Scooby's Home Workouts

The new scoobysworkshop website

2011-10-31T09:08:00.001-07:00

Many of you have seen the amazing new scoobysworkshop website but few of you realize what it took to make this happen. I am an engineer, I like content but dont put a lot of effort into how it looks as long as its organized and easy to find. My old website was a total mess - old fashioned, ugly, and inconsistent. Each exercise page seemed to follow its own new format making it a bit frustrating for a reader. The other problem was speed, many of you complained about the slow page load times as my pages have lots of images and content.

Back in the Spring I met Jo at ph34r.net thru facebook. I was complaining about many problems on my website and he mentioned that he could help. Well, I took him up on it. He was actually in my area on an internship this summer so we met several times a week to play beach volleyball and discuss issues. He worked on it all summer long! I have a LOT of content and it was not a simple matter to convert it to WordPress. The problem as I mentioned before was that the content was presented very inconsistently so not only did he have to convert it over but re-write it in a consistent manner. Then of course, there are all the amazing bells and whistles that WordPress allows like the way images are handled - truly cool. Many people have complimented me on the cool new graphic design of the website but I am the wrong person to congratulate! I had nothing to do with the design, had I designed it, it would have looked as clunky as my last website! The *only* thing that is left of my design is the pale yellow background color!

Going from an old fashioned static HTML website to a dynamic one like WordPress takes far more work than meets the eye. I'm a software engineer and I hadnt even heard of these things till Jo educated me. Number one is security. As I found out 6 months ago when my old website was high-jacked and forwarded to a spammers website, security is a high stakes game now. Jo is an expert at security (its his field) and he took a multi-layered approach to make sure the new website is safe. Cool new services and ways to protect digital assets that an old-school software engineer like myself had never heard of. I learned my lesson the hard way, you can learn from my mistake. If you have a popular website, even if its not a commercial website, you need to get a security expert involved to make sure your website is safe!

The other area that I was ignorant about was cloud resources and what they could do for me. As I mentioned earlier, one of the big problems with my old website was its slow page load times. My pages had lots of text and images and page load times were routinely 5-10 seconds, even for me. Even though generating a webpage in WordPress is *far* more complicated and time consuming than just serving a static webpage like my old website did, Jo was able to drop the page load time down to 2-3 seconds by using cloud services to provide content much faster!

So many things you would not think of when making a 'simple' switch to a new website that have to be taken care of to have a smooth transition. Take URLs for example. My old website had horrible and cryptic URLs, for example, my advanced workout plan had the URL "schedadv.htm". These days, the URL needs to be human readable to maximize rankings - I didnt know this. Anyway, it was not just the simple matter of renaming pages because I was ranked on page one of virtually every google search having anything to do with working out. Changing the name without taking precautions would have lost me all google visibility. Because this was anticipated and precautions taken, the moment we switched to the new website google was able to find the new content and no rankings were lost.

Of course, Jo's biggest task of all was one of educating me which he did with the patience and skill of a favorite grandfather. For every 1 minute he spent adding a feature, he had to spend ten minutes explaining it to me :) I know a lot of you love the new website but didnt know the huge amount of work that went into it. I wanted to publicly recognize Jo at ph34r.net for his amazing work! Jo has helped me to help others!!! Thanks Jo!

Kyle gained 20 pounds muscle!

2011-10-31T08:19:00.001-07:00

http://scoobysworkshop.com/muscle-gain-success-stories/
Congratulations to Kyle, this years success story winner! He gained 20 pounds of muscle thru home workouts and good nutrition. You too can be a scoobysworskhop success story and it doesnt cost a penny. Just use my free website and free videos to get into the best shape of your life and then enter my contest! Details on how to enter:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/how-to-enter/

Many people have had trouble calculating his rate of muscle gain. 20lbs muscle in 18 months (1.5 years) is adding muscle at the rate of 13lbs/year. That is achievable even for teens with "bad genetics". Want to see how much muscle you can gain in a year? Use my muscle gain calculator below:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/muscle-gain-calculator/

Injuries, make the best of them

2011-10-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

Everybody gets injured and you have two options how you deal with it. You can either get depressed, sit on the sofa and get fat eating chips or you can make the best of the situation. Give yourself a mental slap in the face and hear your Mama's voice in your head, remember what she used to say when you skinned your knee and it hurt? "At least you HAVE a knee, think about all those boys who are missing legs."

Three weeks ago, I tweaked my knee on a 10K run. No idea what I did but the next morning I had drastically reduced range of motion and soreness. It was slowly getting better when I had to install a very, very heavy battery backup unit in our cramped server room at work. The contorted, stretched positions didnt bother at the time but the next morning I couldnt walk. At first I was depressed. It was a beautiful fall day, no wind, clear sky, temperatures in the upper 70's - absolutely perfect for a bike ride or run. How I wanted to be up there climbing my favorite hill thru the redwood forest! I wallowed in self pity a few hours then gave myself that mental slap in the face I mentioned earlier and changed my mindset. I went swimming!

My screwed up knee has truly been a mixed blessing. Nobody wants a inoperable knee but its reintroduced me to the joys of swimming. Ya, Ive been doing triathlons for the last 3 years but I havent trained seriously for the swimming part. Now that I have no other cardio options, its amazing how Im seeing cardio in a new light. Under water is one of the few places in the modern world where it is quiet, truly quiet.The only sounds are the bubbles from my breath and the rhythmic woosh woosh woosh of my hands plunging into the water. No jets overhead, no sirens, no horns, no fans. It allows the mind to focus intently on the senses of touch and sound. When I am doing things right, I can feel the waterline on my butt, the back of my hamstrings, and calves. I feel its a whole new world opened up to me. Ive always been a strong but slow swimmer and never before have I looked forward to swimming, until now that is. I swam the last 4 days, 30-40 min each day and was bummed when I had to stop because of leg cramps in my bum leg, otherwise I would have gone longer.

Not sure whats up with my knee, Im still optimistically hopeful that its nothing serious enough to require surgery. Its truly unlike any knee problem I have ever heard of. Its not getting better despite complete rest and multiple daily icings so I will make an appt Monday. In the meantime, I wont dwell on what I *cant* but rather enjoy the opportunity to swim.

Helen, my 94 year old neighbor has been a great influence on me. She has such a marvelous outlook on life which is why she is still mentally sharp and physically active at 94. She takes life one day at a time because each may be her last. She has a catalog of aches and pains but she doesnt dwell on them, each day she finds something she *can* do, and she enjoys doing it. Thanks Helen! Time for me to go for todays swim!

Please help catch video and image thiefs

2011-10-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

All my images and videos are copyright protected, it is illegal for anyone to use them. Why? My whole philosophy is that you dont need to spend any money at all to be healthy and build an amazing physique. I always tell people the only thing they need to buy is a used set of weights from craigslist, nothing more. I am very old school, sweat and good nutrition have always been the best way. When people steal my images and use them to promote and sell products, it goes against everything I stand for! I dont want people buying their expensive, ridiculous product! They are damaging my non-commercial reputation by making it look like I endorse their product. If I wanted to support some product then I would get a sponsor!

I dont have the time to track these hundreds of skumbags down nor do I have any money to hire lawyers to do it for me, thats why I need your help! Here's what you can do:

Contact them directly and let them know how slimy you think they are, email them or call their headquarters and ask them to remove the image at once. Make sure to send them a link to my copyright page so they can see for themselves that the image they have stolen is copyright protected.
Please reply to this post with the URL of the advertisement or a description of where it is. If you can, take a screenshot of the ad and upload it to flickr or elsewhere and then post the link here so we can all see it. The screenshots will help if I ever decide I need to legally pursue these skumbags.

The same goes for videos. I have never given anyone permission to re-upload any part of any of my videos. I want all my videos in one place (http://www.youtube.com/user/scooby1961). If you see someone who has re-uploaded a video of mine, please post a comment on the video asking them nicely to remove it and also reply to this post with the URL to their offending video.

Thanks for your help!!

Scooby Werkstatt

Good Fitness Advice?

2011-10-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

How can you tell if a YouTube trainer is giving good, unbiased fitness advice or not? I get this question all the time and here is an easy way to tell, ask the following key question:

If you follow the trainers advice, do they get richer?

If the answer is yes, then they have a clear conflict of interest and their advice is not to be trusted! If their income depends on you doing what they recommend then their advice is clearly biased and they will be tempted to distort the truth to get more income. Lets take some examples:

Trainer 1 extolls the virtues of supplements in every video and tells you how great they are. He also gives you a discount code you can enter when you order to save money. The discount code gives the trainer a kickback on every item purchased. This trainer can't make his Lamborghini payments unless you buy supplements with his discount code, he clearly has a conflict of interest because his need to make his payments is in conflict with his desire to give good fitness advice - guess which wins?
Trainer 2 makes free fitness videos and has a huge following, he also makes a killing selling his $100 eBook. Again, ask the question. If you follow the advice in his videos does he get richer? If so, then there is a clear conflict of interest because his need to make payments on his mansion is conflicting with his need to provide good fitness information - again, guess which will win. Its very easy to be liked, just tell people what they want to hear! Many folks just use videos as very well disguised advertisements for their products.
Scooby1961. I get advertising revenue from my YouTube videos, I have always been up front about my income sources. I am an engineer, that is my job and my income but fitness is my passion. Again though, ask the same question. If you follow my fitness advice, do I get richer? No. I get money from ads whether people take my advice or not, therefore, I have no conflict of interest. I am free to provide the best, unbiased, most helpful information I can. My income is dependent upon me providing consistently high quality information. Unlike many internet personal trainers, I didnt get into this for the money (why I started scoobysworkshop). In fact, before YouTube I spent a personal fortune hosting my own videos and paying huge bandwidth charges to help spread my "fitness for all gospel". The only reason I put my vids on YouTube was because they saved me gobs of money on hosting fees. True story. Back in 2006 YouTube asked me to become a partner, I said OK even though I had no idea at all what it meant. A few months later I got a check which I didnt cash because I thought it was a mistake. The next month, same thing. After the third month, I figured I needed to contact Google and inform them of their mistake. Only then upon looking into what the partner program was did it hit me - they were actually paying me to do what I always had done, to preach that you can get into the best shape of your life without spending a single dime! Not on supplements, not on books, not on gym memberships, not on expensive equipment. Talk about win-win! My goal now is exactly the same as it was back then, to show that fitness, health, and a killer physique is available to ALL regardless of financial means - without buying a single thing other than a cheap used set of weights from craigslist. Nuff said.

The issue is not if the trainer makes money with their videos, the question is if there is a conflict of interest or not! See the difference???

Workout and Nutrition Advice During Exams

2011-10-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

I know many of you are in college. Exam time is very stressful, I remember it well. The pressure to do well. The vast numbers of papers to write. The seemingly hopeless number of subjects to study for. The first reaction of many folks is to quit working out during this stressful time - DONT! Remember this:

When you "dont have time to workout" is precisely the time it is most important to work out!

Working out is the only thing that can keep your sanity during this stressful time. Working out increases your alertness, ability to concentrate, your mood, and the quality of your sleep. This would be a great time though to change to a very time efficient workout, which definitely means a home workout with very little rest between sets. You could do something very simple like a 15min run followed by a 15 minutes of zero rest, round robin pushups, pullups, and lunges. If you really want to do weights then do complexes which gives you your cardio and weights all in the same compact 30 minute workout.

Now, what to do about nutrition. Every second counts during exam time and you cant waste a single one. I normally dont recommend TV dinners but this is a perfect time to fill your freezer with the *healthy* TV dinners - those by weightwatchers, lean cuisine, or equivalent. Yes, they are highly processed. Yes, they have more sodium than I like. But they are well balanced meals low in fat, far better than vending machines or fast food. If you get these frozen dinners on sale, they are actually less expensive than eating at a fast food restaurant. Eating well is vital to keeping your brain in top gear.

Its not just your body that benefits, its your psyche. We have all experienced this, we stop working out because "we dont have time". We start to feel like a blob, we feel fat, our joints get creaky, we feel stiff, our digestion system rebels, we feel guilty, our mood declines, and perhaps we get a bit resentful at whatever is keeping us from our beloved healthy lifestyle. Can you imagine effectively studying for exams if you feel like that? Of course not! Its not just your body that suffers when you stop working out and let your nutrition go! That quick 30 minute daily workout is the best thing you can possibly do for your GPA!

Good luck during exams!

Read more: http://www.askscooby.com/general-questions/workout-and-nutrition-advice-during-exam-time/msg568975/?topicseen#msg568975#ixzz1buKCTRT9

Proper form of the pullup, bodybuilding basics

2011-10-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

The pullup is the #1 best exercise for building wide lats. In this video I'm going to show you the proper form to build cobra-wide lats. Just a note here, there are many pullup variants that have goals other than building really wide lats. I'm focusing here on the form you want to use if you want to target lats and build your lats as wide as possible for a great V taper.

If you are not strong enough to do a pullup yet, please watch my video "Pullups for Beginners!" - this video wont help you.

For wide lats, here are the THREE imporant aspects of form:

1 grip width: point elbows all the way out to side, not angled forward. See how far apart my elbows are when I point them out to the side? Thats a perfect width to start with. If you want, you can do them wider if you want but not much narrorer. Lets look at why ...

2 Its because we want the elbows pointed outward, not forward. If you use to narrow of a grip, it forces your elbows to point forward. Elbows pointed forward uses more biceps and forearms, we want LATS. When doing pullups, keep your elbows pointed out. Many people let them drift inward as they get tired.

3 bar in FRONT of face, not behind head - shoulders. No added benefit to behind head, it just puts your shoulder at risk of injury. Keep bar in front of your face.

4 Range of motion. Only in PE class do you have to get your chin up to the bar, all that does is make people kick and squirm to try and get up. Just go up till the bar is about at eye level. Now lets talk abou the lower end of the range of motion.

5 a lot of people copmletely relax at the bottom and hang which lets their shoulders come up to their ears and lets their body hang about 3" lower. Bigger range of motion isnt always better and this is a perfect example. We want to keep tension on the lats the entire duration of the pullup set. That means you need to keep your shoulders down and back the entire time. Dont let your shouders float up to your ears.

6 SLOW

7 no kipping. Kipping is an advanced gymnastics maneuver, not something for a beginner or intermediate bodybuilder. If you cant do 25 solid pullups, then your joints, ligaments, and muscles are not ready for kipping.

OK, I lied. I said there were only 3 things but there were 7. I was afraid if I told you the truth you would have thought that doing pullups right was too complicated. Its NOT!

For information on how many sets to do and how often to do pullups, please check out the free home workout plans on my website. There are workout plans for every ability level.

Killer 10 minute advanced ab workout

2011-10-17T04:59:00.001-07:00

Here is an absolute killer abs workout you can do at home in 10 minutes. This is NOT for beginners as it would cause injury, if you are a beginner, please start with crunches. This advanced abs workout - it's a really simple and painful 10 minute workout that you can do once or twice a week, more is not better. There are only three exercises, windshield wipers and weighted crunches super-setted.

Superset:

windshield wipers

weighted leg lifts

weighted crunches

Do this superset three times with 2 minutes rest between supersets.

ectomorph endomorph mesomorph workouts

2011-10-03T15:51:00.000-07:00

Are you a ectomorph, and endomorph or a mesomorph and how does it affect your nutrition and training?? Its really important you know how to optimize your training for your bodytype. In this video I will explain how to do this so you can maximize your muscle gains and get ripped abs.

Dumbbell Pullover For Lats

2011-09-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Pull-ups alone make a fantastic lat workout and give you a wide back. When you are an advanced bodybuilder searching for more exercises for your lats, the pullover is a great one! I dont know why but their is a lot of misinformation about this exercise out there. Many websites mistakenly list it as a chest exercise. Perhaps they do this because there is "common wisdom" that the pullover "expands your ribcage" to make your chest bigger - no. You cant stretch your way to a big chest anymore than you can become taller by hanging upside in gravity inversion boots all day long. This is an exercise predominately for your lats but it does work rear delts, tris, and a bit of pecs too.
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	Starting position, arms straight but not locked. Hands around dumbbell handle with palms on the inside surface of the dumbbell. Shoulders are down and back like you are pinching a tennis ball between your shoulder blades. Feet wide apart for balance. Torso and upper legs co-linear and held rigid with flexed abs.
	Slowly lower the dumbbell with a 2 second count till the elbows are in the plane of your body, do not go further back. Now slowly lift back up to starting position with a 2 second count again.

Please see all my exercises for lats

Muscle Gain Calculator

2011-09-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Want to know how much muscle you can expect to gain in a year? Answer five simple questions and this Muscle Gain Calculator will tell you how much you can expect!

This calculator takes your age, experience level, genetics, training and nutrition into account in coming up with how much you can expect to gain. Its really important for you to have realistic expectations to keep yourself from getting disappointed. Advertisers and the media have done a real dis-service in creating very unrealistic expectations in peoples minds. No, you cant look like Arnold after a year of lifting weights! Because of these ridiculous, un-obtainable expectations, a lot of people starting in bodybuilding end up quitting because they dont think they are making any progress when in fact they are making great progress.

Anyway, please check out the calculator and see how much muscle you can expect to gain! If you find any issues with the calculator, please post them as comments here!

Does Phil Heath Use Steroids?

2011-09-18T07:37:00.000-07:00

The results for the 2011 Mr Olympia are just in, its Phil Heath! All around the world, teens watched eagerly hoping they could someday be as incredibly massive as he is, but is it possible? Can you get as big as Mr Olympia Phil Heath without steroids? Well, here are Phil Heath's stats according to wikipedia:

31 years old

175cm height

111qkg stage weight

3% bodyfat (4mm skinfold thickness at each test location - my estimate)

If you plug his data into this body composition calculator you will find that his Fat Free Mass Index (FFMI) is a whopping 35 - the largest FFMI possible without steroids is 26 according to the research reported in Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine 5(1995):223-28. Steeve Reeves who was a champion bodybuilder back before steroids were available had a FFMI of 25.7 and that is acknowledged as the maximum FFMI for natural bodybuilders.

So if you are a teen looking to bulk up, please set your expectations properly. If you workout hard, have flawless nutrition, and have the gift of perfect genetics then you can look like Steeve Reeves naturally - but it will take years, count on 5-10 years. Very few people have flawless genetics like Steeve Reeves did so dont even count on half his results.

	Phil Heath FFMI=35
	Steve Reeves - FFMI=25.7

Are you skinny?

2011-09-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Fat Free Mass Index (FFMI) is basically a measure of muscularity adjusted for height. The bigger the number, the more muscular you are.

Interpreting FFMI (Fat Free Mass Index)
Under 17	low muscle mass (skinny)
19-20	average muscle mass for an American or European college student
22-23	noticably muscular
25.7	Steve Reeves
over 26	Steroid user

The reason I bring the FFMI up is because many people have a warped idea of what they look like to others - in other words, they have low self esteem. The worst example is the label "skinny"!, My guess is that many of the people who claim to be "skinny" actually are quite normal. I would also guess there are many people in the "noticeably muscular" category who think they are just average. By the way, the research which came up with those numbers is the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine 1995:223-28, I didnt make this stuff up. I have modified my bodyfat calculator so you can calculate your FFMI (Fat Free Mass Index).

You can also use it to find out if your fancy protein powder from eastern europe is laced with steroids :)

"Honestly, I didnt know my protein powder from Eastern Europe was laced with steroids!"

How To Tell A Natural Bodybuilder from Steroid User

2011-09-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

People always ask for ways to tell if someone is a steroid user or not and I stumbled upon a very simple formula today that research seems to indicate is a very accurate indicator. Its the Fat Free Mass Index (FFMI). The research cited below found that the upper limits of FFMI in natural bodybuilders was 26. In other words, if the calculated FFMI is over 26 then they use steroids. As a reference point, Steve Reeves FFMI was 25.7, mine is 25.9 - sorry Steve :)

Here is the formula for FFMI:

FFMI= LBM/(height*height) + 6.1x(1.8-height)

Note: height in meters. Lean Body Mass (LBM) obtained from my body composition calculator and stated in kg.

All the research showed was that if the FFMI is over 26, then they are a steroid user. Just because someone has a FFMI under 26 does not mean they are natural! It in no way eliminates the need for drug testing as I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of steroid users with FFMI's under 26. The basis for this formula is that there is a upper limit of muscle mass, the only way to exceed it is with steroids.

This forumla and these findings comes from research done by E.M. Kouri et al. back in 1995. The title of the article was "Fat-Free Mass Index in Users and Nonusers of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids" published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine (1995):223-28

I was reading an old book in my library titled "The Adonis Complex" by Pope, Phillips, and Olivardia when I stumbled on this great formula.

Scooby's First Half Marathon

2011-09-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

As many of you know my primary fitness goals over the last 4 years have been related to doing triathlons. When I started, running was my primary obstacle not only because I had never done it before but also because of my high weight and knee issues. I started with the sprint triathlons (0.5mi swim, 12mi bike, 3mi run), then moved on to the olympic distance triathlons (1mi swim, 25mi bike, 6mi run). My next goal is the half ironman which is a 1.2 mile swim, 56mile bike ride, and a half marathon and I plan on doing one next spring.

Since running has always been my main obstacle, I have been focusing hard on that. Not only have I been running a lot but I have been working on my calves and hamstrings flexibility because those were causing some of my knee issues. Yesterday was my first trial run of the half marathon and I have to say that overall I was very, very pleased. Mainly because I had no joint pain whatsoever. Between my floating-head technique that minimizes impact force and my stretching, I had no crippling knee pain even after 13.1 miles.

The race day was quite hot, upper 80s near 90 so hydration was key. I started my hydrating strategy 4hours before the run to make sure I was 100% fully hydrated before the race. After the first 40 minutes of running my big green hat was completely soaked and dripping with sweat so it was clear that despite being fully hydrated that some hydration breaks were in order. No biggie, I didnt care that much about my time and it was more important to stay fully hydrated.

Time to mention one of the top 20 stupidest things I have done in my life, I did an intense leg workout the day before the half marathon. It was leg day and I didnt want to throw off my workout schedule so I did legs anyway. My rationale was that in a real Ironman triathlon, before the run I would have to swim 1.2 miles and bike 56 miles so the DOMS from the leg workout would do a good job simulating the pain of the swim and bike ride. Clever rationalization but really pretty stupid. Race morning I had some pretty bad DOMS, after about the first mile though I felt great. Everything was great, at mile 9 I remember thinking "Gee, this is way easier than I though!", then came mile 10. I have never, ever had quad pain while running or biking but at mile 10 my quads hurt like they have never hurt before - a combination of weight workout from the day before and the 10 miles running. Anyway, the quad pain got progressively worse till the last 2 miles when I was forced to walk about 20 seconds every minute.

Anyway, all in all, a major step forward for me. I was able to check off the last of my fitness goals for 2011 with 3 months to spare :) Its clear that my current training plan is working well and that the stretching is vitally important for me and I need to continue it. I still have a lot of work but I am right on track for my half Ironman in the spring.

Seeking shelter after the run

How To Do Your First Pullup

2011-09-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

The pullup is one of the most important exercises that a newcomer to fitness can do, but its also the most difficult and many of you cant do a single pullup. Here I give you a 5 phase program to build up your strength so you can do 8 solid pullups. Man or woman, 13 or 80, you can do it!

First, a quick word about weight. There are lots of reasons to get leaner and lose fat and I'm about to give you another one. The #1 way to make pullups easier is to weigh less! Every pound of fat is a boat anchor holding you tightly to the earth, dump that anchor overboard! Please read my article, losing weight and getting sixpack abs is as easy as 1-2-3!

Some important terminology before we start. A pullup is when your palms point away from your face, these are hard. A chin-up is done with you palms facing you - these are easier. We will use this fact to help us build up to doing eight pullups.

This weeks video is not for hardcore bodybuilders, its for people trying to do their first pullup and build up to eight honest pullups:

OK, how to do your first pullup. There are four methods:

chair method (anywhere)
bands under knees method (anywhere)
partner knee spot (anywhere)
cable pulldowns (gym only)

The only one I will show is the chair method because its my favorite. Lets get started. Getting yourself up is hard, its a lot easier to just lower yourself slowly down and that's what we are going to do to build up strength. We also are going to start with chin-up instead of pullups for the same reason. The first exercise you will do to build up your pullup strength is an exercise I have named "Walk the Plank".

"Walk The Planks"
	1. Put a chair under your pullup bar that's tall enough so it puts your eyes at bar level.
	2. Grab the bar with an underhand grip (palms facing you) shoulder width apart
	3. Tense your muscles and step off the chair (walk the plank!)
	4. Lower yourself as slowly as you can.
	5. Step back up onto the chair and do it again, repeat a total of 8 times

Now lets look at how we use the "Walk The Plank" exercise to build up to doing 8 real pullups. If you can already do 2 good chinups, skip to Phase 4.

Phase 1

5 sets of chinup (palms facing your face) Walk-The-Plank's, 8 reps per set, one minute rest between sets. Workout every other day.

Continue with Phase 1 till you can do it so slowly that it takes 2 seconds to lower yourself each time.

Phase 2

5 sets of pullup (palms pointed away from your face) Walk-The-Plank's, 8 reps per set, one minute rest between sets. Workout every other day.

Continue with Phase 2 till you can do it so slowly that it takes 2 seconds to lower yourself each time.

Phase 3

5 sets. On first two reps, do as much of a real chinup as you can, followed by 6 reps of Walk-The-Planks. Workout every other day. One minute rest between sets.

Continue with Phase 3 until you can do two real chinups!

Phase 4 - Monday Workout

5 sets. Do as many real chinups as you can, followed by enough Walk-The-Planks to give you 8 total reps One minute rest between sets.

Phase 4 - Thursday Workout

Do as many real chinups as you can, and then a static hold for as long as you can. Rest 2 minutes and do next set for a total of 5 sets.

Continue Phase 4 till you can do 8 chinups

Phase 5 - Thursday Workout

5 sets. Do as many real pullups as you can, followed by enough Walk-The-Planks to give you 8 total reps One minute rest between sets.

Phase 5 - Thursday Workout

Do as many real pullups as you can, and then a static hold for as long as you can. Rest 2 minutes and do next set for a total of 5 sets.

Continue Phase 5 till you can do 8 pullups!

There you have it, my 5 phase method to build up your strength so you can do 8 pullups!

Please read complete articles:

Pullups For Total Beginners

Sixpack abs easy as 1-2-3

2011-08-29T05:27:00.000-07:00

Losing weight is a billion dollar industry in America, there are thousands of devices and programs you can buy that promise to get you "6-pack abs fast" but they don't work! If it were as easy as buying a pill, shake, or ab machine then the shopping malls across America would be filled with men who have rippling washboard abs-of-death and women wearing size zero dresses. What do we see instead? Obesity everywhere!

There are no shortcuts to 6-pack abs!

You can't buy 6-pack abs but I will give them to you for free! Are you ready for the secret? Losing weight and getting 6-pack abs is as easy as one, two, three!

Those three things are far, far easier than you might imagine! You dont have to make drastic changes to lose weight or get ripped abs, just minor course corrections. In fact, making minor corrections rather than drastic ones can be MORE successful because its so easy to do and stick with. You added the fat very gradually over years, it doesnt take much of a change to reverse the trend and get ripped abs.

Lets start with #1, exercise a bit more. This is KEY to your success. If you do just 25 minutes of cardio a day, it activates your fat afterburners to help melt the fat away. It doesnt have to be anything fancy, brisk walking is fine if you dont feel like jogging. By doing just 3hrs of cardio a week, it puts your metabolism into overdrive so you burn off more calories even when you are resting. So thats #1, do 25min of cardio a day.

#2, eat a little bit less. No diet required here! Use the simple substitution method. Just choose TWO things that you eat often that you know are unhealthy and substitute something healthier. Thats it! Anybody can make two simple substitutions! If you drink coke every day, substitute water or a diet drink. If you have french fries with dinner every day, substitute a baked potato. Thats it! Nothing drastic, nothing difficult. Those two simple substitutions will be very easy to live with and start you on the path to losing fat. So thats #2, make two simple healthy substitutions.

#3 Drink lots of water! Drinking lots of water can help you lose weight, especially when you drink it right before meals. Research suggests you can lose fat 40% faster if you drink two 8oz glasses of water before each meal. [Journal Obesity February 2010]

Thats it! Losing fat and getting 6-pack abs is as easy as 1-2-3. #1 Do daily cardio, #2 make 2 easy substitutions, and #3 drink lots of water! Easy as 1-2-3! Did you note that I didnt even mention ab exercises in this whole video? Thats for a reason! Getting abs is 95% bodyfat reduction!

Afterburner Effect Melts Away Fat

2011-08-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

You have heard a lot about the "Afterburner Effect" lately. What exactly is it and how do you use it? Do you have to buy anything? Of course not! Its simple and easy to activate your "fat afterburner"!

To lose fat you either have to eat less, … or ..., you can increase how much your body burns! I don't know about you but I like eating so I'd much rather increase how much my body burns! Turns out that its really quite easy to get your body to turn on its metabolic afterburners and burn more calories.

We've all see the activity calculators, the ones that say if you jog for 30 minutes you burn off 325 calories - these are very misleading and pessimistic. Back in 1918, Harris and Benedict discovered that doing cardio caused the body to burn up way more calories than these charts predicted. Doing cardio puts the bodies metabolism into overdrive so that it continues to burn more calories for around 24 hours after the exercise stops. Harris and Benedict came up with some formulas which predict the how much these fat afterburners will burn up which is what my calorie calculator is based on.

Lets look at a great example, ME! If I did no cardio, my daily energy need would be 2600 calories. The below chart shows how much afterburner effect I get for a given daily amount of cardio:

Minutes Cardio	Cardio Burns	Afterburner Effect Burns	Total Cals Burned	Pounds Fat Lost
none	0 cals/day	0 cals/day	2600cals/day	0.0lbs/wk
20min/day	230cals/day	70cals/day	2800cals/day	0.6lbs/wk
35min/day	400cals/day	360cals/day	3360cals/day	1.7lbs/wk
50min/day	570cals/day	580cals/day	3750cals/day	2.3lbs/wk

You will note that at 20min/day, its negligible but when you up it to 35min a day it really starts to kick in! By 50min a day, the fat afterburner is in overdrive chomping up 580cals a day while I sit and do nothing.

So what's happening here? Its nothing complicated or fancy as many would have you believe. Its just that cardio raises your metabolic rate, not a mystery. Just as hibernation lowers metabolic rate to near zero, high activity sends the metabolic rate thru the roof. Interesting question, what qualifies as "cardio". Definitely traditional steady state cardiovascular exercise like walking, jogging, swimming, and biking. Perhaps interval training, its unclear. One thing that IS clear, you must do the cardio every day! The afterburner effect only seems to last about 24 hours so you need to do cardio daily if you want the effect. Doing a 7 hour run on sunday burns off fewer calories than doing a 30 minute jog each day and the 7 hour run will kill you :)

Now you see why doing cardio is very important to losing fat and getting 6-pack abs. Its not so much the calories burned during the cardio that is important but the fact that the cardio puts your metabolism into overdrive to burn up fat!

People always ask if they can lose fat and get 6-pack abs without doing cardio, and the answer is - "Yes, but its really really hard". Why struggle? Use your fat afterburners!

Whats better 6 meals a day or 3?

2011-08-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Whats better for gaining muscle, eating 6 meals a day or 3 meals a day?

I know that there is some research out there that suggests 3 meals a day is as good as 6 meals a day. In my experience I have found that for any opinion you may hold, you can always find research backing you up. Research is rarely conclusive, it merely suggests. Its really hard work to eat 6 meals a day so its natural for people to look for reasons why they dont need to do it. From personal experience I can tell you that when I went from 3 meals a day to 6 meals a day, my yearly muscular gains doubled. Completely anecdotal I know but I was at a stagnant plateau before and the change in nutrition brought me out of it without any accompanying changes in workout routines.

Here is what I suggest. Dont believe that 6 small, well balanced meals a day each with 1/6 of your daily protein needs is better than 3 meals a day? Try this one year experiment! Its completely free, safe, and it might just add you a bunch more muscle.

measure your body composition at start of experiment
for 6 months eat 6 small, well balanced meals a day each with 1/6 of your daily protein needs
measure your body composition again and see how much muscle you gained and fat you lost
for the next 6 months eat 3 meals a day (do not change workout routine)
measure your body composition again and compare results to first 6 months

I know bodybuilders, most are willing to try anything for a bit of improvement. They will pour hundreds of dollars into unproven supplements in hopes it will help them gain a bit more muscle. Please, try this experiment. Its safer than supplements, costs nothing, and you might just find that I am right and be amazed at how much more muscle you gain.

What is the best diet?

2011-08-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

What is the best diet?

When discussing the benefits of any diet, its very important to look at more than the short term benefits and most discussions neglect to do this. Nutritional plans should not be rated simply by how much fat they can lose and how quickly. Additional very important factors to look at:

1) Short term side effects. Many diets have rather unpleasant side effects. For example, no-carb diets can cause severe constipation because of the lack of fiber. This can be more than an inconvienience, it can cause some long lasting digestive problems. What are the short term problems that occur while on the diet? Some of the drastic diets out there are downright dangerous!

2) Is there a bounce-back effect? Is this a nutritional plan you can stay on forever or is it a short term diet? If its a short term diet, what happens to the average person a month and a year after quitting? Do they gain all their fat back?

3) What about muscle mass? Is it possible to gain muscle while on this nutritional plan/diet? Can you at least maintain muscle mass? How much muscle mass is lost? Muscle mass is precious, do you really want to lose it? Most diets that severely restrict calories cause muscle loss.

4) Is there psychological damage done? Deprivation and food-guilt can lead to a lifetime of eating disorders. A short term gain is in no way worth a lifetime of eating disorders. This is a very important question and its one that my nutritional plans have been criticized for which is funny considering how mild my recommendations are compared to many of the diets out there. Anyway, its why you may have noticed that I personally have 'lightened up' a bit when it comes to my nutritional recommendations.

Read about the ways you can eat less.

Expiration dates and food safety

2011-08-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Nobody likes to waste food. I know that many of you use food past the expiration date, its good much longer than this - right? Are you willing to bet your life on it?

Its one thing to go a bit past the expiration date if you are buying at a high-end place like Whole Foods, its an entirely other matter at the discount big box stores where corners are cut to keep prices low. About once a year, I have something go bad before the expiration date even while being properly refrigerated. Here is a particularly dangerous example. This fresh cut salsa went bad, really bad, 4 days before the expiration date.

Look at these two identical un-opened bottles of fresh cut salsa.

The one on the right is ready to explode. It was so bad that I carried it gently outside because I feared it would explode in the house and make a HUGE mess. The bulging sides and lid are a clear sign of botulism or other serious safety issues present in the container. Eating this would cause serious illness and perhaps even death.

So, should you use that food or throw it out? Even if its before the expiration date, check it over carefully: smell it, taste a little. Anything odd is cause for concern. After the expiration date, its your health and your call. If its fresh meat, dairy or produce - its risky. You think DOMS keeps you from having a good workout, try food poisoning!

Do hard workouts count as cardio?

2011-08-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

Do hard workouts count as cardio? People ask this all the time! They say that they sweat profusely, their heart gets pumping, so it MUST count as cardio. Well, maybe.

There is a very specific regimen called complexes that can make a weightlifting workout a cardio workout but other than that, the experiment I performed today indicates that most hard workouts do not qualify as cardio.

First, in my book, interval training is something that gets the heartrate up near the max, then lets it drop down to 60 or 70% of max before starting the next interval. Typically that requires short rests. A typical routine with running would be sprint 30 seconds, rest 30 seconds.

I did a 60 minute workout to see if that qualified as cardio by my definition. I pushed hard, grunted loud, and sweated profusely. Lets look at my heartrate profile:

Fail! You will note that even though I was doing compound exercises (weighted pullups and barbell rows) that in the first 45 minutes, my heartrate barely made it above the 60% line which is the minimum heartrate for fat loss. Maximum for my age group is 170. Only in the last 15 minutes did the workout look anything like a cardio workout for fat loss.

One very interesting thing. I had done my warmups before starting this workout so my weight and reps started out from the very beginning with my max weight and max number of reps. The first 30 minutes I did exactly the same superset repeatedly but you will notice that each time, my peak heartrate went up slightly and my resting heartrate also increased. In short, my body was getting continuously more fatigued.

So, is your normal weight workout count as cardio? Probably not unless your #1 workout goal is achieving and maintaining heartrate rather than strength or mass.

Additional note. In the last 30 minutes, instead of just resting 2 minutes, I did one foot balancing on a bosu ball. Surprisingly, just this little bit of activity kept my heartrate above the 60% level. Or was it just cumulative fatigue? I shouldn't have combined two experiments in one.

Complete healthy meal on a BBQ

2011-08-15T07:19:00.000-07:00

Everyone barbeques chicken but that's not a complete meal. Here is a great meal you can make quickly on a barbecue that doesnt require a trip to the store, you can pull everything right out of your freezer. Its a perfect meal for gaining muscle or losing fat.

Make an aluminum foil boat and lightly oil the bottom with olive oil. Pour in the mixed frozen vegetables (still frozen) and then sprinkle on a no-salt herb seasoning. Start it cooking on the upper rack of your BBQ while you get ready to put the meat on.
Wash the chicken, pour on a little olive oil, and flip it a few times in the tray to get the meat evenly coated with olive oil. Then sprinkle the no-salt herb seasoning on each side and put the meat on the grill.
Cook 3 minutes, then flip.
Cook 3 minutes, then flip.
Cook 3 minutes, then flip.
Cook 3 minutes, then eat!

Just a warning, after you put the chicken on the grill wash everything up with warm soapy water that the chicken may have come in contact with - the counter, the tray the meat was oiled in, everything. You can get rather sick from raw chicken and we dont want you getting chickenosis!

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Cheat Meals for Muscle Gain and Fat Loss

2011-08-08T07:02:00.001-07:00

Do you need cheat meals? How often should you have them?

I have been criticized for being too strict about nutrition, I admit it, I'm a nutritional Nazi. Let me take this opportunity to clarify though, strict nutrition is NOT required for everyone! Strict nutrition is NOT required if you just want:

to get more muscular and stronger
to lose fat and get 6-pack abs
to maintain your current physique

If you just want to get a bit more muscular and a bit stronger, you can eat whatever you want within reason as long as you get 3-6 protein doses a day. If you want to lose fat and get 6-pack abs, all you need to do is make a few healthy substitutions - baked potato instead of french fries or a bowl of oatmeal instead of a donut. If you just want to maintain your current muscle mass and bodyfat levels, you certainly don't need to be strict.

If you are in one of the above three groups, then you don't need cheat meals because you can have whatever you want within reason and EVERY meal is a cheat meal! Now lets talk about those people who will need cheat meals because their nutrition is so strict. Three groups:

Those wanting to maximize strength and muscle mass. Someone very serious about fitness who wants to look like a bodybuilder and is willing to work hard to get it.
Those wanting to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.
Cutters. Those wanting to lose fat fast without losing muscle

If you are in one of those three groups then the quality of every calorie counts. Most people who attempted to stay on these strict nutritional regimens 365 days a year would eventually end up binging and undoing all their progress. You can only eat steamed vegetables, grilled chicken and brown rice SO long before you crave something goopy, salty, creamy, frosty or sweet!

A cheat meal is designed to prevent binging. It's a safety pressure relief valve that keeps you from exploding. A cheat meal is a pre-scheduled meal where you can have something you are craving so that you can stick to your nutritional plan for another week.

Two important points. First, its not a license to pig out. A cheat meal is not TWO whole pizzas and a case of beer! A cheat meal is a few slices and a few beers. And its not a cheat-day, its a cheat MEAL. Second important point, the cheat meal MUST be pre-scheduled. It needs to be something on your calendar that you can look forward to. You eat strictly every meal until your scheduled cheat meal. You cant spontaneously decide to pig out and then label it your "cheat meal".

Just as important is that you MUST have your cheat meal, even if you don't feel you need it. The reason is that many people feel really motivated their first week so they skip their cheat meal. The second week, they think they can skip it again because they did last week. By week three their intense pent up cravings cause them to explode in an eating orgy that undoes weeks of progress. The day after they experience such feelings of guilt and shame that they often give up on their goal completely. Don't let this happen to you! Take your cheat meals!!!

So, how often should you have cheat meals? I would recommend at least one a week and not more than three. Experiment and see what works best for you. The tougher your nutritional regimen, the more cheat meals you will need. Its better to start with more than you think you need and then gradually cut them out. Start with three and if that seems like WAY too much, then drop to two a week.

Please read original cheat meals article on scoobysworkshop.com

Afterburner effect to melt fat away fast!

2011-08-03T13:18:00.001-07:00

The Afterburner Effect!

A weight loss miracle!! How much does it cost and where can I buy it? How hard is it to activate your afterburner-within?

Yikes! The "Afterburner Effect" is just marketing!!! Its always been around and its no secret.

Ever wonder why I emphasize time and time again that you need to do cardio every day??? Its because when you do cardio, not only do you burn off calories for the 20-60 min you are exercising but the exercise raises your metabolic rate for the next 24 hours. What this means is the main fat burning benefit from doing cardio does NOT come from the short few minutes you are exercising but for the 23 hours following the exercise because your metabolic rate has been raised and you burn off more calories. This is what marketing people have dubbed the "afterburner effect". There is nothing at all new or special about it nor is it difficult to "activate".

How do you turn on your fat afterburner and raise your metabolic rate to melt away fat? Do cardio everyday! What type of cardio does not matter! Just do something ability appropriate. If you are just starting out or are very overweight, just walk 20 minutes a day. If you are an intermediate bodybuilder, go for a 30 minute run. If you are an advanced athlete use HIIT or Tabata intervals.

Lets look at an example. Lets say your TDEE is 2500 calories now while you are sedentary. You start jogging for 3 hours a week. Each jogging session burns about 700 calories or 2100 calories for the week - thats a pittance. 2100 calories is just one pig-out meal at a fast food restarant. Lets look at the afterburner effect though!

By doing 3 hours of cardio a week, your TDEE now gets multiplied by 1.55 - the afterburner effect. So now rather than your TDEE being 2500 calories per day, its now 3875 calories! With your 3 jogs a week plan, your body now needs 1375 more calories per day. See why those "calories burned" meters are so needlessly demotivating??? With just those three weekly jogs, you are burning 9625 more calories per week!

How old is the "afterburner effect"? Well Harris-Benedict did a research paper on it back in the early 1900s and we still use their formulas!

Hours per week cardio	Afterburner Effect TDEE Multiplier
1-3 hours	1.375
3-5 hours	1.55
5-6 hours	1.725
7-21 hours	1.9

Daily cardio is important, do it to activate your fat-afterburner within! No need to buy anything!!!