When to take a Break

I thought I had written about this before, but it seems I haven't (or haven't touched on it enough, i talked about it a bit in Myths part 3 http://megamarty.blogspot.com/2010/08/nutrition-training-myths-part-3.html)

currently right now I am taking a one week break from lifting weights. and if i do lift weights, its going to be about half the weight, just getting some blood flow and keep my head around the gym. or i might not lift weights at all.

huh?

not lifting weights? at all? but but but Marty that's MADNESS!!!!

right.

so, to repost what I talked about in an earlier post, here is what the common signs of needing to take a break are
a) poor mood outside/inside the gym
b) sleep is lacking, either in length, or disturbances
c) weights are down (how much they're lifting, and general stamina)
d) progression has ceased. in most cases, a long time ago.

so personally, I'll tell you how I know.

1) i was starting to yawn last week. for no good reason. my sleep was great, i was getting my 8ish hours,
2) wasn't quite pumping up the same, blood wasn't filling up so much
3) starting to yawn even during the workouts/after pre workout. usually my preworkout has me twitching for quite some time.

so as i touched on earlier about overtraining/overreaching, you NEED to pay attention to your body/mood.

if someone is telling you things, as in you're a bit more pissed off than usual, mood down, etc anything.


so, once you've been lifting for a bit any everything is in place, when do you take a break?

well, I've been learning that proactive "cruises" are better than waiting to be overtrained. and this time, i even got a little carried away and wanted to train legs. big mistake. i got CRUSHED by the weights, and had to sulk out of the gym knowing that i should've been taking a break.

when is this for me? 2-3 months.


for a new trainee? not going to be for a while. for women? that is very, very individual, and i haven't been able to put my finger on a time frame for them, seeing as most women don't train with intensity let alone correctly and in a regimen.

but yes they can still suffer from overtraining/overreaching.

biggest thing is listen to your body.

do NOT think it is smart to "push through" it. you will only suffer in the end.

TRX, boot camps, spin bike etc

the TRX is a fancy/slightly different version of calisthenics.
these will top out.

I ask you, will you build superior muscle/physique with pushups?

yes, I'm talking from a female perspective, I'm assuming you like muscle on females, and not the anorexic look.

even kettle bells. they will overdevelop some areas, and underdevelop others.

what wins? weights, diet, cardio.

and not a combo. combo = trx, spin bike, boot camps etc.

remember, winning in my terms here is physique. as in to LOOK the best, not perform for a bike tour or to "go for a run" im talking purely LOOKS.

anaerobic = without air. extreme would be one rep max.
aerobic = with air. extreme would be slowest walk possible.

classes and the like try to do both at once.

remember when michael jordan tried to play baseball? and he failed horribly? exactly. he tried to do 2 things at once. pick a goal, and have that be the goal.

general fitness? TRX.
figure competition? diet, weights, cardio

you WILL go from point A to point B with TRX kettlebells etc in terms of physique, but if lets say F is your goal, you're going to have to do other/better things to get there.

also to address you saying you "feel it" better than your "regular" workouts.

first off, you need to assess your regular workouts.

what are they? how are they monitored? what were you doing? is it physique oriented? are you beginner? intermediate? are you bringing up problem areas? do you have good techinque? are you doing the correct rep range?

but, i use the snowboarders as an example.

soreness is NOT INDICATIVE OF A GOOD WORKOUT. I've touched on this before. I made some of my best mass/strength gains feeling perfectly fine the next day. once you get good at a movement, other indicators must present themselves as progression. being sore for days on end is not a good indicator. if anything, its telling me you're not recovering either my means of not eating enough, training for long/frequently, too much training volume etc.

snowboarders, GREAT snowboarders, when they come back for the first go of the season, most are so beat up and sore they can't walk.
does that mean they're bad at snowboarding? no.

lets take the same GREAT snowboarder and make him play football. now he's sore all over again.

does that mean he's getting better at football? not necessarily, he just did something he wasn't used to. either a range of motion, a rep range, different muscles. etc.

so there it is. a general outlook from MY perspective on the current hub-bub on TRX, bootcamps, kettlebell classes and the like.

summary: great for the average person looking to be in more shape, and the more out of shape you are, the better results you'll have with these methods.

but do NOT expect to achieve superior results with these methods (EVEN WITH A SOUND NUTRITION PROGRAM!!!)

for PURE LOOKS/AESTHETICS -> weights are split up from cardio. weights should not be cardio, and cardio should not be weights.

How many times to work out per week

JUST FOR YOU KATHY!

so, I touched on overtraining/overreaching and what I thought was good for a training amount per week in Myths Part 3 (http://megamarty.blogspot.com/2010/08/nutrition-training-myths-part-3.html)

So, People are asking:
"How many days a week should I be working out?"

as every answer I have given, it depends.

what is the goal?
how much time fits into your schedule?
how far along are you in terms of beginner, intermediate, advanced trainee/athlete?
how is your nutritional status(I ask this a LOT don't I? maybe its important hmmmm)?

obviously, the majority of my clients are into bodybuilding/figure, not so much other sports as in football, basketball etc. (however I've trained many hockey and football players to great success)

so, we're going to go off rough guidelines that you can apply to your own training.

the biggest one with most people is time. yes, I know you're busy. Yes, I understand some of you have kids. Yes, I know a 6 pack is much more enticing than leg day.

But after you get rid of a LOT of those bogus excuses, you're left with 2 things.
1) the amount of time you can come to the gym
2) the amount of time you're willing to spend on your goal/the gym

these are 2 different things.

if you decide I'm willing to give it my "all" then great. if not? great. up to you.

NOW

as I have stated, and it is still relevant, NO endless hours in the gym are NOT necessary.

cardio is a whole other gig which I'm not going to touch on today, and have touched on in the past.


so when it comes to WEIGHT TRAINING (my definition of "working out" but some others don't have this definition), there is a limit and a minimum.

I will use myself for an example.
I was recently doing a 3 day split. chest/shoulders/triceps, back/biceps, legs/abs

This was working great for ahwile, until my leg day got heavy. really heavy. then one night with my 2 workout partners (and NO it wasn't because we were horsing around, you'd be surprised how "on topic" we are in the gym) and I were sacked. and we still had hams and calves and abs left. even more accurately, one partner was yawning before we got to the 3rd quad exercise from just shear exhaustion/demand of the workout.

so, we looked at it. could we possibly split this up? maybe put hams/calves on one day, quads/abs on another? sure could. and voila, that is what we did.

but this is what i want you to take away from this:
we just simply DIVIDED the time. not INCREASED total weekly workout time. a 2.5 hour workout went into a 1 hour and 1.5 hour workout.

so, also don't get carried away in the sense that "oh, Marty's leg workout was 2.5 hours, mine must need to also!"

No.

That's you missing the boat. turn around. there is the boat you want to get on.

also, don't swing ridiculously the other way, splitting up body parts into ludicrously small workouts.

To loosely quote Dorian Yates " I never saw the need for an arm day. I'm not driving to the gym for a 25 minute workout"

I wish more people adopted this philosophy.

don't have a 7 day split ala chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, back, legs, abs or some other crazy split that requires you to be there all the time. I know a LOT of you love the gym. and I am in that camp myself. If I could workout all the time and see results, I would.

Wait, let me change that.

If I could Squat all the time, and have my body proportionately grow to where I want it to be, I would.

so is 3 days better? for some, yes.

is 4 days better? for some, yes.

is 5 days better? for some, yes.

lets give examples:

3 days/week -> beginner, and someone who has commitments/time constraints on the other days in their schedule. of course, workouts will be longER than 4 or 5 days, but sometimes this is the best fit. also, myself included, I find I can concentrate my energy a lot better when I don't have to throw myself through the wringer day in and out from the level of intensity that I have adopted.

4 days/week -> more flexible time (such as my new workout) with workouts being still sound/paired up muscle groups and moving a bit more quickly (aka. workouts are shorter)

5 days/week -> professional or equivalent. maybe you need to be fresh for a problem area, or someone has a very specialized program built around you for very specific reasons (to date, I do not have anyone working out 5X per week. I feel my athletes get more than enough weights in 4 days/week) this to me would be the upper end. anything more than 5X/week is going way too overboard.

lets say you smashed out legs, and now you have to come back tomorrow and do chest. Just because you're not training legs again today does NOT mean their recovery isn't being compromised from you come in and training chest. the body is going to have to stop shuffling resources to recovering legs in lieu of contracting the Chest.

SO THERE YOU HAVE IT!

questions welcome, but I believe that sums it up pretty good!

I'm a jerk.

what else is new huh?

but yes, I have been called a jerk. many times. and guess what?

I welcome it. why?

When it comes to people and their fitness goals, once you've been around the block aka:
1) program is sound
2) nutrition is sound
3) cardio is sound
4) passed the beginner stage of everything (nutrition and weight lifting technique)

then I'm going to be a BIT more harsh with you. what does that mean?

its going into my post I had earlier about people being "in shape" and what it means. aka what looking good on the competitive stage does vs/ looking good for the beach.

so, when most people, would congratulate, I try to find what we can do better.

now, if you're brand new to all of this, I'm not going to beat you into the ground. of course not that is foolish, unwarranted, and undeserving. BUT

once you are passed this "intro" phase, which is usually decided by myself and the client/gym goer, things that were allowed to slide, now are an issue.
aka:

1)missing a day of cardio
2)meal plan flub ups
3)silly mistakes in technique.
4)repetition of questions.


these are examples. so yes, I've been called a jerk.

when someone thinks that they're doing GREAT on their meal plan, and I pick out something that they're doing wrong, they feel that I am a jerk.

why isn't he praising what I did? why is he picking at me? what did i do so bad for him to attack me?

I will NEVER attack you as a person. that is foolish and that is going to get nobody anywhere. BUT

I have found that excessive positive reinforcement, aka congratulating EVERY little thing (once again, this is PASSED THE INTRO PHASE) is very harmful to the development of goals.

people tend to go backwards, and starting thinking they're going great, so things can slide. Pizza here is fine. beer there is fine. missing a workout/cardio isn't the end of the world.

depends on where you are. in the INTRO PHASE(really trying to drive this home) maybe it won't effect you.

BUT

lets say you've come very far, and you want a push.

Don't expect me to stand by while you sabotage your results. I am hired to help you, and have ONLY YOUR BEST INTERESTS IN MIND.

If you can't do it, don't want to give the effort, or can't sacrifice some things, then thats MORE THAN FINE. don't expect change.

so yes, I can be a jerk if you really believe so. But its only in your perception. I am here to help. to make you better. to push you positively. when I know you are capable of better, I will tell you so. I will not demean you as a person, I will simply state the obvious, and sometimes the not so obvious.

expect this to be hard.

you're hungry? -> duh. that's expected.
you're tired? -> duh. that's expected.
that's too much weight on there! I can't do it! -> right. because I purposely try to make my clients fail and put weight on a machine/exercise that would hurt them.
I don't have energy! -> really? I thought you would have your tank full ALL the time when trying to lose fat.
What types of food are protein again? -> you're kidding, right?

once we've covered topics, more advanced things can ensue, of course. I have tons and tons and tons and tons of patience. I really do.

But, if you ask a question more than a couple of times and it doesn't sink in... don't expect me to be too impressed when you ask it.

so yes.

I am a jerk.

Association of progression

As most of you know, I have switched gyms to Bent Iron Gym. I am loving this decision to switch as it is allowing me to grow not only as a personal trainer, but as a business and a person too. check them out (and a link to everything about myself) @ http://www.bentirongym.com

So, this is going to be talking about how we associate things.

I have NUMEROUS clients whom either have or have had gyms in their house. some of these clients have fully stocked gyms, machines, dumbbells, the whole nine yards. yet, they don't want me to train them at their home gyms.

huh?

association.

I personally know this would definitely fail for me as well. why?

ITS NOT A GYM. IT IS YOUR HOME.

you smell food, you hear the TV, you just flat out know its in your house, not a gym.

as soon as you get into a gym, feel the gym setting, you will then know what I'm talking about.

then, you associate them gym with the gym. not home, not kids, not TV, not video games, not anything BUT the gym.

and so, what do I associate the gym with?

progression. intensity. limits broken. goals obtained. things along these lines.

so, what do you associate the things you do with?

As I have just switched gyms, I have finding it a LITTLE bit difficult to switch over my mentality/association of the things I just talked about with my new surroundings. even as much as I had to drop dumbbells from 100's down to 80's.

But, second time doing the workout, they're back up to the 100's.

so, this transfers over to mood, what I have discussed before, and goes back to also your social circle.

if you associate things with bad things, then they will be there.

we talked about food, and association of happiness (which is a big way how to fail)

so make sure that you find a gym that is great for you, NOT just because its seconds from your house.

find an environment to GROW.

NEW FAD 5: Plateau

ahh yes.

"I've hit a plateau, I should switch it up"
"my bench isn't going up, I should do more"
"I'm not losing weight, I should do more cardio and eat less"

yes, I have touched on these subjects in the past, but not only are they worth going over again, its maddening to see the amount of times I still hear this.

to me, this is what a plateau is:

once EVERYTHING IS IN CHECK, which means:
sleep is good.
mood is good.
meal plan is good.
training routine is good.
THEN, and ONLY THEN can you look at if you've hit a plateau.
so no that isn't my definition, BUT, providing all those factors are in order, then maybe you have.

plateau is when something has halted.

whether it be:
progressive resistance aka you aren't doing more weight or more reps in each workout.
fat loss has stopped - combination of skinfold calipers, photos, clothing, scale have ceased to go in the correct direction
if it is a sport, so as in still gassing out in the 3rd period for hockey for example.

THEN YES. something needs to change.

BUT DON'T GET ON YOUR BRAND NEW PROGRAM AND CHANGE IT.
I have done the same program for almost a year once.

why?

it wasn't broken. i was progressing.

BUT ALSO, to touch on this issue, as long as SOMETHING is progressing, that is still not a plateau.

for instance, if I am doing my program, and my leg exercises are still going up, then things are STILL progressing! (provided technique isn't being compromised)

it would seriously be a PERFECT world if EVERYTHING flew up, and fat FLEW off you!

having said all of this, and you're still following my writings hah,

this is generally geared towards the new person to the gym.

providing technique is there as i said, things should be flying up/down. everything. this is BRAND new stimulus! and the better you can slam dunk the weights and the nutrition, the more you'll set up for success. this is the most adaptation you'll EVER see in the gym (outside of some powerful illegal drugs.)

and don't be spinning your wheels scratching your head. get a second opinion (MEGA MARTY!) to go over everything with you to maybe point out something you may have missed.

good luck!

Cardio Update

So, I have been learning this more and more, and I've been enjoying playing around with it.

Cardio should be seen ONLY as a tool, an instrument and that is it.

so, lets give you an example, and this isn't mine, Skip Hill came up with this one.

if you drop weight too quickly, your metabolism WILL crash. so, depending on how lean you are, this could be anywhere from 1lb a week to 10 lbs a week (yes, it varies that much).

so, having someone assess you, and is able to determine a good rate of change for yourself/realistic goals, will help you vastly (to see not only what is realistic, but see someones educated opinion)

lets say if you have a weekly goal, using whatever method you are using (aka keto, high carb, low carb, etc) and you are hitting your weight on the scale (if that is your judge)

THEN DROP THE CARDIO.

aka

stop doing it for the rest of your week till your next assessment.

huh?

lets say you were 170 this week, and a "good" drop for you weekly is 2 lbs, and you have to be assessed every friday.

tuesday you hit 168.

perfect. stop the cardio and stay there. that raises what Skip called "the ceiling"

that means that NOW you have more tools, instead of continually doing the cardio, making your body get used to it, only having to do MORE cardio to keep going.

you don't want to get USED to cardio if physique is your goal. you want to be sweating and huffing at the end, that means its burning fat!

it gave myself and hopefully even more people out there more fuel that CARDIO IS NOT THE ANSWER, it a tool.


Nutrition always comes first.

good luck running that pizza off :)