May 19, 2013 By 3 Comments

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 3 – Setting Up Your Diet

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is the final installment of our 3 part series.

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In part 1, we introduced you to the importance of training, and how it can help you build a better physique. In part 2, we broke down the training part, gave you free routines, and tons of tutorials on the main lifts.

Today, we’re going to discus what you need to know about diet and how to get started setting up your calories for a lean, toned physique.

All About Diet

Alright, when we say “diet,” we don’t mean going on a diet where you aim to lose weight by restricting carbs, or other food groups. We simply are referring to what you eat every day without any special changes or “challenges” or “cleanses.”

Your diet, simply, is what you eat. Changing your diet is different than going on a diet. The first means lasting progress, the second idea sets you up for frustration and disappointment. And if you’d you like to solve this puzzle once and for all, then we’re going to discuss macronutrients, micronutrients, calories, and how it all affects your body.

All whole foods are composed of macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients (macros) are the big boys: protein, fat, carbohydrates, and alcohol. Micronutrients (micros) are the vitamins and minerals important for bodily functions and optimal health. Think of vitamin C in our OJ, iron in our steak, and zinc in various shellfish.

So as not to lose you, here is the gist of what we’re saying. There needs to be an equal focus on both macro and micro intake. It’s easy to eat foods that are macronutrient dense (fat and sugar-laden foods) with very little in the vitamin and mineral department. On the flipside, it’s easy to eat foods full of micronutrients that are very low in calories (salads with lots of veggies, and little else).

Consuming nothing but leafy greens all day long is NOT going to help you get stronger, or construct the curves you’re aiming for.

On the contrary, a diet full of calorie dense (but nutrient deficient) foods is not the answer either.

So as you might imagine, there needs to be a happy medium. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain Tagged With: , ,
May 15, 2013 By 8 Comments

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 2 – Getting Acquainted With Strength Training

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Here’s the link to Part 1. Be sure and subscribe at the bottom of the article to get Part 3.

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In the last installment, we discussed how to get started, and why strength training is important when building the body you want. Today, it’s all about training – the why’s, how-to, and of course, getting started. Make sure you read to the very end as we are giving away some free training programs for you to download.

Out of the gate, learning the major compound movements is a great way to begin. When we say compound, we’re talking about the movements that require the use of multiple joints and muscles simultaneously, as opposed to isolation exercises, where you focus on a single muscle.

Here is why we believe compounds are the best exercises to start with.

If you’re new to training, it’s best to begin with exercises that yield the greatest impact, on both your muscles and your nervous system.

As you might infer, we’re foregoing the exercises normally recommended for “increasing tone, or length” such as leg extensions, bicep curls, and tricep kickbacks.

We also don’t need fancy moves such as the single-leg-squat-to-hop-with-overhead-press-into-a-burpee. The ultimate goal here is to focus on movements that provide the biggest bang for your buck, and get you the quickest results.

Compound movements have stood the test of time and are one of the best ways to get strong, and on your way to looking good naked.

Most of these exercises will be a push, pull or squat movement. Before you start shaking your head in confusion, we’ll break them down for you.

This categorization is an easy “way” to understand what an exercise does, and what muscles it primarily works.

Remember this: even though we are focusing on movements that make use of the entire body, they will most always favor one muscle group over another. It should always be simple when starting out. There are many variations and ways to alter these movements. But there’s no use in worrying about variations until you get the basics down. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain
May 13, 2013 By 22 Comments

How To Build Muscle: Women’s Edition Part 1 – An Intro on Getting Started

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This series is collaboration between JC Deen and Joy Victoria. Joy wrote 90% of the content.

Joy’s a wealth of fitness knowledge, and has already been published in the likes of T-Nation and contributes to WomanScope News Magazine. Make sure you check out her site, and sign up for updates. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Be sure and subscribe at the bottom of the article to get Parts 2 and 3.

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For so long, the words ‘women’ and ‘muscle’ were rarely seen in the same sentence. But it’s no surprise. With all the words like bulky, tone, lengthen, sculpt, ripped, shape, etc (the list is endless), it’s easy to get confused, or even turned off to what someone’s trying to sell you these days.

Because of the overwhelming load of information available (thank you, Internet!) we want to offer a very practical approach to helping you build a beautiful body. There won’t be any smoke and mirrors with this post, as per usual here. In fact, it’s pretty lengthy, so you might want to grab a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever), sit back and take some notes.

Note: This is not a fad diet coupled with an impossible training program. We’re giving you something better; something that actually works. The principles that create success, and the ones you can use over and over again, even when the methods change (and yes, they’ll need to change eventually as you progress).

Today, we’re giving you the so-called secrets behind how and why these principles work.

And that’s what a lot of diet and training plans fail to explain. It’s more of just asking you to do something without explaining the method behind the madness.

How would you like to be given the freedom to manipulate the common “rules” of popular diet and training methods that have you spinning your wheels, and actually get results because you know why they work?

You know, the kind of results you see in all those before and after pictures.

And we’re not talking about just losing weight, but losing fat and getting toned, tight, and hot! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Female Fitness, Muscle Gain Tagged With: , ,
May 8, 2013 By 33 Comments

The Fitness Industry: False Promises, Frustration, and What I’ma Do Differently

Last weekend, I attended the annual Fitness Summit in Kansas City. This is my fourth year in a row, and it’s officially a tradition. I always look forward to this weekend because it’s so much fun.

For me this isn’t just an event to further my education. It’s an excuse to hug the necks of people who are dear friends, previous clients, and those I’ve developed new friendships with over the wonderful Internetz.

This year I decided to take a few of my friends in Nashville, who know very little of the online fitness space, with me.

For them, it was an eye-opener, mainly from the standpoint that making friends, and connections is everything to your business. But they also learned that those connections transcend any business endeavor, and can blossom into amazing friendships.

What’s even cooler is all of these people share a similar mindset – which is to put your clients/customers/audience first, and everything else is automatically taken care of.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this post today is because I was inspired by all those around me and also because Dick Talens wrote a post titled Why The Fitness Industry is Broken [1] and it gave me a lot to think about. So this is more of a reflection, and my take on a few things I see and wish to change about the industry as a whole. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized
April 18, 2013 By

Fitness and Stress – Some Thoughts On How To Manage Yourself

Stress. It’s something we all deal with on a daily basis, whether we think much about it or not. Some of it’s good, but a lot of it, not so good.

Stress can help us in various ways, making us stronger as we adapt to new stressors. The first thing that comes to my mind is weight training.

Placing a barbell on your back and squatting it is a form of stress. Our ability to cope with that stress, and thus resurface stronger a few days later, is all about what we do outside of the gym. Sleep, rest, eating well, and the general chilling out can go a long way in making the most of this stress.

On the other hand, stress can bring us to our knees. Even in the literal sense.

It may be an injury caused by a weak link in the system (underdeveloped muscles, weak ligaments/tendons, or crappy leverages).

Or it could be an overuse problem.

Other times, it’s an issue with moving at a pace you’re not yet equipped for. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized
April 1, 2013 By

The Best Diet In The World

Today I’m writing about my favorite diet, but it’s probably not what you’re thinking…

If you’re an avid fitness enthusiast, you’re probably reading other trainers’ emails, and articles too. If that’s the case, I’m sure you’ve been told to “eat this, not that” or to “stay away from this particular ingredient or food group if your goal is fat loss/muscle gain/whatever.”

You may have been told to eat like your ancestors, or like the Inuit.

The good news is that I’m not going to tell you how to eat today. (WOOT!)

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I am here to give you a fresh perspective, but first let me share with you a story.

On March first, I decided to go on a social media diet. Primarily, I wanted to remove myself from Facebook land for a while. My reasons were many, but the main one was to free up some of the time I normally wasted on the website (it’s pretty addictive, ya know?).

I also wanted to use some of this extra time to read, reflect and write. I did some journaling, worked on a killer blog post that’s due out next week, and even began working on a few new products.

I managed to stay away from Facebook for a total of 30 days, and it was rather refreshing. I got a lot done, went on a mini vacation, and just felt more connected to those outside of the Internet.

Here’s what I did over my vacation…  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Diet
February 16, 2013 By

Being Mindful With Your Training and Nutrition – Setting A New Standard For Yourself

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It’s the middle of February. Where are you in your current health and fitness plan? Are you still on track or have your New Year’s Resolutions gone completely awry?

Are you back into your old habits, or have you successfully created new ones?

This year will mark the 13th or 14th year I’ve been doing some form of strength training. Within the last 3 years I’ve hit a few of my strength-related goals such as a 500lb+ deadlift, being able to bench 225lbs more than 10 times (I believe my best was a set of 15).

A year ago I got heavily into full range of motion Olympic style squats, and quickly got up to doing more than twice my body weight for singles and doubles. This year one of my goals is to hit a 2.5x Olympic squat and if I can manage to stay injury-free, I will surely smash it.

But this past year, my mindset about training and nutrition has taken a major turn for the better, in my opinion. Back on July 1st, I began a journey I had no idea would lead me to the interests I have now regarding a concept called Mindfulness and today I want to discuss how you can apply it to your training and nutrition.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, it’s pretty simple. A working definition is this: a state of open attention in which you observe thoughts, feelings, and ideas without judgment, and with the idea of remaining focused on the present moment.

Of course, there are other definitions primarily derived from Buddhism, but that’s way beyond the scope of this piece. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Motivation
February 7, 2013 By

Well-Being Supplementation

Today’s article is a guest post from Sol Orwell and Kurtis Frank of Examine.com, one of the premium, unbiased supplement websites on the planet.

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supplements

Most people want to “feel better”, and many supplements cater towards making you feeling better. Despite how straightforward that sounds, the manner in which supplements can help you achieve that is not nearly as clear cut.

This is mainly due to the fact that “well being” is a very holistic and broad concept, and the broader the concept, the harder it becomes to narrow it down with quantifiable parameters.

Basically, we cannot actually measure how good somebody feels aside from just asking them about it and having them write it down. And that of course introduces all kinds of potential errors and short-term biases.

Couple this with the observation that anything that induces a large and rapid change in well being is unlikely to influence everybody the same way (not everybody reacts the same to huge social or chemical stressors designed for happiness). Some people can have bad reactions, aka trips. Thus, any reliable method to increase well being is going to have to be subtle. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Supplements
January 16, 2013 By

Growing Pains: How To Improve Yourself By Embracing The Horse Manure Of Life

They say ‘with age comes wisdom,’ and sure enough, the more I experience, the more I realize and understand just how important certain life lessons can be. I’m honest when I say I try to take as much away from them as possible, but it’s not always easy.

Back in October, I found myself boarding a plane for a less-than-24-hour trip to the east coast to meet with a doctor I’d only known from the internetz.

Some might call me crazy for this, and I may be beyond saving when it comes to my sanity. However I’ve come to the realization – and the personal acceptance – that I make many decisions on a whim, and so far, the consequences have been positive.

Anyway, back to the trip… So for anyone who doesn’t know, I’ll spill the beans now.

I’ve struggled with an official hypothyroidism diagnosis since 2008.

I’ve been to a handful doctors, many of which wanted to put me on various drugs in an attempt to solve the problem.

Back during my original diagnosis, I didn’t really care too much about alternative remedies, such as optimizing my diet, or improving my lifestyle (quality sleep, better daily routine). I was in such a bad place mentally, that all I wanted was relief. To further elaborate on said state, read my story at the ChangeBlog.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized
December 28, 2012 By

A Year In Review: Gratitude, Thoughts, Reflections, and Revelation

In a few short days, we’ll stride into 2013.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I secretly thought writing this post would never happen, for I just knew the Mayans were onto something. I guess they weren’t.

Today I want to cover many of the interesting things that have happened in the last year, some people I’ve met, as well as how my thoughts are constantly evolving when it comes to the fitness lifestyle.

First we’ll cover the year, in short, and then some of the most popular posts on JCDFitness, my reflections on the past year, revelations, and finally, some questions on how I can help you in 2013.

Gratitude

Before I begin, I first have to say a hearty thanks to you for reading. This site has been up and running since October 2008, and I’m incredibly grateful for those of you who’ve been with me for so long.

I’ve come a long way as a writer, coach, and thinker since my early days of posting on forums, and writing random blogs about recipes, and such.

Fitness has given me a purpose in this world, and while I may not be the best writer, I’m happy I have the ability to communicate regularly with those who are looking for guidance in this crazed fitness space.

There’s quite a bit to read here today, and I’m incredibly thankful that you choose to read my work whenever I write something new. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Goals, Random Thoughts
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