Gravity Fx Fitness

If you want to increase your metabolism and lose fat but have limits to how much time you spend exercising, there are certain activities that you should focus on. First, what are the determining factors in your metabolism?

According to wikipedia, “metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life.  These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures and respond to their environments.”  Your resting metabolic rate (RMR) makes up 60-70% of your total metabolism.

This is the amount of calories needed to maintain your basic functions while at complete rest.  This is largely determined by your muscle mass (lean muscle tissue), so any fat loss program should include resistance training to build or maintain lean muscle tissue.  About 20-30% of your daily calorie burn comes from your activity levels.  Strength Training or Cardio Training?

Many people have extremely busy lives, with both work and family commitments that limits the amount of time they have to exercise.  Fat loss expert Alwyn Cosgrove has come up with a Hierarchy of Fat Loss to explain the best options if you fall into this situation.

1.  Correct nutrition

2.  See number 1

3.  Activities that burn calories, maintain/build muscle mass and elevate metabolism

4.  Activities that burn calories and elevate metabolism

5.  Activities that burn calories but don’t necessarily maintain muscle or elevate metabolism

Four Factors for Fat loss Training

1.  TIED -

Metabolic resistance training

Strength training

2.  High intensity anaerobic interval training

3.  High intensity aerobic training

4.  Low intensity aerobic training

For a more detailed look at this read Alwyn’s article on the Hierarchy of Fat Loss.  Many of my clients are extremely busy and only have 3 or 4 hours per week to exercise.  So for them to get the biggest bang for their buck, I focus on strength training and/or metabolic conditioning training.

The resistance or strength training focuses on building or maintaining lean muscle tissue with complex exercises – meaning multiple joint movements such as pushing and pulling where several muscles are used with each exercise.  For the lower body this means various squat, lunge and step-up patterns where the large muscles of the leg and hip are working together.

An example of a “big bang” exercise is sled pushing.  Almost every muscle in your body is working to some extent when pushing the Prowler sled.   Not just for football players, it works well for women too, as you can see by the shape of these two.

Metabolic conditioning training uses total body workouts that are more about strength endurance or conditioning, often using timed intervals, such as the TRX Rip trainer and battling ropes class at my studio.

After about 15 minutes of dynamic warmup you then alternate between 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest for 20 minutes.  This is one type of interval training and it compliments the strength training that is done on the other days.  The first 5 minutes doesn’t feel so bad but in the last 10 minutes that 30 second break seems to get shorter.  Heavy breathing and plenty of sweat is par for the course with this type of training.

Alwyn provides plenty of research and real world results in his articles and at his gym Results Fitness in southern California.  How you train for a marathon or strength competition is obviously different than what we are talking about here, but marathoners, triathletes or endurance cyclists not only spend numerous hours preparing for competition but exercise at a higher intensity level in most cases than the average person (hi vs. low intensity aerobic).

So if your goal is losing fat and we know that maintaining or building lean muscle tissue is crucial to your success, than walking at a leisurely pace, while still being good for your health, is not going to be your first exercise option.  At least it shouldn’t be.

You can take leisurely walks to relax, de-stress and catch up with friends or family and do other low intensity activities like mowing the grass, raking leaves, etc. for additional calorie burning, as long as you remember what your primary focus is.  If you only have 20 or 30 minutes to workout you can still get a boost in your metabolism by choosing 3 or 4 exercises and going from one to the other with little rest, choosing an upper body pushing and pulling movement and a squat or lunge pattern.

Now that you know how important muscles are to keeping your metabolism elevated you can better understand how men can sometimes seem to get away with eating whatever they want, at least while they are young, but it will catch up to them some day.  Remember, you can’t out-train a bad diet and nutrition is at the top of the list.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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Recently I’ve seen women on the internet wearing shirts that read “Strong is the New Skinny”, meaning that having strength is desirable.

I couldn’t agree more.  Besides making most of life’s tasks easier, working your muscles with resistance training gives you an appealing shape, as well.

A highschool friend recently celebrated a mid – 40’s birthday by running a half marathon.  Doing basic strength exercises helped her overcome some nagging injuries and increased her running efficiency.  She stopped in to see me briefly a while back and I showed her some simple but effective exercises.

A client recently took up jogging again as a supplement to our strength training sessions.  Several years ago she dislocated her kneecap and had been cautious when doing any type of exercise for fear of re-injuring her knee.

After taking our time to work the muscles of her leg and hip, making sure she had a good foundation, she now is one of the strongest women I work with, pushing a sled with 200 pounds of weights no problem.  The overall strength she has built also comes in handy while working as a nurses’ aide, frequently being asked to help move large patients.

Another client in her 50’s was recently moving some furniture at her parents’ apartment with one of her brothers.  They were going to move a chair when he said something about being careful of his sore back so she just picked up the chair herself and put it where she wanted.

I think you get the picture, that building lean muscle tissue is a good thing, if for no other reason than to make your daily activities that much easier…and since lean muscle tissue is important for your metabolism, that’s another important reason to do resistance training.

Some women always say that they don’t want to get too big or bulky but I just haven’t seen that myself.  In fact, most women get smaller with a proper program.  It takes a lot of effort to build muscle and most people aren’t willing to do the work.  If it was so easy to get big, athletes wouldn’t resort to taking illegal substances.

Not long ago I started working with a woman in her early 50’s who had been taking exercise classes elsewhere and not received the results she wanted.  I had her do a basic exercise for the upper back with 15 pounds and she thought it was too much weight, saying they had been using 8-10 pounds in the other class.  I replied that was one of the reasons she ended up at my door.

If you want lean muscle tissue you have to challenge the muscles with some effort.  If you also want to insure proper bone density you better use enough resistance to stimulate that, as well.  Most women are so much stronger than they realize.  I have a 68 year old woman doing that same exercise with a 20 pound dumbbell.  We didn’t start with that much but she has progressed to that point gradually.

You want to think of Progressive Resistance Exercise – gradually giving the body more of a challenge in order for it to adapt, making sure you have built a good foundation.  If you are in a rehab setting than a 3 or 4 pound weight might be what you need but if healthy and you want to force your body to make a change.

A few years ago I saw a special on CNN on aging and they interviewed a 101 year old woman who was still active, independent and exercised regularly, looking more like she was 80.  They showed her lifting what appeared to be 6 or 8 pound dumbbells and she was lifting them with decent form.  So if she wasn’t lifting the pink dumbbells than why should you??!!

Mothers routinely lift their 30, 40 or even 50 pound children so lifting weights should seem pretty natural.  Some women lift fairly heavy barbells or kettlebells and I admire that but you can use dumbbells, sandbags, flex bands, suspension trainers and the weight of your own body as resistance.  The key is to work hard and gradually progress to using more resistance.

If you want to give yourself the best odds of living long, being healthy and feeling youthful and energetic, strength training should be a part of your life.  A leaner, shapelier you is a nice “side effect” of this training.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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Regardless of your opinion on these, they are going to keep physical therapists busier over the coming years.

There is definitely a positive effect of these various programs – getting people to exercise more intensely.  There is also a negative aspect to this growing phenomena – getting people to exercise more intensely.

Many research studies in the last decade have shown proof that intense exercise, particularly various forms of interval training, cardio strength training, getting more work done in a shorter amount of time, can keep the metabolism elevated for several hours after the workout and burn lots of calories.

Therein lies the rub, with the increased popularity of these programs comes the increased risk of injury, IF simple progressions are not followed.

The key to doing successful resistance training is to LOGICALLY follow a progressive method of increasing resistance – GRADUALLY increase the amount of weight/resistance, the amount of sets and/or repetitions…..

making sure that the individual is prepared for the training for that session.  I recently heard of a woman who had come in to physical therapy for elbow pain.  She had completed 120 pushups in her exercise class.

I’ve seen this woman and she is in incredible shape for a 50 year old.  She can probably run circles around many college age women….but unless she GRADUALLY built up to doing this number of pushups, no matter what kind of shape she is in, she will likely get injured…..and she did.

One of my clients told me of a friend of hers injured her knee recently in an exercise class doing 180’s – this lady is 61 years old and the only 180 exercise I’m familiar with is a 180 degree jump, which can be seen in a popular infomercial promoting a home fat loss program.

I asked my client if her friend is in really good shape and she said she wasn’t.   Many of my 50 something clients have had a past injury or two or three, making jump training something where the risk is not worth the rewards.

You might make the argument that people over 60 lose not just muscle strength and mass with aging, but also have a reduced amount of muscle power which is related to how quickly a muscle can generate force.  How quickly a muscle generates force can make the difference between falling and not falling.

Obviously, falling is not good.  So while I believe that there is always an exception to the rule, I don’t have any of my clients that age doing jump training.  Kettlebell swings are a much better way to generate muscle power without the joint forces and twisting of 180’s.

Last week I was having lunch at a local grocery store when a woman approached a couple sitting at a table near mine.  When one woman said something about boot camp class I tried to listen in without being obvious.

One of the women said something about her knees bothering her and going to physical therapy or needing surgery or something to that effect.  Upon leaving, she told the other woman that she hopes her back starts feeling better?!?

Am I making my point clear yet!!  All of these events happened within a period of ONE WEEK in Iowa.

So yes, while the best benefits happen when you push your body out of its comfort zone, make sure that you are READY for that level of intensity and you GRADUALLY built up to that point.

By the way, having a 430 pound individual run on a treadmill…to the point where he couldn’t keep up and fell on his knee, luckily not injuring it….is NOT a good idea!

Train hard but make sure to train smart, also.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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This article was written by fat loss expert Alwyn Cosgrove of Results Fitness,

I was first introduced to the term self-limiting exercise a few years ago while speaking with Gray Cook (we were teaching together at a Perform Better one-day event).

Gray was talking about the book “Born to Run” By Christopher MacDougall and the barefoot running idea.

Running barefoot is what can be classified as a self-limiting exercise – the body cannot over-stride or heel strike because the immediate feedback – pain – auto-corrects the form of the runner. In fact, it is completely self-limiting as there is no way of creating overuse injuries either – the foot and the joint impacts of running will prevent that as you’ll stop running. You can’t do it incorrectly.

It’s a perfect exercise. However – when we introduced the running shoe with padding – we put a problem in there (And thought we were creating a solution).

The body is now no longer given immediate feedback to adjust or correct running form, and the very nature of the thick sole of the shoe can allow runners to perform far more volume than their muscles and joints can handle. The results – inevitable injuries, as exhibited by many strapped up/knee supported runners you see.

It’s an interesting concept and Gray and I discussed it at length as applied to other forms of exercise.

A self-limiting exercise as defined by Gray “requires mindfulness and an awareness of movement, alignment, balance and control. Self-limiting exercise requires engagement”

My further definition is that a self-limiting exercise provides an automatic yet natural obstacle that prevents you from doing it wrong, or doing an excessive volume. I suppose my first exposure to self-limiting exercise was via martial arts training and in particular sparring – if you don’t protect yourself, you get hit – immediate feedback in the form of a punch on the nose!

With speed and agility training – the CHAOS system as devised by Robert Dos Remedios of open-response is self-limiting – athletes are left behind or fall if their technique or direction change isn’t perfect – very different from closed-response (when you know when you’re going to change direction).

But it also applies to traditional exercise. For example – The Turkish Get-up, inverted rows, bottoms-up kettlebell pressing are all self-limiting. It’s hard to do too many bottoms-up presses, you won’t be able to keep the kettlebell in position. With inverted rows – either the core, or the grip strength limits you. And with Turkish get-ups – you’ll either remain stuck to the floor or have a weight drop on your head!

There are more – jump rope can’t be performed incorrectly or to excess, the battling ropes system, the TRX and the stability ball all have built-in corrections or “abort” mechanisms in their very nature.

As I studied the concept of self-limiting exercise more I started to think of it in terms of fat loss training. In fact, self-limiting exercise may be one of the reasons why our fat loss programs at Results Fitness are so successful.

Self-limiting exercise performed in a circuit is essentially training to technical failure, but without the risk of overuse injury or sloppy form – it’s just impossible to do poor, sloppy reps. Yet the energy demands are through the roof. To train with that absolute level of engagement demands so much metabolically, that it can be exhausting and immediate in terms of fat loss results, yet at the same time, being of a low volume due to the auto-correction mechanisms in place.

Anecdotally, I did a recent workout of Turkish Get-ups. I performed a countdown style workout with 60s rest between sets. 5 reps each side, 4 reps, then 3, 2 and finally a single rep.  The last rep took almost as long as the first set of five. The entire workout, including rest periods, took less than 20 minutes and consisted only of 30 total repetitions. It was mentally and physically tough however -almost exhausting. Despite being low in volume, and short – the metabolic demands were off the charts.

Can self-limiting exercise be the future of fat-limiting exercise? Naturally imposed loads seem to train the weakest links, with a high metabolic cost – naturally!

Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove own Results Fitness in Southern California, which was recently named on of the top 10 gyms in the country by Men’s Health.  Alwyn regularly speaks on the strength and conditioning/fitness seminar circuit and Rachel is the author of The Female Body Breakthrough.

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When using ropes with my clients, the self-limiting nature of the exercise is very clear.  When the member gets fatigued, the rope patterns get smaller and weaker and will eventually stop all together.  Same with the Xiser mini-stepper.

These tools let you keep the intensity high but keep the stress on the joints very low, which is obviously a good thing.  Moderately high to high intensity workouts like these burn lots of calories and can keep your metabolism elevated for several hours after you have stopped exercising.

This is part of the time-efficient workouts that also increase your coordination and ability to move well, by placing you in standing positions instead of sitting or lying on your back.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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Saturday I used only sandbags in my workout and burned 641 calories according to my HR monitor. In one exercise I used a slight assist from a TRX, but the workout took 45 minutes and worked every muscle in my body.

The TRX suspension trainers are supposed to be “all core all the time” because your core is activated to some degree in every exercise.  Same thing with sandbags – you’re always working your abs, low back and hips during an exercise.

Cardio strength training (interval training) is a great way to build lean muscle tissue and burn fat at the same time.  For example, my average heart rate for this workout was 78% of my max, with the peak HR reaching 98%  (pretty intense).

So a 45 minute workout at 78% will obviously burn some calories.  By doing more intense interval training you go into oxygen debt, where you are breathing heavily.  Research has shown that this can elevate your metabolism for 24 hours or more AFTER you have stopped exercising!

That’s one of the things I like about sandbags – improved fat burning efficiency while improving your coordination in different movement patterns.  The exercises train multiple muscles to work together at the same time.

I did step ups, overhead presses, high pulls, partial rotation deadlifts and an overhead rotational lift that is often done with a medicine ball.  I kept the rest periods between exercises minimal which keeps your heart rate up and stimulates your fat burning hormones.

One of the reasons you’re metabolism stays elevated after this workout is because of the fast twitch muscles that are worked with the exercises that focus on either strength or power.  More muscles used equals more calories burned but you also have the “afterburn” effect going on as these muscles are being repaired after the workout.

These workouts can take a lot out of you and need to be progressed gradually.  I have my baby boomer clients doing most of these same exercises and it allows them to get in a fast, efficient workout – letting them spend more time with family and friends.

I really could feel it in deep in my abs the next day, particularly from the overhead rotational lift with the sandbag.  I have taught those 15 minute ab workouts before at a healthclub and would never feel it in my abs like I do with the sandbags, or even the TRX.

Here is a video from coach Josh Henkin that shows a few examples of sandbag training.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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My fat loss workout burned 457 calories in 30 minutes. What did I do?  Glad you asked.

I only had 30 minutes for my training today so I combined some sandbag exercises with rope training and the X-iser.  I wore my HR monitor to see how many calories I torched.

After Monday’s all sandbag workout I mixed in some other moves for a little variety.  I did burpees combined with sandbag high pulls, alternating between the 30 second (approximately) sprints on the X-iser.

Resting for 30 seconds, I did some of my favorite rope throws – one and two arm grappler’s throws and alternating uppercuts, which is somewhat similar to cross country skiing, only more intense.

I tried to alternate between upper and lower body exercises, in order to keep my intensity high.

I did some various lunges and split squats as part of my warmup.  I also threw in a set of one arm rows on the suspension trainer and a set of ab wheel rollouts to the front and sides (diagonal).

The 30 minutes went by pretty quickly and I stopped my HR monitor to check the damage…..457 calories burned in 30 minutes even.  Of course, your heart rate stays elevated for a while after this type of workout, since you went into oxygen debt with all the short bursts of exercise.

I’ll take those numbers any day of the week.  In a magazine advertisement for the Bowflex Treadclimber they mention 321 calories burned in 30 minutes versus 150 for a treadmill at the same speed but no elevation.

Not bad numbers but not as good as my workout – and with my intense interval training, my metabolism would stay elevated longer after the workout. Plus, I worked my upper body and midsection, too.

More bang for your buck if you ask me.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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I’ve lost 20 pounds in the last 6 months and playing basketball recently has kept it off while exercising just a few hours here and there.

I’ve been playing once a week for the last 7 weeks against guys who are mostly 10-20 years younger.  Our team is made up of men in their forties with one guy in his early fifties and two young bucks of 30 and 25.

I lost the weight prior to starting this league but have kept it off without spending much time doing anything else.  Basketball is a stop and go sport, mixing in periods of higher and lower intensity.

This stop and go nature really generates a lot of body heat, sweat, and greatly increases your oxygen consumption – causing you to suck in extra air at times, which is why us old guys need an occasional “sub” to come in for us.

Two twenty minute halves is plenty of action and our heart rates and metabolism stay elevated for a while afterwards, burning additional calories.  I was in pretty decent shape previously, but hadn’t done specific training for playing hoops, since I didn’t know I was going to play.

One of the things I have done is to do jump rope training between games to prepare for the jumping impact of the games.  I’ll do about 20-30 seconds on and then rest for the same amount of time.  This is for 5-7 minutes and then back to more interval training, keeping my heart rate up with different agility and strength training.

Besides being a time efficient way to workout, these interval workouts prepare you for the stop and go nature of basketball.  One of my personal training clients recently talked about doing step aerobics classes twenty years ago.

“I didn’t lose any weight but it was fun.”  Many people adapt to steady pace activity very quickly and don’t end up losing much, if any weight.  Not long ago, this same client walked on a treadmill 5 days a week for four months and only lost 6 pounds – not the greatest return for her “investment.”

She’s since lost close to 20 pounds by doing shorter bursts of exercise and eliminating processed foods from her diet.

The amount of sweat we produce in these games is a pretty good indication of large amounts of calories burned.  The guy who is 52 remarked about how you can’t get the same kind of breathlessness from doing typical workouts on a treadmill.

This guy is a former college wrestling coach, so he knows a little about training…. and is in pretty decent shape, too.  The take home point is that long periods of exercise aren’t always necessary and sometimes can be counter-productive if you don’t get the weight loss you want and decide to give up because you get frustrated with a lack of progress.

At the same time, if you haven’t done much exercise in a while, start out easy and gradually increase your intensity and/or decrease the amount of rest between exercises as you become more fit.

Train to play the sport and don’t play the sport to get in shape.  Don’t forget to do your strength training to help protect your joints and flexibility/mobility work is also strongly advised.

Get Moving!

Brian Morgan

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To burn fat you need to turn up the heat – dial up the intensity of your workouts!  One of my clients has lost 14 pounds in a month, while spending less time exercising.

Previously, she was walking on a treadmill 5 days a week and 4 months later had lost only 6 pounds.  She’s made more progress by making dietary changes and doing burst-type training.

She is still walking, but now she alternates her pace, going back and forth with periods of higher intensity walking – kinda similar to how your car burns more gas during stop and go driving in the city.

She is doing similar exercise in the studio with dumbbells.  Multi-joint movements that involve multiple muscles to burn more calories, alternating between two exercises with little rest in between.

This causes you to release more of your body’s fat burning hormones naturally.  This gets your metabolism elevated without spending hours exercising.  She can feel the warmth in her muscles as she sweats more, helping the body get rid of toxins that can build up.

I showed her a routine that she can do at home with dumbbells and bodyweight when she isn’t working with me in person.  Its great to get results while exercising less.

Research studies have shown that walking on a treadmill without doing any resistance training doesn’t always lead to much weight loss.  If you’re like most people and short on time, interval strength training and interval cardio are the way to go.

Yeah, triathletes and marathoners are usually pretty lean, but they often spend 10 hours or more per week on their training.  Unless you are training for competition, there are more efficient ways to stay in shape.

Yesterday, I did some interval cardio using the Ropes Gone Wild training ropes.  I did 15 minutes of various diagonal, circular and vertical patterns (beatdowns) with the ropes, elevating my heart rate in a short amount of time, going into oxygen debt.

I had my HR monitor on to see what my body was doing and also to see how many calories I burned.  In the 15 minutes I burned 230 calories according to the monitor, which isn’t all that much…..until you read the rest of the story.

I turned the monitor back on as I did some kettlebell presses, before packing it in for the night, leaving the HR monitor running.  An hour and a half later I stopped it and looked at how many calories I burned.

It said 490 calories in that hour and a half after the interval rope training, for a total of 720 overall!  Got your attention now?!  Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that the number is a little high.  Knock off 100 calories and that’s still a LOT of calories burned in less than half an hour of exercise.

The point should be clear – intense exercise keeps your metabolism elevated after you have stopped exercising.  So if short on time, turn up the flame to burn more total fat.  Its fine to mix in longer walks, bike rides or runs with your interval resistance training.  By the way, the monitor is a Polar F6.

If you’re looking for a simple program you can do at home, you might check out Turbulence Training.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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If you’re eating the wrong foods and don’t even know it, you might be screwing up your hormone levels – causing your body to store more fat!

Items such as low fat, reduced fat, diet sodas, and diet drinks, are often unhealthy foods in disguise.  If its something highly processed and/or containing high amounts of high fructose corn syrup or sodium, it could increase the size of your waist.

“Foods” containing trans fats (artificial fat) can slow down your metabolism, as your body doesn’t know what to do with these and stores them in your fat cells.

If it says low or reduced fat, it usually means they replaced the fat with carbs, which isn’t typically a good thing.  Extra carbs tend to get stored as bodyfat – not what you want!

Are high cholesterol levels really a bad thing?  Trainer and nutrition specialist Mike Geary has a new book that addresses all these issues and helps you fuel your fat-burning furnace, instead of slowing down the fat metabolism.

If you would like some info on Mike’s Fat Burning Kitchen, click here.

Get moving!

Brian Morgan

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Is it more important to burn fat during your workout or after?  Alwyn Cosgrove recently wrote an article on EPOC and the “afterburn” effect – where your metabolism stays elevated after the workout.

A research study published in 2002 looked at the effect of a 31 minute circuit training workout on post workout metabolism.  This study showed an increased metabolic period lasting 38 hours after the workout.

Meaning, 38 hours later, their bodies were burning more calories than before the workout session!  The workout involved three multi-joint exercises (bench press, squat, and power clean) done in a circuit, 4 times in 31 minutes.

This should say a lot about the role of high-intensity resistance training and the ability to burn fat – also, the use of compound movements (multi-joint) for maximal efficiency.

One of the things this study does, is highlight the fact that the number of calories burned during the workout isn’t necessarily as important as the number of calories burned after.

This routine broke down a lot of muscle tissue and the rebuilding phase obviously burns quite a few calories.  Combine this interval resistance training with a cardio and nutrition program and you should see even greater fat burning.

This is the basis for Cosgrove’s Warp Speed Fat Loss system that I completed earlier this Summer.  I lost 13 pounds in a month and wasn’t quite perfect in following the low carb diet.

Training is important, but so is the eating.  These workouts were all under an hour in length.

Get moving!

Brian

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