Until just about a hundred years ago, physical exercise was part of our daily lives. We chopped wood, hunted for food, worked in the fields, built structures, etc. Now, in our modern society, our activity is pretty much limited to walking to and from the car.
Approximately 50 million adults in the United States are considered sedentary. This inactivity increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and many other lifestyle related illnesses. Scientists are finding that combining a healthy, sensible eating plan with proper exercise can slow and even reverse many of the changes associated with aging.
Exercising is excellent for your overall health. When you exercise properly, eighty percent of the calories you are burning come from fatty acids. It increases your growth hormone, increases muscle size, improves oxygen utilization, increases bone density, and will boost your overall energy level. Even just a thirty minute walk three times a week can improve your health. Exercise lowers blood pressure, lowers blood sugar, reduces triglycerides, lowers the risk of stroke, lowers LDL cholesterol while raising HDL cholesterol, improves sleep, improves sense of well-being, and preserves muscle strength and flexibility.
In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine found that physical fitness is a more important factor for longevity than lowering high blood pressure, reducing total cholesterol, and even quitting smoking. Men who did not exercise had a 400% higher chance of dying during the study.
I don’t need to tell you how important exercise is.
You should already know.
Before you begin any exercise program, you should have your doctor give you a physical to be sure you are physically able to perform these movements.
In my over 30 years of weight training, I’ve tried just about every routine out there. Some work well, some work so-so, and some don’t work at all. Many of the magazines you see on the shelves use “touched-up” photographs and “performance enhanced” athletes. In reality, people do not look like they do in magazines. In reality, you cannot go to the gym and weight train six or seven days a week for an extended period of time. Your body needs time to recover.
As touched on in a previous chapter, there are three basic types of exercises; weight training, interval training, and endurance exercise. Endurance training is the long distance type, like riding the bicycle or running. Interval training is when you perform very intense exercises for a short period of time, then go slow for a short period of time, then fast again, then slow, and you repeat this pattern several times.
Weight training, my personal favorite, is very important or several reasons. As we get older, muscle is lost and the space where muscle used to be is replaced with fat. Muscle burns calories 24 hours a day. By increasing the amount of muscle in your body, you can eat more food and keep the fat from accumulating. Weight training increases the strength of your bones, muscles, and connective tissue.
Believe it or not, one of the biggest issues facing those who weight train is overtraining. This is going to the gym or lifting weights too often and not allowing your body time to recover. Often times, those new to this type of exercise are so excited and anxious to see results, they overtrain. Overtraining causes the body to actually become weaker and the muscles to become smaller. You have to give your body adequate rest.
The Crazy 8 defined
Over the years, I have tested and refined a system of weight training I call the Crazy 8. The Crazy 8 got its name from performing eight sets of eight repetitions using the same weight. A repetition is the act of performing an exercise one time. A set is a single group of repetitions. For example, if you were to do one push-up, that is one repetition. Doing eight push-ups in a row gives you one set of eight repetitions. After a rest period, you would do another set of eight repetitions for your second set. And so on.
If you have never weight trained before or have been away from the gym for a long period of time, jumping right into the Crazy 8 will most likely cause you to become overtrained. You have to work your way up to that level gradually.
In weight training, rest is actually more important than the amount of weight you are lifting. The amount of rest between sets and the amount of rest between workouts are vital to your success. Resting between sets for the proper amount of time is crucial to combining weight training with a cardiovascular workout. Rest too long and your heart rate slows. If you don’t rest long enough you will not recover your strength for the next set. You must have adequate rest between workouts in order for your whole body to recover enough to get through the next workout. Rest too long and your progress slows, don’t rest long enough and you will soon be over trained.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the Crazy 8 workout, you will need some basic equipment. The best place to weight train is obviously in a gym. As attractive as all those shiny machines are, you want to avoid the machines and stick with the free weights and cables. Free weights are the barbells, dumbbells, benches and the other not-so-glamorous pieces of equipment. Cables are machines that have a handle attached to a cable connected to the weights. As you pull on the cable, the weight is lifted. If you prefer a home gym, you will still need a workout bench to keep you off the floor and some dumbbells of various weights are bare minimums.
For the person new to weight training, you should start with a five sets of five repetitions (5×5) routine until you’ve worked your entire body twice. Then go to a six sets of six repetitions (6×6) routine until you’ve worked the body twice, then 7×7 until you’ve worked the body twice, and finally the Crazy 8. It will take you about two weeks to work your entire body twice. I’ll explain how to divide up your body into sections shortly.
Here’s where we start to get serious
You will begin with five sets of five repetitions. You want to use the SAME weight for each of the five sets so that the last set, you have to put forth 100% effort to get the last repetition. In other words, if you are using twenty pounds, you use twenty pounds for every set. The first set should be relatively easy, the second a little more difficult, and so on until the fifth and final set is very difficult and you can barely do the last repetition. In between sets, you are to rest about 90 seconds.
Once you’ve worked your entire body out twice, move to a 6×6 routine, again resting about 90 seconds, and using the same weight so the last repetition is very difficult. Once you’ve trained the body twice, go to 7×7, then finally to the Crazy 8 doing eight sets of eight repetitions.
Once you have worked yourself up to doing 8×8, or you are an experience weight trainer and want to jump right in, you are ready to start getting serious.
With the Crazy 8, you are splitting your body into three sections. One workout consists of chest, shoulders, and triceps; one workout consists of back, biceps, and abdominals, and one workout consists of legs. Each workout contains a major muscle and two minor muscles. The major muscles are the chest, back, and quadriceps (front thigh). The minor muscles are the shoulders, triceps, biceps, abdominals, hamstring, and calves.
For your major muscles, you will perform two different exercises of 8×8. For your minor muscles, you will perform one set of exercises for 8×8. Your rest time in the Crazy 8 is 45 to 60 seconds between sets.
Instead of having illustrations of the exercises, a much better explanation would be for you to simply search google.com or youtube.com for the exercises. A video demonstration is much better than a static drawing in a book.
Let’s go over a workout here…
It just happens to be chest, shoulder, and triceps day. We will start this workout with a basic bench press. The weight chosen allows you to do the first set easy. You rest for about 45 seconds, and do the second set, rest about 45 seconds, and do the third set, and so on until eight sets are completed. You want the weight to be the same throughout the entire eight sets and the very last repetition of the very last set to be an all out effort, giving 100% in order to finish the repetition.
Writing down your weigh is crucial. How do you know what weight to use for the next workout? If you were not able to complete the entire eight sets without decreasing the weight, mark it down so the next time you do that exercise, you know to lower the weight slightly. If you completed the eight sets completely, you know to increase the weight for the next workout.
Once the bench press is completed, you move to another chest exercise. The rest between sets can be about two minutes to give you time to set up the next exercise or move to another part of the gym. For chest exercise number two, we’ll choose cable flyes. Again, do eight sets of eight repetitions with about 45 to 60 seconds rest between sets using the same weight.
After a two minute rest, it is now on to shoulders. Seated laterals is the exercise chosen for this particular workout. Again, 8×8 with about 45 to 60 seconds rest and it is on to triceps. Triceps pushdown is the exercise, 8×8, 45 to 60 seconds rest, and we are done.
Your workout time should not exceed 60 minutes for any weight training session. After about 60 minutes, your body goes into a “stress” mode and the level of cortisol increases. Cortisol with dramatically slow your process and a high level of cortisol is something that needs to be avoided.
Work quickly and get it done
A forty-five to sixty minute workout is an easy time limit as long as you are working quickly and skipping all the social interaction at the gym. A set of headphones playing your favorite music to block out all the side chatter is something to be considered.
For each muscle group; chest, back, shoulders, etc, you should pick three to five exercises that you enjoy doing (not that are easy) and rotate them in your workout. For instance, you would pick flat bench press, incline bench press, cable crossovers, flat dumbbell press, and incline flyes for chest. Your first workout could have you doing bench press and incline flyes for chest. The next workout, you could do incline bench press and cable crossovers. You want to avoid doing the same exercises over and over because your body will soon adapt to doing the same thing over and over and your progress will stop, just like a traditional diet.
Make sure all your weights and exercises are marked down so the next time you do that exercise, you know how much weight to use.
Exercises
Again, instead of a static drawing, your best explanation of the exercises listed is a google search (www.google.com) or a search on YouTube (www.youtube.com).
|
CHEST |
SHOULDERS |
TRICEPS |
|
flat bench press |
upright pull |
lying triceps extension |
|
incline bench press |
front press |
pushdown |
|
flat dumbbell press |
dumbbell press |
close grip bench |
|
incline dumbbell press |
Arnold press |
rope pull |
|
cable crossover |
side laterals |
one arm pushdown |
|
decline bench press |
bent laterals |
|
|
wide grip dips |
front raise |
|
|
dumbbells flyes |
|
BACK |
BICEPS |
ABDOMINALS |
|
wide grip pulldown |
preacher curl |
abdominal vacuum |
|
pulldown |
dumbbell curl |
concentric crunch |
|
close grip pulldown |
bent over barbell curl |
crunch |
|
reverse grip pulldown |
stiff-leg raise |
|
|
seated row |
hip roll |
|
|
bent row |
hanging leg raise |
|
|
one arm row |
||
|
hyperextension |
||
|
THIGHS |
HAMSTRINGS |
CALVES |
|
squat |
leg curls |
donkey calf raises |
|
hack squat |
still legged deadlift |
standing calf raises |
|
leg extension |
seated calf raises |
Now we need to determine how long to rest between workouts. I have found, in general, working out with weights three or four days a week is ideal. This usually allows a day off between workouts for your body to recover. Sometimes there is a need to train two days in a row. It is not detrimental to lift weights two days in a row, just be sure it doesn’t happen more than once a week.
The ideal situation is to weight train every other day giving your body a full day of rest between workouts.
Yes, it is really that simple. Weight training is very important and there is no need to make it complicated. Just keep everything simple. Write down your progress so you can see how well you are doing and how much stronger your muscles soon become. In no time at all, you will notice that your clothes begin to fit a little differently.
Chapter 6. Growth Hormone, DHEA, Melatonin, Thyroid Hormone
Chapter 5. Estrogen, Progesterone, and Testosterone
Chapter 4. Getting to Know your Hormones
