125 Popular Fat Loss Techniques - rated according to risk and benefit.

Risk to Benefit Ratios of Extreme, Aggressive and Controversial Fat Loss
Techniques

By Tom Venuto

Ken Kinakin recently wrote a book called "Optimal Muscle Training," which is
all about biomechanics, anatomy, muscle testing, resistance training
technique, and injury prevention. I consider it groundbreaking, because
Kikakin did something rarely seen in the mainstream fitness literatu
Rather than making sweeping generalizations about exercise safety or
usefulness, he analyzed 125 popular weight training techniques and rated
them according to risk and benefit.

Understanding risks and benefits enhances your training experience by giving
you clearer distinctions, providing you with more choices and helping you
make better decisions. For example, some exercises have low risk and high
benefit, making them excellent choices for almost anyone. Others have high
risk and low benefit, which usually indicates a poor technique best avoided.
There are also exercises with high risk and high benefit, which means the
exercise, while risky, could have high value to advanced trainees under
certain circumstances.

Here's an example: If you asked a typical personal trainer at a health club
whether it was okay to perform squats with your heels elevated on a board or
wedge, 99% of them would cringe and scream, "That's terrible for you! You'll
blow out your knees! NEVER do squats with your heels elevated - always do
them flat footed." This is a typical "good or bad" judgement, which neglects
to acknowledge the risk to benefit ratio.

The risk is greater stress on the knees. The benefits include greater quad
development, less hip involvement, more emphasis placed on the medialis
portion of the quadriceps, a more comfortable position for those who lack
flexibility, and a more upright torso with less stress on the lower back.

So what does all this have to do with losing fat? Well, I see the same
phenomenon among fitness professionals and practitioners alike when it comes
to judging the usefulness of fat loss techniques (training or dietary),
especially today with the anti-aerobics pendulum having swung all the way to
the right.

Many people take an all or none attitude, such as "You should NEVER do
cardio on an empty stomach because that causes you to lose muscle" or,
"cardio is completely worthless," or "Low carb diets don't work because they
deplete your glycogen and kill your energy so you can't train hard. Always
eat plenty of carbs."

A better approach would be to analyze each nutrition or training technique
according to its risk to benefit ratio (rather than focusing only on risks,
and denying that any benefits exist). Just like all strength training
activities carry a risk, so do most fat loss techniques. What makes an
exercise or nutrition technique worth including in your program is whether
the benefits outweigh the risk given your goals and situation.

What I'd like to do is review a group of aggressive, extreme and/or
controversial techniques for fat loss which some bodybuilders and fitness
enthusiasts embrace as safe and highly effective, while others claim they're
worthless, dangerous or counterproductive. By weighing the risks and
benefits of each technique, you'll be able to make a much more educated
decision about whether to use these techniques yourself.

To read the full article, go to:
http://www.greenapplehealth.com/exer...techniques.htm



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