Podcast Episode #34: Fat Burning Exercise Secrets of The Fitness Experts!

Podcast episode number 34 from BenGreenfieldFitness.com welcome.

To the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast, your free weekly audio exposure to cutting edge fitness, nutrition and wellness information. My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm an exercise physiologist, certified personal trainer and nutritionist. Each week I'll be bringing you information that goes outside run of the mill.

Exercise and diet advice.

So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to lose a few pounds, enjoy this week's podcast episode from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield.

With a double interview super special today on exercise and fat loss and our first interview. John Gilbert and I are going to be going over some of the fat burning techniques that I use with the clients that I train here in Spokane, Washington and Coeur d', Alene, Idaho as.

Well as with the people that I work with online. I'm going to be sharing the science behind the exact programs that I use.

With the people that I work with. And then in a related interview that's a big time focus on fat loss and some of the secrets used by a body transformation expert down in LA who works with a lot of Hollywood stars down there. Josh Carter, a personal trainer, is going to be coming on to talk about the programs that he uses with his clients as well as a book that he wrote that actually features a lot of those programs. Book I've looked through and used myself.

With some of my training.

Fantastic interview there. You're not going to want to miss this one. I'll have a few announcements and then.

We'Ll move into the interviews this week.

From BenGreenfieldFitness.com and oh yeah, one other thing, we have a Q and A. It's a really interesting topic. You may want to listen in.

All right, let's move on to this week's content.

Special announcements alright, first of all, if you want to ask me a question or give feedback. Yeah, you can email ben greenfieldfitness.com you can leave a comment in the show notes, but you can also leave me an audio question or audio feedback that I can even play back on the show if you'd like me to do that. And the way that you do that is you got to have the free Skype software that's@skype.com I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you and I will put my username up in the show notes to this podcast, you will be able to actually Skype me. And that's basically a voiceover Internet protocol. It means you call somebody from computer to computer. You'll be able to Skype me and ask your questions and that'll be a really useful way for you to ask a question. A little bit more multimedia format if you like that kind of thing. If you are a person who has a website or a blog, especially if you're a fitness professional, a lot of the books and the DVDs that I write, you can have access to actually feature those on your website and your blog. There's a lot of different books that I have out on metabolism, on exercise, on diet, a couple different ones for triathletes. Anyways, if you want to check any of those out, I have what's called an affiliate program where you can actually, you can log in and have access to those on your website. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. It's a brand new affiliate program, but I give you everything that you need. If you want to tell your friends and tell other people about some of the information that I have out there, you'll notice that there was a recent workout video posted@BenGreenfieldFitness.com on the gym Stick and using the Gym Stick portable exercise tool in your exercise program. And I'm still leaving that discount code out there for you to use. The discount code is bgstick for absolutely free shipping anywhere in the States. On one of these Gym Stick portable exercise tools, you'll be able to choose the resistance that you want and use me as a resource when you're working out with this thing. It's a great tool, one that I use in my studio with my clients and one that I've been shipping to a lot of people to use and seeing great results in terms of just kind of adding a fun tool into your exercise routine. Okay, the next Q and A online Q and A live video session with me has been scheduled. As I promised, I'm going to be doing these the last Sunday of every month. There will be a link that you can click on at 6pm on Sunday, and this one's going to be on March 28th. I'm going to show you my top 10 exercises, exercises to get the most bang for your buck. While you're working out. I'll be demonstrating those live and then you will be able to ask your questions after I've gone through those. It's going to be a great way for you to see a lot of the really great techniques that can be used for exercise and let you break out of a rut if you're getting tired of the same old exercises over and over again. If you're local in the Coeur d' Alene or Spokane area, two different Fat Burning Secrets seminars over at Pilgrims in coeur d', Alene, Idaho. One is March 17 and one is March 24. Both of those are Tuesday nights at 6pm the first one's on exercise, the second one's on nutrition. And they are just simply that total fat loss sessions for those of you interested in ways to maximize your rate of fat loss and your gain of lean, tight, toned muscle. So that's all the announcements for this week, and let's go ahead and move on to the Listener Q and A. Listener Q and A.

All right.

I have a question today from listener Chip and Chip has an interesting question. What he says is I just stumbled upon your website and subscribed to your e. Newsletter. I was hoping you may be able to help me and thousands like me with a question. How long does it take your metabolism to to get back to normal after quitting smoking? I thought that was a very interesting question and something that we don't touch on too much on this show is.

The cigarette smoking and exercise simply because I think it was a horse that.

Was beaten to death for a while in terms of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody knows it's dangerous and you're not supposed to do it, but gosh, when you quit, what happens to the metabolism?

So I thought that was a great.

Question and here's the answer. Chip. Basically, cigarette smoking increases your metabolic rate, okay? So when you're smoking a cigarette, it forces your heart to beat faster. And as a matter of fact, when you inhale a cigarette, your heart can beat 10 to 20 times more per minute for a period of time. So if your resting heart rate is normally 60, it could be 80 for a period of time during and after you smoke that cigarette. And this type of extra stress on the heart is one of the reasons that people who smoke cigarettes can get heart disease, which is actually the most common cause of smoking related death. So anyways, you think about somebody who's smoking, say 20 cigarettes a day, which is not uncommon, and that puts the same amount of stress on the heart as walking around with about 90 extra pounds of fat, of extra weight. Now, when you finally stop smoking, you break that habit, your heart rate naturally slows down somewhat. You get kind of a down regulation of that heart rate and, and that causes a subsequent drop in your metabolic rate. What you'll notice is when you quit smoking. And you'll hear this a lot, people get that gain, usually about five to ten pounds, within the first few months of smoking cessation. Now, some of this can be controlled. For example, if you keep your diet exactly the same after you quit smoking, you can fight off that dip in metabolism with something as simple as a brisk 30 minute walk. However, there is actually not a lot of research that has been done on how long the metabolism stays in that dipped state after you quit smoking. The acsm, which is the American College of Sports Medicine, they say that smoking is considered a risk factor, meaning that you're still at risk for heart disease until six months after you quit. But that statement really doesn't say much about the metabolism. And so there's one research study that looked at smoking cessation, and I'm just going to read you what that research study says. Limited data is available on the short and long term effects on smoking cessation on hypothalamic and thyroid pituitary adrenal axes, sex, hormones, energy homeostasis, and lipid and glucose metabolism. I know that's a mouthful, but what it means is that they haven't found much in terms of what happens with metabolism or how quickly that metabolism comes up after you quit smoking. It says initial data indicates that smoking cessation is associated with decreased cortisol levels. And in short term, smoking cessation does not correct the diminished adrenal cortical responses to stress caused by chronic smoking. Again, what that means is that they haven't found any short term research that shows the metabolism to come back back up after you quit smoking. Now, it does say that cessation reverses smoking's effect on thyroid disorders and may reduce the risk of osteoporosis. So when you quit smoking, your body actually does start to make that turnaround, but it doesn't say much about metabolism. And then it says, finally, smoking cessation increases transient food intake and sustained weight gain and is associated with increases in high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels that occur rapidly on cessation. And high density lipoprotein is hd. That's the good cholesterol. So as soon as you quit smoking, you basically can reverse the effect on your thyroid disorder. You can increase your HDL cholesterol levels, but there's absolutely nothing out there that suggests the actual period of time that it takes for all of the hormones and the energy levels to return to a point where your metabolism is normal. So what it comes down to is that after you quit smoking, if you're trying to lose weight, you're at a disadvantage and you're probably going to have to do a little bit more than the average person. I would suggest you get an exercise metabolic test and a resting metabolic test. Find out what your metabolism actually is and then you can track that and note how quickly it takes to increase. I actually do those tests in my laboratory in Spokane, Washington, and I suggest every six to eight weeks returning for another test if you're trying to track changes in your metabolic rate with exercise. I've seen somebody do something as simple as start taking, for example, like one of the rapid fat loss supplements that I provide and will notice an increase in their metabolic rate within three to four weeks if we retest after they've started on something like thermo factor or lean factor. But I think that's a great question on smoking and hopefully I gave you some direction, Chip. So remember, if you have a question, you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com or now you can actually Skype me and leave a voice message and I'll put the instructions of how to do so in the show. Notes to this Podcast.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield, and if the audio sounds just a little bit different right now, it's because I'm not using a headset and I'm sitting here with John Gilbert, who you may recognize from some of the articles that you've seen@bengreenfieldfitness.com as well as a couple previous podcast appearances. But John is a student in nutrition and human metabolism over at wsu. Say hello, John.

Hi guys.

And what John and I are going to talk a little bit about today are some of the exercise techniques that I use for rapid fat loss with the clients that I train for weight loss. And so if that's something that you're looking for, you're definitely going to want to listen in today. I did mention in last week's podcast that I had wanted to do this as a personal trainer roundtable, but I've had a very difficult time this week coraling up the personal trainers over@pacificfit.net for a roundtable and decided that I wanted to get the information out to you today either way, and so here it is. So what I'm going to actually have John do is just ask me some of the questions that he has about the things that I do with my clients, because he's starting to work a little bit as a wellness coach and a personal trainer over at our Spokane facility. And I'M basically trying to teach him some of the things that I do for fat loss with my clients. I'm going to let you guys listen in as I do. So, John, I know I told you we were going to talk about this today, and I know you've had a chance to think about some of the questions that you wanted to ask, so fire away. All right.

Thanks, Ben. So, first of all, I just kind of wanted to check about your strategy you use in terms of aerobic exercise, fat loss versus weightlifting or resistance training for fat loss, kind of comparing it to what's different than a general program.

Yeah, well, a lot of general programs for fat loss that you're going to see out there rely on aerobic training, doing a lot of cardiovascular efforts on a bicycle or on a treadmill. And there's actually quite a bit of research out there that suggests that that may not be the most effective thing to do if you're just focusing on fat loss. Now, there's no denying the benefits of aerobic exercise for, say, cardiovascular health. But a couple of the studies that have looked into this one was called the Influence of Exercise Training on Physiological and Performance Changes with Weight Loss in Men. And what this study did was it compared three different groups. One group, all they did was diet. Another group, they dieted as well, same type of diet, but they did aerobic exercise. So that's like easy efforts, about a 5 or 6 on a scale, 1 to 10 on the bike, treadmill, elliptical trainer, whatever the case may be. And then the final group, the third group, they dieted and they did the aerobics, but then they also did resistance training or weightlifting. Now, the first and the second groups lost almost equal amount of weight. So when a group dieted, they lost about 15 pounds. And when the group dieted and did aerobic exercise, they lost about 15 pounds. But the group that actually weight lifted lost over 20 pounds of fat, over 40% more than the groups that just dieted or just did aerobic training. And so I think one of the interesting things that this found was that aerobic training not only doesn't offer a huge advantage over dieting, but weightlifting, which seems a little bit counterintuitive. You'd think you wouldn't burn as many calories. Weightlifting actually causes you to lose fat faster than cardiovascular training. Now, one of the caveats that I like to mention when I bring this up is that there are a few women that I've worked with who I've had to be a little bit careful with in terms of weightlifting every day because they tend to watch that scale, see the lean muscle increase, and get a little bit discouraged about weight loss because their lean muscle goes up. And so that's what I would encourage the women who are listening to this to pay attention to, is that you need to realize that when you're weightlifting, you might not see initial rapid actual weight loss, even though you will actually get the fat loss occurrence occurring. It's just the difference in the way that your body responds. So aerobic training, you're going to lose a little bit of weight training, you're going to lose more, and you're also going to find that you get that tight, toned, lean, muscular look. There are other studies out there that look at aerobic training and body composition. I know one in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition again compared aerobic and dieting and found that aerobic training for 12 weeks had absolutely no effect on body composition compared to people just dieting. And then there was one other study that looked at the impact, and this is a really interesting study. You were asking about aerobic versus fat loss versus weightlifting when we're talking about intensity during exercise. One study looked at people who did aerobic endurance training with people who did cardiovascular interval training. That's like the hard, easy type of efforts where you go hard for a certain period of time, then you back off and you go easy for a certain period of time. Well, the people who were doing the cardiovascular intervals spent a lot less time training and they burnt a lot fewer calories while they were training, but they ended up actually losing a greater amount of weight. And the reason for that was because their metabolism stayed up for a longer time after they finished training, meaning that they burnt more calories after they went home and sat in their lazy chair and watched football or got in their car and drove home. Basically, their bodies were burning a lot more calories. And one study actually found in weightlifting that people burnt more calories for up to 36 hours after they finish weightlifting. And aerobic training doesn't really give you any of those type of advantages. So I know it's a really good long answer to your question. I promise that'll be my longest answer today. But it's something that I'm really passionate about that when you're going after fat loss, you start with the weight training and the cardiovascular intervals, and then the aerobic training is kind of the least important if your only goal is fat loss.

Okay, okay. Well, okay. So if you're doing this interval training and resistance training and kind of imposing a load on the Muscle, I would imagine at some point the muscle's going to kind of get pretty sore and these sorts of things. So I was wondering for your rest period or days off, how you kind of go about doing that with this sort of training.

Yeah, and that's, that's one mistake that I'll see some personal trainers make is that they'll see this type of research and think, okay, every day, then weightlifting and cardio interval training. And what happens when you do that is the muscle reaches a certain level of soreness to where you start to break down both mentally and physically. You simply cannot push yourself that hard every single day. You'll get. Your immune system will start to suffer. You'll get large amounts of cortisol hormone, release your stress hormone. You get a lot of calcium leakage into the muscle, which can lead to residual soreness. You get a lot of eccentric muscle tearing. The muscles start to not respond properly to the training sessions. If every single day it's weight training and cardiovascular intervals. So the way that I do this is I'll take that aerobic training that we talked about, that kind of easy five to six on a scale of one to ten, and I will use that as basically bonus days in the program. So, for example, someone will do resistance training and cardiovascular intervals for 45 minutes a day, three days a week. And a lot of times, if they're training with me, like face to face at my studio, those will be the sessions that they do with me because they're a little bit more intense, they need more supervision, more pushing. And then the aerobic training they do on their own by themselves, and actually enhances recovery. It still teaches the body how to utilize fat a little bit more efficiently, still gives them some benefit over sitting around and doing nothing at all. And they're still burning calories while they're doing it. It may be that their metabolism doesn't stay up for a long time afterwards.

But.

So, for example, we'll do day one intervals and cardio or cardio intervals and weight training. Day two, aerobics, day three, cardio intervals and weight training. Day three, aerobics, day four, cardio intervals and weight training. And then a lot of times on the weekend in my programs, I'll cycle back and forth every couple weeks between one weekend being a long, slow, kind of fat burning session, and then another weekend being a more intense, what I call a trainer challenge. So a lot of times when I'm working with somebody, say, online, because I do a lot of. A lot of training online and write out Programs send them to people. It'll be a change up in terms of what they're doing on different weekends or different weeks. But the basic idea is that no, it's not hard pushing every single day. But it also means that the days in between are off days. They're just like aerobic days.

That's good to know there's some recovery in there to feel good. Also, I wanted to know about kind of timing. I've heard different things about timing of working out in a day. I mean, there's things about nutrition out there, but I don't think it's really prevalent, the information on timing of working out in the day. So how do you kind of go about that? Obviously it kind of depends on the person's schedule, right?

Well, the first thing is that research has shown that people who exercise for 10 minutes three times a day have higher metabolisms, burn more calories and lose more weight than people who exercise for 30 minutes once a day. So like three hard 10 minute sessions are advantageous compared to one short 30 minute or one easy 30 minute session. But that being said, it's very difficult a lot of times for people to just drop everything they're doing and stand up from their desks and run on a treadmill and then come back and throw on a little deodorant and call it good. So what I do is all my programs, I really encourage a two a day. And the way that we do the two a day is I'll have people get up in the morning before they go to work and do what's mentally and physically something that's pretty easy to do, like a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. Light jog at the door, 10 minutes, light jog back, just something to elevate the metabolism first thing in the morning. And you actually can enhance fatty acid oxidation just a little bit. Or your fat burning. If you for instance, have a cup of coffee, go out, short 20 minute fat burning session, come back. Now what you do later on in the day is your hard cardiovascular interval or resistance training session. What I like about that scenario is that your body temperature is lower in the morning. It's harder to push yourself. Research has shown that people can push themselves the hardest or work out at what's called the highest level of perceived exertion during the times when the body temperature is highest. And typically that's about four or five o'clock in the afternoon. And so what I encourage people to do if they're able to, the easy cardio in the Morning to just jump start your day and then you do your harder cardiovascular interval or resistance training session later on in the day. For example, you know, after work, at 4 or 5 o' clock in the afternoon, I'm going to pause this for just one second because I've got a forklift out on our weight training floor. Okay, it's gone now. It stopped beeping.

All right.

And there it goes again. Just a second. Okay. And we moved to a different room where you couldn't hear the forklift. So the sound may have changed just a little bit there again. Now we were talking about the timing and doing the easy exercise in the morning, the harder exercise in the afternoon. If you only have one chance to work out during the day, prioritize that cardiovascular interval or weight training session. If you got to do it in the morning, do it in the morning. But as far as timing goes, I like the easy stuff early in the day, the harder stuff later in the afternoon, and whenever possible, breaking it up into shorter, more frequent sessions. And so, for example, even on a day where I don't have a chance to work out, say a heavy travel day, something like that, I'll tell myself, alright, every hour I'm just going to drop and do 50 body weight squats. Just something throughout the day in terms of timing to constantly get the body temperature elevated and keep calories burning as quickly as possible. So that's what I focus on with as far as timing of the workouts and timing of the exercise.

Okay, well, thanks. And also kind of the timing reminded me of thinking about nutrition and people talk about timing of that. I really don't want to ask a question about that, but more how you go about fat loss from a nutritional standpoint. I realize that's a loaded question, but as in a succinct answer. How do you kind of approach that?

Right.

Well, trying to keep things focused on the exercise component. What I want to talk about real quick is the nutrition during the exercise. There was an interesting study that looked at carbohydrate intake during exercise and performance. This was in the Journal of Nutrition. What they found is that people who didn't eat during a long cardio session, 60 to 90 minute cardio session, people who didn't eat actually burned fewer calories, burnt less fat and had lower metabolisms after exercise compared to the people who had a serving of carbohydrate at the 30 minute mark and at the 60 minute mark. And so the recommendation that I make to people based on this study is that a, you don't work out starved because you're never going to be able to reach the same or that high intensity. But your body also will not burn as many calories during exercise. And then also for any session where you're going to be out there exercising for longer than 60 minutes, you bring food with you because you'll be able to keep the intensity up, you'll be able to keep the metabolism elevated. Your body will burn more calories when it's got calories coming in. And what that means is your metabolism is going to be higher after the workout. So for example, I'll tell people have a meal two or three hours before your workout, and then right before your workout, if you're still kind of hungry, have half a banana, boost the blood sugar a little bit and then work out because you want the caloric restriction and the fat loss to occur not during the workout, but during the other 23 hours of the day when you're not working out. And that's something that's really hard for people to wrap their heads around, it seems. But it really is true that you want to take care of your body during exercise. And then any type of caloric restriction is achieved outside of exercise.

Okay. And then kind of another question about shadowing you here. I've noticed you change up the workout routines pretty frequently, but I was just kind of wondering, on average, how often do you kind of change up your clients workout routines?

Right.

Well, it differs. For the people who work with me locally in like Spokane, Washington or in Coeur d', Alene, their workouts change on a daily basis, meaning that I'll have someone train for three months and they will come in and do something different every single day. Two things happen when you do that. First of all, the body keeps guessing. There's a principle and exercise called specific adaptation to impose demands or the said principle. And what that means is that people's bodies eventually adapt to the demands that are placed upon them and their bodies quit responding hormonally and physically to or hormonally and on a muscular level to exercise. For example, a recent article in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research found that that hormonal response to exercise tended to kind of wane after about five weeks. And so what I do with people is we'll hit some of the same muscles, but we'll hit them at different angles with different exercises and never let the body get into a rut, so to speak. So you never reach a plateau. So if someone's worked with me, say once a week, every single time they come in, they're doing something different, and then when they leave, they'll either be assigned a couple of workouts to do later on in the week, or they'll have some standby workouts that they do on their own that are changed every few weeks. But regardless, every single time that they're with me, we change something up. Now, with people who train with me online, usually it's every four weeks that the program has changed, that new exercises are added, different cardiovascular intervals are added, and basically again, new curve balls are thrown at the body. So to answer your question, never for more than four weeks is someone doing the same thing over and over again.

Okay. Kind of working with mechanical efficiency and trying to create a lot of calorie deficit with me.

Exactly. Like efficiency is your enemy when you're exercising. You want your body to be as inefficient as possible. That's why walking is one of the worst ways to lose weight or to lose fat quickly, because your body's are very efficient at walking. They've been walking for a long time and so they've grown to burn as few calories as possible when you're walking.

Okay, well, something that kind of relates to the walking, it's easy for someone to get out and go walk, so they may be more apt to doing something like that. So how do you get people then to do kind of the things that you approach them with here versus just going out for a walk, kind of, what's your strategy to get them to adhere to these sorts of things?

Yeah, the first thing is that you'd be surprised when you're doing the hard efforts, the cardiovascular intervals and the weight training. Seems like the hardest part for most people is when it is getting stuck in a mental rut and doing the same workout over and over and over again. Whereas if you've got something fresh and something new on your plate every day, and one morning you wake up and you know it's going to be 25 knee push ups and 25 squats, and then you go outside and you run around your block and you come back and you do whatever 25 lunges and 25 overhead shoulder presses versus every single day doing the same thing with elastic bands in your living room. So I like to throw different things at people to keep them adhering to a program. And then as far as adherence goes, one of the things that I find that people really struggle with is a lot of people will be hitting the road, will be traveling, and sometimes people don't realize they're traveling Five, six, seven days out of the month. Sometimes the entire effect of our training, the other 20 days of the month, is negated because they're not keeping up their exercise routine when they travel, because they feel like they have to have this routine that they do at home. And unless they're at home, they can't do it. So what I do is I provide the people that I work with actual travel routines, hotel room routines, road routines that they can do with minimal equipment that actually get them working out and not missing their exercise sessions while they're on the road. And so I think that's probably the biggest mistake that people make from an adherence standpoint is not continuing their program when things happen like holidays and travel. And all of a sudden there's 100 days out of the year where you're not working out, you're not seeing results, and that's a lot of extra fat you could be burning through. So consistency really is the. The key in adhering to a program and seeing consistent results.

Okay. Well, kind of the last thing I wanted to go over was this morning we had someone come in and we went over a few things, and I was just hoping that you could kind of go over what we did in the routine to kind of give people out there an idea of what actually goes on here and how everything you've talked about kind of applies to an exercise routine.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

We had a girl come in this morning. She comes in twice a week to exercise. She got on the bike, warmed up for about five minutes, and then once we were warmed up, we had a kind of higher intensity circuit on the cable machine where we did cable pull downs, we did cable standing rows, we did push downs, we did cable chest presses, and then we did cable low standing row. And we were doing 10 to 20 repetitions on each exercise with a weight that fatigued her by the time she got to the recommended number of repetitions. And then we did three minutes of cardiovascular intervals on the bike. And then we went back and did that cable routine again. And then we went down to the floor and we did a combination of flutter kicks and front planks for her abdominal section. Back and forth between the two, we were doing 20 seconds of front planks followed by 20 seconds of flutter kicks. And then we went back to the bike again and did another five minutes of cardiovascular intervals. Most of her leg work today actually was on the bike, and a lot of the upper body and the core work was on the cables and on the floor. But by the time we were done full Body workout. We got cardiovascular intervals in, we got resistance to training in. And that's just an example of what happens during the workout in terms of achieving some of the principles that I talked about today. So I think that's probably about all we have time for. But yeah, I think those are good questions. John, you got anything you want to, you want to follow up with or.

Not really. I mean, one thing that I think would be good to touch on is why you didn't do resistance training on the legs.

Like why didn't we actually work her work her legs with anything except the bike? Yeah, yeah, well that was a case where again, you take things on a case by case basis. She's been working through some knee injuries and the bike is a non weight bearing form of cardio. And that's one thing that I run into a lot of time is we have to tweak workouts as we go to account for things that might be injured in people or basically injury, anything from a stomachache. And they can't do lots of stuff that's bouncing up and down or they didn't get a lot of sleep the night before. And so we need to be careful doing heavy balance exercises. And so there's a lot that you take into consideration when somebody walks in, they want to do a workout and get good rapid fat loss results. But yeah, you really do have to have to change it and customize it as you go. So anyways, we will come back in future episodes with more on nutrition, more on exercise, but thanks for listening in. John, thanks for coming.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

Alright, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and John Gilbert signing out.

So as promised, this is a double interview, super special. And let's move on to the second interview of the day, which actually touches.

On some of the same principles that I just talked about, but in a really cool way.

This is an interview with Josh Carter, the body transformation expert.

Hey podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield coming to you once again from BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I've got a guy named Josh Carter on the other line. And just a few weeks ago I discovered a book that's called the 100 rep workout. And just the title alone kind of caught my attention. But when I looked into this book, it turns out that this thing has some fantastic, basically what I would almost call time saving type of workouts. But rather than tell you a lot about the book myself, I decided to get the author, Josh Carter on the other line. And Josh is a certified personal trainer and a Body transformation expert down in Los Angeles, California. And he's got some great information. Today we're going to be talking about some of the workouts that are in that book. Hopefully you'll be able to take some of the information after you listen to this interview and go try out one of the workouts for yourself and learn about how big of a result you can get in a very short period of time using some of the strategies that I know that Josh has in the book. I've looked over this thing and it's pretty amazing. So Josh, thanks for coming on the show.

Yeah, no problem. Happy to be here.

Yeah.

Now tell me a little bit about your, your background in fitness and what kind of led you to put together the type of workouts that are in this book.

Well, let me start with the background first. I've been doing this for somewhere around 18 years. I don't know, 17, 18 years, something like that. I'd have to do the math. But you know, I've been training for a long time. I started out as a personal trainer because, well, I started working out because I was fat. I was always big, you know, kind of everybody thought I was kind of big and muscular, but basically I was always kind of fat and got into training. I got hired by a small gym out here in Santa Monica, California who thankfully didn't know what they were doing, which is good because at the time I didn't know what I was doing and, and so I was able to learn my chops kind of in the trenches.

And I'm looking at your website right now and you say you, you were fat. I'm checking out a picture here. It's kind of amazing actually. Got a side by side of how you look now and how you look then. But just so the listeners know, how much did you weigh?

Well, you know, I was always just chunky. I mean, I was always, I was never, you know, hugely obese. And even in my career as a personal trainer, I got trapped in those, you know, bulk up phases or whatever. Oh yeah, I'm getting stronger, which is code for eating too damn much and not taking care of things properly. But you know, some of us bigger guys can do. Oh yeah, you know, I'm bulking up for this or that or, you know, I want to get my bench weight higher. Some BS like that. And so, you know, I let myself probably highest, I get probably near 280. But I mean, I'm six two, so I'm pretty relatively tall and I carry a good amount of muscle. But let's let's call it what it is. I was just, you know, I was, I was letting myself get too fat.

Okay, and so what happened?

Well, I've created various diet, nutrition and training strategies that I've gotten from learning and reading from other authors and other fitness coaches. Basically anywhere I could get information. I've kind of created my own little way of doing things for my clients and myself that helps keep me lean and keep them lean and, and things like that. And I've just found that basically short, intense workouts work the best. And coupled with an intelligent nutrition plan, you can make amazing results with relatively little time investment. And so that's where it's at. And that was kind of the Genesis of the 100 rep workout.

Now what type of people do you actually work with? The evolution of this book came from working out. I mean, is it like, you know, endurance athletes? Is it just the average person off the street? And what type of person are you implementing these workouts with?

Well, I work with who I work with and who this book is carried with kind of the same, I guess. I work with everyday people basically, you know, I do some, you know, executives, high level executives and some actors and producers, stuff like that because I live in Hollywood and that's kind of inevitable just because those are the people that are around.

But.

Basically who I wanted to make this book for was the average working guy. Basically, you know, has a job, has a wife, has kids, doesn't have a lot of time, might or might not have access to a gym. So I wanted to create a workout plan that was fast, effective, could be done in your garage or even your living room if need be. It could also be done at a gym. You know, some of the more desk workouts who have, you know, barbells and stuff, but basically it's barbells, dumbbells and a bench are all that's required. And so if you got that in your garage, great. So that's what I was saying. This girl I've got a lot of requests from female saying, hey, can I use this workout? I say, yeah, absolutely. But they want a little bit more female friendly 100 rep workout. So I'm actually just in the preliminary stages developing one for them. But this book is for the everyday working guy.

Okay, so let's say I'm listening to this interview right now and I'm thinking, okay, I want to go try out what Josh Carter's actually put together. Can you walk me through a sample workout from this book?

Sure. I'm going to give you two things. First off, if somebody has to, they can go to100.com and there's a free workout there, a video of me doing one. And it's just a very simple back and forth between some squats and some push ups. And you'll see that even though I've been doing this long time, I was crushed. And it took about five minutes total to do. And I was, I was completely spent. But here's an example of what I did. I actually had this on my site for the 100repworker.com and it's. I was in a hotel room and didn't have, you know, they didn't have a gym at this place. And so I said, all right, I'm gonna knock out 100 reps real quick. And it was in. I did activate it on the balcony. So that only took about six feet of space, you know, you know, you know, six square feet. You know, I just reached my arms out, make sure I wasn't hitting any walls. And I did 25. And this is all body weight. This is strictly body weight. And it was, I don't know, four or five minutes. It was 25 body weight squats, 25 standard push ups. And you could also put your feet up on, if you could. Then I did 25 lunges and that was 25 step back lunges and that was 25 per leg. So I didn't want to skimp on the legs, make sure it's limited. And then 25 full sit ups from lying all the way back to sitting.

All the way up.

And I did it with my hands overhead the whole time. And that's it. That was 100 reps. And that had me huffing and puffing. So it was a very short, but yet effective. I mean, the metabolic effects you get interval style training program has been clinically proven the last anywhere up to like 38 hours.

Right. So the metabolism stays elevated. I think that's what a lot of people don't realize is that when they do a workout like this, they think, well, how many calories could you burn doing just 100 reps? But it's about all the calories that you burn afterwards. You're driving home in your car and replacing all that oxygen that you put yourself into debt for during the workout. So to all the workouts in the book have a total of 100 reps?

Yes, in this book we decided to keep it pretty basic and keep it just 100 reps. And what I did was I broke it down into a two week Bodyweight primer first. So the first two weeks you'll use nothing but your own body weight and do 100 reps three times a week. And I put in there that you can do some additional various styles of cardio and whatnot. And then from there it goes into more advanced workouts, which does use dumbbells and barbells and there's some advanced stuff in there. By week six, you're doing power cleans and some other relatively complex and big movements to get further effects.

Yeah. And Josh, just for the listeners, I know Josh mentioned that workout he just walked through, took about five minutes. I got an email from Josh a few weeks ago and he actually sent out a 300 rep workout in that email. And this one was 100 body weight squats, 50 pushups or knee pushups if you can do them, alternating lunges, 50 of those per leg, 50 mountain climbers, which is a core exercise, and then 50 sit ups. And every time you stop, you go through that sequence. But every time you stop for more than a second or a count of one Mississippi or your form breaks down, you have to stop and jump rope for 30 seconds. Or if you don't have a jump rope, you could just do jumping jacks. I went and did this for workout and it literally took me about like it was somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes. Fantastic workout. Felt like I'd been at the gym about two hours. And the fitness breakthrough you can get from just doing very quick, intense things like this is enormous. And the thing I liked about it was I didn't really need anything, you know, I didn't have to have all the special equipment I could have done in my living room, you know, while I was watching the office if I wanted to.

Yeah, what's good about that particular one is that if you don't have a jump rope, you just do jumping ji and still get the same thing. That's a little devious workout that I came up with and it's a little bit more advanced. But here's the thing about the 100 rep workout. What I talk about in the book is how important it is to have a goal. There needs to be long term goals and short term goals. And what's nice about the hundred rep workout is that it gives you a nice short term goal. You know that your goal is 100 reps and when you hit those 100, you're done. And so there's, there's, you know, there's a prize, there's, there's something at the end and there's there's something to reach for instead of I'm doing a set of, you know, six to eight or whatever, and you're not exactly sure how many you'll hit, right. And there's not, there's anything wrong with that. But when there's, when there's something to strive for, people tend to be a little bit more. So when I say, all right, this week we're going to do like 300 reps, you know, 100 reps three times. And then they know that they did, there's a certain sense of accomplishment. And then maybe next week I'm saying, all right, now we're going to do a 200 rep on Monday and, you know, Wednesday, Friday we'll do 100. You know, we can play with it. There's so much flexibility, but the real magic of it is seeing that goal, that there's an attainable goal that you can reach every single time you work out. That makes sense. One of the reasons why this is so powerful, the other big reason from my perspective, is how flexible it is because it can be done by an advanced training. When I did this last Monday, I just put it through exercise. I did a deadlift and a bench press, and I'm a relatively strong guy. So I loaded up the bar with £365 for the deadlift and two, not much on the bench that time I was like 225. When you're knocking out 50 reps a piece, alternating back and forth, let me tell you, that is a serious advanced workout. So it can vary from the most basic first time beginner never worked out before in their life. To someone like me, who's been doing this for near 20 years.

Yeah. And I know for a lot of our listeners, banging out 225 on the bench press is not chump change.

And let me say, but near the end, man, I was dying. I was only getting a couple reps per set and going back and forth. So it took me 25, 35 minutes. I don't remember. So it's not that I was doing a set of 10 per set. At the beginning, I would probably hit 10 reps, but near the end, I was only hitting 3, 4 reps per set. So it became quite a challenge.

What kind of stuff are people doing right now in the gym that you think would contrast with this workout in terms of things that people could be doing that might be. Be wasting their time?

Well, you know, there's unfortunately a lot of stuff. A lot of the popular fitness magazines still talk about Very outdated outlooked methods. Training methodologies like, I'm not a big fan of body part training for the average person. If you're a bodybuilder or whatever, that's great. But if you're a guy Sporting a 40 inch waist, you've got no business doing bicep curls or tricep press downs or things like that, or even calf raises or something like that because you're working such a small amount of muscle per unit of time. It just doesn't make any sense. Our time is so valuable. Everybody has so little time on their hands that they need to prioritize their workout events. And so I try to do that and tell people, first thing you want to do, you need the biggest. Let me back up a little bit. This is for people that need to get lean, need to drop weight and want to shape their muscles and transform their body. You need to have a hierarchy of events. And for me, the top of the food chain, there would be resistance training even, maybe even call it interval style resistance training where you have big movements with very short rest periods. And so that could be, like I said, body weight squats and push ups or it could be heavy deadlifts and bench press and rows and pull ups and lunges and squats with weight, I mean just big movements using multiple muscle groups per unit of time. The more muscle mass we can affect per unit of time, the better off we're going to be. Now second to that I would put standard interval training where you do body weight stuff or you know, my favorite is the classic tabata where it's 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for a four minute round. I love those. I use those all the time.

Yep.

My clients that train with me here locally have become friends with that set on a rowing machine.

Oh yeah, that's, you know, I've always, I've never had access to a rowing machine. They're just brutal and I'd love to get my hands on one. Anyway. Third would be, you know, your standard cardio. And that's where you know two biggest mistakes in gyms. It's too many fat people basically spending too much time on a treadmill and not enough time doing resistance training. They should flip that time they're spending. I hear people all the time do 45 minutes on the treadmill, then I'm going to go lift for 15 minutes. I was like, why don't you flip that? Why don't you lift for 45 and treadmill for 15? There's better ways to do it. But you understand What I'm saying, they need to reprioritize and do what gives them the biggest bang for their back.

Yeah, that's what I tell people. Unless you are, you're actually training for some type of event that requires you to be sitting on a bicycle for two hours, then don't waste your time. Yeah, there you go. Bicycle for two hours.

You know, you bring up a great point there because I've had people come to me and they don't see that there's a difference between, you know, training for a 10k, 10k run and dropping £20. You don't train the same way. It's not, you know, those are two different goals. You know, people think it's the same thing. Well, I just need to run on the treadmill to lose weight. It's not, it's, it doesn't work out that way. Not for most of us anyway.

Yeah, and the other thing that I was going to mention when you were talking about the bodybuilders, that's the other thing a lot of people don't realize is that bodybuilders be in the gym three, four hours a day because that's their profession, that's their job. And they can get results doing bicep curls because they're spending an hour just doing bicep curls. The average person, you know, andand that kind of returns.

You don't have that kind of time.

You don't have that amount of time. And you gotta do something that's quick, that's efficient, that gets results. And it looks like this book's got everything in there. Now, do you talk about nutrition at all?

Oh, you know, you have to because I think Alan Cosgrove said it best when he said you can't out train bad nutrition. You. No matter how great my 100 rep workouts are, if you eat like crap, it's not going to make a bit of difference. So yeah, there's a significant portion. I want to say at least a third of the book is dedicated to my fat loss nutrition philosophies, meaning how I recommend people eat to get or stay lean, which it's not rocket science, it's just not. My philosophy is based on a good amount of lean proteins, relatively low carbs, high in vegetables, fibrous vegetables, and a decent amount of healthy fat and a good amount of fish oil. So I talk about the why I go that way, the benefits of it, and if people follow it, then it should look out great.

All right, well I'd like to throw just a little bit of real practical information out there to our listeners. If you could pick one basic exercise from the book from your 100 rep workout program and give that to someone to say to give them the biggest results in the shortest period of time, what exercise would you pick?

You know, one of the best ones that I think gets the most muscle groups in one movement would be the thruster, the barbell and dumbbell thruster, which is. Let's see, how do I describe this is when you're holding a barbell in front of your chest as if you're going to do like a shoulder press, and you basically dip down, bending your knees, you do essentially a front squat, and then as you stand up, you press it overhead and do a shoulder press. So in one fluid motion, you do a front squat and then press it overhead and you just go up and down like that. Did I describe that?

Yeah, I can picture it. So basically it's called a thruster because you're essentially just thrusting your hips down into a deep squat and then thrusting the barbell or the dumbbells up overhead as you stand.

Exactly, yeah, yeah. And obviously I got pictures in the book and you can also just Type it into YouTube and you'll see a bunch of people doing it. But it is a very powerful move. You use a lot of the power from the squat portion to launch the weight overhead. And I mean, you're hitting all your lower body. Your core is getting effective because you got to hold that bar right in front of you really close to your body, and then your shoulders and arms get a lot of work when they're pressing it overhead.

I love that move.

Doctor. Yeah, don't think if you're listening that this is something that you have to do at the gym or that you have to have a barbell or something of that nature. I've actually done these as a workout before in a hotel room with a phone book. Obviously a little bit higher rep to do something like that, but don't think that you need any type of special equipment. And obviously for people who are listening who maybe aren't that strong or who are just getting into this.

Yeah.

A phone book or a dictionary or, you know, a small child, whatever that's gonna offer you enough resistance to give you those big time results that, like Josh mentioned earlier, can bump up your metabolic rate for over 30 hours after you work out. So it's some pretty powerful stuff. Well, Josh, for people to get more information, I'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes, but you got any resources out there that you can point our listeners to for more information?

Well, definitely. First off, I would tell the listeners, go to the webpage that you provide and click on that link. Otherwise, 100rep.com is the website that's about. I have an email address on there. You can click and ask me any questions you might have about how the program works or anything for that matter.

Fantastic. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And thank you for coming on the show, Josh.

Absolutely. It was my pleasure.

All right, the 100 rep workout, over and out. All right, podcast listeners, remember, if you.

Liked what you heard today, make sure that you go to itunes and you leave us some feedback. You can actually leave a rating in itunes.

That kind of lets people know what our podcast is all about.

It's a favor to me for the.

Time I put into putting this thing out. If you go and give us a.

Ranking, I'll put a link in the.

Show notes that you can click on.

It'll take you straight into an itunes.

Window where you can do that.

And then a couple of other things. If you would like to leave your question via audio, basically a recording that records the question that you have for me, rather than emailing me Ben at Bengreenfield Fitness, which I technically suppose you.

Could do, you could record audio and you could email me.

I actually have a Skype username set up where you can actually use the free software for calling from computer to computer. It's called skype@skype.com and you can Skype Pacific Fit to leave me a voice message or a voicemail that I can play in the show with your question. I will put a link to Skype as well as the Skype username in the show notes. And remember that Sunday, March 28th, that's a Sunday night at 6pm I'll be doing again my live TV online Q& A session. And this one's actually going to be me demonstrating exercises that are kind of my top exercises. I'll be giving you the top 10.

Exercises that I use to achieve the fastest results possible.

And the people that I train, I'll.

Be demonstrating those and then answering all.

Your questions on exercises, whether the about.

Exercising through injury or exercising for lean.

Muscle mass formation or fat loss or whatever the case may be. So until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from bengreenfieldfitness.

Com.

Have a great week.