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July 21, 2005

Muscle building not aerobics has residual calorie expenditure

When you talk about exercise and weight loss, most people will equate aerobic exercise with weight loss, burning calories or expending calories and most of these individuals don't understand that to be very effective, or more efficient at fat loss, weight training or strength training and building muscle is far more effective at producing the greatest gains in fat loss. So, it is very important to establish a muscle building and resistance training workout to when you are considering a weight loss plan. The reasons for this are that, for every pound of muscle that you gain you can expend 45 to 75 calories at rest. In exercise science it has been known that a woman performing aerobic exercise only expends calories when that individual is actually doing the aerobic exercise. It has no residual effect, only muscle building, or the hypertrophy of muscle has the residual effect on consistent calorie expenditure.

Posted by Rocco at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

More praise for Fat Kills: A Special Report

It was awesome! It reinforced a lot of the same ideas I have about health and fitness especially the importance to focus on losing fat, not weight. Too many people believe cutting calories will get them in shape without realizing exercise is the only way to get firm. There was a lot of great advice in here particularly your attack on the complacent attitude of fat people. The report does a wonderful job of motivating and forcing people to take responsibility for their actions. You did a bang up job, I really enjoyed it.

Thanks,
Craig Maness

To download Fat Kills go to www.askrocco.com or click on the link on the right side of this page.

Posted by Rocco at 02:26 PM | Comments (1)

July 13, 2005

Skinny people have problems too...

Question: Hey Rocco,
First of all, I would like to ask you what my best bet would be to gain some weight, I know this may be an odd question, but realistically, I am a skinny piece of shit. I am 5'9 and my weight varies from 135 to 150, and no matter what I do, I don't gain any weight, I even have tried lifting weights and exercising, but my metabolism is extremely high. Is there anything I can do to put on some weight, the healthy kind, of course. My goal is to be about 170 or 180 of pure muscle or close to it. As is right now, I am scrawny, but still muscular for my size. What should I do?
Mike Gutknecht, Kentucky, 19 years old

Answer: Mike, it's really not that odd of a question. Just because I want to rid the world of fatness doesn't mean that skinny people don't have problems also. The most important thing that you need to know is that you are still really young. I know you may think 19 years old is getting old, trust me it isn't. I had somewhat of the same problem when I was 19. I just couldn't put the weight on. Every seven years your body changes so when you turn 21 it will become a little easier for you to gain some weight A former Mr. Universe, Bill Pearl told me, the most important thing to do is eat a shit load of calories especially if you metabolism is fast. So I went from eating 3000 calories a day to eating 5000 and then 8000 calories a day. The weight came on at a slow pace but it did come on and because of the intensity of my workouts most of it came on as muscle. You need to up your calories and increase the intensity of your workouts.

Posted by Rocco at 01:32 PM | Comments (1)

July 07, 2005

Weight training to burn more fat

I get this question associated with the topic of aerobic vs. weight training so much from my readers I decided to answer it on my blog.
When discussing exercise and weight loss, most people will equate aerobic exercise with weight loss, burning calories or expending calories and most of these individuals don't understand that to be very effective, or more efficient at fat loss, weight training or strength training and building muscle is far more effective at producing the greatest gains in fat loss. So, it is very important to establish a muscle building and resistance training workout to when you are considering a weight loss plan. The reasons for this are that, for every pound of muscle that you gain you can expend 45 to 75 calories at rest. In exercise science it has been known that a woman performing aerobic exercise only expends calories when that individual is actually doing the aerobic exercise. It has no residual effect, only muscle building, or the hypertrophy of muscle has the residual effect on consistent calorie expenditure.

Posted by Rocco at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2005

For todays youth exercise more important than getting that "A"...

I was discussing with a friend of mine, just today, about kids and young adults and how the American population concentrates more on academics than on fitness and physical conditioning and I recently did a seminar at a high school and was very surprised and concerned about what is going on with the youth of America. It's just insane! It drives me crazy! When I was young or most of us in the generation between Y and X and P and Q and all that kind of stuff, we mostly were not that stressed. We had to do homework, we had to get good grades, we had to do this or that, but it didn't seem like there was so much pressure on the academics of it all. I come to find out; there really is no more pressure on the kids today. There's no more than we had when we were young. It just comes to be that the kids today and the youth of today can't handle the stresses or the pressures. They're not strong enough. They are actually a very weak generation. Why? Because there's no balance, absolutely no balance in what they do. Adults keep harping on - get good grades, you've got to get good grades, but they don't offer the positive stress relief of going out and running, or playing baseball, or actually doing something that can help to counterbalance, or to counteract the negative stress or negative effects of trying to get that A or get that B. You know what; we don't necessarily have to constantly get the A. Let's worry more about the kids, or the youth, being able to go out in the world and be able to form sentences and be able to work hard and take on responsibility. Kids today are taking Ritalin, like it's candy.

Youth and children are just like dogs, I don't care what anybody says. I have two dogs here, Bosco and Snoopi. One's a beagle and ones a Strattfordshire terrier mixed with a lab and a breeder told me when I got them, that they need 45 minutes of exercise, vigorous exercise every day. If they don't get those 45 minutes of vigorous exercise every day, they are the most ornery, pains in the butt dogs in the world. So, if my dogs need the exercise, and they don't listen to me when they don't get that exercise It takes me four times of calling my dog instead of one time. The same kind of things happens with kids and children if they're not exercising. There is all this pent up energy in them. They need a release. They need that release - and you keep piling on, piling on, piling on, and piling on all these other things. You have to get that good grade, be in the glee club, you have to do this and be pillar of society, which we all do want that, but it's not the most important thing. There needs to be that balance, where you can release all of that pent up energy. Adults just don't have stress, and we're even getting worse and worse at dealing with it also. So, exercise for the youth of today, is actually more important because it also helps to breed or to help to continue their healthful ways and kids are more productive when they've exercised and they don't have 14 thousand things on their head.

Posted by Rocco at 01:18 PM | Comments (1)

July 02, 2005

Our Bodies are the greatest adaptive mechanisms

Our bodies are the greatest adaptive mechanism, or machine, in the world. It's unbelievable to see how, if the body works, it becomes more efficient at doing work. It actually becomes stronger and the body becomes more adept at doing a certain skill. The more we do it the better we get at it. That's the way the body is made. Just as the body adapts to work and getting stronger, it actually adapts to becoming lazy. So the lazier we get, or the less work we do, the better at doing less work we become. We become very efficient at it, we become so great at it that we don't want to do any work. If that's the case, and you go to the other end of the spectrum, then in order to get back into shape it is the longest, hardest road that you can possibly have to take. If you haven't done much work, then you have to build yourself back up to be able to become average again, in average health, in average fitness. That's why, if this does happen - if we do become overweight, and we do become a very weak, lazy, unhealthy person, we need to have the mental toughness and the mental commitment - and not only be within ourselves - but we need to come outside ourselves and kind of guide ourselves.

So many people say "look within and grab yourself and pick yourselves up by the boot straps. Sometimes, we can't really look within without getting outside ourselves. When we look from the outside and see what we are, we usually don't like what we see and that can enable us to get the mental toughness and the inspiration to do something better and be healthier and to actually be a little more productive with our lives.

Posted by Rocco at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)