Health, Fitness, Medical & Personal Training Industry Dirt Revealed

ARE YOU EXERCISING TOO HARD? HELL NO!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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!

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 Functional and Core Strength Deception

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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 (Damon Hayhow) — 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.

FAQ: Training Like Everyone Trains

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:17:00 +0000

QUESTION:
There are so many guys getting good results with the 1 bodypart per day, 5 day per week routine (training each bodypart once per week). Why do you recommend 3 days per week and training bodyparts more often?

ANSWER:
There are guys who are better built than you and me who don't even workout! There are guys out there stronger than you and me who have never lifted a weight! There are guys out there who don't need to lift heavy weights or train very hard to become capable of lifting insanely heavy weights! And there are guys out there who suddenly become one of those other freaky guys as soon as they inject a few drugs.

The issue is, you are writing to me because you are NOT one of those guys. I am NOT one of those guys either. In fact, very few of us are one of those guys. But we all look up to those guys. We all WISH we were those guys. So we make the logical but stupid mistake: we ask those guys what they did and then try to copy it. And the inevitable result is: we fail to look like those guys cos we just aint those guys. And we fail to get strong by doing pumping training with light weights and lots of exercises like they do because it doesnt even make sense why a human WOULD get strong training like that!!!

So the reason I don't recommend the standard '1-bodypart-per-day' program is because so many guys ARENT getting good results with it. In fact, MOST trainers arent getting good results with it. In fact, the ONLY trainers that ARE getting results out of it are those rare individuals who get results out of ANY program! And even they tend to get MORE results out of any other program than the standard 1 bodypart per day regime.

Almost EVERY trainer who comes to me for a program is using the '1 bodypart per day' program and has failed to achieve anything for YEARS! But they stick with it because every monday they train chest and they get a big pump and it feels good and they look swollen the next day and are sore for 2 days after. By the time they arent sore its monday again and they get a big pump and feel good and get swollen etc etc. But after a year they havent changed AT ALL! They just swell up and down every week in every muscle and go nowhere overall. But its easy, it feels SOOOOO good, it looks good and everybody does it. And that is why everybody does it: its just lazy, feel-good, lemming behaviour.

I was lucky enough to realise early on that the really muscular guys are really muscular because they are CAPABLE of lifting HUGE weights; even if they rarely bother to. It just makes sense - muscle exists to exert force. It doesnt need to do it for very long or very often. Its just there in case a lot of force is needed. Big muscles equal big strength; even if they don't mean strong work ethic!

Given that I was very weak and I wanted to become very strong, ASAP, it was obvious that I needed a training program that made me able to lift heavier and heavier weights EVERY time I trained. With SO much strength to be gained, it made no sense to waste time on any program that gave me no strength gains each week. So I rationalised and then trialled every combination until I found the ones that gained strength well.

Quickly it became obvious that a program like "the pro's" use - 1 bodypart per week with lots of half-assed 'stuff' - wasnt, in any way, relevant to what I needed to achieve. And it didnt take much trial-&-error to find out how poorly it worked. I am just lucky to be an argumentative, contrarian SOB who doesnt do what everyone else does just because its what everyone else does! ;-)

So by trying stuff and then thinking about it, the logical programs proved to work best: push heavy weights to failure and plan your WEIGHTS given that the WEIGHT is the purpose and outcome of training.

The rest is just logical. I don't recommend doing flyes after bench press because I can't understand how doing light-weight flyes, when I'm tired, is going to help communicate to my body that it needs to become capable of doing a 200kg bench press? Some guys can do that. Most of us can't. If you can do that then keep doing what you are doing. If you can't do that.... it doesnt take too much brainpower to understand why!

I hope that helps. Its not rocket science. Its just pretty obvious. Focus on your end goal - lifting a crazy deadlift, squat and bench! Doing so should make you realise how dumb the standard 'routine-of-the-pros' is!

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.

Fit, Flexible & Fat

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 05:17:00 +0000

Check out this girl who has been training hard to get fit, flexible and fabulous. And she succeeded! Check out that flexibility. Wow! Thats really fit.

Doesn't she just make you want to run to your nearest yoga class to achieve the same sort of fitness?

No. Me either. In fact, I think she could benefit by dropping the Fitness work and engaging in some Body Recompositioning. Click here if you don't know the difference...

Looking Back to Move Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:34:00 +0000

Anyone who has seen rally driving on TV has probably noticed that the racers' front wheels are very rarely pointed in the direction that their vehicle is moving. To take a LEFT hand corner the driver will deftly 'flick' the car into a skid, turn the front wheels to the RIGHT and then apply excessive power to send the car, paradoxically, around the LEFT hand bend. This wasn't the intention of the engineers who originally designed the steering rack of the motorcar. Nor was it the expectation of scientists or academics. But on the track where the game is played, the fastest way to send a ton and a half of metal hurtling round a gravel road is with the wheels pointed mostly in the wrong direction!

This is not a dissimilar situation to weight training for muscle growth. Scientists and academics (and the people silly enough to listen to scientists and academics) bury their heads 'under the hood' and obsess over the chemical and mechanical PROCESSES of "protein synthesis" and "anabolism" with the assumption that pointing part of the bodies chemistry in the right direction will ensure the rest of the body arrives at the desired destination. But, as any rally driver will tell you, looking away from the desired destination to worry about which way the wheels are pointed is a sure fire way to not even finish the race!

A smarter person wanting to jump straight in and join the race as quickly as possible doesn't need to study circuit diagrams of cars ECU or consider the metallurgy of the alloy used in the engine block. A smarter person consults a map! (And has someone show them how to drive)! They consider their destination, the turns in between and work backwards to where they are now.

The tools in the race to grow muscle are food and weights. You don't need to know whats going on 'under the hood' (ie inside your body) when you eat food and lift weights. You just need to consult a map and steer your food and weights, around the twists and turns, toward your destination.

Logically, a muscularly larger version of yourself is going to be eating more food and lifting substantially heavier weights. You can probably guess how much good quality food you'll need to be eating at your desired size. And you can even predict how strong you'll probably be by looking at the maximal strength of other trainers at your desired size. It doesnt matter if you are exact because, like a rally driver, you are going to need to make countless adjustments as you go. But you still have to plan your journey first or it will take twice as long.

Over the course of your 'race' for muscle you are going to need to see yourself measuring your food intake and making adjustments according to the scales; just as a rally driver adjusts the throttle and steering angle through the bends. And just like a rally driver, your food intake won't always move in the direction your body is going. Its not a precise science; you can only keep your eye on the apex and keep fine tuning your inputs to stay on track. And if you 'close your eyes' on your diet and try to 'feel' your way through the twists, you'll probably wind up with a mangled chassis, going nowhere!

Similarly, to be muscularly larger you are going to need to be MASSIVELY stronger. The weights you use at each workout won't necessarily be moving in the direction of your strength - you will routinely need to drop your weights back as well as overload your muscles with excessive weight and less-than-good-quality reps. But you make adjustments as you go in order to keep moving toward your destination of getting truly strong. You never stop trying to get as strong as possible because in the race to gain muscle, thats like... stopping.

Most importantly, the second you stop focussing on your destination - massive strength with a measured, high intake of high quality food - and start worrying about whats going on 'under the hood' (or just cruising by 'feel'), that is going to be the exact moment you stop moving towards your destination and come crashing to a halt!

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 You SHOULD Use Supplements

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 04:48:00 +0000

I've frequently stated that nutritional supplements are largely, for most people, a complete waste of time and money. This position confuses people who logically ask me:

"so why does Biologic Labs have a supplement store then"?

So let me clear that up.

Nutritional Supplements are CAPABLE of improving a trainers rate and extent of body composition change. The RIGHT supplement, added to the RIGHT diet with the RIGHT training can improve the fat loss and/or muscle gain achieved. Sometimes the effect can be dramatic.

For example, I consider Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA) a 'must have' supplement to clients on high carb, high calorie, low fat diets. Without it, most clients suffer horrible bloating, lethargy and extreme food cravings. With ALA, all of those negative effects literally disappear within a day! It is truly incredible.

But ALA is only incredible in that circumstance. In no other circumstance is there such a dramatic, instantly noticeable, almost drug-like effect.

Unfortunately, most supplement companies and stores won't tell you the fine-print about supplements. They'll just tell you that ALA, for example, will MAKE all these incredible things happen, all by itself, like a drug would. And it just won't! ALA makes a dramatic difference to an exceptionally good diet in the same way that expensive speaker cables make a dramatic difference to exceptionally good speakers. If you put $2000/meter speaker cable on your $200, JB Hifi all-in-one home theatre, you still have bad sound!

So my issue is not so much with supplements as peoples application of supplements. People want and expect supplements to MAKE UP FOR their atrocious diets and inappropriate training. They want to buy a potion that will build muscle for them and strip all their fat off while giving them boundless energy and sex drive that never abates. And no such potion exists! Supplements COMPLEMENT particular diets; they help them work better. They don't fix bad diets. They don't turn dog turds into gold bars!

So the bottom line is: nutritional supplements help DIETS work; sometimes dramatically better. But you need to make sure you are choosing the right supplement for the right diet and the right training for the right goal. Because in of themselves, supplements don't 'work'!

And that is why Biologic Labs sells supplements. Because we create the MEASURED diets to match the MEASURED training to achieve your MEASURED body composition goals, we can properly advise of the appropriate supplements to deliver maximum benefit and value.

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.

Supplement Ads: Scientifically Factual, Inferential... untruths

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:40:00 +0000

If you haven't heard, to protect consumers from unscrupulously dishonest operators, the Government has outlawed any and all 'claims' on nutritional supplements; even if they are 100% true and valid. So it would seem that the preferred method of still making supplement claims, but without actually making illegal "claims" is to use (pseudo) scientific facts to INFER.... untruths.

Powerzone HGH is an excellent example of this current marketing trend. Its multi-page brochure explains the function and benefits of Growth Hormone while quoting a variety of scientific studies. Everything stated is perfectly true and factual.... about Growth Hormone... and particularly injected, pharmaceutical Growth Hormone.... in elderly people.

The brochure does not claim that the HGH product itself delivers these results. Nor does it claim that results of pharmaceutical Growth Hormone in old people translates to the healthy gen-Y's that HGH is pitched at. Nor does it claim that HGH will compare to Growth Hormone injections. In fact, Powerzones makers don't actually claim that Growth Hormone levels will be raised by their product. They aren't allowed; and they don't have to. They know that YOU will make those claims for them!

Marketers know that they don't have to make claims for products that people desperately WANT access to. Like Chris Rock joked: [nobody] 'sells' drugs; drugs sell themselves! And when it comes to fat loss and muscle growth, EVERYBODY wants the magic pill! You only need to put the words "fat loss" on the bottle and people will buy it. Even when they know with 99.99% certainty that the product won't work! People will buy it for the .01% chance that something might happen. Heck, people buy lotto tickets for worse odds!

Now I should state that I consider Protein Powder to be a food and not a 'supplement' in the nutraceutical sense. So, protein powders aside, the fact is, as you probably know, no legal 'supplement' products 'work'. No natural product that you can buy over the counter is going to significantly manipulate your hormones, grow muscle and/or burn fat, safely and effectively, without side-effect, indefinitely, until you resemble a model on the cover of a magazine! In fact, with the same training and diet, the only single difference you will ever experience in a year of taking supplements will be to how poor you are!!! Your body will be exactly the same!

So here is everything you need to know about supplements (excluding protein powders which, as I said, are simply a good quality food):
1) if it provides drug-like effects then it will be classified as a drug and illegal to buy over-the-counter (OTC)! Marijuana is 'natural' and still illegal to buy and sell! Tryptophan is an amino acid in most protein foods and even IT is illegal to buy and sell!
2) If you can buy it OTC, then it does NOT produce drug-like effects.
3) If you want to manipulate your hormones with a natural product then get blood tests so that you can measure your disappointment accurately!
4) If you want a natural product to build muscle or lose fat then make sure your nutrition and training is 100% perfect, 100% of the time first or else you are absolutely wasting your money!
5) if you think your training and nutrition is 100% perfect and yet you aren't getting the training and body composition results you desire, reconsider your training and diet.
6) if you still think your training and nutrition is so perfect that it could not be even slightly improved in any way AND you've confirmed that your blood chemistry is absolutely perfect AND you STILL can't get the body you want then you are either a professional athlete being offered supplements for free OR you are too stupid to earn enough money to consider spending it on supplements!

Whoever you are, unless you have a measured, diagnosed deficiency or specific nutritional need, just don't waste your money on supplements (other than protein powder)!

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 Ugly Side of Training Biologic Labs Style

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 14:02:00 +0000

Tonight I had a bitterly disappointing workout. And the thing that made it disappointing was my own Biologic Labs training methods which told me exactly how NOT good the workout was!

The workout wouldn't have been at all disappointing if I just trained like everybody else. You see, I was doing Deadlifts and I worked to my limit and went to failure - I absolutely failed to complete the last rep despite my greatest effort. I did a relevant number of reps. Afterward, my muscles felt pumped and very fatigued. Tomorrow and the next day I will be sore. And the weight was so heavy that if I'd done the set in any gym in Australia everybody would have stopped to watch.

So I lifted heavy weights to failure, did a number of reps, got sore and got a pump and drank a protein shake afterward. How can I possibly be bitterly disappointed? By all contemporary thinking, that is a perfect workout.

The reason for the disappointment was (is), unlike all the other trainers out there, at Biologic Labs we MEASURE our performances! And all the feelings in the world don't change the FACT that, tonight, I missed what I needed. Let me explain.

Tonight I Deadlifted 275kg for 8 reps in touch-&-go style. That equates to a 327kg 1-rep-maximum deadlift according to our calculator for that movement (we have 5 different calculators for different types of exercises).

Before I began the set I calculated that 8 reps on 275 would only EQUAL my previous workouts 265kg x11 reps (also a 327 max). So at a minimum I HAD to do 9 reps (331 max) to beat my previous workout.

But I really wanted more than 9 because 265 x11 was still way off my best. My records show I deadlifted 340kg on 20 September 2008 (and again on 6 December 2008). I needed 11 reps on 275kg (in touch-&-go style) to equal that 340kg max.

My VERY best Deadlift performance has been 300kg x7 (and almost 8) on 31/10/08 which equated to a 353kg max. 16 reps on 275 beats that with a 355kg max; 15 is a 352 max.

So going into the set tonight with 275kg, I knew I wasnt going to get 16; I'm just not back up at that level of strength or muscle currently. But I was confident for a comfortable 9 (331 max), focussed on 11 (340 max) and wishing for anything extra to bring me closer to 16 (355 max).

I went into my set 100% focussed on the job. I knew EXACTLY how many reps I needed, what every rep represented in terms of the exact kilos of progress over (or toward) my previous performance. I even knew the dates of the workouts I was measuring against so I knew how far my training had regressed.

To succeed with the 11 reps would have made me elated; so I wanted that BAD! That would have put me back on track to meeting or exceeding my 340kg max for the first time in 2 years. And it would be exactly 13kg gain on my previous deadlift workout. That was my goal.

Failing that, 10 reps would still be 7kg up on last time and only 6kg off my 340; even if it was 19kg off my calculated best. I could live with that. 9 reps was the minimum acceptable representing a paltry 4kg step back toward weights I've lifted before. I'd resign myself to the slowness of progress but progress none-the-less.

But I failed. I got 8.

The thing that made that set (and therefore the whole workout) so bitterly disappointing was the very thing that made it possible: I measured it! If I never measured my workouts I never would have had the drive to take my genetically skinny, weak little 56kg body up to World Record Deadlifts and a winning Heavyweight Bodybuilders physique.

The downside of measuring your training is that you know when you've failed and you know exactly how much you failed by!

They say "failing to plan is planning to fail". They also say: "The great thing about not planning is failure comes as a complete surprise". Both are true. Neither make failing on your plan any easier.

But for all my disappointment, I'm still glad I'm not one of those guys who doesnt know how disappointed they should be!

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 Shape Training Myth

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 03:03:00 +0000

INTRODUCTION
Bodybuilding is full of wishful exercise and diet myths borne of our innate need to feel in control of our circumstances. None of us wants to accept that our short biceps, fat bums, narrow clavicles, or toothpick calves can’t be improved. Even if we accept that we might be unable to achieve perfection, we still need to believe we can neutralise our aesthetic weaknesses.

This article is a mixture of good and bad news for those of you training to ‘shape’ your body rather than just build size. The good news is that you do have massive control over your overall shape. Even better news is that those changes that you can make can be made quite quickly.

But the bad news is that just about everything you’ve read or been told about ‘shape training’ is probably untrue. Worse than that, following the popular ‘shape training’ advice will probably ensure that you fail to achieve the shape you could have otherwise. Read on if you want to know what works and what doesn’t.

FOUNDATIONS
Before we even begin discussing dietary, chemical and exercise interventions for shaping muscles, something must be said about your base structure; your skeleton.

Your skeleton is the frame upon which all your muscles attach. Without some sort of violent surgical procedure (or pre-pubertal genetic manipulation) you are not going to be able to change your skeletal structure and therefore your overall shape is set before you even start training.

MUSCLE ATTACHMENTS
Where and how your muscles attach to your skeleton is another fixed, structural quality that profoundly affects your shape. In fact, it is your muscle attachments that ultimately determine the shapes of each and every muscle in your body. The tissue in between the attachments can only get bigger or smaller.

Using the thighs as an example, whether you are ever going to have an outer thigh ‘sweep’ like Capriese Murray or Lenda Murray depends upon where your outer thigh muscle (Vastus Lateralis) attaches at the hip* and knee* as well as the size and shape of your hips and femur.

Whether you will ever have an inner-thigh region that appears full and round from the knee to the groin like Jon Davie depends significantly upon where the Gracilis, Sartorius and Adductor Longus attach (among others). If your Gracilis attaches closer to the front of your knee and your Sartorius attaches further around your hip toward your groin then you are likely to be forever frustrated with a thin, bowed looking lower thigh similar to Greg Kovacs (though probably not quite as big). And all the hip adducting exercises in the world won’t change that.

In the case of your arm, if you have ‘short biceps’ like Luke Wood (where there seems to be a large gap between your bicep and forearm) then you will always have short biceps. You cannot build muscle where there is only tendon. So if you get a big burn and pump in the bicep tendon from those preacher curls you read would build your ‘lower biceps’, that’s actually an injury!

The depth of separations between muscles is also largely determined by their attachments. If the muscle attachments create wide, flat muscles with significant overlaps then your separations will never be particularly deep. And all the peak-contraction, isolation exercises in the world will be unable to ‘carve’ out any separations.

So subtle differences in the attachment points of different people’s muscles profoundly affect the ultimate visual impression made by their physiques. And short of surgical detachment and reattachment, there is nothing you can do about what your genetics gave you. You just have to work with them.

But before you hang up your training belt and quit bodybuilding forever, consider that Ronnie Coleman, Dorian Yates and Lee Haney have all been widely criticised for their poor abdominal muscles’ shape and structure among other faults. Yet these 3 men have collectively held the Worlds greatest bodybuilding title for over 20 years!

So just because your structure isn’t perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be totally awesome. Just be realistic about what you hope to look like.

MUSCLE TYPES?
There is no tissue in the body known as ‘bulk’. Neither is there a type of muscle known as ‘toned muscle’. Muscle is only muscle. How hard, soft, separated, cut, vascular or ‘toned’ it looks is a function mainly of how much fat covers it.

Front row Rugby forwards don’t have ‘bulk’ – they have a lot of muscle covered in a lot of fat. They might not be fat by comparison to the slobs in the pub watching them play but the reason they don’t look hard and defined is because they are fat.

So you cannot ‘build bulk’; there is no such thing. Neither can you develop a bulky physique as a result of exercise choice. But you can cover your muscle with a layer of fat giving the ‘bulky’ appearance of front row rugby players.

Similarly, you cannot build ‘cut’ or ‘separated’ muscles as opposed from building bigger muscles with obviously deeper gaps between them. But you can reduce your muscle blurring body fat to see the cuts and separations already between your muscles.

LOGICAL ADAPTATIONS
Muscle growth occurs as a logical adaptation to extremely stressful levels of muscular tension; otherwise known as stinking heavy weights!

Muscle exists to exert the forces necessary to create movement. Different types of exercise – stressful movement – will stimulate different adaptations within the muscle. But these adaptations will always relate to the functional force generating capacity of the muscle; either making the muscle able to apply force longer, faster, through a greater range of movement or just produce more peak force.

Like all adaptations, the bodies response to weight training stresses will be the least required to get the job done. Despite what many bodybuilding writers will make it sound like, the body is not interested in making extravagant, extraneous changes to muscle form and structure for the purpose of improving our external aesthetic form. Unfortunately, the psychological stress of possessing a subjectively unattractive body does not induce positive physical adaptations in muscle.

You cannot build ‘thigh sweep’ or peaked biceps or wide pecs if you weren’t born with the structural potential (the combination of skeletal structure and muscular attachments) to do so. And if you were born with great structure then you can still only increase the overall size of the muscle in the areas you already have it.

SHAPING VS MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
While the basic compound exercises such as squats, deadlifts, rows, and presses are often described as ‘mass builders’, many other exercises are touted as ‘shaping’ exercises. Shaping exercises apparently train their respective muscles from different ‘angles’ thereby allowing you to change the shape of your muscles. Nonsense!

A more correct categorisation for weight training exercises would be ‘potent’ and ‘impotent’. An exercises’ effectiveness or potency can be measured by how comparatively quickly body composition changes (muscle gains) are made. And in all cases you will find a basic ‘mass builder’ outperforms a ‘shaping’ exercise.

The simple fact is that an exercises ability to stimulate muscle growth is the sole determining factor as to whether it can positively affect your body composition (ratio of fat to muscle) and therefore your shape. That means that even if you are a bodyshaper you should be doing heavy deadlifts and presses to look your shapliest.

The inefficiency of shaping exercises for developing muscle is well recognised even by those who recommend their employment in a training program. As such, it is frequently recommended in bodybuilding literature that a trainer should build mass with ‘mass building exercises’ before later trying to shape it with ‘shaping movements’. The inference is that once a quantity of muscle tissue has been developed for functional reasons, the body will then happily disassemble and reassemble the muscle proteins with an all new shape; extending or reducing attachments, adding partial-length fibres where there were none previously and disproportionately thickening sections of muscle for no functional purpose whatsoever. And all of this will apparently happen in response to an exercise that is incapable of developing the muscle from the start.

Though we might wish the body was aesthetically generous and functionally schizophrenic in response to otherwise impotent, ineffective exercises, it isn’t. Adaptations to exercise are logical and functional. And while unnatural positioning of your feet during Hack Machine Squats might eventually require a new cruciate ligament, it is unlikely to require a kilo of functionally useless, partial length muscle fibres added to the outside portion of your thigh (Vastus Lateralis)!

TRUTH ABOUT SHAPING EXERCISES
Shaping exercises tend to fall into 2 categories: single joint isolation exercises and regular compound movements done with an abnormal body position.

Single joint isolation movements fit the category of ‘impotent’ exercises described above. By nature, isolation exercises require lighter loads than compound movements for the same muscle. And by nature, isolating a muscle means that the lighter load being used is applied to much less musculature.

Isolation exercises usually hurt like hell! You can achieve a very intense, isolated burn unlike that felt from compound movements. They FEEL as though they are working the muscle very hard. And they are. The problem is that they do not provide a particularly intense systemic stress and therefore the adaptive response is minimal. No matter how hard you feel you are training with isolation exercises, the inherent stress is light; i.e. not intense.

Using abnormal body positions on compound movements – like pointing your toes in or out while squatting – to train a different aspect of a muscle is simply dangerous. If it was possible to work the outer thigh at the expense of the inner thigh during squats, for example, then the knee joint would have to be subjected to enormous sheering and rotational stresses that would inevitably lead to chronic injury.

Similarly, changing a compound exercise so that far less weight can be lifted does not make the exercise more effective or intense. By definition, a lighter weight means that a movement it is less intense, less effective and typically damaging to the joints. That burn you feel in your outer pecs during bench presses to the neck is likely to be a nerve impingement in the acromion complex or a strain to one or all of the rotator cuff muscles. And there is going to be little stimulus for pec growth when you halve the weight stress that the torso normally accommodates.

TRUTH ABOUT MASS BUILDING EXERCISES
The basic ‘mass building’ exercises are the most effective, efficient exercises you can use. They apply the greatest load stress upon the body thereby inducing the most significant adaptive, muscle growth response. These exercises include squats, deadlifts, rows, bench presses, seated or standing presses – basically any multi-joint compound movement.

Mass builders won’t make you ‘massive’, ‘bulky’ or ‘blocky’. That myth comes from the fact that big, bulky, blocky looking people with wide hips tend to be very good at lifting big weights on basic compound exercises.

But, as explained above, your structure has already been set by your genetics. If you are big and blocky then the use of light, ineffective exercises is not going to make you small and/or shapely.

Heavy mass building exercises are the most efficient for maximising your natural muscular shape. And when it comes down to it, maximising what you’ve been structurally handed is all you can do anyway.

Heavy, compound exercises actually enable you to carry the greatest possible lean mass at any given body size. In other words, they are the best exercises for making you as lean and muscular as you need. If you don’t want excessive size, don’t worry; excessive size doesn’t tend to happen by accident. Besides which, your size is a function of how much you eat. How strong you are only determines how much of you is muscle.

QUANTIFICATION: THE REAL ISSUE
Consider how much muscle you can expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building. The late Mike Mentzer based his exercise calculations on expecting no more than 5kilos of new muscle per year. Pro bodybuilder Dexter Jackson says not to expect more than 2.5kg per year. And some Natural Bodybuilding ‘experts’ have publicly recommended lowering your expectations to 1-2kg per year.

Whatever quantity of muscle you expect to gain in a year of focussed mass building, it will be several multiples more than you could expect to gain in a year of focussed ‘shaping’ training. In short, you can expect to gain pretty close to nothing in an entire year of training with ‘shaping’ exercises.

And if virtually no net gain is the best possible result from using supposed ‘shaping’ exercises for a year, how much change can you expect to the shape of your physique? We already established above that the notion of a muscle structurally reconstructing itself for no functional purpose is absurd as well as technically impossible. If there is any possibility of any change being made to a physique with exactly the same quantity of muscle, on the same skeleton, with the same muscle attachments, then that change will be totally imperceptible.

Yet if you’d focussed on supposed mass building you could have achieved a significant improvement in your muscle mass and therefore your body composition and your shape.

CONCLUSION
Through effective, hard, heavy weight training and strict dieting you can sculpt yourself an amazing body with fantastic shape. But you cannot change the structural shape of your body.

As such, regardless of your specific goals and structural weaknesses an exercise program for bodybuilding/shaping should always be focussed on heavy weights using basic compound movements.

Other than to train through injury, recover from a period of overtraining or successful overreaching, ‘shaping’ movements are never required or effective. They can be fun for something different to do when you are bored but otherwise supposed ‘shaping’ movements do not shape your muscles.

* (technically correct terminology abandoned in favour of spatially and communicatively superior options)

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.

Training Sets, Reps & Days vs. Weights

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 07:22:00 +0000

If you look at the majority of weight training programs they talk about sets, reps and exercises. They talk about heart rate and duration. They talk about ‘feel’ and ‘burn’. But never do they seem to give more than a passing mention about weight! And yet the WEIGHT being lifted is the entire point of WEIGHT Training. If you do not progress in the amount of weight you can lift then your training failed. Period. Nothing left to discuss. If training wasn’t about weight then they’d call it Rep Training or Set Training or something other than Weight Training!

To prove the point, consider a massive Professional Bodybuilders program from a magazine and consider what he does that you cannot?

Apparently he does 10-12 reps per set. Taking weight out of the equation, do you have any problem doing 10-12 reps of any exercise? No matter who you are or how out of shape you are, you CAN do 10-12 reps of an exercise IF the weight is light enough.

Mr Pro does 4 SETS of each exercise. Once again, whoever you are, you are capable of doing 4 sets of any exercise so long as the weight is light enough.

Mr Pro trains 6 days per week for 1-2 hours at a time, always works to ‘feel’ the burn and squeeze the muscles etc etc. All of which every healthy human is capable of doing IF weight is taken out of the equation!

So you are CAPABLE of doing everything that even a Professional Bodybuilder does in terms of sets, reps and hours in the gym. So training to do all those sets and reps and hours is not developing any ability you do not already have. And if your body isn't changing to develop any new physical ability then you can be absolutely sure it won't have changed physically either! Which leaves the ONLY thing that a professional Bodybuilder can do that you cannot do which is lift HUGE WEIGHTS on all those sets and reps!

Now, these days, you might not see Mr Lazy Pro lift huge weights in the videos and they might not choose to lift huge weights for much of the year. We all know how Pro Bodybuilders build their muscles these days and it doesn’t require working particularly hard. But despite what they lift, the issue is that Mr Pro is CAPABLE of lifting much, MUCH more than you on everything he does. In fact, even lazy Pros often train lazily with hundreds of kilos more than you can lift when straining with all of your effort! And if you could get as strong as Mr Pro by training light and lazy then you’d probably be as big as Mr Pro and you wouldn’t be reading this!

Once you can lift similar maximum weights to those your favourite pro is CAPABLE of lifting then you’ll probably find you can lazily play around for 4 sets of 4 exercises with big weights too. And you’ll probably be about the same size (give or take the Synthol lumps in your arms, delts and calves). Of course, by that stage you probably won’t bother with 4 sets of 4 exercises because you will have realised that such training is just stupid, inefficient, ineffective and not even slightly related to the desired result you want from your training!

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.

Muscles = Strength = Weights. Duh!

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 06:44:00 +0000

I was at the supermarket the other day when I saw a little girl point at me and say to her mother “look at that strong man, mommy”. The little girl couldn’t have been more than 5 years old and yet she seemed to ‘get it’ more than the vast majority of weight trainers.

The “form” your body takes is a reflection of what your body can do. I really don’t know what part of that people find so hard to understand or believe? I have muscles because muscles are required to lift the weights I lift. Substantially stronger people than me tend to have substantially bigger muscles. Substantially weaker people tend to have substantially smaller muscles. The measure of a muscle is its strength. That’s just what a muscle does. And I just cannot figure out when the world lost sight of this fact?

If you want more muscles, you need to get much stronger; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want less fat then you need to stop eating tasty rubbish, start eating clean protein foods and train for more muscle; probably by lifting heavy stuff. If you want to look exactly like a ripped, elite rock climber then you need to become an ELITE rock climber. If you want to look more like a skinny, sick, malnourished endurance athlete then you need to exercise for hours and hours and hours, everyday and become an elite endurance athlete! If you want the ‘heroin chic’ look in womens fashion magazines then you probably need to develop a proper heroin addiction. And if you only go half-way with the work required for any of these ‘looks’ then you’ll probably only get half the look!

Yet weight trainers and bodybuilders obsess over exercise ‘technique’ instead of weight; pre-workout supplements instead of food; ‘feeling’ muscles work rather than making muscles ‘do’; and spending hours slothing along on treadmills to ‘burn fat’ instead of powering through workouts to become a REAL strength athlete. As a result the vast majority of trainers are failing to achieve any significant body composition changes. For all their science and ‘feelings’ and technique, trainers are failing to LOOK like strong, muscular athletes because they aren't training to become strong, muscular athletes! Its like training to race Supercars and focussing on steering angles, apexes, wheel camber, tyre selection, throttle modulation and everything else EXCEPT going faster. Its just an obvious waste of time!

If you want muscles and low bodyfat then you need to train with weights. And if you are going to train with WEIGHTS then don't let anyone fool you: the point is the WEIGHT!

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.

FAQ: Building Muscle while Training for Sports/Fighting?

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 05:01:00 +0000

Q: I train for [MMA/Boxing/Kick-Boxing/Rugby/Soccer/AFL etc etc] but I'd like to gain more muscle and have a better looking physique while maintaining my endurance, speed and skills. Do I need to give up my other training to gain the muscle? Or will it be hard to maintain the muscle with my other training?

A: It is very difficult to gain appreciable muscle while also training hard for endurance type activities. Some people can do it; most can't. But even those that can do both still find muscle building is severely slowed by other training.

Stopping any other training to focus on building muscle and strength will enable you to gain the muscle you want. But if you do not gain much muscle or if you only focus on the muscle building for a few weeks before restarting the endurance-y work then you'll probably find you quickly lose the new muscle and go back to exactly where you were before.

The thing is, your body becomes what it needs to become in order to do what you need to do. But when you are doing lots of endurance-y exercise then there is a limit to how big, strong and muscular your body will agree to be. And there isnt a whole lot you can do about what point YOUR body thinks is too much muscle to do your other activity(s).

Almost all men need to focus purely on their strength and muscle training if they ever hope to get past a physique that can do a 120-140kg bench press and 220-240kg-ish deadlift. Strength beyond that level is relatively freakish and requires a very focussed athlete. Some guys can be bigger and stronger than that while also maintaining sports endurance; but its rare, not easy and definitely not guaranteed.

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.

When Stupidly Bad is Good

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:31:00 +0000

Recently a client introduced me to the disgraceful Velocity Diet plan on t-nation.com.

The jist of the diet is you stop eating food and consume only their supplements. Every now and then you have an "HSM" (healthy solid meal - gotta have an acronym or its not scientific, ya know?). But for all week, everyday, its just supplements.

The supplements make a diet that is 60% protein, 15% carbs and 25% fats and VERY low calorie. A 120kg man is prescribed just 1800 calories per day (plus 330 extra calories on training days). It is absolute malnourishing starvation!

This is a terrible diet on more levels than I can be bothered commenting on. One major issue I have is that, for whatever reason, supplements - regardless of how technically brilliant they have been formulated to be - never, ever deliver the same training, strength, health or body composition outcomes as real food. I know it shouldn't be this way when you look at the basic numbers. But it just is. It probably has to do with the fact that you are still drinking a bunch of wierd, colours, flavours, sweeteners and other non-nutritious poisons that have no place in going into the body.

But while I would never, ever prescribe such a terrible, awful, malnourishing diet to any client I would ever work with, the Velocity Diet is actually the best possible diet for a LOT of people. The reason? They can't screw it up!

The fact is, most people couldnt eat a diet much worse than they do if they deliberately tried. I am shocked by how bad most peoples diets are. And most people screw up even the most basic diet instructions. You tell them to eat chicken and they get the fake turkey from the deli. You tell them to eat rice and they eat pasta with cheese sauce. And they actually think these compromises are OK!? A 100% supplement diet is the only diet that they will not and cannot screw up.

And by virtue of being the only diet people cannot screw up, the Velocity Diet - like the worst diet I've ever seen: the Tony Ferguson Diet - is the best diet for many people.

Its so sad!

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 Personal Trainers Fail at Body Recompositioning

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 00:15:00 +0000

The following is a rant I wrote at the old Biologic Labs site.

WHAT YOU WANT
When you go to a gym or Personal Trainer your goal is pretty obvious: you want a better body! If you’d wanted to be a boxer, you would’ve gone to a boxing studio. If you’d wanted to be a runner, you would’ve joined a mate who liked running. And if you’d wanted to learn to balance on a large, colourful ball, you would’ve joined the circus! But you went to the gym/trainer because you never cared what kind of athlete you actually were, you just wanted to look (more) like one!

WHAT YOU NEED
The solution to how to look like an athlete was obvious back in High School. Remember the kids with the athletic, muscular physiques? They were always the ones with the athletic ability! Genetics be damned! It doesn’t matter WHY they were good athletes; the point is that the physique always came with ability!

Even when you were 10 years old you could’ve figured out, for example, that if you wanted to look like someone who can sprint 100 meters in 10 seconds then you probably need to be able to sprint 100m in 10seconds! Granted, not all elite 100m sprinters look exactly the same... but they do all tend to have a certain ‘look’! Its a similar look to elite rock climbers, gymnasts and elite athletes in any other sporting activity requiring an extremely high power-to-weight ratio. They are all really muscular!

At Biologic Labs we recognise that to achieve the athletic physique you want you need to develop the appropriate athletic ability! Thats the mathematical and philosophical basis of our Body Recompositioning Equation. And because weight training is the only infinitely adjustable, measurable and predictable strength sport, we can even predict exactly what weights you need to become capable of lifting in order to have the exact bodyfat percentage that you want. When you see our math you will realise its actually painfully obvious!

WHAT YOU GET
Yet when you go to a Personal Trainer and, for example, show them a picture of your desired elite sprinters body, you won’t get such a direct answer. Instead, they’ll talk to you about ‘core stability’ and ‘flexibility’ and ‘rectus abdominus’ and ‘heart rate’ and ‘vastus lateralis’ and ‘technique’ and ‘motivation’ and basically try to drown you in about 500 gallons of BS without ever even mentioning the sole determining factor in you achieving your goal: you need to become an elite sprinter (or as strong as one at the same bodyweight).

And then, if you let them, you’ll get given the same generic routine most trainers give to ALL their other clients. It will basically be a condensed 5th Grade PE lesson complete with stretching and calisthenics stolen from a 1980‘s Richard Simmons video followed by a bunch of ‘Retirement Village’ rehabilitation exercise. There’ll be some pulling on an oversized rubber band, lying hunched on a ball squeezing your bladder and, finally, leaning against a wall in a sitting position, but, wait for it... without a chair! Because thats gonna create a super hardcore athlete! Do you “Feel the burn”? Its actually your life, sanity and money being sucked into a black-hole, never to be reimbursed.

Of course, with a personal trainer in a gym you might also get a splattering of half-assed weights machine exercises with REALLY light weights! Heavy weights are dangerous, you see. Really Dangerous! Nothing like the safe sports such as Netball or Rugby where you run as fast as you can, leap through the air, land sideways on one foot while rotating quickly and, off balance, try to pass the ball before getting hit by a neanderthal traveling slightly faster than an express train. Knee and shoulder reconstructions? They only happen to people who lift those dangerous, heavy weights, obviously!

Anyway, lets say you argue and do not accept that the trainer gives you the generic garbage that they themselves would never, ever do (because they know its utterly useless, time wasting junk). What if instead you insist upon training like a sprinter to be a sprinter? Well then the trainer will give you a training program akin to the advice you might get from a retarded person copying the sprinters they saw in the background of the Olympics telecast. You’ll probably have to embarrass yourself in a public park by doing an incredibly gay, high-knee-kick run. Then, like a dog on a leash, you’ll get tied to your trainer with an oversized rubber band and have to try to run away. You’ll probably have to run up and down some stairs. And you might even get to run around the park with a parachute tied to you. And in fairness these are all things real sprinters do. The only difference is that your program doesn’t include the actual sprinting... or the stopwatch timing your sprints... or the expert guidance of a person who actually sprints... or the 5-6 days per week regime of a real sprinter... or anyway of making or measuring any sort of quantifiable progress toward your very specific goal of becoming an elite sprinter!

You’ll get your heart rate measured; but not your sprint times. You’ll get your VO2 Max measured; but not your speed. You’ll get your training session times measured to the nano-second; but not your workload. In fact, the trainer will jerk you around with every irrelevant measure that you never asked for (flexibility, heart rate, VO2 Max etc) and NOTHING relevant to the goal you actually stated at the start.

And people wonder why they fail to look like any sort of athlete when Personal Trainers do not train their clients to become any sort of athlete? Visit www.biologiclabs.com.au for radical Body Recompositioning Diets, Training, Supplements & Hormone Balancing.

Boxing for Conditioning & Body Recompositioning?

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:21:00 +0000

Boxing training has become a popular mode of exercise for people wanting body recompositioning and physical conditioning. It makes sense given top boxers - both men and women, particularly in the lighter weight classes - often have great figures/physiques and tremendous endurance, speed, power and conditioning.

Unfortunately, Personal Trainers have jumped on the boxing band wagon despite knowing absolutely nothing about the activity. Many have recognised that boxing gloves, focus mits and pads are some of the cheapest equipment they can buy and therefore offer a huge return on investment. So mock boxing training for 'fitness' is now offered by Personal Trainers in virtually every public park in the country.

As you might expect, nobody seeing a Personal Trainer in the park is coming away looking like a lean, mean boxing machine. Neither do any of the people doing boxing 'classes'. The reason is simple: they don't look like any sort of boxing champion because they haven't become any sort of boxing champion! If you really want to look like a top level boxer then you need to develop the skills and abilities of a top level boxer! And that means training like a top level boxer. Not farting around in the park or gym with someone who has never stepped in a boxing ring in their lives!

For the same or even less money than a PT, people can achieve a massively better workout, skills development and conditioning just by going to a real boxing gym. Such gyms are not necessarily seedy, smelly dungeons. Just check out corporateboxgym.com.au for an example of a top quality, modern facility run by World Champion Boxers and Thai Boxers.

Shaggy, Preacher, Aaron, Shane and the rest of the crew at Corporate Box Gym know their stuff and will give you the workout of your life. If its boxing you want to do, that is the place to do it!

Gymerexia????

noreply@blogger.com (Damon Hayhow) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:17:00 +0000

Here we go again. Check out this report from the NBC warning that going to the gym TOO much is now a big problem.

It is incredible to think that in our society where the majority of people are going to die of obesity and inactivity related illnesses, anyone would warn people away from exercise!? But they are. And yet, unlike being too sedentary, nobody is dying of gymerexia. In fact, from the report, there is no mention of anybody getting harmed in any significant way. The only sited concern of gymerexia is the effect on work and relationships; I imagine much the same sort of work and relationship problems faced by people who don't go to the gym too.

With more than 1/2 the population dying by not going to the gym, we should not be worrying about the people who go to the gym too much! A fight with your spouse is better than costing all of society millions and then dying! People worrying about other peoples exercise and good-health habits need to get some perspective!