Springtime is quickly approaching and you want to look fabulous when you step onto the beach, whether you’re that hunk of a man showing off new trunks or the woman proud of her newly found, eye popping bikini. Face, no matter who you are you want to look good and, when someone looks at you’re the eyes usually glance from top to bottom. If you were a coach, you’d be looking initially at leg strength, but hey, we’re not coaches, we’re average people. This means the eyes will go from the face to the shoulders and downward and, since perception is the name of the game, a knockout upper body will give a good first impression. How do we get it and get it more quickly?

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Let’s take notes: are your shoulders toned and your arms tight and fit? Is your physical, upper symmetry good? What about your posture? For men, this may not be as much of a problem since they tend to concentrate on the upper body first, but for women, this can be a huge problem because women generally tend to concentrate on the butt and leg areas first. But, no matter, we’re here to help rescue you.

There are lots of exercises to do and you do not need to do all of them every day, but you do need to be familiar with how they work. For push-pull exercises to work best, you first do one exercise and then, the other, without rest in between. After you finish the first set of each you can rest for a short period, no more than one minute.

It does not matter if you do the push exercise first or the pull, just begin with one and end with the other and, mix them in with your normal workout. The Push/Pull exercises are listed in the following table:

Pull Exercises
The pull exercises work the back muscles and some arm muscles that include: trapezius, rhomboid minor and major, posterior deltoid, latissimus dorsi and triceps. For each exercise do four sets of 10-12 repetitions. For the wide-grip pulldown exercise perform two sets of warmups, 10 reps each.

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Push Exercises
The push exercises work the chest muscles and some arm muscles that include: anterior deltoid, triceps, pectoralis major and minor, serratus anterior, trapezius, brachioradialis, biceps brachii, brachialis. For each exercise in this category perform 4 sets of 10-12 reps and, as with the wide-grip, for the DB chest press, perform two additional warmup sets, 12 reps each.

These exercises are described on the website, but there are some things you need to keep in mind. Train all body parts equally and often, i.e., add 1-2 exercises from each category each workout day. Whether you are building initially for size or just fitness, undertraining one group while over training another will give your upper body and imbalanced look. What is often overlooked is that this imbalance can occur around the joints. So, what happens? Overworked muscles shorten and become tighter while underworked muscles lengthen and become looser or lax. This can often lead to joint problems with ageing. Also, you can end up with rotator cuff injuries, lower-back problems, tendinitis, or stooped shoulders. Thus, work your muscles equally to maintain balance and don’t overload them too much. While it sounds simple enough, this is one reason you want well designed workout programs.

Be a Winner
One of the nice things about a push-pull split is that it trains your body so that you develop great functional strength that will translate into your everyday activities or athletic movements. Whether you’re opening a door or pushing off a lineman in a football game, you’re not just using your fingers/hands and your biceps, but your back rear delts, traps, rhomboids, obliques and lots of other muscles all at once. Best of all, you’ll develop great upper-body strength. And, because the program is so balanced, you can quickly determine where your weak or strong and balance everything out. After 4-6 weeks you should notice both increased strength and posture. Although you could do the exercises, at least 1-2 of them, they should not be done less than once per week to notice improvement. Many people do pushes one day and pulls the next, but you’ll get more out of the exercises if you perform a push and then a pull back and forth and, you can do the exercises more rapidly for time efficiency – something we all strive for.

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Some other interesting notes is to work your larger muscle groups first just in case you run out of workout time. If you find that happening, rest minimally (30 seconds between sets). To gain more muscle mass, reduce your repetition by 2 for each set and increase your weight, generally increase loads so that you can just perform 6-8 reps. If you want to go for a calorie burn do a push then, pull for suggested reps and sets with five minutes of cardio in between, not resting after the cardio as you do the next dual set of exercises. If you are more athletically inclined, opt for side-to-side hops, step-up jumps, or double-leg straddles (3 sets of 6 reps – these are speed-strength; SS exercises) between the push/pull sets. But, had better eat your Wheaties for those.

The routine would be push/pull – cardio/speed strength – push/pull – cardio/SS – push/pull – cardio/SS – push/pull. There is a max of one minute rest between sets. To complement this, perform ab exercises each day and a core strengthening exercise each day (you choose set/reps). Additionally, work in some pull ups. After about 4-6 weeks, adapt to a different add-program.

Are you having trouble getting motivated for your next workout? Let’s help you with that by introducing you to a very scary fact. The leading cause of death in the United States in 2016 was cardiovascular disease – 614, 348 deaths.

Generally, cardiovascular disease (CD) is thought of as a man’s affliction. However, per the American Heart Association, about 45% of all female deaths occur due to some form of CD. Although roughly 28% of men die within one year after a serious heart attack, almost double that amount of women, 45% die from the same cause.

As you may have guessed, your exercise regimen is a significant combatant to this disease, i.e., exercise is an important first step in CD prevention. But, exercise is not enough, you need to educate yourself about what CD is and how it affects your body. Although modern medicine can successfully diagnose, treat, and often cure a wide variety of diseases, it really is up to you to take the first step.

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The primary step is like that of fitness – take control of your nutrition, along with your personal habits and medical care.

What is cardiovascular disease?

The definition of cardiovascular disease is used such that it is an umbrella term that is used to identify a host of diseases that affect not only your heart, but your circulatory system as well. You are likely familiar with the more common ones, which include:

• Angina – a pain or discomfort in the chest;
• Atherosclerosis – the build-up of plaque on the inner walls of the arteries.
• Coronary Heart Disease – CHD affects the coronary arteries in the heart and is the most frequently occurring form of heart disease;
• Heart failure – this one develops slowly
• High Blood Pressure or Hypertension – this form of CD is called the silent killer, which is the excessive force of blood pumped by the heart against the walls of blood vessels and sadly is an ailment for a great many people; and
• Stroke – a lack of blood flow to the brain (this is a very serious health problem that can leave your partially paralyzed or worse);

It’s difficult sometimes to determine the cause of some of the above, but two issues seem to be the major cause. For example, smoking is a significant risk factor that appears to be a catalyst for CD. Smoking accelerates the oxidation of the cholesterol in your bloodstream so that it is deposited onto the walls of blood vessels at a faster rate. Thus, rather than the cholesterol being deposited a piece at a time as an image, it’s like spray painting a section of your arteries at a time. Women who smoke suffer more severe consequences than men.

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Another major factor contributing to CD is obesity. Are you overweight or severely overweight? This can be a problem, which, as you guessed, can also be helped by a good exercise program. Obesity can help facilitate the onset of type II diabetes in adults. As compared to smoking, a woman with diabetes is at much greater risk than a man for developing complication from CD. Examples include stroke, congestive heart failure, other cardiovascular problems, and peripheral vascular disease. Compared to men, women that have diabetes are at an increased risk of having heart attacks so, pump the iron, hit the trail, or get on those treadmills ladies. Following a heart attack, women are also at risk for performing poorly during procedures such as bypass surgery and angioplasty. Don’t get caught on the short end of the stick with this problem because it is potentially deadly.

High blood pressure is another contributing factor in cardiovascular disease because it’s part of the metabolic syndrome (raised blood pressure, abdominal obesity, insulin resistance). Again, women must be more aware of the importance of monitoring their blood pressure and maintaining a more regimented contact with their doctors to ensure they are taking any proper medications and doing all the risk reduction strategies that will help keep their high blood pressure under control.

A very important factor is your state of mind so, relieve stress as much as you can. Although cholesterol and smoking may not be independent factors of this problem, stress and depression are often significant contributors to developing coronary artery disease. Depression is a very real enemy because people who are depressed have an increased risk of both a first cardiac event and subsequent ones and are more likely to die sooner, as well as to suffer further cardiovascular complications.

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How to Reduce the Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

The best way is one of our missions – you must develop an exercise program and maintain it because your life may depend on it. Exercise is extremely important in this issue. Thirty minutes a day is what is required in the gym, on the trail, or wherever you may workout. This amount of time will not give you the body of a fine-tuned athlete, but it can keep the enemy outside the gates. And, you can even break down the exercise time into 2-3 different segment to make up the total 30 minutes. Your major goal is to make sure you do your exercises.

The key to all of this is to educate yourself about the risk factors involved and the importance of them. This will help you plan risk-reduction strategies that will help you. Following your education, you need to implement preventive maintenance – see your doctor regularly and exercise daily. In a nutshell, keep your cholesterol in check, keep your blood pressure under control, watch your diet, and exercise!

If you could bottle your self-discipline and put it on the market, what would it look like? Well, this is what you need to do to make your fitness a habit. If you want to make both a positive and permanent change in your healthy lifestyle, persistence will prevent you from turning back. But, so many are confused about what to do first.

Let’s look at a basic fact – as you get older, your metabolism slows down and you’ll generally slowly gain weight, about a pound per year or more. During this same time your metabolism will slow as well, but that’s another story. Thus, your slow weight gain is not immediately noticeable until one day you cannot quite squeeze into those tight jeans or your body no longer looks like it should in your new bikini. How did this happen? Not to me; it happens to everyone else! How wrong you are. It’s now time to put your combat gear on and get to work.
Steps to Better Fitness:

STEP 1
The first thing you need to do is change your eating habits, not to a drastic diet or anything, but to simply eat healthy without all the fried, fatty foods or sugar. Watch your portion size and, while you should not be a calorie counter, you need to at least know basically how many calories you need based on your activity and how many you’re eating each day. You cannot go back to eating foods that made you gain weight in the first place. Remember the basic rule of how many calories you need daily – multiply your body weight times 10 then, add 200 calories. This does not include a daily exercise routine so, if you want to weigh 125 pounds you would need 1,450 calories per day.

This step includes watching out for fad diets. Why? Fad diets do not change eating habits; they are short term and temporary. You must mentally and physically adjust your eating habits. You can find out all about this on this website under the nutrition section. First learn something about basic nutrition by reading this website, magazines, talking to others who are more knowledgeable, and forming a plan about how to proceed. Within that plan, cut out all sugar for the first two weeks. You’ll lose at least 10 pounds from this simple step, if not more. Why are we suggesting starting with your nutrition first? The answer is simple – if you do not change your eating habits, working out may not be able to help you lose the weight you want to lose without spending great amounts of time in the gym. And face it, most people have a difficult time just getting to the gym, let alone spending hours there to burn off fat they built up from eating a poor diet. Thus, address your nutrition first. Start eating healthy foods and on Sunday, before that busy work week, take the time to make foods for breakfast that are readily available for those days you know you will be on the go. After you get a handle on your nutrition, you’re ready for step 2.

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STEP 2
This is a simple step – start on your fitness training. Do not think of looking like Mrs. or Mr. Universe initially. The first goal is just to begin. And, surprisingly there are only 3 small steps: (1) pick a time that works for you to exercise; (2) choose simple exercises at first that you know how to do – I suggest walking, jogging, biking, swimming – something that just gets you going; from as simple as a 1-2 mile walk around the park to 30 minutes on the treadmill; and (3) slowly increase your intensity, which means to slowly increase the amount of weight you are lifting or reduce the amount of time spent on the same distance ran, walked, or jogged.

The drawback here is that doing too much at first will generally increase soreness drastically since you may have been inactive for a while. I’ll tell you a short story. I had a friend who begged me to let him come work out with me and I continually invited him. He got news of an upcoming high-school reunion and it motivated him to finally showed up with his son. I wrote them a list of several exercises to do that they know how to perform. One of the exercises was a bench press. They both were told to specifically not lift heavy since they had not been to a gym for several years. However, they saw me benching 405 pounds and their immediate reaction was to complete. I scolded them lightly, but they didn’t listen. Long story short, about two-days later, they were both so sore they could hardly move as they had also competed in back squats. The moral of the story is you do not need to compete with anyone except yourself. The gym is always there when you’re ready to go thus, begin slowly and as you get into better shape you can pick up the pace without the number-one drawback to working out of becoming too sore. So many do this and don’t go back to the gym again. Be persistent and do not be one of those people. On to the next step.

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STEP 3
Just like with your nutrition, learn all you can. Set a goal for your fitness. For example, plan to jog 2 miles in 14 minutes, run a half marathon, maybe you want to bench press your body weight, compete in a CrossFit challenge, or enter a fitness and figure contest. There are so many goals you could set.

Once you set your goals, tell your friends, tell people at the gym, post it on your Facebook, Twitter, or other social media site. Why? Because if you do this, it will put pressure on you to perform and others will be counting on you. It will help you become more persistent. Before you realize it, the nutrition change, getting started in your fitness program and setting a goal will be rewarded with renewed drive and energy as you see the pounds begin to melt slowly away and you start to develop the kind of body you’ve been wanting.

Make the Changes Permanent
You must make these three steps a habit. Be relentless in your pursuit. You have taken your career, job, and life seriously. Now, it is time to take your fitness seriously. You should not think of it as a drag but, an adventure. Choose foods and exercises you enjoy. Get rid of the majority of sugars and carbohydrates and begin detoxing after years of poor nutrition. While diet is a huge part of the process it’s not about the diet, it’s about healthy eating. Try growing your own herbs and or small garden to get you more motivated and help you relieve stress. Pay attention to the calories you need and how many you take in, but do not be a calorie counter or scale watcher. What matters most is how you feel about yourself and the way you look. Also, listen to your body – it will tell you when you’re full so, stop; it will tell you when it’s so sore or fatigued that the exercise you’re doing is aggravating a joint or muscle so, stop that exercise and do something else. Just don’t be a dietary killjoy. When on the go and eating out, make sensible choices – no fat fried foods and no sugar drinks!

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Carpe diem
Seize the day – make this your motto. Every second you have is precious and you must take control of them for, when they are gone you cannot get them back. This does not mean you need to let your calendar manage you, but that you are in control and you have set a specific time for important daily activities – your personal fitness should be one of them! Plan your meals ahead of time and plan your workouts. Get a program and follow it, just like a recipe. Try the workout programs from MyHealthandFitness – they will be geared specifically for you and they are scientifically based for results.

Seize your workout time. Research shows that early morning, lunch-time, or directly after work are some of the best times to exercise for most people. This does not mean they are best for you; only you can determine that so – do it! Find your best time and be persistent.

Mix up your workouts in the time you have chosen: walking, stairs, running, resistance, elliptical, and so forth. Once your workout is complete your body will have relieved some stress and you’ll feel rejuvenated. Enter some walk-a-thons for causes such as cancer, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, or other cause. You’ll be fit enough to do them and you can meet new friends. Learn as much as you can and if all else fails initially, work with an instructor or a master. Someone who will give no quarter on what is expected, an example is our founder, a trainers trainer, who has been often called the ‘bastard’ of the campus – what is given and what is expected is high and there is no mercy, only doing it. The point is, every gym has trainers and they will be willing to help you get started, more importantly they can keep you motivated initially because those first couple of months are so important.

In summary: get your nutrition under control, begin your fitness program, set a goal for your fitness and tell others (a lot of them), make the changes permanent and seize the day regarding your time and persistence.

Have you ever gotten ready for work and found the only thing in your cupboard was a box of Fruit Loops or Cocoa Puffs? So, you ate a bowl full and a few hours later got that early morning sugar crash. It’s a bigger deal than you think because for anyone trying to lose fat/weight, sugar is the enemy of weight loss.

The primary source of weight gain, other than lack of exercise, is sugar intake at the wrong time, and in too large a quantity. Yes, that cola, ice cream, or large plate of pasta you may be eating right now. Not all sugar is bad, but it should be eaten in moderation. Let’s explain it in lay terms. Because of the effects of sugar and other forms of carbohydrates on blood-sugar levels, we shall refer to insulin for illustration of this concept, which is a hormone produced by the beta cells of the pancreas, as the insulin level. This is because of the general appearance of the blood sugar level as it rises and falls in response to sugar intake and insulin release has a cyclic appearance.

The key is to be able to manipulate both insulin and glucagon to help you lose fat. I know many of you lean, mean, workout machine junkies may care less about body-fat reduction. While fitness junkies are already there, for a great many this is a big problem.

The segment of the population that have a fat or weight loss problem far outnumber the fitness junkies among us. This group is more concerned about losing love handles and belly fat from a recent pregnancy than how much weight to add to the next set. Even though many will admit they are overweight due to lack of exercise and overeating, they still desire to have a better body and fitness level.

With a constant on-the-go lifestyle, it is difficult to plan to always have good nutrition and so we become not fitness, but fast-food junkies. The gold standard for gaining weight. If you need eat out frequently, remember two things: (1) make wise choices for food consumption; and (2) eliminate sugar in those choices. Sugar is your enemy!

There are hundreds of diets and workout programs claiming they will eliminate your body fat while allowing you to enjoy your favorite foods. Surprisingly, quite a few of them work ‘IF’ you strictly adhere to their guidelines and remain disciplined with sensible calorie intake combined with exercise.

So, what’s a person to do who is attempting to maximally lose body fat? You must maintain your blood-sugar level between 70 mg/dl and 110 mg/dl. This is key to use insulin and glucagon in your favor and if you do this you will burn more fat. Biologically, it comes down to your body’s ability to regulate the two hormones insulin and glucagon in relation to your dietary intake.

How Insulin and Glucagon Affect Fat Storage
At this point, I’m going to need to get just a little technical for you to understand how and why the process works.

Insulin increases the synthesis of glycogen in the liver and the movement of glucose from the bloodstream into body cells.

How is blood sugar level controlled? The pancreas works with the liver to perform this task. When you begin eating, the pancreas releases small amounts of insulin. When a lot of glucose (sugar in lay terms) enters the bloodstream, the pancreas releases more insulin. This insulin stimulates the liver to synthesize glycogen, the storage form of glucose, i.e., your ‘cell sugar’ in the body, and stimulates adipose (fat) cells, muscle cells, and other cells to increase glucose uptake. By triggering both glucose storage in the liver and glucose movement from the bloodstream into various types of cells, insulin keeps glucose from rising too high in the blood. Individuals that have diabetes understand how critical and important this is. The take away is that as you eat more sugar, more insulin is produced and more fat cells are stimulated to take up more glucose. When this happens, i.e., the cells are full of glucose, you simply build and store more fat. Burning that fat will not happen naturally by your systems since it is overloaded as it were with sugar.

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Bear with me as I attempt to explain the insulin level and glucagon secretion in lay terms. The insulin level is a representative norm for a diabetic or healthy individual who doesn’t eat too much sugar or large portions of carbohydrates at one time. Insulin levels, referred to as your blood-sugar level, typically fluctuate a little. By keeping these levels steady, it is almost impossible to gain weight or put fat on the body! And, you can do this if you don’t over eat carbohydrates and indulge in too many sweets. Insulin is secreted by the beta cells of the pancreas when your blood sugar levels are high. So, following a meal that contains mostly high sugar, rapidly digested carbohydrates, your blood-sugar level may skyrocket far past the desired level of 110 mg/dl. This will facilitate storage of glucose (blood sugar) in the muscle tissues and especially fat cells.

Tip: Limit yourself to no more than 35 grams of carbohydrates per serving then, you can keep from spiking your insulin level past 110 mg/dl.

Glucagon secretion, commonly referred to as the Glucagon Cycle, is the cycle in your body that is responsible for burning or metabolizing fat already stored on your body. Glucagon is a hormone made by the pancreas that stimulates the breakdown of glycogen in the liver into glucose, which increases blood glucose. Glucagon is secreted by the alpha cells of the pancreas when blood sugar is low. This primarily occurs between meals and when exercising. Glucagon causes the liver to release stored energy into circulation.

When the correct types of food are eaten in combination, glucagon works with insulin levels and both are in normal parameters to help you maintain a strong, healthy body that has less fat on it.

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What happens when you eat a large portion of complex carbohydrates such as bread or pasta, or simple carbohydrates such as a coke, candy bar, or ice cream? The result is a spiked insulin level. For example, drinking a regular coke (typically 180 calories or 45 grams of carbs) creates a spiked insulin level for about 2-4 hours or more. The more sugar you eat, the longer the spiked level will remain. The effect can become more pronounced for persons 35 years old and older. Also, increased amounts of sugar usage will increase cholesterol in the blood. When the insulin level begins to fall, you will notice the ‘crash’ that is typically exhibited as drowsiness or sluggishness. You know, you’ve experienced it, that early morning crash you got from eating that cinnamon roll, donut, or sugar frosted corn flakes!

Eating large amounts of sugar or carbohydrates causes a double whammy. It will both spike the insulin level and cause an immediate depression of your fat burning metabolism, which makes it impossible, during the period of the spiked cycle, for your body to burn or metabolize stored fat. Thus, you’ll end up gaining unwanted pounds. Also, the intake of alcohol, since it is high in sugar, is even more exacerbated because the alcohol serves as the body’s immediate energy source leaving the sugar to be stored as fat as well.

Again, I am not implying that you cannot eat sugar. It’s okay to celebrate the birthday or have a nice dessert once or twice a week. But, if you’re drinking 3 to 5 cans of soda per day, reduce it to one can or so every 2 to 3 days. Besides, these kinds of foods have minimal nutritional value and do little for your overall health when eaten in larger portions, which is in addition to the effects discussed here. Use sugar as a reward for hard work. It is very appropriate to drink something such as grape juice (4 to 8 ounces), about 20 to 30 minutes prior to your workout. For those who wish a more detailed, technical description of this process, it is included, along with graphs for a visual effect in Appendix 2.

Tip: Eat complex carbohydrates in smaller meals throughout the day. This will lessen the chance of a spiked insulin level and allow more of your food and stored fat to be burned as energy, giving you the healthy body you desire and keep your insulin level down.

Essentially, insulin and glucagon work in balance – insulin increases, glucagon decreases, and vice versa. Insulin promotes storing energy and manufacturing proteins, while glucagon promotes the release of stored energy, both glucose and fatty acids.

The big take away is that keeping your blood glucose level in check, i.e., below 110 mg/dl, will not only help, but cause your body to consistently burn more stored fat. A good diet with adequate protein and carbohydrate sources will minimize insulin spikes, increase glucagon, and ultimately promote less fat storage. Therefore, to optimize fat reduction, it all reverts to the basics – eat properly and exercise regularly. Remember to pay closer attention to the diet component to maintain an optimal blood-sugar level since it can facilitate more fat burning throughout your day.

Tip: Eliminate sugar from your diet for 2 weeks, while eating general carbohydrates sparingly and you will lose at minimum 10-12 pounds. Some clients have lost as much as 18 pounds in 2 weeks without exercise.

Note:
Illustrations of the effects of high carb intake on blood sugar levels are shown below.
In the first graph, you can observe that high-carb/sugar meals drastically increase your blood-sugar level (top two lines) from the norm (bottom two lines). So, eat less carbs/sugars at one time.

In the second graph, you can see that glucagon is optimal or in lay terms, your fat burning cycle operates at full efficiency with a low carb meal (blue line), but is drastically reduced and becomes inefficient in fat burning with a high carb meal (pink line).