Health, Fitness, Medical & Personal Training Industry Dirt Revealed

LabLaundry hung out to dry. More rants at DamonHayhow.com

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Feb 2014 03:54:00 +0000

The LabLaundry has been folded and put away. I've moved on from the Lab, but Im still continuing to rant about the shambolic, deceitful fitness industry, the disgraceful state of personal training and the truth about fat loss, muscle gain and all things body recomposition. All my latest rants are at my new personal blog: DamonHayhow.com.

I've also created an amazing new body recomposition centre in Melbourne CBD. Recomp HQ is an all new model of gym and coaching for anybody serious about getting in the best condition they can, with maximum efficiency, no cardio and none of the mediocrity and misdirection of personal training and fitness centres.

Our primary focus is serious, prescriptive diets and training programs to achieve measured body composition goals. We cater to anybody who demands better of themselves than the mediocrity championed by the health and fitness industry.

Recomp HQ is staffed by myself (Damon Hayhow), my brother Adam Hayhow (former director of Biologic Labs) and Amy Thompson (former Senior Female Coach at Biologic Labs). It has a world class coaching studio PLUS a second private gym exclusively for clients on our programs and diets.

Recomp Medical and Recomp Certification also runs from Recomp HQ. We even created the incredible Recomp Series of commercial strength equipment because nothing else met our requirements for uncompromised training progress. There is really nothing that compares, anywhere.

My latest rants and blogs can now be found at damonhayhow.com.

Visit www.recomp.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Are High Protein Diets a Kidney Risk?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:28:00 +0000

Before answering this question, it must be highlighted that the term 'risk' is solely concerned with ANY possibility of negative outcome and completely ignores any benefit derived.

Risk is not about balancing positive with negative. It is only about negative and EVERYTHING is a risk! Walking is a risk to injury. Eating is a risk to choking. Breathing is a risk to oxidative damage. This is the context by which doctors can correctly say a high protein diet is a 'risk' to kidneys.

Is a high protein diet likely to CAUSE kidney disease or failure? Absolutely not!!!! But doctors measure plasma Urea as a measure of kidney health. And with a high protein diet, more urea is produced as a predictable bi-product of additional protein metabolism. Doctors see this extra urea as proof of kidney stress. Its just not.

But a high protein diet MIGHT be too much for a person with pre-existing kidney damage or disease. It is an INCREASE to their 'risk' if they have virtually no margin for additional kidney load. Therefore it can be said that a risk does exist. And because risk exists doctors and dieticians will say nobody should ever follow a high protein diet! Its not necessary (for mediocrity) and it has 'risk'. They just conveniently ignore that a high sugar diet like most people follow is a catastrophic risk of diabetes and heart disease.

Personally, as somebody who has eaten between 400g and 600g of protein per day for most of the past 20 years and has no sign of kidney stress whatsoever, I absolutely do not believe it CAUSES any problem whatsoever. And after putting hundreds of athletes on similar protein intakes and watching the dramatic improvements to their strength and body composition with not a single negative outcome, I believe the benefits far outweigh the risk of a person having undiagnosed borderline renal failure which is tipped over the edge by a diet of natural foods that happen to be high in protein!

I also believe that a high protein diet is far less of a risk to the kidneys and other organs than the diet and alcohol practices of most Australians!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

IIFYM (If it Fits Your Macros). More Bro Science BS!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:13:00 +0000

IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) is a dietary philosophy that believes all foods provide exactly the same nutritional and physiological effect so long as they contain the same macronutrient (protein, carb and fat) totals. The motivation of this concept, unsurprisingly, is to justify the exchange of nutritious natural foods with heavily processed junk.

The philosophical extension of IIFYM is that micronutrients have absolutely no nutritional worth at all; and carcinogens, toxins and anti-nutrients are also biochemically and physiologically immaterial. According to IIFYM, all that matters is the macronutrients.

As anyone with an modicum of intelligence will realise, eating 3 silk blouses and a tree branch everyday is not going to lead to the same health and training outcomes as eating 3 chicken breasts with rice; even though the silk blouse and tree branch contain the same amount of protein and carbs! That is an extreme example. But it is an example that still fits the philosophy of IIFYM and highlights the stupidity of it.

But IIFYM is even more ignorant than suggesting silk blouses are nutritious. To say that macronutrients are the only relevant measure of nutrition is to say that vitamins, minerals, amino acids, EFA's and all other micronutrients have no nutritional value. The extension of this is that vitamin and mineral deficiencies (or toxicities) do not exist and vitamin, mineral, amino acid, fatty acid, herbal and other supplements are 100% void of health or performance benefits, under all circumstances.

Food allergies and intolerances are also figments of the imagination according to IIFYM. In the IIFYM world gluten and lactose are just protein and carbohydrate like any other. So eat rice with chicken or bread with chocolate ice cream (or some silk blouse with some tree branch); according to IIFYM its all nutritionally the same when the macros are the same. And I'm sure thats great comfort to everybody following IIFYM who spends their days bloated, lethargic, fat and water retentive.

But the philosophical ramifications of of IIFYM arrogance and ignorance do not end there. IIFYM essentially says every scientist to ever do research on any non-macronutrient was wasting their time and wrong if they found a physiological effect. Basically, IIFYM advocates are just much smarter than the Worlds smartest, most accomplished and respected Biochemists and Nutrition Scientists.

It gets worse! Seeing as MSG and estrogenic pesticides or lignans in food have no effect on body composition or health (according to IIFYM), then clearly oral pharmaceutical versions of similar compounds don't either? Surely the only consideration we need to consider is the carbohydrate from the fillers in the tablets themselves? So a cup of rice or 100 Lasix tablets (a potent diuretic) both have the same macronutrient value and therefore the same effect on my body? Right? Why not? They both fit my macros.

I admit, IIFYM advocates don't specifically argue that drugs and supplements don't work, that food allergies don't exist or that silk blouses are a valid source of dietary protein. But their philosophy does! And often its necessary to consider the most extreme extensions of a philosophy to uncover the glaring flaws underpinning it. Hopefully this blog helps people who intrinsically knew IIFYM was absurdly flawed but couldnt articulate why?

IIFYM is philosophically bankrupt! The fact that some IIFYM-ers eat junk and don't wind up looking and performing like total junk does not mean their philosophy is valid. Don't be duped!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

What You Need To Know About "Peptides"

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 12:28:00 +0000

The majority of peptides being raved about in bodybuilding are involved with Growth Hormone (GH) release. According to a lot of research, they are very effective. The peptides being sold online to bodybuilders are standard items used to stimulate GH release in scientific research. So they are legitimate items even if their legal status and quality is far less clear.

Here is the jist of what its all about. In very basic terms there are 2 aspects to GH release targeted by the available peptides:

1) a signal to release a 'pulse' of GH

2) a regulator of how much GH to release in the 'pulse'

GHRH (GH Releasing Hormone) tells the body to release large amounts of GH whenever a 'pulse' is stimulated. But it does not cause a 'pulse' of GH in of itself.

GHRP (GH Releasing Peptide) signals for the release a 'pulse' of GH.

By themselves, GHRP's do a little bit and GHRH's generally do nothing. But used together it becomes a case of 1+1=10. Though, in the real world of wanting to see some sort of drug-induced body composition change, GHRP + GHRH is more like 0.0001 + 0.0001 = 0.001. Its not a lot!

GHRP's mimic the hormone Ghrelin - the alter-ego of Leptin. Leptin is also known as the anti-obesity hormone. And yes, Ghrelin is its opposite. Does it sound strange that a bodybuilder would want to inject the opposite of the anti-obesity hormone? It should! Ghrelin not only stimulates a pulse of GH but also increases cortisol, prolactin, decreases insulin sensitivity, increases appetite and generally causes every other fat-gaining and muscle-losing metabolic process you can imagine. The GH is about the only upside to a generally bad story!

The first generation of GHRP - GHRP-6 - did/does a really good job of mimicking Ghrelin. It causes significant cortisol and prolactin release along with a decrease in insulin sensitivity and increase in appetite. Bodybuilders still rave about the weight gain and appetite on GHRP-6. But the vast majority of people using GHRP-6 only gain fat!

The story with GHRH isn't any better. The first generation GHRH - GRF - only lasts in circulation for a few minutes and, seemingly, not long enough for GHRP-6's 'pulse' to be amplified into a meaningful amount of GH.

But the story gets worse. To stimulate a debatably significant increase in GH a normal person using GHRP-6 + GRF requires a good 3-5 injections of EACH, per day. And no, one big dose won't work the same.

And if you decide to do 6-10 injections per day of the first generation GHRP-6 with GRF, then the most you should expect is a small LOSS of muscle mass with dramatic increase in bodyfat!. Oh, and a mild feeling of lethargy & depression!

I personally made the mistake of using GHRP-6 with GRF to prove peptides didn't do anything. I was wrong! In 3 weeks of using GHRP-6 with GRF I gained 3kg of fat and lost 1kg of muscle! I put on 2kg. But it wasn't the 'size' anybody wants! In 3 weeks I became fatter than I'd been in 3 years, with no change in diet! And unfortunately I knew exactly how bad it was because at Biologic Labs we actually measure these things. Most of the people raving about peptides don't measure anything!

Fortunately, the biochemists tweaked with the molecules and came up with new generation peptides to replace GHRP-6 and GRF.

The 2nd generation was GHRP-2 and a heavily modified version of GRF they called CJC-1295+DAC. Used together, your 6-10 total daily injections of these peptides might help you achieve a slight improvement in body composition for the first 2-3 weeks with a few weird side effects like hot flushes, hypoglycaemic episodes and weird dreams. They aren't perfect; but they're a damned side better than GHRP-6 with GRF!

Since then was a 3rd generation of refinements. Ipamorelin is a GHRP that causes no cortisol or prolactin release. And straight CJC-1295 without DAC solved the numerous issues of the version with DAC.

Using Ipamorelin with CJC-1295 (without DAC), you might see a mild improvement in body composition with no side effects... except the loss of friends because you spend half your day injecting yourself.

The positive results of properly using peptides and taking your 6-10 injections per day could be described as being about 25% of the improvement you might get from a single low dose of legal Growth Hormone therapy. And in the end, using legally prescribed GH would run you about the same cost as properly using grey market peptides. The difference is that prescribed GH doesn't require 6-10 daily injections nor the risks associated with injecting dodgy stuff you bought over the web with no quality controls or guarantee of being what it says!

But thats not the end of the peptide story. If 6-10 injections is not enough, why not add more. OK! How about an IGF? I mean, GH is only good to stimulate IGF. So why not go straight to the source?

Well, IGF's by themselves are bound and destroyed in the absence of GH. So you need either GH or your Ipamorelin + CJC-1295 to take with your IGF. And whats another 3-5 injections per day anyway?

IGF-LR3 and DES-1-3 IGF are the 2 versions typically found for sale. Both are reportedly 10x more potent than regular IGF and also resist near immediate destruction in the body.

Using either injectable IGF might add another 50% to the suspiciously minor benefits you might imagine you are experiencing from your GHRP's + GRF's.

But I know you want more!!!! So there is MGF which is the form of IGF released locally in muscle cells to cause local growth. There is massive debate by the geniuses on internet forums about whether it is worthwhile to inject MGF? Very little of an injected amount is able to stimulate the minuscule amount of surrounding muscle it is injected into. The majority is absorbed into the blood stream where it is destroyed. But hey, when did a bodybuilder buying bodgy gear over the internet ever care about such details?

So the short answer about the IGF's and MGF is that all of it together with all of the injections of GHRP's and GRF's does 2/5ths of stuff all in 99% of people who use them. Of course, there is the mysterious 1% who live in their basement and nobody has ever actually met or seen but apparently added GHRP-6 to a cycle of steroids and gained 20kg of muscle in 5 days. And of course there is Lee Priest who everybody knows only uses peptides now... well, everybody who doesn't actually know Lee knows that.

When a person asks me what I think about increasing their Growth Hormone levels with peptides I reply with the question:

"What is your Growth Hormone now?"

Of course, most wannabe drug abusers are dumbfounded by this radical question! Why would you want to measure your Growth Hormone before you injected drugs into yourself to mess with it? Thats crazy! And perhaps it is. Especially when you discover your drugs don't work or that your excellent natural GH levels aren't the reason you are fat!

But doing a simple blood test to measure your GH can still be done. We do it at Biologic Labs every day! And then you could be legally prescribed real GH. Or you can use your peptides and retest after a couple of weeks to see how much those 100's of injections are really boosting your GH and IGF? Though the reality will make for much drier reading than the ambiguous drivel you will typically find on internet forums.

Training after Achilles Surgery

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 05:36:00 +0000

7 weeks ago, today, (as I write this, anyway) I ruptured my achilles tendon in the first event of my first ever Strongman contest. I had almost finished walking the 320kg yoke the required 15 meters when ***BANG!!!*** My lower leg instantly went numb and my foot went dead and floppy!

Less than 24 hours later the amazing team at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital were stitching the tendon back together. It hadnt torn off the bone - somehow it snapped in the middle! The surgeon made a point of visiting to tell me the 2 ends of the tendon were over 6cm apart when he went in. He had to keep slicing up my leg to find the top end! Somehow my pathetic little calves generated some real pulling force!

Everybody I spoke with - including my less-than-conservative friends - told me the same story: an achilles rupture is a LONG recovery! I was told to think 12-18 months! This was not like my bicep tear mostly because you don't need to jump up and down on your biceps.

I was to be on crutches for 12 weeks before rehab began. The first 6 weeks would be in a cast. Then I'd move to a moon boot for 6 more weeks. Then I'd walk off crutches. I joked at the time that walking was the same as squatting 3 plates so in 12 weeks I was going to squat 3 plates. I was joking... but I wasn't. The video below shows I managed to prove walking is indeed like squatting 3 plates and I got there 6 weeks early!

Squatting - 6 weeks post Achilles Reattachment Surgery from Damon Hayhow on Vimeo.

Once the injury was done, there was nothing to do but get on with life. So the day I was released from hospital I got home, cooked up my food and was immediately back on my regular diet. The next day I was in the gym.

In terms of training, all exercises that involved standing were obviously out. Well, sort of. I discovered I could do barbell presses and curls kneeling and within 2 weeks I was back to 100kg on the kneeling press and 83kg on the kneeling curls! The looks of incredulous disbelief from other trainers were priceless!

I even found leg training was less limited than I expected. I could do single leg curls and extensions with limited compromise. So I hit them hard, twice per week, working up to reps on 124kg on single leg extensions and 56kg on the single leg curl; and that was on the leg in the cast! The only issue was keeping the calf relaxed on the curl.

My weighted chin-ups were unaffected, working up to an additional 60kg hanging off me. But virtually all other back exercises were compromised. I couldnt hold myself in the seat for heavy pulldowns. I couldnt brace with my legs to do any rows or back extension. So it was all light, squeezy rubbish.

When the cast came off a different doctor assessed me and said I COULD walk in the boot... but my leg would have lost the strength to hold me up. I just laughed. Even if I hadn't trained at all for 6 weeks I would still be able to squat over 220kg. For the rest of my life - with or without training - I will forever be much stronger than any average person and most athletes. Thats one of the lifetime benefits of proper strength training!

Because I had been training I was even more confident that my 124kg-extending leg had the strength to hold me up! I just didnt trust I should put 90kg through the slowly healing tendon? I had heard so many stories and warnings about re-rupturing an achilles that on my first attempts to put weight on the foot, I chickened out! I was just too scared. And the foot was still very swollen, bruised and painful.

But a few hours out of the cast and my foot had visibly reduced in redness and swelling. And a few hours after that I was indeed walking around the gym, in the boot with no crutches... carrying 20kg plates even! The very first exercise I did the night the cast came off was cable row. And I was delighted to find I was able to work up to the entire 140kg stack for a strict set of 10 (well, the first few were strict)!

Next day - without the boot - I was very carefully and gingerly walking around home! By walking I mean I could use the straightened left leg like a crutch. I certainly couldn't step off the toes or even get my foot to 90degrees. The ankle was VERY tight and even light stretching felt extremely unpleasant!

The third day after the cast had come off was leg training day. After leg curls I experimented with Stiff Leg Deadlifts. I stayed light, doing 15-rep sets and managed to work slowly up to 150kg at which point my grip exhausted first. I always keep my weight through my heels so I didnt even have to worry about putting weight through the toes or the tendon.

So I decided to try squats. Clearly walking the bar out of the rack was out of the question. So I succumbed to doing squats on the smith machine. I HATE smith squats! They are a terrible exercise that encourage terrible squatting habits. Anybody who says they squat on the smith machine to alleviate pressure on their back or knees is simply admitting they have no idea how to squat properly! Free barbell squats are the only way to squat!

Unfortunately there was no practical or safe way to do a free barbell squat. And on the Smith machine I was able to set up with a very wide stance and a slightly forward foot position that prevented any flexion at the ankle - which would risk the achilles - while keeping my weight entirely in my heels.

One 20kg plate per side was so pathetically light there was nothing I could do to even pretend I was working my legs. How anyone does smith squats with 1 plate is beyond me? Its actually harder to control or feel than having a heavy weight! So I went to 2 plates and it was still too light and easy. But most importantly there was absolutely no stress at all through my left achilles and no sense of wanting to lean into the toes!

So I smiled and went to 3 plates. Despite my fatigued back (from the stiff leg deadlifts), it was genuinely easy and felt light! By this point the gym was about to close so I quickly put 3 1/2 plates on for a few reps and called it a night.

160kg Bent Over Rows, 6 weeks Post Surgery from Damon Hayhow on Vimeo.

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

PRESS RELEASE: Women's Accidental Super-Freakism Conspiracy!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 08:24:00 +0000

Paranoia has gripped women around the world as Accidental Super-Freakism (Accidentilium Superious-Freakazoidus or ASF) reaches epidemic proportions – yet mysteriously, not a single sufferer can be found!

ASF seems to manifest as an allergic reaction to weight training equipment loads in excess of 2 kilos. According to reports, overnight the victims entire structure undergoes horrific mutations such that by morning they resemble a professional male bodybuilder – complete with dark tan, paper thin skin, rippling abdominals and posing oil!

Doctor Richard Head, is baffled.

“I am baffled! These poor women are suffering that which men previously required more than a decade of deliberate, chronic, anabolic drug abuse, intense weight training and long-term extreme dieting.”

“Even more remarkable is that it is most prevalent among the least likely of people. It seems the more thoroughly neglected the body, the higher the chance of infection. Those truly unmotivated, obese women with a lifetime abstinence from exercise combined with poor eating habits are most at risk! It never occurs in elite athletes or bodybuilders that might want it to happen.”

Dr. Head explains that somehow these women’s bodies begin synthesizing new protein at biologically impossible rates resulting in their super-human levels of muscle mass. Simultaneously their entire store of subcutaneous fat is lost. Literally hundreds of thousands of calories of energy are consumed over night, while tens of kilos of protein is somehow constructed out of thin air.

For all of the obvious seriousness of ASF, nobody has ever come forward to be studied. The lack of evidence of ASF has lead intelligent people to argue that the condition is a figment of women’s imagination.

While intelligent people are correct in their assertion that ASF is a biological impossibility, Dr Head believes ASF is actually being covered-up as part of an international conspiracy.

“Knowledge of the condition is very widespread so why are we unable to find a single sufferer? Personal Trainers regularly refer women [to my clinic] in terrible distress about ASF. They usually know of friends or celebrity victims now hiding from the press, such is their shame. Sometimes they themselves claim to have gone to a gym, touched on the 2-kilo mass limit and seen mutations begin. Yet none are able to bring forward a single sufferer. I want to know who is covering this up!?”

More suspiciously, those convinced they have a predisposition to ASF display hostility and disorientation when pushed to explain their experiences.

Dr Head says: “Their reactions are similar to alien abductees or Paranoid Schizophrenics. They are utterly convinced that any form of weight training will cause their body to instantly and uncontrollably mutate into a professional male bodybuilder!? And though their claims make absolutely no sense – biologically or philosophically – as long as my name is Dick Head, I’m going to give these people’s concerns due respect!”.

Government and leading Feminist group representatives have so far refused to comment.

For potential sufferers, Dr Dick Head offers the following advice:

Walking for 30 minutes, 3 times a week is all the exercise you need
Treadmills are best: you are more likely to quit exercise sooner
Steppers can be used if you don’t actually bend your knees; a small ‘wiggle’ at the hips is best
A glass of wine, every night is essential to maintain your current physical state
If you must lift weights, do not lift more than 2kg dumbbells in any exercise. Plastic coated dumbbells are best.
On weight machines do not lift more than 2 plates – remember it is the visible amount of metal and not the actual load on the muscle that causes ASF
Use the Swiss Ball for everything. The Swiss Ball is proven to be an entirely ineffective form of exercise.

If you have any further questions or information for Dr Head please call the Department of Stupid Services.

Why Most PT Clients Want To Fail & How PT's Oblige

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Aug 2012 02:08:00 +0000

After Training clients for just a few years I came to a demoralising realisation: the majority of PT clients WANT to fail!

Subconsciously, the majority of Personal Training clients want validation that they are a victim; that their sub-par body is something unfixable that happened TO them by an unbeatable external force. They NEED to fail in order to say to themselves and the World: "My fatness is no fault of my own and it is not due to my actions. It's my genetics/God/hormones/[your excuse here]. I am powerless to fix it. I have no choice but to continue being lazy and eating rubbish because it makes no difference. I tried. I did everything I could. I even paid a Personal Trainer!"

To diet and train effectively would only prove that their fat, decrepit body was their own fault and that they do have the power to fix it. It would also prove that the reason they got out of shape was because of the diet and lifestyle they really do not want to give up because it's probably a lot more enjoyable to them than disciplined training and dieting.

In all things, people tend to put in the effort concomitant to the success they want and/or expect. And when you plan to fail you certainly won't put forth the effort required for success! So most clients treat their PT as a conscience for hire. They want someone else to blame and take responsibility for their own bad choices; as evidenced by the defiant (or guilty) way they admit to eating knowingly fattening foods. Their PT is the perfect target.

And most PT's disingenuously pander to this 'business opportunity' by pretending to sell motivation. This has never ceased to amaze and disgust me! Motivation is: "the desire or willingness to do something". It is self evident that you cannot buy the desire or willingness to do something you have no desire or willingness to do! It is exactly as ridiculous as thinking you can buy unconditional love or everlasting happiness. And any PT pretending to sell 'motivation' is either incapable of rational thought... or just a lying snake-oil salesman!?

Of course, selling motivation to unmotivated people leads to a horribly demoralising and dissatisfying situation for the PT as well. In a referral based business like PTing, the business you take becomes the business you get. So the more vampiric clients a PT takes, the more vampiric clients they will get. And nobody in any industry wants to wake up everyday to work with unmotivated clients who don't respect or desire their service but want to bleed them dry of their energy. The only people who can withstand that are vampiric parasites themselves. Hmmmm...

The Biologic Labs Difference
I created Biologic Labs with a very different goal: to see if SOME people actually DID want a proper, uncompromising body recomposition service? If nobody wanted it, at least I would have the answer to that question for myself! But I was never going to compromise my product to cater to people who didn't want it (despite the continued, persistent 'recommendations' of short-sighted people who just cannot seem to see past copying what everybody else is doing badly).

At Biologic Labs everything is measured and preplanned and presented up front so there are no surprises. If a prospective client doesn't like the way we do things, thats fine; we don't take their business. If they don't want to work that hard or have to follow the diet we set, thats fine; we don't take their business. If they don't want to give up drinking alcohol, thats fine; we don't take their business. Its really simple - if a person doesn't want the quality product we offer, we don't sell it to them!

Clients who don't want to do what is required to succeed are going to fail regardless! Changing our successful product to sell them the failure they want is not good business! The client who fails is disgruntled even when failure was what they wanted. Even worse, before they are disgruntled they refer their friends who want to fail. So the business becomes a place for failures. That then impacts on staff morale and the quality of work staff do. Staff start to expect failure and so they become good at delivering it.

By staying true to our business we ensure we get to focus on doing good work with committed clients who DO want our product. Success breeds success, as they say. It feeds upon itself, just like failure does. The choice for Trainers and clients is which they really want?

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Why Recomposer Is Unavailable to End-Users

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 10:45:00 +0000

Introduction

Recomposer is the software I personally designed (with a LOT of help from my partners, David and Tibor) to provide the ultimate body recomposition service. It is a very specialised software tool that gives our specialist staff the analysis tools they need to prescribe the exact nutrition and and training for clients to achieve their goals.

Recomposer was designed to help our staff do a better job more easily, deliver a more professional product to our clients, make training new staff more efficient and effective, protect the IP of our business and meet a plethora of other business needs. It is a business tool!

Why Recomposer Is Not Available to End-Users

Recomposer doesn’t create programs and diets. Its the tool our Recomp staff use to create programs and diets!

The measurements and calculations Recomposer makes depend entirely upon the quality of values fed in by our expert staff. If the skinfold measurements or strength test values are inconsistent or incorrect then every prediction and calculation in the system will be completely useless!

The results our clients get depends on upon the appropriateness of our prescription to their individual needs, and then on their application of that prescription. We could create our prescriptions on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet. But for a variety of business reasons, we do it with Recomposer.

Really, the software provides nothing more than a bunch of numbers on a screen! Those numbers - the quantities of foods and the weights and reps to be done in the gym - need to be given context to the intended recipient by the Consultant prescribing them! Thats why we have invested heavily in the best equipment to train our clients on. Good numbers used badly are no different than bad numbers!

So in the same way dentists drills are not suitable for the general public to fix their own teeth, Recomposer is not suitable for the general public to create a training program and diet! It is designed for our experts to efficiently create and measure each clients prescription. It doesn’t decide the prescriptions for us!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

The Sickening Truth About Our Health System

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 11:43:00 +0000

Australia has what is formally described as a conservative health system. Its most basic philosophy is that no citizen should employ any intervention that might risk their health. And on the surface of it, this seems perfectly reasonable... until you consider the real meaning.

‘Health’ is defined as “the absence of disease”. Technically and medically, there is no such thing as healthier than disease free! You can look terrible, feel terrible and function terribly, yet still be medically ‘healthy’. If you have no measurable clinical markers out of the established range, you are as healthy as can be!

The literal meanings of other words used in discussing health are equally important. An 'intervention' is simply any deliberate action to improve a situation. A 'risk' is the possibility of something unpleasant or unwelcome happening. 'Disease' is defined by any clinical measurement outside an established range that is based on what the majority of the population measures! (And when you consider that the majority of the population is likely to die of heart disease, cancer or diabetes, it's somewhat baffling that they would be made the yardstick of health)!

With these definitions in mind, now reconsider the meaning of citizens not undertaking interventions that might risk health? The literal translation of this philosophy becomes:

Citizens are not to deliberately do anything to improve their health; particularly if there is any possibility of comparing less favourably with average people (who are likely to die of a major disease).

So despite the best original intentions of our conservative health system, the application has resulted in something scarily different. The institutionalisation of rank mediocrity and predictable, major disease is definitely not what you and I mean when we talk about health! But as far as the health system is concerned, it is. And as far as the health system is concerned:

Whatever is practiced by the majority becomes the ‘standard’ of normal ‘health’, irrespective of how predictable the negative effect on wellbeing is.
Anything you do for the purpose of bettering your health is considered an intervention that 'risks' health. But if the same action is completely uninformed, unintentional and unmeasured, then thats OK (it's only an intervention if it's deliberate).
Anything that benefits physical performance, body composition, energy, mental performance and/or general well-being is irrelevant and unnecessary to health because the simple absence of disease IS health!
Health practitioners should prevent citizens from taking any deliberate action to affects their health in any way! If a person has a disease, then medication is the treatment.
The 'healthy' ranges for clinical markers are revised occasionally to better reflect the state of the majority of the population, even when it is well established that the majority of the population are more unwell than before (eg BMI and male estrogen)!
Regardless of how terrible you look, feel or function, there is no appropriate course of action if your health measures are within the range kept by the rest of the population. If you are particularly upset about this then you might be considered to have a mental health problem for which anti-depressants are the treatment!
Regardless of how good you look, feel or function, any measure of health that doesn't agree with the typical measures of the majority of the rest of the population is considered a disease.

So when health professionals advise of a course of action for your health, they are often NOT talking about something that will contribute positively to anything you consider desirable or indicative of good health. They are talking about complying with a state of rank mediocrity established by the majority. In many cases, what health professionals advise for your health can significantly reduce what you and I would consider 'health'. Their advice is designed to reduce your wellbeing, body composition and future health to the level of the 'average' person!

So if you ever wondered why the advice provided by health experts was so often so hypocritical or just downright unhealthy, this is why! Virtually all of the advice you hear is tainted by this warped perspective! It pervades everything from the safety and labelling of the foods to the treatments and advice your doctor offers when you are sick.

When you understand the above and listen more literally to what you hear and read (when it comes to health advice and warnings) you will get the real meaning. And if you aspire to anything better than mediocrity for yourself, what you hear will disgust you even more than it intrinsically should anyway!

The 'Diet' Word Everybody Hates

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 02:42:00 +0000

It is popular these days to hate the concept of going on a 'diet'. Its slightly ironic given that whatever you eat IS your diet!

The only difference between following a measured diet versus not, is whether you are informed or ignorant. Either way, its a diet. How you feel about the word doesn't change the fact that you cannot avoid doing it. Even not eating is a 'diet'.

The great benefit of being ignorant about your diet is that you can blame bad luck (or genetics; which amounts to the same thing) for your sub-par body and go-nowhere training.

But if you follow a diet thats planned, suddenly you take responsiblity for the resulting body that you present to the World! And for a lot of people, thats an extremely distressing thought! Its much easier to join the mantra of the masses who claim that their fat, diseased bodies happened TO them rather than as a result of their own bad choices!

Ignorance might feel like an escape from the responsibility of your diet. But its not. And just because most planned diets out there are stupid, doesn't mean that planning your diet is stupid! Whether you deliberately follow a stupid diet or unintentionally have a diet thats stupid, either way you have a stupid diet! One way you know what was stupid; the other way you are ignorant AND stupid! But either way you are responsible for your the body (and "lifestyle diseases") that result.

The benefit of following a consistent, planned and measured diet - even if its not a great diet - is that you can make educated, intelligent decisions about how to change it when it doesn't deliver the outcomes you want. It's only if you eat the same things, in the same quantities, everyday, that you remove all other variables and can make a true judgement about the effect of your diet. Then you can adjust it accordingly.

Saying you eat 'healthy' by eating random quantities of random foods at random intervals - sorry, by having 'variety' - doesn't change the fact that when you fail to get the body you want, you have no way of fixing the situation! What should you do differently when you always do something different? You can't do anything! And thats not an opinion or judgement about it; its just a fact.

Plan your diet or don't; either way you are dieting! You cannot escape the word just because you don't like it. And you cannot escape the responsibility of the outcome because you choose to be ignorant!

Body Recomposition vs Fitness

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 01:07:00 +0000

Fitness does not mean 'lean, 'energetic', 'strong', 'toned', 'muscular', 'athletic' or any of the other positive terms people mistake it for. Fitness is nothing more than the absence of general physical malaise. To be 'fit' is to be 'suitably able' to function as a human should. It is, by definition, as physically mediocre as a person should be before they are sick or debilitated.

Body Recomposition is the process of becoming lean, muscular, athletic, toned or whatever other term you prefer for a better body! By definition, Body Recomposition is going BEYOND the mediocrity of 'fitness'. It involves MEASURED sports performance exercise and diet to achieve a MEASURED, desirable, athletic figure or physique of whatever extreme you desire. Whether you are talking about a flat tummy or pro bodybuilding, its all body recomposition; not fitness!

Critically, Body Recomposition involves the methodical measuring and planning that is critical to success in any endeavour. In direct contrast to 'fitness' where the objective is to 'destroy the body you hate', body recomposition is creating the body you want, by design!

Who is Body Recomposition For?

Body Recomposition is for any healthy person who wants a good or great body. But it is only for people who are willing to work harder and eat better in order to be better than average and the best they can be.

Fitness is for every sick to average person to maintain a minimum state of mediocrity. Hence, most Fitness training prescriptions are rehabilitation techniques from Physiotherapy. Unless you were born with an amazing body, things like walking on a treadmill, 'functional training', 'core stability', swiss/bosu balls, Pilates etc do not create great bodies. They aren't designed to. They are designed for 'fitness' mediocrity. As the names suggest, they are literally training techniques for normal human function and nothing more!

Measurement

Body Recompositioning focusses solely on the manipulation of bodily fat, weight and muscularity levels as measured by regular body composition testing. All nutritional and exercise interventions are meticulously measured and planned to achieve specific, measured changes in bodyfat and lean, muscle mass.

By contrast, in 'Fitness', if anything is measured then they are things such as heart rate, oxygen uptake, flexibility and other amorphous qualities that have no relevance to bodyfat and composition.

Nutrition

Body Recompositioning nutrition is measured and planned to achieve predefined, measured body goals. It is precise, prescribed, purposeful “sports nutrition” requiring true discipline and leading to significant, positive physical change.

Fitness professionals are not legally allowed to prescribe diets! The extent they can help is to 'recommend' random 'healthy' food choices and malnourishing starvation for indiscriminate 'weight loss'. Curtin University measured their prescriptions as having a 95% failure rate!

Exercise

Body Recompositioning exercise is measured and planned strength training. Again, everything has a purpose to achieve a specific body outcome. Training targets are designed to parallel muscularity goals. And the training is structured to work synergistically with the sports nutrition program for ultimate fat loss and muscularity.

'Fitness' exercise is deliberately low-intensity, low-risk movements designed to achieve and maintain 'normal' physical capability. Concepts like 'functional training' and 'core stability' are meant literally - they are literally training for normal, non-athletic human function without such maladies as 'back pain'! They have nothing to do with looking like a gymnast or making the abdominal muscles become visible!

Conclusion

'Fitness' involves a variety of varied activities and 'healthy' eating to achieve basic health and wellbeing. With 60% of the Australian population deemed 'overweight' and 'unfit', fitness IS a legitimate need in our society. But it shouldnt be mistaken for meaning anything great. Fitness is literally the minimum physical state a person needs to not be mildly debilitated.

Body recompositioning is for anybody who wants to improve their body beyond the mediocrity of being just 'fit'. It involves the disciplined application of measured strength exercise and sports nutrition to achieve extraordinary improvements in the form and function of the human body.

AOC Bans Sedatives. Training & Competing next?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 04:26:00 +0000

This article in the Australian shows how sporting/Olympic committees continue to expand their definition of 'unfair advantage' and protecting athletes health.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/london-games/aoc-bans-use-of-sedatives/story-e6frgdg6-1226415616599

The AOC/IOC/WADA/ASADA are all fine to ignore that Olympic level sport IS a health risk. Athletes get injuries! Its part of every game. But thats OK. Running til you shit blood? Thats fine. Jumping until their is no cartilage left in your knee? Sweet. Throwing until you need a shoulder replacement? Thats what replacements are for. But taking a pill that millions of regular people all over the world take to get to sleep so your body might actually recover from the brutality of overtraining? That makes you such an horrendously dangerous risk to yourself and you need to be banned and publicly and financially ruined!

When it comes to drugs, usually the issue is that the drugs artificially boost performance providing an unfair advantage. But drugs that put you to sleep??? These agencies are fine to ignore that some athletes are provided with the advantage of millions of dollars worth of facilities, doctors, trainers, therapists, nutritionists and specialised training devices. Apparently thats NOT an unfair advantage. But popping a sleeping pill? You dirty scum!!!

So the AOC has reinterpreted its mandate to protect the well-being of competing athletes to meaning they are now the self-appointed, active carers of every competitive athlete! And as could be expected by such a politically motivated group, delivering care to athletes is done in the same manner as the Gestapo cared for citizens in Nazi Germany: breaking into their rooms to search for things like prescribed sleeping pills so they can bring a crushing end to the athletes career, terminate their sponsorships, savage their future and publicly shame and ruin them. But all in concern for their well-being, of course.

The interesting question is, how much further are they going to reach into peoples lives? I mean, they've banned glycerol which is a common ingredient in bakery foods! So now are they going to broaden that to cover ALL bakery foods because pies and muffins arent very good for you? So could that include bread? Are there going to be night raids on athletes pantries to see whether the foods in the house conform to the AOC's opinion of what is 'healthy'? Non-organic flour? Career OVER!!!

And what of training? Are they going to spy on athletes to see how hard they are training and if they breach some arbitrary level, ban them for training too hard or too much? Lots of injuries happen in training. Surely if you are so concerned with the athletes health then imposing your wrath upon them to prevent them training too hard is logical?

And what of the competition itself? This is where athletes really push the boundaries. Surely they should be stopped from putting in too much effort, running too fast, jumping too high or throwing too far? These things are all a bigger risk to their health than a doctor prescribed sleeping pill for a person who can't sleep!!!

Think thats being ridiculous? Remember this whole anti-drug movement really started with relatively obscure prescription drugs that could be heavily abused to dramatically improve performance and visibly turned women into men! It was the visible transformations that outraged the fickle public prompting a response. That has somehow now extended to include cake ingredients and drugs that do the very opposite of boosting performance - they put you to sleep!!! The article in the Australian even intimates that Grant Hackett LOST because of sleeping pills!

Is sport really safer and better because we have a self-appointed Athlete Gestapo running around trying to destroy athletes careers and reputations under the guise of protecting them from doing things that make them lose??? How much further is it going to go before someone recognises how idiotic this is? Because I cannot think of anything more stupid than banning athletes over cake ingredients and sleeping pills?

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Carving in Muscle Separations

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 11:28:00 +0000

(NOTE: Please excuse the bro-sciency-ness of this. PubMed is a little light on research into carving in muscle separations... probably because the whole concept is extremely bro-ish!)

One of the most idiotic and misunderstood myths in body transformation training is that of exercises or techniques for 'carving in muscle separations'.

This is not to say that there aren't ways to improve the visible separations between muscles. There are. But you need to understand what is happening if you hope to achieve the desired outcome and not just waste massive amounts of time and effort... like so many do!

START WITH THE BASICS
Before I get to the guts of this blog, I must make mention of the two most important factors in visually pronounced muscle separations:
1) fat - the number one reason people fail to display the definition and separation they would like between their muscles is that they are simply too fat!
2) genetics - some people have muscles that appear deeply and distinctly separated; others just don't. That said, the vast majority of people who blame their genetics are simply fat... and usually lazy and lacking the 'personal responsibility' gene!

YOU ARE PROBABLY JUST FAT
In all but the absolute most extreme cases, if you cannot clearly see your muscular separations it is probably because you have too much bodyfat! Even competitive bodybuilders who say they are "holding water", 9 times out of 10 are just too fat!

Do not underestimate how lean you need to be for clear definition! It does not matter how lean you FEEL or THINK you are, nor how lean your Trainer has measured you (assuming your Trainer even does measurements), its probably simply not enough. And just because you don't know how to get any leaner doesn't mean you aren't still too fat!

Everybody possesses the same distinct muscles. Those muscles ARE separate from one another! They are each wrapped in their own fascial sheath. What MOSTLY hides them from external view is the water, fat and skin on top! Typically the fat is the most significant factor. It literally 'blankets' the muscles and fills in the 'gaps'. Mostly...

ADVANCED MUSCLE SEPARATIONS - THE PROBLEM
Despite the above, at the more advanced levels of bodybuilding muscle size becomes a factor. More specifically, the current state of an enlarged muscle can be a factor that REDUCES the visible separations between the muscles.

Let me give a crude illustration of the issue. Imagine two, 1/2-inflated balloons inside a glass box. The box is fractionally too small in all directions for the two balloons so they are lightly squashed together and against the glass on all sides.

Now imagine inflating the balloons. With nowhere else to go, the balloons will expand into the empty space between each other and the walls of the glass box, reducing the gaps between them. As you keep inflating the balloons they press tighter and tighter together until, eventually, they form 2 almost-perfect cubes with almost no separation between them.

This balloon analogy is not dissimilar to what happens with muscles within their own fascias. When bodybuilders use food, training and supplements (and drugs) to force-fill their muscles with glycogen, fluid and other substrates, the muscles expand - like the balloons in the box - to completely fill their fascial sheaths. The muscles can press together so tightly that the visible separations between them reduce significantly.

This is why pro-bodybuilders can often be seen with extraordinarily low bodyfat, paper-thin skin, their bodies covered in veins, and yet completely lacking deep muscular separations. It is also why separations in leg muscles often completely disappear with a big leg 'pump' and why legs are famous for having reduced separation and definition for days after heavy squats and leg presses. Blame inflammation or fluid, much of it is WITHIN the muscular compartment.

ADVANCED MUSCLE SEPARATIONS - THE SOLUTION
The simple remedy to this state is for the muscles to SHRINK... a bit! For most of us, shrinking muscles is quite simple:
1) Don't train. Easy. Most lean bodybuilders know that their legs (in particular) are more separated and defined after 10+ days of not training them. They are also measurably smaller.
2) Do ineffective training. This is where the concept that leg extensions with light weights and lots of 'squeezing' and 'flexing' the muscles comes from. There is little inflammatory response, absolutely no stimulation to maintain strength/muscle plus a wasting of glycogen and, when dieting, the muscles shrink measurably. The very fact that this sort of training is INEFFECTIVE for muscular development is the reason it is effective for separations!
3) Do HIIT or more intense 'cardio'. If you feel a burn, glycogen is likely being burned and the muscles shrink. Even better, taking peak-strength-performance trained muscles and suddenly training them for endurance is the best way to cause maximum muscle loss! At some point there will be a benefit to muscular separation. Too much endurance exercise (combined with the typical starvation diets of many bodybuilders these days) can result in so much muscle shrinkage and depletion that the muscles wind up appearing soft and flabby.

The bottom line is, to genuinely "carve in separations", muscle shrinkage is what is happening! Hopefully in understanding this you can choose more wisely WHEN to utilise such techniques. If you are getting ready for a bodybuilding competition, using the stepper and light leg extensions 16 weeks out from your contest is probably not ideal. 2-4 weeks out - assuming your low bodyfat didn't solve the problem anyway - is more appropriate.

FINAL WORDS ON FAT LOSS & SEPARATIONS
Justifying almost every training or diet concept these days are massively overcomplicated (and incomplete) explanations of biochemical processes within the body. As interesting as they are, basing your actions on your hopeful guesses about something you cannot measure and cannot affect is a certain way to be wrong and probably fail!

1) If you have too much fat obscuring your muscles, you need to lose that fat with effective diet and weight training for body recomposition. Measure your body composition, measure your goal and train and diet to achieve those numbers. You cannot BS the basic math of body composition just because you learn some interesting new facts about biochemistry!

2) If you have uneven fat distribution then thats just how it is. There are some long-term drug options that can help. But shy of this extreme, you are not going to change your bodyfat distribution with any form or amount of exercise, diet or supplement. Despite all the convincing biochemical theories of what is going on, the fact is it just doesnt happen!

3) If you are talking about muscle separation then the above is what you are talking about. So next time you read that stupid chest training article in Flex magazine that says to do bench press for mass and then cable crossovers for separations, now you know why you shouldn't! You cannot achieve these 2 contradictory results simultaneously!!!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Our Programs & Diets for Interstate Clients

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 09:59:00 +0000

Q: I do not live in Brisbane but I've heard that you can write a program and diet for me to follow? Can you please tell me more about your programs and diets for your Interstate clients?

A: We write diets and training programs for you to achieve a specific goal bodysize and bodyfat percentage. All we are concerned with is your body composition.

We make adjustments every week according to bodyfat tests you provide us with. So you'll need somebody competent and reliable to test you regularly and forward the results to us.

Your program is custom written to your personal body, goal and requirements. We first get you to complete a questionnaire including your current bodyweight, skinfold measurements and maximum strength. We do our best to help find somebody suitable for you to do this with because very few PT's are suitably competent. We then do an assessment over the phone to articulate your body composition goal and decide what diet and training is going to be best for you.

The diet we write for you specifies every gram of food to eat at every meal. The workout specifies every weight to lift on every set of every exercise at every workout. There is no ambiguity and no random 'stuff' like you get from Personal Trainers.

Our diets involve a lot of food! The biggest complaint is there is too much food - even to lose weight and fat fast. But there are no cheat meals, no random food choices and no drinking alcohol. There is really no point wasting money on our programs if you need to drink alcohol and not follow the diet.

There is no cardio on our programs - even for the most rapid and significant fat loss possible! Our training programs solely involve lifting weights to the limit of your physical capacity. There is not much training - usually 3 days per week? But it is VERY hard strength training with very hard exercises. So we require that you REALLY know how to train or have somebody exceptional to train with. There are VERY few PT's suitable to train you on our programs because the training is so different. We can try recommending somebody in your area depending upon where you are?

For an idea of how we deliver your program and diet to you, please watch this video:

Contact us if you'd like to know more or get started?...

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

ARE YOU EXERCISING TOO HARD? HELL NO!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:13:00 +0000

Here is yet another article alarming all the wrong people from the risks of training “too hard”. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/16/personal-best-workouts-have-their-limits-recognized-or-not/?mid=57

Now, I am in no disagreement that there are a lot of people out there overdoing it with really, REALLY stupid and ineffective training. But there are three main issues with this.

Firstly, in every human activity some people are going to hurt themselves overdoing something that was never going to achieve the results they wanted anyway. Some people are just dumb! Others get manipulated by someone dumb and evil! These people could not give a damn about some professor in his ivory towers spouting off about ‘risks’ and ‘danger’. They are going keep doing what they are doing until they get hurt. Just Google “cults” to see the historical proof of what I mean! Point being, the people for whom these “don’t train hard” articles are written, aren’t listening!

Secondly, a HUGE proportion of people getting sick and injured from overtraining could solve many of their issues with proper nutrition! The number of elite and serious recreational athletes who are thoroughly malnourished is STAGGERING! At Biologic Labs we have taken a number of elite athletes from “has potential” to “unbeatable” within a WEEK of getting them to eat properly! Elite trainers are ASTOUNDED at the changes in performance and the improvements thereafter. We are just astounded at the astounded-ness! If you are going to train hard you need to EAT properly!

But the main issue that really annoys me about all these alarmists screaming “careful, you might be training too hard” is that the ONLY people listening are already NOT training hard enough!

TWO THIRDS of our society are going to DIE because of diseases related to their diet and lackluster activity! Do 2/3rds of runners run so much that they die? Do 2/3rds of gym goers exercise so hard they die? Do 2/3rds of HEROIN users die from heroin? Do 2/3rds of any group partaking of any other activity DIE from it? NO!

The diet and INACTIVITY of most people is THE MOST dangerous thing you could possibly do on this planet! Why are people warning against the risks of the solution???

These articles warning about exercising too hard or too much fail to help the people they are aimed at while vindicating the inactivity of people who don’t exercise ENOUGH!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

More Body Dysmorphia Aggravation

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 08:13:00 +0000

The mediocrity machine pumped out another inane piece of anti-achievement propaganda in The Age today. Presenting the same tired and sad “concerns” about men with body image “problems” - and despite obviously restrained and intelligent counter arguments from Andre Davids - the reader is again warned to be very wary of the ‘dangers’ of wanting to look good. Click here to read...

Here is my beef:

The biggest health problems facing Western society are the OPPOSITE of body dysmorphia! Most people in Western society will DIE from a disease related to nutritional ABUSE and physical NEGLECT! And yet some academics find it necessary to warn people AGAINST the exact lifestyle attributes and values that would solve MOST health problems in Western society? Why? Because a party-hard, recreational-drug-abusing idiot - who also happened to bodybuild - died in Thailand? Hmmm... really?

You do not need to look very far or hard to find idiots in their 20’s who do monumentally stupid, self-destructive things. In fact, pretty much everybody of any age could reveal a story about something that they did or do that is shockingly disturbing or bafflingly stupid. So to find a young, dumb, 20-something, who follows the disgracefully misdirected advice of nutritionally-untrained personal trainers (or his idiot mates) is no proof that training and dieting for a good body is an inherently problematic activity! Its just proof that some people are dicks!

This article, like so many others, brings up the “Zyzz” story. Again! Zyzz was a well known, drug abusing, party nut. The only difference between Zyzz and the thousands of drug-abusing party nuts who die each year is that Zyzz was popular and trained. Like most young guys he liked to take off his shirt to show off a good looking body at nightclubs, parties and festivals. In case you werent aware, good looking guys going to parties with drugs and booze to pick up girls by showing off is not a new thing! Neither is going to hospital or dying from related activities! It happens EVERY WEEK; mostly to non-bodybuilders and people who do not "suffer" body dysmorphia!

Admittedly, a LOT of bodybuilders are risking their lives with some horribly misdirected water and sodium advice. There IS a big problem with heart-failures, kidney damage and seizures in bodybuilding all stemming from unqualified, uneducated ‘fitness’ professionals operating well above their pay-grade to provide dangerously ignorant advice! But these problems have NOTHING to do with body dysmorphia, drugs, training or bodybuilding generally. The problem is entirely a product of morons giving bad advice based on just enough information to be really dangerous!

Obviously the real issue is that body dysmorphia is extremely reader friendly. The average fat, unfit slob reading mainstream news feels vindicated by the idea that trying to make yourself look good by exercising and eating well is a dangerous mental condition. And the “family values” tripe runs thick throughout these articles with the yardstick of deranged, unacceptably obsessive behaviour being anything that causes relationship breakups. Because, of course, relationships between young people are sacred and normally ever-lasting; so long as a socially unpopular activity like bodybuilding doesn’t “infect” anybody.

The “body dysmorphia” charge so irritates me because it is an issue of personal priorities masquerading as psychological science. Dr Psychologist recognises that a competitive bodybuilder requires a level of size and leanness to be competitive but claims a non-competitive bodybuilder must be mentally ill for wanting the same standard for themselves! I was treated with the same contemptible attitude when I tore my bicep off the bone. The surgeon said to me that unless I planned to compete in something - anything - that I shouldnt worry about it being reattached! It wasnt good enough that I didnt want to be disfigured for myself. But doing it for some meaningless game was valid justification.

Body dysmorphia is also a question of standards. I may not be as disgustingly fat and muscleless as Dr Psychologist but that doesnt mean I’m mentally ill because I want to be even bigger and leaner than I am! It simply means I have much higher standards than Dr Psychologist. I think Dr Psychologist is mentally ill for wanting to waste his life working in a university doing research on body dysmorphia! Surely he could've contributed something to society more useful than that? What is wrong with HIM? Even more worrying, Dr Psychologist should be ashamed of how disgusting his own body is because, at the very least, its statistically far more likely to kill him than anybody elses apparent “body dysmorphia”!

Really, if society is going to have concerns about men getting depressed that they cannot achieve the physique standards that they desire, the concern should be the gross misinformation being spewed out by the Fitness industry that is making people waste so much time on such ineffective training! Perhaps if a few more Personal Trainers defected from the Fitness Industry and joined the ASCA and ISSN to learn about ATHLETE development - not helping unfit people achieve mediocrity - then more men would have physiques they didnt need to be depressed about!

PS: If you have body dysmorphia, good on you! Come on over to Biologic Labs and soak up the friendly pro-dysmorphic environment. If you need, you'll find effective training and nutritional advice and coaching from properly qualified Recomp Specialists. We can even put you onstage in a bodybuilding contest looking the best you could possibly look without ever restricting sodium or water or eliminating carbohydrate or anything else that would make you lose muscle, lose your mind, lose the title and possibly lose your life! Or you can always see one of the other guys and do it the other way.

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Advice for Posting Training Movies on the Web

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:08:00 +0000

I’ve been uploading videos of Biologic Labs staff and clients training for a few years now. Click here to see our YouTube Channel.

Often we find out long after the fact that a good number of people have enjoyed and even been inspired by some of those movies. But you wouldnt necessarily get that impression from the comments on the web.

So if you are planning to post a video of yourself or a friend doing something in the gym and you want to minimise the abuse from the web critics in the comments, here are a few things I’ve noticed:

DEADLIFTS

Don’t post heavy deadlifts because they are bad for your back.
Don’t post light deadlifts because then you are a weak pussy.
Don’t NOT post deadlifts because then you are pussy for not doing deadlifts.
Don’t wear straps on your deadlifts because straps lift the whole weight for you and mean you are a weak pussy who cant really lift 60kg
Don’t post training lifts because they don’t count in competition
Don’t post equipped competition lifts because the suit lifted the weight for you and you are a pussy who can’t really lift 60kg
Don’t post raw competition lifts without a belt because its dangerous not to wear a belt
Don’t post raw competition lifts with a belt because thats not raw
Don’t use an over/under grip because ‘real’ lifters use a hook grip
Don’t use a hook grip because deadlifts should be done with an over/under grip
Don’t do a deadlift by bending over because you are an idiot and going to hurt your back
Don’t do conventional deadlift because you are an idiot and sumo is way stronger
Don’t do sumo deadlifts because you are an idiot and real deadlifts should be done conventional
Don’t lock your shoulders back because you are an idiot and you’ll hurt your back
Don’t not lock your shoulders back because you are a pussy who didnt finish the lift
Don’t deadlift in boots or shoes because real deadlifts are done in slippers
Don’t deadlift in slippers because you are a pussy fag

SQUATS

Don’t squat above parallel because thats a half squat for weak pussies
Don’t squat to or below parallel because you are an idiot who is going to have ruined knees
Don’t break at your hips because that is just using your back
Don’t break at your knees because that is just using your knees
Don’t squat low-bar because that just a powerlifters ass exercise
Don’t squat high-bar because thats a pussy bodybuilder curtsy
Don’t squat in knee wraps because knee wraps are for pussies and add 800% to your squat
Don’t squat without knee wraps because you are an idiot who is going to have ruined knees
Don’t squat with a belt because belts are for pussies and the belt adds 800% to your squat
Dont’ squat without a belt because you are an idiot who is going to have a ruined back
Don’t squat with a squat suit because you are a pussy and a suit adds 80000% to your squat
Don't squat without a suit because you are an idiot and going to get injured
Don’t squat in a monolift because real squatters walk out
Don’t squat in a squat rack because real squatters use a monolift

BENCH PRESS & CURLS

Whatever you do is cheating, dangerous, ineffective and you are an idiot pussy fag!

The Functional and Core Strength Deception

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 03:51:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION
Since moving to Melbourne and returning to public gyms to train, I have been appalled by how the Fitness Industry has managed to regress even further than the lowly lows I escaped over 8 years ago. 'Functional strength' and 'core stability' is the current fad being misrepresented to mean 'body recomposition'. The fact is: these are just more rehabilitation techniques being sold to people who do not want or need rehabilitation!

The critical issue still being ignored is: NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS! People just want body recomposition! And that wouldnt be an issue IF the Fitness Industry was honest about the fact that what they are selling has nothing to do with body recomposition! But they are NOT honest. The Fitness Industry continues to blatantly deceive its customers with promises to "get in the best shape of your life", "lose fat and tone up" etc etc while providing solutions that have absolutely no relationship to such outcomes!

DYS-FUNCTIONAL TRAINING
Worse still, the 'functional training' I see practiced in public gyms is the definition of an oxymoron. The 'exercises' I see PT's routinely give their clients resemble NO useful movement pattern that ANY person might ever use, in ANY activity, EVER! For example, the other day I saw a PT give his client a 6-exercise combination of lunge/bicep-curl to squat/shoulder-press to stiff-leg-deadlift/tricep-kickback - with 3kg dumbells! It was an exercise in memory and coordination - certainly not any useful function.

Watching this I just couldnt fathom WHY??? Why lunge down while curling up? It means the dumbells don't actually get lifted! Why reduce a weight for squats to weight you can do a tricep kickback with? For equal thigh and arm development? Just separating those six exercises and using appropriate loads on each to build strength would make a great workout. So had they been left alone, the client would have trained more productively WITHOUT the trainers DYSFUNCTIONAL training!

This is just one example and I could go on and on about the bafflingly worthless, non-functional, functional training I see taught everyday. Fortunately, you can click here for this YouTube video which speaks volumes about how atrocious the situation has become. EVERYBODY I have shown this movie gets a puzzled look on their face and asks the poignant question: WHY??? I hope you do too!

The critical point is that NONE of this so-called 'functional' training relates to delivering the body recomposition outcome that PT's promise and their clients pay for! It is an absolute, blatant rip-off!

THE REASON AND SOLUTION
As I have stated before, the Fitness Industry is part of the HEALTH industry; not sports performance industry! 'Fitness' is the state of MINIMAL physical function necessary to COPE with day to day life. It is not an aspirational achievement unless you are disabled! And this is why fitness solutions are typically derived from rehabilitation techniques.

This is also why the Fitness Industry is so completely irrelevant to non-disabled, non-unfit people who want body recomposition and/or above-minimum levels of physical ability. Anybody wanting body recomposition - even unfit people - need to look for experts in ATHLETE development! Athlete development comes from Strength and Conditioning Coaches; NOT Personal Trainers! And if you want abs, you need a SPORTS nutritionist; not a dietician; and definitely not a Personal Trainer who has no practical or legal ability to prescribe such advice.

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Building Outer Sweep to the Thighs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 07:13:00 +0000

I just read a question to an elite Bodybuilder about building the outer sweep of the quads. His answer, as always, centered around the angle and position of the feet during squatting and leg pressing type movements. The theory is that you can train to change the shape of your thighs (and other muscles) as distinct from training to gain regular muscle 'mass'. Apparently you have to choose whether you want shape or mass and train accordingly. I want to give a more basic answer with a bit of math and common sense instead of voodoo and “bro science”.

Firstly, with any goal you should attempt to quantify what you are aiming to achieve. It is safe to assume the average thigh (ie femur) of even a short bodybuilder is at LEAST 50cm in length. As such, a 1cm increase in the width of the thigh when viewed the front - ie just 2% of the length - is probably not going to deliver the kind of body-shape-changing effect desired. Im going to assume we want at LEAST 2cm of width added to the thighs in order to actually be visually noticeable.

Now lets say a 50cm long thigh is 70cm in circumference at the largest point (a respectable, 27 1/2 inches). Using very simple math, 2cm added only to the width of this thigh (ie not the depth) requires an increase of ~6.3cm (~2.5 inches) to the circumference. Thats 6.3 cm - 2.5 inches - of overall thigh growth for a tiny 2cm increase in ‘sweep’!

For this 70cm thigh to increase 6.3cm to 76.3cm (30 inches), the cross-sectional area - and therefore mass of muscle in the thighs - needs to increase by a massive 18%! That is an awful LOT of muscle growth for a mighty small 'shape' training outcome! But it gets worse!

Physics - not my opinion - tells us that the force generating capacity of a muscle is directly proportional to its cross-sectional area. Which means that when this thigh increases just 2cm in 'sweep', its force output - ie strength - will increase, give-or-take, by around 18%!

In order to train for a 18% increase in quad strength you could rely on luck, hope, voodoo or HEAPS of drugs. Or you could train to achieve an 18% increase in your maximum training loads! Assuming a man with a 70cm (27 1/2") thigh can squat ~250kg (550lb), a 18% gain equates to a hair off a 300kg (660lb) squat! I can promise you that strength gain does not come from pointing your toes awkwardly! For most of us, it comes from bloody hard work and utter determination to squat 300kg. I've done it. Once. Its FREAKING hard! And it sure as hell didnt come from visualisation, squeezing my leg extensions or changing my foot placement on leg presses!

So next time you read that you can significantly develop the outer sweep of your thighs by turning your toes during a leg press or squat, slowing things down, and reducing the weight to 'feel the burn', ask yourself just how likely that strategy is to add 18% more muscle mass to your overall quads and quad strength?

Muscle building isnt rocket science. But it isnt voodoo either. You do have significant control over the shape of your muscles and overall physique; but that that control is largely limited to manipulating the SIZE of the tissue you have (ie growing the muscle and shrinking the fat).

Significant muscle size increases result in massive strength increases. While everybody wants to debate whether strength gains equate to muscle gains, NOT getting stronger means you are definitely NOT gaining muscle! I recommend training for strength because the alternative is to fail outright!

So if changing your foot position during squats and leg presses allows you to make more rapid strength GAINS then it will probably help you increase the 'sweep' of your thighs faster by helping you grow the massive amounts of muscle you need. But if that silly foot placement makes you incapable of gaining strength - which for most people, it does - then that tells you all you need to know about its ability to help you grow muscle anywhere: it WON'T!

(PS: Perhaps you think my over simplified math is grossly incorrect and you believe that you can actually add 2cm to the width of your thighs without a change to the circumference - ie without adding extra muscle? To do that is to suggest that the position of your toes will cause your body to disassemble millions and millions of proteins in one area of the thigh and reassemble them in another area with absolutely no physiological benefit or impact on physical performance. If you believe that, good luck! Because that is voodoo)!

Socialism and Obesity

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:45:00 +0000

I don't normally repost viral emails but the one below is particularly relevant both to contemporary politics and peoples attitudes towards body composition.

As the population has gotten fatter, attitudes have become more accepting of unacceptable obesity. Even science is helping people justify their knowingly atrocious dietary habits by suggesting that obese people are 'victims' of an inexplicable misfortune (such as the study suggesting obesity was "contagious" like a virus). They even gave obesity and its associated health issues a new name - Syndrome X - to highlight that it was something inexplicable that happened TO people and not because of anything they did to themselves.

With people regarded as VICTIMS of obesity - rather than personally responsible for the mess that they made of themselves - they are regarded as needing and deserving 'help' while being incapable of helping themselves. This then establishes a reward process for failure: stay fat and receive help and empathy. Lose the fat and you lose the attention and the support.

So the wonderful, warm, caring, philanthropic socialist attitude does what socialism always does: erodes the motivation and power for people to take responsibility for their actions and enjoy the rewards of their own achievements. Not only do the initial 'victims' fail but the problem spreads like a contagion, fulfilling its own prophecy.

And if you dont know what Im talking about, do some research on Lap Band surgery in Australia...

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich - a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan. All grades will be averaged and everyone will receive the same grade so no one will fail and no one will receive an A."

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the third test rolled around, the average was an F.

As the tests proceeded, the scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

To their great surprise, ALL FAILED and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

Remember, there IS a test coming up. The 2012 elections.

These are possibly the 5 best sentences you'll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation

HOW TO BECOME A SPORTS NUTRITION SPECIALIST WITH THE ISSN

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 06:38:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION
The Sports Nutrition Specialist (SNS) qualification is the entry-level certificate from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN). It was designed specifically for Personal Trainers and Coaches who do not have a related degree qualification.

As the Australian Ambassador for the ISSN, I organise ISSN exams in Australia. Visit my Recomp website to learn how it ties into Body Recomposition Specialist Certification.

GETTING SNS CERTIFIED
Certification is awarded for achieving 70% or greater in a 100 multi-choice question exam. There is no long-winded and expensive course to attend because the ISSN assumes you will already possess a solid background in nutrition and exercise science before sitting their exams. If you do not have such a background, the ISSN is not for you; yet. You will need to do some study and develop some experience first.

HOW TO STUDY FOR THE SNS
The content of the SNS exam is self-studied from the ISSN’s textbook: the Essentials of Sports Nutrition and Supplementation (ESNS). To the average coach studying for the SNS, the textbook is overwhelmingly technical! So much that many competent coaches have been scared off sitting the SNS when they actually had more than enough knowledge to pass.

It needs to be understood that the ESNS textbook was written for the much, much more technical and difficult CISSN exam; not the SNS! And this is why the textbook goes so far beyond the depth required for the SNS.

The SNS exam tests understanding of how to APPLY the latest science described in the textbook. But there is not a single question in the SNS requiring the memorization of biochemical processes, names of chemicals or details about research studies. The questions are not cryptically designed to trick, confuse or baffle. The SNS questions are the sorts of things a good Sports Nutritionist should know in order to correctly advise their clients on what to do. For any Trainer who has been competently advising their clients on diet, the SNS is not hard.

THE TEXTBOOK
The textbook is divided into 5 sections. The first 2 sections cover Exercise Science and are relevant only to the (significantly harder) CISSN exam; but not to the SNS. Only the last 3 sections of the book need to be studied for the SNS. They cover Sports Nutrition, Supplementation and Special Topics.

The 5 sections of the book are further divided into chapters and at the end of every chapter are 30 multi-choice questions. Again, these questions are designed to help with studying for the CISSN; not the SNS. Though a few of the easier chapter-end questions reappear in the SNS, mostly they are much more difficult (and confusing) than the questions in the SNS. In some cases, the questions at the end of the chapter cannot be answered from the chapter in which they appear. And in a few cases, the questions cannot be answered from anywhere in the textbook! It is further proof of the ISSN’s expectation of pre-existing knowledge before you sit the CISSN.

RECOMMENDATIONS
My personal recommendation for a busy coach who understands nutrition and wants to do the minimum study to pass the SNS exam is:
1. Ignore the first 2 sections of the book. There are no questions from them in the SNS.
2. Ignore the study-guides. They are aimed at developing the deep technical understanding required for the CISSN but are way beyond the SNS.
3. Ignore the almost 100 pages of references. Again, it is a tremendous resource to have available; but there are no questions in the exam about study names or their authors.
4. Ignore the almost 100 pages of the Supplements section that describes the biochemistry behind numerous supplement ingredients. It makes an exceptionally good reference guide. But for the purposes of the exam, you do not need to memorise all the different names, doses and chemical processes described.
5. Do not dwell on the complex biochemistry or chemical pronunciations. Focus on understanding the outcomes and the relevant action points – if there are any - as that is what is being tested.
6. Do not dwell on the America-centric content.
7. Possibly ignore the questions at the end of the chapters. They seem to do more to sap confidence in sitting the SNS than help understanding. They are mostly far more difficult than the exam itself.
8. Make sure to read the Sidebars! Not only are they fascinating; many of the questions come from the sidebars.
9. Make sure you know the ratios/doses of carbs, proteins, fluids and their timings that studies have shown most effective for athletic performance. These are the sorts of practical prescription issues that you do need to know.
10. Do not put the exam off for a month or more. The people who should be sitting the SNS already advise people on nutrition and already understand the principles questioned in the exam. Spending more than 2 weeks studying the textbook will only result in getting bogged down in the scary biochemistry you don’t need to know. If you need to learn nutrition from scratch then you probably need to get some experience and practice dieting for your own sport or body composition before sitting the exam.

PERSONAL FEELINGS
Having sat and passed both the SNS and CISSN exams, I cannot overstate the difference in difficulty between the two. The SNS is basic. The CISSN is biblically hard! Having passed both exams I can also reveal that I could not easily answer many of the questions in the textbook itself. Some were so obscure I failed to find the answers even by searching the Internet! So do not be put off by the questions in the textbook.

FINAL WORDS
The SNS is a fair test of relevant knowledge. An inexperienced Personal Trainer who has only been exposed to the nutrition taught in Cert 4 will struggle tremendously with the content and test. Even a degree-qualified dietician would probably not pass without study as the latest science discussed in the ESNS contradicts university curriculums. But for any experienced trainer who has, for example, prepared figure or bodybuilding athletes for competition will find the textbook interesting and the exam simple.

If you follow my recommendations above you will have barely 200 pages of textbook to read which is only 15 pages per day for 2 weeks. Its only 1/2 an hour per day of reading and that’s all you should do to not panic about not completely understanding the biochemistry.

Given that there are only 100 questions in the exam, there is only one question per 2 pages of relevant content. Obviously this leaves no room for highly technical questions or irrelevant questions to pad out the exam. It really is a very fair exam that any good coach with an interest in sports nutrition will not find hard.

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Don't Hate the Fitness Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:32:00 +0000

For the longest time I despised the fitness industry. I hated it for the way it certified people who had never trained with weights or achieved any sort of athletic accomplishment. I hated that out-of-shape people were given the same formal recognition as World Champion athletes. I hated that the content of the Fitness training course is utterly irrelevant, horribly obsolete and almost cannot be failed. I hated that the Fitness industry shunned intense weight training while promoting rehabilitation exercise for people who don't need rehabilitating. In short, I hated the institutionalised mediocrity of the Fitness Industry.

But then one day it dawned on me that the problem was actually my misunderstanding of what ‘fitness’ is. Like most people, I thought fitness was all about being in the best physical condition you could be. I thought it was about having an exceptional body and athletic ability.

But fitness is none of those things. Being ‘fit’ is to be ‘adequate’ or ‘suitable’ to perform the most basic functions a human should be able to fulfil. Being fit, in a general sense, is being able to walk, sit up, jog lightly, throw a ball, crawl etc. It isn’t about being an athlete. It isn’t about being best, brilliant, exceptional or even good. To have ‘general fitness’ is actually to be the LEAST a human can be without being sick, injured or handicapped. ‘Fit’ is simply: to not be ‘unfit’; to not require rehabilitation. To be ‘fit’ is to be average; mediocre; exceptionally unexceptional.

Realising this simple fact was hugely liberating for me. Suddenly the fitness industry made sense. Suddenly it made sense why all those personal trainers were prescribing therabands, swiss balls, walking on treadmills and other low intensity rehabilitation exercise that is utterly useless for improving the body. Suddenly I understood why Personal Trainers worked in parks doing primary school PE exercise with their clients. Suddenly I understood yoga, Pilates, bosu balls, ab rollers, the endless Les Mills franchises and fitness fads. None of it ever was about creating a great body or athleticism. It was all about the masses of fat, unfit people achieving the lofty heights of mediocrity!

I have realised that there never was a problem with the fitness industry when it came to delivering the average-ness 'fitness'. In fact, given the disastrous physical state of the majority of Australians, the fitness industry has never been more relevant! The problem that remains is the general misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what ‘fitness’ is.

I am not the only one who has mistakenly thought that ‘fitness’ was synonymous with ‘body recomposition’. In fact, almost every single person I have ever spoken to – inside and outside of the fitness industry – has never considered fitness NOT to mean body recompositioning. Worse still, the vast majority of people I have ever spoken to - inside and outside of the fitness industry – have never even considered what the definition of fitness actually is at all!? I cannot think of another aspiration that is so widely sought after yet so amorphous that hardly anybody paying for it can even define what it is?!

So the greatest fault of the fitness industry is not that its education program is full of content that is irrelevant and obsolete for body recomposition. It is not that the so-called ‘profession’ of Personal Training is one of the most unaccountable vocations with a staggering 95% failure rate for body recomposition. It is not that the fitness industry aggressively directs people away from the type of weight training and dietary practices required for efficient body composition control. No, the greatest problem with the fitness industry is its ongoing, mendacious implication that fitness IS body recompositioning when nothing could be further from the truth!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Bodybuilding Training: What Am I Missing?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 May 2011 12:15:00 +0000

For several months I was struggling to focus on my training for a variety of reasons. I still trained every week and I trained hard and heavy when I did. But when you measure your performances like I do it makes it very hard to lie to yourself that you aren't going backwards when the numbers prove that you are, in fact, going backwards. So I decided to do something new just to do something new. Ideally I needed to change my training so that I COULD lie to myself that I wasnt going backwards, and not know otherwise. So I decided to do bodybuilder training.

Bodybuilder training means I train more often and do more 'stuff' but never worry about how much weight I lift because apparently weight doesnt matter. Apparently worrying about the weight on weight-based exercises in the activity known as 'lifting weights', well, that is 'powerlifting'. And Bodybuilding is not powerlifting... and that is all... You don't need to know why weight doesnt matter other than to know that weight=powerlifting and bodybuilding is NOT powerlifting!!!

So I strut around commenting on my "insane pump" and "feeling the burn" and how its all about the "quality contractions". I keep reminding everybody that "this is bodybuilding, not powerlifting" as I put really light weights on exercises they all know I can lift more on. Then I explain how I'm "carving in the separations" by "squeezing the muscle" and that I'm "using my mind to make 20lb feel like 200lb" because the "muscle can't see the weight". And though I'm quoting verbatim all the stuff thats written in bodybuilding magazines, people still look at me with a knowing smirk that I am being a dickhead and everything I am saying is idiotic rubbish.

But I can't help that a tinge of sarcasm comes through in my voice when I announce during 15kg dumbell curls that I am "visualising my biceps being like the craggy mountain peaks of the Alps". I'm trying - Im trying hard - to do the bodybuilder thing and say the bodybuilder things but it really is the most ridiculous crap. So its hard to keep a straight face.

I do like that when I just cannot be bothered working hard that I can blurt out some random, stupid, closed-statement like "2 plates per side is enough for growth". Because with bodybuilding your statements dont even need to make sense. Like I can say "Im using a close grip to make my pecs go more outwards and not so much wide" and in bodybuilding gyms, people seem to nod like its the spoken word of Confucius. So long as its always "about the quality contractions and not the weight", its all good. But when I say it, people laugh at me and the stupidity of the statements. What AM I doing wrong?

I also like the ridiculous excuses I can make for pathetic performances. Like the other day after I'd "smashed my pecs til they were totally on swole, man" and I then "destroyed my delts". I started with rear laterals to bring out the rear head of the shoulder and get that "real cannonball" look to the delts. Yeah, those rear laterals really round out my delts. Then I "worked on my width" with a few sets of laterals to "bring out the side head" and build the "cap" on the delts to emphasise my V-taper. Of course I made sure to twist my little fingers to "work the trap-delt tie-ins" (to be honest, I still dont actually know what it means to 'work the tie-ins' assuming the 'tie-in' is the gap between 2 muscles. But hey, who am I to use common sense)? I pyramided up each set, of course, and kept my reps in the "8-12 range for hypertrophy" (cos 7 reps is powerlifting - and bodybuilding is NOT powerlifting!!! - and 13reps would be... I dunno... triathlon or something).

After I "pre-exhausted" the delts I went to the Military Press for "my main mass builder". I was "smashed" so I barely got 9 reps. Phew. I just made it into the growth range. Nevermind that I'd normally do the same weight for 30. Weight doesnt matter and 30reps is aerobics. Military Pressing 110% of bodyweight for 30reps aint impressive; its just... confusing. 9 reps with a weight I can normally do 30 reps with is making my muscles increase in size - but not strength - cos I stopped at 9 and thats between 8 and 12 which is hypertrophy. And hypertrophy is good; like brocolli. Its just good. See, its all about doing the right number of reps and stopping. You don't want to go over or...um... honestly, I have no idea; but you just don't!

Next set I only managed 6. Damn. No growth. 6 isnt enough for growth. But I did get some strength. 6-8 for strength see. Or was that 3-5 for strength? Dammit! I got it wrong and now I won't know what I got til... again, I'm not really sure when I am supposed to actually 'get' something out of this? Oh yeah, "the mirror never lies"... I don't know how that relates either but bodybuilders seem to just throw in those closed statements all the time as though the relevance was self-evident; though it never is.

So try as I might, I can't pretend NOT to know that everything I just said there was just plain stupid. Its ridiculous stupidity. I'm honestly TRYING to say it the same way that the bodybuilders do but I just cannot help notice that it still sounds idiotic.

And yet apparently I am the crazy, radical one. I have crazy ideas about training because I believe that training hard and eating perfectly is the most effective way for looking your best. Apparently THATS crazy. Apparently what I suggest is really confusing. But all the bodybuilding stuff I wrote above, that makes sense? I just don't know what I am missing?

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

GHRP-6 & The Peptide Hormone Craze

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 May 2011 06:06:00 +0000

It seems everyone is raving on peptide hormones as the amazing 'new thing' in lazy, drug-induced muscle growth and fat loss. The fact is, injectable peptide hormones have been around for decades. The diabetic hormone Insulin is a peptide hormone and it was first available in the 1920's!

When Peptides Came To Fame
But Growth Hormone (GH) was the peptide hormone that changed everything. GH was credited to creating the new era of muscular bodybuilding monsters from around the time Lee Haney arrived in the 80's. And demand for the drug - and its reputation as being THE underground 'secret of the pros' - was bolstered by its mind-blowingly expensive price and rarity.

Then IGF-1 hit the black market before it was even an approved drug and the mystery and rumors surround GH, Insulin and IGF reached fever pitch. Steroids were old news. Now, if you want to look like a pro bodybuilder you just need to get enough of the right peptides.

GHRP-6
Which brings us to GHRP-6. GH Releasing Peptide is cheap and... well, currently not illegal to purchase over the internet. As the name suggests, it causes GH release; so people figure it must be exactly the same as GH and therefore will make them look like a pro bodybuilder in no time, with no effort and without all the rest of the drugs. Unfortunately, you won't look anything like a pro bodybuilder from using GHRP-6. The only reason it is so HUGELY popular is because finally Mr Average can AFFORD something that looks like the hardcore 'gear' the pro's use... except not.

I don't know anybody who got anything out of GHRP-6 whatsoever! At least, nothing over and above what might be expected from the other 'things' they were doing/taking at the time. In fact, when really pressed, nobody I know seems to know of anybody else who got any great benefit out of it either. All of the guys I know who still use it only do because it is cheap and they don't want to risk not taking it, 'in case it helps'.

So Why Use It?
Everybody knows that pro bodybuilders use lots of drugs and, these days, are as lazy as sin in the gym. The conclusion for many people is that drugs or injecting/boosting your naturally occurring hormones is the only way to build muscle.

Supplements are selling like crazy in response to the belief that the solution to an awesome physique is in a bottle. And if your muscles don't arrive you don't blame your hopeless training or disgraceful diet. You just got the wrong bottle of magic potion.

Many young guys will inject anything they possibly can afford and get and then strangely believe they are transforming into a pro bodybuilder just by being so 'hardcore' as to be taking a drug. I knew a guy who kicked in the door of his own car in a claimed 'roid rage' only minutes after injecting himself with some cooking oil that he thought was a steroid.

Here is a story to illustrate what I mean about the seriously deluded misrepresenations that bodybuilders make about their drugs and supplements:

The PGF Experiment
A few years ago I followed with interest the writings of a hardcore drug abusing bodybuilder as he did a 4 week experiment with PGF-2; one of the newish growth factors that is one of the most potent muscle building hormones in the body and WAY more significant than GHRP-6 could ever dream of being.

He wound up having to take most of the 4 weeks off work because the explosive diarrhoea and acute flu-like symptoms that he - and everyone using PGF - got after each of his 5 daily injections made work impossible.

The whole time he couldnt hold down any of his food or it went straight through him and 'out the back door'. He could hardly train either because the drug caused massive muscle pain; not to mention the muscle pumps from minimal training were apparently crippling.

He had stacked the drug on top of an especially 'heavy' cycle of very high dose steroids, GH, Insulin, T3 and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember. He did so to give the PGF the "best chance of working". But he used all of these drugs all year round so they "weren't doing anything" for him any more.

Despite the pain and discomfort he was in, he persisted with the PGF because he was quickly "blowing up" AND getting "shredded" all at the same time. In all his years of drugs he'd never seen anything like the transformation that was taking place. He was getting bigger and leaner everyday. Muscle was literally piling on him as the fat melted away. It was incredible.

At the end of 4 weeks of diarrhoea, vomiting, stomach cramps, headaches and all over muscular pain his conclusion was that it had been more than worth it. He had grown so much muscle and lost so much fat that it had transformed his physique. He even measured it; his total body composition change totalled:

2 pounds of muscle gain and 1 pound of fat lost.

Yep. All that hell and he gained 900grams of muscle while losing 450g of fat. Yet in his own mind, he got MASSIVE and RIPPED!

When Peptides Become Relevant to Bodybuilding Training
It all comes back to what I've always said: its all about your training. Train and diet properly and a drug-free athlete should be able to achieve about a 260kg deadlift before things become extremely hard to go further. If you can't get a natural 260kg deadlift then you are training and eating wrong. Some guys can even acheive a 260kg deadlift without ever actually doing a deadlift or training hard!

But if the physique of a lean 260kg deadlifter is not muscular enough for you (eg typically around 95kg at 8% bodyfat at 180cm) then you are going to probably need unnatural means to achieve your unnatural goals. Very low dose, testosterone optimisation therapy can help a successfully training athlete to achieve a 300kg deadlift and a great physique (eg around 105kg at 8% at 180cm).

If you still want more unnatural levels of muscle then you probably need to break the law and cycle higher doses of testosterone and/or add GH. Beyond a 340kg deadlift (growing bigger than around 115-125kg at 8% at 180cm) you'll probably need to stay on higher doses of steroids year round.

By the time you reach the muscularity capable of a 360kg deadlift (ie over 130kg, lean at 180cm) as a career-criminal steroid user, then progress will probably be determined by cycles of insulin with GH and IGF-1 and all the rest.

This is the point at which these peptide growth factors become relevant: the pro-bodybuilder level. Without the heavy base of steroid hormones, though, they are a mostly a waste of time and money. And if you are already using all of these drugs to achieve a lesser physique then you need to take a serious look at yourself, your diet and your training!

Conclusion
When you hear from a bloke that GHRP-6 is MIND-BLOWING AWESOMENESS in a bottle, just remember my story above about exactly how mind-blowing PGF2 was! Whoever you are, GHRP-6 is definitely NOT the solution to ANY of your physique or training problems!

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.

Cardio and Fat Loss: Why don't they Measure it?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 03:39:00 +0000

Interestingly, for all of the deeply scientific explanations for doing low-intensity-endurance-exercise ("cardio") for fat loss, nobody practicing the theory bothers measuring their planned change in body composition. They invest in all sorts of complex gizmos for measuring heart rate and calories burned and calories consumed and VO2 max and stuff; but they don't measure their bodyfat.

The few trainers who do measure fat-skinfolds typically refuse to then calculate a bodyfat percentage. They argue that bodyfat equations are inaccurate; yet ignore that their calorie equations never, ever work for them.

The even fewer trainers who bother to calculate a bodyfat percentage refuse to use it to calculate out how much actual fat and lean mass has changed. They have the data right there but simply cannot face the inconvenient truth it exposes: cardio is horribly inefficient and ineffective for improving body composition and lowering bodyfat.

Visit www.BiologicLabs.com.au for Body Recompositioning diets, training programs, strength coaching, supplements and hormone balancing. Extreme fat loss and muscle development that Personal Trainers and Fitness gyms cannot achieve.