Body Beats

Coaches spend their careers trying to tap into their athletes’ mental toughness. Coaches know that they have to train the mind just as they train your body. Being psychologically strong and mentally tough can be a more important characteristic than being physically strong. Personal trainers realize this, too and practice a lot of the same techniques that coaches use. Your mind can push your body to perform beyond the physical actions you ‘think’ you can do. Have you ever had a personal trainer say, “Last set.” Then you pump out fifteen reps, not sure that you’re going to complete the last three only to hear your trainer say, “Give me five more!”? Of course you have! And I’ll bet that you finished those extra five reps, even when you thought you couldn’t, right? This is mental toughness.

Mental toughness is difficult to explain, but we all know what it is. It’s a powerful combination of will, determination, focus, confidence, conviction, and passion. It’s the unwavering self belief that, “I can do it.”

Many people believe that this quality cannot be taught, that you’re either born with mental toughness or you’re not. I, on the other hand, believe that you can be taught mental toughness. All you have to do is watch one episode of The Biggest Loser and see trainer Jillian Michaels hammer “You Can Do It!” into the minds of those contestants who have lost the ability to push themselves.

So what can you do if you don’t have a personal trainer or a coach to pull this toughness out of you?

Here are some tips for ways you can improve your own mental toughness so that you can achieve your physical or athletic goals. (Although some of these can be applied to help you reach just about any goal.)

Challenge yourself with your workout
When you ‘think’ you can’t do any more or go any further, do it anyways.

• Add another set.
• Increase the reps in your last set by five, even when your last few reps were difficult.
• Run just one more mile.
• Run as far as you ‘think’ you can in one direction without thinking of the way back.
• Just when the timer on your ‘thirty minutes’ on the elliptical ends, increase your time by ten more minutes.
• Quit counting reps all together. Try doing as many reps of an exercise as possible in a given amount of time. For example; do as many bicep curls as your can in two minutes or as many crunches as possible for the length of a song.

Find What Motivates You
Motivation is at the core of mental toughness. To stay motivated, you must first find out what personally motivates you. Are you motivated by winning or being the best? Enter a competition or a race. Or get a training partner and have mini competitions for who can push out the most reps or lift the most weights. Are you motivated by the fear of failure? Tell your friends and family about your goal and ask them to hold you accountable. Find your motivation and let it drive you.

Give Yourself Pep Talks
Coaches give pep talks it before games. Trainers pep you up to complete your reps. Be your own pep rally. Remind yourself why your training so hard, tell yourself to pull it together, push through, get your fat but off the coach…whatever brings out your second wind. Repeat this in mantras to yourself. It may feel awkward at first, but talking to yourself will pay off.

Acceptance
Accepting that there will be people who won’t believe in you, that there may be set backs, there may be activities you won’t be able to perform, parties you may miss, and deserts you won’t taste. Accepting these things and move on. Don’t dwell on things that will harvest negative energy.

Focus
Focus on your goals and focus on the steps you need to take to achieve those goals. Visualize achieving your goals and don’t let anything stand in your way or distract you.

Prepare
Unexpected and uncontrollable events will occur. Anticipate problems and know the solutions ahead of time. How you handle unexpected events could break your focus. And you need to remain focused at all times. Fitness and bodybuilders could prepare by making a back up of their routine music, preparing meals ahead of time, and bringing an extra posing suit. Triathletes could prepare for blisters, a hold in the bike tire, or extreme temperatures. Team sport athletes should be prepared to play without their star player. The point is; when you know you’ve prepared for all the possibilities, your mind will be more at ease so your body can perform at it’s best.

Stay Positive & Keep Positive People Around You
A positive attitude and positive thoughts will energize you and carry you through those tough training sessions, early wake up calls, and meal plans. You can’t expect to perform your best if you’re filling your head with negative thoughts and surrounding yourself with negative people.

Do you ever stand up from your chair and feel as though the room is spinning? This could be because of your killer workout regime! New research done by Oxford Brookes University in Britain found that physically fit women are more likely to feel light headed and dizzy than those who are less active. Here’s why:

Typically, the more physically fit you are the lower your resting heart rate will be. A ‘normal’ resting heart rate is somewhere between 60 and 80 beats per minute. But elite athletes and active, physically fit people can have a resting heart rate as low as 30 beats per minute. A low resting heart rate indicates a strong heart muscle, which doesn’t need to beat as quickly to pump blood through your body. Small shifts in blood pressure, like the shifts that occur when you stand up too quickly, may feel stronger to those with a low resting heart rate. So your dizzy spells may not necessarily be a ‘bad’ thing…

Are muscle gains coming on much slower? Are you doubling your cardio time and still not dropping those last 5 pounds? Sounds like you’ve hit a plateau. Plateaus are a bummer and can derail your motivation. But everyone will hit a plateau at some point in time, so don’t throw your hands in the air and give up. The body is an incredible machine and adapts to the stress we put on it. You have to continually challenge your body so that it can’t adapt as easily and continues to grow and become stronger. The good news is that there are multiple ways to challenge your body blast past the plateau!

1. TAKE A BREAK
You most likely have hit a plateau simply because your body needs a break. Training with full intensity day after day after day puts a lot of strain on your body and in order to keep it functioning the way you want it to…you have to give it a break. Yes, I’m telling you to stop working out. This isn’t a break from your nutrition! Maintain your diet and nutrition and take seven days off from training. If you train hard year round; take a week off every quarter. Don’t worry about losing strength or endurance. It takes longer than a week for your body to regress. Most people find that once they return to the gym, they can lift heavier, run longer, and perform more reps.

2. OVERLOAD
If you want to become faster, stronger, leaner, or make gains you have to progressively and continuously train at a level that’s more challenging on your body than what it’s accustomed to. This is called overloading your body. How do you overload?

Weight Training or Resistance Training
• Increase your reps. Try 15 reps instead of 12.
• Increase the weight. Try 20 lbs instead of 15.
• Increase your sets. Try 4 sets instead of the typical 3.
• Decrease the time between sets.
• Focus on the negative or the eccentric contraction of the exercise. For example; when performing a leg extension, focus on slowly lowering the weight down instead of the normal focus on the extension upward of the weight. This is performed best when you increase the weight, push the weight up (you may need assistance), then lower it slowly all on your own.
• Stop counting reps. Try doing as many as you can do with good form, in one minute. Rest briefly for 30 seconds between sets then do 2 more.
• Switch up your equipment. Try a machine instead of the free weights.

Cardiovascular Training
• Increase the time you perform your cardiovascular workout. Push for 45 minutes instead of 30.
• Change it up. If you’re an elliptical junkie, try a cycling class.
• Incorporate intervals. Maximize your exertion then bring it back down to a comfortable level. For example; after a five minute warm up on the treadmill, sprint for 30 seconds then walk or jog for 1 minute and repeat for 30 minutes.
• Split your cardio routine in ½. If you do cardio for an hour at a time, try splitting it up; 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon.

3. ACTIVE REST
Active rests are exercises performed between sets or between more intense training periods. Use your down time productively.

Active rest exercises between sets should require you to exert less energy than the primary exercise and not exhaust you so that you cannot perform the primary exercise properly. Here are some examples and how you can incorporate active rests between sets:

• Train an opposite muscle group. Between bent over rows, drop to the floor and rep out some push ups.
• Develop core strength. During my seated shoulder presses, I’ll drop the weights, rotate around the bench, grasp the edge with my hands and perform a set of knee ups.
• Burn some extra calories. Raise your heart rate a bit by adding jumping jacks for 30 seconds between sets.

Take an active rest day between intense training days using exercises or activities that are at a low to moderate level. Think fun or relaxing. Don’t exhaust your muscles and avoid raising your heart rate too high. Walk around the block for 20 minutes or practice your skill at a sport like tennis. Grab a band or weights that are ridiculously lighter than your norm and perform a couple of high rep sets at a low intensity level.

4. SWITCH YOUR ROUTINE
Give your body the unexpected. If your routine as been a 5 day split, try 2 days on/ 1 off or try 3 days of full body workouts every other day. The idea is to totally switch it up. If you like your 5 day split, change the muscle groups your train on those days. For example; instead of back and biceps on Mondays try back and chest.

5. NUTRITION
Maintain proper, balanced nutrition which supports your goals. For example; if you’re training for lean muscle mass, you must consume a clean and eat a calorie defecit. If you’re training for endurance, is your diet giving you the energy necessary for peak performance? Every nutrient serves a purpose so be sure you’re eating the right balance of complex carbohydrates, proteins, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals. Supplement safely and only when necessary. I suggest keeping a journal so you can track how you feel and your progress compared to your nutrition. Don’t forget to hydrate. Drink lots and lots of H2O!

6. SLEEP
Be sure you’re getting at least 7-9 hours of sleep every night. Your body needs sleep to reset, restore, and keep your hormones at the optimum performance level.

7. BALANCE
Family, finances, friends, kids, work, pets, yard work, birthday parties, hobbies, soccer games….non of it stops just because you’re training for something. Are you stressed? Is your life in balance? These could some of the factors in why you’re not progressing in the gym.

When you hit a plateau you quickly realize how in tune to your body you need to be. Keep journals, know your patterns, know your limits. You know your body better than anyone, so you’re the best tool to knowing how to blast past your own plateaus.

So many people are intimidated by walking up to a rack of weights or feel like everyone is watching them as they work the elliptical for the first time thinking, “I have no idea what I’m doing and everyone knows it!” Yes, sometimes people are looking at you and thinking that, but who cares? At least you’re trying! And guess what? Even those who have been training for years make mistakes and making mistakes time after time, particularly on form, can lead to injury and can hinder your progress.

Avoid these top 15 fitness mistakes to get the most out of your workout and look like you belong in your gym!

1.) Only doing cardio. So many women think they’ll get bulky and manly if they lift weights. This is the biggest misconception because strength training builds muscles, which increases metabolism to help you burn more calories. You want to look toned? Pick up the weights! Ladies, you will NOT look huge, you will NOT look like a female bodybuilder, and you WILL lose weight.

2.) Not training with intensity. There are those who push themselves too hard and take it to extremes, but more so, there are those who don’t dig from deep within and really drive themselves to train as hard as they can. If you’re not breaking a sweat and your heart isn’t racing and your muscles are never sore, then you’re simply going through the motions and you’re not pushing hard enough. Really mean it when you workout and train with intensity every single time.

3.) Not focusing on your workout. Cardio is not the time to catch up on your reading and chatting it up on your cell phone between sets is not helpful. Ever heard of putting your mind in your muscle? Concentrate on the task at had, which is training hard so that you can reach your goals. On the treadmill? Think, “My heart is getting healthy, my butt is getting smaller.” Curling the dumbbell? Think, “My arms are getting strong and toned.”

4.) Gripping too tight. I still have to remind myself with this one when using free weights. I’ve developed really strong forearms, when that’s not always the muscle I’m aiming to develop. Loosen up your grip on the weights and when on cardio equipment, gripping the handrails is considered cheating. So stand up straight, move your arms, and burn more calories! If you must hold on to feel secure, remain standing up straight and slightly rest your fingers on the handrails.

5.) Guys; Your lower body needs strength, too. Guys often go to the gym and rep out some bench presses, curl their biceps, throw in some shoulder presses and call it a day. Do they think we (the ladies) don’t notice their legs? Come on guys….lunges aren’t just for girls.

6.) Not adjusting the equipment. To get the full range of motion and perform the exercise properly, you must adjust the machine to your shape and size. For example; when using the leg extension machine, make sure your back rests against the back support, the edge of the seat is right at the knee, and the pad sits at your ankles.

7.) Not engaging your core. Take every opportunity you can to work your abs by keeping them engaged during every exercise.

8.) Not re-racking your weights. Re-racking your weights if more of a courtesy than a mistake. But it could lead to an injury. Not everyone is used to taking off six 45lb plates from the squat rack!

9.) Lifting too heavy. If you can’t perform the exercise with proper form for a full set, then your weight is too heavy. If you have to jerk and swing the weight around to complete the move, then your weight is probably too heavy. Pick a lighter weight and follow through, focusing on both the contraction and stretch of your muscles through out the entire exercise.

10.) Not lifting heavy enough. Most people choose weights that are too light to stimulate muscle growth. A good guideline is to pick a weight you can do with proper form for 16 reps. This is should be a good weight for you to perform 8 – 12 reps for 3 sets. After 6 – 8 weeks, increase the weight or increase your reps.

11.) Stretching cold muscles. Avoid injury and warm up your muscles before you stretch them. Stretch after your workout or jump on the treadmill for 5 minutes before first. Stretching cold muscles can tear or pull your muscles.

12.) Not planning. If you have a goal, you need a plan to reach that goal….a road map, so to speak. Will you be training shoulders today? Which exercises will you perform? How many reps? How many sets? What will you do tomorrow? For example; my personal fitness goal right now is to add a bit of size to my quads and define the glute/hamstring connection so I focus on my legs twice a week (not back to back days) and I do a lot of high incline on the treadmill.

13.) Not fueling up properly. Food if fuel for your body. If you put the wrong kind of fuel in your car, it won’t perform like you want it to. Just the same, if you put the wrong kinds of foods in your body, it won’t perform like you want it to. Eat a well balanced diet of whole grain, high fiber carbs, lean proteins, and healthy fats like almonds and avocados. Drink plenty of water….which is usually more than you think is necessary, and limit sodas, alcohol, juices, and sports drinks.

14.) Leaving your sweat behind. If you’ve ever had to wipe down a bench before sitting down, you know what I’m talking about. It’s common courtesy, wipe off your sweat when you’re done.

15.) Using an inexperienced trainer. Just because your new trainer is employed at a well known national gym chain doesn’t mean they’re qualified or good. Using an inexperienced trainer can be a big waste of money and harmful. I once used a trainer at a national chain who pushed me way beyond my limits and caused me to tear my bicep tendon which made my elbow swell to almost double it’s size. I still have problems with the arm. So check up on your trainer and know your own limits.

This move does double duty, targeting both your upper and lower abdominal muscles all at once. So it’s a great move when you’re trying to blast away at your abs in a hurry! It’s a challenging exercise, so start out with low reps to ensure proper form.

How to do a V-Up: Lie flat on the ground. Your toes should be pointed and your arms should be extended over your head. Both your arms and legs should be slightly off the ground, with your back flat against the floor. (A) Raise your legs and upper body at the same time, using your core abdominal muscles to pull your body together for form the ‘V’ shape. (B) Keep your abs tight through out the exercise, even as you lower slowly back to start position. Don’t allow your arms or legs to touch the ground. Continue the move without bouncing or using your body’s momentum to get you through the move.

V-Ups

Get Beth ‘Venom’ Horn to coach you through
this move in her Strong Core Ab Workout

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New workout now available!

Everyone wants a huge chest. Bodybuilders and the general male population spend a great deal of time on this body part. A thick, massive chest with a deep valley down the center is impressive and badge of honor. Chest happens to be one of Branch Warren’s favorites because when he works chest, his whole body gets pumped up…especially when training with him.
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Congratulations to all the competitors who battled it out on the stages this past weekend in Columbus, Ohio.

Always a stand out performer, Jenny Hendershott is the new Ms. Fitness International for 2009. With the phenomenal success of her Phat Camps , the recent 2008 Olympia win, and now her second Ms. Fitness International win….she’s on fire and a seemingly unstoppable force. A special congrats goes out to two athletes in the Men’s catagory, the Dominican Dominator, Victor Martinez and Branch ‘Quadrasaurus’ Warren . After being out of the competition scene for nearly 18 months due to a knee injury, Big Vic proved that he’s back and still one of the best in the world, claiming 2nd place. Branch snagged 3rd and ‘Most Muscular’. Congrats to all!

Fitness Top 6:

1. Jenny Hendershott
2. Julie Palmer
3. Tracey Greenwood
4. Regiane Da Silva
5. Tina Durkin
6. Shannon Meteraud

Fitness Final Comparisons & Callouts Video:

Men’s Top 6:

1. Kai Green
2. Victor Martinez
3. Branch Warren
4. Toney Freeman
5. Silvio Samuel
6. Moe Elmoussawi

Arnold Classic Men’s Top 6 Pose Down Video:

Figure Top 6:

1. Zivile Raudoniene
2. Gina Aliotti
3. Amy Fry
4. Kristal Richardson
5. Felicia Romero
6. Monica Brant-Peckham

Women’s Top 6:

1. Iris Floyd Kyle
2. Debi Laszewski
3. Yaxeni Oriquen-Garcia
4. Heather Armbrust
5. Dayana Cadeau
6. Betty Viana-Adkins

For Full Results & More Video Click Here

Need to gain some lbs? Here’s some info on how to do it in a safe, natural, and healthy way…

You want your extra weight to come from muscle and not fat. However, it’s highly likely that you will add a little fat while you’re attempting to gain muscle, but there are ways to minimize the amount of fat you could gain. It takes about 2,500 calories to add a pound of muscle, so you need to consume an additional five grams of protein each day for every five pounds of muscle you want to gain. Take it slow and increase your calorie intake by only about 400 calories per day. If you don’t see the results you’re looking for, up your intake by 50 or 100 calories per day.

Remember…you want your extra calories to come mostly from healthy, lean proteins and whole-grain carbs. Don’t increase your calories with processed, sugary foods or drinks or you’ll pack on unwanted fat and not the muscles you desire.

Here’s some tips on how to put on healthy lbs and not have to resort to pill or bottle supplements:

Eat more protein – The amino acids in protein repair torn muscle tissue that are temporarily damaged after a strenuous workout. This process will increase your muscle mass and make your muscles stronger. To gain muscle in a natural, healthy way, you need to consume one gram of lean protein per pound of body weight every day.

Consume good carbs for fuel – Whole-grain breads, pastas, and rice and starchy vegetables like sweet potatoes will give you enough energy for those intense workouts.

Hydrate – When you increase your protein, you must also increase the amount of water you drink. Consuming more than one gram of protein per body pound a day usually doubles urine output, which means you need to drink twice the amount of fluids.

Food choices for a healthy gain:

• Chicken, turkey or pork w/o skin
• Fish such as salmon, tuna, halibut, & talapia
• Lean ground beef, chicken, or turkey
• Pinto beans
• Brown rice
• Plain sweet or white potatoes (omit the bad calories you’d get from sour cream & butter)
• Fresh veggies…particularly the dark, leafy greens.
• Fresh fruits…especially berries which are loaded with anti-oxidants.
• Oatmeal
• Fat-free milk and other dairy products like yogurt.

A new review of studies that tested human growth hormone, or HGH, in mostly young athletic men, found that the hormone doesn’t improve strength or exercise capacity. It does add some muscle. But does not appear to help athletic performance and there’s evidence to show that it may even worsen athletic performance, according to Dr. Hau Liu, of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif., who was lead author of the review.

The new research doesn’t give us any information on long-term use of HGH. Experiments concerning long-term use and the dosage and frequency that athletes have practiced illegally using the hormone. (HGH, is among the performance enhancers Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte were accused of using in the Mitchell Report.) Those types of experiments most likely will never be conducted. “It’s dangerous, unethical and it’s never going to be done,” said Dr. Gary I. Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency and a spokesman for the American College of Sports Medicine.


Expand this blog to find the details of the study:

Squats and lunges pretty much work the same muscles and both are among the most important leg exercises for anyone to perform in order to achieve optimum results with your legs…..whether you’re a seasoned pro, beginner, male or female. So why should you be doing both? I received an email this morning asking this question. Here’s why both are a must:

Ever wonderd were the most sexually satisfied men live? Or where the worlds healthiest men live? Men’s Health conducted a study they call “The World’s Best Countries for Men____”. The study shares secrets about things like health, nutrition and fitness with men from all around the world. But ladies…you can use this study to your advantage, too. Find out where you can find the world’s most sexually satisfied men! (Anyone for a vacation to the UK?)