Stop me when you notice that your gym story is pretty close to this – You’ve been training hard for weeks, maybe even months. You started with great intentions of losing weight, toning up and being healthier. And 3 or 4 months later you find that nothing has changed. Unfortunately for most of us, falling into this trap is far too easy. Any of you who follow my posts will know that I’m an avid follower of good nutrition, as this is THE key cog of any exercise plan. You are what you eat. Eat good food, you’ll look good. Eat total crap, and you’ll look like total crap. Simples.
But what if your nutrition is good, and yet there is still no change in your body shape? This is where most people fall off the bandwagon, blaming genetics or some other reason for it. The truth is that there is no problem with genetics here. While genetics play a big role in how fast you can strip body fat, there is no reason that genes can stop you totally transforming your body within 6 – 8 weeks. For a lot of you, the following workout will probably be pretty close to what you’re doing at the moment.
Exercise
Warm Up
5 – 10 minutes on some piece of cardio equipment
Cardio
15 - 20 minutes on one or a few cardio machines
Weights
25 – 35 minutes of weights for the whole body
Abs
5 – 10 minutes abs/lower back work
Cool down
5 – 10 minutes on some piece of cardio equipment
Is the workout a bad one? No, in fact all the components of it are quite good. If this is something close to your plan, you’re definitely on the right track. So with this plan in place, and your nutrition being pretty good, why aren’t you looking like a Greek god ready for the beach? The answer lies in the structure of this program. Like most others, I used to do something similar to this plan. And like others, I grew sullen and frustrated at not improving my physique fast enough. To understand why this structure doesn’t work well regarding fast results, we need to look at the energy systems required for 2 phases, the cardio and the weights. These two phases are the two that require manipulation to fast track your results. That’s not to say that a good warm up, cool down and abdominal work aren’t important. They are very much important, but not quite as important regarding speeding up your results.
The main energy supply for weights is glycogen, which is the stored form of carbohydrate in the body. Glycogen also works as the main form of energy for high intense cardio sessions. However, in times of carb depletion the body will more readily turn to fat for energy.
Therefore, if you do about 45 minutes of weights straight after your workout, your body will burn up a lot of glycogen. Within a matter of minutes of finishing your weights, jump onto the treadmill, bike, rower or any other form of doing cardio and do a 10 minute session at a very high intensity. Your body will want to use glycogen for energy. The problem for your body is that after your weights session, there will not be enough glycogen readily available to supply your body. What does your body turn to? Fat, your body will burn up fat as its main energy source rather than glycogen. One small change to your exercise regime will make one big change to your physique.
Will this work for everyone? In theory yes, but in practice no. If your diet is high in carbs, depleting carbs through your workout isn’t really going to make a difference when you just replace all those carbs again later. However, keep your diet to at least a moderate level of carbs and your results should start coming at a much faster rate. This always begs the question of “what is moderate carbs?” For a longer, detailed answer than I can provide here, just head over to my article on low carbs at http://collegetimes.com/low-carbs-a-how-to-guide/
I hope this was helpful, as always any questions can be fired at me via email or facebook! Stay healthy guys!
Written by Maurice Walsh, BSc of Exercise and Health Studies
About the author
Maurice works as a personal trainer and lifestyle transformation coach at The Gym, Rathgar. He also works as a physique model. To get in contact with Maurice regarding training and nutrition go to www.facebook.com/totaltransformationfitness
To follow Maurice on Facebook, visit www.facebook.com/maurice.walsh87
