Ready for Day 6 of my week-long business trip? No, I’m not going to start talking about the business issues – but hopefully the past several posts are giving you ideas you can use the next time you travel. You are probably also seeing that while I’m far from perfect, I take my fitness and eating very seriously. My point being that being fit, strong, heart-healthy, low-fat, muscular, and healthy overall isn’t a part-time thing. Perfection isn’t required, but dedication is.
If you are already fit, you know this. If you aren’t, then perhaps you can see that some extra effort is sometimes required. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that being in great shape is easy. It’s not. And while your workouts are important, they aren’t as important as your eating.
And unfortunately, eating right is a lot harder than exercising. (At least for most people.)
What I’d like to hear from you on, in comments for this post, are you own ideas and experiences about how to eat right and get in good workouts while traveling. You don’t need to write a lot – just join in and share some ideas.
Day 6 – Eating
I was speaking today at a conference so I knew that eating was going to be a challenge. But, like I keep saying, all it takes is good planning ahead of time.
My breakfasts were just like yesterday in the sense of lower quantity because I’m on a lighter day, and similar to the other (more…)
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Day 5. One word. Unbelievable.
Let’s get the eating thing out of the way, because the exercise part of today was unique.
Day 5 – Eating
Excellent day for eating. By now you might be a little bored so I’ll skip the details except to say that
- I ate really well in terms of food quality
- I ate less food than previous days (I’ve shared the idea of calorie cycling here, where the basic idea for building muscle and shedding fat at the same time has little to do with your workouts – it’s about calories in and calories out; so I do 2-3 days of over-calories and then 2-3 days of under; I’ll explain more another time or if someone asks a question specific to this)
- I timed my simple carbs perfectly around my workouts (see here)
- I did a really good job planning ahead (for example, for lunch I ordered two lunches, and asked that one be packed “to go”; that way, 3 hrs later, I had food [protein and veggies] with me at the business conference)
Now for the really exciting part…
Day 5 Exercise
A week ago, knowing I’d be in San Diego, I scheduled time at one of the top 10 gyms in the country: Fitness Quest 10 . I have no idea what the “10″ means (more…)
As predicted, I woke up pretty sore yesterday (day 4 was yesterday but I am a day behind in my writing). Cable flyes really seem to hit my inner chest more than my other exercises (though, as you might know, there is no “inner chest” in reality – it’s a perception).
Day 4 was another travel day but the flight was pretty short. Should I pack a meal for the flight or not? I decided not.
Before I tell you if that was the right choice or not, I wanted to share with you a question I got from a reader/customer because I think it will inspire you and help you progress smartly. It comes from Jorge Ochoa:
Hello darrin i am new in this stuff of fitness and muscles, but all my life i wanted to be more muscular, i am a man of 39 years that my weight before starting your program was 150lb now after a month is 159 lb but my fat goes from 16.9 % to 12.3 % in the same time i am 5.11 1.80cmt my question is, i do the warm up, the exercises and then cardio and i finished so tire, what can i do???
He then gives some details of his workout (I believe he’s using my FullBodyAttack program) and then ends with this question:
i am doing the right things, or you should think that i have to change something???
What do you think? Should he change anything? [p.s. of course, I got his permission to share this]
The correct answer is NO, he shouldn’t change anything!!!!
He dropped 4.6% bodyfat AND gained 9 pounds of muscle. In ONE FREGGIN’ MONTH!
Now, I don’t care who’s program you are using – mine, your own, or some other routine you bought. That’s incredible progress. [Disclaimer - only beginners can see this kind of progress and even then, this is exceptional.]
So what lessons should you take from this?
a) He tracked is progress. If you don’t track it, you can’t have any objective evidence about effectiveness.
b) He didn’t know what amazing results he was getting – he had no experience so he didn’t know his results were already astonishing. That’s why you need peers/mentors to help you get a reality check.
c) He was actually considering changing his routine. Now, as I said in (a), he just didn’t know. But you are probably not making as much progress as him. And so you are probably thinking you need to switch your program. Most likely, the answer is no, you don’t.
If you’ve been following the past few posts, you’ll know I’m in the middle of traveling and I’m taking more of a “blog” approach by posting more about me and my experience of eating and exercising on the road. Before I talk about Day 3, I have two requests:
a) if you are getting anything out of this, post some comments! If I don’t get any comments, I’ll have to assume nobody cares and I’ll drop this thread
b) don’t unsubscribe based on this series – I’m just testing to see if people are interested in this kind of thing
Now on to Day 3…
Day 3 Workout
At last, I had a really good workout. I found a “24 Hour Fitness” nearby and went there at 5 a.m.
Yes, I have made some negative comments about 24 Hr Fitness before, and they are all still true. Nobody had a training log. Lots of meatheads doing nothing but curls and bench press. People doing way too much talking and not enough lifting. Etc. etc.
However, it is still FAR better than the hotel gym.
I did an upper body workout – day 4 of my own 6×6x6 Routine but I had to make some substitutions and tweaks:
I know, I know. You’re sick of getting emails from me. But I promise this is worth it.
I haven’t edited this yet, but it’s just some basic ideas of how you can do a lower body strength workout in your hotel room.
When you are pressed for time, and have no access to a decent gym (like I mentioned earlier today), you can’t just give up and skip your workouts! Shifting a day or so is fine, but skipping a planned workout? No way!
So check out these two unedited videos. By unedited, I mean that there are errors/quirks. But still worth the 10 minutes to watch them. Let me know what you think, and if this series is useful, please forward them to friends.
Video 1: my fridge
Video 2: leg workout in hotel room
Thoughts?
Continue reading about On The Road – Day 2 – Hotel Room Workout Videos
Yesterday I talked about my travel day, in terms of eating and exercising. Now that I’m here for my first full day, how did I do?
Let’s start with the training, which was a fiasco. My diet fared better but I’ll talk about that second.
Day 2 Exercise
Where on earth are people’s heads? I continue to be astounded at how top rated hotels have such crummy gyms. I’m staying at Treasure Island, a huge hotel in Vegas (though not the most expensive) – I’m guessing 3000 people staying here. And (more…)
Long time readers of WorldFitnessNetwork.com know that I don’t really run this site like a “blog” – the layout looks like a blog, but I focus mostly on sharing articles.
In contrast, “blogs” are more traditionally about the person writing.
Well, regardless of the definition, I’m going to try something for the next several days and I hope you’ll gain something from it.
See, I’m traveling on business. Since I’m not on vacation, I’m sticking to my eating and workout plans.
But it’s hard.
And I think you’ll learn from it.
So I’m going to share each day what happened the day before, regarding eating and exercise. You’ll see that, like you, I’m not perfect. But I have a determination that I think you can borrow, plus some tips, that might help you the next time you are traveling.
If this doesn’t interest you, fine, you can skip these. But don’t unsubscribe! I’ve already got two great articles queued up for when I get back.
Day 1 – Exercise
Normally, yesterday would have been a “leg” day for me. (I’m using my own 6×6x6 Routine right now.)
I usually work out in the mornings, but I was traveling across country and had to leave early.
And I knew I’d be too wiped out at the end of the flights to do legs.
First key: be flexible.
So I simply shifted so that my travel day was a “rest and recovery” day and the next day would resume my workout – right where it left off. In other words, missing one day doesn’t mean you trash the whole week. Just because “Tuesday is my leg day” doesn’t mean I can’t shift.
That said, travel has a lot of walking (low intensity cardio). I try to avoid shuttles from parking garages and stuff, intentionally to get extra walking in. So I did do a lot of walking – I’m guessing a total of about 4 miles.
Day 1 – Eating
Eating on the road is sooooo tough. But you need to plan ahead. I packed a couple of “protein bars” which I usually avoid because they aren’t great for you. But they are better than greasy burgers and fries. Having these helped because I eat every 3 hours and one of my flights was 5 hrs. And the layover was only 45 minutes so I knew I couldn’t order a custom meal.
If you do get protein bars, make sure they use whey protein as the main ingredient. So many of them use soy protein, which is not good in large quantities for men. And some protein bars even have chocolate and/or sugars as the main ingredient. Watch what you buy!
I also stopped, on the way to the airport, and got a footlong chicken breast sub at Subway. I ordered all the veggies and had them scoop out some of the bread before preparing to reduce simple carbs (yes, even their “whole grain” is mostly simple carbs). No cheese, no dressing. This ended up lasting me for two meals (small meals, but still meals).
Now here’s one of the most important items: when I booked my hotel, I asked for a fridge to be added to my room. No charge (sometimes hotels charge). But this allowed for the second most important item:
On the drive from the airport, I stopped at a grocery store and bought healthy supplies, even things that needed to be refrigerated:
Editor’s note – There is so much monthly science news when it comes to muscle fitness, that it’s probably hard for you to keep up. In these ~monthly posts, I’ll summarize various items of recent research. I’ll cite the official reports so that the hard-core of you can read the science for yourself. But for the rest of you, these summaries should save you some time…
Fat Burning Zone vs. Aerobic Zone Differences in Training
You’ve probably heard that there’s a fat-burning zone for cardio workouts, right? In fact, some machines even indicate a specific heart rate target to burn the most fat. But are they right? Is that the best place to target? What about improving aerobic capacity? Since it’s important to train for aerobic fitness too, does that mean you need to train twice, once in each zone?
Well, researchers at University of St. Thomas in Minnesota took 36 runners and did some detailed analysis of heart rates and fat oxidation vs. VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake, a measure of aerobic fitness). Here’s what they found:
The best aerobic zone was at about 68% to 87% of maximal heart rate, while the best fat burning zone was between 59% and 76%. Note the big overlap. Translation: you can simultaneously optimize fat burn and aerobic fitness by targeting between 68% and 76%.
If you dig deeper, there are two other points worth noting: a) the difference in fat calories burned can differ by a factor of 2 or so; this means there really is a fat-burning zone, and b) there is a high variability from individual to individual so you can’t just assume these averages apply to everyone; you’ll need to do some testing on yourself to see which range is best.
This comes from Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 23(7): p2090-2095 (2009).
Best Form For Lat Pulldown
If you are able, regular pull-ups and chin-ups are better than machine assisted variations. That said, this research on the lat pull-down is very interesting.
Scientists in Brazil compared three lat pull-down variations: behind the neck, in front of the neck, and using a V-bar (the V-bar is shaped so that you can pull straight down without hitting your head so it’s between “front” and “behind”).
The measured muscle activation of 4 muscles: your pecs, your lats, your rear deltoids, and your biceps.
The winner for biceps and rear deltoids was behind-the-neck. The winner for pecs was in front. For lats, no difference.
Surprisingly, the authors thus conclude that you should only do the lat pull down in front! I had to reread it to make sure it wasn’t a typo! They don’t really explain why they come to that conclusion except to say that behind the neck has “theoretical” dangers that “have not been proven”. To me this study shows that you should work both movements into your routine unless one of them causes you pain.
Skip The Leucine And Save Your Money
The University Of Texas released the findings of a study comparing the anabolic (muscle growth) effects of leucine added to a whey protein drink versus jus the whey protein drink. The timing was following a high intensity lower body workout. Turns out, there was no difference. So if you are paying extra for protein powder enhanced with leucine, save your money and just buy good old whey protein. This, from Applied Physiology and Nutrition Metabolism, 34: 151-161, 2009.
Does The Glycemic Index Of Foods Affect Exercise Performance?
Well here we have dueling scientists. Two different articles in the same journal (International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 4(3), September 2009) seem to have (more…)
Continue reading about Science News For Building Lean Muscle – October 2009
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