Caffeine Might Make You Weak... A Meatheads Perspective

Before I go and offend all of those people who just sit in coffee shops all day on their laptops typing, well, whatever the hell they are typing, consider this:

If you are a coffee drinker, whether it be just a cup a day or if you are that guy that downs about 50 of those torpedo sized Monster's a day, then you might have a slight caffeine addiction. Wanna test it out? Don't drink or eat anything that contains caffeine for a week. You'll know you have a problem when you wake up day two and look/feel like this little guy:




Top 10 Caffeine Withdrawal Symptoms

1.Headache- A caffeine headache usually starts behind the eyes and then moves up the front of the head.

2.Sleepiness- This just isn’t your normal tiredness, this is sitting up straight but still can’t keep your eyes open tiredness.

3.Irritability- Everyone and everything gets on your last nerve. It’s best just to lock yourself in your room during this stage.

4.Lethargy- Forget about productivity at this stage because you’ll be unmotivated to do anything.

5.Constipation- Caffeine stimulates the bowel, so without its daily does the colon gets a little cranky too.

6.Depression- Caffeine withdrawal can take away all hope for living. Temporary blues are one thing, but if you already struggle with depression this could be a big issue.

7.Muscle Pain/Stiffness- If you normally have some caffeine prior to exercise then during caffeine withdrawal you could feel as though your muscles have weights strapped to them.

8.Lack of Concentration- Forget school, studying, brain surgery, or jet engine repair during this stage of withdrawal.

9.Flu-like symptoms- Stuffy nose, blocked sinuses and even vomiting have been reported by people withdrawing from caffeine.

10.Insomnia- Some people are strange and actually can’t sleep when going through caffeine withdrawal.



I stole this list from some "hippy" website that I was accidentally reading one day. As you can see, I highlighted the only important side effect mentioned. "Muscle Pain/Stiffness." Instead of just reading that and thinking, "Oh, that's a bad thing," I really wanted to figure out why that happens... and the answer is terrifying.

Don't get me wrong, caffeine has some serious positive effects on sports performance, and normal life as well. Increased focus, glycogen (energy) sparing during exercise, increased lipolysis (fat transport and usage, i.e. mechanism for getting ripped, bro) are just a few of the upsides to caffeine ingestion. How do these ergogenic effects actually happen though? The answer, and problem, is caffeine's interaction with calcium.

Quick little physiology lesson: Calcium is stored, basically, in two places in your body. Your bones and your muscles. Calcium in the muscles is responsible for signalling the binding of actin to myosin (contractile untis of muscle) once an action potential is received from the nervous system (through the synaptic cleft which is were the muscle and nerve come together, but the don't actually touch). This shortens a muscle and causes movement. Just so you get an idea of how complicated the human body is, the action I just described happens every time you move any part of your body. Just imagine the amount of nervous activity that is occurring next time you send a text or update your facebook status. "OMGZ! My synapses are going banAnAs!!! ROFL."

Anyway, more calcium available in the muscle=more efficient muscle contraction. Calcium is, unfortunately, caffeine sensitive. When calcium interacts with caffeine it switches the body into a hypersensitive "fight or flight" state. Hence the jitters when you drink too much and the Roid Rage when you don't drink any. The good news is the calcium is protected by a trap door protein called Ryanodine... the bad news its that it is sensitive to caffeine too and explodes open like a broken fire hydrant when caffeine is in the system.

I am not anti coffee or caffeine by any means. As I type this now, I am shotgunning Venti black coffees and chewing espresso flavored gum. Just wanted to share some thoughts on a topic that hasn't really been discussed too much. So, if you do ingest a lot of caffeine before the gym, work, preschool, or performing brain surgery, don't be surprised if you turn into this guy if you have a day without your bitter, dark, muscle gas:



Sprint. Kill. Eat. Get All Jittery. Then Go Be A Butthead At A Terrible Commercial Gym.

Action Movies!... Suck Because of Fitness.

Wrap your head around this:

Think about some of the popular action movies ever. I don't know about all of my fitness hating readers but, a good portion of my childhood was spent watching Arnold beat the living crap out of people. Or watching Stalone shoot about 50 billion rounds of ammunition into a bunch of commies. Those were the days.




I don't know whats more awesome, the fact that he is about to cut that guys head off or the fact that the expression on his face suggests that he is having absolutely no moral issues with cutting that guys head off.

Now, I want you to think very hard about some recent action movies that have come out. Think about the actors Hollywood has been casting to portray these icons of American badassery. Lets take one of the highest grossing superhero movies of the 2000's. Who esle embodys super-human ability, fearlessness, and bravey more than the likes of... Tobey-effing-Maquire????????



Oh. Em. Gee. He is so fit. Assuming this scene was real and he did get himself wipped into shape for the movie, how in the hell are we supposed to believe that someone as skinny as a toothpick is going to defend the city-folk from super villians. I don't know about you but, I would much rather root for Doctor Octopus (kinda fat guy with evil giant robot arms that could provide endless hours of bottle opening,college party tricks) than a Spiderman that looks like he could comfortably exchange outfits with Spiderwoman.

By the way, here is a comparision of Spiderman on-screen and in the offseason:



Sigh... if only he did one more cycle of P90X...

This has to be an extreme example. This can't be happening to us in every recent action movie. Enter Matt Damon and the "Borne" movies. In case you didn't know, Matt Damon makes action movies now. If this doesn't make you pissed off, then you never saw "Stuck On You." Here is a clip of Matt Damon's acting skills:




The only glimmer of hope (to me anyway) for action movies recently was the release of "The Expendables." I was more jacked up than words could ever describe. For those of you that have not seen the movie, just look at this:





It features basically every badass in every action movie since 1980. How could this fail? It's even got Arnold in it, for God's sake!!!!How could this not be the best action movie ever made????!!!!! Well, I will tell you how. Within the first one minute of the movie, there is already more plastic surgery than every combined second of the entire Sex and The City series. Also, the only aspect of the movie that was more lifeless than the expressions on the actors faces was the plot. Fitness, and some useless misguided drive to retain youth, has ruined most of these actors. Thus, ruining there ability to even be a little bit badass in an action movie. The whole thing was actually pretty depressing.

If you feel the same way I do let me know and boycott these testosterone-lowering atrocities. I haven't completely lost faith yet but, until we start getting some real action movie stars back, we will just have to keep watching Commando over and over and over again:



Lean Out, Get Pasty, Become Spiderman, Then Get Fat Again... wait, what?

Fitness Just Tried To Kill Itself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.