The Interview: Marius Metern Graatrud, Bodybuilder.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, who are you and for what reason did you start bodybuilding?

Hi guys. Well I´m a 29 year old norwegian though my grandma was afro american and american indian, so I’m kinda street mixed. I’m full of passion and bodybulding is one of them. I’ve always loved sports and bodybuilding was just something I came across because many friends joined a local gyms and so did I. I just wanted to get a bit more lean really, but one thing led to another and here I am.

How has your life changed since earning a pro card?

Getting a pro card was a goal I set after competing a couple of years ago. I didn’t really take things that serious the first years, I partied a lot and did´nt dedicate myself to what I could have done. I was pushed by many around me to try a 100%, use more time and energy, sacrifice certain things and see how far I could push myself. I think i gave myself two years, and within that time I had reached my goal. After that is said nothing much has changed yet because I’m gonna have my debut as a pro this summer. I hope i then can use more time in the states and start a career.

What is your ultimate goal as a bodybuilder?

I want to be able to live off bodybulding, to make a great career within the industry. But also to compete in the Mr Olympia, that’s every pro’s dream I think.

How do you plan your goals, do you write them down and set a date for them or do you just keep them in your head?

It is said one should always write down goals and set a time for them, and I sometimes do, but it’s a combination because when I know what I want, I work hard for it, but I still have to have a “normal” life with full time work. Therefore it’s not always easy to set time limits but of course I have an idea of when and where things should happen.

How do you prepare yourself for a competition and how early do you start cutting down?

I just prepare each competition beforehand depending on shape and and what I have to do so the time I´ve used had depended from 3 weeks to 8 weeks. I like using more time than I have done earlier times, eat more and drop slowly. I still learn a lot from my body and try to find better ways to reach my goal, but using a longer period of time is for sure the best way to go. I Just start eating clean and eating the same food day in and day out and go on from there.

What is the main difference between your offseason and onseason, both in terms of training and dieting?

Not that much really. Of course into my diet I get tired and train lighter, more reps, I get more focused on training safe because it’s easier to get injuries. I now try to eat as much clean food as possible on offseason too but of course I have much more cheat meals and larger amounts of what I want. You live the same lifestyle, but don’t restrict yourself that much.

What do you consider yout best body part and what is your worst?

Worst has to be abdominal and best – hard to say, some I think look great in certain poses and not so great in others. Never satisfied.

Do you have any role models in the sport of bodybuilding?

I’m inspired by many and like the physique of many but have never really had any role models or idols. Lee priest, Flex wheeler, Phil Heath, Kevin Levrone, Shawn Ray and Tom Platz are some of them but many great out there.

Who do you think is the best bodybulder of all time?

Hard to say, so different physiques and I think a lot of them look great. It is so hard putting one in front of all the rest.

Who do you think is the best today?

Phil Heath

Can you name wich bodybuilders you think have the best bodyparts?

For example who has the best arms,chest,back,quads,hams or calves..

Arms. Phil Heath

Chest: Maybe phil again,

Back – Kai Greene or Phil Heath

Quads – Kai Greene

Hams – Kai Greene

Calves – Ben Pakulski

What is the most frustrating injury you´ve had to deal with as bodybuilder?

I’ve torn of the labral in both shoulders so i haven’t trained haevy shoulders or chest for many years.

What is your favorite muscle group to train?

Well I like to see my physique getting better so that depends. It’s been legs for some while and arms because both bodyparts never really get big enough, but it all has to do with the overall look. I love to shape my body in the best possible way.

Least favorite?

Abdominal

Favorite meal?

I’m the worst foodie on earth so depends on off or onseason but I love breakfast either way. Oatmeal og cram of wheat of the all out breafast buffet. But i just LOVE food in general.

Favorite cheat meal?

Buffet, I love it so much.

How many calories do you eat per day?

Now between 4-5000 on diet but offeseason depends a lot.

On averge how many hours do sleep at night?

I have just recently found out I suffer from an extreme sleep apnea so I get VERY LITTLE quality sleep. I’m gonna get a CPAP machine and looking forward to this, the doctor meant I would get a new life. And i hope I might evolve a lot more with my training too so very exited.

How much money do you spend per month on food and supplements?

I’m sponsored with all the supplements i use so that’s free but food is expensive in Norway, and not very good quality..

What supplements are you using at the moment?

Creatine, glutamine, vitargo, protein, vitamins, q10, amino, CLA, and maybe some fat burners.

Are there any supplements you can´t live with out?

Protein

What do you consider harder, the physical or the mental part of the sport?

Well it’s a lifestyle, it’s much more then a sport. Done a lot of sports at a high level, but this is a big part of your life. You love it but it´s hard.

Can you give us an example of one of your workout routines?

I never follow a plan so all depending on how strong and motivated I feel. I do as much as i can and go as hard as possible. My last workout was front side legs: Suats up to 250kg, then hacklift, many sets and then leg extentions and finished with lunges.

What rep range do you think gives you the best results, in terms of gaining mass?

I like doing quite many reps, from 10-30 reps

Do you have any advice for young guys and girls who are taking they´re first steps in the sport?

To use their head as much as their muscles. It’s a sport that takes quite a bit of mental training and to be patient. Use a weight they can do their exercise correctly with. Food is the most important focus point.

We want to think Marius for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. We look forward to follow him in his pro and see him improve.

If you want to improve your physique or get better at your sport. Contact us at http://www.onlinetraining.no.

Training tip: Keep your workouts short and intense for increased Testosterone production!

Unless you´re  a powerlifter, your workouts should most of the time not last any longer than an hour.. any longer than that and you´re building friendship, not muscles. The gym is a place to work out, not to chat.

If you however spend more than an hour at the gym and actually training, be careful that you might actually lower your testosterone production!

It is true that demanding resistance training will increase your natural testosterone production and the more testosterone you produce, it will be easier for you build muscle, hence testosterone is a muscle-building hormone.

But the amount increased testosterone is up to the amount of how much muscle mass was stimulated,the intensity and the training load.

That means that you will produce more testosterone by doing multi-joint exercises that stimulate more muscle mass than isolation exercises. For example squats and pull-ups would be more effective than leg extension and bicep curls.

To low volume of resistance training will not stimulate testosterone production the same way as higher training volume and at higher intensity. But that does not mean that you should spend two hours at the gym hammering yourself with 10-12 sets of every exercise just to try to increase your testosterone levels, because what research also suggests is that even though high volume and high intensity strength training will increase your levels of testosterone, those levels will quickly drop after about 45-60 minutes, depending on the intensity.

So for mass gaining purposes you want to keep your workouts short or around 45-60 minutes, but when training for maximum strength you can keep your workouts for a little while longer since your rest periods between sets are longer and the volume and intensity is different.

 

 

 

The Secret To Improving Athletic Performance: Sport-Specific Training!

Anyone who participates in athletics and wants to enhance themselves both health- and performance-wise needs a training program that prepares the for the rigors of the sport and it´s movements. The training program also needs to be created for each sport specifically. All sports are diffirent so you need to narrow down the things that benefit you and your sport, both technically and physiologially. It´s rare to find a sport that does not recuire posture, balance, stability or mobility.

Almost every sport is performed on feet, using all kinds of movements in many directions, like flexing, extending, rotating and so on. Training these functions could benefit you as an athlete and give you a head start to other athletes and maybe give you that edge over other that all serious athletes wants.

There is also a major benefit in training movements instead of isolating muscles. Your body will be healthier and the risk of injury decreases. All trainers should have low injury risk as a priority and try to make a training program that will decrease the risk and improve performance.

So what is functional training? It has so many diffirent definitions but if I have to put it simple, I would say that functional training is a form of training that prepares you for competion. You are training movements, not isolating muscles and that will give you more flexibility, mobility and coordination.

 

A lot of exercises can benefit most sports but there are some exercises that suit one sport better than the other. For exapmle and lot of sports requires you to change directions quicly and maybe pay attention to something else, like a ball or a defender. So what you need for that sport is a exercise the makes you you stronger and quicker on your legs and you might want to implement some upper body movement for coordination, for that particular exercise.

But this is just an example, there are a lot of ways to train for each and every sport and we at http://www.onlinetraining.no are making training programs for elite athletes were we make them do exercises and movements that benefit them for their sport and gives them some extra advantage over other. So our goal is to improve performance with our athletes and make the injury free.

Sign up today and get the most out of your body!

www.onlinetraining.no

Why are you not losing weight?

Why are you not loosing weight?

Loosing weight can be difficult for some people that do not have the right tools and knowledge for weightloss. I´m going to guess that out there are a lot of people who want to loose weight and for many people, weightloss is showing up to the gym three times a week and eat „healthy“ foods. But what are healthy foods? Lot of what we call healthy can be really high in calories and by eating a lot of those foods, you can go well over you daily calorie intake for weightloss.

Working out is most definetly a great tool to loose weight, but you have to know how to use it. Your workouts might consist of medium intensity exercises and some cardio. You are really lucky if you burn 3-400 calories from doing that. So as you see, your workout is not doing everything you need for weightloss. You could easily get those 3-400 calories from one extra meal during the day or some sweets in the evening. So what you do the rest of the day, apart from your workout, is the most important thing.

Begin to locate yourself

If you set your goal to loose ten kilos, you have to locate yourself and see where you stand. If you locate yourself on a wrong place, you will most likely go the wrong path towards your goal. It could take a while to find the right path. You need to find your BMR (basic metabolic rate) during the day and adapt your diet to that number.

Dont starve yourself!!!

If you want to loose weight, eating less and almost starving yourself is never good. It will not give you any resaults. Let´s say you start to starve yourself because you want to loose more weight. The human body is so complete that he will hold on to what is the best long lasting energy source in the body. The FAT. You will slow down your metabolism so the body will have a problem with fat burning. So to sum it up: If you starve yourself and eat a lot less then you are supposed to, you will maintain the fat mass in your body, have less energy througout the day and you´re body is in no shape to build up any kind of muscle mass.

Do not stop when you reach your goal!

If your goal is to loose weight, it is probably also a part of your goal to maintain that weight. Do not set to high goals at first. You want to work with smaller goals to feel like you are always achieving something. There are no quick fix solutions or a magic formula to get in shape. It requires hard work and dedication.  Put time and effort into this project and make sure that you get long lasting resaults.

Training Tip Of The Day: Make sure you engage the RIGHT muscle!

Training tip: If you are a powerlifter or an olympic weightlifter the goal is basicly to get the weights from point A to point B. However ,when training for increased muscle mass you have to make sure you switch on/engage the correct muscle. To stimulate a muscular response you´ll have to fire the right muscle at the right time and make sure you feel every repetition in that certain muscle.

Next time you do a bicep curl for example, try not to think about moving your arm up to your shoulder but rather flex your bicep as hard as you possibly can. A  good trick to focus on hitting the right muscle is to get a good pre-stretch in every repetition.  Let´s take bicep curls again as an example: When in the bottom position, flex your tricep as hard as you can for 2-3 seconds before flexing your bicep again. This will increase the amount of muscle fibers activated in every rep.

The V-Taper Recipe

I know for sure that if you´re a guy you would like nothing more than an impressive V-taper, a set of broad shoulders and lats so thick that people literally think you could fly…

Here is my recipe for a V-taper:

1. A thin waist, eat clean and get your body fat percentage down to 10% or below..

2. Pull-ups! If you want to get those wings you better be ready for some pull ups.. no exercise is as good as pull ups when it come to building upper back thickness.

To maximize results, do different variations: wide grip, close grip, neutral grip and so on… The upper body and especially the back and biceps respond very well to variations in both grips and rep ranges.

3. Over head presses, to complete the V-shape you´ll need a pair of broad shoulders.

In my opinion the best exercises to add mass to your shoulders are overhead presses, for example Military press, seated shoulder press with dumbbells, standing overhead press, and two exercises that I have really learned to love lately are push press and seated overhead shoulder press from pins.

I usually start with a couple of sets top half seated overhead shoulder press from pins as an activation, what I like about this exercise is that it allows you to stop in the bottom position for 1-2 seconds before starting the next rep, meaning that you´ll get rid of stretch reflex and momentum so you will have to active more motor units in every rep.

The push press I like because it allows you to overload the concentric part of the lift by using your legs, so you can take more weight in the eccentric(lowering) portion of the exercise.

4. Rep range?

Because of the muscle fiber combination of the back muscles I would most of the time stick to 8-12 reps, (most of the time NOT always!)

For Shoulder presses(and all presses in general) I usually use lower reps, around 5-8.

Other exercises that will help you to build an impressive V-taper: One arm rows,Bent over and seated rows, all Chin-up variations,Lat pull-down variations, Lateral raises, front raises…

More effective way to loose fat! (Part 1)

Most people who train and work out regularly have the same goal, loose bodyfat and/or gain muscle mass. Most of these people think they know exactly the best way to do it. Jog on a treadmill or some other “fat burning” machine for 40-60 minutes.
Maaan do they got it all wrong!

Even though this would defenently be better than lying at home on the couch, this is far from being the most effective way to burn fat.

While most of us have very limited time to work out and many can only get a maximum 3 hours a week to train, why not make those three hours as effective as possible?

In the first part of this three piece article I´ll explain to you how to get the most out every fat burning workout.

Okay, the most important factor is diet. So sort out your diet before you even think about taking the next step in your fat loss journey!
This is not an article about diet but I can simply say this, balance out the amount of calories you bring in and eat enough of proteins and essential fats. I don´t care what kind of diet you choose, wether i´ts vegeterian, low carb, raw food or whatever, just stick to your diet.

Increase your Resting Metabolic Rate(RMR)

People have different metabolisms and different tolerance to certain foods and that´s why some people with a higher metabolisms and can tolerate carbs can eat almost whatever they want ,when they want without getting fat. If you don´t fall in to that catagorie, keep reading…

RMR is the amount of calories burned by the body just to keep it self going, without any extra intensity. About 60-75% of the calories you burn is through your resting metabolism. So if you want to lower bodyfat it´s ideal to increase your RMR but we mainly do that by increasing the muscle mass of our biggest muscles, it´s a known fact that around 75-80% of our RMR is determained of how much muscle mass we have.

Why? Well, it´s actually pretty simple, think about a car engine. A bigger engine burnes more fuel, same goes for the body, more muscles, more calories burned.
So in your fat loss training program there should be focus on exercises that increase or at least maintain muscle mass. So start lifting weights!

2 good reasons why.

Resistance training increases production of growth hormones and tesosterone, these hormones increase both muscle mass and fat burning

Resistance training increases our resting metabolic rate and it can last for up to 16-72 hours after the training.

And this brings us to the next part..

Do workouts that burn calories, elevate metabolism and reach the EPOC effect.

Another thing to keep in mind while on a fat loss program is to do workouts that will elevate your metabolism for hours after the session. The EPOC effect is defined as “recovery of the metabolic rate back to pre-execise levels“ Research have shown that EPOC effect can last up to 38 hours after the training session. To reach the EPOC effect do intense intervals either with sprinting or resistance training.

In part two I´ll give you a few examples of how to put together a good fat loss training program

Do you want to burn fat? Here´s a good advice, Lift heavy weights!

Each and every day I hear that people don´t want to lift weights because they don´t want to bulk up and get some big muscles. This is of course mostly women and the most challenging part of my job is to make them lift some weights and maybe put a little more weight on the bar for example.

This is just not so simple and putting on muscle mass requires hard work and dedication. You need many workouts were the muscles are abused over and over again with diffirent and demanding exercises and weights. Nutrition is of course one of the biggest parts of building muslce mass, as important as the exercises.
What women gain of lifting heavy weights is higher metabolism wich gives the body advantage and more capable of burning fat. Of course they will also gain strength and better physique. I am going to name a few facts on why you should lift weights if you want to burn fat.

Some people just don´t want to lift weights and of course you have to respect that. But I think it´s necessery that people know the facts about lifting weights before decide wether they want to lift or not. These decisions are often made of misunderstanding or ignorance.

• •Women do not produce as much testosterone as men. In average they produce around 10% of the testosterone level that men have. That is one of the main reasons why they would have to work much much harder than men to build up muscle mass. And building up muscle mass is still hard for men.
• •Muscles shape up but the don´t grow that easily. Where there is not much testosterone, the muscle will strengthen and develope without getting much bigger.
• •If you work hard and lift weights, your body fat reduces, with proper diet of course, and you will maybe start to see some muscle definition. There is no correlation between that and muscles growing.
• •More strength is not the same as more muscle mass. It has been proven that when you lift heavy weights, most of the load goes to the central nervous system and causes more strength but not necessarily more size.
• •Bigger muscles do not knock on your door the day after your first heavy workout. Even though you hit the heavy weights couple of times per week, you will not wake up with bigger muscles overnight.
• •Muscle size is limited to your daily calorie intake. If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If not, you will lose weight.
• •Treadmills and other cardio machines are good for conditioning and increase your ability to run or cycle. Save some time and lift weights instead of walking on the treadmill. You will burn a lot more calories and make your body more capable of burning fat or building muscle.

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