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You’re training hard, harder than anyone else in the gym, so hard that you’re always sore, you feel mentally tired throughout the day and lack concentration or even lack good humor?

Even with all of these factors, your results aren’t coming as fast as you would like them to? Or are you looking at people that with less effort are able to achieve what they are looking for? Are you in “overtraining”?

There’s no need for that much hustle and bustle, “overtraining” is a very rare phenomenon and is not well understood. But, very possibly, you’re provoking and overcharge on yourselves. That’s why your recovery is affected and it ends up making your life difficult.

The accepted definition throughout the scientific community for overtraining is: a physiological state caused by physiological, psychological, environmental and chemical accumulation that leads to a decrease in psychological and physical performance, which involves an extended recovery period.

So, the chances of developing this condition are low. Recovering from doesn’t take days or weeks, it takes months. There are some registered cases of Olympic athletes who’ve reached this state, because they trained over 25 hours a week.

Even if it isn’t likely for you to develop this syndrome, it doesn’t mean you’re doing everything right. We’ll have you know:

Training can cause elevated stress levels in your nervous system, which can lead to sort of a “hangover”. This can make you feel a lack of energy and focus, apathy, demotivated and have headaches. It’s no surprise that if you’re able to train in this state you’ll have a breakdown later on in the day,
You can also be overloading your hormonal system, meaning that your cortisol production could be sky-high thanks to training. Cortisol isn’t the enemy, because it helps you to mobilize energy and increase metabolizing of glycogen and fat stores, guaranteeing more fuel for the muscles. The problem is that by producing more cortisol you’ll limit the production of testosterone or estrogen. This effect will make these hormones’ jobs harder, which can lead to muscle loss, fat gain and less libido. Another sign of elevated cortisol levels is liquid retention and a flat appearance in the muscles.

Signs of overload (nervous, hormonal or immune system):

Lack of libido;
Liquid retention increase;
Notable strength loss;
Loss of explosive power;
Increase of resting blood pressure levels;
Movement during training feels less precise;
More tiredness;
Being sore for extended periods of time.

If you regularly feel these symptoms, it’s time to make some changes to your training or even your diet.

Solutions? Yes. Here you go:

Fight your obsession over always training to failure, everything will come on its own time;
Search for constant evolution in your training, like weight goals in certain exercises
Try to do shorter, more efficient workouts.

Despite everything that was said above, your nutrition will also play a huge role. Nutrition can be a catalyzer to invert this situation. That’s why Team Transformerz defends flexible dieting, since it takes into account physical and physiological aspects of each individual, achieving excellent nutrition standards, both in regard to sports and physiologically. Have the best of both worlds, without useless restriction or sacrifices.

Team Transformerz’ coaching doesn’t include meal plans to be followed as an obligation for our clients. Why?

Because we defend that the only way to be successful in a diet is through consistency. Evidently, in order for us to be consistent, we need to like what we are doing and for that, it’s necessary that we follow a flexible approach regarding nutrition.

• It’s quite easy to achieve short term results through excessive caloric restrictions, because initially we’re always extremely motivate, either because it’s Summer or because we want to impress our girlfriend/boyfriend. The problem is that when the sacrifices are abundant, we end up focusing on them that on our goals. This way, it’ll all go to waste and we’ll end up in worst shape than when we started the diet. Plus, we can develop an eating disorder, thanks to exaggerated food restrictions.

• This is where the flexible dieting concept appears. This is the concept behind all of the transformations that we share with you. Flexible dieting can be followed for a lifetime, because it leads to continuity without saturation.

• If you follow a flexible diet, you’re able to eat the food you most love, without any restrictions of meal timing or food. This way you can manage unpredicted situations like time away from home, weddings, birthdays, hangouts, trips or anything else. Flexible dieting give people the freedom to eat meat and vegetables all day and eat half a chocolate cake at night! All of this as long as you respect your macro and calories goals. Or, you can eat half a kinder egg after every meal. Obviously, these goals will have to take into account people’s personal goals, which will dictate the amount of “unclean” food that you are able to fit into your diet.

Why we defend flexible dieting:

• First of all, because it’s the only diet method that’s based on scientific evidence and produces guaranteed results;

• Also, because it’s sustainable. It provides psychological well-being to people. Something that doesn’t happen when people have to follow the same meal plan for endless months. That type of plan leads to quitting and eating disorders, caused by weeks and weeks of privation of the food people most love. After quitting these diets, people tend to go back to where they started, or even worse in terms of physical condition.

RELATED: THE MYTH OF OVERTRAINING!

So, we want to guarantee that our clients not only achieve the results that they want, but also that they learn to eat in an intelligent way, keeping not only their body but their mind healthy.

We ask that you don’t give up from the get go, give this concept a chance. Yes, it takes a little work, but anything that’s worth it does. You’ll thank us.

For anyone who has ever had contact with the bodybuilding or even fitness world, the name Arnold Schwarzenegger is definitely familiar. He is, without doubt, one of the most famous faces of bodybuilding, not only because he won the Mr. Olympia title 7 times (highest contest rank in bodybuilding), but also because of his career in cinema, having played some iconic roles. Also, because he was governor of the state of California (living the true American dream). So, it’s natural that he left is some gems of his training knowledge!

RELATED: THE OVERTRAINING MYTH

Arnold’s Antagonist Training

One of Arnold’s most common practices in training was to divide the workouts into antagonistic splits, for example, training chest and back on the same day. So, if Arnold did a set of Bench Press, he would superset it with a set of Pull-Ups.

Basically, an antagonistic workout consists in alternating opposing muscular movements (normally in the same plane of movement). This means that most of our muscles are organized in pairs, for example, Biceps/Triceps. When you contract the Bicep, you’re extending the Tricep, and vice-versa.

This way, not only does it allow greater efficiency while training in terms of time, but also provides good results in terms of strength and hypertrophy gains, as many studies indicate. It also promotes greater balance between body parts, since it stimulates both opposites in an equal amount. So, greater symmetry.

How to alternate exercise?

This will be quite an important factor, since the workouts consist in a constant rotation of opposing exercises. Arnold, most of the times, did supersets between pushes and pulls. But, you can apply rest between the opposing movements as well, 2-3 minutes if your goal is to improve strength, or 30-60 seconds for hypertrophy. If you’re brave enough or have a slightly more limited workout window, you can just superset the whole thing (no rest between movements).

An easy way to understand which movements to alternate is to think in terms of planes of movement. You should aim to alternate between movements in the same planes (vertical/horizontal). For example, after doing chest flyes for chest, you can invert your position and do reverse dumbbell flyes for your posterior delts. It isn’t always easy to find an opposing exercise that is perfect, since planes can differ slightly, like incline/decline planes. Stilll, you can use approximations, for example, alternating Incline Bench Presses With Chest Supported Incline Rows.

Here are a few opposing exercises:

Squats/Deadlifts
Lunges/Step Ups
Leg Extension/ Leg Curl
Chest Presses/ Back Rows

How can I incorporate this method in my training routine?

You can include antagonist training in all of your exercises, even partially if you only wish to train certain portions of the movement.

Week example:

Monday- Chest/Shoulders/Back – Focus on Horizontal Planes
Tuesday – Leg Day – Focus on the Anterior Portion
Wednesday – Arms
Thursday – Rest
Friday – Chest/Shoulders/Back – Focus on Vertical Planes
Saturday – Leg Day –Focus on the Posterior Portion
Sunday – Rest

References:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15705035

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40454501_Effects_of_agonist-antagonist_complex_training_on_upper_body_strength_and_power_development

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/44680102_The_Effect_of_a_Complex_Agonist_and_Antagonist_Resistance_Training_Protocol_on_Volume_Load_Power_Output_Electromyographic_Responses_and_Efficiency

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Frequently, we’re asked what the purpose of hiring a coach is, especially if the client is in better shape than the coach.

If an athlete has a good physique, it doesn’t mean that he knows what it took to achieve it. In most cases, people with better genetics have less of a need to acquire knowledge in order to achieve the results they want.

Bearing this in mind, there are numerous benefits in hiring a GOOD coach:

Identifying and achieving goals
A coach is always a new set of eyes and will introduce some new information “input”. These eyes can be so efficient that they can completely change the goals that were previously set, thanks to focus. Your coach will aim to strengthen your weaknesses and turn them into strengths in record time.
Custom Training and Diet
Another important aspect is the training routine and. If we could identify two limiting factors for your physique development, they would probably be these two. Achieving a custom diet thanks to flexible dieting can be the answer you’re looking for. Diet will be responsible for around 80% of your results. As you can imagine, a high level athlete like Usain Bolt has his diet under extreme control in order to maintain his performance at its peak. A Coach will examine what you need in terms of training and nutrition and design it according to your information
Provides useful knowledge.
Nowadays it is know that the big difference between man and other animals is the transmission and storage of knowledge. As you can imagine, if we had never had a mentor or a database, we couldn’t educate anyone to become a functional member of society. Instead of getting lost in the midst of all the available information on the internet, that will make you try numerous approaches and will probably confuse you and make you commit many mistakes, you can learn directly from a reliable information source, your Coach. His methods will have already been tested by the Coach, on himself and on many clients, having been previously proven by science. Your Coach will be a catalyzer in this sense, he will transmit knowledge to combat your flaws or to improve certain aspects.
More motivation!
Motivation is essential for dedication. One doesn’t exist without the other. You won’t have to constantly worry and make changes that’ll be counterproductive when tested on yourself. A Coach will be a second conscience in your lives, he’ll make you remember the times when you failed and will tell you what to do so that you don’t fail again. He will congratulate and compliment you when you achieve your short/medium/long term goals. A coach also has a cost, because no one likes to lose an investment, especially when this investment is YOU.
A coach can also be a therapist.
The fact that there will be a cooperation between the two of you for many weeks/months will create a mutual share of information and day to day trivia. Not everything goes well, or as we planned. You need to have an escape, to relieve any existing pressure. You’ll have psychological support from someone that you know and whose been through the same. Most people that you meet in your daily life won’t understand your problems/goals. The fact that there is someone who cares about your development and progression becomes a necessary help.
Hire a Coach for the knowledge that he transmits and not his physique!
Unfortunately, some people use and abuse their physique to demonstrate in order to captivate clients instead of using their knowledge! If your Coach says:

That you need to eat between 6 to 8 small meals per day;
That you need to do fasted cardio;
That you need to avoid certain foods;
That you need to eat clean;
Etc…

Then probably, you should ask for scientific evidence to justify this advice. The good thing about science is that it doesn’t work based on our beliefs. Curiously, science says that a diet doesn’t have to be that hard – or boring!

“If you give some fish to a hungry man, you’ll feed him for a day. Teach that man how to fish and you’ll feed him forever!”

What’s the best way to achieve muscular hypertrophy? This question goes around the air in all the gyms and everyone tries to answer without a consistent answer. It is a complex process, you need to find the best stimulus or even the best workout for muscular growth. What’s the most important factor? Should we prioritize volume? Or is weight more important?

Volume and Intensity

Before we can proceed, we must understand these two concepts: volume and intensity.

Volume, in a training context is the amount of work done, meaning that all the sets and reps for a given muscle add up to a certain amount of volume (throughout the period of a week).

Intensity is related to the effort done in each set. As a norm, intensity is defined by the weight you can handle for a 1 rep max. In this case, your 1 rep max will represent 100‰ intensity.

Volume and Intensity are intrinsically related, since one will always influence the other. Greater volume, less intensity and vice-versa.

How to incorporate Volume Training and Progressive Overload

Volume Training, like the name indicates, will be done according to the mantra – “It’s better to do more!”. So, you’ll do lots of sets and lots of reps of variable intensity, but it’s probable that it won’t be too close to 100% (intensity). The logic is simple. The more work done for a given muscle, the better development it will achieve. Many bodybuilders opt for this type of training for this reason.

On the other hand, we have Progressive Overload, which contrary to what many people believe, isn’t just about intensity, but about progressively increasing muscular effort in each exercise/set, be it by adding more weight, more reps, more sets or even by cutting down rest time. This type of training is done by many weight lifters, even though they don’t explore all of the variables, focusing primarily on adding weight.

When you compare both, bodybuilders and weight lifters, along with their training styles, you are able to see that volume is an important factor in muscular development. If it weren’t so, weightlifters would have more muscle, since they tend to lift heavier. But that’s not true.

RELATED: THE OVERTRAINING MYTH

Knowing that volume is a crucial factor for muscle growth, we can use it while following a progressive overload ideology:

Progressively increase weight as it becomes easier;
Increasing the number of exercises or sets or even reps;
Increasing training frequency of certain muscle groups, progressively, to promote greater volume throughout the week.

This way you’ll increase training volume as well as intensity. Stimulate your body progressively, force it to adapt. These adaptation phases take their time, but it’s worth it long term.

João subscribed to our cutting program, Summer Shape. The approach on his transformation, like in all the transformations we do, was as progressive as possible so that we were able to maintain as much muscle mass as possible while still eliminating body fat.

João didn’t have a lot of body fat to begin with, but his goal was still to get as lean as possible while maintaining the most muscle possible. Said and done, as you can see in the pictures!

Our approach throughout these 16 weeks was as follows:
- João started with 76,1kg and an 82cm waist;
- On the third week, he had 2cm less on his waist and was weighing the same. His macros were: Protein: 195g Fat: 70g Carbs: 400g plus two “high days” of: Protein: 160g Fat: 78g Carbs: 400g;
- After the sixth week, João already presented an average of 75.4kg with 78.64cm on his waist. Macros were: Protein: 195g Fat: 70g Carbs: 410g;
- Losing a total of 3,8kgs and 5,5cms on his waist, João now weighs 72,3kg and has a 76,5cm waist.

We remind you that throughout this process, João only did cardio in the first 2 weeks (twice). Throughout the whole of the 16 weeks all we used was a balanced diet and consistent weight training.

At Team Transformerz, just like we did with João, we don’t prescribe long, useless cardio sessions that are only good to damage your well-being and your physique, making the whole process inconsistent and impossible to maintain long term. So, in our programs, cardio and nutrition cuts are managed in a way that cardio is only introduced if strictly necessary, when it’s no longer feasible to continue to cut food, so that our clients don’t undergo hunger or train as if they were to run a marathon.

So, if you’re interested in doing as João did an getting started on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contacts page.

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One of the best ways to achieve good body composition is by improving estrogen metabolism, since it will promote greater hormonal balance in our body. High estrogen levels can be problematic for both men and women, since they are an indicator of higher cancer risk, higher body fat percentage and less muscle mass.

Our nutrition is a vital factor in our body’s functioning, since it greatly influences our hormonal system. A nutritional deficiency can create a lack of efficiency in metabolizing excess estrogen. That’s why we defend a flexible diet, because it won’t deprive us of certain foods. This way we’re able to take total advantage of our diet so that we can achieve the results we want. If you implement these tips in your diet, it can be the first step towards change:

#1 – Eat more Protein!

Food high in protein such as fish, meat, eggs, seafood and some types of beans offer essential amino acids for estrogen metabolism in our liver. Protein still has the added benefits of appetite control and total caloric intake reduction, since it’s a macro nutrient with a low caloric index (4kcals per gram). That being said, if you increase your protein intake, it might help you in fat loss. By minimizing your adipose tissue, you’ll be promoting healthier estrogen levels.

#2 – Fat matters!

Even though it was demonized for years, we know that it plays a vital role in our metabolism. Fatty acid consumption, like Omega-3 which can be found in fish like salmon, will promote estrogen metabolism, because it will decrease aromatase levels, an enzyme that transforms testosterone into estrogen. This is why high levels of aromatase in the female ovaries result in higher levels of estrogen in women (when compared to men).

#3 – More seeds!

They are a great addition to salads or sautéed dishes. Also, seeds like sesame, fenugreek or flaxseed offer a type of fiber called lignin, which can bind with estrogen in the digestive extract, helping in its excretion. Seeds can also increase levels of certain hormones, like SHBG, protecting the body and stimulating hormonal balance.

#4 – Vegetables are essential!

Eating vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts and spinach promotes estrogen metabolism since they contain compounds like DIM and Glucoraphanin. Studies show that people with higher levels of these two compounds reveal lower cancer rates, since they help in estrogen elimination in our body.

#5 – More Vitamin D!

Vitamin D is another aromatase inhibitor and studies show that it’s very efficient in estrogen metabolism. A study done on men, where Vitamin D levels were increased, showed increased testosterone levels due to less aromatase. On a study done on young women, per every 4ng/ml increase in Vitamin D, they had a decrease in 3 percentage points of estrogen.

A trip to the gym should be anything but monotonous. Like in all great relationships, you need to introduce some variety in your routine so that you don’t lose motivation and keep the relationship going! What’s the best example of life with no taste? Ketchup. It can be used on anything! In the gym, this means Fat Gripz and Resistance Bands.

So, what are they?

Fat Gripz are an accessory that allows you to add thickness to barbells or dumbbells. They were built with the goal of allowing you to train with a thick bar (a barbell that’s significantly thicker than average barbells) for those who don’t have access to this type of equipment. As you can imagine, not all gyms have this type of equipment, and that’s why these were invented. For those of you who are familiar with them, you know the difficulty of shopping and carrying bags after a gym session using them (but let’s leave that for later on).

Resistance Bands, as the name indicates, are elastic bands with variable resistance, which normally have specific colors according to the resistance levels, so that you can distinguish them properly. They are also used for physical rehabilitation. So, their use is quite ample.

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How to use?

Fat Grips will introduce all of the benefits of thick bar training in two compact grips. The use of this type of grip isn’t new and studies suggest that training with a thick bar stimulates more of the forearm muscles. Fat Gripz will do exactly that, having greater flexibility in terms of use, seeing as you can put them on dumbbells or even on Pull-Up bars!

Any exercise that involves a barbell or dumbbell can involve Fat Gripz. It’ll torture your forearms and make them grow, as well as develop your grip strength. As you can imagine, forearm training doesn’t serve only aesthetical purposes, but also greater motor quality. Here are a few advantages:

It’ll improve grip strength, since it’ll stimulate the coordination between hand and forearm, which will have a huge carryover onto big lifts like Deadlifts and Rows.
It will improve your forearm’s strength as well as your elbow joint strength, which can help you get rid of tendinitis and elbow pain.

Resistance Bands are another useful accessory that has ample use. Their elasticity allows growing tension and resistance, which makes them a good option for muscular rehab. This means that when the bands are extended they have more resistance. They can be used for warming up or even to add resistance to your barbell/dumbbell exercises. These bands can also offer support by removing resistance on certain exercises like Pull-Ups. You can do this by looping them around the bar and placing your foot or knee inside the other end. This will make the concentric/positive portion of the movement easier, since the band will provide a little “push” when you’re going up. Here are a few more advantages of their use:

Contrary to free weights, bands don’t need gravity to work, which allows execution of movement in more functional patterns that are used in day-to-day activities.
This independence from gravity also allows more muscular focus on certain exercises, as many studies have shown on squatting with bands. It enables you to shift the emphasis between the hamstrings and the quads by changing the angle of pull of the bands.

The fact that they don’t have a variable linear resistance allows greater or more complete range of motion. So, greater stimuli for the muscles.

Davide subscribed to our New Year’s Challenge (8 weeks of cutting challenge). Taking into account the small number of weeks we had to present a good transformation, we had to accelerate the process as much as we could, something much more drastic, that we wouldn’t recommend if we had more time. Still, we maintained optimal levels of fat loss and muscle maintenance.

So, we decided to include HIIT cardio sessions (not excessively) along with a caloric deficit imposed by food reductions. Davide started with 68kgs and 84cm around his waist. He ended this 8 week transformation with a formidable 63kgs and a 76cm waist!

Bear in mind that this process doesn’t start off with many calories and might even make you feel unsatisfied between meals throughout the day and weaker while training. But, after these 8 weeks, we started a reverse dieting process where we gradually increased Danilo’s calories up to his maintenance requirements. So, André was able to finish the remaining weeks of coaching in a significantly better shape than when he started, with a much higher food intake than when he started working with us!

Here’s Davide’s reaction when he found out that he won 3rd place in our New Year’s Challenge, 300€:

To get to know our work methodology so that you can get started on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contacts page.

João subscribed to our New Year’s Challenge (8 weeks of cutting challenge). Taking into account the small number of weeks we had to present a good transformation, we had to accelerate the process as much as we could, something much more drastic, that we wouldn’t recommend if we had more time. Still, we maintained optimal levels of fat loss and muscle maintenance.

So, we decided to include HIIT cardio sessions (not excessively) along with a caloric deficit imposed by food reductions. João started with 72.5kgs and a 90cm waist, having ended the 8th week with only 72kg. Even though João only lost half a kilo throughout the 8 weeks, he lost 6cm on his waist, having dropped to an 84cm waist! So, in this case, since his metabolism is different, we were able to make him undergo a body recomposition (hard to achieve during a cutting phase), losing adipose tissue and building muscle during the process! As we can see, the weight barely changed but his measure drops were very satisfactory!

Here’s João’s reaction when he found out he won the 4th prize of our New Year’s Challenge, 200€:

To get to know our work methodology so that you can get started on your transformation, get in touch with us through our Contacts page.

Newer Posts

Older Posts

GRID VIEW

The Overtraining Myth!

The advantages of a Flexible Diet

Hypertrophy Secrets: Arnold’s antagonist training

6 reasons to hire a coach!

Hypertrophy Secrets: Volume Training and Progressive Overload

João (16 Weeks)

5 Nutrition tips to optimize estrogen metabolism

GYM’S KETCHUP: Fat Gripz and Resistance Bands

Davide Morgado (8 Weeks)

João Basto (8 Weeks)

Google & Facebook Reviews