Pro Athlete Body

In a long term health study of people in the America, the U.S. Health Administration has documented the risks of developing heart disease for various groups in the population.

Long before any symptoms appeared, epidemiological research was used to identify people in high risk groups.

Among the highest risk factors are males over 35 years of age, high blood pressure, cigarette smokers,  high blood fats and a family history of cardiovascular disease.

There is also another risk factor: the compulsive, hard-charging, high anxiety personality. The greater the stress, the greater the overall risk.

These threats to your “heart health” can be divided into 2 main categories:

1) Those beyond your control, such as age, sex, heredity and…

2) Those that can be avoided, controlled or eliminated through lifestyle modification.

Among those in the second category are what cardiologists call the triple threat. These are high blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and high LDL (bad) cholesterol levels.

If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, your risk of having a heart attack is twice that of a non smoker. If you smoke, have high blood pressure and eat a diet high in saturated fats without any exercise at all, your risk is 5 times greater than normal!!

How To Get a Healthy Heart Fast!

Obviously, quitting smoking cigarettes and eating a low saturated fat diet will help. The next best thing you can do for your heart is to give it what it needs:

regular exercise which includes cardio interval training.

The heart is a muscle. It’s actually a group of muscles, similar in many ways to limb muscles of the body. And just as exercise strengthens and improves limb muscles, it enhances the health of the heart muscles as well.

Since 1943, several large-scale statistical studies have evaluated the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular disease. One prominent survey compared 31,000 drivers and conductors of bus companies. The more sedentary drivers had a significantly higher rate of heart disease than the conductors, who walked around the buses and climbed up and down stairs to the upper level.

The results of these statistics were tested by experiments with dogs whose coronary arteries were surgically narrowed to resemble those of humans with atherosclerosis. Dogs who were exercised had much improved blood flow than those kept inactive.

The exercise seemed to stimulate the development of new connections between the impaired and the nearly normal blood vessels, so exercised dogs had a better blood supply to all the muscle tissue of the heart. The human heart reacts in the same way to provide blood to the portion that was damaged by the heart attack.

To enable the damaged heart muscle to heal, the heart relies on small, newly-developed blood vessels for what is called collateral circulation. These new branches in the arterial network can develop long before a heart attack — and they can prevent a heart attack if the new network takes on enough of the function of the narrowed vessels.

With all these facts we have, what should be done in order to improve heart health?

Some studies show that moderate exercise several times a week is more effective in building up these auxiliary pathways than extremely vigorous exercise done twice as often. Other studies show that vigorous exercise such as Cardio Interval Training is better in this regard.

The general rule is that ANY exercise helps reduce the risk of harm to the heart. Some researches further attest the link between exercise and healthy heart based on findings that non exercisers had a 49% greater risk of heart attack than exercisers in the study. The study also attributed 1/3 of that risk to a sedentary lifestyle alone.

So, by employing cardio interval training you can expect positive results not only on cardiovascular health but on your overall health as well.

This particular activity for the heart is a cycle of brief “repeated drills” of an intense nature followed by longer periods of recuperation (45 seconds to 3 minutes).

So it’s high intensity exercise for a short period (20 seconds to 1 minute)  followed by a break. Then, you repeat the cycle 2-5 times or so.

The benefits of engaging in Cardio Interval Training include:

1. Heart attack risks are lessened, if not eliminated

2. Enhanced heart function (i.e. better blood circulation, more blood vessels)

3. Increased metabolism, which increases calorie burning helping you in lose weight

4. Improves lung capacity

5. Helps lessen or eliminate stress

Indeed, cardio interval training is a fast and modern way of creating a healthy, happy heart and body in today’s hectic world.

Posted by: Bob Thomson, CPT

I’m happy to report I’ve added about 5 lbs of muscle mass over the last few months by upping my caloric intake combined with good hard fitness training. I think I’m also more balanced than ever before in terms of proportion. My calves are responding and legs too.

I’ve been doing an interesting split routine I came up with to better fit my schedule and to push through a plateau I was experiencing:

Monday Morning: 30 Minutes Total (time goes by surprisingly quickly!)

15 Minutes Legs & 15 Minutes Abs:

For legs, use the same weight (dumbbells) for all exercises. The heaviest dumbbells you can handle while maintaining good form. Perform 2 sets of 8-10 Reps of each exercise with 60 seconds rest between sets. For calf raise farmers walk, stand and walk about on your tiptoes with heavy dumbbells for 60-90 seconds.

Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift, 2 Sets, 60 seconds rest followed by…
45 Degree Lunge 2 Sets, 60 seconds rest followed by…
Single Leg Split Squat 2 Sets,  60 seconds rest followed by…
Calf Raise Farmer’s Walk (great calf exercise!!) 2 Sets

Next…

Abs/Core Training - 15 Minutes

Do each set in a circuit (one exercise after the other) with 30 seconds rest after each exercise. Do two circuits total.

Reverse Crunch - Lay on back, pull your knees & thighs up perpendicular to floor, lower legs up and parallel to floor. Do 15 reps slowly, both up and down.

Reaching Situps - Lay on your back with your elbows out to your sides and palms down. Do a slow and deliberate situp and as you rise up, reach for the ceiling. Squeeze your abs at the top position. Do 15 reps slowly both up and down.

Bicycle Kick Crunches - Lay on your back with your hands at your ears, elbows forward. Raise your knees perpendicular to the floor. Slowly kick your legs like your pedaling a bicycle and crunch up at the same time. For example, when you kick your right leg, raise your shoulders off the mat and move your your right elbow and shoulder towards your left knee. Do a total of 30 kick-crunches, 15 on each side.

Monday Night: 60 - 75 Minutes

Full Body Routine - This routine is performed by doing exercise “pairings” i.e. one exercise followed by 60-90 seconds rest than performing the next exercise in the pair. Repeat each pair of exercises for a total of 3 times. Do 10 reps for each exercise.

(3 “pair sets”) Barbell Hang Clean (95-115 lbs) - 90 seconds rest- followed by - Dumbbell Bench Presses. Rest 60 seconds. Repeat this pairing two more times.

(3 “pair sets”) Barbell Squats (145 lbs) - 90 seconds rest- followed by - Close Grip Pull Ups - Rest 60 seconds. Repeat this pairing two more times.

(3 “pair sets”) Standing Dumbbell “Arnold Presses” (45 lb dumbbells) - 90 seconds rest- followed by - “Simulated Hay Bail Toss” - Rest 60 seconds. Repeat this pairing two more times.

Note: Barbell Hang Clean is performed by pulling a barbell up quickly and “cleanoing” it to just below your chin. (Click for a picture of this exercise)

*Note: Standing Arnold Dumbbell Press is performed by curling dumbbells simultaneously and then pressing them over head to work your shoulders. Return to starting position by lowering the weights slowly. Repeat.

**Note: To do the Simulated Hay Bail Toss, use a 35 lb or 45 lb plate. Grab the plate like a steering wheel and bend forward at the waist until your upper body is 45 degrees to the floor. This is the start position. Then, lift the weight up to your left side “as if” you are going to throw the plate on a platform which is at shoulder level. Bring the plate slowly back to start position and then repeat to your right side. Do a total of 10 simulated “tosses” on each side. Be sure to hold the plate tightly. This exercise simulates throwing a heavy hay bails onto a wagon.

Tuesday: OFF

Wednesday: Repeat same routines from Monday

Thursday: OFF

Friday: Repeat same routines from Monday

Monday night full body routine performed in my living room and den…

Tempo: 1 sec up and 2-3 seconds down

• 3 sets of clean pulls, 10 repetitions with 90 seconds rest between
• 3 sets of squats, 12 repetitions with 90 seconds rest between
• 3 sets of alternating dumbbell bench presses 20 reps each arm with 60 seconds rest
• 3 sets of close grip pull ups, 15 reps with 60 seconds rest
• 3 sets dumbbell curl to overhead press, 10 reps with 60 seconds rest
• 3 sets simulated hay bail toss - trunk twist from one knee bringing 25 pound weight from floor to opposite shoulder,  10 reps each side with 60 seconds rest after completing both sides
• 1 minute bridge (face down 4 point stance - resting on forearms and tips of toes) passing 5 lb weight back and forth between hands

First and foremost, the purpose of this blog is to record my ongoing thoughts, goals, achievements, mentors, training experiments and training ideas into a single document accessible on the Web.

For far too long, I’ve been journaling the old fashioned way - in a spiral bound note book. I have hundreds of pages of notes, many of which will never make it into digital form, as was originally intended. That’s disappointing to me…because there is a lot of good real world fitness and training info in my old notebooks.

On the positive side, the blogging software I’m now using makes capturing and publishing a breeze! I really wish I had started digitally recording my fitness journeys earlier than 2008.

At any rate, this is what you can expect from this fitness blog:

1. Honest, actionable fitness information for creating your best body ever!
2. Help readers create the “pro athlete body” they desire….even if you’re starting from scratch. Maybe you’re seeking the powerful physique of an Ultimate Fighter, a pro football player, a fitness athlete / model or possibly the ripped, chiseled look of a pro basketball player.
3. Exactly how I lost 30 lbs in 4 months and now have a body which is the envy of most 20 year olds! (Pssst: I’ll be 43 this June, and I look 10 years younger than my age)
4. Powerful training ideas and strategies used by NFL football players, NBA ballers, Ultimate Fighters (mixed martial artists) and many other professional athletes.
5. Idea exchanges where users can meet, discuss, seek out advice or simply argue their favorite theories on health and fitness.
6. Interviews, commentary and tips from Professional Athletic Directors and Trainers, whose job it is to turn average bodies into Pro Athlete bodies!
7. Occasional interviews with professional athletes
8. And much more…

Stay tuned folks, this thing is just getting started! If you love fitness, or if you just want to have a great body in the shortest time possible, then this is the place to turn to moving forward.