I am speechless... this is nuts. Not only is this a new world record but he looked like he could have gotten 50 more pounds. Way to go Benni.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Dieting Mayhem: Why I Should Be Dead Right Now.
So, this was my lunch today:
-Footlong Buffalo Chicken Sub, double meat, double cheese
-About a half gallon of Coke
-Spicy Tuna and Crabmeat Roll
-Bag of Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips
-Half a gallon of Water
-2 Heaping tablespoons of peanut butter
An hour after:
-1370 calorie shake
An hour later:
-About a pound of spaghetti and 10oz of chicken sausage
That's only 3 out of six times I will eat today. It hasn't always been this way. I used to eat clean. So clean it would probably make a normal human kill themselves out of sheer taste-boredom. I am attempting to gain weight for the first time ever. Believe it or not, gaining weight has always been hard for me. Especially in high school and the beginning of college.
High School:
Freshman year I weighed in at a sickly 160-170lbs. Needless to say, I was almost killed on the football field every time I got hit. Once the season was over, I started smashing weights everyday and eating anything and everything.By the time the next season started, I was 6 inches taller, and weighed 230lbs. I wish I still had growth spurts like that. I made it through high school alive somehow and got the opportunity to play college football.
College:
Got to training camp around 250lbs but in terrible shape. College football made me realize I was a horrible athlete so I knew my only hope was to become un-humanly strong. That was postponed several times due to injury after injury/surgery after surgery. I had some pretty lousy surgeries. Two hernias. A stupid ankle. Punched a wall that was much stronger than my hand. Anyway, when football was over, I was a sloppy 275lbs. That was in 2007. I pretty much hung around there until July of last year... that's when the insanity started.
July 2010 to October 2010:
I lost 51lbs in 15 weeks. Anyone who is serious about losing weight and can't do it on their own: Go to TroponinNutrition.com, hire Shelby Starnes, and try not to shrink too fast. The guy is a genius. I wanted to get as light as possible for a powerlifting competition. I went from 280 to 229 and did not lose any strength. The diet, after a few adjustments, looked like this:
-6 meals a day
-65g protein per meal- fish, steak, chicken, and shakes.
-4 medium carb days a week
-3 very low carb days a week<~~~~ which made me very cranky
-40mins of low intensity cardio 4 days a week
-20mins of interval sprints usually on a bike, 20mins of low intensity cardio 3 days a week
-No gluten
-No dairy
My body fat percentage went from mid 20's to 5%. I was shredded up, totally ripped, brah! By my own stupid accord, I dropped and extra 5lbs the day before the competition by making a homemade sauna in my hotel bathroom, even though Shelby told me not to do this. Needless to say, I felt like a walking poop-cicle going into the meet. I tore my right semimembranosous (medial hamstring) attempting to deadlift 810lbs. I was very dehydrated and very stupid.
October 2010 to February 2011:
Still eating very clean, just more clean food. Added in 2 cheat meals a week. Cheat meal is code for "entire stuffed crust pizza." Weighed in at the Arnold Sports Festival at 250lbs and smoked an 810lb deadlift with my hamstring only at about 80%.
February 2011 to Present:
I just don't care anymore. There is only one goal now: Be as strong as possible. I am already back up to 275lbs just by adding in 2 more cheat meals and keeping everything else relatively clean. I shoot for about 500g of carbs and 300g of protein a day.
Just thought I would put this up because I have received several questions on how/what I eat. It makes more sense to showcase the history of how my diet has evolved than just throw worthless numbers out there. The diet I was on from July to October completely altered my body chemistry, I think. I am stuck at 275 and I'm not getting any fatter? Maybe I'll take up jogging to get fatter.
Anyway, sorry for the short, pointless post. Thanks for reading. Now that I've talked some about sprinting and eating, I guess the next one will be on how to make you an efficient killing machine....
Sprint. Kill. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.
-Footlong Buffalo Chicken Sub, double meat, double cheese
-About a half gallon of Coke
-Spicy Tuna and Crabmeat Roll
-Bag of Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips
-Half a gallon of Water
-2 Heaping tablespoons of peanut butter
An hour after:
-1370 calorie shake
An hour later:
-About a pound of spaghetti and 10oz of chicken sausage
That's only 3 out of six times I will eat today. It hasn't always been this way. I used to eat clean. So clean it would probably make a normal human kill themselves out of sheer taste-boredom. I am attempting to gain weight for the first time ever. Believe it or not, gaining weight has always been hard for me. Especially in high school and the beginning of college.
High School:
Freshman year I weighed in at a sickly 160-170lbs. Needless to say, I was almost killed on the football field every time I got hit. Once the season was over, I started smashing weights everyday and eating anything and everything.By the time the next season started, I was 6 inches taller, and weighed 230lbs. I wish I still had growth spurts like that. I made it through high school alive somehow and got the opportunity to play college football.
College:
Got to training camp around 250lbs but in terrible shape. College football made me realize I was a horrible athlete so I knew my only hope was to become un-humanly strong. That was postponed several times due to injury after injury/surgery after surgery. I had some pretty lousy surgeries. Two hernias. A stupid ankle. Punched a wall that was much stronger than my hand. Anyway, when football was over, I was a sloppy 275lbs. That was in 2007. I pretty much hung around there until July of last year... that's when the insanity started.
July 2010 to October 2010:
I lost 51lbs in 15 weeks. Anyone who is serious about losing weight and can't do it on their own: Go to TroponinNutrition.com, hire Shelby Starnes, and try not to shrink too fast. The guy is a genius. I wanted to get as light as possible for a powerlifting competition. I went from 280 to 229 and did not lose any strength. The diet, after a few adjustments, looked like this:
-6 meals a day
-65g protein per meal- fish, steak, chicken, and shakes.
-4 medium carb days a week
-3 very low carb days a week<~~~~ which made me very cranky
-40mins of low intensity cardio 4 days a week
-20mins of interval sprints usually on a bike, 20mins of low intensity cardio 3 days a week
-No gluten
-No dairy
My body fat percentage went from mid 20's to 5%. I was shredded up, totally ripped, brah! By my own stupid accord, I dropped and extra 5lbs the day before the competition by making a homemade sauna in my hotel bathroom, even though Shelby told me not to do this. Needless to say, I felt like a walking poop-cicle going into the meet. I tore my right semimembranosous (medial hamstring) attempting to deadlift 810lbs. I was very dehydrated and very stupid.
October 2010 to February 2011:
Still eating very clean, just more clean food. Added in 2 cheat meals a week. Cheat meal is code for "entire stuffed crust pizza." Weighed in at the Arnold Sports Festival at 250lbs and smoked an 810lb deadlift with my hamstring only at about 80%.
February 2011 to Present:
I just don't care anymore. There is only one goal now: Be as strong as possible. I am already back up to 275lbs just by adding in 2 more cheat meals and keeping everything else relatively clean. I shoot for about 500g of carbs and 300g of protein a day.
Just thought I would put this up because I have received several questions on how/what I eat. It makes more sense to showcase the history of how my diet has evolved than just throw worthless numbers out there. The diet I was on from July to October completely altered my body chemistry, I think. I am stuck at 275 and I'm not getting any fatter? Maybe I'll take up jogging to get fatter.
Anyway, sorry for the short, pointless post. Thanks for reading. Now that I've talked some about sprinting and eating, I guess the next one will be on how to make you an efficient killing machine....
Sprint. Kill. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Jogging: No, The "J" is Not Silent. Yes, This is Killing You.
My "Sprint. Kill. Eat." mantra is getting pretty popular. Some people have suggested I get t-shirts made. I will look into that and keep everyone posted.
If you have read any of my previous posts, you already know that I am about to rip jogging a new one. This might be one of the all-time fitness go-to's. When most people want to "get in shape" their initial thoughts are to buy a fancy new pair of 10 million dollar running shoes, shoot out the door, and start externally rotating his or herself to death down the sidewalk. Before I send jogging back into the bowels of fitness where it can be digested into a much more useful form (yes, that was a poop joke), I will start with a real life scenario:
Imagine that you are sitting there, minding your own business, reading my snide/sarcastic veiws on how fitness is making you a less efficient human, when all of a sudden you realized you left your front door open. No big deal. Maybe the weather is nice wherever you are. Maybe you did it on purpose. Maybe you live in a barn and the hinges on your stall door rusted off. You continue reading. Then, this guy comes flying through the door:
Yep. That guy is in your living room now and he is pissed off and hungry. Actually, he was so hungry that he ate your neighbors already. Now, he has tasted human flesh and it has put him into a man-craving frenzy that can only be satisfied by your face meat. Your reaction to this situation will put you into one of three catergories of human being:
1. Let's call this one the Jogger. Jogger is not too worried about the killing machine standing in his house. The Jogger is fit. The Jogger jogs everyday and talks to all his/her jogger friends about all the places they have jogged. The Jogger looks at the bear, laughs, and says, "That bear easily weighs 600lbs, there is no way it can catch me because I am in shape!" Jogger then stands up, yells "Fitness!!!", and takes two brisk steps away from the bear to begin his jog to safety. The bear then almost immediately catches Jogger. Jogger is then brutaly murdered by the 600lb serial killer is such a way that if I were to attempt to describe, it would probably get me kicked off the internet.
2. Now it is the Sprinters turn. Sprinter doesnt waste any time at all. As soon as Sprinters, now terrified, brain recognizes one of natures perfect weapons of destruction wants to take Sprinter on a human meat picnic with no picnic basket, Sprinter heads towards the back door. No need to waste time unlocking or opening the door. Sprinter is generating enough forward momentum to lower a shoulder explode through the door like a heat seeking missle. Sprinter is just fast enough to evade the bear... or at least fast enough to get in front of the first jogger they see so that the bear eats them instead.
3. The third person that could turn up, and that will be discussed in great detail later on, is called the Alpha. The Alpha recognizes the danger but calmy stands and walks around the bear. The Alpha keeps direct eye contact with the bear the entire time. Once he reaches the front door, the Alpha closes and locks it to ensure the bear cannot escape. After he has beaten the bear to death, he cooks and eats all 600lbs of him.
So, assuming you don't want to die, lets talk about why sprinting as hard as you can will make you a more efficient human. A lot of people think they can't handle the impact from a maximal sprint. Well, thats stupid. The ground reaction forces of jogging and sprinting are almost exactly the same. The difference between these two actions are the amount of time you can sustain the movements. A normal healthy person could probably lightly jog, I don't know, forever. A maximal sprint could only last for about 10-15 seconds AT MOST. Any longer than that and it's not sprinting anymore. Ever go for a jog and get that "swole" feeling in your lower back? That is not a good thing. The propelling force, if you can even call it that, during a sprint is gravity. The harder you fall down and catch yourself, the faster you will run. When most people jog, they jog straight up and down. Knees lock on ground contact, the foot strikes from heel to toe, and at some point the knee, ankle, and hip are all being crushed by the weight of your body. You fall so far forward when you sprint that is is impossible to now land on your heel and you push off of just the balls of your feet, which is the way humans were meant to run. So, because of the angle at which your body must maintain in order to sprint and the short amount of time you spend actually doing the movement, there is significantly less impact force on the joints. Imagine a caveman. If it hurt too much for him to sprint, guess what happened to him? He either couldn't catch, kill, and eat his dinner or he was too slow to not become dinner to any of the numerous badass killers mother nature has perfected since the dawn of time.
Which one looks like they would stand a chance when Mr. Smiley the frenzied grizzly bear comes storming through the front door?
Now, with all of that stuff out of the way, this guy asks:
Well, how do I use sprinting to get ripped abs like my heroes on The Jersey Shore, bro-Namath?
It is true that jogging is a superior method of utilizing fat for fueling exercise. There are several problems though:
1- It's easy. Your body adapts quickly to low intensity work like this. When your body adapts, progress stops. Once this happens you need to keep increasing duration and frequency to elicit training responses. Everyone knows these people. Those people that have to run 50 billion miles a week and eat like a borderline anorexic to stay at that lean, sunken, can-count-every-rib-because-they-stick-an-inch-out-from-your-body frame.
2- You burn calories... only while you are actually jogging. Going off of what I said in number one, you will adapt. You will eventually have to do more to achieve the same results. Which is fine assuming you don't work or have a personal/family life that you would have to neglect. Eat less. Jog all day. Sleep? Just doesn't sound right.
3- Fat people can do it. If you want to lose weight, get "ripped", fit into that old dress, or whatever your goals may be, watch a fat person go about their daily life... then do the total opposite of EVERYTHING they do.
Here is how sprinting kicks the crap out of jogging when it comes to losing body fat:
1- It's not easy. So it's good for you. Stop being lazy. It's hard to adapt to an exercise when you are heaving your brains out trying to swallow any available molecule of oxygen to keep yourself from passing out because you just finished 5 minutes of interval sprinting.
2- You burn calories... up to 36 hours AFTER you finish the workout. When you preform highly anaerobic, no oxygen available, work with short rests you create an oxygen deficit in your muscles. It takes a long time to pay back that deficit. 36 hours from the conclusion of the exercise, your breathing remains elevated and the increased oxygen exchange causes a big increase in your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Calories are only burned in your body in three different ways. Exercise makes up 10-15% of total calories burned. The Thermic Effect of Food digesting makes up another 5-10%. The remaining 75 to 85% is RMR. A higher RMR means more calories burned while sitting on the couch, in class, or in your cubicle.
3- Fat people can't do it at first... because it will probably kill them. Get on a good diet, walk with a weighted sled 3 days a week, walk a mile the other 4 days a week, and once you can accomplish this without being so exhausted you want to kill yourself, start sprinting.
How do you get the most out of sprinting? Using the interval method. What the hell does that mean? Well, settle down, jerk, I'm going to tell you.
10-15 seconds of all out sprinting
20-30 seconds of rest
Do that until you pass out. Aim for 6-10 total sprints. Do this at least twice a week, ideally between heavy weight training sessions, which also creates the oxygen deficit effect. When you get bored, do it up a hill, use a weighted sled, instead of 10-15 seconds try for certain distances like 50 to 100 yards with the same rest intervals, get creative and vary the movements anyway you want. Just make sure the sprint is an all out effort and you are adhering to the rest intervals.
Now you have the knowledge. Don't let the bear eat your face.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
If you have read any of my previous posts, you already know that I am about to rip jogging a new one. This might be one of the all-time fitness go-to's. When most people want to "get in shape" their initial thoughts are to buy a fancy new pair of 10 million dollar running shoes, shoot out the door, and start externally rotating his or herself to death down the sidewalk. Before I send jogging back into the bowels of fitness where it can be digested into a much more useful form (yes, that was a poop joke), I will start with a real life scenario:
Imagine that you are sitting there, minding your own business, reading my snide/sarcastic veiws on how fitness is making you a less efficient human, when all of a sudden you realized you left your front door open. No big deal. Maybe the weather is nice wherever you are. Maybe you did it on purpose. Maybe you live in a barn and the hinges on your stall door rusted off. You continue reading. Then, this guy comes flying through the door:
Yep. That guy is in your living room now and he is pissed off and hungry. Actually, he was so hungry that he ate your neighbors already. Now, he has tasted human flesh and it has put him into a man-craving frenzy that can only be satisfied by your face meat. Your reaction to this situation will put you into one of three catergories of human being:
1. Let's call this one the Jogger. Jogger is not too worried about the killing machine standing in his house. The Jogger is fit. The Jogger jogs everyday and talks to all his/her jogger friends about all the places they have jogged. The Jogger looks at the bear, laughs, and says, "That bear easily weighs 600lbs, there is no way it can catch me because I am in shape!" Jogger then stands up, yells "Fitness!!!", and takes two brisk steps away from the bear to begin his jog to safety. The bear then almost immediately catches Jogger. Jogger is then brutaly murdered by the 600lb serial killer is such a way that if I were to attempt to describe, it would probably get me kicked off the internet.
2. Now it is the Sprinters turn. Sprinter doesnt waste any time at all. As soon as Sprinters, now terrified, brain recognizes one of natures perfect weapons of destruction wants to take Sprinter on a human meat picnic with no picnic basket, Sprinter heads towards the back door. No need to waste time unlocking or opening the door. Sprinter is generating enough forward momentum to lower a shoulder explode through the door like a heat seeking missle. Sprinter is just fast enough to evade the bear... or at least fast enough to get in front of the first jogger they see so that the bear eats them instead.
3. The third person that could turn up, and that will be discussed in great detail later on, is called the Alpha. The Alpha recognizes the danger but calmy stands and walks around the bear. The Alpha keeps direct eye contact with the bear the entire time. Once he reaches the front door, the Alpha closes and locks it to ensure the bear cannot escape. After he has beaten the bear to death, he cooks and eats all 600lbs of him.
So, assuming you don't want to die, lets talk about why sprinting as hard as you can will make you a more efficient human. A lot of people think they can't handle the impact from a maximal sprint. Well, thats stupid. The ground reaction forces of jogging and sprinting are almost exactly the same. The difference between these two actions are the amount of time you can sustain the movements. A normal healthy person could probably lightly jog, I don't know, forever. A maximal sprint could only last for about 10-15 seconds AT MOST. Any longer than that and it's not sprinting anymore. Ever go for a jog and get that "swole" feeling in your lower back? That is not a good thing. The propelling force, if you can even call it that, during a sprint is gravity. The harder you fall down and catch yourself, the faster you will run. When most people jog, they jog straight up and down. Knees lock on ground contact, the foot strikes from heel to toe, and at some point the knee, ankle, and hip are all being crushed by the weight of your body. You fall so far forward when you sprint that is is impossible to now land on your heel and you push off of just the balls of your feet, which is the way humans were meant to run. So, because of the angle at which your body must maintain in order to sprint and the short amount of time you spend actually doing the movement, there is significantly less impact force on the joints. Imagine a caveman. If it hurt too much for him to sprint, guess what happened to him? He either couldn't catch, kill, and eat his dinner or he was too slow to not become dinner to any of the numerous badass killers mother nature has perfected since the dawn of time.
Which one looks like they would stand a chance when Mr. Smiley the frenzied grizzly bear comes storming through the front door?
Now, with all of that stuff out of the way, this guy asks:
Well, how do I use sprinting to get ripped abs like my heroes on The Jersey Shore, bro-Namath?
It is true that jogging is a superior method of utilizing fat for fueling exercise. There are several problems though:
1- It's easy. Your body adapts quickly to low intensity work like this. When your body adapts, progress stops. Once this happens you need to keep increasing duration and frequency to elicit training responses. Everyone knows these people. Those people that have to run 50 billion miles a week and eat like a borderline anorexic to stay at that lean, sunken, can-count-every-rib-because-they-stick-an-inch-out-from-your-body frame.
2- You burn calories... only while you are actually jogging. Going off of what I said in number one, you will adapt. You will eventually have to do more to achieve the same results. Which is fine assuming you don't work or have a personal/family life that you would have to neglect. Eat less. Jog all day. Sleep? Just doesn't sound right.
3- Fat people can do it. If you want to lose weight, get "ripped", fit into that old dress, or whatever your goals may be, watch a fat person go about their daily life... then do the total opposite of EVERYTHING they do.
Here is how sprinting kicks the crap out of jogging when it comes to losing body fat:
1- It's not easy. So it's good for you. Stop being lazy. It's hard to adapt to an exercise when you are heaving your brains out trying to swallow any available molecule of oxygen to keep yourself from passing out because you just finished 5 minutes of interval sprinting.
2- You burn calories... up to 36 hours AFTER you finish the workout. When you preform highly anaerobic, no oxygen available, work with short rests you create an oxygen deficit in your muscles. It takes a long time to pay back that deficit. 36 hours from the conclusion of the exercise, your breathing remains elevated and the increased oxygen exchange causes a big increase in your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Calories are only burned in your body in three different ways. Exercise makes up 10-15% of total calories burned. The Thermic Effect of Food digesting makes up another 5-10%. The remaining 75 to 85% is RMR. A higher RMR means more calories burned while sitting on the couch, in class, or in your cubicle.
3- Fat people can't do it at first... because it will probably kill them. Get on a good diet, walk with a weighted sled 3 days a week, walk a mile the other 4 days a week, and once you can accomplish this without being so exhausted you want to kill yourself, start sprinting.
How do you get the most out of sprinting? Using the interval method. What the hell does that mean? Well, settle down, jerk, I'm going to tell you.
10-15 seconds of all out sprinting
20-30 seconds of rest
Do that until you pass out. Aim for 6-10 total sprints. Do this at least twice a week, ideally between heavy weight training sessions, which also creates the oxygen deficit effect. When you get bored, do it up a hill, use a weighted sled, instead of 10-15 seconds try for certain distances like 50 to 100 yards with the same rest intervals, get creative and vary the movements anyway you want. Just make sure the sprint is an all out effort and you are adhering to the rest intervals.
Now you have the knowledge. Don't let the bear eat your face.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
An 11 Year Old Girl That Could Probably Beat You Up.
For people who think lifting weights stunts growth and young kids should not be engaged in resistance training... here is a video of an 11 year old girl who is probably stronger than you:
Thats 132lbs. She only weighs 99lbs. I am pretty sure "Fitness" just tried to kill itself. Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Thats 132lbs. She only weighs 99lbs. I am pretty sure "Fitness" just tried to kill itself. Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Six Pack Abs! How to Get Them and Why They Are Terrible For You. Part 1.5.
Flex your abs. Right now, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, flex your abs as hard as you can. What happened? What did your upper body do? Did it cave over a litte? What about your lower body? Did your lower back get a little looser and your pelvis tilt up in the front slightly? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then you have some sort of dysfunction going on in your abs. It's not your fault. Everyone told you to do sit-ups. To do crunches. You read that article about some actress that does 15 trillion crunches a second. Or you are doing P90X or the 300 workout or some other stupid thing with some juiced out maniac/CGI muscle-guy-cartoon on the cover.
Before I drop some anatomy on you, lets go to common sense first. Think of the position you are in when you do a crunch or a sit-up or any conventional ab exercise. Your are on the floor basically forcing yourself into a contorted mess that is genetically programmed in us to be a sign of weakness.
Think very hard of any other time in life you would be in these positions. Here, I can come up with a couple:
-Lying on the ground, getting mauled by a bear
-Lying on the ground, getting eaten by a lion
-You had too much too drink and wake up wrapped around a toilet
-Someone just punched you in the stomach
-You are freezing to death and attempting to keep warm
-Oh yea, how about this... you were like this the entire time you were a baby
These examples took me 10 seconds to think up. The point is, spend most of your training in these positions and you are just getting ready to fail miserably in a situation where something terrible is happening to you. It's sprint, kill, eat. Not fall down, curl up, and get murdered.
Now, in order to understand what you are actually supposed to do with these muscles, you need to understand how they are supposed to function. Not function in terms of gettin' "bro-ed" up with your boys but function in regards being a better human. Lets keep it as simple as possible:
Rectus Abdominals (including pelvic floor muscles): The elusive "six-pack" muscles. Remember when I told you to flex your abs? Odds are, these were the only ones that did anything. The textbook definition of what these are supposed to do is trunk flexion, a.k.a. the sit-up motion. If your trunk is actively in flexion then antagonist (opposite) musculature must be in extension. The opposite musculature in this case are the muscles that keep your spine in a natural alignment. In other words, you have to force your lumbar, thoracic, sacral, and cervical spinal muscles into extension. In case you don't know what that means, it looks like this:
P90X put 50lbs on his deadlift... it's also going to put him in a wheelchair. In all fairness, I have no idea if this kid did P90X. I am sure he does plenty of crunches... on a bosu ball... for max reps... 8 times a day.
I know what you are thinking, "But, brah, how do I work my abs and look good with my shirt off?" Your abs need to work as a means to stabilize your spine. So, pretty much anything you do laying on the floor is out. Now its time to get creative. Here are some of my favorites performed by yours truly:
Front Squat Holds:
A few seconds will do... because any longer and you will lose the ability to fight your bowels from violently evacuating your body. As you can see, the spine is kept neutral and the body is in a natural position (not in P90X bro-guy roll around together position). Plus, stuff like this is much more badass than the average "core" exercises. Here is another one:
Blast Strap Fallouts (Warning: you will be very sore for a very, very long time):
Ok, technically, there is back extension at the beginning of the exercise. The reason this is awesome is because, when your abs are working during this movement, the spine is neutral and the abs are braced, not flexed. Imagine at the complete extension of the movement, that I drive my right knee forwards... it would look a whole lot like someone sprinting as fast as they could.
Obliques (internal/external and some of the glute complex to some extent): Those pesky love handles. People work these to death and nothing ever changes. Maybe because they are being worked the wrong way. The obliques function to counteract the pull of gravity on the body. Wow... think about that for a second. For anyone trying to get stronger/run faster/jump higher/relieve back pain, the obliques sound awfully important don't they? These muscles were meant to be very strong. If you think they weren't, think about how much weight you could hold and perform a side-bend exercise with. 50lbs? 100lbs? 200lbs? Maybe more? These need to be trained like a midget on steroids: hard and heavy.
Landmine Side-Bends:
The same thing can be done with a barbell, heavy dumbbells, dogs, entire sides of beef that you will eat all of immediately after you finish the exercises, just about anything. The key is to keep it heavy and do sets until it feels like someone injected concrete mix into your sides and lit your forearms on fire.
Now the MOST important aspect of your core. The one nobody trains.
The Back: (erector spinae complex, multifidus, and all kinds of other stuff that should be insanely/badassly strong in every human being but is not). These are the key to everything core-related. If your back is weak and feeble then you, as a person, are weak and feeble. Stop doing "Supermans" and start doing these:
RDL's:
Good Mornings:
Not the best form on the GMs but I did it and I am now stronger for it.
Key to these exercises: 1. Go Heavy- progressively work to heavier and heavier weights. If your form is good (neutral spine) and your programming is smart then it is IMPOSSIBLE to hurt yourself. 2- Again, keep a neutral spine, don't be lazy, be strong.
How do you put it all together? How about the deadlift.
Muscles worked when deadlifting heavy... oh yea, all of them:
Yes. This entire post was leading up to how awesome deadlifting is for you.
Want to know why people really do traditional ab exercises for countless reps over and over and over? Because they are easy. Anything that is easy is not good for you. EVER. Easy makes you fat. Easy makes you weak. The above mentioned exercises are very stressful and will make it hard for you to walk without crying for several days after you do them. You will eventually get used to doing these various acts of badassery but only after you've gotten all of the sadassery out of your system.
Now, re-do the test from the beginning of the post. Contract your abs again but, not into flexion. Contract your abs and brace while keeping the arch in your back. There. That was a step in the right direction.
Just some things to think about and consider in your own training to reach your own goals. Hopefully, this rant opened someones eyes and caused you to think outside the box a little bit. I'll probably get one more part out of this topic dealing with dieting. Not dieting like eating less or eating crap like "fruit" . More like dieting while eating like a meat-fueled, human muscle museum with exhibits on the history of being a badass. Between now and then, be sure to pick up something heavy. Sprint. Kill. Eat... and don't do sit-ups anymore.
Before I drop some anatomy on you, lets go to common sense first. Think of the position you are in when you do a crunch or a sit-up or any conventional ab exercise. Your are on the floor basically forcing yourself into a contorted mess that is genetically programmed in us to be a sign of weakness.
Think very hard of any other time in life you would be in these positions. Here, I can come up with a couple:
-Lying on the ground, getting mauled by a bear
-Lying on the ground, getting eaten by a lion
-You had too much too drink and wake up wrapped around a toilet
-Someone just punched you in the stomach
-You are freezing to death and attempting to keep warm
-Oh yea, how about this... you were like this the entire time you were a baby
These examples took me 10 seconds to think up. The point is, spend most of your training in these positions and you are just getting ready to fail miserably in a situation where something terrible is happening to you. It's sprint, kill, eat. Not fall down, curl up, and get murdered.
Now, in order to understand what you are actually supposed to do with these muscles, you need to understand how they are supposed to function. Not function in terms of gettin' "bro-ed" up with your boys but function in regards being a better human. Lets keep it as simple as possible:
Rectus Abdominals (including pelvic floor muscles): The elusive "six-pack" muscles. Remember when I told you to flex your abs? Odds are, these were the only ones that did anything. The textbook definition of what these are supposed to do is trunk flexion, a.k.a. the sit-up motion. If your trunk is actively in flexion then antagonist (opposite) musculature must be in extension. The opposite musculature in this case are the muscles that keep your spine in a natural alignment. In other words, you have to force your lumbar, thoracic, sacral, and cervical spinal muscles into extension. In case you don't know what that means, it looks like this:
P90X put 50lbs on his deadlift... it's also going to put him in a wheelchair. In all fairness, I have no idea if this kid did P90X. I am sure he does plenty of crunches... on a bosu ball... for max reps... 8 times a day.
I know what you are thinking, "But, brah, how do I work my abs and look good with my shirt off?" Your abs need to work as a means to stabilize your spine. So, pretty much anything you do laying on the floor is out. Now its time to get creative. Here are some of my favorites performed by yours truly:
Front Squat Holds:
A few seconds will do... because any longer and you will lose the ability to fight your bowels from violently evacuating your body. As you can see, the spine is kept neutral and the body is in a natural position (not in P90X bro-guy roll around together position). Plus, stuff like this is much more badass than the average "core" exercises. Here is another one:
Blast Strap Fallouts (Warning: you will be very sore for a very, very long time):
Ok, technically, there is back extension at the beginning of the exercise. The reason this is awesome is because, when your abs are working during this movement, the spine is neutral and the abs are braced, not flexed. Imagine at the complete extension of the movement, that I drive my right knee forwards... it would look a whole lot like someone sprinting as fast as they could.
Obliques (internal/external and some of the glute complex to some extent): Those pesky love handles. People work these to death and nothing ever changes. Maybe because they are being worked the wrong way. The obliques function to counteract the pull of gravity on the body. Wow... think about that for a second. For anyone trying to get stronger/run faster/jump higher/relieve back pain, the obliques sound awfully important don't they? These muscles were meant to be very strong. If you think they weren't, think about how much weight you could hold and perform a side-bend exercise with. 50lbs? 100lbs? 200lbs? Maybe more? These need to be trained like a midget on steroids: hard and heavy.
Landmine Side-Bends:
The same thing can be done with a barbell, heavy dumbbells, dogs, entire sides of beef that you will eat all of immediately after you finish the exercises, just about anything. The key is to keep it heavy and do sets until it feels like someone injected concrete mix into your sides and lit your forearms on fire.
Now the MOST important aspect of your core. The one nobody trains.
The Back: (erector spinae complex, multifidus, and all kinds of other stuff that should be insanely/badassly strong in every human being but is not). These are the key to everything core-related. If your back is weak and feeble then you, as a person, are weak and feeble. Stop doing "Supermans" and start doing these:
RDL's:
Good Mornings:
Not the best form on the GMs but I did it and I am now stronger for it.
Key to these exercises: 1. Go Heavy- progressively work to heavier and heavier weights. If your form is good (neutral spine) and your programming is smart then it is IMPOSSIBLE to hurt yourself. 2- Again, keep a neutral spine, don't be lazy, be strong.
How do you put it all together? How about the deadlift.
Muscles worked when deadlifting heavy... oh yea, all of them:
Yes. This entire post was leading up to how awesome deadlifting is for you.
Want to know why people really do traditional ab exercises for countless reps over and over and over? Because they are easy. Anything that is easy is not good for you. EVER. Easy makes you fat. Easy makes you weak. The above mentioned exercises are very stressful and will make it hard for you to walk without crying for several days after you do them. You will eventually get used to doing these various acts of badassery but only after you've gotten all of the sadassery out of your system.
Now, re-do the test from the beginning of the post. Contract your abs again but, not into flexion. Contract your abs and brace while keeping the arch in your back. There. That was a step in the right direction.
Just some things to think about and consider in your own training to reach your own goals. Hopefully, this rant opened someones eyes and caused you to think outside the box a little bit. I'll probably get one more part out of this topic dealing with dieting. Not dieting like eating less or eating crap like "fruit" . More like dieting while eating like a meat-fueled, human muscle museum with exhibits on the history of being a badass. Between now and then, be sure to pick up something heavy. Sprint. Kill. Eat... and don't do sit-ups anymore.
Six Pack Abs! How to Get Them and Why They are Terrible for You. Part 1.
Nothing feeds the Fitness Monster more than the relentless journey most of the teenage to twenty-something year old population have embarked upon; gettin' ripped, brah!
So... when the chicks ask them how they got those awesome six packs, they can say: "Yea, me and my boy did countless numbers of weird body contortions on the floor together... shirtless... in awkwardly matching hot-pant style athletic shorts... and for some reason, we completed all of our sets in complete silence."
In their defense, they are all ripped up, right? Out of curiosity, I checked out the P90x diet plan. I am sitting here at 275lbs and about 18% bodyfat (checked via ultra-sound in a clinical physiology lab) and that diet plan told me to only eat 1,800 calories a day and keep my serving of protein to 3oz per meal. Also, it told me to only have 1 serving of carbohydrates a day for the first "Fat Shredder" phase of the diet. If I followed this advice, not only would I get shredded, I'd get dead. This is ridiculous. So, here is a brief summary of P90X: Roll around violently on the floor for 10-20 minutes a day, borderline starve yourself, don't eat any carbohydrates, and in 90 days your insulin sensitivity will be so out of whack, the next time you see a box of cereal, you will go into a diabetic coma.
Diets like this put your body into a ketogenic state. Ketogenic is just fancy-talk for tricking your body into thinking you are starving to death so it eats up every available energy source you have stored away. Once the carbs are all gone, all thats left are fats and when they are all gone, protein. A process called gluconeogenesis converts fats and protein into keytone bodies that are carbohydrate-like and can be used as energy. But, you might think, if you are using protein for energy, how can you build muscle like all those d-bags say they do on the P90x commercial? You can't. Everybody has abs. Some people have more fat blocking the view than others. If you are starving, and your body eats all your fat as a means of simply surviving in a fasted state, you will magically have abs. You will also magically be closer to death. If the claims are true, and these "high intensity workouts" are burning 1,000 calories, which they very well could be, then that would only leave 800 calories to get through the rest of your day. Most literature suggests that you need 1200 calories just to make sure all of your bodies systems are working properly. That number is assuming you lay down all day and don't participate in shirtless Ab Ripper X sessions with your bro.
I got on a little bit of a rant so I am going to make this in 2 parts. Part 2 will consist of why everything those guys do in that video is stupid and will list exercises that aren't stupid. Not only will they not be stupid, they will make you a more efficient human being in regards to the movement patterns involved in how our musculature is supposed to function. Also, I might even put in some dieting stuff that won't:
1. make you feel terrible while you exercise and/or function in daily life and,
2. kill you eventually.
In the meantime, thanks for reading and don't forget to sprint after something, kill it, and eat it today.
So... when the chicks ask them how they got those awesome six packs, they can say: "Yea, me and my boy did countless numbers of weird body contortions on the floor together... shirtless... in awkwardly matching hot-pant style athletic shorts... and for some reason, we completed all of our sets in complete silence."
In their defense, they are all ripped up, right? Out of curiosity, I checked out the P90x diet plan. I am sitting here at 275lbs and about 18% bodyfat (checked via ultra-sound in a clinical physiology lab) and that diet plan told me to only eat 1,800 calories a day and keep my serving of protein to 3oz per meal. Also, it told me to only have 1 serving of carbohydrates a day for the first "Fat Shredder" phase of the diet. If I followed this advice, not only would I get shredded, I'd get dead. This is ridiculous. So, here is a brief summary of P90X: Roll around violently on the floor for 10-20 minutes a day, borderline starve yourself, don't eat any carbohydrates, and in 90 days your insulin sensitivity will be so out of whack, the next time you see a box of cereal, you will go into a diabetic coma.
Diets like this put your body into a ketogenic state. Ketogenic is just fancy-talk for tricking your body into thinking you are starving to death so it eats up every available energy source you have stored away. Once the carbs are all gone, all thats left are fats and when they are all gone, protein. A process called gluconeogenesis converts fats and protein into keytone bodies that are carbohydrate-like and can be used as energy. But, you might think, if you are using protein for energy, how can you build muscle like all those d-bags say they do on the P90x commercial? You can't. Everybody has abs. Some people have more fat blocking the view than others. If you are starving, and your body eats all your fat as a means of simply surviving in a fasted state, you will magically have abs. You will also magically be closer to death. If the claims are true, and these "high intensity workouts" are burning 1,000 calories, which they very well could be, then that would only leave 800 calories to get through the rest of your day. Most literature suggests that you need 1200 calories just to make sure all of your bodies systems are working properly. That number is assuming you lay down all day and don't participate in shirtless Ab Ripper X sessions with your bro.
I got on a little bit of a rant so I am going to make this in 2 parts. Part 2 will consist of why everything those guys do in that video is stupid and will list exercises that aren't stupid. Not only will they not be stupid, they will make you a more efficient human being in regards to the movement patterns involved in how our musculature is supposed to function. Also, I might even put in some dieting stuff that won't:
1. make you feel terrible while you exercise and/or function in daily life and,
2. kill you eventually.
In the meantime, thanks for reading and don't forget to sprint after something, kill it, and eat it today.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
75 Year Old Man Kills Fitness
This guy isn't doing water aerobics. He isn't letting his age dictate how "fit" he can be. This guy is named Ron. He is deadlifting 440lbs for 2 reps. The world record for his age and weight is only 402.5lbs. This is what I am talking about.
Ron's got the idea... and I bet he isn't one of the 85% of people on Earth that suffer from lower back pain. Oh yea, Ron also squats 500lbs.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
Ron's got the idea... and I bet he isn't one of the 85% of people on Earth that suffer from lower back pain. Oh yea, Ron also squats 500lbs.
Sprint. Kill. Eat.
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