Yesterday marked my 1st half marathon since relocating to the Triangle area 6 months ago. 

 For those of you who don’t know, I am an avid trail runner and have been a little distraught since moving out here at the lack of organized trail racing here in the raleigh, durham, chapel hill area. 

My race on saturday was great.  I could not have asked for better conditions.  the race began at 8:00 when the temp was nice and cool.  The the course wound its way through Bur Mil Park in Greensboro, NC. 

Got some great views of Lake Brandt, and met some great folks along the way.  This is  a trail race I would recommend to anyone, and I will definitely be present next year. 

I am very proud to say that this race helped me set a trail half marathon PR of 1:52:42.  and I earned 3rd place in my age group. 

I am currently searching for a good trail race closer to the area.  If anyone has any suggestion, please shoot them my way.  I do plan on running the Umstead marathon next spring.

Ok, so now you know to look for a background in health and fitness and make sure the certifications are legit.  What else should you know?

Experience and References

Just like you wouldn’t want a first time surgeon operating on you, you want a trainer with some experience.  The best way to get a feel for how much experience a trainer has is to ask him or her specific questions as to when and where they trained previously and ask to speak to former clients, not present clients.

In the business of personal training, word of mouth is one of the best marketing strategies. Former clients will give you a good idea of their experience.  I know from my own experiences that sometimes you can’t make everyone happy, but if you can get about 3 names from your trainer it should be enough.   

Make sure to ask about contracts, how payment is made, how sessions are tracked, and any cancellation/rescheduling policies.  You can also ask for a free trial session, you get a test drive before you buy a car right?  Why not test out your trainer.

Just as with any profession, there are good apples and bad apples.  The take home message from these last few posts is to make sure you examine the apple before you buy it.

My last post dealt with how to shop for a personal trainer and the first key thing to look for is a fitness/exercise related degree.

Another thing to look for is:

Certification

    There are a ton of different certifications out there and some are exetremely easy to attain.  Some gyms offer their own certification.  certifications can be obtained by taking a course online.  I have even seen some trainers put down certifications that do not even exist.  but since there is no regulatory agency to define the quality of a certification, it is up to you (the consumer) to do some research.

 I will help you out by naming some very creditable organizations who offer personal training certifications. you are also encouraged to check out the websites for these organizations. Continue reading "Buyer Beware Cont’d"

Obviously I am an advocate of using a personal trainer to help you reach your fitness goals whatever they may be, but there are a lot of trainers out there with little or no business taking someone’s health or fitness into their hands. 

The problem is that there is no independent regulatory agency for personal trainers.  This means that any idiot can call himself/herself a  personal trainer. 

There are a lot of scam artists out there, and I have run into a few of them personally.  It may take a little leg work, but before you spend any money, find out what you are really paying for. 

My next few blogs will highlight the most important things you should know before working with a personal trainer.

Key things to look for when shopping for a personal trainer.

1. Education-  Find out where he/she went to school.  make sure the degree is in a health and exercise related field. 

Good degrees to have would be Physical Education, Athletic Training, Exercise Science or physiology, etc.  They key here is that you want someone who has been around fitness and exercise for a long time, has an obvious interest in the field, and makes health and fitness part of their own lifestyle.

 My next post will look at what certifications to look for and how to spot a fake. 

When you intiate any strength training program you may see large gains in muscular strength but little or no changes in muscle size or definition. 

The reason for this is that during the first 6-8 weeks of the program your body is adapting to and learning movements and how much strength is needed to perform those movements. 

The body is adapting by creating more neuromuscular connections.  This where nerve fibers are connecting to already existing muscle fibers.  As more connections are made, the more muscle fibers are being used.  the more muscle fibers used, the stronger a muscle becomes. 

 After this initial “learning stage” of 6-8 weeks, strength comes as a result of either an increase in muscle size (hypertrophy) or number of muscle fibers (hyperplasia).

If you want to gain strength past the intial stage, you will want to follow a specific training program that pays attention to exercise selection, order, sets, repetitions, and rest intervals. 

Just don’t be discouraged if your strength gains begin to plateau after 2 or 3 months of training.  Your body has learned the movements, now it needs a stronger stimulus to grow.

Which is better cardio long duration or short, high intensity intervals?

 a recent study published in “Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise”(1) found that shorter, high intensity aerobic intervals raised the VO2 Max of subjects more so than other subjects who followed longer protocols.

The study used 4 groups each with a different running protocol.  They measured VO2max before and after 8 weeks.  Both groups that used short, high intensity running significantly improved their VO2 max.

VO2 Max is a measure used by exercise scientists to determine a person’s aerobic capacity.

So what?  You may ask.  this is huge because this argues against the long held mentality that in order to improve aerobic endurance you have to train at a mild intensity, for a long period of time.  This study shows that training at higher aerobic intensity wil provide more aerbic benefit. 

When I started training for my first marathon, I used a training program given to me by a friend.  It gradually increased my running volume every week, and at one point I was running 5 days a week for 6-8 miles at a time at a steady speed.

 I have already seen the benefits of interval training and now I only run 3 days per week.  I still have a Long Slow Distance run on the weekend, but it’s more to prepare my mind mentally for running a long time rather than making me any faster.

Aerobic High-Intensity Intervals Improve V[spacing dot above]O2max More Than Moderate Training.

I have referenced the article below if you want to read it.

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 39(4):665-671, April 2007.

HELGERUD, JAN 1,2; HOYDAL, KJETILL 1; WANG, EIVIND 1; KARLSEN, TRINE 1; BERG, PALR 1; BJERKAAS, MARIUS 1; SIMONSEN, THOMAS 1; HELGESEN, CECILIES 1; HJORTH, NINAL 1; BACH, RAGNHILD 1; HOFF, JAN 1,3

I cannot recall how many someone has asked me this question. 

It all depends on what your goal is. 

If you are looking to improve your cardiovascular endurance, do that first.  If you want to increase your muscle strength, lift weights first.

Follow the principle of specificity.  When your body is fueled up and fresh, do the activity you want to improve first, that way you can devote the highest level of effort and concentration.

If you are more concerned with weight loss the answer is a bit more complicated.  Weight lifting requires a more concentration and effort than cardio.  It is best to do the activity that is more complex at the beginning. 

If you do cardio first, you won’t be able to put forth the calorie burning effort to get the most from weight training.

If fat loss is your goal, then the same order applies to you too.  The body burns carbohydrate more quickly and easily than fat and more carbohydrate is used to fuel intense activities like weight training. 

It also takes time for you to start burning more calories from fat which is why cardio is so important to any fat loss program.  By weight training first you will use up a lot of your carbohydrate stores and you body will need to rely more on fat to give you calories to use during your cardio.

If your weight lifting program is not very intense then the order is not as important as the amount of effort you put into both cardio and lifting. 

So which is better for fat loss, long duration, low intensity cardio, or high intensity interval training?  We’ll talk about that next time.

    If you have been watch the news you may have caught this headline about A radical new fitness program suggested by Jim Karas in his new book, “The Cardio-Free Diet.”

I just have to ask, “is this guy for real?”  So I looked up his website to find out where he is coming from by making such an outlandish statement. 

Turns out that he is an Ivy Leaguer, graduating from the Wharton School of BUSINESS.  That’s right, BUSINESS.  No exercise physiology degree or health related degree at all.  

He is taughted as a celebrity fitness expert and trainer, but I failed to find a personal training certification of any kind, even a bad one

This guy has some guts to go head to head with established experts in the field of health and exercise science and make comments like, “It(cardio) kills your weight loss plan, your joints, your internal organs and immune system, your body composition, your time and, most of all, your motivation to stay committed to losing weight.”

What is he basing this knowledge on?  killing joints?  What joints?  killing internal organs?  Which internal organs?  I could not find the answers to these questions or a solid explanation of why cardio is bad for weight loss other than that it increases your appetite. 

Honestly, hunger and appetite are driven by a lot of factors.  Things like how long and what you ate before beginning the workout.  how long you are spending doing the workout, stress level, medication, etc. and etc.  to make a blanket statement that cardio increses your appetite is ridiculous.

I integrate both cardio and strength training into my workout regimen but I find no difference in appetite between the two.  I always make sure to eat adequately before and after.

I do agree with him in that strength training needs to be a part of any sound weight loss program.  You may refer back to my earlier posts about how “A Little Muscle Goes a Long Way (parts 1 and 2).

However, I cannot give very much credit to some guy with a business degree and no fitness certification who tells me that cardio is a waste of my time with no real scientific evidence to back up his view. 

I will be honest and say that even though I don’t know everything, I do know that cardiovascular exercise is good for you, good for your heart, and almost every organ in your body.  And it will help you lose weight!  The ultimate key to any kind of weight loss is to reduce caloric intake and increase caloric expenditure regardless of the type of activity.

   In another post I will explain the weight loss benefits of cardio vs strength training  so be on the lookout.

Bulky Women (part 2) 

The second important thing you need to build muscle is the proper training program.

The program needs to be intense enough to overload your muscular system and signal your body to start building more muscle.  Remember that you also have to be eating enough calories too. And we are talking about a lot of calories.

The training programs used for muscle growth (hypertrophy) use high intensity and high volume weight lifting.  The way to overload muscle is to make it lift more weight than it’s used to.  Body builders are sometimes jokingly referred to as “gym rats” because they spend so much time there.  It’s not because they can’t find anywhere else to hang out, it’s because they have to do so many sets and repetitions and include enough rest between those sets. 

Some bodybuilders even train multiple times during the day for hours at a time. 

Most of us can’t afford to spend the time most bodybuilders need to spend shaping their bodies. 

I’ll discuss the third component to building muscle in the next post so keep a lookout.

Can women get bulky?

The answer is yes, but not as easily as most people think.

I have some individuals (women mainly) tell me all the time that they want to tone up their muscles with weight training, but they don’t want to get bulky.

What most people don’t realize is how hard it is for anyone to gain lean muscle, even guys. Successful body builders, either male or female must adhere to strict diets in order to gain the maximum amount of lean muscle, and they spend a lot of time lifting weights and doing cardio in order to create the specific look they want. In some cases, bodybuilders use androgenic steroids or other supplements to enhance muscle gain.

Building muscles requires three important things.

First, you must eat more calories than you are burning on a consistent, daily basis.

Bodybuilders eat a lot, I MEAN A LOT!

To gain muscle you would need to increase the amount of calories you eat by 500 or more per day depending on how big you want to get.

Any weight gain will always include both lean weight (which is muscle, bone, water and other stuff) and fat. If you are burning a lot of calories with exercise and you keep your caloric intake the same, then you will actually lose weight.

The take home point here is that if you don’t want to build big muscles, don’t eat more than what your body can use. Regardless of how heavy you lift weights, if your caloric intake remains the same or decreases, then you are not going to build any more muscle. Your muscles will repair themselves and you will get stronger, but not by building muscle.