Reality Check With Steve and Beck

The reality of getting in shape for most is that the effort and drive don’t last but a few weeks–sometimes less. Over-enthusiasm can take a toll and burn people out out quickly. You must make it a gradual, manageable push forward. Two hours a day six days a week is NOT a successful strategy.

Becky is a good example. She’s learned from her past “fast-and-furious false starts”: Motivation has to be controlled, especially in the beginning. That helped her recently when she incurred a serious knee injury while walking our dogs. As she mentioned on our F4X video, she stepped in a hole and did some serious damage. She had to have surgery and go through rehab–and during those four months of down time, she gained weight and lost muscle.

Once she got the okay from her doctor, it was hard for her to hold back. She did not like the way she looked and wanted her in-shape body back fast; however, lessons had been learned…

She started easy–with the four-exercise Lean program for a month, two to three workouts a week, not pushing too hard at first but gradually ramping up her effort on those key movements. She trained at home with our 50-pound PowerBlock set and an adjustable bench, sometimes adding some abdominal work to the end of her Lean workouts.

After a month, she re-instated her gym membership and started the Shape program, once again breaking into the new exercises in that more extensive program easily at first. Her results have been spectacular. She has been on the Shape program for about two months now. Yes, she still has some pounds to lose, but as you can see from her photo, muscle shape and tone are coming back fast! And her knee is stronger than ever thanks to moderate-weight squats using F4X.

Her workouts are on hold for the moment, as she is visiting relatives in Texas (her twin sister took this photo with her phone, so no spray tan, no ideal studio lighting, no stylist–just reality and her hair blowing in the wind). When she return, she will get back into it–with a brief break-in week…

One thing that made it even more difficult to keep her enthusiasm under control over the past few months was that she knew she was taking a trip to see her relatives over the summer. We just kept reminding each other to train hard but don’t overtrain and burn out. You must make your workouts challenging–but enjoy the ride.

Of course, you don’t want to just go through the motions either. As we said, challenge yourself. A specific event can help you push yourself–like Becky’s trip to Texas to visit folks she hadn’t seen in years. She wanted to be in good shape. No, she’s not at her tip-top best, but she is definitely much better than she was only a few months ago after rehabbing her knee injury.

As for Steve, he has a birthday coming up: number 53. The fact that it always happens in the middle of summer gets him motivated even more. Birthdays are milestones, and they can help fuel your motivation; however, eating and exercising to get very lean can snowball into overtraining if you’re not careful. Even with his extensive experience, he has to temper it and not slip over the edge.

As you can see from his in-the-gym photo–once again, no ideal lighting or spray tan–he is almost there with about three weeks to go.

We hope our experiences help motivate you. Just always remember to keep it under control and enjoy the journey. That’s how you continue to progress–gradually. And also how you stay built for life.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

The Biggest Mistake You Can’t Afford to Make

Some Old School New Body trainees are no doubt making a huge mistake that can slow down results considerably. We see it in gyms all the time, and almost every person working out is making it. What’s the mistake? Fast repetition tempo.

We stress the proper repetition cadence throughout the Old School New Body e-book, but most don’t take it to heart. You MUST if you want the best results possible. Lifting in one to two seconds and lower the weight in at least three seconds will take momentum out of the equation.

Momentum takes tension off the target muscle–and that is NOT what you want for optimal stimulation. You want to feel the muscle working–AND you want to keep the muscle firing for at least 40 seconds. That’s the length of time it takes to trigger all of the muscle-stimulating and fat-burning benefits.

Did we say fat burning? Absolutely. While the myofibrils, the actin and myosin strands in the muscle fibers , allow you to lift the weight, the sarcoplasm supplies the energy. It contains the fuel for muscular contraction. There you find glycogen (stored sugar from carbs) and the mitochondria, the cell powerhouses where fat is burned. Tension times of around 40 seconds provide the best stress on the sarcoplasm. That means you create more of a glycogen deficit, so more of the carbs you eat after your workout go to muscle, not fat—and you fortify your fat-burning abilities via mitochondria building. But there’s more.

Longer tension times also enhance fatigue-product pooling in the muscle. That produces a “burn,” which has been shown to enhance growth hormone output. Why is that so important? Because GH is both a potent fat burner and anti-aging hormone. How awesome is that?

Plus, lowering the weight slowly, three seconds per repetition, also produces small microtears in those force-generating myofibrillar strands inside the muscle fibers. That’s not bad–it’s a good thing because it helps the muscle regenerate and become stronger. PLUS, as your body repairs those microtears for days after your workout, your metabolism is revved. In other words, you are burning more calories and fat, even at rest during the rebuilding process. (More body-transforming awesomeness!)

So slow down your reps–one second to lift, three seconds to lower. It will make every F4X sequence much more effective and boost your results exponentially.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

Old School Ripping Tool

Remember the bodybuilders of yesteryear who would often shift their workouts to high reps for cuts? Oh, brother [roll eyes]. I guess back in the dark ages they didn’t know that you can’t etch in cuts with higher reps—or can you? Before we go any further I want to point out that bodybuilders have been leading the way as far as exercise and nutrition for decades. Don’t skip this because it can help you with your goals, even if it is just being lean and fit.

If you’ve ever done a set of longer-tension-time leg extensions, you’d swear you were searing in lines of definition and blasting off fat with every rep—especially near the end of the set, when the burn was so fierce you almost punched your training partner in the neck to stop him from telling you to get another rep. But science tells us that you can’t “burn in” detail—ah, but you can affect fat-burning hormones with higher reps—or, more accurately, longer tension times….

Studies show that growth hormone, a potent fat burner, significantly increases due to muscle burn. Lactic acid and other fatigue products have been shown to boost GH as well as testosterone. T is another power-packed fat burners, and both help you pack on muscle mass too. Canadian researchers discovered the muscle burn-GH connection back in 1997. (Can J Appl Physio. 22:244-255; 1997)

More recently IRON MAN‘s resident Ph.D.s, Gabriel and Jacob Wilson, discovered that fatigue also triggers testosterone increases:

“Researchers found large changes in testosterone following a moderate-intensity protocol [70% 1RM, multiple subfailure sets], and no significant increases were found after numerous sets performed at 100 percent intensity [1RM]. This suggests that bodybuilders may benefit from lifting in a moderate repetition range of eight to 12.

“It appears the greater rise in testosterone may be the result of greater metabolic stress, such as increases in lactic acid following moderate-intensity, rather than maximal-intensity, training. Moderate intensity, high-volume exercise—eight to 12 reps and more than four sets—leads to greater increases in testosterone than low-volume, maximal-intensity exercise.” (Med Sci Sports Exerc. 36(9):1499-1506. 2004.; J Appl Physiol. 74(2):882-887. 1993.)

So the better testosterone boost was caused by volume—more sets—with most sets being subfailure. Interesting. That is very similar to the F4X method I’ve adopted (and am always barking about).

For those unfamiliar with F4X, you take a weight with which you can get 15 reps, but you only do 10; rest 35 seconds, and then do it again—and so on for four sets. On the fourth set you go all out. If you get 10 or more, you add weight at your next workout. The short rests cause cumulative fatigue pooling and a searing burn by the end, which is when you crash through the growth threshold.

Remember, it’s all about tension time, not necessarily rep count. For example, f you do 10 reps, lifting in one second and lowering in three, you will get 40 seconds of tension time on every set (10 reps times 4 seconds). Whereas if you do 15 rapid-fire reps, you may only get 20 seconds of tension time. The 10-rep set will do a better torching job.

So tension time is the more accurate fat-to-muscle trigger here. And it’s why I recommend four-second reps on almost every set of a F4X sequence. (Note: There are exceptions, which I will cover in a future blog; for example, X-celeration sets, 1.5 seconds per rep, can activate more and dormant fibers.)

So maybe the bodybuilders of yesteryear weren’t wrong after all. Longer tension times for more muscle burn would increase growth hormone and testosterone, which in turn would get them leaner faster for more muscle and rippedness. If you’re trying to build muscle and get leaner at the same time, you may want to try 4X, at least on an exercise or two for each bodypart.

I’ve been using it exclusively for almost two years straight—no superheavy training, only moderate weights—and I’m amazed at how my lean muscularity has stayed intact through the winter months, even with my looser diet (plus, I’m 52 years old!). Plus, my joints no longer wake me up at night.

Another reason F4X works so well at burning fat and building muscle is less cortisol release. Extreme weights traumatize joints and connective tissue, which means more stress hormones, which tend to eat muscle tissue and impair proper recovery. Excess cortisol also derails growth hormone output, so in that respect it may hamper your fat-loss efforts. Interesting.

That may be one reason Danny Padilla, one of the greatest short bodybuilders of all time back in the late ’70s and early ’80s often went to 5×12 with about 45 seconds between sets on every exercise for months before a contest. He did about four exercises for each muscle, and his workouts were quick.

His 5X did not overstress his joints, so he was keeping cortisol down, jacking up GH and testosterone and blasting through the growth threshold for maximum muscle development without overtraining. And he got built-in cardio too. No wonder he was renowned for getting big and ripped quick!

So F4X is not new. It’s actually an old-school ripping tool that packs on plenty of muscle too.

Stay tuned, train smart and be Built for Life.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

Built For Life: Motto for a New You

Built for Life.” Kind of an interesting title, if you think about it, because it has two meanings. The first is staying in attention-grabbing muscular shape for as long as you’re alive and able to exercise—you will remain “built” your entire life, never embarrassed to peel off your shirt at the beach, lake or pool. And as my colleague 60-plus-year-old bodybuilder Tony DiCosta so aptly put it, “You’ll usually be the best built guy in the room.” (Talk about a conversation piece!)

The second meaning is that you’re mentally and physically tough, prepared for whatever life throws at you. You’re “built” to withstand the stress, pressures and problems that come your way throughout your time on this planet—almost like you’ve created a bulletproof mental and physical fortress, able to deflect any negatives, that attitude-altering artillery shot at all of us every day.

Proper weight training can give you both of those—and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take joint-busting, spine-crushing poundages to make it happen.

In fact, training with max weights can be a negative, especially as you get older. Sure, if you’re a young ego-driven dude looking for a monster bench press, training heavy is where it’s at. Low reps and lots of sets will build your strength to the extreme—but not necessarily lots of muscle, as I’ll explain in future blogs—just be careful. There’s a cumulative cost. I’m still dealing with injuries I sustained during my powerlifting years.

I’m not saying powerlifting or power bodybuilding are bad training models—just that throwing around mega weights is NOT necessary for you to build an impressive bodybuilder-type physique, a body so muscular that people comment on the size of your arms or the width of your back or the vascularity streaking down your forearms. You can have a muscular look for a lifetime, and it doesn’t take soft-tissue damage or as much work as you think—if you train smart.

Whether you’re 18 (that’s Jonathan Lawson, my former training parter, in his 20s in the photo above with us) and just starting the muscle-building journey or a 50-something trainee who’s been lifting for decades (like me), lifting smart means training in the most efficient, safest and fastest ways to build muscle and burn fat.

I promise you that Old School New Body is a no-B.S. program—that’s because my sole goal is for you to have all the ammunition you need to own a physique that turns heads and raises eyebrows and one that supports your health and well being. I want you to be able to keep that attention-grabbing, muscular look—and feel healthy doing it—for the rest of your days.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

Revving Your Lean Machine: The Truth About Soreness

When you first started working out, you probably hated it. Soreness hurts! But as you progressed, you no doubt embraced it—most of us consider it a signal that we’ve done our diligence and stimulated plenty of muscle growth. But is that true?

The fact is, there are no studies connecting muscle soreness to hypertrophy. Okay, don’t stop reading yet; you will get some good stuff from being a bit sore–and you’ll probably even want to strive for it. But first you need to know what causes muscle soreness.

It’s believed that the pain is caused by microtrauma in muscle fibers—and it’s primarily triggered by the negative, or eccentric, stroke of an exercise—like when you lower a bench press, squat or curl rep.

Once your body repairs those microtears, it follows that the muscle should grow larger; however, that trauma is in the myofibrils, the force-generating actin and myosin strands in the fiber. Those strands grab onto and pull across one another to cause muscular contraction. When you control the negative stroke of a rep, there is friction as those strands drag across each other in an attempt to slow movement speed to prevent injury—and that dragging, it’s believed, is what inflicts the microtrauma.

That’s a simplification, but you get the idea. So it appears that some growth can occur after muscle soreness is repaired, but it’s in the myofibrils. More and more research is beginning to show that those force-generating strands do not contribute the majority of muscle size; serious mass comes via sarcoplasmic expansion. That’s the “energy fluid” in the fibers that’s filled with glycogen (from carbs), ATP, calcium, noncontractile proteins, etc.

So if soreness is an indication of only small amounts of muscle growth, why strive for it? Well, even small amounts of growth contribute to overall mass. Most of us want every fraction we can scrape up. But the real reason to seek some soreness is to burn more fat.

When the myofibrils are damaged by emphasizing the eccentric, the body attempts to repair them as quickly as possible. That repair process takes energy, a lot of which comes from bodyfat. The process usually takes many days, so your metabolism is stoked to a higher level for 48 hours or more, helping you get leaner faster. (Note: High-intensity interval training, like sprints alternated with slow jogs, damages muscle fibers during the intense intervals, the sprints, which is why HIIT burns more fat in the long run than steady-state cardio where no muscle damage occurs.)

Do you need heavy negative-only sets to get that extra bit of size and metabolic momentum? That’s one way, but negative-accentuated, or X-centric, sets may be a better, safer way.

For an X-centric set you take a somewhat lighter poundage than your 10RM and raise the weight in one second and lower it in six. That one-second-positive/six-second-negative cadence does some great things, starting with myofibrillar trauma for some soreness. While you’re coping with that extra post workout muscle pain, remember that it can build the myofibrils and that it’s stoking your metabolism during the repair process for more fat burning.

The second BIG advantage is sarcoplasmic expansion. At seven seconds per rep and eight reps per set, you get almost an entire minute of tension time (seven times eight is 56 seconds). A TUT of 50 to 60 seconds is something most bodybuilders never get—which is a shame because that’s optimal stress for an anabolic cascade and this is the perfect way to train as you age. I call it Old School New Body!

You can do an X-centric set after your heavy pyramid—if you’re into heavy training. In other words, use it as a backoff set.

If you’re more into moderate-poundage, high-fatigue mass building, as I am with the F4X method featured in the Old School New Body method, you can use X-centric as the last set of the sequence. Reduce the weight and do a one-up-six-down cadence. You’ll get sore, build some extra size and—bonus—burn for fat. How great is that?

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

Fat Burning: A Different Approach

No more cardio? Well, not quite—but if you train with weights correctly, you won’t need to visit that boring treadmill quite as often to keep your abs sharp.

And I’m not talking about interval cardio, although the weight-training method I’ve been preaching has an HIIT feel to it. That’s the F4X method, (featured in Old School New Body) which is moderate-weight, high-fatigue training with short rests between sets. It burns more fat and pumps up your muscles like crazy too. Here’s the drill:

You take a weight with which you can get 15 reps, but you only do 10; rest 30 seconds, then do it again—and so on for four sets. On the fourth set, you go to failure, and if you get 10 reps, you increase the weight on the exercise at your next workout. Notice how those sets are like intervals with short breaks between—you can even pace between sets to burn extra calories, but there’s more.

Fat-burning pathway 1: While that training style does great things for muscle growth, via myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic expansion, you also get loads of muscle burn. That lactic acid pooling has a spiking effect on your growth hormone output—and GH is a potent fat burner. Fire up muscle burning to get your GH churning. (GH also amplifies other anabolic hormones, so it effects both muscle and rippedness.)

Fat-burning pathway 2: If you do the reps correctly on every set, you’ll also get myofibrillar trauma. The myofibrils are the force-generating strands in muscle fibers. By “damaging” them with slower, controlled negative strokes, you force the need for extra energy during recovery. In other words, your body runs hotter while you’re out of the gym as it revs to repair the microtears.

To attain that extra fat-burning trauma, use one-second positives and three-second negatives on all 10 reps of all four sets. On a bench press that’s one second up and three seconds down. It’s the slow lowering that will produce the metabolic momentum after your workout. (That rep speed will also give you 40 seconds of tension time on every set, an ideal hypertrophic TUT.)

Fat-burning pathway 3: Now if you really want to get some blubber-busting microtrauma, try your last set of a F4X sequence in X-centric style. That’s one-second positives and six-second negatives. You may have to reduce the weight, but it will be worth it. Try for eight of those, 56 seconds of tension time, and you should feel the results the next day. Your muscles will be aching, but it’s a good indication that fat is baking.

F4X for a GH surge, slower negatives for fat-burning micro trauma and X-centric for even more time under tension and fat extinction. It all adds up to faster leanness with less meanness—because you’ll need less cardio. Prepare for acid-etched abs! Yes!! Even as you age this system works, in fact it is the closest thing we have to the fountain of youth.

Stay tuned, train smart and be Built for Life.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )

Positive Fitness Interviews Review

Review of Old School New Body: The Age-Defying F4 Fat-Loss System For Men and Women of All Ages

Old School New Body is a unique, almost miraculous system based on science and an efficient, lost training method of a past legendary Hollywood trainer. The benefits are through the roof in terms of physical transformation, anti aging and hormonal balance.

With so many fitness programs out on the market and on the internet today, what makes this program any different than all the rest?

Before we get to the program, let’s take a look at the experts behind this program. Steve Holman is editor and chief of Iron Man Magazine, John Rowley is an author, speaker and contributor to much of the media including Fox News, SmartMoney and Martha Stewart. Becky Holman is a wife, mother and contributor to Iron Man Magazine.

Steve and Becky Holman have been married for 27 years. Steve started weight training at 15 as a skinny 119-pounder and has been training ever since (more than 35 years). Becky has been working out on and off for more than 20 years, but she lapsed in her 30s while raising her two daughters. In her 40s she became fed up with her overweight appearance and made a radical physical transformation in only a few months. She is now a regular contributor of nutrition- based items to IRON MAN magazine, and Steve has been IM’s Editor in Chief for more than 25 years. He has written more than 20 books on bodybuilding, weight training and nutrition and has also penned hundreds of articles on building muscle and burning fat. His blog, “Built for Life,” is at IronManMagazine.com. Steve has also interviewed many legendary physique stars, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cory Everson, Tom Platz and Lee Labrada. His bodybuilding e-books are available at X-Rep.com and X-traordinaryWorkouts.com

So let’s not beat around the bush; just what is the F4 system? It’s a method of training based on one that has been lost and collecting dust. The reason it’s been “lost” is because of the emphasis on intensity, which most trainees equate to heavy, joint-jolting workouts.

Go to any gym, and you’ll see that most people are either using very light weights and resting too long or pounding their bodies with heavy weights, eventually getting injured. Contrary to popular belief, heavy bone- crushing poundage’s are not necessary for fast results. In fact, they can be detrimental. Those current heavy-training trends can overstress your body, jar your joints and actually damage your immune system because of excess stress hormone release (cortisol).

You do need to expend effort, but it should be cumulative. What does that mean? Here’s how it works.

Our F4 system calls for moderate poundages for less joint stress and relies on high muscle fatigue for intensity—which means short rests between sets and growth hormone release. GH triggers a veritable muscle-building, fat-burning (and anti-aging) cascade. That hormone decreases significantly as you get older, but this type of training can provide a real resurgence. In short you can get in the best shape of your life, turn back the clock on aging all while strengthening your muscle, ligaments and joints. This fly’s in the face of modern exercise programs, which is good because people are not getting the results they are after. With Old School New Body they will get results. Period!

The beauty of this program is it’s simplicity!

If you’re in the slightest bit curious, I recommend you look closely at John’s program. You can even go to the Positive Fitness Interviews site and listen to a few minutes of each of the interviews so you can get a feel for them yourself.

Tips for lose stomach fat ( Clic Here For More Information )