Wednesday Workout -- Watch Those Elbows, Honey!

The LTR weekly shares some of his workout and fitness tips:

For those of you who are interested in displaying their manliness by a massive bench press, you need to mind those elbows. What am I talking about?

Stand in the benching area of your gym (sorry, you can’t learn this one in the steam room ) and watch the guys benching. I’ve been doing this for months at my gym, and have seen two common recurrent themes that are certainly hurting many a good man’s efforts to build the monster bench.

First, watch the width of your grip. What you should be shooting for is shoulder width. Any closer than that, and most of the work is being done by your triceps. Any wider than that, and you’re all shoulders. Now both of those muscle groups need attention, but benching is all about building up those pecs…and if you want to work your way out of that training bra, then you need to watch your grip width.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, pay attention to your elbows. When you bring the bar down, your elbows must remain close to your body . If you allow those elbows to flail out (going perpendicular to your body) you have put yourself in a very weak position and will fall short of your potential. (Flailing elbows=weakling; Tucked elbows = Macho muscle stud)

Keep both of those concepts in mind, and your bench will be a real riser around the gym.

Wednesday Workout: Spot Reduction?

The weekly column by the LTR offering diet and fitness tips. Read today's before you attack that jelly donut thinking you'll work it off at the gym!

A typical fallacy I see play out at the gym incessantly is the cute guy whose love handles, or belly, have grown to an unacceptable level and they’ve decided to do something about it. Now there’s nothing wrong with striving for self improvement, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to turn your “keg” into a six pack. But these guys are most often setting themselves up for failure.

The problem is the notion - and it seems almost universally practiced - that you can remove fat from a specific body part by doing exercises that concentrate on that body party. For example, I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked to guys at they gym who “have had it” with their guts and are dedicating their entire workout to every type of contorted stomach crunch imaginable. Backwards, forwards, sideways, upside down. Yoy!

In their minds, they’re working the fat off their stomachs. Unfortunately for most, they lose little if any measurable fat around their waists and soon give up altogether out of discouragement. They likely have much stronger abs, but those abs are still covered by inches of unsexy, unwanted, furry fat.

Fat is largely deposited universally across the body: in the face, in the arms, in the legs, and of course, around the waist. Now some people tend to deposit it in one place rather than another (for me it’s the love handles), and none of us are capable of depositing fat in that vital area that we wish we could enlarge….and that mandates a different way of thinking. So when you ride a bicycle, for example, you’re not just losing the fat on your legs, because that’s primarily what you’re working, you’re losing fat everywhere.

Bottom line: If you have fat to lose, you need to attack it in two ways. First, increase the amount of aerobic activity you do (read: cardio) and increase the amount of muscle mass you have (read: lift weights) and then – and this is where everyone drops the ball – figure out how many calories you burn in a day (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321646) and start managing that end of the equation. Like it or not, in my opinion, diet is at least 75 percent of the battle. Sorry.

The other option – and I personally don’t consider it viable – is plastic surgery (sorry MD). Make sure you watch one being performed on the Discovery Channel before you select this option.