Shannon Clark's Blog
Posted by Shannon Clark
When life gets hectic we all have trouble ensuring we are still getting to the gym on a regular basis. The good news is that in order to maintain your strength training progress you really do not need to dedicate a great deal of time.
Generally as long as you keep up the intensity of your workouts you will not lose much strength if you need to reduce volume for a certain period of time (due to being too busy for example). Try and get to the gym at least twice per week and perform full body workouts, using as heavy of a weight as possible. This should keep your fitness level up while freeing you up to do whatever else is demanding your time.
Additionally, when setting fitness goals, it is always a good idea to follow the three R's, realism, reminders and routine.
Realism means that you are setting goals that are realistic for you. Don't set a goal that is almost impossible to reach or you will not doubt become discouraged and will likely just lose interest.
Reminders means that you set daily reminders around your living space to help motivate you. This could be a list of reasons why working out will benefit you or a picture of the look you hope to achieve. Find out what works for you and use it!
Lastly, routine means that you have planned out a specific routine that you will follow. If you just go to the gym and wing your way through it, chances are you aren't going to see that great of results. Get a clearly defined program and track your progress. Write down how much weight you are lifting each workout so when motivation starts to wane, you can look back and see how far you've already come.
It isn't difficult to maintain motivation to workout as long as you take the right approach and maintain proper mind set.
Posted by Shannon Clark
Whenever someone embarks on a strength training regime there is a good likelihood that they may actually gain some weight on the scale.
Sometimes this can send exercisers into a panic, thinking they are moving further away from their goals.
What you need to remember however is that muscle tissue is more dense than fat tissue so even though you may be heavier on the scale, the shape of your body will actually be smaller.
So in all reality, while your scale weight may have gone up, your total body fat percentage may have gone done. This is really what you want to happen when starting on a fitness program.
While it is a goal to maintain low body fat levels, you can push it too far as you do require some body fat for optimal health. Generally males have a 3% body fat requirement (called essential fat) while females require 9-12% of their body weight to come from fat.
The average male carries 11-18% total weight as fat and the average female carries 21-28%. The recommended levels however are 10-15 and 18-25 % respectively. So rather than setting a goal weight, set a goal body fat percentage. It will be a much better way to measure your progress.
Posted by Shannon Clark
One of the biggest problems that dieters face when they go on a diet is the loss of lean muscle tissue. The reason why this can be so devastating is because along with a loss of lean muscle mass comes a decrease in the resting metabolic rate. This will not only make fat loss harder but will also make maintaining what weight loss you have achieved much more difficult as well.
The reason why muscle loss occurs when dieting is because when you are taking in a hypocalorie diet (eating less calories than required to maintain yourself), after your body runs out of carbohydrates to use it will start to initially turn to protein for fuel. This means that there is less protein leftover from your diet than is needed to maintain your muscle fibers. If the calorie deficit is great enough, rapid muscle loss can be a big problem.
The way to offset this situation from happening is to consume more dietary protein so that your body will have more than enough to spare. Generally, regardless of your total calorie requirements, so long as you are taking in 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight in protein, you will minimize any nitrogen losses (muscle degradation).
Another way to check to see if you are in fact losing muscle mass on a diet is to gauge your strength levels. If you notice your strength level is seriously declining, chances are you are losing muscle mass in the process. If this is the case, either increase total calories so there is less of a deficit or else increase protein intake if you are not yet at that 1.5 grams/lb recommendation.
Finally, performing strength training activities will also go a long way to stopping muscle tissue loss while dieting so it is of utmost importance that you continue to go to the gym 2-4 times per week while dieting. Don't get caught thinking that you should just go spend all your time doing cardio because it burns more calories per minute, while cardio is important, strength training is equally essential.
Posted by Shannon Clark
One of the most popular type of supplement products that are used in today's strength training world is protein powder. More and more people are starting to become aware of the importance consuming enough protein to meet their goals and are supplementing their diet with it.
Some take this a little too far though, thinking that by adding more protein powder they will be able to add more muscle to their frame.
It is true that building muscle is an energy consuming process and does require additional amino acids in the form of protein. It 's also true that it requires however more overall energy, so keeping your carbohydrates or fats higher is a good plan as well. If you are not supplying enough total calories, it does not matter how much protein you consume, you are still not going to grow.
Furthermore, protein powders in and of themselves are nothing special. They are simply a convenient way to get protein into your diet when you otherwise may be lacking. True, some powders are designed to be taken in by the muscle cells slightly quicker than a solid food source and are ideal for right after workouts, however in the grand scheme of things, so long as you are providing enough protein from some source, you should not have to worry (assuming of course the source is not loaded with fat as well as then you will run into other problems such as your total fat calories being too high and a gain of body fat occuring).
Make no mistake, in no way am I saying protein powders are a bad thing and if anything I would recommend them as it will make sticking with your diet much easier. Just do not be confused into thinking that they hold some type of magical properties that will make you grow faster than other types of protein food.
Posted by Shannon Clark
Today I'm going to do something a little different and discuss a topic that has been on my mind as of late.
Rant On.
So, every now and again when I'm in the grocery store waiting for the check-out I'll pick up a copy of one of the various fitness magazines that graces the rack. Sometimes I'll find a new piece of information that is unique and actually gives some good advice. More often than not however I strongly question what some people are thinking when they publish these.
One time I even saw a piece that was recommending people walk backwards on the treadmill because apparently it burns more calories. Don't even get me started on that one. Back to strength training though since that's why we are all here...
This month I saw an article that was telling women that they could easily get 'toned' and defined arms by lifting a 3 pounds weight (nothing heavier - this was stated) for 15-20 reps twice a week.
Problem A. First, if you've read some of my previous articles or have some degree of general knowledge on the principles of strength training you should know that you must create an overloading stimulus in order for a muscle to improve. Pink weights are not going to cut it. Just. Don't. Do. It.
Unless you are a 5 year old child or have never picked up anything heavier than a carton of milk, 3 pounds is not going to provide any challenge by any stretch of the imagination. (should make a note however that if you are coming back from an injury or doing rehabilitation exercises you may be an exception).
Most females, particularly those who have given birth before and have carried around a 10+ pound baby, are simply going to be much stronger than this. Therefore lifting 3 pound weights ("pink weights") is not going to improve strength in any way.
Problem B. "Tone". How I hate this word. There is no such thing as 'tone'. If you want to increase your muscular size you perform a program that is targeted towards hypertrophy (enlarging the actual muscle fibres). If you want to define your muscles, you need to remove some of the body fat that is covering them. It's that simple. Where the word tone came from is beyond me and if I had my way it would be abolished.
So if I could offer you just one piece of advice, one take-home message from this section on strength training, it's lift a heavy enough weight. For males this is usually not an issue. They tend to be the opposite and feel the need to lift more weight than they should to try and impress everyone.
For all the females out there reading this though, please, put down the pink weights. Trust me, those 10-20 pounders sitting on the rack are not as scary as they look. You might just be surprised how strong you actually are.
Rant off.
Posted by Shannon Clark
If your goal is to get big arms than your tricep training is going to be vitally important for you. Your triceps make up a large majority of your total arm mass therefore spending enough time doing the proper exercises will definitely pay off.
One mistake many people make is mostly doing tricep pushdowns as their main tricep exercise. While this exercise is a nice way to isolate the muscle specifically, it unfortunately is not your best option.
If you look at the triceps of male gymnasts, you will find some of the most remarkable muscles around. Then look at the movements they are doing - they include plenty of dip and pressing motions. So, in order for you to develop triceps such as these, you need to include these actions in your workouts rather than those pressdowns that aren't going to get you very far.
Better choices of exercises would include parallel dips, bench pressing using a close grip, decline bench press, and overhead tricep extentions.
Your best bet is to perform 1-2 of these exercises on a day that you work your chest muscle since the triceps will also be indirectly worked any time you work chest as they are a synergistic muscle. This will help to prevent overtraining of these muscles and ensure that they have plenty of time to recover.
Posted by Shannon Clark
Muscle soreness is something that commonly happens after a strength training workout and is caused by the build-up of lactic acid in the muscles.
The problem of equating muscle soreness with progress is that different training techniques will elicit different degrees of muscle soreness. If you train using higher rep ranges will little rest periods you are going to see more muscle soreness than if you train using small rep ranges and lengthy rests. This is because the longer rest periods allow the body to clear the lactic acid that has built up (and small rep ranges do not create such a lactic acid build-up in the first place).
You will also see more muscle soreness if you are doing eccentric focused exercises (sets that really concentrate on lowering the weight very slowly).
So next time you have a workout and don't find you are sore, do not become upset about it. That does not mean you did not make progress during that gym session, it just means you did not cause as much lactic acid build-up as other sessions have.