Got Built?

My formal education is in Statistics – and while there are lies, damned lies and statistics, the fact is that statistics is a game of good guesswork.

Face it – we work in a black box. We gather and analyze data, approximating truth with our models. We never actually know if we’re right (Hell, as Statisticians, if we did, we’d be out of jobs!), but repeated experiments produce converging evidence – and like multiple beams of light, eventually there’s enough brightness that we’re pretty sure of what we’re seeing.

I’ve noticed that many of life’s mysteries follow a similar pattern.

So how about we cast some beams of light on bicep growth? (more…)

Some of you have been training for a little while now – possibly using a full body workout like Basically, Training or some other routine and you’re ready to move into something with a little more variety – but without being overly involved.

Filled with optimism and keen to advance your training you google “exercise routines” – and your head promptly explodes.

There really is a lot of crap out there – usually with tag-lines extolling the virtues of “switching it up” or “muscle-confusion” – so let me save you some time and offer you a better alternative for your next workout plan.

My friend Patrick Ward of Optimum Sports Performance is a is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and holds a Masters degree in Exercise Science.  Patrick posted the following workout on his blog, and I liked it so much I asked him if I could post it here.

He very kindly obliged.

(more…)

Fat loss is a funny little beast.

When you’re VERY fat, your body will drop fat easily (honest!) as soon as you do ANTYHING that lowers calories and incorporates some sort of exercise.

Thing is, it doesn’t work the same way from start to finish.

This is the part where you’ll hear the rep-counters say things like “you have to trick your body” or “confuse your muscles” … when in fact your body will neither be tricked nor confused. It will simply respond to the stimulus provided. If YOU are tricked and confused by the nonsense these bozos try to sell you, you’ll spend a lot of money and work WAY too hard trying to get the results you seek. Don’t know about you, but I’m too cheap and lazy to spend money and effort for sub-par results that wear me out and starve me to death. (more…)

Every diet works for at least one person, right?

I mean, you’d at least HOPE this was the case. You’d hope that for every diet book published, the method produced results for the person who wrote it – and it sometimes seems that every person who has somehow won the battle of the bulge has a book with which to offer us salvation.

Thing is, sometimes a method works in spite of what we do, and not because of what we do.

We’re all different.
Aren’t we? Different I mean? Well, sort-of. What unites us all is the calorie. The sad fact of the matter is that irritating little truth, the conservation of mass. You can’t gain weight unless you consume more food than you require, and you can’t lose it unless you consume less food than you require. Even if you keep your intake the same, if you burn more than you consume, you’re going to lose weight, no matter how metabolically challenged you are.

So we’re all the same then.
Well, sort-of. One noteworthy difference between us all is comfort.

Surprised? Nobody ever mentioned that part? They should – because if you aren’t comfortable, you will NOT stick to a reducing diet. This is the part where people who find that magical combination of foodstuffs and timing that keeps hunger at bay think they have “The Way”.

One of the most contentious of these comfort-food based diets is the Atkins diet. Now I’m not hating on Atkins – that diet gave me my life back. After those first few days of the “Atkins flu”, for the first time in my life, I felt comfortable, fed – and the weight FELL off me, at least initially. It stayed off, too – effortlessly – getting me from “obese” to “healthy lean”. But it did not get me ripped, and I could not understand why.

It took me a very long time to come around to the idea that if there is, indeed, an metabolic advantage to ketosis, it is slight at best, I finally had to accept The Great Unified Theory of Weight Loss: I ate less food on Atkins, and that’s why I lost weight.

So how come it didn’t keep going? (more…)

It’s funny how these things come and go. Back in the day, many of us performed circuit-training in our collective and never-ending quest to drop bodyfat. Circuit training promised us the world: stronger muscles and a leaner body, all at once. The problem, of course, was that circuits were inappropriately used as a substitute for heavy, low-rep strength training. Because of this, over time, this practice fell out of favour among those of us who consider ourselves the lifting bourgeoisie: 

“WE don’t DO circuits!” <Sniff!> (more…)

“So you wanna do the splits hey?”

That’s what my friend – dance instructor Kate Miller – said when I asked her to take on the daunting task of turning my un-bendy make-believe-bodybuilder-self into a pliable image of grace. Okay, I’m exaggerating. A lot. But I haven’t been able to do the splits since I was a kid and I thought it would be kinda cool to once again “assume the position”.

Here’s what Kate suggested. (more…)

	My doctor gave me ‘roids. I think. ‘Cept I’m not getting jacked… why, why, why…?Cows still baby moos? Tips on how to bring up your lagging calves (I should be so lucky…) Dieting you can live with – yep, it’s all about you! – FINALLY! (and of COURSE you can eat at bedtime!) Issue 11 >>
	How to track progress; should I spend my hard earned cash on supplements; tuna and mercury – is it safe?Issue 10 >>
	Another reason for creatine on a cut; functional training may not be that functional; meathead-friendly bodyfat-cut math (with an online calculator so you don’t have to think!)Issue 9 >>
	Training with antagonist pairs; managing maintenance; and the downside of eating raw eggs (in case “because it’s icky” wasn’t enough for you)Issue 8 >>
	Palm oil in peanut butter a problem? Knees diving in during squats? Colleagues asking you how to diet and it’s driving you nuts?Issue 7 >>
	Dropping water weight in a flash – three days before a powerlifting contest, no sauna suit. Also, creatine and caffeine together or not – exploring the available literature.Issue 6 >>
	Allergic to exercise? Also, insulin resistance and glycogen replenishment.Issue 5 >>
	Bringing up a lagging chest – block training vs alterations to Baby Got Back; incorporating loaded passive stretches.Issue 4 >>
	Men, women – do they need to train differently? A discussion with an aspiring personal trainer.Issue 3 >>
	‘The number one most important variable to fat loss success’ and ‘Sugar and it’s role in the body in relation to exercise.Issue 2 >>
	‘Feminine Fat Loss’, ‘Fish oil, flax oil?’ and ‘Help – I’m cutting and I’m freaking HUNGRY!!!”Issue 1 >>

Me me me me! – All of my wannabebig stuff. Click for updates – they’ll show up here before I get around to the individual posts.

Okay – I get asked for this a LOT.

My cutting diet is the same as my bulking diet: I carb cycle.

All meals are protein and fat EXCEPT the one before and the one or two after I train – those are protein and carb.

Note that there are conflicting thoughts on whether or not fat and carb should be in the same meal, and why (or why not). My own reasons are comfort-driven: carbs are yummy, but they make me hungry. Since I don’t really NEED starchy carbs outside the training window, I leave ‘em out of all other meals.

I find I have a better workout if I’ve had SOME starchy carbohydrate before training, so I have a small serving of carb an hour or two before I train. If it’s more than an hour before, I’ll use slower food – sweet potato, meat and broccoli with a little butter. If it’s closer to when I train, I stick with faster carb and protein – maybe oats and cottage cheese – but I’ll avoid going higher in fiber and fat.

On the other hand, you want the post-workout meal to get to work right away, so it’s prudent to keep fat and fiber out of that meal.

Read What a bodybuilder eats… for food selection ideas.

This is how I design a diet: (more…)

How often do we hear this one? You’d think weight loss would be simple to achieve – it SOUNDS so simple.

Until you try to do it.

We have all read the articles that tell us how losing a few pounds of fat will improve our health in any of a number of ways, but they never seem to go far enough – HOW do we get it off, AND keep it off?
There are a few pieces to this puzzle that need to be addressed in wading through the information overload on this topic. One of them is the concept of weight loss vs. fat loss. The other is the relative advantages of resistance training and cardiovascular exercise.

So let’s start wading… (more…)

I got into a discussion that resulted in the following broad-stroke summary of how the process of fat loss evolves over time – or at least, my current understanding of this process.

In the early stages, while you have a lot of fat to spare, it’s really not all that difficult to get weight off: eat a little less, move a little more, you’ll see a drop.  But as the body leans out, there’s an increasing need for strategy – and a decreasing need for calorie-burning workouts as your attention shifts toward maintaining muscle size by lifting heavy and short.  (more…)