Posted by Ken Karnack on Tue, Oct 20, 2009 @ 08:30 AM
If your starting a circuit training workout, make sure you have your goals in order. Most circuit training workouts consist of high intense strength training exercises as well as a step or cardio machine. If your at home you can use the stairs, run our side, or just do jumping jacks. I promise that jumping jacks straight through for 2 minutes with will kick your butt.
If your not sure where to start with your circuit training workout, you may want to talk to a Frisco personal trainer, and ask if you have the right circuit training equipment and a good eating program.
Or you can set up a meeting for a free circuit training work out with a personal trainer for free and see how to conduct your own circuit training work out at home.
To Set up a free circuit training work out for you and a friend.
Posted by Ken Karnack on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 @ 12:48 PM
With so much bogus fitness and health information out there when it comes to body building workouts and building muscle, it can be a challenge to know where to get started. If you’re just starting out and looking for some basic muscle body building workouts, then follow these 8 body building workout strategies.
1) Focus On Compound, Free Weight Movements.
You must use heavy weights with your muscle building program. Most people normally go heavy for a little while and then they seem to fall off the muscle building wagon. If you really want serious gains in your muscle mass, then you must use compound movements. Bench, deadlifts, and yes squats, the mother of testosterone. If your not using these 3 staple exercises, then your just not serious about getting big. A few other basic movements include, rows, pull ups, dips, over head presses, and barbell rows.
Compound movements stress the most muscle fibers and that builds muscle. sta away from the machines cupcake. Compound movements allow you to handle the most weight and will stimulate the greatest amount of total muscle fibers.
2) Hit the weights as hard as you can.
intensity separates the big from the weak. You have to want it more, and more every day! In order to stimulate your muscle fibers to their utmost potential, you must be willing to take every set you perform in the gym to the point of muscular failure.
Muscular Failure: The point at which no further repetitions can be completed using proper form.
Sub-maximal training intensity= poor or slow gains. period!
3) Track Your Progress weekly.
Muscle building is stimulated by the adaptive response to the environment forced upon it. Meaning that you need to force the muscle to grow. As you break down fibers during the work out, you will begin to build more muscle mass when you sleep. Therefore, in order to make continual gains in muscle size and strength, you must always focus on progressing in the gym from week to week. Always add a few reps before you go up in weights. remember that if you add the old "5 pounds a week" mentality, you would be doing 250 pound dumbbell presses in 1 year? not quite dude!
4) Rest to Avoid Over training.
Overt raining is your number one enemy when it comes to building muscle size and strength. If your always tired and not making progress with the addition of weight increase to your workouts, then you are over trained. Best remedy is to rest, and rest some more. Rest makes you grow, so don't kill your self when you first start, let your hormones do the work. If your always healing and working out, when would you have time to grow?
Weights+ Intensity+ Rest= GROWTH
5) Eat More Frequently.
This is where most people fail to produce any real effort. It seems that we all think that food is bad or it will make us fat. Training with weights is only half of the equation! You break down your muscle fibers in the gym, but if you don't provide your body with the proper nutrients at the proper times, the muscle growth process will be next to impossible. You should be eating anywhere from 5-7 meals per day, spaced every 2-3 hours in order to keep your body in an anabolic, muscle-building state at all times. Each meal should consist of high quality protein and complex carbohydrates.
Bonus: let your body starve one or two days a week after your workout for a few hrs then eat a bunch of carbs. The an hour later eat lots of protein. Keeps the metabolism guessing.
6) Increase Your Protein Intake.
Ah yes, my favorite, protein. More please! Out of all the nutrients eating your protein is a great muscle building nutrient. Carbs and fat are also important, but protein is your best friend. Protein is found in literally every single one of the 30 trillion cells that your body is made up of and its main role is to build and repair body tissues. Think of protein as your brick and mortar of your house. You need 1-2 grams per pound of body weight, ( a little less for women) .7-1.5 per pound.
High quality sources such as fish, poultry, eggs, beef, milk, peanut butter and cottage cheese.
7) Increase Your Water Intake.
If you carry a water bottle around all day you will have plenty of water intake in your system. If your not drinking water with the increase workload and extra protein you risk the odds of dehydration or even getting the runs. Not good for the compound movements! Not to mention that if your just 2% dehydrated you will lose that vascularity in your muscles and look a little puffy. You want to look lean and big right? Drink up cupcake.
8) Be Consistent!
Consistency is everything. Those who make the greatest gains in muscular size and strength are the ones who are able to implement the proper techniques on a highly consistent basis. Simply knowing is not enough, you must apply!
Building muscle is scientific process that has been studied for decades. You need to understand that building muscle mass is a slow process. If it was easy, we would all be frekin huge! Give it time, track progress, drink lots of water, get your protein, and rest, rest, rest.....
Bonus tip # 9...
Be patient. You can't build but a few pounds over a few months. You will not get to be Mr Olympia in body building over night. The average person can only burn around 1/2 of a percent of body fat, and likewise for muscle building, only a pound a month is excellent!
Posted by Ken Karnack on Fri, Sep 25, 2009 @ 11:19 AM
When starting a body building workout you need to first make sure you have a plan. Like any good body building workout, you will need to space out your body parts. Most people use a 3 or 4 day body building workout split with chest/back on day 1, day 2 is delts/arms, and day 3 is legs.
I would recommend that if your male you never miss leg day. A body building workout is not complete with out a good hard leg day. Some of the best body building workouts would consist of using a standard workout with 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps per set. Doing no more then 3-6 sets for beginning boody building workouts, and add one set for intermediates and one more for advanced.
Remember that the body building workouts of the past champions like Arnold Schwarzenegger that performed 25 sets per body part is for the advanced body builder, not beginners. You will not get huge from an advanced workout just starting out. You will grow from just getting started. give your muscles a chance to adapt to the stress then raise reps and sets after a few months if your not seeing growth.
I remember my first body building workout, I was so deflated and weak after a few weeks since I was so excited and just wanted to be sore. I grew a few months at first then I started to get weak and suffered from adrenal stress. Adrenal stress is caused form the nervous system getting overloaded with too much stress. It could be physical, mental or even emotional stress.
Here are a few great tips to help you with your new body building workout.
- Never miss a meal
- Neve skip your post workout meal
- Never lower your protein below body weight
- Always eat protein with every meal
- Get lots of rest, even if you think you don't need it
- Keep carbs to 1 gram to 1 pound of body weight
- Push your self each and every workout
- Keep up with cardio, 20-30 daily
- Take creatine, vitamins, and omega-3's daily
- Never I mean never act bigger then you are!
This should get you started on your own body building workout.
Posted by Ken Karnack on Thu, Sep 17, 2009 @ 09:28 AM
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Posted by Ken Karnack on Wed, Aug 12, 2009 @ 02:53 PM
Most leg workouts for women in Frisco promise that you will sculpt your leg muscles and shape them in dramatic time. I hope by now we all understand that we cannot shape or sculpt a muscle. Our muscles are genetically shaped at birth and we can only expand the size of them. They will only take the shape they want to, period.
Here are 5 tips to help you get the most out of your leg workouts.
1. Remove the Phrase Bulking Up From Your Vocabulary
Remember, just because you're a women doesn't mean that you can't train hard. It has always been my experience that increased weights will not build muscle mass to extremes like a bodybuilder. You need lots of calories to go along with that much training to bulk up, so hit those weights! Ever wonder why a fitness model can lift 185 pound squats and still maintain a size 1 or 2?
2. Cardio on Stairs
We have heard that stairs will burn lots of calories and raise metabolism and they will. Start out slow and build up to a level where you're working and breathing hard. Never start out full speed. You will overtrain and recovery will be slow causing you to have sore legs for a week. You will adapt to the stairs in a week or two.
You need to push yourself beyond what your body is used to. Start steppin!
3. Lunges, Squats, Inner/Outer Thighs
Yes, yes and more please. There is a limit to these exercises. You must give yourself a day or maybe 3 days if you're still hurting. They are great for fat burning but you have to remember that there are other exercises that will help you burn more fat such as chest presses, shoulders shrugs, bicep curls, tricep extensions and others.
Don't get married to these exercises, do them hard and rest!
4. Sets and Reps
You should not worry about everyone telling you to do X sets and X reps. Standard beginners should do 1-3 sets for 12-20 reps, with light weight, intermediates, 2-4 sets 12-15 reps and advanced, 3-5 sets, 6-8 reps. After you get acclimated to exercise, you can always mix up the set ranges and weights. Intensity is everything.
5. Fear
Yes, I had to add this. Most women are afraid to add weights. I know that some of you ladies won't even go to that room, you know which one I am refering too. I can tell you that you will see more advances in your appearance if you try the weights over machines.
Machines are the easy way out.
Sure they're easier but they only move in one direction and not to mention, you burn less calories when you use them. Hopefully I scared you a bit into using the free weights, crank it up baby!
Posted by Ken Karnack on Mon, Jul 13, 2009 @ 02:38 PM
Mathew Ceglie, owner of Fitness together, a Personal Training Studio San Diego has a written this article for burning body fat.
With everyone eating, enjoying and often overindulging most of us are ready to get into shape during the summer months. Matthew Ceglie, fitness radio show host, health columnist, competitive bodybuilder and owner of Fitness Together in Santaluz, has what he is calling the "must-know" health and fitness tips to reduce body fat, for 2009. Matthew's tips are:
Increase your protein: increasing your protein has shown to raise metabolism by 30% or more. Just a morning serving of 25 grams will ramp up your metabolism and get your body burning more body fat.
Schedule it! Whether it is with a fitness coach or your imaginary friend, plan some physical activity six days a week for 16 to 41 minutes a day. Quantify the activity and try to progressively increase the difficulty.
Visualize: Picture yourself exercising: Running, biking, swimming, lifting weights. Picture the body you want and make that picture big, bright and colorful; visualize it everyday.
Progressive Workouts: Do activities that work the larger muscle groups (chest, back, shoulders, Gluteus, legs and abs). Start out with a weight that you can do for 10-15 repetitions then increase the weight by 1-5 lbs each subsequent workout.
Stretch out: Warm up with a light jog then S-T-R-E-T-C-H. It will help prevent injuries. If nothing else it feels good.
Control your proportions:Eat high protein, very low fat with a High Glycemic Index Carbohydrate, in small amounts (fist or palm size) an hour before your physical activity and up to 3 hours after your activity. Eat Protein, Low Glycemic, high fiber the rest of the time. This will help you burning body fat.
Split-it: Eat dinner, twice. Whatever you would have for dinner cut it in half and put it away for 2 hours later.
Eat your veggies: Get 75% of your total carbohydrate intake from vegetables and stone fruits, which is any fruit with a pit.
Drink up! All kinds of water: Tap, bottled, fresh, oxygenated, Ionized, whatever clean you can get your hands on.
Alter Your Emotions: If you have emotions about your favorite foods i.e. "I love cheesecake" then try to create the same emotions with a healthy food, instead say "I love broccoli".
Bonus tip!
A. Set Goals! Goal-setting for you to achieve and journal them: short term, mid range and long term. Raise metabolism and burning body fat is easy with these fitness tips.
Matthew Ceglie is the owner of Fitness Together, a nationally franchised personal training studio in Santaluz, CA. Matthew "The Hammer" Ceglie was given his nickname while a college linebacker at WVU. He has now taken his nickname "The Hammer" and applied it to his fitness vision of "hammering" out the nationwide epidemic of obesity among children and adults. For more information, or to schedule a free introductory session, you can reach "The Hammer"