Upper Body Circuit

Good morning everyone! 

I've still been experiencing extremely frustrating sciactic nerve pain but I have 2 saving graces: I can run and at least do some upper body work! If it weren't for that I'd probably have gone insane over the past couple of weeks. 

Anyway, I threw together this upper body circuit to do yesterday morning. It can all be done at home if you have some dumbbells! 

12 inside curls

10 front raises

15 lying chest flyes

20 shoulder taps

15 upright rows

21 bicep curls (7 half reps @ top, 7 half reps @ bottom, 7 full reps)

15 hex press

20 rear delt flyes

10 push-ups

Complete the circuit for a total of 4 times through. I didn't really rest between rounds and it took me a little over 30 minutes. 

Enjoy! 

Are Supplements Really Necessary?

I'm going to start out this post with a massive disclaimer: I am not sponsored by any supplement companies, I am not a professional, and this post is simply my personal opinion, experience, and research. I wanted to address this question because in the fitness industry supplements are pushed ALL THE TIME, and this is an extremely common question of how necessary are they really. 

The first and foremost answer to that question is: no. Supplements are not necessary for a diet because well they are just that, a supplement i.e. extra, an addition, etc. Supplements can be used to enhance a training regimen, diet, or a combination of those BUT you can get results without them. 

I personally do not take very many supplements. If it's something I can get via my diet then chances are I won't seek out a supplement for it. Now, I am not saying supplements are bad at all but the fact of the matter is many of these products do not have long-term research done on them because frankly they haven't been around long enough for us to even study the long-term effects. I don't take that fact lightly and for that reason it will often deter me from trying out a supplement. 

I take two supplements on a regular basis: protein powder and BCAAs. Yes, I consider protein powder to be a supplement because when I take it, it's meant as a way to complete my protein intake for the day so it's supplemental. I don't take protein powder every day but maybe every other or every couple days. It varies and I don't intentionally not take it every day but like I said if it's something I can get through my diet then I will take a more natural way (bump up my chicken, add in egg whites, etc.). The other supplement I take are BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) but again I don't even take these every day. I would say almost every day I workout I will have them to promote recovery and preserve muscle mass because I do workout fasted. 

Again, you don't even need BCAAs because you can achieve both of those things through proper training and nutrition. One of the main things I notice with BCAAs is that they do help with making me less sore the next day but honestly that's something I can live through if I don't take them. I didn't notice any drastic changes in my muscles or physique while using them so it's not a magic supplement to help you build muscle overnight and get jacked. It's meant to help preserve your current muscle mass and promote muscle synthesis over time (not overnight). I simply just like to give my body a little boost every now and then to make sure I'm recovering properly. Also, a quick side note but I do count my BCAAs towards my overall protein intake for the day. They are amino acids and therefore your body treats them as it does a regular protein molecule. So, it can count towards your protein intake for the day. All I do is measure it out by the gram and then plug in however many grams I used for that day and count it as a protein gram. 

Preworkout is probably one of the biggest supplements on the market right now but I will go ahead and say that I have tried different brands of it, and I hate them all haha! I find that I do nottttt like the feeling of preworkout at all, and often times it was so strong that it would make me sick. I workout fasted, usually around 6am, and I find that I don't need an extra boost at all. I make sure to get a good night's sleep, fuel properly each day, and my body is able to handle early morning workouts fasted. I do have a small cup of coffee (half caff) while reading my Bible in the morning but that's all I have before working out.

I'm not saying that preworkout is bad or that you shouldn't take it, but I find that it's not necessary for me and I prefer not to take it. I have found that controlling my caffeine intake is better and the ironic thing is that less coffee helps me feel more energized over time. If I have too much caffeine during the day then my sleep suffers and I don't have as good as sleep compared to when I have less caffeine. I used to get stuck in viscous cycles of being so tired so I'd have more caffeine but that would make my sleep worse so then I'd need even more caffeine and you get the idea. I cut back and, honestly, yes it was horrible for the first couple of weeks but I stick with 1 cup of half caff coffee in the morning (out of habit because I love coffee haha!) and I'm good to go. My sleep is truly so much better and I wake up feeling so much more refreshed in the morning and my energy levels are great throughout the day. 

A lot of people I know swear by PEScience and their pre-workout products plus that company does a lot of research on their products so I do have trust in them. Again, I'm wary in general because long-term research is difficult but I do stand by a lot of their products. I have personally tried out most of their supplements and even though I'm not a fan of pre-workout in general, I was able to handle their Alphamine. I used to order their protein powders all the time (until I found out I can't have whey or casein) and they send you tons of free samples so that's how I was able to try both the Alphamine and High Volume.

Since I've been decreasing my caffeine intake, though, I haven't taken the Alphamine in months. Their BCAAs are my favorite, and I can't wait until I'm out of my current stack to order the new Mango flavor! Right now, I have Slap Nutrition's salted caramel BCAAs and I like them but they're not my favorite. Word of advice: do NOT put them in plain water. I did not like that at all but it's great as a little post-workout drink! The only reason I am switching back to PEScience when I'm done is I like the fruity flavors that I can drink as I workout. I couldn't stomach the taste of the salted caramel mixed with just water because it kind of tasted like watered down coffee. But like I said I mix it up with almond milk, some PB fit, Walden farms chocolate syrup, and it's delicious that way!

Another big supplement that you will hear about is creatine, and usually that word alone is enough to strike fear in the hearts of many women haha! I think that outside of the industry creatine gets this reputation as some magical-manly-muscle-building pill that will turn women into men if they use it. Well, that's not true because a) a woman will literally never just turn into a man because a woman's body is designed to be just that-- a woman and b) all it's meant to do is promote muscle building in your body. Ladies, if you lift and take creatine do not worry about getting "manly", our bodies literally WILL NOT turn into a man's body because we are not designed that way. There are soooo many other factors such as genetics, hormones, plus the fact that our bodies can freaking tell if we are male or female. Creatine is not like a kick start to flip some switch in our body to go from woman to man. All it does is promote muscle growth in your body, which means if you are a woman all it will do is help you grow your womanly muscles. We don't even have a fraction of the testosterone that men do in order to get insanely "manly" muscles like them. It's just not going to happen so if that's your biggest worry then you honestly have nothing to worry about. 

I personally have never taken creatine but I know plenty of women and men that do. There is meant to be a deadline of usage, though, which I'm not sure if that is pushed a lot because obviously companies want you to buy their products. When you first start taking creatine, you can do a sort of "boost" dose where you take a certain number of grams over maintenance (this is called the loading phase). So starting out you could do up to 20-30g for the first 5-7 days then cut back to a maintenance dose of anywhere from 2-5g for about 5 years. It's recommended that you only take it for up to 5 years but there are still plenty of people who use it beyond that time frame. The research goes both ways but I think it would have to depend on the individual and their body. One of the main things would be to watch how your kidneys are functioning and keep an eye out for any potential adverse side effects.

So there you have it! Just some basic points about common supplements out there on the market. I know I didn't even touch on certain ones like sleep aids, joint supplements, fat burners, or any of the other numerous products available. I'll give my honest opinion and say that I doubt they're really worth the money or the effort in taking them because I know that I personally have been able to achieve all of my goals in the past few years without them. So, I'm not too concerned about my current lack of supplements because as long as you tap into your body's natural functioning and manipulate your diet/exercise that way then I don't really see a need for so many supplements. Again, not saying if you take any of these supplements then that's bad, but I'm just always in the mindset of "if I've achieved everything this far without them do I really need them down the road?".

Besides, I'd much rather spend my money on peanut butter and ice cream haha! The real MVPs of how I've built my muscles :)

Totally kidding (sort of ) but seriously, though, carbs are your muscles' best friend. I'm definitely a big believer in doing things the natural way and achieving my results through tweaks in nutrition and training regimen. That's simply my personal opinion, and I get that not everyone shares that but this post is just meant to be my take on supplements! If you are thinking about venturing with certain supplements my biggest piece of advice is this: please do your research. Don't just take it because a friend told you about it or there's a huge hype about it in the fitness industry. We have to be smart for our bodies and make good decisions so if there seems to be reliable and valid research on the product then by all means make the decision you think is best for you! 

How to Design a Workout

Since I'm in charge of my own workout programming and design, I've gotten asked a lot of questions of how I do this. What workouts to do, how to progress, etc. Now, you guys know me by now hehe so of course the first thing I'm going to tell you is: 

DO YOUR RESEARCH. 

But really, I've been lifting weights for almost 2 years now and between the stalking on Instagram (y'all know you do it too), following blogs, looking up lifting sites/forums, research articles and studies, watching videos etc I have learned A LOT. Lifting is my passion, hobby, interest whatever you want to call it but my point is I actively pursue more information about it. I love learning new things about lifting and strive to always continue my education.

It takes a lot of time to learn the ropes but my advice is just continue researching more about it, reaching out to people in the fitness industry, and trying things out for yourself. 

I already know I'll get asked this question so I'll go ahead and share some of my favorite fitness people that I learn from: Layne Norton, Bret Contreras, Strong Lifts, Sohee Lee, Emily Duncan, Erin Dimond, and Katiesfitscript are some of my favorites. They post great content including exercise ideas, form tips, and nutrition.

My second piece of advice when designing your workout is very straightforward: know your goals. A lot of people might think well you go to the gym and start lifting and that's how you'll get stronger, lose weight etc. Well, they're not drastically off the mark but I beg to differ a little bit because there's a difference between training hard and training smart. Also, different styles of lifting like rep schemes, sets, volume, intensity and rest intervals will get you different results. So today I'm going to give a brief outline of what that looks like.

There are essentially 3 categories that a lift can fall into: hypertrophy, strength, and endurance. Hypertrophy sounds like a big fancy word but it just means muscle growth. A lot of the time (not always) but a majority of people who are lifting weights in order to lose weight or "tone" (I hate that word haha!), they are doing hypertrophy lifts. When you think of the traditional bodybuilding-type lifts like 4x8 that is training for hypertrophy. Supersets are also common for hypertrophy lifts.

So if you want muscle growth (hypertrophy) then you want to do a moderate number of sets like 3-5 and stick with the 6-12 range for reps with about 45-60 seconds for rest. Or just go ahead and do supersets instead of doing rest intervals.

Strength is usually what I end up training a lot because personally that's how I like to train. Again, I don't have any specific goals....yet hehe but I have some ideas in the works so strength is my main focus right now. I'm pretty happy with all the muscle I've built over the past two years so I'm working on strength.

Strength is lower reps with higher sets than hypertrophy. I usually do about 5-8 sets of anywhere from 1-5 reps depending on what percentage of my max that I'm using. The higher the weight, the lower the reps. Usually, the number of sets and reps are inversely related in order to control for volume. It honestly just depends on how much I need to lift that day and the way I break down my reps. What I usually do is have a set volume of weight that I need to move that day like say for deadlifts so I'll know that I need to do x amount of total weight so I'll break that down into x amount of sets with x reps per set.

I track my total volume for each workout for each week so that I can make comparisons from week to week. Ideally, you want your volume to increase each week because that means you're gaining strength and able to move more weight each workout. It can also show me my weaker lifts, and where I need to improve most. Obviously I'm not going to compare my lifting volume for deadlifts to bench press because I can work with thousands of pounds (total) during a deadlift workout than benching.

Calculating volume is super simple! The equation is this: # sets x #reps x #weight used = volume. Here's an example from my deadlifts:
5x5 @ 165lbs
5 x 5 x 165= 4,125

Keeping track of volume enables me to compare what sets and reps I used the week before and how much I should bump up each week. I also know that when I can get to a certain volume then it's time to try for a PR. I don't have this down to an exact science yet but I'm fairly familiar with my own personal window of strength. For example, once I got to being able to do 155 for 5 sets of 5 reps, I was fairly certain that I could get over 200lbs for my 1 RM (rep max). I compared my volume, strength gains, and rep schemes from previous weeks in order to determine what max I should try for. It's all about training smart for your goals and planning out the science. I know that I'm such a huge nerd but this is honestly so fun for me! I love playing around with my own programming and learning more about my body.

The third category a lift can fall into is endurance. It basically means what it sounds like: increasing your muscle's endurance (their ability to produce force over longer periods of time). Just like with endurance running, you have to lift longer in order to gain endurance. I don't mean longer as in you don't gain endurance unless you've been lifting for a long time but the number of reps per set. Endurance is usually a rep scheme of 12-20 with a moderate number of sets like 1-3. Again, you have to make sure you control for volume so you don't want to do 8 sets of 20 because that might result in overtraining. Intensity and volume should always be inversely related.

Now, you do not have to simply pick one of these options and just stick with it because you think that you can't do both strength and hypertrophy lifts in one week. Heck, I do them in the same workout haha! I usually focus on 1 strength lift (usually squats, deadlifts, bench, cleans, hip thrusts) per workout and then build my accessory work around it. My accessory work is usually hypertrophy, endurance-based, or even just with my bodyweight. Since my strength-based lifts are higher in intensity I steadily decrease the intensity of my workout as I get to the end. I always do my heaviest lift first so that I have the most energy for it, and then I do my accessory work so that by the time I get to my last set of exercises it's usually with either light weight or my bodyweight.

An example is one of my lower body days (quad focus):
5x5 front squats
5x12, 10, 8, 6, 2 leg press (warm-up set of 15 reps)
4x8 smith machine lunges
3x7-7-7-7 leg extensions (7 regular reps, 7 reps w/ iso pause, 7 half reps at the bottom, 7 half reps at the top)
3x20 jumping leg press (very light weight 20-30lbs)
circuit (3x): 20 box jumps, 20 pulsing goblet squats, 20 walking lunges, 20 step-ups

As you can see I start out with my heavier sets first and then work my way down with moderate hypertrophy work until I get to the circuit at the end where I use maybe a 10 lb plate max. I design most of my workouts this way and it's what works for me! I find that it allows me to keep strength high throughout the workout and that allows me to keep good form.

I also want to point out that lifting cannot be entirely contained in neat little boxes. What I mean by that is if you're concerned that strength lifts won't help you build muscle or that hypertrophy lifts won't help you get stronger then that's not the case. You can in fact get stronger each week doing hypertrophy lifts because our bodies are designed to adapt to the stress we place on them (resistance lifting is a form of stress but can be a good form). Meaning, if you lift a certain amount each week then your body will learn to recruit more muscle fibers in order to increase its ability to adapt to the weight you are lifting. The same can be said for strength and muscle growth. Your muscles can still grow while doing strength-based lifts but it's simply that it might not occur as quickly as if you were to focus on hypertrophy lifts. There's no magic number of reps or sets that anyone can figure out to tell you this is how you'll definitely grow muscles, gain strength, etc. Like everything else with our bodies, it's all trial and error and extremely variable upon the individual.

My biggest piece of advice is this: do what you love. I didn't intentionally step away from the traditional bodybuilding lifting regimen with different splits each day and the standard super sets of hypertrophy rep schemes but over time I slowly drifted into my current lifting splits. I joke around and call myself an OlyPowerBuilder but that's basically what I am haha! I began planning my workouts based on my favorite lifts, my chosen rep schemes, and I ran with it from there. I love, love, love squats and deadlifts so I work those into my lifts about 3x a week and bench press has grown on me, too. I hate working biceps and triceps so I don't #nobisfortheguys #sorryimnotsorry but I do a lot of upper body work including back and shoulders. I have also begun to fall in love with Olympic lifting so I work on my cleans and cleans and presses along with my accessory work which is what I would say is the closest thing to bodybuilding lifting that I do now.

My point is that none of this ever happened intentionally but I realized that if I didn't like to do a certain lift or body part then I really had no obligation to focus on it. I mean, duh, but at the same time I thought that was how it was "supposed to be". So many people on social media would talk about how this certain body part was their least favorite to work or that this workout was their least favorite to look forward to each week or that it was a struggle to push through. And then I realized that I didn't have to set up all my lifts to look like that. I learned more about compound lifts, which I had always found intimidating, but I quickly learned that I thrived on them. I also quickly learned that my body best responds to them.

I am not saying by any means that people who like to do isolation work are wrong or that it's the wrong way to go but all I'm saying is that I found it wasn't for me. I like doing squats multiple times per week with accessory work thrown in. I typically do my deadlifts and follow it up with hamstring and back accessory work, and my cleans and presses are on the days I do some shoulder/upper body work.

I'll do a separate post explaining my current workout splits, but I simply want to get the message out that it's okay to train differently and experiment. Do what you love and I promise the workouts will all fall into place. I could not be happier with my current program design and every day I look forward to my workouts. I love training more as an athlete and to mix in a little bit of everything.

So. This was extremely long-winded but my take-home points are:
1. Keep on doing research. You can never learn too much!
2. Know your goals
3. Plan accordingly to your goals
4. Don't be afraid to experiment and try out different lifting styles
5. Above all, make sure it's what you want to do

I hope this was informative and that you enjoyed reading it! Have a wonderful weekend :)