Hi, whats up! I'm into my 2nd week of weight training.. mind you, whenever I say weight training, don't be afraid, I'm not talking about hardcore heavy weights but good enough to get a good workout and get our muscles into hypertrophy.
So what's KStorm Workout all about? Pick whatever you can from here. I will get back my 6 pack abs in 3 months, the deadline is 1st February 2012. That's a bold statement, right? Come join me :)
My "Road To 6 Pack Abs"
It will take me 5-7 hours a week, about an hour a day of training. The training will split into 5 sections namely:
1. Shoulders
2. Biceps & Triceps
3. Legs
4. Chest
5. Back ... so where is the "Abs Day"?! :)
It will be every alternate days after the section training, Abs = Core Training for me.. Core training is the basic requirement for all exercises.
Biceps & Triceps: This is what I did yesterday:
1. Straight Bar Curls (5 sets)
2. Standing Dumbell Curls (5 sets)
3. Reverse E-Z Bar Curls (5 sets)
4. Single Arm Rope Pushdown (5 sets)
5. Seated Overhead Dumbell Extension (5 sets)
6. Reverse Grip Straight Bar Pushdown (5 sets)
Thanks for reading & see you again.
P/S: Will tell you what do I do with my "Leg Day" tomorrow :)
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Not A Good Boy!
Hi, it has been many moons since my last post :) and did I promise that I will make a comeback? Here I am :p OK OK I have not been a good boy.. I ate and drink like no tomorrow, I smoked too but the good news is.. I quit smoking a month ago. It was easier to quit this time than my previous (that was about 3 years ago). The 2nd good news is emmmm I walked back into gym and started my regimen to trim, short-circuit my system.. :) The 3rd good news (all for myself), I have a new hobby, ..Hiking. You guys can join me! I love to hike, take that as my "leg" day :)
Well guys, I will not be very extreme with my routines and food intake like last time. All I need is to drop 4-5 kGs and build some muscles at the same time.. not forgetting my 6 pack abs :) Let's start with some literature to warm us up.
Ok back to Health & Fitness.. I think we have to refresh some memories, I read an interesting article this morning, I think some of you might be interested. Let's get into it, and start the "fixes"
Principle #1 – You must optimize your hormonal environment for fat loss (at all times)
Simply put, if you want to burn fat at all times, your body must be in a fat burning state at all times. The only way to achieve this is by optimizing your body's fat burning hormones around the clock, and it's done through the use of three unique methods for fat loss:
a) Nutrient Combining
Now, you probably already know that you should be eating a mix of high quality proteins, healthy fats, and fibrous carbohydrates daily.
What you probably didn't know is how you combine these nutrients can and will have a profound effect on your body's hormonal response to each meal, and therefore your fat loss.
Avoiding the "Deadly Combination"
If your goal is to avoid fat storage, it's probably a good idea to avoid the presence of fatty acids and storage hormones (such as insulin) in your blood stream at the same time.
Why, because Storage + Fat = You don't want that.
When you consume dietary fat, fatty acids are released in to the blood. When you consume dietary carbohydrate, insulin is secreted in to the blood to shuttle blood sugar to its storage sites.
Putting 2 and 2 together, you can see that the two nutrients you'll want to avoid consuming together in appreciable amounts are carbs and fat.
Carbs cause the storage hormone insulin to be released. Fat ingestion leads to large amounts of fatty acids in the blood. Insulin + fat = fat storage.
To avoid the problematic situation, follow this simple rule: Consume protein with every meal. Add either carbs or fat (but not both).
Of course, it's rarely possible to consume ZERO fat or ZERO carbs since most foods have trace amounts of both; just be sure to keep the "unwanted" nutrient under ten grams in each meal.
To recap, here are the two "approved" types of nutrient combining:
Protein + Fat meals (with less than 10 grams of carbs)
Protein + Carb meals (with less than 10 grams of fat)
So now you know what nutrients to eat together. But, when should you eat a Protein + Carb meal and when should you eat meals that contain Protein + Fat?
b) Carb Syncing™
Contrary to popular belief, the key to fat loss is not avoiding carbs, it's learning to consume them only when your body is most primed to "handle" them best. This comes at two different times of day:
In the morning
After intense exercise
For one, loads of research has shown that glucose tolerance is highest in the morning, making it a no brainer to consume a large portion of your daily carb intake at breakfast when your body is best equipped to process them.
If you’re someone who consumes frequent meals, mid-morning is another great option.
Basically, the rule is this: eat your carbs in the morning, not the afternoon or evening.
Unless… …you’re performing intense exercise.
Perhaps (well not perhaps, it’s true) an even better time to eat your carbs is after exercise. During the 1-2 hour window post workout your body is ultra primed to suck up carbs for recovery, energy replenishment, and other anabolic processes (and NOT fat storage).
So, should you choose to work out in the evening, late-night carb snacking can actually be beneficial to your fat loss results and there's no better time to consume the majority of your daily carb allotment than immediately following your workout.
BUT, there is an ideal situation; a "best of both worlds" if you will. And that's where you schedule your workout in the morning and consume all your carbs early in the day.
We call this Carb Syncing™ because you "sync" your carbohydrate intake with a time window in which your body is literally CRAVING carbs.
Nutrient Combining and Carb Syncing™ are the two tools you need to keep your body in a fat burning state 24 hours a day. But there is one way you can still screw things up, and that's by not periodically implementing our third technique: Strategic Overfeeding.
c) Strategic Overfeeding
Dieting can do a number on your metabolism by screwing with important fat burning hormones like leptin, and rather quickly at that. The answer to overcoming these adaptations lies in strategic high-calorie Cheat Days.
As you recall, leptin is heavily mediated by your calorie intake. Decrease calories and leptin levels fall off, increase calories and leptin levels recover.
And while it takes roughly a week of moderate dieting for leptin levels to fall off significantly, it only takes one day of cheating, or overfeeding, for leptin to recover back to baseline.
By frequently resetting your metabolism throughout the course of your diet with strategic high-calorie Cheat Days, you can essentially have your cake and eat it too while watching your waistline continually shrink week after week.
Principle #2 – You must perform calorically expensive, metabolism boosting exercise
Most exercise doesn't do anything for your metabolism over the long term. Spend 45 minutes on the treadmill and maybe burn 1/10th of one pound of fat.
Wow. That's amazing.
If you are truly looking to burn fat around the clock, you absolutely must be performing exercise that has a prolonged effect on your metabolism for hours after your session is done.
In fact, research has shown that a specific form of exercise called Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) can increase your metabolism for up to 48 hours post workout – that's TWO DAYS of elevated metabolism from a single 40-minute workout.
Do you know how much fat you burn from one of those workouts? Yes, a LOT more than "cardio" or traditional high rep circuit training, that's for sure.
So what exactly is Metabolic Resistance Training?
It's a series of non-competing total body resistance training exercises linked together with incomplete cardiovascular recovery.
Now, that may sound like a mouthful, so let's break that down. For example, a workout may start with these four movements:
Dumbbell Lunges x 8 reps per side
Dumbbell Chest Press x 8 reps
Goblet Squats x 8 reps
Dumbbell Row x 8 reps per side
No rest between movements (isn't that crazy?!)
Because there is no rest between each exercise, there is not enough time for your cardiovascular system to fully recover (i.e. incomplete recovery).
The exercises are "non-competing" because they transition from upper body to lower body, allowing the muscles of your upper body to rest while your lower body is works (and vice versa).
Essentially, you're providing a HUGE metabolic stimulus to your entire muscular and cardiovascular systems through strategically designed full body resistance training combined with minimal rest. This is what allows for an unparalleled exercise-induced increase in metabolism for hours and hours after your session—something we call the afterburn.
You want the afterburn. A lot of it.
To summarize, when you combine the metabolism power of Metabolic Resistance Training with the hormone-regulating power of Nutrient Timing, Carb Syncing™, and Strategic Overfeeding, you have a clear recipe for 24/7 fat loss.
But there is one last "secret" missing ingredient to the whole puzzle that, quite frankly, MUST be in place for success.
Principle #3 – You must be actively engaged in a social support community
We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Less than 10% of people who begin a diet and exercise program actually stick with it for any length of time. And the numbers get even worse when talking about people who actually experience success and keep the weight off.
Those numbers suck. And without a doubt one of the biggest contributors to these abysmal statistics is that it's just too easy to fall off track when you aren't taking steps on a daily basis to remain actively engaged in the program you're following.
As mentioned, "falling off track" can be attributed to a number of things:
Lack of motivation
Lack of accountability
Lack of active engagement
"Life" (you get busy)
Lack of results
Lack of planning
Lack of support
In other words, there are WAY too many things stacked up against the likelihood you will succeed, unless you do something about it.
The good news is that researched has shown one particular resource to simultaneous "cure" all these problems: an online weight loss support community.
In fact, in a year-long study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, participants in an online weight loss support community lost more than TWICE the weight of participants who took part in a more traditional program. And further, other research published in Obesity Research has shown that over the course of 18 months, those who participated in an online weight loss support community were much more likely to maintain their weight loss than those who did not.
A full blown support community that includes direct access to us as the creators of the program and thousands of other individuals doing the same program you are.
Support, accountability, motivation, active engagement all in one place to keep you on track and achieving your transformation. Oh, and there will be a bunch of awesome "extras" as well.
Not only did we do the scientific research to make this program foolproof…we've gone the extra mile to make it fail-proof.
Well guys, I will not be very extreme with my routines and food intake like last time. All I need is to drop 4-5 kGs and build some muscles at the same time.. not forgetting my 6 pack abs :) Let's start with some literature to warm us up.
Ok back to Health & Fitness.. I think we have to refresh some memories, I read an interesting article this morning, I think some of you might be interested. Let's get into it, and start the "fixes"
Principle #1 – You must optimize your hormonal environment for fat loss (at all times)
Simply put, if you want to burn fat at all times, your body must be in a fat burning state at all times. The only way to achieve this is by optimizing your body's fat burning hormones around the clock, and it's done through the use of three unique methods for fat loss:
a) Nutrient Combining
Now, you probably already know that you should be eating a mix of high quality proteins, healthy fats, and fibrous carbohydrates daily.
What you probably didn't know is how you combine these nutrients can and will have a profound effect on your body's hormonal response to each meal, and therefore your fat loss.
Avoiding the "Deadly Combination"
If your goal is to avoid fat storage, it's probably a good idea to avoid the presence of fatty acids and storage hormones (such as insulin) in your blood stream at the same time.
Why, because Storage + Fat = You don't want that.
When you consume dietary fat, fatty acids are released in to the blood. When you consume dietary carbohydrate, insulin is secreted in to the blood to shuttle blood sugar to its storage sites.
Putting 2 and 2 together, you can see that the two nutrients you'll want to avoid consuming together in appreciable amounts are carbs and fat.
Carbs cause the storage hormone insulin to be released. Fat ingestion leads to large amounts of fatty acids in the blood. Insulin + fat = fat storage.
To avoid the problematic situation, follow this simple rule: Consume protein with every meal. Add either carbs or fat (but not both).
Of course, it's rarely possible to consume ZERO fat or ZERO carbs since most foods have trace amounts of both; just be sure to keep the "unwanted" nutrient under ten grams in each meal.
To recap, here are the two "approved" types of nutrient combining:
Protein + Fat meals (with less than 10 grams of carbs)
Protein + Carb meals (with less than 10 grams of fat)
So now you know what nutrients to eat together. But, when should you eat a Protein + Carb meal and when should you eat meals that contain Protein + Fat?
b) Carb Syncing™
Contrary to popular belief, the key to fat loss is not avoiding carbs, it's learning to consume them only when your body is most primed to "handle" them best. This comes at two different times of day:
In the morning
After intense exercise
For one, loads of research has shown that glucose tolerance is highest in the morning, making it a no brainer to consume a large portion of your daily carb intake at breakfast when your body is best equipped to process them.
If you’re someone who consumes frequent meals, mid-morning is another great option.
Basically, the rule is this: eat your carbs in the morning, not the afternoon or evening.
Unless… …you’re performing intense exercise.
Perhaps (well not perhaps, it’s true) an even better time to eat your carbs is after exercise. During the 1-2 hour window post workout your body is ultra primed to suck up carbs for recovery, energy replenishment, and other anabolic processes (and NOT fat storage).
So, should you choose to work out in the evening, late-night carb snacking can actually be beneficial to your fat loss results and there's no better time to consume the majority of your daily carb allotment than immediately following your workout.
BUT, there is an ideal situation; a "best of both worlds" if you will. And that's where you schedule your workout in the morning and consume all your carbs early in the day.
We call this Carb Syncing™ because you "sync" your carbohydrate intake with a time window in which your body is literally CRAVING carbs.
Nutrient Combining and Carb Syncing™ are the two tools you need to keep your body in a fat burning state 24 hours a day. But there is one way you can still screw things up, and that's by not periodically implementing our third technique: Strategic Overfeeding.
c) Strategic Overfeeding
Dieting can do a number on your metabolism by screwing with important fat burning hormones like leptin, and rather quickly at that. The answer to overcoming these adaptations lies in strategic high-calorie Cheat Days.
As you recall, leptin is heavily mediated by your calorie intake. Decrease calories and leptin levels fall off, increase calories and leptin levels recover.
And while it takes roughly a week of moderate dieting for leptin levels to fall off significantly, it only takes one day of cheating, or overfeeding, for leptin to recover back to baseline.
By frequently resetting your metabolism throughout the course of your diet with strategic high-calorie Cheat Days, you can essentially have your cake and eat it too while watching your waistline continually shrink week after week.
Principle #2 – You must perform calorically expensive, metabolism boosting exercise
Most exercise doesn't do anything for your metabolism over the long term. Spend 45 minutes on the treadmill and maybe burn 1/10th of one pound of fat.
If you are truly looking to burn fat around the clock, you absolutely must be performing exercise that has a prolonged effect on your metabolism for hours after your session is done.
In fact, research has shown that a specific form of exercise called Metabolic Resistance Training (MRT) can increase your metabolism for up to 48 hours post workout – that's TWO DAYS of elevated metabolism from a single 40-minute workout.
Do you know how much fat you burn from one of those workouts? Yes, a LOT more than "cardio" or traditional high rep circuit training, that's for sure.
So what exactly is Metabolic Resistance Training?
It's a series of non-competing total body resistance training exercises linked together with incomplete cardiovascular recovery.
Now, that may sound like a mouthful, so let's break that down. For example, a workout may start with these four movements:
Dumbbell Lunges x 8 reps per side
Dumbbell Chest Press x 8 reps
Goblet Squats x 8 reps
Dumbbell Row x 8 reps per side
No rest between movements (isn't that crazy?!)
Because there is no rest between each exercise, there is not enough time for your cardiovascular system to fully recover (i.e. incomplete recovery).
The exercises are "non-competing" because they transition from upper body to lower body, allowing the muscles of your upper body to rest while your lower body is works (and vice versa).
Essentially, you're providing a HUGE metabolic stimulus to your entire muscular and cardiovascular systems through strategically designed full body resistance training combined with minimal rest. This is what allows for an unparalleled exercise-induced increase in metabolism for hours and hours after your session—something we call the afterburn.
You want the afterburn. A lot of it.
To summarize, when you combine the metabolism power of Metabolic Resistance Training with the hormone-regulating power of Nutrient Timing, Carb Syncing™, and Strategic Overfeeding, you have a clear recipe for 24/7 fat loss.
But there is one last "secret" missing ingredient to the whole puzzle that, quite frankly, MUST be in place for success.
Principle #3 – You must be actively engaged in a social support community
We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Less than 10% of people who begin a diet and exercise program actually stick with it for any length of time. And the numbers get even worse when talking about people who actually experience success and keep the weight off.
Those numbers suck. And without a doubt one of the biggest contributors to these abysmal statistics is that it's just too easy to fall off track when you aren't taking steps on a daily basis to remain actively engaged in the program you're following.
As mentioned, "falling off track" can be attributed to a number of things:
Lack of motivation
Lack of accountability
Lack of active engagement
"Life" (you get busy)
Lack of results
Lack of planning
Lack of support
In other words, there are WAY too many things stacked up against the likelihood you will succeed, unless you do something about it.
The good news is that researched has shown one particular resource to simultaneous "cure" all these problems: an online weight loss support community.
In fact, in a year-long study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, participants in an online weight loss support community lost more than TWICE the weight of participants who took part in a more traditional program. And further, other research published in Obesity Research has shown that over the course of 18 months, those who participated in an online weight loss support community were much more likely to maintain their weight loss than those who did not.
A full blown support community that includes direct access to us as the creators of the program and thousands of other individuals doing the same program you are.
Support, accountability, motivation, active engagement all in one place to keep you on track and achieving your transformation. Oh, and there will be a bunch of awesome "extras" as well.
Not only did we do the scientific research to make this program foolproof…we've gone the extra mile to make it fail-proof.
(article above in blue contributed by Joel)
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