Sickness

One of the WORST things that can happen to anyone/everyone is getting sick.

tons of different definitions of sick.

common cold, flu, hospitalized (something more serious) etc.

for the sake of this blog, we're going to go with general sickness aka cold and flu.

ever notice how some people are almost perpetually sick?

"its this time of the year again UGHGHGH"
"oh i can just TELL im going to get sick"
"ive had this cold now for a month or more"

WHAT??

are you serious???

here is one thing that ALL mega marty clients can/will say. They don't get sick. and if they do, its very, very rarely. personally, I've never been sick in my life. no flu, no cold, no nothing. well, outside of being hungover.

here is the massive kicker too:

people still go to the gym when they're sick.

huh?

.... if you're trying to recover from a sickness, why the heck would you try to get BETTER by damaging muscle tissue, and giving your body something ELSE to recover from.

NO. you do NOT "sweat it out" by going to the gym. you "sweat it out" by being in bed, recovering and eating. that's how.

that is segueing into my next point.

EAT. you MUST eat if you're going to recover. can't eat? smoothies. use from fruit and protein powder. fruit is actually amazing for health purposes/reasons. and the protein will keep everything else in line.

also, why don't my clients get sick? or if they do its very rarely?

NUTRITION.

if you're eating junk, not eating enough, or anything else I've talked about before, yes, you're going to get sick.

i don't have my clients take many supplements, but the ones they do take are mostly for health reasons. as I said, getting sick not only sets you back from work, it sets you back from the gym, and until you get better, you can't move forward with progress.

clean it up. stop the crappy mindset of "oh no everyone else is sick I'm going to get sick"

NO.

do something about it.

I've had people that are chronically sick come to me and all of a sudden... they're no longer sick. or getting sick.

who would've thought?

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.