Is LHM Like Crossfit?
Under Burn Fat/Fat Burning, Recent Posts
Is LHM Like Crossfit?
A few years back Cross Fit hit the fitness world and quickly became very popular. All of sudden you started seeing a wave of new “cross-fitness” cardio machines, infomercials and training routines. Today, Cross Fit has evolved into a distinct training style. It all started back about seven years ago with a guy in Santa Cruz, California trying an online “experiment” to measure his workouts. From there it just sort of took off. But how does Cross Fit training compare to Lean Hybrid Muscle Building? Let’s take a look.
Cross Fit gets its name from the fact that the training sessions “cross” disciplines. The workouts are varied and are generally intense. There are actually 10 different domains where Cross Fit athletes strive for proficiency: stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, coordination, and accuracy.
The workouts can be done just about anywhere and in fact, are best suited to a non-gym environment. Exercises can be performed with free weights, kettlebells, dumbbells or body weight. Training sessions are typically short—about 30 minutes—so the exercises are performed quickly with little rest in between sets. Below is a typical beginner’s routine:
• A 400-meter Jog/run;
• Deadlift;
• Push-press; and
• Squat.
This is a five-day-a-week routine that can be completed in less than 30 minutes. On day one you jog/run and do deadlifts; the next day it’s just the jog/run; day three is jog/run and push-press; day 4 is jog/run and day 5 is jog/run and squat. Overall, you can see that this looks like a pretty worthwhile approach to getting fit or if you are looking to get lean.
But what if you’re goal isn’t just fitness or getting lean? What if you want to build muscle and get lean? From that perspective Cross Fit starts to lose some of its appeal. It’s a great all-over body workout but it’s really designed for conditioning and toning more than building strength and muscle. Also, with its emphasis on a lot of intense aerobic activity, gains in size and strength are going to be negated by all the cardio. Remember, lots of ordinary cardio will always result in not only fat loss but in loss of muscle size and strength too—it’s just the nature of our bodies.
The way around that is through Lean Hybrid Muscle Building (LHMB) combined with hybrid cardio. With LHMB you have strength building and muscle building, followed by 30 minutes of hybrid cardio three days a week. And even if you add in a couple more days of just hybrid cardio, you will still be able to build muscle and burn fat at the same time.
LHMB is cross-disciplinary like Cross Fit but it has a significantly greater emphasis on building strength and muscle than Cross Fit does. The LHMB strength/muscle building workouts take the best elements of bodybuilding, powerlifting and strongman training, combining them into a single, hybrid training philosophy through concurrent periodization. What this basically means is that you’re simultaneously incorporating multiple training approaches into a single workout and within a single micro-cycle (aka period), which is typically about a week. By combining the various training philosophies this way you’re able to build muscle and burn fat at the same time.
And unlike the muscle fiber eating intense cardio of Cross Fit, hybrid cardio does not cause your body to cannibalize itself and burn muscle fiber. Even better, hybrid cardio enables you to actually build muscle and burn fat at the same time—no other cardio workout that I’m aware of can say that. Hybrid cardio workouts are able to accomplish this because they incorporate both cardio and resistance training activities into a single exercise, training session and micro-cycle.
By doing this, the muscles are continually forced to adapt—rather than being used for fuel—essentially causing a metamorphosis with the end result being the development of hybrid type III muscle fibers which have both strength and endurance. Ordinary muscle fibers really only have one primary property—strength, power or endurance—not multiple properties in a single fiber. And because the body is burning fat, not muscle you are able to make gains in size and strength while getting leaner—at the same time.
We’ll wrap this up by saying that yes, Cross Fit is an excellent training philosophy that can produce great results—if your objective is conditioning, toning or developing endurance, agility and speed. But if your goal is to build strong, powerful muscles and really get lean, then Lean Hybrid Muscle Building is the clear winner.
Claim your Super Hero Hybrid Muscle Online DVD & Warrior Physique Report FREE - Enter your email.
