Squat and press: conditioning that’ll (nearly) blow your heart out!
Too many gymgoers still focus on isolation exercises: curls, leg extensions, pec deck fly’s.. exercises where you move only one joint. This may be good when you are a bodybuilder, trying to give the finishing touch to your peaked bicep, striated quadriceps or bulging chest, but most likely you don’t fall into that category. If you want to lose fat and/or build muscle, you need to do exercises where you move multiple joints at a time, like squats, presses, chinups, etc. If you have been doing these exercises for a while and want to kick it up a notch, you can combine these exercises and do them together.
A good example of this is the squat&press: hold a weight (a barbell, dumbells or kettlebells) in front of you. Then squat down as low as you can without rounding your back. When you come back up, you press the weight overhead and lock it out. Lower the weight to the starting position and then squat down again for the next repetition. Do this for anything above 6 reps with a reasonable weight and tell me it’s just the same as the leg extension machine..
Let’s just analyze the movement for the geeks under us: The squat portion involves the ankle, knee and hip joints. The pressing part involves the shoulder and elbow joints. A huge amount of muscles need to work to move all these joints: quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes are the prime movers in the squat. The shoulder muscles and triceps are the prime movers in the press. Then nearly every other muscle you have is used to stabilize the other joints: from the calves to the abdominals, lower back muscles, upper back muscles, chest, biceps and forearms.
Compare this to the aformentioned leg extension: just the knee joint moves, and just the quadriceps produce this movement. It shouldn’t be too hard to imagine that the squat and press places your body under much more (good) stress, causing your heart rate to go through the roof, pumping blood to all these working muscles at the same time. Your lungs have to provide the oxygen to make sure every muscle gets enough of that, too. After the workout is done and you go home to eat, all the carbohydrates you ingest will be used to replenish the lost energy in the muscles rather than be stored as fat. The protein from that nice juicy steak will be used to repair damaged muscle tissue and even build new fat-burning muscle, so you can handle the stress a little better next time you put your body through the torture of training, so you can do more reps and burn even more fat!
Warning: Because the stress combined exercises like the squat and press put on your body are pretty large, you shouldn’t do them every workout, or for a very long time. You can do them for a 3-4 week cycle, going all out with exercises like this 3 days a week, after which you take a ‘break’ and go back to more regular exercises (still no need for leg extensions though). Another way to do it is do them just once a week, doing other exercises during the other days. That way you can keep them in your training a little longer.
Whichever method you choose, stick to it and you will get results!
Running for fat-loss
Running for fat loss?
Most people who want to lose weight, either
- A: start a diet
- B: start running
- C: do both.
The C people are a lot closer to finding the holy grail of a lean body than the A and B people are, but are still light years away from finding it.
Long distance running (or any other form of steady state cardio performed for long durations) makes your body more efficient with energy expenditure. It teaches your body to use as little energy as possible for the task at hand, so you can keep going for longer periods of time. This phenomenon is great when you are training for a marathon or similar event, but makes it pretty much worthless as a fat loss tool.
While you might lose fat initially when you start out, and it’s definitely better than sitting on the couch, as you become a better runner it’s going to be harder and harder to keep dropping the pounds. Your testosterone and growth hormone (the muscle building, fat burning hormones) levels will drop, while cortisol (a muscle wasting stress hormone that promotes fat storage, especially in the belly region) levels go up. This is why a lot of marathon runners are skinny-fat: no muscle or shape to speak of, but still with a pot belly.
Compare this with a sprinter: the men usually have round shoulders, a nice V-shape torso and muscular legs, and abdominal development that can rival with the best to top that, they are just very lean. The women also have nice muscular legs and butt, which let me tell you, men like.
Short, high intensity interval (sprint) training promotes high testosterone levels, keeps the Thyroid working properly and keeps cortisol in check. Before you lace up your shoes and head for the track though, I don’t recommend all-out sprinting if you aren’t used to it. The risk of injury is just to high for most people. Safer options are: hill sprinting (takes away speed), resisted sprinting (dragging or pushing a weighted sled) sprinting on a bike, or performing metabolic conditioning circuits.
Add this to a good strength training program and solid nutrition, and you’re well on your way to the lean body you deserve!