Tim Reed
Age: 22
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 195
Favorite Body Part: Back and Abs
Body Fat: 6.1%   

How To Keep Lean!

I was raised in a small farm town of 300 people in southeast Nebraska. I am the second of seven children and we all grew up being competitive with one another, and we pretty much still are...probably will never change. We all had great athletic success in high school which the thanks can go to my parents by always encouraging us to play sports. So far the four of us that have went on to college have played sports in college. I recently graduate from Doane College where I studied exercise science and played football for four years. I have always been interested in how the human body works and I have always enjoyed expanding my knowledge on the human body and I enjoy sharing my knowledge with others. I just moved from small town Nebraska where I was doing farm work and construction to big city Phoenix, AZ where I am now a certified strength and conditioning specialist at Lifetime Fitness in North Scottsdale. I'm loving every second of it.

Nutrition to get lean

My childhood days all the way through college I have never had a problem staying lean, I have always lived an active lifestyle. I played four years of college football so during that time I was eating a lot just to maintain weight and then in summers I was doing manual labor so I never had to watch what I ate then as well. Now that I have graduated I am still living an active lifestyle but my diet can't be the "see food and I eat it" diet like it has been in the past. Many people say to stay lean you need to cut out the carbohydrates, to some point this is true. The carbohydrates your body doesn't use throughout a day are stored as fat in the body so cutting out carbohydrates may help one to get the lean body, but then again carbohydrates are a source of energy so carbohydrates need to be in the diet otherwise the body may go to proteins as a source of energy which means you would lose muscle so the body could have energy. My diet, now that I have graduated college and my lifestyle isn't as active consists of protein at every meal along with a carbohydrate, but not a dense carbohyrate like pasta, white rice, or bread, my carbohydrates come from vegetables and fruits. I try to focus on eating low glycemic index foods except for after an intense workout I usually have a high glycemic meal, like a baked potato just to replenish muscle glycogen and start the muscle repair process. I eat about five meals a day and try to eat something every three hours. Calories are burned from just digesting food and absorbing the meal so if you eat more small meals you are burning more calories just from eating. My advice to people from a nutrition point of view is not to diet but to make a lifestyle change.

Weight Training to stay lean

My lean muscle split is always changing and for most people who have been lifting a while you should always be switching your workout up about every one to two weeks because eventually your muscles adapt to the stresses applied and ultimately stop responding or growing. If your a beginner stick with a program for 4-6 weeks so your body does have that chance to adapt then switch it up.

I usually go two weeks of hypertrophy training where I am doing three or four sets of eight to twelve reps on every exercise and no more than a minute between each set. Then I'll do strength training for a week where I do four to five sets of four to six repetitions with about two minutes of rest between each set. Then I will start the mesocyle over. I will do agonist-antagonist muscle training every once in a while to switch it up and keep my heart rate up. This training is basically working mirrored muscle groups. For example I'll do a dumbbell bench press then go right into a dumbbell row. This way my heart rate is staying up because I am not taking rest between the sets but my chest is getting a chance to rest while my back muscles are doing the work and vice versa. For hypertrophy training I will also do drop sets about once a week. This is where you max out lifting amount of weight then take weight off and max on that weight and then take even more weight off and max on that. This is good for hypertrophy because studies show that the longer a muscle is under tension the more hypertrophy will occur.

I start off my week training muscles involved in a pressing motion (shoulders), then the next day I will work muscles involving a pulling motion (back, focus on pullups and pulldowns to work lats for back wideness), then the dreaded leg day, then back to work pressing muscles (chest), then again a pulling motion (back, focus is on rows and working the mid back for back thickness).

I also start off doing multi-joint movement exercises before I do isolated exercises. For example I will do shoulder presses before I get into a shoulder raise. Doing multi-joint movements is getting more muscles involved which in turn is burning more calories. Doing multi-joint exercises also helps to put on size where doing isolated movements like a shoulder raise is done more for definition. I also like to keep my intensity up which basically means shortening my rest periods because studies show that doing intense workouts can help increase natural testosterone levels in the body which is good for anyone wanting to lose body fat or build muscle. My workouts typically never last more than an hour and fifteen minutes. Many people think they have to workout long hours to get a ripped body but then wonder why the can't see results. The reason is, if you apply too much stress to your body the stress hormone (cortisol) is secreted, which can have catabolic effects on muscle growth...nobody wants that. I always go with the saying "stimulate don't annihilate."

Abdominal workouts

 
I do ab workouts every other day. Abdominals are muscles too and they respond the same way as any muscle so they need time to rest and repair in order to grow just like other muscles. Also by adding more resistance to abdominal exercises will help abdominal muscles to grow. For example if you want a big chest you're not going to do fifty reps on bench press, you will pry put some weight on the bar and do sets consisting of eight to twelve reps. The same should go for abdominal work because like I said before they are muscles too and they all respond the same way. My first day of abs my focus is on the obliques and transverse abdominus which is the deep abdominal muscle. My next day of abs my focus is on the "six pack muscles" then I just keep going back and forth between the two groups.

Advice:

I want to tell everyone who read this the same thing a friend and a former high school football coach, Coach Stanley, told me. "Never ask yourself, am I good enough? The answer is always yes. Ask yourself are you willing to do what it takes." Its not going to be easy making a lifestyle change. It's not going to be easy staying disciplined to tell yourself not to eat something but instead to eat something else. It sure is not going to be easy to get out of bed early in the morning and maybe get a training session in before work. But if a healthy lifestyle is what you want and if you want to see those six pack abs of yours that you haven't seen in years that is what its going to take and eventually you will not want to live any other way. It's a lifestyle change and its your life so you can make the choice, Are you willing to do what it takes?

 
Take Care Everybody,

Tim

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