Author: Dr. Len Lopez

If you are not sure if your metabolism is keeping you in your “fat-burning” zone all day long, here is a simple quick test that will be very revealing and helpful for you. Remember, you can burn calories all day long, and you can rev-up your metabolism but it doesn’t mean you are burning calories from stored body fat. Questions To Ask Yourself. Do You Currently: Struggle with cravings, low blood sugar or hypoglycemia? Skip meals or breakfast? Get hungry between meals? Eat more than two hours after waking up in the morning? Irritable or moody if meals are delayed?…

Overtraining is probably the most common reason for hitting a plateau or for some type of nagging injury to occur or not go away. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t seem to believe or imagine that they are overtraining. But if you’ve hit a plateau or injury you can’t seem to shake, you might want to take an honest look at yourself and make sure you are not overtraining an already exhausted body. If you’ve taken the stress test and didn’t do so well, you should consider having your cortisol levels tested to accurately determine if stress is truly impacting your…

For too long it has been assumed that diet and exercise were the only two components you needed to concern yourself with in regards to losing weight and staying fit. However, we are starting to realize that there is another component to the game, which is stress. Stress could be that other piece of the puzzle, because stress can interfere with the production of your growth hormones and testosterone. Not only that, but stress could be taking you out of your “fat-burning” zone and triggering your metabolism to burn lean muscle instead of stored body fats. More specifically, it can keep you…

Adrenal fatigue is essentially the point in which your body has become overwhelmed with too much stress, which includes physical stress. The key to addressing adrenal fatigue for anyone, regardless if they exercise or not, is in reducing the amount of stress you place on your body. Stress is anything that triggers your adrenal glands to produce more cortisol, adrenaline or noradrenaline. Exercise is a form of physical stress. The biggest hurdle I run across from anyone struggling with adrenal fatigue who is also an avid fitness enthusiast, is getting them to modify and change their training routine. You don’t…

If you are not sure whether to include pull-ups or chin-ups into your workout, I applaud you because either one of them will do amazing things for your upper body. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation about pull-ups versus chin-ups and which exercise does more for you. Suffice it to say, both the pull-up and chin-up target all your primary back muscles about the same. The only real difference comes into play as to how much your biceps and forearms are used. Let me first clear up the confusion about which muscles aren’t being targeted by either a pull-up…

Pull-ups are just as important for your upper body as push-ups! Unfortunately, most women can’t do pull-ups and most men who have added a few extra pounds over the years can’t do but a few pull-ups. If you fall in that group, you need to look at incorporating “modified” pull-ups into your routine, otherwise you could be creating muscle imbalance, which is a contributing cause of upper back and neck pain. If you’re neglecting that pulling motion from your workout, you are overlooking half your upper body. When you start pulling your body up off the ground, from either a…

About 30 years ago, we learned that straight legged sit-ups were bad for you, because it caused back pain. But are leg raises or hanging leg raises the same thing as straight legged sit-ups, done in reverse? Aren’t you using the same muscles, whether you raise your legs and keep your upper body still or raise your upper body and keep your legs still? Great looking abs are a goal for both men and women, but lying or hanging leg raises may be contributing more to your back pain then you think. How Muscles Work To understand why leg raises…

Of all the different workout mistakes, probably the one that slows down your results the most is performing aerobic exercise in an anaerobic state. Simply put, doing your aerobic exercise at too high of an intensity for your current fitness level. It’s easy to think that just because you are doing an aerobic exercise, that it is aerobic. That’s not necessarily the case. You could be performing your aerobic activity at such an intensity, that it becomes anaerobic and stress producing on your body. The determining factor whether your body is triggering aerobic or anaerobic metabolism is the availability of…

Is your aerobic training helping to firm your butt? The benefits of jogging in your neighborhood, through the woods or on the beach are two-fold.  You get the aerobic conditioning along with added shape and tone to your legs and butt muscles. Unfortunately you don’t get the same benefits when you use many of the indoor aerobic machines such as treadmills, stationary bikes, stair-steppers or elliptical machines. The aerobic training machines are great for aerobic conditioning, but they don’t do much for adding shape and tone to the backside of your body.  The simple reason for that is inherent in…

Dr. Len Lopez is a nutrition and fitness expert and creator of the Work Horse Fitness Trainer. He is the author of “To Burn or Not to Burn – Fat is the Question” and “The 10 Biggest Workout Mistakes.” An athlete and fitness enthusiast all his life, his background in sports medicine, nutrition and fitness training gives him insight to help those who are struggling with both their health and fitness levels. It’s important to understand that sometimes your health ailment may dictate the type, duration and intensity of your workout, as well as, your dietary choices. Otherwise you may hit…