Q&A Sesh

What should I be doing to get that Ultimate Bod?  Cardio or Weights?

We all know that cardio burns lots of calories, our Heart Rate Monitors tell us this.  But unless we are planning on developing a super sculpted heart muscle, its not just the heart that we want to be pumping, its all the other muscles as well.  After all - you could wear a HR monitor, get very excited about something - record a high heart rate and supposedly burn lots of extra calories.  Not really.  HR is just one indicator as to how hard we are working.

If you read lots of fitness mags, and look at all the fitness models, they all have one thing in common:  they prioritise weight training above cardio.  Lifting heavy weights burns a lot of calories, whether your heart rate goes up high or not.  Plus, what we really want - is to develop a body that is a furnace when it comes to food.  A body that will allow us to enjoy the good things in life, AND still look good.  Being 'skinny fat' wont do this for you.  If you lose weight through cardio, and dont weight train, your body will still be high in body fat/low in muscle.  You might have small thighs, but they will be flabby, the waist may be smaller than it used to, but there will still be the "pot".  AND you will regain weight very easily as there is no muscle mass to maintain.  Muscle requires/burns a lot of calories just at rest.  Fat doesn't.

So really, the ultimate aim is change the composition of your body - increase muscle - decrease fat to develop a great looking bod.

A couple of things about gaining muscle:
1.  Its really hard for women - forget thinking you will look like the incredible hulk.  To become the first Incredible Hulkette - you will probably need to take steroids -so no real risk here

2. You wont be gaining much muscle from cardio.  In fact, too much cardio without the correct diet and rest may have the opposite effect.

3. To build muscle, you must engage in resistance exercise (either weights, or body weight) and you must give the muscles you have trained  - 48 hours to recover afterwards.  Yep, that's two days.  So if you do a lot of leg work one day - say weighted squats, lunges etc, you shouldn't repeat these exercises, or similar ones for 2 days.  When you push these muscles out of their comfort zone, you are aiming to break down the muscle fibres.  The body will then go into adaptation mode, and rebuild the muscles stronger than before so it can cope better next time.  But it does this during rest, not during  exercise.  If you repeat these exercises too soon, you will further break down the muscles, to the point at which they can no longer repair, and the muscle tissue will deteriorate, not build bigger and better.

4.  Therefore - you need to plan your exercise schedule.  Body builders get around the 48 recovery period by splitting their weight training into different muscle groups on different (consecutive) days.  Eg Biceps Chest and Abs one day - Triceps, Back and Shoulders the next, Legs on the third day.  Or you can train all muscle groups in one session on alternate days. Obviously a split routine allows you to spend more time on individual muscle groups.  For good results - you need to be weight training at least 3 times/week.  So plan in your weight sessions, and then work your cardio around this.  Whatever you do, don't bunch together similar training regimes into short periods of time.  This is a case of where "more" is not always "better".

5.  Quality of training and good technique is vitally important.  Use poor technique and risk an injury.  Perform an exercise that you are not ready because it looks super hard and you are "gun ho" and not only do you risk injury but you risk developing poor habits, poor posture and not achieving your goals.  Where-ever possible have your routine set up by a qualified instructor who can take into account your needs and abilities.  One size doesn't fit all.

3 You need to eat enough protein at the right times of day to feed muscle recovery.  Lots of training and no