Women are additionally benefiting from this system - when
you're dealing with the potential for osteoporosis when
you get up in your years, bone density becomes crucial for
your overall health. There is no better way in the world
to make sure you have strong bone density than to engage
in high intensity, short duration strength training exercises.
Static contraction training is, in my view, the very best
system of exercise for maintaining not just muscle mass,
but also bone mineral density. You will also strengthen
your ligaments and tendons.
>> Click here for Pete Sisco's Maximum Strength Training program
The key is, as with all forms of exercise, to be sure to
work with a qualified health professional before attempting
this, especially some of the more high intensity exercises.
You may want to ease your way into it and check with your
naturopath, doctor or physical therapist to make sure you're
ready for this. You don't want to injure yourself - that
would set you back weeks. So take it a little bit at a time.
Remember, your body will adapt slowly, so ease into it slowly.
By doing all of this, you'll be able to conserve the incredible
muscle mass that you have underneath that body fat right
now.
Strength Training Workout
Accelerated weight loss. The other benefit of strength
training is that it greatly increases the speed of your
weight loss effort. It will double the effectiveness of
any weight loss program you're on. As mentioned in part
one of this article, losing weight by calorie restriction
alone is very, very difficult. In fact, personally, I've
never been able to do that. The only way I've been able
to lose body fat (I lost over 50 lbs. of body fat, and I've
kept it off for several years now) is to engage in exercise
that includes both a strength training component and a cardiovascular
component.
My belief is that you cannot keep weight off just by modifying
your diet alone, unless you happen to be extremely gifted
with just the right genes that don't ever turn on the hunger
signal for you. If you're in that situation, good for you.
But you should probably think about exercising anyway, because
of the other cardiovascular health and brain chemistry benefits
that are derived from frequent exercise.
Alternative training: Pilates. Now, some people say "Well,
I can't join a gym, I can't exercise, I don't want to go
to that website and look up static contraction training,
I don't want to do that, I don't want to pump weights. What
do I do instead?" There's a great solution for people
who don't want to pump weights, and I understand a lot of
women are in this situation, nothing wrong with that. You
can be very strong without pumping weights if you follow
Pilates.
Pilates is a form of body movement and flexibility training
that was pioneered by Joseph Pilates almost 100 years ago.
The guy was well ahead of his time. This is a system that
I definitely follow today. The movements require a lot of
strength, but not so much that you can't get started. There
are simple ways to get started with Pilates on a mat that
would greatly boost your muscle mass and your overall strength
- especially your abdominal strength and your lower back
strength. And then, as you gain comfort with that, you can
move up to the more advanced movements in Pilates.
And you can even get Pilates equipment, which is rather
affordable. The best place for that is Pilates.com, which
is the website of a manufacturer of Pilates equipment. They
have outstanding equipment. They even have an affordable
home version of this Pilates equipment that runs only a
couple of hundred dollars. Well worth the investment.
What does this Pilates system do for you? It will give
you strength training all over your body - in your hips,
adduction and abduction muscles, abdominal muscles, lower
back, traps, biceps, triceps, chest, upper body, lower body
and especially in your midsection. It will do all of this
for you - I should say with you - without using any weights.
So you don't have to set up a bench press with 200 lbs.
and see how many reps you can bang out. Pilates can be done
in a more artful way. It is a form of body movement that
can be very yoga-like, if you choose, or it can be done
with more power. This is why both men and women find Pilates
to be a fantastic system of strength training. I know a
lot of people in the performing arts community who rely
on Pilates to maintain core strength and flexibility throughout
their body, including in their arms, legs and neck muscles.
The cure for joint pain. I've got to mention this too:
If you engage in Pilates, you may experience one of the
benefits that almost everybody experiences when they do
this for a couple of months: their joint pain begins to
disappear. People always complain about their joint pain,
it seems. When I'm at the gym, I hear guys in their 40s
- they're only 45 years old! - and they're complaining and
whining about how much everything hurts. They say, "Oh,
wait 'til you're my age, everything's gonna hurt!"
And I respond with, "I don't think so!" But I've
experienced chronic pain, and I know what that feels like.
But now I do Pilates and engage in outstanding nutrition
and the pain is gone.
The body is designed to be healthy, and it's not supposed
to hurt. If you feed your body right and if you use and
mobilize all those joints, they will not hurt, even to the
age of 100. There's no reason why we can't live to 100 in
a state of perfect health with outstanding cognitive function,
free of chronic pain. But to do that, you have to use it.
I firmly believe in the concept of "use it or lose
it." If you're not using those joints, then you're
going to lose their range of motion.
Just ask any physical therapist, they will tell you much
the same. You have to have range of motion in order to be
free of pain. The difficulty is that as we get older, we
tend to stop using all of those muscles and joints in their
full range of motion. A lot of people who say that chronic
pain is related to aging are really confusing cause and
effect. It's not related to aging, it's related to the number
of years that they've stopped using their body.
For example, take a person who is a dancer or someone engaged
in yoga, Pilates or flexibility well into their 80s or 90s,
and they won't have joint pain. If aging causes joint pain,
then how is it that these people have no pain? The answer
is because they keep mobilizing those joints, they keep
using their body. They engage in Tai Chi or other gentle
body movements. And they are free from pain. By the way,
Tai Chi is another outstanding way to get range of motion,
but it won't do quite the same thing for you in terms of
muscle mass as Pilates training or other weight bearing
exercises. (Tai Chi has many other energetic benefits, though,
which are beyond the scope of this article.)
What's missing from all diets. The bottom line is if you
are attempting to lose weight, or more specifically to lose
body fat, then engaging in some form of strength training
is crucial to your success. I know there are a lot of books
out there that say well, you can just change your foods,
or you can consume this one particular food like grapefruit
or cabbage, or you can go on the popular low-carb diet.
I know some people have success with that, but I think the
vast majority of people don't really meet their weight loss
goals just by changing their foods.
What's missing is that body component, the strength training,
the movement, the flexibility, and also the cardiovascular
training. What I'm suggesting is that you seriously consider
finding a way to get some form of strength training into
your life. It could be as easy as buying a floor mat or
a DVD video on Pilates. Those videos are as little as $15
or $20. So your total investment, including the mat, could
be only $40 or $50. And then you can engage in strength
training.
Strength training, when you get into the advanced stages
of it, is not so easy. You know lifting weights, even just
for 15 seconds with high intensity, isn't always easy, either.
When I do it, sometimes I feel like I'm about to pass out.
It's such high intensity. When I do a leg press with a 15
second high intensity static contraction system - and I'm
really not even anywhere near what some of the founders
are - I'm pushing at least 1,500 lbs. I'm out of breath
after that. I'm wiped out. This is hard stuff! It takes
effort.
None of this is going to happen automatically, and if you
whip through a strength training routine, and you don? feel
like you've done any work, then you probably haven't. You're
not going to get any benefit from that. At some point, it's
going to require some effort to get these results. A lot
of the information out there that claims you can lose weight
without any effort is just flat out wrong. Certainly, there
are some shortcuts. There are some strategies that can make
it a lot easier for you, no doubt about that. There are
some nutritional supplements that can help - I agree. But
the bottom line is: if you don't engage the physical body,
if you don't do some strength training and some cardiovascular
training, you're not going to get the results you want.
Finding a workable system. Most people who are really committed
to losing body fat are okay with the effort part. That hasn't
been the problem. The problem has been finding a strategy
that really works. What's a system that works? People tried
the Atkins Diet or the low carb diet, and for many people
that didn't work. People tried the low fat diet years ago
- well that didn't work, because everybody just loaded up
on carbohydrates and cookies. People tried all kinds of
other things - they tried stimulants, things that make you
shake all day long because you have a lot of caffeine in
your system. And gee, they found out that didn't work either,
because it just made them hungrier.
So, typically, it's not the effort that stops people. It's
the reliability of the system. Finding out what really works
is the hardest part. But I can tell you that no system will
work without the physical body movement component. You've
got to engage in strength training, you've got to engage
in cardiovascular exercise, even if it's just walking for
five minutes a day. If you can't walk, even just lifting
your arms for 10 minutes a day, or lifting a 1 lb. dumbbell
over your head 50 times will benefit you. I don't care what
it is, if you can move something, then you can engage in
cardiovascular exercise. There is no excuse, unless you
happen to be paralyzed from the neck down, in which case
obviously you can't engage in strength training. But for
everybody else, there's no excuse. If you can move a limb,
you can do this.
>> Click here for Pete Sisco's Maximum Strength Training program
>>
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