Intensity and Consistency

The two most important things for building muscle, gaining strength, and burning fat are Intensity and consistency.

Intensity - Working above 85% of your maximum heart rate (predicted maximum heart rate = 220- your age). Or working with weights greater than 80% of your 1 rep max (thats the most weight you can lift once). Those numbers are just guidlines so dont take them too seriously. Basically if your on a bike, treadmill, row machine, or stairmaster, you need to set the exercise to a level high enough that you cant possibly continue for more than a minute. Follow that with a recovery pace up to a minute long before you start again. This is much more benificial for burning body fat, as it increases the number of calories you burn after the workout is over.
As for the weight training, building muscle through increased strength should be your goal in the weight room. You dont lift weights to "tone" your muscles, which implies that you are just adding a bit more tension to your muscles than they have now, your lifting as much weight as possible! The goal of lifting weights is to build muscle and increase strength, which takes inflicting some damage to the muscles through heavy lifting. Assuming you do not have any health concerns preventing you, each working set of a weight training exercise should leave you out of breath, sweating, swelling of targeted muscles (muscle pump), and feeling very uncomfortable during the set. While doing a particular exercise, the last half of the set should be extremely difficult with the last 1 or 2 reps being the last ones you could possibly do before your muscles give out!

Consistency - Working out hard is important, but one good workout by itself doesnt mean much. It is very easy to have a good workout when you feel good, and strong, but having a good workout, when you dont feel 100% and did not really want to workout, that will determine weather you reach your goals or not! Never miss a scheduled workout. If you walk into the gym feeling like crap, chances are you will feel much better when you walk out (after completing your workout). Even when you first begin the workout, your muscles hurt, you feel weak, you have no energy, suck it up and push through it. Once you get your heart rate up, and some blood flowing, the muscles will loosen up, and you will soon get a rush of energy. So stop feeling sorry for yourself, the human body is not meant to sit around all day. Its meant to run, walk, pull or push objects around, climb things, build things, everyday. So start pulling your weight... every day!

Introduction

Thank you for visiting my Blog!

My Name is Vaughan Twigger, I have been an ACE Certified Personal Trainer since 2004. I created this blog to document and share some of my ideas about Fitness and Nutrtion.

There is a lot of conflicting information about each subject, so some of the information I post here you may have heard differently from another source. All the posts that I will put on here are based on the research I have done and my own experience's.

I hope you find my posts informative and I hope they give you a new perspective on health and nutrition. Please feel free to subscribe to my blog, and please feel free to ask questions on anything you would like to learn about!

Thanks again!
Vaughan