One of the toughest parts of building your physique is staying stoked to hit the gym—and not just hit it, but power drive it over the wall every time you work out. That can be especially tough in the winter when you’re all covered up and not necessarily thinking of your lean-machine spring and summer body…
“If no one is going to see my muscles, why try to stay lean and push through the pain to gain?” The answer is simple: Spring will be here before you can say, “Abracadabra, my abs have vanished.” (There’s a weight-room trick you can use to keep that from happening; more on that below.)
Remember, the more fat you put on over the winter, the more you’ll have to lose when spring sneaks up on you and demands that you reveal your soft, doughy physique. Yikes.
If you’re thinking you’ll just burn it off with a couple of lean-machine cardio sessions, consider this: A brisk treadmill workout will burn about 300 calories in 30 minutes. There are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, so it will take you 6 straight hours to burn one measly pound of fat—and that’s if you can maintain the pace. Double yikes…
A much better scenario is to stay fairly lean so that when spring arrives, you’re ready to peel off your shirt with pride…
You don’t have to be ripped to the bone—just be sure your abs are still visible and you have a few veins streaking down your arms. In that closer-to-peak condition, your gains will suddenly snowball.
Now for that lean-machine weight-room trick to keep your abs tight and veins in sight: Research reveals that one of the best ways to burn more fat, even at rest, is to make sure you trigger muscle microtears in the gym. Scientists have found that when you “damage” muscle tissue, your body uses a lot of energy to repair it—and that energy comes primarily from bodyfat. How cool is that…
In other words, if you train hard, you cause muscle microtears, which has you burning fat 24/7 as you build muscle. That means you can get away with less cardio—if you train hard but smart…
For example, using progressively heavier weights on all-out sets is a good way to make that happen. That’s why one of our most popular winter workouts for a fat-to-muscle effect is the POF Power Pyramid. You hammer the big midrange exercise hard by adding weight each set so your reps drop—8, 6, 3-4. Do that on bench presses, squats and rows training three or four times a week, and you’ll light the lean-machine fuse.
Then to complete the combustion, that workout has you finish with one set each of a stretch- and contracted-position exercises. Those “secondary” Positions of Flexion have unique fat-to-muscle effects as well…
Stretch moves, like pullovers and flyes, cause ancillary microtears as the target muscle fully elongates; contracted exercises, like leg extensions, are great for occlusion where you choke off blood flow during the set to hammer and expand the endurance constituents ), such as the mitochondria, which is the part of the cell where fat is burned—you’re actually building the fat-burning furnace with those constant-tension exercises.
Or, for a more multi-faceted approach, try the 3D Power/Rep Range/Shock program. That constant variation keeps the muscle trauma and growth churning and the bodyfat burning…
You do heavy low-rep work one week (4-6 reps), a variety of rep ranges the next week (7-9, 10-12, 13-15), then the third week you use specific intensity tactics, like drop sets and X-hybrid tactics. It’s a fantastic mass-building, fat-burning protocol (and it keeps you fairly ripped with minimal cardio).
Any of the above workouts can work lean-machine magic for you, too—or simply use your current workout with enough intensity tactics to trigger the right amount of muscle trauma for a fat-obliterating afterburn. One of our favorites is slowing down the negative stroke on every rep of a set. Then, when spring jumps out and screams, “Surprise,” you’ll peel off your shirt looking something like this…
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman and Jonathan Lawson
www.X-Rep.com
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