The following is a weekly newsletter distributed by Parrillo Performance.  You’ll see great weight loss, muscle gain recipes, training tips and NEW product releases.

Table of Contents

1. “I hate cardio!!!!” Results from our weekly survey….
2. Weekly survey - Abs, the quest for the perfect six-pack!
3. Paging all Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers - Motivated clients are looking for you….
4. Article of the week: Why free weights trump exercise machines
5. Chicken salad - perfect for summer picnics

“I hate cardio!!!!” Revealing results from our weekly survey…. Treadmill running

Thanks to all of the readers who gave their two cents worth on their cardio routines. This seems to be a very passionate subject, with some really getting into it and some sharing exactly how they feel by letting us know, “I hate cardio!!!!”

28% of respondents have a three-day routine, while 25% have a five-day routine. Four and six days a week come in third and fourth in the list. An overwhelming 82% do cardio once on the days they have it scheduled, with the average length of their session being between 30 - 45 minutes (42%). 27% keep their sessions between 15-30 minutes and 24% go for 45-60 minutes.

By far, the favorite activity is running, either on a treadmill or outdoors, with 32% of our readers citing that as a favorite. 21% hop on the elliptical trainer for their workout, and among some of the more creative ways our readers get their cardio conditioning include mixed martial arts training, walking, spin class, basketball, arch trainer, Kettlebell, and NordicTrack. Interval training also seems to be a popular approach to cardio conditioning as well.

A couple of key points indicated in our survey. Cardio enthusiasts experience less burnout by cross training - they do different things on different days. It keeps the workout interesting and the body responsive. The second key point is if you can do it outside, do it! As one response aptly states, “Outdoor cardio helps prevent burnout. Critters, trees, wildflowers and snow will beat staring at a wall or TV any day! The varied terrain challenges the body more as well.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

To sum it up, this powerlifter says it nicely, “Many powerlifters disdain cardio. I, however, prefer to be healthier, to live longer and to have some kind of weight control mechanism.” And our hats are off to our 72 year-old fan who tells us, “I also love cycling outdoors, elliptical trainers, rowing machines and workout videos (step aerobics, kickboxing, cardio fusion). “

Thanks for your responses - keep up the great efforts!

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Abs workouts - what’s yours? Weekly survey - Abs, the quest for the perfect six-pack!

So many of our readers are passionate about having a perfect six pack. While diet plays a huge part of this, so do effective ab workouts. Share with us some of your favorite approaches to abs and making them burn. Click here to respond to our survey.

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Paging all Parrillo Certified
Personal Trainers -

Motivated clients are looking for you…. Calling all Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers

Be sure to add your listing to the Parrillo Certified Personal Trainers list in ParrilloZone.com - we get calls all the time from motivated people looking specifically for a Parrillo Certified trainer in their area because they know they can count on them to help them be successful. Make yourself easy to find! Click here to submit your listing… (register and sign in to add your entry.) Not a Parrillo Certified trainer? What’s holding you back? Call 1-800-874-3305 to learn how to become one of the elite!
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Free weights trump machines Article of the week: Why free weights trump exercise machines

Back in the olden days, before exercise machines became commonplace, the exercise possibilities for weight trainers were extremely limited. Basically you had barbells, dumbbells, squat racks, flat and incline benches, a hyper-extension bench, a chin bar and perhaps a cable crossover/tricep pushdown device, maybe a power rack.

If a gym had a cable crossover apparatus it was considered high tech and state of the art. The machine revolution didn’t really occur until Arthur Jones invented his highly overrated Nautilus machines. From that point forward machine technology, acceptability and desirability, took off like a rocket. Suddenly a facility’s sophistication was determined by how many machines it had and what type. It got very strange: people would do entire workouts using machines only. This seemed at the time a giant technological step forward when in fact, from a muscle building, bodybuilding prospective, it was a gigantic step backwards! At the time, all machines mimicked isolation exercises. With the exception of the venerable Smith Machine, (still a valuable training device and the number 1 machine in my opinion) all early exercise devices restricted the trainee to single-joint isolation movements. The early machines were limited to isolation stuff such as curls, tricep extensions, leg extensions, leg curls, lateral raises, machine rows, pec dec, and overhead presses.

Because there were no machines capable of allowing the user to perform compound multiple-joint exercises, people who trained exclusively on machines got inferior results. Because machines eliminate the requirement that the user control the side-to-side motion of the weight, machines are inherently inferior to the barbell/dumbbell exercises that they mimic. A bench press done on a machine locks the user into a specific motor-pathway and 100% of available strength can be used to push the bench press - muscle stabilizers are not activated during the push or the lowering because there is no need for them to be activated. This means that approximately 30% less muscle fiber is stimulated than the identical exercise done using barbells (or better yet, dumbbells) that require stabilizers to fire.

Easier, in resistance training, is NOT better or more effective. Easier is inferior. The reason old fashion barbells and dumbbells are so effective is because they are cumbersome and difficult; the ball-bearing smoothness of a well-oiled, well-engineered exercise machine makes it a joy to push or pull on, but that very efficiency makes it less effective at muscle building. Stimulating muscle fiber is done by stressing a muscle. The most effective way to cause maximum muscle fiber to fire is to use an implement, like a dumbbell, that not only requires you control the raising and lowering, but that you are also forced to keep the dumbbell within the proscribed pathway. A machine defines the path the resistance travels in: the user has no need to call upon muscle stabilizers because the payload pathway is stabilized.

So what does all this mean? Be sure and start off a muscle group with compound multi-joint free weight exercise that requires many muscles to work together to push or pull the weight along the proscribed path. I shake my head when I see a novice trainee come to the gym and start off their workout with machine curls, lateral raises or pec dec. After you initially blast the muscle with a compound multi-joint, stabilizer activating barbell or dumbbell exercise, move on to an isolation exercise that uses barbells or dumbbells, or use what I call the “rough devices.” Rough devices include cables that allow the user to cut their own path, ditto chins or pull-ups, dips activate stabilizers. A hyperextension bench is a rough device, as is a calf machine or a leg press. Once you’ve worked through the main compound exercise, once you’ve done the isolation exercises that use free weights or rough devices, if you still have some gas and wish to continue, this is the ideal time to finish off with a machine exercise or two.

One great advantage to finishing a body part with a machine movement is machines are ideal for having a partner administer forced reps. After blasting the chest with flat benches, dumbbell inclines and cable crossovers, a set or two of high rep pec dec (including a bunch of forced reps at the end) are a great way to utterly, totally, completely burn out a muscle. Just make sure the instant you have completed this type of savage workout, you immediately down a serving (or better yet a double serving) of 50/50 Plus^TM. If you blitzkrieg a muscle in this fashion and don’t feed it immediately afterwards - you go backwards! Feed the muscle while the 30-60 minute window of opportunity is open. Do so and amplify gains by upwards of 30%! Free weights trump machines!

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Chicken Salad

CapTri® Mayonnaise
70 g. egg whites
2 tbsp. lemon juice
1 cup CapTri®
1 tsp. dry mustard
Beat egg whites in blender on low speed. Add lemon juice and dry mustard. Continue to blend and slowly drizzle in CapTri®. Continue blending until smooth. Keep refrigerated!

Chicken salad - Perfect for summer picnics

650 g. boiled chicken breast (cooled and shredded)
100 g. chopped lettuce
100 g. chopped celery
50 g. minced onion
1 cup CapTri® mayo (recipe separate)
1 clove garlic minced OR 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. onion powder pepper to taste

Place chicken and vegetables in medium bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine mayo and spices. Mix well and pour over chicken and vegetables. Mix again.
Scoop chicken salad onto tomato wedges with a small potato on the side.
Variation: add 200 g. (1 cup) fresh or thawed frozen pea

View these and other great healthy recipes at ParrilloZone.com by clicking here.

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To your health,

The Team at Parrillo Performance

Rightclick to download pictures…

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Parrillo Performance

6200 Union Centre Blvd

Fairfield, Ohio 45014

1 (513) 874-3305

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm and is filed under General Training and Workout. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.