BEGINNING TOMORROW THURSDAY AUGUST 25, 2011, WE WILL ONLY HAVE ONE 7:45PM EVENING CLASS PER NIGHT.  MORNING CLASSES WILL NOT BE EFFECTED.

WE WILL RESUME OUR REGULAR EVENING CLASS SCHEDULE ON TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 6TH.

ROD

Wednesday, 24Aug11

Crazy Eights

Chris, you asked for it you got it!!

8 reps of each, 8 rounds, for time… or 22 mins

• SDHP (KB)
• Pushups
• Air Squats
• Diamond Situps
• Burpees
• DB Push press
• Box Jumps
• KB swings

_________________________________________________________________________

Top 10 Reasons Heavy Weights

Don’t Bulk Up the Female Athlete

I am always asked this question when I train… Will I get big muscles if I use heavy weights. The answer is NO!! and here is why.

Rock solid information below ladies….. by Coach Donald

1. Women do not have nearly as much testosterone as men. In fact, according to Bill Kreamer in Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning, women have about 15 to 20 times less testosterone than men.
2. The perception that women will bulk up when they begin a strength training program comes from the chemically-altered women on the covers of bodybuilding magazines. These “grocery stand models” are most likely pumped full of some extra juice. This is why they look like men. If you take the missing link that separates men from women and add it back in, what do you have? A man!
3. For women, toning is what happens when the muscle is developed through training.  This is essentially bodybuilding without testosterone. Since the testosterone is not present in sufficient amounts, the muscle will develop, but it won’t gain a large amount of mass.
4. Muscle bulk comes from a high volume of work. The repetition range that most women would prefer to do (8–20 reps) promotes hypertrophy (muscle growth). At NLP we use considerably lower volume which will build more strength and cause minimal bulking.
5. Heavy weights will promote strength not size. This has been proven time and time again. When lifting weights over 85 percent, the primary stress imposed upon the body is placed on the nervous system, not on the muscles. Therefore, strength will improve by a neurological effect while not increasing the size of the muscles. And, according to Zatsiorsky and Kreamer, women need to train with heavy weights not only to strengthen the muscles but also to cause positive adaptations in the bones and connective tissues.
6. Bulking up is not an overnight process. Many women think they will start lifting weights, wake up one morning, and say “Holy shit! I’m fucking huge!” This doesn’t happen. The men that you see who have more muscle than the average person have worked hard for a long time (years) to get that way.
7. What the personal trainer is prescribing is not working. Many female athletes come into a new program and say they want to do body weight step-ups, body weight lunges, and leg extensions because it’s what their personal trainer back home had them do. However, many of these girls need to look in a mirror and have a reality check because their trainer’s so-called magical toning exercises are not working. Trainers will hand out easy workouts and tell people they work because they know that if they make the program too hard the client will complain. We don’t do this at Nxt Level, we don’t care if you complain. Play hard or go home.
8. Bulking up is calorie dependant. This means if you eat more than you are burning, you will gain weight. If you eat less than you are burning, you will lose weight. Unfortunately, most female athletes perceive any weight gain as “bulking up” and do not give attention to the fact that they are simply getting fatter. As a mentor of mine, Mark Rippatoe once said, “Squats don’t bulk you up. It’s the ten beers a night that bulk you up.” This cannot be emphasized enough.  If you’re a female and training with heavy weights (or not), you need to watch what you eat.
9. The freshman 15 is not caused by strength training. It is physiologically impossible to gain 15 lbs of muscle in only a few weeks unless you are on performance enhancing drugs. Yes the freshman 15 can come on in only a few weeks. This becomes more complex when an athlete comes to a new school, starts a new training program, and also  has a considerable change in her diet (i.e. only eating one or two times per day in addition to adding 6–8 beers per evening for 2–4 evenings per week). The fact that two meals per day has slowed the female’s metabolism down to almost zero and then the multiple beers added on top of that couldn’t have anything to do with weight gain…it must be the   lifting.
10. Most of the so-called experts are only experts on how to sound like they know what they are talking about. The people who “educate” women on training and nutrition have no idea what they’re talking about. Let’s face it—how many people do you know who claim to “know a thing or two about lifting and nutrition?” Now, how many   people do you know who actually know what they’re talking about, have lived the life, dieted down to make a weight class requirement, or got on stage at single digit body fat?   Invariably, these so-called experts are also the people who blame their gut on poor genetics.