Cardio, Weights, Diet… What’s the Best for Losing Fat?

The topic of weights vs cardio has been an age-old debate with the common misconception that lifting weights will make you bulky and big and a lot of cardio will cause you to strip high amounts of fat. However, nutrition plays a pivotal role in fat loss, using exercise as a tool will assist fat loss further and there are both pros and cons of choosing either cardio or weights.

• First Thing’s First – Calories In vs Calories Out

• Why Do Cardio?

• Benefits of Weights

Nutrition: Calories in Vs Calories Out

t An alternative to being in a caloric deficit is to calculate your maintenance calories which is the amount you need to consume per day in order to maintain your weight after doing physical activities whether sport, occupational or leisure.  Here is a link that will assist you with calculating your calories (https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/macronutcal.htm). To avoid dropping your calories and constantly being hungry, you can utilise weights or cardio as a tool to increase your energy expenditure. This will also result in weight loss, as you will exert more energy than you consume, without starving yourself.

Cardio: Weight Loss Benefits

So why should you choose cardio? Cardio exercises are great as it is an easy way to burn calories in a single session, you can do then anywhere without needing any equipment and it is also proven to improve your cardiovascular system. On average, you will be able to burn up to 250 calories in a single session. However, there are many factors that contribute to how much you will actually burn. These factors include; age – as the older you are the fewer calories you can expect to burn, workout intensity – the higher the intensity, the faster your heart rate and the more calories you will expect to burn, overall daily activity – the more sedentary you are, the fewer calories you will burn. You will not need any specific equipment in order to do most cardiovascular exercises. Such examples are running, jogging or bodyweight circuits. These are great to do at the park, the beach and even better if you have a dog to go on runs with. The main benefit of doing cardio exercises is that they will improve your cardiovascular health. You will improve your cardiac output – the amount of blood pumped around your body per beat, which is the product of your stroke volume and heart rate. Having a greater cardiac output will result in a higher amount of oxygenated blood available to your working muscles and thus greater potential output.

Although there are many benefits in doing cardio, there are also negatives. Cardio exercises will not help in building or retaining muscle mass. Long durations will put a lot of strain on your joints and ligaments, especially in your legs and most steady state activities usually require the lower body thus you will be neglecting your upper half. Due to the nature of most of the exercises, you will not be putting direct load or stress on the muscles, which will not stimulate them to grow as effective as lifting weights will. Steady state cardiovascular exercises will put your body in a catabolic state, which means the loss of your hard-earned muscles. Long durations of cardio will strain and put stress on the joints and ligaments. Take running for example, it requires the understanding of biomechanics and correct running motion, in order to ensure you can run effectively and efficiently. The most common injury is knee pain which can set you back for a long period of time. In addition, most steady state activities require the use of the lower body, which means you will be neglecting your upper body. This is not ideal as it your body will be disproportioned and therefore a lack of upper body strength, which can affect everyday life tasks.

Weights: Better for Maintaining Muscle?

Weights on the other hand is the best option if you are looking to maintain/build muscle mass as you can actively target specific muscles and there is much more scope to add variations to your routine. Due to the nature of lifting weights, you can directly put load on and target specific muscles selectively for them to grow. Lifting weights stimulates the muscle fibres, causing them to tear during your workout and then rebuild bigger and stronger during your recovery due to a cellular process to form new muscle protein strands. This process will allow you to recruit more motor units and lift heavier over time. You will also improve your posture as you will be able to activate muscle such as your erector spinae and upper back to be more upright. One major benefit of weight training, especially with the older population is to maintain their bone density. Due to the risk of arthritis, it is important to ensure that your joints, ligaments and bones are strong and healthy for as long as possible. Weight training will develop and strengthen them which will be very beneficial in the long run. With a heap of exercises to choose from, you can add many variations to your routine, which will ensure you’ll enjoy your training. Unlike cardio exercises which is limited to only a few options. You can also do circuits or HIIT training with weights to improve your cardiovascular system.

As we are a gym that is strength/weight focused, it is inevitable that we will be biased towards lifting weights. However, if we had to pick some drawbacks, it would be investing time to learn the right form and technique and correct programming will be vital to ensure maximum gains. Learning the right technique will take some time as it is crucial to ensure you prevent injury. Similar to running, understanding the movement pattern and biomechanics of the exercises is important as you will be able to hit the correct muscles or lift the most amount of weight efficiently.

The take home message is that fat loss only comes from a caloric deficit and this can be achieved with the help of steady state exercise and weights. Cardio will help burn a substantial number of calories in a single session, but you will look like you don’t train. Weights on the other hand may take longer to achieve fat loss, but if you want to get a lean and toned physique, this is definitely the more effective option, and you will look like you go to the gym.

Happy training!

Bringing up your lagging body parts is something everyone will work towards when in the gym. Whether you want to get your arms and shoulders bigger for summer, you need a wider, stronger back for your athletic pursuit, or you’re after rounder, fuller glutes and thighs, there needs to be a plan put in place to achieve these goals.

We can pin this down to a few main factors, that cause majority of these weaknesses to stay that way and unless these are addressed, you’ll be left spinning your wheels. So let’s dig a bit deeper into 5 pillars, crucial for progress;

1. Perfecting Technique

It’s been touted a thousand times, but if you can’t feel a muscle contract, you’re not going to be getting the most out of it in any given movement pattern. If necessary, cut the weights back to begin with, nail in your execution of lifts so you can really get everything out of the movement and muscle. From here, with each and every rep, apply both intent and focus, as you gradually get stronger. Challenging yourself every time you come back around to that muscle and movement pattern

2.  Frequency

Stimulus is what we’re really looking at here. We want to stimulate a muscle, cause some micro tears in the tissue, signalling to the body to recover and repair, making it stronger for the next training bout. The more often we can do this the better, and given the protein synthetic rate of musculature, we’ve got a 48-72 hour recovery time before we can hit it again.
With this in mind we’ve got the opportunity and potential to train a muscle 2-3 x per week, that over the course of a year is 104 – 156 possible sessions to grow your glutes or chest.
Working this into your training week we can go with 2 lower body sessions per week, Monday and Thursday, then adding in an additional couple of sets for glutes on Saturday where we also hit say shoulders and back. This quite easily increases how often we’re signalling to the body “Hey, I’m using the muscle quite a lot, we need to make this bigger and stronger”

3. Volume

Think of volume as how many hard sets you’re doing per week. If you’re currently hitting a full “chest day” once per week, you do 5 exercises, 4 sets on each, that’s 20 work sets. In this session you’re annihilating the muscle, but only hitting it once then leaving it for 144 hours before the next chest day rolls around.Keeping those 20 work sets you’re doing, we can space it out, increasing the frequency and dropping the individual session volume;e.g. 8 sets on Monday & Thursday, then 4 on Saturday.

By dropping the amount of work you’re doing on one single day, you’re not completely demolishing the muscle but stimulating it enough to cause an adaptation. You’re also then in a better place to push your strength as you’re not accruing more and more fatigue which only leaves you “feeling” like you’ve done a lot of work.
This leads on well to the next point of….

4. Strength

Now it’s all well and good to feel the muscle, then hit it often, but if strength is not progressing, your muscle won’t adapt. We need to push hard, log booking your sessions, ensuring week in, week out we’re testing new grounds and moving forwards, challenging the muscle and forcing the adaptations we require. That can be via a bit more weight, an additional couple of reps or taking on one more set, but we need to challenge the body to cause the adaptation we’re after. Strength is a key driver of growth; a stronger muscle will be a bigger muscle. If we take your Barbell Hip Thrust from 90kg for 6 reps, up to 180kg for 6 reps, I guarantee you your glutes and hamstrings will be bigger as they’ve gotten significantly stronger. It’s a basic physiological adaptation, but this requires you to be diligent and work hard!

5. Calories

With the previously mentioned factors we’ll be in a place where we’re pushing hard and training frequently, we need the calories there to recover, signal surplus to the body to continue strength progressions and increase the potential for new tissue to be gradually be gained. If you really want to progress you can’t be scared of the calorie, if you are, then that’s something we’ll need to address if you really want to push ahead in your progress. See the performance progressions you are making and the potential for you to keep going, you need to fuel the body to get the most out of it. If you train like you mean it, don’t sit on your phone all sessions, challenge yourself and keep pushing progress, the calories are well deserved and aiding that recovery process (if you need to work out intake see my previous blog posts)

There are many moving parts when it comes to training and bringing up weaknesses, but it is really quite simple; Train well, train hard, push ourselves often and eat to support our goals. It takes time, commitment and continual effort. It always comes back to consistency and your ability to do the necessary today, to move ahead tomorrow to turn your weaknesses into strengths.

When it comes to the body and hormones it is unfortunate, but very common, that oestrogen is seen as the devil and by no means is it that. It’s important to find the sweet spot of balance to have everything in the body running efficiently.

To get a good idea of what the hormone is, let’s start with the basics; oestrogens are a group of steroidal hormones that are found in both men and women and we have a number of different types, or groups. There are three big ones that we will focus most upon;

Oestrone (E1) 

The weakest of the 3, E1 can be converted and serves mainly as the precursor to Oestradiol(E2). It is a minor female sex hormone, synthesized from cholesterol and secreted mainly from the gonads, as all oestrogens are.

Oestradiol (E2)

Broadly, when we speak of Oestrogens, this is the one we are referring to. It’s the major female sex hormone, regulates menstrual/reproductive cycle and development of reproductive tissues. E2 is produced in the follicles of the ovaries in women, testicles in men and adrenal glands, fat tissue, liver, breasts and the brain in both.

Oestriol (E3)

Often seen as a urinary metabolite that is measured. Close to undetectable in women unless pregnant, it is synthesized in very high quantities in the placenta. For both men and women E3, like E1, has a far weaker activity in the body.

When it comes to the importance of oestrogen in the body, both men and women have their own levels required for optimum function and they have different roles for each sex.

We obviously think mainly about its role in women, the reproductive processes, libido, and regulation of menstrual cycle along with bone health, mood, brain activity and other things like that.

Whereas in men, oestrogen still has a role when it comes to the reproductive system, just not to the same extent, as the testosterone steroidal hormone governs/regulates it’s input. Oestrogen helps with how well and strong a man’s sperm can swim, the stronger the swimmers, the better the fertility rate. It also helps modulate immunity and has an effect on the cardiovascular system.

So they have similar roles in both sexes, but different interactions with other hormones which facilitate different impacts on the body.

The many ratios in which we see the metabolites of oestrogen, some of the metabolites are considered more protective and good for you, while others, not so beneficial. So, if some of the metabolites are far too high, that’s where you can run in to some health issues. To regulate these potential negative effects of oestrogen it runs through the liver where it goes through a detoxification process to try and get the right ratios in check, suited to your physiology.

If someone is very poor at this detoxification process, both men and women, are likely to notice symptoms of memory loss, lack of libido, decreased mood, greater levels of body fat, decreased recovery and impaired gut function can become impaired to name a few. It’s a hard one to pick apart, but these above symptoms can suggest something is not going quite right.

Now to combat these issues, the best one, in most cases, is a reduction of body fat, this is because of an enzyme called aromatase. Aromatase is what converts testosterone into oestrogen, the more body fat you have, the more aromatase you will have and the more aromatase you have, the more oestrogen you will be likely to produce and/or convert.

To reduce negative oestrogens, we can reduce our exposure to environmental oestrogens; these are very similar to in genetic make-up to the oestrogen receptors we have in our body. These xeno-oestrogens are the “bad” oestrogens that bind to our natural oestrogen and can throw the body’s ratios insanely out of whack over extended periods of exposure.

To reduce this, be mindful and watch out for:

– Plastics,
– BPA,
– Parabens found in cosmetic products and unnatural body lotions,
– Petrochemicals,
– High Oestrogen foods (soy, wheat, corn, conventional dairy & meat)
– Excessive alcohol consumption
– Hormonal contraception’s
– Insecticides

Don’t stress, it’s not the end of the world if you use these things, but it is an accumulative thing. Over time they will catch up on you and begin causing negative health effects.

It can be fixed though, not all hope is lost, it comes down to some simple things:

– Manage reasonable body fat levels, no higher than 15-20% in males and 20-25% in women
– Exercise regularly, the resulting hormonal output will improve the oestrogen ratios in your favour
– Eat a balanced diet inclusive of beans, cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens, varied nuts, pumpkin, artichokes, avocados, berries, chia seeds, coconut based products, lentils, peas and quinoa
– Limit your exposure to environmental oestrogens. Use glass containers, natural products etc
– Maintain healthyfFibre intake to keep your gut in check so oestrogen doesn’t hop back in the blood stream
– Manage inflammation, don’t stress too much, balance the yin and yang in your life

So those are all the key things to really balance out your oestrogen levels in your body. Don’t go crazy on supplements to remove it entirely, it is important. Do the above, get your bloods tested, train hard, eat well, manage your recovery and look after yourself.

“There’s so much online… where do I start?”

Congratulations, you’ve decided to start hitting the gym and improve your physique, strength and health. Whatever your motivation, there are a few tips to keep in mind when first stepping foot in the gym.

Before we start, it’s important to mention that most of your gains will occur during your first year of lifting (AKA noobie gains). Implementing these tips will help maximise your progress in the gym.

• Get Informed

• Train Often

• Take it Slow

Do your Research

Firstly, become informed. This is by no means an all-inclusive guide for first timers. There are many sources to expand your training knowledge. Hiring a fitness coach, watching YouTube videos and browsing the web are all great methods to provide you with a level of guidance in the gym. You can use these sources to learn about how to perfect your form, choose the right workout split or what exercises to perform. It may seem overwhelming once you start learning, but I can assure you that armed with this information, you are at a significant advantage to your peers who failed to conduct their due diligence. This is because you’ll make smarter decisions in the gym optimising your muscle development and preventing your risk of injury.

Train Often

Secondly, frequency is king. Since you are a beginner, it is pivotal you get your body used to performing the exercise and feeling the stress on the muscle. You may see a plethora of opinions online, however, we recommend a full body workout three times a week. This may seem like a lot, but since you are training your entire body, the amount of volume per muscle group would be much less compared to training a single muscle group per workout. As much as us gym bros like to think that we can go hardcore in the gym every day, rest is paramount for optimal muscle growth and recovery. Thus, we propose one or two rest days in between your full body workouts. This higher frequency will allow you to adapt quicker to the movement and acquire what’s called neurological efficiency or muscle memory, a form of procedural memory that creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems and improves your muscle retention abilities. Once you feel comfortable performing the exercises and the movement pattern has been ingrained, you can scale back the frequency to once or twice a week and bump up the volume.

Take it Slow

Lastly, like doing anything for the first time, it is critical to take it easy and slow. Loading the bar with preposterous amounts of weight and training to utter failure, is the fastest way to get yourself injured. Use a weight that you can handle comfortably and perform 8 – 12 reps, leaving a few reps left in the tank. Once you have introduced it to the movement with low to moderate intensity and familiarised yourself with the motion, you can slowly increase the weight as well as the intensity as your body is constantly adapting.

Whatever your motivation for hitting the gym for the first time, abiding by these three guidelines will ensure you develop a strong foundation and maximise your muscle growth. By becoming more informed, hitting the gym frequently and performing exercises steadily with perfect form, you place yourself in a position where you can train smarter and more consistently, allowing you to start packing on crazy amounts of mass in no time.

It has been vouched time and time again that static stretching is terrible when it comes to both hypertrophy and athletic performance.
“It will make you weaker”
“It puts the muscle at an increased risk of injury”
While these are both true statements, it really depends on both the application, execution and timing of stretching.

By no means is static or passive stretching bad, but in a performance based setting there are number of cons we quickly approach.

Negatives of Static Stretching

– Perceived improvement of flexibility as opposed to mobility

– Static stretching improves your body’s ability to sit into that given stretch, not improve whole bodily movement

– Stretching can temporarily decrease the strength, endurance and force potential of given muscle.

With this being said, these negatives only really arise when passive stretching is all pre-training. Save those static stretches for post workout to calm yourself, drop the heart rate and bring you in to that para-sympathetic state.

Now seeing how detrimental passive stretching can be on our performance, here is where loaded stretching really takes the cake. Once applied, I guarantee you’ll be left asking yourself why you haven’t been doing this all along!

The premise behind loaded stretching is that our muscle is constricted by fascia, if that fascia is not gliding well over the muscle, movement will be restricted, optimal mobility is harder to achieve and we cannot optimize given muscles’ performance potential.  Loaded stretching itself aims to loosen the grip fascia has, allowing the muscle more room to glide, lengthen and contract forcefully.

But why does this work in making us bigger, stronger and more mobile?

Benefits of Loaded Stretching

Occlusion Effect:

When muscles are contracted blood is restricted within, the same thing occurs when the muscle is stretched out in the fully lengthened position. So, during a loaded stretch, you are contracting as hard as you can, in the fully stretched position, you’re trapping all the blood inside the muscle and causing 2 incredibly positive outcomes.

1) It prevents the clearance and disposal of metabolites in lactate and hydrogen ions,

2) Deprives the muscle of oxygen.

Both conditions lead to the release of local growth factors (IGF-1), which can increase potential for local muscle hypertrophy.

Increased Recovery:

Due to the blood flow restriction nature of loaded stretches, once we release the stretch, the muscle is supplied, very quickly, with a fresh source of blood, delivering nutrients directly to the muscle as the body works to clear the build up of metabolites.

Increase Muscle Size:
When in that fully lengthened position and we are contracting incredibly hard, the body is recruiting all potential muscle fibers it has in that local area, hitting both fast and slow twitch muscle fibers (Type I & Type II), with the potential of increasing both density and size of given muscle

The method of Loaded Stretching has been tried and test by many coaches originating with Chuck Sipes hanging from a bar to grow his lats in the 60’s, Bodybuilding programing “DC Training” from Dante Trudel and Hypertrophy experts like Dr. Scott Stevenson and Jordan Peters being major advocates of loaded stretching for maximal results.

Personally, seen in myself and clients, loaded stretching rapidly improves recovery and mobility. In a matter of a single training cycle you will begin to notice significant improvements with how your body can move in lifts as well as building your neural connection (mind-muscle) to areas you apply these techniques. Then applied across the course of 3,6 and 12 months of solid, progressive training and we see the growth benefits.

It’s all well and good having this knowledge but now the application.

What we want to do is focus on isolating a single muscle group, getting it into it’s fully lengthened position, under load ,in a safe manner and both stretch and contract simultaniously. We want to think, where is the origin and insertion of the muscle and how do I put them as far apart as possible and squeeze it like it owes me money!

Chest (Pectoralis Major/Minor)

My preferred go to is a cable stretch on these. Strap up to a D-Handle, walk out and brace against something, from here, pull your shoulder blades back and down allowing your humerus to pull away from sternum

Front Shoulder (Anterior head of Deltoid)

Set a barbell up at chest height in a rack, spin around and place both hands as close together as you’re able to WITHOUT PAIN. Don’t over-crank this one as you walk your feet forward

Side Shoulder (Lateral head of Deltoid)
Put a cable down to the bottom attachment, grab it so the cable is running behind you and walk out slightly. Maintain the shoulder blades back and shunted down

Vertical Back (Latissimus Dorsi)
Grab a single D-Grip handle and attach that to the lat-pulldown machine. We want to slightly supinate, as the lat is an internal rotator, tuck the pelvis underneath you and reach up, leaning back slightly. Think reaching and contracting.

Horizontal Back (Rhomboids, Posterior Delts)
Prop a bench up on a 45º and we’re going chest supported by the bench. Grab a dumbbell in either hand, internally rotate and allow the dumbbells to “spread out” your back

Glutes (Gluteus Maximus/Medius/Minimus)
If you don’t have access to a 45º extension you can hang over the edge of a bench, but we want to think about dragging the heels down and pushing your ass to the roof the whole time

Hamstrings (Biceps Femoris/Semitendinosis/Semimembranosus)
Knees locked and come down by shifting your weight back as you come into the bottom position. Your foot placement will dictate where about in your hamstrings you feel this most, so play around with it based on your needs/wants

Quads (Vastus Lateralis/Medialis/Intermedius & Rectus Femoris)
Best bet is doing these in a smith machine setting the bar at hip height, walk your feet slightly forwards and swing your hips under. Focus on trying to keep the hips extended. These are nasty.

Calves (Gastrocnemius & Soleus)
Hopefully you are training your calves properly, if you are doing so, bodyweight will suffice for these. Elevate the feet on something lean over like we’re in a Donkey Raise position and then drive the heels down while pulling the toes up.

We want to hit these stretches when we’re done training that group while there’s lots of blood within the muscle and we can “feel” the area.
1-3 Sets, 30-60seconds – Accruing a total time of 2-3minutes in that loaded stretch position. Overload the movement by small increments in time or weight. By nailing these stretches once finished training a muscle group, we’re in a primed state to reap all the benefits surrounding loaded stretches.

From here, work these into your sessions next time you train and make them a staple in your programming, the potential benefits you will be awarded with far outweigh the brief period of discomforted that arises from the loaded stretch.