Ask Joe Weider

Tip of the Week: When it comes to exercise, confusion can be a good thing.

I've noticed that one of the popular new training systems of today promotes something they call "Muscle Confusion" as being a way to keep progressing to ever-greater heights of strength and fitness. They're right — keeping the body on its toes and unable to adapt to the next stress it receives is an effective means of getting it to constantly respond to workouts.

This isn't a new idea by any means. More than 40 years ago, I defined the Muscle Confusion Principle as part of the overriding set of Weider Principles that can be used to achieve maximum results from exercise. What it essentially means is mixing things up from workout to workout.

For example, if in one workout you perform squats for your legs, the next you might want to replace them with walking lunges. Or if in one chest workout you go heavy using low reps, the next you might lighten up and go with higher reps, or superset bench presses with push-ups. So long as you're not allowing your body to grow complacent and adapt to your workouts, you're sure to keep it advancing.

Q: What do you think about the phrase "No pain, no gain?" I'm trying to drop 20 pounds of fat and tone up my muscles, but I'm wondering if it's true that to develop my muscles I'm going to have to feel pain in them. I've got so much going on in my life that the last thing I need is to be walking around in pain.

Joe: "No pain, no gain" is an age-old term that is often taken out of context and in reality only applies to the serious lifter.

The pain that's referred to in the phrase is muscle soreness, which is brought about by things like lactic acid buildup during exercise and the body's response to the tearing down of muscles during exercise.

What it does not refer to is joint pain, chest pain or anything more than a mild aching in the muscles. Severe pain is a sign of injury, which obviously isn't your goal.

So, a small degree of pain indicates that work was done and growth will occur as a result.

For those of us who enjoy training, such pain is welcomed. It indicates to us that we were successful in the job at hand.

You may experience a small degree of such soreness in your muscles for a day or two after a workout, but the odds are it won't be anything even close to unbearable, more like invigorating. That ache also serves to keep us in touch with our muscles, a feeling that too many of us never experience.

Q: What is a "keto diet"? I heard some women talking about going on it at the gym. Sounds exotic!

Joe: They were talking about a ketogenic diet, which refers to a process in which the liver converts fat to energy, something that happens when carbohydrate intake is very low.

The original ketogenic diet was created to treat a form of epilepsy in children. It was discovered back in the 1920s that such a diet could actually help reduce the number of convulsions epileptic children experience.

More recently, nutritionists have gotten onto the ketogenic bandwagon when they realized that the ketogenic process could be employed to help people lose weight. When the body is trained to use fat for energy, it is always being processed rather than stored.

The Atkins diet is a modification of the ketogenic diet, although not as extreme. The traditional keto diet consists of a four-to-one ratio of fats to carbs plus protein. While this may work well for epileptic children, it's extreme for those looking to lose weight.

I would recommend trying a diet that is 40 percent fats, 40 percent protein and 20 percent carbohydrates, with all of your carbs coming before the early afternoon, when your metabolism is at its highest. Your body will "learn" to rely more on fats than carbs for energy and thus become a more efficient fat-burning machine.

Joe Weider is acclaimed as "the father of modern bodybuilding" and the founder of the world's leading fitness magazines, including Shape, Muscle and Fitness, Men's Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, Hers, Golf for Seniors and others published worldwide in over 20 languages.To find out more about Joe Weider, write to him and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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