Dom Bower Exercise

Dom Bower Transformation

2019-01-13T03:11:00.000-08:00

Firstly if you’re reading this and wondering who the heck is Dom Bower?
I’m a professional property photographer with a company that makes property videos and floor pans and images which you can see here http://www.movingproperty.tv/. I also make YouT ube Videos. I spend a lot of time in behind a computer, editing photos, videos and emails and a lot of driving to locations for shoots. I'v always had an interest in strength and fitness, I would love watching Worlds Strongest Man on TV and regularly went to the gym in my teens, but then Universty, alcohocl and freedom to eat what i wanted resulted in me getting pretty squishy around the edges. That coupled with a car crash that herniated several discs in my spine make it almost impossible for me to even put on a sock never mind lift any weights, really put me out of the game.

My issue was food, sweets actually, i love my crisps, chocolate and sausage rolls. For work I drive around the city a lot and that requires a lot of change for the parking meters which, although i would get a bag of 50s, would run out quickly and as a result I would pop into a corner shop and buy something under a pound and hand over a £5er to get change. this usually was a Yorkey or a Galaxy or a McCoys Crisps and in any given day I found out I was eating up to 1000Kcal a day of junk.

I had managed to get myself to 104kg (16.5 stone) (5f 11inch tall) and got a shock when I saw this video of myself

Back to the gym part 1, 2 and 3

2015-12-07T02:58:00.004-08:00

I have not been in a gym or lifted weights for 18 months. I blew my back out from a combination of car crash and squats and had a fully herniated disk in my spine which was due for surgery

you can see the disk at the l5-s1 joint protruding out of its normal position and pressing on the nerve which then goes down to my legs causing Sciatica which is pain down your legs due to damage to your nerve higher up in the body. (the disk above also looks pretty crap and is putting some more pressure on the spinal nerve and is pretty see through meaning normal Disk Degeneration disease, yeah!)

It crippled me. Litterly. Couldn't even sit. and got slightly addicted to painkillers.

Anyway, onto the point of this blog post.
I am back. (but still without a spine)
squats and deadlifts and anything that puts load onto my spine is out of the question. So over head presses are scary and not going to happen.

So bench, and seated rows and pull downs are all go.

Firstly where was I before the injury and where am i now?

Before the injury
Bench
managed 125kg

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2X9iPh8HHLA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

and again 124kg and 60kg for 24reps afterwards

Current condition

Bench 60kg x5
pull up - 0 Pull down 50kg x2

Quite the drop in performance then.

So how am i going to get back into it.
I have joined a gym. It has all the stuff i need and even has showers so I can go in the morning before work (if i am not looking after or dropping off my 15month old at nursery)

Now if you read above there is a further complication, I have a 15month old legend (baby boy) and with that comes some further restrictions. Going for a massive gym session for a few hours and destroying my muscles and going past failure and deep into fatigue resulting in massive amounts of DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness) and IOMS (instant onset) which will make me sore, tired irritable and weak for days afterwards is not a recipe for a happy marriage or dealing with a wriggling baby and a dirty nappy in a calm and adult manner.

So the connundrum is 1) how do I get my strength back as fast as possible and b) not end up divorced.
The good thing is I have a plan. and it may sound surprising.

MAX my Bench + Pull down EVERY DAY

This involves following a method I first tried with squats from a post on T-Nation https://www.t-nation.com/training/maxing-on-squats-and-deadlifts-every-day regarding high frequency heavy weight exercise. Check it out for a read.

This also means other than my 7-10 min warm up on the stair machine (5 -7 min warm down), and 2-3 warm up sets on each exercise, I am going to do no more than 3 sets of a max of 3 reps each on each exercise) and my whole workout can be done in under 30mins, but trying to do that each day will be a full 3.5 hours of weights a week.

Rules when doing this

1) Dont get psyched up before working on the maxes
2) no pre-workout
3) Use perfect form. (If I can lift more but with bad form it is considered a fail)
4) After the maxes just go chill and stretch and do a warm down.

Results so far
day 1
routine of
bar x20 (warm up)
60kg x5
65 x 3
70 x 3
75 x 2
80 x 1

Back (didnt do)

From here on in, Consider that i have done the warm up reps and weights upto the max if i dont get 3 reps on it then I shall write it down. additionally all workouts are done at around 5pm after work, before my wife has picked up Logan from nursery.

Day 2
same work up as before
75 x2
80 x 2
(then 60x12 for fun)
(Pull down)
73 x 1

Day 3
bench
75 x 3
80 x2
60 x 8
(Pull down)
73 x1

Day 4
Wednesday, Crap night sleep, starting to get a cough
bench
80x2
60 x9 (good pause reps) then 5 pause reps
Pull down
73 x 2
45kg pause reps x 8
(very hard to resist not doing more exercises and reps as bummed that there has been no improvement, however must remind myself, this is only day 4 and the aim is to not tire myself out)

Day 5
Thursday (even crapper night sleep, annoying tickle cough)
warm up with some deadmill
Bench
80x 3 (last one was sketchy)
60kg x 10 Pause + 6

Pull down
(making sure i see the rope stop for each rep (not quite a pause rep))
66x 3
73 x2
45 x 10 Pause reps

Day 6
Friday Morning workout before work.
Bench
75x 3
80x 2 (felt good)
60 x 8(3 second pause reps) + 5

Back
66x 3
73x 2
45kg x 9 (3 second pause reps)

Day 7
Off
Life got in the way, looking after logan and by the time i was free the gym was closed on saturday at 8pm

Day 8
Morning workout at 10am, stairs, then deadmill then back first today.
Bench (slight change to the warm up sets, missed out 65kg, seems like an unnecessary set)
Bar (20gk) 20 Reps
60kg x 5
70kg x3
75 x 3
80kg x3 (WHOOP!)
82.5 x (20 second rest pause reps ) 3 (1+1+1)
60kg x (3 second pause reps) 7 + 5

Pull down
66x3
73x3 (whoop)
79 x 1

Felt good after workout so did some additional work
Rotary cuff (4kg)
bent over bicep curs (12 kg)
Standing unilateral arnold shoulder presses (8kg)

OverHead Squats (Bar) x 5 Very happy with this
and generally feeling more positive about my body shape today

Day 9
Monday after work
Bench
80x3
85 x 1 (felt good, didnt have the balls to try a seond rep)
60kg x9 (3 second pause reps)

Pull down
73x3
79x1
(then did more over head squat, managed 6 with just the bar, then added 2x5kg plates for a 30kg and managed a few sets of 3-4 reps there

Day 10
Tuesday after work, Gym busy Did back first
Bench
60x5
70 x 3
80 x 3
85 x 2 (second rep was sketchy)
60x9 (3 second pause reps)

Pull down
73x3
79x1

Day 11
After work, after Logie gone to bed (Bench First, bugger all warm up)
50kg x 10
60x 3
70x 3
80 x 3
85 x 2 (felt good, but didnt have the balls to go for a third yet)
60x 8 (3 second pause reps)

Back
73x3
Shower then home

Day 12
Thursday
bar x 20
60x 3
80 x 3
85x 3 (whoop Got it!)
87.5 x 1 (20 second rest pause reps) + 1 +1

Pull down
45 x5
59 x3
73 x3
79x 2

Day 13
(off, as kim had her xmas night out so no chance of going to the gym as she came back at midnight)

Day 14
Saturday Morning, before my xmas work party
Bench
60
70
80
85x3
90 x (20 second rest pause reps) 1+1
70 x 10
60 x (3 second pause reps) 7

Went to xmas party but didnt drink alcohol, only water. as I decided to drive. party was good but no chance of me going near a dance floor and felt like i wish i had drunk so as to have more fun but the thought of a hang over with a 15 month old child was off putting enough to just stick with water.

Day 15
sunday during logies dinner time (5.30-6.30pm)
Massive lie in this morning, totally knackered from yesterday which was (hospital with logie, shopping, cinima to see starwars, then xmas party till midnight)

Bench
60 -70- 80-
87.5kg x 3 (Whoop!)
92.5 x 1 + 1
70kg x amrap 10 reps
60kg x Amrap 15 reps

Back
Neutral grip pull ups!
x2 + 2 +1 +1

(Shoulders)
Unilateral arnold presses)
10kg x 10
14 x 8
18 x 6
20 x5

Day 16
Bench
60 x 5
80 x 3
90 x 2
60x 9 (3 second pause reps)

Back
Pull ups!
2 (Whoop!)
Pull down
45 x 5
59 x 3
73 x 3
79 x 1
(then another pull up
then 45 x 10 (3 second pause reps)

Day 17
off Kims parents over so out for dinner straight after work

Day 18
Xmas eve (big session as off for 2 days afterwards)
Warm up
Step machine and Skipping
Bench
60 x 5
70 x 3
80 x 3
90 x 3 (whoop)
95 x 1 + 1
70 x 11reps (personal best by 1 rep)
60 x 7 (3 second pause reps)

Pull ups x 2
Pull downs
45 x 8 (coming to a stop each rep)
59 x 5
66 x 3

Seated Flys (machine)
59kg x 8 ( 3 second pauses) followed directly by
10 reps of (10 second pause, +rest pause reps)

Over head press
3 sets of 3 with 30kg

Unilateral Standing Arnold Press
12kg x 10
16 x 8
20 x 6
22 x 3

Hanging bicep curls
(3 second pause reps)
8kg x 5
14 x 5
18 x 4

Seated Unilateral Row (machine)
20kg x 6 (3 second pause reps)
30 x 5
35 x 4

Step machine to warm down
then 2 x pull ups
7 x dips on the way out

Day 19 + Day 20
Off due to xmas and boxing day

Day 21
Bench
60 x 5
80 x 3
92.5 x 2 (second one sketchy)
97.5 x 1
60kg (for max reps) 17 Followed by triples rest pause style for 5 sets

Pull ups x 3 (whoop)

Unilateral arnold press
12 x 10
16 x 8

Hanging bicep curls
10 x 10 (3 second pause reps)
16 x 6

Day 22
Bench
60 x 6
80 x 3
92.5 x 2 (good second rep, just didn't have the balls for a third)
100kg x 1 (WHOOP!) Personal best by 2.5kg
65 x 12 followed by triples rest pause style for 5 sets

Back 45x 10
73 x 6

Hanging bicep curls
12kg x 7 (3 second pause reps)
16 x 8

Seated flys (machine)
66kg x (3 second pause reps) 10 + (10 second max contraction pause reps) x 7

Pull ups x 3

Day 23, 24, 25, 26
Off New year in highlands

Phase 2

Day 27
New year new start
After having such a long time off, I am starting my training a-new with a higher rep set of 6 reps. all pause reps.

Bench
60x 6 (all with pause reps)
70 x 6
75 x 6
80 x 6
82.5 x 3

Pull Ups
3

Pull downs
New year New start, going with ultra wide position on the pull down bar from here on in.
39 x 6
52 x 6 (bad)
45 x 6
(25kg single arm pull downs x 7)

Dips x 7

Day 28 day 29
Off Ill, Big sinus pain possible man flu.

Day 30
Bench
60 x 6 (all with 2 second pause)
70 x 6
80 x 6 (barely)
82.5 x 4 (better than before i was ill so thats a plus)
60kg x 15

Back
Super wide pull down
32 x 6
39 x 6
45 x 6
52 x 6 (good)
59 x 4
Pull ups x 3

Day 31
Wednesday 6th January
Bench
50 x 6 (good pause reps)
60x 6
82.5x 6 (really tough pause reps)
50kg (as many reps as possible) x 15

Pull ups
4 (WHOOP) Personal best by 1 rep
Pull down (super wide pause reps)
32 x 6
39x 6
45 x 6
52 x 6
59 x 6
32x 15

Day 32
Bench
50x 6
70x 6
85kg x 5 Good pause reps then last rep a bit fast
95 x 1 then x 3 reps Personal best by 2 reps
100kg x 1
Pull ups 4
Pull down
39x 6
52 x 6
66 x 1
32 x 11

Day 33
Bench
40, 60, 70, 80 all pause reps x 6
90kg x2
Pull ups
4, then 3

Day 34
60,70,80, pause reps x 6
90 x 3
100 x 2 (whoop) Personal best by 1 rep
60kg x max reps 22 Personal best by 5 reps
80kg triples (rest pause) x 5 sets

Day 35
40x 10, 70,80, pause reps x 6
90 x 3
70 x max reps 13 Personal best by 2 reps

Pull ups
2 +2

Day 36
50,70,85 x 6 pause reps
95 x 1
100x 1
102.5 x1
105x 1
107.5 x 1 (WHOOP) personal best by 7.5kg
70kg x 5 rest pause x 7 sets

Pull downs
32,39, 45,52, 59 x 6 reps
Pull ups
5 REPS (WHOOP)

Day 37
Bench
60,70,87.5kg x 6 pause reps awesome
95x3 +1 +1

Pull ups 3

Day 38
60,70,80 x 6 pause reps
90x 3
95x1
100x1
105 x1
80kg Max reps x 13 (Whoop) personal best by 7 reps
pull ups x 3
Pull downs
45, 52,59,66 x 6 (whoop)

day 39
50,80 x 6
90 x 1
100x 1
105x 1
107.5x1
110x1 (whoop) Personal best by 2.5kg
85kg x max reps 9 Personal best by 3
80kg triples x 5 sets

Day 40
off

Day 41
60,70,80,x6
90x6 (whoop) Personal best by 3 reps (awesome pause reps, felt fuzzy afterwards)
100x 3 (whoop) Personal best by 1 rep
105x 1
60kg x max reps 25 (whoop) Personal best by 3 reps

Day 42
60,80
92.5x6 (whoop)
100x1, 105x1, 110x1,
112.5x1 (whoop)
87.5kg x Triples x 5 sets

Pull ups x 4
seated row 20kgs x 10
30kgs x 5 second pauses x 3 reps

Day 43
60,70, 80x 6
90x3, 100x1, 105,107.5 x 1
70kg x 17 reps (whoop)
95kg pause reps 3

Pull ups x 5
seated row 27.5x6 reps x 4 sets

Day 44 (no warm up what so ever before this workout)
60, 80x6
90x 3
95 x 3 + 1 fast rep
100x1, 105x 1
80x13 (whoop)

Day 45 (feeling ill)
Started off with some deadlift
40kg x 6, 6, 10
Pull down next
45,52,59,66 x6
Benchpress last
60, 80 x 6
90 x 5

Day 46 (off, looking after logie)

Day 47
got a cough and had a crap night sleep
bench
60-70-80 x 6 good pause reps
90x 3
95 x 4 (good ones)
100x1
105 x 2 (whoop)
107.5x1 (thought about doing a second)
110x 1
90 x 9 (whoop)

Pull down
45,59,66x6
Seated Flys
66kg x 3 second pause x 12 reps
+10s rest paus x 8
Deadlift,
50kg x 5,5
Pull ups x 6 (whoop)
Arnold presses
22x 5
26 x 5 (whoop)

Day 48 (up in dundee before going out drinking)
60,80,90,100,105,110
85x triples x 10 sets

Pull ups x 7 reps (Whoop)
Deadlift 60kg x 5
over head press 60kg x 5 (bit scary for my spine)
bicep curls 16x 5 (3s pause reps)
18x4, 20x3

Day 49 (hung over)
Day 50 with family

Day 51
60x6, 70,80
90x3
95x 5 good ones (whoop)
100x1
105x1
87.5x triples x 8 sets

Day 52 off sore

Day 53
60x 6
80x5
95x3
100x2 (good pause reps)
105x1
107.5x2 (whoop)
95 x 6 pause reps (Whoop)

Pull down 45 x 10

Day 54 Off

Day 55
60, 80,90,100,105, 107.5, 110
112.5kg x1 (Equal current max)
100kg x 5 (whoop)
60x 22

Pullups
x 8 (whoop)
Bicep curls
16x 7
18x 5
20x 4

Day 56
Sunday morning (fasted)
60x10
90x 5
97.5x (pause reps) x 4 good ones
102.5 x 2
107.5x2 (whoop)
110x1
90kg x Triples x 7 sets

Seated unilateral row
25x10
30s (3second pauses) x 5
32.5 x 5
35x5

Machine Flys
66x 15
86 x 5
100x8

Pull ups x 4

Day 57
60x6
80x3
100x2
105x2
110x1
115x1 (whoop)253LBS
80x6

Day 58
Off

Day 59
70,90,100,105,110,112.5
115x1 (equal best)
80x 16 (whoop)

Arnold unilateral dumbell standing press
22x6
26x6
30x5 (a bit pushy)

Flys
66x10
100x8
120x4

Day 60- 67 Gym Closed due to flooding

Phase 3

This phase is for month 3. The first two months have been working on developing strength and form as fast as possible

Day 1 (Friday february 12th, 2016)

How to Drop Weight and Get fit

2015-05-22T07:25:00.002-07:00

Trying to lose weight

tip 1, Dont go by the daily recommeded guidlines for calorie consumption. Which for adult men is 2500Kcal and for adult women is 2000Kcal.
The first thing you need to do is find out your RMR or BMR (resting metabolic rate) which will let you know how many calories a day you will be burning just by being alive.
there are a lot of bodyweight scales that can take your measurements of height, age, sex and body fat percentages and advise you what your BMR is. For myself I am 181cm tall, 31years old, 21% body fat, 38% muscle male and my BMR is 1850Kcal
Then eyeball your average daily aditional expenditure. If you are having a rest day and you are literly sitting in the house watching a marathon session of Game of thrones then your additional expenditure will be pretty damn close to your BMR however if you go for a 20km hill run... well that is a different thing.
If your 9-5 life involves you sitting in an office sending emails, then your 5-9 life involves you going home standing in your kitchen, making your dinner then watching tv before having a bath... guess what, its still pretty much the same as your BMR. Dont assume your 40 minute yoga class twice a week will make you burn a lot of calories.

To drop weight and hopefully fat, you need to reduce the amount of calories your body consumes compared to expends. (be careful with this as eating 2000Kcal of almonds may mean your mouth has consumed all those calories but when you shit them all out almost hole the next morning, then you can seriously be off the mark with the amount of calories your body has actually consumed/absorbed.
But if you drop too many calories then there can be negative preoccupations to that as well.
the biggest tip is to try and be within the range of a drop of 15-20% calories... a week. trying to be that accurate every day is impossible but easier to gauge when looking at the calories over a week.

So if sitting on your ass doing nothing and trying to lose weight. (good luck with that) you will have to be consuming less than 1500Kcal (for me) a day which is possible but incredibly dull.

Far better is to burn more calories via exercise. however a big shock to some people is how few calories are burnt during some forms of exercise in comparison to their Percieved level of exertion (The Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE)

To have the most effective fat burning and body changing exercise I recommend doing Fasted Morning cardio
and if you want to get fit at the same time you need your hear rate at around 70%-90% of max (for a 31 year old that is133-171bpm.
The early stages of taking on an exercise program having your heart rate around 140 for an extended period of time could be incredibly taxing and difficult. but the fitter you get the easier it is to the point where you will able to hit a treadmil or cross trainer and have your heart rate at that level for an hour and barely get out of breath or break much of a sweat. and that is when you need to start pushing yourself up to the more 171bpm levels.

The next thing to do and is possibly the MOST IMPORTANT is being able to do some form of WEIGHT TRAINING!!!
This may not be the best for losing 'weight' but it is very important that while trying to lose weight you dont inadvertantly end up losing muscle and weight training will help you keep that hard earned muscle.

Alternatively
HILL SPRINTS
nothing else matters

and lastly
as promoted by any health professional

Drink LOADS of WATER!

Dom's HIIT Examples

2013-10-23T02:17:00.000-07:00

HIIT - High Intensity Interval Training - Has been reported to have shitloads of benefits for so many people and athletes. Providing Shorter workouts which have Greater effect in Less Time. Awesome!

15 minutes of interval training could have more benefits than an hour of regular cardio.

There are a bunch of different methods all of which should be tailored to your current level of fitness and strength. It will also be beneficial if you make it sport specific, i.e. doing HIIT on the rowing machine may not have a huge effect on your sprinting ability. However if you are not a sportsman and just looking for a better all round fitness and body composition then do a variety of exercises

One very popular method is the Tabata Workout/protocol.
Choose your exercise - running, rowing, cycling, swimming - and go at it Hell for leather / balls to the wall for 10seconds, then rest for 20seconds.
10 on, 20 off
Simple
Do that 8 times (or more) - (8 is not a magical number that must be adheared to but does give a rough estimate of a minimum 4 minute workout)

If you are super fit and not totally exhausted after those 8, then keep going, however remember, that if you are not going balls to the wall then you are not getting the benefits. The aim should be to have yourself massively fatigued, unable to recover, wanting to cry, falling off the machine by even just the 4th set never mind the 8th!
If you are not an incredibly fit and highly trained individual, and you get to 8 sets and think you can do more...... you clearly need to look up "balls to the wall" and try harder!
It should be to the point that when someone asks you 'what would you rather do - jog for an hour in the rain and snow, OR do a 4 minute Tabata workout' - your immediate first though should be a jog will be so much nicer.

Here are a couple of my Protocols I use.

Rowing. Extra Rep Per Minute.

This one is easy and a good challenge.
Set the rowing machine to max resistance and change the display settings to Watts
Row for the first minute at a relaxed pace (~70wpm)
At the start of the second minute do 1 super hard pull. and note how high the Watts measurement goes up to (usually over 200wpm)
Bring your rowing power back down to 70wpm rest of that minute.
At the start of the next minute do 2 Reps as hard as possible. (again note how high the Watts goes up 350wpm?)
Again drop your rowing power down to your comfortable range 70wpm for the remaining part of that minute. At the start of the next minute do 3 reps balls to the wall)
Continue this process of adding one more extra rep per minute.
There will come a point when no matter how many extra reps you have you can't increase your wattage
However try to beat it 3 times.
In total this for me is an around a 9 minute mark. Usually I cant get any more increased power after 6 reps and the drop in rest time between sets (due to rowing for longer) means I am not able to get any more recovered.

The plan is that I both increase my WPM in each of the reps and managed to do more minutes.

Rowing Tabata style:
if the above protocol is too confusing then just to the bog standard
10 seconds balls to the wall (that will be around 5-6 reps) then 20 seconds recover (stop if you have to).
Repeat 8 times+

Adjust that protocol for your level of fitness but at the same time I suggest a good warm up before hand (which my protocol has already integrated in itself) both in terms of getting your heart rate up and also preparing your back and legs for the sudden increases in force in the 10 seconds ON.

Treadmill Sprints + Hills.
Sprinting is awesome, no doubt about that. Very few people do it, and also there may be a bit of danger to doing it in the gym where you could loose your footing and faceplant into the spinning track under your feet. Which wont look cool.

Here is the basic idea.
First minute Speed 4 - Incline 0
Minute 2 Speed 20 - Incline 15
Minute 3 + 4 Rest

So far this is not what happens.
What actually happens is that just after the first minute I hold the speed button up until it reads 20kph, then I press the Gradient button up until it reaches 15%. By the time I have taken my finger off both of the buttons I have done 35 seconds (of increasing difficulty) But the treadmill is still increaseing its gradient as it is slower to change its actual angle compared to its digital readout angle.
And i just sprint for as long as i can.
so far I have only managed to get to 50s within the minute before i have to slam down the stop button.
When I hit the stop button I bring my runing down and then press restart/resume and get settings down to Speed4 and incline 0 and then walk for 2 minutes to get my heart rate back down before trying again.

The plan is to be able to run for longer (and subsequently a higher angle) and get my heart rate to drop faster between sets.
Todays example My heart rate went up to 175BPM, then in the 2 minutes rest it dropped to 135pbm
The fitter i am in the future, the quicker my heart rate may drop between sets, indication a greater replenishment of energy and a greater ability do do more sets.

How much Weight Can I lose in 2 Days?

2013-08-28T05:13:00.002-07:00

Here are the food diaries for what i ate while i was trying to loose as much weight as possible.

I could have just stopped eating for 3 days but every time I have done that my digestive system also shuts down and i end up not doing a poo for the whole time, so here I still ate a good amount of food to keep me "regular"

Day 1, when I weighed myself at 88.8kg I burnt off 525Kcal with some gardening

Day 1 was really this day, this is when i pretty well controlled what I was eating but also destroyed it on the cross trainer and other machines, burning over 1000kcal

The second day... this may look odd, but the weigh in time was just before lunch, and by that time I had already sweated out and exercised out 700Kcal that morning and weighed myself,

the second part of that where you see how i ate a shit ton of food. thats part 2 of this experiment, how much weight can i put back on in a day?!

Self Diagnostic before workout

2013-06-21T06:19:00.002-07:00

Here is the list in relation to the video here

A)What you have eaten
b) when you ate it
c) what you drank
d)Supplements you have taken and their timing
e) Muscle soreness and fatigue
f) time of day you are working out at
g) temperature and weather
h) warm up, all day or none
i) clothing you are wearing
j) Sleep you have had
k) Gym buddy you are with
l) music you are listening to

Pros and Cons of Morning Workouts: Best time to train

2013-05-24T04:33:00.000-07:00

No doubt I am a big fan of my morning workouts before work. Last year when I was trying to drop weight a college in my office put the idea of going to the gym before work. I thought it rediculous and far too difficult to keep up. I did it once.

When I walked into work that day I had an all over feeling of righteousness! I was coming into work fully away, refreshed, and already done more exercise than anyone else in the office.

But could I keep on doing it? and is there any additional benefits of it?

Well so far I have been doing it for over a year now. My daily time line is like this

Wake up at 6am
Check youtube and facebook till 6.40am
Drive to the gym and park by 7am
workout till 8.30am
shower and drive to work 9am.
9-5.30 in office working.
5.30 drive home (or go for second workout with Kim)
9pm, head to bed
10pm try and be asleep
10.30, deffo asleep

Ok so what are the Pros/benefits of a Morning workout

1) Gym is quieter

Easier to get to equipment
music (crappy gym music) usually quieter, so my own music is better
No distracting gym douchbags/peacocking meatheads
Not likely to skip the gym cos something during the day got in the way
Drive to the gym is quieter (faster, less fuel, less frustration with traffic)
Changing rooms are quieter, less locker hunting and less lockerroom fancyboys (ie the guys who sit around in the changingrooms longer than they really should)
Parking can be cheaper or free (if parking on the street befroe 8.30 - in Edinburgh anyway)

2) Fight Catabolism with some anabolic workout

The morning time your body is pumping out a lot of catabolic hormones (break down hormones), to counter this you can either A) Eat - thus spiking insulin and additionally giving the body fuel in an easy form, rather than having to try and get it from stores, ie fat) B) by doing a heavy workout, high intensity or what not, you produce anabolic hormones and work the muscles so more likely that any negative effects of the catabolic hormones will not affect your precious muscle.

3) Boost Catabolism and burn loads of fat.

In the morning you are in a fasted state. If you decide to not eat before you go the the gym you can increase your catabolic hormones which will be hunting your body for energy stores... which usually is in the form of fat. And combined with the anabolic hormones produced as mentioned above then you can have a double effect of fat burning and muscle saving workout

4) Boosts metabolism.

That is kinda already mentioned above
but also
Turbo charges your body first thing in the morning, raising your blood pressure, heart rate, and help you squeeze out a poo first thing in the morning can potentially make your body stay in a more elevated physiological state throughout the day.
Imagine a car having the accelerator slammed at the start of a quarter mile. It goes up to 100mph then the car coasts to the finish where it then puts on the breaks as it passes the line
Imagine a second car. at the start line the owner puts it in first and tries to nudge the car off the start line just by working the clutch with the engine at an idol turn over and he slowly reaches 20 miles an-hour then in the last 50 meters of the track he then slams the accelerator and reaches 100mph but then crosses the finish line and slams on the break (the finish line is you going to sleep)

5) Fasted workout is easy.

We all like a coffee in the morning, so down one of these then destroy the gym very little time to be thinking about food or hunger for that matter so doing a good fat burning workout is far less mentally challenging
having your digestive system (parasympathetic) in a rest mode - its done all its digesting through the night, means that there will be less energy being used in your stomach when you are working out so that you can force more effort to the skeletal muscles.
No intestinal discomfort from having eaten something during the day that may be tough on your tummy.

6) Really makes you want to go to bed early

Studies have shown that 8 hours of sleep is not the same as 8hours of sleep.
What has been shown is that going to sleep at 12 and waking up at 8am is not as beneficial to your body as going to bed nice and early 9-10 and waking up at 6am. The greatest burst of Growth hormone is in the first wave of REM and this is shown to be greatly boosted when people sleep earlier than going to bed late.
A lie-in has far less benefit (physiologically) than an early nights sleep.
Additionally, pre workout supplements before an evening gym session could still have large quantities of caffeine floating around your body 4 hours later. so trying to get to sleep at 10pm after going to the gym at 7 could be difficult.

7) Less Pollution + Less hot

If you are doing any cardio outside, then a morning workout will have far less airborne pollution as generally during the night there are less cars, trucks etc. Getting fresh air in an evening walk could be far less good for you than previously thought due to the amount of pollution you may be sucking into your lungs. Running in parks, in the morning, in the wind, in the rain, are better options and especially if you suffer from asthma.
Our body produces a lot of heat when it is working out, working out in hot climates or even just a hot day that you are not used to is far more taxing than in a cooler day (i am not talking cold!) The morning of a sunny day may be the time when you are able to do your most productive cardio as the temperature will be low compared to the potential sweltering heat of an evening.

8) Superior feeling

You feel a bit morally superior, a bit more intelligent, a bit more awesome when you go into work and all the other staff are there shuffling around trying to wake up and you come striding in chugging some ice cold water.
It also means that you have done your workout while others are still waking up, and in the evening you can spend your time more constructively either at work or with family and friends and not be a social outcast that insists they cant go to that party cos they cant miss a gym session.

9) Appetite regulation?

debatable concept here, that by working out in the morning you somehow can have more control over your appetite during the day. I am unconvinced that the timing of the workout will have as much control or effect over your hunger and food choices throughout the day as does the type of exercise you are doing. For example when I was doing the '24 day squat challenge' where i worked up to a max lift every day. very low reps, but heavy weights. my hunger went through the roof! but if i do a morning jog or high intensity cardio, I can happily not eat for the rest of the day and be strict with my fast till 5pm. This may be something which is proven by research but has little real effect in real life situations.

But are there any cons?

Lets look at this.

1) The whole day warm up is missed.

If I am going for a Personal best, or a monster session I want to be on top of my game. I mentally start to prepare a full 24hours before hand. This may sound overkill, but if I know I am aiming for a deadlift tomorrow, then today I would start visualising it today. I would also start paying attention closely to how my body feels and which muscles may benefit from an extra bit of foam rolling (or rolling pinning) the night before. Then on the day I do simple movements that will mimic the exercise later on. Some bodyweight squats (just a couple at a time) if doing squats or deadlifts, or some pressups (no more than 5 at a time) if doing bench etc. The idea is not to tire-out or fatigue, but just to warm up the movement patterns in my brain and CNS, as well as just get the body use to the stretch i may feel in certain muscles that i will be using.

2) Fasted training

If your not used to it then it is going to seem far more difficult, however you can always just scoff a banana or 2 while you are on your way to the gym.
If you cant workout without eating, then it may be the case that you would have to wake up earlier, eat as soon as you wake up, so that you have at least an hour and a half for that food to be digested out of the stomach before you go and blast the weights. This would require getting up even earlier and being very prepared with food.

3) Spinal loading early in the morning

This one I need to research some more on as at the moment it is just gym bro advice.
Seemingly during the night your spine 'hydrates' ie there is a lot of water that is soaked up in the spine as you lie flat on your back. This seemingly makes it a bit squishy and not so good if doing heavy spinal weight lifting exercise such as, deadlift, OHP, squat etc
I do know that in the morning you are meant to be a bit taller than you are in the evening, and this extention of the body may make things harder. Need to find scholarly articles confirming this though.

4) Time restricted

You have to go to work. And work always starts at a certain time. If you are 10 mins late getting out of the house, or the traffic is busier than usual, or your alarm goes off late, then there is usually no extra time for you to do an extra bit of work in the gym.

5) Low gym energy

Sometimes the best workouts are ones when there is a lot of peacocking, a lot of gym douchbags and a lot of loud music blasting everywhere, ie when it is busy in the evening. Sometimes the fact that you have to wait for a machine or bench builds up your frustration and makes you want to just destroy the reps and sets.

6) Winter mornings suck ass. Warmups not optimal

Getting up in the pitch dark, getting out of your bed into a cold room, going out to your car while it is freezing cold, driving along to the gym in the dark…. is not easy
There is some research indicating that after waking there is an optimal time zone for strength (usually around 3hours after waking) there are a bunch of ideas behind this. Neural activation, circadian rhythms, hormonal fluctuations and even just the general warm up of your synovial fluid in your joints… guess this is kinda the same as the spinal dehydration thing mentioned earlier. However that is research science which may have little reflection to real world purposes and have negligible effects compared to the time actually spent warming up (ie treadmill, skipping and foam rolling) and sheer motivation.

7) Shattered for the rest of the day

Contentious arguement here, some people feel buzzed after a workout, others want to puke and go to sleep. depending on what kind of workout you are doing you could be either skipping into work or faceplanting into your keyboard at 10.30

In the end, The timing of when you exercise is not as important as the amount of effort, intensity and consistency you put into your training.
Morning training may seem daunting to the un-initiated but like all gym go'ers know, the gym is a habit. Once you start going in the morning you can develop that habit so that it is not as difficult as you first thought. Once in the routine, of a morning workout and early to bed, then you can wake up and destroy the gym just as well as you could have done during an evening workout.
My only advice would be to give it a try. If you have never done it before, don't poo-poo it until you have given it a go. Pack your gym bag the night before, have your coffee and supplements laid out in the kitchen the night before and set your alarm early and put it in another room so you have to get up to turn it off. Go to bed early and get ready for a good workout. A positive mental attitude will do far more than a sluggish half-ass attempt at anything.

Never Stretch before Running!

2013-05-23T03:38:00.002-07:00

Measures of Health

2013-05-23T03:36:00.002-07:00

How do we measure health?
Its actually more difficult than you may think. We can easily measure ill health, disease, viruses, inability to work, pain, etc but Health is far more than just the lack of ill health.

Here is a quick list of Some Markers of "Health"
1)Weight
2) BMI
3) body fat percentage
4) Cholesterol
5) Blood Pressure
6) Resting Heart rate
7) Energy levels
Relaxing Sleep (quality not quantity)
9) Aerobic performance (vo2max and lactate thresholds)
10) Digestive function (good pooing ability)
11) Reduction of illness and pain.
12) Sweat v Body oder
13) T-cell count
14) Blood sugar stability
15) mood
16) hair, skin and nails condition
17) Cognitive ability - concentration
18) Appetite
19) Positive Mental attitude
20) Social interaction

Health involves both physical, psycological and sociological factors, of which the the importance of each change with different times and developments in our lives.

Good link
http://www.polity.co.uk/shortintroductions/samples/bury-sample.pdf

A Shitload of Sets?

2013-03-26T09:50:00.002-07:00

I am not one to fear the squat, nor am I a fearer of high frequency training.
I do however have a distinct hatred for the pain that comes with high rep high intensity training low rest that is accustom to 'bodybuilding' routines. And anyway all i want to do is get stronger, not bigger. being bigger just makes running/jogging more difficult.

Previously I have done a squat challenge where I challenged myself to Squat EVERYDAY for 24 days, and although on the first 15 days my performance dropped and I was very close to giving up thinking this is a waste of time, by day 19 I was making some new Personal Bests and by the results day 4 days after finishing, I managed to squat a full 10kg more than I had at the start of the month!

Since then in the last 2 months my squats have stayed pretty much the same but I have managed to get a tiny bit of an increase bringing my current max up to 134kg.

My thoughts just now are that I could go and re-do that challenge, but there was a major issue with that training programme.
My appetite went through the roof, and I lost almost all control over my diet. There is something about High intensity but low volume (and low exersion relatively) that spikes my appetite and makes me crave food like nothing else! so for the last 2 months I have not only been trying to keep the strength and increase it but also get my weight, eating pattern and diet back on track.

So new idea, sprung to my head after seeing a thing for the Russian squat programme found here
This looked like fun and had an emphasis on strength rather than size.
On day 1 I tested out what 6 sets of 2 reps on 80% max feels like. I ended up doing 82%max as I just rounded the weight to 110kg and got to 6 sets.
That was easy.
so I did a couple more
then i did a couple where i was really doing pause squats,
then i did one without a belt
then i did another 2
and then i though... cant leave on 13 so did another one and the left.

So a total of 14 sets of 2 reps @ 82%max
To be honest, it wasnt all that difficult, and that was after attempting a max lift on deadlift beforehand.
I then went and did some killer Glute Ham Raises.
and the next day my legs are not really that bothered.

So here is the plan for the next Month

Squat 3 days a week
1) 15 sets x 2 reps x 80%max (110)
2) 10 sets x 3 reps x 86% max (115)
3) 15 sets x 1 rep x 90% max (120) (that should be a killer!)

Then the next week all the same again but with an extra 2.5kg

A total of 40 sets and only 75 reps (not including warm up sets)
This should be interesting.

Strength Level 1 and 2

2013-02-26T03:08:00.000-08:00

Strength Level 1 is not about what total weight you can lift nor how many years you have been working out for. Its a combination of Strength to bodyweight and also fitness.

Level 1 is being able to do all of these within 1 month

Deadlift 2 x bodyweight
Squat 1.5x bodyweight
Bench 1.25xbodyweight
Push Press 1.25x bodyweight
Pull up Bodyweight x10

and RUN/JOG 5k in under 30mins

Level 2 could take a year or 2 to get up to after reaching level 1

Deadlift 2.5 x bodyweight
Squat 2 x bodyweight
Bench 1.5x bodyweight
Pushpress 1.5 x bodyweight
Pullup bodyweight x 20

Run /jog 5k in under 25mins

Gym Plan February 2013

2013-02-04T05:11:00.001-08:00

Currently My bodyweight is 85kg (13.4stone or 187lbs)
My Height is 181cm (Just under 6foot)
My age is 29
My current maxes are
48kg dumbbells incline bench
80kg military press
100kg push press
130kg squat
176kg deadlift

Over the last month I have been doing a challenge where I do squats everyday in an attempt to improve my squat performance, and for me it very much worked, however there were some negative sides to it.
1) total amount of calories burnt during a workout went down
2) appatite went through the roof
3) failed to keep strict on my 18-6 fasting-fed
4) failed to stay away from chocolate and crisps
5) neglect of other exercises such as deadlift, bench, and shoulder press,
6) massive neglect of Cardio - even though I covered around 100k in the month from walking and jogging, in general cardio was right down.

The result of which was an awesome gain of 10kg in Squat performance BUT also the disappearance of my abs, the emergence of Back-acne and a bit of a weight gain up to 86kg (starting weight was 84 and that was post xmas and newyear food and booze)

My lowest I'v ever got down to was 78.9kg but that only lasted a day as cravings for pizza and chocolate were almost/actually unbearable. So I want to loose some weight but at least keep the strength gains that I have at the moment.

Aim is to get to 'a stable' 81kg (12.7stone /178lbs) and still have same PBs on the main lifts (DL, Squat, PushPress, Military Press, Benchpress,)
The important part of that statement above is the term STABLE, ie Not just 81kg for a day, or even 2 days but 81kg for a fortnight/month without suffering from huge cravings and dreaming of chocolate covered pizzas on a crisp base.

The Programme

I am a big fan of the Wendler 531 programme and its numbers it uses, it also just promotes the 4 main lifts and gives basic advise for auxiliary exercises, but generally leaves that up to you to factor in. Some times it could be another 5 sets of10 reps 60% of the max you just lifted, other it can be a drop everything and go home and sleep.

For me I can get to the gym every day of the week (providing life doesnt get in the way) So I am going to factor the 4 main lifts into having their own seperate day. Thus giving me another 3 days a week to either relax or do some Cardio.

As my aim is to loose some flab I will definitely be using those extra days to really bump up the cardio and fitness levels to really get burning some calories and promoting cardiovascular adaptations.

Basic Programme is this

Following the guidelines of Wendler 531 for reps and sets

Saturday (Lunch time)

Squats

Sunday (Afternoon - after eating)

Deadlift

Monday (Morning)

Low intensity cardio

Cross trainer/AMT machine 60mins level 20 burn around 800kcal then sauna

Tuesday (Morning)

Incline Dumbell Bench press

Wednesday (Morning)

HIIT Cardio

tredmill hill sprints 100m runat 5degrees up to 15 degrees (speed 10 to speed 15) (gradient increasing by 2 degrees each time, speed increasing by 1kph (interspersed with 100m walk at 3k and 3 degrees) 1k =9minutes 20seconds plus 260elevation)

Thursday (Morning)

Push-press - Military press

work up to a max on push press and then wendler 531 on seated barbell military press.

Friday (Morning)

Cardio + Plyometrics

Corebag throws, medicine ball throws, UFB-2s, muscle ups, clap press-ups/muscle overs, Rowing 1 minute challenge.

Repeat

If for some reason I revist the gym in the evening during the week, which might happen if my girlfriend wants to go and do a workout, I shall do cardio on the cross trainer and sub90% squat training.

Video examples of workouts are below

UFB-2 are this

Corebag throws

Muscle-ups

Power overs

current weight is 85kg = 13.4stone =187lbs
abs are visable at 81kg =12.7stone = 178lbs

Things to Buy To Help You With Weightlifting

2013-01-29T09:23:00.004-08:00

I do like lists. top tens, charts, analytics all that kind of stuff.
and I like finding things that have easy links if I am advised to go buy stuff.

So this page is really for myself for the future for when I need to remember to buy things for my Gym training. The store is below, but below that is my reasoning for each item.

Weightlifting shoes

Just about to start using these, definitly squats will drop at the start, maybe the first couple of weeks but hope to have my squats increasing very fast after I get used to the new heel position.

http://amzn.to/TQXf4s

Click more for ... more.

Weightlifting belt

Belts are very important to help your back stay tight.

I think I am a size Medium ie waste 31-37
http://amzn.to/WrBoPh

Weightlifting wrist straps

http://amzn.to/XPClhA

Liquid Chalk

http://amzn.to/XdZ4oq

Speedrope

Small and light, should take up no room in your gym bag and be great at getting you warmed up fast
http://amzn.to/Xe18gd

Preworkout suppliments

Cellucor

Orange flavour is the bomb

http://amzn.to/XPE1aK

Green tea pills

http://amzn.to/Xe3ziI

Healthy sugar alternative (Stevia)

http://amzn.to/XPEVUN

Chia Seeds

http://amzn.to/TR5nSn

Creatine

http://amzn.to/XPFjm1

Running

Vibram 5 fingers

Kso version

http://amzn.to/XPFvSi

Speed vesion for more grip

http://amzn.to/TScTfN

Foam Roller

Nothing will cause you more pain and be good for you

http://amzn.to/XPG8LV

24 Day Squat Challenge

2013-01-08T04:28:00.006-08:00

I can't ever claim to be someone that is afraid of too much volume nor that I fear the dreaded "OVER TRAINING" I have managed to go to the gym up to 10 times a week for weeks on end without ever reaching this so called limit of over training.
I especially like this quote

Overtraining is real, but it is very misunderstood and grossly overstated by most people. 99% of people will never experience overtraining, and maybe only 5-10% of athletes. http://www.doctorhartmanblog.com/2011/07/overtraining-vs-under-recovery.html

However I have, over the past year, separated my workouts day to day, by following the Wendler 531 programme which focuses on 4 main exercises (deadlift, squat, shoulder press and bench press) I have rarely ever done the same exercise back to back. Well maybe a couple of times doing benchpress but that is easy.

Just before Christmas I managed an Ass-to-Grass 120kg (265lbs) Squat and a 105kg Front Squat, which I was most happy about - see here

And although I am very happy with that, and with my bodyweight at the time being around 84kg (185lbs) it is a happy 143%bodyweight squat.

But

I kinda think that that still sucks, and sucks real bad especially after i saw this video of this lady doing front squats with 120kg for 4!

And I know that we all have different bodies, different shin to femur to backbone ratios etc, some of us are just built for squatting, others are not, and although I would class myself inbetween, my 120kg i know is a piss poor amount to lift. especially as a max.

To see someone who is perfectly built for squatting look at this guy, look at how his back doesnt have to move at all as he squats down, he is almost still totally vertical even in his lowest position!

So how to increase my squat?

Speed squats
pause squats
working only in my 80%+ range
overload partial squats
Increase volume
increase intensity
increase load
increase frequency

All good things to do i know and then by accident I came accross an article calling for a 21day squat challenge.
http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/21-day-squat-challenge which promotes the idea that More is Better.

Then I found more articles claiming that doing max squats everyday could be the key to getting much stronger.

A 2011 article on t-nation about maxing your squats everyday http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/max_out_on_squats_every_day
This one not only suggests to max out every day on squats but also other Olympic lifts and furthermore advises to constantly train in a fatigued state and to disassociate pain.
http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_squat_4_times_per_week_experimen another article on maxing out on squats AND DEADLIFTS EVERYDAY! http://community.crossfit.com/article/experimenting-squat-day "Lipson had been squatting with heavy singles every day for more than a month"
So it seems like veryone from PowerLifters to bodybuilders to crossfitters have had great results from squatting every day, and squatting heavy!

So time for me to give it a try.

Firstly I would not class myself as a anything above a very basic intermediate weightlifter.
I would consider that the last year of weight training and research I have done enough to elevate me out of the beginner phase but only just.

I highly doubt I could go straight into the Broz routine so for me I am going to make one up for myself.

For me I am going to incorporate a rest day once a week but still go for a full 24 days of squatting
ie 4 weeks in total.

(rm = rep max)

Day1

1rm Back squat

Day 2

Front squat 80%1rm x rep to failure

Day 3

10rm Back squat

Day 4

Front squat 80%1rm to failure

Day 5

5rm Back squat

Day 6

3rm Back squat

Day 7

Chill.

So with that routine each week I will have done:
2 sets to failure on front squat @80%max
1set of 10rm, 5rm, 3rm and a 1rep max lifts

Which compared to doing squats one day a week and doing multiple sets etc... is a fairly big increase in my total week workout for squats.
So before I even start I think I can already see some potential benefits but also drawbacks.

Benefits
Increased relationship with the squat and heavy loads on my traps
Fresh for putting in maxium effort each workout#.
increased weekly poundage moved

Drawbacks
Potential CNS Fatigue
muscle recover not great
training while fatigued?
knees get buggered with repeat heavy squats every day?#

Those are all just guesses so lets find out how well or badly this affects my squat and general strength.

Diary

-1 thursday 14.3k hill jog

1 (Friday)
Today was 1rep max day on the back squat, yesterday i did a big 14k hill run so my legs are already very tender. manged to get up to a 1rep of 110kg which is 10kg down from my PB but is deffo a 1rm for today. had to fight urge not to do more sets.

2) (saturday)
80% front squat (84kg) + 5k jog beforehand
did another run today, a 5k this morning with Parkrun Edinburgh. managed to do it in 29.19
Legs still tender and did 84kg on the front squat, this time only 5 reps. the 6th rep was just a eccentric movement down to fail.

3)
Back squats 10rep max 85kg,
but then got carried away and did a bunch of hang cleans then something iv never done before, partial squats. putting an extra 30kg on the bar more than my max and unracking and dropping down 4-5 inches till resting on the safety bars of the squat rack, ended up doing 10 of these up to 150kg. All with the idea of it helping me prepare for the heavier weight i want to lift in the near future. toughen up the body / spine for the heavier loads. deffo going ot make squats more difficult tomorrow morning though.
Additional - a 6k walk around the west of Edinburgh as my warm down.

4)
Front squats 84kg (bw 86.5kg)
front squats, 84kg x5 reps, feeling fatigued doing it at 7am this morning, then did a couple of overload back partials, then chest then some sprints. then weighed myself and found i was 86.5kg and felt really bad, i need to loose some fat soon! i think the more i walk the more weight i put on!
Additional - fasted for 22hours (ate at 6pm till 8)

5)
5 rep max back squats 100kg
managed 95kg, so then did100kg. then some deadlifts upto 140, shoulder press then some muscle ups and standing distance jumps.
legs today feel good.

Additinal - total of 12k walked today getting parking permit from council and back
fasted for 22hours (first meal at 6pm again, ate till 8.30)
meal time = toast x2 + butter, 1 whole can beans and sausages + cheese + flaxseed
1 bowl of porridge with semi-skimmed milk and 2 heaps of chocolate portein powder + flax, sunflower, pumpkin seads and sultanas,
2 bananas, 2x toast and butter + tomato puree and herbs and pepper

6) Wednesday)
3 rep max Back squat 110kg (bw 84.6kg)
This morning I took some Pulse from MyProtein.com, didn't think it had much effect, felt good in the gym and after reading an article on line where the author claims " You should be so piss-scared of the weight you use for doubles that you consider skipping the gym altogether. ...... a fill-your-pants-with-liquid-shit-because-100,000-armed-Mongols-are-bearing-down-on-you sort of fear. Master it and you’ll master the squat. "
by blog that is NSFW http://chaosandpain.blogspot.co.uk/ ( http://chaosandpain.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/squatting-like-youre-ceo-of-paper.html)
So for me the thought of doing what I only managed for 1 just 6 days ago was definitely a scary thought.
After completing that i then did some pause squats70kg , pause front squats to shoulder press 60kg, and some jump squats with 40kg.
At the end of all that i felt good enough to ignore the idea of day 7 being a day off and instead i am going to make that a doubles day (just this week) so that my rest day is officially Friday meaning that when i go back in on the Saturday, it is usually afternoon time so it is a 52 hour rest (end on Thursday 8am, workout Saturday 12pm)
Additional - around 5k of walking today, by 2pm I was constantly thinking about food, dreaming of a subway sandwich. I caved in and at 3.40 got myself a footlong double meat turkey and ham on Italian bread with lettece tomato and olives and mayo and barbeque sauce! devoured it in just 2 minutes! so so good!. I thought that that would have done me but when i got home i made a massive pot of pasta with tomato sauce, big enough for me and kim, and i ate it all. then after that a massive bowl of porridge with dried fruits and protein milk.
In all, I killed easily 3500kcals in under 4 hours. finished eating at 7.30.

7) Thursday
2rm x 115kg, + 1rm on 120kg
Today was a surprising day, had a bit more of a lie in and a good nights sleep, (first in ages) and woke up at 6.15 (20minutes extra sleep) got to the gym and just went on the treadmill for less than 2 minutes, just hopped on, and increased the speed till it hit 20kph (3minutes per k) went for 240m then stopped it and got off. then straight to the squat.
a couple of warm ups with just the bar, then 40kg then 50, then 60, then 80, then 100 for 3 speed reps, then 115kg for 2 which i was very happy with, so happy in fact that i decided to go for broke and try and do my current PB and blow me! 120kg, although heavy as hell for me, it went back up, which is very surprising for me after squatting 6 days consecutively beforehand!
Very happy, and surprised.

Additional - fasted like a champ today, after the squats in the morning managed to go the whole day until 6pm before eating, so worked both in the office and around town taking photos, then when i got home I had 4 eggs scrambled on toast with ketchup and mayo and lots of seeds, then 3 rashes of bacon on 2 bits of toast then a big bowl of porridge with protein milk seeds and dried fruit and coconut stuff. NO chocolate or crisps at all go me!

Friday - not giving this day a number as it is my day off, had a great lie in till 8am, then off to work for 9, today as i am not exercising at all i am just going to fast all day and not eat till saturday morning, so this should be a good 36hour fast easy!
8.30 - Coffee, with stevia and a dash of almond milk - <24kcal i="i">
9-1pm - 1 coffee, about a litre of water and about 10g of creatine.
1-2pm walk to the bank 5.5k and almost 500kcal burnt off,
2.30 baught a 0.5/bottle of pepsimax
6pm home, 2 eggs on some flaxseeds and pumpkin seeds then bed at 10.30

8) Saturday
1x120kg, 1xfail-125kg +Push press
Today I had breakfast before the gym, porridge with my usual seeds and dried fruit in it, then went to the gym at a relaxed time of 12pm. fast warm up then straight into the squat rack. worked up to a single on 120kg, which was slow! then went away did some foam rolling for 30 seconds, back to the squat rack moved the pins up so i could do some heavier partials, put it up to 125kg and added an extra 20kg on each side for a partial (total165kg) then took off the 20s for the 125, got down and came out of the hole (legs got past parallel but i just couldn't get it all the way up. I then tried again and same thing.
So no new pb there. booooooooo
Additional
After reading more about AverageBroz http://www.averagebroz.com/ABG/ABG.html He recommends doing all olympic lifts to max every day! I love his attitude so going to follow that more.
Then did push press up to 95kg for a bunch of singles,then come clean and press up to 75kg.
+ did a 6.4k walk when i got home and after i had lunch.

9) Sunday
110kg back squat + 90kg SP, +79 clean and push press
Fasted until after the gym today, went up to 110kg for back squats, could have maybe done more but didnt have it in the safety squat rack so just did 110 for 1 but did that 3 times, then did some pause squats at 60kg, then some clean and jerk up to 79kg, total time in the gym was about 2 hours but only doing singles, or at most doubles on all exercises.
went to cinema afterwards and watched The Impossible.

10)Monday

11) Tuesday
morning workout today was a tough one after doing it twice yesterday, shoulders are aching from cleans... dont know why either, and only manged 90 on front squat and 115 on back squat. tomorrow shall be awesome though.

12) Wednesday

nteresting. think i managed a new pb on squats on day12 of the 24 day challenge. Did a rep with 122kg (2kg PB) but need to check depth before claiming it.

13)
Thursday

This morning was just up to 100kg for squats, did a single, double, triple, another double then a quadruple, then a poo. deadlift afterwards got difficult even with just 140 on the bar.
appetite is through the roof! i could easily eat 8 big meals a day just now! Damn you High Frequence, Heavy Load, low volume, low intensity training. You make me fat!

Dayoff Friday
today was my day off, and good day it was to have off, my tummy felt well dodgy all day, had some explosive shits near the end of the day… would hate to have had to find out what would have happend if i let a little fart out will squatting with 100k+ on top of me. It also started to snow, lots.

14) Saturday
120kg + 123kg (back squat, 82.5kg clean, 95kg push press)(PB)
Did my 5k Race in the morning in the snow which was fun, got pretty much the exact same time as the first time but my watch recorded me as having my new fastest times for the 1k, 1mile, and 5k.
then before heading to the gym I tried out my Vibram 5 finger shoes in the snow (not a good move)
then off to the gym.

After all the running my legs were pretty tired, I took it very slowly and worked a lot of pause squats with lighter weights as i slowly increased. Got up to 120kg and it moved pretty fast so thought, bugger it lets go for a new PB! fearful of going straight to 125 as i had failed on that before i went for just 1kg more than my current best and put on 123kg in total.
It was a slow grinder but it was a completed rep, felt over the moon, so much so that I then did a max on pushpress with 95kg and then did cleans and went up 2.5kg of my current max and did 82.5kg.
Very happy day.

15) Sunday
Deadlift 160kg, squat 100kg x 5 (PB) x2
Warmup today consisted of deadlifts, Went 140 for 3 then 150 then 160 and felt that that was enough and that my hamstrings were very tight so didnt want to push it.
moved to backsquats and as i had got a pb yesterday I thought more on working on an extra rep on a lower weight.
went up to 100 x5 did that twice and that was enough for me.

Tried to then do some benchpress. but generally totally fatigued and was not totally in the zone

16 Monday (double gym)
110kg x 4 (PB) and 115kg x2 (PB)
2 new PBs today, in the gym this morning before work and felt good, sore and tight but good.
Confusing morning workout today. Legs are in tatters from the weekend with all the running, back is also a bit tender with the deadlifts yesterday. Yet managed a new rep pb on 110kg (4 reps) and 115kg (2 Reps) very happy.
additional -
went back to the gym in the evening after work and worked on some chest but the place was soooo busy with new years resolosers that it was impossible to get must time on any bench or rack, and when you were on the bench or rack you could just feel 4-5 sets of eyes on you the whole time waiting for you to get off. pissed me off a bit. However, made me appreciate the quality of the workouts I get by going to the gym for 7am before work.

17
115kg x3 (PB) 120kg x1
Getting out of bed this morning was a real struggle, Actually woke up with my phone under my pillow which required me getting up during the first alarm, stumbling out of the room into the man cave picking up phone, tunring off alarm and stumbling back and crashing back into bed... none of which I remember.
still managed to leave the house at 6.47 so didnt get to the gym too late.
Chest this morning was tight and legs were also sore and a bit bruised from the Cleans the other day with the bar hitting the thighs and sometimes knee caps. SLowly i worked up to 100 for 3, then 110 for 2 then I thought about 115kg, did one rep, and then decided to go for a PB of 3 reps, after completing those 3 reps I was pretty happy, did one rep at 120kg and then called it a day... a morning.

18
Wednesday (Double Gym, squats AM, Spinning PM)
125kg x1 back squat (PB)
Woke up this morning with the full visualisation of doing a PB of 125kg today. I Youtubed a couple of videos of other people doing 125kg squats and was pretty unimpressed by the amount of half squatters and 'just parallels' I saw.
Started with making sure I know exactly what my ATG depth was and put the safety bars just half a cm below that, worked my way up from 60-90-110-115-120-124 then 125, so in effect that was 2PBs as 124 was a new record and then the extra kg to 125 was another. So Double win this morning!!!

19 Thursday Afternoon
110kg x5 115kg x3 120kg x2
Managed to get a 5 reps on 110kg (1 extra rep pb)
3 reps on 115 (equal to previous pb)
2 reps on 120kg (1 extra rep pb)
and all this was after a max weight PB the day before and doing my first ever spinning class. and not even having taken any pre-workout sups or even any coffee! something right is definitly happening

20) Friday morning
Front squat 107kg (PB)
Morning session went well, realised i hadn't pushed myself too far on the front squats for a good while so decided to try and beat or at least equal my previous pb (105kg) worked my way up on tripples to 90kg, then did a single on 100, then 105 which resulted in a massive grunt, then went up 2kg and managed to get a new pb of 107kg, strangely that one felt easier than the 105kg.

Saturday
Life got in the way, did the 5k race in the morning then had to do stuff regarding my upcomming wedding, never got a chance to get to the gym today. also had a friends birthday that night, so a couple of beers were drunk late on.

21) Sunday 1pm
127kg x1 (PB)
Very happy with ANOTHER squat PB today. 127kg (2kg more than before) on the 21st day of the 24 day squat challenge, However lots of coffee, pre-workout sups and nox taken beforehand. So only an official pb once i do it again….. maybe tomorrow morning

22) Monday Morning
127kg x1 (PB) + 115kg x 5 (PB)
So, this morning I tried to get the PB I got yesterday (127kg), but no pre-workout stims, no food, a 7am workout and less than 24hours since yesterdays PB where I also did a Deadlift session going up to 93%max....
Results.... amazballs, 127kg OWNED along with a NEW PB of 5 reps on 115kg, (previous PB was 3)!!!.

23)
115kg x 6 (PB)
Holyshit, first time in weightlifting shoes this morning and my squats were all over the place, balance messed up and knees a bit sore, felt totally different... harder even. fortunately I was advised that there may be a dip in performance before an increase.
Additional - ate a massive lunch and then due to Kim wanting a fish supper, ate total greasy shit battered fish and chips at night, so a pretty big calorie load today. oops.

24) Wednesday Morning
Last day of the Challenge.
Took it easy, just worked on some Pause squats focusing on my butt and back form.
no more than 100kg x3 pause squats.

Now time to recuperate for my results day, Sunday

3 days of no squats and only light cardio and some upper body workouts

Results day.

Video Recording Your Workouts: Benefits

2012-12-17T08:42:00.002-08:00

Why would you record your workout with a video camera? What purpose apart from wasting time and ogling at yourself afterwards does it serve?

Well there are many reasons to record yourself. Safety, motivation, form analysis and performance analysis.

Firstly, My background in exercise is that after a car crash a couple of years ago I injured my back. A herniated disk in my spine meant that putting load on top of me compressed my spinal disks more, resulting in agonizing pain when stretching my legs and back due to the nerve that comes of the the disks being crushed. What this meant was that for a while I was not able to bend over and put on a sock, I was not even able to extend my leg to put down the clutch of my car without agonizing pain. I was partially bed ridden, and ended up on a diet of asprin and ibuprofen to get me through a day. I was advised and prescribed a dose of stretching and flexibility which only served to increase my pain and restrict my movement even more so afterwards. I ended up just giving up on trying to stretch the nerves and felt that i would happily be inflexible/stiff but in no pain, than able to touch my toes but in agony. So straight off the bat, I fully admit I have poor posture, even poorer flexibility and a massive amount of inhibition when it comes to loading anything onto my spine.

Safety:
Recording your workout means that you get a better understanding of your position, speed and form. If it was not for recording I would never have found out that I have a massive imbalance in my back and shoulders that results in me skipping with a very odd form.

Also it has totally sorted out my running form
Which was like this:

and is now like this

Safety is largely dictated by your form while performing an exercise, However sometimes you are so concentrated on doing and counting the reps, or focusing on minor elements of the exercise such as keeping head elevated during a squat that you forget to focus on the larger elements of the exercise such as depth, foot placement, hip and knee angles etc. By having my workouts recorded I am able to focus on the movement and the form while ignoring the need to count the reps, or even the sets if i am that focused.

For me the biggest thing about video recording my workouts is the PEFA) Post Exercise Form Analysis
So with a camera on me I know I can analyze my form after the workout and make conscious adjustments to my future workouts, Whether that be to keep my ass down lower, my hips to drive through sooner, my head to look straighter etc, all things which are maybe best to start off the workout with rather than trying to change/adjust mid workout especially if you are in your flow.

Motivation:
A lot of strength is gained not through hypertrophy of your muscles but through the neural adaptions that occur from heavy strength training.

Form
Never thought benchpress required much form control, then from the videos i found out i lift my head when i am lifting heavy weights. no idea that I did this nor that it was an issue.

Chasing Optimum....Doing the Best?

2012-11-13T03:09:00.000-08:00

A regular thing to hear is "what is the optimum workout for .........(fill in blank with: muscle building, weight loss, fat stripping, fitness enhancing, strength gaining).

And by all means you will find hundreds of scientists and 'Bros' who have researched this question and will give you 100 different answers.

Some of them may be absolutly correct, some may be a little mis guided, some may just not be for you and your body type. But the question is why are you wanting Optimum?

Stupid question right? Why wouldn't you want optimum. Optimum means you are not wasting any time, that what you are doing will be giving you great results as fast as physically possible. It will be the quickest way to being the fittest, fastest, strongest, leanest, healthiest super human you could ever become.

But there is a problem.

There is no such thing as optimum.

At least in terms of from the advice you will already have heard. i.e. The best workout for gaining (X) is by doing (Y), (Z number of times) at an intensity of (Q) with rests of (R) followed by auxillery exercises of (T) accompanied with suppliment (A and B) at (time C and D) along with Active recovery sessions of (D) at intervals of (E) etc the list of advice can go on and on.

A single answer of 'optimum' doesn't exist because:
What is optimum for one person may not be for another.
What is optimum for one person at a certain body condition will not be the same as it is at a different body condition.
What is optimum for one week will not be the same as the next week.
Heck what is optimum for a morning workout will not be the same as an evening workout.
It can go as far as to say what is optimum may be to not actually go to the gym at all, but stay at home, lie in bed, eat cake all day.

And out of all the research how do they know they got optimum results? usually compared to a control group maybe even a control group and a counter study group...
So certainly lots of research can find out what is potentially better, but Optimum? not a chance.

If there is no such thing as Optimum, then what should we be striving for?

How can you measure the Quality of your Training if not through the results you achieve?

If one week you did 5 reps on Exercise (X) with weight (Y) and the next week/month you managed to do 6 reps with as similar conditions then bingo you have Gained! Could you have gained 2 extra reps, 3, could you have doubled your reps, increased the weight or even both? Maybe. Should you care? NO

A Gain is a Gain! Big or Small, doesn't matter.

What does matter is making a Consistent Set of Gains.
But to get consistent gains you need varying strategies.

And you also need strict measurements and valid procedures to truly analise if a gain is really a gain, or was it a cheated rep, a swung dumbell, a faulty running machine, a lower resistance rowing machine, a new trainer, lighter clothes or an extra load of coffee that made you that little bit stronger, faster, fitter than before.

If you go to the gym for the same reasons as me: To be that little bit stronger, fitter, faster, leaner than before. That little bit less physically incapable of difficult physical real world tasks and that little bit more resistant to real world damage/injury. Then you are the prime person to really develop your understanding of how your body responds to what ever stimulus you provide it. You don't need to cheat, you dont go to the gym to look good in front of other blokes, or the female highjump team, You dont try and lift the heaviest weights you can just to look strong, you don't care if you look a little bit strange busting your balls on the running machine at full speed at max gradient with no shoes on! You don't care about the athestic looks or the attractiveness of your muscles or the amount of sweat you leave on the ground while doing squats. because all that matters is Results!

If one week you get great results, it has no bearing on how good your next results will be if you copy exactly what you did before.
1 Week of great results could be all down to neuro development/connections, a drop/re sensitization to caffeine, a bizarre synergy of nutrient absorption timing and motivation, hormonal activation via a minor road rage incident on the way to the gym, enhanced REM sleep the night before...the options are endless and almost all, unpredictable/unrepeatable/unmeasurable.

Then, the next week, even if you had the same music on, ate the same food, went to the gym at the same time, went to bed the night before the same time etc, you could have completely different results. Maybe even disappointing results.

So what to do?

Control what you can.
Repeat as acuratly as you can.
Measure as precisely as you can.

If you are making gains, you are training well. You are resting right, eating right, working out right.
If your not making gains, Change elements of your training, your eating your resting.
If even after making changes you are still not making gains.
Change to a new set of gains.

You may have noticed that further up in the text I put in bold the word Set when stating that 'making a consistant set of gains is what matters.'

Because sometimes your body just doenst want to change, doesnt want to develop, it hits a wall that you cant smash through.
So you then have to find a way to walk around that wall.

Benchpress stagnated even after changing all the variables you can? Then do Dumbbell Press, develop plyometric pushups, go add a gradient to your exercise (incline + decline)
Squat just not getting better? Try downhill sprinting, try explosive hang cleans.
Find you just cant run your 5K any faster? Try training while fasted, start doing hill sprints.
Develop your other energy pathways and have them help your original goal you so wish to achieve.
Heck, take a week off!

Optimum is a dynamic, elusive, morphing potential of anything you do. Not a consistent set of rules to follow.

If your aiming for Optimum and are disappointed by getting small gains, your not realising the difficulty and effort and intelligence required to become that little bit better.

Different types of Fasting

2012-10-24T06:15:00.002-07:00

Fasting is awesome,

There are a couple of different fasting routines on line that people follow

Intermittent fasting (usually fasting every day for something like 16-20hours)
ADF (alternate day fasting) eat one day, don't the next, simple)
5-2 Fasting (eat for 5 days, fast for 2)
and all variances in between of course, Find what time scheduled suits you best and works for you.
I can also fast for 48hours and currently trying a 3 day fast.

Currently for me I fast every day, and break my fast at around 2-3pm. This means I have usually had a 18-20hour fast and a 6-4 hour eating window.
And I also do TravelFasting where when i have to go for a long trip, whether it be a drive, train or flight, ill just not eat. which is great cos then I save a lot of money and am not tempted by really crap food.

However those are really just regarding the Duration.

I suggest there are also intensity levels of fasting, and activity during the fast

1) Hardcore Fasting - This is where you fast but you still kill it in the gym, high intensity cardio and/or heavy weights. This is tough and also certain exercises are harder than others, ie doing heavy deadlifts for reps when slightly fasted is a dizzy time!

2) Lazy Fasting - This is just where you don't eat, You will do lazy fasting when traveling or when your being a slob and just watching tv or playing computer games.
Lazy fasting is very similar to Devastation Diet, where if you have been dumped by your partner you are so depressed you just cant eat.... not a healthy or happy way to live. Could also be an indication of Anorexia so this generally sucks if you are not doing it intentionally.

Then the Intensity of the fast, and its stricktness.

Those who do Ramadan know what a strict fast is!, not only are you not allowed to eat/consume anything, you cant even have water! Now that is crazy! I spoke to one of my friends and he even told me that he cant use eye drops or ear drops or anything for a cough etc....

When taking the fast beyond 24hours you should consider the type/strictness of fast you do during that time.

1) Strict fasting. This is really the avoidance of all things food and calorie-tastic, however coffee, tea, Stevia, sweeteners, Pepsi max, I say are all ok

2) Sensible fasting, This is really the better option especially if you are doing Hardcore fasting. In sensible fasting I recommend some form of calorie intake (aim for under 500cal) my tip would be, an apple, banana, 2-3 eggs and amino and Chia seeds. probably most of that taken later on in the day closer to night time.

So for me I can more accurately say the kind of fasting I do is
18h Intermittent Hardcore fasting, interspersed with Hardcore Extended (sub 3 day), sensible fasting

Potential: Reaching your Max

2012-10-03T22:39:00.005-07:00

Its a funny word Potential, especially if you say it too many times. If English is not your first language let me explain what 'potential' is.

In terms of exercise and strength, your potential is what you are capable of, if everything was perfect.
Reaching your potential I suspect is near on impossible. Only in truly freak occasions has anyone seen their true potential.

Its what you say to someone who doesn't know what weight they can lift, and you look at them and guess by their shape and weight what they might be able to do if they practiced and tried really hard.

Olympic weight lifters when under highly competitive situations and highly stimulated will reach some of the highest levels of their potential. Some research have rated that to be around 90% of their potential.
So thinking about that, thinking about a sub53kg lady in the London Olympics Clean and Jerking 131kg! and thinking that they still had another 13kgs they potentially could have lifted! Now that is scary!

http://www.london2012.com/weightlifting/event/women-48kg/index.html
http://www.london2012.com/weightlifting/event/women-53kg/index.html

We have all heard of the miraculous feats of strength and endurance over the years, the most famous example is the mother who picks up the car which had run over her baby child.
My personal experience was meeting a man who on the day of the 7/7 bombings in the UK was in one of the train stations minutes before it all went off. The man, a computer nerd, obese, and general gym phobe ended up running 7 miles from the train-station to his house. 7MILES! he said he had never run that before, and had never been able to run that since.
Ok so, adrenaline, and shitting your pants with fear will have greatly contributed to his monumental feat of fitness but HULLO! I think we just found out what the fatties potential at that time was!
Imagine if he could tap into just half his potential, He could be running 5ks every day!

However, we have lots of different types of potential, fitness potential, strength potential, endurance potential, pain potential, shyness/confidence potential, business potential, maybe even health potential.
and what about intelligence potential? Ever think you were too thick to learn something then you got a good teacher and bingo it all made sense?
A lot of the time I think the superheros you read in comics or in cartoons wouldn't be really that special if we could all tap into our true potential.

Lets now think, why can we not reach our true potential...
This could be a lead into many many books on this subject so lets keep this more to do with exercise.
Why cant we use our 100% potential, even if we feel we are putting in 100% effort? And even if we are highly trained?

Cos you will die!

Joking, I think... But seriously lets figure it out.

Lets just use a squat as an example. Just now I can squat 110kg quite happily, My PB this year was 132kg, However put that weight on me now and i'll crumble, but already I know I have another 22kg in the bag of potential, and I suspect if I were to reach my potential I would be squatting 200kg before I noticed I had a weight on my back.

There is something holding me back. I suspect it is my Brain.

Protective mechanisms. Survival inhibition.

Lets go caveman style here for a moment and consider what would happen if we used all our potential.
Caveman see tiger, caveman want to kill tiger, caveman runs after tiger, tiger runs away, caveman taps into full potential and runs at Usain Bolt beating speed. Caveman gets closer to tiger. 2 seconds later, caveman have no more power to send to leg muscles, cave man stumble and fall, cave man panting with face in dust. Tiger turns round...... 10 minutes later, Tiger full, caveman dead.

Ah.

Ok then.

What is happening is that within your body, your brain is trying to control everything. There is a lot to control and the biggest aim is a level and stable homeostasis. Ie everything in your body is equal. that's why when you run, instead of your muscles just burning up ATP and then giving up, your heart and lungs with increase their rate and provide more oxygenated blood to your cells so that you have a second form of energy, and while doing that it takes away the lactic acid you have created along with some carbon dioxide and so on. And your brain knows you need to keep doing this for longer than just the length of the exercise or even which your body is being subjected to, so instead of it sending out all its power all its electricity to your muscles thus giving it a harder job to stabilize your homeostasis it holds back a little.
Perfect example is this: Go into the gym, get on the rowing machine, and before any warmup just go for 10-20seconds full on balls to the wall rowing. see how far you can go. Then do some more actual warm ups and intervals and then give it ago again, and without it seemingly feeling any more difficult, your will magically be able to row further in those same 10-20s blow out. WHY? well your body is now at an elevated level of homeostasis and is capable of stabilizing you from a higher exertion point.

so tip 1, The better the warm up, with the greater the increase in homeostasis, combined with not fatiguing the muscles needed for the task = greater ability to tap into potential!

Our survival needs us to keep some strength and energy in reserve otherwise if we complete the task we set out to do, we will have no energy or be able to function after doing so.
Its a bit like having a speedboat with a massive powerful engine, you can make it go fast as feck but if you run out of fuel, you are then stuck in the middle of the ocean. so you always keep a little extra petrol canister in the back to help you get home.

However, if you know you are just sailing by the coast… you would only need a smaller canister…
This is where my next point comes in.

Uri Gellar Magic trick...
My Dissertation: Exercise performance
My University dissertation was: The effect of Suggestion on Exercise performance. I Remember seeing a magic trick on a tv show where the magician pulled up 5 members from the audience, and put the heaviest looking person on a seat, and asked the other 4 members to put their hands together and try and lift the man with just their 2 index fingers each. One in each armpit and kneebend.
Seebelow for awesome example

So what is actually happening here?
Try it out for yourself, it is kinda amazing.
But the trick is that it is not a trick. Its simple psychology.

The first part of the trick the magician tells everyone to Give it a try, but make sure you don't hurt yourself, try not to strain bla bla bla" Lots of negative or weakening suggestions, People put their fingers in place with no expectancy to be able to lift and their brains also worried about injury.
the result, no chance of lifting the tubby bitch up.

Then the magic part where they all put their hands above the persons head.
The magician advises everyone to imagine energy flowing from your hands going down into the person making them become lighter, and you stronger and all that jazz. and also advises that this time you will easily be able to pick the person up and they will feel light...

Massive amounts of possitive suggestion and reinforcement and belief. The people believe they can now lift the person up and also that there is no danger,
Their brain now is happy to send out as much charge as is needed and magically they lift the person into the air.

If we can get our brain to believe that what we are about to do, we can do, then we can do it!
How many times have we done one more rep because we knew that last time we did a certain number?
or how many times have you lifted a weight and though, oh i must be a little more tired than expected to then only find you put on the wrong weights and you were lifting more than expected.

Energy pathways and neural pathways

For every muscle to move, it needs and electrical pulse, Our brain is a fist size electric power station that with tiny neuro chemical reactions it can send pulses of electricity down our neurons/nerves to our muscle cells and stimulate them to contract. Put an EEG meter on your brain to measure your brianwaves and one on your bicep, now tense your bicep and you will see waves from brain and electricity in your guns.

Alternatively get an EMS machine like those ones you see girls using to get toned abs.... or Bruce lee/jason scott lee using. And ramp it up to the MAX right at the start and feel how much your muscle feels like it is going to explode!

There is only a certain amount of electricity/neurochemical reactions that can happen at any given moment. The more you train the greater the connection and the ability to send greater pulses of electricity down the nerves. You may not be actually making more electricity but there may just be less resistance between nerve endings and the nerves themselves may get larger, a bit like a thick electrical wire.

http://web.sau.edu/psychology/devolder/Psyc540/nerve_conduction_velocity_factors%20and%20myelin%20disorders.htm

The same can happen at the other end, ie at the muscle end. The cells/fibers have to be receptive to the signals, the more fatigued you are the higher the voltages that is needed. Again put on the EMS toy, after about 20minutes you will find that you will have the power setting up to the max and it will feel just as intense as the lowest setting did at the start.

However this electric stuff is only a small part of the equation, as your cells have a shitload of functions it needs to perform to be able to contract, especially repeatedly.

We have multiple energy systems that kick into gear at different levels of A) intensity and B) duration

Simplest way to explain is by saying some exercises are Anaerobic(without oxygen) and others are Aerobic (uses oxygen)

Your body has to be able to switch fuel supplies and fuel consumption, smoothly and on the go when you do any exercise, starting off with your first energy provider ATP which can give you power for a very short length of time under 10 seconds, then you have your CP which may take you up to 20 seconds then you have your glycogen then fat.

So again the idea of being able to be at 100%potential is an impossible request as there is different levels of potential for different levels of exercise duration and intensity. But again lets keep this back on something like Benchpress.

http://www.brianmac.co.uk/energy.htm

You also have 3 different types of muscle fibers, Imaginatively labeled as Type 1, Type 2a and Type 2b.

Type 1 is for long distance stuff, type 2 is more anaerobic. So again even if you were able to send down enough electricity to stimulate all the muscles some fibers don't work as well as they do at different intensities. However you can change your muscle fibers, the more you train something the more a fiber will develop the necessary parts to fulfill its job, ie if you become a long distance runner your fibers will incorporate more mitochondria in them and become more efficient in longer duration exercises. (up to a point)

So again the potential of your muscles is actually only the potential of the type of muscles you can activate at any one time.

http://www.teachpe.com/anatomy/fibre_types.php

Take-away Message

Ok now that we know it is almost impossible to reach our true potential, what conclusions can we make that will help us get close to it?

1) To get close to the potential of the exercise we want, we need to aim for it. By trying to do the heaviest bench-press each time, or alternatively, run the longest race each time, we develop our neural pathways and even muscle fiber type to better suit our goal.

2) Having a spotter is not as powerful as having a Great Spotter. Someone who can motivate you, help you focus, help you visualize and even pretend to help you when they are in fact not even touching your weights. This will decrease your inhibition, increase your security and promote you to unconsciously produce more power and force.

3) Its impossible to know what your potential is, so make a good guess, then double it. and strive to beat that.

4) Strength that can seem like magic can be obtained in just a few seconds, you just have to believe.

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kelly2.htm

How I Dropped 5kg / 12lbs in 2 days

2012-09-07T02:22:00.002-07:00

Last weekend i was away in ireland for 4 days, I ate like a champion, Fry-ups in the morning, fish and chips with disgusting amounts of salt and sauses, chocolate... oh lots of chocolate, biscuits, big curry, bigger chinese, and I didn't scrimp on the booze, beer every night. I larded it up for the whole time I was there.

I knew I was putting on flab, but I didnt care, cos I knew I could drop it off afterwards, additionally, I had done a big squat day just before going over to Ireland, so the calories were all good..... kind of.

When I left my body weight was 82kg (give or take a shit)
When I returned my body weight was 85kg (give or take a shit)

Time to commence badass weightloss programme.

Now this did not consist of starving myself. Infact here is what I ate for the 48 hours

Chia seeds (400kcal worth)
Xtend (amino supplement)
Protein shake (about 500kcals worth)
Unsweetened almond milk (1litre)
Fruit salad (350gramms)
MandS bean salad thing (210kcals)
A total of 8 full eggs, fried (no oil or fat or butter, just non stick pan) on 2 bits of toast (with butter and salt)
half a tub of Philidelphia on 2 bits of whole grain bread drowned in butter,
shit loads of ketchup
1 apple
1 banana
1 kiwi fruit
Coffee, lots of coffee,
Sugar replacement (stevia) for in my coffees
Diet pepsi 2 bottles
1 Green tea (as a tea)
2 green tea tabs
Multi vitamin x2
Jack3d pre-workout supplement (shitloads of caffeine)

Now the first time I weighed myself was the Wednesday Morning, in the gym. For the sake of the title that is when I am saying I start my weight loss, however by this time i was already 12hours into my first fast, The last time I had eaten was when i was back in Northern Ireland having a big curry at 6pm before rushing off to get my plane. (PS N.I. City airport doesnt even have a Dixons, or Currysdigital to keep you amused! can it even call itself an airport?)

So at this moment the fat burning is already started. And my first gym session is going to enhance it as much as possible.
I go with only a coffee, some green tea, some xtend amino suppliment and some Jack3d suppliment in me to the gym. I do a couple of high incline sprints on the running machine to get me warmed up, a couple of balls to the wall rows (totaling about 1k) then hit some weights, then the cross trainer where i put it on max resistance and stick my headphones in and watch tv ("Life according to Jim" is my new fav morning programme)
40 or so minutes later it says i have just burnt off 700 calories!
Score,
now time to hit the sauna for 15 minutes, then shower then change and head off to work for 9am!
Fat burning level MAX!

From 9am - 3pm I am just busy working. My work is shooting the inside of a couple of Properties, photos and videos, then sitting on my ass editing, manipulating uploading and socialmedia-ing the images and the properties. Not really intensive stuff, but also not totally just sitting at a desk.

During this time I dont eat. I had 2 coffees, with a dash of milk, and stevia, and a green tea. (average 1 caffeinated good thing every 2 hours) This staves of any hunger and keeps me burning calories due to the thermogenic/awesome NEPAboosting effect of caffeine.
(NEFA, Non-Exercise Physical Activity = ie the shit you do when not Exercising. ie day to day work but also additional stuff like going for a piss, going to the water cooler, going to get more coffee, fidgeting etc)

at 3pm I filled up my gym cup thing, with 2 heaped teaspoons of chia and a scoop of some whey protein (strawberry flavor) then fill it up to about 500mls of water. and then drink that. It becomes a bit of a gloop so sits in the stomach for a while. didnt feel all that great. made me crave something sweet and fiberous like an apple. So i went to a shop and found me a kiwi fruit and scoffed that.

after work i head to the shops, buy some magazines, buy a light for the house, usual day to day stuff.
then at home i get busy working on some photography videos and photos, and at about 8pm I decide to go and have some eggs.

I fry 4 whole eggs in a pan (no butter or oil in the pan just a non stick pan) put in some spices and pepper and salt then once suitably scrammbled i put them on a single piece of granary bread (which each slice has about 135kcal!) I butter the toaste and drown the eggs in ketchup. that fills me up nice, but i kinda wanted more so, i toasted another slice and covered it in philidephia and butter.
then a camomile tea before bed and off i go to sleep for 10.30pm

Day 1 complete!

Day 2 starts the same as day 1
stumble out of bed at 5.50, turn the kettle on make a massive coffee, 2 heaped tea spoons of coffee, 1 heaped of stevia and 200ml of unsweetened almond milk. That gets the innards moving.

then a big pint of water
then just before i leave the house at 6.45 ill take 300mls of water with a scoop of jack3d and a scoop of xtend aminos, very orangy.

off to the gym. this time i do some cardio and notice my heart rate is not every high, so i get off the cross trainer and do some weights, some squats, shoulder presses, and bent over rows, pull ups and dips, then a quick sprint on the running machine incline 9 speed 15 total distance 150m, that blasts the heart rate up to max 191bpm, then i go and go back on the cross trainer and do 35mins, burn off another 600 calories then have a nice 15 minutes in the sauna.

I head to work for 9 and dont eat till 2,

At 2pm i go to M and S and get myself a fruit salad, a been salad thing, and fill up my gym cup with more almond milk and this time chocolate flavored protein. total calorie intake is about 550cals (still less than what i burnt off in the gym in the morning)

Throughout the day I may have another coffee, or a diet coke.

after work i meet a wedding client and go through their wedding rehersal, just beforehand I eat a banana. I discuss photos, then head over to a studio and record 5 photography related videos, then by the time i get home it is around 9pm,
Back at home it is the same as before, 4 eggs, toast, butter etc, then toast and philidelphia, and then also an apple. while eating i edit a video, upload to youtube, then get to bed for 11pm. (would have liked to get to bed earlier but just too busy)

Day 2 complete!

So time for the weigh in!
I head to the gym, and do my 10 ton workout, so i look a bit more pumped for the ab check video I do, then go and weigh myself. and blow me! the scales now say 79.6kg!

job done!

However I then carry on, and do some more weights, a quick sauna, then dont eat till 3pm again that day but then what i do eat, i eat what ever i want. i have 2 cakes, 2 chocolate bars, 2 salmon ball things, 1 giant pasta pot, then when i get home i watch a dvd (apollo 18) have a bowl of oats with lots of nuts in it, then later on that night i get peckish again and go back to asada get myself a peparoni pizza, and a block of cheese, and a packet of crisps, and some hummas and scoff the lot!

a the rewards are so good! abs and pizza!

Technically, you could say it was a diet from Tuesday 8pm till the final weigh in on friday at 8am = 60 hours…… so guess it is kinda cheating saying it was 2 days. but hey who gives a crap when you have dropped 5kgs!

Locking your elbows during benchpress

2012-08-27T09:05:00.002-07:00

I lock my car, I lock my house, I even lock my elbows!

Man I get a lot of shit on my videos when people see me doing the bench press!
Mostly it is due to the fact that I lock my elbows during the exercise.
I always have, that's how I complete a rep.
Start with arms locked, bring bar down to chest, push back up till arms are straight. repeat.
Simple.

Seemingly not.

So there seems to be 2 schools of thought on this.
1 you should never lock your elbows
2 yes you should

I am inclined to go with school number 2 but lets see what the pros and cons are of each.

NOT LOCKING - Benefits
Continuous tention on the chest.
more isolation work on the chest,
Thus more pec development,
less work on front delts(shoulder) and tricep muscle
makes exercise higher intensity.
"safer".....???
Potentially able to use heavier weights,

NOT LOCKING - Drawbacks
Less range of motion
its not a coumpound exercise and additional exercises will be needed for you to workout your arms
Due to higher intensity could prove dangerous if not done with a spotter and you dont have the power to push up to full lock out to replace the bar.
its not a completed benchpress rep it is only a partial rep.

LOCKING - Benefits
It is what makes a bench press a benchpress. any competition the arms have to lock.
Full range of motion
Exercise becomes more Compound Exercise
involves triceps and shoulders more.

LOCKING -Drawbacks
Potential elbow joint irritation...?????
removes stress from chest and places it on triceps and delts and then finally just on elbow and shoulder joints.

Wait a minute, the drawbacks and benefits of locking and not locking look almost like mirror images of eachother.....

SO what about this safer issue. what are the elbow injuries that we can get from locking?
Doing a bit of researching and the biggest cause of elbow injury is from over use and repetative strain... eg tennis elbow. But this can also come from regular Benchpressing
Eventually small tears can begin accumulating in the surrounding tendons, which may cause inflammation and pain.
One thing that is advised if you do have elbow pain is to avoide the single joint isolation exercises... ie the exercises you would have to do if you were doing only partial reps on the bench and had to do some isolation exercises to extra work out your triceps or biceps....

Further research indicates that to avoid elbow pain or injury you want to avoid elbow HYPEREXTENTION which is when your elbows lock past being straight, up and down.
"An elbow hyperextension injury occurs when the elbow is forcefully extended beyond it normally physiological range of movement."
Additinally you want to avoid jerking movements where you are putting undew strain on the tendons and ligaments around the elbow.

So far I cant find anything saying that with a good form that locking your elbows causes damage. I cant say I have ever had an elbow pain from locking my elbows while benching, and my elbows are one of the few joints in my body that doesnt crack.

The one thing i see where there is the potential of additional wear and tear is if standing in a stationary position for along period of time there can be a 'dent' generated within the joint, then sudden movement uppon the dent could indeed cause extra wear. so tip there is if you are locking out, dont hold it locked out, infact dont hold it in any position for anything longer than a couple of seconds it seems especially if it is a heavy weight.

Locking and not locking both have their benefits, Locking proves the exercise strength and is a compound exercise, while not locking becomes more isolation and provides greater pec hypertrophy
BUT in terms of safety.... Its repititoin, hyper extention and jerking that are the danger factors, not the locking of the elbows when doing a heavy weighted benchpress.

Compression vs Sheer

A lot of injuries in the gym are more related to Shear stress (force) rather than compression stress on a joint.
When squatting and you bend over too much at the hips you put shear stress on your back, when you put your leg out straight on a leg extension machine you are putting shear stress on the knee. And likewise with the leg curl machine.
Our joints are pretty bloody hard! they have been designed over millions of years to deal with stress, gravity, punching things, ripping things apart etc It really seems like our muscles are the weak chain compared to our joints. If your chest muscles can lift something then by all means your elbow can hold it. Infact from what I have read it seems more likely that you are going to fracture your bones before you destroy your elbow joint in any hard hitting exercise.

And here is my last point.
You pick up 100kg from the bench, you lower it to 1cm above your chest there is 100kg acting down on you, and thus still on your elbows, just because your muscles are activated does not mean that some how your forearm and upperarm are now magically seperated and no stress is put on the elbow joint. in fact i suspect more pressure is on the joint when your arms are at a greater distance from the centre of their origin, ie right above the shoulder.
Your joint is still under stress even if your muscles are activated.

CAVEMAN Gym Diaries
Caveman sees cavelady near the gymcavium, caveman show her who is bigman, goes in picks up tree branch does treebranchbenchpress, cavelady impressed.
Second caveman enters gymcavium picks up tree branch does partial treebranch press. Cavelady and caveman one looks at him confused.
Second caveman throws down treebranch and has massive pumped chest then goes off to quickly workout arms. caveman one swoops in for a romp with cavelady.
Caveman two comes out after blasting guns feels awesome, looks awesome, cavelady impressed.
but sadly cavelady already pregnant by sleeping caveman one.

Links consulted
http://www.builtlean.com/2012/04/05/elbow-pain-weight-lifting/
http://www.livestrong.com/article/364906-bench-press-and-elbow-pain/
http://stronglifts.com/how-to-bench-press-with-proper-technique-avoid-shoulder-injuries/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6130712/Biomechanics-of-Elbow-Complex

DOMS: From Squats

2012-08-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

DOMS = Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness
This is technically wrong as it should be spelt
WTFAMLSSOFS = Why The Feck Are My legs still so fecking sore!

After a heavy leg session, DOMS are the bitches that come round to your house when you are asleep and constantly punch you in the legs so that when you wake up the next day and even the day after that, you can barely walk down stairs, sit on a toilet or get out of a car without making whimpering sounds.

However you can look at it in 2 ways.

1) Fear them, they hurt, make you weak, and make you look like a cripple for at least 48hours after your first sleep after a big workout.

OR

2) Rejoice! You have achieved awesomeness. Only other awesome people will understand your pain and be both impressed and may even compliment you on your diligent effort!

You see, DOMS are what you get when you really really shock your muscle. They are most common in people who have taken a while off, or been bedridden for a while or even just not done a perticular exercise for ages.
A great example is the once a year snowboarder: Once every year he goes out to France, puts on his board, rips up the slopes the first day, feels great, then the next day he cant walk, or move for that matter.
Snowboarding requires squatting, isometric and isotonic contractions it also is like a Vibration plate workout but for several hours. Consequently, I am yet to meet a skiier or snowboarder with skinny legs.
Anywhey the point is, after not doing snowboarding for the last 12 months then suddenly doing a monster monster leg sesh of several hours. The cool snowboarder is transformed into a whimpering cripple.
One way around this is to drink vast amounts of alcohol, as is done in most European ski resorts or 2 do a day session a week or so beforehand, suffer your DOMS during the week then go for your week session and feel no pain at all!

Getting DOMS shows that the intensity level that you put into your last workout was well above what you have done in the past. It shows that the effort you put in was badass and as long as you didnt injure yourself, you will reap lots of rewards. Give yourself anything from 4-7days until you try that exercise/intensity again If you want to do anything do a very light session afterwards but dont try heavy as you will be weaker for a number of days after.

Preventing:
Seemingly DOMS are more prone to attack you if you really work your Eccentric contractions (making your muscle longer) so that would be the downward direction of the squat.

May be interesting if it is possible to recieve no DOMS abuse by using a leg press machine and just lowering yourself to the most eccentric position each time.... IF YOUR A PUSSY!

Additionally DOMS are brought on by a big change in exercise intensity. Ie from never doing an exercise to doing a big session.

So tip 2 if you want to be a pussy, slowly increase your intensity of your workouts each time you do the exercise, i.e. the first time just do a single set, the second time do a couple of sets, and so forth.

Cures:
Stretching has no effect on either preventing it or reducing the pain.... Alcohol on the other hand....

I Saw it recommended to use a foam roller to prevent DOMS. This may be a good idea, I also suspect that this is a good idea to do just after exercise as trying to do some Foam rolling exercise whence DOMS are fully attacking ... is just throwing more pain right at cha! Then it wont be whimpering it will be full on tears and screaming.

RICE (rest, ice compress and elevate) works for sprained wrists, but how the feck am i ment to elevate, ice and compress my thighs while i am at work or driving? not happening!

DRUGS: over the counter drugs are pretty much just pish rolled up in sugar, it will not have any effect on your legs

MAN UP: Granted it is hard to man up when you cant even walk properly, and don't even think that breaking into a jog will look anything like the elegent display of fitness you have done in the past, you will get 3 steps in stumble and crumble to the ground.

Surprisingly one of the treatments for it is.... do the exercise again! This causes you more pain... for the first couple of reps, then your body pumps out natural painkillers and.... makes you awesome.
Its kinda like telling your body, Oi! Stop being sore, i need these muscles just now, so can you bugger off with this pain and let me get on with training!

Caveman Reasoning
Caveman sees tiger, fights it for ages, kills it. Wins. Cave man now tired, Cave man sleeps by dead tiger before cutting it up to eat it. Cave man wakes up, Cave man in muscular pain, cave man sees other tiger about to attack... cave man difficult to move cos legs are sore, tiger jumps at cave man. cave man goes ape shit, kicks tiger to death, forgets pain in legs. Caveman walks home dragging 2 tigers, feels like a champ, receives lots of cavelady attention!

2012-08-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

Hormone Timeline

I think I have figured it out.

The human body responds to Physiological stress. And when it is able to, it always responds in a positive way!

In this article I am going to go over what I think is going on inside me with regards to hormones and how they interact with one another to be as anabolic and 'muscle preservingly' catabolic as possible. I'll start by firstly disclosing that this may all be wrong, however it does kinda fit with my experience and results.
Iv gone from 102.4kg Obese 28%body fat, to 81kg 14.5%BF and yet I am still eating shitloads

There are a bunch of words here that you may need to brush up on.

Hormone = cool stuff that floats around our body doing things

Anabolic = the (re)building of tissue (not just muscle)

Adrenaline = awesome stuff that gets you psyched, blood pumping and burning fat

Amino Acid = the bits that make up a block of protein.

Blood Sugar Levels = something that your body tries to keep stable at all costs!
BMR/RMR = Basil metabolic rate, Resting Metabolic rate = the number of calories you burn just being alive each day,

Catabolic = the break down of cells for energy

Caffeine = bitter substance that is awesome, raises blood pressure, heart rate and makes you pumped.

Cortisol = stress hormone that sucks sugar out of stored glucose within cells (leading to cell breakdown)

Catecholamine = group of hormones related to the fight or flight response, mainly adrenaline and nor adrenaline

Epenephrin = same as adrenaline just posher name

FFA = free fatty acids - not the same as fat

Glucose = smart arse word for Sugar

Glycogen = stored form of glucose

Glucogon - hormone that breaks down glycogen into glucose, (Increase glucose in blood)

Ghrelin =hormone from stomach that tells us we are hungry, precursor to GH

Growth Hormone (GH) = awesome anabolic hormone that promotes the rebuilding and repairing of cells

HIT = High Intensity Training, Exercise that makes you cry

Insulin = anabolic hormone that shuttles sugar from blood to be store in cells within the body, made in the pancreas, (you dont want to fuck your pancreas)(Decreases glucose in blood)

Leptin = hormone from fat cells telling us we should not be hungry

Liver = thing inside you that is very important

Lipolysis = breaking down of fat into its constituant parts ie FFA and Glucose

Metabolism = the combination of Anabolism and Catabolism

Oxidisation = destroying stuff, ie fat oxidization = burning fat

Sympathetic Nervous System = SNS produces the goods for fight or flight.

Pancreas = makes both Insulin and Glucagon, opposing purposes

Parasympathetic nervous System = PNS produces the goods to digest and rest, and poo

Petuitary gland = tiny thing in brain makes GH, Luteinizing hormone (precursor to Testosterone)

Testosteron = Anabolic hormone produced by your balls and makes you manly, if your a man and produced by the Overies and makes you manly if your a woman, Derived from Cholesterol, increased by weight training, sleep and fat loss.

Estrogen = girl hormones, gives you titties

Titties aka MOOBS

.............................

So lets start off with the hormone that everyone enjoys talking about so much
INSULIN
Insulin is an anabolic Hormone, Its purpose is to grab a hold of sugary glucose and other cool shit in your blood stream and shove it into your bodies cells such as your muscle and fat cells and importantly, the Liver
Now it is not just a case of dragging the sugar (glucose) to all your cells in your body. It is more a case of dragging the glucose to the cells that are crying out for it. This is where the idea of being Insulin sensitive comes into play, You can have a shit load of insulin pumping out of your pancrease in response to a shit load of food but if you are INSULIN resistant, it is not, only, that you are making loads, but also that you are just not having the insulin work very well. It is not finding the cells to dump the sugar and it is staying elevated for a long period of time which means you have a longer time of elevated blood sugar which is not too good.
It also shoves in a lot of amino acids to help rebuild any broken cells.

Insulin thus raises as you eat, in fact it spikes just after you have eaten, then it falls and keeps falling until you eat again.
Insulin sensitivity on the other hand raises the longer you go without food (up to a point).
What you want is for your insulin profile to be as effective as possible, not as big or as long as possible. (ie having a massive or long dick is no use if you can't get it up and pump till the cows come home additionally it can be a little dangerous just swinging around knocking things over, giving you a sore back etc)

http://www.msdlatinamerica.com/diabetes/sid1489079.html

If you don't have a spike in insulin due to being diabetic or what not, your pancreas keeps on pumping out Insulin, it takes longer for it to drop, and what this means is that when your blood sugar levels are level, there is still insulin floating around further dropping blood sugar, giving you a massive yoyo effect. your pancreas then has to counter act the floating around insulin with a burst of glucagon and this as well may be an over reaction and your body is constantly swinging from high blood sugar to low blood sugar and your body is blasting out hormones left right and centre to control it.

Your blood sugar is like a tightrope, and insulin and glucagon are the weights that go on either side of the tightrope walkers balancing pole. A healthy person has a very well balanced rope walker, a diabetic or insulin resistant person on the other hand has a tightrope walker with an inner ear deficiency

Insulin is from a part of your pancreas which is a ugly looking thing inside you just after your stomach and pumps its stuff into you very close to the start of your intestine

http://www.faqs.org/health-encyc/Your-Body/The-Endocrine-Glands-The-adrenal-glands.html#b

INSULIN and CORTISOL
These guys dont like each other, and Cortisol blunts the effect of insulin thus meaning that you have to pump out a lot more than normal if you have an intake of food while you have high cortisol.

INSULIN and GROWTH HORMONE
these guys are like armies facing different directions. Insulin response to food and GH response to a bunch of other things, when insulin is pumped out Growth hormone tends to drop. In terms of fasting then GH and Insulin are two sides of a coin. In terms of weight training, they can be brought together(more on that later).

INSULIN and FAT
Insulin first pushes aminos and carbs (sugars) into your muscles and it leaves fatty acids in your blood, they then circulate and can be deposited after the carbs and protein in either your muscles or maybe even in your fat cells, yes your fat cells may get a little bigger from eating! However it also goes that the fatter you are the more insulin resistant you may be, weight loss and exercise is the key to heightening your insulin sensitivity again.

INSULIN and Glucagon
yep, they done like each other, Glucagon wants to convert stored sugar into active sugar in the blood. when insulin is high (from eating) glucagon shuts down for a while

INSULIN and Stress (Psychological)
Not really any affect, insulin is really a digestion hormone and psychological stress will have little effect on its output, however constant psychological stress can increase base levels of Cortisol which in effect may make you a little Less insulin sensitive, meaning you may have to pump out more.

INSULIN and Stress (Physiological)
By doing bad ass exercise you are depleting your glycogen stores, you are making your body crave the sugar to go back into its cells. You are making your cells more insulin sensitive. Bingo, Exercise increases Insulin sensitivity and thus potentially decreases insulin production.

INSULIN and Fasting
Same as above, by fasting you are not letting your body constantly have a supply of sugar and amino so the longer you fast the more sensitive your body is to insulin.
Fasting will cause your parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) to chill out for a while as you are not digesting or pooing and thus your SNS gets a little bit of a boost while you are in an unfed state thus indicating an increase in your resting metabolism

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0djyWtCBNSA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

INSULIN and Immune system
Not really related, but people who are type 2 diabetic, insulin resistant are at greater risk to their health. again the question is is it that lots of insulin is the danger factor, or is it the resistance to it? Maybe if your cells are resistant to insulin then it cant shuttle neutrients and antigens to the cells, thus leading to potential illness.

INSULIN and Food (Carbohydrate and Protein and Fat)
There is an insulin response to Carbohydrates (that get broken down to sugars) and to Protein (that gets broken down to aminos) However however the change in blood sugar is much more with carbohydrate rich meals, potentially it is that the hormone response is nearly the same however the heightening of the hormone sensitivity may be more with protein than with carbs. (need to research this more). However i suspect that whether carbs or protein, you will still have the same insulin response but protein has a greater effect on reducing appatite compared to carbs and is usually less energy dense ie fills you up more with less calories. (quote, However, fat will also suppress HSL even when insulin levels are low. This means you will be unable to lose fat even when carbohydrate intake is low, if you are overeating on calories. If you ate no carbohydrate but 5,000 calories of fat, you would still be unable to lose fat even though insulin would not be elevated.)
Thus, just suppressing insulin aint going to get you ripped you can still be a fatty if you still eat over your recommended BMR of calories
http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Next biggie that everyone loves
GROWTH HORMONE (GH or HGH)
This is the stuff that we are all trying to produce more of nowadays. Its purpose is to protect muscle and break down fat to provide fuel. It shuts down the uptake of glucose into muscle tissue but also stops the conversion of amino acids into glucose. So kinda stopping you dragging sugar out of your blood but not letting you get fuel from your muscle cells!

You pump out tones of this stuff during sleep, more if you go for a full 8 hours and even more if you go to bed at 10 compared to going to bed just 2 hours later at 12. The more you dream the more REM you have and the more GH output you have.
During your sleep you are burning fat like nobodies business. Your body is repairing itself during your sleep, the growth hormone is stimulating repair and put poshly Protein synthasis

It also stimulates the immune system. so maybe there is good advice in the old saying, "starve a cold" The feed a feaver part is cos a feaver is a bit more badass and you want some food in you to survive)

So growth hormone is elevated by
1)deep sleep
2)HIT exercise
3)Fasting
4) Sauna
5) Pain

GROWTH HORMONE and Sleep
So to rock that hormone profile, Get to bed at 9.30 sleep from 10 deeply, wake up dont eat, and beast it in the gym, have a sauna then stub your toe on the way out and keep on not eating as your GH will just keep on rising as your blood sugar levels will be wanting to fall.

http://www.endurancedoc.com/Training/Training_Growth_Hormone.htm

GROWTH HORMONE and EXERCISE
Loves it if it is hard core, high intensity, and short in duration. The hard core bit means using lots of muscles. Seemingly it is more stimulated by lactic acid build up in large muscle groups, not just bicep curls but hill sprints, or rowing sprints. The term used these days is your Lactate Threshold, and you have to destroy it as fast as possible, ie do an exercise which makes you produce more lactic acid than you can handle… guess that is also part of the pain factor in the list above.
PAIN IS GOOD FOR YOU. For the guys who do the olympic 400m they are trying to get their all out threshold to last for the 40s of running. for the rest of us it is probibly more around the 20-30s of balls to the wall sprinting or rowing.

http://www.coachcalorie.com/maximizing-growth-hormone-for-fat-loss/

GROWTH HORMONE and FASTING
The longer you fast the more your hormone goes up, usually kicks in at around the 8-12hours and has increasing effect from the 12-24hours then still raised but not continuously increasing after 24hours., you still get your peaks of GH during sleep and after intense exercise and the rest of the increase in GH is more due to glycogen depletion raising your base level of GH. Over a 4 day fast each day total GH will increase but if you have a poor nights sleep… you will probably have lost all the benefits.
The other thing is that over eating massively kills GH output!!!

http://suppversity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/great-feast-overeating-suppresses-gh.html
The picture above shows HG response is normal on the first day of over eating, no bad thing (ie it is ok to over eat for a day) but by day 3 of over eating by 75%over BMR you have a totally flat GH response! So a 3 day food binge=bad (no shit!)

Ok so your thinking, simple, Insulin good, growth hormone good, try and get equal amounts of both. and that would be a very good move. So my advice here is, eat in a short time period, say between 3-8, then you have 2hours till sleep time, when you get lots of growth hormone, then when you wake up and if you dont eat and go to the gym you get a double dose of GH because you are doing HIT training and being fasted. BINGO! And when you do eat your cells in your body are primed to accept the sugar in your blood so that your insulin can drop quickly after eating so that you can get busy burning off your fat stores and preserving your glycogen stores.

GH and Insulin
They are not actually mutually exclusive, yes GH likes to come out of its fasting hole when your asleep and when you are low in glycogen and thus insulin but your body can still pump out GH and insulin together. This makes for a very anabolic situation and is found when you eat right after a workout. GH response to HIT training and infact so does Testosterone so combining GH, Insulin and Testosterone and you are onto a real winner!

My tip would be that if you are doing a double workout day, make the morning session cardio based and the evening session much more weight bearing, have your lunch(break fast) before the gym, about 3 hours or so and then eat after the gym and bingo, all kinds of gains!

http://entropyproduction.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/feast-and-fast-dichotomy-of-insulin-and.html

GH and Cortisol
GH is anabolic, we know that, and Cortisol is Catabolic (more on that below) However these guys could work together in a very positive, fat burning way, Cortisol breaks down cells, and GH protects muscle cells, so thus leading the Cortisol to only be able to break down the Fat cells for energy! Bingo mixing GH and Cortisol = fat burning

Both Cortisol and GH are increased with exercise, be it HIT or Heavy weights. In the morning you have a lot of cortisol so quickly combine some exercise so that it doesnt have time to start breaking down your muscle cells!

GH and Glucagon
Kinda buddies, If you inject a kid with Glucagon, soon after there is an increase in GH. Glucagon breaks down stored glycogen and puts it back into the blood, in doing so triggers GH to be secreted to protect the muscles

GH and the Immune System
awesome! stimulates it like a motherfuther! Think about it. Your a cave man running around trying to find some food, you run and catch something but it gets away from you, you need your muscles and health so you can pick yourself back up and go chase it down again. no food in you means your body is not fighting all the bacteria in your stomach from the food and is insted just flopping around killing off annoying cells all over your body.
Same goes for your bones, GH makes you retain more calcium and makes your bones stronger.

................................................

Anything else to think about?

What about being CATABOLIC!
To understand this you need to think of your body, not as a car (ie fuel in, performance out) but as a constantly changing CITY. Over time roads get pot holed, buildings crack, windows get broken, parks need up keeping people need moving and so on its the same with your body nothing stays the same. there is something around 70 Trillion cells in a human and almost all of them get destroyed and replaced repeatedly over a life time (apart from brain cells) There is a theory that every cell in your body in 7 years time will be different ones to the ones you have today. So just imagine that as a city every building and road will be updated torn down, built back up, repainted retarmacked and so on and so forth. Being catabolic for a while is needed to get rid of the dieing/ degrading cells to help replace them and also to create the energy to help rebuild the new cells.

I spend 19hours a day being catabolic! My muscles should be wasted!!!

For your body to be in a catabolic state it has to say, right fuck this building of muscles, I just need energy. for example when you are in a Fight or Flight response. Your body pumps out adrenaline, nor adrenaline, cortisol and other catecholamines which target cells to tear them apart to get energy.

The term use it or lose it springs to mind with these catabolic hormones, if it is something you are not using then they will just come and rip it away from you. If you are not using your muscles..... ie sitting at a desk all day being stressed, then it will sure as hell target them as they are easier to breakdown than fat cells.

The bummer is that these hormones are produced not just when we are exercising but when we are stressed psychologically. Tough job, bitchy mother in law, parking wardens etc induces stress which gets the body pumping out these hormones which go on the attack and just strip any cell they come across (like a riot in the city tearing down shops) This can most definitely lead to muscle wasting and fat storage because your muscles have an easier supply of aminos and when they get ripped apart the aminos float in the blood stream and then as there is no insulin floating around they get board and drop off in the nearest fat cell. (imagine the riot tearing up shops and the staff in the shops leaving then heading to the pub to sit around until the shops are fixed)

But what if we could get the Riot group to specifically target all the bakers and pie shops? We, the city would still be catabolic as it would be ripping them apart but it would be ripping apart what we want to get rid of, FAT
What we need to do is put down the metal shutters on the good shops leave the doors unlocked on the fat shops.
This is where the interplay of GROWTH Hormone becomes very important, and if we give the message right, we can lead the riot squad right to the doors of fat.

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/thread29011.html

CORTISOL
This is something that is regularly touted as something to be avoided, and that is true, if you are a sedentary lazy thumb sucking life fearing turd. Sitting on your ass all day being worried about everything will motivate your fear response, pump out cortisol and it will go out on the rampage ripping up muscle cells and getting bored with the extra energy in the blood stream and then dump the stuff in fatcells. NOT GOOD! leading to muscle wasting and fat gaining. DOUBLE BUMMER!

Cortisol runs on a diurnal cycle, ie it goes up first thing in the morning as you wake up and is near flat at around 3am at night when your in dream land.
It is ravishing your body at around 8am!? WHY? what is the bonus of that? Well, you have been asleep for 8 or so hours, and you have gone from a physical state of sleep to awake which in itself is akin to the difference between sitting at your desk awake and blasting out a balls to the wall 10 mile hill sprint!, Its a big change in your bodies homeostasis, which your body wants to keep roughly the same all the time. You have also not eaten for around 10 hours and suddenly you need all that stored up glucose and aminos that you have stored in your muscles and fat and liver back in your blood streem so that you can get going. Caffeine as well as being a neural stimulate also increases your cortisol, which is why people love a coffee in the morning!
So it sucks, first thing in the morning you will be breaking down muscle and fat cells for energy. So how do you quickly change that to it just breaking down fat cells?
You need something to either preserve muscle or to cut down the cortisol.

OPTIONS
1) First option is to eat breakfast, Doing so you will have a spike in insulin which will send back all the glucose in the blood back to the cells and also on the way put in some more of the glucose from the food you have just consumed. This may also put some more back into the fat cells.
That is the easy option but not the best option. Annoyingly cortisol kinda counteracts the effects of Insulin so your body has to pump out more insulin for the same effect. which is not so good as stated above.
2) Option 2 which is what i have been doing is to go to the gym at 7am, a light warm up and then a couple….3-5 sets of balls to the wall rowing or skipping or something. Yes this will further increase cortisol and possibly even get me producing adrenaline. My blood sugar levels may try and drop further, and if i dont eat my body will have to respond with a blast of GROWTH HORMONE, which sends out the signal to preserve the muscle and motivates the fat cells to get used instead. Leptin is also produced or, potentially more accurately your brain becomes more senstive to leptin and further rallies the catabolic hormones to the fat cells!
YEEHA! Burn fat BURNNNNN!

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-hiit

Cortisol also has some extra added benefits!
It is an anti inflamitory, ie it is your bodies natural Hydrocotisone (ie stops itching from midge bites) and also swelling from muscle tears.
It raises blood pressure, good for getting warmed up for a workout quickly
and stimulates hepatic detoxification (ie reduces heavy metals from the body)
It increases your pain tolerance, deminishes fatigue and strenghtens motivation

This may explain how on my 40hour fast where I did 3 gym sessions 1@12hours, 2@20hours and 3@32hours, where I did my 10 Ton Challenge at each time (1 set per exercise as many reps as possible, what ever weight, adding up all the reps and weight to reach 10,000kg moved)
I managed to do my 10 ton challenge fastest and easiest on the 3rd go while massively depleted in glycogen and possibly massively pumping out Cortisol and Growth Hormone

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But weakens the immune system, stops calcium being transported to the bones, works with adrenaline to create flashbacks (PTSD), and is a diuretic (makes you piss lots).

So it is a real give and take hormone that is best tempered with a nice dose of imune system boosting GH and fasting.

LEPTIN
Interesting hormone here. It is actually produced in fat cells!, the amount of circulating Leptin is directly proportional to the amount of Fat you have. Fat people have a lot of leptin.
Strangely, Leptin is a hormone that goes from fat to the brain to tell you to stop being hungry!
Fat people should not be hungry!
Well kind of, Firstly Leptin is considered a Long term hormone, it tells you how hungry you should be in a general scale, not like an instant appatite hormone such as Cholecystokinin.
So the leaner you are the harder it is to produce more leptin however just like insulin the trick here is not to produce more but to more senstive the the amount that is produced. Getting it working harder father than being bigger or more.

So how does fit man increase leptin sensitivity?
Recent research says 1 bout of all out 30s cycling sprints does the trick. They didnt test more but i suspect that more would have an even greater effect, so again this supports the idea of doing some High intensity balls to the wall 20-30second all body, or main big muscle group exercises, ie hill sprints, rowing sprints, but not bicep curls!

http://nutritionwonderland.com/2009/06/understanding-our-bodies-leptin-the-fullness-hormone/

Ghrelin
This is a little bitch of a hormone, It is secreted from your stomach lining and triggers hunger! It usually pops up at around 5-6hours after your last meal. It is advised that you try and be asleep at this point. It is a hormone that goes to your brain and has no actual purpose apart from to promote you to eat. In the past it had a purpose as it promoted you to get off your fat ass and go hunting for some food but with todays unlimited access to food, it just makes you waddle to the fridge and eat a pie!

Good thing though is that when this guy pops up, and no food is consumed guess what happens!
Signals go to the brain and say OI we just asked for food and we aint getting any! Lets rev this machine up and get going beeach, Brain responses and goes, ok hers some GH and some catecholomines! lets go!

http://www.sacbariatric.com/ghrelin.html

So Ghrelin and no food = GH increase, good ho!

..........................................................

Ok so lets put this all together now, what should the most effective, fat burning, muscle preserving, immune boosting, metabolism rising, day look like?

6AM
(Suppliment) Coffee
Morning
Wake up after an 8 hour sleep, if you went to bed at 10, then you can get up at 6am! If you feel tired when you wake up which you will, cos you have just woken up, go grab yourself a coffee.

This time of day your cortisol will be rising, not good as it will be ravishing your muscles as well as your fat cells.

7AM
(Suppliment) Aminos (table spoons worth)
So time to get some good anabolic hormones into you to stop the negative effects and get you burning fat instead.
This is where morning High Intensity Training will help, Go to the gym before work, destroy it on the rowing machine (3-5 sets of 30s balls to the wall rows, with a good 2-4minutes rest between). This promotes GH and also if you pulled hard enough it will also raise your Testosterone. As well as even more Cortisol.
If your lucky enough then go and get yourself a sauna afterwards, The heat further promotes GH and instigates an artificial fever which further boosts white blood cell count and thus immune system!
Take a couple of aminos or a small amount of protein so that you at least have some good stuff floating around inside (no more than 10g, large table spoon)

8.30AM
(Suppliment) Coffee, green tea, diet cola.
Time to go to work,
Dont eat!
If tired have a diet coke, or a coffee (very little milk or sugar) or if your tummy can handle it, green tea or if your a pussy like me and love your sweet tooth get a diet coke in you to keep you satisfied.

9am-3pm
Work
If you have a job. Or do your normal days stuff. dont just sit and watch cookery programmes!
These 6 hours your body will be ravishing your fat cells for energy the longer you wait the more your fat cells will be used. I suspect the time between 1-3 is the most badass inside your body.

3-4pm
(Suppliment) Protein shake, chia seeds, Creatine
eat! eat like your starving! You will deffo be hungry by now Ghrelin will have been high and insulin low, your cells will be craving sugar and be super insulin sensitive. Try and make it healthy. I suspect you could eat what ever the hell you want to eat at this time but as a double benefit supply your cells with quality stuffs and also Nutrient dense but calorie low food stuffs, fruit, bananas, veg, and protein are very important at this time. this is the time your body is storing all that goodness in your cells.

6-7pm
(Suppliment) Pre-workout stimulants, aminos, coffee.
Gym
Heavy weights, raise your testosterone and GH levels, Squats, deadlifts, pull ups, bench press, shoulder presses, leg presses etc This is not about high intensity just about OVERLOAD with weight.

7.30pm
Suppliments (Protein shake, chia seeds)
Get home, shower or sauna, and have a more protein rich dinner. Try and avoid sugars and also caffeine, you want your body to start chilling out, so eat slowly but eat as much as you need.
My advice would be whole eggs (or a vegan protein shake) at this time. 2-3eggs will give you the protein and also the fats to help build your muscles, promote testosterone and the B vitamines to help you break down the broken cells during night.

10pm
(Suppliment) Herbal tea, Chamomile or honey and mint. (not ginger) (pint of water beside bed)
Go to bed, you should be tired and satisfied. close all curtains so that the room is dark and better yet, put your phone on charge in a different room, so that if someone does text you it dosnt wake you up but when the alarm goes off in the morning, you have to drag your sorry ass out of bed quickly to turn it off.
The pint of water is so that when you wake up, you down all that water, and that means you really give a nudge to your innards to push out any built up turd and also it gets you rehydrated quickly.

However that is just what i have been doing. and it is what i am seeing fantastic results on.

Disclaimer,
This isnt easy. Your body wants you to just eat when you can which unfortunatly is all the time nowadays. You will have to, at some points, be hungry, you will also have to exercise, you will also have sore muscles, you will also sweat!

But in the end you will also be ripped and have an awesome immune system!

If it was easy everyone would do it. But it takes a bit of discipline.... thats why so many people are fat.

A-Z Weight Loss Tips

2012-08-24T07:42:00.002-07:00

Here is my A-Z of fatloss tips

At the start of this year I hit a worrying weight, 102.4kgs (16.1Stone or 226lbs) I was the typical, Fat bald photographer that I didn't think I was. On the BMI chart that took me to 31BMI which is OBESE. My job as a property photographer requires me driving around a lot and I am constantly needing change for parking. I would make excuses that I needed to buy a Mars bar so that I could get change. I counted it all up, and I found out I was eating around 1000Kcal extra a day of just junk food. But I was going to the gym, and lifting heavy weights, and I made more excuses that it was ok because I would be burning up those calories when I lift the weights. Wrong.

I had to stop making excuses and take control, stop thinking that I was just big and muscly when in fact I was just very fat with a bit of muscle.

Now I am 84kg (13.2Stone or 185lbs)

This was my motivation as this was me when i was at university, working out, doing parkour and had hair

Here is my tips for weightloss if you need any.
it is split into 4 Categories, none of which are exclusive to the other.
1) Motivation
2) Goals
3) Pitfalls

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1) Motivation

The Start!

Firstly if you are reading this and you are not totally ripped and fitter than 90% of the adult population, then the cold hard truth is that you are FAT. Get over it. Actually don't, be disappointed that you are not treating your body as the most precious item you can ever own. The important word I use here is Body, not your cravings, not your hunger or your general comfort. The human body was designed to take a beating, day in day out, it needed to so it could survive. For some reason we think that exercise is something we do inbetween when we sit around doing nothing. Its not, its something we should be doing all the time and the sitting vegging infront of the tv should be something we do when we are physically knackered, not just cos we have finished our 9-5 or even our 9-5 and 1hour in the gym.
Secondly, get over the word FAT, if your offended by that word and cry internally when someone says you are fat....man the fxxk up! Face it, don't hide behind ideas that your strength or your fitness are ok and your bones are big and your partner likes a bigger bodied person, bullshit. Just remember every time you go to a pool or a beach and your partner and yourself are constantly looking at the people with a lot less FAT than you. Thats the reality of where you should be.

If you cant admit that you are fat, then you cant start loosing weight.
If you think you just need to loose a few pounds. your wrong.
You need to have a fit body. You need to have some discomfort in your life for a while.
You need to look at yourself every day and think to yourself I look awesome!

A)
Get a photo of yourself fatty, don't pose or pull in your gut, dont flex your puny muscles and dont shoot from your best angle. Take a cold hard look at yourself in the mirror and squeeze your fat around your belly between your fingers, or hands or if your really fat between your elbows. Look at how it moves look at it wobble, Jump up and down (if you can) do a slow motion video capture of your flab jiggling about. Its yours, all yours! Be disgusted by it.
And there aint no cheap, easy, relaxing or lazy way to get rid of it. No magic pill, no electrical pulsating device, no single exercise machine that is going to make it fall off. Your going to have to work it off both physically and mentally! and do you know what, Getting rid of it is going to hurt, be uncomfortable, make you hungry, cause you to get grumpy, fart more hell you may even piss the bed but in the end YOU CAN DO IT. Just stop being a pussy and quite making excuses!

B)
Get an Idol. and dont choose some douchbag who has been ripped their whole life and genetically are superior to 99.9% of the population. Find people who inspire you, not just with their physical abilities but their motivation, their determination, their information. Dont follow a dumbass and dont court someone who is negative. Make a facebook photo page or go oldschool and get a pinboard and put up pictures of people with bodies you want to have, have some fecking consensus with it though, dont have a Ryan raynolds and a Ronnie Colman picture side by side it aint going to happen.

C)
Music. The intensity in the gym in total goes through the roof if a Rocky theme tune comes on. so get your ipod filled up with your best songs, be they motivational, visualistic or building up. I chose some tunes from EPIC Soul Factory which are a free from some online thing and they are all the super dramatic tunes you get from things like batman etc. Swedish House mafia for when i am running, and Glitch Mob (we can make the world stop) when doing weights. Good tunes can really help you focus, get your act together, and push out that extra 10meters, that extra hard pull or the last rep on the whatever machine you are using.

D)
Tell Everyone Your Plan.
If it is to loose weight, gain muscle, increase strength, up your fitness. Doesn't matter. just make sure you advertise it to everyone, friends, family, work, random guy behind the bar. The more you tell the more support you will have, the more you will have giving you tips, advice, bro-science and most importantly, encouragement and support, and if you are not fulfilling your goals, then a little bit of a constant reminder when the person keeps asking you "hey hows the marathon run training going"or whatever.
My plan was tell the world via youtube and blog the shit out of it.

E)
Spend loads of money! On food.
Your body is the most important thing you own. So cut down on the chocolate and crisps and use the money you have saved to spend on good, delicious food. Stop going to the bargain bucket section in the shops. Think of every bit of delicious and expensive healthy food you buy as an investment. also the more expensive it is the more you will savor it and less likely to constantly gorge on it.
Before when I would shudder at the cost of some salmon from M&S I now see it as a brilliant treat of goodness that is worthy of my dosh.

F)
Photo/video progress. each week or each fortnight or each what ever, take another photo or do another video where you look for changes, look for developments or just report on your progress. If you have had a bad week then say it dont hide from it and pretend it never happend. Everyone loves a good transformation photo or video and it can be super rewarding when you look back at yourself months before to where you are now (or will be)
I never intended on doing a transformation photo or video but wish i had when i finally got my shit together. I am just using frame grabs from old photography videos i put up.

G)
Buddy System
This goes with the telling everyone section, If someone you tell also shows some interest in your goal, get them to be your buddy/little angle on the shoulder, ask them and get them to ask you how your progress is going, make little challenges short term goals for eachother to reach, and what ever you do, make sure you do it better than your buddy. Additionally, though, if your buddy is a chatty bugger, ditch them. Get someone who is there to workout to challenge you to motivate and push you, not to distract you and talk about work and lovelifecrap.

H)
Films.
If you need motivation or inspiration, go buy Rocky 2,3,4, and Warrior on DVD and if you want a motivation and a little cry google the story of Rick and Dick Hoyt. gets me every time and makes me want to get off my ass and run a marathon!

I)
Get outside in nature.
Gyms can be intimidating, boring, repetative, and annoying when you have some douch wanting to use your machine and they are standing right behind you while you are doing your superset with only 9seconds rest inbetween sets. Nothing gets my rage up more than someone asking to use my machine while i am doing a workout on it. Equally nothing pisses me off more than seeing some pansy sitting at the machine looking at the weights longer than they can even hold a weight for. RAAAAAAA, but I digress. The point here is that all exercise is not just for the gym. Go outside, run in the hills, get away from the town for a while. Be a badass and go hill walking and take a massive rock up with you to the top of the hill. Go swimming in the sea or a loch or lake, take inspiration from the 10year old kid who does real water swimming in scotland during winter without a wet suit! Climb a tree,, chop down a tree. Cycle in the highlands and get chased by 15,000 midges. Shovel snow. Run in the rain and see if you can get fast enough that the rain hurts. Slide down wet grassy hills, go rock climbing. rent a kayak. Get some ideas.

2) Goals

Having one goal is a pretty poor effort in your plan to get a better body. Saying that you want to just loose weight sucks balls in terms of motivation and adherance. Break down what ever your goal is down into tiny little goals and make them flexible. ie if it is to loose weight, say 10kg, then what you have is 10 smaller goals of loosing 1kg a week or a fortnight. But that is a sucky goal to have. Your body weight can fluctuate like a butterfly in a tornado. Drink too much water one gym session and your up a kg, do a massive shit another day and you are down. So make yourself a bunch of performance goals, ie to be able to run a distance, then to run a distance in a slightly faster time, or run further, or row, or cycle, or lift weights, or do pullups and so on. Heres some of mine.

J) Weight
Right I did just say dont use weight but for me I did, but i used weight as my marker for fat loss, as all the exercise i was doing was promoting muscle retention so that all the weight i should have been losing was fat. Weightloss is just my byproduct from exercising and controling my diet, but it is a nice thing to look at when you see it constantly dropping. I aimed for 1kg a week or a fortnight (ie 2.2lbs) and that i think was reasonable. If you are already heavier then you may be able to loose more at the start, if you are lighter you may loose less.

K)
Rowing
What a beast of an all over body exercise! Rowing uses everything and can be a massive cardio exercise. I gave myself 2 challenges with the rowing machine 1)how far can I go with the settings set at max in 1 Minute and 2) How far can I go in 3 Minutes.
Simple
Its meant to be. But simple does not mean easy as each time I am busting my balls so hard that I struggle to breath for hours aftewards, I call it heartattack central. So maybe be careful with this one but it is a great measure of both strength, endurance and cardio development. I am currently rowing 367m in 1 minute and 906m in 3 minutes (from a stand still start)

L)
Running
Every time your foot hits the ground while you are running you are exerting the pressure of 6-8 times your bodyweight on that one foot/leg try and do that in a squat! no chance! However as you are fat running is not going to be enjoyable, it requires a lot of effort and you cant do it sitting down like rowing or cycling. But tough luck, do it, it is awesome, even better is learn the Pose Technique or be truely badass and try out barefoot running, it will destroy your calves but make you so awesome. Running machines in the gym, should be used as they are named, for RUNNING! jogging is for outside, walking is for everything between sitting, Running is also more aweome done outside but difficult to measure your performance. Also always have it on a gradient, somewhere between 1.5 and 3degrees minimum.
I use the running machine a lot for my warm up, I ramp it up to 14kph and gradient 4 for 400m then back it down to walking and measure my heart rate, once is drops below 130bps ill take it back up to a faster speed and a higher gradient, the aim is to get my heart pumping fast and hard and also get it dropping fast between sets. normally I bearly do more than 1k, or 6minutes on the running machine to warm up but i am always sweating, blood pressure up, and core temp raised. Then off to do the weights.

M)
Skipping
Little girls can do it, why cant you? Rocky does it, and so does every professional boxer and MMA. and check their bodies! Skipping is something that can be done anywhere at any time, requires little space or equipment and can have you sweating buckets in minutes. That is if you can even skip for a minute. It will destroy your calves, and you will have whip marks all over your arms and back. Learn to do doubles and crossovers. Once you can do doubles and carry on normal single skipping like a boss, you look like a boss, all the girls and gympansies will be in awe of your awe-some-ness.

N)
Weights
Lift them.
Your a man arnt you? or a tough girl? So lift some weight repeatedly. Strength (not muscle size) is very important for everything, Build it. Nuf said.

OVER DO IT! BURN OUT!
This goes against all advice you will hear...everywhere. But how often do you hear people saying, oh your over doing it, you'll burn out. Have you ever burnt out from exercise? Your one hour a day or every second day do you think your body is going to just give up and burn out? NO. What do you think olympic athletes do? Train a couple of times a week? No they train 7 hours a day... EVERY DAY. And they dont burn out! So go on challenge yourself to find out where your burnout level is.
I have been doing the gym in the morning every day before work, and several times after work as well. Some muscles are sore one day so I workout other muscles the next or do some cardio instead of strength training.
The biggest factor for burning out is Stress! and that is usually just crappy MENTAL stress. Again, the human body has evolved over billions of years since jesus to deal with shitloads of physical stress. The only mental stress we had was being killed or dieing of hunger which usually were supported by a bout of physical stress (ie running away from being killed or running after and killing)
Its only our sucky modern day lives where Mental stress, time management, party planning, job hunting, insurance paying, tax dodging, law breaking, monogamy fails, etc that has put a shit load of mental stress in our lives where we can be stressed to the max and not do anything physical. One of the biggest prescriptions for stress... guess... exercise! go figure!

Another example regarding how much stress your body can take from physical work. Look at your job, how much do you sit on your ass? lots i suspect, unless you are a PT. One of the fittest times of my life was when I was working as a Removal Man, lugging boxes and boxes of books, fridges, washing machines, wardrobes etc up and down floors and floors. It Knackered me the first month. But by month 2 I was doing that 9-6 and then still going off to the gym again aftewards, my body lapped it up and could take even more!

Biggest rule to avoid burn out? Sleep, an i am not meaning the 8hours you get from 1am till 9am. but studies have shown that you get the greatest spurt of growth hormone (the good stuff) when you go to sleep at 10 compared to 12, so rule in life is try and be in bed at 9 and have an hour chilling, then try and go to sleep at 10. Doing this means that waking up at 5am is not half as difficult because you will already have had 7 hours and those 7 will have been much more GH filled meaning you are much more recharged.

O)
Cut shit out COMPLETELY!
Chocolate, crisps, beer, harribo, cinema popcorn, the odd glass of wine, followed by the rest of the bottle...everynight. The Chocolate milkshake, the McDonalds, the Subway footlong, the non diet fizzyshit.
The tip here is to cut it out, not cut down on it. Cutting down does bugger all. Eating cutting your junk intake from 1000kcal to 300kcal still does nothing your still taking in 300kcal of shit which you dont need so grow some balls, stop being a child in a sweety shop and stop buying yourself 'treats' you dont deserve them.
The only time you do deserve them is after you have given blood.

3) Pitfalls

The road to a healthier body is not a straight one, it has lumps and bumps, cliffs and forks. You may find that you want to work on cardio and cut out the strength work, you may get into adventure running or take up some impact sport. OR you give up and go right of the cliff back to marshmallow squishy heaven! (thats you i am describing not the sweet).
The trick is to see where your pitfalls are, identify them before you fall into them and take ahold of any slipups you have and factor it into your progress as a learning tool. (or dont bother and just be fat and soak up your sugary type 2 diabeties around the corner)

P)
Sweet tooth
I am a mega pussy with sweet shit. I blame my mum. She fed me that squeeze sugary condensed milk as a child and I was hooked like a junkie. So I am aflicted with the dreaded sweat tooth. But also I love my greesy batterd sausage rolls my burgers my pies and my Favorite Chips n Cheese with extra barbeque sause.... is your mouth watering like mine is just now? Bugger seems like i have a savory tooth also. I blame my dad for that he owns pubs and pub food must have been what he fed me when i got cranky between my sweetie fixes. Oh all my dietry fails are because of my parents.... WAIT A MINUTE! did someone just slap me with the Bitch stick? Why the fuck am i blaming others for my weakness. Why dont I just man up, realise what is actually good for me, and show my crap craving conscious whos in charge. Look at the crap you want to eat and physically say 'No, i am not having you' and go get yourself something healthy and tasty. Not sweet fast and ultimately weak.

Q)
Drink Diet fizzy Drinks
The wonderful sweetner Aspartame will cause cancer, liver tumors headaches and generally kill people if too much is taken. Thats what the sugar addicts get us to believe, They say just have the sugar drink instead. BULLSHIT! NEVER drink the full sugar equivelent pop drink again. Your lardyness is due to to many calories so just cut the shit out. Aspartame is a billion times more sweet than sugar and has no calories, so it must kill us in another way. But do you know what... So will inhailing the farts you do under your bedcovers, but we all still enjoy it.
The trick is the term Too Much. Yes too much sugar free crap will kill us all, however Too Much water will also kills you, too much spinach will kill you, too much oxygen will kill you. Everything will kill you. Better to die with a hot looking body than just a blubby mess. However if you can be ultrabadass and live on a constant intake of water, fruit tea, and almond milk or what ever is good nowadays then all the better for you. For the rest of us sweettooth suckers, fake sugar all the way.
Or try Stevia, pretty much sugar but not calorie loaded.

R)
Know your Calories (My Fitness Pal: APP)
Quick way to shock you into learning how much you actually need to eat each day is by having something that tells you the calories you are consuming and what you need. Myfitnesspal is some app for my phone where I can scan in the barcodes of all the food i am eating and it has a list of all the details of the nutritional content, fat, protein, calories, carbs vitamines etc. Very handy to know and also very shocking when you see you accidentially consumed more than double your daily amount of sugar in one meal from subway. Get it Use it, and try and follow it. If you get it add me as you can add others on it somehow.

S)
Expecting too much too soon.
Do not think of this as a quick fix, do not think of this as a DIET, or something to do for a month for results before a wedding or what ever. Think of it as changing your lifestyle and your mentality to food. Minimum time you should be thinking here is 6months before doing the reveal of your new body. This goes for most things, including weight training and cardio. Doing a new weight training routine for a month is nothing, doing it for 3 months... thats the start. once you have done 6 months then it is definitly time to move onto the next routine or goal.
So for me the goal was to loose fat, and find a 6pack. 6 months in, I am so very close that I am happy enough to start my next goal which is to build up my strength.
If you give up just after or before 3 months then just face it and give up on ever trying you clearly are a pretender.

T)
All Diet Suppliments WORK!
Again this may be against most advice but the truth is that all diet suppliments work.... when you follow the instructions. The hillarious bit is that on the instructions with any diet suppliment it says :works in conjunction with a calorie restricted diet and exercise:
NO SHIT! There is even some shit out from the Kardasians where you drink some ;Detox juice: and only eat a small amount of veg and fruite for a week and bingo you have lost 4lbs! yeah no shit sherlock, only eating a couple bits of veg and fruit for a week accompanied with a super caffinated drink will get everyone dropping pounds (of shit).
But the word is Diet Suppliments, not Diet pills, The pill does bugger all on its own, They can fractionitly increase your heart rate, maybe lower your hunger, stabilize your blood sugar or what ever but unless you are busting your ass in the gym and restricting your calorie intake nothing is going to change. However what is better as a fat loss suppliment than Coffee and Green tea?

U)
Start Now
Procrastination is for pussies, people who say I am going to start the diet after the weekend, or who claim they will go to the gym 3 times evey week starting at the start of next month... What ever. Pull your socks up, stop giving all the chat and put your trainers on and go for a jog tonight. Oh but it is raining? Diddums. Give your excuses to someone who cares. oh wait a minute, noone does.

V)
Cheat days
Great question people ask when starting a diet and exercise programme (or life style) when do i get cheat days and how much can i eat?
Here is my take on it. Unless you are ripped, you dont deserve cheat days. If you are going to have a day off, make it a day off with a light jog, or an intense sauna and cold shower workout to start the day, or make it a fasting day if you are doing nothing or do a big gym session at the start of the day if you are going to be filling your face with crap later on. Cheat days are thought to be days when you can eat what you want and sit around doing nothing watching tv, playing computer games. Wrong.
Social Obligation days:
This is the closest thing i get to a cheat day. Invited to a party? Got a wedding, barbeque in the park, Family gathering. Dont be a douch and turn your nose up at the cocktail sausages because it is 3grams of fat and it will ruin your diet. it wont. Dont turn yourself into a social outcast because of your aims. Just factor it in and run off whatever crap you consume or again do a workout before hand. Summer is a difficult time for me with weddings almost every weekend but i can do a 10 ton workout in an hour at the gym in the morning at 7am... so that is not an excuse.

W)
Diet food
Dont be fooled by diet food. food is not ment to be diet fat is important to you, unsaturated fat can actually help burn fat and saturated fat is needed for a lot of healthy hormone production. Dont automatically reach for the LOW FAT crap in your shops. No, insted read the nutritional info and look for the ones with the least sugar. Carbohydrates are not the enemy either but sugar (the simplest form of carbs) is. Make your body have to fight to get its energy from the food you consume.

WYZ)
In the end it is your life, you can slob your way through it and never challenge yourself out of your comfort zone. But challenging yourself, giving yourself a little bit of discomfort and a little bit of hunger with undoubtidly make you a better person. Life is not meant to be easy, and generally life is difficult for a lot of us but that is usually through things we have little control over, ie the economy, love life, work etc. So take control of one thing you are in contact with every day. Your Body. With every challenge you give it, it will come back stronger and healthier and ready for more.