How To Stay Motivated
Almost anyone can find the motivation to plan a workout routine and most people can even find the will power necessary to go out to the gym, buy a pass and begin working out. It’s that extra ounce of motivation and will power that allow you to go beyond these simple initial steps and actually continue working out over the long term. To find the motivation to go back to the gym multiple times each week, to eat properly every day and to maintain the lifestyle necessary for muscle growth is one of the most difficult aspects of bodybuilding.
In fact, during my years of training, I’ve come across very few people who have actually been able to maintain a non-stop training regimen. Not surprisingly, those that haven’t given up and have stayed motivated for years are the ones who have achieved the greatest muscle building success. The question you’re probably asking yourself, then, is “how do I stay motivated?”
Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer to this question. There are a number of methods that I’ve used over the years and that are generally considered successful. Nothing is going to work 100% for any person, and you can’t expect to go for months without periods of laziness or lethargy. That being said, here are a few basic guidelines for staying motivated:
1. Take things one day at a time. It’s important to focus on what’s here and now. Today, you need to eat six meals. Today, you need to go to the gym and work out your legs. Tonight, you need to get eight hours of sleep. This weekend, you need to watch your alcohol consumption. When you wake up each morning, remind yourself of the bodybuilding tasks that must be achieved that day. Don’t think about how many workouts you’ll have to have in the next month, and don’t ever tell yourself that eating or working out is a pain in the ass.
2. Try to embrace the pain and discomfort of bodybuilding. If you can convince yourself that the more pain you subject yourself to the more you will grow, you’ll end up embracing the pain inherent to muscle building. (Of course, I’m referring to mild physical pain and emotional stress – not injuries or actually subjecting yourself to undue harm). Try to think of the pain associated with all-out training as the key to achieving your goals. When that last rep is causing you immense discomfort, convince yourself that the pain is directly correlated to muscle growth. Same thing when you’re forcing down that last bite of tuna. Each ounce of discomfort will lead to an ounce of muscle.
3. Check your perfectionist attitude at the door. Don’t allow yourself to be frustrated by setbacks. Bodybuilding is a journey with no end and no perfect result. You will encounter injuries and problems and other setbacks, but this is to be expected. If you think of your muscle building journey as a graph, it will have a general upward trend – but there will obviously be dips and downfalls along the way. You simply can’t afford to let these downfalls get you down and ruin your motivation for good.
Keeping these general ways of thinking in mind, here are a few down-to-earth examples of how you can boost your motivation during a lull or period of laziness:
1. Take pictures of yourself before you begin workout out (or take one right now, even if you’re in the midst of a program. Keep measurements and pictures close by. Whenever you feel unmotivated or lazy, look at the pictures – they should remind you of the reason you’re in the gym in the first place. Maybe you’re skinny, maybe you’re fat, or maybe you’re just not happy with the way you look: whatever it is, these pictures should remind you of what you’re trying to accomplish.
2. Scour the internet for quality motivational resources. Find articles that motivate you and bookmark them. Buy a quality bodybuilding package that contains some good motivational materials (Sean Nalewanyj’s program is full of stuff – articles, videos, and an entire mini-book on the “inner game” of bodybuilding). Refer to these articles before a workout, or whenever you feel your motivation sagging.
3. Keep a workout playlist and play these songs for a boost in energy and motivation. It may seem obvious, but many people don’t do this. Music can be a great motivator, whether it’s hard rock or classical. Choose what works for you, and play this.
4. Find yourself a training partner. Ah yes, I’ve saved the best for last – a training partner can make a huge difference in your training motivation. When there’s two people committed to a training schedule, it’s much easier to stay dedicated. Even on days where your motivation is sagging, chances are your partner won’t be experiencing the same thing. Before you begin training together, make sure you agree to push one another to stay focused and continue with the program.
As I mentioned before, long-term motivation can often be very elusive. If you can master your motivation and stay dedicated, you’re almost guaranteed success (so long as your program itself is quality). Recognize that you will have periods of laziness and depression and fight through them as best you can.
Trust me, it’s all worth it in the end.
Counting Calories and Weight Loss
Do calories matter or do you simply need to eat certain foods and that will guarantee you’ll lose weight? Should you count calories or can you just count “portions?” Is it necessary to keep a food diary? Is it unrealistic to count calories for the rest of your life or is that just part of the price you pay for a better body? You’re about to learn the answers to these questions and discover a simple solution for keeping track of your food intake without having to crunch numbers every day or become a fanatic about it.
In many popular diet books, “Calories don’t count” is a frequently repeated theme. Other popular programs, such as Bill Phillip’s “Body For Life,” stress the importance of energy intake versus energy output, but recommend that you count “portions” rather than calories…
Phillips wrote,
“There aren’t many people who can keep track of their calorie intake for an extended period of time. As an alternative, I recommend counting ‘portions.’ A portion of food is roughly equal to the size of your clenched fist or the palm of your hand. Each portion of protein or carbohydrate typically contains between 100 and 150 calories. For example, one chicken breast is approximately one portion of protein, and one medium-sized baked potato is approximately one portion of carbohydrate.”
Phillips makes a good point that trying to count every single calorie - in the literal sense - can drive you crazy and is probably not realistic as a lifestyle for the long term. It’s one thing to count portions instead of calories – that is at least acknowledging the importance of portion control. However, it’s another altogether to deny that calories matter.
Calories Do Count!
Any diet program that tells you, “calories don’t count” or you can “eat all you want and still lose weight” is a diet you should avoid because you are being lied to.
The truth is, that line is a bunch of baloney designed to make a diet sound easier to follow.
Anything that sounds like work – such as counting calories, eating less or exercising, tends to scare away potential customers! The law of calorie balance is an unbreakable law of physics: Energy in versus energy out dictates whether you will gain, lose or maintain your weight. Period.
I believe that it’s very important to develop an understanding of and a respect for portion control and the law of calorie balance. I also believe it’s an important part of nutrition education to learn how many calories are in the foods you eat on a regular basis – including (and perhaps, especially) how many calories are in the foods you eat when you dine at restaurants.
The law of calorie balance says:
To maintain your weight, you must consume the same number of calories you burn. To gain weight, you must consume more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn.
If you only count portions or if you haven’t the slightest idea how many calories you’re eating, it’s a lot more likely that you’ll eat more than you realize. (Or you might take in fewer calories than you should, which triggers your body’s “starvation mode” and causes your metabolism to shut down).
So how do you balance practicality and realistic expectations with a nutrition program that gets results? Here’s a solution that’s a happy medium between strict calorie counting and just guessing:
Create a menu using an EXCEL spreadsheet or your favorite nutrition software. Crunch all the numbers including calories, protein, carbs and fats. Once you have your daily menu, print it, stick it on your refrigerator (and/or in your daily planner) and you now have an eating “goal” for the day, including a caloric target.
Rather than writing down every calorie one by one from every morsel of food you eat for the rest of your life, create a menu plan you can use as a daily goal and guideline. If you’re really ambitious, keeping a nutrition journal at least one time in your life for at least 4-12 weeks is a great idea and an incredible learning experience, but all you really need to get started on the road to a better body is one good menu on paper. If you get bored eating the same thing every day, you can create multiple menus, or just exchange foods using your primary menu as a template.
Using this meal planning method, you really only need to “count calories” once when you create your menus, not every day, ad infinitum. After you’ve got a knack for calories from this initial discipline of menu planning, then you can estimate portions in the future and get a pretty good (and more educated) ballpark figure.
So what’s the bottom line? Is it really necessary to count every calorie to lose weight? No. But it IS necessary to eat fewer calories then you burn. Whether you count calories and eat less than you burn, or you don’t count calories and eat less than you burn, the end result is the same – you lose weight.
Which would you rather do: Take a wild guess, or increase your chance for success with some simple menu planning?
I think the right choice is obvious.
How To Avoid 8 Years Of Poor Health In A Fat Body
By Rob Poulos
I was puttering around on the internet this morning and I saw something that caught my eye. It was the latest data regarding our current life expectancy as humans from the World Health Organization, along with a history of how that’s changed over the years.
This info went all the way back to the Neanderthal period (the guys from the Geico commercials) up to present day humans. Those poor Geico guys only lived to be 20 years old on average, while today’s humans can expect about 75 years of life.
But did you know that today’s people have an average healthy life expectancy of just 67 years? In other words, this is saying that you can expect 8 years of your life in poor health. 8 years! That’s 2900+ days of poor health. I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’m looking forward to.
I sure think we can do better than 67 years of good health on this planet. And you know what? We can. This number is an average. Like anything else, you don’t have to be average if you don’t want to be. The average person doesn’t exercise properly, if at all. The average person doesn’t know how to make the right foods selections and maintain a healthy diet. The average person doesn’t apply themselves mentally and emotionally to maintain relatively stress free living.
If this sounds a little bit too much like you, the good news is you don’t have to be this person any longer. While it is a shame that today’s health, fitness, and diet industry is simply confusing more people than it’s helping, there are a few people and organizations out there that can provide a realistic, effective and efficient approach to breaking past the average healthy life span and living those years full of energy, strength, and vitality.
I get questions from my Fat Burning Furnace readers all the time, after going through the FBF materials, about how they can’t believe how little exercise I recommend. Even though I’ve told them up front that they can let go of the aerobics or traditional cardio, many still have trouble doing that. And what I tell them is directly related to the subject of life expectancy and just how much time we really have in our lives.
I tell them that having a lean, strong, and healthy body is great. It’s one of the most important things we can attain. Period. But, how much time is it worth to you? That’s the question I asked myself over and over when seeking out my own methods and developing the FBF methods.
Most people, after years and years of trial and error, come to realize that spending several days and hours a week working out is just not worth the trouble. And carefully measuring your food, counting calories, and depriving yourself of nutrient rich foods like whole grain carbohydrates is also something that shouldn’t be necessary to enjoy a healthy and energy filled life. And it isn’t.
What we really should be focusing on is how much time and effort is minimally required to get the results we’re looking for. Think about that. Not how much, but how much is minimally required. Remember, we’ve got just 67 healthy years as a starting point…If I valued my time on this planet, this is what I would be searching for.
If it really took hours and hours a week and all of that crazy nutrition manipulation to burn fat, build muscle, strength, and cardiovascular health, I’m not sure I’d do it. Not for very long anyway. I’ve tried that approach, for years, and if you have you know it’s no fun. And it’s just not realistic given the demands our lives place on us in today’s world.
But as I’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff anymore. The principles in my FBF system allow you to approach your genetic potential for a lean, strong, and healthy body in just minutes each week and with very simple lifestyle changes.
I’ve been using the FBF principles for a while now. I work out twice each week. I even take a week off entirely every few weeks or so. I don’t count calories. I don’t deprive myself of the foods I love. If it’s my daughter’s birthday, I eat a piece of cake. I just work the FBF principles and continue to stay in great shape day after day, week after week, year after year.
I work out so little because of the way the workouts are performed and created, and I eat with such flexibility because I stick with the FBF lifestyle, which gives you the power of flexibility and variation that is lacking in most programs.
What I’m saying is that I’ve discovered what is minimally required to give me the health and body that I wanted. And many of my FBF students are doing it as well. Sure I could add another day a week to my workouts, but at this point it would actually be detrimental to my results. I could also start messing with my diet in all sorts of crazy ways, but that would just make my body angry and cause me unneeded stress.
So, I ask you, are you trying to find what’s minimally required to get you the results you want? If you truly value your time and the other worthy pursuits in your life, I’m suggesting that this is exactly what you should be doing. If you don’t, you may just end up being an average 67 year old with 8 years of poor health to look forward to.
Check Out The Fat Burning Furnace system by CLICKING HERE
You CAN Triumph Over Snack Attacks!
We all face snack attacks, after work when the kids are hungry and we’re frazzled from a hectic day, late in the evening while watching TV, on lazy weekend afternoons.
We can control snack attacks with three easy steps:
Be prepared. Make sure you have healthier snacks on hand, and keep cookies and other high-fat, high-sugar treats hidden from sight in the back of the cupboard and refrigerator.
Use the food pyramid to fill in the gaps. If breakfast was cereal and toast, perhaps a midmorning snack could consist of fruit, yogurt or string cheese — all items missing from breakfast. If you use this tactic, you won’t be as easily tempted to choose high-calorie snacks, and you’ll improve your nutritional intake at the same time.
Choose a satisfying snack. Do you want something salty? Sweet? Cold? If we can understand what type of flavor or texture we want, we’re more likely to be satisfied sooner rather than later, after we’ve rummaged through the cupboards. Here are some ideas for healthy snacks:
To Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth:
Fresh or dried fruit
A frozen fruit-based sweet or other frozen treat
Frozen grapes or berries
Low-fat yogurts in exotic flavors: cappuccino, banana cream pie and even chocolate mint
If You’re Looking For Something Crunchy:
Plain, reduced-fat microwave popcorn. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese for extra flavor.
Pretzels and low-fat crackers made with whole grains.
Bagel or tortilla chips. Make your own: Cut tortillas into pie-shaped wedges and slice bagels thinly. Place on a cookie sheet in a single layer, and bake in a 400-degree oven until toasted (5-10 minutes).
Baby carrots, celery sticks and jicama slices. Keep them ready to eat in the refrigerator.
Craving Protein?
Low-fat string cheese or cubes of other reduced-fat cheese.
A hard-boiled egg.
Rolled-up slices of low-fat turkey or ham.
A hearty lentil or black bean salad for fiber and protein: simply mix rinsed and drained canned legumes with your favorite fat-free salad dressing.
Blender drinks: Mix any combination of skim milk, yogurt, fruit juice and fruit in a blender.
Caffeine-free flavored teas.
We often mistake thirst for hunger: Try calorie-free flavored waters, or add your own flavor to sparkling water with a twist of lemon or lime, or even add fresh cranberries.
Sugar-free hot chocolate made with skim milk: It not only satisfies your sweet tooth, it adds essential calcium and vitamin D to your diet.
Bag A Healthy Snack:
Pretzels or plain popcorn in individual bags.
Cereal or granola bars that contain added calcium.
Reduced-fat or baked potato chips.
Snack in a bag: Mix your favorite types of dry cereal, and add a handful of raisins and a sprinkling of roasted nuts.
With a little imagination and know-how, You CAN Triumph Over Snack Attacks!
Pain In The Mass- Ten Most Common Causes Of Training Injury
Weight training isn’t a picnic or a walk in the park, it’s sweaty, gut busting work that if done correctly, has you treading the thin line between growth and injury. If you train intensely - the only kind of training that stimulates growth - you continually flirt with muscle damage. Rubbing up against the danger zone is where the muscular gains lie.
Injury is always just ahead for the careless weight trainer. There’s something inherently dangerous about pushing, tugging and straining against cold, hard iron with all your might. But how else are you going to stimulate those gains? Because the quickest way to sidetrack progress or derail a bodybuilding career is through debilitating injury, you need to be a bit clairvoyant, learning to avoid injuries before they happen. You can accomplish this by listening to your body’s feedback and then making the appropriate adjustments. Here are the 10 most common causes of injury - let the bodybuilder beware.
1. Incorrect Technique
The most common weight training injuries are related to poor exercise technique. Incorrect technique can pull, rip or wrench a muscle, or tear delicate connective tissue quicker than you can strike a match. An out of control barbell or stray dumbbell can wreak havoc in an instant.
Each human body has very specific biomechanical pathways. Arms and legs can only move in certain ways, particularly if you’re stress loading a limb with weight. Strive to become a technical perfectionist and respect the integrity of the exercise - no twisting,, turning or contorting while pushing a weight. Either make the rep using perfect technique or miss the weight. Learn how to miss a rep safely; learn how to bail out.
2. Too Much Weight
Using too much weight in an exercise is a high risk proposition rife with injury potential. When it’s too much: if you can’t control a weight as you lower it; if you can’t contain a movement within its biomechanical boundaries; and if you have to jerk or heave a weight in order to lift it.
An unchecked barbell or dumbbell assumes a mind of its own; the weight obeys the laws of gravity and seeks the floor. Anything in its way (or attached to it) is in danger.
3. Bad Spotting
If you lift long enough, you’ll eventually reach a point where you need to have a spotter for a number of exercises, including the squat and bench press. When you work as hard as you’re supposed to, you occasionally miss a rep. Nothing is wrong with that - it’s a sign that you’re working to your limit, which is a good thing if it isn’t overdone. Yet when you work this hard, you need competent spotters. A good spotter should conduct him or herself at all times as though the lifter is on the verge of total failure. Your training partner can also lend a gentle touch that allows you to complete a rep you’d normally miss. A top spotter needs to be strong, sensitive and ever alert to the possibility of failure - not looking around or joking with friends.
4. Incorrect Use of Cheating & Forced Reps
Cheating and forced reps are advanced techniques that allow the lifter to train beyond normal. Taken past the point of failure, the muscle is literally forced to grow. When incorrectly performed, a cheating or forced rep can push or pull the lifter out of the groove. The weight collapses and a spotter must come to the rescue.
Cheating movements work; real world data prove this statement. Yet cheating, by definition, is dangerous. Any time you use momentum to artificially goose rep speed, thus allowing you to handle more poundage than when using strict techniques, you risk injury. To play if safe, use the bare minimum cheat to complete the rep. On forced reps, make sure your training partner is on your wave length. Don’t go crazy.
5. Training Too Often
How does overtraining relate to injury? It negatively impacts the body’s overall level of strength and conditioning. Overtraining saps energy, retarding progress. You can’t grow when you’re overtrained. It also interferes with both the muscles and the nervous system’s ability to recuperate - ATP (adenosine triphosphate, an energy compound in the cells) and glycogen stores are severely depleted when an agitated metabolic status is present. In such a depleted, weakened state, is it any wonder that injury is common, particularly if the athlete insists on handling big weights? The solution is to cut back to 3-4 training sessions per week and keep session length to no more than an hour.
6. Not Stretching
Stretching is different from warming up. Properly performed, a stretch helps relax and elongate a muscle after warm up and before and after weight training. As a result of warming up and stretching, the muscle is warm, loose and neurologically alert - in its most pliable and injury resistant state. In addition, stretching between sets actually helps build muscle by promoting muscular circulation and increasing the elasticity of the fascia casing surrounding the muscle. Finally, if you perform muscle specific stretches at the end of your workout, you’ll virtually eliminate next day soreness.
7. Inadequate Warm Up
Let’s define our terms. A warm up is usually a high rep, low intensity, quick paced exercise used to increase blood floor to the muscle. This quick, light movement raises the temperature of the involved muscle while decreasing blood viscosity and promoting flexibility and mobility. How? Everyone knows that a warm muscle with blood coursing through it is more elastic and pliable than a cold, stiff muscle. Riding a stationary bike, jogging, swimming, stair climbing and some high rep weight training are recommended forms of warm up.
Try a 5-10 minute formalized warm up before stretching. If you choose high rep weight training, try 25 ultralight, quick reps in the following nonstop sequence: calf raise, squat, leg curl, crunch, pull down, bench press and curl. Do one set each with no rest between sets. This can be accomplished in fewer than five minutes and warms every major muscle in the body.
8. Negatives
Negative (eccentric, or lowering) reps are one of the most difficult and dangerous of all weight training techniques - and very effective at stimulating muscle growth. What makes negatives so risky? The poundage you can handle in negative exercises is likely to be the heaviest you’ll ever lift.
Normally, we only lift what we’re capable of moving concentrically. In negative training, we handle a lot more weight. Most bodybuilders can control approximately 130% of their concentric maximum on the eccentric phase of a lift. Someone using 200 pounds for reps in the bench press, for example, would bench roughly 260 in the negative press. Because of the increased weight used with negatives, you need strong, experienced spotters. Exercise extreme caution. If the rep gets away from you, the spotters need to grab the weight immediately.
9. Poor Diet/Training
If you under eat and continue to train hard and heavy, you’re likely to get hurt. Again, it relates to your overall health: Before of heavy training when in a weakened state brought on by severe dieting or restricted eating. It’s best to save the big weights, low reps, forced reps and negatives for non-diet growth periods. While dieting requires reduced poundage, this doesn’t mean you can’t be intense in your workout - it just means you need to use lighter weight.
10. Lack Of Concentration
If you’re distracted, preoccupied or lackadaisical when you work out, you’re inviting injury. Watch a champion bodybuilder train and one thing you’ll notice is his or her intense level of concentration. This is developed over time, and the athlete systematically develops a preset mental checklist that allows him or her to focus on the task at hand. More concentration equates to more poundage. More poundage equates to more growth. More poundage can lead to getting hurt if you don’t pay attention. Train smart.
