Q: Worst open chain exercise?

A: Leg extensions.

Q: Why is cardio pointless?

A: Because cardio is ineffective at burning fat, great at producing overuse injuries, and might even be making you fatter.

Q: Difference between War Machine and CrossCore180?

A: Nothing.

Q: Why is wall sit pointless?

A: Because the wall sit exercise doesn’t train the lower body as part of a functional unit.

Q: TRX d-rings?

A: They’re on the new TRX Tactical Suspension Trainer, and they’re goddamn cool.

Q: Should i sign a long-term gym contract?

A: Fuck no.

Q: Calorie surplus means?

A: You’re consuming more calories in a day than your maintenance level.

Q: Are full depth squats ever contraindicated?

A: No, not for people with healthy knee function.

Q: How to adjust CrossCore War Machine?

A: Tie a prusik knot.

Q: Tony Horton shirtless?

A: Your wish is my command.

For this blog post, I was going to write in my own words why cardio is making you fatter, but I recently stumbled upon this great video (actually, just an audio recording posted on YouTube) of Paul Chek explaining it way better and more succinctly than I could possibly do:

The key point from Paul’s answer is:

Once you adapt to cardiovascular exercise — in other words, once you’ve done it for any period of time — the metabolic stimulation goes down as you adapt. So after a month of exercise, you’re getting a fraction of the stimulus that you did in your first week.

If you do cardio for a couple of months, eventually your body will adapt and will not be burning anywhere near the same amount of calories as it did when you started, but if you’re still eating the same amount of food (or worse, if you increase the amount of food you’re eating since cardio exercise is proven to increase your appetite), your cardio routine will officially be making you fatter.

A personal trainer who values health and fitness has made it his mission to get fat, but it’s all for a purpose.

Luke Shook, of Omaha, started his journey in December. Shook said his goal was to gain 50 pounds in 12 weeks so he could lose the weight with his clients. [...]

After facing some serious health complications in week 10, Shook knew he had to change his original plan.

“I started getting bloody noses, getting light-headed and stuff, and ended up getting pretty ill for a couple days. So I spoke with everybody involved and decided I should stop at 40 pounds,” Shook said.

Surely there must be more effective ways to motivate the fine people of Omaha get fit.

First, regarding the term “lean muscle”, yes, it’s a really stupid term. “Lean muscle” as opposed to what, “fat muscle”? All muscle is lean. Saying lean muscle is redundant and sounds stupid.

But as I was thinking about this, I began wondering why anyone would use the term “lean muscle” in the first place, and I think I figured out the answer: fat musclemen.

There is no such thing as fat muscle (all muscle is lean), but there is absolutely such thing as fat musclemen (i.e. roly-poly weightlifters and tubby strongman competitors who are very muscular, but also very fat).

If you go to any gym in any city in any country on this fine planet of ours, you’ll see fat musclemen. They’re the guys wearing the weightlifting belt, short shorts, and stringer tank top, and carrying around a 4 litre jug of water.

Fat musclemen are not to be confused with bodybuilders. Bodybuilders are the guys wearing the weightlifting belt, clown pants, and stringer tank top, and carrying around a 4 litre jug of water.

Besides the gym, another great place to spot fat musclemen is in the World’s Strongest Man competitions that are televised on ESPN.

I have a feeling that the reason fitness professionals say they will help you build “lean muscle” is to make it painfully clear that they don’t intend to transform you info a fat muscleman. In other words, they will help you build muscle and lose fat.

So now that I’ve cleared that up, I no longer feel the pressing urge to mock those fitness professionals who use the, albeit stupid, term “lean muscle”.

Sorry, I have no idea how many calories any of my workouts burn. I’ve never worried about trying to track that information for myself, or any of my clients.

The best way to lose weight is to workout regularly, preferably at a high intensity, and make small but maintainable improvements to your diet. They don’t need to be drastic changes. You can start by making small improvements like, say, eliminating pop, cutting down on sweets, reducing portion size, etc. These are simple changes that you can easily maintain.

Don’t stress out about counting calories eaten and trying to estimate how many calories you burn during exercise. That’s a huge pain in the ass and not a habit many people can maintain.

That’s the exact response I sent to the person via YouTube, but I’ll elaborate on some of those points here in this blog post.

First, if you want to lose weight, you should keep in mind that temporary changes in diet will produce a temporary reduction in your weight. Once you return to old habits, you’ll return to your original weight as well. That’s why I think calorie counting is so utterly pointless. Who has the time or interest to count calories every day for the rest of their lives? Certainly not me, and likely not you.

Second, if you want to lose weight, you likely want to see results as fast as possible, and therefore you’re anxious to make drastic changes to your diet to produce rapid results. The problem is that drastic changes are extremely hard to maintain. You’re better off making small changes, trying to maintain those changes, then make some more small changes while still maintaining the previous changes, etc. Over time, many small changes will add up to big changes.

So to summarize, counting calories eaten and/or burned is a huge pain in the ass, so don’t bother doing either. Instead, exercise regularly and improve your diet by making small changes that are maintainable over the long term. If you make one small change to your diet each month this year, and maintain all of those changes, by then end of the year you’ll have a drastic improvement to your diet that’s permanent because you’ll have properly developed the necessary habits to maintain those changes.

So while a low intensity resistance training circuit would need to be 45 minutes to an hour in order to be very effective towards at burning much fat, a high intensity circuit that’s 20 to 30 minutes in length can be extremely effective (more effective than a low-intensity workout that lasts an hour).

Furthermore, if you really take the intensity off the charts and go maximum intensity for 10 to 15 minutes, you can have a killer workout that’s just as effective, if not more so, than a high intensity 20 to 30 minute workout.

So if you want to reduce the amount of time you spend exercising, workout at a higher intensity. Instead of pacing yourself for 45 minutes to an hour, up the intensity and workout harder for 25 minutes, or go balls to the wall for 15 minutes.

HIIT (high-intensity interval training) is the very antithesis of cardio. They are opposites. Different ends of the spectrum. Hot and cold. Wet and dry. Etc.

With HIIT, you workout extremely hard for a short period of time (10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever), then rest, recover, and repeat for a certain number of rounds.

With cardio, you workout at a fairly low intensity that allows you to perform the exercise for a long period of time (20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever) with no rest.

HIIT is one of the very best ways to burn maximum fat in the shortest possible time spent exercising.

Cardio is one of the best ways to piss away your time and get no results, unless your desired result is an overuse injury.

To summarize, cardio exercise is completely different than HIIT, one is effective (HIIT), the other isn’t (cardio), and there are a lot of dumbasses posting bad workout videos online.

I subscribed to your channel and have been watching quite a few videos. I really like all the ones I’ve seen. I don’t have a lot of money to afford a gym membership but I really need to lose weight. I feel like your videos are my next step in doing this. However I don’t want to be all muscular, I just want to lose the extra fat and tone all my muscles. Do you have any videos that are aimed at the female viewer? Thank you.

That is a very, very, very common question that I get asked all of the time. A couple of months ago I wrote about men’s workouts vs. women’s workouts, and in particular how men and women don’t need to exercise differently, and how the best fat-burning workout routines are the same for both men and women.

Here’s the response that I sent to the person who asked me about this today via YouTube.

Hi there, thanks for your positive feedback about my videos. My YouTube videos are geared towards both men and women who want to burn fat and get in shape by exercising at home with minimal equipment. It’s a myth that women should exercise differently than men. Here’s an example of a fat-burning workout that I filmed that’s great for both men and women:

10 Minute Home Fat-Burning Workout Without Weights

If you have more than ten minutes to exercise, you should repeat that workout two or three times.

Here are some more workouts that are also very effective fat-burning workouts for both men and women:

10-Minute Bodyweight Workout

Home Workout Without Weights

Fat-Burning Workout Without Weights

Bodyweight Workout Routine

Bodyweight Circuit Training Workout

Note that since you didn’t mention what, if any, exercise equipment you have at home, I specifically choose to send you workouts that do not require any equipment at all. If you have resistance bands and/or a suspension gym ($50 to $100 for either), I have lots of exercise videos on my YouTube channel that use those pieces of equipment.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions, and good luck with your home workouts!

Mike

Maintenance level of calories is the amount of calories your body needs to maintain your current weight. If you’re not gaining or losing weight, then whatever amount of calories you’re eating each day is considered your maintenance level of calories.

Caloric deficit means you’re eating less than your maintenance level of calories and will therefore lose weight if you continue on that deficit for enough days, weeks, months, etc.

Calories surplus means you’re eating more than your maintenance level of calories and will therefore gain weight if you continue on that surplus for enough days, weeks, months, etc.

So if you’re happy with your current physique and you’re not looking to lose fat or gain muscle, you should be eating your maintenance level of calories.

If you’re interested in losing weight, besides performing effective fat-burning workouts, you should reduce the amount of daily calories you’re eating so that you create a caloric deficit in your diet, which will cause you to lose weight.

If you’re interested in building muscle, besides performing effective compound muscle-building exercises, you should increase the amount of daily calories you’re eating so that you create a caloric surplus in your diet, which will cause you to build muscle.

And don’t listen to anyone who tells you that fruits have too much sugar. Gimme a break. Nobody ever got fat from eating too much fruit. Fruits are wonderful and if you eat or drink more of them, you’ll become thinner. Trust me.

So get yourself a blender, and start drinking fruit-filled smoothies instead of the fattening foots that you might otherwise be eating instead.