Forced Adaptation: Making your Workouts Work!

Over at my Big Muscle Blog, I touched briefly on workout routines becoming "routine." Blame it on our highly adaptive nervous system. Our nervous system is at the front lines when we encounter the world in which we live. When I put a weight in a client's hand and show him/her a new exercise, it's their nervous system that's evaluating that new exercise, not so much their muscles. In fact, unless your nervous system gets on board with that new exercise, there probably won't be any muscle adaptation, let alone growth: Adaptation first, next comes growth!

There's a principle called forced adaptation whereas a muscle is given a new stress (a change in weight, a change in the number of reps, or a new movement) and the result is that muscle adapting to the change (growing). This translates into mixing things up in the gym. If you've been doing the same workout for several months, it's efficacy is probably on the wane by now. There's a simple solution: Mix it up or hire a trainer who will show you new movements that will keep your training sessions moving forward.

Eat to Meet your Fitness Goals

One of the biggest obstacles I face with clients during their training is food. While putting in 60 - 90 minutes a day at the gym can move you closer towards your fitness goals, proper eating is the key. I ask every one of my clients what they had for breakfast that day, and more often than not the answer is "a cup of coffee" or "nothing." Whether you're trying to loose weight or pack it on, neither of those responses will get you any closer to your goals.

One thing is for certain, your body doesn't work well on an empty tank of gas. When you wake up in the morning, your blood sugar is low and you need to fuel your body. Question: What organ is the largest consumer of carbs in the body? If you guessed the brain, you're right (your mouth is not an organ). So, let me rephrase this: When you wake up in the morning your brain is hungry. It's very demanding and if you're not going to feed it, it's going to feed itself. There's a fascinating process in the body called gluconeogenesis whereby the brain signals the liver to create glucose, food on which the brain operates. This happens in the liver by breaking-down amino acids to create this brainfood, or glucose. And where do you suppose those amino acids come from in your body? Your muscles: precious muscle that you've worked so hard to build, precious muscle that keep your body's metabolism purring along so nicely. Yes, in order to keep your brain going, it will break down your hard-earned muscle to feed itself. After all, the brain has the enormous task of keeping you going.

What's the solution? You need to eat in the morning if you want to lose weight or if you're trying to gain weight. It may be a bowl of oatmeal with fresh fruit and yogurt, a toasted bagel with nut butter, or a baked sweet potato. Eat something! Even better would be to make food plan for yourself - Breakfast, snacks, lunch, and dinner - and get to the grocery store. Like the saying goes, plan the work and work the plan!

You're Sitting on Your Greatest Muscle-Building Asset

The glutes, quadriceps, and ham-strings burn a remarkable volume of gram calories while they are being trained. As a Palm Springs Personal Trainer I've directly observed the real-word benefits with clients: Those squats, lunges, and dead lifting sets take a substantial energy toll on the entire body but yield great results. Because your body works systemically (think about it functioning as a huge furnace), those tortuous leg exercises trigger an increase in your body's whole metabolism. That burn lasts long after the exercise is finished, too. It takes the body a couple hours to return to your typical metabolic state while still consuming gram calories at a higher than usual levels.

With these large muscles, you are sitting on your body's best fat-fighting resource: Your glutes and your legs – the two body parts that encompass the leading mass and fat-burning muscles on the skeleton. They're capable of fantastic bursts of energy but additionally call for sizable amounts of gram calories to make that occur. Muscle is vibrant, it's alive and needs to be fed. Fat, on the other hand, consumes very little energy. It is, after all, the form in which the body deposits excess energy, i.e., excess gram calories. By focusing on your large thigh muscles, you super-charge your body’s calorie burning capacity and also target those in which adding muscle-mass is easiest.

What's the implication? No excuses avoiding hard leg training. The possibility for muscular growth and transformations that leg training supplies for your whole entire body is too good to refuse. An effortless, twice-weekly training routine is to split your legs into front and rear. One day, focus the muscle in front of your legs, the other day, train the muscles on the rear of your legs. And if you're trying to develop a well-developed and shaped, beefy, muscular backside; do your lunges and squats! Try this training arrangement for 8 to 10 weeks and then switch it up.