Author: Fabian

“Skinny Fat” is a term you’ve most likely heard before, but is it just another silly marketing buzz-word, or does it actually have some real meaning behind it? Well, skinny fat is indeed a real term, although in scientific and medical circles it’s more commonly referred to as either Metabolically Obese Normal Weight (MONW) or Normal Weight Obesity (NWO). As the names suggest, it refers to a condition whereby someone has a normal body weight (as determined by their BMI), but are nevertheless obese, or carrying an excessive amount of body fat. So how is that possible? How can someone…

The good old fashioned plank is a very well-known and commonly used exercise in many people’s ab routine. And as far as isometric exercises go, it’s not a bad little technique. The main problem however is that, although they’re not necessarily usually done incorrectly, they’re certainly rarely done as well as they could be. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that when planks are done in the commonly-accepted way, they’re relatively easy to hold, making them a great option for beginners whose abs aren’t all that strong yet. The bad part is that…

The good ol’ treadmill is certainly one of the standards as far as gym cardio machines go, but even so treadmill cardio unfortunately rates right up there in the prize for most boring workouts ever invented. Sure, the treadmill has its advantages. It allows you to do your cardio indoors, in relative safety and comfort. It manages your speed for you, making it easy to track your progress. And it can even have a stab at working out how many calories you’re burning, for what it’s worth. But let’s face it, treadmill cardio is pretty limited in terms of what…

Once you’ve made a committed decision to jump into a lifestyle of health and fitness, you know that you’re going to be in for a tough transition period. That’s the time where your determination will be tested, when you’ll find out whether you really have what it takes to see it through. Right up at the top of your challenges will of course be the hard work that you’re going to have to put in at the gym, and the discipline you’re going to need in cleaning up your diet and foregoing the lovely treats that got you into your…

Let’s face it, there’s nothing quite as frustrating as stubborn body fat. You think you’re doing all the right things, you’re working out regularly, maybe even eating “clean” foods, but still it won’t budge. What’s going on? Is it just that you’re getting older, and your body simply isn’t able to lose fat anymore like it used to? Is it genetics? Age and genetics are certainly influencing factors in fat loss, but neither of these will prevent you from losing fat altogether. Rest assured that if you’re not managing to lose body fat, there’s a reason for it, and once…

Have you ever been told that you hit like a girl, or run like a girl, or do anything “like a girl”? It’s an expression thrown around more so by young male children than anyone else, but unfortunately it’s not so uncommon among adults either. When you’re told that you do something like a girl, it basically means that you’re not doing it well, or at least not as well as a male. For example, if you hit like a girl it means that you don’t hit hard. If you run or throw like a girl it means that you’re…

I have a friend who underwent surgery about two years ago. As a builder, he had a very physical job and unfortunately developed a severe chronic pain in some of the vertebrae of his neck. After consulting with a number of medical professionals, it turned out that surgery was the only solution to correct his problem. Being a stickler for detail and the type of person who has always taken it upon himself to ensure he’s getting the very best of care and most appropriate treatments in medical matters, my friend did his due diligence and finally found a neurosurgeon…

Following on from Gloria’s blog post a few weeks ago about the role of the mind in training, I just wanted to talk a little bit about training to failure, since the mind is very closely tied up in this. Training to failure isn’t something you necessarily do in each and every set of your workouts, but you do it often enough (depending upon your own personal program, of course) to warrant understanding what exactly it means and how it’s done. Now, you may be thinking, it’s very simple – you just keep going until you can’t do anymore!  And…

Below is a great series of three videos produced by Layne Norton on the topic of Metabolic Damage. Layne has been at the forefront of the movement in the fitness industry bringing the issue of Metabolic Damage, or as he prefers to call it, Metabolic Adaptation, to public awareness. Although the validity of the concept of Metabolic Damage is amazingly still meeting with resistance from some corners, more and more people are becoming aware of it and benefiting from it to lose body fat in a healthy and sustainable manner. Nowhere is this more evident than among fitness athletes. In…

In the video below MMA fighter and UFC star Chael Sonnen talks about the importance of setting goals to achieve your dreams and not wasting time in pursuing them. As a child Chael dreamed of being world champion someday.  And that vision drives him to this day – not the fame or the money, but just the accomplishment. He talks about how, if you want to be the best, there’s no time to waste.  You have to start on your journey to achieving your goals right now – not tomorrow, not next week, not as part of some resolution, but right…

As someone who’s somewhat of a perfectionist, I’ll be the first to admit that I can sometimes suffer from “paralysis from analysis”. In other words, when I have to do something, I can spend too much time figuring things out to the minutest detail and making sure everything is just right before actually getting started. It’s something I consciously have to guard against, because I know it’s a trait that can sometimes do more harm than good. More often than not, the best course of action is just getting started, and correcting things as you go. I read a great…

In this installment of the BioLayne Video Log Series, Layne discusses why ‘failure’ is not a destination, but a detour on the road to success. Many people are paralyzed by fear of failure, so much so that they never even attempt to acknowledge their goals, for fear they will fail at them.

In the two videos below, Bret Contreras, The Glute Guy, demonstrates the 3 basic movements that form the foundation for lower body exercise. These are: The Box Squat The Hip Hinge (or Romanian Deadlift) The Glute Bridge These movements are absolutely essential to learn properly, to ensure that your form is correct. Doing big lifts with poor form is a recipe for stalling your progress, or worse still, injuring yourself. If you’re a beginner to working out, you should practice these movements over and over until they become second nature, and then you can progressively add weight as you feel…

Metabolic damage is a topic of discussion that has been gaining widespread attention within the fitness industry of late, particularly among the competition community. This is largely due to the efforts of notable industry leaders such as Dr. Layne Norton and others in bringing the subject into the public awareness. But what exactly is metabolic damage? Why does it occur and how harmful is it really? Does the average person who’s simply trying to lose some weight or get into reasonable shape need to be concerned about it, or is it only an issue for fitness competitors? In this article…

As people who live the fitness lifestyle, it’s important to always remember that we have the ability to change lives by motivating and inspiring others through our example, regardless of where we are on our journey. It’s very easy to overlook the importance of what we do on a daily basis and minimize how we can influence the world positively. But the truth is that each and every one of us has the power to achieve remarkable things. In the videos below (Part 1 and Part 2) the late Evan Tanner, MMA fighter and former UFC champion, talks introspectively about…

Cheat meals or cheat days as part of a healthy/weight loss eating program is something that almost everyone has an opinion on. And these opinions can often vary quite dramatically, even among coaches and dietitians. Recently I’ve seen a bit of discussion here and there online about this topic, some of which I have to say I found very frustrating. There are a lot of people out there who have simply being misled and misinformed about cheat meals, which is really a shame because more often than not these same people are working their butts off in the gym in pursuit…

A standard feature we commonly see accompanying almost all fitness and weight loss products advertised in magazines and newspapers, on television and online, are testimonials and/or before and after photos. But how real are these and how much can we really trust them? Well, there are no doubt a good number of skeptics among us who believe that testimonials are almost always either falsified or paid for, simply because it’s so easy (and profitable) to do so. The same goes for before and after photos – these days creative lighting and Photoshop can practically work miracles. But let’s put aside the questionable…

About two years ago, Gloria posted a blog entry about a particularly tough contest preparation she had just gone through to prepare for a series of Figure shows in March 2013. If you’re interested, you can read the blog post by clicking on the link below: My Competition Battle Because she was struggling to lose body fat at the necessary rate, she took it upon herself to do way more cardio than she was prescribed for several weeks. But not only that, she also had a couple of fairly painful injuries that she had to work through as well. In…

A while back I was taking to a friend of mine who’s a big Blackjack enthusiast. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about the game – how it works, how to play winning systems, the odds for each hand, and so on. He actually spends quite a bit of time in the casino himself playing Blackjack. Anyhow, we got onto the discussion of card-counting systems for Blackjack, which are basically systems that players use to try to get a mathematical advantage against the casinos, and he mentioned something very interesting. He told me that the first Blackjack…

Within the health and fitness industry there is an ever-increasing epidemic of bogus and scam products, designed to do nothing more than bring in big profits for those that market and promote them. And ranking right up there among the best of them are so-called detox diets and cleanses, which supposedly flush the body of mysterious, unnamed and nondescript “toxins”, something that our body, it seems, is incapable of doing itself! The fact of the matter is that no scientific evidence has ever been put forward to prove the efficacy of these products, much less that actually identifies the so-called…

In my last blog post I talked about the importance of varying your exercises to ensure that you always get the most effective workouts possible, and progress as quickly as possible. I also mentioned the necessity for regularly pushing yourself past previous limits whenever you can to create progress. There are two more important exercise variables that can also be changed around periodically to ensure a good, thorough workout program, and they are number of repetitions per set and speed of movement. Number of repetitions is important because, generally speaking, the fewer repetitions you perform per set of exercise, the…

Without a doubt, the most important factor when executing any exercise is good, safe, effective form. But another vital consideration that rates right up there however, and one that many people unfortunately overlook, is variety. The human body is an amazing mechanism that is actually designed to adapt to any environment or situation that it finds itself in. It’s this characteristic that keeps us safe and functioning properly throughout our lives, even in many extreme conditions and situations. It’s important to realize that this adaptation has implications when we are trying to get into shape. But firstly, what exactly does adaptation…