Additional Tips To Help Improve Your Results

THE FIRST STEP TO GETTING RIPPED

Avoid the weight scale. Don't get on it more than twice per month. Use the mirror as your progress gauge. Your bathroom scale cannot distinguish between fat and muscle. Your eyes can. So focus more on how you look than on how much you weigh when you are working on cuts and muscle definition.


Diet management will be your key to success. Not doing more sets or more reps or increasing your aerobic activity. All of those things are necessary but alone they won't get you there. If they could the gyms would be full of ripped guys instead of being full of puffy smooth guys trying to get ripped. The exception to this rule would be if you are doing extreme workouts like P90X or some other non-stop intense activity .

The problem with P90X type workouts is that it is difficult to maintain the results without working out like you are on speed everyday.

To get ripped you must know how much food you need per day and lay out those meals in advance. This means you have to carry prepared food with you when you are leaving home. Or you must carry enough protein supplements to replace high the protein meals you will require throughout the day.

This is how to closely estimate how much food you will need throughout each day. You will have to adjust these calculations as you lose fat.

1. Find out your weight.

2. Next we must calculate the bare minimum calories you will need per day to sustain yourself. To do this multiply the answer from line one by 10.5: Line 1 X 10.5 =

3. Consider your physical activity for the average day. If you are currently not getting any exercise multiply line 2. by 20%. If you are getting a light amount of exercise say, being on your feet at least 2 hours per day, multiply by line 2 by 30%. Multiple by 40% if you get moderate exercise every day. If you do intense exercise 3-4 times per week use 50%.

4. Add line 2 and line 3. This is your daily calorie need. Or close to it.

5. Now subtract 500 (this will allow you to lose about a pound per week). The resulting number is your ideal daily calorie intake.

If you follow this formula you will lose weight.


INVERSION WEIGHT TRAINING PREPARATION


For anyone interested in inversion weight training I will make the following suggestions.

Spend time just hanging in the inverted position for a week or two. Being inverted for moments at a time can require a little get used to. Invest time in mounting and dismounting the machine. This is how I adjusted to the quick blood pressure changes which occur when standing up from the inverted position. Workout slowly and carefully. Pay attention to any changes in consciousness. At the first sign of dizziness stop and dismount the machine. After you dismount hold on to the machine to keep your balance until you feel oriented again. Your ability to reorient quickly will improve as you get used to the exercises.

My idea behind inversion weight training is simply an extreme attempt at muscle confusion. But it works. I consistently experience muscle soreness after I do inversion weight training exercises. I always use light weight when doing inversion exercises. My consistent ability to get sore from using light weight when doing inversion exercises is how I gauge the potential of this type of training. I consider inversion weight training a valuable, though certainly unusual, way of introducing muscle confusion. It is a great method for shocking the system when progress has stalled.

All of this is theory, of course. I could be doing nothing more than creating the slow on-set of mental retardation by weightlifting in an inverted position. But somebody has to volunteer to be the lab rat in the name of expanding our fitness horizons. It might as well be me.


FITNESS,  TOBACCO PRODUCTS,  ILLEGAL DRUGS AND ALCOHOL


One of my beliefs is that by constantly reminding ourselves of how amazing we are as individuals, the more we lessen our dependency on outside sources to fulfill us.


I am writing this post as a reminder. Not as condemnation. You see, I am guilty of the very things I am writing about.

Good health allows us to be strong , happy, smart and as skillful as we can possibly be. The worst thing about illegal drugs and the overuse of legal drugs is that they damage us from the inside. Our bodies and minds are wonderful, complicated systems that run like finely tuned machines when we take care of ourselves. Here are some reasons you should not use or not overuse illegal drugs, tobacco products and alcohol.

Illegal drugs can damage the brain.

Illegal drugs are "psychoactive." This means that they can change your personality and as well as the way you feel. They also impair your judgements. While under the influence of drugs, you are more likely to endanger your life or someone else's. You will also be less able to protect yourself from danger.

Many illegal drugs are addictive, which means that once a person starts taking them, stopping is extremely difficult. An addicts mind craves the drug and becomes dependent on the way it makes him or her feel. The drug user or abuser may become sick if the drug is discontinued and so may become a slave to the substance.

These are really basic facts which, do to their simplicity, hardly get a second consideration after being heard. We have all known these truths since childhood. Many of us have just forgotten that we ever knew.

Here are some reasons why you should moderate or avoid alcohol:

Alcohol is the second leading cause of death in our country. More than 100,000 people die every year because of drinking.

Adolescents are twice as likely as adults to be involved in fatal alcohol-related car crashes.

Half of all assaults against girls or women involve alcohol.

Here are a few reminders about Cigarettes:

Nicotine is highly addictive. Once you start smoking, it is very hard to stop, and smoking cigarettes causes lung damage, cancer and other diseases. Tobacco and nicotine related diseases kill more than 400,000 people every year.

Each day, 3,000 children begin smoking. One third of these youngsters will probably have their lives shortened because of tobacco use.

Children who smoke cigarettes are almost six times more likely to use other illegal drugs.

Just some food for thought . . .



THE SECOND THING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO GET RIPPED


After you have worked out a close estimate of how many calories you must limit yourself to daily, next you must lay out your diet. In the beginning you will have to literally read the nutritional label on everything you plan to eat. Count calories. Count grams of protein and count grams of carbohydrates. At first this is a royal pain in the ass. But it is a necessary evil. After a while you will get used to your diet and will be able to roughly figure food values in your head. Then counting everything will not be necessary. Until then a small note book to log your food intake and gram values each day is a must-have. I still have my old pocket notebooks and will be posting some of my actual daily meals on this blog sometimes in the future.


Before I go further I should probably pause and tell you how log I had to follow this diet to get ripped. Well, in three months I was astounded by the results. By month 4 I had to begin to consuming empty calories just to keep from looking too freakish. Overall I had dropped 20 lb of fat before I reached the degree of muscular definition that you see in the Soloflex Hybrid videos. Do not think for one moment that you cannot achieve the same results. You can. I have seen others do it, you can as well

The two main rules that you have to keep in mind when you intend to get ripped is to keep your daily consumption of carbohydrates between 100 - 300 grams. Focus on getting your carbs from complex carbohydrate sources. Avoid simple carbohydrates. Or keep them to a minimum.

The second rule is to consume 30 - 40 grams of quality protein every 2 hours. This step serves multiple purposes in the process. 1. It keeps you from feeling hungry to the point that you lose control and stray off your diet. 2. Your body has to use more fuel to digest protein than it does for other food components, which means you will burn more calories. 3. You will meet your muscles REAL protein requirement needs. Most people who workout aren't even close. As a result their progress from their workout routines often lag.

A high protein diet will require you to drink a lot of liquid. Drink often (limit alcohol. Most alcohol has way too many carbs) while on this diet.

Begin the diet with your carbohydrates around 300 grams per day and slowly, work down to about 100 per day. Or when you reach the degree of cuts you desire adjust your carbohydrates to maintain that level. You will have to pay close attention to your body to do this.

Keep your breath fresh. The side effect of this diet is bad breath. The smell actually comes from your body using protein as fuel. The side effect passes as your body adjusts to your new diet. Until then be aware of your oral condition. Plenty of liquids will help keep your system flushed and keep the breath problem small.

That's it. Get to it.


THE PROPER FORM MYTH

A comment from one of my YouTube viewers addressed the poor lifting form that I used in my "Arms" Shock Routine video. From the instant that I reviewed the finished footage of the video I knew that my sloppy form would become a topic of interest to someone. So, I waited. My plan from the beginning was to respond to the form issue with a blog post if ever a viewer broached the subject. The subject has been brought up, so here is the post.


Please consider the following.

In this example, I will say each set must be completed within 30 seconds.

Using proper lifting form, if, within 30 seconds, you moved 20 pounds for 10 reps, at the end of the set you will have moved a total of 200 pounds (20 pounds X 10 reps = 200 1bs).

Using fair to good form, if, within 30 seconds, you moved 20 pounds for 15 reps, at the end of the set you will have moved a total of 300 pounds (20 pounds X 15 reps = 300 lbs).

Which of these sets will put the greatest demand on the body? Correct - the fair to good form set. Because a greater total amount of weight was moved within the same 30 second period.

The greater total amount is all your body cares about when it comes to building muscle. It strives to meet the greater total amount demand. It could care less about proper form. Muscles only respond to the demands associated with the form being used.

The most physically powerful and visually impressive guys in the gyms often prove my point with regard
to proper form. I personally cannot remember one huge guy standing firm on the "proper form" issue. Unless he was being forced to do so by the equipment he was working out on.

Personal trainers and trainer wanna-bes, on-the-other-hand, are often found on soap boxes with proper form speeches for everyone within earshot.

I think many of us would progress faster if we spent more time picking the weight up and putting it down. And less time pretending that form will be the decisive factor in our ultimate success or failure