An Interview on Fitness, Nutrition, and Active Lifestyle

Check out my interview with Tim Andrews from the Regular Guys Show, Atlanta’s Rock Station 100.5. The subjects of the Interview are fitness, nutrition, and active lifestyle.

You Need a Treadmill Just like Eskimos Need a Refrigerator

So many people purchase a gym membership just to work out on a treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike. It is just a paradox like if Eskimos buy freezers.

I believe that using these machines in the gym is justifiable in a select few situations:

• Warming up for a workout

• Cooling down after a workout

• Extreme weather conditions (extreme heat, extreme cold, lighting)

• You live in Manhattan

Why to do your cardio on the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike if you can simply run in the park or on a trail? You can even run on the street if you do not mind to run when the air is clean: early in the morning or late in the evening. Working out on these cardio machines is not an alternative to doing same things outdoors. Running outdoors (or for that matter riding a bike outdoors) is much more challenging and beneficial than simulating the same exercise inside. I have listed some differences between treadmill and outdoor running:

Running Outdoors	Running Treadmill
Clean air	Not so clean air
Changing and unpredictable environment	Boring and predictable environment
It is all you and your will	Treadmill belt is there to propel you
Turns and downhills	Only straight and up
Wind resistance	No wind resistance
Larger  variety of muscles are involved	Running muscles involved only
Increased production of serotonin	Serotonin is not produced
Feel happy and energized when you are done	You don’t feel like you accomplished anything

So, do not go to the gym to do something that is readily available and free and also a lot, lot better. When you go to the gym do what you cannot find anywhere else: lift free weights so that you can increase strength and bone density, hire a competent personal trainer who will design a training program that will make it possible to achieve your personal goal, hire a competent nutritionist who will explain to you why you cannot eat McDonalds and expect to lose weight, take a martial arts class that will put your entire body and mind in use and also teach you self defense skills. But please do not go to the gym to do or use something that you can do as soon as you step out of your house.

Plan, Execute, Measure

I know a significant number of recreational and amateur athletes who after years of training have not improved their physical appearance. I also know many individuals who believe that they are in great shape but as soon as they tried some new physical activity they feel out of shape. Here are the reasons for this:

• Individual workouts have never been planned

• Training periodization has not been implemented

• Results of training process has never been measured

Individual workouts have never been planned

One single workout cannot be just a pile of many different exercises. It is not a question do you feel good or not so good after the workout. The question is did your training have effect on development of these physical characteristics: cardiovascular endurance, muscular endurance, power, strength, speed, agility, flexibility, balance, and coordination. A single training session should be planned based on: the specific goals of the individuals involved in the training process, the current level of one’s physical abilities, current training period, work overload during previous workout session, etc… The reason for poor workout planning is incompetent instructors and/or coaches. Planning a single workout in a way that the workout has produced the desired effect for that given training period is a very difficult job. Individuals who plan training their own session must possess waste knowledge on the elements of sports training. This amount of knowledge cannot be obtained through the online certification courses for personal trainers. While I believe that the best coaches are a combination of a great education and great professional experience I know and admire many coaches who have never received formal education in exercise science but who constantly keep track of the latest scientific studies and findings and who are able to implement newly acquired knowledge into their training methodology and strategy. 

Training periodization has not been implemented

Recreational athletes and professional athletes must have the same approach to planning their fitness training. The goals are different, the volume and intensity of their training is different, the tolerance for pain is different, but planning must be the same. It must be the same if you set up and want to achieve a specific goal. If an individual does not have a specific goal, the planning does not make any sense. In order to achieve your goal, your year should be divided into three main phases:

• Preparation phase

This phase consist of longer period called general preparation and shorter period called specific preparation. The preparation phase begins with high volume and lower intensity trainings and that changes going into specific preparation period when the volume decreases and intensity increases.

• Competition phase

You do not need to compete in order to have a competitive phase implemented into your training. If you are recreational athlete this competitive phase can be period when you want to achieve your personal goals and to stay on that level for a certain period of time. If you are an amateur or professional, this is the period when training has to be adjusted so that you can keep your sports form on the highest level for a prolonged period of time.

• Transition phase

This phase is as equally important as the first two. You want to give your body to time to heal and rebuild and you want to decompress from the stress caused from months of constant training. What you do not want to do is nothing. You should still have some physical activities but this time these should be less frequent and less structured. Total inactivity will slowdown recovery and rebuilding process.

Although mentioned phases usually cover a 12 month period, these phases must be planned down to each single workout. This is achieved by breaking down annual plan called the macrocycle into monthly periods (these periods also can be shorter or longer than one month period) called mesocycles. Then breaking mesocycles down to weekly training periods called microcycles.

Breaking an entire year into mesocycles and microcycles also requires knowledge and experience. There is no doubt that a lot of personal trainers and instructors do not have the sufficient knowledge and experience to plan somebody’s training so I would advise every recreational athlete to research their trainers’ professional background before starting to train with them. You should disregard their official certifications, but if your future trainer is current or former competitive athlete, there is a good chance that these trainers have learned a lot from their personal competitive experience and that they will use that knowledge for working with their students or athletes.

Results of training process has never been measured

Personal trainers must be able to measure your abilities at the beginning of your training process: heart rate recovery after the exercise, muscular strength, power, joint flexibility, endurance. If the trainer plans and executes training properly and if the student or athlete executes what the trainer asks for, each measured value will improve. If the results do not improve, the usual reasons are:

• Athletes physical and mental efforts during the training sessions are insufficient

• Execution of workout schedule is inconsistent

• Personal trainer or coach is incompetent

If you have any questions in regards to this article, just go to my website www.goranlozo.com, click on the Ask Goran button and send me your question. I will respond within 48 hours.

Myths about Hydration

In science, dehydration is defined as an excessive loss of body fluid. Dehydration usually has multiple symptoms: dizziness, fainting, headache, lowered blood pressure, etc. and can be treated immediately by drinking water or in the hospital, depending on the type of  dehydration. Types of dehydration are:

-          Isotonic (equal loss of water and electrolytes)

-          Hypotonic (primarily a loss of electrolytes, sodium in particular)

-          Hypertonic (primarily a loss of water)

When it comes to hydration and exercise I know for a fact that many people have misconceptions about hydration before, during, and after exercise. These misconceptions have not become popular belief because of any new scientific findings but because of very clever advertising campaigns by the bottled water industry and energy drink industry. Basically, we were told by these companies to ignore what Mother Nature gave us in order to maintain our body fluid balance: the thirst mechanism. Advertisers tell us that when we feel thirsty we are already dehydrated and that we need to start drinking lot earlier than when we become thirsty, every ten minutes during the workout, and of course to continue after the workout. Thus, we started buying very expensive bottled water (they want us to believe that tap water is not good enough) and many energy drinks. Tell that to my dog Fred, or any domesticated or wild animal. They would never buy that theory; they will drink only when they feel thirsty. Also, do not tell me or other retired athletes who were involved in a professional sport long before this avalanche of new energy drinks and bottled water mania. When I started my karate training and competition back in late 70’s, I had at least 400 workouts each year which translates to at least 800 of hours of training a year. The only one way to be a successful athlete was to push your physical and mental limits every single day. It was very hard work for decades but I have never drunk anything else but water and I drank water only when I was thirsty. I and many other athletes from the 70’s, 60’s, 50’s or 40’s have never trained in an air conditioned gym. We were working in extreme heat or cold, we were running 10 – 15 miles long routes either in the high mountains or at the sea level, but I cannot recall that I ever got dizzy or that I fainted. The reason for that is that I always drank water when I felt thirsty.

While on the subject of energy drinks, I believe that energy drinks such as Gatorade are necessary after long workouts when we sweat excessively. During long workouts when we are exposed to high temperatures for prolonged periods of time, we will lose a significant amount of fluid through sweat and a significant amount of electrolytes that must be replenished. But when we do a regular 60 – 75 minute workout, water is all we need. All we need to do is to maintain the electrolyte-water balance. In science, this balance is called OSMOLALITY. Many people drink a lot of Gatorade and similar drinks during short workouts because they believe that energy drinks will give them back what they lose through sweat but this is a wrong assumption because sweat contains significantly lower levels of sodium than the fluid in our bodies: 20 – 60 mM (millimoles) per liter of sweat versus 140 mM per liter of body fluids. It is important to know that the sweat of well trained and conditioned individuals have significantly lower sodium levels than the sweat of individuals who are not in good physical shape. So, we can conclude that well trained athletes really do not need energy drinks. And I suggest to everybody else that if you decide to use energy drinks, dilute your drink with three times more water.    

So, despite in what kind of conditions you work out in, do not spend money on energy drinks or bottled water. Fill your regular water bottle with tap water and follow your thirst. The thirst mechanism is nature’s invention that is millions of years old, if that mechanism is good enough for lions and chimpanzees in Africa then it is good for humans in the urban world.