Why YOU should be doing cardio!!!

Cardio, everyones favorite thing to debate as it realtes to all aspects of your muscle building, fat loss and overall fitness journey. The question that usually comes into play is should you be doing cardio if your bulking, or otherwise in a state of gain? I mean we want to conserve as much unneeded energy to assist in the weight gain process right? Well my friends this could not be further from the thruth. Below I am going to lay out my top 8 reasons that you should be doing cardio no matter your goal.

1. Keeps metablism in check. One of the many benefits of cardio is the subsequent metabolism boosts that come along with it. Cardio helps keep your body burning food at a higher level and allows nutrients to be transported through the body more efficiently.

2. Maintains heart health. This one is pretty self expanitory, but cardio has been well established as a healthy means to a good heart. And your heart is the most important muscle in your body so you definitly should take care of it.

3. Improves brain health. Another great benefit of cardio is its ability to improve overall brain function. This is caused by the increase transport of oxygen through the body and especially the brain. All of these things lead to am improvement in brain function.

4. Happier Mood. Along with the improvement in brain function is an improvement in overall mood. This is due to the increased realase of the feel good chemicals, dopamine and serotonin, that accpompany a bout of cardio.

5. Direct fat loss. Ok so here is another benefit that many of you are seeking, and that is a loss of bodyfat. This is due to cardios ability to directly use fat as an energy source, thus taping into unused fat stores. This is why doing cardio following a bout of weight training, when your body is already in a depleated state, is one of the best ways to help get your body leaner.

6. Strenght gains. Another great benefit of regular cardiovascular training is its ability to indirectly improve ones level of strenght. Because of the increased nutrient transport that accompanies cardio, these is an increase uptake in ones ability to use those nutrients. Now if we can greated use nutrients in our body, we now how more energy to fuel our weight training sessions. And as we know more energy leads to an increase in strength and performance.

7. Improved ability to build muscle. Again this is going to come down to a secondary function as opposed to a primary function. With the increase in nutrient transport and the subsequent energy boost comes better gym performance. And with this greater increase in gym performance is an increase in muscle building ability as well. Think about it, energy goes up, your able to push harder in the gym. If your able to push harder and get more out of your sessions wouldn’t it make sense that your muscle building potential would go up as well? If your able to get a few extra reps for an exercise, recover a bit faster or go up in weight just a tad more, that could definitly be the progressive overload needed ot get progress moving in the right direction.

8. Faster overall gym recovery. So this brings me to my final big benefit of cardio and that is an overall improvement in gym recovery, not only from session to session, but every during sets. Your body is now able to transport oxygen faster and more efficiently, which we know can lead to and improvement in your ability to recover. Think about it, if your body can transport proteins and other nutrients to damaged muscle cells, it would make sense you are now able to recover a tad faster. Alos, an improvement in carb transport during a training session most certainly will incrase your ability to handle overall more volume in a single session. And that will most certainly lead to progress.

So as you can see there are numerous benefits to cardio, not just for your overall gym performance but your overall health as well. So next time you are thinking on skipping your cardio remember these 8 reason you should be doing regular cardiovasuclar training as part of your overall routine.

Finding your why in the gym and in life!!!!

Finding YOUR why, thats the million dollar question that one must answer to truly have purpose and intent with the things your trying to achieve. Without it progress will be subpar and focus can often lack.

When I first started bodybuilding nearly a decade ago I asked myself a simple question, why is getting big and strong important to me. The answer that I came up with was this. I wanted to look in the mirror and be proud of what was looking back. To feel confident and proud of what I was building and the progress that I was making.

Now this extends beyond the gym walls. This should seep into every aspect of your life and be the foundation that your life is built. One thing I like to do daily is write out each morning what I am trying to achieve that day so that I have a clear path for the next 24 hours. What are things I am trying to achieve today, what aspects of my life am I trying to improve. That was I have a clear vision as to what I am working towards on a certain day.

Too often we rely on external factors to influence our day to day actions. We rely on a doctor telling us we need to improve our health to get us to change, or attempt to change becasue again we dont have a clear why. We rely on a family member asking us if we have gained weight to get us to start exercising and eating better, and chances are you will fall off and be back to square one, becase again we don’t have a set WHY!!!!!

So one thing I encourage you to do is sit down and think about WHY are you starting? Why is this goal important to you? Why are you going to stick to this goal? And be as specific and personal as possible. Becasue once you do that you will be able to transform, not only your physique, but ultimatly your life!!! Time to go BEYOND JUST BODYBUILDING!!!!!

Leg Training 101

Leg day, hands down everyone’s favorite day of the week. I am going to give you a little insite into how to get the most out of your leg days to maximize progress. The first aspect that I am going to talk about here is volume.

Now I do not care if your natty, not notty or whatever, the same principles apply. Leg training takes volume and a good amount of it. We want to overload the muscle and create a good amount of blood flow. Remember we use our legs daily so it will take a good amount of stimulus to really get the legs to respond.

Now your probably thinking what exercises should you do? Well that depends on what’s lacking and needs to be brought up. But as a good rule of thumb, we should have an extension exercise, a curl exercise, a squating movement and a press movement. There are many different variations of these so it would be a good idea to mix them up every once and a while.

As for reps, one thing that I like to do is keep the reps 12-20 on the extension and curls, but focus/build up to one top set on the press and squat exercise!!!! Now this is a set you are pushing to complete failure. You are going to war here and you should be gased. Now if you want to add some fillers feel free but the bread and butter is executed.

1. Leg Extensions 5 sets 20 reps down to 12 increasing each set

2. Seated leg curl 5 sets 20 reps down to 12 increasing each set

3. Leg Press 1 top set of 10-15!!!! Complete failure

4. Hack Squat 1 top set of 10-15!!!! Complete failure

5. Lunges 3 sets of 30 per leg (best to find a long alleyway or walkway and use that strech)

DONE!!!!!!! Now its not a bad idea to throw a little bit of cardio into the mix here. Say 20 minutes on the stairmaster!! Overall your legs should be fried here if done right. Rinse and repaet next week either using the same exercises or slightly different.