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What if a brief exercise of 60-90 seconds done before eating, made it less likely that food would get stored as body fat?

What if you are creating a large calorie deficit through diet and exercise and still have a bit of fat that you can’t shake? Well you might want to blame the estrogen mimicking effects of “Xenoestrogens”.

Tennis star Serena Williams poses for Harper's Bazaar magazine.

Tennis champ Serena Williams, who just won her fourth Wimbledon title and holds the No. 1 world ranking, appears in the August issue of Harper’s Bazaar sporting a sexy, white bathing suit.

With a toned, muscular body, you’d think Serena wouldn’t have any qualms with the way she looks. But the athlete admits that it wasn’t until she was 23 years old that she finally was happy with her frame — and stopped wanting to look like her older sister, Venus.

“She’s totally different. I’m super curvy,” Serena, now 28, tells the magazine. “I have big boobs and this massive butt. She’s tall and she’s like a model and she fits everything.”

Serena tells Harper’s Bazaar that growing up, she always envied her leggy sister.

Serena Williams (left) tells Harper's Bazaar that she used to envy sister Venus' (right) leggy body.

“I was always fitting in her clothes, but then one day I couldn’t,” Serena says. “But it’s fine. Now I’m obviously good, but it’s a weird thing.

“Since I don’t look like every other girl, it takes a while to be okay with that. To be different. But different is good.”

Though she’s learned to accept her body, there is still one thing that she would change if she could: her arms.

“People want more fit arms, but my arms are too fit,” she says. “But I’m not complaining. They pay my bills.”

To keep her muscular body looking more lean, Serena says she does Pilates two or three times a week and yoga. To round out her daily exercise routine and get tournament-ready, she’ll do “a couple of hours of hitting, then an hour or two of cardio and strengthening in the gym.”

While she’s committed to exercise, Serena shies away from diets.

“I don’t even know the D word,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar.

Instead, she keeps an eye on her portions, eating “a lot of grilled or baked chicken or fish, and steamed veggies.”

Put a piece of cherry pie in front of her, though, and the deal’s off.

“I can never turn down a good piece of cherry pie,” Serena admits. “But all I know is that in 10 years, I don’t want to be as wide as this couch.”

Ideal Body Weight and Body Fat Percent

The ideal weight and fat-lean ratio varies for men and women, but the minimum percent of body fat considered safe for good health is 5 percent for males and 12% for females. The average adult body fat is closer to 15 to 18% for men and 22 to 25% for women.

Athletes tend to be at low end of this scale due to increased lean muscle mass. While low levels of body fat seem to be related to improved performance, body composition alone is not a great predictor of sports success. Body fat among elite athletes vary largely by sport. There is little evidence of any benefit when men drop under 8% and women drop under 14 percent body fat.

How Low Is Too Low?

While the average body fat percent in the United States and Europe is increasing, extremely low body fat percent is also a health problem. The female athlete triad highlights the problem. Women athletes who lose too much fat risk injury, decreased performance and health issues.

The female athlete triad refers specifically to three related health problems often found in women athletes:

• Eating disorders and low energy availability.
• Amenorrhea and menstrual disorders.
• Decreased bone mass and increased risk of stress fractures and osteoporosis.

This attempt to reduce body fat by extreme measures not only leads to decreased exercise performance, but can lead to severe health complications. Nutrient deficiencies and fluid/electrolyte imbalance from low food intake can lead to increased risk of fractures, illness, loss of reproductive function and serious medical conditions such as dehydration, and starvation. The medical complications of this triad involve almost every body function and include the cardiovascular, endocrine, reproductive, skeletal, gastrointestinal, renal, and central nervous systems.

Read the updated American College of Sports Medicine Position Stand on the Female Athlete Triad.

How Much Body Fat Is Too Much?

Just as too little body fat can cause physiological complications, too much body fat is also harmful. For men over 25% and women over 32% fat there is a dramatic correlation with illness and disease.

Isn’t Body Composition Genetic?

Some aspects of your body composition are genetic (where you store fat), but most fat increase is related to lifestyle.

Can I Change My Body Composition?

Yes. To increase or decrease your percent of body fat you need to create the right balance between the calories in and calories out. The best way to do this is to decrease daily calories by about 500 and increase your exercise. Aerobic exercise along with strength training is ideal. If you are beginning a new exercise program, you are advised to first consult your physician.

Elizabeth Quinn
Sports Medicine Guide

I have to admit, I have only been exposed to thick bar training on a few occasions. I simply have never trained in a gym that had many thick barbells or dumbbells. My guess is that 99.9% of the people reading this article don't have access to thick bars either. I do have a solution for this, but first lets talk about how thick bars can significantly improve upper body development.

[If you can develop a vise-like grip, weights that once felt heavy will now feel lighter in your hands. This strength will transfer over to your entire upper body. I'll discuss why this is the case in a second.]

How Does a Strong Grip Help With Pressing Movements?

I think most people understand the idea of grip strength helping pulling movements like chin ups and rows. It makes sense because if your grip is too weak you won't be able to hold the weights. This is just part of the overall picture. The think you rarely hear about is a principle called "irradiation". I talk about this principle in full detail in this post: The Strength Training Rep Dissected and Explained.

A Quick Outline of "Irradiation"

Did you know that you can contract a muscle much harder if you also contract the muscles surrounding it? I learned about this principle called "Irradiation" from Soviet Special Forces Trainer, Pavel Tsatsouline. Here is how he explains it.

1. Try flexing your bicep as hard as possible without making a fist.
2. Now try and flex your bicep as hard as possible while making as tight as fist as possible and squeezing.
3. You should be able to contract your bicep much harder when making a tight fist.
4. This is called "irradiation"what is happening is that the nerve impulses of surrounding muscles can amplify the effect of that muscle.

Surrounding Muscles "Borrow" Strength from Your Forearms

Make a fist as hard as possible and try not to also flex your biceps or triceps. This is pretty hard to do. As you flex and generate tension in your forearms, you will also generate tension in your biceps and triceps without even trying. Gaining strength is simply the skill of generating more tension "on demand" to the muscles being worked. If you flex your forearms hard enough you will begin to feel tension not just in your arms, but in your shoulders, chest, and back.

Gripping the Bar Hard Helps, But There Are Issues…

Gripping a bar hard while doing something like bench presses or curls and you will begin to feel the effects of irradiation. The problem is that it is hard to grip a thin bar hard, especially if you have large hands. I have freakishly large hands, even for a tall guy. The problem with having large hands is that it makes gripping a regular width bar really easy. My fingers can easily wrap around the bar and It doesn't even feel like my forearms have to work at all when doing a lift. I had a workout partner who was 5'6" and his forearms would burn badly when doing curls or rows. As a result, he had some very impressive forearms and mine were just average.

[This is the width of a typical thick bar. The red one pictured here is sold over at FunctionalHandStrength.com]

Using Thick Bars Force Your Forearms to Generate Tension

If you have access to thick bars, you are one of the lucky few. The great thing about thick bar training is that you have no choice but to grip the bar hard for a lot of lifts. If you use a weak grip doing curls for instance, the bar will slip out of your hands. When you do pressing movements, you will be able to generate a better squeeze and more tension onto the bar compared to a thin bar. This will allow you to use the irradiation principle to the max! You will be able to lift more in the military press, bench press, etc.

How Getting Stronger at Rows Will Increase Your Bench Press

You will get stronger in the pulling movements like curls, rows, chin ups, etc. The pulling movements will be harder at first, because it will demand serious grip strength to hold onto a thicker bar…but the stronger your forearms get from these pulling movements, the more you can use that strength to help your pressing movements. The stronger grip will translate to better irradiation in the pressing movements when you do squeeze the bar hard.

For Those Who Don't Have Access to Thick Bars

I found a nifty solution for those who don't have access to fat bars. A guy named Matt commented on one of the posts on this site where I was discussing grip strength. I was reading his comment and liked what I read. His name was hyperlinked so I knew he must have a website as well. I clicked on his name, which lead me to his site: FatGripz.com. He invented a really cool solution to turn any bar or handle into a thick bar. Here is a picture…

[I had one of those "why didn't I think of that" moments when I saw this product.]

These Can Be Used on Almost Any Bar or Handle

They work well on chin up bars, home or gym barbells, home or gym dumbbells, etc. At first I thought that they would only fit Olympic bars, but they work on almost any width bar. For those of you who want to increase upper body strength and definition this is a great tool. One thing I forgot to mention is lifting straps…don't use them! Lifting straps seem like a good idea on paper in that you can use more weight for pulling movements, but they weaken your ability to generate tension in your forearms and get the full benefit of irradiation.

Tags: Strength Training, chin up, chin up bar, gaining strength, getting stronger, grip strength, Pavel Tsatsouline, strength training