Okay, I meant to send my white water rafting adventures to you a few weeks ago. This post has nothing to do with building muscle or losing fat.

My younger brother put together some footage of our trip. I’m sending part 1 and part 2 and you can meet my youngest brother Mikey, my middle brother Adrian and our buddy Andrew.

White Water Rafting (prequel before the rapids)

White Water Rafting Part 2 (the rapids!!!)p

Feel free to post some comments too and laugh at me when I throw the paddle out of the boat at 3:42 because for some reason I thought it was going to knock my teeth out.

The soundtrack to both video’s is really good too.

If you only have time to watch one then watch part 2 which shows me attempting to swim… LOL

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to start sharing the new muscle building programs (there are two of them) that I’ve been using to squeeze out SUPER short workouts that have have allowed me to maintain my physique all summer without spending hours in the gym.

Most likely, lifestyle is probably more important than the way your body looks but that does not mean you can’t have one without the other. Don’t let anyone tell you that. Most likely they don’t know how to train properly or make the most of their gym time if they believe that.

I can’t wait to share these two new muscle building programs I’ve been using to maintain my strength and muscle size while spending LESS time in the gym than ever.

Enjoy the videos and have a great weekend,

Vince DelMonte

I got some free gifts for you today…

If you have ever suffered radiating pain running down the back of your leg that just won’t go away then you probably have sciatica and I have an article that discusses treatment for sciatica and how to treat it effectively, by my friend Jesse Cannone.

Click here for the article

Click here — Sciatica: What Causes It and How to Treat It Effectively

I guarantee you that what you are about to read will likely be far different than what you have read or heard anywhere else!

Also, I made a huge mistake recently…

I was supposed to include a bonus product called The Ultimate 10-Minute Warm Up in my six-pack program but my video editor thought it was supposed to be a free You Tube video so posted it there.

I don’t feel right about charging for it since it’s been on You Tube for free for some time now so here it is… (this routine can easily save you hundreds of dollars in therapy)

The Ultimate 10-Minute Warm Up

This is far more powerful than static stretching and is a very cutting-edge way of priming the nervous system before you lift your weights or do cardio. It only takes 10-minutes and will create mobility and flexibility in all your major joints.

Let me know what you think by posting your comments and posting a rating for this video. I would be very interested in hearing your own comments.

Kids are back in school today (most places) and this is the time to get a new muscle building routine if you’re in one right now…

Train hard and train even smarter,

Vince DelMonte

Sorry for not writing as soon as I got back from Vegas last Thursday night. It’s hard to believe a place like that actually exists!

I honestly don’t think I could do anymore than the 48 hours I spent but I had an amazing time with 10 of my fitness buddies, some of whom you know from my newsletters like Mike Geary, Ryan Lee, Craig Ballantyne, Jeff Anderson and some other great guys.

Last Wednesday night we went to LAX night club in the Luxor and saw Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson and Nikki Hilton who all recognized me and invited me into their private booth guarded by a 6’9 bouncer so they could ask me for some muscle building advice. LOL I wish! However, if I did get the chance to share some muscle building tips with Jordan and Hilton who are both classic hard gainers, here is where I would start:

Muscle Building Tips

1. Treat each set like an all out sprint.

Have you ever tried sprinting as fast as you can for 400 meters, which is one time around a high school track? You’ll be lucky to get to 300 meters before you start sucking for air. Training to failure during an exercise is like sprinting all out around the track. You’ll probably only be able to do 8-10 repeats which is why your muscle building workouts should be shorter. The harder you train, the less you can stand. Typically, you will only need 3-4 super intense workouts per week to maintain your muscle mass or grow new muscle mass depending on your caloric intake.

2. Rotate your reps around every few weeks.

Your body will adjust to reps and sets faster than any other training variable like rest periods, tempos or exercises.  The more variety you can incorporate into your program, the less chance of your body plateauing and adapting. During some of my muscle building workouts, I’ll have you rotate through workouts that consist of 5×5, 4×10, 3×15, 6×6, 4×12, 2×20, 10×3, 5×8 etc You’ll constantly be stimulating all your different muscle fibers to ensure maximal muscle growth.  With the first tip above, treat each set like it’s an all out sprint and stop “pacing” yourself. Your weight training workouts should not be treated like a marathon.

3. Stick to the bread and butter movements.

Anybody who has used my No Nonsense Muscle Building program with loads of muscle building tips will know that my exercise selection is not very fancy. I stick to all the “bread and butter” movements that emphasize horizontal pushing (chest), horizontal pulling (mid back), vertical pushing (shoulders), vertical pulling (lats), hip dominant (deadlift variations) and quad dominant (quad variations) exercises. You’re not going to see any Bosu balls or balance boards or rocking chairs in my mass programs.  Just the good old fashioned exercises that allow you to load  up the bar with the most weight and “give her.”

I nicknamed Vegas, the “City of Superficial” since so much emphasis is stressed on out ward appearance but I have to admit that it feels pretty good chilling by the pool, cruising the strip and hitting the clubs and feeling confident about your appearance and physique.

I don’t think “Skinny Vinny” (my nickname before I gained 41 pounds of muscle) would have enjoyed himself in Vegas as much because I still remember how insecure I was about my scrawny frame and never being able to find a shirt that “made me look big.” Now, I don’t worry about that.

Click here to learn my muscle building techniques.

I used the first 29-week program to gain 41 pounds of drug free muscle in six months and now it’s your turn. Especially, since it’s already September!

Train hard and train even smarter.

Vince DelMonte

Imagine being able to eat 12,000-calories a day and win 8 Olympic Gold medals and still have a six-pack?

I think the media has blown this out of proportion and I don’t believe he consumes 12,000-calories a day – maybe 6,000 to 8,000 max. But for the sake of entertainment and discussion, let’s entertain a typical day…

Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.

Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.

Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.
Yes, that’s insane!

I personally assign meal plans from 2,000 to 6,000 calories for my skinny guys and I rarely meet anyone who needs more than 4,000-5,000 calories to get super muscular in conjunction with high intensity weight training.

NFL linemen don’t even consume that many calories yet Phelps’ is able to maintain not a single ounce of fat on him.

Some interesting thoughts…

– Phelp’s plan is the equivalent of eating of 25 Big Mac’s each day, yet he is still able to maintain single digit body fat despite the massive amount of unhealthy fats and lack of veggies and fruits in this diet.

Take home lesson:

Perhaps the saying, ‘Your abs are made in the kitchen,’ is not completely true if you can train 5 hours a day and 6 days a week. Unless you can increase your overall training volume then you’ll have to take your diet much more seriously. I am not saying you need to train 30 hours a week but perhaps you could consider more often for starters?

– Many would argue that Phelps’ diet is full of ‘garbage,’ yet he has proven to be one of the most decorated Olympic athletes of all time.

Take home lesson:

If you’re training up to 5 hours a day then you need a muscle building diet with enough calories or else you’ll ‘hit the wall’ and be completely drained the last 2 hours of your workout. (I just hope that all the saturated fat in Mike’s diet does not result in heart disease in the next ten or twenty years… )

As far as building muscles goes, it’s practically impossible to bulk up by resorting on just veggies and fruits (unless you want to live on the toilet) so be prepared to do more cardio training to counteract the excess calories and remember you can only build 3-4 pounds of dry muscle each month and anything else will be fat, so don’t attempt to ‘force feed’ your muscles into growth.

– Phelps is ULTRA skinny and your classic hard gainer so he has a super charged metabolism which allows him to consume about 6x more (2,000-calories a day) than the average man. So how the heck is he an alien-human-fish instead of a fat whale?

Take home lesson:

It’s all about about energy in versus energy out. If his weight is staying constant, which it is, then he’s obviously burning the same amount that he is taking in.

You’re probably wondering, what’s going to happen now that the Olympics are over… I don’t think he’ll have a problem of maintaining his weight because his metabolism is so high and he still needs to be in the water several hours a day.

Don’t worry, I’m like you and if I tried to follow a muscle building diet like Mike then I would end up in the hospital too. I don’t mean to sound like Dr. Phil but as you can see it all comes down to what comes in and what goes out. If you want to lose fat then you need to move more and eat less.

If you want to gain weight then you need to move less and eat more. It’s that simple.

Check out this link if If you are looking for a more sensible approach to body building nutrition without eating 12,000 calories a day.

Click here to get your own ‘world class Olympic body’br
– a href=”http://www.vincedelmontefitness.com”http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com /a
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If you’re looking for a more sensible way of leaning down without training 5 hours a day and six days a week then I get started with my No Nonsense Fat Loss program at a href=”http://www.yoursixpackquest.com”http://www.YourSixPackQuest.com/a

Train hard and train even smarter.

Vince DelMonte

So I got an awesome interview for you today with my buddy Mike Geary who is the author of  Truth About Abs

This is a very important post if you have ever wanted to get a flat stomach or ripped 6-pack abs.

Mike is not only the author of the best selling abs book on the entire Internet but a really good friend of mine who I went skydiving and white water rafting with two weeks ago in Colorado.

After you read the interview (it’s really good) then be sure to check out Mike’s website to learn more.

Here is how our interview went down:

Vince: What is the number one component to getting six pack abs?

Mike: Your training style, nutrition, and mindset are all extremely important if you want to stand a chance at getting a six pack… However, if I had to choose 1 component that is most important, it would probably have to be nutrition. Maybe you’ve heard the saying before that “abs are made in the kitchen.”

It really is true, and that’s where the majority of people go wrong in the goal to get super lean. Of course, this also ties into mindset, because you really have to get your mind in the right place in order to have the discipline to be able to eat consistently clean enough to get six pack abs.

There’s a lot of confusion out there these days about calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrates… every “expert” disagrees with one another on proper ratios and types of diets. I think people make this way too complicated…

If you are just to focus on a good balance between fats, carbs, and proteins, and make sure to eat only natural unprocessed organic foods (as close to their natural state as possible) instead of packaged, processed foods, a lot of the problems that most people have with cravings, sweet tooth, overeating, blood sugar swings, etc all take care of themselves.

We still can’t lose sight of the fact that you can overeat on healthy foods and gain fat even while eating healthy.

Therefore, your caloric intake needs to be controlled to a level that will promote fat loss if that’s the goal.

Vince: What is one thing I might be doing, unknowingly, steering my quest for a six pack in the wrong direction?

Mike: I’ll give 2 things that may be steering you in the wrong direction…

a. Too much cardio

Some people, in their efforts to try to get lean, focus way too much on hours and hours of cardio exercise. The problem is that this can backfire on you by making you lose lean muscle mass over time, which decreases your resting metabolic rate. Once this happens, it becomes easier to pack on body fat than ever before. I’ve even seen many people that do too much cardio and end up getting that “skinny fat” appearance, where they have very little muscle tone, yet they have excess stomach fat (even a “gut” possibly).

Instead of excess cardio, focus more on high intensity weight training (yes, even during a “cutting” cycle). This will help maintain your lean muscle mass throughout your body, so that you don’t experience the metabolic rate decrease. Maintaining as much lean muscle mass on your body at all times is one of
the most important things for staying super-lean for life.

b. Not eating enough healthy fats

This is another area where I see people go in the wrong direction. They are trying to lose body fat and they end up going WAY too low on their fat intake. When you decrease your fat intake too much, you are basically messing up your fat burning and muscle building hormones. It’s not uncommon to see people decrease their fat intake too low and end up reducing their testosterone levels significantly.

Try to get some sources of healthy fats with every meal to make sure you don’t go too low… This could be avocados, any and all nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, etc), seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds), nut butters (almond butter, natural peanut butter, etc), virgin coconut oil (good source of medium chain triglycerides), extra virgin olive oil, grass fed beef (good source of conjugated linoleic acid and omega-3s),whole eggs (yes, whole eggs…not egg whites), etc.
Vince: What is one unique way of boosting your metabolism, to finally burn fat and get six pack abs, that I might be overlooking?

Mike: Incorporate any form of clean presses into your routines twice per week. This could be barbell clean presses or using kettlebells or dumbbells. If I had to choose one exercise that burns the most calories and has the biggest impact on increasing your metabolic rate, I’d have to choose high intensity clean presses (with squats and deadlifts being at the top of the pack also). I like alternating the use of barbells for CP’s one workout and kettlebells for another.

Vince: What is your number one plateau busting secret to lose the last 10 pounds?

Mike: When you get to the point that you’re already fairly lean, but just need to lose that last 5 or 10 lbs of body fat that is covering up your abs, you really need to take your workouts to a whole new level of intensity.

Consider adding all-out wind sprints and/or hill sprints into your routine if you want to take it to the next level of intensity.

As for gym workouts, this also means no jibber-jabbering for 5 minutes in between sets at the gym… Instead, you need laser-focused intensity, and one of the best ways to keep high intensity is super-setting or alternating sets. This means while you’re resting one area of your body, you’re working another area of your body. I usually like to do this by alternating a really tough lower body exercise such as a squat, lunge, or deadlift, with a multi-joint upper body exercise such as a bench press, overhead press, bent over row,
or pullup.

Think short rest periods, full body exercises, multi-joint exercises, lots of sweat, and your chest heaving for air… if that’s what your workout is looking like, then you’re on the right path. If not, then you’re not working hard enough, so stop being lazy.
Vince: What is your advice for me to deal with the social temptations of alcohol, eating out, and junk food?

Mike: This is something many people struggle with, but if you set some limits, it can be easy to deal with and still stay lean. One thing I’d suggest is to make sure to not get n a habit of drinking alcohol excessively on a daily basis.

If you’re going to go out and have some fun with friends, try to limit the drinking to only 1 or 2 days max per week.  Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we can still go out and have fun with our friends without getting totally smashed.

You need to decide what is more important in your life… do you want to live healthy and have a sexy lean body, or do you want to get full-blown drunk every night? There’s a lot more to life than alcohol.

As for eating out… If you’re serious about getting and staying lean, eating out should only be an occasional event.
Cooking your own food on a daily basis is extremely important as it’s very hard to know what is in all of the junk at restaurants and fast food joints. One of the tricks I use when eating out is to NEVER eat fries or sodas (in fact, I never eat fries or sodas AT ALL).

Instead, go ahead and order that burger, but substitute steamed veggies or a salad for the fries. Almost every restaurant will make that substitution for you. And water or unsweetened iced tea are the best beverage options to keep the calories under control when eating out.
Vince: Why do I lose motivation when trying to get a six pack?

Mike: Most people lose motivation because they simply aren’t seeing the results fast enough. If that’s why you lose motivation, go back to all of the tips and techniques we’ve been talking about in here and see where your nutrition or training programs are going wrong so you can get faster results. Be patient and consistent and the results will come.

Also, you can really stay motivated by focusing on what has been successful so far. For example, maybe your fat loss hasn’t been what you wanted so far, but maybe you’ve increased your pullups from 8 to 13 and your squat weight from 185 to 225 lbs. Keep focusing on your successes rather than your failures, and keep going for more successes.

More motivation tips — Train regularly with a partner. This will keep you both focused and will keep you accountable to someone other than yourself. You don’t want to disappoint someone else that you’ve made a goal with.

Also, keep a picture up in your house or at work of someone’s body that motivates you to strive for those results. Look at it every day and keep visualizing your own body improving.

Set a realistic goal and a time frame to achieve that goal, such as “I will lose 15 lbs of body fat in the next 8 weeks.” The important thing here is realistic goal… don’t expect to lose 30 lbs in 30 days (despite those weight loss scam ads that you see everywhere saying this is possible).
Vince: I understand you number have the number one ab book on the Internet, at Truth About Abs Why do you think it’s so popular?

Mike: My Truth about Abs program is so popular because it works! It’s REAL nutrition and REAL training programs. I give the TRUTH on what people really need to get lean sexy abs for life and why they DON’T NEED fad gimmicks like diets, ab infomercial gadgets, and bogus fat burning pills that people waste way too much money on.

Vince: Who should order TruthAboutAbs.com and who is this book not for?

Mike: This program is for anyone that wants to truly live healthy and get super-lean for life. I have college students, parents, busy professionals, and even grandparents using this program successfully.

Who is this program NOT for? Anyone who is lazy, or thinks that there is a “quick fix” out there. There isn’t! So stop looking for a quick fix, and learn the truth!

Click here to learn the truth…

– http://www.SixPackAdvantage.com

As you can, Mike is fountain of information and I strongly believe that staying motivated and educated is a huge part of your transformation so I wanted to share this fantastic resource with you.

I’m flying out to Las Vegas to hang out with Mike as well as some of my other fitness friends Craig Ballantyne, Ryan Lee, Jeff Anderson, Rob Polous, Scott Colby and a few other buddies!

Next update will be a summary of my attack on Vegas baby!

Vince DelMonte