-Eric Broser/Team True Alpha

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Children eat around 350 calories more per day then they did in the 1970’s, and adults consume an additional 500 calories compared to the 70’s.

If everyone skipped one meal every day, we would be eating the same amount of food as we were 30 years ago, when obesity rates were low. However, consider the consequences of skipping one meal on the economy.

If lunch costs around 5 dollars and all Americans skipped this meal, there would be a loss of revenue exceeding 1.5 billion dollars per day (over $560 billion each year), or a 34% decrease in total revenue for the food industry.

The fact is, we eat more than we need and spend more money on food than necessary. Simply eating less and spending more time exercising is the best place to start. We are already spending the money on food; if we spent less money on food and more money on items to improve health, such as gym memberships and health books, we can begin to combat obesity in America.

The Alpha Male understands this concept and decides not to avoid eating, but to eat healthy and exercise more. This is one thing that separates the Alpha Male from the rest. An Alpha Male looks at food as Alpha fuel, something to take him to the next level. If everyone applied the Alpha Male principles to their life we would not have a loss of revenue in the food industry, but a shift in revenue to healthy foods and away from fast and unhealthy food.

A. I was in a very similar situation as you when I first started, although I was even skinnier if you could believe that! I weighed a paltry 125 lbs when I first wrapped my hands around a barbell! So, in other words, I feel your pain, and can fully appreciate your question. As for my response…I would have to say no, you should not do any cardio at this time. As an ectomorph struggling to add muscle and bodyweight the last thing you want to do is burn more calories and further increase your already racing metabolism through cardio. You want every calorie you ingest to be pointed toward muscle repair and growth, even if you store a little bodyfat along the way. The best way to avoid adding too much extra adipose tissue while gaining size is to make sure that you are eating a relatively clean high calorie diet. Try to get the bulk of your calories from foods like steak, eggs, milk, chicken, fatty fish, protein powders, rice, pasta, potatoes, whole grain breads, fruits and vegetables. While the occasional pizza, ice cream and pancakes will not hurt you, make foods like this the exception and not the rule. Another point about cardio and the ectomorph that I want to make is that in my experience, those with this body type tend to have more limited recovery ability than most…not as much in regards to individual muscles as to systemic recovery. This means that as an ectomorph, overtraining is more of a concern than with other body types. Thus, the addition of cardio on top of weight training is not a good idea for us naturally skinny types (at least in the early bulking stages), as too much exercise will make too far an inroad into our recovery ability, which will all but bring gains in muscle to a screeching halt!

So, my advice to you is to train hard and heavy no more than 4 days per week, eat at least 6 clean, high calorie meals per day, and to sleep 7-9 hours every night. That is your simple, yet most reliable equation for muscle growth.

www.alphamaleadvancedworkouts.com

Did you set a well-defined goal?
One of the biggest reasons why many people lose their motivation is because they don’t set a well-defined goal. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s use the ‘ol New Year’s Resolution weight loss cliché. It’s a new year, the holidays are over, another year has gone by and you’ve packed on more pounds. You make a vow to yourself that this is the year you’re going to finally lose weight. You’re all excited, pumped up and motivated. You start faithfully going to the gym 4 days a week and you’re cutting out junk foods and eating lots of salad.

After about a month of this, you start to lose motivation. The weight isn’t coming off quickly enough, you’re tired of eating salad all the time, you’re feeling hungry, irritable and deprived and going to the gym now seems more like a chore.

What happened? What you did was declare you wanted to lose weight. What you didn’t declare was how much weight you wanted to lose by a specific date. You also didn’t declare how you were going to go about doing it. All you did was decide to eat lots of salad and go to the gym every day after work. Essentially, you had no plan. Without setting a specific goal, by a specific date with a specific plan to follow, subconsciously you start to feel like you’re on a perpetual hamster wheel going nowhere. You get frustrated, bored, don’t feel challenged, lose your motivation and, your “Eye of the Tiger”.

Setting a well-defined goal
To correct this common mistake, you need to set a well-defined goal along with a plan of action to follow. When setting your goal, you don’t want to overwhelm yourself. Set goals in small chunks that are attainable.

Set a goal date
Your basic goal is to lose weight. Let’s narrow that down. Decide that you want to lose x amount of pounds, or lose x amount of inches, or drop x amount of body fat in 6, 8, or 12 weeks.

From that point, you want to narrow down your goals even further. For example, let’s say you decided that your goal is to lose 10% body fat in 12 weeks. What you may look to do is drop 1% body fat every 7-10 days in order to achieve your goal. Perhaps you decided that you wanted to lose 40 pounds in 12 weeks with a weekly weight loss goal of 3 pound per week.

Each week you have a specific, measurable goal. This helps keep you motivated, focused and challenged. Focusing on losing 3 pounds per week does not seem as overwhelming as the bigger picture of wanting to lose 40 pounds in 12 weeks. Each week that you lose weight gets you closer and closer to your overall goal weight.

Being specific about setting weekly measurable goals, also lets you know whether or not your plan is working. If you are meeting your weekly goal, then you know you don’t need to make any changes. If two weeks have passed and you know you’ve not reached your target goal, then you know you need to make changes to your diet, your workout program or both.

Plan of Action
You know that in order to achieve your goal, you need to exercise and make improvements to your dietary habits. What you want to do is put together a weekly plan of action. Decide what day of the week you’re going to go grocery shopping and put together a shopping list with a variety of foods that will help you achieve your goals. Plan a menu for the week based on the foods you bought.

Having a variety of foods and planning your meals in advance helps you to stay on track.

Decide what days of the week you’re going to go to the gym and what type of workout you’re going to do each time you’re in the gym. You can do this by participating in a variety of group exercise classes or by following a workout program that gives you a specific list of exercises to do each week over a prolonged period of time. There are a variety of great workout programs you can purchase as a traditional book or as an e-book. There are several I recommend that you will find on this website.

Once you have your goals defined along with a plan of action, you will feel more challenged and motived. You will have “The Eye of the Tiger”.

Staying Motivated
Often times, someone will lose weight only to fall off the wagon and regain the weight they lost and then some. Has this happened to you?

Once someone has achieved their initial goal, they tend to get “burnt out”, fall into a rut and lose motivation.

Let’s say you lost your initial goal to lose 40 pounds. Now what? Do you continue with the same diet and exercise routine? How about setting a new goal? Most people are so focused on initial weight loss that when they achieve it, they don’t think about setting a new goal.

There are so many other goals you can set for yourself such as, building more muscle, building more strength, improving endurance, training for a marathon, entering a physique contents (aka bodybuilding, fitness, figure competition) etc. Find a new goal that will challenge you and keep you motivated.

What do I do?
I am constantly trying new foods that will nourish my body. By introducing myself to new foods, I don’t get bored eating the same thing all the time while keeping my diet nutrient rich. I also eat fresh foods that are in season.

As for my workouts, aside from the workout programs I create, I do try workout programs from my friends in the industry to not only challenge myself in a different way, but as a way to learn from others. This keeps my workouts fresh, exciting and challenging.

The power of Social Media
Facebook and Twitter are such great resources for information, motivation and accountability. There are so many health, fitness, nutrition and weight loss experts on social media that you can tap into for guidance and advice. You’ll find for the most part that many of them will be more than happy to answer your questions and point you in the right direction.

You will also find that many of these experts share excellent content on many subjects that you can learn from to help you reach your goal.

Talk about your goals and your plan of action on Social Media. This helps to keep you accountable. You’ll discover that people will encourage and support you in your efforts which will keep you motivated.

Finally….
There’s nothing like a good Rocky movie to help you find and keep your “Eye of the Tiger”.

I’m now recovering from the worst injury I’ve sustained in nearly 35 years of careful but extremely high-intensity bodybuilding. It wasn’t pretty, and it seemed to happen in an instant. One minute everything seemed to be going just fine and the next, out of nowhere, in a flash, everything suddenly went terribly wrong.

So, in response to the many questions I’ve gotten, here’s what happened. It was Chest night. I met my training partners and we started with our usual warm-up. I’d been having intermittent tendonitis in the right elbow and an extensive warm-up always loosened things up nicely. As flat barbell benching tended to unduly stress my elbow, we started with the much more comfortable flat dumbbell benching as our first exercise. I warmed up with 15 reps using the 50 pound dumbbells, then the 75s, then the 100s (I don’t consider the 100s a working set, having knocked out 32 repetitions with 100 pounders on a recent high-rep pump-out set as the last set of flat dumbbell benches). For my working sets, I did 120s for 15 reps, then 140s for 12, and was ready to skip the 150s (which I’d used without a hitch previously) and try the 160s for the first time.

Without a doubt, the hardest part of heavy dumbbell benching is getting into position. Some gyms offer special holders so that the dumbbells can be grasped from a position with both arms fully extended, and then the holders fall away when the dumbbells are lifted. Where I train, we use spotters to do the job. But lying back, while at the same time popping 300 pounds or more of dumbbell weight from on top of your thighs into a position with arms extended above your face, is an exercise in timing and acrobatics. As the trainer lays back and pops up the dumbbells, the spotter, close behind, grabs his hands or wrists and helps guide the dumbbells into place to begin. That extra hoist makes it easier to lay back, stabilize in position, and start the set.

My training partner went first. As he lay back, I helped hoist the dumbbells up and into position so he could knock out 6 or 7 reps. Then it was my turn. He positioned himself standing, slightly crouched, and I sat on the end of the bench, with the 160s on my thighs, ready to lay back flat while simultaneously hoisting the dumbbells into position with a little of his help. But that’s not what happened. Although he’s more than strong enough to do the job, a misjudgment as to where he stood prevented me from laying back – my head was stopped by his torso, putting me in a crunch position with my shoulders still not on the bench and 320 pounds of dumbbell weight halfway up. I couldn’t lie down, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t drop the weights to the floor because his arms were there trying to keep them in position. It seemed like forever but it was a few instants. With nowhere else to go, the dumbbells came in across my chest. Essentially, I did slow, controlled cross-the-body eccentric lying triceps dumbbell extensions with 160 pound dumbbells. The dumbbell in my right hand was headed to my face, but I was able to miss my face (although I very slightly chipped a tooth) and averted an even bigger disaster. But the right triceps tendon was sheared off the bone by the stress of the controlled descent, I would later find out. I knew something was wrong but actually did a few sets of pec deck flyes, partly to assess the seriousness of the injury and partly as a sheer test of will. But after a few sets I left the gym, and ten days later I was in surgery to reattach the tendon to the bone.

Life is about trade-offs, and hardcore training is no different. After decades of pounding muscles and joints, some wear and tear is inevitable. At this point, I’m like a car with 100,000 miles, LOL. The mild intermittent elbow pain, which I was treating with occasional NSAIDS as needed, ice, massage therapy, and rest was the reason, ironically, that I was focusing on dumbbell benching over barbells and machines as my first chest exercise, and my heaviest. Dumbbell benching simply felt better than the other exercises and is generally regarded as a less stressful alternative to barbell benching, especially for those experiencing some joint pain on the barbell bench. After all, you have much greater freedom to find “the groove” that feels right with dumbbells than with a barbell, and your hands can be much closer to your body at the bottom position of the movement, which feels more comfortable on the shoulders. You also require less overall poundage with dumbbells – benching 100 pound dumbbells is probably tougher than benching a 225 or 240 pound barbell. But there’s a trade-off: control. More freedom means less control. Compared to machines, which typically lock you into a limited plane of movement, dumbbells can go anywhere. More things can go wrong in more directions. Which is exactly what happened. The trade-off for less elbow pain was that in the off chance that things somehow went bad, unlike as with most machines, the weights wouldn’t simply fall safely back onto supports.

I’m not blaming anyone, including my spotter. Look, seeing those monstrous 160s flipping up into position is probably more intimidating to the spotter than to the guy actually doing the set. The pressure is high. I’m sure it’s natural to totally focus on the dumbbells, on grasping them, and on the timing – and not on how torso and my head might collide. In retrospect, it might have been better to have had no spotter at all, as I would have been able to lay down unimpeded on the bench, and if I couldn’t have gotten the dumbbells into position on my own I could have more safely let them fall to the sides. But we’d done the identical maneuver countless times before with very nearly the same weight, without any difficulties. In any event, once my elbow is healed, I’ll likely go heavier on exercises that are easier to spot rather than dumbbells.

Where do I go from here? Well, I missed only a week or so from the gym and have been training consistently since then, including heavy unilateral upper body training with my left arm. I will start physical therapy on my right arm in a week, and begin the process of regaining range of motion. The great thing about this type of injury is that a 100% recovery is possible.  I have no doubt I will be back, better than ever soon enough.  I sincerely and deeply thank my many friends both online and offline for being so incredibly supportive. You all ROCK!!!

A. I just want you to know that I truly appreciate that you trust me, and the info I put forth. Thank you.

Now…on to the question at hand. There are only a few supplements that I use 365 days per year. Those include a multivitamin/mineral, BCAA’s, and yes, glutamine! Glutamine has proven itself to me over and over again, with myself, and my personal training clients. Very often there is far more reliable evidence in the “real world” than what is seen in a laboratory. The reason that some people fail with glutamine is because they either expect to achieve immediate gains (yes, prohormones spoiled everyone while they were available), or they simply do not use it consistently enough, or in high enough amounts to get the desired effect. Another problem is that many trainees take L-glutamine along with protein, which pretty much assures that it will not be absorbed efficiently. L-glutamine needs to be taken on an empty stomach, about 30 minutes before each meal to be utilized properly. Now, it is true that the gastrointestinal tract is a “glutamine hog,” and will horde much of what you take for itself, which is why I said that you need to take a fairly large amount to reap the benefits. For most, this means 25-50 g per day. I strongly believe in glutamine’s immune system enhancing effects (can’t train when your sick, right?); its positive effects on protein synthesis; its ability to help with glycogen storage; it’s anti-catabolic effects; and it’s GH inducing abilities as well.

I take glutamine along with BCAA’s at least four times per day, and when dieting, up to 6-7 times per day. Each dose is no less than 5-10 grams.

Remember, just because you do not gain 10 lbs of muscle in two weeks does not mean glutamine is not working. Glutamine is what I call a “long haul” supplement. This simply means that over the long haul, it will certainly help hasten your progress. So be patient, and let glutamine work it’s magic a little at a time.

It’s not that they can’t exercise or improve their eating habits; it’s just that they never actually “DO” it.  And it’s not just with their health and fitness goals.  This concept applies to other goals as well.  So what’s holding you back?

Talk is cheap
When we don’t actually “have to” do something, we tend to put things off and make excuses that hold us back.  In the case of weight loss and improving one’s health, when it comes to diet and exercise, let’s face it…. people make excuses.  The #1 excuse people make as to why they don’t exercise is that they don’t have time.  When it comes to improving your diet, the #1 excuse is that eating healthy is expensive, followed up with I don’t have time to prepare a healthy meal.

What would it take for you to “have to” improve your health and fitness?  Would it take getting a poor health evaluation from your doctor?  I’m here to tell you the chances are that won’t do it.  I know this from first- hand experience.  I hear from people all the time about a health issue (high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, borderline diabetes, etc.) they have either been diagnosed with or warned about that can be corrected or improved with a diet and exercise program, and will TALK about how they need to exercise and eat better, yet still don’t ACT on it.

Are you an information junkie?
Some people are great about gathering information, love learning, but still don’t ACT on the knowledge they’ve acquired from all the information they gathered.  All the research, learning and information is useless unless you ACT on it.

What do I mean by this?  You can buy the best book in the world on how to successfully lose weight and keep it off for life, read it cover to cover and NOT implement any of the information you learned from that book.

The question you need to ask yourself is why you invest your time gathering information, yet don’t implement any of it?

Keeping them honest
Most people need to be held accountable in order to act on things.  Your paycheck keeps you accountable.  A monetary investment keeps you accountable.

Part of what I do is keep people accountable.  They’ve made an investment by purchasing my services.  I keep them accountable by having them show up for their appointment with me whether it’s on line or in person.  Those who make the investment are taking action.

Here’s a great way to keep yourself accountable.  Many people say they want have great abs and look great in a swim suit.  What if you were to schedule an appointment with a photographer for a swimsuit photo shoot?  Find a photographer, meet with him/her, set a date for the photo shoot (3 or 6 months from now), and pay the photographer ½ the money up front for the photo shoot.  That would provide you with a goal, time frame to achieve your goal, and incentive to ACT on getting those great abs.

Is procrastination holding you back?
One of the biggest reasons why most people fail to do anything they dream about whether it’s improving their health and fitness, starting their own business, etc., is that they procrastinate.  They hold off on doing anything because the timing isn’t right, they have something else going on, they never seem to have enough money, etc.

With weight loss, I hear the following comments all the time – I’d like to wait until next month to get started or I’ll get started after the New Year.   Guess what?  The never do.

Are you an action taker?
If you don’t ACT NOW, chances are you never will.  That’s what separates action takers from procrastinators.  Those who take action get results.  Those who procrastinate achieve NOTHING.  It’s as simple as that.

If I wasn’t an action taker, I would not have achieved the results I have gotten not just with my health and fitness, but as a business person, and in my personal life with the friendships I have made.

Ask yourself, are you an action taker or are you going to continue being a could’ve, would’ve, should’ve and achieve NOTHING.

The time is NOW to ACT and ACHIEVE.  Those who ACT triumph in life and what better place to start than with your health and fitness.

Keep Going!

James Villepigue CSCS

But the advantages of trio training can be significant, too.  Here are 3 suggestions for making the most of a training trio:

1)      Find a rhythm. Rather than allowing an extra training partner to slow things down on a given exercise, use three partner training to keep you on the clock.  When partner A is doing a set, B is spotting and C is counting reps on the sidelines and ready to change the weights when and if needed.  Then, partner B does a set, with C spotting, and A catching his or her breath and getting the weights ready for a poundage change.  As partner C starts a set, partner A spots, and so on.  There should be no delays.  Rather than slowing things down, trio training should keep everything moving along without delays.

2)     Eliminate the “down” time between exercises. With three partners in a workout, moving on to the next exercise should be more quickly accomplished.  While the last partner in the roster is doing the last set of an exercise, the partner who isn’t spotting should be staking claim to the next station and setting up the machine or bench for the next exercise. Other than being the “advance scout” for the next exercise, each member of the trio should stay together and stay focused from the moment a body part training session begins until it ends.  At no time should any partner “disengage” from the workout or walk off to chat with anyone else in the gym.

3)     Use giant sets.  Trio training is perfectly suited for choosing a sequence of 3 exercises in prompt succession.  These “giant sets” can be performed toward the end of a training session for a particular body part, after you do the heavier compound movements.  For example, with chest, after heavy flat bench presses and incline bench presses, set up 3 stations: pec deck, incline flyes, and cable cross-overs.  Each partner can begin the giant set on a different station.  Upon finishing the exercise, each partner moves promptly clockwise to the next station and begins that exercise, and so on.  The rest between exercises should be no more than the time it takes to move to the next station and catch a few breaths – 30 seconds or so. Complete 3 cycles of the sequence and feel that pump!

The right third partner can add a fun dynamic to the mix.  Having a trio of training partners can also come in handy when one partner can’t make it to the gym due to illness or work/family obligations.  It’s less likely you’ll ever train alone.  Try it and see!

To learn about more physique-transforming methods go to www.alphamaleadvancedworkouts.com and get the newest training E-book that is taking the fitness industry by storm!