Sometimes the truth can be SHOCKING…

And fat loss is no exception to that rule.

The more we learn about fat loss, the more it becomes obvious that the majority of the urban legends and ‘accepted dogmas’ about losing weight are not only misleading, they’re PLAIN WRONG!

The idea that you need to do situps to lose belly fat? WRONG!

The idea that long, slow cardio is the best way to shed weight? WRONG!

The idea that you should eat according to the food pyramid if you want to lose weight? VERY WRONG!

The list could go on and on. There is just a TON of misinformation being spread out there and it’s time we cleared it up and gave YOU – the person who wants to lose fat quickly and easily – the true answers about what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

The good news is that I have a special treat for you today that does exactly that.

I recently got world renowned fat loss expert Craig Ballantyne on the phone and spent 30 minutes GRILLING him about all of the facts and fallacies of fat loss, including:

The 3 biggest success tips that beginners must follow at the start of their fat loss plan if they want to see results right away

Why you should NOT do regular cardio if you want to lose fat

Why you should NEVER do situps or crunches if you want to get in shape (and what you should be doing instead)

Why protein shakes are just a big marketing gimmick

How you can spend way LESS time working out and yet get MUCH better and faster results

The one secret ingredient that most people forget about entirely in their fat loss plan

And much more!

Seriously, this call was absolutely jam-packed with incredibly valuable tips that will help you lose fat faster than ever before!

To get FREE access to this call and download it immediately to your iPod or computer, all you need to do is enter your name and email in the box below:

Once you sign up, you’ll get an email sent to your inbox asking you to confirm your subscription – it’s subject line will say: “click the link in this email to get your fat loss interview with Craig Ballantyne”.

All you have to do is simply click the link in that email (we do this to make ABSOLUTELY sure you want our emails, because like we said, you’ll NEVER get any spam from us!) and you’ll get another email delivered to your inbox with the download link for your audio.

Sign up now, and you’ll be listening to your fat loss secrets audio track within 2 minutes.

Hurry and do it now, before I take the audio track down!

After listening to this audio, you’ll never fall for the gimmicks and lies of the weight loss industry again. You’ll just know the TRUTH about fat loss and how easy it can be when you follow sound advice instead of lies.

I hope you enjoy it!

As always, if you have any questions or input, feel free to drop me a comment below (I always reply).

Take care,

Yudi

P.S. If you think that others could benefit from hearing this audio, please help spread the word by clicking the ‘share/save’ button below and adding this post to your favorite social bookmarking site. I really appreciate your help!

How to do High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

(photo by johnthescone)

You may have heard of a little something called interval training when reading some fitness related information lately.

And there’s good reason for that. High intensity interval training (or HIIT as it’s known for short) is fast becoming a huge phenomenon in the fat loss arena due to its tremendous capability to burn away body fat and rev up your metabolism in record time.

Recent research has shown that interval training burns 9 times more body fat than your average slow cardio workout, which would be remarkable in itself. But what’s even crazier is that it achieves these amazing results in just a fraction of the time that traditional cardio workouts take.

Here’s a quick little introductory video to this blog post. You can either watch this first or skip it and go right on ahead to the blog. It’s basically a very short version of what I cover in the blog without the details:

If you’re a newbie to interval training, you’re probably salivating at the thought of melting away body fat in workouts of 20 minutes or less, but you also probably have no idea about how to do intervals, since every article you read about them gives you conflicting information.

So my aim in this blog post is to simply and clearly explain to you exactly:

• What interval training is

• How to do it

• And how to adjust the intensity so that it produces the optimal results for you

What is interval training?

Simply put, interval training means training for a period of time at a high intensity and then training for a period of time at a lower intensity, alternating between these two phases for a given length of time.

So how do I actually ‘do’ interval training?

Well, let me demonstrate by showing you an example. If you were doing an interval training routine where you were using running as your high intensity exercise and resting as your low intensity exercise, your interval training session might look like this:

Run for 20 seconds Rest for 20 seconds Run for 20 seconds Rest for 20 seconds Repeat for a 4 minute duration

Essentially what you want to do is pick an exercise for your high intensity period and then aim to do as many reps as you can within your high intensity time frame. So, if you were running, as in the example above, you would aim to run as fast and as far as you could within those 20 seconds.

If, however, you were doing bodyweight squats or jumping jacks for your high intensity period, you would simply try and do as many squats or jumping jacks as you could within those 20 seconds.

For the low intensity period, you want to either pick a relatively low intensity movement, such as walking or glute bridges or even a mobility exercise, and do that during the allotted time frame. Or, if you’re really going all-out during your high intensity phase, you can just rest for the low intensity period instead.

The idea is that you really push yourself during the high intensity phase and then use the low intensity phase to allow your body to recover somewhat before pushing yourself through the high intensity phase again. How do I adjust interval training to my current level of fitness?

Interval training can be tricky for newbies because it’s hard to know where to start. Which exercises should you choose, how long should your high vs low intensity intervals be, how do you progress your interval training as you get fitter – all of these questions might be popping into your head and confusing you.

So. to help you out, I’m going to give you some basic guidelines for how to adjust interval training to your level of fitness and how to progress it as needed.

• When you’re just starting out on your workout program and are not used to rigorous exercise, it’s important that you don’t go too intense too fast. This can be lead to injury and over-training, which are completely counterproductive. So instead, what you want to do is start out at a moderate level and work your way up from there. A good typical starting point that I use with my clients is to use brisk walking as your high intensity phase, and casual walking as your low intensity phase. If you were to rank intensity of effort on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being all-out max effort and 1 being almost no effort at all, you would want your brisk walk to be around a 6 and your casual walk to be around a 3. You want to initially keep your high intensity phases short and your low intensity phases longer, and slowly increase the high intensity duration while decreasing the low intensity duration until you are eventually spending the same amount of time on both phases. Spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute walking briskly and anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes walking casually to start out with. Alternate these phases back and forth for a total of 20 minutes per interval training session, with no rest at all in between. I would start out performing this routine 3 times per week and working up to 5 times per week, for a person who is very out of shape and has not worked out in a long time.

• As you get fitter, you can make your intervals harder and harder. You can do this through a number of methods:
  • Start out by increasing the time you spend in your high intensity phase
  • The next step is decreasing the amount of time you spend in your low intensity phase
  • Keep doing the above steps until you have reached a ratio of 1:1 high intensity to low intensity time periods
  • Once you have got to this point, increase the difficulty of the exercises you are using and adjust the time periods once again so that you are spending less time on the high intensity phase and more time on the low intensity phase
  • Repeat the above steps ad nauseum to keep raising the level of difficulty.

• You want to keep the duration of your interval training fairly short – no more than 20 minutes, and as little as just a minute or two (micro workouts, anyone?). Start out with longer durations when your interval training is less exhausting and gradually shorten the overall time spent doing intervals as your workouts get harder and harder. I know that a 4 minute session seems like nothing, but believe me, once you experience doing intervals of jumping split squats for 20 seconds followed by rest for 10 seconds, 4 minutes will seems like a lifetime. Likewise, the harder your workouts get, the fewer times per week you can do them. A deconditioned person doing a relatively ‘easy’ interval workout could do it every day of the week without much of a problem. However, doing the split squat interval training mentioned above every day would be very intense and would only be necessary for hardcore athletes and extremely fit people. There would be no need for the average person to do them every day; 2-3 times per week would be more than enough.

So, to flesh out the above points in more detail, let’s look at an example progression:

1. Start out with a relatively easy interval – brisk walk for 15 secs and casual walk for 1 min. 20 minutes total time for interval workout.
2. Gradually increase time spent on brisk walk and decrease time spent on casual walk until you are spending 30 seconds on each phase. 20 minutes total workout.
3. Increase the difficulty of exercises, so that your high intensity phase is now a jog, instead of a brisk walk. Low intensity exercise remains casual walk. Re-adjust interval phases so that you are now spending 20 seconds jogging and 1 min walking. 15 minutes total time for workout.
4. Gradually increase time spent jogging and decrease time spent on casual walk until you are spending 30 seconds on each phase. 15 minutes total workout.
5. Increase the difficulty of exercises, so that your high intensity phase is now a moderate run instead of a jog. Low intensity exercise is reduced to very light walking. Re-adjust interval phases so that you are now spending 10 seconds running and 90 seconds walking. 10 minutes total time for workout.
6. Keep repeating the above steps, until you have reached the point where you are sprinting for your high intensity exercise and resting for your low intensity exercise for a total phase duration of 20 seconds each and a total workout time of 4 minutes. At this point, you’ve pretty much reached the peak. You can extend the overall time of the workout to longer than 4 minutes if you want to really push yourself, or you can start mixing up your exercises to weighted movements or combo exercises like burpees, instead of sprinting.

See how that worked? We continually made the interval periods harder before making our exercises harder. We also shortened the overall workout time as the workouts got tougher and tougher.

The key thing is to make sure that you are able to really give it your all during the high intensity phases, as that’s where most of the benefit of the workout occurs. So if you find that you just have no energy during your high intensity phase, you need to either tone down the exercise or more likely increase your rest periods so that you can rest up a little better between your high intensity phases.

Final Thoughts

The truth is that even after reading this, you’re probably still not 100% clear about how to do interval training, and that’s only to be expected. It’s one of those things where you just can’t fully ‘get it’ until you’ve done it a bunch yourself.

So get out there and start doing some intervals and you’ll find that you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Pick a high intensity exercise, pick a low intensity exercise (or decide that you’re going to rest during the low intensity phase), pick some durations for your high and low intensity phasese that you feel would be adequate for your level of fitness, and have at it. You’ll quickly be able to tell whether you’ve picked the right parameters for you or whether they need adjusting.

I hope that this blog post has helped clarify some points regarding interval training that you may have had, and that you now start using interval training instead of slow cardio in your workouts in order to help you burn away fat faster than ever.

As always, I’m more than happy to answer any questions or comments, so feel free to leave some below and we can discuss this topic as much as you’d like.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please help spread the word by clicking the Share/Save button below to add it to your favorite social bookmarking site. Also, if you want to get regular email updates every time I make a new post, as well as getting exclusive access to ebooks, videos, audios and other bonus material that I send out only to my newsletter subscribers, make sure you put your name and email in the box below:

Welcome back, to all of you who have shown up and are ready to take your fitness to the next level.

In our last post, we discussed how 90% of success was just showing up. Beautiful words, for sure, but the question still remains – what do I do with the final 10% to really reach the success I’m capable of? It’s a great question, and a particularly tough one when it comes to fitness and getting the body you want.

Is it any wonder that many people say that the toughest weight to lose is that stubborn last 10 lbs? Or how about artists, who always bemoan the fact that finishing a painting or a song is by far the toughest part of the creative process. Getting started may be tough to do, but it’s nothing compared to really finishing things off the way you want.

So let’s tackle the question head-on: I’ve shown up, now what?

The answer to this can be split into parts:

1. Eat right:

A bland first answer perhaps, but truthful nonetheless. The old axiom states that ‘you can’t out-train a poor diet’, and while I don’t agree with that entirely, it’s still broadly true. Your body can only work with the materials it’s given – genetics and fuel. Most people completely overrate the role of genetics. No one is biologically perfect and using that as an excuse is limiting yourself and looking for an easy cop out. It’s also an extremely negative mindset to have – focus on what you can change, not what you can’t. You can’t change your genetics, but you can change your diet.

Limit your carbs, cutting out grains wherever possible. Eat lots of lean protein. Up your intake of healthy omega-3 in items such as almonds, fish and olive oil. Get rid of all unnecessary sugar by ending your habit for sodas, energy drinks and candy. Eat more fruit and healthy vegetables. Get dressings and sauces on the side and limit them. Watch your calories and eat more in the morning and less in the evening. This is all basic, basic stuff, but 90% of the people out there are not following it. Try adhering to it – rigidly – and watch the immediate results.

2. Train movement patterns, not body parts:

When it comes to exercise selection, I like to stick to the basics when they work and innovate a little when the basics just don’t cut it. However, I’ve found that most people do just the opposite.

Take for example, core/ab training. The latest scientific research has indicated that most people are doing completely the wrong thing in this area, yet old school exercises are more popular than ever. People are injuring themselves and creating faulty movement patterns by doing situps and crunches day after day, when really that’s the last thing they should be doing.

Then, on the other hand, you have hip and thigh training, where people are always searching for the latest machine or cable attachment that will ‘get rid of cellulite’, when really they should be doing what has worked since time began – squats, deadlifts and variations thereof.

If you’re trying to get in shape, you need to work out based on movement patterns, not body parts. In other words, instead of working your chest, you should be thinking of working your horizontal push. This may seem like semantics, but the difference, in actuality, is huge. I’ll be sure to discuss this further in a future post.

3. Get the most bang for your buck:

You need to be doing workouts that are functional – exercises that help you move better, look better and experience less pain in real life situations. Get on your feet and get off your backside. Just making a simple change like this can cause your core to fire more in each exercise, adding to the caloric demands of your exercise and working more muscles with each movement.

You also need to find exercises that help you improve in multiple areas all at the same time. One of the best exercises for this is the pushup. In just one exercise you get shoulder stabilizing strength as well as chest and arm strength, all while also working your core. Or how about static lunges done with your foot up on a bench and a dumbell in one hand – leg strength, hip mobility, core stability and balance, all challenge in one movement. If you change the way you think about working out, you can get this kind of effect with almost any exercise. This will be discussed in greater detail in future posts.

4. Ditch exercise that is inefficient and ineffective:

While this principle can apply to a lot of different things, I’m talking specifically about traditional long, slow, boring-as-hell cardio. It’s not effective for weight loss, it wastes a ridiculous amount of time, it’ll probably injure you in the long run, and to be frankly honest – the way most people do it is almost entirely useless.

Thankfully, there is another method that is effective, time-efficient and proven to succeed in both research and practice: interval training. Train really hard for a short period, then train lightly for a while to recover. Rinse and repeat. It’s the secret weapon of knowledgeable trainers all over the world and it’s probably the single most effective way to lose fat in a short amount of time. I’ll expand on exactly how to do it in future posts.

5. Train with intensity:

Talking to someone, reading a magazine, or watching TV while you workout means that you’re not putting in your full intensity. Period. You need to approach each workout with a ruthless single-mindedness. From the moment you start your warmup until the last second of your cooldown flexibility routine, your mind should be focused on one thing and one thing only – getting the absolute maximum out of your exercise session. Put your ipod in your ears, put on music that gets you pumped and focus your mind.

6. Be Balanced:

Too many people are afraid of being a polymath when it comes to health and wellness. It’s almost like people are scared to stray from one dogma, which makes no sense to me. If you want to put on muscle mass, there is plenty you can learn from yoga that will help you do that. If you want to lose your cellulite and get toned, there’s a ton of information from the weight training community that will absolutely help you get there. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and look outside your boundaries, you’ll be amazed at how every single school of thought has something to offer. Take what you like, leave the rest behind and bring it all to the table to create the complete and healthy lifestyle you’ve always wanted. If you restrict yourself to one way of being, you’re limiting yourself to unidimensionality. Get out there and explore.

Also, do the stuff that you know you should be doing but somehow never get around to. Get more sleep. Drink more water. Take some time to breathe deeply and clear your mind. Let go of your life and let yourself be. Everyone talks about this, few people deliver. Be one of those few.

These are the broad principles underlying my philosophy on fitness. Revolutionary? Probably not. Talked about by others? You betcha. Actually implemented by people? Hardly.

This post was intended as a very broad outline to what I have found to be truthful and successful in my journey to find the ultimate method to complete wellness, fitness and fat loss. Looking at them like this, from a 10,000 feet view, doesn’t really demonstrate how powerful they are. When you see the details from close up, though, you’ll be amazed.

This is my philosophy.

No gimmicks, no BS.

No stuff that people say ‘works’ when there’s no evidence at all of that being true. No stuff that science says works but doesn’t happen in the real world.

Just tried and true methods that get people in the best shape of their life. I’ve tried to take these first couple of posts and show you what I believe in. Now that we have the foundation in place, we will be exploring the finer aspects of these points, and delving into the actual, practical ways that you can make them a part of your life and a part of your success.

Tomorrow, we start at step 1 of the road to fat loss and wellness: getting rid of aches and pains. First up, the killer that’s getting 80% of our nation as we speak – low back pain.

Thanks for indulging me as I get my feet wet in the blogosphere and for the positive energy that you have brought to both yourself and me by reading this post.

And thanks again for showing up. Lets conquer this last 10% together.

(photo by mattcyp88)