The BIGGEST Diet Mistake

I am at 30,000 feet right now flying home on the red eye from Orange County, California after an awesome weekend fitness conference hanging with the top fitness professionals in the world.

Me and Mr. Lean Hybrid Muscle and busy dad Elliott Hulse

Check out what I think you MUST do to stay in shape while traveling and the BIGGEST diet mistake I seen people making during my trip to California.The 4 hour east-west coast time shift was quite the adjustment, so I found myself wide awake at 5am every morning. I like to take advantage of training at different gyms when I travel.

…So it was a great chance to hit the nearest big chain gym for a couple workouts to clear the mind and body after sitting for 8 hours a day in a conference room. I feel SO much better and energized afterwards!

There’s a reason why so many of the worlds most successful business men start their day with an early morning workout and make it the most important appointment of their day. It’s priceless…

As for phoning my wife at 2am east coast time, not such a great idea! (should of changed the time on my MacBook)

…I think making the time for a workout when you travel no matter where you do it is even more crucial, to combat all the sitting on airplanes, meetings and well, the hotel bar stools…I like to even do a little extra foam rolling and warmup to loosen up the tight knots in my muscles.

But the BIGGEST belly buster I noticed while in the US was how outrageous the portion sizes are in the restaurants compared to Canada. Now don’t get me wrong, even our typical food fare is way beyond what anyones needs for nourishment,but south of the border the portions were twice as much!

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a night out with friends for dinner and drinks when you travel for business, but don’t feel obligated to eat everything on your plate or you just might find yourself paying “overweight” when you check-in at the airport.

The key to long term leanness is to learn to enjoy the treat foods you do eat but just eat less. Sounds like a good deal to me…

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With the popularity of The WeekEND Workout article I wrote a few years back I thought I would switch gears and fit our workouts into most of our work-weeks, so we could be more productive  during the week and have the weekend to kickback with our family.

For a lot of us busy dads trying to stay fit it’s not that we can’t find time to squeeze in 3 or 4 workouts during the week but it’s trying to string together a consecutive hour or two during the work day to complete our workout.

Because let’s face it, most serious workouts usually take an hour to complete after you factor in a proper warmup, a few warmup sets for each exercise and then some cooldown stretching. Then if you prefer to train at a gym, you have to tack on time for commuting and hitting the showers.

But if you’re like me you love how better you feel on the days you DO workout; before, during and after, so recently I bumped my training up from 3 days a week to 4 but cut my workouts almost in half by hacking away the time wasters and focusing on just ONE lift a day during my workout. This took my workouts from 60 minutes to 30 minutes including warmup and cooldown; something you shouldn’t cut out of your workout.

By reducing the QUANTITY in your workouts you have to make up for it in QUALITY so the peck deck or bicep curl machine will not count as a lift in this program. You need to pick the big multi muscle movers, like squats, deadlifts, bench presses, standing overhead presses, chinups, pullups, and dips.

There is a reason why powerlifters and olympic lifters stick with these basic pushing and pulling exercises, because they make you bigger and stronger faster than “feeling the burn” on the leg curl machine.

Just knowing you have only ONE lift to do allows you to train more often, even up to 5 days a week if you prefer, and gives you laser like focus to follow the proven muscle building method of progressive overload by gradually breaking personal lifting records each and every week and adding a fews extra pounds to the bar or pushing out an extra rep.

So here is the One Lift a Day Template to build maximum muscle in minimum time. By sticking to the “3-5″ formula you get the results you want with the flexibility to fit any man’s schedule.

Choose one main lift 3-5 days during the work week, hit it hard for 3-5 reps of 3-5 sets and get on with your day knowing that no muscle will be left behind by the end of the week.

If you want to focus more on getting stronger in specific exercises stick with the same lift choices for 4 weeks. If strictly building bigger muscles is more your goal, choose a different exercise lift each week.

Monday- Standing Barbell or Dumbbell Shoulder Press

Tuesday- Barbell Deadlifts or Dumbbell Deadlifts, or *Chinups

*Wednesday OFF or – Chinups or Pullups

Thursday- Barbell Bench Press or Dumbbell Bench Press (flat, incline or decline) or Dips

Friday- Barbell Back Squat or Front Squat or Box Squat

*For a 4 day split you can choose chinups as a main lift on Day 2 or for a 5 day split choose only chinups or pullups on Day 5

But wait! No curls or crunches?

Don’t let the simplicity fool you, chinups and deadlifts will give you brawny biceps and forearms and standing overhead presses and squats will strengthen and stabilize your abs better than rolling around on the dirty gym floor.

So don’t worry about being a weekend warrior and keep your work and workouts for the workweek so you have the weekends to rest and recover with your family.

Because being a strong dad means more than just lifting weights…

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There is nothing worse than trying to get in a good workout when the gym is jam-packed!

Well I created for you the Busy Gym Workout that works every muscle in your body and only requires a bench and ONE set of dumbbells…

For days when your local gym is packed liked sardines and probably don’t smell much better, head over to an empty corner of the gym with a flat bench and a set of dumbbells and crank up your ipod to blast out the Busy Gym Workout.

*Warmup with 10 reps of bodyweight squats, pushups and lunges.

Pick one set of dumbbells that you can perform at least 3 sets of 8-10 reps for all exercises.

A Db bench squat to shoulder press, rest 60 secs (hold dumbbells at shoulder height and squat back on bench until your butt touches then stand up and press dumbbells overhead),
B1 One Arm Bent Over DB row, no rest go directly to
B2 One Arm Flat DB Chest press, rest 60 secs
C1 Seated DB Bicep curls,no rest go directly to
C2 Lying DB Tricep Ext, rest 60 secs
D1 Cross Body Mountain Climbers, no rest go directly to
D2 Ab Plank From Floor, rest 60 secs

By using supersets and exercises that keep you in the same space you get an intense workout without the wait!

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I CRINGE every time I see some clown stroll into the gym cold off the street and start loading up the bar without completing a proper warmup.

Coincidentally it seems the same people who neglect this important part of their workout are the same people complaining about shoulder pain or back pain and wrap themselves up like a mummy before their workout with wrist wraps, elbow wraps, knee wraps and the infamous weight lifting belt for EVERY exercise so they can manage to get through their workout.

Even though I don’t recommend the “old school” warmups of walking on a treadmill for 5 minutes and then static stretching before your workout, (which I will explain in a future post) it is still a lot better than doing nothing at all!

What I do recommend is a Dynamic Warm-Up before you workout, so here is my current warmup I do before EVERY Dad Fitness workout to enhance muscular activation and increase joint mobility.

Give this one a try or let me know what you do for your workout warmup by leaving a comment below…

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E=mc²

You might remember this from your old high school math class.

It was Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Despite Einstein’s well known brilliance, what amazes me even more was he was also a busy dad of 3 kids.

Einstein was known for challenging the status quo and I think if he was alive today he would tell us busy dads who continue to waste time on long boring workouts that leave us even more exhausted to smarten up and fly right!

Einstein doing his interval training

So let’s do the math…

A typical workout may look like this.

Pushups, 3 sets of 12-15 reps, rest 60 secs
Deadlifts, 3 sets of 6-8 reps, rest 60 secs
Bicep Curls, 3 sets of 8-10 reps, rest 60 secs
Shoulder Press, 3 sets of 8-10 reps, rest 60 secs

With each set taking almost a minute to complete and resting a minute in between sets this workout would take you about 30 minutes on paper.

But in reality, this workout would take even longer as you would have to move around the gym setting up each exercise and changing weights, not to mention actually getting to the gym.

Even a 40 minute workout is not bad compared to most endurance type workouts found in the muscle mags on your local newsstand.

What if I could show you how to get this same great workout using all the same exercises in half the time and without all the equipment?

Would you be interested? If your a busy dad, you should be.

Enter the Dad Fitness Theory of Efficiency, which is
E=Dad ^Fit

I am so smart…SMRT

Where E is Efficiency, Dad is well… you!, and Fit is what you will become using this workout routine

So it’s time we pulled a General Motors with our workouts by getting rid of the excess junk and focusing on what works…no offense Saturn owners.

Check out this video to see the same Dad Fitness workout using the exact same exercises done in all in one movement but without the wasted time.

Plus all you need is a simple set of dumbbells!

*Warmup with 10 reps of bodyweight burpees.

Dumbbell Pushup, no rest, go directly to
Dumbbell Deadlift, no rest, go directly to
Dumbell Bicep Curl, no rest, go directly to
Dumbbell Shoulder Press, rest 60 secs

Complete this circuit 8-10 times before resting, and repeat the circuit 3 times.

Total workout time is about 15 minutes. How’s that for efficiency?

So lets get smart with our time and put the “work” back into our workouts so we can spend less time with the dumbbells and more time being a dad…

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