Natural Health Topics

Sample Strength Training Program For Athletic Performance

What to Eat

If you wish to lose weight rapidly don’t eat until three hours after your workout. A word of caution though — it can be painful and you must pay close attention what you put in your body when you do eat — no sugars. Go for Barron’s Superfood or the Low-glycemic body fuel product.

Eating within an hour after the workout will feed the muscles. Again, watch what you eat. If you have a juicer, try vegetables and an apple with a Low-glycemic body fuel to lose weight and use Superfood with the juice to feed the muscles. Try two shakes a day and a regular meal at night but make sure you take digestive enzymes with the regular meals.

Eating then working out is hard on the body because the blood used to digest food will be sent to muscles leaving undigested food in the stomach — which can be uncomfortable. So, eat at least 45 minutes before working out.

Here are some facts on food and the bioavailability of nutrients; an 8-ounce steak is only 22% protein — 15% of which is usable by the body. So that 8-ounce steak is about 1.8 ounces of protein, whereas only .27 ounces are actually usable protein — and it gets worse! This is under a best case scenario; I haven’t mentioned the problems with hormones and animal/fowl meat health issues.

And the story doesn’t get any better when you take a closer look at what we start with – factory farmed and processed foods. The soils are depleted under factory farming so what do the factory farms do? They add synthetic chemicals that accelerate growth and taste – but what about nutrition?

This raises a question in my mind; is there a protein alternative? Yes, products like spirulina, rice protein, and yellow pea protein are 70% protein and are in the range of 90% digestible. They provide five ounces of usable protein for each 8 ounces consumed. Barron’s Superfood is only 25% protein, but it’s also 90% digestible, is totally hypoallergenic, and provides wealth of antioxidants to help repair damage caused by intense workouts.

Keeping Energy Levels High

If you feel weak from lack of food before or during the workout try Barron’s Energy Formula and/or Sun Chlorella (Whole Foods Market) for an energy boost.

Like most people, you face a two-fold problem: Today’s food lacks nutrients because the factory farm soil is missing nutrients.
The body no longer produces the level of digestive enzymes that transforms what little nutrients you do get into bioavailable material. The body interprets this problem as starvation and it immediately converts anything it gets into stored fat!

How to Maintain Proper Hydration

I only drink steam distilled water and with good reason. All other fluids contain pollutants that act adversely with the body or fail to transport food and oxygen to the cell and waste away from the cell. Note: I add Barron’s Trace Mineral formula to the water.

I drink about 1 to 2 gallons per day (and have been doing so for 25 years) under winter condition workout load and in the summer an additional 3/4 gallons. Drinking a couple sips periodically throughout the workout balances the body’s hydration needs.

The Workout

Be sure to STRETCH OUT before you work out to avoid injury. Stay between 8 to 12 reps as heavy as tolerable for 4 sets. Talk with your doctor if you have a health problem or concern about any exercise.

Your workout SHOULD NOT EXCEED 60 minutes total. And if cardio is part of your regimen, great, but remember, cardio will not get the results weight training gets in restructuring the body. A combination of the two will enhance each other.

ALL of the exercises should be controlled, slow, and complete from beginning to end — all the way up and all the way down — use all the muscle’s length.

Pick ONE from each numbered exercise and the following week, choose another, rotating the exercise so that it does not repeat for 3-4 weeks. This helps make the training dynamic.

Remember the saying “never let your workout routine become to routine”. Basically in a nutshell that means don’t do the same exercises every single week. If you do barbell bench presses one week the next week you should switch it up and do dumbell bench presses and then the next week something different. After about 3 or 4 weeks of switching it up you can certainly start over again with a barbell bench press. You may think this is silly because either way you are working the same muscle group but each variation of an exercise (in this example the bench press) may work the same major muscles but each variation works the smaller muscle groups and muscle fibers differently. By taking this approach you have made your workout dynamic and this will ensure that your routine doesn’t become “routine”.

If you are looking for a website that has the most extensive list of all sorts of exercises and how to do each one of them with a movie showing you how to do it as well please check out ExRx Exercises & Muscle Directory. This site is by far the most complete site around when it comes to how to do exercises. The site is broken down by the different muscle groups and the many exercises you can do to work the different muscle groups. This site is used by amateurs and professionals all over the world and weather or not you are a novice or a pro when it comes to weight lifting everyone can benefit from such a great site!

Neck, Stomach & Calves – (Monday and Friday)

Neck: when doing neck exercises use a neck machine or headgear with weight suspended. Use the LIGHTEST weight possible adding weight as you gain strength. Work the four directions; head forward, head backwards, and head to each side with resistance.

Shrugs: seated and standing. Can use a shrug machine, barbells, or dumbbells. Move your neck slightly forward as you raise the weight to give your neck room for the movement.

Calves: can do these seated, standing, or Donkey Raises. Just make sure to hit all three positions four sets each; toes facing in, toes facing out, and neutral position. Make sure you go all the way down and all the way up on the exercise.

Crunches: seated flat, seated inclined, or suspended leg ups. Do as many reps as you can but make sure you do four sets with that number of reps.

Chest & Back – (Tuesday)

Flat chest press (pick one per work out): barbell, dumbbell, hammer strength, horizontal chest press, smith machine flat chest press, or push up.

Rows (pick one): T-bar row, dumbbell row, seated row, hammer strength row, or machine row.

Incline chest press (pick one): barbell, dumbbell, hammer strength incline press machine, flex leverage machine, smith machine incline press, push up with feet elevated above shoulders.

Pull downs (pick one): close grip, front pull downs, behind the neck pull down, pull down chin up position, neutral grip pull down, cable pull down in carriage.

Decline press (pick one): barbell, dumbbell, or push up with body at a 45 to 65 degree incline.

Straight-arm pull down or pullover with dumbbell.

Chest fly’s (pick one): flat dumbbell, incline dumbbell, decline dumbbell, cables, or peck deck machine.

Legs – (Wednesday)

Leg extension: each leg by it’s self weaker leg first for 8 reps then both together for 12.

Leg curl (pick one): seated, lying or standing.

Adduction: seated closing leg exercise.

Abduction: seated spreading leg exercise.

Leg press: lower pad will impact more quads and the upper will bring a little more hams and gluts.

Squats (pick one): barbell, cable squat using close grip attachment, smith machine squat or dumbbell.

Lunges (pick one): barbell, dumbbells, stationary, reverse or diagonal.

Arms & Shoulders – (Thursday)

Triceps press down (pick one): rope, angle grip, straight bar, reverse grip.

Seated shoulder press (pick one): dumbbell, barbell, or machine.

Basic bicep curl (pick one): standing barbell, standing dumbbell, standing withcables, lying cable curl, concentration curl with dumbbell.

Lying tricep extension (pick one): barbell, dumbbell, cambered bar, straight bar, or cables.

Front raise (pick one): dumbbell, barbell, low pulley; front raise with rope facing away from pulley between legs.

Preacher curl (pick one): preacher weighted machine, cambered bar, straight bar, or dumbbells.

Seated overhead tricep extension (pick one): 1 dumbbell using both hands, 1 dumbbell in each hand, cambered bar.

Rear delt fly (pick one): supported with dumbbell, bent over with dumbbell, rear delt fly using weighted machine, sitting down on bench using cables, lateral raise with dumbbell.