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Make those a "habit" and you'll always have a much better workout. Your first "phase" in beginning any workout is to "FIRST", condition your heart. |
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Condition Your Heart?! How do you do that? And why?! The higher your heart rate, the less fat you burn. So if your heart is conditioned, when you are working hard your heart rate will be low. As you age you will appreciate that you have conditioned your heart! The risk of heart disease is dramatically reduced just by conditioning your heart. Get one of those inexpensive heart rate monitors and pay close attention to it for several days so you can see how hard your heart is working all the time. Why? Read more... |
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There are 3 types of workout programs:
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A "1-rep max" is done to find out how much weight you (specifically) will need to perform on any of the exercises for your selected workout program. Each of the program types uses the 1-RM to calculate the proper weight for every exercise. If you are using weight that is too heavy, you will not be able to go through your full range of motion in the exercise. If you continue to do that, eventually you will train your muscle to only be able to go through a "partial" range of motion. If you use a weight that is too light, you will not get very good gains, or perhaps none at all. Make your time in the gym count. |
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Protein requirements differ between age groups. The "cutoff" is about 50, so those under 50 would eat "LESS" Protein than those over 50. Pretty wild. Right? Why do older people require more protein? More importantly, how much Protein do "YOU" need? (Find Out Now...) |
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Knowing your daily calorie burn is not something you can estimate or guess. it requires precise calculation based on your specific body and daily activities. The only reliable way to determine this crucial number is through a properly designed calculator that accounts for your individual characteristics. The Garrison Body Proprietary Calorie Calculator was developed after 40+ years of real-world testing with hundreds of clients. It calculates your calorie burn based on your exact weight and specific daily activities - not generic estimates or theoretical formulas. This calculator provides three essential pieces of information:
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To use the calculator effectively, you'll need to:
Daily activities like cooking, cleaning, showering, and routine movements can be grouped under "Housework" to simplify tracking. The calculator's comprehensive activity list ensures every minute of your day is accounted for. Unlike standard calorie calculators based on theoretical models, the Garrison Body Calorie Calculator reflects what actually works in practice, providing significantly more accurate results for real people. |
WALK!That's right! The easiest, fastest, safest and cheapest way to burn fat is simply walking. This does not mean walking to increase your heart rate! Always remember that the higher your heart rate, the LESS fat you burn! Find somewhere you can walk where it is level. You heard that correctly. You want a nice, easy, flat area where you can walk for hours if you wish. Just be certain that your heart rate is at or below 60% of your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR). Use the "Heart Rate Calculator" to find "your" MHR. To begin, if you are not already conditioned to walk a lot, start with 20 minutes - 10 minutes away from your starting point, and 10 minutes to return to your starting point. Walk at your normal pace. Do not attempt to walk fast or do anything that you think may help. Nothing will do more for you than walking on a level surface. Anything else will increase your heart rate and you will not be burning fat. When you increase the intensity or involve stairs, hills or something other than level at your normal walking pace, you are not burning fat. You can even break up the walking however you wish so that you only walk during the time you are able. It could be 5 minutes, plus 10 minutes plus 5 minutes to hit your 20-minute total. You can break up the time to fit your schedule. Be sure to have some "accurate" method of monitoring your heart rate while you walk. You do NOT want your heart rate high! Every day you walk you need to also watch how many calories you eat. Any time you are exercising, for whatever goal, you must know how many calories you burn daily, and, how many calories you eat daily. This is absolutely critical! |
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Increasing strength or muscle size "requires" resistance! A program that will increase your strength requires you to "find out" how much weight you can use for every exercise you wish to add to your program for gaining strength. As an example, if you are using the Bicep curl machine to build your Bicep strength, you need to find out how much you can lift 1 time. That number becomes your "1-rep maximum" (1-RM). Write that down then move on to any other equipment you plan to use in your routine and perform the 1-RM for that exercise. Each muscle group can have 2 exercises. If you are working your Pectoral muscles (chest), you may want to use the Seated Fly (arms straight out to your sides and you pull the weight around to the front of you), and perhaps the bench press. So you will need your 1-RM for both exercises. There are 8 groups of upper body muscles, and 8 groups of lower body muscles. Work out upper body 1 day and lower body the next day, then repeat. When you are going through your 1-RM, you should start with a low weight you know you can lift on that exercise and do 3 or 4 reps. Then, add more weight, but drop back to just 1 rep each time you add more weight, and stop when you get to the weight you either cannot lift, or, only lifted slightly. Drop back to a weight you can lift through the full range of motion 1 time. Then write down that number and move on to the next exercise following the same process. Once you have completed your 1-RM for each muscle group, you are ready to use our proprietary Professional Program Creator. This calculator will allow you to add the exercises you have chosen into the calculator along with your 1-RM, then calculate everything so you can simply print out the program you will follow for 2 weeks. At the end of 2 weeks you must then change the weights, reps and sets. At that point you return to the calculator and select weeks 3-4, add your exercises and 1-RM, calculate, print. It's that simple to get your 2-week program prepared for you and get those gains you thought were impossible. Using this method you can expect an average of 40% overall strength gains as reported from our clients. Some areas are far more than 40% gains, and some areas are less. But an average of 40% is what you can expect. |
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Using the information in the previous question - "How Do I Gain Strength?" - you will compile all your exercises and 1-RM. The rest is simple. You input the information required into our Professional Program Creator, calculate everything, print and you are on your way to gaining size. The Professional Program Creator can be used for the following 3 programs: Strength; Size; Maintenance. This Professional Program Creator is designed to be very simple for you to select your preferred type of exercise program. The program type, 2-week period on which you will be working, and the exercises are all up to you. Once you have determined what the calculator requires, you are going to receive a program that will take you through 2-week cycles of growth for a total of 12 weeks. |
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To maintain your current physical condition, lifting light weights with fast repetitions (about 1-second reps) is the best way to strengthen ligaments and tendons - all the small muscles that help the core muscles through their range of motion. To know what weight you should use, if you have not already created a strength or size workout with the proprietary Professional Program Creator, you will need to have done that first. All workout programs are created using your 1 repetition maximum (1-RM is the weight you can lift through a full range of motion 1 time). If you do not perform the 1-RM, you will be "guessing" at your weights and your results will be far less than optimal. The Garrison Body Professional Program Creator will also create a Maintenance program for you to follow. Regardless of what your goal(s) is/are, you need a "base" from which to work. Using equipment with no idea about the weight you "should" be using is simply an exercise in futility - read that as, it won't work! (An exercise in futility describes any action, effort, or activity that is pointless, useless, and doomed to fail, producing no meaningful result despite the energy spent, like "trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon".) If you are not interested in anything other than maintenance, you can go through the 1-RM process to get your weights determined (as discussed in the previous 2 questions), then print the "Maintenance" program. If you feel that there is no reason for you to perform 1-RM for each of your exercises, you are wasting time in the gym. Knowing your 1-RM not only visually allows you to see your gains, but you are maximizing the time you spend in the gym in order to get the absolute best results possible. Whatever that means to you! |
YES!Many people spend years in the gym doing the same things over, and over, and over, with very little change. Or, people have been (somehow) convinced that targeting specific muscles in one area of the body on one day, then working on the other muscles in that same area the following day is a good method to follow. ONLY if you are using steroids or some other "enhancement". It really makes no difference what you do when using enhancements because they "enhance" regardless of working out correctly or not. When you work out any muscle, there are a lot more smaller muscles that come into play at the same time. These are called supporting muscles, such as ligaments and tendons. Not to mention the fact that if you target, perhaps, your chest (Pectoral muscles), you are also working Lats and other large muscles. It's not physically possible to work out only the muscles you "think" you are targeting. Just because someone wrote a book with exercises does not mean they have spent years learning how the body works. They wrote a book based upon what "they" have experienced - nothing more. If you work any muscle in the upper body, or the lower body, work "all" of the muscles in the same area (e.g. upper body or lower body) that same day! And in the correct order. Largest muscles first. Look at your body in the mirror and you can see which muscles you would work out before another. The correct order to work your muscles is to work out either all upper body or all lower body one day, and the opposite portion of your body the next day. Upper / lower, or lower / upper. But do not mix them or you get next to no value. No matter how you work any muscle, mixing the order provides "mixed results". Why do that when you are taking the time to exercise? Don't waste your time - make the most out of the time you spend in the gym. Muscles require 24 hours rest before you should work that same muscle again. That is how you get the most value out of your workout. So if you work anything in the upper body one day, you need to make sure to do no exercises in the upper body the following day. When you are working muscles in the upper body, your body concentrates all the necessary vitamins, minerals and everything the body requires to work that area of your body. If you then switch to an area that is not directly connected to the muscle you just worked, you are not getting the maximum effect of the exercise. It can take your body longer than the sets you perform for one muscle group to be available for the muscle you chose to exercise next which was not attached to the last muscle group. Read that last bit of information as, work the muscle right next to the one you just completed working. Start with your largest muscle first. Either upper body or lower, it's pretty easy to see the largest muscles you have. But to specify, working the upper body you would start with your Latisimus (sides), Pectoral (chest), Trapezius (top of your back reaching down to the center back), Deltoid (shoulders), Triceps (back of upper arm), Bicep (front of upper arm), and finally, Flexor Carpi and Extensor Carpi (forearm front and back). Save your abdominal muscles for the following day and they will get worked with your lower body. Follow Garrison Body processes and you will get great gains fast! |