Browse Past Q&A:

[ First ]

[ Previous ]

[ Next ]

[ Last ]

[ Random ]

Q&A for: 3-Jul-05

Search Past Q&A:

Ask Mike Your Fitness Question:

31. Q: what has more of an impact on your bmr, your lean body mass or your cardiovascular health?

A: I wouldn't say that your cardio health directly impacts your BMR the way that your lean body mass does. But at the same time, don't underestimate the importance of cardio health either. Besides the well-known health benefits, a well-developed cardio system will allow you to recover quicker in between weight lifting sets allowing more intense workouts. It's certainly a mistake to ignore your cardiovascular health just because it does not directly impact BMR.

32. Q: I weight train with weights that are between 50-90 pounds.How much muscle could I gain with these light weights?

A: Unfortunately I can't tell you the answer to that without knowing more about you and the exercises that you do. A 90-pound bicep curl for reps is impressive for almost anybody. A 90-pound squat for reps may be the appropriate weight for beginner man or intermediate woman lifter. A 90-pound bench press is impressive for a woman, but not for a man. So to give you the answer, I'd need more information about you and the exercises that you do.

If your goal is building muscle then you should emphasize big compound exercises such as squat, deadlift, lunges, bench press, should press, pullups and pulldowns and rows. For any given exercise, pick such a weight that you reach muscular failure in 6 to 12 repetitions of the exercise. If your equipment limits you so you do not have weights that are heavy enough, don't despair and just do more reps or choose more challenging exercises so you reach failure in fewer reps. For example, substitute front squats or lunges for the regular backsquat, do slow one-handed dumbbell rows instead of two-handed barbell rows, etc.

33. Q: this is more of a comment.I have never lost muscle doing a lot of cardio like an hour or more 7 days a week. Only people who are on low calorie diets lose muscle when they do cardio. Since I always eat whenever I'm hungry I could never lose muscle unless I did a massive amount of cardio. And even If one did a massive amount of cardio and lost muscle it wouldnt really matter because the calories burnt by the lost muscle would be less than the calories burnt from the massive amount of cardio.

A: If you are sure that this approach is working for you, then there's no need to fix what isn't broken. You are definitely doing the right thing by not restricting your calorie intake too much while doing a lot of cardio. Near-starvation diets coupled with excessive cardio are the surest way to drive your metabolism into the ground and start losing muscle instead of fat. You are wise to avoid that common pitfall and that certainly helps a lot.

As I said, if you feel that your current training methods work well, I would not advise you to change them. However just keep in mind for the future that as you age, your metabolism will keep slowing down and you will have more and more difficulty hanging on to your muscle mass. I encourage you to be aware for the future to non-cardio intensive fat-burning techniques.

Also, if you are a big fan of cardio, I recommend that you take a look at HIIT -- High Intensite Interval Training. It's basically cardio that's performed like weightlifting exercises: very high intensity, short duration, in sets with short breaks in between sets. You start out doing four 30-second intervals of high intensity cardio (basically, sprinting) each of which is followed by 30 seconds of relaxed walking. So your session goes like: 30 second sprint, 30 second walk, 30 second sprint, 30 second walk, 30 second sprint, 30 second walk, 30 second sprint, 30 second walk. You do this 2-3 times a week and add another interval with every passing week, building up to 15 or so. This is another effective variation on anerobic exercise and should especially appeal to those who like cardio.

34. Q: If a person improved their body composition and at the same time gained a lot of weight would this cause them to be slower when performing in a fast paced sport?

A: This is not a common occurence, but yes it is possible to actually hurt your athletic performance by packing on too much muscle. For example, consider a soccer player who bulks up his upper body. His extra back or chest or shoulder strength will give him very little or no competitive edge, but will slow him down due to the extra weight he is now carrying.

If you are concerned about athletic performance in a fast-paced sport, you should structure your weight-training program to emphasize muscle groups that are relevant to that sport. For a soccer player that would mean working legs heavily, but upper body only a little or even not at all. You should also introduce plyometric training into sport-specific programs. Plyometrics is designed specifically to improve explosive strength needed in most sports.

In general, the best time to train for a sport is in the off-season since you can afford to be tired and sore after training sessions. You would most likely want to incorporate the traditional weightlifting exercises that target sport-specific muscle groups, as well as power exercises (cleans, jerks, snatches) and plyometrics into your off-season training program.

35. Q: how do i get rid ofman boobs

A: Please read this!

36. Q: How many calories does one pound of muscle burn? I have heard everything from 50 calories to 14 calories a day.

A: The answer depends on many factors such as exercise and current metabolism (which is affect by diet, health, age, and other factors). A pound of unexercised muscle will burn fewer calories than a pound of muscle that's been heavily exercised and is currently recovering. Instead of trying to assign a number of calories that a pound of muscle or of bodyweight burns I recommend that you stay aware of your current dietary intake versus weight. Know how many calories and what rough percentage of protein/carbs/fats you are consuming and how it's affecting your weight.

For example if you are taking in about 3000 calories daily at 40/30/30 protein/carbs/fats and your weight is staying constant, you can use that knowledge to approximate by how much you need to increase/decrease your intake to gain/lose weight. For example, if you wish to lose 1 pound (which is 3500 calories) in a week, you can cut your diet down to 2500 calories daily, thus achieving a daily deficit of 500 calories. 500 calories time 7 days/week gives you 3500 calories deficit or 1 pound lost. Or, suppose you've noticed you're gaining about 2 pounds per month and want it to stop: 2 pounds is about 7000 calories. Divide that by 30 days and you'll find that you'll need to cut down daily intake by about 250 calories to stop gaining weight.

Knowing how much you're eating and how much it's changing or not changing your weight is the only reliable way I am aware of to make specific changes to your diet aimed at accomplishing specific goals. Most calorie calculators are too generic to be anything more than a general guide. They have a very large margin of error because they're designed for a statistically average person, not for you. If you pay attention to your diet for just a month or two you will know with good accuracy how much and what you are eating and how it's affecting your weight. You can then use that knowledge to plan dietary changes designed to help you lose or gain weight.

37. Q: I gained in the last 3 months 5 pounds of lean body mass and lost 10 pounds of fat. in those 3 months I always burned more calories than I ate. But I thought to gain lean body mass one has to eat more than what one burns,so hoe come I gained muscle? The theory that one cannot lose fat and gain muscle at the same time may not be true.

A: Big CONGRATS to you on your success! It is certainly possible to lose fat and to gain muscle at the same time, but in order to do that consitently and significantly at least one of several things have to be true:

• You are in your teens or early 20s. This is the prime age, especially for men, and your body is at its peak and at the highest point of natural testesterone production which promotes fat loss and muscle gain.
• You are a relative beginner when it comes to weightlifting (under a year of consistent exercise) and/or your body composition has relatively high fat levels (more than 15% for men, more than 25% for women). Changing body composition is a process of diminishing returns. Initial progress is fast, but continuing the progress and getting to the six-pack stage is not easy or even possible for some people. Once they get past the first year or so of training, most people will no longer be able to gain muscle while losing fat at significant pace.
• You have superior genetics. Some people are just born lucky :) These are the people who are natural mesomorphs (large, musclar body types) or natural ecto-mesomorphs (lean, athletic body types). These people in general have relatively easy time putting on muscle and burning fat.
• You supplement with anabolic steroids. If you are willing to go this far and you're sufficiently educated about steroid use, you will be able to achieve body development far past what is possible naturally. I do not advocate the use of anabolic steroids and strongly advise anyone considering them to first educate themselves on the proper use and the risks that go along with such use.

38. Q: what is more accurate for measuring body fat:skinfold calipers or the Bioelectrical Impedance method. skinfold caliper measures my BC at 19% versus 22.5% using a BI device.

A: When done by a professional, caliper measurements tend to be a lot more reliable than bio-impedance ones. You can also increase the accuracy of caliper measurements significantly by using the 7-point method instead of the 3-point method (calculators for both are available in the Articles section of this website). There's even a 9-point method if you want.

If you are taking the caliper measurements yourself or have an untrained friend or relative take them, there's more room for error -- many people will grab too much or too little skin when measuring. However if that person does basic self-education on how to perform the measurement (use Google), with a little practice they'll be able to get fairly accurate and consistent results.

Bioimpedance devices are not considered either reliable or consistent in general. Some people luck out and get good results, but it's a lot more hit-or-miss than calipers.

If you have the money to pay for it, you may want to consider getting an underwater submergence body fat test. Such a test is considered highly accurate and you can use it to see how close to correct your caliper measurements were. Check with your local colleges, hospitals or medical schools -- a lot of these have the facilities and will perform the test for a fee. And there are some others, even more exotic clinical test methods, such as Dual Energy X-Ray.

But for everyday testing I definitely recommend using either calipers or just honest observation of yourself in the mirror (and how tight the pants fit!). In either case, the best time to keep track of your body fat progress is same as for your weight -- first thing after waking up and using the bathroom, before eating or drinking anything.

In your specific case, with both BF% numbers being relatively close, you can probably safely assume that your current BF% is approximately 20%. A 1% error one way or the other is to be expected even for a professional using calipers.

39. Q: Are there any exercises that will help strengthen the upper chest muscle without using gym equipment?

A: Incline bench press is definitely the single best upper chest exercise. However if you don't have access to the gym, you can still do push-ups, which are one of the most popular and simple exercises. Lie on floor on your stomach, with hands a bit wider than shoulder width. Raise your body up off the floor by extending arms keeping the body straight, so your knees are off the floor too. Then reverse the movement and lower your body back to the floor. Repeat. To make the exercise harder and to target the upper chest more, elevate your feet off the floor. Put them on a sofa or a chair, but keep your hands on the floor. Your body will be at an angle to the floor now, but still straight while you perform the exercise. The higher your feet are, the more difficult this exercise becomes and the more it will target upper chest and shoulders. You can even ask a partner to place a weight on your upper back to add more resistance while performing this exercise. If you can achieve the combination of feet elevation and/or extra weight that causes muscular failure in under 12 reps of this exercise, then you will have come very close to dulicating the effects of doing incline bench press in the gym. Keep in mind however that if you use too steep an angle for elevated pushups, you'd shift almost all the work to your shoulders and away from upper chest, so keep your angle of incline to no more than 30-45 degrees.

If you do not have enough strength to keep your legs straight while performing this exercise, keep your knees as well as your feet on the floor and only elevate your upper body. After awhile you'll build up enough strength to do regular push-ups.

Another point to consider is that shoulder strength, specifically anterior deltoid (front shoulder) is very complementary to upper chest strength since most movements that involve one of those muscles will also involve the other. Therefore you can also work on your shoulders with shoulder presses that you can do at home with a gallon of milk in each hand, for example. Though you are likely to outgrow such small resistance quickly and may want to buy some heavier dumbbells for home if gym is not an option.

40. Q: How to gain abs

A: See here

41. Q: beer gut

A: First quit driking :) Or at least quit drinking beer -- substitute it with straight-up hard liquor (no sugary drinks like margaritas, pina coladas, etc!) for the same effect with fewer garbage calories. The See here on how to build the six-pack.