Article By: Johnny Fontana

A friend recently sent me a message asking whether she should eat more fat or more carbohydrates. This really sparked my attention, making me realize that a lot of people have the same question. It is not necessary to follow one of the high-fat or high-carb diets, you just need to pay attention to what type of food (carb, fat, protein) your eating. The fact that she is thinking about this is a major step in the right direction.

No one has ever become overweight from eating too much protein, but those who have taken fancy to consuming high amounts of carbs or fat have. If you adopt a diet high in both carbs and fat chances are that you will have weight issues. I highly recommend to pick one of the two and have that lead your daily food consumption. Although I carry a heavy bias towards a high-fat & high-protein diet, you might be a carb junkie. I’ll explain the differences in the two in the following paragraphs.

Benefits of Fat

If you have been following my posts for a while, it is probably obvious that I am a big fan of fats. I would love it if we would start calling them lipids so people would get over this stigma that fats make you fat, but that likely won’t happen soon. Good fats provide a wide variety of benefits that carbs can’t even attempt to compete with. From a beauty standpoint, they are great for hair, skin and nails. Fats help increase cell production, especially in the brain. They also are very beneficial for your heart and other organs (believe it or not). Your joints will also thank you because fats tend to act as an anti-inflammatory. If you eat the healthy fats (avocado, animals, nuts & good oils) you will see a tremendous amount of health benefits from them.

Negatives of Fat

The one major downfall of fat is that it is high in calories. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories, as opposed to 4 for both protein and carbs. Other than that, the good fats are pretty flawless.

Benefits of Carbs

The one major benefit of carbohydrates is the fiber count found in them. The majority of fiber that the typical American consumes comes from carbohydrates. They also are our bodies first and main source for energy. Glycogen stores are used by our muscles, especially in physical activity.

The vast majority of fruits and vegetables consist mostly of carbs. The good news here is that most fruits and vegetables are low in calories, so the majority of the carbs in them come from fiber.

Negatives of Carbs

It is a lot harder to tell the difference between a good carb and a bad carb, as compared to a good fat vs. bad fat. Is bread good for you? Are potatoes good for you? How about rice? Most people aren’t prepared to answer these questions and have a hard time deciphering which carbs will be helping them as opposed to hurting. For the most part you have great carbs that are low calories, high fiber (fruits & veggies) than you have bads that are high calorie, low fiber. Carbs are also typically high in sugar, which leads to insulin and blood sugar spikes. If you are looking to lose weight, those spikes are your worst enemy. Bacteria in your stomach loves sugar, this can actually lead to inflammation.

My Recommendation

I suggest that you stick with a high-fat and high-protein diet. I am a believer that unless you are a cardio endurance athlete your daily intake of carbs doesn’t need to be higher than 40%. There’s really no great health benefits to most carbohydrates aside from the fiber, which you can get from proteins and fats. One of the only real cases you can make for carbs is the fact that they provide us with energy. The activity levels of most Americans isn’t high enough to require “carb loading”

Stick with the fat, it will keep you lean.

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I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

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Article By: Johnny Fontana

If I told you that you could eat the exact same food you are eating now, but lose weight and develop a better body composition (body fat %) would you be into that idea? I think it would be really hard to find someone who would say no. I am not telling you to cut out certain foods or start counting your calories. I’m really not asking you to change your diet (the things you eat) at all, just to change when you eat them.

Western civilization (yes, that includes America) has developed some of the worst eating habits known to man. Sure, we typically eat food that is toxic to us, but that is not the point I am trying to make here. What we have done is arranged our eating habits in a way that sets us up for failure. We eat only a few meals per day, each packed with a large amount of food, and typically put off until later in the day. On top of that, we eat a ton of carbs at one time or a ton of fat at other times, which throws our bodies into a scramble.

This post will focus mostly on the bad foods that you eat and when to eat them. I don’t expect everyone to eat great foods all the time, but the trick is learning how to manage them. Here I will examine sugar intake and teach you how to properly eat sugar. Typically we are all-or-nothing-type people, eating loads of sugar at one time. This usually is around dinner or late-night snack time, which I shouldn’t have to tell you, is terrible for you.

All At Once

Nutrient timing is absolutely key to losing weight and getting a better body composition. Since we tend to have a problem with eating way too much sugar, I will use that as an example. Let’s say that you eat 50 grams of sugar throughout your day.  You can actually lose weight and lower your body fat by simply changing what time you eat that 50 grams. Let’s say you are currently eating 15 grams of sugar at lunch, 30 grams of sugar at dinner and 15 more grams for dessert or late snack. These large amounts of sugar later in the day will send your insulin through the roof, which is about the last thing in the world you want to do. On top of that, if your meal is comprised mostly of carbs, then you are in real trouble.

The Long Slow Burn

If you simply switch those 50 grams to 15 at breakfast, 10 for a late-morning snack, 10 at lunch, 10 for a late-afternoon snack and 5 at dinner, you will be in a much better position. By spreading out those 50 grams of sugar, you won’t be getting such an insulin spike. On top of that, by eating sugar earlier in the day, your body will have more time to burn it off.

Sugar & Insulin

I talk about insulin a lot, so if you are confused why I am bringing it up  read here to get a better understanding. By simply spacing out the sugar and putting it into more meals, you will be doing yourself justice. If you know that you are going to eat an entire Hershey’s bar today (not recommended), instead of eating it in one sitting break it up into multiple snacks. Eat a quarter with breakfast, a quarter with a snack, a quarter with lunch and a quarter with another snack.

Notice that I’m saying “with” in the last sentence. The food combinations that you eat will also play a big roll in your body’s ability to properly process the foods. I will get into this topic further in my next part of this series, so stay tuned.

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I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

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Chips are one of americans favorite snack to munch on. With hundreds of different brands and thousands of different flavors, it can be tough to make a selection. If you are one of those people who needs chips in their life but still trying to keep it healthy, you got your hands full. While there are some not so bad brands and flavors out there, many of them are terrble for you. Should you be picking a Lay’s Classic type chip or do you need to go with a brand like Kettle in order to keep it healthy?

Article By: John Fontana

You’re flipping back and forth between the pages of a menu trying to figure out, “What do I want to eat?”  But you’re finding little luck.  Your first move was to look at the salads, since they are generally regarded as the healthiest choice on the menu, but they aren’t working for you today. None of them seem too interesting, and on top of that you are hungry. So a salad gets eliminated from the list of options, and it’s on to the sandwiches and entrees.

Now an even bigger problem is facing you — what can you eat that isn’t packed with a million calories? You have been doing well all week with diet and exercise and do not want to blow it with one bad choice. The big problem is, you don’t know what’s considered a “good choice” and a “bad choice.”

You probably face this situation at least a few times per week. While some restaurants are just doomed and it is near impossible to find a healthy option, you can likely find a few hidden gems in most of them. Here’s how:

1. Nothing Fried

I hope this is an obvious tip to most of you, but it surprises me how many people don’t know how to point out which foods are fried and which aren’t. Sure, everyone knows the obvious ones like french fries and fried chicken, but what happens when the word “fried” is not in the name of the food? Anything with the words “battered” or “breaded” will likely be deep-fried. If you’re at a Mexican place, the chips are probably fried, and many appetizers such as mushrooms and calamari are fried as well. If you aren’t sure if a food is fried, ask your waiter. Do not make the mistake of eating fried foods.  They are some of the absolute worst foods you can eat.

2. Don’t Double Up

I see this issue a lot at restaurants, especially with breakfast places. I went to breakfast with a friend recently and they ordered a meal that came out with pancakes, potatoes and toast. That is three carb-based food items in one meal, which is a bit of an overload. My big point here is to avoid meals with two carb sources in them. If you have a sandwich, you shouldn’t be getting potatoes (especially fries) as a side. Carbs are Americans’ favorite foods because they taste great, and restaurants want you to enjoy their food so they throw an abundance of carbs at you. Don’t fall into the trap.

3. Pick One Of Each

Look to order a meal that has one fat, protein and carb source each and nothing more. The fat source will likely come from whatever the food is cooked in, and then it should be a piece of protein (i.e. chicken, fish, lean meat or tofu) and then a carb (if necessary). If you are still confused, here is a good way to look at it. A carb will typically be white or light brown (mashed potatoes, rice or pasta), a protein will typically be from an animal and a fat will be in the form of oil.

4. Avoid The Sauce

Foods that are based around a sauce are typically not a good idea when you’re eating out. A little bit of sauce is alright, but something that has the name of the sauce in the title should put you on alert. Pastas with Alfredo sauce are sky high in both fat and calories. The sauce alone will put you well over the amount of calories you should be eating in a meal. Any dish that has a sauce or dressing on it, ask them to put it on the side.

5. Get Some Color

Many restaurants will ask you to pick a side of your liking or allow you to substitute the current side for another one. A rule of thumb here is to get some color out of the side.  Basically this translates to getting vegetables. Since most people don’t particularly enjoy the taste of vegetables, restaurants love to butter them up. Typically spinach or broccoli will be drenched in butter since those are people’s least favorite. Ask them for steamed veggies if that is an option or just ask them to cook your side with little or no butter.

Save Hundreds… Of Calories

While it is relatively easy to go out to eat, enjoy your food and keep it healthy, many people struggle with this idea. For the most part, you go out to eat to enjoy company more than to enjoy food, so don’t feel like you need to indulge like crazy. Plus if you play it right, you can get a bite of others’ unhealthy meals while not having to eat the entire thing. By taking a little time to think about what it is you are about to order, you can save yourself hundreds of calories and hours of exercise. There is no need to burn a good week just because of one meal. Be smart about it, take a minute to look it over and make a decent decision. The restaurant’s job is to make food taste good so I doubt that anything on the menu will be awful.

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I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

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Benefits:

The alternating lunge jump is an excellent exercise that fits well with just about any workout. If you want to lose weight, increase power or increase your cardio endurance, all could benefit from the alternating lunge jumps. By performing consecutive jumps you will be incorporating both plyometric and cardiovascular training.

How To:

1) Walk into a lunge

2) At the bottom of the lunge, aggressively drive up jumping into the air

3) While in the air switch legs

Supplements are a really tricky subject for a number of reason, one of which (caffeine) you addressed in your Tweet. There is definitely a huge mental aspect that comes with taking supplements and it is impossible to tell how much of a placebo effect occurs. A lot of people get excited because of a new supplement and that excitement alone may be enough to allow them to have a much better workout than before. Also, many of the supplements similar to N.O. Xplode have a ton of sugar and caffeine in them which will rev your body up no matter what. Having more energy means that you are lifting more intensely which will result in muscular gains.I have at least tried out just about every type of strength/size supplement and will say that some of them definitely work.  Than again I have taken some that have showed me no significant results at all.

The vast majority of supplements are never tested by a third party so the supplement companies can put just about any statements they want to on a label.  They are also not regulated by the FDA, so really they can get away with whatever they want. Since they don’t do third party testing you really cant say whether or not the claims are true and really if any of the ingredients really mean anything. Most supplements use what is called a “blend” which mixes a few different chemicals together. This is usually their “secret formula” and is the main ingredient in the supplement. The problem is that the blend can be 90% sugar and only 10% of whatever else they are claiming is in it.  So if you look at this label below, the main ingredient which accounts 18,000 mg is the “N.O. Xplod Proprietary Blend” and it doesn’t even tell you what is in that. Something that tips me right off the bat is how they try to deceive you into thinking it works by throwing a big number at you like 18,000 mg. Why can’t they just say 18 grams like it truly is? These are the kinds of things to look at when shopping around for supplements.

When it comes down to it I will advise you to do a few things. The first is to try some different supplements out for yourself and see which ones you like. The reason there are so many supplements out there is because some people swear by one brand while others swear by another. Since there is no real scientific data stating that one is supreme, we will never really know which brand is better. Another thing you need to do is realize that just about all of those supplements are pumping some not so great chemicals into your body. These supplements taste terrible naturally so they pump a lot of artificial flavors into them to make them taste better. Its your call on whether or not you mind putting those chemicals into you, just be aware of them.

There are a few brands that I like and will recommend, but it is strictly from my experience with them. The first is anything by BioTest. From a product development standpoint I think they have a lot of really smart guys working together to create these products. They get a little corny with the way they pump their products to you, but all in all I think they are one of the better companies. The other company is EAS. While they don’t have as many products as some other companies, they are one of the few that does third party testing. They are NSF certified which basically means that all of their products are approved for use with NFL athletes. In my personal experience with N.O. Xplode, I felt that it worked well but it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. When it comes down to it, nothing beats hard work.

This is a great question because I feel like millions of people have the same one. Losing weight and improving physique are two different things that go with each other hand in hand. You can lose weight and not have such a great physique, but in order to accomplish a great physique, you will likely need to lose weight. Either way there is really only one way to go about it. If you just simply do cardio, you will for sure lose weight but getting a nice physique will not necessarily come along with that. At the same time if you need to lose weight, weight training will not be the absolute best option for you. This is why I like to combine aspects of both into workouts, in order to accomplish the overall goal of leaning out and looking good.

You can do this in a number of ways, but there are a few different workouts systems that I like to use in order to accomplish the goal. They all involve different types of “metabolic training” which is the best way to lose weight and turn fat into muscle. My favorite system is something I made up called Cx3 (for lack of a better term). This stands for cardio, complex and core. You basically pick one type of cardio exercise, one type of complex (which I will explain in a minute) and one type of core exercise. You put the three exercises together and make a circuit out of it, going from one exercise to the next until you finish all three of them. For cardio, you should pick an exercise that will get your heart rate up really high in one minute or less. This can be running on a treadmill at an incline, jumping up and down or using my favorite tool, the Versa Climber. The important thing is just to get the heart rate up and keep it there for about 30 seconds before moving on. Then from there you will go right into a set of complex’s. Complex’s are a group of individual exercises strung together and done one right after the next. You might be thinking “Isn’t that circuit training?” and in a way it is, but there is one key element which is different. A complex must be done with either a barbell or dumbbells. During the complex circuit, you will never put down the bar or dumbbells in between each exercise. Every exercise should be done as quickly and aggressively as possible. So for example, I like to do a complex with an upright row, snatch, shoulder press, bent over row and another snatch. You will do 6-8 reps of each one moving from one to the next immediately, until all exercises are complete. This will sent your heart rate through the roof and get you a total body workout going on. The final stage is just picking your favorite core exercise and doing about 20 reps of that. Then you rest for amount of time as possible and repeat 2-6 times.

Examples of all the exercises that make up a Complex:

Upright Row

Snatch

Shoulder Press

Bent Row

This workout is highly effective because you are challenging yourself in both in cardiovascular and muscular standpoint, which will help you lose weight and exchange some fat for muscle. Another great thing is that the Cx3 workout is so intense and you are accomplishing so much at once that you can actually get a great workout in, in a lot less time.

When it comes down to it, the important thing is to get the heart rate up, challenge your muscles and take as little rest as possible. Doing so will allow you to accomplish your goals in a shorter amount of time.

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I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

E-mail me personally at jfontana@shadowfit.com

or Tweet me @johnnyfontana on Twitter

Great questions, I think a lot of people operate under that same assumption. The answer is yes and no depending on what you consider a fat belly. If you just want to be skinny than just don’t eat a ton and you really don’t have to workout. On the other hand if you want to actually have abs than you will need to incorporate some exercise. Either way exercise will make getting and keeping a flat belly easier because you will be burning more calories than if you don’t exercise.

Another issue here is what you consider to be the right foods. Everyone has a different idea of what foods are healthy and what foods aren’t. If you are not doing any exercise at all than you will need to make sure the foods you eat are actually the healthy type.

Sorry to not give you a definitive answer but the body is a crazy machine and a lot of questions about it can not be answered definitively. If you have any more questions on the subject please comment below and I’ll be glad to answer them.

The diet industry alone is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business. Hundreds of books and thousands of e-books are published each year, promising the answers to all your questions. They claim to have the diet that will change your life and get you to an ideal weight in no time. The major problem with many of these diets is that they are not sustainable. You cannot continue the diet they offer for an extended period of time, leaving you confused and helpless when you step away from it. If you think about it, the diet industry wants this to happen and is willing to pay big dollars to ensure that it does. Because if you found the perfect diet that was actually sustainable, you would eat less overall and never have to buy another diet book again. Since food publishers sell books and food companies sell “diet foods,” they cannot afford any miracle diet that changes people’s lives forever.

This in turn, is why people will lose weight, gain it back, lose it again and gain it back again, over and over and over. This vicious cycle continues time after time, until you just give up and learn to live with all that extra weight you’d rather shed. The funny thing is, the answer really is simple and right in front of you. We had the answer hundreds of years ago, but somewhere in the last 30 years we completely lost sight of it. The answer went from being simple to extremely complex, completely confusing a relatively simple topic along the way.  Here are a few, easy-to-follow rules for you to make for yourself.  If you stick to them, you’ll surely be on a better path and find yourself a whole lot less confused.

It’s Not a Diet

I hate saying the word diet, just because people associate it with a method of weight loss. In truth, Webster’s Dictionary describes a diet as, “the kinds of food that a person habitually eats.” You can see where we become so confused. If these “diets” that we go on are supposed to be short-term fixes and a proper diet is habitual, it is a bit of an oxymoron. The first thing you have to do is change the meaning of the word “diet” for you. It now needs to be a habitual way you eat that can be sustained from now until forever. The best diet is actually the furthest thing from what we think of as a traditional diet. The best diet is simply the way you eat.

It’s Not Fat, It’s Worse

Somewhere in the last 30 years, America has developed this obsession with fat. The idea that fat makes us fat sparked this craze to cut the natural fat out of foods. In turn, the food industry started making up for the lost flavor by adding sugar to foods. Not your regular old table sugar mind you (which still isn’t recommended), but instead sugars like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

Our food’s sugar content has skyrocketed dramatically, which has a lot of negative effects on the body. Sugar spikes blood-sugar levels, which in turn spikes insulin, causing the body to deliver nutrients we eat to the places we don’t want them to go. The sugar put in foods in order to reduce fat content actually gets stored in the body as fat in the long run. Basically, we’ve been fooled.

Make a rule for yourself that you will drastically reduce the amount of sugar you eat that does not come from fruits and vegetables. Doing this will automatically put you in a better position to lose weight.

Be Aware

Paying attention to how much sugar you eat comes down to you looking at a food label for how much is in each item. Just being aware of what is in the foods you are picking from the grocery store is a key step if you’re trying to start to lose weight. It’s heartening to know that the food industry is finally starting to make foods that are better for us, but they’re still putting them right next to foods that are terrible, so vigilence is key.

Simply looking at the nutritional facts of all the options of a specific type of food will make a huge difference. If you notice that one brand is 400 calories per serving and the other is 300, make the choice for the brand with 300 calories. I found some bagels the other day that have a very similar taste but are completely different. While one had over 50 carbs and nearly no fiber the other had only 19 cabs with 9 grams of fiber. The decision to go with the latter will make a huge difference in your ability to lose weight.

Please just compare the nutritional facts of the foods you are looking at.

Avoid Being Labeled

While I just told you to look at the labels of the foods you are buying, the best types of foods come with no labels at all. Making fresh fruits and vegetables your main food choices takes all the pressure off of you because just about every single time they are far supreme to any packaged foods. Think about it, the bonus of eating fruits and vegetables is that you can eat a lot more throughout the day than if you eat packaged foods. More nutrients, less calories doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Avoid The Hype

Food companies are equally as large (if not larger now) than any car company out there in terms of profits. They spend billions on research and basically know exactly where the trends are heading. Once we started to recognize as a whole that tans fat’s were no good for us, they stopped putting it in our food. Then they started making sure that we could easily see that their foods don’t have trans fats.

Even foods that never had trans fat in them were labeled “Trans Fat: 0″  to make sure that you could see they were a trans fat free product. The same is now happening with the likes of HFCS, Omega-3’s and fiber. Just about any food you see now has some form of nutritional reinforcement right on the label. While 20 years before we would never see on the front of the box that a cereal had fiber in it, now companies rush to show us how much it has.

When it comes down to it, many of these companies are doing this as a way to trick you into thinking their product is healthy. I recent heard that Golden Grams is going to begin an ad campaign claiming to be a cheap, healthy snack. Really? Sure  Golden Grams are cheap but how in the world are they healthy? The will likely claim that they have a few servings of whole grains.

If companies have to tell you that their food is good for you by flashing a graphic at you chances are it is not. Don’t buy into the food just because it say’s it has some Omeg-3’s or fiber in it.

Remember that your diet should not actually be a diet but more of a way of life. One of the worst things you can do is to actually go on a “diet.” Learn to make some simple adjustments and eat the foods that our grandparents were eating when they were younger. Just 30 years ago when obesity and diabetes was not much of a concern at all. Our bodies chemistry hasn’t changed at all, our food has. People weren’t worried about being on a diet or eating certain types of “low-carb” or “low-fat” diets, if they needed to lose weight they just ate less. Now with there being about 50,000 products in your average grocery store you need to start paying attention. If you know people who are in their 70’s and 80’s ask them what they ate when they were kids. I bet if you follow that diet you will be alright.

Article By: John Fontana

Walk into any major gym at around 6 p.m. on a weekday and it is tough to find an open piece of cardio equipment. The people hop on and follow the instructions listed on the machine in order to burn some fat. It’s nice isn’t it, the idea that you can cruise along in this “fat burning zone” for 30 minutes to an hour and achieve great results?

Article By: John Fontana

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Time is of the essence. Though it’s a term originally coined with regard to legal contracts, it should actually be considered each time you exercise. You likely place most of your focus on how many sets you perform, the reps in each set and the weights used doing those sets. Although those three variables hold a lot of importance, time should not be ignored. In fact, time is so important that it should play a roll in nearly every aspect of your workout. Too much time spent in a workout and you risk putting your body in an over trained state. Too much rest in between sets and it will take longer for you to shed the pounds you are trying to take off.

I think that time is one of the most overlooked aspects of exercise. It is important when considering reps, sets, rest, duration of a workout and rest in between days. No matter what goals you have set for yourself, time can either be a major aid in reaching them or a hindrance.

Time Under Tension

When it comes to repetitions, time goes hand in hand with your goal.  Within a rep, time is called “total time under tension” and refers to the amount of time it takes from your very first to very last rep within a set.

Time Per Set

The theory is that the amount of time you spend under tension will determine which training goal you accomplish. If you’re looking for absolute strength, you should spend between 3 and 20 seconds under tension. To put on some muscle size (hypertrophy) you should be under tension from 40-70 seconds. My guess is that you do not want to get super strong, nor do you want to look like a body builder, so avoid those times. Your range should be between 20-40 seconds per set (usually 8-12 reps) of a given exercise. This will help strengthen the muscle just enough, while not getting you too bulky.

Rest To Lose Weight

The amount of time you spend resting in between sets, compound sets (2 exercises grouped) or a circuit (3+ exercises grouped) is also a key element in reaching your fitness goals. Keeping the rest to a minimum is a key in order to burn more calories each workout. Lately, spinning has been regarded as one of the best ways to burn calories. This is because you are constantly fluctuating your heart rate up and down, while taking minimum rest.

The same should go with weight training. Your exercises should get your heart rate sky high and then you should only use as much rest as needed. If you are just starting out, this should be between 60-90 seconds.  If you are experienced it should be 30-60 seconds. The basic theory is that the least amount of rest you take the higher your average heart rate will be. High heart rate equals burned calories, burned calories equals weight loss.

Time Per Workout

If you follow the aforementioned advice, each exercise will take between 20-40 seconds and you will be resting a maximum of 90 seconds. Since your goal is to lose weight you should be performing compound sets or circuits. I would recommend about 3 circuits (9 exercises) per day, which will total 36 minutes from the first rep of your first circuit until the last rep of your last circuit. Factor in warm up; stretch and cool down time and you are right around an hour for your entire workout.

The Time Limit

Studies have shown that most people’s bodies begin to take a serious decline after an hour-and-a-half of continuous exercise. Following this 3-circuit workout will allow you time to get in all of your weight training for the day and a little extra cardio, all within that 90 minute range.

Consistently performing more than 90 minutes of continuous exercise will put your body at risk of being over trained. Overtraining is also known as a plateau and is a natural phenomenon that occurs within your body. The stress of the exercise will overwhelm your system and your body will begin to shut down. Progress will be put on hold and you will likely start to lose some of the progress that you made.

As you see, time plays a crucial factor in exercise, especially when looking to lose weight. It should be accounted for just as much as the number of sets, reps or exercises you are doing. If you are having trouble cutting some pounds it may be a result of ignoring the clock. Figure out the amount of rest periods you need in between sets and attempt to lower them each week.  You will be surprised how much it changes things.

If you are still a bit unclear as to how to factor in rest with your workouts, you can sign up for a Shadow Fit personalized workout for free. Here will provide the exercise along with proper sets, reps, tempo and rest of each exercise. Just fill out the questionnaire and you will be on your way.

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I encourage any questions or comments, please:

Leave a response at the bottom of the article,

E-mail me personally at jfontana@shadowfit.com

or Tweet me @johnnyfontana