The Life Plan (37 page)

But what type of exercise was best? To find out which is better at fighting fat—resistance or aerobic training—exercise physiologists at the University of Alabama’s Department of Human Studies divided 97 subjects into three groups: aerobic training, resistance training, and no exercise. Participants followed a restricted-calorie diet and lost an average of 24 pounds each. Afterward, the two exercise groups were instructed to continue their exercise regimen (40 minutes, two times a week) for a year.

The findings revealed that resistance training was just as effective as aerobic training in preventing the regaining of fat, and both succeeded in decreasing harmful visceral fat. Yet I see many men at the gym who focus entirely on resistance training, and their bellies still seem distended. My experience with my patients and myself is that if you tend to store fat in your abdomen you must do cardio in combination with strength training to get rid of it.

Aerobic exercise and resistance training work hand in hand to prevent, reduce, or even reverse heart disease by preventing/controlling diabetes, dyslipidemia (high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and low HDL), and hypertension. They do this through all the complex biochemical and physiological processes that are initiated during these exercises and for several hours after they are completed. Both forms of exercise also strengthen the heart. Men with healthy hearts—no matter what their age—and most with unhealthy hearts need to start using resistance training along with their aerobic training as an important part of their heart-disease prevention and/or treatment program.

The components of a good resistance training program include strengthening every muscle group in your body: legs, arms, back, shoulders, and core. Most people think the core is synonymous with abdominal muscles. The “core” actually consists of many different muscles that stabilize the spine and pelvis and run the entire length of the torso. These muscles provide a solid foundation for movement in the extremities.

Training of all these muscle groups is done by completing various exercises, at a particular frequency (how many times you repeat the same movement), duration (how long you hold a particular pose), and intensity (how much weight you are working with).

You will need to incorporate resistance training into your exercise program three to four days per week to achieve the best results for your body.

I suggest that you make the following rules your mantra:

Make resistance training a key component of your exercise program. My exercise regimen starts with resistance training five days a week.

Train as if your life depends on it—because it does. If I hadn’t started training 13 years ago for the Body-

-LIFE contest and added the Cenegenics program to my regimen five years later, I wouldn’t be alive today. It’s really that simple.

Train like a 30-year-old—unless, of course, you are 30, then train as if you are 20. Always set the bar higher. Never stay in your comfort zone.

Achieve new heights in the “no pain no gain” attitude.

You must achieve muscle soreness (good pain) after each training session. Good pain is soreness that is on both sides of your body, not sharp or extreme, just enough to let you know that you worked your muscles just right. It’s a great feeling.

It’s normal to have some muscle pain after a good workout. In fact, this is usually a good indication that you trained your muscles properly. Occasionally, however, this pain can be excessive and may even interfere with your training program. Ibuprofen, or another nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, is frequently used to alleviate this kind of pain, but these medications can interfere with your muscle repair and growth processes. I never take them for this kind of muscle discomfort. Instead, I take my vitamins.

Scientists believe the muscle pain associated with intense exercise is caused, in part, by the excessive production of free radicals (very active molecules) during exercise. Free radicals help repair the microscopic tears and inflammation we want to produce in our muscle tissue when we train hard, and they actually promote increases in strength and growth. Excessive amounts of these molecules, however, can actually do more harm than good and interfere with muscle healing.

We have known for some time now that antioxidant supplements, including vitamin E, vitamin C, and selenium, help neutralize free-radical activity. They may help prevent the excessive muscle damage from free radicals that intense exercise can cause. So train hard, take your antioxidants, eat healthy, and enjoy the “good” pain you get in your muscles after a great workout.

On the Life Plan I recommend doing a total body workout three to four days a week. It is very important to train your whole body in a way that stresses every muscle over the course of the week. By doing so, you will be gaining the benefit of burning more calories than you would by just doing one muscle group per day. Training the whole body during a workout, particularly a circuit workout, causes the heart to work harder to pump blood and oxygen to the muscles that are performing the work. This results in a higher heart rate, which equates to a higher caloric expenditure.

A phrase you’ll hear often in this chapter is “your 1-rep max.” In short, it’s the heaviest weight you can lift for one rep of a particular exercise. To determine your 1-rep max, use the calculators on my website (www.drlife.com). All you have to do is enter the amount of weight that you lifted and the number of reps you were able to perform, and the calculator will estimate your 1-rep max. Choose a weight with which you can do no more than 10 reps to determine your 1-rep max.

The danger of not training the whole body in a balanced way is that you set yourself up for muscle imbalances, postural distortions, and interference with reciprocal inhibition (when muscles on the opposite sides of a joint contract at the same time, producing muscle tears), causing undue stress on the joints and soft tissues of your body. All that means just one thing: injury. You do not want to injure yourself. Injuries can set you back months and in some cases, years. Avoid injuries at all costs. Move slowly through your exercise journey. It’s meant for a lifetime, not 12 weeks.

Whether you begin with the Basic Health program or jump into a higher level, if you already have experience with resistance training, your workout will contain the same core components: