Drop that Body Fat!

Did you know that if you increase the level of growth hormone being produced in your body, your body will naturally burn off excess body fat?

It's true.

According to Dr. Ronald Klatz, "the amount of growth hormone after the age of 21 to 31 falls about 14 percent per decade, so that the total 24 hour growth hormone production rate is reduced by half by the age of sixty." This, along with deminishing levels in the production of androgenic hormones like testosterone and progesterone is part of the reason why the average person begins to lose muscle and gain fat as they age.

However, it doesn't have to be that way.

Now, performing bouts of long duration exercise like jogging and riding the bike can help you lose weight, a huge amount of that weight loss will be from lost and eaten away muscle tissue, including muscle tissue from the heart and lungs which can lead to "Jim Fixx" syndrome. Along with that, this long duration training will also shut down your production of growth hormone and the androgenic hormones.

Heavy resistance training, on the other hand will stimulate the production of growth hormone and the production of the androgenic hormones and help you lose weight. And that weight loss will be mainly from body fat, not from muscle.

By training your anearobic energy system, through heavy resistance training and sprinting, you'll not only drop the excess body fat, but you'll also slow down the aging process (it's wonderful what increased natural production of growth hormone and the androgens does), improve your immune system, create stronger bones and tendons, create stronger muscles, stabilize and keep the body more injury proof, and you'll look much better in or out of your clothes.

There's a caveat though; you have to work your ass off. Use heavy, multi-joint movements (squats, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, etc.) with smaller rest intervals between sets. This will flood your system with lactate which is part of the way that it tells your brain to produce more growth hormone and more androgens.

So, if you want to drop the fat, drop the bike. Instead pick up some heavy-ass barbells and start working.

Yours in strength and health,
Brett Stepan