If you’re trying to get lean, or lose weight, I’m sure this question has crossed your mind a number of times.

It’s easy to follow the crowd and become a hamster on a wheel by doing endless hours of cardio on a treadmill or bike.

While it’s true that these exercises burn fat, they only burn fat during the workout a for a few hours after.

On the other hand, intense training, aka. weight training or interval training, burn overall calories and keeps your metabolism revved up for up to 48 hrs after.

Here’s a few examples to drive this home.

Your metabolism can be likened to a row machine and that wheel that spins when you pull the cord.

If you pull the cord slowly and steadily, yes it’ll move.  But when you stop, it’ll only go a few more revolutions before it stops also.

However, if you yank the cord really hard and really quickly then stop, it’ll continue spinning at a high rate of speed long after you’ve stopped pulling.

The reason for this is because during interval training or weight training, you’re breaking muscle down.

We all know (or you’re about to find out) that muscle burns fat around the clock.   Muscle to your body is like a heavy load is to a truck.

It takes a lot of energy to carry all that excess load around.  That energy comes from fat.  So the best way to burn fat is to build lean muscle.

The main reason your metabolism remains at an increased level is because when you do either weight training or interval training and break down muscle, your body has to repair the damage you’ve done to it.

Think of your muscles as an ant pile.  If you just remove some of the dirt, only a few ants will come out and repair it.  The damage will be repaired pretty quickly.

However, if you wipe out an entire chunk of the pile, all of a sudden you see hundreds of ants scurrying out to repair the pile.  It’ll be a day or two before they have it back to normal.

This was one of my favorite activities as a kid, by the way.

With that being said, which exercises burn the most fat by doing damage to your muscles, increase your metabolism, and build lean muscle?

The answer: Compound Exercises.

You can check out my blog on isolated exercises vs. compound exercises to get the real low down on what compound exercises do to your body.

My page on interval training will enlighten you as to how to do proper interval training and HIIT.

Some great compound exercises to rev up your metabolism, build muscle, and burn fat around the clock are:

1. Deadlift

2. Back Squat

3. Power Cleans

4. Standing Military Press

5. Pull Ups

6. Bench Press

7. Cable Rows

You can also check out my page on greatest muscle building exercises to get a video demonstration of these movements.

Incorporating these exercises into you routine will give you a great start to getting lean as well as building muscle.

Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.

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Next up on my list of Versus Series is cardio.
When it comes to cardio, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there.  However, since you’re a reader of my blog, I trust you’ll follow my lead on this one.

One trainer will tell you something, your buddy at the gym will tell you a different something, and some know-it-all on online with a muscle building blog will tell you something else

The problem is that the story is different depending on who’s telling it.

It could be true in one circumstance and false in another.  That’s just the nature of working out.  It’s not easy to give you a “one size fits all” scenario.

I don’t wanna “poo poo” on steady state cardio because it has it’s place – if you’re training for a distance event or it’s your only kind of physical activity.

The biggest thing is that your body adapts to whatever you repeatedly do to it.  It adapts to become stronger, your neural pathways adapt to fire more efficiently, and your metabolism adapts to burn less and less calories.

That being said, you must progressively overload your body to make favorable adaptations, or make changes in your routine.

Steady State Cardio

As I said before, it’s good to do if you’re training for a distance event because your body adapts and becomes more efficient at doing the same thing.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not all that great for burning calories and losing weight.  Why?

Because your body ADAPTS.

For one, you only burn a few hundred calories – 200 to 400.

Second, it doesn’t increase your metabolism a whole lot and your rate of calorie burn is only increased while you’re doing the exercise.

Lastly, by doing the same thing over and over, your body becomes energy efficient so it eventually takes a lot more work to burn the same amount of calories.

I’ve seen plenty of overweight people run marathons, but I’ve never seen an overweight sprinter.

Interval Cardio (HIIT)

Also known as HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training is great for burning more calories and losing weight.

Interval training forces your muscles in to an anaerobic state, meaning they are in an oxygen deficit.  When your muscles do this, they are forced to burn more calories to maintain the same level of activity.

Interval training can be things like short sprints with short rests, or quick body weight exercises.

Very intense “aerobics” can do the trick also.   You can review my post about Interval Training here.

Generally this creates and overall higher calorie burn which results in more fat burned up.

It also increases your metabolism for up to 24 hrs after the workout because of its anaerobic nature, unlike steady state cardio.

So there you have it.  A brief but thorough look at the two main types of cardio and what they’re used for.   Choose wisely.

Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.

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When it comes to “cutting”, losing weight, or burning fat, your biggest ally or biggest enemy is your diet.

To build muscle, you need to eat certain things, just as you need to eat certain things to burn fat.

When I tell people “I can’t eat that because it’s not apart of my diet”, they look a me funny and say “you don’t need to lose weight”.

Your diet is what you eat, good or bad, whether you want to lose or gain weight.

That being said, if you want to burn fat, your main goal in your diet should be to keep your metabolism as high as possible.

Your metabolism is the rate at which you burn energy.  We all know that fat is stored energy (and wastes), so to get rid of this, your aim should be to keep the rate at which you burn energy quite high.

But I can hear you saying right now “I have a slow metabolism.  I gain fat/weight easily and it’s hard to lose it.”  I’ll do a blog later on internal beliefs but in short, YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK.

CONTRARY to popular belief (popular hardly ever means right) your genetics only influence your overall metabolism by 5% to 10% – a very small portion.

Your rate of calorie burn is largely determined by your age, weight, level of activity, food, and increments of food – to name a few.

Needless to say, your metabolism is largely up to you.  Review my blog on 9 ways to instantly increase your metabolism.

Now, for the fat burning foods, which actually increase your metabolism.

1. Oats & Whole Grains

They are a great source of carbs and they digest slow.  This keeps your insulin low, which you want to do most of the day.

2. Jalapenos

Spicy peppers contain capsaicin which increases your heart rate (so that’s what that is!).  A spicy meal can boost your metabolism for several hours.   I like to throw plenty of spices on my chicken breast and in my rice.

3. Chicken

A great source of lean protein and should be a staple in any diet (whether to gain or to lose weight).   This lean protein is great for boosting your metabolism and helping you burn fat because proteins takes more energy to break down than carbs.  I think like most builders, I eat chicken breast almost every day.

4. Salmon

Fish is a great source of protein also.  But it’s on the fat burning list because it contains Omega-3 fatty acids which help lower leptin levels.  Lower leptin levels increase your calorie burn.  I eat fish several times a week.

5. Green Tea

It’s not exactly a food, but a drink and also important for many reasons.  It has EGCG which increases brain and nervous system activity, it’s an antioxidant, and helps increase calorie burn because of these.

I tried to include different categories here, to give you a framework of which types of foods increase your metabolism and help you burn fat.

Now go out, and start burning around the clock.

Get Big. Get Ripped.  Get Fit With Mitch.

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One of the best parts of the gym is the ability to grunt and make faces like a real brute and get away with it.  This usually happens when you’re pushing through some pain and yelling at your muscles not to fail on you.

In this article today, I’m going to be explaining the importance of muscle failure and how to achieve it. 

We’ve all been there.  That point of complete exhaustion when your muscles cry Uncle and you can’t lift a single thing. 

I was on the incline bench yesterday lifting a lot heavier weight than usual.  On my third set, as I was coming down, my muscles reached their limit.  If I didn’t have a spotter, 85 lbs would’ve come crashing onto my face.

I knew I was done with chest for the day, and unlike so many other trainees, I moved on to another exercise after that. 

When you train to complete muscle failure, you’ve recruited (just about) every fiber in that muscle to do a particular movement and they’ve ALL failed.  The lactic acid build up from your muscles oxidizing themselves has reached a critical limit and they can’t move anymore.

This is important because you’ve now effectively torn that majority of the muscle.   Giving you the maximum chance of recovery.

It’s like this.  If you only damage 60% of your muscle, only 60% of it will repair itself.  But if you damage 95% of your muscle, 95% will repair itself and you will see growth a lot faster.  It may take longer to recover, but generally, you’ll see greater growth because you have greater repair going on. 

With that being said, it’s a good idea to have a spotter with you when you do this.  Either your training partner, or someone else.  This can be dangerous as I’ve pointed out above, but if you want to see greater growth, this is a great strategy. 

Of course, you need to know when you’re close to failing and communicate that, and your spotter needs to be vigilant. 

I would end with the cliche, No Pain, No Gain, but that’s not exactly true, lol.  So I’ll just say, Train Hard and Train Smart.

Get Big. Get Ripped. Get Fit With Mitch.

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Pretty much everytime I’m in the gym, people come up to me and ask “So what’re you working on today?” 

I smile and say “Everything” and they look at me like I’m crazy.

This whole split day workout routine has been drilled into us.  Mainly by friends and magazines.  It’s a pop culture fad that has infested our gyms.

I’ll admit, I fell victim for a long time as well. 

In this post, I’ll discuss the pros and cons to doing full body workouts vs. split day workouts. 

Split Day Workouts

I did these for a long time and was able to see moderate results.   I was only able to see isolate results and they took a while to come by. 

The main reason for this was because when you do a split day, say, arms and legs, you don’t get the maximum hormonal benefit from these. 

Your body releases amounts of muscle building hormones based on the amount of damage it has to repair.   So the more muscle you damage, the more GH and Testosterone it realeases for instance.

So splits like abs and arms, are pretty bad because you don’t get a lot of hormone release to repair these muscles.  This in turn can lead to overtraining because most likely, you’ll get anxious and hit the gym again to workout these muscles before they’ve repaired themselves all the way. 

Split routines also tend to focus on doing multiple exercises per muscle.   This can quickly lead to overtraining because from experience and research, you only need to overload a muscle ONCE in order for it to grow. 

Once you do that, you can move on to another muscle because you’ve already started the repair process for that muscle. 

If you continue, you’ll start dipping into other energy reserves that you’ll need for other workouts. 

The good thing about split workouts is that they don’t take a lot out of you in terms of hormonal system, or central nervous system completion, so these systems repair quicker.  These systems also take longer to repair, generally, than your muscles. 

By cutting the recovery time down, you may come close to matching your muscles.   But again, this depends on your individual physique and experience. 

The other good things about splits is that they tend to be shorter workouts – thus as I stated before, less stress on your nervous system. 

In my opinion, you should do splits that incorporate large muscles along with smaller muscles – back and chest for instance.   This will release more hormones for you to repair with. 

Another good idea is to do lower body and then upper body using compound exercises.  Again, for the hormone benefit because you’ll be working larger groups of muscles. 

Splits are also a good idea for intermediate to advanced trainers – which is probably why they’ve become so popular with beginners.  They want to lift like the “big boys”.  Different strokes for different folks. 

Full Body Workouts

I’ve been doing full body workouts for about 2 months now and I can’t say I’ve been disappointed.  I’ve been following Vince’s NoNonsense Muscle Building plan. 

You can tell by his blog and youtube channel that he’s a fan of compound exercises, so it’s no wonder I find them in his plan. 

Combined with a killer nutrition plan, I’m able to see steady growth and gains, and I’m back to an all time weight high for myself. 

I see more all around and even muscle growth which is great to see (my girl love it too).  I’m also able to make gains faster – I haven’t plateaued yet!

The best part about full body workouts is that your get the maximum hormonal release possible each time you workout.  That means ALL your muscles, from large to small, reap an enormous benefit. 

All while doing one exercise per body part.

The other good thing is that you don’t have to be in the gym as often.  I workout 3 days a week now doing full body.  Before, I was on a 4 day split.  I shaved an entire day off my workout and I’m getting better results. 

This allows you to build muscle faster and more effectively. 

The downside to full body is that it takes a while to do (even doing one exercise per muscle) and you’re hella tired at the end.   Your nervous system is shot. 

However, once you build a tolerance up to this, you can recover faster. 

Full body workouts are great for beginners because you can combine raw muscle building potential with huge hormone releases. 

Ok, let me quit because this post is getting crazy long.   Well needless to say, I’m a fan of full body workouts.  

I’ll experiment with split workouts again sometime later, but only after I’ve reached my goals by doing full body workouts. 

You too can follow the same plan I’ve been using to get great personal results by following Vince’s Plan. 

Get Big, Get Ripped, Get Fit With Mitch.

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