As I was driving to the gym today to take a workout for myself (1st in almost 8 days which took about 12 minutes) I was thinking of a conversation that I had with one of my new phone clients about diet and exercise.
Sergio is a truck driver and he used to be in shape when younger… but not lately. In assessing his needs and what he is trying to accomplish, Sergio had some interesting questions and commentary.
Sergio advised that because of his profession and new born baby and bride, he’s no longer able to get to the gym 3-4 days a week and spend the 2 hours a day necessary to keep in shape. He is on the road as a driver and eats fairly well…he says!! Subway and Burger King are normal stops and never skips breakfast. He does drink an amazing drink he says, however, which helps him keep his diet balanced and helps burn body fat. Sergio does admit it is not working as well as it could and that he needs to loose about 30 pounds. Does any of this sound familiar?
Sergio also wanted to know what supplements I am using and recommend and how many hours a day minimum he would have to train to get back in shape.
Folks, please let’s think about what was said here for a second… (Sergio gave me permission to write about this by the way… as long as I changed his name so I did) we have a middle aged man, who is mainly sedentary due to his profession, eating fast food. Since he has not used his muscle it has atrophied and he has bought a cure all elixir to take up the slack!
He is confused! Most bodybuilders are confused and bewildered. They look in muscle magazines and take the first routine they can find, buy a whole bunch of supplements and go at it!! They don’t really know why they progress for a little bit then progress comes to a halt. Many quit thinking that they just don’t have what it takes to build muscle when actually they could be Olympians and never know it. It becomes a social ritual!
Muscle is a stress reaction
Before muscle can be built, it must be stimulated, period! As with a suntan, where you must go out into the hot sun, enough to stimulate the effect of that stress, the sun’s rays, so do you with building muscle.
If you go out for hours and possibly for the day in the hot August sun, you might burn or blister. The same thing goes with muscle.
1. You will never get a suntan on a cloudy day no matter how long you stay out there and
2. No matter how much suntan oil you rub on, it doesn’t matter if the sun’s intensity isn’t there!
Like a suntan, muscle also takes a stimulus. Once stimulus has occurred you don’t have to re-stimulate over and over again, what does this mean? It means that once you stimulate muscle growth through the intensity of a set, you don’t have to re-stimulate it over and over again with one set after another. Remember, your objective as a bodybuilder is not to go into the gym to see how many sets you can do, or how many different exercises to do. Yours is to do the precise amount of sets to stimulate muscle growth! That does not take 2 hours to do… it takes more like 10-15 minutes if done properly. Muscle is specific. Doing any more than is minimally required to stimulate a growth increase is overtraining!
It means that muscle grows outside the gym as the body compensates then overcompensates for the stimulus or the workout. It has to recover first from the exhaustive effects of the workout systemically not just locally, then, once recovery has taken place, whatever is left over goes into overcompensation or growth. This may take 4 days or more, sometimes up to 14 days, with some of my clients! Remember, those Cartoon Characters that you read about and see in muscle magazines take huge amounts of recovery drugs like growth hormone, insulin and steroids. Even they would do better to train more intense, less sets and less frequent. The body has a limited amount of resources for recovery ability. As your body gets stronger, the limited amount does not increase. In fact, because you are stronger and bigger, and use up more resource as you grow, the chance of overtraining becomes even greater unless you manage the volume and the frequency downward!
Fat is Fat
Muscle does not turn to fat and visa versa. An apple can not turn to an orange! Fat is storage. Through out history, there has been famine. When your body senses that you are starving, it begins to store body fat because it thinks you are going to die. Why do you think bodybuilders eat frequently and are always lean?
Eating frequent small meals allows the body to never think it has to hold on to any storage because it is starving. Eating one or two meals a day encourages the body to hold onto body fat. Eating a high calorie meal once a day with little nutritional value tells it that you are starving and not only holds on to it but also slows the metabolism down to be ultra efficient.
There is no nutritional supplement that will undo this process!
If you want to remove the covering of fat that exists over your muscle, it is pretty simple!
****Eat a well balanced diet consisting of the following:
1. Cereal and Grains – 4 daily servings or more
2. Fruits and Vegetables – 4 daily servings or more
3. Proteins – 2 daily servings or more
4. Milk and Milk Products – 2 daily servings or more
****Reduce your calorie intake below your maintenance level
If you reduce your calorie consumption by 500 calories a day, you will loose 1 lb of fat a week. NOTE: Remember the more lean muscle you gain, your BMR also rises. You become a fat burning machine!
See the math…
1 lb of fat yields 3500 calories (as apposed to a 1lb of muscle that yields 600 calories). Your maintenance level is based on your bodyweight.
To figure out your maintenance level:
If you are a man…. add a zero at the end of your bodyweight. Multiply your bodyweight by two and add it to that figure.
If you are a woman… add a zero at the end of your bodyweight, then add your bodyweight to that figure and that is your BMR.
Example: 200 lb man, add zero. i.e. 2000 calories. Take 200×2=400. Add 400 to 2000 and that is your BMR which means Basic Metabolic Rate… 2400 calories. This is what you body needs just to fuel the vital life process and does not include calories expended in your voluntary daily activity.
So if you are a 200 lb man and reduce your calories by 500, which would be 1900 calories a day, you will effectively loose 1 lb of fat a week. If you reduce your calories by 1000, you will loose 2 lbs of fat a week.
NEVER GO BELOW 1200 Calories a day, as it would be a challenge to eat a well balanced diet at that level.
(If you BMR is so low that even at a 1200 calorie diet per day you can’t loose a minimal amount of body fat, consider burning those calories in addition through exercise, namely aerobics, biking, walking etc. Biking will burn approximately 500+ calories an hour if at about 10 mph)
Oh, by the way, a 200 lb bodybuilder requires approximately 72 grams of protein a day and if he wants to put on 20 lbs of muscle this year and get to 220, he should increase the 72 grams he is currently taking to 74. I will spend another time speaking about this magic thing called protein, yes I am being sarcastic  as regardless of whom you are or what you do, your protein requirement is based on need and that need is based on your weight.
Putting It Together
The only way to build muscle, whether you are a natural bodybuilder or other, an athlete, a professional or a housewife, is to:
1. Train Intensely and briefly as to not use up a great deal of the bodies resources (any training at all is a negative when it comes to building muscle)
2. Train Infrequently to allow the compensation then the overcompensation (muscle gain) to occur
3. Feed your body with a well balanced diet as indicated and if lean trying to gain, add an additional 250 calories, and if trying to loose fat, reduce by 500-1000 calories a day (never going under 1200 calories)
If you read my book RUSerious?- http://www.ruserious.info -you know it does not take much in volume to stimulate muscle growth. I just had a phone client call me and he has gained 13 lbs of lean muscle in 2 months training a total of 2 hours in those two months. 15 minutes every 7 days! Yes, he is a natural athlete and has been training for 20 years so he is not a newbee. If you do this right, you will experince progress each and every workout.
It is the intensity not the volume that creates the stimulus. It is the difference between a distance runner and a sprinter. The distance runner has stringy muscles conditioned to do more and more work with low intensity as apposed to a sprinter who has muscular shapely legs who goes full bore for a limited number of meters. Why? Because if you are training intensely it is impossible to train long… to the extent that you train hard there is an inverse to the duration! You train short and intense and get out of the gym to allow the muscle growth to occur. Could you imagine a sprinter sprinting 10 miles?
Potions
If you are training intensely, not training too long or too often, eating a well balanced diet, that is all you need! Get rid of the pills, potions, fat burning elixirs and put that money into your pocket. There are no secrets as long as you understand the way that muscle grows and how fat is deposited.
I say it over and over again, “Stop Wasting Precious Time”, reach your personal and bodybuilding goals and make progress each and every workout.
Bill Sahli is a 35 year X Competitive Bodybuilder, Trainer, Author and Life Coach. Bill is author of the E-book “R U Serious ®?” http://www.ruserious.info and Audio Tele Seminar – High Intensity Mindset. He is available for personal instruction on a limited basis. He has trained bodybuilders, athletes, professions, the handicapped & both men and women. His amazing techniques save hours in the gym, with most clients training 15-30 minutes within a week, allowing them to reach their goals in record time. You can reach Bill at ruseriouss@msn.com
