An interview with Al Kavadlo

www.alkavadlo.com

Al Kavadlo is an animal.  Just like me he grew up a tall skinny kid who got into fitness at a fairly early age. A lot like most trainers these days, Al started his fitness career by training out of local facilities and doing private in home sessions.  It wasn’t until long that Al came into his own style and took it to the streets/parks of New York City.  I have had the pleasure of connecting with Al these past couple of weeks and I can already tell I like his style.  He’s brutally honest, and his training style is inspiring.  Here is what has conspired between the two of us these past couple of weeks.

Me: Is the majority of your training done outdoors?

Al: Yes.

Me: How long have you been training this way?

Al: I’ve gradually been getting away from working out at gyms over the last several years.  Up until recently, I had always worked at gyms, so I didn’t want to spend all my free time there as well.  That’s how I got started with working out in parks and other recreational areas.

Me: Nice, how long do your workouts last?

Al: Some days I only have 15-20 minutes to devote to my own workout, other times I might train for over an hour.  I’d say on average I spend about 45 minutes a day working out.  If you hit it hard, you don’t need a lot of time.

Me: I agree, sometimes those 15 minute shock and awe sessions are the best. That human flag position is sick.  How long did it take you to get good at it?

Al: Well it’s tricky to say because I had a very good foundation before I ever tried to do a human flag.  Once I got the idea to try it, it only took a few months to start to get the hang of it, but like I said, I was already pretty fit.  It’s still a work in progress for me though–there are guys who can do it for a lot longer and with way better control than I can.

Me: Still it’s pretty bad ass. If you only had time to do one exercise, what would it be?

Al: It’s hard to say because there is no one exercise that really gets everything.  But If I had to pick one it’d probably be Turkish Get-ups or Muscle-ups.

Me: Do you do anything that might cause somebody to classify you as a geek? ie comic books, video games, tech, movie trivia etc.

Al: I’ve been a huge Weezer fan since the early 90’s.  And I guess running my own website is a bit geeky.

Me: Do you have any fitness industry pet peeves?

Al: My biggest pet peeve, and this is not just in fitness, is lying.  So whenever I feel like someone is peddling a quick fix or trying to hype a bogus product, it really bugs me.  I also get annoyed by trainers who act like their methods are the only way to get results.  There are many roads to the same destination.

Me: Agreed, people need to start being honest more with themselves and others.  Also we all need to understand that we’re all on the same team.  Drop the egos. What do you see happening in your future regarding fitness?

Al: I will continue to challenge my limits with body weight training and keep exercise as a daily part of my lifestyle.

Me: Who wins in a death match Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.

Al: Gotta go with Chuck on this one.

Me: Correct answer! Do you have any great physical achievements that you’ve accomplished and would like to share?

Al: Running the NYC marathon last November was probably my greatest physical accomplishment.  You don’t realize just how long 26.2 miles is until you actually run it.

Me: Damn, I can’t even drive that far without my legs cramping.

Al: As far as feats of strength, the one arm chin-up is the one I’m most proud of because it took me years of practice to get it as good as I have (even though there are still lots of guys who do it way better than I do).

Me: Do you have any role models or someone who’s inspired you?

Al: I’ve had tons of role models–everyone from Arnold Swartzenegger to my own mom!  There are also a few people I’ve met who have been “reverse role models”–I watch them to see what NOT to do!

Me: The rest of the world often sees us Americans as fat and over consuming.  What do you think people in this country need to start doing/thinking to change that image?

Al: People need to start giving a shit, Jamie!  Apathy is the number one problem in America–obesity is just an offshoot of that.

Me: What can people do to find out more about you and how to train with you?

Al: By going to my website, www.AlKavadlo.com.  Unfortunately, I am not taking on new personal training clients right now.  However, there’s tons of free videos and articles on the site, so people can still get the Al Kavadlo experience.

I’ve always been into meditation. I guess it’s something I picked up from martial arts at an early age. But just recently I’ve been using it as a post workout tool for recovery. I have to say, it seems to do the job quite well.

Not to mention there are some legit studies showing it’s effectiveness post exercise. Check this study out from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Here is my current routine.

1. I find a quite place to sit down and relax. I try to keep it distraction free, but by no means do you need to be in complete darkness and silence. Hell, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes. There’s no set rules in meditation. That’s why I like it.

2. Start by watching your breath. Just notice the sensation of the air entering your lungs. Try to keep the breaths deep into your abdomen. Almost like you’re breathing into your gut.

3. Focus on relaxing every muscle in your body. Start from the top of your head on down to your toes.

4. Once relaxed you’ll probably notice your mind will tend to wonder off occasionally. That’s alright, it always happens. Just bring yourself back to watching your breath.

It doesn’t take much to get results. Start with 2 or 3 minutes. Sometimes recovery is neglected, but it really is one of the most important aspects of a workout. In recovery is where you build lean muscle, burn fat, and clear harmful stress hormones from the body.

Give it a shot. Let me know if you’ve tried this or have found a better way.

1. Leg Extensions: You’ve already spent most of the day in a seated position. The last thing you need to do is train your legs from that same position. As someone who spends any amount of time sitting we have to be sure that our workout routines are well balanced. Providing exercises that focus more on quality movement patterns and less on specific muscle groups. Truth is leg extensions may be doing more harm than help. Passive structures in the knee (ligaments) are stressed more in open chain exercises like the leg extension which can lead to future knee pain and range of motion problems. During the knee extension several stabilizing muscles are taken out of the movement creating an imbalance of work done by primary movers and synergistic stabilizers. In other words, this is an injury waiting to happen.

Alternatives

*Dynamic Lunges
*Step-Ups
*Front Squats
*Terminal Knee Extensions or Backwards Walking for any individuals with knee impairments

2. Military Pressing: Few people, not excluding high level athletes possess optimal shoulder build to be able to do this exercise “safely”. I put safely in quotes because you may not suffer an acute injury from shoulder presses, but chances are down the road you may develop some sort of impingement. Understand this is not a matter of poor training or weak musculature. It is simply a matter of how you are built. This is not to say that Military Presses can’t have their place in a well planned out exercise program. Let’s face it; the average computer guy geek has sub-optimal posture in the first place. The last thing we want to try and do is have him press heavy weights over his head. The outcome could be very dangerous. For our purposes in the gym, I believe much safer exercises can be used to create even better results without this risk.

Alternatives

*Push-Ups (there is a large variety)
*Gators
*Press-Outs

3. Sit-Ups: Everybody’s favorite exercise. If not for great looking abs then surely they are good for “core” strength and your lower back right? The truth is, when you perform a Sit-Up you are using very little abdominal strength and a whole lot of hip flexor strength. Contracting these hip flexors and flexing forward can create excessive amounts of compression on our lower spine. For anyone who sits for any length of time during the day this is not an ideal situation. Most geeks need more abdominal strength but there are much safer and more effective ways to go about getting it.

Alternatives

*Planks and Side Planks
*Reverse Pull-Ins
*Jack Knives
*Chop and Lift

4. Bench Press: Another favorite exercise to most average gym goers. But here we sit, not the “average” person. One of the last things we as geeks want to do is reinforce our tendency to be slumped with our shoulders rolled forward. After all this is the position most of us are in the majority of the day if we spend any time at a computer. Unfortunately our friend the bench press is only going to do more hurt than help when it comes to this negative posture. Don’t worry though, like the others there are plenty more exercises that can be used to get the same and most likely better results. Most of which allow our shoulder blades to move freely throughout the exercise which actually reinforces a more desired posture.

Alternatives

*Push-Ups
*Cable presses (unilateral or bilateral)
*Gators

5. Upright Rows: When it comes to the upright row I struggle to find a reason why anyone would need this movement. If this is in your routine I suggest you take a moment to re-evaluate what your goals are in the gym. Keeping your forearms internally rotated while you abduct your upper arms is a recipe for impingement.

Alternatives

*Barbell Rows
*Dumbbell Rows
*Face Pulls
*Cable Row Variations

Conclusion: When designing yourself an exercise program it is important to create goals and choose exercises based on their potential benefits as well as risks. As geeks we have to be mindful of our posture and the implications it will have on our workouts. It may not be a glamorous approach but in the long run it will be the most effective approach regardless of what our goals may be. Remember, if you get injured working out it won’t matter what those goals are because you won’t be able to work out at all.

The Scene; You’re driving in your Volkswagen on a cool autumn day. You gaze out the window to admire the colorful foliage when out of nowhere a toddler on a big wheel rolls directly in front of your car. You slam on the breaks, just barely avoiding disaster.

You can feel your heart in your chest. It appears everything has slowed down. Your vision seems to have narrowed. Your once clogged sinuses are now clear. That nagging tendonitis you have had in your elbow seems to have temporarily gone away.

Your body has just given you a powerful dose of Epinephrine.

Epinephrine/Adrenaline

The fight of flight hormone. Your body releases epinephrine in response to short term stress situations. These situations tend to involve extreme changes in the environment, like those of temperature, noise, bright light, or children running in front of your car. The purpose of this temporary doping is to allow increased oxygen to reach the brain and skeletal muscle in order to allow for momentary peak performance. The type of performance one might have needed to escape from a sabre toothed cat 2 million years ago. The software in our bodies hasn’t really updated much since then.

Testosterone

For our purposes I’ll skip the sex education speech and go into the not-so-familiar method of elevating testosterone; through exercise. Studies have shown that using complex movements like squats and pull ups as opposed to leg extensions and biceps curls has a much greater impact on our bodies ability to naturally increase its testosterone levels. Testosterone offers us a plethora of benefits such as increased libido, mental and physical energy, decreased fat mass, and increased protein synthesis and bone density. Not bad for anyone whose goal is to either shed a few pounds or gain some lean muscle. Aside from using compound movements studies also seem to favor using heavy weights when trying to stimulate greater testosterone levels.

Cortisol

Like epinephrine, cortisol is also released due to stress. Its job is to try to bring your body’s systems back to homeostasis after an event. It does this by increasing blood pressure, blood lipids, and blood sugar. It also temporarily shuts down the immune system in order to cater to the other more important bodily systems. Unfortunately, some negative side effects of long term cortisol release can leave you pretty beat up on the inside. Your body is now more likely to store fat close to the vital organs in your gut so that it is more readily available for the next stressful event. A good way to spot the stressed out guy at your office is to look for the beer belly.

Although this article did not focus completely around exercise and fitness, it should be easy to see how knowing a little bit about the way things work on the inside can affect the way you look on the outside. Understand and learn your body; that is a major key to success in any fitness program.

The Step Up is one of my favorite leg exercises because it’s suitable for both beginners and advanced trainees.  Several variables can be changed in order to make this exercise more difficult or easy including changing step height, amount of weight lifted, and the placement of the free leg at the top of the movement.  That brings me to my next point; keeping the free leg from touching the bench at the top of the Step Up is a great way to challenge unilateral stability.  At the top of the movement the glute of your working leg has to work hard in order to keep your body from wavering.

Primary muscles worked.

• Quadriceps
• Glutes

Stabilizers

• Abdominals
• Obliques
• Hip Flexors
• Adductors
• Glute Medius

Tips:

1.  Keep your torso tall throughout the entire movement.  Do NOT dip your chest at the bottom.  Also this could be a sign of tight hip flexors.

2.  Fully extend your hip and knee at the top position, really squeeze the glute of your working leg.

3.  Make sure you pause at the top.  If your glutes are weak or your hip flexors are too tight, you’ll have a tendency to want to cut the movement short.

By Vince DelMonte

www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

If you could sculpt one body part to perfection for next summer, what would it be? Let me guess – six pack abs! I don’t know anybody who does not want to shrink there waistline, lose body fat, eliminate low back pain and develop a jaw dropping set of rock-hard six-pack. Too bad that your brain has been poisoned with contaminated information.

Before you can start learning how to get six-pack abs and discover the truth about what it really takes to build a beach-worthy abdominal section, you must first expose the lies, myths and rumors. Before we talk about how to get six-pack abs, the right way, we must re-program your hard drive and empty the trash can of garbage you have been fed.

Because of all this hyped up and misguided information – even among so-called ‘fitness experts’ – you should skeptical of discerning about all abdominal training equipment and programs. Let’s first eliminate the top four ways not to get a six-pack:

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require expensive workout equipment promoted through obnoxious infomercials. You can’t flick on the TV anymore without seeing two new abdominal exercise machines being promoted at once. There are so many of them, that if you get suckered into these ‘ab workout’ gimmicks, you will be broke quicker than Ben Johnson sprints the 100 m dash! And get this: Of the $520 million dollars a year spent on exercise equipment, abdominal machines get a $208 million dollar piece of the pie!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require thousands or even hundreds of crunches a day. So much for the Brittany Spears ab workout! Crunches are decent but totally overused and associated with more being better. Crunches is a very general exercise and general exercises get general results. Excessive floor crunches shorten the abdominal wall, pull your head forward and emphasize poor posture. They also involve a very low level of stimulation which neglects adequate muscle fiber recruitment.

Learning how to get a six-pack does not involve starvation diets. Starvation diets starve the muscle when instead, you should be feeding the muscle. Guess what happens when you starve your body? Your metabolism shuts down out of survival and causes your body to store fat. Your body must get energy from somewhere so guess what gets sacrificed? That’s right, your precious muscle which is in fact responsible for a maintaining a high metabolism. Starve your muscle – great logic!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require fat burning pills. What did the last weight loss pill you bought do for you? The same thing the next one is going to do – nothing! Except give you a thinner wallet but not a thinner waist line. The entire concept of taking pills to ‘burn fat’ is built on a sandy foundation and misleading because diet pills only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. Without focusing on the root problems of a flabby mid-section, like nutrition, lifestyle and proper training, you will just end up where you started – farther away from having a six-pack for summer instead of closer.

If you just landed on earth from Mars today, and were able to avoid these four completely wrong ways to build a six-pack, than you will have an advantage over the rest of the world and be one enormous step closer to taking your shirt off with pride!

About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

He specializes in teaching skinny guys how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without drugs, supplements and training less than before.

The push up is the second greatest body weight movement for upper body strength just behind the body weight row.

Using a smith machine, power rack, or bench you can slowly increase the difficulty of the push up by decreasing your angle to the floor when comfortable.  Eventually you’ll be pushing from a kneeling position and finally doing a full push up off the floor.

Primary muscles worked.

• Pecs
• Triceps
• Shoulders

Stabilizers

• Rotator Cuff
• Traps
• Lats
• Abdominals
• Glutes

Tips:

1.  Keep your abdominals tight and your hips forward.

2.  As you lower, focus on pulling your shoulder blades together.

3.  Use tension; everything needs to be tight in order for your body to remain rigid.

Although I am not a big fan of sit ups and crunches in the first place, people are still going to do them.

We can’t help it.  We’ve been socially conditioned to associate 6 pack abs with doing hundreds of sit ups.  You can thank the media for that one.

Today I thought I’d just bring light to a subject I’ve had a client inquire about lately; working out first thing in the morning.  The conversation started something like this…

Client:  I figured I would wake up 5 minutes early everyday from now on and do 100 sit ups.  That would make an extra 700 a week, 2800 a month etc, etc.

The problem here; upon waking up we have excess fluid accumulation of our vertebral discs during the night’s sleep.  This would create extra stiffness of the spine and also result in extra compression during movements requiring the spine to bend and move.  Not only sit ups and crunches would be a bad idea, but most exercise would not be recommended.

The solution: try not to work out until you’ve been up and about for at least an hour.  Drink your coffee, have breakfast, go for a walk, do some work.

Is the extra 36,500 sit ups a year really worth doing damage to the spine.  I don’t think so.

PS Lay off the sit ups and crunches and do some more reading on The Buff Geek.

Your hands; they’re the most sensory rich part of your body.  The amount of nervous system feedback from your hands to your brain dwarves any other part of your body.  Your shoulders, hips, knees, feet and back don’t even come close.

When you go through the paces of everyday life, your brain relies on signals from your hands, especially when something physical is about to take place.

This is why it’s important to have a strong grip.  A tight grip will reinforce a tight posture through that nervous system feedback.  The brain knows, if the grip is taking an activity seriously, the rest of the body should follow suit.

Test this next time you workout.  Grip those weights just a little bit harder than necessary and you’ll feel much more stable in your lifts.  You can even train your grip when opening and closing doors, carrying a brief case, shaking hands or even just putting dishes away (don’t break them of course).

A good but not exhaustive list of exercises that help with grip strength.

• Dead Lifts
• Pull UPs
• Body Weight Rows
• Kettlebell Swings
• Farmers Walks
• Dumbbell Rows

You should be using a variety of these in your workouts in order to strengthen your grip while your arms are in different positions.

By Mike Roussell PhD(c) http://thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php

Weight loss plateaus can be frustrating and detrimental to your fat loss if not dealt with swiftly and properly. Another way to look at weight loss plateaus is that they are actually your body settling in at a new body weight set point.

The set point theory is basically the idea that your body likes to be at a certain body weight and it will work to keep you there. Chances are you have experienced this in your own life. I’m talking about situations where you will gain or lose weight but inevitably after a couple weeks or months of trying to change you end up around the same body weight (I know for me 175lbs was a set point, in my own system for quite some time).

In order to break these body weight set points, it is important to understand the forces that you are working against (know thy enemy, right?). I’m talking about adaptive thermogenesis. Adaptive thermogenesis is the seemingly automatic reduction in energy expenditure that occurs when you diet. Many think that this is the driving force behind people’s body weight set point.

This is important so I want to make sure I’m explaining it clear enough so here’s an oversimplified example.

You are currently eating 2000 kcal per day. Your body is currently burning 2000 kcal per day. You decided that you need to lose weight so you cut 500 kcal from your diet. So in theory your body should now have to dig up another 500 kcal from body fat to fuel the calorie difference.

It doesn’t work that way. Studies show that your body adjusts its energy output so that it can now function on only 1500 kcal per day. This is adaptive thermogenesis. It has been demonstrated that adaptive thermogenesis occurs with both severe and modest calorie cutting.

What is the driving force behind this? Here are some candidates:

• Changes in body weight
• Changes in Leptin
• Changes in Insulin
• Changes in Thyroid Hormones
• Depletion of Fat Stores

 Fortunately you can beat all of these, prevent adaptive thermogenesis, and keep the weight loss coming.

The answer?

Exercise combined with diet.

This seems to help – but not in all cases. We know from research and anecdotal evidence that not all exercise prescriptions work. What does work is intense metabolic resistance training.

If you are currently stuck at a weight loss plateau, you need to break your body’s set point. To do this it is necessary to undergo a rigorous change in diet and training so that you can in essence shock your system.

Here’s what to do next. Once you break though your sticking weight using Warp Speed Fat Loss (or which ever method you choose), maintenance is very important. Get 5-15lbs below your old body weight set point and maintain that weight. Many people lose their fire and drive after they have lost the weight but you need to stay focused so that you can reset your body’s set point.

Maintain your new weight for 4 weeks (this is ideal – if you can’t go that long at least do 2 weeks) before you start losing weight again. This step wise approach will help reset your system to your new body weight and help fight its urge to return to the old set point. The key is keeping your body weight long enough so that your body ‘thinks’ that is the new normal.

About the Author/More Info:
Warp Speed Fat Loss is a complete 28 day diet and training system crafted to help you lose 10,15, or 20lbs of body fat in just 28 day. To start losing weight fast visit http://www.thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php. Mike Roussell is a nutrition doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University. Mike’s writings can be found in magazines such as Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Testosterone Nation. Mike specializes in fat loss nutrition and diets for busy men and women who need to lose weight fast without it interfering with their lives. Warp Speed Fat Loss (http://www.thebuffgeek.com/warpspeedfatloss.php) is a complete Done-for-You A-Z Fat Loss Blueprint that gives you exactly everything you need to eat to lose weight in record time.