Every morning I leave my Carson City Bootcamp and I see women making this mistake on the roads and paths around my gym…..

One Mistake All Women Make

By Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

Following the cardio mentality and depending on the cardio
confessional is the biggest mistake that all women make when it
comes to fat loss. Let me explain…

On Saturday morning I was walking home from the gym when I passed
by a young women – about 28 years old – who was talking on her
iPhone.

And I heard her say, “I’m going for a walk now to get some exercise
because I’m going out for a bad dinner tonight.”

And I just wanted to yell, “No – no – no – no – no! That doesn’t
work. It never has, it never will!”

You can’t out-cardio a bad diet.

Every woman I’ve ever met has made this mistake and had that
“cardio confessional mindset” at one time or another – and it goes
for most of the guys I know, too.

Unfortunately, at best, this poor girl will probably burn an extra
300-500 calories during her walk – if it’s a really, really long
walk. But at dinner, she’s likely to eat 400-700 calories during
the appetizer or consume that in liquid calories alone!

(NOTE: By “bad dinner”, I’m guessing she meant a high-calorie meal,
and not a pity date with a deadbeat ex-boyfriend.)

The bottom line is that a single cardio session will not beat a bad
diet.

Now you might be thinking, “At least it’s better than nothing.”

But is it?

Remember, as I’ve mentioned in the past, one British study found
that some people OVEREAT in response to cardio exercise.

So when dinner comes around, this poor girl might think, “Oh, I did
that long walk today, so I can treat myself to a bigger dinner or
dessert.”

The only thing that comes close to beating a bad diet is interval
training and resistance training.

Back in 2007, an Australian research study on interval training was
getting a LOT of press for the surprising results. In the study,
women who did interval training were able to lose belly fat without
changing their diet.

In fact, one subject, named Louise, said this:

“My diet was pretty bad back then, with lots of sweets, lots of
junk food…doughnuts and sugar — it was awful.”

And yet by the end of this study, interval training helped Louise
burn 8kg of fat in just 15 weeks – WITHOUT changing her diet.

Perhaps it IS POSSIBLE for you to out-train a bad diet – but only
if you use interval training.

And that’s just another reason the best short, burst fat burning
workouts are based on this specific type of fat burning exercise.

So here’s what you need to do:

1) Give up the “Cardio Confessional Mentality” and understand that
you can’t “out-cardio a bad diet”.

2) Stick to your simple lifestyle nutrition plan 90% of the time
and then enjoy your 10% reward meals GUILT-FREE.

3) Use interval training to burn the fat and resistance training to
sculpt your body.

It’s that simple – a 3-step system for fat loss success that is
guaranteed to work every time.

Here’s the program that shows you EXACTLY what to do:

=> Check Out Turbulence Training

Enjoy guilt-free eating and fat loss with this mindset.

If you go to the gym right now, you’ll see hundreds of people working on their New Year’s Resolution to lose weight.  And almost all of them are doing the exact same thing: 45 minutes in their “fat loss zone.”

Research and experience has proven time and again that interval training is superior to steady state training when it comes to fitness, health, and fat loss.  The problem is that most people don’t know how to set up an interval-based session.

Here is a handout from my last seminar, with an EXACT plan of what to do.  This can be recycled every month (with week one having a higher intensity each time).

Do this on the “off days” from your metabolic resistance training sessions.

Interval Training For Extreme Fat Loss

This program is designed to raise your metabolism so that you will liberate and shed as much body fat as possible.  Do this routine 2, 3, or 4x a week and choose a different piece of cardio equipment each time.

Week 1:

5 Minute Warm Up

Intervals: 3x through this set

1 min high intensity (9/10 effort)

2 min moderate intensity (6/10)

5 min Very Low Intensity (2-3/10)

20 min moderate intensity (5-6/10)

3 min cool down

Total time: 42 minutes

Week 2:

5 min warm up

Intervals: 4x through this set

      1 min high intensity (9/10 effort)

      2 min moderate intensity (6/10)

5 min very low intensity (2-3/10)

20 min moderate intensity

3 min cool down

Total time: 45 min

Week 3:

      5 min warm up

      Intervals: 5x through this set

            1 min high intensity (9/10 effort)

            2 min moderate intensity (6/10)

      5 min very low intensity (2-3/10)

      20 min moderate intensity (5-6/10

      3 min cool down

      Total time: 48 min

Week 4:

5 min warm up

Intervals: 6x through this set

      1 min high intensity (9/10 effort)

      2 min moderate intensity (6/10)

5 min very low intensity (2-3/10)

20 min moderate intensity (5-6/10

3 min cool down

Total time: 51 min

An interview with John Alvino of How to get Ripped Abs.

Luke Wold: Hey John, I consider you a “real world” guy – in that you work with real people with busy lives and hectic schedules. We all know that there is a ton of fat loss advice for pre-contest bodybuilders (fasted cardio, two-a-day sessions, egg whites and steamed fish 6 times a day…).

And we also know that there’s good advice out there for the overweight guys who have never exercised before (like don’t eat Oreos, and take the stairs instead of the elevator…).

But what about the “in between” person? You know, the professional man or woman who works a solid 9-5 job with maybe up to an hour commute each way, and still tries to spend time with the family and kids. There’s a serious lack of information for this demographic. How do you set up a solid “real world” fat loss nutrition plan for these people?

JA: I couldn’t agree with you more. Earlier in my career, I would tell this type of client that they had to eat a broccoli and alfalfa sprouts omelet for breakfast every single day! When they told me that they didn’t have the time to prepare that, I would accuse them of not being committed.

Looking back on it now, I realize that as a young trainer, I had no idea how difficult it is to work a stressful job, raise a family, and still summon up enough energy to even get to the gym.

It wasn’t too long before I realized that my expectations were unreasonable, unnecessary, and unrealistic for them to stick to. Thus, I had to be creative enough to devise meal plans that would deliver results while being realistic and easy enough for this busy folks to actually follow.

After years of trial and error, I have found several ways to accomplish this goal. For starters, these clients have a tough time following a diet that has very precise parameters.

For instance, instructions such as: “eat exactly 3.35 ounces of salmon with 1 ¾ cups of broccoli at exactly 10:25 a.m. each morning”, or “You must prepare and eat 7 meals per day.” Their lives are simply too stressful and busy to be this rigid. They need more flexibility in their diet protocol.

Trying to force this “all or nothing” approach onto a person such as this will more often than not result in total failure. After your client realizes that he can’t follow the plan, he will fall off the wagon and feel completely defeated.

This may discourage him from ever trying to lose fat again. And it is just unnecessary. A successful diet, first and foremost, must actually be feasible. If it’s not, it doesn’t matter how great it is, because it will most surely fail.

To make an eating plan realistic for a busy businessman or woman, I would suggest that they eat 3 meals per day. Most people eat breakfast, lunch and dinner anyway, so this would not be disruptive to their extremely busy day. In between these “regular” meals, I would suggest eating 2-3 convenient snacks.

LW: What about training? Doing six or seven days a week, or multiple sessions for these people is just fantasy land. What about some real world workouts? I’ll give you an example – a 40 year old father of two – with a full time job (40 plus hours per week) who is maybe 19-20% body fat but wants to see his abs for the first time this summer?

JA: In my experience, when someone has a restricted schedule like this, I am usually only able to meet with them around train 3 times per week. So it is imperative that we get the most out of each training session. The most important goal for each of these training sessions is to create a metabolic elevation that will last up until the next training session.

Let’s assume that he would be using a Monday, Wednesday, Friday training schedule. Our goal is to perform a workout that increases metabolic rate for 48 hours. In order to accomplish this, we must work all major muscle groups – so that means full body training routines.

These full body routines should emphasize exercises that have a high metabolic cost. In addition, this routine should be designed using a multi-station approach.

Because there is a time constraint, you will spend very little time resting in between sets. Therefore, exercises performed back to back should not interfere with each other. In other words, consecutive exercises should not fatigue the same exact muscle groups.

Immediately following the resistance phase of this routine, he would perform a special type of interval training. For the actual interval, you will work hard (about 90% of your max) for 30 seconds. Then decrease the intensity to about 60% of your max for 60 seconds. That is one interval.

After the 60 second “easy” period, increase the intensity back up to 90% and begin the second interval of the workout. Start with 6 intervals per workout, and build your way up to doing 12 intervals per workout. Once you can perform 12 intervals at maximal intensity, it is time to vary your workout.

Varying your workout from time to time, when done in a calculated manner, will keep your body constantly stimulated to respond positively to this type of training.

LW: Can you give us a sample workout based on your training principles?

JA: Sure. I’ll give you’re a workout that I designed for my client JR. He fits the “busy working client” criteria perfectly. He works about 70 hours per week, has a wife and 2 kids that he spends a lot of time with. To his credit, he still manages to train hard 3 times per week. This is the workout that he just performed:

1: Dynamic Movement Phase (5 min):

Rope Jumping 3×60 seconds with 30 sec rest.

2: Joint Prep Phase (3 min):

Overhead Squat 30 seconds, Reaching Split Squat 30 seconds, Forward Flexion 30 seconds, Supine Hip Raise 30 seconds, Intermediate Plank 30 seconds

3: Resistance Phase (25 min): This is a multi station circuit. Perform 5 rounds without any rest.

1a) DB Squat Push Press Combo 5x 12,10,8,6,4

1b) Strap Chin Ups 5x 12,10,8,6,4

1c) DB Step Up 5x 12,10,8,6,4

1d) Hands Elevated A Frame Push Up 5x 12,10,8,6,4

1e) DB RDL With Shrug 5x 12,10,8,6,4

4: Interval Phase: (12 minutes)  Do 4 continuous sets

2a) Med Ball Slams 30 sec maximal effort

2b) Jumping Jacks 60 sec easy pace

2c) Rocket Jumps 30 sec maximal effort

2d) Seal Split Shuffles 60 sec easy pace

5: Static Stretch Phase: (5 minutes)

This routine has JR out of the gym in 50 minutes. And the results speak for themselves. JR has lost 22 pounds of fat in 9 short weeks and is in the best shape of his life.

LW: Nice. Any other tips for these people?

JA: There are several little things that they must do in order to succeed. Some of the keys to success are:

• Since you are only training 3 times per week you must make each workout count.
• You must be consistent.
• No missed workouts.
• Prepare food in bulk. (Most cheating stems from not having healthy food readily available).
• Keep the house stocked with quick and accessible healthy foods and snacks.
• During the first week of your meal plan, I encourage you to weigh/measure your food.

For instance, if one of your meals requires 1 cup of rice, you should have a pretty good idea of what a cup of rice looks like. That way, when you are eating out, or on the road, you will be able to estimate your portions with reasonable accuracy.

LW: Thanks so much, John, for taking the time to share these great insights with us. For those of you who are interested in creating an amazing body transformation and losing fat at an incredible rate, you should definitely go to John’s website, How to get Ripped Abs

He has changed a lot of lives with his amazing fat loss techniques, and clearly he is sensitive to the working class person who is busy, but still wants and deserves to get in great shape!

JA: Thank you, Luke. It’s always a pleasure speaking with you. I look forward to next time!

~ Luke Wold

PS – Click here to check out How to get Ripped Abs

All of my bootcamp clients know that I’m constantly on the lookout for new research that can make my Unstoppable Fitness Formula even MORE effective.

For example, I noticed that a certain type of workout was getting clients better weight loss results in less time.  When I went looking for the reason why, I found out research has proven that training in a certain way can elevate your metabolism for 39 hours AFTER your workout.

And that’s only one tiny piece of what I do to get your body changing.  For instance, adding interval training greatly improves your results, as does the correct exercise choices and set/rep scheme.

Well… I was looking through some newly published studies (in preparation for my next seminar) and I found this…

McKay et al.
Effect of short-term high-intensity interval training vs. continuous training on O2 uptake kinetics, muscle deoxygenation, and exercise performance.J Appl Physiol. 2009 Jul;107(1):128-38. Epub 2009 May 14.

This study used 8 sessions of 8-12 intervals. The intervals were one minute hard, then one minute easy, repeat.

The “cardio” group did 8 sessions of 90-120 minutes steady-state exercise (like going on a treadmill or elliptical at an even pace)

To compare times: The interval group exercised 80 minutes over the 19 day study. The steady-state group exercised for 825 minutes.

As it turns out, the subjects had the SAME adaptations despite the interval group exercising for only a tenth of the time as the steady-state group.

If you know what you’re doing you can cut down your workout time by 90%!

Let me repeat: YOU CAN CUT YOUR WORKOUT TIME BY:

This proves the importance of following the right training program!

In my seminars I share studies that show:

• How one type of interval training burns 900% MORE abdominal fat than regular training…
• How ONE simple change in your eating makes the difference between losing thirteen pounds of fat or thirteen pounds of toned muscle…
• How endurance training makes NO change in your resting metabolism (where you burn most of your calories)
• That the addition of 45 minutes of hard aerobic training, 5 times a week for twelve weeks – has NO effect on fat loss!

Those are just a few of the things that my research and experience has shown me.

If you train with me, you’re great!  You’re following a proven, research-backed system that delivers incomparable results.

If you’re training in your own, don’t just “wing it”.  Do some research in publications that don’t have glossy covers and find out what REALLY works.

Here’s one of my favorite free research tools: http://www.PubMed.gov

All right, I’m going to get back to geeking out over some new studies, talk to you soon!