Fit Villains: Selfish, Shameless, Sassy, Fitness.

PSA FOR ALL FIT FREAKS! Are you taking enough time OFF?

Recovery is just as important as what you do IN the gym. But no matter how much we ‘know’ this, many people consistently spend hours and hours in the gym because it “feels” right. It’s psychological. A dependence. Fitness CAN be addictive, but it’s important that we learn how to overcome these psychological barriers to live happier, healthier and injury free lives. Outside of the gym.

Recovery is THE reason we get fitter and stronger. It’s during this time that your muscles rebuild stronger, where your body puts your workout to use and where you’ll reap the benefits.

I like to think of it as making bread. You can knead the dough as much as you like, but unless you STOP and let it rise, your bread is gonna SUCK. The kneading is important, but the “rising” on it’s own is what makes the bread awesome. Rest is your ‘rising’ time.

SIGNS OF OVERTRAINING (and/or fitness addiction).

1. A decrease in performance. If you’re training hard and you notice that you just aren’t able to do what you know you CAN DO (having to reduce your weights, not being able to finish a set, needing to take more breaks etc), it might be a sign that your muscles have not gotten enough recovery time.

2. Problems sleeping, decrease in overall energy, mood swings etc. Workouts generally should BOOST your energy and mood. If the days seem ‘harder’ it might be a sign you need to take a step back. Depression can be a symptom of overtraining as well.

3. Feeling that unless your workout is 2 hours long, it doesn’t count. The truth is, there is ONLY so much you can push your body. After a certain amount of time, it releases chemicals and begins processes to minimize damage… NOT to help you get stronger, fitter or better. 2 hours a day in the gym is too much. Psychologically, this is a barrier a lot of people get stuck behind. Often, beginners are encouraged to workout for long periods of time, but at a VERY LOW intensity. The higher the intensity, the shorter your workout can be. Work to limit your workouts to an hour or less, take less breaks, and boost your intensity instead.

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1. You have all the muscle fiber you will ever have by the time you’re in your early teens! You can make the fibers bigger (more toned) or they can shrink, but once damaged they cannot be replaced.

2. You have as many muscle fibers as the biggest body builder guy you can think of. His are just bigger. :)

3. The term ‘ripped’ is derived from the process that makes your muscles grow. When you hurt yourself, your body sends cells to repair the damage (like a scab). When you work your muscles, you cause tiny little tears (ripping them). Your body sends cells to help heal these tears, causing the formation of proteins which increase the size of your muscle. (This is why protein is so important for your muscles!) No pain, no gain. Literally.

4. Fast & slow twitch fibers do different things for your body. Fast twitch muscles are the ones you use for quick, short bursts of exercise or power (sprints, plyometrics etc.). Slow twitch fibers don’t produce much power, but are perfect for longer, endurance based activities (think long distance running). If you’re looking to train for endurance, think lighter weights & more reps. For power? Heavier weights & fewer reps.

5. Your muscles don’t have memory… they have efficiency. Every movement you make, your brain sends signals to the muscles involved to contract. As you repeat movements over and over, the communication between your brain & muscles becomes more efficient: you become more coordinated. That’s why riding a bike feels so natural after years, or why you get better at dance moves the more you practice them. This applies to your workouts too. Moves that require coordination will get easier with practice.

6. For once and for all, lifting weights will NOT make you bulky. Men gain muscle more easily because of their hormones; hormones women don’t have. Female body builders spend hours in the gym every day, training intensly & heavily (think using 100+lbs), often take supplements for size & eat very specifically for YEARS to get that look. Picking up a 10lb dumbbell will NOT make you bulky. Or a 25lb dumbbell. Or a 45lb barbell. Relax.

7. Where you’re likely to tone up first? Your shoulders. Women don’t have a lot of fat in that area, so you’ll see definition there first. Having wider shoulders will also make your waist appear smaller: a little trick from the supermodels.

8. There are NO muscles in your fingers! The muscles that move them are in your palm and mid-forearm: they are attached by tendons that run up to your fingers, making them move when the muscles contract (like a puppet).

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Hey there,

You can build muscle at a calorie deficit, but not when you’re in starvation mode. Being at a deficit is fine if you’re in weight loss mode, as long as your body is getting adequate nutrition to sustain your activity level (and plenty of protein to rebuild your muscle). Creating too large of a deficit can be troublesome - it signals your body to store fat for energy instead of using it. This happens when we over-restrict or under-consume. All the body knows is that it’s not getting enough, and doesn’t know if and when it’ll get adequate amounts of energy. It slows down other body processes to compensate, and signals hormones to hold on to fat. Muscle, however, is expendable. If it needs to choose between using life sustaining fat, and muscle for energy, muscle wins.

If you notice a drop in performance (suddenly you can’t keep up, can’t lift heavy, or should be improving but are not), a decrease in overall energy, an ammonia smell after a tough workout or are staying sore longer than usual, it may be a sign you’re not eating enough to support your muscle growth. As we get closer to our weight goals, the calorie deficit should be smaller (meaning you can boost your calories a bit to keep your metabolism up, but keep them clean) and more emphasis should be put on food quality, and strength training. Too much cardio when we’re already eating at a deficit can burn away muscle you’re trying to build: muscle that’s the difference for overall fat loss. Eat clean, drink loads of water, but pay attention to signs that you may need to boost your calories.

xo

Hey there,

Too much cardio without proper nutrition can burn away muscle. If your focus is building muscle and changing your body composition, your focus should be strength training and intervals - not cardio. It’s not all about exercise. For muscle growth you need to eat enough in general, and focus heavily on the protein.

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Are you sore right now? I AM.

DOMS is the physiological term for the gradually increasing discomfort that you feel post workout (usually takes 24-48 hours). It’s normal, and anyone can suffer from it, from newbies to fitness freaks alike.

Any activity can cause DOMS: the only requirement is that the muscle has been used in a way it’s not accustomed to. Even a “light” workout like a long walk can cause your legs to ache the next day if you’re not used to it. Soreness is not an indicator of how intense your workout was, nor should you ‘strive’ to be sore each workout. It’s something that happens to everyone, and some people are perpetually sore while others never seem to need more than a light stretch. (I fall under perpetually sore).

Soreness usually means that your muscles are getting used to that movement, and will rebuild stronger than before. In fitness, if you get sore the first few times you do a workout, chances are the soreness will lessen over time as your muscles get used to the movements (don’t take it as an indicator that a class was too hard!).

For beginners, soreness can be a deterrent from a new workout program, but it’s important to ‘ride it out’. It’s temporary and will get better with time. That said, you don’t need to plow through grueling workouts when you’re sore: this can lead to injury and your muscles need some time to recover and rebuild.

What To Do When You’re Sore…

1. Don’t stop moving, but take it down a notch. Sore muscles can cause us to restrict range of motion during every day activity, which doesn’t help (we’re less active: less blood gets pumped to those muscles, meaning the soreness will take longer to heal). There’s no need to power through another tough workout, but think along the lines of a power walk, light cardio, or something that gets you ‘warm’. Keep moving.

2. Don’t stretch when you’re ‘cold’. The most effective stretches are done when our muscles are warm: cold stretches can put more strain on tight muscles. Take a quick walk (10-15 minutes) then have a good stretch. (Time tip: muscles react the same way out of a hot shower. If you can’t get active, squeeze in some extra stretching time after you scrub down, before you cool off).

3. WATER. Your muscles need to heal, and water is their best friend. Treat sore muscles with more H2O.

4. Ease up on the ibuprofen. While it can help for temporary pain relief (which is fine if you REALLY need it), it can also mask symptoms of pain: no good. If you can’t feel it, you can’t prevent further injury. So if you have something important to do, take the minimum dose, but otherwise stick with water and rest.

5. Massage & Foam Rolling: get on the Myofascial train! Deep massages don’t need to come from a spa. Tennis balls, broom handles and PVC pipe can all be used as ‘rolling’ release tools. Apply them to your muscles and use your body weight to press into them while moving very slowly. For tips on how to use your roller, try some of these from the Tone It Up ladies.

6. The Cold Shoulder. If your soreness is made worse by inflammation, ice packs and ice baths (ugh) can be helpful. You don’t need to do them long: 10-15 minutes is usually enough to bring down swelling, and most swelling will pass within a day or so.

7. Modify your routine. Legs dead? Time for upper body and core. Abs murdered? Lower body and back. Arms heavy? Work anything else. You don’t need to skip your workout, just modify it so the muscles that need to heal can. Keep exercises that work your tired parts to a minimum, and stretch well afterwards while you’re warm.

8. Yoga. Nuff said. :)

Any other tips? How do YOU deal with soreness?

VERY interesting! Geeks with guns!

Apparently, gamers possess a unique set of personality traits that make them ideal gym go-ers and body builders. Patience, the thrill of the ‘mission’ and a craving to ‘conquer’. The website Fitocracy focuses on turning gaming geeks into fitness geeks with challenges, quests, points and more. It also provides them with feedback & a community to draw from.

As Vin Diesel wrote “We were all drawn to the game because it allowed us to become these characters, vastly different in appearance and in actions, but what kept us hooked was the search for the character that represented our higher self.”

It appears that like in a game, gamers approach fitness with the goals of getting stronger, faster, more efficient: i.e. BETTER at it. They are tactical, develop skills quickly and like to up their ‘scores’. In fitness, this makes them ideal candidates: they are driven, focused, have clear goals, specific objectives and they are motivated to seek information to help them get ahead.

Looks like the stereotype is a-changin!

Geek pride. :)

Excerpt from CNN.com

(CNN) — They’ve been trained to focus for weeks at a time on a single goal. They know how to clearly identify obstacles and form step-by-step plans to overcome them.

They’re obsessed with improving specific skills but judge success only by overall progress made in the world they’ve decided to conquer — as realistic or fantastical as it may be.

It’s precisely these traits that make video-gamers great bodybuilders.

Take a moment to laugh, if you must. Now hear us out.

Brian Wang and Dick Talens were the stereotypical video-gamers in high school. One was scrawny, the other fat. They grew up playing marathon sessions of “EverQuest,” “Counter-Strike” and “World of Warcraft.”

“I literally would wake up and play all day, eating intermittently,” Talens said. “OK, when I say intermittently, I mean eating a lot.”

But by the time the men met at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, they had traded an obsession with video gaming for an obsession with weight-lifting. As they shared stories at the gym, they realized their healthy transformation had been easier for them than for most.

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Hello Bad Ass Beautiful,

Hope your week’s off to a kick ass start! Will be posting some Q & A later today, going through your questions is fun but time consuming! I don’t always answer them in order, so if you haven’t already, send in your ‘I wanna knows’ (be sure to leave your email address if Anon, so I can send you a link with the reply).

Inspired by your questions, I felt there were a few things that we should re-visit. These are all topics I’ve written about, but from the questions I’m getting, some really important things haven’t sunk in for many of you.

Your shape is your shape, for better or worse better.

Here are a few things you should know by now…

1. Curvy girls who don’t want to workout for fear they’ll lose their curves, stop worrying! It’s not true! Curvy is curvy, big or small. Some women experience a loss in boob-age, but not all do. I was kinda sad about losing my boobies… til I realized they were still there. And now they had a new butt & tummy to play with, and they were rather nice and perky. See Why Losing Weight Won’t Change Your Shape (and other FAT facts)
2. Girls who are constantly looking for exercises to induce a ‘thigh gap’ should stop. I’d never heard about ‘thigh gap’ desire until I joined Tumblr. It’s the most ridiculous trend. I cringe when I hear it mentioned. I understand it though, and to be honest, with all the manipulated photos going round the interwebs, I can see why some of you think it’s normal to have them. Thigh gaps are genetically impossible for most of us, and not a symbol of fitness, good health or even thinness. Some of the thinnest people in the world will always have thighs that touch. And people who are overweight can have thigh gaps. Why? Because it depends on how far apart your hip bones are set, and whether or not you’re genetically programmed to accumulate fat there. Some people have more in their bellies, legs, butt.. some have it in their thighs. It’s normal & common be thin and have thighs that touch. (P.S - in case no one told you, 99% of those ‘thigh’ gap images have been altered to show the gap. It’s not something to aspire to). Let your thighs makeout, it’s okay.
3. Ladies looking to spot reduce are in for disappointment. ‘I like my butt, but I hate my stomach. How can I target my stomach without losing too much of my butt?’. You can’t. You can’t spot reduce. You can add muscle in your tummy with ab & core exercises, but it won’t do much if you still have a layer of fat over the top. Fat gets lost at the same rate everywhere on your body, and your genes & hormones will dictate which spots have more fat to lose than others.
4. The fear of bulking from lifting weights is bull. Not going to happen. 30lbs heavier I was a muscle-y girl. That’s in my genes. 30lbs lighter, I’m still a muscle-y girl, but not big. I squat 150lbs regularly (25-30lbs more than my body weight), and exercise keeps me toned, but it doesn’t make me bigger. At the beginning of a strength program, some women mistake muscle swelling with growth. Not true. Sometimes it swells & pushes the fat up & out, but a healthier diet will help. Fat loss is key to unveiling those muscles, but believe me you’d need to be working INSANO hard, taking supplements & training 5-6 hours a day for body-builder results. And it takes YEARS of that to build a body like theirs. Won’t happen with a 10, 15, 20, or even 50lbs of weight. I promise, I’ve seen it myself, I’m not just saying it. Lift heavier for better results everywhere.
5. Ladies who think 20 -30lbs is a reasonable amount to lose in a month. Really? That’s a pound a DAY. Unless it’s poop & water, not gonna happen. You don’t know how this story goes? Let me remind you: you spend a month working crazy hard & starving yourself down. You’re bitchy, unpleasant & constantly feeling deprived. You get down to a size that’s good, and you feel comfortable enough to have a cookie, or something high in carbs & fats. Which tastes goooooood. So you have another, and another. Since you’ve been starving your body, it’s having a field day storing those extra calories cause it doesn’t know when you’re gonna starve it next. You gain all the weight back. Now, you’ve just spend a month and a half starving, feeling like shit, and destroying your body… to end up right back where you started. MAKE YOUR GOALS REALISTIC: 1-2lbs a week if you’re average sized, with 15+lbs to lose. If you do more, great. Less? Okay too! But do it too fast and unhealthily? You’ll end up back where you started. And you KNOW this, cause you’ve probably DONE this a million times. Let it sink in: it doesn’t work. Unless you’re VERY overweight or obese, losing 20lbs in a month is unrealistic. You aren’t a failure for not being able to do it: it’s not realistic to think you can. 
6. You can’t make changes unless you start, and you don’t need a 30 day plan to do it. Today you could: take a 30 minute walk, have a salad instead of fries, do 10 pushups ANYTIME, or sign up for a class. You can do all these things. Not having the motivation is another story, but don’t think you have to have a full plan ready for you before you start. I hear a lot of “I’m gonna do this” or “I can’t wait to try this” or “When I’m thin I’ll start ____ “. Bullshizz. Stop thinking, and make just ONE change each day. If you catch yourself making “promises” to start another time, ask yourself ‘Why not now?’. The answer is usually because you don’t feel ‘ready’ or ‘don’t really want to’. Stop thinking, get moving. Walks are perfectly fine exercise. 

1. You have all the muscle fiber you will ever have by the time you’re in your early teens! You can make the fibers bigger (more toned) or they can shrink, but once damaged they cannot be replaced.

2. You have as many muscle fibers as the biggest body builder guy you can think of. His are just bigger. :)

3. The term ‘ripped’ is derived from the process that makes your muscles grow. When you hurt yourself, your body sends cells to repair the damage (like a scab). When you work your muscles, you cause tiny little tears (ripping them). Your body sends cells to help heal these tears, causing the formation of proteins which increase the size of your muscle. (This is why protein is so important for your muscles!) No pain, no gain. Literally.

4. Fast & slow twitch fibers do different things for your body. Fast twitch muscles are the ones you use for quick, short bursts of exercise or power (sprints, plyometrics etc.). Slow twitch fibers don’t produce much power, but are perfect for longer, endurance based activities (think long distance running). If you’re looking to train for endurance, think lighter weights & more reps. For power? Heavier weights & fewer reps.

5. Your muscles don’t have memory… they have efficiency. Every movement you make, your brain sends signals to the muscles involved to contract. As you repeat movements over and over, the communication between your brain & muscles becomes more efficient: you become more coordinated. That’s why riding a bike feels so natural after years, or why you get better at dance moves the more you practice them. This applies to your workouts too. Moves that require coordination will get easier with practice.

6. For once and for all, lifting weights will NOT make you bulky. Men gain muscle more easily because of their hormones; hormones women don’t have. Female body builders spend hours in the gym every day, training intensly & heavily (think using 100+lbs), often take supplements for size & eat very specifically for YEARS to get that look. Picking up a 10lb dumbbell will NOT make you bulky. Or a 25lb dumbbell. Or a 45lb barbell. Relax.

7. Where you’re likely to tone up first? Your shoulders. Women don’t have a lot of fat in that area, so you’ll see definition there first. Having wider shoulders will also make your waist appear smaller: a little trick from the supermodels.

8. There are NO muscles in your fingers! The muscles that move them are in your palm and mid-forearm: they are attached by tendons that run up to your fingers, making them move when the muscles contract (like a puppet).

Read More