Almost every RD, MD, and Ph.D. believes it. Right? Not necessarily.

The role of saturated fats and heart disease is a hot button topic in nutrition today. This doesn’t filter down to the mainstream media, but many of the top minds in nutrition are re-examining this issue.

Just this month in the June edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition there is an editorial entitled “Are refined carbohydrates worse than saturated fat?” The editorial written by Dr. Frank Hu, a medical doctor and professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, contends that:

“…diets that are typically low in fat (particularly saturated fat) and high in complex carbohydrates led to substantial decline in the percentage of energy intake from total and saturated fats in the United States. At the same time, it has spurred a compensatory increase in consumption of refined carbohydrates and added sugars-a dietary shift that may be contributing to the current twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

The changed landscape in obesity and dietary patterns suggests a need to reassess the dominant diet-heart paradigm and related dietary recommendations, i.e., the strategy of replacing total and saturated fats with carbohydrates.”

This editorial references a study published in the May 2009 edition of the same journal that pooled the results from 11 American and European studies.  In the study,replacing saturated fat calories with high GI carbohydrates actually increased the risk of heart disease!

Let’s look at one of the older studies often cited to support this hypothesis: The Seven Countries Study. Ancel Keys, a professor at the University of Minnesota, compared fat consumption in various populations with heart disease. The results were a nice and neat looking line graph. The data looked very convincing, but there was one huge problem. The databases Professor Keys used to plot the graph for the seven countries study contained data for 22 countries. When data for all 22 countries are plotted there is no correlation whatsoever between fat intake and heart disease.

The Framingham Heart Study is also frequently referenced, even though the data from this study shows no correlation between diet and serum LDL, HDL, or total cholesterol.

Yet Dr. William Kannel, the original director of the study, stated in a “clarification” of the results that even though there was no relationship between diet and serum cholesterol intake in the Framingham Study group, “it is incorrect to interpret this finding to mean that diet has no connection to blood cholesterol.”

Huh? The study found no connection between diet and serum cholesterol so how else can we interpret it?

Dr. William Castelli (Dr. Kannel’s successor as the head of the Framingham study) interpreted the data as “disappointing.” Here is his full quote, published in an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine:

“Most of what we know about the effects of diet factors, particularly the saturation of fat and cholesterol, on serum lipid parameters derives from metabolic ward-type studies. Alas, such findings, within a cohort studied over time have been disappointing; indeed the findings have been contradictory. For example, in Framingham, Mass, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the more calories one ate, the lower the person’s serum cholesterol.”
But even in ward-type studies that show an increase in bad cholesterol (LDL’s), there is also a proportional increase in good cholesterol (HDL’s). In addition, triglycerides are often lowered. Both high HDL’s and low triglycerides have been individually associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Any negative health impact from increased LDL’s is offset by this corresponding increase in HDL’s and decrease in triglycerides.

This would explain why in large population studies, a link between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease has never been shown. In both the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) and the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MR-FIT) no significant correlation was found between dietary consumption of saturated fat and cardiovascular disease! In both of these studies researchers admitted to being “disappointed” by the lack of results.

At first glance some studies will seem to support the ”saturated fat clogs arteries” hypothesis. For example, in one follow up analysis of the data from the Seven Countries Study researchers concluded in the abstract that “…saturated fat, vitamin C, and smoking are important determinants of all cause mortality.”  But if you read thru the entire text you will see that the data showed no link between saturated fat consumption alone and age adjusted mortality. Only by grouping all three risk factors together (saturated fat, vitamin C, and smoking) were the researchers able to show a significant correlation.

“In controlled, long term studies saturated fat intake has never been linked to increases in cardiovascular disease or all cause mortality”

So what does this mean? Personally, I intend to stop worrying only about saturated fat and cholesterol. Other dietary factors, such as eliminating trans fats and other industrial seed oils, will have a much greater effect than reducing your intake of saturated fat and cholesterol.

From time to time I like to search the web and see what my competition is up to. I like to be aware of there training styles and philosophies so I can better identify the advantages of choosing us over anyone else. And I strive to keep my prices competitive so I also search for session rates and special offers.

Lately I haven’t been doing this as much, mostly because anytime I look someone up it seems like they’re of business. I have been fortunate to remain a strong and viable business during these tough economic times. And while technically my competition shutting their doors is a positive for my business I find no pleasure in others misfortune.

But recently a new client came to the studio to try out some of the strongman workouts we have been specializing in lately. We took him through a workout consisting of five sets of backwards sled drag alternate with one minute Atlas stone holds. The second circuit alternated the keg load with farmer’s walk. Kettlebell man makers were the finisher.

This is a brutally hard workout that improves nearly every aspect of fitness. It burns fat, builds muscle, increases strength, and improves both anaerobic and aerobic endurance. By any definition you want to use, it is a “functional workout.”

I bring this up because this gentleman has worked with one of my competitors in Raleigh who professes to specialize in “function fitness.” It sparked my interest, and I decided to do some research.

The primary claim on this website was that “functional” training builds a lean, flexible body that is resilient to injury while traditional weight training creates a muscle bound physique that is inflexible, unfunctional, and injury prone. In addition, this website claims that functional training workouts are shorter and less monotonous than traditional workouts.

I have many issues with this claim, including the use of the term “unfunctional.” Although I wasn’t an English major in college, I’m pretty sure this isn’t a word. But let’s just assume it was a typo and this person meant nonfunctional…

No one would describe Adrian Peterson, running back for the Minnesota Vikings as nonfunctional. He led the NFL in rushing last season and is following that up with another all-pro year.

Yet in an interview with Men’s Fitness magazine he speaks about how he built his incredible lower body power with barbell squats and lunges, very traditional strength training movements. And while he trains to be a better football player, a side effect of his workout is a very impressive, lean physique.

Adrian Peterson, All Pro NFL Running Back

And did his “unfunctional” barbell training make Adrian more injury prone? I doubt it. He is routinely tackled by men that outweigh him by over 100 pounds, yet he was able to play in all 16 games last year.

While I have never tested Adrian Peterson’s flexibility, this claim is just as ridicules as the others. One of my former clients is a scholarship football player at Penn State. He is 6’2”, 300 pounds and can bench press a Kia. Yet while I was training him he was also able to do a full split!

Jillian Michaels

Don’t think traditional weight training exercises are just for men. Jillian Michaels, celebrity trainer from “The Biggest Loser” also focuses her workouts on basic moves such as lunges and bench presses. Would you describe her as bulky?

Are traditional workouts monotonous? I think that depends more on the abilities of the trainer than anything else.

The bench press is one of the exercises that almost every functional training guru despises. But nothing adds muscle and strength to the chest, shoulders, and triceps as fast as this basic movement. And like it or not many men are looking to build their upper bodies. With many of them we may bench press twice a week. Yet almost every client raves about the variety. How do we do this?

Take a look at the following two workouts.

Workout one – Vince Gironda Volume Training

A)  Bench Press – 10 sets of 10 reps

Load a barbell with 50-60% of your one rep max. Set your Gym boss timer to beep every minute for ten minutes. Every time it beeps do a set of ten bench presses. If you don’t have a Gym boss timer go get one. They are an amazing help when performing any type of timed or interval workout.

Workout two – The Chain Drop Set

A1)  Bench Press with Three Chains – 5 reps

A2)  Bench Press with Two Chains – 5 reps

A3)  Bench Press with One Chain – 5 reps

A4)  Bench Press – 5 reps

Load a barbell with a combination of plates and three chains. Make sure that you can perform 6-8 reps with the total load. Perform 5 reps and take a chain off each side. Immediately get back down and do 5 more reps. Continue until all the chains are off the bar and perform a final set. Rest three minutes and repeat two more times.

Both workouts include only bench press. Yet both are completely different. No one would feel like they did the same workout two sessions in a row if they were alternated.

Most of our female clients do some type of lunge or split squat every single workout. Most will also tell you that the thing they love most about training with us is that the workouts are always different. Why is that? Because we do over fifty different lunge variations!

One thing I’m not really sure about is why the functional training workouts this trainer puts clients thru are shorter than traditional training. My best guess is that shorter workouts allow him to see more clients in the same amount of time, creating more revenue for his business.

One of my clients came to me last month and asked me if I could take her through Jillian Michaels workout plan from her book Making the Cut. For those of you who are not familiar with Jillian, she is a Team Trainer from the hit TV show “The Biggest Loser.”

Typically this would not be something I would do for a number of reasons. First of all, most of the celebrity trainers I have encountered in the past are more celebrity than trainer. Put bluntly their workouts usually suck.

Second, I’m a big believer in personalizing workouts to the individual. No generic book can give you a program designed specifically for your personal strengths, goals, and limitations.

But Joy is a great person and a great client so I told her I would look the book over and if I didn’t think it was total garbage I would help push her through the workouts.

After looking over the book I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was a program focused on compound weight training exercises done in circuit fashion with cardio intervals at the end of most of the circuits. For those of you who are familiar with my training style this is pretty similar to how I train most clients who have general fitness/body composition goals.

I typically utilize more kettlebell exercises, sled drags, waiter walks, and similar high calorie demand exercises and some of the moves Jillian utilized would be what I consider “entertainment” exercises (i.e. movements that more closely resemble a circus trick than exercise) but overall I was pleased with the contents of the book and agreed to take Joy through the 30 day program.

Here’s where the story gets interesting: Joy wears a heart rate monitor during her workouts that track calories burned. During the course of the 30 day program, the typical workout would take between 45 and 50 minutes and would burn 350 calories. The most she ever burned was 400 calories.

We finished up the program and after a few days off Joy came back ready for a new challenge. She wanted to repeat the program but in my experience repeating the same workout never produces the same results as the first time through so we compromised. Two days a week we would do the routines outlined in Jillian’s book and the other two days we would do kettlebell only training.

Today was our first kettlebell workout and we were both amazed by the results. In 42 minutes (shorter than any of the workouts in the book) Joy burned 444 calories! This is 11% more calories than the hardest workout in the book and 26% higher than the average workout!  Plus I am sure this number will go up significantly because almost 20 minutes of today’s session was teaching proper technique.

If you would like more information about kettlebell training there are many useful and free resources available on the internet. Some of the better sites include:

http://www.mikemahler.com/ – lots of great free articles

http://www.irontamer.com/ – a useful blog and a kettlebell e-book

http://www.dragondoor.com/ – the original kettlebell resource

Here at Kuzora  Personal Training – Raleigh we are offering a “Learn to Use Kettlebells” package that includes:

One 60 minute one on one orientation session ($70 value)

During these sessions you will learn two foundational movements: the swing and the Turkish get-up. With these two exercises alone you will build a strong core, tone and tighten your glutes, inner thighs, and hamstrings, burn calories and bodyfat, and develop strong, healthy shoulders.

Your own kettlebell ($40 value)

Want to try kettlebells but didn’t know what size and weight you should start with? We take the guess work out. During your orientation our trainers will assess your strength and fitness levels and send you home with an appropriately sized kettlebell of your own.

A personalized eight week training plan ($199 value)

After your orientation, we will email you a personalized workout plan you can do in the privacy of your own home.

Three bi-weekly follow-up sessions ($135 value)

These 30 minute follow-up “accountability” sessions will be used to keep your kettlebell fitness plan on track. We will correct and perfect technique on the basic movements as well as teach you more advanced exercises such as the snatch, windmill, and clean & press.

We are currently offering this package for $299. (There is an additional charge for kettlebells over 20 lbs.) This is a great way to learn how to integrate the fat burning power of kettlebells into your current routine.

Contact us today at (919)569-9929 to get started

by John Kuzora of Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh Wake Forest NC

There are two ways that physical activity can help you lose body fat. First, you burn calories while you are actually doing the activity and create a calorie deficit. This one is pretty self explanatory. If you walk for 30 minutes and burn 300 calories you have created a calorie deficit. Theoretically if you eat the same and create this 300 calorie per day deficit you would lose approximately 2.5 pounds per month. Of course things rarely work out that way for a number of reasons. Your body adapts the stress of the exercise, you subconsciously eat more to compensate for the calories you are burning, or the intensity of the exercise simply isn’t high enough to force your body out of homeostasis.

But there is a second, more powerful way that exercise can help you lose body fat. You continue to burn calories for a period of time after exercise. This known as excess post exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, and maximizing this metabolic boost can be a powerful tool in body composition.

EPOC is the calories expended above resting values after exercise. After activity, the body needs to perform several metabolic functions to return to a rested state. These include replenishment of oxygen stores, resynthesis of phosphagen, removal of lactic acid, among other things. Studies show that it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 48 hours for the body to fully recover. Most studies show that the intensity of exercise has more effect on EPOC than duration. In other words, working really hard for shorter amounts of time seems to increase your metabolism longer than slowly pounding away on a treadmill at 2.5 mph.

(For a more detailed discussion of EPOC please visit http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epoc.html)

The following workout fits the bill perfectly for maximizing EPOC and boosting your metabolism to new heights:

The 60 yard shuttle

The 60 yard shuttle is a simple yet brutally effective anaerobic conditioning workout. It will improve your VO2 max, agility, and speed while burning calories and speeding up your metabolism.

To perform the workout, set up three cones 5 yards apart. The participant starts from one end, runs 5 yards and back to the start, 10 yards and back, then 15 yards and finishes at the start line. A total of 60 yards is completed. The person is required to touch the line with their hand at each turn, for a total of five touches.

Make sure you warm-up before starting this workout. Some general cardio (jogging or jumping rope for five minutes) and some dynamic flexibility exercises (leg swings and marching inch worms) will do. Start with anywhere from 6 to 12 repetitions. For example, someone new to interval training may start with 6 reps completed in 30 seconds followed by 90 seconds rest. At 30 seconds, you will be running, not sprinting, but this may be appropriate if your body is not used to 100% efforts. In this example progress first by decreasing you rest, the increase your speed, and finally add reps.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you are already in great shape and are looking for an intense challenge try completing 12 reps in 12 minutes each under 12 seconds. The intensity of this 12 minutes workout will amaze you.

Most trainers out there don’t understand functional training. They believe that if a movement is done on a BOSU or with a resistance band it somehow magically becomes “functional” and is better than the same movement performed in a more traditional manner. Sometimes I think they might be confusing the word “functional” with “inflatable.” Or maybe they just need to find a use for all their pool toys during the winter months.

Strictly speaking, something is “functional” if it serves a purpose, role, or function. In terms of sports performance, I label an exercise as functional if it improves an athletes ability to function in there chosen activity. This can be very sport specific. For example, if you play tennis a chin-up is a highly functional exercise. Within a few weeks of beginning a chin-up program you will add significant speed to your serve and significantly improve your ability to “function” on the courts. For long distance road cyclists the same program of chin-ups would likely be very counter productive as the upper body hypertrophy could decrease performance.

If you train for general fitness and your sport is life, than evaluate things that are challenging for you and determine what exercises can help improve your function in those particular activities. If you are eighty years old and have trouble getting up from a seated position a heavy dose of bench squats would be highly functional. If you travel for work and carry a heavy suitcase all over the country, farmer’s walk and suitcase deadlifts would be more functional choices.

That being said, certain tools are extremely versatile and can be used to improve function for many types of athletes and regular people alike. The following are some of my favorites in no particular order:

Kettlebells

The five minute kettlebell snatch test (along with hill sprints and Tabata protocol rower intervals) is one of the most demanding and time efficient anaerobic workouts one can perform. And life is an anaerobic sport. Think about it: running up the stairs, sprinting with you luggage in an airport to try and make it to the gate on time, moving furniture in your new house, even carrying your laundry basket from your laundry room to the bedroom are all anaerobic activities.

Swings, cleans, & snatches also increase glute strength and psoas flexibility, both common problems in our country. Correcting these common weaknesses can improve running speed, jumping ability, and lower back health.

Kettlebells can also be used to provide variety on almost any basic movement such as front squats and military presses.

Hex Bar

A Hex bar is an indispensable tool that will allow almost anyone to deadlift with proper technique. The deadlift is one of the most functional movements around. Everyone needs to pick something up off the ground at some point, and learning how to do this with proper technique and in good position to protect your back is crucial.

The unique shape of the bar helps keep the load centered through body’s midline, reducing stress on the lower back. And the two-handle option helps to accommodate taller people and people with poor calf, hamstring, and hip flexibility.

As either a tool to teach proper deadlifting technique or as a source of variety for a more advanced athlete, the Hex Bar can’t be beat.

Dragging Sled

The dragging sled is a particularly useful tool for increasing work capacity and rehabbing injuries. Because exercises performed using the sled involve only concentric muscle contractions there is virtually no soreness associated with sled workouts.

People with knee pain on squats and lunges can easily perform a backwards sled drag pain free. Most of the work is handled by the vastus medialis, the chronically underdeveloped head of the quadriceps muscle.

Some other more specialized tools we utilize at Kuzora Personal Training – Raleigh are sand bags, strongman logs, an atlas stone, thick handled barbells, and my personal favorite, the half filled keg. Watch this video and you can easily see how lifting that over you head will build significantly more functional strength and core stability than the contra-lateral single arm DB overhead press standing on one leg on the BOSU!

I have received such a high number of inquiries since my first blog on complexes I have decided to post some of the most popular complexes we use here at Kuzora Personal Training in Raleigh , NC :

The Beach Barbell Complex (named for the everlasting pump you get in your arms and shoulders)

Wide Grip Barbell Upright Rows – 12

Medium Grip Barbell Curls – 12

Medium Grip Upright Rows – 12

Close Grip Barbell Curls – 12

Close Grip Barbell Upright Rows – 12

Barbell French Press – 12

Choose a light weight for this one, usually a weight you could curl for at least twenty repetitions. Forty-five to sixty-five pounds works well for most men and an eighteen to twenty-four pound body bar will work for most women.

The Bodybuilders DB Complex (preformed on a flat bench)

Nose-breakers – 15

Semi-supinated Bench Press – 30

Flyes – 15

DB Bench Press – 30

This is great for hyperplasmic hypertrophy in all your upper body pushing muscles or the day after a heavy bench workout as “active recovery.” If you can do two rounds of this complex with thirty pound dumbbells you have an exceptionally high pain tolerance.

The Javorek Inspired Kettlebell Complex

Single Arm Swing – 6

Snatch – 6

Squat with Shoulder Press – 6

Bent Over Row – 6

Snatch – 6

I like to use this complex to perfect kettlebell snatch technique. By the time you get to the second set of snatches your shoulders and upper back are significantly fatigued and you are forced to generate most of the power with your glutes and hamstrings.

The DB Shoulder Tri-set

One & a Quarter DB Military Press – 8

Arnold Press – 6

DB Military Press – 6

Technically more of a mechanical advantage drop set, this complex takes advantage of increasingly easier movements to allow you to keep pressing the weight once you have already reached muscular fatigue. You can perform it seated or standing.

Hopefully these should keep you busy for awhile…

One way we accomplish this is thru our “Fitness Boot Camp.” In these classes we use various exercise modalities and equipment to create a constantly changing and appropriately challenging workout in a supportive, fun environment.

One of our favorite Boot Camp workouts here at Kuzora Personal Training, in Raleigh NC  is the “Blackjack.” Ask any of the people who participate in our boot camp and they will be sure to tell you just how “fun” this workout is!

The basic layout for the workout is as follows:

Perform One Jump Squat (regular squats are fine too!)

Jog 40 yards

Perform Twenty Push-ups (on your toes or your knees)

Jog Back

Repeat nineteen more times increasing the number of jump squats by one and decreasing the number of push-ups by one each time. Try to rest as little as possible.

Pretty simple, right? So let’s turn off the computer and start moving!

Oh, yeah, by the way email me if you can figure out why we call this one the “Blackjack.”

John Kuzora – Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh

Complexes are a series of exercises performed without putting your barbell, kettlebell, or dumbbells down. The many benefits of complexes include:

1) They are very time efficient

2) They require very little equipment

3) They burn a lot of calories

4) They build muscle and improve cardiovascular conditioning at the same time

Istvan Javorek, a professor of fitness and strength and conditioning coach in Kansas who is thought of as the creator or complex training, has this to say about complexes:

“My original goal with the Complex exercises was to find an efficient and aggressive method of performance enhancement that saves time and makes the program more enjoyable.”

So they next time you are pressed for time and need to squeeze in a workout try this complex I adapted from Mixed Martial Arts legend Randy Couture. He is quite possibly the best conditioned 45 year old alive, often out lasting men half his age so when he talks strength and conditioning take notice.

Perform the following series of exercises without putting the barbell down. Half of your Standing Military Press one rep max is a good weight to start with.

Bent Over Row x 8

Upright Row x 8

Military Press x 8

Good Morning x 8

Split Squat Right Leg Forward x 8

Split Squat Left Leg Forward x 8

Front Squat w/ Push Press x 8

Romanian Deadlift x 8

Perform three to five complexes resting one minute between each. If you do not know how to perform any of the exercises please find an NSCA certified trainer or Strength and conditioning coach to teach you proper exercise technique.

Kettlebells can also be an excellent tool for complexes. Here’s an example:

Single Arm Swing x 6

Snatch x 6

Front Squat + Push Press x 6

Bent Over Row x 6

Snatch x 6

If you would like more information on complexes please consult www.istvanjavorek.com