What’s up fat-haters?  Hope everyone is having a great Halloween weekend.  I know I am – my Iowa Hawkeyes came back from a miserable first 3 quarters to beat Indiana and remain unbeaten…also, I think the cheerleaders have shortened up their uniforms since I graduated (see below).  Plus, I just put the finishing touches on my Halloween costume for tonight’s party.

I’m not going to reveal who or what I’m going as, but let’s just say you’ll appreciate it if you’re a Big Lebowski fan.  I’ll try to post some pics tomorrow…should be a pretty crazy night and that’s okay because I worked my butt off all week long to burn off a couple more pounds of fat (trying to get down to around 4% body fat for the membership site launch).

Anyways, I wanted to hook you up with a quick post here before I go get ready for the big party…oh, and before that I’m going to hand out whey protein shakes to all the trick-or-treaters.  Kidding, I don’t want to be known as the creepy health freak in the neighborhood…it’s bad enough that my neighbors asked me if my parents were home when I first moved in…guess I have a pretty youthful look thanks to the fitness lifestyle

So I spend a lot of time coaching you on advanced fat loss techniques that you should start implementing to help you lose fat and build lean muscle faster than traditional methods that 99% of people are using.  Today, let’s focus on what you shouldn’t be doing.  Here’s a list of 4 common mistakes I see almost everyone making when they’re trying to lose fat and get tone.

Avoid these 4 mistakes if you want a lean and tone body:

1) Overdoing the slow, steady-state cardio.  It’s been embedded in our brains since we first knew what body fat was, that you have to do lots of cardio to lose stubborn fat.  Although standard cardio sessions do burn a fair amount of calories during the session, they don’t do much for burning calories (and therefore extra body fat) the next 12-72 hours.  Hardcore interval training will do a much better job of fighting fat around the clock, plus it takes a lot less time to do.

The only case where I use moderate intensity cardio is if I want to add a lil extra calorie burning to my weight training and interval sessions for the week, but my legs are shot from the weights and intervals.  This is an easy way to expand your caloric deficit, while letting your muscles (legs, especially) recover from the more demanding workouts…which should of course be the foundation of your fat loss plan.

2) Doing your cardio BEFORE weight training.  I can see where people get confused – it sounds like good reasoning to assume that if fat loss is your primary goal, you should place the greatest emphasis on cardio, right?

Nope and here’s why…strength training requires maximum energy and intensity to produce significant results.  Therefore, it’s important that you attack your weight training workouts when you’re fresh and able to put in maximum effort.

Also, studies have shown that doing cardio AFTER weight training results in significantly more fat burning.  The main reason for this is most likely due to the fact that weight training eats up stored glycogen…so when you hit up your cardio session, the only ‘fuel’ left to burn is fat.  This is a good thing.

3) Lifting light weights for high reps.  Again, it’s easy to see why people come to the conclusion that heavy weights will make you look bulky and light weights will help you look tone.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is no such thing as ‘toning a muscle.’  You can either build muscle, maintain muscle or lose muscle…but ‘toning’ doesn’t exist.

*You can do certain things to promote greater muscle tension/tightness, especially while at rest, and I’ll be doing a post about this in the future…but it’s my general understanding that most people who talk about lifting to get “toned muscles” are referring to the low body fat, fitness model look…in which case you generally still need to increase muscle size and decrease body fat.

I still use the term once in a while because it’s been used inappropriately for so long that people who are going for the lean and tone look don’t want to hear that we’re going to be ‘adding muscle.’  They don’t understand that looking lean and tone is just a matter of adding the right amount of muscle mass (not overdoing it), combined with achieving a low body fat percentage.

To add lean muscle – which most of us NEED to do – you must challenge the muscles by lifting heavy weights or by lifting moderate weights and mixing in advanced training techniques, like my explosive eccentric training tactic.  I recommend going both heavy and advanced for maximum muscle building and fat burning effects.

4) Skipping protein or amino acids before workouts.  The goal of working our butts off to burn body fat is so that we’ll look lean, tone and sexy – not skinny, weak, soft and lacking symmetry.  For this reason, it’s muy importante (I think that’s Spanish for ‘very important’) to prevent muscle breakdown as much as possible, both during cardio and weight training.

By feeding your body amino acids before your workouts, you’ll be effectively ‘hating’ on potential muscle breakdown for energy (also a good thing).  I recommend taking 4-6 grams of amino acids or slamming a 20-30 gram whey protein shake within 15 minutes prior to any cardio or strength training workout.

*If you’re a mesomorph or could care less about potentially losing muscle mass, however, then you’re free to rock the morning cardio sessions on an empty stomach.

The post-workout meal/snack is even more important and should contain a carb:protein mix to maximize skeletal muscle synthesis (building bigger muscles), while preventing muscle catabolism (the breakdown of muscle tissue).  This post-workout nutrition is certainly worthy of an entire post itself, so stay tuned for that bad boy in the near future.

There are many more mistakes that people make unknowingly when they’re trying to to tone-up and shed body fat…but these 4 are among the most common and most detrimental mistakes that could be holding you back.  If any of these apply to you…you know what to do

Let’s wrap this baby up with a lil bit of humor.  I heard this joke the other day and cracked up…it’s so true.

A woman walks up to a lil old man rocking in a chair on his porch.  She says:  “I couldn’t help but notice how happy you look.”  “What’s your secret for a long, happy life?”

“I smoke 3 packs of cigarettes a day he says.”  “I also drink a case of whiskey a week, eat fatty foods and never exercise.”

“That’s amazing,” the woman says.  “How old are you?”

“Twenty-six,” he said.

Haha, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.  In the comments section below, be sure to drop me a line and let me know if you’re making any of these mistakes.  Talk soon…

Your Fat Loss Coach,

Brad Campbell

Here are 5 awesome reasons interval cardio will change your body fast and make you colder than a polar bear’s toenails (now that’s cool)….

1) It’s quicker. If you are constantly reassuring yourself you’re too busy to workout…and if 45 minutes sounds like an eternity to commit to exercise, then start working out for 7 minutes using high intensity intervals.

I won’t bore you with technical research that backs up this recommendation. Instead, I’ll just say I’ve maintained a single digit body fat percentage working out as little as 7-11 minutes 3-4 times per week using interval-based training!

If you think this sounds too good to be true and there has to be a catch, let me say that this will be pretty much the most uncomfortable 7ish minutes of your life.

The key is INTENSITY and extremely short rest periods, which force you to repeat these demanding ’rounds’ over and over again when you’re nowhere near ready to be doing them. The bright side is as soon as you start, you only have a few minutes left

2) Mental toughness.  You’re probably starting to see a theme to my workouts- challenging, intense, efficient, effective and confidence-building! It’s hard to explain until you’ve actually done it….but, pushing yourself way past your comfort level really changes the way you view life.

All of a sudden that annoying phone call you have to make Monday afternoon is a piece of cake because your brain becomes programmed to conquer these challenges that are thrown at you.

You realize that nothing you do in a given day is near as hard as the workout you put your body through and this really opens you up to becoming more productive and positive in other aspects of life.  That’s a pretty sweet secondary effect to working out if you ask me….

3) More fat loss. Again, intervals do a nice job of burning calories and fat during a workout, but the really cool thing is the calories and fat this type of training burns up after you finish the workout.

I compare this to making money while you’re not actually at work. Wouldn’t you like to lose body fat while you’re at home hanging out with the fam, watching a movie? Intervals done the right way will grant you this luxury.

4) Won’t STRIP lean muscle. Because interval training is generally performed in short, intense spurts of 30 sec to a couple of minutes….you are actually working your body in a way that favors muscle growth.

This type of anaerobic training is very similar to weight training. Also, because the duration is much shorter, you will be less likely to burn valuable muscle tissue for energy. On the other hand, long, slow-paced cardio workouts can strip your body of metabolism boosting muscle mass (think marathon runners) if you overdo it.

5) Keeps things refreshing. Intervals can be performed in so many different ways, making it ideal for anyone who is bored with their standard exercise regimen.

My favorites include sprinting, explosive jumps, shadow boxing with dumbbells and using the ‘old-school’ exercise bikes (the ones with moving handles to work the upper body as well).  Any activity you can think to do HARD for a short duration, follow with a rest period and repeat several times…works great.

If you’re new to interval training, start slow and perform the ‘working’ part of the interval workout at about 60% effort. After 2 weeks, increase this to 70%, and so on until you can perform the intervals at near 100% effort.

I recommend using intense intervals in conjunction with total body (highly metabolic) weight training workouts and 1 or 2 standard (slow and steady) cardio sessions for a comprehensive, “body fat can kiss your new and improved skinny butt goodbye” exercise program.

For an exact outline of how to schedule your weekly workouts for best results, just check out this video:  weight loss workouts.

Okay, so having said all of that…is high intensity interval training the ONLY way to go for EVERYONE out there?  Absolutely not.  There are still major benefits associated with long, slow cardio workouts that cannot be matched with interval training.

On top of that, intense interval training is just not practical for everyone.  True beginners, extremely overweight people, those with certain injuries and others who really enjoy the more traditional (long and slow) cardio workouts….all would be best suited to stay with the slow-go cardio.

For everyone else, however, make sure interval training becomes a staple in your overall exercise program!

Dr. Brad Campbell

P.S. BE COOL!