THE ANSWER TO LOSING BODYFAT

I’m willing to bet you’d love to know exactly how to minimize your body fat.

Unfortunately there is so much information out there (much of which is very contradictory) that you just don’t know where to start. As a result, you do just that – don’t start!

The truth is that dropping unwanted body fat is in fact very simple but a new perspective is required away from all this rubbish about calorie counting, no-carb diets and periods of dangerously low calories to force fat burning.

Whilst pretty much any diet which restricts your calories to a level below what you burn up each day will lead to reduced body fat in the short-term, you are likely to be doing untold damage to your health and also setting up a rebound effect.

When you finally decide you can’t take starving yourself anymore and increase your calorie intake again, you’ll more than likely end up even fatter than you were before.

What I am about to tell you may seem strange and in direct opposition to what you think you know, but remember this.

I have used these methods to maintain a body fat percentage of 5% on myself, help a lady lose 120lbs in 7 months having tried all the ‘famous’ diets with no success and restore the health of everyone from regular sports fanatics to stressed out business men who were heart attacks waiting to happen!

Also, if you are reading this with excitement at the thought of finally being able to drop body fat, it is clear that what you think you know doesn’t work so listen up!

Here is a list of actions you must start climbing to quickly develop a lean, athletic body and restore your health, dramatically reducing your risk of common ‘affluence diseases’ such as diabetes, heart disease and various cancers which are often non-existent in areas which no access to the Western diet.

The truth is that whilst anyone can drop a few pounds quite quickly, long-term astounding, life-changing results can only be achieved when optimal health is achieved FIRST.

There is too much focus today on missing out this step in search of the quick-fix fat loss method.

You must become aware of the following:

1) The media will glamourize whatever will sell newspapers and magazines regardless of the effect on your health. These journalists have not thoroughly researched studies that often contradict the random advice thrown around about nutrition, and using them as your main reference source for fat loss advice is like getting a dentist to fix your car.

2) The medical profession is controlled by drugs companies and is under so much pressure that those who do want to know and dish ou the truth about nutrition simply do not have the time to offer advice and planning which will truly make a difference to you. It is easier, and unfortunately more profitable in many cases, to simply prescribe another pill or shot of insulin.

3) Often the truth has been covered up in order to protect what are very lucrative industries. The government heavily relies on donations from food and drugs companies and often could not afford to lose the backing of entire industries. The truth mysteriously disappears in a lot of these cases.

This is an express guide to give you something to work from. The three points above should illustrate that there is a huge amount of science and critical issues to consider but as you don’t have time for all that, make sure you do all you can to implement the steps below.

Results will be achieved much quicker if you can work with a health and fitness professional who understands the mechanisms behind these steps so please seek one out as soon as possible.

Build your blood back up

You cannot see the proof of this on screen unless you have your bloods taken as I have by an expert.

However, trust me when I tell you the blood of an average person is an absolute mess and without healthy blood you can never hope to restore sky-high energy levels and minimal body fat!

To begin to feel and operate much better and build a very strong foundation for getting a great looking body back do the following:

- Drink 1 litre of pure, BOTTLED water for every 20-25kg of bodyweight, every day without fail.

- Take 2-3 fish oil tablets 2-3 times per day in order to reduce inflammation and help cleanse your blood.

- Get out of your three caves. Many of us live either in the house, in the car or in the office. Some of us go to cave number four – the gym. Schedule in 2-3 blocks of 45-60 minutes each week where you get outside and oxygenate your blood. This is best done near running water like a canal, or in a woodland or forest, away from the hustle and bustle of daily life.

This is a video of blood ananlysis and what is probably going on inside you right now if you’re diet doesn’t match what I am detailing in this article.

Heavy Metal Detox

Detox is probably up there with ‘skint’ in the most commonly used words list every January yet few people have any clue what is really required to get rid of toxins in the body.

Simply eating a bit more veg and staying off the booze for 2 weeks will do very little if anything for detoxing your body.

The truth is we are literally swimming in toxins as we get bombarded by everything from tap water (with upwards of 300 chemicals) in and carcinogenic (potentially cancer-causing) chemicals in soaps, shower gel and deodorants to air pollution and the use of plastic food tubs.

One of the first steps you must take if it applies to you is to have all mercury fillings removed.

If you have any of these, every time you swallow you are ingesting more heavy metals which are poisoning your body and can lead to a variety of serious health issues.

In fact, if you have enough fillings (maybe 3-4) and you spit in the toilet, you could be charged with breaking rules on the concentration of heavy metals allowed in municipal dumping – that’s how concentrated your saliva is with mercury!

Another to take with detoxification are to bath in Himalyan crystal salts and add it to a drink or two each day as this will help flush out heavy metals and supply the exact mineral content of a healthy human body.

Finally using iodine supplementation helps counteract the negative effects of too much exposure to flourides, bromides, and chlorides in drinking water, toothpaste, swimming pool water etc.

Unfortunately, your cells ‘receive’ all these chemicals in the same way but iodine (which is important for a high metabolic rate) gets pushed to the back of the queue by its bigger cousins!

Alkalise Your Body

Right now, if you eat lots of ‘carbs’ and meat everyday amongst other food sources, you may well be a walking acid bomb.

This means you’ve created an environment in your body that is very conducive to lethargy, illness, disease and generally feeling awful!

Developing a plant-based diet centred on vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds,will see your energy levels surge, your body fat plummet and your long-term health improve dramatically.

Whilst some would advocate a completely vegetarian diet, my experience is that if you are involved in heavy weight training and intense sport, a degree of meat is required to maintain testosterone levels (yes important for ladies as well) and growth hormone.

If you can stick to a diet which is 90% alkaline and 10% acidic, reducing your consumption of animal proteins to 4-5 times per week, you will see amazing changes to your physical appearance and performance and mental wellbeing.

Rather than regurgitate lots of science, I urge you to read ‘The China Study’ which gathered indisputable evidence from around the world over many years, that diets high in animal proteins (meat, dairy and cheese) dramatically increase the risk of diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

By learning to prepare your food you will, as a matter of course, eliminate many of the problematic chemicals that have invaded out food supply in the interests of profit and little else.

In response to these problems, science now focuses on how we can add back individual nutrients as with cereals ‘fortified with iron, calcium etc’. This takes away from the fact that healthy nutrition is not a simple case of isolated nutrients but a complex interaction of natural foods.

Nature knows how things work together and has placed them together in different foods. This is why a varied diet which largely consists of raw food that hasn’t been tampered with, will bring rapid improvements in health and body composition.

As part of this new diet of yours, ensure you adhere to the age-old advice of eating a good breakfast. However, this breakfast must be a highly alkalizing one consisting of ‘greens’ and healthy fats.

This plan involves common sense though and not an obsessive approach so a weekly bowl of nice, warm porridge in the winter (made from rice milk not cow’s milk) is fine and can do wonders for your mood!

Take time to relax, and chew your food to aid digestion, reducing fat storage and helping assimilate important nutrients!

Mental Health

Without your mind in the right place trying to improve your body can often prove rather futile!

Taking time to distress, calm down and enjoy life is critical to giving your body the right environment in which to restore itself back to its healthy, natural, lean state.

Many of us are constantly ‘wired’ as be buzz around getting all our tasks done even if they are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of a healthy, enjoyable life!

Finding 20 minutes to relax and create intense images which help you envisage a calm, relaxed future in which all your dreams come true is a HUGE step in becoming that person.

 

This sort of approach used to seem very ‘out there’ to me until I realized that without a programming your subconscious mind to accept that you are capable of whatever you want to achieve, past experiences and failures will always dominate your thoughts and hold you back.

Our brains are funny like that! By creating positive, intense images and repeating them every single day you will increase the feelings that you and noone else are in control of your life.

This will rapidly get rid of feelings of anxiety and a lack of control that is essentially where all stress originates.

The problem with this stress is that it causes hormonal disturbance such as increases in cortisol that is known to contribute to storage of body fat and numerous health issues. Consequently, you can go to the gym every day for two hours and still see no reduction in body fat!

So no matter how busy you are, find a little time to chill out and build those images and mini-movies in your head of what you want to see happen in ‘real life’ in the near and distant future.

You’ll be surprised how you start changing the way you act, moving you closer and closer to making a happy, relaxed, you with a low body fat and a successful lifestyle, reality!

Remember, you could combine this with your ‘oxygenation’ sessions to kill tow birds with one stone!

A final point on relaxation and improving your mood is to do with the sun.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a nice sunny climate, ensure you get regular short doses of ‘high noon’ sunshine to improve your mood and help keep your body in healthy state, primed for fat loss and fitness gains!

If not, have 2-3 sunbeds of around 3 minutes each week to get your dose of life-giving UVB rays. Many taboos surround sunbeds due to fears about skin cancer, but cancers rarely develop or survive unless the terrain (your body) is in a state to allow this.

Creating an alkaline environment before introducing sun beds will greatly reduce any chance of such fears being realized and in fact help PREVENT such diseases.

(Remember keep sun sessions, either outdoors or under sunbed to short doses.)

The same concept applies to illness. The germ becomes largely irrelevant if the environment is highly alkaline and does not permit it to survive or grow.

Food Timing

Once you have the basics of an alkaline diet and healthy lifestyle in place, consider when you eat certain foods.

Whilst a non-carb approach is not recommended, the timing of your carbohydrate intake can make massive differences to your body fat.

By eating carbohydrate-rich food such as oats and rice in the meal after a hard exercise session, you will avoid the well-documented problems of insulin spikes and the likely onset of diabetic conditions eventually.

After hard-exercise your insulin-sensitivity rises naturally meaning that any sugars from carbohydrates (unless the intake is excessive) will be shuttled into your muscles rather than your body fat stores!

The Technology Trap

Whether you believe it or not, your life is likely dominated by technology. Rather than go into whether or not emails and mobile phones have improved our lives or made them even busier, let’s focus on direct health issues!

Constantly being surrounded by electromagnetic waves, wi-fi internet and mobile phone waves is not good for the brain.

Use the speakerphone on your mobile phone whenever you can and even better, try to use email as much as possible. Not only does this reduce the amount of time you have your phone close to your brain but also gives you more control over when you speak to people!

By claiming back control, you can reduce your stress levels significantly.

Also, remove all electrical goods from your bedroom as the electromagnetic waves can severely hamper good sleep. Without lots of deep sleep, we are unable to recover and rest properly, reducing the ability to build muscle and drop body fat through distressing and relaxation.

This includes electrical alarm clocks, radios, mobile phones and televisions.

Conclusion

Wow! Lot’s of changes to make but don’t feel daunted by the whole process. Much of this can be implemented easily and immediately.

The rest should be implemented in small steps and repeated daily until it becomes habit.

If you think you can’t do any of it, you are basing this purely on past experience rather than thinking rationally about what makes sense in terms of healthy human beings from years gone by.

This is all common sense stuff that, whilst it makes a huge difference, has been largely forgotten by the mainstream as self-imposed time constraints and chasing more and more money have come to dominate our modern society.

I can promise you from personal experience and ‘experimentation’ with clients that this will change your life if you choose to live a healthy and happy life from now on.

To work with me personally please email me at jon@stormforcefitness.com.

It can appear a difficult process at first but I can help you implement these changes and other very effective methods for restoring health and low body fat levels and fast as possible but with lasting results.

I have been through the process of doubting how I could ever change my own eating patterns until I researched the health implications. I realized that not only do I want to maintain low body fat and the ability to run around and enjoy life, but also to avoid many of the diseases which have affected most of my own family.

There is plenty more to work with (such as exact food plans) and many ways to explain the processes in more detail but this will give you a great start!

5 Must Read Articles By Charles Poliquin Please scroll down to read

.1.Poliquin's Top 10 Carb Intake Rules for Optimal Body Composition                2.Fast Results with Fish Oil          3.The Meat and Nut Breakfast

4.Vitamin D3: Best...Supplement...Ever!                  5.The Advantages and Disadvantages of Low Carb Nutrition

Weight Loss: Have your cake and eat it too

You don't have to choose between staying in shape and enjoying yourself this Christmas -- do both

It is at this stage of the year when we start to hear stories about how most people will gain between five and 10 pounds of body fat in the run-up to Christmas. I'm not sure if this worries you or not, but a lot of people are terrified about getting fatter in the coming weeks.

They anticipate their workouts falling by the wayside and the holiday food will be calling out to them irresistibly, defeating even the strongest of willpowers.

The reality is that the average weight gained is a modest pound, but a study by the National Institutes of Health found that this seasonal weight gain -- even just a pound -- is the kind that most people don't lose when the holidays are over. It simply sneaks up -- also known as creeping obesity.

You don't wake up one morning at age 40 or 50 and wonder how come you are 40lbs fatter. It wasn't because you ate a 40lb burger the night before. It was a result of the actions and decisions you made in the years previous to this.

Of course, there are others who gain 10lbs over the holidays but did you ever take the time to ask yourself -- why does holiday weight gain happen at all?

Most people set an unconscious goal to get in worse shape during December. You may not even realise it, as you would never intentionally set out to get fatter. You may be reverse goal-setting. You simply do it by default. In your mind, you may be accepting that it's impossible to stay in shape with everything going on throughout the month, so why bother? You think you can either get in better shape or enjoy yourself, but you can't do both.

You try and reinforce this belief by saying: "I'm too busy meeting clients, and I'm more stressed over the holidays, and the food is there so I eat more. It's only three weeks of mayhem and I can lose any pounds I gain at the beginning of January."

These are all excuses. We all have the same 24 hours in a day and our time is dictated by our highest life priorities. Your schedule never lies. In fact, Parkinson's principle states that things of high priority in your life that are not scheduled in your diary will get replaced by things of low priority. So the question becomes -- is your training scheduled as an appointment in your diary or is it left to chance? Words mean little and it is your actions that will reveal your true priorities.

The real reason people gain weight in December is because they never set out to do the opposite: that is, to get in better shape in the run-up to Christmas. You can enjoy the holidays and stay in shape at the same time. After all, you can't enjoy anything in life, including family or holidays, if you don't have your health.

I'm not that different from you. I have many of the same challenges and problems but I make a conscious decision to stay in shape in the run-up to holidays or when I am studying abroad and on aeroplanes and living in hotels.

I can say that travelling is a pain and that I can't stay on a strict nutrition and training programme when I am on the road. I can resign to not bother and let my expectations create my reality or else I can challenge my limiting beliefs.

Why can't I challenge myself to get in better shape when I am travelling? There are no good reasons, only excuses. I now look at strategies to build health while travelling.
I write my training programme before I leave and I look at hotel gyms or local gyms at the destination in advance of travelling. I can prepare food to eat on planes, so airline food is never an excuse; or I can chose accommodation that has a kitchen, and shop after I check in and cook my own food. I can be a victim of my circumstances or I can be a master of my destiny and create a strategy to improve when I am faced with challenges.

What are you going to do differently this December? Life is not an either/or proposition -- it's a matter of balance. Success does not mean going to extremes but it may be as simple as re-examining your beliefs, rearranging your priorities and changing the questions you ask yourself.

Your expectations will become your reality. What are you expecting? Are you expecting success? Are you expecting to be in better shape after Christmas parties, celebrations, dinners and desserts? If not then why not?

What's preventing you from enjoying all of the above and still getting in better shape?

You can have a result or an excuse but you can't have both. Your activities over the coming weeks will have a big bearing on what your health goals will be for 2010, and what better goal than to be leaner than you were in 2009?

 

 

Why Women need Chocolate

It's the news we've all been waiting for -- craving chocolate is perfectly natural! In fact, denying the dark desires could even be bad for your health. So, go on...

Summer is coming, the holidays have been booked and a number of women will be feeling a little uneasy.

Thoughts of dusting down last year's bikini are not appealing as your misdemeanours in the chocolate cupboard come tomorrow.Guilt and society's eating rules have led to the female blues. You undertake a solemn oath to abstain from your favourite food group, chocolate, till the holidays in order to regain your body shape. But the thought of long-term unhappiness in avoidance of your favourite treat is a major stumbling block to embrace a healthier lifestyle.

In Why Women Need Chocolate, Deborah Waterhouse explains that avoidance of your favourite foods does, in fact, allow cravings to build. These intensify during and after a diet. When they are ignored, they rebel, resulting in excessive overeating, which leads to weight gain.

Female food cravings are biologically ingrained as the female body's survival instinct is to store fat for reproduction.

Researchers at Rockefeller University, New York, found that cravings coincided with reproductive needs. Women craved sugar because of oestrogen's effect on brain chemicals and blood sugar levels.

The University of Michigan found that women craved sugar, which releases the brain chemical serotonin for its calming effects, but also fats for releasing endorphins to elevate the mood. However, the biggest food cravings were for a combination of sugar and fat.

One food that satisfies the cravings of sugars and fats is chocolate. Women everywhere find that eating chocolate makes them feel better by boosting their mood but they may know why.

Hormonal fluctuations, seasonal changes, eating habits, stress and sleep deprivation affect female chemistry. Serotonin and endorphins are known as neurotransmitters and they appear to very important for mood stability and food cravings.

Low serotonin decreases your mood which can lead to carohydrate cravings. When you eat carbohydrates, you increase your serotonin levels elevating your mood.

On the other hand, low endorphins decrease your mood, which makes you crave fat. When you eat fatty foods, it increases endorphins, which also elevate your mood.

The trick is to eat your chocolate at the right time and to distinguish between biological eating and emotional eating.

It is best advised to eat five smaller meals a day. But if you are not hungry are in a negative mood, it can lead to an emotional food craving which leads to an intensified negative mood.

The solution to your food cravings is to satisfy them immediately with a small portion. Abstinence and restriction only serves to fuel food cravings, trigger binge eating, and further deteriorate mood -- while fulfilment satisfies the craving, prevents overeating and enhances your mood.

What does chocolate contain and how do I know if it is a good quality chocolate? Firstly, know the ingredients.

Chocolate has phenylethylamine, which is a chemical released from you brain when you fall in love. It may explain why 50pc of the women surveyed in Waterhouse's study said why they would choose chocolate over sex.

The obromine is similar to caffeine, which increases alertness, concentration and cognitive functioning, and magnesium which is involved in manufacturing serotonin.

Chocolate has also be shown to be rich in anti-oxidants that protect arteries and prostate glands, reduce inflammation and increase well-being.

Your chocolate should be organic, at least 70pc cocoa, be free of high- fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated fats as these will detract from the health benefits of chocolate.

Knee problems!!!!! Knee problems of varying descriptions are as common as five pound plates in gyms and health clubs throughout the world. Anyone who has recently experienced knee surgery will attest to their awareness of this fact, as they quickly begin to notice legions of zipper-like knee scars among their gymgoing peers.

The prevalence of these cases can be attributed largely to the fact that the knee is an anatomical vortex of sorts, where the body's largest and strongest muscle groups converge upon the tiny, yet in most cases hardy, kneecap. Add to this a lack of basic anatomical knowledge, improper exercise technique and/or selection, and unsuitable workout gear, and the prescription for disaster becomes compounded exponentially.

In this discussion we will examine several factors which collectively, have the potential of determining your predisposition for experiencing knee symptoms. Much of this information has received minimal exposure from industry magazines and trade journals in the past, and therefore should be of considerable interest to current and prospective fitness professionals and health care specialists.

Knee Anatomy and Biomechanics

Keeping your knees healthy and asymptomatic begins with developing a functional understanding of how this unique joint is constructed (anatomy) and how it does and doesn't function (biomechanics). The knee is relatively simple to understand from a mechanical perspective, but please refer to the appropriate illustrations as you read this section— doing so will enhance your comprehension of the discussion.

The knee is an unarthroidal (meaning movement in one direction only) hingetype joint, roughly equivalent to a door hinge for practical purposes. Five different types of structures are involved in the knee's functional anatomy— bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles, and articular cartilage. Here then, is a brief definition of these structures:

Bone: Purposeful human movement would not be possible without bones. The four bony structures which are involved in knee function are the femur, or thigh bone, the tibea and fibula (the shin bones), and of course, the patella, or kneecap.

Ligaments: Fibrous and very tough connective tissue which connects bone to bone, providing stability and integrity to the joint. Two sets of ligaments help to stabilize the knee joint— the anterior and posterior cruxiates, which are deeply located within the knee, and serve to limit rotation and hyper-extension, and the co-laterals, one on either side of the knee. The co-laterals protect the knee from being moved from side to side, and help to establish the integrity of the joint by keeping the tibea and femur attached to one another.

Tendons: Fibrous bands that that connect muscles to their bony attachments. In the knee, the patellar tendon connects the quadriceps muscles to the patella, and then in turn to the upper shin.
Muscle: We all have a clear idea as to what muscles are, but let's examine the ones that cross (via their tendinous attachments) the knee joint. First are the quadriceps, the powerful muscles of the anterior (front) thigh. Next are the hamstrings, or the leg biceps, located on the posterior thigh. Finally, the gastrocnemious, the most superficial calf muscle, crosses behind the knee joint, where it contributes as a knee flexor.

Articular Cartilage: You've heard of "torn cartilage" in knee injuries before. cartilage is the connective tissue which provides for a smooth articulation between bones at the joint. Cartilage also acts as a shock absorber. The meniscus is the knee's only cartilage. Located on the tibeal plateau, it cradles the femoral condyle, or the rounded knobs of the lower femur. Since the tibeal plateau is flat, and the femoral condyle is rounded, the meniscus provides a better "fit" between these two structures.

Training Gear

For most, training attire is primarily a matter of vanity— looking good while you're training. But two pieces of standard training gear— your shoes and knee wraps— should be carefully selected and applied, not only to maximize comfort and short term safety, but more importantly, to ensure the long term health of your knees.

Your shoes are literally where the rubber hits the road. We urge you to think of your shoes as the foundation of your leg training sessions. Wearing old or broken down fitness shoes for heavy squatting or leg pressing is like putting old, worn-out tires on a race car! There are several reasons to avoid training in your "tennies:"

First, most general purpose fitness shoes simply lack adequate stability, and have little or no arch support for heavy lifting. As you squat, your feet may develop a tendency to pronate, or "cave in" toward the inner side. When this happens, the knees are also forced inward, leading to a constant strain on the medial collateral ligament, excessive shear force on the meniscus, and improper patellar tracking, which in turn can lead to chondromalacia (to be discussed shortly).

If your feet tend to pronate anyway, or if you're prone to being "knock knee'd" (and these two conditions are very often associated with one another), it becomes even more important to select good training shoes. Another important reason for using specialized shoes for squatting or other heavy leg training movements is that they provide a deep and solid heel cup, which prevents the foot from rocking and rolling laterally (to the outside) when it is compressed under heavy loads.

Finally, there is a difference between a shoe being worn out and being broken down. Even if your shoes look fine, they still may offer no arch or heel support at all, either because they never had any to start with, or because after a handful of heavy leg sessions, the supports have compressed to the point to where they no longer function as they were intended. Think about it— a tennis shoe is meant to support a 160 pound tennis player, NOT a 600 pound leg press! Loads like these cause the shoe to break down without visual signs of wearing out.

We strongly recommend that you choose a heavy-duty training shoe (please see corresponding list of companies that offer these shoes) that you use for training, and training only. Use a stable running shoe or cross trainer for everything else.

Knee wraps have long been a mainstay for competitive powerlifters, and for good reason. When properly used, wraps can dramatically improve knee safety during heavy squatting and leg training sessions. Whenever you contract your quadriceps muscles, the patellar ligament "wants" to pull away from it's attachment at the upper front aspect of the tibea. During squatting, for example, the heavier you go, the lower you go, and the faster you descend, the more this tendency is compounded. Please refer to the sidebar below on proper knee wrapping.

You'll notice that the wrap is tightly wound in a cylindrical fashion around the upper shin (where the patellar ligament attaches), then more loosely wound over the kneecap itself (this is important to avoid grinding the patella into the femoral condyle, creating a case of chondromalacia for yourself), then tightly wound over the lower third of the thigh. The rationale for wrapping the knees prior to heavy squatting is that it reduced the pulling forces on the patellar ligament at it's attachment to the shin. This translates to significantly reduced chances of avulsing (detaching) your patellar ligament during heavy leg movements.

According to Dr. Paul Ward, knee wraps also provide several other benefits beyond protection of the attachment site of the patellar ligament. These benefits include keeping the knees warm, which improves blood flow and tissue elasticity, reducing the possibility of muscle tears during high-intensity leg pressing or squatting. Additionally, knee wraps assist the patella in tracking normally over the femoral condyle, reducing the possibility of developing chondromalacia.

 

“...make sure that your knees are tracking directly over your feet...”

Stance Variables Affecting Knee Health

Whenever you squat, hack squat, or leg press, your foot position is an important variable in determining not only the results you'll obtain from the exercise, but also the safety of your knee joints. Although each individual must determine their own best stance exercise per exercise (based on their own anatomical peculiarities such as height and leg length), the following variables must be taken into consideration:

1) The quadriceps muscles can contract more efficiently when the feet are pointing slightly (about 25 to 30 degrees) outward as opposed to straight ahead. If you squat with a very wide stance, your adductors tend to assist the quads. This can result in stress to the medial collateral ligament, abnormal cartilage loading, and improper patellar tracking.

2) During the decent phase of any type of squat, do not allow the knees to move more than 2-3 inches forward of their locked position. The further your knees travel over your feet, the greater the shearing forces on the patellar tendon and ligament. To avoid this, descend into the squat as if you were sitting back and down into a chair. Don't worry if you lean forward a bit as long as you maintain a tight and arched back, and keep your bodyweight over the center of your feet. The ultimate objective is to keep the shins as vertical as possible throughout the entire movement.

3) In any leg training movement, make sure that your knees are tracking directly over your feet, not to the inside or outside. Many lifters turn their knees inward during the concentric phase of a heavy squat, and they usually aren't aware of it. Give your clients immediate feedback, since after all, they shouldn't be looking at their feet during the lift! If a client turns the knees inward, insist that they back off on weight until more correct movement patterns are mastered. Consider videotaping the squat session to provide unquestionable evidence when needed.

4) During the concentric portion of squatting or leg pressing of any kind, instruct your clients to "push from the heels." This not only enforces a vertical plane of the shins, but also allows the quads to contract with maximum efficiency. Balance will improve as well, which adds an extra margin of safety.

5) Although many top bodybuilders advocate a very close stance for the purpose of "isolating the quads," when squatting, remember the inherent tradeoffs in all ergogenic (work-enhancing) techniques. In this case, any leg training technique that isolates the quads also intensifies the shearing forces to the patellar tendon and ligament. A lucky few have knees that can take this type of punishment, but for most of us, a slightly wider stance, with toes pointing slightly outward and shins vertical, is a much safer and still very effective alternative.

6) Finally, teach your clients to be efficient in the exit out of the rack, and getting "set" in the squat stance. After lifting the weight off of the pins, the lifter should take just one step backward as immediately assume the squatting stance. This takes time to master, but eventually all the minute adjustments can be pared down substantially. Once set in the stance, cue your clients to keep their feet "nailed down" for the duration of the set. Many people "fidget" with their feet and toes between reps which can cause a variety of problems ranging from a break in concentration to a loss of balance.

How to Use the Knee Wraps

Knee wraps are only effective if used properly. So, if you've never used them before, take a moment to read this:

Sit on a chair or bench. Begin with the wrap completely rolled up (this makes the process much easier than fighting with a six foot tangle of cloth). With your leg straight, start applying the wrap on the upper portion of your shin. Wrapping from "in" to "out," (counterclockwise for the left leg, clockwise for the right), anchor the wrap by applying 2-3 layers on the upper shin, then move upward, overlapping each previous layer by one-half the width of the wrap. When wrapping around the patella, make sure the wrap is a bit loose to avoid excessive pressure on the kneecap. Apply the wrap tightly again as you move past the knee, stopping somewhere on the lower third of the thigh. Tuck the end of the wrap under the previous layer to secure it. Repeat for the other leg.

Common Problems of the Knee

Chondromalacia: Degenerative changes (roughening) of the underside of the kneecap. Causes pain when rising out of a chair or when climbing stairs. Think about getting a grain of sand under your eyelid— the synovial fluid acts the same way! Tight quads are responsible for 80% of chondromalacia. Other causes include repetitive overuse, genu valgum ("knock-knees"), and a shallow lateral femoral condyle.