The following is an excerpt of an interview I did for The Elite Body, with Vince Delmonte, author of No Nonsense Muscle Building.

Jim:    So going with the hormone thing and not doing steroids, what are the alternatives to that?  What are the natural ways to stimulate those hormones?

Vince:    That’s a great question.  Let’s look at the three things – training, lifestyle and nutrition.  Let’s start off with things people might miss on lifestyle.  The reality is that when training, you’re only in the gym a couple of hours a week.  The majority of the time you’re outside of the gym.  So sleeping eight hours a night is very important.  These are the things that can’t really get dressed up as sexy and they can’t market on the cover of a magazine, “Sleep Eight Hours a Night.”

People underestimate this stuff.  Going to bed earlier I found was one of the big things for me in recovery and being able to train harder the next day.  I would let that kick in.  So I recommend that everybody – I’m just painting a perfect situation.  Whether you can do this or you can’t, that’s up to the person listening to the call to make that commitment and lifestyle change.

If you can get to bed closer to 10:30/11:00 each night, that’s going to help a lot.  They say for every hour of sleep you can get before midnight, it’s almost like the equivalent of two hours sleep.  I tested this out.  I know it’s amazing.  You wake up earlier and you’re able to start your first meal earlier.  You’re able to finish your last meal earlier.  Everything just seems to work a lot better.  Your body is able to start building muscle quicker.

That’s going to produce growth hormone.  That’s one of the hormones that are going to allow you to build muscle.

Also minimizing stress in your life.  Looking at the relationships you’re in; the career you’re in; the social settings you’re in; how late are you staying up – all those little things – the one isolated incident might not make a big difference.  It’s what happens when going to bed at 2:00/3:00 in the morning occurs two or three nights a week over a course of six to nine months.

That’s where the damage is.  So that’s lifestyle.  Alcohol too – that’s another thing.  A lot of people ask me, “Vince, can I drink on the weekends?”  Of course you can drink, but is it going to get you closer to your goal or further from your goal?  It all comes down to how serious you are.

If I’m getting ready for a show, the booze has got to go.  If I’m just wishy washy; I’m happy with how I look and I’m just trying to relieve some stress and that, well then sure.  A drink here and there isn’t going to be a big deal.  So you have to ask yourself how serious you are and then you’ll be able to start answering these questions better for yourself.  That’s lifestyle.

If you want to learn more about Vince’s amazing muscle building program, visit No Nonsense Muscle Building.

Jim Katsoulis: Talk a little bit about  the Tabata protocol, if I’m pronouncing that right. Talk a little bit about – explain what the Tabata protocol is and how it influenced 7 Minute Muscle and your ideas of training.

Jon Benson: Okay, yeah. Tabata is a Japanese researcher that a lot of fitness guys were quoting in the ‘90s especially when this study first came out in the early 2000, that Tabata, he just – he came up with this ridiculously intense protocol which later just became high intensity interval cardio, interval training that basically pushed people well beyond their lactate threshold for only periods of time, like brief periods of time, 30 seconds sometimes, the protocol for that are that short, followed by duration periods where you’re at – where you’re exercising at a normal pace.

So, it’s just basically – it’s a glorified version of interval cardio. And what the studies where he was most impressive, and that these studies had been duplicated, is the actual – the O2 increase, in other words, your oxygen, how much oxygen can your system use efficiently. And he was seeing just rapid, massive increases in the body’s ability to process oxygen, which means your cardio – it means that your cardio health is increasing basically. And since then a lot of guys had tried to apply that fat burning and it does work for fat burning if you do it right, and if you’re willing to do a little bit of low-intensity walking, things like that, along with it.

But I’ve always believed that fat burning was 80 percent nutrition and so the cardio is just on top of this. So, I have a version of – it’s just totally different than Tabata, to be honest with you. But it’s based – Richard’s study – Dr. Richard Winett came up with a protocol called GXP or Graded Exercise Protocol actually before Tabata if I’m not mistaken and he’s had four different university tests done, and that’s the protocol I suggest that people use.

So, the 7 Minute Muscle protocol, obviously, I developed but I quoted everyone that I actually said this is the guy who influenced me here, this is the guy who influenced me here, but the 7 Minute Muscle is totally different in the way that protocol is put together but it’s influenced by guys like Vince Geronda, it’s influenced by EDP training, by – there’s just a myriad of different influences that come into it. But the cardios are like Dr. Richard Winett’s and – so, Ageless Athletes. It’s a very, very good website. And it’s nine minutes long and I used it for years. I had used it for years. And it’s by far and away more effective than trying to do something ridiculous like the 45 minutes of cardio a day. It is, you know, unless I’m four weeks away from a photo shoot, there’s no point in it.

Jim: What are some rules people should follow for an effective workout?

Tom:    One of course would be form.  You have to learn the proper technique for the exercise.  That’s important because bad form can cause an injury.  If you’re injured, you can’t work out.  Second would be that poor form robs you of results.  For example, if you’re heaving a weight up and using momentum to lift the weight, the muscle’s not working.  Momentum is working.  If you’re dropping the weight, it is gravity working; not your muscle resisting.  Form is number one.

Number two, proper resistance – for weight training that means choosing the right amount of weight to give you the exact stimulus you need to get the response you want – strength and muscle growth.  If you don’t use enough weight, you don’t get the stimulus you wanted.  Outside of some calories you burn, your workout was ineffective.

What I’ve noticed is the advanced trainee gets a real instinct for this.  If you watch a pro in a gym, they might put the pin in the machine, do a couple of reps.  Immediately they stop and they pull the pin out and they adjust it.  They know instantly or they’ve been keeping a training journal and they’re tracking the exact poundages they used for the previous workout.  They’ve walked into the gym knowing exactly how much weight to use.

If you are a beginner, you need to work on this.  You need to develop a sense of the right load to use as early as possible in your training career.  One what that I like to help people do that is by instead of giving a fixed number of sets and reps, I use two things – a rep range and a rep max.  Now I’m sure you’ve heard a training program with a prescription “I want you to do three sets of ten; four sets of eight; five sets of five” and there’s nothing wrong with that provided you have load selection down to a “T”.  If you do that, you need to know how to pick the right weight.

I would prefer to figure out what your goal is, choose the right repetition range for that goal – for example muscle growth is typically a range of 8-12 reps – and instead of saying three sets of ten, I’m going to say “I want you to do three sets of 8-12.”  I’m going to give you a repetition max number of 12.  Your cue is that if you can do 12 reps in good form, that’s your signal to increase the weight.

If you’re training with the right weight, the last rep or two is very difficult.  You are working to get the last rep or two.  You may even hit failure on that last rep on some of your sets.  It happens between 8-12 – no brainer way to figure out how much weight to use and it’s really important because I see a lot of people using light weights and they’re doing three sets of 12, but it was a 25 rep max.  They’ve selected absolutely the wrong weights.  You’ve got to nail down the poundages.

Number three would be progressive overload or some kind of overload or some kind of progression.  That’s the fundamental principle of making progress.  Here’s a rule to remember – do what you’ve always done; get what you’ve always got.  I have that on a little poster.  I’m looking at it right now up on my bulletin board.  That’s one that you should always remember.  To get something that you never got before like more muscle or a leaner body than you’ve ever had before or more strength than you’ve ever had before, you are going to have to do some work that’s above and beyond what you’ve ever done before.  Makes sense, right?

You have to work out of your comfort zone.  Safely but steadily you push a little bit past your previous workout.  A little more weight, another rep or two, the same workout completed in less time which is called density; a new exercise you have never done before; a new combination of exercises; a new workout program – something – anything you’ve never done before.

I could go on and on, but one more I think is really important is recovery because the growth takes place outside of the gym, not while you’re in the gym.  This one is so important.  It influences all the others.  Your volume, your frequency, your resistance, everything – if you’re not recovering between workouts you may have to change your frequency.  If you were training four or five days a week, you may have to come back to three days a week or you may need to put more rest days in between.  If you were doing 12 sets per body part and you’re feeling overtrained and you’re not recovering, you may have to cut back to 8 or 6 or 3.

The idea is that you have to overload your body and make it do work that it hasn’t done before, but you have to be able to recover from that.  The idea here is that training is a stress.  People have this idea that stress is bad.  Stress is not bad.  Stress is your stimulus for growth.  No stress, no growth.  You rot away and die.  What you need is stress, recovery, stress, recovery, stress, recovery and that would be a good thing to remember in terms of life stress as well with people’s work and with people’s career.
I mention this because your lifestyle is going to influence the results that you get out of the gym too.  If you have a high stress psychological level and you’re not sleeping well and your boss is driving you crazy and you’re overworked, it’s going to affect physical recovery.  You have to take the time to balance all kinds of work with stress and that’s what’s going to keep the progress coming.

Tom really put on a master class. He reveals which exercises are the best for boosting up your metabolism, his 10 rules for nutrition that keeps you lean, and the most common limiting beliefs that people have when it comes to transforming their bodies. This call is so good, that I’m going to keep the replay up througout the weekend for free.  You can listen to this amazing seminar for a limited time by clicking here.

PS: If you haven’t signed up for the free Elite Body series yet, click here

Jim: Speaking of goals, can you talk a little about performance and outcome goals?
Vince: That’s a great question.  Performance and outcome goals – I guess one’s a good way to set goals and one’s a bad way to set goals.  Outcome goals are something you can’t control.  These are the wrong goals to set.
An outcome goal is saying that I want to – and I’ll clarify all this in a second – an outcome goal is saying I want to lose 100 pounds.  Well, you can’t control if you’re going to lose 100 pounds.   You can control the performance goals that are going to contribute to that outcome goal, but you can’t actually predict the outcome.
It’s kind of like a 100 meter sprinter.  He might want to run . . . an Olympic sprinter might want to run sub 10 seconds, but he can’t control the outcome of running 10 seconds.  What he can control is how hard he pumps his arms; how fast he comes out of the gate; how he accelerates at the 30 meter mark.
What I’m trying to say is that yes, you should have some sort of outcome goal — I want to lose 100 pounds, but that shouldn’t be where it stops.  You should progress your day to day focus to revolve around performance goals, things that you can control. So let’s make this practical.  For somebody who wants to lose some body fat, a good performance goal would be to wake up at 6:00 in the morning instead of 7:00, because waking up an hour earlier is going to allow your metabolism to work an extra hour in the day.  Multiple that by seven days in a week, and that’s 7 hours times 52 weeks — 7 x 50 = 350 extra hours in a year that your metabolism is going to be burning.
Focusing on things that you can control like writing out a grocery list so knowing that you’re going to put enough chicken in your grocery cart.  You’re going to get enough oatmeal.  You’re not going to put this in your grocery cart.  You’re going to make sure you get enough vegetables.  Those are things that you can control.
Writing out your day planner – I’ve got a buddy living at my place right now.  He’s a physician.  He has this insane schedule.  He works one day on; he’s on call one day; he’s off another day.  He’s asked me for all this workout advice.  I’ve been giving him workout advice.  Every time I see him, he looks the same.  I’m like, “What’s the problem here?”  I realize that he doesn’t have a schedule.  He’s focusing on the wrong thing.  I said, “What you need to do is get your planner and I need you to schedule in all the days you’re going to work out for the next month.  Let’s worry about that.”  He’s like, “Oh man, that’s what I need to do. I have to figure out what days I can even work out on.” Who cares about reps and sets until you have a plan and know when you’re going to hit the gym?  Focus on things you can control and then the outcome will take care of itself.

Jim:    That is profound.  That is really great.  I think that’s one of those common mistakes that people make.  They’re so focused on the outcome that they forget to focus on the details of it all.   That is profound knowledge. Another one – and again, these are things in the No Nonsense guide.  It really is no nonsense.  I think that’s the absolutely perfect title because in an industry where there’s a bunch of nonsense – well, the nonsense is that there’s so many different systems and programs and everything else.  I think what Vince has done with his book is really boiled it all down to the absolute core things.

If you’d like to learn more about Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program, click here.

]]> http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/goals-that-lead-to-failure/feed/ 0 http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/replay-interview-with-vince-delmonte/ http://theelitebody.com/blog/training-tips/replay-interview-with-vince-delmonte/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:01:25 +0000 Jim Katsoulis http://theelitebody.com/blog/?p=8

I just finished interviewing Fitness Model Champion, Vince Delmonte and it was awesome. Vince is a fantastic model of motivation. He shares some distinctions about how to set goals that are profound. It was also fascinating to hear his technique for creating  unstoppable commitment to his stated goal. You can listen to a replay of the interview here for the next 24 hours.

PS: If you haven’t signed up for the free Elite Body series yet, click here

How to Start an Exercise Habit Audio

This is an excerpt from last week’s Elite Body interview with Turbulence Training creator Craig Ballantyne about the “dark side” of cardio.

Jim:  I think something that may be new information for some people, is that you’re not a huge fan of cardio, are you?

Craig: I’m not a huge fan of it in terms of people looking to lose body fat obviously in short time periods.  I mean if somebody likes doing it; if somebody wants to be the triathlete, you know what, go ahead and do it and love what you do. But, I’m not a big fan of it for those people I see who are running on the sidewalk and look like they despise every single minute they are doing it.  That is probably a greater percentage of the people who do it when they are looking to lose weight.  I’ve got farmed with enough to studies to say that it’s not what it’s all cracked up to be in some of the articles that you’ll see out there.  I’m just not a fan of it in terms of that.  I’m not a fan of having somebody do stuff they don’t like to achieve a goal when there’s other ways to do it.

I’m not a big fan of certain machines in the gym for cardio.  It may not be the machine itself, but it may be the excuses.  Its human nature that some of these machines allow us to slide by and do stuff that we think is helping us, but subconsciously we’re taking the easy way out.  I have what I call the human nature test; because I always make fun of elliptical machines and I really think that they are not again what people make them out to be.

If you took . . . let’s say you take 100 people.  You go to a mega gym – you’ve got 100 treadmills, you’ve got 100 elliptical machines – you take 100 people into that room and you say, “Okay, you have to work out for 30 minutes at a pretty good pace.  You choose your machine.”  You know darn well that 70-80 of those people are going to be on the elliptical machines rather than the treadmill.  To me, that says something.  I’m intuitive about that, and I just think that we’re taking the easy way out.

You can extend it even further and say, “Okay, you’ve got 100 people; you’ve got 100 treadmills or you’ve got a track.  Go do your training.  You can either do the treadmill or the track.”  You know 80% of those people are probably going to use the treadmill too.  Choices like that I think; humans take the easy way out.  It’s not always a bad thing to do, but when it comes to interval training it’s at least as good if not better than cardio training and at a shorter time amount.

The other thing that I’m against in terms of cardio is – I refer to it as one of the dark sides of cardio – is that people can get injured doing a high volume of cardio work.  Now that’s not to say you can’t get injured doing a high volume of body building work.  I personally when I was young and reading the magazines, I was doing too much upper body work and had a little bit of shoulder problems; not anything I haven’t been able to get over.

Again, that comes down to volume of work.  Too much volume in lifting, too much volume in cardio and you’re going to end up in the doctor’s office or the physiotherapy office.  I know plenty of physiotherapists; they tend to be . . . as you know, health experts tend to be people who like to do exercise and those physios who know better are often getting treated themselves.  There’s one physio that I worked in a gym where she worked, and she literally could not walk properly because she did so many spinning classes.

Spinning classes are another thing I’m not a huge fan of.  There’s great benefit to the group mentality because social support is huge.  But, why do something for 45 minutes when you can get the same results in 20 minutes or better results.  Also, I’m not a big fan of the high RPM spinning because I think that’s where a lot of hip problems have been developed in people that I’ve trained personally and also in some of the classes I’ve watched.  I mean I just don’t think that it’s great for your hips, especially in women who have hip problems already from childbirth.  To just be going at 140-160 RPM or whatever they are doing and you just watch their bodies, and without to use a broad and encompassing term, without the right core and musculature and stability there, they are going to end up with problems.

I can find . . . I guess I can poke a hole in any of these types of training.  Nothing’s perfect, but there are some things that are often overlooked by people who use these things.  We should all have a little more critical thinking in how we train.  I mean I’m not perfect in what I do in my own workouts too, but I think that’s a huge, huge thing that we want to avoid overuse injuries from cardio, especially in the weight loss industry or the weight loss goal setting plan that we have.

One last thing I’ll say on this is that an aerobic training program is probably one of the worst places to start a 300 pound person out on a fat loss program because their muscles are not prepared for this and neither are their joints.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to run with an extra 120 pounds on my back, or even walk quickly.  We need to re-examine where we start people out.

Craig Ballantyne, creator of Turbulence Training: “I came up with this in the late 90s.  I was finishing graduate school, and  was doing a lot of research in the cardiovascular area.  We were actually looking at . . . in my Master’s degree study, we were looking at what happens to power and performance in young men when they do a lot of endurance training.  So, we expected to see a decrease in their power and performance.

So I was taking a look at a lot of cardiovascular research; a lot of internal training research; this in addition to me working with a lot of athletes and in addition to me working with people to lose body fat.  At the time, I was training a lot of athletes with interval training.  I’ve been using this for quite a long time now for performance, and, you know, we noticed that some of the research is also showing that fat loss would be increased by the interval training.  It’s really come out in a lot of recent studies.  Well, not a lot of recent studies, but a few recent studies in the past couple of year, so we were a little bit ahead of the curve.

When I was doing all that studying, you know, that fun lab work, I was really, really busy.  I mean I was in there 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. some nights where I just, you know, running this blood through these fancy schmancy machines and, you know, this was in the hospital at my university.  So I’m halfway across campus to the gym, and I didn’t want to not work out during this time.

I had about 45 minutes while this one what’s called a gamma counter; so we’re talking about radioactive isotopes going on counting; so, it had 45 minutes for this machine to do its thing on some blood work that I had put together.  I had time to zip over to the gym, do my work out and get back.  That’s all the time I had for it, and, you know, I’ve been body building since I was 16; then moved into a bit more – I wouldn’t say power lifting, but more like athlete strength training type stuff – my own personal work outs.

Again, with the athletes I was working with, I basically I just put it all together.  I like to use the phrase, “I put all this information together in my mental blender” and came up with what I call Turbulence Training which was simply the supersets that I stole from the body building world combined with the interval training which I stole from the athletic world and together if you take a look at . . . if somebody; a body builder and athlete used that type of training, they would be very lean, very fit, very Men’s Health/Women’s Health type body.

That was in 1999 I was doing that.  In 2000, I started working with Men’s Health, so I kept getting more and more into the fast workout – the dumbbell – the stuff you can do at home in your basement sort of thing, not have to go to a fancy gym.  Then over the years, it’s evolved into a lot more body weight training as well, because that’s just been what people have wanted.

That’s the evolution of it.  The philosophy behind it is simply to work the way you were used to and work less as frequently your sets – well, fewer repetitions per set, generally fewer exercises than the body building stuff I grew up with; and, obviously, cutting back on the cardio volume and just doing interval training.  It’s an increased quality of training, decreased quantity of training.

Our whole purpose is to put the body into what I call turbulence.  That just means putting it outside its comfort zone like a plane going through turbulence in air.  I came up with that actually on a flight, I think if my memory serves me correctly.  That’s the whole philosophy.  That’s the mindset, the imagery I want people to do.  It’s getting outside their comfort zone, you know, training hard but of course training safe.  We’re not doing anything unsafe here, so there’s definitely a progression in building up to this stuff.  That is how it goes down.”

If you’d like to hear more of Craig’s interview, sign up for the F*ree Elite Body Expert Series.