Twitter: @CortArthur
If you want to have the lean
body, the big muscles, and the awesome booty, you have to WORK AT IT!
There is no excuses allowed, only excuses made!!!
I asked my friend Cort Arthur to write a blog over belly fat... I actually had no clue that some of the exercises mentioned would get you abs... Def. try to read the whole thing... when I first started reading it I was expecting to read all these cool tricks but honestly... I'm glad to read that its stuff I'm already doing that is helping build my core which is AWESOME
bc that's a few less things I would have had to add to my work out. THANKS AGAIN CORT :))OH AND I LOVE HOW he bluntly tells you towards the END of the blog that if your not going to work for it then dont complain!! :)) A healthy body
doesnt
come for free and easy.
(thank you Cort)
If you read this blog you will truly understand weight loss more. Its a little hard to read if your not familiar with some of it but if you can wrap your head around it, I honestly think it will help, and its important to understand this stuff anyway!!
Performance Goals and Weight LossHello
everyone! My name is Cort Arthur. I am a friend of Belle’s who all but
begged her to let me write a guest blog post on her magnificent forum.
She has done an amazing job with 1) Her Journey in weight loss and body
transformation, and 2) in telling people the truth about how truly hard
it is and how much it sucks. She often gets praise from people both on
the blog, and also on her Facebook page…I’m telling you now, she
deserves more praise than she gets. Her results are fantastic, and her
honesty is amazing. There is little doubt in my mind as to why she has
been so successful, the previous sentence states the exact reason.
Ketones, Glucose, and Belly FatToday,
I want to talk a little bit about Performance Goals. Belle asked me to
talk about belly fat, and I promise that I am, but it’s going to be a
bit indirectly related to the post as a whole.The
great thing about the human body is that it is, in fact, not that
different from person to person. I often hear, “Oh, eating that way
won’t work for me,” or “I can’t lose weight because my parents were
always heavy, and it’s in my genetics.” While I don’t have a hard time
listening to people who tell me these lines, I do have a very hard time
taking them seriously. Here’s the scoop: the human body is designed to
smash certain foods into an energy efficient, body fueling oblivion,
other types of food is creates into somewhat unusable, definitely
unsustainable bits of badness and deposits them in places that no one
wants to talk about, much less see. (Love handles, saddle bags, Yeah I dont like seeing those either Cort LOL)In
its ultimate state, the human body does what it is supposed to do, it
helps the soul it carries until the ever present expiration date move
from Point A to Point B without getting itself smashed by a dinosaur,
mountain lion, or the ever present alligator/crocodile (perhaps the
scariest animals to ever live!). How do you reach that ultimate state?
Well, I tell you that it has to do more with food than anything else.Ok,
quickly to the bottom line: If you want to lose BELLY FAT, look no
further than the word ketosis. Ketosis, not to be confused with
Ketoacidosis (that’s bad), is the state of being in which the body in
which the human machine uses STORED FATS as energy! How sweet that
sounds, right?!? What happens in Ketosis, or a ketogenic state is the
body makes ketones to use as a primary energy source instead of using
glucose. Ketones are simply a bi-product of fat metabolism, a water
soluble bit of energy that most of the tissue in our body can use for
energy. Now, what’s crazy about Ketones is the simple fact that the
heart, kidneys, and intestines work BETTER on ketones than they do
glucose (sugar). (NO MORE DONUTS, CANDY, COKES, ALCOHOL ETC...)Now,
with out getting too sciency, I will just say that the difference
between the two forms of energy is how the body uses them.
Glucose/glycogen stores are consumed very rapidly throughout the body,
to the point that you have to constantly replenish them as you use them
(eating a crap load of carbohydrates). Now, ketones, even in a Belle
Parham-esque lean body are there for the taking, because no matter how
lean you get you still have stored fat to use as energy. So,
with all of this said, what am I really trying to say? Basically, a low
carb diet (preferably a diet with zero grains, and carbohydrates only
coming from fruits and veggies) is how your body wants to function. I
won’t lie, it takes a bit of time to get used to... but think of it this
way, you get to eat more bacon and steak!Now,
I want to talk about Performance Goals. As someone who works with
teenagers on a daily basis, I completely understand why people want to
be lean, and why they HAVE TO HAVE abs! I hope I don’t offend anyone
with this, but I think that abs are the stupidest muscle ever invented
(mostly because I don’t have them, I think...). I will say that, with
every athlete I have worked with, abs have shown up pretty quickly when
they stopped thinking about abs.I
have a phenomenal athlete named Levi. He is 17 years old, he has a
550ish backsquat, a 350ish bench press, and a 500ish deadlift. He runs a
sub 4.7 40 yard dash, can do 25-30 strict pull ups on a single serving,
and can jump vertically close to 38 inches. He is amongst the top
powerlifters in the state of Texas, and I think will have a fantastic
football season this year as a junior.Levi
has completely sold out to what I have told him. He comes and works out
with me every single day, he eats pretty well (doesn’t avoid soy as
much as I would like him to) and looks like he was chiseled out of
marble by Michelangelo. He used to work and work and work for abs.
Crunches daily, contraptions galore (ab wheels, funny looking hangy
things from chin-up bars, etc). When I finally got him to quit worrying
about his “core” (another stupid word in my opinion) his abs showed up! What
we did with Levi is we started to work on performance goals. We know
that if he puts the time and the effort into the gym, he will get what
he wants. He doesn’t need to do HOURS and HOURS of cardio, to the point
of complete muscle break down. Nah, instead he squats houses, bench
presses cars, and deadlifts trains off of damsels in distress (as
chivalrous as that may sound, it’s still messy).How we program for our athletesLevi
isnt the only one who looks like he came from a museum. I have several
boys and girls both that look very lean, very strong, and super fit. I
can say that my girls summer program is completely fascinating. This
summer I’ve had 12-or-so girls come in and completely busted their asses
on (they are squatting heavy, so that is the opposite of making them go
away). They have lines in their quads, in their arms and shoulders,
it’s amazing! The best part for me, as their coach/trainer, today I
heard one of them say “I love to squat now, I used to hate it because it
hurt my knees so badly, but now it doesn’t hurt at all, and I love to
move heavy weight.” She’s a sophomore, she will squat 200lbs plus for a
set of five before the summer is out, maybe even 225.Anyways,
we program our athletes to do several things: be able to move under
heavy loads in various positions, be explosive, and have a motor that
can last. That’s broad, I know. Often times I see that people have
different solutions, or starting places for new lifters/fitness goers. I
tend to fall in line with the Mark Rippetoe (excellent strength coach,
maybe the best ever?) line of thinking. It all starts with strength. As a
human, when your strength goes, you start to see many other things go.
Flexability, mobility (the scariest one), creativity, etc. So, how do
you get strong?Well,
the easiest thing I can tell you to do is to learn how to squat
properly (deep). The back squat is, without a doubt, the single most
important exercise in any weight room. I absolutely HATE going to a gym
and seeing no squat rack, or hack squats/smith machines instead. It’s a
disservice to humanity. The awesome part of squatting is that it creates
more change throughout your entire body than any other lift, reason
being is it uses more muscles to complete the movement than any other
lift. Your calves have to stabilize your ankles, your hammies, quads,
and glutes have to lower, then raise you up; your abs (both front and
back) are supreme stabilizers so you don’t crash through the floor, your
chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, traps, and delts are used to control
the weight. I challenge another exercise that uses every part of your
human system to move an object. My email address will be in this
somewhere, you can contact me to debate if you want. Bring sources.Why should you train like an athlete?
I
know that most, if not all of you are not necessarily athletes. When I
say that I’m not coming down on you, I am merely saying that your
competitive days may well be behind you. Nothing wrong with that at all.
You should still train like one.
Guys
tell me all the time, “I want to look like I did in high school.” Well,
no shit, dude! (for the record, I don’t want to look that way, I
weighed about 130lbs as a graduating senior, a full 100lbs less than I
do presently). My response to these men is typically, “dude, then train
like you did when you were in high school.” SO TRUE!!!! “Cort, that’s too hard.”
“I understand, then be satisfied with how you look.” (love that Cort said this!!) Bottom-bottom
line is this, and I think that Belle states this clearly (both
indirectly and directly) in her posts: If you want to have the lean
body, the big muscles, and the awesome booty, you have to WORK AT IT!
There is no excuses allowed, only excuses made. OH CORT!! LOVE THIS WHOLE PART OF YOUR BLOG!! In
closing, I hope you enjoyed this post. I know that it was long winded
and possibly confusing. So, if you have questions, feel free to email me
at arthur.cort@gmail.com.
I will answer as quickly as I can. I may not know every answer to every
question, but I have spent the better part of the last 10 years trying
to be smarter at this. In the last 5 years I have made some good
strides. This summer I will complete my CSCS training and be an official
Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach through the NSCA (www.nsca-lift.org). I am a certified CrossfitFootball Trainer (and more-so, a junky), and a Robb Wolf enthusiast (www.robbwolf.com).
If you want to see old workouts of mine, feel free to look at my blog
(I don’t keep up with it much any more, because I see my students on a
more regular basis than I used to). It’s address is www.bearcatgymwise.blogspot.com.
We have changed several things about our programming since I last
posted there, but the concepts are the same. Again, ask me questions if
you have any, and keep up the good fight, I have zero doubt that you can
do it for yourself... Now you need to think the same way.Contact Info:Cort Arthurarthur.cort@gmail.comFacebook: Cort ArthurTwitter: @CortArthur
