Questions with David Grisaffi

Since 1994 David Grisaffi has been an exercise specialist, strength coach and personal trainer, working with all types of people from professional boxers to housewives who want to get rid of cellulite.

He is certified by the International Sports Sciences Association and also by the prestigious Chek Institute as a Corrective High Performance Exercise Kinesiologist, Health and Lifestyle Coach and Golf Biomechanics Pro. He is one of only 37 trainers in the United States to hold all of these credentials.  


Are there any other ab exercises that are really common in the gym but you wouldn’t recommend to your clients?

DG: Unfortunately, many of the abdominal exercise gadgets on the market are ineffective and sometimes even unsafe. I would stay away from the Ab Roller or Torso Track because these machines can create muscle imbalances. I'm also not a fan of machine crunches because these machines - like all machines - stabilize your body and isolate the rectus abdominis, which doesn't allow for true functional movement. Let's see, what else? Russian twists on a roman chair with a plate sound like a good way to ruin your lumbar spine. Torso twists on a machine fall in that category too.

Yeah, those rotary torso machines are always being used in every gym I’ve ever been in. What about the ab machines you see on TV – ANY of them any good?

DG: The infomercial ads on TV try to make the machines and devices seem new, fun and easy. Everyone wants nice abs fast and easy. But nice abs do not come in a machine! The first step is a not a machine, it’s a proper diet based on the individual. I would say the E book Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle is one of the best on the shelves these days when it comes to nutrition and the motivational techniques to stay on the plan.

So what’s probably on everyone’s mind now is that if sit ups and most machines are out, that must leave crunches as the exercise of choice right?

DG: Yes and No - crunches have become more popular because of the popularity of ab rollers and crunch machines. But like sit ups, crunches are overused and misused - frequently! Floor crunches also limit your range of motion compared to using a Swiss ball.

Eating for muscle and fat loss

Your body is very adaptable. Thats why weightlifting works, your body gets stressed by the lifting and realizes that it must get stronger in order to survive this rigorous exercise. Your body then must decide what the most efficient way to adapt to this activity is. If you regularly consume a lot of food then your body will likely decide that the best course of action to take is to create more muscles because more muscles will allow it to more easily handle this lifting.

When you first start lifting your central nervous system will likely keep you from lifting to your full strength because your tendons aren't strong enough to handle this much force. This is why people that are pumped up on adrenaline or some drugs can perform super human feats of strength, they aren't instantly creating more muscles, they are just using their full muscle potential. But under normal circumstances their body's limits this so that you don't tear a tendon or rip yourself apart under your full strength. This is part of the reason that many people see very immediate strength gains in the gym, they start lifting and within a few weeks they have made huge strides in strength. The more they lift the slower those gains come. They aren't building muscles that fast, they probably don't look bigger at all, their central nervous system and probably their muscle memory are just allowing them to use the muscular strength they already have.

But after these initial gains the easiest way to get stronger is to add more muscle. This may sound kind of obvious to someone that doesn't understand strength very well but in actuality you can get stronger with out adding more muscle mass, and this is exactly what many people like competitive weightlifters, wrestlers, boxers and mixed martial artists want. They have to make a certain weight class. They want to be as strong as possible without getting bigger. However if you want to get bigger then this isn't what you are looking for.

It takes more calories to sustain a bigger body, especially a more muscular one. Two people that are the same height and weight but with one being much more muscular and the other one carrying more bodyfat will use differing amounts of calories (well this will differ from person to person but it they were identical twins). The muscular one will require more calories just to get up and around. As I have said the body is very adaptable and is looking for the best way to survive. If you are eating a lot then your body decides the best way to handle this weightlifting is to create more muscle. But if you aren't getting enough calories then it decides that this isn't the way to go because if there is a food shortage you will starve to death quicker if you are more muscular.

So if you are trying to gain muscle mass then you need to be lifting hard but also eating a lot. You should be grazing, that is eating all of the time and not just gorging on a few meals a day. I believe that whether you are trying to lose weight or gain the best way of eating is to eat continually throughout the day. Difference being a person trying to lose weight would eat small meals throughout the day and someone trying to gain would eat medium or possible even large meals, continually through the day.

You see when the body isn't getting a regular feeding then it doesn't add muscle as I have stated above because it figures if you never know where your next meal is then you had better not get to muscled up because it might be awhile before you get another one. What it does do is add fat because it wants to store something up for hard times.

You have probably heard fat people say the line “if this was caveman times I would be a survivor and the skinny people would starve to death” while this is an annoying line there is some truth to it. Their bodies are storing fat for starvation times, So you must eat on a regular basis so that your body realizes that it doesn't need to worry about when your next meal is coming and therefore doesn't need to store fat. If you are lifting weights then it will concern its self with how to better handle these weights and will add more muscle. Not eating and it will store fat whenever you do eat because your body thinks the reason you aren't eating much is because you don't have steady access to food and it wants to store for the day when you don't have any food.

Caffeine for Intensived Training

 Working out hard is a good thing. However when we do things like use caffeine and other supplements to boost our workout we must be aware of something. As you hopefully know you shouldn't be lifting weights everyday. The muscles need time to recover and that is why a lot of people lift every other day or even just twice a week. When I am deadlifting I lift twice a week, when doing other less intense lifts I go three times a week with a day off in between every session.

 Why do I lift less when I am deadlifting? The answer is because the central nervous system (cns) needs to rest after lifting and heavy compound lifts like squats and deadlifts (the ones I promote the most) take a heavy toll on the cns. It takes longer for the cns to recover then it does for the muscles to recover.

 When we use anything to give us extra energy or strength, this depletes the cns more and takes longer for us to recover. Drug users may be able to stay awake for long periods of time while on a high and receive super strength, but eventually they come down and crash. You can do something like take a lot of caffeine while studying and keep going for a while but eventually things will kind of even out as you will need extra sleep to recover from this extra energized caffeine session.

 When we take caffeine to lift, it might help kickstart our morning or help keep us up after a long day and get us in the gym. But it is going to take an extra high toll on us and we will pay later. If we are able to lift extra heavy, thats great but we will need longer to recover. Even if we don't hit the weights extra hard we are taxing the cns more just from the caffeine use and once again we will need an extra long recovery time.

 I use caffeine as an example because that is the most common stimulant, but if you are using anything legal or illegal that gives you a boost of energy then you are probably going to be tiring your cns a little more then normal. Even if you aren't taking anything just getting really pumped up can do the same thing. Have you ever worked out while really mad about something? Did you find that you had extra strength and energy at first but eventually you just wore yourself out?

  For every action their is a reaction and so after you get a energized "high" there is going to be a crash of an equivalent level. Not saying you can't have an extra energized workout ever. In fact it can work great doing it once in a while just to help boost you over some plateau or sticking point, such as when you are stuck at the same weight and just can't seem to move up. But I don't feel that it should be done all the time.

  If you do choose to do this then I recommend getting some extra rest afterwards. This can be both time wise as in waiting 2 days before lifting again instead of just 1 day off. But also in what you do on your off days. Having a lot of sleep and general laid back rest is boring but beneficial to someone lifting weights. You need to be extra restful when you are working out real intense under the aid of stimulants or psyching yourself up or whatever.

 Hitting the gym heavy, then working hard all day then staying up all night partying, harmful to anyone lifting. But especially bad for someone that is using stimulants.