Reminder: COME TOMORROW 2/25/2012 between 8:30 and 11:30 to the IM field for some fun in the sun. It should be fun!
Science is awesome. So instead of arguments saying "you can't this or that" or "this or that is bad for you" I like to read about causative stuff.
The Carbohydrate Hypothesis of Obesity: a Critical Examination
The funny part is that I've read Stephan Guyenet's work before and found myself thoroughly intrigued. He is on par with people like Mathieu LaLonde. Real scientists doing their job. It's a bit lengthy but enjoyable.
Have a good weekend!
Because we can.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Soreness. I pity the fool..
Don't forget about the Workout this Saturday 2/25/12 8:30-11:30. Be there by 8:30am for the best instruction. ;)
Well, I had my first cup of highly caffeinated coffee for the first time in like 2 weeks. It was my first drop of caffeine in 10 days. I felt like I was dying. I was shaking uncontrollably and jittery as hell. My heart thought I was a rocket ship. Fantastic.
Those of you still rockin' the paleo thing, good job! Keep it up. I suspect that everyone will experience something positive out of it.
Soreness: A good question was posed on the FB page about soreness and what to do with it. I'm going to try to keep things simple and not get technical about anything that doesn't need it because it gets boring.
Another reason is this: http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2011/11/shitty-research/
The general public believes soreness to be a metric indicator of a "good workout". Most people perceive soreness the result of working hard. Although one is more likely to get sore from doing more volume than normal, soreness is really not an indicator of anything other than soreness.
Soreness can result from many things, and there are different types of soreness at various degrees. The most common type is the soreness that comes a day or two after a high intensity workout. "Delayed-onset" soreness. From what I've read before, that particular soreness is caused by enzymes eating away at damaged muscle tissue to expose fresh tissue to bind other muscle fibers to. Most of the time, your body just isolates that area with a little localized inflammation to prevent retraumatizing (yep, I just invented that word) the same tissue until it fully heals back up. This is the soreness we all experienced in the beginning of BHIP that prevented us from sitting on toilets or going down stairs without feeling our thighs jiggle. The best way to deal with this is nutrition for recovery (anti-inflammatory) and rest combined with anything that will help mobilize fluids to that affected regions.
There is another type of soreness that comes on during extreme volumes of work. Endurance athletes who run insane distances often get sore during their run. The soreness can become so intense and debilitating that many are forced to quit long before they reach the finish line. That type of soreness is caused by protein breaking down within the muscle tissue and the various substances (I'm pretty sure it's potassium) creating a state of acidosis in the muscles that are getting used and abused. This is usually a precursor to Rhabdo and that is certainly a state of being that really sucks. It's often followed by kidney failure and possible death
Here's a dude that doesn't mind Rhabdo as much as he tries to help people. David Goggins and here's his website that will surely make you feel like an insignificant little worm. SHOW NO WEAKNESS
Anyway, I've had my urine turn brown and felt like death for a good couple weeks. Couldn't do anything for a couple weeks and had periodic muscle cramps that left me immobile for hours at a time. It sucked. Really bad. So if your urine ever starts getting darker than usual and resemebling Dr. Pepper, you're in trouble. Get medical attention.
The point of this anecdote is that soreness is not a good thing. And if it is rewarded into being a good thing, then you're looking at even bigger problems down the line. They start at being sore, then turn into being immobile and cramped with flexibility problems and could turn into more life-threatening issues eventually. Soreness is a good tool to see what part of your body you use to generate a movement. So if I have doubts that a person is using their hips right then I might have them do something very hip specific like powercleans or KB swings for volume and then ask them where they're sore. If the say quads or back, I know that they are doing the movement incorrectly and now we need to fix it.
Otherwise, I see soreness as a training enemy. If I make myself too sore to workout the next session, then I'm not going to see the adaptive effects of the sequence of workouts. Basically, I'm getting weaker instead of stronger and what I think is my full output is nowhere near where it should be. This is also where fatigue-related injuries happen. You may be too sore to engage a necessary group of muscles and end up hurting yourself. Being sore is not indicative of a good workout, but increased performance IS, so anything that will hinder your future performance may not be a good idea in the athletic world.
In the body-building world, it may be different. They only use one muscle at a time and aspire for hypertrophy. So they may want to experience soreness as an indicator of hypertrophy. So if you're a body-builder, enjoy being sore and don't use the same muscles on subsequent days.
Everyone is different though. Some poeple like to rest when sore. Others like to work through soreness and pump some new blood. Others disregard soreness and just keep lifting or running. It's up to you. You just have to be smart and think about it in a developmental way. Ask yourself: "Am I going to be stronger or weaker tomorrow?" Usually, I'd go for the stronger one.
Immobility - Soreness, often times, results in tightening of muscles around joints and knots to form in the actual muscle tissue during recovery. This may lead to immobility/inflexibility. So it may behoove people to deal with soreness with mobility work to prevent tightness and develop necessary mobility. Kill two birds with one stone.
Here's a goal/worout for this week;
Do 30 pushups.
Do each pushups as perfectly as you can, one at a time. Hold a plank at the top of every pushup for about 5-10 seconds and be conscious of whether you are hollow or not. Be hollow.
Enjoy.
Well, I had my first cup of highly caffeinated coffee for the first time in like 2 weeks. It was my first drop of caffeine in 10 days. I felt like I was dying. I was shaking uncontrollably and jittery as hell. My heart thought I was a rocket ship. Fantastic.
Those of you still rockin' the paleo thing, good job! Keep it up. I suspect that everyone will experience something positive out of it.
Soreness: A good question was posed on the FB page about soreness and what to do with it. I'm going to try to keep things simple and not get technical about anything that doesn't need it because it gets boring.
Another reason is this: http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2011/11/shitty-research/
The general public believes soreness to be a metric indicator of a "good workout". Most people perceive soreness the result of working hard. Although one is more likely to get sore from doing more volume than normal, soreness is really not an indicator of anything other than soreness.
Soreness can result from many things, and there are different types of soreness at various degrees. The most common type is the soreness that comes a day or two after a high intensity workout. "Delayed-onset" soreness. From what I've read before, that particular soreness is caused by enzymes eating away at damaged muscle tissue to expose fresh tissue to bind other muscle fibers to. Most of the time, your body just isolates that area with a little localized inflammation to prevent retraumatizing (yep, I just invented that word) the same tissue until it fully heals back up. This is the soreness we all experienced in the beginning of BHIP that prevented us from sitting on toilets or going down stairs without feeling our thighs jiggle. The best way to deal with this is nutrition for recovery (anti-inflammatory) and rest combined with anything that will help mobilize fluids to that affected regions.
There is another type of soreness that comes on during extreme volumes of work. Endurance athletes who run insane distances often get sore during their run. The soreness can become so intense and debilitating that many are forced to quit long before they reach the finish line. That type of soreness is caused by protein breaking down within the muscle tissue and the various substances (I'm pretty sure it's potassium) creating a state of acidosis in the muscles that are getting used and abused. This is usually a precursor to Rhabdo and that is certainly a state of being that really sucks. It's often followed by kidney failure and possible death
Here's a dude that doesn't mind Rhabdo as much as he tries to help people. David Goggins and here's his website that will surely make you feel like an insignificant little worm. SHOW NO WEAKNESS
Anyway, I've had my urine turn brown and felt like death for a good couple weeks. Couldn't do anything for a couple weeks and had periodic muscle cramps that left me immobile for hours at a time. It sucked. Really bad. So if your urine ever starts getting darker than usual and resemebling Dr. Pepper, you're in trouble. Get medical attention.
The point of this anecdote is that soreness is not a good thing. And if it is rewarded into being a good thing, then you're looking at even bigger problems down the line. They start at being sore, then turn into being immobile and cramped with flexibility problems and could turn into more life-threatening issues eventually. Soreness is a good tool to see what part of your body you use to generate a movement. So if I have doubts that a person is using their hips right then I might have them do something very hip specific like powercleans or KB swings for volume and then ask them where they're sore. If the say quads or back, I know that they are doing the movement incorrectly and now we need to fix it.
Otherwise, I see soreness as a training enemy. If I make myself too sore to workout the next session, then I'm not going to see the adaptive effects of the sequence of workouts. Basically, I'm getting weaker instead of stronger and what I think is my full output is nowhere near where it should be. This is also where fatigue-related injuries happen. You may be too sore to engage a necessary group of muscles and end up hurting yourself. Being sore is not indicative of a good workout, but increased performance IS, so anything that will hinder your future performance may not be a good idea in the athletic world.
In the body-building world, it may be different. They only use one muscle at a time and aspire for hypertrophy. So they may want to experience soreness as an indicator of hypertrophy. So if you're a body-builder, enjoy being sore and don't use the same muscles on subsequent days.
Everyone is different though. Some poeple like to rest when sore. Others like to work through soreness and pump some new blood. Others disregard soreness and just keep lifting or running. It's up to you. You just have to be smart and think about it in a developmental way. Ask yourself: "Am I going to be stronger or weaker tomorrow?" Usually, I'd go for the stronger one.
Immobility - Soreness, often times, results in tightening of muscles around joints and knots to form in the actual muscle tissue during recovery. This may lead to immobility/inflexibility. So it may behoove people to deal with soreness with mobility work to prevent tightness and develop necessary mobility. Kill two birds with one stone.
Here's a goal/worout for this week;
Do 30 pushups.
Do each pushups as perfectly as you can, one at a time. Hold a plank at the top of every pushup for about 5-10 seconds and be conscious of whether you are hollow or not. Be hollow.
Enjoy.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
What else should we debate?
SAVE THIS DATE! Saturday 2/25/2012 8:30 - 11:30
We're doing a special workout day for the on-going people only. Spread the word!
Well, debating stuff is fun. But lets clear some things up..
There is no one official THE Paleo "diet". There are merely interpretations of a similar idea, the common tenets of which are to avoid foods that don't occur naturally or are adulterated and do avoid things that cause gastro-intestinal dysfunction regardless of one's sensitivity and instead, to prioritize consuming higher-quality, naturally, ethically, and sustainably produced foods.. That's basically IT.
There are no specific prescribed recommendations or maximums.. Everyone is different and will react differently to various amounts of different nutrients. Yes, you can consume too much of anything and die, even water, but you wouldn't avoid water because too much will kill you, would you? So being smart is a requirement as well.
There is nothing in the paleo "scripture" that says you must restrict carbs or go into a ketosis or ketogenic state. if anyone tells you that, then that's what they decided to do with their plate. You don't have to.
Certain gurus and other individuals have taken it upon themselves to illustrate various contexts and prescribe recommendations for those specific contexts, but in general, you can eat as much or as little of anything you like as long as you know what to avoid. So if you want, you can mack down on potatoes and kale till you pop for all anyone cares. It's your call, folks. If your body reacts adversely, then it would behoove you to change what you did to something better for YOU. Seems to me like many of us have already undergone the adverse effects of a long time of eating things that may not have reacted well within you.
ALSO. No one is making anyone do anything they don't want. If you want no part of this, that's fine. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You're all adults and are all capable and entitled to making YOUR OWN DECISIONS. We want to make sure that this tenet is always protected.. The freedom to choose.
But to stimulate a little more discussion:
I'd like to see more about HOW the body turns calories into fat. Do all 3500 ingested calories magically become a pound of fat? Or is it part of a very complicated, systematically controlled process involving more than just the number of calories ingested?
What is ketosis? Is glucose the body's only fuel? What are the dangers of ketosis and in what CONTEXT? What if somebody has perfectly healthy kidneys and a healthy liver vs. someone with dysfunctional kidneys? If it is dangerous, then why are Inuits still alive?
What is ketoacidosis? Is it dangerous? In what context?
Also, if you like reading interesting things, check these links out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2012/02/09/gIQA7NecBR_story.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119282/
http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2012/02/marilyn-monroe/
http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_gustafson_obesity_hunger_1_global_food_issue.html
Day 6 of no caffeine for me.. I'm really OUT now!
We're doing a special workout day for the on-going people only. Spread the word!
Well, debating stuff is fun. But lets clear some things up..
There is no one official THE Paleo "diet". There are merely interpretations of a similar idea, the common tenets of which are to avoid foods that don't occur naturally or are adulterated and do avoid things that cause gastro-intestinal dysfunction regardless of one's sensitivity and instead, to prioritize consuming higher-quality, naturally, ethically, and sustainably produced foods.. That's basically IT.
There are no specific prescribed recommendations or maximums.. Everyone is different and will react differently to various amounts of different nutrients. Yes, you can consume too much of anything and die, even water, but you wouldn't avoid water because too much will kill you, would you? So being smart is a requirement as well.
There is nothing in the paleo "scripture" that says you must restrict carbs or go into a ketosis or ketogenic state. if anyone tells you that, then that's what they decided to do with their plate. You don't have to.
Certain gurus and other individuals have taken it upon themselves to illustrate various contexts and prescribe recommendations for those specific contexts, but in general, you can eat as much or as little of anything you like as long as you know what to avoid. So if you want, you can mack down on potatoes and kale till you pop for all anyone cares. It's your call, folks. If your body reacts adversely, then it would behoove you to change what you did to something better for YOU. Seems to me like many of us have already undergone the adverse effects of a long time of eating things that may not have reacted well within you.
ALSO. No one is making anyone do anything they don't want. If you want no part of this, that's fine. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You're all adults and are all capable and entitled to making YOUR OWN DECISIONS. We want to make sure that this tenet is always protected.. The freedom to choose.
But to stimulate a little more discussion:
I'd like to see more about HOW the body turns calories into fat. Do all 3500 ingested calories magically become a pound of fat? Or is it part of a very complicated, systematically controlled process involving more than just the number of calories ingested?
What is ketosis? Is glucose the body's only fuel? What are the dangers of ketosis and in what CONTEXT? What if somebody has perfectly healthy kidneys and a healthy liver vs. someone with dysfunctional kidneys? If it is dangerous, then why are Inuits still alive?
What is ketoacidosis? Is it dangerous? In what context?
Also, if you like reading interesting things, check these links out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/2012/02/09/gIQA7NecBR_story.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119282/
http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2012/02/marilyn-monroe/
http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_gustafson_obesity_hunger_1_global_food_issue.html
Day 6 of no caffeine for me.. I'm really OUT now!
Monday, February 13, 2012
The logic is just silly
Please note: If you are any species other than Human, please disregard any and all information about HUMAN nutrition.
Over the last few decades (maybe century) we have been led to believe that the obesity epidemic and other related diseases pathologically stem from over consumption of some arbitrary unit of energy called a "calorie." It's been really simple: if you're obese, then the problem is obviously that you eat too much and the solution is even simpler.. to either "burn" off more calories than consumed to create a deficit or to defy every survival-based, self-preservation instinct in the body and starve oneself under his or her own will power...
I have a few questions about that though...
If obesity is a product of over-consumption, then why does it plague the under-cosuming populations to a much higher degree.
You expect me to believe that groups of people who can't afford paperclips are gorging themselves on excessive food!? The homeless are over-eating!? Really? They're eating "too much"? Am I really the only one to find this absurd? (side note, so did Gary Taubes). According to "their" math, they expect me to believe that the poor in this country are feasting on more food than the wealthy. Interesting. I wonder if these people are eating their share of meat and vegetables...
Here's your homework assignment: drive around the city of LA and go inside of every Ralph's store you see. Take note of the neighborhood and the observed level of poverty or affluence. Then record what the first things you see when you walk through the door are. This is what my undergrad senior thesis was.
You think they have a whole foods in Compton? You think they're buying organic veggies at their carbon-footprint-neutral farmers market in Watts? Think again. They get to choose from discounted soda (2 liters for a buck) and tons of discounted baked goods like breads and cookies and donuts. Think I'm kidding? Go look.. You think those are high calorie or high fat foods? Check the labels..
Tell me again about how these people are eating too much.. Better yet, go up to a mother of like 4 or 5 who is shopping in there, on food stamps, and tell her that she eats too much and is probably feeding her kids too much. I suggest you get a good head start because my mom would not take that too lightly.
I wonder what their dinner plate looks like.. Too much saturated fat from animal meats? Right...
Not getting enough exercise, you say? Let's think about this.. I'm not even going to bother finding a graphic because this is absurd.
What demographic is more likely to populate white-collar jobs? College-educated? Middle to upper class?
- What constitutes a white-collar job? Sitting in an office for 8 hours behind a blinking screen under blinking flourescent lights.. Meetings.. Cell-phones.. periodically checking facebook.. Tough day of sitting around huh?
Blue collor: No education required usually. On site training. Lower class.
- Dirty manual labor. Heavy physical demands. Hauling. lifting, wrenching. welding. Moving. Basically a gym rat's dream job.
Which lifestyle do you suspect has a higher chronic caloric expenditure? Seems pretty obvious, right? But who is more likely to be obese? The hard-working, blue-collar folks.
Does that seem logical? Is adding an extra 100-200 calories burned a day going to make a difference in a 5000 calorie burned day? Those of you aching to burn a few extra calories may want to reconsider your career paths.. Let me know how it works out for you..
I may have the wild speculations and I may be a skeptic about what is considered "common knowledge". But I'm no doctor and I don't have a fancy Ph.D. nor am I a recognizeable TV personality and I sure as hell haven't written a book.. So what do I know.. Make your own judgements..
I'm OUT!
Hollow rocks.. Do them. Do more.
Over the last few decades (maybe century) we have been led to believe that the obesity epidemic and other related diseases pathologically stem from over consumption of some arbitrary unit of energy called a "calorie." It's been really simple: if you're obese, then the problem is obviously that you eat too much and the solution is even simpler.. to either "burn" off more calories than consumed to create a deficit or to defy every survival-based, self-preservation instinct in the body and starve oneself under his or her own will power...
I have a few questions about that though...
If obesity is a product of over-consumption, then why does it plague the under-cosuming populations to a much higher degree.
You expect me to believe that groups of people who can't afford paperclips are gorging themselves on excessive food!? The homeless are over-eating!? Really? They're eating "too much"? Am I really the only one to find this absurd? (side note, so did Gary Taubes). According to "their" math, they expect me to believe that the poor in this country are feasting on more food than the wealthy. Interesting. I wonder if these people are eating their share of meat and vegetables...
Here's your homework assignment: drive around the city of LA and go inside of every Ralph's store you see. Take note of the neighborhood and the observed level of poverty or affluence. Then record what the first things you see when you walk through the door are. This is what my undergrad senior thesis was.
You think they have a whole foods in Compton? You think they're buying organic veggies at their carbon-footprint-neutral farmers market in Watts? Think again. They get to choose from discounted soda (2 liters for a buck) and tons of discounted baked goods like breads and cookies and donuts. Think I'm kidding? Go look.. You think those are high calorie or high fat foods? Check the labels..
Tell me again about how these people are eating too much.. Better yet, go up to a mother of like 4 or 5 who is shopping in there, on food stamps, and tell her that she eats too much and is probably feeding her kids too much. I suggest you get a good head start because my mom would not take that too lightly.
I wonder what their dinner plate looks like.. Too much saturated fat from animal meats? Right...
Not getting enough exercise, you say? Let's think about this.. I'm not even going to bother finding a graphic because this is absurd.
What demographic is more likely to populate white-collar jobs? College-educated? Middle to upper class?
- What constitutes a white-collar job? Sitting in an office for 8 hours behind a blinking screen under blinking flourescent lights.. Meetings.. Cell-phones.. periodically checking facebook.. Tough day of sitting around huh?
Blue collor: No education required usually. On site training. Lower class.
- Dirty manual labor. Heavy physical demands. Hauling. lifting, wrenching. welding. Moving. Basically a gym rat's dream job.
Which lifestyle do you suspect has a higher chronic caloric expenditure? Seems pretty obvious, right? But who is more likely to be obese? The hard-working, blue-collar folks.
Does that seem logical? Is adding an extra 100-200 calories burned a day going to make a difference in a 5000 calorie burned day? Those of you aching to burn a few extra calories may want to reconsider your career paths.. Let me know how it works out for you..
I may have the wild speculations and I may be a skeptic about what is considered "common knowledge". But I'm no doctor and I don't have a fancy Ph.D. nor am I a recognizeable TV personality and I sure as hell haven't written a book.. So what do I know.. Make your own judgements..
I'm OUT!
Hollow rocks.. Do them. Do more.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Choices.
As adults, we have this really nice thing. We get to make our very own choices. We take opportunities and we leverage the benefits of the opportunity against the cost of the opportunity and if the benefits outweigh the costs, we go for it. Yay! Pretty simple there.
Last night many of you had an opportunity presented to you. Although the benefits may seem a bit nebulous to you and the utility may not be as apparent, you now get to make a choice. It is a very temporary, albeit substantial choice in the foods you choose to consume. If you're up for the challenge, cool. If not, no big deal.. But consider the following.
Analogy time:
Suppose young Barby read up on some nutritional things which told her to abolish fats and stick to a higher carbohydrate percentage in her diet. These are things that tend to spike insulin levels very rapidly by raising blood glucose levels. No magic there. Now lets say Barbie also happens to be more insulin sensitive than others which will not only trigger triglyceride production in the liver but will also stimulate excess lipoprotein lipase to deal with it all and then subsequently put it all away in convenient triglyceride storage cells until the metabolic backup clears up for triglycerides (your metabolism is busy with glucose because glucose is awesome and easier to metabolize and proffered).
Translation: Barbie blows up in fat. Barbie's adiposity is exclusive to HER genetic and epigenetic profile but in this case she is just more predisposed to it. It's not her fault, but the dice rolled that way. Suddenly Barbie is bummed out. She's depressed because it's her senior year, she's young and energetic but no longer looks like it. Eating helps her depression onsets but it's only exacerbating the problem. She decides that it's her lack of exercise which is slowing down her metabolism and not the foods that stimulated adiposity that made her fat. She decided this because her skinny friends told her that they stay skinny by constantly exercising (burning all of the sugar out of their blood). She also saw a commercial on TV saying that burning calories on strange machines will surely squeeze you back into that freshman bikini. Another "expert" told her it's because she eats "too much" rather than what she eats that stimulated the growth reaction.
Translation: Barbie is sick and has a physiological problem that stems from a psychological disorder of not being able to discipline hunger away. Sounds a bit crazy, but since everyone is saying it, it must be true. So Barbie decides that the only logical solution is to do more with less. She's going to exercise until she collapses every day and eat as little as possible thus creating this fool-proof, idiot-simple caloric deficit, nevermind the fact that she has no idea what a calorie is or what it does. She doesn't realize that a colorie is just a unit.. like an "inch". She bears no attention to things like nutrients and nutrient density; it's just a simple numbers game to her. She busts her butt at the gym. She parks farther away. She is peppy and motivated to get the job done. It's all very inspirational and her friends support her all the way.
What young Barbie fails to put together in her bullet-proof logic is something called energy balance. What you lose, you must replace. If you lose more, you will replace more. It's just like sweating. The water has to be replaced. Barbie, much like many others, fails to realize that exercising and exessive energy expenditures (high intensity) stimulate appetite because you are now hungry at the cellular level. You cannot outsmart your cells. You have two options: eat or slow the metabolism down. So Now Barby starts slowing down because she is disciplend and can control her hunger. She becomes less energetic but is still motivated. 2 weeks in and she has lost a little bit of weight and has a couple little muscles bulging out. But boy is she hungry. Especially since the exercise is stimulating growth of muscles, which requires food as well. She is now grumpy a lot and getting frustrated. She is hurting bad for anything of substance. The vices really get her though. They serve chocolate cake in her dorm which is so much tastier than the whole-grain bagels she chokes down because they're "low-fat".
16 days have gone by and the headaches are getting almost intolerable. Statistically, Barbie is already a success since most would have quit long ago. The scale has become the only metric of health and fitness that matter, but realistically, no part of this is healthy even though the "fitness" industry tells her it is and encourages her to press on. The misery is intolerable. Barbie caves. The chocolate cake is too much to resist and watching the skinny girls gorge on it is too much to resist. Barbie tears into one peice. Her body responds with relief and brief hapiness (positive reinforcement). She feels good. In comes the second slice. Still amazing but now guilt starts taking over and depression not far behind.
After the cake storm, it's time to start rationalizing and negotiating. "I've been working out really hard and ot eating.. I've lost 6 pounds already and the rest will just fall off of me any minute.. probably sometime during my next 2-hour-long cardio session. I deserve to eat dessert." Meanwhile every starving and miserable cell in her body agrees. Thus begins the slippery slope and pretty soon Barby has not only caught up to her pre-workout intake but will surely surpass it. The problem is that now she eats even more of the stuff that got her where she is since it's all deemed "healthy" by various authorities (USDA, FDA, the government, grain farmers). Thus the adiposity cycle continues. Even though she may be losing a bit of weight and building muscles, innevitably, Barbie will succumb to the same fate that almost everyone who has ever followed this template has. She will blow up again and will probably even be worse than before.
Does this sound familiar to any of you. To many of us in the fitness industry, this is the status quo. It is so universal that it is ubiquitous at this point. It is so common that is has become "normal"; and that is dangerous. It's is like the frog that boiled in the warm bath. Eventually normal becomes extreme but non of us will ever notice.
All because "Barbie" listened to the everchanging-hype and blinded herself to reality. The fact of the matter is that adiposity (the process of converting and storing fat) is a hormonally triggered growth rather than a magical dumpster for excess calories, and vigorous execise stimulates apetite. It's a nice cycle that can't really be outsmarted. But it can be intelligently controlled.
Not everyone gets fat from excessive glucose. Not everyone gets lung cancer from smoking. Not everyone gets heart disease from inflammation. But in Barbie's case, she did. All Barbie had to do was ask her great-grandmother what to eat (as Michael Pollan would suggest). I like to imagine that after beating little Barbie with a nice thick paddle, she'd tell her to eat her meat and veggies and to stay away from the processed junk that comes in wrappers and boxes and packaging (meaning factory processed and adulterated). Your great grandmother would not consider that food and neither should you. It just so happens that much of that stuff also happens to stimulate adiposity via the hormonal cascade.
In a way, Stephanie preached the word of your great grandmothers. She told you to eat your meat and vegetable and stay away from less nutrient dense foods like grains and beans and the factory-produced byproducts. She told you to prioritize ethically and optimally raised animal meat (which just also happen to be much healthier for you) and higher quality vegetables (which also are strangely more nutrient dense). You get the point.
If you choose to participate in the challenge, it probably won't be easy. But it's not very hard either. It's only 30 days. Less-than 10% of a year. 30 measly days.. 30.. that's it. If at the end you feel worse and your numbers are garbage, go back to your old ways and disregard everything you've been told. If you feel a little better, maybe you'll just adopt a few of the habbits. Some may have a revolution take place in their household.. Who knows. Either way it will be entertaining to see what happens. At the end of the day, if we learn to prioritize nutrient dense foods and get rid of factory-produced, "conventionally raised", adulterated, modified, enriched, dehydrated, hydrolized, emulsified, fortified, sweetened, artificially flovored, artificially colored, preservative-infused, glutamate-rich, grain-fed, nutrient void garbage.. then everyone wins. Even Barbie.
Last night many of you had an opportunity presented to you. Although the benefits may seem a bit nebulous to you and the utility may not be as apparent, you now get to make a choice. It is a very temporary, albeit substantial choice in the foods you choose to consume. If you're up for the challenge, cool. If not, no big deal.. But consider the following.
Analogy time:
Suppose young Barby read up on some nutritional things which told her to abolish fats and stick to a higher carbohydrate percentage in her diet. These are things that tend to spike insulin levels very rapidly by raising blood glucose levels. No magic there. Now lets say Barbie also happens to be more insulin sensitive than others which will not only trigger triglyceride production in the liver but will also stimulate excess lipoprotein lipase to deal with it all and then subsequently put it all away in convenient triglyceride storage cells until the metabolic backup clears up for triglycerides (your metabolism is busy with glucose because glucose is awesome and easier to metabolize and proffered).
Translation: Barbie blows up in fat. Barbie's adiposity is exclusive to HER genetic and epigenetic profile but in this case she is just more predisposed to it. It's not her fault, but the dice rolled that way. Suddenly Barbie is bummed out. She's depressed because it's her senior year, she's young and energetic but no longer looks like it. Eating helps her depression onsets but it's only exacerbating the problem. She decides that it's her lack of exercise which is slowing down her metabolism and not the foods that stimulated adiposity that made her fat. She decided this because her skinny friends told her that they stay skinny by constantly exercising (burning all of the sugar out of their blood). She also saw a commercial on TV saying that burning calories on strange machines will surely squeeze you back into that freshman bikini. Another "expert" told her it's because she eats "too much" rather than what she eats that stimulated the growth reaction.
Translation: Barbie is sick and has a physiological problem that stems from a psychological disorder of not being able to discipline hunger away. Sounds a bit crazy, but since everyone is saying it, it must be true. So Barbie decides that the only logical solution is to do more with less. She's going to exercise until she collapses every day and eat as little as possible thus creating this fool-proof, idiot-simple caloric deficit, nevermind the fact that she has no idea what a calorie is or what it does. She doesn't realize that a colorie is just a unit.. like an "inch". She bears no attention to things like nutrients and nutrient density; it's just a simple numbers game to her. She busts her butt at the gym. She parks farther away. She is peppy and motivated to get the job done. It's all very inspirational and her friends support her all the way.
What young Barbie fails to put together in her bullet-proof logic is something called energy balance. What you lose, you must replace. If you lose more, you will replace more. It's just like sweating. The water has to be replaced. Barbie, much like many others, fails to realize that exercising and exessive energy expenditures (high intensity) stimulate appetite because you are now hungry at the cellular level. You cannot outsmart your cells. You have two options: eat or slow the metabolism down. So Now Barby starts slowing down because she is disciplend and can control her hunger. She becomes less energetic but is still motivated. 2 weeks in and she has lost a little bit of weight and has a couple little muscles bulging out. But boy is she hungry. Especially since the exercise is stimulating growth of muscles, which requires food as well. She is now grumpy a lot and getting frustrated. She is hurting bad for anything of substance. The vices really get her though. They serve chocolate cake in her dorm which is so much tastier than the whole-grain bagels she chokes down because they're "low-fat".
16 days have gone by and the headaches are getting almost intolerable. Statistically, Barbie is already a success since most would have quit long ago. The scale has become the only metric of health and fitness that matter, but realistically, no part of this is healthy even though the "fitness" industry tells her it is and encourages her to press on. The misery is intolerable. Barbie caves. The chocolate cake is too much to resist and watching the skinny girls gorge on it is too much to resist. Barbie tears into one peice. Her body responds with relief and brief hapiness (positive reinforcement). She feels good. In comes the second slice. Still amazing but now guilt starts taking over and depression not far behind.
After the cake storm, it's time to start rationalizing and negotiating. "I've been working out really hard and ot eating.. I've lost 6 pounds already and the rest will just fall off of me any minute.. probably sometime during my next 2-hour-long cardio session. I deserve to eat dessert." Meanwhile every starving and miserable cell in her body agrees. Thus begins the slippery slope and pretty soon Barby has not only caught up to her pre-workout intake but will surely surpass it. The problem is that now she eats even more of the stuff that got her where she is since it's all deemed "healthy" by various authorities (USDA, FDA, the government, grain farmers). Thus the adiposity cycle continues. Even though she may be losing a bit of weight and building muscles, innevitably, Barbie will succumb to the same fate that almost everyone who has ever followed this template has. She will blow up again and will probably even be worse than before.
Does this sound familiar to any of you. To many of us in the fitness industry, this is the status quo. It is so universal that it is ubiquitous at this point. It is so common that is has become "normal"; and that is dangerous. It's is like the frog that boiled in the warm bath. Eventually normal becomes extreme but non of us will ever notice.
All because "Barbie" listened to the everchanging-hype and blinded herself to reality. The fact of the matter is that adiposity (the process of converting and storing fat) is a hormonally triggered growth rather than a magical dumpster for excess calories, and vigorous execise stimulates apetite. It's a nice cycle that can't really be outsmarted. But it can be intelligently controlled.
Not everyone gets fat from excessive glucose. Not everyone gets lung cancer from smoking. Not everyone gets heart disease from inflammation. But in Barbie's case, she did. All Barbie had to do was ask her great-grandmother what to eat (as Michael Pollan would suggest). I like to imagine that after beating little Barbie with a nice thick paddle, she'd tell her to eat her meat and veggies and to stay away from the processed junk that comes in wrappers and boxes and packaging (meaning factory processed and adulterated). Your great grandmother would not consider that food and neither should you. It just so happens that much of that stuff also happens to stimulate adiposity via the hormonal cascade.
In a way, Stephanie preached the word of your great grandmothers. She told you to eat your meat and vegetable and stay away from less nutrient dense foods like grains and beans and the factory-produced byproducts. She told you to prioritize ethically and optimally raised animal meat (which just also happen to be much healthier for you) and higher quality vegetables (which also are strangely more nutrient dense). You get the point.
If you choose to participate in the challenge, it probably won't be easy. But it's not very hard either. It's only 30 days. Less-than 10% of a year. 30 measly days.. 30.. that's it. If at the end you feel worse and your numbers are garbage, go back to your old ways and disregard everything you've been told. If you feel a little better, maybe you'll just adopt a few of the habbits. Some may have a revolution take place in their household.. Who knows. Either way it will be entertaining to see what happens. At the end of the day, if we learn to prioritize nutrient dense foods and get rid of factory-produced, "conventionally raised", adulterated, modified, enriched, dehydrated, hydrolized, emulsified, fortified, sweetened, artificially flovored, artificially colored, preservative-infused, glutamate-rich, grain-fed, nutrient void garbage.. then everyone wins. Even Barbie.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Progress always moves forward.
So in the theme of the last few weeks of talking about progress, we need to review some very crucial yet overlooked underlying Truths.
Progress moves forward. It builds upon an already existing and well-bolstered foundation. Think about erecting a tall building. You cannot add upper levels until there is enough foundational structure below. The upper levels will not be held up and will crumble to less-than before they were added.
Translation: If you do not have your foundational movements dialed in and sturdy, you are behind the curve and need to take responsibility for remediation. We cannot turn back and start retraining the basics in the ongoing. That was what the on ramp was for. At this point, if you cannot do a squat or a lunge or a push up or keep your legs straight during flutter-kicks. If you're still peeling allllll the way up in a push up without engaging any mid line. If your still falling into your knee on a lunge. If your squat looks like anything but a squat.. etc then learning more advanced skills is not going to help you. In fact, you're only going to hurt yourself just like an unstabilized building will fall in on itself.
BHIP has always been centered around developing skills for the purpose of strengthening them and progressing with them. NOT complacently stagnating on calisthenics and mediocrity. We want people to quantitatively and QUALITATIVELY improve at the skill we develop. So doing more. Lifting more. Running faster. Jumping higher. Being smoother. Standing taller. Breathing better. Basically making the hard look easy.
This may sound harsh to some of you, but it's just the nature of progression. We have no choice but to move forward and as coaches we cannot spend time and workouts reteaching the fundamentals every class. Think about any other coach. Did John Wooden have to teach the kids how to play basketball before every game? Does an air traffic controller teach a pilot how to land a jumbo jet on every flight? Does a SEAL team leader have to teach his snipers how to shoot before every insertion into hot spots? It's funny to even consider.. Imagine John Wooden teaching the champion Bruins the basics of basketball before every game and then following them around on the court and whispering little reminders about how to dribble.
Coaching implies the assumption that the people you're working with are fundamentally and foundationally equipped to perform the specific tasks of "the job". Everything else build upon that foundation. A 3-point jump shot requires the athlete to be the best jumper and dribbler and runner and skillful athlete. The 3 points are just an expression of the harmony of all of those skills working together.
I hope you're getting the picture that I'm painting here. Develop your foundations and keep them strong and always try to make progress. You can do 30 push ups? Why not 31? You can't do a single push up? Why not? You can do 30 burpees in 2 minutes? Why not in 90 seconds? You can't do burpees? You better have a damn good reason..
So here's my advice:
If you struggle with a skill, develop it this week and forever. Stop doing all the supplementary workouts that beat you up, you're just spinning your wheels anyway. You have more to gain by doing the things better rather than just plowing through a million sloppy "whatevers".
Push ups:
HOLLOW ROCKS. Do thousands of them. Do them until you can fall asleep in a hollow rock position. Aka "banana"..
Watch these vidoes: http://gymnasticswod.com/content/hollow-rock http://gymnasticswod.com/content/hollow-body-progression-pt2
The push up relies on a hollow position of the body. So you have to get your knees and hips and belly button off the ground first. It's like a Roman Arch. The strength comes from holding the arch. If you can do that, then the arms are just anchors expressing the movement by extending at the elbows.. they don't do much else.
If you can do a push ups or two WELL, then you can do a perfect, picture-worthy push up every 2 or 3 hours until you can do 2 or 3 every 3 hours.
If you can do a bunch of push ups then do 60% of your max every few hours for a few weeks and then and a push up or two so that becomes your new 60%. Thus your 100% advances.
These have to be Well-executed push ups.
Fingers out. Elbows in. Shoulders back. Body hollow. Push the ground as far away from the front of your shoulder as you can..
Give yourself a daily/weekly goal and get them done.
Squat:
I'm not even going to address that. I've talked to those who need talking to so much that it's painful. If you still have trouble squatting, then you're A. at risk for all sorts of injuries from poor execution of advanced movements. and B. Should probably take some measures in addressing it instead of doing 4-5 workouts a week and hoping for the best. Hopes and dreams don't develop movements.. Mobility work does. Mobility! Mobilizing! Mobile! = having the capacity to MOVE! If you are IMMOBILE, you should work on MOBILITY! NOT getting huffy and puffy because that seems like the cool thing to do. [Smashing head on keyboard]
Flutter-kicks:
Please learn to do these and not look like you're in misery. These should be a joke. Compared to lunges and push ups, flutter-kicks should remind you of prancing through flowery fields. Unfortunately I still see many people flailing around pedaling with floppy knees and their heads resting on the ground. FIX IT!
Lunges:
All toes point forward. Hips are square in line with the shoulders and chest and pointed straight ahead. The torso remains upright and neutral and the arms are out of the way.
Enough with the ab mats. I see people doing sit ups as if they're vitamins. It's ridiculous. Sit ups don't get rid of belly fat! What is still unclear about that? Sit ups are a mobility tool to help develop upright torsos in the squat. THAT'S IT! But the way I see them done, I might change the name to fetal-position-ups. You want to develop a bullet-proof midsection? Squats and push ups are your keys. NOT HIP FLEXION!
Anyway..
Do some push ups and flutter kicks. If you feel you did enough. Do some more. Do some hollow rocks and maybe figure out your squat..
The train is steaming ahead, keep up.
I'm OUT!
Progress moves forward. It builds upon an already existing and well-bolstered foundation. Think about erecting a tall building. You cannot add upper levels until there is enough foundational structure below. The upper levels will not be held up and will crumble to less-than before they were added.
Translation: If you do not have your foundational movements dialed in and sturdy, you are behind the curve and need to take responsibility for remediation. We cannot turn back and start retraining the basics in the ongoing. That was what the on ramp was for. At this point, if you cannot do a squat or a lunge or a push up or keep your legs straight during flutter-kicks. If you're still peeling allllll the way up in a push up without engaging any mid line. If your still falling into your knee on a lunge. If your squat looks like anything but a squat.. etc then learning more advanced skills is not going to help you. In fact, you're only going to hurt yourself just like an unstabilized building will fall in on itself.
BHIP has always been centered around developing skills for the purpose of strengthening them and progressing with them. NOT complacently stagnating on calisthenics and mediocrity. We want people to quantitatively and QUALITATIVELY improve at the skill we develop. So doing more. Lifting more. Running faster. Jumping higher. Being smoother. Standing taller. Breathing better. Basically making the hard look easy.
This may sound harsh to some of you, but it's just the nature of progression. We have no choice but to move forward and as coaches we cannot spend time and workouts reteaching the fundamentals every class. Think about any other coach. Did John Wooden have to teach the kids how to play basketball before every game? Does an air traffic controller teach a pilot how to land a jumbo jet on every flight? Does a SEAL team leader have to teach his snipers how to shoot before every insertion into hot spots? It's funny to even consider.. Imagine John Wooden teaching the champion Bruins the basics of basketball before every game and then following them around on the court and whispering little reminders about how to dribble.
Coaching implies the assumption that the people you're working with are fundamentally and foundationally equipped to perform the specific tasks of "the job". Everything else build upon that foundation. A 3-point jump shot requires the athlete to be the best jumper and dribbler and runner and skillful athlete. The 3 points are just an expression of the harmony of all of those skills working together.
I hope you're getting the picture that I'm painting here. Develop your foundations and keep them strong and always try to make progress. You can do 30 push ups? Why not 31? You can't do a single push up? Why not? You can do 30 burpees in 2 minutes? Why not in 90 seconds? You can't do burpees? You better have a damn good reason..
So here's my advice:
If you struggle with a skill, develop it this week and forever. Stop doing all the supplementary workouts that beat you up, you're just spinning your wheels anyway. You have more to gain by doing the things better rather than just plowing through a million sloppy "whatevers".
Push ups:
HOLLOW ROCKS. Do thousands of them. Do them until you can fall asleep in a hollow rock position. Aka "banana"..
Watch these vidoes: http://gymnasticswod.com/content/hollow-rock http://gymnasticswod.com/content/hollow-body-progression-pt2
The push up relies on a hollow position of the body. So you have to get your knees and hips and belly button off the ground first. It's like a Roman Arch. The strength comes from holding the arch. If you can do that, then the arms are just anchors expressing the movement by extending at the elbows.. they don't do much else.
If you can do a push ups or two WELL, then you can do a perfect, picture-worthy push up every 2 or 3 hours until you can do 2 or 3 every 3 hours.
If you can do a bunch of push ups then do 60% of your max every few hours for a few weeks and then and a push up or two so that becomes your new 60%. Thus your 100% advances.
These have to be Well-executed push ups.
Fingers out. Elbows in. Shoulders back. Body hollow. Push the ground as far away from the front of your shoulder as you can..
Give yourself a daily/weekly goal and get them done.
Squat:
I'm not even going to address that. I've talked to those who need talking to so much that it's painful. If you still have trouble squatting, then you're A. at risk for all sorts of injuries from poor execution of advanced movements. and B. Should probably take some measures in addressing it instead of doing 4-5 workouts a week and hoping for the best. Hopes and dreams don't develop movements.. Mobility work does. Mobility! Mobilizing! Mobile! = having the capacity to MOVE! If you are IMMOBILE, you should work on MOBILITY! NOT getting huffy and puffy because that seems like the cool thing to do. [Smashing head on keyboard]
Flutter-kicks:
Please learn to do these and not look like you're in misery. These should be a joke. Compared to lunges and push ups, flutter-kicks should remind you of prancing through flowery fields. Unfortunately I still see many people flailing around pedaling with floppy knees and their heads resting on the ground. FIX IT!
Lunges:
All toes point forward. Hips are square in line with the shoulders and chest and pointed straight ahead. The torso remains upright and neutral and the arms are out of the way.
Enough with the ab mats. I see people doing sit ups as if they're vitamins. It's ridiculous. Sit ups don't get rid of belly fat! What is still unclear about that? Sit ups are a mobility tool to help develop upright torsos in the squat. THAT'S IT! But the way I see them done, I might change the name to fetal-position-ups. You want to develop a bullet-proof midsection? Squats and push ups are your keys. NOT HIP FLEXION!
Anyway..
Do some push ups and flutter kicks. If you feel you did enough. Do some more. Do some hollow rocks and maybe figure out your squat..
The train is steaming ahead, keep up.
I'm OUT!
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Gain O'clock!
Side note: I had all of the sessions do the KStar mobility wod from the video a couple posts down during the warm up. So if you're in the AM sessions. Do it!
So by now, many of you are saying "YEP! Sign me up! I want to get strong and then condition myself at a new, higher strength level so that I may be even stronger, faster, more powerful, and even harder to kill than ever before in the history of life!!"; "I want to REAP the rewards of being stronger than others so I may swagger around and push the earth away behind me along with others who are weak." Or if you're like me, you just let out a big roar, crack your neck and knuckles, stomp around and then break something. (Testosterone issues.. no biggie). Either way, the idea of being stronger; being more than you are now, gets people PUMPED and hopefully many of you are wondering how..
First, I'll address the shortcomings of BHIP. Essentially, what we do in BHIP is straight-up conditioning. I try to throw in as much strength work as I can into the cycles but we really can't periodize strength in BHIP. We mainly periodize intensity. A single hour-long session is just not enough to fit in a full warm-up, a strength workout, and a conditioning workout. Many wouldn't be able to physically and psychologically handle it.. We have too many people out there and it would be chaotic if we even tried. Basically, it's just impossible with the resources we currently have. Heck, we don't even have the squat racks anymore (we only have 4 or 5 anyway) so there you go.. The strength gains we incur are "incidental." This is a good thing in the sense that the strength is legit and comes from a deep down place inside that pushes you to do more.. These strength gains will withstand the test of time. If you dead lifted 200 pounds in BHIP, chances are you'll keep that for a long long time.
The workouts we do focus much more of structural and metabolic work capacity at high intensities. That means conditioning. Nothing wrong with it. It's awesome, as many of you know. We get to do a lot of cool stuff with it and it's fun to do in a group setting. Basically, the workouts serve everyone and everyone will benefit from them in some way or another.
Real "specific" strength training involves periodizing incremental linear progression over short and long intervals of weeks and months. Basically, you try to increase your weight-bearing and weight-moving capacity every week or so. This involves meticulously monitoring progress. So lets say this week I squatted 100 lbs for 3 sets of 5 repetitions; next week I'll try to squat 105 lbs for 3 sets of 5. And so on. I keep doing this overload training to provide a stress for my body to adapt against; I eat and sleep to recover and the cycle works and continues. It works in small increments over various periods of time. You can do it in short cycles to gain strength for a purpose or a competition, or you can do it in long cycles for a career or for fun. This is essentially how any simple, beginner program works. But it takes time and commitment.
The strength gains have to be your main focus and you have to adjust your other training to facilitate the strength gains. So if you're coming up on a some huge weight that feels like a near-death experience, you'll have to hit it fresh and rested, so no conditioning the day prior or more.
I'll get more into this later, but it's pretty simple. We know our lifts (the squat is by far the most important) and we know our numbers, now we do them and get stronger. Since the squat is king, we do it twice a week and dead lift less frequently and press once a week.
Here's a simple model broken down by day:
Monday:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x 5+ (do as many as possible on last set). (Add 5 lbs from previous Monday)
Assistance work..
Tuesday:
Press - If you can go heavy 3x 5+ (try to add small amounts of weight). If light, then 3x 8-12 to develop shoulders.
Assistance
Wednesday:
Off
Thursday:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10lbs less than on Monday)
Assistance
Friday;
Dead Lift - warm up light. the 1x 5+. Go heavy and go for broke. (add 5 - 10 lbs from previous).
Or, cleans - 5x 3 (try to add 2.5 lbs)
*The weights stays the same for all of the "working sets".
*Assistance just means 1 or 2 things that relate to the lift. eg. Arms on press day. Sit ups on squat day. etc.
*Push ups and pull ups (or development of pull ups) and dips should be done throughout the week.
eg. 100 of each per week.
This is a simple program that I just threw together which will build a lot of strength very quickly.
I did a program similar to this for an entire year last year and made big gains. I conditioned 2-4 days a week depending on how I felt. Conditioning workouts were short and furious. Just like what we do in BHIP.
So now obviously you're asking "well, what happens when I reach a maximum strength?" Sometimes it's called a plateau and sometimes it is just boredom. Let's say you're squatting one day and you fail to complete all 5 reps or 8 reps or whatever you had to do. You may have reached the upper limits of your developments for this cycle. What you do is you find the last SUCCESSFULLY completed 3x5 you did. Probably the one you did the previous week. You take 90% of it and start THAT particular lift from there. So the sets that have a "+", you'll just be able to do more reps now and the strength will build there. It looke much like the graph I drew up last week about "shape".
I know I've simplified it a bit here and I'm just giving you guys an example of a strength program. If you only have 2 days to lift the it looks like this:
Day 1:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x5+ (add 5lbs from previous day 1)
Press - 3x 8+ (add weight from previous)
Day 2:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10 lbs less than day 1)
Dead Lift - 1x 5+ (add 5-10 lbs)
Either way you go, the key is to make progress, so you have to start light. If your squat is like 135, I'd start you at like 85 or 95 lbs so that you can progress and build a good strength base long before you start getting into the unknown.
Now that you're all nice and confused, try to draw up a strength program that might fit your schedule and post it in the comments and I'll give you some feedback.
Have fun!
So by now, many of you are saying "YEP! Sign me up! I want to get strong and then condition myself at a new, higher strength level so that I may be even stronger, faster, more powerful, and even harder to kill than ever before in the history of life!!"; "I want to REAP the rewards of being stronger than others so I may swagger around and push the earth away behind me along with others who are weak." Or if you're like me, you just let out a big roar, crack your neck and knuckles, stomp around and then break something. (Testosterone issues.. no biggie). Either way, the idea of being stronger; being more than you are now, gets people PUMPED and hopefully many of you are wondering how..
First, I'll address the shortcomings of BHIP. Essentially, what we do in BHIP is straight-up conditioning. I try to throw in as much strength work as I can into the cycles but we really can't periodize strength in BHIP. We mainly periodize intensity. A single hour-long session is just not enough to fit in a full warm-up, a strength workout, and a conditioning workout. Many wouldn't be able to physically and psychologically handle it.. We have too many people out there and it would be chaotic if we even tried. Basically, it's just impossible with the resources we currently have. Heck, we don't even have the squat racks anymore (we only have 4 or 5 anyway) so there you go.. The strength gains we incur are "incidental." This is a good thing in the sense that the strength is legit and comes from a deep down place inside that pushes you to do more.. These strength gains will withstand the test of time. If you dead lifted 200 pounds in BHIP, chances are you'll keep that for a long long time.
The workouts we do focus much more of structural and metabolic work capacity at high intensities. That means conditioning. Nothing wrong with it. It's awesome, as many of you know. We get to do a lot of cool stuff with it and it's fun to do in a group setting. Basically, the workouts serve everyone and everyone will benefit from them in some way or another.
Real "specific" strength training involves periodizing incremental linear progression over short and long intervals of weeks and months. Basically, you try to increase your weight-bearing and weight-moving capacity every week or so. This involves meticulously monitoring progress. So lets say this week I squatted 100 lbs for 3 sets of 5 repetitions; next week I'll try to squat 105 lbs for 3 sets of 5. And so on. I keep doing this overload training to provide a stress for my body to adapt against; I eat and sleep to recover and the cycle works and continues. It works in small increments over various periods of time. You can do it in short cycles to gain strength for a purpose or a competition, or you can do it in long cycles for a career or for fun. This is essentially how any simple, beginner program works. But it takes time and commitment.
The strength gains have to be your main focus and you have to adjust your other training to facilitate the strength gains. So if you're coming up on a some huge weight that feels like a near-death experience, you'll have to hit it fresh and rested, so no conditioning the day prior or more.
I'll get more into this later, but it's pretty simple. We know our lifts (the squat is by far the most important) and we know our numbers, now we do them and get stronger. Since the squat is king, we do it twice a week and dead lift less frequently and press once a week.
Here's a simple model broken down by day:
Monday:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x 5+ (do as many as possible on last set). (Add 5 lbs from previous Monday)
Assistance work..
Tuesday:
Press - If you can go heavy 3x 5+ (try to add small amounts of weight). If light, then 3x 8-12 to develop shoulders.
Assistance
Wednesday:
Off
Thursday:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10lbs less than on Monday)
Assistance
Friday;
Dead Lift - warm up light. the 1x 5+. Go heavy and go for broke. (add 5 - 10 lbs from previous).
Or, cleans - 5x 3 (try to add 2.5 lbs)
*The weights stays the same for all of the "working sets".
*Assistance just means 1 or 2 things that relate to the lift. eg. Arms on press day. Sit ups on squat day. etc.
*Push ups and pull ups (or development of pull ups) and dips should be done throughout the week.
eg. 100 of each per week.
This is a simple program that I just threw together which will build a lot of strength very quickly.
I did a program similar to this for an entire year last year and made big gains. I conditioned 2-4 days a week depending on how I felt. Conditioning workouts were short and furious. Just like what we do in BHIP.
So now obviously you're asking "well, what happens when I reach a maximum strength?" Sometimes it's called a plateau and sometimes it is just boredom. Let's say you're squatting one day and you fail to complete all 5 reps or 8 reps or whatever you had to do. You may have reached the upper limits of your developments for this cycle. What you do is you find the last SUCCESSFULLY completed 3x5 you did. Probably the one you did the previous week. You take 90% of it and start THAT particular lift from there. So the sets that have a "+", you'll just be able to do more reps now and the strength will build there. It looke much like the graph I drew up last week about "shape".
I know I've simplified it a bit here and I'm just giving you guys an example of a strength program. If you only have 2 days to lift the it looks like this:
Day 1:
Squat - 2x 5, 1x5+ (add 5lbs from previous day 1)
Press - 3x 8+ (add weight from previous)
Day 2:
Squat - 3x 8 (5-10 lbs less than day 1)
Dead Lift - 1x 5+ (add 5-10 lbs)
Either way you go, the key is to make progress, so you have to start light. If your squat is like 135, I'd start you at like 85 or 95 lbs so that you can progress and build a good strength base long before you start getting into the unknown.
Now that you're all nice and confused, try to draw up a strength program that might fit your schedule and post it in the comments and I'll give you some feedback.
Have fun!
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