April 15, 2010 in Articles, Motivation by James Dawson Martin

Why Women need to lift weights!

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

April 14, 2010 in Articles, Workouts by James Dawson Martin

Periodization: Training Smart, not just hard

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.

April 13, 2010 in Articles, Member Updates by James Dawson Martin

6 Week Workout to get you BIG!

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

April 2, 2010 in Articles, Energy Systems by James Dawson Martin

Carbs 101

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.