Kurt’s Essential Keys to Building Muscle and Burning Fat
10 Essential Keys to Looking Your Absolute Best
The 5 Essential Keys of Fat Burning
1. Protein Helps Burn Fat
You’ve heard it before, athletes and the fitness community at large worship protein, and if you want to build muscle and lose fat (that’s why you’re reading this, right?), then you should too. You see, of all the macronutrient family (protein, fats, carbohydrates), it’s protein that has the highest ‘thermic value’, meaning that it is 5 times more likely than the other macronutrients to be used by the body for creating body heat than being stored as body fat.
When you become active through training or playing sports, your body craves protein to help rebuild the muscles that were broken down in the process. It also craves protein to build new muscle, so your body can become better equipped 
to meet the challenge the next time you train or play, thus making you stronger. Eating more protein helps ensure that the weight you’re losing is more likely from body fat than from your hard-earned muscle.
Of course, not all protein sources are created equal. Protein with the highest ‘biological values’ (aka, the greatest absorption – see chart shown on the left) are typically derived from animal sources, and include but are not limited to, beef, chicken,
fish, eggs, milk and whey. They also contain all the necessary amino acids required to make them a ‘complete protein’, rendering them active unlike incomplete sources. Other protein sources (even plant-based ones) are indeed great to contribute to your total intake, but the ones that should make up the bulk of your day’s eating should come from animal sources if you want to strip off body fat faster. By increasing your protein intake of high quality lean sources, you’ll increase your metabolism – and soon watch your body become substantially leaner. Eating more protein helps ensure that the weight you’re losing is more likely from body fat than from your precious muscle tissue.
2. Diversify and Time Cardio Correctly
Regular Cardiov
ascular training can greatly assist in fat loss. This is no secret. The problem is however, it’s often not timed properly. A great deal of gym goers typically enter the facility and routinely march towards a piece of cardio equipment to occupy it for say, 20-60 minutes. Afterwards, they may proceed to lift weights, then maybe do some core training, stretch, and then call it a workout. The problem in doing cardio in this order is that it zaps your energy to lift afterwards. Though it’s not necessarily wrong to train this way, there is a much better way of ordering things to more effectively encourage and utilize fat burning, which means putting cardio work after your weight training. Doing things in this order is more likely to do the following:
Weight training for 45-60 minutes will serve to use up stored glycogen (sugars stored in your bloodstream) for energy and then break down muscle tissue to be rebuilt bigger and stronger for the next workout. Weight training requires glycogen foremost to lift increasingly heavy poundages. After glycogen stores are used up for weight training lifts – and then subsequently cardio is performed – the body is more likely to now begin using adipose tissue (aka, your unwanted body fat) for energy to keep you going. Thus, post-weight training cardio is more likely to use your stored body fat as fuel.
Use the glycogen for the lifts, use the body fat for cardio. Timing cardio work post-weights makes this much more likely to happen.
3. Increase Fibre Intake for More Fat Loss
To ramp up fat loss, include fibrous foods with each meal. The reason for this is that eating fibre with a meal lowers the insulin response one typically gets from eating (or drinking) higher glycemic carbs and/or sugars. If consumed on an empty stomach, starchy carbs or sugars can result in a spike of the hormone insulin which is often converted into new fat by the body.
A fibre-depleted diet is often associated with excessive weight gain. That’s bad news. The good news is that incorporating fibre (from predominantly vegetable-based sources) with a meal substantially blunts the negative insulin response from any starches or sugars, allowing more of it to be effectively burned off as energy instead of being converted into body fat. As an added bonus, fibre also has a higher satiety then fats or simple carbohydrates, enabling you to feel fuller sooner which means better portion control. If that’s not enough for you, fibre also slows down the digestion process so you have an even and sustained release of energy in the hours following your meal. Think of a ‘bell curve’ of energy as opposed to a sharp ‘spike’ and then sudden drop. Superior sources of fibre include vegetables (especially green vegetables), low-glycemic nuts, beans & legumes, berries and grains like oatmeal, quinoa or buckwheat. Making fibre a consistent component of most meals will help strip off body fat, increase energy, keep you lean year round, and, um – keep you regular to boot. Beauty.
4. Add Muscle to Shed Fat
This Essential Key I emphasize to both women and men, but to women even more so. Why? Because many women mistakenly fear lifting weights as a result of thinking that they’re going to accidentally ‘get big’ and that weight lifting is a domain best left for men. Wrong. Dead wrong – yet I’ve heard it expressed from women a thousand times. Truth is, 
building some new muscle tissue through lifting weights ramps up your metabolism (or Basal Metabolic Rate – BMR – to put it in clinical terms) to start burning fat at a far greater rate even while at rest. You see, muscle requires calories to be sustained by the body, therefore an increased musculature requires more calories to be burned by the body instead of being stored as body fat.
Increased musculature definitely raises your BMR which is a measure of how many calories you’re burning while at total rest (like being in bed). Muscle tissue is the most metabolically active tissue in the body, so when you increase muscle mass, you increase daily calorie burning – it’s a simple as that. For women, adding some new muscle typically creates a more desirable shape instead of building unwanted bulk and mass. In over 10 years of training many female clients, I’ve had but two women who felt they had added a touch more muscle than they’d have liked – and guess what – they were both genetically gifted former athletes and definitely not your ‘average woman’.
Want to lean out? First spend time building some new muscle. Shown to the left is a 4 day per week muscle building program to get you started.
You’re welcome.
5. Cycle Your Carbohydrates
Carbs aren’t evil, they’re just misunderstood. In fact, my diet is carbohydrate rich! The key is in the timing and the type of carbohydrates I choose that makes them a close ally in weight loss in the maintenance of a year-round lean physique instead of an evil foe. The problem for most people is that they don’t know what carbs to eat and when to eat them. I’ll explain:
When a lot of people think ‘carbs’, they think breads, pasta, potatoes, starch and sometimes, fruit. They often don’t understand that vegetables are carbs too – and damn good ones at that. Thus carbs come in many different forms, and range from low-glycemic (meaning the body converts them to sugar slowly) to high-glycemic (meaning the body converts them into sugars rapidly). For the most part, a diet should be comprised of primarily low- to mid-glycemic carbohydrate sources. These include things like leafy greens, legumes, most vegetables, apples, buckwheat and spelt to mention a few. These type of carbs are ideal for a continual state of great energy, and are less likely to wind up being stored as body fat. Now I know what you’re thinking: ‘but, these aren’t the tasty kind of carbs, right?’ You’re also likely thinking that if you want to lose weight you shouldn’t eat any of the higher-glycemic carbs at all. Not true. They can be a part of a daily diet that encourages weight loss, you just have to know when to eat them. Cool, eh?
‘Carbohydrate cycling’ is a popular method used by competitive physique athletes and models to bring down their body fat levels while maintaining their hard-earned muscle tissue through having high, moderate, and low carbohydrate days. The high-carb days are essential for energy and to maintain an anabolic environment by providing ample glycogen to the muscles for fuel and to grow. These days are best for days that typically involve weight training, and are comprised primarily of high- and low-glycemic carbohydrates, some protein and some fats. On these days, consuming 0.9-1.0 grams of carbohydrates per pound of bodyweight is best.
Alternatively, the low-carb days are used to minimize the potential of fat gain and actually promote fat loss. The idea is that the low-carb days are used to encourage the body to switch to using fat for fuel instead of the sugar/glycogen it gets from eating carbohydrates on the higher-carb days. These days are best for non-training or cardio-focused days, and are best consuming 0.2-0.5 grams of carbohydrates per pound of body weight is ideal. These days are comprised of primarily protein foods, fats, some low-glycemic carbohydrates and lots of water. If cycled into a weekly dietary regimen, this method of eating can effectively result in the fat loss you seek to attain quick. A magic pill? you betcha.
Having covered my 5 Essential Keys to Fat Burning, now it’s time to look at my 5 Essential Keys to Muscle Building. Here we go:
The 5 Essentials Keys of Building Muscle
1. Add Protein (yes, again)
Quite simply put, protein soon becomes muscle with proper ongoing training and rest. Our bodies take the amino acid molecules found in protein foods and use it to synthesize brand new musculature. Including high-quality protein sources on a regular basis provides the body with the raw materials or ‘building blocks’ it needs to build the body bigger and stronger. In addition to this, protein also provides a wide variety of uses within the body, like the formation of hair, skin and nails, DNA repair, and even to use as energy. Even without exercise, the body needs an influx of protein each day to assist in many body processes. However as an active individual, your body begins to need even more amino acids to repair itself, therefore athletes require a higher-protein diet to maximize performance, rebuild and grow stronger (and ideally leaner; see above).
Of course, diets higher in protein require proper intake of fibre and excellent hydration to encourage and facilitate the proper digestion and metabolism of said foods. Therefore refer to Essential Fat Loss Key #3 and up your fibre intake while drinking plenty of good ‘ol H2O to watch your muscles grow.
2. Begin Emphasizing Compound Exercises
Your body is more likely to pack on some serious muscle if you spend the majority of your weight training time doing compound exercises within the 6-12 rep range. Compound exercises are lifts that recruit many different muscles simultaneously to perform a given movement. Some great examples are squats, deadlifts, bent- over rows, bench presses and military presses, to mention a few. This is opposite to ‘isolation exercises’, which hone in on one or very few adjacent muscles to complete a lift. Examples include leg extensions, preacher curls, calf raises and tricep extensions. Whereas compound exercises use many different muscles at the same time, isolation lifts are very specific in what muscle(s) get used. Simply put, using compound lifts activates more muscle and uses up more calories during a workout than favouring isolation ones, thus tiring out more body parts to eventually grow bigger with proper rest and nutrition afterwards. Though isolation exercises have their place within a workout, I tend to view them as the the ‘icing on the cake’, and as the finishing touches on a successful weight training session.
More compound lifts, more muscle faster – it’s that simple. Now get to it.
3. Include a Post-Workout Cocktail
When it’s training day (which is typically more often than not), it definitely matters what you do for your post-workout nutrition and supplementation to put you on the best road to fast, maximal recovery and to grow stronger.
After the Atkins diet craze of the late 1990’s/early 2000’s, many people started fearing carbohydrates – most notably ones of the starch and simple sugars variety. They quickly became the devil. Now, for much of the mass population this was applicable, as the masses were often gorging on far too much of these things, not being very active, and getting increasingly fat and unhealthy as a result. But for us, ‘the active population’, it turns out that starches and sugars aren’t the devil at all, but actually a vital element in building some serious muscle as long as they’re not over-consumed and timed right. Again, timing is everything. The problem around this time was that the original post-workout formulas that contained sugars weren’t selling, so the supplement companies changed them up to be instead artificially sweetened and sugar-free with new ‘insulin-mimicking’ ingredients now added. Such ingredients (like d-pinitol or alpha-lipoic acid) purportedly mimicked an insulin spike without the sugars, all in the name of keeping post-workout supplements selling. Truth is, that the post workout stage is when the body does actually need some sugars to build muscle for 2 reasons: 1) to replace glycogen (sugars stored in the bloodstream for energy) that was used up during training, and, 2) to create a momentary ‘spike’ of insulin, as insulin is widely known as the most anabolic hormone within the human body, and when it’s increased after a workout, can speed up the synthesis of amino acids from protein into muscle tissue. This is an example of sugars doing the active population a good service, for at most other times an insulin surge is not beneficial.
My post workout cocktail looks something like this:
- 1 1/2 scoops of whey protein isolate
- 1 tablespoon of Gatorade powder
- 1 teaspoon of L-Glutamine
L-glutamine is an invaluable addition that helps rebuild muscle after intense training and has other numerous health benefits as well, like carbohydrate and alcohol metabolism, increased growth hormone levels as well as fixing a leaky gut. If muscle building is a top priority on your fitness list, then I highly recommend adding some whey protein, some simple sugars from dextrose or natural sources, and l-glutamine in your post-workout cocktail.
4. Train Legs Hard & Frequently
When it comes to building a better body, I’m a staunch advocate of balance and proportion. I believe that a lifter’s strength in lifting repeatedly requires a rock solid foundation, which means having strong, well built legs and not just the fancy ‘mirror muscles’ from the waistline up. Simply put, it’s much more aesthetically pleasing overall and allows for greater function of the human body as a whole, making one stronger and less prone to injury as time goes on.
I know that this concept isn’t a hard sell for most women, who, typically seem to emphasize their lower half in training. Legs, glutes and abdominal training is often a top priority for most female lifters. For many women, I actually encourage implementing some more upper body work to achieve the balance they may be lacking aesthetically and functionally; for a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link.
However, for men and women alike, there are simply too many reasons to NOT neglect your leg training. For example, exercises that have a great deal of lower body involvement typically burn more calories, elevate the heart rate more and recruit more overall muscle fibres in the body the than say, doing a set of bicep preacher curls. Leg training involves more abdominal/core participation as well (so, better abs), and is believed to cause the body to stimulate and release more natural growth hormone during lifts. As you may or may not know, more growth hormone means more muscle, less body fat, slower aging, less colds and sickness, better sex drive…..I think you get the picture.
Furthermore, the body constantly wants to find homeostasis (balance), and if the lower half is neglected, the body becomes reluctant to allow further development of the upper half until the lower half properly can catch up. Thus, neglecting leg training can make the body more susceptible to injury. You wouldn’t build a house on a weak foundation, would you? So why would you do the same for your body? After over two decades of heavy lifting, I’m glad that I’ve created a strong and powerful foundation for my body through consistently and effectively training my legs. Train your legs hard and frequently and watch your body grow to be more functional and more pleasing to the eye as a whole.
5. Regularly Switch Your Rep Ranges for Maximum Growth
I believe the best rep range to achieve hypertrophy (AKA, muscle growth) is keeping lifts between 8-12 reps. Among experienced lifters, it seems to be widely agreed upon that this range works best to build muscle; however you cannot always train in this range as your body will inevitably plateau and your progress will come to a big screeching, crappy halt.
So how do you prevent this from happening? Easy. Vary your rep ranges throughout the calendar year by using micro-cycles of lighter or heavier reps, shorter or longer rest periods between lifts, and even different exercises. This constant variation works to keep your body guessing as to what challenge it will have to face next, forcing it to continually make positive changes to be able to meet each new obstacle it faces.
To use an analogy, it’s like a game of golf; if you continually play the same course over and over and never a new one, your progress as a golfer will be slow at best as you’re almost playing on autopilot. However, if you decide to frequently include courses that are unfamiliar to you, you will then be forced to think harder and strategize during play, thus making your a better golfer as time goes on. The same principle applies to weight training. Regularly applying new physical and mental challenges during training forces your body to work harder to adapt to each unfamiliar task which results in making gains in areas such as strength, muscularity, flexibility, etc.
Cyclical variation in your rep ranges, poundage amounts, rest time and exercise selection are all keys to keep your progress headed in the right direction and resist becoming stagnant in growth through unwanted plateaus.
Summary
Altogether, I’ve laid out 10 Essential Keys to help you look and feel your absolute best yet. Of course, there are countless other concepts that can help accomplish this goal, but after careful consideration, I honestly feel these are the ones that have proven time and time again in getting my clients (and me) towards looking our best in the shortest amount of time possible when used properly and regularly. Of course, no two bodies are the same, so sometimes certain keys will work better for some than others, but for most these concepts are a pretty safe bet to benefit greatly from.
Looking and performing your best each day is an incredible feeling. If it’s time to leave your tired old self behind, put these 10 Essential Keys into practice today and set out on a new path of greatness – and never look back.
– Kurt Bradley
