I’m liking this show right now, and I’ll tell you why.

In a society where pills, surgery, and other shortcuts seem to be the norm,  the show’s trainers (Bob and Jillian) emphasize a good diet and hard exercise. And they work their victims to the bone too.

On top of that, they use real exercises for strength training. I don’t think I’ve seen them doing concentration curls or tricep extensions.  They do squats, deadlifts, thrusters, etc.

This season I think I’ve seen kettlebells in each episode. They have also used battling ropes, and the other night they had Danny whacking the tractor tire with a sledgehammer – followed by some tire-flipping.

Plus, call me a softie, but I like seeing people who have struggled with their weight their whole lives finally see some success.

So, maybe you’re skinny and don’t need to lose weight. I don’t really think that matters. The point is; be disciplined in your diet and workouts. I haven’t been lately and I can tell.

However, a good diet and regular exercise will turn your body into what it was meant to be. The problems come with eating too much junk and sitting in front of the TV or computer. This is how these contestants ended up where they are.

But, it’s never too late to turn it around. Some of these folks are way past unhealthy. This season, Shay started at almost 480 pounds at 5′ 8″.

Watch some of these folks work their butts off and see if you don’t get inspired. Grab your trusty kettlebell and a patch of grass and get to work.

The Top 5 Fat Loss Myths

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

There are so many fat loss myths out there in “exercise-land” that I was hired by Men’s Fitness magazine to write about one myth each month.

After all, by now you’ve probably heard that if you don’t do 60-minutes of cardio in your fat burning zone on an empty stomach while Venus is in line with Jupiter, you’ll never burn fat.

The problem with myths is that not only are they wrong and give false hope to millions of people trying to lose weight, but they also waste your time and mental effort.

I have also seen these myths used as justification for cheating on a diet, watching countless men and women justify their “treats” because they believe they are on some type of magical exercise program or nutrition plan.

I could go on for days about fitness myths, but I cut my list from 30 down to the Top 5 Fat Loss Workout Myths today. I’ll save the other 25 for future newsletters.

Myth #1: You have to do cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

Relax. You don’t have to hop on the treadmill at 4:30am every morning. Let’s allow common sense to dictate when and how you exercise.

If you want to work out first thing in the morning, and I know that is the best time for many TT readers, by all means, go ahead and do it. There’s nothing magical about this time – although it is often the only time many of day many people have to themselves.

We need to think “outside of the hour” of exercise and realize that calorie burning and fat burning goes on for 24-hours. Forget about the theories and look at the big picture.

It doesn’t matter when you exercise – as long as you exercise intensely and consistently. Focus on relatively high-intensity workouts to increase your metabolism for as many hours after exercise as possible. That is best done with interval training and resistance training.

Myth #2: You have to do your cardio in your “fat burning zone”.

Again, nonsense.

While you might burn a larger proportion of total calories as fat when you exercise in your fat burning zone, you burn fewer calories overall by exercising at such a low intensity.

When you increase your workout intensity and get out of your so-called “fat burning zone”, you burn more total calories, and as a result, more fat.

In addition, the “fat burning zone” training doesn’t put “turbulence” on your muscles… so you don’t burn many calories in the post-exercise time period. But with interval training, you burn a significant amount of calories for hours after training, and that leads to more fat loss.

I’ve worked with hundreds of people that have avoided the fat burning zone while still managing to lose dozens of pounds of fat. The “fat burning zone” is one of the biggest fitness myths of all time.

Myth #3: You have to do cardio for 20 minutes before you burn fat.

When I hear this, I picture a fat-burning switch in my body that turns on only after I’ve been doing “cardio” for 20 minutes. But what if I only exercise for 19 minutes and 59 seconds? Are you telling me that I won’t have burned any fat? That’s ridiculous.

What if I did it on an empty stomach in the morning and in my target heart rate zone? (read that one sarcastically!)

I’ll say it one last time. We need to be more concerned with our 24-hour metabolism, not how much fat or even how many calories are burned during the workout.

Myth 4: Drinking ice cold water will help you burn calories and lose fat.

Standing in line at the grocery store is a great place to pick up the latest fat loss myths. You’ll also find this one all over the Internet.

This myth often comes along with some calculations showing that by drinking 8 glasses of ice-cold water you can burn 70 calories per day. I don’t believe that actually holds true in real life. Regardless, drinking cold water is not going to burn any more fat off your body than drinking room temperature water.

Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe you should drink 12 glasses of water per day, but the temperature of your water won’t have any effect on your overall fat loss success.

Myth #5: Adding one pound of muscle will burn 50 extra calories each day.

Uh-oh, now I’m cutting down a myth that supports my use of strength training in a fat loss program. But I have an obligation to set the record straight about this extremely prevalent myth (even though I just saw a big name fitness expert perpetuate this myth in a recent article!).

This myth sounds so good. Add a pound ouf muscle, boost your metabolism 50 calories. That doesn’t seem out of line at all.

But do the math for a guy that puts on 30 pounds of muscle. Does his metabolism really increase by 1500 calories? Absolutely not. For an average guy, that would require his resting metabolism to increase from 2500 calories to 4000 calories per day. How would he be able to keep any of that muscle with a metabolism like that? He’d have to eat like a pig forever.

So when you look at the big picture, you can see this little myth start to fall apart.

That’s not to say you should stop your strength training, but just don’t use this myth as an excuse to cheat on your diet.

Bonus Myth: Negative Calorie Foods Cause You to Lose Weight

According to the “experts”, a negative calorie food requires more energy to digest than it provides you when you eat it. And included in the negative calorie food list are apples and bananas.

So by this logic, I would actually starve to death if I had nothing to eat but apples (because I would have a net energy loss from eating a so-called “negative calorie” food).

There is no such thing as a negative calorie food.

It’s a shame that people are out there promoting this stuff, and it’s too bad that so many people fall for it.

Remember the old phrase, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Instead, let the common sense fat loss principles apply. It’s going to take consistent effort, working hard at your workouts and with your nutrition to get the results you want.

I guarantee you that Turbulence Training will successfully guide you to the fat loss you deserve and desire.

Sincerely,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com.

*** END OF ARTICLE ***

I’m sure we’ve all heard most of these before. Maybe you’ve even believed them at some point. I think the fact is that there is some bit of truth to most of these, which is what helps perpetuate them.

Regarding working out first thing in the morning, I agree that there’s nothing magical about the hour. There’s no reason why working out in the morning would be physiologically better than any other time of day. However, there are some good reasons. Craig mentions that it’s simply a time many of us have to ourselves. Another reason is that there really is something about working out in the morning that can set the tone for the day. It can give you a burst of energy to help start your day off. One more thing is that by getting up earlier and exercising, I believe that you are adding more “calorie burning” time to your day. If you get up an extra 30 minutes, you’re giving yourself 30 more minutes of burning calories rather than lying in bed. In the grand scheme of things it may not amount to much, but it’s a consideration. Overall though again, I don’t think there’s anything particularly special, physiologically.

The “fat burning zone” and “20 minutes” myths have never made much sense to me. I just don’t see how these myths continue.

I believe that the “cold water” and “50 extra calories per pound of muscle” are also half-truths. Well, maybe not quite half. The point is valid, but I don’t believe that the numbers line up. The idea behind the cold water is that your body has to burn calories to bring the water up to body temperature. I can believe this. However, I agree that the number of calories burned here is negligible. And adding muscle to your body certainly does burn more calories. It simply takes more calories to maintain muscle than fat. However, I agree with Craig that the numbers just don’t add up.

I encourage you to take these myths and turn them into positives to add to your success. Think about what the truth is in the half-truth, and use it to your advantage.

The Cardio Machine that Sucks

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Recently, I was in Tampa, Florida, at a seminar. Between sessions, a physician from Georgia stopped me in the hall and said, “Hey Craig, you were right about those crosstrainer machines. I’ve had your program for a few months now and I’m getting better results with the bodyweight circuits.”

It’s always great to meet clients, and I was curious to find out how he heard of me. Turns out, he found me through Google, landing on an article I wrote about “how elliptical machines (crosstrainers) suck for fat loss”.

That’s right, I think those machines are almost a complete waste of time.

“I was using one of those machines for a long time and was wondering why I wasn’t getting any results,” the physician continued, “I’m so glad I found your program and now I’m using the bodyweight circuits from the Dumbell-Bodyweight Fusion Workout”, he added.

I told him how I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’ve never personally known anyone to get great results with one of those crosstrainer machines. Now I’ve watched really lean people use them, but they didn’t get lean with those machines.

I know some people will be angry with what I have to say because they like exercising on the crosstrainer, but the truth is that they just don’t work as well as harder forms of interval training.

And hey, any time you are traveling or want a break from regular interval training workouts, you can use one of the 4 bodyweight circuits from the TT DB-BW Fusion Fat Loss program that you get as a bonus when you order the Turbulence Training fat burning workout routine.

Click here to get Turbulence Training
Let me know how it goes for you,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Your body will adapt to the stimulus you give it. So, if you give your body a reason to keep or build muscle, it will. If you don’t, it won’t. Maybe oversimplified, but valid. And that’s the reason you can lose muscle mass if your main mode of exercise is traditional cardio, like walking or jogging. Low intensity exercises like these can help you lose weight, but they don’t give your body a reason to keep its muscle.

So, what’s the solution? The simplest step is to add an element of resistance to your workouts. A simple weight training program of large-movement, multi-joint exercises will do the trick for most. If you’re just starting out, try a program of deadlifts and overhead presses, five sets of five repetitions, two to three times a week.

The next step is to get more out of your cardio workouts. One method that is growing in popularity is interval training. Interval training consists of a series of short, intense bursts of work followed by a short period of low intensity recovery. Here’s an example using an exercise bike with adjustable resistance:

1. Warm up for 5 minutes
2. Sprint – high resistance, high speed – for 30 seconds
3. Rest – low resistance, low speed – for 1 minute
4. Repeat the Sprint/Rest sequence 3-5 times
5. Cool down for 10 minutes

Funny how less than 10 minutes of real work gets your heart racing more than 30 minutes of walking. You’ll probably also notice that you feel your muscles more. These are some of the things that make interval training so effective, offering these benefits:

• Efficiency. You get a better workout in a shorter period of time than you do with those 30-minute to hour-long treadmill walks.
• Intensity. Because the intensity level is raised – even for a short time – you encourage your body to keep its muscle mass.
• Higher metabolism. It has been shown that interval training allows your body to continue to burn fat for up to 24 hours after your workout. This is apparently due to the higher intensity and/or the “shock to your system” of the repeated “hard-easy-hard-easy” cycle.
• Portability. Interval training can be done with several different types of equipment, even no equipment at all, and just about anywhere. Even a simple program of sprinting and walking will work.

There’s a reason why interval training is growing in popularity: because it’s an excellent option when you want to burn fat without losing muscle mass. When your goal is to lose weight, you want to end up with firm muscles that have strength and tone to them. Interval training along with a smart diet and some resistance training will help you reach your goal faster than traditional cardio.

The Evolution of Cardio

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

I’ve been meaning to write this email for a long time. Today I’m
going to give you the story of how I solved the problem of getting an efficient and effective fat loss program finished in 45 minutes. Essentially, how I invented Turbulence Training.

And then I’ll end with a sample TT workout for you…

But first, let’s take a trip down memory lane to the winter of
98-99. I was but a lowly grad student, studying the effects of
androstenedione (the supplement taken by the might Mark McGwire during his record-breaking home run quest in ‘98).

In my study (which was published in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology for any science nerds like myself out there), we had guys use the supplement and go through a couple of weight training sessions. By February of ‘99 I was stuck in the lab, analyzing the blood samples using some fancy radio-active isotopes.

And when I say stuck in the lab, I mean STUCK. I’d get there at
7am, and record my last data point at 11pm. Sixteen hours of
mad science. And if I wasn’t there, I was downstairs in the
medical library, studying papers on testosterone and training.

Now coming from a very athletic background, this sedentary
lifestyle didn’t sit well with me. But there I was, studing for a
degree in Exercise Physiology and left with no time for exercise.
Or so I thought.

Fortunately, I actually had a 50 minute window once per day of
“down-time” while the lab’s gamma-counter analyzed blood samples.

That left me 50 minutes to get to the gym (5 minutes across campus) and get a workout in the remaining 40 or so minutes. I knew that if I applied my studies to the workout, I could get maximum results in minimum time.

As a former athlete, I knew that I had to find a way to stay fit
and to avoid the fat gain that comes with working long hours in a
sedentary environment. And I also had to stay true to the
high-school bodybuilder I once was, so there was no way I was
willing to sacrifice my muscle to one of those long-cardio, low
protein fat-loss plans that were popular at the time.

Instead, I had to draw on my academic studies and my experiences working with athletes as the school’s Strength & Conditioning Coach.

I knew that sprint intervals were associated with more fat loss
than slow cardio, and I knew that you could also increase aerobic fitness by doing sprints (but you can’t increase sprint performance by doing aerobic training).

So clearly, intervals were (and ARE!) superior to long slow cardio.

I had seen first hand the incredible results of sprint intervals in
the summer and fall, as the athletes made huge fitness improvements and shed winter fat in a short time using my interval programs. I knew that intervals had to be the next step in the evolution of cardio.

The biggest benefit of intervals? A lot of results in a short
amount of time. I knew that I only had 40 minutes to train, and
therefore I could only spend 15-20 minutes doing intervals.

Now onto the strength training portion of the workouts. I knew that a high-volume bodybuilding program wasn’t going to cut it – I just didn’t have time. But in the past year I had read so many lifting studies, that I knew exactly what exercises I needed to do to maximize my lifting time in the gym.

Those exercises were standing, multi-muscle, movements such as squats, presses, rows, power cleans, and plenty of other standing single-leg exercises. I knew that those exercises would bring me far more results than those people sitting on machines would ever achieve.

And I also knew that I had to lift heavier than the average Joe or Jane Gym-goer lifts. I just knew that doing lighter weights and high-reps wasn’t going to cut it. And a research study from 2001 later showed that I was right – when women did 8 reps per set, they had a significantly greater increase in post-workout metabolism than if they did 15 reps per set.

So I had my plan. Bust my tail over to the gym, through the cold, dreary Canadian winter afternoon, and do a quick but thorough warmup (specific to my lifts – none of that 5 minutes on the treadmill waste of time).

Once I got through the warm-up, I did as many sets as I could in the remainder of the 20 minutes for strength training.

At that point, I knew that supersets were the only way to go if I
wanted to maximize the number of sets I could do…so the
non-competing superset of Turbulence Training was put in place.

By non-competing, I mean that the 2 exercises in the superset don’t interfere with one another. So you can use upper and lower body exercises together, or pushing and pulling exercises. Just be careful not to use two grip-intensive exercises together in a superset – otherwise, one exercise will suffer, if not both.

And then I followed up the strength training with intervals, as I
knew these had to follow the lifting, otherwise it would not be the correct exercise order. Remember, intervals first leads to
premature fatigue. Lift first, cardio later. Forget that old wives
tale about doing cardio first to burn more fat. That’s junk.

You know, I remember the exact day and exact workout that this all came together into the Turbulence Training program. It hit me as I was finishing my intervals. I knew I had found something that was like fat loss magic.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to put it in a pill. But I’ve
been able to put it down on paper in all of the TT manuals.

The exact workout I used that day went like this…

Warm-up
1 set of Bodyweight Squats
1 set of pushups
1 set of Squats with the empty bar
1 set of light dumbbell chest presses
1 set of moderate weight barbell squats
1 set of moderate weight dumbbell chest presses

Strength Training Superset #1
Barbell Squats paired with Dumbbell Chest Presses
3 supersets, aiming for 8 reps per side per set

Strength Training Superset #2
DB Rows paired with Barbell Forward Lunges
3 supersets, aiming for 8 reps per set

Stationary Bike Intervals
After a warmup, I did 6 intervals of 45 seconds work and 45 seconds rest, finishing with a cool-down.

And from that point in time, I’ve tried to share this and all the
other Turbulence Training workouts with as many men and women as possible. The same men and women that I would see day-in and day-out performing the same ineffective slow-cardio fat loss programs, and not making a darn change month after month. And every day they would see me, soaked in sweat, feeling great and looking lean, and finishing another TT workout.

Eventually I noticed these other men and women weren’t around as consistently as before, and then soon enough they would drop out completely – after all, they weren’t getting results with their slow cardio and aerobics classes (yep, those were still around in ‘99!).

And so here we are today…thousands of TT users later, with
national fitness magazines like Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and
Shape spreading the good word about Turbulence Training.

Thousands of TT users, dozens of personal trainers, and even
several national fitness magazines all agree with me, Turbulence
Training is the #1 way to fast fat loss.

Thanks for being a part of the TT Lifestyle Revolution, and for
sharing this new and improved fat loss training and cardio system with the world.

So when you see someone frustrated with their ineffective fat loss program, tell them there is a better way. It’s research-based, efficient, and most of all, effective. And yes, it goes against the crowd. But it works.

And it’s now better than ever,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

PS – Don’t know where to start?

If you are a beginner, start by reading Dr. Mohr’s nutrition
guidelines…eating properly will be the biggest factor in your
early success.

Beginners should also start with the Introductory TT workouts to prepare their muscles for the upcoming intense training.

For others, it’s best to start with the Intermediate Level TT
workouts. If those aren’t enough of a challenge, you can move onto the Original TT workout and follow the 16-week advanced program right through.

If at any time you need a break, try the TT Bodyweight 4-week plan.

And then finish off with the bonus programs to cap off a full 24 weeks of Advanced TT fat loss workouts.
About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com.