Student Fitness

By: Ryan Imbach

With summer halfway over and the constant barrage of fat loss information on television and the internet, I decided to write a quick article on what people can do to finally shed that last bit of fat, or even get started. There is a lot of confusing information out in the world about how to optimize your fat loss plan.

Here, I’m going to offer some tips to help you overcome your plateaus. Here they are, in no particular order (though I believe nutrition is number one for a reason):

1. Get your nutrition in line now. If you’re not eating whole, unprocessed foods, you’re eating junk (except for protein powder). Now you don’t have to do this all the time, but 80 – 90% of the time should be whole unprocessed foods.

2. To help with nutrition, write down everything you eat. Using a product like FitDay (free!) can help tremendously.  The first step is to start eating unprocessed foods, and if you’re not losing fat, start using FitDay.

3. How’s your training? Have you been doing the same routine for the past six weeks? Change it up! It doesn’t have to be a completely new program either. Shorten rest periods, shoot for more reps or more weight, or use “finishers” at the end of your training session.

4. Create lofty, but attainable goals. Write them down, let people who will be supportive know of your goals. Having a visual reminder of your goals can be a great tool in your training plan.

5. Have a way to measure your progress. Whether that be through pictures, body fat measurements, scale measurements, or simply looking in the mirror week to week. If you can see yourself becoming better, you will not want to stop.

6. Finally, and this is important: REST. Many people will go for months training without rest. If you’ve been training and dieting hard for more than two months, take a week off to let your body get back on track. But don’t just sit on your butt. Continue eating clean, and do some light cardio or play some sports to keep active. Even walking for just 30 minutes a day is good enough for a week of rest.

So there you have it. Here are six tips on how to deal with fat loss plateaus. They may seem simple, but they are effective. You don’t need super-advanced weight training techniques or a multitude of supplements. Hard work, support, and determination will get you where you want to be.

If you patrol the internet, as college students have been known to do, I can definitely understand how you could be confused. However, as one becomes more advanced in training and nutrition, one realizes that there’s not much difference between different success stories.

By: Joe Norton

Living on campus during the summer , but you’ve got no meal plan!?! Don’t worry, I’m facing the same situation.

Here I’ll share with you some of the ways I’ve dealt with this. It’s not easy going from a hefty meal plan to none at all. Especially when you’re pretty light on cash (aren’t we all).

• Go Grocery Shopping - Not the most convenient for most, but arguably the most affordable and definitely the easiest way to get a hold of healthy options. Going to the grocery store and making that once a week (or twice) stop allows you to save mucho dinero by buying in bulk (kind of) and gives you the freedom to choose what you will be eating the upcoming week. Chicken, veggies, and rice anyone?

• Get Hoagies… No, Not Cheesesteaks - So maybe not every city has this issue, but here in Philadelphia it’s difficult to step into most “cheap” restaurants without having a glistening pile of steak, cheese wiz and onions in a roll staring right back at you. My suggestion: Get the turkey with all the veggies and hot peppers on it. HOLD THE MAYO!!! Or get a grilled chicken sandwhich of some sort. Just try to dodge the fried foods and cheeses and most hoagies are semi-healthy.

• When you have a chance, eat whole wheat - Not every place gives you the option, but when they do. Take it. It’s proven to reduce bellyfat (so says Penn State)

• Mix It Up - Don’t eat at the same place everyday. It’s easy to get comfortable with your favorite sandwhich at your favorite pizza shop. Despite how much your stomach may like it; it’s not good. Eating the same thing all the time (even if it’s a nice turkey on whole wheat with LTO and mustard) is bad for your body. You need to have a well-rounded diet and this can only be done by changing up what you eat. So follow your palate and eat at multiple places around town so long as you can make healthy choices and not spend everything you’ve got.

• Pack A Lunch (or dinner) - When you are busy during the summer; either with school or work, it’s easy to forget about the food and your fridge and to rely on eating out all the time. Not only does this pack a serious punch on your wallet but it’s also not the best way to make sure you get all the nutrition you need. Try to pack your lunch or another meal on occasion. The only real way to decide 100% whats in the food you’re eating is to make it yourself.

By: Veljko Petranovic

As any fitness model will tell you, it’s the abdominal muscles that really sell a physique.

Bulging shoulders, tree trunk legs and brutal arms can be mighty impressive, but if you’re still carrying a spare tire around your waist, guess what? It deters from your appearance, virtually nullifying all the hard work. What to do?

Any devoted Student Fitness reader by now knows that ripped abs are gained by keeping your diet in check over a period of time. But what about hypertrophy? No one wants weak, puny abs, instead, that powerful, stuck-out look with ridges and crevices is what most people who train aspire to. Pro bodybuilder Adorthus Cherry wrote an interesting thing in one of his articles in Muscular Development – he only trains his abs pre-contest, and gives them a rest in the off season. This has good merit, as you can’t really see your abs while they’re covered with fat, and they do tend to grow pretty quickly for a lot of trainers. That’s because it’s easy to contract and isolate them, and if you go overboard, you can end up with a larger waist. For that very reason, I don’t add extra weight in my abdominal training.

People are really divided on this subject, but from personal experience, I’ve found out that you can very well have too much development in that area – to the point where even ripped abs stick out further than the chest. Also, I steer clear from oblique training and any sort of side crunches, but people who play competitive sports will surely disagree on this. To each his own. Aesthetically, the washboard, cheese grater look coupled with a tiny circumference is much more pleasing, but for functional training, you can’t beat a strong core. First off, I believe in striking a balance in your appearance. If you train the chest or shoulders once a week, why should you work the abs every other day or even more often? A lot has been said about the abs being “endurance” muscles, but that’s a big load of hooey.

All muscles in a body are composed of slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers, and this endurance talk probably stems from the fact that you can do a lot of crunches in a row after a while. But guess what? Your bodyweight doesn’t really put much stress on that area, and that’s why you can rep out a hundred crunches after a few weeks easily. If you worked your biceps with 5 lbs, and if you did a hundred repetitions, would they become “endurance” muscles, too?

Speaking of crunches, they’re kind of out. Just about everyone does them, they’re boring, they’re easy and they don’t really do justice to the bottom half of your midsection. For me, leg raises are the way to go. They work your entire abdominal area like nothing else. I like to keep reps in the 20-30 area and make the movement steady at a slower pace, two seconds up, one second pause and contract, two seconds down and one second pause and extend. The big thing is not to let them relax during a set, but instead to keep a constant tension.

Here are some tried and true variations of the leg raise.

1. Hanging leg raise.

Grip a chin bar and stop at a dead hang. From there, lift your femur but bend the knees, letting them travel all the way up to the chest. The flexion happens at the hip, and your pelvis should also rotate upwards. Remember to squeeze at the top and don’t swing around like a little monkey. Keep the body steady. An advanced version of this would be to extend the knees, which allows for greater tension but shortens the range of movement a bit. When your legs come back down, don’t let them travel past your back, as this results in swinging and you really shouldn’t let inertia do your work. This is a good exercise for those who possess a strong grip. If you don’t, work on it!

2. Lying leg raise.

Start by laying down on a mat, and don’t anchor your hands. Instead, they should be by your side, relaxed. The legs are kept straight the entire time, and rotating the pelvis ensures that you use your hip flexors less while the abs do most of the work. A great way to make this harder is to have a training partner push at your feet when they reach the top of the movement, forming a 90 degree angle with the torso. Do not let your feet touch the ground – this makes the abs relax.

3. Floor wipers.

Lie down on a bench and get in a starting position of the bench press. The weight on the bar shouldn’t be more than half of your bodyweight, your grip slightly wider than your shoulders. Legs are straight, and then you lift them upwards and diagonally and touch one of the plates on either side of the bar. Bigger plates result in a shorter range of motion. The key to this is balance. You lift the legs up to one side, lower them down and straight, back up but than touch the plate on the opposite end of the barbell. Keep the arms locked at the elbow and ensure that you’re not slipping off either side of the bench by squeezing your shoulder blades together.

4. The candle.

We used to do a lot of this in elementary school gym class. Lie down, arms at your sides, pushing at the floor. You lift your legs up, knees straight and locked, and then proceed to lift the lower back off the floor and your feet further up in the air. Reverse the movement, but remember to keep the feet off the ground.

5. Planted leg raise.

If you’re lacking in grip strength, this one is for you. Most gyms have proper benches for this type of movement, a pad for your back and two for your forearms with handy bars for gripping. If you’re not in luck, a pair of parallel bars will do, but you’ll have to remain holding yourself up with your arms locked. Kind of like you’re doing a dip, but instead you remain at the top of the dip movement and lift your legs up instead, until they’re parallel to the floor. Bend them at the knees if it suits you, then over time progress to keeping them straight. As always, avoid swinging and don’t let the feet go behind you at the bottom of the movement. You can combine this with the floor wipers and lift the legs up and to the left, then up and in front, then up to the right – this is all one big rep.

A couple of final points.

Abs are typically done at the end of a workout, like an afterthought. If you’re bent on improving your midsection, give them priority in your workout – the exercises are not very exhausting and can make for a great warm up. Also, don’t just go through the motions, instead, aim to feel each rep and go for the burn. As your mind-muscle connection improves, you’ll need to do fewer reps and the results will keep coming. A set/rep scheme for the abs should be, four to five sets of as much reps as you can manage in good form without excessive pain. Remember to breathe at all times, breathe in as you contract the muscles and breath out as they extend. Also, a strong lower back is important both for your posture, muscular balance and injury prevention. Deadlifts on your back workouts are great for this. These are opposing muscles and should ideally be the same in strength and endurance. And if your abs still ain’t showing, it’s time to implement two new exercises into your regimen – the lowering of the spoon and the pushing of the dinner plate - away.

By: Veljko Petranovic

Ah, yes, the pectoral muscles. Ever since the image of Arnold’s unbelievable chest musculature entered the mainstream, everyone and their uncle spends hours upon hours benching in the gym. The pecs are composed of two muscles – the major and the minor. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend why people think they need, like, 6 different chest exercises on each workout. It’s only two muscles, guys! Two or three exercises, executed with proper form and intensity, are well enough! It’s not like it’s a large muscle group anyway. It’s not even that hard to exhaust. Yet I keep seeing trainers making the same mistakes all the damn time.

Mistake one: prioritizing chest to the expense of other body parts. A great body is evenly developed, end of story. Besides, the size of your chest is directly proportional to how much muscle you’re carrying overall – I’ve yet to see someone with great pecs and nothing else happening elsewhere. If your pulling (bent over row) weight isn’t about the same as the pushing (bench) weight, you are in the process of developing a muscular imbalance, which not only looks funny, but can result in injury.

Mistake two: Flat benching all the time. Unless your fitness goals include looking like a Neanderthal, with slumped shoulders and droopy pecs, lay off the flat bench. I’m serious. It’s not that great a movement. Yes, it works for some, and it is a great mass builder, but the trouble is that for most of us, the flat bench works mostly the anterior deltoids and triceps. If you must do it, keep your upper arms parallel with the bar, instead of letting the elbows slide downwards. This rotation is keeping the tension away from the pecs.

Mistake three: Benching heavy. Yeah, I know it’s impressive and cool and all, but if you’re doing it for the bragging rights, you are not doing yourself a favor. You can, and eventually will, get hurt. No one but your buddies cares about your benching weight. Girls couldn’t give a rat’s ass, believe me. They appreciate the results, not the effort. And if you’re sacrificing form for the sake of going heavy, you’re exercising your ego, not your body.

Mistake four: Attempting to “hit the chest from all angles”. Look, there is only one angle that is beneficial to your pecs’ development, and it’s the 90 degree angle of your humerus to the torso. Like I said, it’s only two muscles. An exception would be the parallel bar dip, which I’m very fond of doing, but it, too, works the triceps too hard while the pecs receive about a third of the total stimulation. I just thought of another one – the pullover, though I’m not sure whether it works the chest or the lats more. All I know is, my lats hurt after the pullover, and expanding the ribcage with an exercise is a big load of hokey.

Mistake five: Isolation. No amount of cable crossovers is going to put striations and cuts and whatever on your chest. This sort of detail is reserved for people who have two things: one, a good chest, and more importantly two, low body fat. Don’t kid yourself – pack on the muscle with properly performed dumbbell presses and flies. Free weights rule over puny cables. Not that they don’t have a purpose, but one shouldn’t rely on cables alone. The pec-deck can be great, just remember not to put your forearms on the pads and push that way – it’s much better to grab the bars of the apparatus and push with your hands.

Mistake six: Too much volume. It’s a relatively small muscle group. Eight time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney has a great proverb about this – stimulate, don’t annihilate. Four sets of three exercises is enough for a regular human being. Just one drop set will put the burn in your chest like you wouldn’t believe. Never mind all the articles with the top pros who do chest three times a week for 30 sets. Us mortals need time to recover and grow. It’s way more important then training. Otherwise you’d be seeing some amazing transformations with the gym rats who train six times a week, 2 hours a day. Sadly, you never do.

Mistake seven: Forgetting the “upper” chest. I remember doing only incline benches and flyes just before this contest in 2002. When all was said and done, I ended up with a pretty good overall pec size. I strongly feel that a quality chest is supposed to be even from top to bottom. Yes, I know that your bench weight decreases by about 10 percent when you go incline. Please refer to mistake number three.

Mistake eight: Saying “bah” to push ups. Yeah, I know, you’re a big boy and have heavy weights to play with, and you could do about a hundred if you wanted to, and the floor is dirty and you’re not in the Army. I used to think some of those things, too. That was until I devoted an entire summer to doing push ups with my feet on a chair exclusively. Guess what? It worked the same way as weights do. When it gets easy and boring, as 50 rep sets can do, push up slower. Add weight on your back, be it manual resistance from a friend or a heavy backpack. Be careful, it can slide down and hit your head. Try clapping in between reps, it’s fun!

Mistake nine: Having no mind-muscle connection. For good stimulation, ensure that you feel each rep of the execise in your targeted muscles. This applies to everything. Don’t just move the weight like a piston. Feel it. Once you start feeling pain, you have 1 or 2 good reps left in you. Then just back off. No need to administer self torture, even if you have been bad.

Mistake ten: Copying what others are doing. Be it an IFBB pro, or a fellow trainer you see every day, it’s far from given that you’ll look like him if you train like him. We’re all different. Genetics, drugs, lifestyles, experience, all that jazz. He might have the kind of body you want, and he might have gotten it doing everything contrary to this article. If that’s the case, just remember that it was written by a hard gainer, for hard gainers. We outnumber the easy gainers 50 to one. And we can, given common sense and hard work, look great and improve independently from others.

By: Veljko Petranovic

I got an urge to write some text about dieting about 20 minutes ago, during my second meal of the day, at about noon. Can you guess what I was eating? Well, here’s a recipe for a diet-friendly, no-carb meal that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. Ingredients: One can of sardines in sesame oil. Open the can halfway and let all extra oil exit by applying manual pressure. Serve sardines on a plate, and consume with a fork. Drink water throughout the course. Appetizing, eh?

Not really. But on the other hand, I’m on a mission to drop about 10 pounds of body fat exclusively, which is an endeavor that entails eating lots off protein. Carbs are cycled in a fashion that I’ll get to a bit later. It’s simple, effective and lasts one whole month during which you don’t get hungry once. Here’s a sample of my menu on Monday, the 12^th of May.

• Meal one: 4 raw eggs, drank, about 20 grams of protein plus about the same amount of fat
• Meal two: one can of tuna in salted water, about 25 grams of protein
• Meal three: one can of tuna in salted water plus about 100 grams of radishes (whatever that vegetable is called, it has next to nothing carbs yet contains fiber)
• Meal four: whey protein shake, in water, 38 grams of protein, 3,2 grams of carbs, 2 grams of fat
• Meal five: post workout shake, same as meal 4.
• Meal six: maybe 50 grams of cottage cheese Major suckage, right? It is what it is, but I’m hell bent on doing it and the results will be posted in about one month. Photographic evidence, one might say.

The whole diet plan looks something like this: on Mondays and Thursdays, I severely cut out the carbs. On Tuesdays and Fridays, I eat a banana pre-workout. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, there’s a proper feast waiting – two bananas pre-workout. And on Sunday, I eat a lot of complex, fibrous carbs, in the area of 300-400 grams. That is also the only day when I don’t have to hoard up on protein. Bananas are just what I chose for my carbohydrate source, it can be anything up to 100 grams of that particular macronutrient. Believe it or not, that’s all there is to it! Nothing fancy, nothing extraordinary, no miracle fat burners or thermogenic foods. Just frequent, protein-rich meals, which, combined with cardio and weight training, comprises a fail-safe plan. It isn’t a whole lot of fun, but on this regimen, I can eat a pound of lean beef steak and not feel bad about it. It’s no fun, though, and this lack of fun is what keeps most people from coming even close to their fitness aspirations. It takes discipline, it takes being dumb as a mule and just forgetting about taste of proper food. All tasting variety is limited to cardboard and salty cardboard.

In a Muscle and Fitness article from recently, I’ve read about this study. Apparently, they gave one test group fresh popcorn and the other group got stale popcorn in a – get this - larger bag. Results show that people are likely to eat even more crap food if it’s provided in large containers. That’s right, more of the stale popcorn ended up being eaten! Holy cow! That’s just dumbfounding. The point of this digression is this: you, and you alone, decide what goes into your body.

If your goals include being in better shape and more aesthetically pleasing, by all means, keep your browser pointed to Student Fitness. My colleague, Joe Nort, writes up excellent articles that will get you on your way to Fitville in 1-2-3, as long as you actually listen to the advice. There is another way, a path of accepting yourself as you are physically and give up on such superficial actions as “dieting” and “training” for the sake of “looking good”. On the other hand, a lot of people I know feel depressed and shortchanged because of the way they look. Yet they still end up doing nothing about it! Don’t be like that. You can be whoever you want to and you possess the power to get in awesome shape if you wish. So read up. After that, it only comes down to putting in some hard work and eating a lot of bland, yet awesome food.

The final rewards include, but are not limited to, being healthy, buff, fast, strong, positively oriented, also there are six-pack abs, self-confidence, attractive looks, high energy levels and the comfort of knowing that, if you can diet properly for a solid month, you can do just about anything.

By: Veljko Petranovic

Last week I was at the gym, getting used to the now world famous “300 workout”. It’s, for a lack of a better word, brutal. Try it sometimes. I was cowering in a corner after a 20-rep set of squats, holding back from puking, and then I noticed the two newcomers. Both were tall and slender as beanstalks, and of course, they were benching, doing maybe eight reps with 60 pounds.

No big deal there, everybody at my gym benches all the time, and we have a steady influx of newbies, but it was the way they were doing it that really rattled my nerves. Normally, I have this rule - don’t give advice unless you’re asked. But these guys were out to hurt themselves, so I told the receptionist about it. His words didn’t make an impact I hoped for.

Set after set, they laid on the bench at an angle, grabbed the bar unevenly and proceeded to raise it in the most crooked manner. At the top of the movement, the knuckles of their right hands were above the knuckles of their left, exceeding one another for about three inches. Obviously, they had a muscular imbalance - their left elbows didn’t lock out at the top (weaker left triceps), and as a result, they were doing something that resembled a circus balancing act - lift, compensate for the plates that began to slide off the bar, lower.

So, I told them about it, and promptly forgot about them. More recently, I was talking to a friend, who boasted about squatting some 300 pounds for eight reps on a fixed bar. I asked him how low he went, and found out that he’s doing quarter squats. He explained that it was because he “didn’t want to hurt his spine”. As a matter of fact, he defended his form quite vigorously. Yadda yadda yadda.

There are your two reasons for using improper form in the gym. One is a lack of knowledge, the other is ego. Let me tell you, most people don’t care how much you can lift unless you’re a powerlifter at a meet or a strongman competitor. It’s the way you look and perform in your sport that separates you from the average gym rat. Bad form will, in the long run, give you an injury, and that means time off training and lots and lots of pain. Depression is common when this happens. So it pays off to give proper form a bit of attention. Besides, lackluster form means utilizing less muscle fibers in your lift, targeting other muscles unintendedly which translates to little or no progress. Yikes!

Let’s examine some of the more common movements. You have your obligatory bicep curl. Stand in front of the bar, feet shoulder width apart. Grab the bar with the palms facing you, a bit wider than shoulder width. Some movement in the lower back while you curl is OK, but don’t swing like you’re doing a snatch - it’s best to keep the back rigid and let the biceps do the work. Also, try not to slouch your shoulders.

The militairy press is what most people choose when it comes to building the deltoids. Most don’t know that those muscles consist of three heads - the anterior, the lateral and the posterior. Each of these is trained with a different movement, but for some reason, a lot of guys do only the MP, which develops the front shoulder exclusively. Grip the bar in a manner that will allow your upper arms, upon lowering, to be parallel to the bar and perpendicular to your body. This means that the hands should be about three feet apart for the average height individual. Don’t curve your spine either way, keep it firm and in a neutral position. Also, don’t roll your tailbone if you’re sitting down and keep the feet firmly planted on the ground. If you’re standing up, avoid excessive back extension - this puts much stress on the spine’s discs. Lower the bar to your nose or to the atlas disc (the one that rotates the head) in your neck, depending on whether you’re lowering it to the front or the back of your head. Anything lower puts unnecessary strain on the rotator cuffs.

Deadlifting is easy to learn. The loaded bar is on the ground, and you just bend over and pick it up. The sumo variant demands that your legs be wide apart, while the conventional deadlift dictates that they should be kept narrower than the shoulders, so that your arms can grip the bar and remain “outside” of the knees when you go down. Use a mixed grip - one hand pronated, the other supinated, and switch hands at each set. KEEP THE BACK STRAIGHT. Also, there is no need to go down in a deep squat, the back should do most of the work and the majority of the movement happens at the hips, not the knees.

When squatting, think “heels” and think “butt”. Push with your heels and keep the butt back, don’t tuck it in. Go down as much as you can with no weight, keep the back neutral, and don’t let the knees travel much past your toes at the bottom. Don’t fall back on your ass now! Also, don’t let your knees wobble left or right - this is a sure sign that you’re using too much weight. Place the bar on the traps, just under the bone that sticks out, where the spine meets the neck. Hand placement depends on preference - me, I just “hug” the plates to keep them in place, arms spread. Breathe, but contract your abs at all points of the movement. Chest is kept up, eyes forward.

Parallel bar dips are another easy one - make sure that your biceps meet your forearms at the bottom, then extend. Tilt to the front to put more stress on the pecs, or keep your body straight to isolate the triceps. Legs are bent at the knee and crossed.

By: Ryan Imbach

After a long hiatus – being super busy with school projects – I’ve decided to devote some of my time again to Student Fitness! I am hoping that the readership has grown since I’ve been gone. Thank goodness I’m back, because you were getting sick of that pumpkin pie oatmeal and you want some more creations! Well, I’ve concocted some more nutritional goodness for you. So eat up!

Neon Green Shake

Before, you attempt this, I highly suggest you get a blender. You could also beg your parents to get you one, which is the option I usually choose. A small one like the Magic Bullet is pretty useful in college. Anyway, this smoothie packs a pretty good nutritional punch, and it will keep you quite full, especially if you use the casein protein and the flax seeds. Here’s the goods:

-1/2 an avocado

-1 or 2 scoops any flavor whey or casein protein

-large amounts of fresh spinach

-2 tablespoons of ground/milled flax seeds

-water or milk

First, I put the spinach in the blender, then I add a small amount of liquid and blend into a watery green mess. Then add your other ingredients and blend. Trust me on this, the taste is way better than the looks. Your friends will think you are crazy for drinking bright green liquid. On the other hand, they may think it’s some sort of crazy fruit juice. But you know what you’ve got: pure nutritional goodness.

Banana Nut Oatmeal

Okay, so maybe you’ve already thought of this one. But for some readers who haven’t, here’s yet another oatmeal recipe that is pretty tasty. The ingredients:

-1 cup of old-fashioned oats

-1 scoop banana whey or casein protein

-1 tablespoon flax seeds (optional)

-slices of banana

-small handful of crushed walnuts

-Water to cook oatmeal

-A few shakes of cinnamon

Heat the water and oats in a glass bowl in the microwave. Put the protein, flax, and cinnamon in, and crush the walnuts and throw them in, too. Stir in and chow down, my friend.

French Toast Eggs

Here’s a twist on my previous microwaved scrambled eggs recipe. It’s supposed to taste like French toast. And since fried toast is covered in sugar and whipped cream, it is not the best choice for your body. Here’s the ingredients:

-Ingredients from scrambled eggs article, plus…

-A sprinkle of butter buds (butter flavored flakes, sweet!)

-1 to 2 packets of Splenda

-A few shakes of cinnamon

Make the eggs in the microwave as usual. Then, when they’re done, sprinkle Butter Buds, Splenda and cinnamon on your eggs. It will be a taste explosion. Okay, so maybe not that great, but it’s pretty close to tasting like French toast. And that’s a good thing.

Tuna Burgers

Yet another recipe that floats around in health food circles is the tuna burger. This requires you to have some hardware and to get a little messy. The hardware you’ll need is either a George Foreman type grill, and Pizzazz type rotating pizza oven, or a microwave might work. The tools and ingredients are:

-A glass bowl

-2 cans of tuna

-1 egg

-crushed oatmeal (oat flour); about ¼ cup or less

I’m not saying sneak it in, but if your college doesn’t allow a Pizzazz pizza oven…well, do what you have to do, right? But these are great. They cook from the top and the bottom, so it’s almost like a real oven. First I’d suggest starting your pizza oven or grill to get it warmed up. Then you combine all your ingredients in the glass bowl with a fork. Next you’ll scoop up about half the mixture with your hands (gross!), and put it on the grill/oven in a nice patty shape. Put the other half on the oven, and then wait for it to cook. I honestly could not tell you how long to cook it. If you’re using the grill, I would say maybe 3 – 5 minutes. With the oven, I’d say 5 – 7 minutes. You’ll just have to experiment with the cooking times. To change up this recipe a bit, you can always add in extras like curry powder, chili powder, lemon pepper, onions, chives, or chunks of bleu cheese. It will be tasty in no time.

Frozen Peanut Butter Balls

This is another messy recipe, and one that requires a very cold refrigerator or a freezer. It is pretty tasty, however, even though you’ll have to play with the amounts of ingredients to get the perfect texture. The goods:

-2 mashed bananas

-1 2/3 cup natural peanut butter

-About 4 scoops whey or casein protein

-About 1 cup water

-Oat flour (optional)

-Very large bowl (trust me) and very large spoon

First, mash your bananas. Now the hard part. Combine all your ingredients except your oat flour (I have never actually tried it with oats in the mix, but it might help to make the mix hold together). Stir and mix; mix and stir. Keep going because it will take a while, and it will be sticky. Once everything is combined, you roll the goop into little balls. You can then proceed to cover them with oat flour (or flax seeds), and pop them in the freezer in zip lock containers or bags. If this doesn’t work for you, don’t be discouraged. It took me a few tries to get it somewhat correct. And even then, they weren’t balls so much as they were blobs of goop. But they were mighty tasty!

Another installment of recipes for you dorm-dwellers. Enjoy, and remember, not too much longer and it will be summertime!

By: Joe Norton

Here’s a shocker: Fat People Order Fat Food

I often stand in line at the Student Center for long periods… waiting for the disgruntled, minimum wage, sodexo employees to find some time for ‘customer service’ (don’t even get me started with Sodexo)… and during these arduous waits I decide to kill two-birds with one stone and so I people watch. Yes, that’s right, I people watch… all the time. And it just so happens that one of my favorite places to do so is at the student center watching students order food.

You can learn a lot about a person by what they order. Their are a number of inferences you could make about someone based on what they order, but for today’s article I’m going to focus specifically on what you can tell about someones general overall health and body composition.

I could listen to somebody order, without looking at them, and I can tell you roughly what kind of shape that person is in. Sure, their is the unlikely chance that someone is unhealthy/fat and is just starting a diet and thus is ordering healthy but their body is not necessarily representative of that fact. This actually doesn’t happen too often. Usually, when someone orders something dripping with mayonaise and fatty meats - they aren’t doing too good. Usually, when someone orders something fried and grabs a few cookies on their way out - they aren’t doing too good.

I’ll hear someone order grilled chicken with greens and whaddya you know it’s someone in great shape. I’ll hear someone being very picky about what goes on their wrap, specifically asking for no mayonaise and for lots of veggies - no shocker that this person will nearly always be one of the thinner people.

I’ll hear someone order the quarter pounder at BK (yes, we have burger king in our Cafeteria) and ask for a mountain of fries => and I have yet to see that coming from someone with one chin. Now, I do have to disclose this one fact. I do often see some of the athletes (basketball, and football players) come in and grab some BK. This does go against my theory => BUT, it really dosen’t. This person WOULD be fat if they didn’t do so much exercise. This is how you can order poorly and still be healthy/fit. By balancing the equation that is 1 part Diet, and 1 part Physical Activity

You are what you eat. Eat fatty food, be a fatty person. Eat healthy and balanced, and you will be healthy and balanced.

By: Joe Norton

Want washboard abs? Want bulging biceps or toned legs?

Well, I can’t give you any of those today.

What I can give you is 3 things you can begin implementing TODAY into your life to begin the process (journey… if you will) of losing weight and getting to whatever your ideal state is:
Be that super thin, super muscular, or something along that continuum.

These aren’t intended to be just huge “cut this out” blanket statements that are impossible for the common person to follow, these are intended to be mini ‘life hacks’ or positive habits that you can begin to build into who you are in order to make you a more healthy person.

1) When given a chance to be active, take it. Convenience is your enemy when you want to be more active.

Take the stairs, not elevator. Ride a bike, don’t take a taxi. Walk a few blocks as opposed to getting a friend to give you a ride. Don’t settle for the closest pizza shop, if you must eat pizza then burn some calories and walk to your favorite place. If you have downtime in between classes => walk to your dorm and do what you will, and then walk back across campus when your class comes around. This is as opposed to sitting around waiting, or sitting in the library (though useful for studying, I’d rather lose out on 20 minutes because I was getting some light exercise and just study in the comfort of my room).

2) When given a choice to between meats; go with Chicken, Turkey or Fish.

Lean Beef => 59% Fat, Reduced Fat Pork => 69% Fat, Skinless Chicken Breast => 26% Fat, White Fish => ~10%
These calculations are based off of nutrition facts of products offered in stores, based on the calculation of % calories from fat. For example: X Grams of Fat * 9 Calories = Net Fat Calories/Total Calories = % Calories from Fat.

3) Don’t Starve yourself. Always have something to Nibble on.

Ask ANY bodybuilder, athlete, or health enthusiast and they will always tell you this. You must eat every 3-4 hours to keep your metabolism going. If you go longer than that without eating then your body gets worried about your
food sources so it slows down your internal calorie furnaces and then starts converting calories into fat just in case you
have to go for a long time without eating. Let your body know you don’t have to be in starvation mode - by not starving it.

These are 3 keys to getting healthy, sure - they are common sense, but sometimes it’s the most common things that we
overlook. Now that you are armed with these 3 tools you will be much better equipped to get through college in healthy shape.

By: Veljko Petranovic

A lot of people I know have trouble when it comes to developing their legs to match their upper bodies. I am also one of those people. You see, legs aren?t ?show? muscles. So, if you happen to be lifting weights just for the sake of looking good, chances are that you?ve been neglecting your legs. No wonder. The first thing someone notices about your build is the shoulders. Arms are also a huge favorite. Hitting the beach? Don?t forget the abs. Just about everyone does the bench press often to get that impressive chest.

Meanwhile, the legs remain forgotten, ignored if you will, like a red-headed stepchild. In the long run, the result is a huge muscular imbalance, which not only looks funny, but can and will ultimately limit your overall growth. So, my first advice would be to start exercising your legs at least as much as you exercise the upper body. Your look will be complete, not half-assed.

That being said, legs are notoriously hard to train. Squats just might be the hardest movement you?ll ever try. They are not fun like it is to pump up your biceps on the Scott bench, named after the great Larry Scott, a bodybuilding champion from the past. Legs are also always in motion, as they propel you about on your daily business. This means that they are used to low intensity, high endurance work, and logic thus dictates that hey should not be trained in a similar fashion if your goal is muscular hypertrophy.

Using full range of motion and precise form is a must. Injury is not fun at all, take it from someone who has torn his vastus medialis muscle twice and has had numerous tendon pulls and countless joint inflammations. Going heavy is an option, but if you?re using a limited range of motion for the sake of hoisting more iron, you?re just stroking your ego and risking injury, time off of training, depression, fat gain, you name it. Not good. Besides, a quarter of a squat does very little in the way of growth.

High reps or low reps? My answer would be to do both, and switch often. A good leg workout will produce nausea and massive fatigue, so if you?re feeling like a million bucks after a workout, you?re doing it wrong, dummy. A reasonable set range for legs would be 15 to 20 total sets, divided over 3 to 8 different movements, hopefully including both the thighs and the calves.

Lots of trainers have trouble bringing their legs up to par due to ?genetic disadvantages?. While it?s true that those disadvantages do exist, they should not be used as an excuse to cop out on your training. Myself, I?ve had a lot of problems when it came to lower leg development. High insertions, few muscle fibers, whatever. The missing ingredient for me was frequency. I?ve found that I should work the calves three times a week, instead of just once or twice.

This brings us to the point of recovery. It?s necessary, yes, but seeing how the legs are used to constant stress, you will need much less than, say, a week or even 72 hours. 24 to 48 hours is what works for me, and you can only find out your what your own ?recovery zone? is by experimentation. I?ll outline a solid program which presumes you?ll be hitting the gym 4 times per week, one hour per training session. Remember though, this is just one way to skin a rabbit.

Monday:
Squats, 6 sets of 3 reps
Stiff legged deadlifts, 3 sets of 12 reps
Leg curls, 4 sets of 6 reps
Toe raises on the leg press, 6 sets of 20 reps
Abdominal work
Rest 3 minutes between sets

Tuesday: Upper body

Wednesday: Rest

Thursday:
Lunges, 2 sets of 15 reps for each leg
Dumbbell deadlifts, stiff legged, 4 sets of 20 reps
Leg press, 3 sets of 25 reps
Calf machine, 6 sets of 10 reps
Abdominal work
Rest 1 minute between sets

Friday: Upper body

Saturday, Sunday: Rest

Include sprints in your off days, to the effect of ten to fifteen 30-second full-out sprints, with a one minute pause between the sets.Train hard and be safe!