Tag: erin stern
Erin Stern Shares the Go-to Supplements That She Relies on a Daily Basis
2X Figure Olympia champion and IFBB Pro Bikini Competitor Erin Stern has inspired countless individuals to take up the path of health and fitness. During her journey, Stern has always been open about her nutrition and training with her viewers through her social media accounts. In her latest YouTube video, she shares her top six essential supplements for promoting overall well-being and providing the required micronutrients that our body often misses out on in today’s hectic era.
Mega D3 K2
Stern started her list by mentioning Mega D3 K2, often called the ‘sunshine vitamin.’ She admitted that “I have bloodwork done and I was actually deficient in Vitamin D.” Although Stern did recommend getting blood work done to ensure if you’ll actually benefit from it. She educated her viewers that K2 and D3 work symbiotically to ensure that calcium does not get deposited in arteries and soft tissues.
Magnesium Glycinate
“I’ll get a headache, kind of a low-grade headache if I stop taking it, so I know that the body gets depleted of Magnesium if you are under stress, if you are training hard, um you know, if you’re just go go go, chances are you are deficient in Magnesium,” stated Stern.
She explained that Magnesium Glycinate helps her sleep well. However, she warns that Magnesium Citrate and Magnesium Oxide might lead to an upset stomach.
Collagen
Next on the list for Stern is Collagen. She revealed that along with healthy hair and nail growth, Collagen is also an important component of connective tissues.
“I like taking it on an empty stomach and first thing in the morning. It does contain Vitamin C also which can help a lot with assimilation and helping it with collagen production,” Erin added.
Creatine
Continuing the list, Stern reveals creatine as her next favorite supplement in her stack. However, she admits a personal preference for taking it in the form of tablets rather than powders. She pointed out that apart from muscle gain and recovery, creatine also serves some proven cognitive benefits. Being the most researched product in the market, creatine is a go-to for most athletes while going supplement shopping.
Beef Protein
“It is hard to find a high-quality whey protein lately…If you simply can not do whey proteins, try this one out.”
A bodybuilder’s life is almost incomplete without protein. Talking about her own preferences as of now, Stern admits relying on beef protein, which consists of beef organ powder. It helps her fulfill her protein intake, offering a complete protein profile consisting of all the essential amino acids necessary for muscle hypertrophy and recovery.
Related: Erin Stern Shares 5-Step Plan to Figure Out Daily Calories & Macros
Honorable Mentions
Continuing further with her video, Stern provided some other supplements that deserve an honorable mention, according to her.
Serrapeptase- It is a protein-digesting enzyme that helps with muscle inflammation, and pain, and can help with edema.
N-acetyl cysteine- NAC is an antioxidant that can help support respiratory functions and helps boost immunity.
Probiotics- Contrary to popular belief, Stern loves consuming probiotics as it helps her with “tummy troubles.”
Concluding her video, Stern even dropped a hint that her next goal might be a venture into the track arena. “I’m thinking about track and field.”
You can check out the whole video below:
Published: 2 August, 2023 | 4:21 PM EDT
Erin Stern Shares 5-Step Plan to Figure Out Daily Calories & Macros
American bodybuilder Erin Stern has been a dominant force in the women’s Figure and Bikini division. Having been a part of the sport for over a decade, she amassed a plethora of knowledge about fitness. In a recent video uploaded on YouTube, Stern shared a simple five-step plan to figure out daily calories and macros.
Hailing from Tampa, Florida, Erin Stern comes from a family of athletes. She began competing in sports from a young age and developed a passion for weight training during her athletic days in college. After narrowly missing out on the qualification for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Stern turned her attention to bodybuilding and decided to pursue a career.
Stern’s potential was clear from the start as she emerged victorious in her debut contest at the 2008 NPC National Bodybuilding and Figure Championships. The win paved the way for her to participate in the IFBB Pro League.
Stern kicked off her career with several impressive performances, taking silver at the Arnold Classic in 2010 and 2011. She secured the coveted Figure Olympia title in 2010 and reclaimed it by exacting revenge on former champion Nicole Wilkins in a dominant showing in 2012. She also claimed two Valenti Classic Pro Figure wins.
The 43-year-old was at the height of her power between 2010 and 2013. She proved to be one of the most consistent and disciplined athletes in the sport, never placing below third in any contest during those three years. Following an outing at the 2014 Australia Pro Grand Prix XIV, Stern took to the sidelines for over six years.
In 2020, Erin Stern marked her return to action, but in the women’s Bikini division instead of Figure. She took silver to Daraja Hill at the 2021 Republic of Texas Pro and scored her first win in the category at the 2021 Tahoe Show.
Stern delivered a stunning season last year. She finished runner-up at the 2022 Miami Muscle Beach Pro and came out on top of the 2022 Republic of Texas Pro before concluding it with a strong showing at the Mr. Olympia show.
Erin Stern Shares 5-Step Plan to Figure Out Daily Calories & Macros
In a recent Youtube video, Erin Stern shared a straightforward 5-step plan to figure out daily calories and macros.
“A good diet can either help you along with your progress or it can seriously hinder it,” said Stern. “There’s so much information out there. Where do you turn? The more you learn, the more confusing things can be. I wanted to break it down into five simple ways to calculate your calories and macros.”
These five steps are:
1. Goal setting:
Looking at your starting point. Be really honest here. I want you to think about what your current body fat percentage is, how much muscle mass you’re carrying, and if you need to go get calipers or do body fat testing, really good idea. You can also get a DEXA scan if you’d like.
Take progress pictures, and measurements, then figure out what your goals are going to be for let’s say the next 90 days. It can be really helpful to focus on one goal such as building muscle or leaning down.
2. Calculate maintenance calories:
We’re going to calculate maintenance calories. There are several different ways you can do this. You’ve got some online calculators that can be pretty effective. You can also track your food for about two weeks, do a food log, keep track of your weights, and if things don’t change you’ve got maintenance calories. This is one of my favorite ways although it takes a little bit more time you know exactly what your maintenance calories are and therefore have an easier time adjusting from there. If you don’t want to wait… you can take your body weight, multiply it by a coefficient from 11 to 15.
So, if you’re highly active and want to gain muscle, maybe you’re on the leaner side of things and have a high metabolism, go for body weight times 14 or 15.
3. Calculate protein:
The reason I don’t do a ratio or percentage is because I want you to think about protein as the building block of muscle. This is a rather fixed number. The protein isn’t going to drastically increase or decrease. You’re typically going to be somewhere in that body weight times 0.8 to 1.2. Use our protein calculator.
4. Calculate fats:
Think about how you like to eat and your goals. You’re looking at your body weight multiplied by 0.2 to 0.6
If you enjoy low fat/higher carbs, choose somewhere around 0.2 – 0.3. If you like higher fats and lower carbs, choose somewhere around 0.5 – 0.6. Let’s go with 150 x 0.2 = 30g of fat. This gives us (30g x 9 calories per gram) 270 calories for fats.
The remaining calories are for carbs. So, 1,800 – 600 – 270 = 930 calories.
5. Calculate carbs:
We’re really just filling in those missing calories with carbs. Let’s get our grams of carbs, or (930 / 4 calories per gram), 232.5g of carbs So, we have: 1,800 calories 150g protein 30g fats 232.5g carbs.
“When making adjustments, think about making small changes every 1-2 weeks. This would be an increase or decrease of around 10% of your daily caloric intake or around 100-300 calories. Give your body 1-2 weeks to see how the adjustment works and then decide to stay at your current intake, or adjust intake again.”
Erin Stern gave fans a look into her customized high-intensity low-impact training to build muscle with minimal wear and tear on the body two weeks ago.
Her latest offering provides fans with an effective and simple way to calculate and track daily calories and macros to stay on track with their diet. It will certainly help many improve their results.
You can watch the full video below.
Published: 27 July, 2023 | 1:55 AM EDT
Erin Stern Shares Modified Low-Impact ‘HILIT’ Workout for Building Muscle Without ‘Wear & Tear’
IFBB Figure/Bikini Pro Erin Stern continues to give back to fans with easy-to-understand workout demonstrations. In a recent YouTube video, Stern discussed her alteration to high-intensity interval training, where she promoted low-impact activities, but at a rigorous pace. While Erin Stern appreciates the benefits of HIIT workouts, she believes her low-impact variation will benefit those who are getting older, and lack the ability to recover like they used to.
“It can be done pretty much anywhere depending on what type of equipment you have. Let’s say you have a pool, you can go swim once or twice for me. For me, I have my assault bike in the backyard,” Erin Stern shared.
Stern began her career in 2008 and took first place at the NPC National Bodybuilding and Figure Championships. She leads an incredibly active schedule and routinely competes in multiple Pro competitions a year. In her first Olympia appearance in 2009, she took sixth place but went on to correct her mistakes.
The following year (2010), Stern reached the pinnacle of her career, having laid claim to a prestigious Olympia title in the Figure category. While she was unable to fend off Nicole Wilkins in 2011, Stern exacted revenge in 2012, when she took out her rival in a close show. Erin has also made numerous appearances at the annual Arnold Sports Festival.
Stern is well-respected in the community for her training knowledge and work ethic. Her last Figure competition came in 2021 at the GRL PWR in 13th place. Stern transformed her physique for the Bikini division and later earned the right to compete at Bikini Olympia in 2021 and 2022. In addition, she now spends her time offering advice to fans online with a YouTube channel of over 292,000 subscribers.
HIIT ‘Low-Impact’ Takes 1/10th of the Time Traditional Cardio Takes, Says Bodybuilder Erin Stern
Erin Stern maintains that high-intensity interval training is anabolic and helps grow muscle. However, since the intensity can cause damage to the body over time, her solution is to perform HIT workouts with low-impact exercises.
“By now you’re probably very familiar with HIT or high-intensity interval training. It’s one of my favorite forms of cardio. It takes an eighth to a tenth of the time of the amount of time that traditional cardio takes. Of course, it’s super intense and it’s anabolic, it can help you build muscle. It’s going to boost your metabolism for 24-48 hours after training, also known as the after-burn effect.
But there are quite a few drawbacks to HIT, especially if you’re weight training, you’re looking to really gain muscle and you are on a structured lifting program. HIT especially, things like sprinting, there’s a lot of eccentric force, a lot of wear and tear on the joints and on the muscles. You can lessen your recovery ability meaning the next time you’re looking to weight train, you’re going to be sore from HIT. So training with HIT and weights. It can be really really tough.”
Next, Stern highlighted the importance of choosing a movement/exercise that is either ‘concentric or push-based.’ In addition, she named a few workouts that fall into those parameters, such as sled pushing, kettlebell swings, and swimming.
“We tend to recover a bit more slowly as we age. What is the solution? It’s high-intensity low-impact training,” said Stern. “Now, for high-intensity low-impact training, what you’re looking for is an exercise that concentric or push-based.”
“Now, I’ll explain this: With HIT, you’re typically looking at something like sprints and for each step that you take when you’re at full speed, you might put 500-600 pounds of pressure on your foot as you land and you’re experiencing a tremendous amount of eccentric force with traditional HITS. Now, take this exercise, a sprint for example, and put yourself on an assault bike or get on stairs.
Push a sled. Anything where you’re limiting that negative aspect or the eccentric force on your joints is going to qualify as HITS, or high-intensity low-impact training. Other exercises can include kettlebell swings, the rower, swimming, so think about that when you’re structuring a 1-2 time per week high-intensity training session.”
Stern’s High-Intensity Low-Impact Training Guide
According to Erin Stern, a high-intensity low-impact workout should consist of 3-4 rounds of 15-30 seconds of all-out effort. Once the heart rate lowers, repeat the workout. In total, the training session should add up to 20-25 minutes.
“We’re looking at to start three to four rounds of between 15-30 seconds of all-out effort. And also keep in mind that as you do these intervals it’s going to have a cumulative effect on you. So after you do the first interval, it might take you a minute to a minute in a half to get your heart rate back down to that 60% each successive interval though. It’s going to take you a little bit longer and a little bit longer each time and that is totally fine.”
“We’re looking at 20-25 minutes max as far as your workout goes. So if someone tells you that they’re able to do HIT or high-intensity low-impact training for an hour and that is the working time and they’re not taking 10 minutes in between each sprint, I would highly doubt that. You do want to keep that training time pretty short, 20-25 minutes total, not including your warm-up or cool down which could be 5-10 minutes depending on what you like to do before/after training.”
She believes eliminating eccentric or negative force is essential to limiting wear and tear on the body.
“Eliminating that eccentric or negative force on the muscles which is going to limit the wear and tear on the joints, it’s going to improve recoverability so you’re able to get a lot more volume in and you’re going to get the benefits of HITs without the wear and tear that HITs bring along.”
It’s no mystery that fans and athletes alike have gotten a lot of out high-intensity interval training. Just look at six-time Mr. Olympia Dorian Yates. HIT workouts were a staple part of his Olympia training routine. He recently mentioned that these workouts have helped him maintain mobility and flexibility in retirement. Most importantly, Yates stressed warming up properly to avoid injuries.
Historically, Yates has been a supporter of HIT-style training regimens. In 2021, he emphasized that taking part in regular HIT workouts can promote positivity and confidence. And judging from the physique he’s carrying today, those techniques appear to be paying off.
Erin Stern’s low-impact HIT variation is a great alternative for people getting older and looking to stay in shape. It minimizes stress on the tendons and joints while still reaping the benefits of a traditional HIT workout.
RELATED: 6x Figure Olympia Cydney Gillon Shares Ab Workout & Tips
You can watch the full video from Erin Stern’s YouTube channel below:
Published: 13 July, 2023 | 5:13 PM EDT