Body And Fitness Blog

I was recently sent a message from another fitness website asking me if I would review one of their posts in their website, entitled “Toned Arms in Record Time”.

Naturally I was curious to see what their article was about, so I followed the link I was sent and read through the three different workouts they suggest for toning up ones arms.

My first reaction was that the lady in the photoshoot was very toned and athletic looking, a nice bit of eye-candy one could say. My second reaction was that the exercises they were touting as being great for toning ones arms in record time were actually not exercises that work the arms directly, moreover they are compound movements that work the shoulders primarily. The exercises they promote are:

• standing shoulder press
• standing cable row
• standing cable flye (leaning lateral raise as they refer to it)

The standing shoulder press primarily works the shoulders, although it does work the triceps, they are not the primary muscle being worked.

The standing cable row, with your arms high as they show, will primarily work the back muscles at the top of ones neck (traps and rhomboids), rear deltoids and will also work the biceps, but not primarily.

Performing a standing cable flye, one handed whilst leaning off the machine will work the shoulders primarily, if you pull the cable to your side it will primarily work the lateral delts, if the cable is pulled to your front it will primarily work the anterior delts. There will be some work done by the forearms in steadying the handle, and a small amount of work done by the biceps/triceps in keeping your arm straight, but I would not refer to it as a good exercise to develop (tone) the arms.

If I were looking to tone up my arms or someone esle’s arms for that matter, I would recommend that they perform compound exercises for the whole body, which will utilise the biceps/triceps. Exercises such as bench press, shoulder press, seated cable rowing, wide grip pulldowns and chin ups. If they were still wanting to do some “extra” work on their arms, I would recommend dumbbell curls for biceps and cable pushdowns for triceps.

If the aim is to build muscle then you will need to work in the 6-12 rep range, working out 1 -2 times week. If the aim is simply to tone and firm up the arms, work in the 20 - 30 rep range and exercise 3 - 4 times a week, combined with some steady state and interval training cardio work.

All of this is completely useless unless you are getting the right nutrition, something most people are too ignorant to understand or too arrogant to accept that they need to change their diet. For a lean, toned look you need to eat a diet that promotes testosterone in the body, as well as not blunting the raised testosterone levels that you will achieve from working out.

To achieve this, eat a high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diet, ensuring that any carbs that are consumed are low GI - read the back of the packets and if the nutrition information states the levels of sugar in the carbohydrates is more than 10% of the carbs avoid it like the plague. If you have the money, buy whey protein powder as it is high in protein and low in carbs (and fat usually), but allows you to keep a high protein diet without any simple carbs and the unwanted blood sugar spike that they produce.

I find it’s just easier to avoid carbs altogether, preferring to eat fats for energy instead, this is because all fats are low GI, thus affording me a steady release of energy, which has the added benefit of never feeling tired like I used to when I ate a high carb diet.

For the past few months I’ve been taking the supplement Tribulus Terristris, largely because I had read that it was a natural product that could be used to increase your body’s natural production of testosterone and also because I had read that it did not have any side effects.

This understanding of the supplement was recently challenged by my brother who argued that it could cause “bitch tits” and would also increase the levels of estrogen in my system which would naturally cancel out the effect of the increased testosterone.

At first I was slightly worried thinking that maybe I had been duped into this supplement and that perhaps I should have researched it further before trying it out.

In the spirit of being scientific, I had a look on the Journal of Physiology website to see if I could find any papers on Tribulus Terrestris and its’ effects on humans, but they didn’t have any (or at least their search engine didn’t find any).

Not wanting to be defeated, I did a few searches on Google, but could only find forums on other bodybuilding and fitness websites, where from my experience, you only get the opinions of various blow-hards who feel the need to speak their minds and “tell” everyone else how to live their lives.

What I did get was some interesting information (whether or not it’s true) about Tribulus, here is what I learned:

• Tribulus Terrestris increases the levels of LH (luteinizing hormones) in your body
• LH stimulates hormone production and secretion
• LH may aromatize into either estrogen, growth hormone, insulin or testosterone
• Only really has any positive (testosterone increasing effects) in males with abnormally low testosterone, so if you are already hitting the weights and getting laid, your testosterone levels are probably fine!

From the reading I’ve done, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably a waste of time me taking it and I will discontinue taking it. However, if you think that your testosterone levels of abnormally low and you want to get hold of some, please use my other website, DiscountSupplementsGuide.com to find suppliers of cheap Tribulus Terrestris.

Last week I had a planned rest from doing weights, I do this every eight weeks so that I give my body time to recover from all the weights that I do in a normal week. I believe this process of working out for a given time period, then taking a week or two off is called periodisation or having a training cycle.

During this week off, I come off the creatine, drop the protein and calories a bit and just do some lighter CV work, generally I’m not as active as I would normally be. Last week was no exception, I did a few gentle three/four mile runs, just steady state cardio, no weight training at all. The only problem is, I still feel exhausted this week and wonder if I should have another week off from doing weights.

My real quandry though is that I did have a heavy weekend, going out both Friday and Saturday night, and wonder maybe if as much as I did need time off to rest, because I’ve had a large weekend, all the good rest that I got last week has been spoiled.

Which leads me into a few trains of thought, firstly, should I really be indulging in two nights of fun and games at the weekend, especially as I am approaching thirty years of age and can clearly not cope as well as I used to when I was 10 years younger. And secondly, had I not gone out on the weekend, would I still be feeling so exhausted now? I have been training very consistently since early November last year, it’s now July, so that’s over eight months of training consistently without any holidays, except for my planned rest weeks during the first week in March and the first week in May.

Perhaps regardless of my weekend activity I would still be feeling tired now and so should I listen to my body and take the rest of this week off from weights, have a restful weekend without any booze and feel fully recovered to start training hard again next week.

Sonia Devine presents All About Body Image Issues - Love Yourself Slim posted at Love Yourself Slim - Weight Loss from the Inside Out.

Excellent yoga set for total body workout. Strengthen and tone your upper body, arms, abs, things, hips and buttocks. A comprehensive yoga workout which promotes weight loss and fitness. Anmol Mehta presents Yoga for Full Body Fitness posted at Mastery of Meditation and Yoga.

Guy Mackenzie presents How to develop an exercise routine posted at SlimCo Weightloss Blog.

Health Tips 101 presents 4 Tips To Help You Get Ready For A Fitness Program posted at Health Tips 101.

An effective at home workout can provide you with a full body weight exercise routine when you can’t get to a gym. In fact, they can be better than any machine or weight-based workout. JD Bell presents The Effective At Home Workout posted at Body Weight Exercise.

A very powerful article on the Body Fat Set Point. Is there scientific evidence that it exist and what is the best way to change it. Don’t spend another dime on weight loss products and don’t start another diet until you read this article on the body fat set point! Darryl Kimball presents If You Don’t Give Some Thought To The Body Fat Set Point- You Might Be A Dumb Ass! posted at www.weightloss4dumbasses.com.

Sonia Devine presents Top 5 Causes of Binge Eating - Love Yourself Slim posted at Love Yourself Slim - Weight Loss from the Inside Out.

Stephen Todd presents Weight Management With Exercise posted at Weight Loss.

Some of my regular readers will probably have notice that I’ve been a bit slack at posting on here over the last couple of weeks so I feel I should explain myself.

I have been busy, very busy in fact, putting together a new website that compares the prices of supplements. I started the venture off thinking it would be quite easy to do and wouldn’t take too long, but it’s actually turned into a much bigger project than I had realised! It’s because of this that I’ve been “off the grid” so to speak, spending every waking hour working on getting the new website finished.

For those of you that want to find cheap supplements, please follow this link to my new site, Discount Supplements Guide and search for the best prices on your favourite supplements, or even find cheaper, alternative suppliers.

I welcome all kinds of constructive criticism on the new website, and I will endeavour over the coming months to make the new site as useful as possible.

Every once in a while I will get stressed about things in life, it may be that I’m struggling with something for my work, it may be emotional stress from relationships - professional and personal - or it may simply be financial, having spent too much money on a stag do for example!

Whatever the reason, I always find that taking some time to do some exercise is a sure-fire way of reducing my stress levels.

I personally find that if I have some nagging stress, like if I’m worried about something or maybe just feeling a bit unsure of the future, I tend to find that going for a long, steady run is the bet medicine. It gives you time to think about the issues that are causing the stress, and generally my mind is able to rationalise the problem and provide re-assurance that things will improve in the future.

If my stress is emotional, for instance I’m having some kind of conflict with someone in my life, I find that I generally need to do something a bit more high intensity. I find that it’s good to go out and do some sprinting in situations like this. It really gets my energy levels up and makes me feel somewhat more able to deal with any negativity that I am experiencing.

When I have financial stress, I’ve generally found that going for a long walk is a good way to clear my head. It allows me time to work out how I’m going to overcome the fact that I may not have much money, and generally I feel much better for having spent some quality time just thinking and walking.

If you feel stressed, no matter how stressed, it is always advisable to get some exercise in. You will be amazed at how going for 30 minutes of exercise can help to make even biggest of problems seem much smaller, thus making them far easier for you to tackle.

I’m off on a friend’s stag weekend this weekend, something that I am both looking forward to immensely, but am also a little anxious about as well. Although I’m not the stag, so should have no reason to feel anxious, I am still feeling anxious, though this is because I am slightly worried about how drunk we will all get over the course of the weekend. Clearly going to gym and eating well in an attempt to build a strong, lean physique is somewhat juxtaposed to going on an all-weekend long bender with 20 of your friends, who will no doubt all regress back to their university behaviour – childish, immature, but hilarious – despite all of us pushing 30 years of age!

So this is what’s causing my angst – do I just say to hell with it and have a good time, or should I practice some restraint and accept that I will most likely not do to much harm if I limit myself to “just a few pints” each night? The sensible part of my brain, the part that pays bills on time, makes the bed and checks the oil in my car once in a while says that I should practice restraint. The slightly immature, not wanting to grow up and be responsible part says that I should just have a big blowout, forget about the diet and training for the weekend and just relax with my old friends, as it’s not that often that we get together as a big group anymore.

Through all of this, I can’t help but think there must be a way to have your cake and eat it, although in this case, it’s more have a skinful and not ruin your body and put on any weight! Perhaps I can do a bunch of exercise on the Saturday and Sunday morning to offset the effects of tonight and Saturday? Maybe a high intensity interval training session, followed by some weight training and some sit ups will do the trick as far as exercise goes, but then to offset the calories from the booze, maybe I’ll just have a few protein shakes for my food all day. I know we’re going for a game of five-a-side football so that should help to burn off the previous nights’ excesses!

I’ve been reading about glycemic load and glycemic index quite a lot during the last few months, with a view to trying to understand what is the right way of eating carbohydrates, or in fact any foods for that matter. A great website for seeing what the glycemic load of a particular food has is The Glycemic Index, it has a database of tons of different foods, showing the carbs for each food and gl value each has too.

From my understanding of glycemic load, if the glycemic load of a food is below 10, then you will not get an insulin spike, meaning your blood sugar levels have remained in a healthy range, and so you won’t metabolise the excess sugar into fat. Obviously this is useful if you are trying to reduce your body percentage, and if like me you are trying to do this while still adding some muscle, it’s even better!

Another reason that it may be advantageous to keep one’s glycemic load low is because when performing intense exercise, such as sprint interval training or heavy duty weight training, your body greatly increases the amount of various hormones into the body, such as Testosterone, Humana Growth Hormane and Insulin Like Growth Hormone 1, which will cause your body to become more muscular and leaner.

An unwanted side effect of having an insulin spike, as one does if one eats too many simple carbs, is that the level of the aforementioned hormones in the body is greatly decreased. If you are training specifically with weights to gain muscle mass, you will do all the hard work in the gym, thus naturally increasing the hormone levels in one’s body, but all this will be to waste if one then eats too much simple carbs and causes an insulin spike.

So it seems to me that to have a lean, muscular body, it’s imperitive to train hard, be it with weights or by doing sprinting, to increase the hormone levels, then just leave the body to do what it will do naturally – gain muscle and lean up – whilst avoiding simple carbs and insulin spikes and the associated negative effects they have on the body and it’s fat levels.

Has the constant advertising of the diet, weight loss, and fitness industry convinced you that losing weight is difficult. Have you been convinced that it takes a lot of time, or that it is just too hard, or that it takes money to lose weight? Perhaps you have allowed yourself to become mentally conditioned to stay overweight! Darryl Kimball presents Are You Mentally Conditioned to Stay Overweight? posted at Weight Loss 4 Dumb Asses.

Sonia Devine presents Portion Sizing – the Weight Loss Killer - Love Yourself Slim posted at Love Yourself Slim.

JD Bell presents Before You Pop That Vitamin In Your Mouth… posted at It Takes Work.

There is always a lot of hype surrounding Pre-Workout Supplements, but most of the time they are a complete waste of cash.But I have hope; enter Musclespeed from Accelerative Nutraceuticals… Fit Jerk presents Supplement Review: Musclespeed From Accelerative Nutraceuticals posted at FlawlessFitness.

Childhood obesity is an epidemic. Here are some tips on how to help your child lose weight. Joshua presents How to Help Your Child Lose Weight posted at Family and Parenting.

One of the most common, and surprising, effects of following the Atkins diet is appetite suppression. Many followers of the plan report that the between meal hunger pangs they used to experience fade away very quickly. This makes it easier to stay on the diet and continue to lose weight. While other diets have their followers starving between meals, the Atkins diet offers relief from constant hunger. The Atkins diet, with its specific combination of foods and ingredients, has powerful appetite suppressing effects. Robert Galway presents Atkins Diet posted at Robs Sports and Fitness.

I read a lot of information about weight training and fitness training and most of it seems to fall into one of two categories. The first category I can liken to the herd mentality, the second category I liken to the innovators. It seems this pattern is inherent in all aspects of human behaviour, and bodybuilding and fitness are no different.

You see, most of the information that you read about how to pack on muscle as a bodybuilder would have you believe that you need to train 4-5 days a week, working only one major body part per workout, using a combination of compound exercises and isolation exercises.

The plethora of information that you read in bodybuilding magazines leads you to believe that a typical workout should involve 12 –20 sets during a workout, on one body part alone, then leaving that body part a week to recover. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve trained like this, did so for many months and didn’t really see a huge difference in my physique.

My belief is that if you train like this, you will need to be doing steroids to see any significant gains and eating every other hour, going through about 300 grams of protein a day, not to mention needing lots of sleep. The worst thing about this kind of training is the monotony of it, or at least that’s what I found when I was training like this, and that combined with fairly insignificant size gains can blunt the enthusiasm of even the most devoted weights training enthusiast.

I now believe that a full body workout, done three times a week, with a bit of variety thrown into the exercises done for each body part and a lot less sets for each body part each workout can lead to greater strength and size gains than training like a pro bodybuilder who does nothing other than train, eat, oh and of course take steroids!