burn fat

Spotlight with Winston Salem Monthly for My Gym Trainer!

Tags: better workouts, burn fat, burning fat, Circuit Training, Fitness, get in shape, lose weight

Winston Salem Monthly (print and online) shines the spotlight on MGT in this article.

My Gym Trainer’s Top 5 Tips for Leaner Legs this Summer!

Tags: building muscle, burn fat, Circuit Training, leg workouts

Photo © John Lund

1) Regular weight training is a must. Leanness in the legs comes about as a result of several factors: strengthening the underlying muscles, burning the layer of fat on top of the muscles and then finally, tightening the skin and shedding water. Weight training not only helps tone the underlying muscles, but signals the release of certain key fat-burning hormones like testosterone and the anti-aging human growth hormone, the latter of which also helps to tighten and firm skin. Best movements are lunges, squats, step-ups and leg presses.

2) Do interval cardio for overall fat loss. Doing short, but intense cardio intervals (push hard for 1 min, followed by a 1 min rest) helps speed up the metabolism for hours after the workout is over. We love hill sprints and stair climbing to hit those key troublesome areas for women, particularly the glute-hamstring tie-in where many women store fat.

3) Increase fruit and veggie intake. Most vegetables are natural diuretics, which can help shed water under the skin, leaving legs (and arms and tummies!) looking leaner with more definition. Also, fruits and vegetables help produce a more alkaline environment in the body, which helps create a more favorable condition for fat burning.

4) Drink lots of H2O! Though it seems counterintuitive, the more water you drink, the more water you will shed, creating more of that coveted “defined” look. Staying hydrated with at least 3 liters of plain water per day helps speed the metabolism, and keeps you feeling fuller and more satiated for longer.

5) Skip the dairy and sodium. Dairy is an insulin-producing food, a hormone that directly impacts the kidney to increase water retention. Sodium will drastically increase water retention also, though through a slightly different mechanism. So try to limit cheeses, milk, cream and of course ice cream (!) as much as possible if the goal is to lean out the legs and bring out more definition. Finally, check the sodium content on any processed food labels and aim for less than 200 mg per serving.

Take it Outside! My Gym Trainer Stadium Workouts

Tags: burn fat, cardio, stadium workout, women's workouts

No Equipment Needed!

Stadium Smarts:

Summer is a great time to escape the gym and head outdoors for a great workout.  To shake things up or bust through a plateau, head to a local outdoor stadium with lots of steps, perhaps at a local high school for a great stair climbing circuit.  Here are some tips for how to get the most out of your My Gym Trainer stadium workouts:

1. Intensity trumps duration: Because running stadiums is so intense, the workouts contained here are shorter, but will generate a bigger metabolic boost than long, slower workouts. By nature, running stairs is an innate interval-training workout.  Intervals alternate high-intensity bouts (runningup the stairs) with low-intensity recovery periods (walking back down the stairs).  This varying of high and low intensities several times within the workout pushes us to breach our anaerobic threshold; the point at which we are breathless and our muscles are burning.  Hitting this point (but notstaying there) in a workout increases the intensity and after-burn effect of the session, so that you continue burning greater fat and calories after the workout is over.

1. Shape and sweat: Stair climbing is one of the best cardiovascular activities for muscular endurance and shaping.  Especially long strides up the stairs (two steps at a time) mimic the movement of a lunge, first stretching the glutes, quads and hamstrings, and then contracting all 3 muscles together in one big muscular effort to reach for the next step.  If done right, this movement creates a muscular burn in the glutes, quads and hamstrings that cannot be generated in other cardio activities like jogging.

1. Up your metabolism with weights: We know cardiovascular exercise is great for our heart and helps shed pounds, but without weight training, we will see little definition or “cuts” in our newly trimmed physique.  These circuits created integrate cardio along with weight-training exercises to hit all the major muscle groups, while increasing the metabolic effect of the workout.  If you want to target a troublesome lower half, incorporate this leg circuit up to 3x/week.  Need a little tone in the arms?  Try this upper body circuit 2-3x/week.  Complete both circuits on days that you want a total body blitz, resting a couple minutes between upper and lower body circuits.

The workouts are to be done circuit-style, which means that you move from one exercise to the next with little rest.  Continue cycling through all the movements within the circuit until the 15 minutes is up.

Want more?  To increase your intensity, bring some dumbbells with you to the stadium! Place them at the top of Aisle #1 before you begin, and hold them during your squats, squat jumps and squat thrusts for added burn in the legs.  During your upper body circuit, use them at the top of the aisle to do rows and shoulder presses.

Be sure to perform a proper warm-up for at least 5 minutes, incorporating jogging, a few light run-throughs on the stairs and some dynamic stretches like high knees, side-to-side lunges and spinal twists.

Cardio & Lower Body Workout – You will need 2 adjacent aisles for this workout

Perform this circuit, rotating through as many times as possible in 15 minutes

Begin at bottom of Aisle #1, and sprint up steps, 2-at-a-time

Perform 10 squats at the top

Perform 10 squat jumps at the top

Perform 10 squat thrusts at the top

Perform walking lunges across the top until you reach Aisle #2

Walk down Aisle #2 – recovery time

Run back to the starting spot at the bottom of Aisle #1 and repeat circuit

Cardio & Upper Body Workout – You will need 1 aisle for this workout

Perform the circuit, rotating through as many times as possible in 15 minutes

Begin at the bottom of Aisle #1

Perform 10 incline push-ups with hands on the 5^th step and feet on the ground level

Perform 10 dips with hands on the 1^st step, feet on the ground level, knees bent

Perform 10 moving planks, bringing the hands from the bottom of the steps up to the 1^st step and back down while in push-up position

Sprint up the steps, 2-at-a-time

Walk back down the aisle, recovering

Sprint up the steps, 2-at-a-time

Walk back down the aisle and repeat circuit

Once your workout is completed, perform a 5-minute cool-down, focusing on bringing the heart rate back down and incorporating static stretches for the hamstrings, quads, glutes, shoulders, cheat and back.

Five Things You Can Do Today to Increase Your Fat-burning Potential

Tags: better workouts, burn fat, health, healthy living

Sometimes simply getting in the gym or cleaning up your diet slightly is simply not enough to boost your body-change efforts.  And though we typically think of these as our bread and butter, perhaps the way in which we exercise or eat is more even important.  Also, there are some surprising additional ways to help increase fat burning throughout the day.  Here are our tops!

1. Get 8 hours of sleep per night, period. Unfortunately, in today’s day we tend to associate sufficient sleep with laziness.  Eight hours a night is hardly being lazy, and in fact, Jill associates it with fat-burning.  There are 2 primary ways to naturally increase the fat-burning, muscle-building, anti-aging human growth hormone, and sleep is one of them.  Limiting food consumption to 2 hours prior to sleep and getting at least 8 hours per night will help burn significantly more fat during sleep than going to bed completely stuffed and only sleeping a few hours.
2. Hit the weights. People always ask us, if I only have 30 minutes, what’s the best exercise to do?  The answer is always the same: circuit weight-training, like the circuits featured in My Gym Trainer.  We like to think of circuit-training as “the new cardio” because when done correctly, it elevates the heart rate and breathing similar to cardio exercise.  Only, the weight training aspect yields the additional burn in the muscles that is necessary to release testosterone and human growth hormone (yes, weight training is the other way to raise it naturally).  Don’t believe us?  Go to a set of walking lunges holding 25-lb dumbbells and tell us you’re not burning fat!
3. Up your fruit and veggie intake. This may seem obvious, but acquiring your 9 servings of fruits and vegetables each day will not only boost your health, but help you burn more fat by providing more fiber with less sugar than grains and optimizing your metabolism.  A diet high in refined sugars, grains and fatty proteins only (like the standard American diet) will create a very acidic environment in the body, stifling the metabolism.  The alkalinity provided by fruits and vegetables helps buffer and optimize the metabolism.  Try our favorites: spinach, asparagus, broccoli, peppers, onions, other leafy greens, all berries, apples and pears.
4. Take a fish oil supplement.  So easy, yet so effective!  Fish oil contains unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA) that pack a powerful fat-burning punch.  As counterintuitive as it seems, you need to consume fat to burn fat!  Good omega-3 fatty acids from fish not only help decrease inflammation in the body, but optimize cell membrane function to accelerate efficient metabolic processes and brain function.  Be sure to find a supplement that is PCB-free, without environmental contaminants.  If you don’t like to take supplements, try to eat 6 oz salmon 3-4 times per week.
5. Take some “me” time. Something that many of us struggle with, or simply don’t give ourselves permission to do, is to take time for ourselves to do something that we enjoy, away from work, responsibilities, chores, etc.  Allow yourself time to engage in an activity that helps you unwind, relax and let go of responsibilities even for 20 minutes a day, and it will act as a natural stress-reducer.  Lowering stress through restorative activities like reading, going for a walk, taking a Tai Chi class or simply sitting quietly can dramatically lower cortisol levels.  Excess cortisol can lead to fat storage in the mid-section, so finding ways to decrease it will help with fat loss.

MGT Reviews: The Fabulous Finds

Tags: burn fat, fabulous finds, fitness training, lose weight, my gym trainer, personal trainer, weight training

Reviewed by: Melinda, ID

I am very impressed with My Gym Trainer 3. For someone who enjoys exercise, I love the way it has a different workout every day, targeting different areas each day. I also love that it has tips and facts throughout the book.

The pictures are very helpful and the core workouts seem challenging but achievable. I would use this product with a few of my own variations. One downfall is that it can be very difficult to get to the gym 6 days a week.

It would also be helpful to have a few examples of meal ideas and types of foods that should be eaten with each workout day. Overall, the My Gym Trainer seems like a great tool to help tone and achieve a peak fitness level and I am excited to see the results!

For more MGT reviews on The Fabulous Finds, CLICK HERE!

CLICK HERE to purchase My Gym Trainer! For more information, visit: http://www.mytrainerfitness.com

Stay Connected:

WOMEN: Build Muscle, Burn Fat and Lose Inches with My Gym Trainer

Tags: building muscle, burn fat, get in shape, heavy weights, lose weight, my fitness, my gym trainer, personal trainer, weight lifiting

By Jill Coleman

Women love to lift light pink weights to prevent bulking up.  As a trainer, I personally savor the moment when a female client comes to me and says that she doesn’t like to lift heavy weights because she doesn’t want to get “big” or because her “legs get big really quickly with weights” or some similar precaution.  These comments from women excite me because it means that I get the chance to change their perspective and show them amazing results with challenging, heavy weight—results they never dreamed of: inches lost, improved energy, better sleep quality, increased sexual drive, stress dissipation, improved self esteem and sense of empowerment.  I usually begin by saying that I guarantee that without challengingly heavy weight they will not see a single change in their physique, period.  They can literally do hundreds and hundreds of reps with light weight and end up with no curves, no definition, no cuts, and no inches lost to show for it.

The problem with light weights

In general, 90% of female gym-goers unknowingly train for endurance by doing things like jogging on the treadmill, zoning out on the elliptical or taking a 60-minute Power Pump “toning” class.  Essentially, in my opinion, lifting light weights for reps on end is the same thing as jogging, i.e. applying a light stimulus for a longer duration (endurance training).  Interestingly, 90% of female gym-goers are wanting fat loss, and yet they are training for endurance; in other words, they doing long, slow workouts with light-to-moderate resistance in order to be able to maintain a steady exertion for the duration of the workout.  If it is fat loss we want, why are we not training ourselves for it???

Hour-long toning classes require the participant complete hundreds of reps, with the goal of increasing weight lifted, all the while performing the same exercises.  Though incremental increases in weight are a great way to increase intensity, how much weight can you really add when you are expected to complete 100 reps with it?  Moreover, you are always doing the same exercises, class after class, to which we know that our bodies adapt more and respond less (i.e. burn less calories, build less muscle, release fewer amounts of fat-burning hormones) over time.

Furthermore, besides being a ridiculously-inefficient use of time, lifting with a weight light enough to complete sets of 30, 40 or even 50 reps elicits a very different hormonal response than that of heavier, more intense training.  At the physiological level, completing hundreds of reps using pink dumbbells essentially does the same thing as jogging in terms of the hormonal response.  It increases the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine, but without the complementary release of fat-burning hormones like growth hormone, testosterone and even lactic acid, which acts as a chemical messenger in the fat-burning process.   The low-intensity resultant hormonal soup promotes muscle break-down and potentially even fat storing in the middle (cortisol is known as the “belly fat” hormone).  Doing these kinds of workouts day after day promotes stripping of muscle, not building.  The stimulus used is never enough to promote growth and development.  The only way to increase fat-burning while building muscle is to lift heavy weights, preferably quickly and get more done in less time.

Why lift heavy

In the “My Gym Trainer” books, we encourage you to train with challengingly heavy weights.  Here’s why:

Contrary to what many trainers may say, bulking up does happen, however it is not what you think it is.  It occurs when muscle is built underneath layers of fat, without any attention paid to fat-burning.  Thus, you appear larger.  By now we know that we must lift heavy weights to elicit any physique change, but we also need to burn fat simultaneously to lose inches and gain more definition.  Most educated personal trainers know that in order to increase fat-burning during and after the workout, you must breach your anaerobic threshold.  In other words, when lifting, you must get breathless, you must get burning in your muscles (signals lactic acid accumulation) and you must lift heavy enough weight to reach the point of mechanical muscle failure.  There should be no fear of bulking up when fat-burning is being maximized.

Lifting heavy weights to the point of muscle failure, in general, enhances the release of testosterone, which when increased naturally through weight training will increase fat-burning in women (one of the reasons men are leaner than women).  Lifting heavy enough to generate a strong burning in the muscles enhances the release of human growth hormone, which also aids in fat burning and has female-friendly anti-aging benefits.

Finally, adding lean muscle mass will enhance your fat burning potential while you are not working out.  A pound of muscle burns 15-30 calories per day at rest, while a pound of fat burns 2-5 calories; it’s a no-brainer of which composition is more desirable.  More muscle makes us more metabolically active. Furthermore, a pound of fat takes up more physical space than a pound of muscle.  So, burning fat and increasing lean muscle will NOT create bulk, but instead strip inches creating a lean, tight, defined physique, not to mention your clothes hanging off you.

Build Muscle, Burn Fat and Lose Inches with My Gym Trainer

So how do you do this?  First, stop doing “toning” workouts. If you can complete 50 reps without stopping, you are not “toning,” you are wasting both muscle and time.  Using the workouts contained in “My Gym Trainer,” choose a weight that elicits failure by the last rep.  For example, if the workout calls for 10 reps, choose a weight with which you can barely complete 10 reps, and definitely not 11.  Next, maximize your time in the gym by training quickly, sticking to less than 60 seconds between sets.  Workout sessions (cardio OR weight training) should be no longer than 35-40 minutes in duration for best results.  Long rest periods between sets is power lifting and does not burn fat. 

“My Gym Trainer” uses circuit training.  You have 3-4 exercises per circuit, through which you move quickly from exercise to exercise with little-to-no rest.  The workouts in MGT are designed this way in order to keep the heart rate up and generate a greater lactic acid burn in the muscles because there will be less time for the burn to dissipate between sets.   My Gym Trainer offers tons of variety in the exercises in order to keep the body responsive.  Compound movements like pull-ups, squats, lunges, push-presses, rows and bench presses use multiple muscle groups across several joints.  The more muscle tissue recruited by an exercise, the larger the metabolic effect of the workout. 

Go heavy and leave the pink to the babies!  We would love to hear from you, and about your My Gym Trainer experience!  info@mytrainerfitness.com

CLICK HERE to purchase My Gym Trainer!

For more information, visit: http://www.mytrainerfitness.com

Stay Connected: