6 Reasons You Still Have a Gut

The reasons why excess baggage around your midsection won’t budge aren’t always obvious.

Assuming you’re not eating your meals from a trough, you’re selective about what foods you consume, and you’re exercising consistently, you might be perplexed as to why the inner tube around your waistline won’t disappear. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t always cut and dry. While you’ll need to do some investigative work, we have ideas that’ll help you solve the mysterious case of the inflated spare tire.

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9 Things Guys Do That Can Give Them Man Boobs

It doesn’t matter how much you can bench press—you could be growing woman-worthy breasts.

A shrinking scrotum isn’t steroids’ only threat to your manhood. So are “bitch tits,” a name reserved for the breasts men grow after

taking anabolic steroids to bulk up. This phenomenon is caused when the body converts the ridiculous amounts of testosterone in steroids into estrogen, says plastic surgeon Elliot W. Jacobs, MD, who specializes in gynecomastia surgery in New York City. About half of his gynecomastia patients are bodybuilders, many of whom either have B and C cup-sized breasts as well as puffy nipples, he says.

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9 Things Guys Do That Can Give Them Man Boobs

It doesn’t matter how much you can bench press—you could be growing woman-worthy breasts.

There are pecs and then there are boobs. And it turns out, up to 50 percent of men in the U.S. have the latter, according to a review from the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. And FYI, the condition’s called gynecomastia.

But don’t buy stock in the bro (thanks, Kramer!) just yet. Assuming you aren’t born with a genetic disorder like Klinefelter syndrome that can cause the condition, bra-ready jugs are pretty simple to avoid if you heed the causes. Breast tissue—which both women and men possess—feeds off of estrogen hormones. While women naturally have more estrogen, and men naturally have more androgen hormones, men can easily get their estrogens-to-androgens ratio out of whack. The result: Sprouting boobs faster than your high school’s head cheerleader.

Here, the 9 sneakiest cup-fillers:

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5 BEST EXERCISES FOR INCREASED PERFORMANCE

Get an edge on your competition – in whatever sport you play – with these performance-enhancing lifts.

In our search for the most effective weight training exercises for athletes, we decided to contact a handful of the country’s best trainers and strength coaches and ask them each one simple, yet ever-perplexing question: What is the single best exercise a ballplayer, fighter or any other sportsman for that matter can do to improve his performance on the field, the court, the track or the ring?

The typical response included lots of head-scratching, and more than one trainer made the point that it’s virtually impossible to pick one single move that trumps all others. Fair enough. So we rephrased the question: If for some odd reason, you were limited to one exercise to prescribe to your athletes, what would it be?

In the end, the trainers came through in fine fashion and delivered the following 5 exercises. Each individual had his own reason for choosing the exercise he did, but overall, any one exercise on the list will work for a number of sports, from football to fighting to sand volleyball on the weekends, provided that sport requires some combination of strength, power, flexibility and conditioning. (All you dart throwers and foosball players out there, sorry, you’re out of luck.) Fortunately, you’re not limited to picking just one exercise. Work several (or even all) of them into your current lifting program and we promise you’ll be that much more of a beast in your chosen sporting arena in no time.

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THE 15-MINUTE FULL-BODY MASSACRE WORKOUT

This workout is short, but it's not for the faint of heart. These timed circuits will test your strength and endurance for every part.

Timed circuits are great way to burn fat yet still build muscle. They’re great to tack on to the end of your normally scheduled workout -- but if you are short on time, these workouts are a great way to keep the metabolism up or just for a change of pace.

One of the most grueling timed circuits consists simply of barbell squats and the barbell bench presses, but similar schemes can be applied to other body parts that are a) being trained that day or b) in need of a serious makeover.

For the back squat/bench press combo, select weights for each exercise that you can handle for approximately 10-12 reps. Using a 2010 tempo – two seconds down, no pause, one second up, no pause – perform six reps of each as quickly as possible (again, understanding tempo) with the goal of performing as many rounds as you can in 15 minutes of time. Move from one exercise to the next without rest until you hit 15 minutes.

WORKOUT TIPS
You'll want to do 1-2 warm-up sets for each move before you start the 15-minute timer. If this is at the end of another workout, no general warm-up is needed. If you are doing it as a standalone session, spend a few minutes on a good dynamic, full-body warm-up to prep joints and your central nervous system for the work ahead. Follow your dynamic warm-up with the 1-2 specific warm-up sets.

For you big-box gym rats, you may have to adapt if the gym is busy. Keep your mind open if you do not have the availability of the equipment. Good squat substitutes, if you must, include the Smith squat, leg press, hack squat and Goblet squat. For chest, find a Hammer strength machine, Smith machine, bench press machine, dumbbells or do weighted pushups with a vest.

THE PAYOFF
This type of work is great because it gets your heart rate up, gets you burning fat and keeps that metabolism burning. The alternating style between body parts affords you a lot more reps and sets in and the allotted time and there's no question that you can grow muscle performing workouts like this as well. For you former athletes or naturally competitive people, perform the same workout a week apart and try to up your weights the second time through matching your rounds score or leave the weight the same and try to get more rounds.

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7 REASONS YOU'RE NOT LOSING WEIGHT

Follow these nutrition and training tips to drop more LBs.

So you want to lose weight?  It’s a commendable goal and the benefits are plenty (self-esteem, energy, quality of life, preventing disease, longevity, and lower health costs). With an epidemic of obesity, people are looking for ways to obtain or maintain a healthy weight, yet their goals are being hijacked. Many of the saboteurs are controllable and easy, yet they are elusive. 

Here are 7 reasons you may be struggling with weight loss. 

It seems easy enough. Eat less and exercise more. In a vacuum you may be correct. The body is a finely tuned, intelligent machine though. When slashing calories be careful not to cut too many. Leaving too many calories on the plate can be as detrimental to weight loss as eating too much. When you decrease calories to low your body goes into starvation mode and your metabolism crashes. 

A sluggish metabolism is the quickest way to stop weight loss. What typically follows is frustration, starvation, lethargy, and even depression, resulting in a binge.  Binging with a slow metabolism is a double whammy sure to lead to more fat accumulation. Try making subtle drops in calories between 200 and 500 calories per day, depending on your current intake.
We get it, calorie counting and tracking macronturients (proteins, carbohydrates, and fats) can be tedious. For those not accustomed to it, it can be intimidating and overwhelming. There are tools to help you. My Fitness Pal and Fat Secret are great smart phone apps with recipes, bar code scanners, and also interact with many of your favorite restaurant chains. Take a week to weigh and measure all of your foods so you get an idea of portion sizes and the macronutrients and calories each food contains. Most people severely over or under estimate the amount of food and calories they consume per day. You may surprise yourself.

Hold the BBQ sauce!  Say no to ranch. Get dressings on the side. It may not seem like a big deal, but many of your favorite condiments pack 100-200 calories per serving (which can be as small as a tablespoon). 

There are low calorie and calorie free options to choose from such as mustards and hot sauces you can use to enhance your foods. I frequently pack my own when dining out, and order my foods plain. It gives me the enjoyment of eating out, yet I can often times cut hundreds of calories.  Even ketchup contains 15 calories (4 grams of sugar) per tbsp. That adds up in a hurry when you are using 2-3 servings a day over time.

The fastest way to accrue calories with no satiation is to drink them. Liquids will not make you feel full. It’s double jeopardy because you will still eat enough calories to make you feel satisfied. Fruit juice, soft drinks, sports drinks, and alcohol will destroy your weight loss goals. Ditch them. If you must have them opt for sugar free or diet varieties and limit alcohol to 1-3 drinks per week. For many people this can create a major caloric deficit and cause a jump in weight loss alone.

It’s true, you must burn more calories than you are consuming to lose weight, and cardio is the fastest way to burn those calories for most. However, there is a point of diminishing returns for most. Spending hours and hours of cardio can be tedious and cause unfavorable metabolic adaptations. Your body adapts to cardiovascular/aerobic exercise quickly. If running for 20 minutes at 6 miles per hour burnt X amount of calories when you start it will eventually burn X-Y calories. One must continue to either increase intensity or duration to continue the weight loss benefits.  As you can see, eventually you run out of energy or time.

Your answer to the previous dilemma is weight training. Weight training produces a phenomenon called EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). In a nutshell, this means that your metabolism is going to stay elevated after you exercise, so you continue burning calories even after you are done training. Sometimes metabolism stays elevated up to 72 hours after an intense weight training session. EPOC is the gift that keeps on giving (in terms of body fat reduction).

Preparation is your biggest ally in the battle of the bulge. All the healthy eating and exercise in the world will not make up for that 3 day weekend getaway you plan on drinking pints or sucking down whip cream infused strawberry daiquiris, while devouring typical vacation fair. I’m not advocating abstinence from enjoying a drink or two, or even a couple of cheat meals, but not planning ahead typical means poor food choices for an entire day or weekend. Take a couple of days and some time to plan ahead. 

Plan your “cheat” meals or meals out and adjust your calorie int

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View 12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster fOR FRee

Follow these key training tips to accelerate your muscle gains.

12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster

1. Use Proper Form
Bad form equals bad results. Having good form, feeling your muscles contracting against the weight will develop quality muscle. You will have better workouts and will experience more muscle development going for the feel, as opposed to letting your ego take over.

2. Keep It Simple
Don’t let your training become too fancy and overly complicated. Some of the greatest physiques are guys who trained in the 40’s and 50's. Those guys trained naturally and their routines were simple. 3x per week, full body routine each workout. They also used simple rep schemes, 5 sets of 5 reps, or 5 sets of 10 reps. A simple routine focusing on getting better every workout will go a long way. There is no reason to get fancy, when doing the basics will get the job done.

3. Be Patient
You need a lot of patience to build a great physique. Unfortunately muscle does not grow overnight. In a perfect scenario with optimal conditions your body can make 10g of muscle a day. Gaining 40 lbs of muscle in 30 days won’t happen. Get that idea out of your mind, it does not exist.

4. Be Consistent
Consistency is probably the most important item on this list. You have to be consistent when trying to build muscle or burn fat. Every program works to some degree but sticking to a program is what separates the average from the great. People get results in spite of what they do. Those people are the ones who consistently grind in the gym and who consistently train hard no matter what life throws at them.

5. Focus on Progressive Overload
Progressive overload is the most important aspect of muscle building. If you’re not training with progression you’re not working out, period! Muscle only responds to load and training volume. If you’re doing more work with more load your muscle will have no choice but to adapt and grow bigger and stronger. If your focusing on “confusing the muscles” or you’re not committed to your training program your results will be slim to none in the long term.

6. Keep a Workout Journal
How do you know what works for you and what doesn’t? I like to compare our individual bodies to science experiments. We are our own test subjects; you should always be monitoring, tracking and tweaking your program slightly to adjust to the changes you are seeing. Failure to do this will result in plateauing.

Without keeping a workout journal how else would you know if what you are currently doing is working? The more detailed your workout journal is the better and faster you will get permanent results.  

7. Plan Ahead
Success is a planned event. Getting a better physique is not going to happen on accident. If you want results in the gym you have to plan for them. Plan ahead for each day. Prepare your meals beforehand so you have access to your food and you’re not running through the drive-thru because you’re starving. If you’re not getting results, you didn’t plan accordingly. Did you get your cardio done for the week? No, why? You didn’t plan ahead. You missed a meal and had to eat Wendy’s, you didn’t plan ahead. Have the no excuse attitude and get it done.

8. Focus on Compound Movements
Isolation movements are great and definitely have their place in training but you should always be striving toward progressing in the basic compound movements. Compound movements are movements that incorporate multiple muscles at once such as squats, deadlifts, rows, and bench press. With compound moves, you will be hitting multiple muscles at once which in turn will release more muscle building/ fat burning hormones in your body. You will have a systematic response and you will be placing a greater demand on your body for more muscle.

You should always perform your compound movements first in your routine. Once you start getting tired out then you should switch over to more isolation movements to help further hit the muscles.

9. Lift Heavy
Being strong doesn’t have anything to do with size. Some of the best powerlifters are females who weigh 130lbs. Your diet will control how much mass you build, but the more strength you have the better. The more muscle you have on your frame, the leaner and more ripped you will be. Heavy lifting will help build strong rock hard muscle. Don’t get caught up doing light weight for high reps in an attempt to lose more body fat. That does not work. Stay true to your heavy compound movements.

10. Eat Smart
80% of what we see in the mirror is based off our eating habits. If you’re eating like a little pig chances are you will look like one. Proper nutrition goes a long way to help aid in recover and the rebuilding of muscles. Proper post workout meals along with balanced macronutrients will result in an overall healthy and strong body.

11. There's No Magic Pill
Don’t be that person that jumps from routine to routine in hopes of getting a better body overnight. There are no magical potions, secret routines or crazy diets. People that waste time looking for the next best thing are doing just that, wasting their time. Instead of putting in so much effort searching for the easy way out why don’t you enjoy the process you’re on. I truly love training and I enjoy training every week. I actually enjoy the process. If you don’t make an effort to stay on your routine and eat a healthy balanced diet your body will rot away. Don’t ignore the basics, embrace them.

12. Take Action
Stop procrastinating and start taking action. Do not dilly-dally during your workout. Be as productive as possible in the gym and even in life. You never want to be wasting time. You only have one life to live and you have to be as productive as possible during every hour of everyday. The more focused you are during your workouts the more you will get out of them.

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12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster

Follow these key training tips to accelerate your muscle gains.

12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster

12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster
Anthony Bevilacqua
Follow these key training tips to accelerate your muscle gains. 
12 Ways to Build Muscle Faster  “Click Here” >> To ViEw ...

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Wave Load for Big Strength Gains

Boost .your .lifts .and .pack .on .more .muscle with this advanced training t.echnique.

For .big strength *gains, straight sets. just aren’t enough. Traditional set-and-rep schemes like 4 sets of 10. reps, 3 sets of 12 reps, or even 5 sets of 5 reps are limited because your strength declines from *set to set, and your training stays at only one level of intensity.

What if there was a routine that exposed you to different intensities so you could -gain more strength and pack on more muscle? And what if there was a routine that -could “shock” your body into lifting heavier weights?

Say hello. to wave .loading. 

What is .Wave Loading?

Wave loading is an advanced set/rep .scheme where you adjust the weights .and reps for each set in an ascending or descending f.ashion (a wave). Here’s a simple example of one descending .wave:

8  - reps of 300 lbs.
6 -  reps of 320 lbs.
4 -  reps of 340 lbs.

Here, the reps .decrease with each set as the -weights increase. You can also reverse the order (an ascending wave) to focus on strength instead of hypertrophy.

For advanced lifters, use -multiple waves. Now, the first wave actually prepares your muscles to lift heavier -on the second wave – that’s where the magic happens. Using the previous example, we’ll add a second wave with slightly -higher loads:

8 -  reps of 300 lbs.
6  - reps of 320 lbs.
4  - reps of 340 lbs.
8  - reps of 305 lbs.
6 -  reps of 325 lbs.
4 - reps of 345 lbs.

We can also -make those waves “spikier” by increasing the difference in reps:

6 -  reps of 320 lb.
1 - rep of 360 lb.
6 - reps of 325 lb.
1 - rep of 365 lb.

This is called “rapid wave loading:” the waves become spikes that peak with a few, heavy reps. 

How Wave Loading Works

Wave loading does three things better than other set/rep schemes: first, it stimulates your. muscles with different intensities. Straight sets don’t give you that option

Second, it exposes you .to heavy weights, which are absolutely critical for growth. Too often, programs favor high volume and low weights when it’s actually the high weights that .stimulate your big gains. How high? Think above 80% of your one-rep max. To pack on more muscle., there’s no substitute for lifting gut-wrenchingly heavy weight.

Third, wave loading “shocks” your muscles to lift more – a phenomenon called “post-activation potentiation.”. From a quick exposure to .heavy weights, you stimulate your neural system and improve your muscles’ ability to generate. power.
Now, you can lift more. and get bigger strength gains. 

Wave Loading .Routines

If your goal is more size, try this wave load for .your heavy .lifts:

10 - reps

2 - reps

10 - reps

2 - reps (at a .slightly higher weight than your .second set)

15 - reps

If your goal is more strength, try this wave load:

6 - reps

1 - rep

4 - reps

1 - rep (at a slightly higher weight than your second set)

8 - reps

Wave Training Tips

• The key with .these waves is to maintain the balance between activation and. fatigue. If your spikes. are too heavy, they’ll tire you. If they’re not heavy enough, you .won’t potentiate the muscle.
• Avoid training to failure.
• As the weights get heavy, rest more.
• As you familiarize yourself with wave .loading, feel free to get more creative. Add another wave, change the direction of the waves (more reps and less weight or vice versa), or increase the speed of your. lifts.

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6 Pilates Moves for a Shredded Six-Pack

Master pilates instructor Jennifer Mongeluzo tells you how to build a better six-pack with this 15-minute pilates routine.

Do you have a gut or a tight, lean midsection? As a master Pilates instructor for 10 years, I can comfortably say that I know what’s best when it comes to your core. Strength, stamina, and posture are the keys to solid abs. On the following slides, you’ll find five quick and easy Pilates exercises you can do anywhere— even in front of the TV while you watch ESPN highlights. Each exercise will hit the major core muscles: transverse abdominis, internal and external obliques, serratus anterior, latissimus dorsi, spinal erectors, and, of course, the rectus abdominis.

More Tips: All exercises (minus the warmup) are shown with five-pound dumbbells. this can be modified with lighter weight or no weights for beginners. If you have lower-back issues, don’t 

extend your legs; keep the knees bent. If you have neck issues, leave your head down

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