Anyone who has seen rally driving on TV has probably noticed that the racers' front wheels are very rarely pointed in the direction that their vehicle is moving. To take a LEFT hand corner the driver will deftly 'flick' the car into a skid, turn the front wheels to the RIGHT and then apply excessive power to send the car, paradoxically, around the LEFT hand bend. This wasn't the intention of the engineers who originally designed the steering rack of the motorcar. Nor was it the expectation of scientists or academics. But on the track where the game is played, the fastest way to send a ton and a half of metal hurtling round a gravel road is with the wheels pointed mostly in the wrong direction!
This is not a dissimilar situation to weight training for muscle growth. Scientists and academics (and the people silly enough to listen to scientists and academics) bury their heads 'under the hood' and obsess over the chemical and mechanical PROCESSES of "protein synthesis" and "anabolism" with the assumption that pointing part of the bodies chemistry in the right direction will ensure the rest of the body arrives at the desired destination. But, as any rally driver will tell you, looking away from the desired destination to worry about which way the wheels are pointed is a sure fire way to not even finish the race!
A smarter person wanting to jump straight in and join the race as quickly as possible doesn't need to study circuit diagrams of cars ECU or consider the metallurgy of the alloy used in the engine block. A smarter person consults a map! (And has someone show them how to drive)! They consider their destination, the turns in between and work backwards to where they are now.
The tools in the race to grow muscle are food and weights. You don't need to know whats going on 'under the hood' (ie inside your body) when you eat food and lift weights. You just need to consult a map and steer your food and weights, around the twists and turns, toward your destination.
Logically, a muscularly larger version of yourself is going to be eating more food and lifting substantially heavier weights. You can probably guess how much good quality food you'll need to be eating at your desired size. And you can even predict how strong you'll probably be by looking at the maximal strength of other trainers at your desired size. It doesnt matter if you are exact because, like a rally driver, you are going to need to make countless adjustments as you go. But you still have to plan your journey first or it will take twice as long.
Over the course of your 'race' for muscle you are going to need to see yourself measuring your food intake and making adjustments according to the scales; just as a rally driver adjusts the throttle and steering angle through the bends. And just like a rally driver, your food intake won't always move in the direction your body is going. Its not a precise science; you can only keep your eye on the apex and keep fine tuning your inputs to stay on track. And if you 'close your eyes' on your diet and try to 'feel' your way through the twists, you'll probably wind up with a mangled chassis, going nowhere!
Similarly, to be muscularly larger you are going to need to be MASSIVELY stronger. The weights you use at each workout won't necessarily be moving in the direction of your strength - you will routinely need to drop your weights back as well as overload your muscles with excessive weight and less-than-good-quality reps. But you make adjustments as you go in order to keep moving toward your destination of getting truly strong. You never stop trying to get as strong as possible because in the race to gain muscle, thats like... stopping.
Most importantly, the second you stop focussing on your destination - massive strength with a measured, high intake of high quality food - and start worrying about whats going on 'under the hood' (or just cruising by 'feel'), that is going to be the exact moment you stop moving towards your destination and come crashing to a halt!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Why You SHOULD Use Supplements
I've frequently stated that nutritional supplements are largely, for most people, a complete waste of time and money. This position confuses people who logically ask me:
"so why does Biologic Labs have a supplement store then"?
So let me clear that up.
Nutritional Supplements are CAPABLE of improving a trainers rate and extent of body composition change. The RIGHT supplement, added to the RIGHT diet with the RIGHT training can improve the fat loss and/or muscle gain achieved. Sometimes the effect can be dramatic.
For example, I consider Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) a 'must have' supplement to clients on high carb, high calorie, low fat diets. Without it, most clients suffer horrible bloating, lethargy and extreme food cravings. With ALA, all of those negative effects literally disappear within a day! It is truly incredible.
But ALA is only incredible in that circumstance. In no other circumstance is there such a dramatic, instantly noticeable, almost drug-like effect.
Unfortunately, most supplement companies and stores won't tell you the fine-print about supplements. They'll just tell you that ALA, for example, will MAKE all these incredible things happen, all by itself, like a drug would. And it just won't! ALA makes a dramatic difference to an exceptionally good diet in the same way that expensive speaker cables make a dramatic difference to exceptionally good speakers. If you put $2000/meter speaker cable on your $200, JB Hifi all-in-one home theatre, you still have bad sound!
So my issue is not so much with supplements as peoples application of supplements. People want and expect supplements to MAKE UP FOR their atrocious diets and inappropriate training. They want to buy a potion that will build muscle for them and strip all their fat off while giving them boundless energy and sex drive that never abates. And no such potion exists! Supplements COMPLEMENT particular diets; they help them work better. They don't fix bad diets. They don't turn dog turds into gold bars!
So the bottom line is: nutritional supplements help DIETS work; sometimes dramatically better. But you need to make sure you are choosing the right supplement for the right diet and the right training for the right goal. Because in of themselves, supplements don't 'work'!
And that is why Biologic Labs sells supplements. Because we create the MEASURED diets to match the MEASURED training to achieve your MEASURED body composition goals, we can properly advise of the appropriate supplements to deliver maximum benefit and value.
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
"so why does Biologic Labs have a supplement store then"?
So let me clear that up.
Nutritional Supplements are CAPABLE of improving a trainers rate and extent of body composition change. The RIGHT supplement, added to the RIGHT diet with the RIGHT training can improve the fat loss and/or muscle gain achieved. Sometimes the effect can be dramatic.
For example, I consider Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) a 'must have' supplement to clients on high carb, high calorie, low fat diets. Without it, most clients suffer horrible bloating, lethargy and extreme food cravings. With ALA, all of those negative effects literally disappear within a day! It is truly incredible.
But ALA is only incredible in that circumstance. In no other circumstance is there such a dramatic, instantly noticeable, almost drug-like effect.
Unfortunately, most supplement companies and stores won't tell you the fine-print about supplements. They'll just tell you that ALA, for example, will MAKE all these incredible things happen, all by itself, like a drug would. And it just won't! ALA makes a dramatic difference to an exceptionally good diet in the same way that expensive speaker cables make a dramatic difference to exceptionally good speakers. If you put $2000/meter speaker cable on your $200, JB Hifi all-in-one home theatre, you still have bad sound!
So my issue is not so much with supplements as peoples application of supplements. People want and expect supplements to MAKE UP FOR their atrocious diets and inappropriate training. They want to buy a potion that will build muscle for them and strip all their fat off while giving them boundless energy and sex drive that never abates. And no such potion exists! Supplements COMPLEMENT particular diets; they help them work better. They don't fix bad diets. They don't turn dog turds into gold bars!
So the bottom line is: nutritional supplements help DIETS work; sometimes dramatically better. But you need to make sure you are choosing the right supplement for the right diet and the right training for the right goal. Because in of themselves, supplements don't 'work'!
And that is why Biologic Labs sells supplements. Because we create the MEASURED diets to match the MEASURED training to achieve your MEASURED body composition goals, we can properly advise of the appropriate supplements to deliver maximum benefit and value.
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Monday 15 November 2010
Supplement Ads: Scientifically Factual, Inferential... untruths
If you haven't heard, to protect consumers from unscrupulously dishonest operators, the Government has outlawed any and all 'claims' on nutritional supplements; even if they are 100% true and valid. So it would seem that the preferred method of still making supplement claims, but without actually making illegal "claims" is to use (pseudo) scientific facts to INFER.... untruths.
Powerzone HGH is an excellent example of this current marketing trend. Its multi-page brochure explains the function and benefits of Growth Hormone while quoting a variety of scientific studies. Everything stated is perfectly true and factual.... about Growth Hormone... and particularly injected, pharmaceutical Growth Hormone.... in elderly people.
The brochure does not claim that the HGH product itself delivers these results. Nor does it claim that results of pharmaceutical Growth Hormone in old people translates to the healthy gen-Y's that HGH is pitched at. Nor does it claim that HGH will compare to Growth Hormone injections. In fact, Powerzones makers don't actually claim that Growth Hormone levels will be raised by their product. They aren't allowed; and they don't have to. They know that YOU will make those claims for them!
Marketers know that they don't have to make claims for products that people desperately WANT access to. Like Chris Rock joked: [nobody] 'sells' drugs; drugs sell themselves! And when it comes to fat loss and muscle growth, EVERYBODY wants the magic pill! You only need to put the words "fat loss" on the bottle and people will buy it. Even when they know with 99.99% certainty that the product won't work! People will buy it for the .01% chance that something might happen. Heck, people buy lotto tickets for worse odds!
Now I should state that I consider Protein Powder to be a food and not a 'supplement' in the nutraceutical sense. So, protein powders aside, the fact is, as you probably know, no legal 'supplement' products 'work'. No natural product that you can buy over the counter is going to significantly manipulate your hormones, grow muscle and/or burn fat, safely and effectively, without side-effect, indefinitely, until you resemble a model on the cover of a magazine! In fact, with the same training and diet, the only single difference you will ever experience in a year of taking supplements will be to how poor you are!!! Your body will be exactly the same!
So here is everything you need to know about supplements (excluding protein powders which, as I said, are simply a good quality food):
1) if it provides drug-like effects then it will be classified as a drug and illegal to buy over-the-counter (OTC)! Marijuana is 'natural' and still illegal to buy and sell! Tryptophan is an amino acid in most protein foods and even IT is illegal to buy and sell!
2) If you can buy it OTC, then it does NOT produce drug-like effects.
3) If you want to manipulate your hormones with a natural product then get blood tests so that you can measure your disappointment accurately!
4) If you want a natural product to build muscle or lose fat then make sure your nutrition and training is 100% perfect, 100% of the time first or else you are absolutely wasting your money!
5) if you think your training and nutrition is 100% perfect and yet you aren't getting the training and body composition results you desire, reconsider your training and diet.
6) if you still think your training and nutrition is so perfect that it could not be even slightly improved in any way AND you've confirmed that your blood chemistry is absolutely perfect AND you STILL can't get the body you want then you are either a professional athlete being offered supplements for free OR you are too stupid to earn enough money to consider spending it on supplements!
Whoever you are, unless you have a measured, diagnosed deficiency or specific nutritional need, just don't waste your money on supplements (other than protein powder)!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Powerzone HGH is an excellent example of this current marketing trend. Its multi-page brochure explains the function and benefits of Growth Hormone while quoting a variety of scientific studies. Everything stated is perfectly true and factual.... about Growth Hormone... and particularly injected, pharmaceutical Growth Hormone.... in elderly people.
The brochure does not claim that the HGH product itself delivers these results. Nor does it claim that results of pharmaceutical Growth Hormone in old people translates to the healthy gen-Y's that HGH is pitched at. Nor does it claim that HGH will compare to Growth Hormone injections. In fact, Powerzones makers don't actually claim that Growth Hormone levels will be raised by their product. They aren't allowed; and they don't have to. They know that YOU will make those claims for them!
Marketers know that they don't have to make claims for products that people desperately WANT access to. Like Chris Rock joked: [nobody] 'sells' drugs; drugs sell themselves! And when it comes to fat loss and muscle growth, EVERYBODY wants the magic pill! You only need to put the words "fat loss" on the bottle and people will buy it. Even when they know with 99.99% certainty that the product won't work! People will buy it for the .01% chance that something might happen. Heck, people buy lotto tickets for worse odds!
Now I should state that I consider Protein Powder to be a food and not a 'supplement' in the nutraceutical sense. So, protein powders aside, the fact is, as you probably know, no legal 'supplement' products 'work'. No natural product that you can buy over the counter is going to significantly manipulate your hormones, grow muscle and/or burn fat, safely and effectively, without side-effect, indefinitely, until you resemble a model on the cover of a magazine! In fact, with the same training and diet, the only single difference you will ever experience in a year of taking supplements will be to how poor you are!!! Your body will be exactly the same!
So here is everything you need to know about supplements (excluding protein powders which, as I said, are simply a good quality food):
1) if it provides drug-like effects then it will be classified as a drug and illegal to buy over-the-counter (OTC)! Marijuana is 'natural' and still illegal to buy and sell! Tryptophan is an amino acid in most protein foods and even IT is illegal to buy and sell!
2) If you can buy it OTC, then it does NOT produce drug-like effects.
3) If you want to manipulate your hormones with a natural product then get blood tests so that you can measure your disappointment accurately!
4) If you want a natural product to build muscle or lose fat then make sure your nutrition and training is 100% perfect, 100% of the time first or else you are absolutely wasting your money!
5) if you think your training and nutrition is 100% perfect and yet you aren't getting the training and body composition results you desire, reconsider your training and diet.
6) if you still think your training and nutrition is so perfect that it could not be even slightly improved in any way AND you've confirmed that your blood chemistry is absolutely perfect AND you STILL can't get the body you want then you are either a professional athlete being offered supplements for free OR you are too stupid to earn enough money to consider spending it on supplements!
Whoever you are, unless you have a measured, diagnosed deficiency or specific nutritional need, just don't waste your money on supplements (other than protein powder)!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Thursday 11 November 2010
The Ugly Side of Training Biologic Labs Style
Tonight I had a bitterly disappointing workout. And the thing that made it disappointing was my own Biologic Labs training methods which told me exactly how NOT good the workout was!
The workout wouldn't have been at all disappointing if I just trained like everybody else. You see, I was doing Deadlifts and I worked to my limit and went to failure - I absolutely failed to complete the last rep despite my greatest effort. I did a relevant number of reps. Afterward, my muscles felt pumped and very fatigued. Tomorrow and the next day I will be sore. And the weight was so heavy that if I'd done the set in any gym in Australia everybody would have stopped to watch.
So I lifted heavy weights to failure, did a number of reps, got sore and got a pump and drank a protein shake afterward. How can I possibly be bitterly disappointed? By all contemporary thinking, that is a perfect workout.
The reason for the disappointment was (is), unlike all the other trainers out there, at Biologic Labs we MEASURE our performances! And all the feelings in the world don't change the FACT that, tonight, I missed what I needed. Let me explain.
Tonight I Deadlifted 275kg for 8 reps in touch-&-go style. That equates to a 327kg 1-rep-maximum deadlift according to our calculator for that movement (we have 5 different calculators for different types of exercises).
Before I began the set I calculated that 8 reps on 275 would only EQUAL my previous workouts 265kg x11 reps (also a 327 max). So at a minimum I HAD to do 9 reps (331 max) to beat my previous workout.
But I really wanted more than 9 because 265 x11 was still way off my best. My records show I deadlifted 340kg on 20 September 2008 (and again on 6 December 2008). I needed 11 reps on 275kg (in touch-&-go style) to equal that 340kg max.
My VERY best Deadlift performance has been 300kg x7 (and almost 8) on 31/10/08 which equated to a 353kg max. 16 reps on 275 beats that with a 355kg max; 15 is a 352 max.
So going into the set tonight with 275kg, I knew I wasnt going to get 16; I'm just not back up at that level of strength or muscle currently. But I was confident for a comfortable 9 (331 max), focussed on 11 (340 max) and wishing for anything extra to bring me closer to 16 (355 max).
I went into my set 100% focussed on the job. I knew EXACTLY how many reps I needed, what every rep represented in terms of the exact kilos of progress over (or toward) my previous performance. I even knew the dates of the workouts I was measuring against so I knew how far my training had regressed.
To succeed with the 11 reps would have made me elated; so I wanted that BAD! That would have put me back on track to meeting or exceeding my 340kg max for the first time in 2 years. And it would be exactly 13kg gain on my previous deadlift workout. That was my goal.
Failing that, 10 reps would still be 7kg up on last time and only 6kg off my 340; even if it was 19kg off my calculated best. I could live with that. 9 reps was the minimum acceptable representing a paltry 4kg step back toward weights I've lifted before. I'd resign myself to the slowness of progress but progress none-the-less.
But I failed. I got 8.
The thing that made that set (and therefore the whole workout) so bitterly disappointing was the very thing that made it possible: I measured it! If I never measured my workouts I never would have had the drive to take my genetically skinny, weak little 56kg body up to World Record Deadlifts and a winning Heavyweight Bodybuilders physique.
The downside of measuring your training is that you know when you've failed and you know exactly how much you failed by!
They say "failing to plan is planning to fail". They also say: "The great thing about not planning is failure comes as a complete surprise". Both are true. Neither make failing on your plan any easier.
But for all my disappointment, I'm still glad I'm not one of those guys who doesnt know how disappointed they should be!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
The workout wouldn't have been at all disappointing if I just trained like everybody else. You see, I was doing Deadlifts and I worked to my limit and went to failure - I absolutely failed to complete the last rep despite my greatest effort. I did a relevant number of reps. Afterward, my muscles felt pumped and very fatigued. Tomorrow and the next day I will be sore. And the weight was so heavy that if I'd done the set in any gym in Australia everybody would have stopped to watch.
So I lifted heavy weights to failure, did a number of reps, got sore and got a pump and drank a protein shake afterward. How can I possibly be bitterly disappointed? By all contemporary thinking, that is a perfect workout.
The reason for the disappointment was (is), unlike all the other trainers out there, at Biologic Labs we MEASURE our performances! And all the feelings in the world don't change the FACT that, tonight, I missed what I needed. Let me explain.
Tonight I Deadlifted 275kg for 8 reps in touch-&-go style. That equates to a 327kg 1-rep-maximum deadlift according to our calculator for that movement (we have 5 different calculators for different types of exercises).
Before I began the set I calculated that 8 reps on 275 would only EQUAL my previous workouts 265kg x11 reps (also a 327 max). So at a minimum I HAD to do 9 reps (331 max) to beat my previous workout.
But I really wanted more than 9 because 265 x11 was still way off my best. My records show I deadlifted 340kg on 20 September 2008 (and again on 6 December 2008). I needed 11 reps on 275kg (in touch-&-go style) to equal that 340kg max.
My VERY best Deadlift performance has been 300kg x7 (and almost 8) on 31/10/08 which equated to a 353kg max. 16 reps on 275 beats that with a 355kg max; 15 is a 352 max.
So going into the set tonight with 275kg, I knew I wasnt going to get 16; I'm just not back up at that level of strength or muscle currently. But I was confident for a comfortable 9 (331 max), focussed on 11 (340 max) and wishing for anything extra to bring me closer to 16 (355 max).
I went into my set 100% focussed on the job. I knew EXACTLY how many reps I needed, what every rep represented in terms of the exact kilos of progress over (or toward) my previous performance. I even knew the dates of the workouts I was measuring against so I knew how far my training had regressed.
To succeed with the 11 reps would have made me elated; so I wanted that BAD! That would have put me back on track to meeting or exceeding my 340kg max for the first time in 2 years. And it would be exactly 13kg gain on my previous deadlift workout. That was my goal.
Failing that, 10 reps would still be 7kg up on last time and only 6kg off my 340; even if it was 19kg off my calculated best. I could live with that. 9 reps was the minimum acceptable representing a paltry 4kg step back toward weights I've lifted before. I'd resign myself to the slowness of progress but progress none-the-less.
But I failed. I got 8.
The thing that made that set (and therefore the whole workout) so bitterly disappointing was the very thing that made it possible: I measured it! If I never measured my workouts I never would have had the drive to take my genetically skinny, weak little 56kg body up to World Record Deadlifts and a winning Heavyweight Bodybuilders physique.
The downside of measuring your training is that you know when you've failed and you know exactly how much you failed by!
They say "failing to plan is planning to fail". They also say: "The great thing about not planning is failure comes as a complete surprise". Both are true. Neither make failing on your plan any easier.
But for all my disappointment, I'm still glad I'm not one of those guys who doesnt know how disappointed they should be!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Tuesday 19 October 2010
The Shape Training Myth
INTRODUCTION
Bodybuilding is full of wishful exercise and diet myths borne of our innate need to feel in control of our circumstances. None of us wants to accept that our short biceps, fat bums, narrow clavicles, or toothpick calves can’t be improved. Even if we accept that we might be unable to achieve perfection, we still need to believe we can neutralise our aesthetic weaknesses.
This article is a mixture of good and bad news for those of you training to ‘shape’ your body rather than just build size. The good news is that you do have massive control over your overall shape. Even better news is that those changes that you can make can be made quite quickly.
But the bad news is that just about everything you’ve read or been told about ‘shape training’ is probably untrue. Worse than that, following the popular ‘shape training’ advice will probably ensure that you fail to achieve the shape you could have otherwise. Read on if you want to know what works and what doesn’t.
FOUNDATIONS
Before we even begin discussing dietary, chemical and exercise interventions for shaping muscles, something must be said about your base structure; your skeleton.
Your skeleton is the frame upon which all your muscles attach. Without some sort of violent surgical procedure (or pre-pubertal genetic manipulation) you are not going to be able to change your skeletal structure and therefore your overall shape is set before you even start training.
MUSCLE ATTACHMENTS
Where and how your muscles attach to your skeleton is another fixed, structural quality that profoundly affects your shape. In fact, it is your muscle attachments that ultimately determine the shapes of each and every muscle in your body. The tissue in between the attachments can only get bigger or smaller.
Using the thighs as an example, whether you are ever going to have an outer thigh ‘sweep’ like Capriese Murray or Lenda Murray depends upon where your outer thigh muscle (Vastus Lateralis) attaches at the hip* and knee* as well as the size and shape of your hips and femur.
Whether you will ever have an inner-thigh region that appears full and round from the knee to the groin like Jon Davie depends significantly upon where the Gracilis, Sartorius and Adductor Longus attach (among others). If your Gracilis attaches closer to the front of your knee and your Sartorius attaches further around your hip toward your groin then you are likely to be forever frustrated with a thin, bowed looking lower thigh similar to Greg Kovacs (though probably not quite as big). And all the hip adducting exercises in the world won’t change that.
In the case of your arm, if you have ‘short biceps’ like Luke Wood (where there seems to be a large gap between your bicep and forearm) then you will always have short biceps. You cannot build muscle where there is only tendon. So if you get a big burn and pump in the bicep tendon from those preacher curls you read would build your ‘lower biceps’, that’s actually an injury!
The depth of separations between muscles is also largely determined by their attachments. If the muscle attachments create wide, flat muscles with significant overlaps then your separations will never be particularly deep. And all the peak-contraction, isolation exercises in the world will be unable to ‘carve’ out any separations.
So subtle differences in the attachment points of different people’s muscles profoundly affect the ultimate visual impression made by their physiques. And short of surgical detachment and reattachment, there is nothing you can do about what your genetics gave you. You just have to work with them.
But before you hang up your training belt and quit bodybuilding forever, consider that Ronnie Coleman, Dorian Yates and Lee Haney have all been widely criticised for their poor abdominal muscles’ shape and structure among other faults. Yet these 3 men have collectively held the Worlds greatest bodybuilding title for over 20 years!
So just because your structure isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be totally awesome. Just be realistic about what you hope to look like.
MUSCLE TYPES?
There is no tissue in the body known as ‘bulk’. Neither is there a type of muscle known as ‘toned muscle’. Muscle is only muscle. How hard, soft, separated, cut, vascular or ‘toned’ it looks is a function mainly of how much fat covers it.
Front row Rugby forwards don’t have ‘bulk’ – they have a lot of muscle covered in a lot of fat. They might not be fat by comparison to the slobs in the pub watching them play but the reason they don’t look hard and defined is because they are fat.
So you cannot ‘build bulk’; there is no such thing. Neither can you develop a bulky physique as a result of exercise choice. But you can cover your muscle with a layer of fat giving the ‘bulky’ appearance of front row rugby players.
Similarly, you cannot build ‘cut’ or ‘separated’ muscles as opposed from building bigger muscles with obviously deeper gaps between them. But you can reduce your muscle blurring body fat to see the cuts and separations already between your muscles.
LOGICAL ADAPTATIONS
Muscle growth occurs as a logical adaptation to extremely stressful levels of muscular tension; otherwise known as stinking heavy weights!
Muscle exists to exert the forces necessary to create movement. Different types of exercise – stressful movement – will stimulate different adaptations within the muscle. But these adaptations will always relate to the functional force generating capacity of the muscle; either making the muscle able to apply force longer, faster, through a greater range of movement or just produce more peak force.
Like all adaptations, the bodies response to weight training stresses will be the least required to get the job done. Despite what many bodybuilding writers will make it sound like, the body is not interested in making extravagant, extraneous changes to muscle form and structure for the purpose of improving our external aesthetic form. Unfortunately, the psychological stress of possessing a subjectively unattractive body does not induce positive physical adaptations in muscle.
You cannot build ‘thigh sweep’ or peaked biceps or wide pecs if you weren’t born with the structural potential (the combination of skeletal structure and muscular attachments) to do so. And if you were born with great structure then you can still only increase the overall size of the muscle in the areas you already have it.
SHAPING VS MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
While the basic compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses are often described as ‘mass builders’, many other exercises are touted as ‘shaping’ exercises. Shaping exercises apparently train their respective muscles from different ‘angles’ thereby allowing you to change the shape of your muscles. Nonsense!
A more correct categorisation for weight training exercises would be ‘potent’ and ‘impotent’. An exercises’ effectiveness or potency can be measured by how comparatively quickly body composition changes (muscle gains) are made. And in all cases you will find a basic ‘mass builder’ outperforms a ‘shaping’ exercise.
The simple fact is that an exercises ability to stimulate muscle growth is the sole determining factor as to whether it can positively affect your body composition (ratio of fat to muscle) and therefore your shape. That means that even if you are a bodyshaper you should be doing heavy deadlifts and presses to look your shapliest.
The inefficiency of shaping exercises for developing muscle is well recognised even by those who recommend their employment in a training program. As such, it is frequently recommended in bodybuilding literature that a trainer should build mass with ‘mass building exercises’ before later trying to shape it with ‘shaping movements’. The inference is that once a quantity of muscle tissue has been developed for functional reasons, the body will then happily disassemble and reassemble the muscle proteins with an all new shape; extending or reducing attachments, adding partial-length fibres where there were none previously and disproportionately thickening sections of muscle for no functional purpose whatsoever. And all of this will apparently happen in response to an exercise that is incapable of developing the muscle from the start.
Though we might wish the body was aesthetically generous and functionally schizophrenic in response to otherwise impotent, ineffective exercises, it isn’t. Adaptations to exercise are logical and functional. And while unnatural positioning of your feet during Hack Machine Squats might eventually require a new cruciate ligament, it is unlikely to require a kilo of functionally useless, partial length muscle fibres added to the outside portion of your thigh (Vastus Lateralis)!
TRUTH ABOUT SHAPING EXERCISES
Shaping exercises tend to fall into 2 categories: single joint isolation exercises and regular compound movements done with an abnormal body position.
Single joint isolation movements fit the category of ‘impotent’ exercises described above. By nature, isolation exercises require lighter loads than compound movements for the same muscle. And by nature, isolating a muscle means that the lighter load being used is applied to much less musculature.
Isolation exercises usually hurt like hell! You can achieve a very intense, isolated burn unlike that felt from compound movements. They FEEL as though they are working the muscle very hard. And they are. The problem is that they do not provide a particularly intense systemic stress and therefore the adaptive response is minimal. No matter how hard you feel you are training with isolation exercises, the inherent stress is light; i.e. not intense.
Using abnormal body positions on compound movements – like pointing your toes in or out while squatting – to train a different aspect of a muscle is simply dangerous. If it was possible to work the outer thigh at the expense of the inner thigh during squats, for example, then the knee joint would have to be subjected to enormous sheering and rotational stresses that would inevitably lead to chronic injury.
Similarly, changing a compound exercise so that far less weight can be lifted does not make the exercise more effective or intense. By definition, a lighter weight means that a movement it is less intense, less effective and typically damaging to the joints. That burn you feel in your outer pecs during bench presses to the neck is likely to be a nerve impingement in the acromion complex or a strain to one or all of the rotator cuff muscles. And there is going to be little stimulus for pec growth when you halve the weight stress that the torso normally accommodates.
TRUTH ABOUT MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
The basic ‘mass building’ exercises are the most effective, efficient exercises you can use. They apply the greatest load stress upon the body thereby inducing the most significant adaptive, muscle growth response. These exercises include squats, deadlifts, rows, bench presses, seated or standing presses – basically any multi-joint compound movement.
Mass builders won’t make you ‘massive’, ‘bulky’ or ‘blocky’. That myth comes from the fact that big, bulky, blocky looking people with wide hips tend to be very good at lifting big weights on basic compound exercises.
But, as explained above, your structure has already been set by your genetics. If you are big and blocky then the use of light, ineffective exercises is not going to make you small and/or shapely.
Heavy mass building exercises are the most efficient for maximising your natural muscular shape. And when it comes down to it, maximising what you’ve been structurally handed is all you can do anyway.
Heavy, compound exercises actually enable you to carry the greatest possible lean mass at any given body size. In other words, they are the best exercises for making you as lean and muscular as you need. If you don’t want excessive size, don’t worry; excessive size doesn’t tend to happen by accident. Besides which, your size is a function of how much you eat. How strong you are only determines how much of you is muscle.
QUANTIFICATION: THE REAL ISSUE
Consider how much muscle you can expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building. The late Mike Mentzer based his exercise calculations on expecting no more than 5kilos of new muscle per year. Pro bodybuilder Dexter Jackson says not to expect more than 2.5kg per year. And some Natural Bodybuilding ‘experts’ have publicly recommended lowering your expectations to 1-2kg per year.
Whatever quantity of muscle you expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building, it will be several multiples more than you could expect to gain in a year of focussed ‘shaping’ training. In short, you can expect to gain pretty close to nothing in an entire year of training with ‘shaping’ exercises.
And if virtually no net gain is the best possible result from using supposed ‘shaping’ exercises for a year, how much change can you expect to the shape of your physique? We already established above that the notion of a muscle structurally reconstructing itself for no functional purpose is absurd as well as technically impossible. If there is any possibility of any change being made to a physique with exactly the same quantity of muscle, on the same skeleton, with the same muscle attachments, then that change will be totally imperceptible.
Yet if you’d focussed on supposed mass building you could have achieved a significant improvement in your muscle mass and therefore your body composition and your shape.
CONCLUSION
Through effective, hard, heavy weight training and strict dieting you can sculpt yourself an amazing body with fantastic shape. But you cannot change the structural shape of your body.
As such, regardless of your specific goals and structural weaknesses an exercise program for bodybuilding/shaping should always be focussed on heavy weights using basic compound movements.
Other than to train through injury, recover from a period of overtraining or successful overreaching, ‘shaping’ movements are never required or effective. They can be fun for something different to do when you are bored but otherwise supposed ‘shaping’ movements do not shape your muscles.
* (technically correct terminology abandoned in favour of spatially and communicatively superior options)
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Bodybuilding is full of wishful exercise and diet myths borne of our innate need to feel in control of our circumstances. None of us wants to accept that our short biceps, fat bums, narrow clavicles, or toothpick calves can’t be improved. Even if we accept that we might be unable to achieve perfection, we still need to believe we can neutralise our aesthetic weaknesses.
This article is a mixture of good and bad news for those of you training to ‘shape’ your body rather than just build size. The good news is that you do have massive control over your overall shape. Even better news is that those changes that you can make can be made quite quickly.
But the bad news is that just about everything you’ve read or been told about ‘shape training’ is probably untrue. Worse than that, following the popular ‘shape training’ advice will probably ensure that you fail to achieve the shape you could have otherwise. Read on if you want to know what works and what doesn’t.
FOUNDATIONS
Before we even begin discussing dietary, chemical and exercise interventions for shaping muscles, something must be said about your base structure; your skeleton.
Your skeleton is the frame upon which all your muscles attach. Without some sort of violent surgical procedure (or pre-pubertal genetic manipulation) you are not going to be able to change your skeletal structure and therefore your overall shape is set before you even start training.
MUSCLE ATTACHMENTS
Where and how your muscles attach to your skeleton is another fixed, structural quality that profoundly affects your shape. In fact, it is your muscle attachments that ultimately determine the shapes of each and every muscle in your body. The tissue in between the attachments can only get bigger or smaller.
Using the thighs as an example, whether you are ever going to have an outer thigh ‘sweep’ like Capriese Murray or Lenda Murray depends upon where your outer thigh muscle (Vastus Lateralis) attaches at the hip* and knee* as well as the size and shape of your hips and femur.
Whether you will ever have an inner-thigh region that appears full and round from the knee to the groin like Jon Davie depends significantly upon where the Gracilis, Sartorius and Adductor Longus attach (among others). If your Gracilis attaches closer to the front of your knee and your Sartorius attaches further around your hip toward your groin then you are likely to be forever frustrated with a thin, bowed looking lower thigh similar to Greg Kovacs (though probably not quite as big). And all the hip adducting exercises in the world won’t change that.
In the case of your arm, if you have ‘short biceps’ like Luke Wood (where there seems to be a large gap between your bicep and forearm) then you will always have short biceps. You cannot build muscle where there is only tendon. So if you get a big burn and pump in the bicep tendon from those preacher curls you read would build your ‘lower biceps’, that’s actually an injury!
The depth of separations between muscles is also largely determined by their attachments. If the muscle attachments create wide, flat muscles with significant overlaps then your separations will never be particularly deep. And all the peak-contraction, isolation exercises in the world will be unable to ‘carve’ out any separations.
So subtle differences in the attachment points of different people’s muscles profoundly affect the ultimate visual impression made by their physiques. And short of surgical detachment and reattachment, there is nothing you can do about what your genetics gave you. You just have to work with them.
But before you hang up your training belt and quit bodybuilding forever, consider that Ronnie Coleman, Dorian Yates and Lee Haney have all been widely criticised for their poor abdominal muscles’ shape and structure among other faults. Yet these 3 men have collectively held the Worlds greatest bodybuilding title for over 20 years!
So just because your structure isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be totally awesome. Just be realistic about what you hope to look like.
MUSCLE TYPES?
There is no tissue in the body known as ‘bulk’. Neither is there a type of muscle known as ‘toned muscle’. Muscle is only muscle. How hard, soft, separated, cut, vascular or ‘toned’ it looks is a function mainly of how much fat covers it.
Front row Rugby forwards don’t have ‘bulk’ – they have a lot of muscle covered in a lot of fat. They might not be fat by comparison to the slobs in the pub watching them play but the reason they don’t look hard and defined is because they are fat.
So you cannot ‘build bulk’; there is no such thing. Neither can you develop a bulky physique as a result of exercise choice. But you can cover your muscle with a layer of fat giving the ‘bulky’ appearance of front row rugby players.
Similarly, you cannot build ‘cut’ or ‘separated’ muscles as opposed from building bigger muscles with obviously deeper gaps between them. But you can reduce your muscle blurring body fat to see the cuts and separations already between your muscles.
LOGICAL ADAPTATIONS
Muscle growth occurs as a logical adaptation to extremely stressful levels of muscular tension; otherwise known as stinking heavy weights!
Muscle exists to exert the forces necessary to create movement. Different types of exercise – stressful movement – will stimulate different adaptations within the muscle. But these adaptations will always relate to the functional force generating capacity of the muscle; either making the muscle able to apply force longer, faster, through a greater range of movement or just produce more peak force.
Like all adaptations, the bodies response to weight training stresses will be the least required to get the job done. Despite what many bodybuilding writers will make it sound like, the body is not interested in making extravagant, extraneous changes to muscle form and structure for the purpose of improving our external aesthetic form. Unfortunately, the psychological stress of possessing a subjectively unattractive body does not induce positive physical adaptations in muscle.
You cannot build ‘thigh sweep’ or peaked biceps or wide pecs if you weren’t born with the structural potential (the combination of skeletal structure and muscular attachments) to do so. And if you were born with great structure then you can still only increase the overall size of the muscle in the areas you already have it.
SHAPING VS MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
While the basic compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses are often described as ‘mass builders’, many other exercises are touted as ‘shaping’ exercises. Shaping exercises apparently train their respective muscles from different ‘angles’ thereby allowing you to change the shape of your muscles. Nonsense!
A more correct categorisation for weight training exercises would be ‘potent’ and ‘impotent’. An exercises’ effectiveness or potency can be measured by how comparatively quickly body composition changes (muscle gains) are made. And in all cases you will find a basic ‘mass builder’ outperforms a ‘shaping’ exercise.
The simple fact is that an exercises ability to stimulate muscle growth is the sole determining factor as to whether it can positively affect your body composition (ratio of fat to muscle) and therefore your shape. That means that even if you are a bodyshaper you should be doing heavy deadlifts and presses to look your shapliest.
The inefficiency of shaping exercises for developing muscle is well recognised even by those who recommend their employment in a training program. As such, it is frequently recommended in bodybuilding literature that a trainer should build mass with ‘mass building exercises’ before later trying to shape it with ‘shaping movements’. The inference is that once a quantity of muscle tissue has been developed for functional reasons, the body will then happily disassemble and reassemble the muscle proteins with an all new shape; extending or reducing attachments, adding partial-length fibres where there were none previously and disproportionately thickening sections of muscle for no functional purpose whatsoever. And all of this will apparently happen in response to an exercise that is incapable of developing the muscle from the start.
Though we might wish the body was aesthetically generous and functionally schizophrenic in response to otherwise impotent, ineffective exercises, it isn’t. Adaptations to exercise are logical and functional. And while unnatural positioning of your feet during Hack Machine Squats might eventually require a new cruciate ligament, it is unlikely to require a kilo of functionally useless, partial length muscle fibres added to the outside portion of your thigh (Vastus Lateralis)!
TRUTH ABOUT SHAPING EXERCISES
Shaping exercises tend to fall into 2 categories: single joint isolation exercises and regular compound movements done with an abnormal body position.
Single joint isolation movements fit the category of ‘impotent’ exercises described above. By nature, isolation exercises require lighter loads than compound movements for the same muscle. And by nature, isolating a muscle means that the lighter load being used is applied to much less musculature.
Isolation exercises usually hurt like hell! You can achieve a very intense, isolated burn unlike that felt from compound movements. They FEEL as though they are working the muscle very hard. And they are. The problem is that they do not provide a particularly intense systemic stress and therefore the adaptive response is minimal. No matter how hard you feel you are training with isolation exercises, the inherent stress is light; i.e. not intense.
Using abnormal body positions on compound movements – like pointing your toes in or out while squatting – to train a different aspect of a muscle is simply dangerous. If it was possible to work the outer thigh at the expense of the inner thigh during squats, for example, then the knee joint would have to be subjected to enormous sheering and rotational stresses that would inevitably lead to chronic injury.
Similarly, changing a compound exercise so that far less weight can be lifted does not make the exercise more effective or intense. By definition, a lighter weight means that a movement it is less intense, less effective and typically damaging to the joints. That burn you feel in your outer pecs during bench presses to the neck is likely to be a nerve impingement in the acromion complex or a strain to one or all of the rotator cuff muscles. And there is going to be little stimulus for pec growth when you halve the weight stress that the torso normally accommodates.
TRUTH ABOUT MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
The basic ‘mass building’ exercises are the most effective, efficient exercises you can use. They apply the greatest load stress upon the body thereby inducing the most significant adaptive, muscle growth response. These exercises include squats, deadlifts, rows, bench presses, seated or standing presses – basically any multi-joint compound movement.
Mass builders won’t make you ‘massive’, ‘bulky’ or ‘blocky’. That myth comes from the fact that big, bulky, blocky looking people with wide hips tend to be very good at lifting big weights on basic compound exercises.
But, as explained above, your structure has already been set by your genetics. If you are big and blocky then the use of light, ineffective exercises is not going to make you small and/or shapely.
Heavy mass building exercises are the most efficient for maximising your natural muscular shape. And when it comes down to it, maximising what you’ve been structurally handed is all you can do anyway.
Heavy, compound exercises actually enable you to carry the greatest possible lean mass at any given body size. In other words, they are the best exercises for making you as lean and muscular as you need. If you don’t want excessive size, don’t worry; excessive size doesn’t tend to happen by accident. Besides which, your size is a function of how much you eat. How strong you are only determines how much of you is muscle.
QUANTIFICATION: THE REAL ISSUE
Consider how much muscle you can expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building. The late Mike Mentzer based his exercise calculations on expecting no more than 5kilos of new muscle per year. Pro bodybuilder Dexter Jackson says not to expect more than 2.5kg per year. And some Natural Bodybuilding ‘experts’ have publicly recommended lowering your expectations to 1-2kg per year.
Whatever quantity of muscle you expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building, it will be several multiples more than you could expect to gain in a year of focussed ‘shaping’ training. In short, you can expect to gain pretty close to nothing in an entire year of training with ‘shaping’ exercises.
And if virtually no net gain is the best possible result from using supposed ‘shaping’ exercises for a year, how much change can you expect to the shape of your physique? We already established above that the notion of a muscle structurally reconstructing itself for no functional purpose is absurd as well as technically impossible. If there is any possibility of any change being made to a physique with exactly the same quantity of muscle, on the same skeleton, with the same muscle attachments, then that change will be totally imperceptible.
Yet if you’d focussed on supposed mass building you could have achieved a significant improvement in your muscle mass and therefore your body composition and your shape.
CONCLUSION
Through effective, hard, heavy weight training and strict dieting you can sculpt yourself an amazing body with fantastic shape. But you cannot change the structural shape of your body.
As such, regardless of your specific goals and structural weaknesses an exercise program for bodybuilding/shaping should always be focussed on heavy weights using basic compound movements.
Other than to train through injury, recover from a period of overtraining or successful overreaching, ‘shaping’ movements are never required or effective. They can be fun for something different to do when you are bored but otherwise supposed ‘shaping’ movements do not shape your muscles.
* (technically correct terminology abandoned in favour of spatially and communicatively superior options)
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Wednesday 13 October 2010
Training Sets, Reps & Days vs. Weights
If you look at the majority of weight training programs they talk about sets, reps and exercises. They talk about heart rate and duration. They talk about ‘feel’ and ‘burn’. But never do they seem to give more than a passing mention about weight! And yet the WEIGHT being lifted is the entire point of WEIGHT Training. If you do not progress in the amount of weight you can lift then your training failed. Period. Nothing left to discuss. If training wasn’t about weight then they’d call it Rep Training or Set Training or something other than Weight Training!
To prove the point, consider a massive Professional Bodybuilders program from a magazine and consider what he does that you cannot?
Apparently he does 10-12 reps per set. Taking weight out of the equation, do you have any problem doing 10-12 reps of any exercise? No matter who you are or how out of shape you are, you CAN do 10-12 reps of an exercise IF the weight is light enough.
Mr Pro does 4 SETS of each exercise. Once again, whoever you are, you are capable of doing 4 sets of any exercise so long as the weight is light enough.
Mr Pro trains 6 days per week for 1-2 hours at a time, always works to ‘feel’ the burn and squeeze the muscles etc etc. All of which every healthy human is capable of doing IF weight is taken out of the equation!
So you are CAPABLE of doing everything that even a Professional Bodybuilder does in terms of sets, reps and hours in the gym. So training to do all those sets and reps and hours is not developing any ability you do not already have. And if your body isn't changing to develop any new physical ability then you can be absolutely sure it won't have changed physically either! Which leaves the ONLY thing that a professional Bodybuilder can do that you cannot do which is lift HUGE WEIGHTS on all those sets and reps!
Now, these days, you might not see Mr Lazy Pro lift huge weights in the videos and they might not choose to lift huge weights for much of the year. We all know how Pro Bodybuilders build their muscles these days and it doesn’t require working particularly hard. But despite what they lift, the issue is that Mr Pro is CAPABLE of lifting much, MUCH more than you on everything he does. In fact, even lazy Pros often train lazily with hundreds of kilos more than you can lift when straining with all of your effort! And if you could get as strong as Mr Pro by training light and lazy then you’d probably be as big as Mr Pro and you wouldn’t be reading this!
Once you can lift similar maximum weights to those your favourite pro is CAPABLE of lifting then you’ll probably find you can lazily play around for 4 sets of 4 exercises with big weights too. And you’ll probably be about the same size (give or take the Synthol lumps in your arms, delts and calves). Of course, by that stage you probably won’t bother with 4 sets of 4 exercises because you will have realised that such training is just stupid, inefficient, ineffective and not even slightly related to the desired result you want from your training!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
To prove the point, consider a massive Professional Bodybuilders program from a magazine and consider what he does that you cannot?
Apparently he does 10-12 reps per set. Taking weight out of the equation, do you have any problem doing 10-12 reps of any exercise? No matter who you are or how out of shape you are, you CAN do 10-12 reps of an exercise IF the weight is light enough.
Mr Pro does 4 SETS of each exercise. Once again, whoever you are, you are capable of doing 4 sets of any exercise so long as the weight is light enough.
Mr Pro trains 6 days per week for 1-2 hours at a time, always works to ‘feel’ the burn and squeeze the muscles etc etc. All of which every healthy human is capable of doing IF weight is taken out of the equation!
So you are CAPABLE of doing everything that even a Professional Bodybuilder does in terms of sets, reps and hours in the gym. So training to do all those sets and reps and hours is not developing any ability you do not already have. And if your body isn't changing to develop any new physical ability then you can be absolutely sure it won't have changed physically either! Which leaves the ONLY thing that a professional Bodybuilder can do that you cannot do which is lift HUGE WEIGHTS on all those sets and reps!
Now, these days, you might not see Mr Lazy Pro lift huge weights in the videos and they might not choose to lift huge weights for much of the year. We all know how Pro Bodybuilders build their muscles these days and it doesn’t require working particularly hard. But despite what they lift, the issue is that Mr Pro is CAPABLE of lifting much, MUCH more than you on everything he does. In fact, even lazy Pros often train lazily with hundreds of kilos more than you can lift when straining with all of your effort! And if you could get as strong as Mr Pro by training light and lazy then you’d probably be as big as Mr Pro and you wouldn’t be reading this!
Once you can lift similar maximum weights to those your favourite pro is CAPABLE of lifting then you’ll probably find you can lazily play around for 4 sets of 4 exercises with big weights too. And you’ll probably be about the same size (give or take the Synthol lumps in your arms, delts and calves). Of course, by that stage you probably won’t bother with 4 sets of 4 exercises because you will have realised that such training is just stupid, inefficient, ineffective and not even slightly related to the desired result you want from your training!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Muscles = Strength = Weights. Duh!
I was at the supermarket the other day when I saw a little girl point at me and say to her mother “look at that strong man, mommy”. The little girl couldn’t have been more than 5 years old and yet she seemed to ‘get it’ more than the vast majority of weight trainers.
The “form” your body takes is a reflection of what your body can do. I really don’t know what part of that people find so hard to understand or believe? I have muscles because muscles are required to lift the weights I lift. Substantially stronger people than me tend to have substantially bigger muscles. Substantially weaker people tend to have substantially smaller muscles. The measure of a muscle is its strength. That’s just what a muscle does. And I just cannot figure out when the world lost sight of this fact?
If you want more muscles, you need to get much stronger; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want less fat then you need to stop eating tasty rubbish, start eating clean protein foods and train for more muscle; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want to look exactly like a ripped, elite rock climber then you need to become an ELITE rock climber. If you want to look more like a skinny, sick, malnourished endurance athlete then you need to exercise for hours and hours and hours, everyday and become an elite endurance athlete! If you want the ‘heroin chic’ look in womens fashion magazines then you probably need to develop a proper heroin addiction. And if you only go half-way with the work required for any of these ‘looks’ then you’ll probably only get half the look!
Yet weight trainers and bodybuilders obsess over exercise ‘technique’ instead of weight; pre-workout supplements instead of food; ‘feeling’ muscles work rather than making muscles ‘do’; and spending hours slothing along on treadmills to ‘burn fat’ instead of powering through workouts to become a REAL strength athlete. As a result the vast majority of trainers are failing to achieve any significant body composition changes. For all their science and ‘feelings’ and technique, trainers are failing to LOOK like strong, muscular athletes because they aren't training to become strong, muscular athletes! Its like training to race Supercars and focussing on steering angles, apexes, wheel camber, tyre selection, throttle modulation and everything else EXCEPT going faster. Its just an obvious waste of time!
If you want muscles and low bodyfat then you need to train with weights. And if you are going to train with WEIGHTS then don't let anyone fool you: the point is the WEIGHT!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
The “form” your body takes is a reflection of what your body can do. I really don’t know what part of that people find so hard to understand or believe? I have muscles because muscles are required to lift the weights I lift. Substantially stronger people than me tend to have substantially bigger muscles. Substantially weaker people tend to have substantially smaller muscles. The measure of a muscle is its strength. That’s just what a muscle does. And I just cannot figure out when the world lost sight of this fact?
If you want more muscles, you need to get much stronger; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want less fat then you need to stop eating tasty rubbish, start eating clean protein foods and train for more muscle; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want to look exactly like a ripped, elite rock climber then you need to become an ELITE rock climber. If you want to look more like a skinny, sick, malnourished endurance athlete then you need to exercise for hours and hours and hours, everyday and become an elite endurance athlete! If you want the ‘heroin chic’ look in womens fashion magazines then you probably need to develop a proper heroin addiction. And if you only go half-way with the work required for any of these ‘looks’ then you’ll probably only get half the look!
Yet weight trainers and bodybuilders obsess over exercise ‘technique’ instead of weight; pre-workout supplements instead of food; ‘feeling’ muscles work rather than making muscles ‘do’; and spending hours slothing along on treadmills to ‘burn fat’ instead of powering through workouts to become a REAL strength athlete. As a result the vast majority of trainers are failing to achieve any significant body composition changes. For all their science and ‘feelings’ and technique, trainers are failing to LOOK like strong, muscular athletes because they aren't training to become strong, muscular athletes! Its like training to race Supercars and focussing on steering angles, apexes, wheel camber, tyre selection, throttle modulation and everything else EXCEPT going faster. Its just an obvious waste of time!
If you want muscles and low bodyfat then you need to train with weights. And if you are going to train with WEIGHTS then don't let anyone fool you: the point is the WEIGHT!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
FAQ: Building Muscle while Training for Sports/Fighting?
Q: I train for [MMA/Boxing/Kick-Boxing/Rugby/Soccer/AFL etc etc] but I'd like to gain more muscle and have a better looking physique while maintaining my endurance, speed and skills. Do I need to give up my other training to gain the muscle? Or will it be hard to maintain the muscle with my other training?
A: It is very difficult to gain appreciable muscle while also training hard for endurance type activities. Some people can do it; most can't. But even those that can do both still find muscle building is severely slowed by other training.
Stopping any other training to focus on building muscle and strength will enable you to gain the muscle you want. But if you do not gain much muscle or if you only focus on the muscle building for a few weeks before restarting the endurance-y work then you'll probably find you quickly lose the new muscle and go back to exactly where you were before.
The thing is, your body becomes what it needs to become in order to do what you need to do. But when you are doing lots of endurance-y exercise then there is a limit to how big, strong and muscular your body will agree to be. And there isnt a whole lot you can do about what point YOUR body thinks is too much muscle to do your other activity(s).
Almost all men need to focus purely on their strength and muscle training if they ever hope to get past a physique that can do a 120-140kg bench press and 220-240kg-ish deadlift. Strength beyond that level is relatively freakish and requires a very focussed athlete. Some guys can be bigger and stronger than that while also maintaining sports endurance; but its rare, not easy and definitely not guaranteed.
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
A: It is very difficult to gain appreciable muscle while also training hard for endurance type activities. Some people can do it; most can't. But even those that can do both still find muscle building is severely slowed by other training.
Stopping any other training to focus on building muscle and strength will enable you to gain the muscle you want. But if you do not gain much muscle or if you only focus on the muscle building for a few weeks before restarting the endurance-y work then you'll probably find you quickly lose the new muscle and go back to exactly where you were before.
The thing is, your body becomes what it needs to become in order to do what you need to do. But when you are doing lots of endurance-y exercise then there is a limit to how big, strong and muscular your body will agree to be. And there isnt a whole lot you can do about what point YOUR body thinks is too much muscle to do your other activity(s).
Almost all men need to focus purely on their strength and muscle training if they ever hope to get past a physique that can do a 120-140kg bench press and 220-240kg-ish deadlift. Strength beyond that level is relatively freakish and requires a very focussed athlete. Some guys can be bigger and stronger than that while also maintaining sports endurance; but its rare, not easy and definitely not guaranteed.
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Saturday 9 October 2010
When Stupidly Bad is Good
Recently a client introduced me to the disgraceful Velocity Diet plan on t-nation.com.
The jist of the diet is you stop eating food and consume only their supplements. Every now and then you have an "HSM" (healthy solid meal - gotta have an acronym or its not scientific, ya know?). But for all week, everyday, its just supplements.
The supplements make a diet that is 60% protein, 15% carbs and 25% fats and VERY low calorie. A 120kg man is prescribed just 1800 calories per day (plus 330 extra calories on training days). It is absolute malnourishing starvation!
This is a terrible diet on more levels than I can be bothered commenting on. One major issue I have is that, for whatever reason, supplements - regardless of how technically brilliant they have been formulated to be - never, ever deliver the same training, strength, health or body composition outcomes as real food. I know it shouldn't be this way when you look at the basic numbers. But it just is. It probably has to do with the fact that you are still drinking a bunch of wierd, colours, flavours, sweeteners and other non-nutritious poisons that have no place in going into the body.
But while I would never, ever prescribe such a terrible, awful, malnourishing diet to any client I would ever work with, the Velocity Diet is actually the best possible diet for a LOT of people. The reason? They can't screw it up!
The fact is, most people couldnt eat a diet much worse than they do if they deliberately tried. I am shocked by how bad most peoples diets are. And most people screw up even the most basic diet instructions. You tell them to eat chicken and they get the fake turkey from the deli. You tell them to eat rice and they eat pasta with cheese sauce. And they actually think these compromises are OK!? A 100% supplement diet is the only diet that they will not and cannot screw up.
And by virtue of being the only diet people cannot screw up, the Velocity Diet - like the worst diet I've ever seen: the Tony Ferguson Diet - is the best diet for many people.
Its so sad!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
The jist of the diet is you stop eating food and consume only their supplements. Every now and then you have an "HSM" (healthy solid meal - gotta have an acronym or its not scientific, ya know?). But for all week, everyday, its just supplements.
The supplements make a diet that is 60% protein, 15% carbs and 25% fats and VERY low calorie. A 120kg man is prescribed just 1800 calories per day (plus 330 extra calories on training days). It is absolute malnourishing starvation!
This is a terrible diet on more levels than I can be bothered commenting on. One major issue I have is that, for whatever reason, supplements - regardless of how technically brilliant they have been formulated to be - never, ever deliver the same training, strength, health or body composition outcomes as real food. I know it shouldn't be this way when you look at the basic numbers. But it just is. It probably has to do with the fact that you are still drinking a bunch of wierd, colours, flavours, sweeteners and other non-nutritious poisons that have no place in going into the body.
But while I would never, ever prescribe such a terrible, awful, malnourishing diet to any client I would ever work with, the Velocity Diet is actually the best possible diet for a LOT of people. The reason? They can't screw it up!
The fact is, most people couldnt eat a diet much worse than they do if they deliberately tried. I am shocked by how bad most peoples diets are. And most people screw up even the most basic diet instructions. You tell them to eat chicken and they get the fake turkey from the deli. You tell them to eat rice and they eat pasta with cheese sauce. And they actually think these compromises are OK!? A 100% supplement diet is the only diet that they will not and cannot screw up.
And by virtue of being the only diet people cannot screw up, the Velocity Diet - like the worst diet I've ever seen: the Tony Ferguson Diet - is the best diet for many people.
Its so sad!
Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.
Friday 1 October 2010
Why Personal Trainers Fail at Body Recompositioning
The following is a rant I wrote at the old Biologic Labs site.
WHAT YOU WANT
When you go to a gym or Personal Trainer your goal is pretty obvious: you want a better body! If you’d wanted to be a boxer, you would’ve gone to a boxing studio. If you’d wanted to be a runner, you would’ve joined a mate who liked running. And if you’d wanted to learn to balance on a large, colourful ball, you would’ve joined the circus! But you went to the gym/trainer because you never cared what kind of athlete you actually were, you just wanted to look (more) like one!
WHAT YOU NEED
The solution to how to look like an athlete was obvious back in High School. Remember the kids with the athletic, muscular physiques? They were always the ones with the athletic ability! Genetics be damned! It doesn’t matter WHY they were good athletes; the point is that the physique always came with ability!
Even when you were 10 years old you could’ve figured out, for example, that if you wanted to look like someone who can sprint 100 meters in 10 seconds then you probably need to be able to sprint 100m in 10seconds! Granted, not all elite 100m sprinters look exactly the same... but they do all tend to have a certain ‘look’! Its a similar look to elite rock climbers, gymnasts and elite athletes in any other sporting activity requiring an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. They are all really muscular!
At Biologic Labs we recognise that to achieve the athletic physique you want you need to develop the appropriate athletic ability! Thats the mathematical and philosophical basis of our Body Recompositioning Equation. And because weight training is the only infinitely adjustable, measurable and predictable strength sport, we can even predict exactly what weights you need to become capable of lifting in order to have the exact bodyfat percentage that you want. When you see our math you will realise its actually painfully obvious!
WHAT YOU GET
Yet when you go to a Personal Trainer and, for example, show them a picture of your desired elite sprinters body, you won’t get such a direct answer. Instead, they’ll talk to you about ‘core stability’ and ‘flexibility’ and ‘rectus abdominus’ and ‘heart rate’ and ‘vastus lateralis’ and ‘technique’ and ‘motivation’ and basically try to drown you in about 500 gallons of BS without ever even mentioning the sole determining factor in you achieving your goal: you need to become an elite sprinter (or as strong as one at the same bodyweight).
And then, if you let them, you’ll get given the same generic routine most trainers give to ALL their other clients. It will basically be a condensed 5th Grade PE lesson complete with stretching and calisthenics stolen from a 1980‘s Richard Simmons video followed by a bunch of ‘Retirement Village’ rehabilitation exercise. There’ll be some pulling on an oversized rubber band, lying hunched on a ball squeezing your bladder and, finally, leaning against a wall in a sitting position, but, wait for it... without a chair! Because thats gonna create a super hardcore athlete! Do you “Feel the burn”? Its actually your life, sanity and money being sucked into a black-hole, never to be reimbursed.
Of course, with a personal trainer in a gym you might also get a splattering of half-assed weights machine exercises with REALLY light weights! Heavy weights are dangerous, you see. Really Dangerous! Nothing like the safe sports such as Netball or Rugby where you run as fast as you can, leap through the air, land sideways on one foot while rotating quickly and, off balance, try to pass the ball before getting hit by a neanderthal traveling slightly faster than an express train. Knee and shoulder reconstructions? They only happen to people who lift those dangerous, heavy weights, obviously!
Anyway, lets say you argue and do not accept that the trainer gives you the generic garbage that they themselves would never, ever do (because they know its utterly useless, time wasting junk). What if instead you insist upon training like a sprinter to be a sprinter? Well then the trainer will give you a training program akin to the advice you might get from a retarded person copying the sprinters they saw in the background of the Olympics telecast. You’ll probably have to embarrass yourself in a public park by doing an incredibly gay, high-knee-kick run. Then, like a dog on a leash, you’ll get tied to your trainer with an oversized rubber band and have to try to run away. You’ll probably have to run up and down some stairs. And you might even get to run around the park with a parachute tied to you. And in fairness these are all things real sprinters do. The only difference is that your program doesn’t include the actual sprinting... or the stopwatch timing your sprints... or the expert guidance of a person who actually sprints... or the 5-6 days per week regime of a real sprinter... or anyway of making or measuring any sort of quantifiable progress toward your very specific goal of becoming an elite sprinter!
You’ll get your heart rate measured; but not your sprint times. You’ll get your VO2 Max measured; but not your speed. You’ll get your training session times measured to the nano-second; but not your workload. In fact, the trainer will jerk you around with every irrelevant measure that you never asked for (flexibility, heart rate, VO2 Max etc) and NOTHING relevant to the goal you actually stated at the start.
And people wonder why they fail to look like any sort of athlete when Personal Trainers do not train their clients to become any sort of athlete?
WHAT YOU WANT
When you go to a gym or Personal Trainer your goal is pretty obvious: you want a better body! If you’d wanted to be a boxer, you would’ve gone to a boxing studio. If you’d wanted to be a runner, you would’ve joined a mate who liked running. And if you’d wanted to learn to balance on a large, colourful ball, you would’ve joined the circus! But you went to the gym/trainer because you never cared what kind of athlete you actually were, you just wanted to look (more) like one!
WHAT YOU NEED
The solution to how to look like an athlete was obvious back in High School. Remember the kids with the athletic, muscular physiques? They were always the ones with the athletic ability! Genetics be damned! It doesn’t matter WHY they were good athletes; the point is that the physique always came with ability!
Even when you were 10 years old you could’ve figured out, for example, that if you wanted to look like someone who can sprint 100 meters in 10 seconds then you probably need to be able to sprint 100m in 10seconds! Granted, not all elite 100m sprinters look exactly the same... but they do all tend to have a certain ‘look’! Its a similar look to elite rock climbers, gymnasts and elite athletes in any other sporting activity requiring an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. They are all really muscular!
At Biologic Labs we recognise that to achieve the athletic physique you want you need to develop the appropriate athletic ability! Thats the mathematical and philosophical basis of our Body Recompositioning Equation. And because weight training is the only infinitely adjustable, measurable and predictable strength sport, we can even predict exactly what weights you need to become capable of lifting in order to have the exact bodyfat percentage that you want. When you see our math you will realise its actually painfully obvious!
WHAT YOU GET
Yet when you go to a Personal Trainer and, for example, show them a picture of your desired elite sprinters body, you won’t get such a direct answer. Instead, they’ll talk to you about ‘core stability’ and ‘flexibility’ and ‘rectus abdominus’ and ‘heart rate’ and ‘vastus lateralis’ and ‘technique’ and ‘motivation’ and basically try to drown you in about 500 gallons of BS without ever even mentioning the sole determining factor in you achieving your goal: you need to become an elite sprinter (or as strong as one at the same bodyweight).
And then, if you let them, you’ll get given the same generic routine most trainers give to ALL their other clients. It will basically be a condensed 5th Grade PE lesson complete with stretching and calisthenics stolen from a 1980‘s Richard Simmons video followed by a bunch of ‘Retirement Village’ rehabilitation exercise. There’ll be some pulling on an oversized rubber band, lying hunched on a ball squeezing your bladder and, finally, leaning against a wall in a sitting position, but, wait for it... without a chair! Because thats gonna create a super hardcore athlete! Do you “Feel the burn”? Its actually your life, sanity and money being sucked into a black-hole, never to be reimbursed.
Of course, with a personal trainer in a gym you might also get a splattering of half-assed weights machine exercises with REALLY light weights! Heavy weights are dangerous, you see. Really Dangerous! Nothing like the safe sports such as Netball or Rugby where you run as fast as you can, leap through the air, land sideways on one foot while rotating quickly and, off balance, try to pass the ball before getting hit by a neanderthal traveling slightly faster than an express train. Knee and shoulder reconstructions? They only happen to people who lift those dangerous, heavy weights, obviously!
Anyway, lets say you argue and do not accept that the trainer gives you the generic garbage that they themselves would never, ever do (because they know its utterly useless, time wasting junk). What if instead you insist upon training like a sprinter to be a sprinter? Well then the trainer will give you a training program akin to the advice you might get from a retarded person copying the sprinters they saw in the background of the Olympics telecast. You’ll probably have to embarrass yourself in a public park by doing an incredibly gay, high-knee-kick run. Then, like a dog on a leash, you’ll get tied to your trainer with an oversized rubber band and have to try to run away. You’ll probably have to run up and down some stairs. And you might even get to run around the park with a parachute tied to you. And in fairness these are all things real sprinters do. The only difference is that your program doesn’t include the actual sprinting... or the stopwatch timing your sprints... or the expert guidance of a person who actually sprints... or the 5-6 days per week regime of a real sprinter... or anyway of making or measuring any sort of quantifiable progress toward your very specific goal of becoming an elite sprinter!
You’ll get your heart rate measured; but not your sprint times. You’ll get your VO2 Max measured; but not your speed. You’ll get your training session times measured to the nano-second; but not your workload. In fact, the trainer will jerk you around with every irrelevant measure that you never asked for (flexibility, heart rate, VO2 Max etc) and NOTHING relevant to the goal you actually stated at the start.
And people wonder why they fail to look like any sort of athlete when Personal Trainers do not train their clients to become any sort of athlete?
Thursday 16 September 2010
Boxing for Conditioning & Body Recompositioning?
Boxing training has become a popular mode of exercise for people wanting body recompositioning and physical conditioning. It makes sense given top boxers - both men and women, particularly in the lighter weight classes - often have great figures/physiques and tremendous endurance, speed, power and conditioning.
Unfortunately, Personal Trainers have jumped on the boxing band wagon despite knowing absolutely nothing about the activity. Many have recognised that boxing gloves, focus mits and pads are some of the cheapest equipment they can buy and therefore offer a huge return on investment. So mock boxing training for 'fitness' is now offered by Personal Trainers in virtually every public park in the country.
As you might expect, nobody seeing a Personal Trainer in the park is coming away looking like a lean, mean boxing machine. Neither do any of the people doing boxing 'classes'. The reason is simple: they don't look like any sort of boxing champion because they haven't become any sort of boxing champion! If you really want to look like a top level boxer then you need to develop the skills and abilities of a top level boxer! And that means training like a top level boxer. Not farting around in the park or gym with someone who has never stepped in a boxing ring in their lives!
For the same or even less money than a PT, people can achieve a massively better workout, skills development and conditioning just by going to a real boxing gym. Such gyms are not necessarily seedy, smelly dungeons. Just check out corporateboxgym.com.au for an example of a top quality, modern facility run by World Champion Boxers and Thai Boxers.
Shaggy, Preacher, Aaron, Shane and the rest of the crew at Corporate Box Gym know their stuff and will give you the workout of your life. If its boxing you want to do, that is the place to do it!
Unfortunately, Personal Trainers have jumped on the boxing band wagon despite knowing absolutely nothing about the activity. Many have recognised that boxing gloves, focus mits and pads are some of the cheapest equipment they can buy and therefore offer a huge return on investment. So mock boxing training for 'fitness' is now offered by Personal Trainers in virtually every public park in the country.
As you might expect, nobody seeing a Personal Trainer in the park is coming away looking like a lean, mean boxing machine. Neither do any of the people doing boxing 'classes'. The reason is simple: they don't look like any sort of boxing champion because they haven't become any sort of boxing champion! If you really want to look like a top level boxer then you need to develop the skills and abilities of a top level boxer! And that means training like a top level boxer. Not farting around in the park or gym with someone who has never stepped in a boxing ring in their lives!
For the same or even less money than a PT, people can achieve a massively better workout, skills development and conditioning just by going to a real boxing gym. Such gyms are not necessarily seedy, smelly dungeons. Just check out corporateboxgym.com.au for an example of a top quality, modern facility run by World Champion Boxers and Thai Boxers.
Shaggy, Preacher, Aaron, Shane and the rest of the crew at Corporate Box Gym know their stuff and will give you the workout of your life. If its boxing you want to do, that is the place to do it!
Gymerexia????
Here we go again. Check out this report from the NBC warning that going to the gym TOO much is now a big problem.
It is incredible to think that in our society where the majority of people are going to die of obesity and inactivity related illnesses, anyone would warn people away from exercise!? But they are. And yet, unlike being too sedentary, nobody is dying of gymerexia. In fact, from the report, there is no mention of anybody getting harmed in any significant way. The only sited concern of gymerexia is the effect on work and relationships; I imagine much the same sort of work and relationship problems faced by people who don't go to the gym too.
With more than 1/2 the population dying by not going to the gym, we should not be worrying about the people who go to the gym too much! A fight with your spouse is better than costing all of society millions and then dying! People worrying about other peoples exercise and good-health habits need to get some perspective!
It is incredible to think that in our society where the majority of people are going to die of obesity and inactivity related illnesses, anyone would warn people away from exercise!? But they are. And yet, unlike being too sedentary, nobody is dying of gymerexia. In fact, from the report, there is no mention of anybody getting harmed in any significant way. The only sited concern of gymerexia is the effect on work and relationships; I imagine much the same sort of work and relationship problems faced by people who don't go to the gym too.
With more than 1/2 the population dying by not going to the gym, we should not be worrying about the people who go to the gym too much! A fight with your spouse is better than costing all of society millions and then dying! People worrying about other peoples exercise and good-health habits need to get some perspective!
Saturday 11 September 2010
Personal Trainers & Fitness: Not What You Think!
The Fitness Industry caters to a massive market! Around 2/3rds of Australians are obese, overweight and unfit. They need to get fit AND they need to lose weight (fat). The issue is: fitness has virtually nothing to do with fat loss!
Despite their target market being so big, the Fitness Industry is happy to profit from the misconception that ‘fitness’ actually means a 'good body'. As such, they promote heavily to people who are already 'fit'. Fortunately for the Fitness Industry, the misinterpretation of what 'fit' means goes so deep that they do not even need to hide what they are really about. Just check out these commercials for Fitness Australia on YouTube..
One of the ads shows a girl bragging about how she can paint a wall - yes, paint a wall - because she jogs in the park with a Personal Trainer! Another shows a lady bragging about being able to cruise through a park on a bike because she does gym classes. This is what ‘fit’ really means. Its not about looking good or becoming athletic. It is about having the lowest level of physical ability necessary for a normal human existence. It is about being the least you could possibly be. Even the Fitness Industry itself advertises as such. Unfortunately, most people still think 'fit' means looking good. It simply does not!
Personal Trainers prescribe exercises to make people ‘fit’ to perform the simplest human functions - like painting a wall. Mostly they are the exact same activities that teachers give 6 year olds for Physical Education classes and Physiotherapists give to rehabilitation patients. They throw balls in the park, do burpees and sit-ups, run on treadmills, balance on bosu balls, do twisty things with giant rubber-bands, squat with a ball against the wall etc etc. If you can throw a ball and squat your own weight then you are ‘fit’ and your Personal Trainer has delivered what they should have promised. If they promised more, then they misled you.
None of the exercises you see Personal Trainers doing with their clients in parks or gyms is designed to make a persons body look better. Ball skills, stretching and balance are completely irrelevant to substantial changes in body composition. And 'burning calories' is something every mammal does simply as a function of living. So do not believe any person who is qualified in 'Fitness' and suggests that 'fitness' training is going to result in a better-than-average body. Also, there is no skill or valuable 'expertise' behind any 'weight loss' regime based on less food and more exercise. Any schmuck can design such a plan.
The truth is, 'Fitness' is mediocrity. If you are unfit - like 2/3rds of the country is - you DO need to get fit! But 'fitness' will happen as a result of body recompositioning exercise anyway. Very little body recompositioning (fat loss and muscle gain) will result from 'fitness' exercise.
And if you are already ‘average’ there is no more ‘getting fit’; you already are. So if you want better than average, do not hire a Personal Fitness Trainer. They are not qualified to help you. If you want a good or great body, you need to find a Body Recompositioning specialist and/or a Strength Coach; like Biologic Labs!
PS:
If Biologic Labs is not an option, look for a Trainer or Strength Coach who:
1) looks the part
2) writes detailed, personalised diets and
3) trains their clients exactly as they train themselves!
That third point is critical! Many trainers tell their clients to train in a manner they would never waste their time on themselves. Do not let them scam you too. As with Fitness Trainers: KNOW WHAT YOU ARE REALLY BUYING!!!
Despite their target market being so big, the Fitness Industry is happy to profit from the misconception that ‘fitness’ actually means a 'good body'. As such, they promote heavily to people who are already 'fit'. Fortunately for the Fitness Industry, the misinterpretation of what 'fit' means goes so deep that they do not even need to hide what they are really about. Just check out these commercials for Fitness Australia on YouTube..
One of the ads shows a girl bragging about how she can paint a wall - yes, paint a wall - because she jogs in the park with a Personal Trainer! Another shows a lady bragging about being able to cruise through a park on a bike because she does gym classes. This is what ‘fit’ really means. Its not about looking good or becoming athletic. It is about having the lowest level of physical ability necessary for a normal human existence. It is about being the least you could possibly be. Even the Fitness Industry itself advertises as such. Unfortunately, most people still think 'fit' means looking good. It simply does not!
Personal Trainers prescribe exercises to make people ‘fit’ to perform the simplest human functions - like painting a wall. Mostly they are the exact same activities that teachers give 6 year olds for Physical Education classes and Physiotherapists give to rehabilitation patients. They throw balls in the park, do burpees and sit-ups, run on treadmills, balance on bosu balls, do twisty things with giant rubber-bands, squat with a ball against the wall etc etc. If you can throw a ball and squat your own weight then you are ‘fit’ and your Personal Trainer has delivered what they should have promised. If they promised more, then they misled you.
None of the exercises you see Personal Trainers doing with their clients in parks or gyms is designed to make a persons body look better. Ball skills, stretching and balance are completely irrelevant to substantial changes in body composition. And 'burning calories' is something every mammal does simply as a function of living. So do not believe any person who is qualified in 'Fitness' and suggests that 'fitness' training is going to result in a better-than-average body. Also, there is no skill or valuable 'expertise' behind any 'weight loss' regime based on less food and more exercise. Any schmuck can design such a plan.
The truth is, 'Fitness' is mediocrity. If you are unfit - like 2/3rds of the country is - you DO need to get fit! But 'fitness' will happen as a result of body recompositioning exercise anyway. Very little body recompositioning (fat loss and muscle gain) will result from 'fitness' exercise.
And if you are already ‘average’ there is no more ‘getting fit’; you already are. So if you want better than average, do not hire a Personal Fitness Trainer. They are not qualified to help you. If you want a good or great body, you need to find a Body Recompositioning specialist and/or a Strength Coach; like Biologic Labs!
PS:
If Biologic Labs is not an option, look for a Trainer or Strength Coach who:
1) looks the part
2) writes detailed, personalised diets and
3) trains their clients exactly as they train themselves!
That third point is critical! Many trainers tell their clients to train in a manner they would never waste their time on themselves. Do not let them scam you too. As with Fitness Trainers: KNOW WHAT YOU ARE REALLY BUYING!!!
Thursday 2 September 2010
Another Dr Explains the Cholesterol Lie
The following is from a viral email currently doing the rounds. It reiterates and expands upon what I've written previously about Cholesterol.
By Dwight Lundell, MD
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong.. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries,today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, Stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. You kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.
While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking Sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels. While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butterfrom grass-fed beef.
Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.
Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of "The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie"] .
By Dwight Lundell, MD
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong.. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries,today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process,a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, Stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. You kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.
While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking Sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels. While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butterfrom grass-fed beef.
Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.
Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa, AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of "The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie"] .
Wednesday 18 August 2010
The Detox Diet Deceit
I just received a copy of the latest "Detox Diet". And like the countless other 'Detox Diets', it contained the exact same emotive language and pseudo-scientific, non-specific justifications and prescriptions.
The basic premise is always the same: if you ever feel less than amazing its because your system is bogged down with toxins which need to be removed by specific fruits and/or veggies in a highly specific pattern.
To prove you need 'detoxing' they provide a broad list of toxic 'things' that ensure you MUST be doing/eating/drinking something bad. Things like 'breathing air', 'drinking water', 'absorbing invisible radiation' or 'having bills to pay'. They use trigger points that everybody has so we feel a connection with their argument. Its the most basic form of NLP - get the audience to agree with something - ANYTHING - and you open them to agreeing with the rest of your arguments.
And the arguments for Detox Diets aren't necessarily wrong. Many people look and feel awful primarily because they are both overfed and malnourished all at the same time. The popular diet of convenient, high-sugar foods - completely lacking in essential nutrients - is causing myriad, well-documented health problems.
The thing is, the solution to the malnourishment of a poor diet is NOURISHMENT! In fact, a richly nourishing diet should form the foundation of any attempt towards helping the body heal itself from any sort of stress or ill-health. And the foundation of a nourishing diet is the provision of a rich supply of the essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that your body unarguably needs. Anything else is, by definition, inadequate and malnourishing!
But despite the emotive language, detox diets don't believe in nourishing the body. They don't see the body as self-resorative and therefore needing the resources essential to self-repair. Detox diets see the body as a clogged sewer in need of a thorough scouring. They ignore that their completely unfounded prescriptions are always completely void of the critical quantities of essential amino acids and fatty acids required by our bodies. They believe they can fix malnourishment with brutal starvation.
Detox diets have no basis in science or common sense. They are like cults; of biblical stupidity. Don't be fooled.
The basic premise is always the same: if you ever feel less than amazing its because your system is bogged down with toxins which need to be removed by specific fruits and/or veggies in a highly specific pattern.
To prove you need 'detoxing' they provide a broad list of toxic 'things' that ensure you MUST be doing/eating/drinking something bad. Things like 'breathing air', 'drinking water', 'absorbing invisible radiation' or 'having bills to pay'. They use trigger points that everybody has so we feel a connection with their argument. Its the most basic form of NLP - get the audience to agree with something - ANYTHING - and you open them to agreeing with the rest of your arguments.
And the arguments for Detox Diets aren't necessarily wrong. Many people look and feel awful primarily because they are both overfed and malnourished all at the same time. The popular diet of convenient, high-sugar foods - completely lacking in essential nutrients - is causing myriad, well-documented health problems.
The thing is, the solution to the malnourishment of a poor diet is NOURISHMENT! In fact, a richly nourishing diet should form the foundation of any attempt towards helping the body heal itself from any sort of stress or ill-health. And the foundation of a nourishing diet is the provision of a rich supply of the essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that your body unarguably needs. Anything else is, by definition, inadequate and malnourishing!
But despite the emotive language, detox diets don't believe in nourishing the body. They don't see the body as self-resorative and therefore needing the resources essential to self-repair. Detox diets see the body as a clogged sewer in need of a thorough scouring. They ignore that their completely unfounded prescriptions are always completely void of the critical quantities of essential amino acids and fatty acids required by our bodies. They believe they can fix malnourishment with brutal starvation.
Detox diets have no basis in science or common sense. They are like cults; of biblical stupidity. Don't be fooled.
Wednesday 11 August 2010
Cholesterol Revisited: Somebody Elses Word
I've previously written about the public health scam that is the Cholesterol Myth. If you haven't read it, you can find it here.
But don't take my word for it! Here is an article by a Doctor, about other Doctors, all explaining the same thing: Your Cholesterol isn't a problem! There are no 'good' or 'bad' varieties. Cholesterol doesn't kill you; it actually keeps you alive. Its very good but very misrepresented stuff.
But don't take my word for it! Here is an article by a Doctor, about other Doctors, all explaining the same thing: Your Cholesterol isn't a problem! There are no 'good' or 'bad' varieties. Cholesterol doesn't kill you; it actually keeps you alive. Its very good but very misrepresented stuff.
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Crossfit
'Crossfit'! is the latest craze in 'fitness' and we have been receiving a lot of queries about how it compares to what we do and what everybody else does.
For those who haven't heard of it, Crossfit is a brutal program comprised of an incredibly wide variety of exercises from olympic lifting to running to boxing and absolutely everything in between. It is designed to cover every aspect of endurance, strength and conditioning. It is described on the Crossfit website as being the "principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units..." etc. They even say that their "specialty is not specializing"!
So how good is it? Well, that depends on the context in which that question is being asked.
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of creating an incredibly rounded athlete who could take on almost any physical challenge and do it better than average? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of developing the base strength and endurance capability necessary for serious ass-kicking as a martial artist, police officer or soldier? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of helping a person develop a better figure or physique than the hopelessly ineffective rubbish that consistutes 'training' in every gym across the world these days? Absolutely yes.
Is Crossfit the most efficient and effective exercise program for the most rapid and/or extreme improvements in body composition? Absolutely NOT!
Is Crossfit the best choice of exercise for a person who doesnt want to spend almost every non-working hour of their week performing sickeningly painful, yet totally arbitrary exercise that has no direct relevance to how their body looks? Absolutely NO!
Crossfit is DESIGNED to create very broad athletic ability for people serious about broad athletic ability. And for this it is AWESOME. And people who become awesome athletes tend to have pretty awesome bodies, generally!
BUT Crossfit is not DESIGNED to create a great LOOKING body! So if a great LOOKING body is your priority, Crossfit is NOT the BEST choice. Compared to a proper body recompositioning program Crossfit will waste huge amounts of your time, effort and comfort for a much lesser result.
That said, if you don't 'like' the best way of creating a good body (ie strict dieting with measured, planned, HEAVY weight training), then proper application of Crossfit SHOULD wind up creating a far better body than any easier, softer and less demanding exercise program. The real question is: if you are willing to work THAT hard on that MUCH stuff, why wouldnt you just focus the same effort on just training for the body you want?
For those who haven't heard of it, Crossfit is a brutal program comprised of an incredibly wide variety of exercises from olympic lifting to running to boxing and absolutely everything in between. It is designed to cover every aspect of endurance, strength and conditioning. It is described on the Crossfit website as being the "principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units..." etc. They even say that their "specialty is not specializing"!
So how good is it? Well, that depends on the context in which that question is being asked.
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of creating an incredibly rounded athlete who could take on almost any physical challenge and do it better than average? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of developing the base strength and endurance capability necessary for serious ass-kicking as a martial artist, police officer or soldier? Obviously yes!
Is Crossfit 'good' in terms of helping a person develop a better figure or physique than the hopelessly ineffective rubbish that consistutes 'training' in every gym across the world these days? Absolutely yes.
Is Crossfit the most efficient and effective exercise program for the most rapid and/or extreme improvements in body composition? Absolutely NOT!
Is Crossfit the best choice of exercise for a person who doesnt want to spend almost every non-working hour of their week performing sickeningly painful, yet totally arbitrary exercise that has no direct relevance to how their body looks? Absolutely NO!
Crossfit is DESIGNED to create very broad athletic ability for people serious about broad athletic ability. And for this it is AWESOME. And people who become awesome athletes tend to have pretty awesome bodies, generally!
BUT Crossfit is not DESIGNED to create a great LOOKING body! So if a great LOOKING body is your priority, Crossfit is NOT the BEST choice. Compared to a proper body recompositioning program Crossfit will waste huge amounts of your time, effort and comfort for a much lesser result.
That said, if you don't 'like' the best way of creating a good body (ie strict dieting with measured, planned, HEAVY weight training), then proper application of Crossfit SHOULD wind up creating a far better body than any easier, softer and less demanding exercise program. The real question is: if you are willing to work THAT hard on that MUCH stuff, why wouldnt you just focus the same effort on just training for the body you want?
Protein Bars
Protein bars are a delicious and convenient way of getting a good dose of very bad protein plus all the mysteriously textured, flavoured, colourised and perservatised toxins a healthy diet avoids. Unfortunately, many people are fooled by the very clever nutritional panels that present protein bars as a source of quality nutrition.
Really, I shouldnt even have to blog about how bad these bars are. And nobody should be surprised to hear that whenever any of our clients have substituted quality nutrition in their diets for the exact same nutrition from a protein bar, the diet immediately stopped yielding fat loss or muscle gain results.
You'd think that "Snickers bar" appearance would tip most people off that protein bars CAN'T be good dieting tools? If not, then surely the mysterious dry but slimy texture these bars leave on the roof of your mouth might suggest that something is amiss? No? How about reading beyond the nutritional panel to discover that 'Soy Protein' is the first listed ingredient in the 'Proprietary Protein Blend' section with 'hydrogenated' stuff almost invariably listed somewhere in the middle of the misleading label? Or maybe you'd think people would notice that the 'chocolate coating' is, in fact, the same basic, garbage chocolate you find in the nastiest chocolate bars in the supermarket? The nuts in protein bars are always peanuts which no serious dieting person ever chooses. Even worse, the 'peanuts' are often listed in the 'protein blend' as a source of protein!
Then there are the 'sugar alcohols' which are listed as "non-impact carbs" because the body... can't use them like carbs. Quite honestly, I cannot find an intelligent explanation of how sugar-alcohols are metabolised or what mess they make on their way through your body? It appears that nobody really knows. You'd have thought people would ask: "if they aren't like carbs then what does the body do with them then"? But it seems nobody asks obvious questions anymore. Nobody asked about the Gaussian copula function; they just swallowed it whole and next thing you know we had the greatest financial crisis in over 70 years!
In recent years, protein bars have come to resemble some of the most amazing chocolate indulgences imaginable while their nutritional profile still resembles something that you might think belongs in a quality diet. But like so many things these days, the headline specifications belie the garbage you are actually buying. Protein bars are to food what those fake chinese iPhones are to the Apple iPhone. They look the same, the memory is the same, the screen is the same size; but every element of the functionality is awful to the point of being unusable!
The fact is, protein bars are something you HOPE you can GET AWAY WITH. No matter how limited your dietary knowledge, you KNOW you would never design a diet of sugar-alcohol, hydrogenated oil, chocolate and soy protein to create a lean, healthy, athletic physique. But that IS the nutrition a protein bar is providing and that is the reason it absolutely should not make up a part of anybodies diet!
Protein bars are no better for you than any other junk chocolate bar from the supermarket. In fact, a properly made chocolate bar based predominantly on cacao would be much, MUCH better for your health and physique than any protein bar you will find in a supplement store!
Really, I shouldnt even have to blog about how bad these bars are. And nobody should be surprised to hear that whenever any of our clients have substituted quality nutrition in their diets for the exact same nutrition from a protein bar, the diet immediately stopped yielding fat loss or muscle gain results.
You'd think that "Snickers bar" appearance would tip most people off that protein bars CAN'T be good dieting tools? If not, then surely the mysterious dry but slimy texture these bars leave on the roof of your mouth might suggest that something is amiss? No? How about reading beyond the nutritional panel to discover that 'Soy Protein' is the first listed ingredient in the 'Proprietary Protein Blend' section with 'hydrogenated' stuff almost invariably listed somewhere in the middle of the misleading label? Or maybe you'd think people would notice that the 'chocolate coating' is, in fact, the same basic, garbage chocolate you find in the nastiest chocolate bars in the supermarket? The nuts in protein bars are always peanuts which no serious dieting person ever chooses. Even worse, the 'peanuts' are often listed in the 'protein blend' as a source of protein!
Then there are the 'sugar alcohols' which are listed as "non-impact carbs" because the body... can't use them like carbs. Quite honestly, I cannot find an intelligent explanation of how sugar-alcohols are metabolised or what mess they make on their way through your body? It appears that nobody really knows. You'd have thought people would ask: "if they aren't like carbs then what does the body do with them then"? But it seems nobody asks obvious questions anymore. Nobody asked about the Gaussian copula function; they just swallowed it whole and next thing you know we had the greatest financial crisis in over 70 years!
In recent years, protein bars have come to resemble some of the most amazing chocolate indulgences imaginable while their nutritional profile still resembles something that you might think belongs in a quality diet. But like so many things these days, the headline specifications belie the garbage you are actually buying. Protein bars are to food what those fake chinese iPhones are to the Apple iPhone. They look the same, the memory is the same, the screen is the same size; but every element of the functionality is awful to the point of being unusable!
The fact is, protein bars are something you HOPE you can GET AWAY WITH. No matter how limited your dietary knowledge, you KNOW you would never design a diet of sugar-alcohol, hydrogenated oil, chocolate and soy protein to create a lean, healthy, athletic physique. But that IS the nutrition a protein bar is providing and that is the reason it absolutely should not make up a part of anybodies diet!
Protein bars are no better for you than any other junk chocolate bar from the supermarket. In fact, a properly made chocolate bar based predominantly on cacao would be much, MUCH better for your health and physique than any protein bar you will find in a supplement store!
Thursday 20 May 2010
Can You Grow Muscle & Lose Fat Simultaneously?
The latest issue of a certain Fitness Magazine claims - like most Fitness authorities and Personal Trainers these days - that you cannot build muscle and lose fat at the same time.
Lets test that theory with a hypothetical situation. Imagine a 180kg man with 60% bodyfat. He's eaten nothing but 'fast food' and hasnt exercised in 10 years. He used to be an elite athlete who weighed 120kg with 15% bodyfat. If you do the math, that means he's now got 30kg less muscle than he used to have; and 90kg more fat.
Now, don't you think that maybe its possible, if you cleaned up his diet and got him back in the gym, that this man might be able to regain some of his lost muscle while losing some of his new fat? Do you REALLY believe, as Personal Trainers would try to have you believe, that its just absolutely 100% impossible for that to happen? That there is no way this giant, fat man couldnt get back into the training he once did and regain some of his former condition?
Of course he could! Its happened time and time again in the public eye with boxers, football players, wrestlers and all sorts of athletes. Its not an unusual phenomenon for an athlete to get back in shape; building muscle and losing fat at the same time. Thats just the normal process of EFFECTIVE TRAINING AND DIET!!! Fat people can turn into athletes simply by training for it!
But maybe you are thinking "thats muscle memory" or "its different when they've been there before". Really? Then lets say my hypothetical fat-man hadn't been an elite athlete previously. Does that really change the argument? Is it really so hard to believe that getting a sedentary person to train with weights and eat a clean, nutritious, high-protein diet might result in some muscle gain with some fat loss? Of course it will! It regularly does.
Maybe you are thinking "but its different for a really fat person". No its not! Yes its easier; but it doesnt change human physiology. The fact is, its either biochemically possible to simultaneously drop fat and build muscle, or its not! And as it happens, it IS biochemically possible to reduce bodyfat and build muscle. As proven by every athlete that got out of shape and then got back into shape. And as proven by every sedentary person who decided to fix themselves up by training hard and eating well. Its not that it CAN'T be done; its just that most people FAIL!
The only reason someone won't be able to simultaneously lose fat and build muscle is because they aren't training and dieting appropriately! As you get leaner and more muscular it does get harder and eventually your options get more and more limited and unhealthy. But it is biochemically POSSIBLE.
So any Trainer who tells you that you can't lose fat and build muscle simultaneously is really saying that THEY DON'T KNOW HOW because they've FAILED to ever achieve it! Which also means: the advice they are offering is WRONG!
Simultaneously losing fat and gaining muscle CAN be done. It regularly IS done. And now you know why you need to ignore every word spoken by any person who says it CAN'T be done!
Lets test that theory with a hypothetical situation. Imagine a 180kg man with 60% bodyfat. He's eaten nothing but 'fast food' and hasnt exercised in 10 years. He used to be an elite athlete who weighed 120kg with 15% bodyfat. If you do the math, that means he's now got 30kg less muscle than he used to have; and 90kg more fat.
Now, don't you think that maybe its possible, if you cleaned up his diet and got him back in the gym, that this man might be able to regain some of his lost muscle while losing some of his new fat? Do you REALLY believe, as Personal Trainers would try to have you believe, that its just absolutely 100% impossible for that to happen? That there is no way this giant, fat man couldnt get back into the training he once did and regain some of his former condition?
Of course he could! Its happened time and time again in the public eye with boxers, football players, wrestlers and all sorts of athletes. Its not an unusual phenomenon for an athlete to get back in shape; building muscle and losing fat at the same time. Thats just the normal process of EFFECTIVE TRAINING AND DIET!!! Fat people can turn into athletes simply by training for it!
But maybe you are thinking "thats muscle memory" or "its different when they've been there before". Really? Then lets say my hypothetical fat-man hadn't been an elite athlete previously. Does that really change the argument? Is it really so hard to believe that getting a sedentary person to train with weights and eat a clean, nutritious, high-protein diet might result in some muscle gain with some fat loss? Of course it will! It regularly does.
Maybe you are thinking "but its different for a really fat person". No its not! Yes its easier; but it doesnt change human physiology. The fact is, its either biochemically possible to simultaneously drop fat and build muscle, or its not! And as it happens, it IS biochemically possible to reduce bodyfat and build muscle. As proven by every athlete that got out of shape and then got back into shape. And as proven by every sedentary person who decided to fix themselves up by training hard and eating well. Its not that it CAN'T be done; its just that most people FAIL!
The only reason someone won't be able to simultaneously lose fat and build muscle is because they aren't training and dieting appropriately! As you get leaner and more muscular it does get harder and eventually your options get more and more limited and unhealthy. But it is biochemically POSSIBLE.
So any Trainer who tells you that you can't lose fat and build muscle simultaneously is really saying that THEY DON'T KNOW HOW because they've FAILED to ever achieve it! Which also means: the advice they are offering is WRONG!
Simultaneously losing fat and gaining muscle CAN be done. It regularly IS done. And now you know why you need to ignore every word spoken by any person who says it CAN'T be done!
Wednesday 19 May 2010
They Call It 'Lifestyle'?
Pretty much everybody wishes they could eat whatever they want without getting fat. Unfortunately, pretty much everybody knows that the human body doesnt work that way.
So society has been taught to 'pay' for dietary indulgences by 'burning it off'. In effect, for every TimTam you eat you are sentenced to a couple of hours of monotonous, soul destroying aerobic exercise while forgoing all other food. In essence, you try to fix your malnourishing indulgence by sacrificing nourishment.
Some people have embraced this methodology with a rabid tenacity. They so love their TimTams and wines and cheese and whatever other non-nutritious poison that their friends like to share, that they'll happily starve and spend almost every non-working hour of their day running, riding and doing aerobics classes just for the luxury of being able to semi-indulge.
This way of living is so popular that its been given a positive descriptor: 'Lifestyle'.
So to clarify, to many, 'lifestyle' means constant hunger plus exercising for 2-3 hours of every DAY so that they can spend 2-3 hours per WEEK poisoning themselves.
2-3 hours per DAY of mindless, purposeless, goalless punishment for 2-3 hours per WEEK of pointless indulgence...
Apparently thats a desirable 'lifestyle'.
Despite the countless hours of exercise, very few people wind up with good bodies as a result of their 'lifestyle' living. For all of the punishment, they still lose the battle against the alcohol and malnutrition. As time goes on, their 'lifestyle' ages them at an accelerated rate while affecting their mental and emotional function. Any sane person wouldnt be surprised at this. But 'lifestylers' just panic and push harder.
When occasionally these skinny-fat, depressed, malnourished people are shown Biologic Labs solution - just 2-3 hours per WEEK of purposeful exercise coupled with a diet so nutritious that they will never feel hungry with the result of measurable fat loss every week and a reversal of all of the systemic damage they have done - we always wind up with the same complaint:
BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFESTYLE???
Indeed!
So society has been taught to 'pay' for dietary indulgences by 'burning it off'. In effect, for every TimTam you eat you are sentenced to a couple of hours of monotonous, soul destroying aerobic exercise while forgoing all other food. In essence, you try to fix your malnourishing indulgence by sacrificing nourishment.
Some people have embraced this methodology with a rabid tenacity. They so love their TimTams and wines and cheese and whatever other non-nutritious poison that their friends like to share, that they'll happily starve and spend almost every non-working hour of their day running, riding and doing aerobics classes just for the luxury of being able to semi-indulge.
This way of living is so popular that its been given a positive descriptor: 'Lifestyle'.
So to clarify, to many, 'lifestyle' means constant hunger plus exercising for 2-3 hours of every DAY so that they can spend 2-3 hours per WEEK poisoning themselves.
2-3 hours per DAY of mindless, purposeless, goalless punishment for 2-3 hours per WEEK of pointless indulgence...
Apparently thats a desirable 'lifestyle'.
Despite the countless hours of exercise, very few people wind up with good bodies as a result of their 'lifestyle' living. For all of the punishment, they still lose the battle against the alcohol and malnutrition. As time goes on, their 'lifestyle' ages them at an accelerated rate while affecting their mental and emotional function. Any sane person wouldnt be surprised at this. But 'lifestylers' just panic and push harder.
When occasionally these skinny-fat, depressed, malnourished people are shown Biologic Labs solution - just 2-3 hours per WEEK of purposeful exercise coupled with a diet so nutritious that they will never feel hungry with the result of measurable fat loss every week and a reversal of all of the systemic damage they have done - we always wind up with the same complaint:
BUT WHAT ABOUT LIFESTYLE???
Indeed!
Friday 14 May 2010
Bodybuilder FAQ: Supplements for Massiveness
QUESTION: I want to get massive and with so many prouducts on the market I'm not sure where to start?
ANSWER: Thanks for your email. I can answer you equally directly: the PRODUCTS on the market have absolutely nothing to do with your getting massive or not. Anything legal you can buy from a shop will make no difference at all.
Food makes you massive, period. Protein powders and weight gain powders are a source of food and nothing more.
Hard, heavy training can ensure your massiveness is massive muscle and not just massive fatness; but only if your training is successfully making you massively strong.
If you want to be properly, muscularly massive, your entire focus should be on achieving a 300kg-400kg deadlift. With that, you will probably have the back and legs for a 250-350kg squat and the chest and shoulder structure for a 180-240kg bench press. And anyone who can dead 350kg, squat 300kg and Bench 200kg is pretty damn large!
Supplemental pills and pre-workout drinks etc are irrelevant and unnecessary. Anybody who told you they got huge because of a legal product is lying or not telling you the rest of the story!
Hope that answers your question and saves you a truck load of wasted money.
ANSWER: Thanks for your email. I can answer you equally directly: the PRODUCTS on the market have absolutely nothing to do with your getting massive or not. Anything legal you can buy from a shop will make no difference at all.
Food makes you massive, period. Protein powders and weight gain powders are a source of food and nothing more.
Hard, heavy training can ensure your massiveness is massive muscle and not just massive fatness; but only if your training is successfully making you massively strong.
If you want to be properly, muscularly massive, your entire focus should be on achieving a 300kg-400kg deadlift. With that, you will probably have the back and legs for a 250-350kg squat and the chest and shoulder structure for a 180-240kg bench press. And anyone who can dead 350kg, squat 300kg and Bench 200kg is pretty damn large!
Supplemental pills and pre-workout drinks etc are irrelevant and unnecessary. Anybody who told you they got huge because of a legal product is lying or not telling you the rest of the story!
Hope that answers your question and saves you a truck load of wasted money.
Wednesday 28 April 2010
The Great "Calorie Balance" Swindle Part 2
Regardless of your exercise, feeding your body nothing but colourised, flavourised, preservatised, nutrient drained processed foods will probably make you sick and fat irrespective of your calorie intake. That is why the biggest, fattest people to walk into Biologic Labs are never big calorie consumers; they are completely malnourished by ‘fast food’; and full of ‘pollution’. That is why Milton Spurlock got so fat and so sick in the movie, ‘Supersize Me’. He wouldnt have gotten that sick and that fat from the same calories of organic rice and almonds! The ‘calories’ weren’t the issue!
It is ridiculous to expect your body to look and perform the same regardless of the quality of your nutrition. Tim Tams do not compare to organic eggs for nutrient supply nor the body that results; even if the calories are the same! Neither does KFC compare with free-range chicken breast and rice!
Our bodies are designed to change in order to keep us alive despite all the dumb things we do! If you feed it a leaf of lettuce per day and tell it to run for 6 hours per day, it will adjust to become able to do that; or until it falls over dead. Your body doesn’t need to burn fat to find fuel. It can just stop using fuel that should be used to keep you healthy! So adaptations to starvation and overtraining might involve losing weight. Or they might not. Either way, the response will not be a mechanical reduction in stored fuel; it will be an adaptation to your actions and therefore probably not all what you expected!
The smart option is to use the adaptive nature of your body positively. Rather than trying to “waste away the body you hate”, work to “build the body you want”. Looking strong/‘athletic’ and healthy is a function of BEING strong/‘athletic’ and healthy! That means quality nutrition and quality strength exercise. Not starving on a treadmill!
The positive adaptations - ie those changes your body makes to itself to yield an improvement in physical ability and capacity - require a range of resources (ie nutrients) from food, to meet the needs of your training. Some resources (nutrients) are absolutely critical; others are highly significant; others are just nice to have. If you can find and feed your body ONLY the perfect balance of critical, significant and nice-to-have resources, you will watch yourself transform rapidly and positively in the direction your exercise stresses require it. And you will ultimately be able to improve your body to an extraordinary extent. Basically, your body will adapt to become a physical manifestation of its purpose and environment. If your purpose becomes pure strength and your environment is richly nourishing, your body will reflect it with low bodyfat and taut muscularity. It would be ridiculous to expect a replication of such bodily perfection with a baron diet combined with soulless, purposeless exercise (eg ‘cardio’)!
For most people, even small deviations from perfect dietary nirvana results in massive slow-downs to their adaptive changes and a pronounced ceiling to their body and training progress. Those deviations often seem so ridiculous and so insignificant that they could not possibly matter. But when they do, they just do! How you feel about it - how unfair it seems - doesnt change the reality.
For example, it is typical to see an almost complete stop to fat loss in our clients who add pre-made sauces to their meals. Even diet soft-drinks significantly stunt positive body change. Our clients who regularly eat out - even when they order plain meals - never achieve even 1/4 of the fat loss of our clients who prepare the exact same food in the exact same way, everyday. I cannot tell you why this seems to consistently occur? But the simple answer is: the price of that dietary ‘variety’ and ‘lifestyle’ is a buffer of bodyfat to make up for the nutritional inconsistencies!
The fact is, any food that your body cannot use for a positive purpose is pollution. And one of the worst things about a polluted environment is that it cannot even benefit from beneficial resources. The pollution just seems to have a way of screwing everything up!
The pollution you eat is stored (as fat) and/or uses quality resources to process and ‘clean up’ after. Either way, its a “double whammy”. You got fat AND the food that WOULD have been used for productive ends, won’t be.
So no matter how you or anybody tries to justify that tasty Pizza Hut pizza or Cold Rock ice cream, it IS garbage, its going to make you fat and its going to do nothing positive for you! And counting the calories just does not make the slightest bit of difference to that!
In closing, consider this quote from Jim Rohn: “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment”. Thats your diet!
It is ridiculous to expect your body to look and perform the same regardless of the quality of your nutrition. Tim Tams do not compare to organic eggs for nutrient supply nor the body that results; even if the calories are the same! Neither does KFC compare with free-range chicken breast and rice!
Our bodies are designed to change in order to keep us alive despite all the dumb things we do! If you feed it a leaf of lettuce per day and tell it to run for 6 hours per day, it will adjust to become able to do that; or until it falls over dead. Your body doesn’t need to burn fat to find fuel. It can just stop using fuel that should be used to keep you healthy! So adaptations to starvation and overtraining might involve losing weight. Or they might not. Either way, the response will not be a mechanical reduction in stored fuel; it will be an adaptation to your actions and therefore probably not all what you expected!
The smart option is to use the adaptive nature of your body positively. Rather than trying to “waste away the body you hate”, work to “build the body you want”. Looking strong/‘athletic’ and healthy is a function of BEING strong/‘athletic’ and healthy! That means quality nutrition and quality strength exercise. Not starving on a treadmill!
The positive adaptations - ie those changes your body makes to itself to yield an improvement in physical ability and capacity - require a range of resources (ie nutrients) from food, to meet the needs of your training. Some resources (nutrients) are absolutely critical; others are highly significant; others are just nice to have. If you can find and feed your body ONLY the perfect balance of critical, significant and nice-to-have resources, you will watch yourself transform rapidly and positively in the direction your exercise stresses require it. And you will ultimately be able to improve your body to an extraordinary extent. Basically, your body will adapt to become a physical manifestation of its purpose and environment. If your purpose becomes pure strength and your environment is richly nourishing, your body will reflect it with low bodyfat and taut muscularity. It would be ridiculous to expect a replication of such bodily perfection with a baron diet combined with soulless, purposeless exercise (eg ‘cardio’)!
For most people, even small deviations from perfect dietary nirvana results in massive slow-downs to their adaptive changes and a pronounced ceiling to their body and training progress. Those deviations often seem so ridiculous and so insignificant that they could not possibly matter. But when they do, they just do! How you feel about it - how unfair it seems - doesnt change the reality.
For example, it is typical to see an almost complete stop to fat loss in our clients who add pre-made sauces to their meals. Even diet soft-drinks significantly stunt positive body change. Our clients who regularly eat out - even when they order plain meals - never achieve even 1/4 of the fat loss of our clients who prepare the exact same food in the exact same way, everyday. I cannot tell you why this seems to consistently occur? But the simple answer is: the price of that dietary ‘variety’ and ‘lifestyle’ is a buffer of bodyfat to make up for the nutritional inconsistencies!
The fact is, any food that your body cannot use for a positive purpose is pollution. And one of the worst things about a polluted environment is that it cannot even benefit from beneficial resources. The pollution just seems to have a way of screwing everything up!
The pollution you eat is stored (as fat) and/or uses quality resources to process and ‘clean up’ after. Either way, its a “double whammy”. You got fat AND the food that WOULD have been used for productive ends, won’t be.
So no matter how you or anybody tries to justify that tasty Pizza Hut pizza or Cold Rock ice cream, it IS garbage, its going to make you fat and its going to do nothing positive for you! And counting the calories just does not make the slightest bit of difference to that!
In closing, consider this quote from Jim Rohn: “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment”. Thats your diet!
The Great "Calorie Balance" Swindle
We’ve all heard the ‘Energy Balance Equation’ (or ‘Calorie Balance Equation’). You know the one: “energy in - energy out = weight gain or loss”. Every single piece of fat loss and muscle building advice you read comes back to this simple equation. And yet despite its simplicity and popularity, in the real World, it never works as planned or expected!
Technically, the energy balance equation is 100% accurate and true! The equation is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics: “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form”. So to argue against the truth of the ‘energy balance equation’ is to argue against the nature of the Universe. However you position your argument, you are wrong! Lyle McDonald offers a great explanation of the equations perfection here on his website
Truth and accuracy, however, does not make an equation useful or relevant. Consider the algebraic equation: A+B = A+B. It is 100% true and accurate. It is also entirely redundant. You cannot use it for anything because it cannot help you calculate either ‘A’ or ‘B’. And an equation that cannot be used to calculate or predict something is, by definition, useless.
And thats the issue with the ‘energy balance equation’. The only interest any fat (or skinny), non-physicist might have with the Energy Balance Equation is to PREDICT a change in bodyweight from diet and exercise. And for this purpose, the equation is completely and utterly useless! For proof of this, have a read through the plethora of respected research articles here at PubMed. Its really no secret that you cannot use the Energy Balance equation to reliably predict future weight gain or loss!
At Biologic Labs, to help our overweight clients lose weight, we typically feed them MORE calories than they were eating before! In fact, we feed them a LOT more! And generally, the more quality nutrition that we feed them, the more weight they lose; all of it from fat! And all with only 2-3 workouts per week and zero cardio.
According to the energy balance equation, increasing calories should ALWAYS cause weight GAIN; and yet, successful trainers can consistently increase calories to cause quality fat-weight loss. The difference is in the QUALITY of what is being consumed.
The reason this occurs is quite simple: your body is an adaptive organism. Read that again:
YOUR BODY IS AN ADAPTIVE ORGANISM!
This is the most critical point to understand about your body. It is NOT a machine! It doesn’t burn a fixed number of “kilometers-per-litre” of fuel. Take less energy in, and your body adapts by expending less energy out. Perform an activity for the purpose of burning energy and your body adapts by becoming more energy efficient; it begins to use less energy for that activity. And your body is almost infinitely adaptable in both of these regards. You absolutely cannot win against it!
But more importantly, your body uses the nutrients you feed it to manifest physical changes in itself to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Read that one again too:
Your body
uses the nutrients you feed it
to manifest physical changes in itself
to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Did you get all that? Let me break it down into its 3 essential parts:
Your body is literally comprised of the nutrients you feed it! Your liver isn’t made of ‘calories’! Your heart isn’t made of calories! Your muscles aren’t made of calories! They are all made of complex protein and lipid structures while functioning on a constant supply of dietary elements. Regardless of how many CALORIES you eat, if you don’t supply the necessary components to proper bodily functioning and repair, then your body won’t function or repair properly!!!
Your body manifests changes in itself. Your body constantly builds-up and breaks-down physical tissue as part of its ongoing maintenance. Any net changes in your form are always the net result of BILLIONS of biochemical processes constantly taking place. Basing your actions on assumptions you make about just 1 or 2 biochemical reactions will ensure you fail!
Your body changes to better fit its purpose. Or, as the Bulgarian Olympic Lifting Coaches used to say: “the body becomes its function”. So if your bodies function is to lift ludicrously heavy weights, then it will try to become muscular. If your bodies function is to run fast for 6 hours per day, it will try to become light and lean. Your supply of the nutrients necessary for the adaptations determines whether your body will succeed. And, of course, if your purpose is to sit at a desk all day and occasionally shuffle on a treadmill for 30 minutes, your body will try to become a lump of fat; and it will probably succeed.
The point of all of this is that the Energy Balance Equation is almost completely irrelevant in the pursuit of a great body. Nutrient supply matching your physical purpose is the key! If your physical purpose doesnt require the body you want and/or your diet doesnt supply ONLY the nutrients necessary to look that way, then you won’t have the body you want! Its obvious, really.
Technically, the energy balance equation is 100% accurate and true! The equation is rooted in the laws of thermodynamics: “energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only change form”. So to argue against the truth of the ‘energy balance equation’ is to argue against the nature of the Universe. However you position your argument, you are wrong! Lyle McDonald offers a great explanation of the equations perfection here on his website
Truth and accuracy, however, does not make an equation useful or relevant. Consider the algebraic equation: A+B = A+B. It is 100% true and accurate. It is also entirely redundant. You cannot use it for anything because it cannot help you calculate either ‘A’ or ‘B’. And an equation that cannot be used to calculate or predict something is, by definition, useless.
And thats the issue with the ‘energy balance equation’. The only interest any fat (or skinny), non-physicist might have with the Energy Balance Equation is to PREDICT a change in bodyweight from diet and exercise. And for this purpose, the equation is completely and utterly useless! For proof of this, have a read through the plethora of respected research articles here at PubMed. Its really no secret that you cannot use the Energy Balance equation to reliably predict future weight gain or loss!
At Biologic Labs, to help our overweight clients lose weight, we typically feed them MORE calories than they were eating before! In fact, we feed them a LOT more! And generally, the more quality nutrition that we feed them, the more weight they lose; all of it from fat! And all with only 2-3 workouts per week and zero cardio.
According to the energy balance equation, increasing calories should ALWAYS cause weight GAIN; and yet, successful trainers can consistently increase calories to cause quality fat-weight loss. The difference is in the QUALITY of what is being consumed.
The reason this occurs is quite simple: your body is an adaptive organism. Read that again:
YOUR BODY IS AN ADAPTIVE ORGANISM!
This is the most critical point to understand about your body. It is NOT a machine! It doesn’t burn a fixed number of “kilometers-per-litre” of fuel. Take less energy in, and your body adapts by expending less energy out. Perform an activity for the purpose of burning energy and your body adapts by becoming more energy efficient; it begins to use less energy for that activity. And your body is almost infinitely adaptable in both of these regards. You absolutely cannot win against it!
But more importantly, your body uses the nutrients you feed it to manifest physical changes in itself to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Read that one again too:
Your body
uses the nutrients you feed it
to manifest physical changes in itself
to better fit the purpose for which you use it.
Did you get all that? Let me break it down into its 3 essential parts:
The point of all of this is that the Energy Balance Equation is almost completely irrelevant in the pursuit of a great body. Nutrient supply matching your physical purpose is the key! If your physical purpose doesnt require the body you want and/or your diet doesnt supply ONLY the nutrients necessary to look that way, then you won’t have the body you want! Its obvious, really.
Saturday 24 April 2010
BIA Scales & Bodyfat
A lot of gyms use BIA Scales or devices for measuring bodyfat. They are considered more accurate than doing skinfold tests with a caliper because there is no skill required of the tester. But does that mean they accurately measure bodyfat?
A few years ago I was DEXA scanned, callipered and BIA tested with both a set of BIA scales and a 6-electrode BIA device; all on the same day.
The calipers and DEXA scan both measured me at 8%. The BIA scales put me at 30% before they switched to 'athlete mode' whereby I was 20% bodyfat!
That day, I was the only man on the planet with clearly defined abs at 20% bodyfat!
The tester argued that BIA devices are good; they just don't cater to people like myself with exaggerated muscular development. She then said that all that was needed was an equation based on people like me and then the BIA test would be accurate.
Translation: BIA devices are extremely accurate for measuring bodyfat so long as you already know your bodyfat to begin with.
Translation translated: BIA devices are as useful as a broken compass in a magnet factory during an electrical storm! You should never, EVER base any decisions on their readings!
A few years ago I was DEXA scanned, callipered and BIA tested with both a set of BIA scales and a 6-electrode BIA device; all on the same day.
The calipers and DEXA scan both measured me at 8%. The BIA scales put me at 30% before they switched to 'athlete mode' whereby I was 20% bodyfat!
That day, I was the only man on the planet with clearly defined abs at 20% bodyfat!
The tester argued that BIA devices are good; they just don't cater to people like myself with exaggerated muscular development. She then said that all that was needed was an equation based on people like me and then the BIA test would be accurate.
Translation: BIA devices are extremely accurate for measuring bodyfat so long as you already know your bodyfat to begin with.
Translation translated: BIA devices are as useful as a broken compass in a magnet factory during an electrical storm! You should never, EVER base any decisions on their readings!
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