One Exercise Tip to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle Over the Holidays

By Craig Ballantyne | 12/1/2011 |

I literally just woke up from a dream about how you can lose fat and gain muscle over the holidays. It’s 4:43am and I just had a dream that a client was struggling to keep the fat off over the holidays. So, I got up, petted the dog, gave him a belly rub, and then let him take my place in the bed. He likes to sleep like a human sometimes with his head on the pillow. It’s quite entertaining.

But back to your fat loss and muscle building. Something that my TT Meatheads programs will help you with. And you can get them all as a bonus when you get Ben Pakulski’s new muscle building program here this week.

(Just send your receipt to TurbulenceTrainingHelp@gmail.com and we’ll hook you up with all the bonus TT Meatheads programs.)

Now to that exercise tip…

I’ve been playing around with some techniques recently that will add a little ‘boo-yah’ to your workout so you’ll burn more calories and stimulate more muscle building. In fact, in 2 hours and 30 minutes, I’ll be using this technique when I go to do my squat workout.

Here’s what you’re going to do.

Oh, and big damaging confession/admission: “I stole this from bodybuilders…guys like Ben Pakulski, who I used to train beside down in the dungeon of System Fitness here in Toronto.”

So yes, this is a BB-technique added to TT. But you’ll thank him. Or you can thank me and I’ll thank him.

The tip is to maximize muscle tension.

There are several ways to do this.

First, in the squat, you’ll use a narrow stance with your feet directly under your hips. You can use this for both barbell and goblet squats. Push your hips back but maintain that narrow stance and you will dramatically increase the overload on your quadriceps while maintaining the overload on your glutes. You’re going to build a nice butt, boys and girls, while also burning more calories.

Control the descent, and then squeeze like heck on the way up. That’s the ticket. Squeeze like heck on the way up.

Now let’s use that squeeze like heck tip on all other exercises too. For pushups, squeeze your chest like heck on the way up. On dumbbell rows, squeeze like heck as you pull that dumbbell up. For bulgarian split squats, squeeze your quadriceps and butt as you drive up to the top position.

You can even use less weight – much less weight – than normal to achieve great results – when you squeeze like heck.

So dedicated your next training session to the “squeeze like heck” principle. It will totally change your TT workout, and you’ll know that your workout has been supercharged.

If you like this tip, you’re going to love the TT Meatheads training programs. And I’m giving these away when you get Ben’s program here.

But hurry, this special offer is only available this week.

And now here’s 4 bonus tips from Ben on how to build your arms:

4 Uncommon Tips To BIGGER ARMS
By Ben Pakulski
1) LESS VOLUME!

Small muscles require less volume, and recover faster. Basic logic says, a smaller muscle has less overall total volume of muscle fibres.
CB: No need for complete days devoted to arms. Ben will show you how to insert short, frequent arm workouts into your system – even the TT system – so you gain nice size on your arms without ridiculous arm workout days.
It takes LESS overall stimulus to fatigue these muscles and less overall training volume to exhaust glycogen stores (stored muscle energy).
2) HEAVY WEIGHTS (WITH PERFECT FORM)

Heavy weights are going to fatigue a greater overall percentage of muscle fibres in a shorter amount of time (aka less sets). Heavy weights also have the added benefit of stimulating “high threshold motor units”.
CB says: You can really overload your triceps with db triceps extensions. Make sure to use incline and decline versions as well.
These are the muscle fibres that require a lot more stimulus to grow and respond, but also the fibres that are more likely to be responsible for muscle hypertrophy or GROWTH!

 

3) ARMS REQUIRE A LOT OF STIMULUS ON A REGULAR BASIS
Arms receive a lot of stimulus on a regular basis. For most people, this tends to occur in the middle of the range of motion where the muscles are strongest.
CB says: You can’t just do chin-ups and dips once a week for big arms. If you want serious arms, you need serious arm training.
In order to get the arms to grow and respond, it is necessary to subject them to a different type of stimulus. One of the best ways to improve arm development is to subject them to more tension and continuous tension at the extremes of the range of motion (a.k.a, when a muscle is fully lengthened or fully shortened –where muscles are weakest). This will allow for greater time under tension as well as targeting different points of the strength curve to force the nervous system to adapt and stimulate new muscle
growth. 

4) YOU MUST ENGAGE THE TARGET MUSCLE FIRST IN ANY MOVEMENT
The FIRST muscle to engage in ANY movement must be the muscle you are trying to target.
If you are working your biceps, to most effectively stimulate the bicep, it must be the muscle to initiate the movement. As mentioned, muscles are weakest at those extremes and that makes it LEAST likely to contract. This is where your conscious intent and control is vital! The best way to ensure this is happening is to CONTRACT its antagonist muscle. This will ensure a fully lengthened working muscle and make it much more likely that it will initiate the movement(provided youre using
proper control).
CB says: A great exercise to use for building biceps in the DB incline curl. Amazing stretch. Killer soreness.
e.g. when working your bicep, to fully stretch your bicep at the bottom of the range, it is necessary to contract your tricep before initiating the movement of contracting your bicep again.The opposite is true when training triceps. Contract your biceps at the top of the range when a tricep is fully stretched(forearm touches biceps).

You can probably feel your arms growing just reading that. Great tips from Ben. If big arms are your interest, hit those tips up in your next TT workout.

 

Just send an email to TurbulenceTrainingHelp@gmail.com with your receipt for Ben’s program and we’ll send you the Eight TT Meatheads program as a free gift.

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Certified Turbulence Trainer

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