ALEX VIADA Alex doesn't really write this anymore, because of time constraints and the fact that he doesn't think fitness is very complicated and he's pretty much laid out most of it, but we think these are awesome, so we kee them here. He still answers questions at Alex@RangerUp.com Also - the archives are located at the bottom of the page!. When I first met Alex at the gym my first instinct was to hate him…because you know, he is stronger than I am…and he is an arrogant, sarcastic asshole. But then I was reminded that I am also an arrogant, sarcastic asshole, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. After getting to know him over the past few years, I still think he’s a giant asshole, but I am always impressed by how much he knows about training. This guy is the real deal and trains harder than anyone I know - better still, he’s all about performance. For those reasons, I thought his input would be an awesome addition to Ranger Up. I’m going to tell you a bit about him and hopefully you’ll feel the same: I’m going to leave out his zodiac sign and favorite color, but I will share the stuff that I think matters and should impress you hardcore guys and shock you beginners out there. Alex is a black belt in Judo and Karate with a strong Muay Thai and wrestling background. He benches 455, squats 635, and deadlifts an absurd 720 freakin’ pounds at a bodyweight of about 225, while still maintaining the ability to run a sub five-minute mile. He has a degree in biology from one of those elite universities we all love to hate, is a former EMT, and has been a certified personal trainer for over four years. I have see him train everyone from semi-pro, high-performance athletes and power lifters to obese first-timers and pregnant women, all with great success. Finally, he is a featured moderator of many online workout forums. How’d we get him here when he already has so much going on? Two reasons: 1) He loves working with military people because they generally don’t quit or complain about workouts. 2) We told him he could say whatever he wanted. Ranger Up fans don’t need anything sugar-coated. So anyway, here's his column. Hope you enjoy it. by Alex Viada 29 June 2007 Ok, I know it's been a while since I've written anything. It's not that I've run out of things to rant about, ask anybody I know, I can always think of something. The actual reason boils down to my whole workout/health/fitness philosophy: If you spend too much time thinking about it, you're missing the point. I always emphasize simplicity. This is why I make a shitty personal trainer: If somebody doesn't get the idea after a few sessions, then they'll never get it. I'm there to give a push, give some guidance, but not spoon feed people things that they should be learning for themselves. So I like to give people a framework, some basic information, then let them educate themselves from there. If they got more questions, then they can come back. This makes it tough to write articles, since I can't write up generic workout after workout, or discuss the practical application of the bosu in a ten month core strengthening program. So once people get out the door, I do expect some initiative, some research. Of course, it's been so long since I've picked up much mainstream fitness material that I do forget how terrible most of it is. So doing research can be an exercise in frustration. Or, put another way, a complete goddamn waste of time. So, in the interest of eliminating uncertainty, I'm proud (not really) to present the first exercise FAQ, compiled from several questions I've received, as well as discussions I've read on various internet message boards, conversations I've heard in the gym, and a few questions I just made up for filler content. I'm training for MMA/the APFT/an Ironman triathlon/some other event. I'm sore all the time, running fifty miles a week, doing a shitload of specific training for my event, but still want to maintain strength. Should I be lifting, and how often? Short answer: Yes, you should. Twice a week is the usual minimum, but you can get away with once a week. Long answer: Depends. Yeah, you saw that coming. Training for your event or sport should always come first. If you're a marathon runner, it's obviously stupid to overdo it in the weight room three times a week. If you're busting ass trying to drop your two mile time, it's going to hurt your run speed if you're squatting heavy twice a week. So what's the minimum? A properly stimulated muscle can take up to a week to recover, as a rule. Yeah, certain muscle groups in the legs may take longer, and some small muscles can recover in half the time. But a week is a good guide. What this means is that you could technically get in the weight room once a week, do some squats, weighted pull-ups, a few sets of bench press, and get out after 45 minutes. In fact, this is what I'd usually recommend for most fighters in season, as well as most endurance athletes. Basic weight training is important for overall strength, joint integrity, maintaining lean body mass, etc., but you gotta train for your event. Take prepping for the APFT. You should be running every other day, doing 1 mile speed runs, 3 mile over-distance endurance runs, hill workouts, etc. You should also be doing high-rep bench presses, hanging leg raises, and other over-load push-up/sit-up equivalents. (motions that are similar to push-ups and sit-ups, but with greater resistance than bodyweight) But if you're doing too much lifting on top of that, you're going to end up with a shitload of overuse injuries, including elbow pain, shin splints, you name it. So your lifting should complement your specific training. In this case, you're doing extremely high repetitions of three basic movements... running, pressing, and abdominal crunches. What's being left out? Constant push-ups will lead to tremendous elbow and shoulder pain over time. Besides the obvious over-use, the joints are being subjected to repeated stress in one direction: the press. So in the weight room, do what you're not doing every other day. Your upper body work should be focused on heavy rows (a pulling movement to offset the presses), the occasional low-rep bench press (to offset high repetitions), and high load squats and deadlifts(lower back work to complement the abdominal work, heavy load leg work to hit the legs over their full range of motion). So take this basic idea and apply it to whatever else you're doing. The weight room is about rounding out the individual, filling in the missing parts. It shouldn't be hurting your performance in other fields. Can you still get stronger lifting once or twice a week? Hell yes. But don't expect miracles unless you're taking in enough calories and getting enough recovery. If you're doing sprints, intervals, GPP, and teaching martial arts (among other things) like one reader, and you're hurting all the time, back off to once a week, just make it a damn good day. Focus on a few compound movements, set some short term strength goals, and try to keep your motivation up. Sometimes having just one day of lifting a week will force you to focus that much more on the quality of that one workout. And you'll need the extra recovery. I do wide grip pull ups for back width, narrow grip for back thickness, incline press for my upper chest, decline for my lower chest, leg raises for my lower abs, and crunches for my upper abs. Now I want to work my inner chest and lower right quadrant of my gastrocnemius. What should I do? This question usually makes my head hurt. Not like the regular headache pain, but the splitting migraine type of pain that makes your eye twitch. Look, you can't isolate specific portions of a muscle. Actually, you can't really isolate specific muscles, period. Wide grip pull-ups work the EXACT SAME MUSCLES as close grip pull-ups, they just do so much less efficiently. And isolating your inner chest is a physiological impossibility. Even if you're not the kind of person who cares about muscle shape and size (I'm hoping), chances are exercise selection/variety is something that comes up pretty often. You have people recommending three types of bench presses, two types of pull-ups, even different foot placement on the leg press, etc. And it sounds like a good idea, you're working muscles from every angle, right? Wrong. The best bench press? The one that's the most comfortable. Incline, decline, flat bench, whatever, think about what your chest is doing. The pectoralis muscle is contracting in the EXACT SAME PLANE. It's the surrounding muscles that alter the direction of movement. Picture your skeleton, no muscle attached, no skin, nothing. Plain skeleton, just bones. Now, take a rope, attach it to your upper arm, and to the center of your chest. If you tug on that rope from the center of your chest, the arm will flop up and across the chest, right? That's your pectoralis muscle contracting. This is the ONLY ACTION that the muscle can take. If you want to control this motion, change the angle, you need to start adding ropes; adding muscles, to alter the direction of movement. Something as simple as the bench press involves the chest, shoulders, abdominals, serratus, back muscles, triceps, biceps, forearms, etc. Nothing is getting isolated, and definitely not the upper or middle part of the chest. So what's the difference between the incline and the flat bench? How much deltoid you're using, among other things. So which one should you do? Whichever one feels more comfortable. Period. There's more to this, obviously. But I don't want to start getting into a long drawn out discussion on innervation, motor unit activation, muscle fiber recruitment patterns, etc. Because that's not useful. Bottom line, when you need to pick an exercise, pick the one that you feel best doing. If you want to do pull-ups, the only difference that your grip/hand placement makes is how favorable the angles are across your shoulder and elbow joints. Wide grip, palms facing away (pronated) pull-ups are the hardest for two reasons: One, your shoulders are at a bad angle, the lats (the prime movers) being put in a position that makes it harder for them to contract efficiently, and two, your forearms are rotated in such a way that your biceps cannot pull efficiently. So yes, these are harder than narrow-grip, palms facing you (supinated) pull-ups. But they're NOT a better exercise. The only reason to do them? If you're being tested on your wide grip, palms pronated pull-ups. Otherwise, stick to the easier, more comfortable exercise. Picture what your lats are doing in each motion. The SAME DAMN THING. In both cases, you're hauling your sorry carcass up from a hanging position, so you're doing the same amount of work. It's just hurting less. Go back to my point about the swiss ball, and hitting people in the face while squatting. Yeah, same idea. I have X injury, can you give me some idea of how to work around it? This question pains me too, but mostly because it's difficult as hell to answer. I don't want to give bad advice, period. Ok, shit, if you fuck yourself up because of what some guy on the internet told you to do, then I don't have all that much sympathy. Actually I'd probably laugh. Hey, while you're blindly following my advice, I got some great stock options in Nigeria to sell you. Just send me your account number and bank's routing number, and I'll take care of all the necessary transfers. I would love to help. I've had my share of injuries, worked with plenty of athletes with pretty significant problems, but to give ANY idea of how to fix these things, I need detail. If you want some suggestions, make sure you're giving me the information I need. When did your injury occur? What movements aggravate it? What has your doctor/physical therapist/hypnotist/mother said so far regarding your injury? Even with all that information, all I can do is give you some suggestions. Now keep in mind I'm mostly covering my ass here. Listen to your doctor when he tells you to lay off lifting, stop your running, and never step on a mat again. Then after a few days of this, when you've decided to ignore his advice and go back to whatever you were doing anyway, I'll do my best to give you information to minimize the damage. I want to get stronger, but I don't want to get too large or bulky. Should I still lift heavy? I get this question from women quite a bit, but it's also applicable to athletes who compete in certain weight classes, or guys who need to maintain their agility for other reasons. Bottom line: Lifting won't make you bigger. Calories and hormones make you bigger. Most women just don't have the testosterone levels to get “big”. The female bodybuilders, and even some female fitness models, tennis players, sprinters, etc., take all kinds of, uh, supplements to get as muscular and lean as they are. And by supplements, I mean that Barry Bonds and the WWE combined got nothing on them. So lift heavy. You won't get huge. Shit, look at all the guys who've been lifting for years, going at it, and are happy to have put on twenty pounds of muscle. You've got less than a tenth of the testosterone levels that they do. And for guys.. calories. High reps, low reps, high weight, low weight, doesn't matter what you do. Your size is controlled by how much you eat. Period. Are you Nick writing under a pen name? Yes. Actually, Ranger Up is comprised of a single person: Nick. All the articles are written by Nick, all the “submitted” stories are written by Nick, and in fact all the models are Nick. The man's a master of photo shoot prep, and looks pretty cute in his “Grace” outfit. And when he's not doing all this, he straps on a prosthesis and competes in Ironman triathlons. He also apparently writes in the third person. Will you design me a personalized workout? No. BUT, if you show me your current workout, or propose a new one, I will critique it and make suggestions. I don't know what exercises you can do, what your goals are, what equipment you have access to, what your experience level is, etc. I'm not one of those bullshit internet personal trainers who, for the low low cost of $200 a month will write you an individual workout (chosen from one of three templates), specifically designed for you (I changed the “athlete name” at the top of the template), and tailored to your goals (I make the routine last as long as your subscription to my service). You know you better than I ever will. Give me something to work with, and I'll be more than happy to help. When's your next article coming out? You're too slow in updating. Hi Nick. It'll be done next week. Thanks for writing, though! Asshole. And that's it for this installment. 23 May 2007 Alex versus Crossfit Alex, I enjoy your comments on the RangerUp website. Thanks for giving out straight talk. I especially liked your recent post about nutrition. My wife got a kick out of it also. I'm a grad student at A&M who's going back to West Point to teach Physical Education. Some friends of mine have been trying to evangelize me into the "Crossfit" system. They have a pretty slick website and their workouts will definitely smoke someone who's not all around fit, but I haven't totally bought in. I wonder if their system does enough cardio. Background on me: I'm a runner (if you didn't guess from my question.) I've recently made an effort to run less and strength train more, so the CrossFit idea intrigues me. However, they don't do a structured weight program and I wonder if their Workouts of the Day are enough if you're not already fairly muscular. What's your take on CrossFit? Thanks, A Ok, I’ve been putting off answering the slew of Crossfit questions for months. Yeah, months. Why? It’s a touchy subject with some people, especially true Crossfit aficionados who believe it’s The Answer. The Answer to what, exactly, I’m not sure. But nevertheless it’s The Answer. To start off, if you’re not familiar with Crossfit, I could type out an explanation, but your best bet is to go to their website, http://www.crossfit.com/ , check out the descriptions there, try a few of their workouts of the day, then report back. Long story short, Crossfit is GPP (General Physical Preparedness). It’s essentially circuit training for those who don’t want to call it circuit training. Of course, given my opinion on circuit training, one might expect a smartass dismissal of Crossfit and all its offshoots. Not this time. Crossfit is good shit. It’s essentially a scalable framework. The workouts can vary in difficulty (both physical and technical), and can be adjusted to any level of fitness. It’s hard to point out pros and cons of a system that can be adapted to any trainee without looking at the specifics. And to its credit, Crossfit emphasizes some very, very important aspects of training that set it apart from any normal circuit routine: 1) Actual cardiovascular conditioning. Crossfit-style circuit training is not about going from machine to machine. Rather than trying to make lifting into a cardiovascular activity, (worthless; different metabolic pathways,) it incorporates actual RUNNING (usually 400-800 meter runs) to build up your cardio conditioning. Granted, this isn’t the same as running the two miles on your PT test, but it’s closer than doing fifty reps on the leg press. Additionally, the remainder of the workouts are generally structured so that the weights you’re lifting are not so heavy as to require a major break between sets. This actually DOES keep the heart rate up. 2) Emphasis on Olympic/bodyweight movements. Crossfit does not want you on the leg extension machine. In fact, if you ever even consider incorporating a leg extension into a workout of the day, a Crossfit coach somewhere goes blind in one eye. True story. So don’t try it. Instead, you’ll do things like muscle-ups, pull-ups, overhead squats, push jerks, and other exercises that actually require you to stabilize yourself, stabilize a weight, and otherwise use every muscle in your body in unison. This is a good thing. This is true athletic training, and for almost any real-world application, building this kind of bodyweight strength and coordination, as well as being able to repeatedly handle medium-weight loads, is much more useful than maximum power output or hypertrophy training. Speaking of which: 3) Real-world application. Think about it this way: In a typical Crossfit workout, you may go directly from running 800 meters to repeatedly lifting about a hundred pounds over your head, to performing multiple pull-ups, and then taking off running again. If you extrapolate that into real-world situations, you can start to see why this system is so popular in law enforcement, emergency services, and the military in general. If you can do thirty pull-ups in an air conditioned gym while listening to the Rocky theme (or some other cheesy shit) on your iPod after taking a fifteen minute sit-down break with a glass of cold water, that’s great. If you’re ever out in the field and find yourself in a situation where you need to mantle some high barrier with fifty pounds of gear on your back after having just run 100 meters from your last point of cover, I’m sure everyone around you will appreciate holding your stuff while you catch your breath and figure out how to get the trendy little earbuds in under your helmet. Sounds good, right? There are definitely more good points to the system. However, (and this is where I’m sure I’ll get plenty of disagreement,) I don’t think it’s the ONLY form of routine you should follow. Like any circuit-based routine, (it IS circuit training - you know it’s circuit training - man up and admit it,) Crossfit leaves a little room for improvement on the extremes. Crossfit alone will build a well-rounded individual that truly excels at certain types of physical activity, but not at all types. There’s still room for pure power training and for extended cardiovascular training. If you were to do a Crossfit-style workout two days out of the week, I’d still incorporate one or two days of solid lifting (again, compound movements, but higher loads with longer rest periods), and at least one day of more consistent cardiovascular training; say for example, distance running. So, bottom line, you can build some limit strength on Crossfit, you can build mass, you can build aerobic endurance, but alone, none of these are really the point of GPP, and these are not what it excels at. The goal of the system is to build a good overall athlete. It is an excellent adjunct to traditional training, but it is not the only form of training you should do. So to answer the question (finally), by all means, do some of those workouts; try to do one or two a week. But I would say, if you can, spend at least one day doing some deadlifts, heavier squats, and a few heavy, compound, upper body movements. Always be a little wary of people who proclaim ANY one routine as the solution to the world’s problems; a lot of advocates don’t leave much room for disagreement. Here’s a quick tip when evaluating the quality of any routine: Ask an advocate of the routine what the shortcomings are. If they give the old job-interview style shortcoming (You know, that whole “I’m organized to a fault and too much of a perfectionist!” complete bullshit response that we’ve all given several times in our lives), then you know you’re not dealing with somebody who’s going to give you a straight answer. If they are very clear as to why SPECIFICALLY the system will help you, but are also very clear in letting you know what the system WON’T do, then that’s probably someone you can trust. And next column… Training around an injured back, and why you should avoid artificial sweeteners and beer. (Quick preview: You shouldn’t. I live on aspartame and Yuengling.) 17 April 2007 The Complete Guide to Nutrition Since the feedback to the supplement article has been so good, I decided to write another short guide. In this case, I’ve been getting a lot of questions on nutrition; questions on different diets, meal timing (should I eat at night if I’m trying to cut weight), stuff like that. This can be seriously complicated shit, so please read carefully. The most important thing to remember about calories is that you need to count them. You need to know exactly what you’re getting in. You can’t be expecting to gain or lose a single pound if you don’t dial in your precise number. What you do is take your bodyweight, multiply it by 12. That is your rough basal metabolic rate. Then multiply this by 1.2 if you’re minimally active, 1.4 if you’re moderately active, and 1.6 if you’re very active. Then find a calorie calculator for your daily activities, and add them on top. That final number is your maintenance calorie number. Subtract 500 a day to lose weight, add 300 a day to gain weight. The ratio should ideally be 40% carbohydrates, 35% protein, 25% fat. Remember, carbs and protein are about 4 calories a gram, fat is 9. Try to stick to low glycemic index carbs like brown rice and oats, avoid white bread like the plague. Also, don’t drink beer. Don’t eat red meat either, stick to chicken and fish. Avoid cooking with oil, and stay away from butter. But no skin on the chicken, and no fatty fish. Eat lots of fiber, preferably in the form of leafy vegetables. Avoid fruits, they’re pure sugar. Milk products can make you maintain water and contain hormones. Nuts are ok in very small amounts, but are too high in fat to be a staple of your diet. Now, for meal timing. Eat six balanced, small meals a day to keep your metabolism high. Evenly space them, but avoid eating carbohydrates after 6:00 PM. This will make you fat. Before your workout consume 20-30 grams of carbohydrates and 10-15 grams of protein. After your workout, do the same. Be sure to drink at least half a gallon of water a day. If you’re dieting, once every 10 days do a re-feed of 1000 calories over maintenance, consisting almost entirely of high glycemic index carbohydrates. Now, make sure you’ve written all this out and designed a rough diet plan. It should look like this: Meal 1): Oatmeal and chicken. Meal 2): Oatmeal and chicken. Meal 3): Brown rice and chicken. Meal 4): Brown rice and chicken with some spinach. Meal 5): Chicken and half a walnut. Meal 6): Piece of fish garnished with water. At this point, if you’re thinking this sounds completely overcomplicated and the resultant meal plan sounds fucking awful, you’re pretty much right. This is all a complete load of shit. The first two sentences in this article are the only true things I’ve said, pretty much. Sadly, this is the kind of advice you’ll see everywhere. So sorry for wasting your time. Then again, maybe I’m not. If you skimmed all that thinking “This is useless”, then congratulations, you were right. Designing a diet is simple, and all you need to do is take a simple framework, then follow a few simple rules. The framework is this: Take what you eat already, and make it healthier. I don’t mean sit down with the latest edition of Shape (yeah, you know you’ve read it at least once, nobody believes it was just in the doctor’s office) and try to recreate their soy-almond-olive topping for your dinner salad, I just mean ask yourself a simple question when you look at your meal: Can I switch up anything to make this a little better for me? You want a steak, eat a fucking steak. But have the sirloin, not the ribeye. Put a little less blue cheese on your wings. Cook with half the oil. Switch to 1% milk. Don’t drink so much sweet tea. Fries are damn good, but just once leave them out. Hell, have a second burger, there’s more nutrition in it than the fries. Have the thin crust pizza, not the stuffed crust. Point is, there are no bad foods. Diet is 90% of the puzzle when it comes to how you look and how you feel, but people spend WAY too much fucking time on it. Beer isn’t bad. Ice cream isn’t bad. Bacon isn’t bad. Pate de foie gras isn’t bad, just a bitch to pronounce and even harder to spell. Pork rinds aren’t bad. That’s a lie. There is not a single good thing about pork rinds, nutritionally. But damn they’re good. Things are bad in excess, that’s about it. Think big picture. Your body isn’t an accountant, sitting there tallying calories and nutrients. Your body is a damn complicated system with endless variables controlling your caloric need. Don’t second guess it; you’re not that smart. I’m not either. So you’ve got your basic framework. Now, if you want to lose weight, figure out some way to cut some calories out of it. I don’t like low carb diets, but carbohydrates are the easiest thing to cut down on. But in general…eat half your mashed potatoes, leave the cheese off your burger, have four pints of beer on Saturday night, not five. And stop drinking those god damn mixed drinks. Not only are they high as hell in calories, but everyone’s laughing at you. Seriously. You look like a tool drinking that shit. This is your diet for a lifetime here. If you want something more extreme, I’ll be covering some of those diets later. But when it comes to just daily eating, don’t kill yourself over it. You can’t second guess your body; there are WAY too many variables to even roughly calculate how many calories your body needs a day. So pretty much go with what you eat already. You know EXACTLY where it’s getting you. Some of you are probably looking down, grabbing a handful, and going “yeah, I know. Fuck”. So adjust that, bit by bit. Don’t think the scale’s moving after a month? Adjust it a little more. Don’t do something drastically new. Chances are, you’ll hate it and feel like crap on it. Some days you’ll be starving, other days you’ll be hungry at odd hours, and every day you’ll get sick of the same damn foods. I’ve gotten the same results eating whatever the hell I want, and just being smart about it, as I did back when I was eating a carefully regimented diet incorporating all the latest science, most of which has been proven wrong since then anyhow. I felt like shit then, by the way. Oh, and don’t starve yourself. Too few calories will basically result in you shedding nothing BUT muscle. That’s the last thing your body wants to hold onto when you’re too low in calories. And to answer a few specific questions: Q: Should I cut carbs to lose weight? A: Carbs are a good one to cut because they’re easy. But it’s not requirement of any diet to be low in carbs. If you’re restricting your calories, protein does become the most vital nutrient. But vital in that you can’t let it drop below a certain threshold, or you WILL go into a negative nitrogen balance. i.e., your body is consuming more amino acids than it is taking in, which means you WILL lose lean body mass (muscle). You don’t need a hell of a lot of protein to maintain this mass, though. 1 gram per pound of body weight is definitely adequate, and even for you bigger guys out there, that’s maybe 1200 calories, or probably a third of what you’re taking in. Don’t worry about insulin spikes or any of that crap. Chances are, if you’re following any kind of workout routine, you’re using those carbs. (If you’re not, stop reading this, get off the computer for twenty fucking minutes, and go out and run. Lazy ass.) So, short answer, no. Cut a little bit of everything. Remember: balance. Q: Should I eat six small meals a day to keep my metabolism up? A: A big meal can take 24+ hours to digest completely. If you don’t believe me, go into work on the Monday after the Super Bowl and take a whiff of the bathrooms around 4:00 PM. Yeah, the point is that your system’s releasing nutrients into your body during that entire time. Unless you’re starving yourself, you’re NOT going to slow down your metabolism or enter any kind of starvation mode. And to get in six small meals in 18 waking hours, you’re eating every three hours. Shit, that last meal’s still in your stomach, maybe half digested. Three meals a day is fine. I eat a little bit in between because I tend to have a small breakfast, I work out in the evenings, and need a little something to keep me going. So eat two big meals a day with some snacks. Shit, eat one. Eat a huge, 3000 calorie meal at 11:00 at night, full of pasta. I don’t give a crap. Neither does your body. All it sees are nutrients. It’s going to put them where it needs them, regardless of what the guy in the magazine is insisting. Q: What is this glycemic index, brown rice shit? Is bread bad? Is beer bad? A: Nothing’s bad. Look at it this way… eating pure sugar spikes your blood sugar, right? Makes sense. Goes into your stomach, is easily digested, and goes right into your bloodstream. Brown rice is harder to digest. Eat a big bowl of that then go out and run. Not gonna happen. That rice will be in your stomach for hours and hours, slowly releasing carbohydrates. So 50 grams of sugar gets into your bloodstream faster than 50 grams of carbs from brown rice. Simple. The argument here is that your body releases insulin in response to sugar/carbs. This is true. Insulin causes your body to store nutrients, which can mean you end up depositing fat. Over time, these big insulin spikes are bad, you’re overloading your receptors. This is where type II diabetes comes from. BUT. All that matters is the rate of entry. Analogy: It’s like saying whiskey makes you more drunk than beer. This true? No, alcohol is alcohol. Drink a case of beer, you’ll be more wasted than a glass of whiskey. True, whiskey gets alcohol into your system faster; it’s more concentrated. What matters here is the RATE of entry, right? You eat a huge bowl of brown rice, chances are you’ll be spiking your insulin more than you would eating half a powerbar. Or by putting sugar in your coffee. So a big meal of “good” carbs will still fuck with your insulin levels, just as much as small amounts of “bad” carbs won’t. So again, nothing’s bad. Even white bread. Just eat less of it at one time. White bread doesn’t make you fat. Too much white bread along with a shitty diet makes you fat. If nothing else, just take the same approach to diet and nutrition that you should with working out: Keep it simple, make sure it’s something you can stick to. There’s way too much overcomplicated bullshit out there involving ketogenic diets, carb timing, refeeds, etc. And none of it will really make a bit of difference in the long run. People have been getting lean and strong for thousands of years, and they did it without Nutri-this and Jenny That. 2 April 2007 Moto-moto-moto-motivation! Next letter leads pretty well into a few topics I wanted to talk about. Plus, it contains a compliment. I like compliments. Hint: If you want to get a question answered, make sure you include some kind of flattery. Or if not flattery, say something that really pisses me off. Personal attacks work, but only if they’re funny. Alex, I love your columns. Nice mix of I hate the world, but I know what I’m talking about commentary. I find the more I read the more I get confused on one basic issue – how do I measure results? I’m trying to lose about forty pounds. I’m currently 260, 6’1. I’m lifting so I assume I’m both gaining muscle and losing fat but my weight is staying relatively constant. I can blame that largely on beer consumption over the weekend, which I know I need to work on, but overall I’m pretty fucking disciplined. I do cardio after I lift for about 30 minutes and I try to keep my heart rate right around 135 while I workout to burn fat. I’m getting stronger so I know I’m building muscle, but I’m only seeing a little slimming down. What’s the best way to tell if I don’t have the means to measure my body fat percentage? Also, how the fuck do you stay motivated all of the time. Six days a week is no problem for me but I can’t get the hang of seven days a week. Thanks bro, Ian Ian, First off, nice job staying disciplined. But you said one thing that struck me a bit. You don’t need to work out seven days a week, man. If you’re lifting as hard as you should be, three or four days a week is PLENTY. Muscle takes time to recover, and the stronger you get, the harder you’ll be hitting each group. Even if you’re not sore (Sore isn’t always good, I haven’t been sore from a workout in years) you’re still asking your body to adapt. This takes time. Figure after a good leg workout, for the next two or three days your legs are just repairing the damage that was done. For the next few days after that, you’re slowly building muscle, remapping your motor units, and otherwise doing all the shit that’s going to make you bigger and stronger next time. Even if you’re not lifting every day, you’re still doing some sort of physical activity, which slows down your recovery. With your current schedule, six days a week is plenty, but try to split it up, with three days of lifting (I gave a program in another article), and three days of cardio. Enjoy your off day. Burnout in anything sucks, and if you need to be fighting to stay motivated, it’s not going to last long. Cardio can even be more intense than you’re doing; honestly regular cardio bores the shit out of me. And while 30 minutes on the treadmill at 135 bpm may technically be “ideal” for fat loss, but it’s not the most effective long-term. So some background, and I’d say most of you probably know this - skeletal muscle has two energy sources - carbohydrates and fats. (If you’re sitting there saying what about protein, then yes, you can de-aminate amino acids to generate pyruvate for the citric acid cycle. Shut the fuck up, nobody asked you. It’s inefficient and unless you’re a marathon runner or in the middle of Hell Week, the contribution from protein isn’t significant. Don’t listen to the supplement companies.) The higher the level of energy expenditure, the more that carbohydrates are used. At rest (for example, while sleeping), your muscles can use almost exclusively fat as an energy source. There’s no need to use carbohydrates, there’s plenty of oxygen and fat’s a better energy source. So TECHNICALLY, the most aerobic (fat-burning) activity you can do is sleep. Of course, your overall caloric expenditure is pretty low, so it’s maybe not the most efficient. At the other extreme, like during lifting or sprinting, you’re burning almost entire glucose for your energy needs. So usually the ideal fat burning workout is somewhere in between, which is where people get that “target heart rate for fat burning” idea. This is great if you’re the average person who wants to drop a little weight, get a little “toned”, and your idea of committing to a workout program is getting on the elliptical three days a week for 30 minutes, lifting weights while listening to 80’s mixes, and taking the Special K challenge. If you’re that kind of person, please stop reading this column. Your existence bothers me. Now, look at body composition of elite athletes, and think where you want to be. Look at the guys who sprint in short bursts, lift heavy weights, and do general full-body conditioning a few times a week. Take wide receivers, running backs, and Olympic sprinters. These guys are strong, fast, and lean. Not a bad way to be. And they don’t exercise in the “fat burning” zone. They hit the ground hard and fast. Yes, they may not burn much fat during the exercise, but the flip side is, they burn PLENTY during recovery, and their metabolisms are going out of control. Not only that, but the running that they DO is high-load enough to actually build leg muscle. You want to get these benefits, do sprints. 100 meter repeats. 200 meter repeats. Wind sprints on the bike or elliptical. Organize the cardio like this: 10 minute warm-up 6 sprint phase, 12 minutes: 1 minute sprint (80-90% maximum heart rate) 1 minute cool-down (let heart rate drop to a level where you don’t feel like you’re going to die) 2 sprint intense phase, 3 minutes: 30 second sprint, maximum effort 1 minute cool down 5 minute cool down. Still 30 minutes, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you do this three times a week, you will see better results. As far as measuring results - don’t worry about body fat percentage. The main purpose of testing body fat percentage is to pass your physical. If you want an objective measure of your true appearance, take off your shirt when in a crowded area. If young children start crying and women look terrified, chances are your body fat percentage is a little high. Otherwise, you can caliper as a baseline, but remember that the numbers themselves aren’t worth much, especially for individuals who weight train with any degree of consistency. However, the numbers are very good for bragging to friends and lying on the internet. (Be sure to subtract 3% from whatever actual number you get.) And if you really want some way of measuring it, weigh yourself once a week and look at the weights you’re moving. If the first number stays the same or goes down, and the second number goes up, you’re building muscle and losing fat (or some combination of both). There’s no other way that the numbers would be moving. I know this sounds like a cop-out, but sometimes you just gotta have faith that you’re doing the right things you need to get to where you want to be. Self-evaluation is good, but if you do too much of it you’ll just get frustrated. These are slow changes, bud, and if your clothes are fitting any better and you’re feeling better, what more could you ask for. 29 March, 2007 Training with an injury: This past fall I managed to break my hand in a couple places, and ended up in a full arm cast for 3 weeks, and a short arm one for another 6. I starting lifting again (pretty much pain free) in early February, and I feel like for the most part I have regained all the strength I had lost...however I am still feeling like my right side is doing more work than left, i.e. my right side is usually more sore than my left (mainly in the pec, tricep and lat areas). I can feel it during the workout as well especially on bench press and tricep cable pushdowns. I'm naturally right handed, so I know that my right side is generally a little stronger than my left, and maybe at this point it's in my head, but I never remember feeling it that much before the injury. I'm a Midshipman at the US Naval Academy but I'm not a varsity athlete so I'm pretty much own my own lifting schedule, usually working out twice a day (lifting during one, more cardio in the other)...my only ideas to even this out are to just keep lifting and let my body balance things out, or maybe exclusively work left side for a week or two, but I really don't know since I'd never been injured like that before. Thanks a lot for your help. -Shane Shane, Big thing here, and some physical therapists may disagree with me: (But then again, it’s my column and nobody’s asking them.) Never, ever train one side of your body on its own. Your body strives for balance in all things, and if you train one side without the other, you’re just asking for muscle imbalances, strains, etc. After an injury, especially one involving any kind of significant trauma, your body is going to heal a little differently than it did prior to the injury. When bones heal, their structure’s going to be just a little different than they were before you broke them. If you tear a muscle, it’s always going to be a little bit tighter than the other side. So don’t worry if you feel like your left arm may never be as strong as your right, or never quite look the same. Chances are - it won’t. But nobody’s symmetrical. There’s another factor, too: Think about when your one arm was injured. You probably spent a lot of time using your right arm, and may still use it more during lifts. Instinctively you’re probably still favoring your left side because you are likely, albeit subconsciously, trying to protect it from harm. So rather than working just your left side, just substitute in exercises that force the left side to do an equal share. This means stay the hell off machines. Focus on dumbbell work: dumbbell bench presses, overhead presses, etc. As far as back work goes, focus on pull-ups, dumbbell rows, etc. This doesn’t mean cut out the barbell work - that stuff all has its place, but if your left arm is forced to do half the work, it will basically be forced to catch up. And that’s really all the advice I can give in a nutshell. This does lead into another letter I got, though, which I’ll address indirectly here, and directly in a later column. If you are currently injured, do NOT stop working your good side. There’s actually an interesting property of the body, again going on a need for balance, where working the good side will still result in some growth on the injured or immobilized (or even amputated) side - and the more full-body the exercise, the better. A one legged squat is better than a one legged leg extension - the squat will work the quads and hamstrings on the good side, but will work the smaller hip flexors on both sides, the abdominals across the entire torso, your entire lower back, etc. But even isolations are good. If you have a broken arm, work the good arm. The muscles on the immobilized side will still benefit from some growth (or at least, less atrophy). I could go into the specifics, but it’d probably bore the piss out of everybody reading. If you want specifics, e-mail me and if I have a few free hours I’ll give you some Pubmed links. And if anybody knows the specifics, and wants to get their name on the internet, send me a good explanation and I’ll publish it with your name attached. Then you can show all your friends how much free time you have. Anyway, this advice doesn’t take the place of the advice of your doctor, physical therapist, whatever the fuck. Listen to them first. They do get paid to give this kind of advice. I mostly just get the ego boost of seeing my words on the internet. Then again, these days it seems like any fucking talking monkey can get a blog, so even that’s not worth much. Why does everyone think they have interesting shit to say? “Today my dog Spot pissed on the carpet…I was mad…” That shit pisses me off. Maybe I should start a blog about it… 8 March 2007 The Definitive and Comprehensive Guide to Supplements. Nice title. But this guide is neither definitive nor comprehensive. Actually, some of the information I have might be outdated or flat out wrong. So chances are there’s some bullshit in this article. But since I’m talking about supplements, and that industry is pretty much 90% bullshit, I figured it was appropriate. I know people want to hear about workouts and training, as well as diet and nutrition. More of that’s coming. But actually a huge number of the questions I’ve been getting have been about various supplements - what works, what doesn’t, who should use it, etc. This makes sense. This shit is expensive. And it’s almost impossible to get unbiased information on any of these supplements, because everybody is either selling something, using something and wants to believe it works, or pissed because they wasted money on something. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t want to spend $300 every time you walk into a damn GNC. And you’re probably sick of walking into a supplement store, asking a simple question about creatine or protein, and having sales reps descend on you in a swarm of brightly colored polo shirts and khaki shorts trying to sell you fucking multivitamins and NO2 products. So what is all this shit? Here’s the list: Name: Whey protein/Casein/Soy protein/etc. What it is: Uh, protein. What it’s supposed to do: Improve recovery, make your muscles bigger, help you get cut, etc. What it actually does: All these things. If your diet is geared to it. Protein isn’t really a supplement, it’s a food. All the kinds of protein out there are basically just different arrangements of the same things… amino acids, plain and simple. Do you need a protein powder? No. But actually, they can be pretty cheap these days if you find a good deal online, and if you’re cutting down your calories but want to keep your protein intake up, or on the flip side, want some extra calories in your diet without adding a lot of carbs and fat, protein powders are a great way to do it. Egg whites are good too, but can get expensive and aren’t all that convenient. Tuna has a lot of sodium and tastes like hell. So for convenience, powders can’t really be beat. But that’s all they are, convenient food. Nothing more, nothing less. What it does not do: Anything that a steak wouldn’t. Name: Creatine Monohydrate/ Creatine Ethyl Ester/ Creatine Malate What it is: A naturally occurring substance put in powder form. Creatine is used by the body to store energy (phosphate donor to resynthesize ATP, if anybody gives a shit). What it’s supposed to do: Increase muscle strength, increase power, speed recovery What it actually does: Actually, pretty much all these things, but not by itself. Creatine will, in essence, let you do another rep or two before you get exhausted. ATP is, at the end of the day, what your muscle uses for fuel. Think of every molecule of ATP as a molecule of gas. When you run out, you stop. Your body resynthesizes this pretty quickly, which is why a quick rest is all you need to be able to move again after a heavy set of squats or quick sprint. Creatine is basically a reserve tank. Your body has a small amount of creatine phosphate in each cell that basically re-forms ATP as you deplete it. Think about it, though… a bigger gas tank won’t make a car faster, but it’ll let it go longer. So creatine will let you do one or two more reps, or sprint up that hill at the end of a long run, etc. But if you don’t put in that extra effort, you won’t get anything out of it. You’ll gain weight off it right away, true, but that’s mostly so-called “water weight”, that’s actually extra water in the muscle cells used to buffer the extra creatine phosphate (again, if anyone gives a shit). What it does not do: Make you any stronger, improve cardio endurance (endurance exercise has other factors that make you fail), bloat you up, cause cancer. Creatine CAN cause some bloat in your stomach.. monohydrate is tough to digest. If you have a tough time with this, try ethyl ester or one of the other kinds. If you don’t, then stick to monohydrate. Much cheaper. Oh, and you don’t need to load creatine, and you don’t need to cycle it, and you don’t “lose your gains coming off” unless you were a lazy bitch while you were on it. If you want to know the reasons behind any of these things, shoot me an e-mail. Name: Branched Chain Amino Acids/Glutamine/other amino acid supplements. What it is: Amino acids. Building blocks of protein. For all other questions, see the section on protein. Because that’s all this shit is, and unless you’re dealing with a wasting illness and trying to come up with some sort of perfect tube-feeding diet, or just lack the ability to digest protein (in which case you’re fucked anyway), you don’t need this stuff. Name: Nitrous Oxide secreting products (No-xplode, etc.) What it is: A combination of arginine alpha-ketoglutarate, citrulline malate, creatine, caffeine, etc. What it’s supposed to do: Increase pumps! Increase strength! Improve lactic acid clearance! Improve time to exhaustion! Increase blood flow! Give you rock-hard erections! Change the oil in your car! What it actually does: Jack shit. What it does not do: Anything it’s supposed to do. But Alex, you’re wrong, I tried this shit and it worked really well! I felt stronger, more alert, had better workouts, etc. etc. Yeah, read the ingredients. You’ll notice lots of caffeine, creatine, and electrolytes. Chug some red bull, have a scoop of creatine monohydrate, and bring a Gatorade with you to the gym. And if you want rock-hard erections…can’t help you. That’s your own issue, keep that shit to yourself. Buy some Cialis from India or something. Honestly, this is a product that could have some limited usefulness for endurance athletes. Citrulline Malate in particular has been shown to have some useful effects on runners. But really, I’m not going to spend $35.00 for a tub of theory. And you can buy citrulline on its own for about a tenth the price if you want to try it. Name: Muscle Milk, NLarge 2, Nitro-Tech, etc. What it is: Meal replacement/protein powders What it’s supposed to do: Varies. What it actually does: These are all just meal replacements. Honestly, read the labels. The point of including these is simple: There are a lot of meal replacements and protein powders out there that advertise “special” benefits. Really, they’re all the same shit. Some have a lot of sugar or maltodextrin, others don’t. Some have MCT (medium chain triglycerides; fats burned quickly for energy), others do not. Take a look at all these, find one that tastes good, has a good balance of protein and carbs, maybe some fat, then find the best price possible. Don’t waste time on the hype. And these are just the basics. More information will be coming on prohormones, stimulants (ephedrine, caffeine, etc.). I’m still taking e-mails and answering as many as I can. If I don’t respond personally within a couple of days, you can pretty much guarantee I’m working your question into an article. So keep sending stuff my way, and make sure to tell me if you don’t want your name printed. |
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