THE WEDNESDAY WORKOUT

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Toward the end of this week, take a look at yourself in the mirror or try on a pair of pants that have always felt tight. Chances are, you've already lost some body fat and your muscles have begun to tone. If you're weighing yourself or checking your body fat percentage, you may notice improved numbers as well. Yes, it's happening you're beginning to create the body you've always wanted and more. But don't stop; keep it going! Assess, adjust and move forward.

Here are three ways to continue your success:

1. Your Workouts

As you continue working out, you need to keep achieving new goals in order to make progress. Make sure you strive to challenge yourself in at least one area of each workout. For example: Boost the intensity of your cardio by raising the incline on the treadmill from level 5 to level 7 or increase the weight by 5-10 pounds when doing a set of 10 DB squats.

2. Your Nutrition

You should be eating every 3 hours to boost your metabolism. Remember your metabolism will be faster if you eat 5-6 smaller meals. If you have not been watching what fuels you put into your body its not too late. Don't let it stop you from thinking about the week ahead; write down your nutrition goals and plan your meals to keep you continuing on your road to success!

3. Your Mindset

Actually doing what you say you're going to do is very rewarding, and it changes the way you see yourself! Watch your confidence grow as your body transforms. Keep going. You're making it happen!
 

Biggest Loser Workout
Walking Lunge with Dumbbell
1. Start position: Stand with feet hip width apart. Hold a Dumbell in each hand.
2. Step forward 2-3 feet forming a 90° bend at the front hip and knee. DO NOT allow front knee to extend past the big toe - may cause injury.
3. Push body up and move the back foot beside the front foot. Alternate feet and repeat.
4. Remember to keep head and back upright in a neutral position. Shoulders and hips should remain squared at all times.
5. Watch for proper knee alignment - do not let front knee extend past big toe or deviate laterally or medially. Back knee should not come in contact with floor.

Hip Abduction with cable
1. Start by placing a cable strap around your ankle and facing parallel with the cable.
2. The working leg should be on the outside.
3. Maintaining your balance take your outside leg and pull it away from your body as far as your hip will allow. Keep your toes pointing straight forward throughout the movement.
4. Return to the starting position and repeat according the to the required repetitions.
5. Switch legs and repeat.

Weighted Russian Twist
1. Roll out onto ball in a supine position. The ball should be on your upper back.
2. Keeping your hips and body parallel to the floor (no sagging of the hips) rotate your shoulders to the right holding a dumbell with your arms extended.
3. Remember to keep your trunk parallel with the floor.
4. Now rotate towards your left and repeat back and forth until the desired number of repetitions is met. The ball should pretty much stay in one place. Keep your body in a straight line and parallel with the floor. No sagging of the hips.

Pushup and Plank on BOSU
1. Turn the BOSU so platform is up and hold on widest portion, chest directly over middle. Either on knees or toes, hold your body in this pushup position with abs in, body in a straight line.
2. Add difficulty by bending elbows and lowering into a pushup.
3. Repeat for the desired time or repetitions if completing pushups.

Alternating 1 Arm DB Row
1. Start by holding a dumbell in each hand and bending forward until your upper body is almost parallel to the floor.
2. Slowly bring one dumbell up to your waist and return to the starting position.
3. Repeat with the other arm.
4. Remember to pinch your shoulder blade in towards your spine as you row.

Seated Shoulder Press (lever)
1) Sit in upright position or adjust seat to shoulder press position.
2) Adjust bottom position of press arm so that handles are approximately ear level.
3) Start position: Grasp handles with an overhand grip (palms facing forward). Elbows should be at 90° in bottom position.
4) Press weight up overhead.
5) Return to start position.
6) Do not lock out elbows. Keep back secured on seatback (if applicable) - hyperextension or flexion may cause injury.

Parial Co-Contraction Lunges
1. Start in a lunge position.
2. Lower your back leg until your knee touches the floor.
3. Place one hand on the the tear drop muscle just on the inside of your knee.
Place other hand on the glute of same leg.
4. Now raise your back knee one inch off the floor and you will feel the two muscles contract.
5. This is the starting position. Slowly raise yourself up by extending both legs all the time feeling for the tension in the 2 muscles. the second you lose tension(it likely will not be long) pause and then slowy return to starting position.
6. Repeat for the recommended repetitions.

Lateral Band Walk
1. Place a short band around your knees and place a long band around your feet with your arms holding the other end.
2. Proceed to slide your feet across the floor while barely picking your feet up off the ground.
3. Try to keep your hips level and just abduct your leg rather than tilting your hips up and down to raise your leg.

Wall Sit
1. Place ball against the wall and your lower back.
2. Proceed into a squatted position so that your thighs are parallel to the ground.
3. Hold this position for the required number of seconds.
4. Remember to keep your feet flat on the floor and your knees behind

Free Motion Ab Crunch
1. Start by positioning the pad in your lower back and grab the handles and bring the pads over your shoulders. You can grab the opposite handles and criss cross them across your chest or keep them on the same side.
2. Holding your hands against your chest proceed to crunch forward until full range of motion has been met.
3. Return to the starting position and repeat.
4. Crisscrossing the pads across your chest may minimize strain and pressure in your

Standing Row with bands
1. Anchor tubing at around belly button or chest level.
2. Grab the ends of the band in each hand with arms at full extension.
3. Pull your hands back towards your navel and pinch your shoulder blades together as you pull.
4. Keep your elbows close to the body and return to the starting position and

Pushups from knees
1. Start by lying face down and placing your hands near your shoulders with your elbows pointing up.
2. Keeping your trunk straight press your hands into the floor so that your upper body and hips come up off the ground into a push up position.
3. Now you are in a modified push up position from your knees.
4. Bend your elbows so that your chest touches the ground and then repeat by returning to the top position.

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Mike's 10 Rules - Nutrition Crash Course

1. Eat a supportive meal every 3 to 3 ½ hours. This routine has the tremendous power to rev up your metabolism. The more often you eat supportive foods throughout the day the easier it will be to burn fat. Why? Every time you eat your metabolism goes up! Supportive foods require more energy to be digested. This is called the "thermic effect" of food (calories used to digest food) and is part of the reason why, when you begin to eat the supportively you are going to feel like you are eating what appears to be a tremendous amount of food. That's because you're taking out so many of those empty calorie foods and replacing them with high quality proteins and complex , nutrient rich carbohydrates.

To truly grasp the metabolism concept - picture your metabolism as a fire. The food you eat will fuel this fire. The stronger your fire burns, the more calories and fat your body will burn. But if you don't replenish the fuel often enough, the fire will die down which means your body is burning less calories (energy). So, if you don't eat often enough, your metabolism slows down and you don't burn through calories very quickly. Worse yet, your body will begin storing almost everything that you do eat as fat! In essence, every time you starve yourself in your honest effort to "lose weight", you are actually slowing down your metabolism as well as making your body more efficient at storing fat.

Bonus: By eating frequently you will also have more control over your blood sugar levels. Controlling your blood sugar is key to suppressing your appetite and prevents fatigue.

2. Eat Supportive Foods. The types of foods that you eat along with how big of a caloric deficit you create will be the main factors in determining if you are going to lose fat only or both fat and muscle. To build your fat burning muscle without packing on body fat, you've got to eat the right kind of calories. High quality fuel "supportive foods"- are your quality proteins, complex carbohydrates and fibrous carbohydrates that must be eaten frequently throughout the day.

3. Portion Sizes. When planning your meals, it is extremely important to measure out the foods you are eating. This is not a guessing game. If you have no idea how many calories you are consuming, you may never be able to achieve fat loss. You must initially be accurate in measuring your food intake in order to be successful and see results. Pay attention to what method of measurement is being used as well (ex. tbs. verses tsp.).

4. Supplement your Efforts. FACT:Nothing burns fat better than healthy muscles. The surest way to maintain and even build lean muscle is to ensure all of your nutrient needs are being met. If you're going to cut back your calories at all, you have to make sure that you are not depriving your body of vital nutrients. In fact, now that you'll be exercising more (or more intensely), your nutrient requirements are going to increase so your body can recover from your workouts.

Add the fact that you lead a busy lifestyle. There are some days when you just don't have the time or opportunity to eat often enough or even choose the best foods. The holes left in your nutrition plan must be filled with nutrients in some manner. IF NOT your body will take them from your muscles - which will ultimately lead to a slower metabolism.

The best solution to this is adding calorie-free, whole food nutrients into your nutritional plan. I recommend that you start with VGF+25 to ensure that you have the nutrients your body needs to maintain and even add lean muscle. Your body will be more prepared to fight illnesses and have the raw materials necessary to achieve a lean, fit physique. Check out all the supplements I have posted on our Gold's Gym website.

5. Breakfast. Always eat breakfast! This is the most important meal of the day. Skipping breakfast will only send the message to your body that you're starving because you haven't had food in over 8+ hours. Plan your meals so that you eat within an hour of waking. Eating a supportive breakfast will give you a boost of energy and prevent your from craving high sugar/high fat foods later in the day.

6. Spread calories evenly throughout the day. It's important to change your perception of what a meal consists of. It is quite common to think of breakfast as a small quick meal (or worse yet, a meal that can be skipped - see the consequences below) and dinner as a large sit-down meal. However, if food is the fuel that will accelerate results, it only makes sense that every time we fuel the body we want to give it the right types and the right amounts.

Your task now is to get into the practice of balancing each meal out by creating meals that are equal in size. For Example: If your calorie needs are 1600 for the day, and you are eating 5 meals, then each meal you consume should be around 300 to 350 calories. Use the Online Menu Planner to help you create balanced meals. When in doubt, use the following rule of thumb: On a 9 inch plate, each food group should visually be about the same size.

7. Refuel for Quick Results. Want results fast? Recovery is the key! While you will only be in the gym engaging in intense resistance exercise for less than one hour, it is what you eat in the 60 minutes before and the 30-45 minutes after that workout that can determine how effective all your hard work will be at moving you towards your goals.

Do you exercise on an empty stomach? What is your body using for fuel? Give up? Your body is using muscle protein for fuel because it doesn't have enough carbohydrates to burn. If you start your workout well-fueled, your body will burn a combination of the carbohydrates stored in your muscles and the fat stored in your fat cells. Eat within one hour of working out, keep your metabolism burning strong and to spare your muscle.

During resistance training, your muscle is forced to work harder than usual and the muscle cells become damaged. In an attempt to prevent future damage and soreness, your body will not only repair the damage, it will also build your muscles back just a little bit stronger than they were before.

This is what causes the actual gains in muscle size, strength, and efficiency, which ultimately lead to a faster metabolism helping you get the results you're after

The best way to speed the recovery process, as well as the results you want to see, is to follow each workout with a proper POST-WORKOUT Meal. You need to quickly and efficiently refuel the muscles and then provide them with the raw materials they need to rebuild themselves to be bigger and stronger.

8.Eliminate Sugar. There are foods with nutrients that can interrupt the process of boosting your metabolism. The nutrients to avoid are simple sugars and refined carbohydrates - "Processed Foods" (soda, fast food, chips, white bread, white pasta, white rice or meals in a box/bag). These foods are high in calories and have little to no nutritional value. Eating foods from this category means you are not filling your body with supportive foods. Processed carbohydrates rapidly increase and decrease your blood sugar levels, resulting in hunger and fatigue which causes your body to go into fat storage mode and will slow your metabolism

9. Drink Water. Over 70% of your bodily functions take place in water - a lack of water causes all your systems to slow down - including your metabolism. Consume at least 8-12 eight ounce glasses of water throughout the day. Water is the most important nutrient in the human body and has many benefits involving fat loss. Proper hydration will increase the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream which in return will increase your body's fat burning ability.

Bonus: When a craving hits, down a glass of water and wait about 10 minutes. Chances are, you were just thirsty. Drinking plenty of water keeps you satisfied, energetic, young and on track!

10. Follow the 90/10 Rule. Eating supportively should not leave you feeling deprived. The 90/10 Rule is the prefect method for eating those not-so-supportive foods without blowing your ability to achieve results. The general rule on cheating is this: make sure that no more than 10% of your meals are missed or cheat meals. So if you're eating five meals a day, seven days a week (for a total of 35 meals per week), then no more than 3 of those meals should be misses or cheats. If you can achieve 90% adherence - and anyone can - you can get the results you want.