Body Mass Index, or BMI, has usually been the Index upon which your health risks are assessed. However, this can be problematic for athletes or fit/muscled people since it puts them in the overweight to obese charts, since the BMI is calculated based on weight and height. A recent intriguing article I found on Livestrong.com  issues info about research surrounding WtHR or Waist to Height Ratio as being more accurate.

Since stomach body fat can be more dangerous and cause the release of hormones which contribute to diabetes and many other maladies, this could be a better predictor of health.

“WHR

The WHtR is calculated by dividing waist size by height, and takes gender into account. As an example, a male with a 32 inch waist who is 5′10″ (70 inches) would divide 32 by 70, to get a WHtR of 45.7 percent. The WHtR is thought to give a more accurate assessment of health since the most dangerous place to carry weight is in the abdomen. Fat in the abdomen, which is associated with a larger waist, is metabolically active and produces various hormones that can cause harmful effects, such as diabetes, elevated blood pressure, and altered lipid (blood fat) levels.

Many athletes, both male and female, who often have a higher percentage of muscle and a lower percentage of body fat, have relatively high BMIs but their WHtRs are within a healthy range. This also holds true for women who have a “pear” rather than an “apple” shape.

The following chart helps you determine if your WHtR falls in a healthy range (these ratios are percentages):

WOMEN
• Ratio less than 35: Abnormally Slim to Underweight
• Ratio 35 to 42: Extremely Slim
• Ratio 42 to 46: Healthy
• Ratio 46 to 49: Healthy
• Ratio 49 to 54: Overweight
• Ratio 54 to 58: Seriously Overweight
• Ratio over 58: Highly Obese

MEN
• Ratio less than 35: Abnormally Slim to Underweight
• Ratio 35 to 43: Extremely slim
• Ratio 43 to 46: Healthy
• Ratio 46 to 53: Healthy, Normal Weight
• Ratio 53 to 58: Overweight
• Ratio 58 to 63: Extremely Overweight/Obese
• Ratio over 63: Highly Obese”

- Area in quotes excerpt from Livestrong.com

I highly recommend that you check your ratio!

When my clients come into the gym where I do some training in the evenings, they are always excited to be there and work with me. That is true of most of our trainers - their clients don’t generally regret purchasing personal training. It helps them to know what to do. It motivates them, and it holds them accountable.

Not everyone however has the budget for personal training. Here are two options, one inexpensive, one affordable, that might help:

1. For $15, You can download a PDF eBook called FitTransition. (www.fittransition.com) FitTransition shows a three-phase workout program and gives sound nutritional guidance. It also gives you membership to the gallery, which shows you shots of the exercises, so you know how to do them.
2. For $149, and a $30/month subscription, you can have access to The KeyChain trainer (click link bottom of this page.) The KeyChain trainer is a step above, as the $30 a month gives you access to dozens of trainers, and you may workout as many times as you like. The trainer talks to you and tells you what to do from a neat little MP3-type device, and counts your reps for you, all while you are listening to your iTunes playlist or the music that gets downloaded each day when you create your workout. I use this for my own personal training, and I find that I work out harder, never worry about the routine I’m using, and it keeps me from cheating on reps and sets.

There you have it! Two inexpensive options to help you know what to do and how to do it. Compare personal training at $50-$175/half hour per session, which gets very expensive.

If you were to pull up to the pump in a NASCAR and fill it with standard unleaded gasoline, it wouldn’t run very well. NASCARs use 100 octane fuel! Similarly, your bodies need proper nutrition to function optimally. That is the first secret to getting ripped.

The second secret - although the same thing - is percentage of body fat as it relates to nutrition or caloric intake. If your abs are buried below a layer of fat, you’ll never see them no matter how hard you work out! Gauging your caloric expenditure, workout expenditure, and caloric intake however is difficult. Lance Armstrong’s site, Livestrong.com makes this easy! I highly recommend it!

At Livestrong.com, you can create a free account called the Daily Plate. Here you enter your food choices and before you’re done typing, dozens of options are coming up on the screen. So if you buy a breakfast burrito at the local gas station, and it’s made by Rico, it’s there! If you down a Minute Maid pomegranate juice, it’s there. It will tell you how many calories per serving and the serving size, how much sodium, protein, carbs, and this by grams, milligrams and also percentages. It makes the science of thermodynamics a snap!

Remember, you can’t really get ripped until you lose the body fat covering your muscles, and you can’t lose it if you don’t know whether you’re in a nutritionally-sound caloric deficit. That’s my tip - go to Livestrong.com and take a few minutes every day to see how you’re doing nutritionally. You’ll be glad you did!

I’m always amazed at the amount of ignorance that exists relative to weight training and fitness. I see guys and gals in the gym every day doing the same things and wondering why their bodies never change. Assuming you lift hard, consistently, and properly, here are three tips that will shoot your muscle gain into the stratosphere:

1. Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition! Why do people ignore this fact? You can’t run a NASCAR and pump it full of unleaded gasoline and expect to win the race. Similarly, you MUST eat right, meaning daily multivitamin supplementation, 6 meals a day with the correct portion sizes, and adequate protein combined with complex carbs. It’s amazing what happens to your body when you cut refined sugar and white flour products out of your diet! Really? Do people really think that the white poison actually has any nutrients in it over just calories? Why eat it every day. If you’re one of those frequent gym goers who hasn’t made this commitment yet, try it for a month and watch what happens to your body. If you get hungry, snack on nuts.
2. Don’t Overtrain. I often want to say, “Hey idiot, you’re working the same muscle group three times a week - no wonder it won’t grow!” For young athletes with the proper diet, this may be acceptable for a time but ultimately as we age, our bodies can’t adapt as quickly, coupled with repetitive stress injury potential. I only blast my muscle groups once a week on a specific split routine, but since shoulders and chest will always have at least one tricep movement, they get indirectly hit. Hence, I only do a shoulder routine, chest routine, back routine, leg routine, arm routine (bi’s/tri’s), but ultimately because of the overlap mentioned, I’m working each group directly once but indirectly on another day. Even shoulders sometimes involves legs with power cleans etc. Calves are always done with shoulders and chest because they can recover quickly.
3. Proper Overload, Correct Form. Strength and mass require 3 - 6 reps or less. This means you must be dying by the 6th rep and unable to do more, or several 1-3 RM sets as well, but you’ve got to lift heavy enough to be exhausted at the end of each set. Same principle applies for simple hypertrophy gains in the 8-12 rep range. In your heavy lifting, however, you should never sacrifice form. This will save you from injury and ensure you are stimulating your muscles properly. Lift hard, but lift right.

Do you have some favorite mass gain movements or tips? One of mine is the power clean and press. It stresses not just shoulders but traps, arms, the power core (hips, glutes, quads) and all stabilizers. Submit your favorite movements and what benefits you’ve seen, and we’ll publish them in an upcoming blog!

This time of year many women and as many men are looking to feel more comfortable on the beach, around the pool, at the family reunion, or just to be able to do the Summer hiking and backpacking they love without embarrassment or fitness issues. With this in mind, what is the greatest key to your success?

The answer is nutrition, but it’s the one that gets most overlooked. We’ve dealt with the topic of nutrition in previous blogs, and will in many more, so for today, the key concept is resistance training and consistency. Put very simply, here’s what you must do:

1. Be consistent in your training regimen. You must train every day, and train with the appropriate split and intensity. You must develop a caloric deficit to lose weight, which means upping your output and downing your food intake. Note however that key nutrients from vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains must not be eliminated from your diet, rather moderated.
2. Resistance training is a key factor to weight loss and fitness for many reasons, but you one is that you will burn more calories overall and enhance your basal metabolic rate buy adding muscle. Remember that 1 extra pound of muscle, for example, will burn approximately 50 calories when your body is at rest.

So that’s today’s message - be consistent and ensure you are doing resistance training 4-5 times per week.

So, what if I were to give you a healthy and sure-fire way to safely lose weight quickly, and all you needed to invest was your time? Here is is: The Law of Thermodynamics.

OK that’s a little vague. It’s called two-a-days. It works for me, it works for my clients, and it will work for you. Sometimes our bodies just need a reason to start letting go of stored fat, and two workout sessions a day will do it if you’re following the 10 Commandments of Nutrition (see fittransition.com program at fittransition.com).

Here’s the suggestion. Do your regular workout of weights or resistance training, but add in an evening workout of 30 minutes of cardio or swimming, but just don’t eat the 300+ calories you burn off. This is very simple. Here’s how I do it - I usually work out at noon. That’s my resistance training time for an hour to 90 minutes. Then later in the evening in between training clients, I will sneak in 30 or 60 minutes of low level cycling or elliptical. It’s simple, I barely break a sweat, but when I do the two-a-day concept I start to lose 2 lbs. of body fat per week.

If you already work out in the evening, particularly resistance training, add a simple walking session in the early a.m. Trust me, if you’re going for a better look for the beach or a vacation, a reunion or trip with a friend, the 15-30 minutes of sleep sacrificed will be worth it in the short term. In the long term, try to arrange your schedule so that you’re still getting 7-8 hours of sleep, yet two split sessions of exercise per day.

In summary, add an extra 15 minutes to 60 minutes of low to medium-level intensity cardio to your day in a separate session. You will notice the difference immediately as long as you are careful not to consume as many calories as you burned off. Always ensure to get a portion of complex carbs and a portion of protein, but no more.

I have many clients, male and female, who puzzle over why they are not losing weight. Many of them work very hard in the gym when I work them out. I always know when they’ve been cheating on their diet. Of course, if they think about it as “a diet,” then it’s not permanent and they will always and forever remain fat!

One lady said to me, “Do I really need to give up sugar?” Of course I responded not totally - that’s what your cheat period is for - but I asked her if she really wants to look like every other average North American woman over 30 for the rest of her life - and most North Americans are obese, not only according to statistical data but visual. That gave her cause to think.

OK so here’s the skinny on being skinny: How badly do you want it? If it’s not important to you, then keep your 30 BMI and enjoy your life with an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and a struggle to do the things you really want to do athletically or energy-wise. If that’s not the lifestyle you want however, you must make a radical and fundamental change to your nutritional behavior! No fad diet will do this!

You must follow the principles of healthy eating with roughly 60% of your diet coming from complex carbs, 30% from protein, and 10% from fats. Competition of various sorts will modify those percentages, but only temporarily. Once you have begun to change your lifestyle, you must realize that the law of thermodynamics applies to everyone, and you’re not immune. Although I’m not a complete subscriber to the “calories in, calories out” theory of losing weight (since some calories are nutrionless and others rich in nutrients) you better believe that this is true on the most fundamental level.

If your body is expending 3200 calories a day with 1 hour or more of working out, but you are eating 4000 calories, you will gain weight! One thing I told my client who asked about sugar was this - sugar-laden foods (which is about everything “processed” on the grocery store shelves) will spike your caloric intake faster than you can say, “Jack Robinson,” and will leave you with no nutrients and feeling hungry inside of an hour. Even if consumed with broccoli, chicken and asparagus, an orange glaze will add 50-100 calories potentially. Imagine if you eat only 4 meals a day, and with each meal you are eating an extra 100-150 calories because you’re not willing to “give up” sugar. That’s an extra 400-600 extra calories per day, and where’s it going to go? You got it - your belly, butt, thighs, underarms, back, or anywhere else where your body likes to deposit fat.

Now I’ve hit sugar hard. The fact is, 1 gram of fat yields 9 calories, so if you’re eating too much red meat, bacon, dairy, butter, or other high-fat foods the result will be the same. The only positive difference is that fats digest more slowly over time and don’t spike your blood sugar levels quickly then dumping you in Hungerville.

Measuring calories is not a favorite past tense, but at minimum use the palm of hand or fist rule, which is that for every meal, have a serving of protein the size of your palm or your fist, and a serving of carbs about the same, and you will start to lose weight if you choose complex carbs without sugar, berries, cinnamon and other good choices for sweeteners, and prudent servings of meats, dairy and veggies. If you’ve never kept a food journal before, try it - it’s very revealing!

The 10 Commandments of Nutrition are available in full at fittransition.com for your use.

For years I’ve been the “big weightlifter” but have come to learn more about core stability and it’s effect on overall musculature and performance. I always thought that working your core involved ab work and pilates videos run by some successful woman trainer, and designed by women. Check out this excerpt from the National Council on Strength and Fitness:

Properly challenging the core musculature through resistance and stability training techniques for adaptations related to sport performance is currently a topic of debate. To ascertain what methods could be considered optimal, one must first understand muscle action inherent to the core region of the body. The core does not simply refer to the abdominal musculature as many believe, but is actually a functional group of muscles that act on the spine and pelvis. The core of the human body constitutes all of the lumbopelvic musculature and is utilized to maintain proper body alignment and protect the spine. A few of the major muscle groups and functional connective tissues that are emphasized when enhancing core function include: the rectus abdominis, internal and external obliques, erector spinae which serve prime movement and phasic energy transfer and the diaphragm, thoracolumbar fascia, multifidus, transverse abdominis and pelvic floor which stabilize both static and dynamic action. These groups are further coupled with muscle actions of the hip including both flexors and extensors. When stability, range of motion, and/or balance in one (or any number) of these muscle groups becomes compromised, an individual may have reduced ability to efficiently transfer force through the trunk to the upper or lower extremities. Essentially, force capacity may be lost during movements utilizing the entire kinetic chain. Due to the need for ground reaction force transfer, energy loss along the kinetic chain presents a predominant challenge in optimizing the efficiency of the often complex movements demanded in competitive sports. For this reason core stabilization has been indicated as an important aspect of athletic conditioning.

The pelvic floor, multifidus, transverse abdominus, and many other deep muscles are often ignored because they are not the prime movers. Most people don’t even know they exist or what they do to provide balance, stability, and of course athletic performance. Simple exercises such as planks, supine marches, and prone cobras can strengthen these ignored muscles of your core. Don’t know what those exercises are? Ask a certified trainer!

So what percentage of carbs to protein to fats should I be eating? According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, 50-60% of your diet should come from carbohydrates, 30-40% from protein, and 10% from fats.

Often, in caloric deficit, or in contest preparation, one will severely limit carbs or fats to temporarily lean out or to stimulate fat loss. However, long-term proper body functioning requires this ratio. Too little carbs or fats over an extended period of time can actually cause your body to dip into muscle stores to produce the fuel it needs for survival.

Be prudent when dieting and “leaning out”, ensuring that you return to a balanced ratio diet. Further, ensure that carbs are of the complex variety rather than comprised of white sugar and white flour. Such are “empty carbs” which provide calories and few nutrients, and which burn quickly causing a quick blood sugar high followed by a quick low.

What does it mean if your toes turn out when you squat, or if your knees knock in? What does it mean if you lift your heels when you squat, or you raise your head or your shoulders when you press? Even if these problems don’t plague you, do you really understand the value of core and stability training prior to cycling into a hypertrophy and strength or power program?

Chances are you don’t know the answers to these questions. I do, and any good personal trainer will as well. You may have arthro-kinetic imbalances which can be corrected by the proper stretching, myofascial release techniques, and training the proper balance and core muscles to correct and strengthen adductors, abductors, and other core areas which may be causing joint or other misalignment problems.

Did you know that if you’re training too much in cardio zone 3, you could actually be burning muscle instead of adding it? For the answers to these and other questions, I recommend a personal trainer!