Lose Body Fat With These Meals...

You can lose body fat faster by buckling down on your nutrition TODAY. Here are five easy meals with a relatively short prep time that can become regular choices in your weekly diet without sacrificing time and taste:

Chicken, Veggies & Brown Rice 

I buy my chicken organic from Trader Joes, mostly use frozen veggies for convenience and I actually use frozen brown rice which drastically cuts down the prep time for this meal. Cook the chicken in a pan on the stove using a non-stick pan. When the chicken is cooked well, toss in some veggies and heat them up on the stove top at a low heat and cover it. Total time to cook the chicken and veggies should be about 20 minutes. Using frozen brown rice, you can heat that stuff up in 2-3 minutes and mix it all together for a nutritious lunch or dinner. This meal also keeps well as left overs so make a bunch and eat it a few days in a row!

Ground Turkey Soft Tacos
No one says to be fit you have to eat bland tasting food. Tacos are one of my favorite dinners and I make some healthy substitutions to this great Mexican dish. I use 98% lean ground turkey and spice it up with the taco seasoning of my choice instead of using ground or shredded beef. I substitute corn tortillas for flour tortillas and heat them on the stove. I also use re-fried or black beans as a topping to add calories, fiber and bulk to the meal. You can toss in your favorite veggies (tomatoes, lettuce, etc) and have a complete meal that only takes about 15-20 minutes to prepare depending on how long it takes to cook your turkey meat.

Turkey Sandwich

One of the lamest excuses I get from clients on why they don't eat well at work is because "they are forced to eat out somewhere." I have a simple solution: pack a lunch like you did in grade school and don't eat out so much! Tried and true, a simple sandwich consisting of 3-4 slices of turkey on 100% whole-wheat bread, topped with a non-fattening condiment like mustard, a slice of low-fat cheese, tomatoes and lettuce can give you essential nutrients from all food groups and be made in less than five minutes.

Apples with Peanut Butter
I already took you back to your childhood with sack lunches and turkey sandwiches, but apples with peanut butter are another simple and great snack to have in between major meals. As you have heard me mention before, eating frequently is important to keep your blood sugar and insulin levels balanced and to keep your energy levels up to avoid brain crashes. Slicing up an apple and dipping it into 1-2 tablespoons of organic peanut butter (not that Skippy or JIF stuff, they have hydrogenated oils in them which are no good for your heart) can give you a quick and nutritious shot of essential vitamins, carbs, good fat and a snack worth about 200-300 calories depending on how much you like peanut butter.

Oatmeal, Eggs & Fruit

Breakfast is important and you must always find time for breakfast. Heating up a bowl of oatmeal takes less than five minutes, which can be done while you scramble an egg or two. Once you're done cooking and eating your oatmeal, grab an apple or banana for the road to eat on the way to work. Oatmeal and your fruit of choice will provide your body with some of the necessary energy to jump start your metabolic engine for the day, while the eggs are a valuable source of protein. You can even throw some blueberries in your oatmeal to make it more nutritious. This is one of the most nutritiously complete and quick breakfast meals you can incorporate into your food plan!

3 Tips for Six Pack Abs...

"How do I get six pack abs?" If I had a dollar for every time this ab question was asked, I'd be a rich trainer! Most people spend their time sitting up and crunching in their attempt to get a shredded six pack. Believe it or not, these people are going about their goals mostly the wrong way. I am going to give you three tips that will help give you the abs you want, without ever asking you to do a crunch.

Tip #1 - Eat Well
If you aren't eating well, you won't be able to see your abs. Sound nutrition is the biggest factor in keeping your midsection lean. Stay away from refined sugars, high glycemic carbs and enriched flour products which cause high insulin responses. Stick with eating lean proteins, complex carbs and snacking on good fats to balance insulin levels and maximize the body's natural fat burning capabilities throughout the day.

Tip #2 - Rotate & Chop 
Rotations and wood chops are some of the most under used movements in the gym, especially when it comes to shaping up the abs. Exercises like wood chops and rotational variations work numerous muscles in the trunk including the obliques, rectus abdominis and those cool looking serratus muscles that make your ribs look lean. Try including at least one rotational movement in your routine 2-4 times a week to shape these muscles and increase functional strength.

Tip #3 - Train On Your Feet
The reality for most Americans is we sit entirely too much. This causes the internal stabilizing muscles of the trunk to weaken and the stomach to protrude. By working out on our feet we increase the amount of calories burned in a session, thus making it easier to stay lean. We also will be forced to engage our core more which practically means you are working abs while you squat, lunge, bend, push and pull. With stronger stabilizers our stomach will flatten and with more work being done in the session it will be easier to keep the body lean.

The Body Weight Project Routines

Here are the five routines we will be cycling through for the next six weeks. You will notice the only equipment necessary will be a TRX, a step or platform and a place to do pull ups. Remember, the goal is to perform 20 repetitions of each exercise and move through the circuit as quickly as possible, taking rest as needed. Every two weeks we are going to two extra rounds to boost the total volume as follows:

Weeks 1 & 2 - Four rounds

Weeks 3 & 4 - Six rounds

Weeks 5 & 6 - Eight Rounds

As for the conditioning, we will be increasing one set each week as well. If you are up for the challenge, please read the routine and check my closing statements at the end of this blog. Enjoy!

Day 1
Bulgarian Split Squat
Push Up with Shoulder Over
Ice Skaters
TRX Low Row
Single Leg Hip Extension

Conditioning: 5-10-5 Shuttle Drill x 15 30 seconds rest

Day 2
Jump Squats
Incline Push Ups
Lateral Lunge
Pull Ups (only 8-10)
TRX Hamstring Curls

Conditioning: 30-30 Super Burpee Intervals x 5


Day 3
Walking/Alternating Lunges
Plyo Push Ups
Lateral Shuffle (10 yards/30 feet apart) 10 to each side
TRX High Row
TRX Grappler's Twist

Conditioning: 15 yard line drill/suicides (5 back, 10 back, 15 back) x 10



Day 4
Split Squat Jumps
TRX Push Ups
TRX Single Arm Row with Rotation
Jack Knife/Inverted Push Up
TRX Supine Hip Extension Swing

Conditioning: 40 yard sprint x 6


Day 5
Squat
T-Push Ups
Carioca (10 yards/30 feet apart) 10 to each side
TRX Y-T-W (6 sets of the 3 movements)
Box Jumps
20 yard Sprint/Shuffle/Carioca/Mountain Climber Circuit (aka Anaerobic Ass Kicking) x 4

Any of you out there willing to give this Body Weight Project a shot on your own let me know! If you are a beginner, you can start out by doing less reps, say 8-10 of each exercise. Intermediate you want to try 12-15 and if you are advanced, try to keep up with us! If you plan on trying this, please e-mail me at jeff@bombergerpt.com so we can discuss a few things and track your progress as well! Get some!

The Body Weight Project Explained

This past Monday I began what I am calling 'The Body Weight Project'. For the next six weeks, I am going to perform five consecutive total body workouts (Monday-Friday) using JUST my body weight. That's right: no barbells, no dumbbells, no strength training machines, no medicine balls, not even kettle bells. Joining me on this six week journey will be friend and fellow trainer Brandon Reina. The routines are going to consist of a strength training circuit to be completed as quickly as possible, followed by agility or sprint based cardiovascular conditioning drills. The purpose of my little experiment is to see how the body responds to the stress of performing total body exercise routines on five consecutive days.

Now those of you who are up to speed with your program design and best training practices, you may be thinking: I thought you weren't supposed to work the same muscle groups on consecutive days? You're right, this is what we are told as fitness professionals. However, the human body is a resilient machine and my wheels really started turning a few months ago when I started taking a closer look at the way we typically train today. As I evaluated today's current training practices and took a look at the evolution of the human body, I started formulating some different ideas.

First off: bench presses, machines, treadmills and all that other gym stuff is in fact new to the human environment. For thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, people didn't just sit around all day and stare at the television and computer screens. The human body for it's entire history up until the last one-hundred and fifty years (max!) was required to be physically fit and capable. I have a sneaky suspicion that two hundred years ago the human body just did what it had to do to adapt and survive in the environment without thought to concepts like "pyramid training", "drop sets" or "over-training". The reality is, the body just adapted to whatever demands were placed on it and that was that. If your job was to load heavy bails of hay for ten hours a day or you were dragging heavy carts back and forth on the farm then you developed the necessary strength and musculature to do so. Knowing the human body is extremely adaptable and resilient, I used human history to hypothesize we could actually do total body workouts five days a week. To be safe and intelligent about the process, I figured a good starting point would be testing the use of just your body weight for resistance.

Utilizing body weight for resistance also came from another realization I had: how do gymnasts stay in such great shape without ever really lifting weights? It's simple: they practice for hours and perform TONS of volume when it comes to the movements they are trying to perfect for competition. Whether it be tumbling, which will develop unbelievable explosive power and leg strength or hoisting around on some rings, gymnasts get in great shape by doing a lot of repetition using just their body weight. I don't know about you, but I have never seen a fat gymnast. In fact, I think a lot of people would be pretty happy to be as lean as those who compete in gymnastics.

Using these observations, I have concluded one could reach some pretty unbelievable fitness levels by using just their own body weight. With the use of total body exercises, explosive drills and compound movements, Brandon and I decided to track how our body will adapt to these demands if performed in high volume, five days a week over a six week period. To go back to our evolutionary roots, we are also incorporating agility drills and sprint based conditioning to the workouts to mimic the physical prowess needed to survive as a hunter-gatherer.

Based on my understanding of the human body and the evaluation of human history, I am expecting our lean body mass to at least maintain its current state if not increase a bit, fat mass to decrease, while seeing improvement in our overall total body conditioning and core strength. The workouts will last less than an hour, reducing the effects of cortisol,  thus reducing the time our body will be in a catabolic state. Due to the fact we will not be using excessive loads and working for more than one hour, as typical in the gym, I believe we will not run into the issue of over-training. To ensure we have enough overload to incite muscular adaptations, we will be increasing the volume of the body weight workouts every two weeks. Week one we will start at four circuit rounds of 20 repetitions of each exercise, resulting in a total work load of 80 repetitions. By the end of week six, we will perform eight rounds of 20 repetitions on each exercises, resulting in a total work load of 160 repetitions. Let the games begin!

Funny Workout Clip

This is from that show "My Wife & Kids" from a couple years back. Actor Terry Crews portrays a pretty over the top, but funny trainer...

Why Smoking Needs To Go...

I hate cigarette smoke. Yeah...I said it. There's two things I  hate in this world: cigarettes and mayonnaise. Both of those things just so happen to be terrible for you. I personally think smoking should be made illegal in all public places and should not be allowed outside the confines of your own home or property. Nothing can ruin any life moment more than a big deep breath of second-hand cigarette smoke encountered: outside in the park, on the beach, in my own apartment from neighbors smoking (stink up your own house dammit!), outside the gym (ridiculous), or anywhere else I may be enjoying my day. If you want to cancer up your lungs, well then it is your free choice, but please keep that stuff away from me, other people who don't smoke, health conscious people and for crying out loud...CHILDREN. Here's the verdict on the dangers of second-hand smoke for all the weenie smokers who will claim there is no biological evidence smoking hurts other people:

Based on the level of nicotine in the urine, the scientists also divided the volunteers into three groups: smokers, who showed the highest level of the tobacco metabolites; nonsmokers, who showed none of these compounds and a low-exposure group who fell in between. Comparing the 372 genes among these three groups, they found that the low-exposure group shared 34% of the same active genes with nonsmokers and 11% of the same gene activity with smokers. The low-exposure group included both nonsmokers who have never lit up as well as those who admitted to smoking only occasionally.

Furthermore...

"What is interesting to me is how sensitive the lung cells are to any cigarette smoke," he says. "It doesn't matter if you are walking into a cocktail party where other people are smoking or if you smoke one cigarette a week. No matter what level of exposure you have, your lung cells know it and they are responding. It's sort of like canaries in the coal mine - they are crying out and saying, 'I'm changing here, I'm changing the genes that I turn on and off in response to this environmental stress.'" - Yahoo! News

Empowering Yourself

A part of my job on a daily basis is to give people the tools they need to successfully live a life of health and wellness. Although I find my job to be pretty rewarding, it can often be a tad bit frustrating as I feel like sometimes I care more about my client's personal wellness than they do themselves. I know everyone does not and will not share a passion for fitness, nutrition and health as I do, but at least have a little motivation to take care of yourself! One of the things I have come to realize as a teacher essentially, is I cannot give people something they are not willing to find in themselves. To me, this is a pretty important concept not just in fitness, but life in general.

Everything we could ever want in life is around us: ALWAYS. Information, teachers and opportunities surround us to help give us guidance in the direction we want to go. It is up to us as the individual to take this guidance and put it to positive use towards the goals we wish to achieve. The key is to find the motivation, the passion and the initiative within yourself. You could surround yourself with the happiest, healthiest, loving, most successful people or things you think represent happiness, health and love; but you may never truly experience these things if you cannot find happiness, health, wellness and wealth within yourself. Find beauty and pride in the fact that you have so much power within yourself. When you can find what you're looking for in the world within yourself, the sky is the limit.

Timed Sets

Let me briefly share with you guys why I employ the use of timed sets in my own personal workouts and with my clients. If you are unclear on what a timed set is, let me clarify; A timed set is when you prescribe a set amount of work and rest. Instead of lifting three sets of 10 repetitions, you might do three sets of 30 seconds of work. I have found this technique to be extremely effective at fatiguing muscles, elevating the heart rate and providing a great marker for measuring relative fitness.

Using timed sets typically allows me to get in a lot of muscular and cardiovascular work in with lighter loads, which in my eyes can help reduce some wear and tear on the joints. Although the loads used are relatively light, the volume typically provides enough overload to induce positive physical adaptations. With my clients, this comes in extremely handy considering people don't always come to me in the best shape. Therefore, prescribing timed sets will push my clients to get moving, build some muscular endurance, create some overload and even elicit a cardiovascular response. If the ability to handle a certain amount of weight is an issue, a useful practice is to count how many reps are done in the timed period. We all know it is easy to slack off as you get tired and the body starts to fatigue. Using the rep count from your first set can provide an excellent target for you to work towards through the remainder of your sets to ensure you are maximizing your time doing work.

Here are some different timed set work to rest ratios I have generously borrow from strength coach Robert dos Remedios and all his great work:

5:25
10:20
15:15
20:40
30:30
20:10

Flying Squirrel Push Up

Check out Joel Gunterman's 'Flying Squirrel Push Up'. It is pretty hardcore...I am kind of jealous I didn't think of it. This is basically a modified super plyometric push up. Don't miss the landing...

Wanna Increase Your Bench?

Try doing some plyometric push ups. How can a body weight exercise possibly increase your bench? Employing the use of plyometrics requires the muscles to rapidly recruit muscle fibers to create a maximal contraction. By increasing the rate at which the muscles fire and maximizing the number of muscle fibers recruited, you actually get the most work out of the muscle you possibly can with each repetition. Causing a muscle to do more work always yields positive results. This sounds like a pretty solid reason plyo push ups can help you increase your bench right? Truth be told, this is only the half of it!

Some of the plyometric push up's greatest strength gains come from the deceleration portion of the movement, or when you catch yourself on the way down from the plyometric part of the exercise. The eccentric load that is placed on the upper body during this exercise is actually quite substantial. It is simple physics: the heavier something is and the further it falls from the sky toward the ground, the more force it is going to hit the ground with. When you forcefully push yourself up into the air and you fall back down, your upper body must work eccentrically to slow down the mass of your body to keep it from just slamming on the ground. In strength training, it is a pretty well known fact muscles can greatly benefit from eccentric overload due to the amount of muscle fibers that are activated. In the case of the plyo push up, you work both maximal concentric contraction and place significant eccentric load on your upper body.

The combination of powerful concentric work and eccentric overload makes the plyo push up not only a killer exercise, but a great way to increase your bench and overall upper body strength. Give this exercise a shot and watch your bench numbers go up. For beginners, just try to get your finger tips off the ground. As you progress, try to push into the air and clap, touch your chest, your ears and finally the hardest progression, touch your hips. Start with 2-3 sets of 10 and eventually progress to 4 sets of 10. The coolest part about progressing through this exercise is the relative intensity always stays constant as you get stronger you go higher, therefore your eccentric load stays high.

Aubrey De Grey: Humans Live to 1,000 Years Old?

I just happened to come across an article discussing Biogerontologist Aubrey De Grey and his belief that humans could live to be 1,000 years old. I was intrigued by his ideas as I do believe that humans could live a great deal longer than we currently do if we learned how to properly take care of our bodies and utilized some of the great medical advancements we've made in regards to preventing disease, such as the field of stem cell research. The communion of positive lifestyle choices, good eating habits, physical awareness and wellness combined with the technological advances in my eyes really spell out the prospect of a much longer human life span. Here is a 22 minute video of Aubrey De Grey filmed in 2006 as he gave a lecture on his field of study and the seven steps to preventing aging. Enjoy!

WHOLE FOODS Locally Grown In China?

Please take just a few minutes to watch this investigative report by ABC 7 on WHOLE FOODS selling products of China, rather than locally grown, organic food as labeled. WHOLE FOODS carries a line of supposedly organic food under their brand "365 Organic". This report shows some of these products are not only grown in China, but some may not be up to the USDA standards for organic products. Read your labels, read the fine print and take your health into your own hands because not everyone is looking out for its best interest!

Nastiest Workout Ever..

On Tuesday I headed out with some of my friends and colleagues to complete a ridiculous workout trainer Brandon Reina came up with. We all met at College of the Canyons in Valencia, CA to get our sweat on. As if the prospect of performing 5 rounds of a 400 meter run, 5 tire flips, 15 power presses (wall balls) and 10 plyo push ups wasn't enough to make me question my mental health, the fact that it was 100 degrees outside proved we were all certifiable. Enjoy...

Reading Fat Labels

Reading nutrition labels can be tricky. Now that you know why eating fat is important and vital to health, let's talk about different kinds of fat and how to read a nutrition label properly.

Total Fat - This label indicates the total grams of fat in your food. This will include the healthy monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat content, trans fat and saturated fat altogether. This number isn't as revealing of healthy fat content as much as the ratio of this number to the Trans and Saturated Fat labels.


Monounsaturated Fat - Fat that is typically liquid at room temperature. Found in: olive, canola, sesame oils, avocados, peanuts, pistachios, cashews, almonds and nut butters.

Polyunsaturated Fat -Fat that is typically liquid at room temperature as well. Found in: corn, cottonseed and safflower oils, sunflower seeds, flaxseed and flaxseed oils.

Trans Fat - Is a man-made fat found in margarine and packaged food. You want to limit the consumption of this type of fat..

Saturated Fat - Fat that is typically solid at room temperature and mostly found in food that comes from animal sources. Found in: meats, butter, whole milk, cheese, cream and ice cream. You want to limit the consumption of these fats as well and they should not make up the bulk of your dietary intake.

Fitness Fail #7

When your trainer tells you it is probably too much weight, you should probably listen...