Now a little less than a year ago I committed to doing the P90X for about 60 days and got some pretty good results. Went from 20% to 12% body fat. Built a lot of cardio, strength, and went from 190lbs to 164lbs. I worked out about 6 days a week, many of those days doing doubles or triples (two or three separate hour-or-more long workouts the same day).
What I wasn't a big fan of, though, was some of the extra strain I was putting on various body parts. I felt like I was powering through a lot of my weightlifting workouts without giving enough attention to proper alignment, body control, nor did I feel like I was able to monitor my strength gains very well. I also got hurt a number of time being that I didn't feel strong enough for the workouts and over-exerted myself as to not look like a pussy at the gym with light weights.
This year I wanted to do something different. The results I got from P90X were great, but I'm bored of those workouts. My main goal is fat loss. Some people recommend I do 40-60 mins of cardio 5 days a week, but after trying that out for 2 weeks and avoiding weightlifting, I didn't get the results I wanted besides increasing stamina. So I decided to go back to weightlifting.
Here's my argument. Lifting weights burns calories. It take your body a lot of energy to push through heavy weights. Between sets, you're still burning calories as your body is recovering for the next set. After your workout, your body is still burning calories throughout the day, and as you sleep, for days on end until your muscles are fully recovered. Your heart doesn't burn fat, muscles burn fat. The more muscle you have, the more energy your body needs to power your muscles, and thus the more calories your body will burn in order to produce work. The more muscle you gain, the more calories you're burning.
The buff bodybuilder running on the treadmill at 6mph is actually burning more calories than the lean runner on the treadmill going at 8mph. Cardio only really targets fat burning during the workout, but doesn't continually burn calories throughout the day the way that muscles recovering do. I can do an hour of low intensity cardio and burn X amount of calories, or I can lift weight a burn X calories plus the the calories my body will use to repair those muscles. Same with high-intensity interval training. I might burn less by doing high-intensity cardio for 45 mins, but my metabolism will be raised higher and I will ending up burning more throughout the day, especially with the more muscle I have.
I got very buff and ripped in high school with this method and find that I get really good results when I do weightlifting in combination with other exercise as opposed to strictly cardio. Cardio is great for improving stamina, endurance, and cardiovascular strength, but I would argue against Arnold Schwarzenegger that I can't lose weight or burn fat just by lifting alone.
Most of the Fat-Buff Bear guys you see don't get that way just from lifting, it's mostly because they lift without following a proper diet regiment. A lot of them drink weight gainers, have a high-caloric diet, or ingest a lot of carbs and therefore have their metabolism slowed down.
For the last 2 weeks I've been following a Barbell Training program called Starting Strength. It's similar to what olympic power lifters do: mostly a series of Squats, Bench Presses, Deadlifts, Shoulder Presses, and Power Cleans. I liked the idea of building foundational strength first before trying to sculpt. I wanted to get my glutes stronger as I sit down all day and it's caused me to have lower back problems. I wanted to develop a good awareness of proper bench pressing, deadlifting, and doing other workouts that have been prescribed to athletes for so long.
When doing the P90X I found myself getting hurt a lot and being disconnected from my core. I'm not interested in bulking up or toning right now, but rather building actual strength & power for me to have under my belts when I do in fact wish to switch to more prettyboy workouts like bicep curls, shoulder flys, calf raises, tricep extensions, etc.
It's also just something new, and I enjoy doing it. I don't enjoy endless cardio. I don't enjoy endless weightlifting routines with tons of different exercises. I find that I'm more likely to stick to a workout that I actually enjoy, so why not stay with it if I'm more likely to succeed that way? I like the result I have so far, but of course, I'm experience the compulsory lower back spasms that I get whenever I start a new workout, but with this, I'm making my lower back and glutes STRONGER, not just straining them as an undesired consequence due to poor posture in other workouts.
I'm doing cardio on my off-days. I know you're not supposed to do too much cardio when trying to build muscle, but I find it important that my stamina and endurance be increased, so I'm will to sacrifice some muscle to be able to push harder in other things. I'm just doing continuous cardio for 40 mins at around 165-185 heartbeats per minute and will do high-intensity interval training after I've built enough cardiovascular strength.
My diet is also a Primal/Paleo diet. In short, it's a diet of strictly plants and animals. No bread, no grains, no pasta, no candy, no junk food, no cookies, no cheese, but yes milk. Carbs are basically more complex sugars. The carbs found in gluten slow our metabolism down by signaling our body to release insulin and take energy from our protein storages (muscle) instead of fat. The carbs found in vegatable and plants are much more preferable to our bodies. It's basically the diet our bodies have adjusted to for over two million years, before the recent introduction of grains, gluten foods, refined sugar, candy, and other poisons that civilization has fed us. Gluten-based foods and breads did not appear until about 10,000 years ago, along with the introduction agriculture. Evolution takes a long time and our brains and bodies have not yet developed as fast as our agriculture, technology, and way of life.
Of course, I wont be a crazy diet-freak about it. I'll make exceptions, let myself cheat now and then, eat a sweet, drink a beer, or have a bowl of spaghetti. I really think a lot of people develop strange eating disorders from following too strict of diets. Also, stressing yourself out too much over what you eat goes against the whole principle of health. It also just makes sense to me.
So for the next month and a half I'll be doing barbell workouts, focused on three sets of five reps, for each workout, just to build strength. Once I get as strong as I'd like, I'll switch to bodybuilder dumbell workouts and doing sets of 8-10. I'll do that for a month and a half (or more if it feels right) as well while continuing the Primal diet with the intentions of mainly building muscle.
After that, depending on my results thus far and how I feel, I plan on switching to a high fat KETO diet. It's a diet that allows no more than 50g of carbs a day, is high in fat, and permits a moderate amount of protein in ratio to the amount of lean body mass I currently have. Starving the body of carbs will put it into a "starving state" in which it will metabolize the high resources of fat in my body along with the fat in my diet. I've been doing a lot of research on this and thought this would be considerable as it keeps the body from metabolizing muscle while losing weight. During this "keto" phase I'm not yet sure if I'll be more cardio-focused, as I would by then have a lot of muscle to burn fat with, or if I'll be doing the same thing. I'll have to see.
Eventually I'll return to a regular diet with minimalized amounts of sugar, carbs, and fat. Mostly having protein at the top of my chain with lots of healthy raw fruits and vegetables.
My goal is to be in poolside shape my June. I don't think that far ahead though. Just one day at a time. Of course I'll also be mixing in yoga, dance, TRX training, pilates, etc.
But now it's time for the most important part... REST!!!
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