Warming Up for the Weight Room Part 2
In Warming up for the Weight Room Part 1, I took a look at some general warm up concepts along with examining the roles of cardio, stretching and foam rolling as part of the general warm up. In Part 2, I want to look at the specific warm up and how to structure it. I’ll be looking first at the issue of activation exercises (a current trend/fad in the training world) along with specific warm up recommendations for lifting. I’ll also look at a few ‘advanced warm up’ techniques that people may wish to play with after they have their ‘normal’ warm up dialed in.
Warming Up For the Weight Room Part 1
Warming up is a critical aspect of training that, because it’s really not very sexy, often isn’t discussed nearly enough. Watching people in the weight room, people seem to fall into one of two categories when it comes to warm ups, either they warm up for ever and ever (exhausting themselves in the process) or come in and try to lift near maximum weights without any warm up at all. Neither is ideal.
Why Do Obese People not Lose More Weight When Treated with Low-Calorie Diets?
Over decades of their use, the simple fact is that low calorie diets (LCDs) mostly fail. And I’m not simply talking about the fact that most people will regain any weight lost. The simple fact is that even the total weight loss seen with such diets is often fairly small. A total loss of 5-10kg (roughly 10-20 lbs) over a year’s span is a typical result. And while that might be great for someone who who is lean, for someone at 250-300 lbs, it’s not terribly significant.
Cyclical Ketogenic Diets and Endurance Performance
Question: I’ve seen the idea kicked around that a cyclical ketogenic diet might be beneficial for improving endurance performance. Do you think this is possible and, if so, what’s the best way of going about it.
Body Composition Calculations
For the time being let’s assume I have a magic wand which I can wave to determine someones body fat percentage. I want to show you how to do some basic calculations with those numbers in hand.
So I wave my wand it tells me that the 200 pound athlete standing in front of me has 10% body fat. First let’s determine what his actual body composition, in terms of pounds of lean body mass and fat are.
Cable Row Technique
The midback (and lats) make up a considerable amount of muscle mass in the body and training those muscles groups effectively should be a key part of any good training program. In terms of maintaining good shoulder health and posture, along with developing musculature that contributes significantly to overall mass; training the back properly is key. Unfortunately, many trainees either pay little attention to the back or train it so ineffectively as to make that training, well…ineffective.
An Objective Comparison of Chocolate Milk and Surge Recovery
My position was that using sucrose isn’t any more of a nutritional compromise than using dextrose. His answer was that “everyone knows” dextrose is superior to sucrose for postworkout glycogen resynthesis, and that sucrose is inherently unhealthier than dextrose. I countered his position by presenting scientific research refuting his claims. He then got all bent out of shape and started hurling adhominems at me, obviously frustrated that he was losing a public battle.
Straight Talk About High-Fructose Corn Syrup: What it is and What it Ain’t. – Research Review
And now, as we enter 2009, if there is a single nutrient that is blamed for everything that is wrong in the world, it is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Much of this started with a 2004 paper by Bray where he correlated changes in HFCS intake with changes in obesity, suggesting that it was the increase in HFCS intake that was driving obesity. This was taken, as usual, far out of context into the popular realm of magazines, newspapers and tv soundbites.
Is Rapid Fat Loss Right For You?
It’s taken almost as a matter of faith in the fitness world that slower rates of weight loss are superior to faster rates, that diets generating faster weight loss always cause faster rates of regain and poorer long-term results. As I’ll mention below, there is certainly some data to support that.
What Are Good Sources of Protein? – Wrapping it Up
In What Are Good Sources of Protein – Introduction, I included a short list of other important factors such as effects on appetite and blood sugar that I already addressed in previous parts of this series so I won’t touch on them here. The issues I do want to touch on are availability, the actual protein content, and cost.
