A Detailed Examination of The Leo Fit Method
- High-Intensity Training (HIT) is a revolutionary workout with special benefits!
- Minimal time commitment- twice a week for just 20-25 minutes yields unparalleled results!
- Personal trainers provide extra motivation and a customized individual training plan.
- Gain strength, lose fat, increase bone density and boost metabolism!
- Perfect for all ages and body types. Safe and efficient. ARX computer-controlled resistance tailors your workout to maximize results and prevent injury.
- There is no easier way to move your health and fitness to the next level!
Our Primary Goals are Weight Loss and/or Strength Gain.
This article concerns two basic health concerns. One is weight loss, and the second is strength gain. This article will guide you to do both simultaneously. Many parts are very well known while other sections should be new to you. It is written as if the reader has never studied anything about weight loss or strength training. So be patient with the parts you already know, and I believe you will discover some “knowledge nuggets” which are new to you.
If you are looking for only one of these, weight loss or strength improvement, it will be beneficial to read the whole article because health is tied to fat loss and muscle strength. This paper is not about “bodybuilding,” but you may gain muscle by following this knowledge. It will all come together by the end.
It is a series of statements, all of which I have researched. I have left out notes (references) to keep this as brief and straightforward as possible. However, the concepts are sound. They are there for your review, and you may look into each on your own.
The Lessons For Permanent Weight Loss
LESSON: Calorie restriction is the primary way to lose weight (fat) and is technically a matter of calories in and calories out. Less in and more out is called a “calorie deficit.”
The simplicity is to eat fewer calories than you use (burn) daily.
However, that’s NOT the end of the story!
LESSON: Weight loss should mean FAT loss.
Losing weight by watching numbers on a scale (going down) can be completely counterproductive. Why?
LESSON: Most calorie-restricted diets drive weight loss equally between fat and muscle.
LESSON: We want to lose FAT, not muscle, because muscle cells burn calories even while at rest. And muscle is healthy. Strong muscles are incredibly healthy. (More on muscle strength and its health benefits to come.)
Why We Gain Weight And WHY It Is Mostly Fat
Fat cells are a survival tool to protect us from starvation, but starvation for modern Westerners is rare! So, most of us have too much body fat because food is so easy to come by today. And we do not need or want an excess of it.
LESSON: Most calorie-restricted diets work at reducing the numbers on the scale but are challenging to stay on because you are “hungry” all the time.
Usually, the next meal is all you can think about, right? This happens when the calorie restriction is too great. Anyone would be happy to lose fat quickly. But permanent fat loss generally happens over a longer time period than we would like.
But I would assume that permanent fat loss is what we truly desire.
LESSON: Calorie-restricted diets have two significant but rarely discussed problems,
- While dieting, Nature often slows your metabolism because it thinks you are “starving.” Our bodies do this to conserve calories. But when you return to normal eating patterns, all the weight returns and, many times, even more!
- One study showed that for every pound of weight you lose, your body pushes you to eat 100 more calories daily!
Both of these rarely discussed problems can be averted.
Now On To Strength And Muscle Growth
There ARE studies, most of which are ignored by mainstream educators, that indicate HIIT is far superior to steady-state exercise. In my humble opinion, if you can get the same results in 1/4 the time why wouldn’t you?
What makes this possible is not only our professional trainers but our state-of-the-art ARX machines. ARX stands for Adaptive Resistance eXercise Technology.
These high-tech ultra-modern machines are similar to medical-grade instruments. They use computer-controlled, motorized resistance that matches your force throughout the entire exercise. This exhausts the muscle much faster than normal exercise. No more “three sets of ten.” Just one exercise per body part, and you are done. This technology lessens the amount of time you have to work out and significantly increases the effectiveness of your workouts.
Because the machine “senses” your strength, second by second, it gives you the maximum resistance that you can safely handle moment by moment. This also prevents injuries since you’ll always have a resistance that matches what you’re pushing or pulling for your current fitness level. This brand-new technology cannot be matched in a regular gym setting. Machines and free weights are “dumb” tools. ARX is as “smart” as you can get. There is no way to fall, drop the weights, or “overdo it.” With the ARX machines, you can grow new muscle, stimulate bone growth, and see other improvements while cutting down your workout time from the normal 3-6 hours a week to just 20 minutes twice a week.
The main stimulus for growing and maintaining bone density is mechanical loading. This means that the higher the load put on, the more the exercise can stimulate bone growth, mobility and especially strength.
Muscle strength, alone, is now considered the single most important aspect of metabolism, health, the prevention of cognitive decline and more.
It was recently stated that if your muscles are strong, not big, but strong, then your brain will be healthier. A scientist friend of mine said that every part of the body is there to support muscle and NOT the other way around. For years muscle was thought to be in the back seat, but as it is being discovered now, all the organs, bones, and even the brain itself are in the back seat, and muscle strength is the key to health.
Why you want to Overload your Muscle on the return part of an exercise.
Most people do not realize that you are 30-100 percent stronger on the second part of an exercise. Put another way is this: If you can bench press 100 pounds on the pushing up half of the exercise, you can resist 130-200 pounds on the way down. So when you use a normal “dumb” weight or machine, you push and pull the same weight. This means you are missing out on half of the exercise. Another way to visualize this is when you are pushing a weight, as in a bench press, you are getting exercise on the way up, but on the way down, gravity is doing most of the work. On an ARX machine, you push up 100 pounds, but the machine adds 30 to 100 pounds on the way down. Not only is this safe (because the machine will stop the moment you do), but you keep your muscles under tension the whole time. And it is nearly impossible and dangerous to try to do in a normal gym setting.
There is a saying in the weight training world, “Time under tension” is where the results come from. But what they miss is this, “Time under constant tension” is the fastest way to the maximum benefits.
According to an article from the ARX site, “You can’t achieve the same levels of mechanical tension and loading with weights because you’re limited to the amount of weight you can lift in the first place, completely missing out on the potential amount of weight you could have accommodated on the way down.”
If you want to personalize your workout, cut down your workout time, and build the most effective workout routine, visit our certified personal trainers at Leo’s Fitness Lab today!
Click here to contact us and set up a free trial. You won’t understand this fully until you try it. And you will KNOW it is right after the very first exercise.
ARX Site Article on Bone Health
Avoid the Negative Features of Most Weight Loss Diets
There are ways to offset the two negatives above.
LESSON: If the calorie restriction is too great, you will lose muscle and fat and burn fewer calories every day. You have created your very own “Slower Metabolism.”
This is counterproductive no matter how you look at it.
There is hope though if you grasp and follow these lessons.
HOW TO SUCCEED ON A CALORIE-RESTRICTED DIET
YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO WORK THIS HARD AT LEOFIT, BUT YOU WILL GET SIMILAR HEALTH RESULTS!
LESSON: The trick is to cut calories at a smaller rate than most diets recommend.
LESSON: Slow weight loss has a much greater chance of NOT returning. Because slow weight loss does not slow your metabolism. Quick weight loss does.
LESSON: You should lose weight as FAT while maintaining as much muscle as possible.
PROBLEMS WITH AGE
LESSON: After the age of 30, muscle (and bone) decreases approximately 3–8% per decade, and this rate of decline is even higher after the age of 60. Therefore, as we age, we burn fewer calories because we lose this “muscle mass” and BECOME FATTER and WEAKER.
This loss of muscle even has a name:
sar·co·pe·ni·a
noun
MEDICINE “Loss of muscle tissue as a natural part of the aging process.”
But this loss is NOT natural. It comes about because we tend to become less active.
LESSON: Sarcopenia can be prevented with as little as 30-40 minutes of a specific type of exercise a week.
The 40-year-old that brags, “I weigh the same now as in college,” may be correct, but in most cases, more of that weight is fat and less is muscle, than when he/she was in college.
LESSON: Muscle burns fat even while resting. The less muscle, the fewer fat calories we burn. We also risk becoming frail with weaker bones. We should all want MORE MUSCLE as we age.
I doubt there has ever been an 80-year-old who said, “I just have too much muscle!”
THERE IS A SPECIFIC TYPE OF EXERCISE THAT CAN BE DONE IN 20 MINUTES AND ONLY TWICE A WEEK, WHICH WILL HELP YOU KEEP MUSCLE EVEN WHILE DIETING.
And this type of exercise will always make you stronger.
Yes, I am still leading up to the specific type of exercise, but there is a little more to learn.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXERCISE AND MERE ACTIVITY
LESSON: Exercise is a purposefully directed activity that stimulates the body to produce a positive adaption in one’s level of fitness (fitness is your ability to do things) and health (absence of sickness). It also must not cause harm.
Without getting into the weeds on this, but to make a point, many activities today thought of as exercise is just “activity.” If NOT done intensely enough, activities such as walking, swimming, jogging, regular weight training, and casual yoga can simply act as activities while risking inflammation and injury. Worse yet are the “boot camps,” “challenges,” and other “programs.” These usually end up in injury, which results in non-completion.
LESSON: All the above activities, if used to lose weight, will result in the weight coming back VERY SOON AFTER YOU STOP DIETING. This is because these activities, COMBINED WITH A CALORIE REDUCTION, will take off the weight too quickly. This then reduces your metabolism because your body thinks it is starving.
The reason is that calories burned while performing activities are like a loan from your “fat bank.” The body wants to be paid back and will encourage you to eat more.
While dieting, exercises that don’t BUILD strength cause you to lose muscle, along with fat, and your metabolism slows.
REMINDER LESSON: This is a very important point. Weight taken off too quickly results in all the weight returning (85-95% of the time). This is because fast weight loss WILL slow your metabolism.
LESSON: Many of us are “active” but not truly exercising.
Genuine Exercise and Metabolism:
From above, “Exercise is a purposefully directed activity that stimulates the body to produce a positive adaption.”
LESSON: The adaption we are looking for is muscular strength and the building, or at least maintaining of muscle while losing weight in the form of fat ONLY.
LESSON Exercise must stress the muscle so that the adaption of “a stronger muscle” occurs.
LESSON: A stronger muscle means better metabolism.
LESSON: Better metabolism means “burns more calories.”
LESSON: Burning more calories means fat loss. Assuming calories consumed are less than burned.
Walking, swimming, and jogging may stress the body the first few times you do them. But after you are used to that activity, the only way to continue to stress your muscles is to walk faster and faster, add hills, start jogging, and eventually run. Studies have shown that 50% of runners hurt themselves badly enough each year that they must stop running for months on end.
So, in many ways, even running can be bad for you.
OK, I said I was not going to quote references, but I will use this one from The United States National Institute of Health:
Jim Fixx was one of millions of Americans who started running in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Unlike other runners, however, Fixx wrote a best-selling book about running and, ironically, died of a heart attack at the age of 52 years while running. Fixx and the authors of other running books believed heart disease resulted from over civilization and recommended running as a cure.
I put the above in because almost all aerobic exercise being done today is being used as exercise but is generally just a form of “a bad activity.” By definition, it isn’t EXERCISE.
How can I say this? Because after 50 years of diet advice and millions, even billions, of hours of “aerobic exercise,” Americans are fatter than ever! So, the diets don’t work, and all that exercise is for nothing.
The right way to get the most benefit in the least time is to do specific exercises in a particular manner.
At Leo Fit Labs, we build stronger muscles in only 20 minutes twice a week. We see our customers become stronger week in and week out. It is recorded on our machine’s computer, and each session is visually observable on the computer screens.
You will get stronger, and maintain or build muscle for months on end.
At Leo Fit Labs We Do True Exercise:
LESSON: True Exercise is called “High-Intensity Exercise.”
This “High-Intensity” may sound scary, but intense here only means “harder than you’re used to” at your current fitness level.
For exercise to cause the adaption of strength and faster metabolism, it must be short and intense.
In most cases, the proper high intensity will only be an “all-out” effort of 60-120 seconds per body part. If you are a beginner going ‘”all-out”‘ may end in only 30-60 seconds. It doesn’t matter, though. What does matter is that you exercise “all-out” for the fitness level you are currently at right now.
Our computer-controlled machines will give you the PERFECT “all-out” resistance for YOU at your current fitness level. Injuries are nearly impossible too!
Why High-Intensity Training?
HIT for short.
(I am keeping this very simple, so we get through this and not go off into subjects that are difficult to grasp. The concepts presented are scientifically proven though simplified.)
Your muscles have different types of fibers, those that primarily burn fat with oxygen (aerobic) and those that primarily burn sugar with no oxygen (anaerobic).
Most exercises, such as 95% of what people currently do, use primarily the oxygen-reliant muscle fibers. Doing “aerobics” is considered a standard. But aerobics have the problems listed above. They borrow calories that your body wants back, they rarely build strength, and they take use up a lot of time.
In the end, aerobic “exercise” rarely brings about permanent weight loss and rarely builds up strength or muscle.
LESSON: The “fight or flight,” “life or death” fibers which are the STRONGEST fibers you have are not engaged in aerobics. Even standard weight training only lightly taps into these muscle fibers. They are strong fibers but they don’t have much endurance. 60-120 seconds worth is about it. They are the emergency muscles that pack their own rocket fuel, sugar, so do not need oxygen to burn it.
In the old days, when a bear attacked you, you fought hard, very hard, to survive. That’s what these “fight or flight” muscles are for. These muscle fibers are super strong but can only last for a short duration.
If you succumbed, you didn’t pass on your genes. But if you survived, your brain adapted by saying, “Whew! That was close. I need to build up my strongest muscle fibers, and I need to refill them with sugar. This sugar is not borrowed but stored IN the muscle, so you do not get the craving to replace it by eating more. Your brain also adapts by trying to store a little more sugar, in each affected cell, as a buffer for the next emergency! Depending on your genes, this adaption may cause muscle growth, but “emergency events” always result in a bit more strength and metabolism.
LESSON: Real Exercise creates the needed stress on the muscle fibers that build metabolism, strength, and often muscle size.
STRENGTH is the most important!
We mimic the “bear attack” by doing intense exercise (for our current fitness level), and it is done on our computer-controlled machines, so the weight is exactly right for you to cause the upwards adaption.
The machines are called ARX. Adaptive Resistance eXercise.
Here are a few unique facts about ARX machines.
When you push, it pushes back, and when you stop, it stops. Therefore, you experience no injuries. The weight is always correct for your fitness/strength level at the moment you are exercising. The weight (resistance) changes, second by second, to adapt to your strength through each exercise.
It “knows” how strong you are second by second, and it will give you a weight that will cause your strongest muscle fibers to come into play. The ones that store sugar and are the “emergency” muscles.
We want to drain the sugar until that muscle “fails” which means you cannot do another repetition. This is usually 5-8 repetitions per body part. You will only need one set, per body part, for temporary muscle failure. This is all you need to do and only twice a week to get maximum benefits. Science has shown that you can do 2 or 5 or even 10 more sets for nearly no additional benefit. That is just called “wasting time” and risking exhaustion and injury.
You can complete each set of these exercises, stressing your body for the strength level it is at moment by moment, and the result will be stronger muscles in your subsequent workout. We see people getting stronger and stronger for months on end. And it could take years using regular weight training to achieve this kind of strength. This may sound hard to believe, but you will believe it as you do your very first exercise.
Why The Computer Graph is Key
Another benefit of ARX is the computer screen. It tracks your workout with a moving line so you can see your exercise in real-time. It saves the weights and graph lines from the last session so you can see your strength increase from the last session. The gray line is your last workout, and the dark line tracks your “push” or “pull” weight second by second.
It is almost impossible to know if you are slightly stronger from one workout to the next in a regular gym. Computer screens and workout data collection don’t exist in a normal gym setting. ARX resolves that!
Your Personal Trainer
Lastly, you have a personal trainer by your side to guide and encourage you.
To sum up, you competing against yourself because you can see last week’s session in the grey line and this week’s in the green. You have the machine giving you the weight you need, second by second, and you have your personal trainer for that little extra “mental push.”
It is no wonder people see such fast results.
Side Note: Concerning Type Two Diabetes, which is an epidemic even amongst children today. HIT exercise can prevent or reverse Type Two Diabetes. This is a massive bonus to your training.
All this in only 20 Minutes Twice a Week! ARX is the shortest path to a leaner, stronger, healthier body. Just 40 minutes a week!
Why only twice a week? Because when your muscles are stressed until they temporarily fail completely (this failure is only for a moment), this is the key to improved health, metabolism, and strength. Once stressed to this point, the muscle fibers need 3-4 days to recover and rebuild.
These short, focused workouts replace hours of standard weight training and are yet STILL more productive because of the precise computer monitoring and adaptable resistance.
Last, did you know that everyone is stronger on the “negative” part of an exercise? The positive is when you push, like a bench press, and the negative is when you return to the starting point. You can resist 30-100% more weight in the negative direction. In a normal gym setting, you never get this productive “overload” on the return half of every exercise. The ARX machine adds the precise amount of weight that you can safely handle, and this adds 30-50% more benefits to each workout.
There is nothing like this in the everyday world of exercise, and as I said earlier, you won’t TRULY understand it until you try it.
A COMMENT ON WEIGHT LOSS
Remember the “calories in and calories out” method of weight loss? The following is some advice I have found VERY useful.
Any type of “calorie-restricted diet” will cause weight loss, but science has identified the type of calories that can make the diet easy or difficult.
Carbohydrates (or Carbs), such as sugar or highly processed foods, even fruits and some vegetables, and organic grains, are all “sugars” or carbohydrates.
LESSON: When you eat sugars, any sugars/carbs your insulin spikes. Insulins’ job is to push the sugar into the cells for immediate use, BUT 95% of us have muscles already full of sugar from this morning’s meal, yesterday’s, and all the days before those. If insulin cannot push the sugar into your cells, as they are full, it is turned to fat.
LESSON: Sugar gives an instant high, then you shortly crash, demanding more sugar. It is a relentless cycle that occurs daily because carbohydrates are so common in today’s world.
The sugar in your strongest fiber only gets used in “emergencies” or doing HIT exercises.
This is why people feel like eating carbs all day. Carbs make you want more carbs.
LESSON: Carbs encourage you to eat more carbs
LESSON: We, in general, eat too many carbohydrates.
Your body can make sugar from fat, or protein, so you DO NOT really need to eat carbs. There is no scientific minimum daily requirement for carbs.
IF YOU ARE TRYING TO LOSE FAT you want to minimize your carbs or restrict calories a little at a time so that your body needs to burn stored fat.
The whole “breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a con perpetrated by breakfast cereal companies and protein powder sellers.
Carbs at breakfast will make you want more in an hour or two. Carbohydrates make you desire more carbs. Some say they are addictive.
LESSON: Eat mostly proteins, greens, and fat which, is called “low carb eating.”
To make it easy on yourself, eat low carb and eat fewer calories than your body needs daily, and you will lose weight (fat). This is known as a “calorie-restricted diet.” But do not restrict calories too much or your metabolism will slow. High Intensity Exercise is an excellent way to keep your metabolism high.
Some Extra Tools.
A final point about Weight Loss. As I have repeated, if you cut calories too much, your metabolism WILL SLOW as your body “thinks” you are starving.
But how much should you restrict your calorie intake without lowering your metabolism? How much is too much?
First, you need to know your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). This is the number of calories your body burns daily, not counting movement. This is tested by a machine that analyzes your breath. Did you know that you breathe out most of the weight you lose? Our PNOE machine tests your Resting Metabolic Rate guiding you to eat the appropriate amount of calories (for you) to lose excess body fat and support healthy lean muscle growth. The beauty of this test is that we can test you every other week to see if your metabolism is slowing down, and it if is, you need to eat a little more. YES, you may need to eat more to lose more weight! No magazine will tell you this because they do not take lower metabolisms into the calculation.
Recall we DO NOT want a slower metabolism. If anything, our ARX workouts will help build your metabolism, but you need to know your RMR. This is one of the pieces of knowledge regarding weight loss that many people just don’t know and most trainers don’t talk about because they have no way to test RMR.
Most “systems” use an estimate that is derived from measuring many people and averaging. To be precise, you must know your own, personal calorie burn (usage).
Our PNOE device will test this and give you a baseline.
We also have another medical-grade body composition testing machine that will measure your percent of body fat and muscle. The Cosmed Bodpod. We can use this to measure you body fat versus lean muscle tissue.
With our ARX workouts, 20 minutes twice a week, metabolism testing, and body composition testing, we can keep you on a winning track!
In the end, 95% of all diets fail, resulting in fat gain. This is a scientific fact, BUT you can use technology to break this cycle.
As another sidebar, I personally have been eating low carb (not fanatically but close). I have often tested my metabolism and use ARX for 40 minutes weekly (and NO other exercise). My weight (as body fat) has slowly decreased while I have maintained my muscle tissue. The fat I have lost has stayed off. So, I am writing from science AND personal experience.
Make an appointment for a free trial of the ARX machines now! 619-299-1694 or leofitlabs.com
Leo Hamel
Ps: STRENGTH ARTICLE AS TO BRAIN FREE BENEFIT
Google search “How do strong muscles keep your brain healthy?” You don’t really need to look t up, but there are countless studies that show brain health is heavily dependent on muscle strength. This is very new science and not broadly known. The article is very interesting. It shows how simply having stronger muscles can positively affect your brain. So even if weight loss isn’t a priority, brain health from strength alone is worth considering The LeoFit Method and the ARX Machines.
