I can still remember sitting at a table with two wanna be bodybuilders in University and listening to their conversation as they ate three pieces of leftover grilled chicken with a large side of cottage cheese (This after-workout eating menu should have been hint #34 to change my approach with regards to fitness but I was a sucker for trying to get lean and mean back then).

The terms and language thrown around in discussing their current workout routine made them sound like they attended a private middle school on Mars. I felt intimidated to jump in and tell them I did 50 push-ups and sit-ups last night before bed.

[You don't need to be a smarty pants to understand fitness lingo... Kinda of looks like Jennifer Love Hewitt in disguise?]

For those who watch The Biggest Loser, read through the latest Fitness magazines, or follow one of the fat loss programs reviewed here, you’ll be familiar with this language. For others just starting out, it’s time to stop feeling embarrassed – read through the glossary below to help you decode some popular gym jargon.

Note: Even I rolled my eyes at the thought of a fitness-glossary-type-of-post but you know what? Sometimes we, as fitness enthusiasts, get so wrapped up in what we’re passionate about that we fail to communicate effectively with those just starting out. Fitness and health is for everybody so let’s take a step back and review some of the exercise jargon we’ve accumulated or crossed paths with.

REPS: It has nothing to do with your rep-utation as a stand-up guy or rep-resenting your hood? In a gym setting the term “reps” is short for “repetition” – as in the number of repetitions in a set of exercises. For example, you can do three sets of push-ups with ten reps in each set.

SETS: The kinds of sets you see in a gym have nothing to do with the lovely kitchen and dining set you see at your furniture store. Rather, the term “sets” refers to a group of repetitions of a particular resistance exercise. For example, Ah-nuld did five sets of bicep curls.

CORE: Every time I hear the word core, I remember wasting my money on seeing this box-office bomb (The Core) that was chalk full of scientific inaccuracies, it made Peter Pan believable. But in a fitness setting, the core refers to the muscles that stabilize and align the body, especially the muscles of the lower back and abdomen. The importance of having a strong core is evident in just about every human movement. To make your core the serious strong point it should be, engage in activities that work the abdominal muscles, such as planks and total body movements.

CARDIO: Cardio is short for cardiovascular exercise which really means aerobic exercise which really really means a constant movement that raises your heart rate. Traditional examples of cardio exercise include brisk walking, running, or moving along with Richard Simmons and his candy stripped Dolphin shorts. Kidding aside, cardio exercise can be effective for fat loss but other methods can burn fat faster and longer.

RESISTANCE TRAINING: Exercises that increase muscle strength by forcing the body against a weight such as a dumbbell or your own bodyweight. Movements such as squats, bench press, or chin-ups are common examples. Also known as strength training in weight lifting circles.

[Break time... Here's an interesting video someone sent me regarding last week's squat article. A nice little production for YouTube standards.]

WARM-UP: Like a basketball team doing layup drills, it’s a method of heating the body through gradual aerobic movement before tip-off, or in our case, exercise routine. For example, walking steadily for a few minutes before sprinting is a common warm-up approach. Experts recommend warming up for five to 10 minutes before an activity or exercise to improve muscle elasticity which decreases the risk of injury.

COOL-DOWN: Done after an exercise session, this is slow steady activity that gradually reduces the heart rate to a pre-exercise state. Allowing blood to adequately return to the heart and minimize the risk of blood pooling and lactic acid build-up in your muscles. Yikes!

INTERVAL TRAINING: It sounds fancy but simply put it’s alternating short bursts of intense activity with periods of active recovery or more moderate exercise. Read more here. For example: Start out by walking briskly and adding one minute bursts of jogging or running before returning to brisk walking. The amount of calories burned in a short period make this a highly effective fat loss strategy.

CIRCUIT TRAINING: Similar to interval training with more work being done in less time except it’s specific to strength and endurance activities. In circuit training, you would perform a group, or a circuit, of exercises with little to no rest in between. For example each circuit might consist of 10 reps of 5 different exercises: Try push-ups, squats, pull-ups, lunges, and finally bicep curls. Looks easy on paper but gaurantee sweat breaker. I love circuits and promise to include specific routines in the future.

RESTING HEART RATE: This is your heart rate at rest. Usually, the heart beats between 60 and 80 times in a minute at rest. General rule of thumb – the more fit you are, the lower your resting heart rate.

MAXIMUM HEART RATE: In order to calculate your target heart rate you need to know your maximum heart rate. Here’s a quick calculation to do just that: Subtract your age from 220 and ta-da… you now have your maximum heart rate.

TARGET HEART RATE: Experts generally recommend that your target heart rate should range between approximately 60-80% of your maximum heart rate. Any lower than this and you’re probably wasting your time and not burning fat effectively. Any higher, and you might end up on Dr. Grey’s operating table.

TALK TEST: A relatively new age approach to measuring your level of activity. It’s a less scientific measure of how hard your heart is working during exercise by your ability to carry on a conversation. Some experts take it a step further and say you shouldn’t be able to sing during exercise, but you should be able to carry on a conversation, even if it’s a little “choppy”. In general, it’s ok to be breathless during short, intense periods of interval training as long as other symptoms like dizziness or feeling light-headed don’t creep up on you.

There you have it, a basic list of good-to-know fitness terms that allow you to focus on the exercise program at hand instead of reaching for a dictionary. Most of the programs we review do an adequate job of explaining terms along the way but I was especially impressed with the job Mike Geary does in his book Truth About Six Pack Abs. Check out our review here because it’s bursting at the seams with other solid fat loss information .

Training biceps is fun, especially for guys. The feeling of curling a weight and the ensuing pump after just one set feels pretty damn good.

But there are downfalls.

Let me explain using my informercial voice:

Tired of standing in line for the preacher curl machine? Or the bicep cable curls machine? I know I am.

Working out at your local fitness centre can be awesome and frustrating in the same workout session. Awesome because you have a ton of fitness resources under one roof but also frustrating when the number of bodies out numbers the equipment.

[A crowded beach always beats a crowded gym... Except maybe the one above! Honey, where are the towels?]

I know the most common suggestion I hear in response to crowds in the gym is to pack up and try a different time of day.

Without dropping a couple of choice explectives, I’ll say “forget that“!

You are at the gym to train for a limited period of time so train you shall. Also, what if this is the only time of day you can make it to the gym?

Should you be forced to change your lifestyle because someone thinks he’s Ronnie Coleman training for the next Mr. Olympia and has decided this is a great day to do 20 sets on the machine you want to use?

End of rant…

While people are lining up like sheep for the usual biceps machines, make your way over to the “cargo loading single arm bicep machine” used in the 1986 hit movie Aliens.

[Really, I don't know the official name for it but I feel like Sigorny Weaver every time I use it]

I found this hunk of metal and cables in the far corner of my gym so don’t despair if it’s not placed right beside the preacher curl machine.

Here’s what you do:

1. Grab a handle in each hand and lean slightly forward on the seat. Your back is about 4 inches off the backrest.

This puts your hands almost behind your body throughout the entire movement.

What this does is simulate the old body drag curl but without the obscene amount of weight. It isolates and streches (more on this shortly) the biceps and takes your anterior deltoids (ie. the front portion of your shoulders) out of the movement.

2. With palms facing forward, raise the weight (technically the handles) to slightly past parallel.

Keep your eyes forward! The temptation to gaze erotically at your biceps is strong but resist and you’ll reduce neck cramps and other unnatural body soreness.

3. Keep your elbows tight in to your body and lower the weight slowly back to the starting position.

4. Keep tension on the biceps during the entire movement, and go for 10-12 slow reps.

Why is this exercise effective?

It’s all in the stretch, and not in the 1970s addidas shorts static-stretch kinda of way.

In a study published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise Journal, authors Antonio and Gonyea determined that stretch exercises like the movement above are very effective methods in increasing muscle fibers.

But don’t get macho here!

Common bodybuilding advice will tell you to overload the stretch (ie. use heavy heavy weights) but if your not a Major League Baseball player then your asking for trouble (I’m sorry… still dealing with Big Papi getting busted this month).

Lower reps are not as effective for biceps either unless your training for brute strength. Even then, lower reps usually means much heavier weight which also means increased risk of injury. No thanks, not today!

An alternate to the biceps movement above can be done using dumbbells on an incline bench if the crowds subside and the equipment becomes available.

Follow the same steps above and your biceps should be feeling nice and full in 10 minutes or less.

For more ways to improve your arm training I strongly encourage men and women to check out Vince DelMonte’s program No NonSense Muscle Building. A top selling muscle program that answers all of your questions when it comes to which equipment to use at your local gym. 

The time, or rest between sets, (a series of exercises done consecutively i.e. he did 4 sets of 10 reps on the bench press) is an important factor in your ability to complete a workout.

Very often the question raised on the gym floor is, how long should I wait after completing a set to start another set?

The answer is: It depends on your goals.

[Do you frequently spend your rest periods looking at yourself in the mirror or at the hottie on the treadmill? Stop! Focus on the time between your sets and you'll get more done (fat loss and muscle building) in less time!]

More Rest For More Strength

For example, when I’m training with Vince DelMonte’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program, I’m looking to increase my strength and build muscle so the rest period is a bit longer – up to three minutes for exercises like squats and heavy dumbbell work.

Less Rest for Fast Fat Loss?

But if I’m training for fat loss and trying to burn the most amount of body fat and gain lean muscle with Tom Venuto’s Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle program, then resting for very short periods of time (30 seconds on average) is required.

The Iron Guru – Vince Gironda

I remember in my early bodybuilding days reading about Vince Gironda, “The Iron Guru” in Iron Man Magazine. Now as many of you know, I’m not an advocate of classic bodybuilding where you try and get unnaturally huge and wear spandex t-shirts the rest of your life.

But this Vince character had some unorthodox training views on building muscle which attracted my attention and made me question the norm when it comes to building and gaining muscle.

One such view he subscribed to was leaving your hands on the bar between sets and resting for only 15-20 seconds between sets. Can you say burn?

[Here's Vince berating this woman during bicep curls. The unintentional comedy is off the charts but once you stop laughing and actually listen to his instructions I can't help but think back to the lazy personal trainer I saw last week at the gym who did nothing to correct one guy's form on deadlifts. Give me Mr. Gironda everytime!]

Better Results in Less Time!

This is similar to the strategy Tom Venuto uses in his programs – very short rest intervals and very intense training. Smart, short, efficient. The way I like it!

If your new to this strategy, Venuto suggests a good place to start is simply reducing your rest intervals by 10 seconds.

“No matter what workout you’re using, decrease your rest by 10 seconds between sets.”

You may not be as strong on the last few sets (if you are training traditionally with the same number of sets and reps), but Venuto teaches you to reduce weight (your EGO will be just fine, relax) to maintain the prescribed number of sets and reps.

Over time you will work your way back up to the same amount of sets and reps but done in far less time.

This means more work output, which means more muscle (and of course your nutrition is always important).

For the majority of us with busy lives, this is the best way to train: Limited rest, intense sets, and short workouts.

For more information about what exercises work best when reducing your rest periods and shortening your workout, check out our Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle review by Tom Venuto. It’s an invaluable resource for any person looking to reach his or her fitness goals.

I see more flat stomach and six-pack ab infomercials everyday that revolve around the classic crunch move.

We all know this move: lie on the floor on your back, grab the back of your head with your hands and pull it two inches off the floor. I think it’s safe to say this method does not work very well for building your 6-pack abs and flattening out your stomach.

[There's nothing intense about this exercise. Look at this poor girl's facial expression! Not another time wasting crunch, please...]

Aside from them being useless for getting six pack abs, the crunch movement itself is actually harmful to your spine and lower back. Every single time you perform a crunch, you are doing what the world’s leading experts on back pain describe as a dangerous motion.

Research shows every time you crunch, you do what is called spinal flexion, and spinal flexion compresses the disks between your vertebrae. If you do that too much, you could end up with a herniated disc. It’s the same motion as rounding your back to pick up something off the floor, and you probably know someone who has hurt their back that way!

Total body ab exercises are more effective.

Instead of wasting your life lying on your back doing an exercise that you can do hundreds of times, you need to replace crunches and all those other 1980s aerobics style exercises with better, total body ab exercises to get more results in less time.

So you don’t need to do crunches, and you don’t even need to go to a gym, if you have the right total body ab exercises in your home abdominal workout program says Craig Ballantyne, Men’s Health Training Advisor and Author. “In fact, with the right program, your entire fat loss workout will take less time than most bodybuilders spend on crunches every day! Yet you’ll still be able to get a flat stomach and six packs abs with this fast at-home workout.”

[I just couldn't resist this video. Four ladies wasting their time in almost perfect unison. Crunch after crunch and not a drop of sweat. Not good!]

Forget long boring cardio sessions.

I used to spend an hour walking on a treadmill while watching the timer or other gym goers walk by. Long boring cardio sessions suck, plain and simple. With the ab erecises explained below, your entire workout (including your resistance training) will take less time (45 minutes tops) than most people spend getting to the gym and warming-up.

And you only have to workout three times per week, not six days per week like the bodybuilding magazines suggest. So you save time in each workout, and workout fewer times per week. That will give you more time to spend* on the important stuff in life like connecting with your family and enjoying the company of friends.

Ab workout exercises that work.

Ballantyne details his top abdominal exercise replacements for ineffective crunches and other 1980s style ab moves.

1. Replace crunches with stability ball rollouts (see video below). You’ll get a more powerful stretch in the Rollout exercise, and a more powerful contraction, all without doing excessive and dangerous spinal flexion.

2. Replace crunches on the ball with a plank with arms on the ball. According to the Men’s Health magazine, research shows that a plank with arms on the ball is 30% more effective in working your abs.

3. Replace bicycle crunches with X-Body mountain climbers (see video below). This unique total-body ab exercise still works your obliques, but without repetitive crunching. Plus, it helps build invaluable abdominal endurance and stability to keep your low back healthy.

4. Replace reverse crunches with stability ball Jackknives (see video below). You will still be able to work the lower area of your abdominal muscles, as well as your obliques with this stability ball exercise, but you also get the benefit of building back-protecting abdominal endurance.

5. Replace sit-ups with hanging knee-ups or the advanced pull-up plus knee-ups. Your abs will have never experienced anything like this exercise! You can also do a chin-up plus knee-up for the same effect on your abs, and chin-ups are a little easier. This is one of my current favorite exercises.

By getting rid of crunches you’ll lose nothing, while gaining time to work on better exercises to build your six pack abs and flat stomach, plus you’ll avoid exercises that are hard on your back.

For more detailed descriptions of all of these home ab exercises as well as more techniques for losing abdominal fat, click here for more great abs training strategies.

Welcome to the Gun Show” or ”The Beach is That Way” or how about ”I’m Busy Sculpting My Guns“.

There is no other muscle group that has earned more nicknames. When looking in the mirror, every guy imagines a set of bulging biceps. Yes, I’m guilty too!

The days are far from gone when you walk into the gym and see 8 out of 10 guys doing bicep curls all at the same time with the same determination to add even a quarter of an inch to their biceps. Training biceps has become almost an obsessive habit in the gym. I’ve seen guys spend entire gym sessions bent over doing concentration curls while starring in the mirror thinking they are somewhat special.

”

[Thought you'd see some bodybuilder dude with 24" pythons and a fake tan? Very few athletes and so called bodybuilders sport the muscular definition of Rafa Nadal's arms.]

Even more hilarious is seeing guys buying and wearing tight t-shirts in the hope of making their arms “look” bigger. Kinda of sad, but the allure of strong, mountainous biceps will never go away and why should it?

After all, they are a man’s most prized possession and one of women’s most desired body parts on a man!

But if every guy is obsessing over their biceps and dedicating entire training sessions with classic bodybuilding techniques such as forced reps, drop sets, and 21′s…. why do they still have little to show for their efforts?

Let’s examine five of the most common problems with bicep training:

1. More is Not Always Better

If doing 4 sets is better than 3 sets, why don’t you just do 10 sets? Even better, why don’t you just train them all day? Don’t laugh, I know a guy who did this!

It has been said before, but it obviously needs to be said again: “Less is often more.”

Your goal of each weight training workout should be to simply ‘out do’ your last workout. Be it an extra pound or a few extra reps, then it is time to move to the next exercise.

It’s a hard concept for many to grasp because they are fixated on the instant gratification of making their biceps ‘look’ big during the workout and not what they look like when they leave the gym, which leads us to our next problem.

2. Being obsessed with the “Pump”!

Yes, Arnold was right. It’s one of the best feelings in the world and the former Mr. Olympia even goes as far as comparing it to sex. Now that’s a little bit of a stretch in my book but to each his own.

The truth is that the longer you train your biceps, even if the weights are not extremely heavy, you can achieve a fairly decent pump that can turn a few heads while in the gym.

This attention and perception that you are doing something beneficial is deceiving. Yes, there is something to say about keeping blood in the muscle as long as possible, but if the workout is done with weights that do not overload your muscles and emphasize an increase in strength, your biceps will quickly deflate back to normal with no true muscle growth.

3. Not Focusing on Increasing Your Overall Strength

If you look at some of the best upper body physiques (Craig Ballantyne comes to mind) today and their workout plans, they barely train arms. Why?

Because biceps are secondary muscles. A stronger emphasis is put around increasing their chest, back and shoulder strength. If you simply focus on increasing the weights on your rows, pull-ups and chin-ups, rest assured that your biceps will come along for the ride and grow proportionally.

However, if you are always blasting away one-arm dumbbell curls, your biceps will always be fatigued when you train your bigger muscles like your back and chest therefore, you’ve sacrificed a big muscle for the sake of a small muscle. Make sense? This is another reason to take a lower volume approach to arm training.

4. Using the Same Bicep Exercises Every Time

Every bodybuilding magazine will always claim barbell curls and dumbbell curls are two of the simplest and best exercises for building huge biceps. For once, I’ll semi-agree with the so-called experts. These ‘simple’ exercises are a safe foundation to build a program around, but let’s not get carried away. Pro bodybuilders using steroids are going to have a strong bodily response to practically any exercise they do.

Therefore, I have no problem using these two exercises under the important condition that you are getting stronger from week-to-week. As long as you are increasing the weights and reps relative to good lifting form, then your arms should continue growing.

5. Not Enough Tension on the Muscle

I think many people of all levels (yes, I’m talking to the advanced athletes as well) do not fully grasp the concept of isolating and actually training a muscle. They do not know how to make the muscle work and fatigue.

Instead, you see a lot of swinging, momentum and sloppy lifting used to move the weight from every part of the body except the one they are actually trying to train.

Fitness author of the No Nonsense Muscle Building Program, Vince DelMonte explains that biceps have a very strong response to “constant tension,” which means you should never give them a chance to breathe.

Keep the bar constantly moving without pausing at the top or bottom. Focus on squeezing the heck out of the bar and never let your biceps relax until the set is over. Your entire goal is to not allow any oxygen into the muscle which creates a spike with your anabolic hormones to promote muscle growth. Resort to a slower tempo (ie. 3 seconds up, 0 pause, and 3 seconds down) to get the job done.

For more ways to improve other aspects of your workouts, I strongly encourage men and women to check out Vince DelMonte’s program No NonSense Muscle Building. The top-selling fast muscle 201 page manual is literally changing lives everyday!

If you’ve caused metabolic damage as a result of following starvation diets or losing weight too rapidly in the past, it can be extremely difficult to achieve any further fat loss at all. The good news is, metabolic damage can be repaired. All it takes is the right combination of metabolism stimulating exercise and metabolism stimulating nutrition (NOT just a diet), all done consistently over time.

The big irony is that most of the diet programs that claim to help you get rid of excess weight, only end up making it harder for you in the long run because they use harsh metabolism-decreasing diets and not enough exercise (almost never any weight training).

It may take a little longer if you have really messed things up with severe starvation dieting in the past, especially if you’ve lost a lot of lean body mass, but it is never hopeless. Anyone can increase their metabolism.

Most people get an almost immediate boost in metabolic rate when they start the Burn The Fat program. However, the results are not going to be “overnight.” Give it a little time…

Within 3 weeks your metabolism will already be more efficient. Within 6-8 weeks, it’s burning hot. Give me 12 weeks of consistent diligent effort, sticking with all the metabolism boosting strategies I teach, and your metabolism really will become like a turbo charged engine, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

What’s most important for upping your metabolism is CONSISTENCY in applying the Burn The Fat nutrition and training principles every single day.

That includes:

• Meal frequency: eat 5-6 small meals per day
• Meal timing: eat approximately every 3 hours, with a substantial breakfast and a substantial post workout meal.
• Sufficient Caloric Intake: maintain a small calorie deficit and avoid starvation-level diets (suggested safe levels for fat loss: 2100-2500 calories per day for men, 1400-1800 calories per day for women; adjust as needed)
• Food choices: Select natural, unprocessed foods with high thermic effect (lean proteins like chicken, turkey, egg whites and fish are highly thermic, as are all green vegetables, salad vegetables and other fibrous carbs)
• Cardio training: Push up the intensity a bit if you really want to get a metabolic boost. Walking and low intensity cardio is fine, but higher intensity is more metabolism-stimulating
• Weight training: The basic exercises that include the largest muscle groups or even call into play the entire body as a unit (squats, front squats, split squats, deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, overhead presses, all kinds of rows and core-activation exercises) will have a much greater metabolism stimulating effect than isolation exercises (concentration curls, calf raises, etc)

The weight training is extremely important in cases of “metabolic damage” because this is the stimulus to keep the muscle you have and begin rebuilding new muscle tissue, which is the engine that drives your metabolism.

The men don’t usually have a problem with the weight training, but I still hear women say they don’t want to lift weights as part of their fat loss programs. Well, people who wont lift weights can expect a very, very long metabolism “repair process” if they achieve it at all.

Consistency is the key.

Nothing will undermine the “re-building” of your metabolism like inconsistency. If you stop and start, or skip meals and workouts often, you will not even get off the ground.

After your metabolism is back up where it should be, it takes continued “stoking” of the metabolic furnace to keep it there. Once you get your metabolic engine running, you’ve got to keep feeding it fuel or the fire will die down.

Picture an old fashioned wood burning stove…

Imagine you’re in a cabin up in the mountains in the winter. It’s cold in there and you want to keep the cabin warm. Can you achieve this by feeding the fire once or twice per day? Nope. Not enough fuel to burn, so not much heat is generated.

What if you just toss an entire pile of wood in the stove all at once? Will that work? Nope. Lots of fuel, but can’t all be used at once… it just smothers the fire and the excess just sits there.

How about if you throw some tissue paper or crumpled newspaper in the stove, will that work? Nope – too quickly burning.

You have to keep putting small amounts of wood (the right type of fuel) on the fire at regular intervals or the fire burns out.

It’s also difficult to get the fire lit again. In the case of metabolism, it’s like going through that initial few weeks of overcoming inertia all over again.

Your goal is to get your metabolism burning hot and keep it burning and this cannot be achieved by missing meals, missing workouts or with sporadic, infrequent training.

I have only seen a handful of cases where all these things were done properly and there was still a longer “repair” process.

For example, one case was former ballet dancer. At 5′ 5″, she was previously 110 lbs and had increased to about 145 or so. She didn’t want to reach her previous 110, but find a happy medium of about 125 lbs.

I figured with 20 lbs to cut, this would be a simple and predictable process, but she had a challenging time (and I didn’t know why at first).

I later found out that she had been anorexic and bulimic for many years. This had caused a lot of damage, and although she did reach her goal, it took about twice as long as we had anticipated.

The good news is, even in this extreme case, the same nutrition and training principles worked! It just took a little longer. And by the way her program included some serious training with free weights and she ate a lot more (clean) food than she had ever eaten before. No “starvation!”

That’s the power of burning the fat and feeding the muscles… Trying to starve the fat with crash diets is what causes the metabolic damage in the first place!

If you’re interested in the healthy, sensible way to take off the fat, while keeping all your muscle and actually increasing your metabolism in the process, then my Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle program can teach you how. No gimmicks or false promises. Just the truth – you have to work at it and you have to be patient.

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilder, certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) and a certified personal trainer (CPT). Tom is the author of “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle,” which teaches you how to get lean without drugs or supplements using methods of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models. Learn how to get rid of stubborn fat and increase your metabolism by visiting: www.burnthefat.com

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