January 2 is International Shortcut Day! Only 25 days away!

On the 1^st day of the year you set some new year’s resolutions. You anticipate signing up for a program that will help you achieve all of your goals EASILY AND FAST in the next 30 days! Woohoo—what will you do with the rest of your year??

Of course, I’m referring to the get-lean-quick shakes, the crash diets, and the zero-money-down gym sign-up programs that prey on people like us.

There ARE shortcuts to fitness. But there are also a lot of lies out there.

When can a shortcut help us and when does it hurt us? Here’s a four-question test that I took from Seth Godin’s blog.

Is it repeatable? Can I keep doing this for a long time, or is it a crash diet?
Is it non-harmful? What are the downstream effects on my health?
Is it additive? Will it improve over time?
Can it survive the crowd? Does it have to be a secret?

Let’s take a few examples of past fitness trends (and the stuff you’re probably being pitched on your Facebook feed today) and hold them up to our four filters of shortcut validity.

Weight Loss Shakes

Is it repeatable? Can you stay on this diet of shakes forever? No. Are you really going to do this for the next 40 years?

Is it non-harmful? Actually, they’re harmful. Every protein or weight-loss shake uses sweeteners, usually corn derivatives or chemicals. On one hand, you’re brought closer to insulin resistance (diabetes). On the other, you’re ingesting a laboratory experiment.

Most shakes also use a combination of appetite suppressants, caffeine and a mild laxative to keep you full and alert. But your body quickly downgrades its energy expenditure to match, and when you go off the shakes, you quickly gain weight—and it’s all fat. Long term, weight-loss shakes make you fatter and sicker.

Is it additive? Will it improve over time? Well, you’ll probably start to hate taking protein shakes instead of eating real food. And every shake you drink is less effective than the one before (see above). You’re getting smaller by starving out your metabolism.

Can it survive the crowd? Sure … except that, eventually, someone will tell you the truth. The only people sharing their huge weight loss from diets or shakes on Facebook are the people who make a commission by signing you up.

The Keto Diet / Paleo Diet / XYZ Diet

Is it repeatable? Can I keep doing this for a long time, or is it a crash diet? People have been using ketosis and intermittent fasting and high-fat diets since before recorded time. And if you’re trying to beat a sugar addiction, a short ketogenic period might actually help.

But the real question is, “Can I sustain this for the rest of my life?” And the answer to ALL “diets” is “no.”
If you stop eating grains, your body will lose the ability to process grains.

If you stop eating carbs, you’ll become less resistant to insulin in the short-term … but your body will learn and become better at gluconeogenesis (breaking down your muscle tissue to trigger insulin response).

And if you eat in a different way than everyone around you, they’ll pull you into their habits.

Is it non-harmful? What are the downstream effects on my health? Long term, kicking sugar is a very positive thing. But rapid weight loss, binge dieting, or any unsustainable practice will always have a rebound effect. You have a relationship with food. One-night stands with diets will always come back to haunt you.

Is it additive? Will it improve over time? You might get better at eating paleo. But you might also become neurotic about food. There’s a reason people with eating disorders jump from diet to diet: They love the feeling of control, and diets give them a clear “good and bad” line. Unfortunately, that’s not sustainable in life, and everyone knows the term “yo-yo dieting” by now.

Can it survive the crowd? Does it have to be a secret? If you’re part of a group and dieting together, you’ll definitely have more success. You eat like the people you spend most of your time around. If everyone eats a ketogenic diet, you’ll do better at sticking to the ketogenic diet. SHOULD you stick to it? See above.

Joining A Gym

Is it repeatable? Can I keep doing this for a long time? Yes. You can join a gym and keep going for 40 years. We think you should do coached fitness, but even a $9.95 access-only gym will benefit you long term (if you show up).

Is it non-harmful? What are the downstream effects on my health? Yes. There probably are no negative effects. Very few people get injured in the gym. When they occur, injuries are usually overuse problems (you bench press every Monday and do leg extensions every Friday) and don’t occur for a few years.

Is it additive? Will it improve over time? Yes. Training with weights has a compounding effect. You get stronger, your muscles improve your metabolism, and you get better … UNLESS you’re sticking to the same old 3-sets-of-8-reps program you did last month. You need constant variety.

But in general, running becomes more fun the longer you run, weightlifting becomes more fun the longer you lift, and CrossFit gets even more exciting over time.

Can it survive the crowd? Does it have to be a secret? Yes. Discount gyms will see a huge influx of new members until March 13 (the average date most new gym-goers give up and quit, except in coaching gyms like CrossFit Dedication.) And you can’t really “fill” a discount gym, because their business model is based on members who never show up. We’re the opposite, so we have a membership cap.

Joining a Coaching Gym or Personal Trainer or Nutritionist

Is it repeatable? Can I keep doing this for a long time? Yes. I’ve been doing CrossFit for 16 years, and I still love it. Are there injuries? Yes—the same amount as a normal gym, far fewer than hockey or soccer. But CrossFit has also fixed my chronic problems. And I’m always eager to go.

Is it non-harmful? What are the downstream effects on my health? Yes. When a gym works 1:1 with its members to measure progress and set goals, the effects compound, and you don’t waste your time doing stuff that doesn’t work.

Is it additive? Will it improve over time? Yes. When an objective source measures your results, they can point to what’s working and help you focus more.

Can it survive the crowd? Does it have to be a secret? No. Coaching businesses are anti-crowd; because of the 1:1 relationships involved, coaching businesses can’t take 1,000 clients. But maybe that’s OK.

You’re going to get pitched this month. If you feel like you’re being sold, don’t buy. And if a new super-secret fitness method isn’t sustainable, don’t start it: You’ll probably be moving backward.

The post How Fitness Shortcuts Hurt Your Health appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

This might be the only thing you read about metabolism that isn’t trying to sell you something.

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns energy.

Your body uses calories for energy, like your car uses gas for energy.

You need calories to power your body’s systems, such as digestion and circulation. But you also need calories to move.

When you eat too many calories, you store them as fat. This is where things get complicated: Calories from sugar are more likely to be stored as fat because sugar tricks your body into thinking “here come a lot of calories.” And it’s usually right: It’s easy to pack a LOT of calories into sugary foods. But I’ll keep this at a high level for now.

You want a FAST metabolism, meaning your body burns a LOT of calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. Obviously, you should eat less. But there are three ways you burn calories:

Basal metabolic processes: the number of calories your body burns when you’re not moving. This is measured as “basal metabolic rate,” or BMR. The more muscle you have, the higher your BMR will be. The less muscle you have, the lower your BMR will be. Muscle burns calories to stay alive.

Thermic effect of food: It costs a bit of energy to digest food. Not much. It takes slightly more energy to break down proteins and fats than to break down carbs. This is maybe 10% of your total daily intake, at best.

Energy expenditure from physical activity. These are the calories required to move you. The more you move, the more you burn. Walking and shopping don’t count for much, despite what many health professionals tell you. You will not lose weight mowing the lawn or taking one flight of stairs every day. Even an hour of intense aerobic exercise might improve your daily calorie use by around 20%.

That’s it.

The real way to burn calories is to increase your muscle mass. That means lifting weights.

Let’s say you have a basal metabolic rate of 1,000 calories per day. You eat 1,500 calories per day (yeah right—no one eats that little) and you do spin class for an hour. Let’s say your food choices are pretty good, and you have protein or fat with every meal.

Your BMR + thermic effect from food + exercise = 1,300 calories. You’re still gaining weight. If you did this exact thing every day, you’d gain a pound around every 18 days.

Now let’s say you boost your BMR. The ONLY way to do this is by building muscle (or maybe sleeping on the sun, or eating those chemical foot-warmers, or taking thermic steroids. Superfoods won’t do it. Neither will apple cider vinegar nor laxatives nor cigarettes.)

If your new BMR is 1,200, and you eat the same 1,500 calories per day, the thermic effect of food will be the same. But the calories you burn during exercise will go up along with the calories you burn to live.

Your new BMR, thanks to a bit more muscle, is 1,200.

Your BMR + thermic effect from food + exercise = 1,530. You’ve actually lost a bit of weight.

You burn calories right after exercise, when your muscle feeds itself. But you burn far MORE just walking around … and the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn off.

Creating a caloric deficit is the first step to losing fat. It’s not the only step. But if I were going to tell a person the first step to weight loss, I’d tell them to lift weights. The second step: Cut out sugar.

The post What Metabolism Means (And How to Fix Yours) appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

If I asked you if eating healthy foods was important, you would say ‘of course,’ right? And if I asked whether exercise is key for health and wellness, you would most likely respond with a yes. So if we know that nutrition plus fitness is the magic formula for living a vibrantly healthy life, why don’t we do it? Why do we prioritize one over the other? Why do we put one on the back burner and only get serious about it when we’ve been slapped in the face by a wake-up call, such as getting winded by one flight of stairs or a high blood-pressure reading?

In my experience working with hundreds of individuals at CrossFit Dedication, the key is accountability. We’re often willing to let ourselves down time after time, but when someone else is counting on us, we show up for them.

We show up for others because we don’t want to disappoint them, but yet we willingly disappoint ourselves over and over. We justify why we can’t follow through on our nutrition plan, we make excuses for why we have to skip the gym today and we follow it up with a promise to try again tomorrow—or better yet, to start fresh on Monday. Meanwhile, we’re subconsciously cataloging every time we didn’t show up for ourselves as just another failure, and over time, we begin to see ourselves as incapable, inept and weak-minded.

Relying on others to hold us accountable is OK—in the short term. When we’re just getting started, we need that assistance. We need that encouragement and support while we develop good habits. At CrossFit Dedication, we have a framework of accountability to help those wanting to get started. We send reminders, we check in, we acknowledge you every time you walk through the door, we high-five, we follow up and we celebrate with you each time you reach a milestone.

Our community of fellow members also helps in this accountability effort. That friend who is normally in class with you notices when you haven’t been there and sends you a friendly text asking how you’re doing. We let you know you aren’t forgotten and we want you here.

Now here’s where the truth hurts a little bit: No matter how much work to keep you accountable, it ultimately comes down to you. It’s up to you to consciously choose every day to make progress toward your goals. We will always cheer you on and help you, but if you haven’t bought in to the process, it won’t work in the long term.

So how do we stop letting ourselves down and create a safety net for reaching our goals?

Here are 10 tips for holding yourself accountable to your goals:

1. Engage in the community. We want to help you! It is our business! If you don’t engage, you are missing out on a big piece of the magic. Who wouldn’t want a group of like-minded people cheering you on every step of the way?

2. Set reminders on your phone. Schedule your workouts like appointments you can’t miss. Set an alarm for when you need to start prepping your healthy meal so that you don’t look at the clock, realize you have no time and reach for something unhealthy out of convenience.

3. Tell a coach when you’re planning to come to class. By putting your intentions out there, you have created an expectation that you will want to follow through on.

4. Print off a calendar, hang it in a visible spot and cross off the days you hit the gym or stayed true to your nutrition plan so that you can visually see all the marks of your success. It’s satisfying to see your efforts adding up and will reinforce your intentions to keep going!

5. Share your story on social media or another public forum. There’s something to be said for putting it all out there! Even if no one on social media follows up with you on your progress, making a claim publicly will make you more likely to keep your word.

6. Take progress pics. To see our progress, we have to remember where we started. We get used to how we currently look because change is subtle and gradual. By looking back to our starting point and comparing it to where we are now, we can take stock of the progress we have made since day one.

7. Set quarterly goal-setting meetings with an accountability buddy. If you are a member at CrossFit Dedication, we want to schedule these meetings with your coach every quarter, so reach out to get yours on the calendar! If you aren’t a member here, find a friend who needs accountability, too, and make quarterly dates to review your progress and set goals for the future.

8. Constantly remind yourself of your “why.” A goal is great, but if we don’t know why we want to reach it, it doesn’t mean much. Ask yourself why you want to focus on your fitness and nutrition. How will it impact your life? How will it make you feel? It doesn’t hurt to do some visualization either. Mentally imagine yourself as the person you see yourself as if your goals are met. Once you have a solid “why,” remind yourself of it daily so that you internalize it and keep it close to your heart.

9. Don’t make it all or nothing. “Rome wasn’t built in a day”—we all know that saying, and it’s true! We are on a journey, not a quick trip to the supermarket. There will be ups and downs. There will be plateaus. There will be naysayers and stress and self-doubt. Don’t let those things knock you off your path. Acknowledge them, thank them for teaching you something about yourself and then continue to make forward progress.

10. Reward yourself for reaching micro-goals. Everyone likes a prize, right? Set micro-goals along the path to your BIG goals and reward yourself for hitting those milestones along the way. An example is if someone wants to lose 30 pounds, they can give themselves a little gift for every five-pound loss. Someone who wants to focus on nutrition can reward themselves for each solid week of staying on track or keeping their eating out to below an acceptable minimum for the week. These rewards don’t have to cost money, either—get creative with things you enjoy and treat yourself!

There are many other ways to keep yourself accountable, so find what works for you. Something that worked once might not work forever—switch things up often to stay excited and motivated about your success.

If you need help getting started on your health and wellness path, feel free to contact us! We would love to set up a No-Sweat Intro with you where we talk about you, your current lifestyle and your goals, and help you make a plan of action. Book one here!

The post 10 Ways to Hold Yourself Accountable appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

“Your workout is our warm-up!”

“Grip it and rip it!”

“We don’t need machines; we are machines!”

I’m sure you’ve all read or heard one of these quotes or any number of others telling you workouts have to be all out. That you should leave nothing in the tank. That the way to make progress is to put yourself in the pain cave and stay there. Not only have I heard them all, I’ve no doubt said them all too—and meant it at the time.

But it’s not true all of the time, and for many of us it’s not what we need right now. Exercise is a wonderful thing with so many benefits, but we need to be mindful that it puts stress on the body. If you already have a huge amount of stress in your life with work, home life, home-schooling while working from home (no idea how you do this; I’m in awe of those of you who do), constant negative news, not seeing your loved ones and countless other stressors, don’t beat yourself up if the last thing you want to do is a workout that grinds you into the ground.

Just because you’re used to going all in on a workout doesn’t mean that anything less doesn’t count. Doing a workout at 50 percent of what you normally would is still a deposit in your well-being bank. Just doing the warm-up and saying “that’s me done” is still doing something.

I’ve spoken to so many people recently who are struggling to find motivation to train, whereas in normal times, exercise is the highlight of their day. I own the gym and I struggle to find motivation to train frequently. Don’t be too hard on yourself for feeling that way. It’s perfectly normal, and I promise, you’re not alone.

Try reframing why you’re training. The end goal doesn’t have to be a 300lb back squat or a sub-6-minute mile. The goal can just be to move. To have some time to yourself. Or to have some time with someone else. Doing some exercise is still a huge positive even if it doesn’t feel like you’re going to die doing it.

If you are struggling with training or have completely given up, here are a couple of suggestions that might help.

Exercise in the morning. I’m a dad of two boys who think getting up at 5:30 is a lie-in, so I’m fully with you if the idea of doing this sounds ludicrous, but stick with me. We’ve all got a set amount of willpower and it depletes as the day goes on. If you can get your exercise in before you start your day when your willpower is at its strongest, the chances of you doing something are much greater.

Pick easier workouts. A 20-minute walk counts as a workout. Three rounds of 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups counts as a workout. Working out while watching re-runs of Ted Lasso (if you know, you know) is not only acceptable, but I’d highly encourage it. Move. Pick something you love doing. Forget doing things because you want to be better at them or because they’re your weaknesses. Training should be fun at the best of times—it has to be fun in the current time.

If you’re struggling to come up with workout ideas:

Push-up/sit-up/squat grid. Draw a grid on a sheet of paper, like noughts and crosses. It can be as many boxes as you want, but the more boxes, the harder it is. So start with just nine. Pick a movement. While you’re watching TV or catching up with friends, do a set of that movement. Write the number in the grid. Rest and relax. When ready, do another set. By the time your program has finished, you’ll have done nine or more sets without even realizing it.

12-minute EMOM (every minute, on the minute)

Minute one: squats

Minute two: push-ups

Minute three: lunges

Minute four: plank

Aim for just 20 seconds of work each minute, giving you 40 seconds of rest.

Train with someone. If you live with someone, see if they want to do something with you. It doesn’t matter if you have vastly different fitness backgrounds or abilities. Training with someone means you’re accountable to someone, and if you live with them it’s not like you can screen their calls.

If you don’t live with someone, get outside and exercise with someone. Or if the Beast from the East continues to make it feel like we’re living in Siberia, video call them and train together. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not doing the same thing.

There’s more than enough going on around the world taking its toll on you. Don’t add to it by being hard on yourself when it comes to exercise or the lack thereof. Try doing something.

If you don’t manage it today, that doesn’t matter. Try again tomorrow.

Having a consistent schedule of going to the gym is obviously ideal, but if that’s not in the cards right now just make sure you are doing something.

As we say here at CrossFit Dedication, “Just get started.”

If you’d like a more specific plan that will help you accomplish your goals faster, we can help. Click HERE to book a free consultation with one of our expert coaches today!

The post Training Dosen’t Have To Be Hard appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

The one-word answer is “no.”

So why do so many people avoid fat or believe it causes weight gain? The answer is likely because the diet industry went through a low-fat craze in the ‘90s. And it doesn’t help that body fat and dietary fat share the same name. You are what you eat, right? Wrong in this case!

It also doesn’t help that the word “fat” is sometimes used to describe someone who is overweight. If you combine all that, it’s easy to see why so many people avoid fat and so many products have the phrases “low in fat!” and “fat-free!” on their labels.

But dietary fat isn’t a problem. It’s one of three important macronutrients. Protein and carbohydrates are the other two. Fat is just a nutrient that supplies energy and it’s a source of “essential fatty acids.” The body can’t make these fatty acids, so we must eat them—and they are indeed essential for health. Here’s a line from “The Essentials of Essential Fatty Acids,” published in the Journal of Dietary Supplements: “Studies have shown that increasing the intake of certain essential fatty acids, either alone or in combination with other fats and compounds, can increase health, help in treating certain diseases, and even improve body composition, mental and physical performance.”

So some kinds of fats are very good for you. You might have heard of “unsaturated” or  “good” fat. These fats can be found in foods like fish, nuts and avocado. You’ll hear about two other kinds of fat: “saturated” and “trans.”

Saturated fats are found primarily in meat, dairy, and some plants. Experts have different opinions on saturated fats and this Healthline.com article has a good overview. The quick summary: A reasonable amount of saturated fat from high-quality sources likely has a place in an overall healthy diet. Large amounts regularly consumed through high-calorie fast food can create health concerns.Trans fats—“bad” fats—are primarily found in processed foods and have been linked to heart disease, strokes, and other health problems. They should be avoided.

So if some fats are good and even essential, what actually causes people to gain body fat? More and more, researchers are pointing to refined carbohydrates and sugar. The interesting part is that some foods are packed with sugar and fat and they’re delicious. That makes it very easy to consume too much—and overconsumption of fat adds a lot of calories to your diet. Again, it’s not necessarily the fat itself that’s bad, just the amount.

Sugar, on the other hand, has fewer calories per gram, but it wreaks havoc on hormones like insulin. It gets complicated here, so we’ll just mention that high levels of added sugar are not good for health. (If you want, you can read more about carbs and blood sugar here.)The takeaway: Body fat is not directly produced by eating dietary fat. Healthy fats are definitely part of a solid nutrition plan. Weight gain is more closely tied to a number of factors including food quantity, food quality, activity levels, and other factors.

So some almonds or slices of avocado can definitely be included in your plan. Those foods will give you energy and fuel your workouts. Huge bags of chips, lots of chocolate bars and double-cheeseburgers at every meal? That plan won’t help you achieve your fitness and health goals. The best news: You don’t have to figure all this out. We have qualified experts who can help you develop the healthy eating habits that will help you reach your goals.

The post Dose Eating Fat Make You Fat? appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

Is Your Metabolism Broken? (And How to Fix it)

This might be the only thing you read about metabolism that isn’t trying to sell you something.

Ever wonder about the secret machinations of your body’s use of energy? It seems so obscure and impossible to alter in our world today, but it can also be quite straight-forward, with a little deeper look and some math. Stay with us here…it’s worth it.

Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns energy.

Your body uses calories for energy, like your car uses gas for energy.

You need calories to power your body’s systems, such as digestion and circulation. But you also need calories to move.

When you eat too many calories, you store them as fat. This is where things get complicated: Calories from sugar are more likely to be stored as fat because sugar tricks your body into thinking “here come a lot of calories.” And it’s usually right: It’s easy to pack a LOT of calories into sugary foods. But not all calories are the same, though they seem they should be. Or at least your body doesn’t burn through everything in a calorie-in, calorie-out kind of way.

There are three ways you burn calories:

Basal metabolic processes: the number of calories your body burns when you’re not moving. This is measured as “basal metabolic rate,” or BMR. The more muscle you have, the higher your BMR will be. The less muscle you have, the lower your BMR will be. Muscle burns calories to stay alive.

Thermic effect of food: It costs a bit of energy to digest food. Not much. It takes slightly more energy to break down proteins and fats than to break down carbs. This is maybe 10% of your total daily intake, at best.

Energy expenditure from physical activity. These are the calories required to move you. The more you move, the more you burn. Walking and shopping don’t count for much, despite what our Food&Drug Administration may say. You will not lose weight mowing the lawn or taking one flight of stairs every day. Even an hour of intense aerobic exercise might improve your daily calorie use by around 20%.

That’s it.

The real way to burn calories is to increase your muscle mass. That means lifting weights.

Let’s say you have a basal metabolic rate of 1,000 calories per day. You eat 1,500 calories per day (yeah right—no one eats that little) and you do spin class for an hour. Let’s say your food choices are pretty good, and you have protein or fat with every meal.

Your BMR + thermic effect from food + exercise = 1,300 calories. You’re still gaining weight. If you did this exact thing every day, you’d gain a pound around every 18 days.

Now let’s say you boost your BMR. The ONLY way to do this is by building muscle. If your new BMR is 1,200, and you eat the same 1,500 calories per day, the thermic effect of food will be the same. But the calories you burn during exercise will go up along with the calories you burn to live.

Your new BMR, thanks to a bit more muscle, is 1,200.

Your BMR + thermic effect from food + exercise = 1,530. You’ve actually lost a bit of weight.

You burn calories right after exercise, when your muscle feeds itself. But you burn far MORE just walking around … and the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn off.

Creating a caloric deficit is the first step to losing fat. It’s not the only step. You want a FAST metabolism, meaning your body burns a LOT of calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat. Obviously, you should eat less. But if I were going to tell a person the first step to weight loss, I’d tell them to lift weights.

The second step: Cut out sugar. More on that to come!

Inspiration provided by Chris Cooper at Catalystgym.com.

Original article can be found at:  https://catalystgym.com/what-metabolism-means-and-how-to-fix-yours/

The post Is Your Metabolism Broken? appeared first on CrossFit Dedication.

“How do I get better arms?”

We get this question all the time. Sometimes it’s from people who are looking to build muscle in their biceps and triceps. Other times, people are looking to achieve better tone. We’ll answer the question for both crowds. Here are five things you can do to get the arms you want.

1. Eat Properly

Surprised this one is first? Don’t be: Nutrition is the foundation of everything when it comes to fitness. If you want to build larger muscles, you’ll need protein. And if you’re looking to increase tone and definition, you’ll need to reduce body fat. To drop fat, you must have your nutrition dialed in: You can’t eat excessive amounts of food, and some foods will help you accomplish your goals faster than others.

At CrossFit Dedication we can guide you on exactly how to eat for your goals, but here’s the short, general version: Prioritize protein, and look to whole foods including veggies, some fruit, nuts, and seeds before picking up processed, fatty foods with lots of added sugar.

2. Lift Heavy Stuff!

To build some arm muscle, you need to lift enough weight to cause the muscle to grow. That means the last reps in any set should be challenging. If you do a set of 8 biceps curls and the last rep felt very easy, you’re probably not lifting heavy enough. You need to “feel the burn” and challenge yourself! That safe stress will trigger your body to grow new muscle to adapt to the work you’re asking it to perform.

Muscle growth is called “hypertrophy.” In the past, people often saw bulging bodybuilders and worried that heavy lifting would turn them into behemoths covered in veins. That just doesn’t happen without very hard, very specific training (and often anabolic steroids). So don’t worry that heavy lifting will make you “bulky.” Lifting heavy is exactly what you need to build muscle and achieve great arms.

How heavy should you go? That depends on the movement and the sets and reps you’re doing. Our coaches can give you an exact plan—and we’ll talk about that below.

3. Do Arm Movements

This seems obvious, but we’ll point out something most people miss: You shouldn’t just focus on the biceps if you want great arms. Sure, the biceps are prominent, but you can’t forget all the muscles of the forearms and the triceps on the back of the arm. Deltoids are considered shoulder muscles, but they still help move the arms, and you should work them, too.

Hundreds of movements can be used to train these specific muscles. You can use barbells, dumbbells, bands, cable stations, body weight and household objects. A lot of times people will use “single joint” or “isolation” movements to train the arms. Think biceps curls, triceps extensions, delt raises and so on. These movements can be great if you want to target very specific areas.

For best results, we recommend you train all the muscles in the arm in isolation and together—read on!

4. Do Compound Movements

Compound movements work many muscle groups at once and involve several joints. Think about a pull-up, for example. It requires the elbows and the shoulders to move, and it trains a host of muscles at once.

Isolation movements are great, but don’t think you aren’t training your triceps in a bench press or your shoulders in a barbell press. You’ll get a huge bang for your buck with compound movements, and we use them regularly in the gym. As an added benefit, compound movements usually involve the muscles of the core and sometimes even the legs. That means you can improve your whole body even if you’re mainly focused on your arms. A few great compound movements for arms: pull-ups, chin-ups, bench presses, shoulder presses, bent-over barbell rows.

5. Change Your Routine

If you always do the same thing, your body will adapt for a while and then stop adapting. But if you change your routine at appropriate times, your body will keep adapting to new stresses and you’ll get the results you want. That means you might do 3 sets of 8 reps of barbell biceps curls with 20 lb. for three weeks, then switch to 2 sets of 12 reps of dumbbell hammer curls with 10 lb. in each hand for three weeks. You can adjust the weights you use, the reps, the sets, the movements, the rest and the number of times you train. But it’s not random.

You need to make the right changes at the right time. We could write a huge book on that, and we carefully tailor workouts to our clients so they get results. We’ll just say this to get you started: Change up your routine at least every four weeks to ensure you’d don’t hit a plateau.

Get to Work!

There you have it! With these five tips, you’re well on your way to better arms.

We’ll even give you a simple workout:

2-3 sets of 8 alternating dumbbell biceps curls (rest 45 seconds between sets)

2-3 sets of 8 dumbbell lying triceps extensions (rest 45 seconds between sets)

2-3 sets of 8 dumbbell hammer curls to overhead presses (rest 60 seconds between sets)

2-3 sets of 8 dumbbell bent-over rows to triceps kickbacks (rest 60 seconds between sets)

If you’d like a more specific plan that will help you accomplish your specific goals faster, we can help. Click HERE to book a free consultation with one of our expert coaches today!

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How do you find fitness for you that works? That energizes you and helps you feel stronger in an overbusy and largely sedentary world? You choose a pathway with multiple schedule options that offers both predictability and variety.

Crossfit classes are held daily–early morning, morning, midday, afternoon, late afternoon—which offers some good flexibility for busy lives. Each offers a workout plan that over the course of the week aims for diversity of movement, balance of strength and cardio, and even mobility to improve your range of movement.

You can always depend on a good workout. Not too much. Not too little. One that has been prepared to balance effort with experimentation and learning.

At the same time, the workouts keep changing. You get to learn to anticipate what the fun might be in the morning! There is always variety, new things to learn, new things to try.

A fitness path that works for you needs to find this rhythm between predictability and variety. It keeps a person interested with the newness of the workout movements. It keeps a person engaged because it’s also predictable. Safe even.

For more information or questions that arise for you, CrossFit Dedication can be found here (www.crossfitdedication.com) or by contacting Matt Mitchell at (cfdedication@gmail.com).

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Anything you spend concerted time, money, and effort in is easier if results are visible, right?  The resources you invest into your own health and fitness are no different, except we get conflicting signals of what measures matter. Do you track your progress in your own fitness? For a long time, I didn’t. I measured running distance, or times/week at the gym, but nothing else…

CrossFit gyms have developed practices and technologies to track the most significant aspects of a body’s health: percentage fat, muscle mass, metabolic rate, hydration, symmetry or balance of muscle development. And yes, while there, total weight and BMI’s are taken too. But contrary to public opinion, total weight isn’t a result that matters. Stepping on the scale doesn’t give you a glimpse into body health or fitness. You could be working out, gaining 2 lbs of muscle while losing 2 lbs of fat. The scale will tell you you’ve had no change. There’s no way to know otherwise unless you use a health-fitness technology like InBody or Whoop to tell you the inside story about your current metabolic rate, the ratio of fat to muscle, your level of hydration, etc.

So results matter…but you have to know to look for the most appropriate and data-oriented results, disregarded even by many health professionals today. CrossFit offers this inside glimpse of body health-fitness for athletes interested in tracking their progress…in the results that matter.

Consider Matthew Smith, then. He searched for a CrossFit gym close to where he lives, landing at CFD. He was motivated to become intentional about his health because of his children, his awareness that he’s of an age where “all the health things just start to add up!” High blood pressure, pre-diabetic…it was time.

He just completed his Six Week Challenge, an entry initiative at the gym to give an introduction to the CrossFit wisdom over a long enough period of time to see some results that matter. In the short period of six weeks, coming faithfully to the morning classes, he gained five pounds in muscle, lost 7.1% body fat, and lost a total of 12.8 pounds. His starting blood-pressure was 125/81. At last check it was 120/70, but the marvelous surprise is that this ‘count’ is without the BP meds he’d been prescribed to take. He is completely off the meds, with the surprise and nod of his doctor. And he’s become a welcome member of both 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Crossfit classes!

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