This is Why You're Not Building Muscle

"Well, I got my butt kicked, so I'd say the workout was great!"

I can't stand it when I hear this, even if it's immediately after one of my classes that I teach. I would say that I hear a statement similar to this AT LEAST once per day, and at this point it kinda just goes in one ear and out the other. But at first, oh at first it drove me crazy.

What's so wrong with a butt-kicking workout?

Hehe.

Nothing is wrong with a butt-kicking workout at all. It's not the workout that's the problem. It's the approach to the workout that's the problem.

Or lack thereof.

Most of the time, people appreciate a butt-kicking workout because they feel exhausted and their clothes are drenched in sweat. Which usually means they worked hard and they burned some 300 or so calories. 

Whoopdie freaking doo. 

Here's a thought. When you set out on your fitness journey, did you tell yourself, "ok, my goal for the next 6 months is to get my butt kicked three times per week"? Absolutely not. I really hope not. Your goal was most likely along the lines of, "I wan't to have a six pack", "I wan't to lose 10 lbs of body fat", or "I want to gain 1/4 inch of muscle on each of my arms." You had a "why" to your "what" that meant something significant to you. 

It's easy to lose sight of a "why" (the why is your purpose) with a bunch of butt-kicking workouts that only serve one purpose: burning calories. 

For the sake of this article, I want to keep things on one track, the track that I know most about, and it's building muscle. 

If you're going to the gym each and every day, mindlessly lifting weights with no strategic approach, no prior research on how to properly train, etc., building rock-hard muscle can (most likely WILL) be extremely difficult. 

I want to break this down into two different aspects of fitness since I'm both a functional fitness instructor as well as a bodybuilding style enthusiast. 

Functional Fitness

When you sign up for a class at your local functional fitness gym, you most likely have no clue what body parts the instructor is going to have you train. THAT'S OK. 

So the question is, how do you adjust and make sure that the workout assigned to you for the day lines up with the goals that you have?

Well, going frequently is going to be your first bet. The more often you attend, the higher the chance of working your entire body each week. 

When you are in class, then what? How should you approach the workout? 

MUSCLE ACTIVATION

That is the answer. Activating your muscle fibers with every single exercise is the key to lean muscle tissue growth.

I tell my students in class almost every single day. SQUEEZE. I want their focus to be on how they can best squeeze and stretch the designated muscle group in order to promote the best possible stimulation which can ultimately lead to growth. I would much rather have them grab slightly heaver weights, do slightly slower, more controlled reps rather than grab light weights and do 30 repetitions in the given amount of time. It's too easy for form to get sloppy and take attention off the primary muscle group if you're racing to get 30 reps in 20 seconds.

But it all depends on the workout. If your instructor has given you a workout full of supersets with chest, back, shoulder, arm, and leg exercises, then you've struck gold. If your instructor has given you a workout with box jumps, plyos, agility ladders, and other forms of interval cardio, no worries there either! You've just completed a cardio session for the week, and you didn't have to come up with the workout on your own!

Let's say you get one of those cardio workouts, and you've got another muscle group left to work that week, what to do now?

Resistance Training

If your functional fitness gym has an open gym time, or you belong to a separate gym with weights, machines, etc., it's time to put some work in.

"You mean like, butt-kicking work?"

Well, no. Eh, yes, kind of. Butt-kicking in the sense of your muscles are absolutely screaming and full of blood by the end of it, rather than your lungs begging for air.

Let's say you've worked everything but your biceps and triceps for the week, so you're headed to the gym, pre-workout in hand, ready to blow up your arms.

"But Adam, what are you suggesting that I do different from my usual arm day?"

Solid question. Remember what I said earlier about squeezing? Yeah, that's all I need you to do. One of the biggest reasons people plateau with their muscle building is because they don't have any mind-muscle connection (they don't squeeze).

I'll put some real world application to this so it makes more sense. Let's take a staple exercise for bicep growth, the barbell bicep curl.

You find your hand placement, grab the bar, get your core and back in position, and begin curling. Rep 1,2,3,4... It begins to burn a little.

Just a little, though. We want that arm pumped and full of blood.

Let's address the common mindset when it comes to lifting weights. It usually goes like this: If I lift the weight, it will activate and work my muscle. So if I lift the bar, it will activate my biceps.

We need to flip that upside down.

From now on, think about it this way: I am going to flex my bicep, which will cause the weight to move in order to complete the curl. Always flex your muscle BEFORE you begin the movement. As you go through the motion, don't think about moving the bar up with your hands, think about moving the bar up by squeezing your biceps even harder. Your hands just happen to be holding the bar. 

It's magic.

After using this tactic, you'll be able to command so many more muscle fibers to work and it will spark growth that you've never experienced before. 

Regardless of where you're at, on a machine or in a class, always be thinking about the activation of your muscle rather than the movement itself. The movement will take care of itself as long as the muscle is doing the work.

Use this tip, and send me a message or email (adam@poehlmannfitness.com) letting me know how it worked out for you. Remember, muscle growth and maintenance is top priority for a lean, great looking physique. 

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Thanks for reading!

Build Muscle or Burn Fat: Which Should Come First?

Over this past week I have been meeting with potential clients at the coffee shop close to my place. It's a great spot to build relationships and have great conversations. During those conversations, I noticed a lot of questions were shared between the various people I was speaking with. One of the most common questions asked was: "If my goal is to build lean muscle tissue, should I try to build muscle first, or lose body fat first?"

My immediate answer is this: It depends. It depends on what your ideal body is, where you're starting, and whether you're male or female. Having said that, I am going to speak for the male readers out there. Don't worry ladies, all of this applies to you as well, just round up 7-8 percentage points when I'm speaking of body fat percentage. 

Now, I want to take the time to explain how you can figure out what to do first on your fitness journey. 

Starting Points

All of our starting points are different. We have different genetics, different body compositions, and different goals. So in order to properly assess the best initial goal, we need to first figure out where we're at with our body composition. Figuring out what goal to attack first is dependent on the individuals starting body fat percentage. For the sake of the topic, I'd like to use 15% body fat as a good place for middle ground. If I'm looking to gain lean muscle tissue, I must first accept that there will most likely be a little extra fat put on during that phase, although It is possible to burn fat and build muscle at the same time, especially when you are just starting an exercise program for the first time. But for those of us out there who have been training for a while, it is an extremely hard goal unless you are counting each and every calorie, which can be hard with busy schedules, kids, travel, "lack of time", etc. 

Once we have accepted that some fat may be added to the pounds on the scale, we can now properly assess the direction we must take. If we start out at a lower body fat percentage (lower than 15%) I would strongly consider building muscle, since we won't get close to that 20% range which is what we want to avoid. Going off of that, we would aim to burn fat first if our body fat was 15% or higher because 20% body fat is not where we want to be if our goal is to be lean and healthy. 

Ultimately, it comes down to knowing what body fat percentage we currently have. There's a question that still stands, though. Why do we need to avoid 20% body fat? Why can't we just get to 20-25% and work our way down? Let me explain.

TAKE CAUTION

As I stated before, 20% body fat is what we want to avoid because it is easier to let yourself go and not worry about the additional fat gained. It's harder to see that fat gain because there isn't any initial muscle tissue to look at anyway. You could be at 30% body fat before you know it. 

LEAN DOESN'T MEAN SMALL OR SKINNY

When I started leaning out for the first time, I was absolutely terrified. I was at my biggest and strongest at that point. I had nearly 240 pounds on me and I felt great about it. I knew I had a decent amount of body fat at the time, but I wasn't concerned, really. As I got leaner and leaner, people kept saying that I was looking bigger, that my muscles looked fuller, and I was more vascular. People told me stories of others looking bigger as they leaned down and I thought it was complete garbage. How could I possibly look leaner if I was losing weight? Muscles. That's why. I began to see the muscles that I had developed over the years and they looked bigger without all of that fat around them. Now that I'm in a stage of maintenance with plenty of food and a lean composition, people are saying I look bigger and leaner than ever. I'm only 212-215 pounds on a 6'2" frame, which isn't anything jaw-dropping. 

Additionally, it's extremely difficult to gauge what we want to gain because we can't actually see what our lean muscle mass actually looks like under all of that fat. If you have 25% body fat, you may want to gain 10 pounds of lean muscle, but I am willing to bet that if you see yourself at 10-15% body fat, you'll be pretty happy with what you're workin' with. 

To conclude, burning fat first is always a good option, unless you're completely new to working out and your body can handle two things at once, or you body fat is low and you can visually see your lean muscle mass. 

If you have any questions like this, please send me an email at adam@poehlmannfitness.com, or send me a message after you "like", and follow me on the socials!

Thanks for reading!

Real Talk on the Fasted Cardio Topic

If you've ever wanted to lose body fat but didn't quite understand how to approach it, I'm sure at one point or another you've gone straight to Google to figure out how to get the job done. Upon searching time and time again, you may have learned about certain forms of cardio such as steady-state cardio, high intensity interval training, as well as fasted cardio. 

Many humans have a tendency to take the short and easy route a lot of the time. It's relatively painless, and requires very little effort, comparatively. In this article, I want to discuss the potential (keyword: potential) benefits of fasted cardio, as well as the consequences if not executed correctly.

SO YOU WANT TO LOSE FAT FAST

Don't we all? Hitting any sort of goal in an extremely short amount of time would be great, but that's just not how the world works, nor do our bodies. Losing fat is a slow process that needs to be done with consistent macronutrient tracking, clean eating, and patience. But, there HAS to be a way to speed it up, right? Well, yes and no. There are a lot of factors that go into fat loss during cardio sessions such as prior food intake, current well-being, genetics, etc. 

There are rumors out there that fasted cardio can actually help you target fat loss quicker because the body is in a fasted state after you've slept, thus it has no choice but to use stored fat. This is true, BUT only under certain circumstances as well as precautionary measures that must be taken in order to avoid the one thing we don't want: using muscle tissue as fuel. 

FIRST, SOME SIMPLE SCIENCE (kind of)

In order to transition into the necessary steps to almost guarantee fat loss, allow me to quickly discuss how our bodies operate under these conditions. Believe it or not, our bodies are much smarter than we think they are. They can adjust to certain environmental and behavioral situations without us even realizing it. It's quite fascinating. So what does that mean for fitness? Well, it means that our bodies are quick to enter survival mode (where it wants to hold on to a certain amount of fat), so at a certain point it will hold on to body fat and start using muscle tissue as fuel. When performing fasted cardio, our goal is to trick the body into thinking that it's not in survival mode, and it's free to use whatever fat stores it has for fuel. 

SO HOW DO WE TRICK THE BODY? 

When you wake, your body has nothing to work with. It's been feeding off of practically nothing for the past 6-8 hours. So, we must give our body something in order for it to feel like it's not in survival mode so it will utilize fat stores. Did you catch that? "Fasted" cardio that works isn't actually fasted cardio. Sure, your body has less to work with because you haven't eaten as many calories, but it must have some sort of carbohydrate to work with. This is because the intensity of the training can outweigh the body's ability to utilize fat stores as fuel. So at some point during the fasted cardio session, your body says away with the fat and on to the muscle.

There are studies performed that say those who perform cardio on an empty stomach are more prone to loss of muscle tissue over time compared to those who consume carbohydrates before their training sessions. Not good, because we want to conserve as much muscle tissue as possible. Anyway, we must fuel the body before cardio. Some good examples are carbohydrate protein shakes, fruits, and at the very least, branch chain amino acids. 

THE TAKEAWAY

If you want to maximize fat loss over a period of time, stick to fed, high intensity interval cardio sessions. If cardio fits into your schedule best in the morning, then do it. Just make sure you fuel up with a fast digesting carbohydrate beforehand. If cardio works better for your schedule in the afternoon, great. You will burn fat either way. There are no significant studies that say fasted cardio can significantly increase body fat loss. All we do know is that there is a chance that our bodies can use muscle tissue as fuel after a certain amount of time. So what's the tangible takeaway? Do what works for you. Track your body fat and your lean body mass over time and see where your plan takes you. If you do choose to do cardio immediately after waking, I do suggest getting some fast fuel in your system such as a fruit, carbohydrate protein shake, or branch chain amino acids.

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Thanks for reading!

References

Blomstrand, Eva, and Bengt Saltin. “Effect of Muscle Glycogen on Glucose, Lactate and Amino Acid Metabolism During Exercise and Recovery in Human Subjects.” The Journal of Physiology 514.1 (1999): 293–302. Web.