Mendo Fitness

https://open.substack.com/pub/abelardomendo/p/full-in-depth-client-case-study-here?r=2ckj1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

1) Principle of Specificity

“Practice what you want to be good at.”

Want to build muscle? Follow a hypertrophy (muscle building) program. Don’t follow a strength program.

Want to become a good soccer player? You should mostly be playing soccer; not functional movements in the gym.

Want to lose weight long-term? Follow a program designed for long-term weight loss.

Not a program designed to help you lose 20 pounds in 2 months, leaving you to regain the weight after the program is over.

2) Principle of Progressive Overload

“Do a little more than last time.”

There’s a parable about a man who lifted a baby calf above his head every single day.

The calf grew a little heavier each day, eventually maturing into a bull.

As a result, the man was able to lift the bull above his head.

The story is (probably) not real, but it’s a great example of progressive overload.

If you’re a complete beginner, start with something that’s not too hard and make it a bit harder each time you train.

How?

Increase the weight. Increase the time under tension by slowing down the reps. Increase the number of reps. Increase the number of sets.

Read the rest of the article below.

7 rules every program should follow These are based off of the 7 principles of training used in exercise science. My goal is make this crystal clear for anyone, regardless of their experience in the gym. If anything doesn’t make sense, I would appreciate you messaging me and letting me know so I can explain it better.

My name is Abel, I’m a personal trainer with a background in psychology.

I previously worked as a crisis intervention worker, a behavior intervention specialist, and a health & wellbeing coach.

It took me about 11 years of trial-and-error to learn how to free myself from food-focused thinking.

I am going to share practical strategies you can use to have absolute control over your weight without paying for personal training or getting tricked into an endless cycle of hopping from one fad diet to another.

In fact, I will explain the mechanics of why these fad diets work in the short-term and are unsustainable in the long-term.

https://abelardomendo.substack.com/p/sleep-week-one-tip-or-more-per-day
Sleep is the number one priority when trying to reach your fitness goals.
This is because more sleep will prevent overeating, reduce stress levels (high stress tends to lead to overeating), improve fat loss, decrease water retention.

This is mostly due to how our body regulates the stress hormone, cortisol, whenever we have good quality, long sleep.

Caffeine Control

We do not have to rely on caffeine if we get a good amount of sleep because our body produces a high amount of cortisol which naturally wakes us up, energizing us for the day.

There's a molecule we produce called adenosine.

This molecule makes us sleepy.

Drinking caffeine gives us a temporary "immunity" to adenosine, meaning we do not react to it.

However, just because our body doesn't react to adenosine doesn't mean that our body has stopped producing it.

Read the rest by clicking the link below.

Sleep week. One tip (or more) per day until Friday. Quick reminders: Know someone struggling with their weight? Refer them to sign up here for the 14-Day Cravings Control Challenge Starts on September 10. If you want to tag along for this challenge, you can join the Facebook Group here. Now for the good stuff…

The stress loop works like this:

Unsustainable behavior change -> stress -> insufficient recovery -> higher stress -> compensation -> poor quality sleep -> poor quality decisions

https://abelardomendo.substack.com/p/opposite-day-how-to-lose-muscle

This was a bit of a weird one and reminds me when I had a client that actually wanted to gain weight because her BMI was dangerously low. It was a fun exercise in flipping all of the usual advice I give, creating weird tips like, “You need to have whole fat milk with protein powder and peanut butter. And if you have salad, then be sure to add a lot of salad cream and mayonnaise; if you have fruit, add honey and heavy cream. If you have protein, get the fattiest cut and make sure you eat the skin. If you have soup, add oil.”

Muscle loss happens when our bodies receive a stimulus that signals us to make an adaptation to lose muscle. The easiest way to create this stimulus is to create conditions where our body thinks, "I need to get smaller so that I can move longer without getting tired." There's a reason a marathon runner will struggle to gain muscle. Hypertrophy programs and long distance running create competing signals. That is, the hypertrophy program signals the body to increase muscle mass while the long-distance running signals the body to lose muscle mass.

(You can read the rest of the article by clicking the link below!)

Opposite Day: How to Lose Muscle Someone on Reddit actually asked, so I helped.

https://abelardomendo.substack.com/p/how-to-lift-even-when-your-joints
Listening to your body will prevent 99% of exercise-related injuries. Most people willingly ignore that they feel their shoulder hurting when bench pressing, and decide to do it anyway. Or they know that their feet are hurting more than usual, and decide to run on the treadmill anyway, injuring the front of their foot. Then they can’t train as usual and lose motivation.

By the way, regarding the barbell bench press, a physiotherapist with lifting experience advised me to avoid letting my arms/elbows go past parallel at the bottom of the lift. By this, I mean, pay attention to where your elbows are at the bottom of the lift. Are they stopping right as they reach your torso? Or are they going behind your torso? If they’re going behind your torso, yes, your pecs will get more of a stretch, but it may explain why your shoulder joint is hurting. Use your elbow position as a reference point instead of aiming to “tap the bar with your chest.”

(You can read the rest of the article by clicking the link below!)

How to Lift Even When Your Joints Hurt The value of making light weights feel heavy.

https://abelardomendo.substack.com/p/youll-never-fail-your-goals-after

Pick One Thing

As a health & wellbeing coach, my training involved practicing to ask the patient, “What is the most important thing for you right now?”

Studies show that, whatever your goal may be, it needs to become the number one priority.

So, for example, if you’re trying to write a book and lose weight at the same time, splitting your attention evenly across both of those goals puts both goals at risk of failing.

It could be that writing the book is the most important thing right now, meaning this person could instead focus on maintaining their weight until they finish their book-related goal.

In other words, put your other goals in the fridge (e.g., don’t slip backwards and lose progress, maintain them instead) while you cook your main goal in the oven.

Do Specific Things for a Specific Time
Successfully reaching goals comes from doing specific actions for a specific amount of time.

(You can read the rest of the article by clicking the link below!)

You'll never fail your goals after reading this. Couldn’t sleep last night until 4:30am. I made the careless mistake of drinking black tea at 6pm. Even melatonin couldn’t save me. I tried to fall asleep by listening to a 90 minute podcast about what studies say about goal setting. I’m going to list the most insightful, practical tips you can...