Another day in the gym, another round of “crazy things people do when they workout”.

Did I ever tell you about the one time I watched a trainer instruct his client to stand on a Bosu ball, wearing boxing gloves, and then do some type of whacky reverse punch/backhand slap while the trainer stood BEHIND him holding the pads?

I was speechless…until – at the same gym – I watched a different trainer instruct his client to put his back foot on a Bosu ball and his front foot on an upended dumbbell (!!!) and do split squats.

Seriously, the trainer had his client stand on a dumbbell.

What’s wrong with these guys?

Anyways, I didn’t see anything that silly this weekend, but I did watch a guy do arms, chest presses, and then clean & presses supersetted with squats.

Probably one of the worst workout orders I’d ever witnessed.

So today, we’re going to cover the Best Exercise Order for maximum results in minimum workout time. Here’s how it goes.

The best workout exercise order is:

Stage 1: Warm-up
Stage 2 (optional): Skill/Power Training
Stage 3: Major Movement Resistance Training Straight Set or Superset
Stage 4 (optional): Minor Movements Superset or Circuits
Stage 5: Torso Training
Stage 6: Interval training

Let`s look at each stage in more detail.

Stage 1 – Warm-up

This is not the time to jump on the treadmill. That does not prepare you for stages 2-5. So we skip that and focus on a general bodyweight exercise warm-up that covers all of your major muscle groups & joints.

I filmed a warm-up video for you here:

=> Best Workout Warm-up

It covers everything far better than I could by email.

Stage 2 – Skill/Power Training (Optional)

Skill and power training should be done at the start of a workout while your neuromuscular system is fresh, not fatigued. That`s why you should not do power cleans at the end of a workout or supersetted with squats. Unless you like injury and dislike results.

Skill and power training are also optional for fat loss, but if you have any athletic or maximal strength goals, this is the time for most effective training.

Plus, this type of training is not bad for fat loss, but it just must be done appropriately for all levels.

Even beginners can do power training, such as doing very low (4-6 inch) box jumps – i.e. jumping from the floor onto a sturdy surface, such as an elevated aerobic step.

Anyways, this is a complex topic and we can revisit it another day.

Stage 3 – Major Movement Resistance Training (Straight Set or Superset)

If you are training for fat loss and to get the most amount of work done in the least amount of time, you`ll stick to supersets as outlined in the Turbulence Training workout. Simple, but effective.

However, if you want to dramatically increase your strength in the bench press, deadlift, squat, power clean, chin-up, or 1-leg squat, you can also do straight sets before you get into your supersets.

With the straight sets for strength approach, you`ll take more rest (2-3 minutes) between sets.

Alternatively, you could superset one of those strength exercises with a non-competing minor movement or stretch.

For example, if I`m focusing on bench press strength, I might stretch my psoas (hip flexor) area between sets, or superset dumbbell rear deltoid raises – something that uses the time between sets but does not impair my strength performance.

Again, another long topic for another day…and a future Meathead workout.

Stage 4 – Minor Movements (Supersets or Circuits)

I believe you`ll get more muscle building and strength gains when you choose supersets over circuits. That said, if you only want to lose fat and maintain lean muscle, you can finish your workouts faster by arranging your workouts in metabolic resistance circuits.

Two TT workouts that do that are TT 2K10 and TT Hard-Core 2K10.

Stage 5 – Torso Training

I prefer this term over `core training`, but essentially we are discussing the same thing. Working your abs, obliques, low back muscles, etc., using stability exercises – as is done in ALL of the
Turbulence Training workouts. No crunches, no sit-ups.

Sometimes old-school is good, but not when it comes to ab training. To learn more, I recommend the TT for Abs manual, and for beginners, please start with the January 2010 Total Torso Training workout.

Stage 6 – Interval Training

I`m getting a little long-winded today, so we will cover intervals on Wednesday.

For now, at least you have the perfect template for the best workouts.

But an even better resource would be to have all of the TT workouts at your finger tips…and you can get full Platinum Member access for the shockingly low investment of only $95 this week only here:

=> Click here for Platinum Access to ALL Turbulence Training Fat Loss Workouts

I`ve extended the January New Year`s special for three days, because of a funny thing that happened to me on Friday.

You see, I was driving from Toronto to my parent`s house in the country, and ol` Maxima broke down along the way. Now I have a big repair bill to pay off.

I`ll try to send you the full funny story about ol` Maxima`s problems tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

Plain white tee? Check. Awkwardly long sideburns? Check. Me slapping my hand to make a point? Check. The answer to how many sets and reps for your fat loss workouts? Check.

There are a lot of questions about the relationship between cardio exercise and fat loss that we will discuss over the next few days with Tom Venuto, who is internationally recognized as a fat loss guru.

For those of you who don’t know Tom Venuto,  he is a NSCA-certified strength and conditioning specialist, lifetime natural bodybuilder, freelance writer, personal coach and author of the #1 best-selling e-book “Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle” (BFFM): Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models.

Tom has written over 170 articles and has been featured in IRONMAN Magazine, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Muscle-Zine, Olympian’s News (in Italian), Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise. Tom’s articles on bodybuilding, weight loss and motivation are featured regularly on dozens of websites worldwide. If you would like more information on Tom’s “Burn The Fat” e-book, click here:  www.burnthefat.com.

So let’s get right into it.

**********************

Craig Ballantyne: Tom, you’ve written a great article called, “Risk to benefit ratios of extreme and controversial fat loss techniques.” I first read it on your site, Fitness Renaissance (www.fitren.com) has rankings since you wrote that article?

Tom Venuto: That article pretty much sums up my current thoughts about fat loss. The article looked at techniques for fat loss that are controversial, like not eating for 2-3 hours before going to bed or not eating carbs after a certain time of the day, or doing early morning cardio on an empty stomach. Some experts recommend these methods; others strongly recommend avoiding them. Some say they work well; others say they don’t work at all.

The main message I wanted to get across is that when you generalize by saying things like, “This technique is good”, “that technique is bad”, or “never do this,” “always do that,” you’re limiting yourself. I believe in the philosophy that the person who has the most flexibility and the most choices is the person with the most power to get results and to break past barriers (which unfortunately, are often self-imposed by all or none thinking).

Instead of making generalizations, I prefer to approach training and nutrition from the viewpoint of personalization and risks versus benefits. If you think about it, all exercise has risks. Squatting has risks. Running has risks. Competing in sports has risks. You can’t avoid risks. Heck, being alive has risks! The idea is to manage risks, not to try and eliminate them.

Take fasted cardio in the morning, for example. Are there risks in using this technique in an attempt to accelerate the fat loss? Yes, absolutely. Cortisol is higher in the morning, so you are more catabolic, and you might lose muscle. Does that mean there are no benefits and you should never use this technique? Not necessarily. Does doing cardio on an empty stomach guarantee you’re going to lose muscle? No, it only increases the possibility. However, many trainers, strength coaches, athletes and bodybuilders approach techniques like these with “It’s good” or “It’s bad” with no shades of grey in between.

The truth is, the value of each technique depends very much on the context. I remember reading something Charles Poliquin wrote about how ridiculous it was to think about his “manly men” athletes (as he called them), such as a 6 foot 5 inch 250 pound hockey player, doing any kind of conventional “aerobics.” That makes complete sense to me – in that context. If the athlete shows up after the off season carrying some undesired body fat, that weight can easily be shed with strength training and nutrition. Combine that with energy expended from practice time, and no aerobics are necessary.

However, does that mean “All aerobics are bad” or “Cardio is completely worthless.” Well, again, it depends on the context. Bad or worthless when? How much? How intense? What kind? Under what circumstances? And for whom? Are we talking about a 55 year old sedentary women with 35% body fat, an elite shot putter or a bodybuilder six weeks out from a competition?

I think these rigid all or none beliefs get formed gradually over a whole lifetime of experiences. We tend to collect our own personal biases and carry them along with us – I know I had to overcome my “pure bodybuilder” mentality and develop more flexibility in my approaches in order to really serve my non-bodybuilder clients the best. I specialize in fat loss – including nutrition, exercise and the psychological/emotional aspects – and my  personal interest is bodybuilding.

I don’t train people for sports, so I don’t have the perspective that most strength coaches do. Similarly, I imagine that many top strength coaches have developed an anti-cardio bias from their experience working with power, speed and strength athletes who have always been told that aerobics kills your strength, and perhaps they generalize their beliefs to apply to everyone.

The bottom line and the whole point of my article was that there are no absolutes, everything is context dependent.

Craig Ballantyne: You rank “fasted cardio in the morning” as a high risk, high benefit activity for fat loss. Is this something that you use yourself or with clients?

Tom Venuto: Because it’s high risk, it’s not necessarily a fat loss technique I recommend for everyone all the time. However, I’m not afraid to use it and I believe it has benefits that can outweigh the risks, depending on the circumstances. I usually do fasted cardio in the morning about 8-12 weeks before a competition. However, it depends on my weekly results. If I’m losing fat quickly and easily, I don’t need to use any high-risk techniques. Sometimes I’ll still do cardio in the morning, because I like doing it then, but I’ll have a whey protein drink or even a whole meal shortly beforehand.

I like to have an enormous amount of flexibility in my approach. If there’s a plateau in fat loss, I want to be able to dig into my bag of tricks and have a lot of stuff in there to pull out when I need it. If you only have one way, and you get stuck, you have a problem. I don’t like rigid formulas. I like freedom to choose my approach according to how things are going.

That’s all for today. We’ll take a look at the pro’s and con’s to traditional cardio compared to interval training in part 2 of this expert inter view series with Tom Venuto.

Off to Vegas this weekend…will be hanging around dozens of fitness experts…including kettlebell experts, hockey conditioning coaches, supplement experts, and some physiotherapists too. Should be fun.

I’ll be doing my workouts there on Friday morning and Monday morning, and taking Saturday and Sunday off – except for some stretching.

Now let’s help you lose fat…

Click here to listen to the call…

Now let’s get into the TT Workout and tips…

Monday – Oct  18th

Transformation Tip of the Week sponsored by Daily Inspirational Quotes:

“When you focus on you failures you become a person of reasons. When you hang onto your successes and build on them you become a person of results.” – Jordan Belfort

Don’t quit. You can do it. I believe in you. Take the mistakes from the past and burn them. Focus only on what you can achieve in the future.

How to burn 1000 calories (or more)

According to Men’s Health magazine:

67 minutes of jump rope burns 920 calories
2 hours of chopping wood burns 1500 calories in a large tuna melt sub from Quiznos
2 hours of backpacking burns the 1000 calories of Romano’s macaroni grill chicken pasta

And according to a random website, it would take a 200 pound guy over 70 minutes on the elliptical machine or 2 hours of hard landscaping to burn 1000 calories. Boring. I’ll take the wood chopping any day.

Tuesday
Get 30 minutes of fun activity – now grab a Green Tea and do this week’s research review.

Reference:
Obesity (Silver Spring). 2009. Web-based Weight Loss in Primary Care: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Bennett GG, Herring SJ, Puleo E, Stein EK, Emmons KM, Gillman MW.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health studied 101 obese patients who used comprehensive website that taught a moderate-intensity weight loss approach.

Patients also participated in four (two in-person and two telephonic) counseling sessions with a health coach.

Results:
Greater weight loss at 3 months (-2.56 kg) compared to usual care (0.28 +/- 1.87 kg).

High rates of participant retention (84%) and website utilization were observed, and the greatest weight loss found among those with a high frequency of website logins.

Conclusion:
Web based fat loss works, and the more often someone logs into a fat loss website, the better results they get.

Wednesday

Workout Tip Wednesday

“Do ONE strength exercise before metabolic resistance training.”

I was hanging out with a world-class powerlifter on Friday night. He literally squats 1000 pounds, but there are a lot of similarities between our training. The main difference is that they do one main strength exercise before they get into supersets. So if you want to improve a particular exercise, do it first with extra rest, lower reps (6 per set), and straight sets (or paired with an easy non-competing move).

Thursday
Do 30 minutes of fun activity…

Facebook Fitness QnA

Q: Which of your workouts would you recommend for a mountain biker?

Answer:
Depends on how much the person mountain bikes, I’d use something basic like squats once per week plus some bodyweight exercises (3-4 for a total body workout) and then another day later in the week of a dumbbell lunge or stepup and more bodyweight exercises (3-4 for a total body workout). I can’t think of which specific TT workout would do that…if you have the main manual, use TT2K3 or TT 2k4.

Friday

More fitness qna…

Q: hey craig, for the past 8 weeks I’ve been using turbulence training for fatloss. Is it possible to increase strength without being on a muscle building diet/routine? Is there an amount of reps that is better suited for strength gains?

Answer:
Yes, you can gain strength without getting bigger. The lower the reps, the heavier the weight, the more strength you will build. To be safe, if you are using 8 reps per set now, increase the weight by 5% and drop the reps to 6.

Even older dudes can get stronger!

Reference:
The effect of strength training and short-term detraining on maximum force and the rate of force development of older men. European Journal of Applied Physiology.

Australian researchers studied 24 older men (70–80 years) were randomly assigned to a ST group (n = 12) and C group (control, n = 12).

Training consisted of three sets of six to ten repetitions on an incline squat at 70–90% of one repetition maximum three times per week for 16 weeks followed by 4 weeks of detraining.

Training increased RFD, upper leg muscle mass and strength above pre-training values (90% strength increase!).

After 4 weeks detraining all neuromuscular variables were significantly (P < 0.05) lower than after 16 weeks training but remained significantly (P < 0.05) higher than pre-training levels.

Bottom Line:
Resistance exercise should be performed on a regular basis to maintain training adaptations.

Social Support Saturday!
30 minutes of fun activity…and now, let’s go to the November Issue of Men’s Health to ask the common question, “Will my skin return to normal after I lose weight?”

They asked this question to a doctor from the Mayo Clinic, and he said,

“If you weighed 30% more for 5 years or longer, than surgery is probably the best option,” according to Dr. Galen Perdikis, MD, Mayo Clinic. Otherwise, give your skin 6-12 months to tighten.

Sunday – Plan, Shop & Prepare
30 minutes activity and plan, shop, & prepare

Now for 2 international nutrition studies from the November issue of Men’s  Health magazine.

In a Swedish study, one group of men snacked on 1360 calories of non-chocolate candy every day for two weeks straight while another group ate the same amount of peanuts. Surprisingly, only the candy group gained weight and increased their waist size. There were no changes in the peanut group.

According to a study of 25,000 japanese men that was published in Preventative Medicine, drinking 1 cup or more per day of Green Tea helps prevent tooth loss.

Next week!
TT Workout – My Current Workout
Research Review – Superset Research