I would like to take a few moments to address an issue that I deal with on a daily basis – Women in the gym who are afraid to lift weights, fearing they will become female versions of the incredible hulk just by touching anything heavier than a 2lb dumbbell.

They are many benefits for women when it comes to participating in regular weight resistanceworkouts.

Below I will list the top 3 reasons:

1. Shape and tone – Shape and tone comes from losing body fat and gaining lean muscle.  Women seem to be fine with the losing body fat part but when they hear the words ‘gaining lean muscle’ they begin to panic… WRONG.

Lean muscle is what gives your body shape with the tone you want. If you didn’t have muscle you would just be fat hanging from bone. You would have no tone to work with.

2. Burn more calories – The more muscle to fat ratio you have, the more body fat you are able to burn. If you have a high percentage of bodyfat and a low percentage of muscle, you will have a harder time being able to burn fat and keep fat off long term – another reason why fad diets alone without weight training does not work long term – it doesn’t help you gain lean muscle to help you raise your metabolism to fuel the fat burn process throughout the day.

My wife, Nicole, is a great example of a woman achieving great, feminine lean tone in the gym(just don’t wear the stilettos)

3. Health Benefits - By working out and eating correctly, not only can a woman look better on the outside.. They can feel better on the inside! Studies have shown that building healthy lean muscle is a great indication for longevity – more so than cholesterol or blood pressure levels.

By mixing endurance weight sessions with strength weight lifting sessions, women are able to increase their cardiovascular output, have healthier and stronger bones/joints, and be able to live longer!

Not to mention lifting weights can be even better for you than just doing cardio!
If done right, you can burn just as many calories, if not more, and burn more calories throughout the day because you have more lean muscle!
Copyright JamesDawsonMartin.com

Periodization: periodization is planning and structuring your training into specific phases – either by manipulating intensity – reps, tempo, rest, or weight and volume of load lifted. It can also be about taking someone from point A to point B in a structured and goal defined way.

A microcycle phase – refers to one week of training

A mesocycle phase – refers to two-four months of training

A macrocycle phase – refers to one to four years of training

Periodization is a form of structured training that is popular amongst athletes.

Coaches across the world structure an athletes program based on their current level of fitness, season of training, and competition.

For example, a football coach will have his athletes on a strength and mass routine during off season, before bringing in a period of recovery, and then changing it to endurance, speed and more agility later on – this is all part of periodization.

Periodization allows you to train certain times with higher volume and load and then have you go through a new cycle phase of recovery training so that you do not overtrain.

Where many people make mistakes is that they think training too much and too hard will cause overtraining. The truth is that by manipulating our training to include periodized recovery weeks - reduced volume – will stop overtraining from being able to occur.

As you can see, bodybuilders and anyone wanting to increase lean muscle can see the importance of periodization for further growth and fat loss.

You are able to plan weeks of intense, heavy lifting and then structure in weeks of higher rep, higher volume training, before tapering off and recovering.

We get all the benefits of strength training, lean muscle building – and we recover before we overtrain!

Perdiozation is becoming more popular with bodybuilders because of this.

Training hard is great.. But training smart as well as hard is the key to results.

Access all the shots here

Many people think it is over training – too much of a good thing to train a muscle group more than once a week.. That we are limited to training just once and nothing good can come from pushing ourselves that little bit more.

The fact is, our muscles need 24-72 hours of recovery (general rule of thumb) after an intense workout session.

Studies show that after the 72 hour period, our muscles atrophy – they get smaller.

Therefore, by training a body part 2-3 times a week in a smart, effective and program structured and periodized way, with the correct nutrition throughout, we..

Access this Program in full HERE

Breakdown:

Carbohydrates, along with protein, should make up the heart of your daily caloric intake because they form muscle glycogen – the fuel that gives us that energy to perform our workouts.

Focus on non processed, natural complex carbohydrates like yams, potatoes, whole grain breads, oatmeal and brown rice. The complex carbs are made of long chains of sugar and are digested very slowly, a lot slower than simple sugar carbs. Slow burning complex carbs promoted consistent blood sugar levels, which help to offset fatigue while promoting the release of insulin – the body’s principal anabolic hormone.

Spread them out

Divide your carbs into 5-6 meals throughout the day. This forms a steady release of insulin to keep our body in an anabolic environment! If you eat them in large amounts in one sitting, the body will store them as fat.

Eat them when you are active

Eat the majority of your carbs when you are most active – before and after workouts, and in the morning.

Focus on a big complex carb meal an hour before your workout. Focus on simple sugars and after an intense workout when you are bulking.

No Carbs before bed

4 hours or so before bed, taper your carbohydrates down and just have lean protein sources and green leafy vegetables or green vegetables.

Having carbs before bed will interfere with the release of growth hormones and promote fat storage as you sleep.

Eat carbs with protein

Mixing carbs and proteins reduces the risk of carbs being stored as fat. Eating protein with carbs facilitates the transport of amino acids in protein foods into the muscles to trigger new growth – just what we want.

There are two main types of stretching – static (holding a stretching exercise in one position without movement) and dynamic stretching, which means moving while stretching – quick bursts of dynamic movement to stretch.

Static stretching works great for flexibility and recovery after a work out/inbetween workouts. However, when it comes to warming up, static stretching has been proven to be less than beneficial.

Static stretching, studies have found, has been associated with muscle damage. A study completed on mice illustrated acute stretching of muscle fibers just five percent beyond resting length resulted in a five percent loss of isometric force.

More studies have found that stretching twenty percent beyond resting length have been related to muscle damage and decrease force in humans. Therefore, stretching before sport or intense strength activity could provoke enough muscle damage to reduce maximum force and explosive strength.
Infact, the National Association of Sports Medicine and many other organizations agree with this.

Going Dynamic:

Dynamic stretching is aerobic, it elevates heart rate and gets the oxygen pumping – resulting in your muscles being warmed up for the workout to come. Dynamic warm up activates the musculature to prevent injuries and the body is in a heightened active state for the workload ahead.

Dynamic stretching will give you better conditioning, it will help with balance and co-ordination, and it is effective for warming up many specific muscles at a time for strength exercise.

Following a dynamic stretch routine will give you the most effective warm up you can get:

Below I list some very effective dynamic stretches that emphasize the quads, abs, calves, hamstrings, pecs, shoulders, and back.

Squat into Arm Raise

1. Perform a regular squat, keeping your arms at your side

2. As you reach the bottom of the squat, extend your arms back behind you.

3. Come back up out of the squat, raising your arms in a controlled fashion as you do, all the way above your head, stretching your lower back.

Chest Stretch:

1. Stand with feet hip width apart and knees slightly bent
2. Start with arms stright out in front hands at shoulder level, as you would a bench press.
3. Keeping you arms straight take your hands back as far behind you as possible so you feel the stretch around your shoulders
4. Still keeping your arms straight return your hands back to the front
5. Repeat these actions for 30 seconds, gradually getting quicker and quicker

Side Lunge with rotation:

1. With feet touching, bend your arms at the elbow and hold in front of your chest
2. Bring your right foot out, taking a wide stance from the left, which stays where it is
3. As soon as you do this, lunge down as far as possible
4. As you are lunging down,  rotate your arms and upper body all the way to the right at the same time as you lunge
5. Come back up and bring the right foot back right next to the left, as you are coming up from the lunge, rotate back up with your body, so it is back to where it was at the beginning.
6. Once practiced, this should be performed in one dynamic burst

Celebrity Workouts:

The Fight Club Physique:

Fight Club is arguably one of the best movies of Brad Pitt’s career. However, the majority of buzz surrounding the movie was Brad Pitt’s ripped and toned physique, not his acting.

Below I list a workout split that would have been like the one Brad used to get lean and mean for the role of Tyler Durden.

The Routine:

Brad’s goal was to get ripped, functional and toned muscle. He didn’t want a bulky look for the movie.
With that said, Brad used an intense weight training circuit program a long with a cardio program to achieve the physique of fight club.

Weight Circuit:

This routine is an intense weight training circuit. 2 days a week will be multi joint compound movements and inbetween those days will be a mixture of multi-joint exercises and isolation exercises – more reps.

This routine would be perfect for Brad – The constant circuit training kept his heart rate elevated and the weight training helped tone and chisel his physique without adding bulk. Exactly what he wanted for the Fight Club Role!

Guidelines:

Do one set of each exercise of the circuit without stopping.

Once you complete the circuit once, rest a few minutes and begin again. End after doing 3 sets – finishing with the ab workout after completing the weight training circuit.

Monday:

3 sets of each, 12 reps
Do one set of each exercise until you reach the end of the circuit – then repeat another 2 times – this will equal 3 sets per exercise.

Squats x 3 sets -
Dumbbell Bench Press x 3 sets
Barbell Rows x 3 sets
Stiff leg deadlifts x 3 sets
Arnold Dumbbell Press x 3 sets
Dumbbell shrugs x 2 sets
Tricep Pushdowns x 2 sets
Barbell curls x 2 sets

Abs:
After completing the circuit, do 3 sets of each ab exercise
Planks x 3 sets
Roman Chair side raises x 3 sets

Wednesday:

Leg Press x 3 sets
Cable Crossovers x 3 sets
Lat pulldowns or pushups x 3 sets
Leg curls x 3 sets
Lateral raises x 3 sets
Dumbbell Shrugs x 2 sets
French Press x 2 sets
Hammer curls x 2 sets

Abs:
Decline crunches
Roman Chair scissors

Friday:
See Monday’s workout.

Cardio Program:

2-4 days a week. Following a HIIT (high intensity interval training) system.

2 minutes – warm up, slow jog pace
1 minute – all out sprint
2 minutes – jog
1 minute – all out sprint

*Continue this for 20-25 minutes

Sorry everyone! I came down with sickness/flu & fever this past week. I have not been able to workout for a full week now, so my workout journal has been put on hold until next week.

I will be in Mexico until March 6th and then I will be ramping this workout journal up better than ever!

Week one will consist of supplement breakdowns, my goals and routines for the next month!

James

CLA (conjugated Linoleic Acid) is a naturally occurring fatty acid. It is found in cheese meat and dairy products in low amounts.

CLA is one of the ‘good fats’, and at levels of 2-3 grams per day CLA can help achieve body fat loss – which studies have shown.

The one problem with CLA is that it is found in foods at very low levels that also contain a lot of saturated fat – this is the reason we supplement with a CLA product.

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STUDIES & Research:

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CLA has strong and scientific evidence to support weight loss. For many years, studies have been done on CLA to find out just how effective supplementing with it can be.

Extensive studies have shown that  CLA reduces fat mass, while increasing lean body mass. A recent study showed that in 53 healthy individuals taking 4.2g of CLA a day led to a significant 3.8% decrease in body fat compared to individuals not taking CLA!

Optimum CLA, 180 Softgels CLA Is A Naturally Occurring Nutrient That Exerts A positive Effect On Protein And Fat Metabolism!

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Impact on Weight Training

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When combined with a weight training program, CLA can be of even more benefit.

A small trial study investigated CLA on muscle development in bodybuilders consuming 7.2 grams of CLA or placebo a day for 6 weeks while completing bodybuilding multi-joint exercises.

An increase in skin fold corrected arm girth, body mass and leg press strength was seen in the group taking CLA – this was not found in the group using the placebo!

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Summary

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With proper exercise, nutrition and dedication, CLA can undoubtedly lead to an increase in fat reduction and increased lean muscle.

Remember that in order to be successful, the dosage of CLA should be around 3.4 or higher – maybe as high as 6 grams for bodybuilders and weight training men.

I will be utilizing CLA for my new workout journal – so keep checking that out!

- James

As a trainer, I always begin by having a client discuss their goals with me. These goals can range from general fitness, athletic performance, strength, and physical appearance.

The latter, in my opinion, counts for the majority of my clients main goals.

In terms of physical appearance, some of these clients wish to morph their bodies not

just by increasing muscle mass or decreasing fat, but to actually change the shape of their muscles -width and length.

This is the mistake many people make initially.

The way our muscles are shaped – the way our chest is formed and our abs are shaped - is mostly genetic.

Some people have a wide, broad chest and others have thick less broad chests. While we can work to change this, a lot of it is genetic.

It is important that one becomes comfortable in their own skin and body before beginning a workout – that they know that they can achieve fantastic results, that they can strip away that body fat and have abs that they dreamed of..But they must realize that those abs will be their own and nobody else’s.

We are unique individuals and have separate genetics.

Coming to this conclusion and focusing on the way your own physique will look like is one of the most important factors before starting a workout program.

You will not look like ‘Brad Pitt in Fight Club’..

You will not look like ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando’..

No. You will look like yourself -

You will look like yourself with toned muscles and six pack abs -

Unique muscle. 

So take this time.. Look in the mirror.. Look at your chest and the shape of it..

Think of it being lean, think of your stomach with six pack abs, the way it will all come together.

You will make amazing results happen.

Just Make sure you visualize yourself being ripped and muscular - not another person being it for you.

You are you. You are unique.. And that is an amazing thing my friend.