Archive for Turbulence Training

Turbulence Training for Women Review – Is It Worth the Money?

March 19, 2012 Fit Chic Jackie Reviews, Turbulence Training

While looking for a new fat burning workout, I stumbled across a program promising better fat loss results in half the time. Frankly, it sounded too good to be true, but with life seemingly moving at a faster pace these days, leaving me with little time to hit the gym, I decided this new program – Turbulence Training for Women –  was worth a shot.

If you aren’t yet familiar with “TT“, as it’s commonly referred to by its ever-growing fan base, this is a workout program in which you ditch the time-consuming and ineffective cardio sessions and replace it with 3 short-burst fat burning workouts that combine both resistance training and superior interval training.

The results are a leaner, sexier, feminine-looking physique, with less time spent in the gym away from your family and friends. So let’s have a look at what my experience was with TT for Women.

To start out, the Turbulence Training program offers a convenient and economically-friendly $4.95 21-day trial (after which you are billed the remaining $35), but I decided to follow the program for the full 4 weeks to really measure its effectiveness.

My first concern was that the workouts would be either too easy or too difficult, but after quickly reviewing the TT program I knew that wouldn’t be a problem! 

Not only is this program packed with workouts to keep even gym fanatics busy for a long time, but the TT Fat Loss program has workouts that allow beginners to naturally progress without over-doing themselves. 

My next biggest concern was that these workouts would turn me into the next He-man.  Let’s face it, we want fat loss, but if it’s going to make us big and bulky, then forget it. 

Fortunately, the combination of bodyweight exercises, traditional dumbbell exercises, and interval training made my body smaller and firmer, not big and bulky. After 4 weeks, there was definitely no threat of me entering the next bodybuilding competition, but my arms, abs and hips had noticeably toned up and my stomach was flatter than it had been in years.

And I can’t forget to mention the interval training portion of the workouts either.  These short burst training sessions will challenge you mentally and physically, but they are so quick and the natural exercise high you feel after completing one of these sessions simply does not compare to anything else. 

I refuse to spend 30-45 minutes wasting my time running on the treadmill anymore without getting any results. I’ve said “NO” to boring cardio for good.

Other Cool Features:
These workouts offer a lot of variety in the exercises to keep your body guessing and your mind stimulated.
The program offers exercise photos along with the accompanying descriptions.

When you purchase the program, you get a free 3-month membership to the Turbulence Training fat loss forum where you can get professional advice directly from the author, Craig Ballantyne, as well as social support from other women all over the world – just like you. This forum is priceless – and you get it free with Turbulence Training.

Problems:
I didn’t have many concerns with this program.  In fact, the only thing I can really think that could be improved is a more convenient travel program.  The manual is quite cumbersome, and would involve printing off a large number of pages.  However, all I did was write down my workout in a little booklet, double check to ensure I knew how to do the exercises correctly and head off to the gym.

So, for $4.95 and a 21-day trial, Turbulence Training for Women is an excellent investment and I highly recommend you give it a try if you’re looking to tone your body up in just a few weeks with short, burst workouts.

You can purchase Turbulence Training for Women HERE!

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Fat Burning Bodyweight Circuit Exercises

March 12, 2012 Joel Panetta Turbulence Training, Workouts

Fat Burning Bodyweight Circuit Exercises

By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Turbulence Training for Fat Loss

When you travel, you worry about missing your workouts and eating poorly…So you must plan ahead for both (apples and almonds for planes, trains, & automobiles)…and bodyweight circuits for “no-equipment fat burning”.

And while I have bodyweight exercises that are just as hard as the bench press and barbell squat in one of my bodyweight workouts, today we’ll focus on replacing intervals with bodyweight circuits.

To do a bodyweight circuit…

a) Pick 3 lower body exercises

b) Pick 3 upper body exercises

c) Alternate between a lower and upper body exercise without rest, till you are done all 6 exercises

d) Rest a minute.

e) Repeat 2-3 more times until you are done 20 minutes

For example, this is a great circuit that doesn’t need any equipment

1) Prisoner Squat (12 repetitions)
2) Elevated Pushups (8 reps per side)
3) Single-Leg Deadlift (10 reps per side)
4) Close-grip Pushups (As many reps as possible)
5) Jumping Jacks (30-60 reps)
6) Cross-Body Mountain Climber (12 reps per side)

Whew. That’s pretty advanced…for a beginner, we’d slow it down like this and take some breaks between exercises…

1) Wall Squat (8 reps)
2) Kneeling Elevated Pushup (5 reps per side)
3) Lying 1-leg Hip Extension (8 reps per side)
4) Plank (30 second hold)
5) Jumping Jacks (5-10 reps)
6) Side Plank (15 second hold per side)

Safe travels, and of course, always check with your doctor before beginning a fat burning bodyweight circuit exercise program.

About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit Turbulence Training for Fat Loss

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Fat loss secrets that your doctor hopes you never learn.

March 6, 2012 Joel Panetta Nutrition, This & That, Turbulence Training

You wouldn’t think your fitness would be contrary to your doctor’s interest, would you? Look my doctor is a nice enough fellow. And he does care about my health. There’s a good possibility you have a good doctor too.

The medical establishment, however, is in the business of being in business. Simple economics tells you that the more sick you are, the more money they make. At its best, the medical establishment aims toward wellness.

For your best health and happiness, there should be a higher aim. It looks like this:

Illness => Wellness => Fitness

When you’re talking about your health, Wellness is mediocrity. Fitness is optimum health.

The secrets of fat loss are hidden in the myths of wellness.

Myth #1: Maintaining a steady target heart rate is ideal for heart health.

Fat Loss Secret: Your heart is most healthy when it can operate efficiently, and quickly return to resting heart rate, at many different heart rates.

The best way to do cardio or aerobic activity is to vary the intensity. After a warm-up period, maintain high intensity for one minute. Then, dial down the intensity for 2 minutes. Then alternate for the duration of your cardio routine.

Myth #2: Maintaining a steady target heart rate is ideal for fat loss.

Fat Loss Secret: The fat loss benefits of aerobic or cardio activity only last as long as you are exercising. Once you stop cardio (30, 45, 60 minutes, whenever) your metabolism stops working to burn fat.

Building muscle is a far more efficient fat loss method. And you don’t have to gain bodybuilder-type mass to enjoy the benefits. Bodyweight exercise is an excellent way to build the kind of functional muscle strength that will raise your metabolism.

A rising metabolism burns fat long after you stop exercising. You can achieve the variable heart rate benefits by doing supersets or combo sets.

Myth #3: Lower your calories if you want to lose fat.

Fat Loss Secret: To lose weight, you just have to burn more calories than you take in. If you increase your activity level, you can eat more and still lose weight. If you want to lose fat; build muscle, increase your metabolic rate, and eat more of the right foods and less of the wrong ones.

Simply put, focusing on calories alone in not an efficient way to lose fat.

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Do you want to find a treasure trove of fat loss secrets? Do you want to gain strength while losing stubborn belly fat? Download a copy of Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training. Ballantyne has a time-efficient system for burning fat. He is a world renowned author and training expert. Download it now – Turbulence Training.

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Cannot lose weight? 3 tips for conquering your fat loss plateau.

March 1, 2012 Joel Panetta Fat loss, Turbulence Training

Here is a great article from my buddy Craig Ballantyne creator of the Turbulence Training Program.

Despite your best efforts to control your calories and keeping your exercise routine, sometimes, you just cannot lose any more weight. When you can weight loss stops, despite your efforts, this is called a plateau.

Have you experienced a plateau? You are not alone. Plateaus are the result of the body’s natural response to changes in your routine. Once you understand how your body adjusts to your dietary and fitness changes, you can put your plateaus behind you.

The first step for conquering your plateau is to take a look at your mental preparation for fitness. Is your exercise routine becoming too dull? If you are doing the same 3 sets of this, the same 20 minutes of that, and aren’t finding ways to improve your condition, you are probably plateauing.

Look for things to change. Work on increasing the intensity of your workouts. Get more work out of each of your reps. If you are doing pushups, for instance, you can easily make them harder.

When you extend your arms, really push hard against the ground. Try to pop body off the ground. Squeeze at the top push. Then lower your body in a controlled slow movement.

Second, try taking a week off of your workout routine. Try low-intensity exercise. Give the diet a bit of a break. Sometimes, your metabolism needs time to adjust. Your body may just need a few days to recover from your new routine. You should take a break from your routine every 5 to 10 weeks. Exercise, just do something a little different.

When you return from your “break” do a completely new routine. Add different types of resistance. Enjoy the good weather, if it’s the right time of year, and go for a mountain bike ride, swim, hike, play sports.

Finally, add variety to your eating habits. If you are eating 2000 calories a day, eat 2200 calories one day and 1800 the next. If you are eating three meals, eat less for your meals, and eat more snacks. If you are eating more than three meals, shift to three.

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Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to gain strength while losing stubborn belly fat? Download a copy of Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training. Ballantyne has a time-efficient system for burning fat. He is a world renowned author and training expert. Download it now => Turbulence Training.

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The top 5 fat loss myths.

February 25, 2012 Joel Panetta Fat loss, Turbulence Training

The top 5 fat loss myths
By: Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
www.TurbulenceTraining.com

There are so many fat loss myths out there in “exercise-land” that I was hired by Men’s Fitness magazine to write about one myth each month.

After all, by now you’ve probably heard that if you don’t do 60-minutes of cardio in your fat burning zone on an empty stomach while Venus is in line with Jupiter, you’ll never burn fat.

The problem with myths is that not only are they wrong and give false hope to millions of people trying to lose weight, but they also waste your time and mental effort.

I have also seen these myths used as justification for cheating on a diet, watching countless men and women justify their “treats” because they believe they are on some type of magical exercise program or nutrition plan.

I could go on for days about fitness myths, but I cut my list from 30 down to the Top 5 Fat Loss Workout Myths today. I’ll save the other 25 for future newsletters.

Myth #1: You have to do cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach.

Relax. You don’t have to hop on the treadmill at 4:30am every morning. Let’s allow common sense to dictate when and how you exercise.

If you want to work out first thing in the morning, and I know that is the best time for many TT readers, by all means, go ahead and do it. There’s nothing magical about this time – although it is often the only time many of day many people have to themselves.

We need to think “outside of the hour” of exercise and realize that calorie burning and fat burning goes on for 24-hours. Forget about the theories and look at the big picture.

It doesn’t matter when you exercise – as long as you exercise intensely and consistently. Focus on relatively high-intensity workouts to increase your metabolism for as many hours after exercise as possible. That is best done with interval training and resistance training.

Myth #2: You have to do your cardio in your “fat burning zone”.

Again, nonsense.

While you might burn a larger proportion of total calories as fat when you exercise in your fat burning zone, you burn fewer calories overall by exercising at such a low intensity.

When you increase your workout intensity and get out of your so-called “fat burning zone”, you burn more total calories, and as a result, more fat.

In addition, the “fat burning zone” training doesn’t put “turbulence” on your muscles…so you don’t burn many calories in the post-exercise time period. But with interval training, you burn a significant amount of calories for hours after training, and that leads to more fat loss.

I’ve worked with hundreds of people that have avoided the fat burning zone while still managing to lose dozens of pounds of fat. The “fat burning zone” is one of the biggest fitness myths of all time.

Myth #3: You have to do cardio for 20 minutes before you burn fat.

When I hear this, I picture a fat-burning switch in my body that turns on only after I’ve been doing “cardio” for 20 minutes. But what if I only exercise for 19 minutes and 59 seconds? Are you telling me that I won’t have burned any fat? That’s ridiculous.

What if I did it on an empty stomach in the morning and in my target heart rate zone? (read that one sarcastically!)

I’ll say it one last time. We need to be more concerned with our 24-hour metabolism, not how much fat or even how many calories are burned during the workout.

Myth 4: Drinking ice cold water will help you burn calories and lose fat.

Standing in line at the grocery store is a great place to pick up the latest fat loss myths. You’ll also find this one all over the Internet.

This myth often comes along with some calculations showing that by drinking 8 glasses of ice-cold water you can burn 70 calories per day. I don’t believe that actually holds true in real life. Regardless, drinking cold water is not going to burn any more fat off your body than drinking room temperature water.

Don’t get me wrong, I strongly believe you should drink 12 glasses of water per day, but the temperature of your water won’t have any effect on your overall fat loss success.

Myth #5: Adding one pound of muscle will burn 50 extra calories each day.

Uh-oh, now I’m cutting down a myth that supports my use of strength training in a fat loss program. But I have an obligation to set the record straight about this extremely prevalent myth (even though I just saw a big name fitness expert perpetuate this myth in a recent article!).

This myth sounds so good. Add a pound ouf muscle, boost your metabolism 50 calories. That doesn’t seem out of line at all.

But do the math for a guy that puts on 30 pounds of muscle. Does his metabolism really increase by 1500 calories? Absolutely not. For an average guy, that would require his resting metabolism to increase from 2500 calories to 4000 calories per day. How would he be able to keep any of that muscle with a metabolism like that? He’d have to eat like a pig forever.

So when you look at the big picture, you can see this little myth start to fall apart.

That’s not to say you should stop your strength training, but just don’t use this myth as an excuse to cheat on your diet.

Bonus Myth: Negative Calorie Foods Cause You to Lose Weight

According to the “experts”, a negative calorie food requires more energy to digest than it provides you when you eat it. And included in the negative calorie food list are apples and bananas.

So by this logic, I would actually starve to death if I had nothing to eat but apples (because I would have a net energy loss from eating a so-called “negative calorie” food).

There is no such thing as a negative calorie food.

It’s a shame that people are out there promoting this stuff, and it’s too bad that so many people fall for it.

Remember the old phrase, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Instead, let the common sense fat loss principles apply. It’s going to take consistent effort, working hard at your workouts and with your nutrition to get the results you want.

I guarantee you that Turbulence Training will successfully guide you to the fat loss you deserve and desire.

Sincerely,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training


About the Author

Craig Ballantyne is a Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist and writes for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Muscle and Fitness Hers, and Oxygen magazines. His trademarked Turbulence Training fat loss workouts have been featured multiple times in Men’s Fitness and Maximum Fitness magazines, and have helped thousands of men and women around the world lose fat, gain muscle, and get lean in less than 45 minutes three times per week. For more information on the Turbulence Training workouts that will help you burn fat without long, slow cardio sessions or fancy equipment, visit www.TurbulenceTraining.com

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