If you've ever busted your ass at the gym lifting heavy weights, afterwards you get these cravings. You start to want to eat beef, eggs, or chicken. These are what I classify as heavy proteins. Their texture is tougher. They're harder to digest. But they're also the raw materials from which muscle is built. You absolutely must gorge yourself on meat and poultry and eggs if you expect to make strength gains.
Then after the 36 to 44 hours you stuffed your face with meats, your animal protein cravings subside. You don't feel quite as hungry as after you just worked out but there still is some residual cravings for animal protein.
So what's your next move? How do you satisfy the cravings without expelling all your expensive protein down the toilet drain?
You have to move to lower quality protein sources. I classify them as light proteins because when compared to the amount of volume they occupy the actual protein that is in them is very low. For example, yogurt has about 15 grams of protein per cup. Deli meats are another terrible source of protein. One package of sliced pastrami is no more than ten or fifteen grams of protein. Gyro meat has no more than fifteen grams of protein per six ounces.
It's not like you're going to build a lot of muscle with these low quality protein sources. The idea is to use these as something to satisfy your animal protein cravings and add volume to your meals thus making you feel full without forcing your body to digest large amounts of protein. Probably about 24 to 36 hours before your next workout is ideal for consumption of these lower quality proteins.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Friday, June 27, 2014
Progress report: Dissection of busting a plateau
Here's a far reaching analogy but I'm going to make it anyways. Building up to a personal best record lift is a lot like building construction. With a building you can't have any top floors without first constructing a solid base upon which to start stacking thousands of tons of concrete floors, walls and ceilings.
Busting a plateau is the same. You have to build the base. When you're down in the hole in the squat or when you're bent over in the deadlift or when the bar is resting on your chest in the bench press are all considered the base of the lift. Much like building construction, you have to solidify that base if you expect to bust through a plateau.
Case in point, here I am attempting a 545 lb. stiff legged deadlift beltless with straps.
Notice how I don't even lift it a couple inches off the ground so the lift gets a 0 but the lift is still valuable to helping me accomplish defeating the plateau.
Here's another example of me trying to conquer a plateau. I'm attempting a 365 pause squat attempt.
I gave this a 1 because my pause at the bottom was held well and when I tried to explode up I did manage to move it a couple inches.
Now compare this with my previous week's attempt at a 365 lb. pause squat attempt.
The pause at the bottom was negligible and the upwards movement was negligible as well. Still I rated the lift at a 1 but it was a lower quality 1 than this week's pause squat attempt.
If you're going to progress, you have to notice these subtle differences between your attempts. This week's attempt at a 365 lb pause squat was significantly improved over last week's. I was in the hole longer and my liftoff was maybe a couple inches higher than the previous week's.
You can use this system to defeat any plateau whether it's bench pressing, tricep extensions, or bicep curls.
There are detractors of my system. They say you'll get injured attempting a 1 rep max like that week in and week out. They say you'll fry your central nervous system maxing out like that.
But they're wrong for the simple fact that I only do one type of exercise once a week. My alternate lift to the pause squat is the leg press or the hack squat coupled with rack pulls. Do you think I would be able to put 365 lbs. on the back of my neck without being able to rack pull 535 lbs.? Of course I wouldn't. Do you think I'm attempting a 545 lb. stiff leg deadlift twice a week? Of course not. It would wreck my shoulders so I'm alternating it with single leg deadlifts. My single leg deadlift is significantly less than my two legged stiff leg deadlift so my shoulders are spared any aggravation of injury or damage I might have taken on in my double legged deadlift.
If you're going to be successful at making gains without injury you have to go above and beyond your limits and you have to do each lift sparingly.
Anyways here are my numbers. Here's what the numbers mean.
Home Thursday 1230 pm 6/26/14
Shoulder press seated 255-1
Stiff legged deadlift 545-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
50's-2
Pendlay row 365-1
Pause squat wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 365-1
Gym Sunday 10 p.m. 6/22/14
Leverage chest press machine 370-0
One legged stiff legged deadlift
Left 175-1, 185-1
Right 175-1, 185-1
Rack pull 545-0
Bench press legs in the air 205-0
Leg press machine freemotion 390-1
Freemotion bicep curl cable machine 150-1
Tricep extension rope attachment cable machine 85-1
Workout notes: So I switched to doing a one legged stiff leg deadlift to save my shoulders from any further re-injury of any tears in my shoulders I might have taken on from my day of double leg deadlifting.
Here's the form:
This is what's going to help me bust through my deadlift plateau. Like I said it's less weight but it still works my back and upper quadricep area next to the groin without any further re-injury to my shoulders.
Busting a plateau is the same. You have to build the base. When you're down in the hole in the squat or when you're bent over in the deadlift or when the bar is resting on your chest in the bench press are all considered the base of the lift. Much like building construction, you have to solidify that base if you expect to bust through a plateau.
Case in point, here I am attempting a 545 lb. stiff legged deadlift beltless with straps.
Here's another example of me trying to conquer a plateau. I'm attempting a 365 pause squat attempt.
Now compare this with my previous week's attempt at a 365 lb. pause squat attempt.
If you're going to progress, you have to notice these subtle differences between your attempts. This week's attempt at a 365 lb pause squat was significantly improved over last week's. I was in the hole longer and my liftoff was maybe a couple inches higher than the previous week's.
You can use this system to defeat any plateau whether it's bench pressing, tricep extensions, or bicep curls.
There are detractors of my system. They say you'll get injured attempting a 1 rep max like that week in and week out. They say you'll fry your central nervous system maxing out like that.
But they're wrong for the simple fact that I only do one type of exercise once a week. My alternate lift to the pause squat is the leg press or the hack squat coupled with rack pulls. Do you think I would be able to put 365 lbs. on the back of my neck without being able to rack pull 535 lbs.? Of course I wouldn't. Do you think I'm attempting a 545 lb. stiff leg deadlift twice a week? Of course not. It would wreck my shoulders so I'm alternating it with single leg deadlifts. My single leg deadlift is significantly less than my two legged stiff leg deadlift so my shoulders are spared any aggravation of injury or damage I might have taken on in my double legged deadlift.
If you're going to be successful at making gains without injury you have to go above and beyond your limits and you have to do each lift sparingly.
Anyways here are my numbers. Here's what the numbers mean.
Home Thursday 1230 pm 6/26/14
Shoulder press seated 255-1
Stiff legged deadlift 545-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
50's-2
Pendlay row 365-1
Pause squat wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 365-1
Gym Sunday 10 p.m. 6/22/14
Leverage chest press machine 370-0
One legged stiff legged deadlift
Left 175-1, 185-1
Right 175-1, 185-1
Rack pull 545-0
Bench press legs in the air 205-0
Leg press machine freemotion 390-1
Freemotion bicep curl cable machine 150-1
Tricep extension rope attachment cable machine 85-1
Workout notes: So I switched to doing a one legged stiff leg deadlift to save my shoulders from any further re-injury of any tears in my shoulders I might have taken on from my day of double leg deadlifting.
Here's the form:
Friday, June 20, 2014
Progress report
Here are my numbers. Click here for what the numbers mean
Gym Sunday 1130 pm 6/15/14
Leverage chest press machine 360-1
Rack pull 535-1
Chest press free motion cable machine 200-0
Life fitness seated leg press one legged
Left 90-1, 110-0, 110-1
Right 90-1, 110-0, 110-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine 150-1
Tricep extension rope attachment cable machine 70-2
Good morning 195-0
Thursday 6/19/14 1230 p.m. home
Seated shoulder press 215-1, 225-1, 250-0
Stiff legged deadlift 535-0, 545-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
40's-3, 45's-2
Pause squat 365-1
Pendlay rows 365-1
Here I am attempting a 365 lb. pause squat attempt. I gave myself a 1 just because I kind of got it up a couple inches and it was a very controlled lift. I maintained form on the way down and in the hole, so I gave myself a 1 to help me stay motivated.
Afterwards, I banged out this 335 lb. pause squat. By about midrange of the lift it turned into a good morning but at least I got it up there.
Here's me doing a chest fly with 45's. Notice how I don't go that low for fear of tearing something. Some people would consider that a full and complete lift because I got the dumbbells parallel to the ground, but to me that's a halfway lift. I want to go until my arms can't go down any further while still maintaining correct form and keeping the dumbbells under control without my arms swinging out of position.
As a final note, I used to do tricep extensions every workout but the tendonitis in my elbows was flaring up so bad that the pain was starting to bleed over into my chest press and shoulder press so I resolved myself into doing tricep extensions just one day a week. I'm hoping the shoulder press will adequately stimulate my tricep muscles but that remains to be seen until I do tricep extensions again.
Gym Sunday 1130 pm 6/15/14
Leverage chest press machine 360-1
Rack pull 535-1
Chest press free motion cable machine 200-0
Life fitness seated leg press one legged
Left 90-1, 110-0, 110-1
Right 90-1, 110-0, 110-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine 150-1
Tricep extension rope attachment cable machine 70-2
Good morning 195-0
Thursday 6/19/14 1230 p.m. home
Seated shoulder press 215-1, 225-1, 250-0
Stiff legged deadlift 535-0, 545-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
40's-3, 45's-2
Pause squat 365-1
Pendlay rows 365-1
Here I am attempting a 365 lb. pause squat attempt. I gave myself a 1 just because I kind of got it up a couple inches and it was a very controlled lift. I maintained form on the way down and in the hole, so I gave myself a 1 to help me stay motivated.
Afterwards, I banged out this 335 lb. pause squat. By about midrange of the lift it turned into a good morning but at least I got it up there.
Here's me doing a chest fly with 45's. Notice how I don't go that low for fear of tearing something. Some people would consider that a full and complete lift because I got the dumbbells parallel to the ground, but to me that's a halfway lift. I want to go until my arms can't go down any further while still maintaining correct form and keeping the dumbbells under control without my arms swinging out of position.
As a final note, I used to do tricep extensions every workout but the tendonitis in my elbows was flaring up so bad that the pain was starting to bleed over into my chest press and shoulder press so I resolved myself into doing tricep extensions just one day a week. I'm hoping the shoulder press will adequately stimulate my tricep muscles but that remains to be seen until I do tricep extensions again.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Why protein intake guidelines are bullsh*t
First off I'd like to say I'm not a sports nutritionist or a dietician.
This is just me speaking what I know from experience.
All the protein intake guidelines you read are pretty much arbitrary numbers. Somebody can do a study and then trot around some magical number of grams of protein like it's the end all be all protein number just because they put a subject on that protein number and he made a strength gain.
The problem I have with the protein Nazis is most of the time your actual protein needs are always higher or lower than their guidelines dictate.
What are you going to do if your body is hungry and it's craving animal protein but you can't eat because you're strictly adhering to some made up protein intake number? Are you just going to ignore your body's wants for beef? Are you going to stifle your muscle growth and deny your body the ability to repair its muscles just because some researcher in a lab setting did a study on rats and assigned some arbitrary protein number?
On the flip side, what if it's this scenario? You're between training sessions on your rest day and you're feeling stomach discomfort from eating a big steak and eggs breakfast. Lunchtime rolls around and you know if you eat anymore protein you're going to expel it in the toilet. Do you say to yourself well the magical protein intake fairies told me to consume 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of bodyweight so I guess I gotta go suck down a sirloin steak for lunch. Two hours later you're shooting it out your backside watching your expensive steak flush down the drain.
Then you have the body listeners of which I'm a member. They're connected to their inner aura or some other new age nonsense and they're just letting their bodies tell them how much protein to ingest. The problem with that is the protein you intake may be far greater or less than you actually need.
So what's the answer? There is no cut and dry answer. I heard Michael Phelps was taking in six hundred grams of protein per day when he was training for the Olympics. During the coldest days of January I could easily digest 450 grams of protein in a day. Now that it's summer I'm barely hitting two hundred grams.
Incidentally some of my biggest strength gains came from me eating far more than my protein requirements of 1 gram per 1 pound of body weight. Of course I spent the last of my resting time the day before and up until my workout on the toilet watching all my protein flush down the drain which is disgusting and time consuming and expensive. Beef and chicken are not cheap.
The only guideline I can think of is try to hit the 1 gram per 1 pound of body weight the first 36 hours after you workout and track your protein intake using myfitnesspal.com. If you feel like the protein is not going to digest properly and be used for muscle repair, back off the protein for the whole day. Maybe eat some yogurt or some bread or a banana for the rest of the day. Let your body reset itself. Try not to upset your stomach with a lot of fiber. And then hopefully on the next day for breakfast you can gorge yourself on meat and then start the strength gains again.
This is just me speaking what I know from experience.
All the protein intake guidelines you read are pretty much arbitrary numbers. Somebody can do a study and then trot around some magical number of grams of protein like it's the end all be all protein number just because they put a subject on that protein number and he made a strength gain.
The problem I have with the protein Nazis is most of the time your actual protein needs are always higher or lower than their guidelines dictate.
What are you going to do if your body is hungry and it's craving animal protein but you can't eat because you're strictly adhering to some made up protein intake number? Are you just going to ignore your body's wants for beef? Are you going to stifle your muscle growth and deny your body the ability to repair its muscles just because some researcher in a lab setting did a study on rats and assigned some arbitrary protein number?
On the flip side, what if it's this scenario? You're between training sessions on your rest day and you're feeling stomach discomfort from eating a big steak and eggs breakfast. Lunchtime rolls around and you know if you eat anymore protein you're going to expel it in the toilet. Do you say to yourself well the magical protein intake fairies told me to consume 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of bodyweight so I guess I gotta go suck down a sirloin steak for lunch. Two hours later you're shooting it out your backside watching your expensive steak flush down the drain.
Then you have the body listeners of which I'm a member. They're connected to their inner aura or some other new age nonsense and they're just letting their bodies tell them how much protein to ingest. The problem with that is the protein you intake may be far greater or less than you actually need.
So what's the answer? There is no cut and dry answer. I heard Michael Phelps was taking in six hundred grams of protein per day when he was training for the Olympics. During the coldest days of January I could easily digest 450 grams of protein in a day. Now that it's summer I'm barely hitting two hundred grams.
Incidentally some of my biggest strength gains came from me eating far more than my protein requirements of 1 gram per 1 pound of body weight. Of course I spent the last of my resting time the day before and up until my workout on the toilet watching all my protein flush down the drain which is disgusting and time consuming and expensive. Beef and chicken are not cheap.
The only guideline I can think of is try to hit the 1 gram per 1 pound of body weight the first 36 hours after you workout and track your protein intake using myfitnesspal.com. If you feel like the protein is not going to digest properly and be used for muscle repair, back off the protein for the whole day. Maybe eat some yogurt or some bread or a banana for the rest of the day. Let your body reset itself. Try not to upset your stomach with a lot of fiber. And then hopefully on the next day for breakfast you can gorge yourself on meat and then start the strength gains again.
Progress Report
Here are my numbers. This is what the numbers mean.
Home Thursday 6/12/14 1215 p.m.
Shoulder press 215-1
Stiff legged deadlift 535-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
40's-2
Tricep extension skull crushers full extension behind the head
105-1
Pendlay barbell row 325-1, 365-1
Pause squat wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 405-0
Gym Monday 6/9/14 12 a.m.
Leverage chest press machine 345-1
Life fitness one legged leg press
Left 90-1
Right 90-1
Free motion chest press cable machine
200-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine
150-1
Rack pull 535-1
Good morning pin lift from #10 position on hammer strength power rack
185-1
Tricep extension cable machine straight bar attachment
70-1, 85-1
Here I am getting slammed by 405 lbs.
I wanted a taste of the 400's. I walked it out, set it up, and then the bar said I don't care what you want.
That's most of my training. Failing. Missing. Who knows maybe next time I'll get it half way up.
Home Thursday 6/12/14 1215 p.m.
Shoulder press 215-1
Stiff legged deadlift 535-0
Pec fly dumbbells pair of:
40's-2
Tricep extension skull crushers full extension behind the head
105-1
Pendlay barbell row 325-1, 365-1
Pause squat wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 405-0
Gym Monday 6/9/14 12 a.m.
Leverage chest press machine 345-1
Life fitness one legged leg press
Left 90-1
Right 90-1
Free motion chest press cable machine
200-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine
150-1
Rack pull 535-1
Good morning pin lift from #10 position on hammer strength power rack
185-1
Tricep extension cable machine straight bar attachment
70-1, 85-1
Here I am getting slammed by 405 lbs.
That's most of my training. Failing. Missing. Who knows maybe next time I'll get it half way up.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
What the numbers mean
These are records of my one rep max's. I rate them on a five point
scale. 5 means I completed the lift with perfect form. 4 is a completed
lift with noticeable shakiness. 3 is completing the lift 3/4 of the way
up. 2 is half way up. 1 is a couple inches up. 0 is no noticeable
separation between the weight and whatever the weight was resting on.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Why I write this blog: a strength training without steroids manifesto
Before I get into my rant, I want to give a little history on myself.
I first started lifting when I was around fourteen years old. My mom bought me a bench press station and a 110 lb weight set with a standard bar and dumbbell handles. For some reason the bar didn't have clips to hold the plates on the bar. Instead it used threaded clips which I had to screw onto the bar to keep the plates locked down. This really made setup time seem to take forever because each and every time I had to change the weight I had to spend a minute or two unscrewing the clips from the bar.
My first injury happened when I was sixteen. I was banging out a mean set of sixty five pound barbell rows, and then CRACK I slipped a vertebra disc in my lower spine and was bedridden for a couple days. I didn't know about holding your breath in to stabilize your lower back.
Incidentally my worst workout accident happened when I had the full 110 lbs of weight on the bar and it was resting on the uprights of the bench station. I stupidly unloaded all the plates from one side of the bar. This made the bar unbalanced and all the weight on the other side of the bar pulled the unweighted side off the uprights and the bar cartwheeled end over end into my bedroom window and shattered the glass.
Up until the age of thirty seven years old, I was seriously misinformed about a lot of things in strength training. I thought three sets of ten was the only way to get strong. I thought breathing in on the concentric part of the lift and breathing out on the eccentric part was how you breathe. I didn't know crap about maintaining tightness in the lift. I believed if you held your breath while lifting you would burst a blood vessel in your brain and die. I had no idea that animal protein consumption was the most important key to build muscle. And I thought all the freaks in those muscle building magazines at the supermarket magazine rack were completely natural and were totally being honest about how they got strong and muscular. And I also believed that they were being honest about the supplements they were taking and all the flashy ads where some big muscle freak is holding a bottle of some expensive supplement was actually the only thing he was taking to get strong.
You see, in many respects this blog is a revolt against those ways of thinking. I'm not very fond of the supplement industry. They're basically misrepresenting the ingredients on their labels a lot of times and for all I know there might just be anabolic steroids in the protein powder I consume. The supplement industry is basically unregulated and the only way they get investigated by the federal government is if not one person dies but three to five people actually die from taking their poison. For almost twenty years I was being duped by the quacks and snake oil salesmen.
One of the first quack books I bought was A Practical Approach to Strength Training. The author basically recommends using time under tension strategies to build strength. But of course this couldn't be any more wrong as you know if you've been reading this blog any length of time.
Then I stumbled upon Supertraining. It was the first book to formally introduce me to single rep sets. I read about fifty percent of the book. Of that I could only understand about seventy five percent. Most of the book is filled with incomprehensible graphs and esoteric strength training language. A lot of the book covers plyometrics which is mostly useless to strength training. It also discusses the concepts of speed strength and periodization which I also consider to be pseudoscience. But still I generously borrow a lot of strength training ideas from that book and you should be aware of that.
Where I branch off into my own research are the two basic building blocks of any successful strength training program. The first is the concept of translative exercises. This is where you use two or more complementary lifts to exercise and strengthen the same muscle group. SUPERTRAINING devotes a couple pages to this topic but it only talks about the strength building aspect of translative lifting. It doesn't talk about the fact that translative exercises are necessary for injury prevention as well.
The second thing of mine is the concept of using missed lifts to strengthen muscles. I generously utilize missed lifts in my training programming. I consider the missed lift in a single rep set to be the single most important key to busting plateaus and sticking points. And I can completely without a doubt claim that no strength trainer in the world uses the concept of rating one's missed lifts to assess strength progression. I count that as my own proprietary original idea.
Now for the rant.
I write this blog for many reasons. The first is that I'm actively trying to undermine all the quacks and the supplement industry. I consider them thieves.
The first set of thieves is the guys on YouTube. They're usually hawking some crap pre-workout powder or protein powder. They're saying that you absolutely have to take their specific brand of powder.
To date, I've only taken one kind of pre-workout and that was caffeine pills. I stopped though because they only last for thirty minutes and the rest of the workout my body crashed and I felt weak.
In fact, anybody who is trying to sell you their protein powder as a replacement for animal protein is trying to feed you a line of crap and you should be very suspect of their intentions.
The second set of quacks are the
I first started lifting when I was around fourteen years old. My mom bought me a bench press station and a 110 lb weight set with a standard bar and dumbbell handles. For some reason the bar didn't have clips to hold the plates on the bar. Instead it used threaded clips which I had to screw onto the bar to keep the plates locked down. This really made setup time seem to take forever because each and every time I had to change the weight I had to spend a minute or two unscrewing the clips from the bar.
My first injury happened when I was sixteen. I was banging out a mean set of sixty five pound barbell rows, and then CRACK I slipped a vertebra disc in my lower spine and was bedridden for a couple days. I didn't know about holding your breath in to stabilize your lower back.
Incidentally my worst workout accident happened when I had the full 110 lbs of weight on the bar and it was resting on the uprights of the bench station. I stupidly unloaded all the plates from one side of the bar. This made the bar unbalanced and all the weight on the other side of the bar pulled the unweighted side off the uprights and the bar cartwheeled end over end into my bedroom window and shattered the glass.
Up until the age of thirty seven years old, I was seriously misinformed about a lot of things in strength training. I thought three sets of ten was the only way to get strong. I thought breathing in on the concentric part of the lift and breathing out on the eccentric part was how you breathe. I didn't know crap about maintaining tightness in the lift. I believed if you held your breath while lifting you would burst a blood vessel in your brain and die. I had no idea that animal protein consumption was the most important key to build muscle. And I thought all the freaks in those muscle building magazines at the supermarket magazine rack were completely natural and were totally being honest about how they got strong and muscular. And I also believed that they were being honest about the supplements they were taking and all the flashy ads where some big muscle freak is holding a bottle of some expensive supplement was actually the only thing he was taking to get strong.
You see, in many respects this blog is a revolt against those ways of thinking. I'm not very fond of the supplement industry. They're basically misrepresenting the ingredients on their labels a lot of times and for all I know there might just be anabolic steroids in the protein powder I consume. The supplement industry is basically unregulated and the only way they get investigated by the federal government is if not one person dies but three to five people actually die from taking their poison. For almost twenty years I was being duped by the quacks and snake oil salesmen.
One of the first quack books I bought was A Practical Approach to Strength Training. The author basically recommends using time under tension strategies to build strength. But of course this couldn't be any more wrong as you know if you've been reading this blog any length of time.
Then I stumbled upon Supertraining. It was the first book to formally introduce me to single rep sets. I read about fifty percent of the book. Of that I could only understand about seventy five percent. Most of the book is filled with incomprehensible graphs and esoteric strength training language. A lot of the book covers plyometrics which is mostly useless to strength training. It also discusses the concepts of speed strength and periodization which I also consider to be pseudoscience. But still I generously borrow a lot of strength training ideas from that book and you should be aware of that.
Where I branch off into my own research are the two basic building blocks of any successful strength training program. The first is the concept of translative exercises. This is where you use two or more complementary lifts to exercise and strengthen the same muscle group. SUPERTRAINING devotes a couple pages to this topic but it only talks about the strength building aspect of translative lifting. It doesn't talk about the fact that translative exercises are necessary for injury prevention as well.
The second thing of mine is the concept of using missed lifts to strengthen muscles. I generously utilize missed lifts in my training programming. I consider the missed lift in a single rep set to be the single most important key to busting plateaus and sticking points. And I can completely without a doubt claim that no strength trainer in the world uses the concept of rating one's missed lifts to assess strength progression. I count that as my own proprietary original idea.
Now for the rant.
I write this blog for many reasons. The first is that I'm actively trying to undermine all the quacks and the supplement industry. I consider them thieves.
The first set of thieves is the guys on YouTube. They're usually hawking some crap pre-workout powder or protein powder. They're saying that you absolutely have to take their specific brand of powder.
To date, I've only taken one kind of pre-workout and that was caffeine pills. I stopped though because they only last for thirty minutes and the rest of the workout my body crashed and I felt weak.
In fact, anybody who is trying to sell you their protein powder as a replacement for animal protein is trying to feed you a line of crap and you should be very suspect of their intentions.
The second set of quacks are the
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Progress Report: listening to your body's cycles
The body acts on cycles. Sleep at night. Awake during the day. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. These are some basic cycles I can think offhand.
Strength training relies on cycles too. Lift heavy. Afterwards eat beef. Get strong. Another obvious cycle. So how does this relate to anything useful so you can get strong?
See, science hasn't figured out all the cycles necessary to get strong. I haven't figured out all the cycles to get strong. Maybe someday somebody reading this will go to college and apply a detailed analysis in a lab setting to figure out all the biomechanics and chemical reactions that go into making strength gains.
This blog is far from the end all be all of strength training. This blog is about as unrefined and crude as strength training principles can get. If any further research is to be done in strength training it would have to be in refining the strength training process. Protein intake and how it converts into muscle growth. Rest periods. Training session duration. Night time vs. daytime training. Fast twitch muscle fiber analysis after training are just a few of the areas I can think of that deserve much needed research.
So now for the latest kick that I'm on: winter vs summer strength gains. I don't know what type of environment you live in, but here in Chicago during the last winter I had to survive through subzero temperatures multiple days from January to March. And yes it is survival especially when if you stand out in subzero temperatures for more than fifteen minutes you can basically die.
My theory is that it's easier to get stronger in the winter than it is in the summer. Why? Calorie intake. On some days in January I could pound into my gut easily four or five thousand calories in a day, and yes I could definitely feel myself getting strong quickly. I was also getting fat quickly as well, and I had no problems digesting the massive amounts of protein I was taking in.
Now that it's summer my body is in fat burning mode. I'm having problems digesting protein. It seems like the only time I can fully utilize massive amounts of beef protein are after I workout. Even then I'm having to wait sometimes three or four hours after training to make sure my body goes into an almost catabolic phase and doesn't crap out all the expensive protein I had to shell out my hard earned dollars for.
My strength gains seem to be slower, but since it's the start of summer I don't have any hard data to back up my claim. It's just something I'm feeling.
The problem with going with the cycle theory and the whole hippie dippie "Oh I'm just listening to my body man" is that most of the time you're either undershooting or overshooting. For example, my protein intake for the summer is about ten ounces of beef and a couple eggs one time a day. The rest of the day I'm going very little protein and focusing on carbohydrates and fats. Yogurt. Fruits. Pizza. Basically anything to subside my appetite Sometimes thirty minutes later I'll have to go eat some beef because I can feel myself getting weak. But then my appetite is greater than what my body can actually digest and utilize to build muscle and I'll have to sit on the toilet and watch my expensive protein go down the drain.
Anyways here's my numbers.
What the numbers mean:
These are records of my one rep max's. I rate them on a five point scale. 5 means I completed the lift with perfect form. 4 is a completed lift with noticeable shakiness. 3 is completing the lift 3/4 of the way up. 2 is half way up. 1 is a couple inches up. 0 is no noticeable separation between the weight and whatever the weight was resting on.
Gym Thursday 230 a.m. 6/5/14
Seated shoulder press 205-1
Stiff legged deadlift 525-1
Free motion leg press machine wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 350-3, 370-1
Life fitness seated lat row 260-3
Tricep extension rope attachment 60-1
Pec fly machine free motion 200-5
Gym Sunday 6/1/14 1045 a.m.
Leverage chest press machine 325-1
Rack pull 535-0
Good morning 275-1, 285-1
Free motion chest press cable machine 200-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine 140-1
Life fitness seated leg press
Right 70-1, 80-1
Tricep extension free motion machine 200-3
Workout notes:
When I do cable machine tricep extensions with a rope attachment, from now on I'm hitting it from behind like this guy. It's supposed to activate the long head of the tricep muscle. It also dropped my tricep extension lift by forty pounds. But the good thing about doing it this way is the tendonitis in my elbows has subsided because I'm not trying to move as much weight as I would be if I'd been doing tricep pushdowns. However, my triceps feel more fatigued and exercised when compared to the tricep pushdown. I can feel the lactic acid buildup soreness extending the full length of the tricep and extending back into my rear deltoids. To me exercising the triceps like the guy below seems far more effective than the tricep pushdown.
Before I was doing it like this guy.
Strength training relies on cycles too. Lift heavy. Afterwards eat beef. Get strong. Another obvious cycle. So how does this relate to anything useful so you can get strong?
See, science hasn't figured out all the cycles necessary to get strong. I haven't figured out all the cycles to get strong. Maybe someday somebody reading this will go to college and apply a detailed analysis in a lab setting to figure out all the biomechanics and chemical reactions that go into making strength gains.
This blog is far from the end all be all of strength training. This blog is about as unrefined and crude as strength training principles can get. If any further research is to be done in strength training it would have to be in refining the strength training process. Protein intake and how it converts into muscle growth. Rest periods. Training session duration. Night time vs. daytime training. Fast twitch muscle fiber analysis after training are just a few of the areas I can think of that deserve much needed research.
So now for the latest kick that I'm on: winter vs summer strength gains. I don't know what type of environment you live in, but here in Chicago during the last winter I had to survive through subzero temperatures multiple days from January to March. And yes it is survival especially when if you stand out in subzero temperatures for more than fifteen minutes you can basically die.
My theory is that it's easier to get stronger in the winter than it is in the summer. Why? Calorie intake. On some days in January I could pound into my gut easily four or five thousand calories in a day, and yes I could definitely feel myself getting strong quickly. I was also getting fat quickly as well, and I had no problems digesting the massive amounts of protein I was taking in.
Now that it's summer my body is in fat burning mode. I'm having problems digesting protein. It seems like the only time I can fully utilize massive amounts of beef protein are after I workout. Even then I'm having to wait sometimes three or four hours after training to make sure my body goes into an almost catabolic phase and doesn't crap out all the expensive protein I had to shell out my hard earned dollars for.
My strength gains seem to be slower, but since it's the start of summer I don't have any hard data to back up my claim. It's just something I'm feeling.
The problem with going with the cycle theory and the whole hippie dippie "Oh I'm just listening to my body man" is that most of the time you're either undershooting or overshooting. For example, my protein intake for the summer is about ten ounces of beef and a couple eggs one time a day. The rest of the day I'm going very little protein and focusing on carbohydrates and fats. Yogurt. Fruits. Pizza. Basically anything to subside my appetite Sometimes thirty minutes later I'll have to go eat some beef because I can feel myself getting weak. But then my appetite is greater than what my body can actually digest and utilize to build muscle and I'll have to sit on the toilet and watch my expensive protein go down the drain.
Anyways here's my numbers.
What the numbers mean:
These are records of my one rep max's. I rate them on a five point scale. 5 means I completed the lift with perfect form. 4 is a completed lift with noticeable shakiness. 3 is completing the lift 3/4 of the way up. 2 is half way up. 1 is a couple inches up. 0 is no noticeable separation between the weight and whatever the weight was resting on.
Gym Thursday 230 a.m. 6/5/14
Seated shoulder press 205-1
Stiff legged deadlift 525-1
Free motion leg press machine wearing inzer strongman knee sleeves 350-3, 370-1
Life fitness seated lat row 260-3
Tricep extension rope attachment 60-1
Pec fly machine free motion 200-5
Gym Sunday 6/1/14 1045 a.m.
Leverage chest press machine 325-1
Rack pull 535-0
Good morning 275-1, 285-1
Free motion chest press cable machine 200-1
Free motion bicep curl cable machine 140-1
Life fitness seated leg press
Right 70-1, 80-1
Tricep extension free motion machine 200-3
Workout notes:
When I do cable machine tricep extensions with a rope attachment, from now on I'm hitting it from behind like this guy. It's supposed to activate the long head of the tricep muscle. It also dropped my tricep extension lift by forty pounds. But the good thing about doing it this way is the tendonitis in my elbows has subsided because I'm not trying to move as much weight as I would be if I'd been doing tricep pushdowns. However, my triceps feel more fatigued and exercised when compared to the tricep pushdown. I can feel the lactic acid buildup soreness extending the full length of the tricep and extending back into my rear deltoids. To me exercising the triceps like the guy below seems far more effective than the tricep pushdown.
Before I was doing it like this guy.
Here's what happens when you experiment with good mornings and you don't know what you're doing. I scraped the skin off my back letting the bar chafe up and down where that red mark is.
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