Lean Bodies Consulting

Oh, I’m back with more for ya:

I talked to “trainer’s name here” and again he made sure i understood that i need to get that 2 hours of cardio in … and more if possible.

So last night i did 2 hours … and add that to my 30 minutes in the morning … 2.5 hours of cardio yesterday on top of my shoulder workout! I already feel leaner! Silly i know, but i know that is what is going to get me the smallest … and hopefully the muscles will show as i lean out more

Come on!

When are people going to wake up and get it? How is this fun? Training 3 hours a day? 20 hours a week? For how much progress? Seriously?

Sure if you eat few enough calories and exercise enough you’ll lose weight. That’s certainly not rocket science.

Here’s what I think of this:

How about this one?

Fitness trainer at my local gym told me that I should drink only 2 cups of water a day until Friday if I want to look cut. But I’ve decided to go with reducing sodium intake method. If I,

A. consume less than 500 mg of sodium per day.
B. do cardio and sauna
C. drink more water
D. cut down my carbs by 30%

would I be able to look somewhat cut?

The fitness trainer says to drink 500ml of water/day in the final week. Wow! So the girl isn’t going to do that and appears to make a better choice when she says ‘drink more water’ - but I don’t know what that technically means, but for sure it’s better than the ‘fitness trainer’ advice she received.

500mg of sodium per day for the final week? That one is going to backfire.

Sauna? No, no no!

You know, it’s when people aren’t in good enough shape that they’re banking on final week voodoo magically transforming their body. And the truth of the matter is, it doesn’t. Add to that, any visual effect is really only apparent if you’re lean enough in the first place. If I were to run myself through a prep week, you know what would happen? Nothing. LOL! I’d look exactly the same at the end of it.

Focus on getting in great shape and using those last few days to polish things up, not try anything crazy that you’ve not even experimented with before.

Here’s the latest from Amy Marable on the heels of her most recent figure competition.

Choosing a good coach is not easy! I had been researching for awhile and finally went with who I feel is the best decision I’ve made by signing with Erik Ledin of Lean Bodies Consulting. A good coach makes a world of a difference especially when it comes to competing. I chose Erik because of the great feedback I had found online. I wanted someone who was going to look out for me and not do whatever crazy antics it takes to get me on stage and then forget about me or my health! There is life after a competition! This was my 4th show and I wanted to bring my very best.

Amy Marable
Florida

Disclaimer - apologies (only small ones) if this offends you.

It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon (yes surgeon :lol:) - or a smart contest prep coach for that matter - to get fat off someone if they starve them enough and get them to do enough cardio. How does that make a trainer … awesome? 14 hours of cardio a week? 21 hours of cardio a week? 1200 calories while doing that amount of cardio? This isn’t the program recommendations of a great trainer, IMO - it’s the program directions of someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing - who has one tool in his or her toolbox. Eventually everyone will get in shape if they eat few enough calories and do enough exercise for long enough. And people pay for this?

What? You’re not losing fat? Hmm, we’ll we’re already doing an hour of cardio a day. Let’s double it. Two hours a day now. We’ll also drop your calories to 9x BW too.

Two weeks later

Nothing? Alright then - 8x BW in calories and you get no carbs but vegetables and you get no fat either. And you only get nearly fat-free protein sources - egg whites and orange roughy for you. Wait, make it two-and-a-half hours of cardio a day. I also want you to do walking lunges - no weights - every day for 20 minutes - to spot reduce the fat off your glutes and legs of course.

Weight starts falling.

What? You’re hair is falling out? Suck it up, you’re a competitor. Hardcore!

Brilliant!

I’m sorry but you have to diet extremely hard and do hours upon hours upon more hours of cardio per week to lose what? You better be getting Biggest Loser results and dropping pounds of it each week. I mean, a pound of fat has a whopping 3500 calories. Unless you’re crawling on the treadmill and you have the math skills of a 2-year old (subsequently adding up your 2500 calories and thinking it’s 1000), then it’s NOT working very well now is it? A pound a week? (Because you know you’re not dropping 3lbs per week and you’re not even dropping 2/week if you’re pretty lean), then that’s not success. You have to do ALL THAT for a pound of fat? Come on now. Your body is broken if that’s what it takes. Actually let me correct that - that’s not what it takes. For anyone. Do you really consider that a winning formula? Because you might have “won”?

And another thing - those that don’t do their prep this way? Those that get in shape with sane dieting and sane amounts of cardio? They aren’t just genetically lucky. They work just as hard as you do. They just work smarter. There’s nothing special about you that deems it absolutely mandatory to do 7, 14, 21 hours of cardio per week to drop a small amount of fat per week. I mean, if a pound of fat is 3500 calories and you’re doing all that cardio and you’re dieting hard, don’t you think something might be a tad wrong there?

Get ready for your rebound. I have been saying this for quite a while now - those who do the most cardio in their preps are invariably always the ones with the most horrendous post-contest rebounds. And I think this is separate from the psychologically influenced rebound triggered by retardedly restrictive contest diets where you get only 5 foods. Of course, you’re going to start eating after that. Sheesh.

But the cardio? It’s almost as if it’s programming you for fat storage when the calories become available again. Whether it has to do with an efficiency phenomenon or something else entirely, the bottom line is that cardio junkies rebound terribly, more often than not. I don’t really care why it happens – just that it’s happening. There is far too much empirical evidence in contest circles to deny this.

Why do you think 30 minutes of cardio stops working and becomes 45 minutes? And 45 minutes per day becomes 60 minutes? And 60 minutes becomes 90 minutes? Something is happening there for you to have to be continuously adding more and more cardio. So what happens the next time you diet? Do you have to do even more? I know of competitors who return a previously successful contest prep program (successful meaning they got in shape) and it doesn’t work for them - nothing happens. Hmmm

The prep methods of many competitors are in my mind, nothing short of downright silly. It’s sad really - to see what some people believe they have to do in order to compete. And it’s not even the competitor’s fault - it’s the people they entrust themselves to. I can’t believe some of the stuff I’ve read. Boiling chicken breast in distilled water? What? People still do that? Cutting sodium a full week out? I’m sorry, but what the heck? Fish and vegetables 6x a day? 3 hours of cardio? A day? And it’s not like competitors are coming up with this stuff on their own - they’re being instructed to do this and they’re paying for it!!

And never mind how silly and just beyond explanation it is; it’s downright damaging. I can’t tell you how many competitors I’ve worked with now that have come from the above and my first order of business is getting their bodies responsive to diet and training again and correcting the damage done by their previous trainer. Many times over now.

Listen, being a hamster on a treadmill is not the only way to get in contest shape. Hamsters aren’t even cute.

There IS an easier way. No, not easy – as getting in contest shape will never be easy, but it’s easiER. And it can be a far more enjoyable experience. Man, there’s some troopers out there. Girls who go through this every single contest season. You have to hand it to them – that’s seriously some hardcore dedication. Hey, if you like it - more power to you. But …

There IS another way.

Comments? Agree? Disagree?

1. Here’s a good one for ya:

Talked with trainer by text yesterday and he called me this morning to see how i was holding up. My diet changed as of today and he told me i MUST get the 2 hours of cardio in … in addition, I have 15 minutes of step-ups … to work the booty

Where to begin?

Do you realize my keyboard has dents from typing about these subjects?

15 minutes of step ups to work the booty? Who is this trainer? They belong in another industry. So what is the 15 minutes of step ups going to do to ‘the booty’? Is it spot reduction cardio? Sure, of course that works. Muscles grow or they shrink. Or I guess a third option is they stay the same. I’ll assume that since this person is dieting (the 2 hours of cardio per day gives it away), that the step ups are not being done to ‘build the booty’. So I take that’s to mean they’re being done to strip off booty fat? If someone ever tells you to do this - you need to immediately start laughing hysterically at them. And then call them an idiot.

2. How about this one?

I recently started talking to a girl I went to high school with me and she has hired a trainer for the first time to do a figure competition (she’s done a few in the past apparently). She tried to “give me some pointers” from her trainer (mind you I never asked, she just offered because I’m a “newbie”). She thinks her trainer is awesome because he “really gets into her muscles” by having her do bodyweight lunges for about an hour. No joke. And SS cardio not to be done above 60% max HR. MAN I am SOOO glad I am working with you Erik.

Ok, you thought the first one was bad - and she was only doing 15 minutes of step ups. This poor girl is getting AN HOUR of lunges. You know, to get really deep into those muscles. Can these trainers even keep a straight face when they say this? Let’s not forget - how incredibly boring would 60 minutes of alternating lunges be?

Oh and don’t go past 60% MHR - because if you do, you’ll burn NO FAT. Let’s bow down to the fat-burning zone. Oh wait, one more thing - make sure it’s done fasted too.

3. This comes from the same source as the last point.

The same girl I talked about in my last biweekly gave me a few more pearls of wisdom the other day. First, her diet sucks. She gets like 1 tbsp of peanut butter, and lean steak every third day, but has to eat egg whites/chix/veggies/oatmeal for the rest of her diet. Poor girl also has no salt, dairy, fruit. She told me to watch the fruit and yogurt because “They have a lot of sugars in them that will keep you from getting the leanest you can.” Oh and no surprise she has 2x day cardio.

Awesome! She gets four different foods on her diet. FOUR!! Does anyone want to bet what’s going to happen the day after the contest? FOUR FOODS!!

Oh no! Fruit keeps you fat! Yeah, it’s the fruit that keeps people from getting lean. How much fruit would you have to eat for that to happen? Sure, a piece or two of fruit is going to be the one thing that keeps you from the stage. Does this even sound logical?

Got any more for me? Let me hear it in the comments.