The Truth About Weight Training

It's been a busy week...a lot of decision making
regarding the future. Business wise, I'm happy to
announce that I will have a newly designed blog
coming very soon where I will talk about EVERYTHING
fitness.

It's actually going to be like 4 blogs in
one so no matter who you are or what type of fitness
info you're looking for, I'll have it for you.

I also designed a new program for myself so I'm
excited about that. It's a fairly involved workout,
but as I was doing it it reminded me of an interview
I did with Mike Geary of Truth About Abs recently and
I wanted to share a little bit of it with you.

Enjoy,

DG - For total beginners to weight training what's
the very first step?

MG - Well, I think it's important for beginners to
master some very basic bodyweight-based exercises
before getting too involved in a lot of weight
training. So this means we focus on making sure the
beginner learns how to do a proper bodyweight squat,
bodyweight lunge, and step-ups for the lower
body.

For the upper body, I'll make sure they're proficient
at pushups and inverted body rows up to a bar. If
they aren't able to do pushups from the floor, I'll
have them do pushups with their hands on an elevated
surface. I find these more effective than modified
pushups with the knees on the ground.

Also, I make sure the beginner is working some very
basic core stability such as holding full pushup
positions, plank positions, etc.

Then, when they're strength is improving, we'll
start to introduce basic multi-joint exercises
(mostly with dumbbells, barbells, and possibly a cable
exercise or two) keeping in mind the following basic
movement patterns:

*Upper body horizontal row (1-arm row, bent over row,
cable row, inverted body row)
*Upper body horizontal push (chest press, pushup, etc)
*Upper body vertical pull (lat cable pulldown, pullup)
*upper body vertical press (overhead dumbbell press, etc)
*Lower body pull (deadlifts, romanian deadlifts)
*Lower body push (squatting movements)
*Lower body unilateral exercises (lunges, step-ups, etc)

DG - What are your favorite exercises for fat loss?

MG - These are the top of my list without a doubt:

*1-arm swings (dumbbell or kettlebell)

*1-arm snatches (dumbbell or kettlebell)

*barbell clean & presses

*barbell or dumbbell high pulls

*any form of squatting (bodyweight, barbell front
or back, dumbbell, jump squats, etc)

*any form of deadlifting (standard, romanian,
sumo-stance)

*any form of lunging (standing fwd, standing
reverse, walking, walking/twisting, etc)

*step-ups (bodyweight, dumbbells, med ball,
step & press, etc)

*dumbbell squat & presses

DG - How important are ab exercises for losing weight,
because I see A LOT of people doing them in the gyms?

MG - Ab exercises have virtually nothing to do with
losing weight... yet for some reason, that seems to
be the first thing people do when they want to
lose belly fat.

We should all know by now that you don't "melt off
body fat" from a specific area of the body just by
contracting the muscle group in that area of the body.

There are many more important factors for losing body
fat such as your resting metabolic rate, your activity
level, your training routines as a whole, your nutrition
quality and quantity, the hormonal balance in your
body, the amount of lean muscle mass you have, etc... all
of which affect the grand-poobah of whether you lose
weight or gain weight... your overall caloric deficit
or surplus compared to your current metabolic needs at any
given time (are you eating more than you're utilizing
in a time period or vice versa).

Have a great week,

Dan Grant
http://www.degreesofchangefatlossplan.com