The Five Questions We Ask Everyone: Fitness Guru, Patrick Murphy

If there is one man who knows fitness and health it’s Patrick Murphy.  We found him on Twitter, Tweeting away helpful advice snippets for the taking. And why should you do what this man says? Maybe because he is the man responsible for getting both Eva Longoria and Olivia Wilde their #1 spots on Maxim’s Hot 100. And did I mention that he was willing to sit down and talk to you?

Well not talk to you personally, but he did spend a long time on the phone with CollegeCandy telling us about the importance of switching up our workouts, why it’s crucial to stay hydrated and all the other tips and tricks he uses to get his clients into tip-top shape. Although be forewarned; this man is serious business when it comes to seeing results (i.e. opting for apples and green tea for dessert), so getting in shape his way is no easy task.

And there’s more! (I know!) His new website www.murphyfitness.com is launching today, July 1st, and members can download workouts, videos and keep a food diary where Patrick will give personal feedback to ensure success! And he’s giving away a FREE membership to one very lucky CollegeCandy reader. You (yes, YOU!) can look like Olivia Wilde for FREE. Get to know Patrick a bit and then find out how you can be one step closer to that banging bod…

5 Questions We Ask Everyone:

1.    What is your most ridiculous college memory/most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?
I disappeared with a bunch of friends to Mexico without telling my family for like, almost a week. I just disappeared for like five days, that was really bad. I was just starting college so I was just experimenting and partying my ass off.

2.   What are five things you can’t live without?

Exercise, my wife,  my eyesight, contacting my mother every week, and I can’t live without staying hydrated… You’re gonna find out in this phone call that I’m kind of a fitness fanatic. I live and breath my job. I love it.

3.    What’s your motto/advice you live by?
Well, I say many things, but one of the things I like to say is that the root of all evil is the lack of circulation. So, everything – every problem that we have, mentally and physically with our bodies – is a lack of circulation.  That is the cause and root of all evil. That’s why cancer happens, why we have eye problems, why we have skin problems, why we have all types of problems. So,we gotta keep moving.

4.    What is your favorite song to belt out at the bar/in the car/for karaoke?
I have like 9,800 songs in my iPod and I listen to so much music, so I don’t know if I have, like, one specific song. I do listen to music a lot, especially on my runs and stuff like that. I like 80’s music!

5.    Ten years from now you will be….
My platform will be large enough that I will be reaching the masses and teaching people the latest fitness and health advice and tips.  Just reaching the masses and helping people stay healthy and become healthy.

5 Questions Just for Patrick Murphy:

1) You train Olivia Wilde, who landed at #1 on this years Maxim Hot 100. Give us your secret!
Well with Olivia Wilde I do full body workouts. Some of the full body workouts are super setting workouts and then the other type of full body workouts I’ll do with her are mini circuits within the hour. So I’ll do five exercises in a row without rest.  And then we’ll repeat it again and then we’ll repeat that little mini circuit again and then I’ll do that four to five times, like four to five different five-exercise circuits. So very high intensity – her heart rate is way up.  And the good news is, every time I train her, I never do the same thing. I force her body to constantly adapt to different modes of resistance, to different environments.

2) Bikini season is here and I know every girl wants your help. If we could make two changes starting today to see the most results the fastest, what would you recommend?
1. Starting right away, you want to definitely start drinking.  I tell all my clients a minimum of 100 ounces of water daily. The reason why that is, is because you want your internal organs, especially your liver, to operate efficiently. If you are dehydrated and your kidneys aren’t operating efficiently, then your liver has to help out your kidneys do their job, and therefore your liver can’t metabolize fat as energy. So, staying hydrated is gonna help you metabolize fat off your body. Also, part of that is getting rid of water retention. If you give your body water all the time, then it’s not gonna hold on to excess water. It’s like this little game you play with your brain.

2. You want to avoid daily sugar spikes. To do so, you want to eat the right carbohydrates. Those are the carbohydrates that absorb slower and those are the ones that are high in fiber. So you want to eat carbohydrates that absorb slowly.  A good example that I tell my clients for good carbohydrates to remember are any fruits with skins: granny smith apples, pears, all berries are recommended. Carbohydrates high in fiber like beans, and brown rice, quinoa, and some great oatmeal products are high in fiber, too.

3) Can you give us a quick, ideal sample daily meal plan? Just, you know, kind of a suggestion.

A good breakfast would be egg white and a fruit, any piece of fruit of your liking.
A snack after breakfast would be 10-20 almonds and maybe even a pear an hour before that.
Lunch would be something like fields of green, like a good salad with different colors in it: Red peppers, orange peppers, or yellow peppers and maybe some type of beans in there, or quinoa or a whole grain.
Another snack an hour or two later would be another type of fruit, maybe just a peach.
Dinner is going to be a good fish, like a halibut or salmon. And you’re going to have a good carbohydrate and fat with that. You’re going to have a good whole grain, either a wild rice or a brown rice or quinoa again, with avocado.

4) Drinking… how much damage?
Basically, the fact of the matter is, the more you put into fitness, the more you’re going to get out of it. So if you want to really maximize full potential, then you have to not indulge as much, you know? Drinking spikes your blood sugar, causing body-fat 100%. Let me give you the safest cocktail, ‘cause if you have a problem, you have to have a cocktail. It would be a vodka soda. It’s 60 calories. All these other drinks, you know, for example, a margarita is 350 calories! Big difference!

5) So what are the best types of cardio that we can do to drop pounds fast?
When someone asks me about cardio, it should have variety, it should be different. You don’t want to do the same interval workout every single time. Most people just do the same thing for an hour or 45 minutes. They’ll do 65-75% of their max heart rate. Once you establish that and you’re able to do that every time and it’s no problem, that’s when you want to get into the interval training.

You can do two different types of interval training, you can do the “hard easy”: three minute/one minute hard. Or you can do another interval that’s called power. You do an interval within an interval.  So if you’re cruising at 3 minutes, for one minute you’re going for the sprint and then for another 30 seconds to another minute you go maximal velocity.  You just try to do as much as you can. And after the interval, then you go down. Then you do it again.

Like what Patrick had to say? Think he’s the guy to get your body where you want it to be? Tell us why you need Patrick’s help to reach your goals in the comments section below. We’ll randomly choose a winner on Monday, July 6th to “take home” the free membership to MurphyFitness.com. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be #1 on Maxim’s Hot 100 list next year!