Last year, Steve H. made the commitment to getting his weight down and getting healthy. He stuck with the program throughout the year and lost body fat at a healthy and sustainable rate and eliminated over 80 pounds of FAT. This year Steve has switched to our strength and mass program…. so this year’s pictures are sure to paint a different picture. Congratulations Steve!
Start of 2011
End of 2011
This year’s goal should be not having to make the same resolution again next year. Come on in and get it done!
This is simply the best deal Brickhouse Miami has ever offered. Register now for January 2012 and get the entire month for just $25 with no contract, commitment or hidden fees! Once you experience our revolutionary program, you will be hooked and have the option to continue for just $99 per month. For less than $25 per week you get up to 5 days of supervised training per week, nutrition guidance and participation in a program that is designed for your specific goals and your fitness level. Essentially, you are getting all of the benefits of personal training at a significantly lower price. You will not find a better deal or better results anywhere.
For more details, feel free to call Lucas Irwin at 786.226.7196 or email lucas@brickhousemiami.com
Space is limited to 100 total members, so don’t miss this opportunity. This is Your year!
Just a reminder that all of our rates will be increasing in January 2012 for anyone signing up after January 1st. Sign up before Christmas to lock in our current pricing!
While there is certainly a significant portion of the fitness population that is simply not putting in enough work to achieve their desired goals, there is also a rather large slice of the pie comprised of those that are actually overtraining. If you are a potential victim of overtraining, I am sure you have read an article about this issue or had someone preach to you about scaling back at some point in your training career. However, this article is not going to immediately start preaching to you about cutting back your dedicated hours; you may actually be able to keep grinding away at your current pace. But lets cover some basics first.
Let us start with a definition: Overtraining is a physical, behavioral and emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of an individual’s exercise exceeds their recovery capacity.
Now that we know what we are talking about, lets take a look at some of the symptoms and signs so you can better analyze your situation. Here are a few of the most common:
-Persistent or unrelenting fatigue
-Elevated rested heart rate
-Irritability
-Depression
-Persistent or unrelenting muscle soreness
-Difficulty sleeping, even when tired
-Night sweats
-Increased sickness
-Depression
At this point a number of you are reading the list above and drawing check marks down your computer screen. If this is the case, I would first like to congratulate you on not being at the other end of the spectrum. On the other hand, we have some work to do with you. Overtraining can lead to some serious problems and will undoubtedly hinder your progress and potential.
Typically this is where an article tells you to chill out, take more days off and spend less time under the iron and/or training. Well, sometimes that advice is spot-on perfect; but we aren’t going to jump to that conclusion today. In my experience as a trainer and a competitor, there is a crucial analytical step that is all to often bypassed in prescribing overtraining remedies.
Take a closer look at the definition above, specifically: “..exceeds their recovery capacity.” If volume and intensity exceeds recovery capacity, the easy solution is to decrease volume and intensity. However, this decrease is only the correct answer when recovery capacity is maximized. If your capacity to recover is not optimal, you may be able significantly increase it, allowing you to continue training at your current level and drastically increase your results. Therefore:
1.
Volume & Intensity > Un-maximized Recovery Capacity
Attempt to increase capacity.
2.
Volume & Intensity > Maximized Recovery Capacity
Immediately decrease volume.
Here are a few different areas that you can examine to help determine if your recovery capacity has room to be improved. Though there are many more potential areas of improvement, we are going to focus on the most common.
1. Diet and Nutrition. Simply put, are you consuming enough quality calories from clean protein, carbohydrate and fat sources to support your activity? More often than not, the answer to this question is “no.” Because the required amounts of everything can differ a great deal for each individual, I cannot sit here and write out specific numbers that apply to your specific training style, training purpose, experience and genetics. But here are the shortcomings that I see most often in my clients:
- Are you simply eating enough carbs? Protein? Fat? Overall calories?
This is almost always the problem.
-Are you eating often enough throughout the day?
Spacing your meals out will help increase the absorption of crucial nutrients.
-Do you eat enough green vegetables and/or fruits?
They contain vitamins and minerals that will help optimize recovery, growth and fat loss.
-Are you consistent?
Is your diet perfect day after day, week after week? Or just here and there?
-Do you drink alcohol or do drugs?
Yes, drinking only once a week can destroy your recovery. Duh.
2. Sleep. I honestly don’t know a whole lot of people who can consistently get 8-10 hours of sleep per night, but that doesn’t change how important it is. Some of our body’s most important recovery-related hormones are released in abundance while we sleep. A significant lack of sleep can make virtually any training program too much for the body to handle. Even though many of our lives don’t allow us to get a great deal of sleep, virtually everyone can make some small adjustments to their p.m. routine to get them under the sheets a bit earlier. Take a good look at what you do every night (i.e.-watch TV, play on the computer, etc..) and eliminate the unnecessary to add some additional healing time.
3. Supplementation. There are a number of great supplements, beyond our essential protein shakes, that can aid your recovery time. Please keep in mind, supplements aren’t going to help you out if your diet is poor and you only manage to squeeze in 4 hours of sleep every night. Once those two are in check, try adding the following stack to your diet to really kick up the recovery and rebuilding process.
Lucas G. Irwin’s Recovery Stack:
Creatine
R-ala
L-Glutamine
EAAs
Vitamin-C
HMB
High Quality Multi-Vitamin
Beta-Alanine
So just about anyone who has ever spent more than a week in a gym or flipped through any one of the countless bodybuilding magazines available has likely heard of supersetting. For most, supersetting is simply clumping some exercises together without too much rest in between. Unfortunately, there is typically very little science or reason behind their pairing and the majority of the individuals utilizing this technique couldn’t tell you why it is actually beneficial. So lets make sure that you know the real deal.
By simple definition, supersetting is completing two different exercises, one after the other, without resting in between. Sounds pretty straight forward, right? Well, it isn’t. There are a number of different supersetting techniques that you should be familiar with and utilize in your training. The three primary techniques are pre-exhaustion, post exhaustion and antagonistic.
Pre-Exhaustion
This technique is used to tire the targeted muscle group though the use of an isolated movement before completing a compound movement. When done properly, the compound exercise will more efficiently work that targeted muscle group, while all other muscle groups involved simply assist in the destruction of our target.
The classic example of this technique is the pairing of the dumbbell flye (isolation) with the flat bench press (compound). By performing the flyes first, the pecs should be sufficiently pre-exhausted with little or no effect on surrounding muscle groups (if performed with proper form). Now when the bench press is executed immediately after, the pecs tire rapidly, but the assisting muscle groups (i.e. deltoids, triceps) have enough energy remaining to assist in the complete annihilation and atrophy of the pecs. Mission accomplished.
Post-Exhaustion
The post-exhaustion method is the exact opposite of the pre-exhaustion method listed above. Therefore, the compound movement is executed first and immediately followed by an isolated movement. This method allows you to keep the weight used during the compound movement heavy and then uses the isolation exercise to burn out the targeted muscle or muscle group.
For example, during a quadriceps training session, one might use heavy squats as their compound (which recruits numerous different muscle groups) and then zero in on the quads with leg extensions. If the pre-exhaustion method had been used in this case, the squats would have to be much lighter.
Antagonistic
This approach is when opposite muscles or muscle groups are paired together in the superset. Please note that I said “opposite” and not “different.” Good examples of opposite pairings are biceps/triceps, quads/hamstrings or chest/back. Poor examples of pairings would be hamstrings/biceps or chest/quads. Now there are situations where these non-opposing muscle pairing would be beneficial (i.e. circuit training), but for the sake of supersetting for muscle growth, they should not be applied.
It is our body’s physiological and anatomical balance (I use that word loosely) that allows the antagonistic approach to work. Keep Newton’s 3rd Law in mind when utilizing this method: “For every action, there is an equal (in size) and opposite (in direction) reaction force.” So lets apply this to those guns you’ve been trying to build since high school. During a bicep curl it is quite obvious that during the concentric phase (lifting of the weight) and the contraction (hold or squeeze at the top) of the lift, the biceps are engaged and bearing the majority of the work. However, it is during the eccentric phase (lowering of the weight or the negative) of the curl that we should be focusing on for two reasons.
Reason 1: 90% of the lifting population ignore the significance of the “negative”; despite the fact that numerous studies suggest that it may be the most important aspect of every exercise when it comes to developing muscle mass and increasing natural hormone production. Reason 2 (getting back on track): It is during this phase that our triceps kicks in to assist in the fight against gravity, essentially priming our triceps with blood and neuromuscular stimulation for the upcoming exercise. It is for this very reason that many individuals are actually stronger in a given lift when they superset it with an antagonist (i.e. your bench increases when you do bent over rows first).
Supersets Help Increase Growth Hormone
So we have all heard about the benefits of Growth Hormone (GH) and how beneficial it is to anyone trying to decrease body fat and increase muscle (amongst many other things). Unfortunately, most people are unaware that we can increase our body’s production of GH naturally, without making any special trips to BALCO. The secret lies in lactic acid (the stuff that “makes it burn!”). As your body releases more lactic acid into your blood stream, your blood’s pH level decreases. How does your body respond to this? By excreting more GH to negate the decrease in the blood stream’s pH. There for the more lactic acid you are able to generate through your workout, the more GH your body will produce. Supersetting is hands down one of the best ways to generate large amounts of lactic acid.
Other Benefits to Supersetting
1. Another pretty obvious benefit to supersetting is the amount of time that is saved. By using any one of the approaches above, one can accomplish the same amount of work in significantly less time; which is more than enough reason for many busy individuals.
2. An increased caloric burn is another great reason to superset. By limiting rest time and increasing the time of each set (1 superset vs. 1 set of an individual exercise) we are able to increase our body’s working heart rate. An increase heart rate means more fat burned for energy. The majority of the population would see this as a good thing.
3. Finally, it is a great way to stimulate new muscle growth and development. I don’t personally believe supersetting should be a continuous and solo part of one’s routine; but I think the benefits of supersetting certainly make it well worth cycling into or including in a routine. The different supersetting approaches should be cycled into your program or rotated every 4-6 weeks. The continuous change in stimulation will be sure to take your development to a new level.
