If I wanted to blow up..

Everyone has a weight-loss solution, I've discovered. I was at several public places throughout the weekend and I'm pretty sure that I heard some know-it-all explaining to a bunch of bewildered folks the Truth about weight-loss. I swear every one of them had some different little thing that was the KEY. One person said not to eat after 6pm. Another said no carbs after 4pm. Another said only mono-unsaturated fats are good, the rest are evil. More exercise, more cardio, less cardio, supplements, smoothies... I was blown away. I didn't realize how much I don't know about the "secrets" and tricks to make weight-loss so easy. The best part is that the people giving and receiving the advice look like weight-loss is the least of their problems. I digress.

I find it interesting that everyone has a weight-loss solution but few have a weight-GAIN method that is guaranteed to work. So I'm going to lay out a short protocol for gaining as much weight as possible, as quickly as possible.

From what I know about physiology, adiposity is controlled via various hormonal and enzyme mechanisms. So I would try to optimize those mechanisms.

• The first thing I would try to do is to shut down leptin sensitivity. Leptin is a hormone that controls fat storage and satiety and the last thing I would want is for that hormone to impede my fattening. So I'd want to keep my body saturated in leptin to promote resistance rather than sensitivity. How? Well, I'd stop eating fats and eat way more refined carbohydrates. Not sure exactly how much more, but I'd make them the staple of my diet by a huge margin. http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/277/5/E855.abstract   http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=leptin

• Also, I can't have any glucagon in my blood. Glucagon mobilizes glycogen to be metabolized, and I don't want that. I want to store, not mobilize or metabolize. Glucagon secretion is triggered by amino acids in the blood. http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/pancreas/glucagon.html  Translation: I won't be eating any protein as that breaks down into amino acids. Sure I'll be depriving myself of essential amino acids, but my goal is not to be healthy, rather to gain as much adipose tissue as quickly as possible.

• Luckily for me, my new carb-rich diet will also help keep insulin levels nice and high. But I want to make sure that the insulin levels spike up and stay erratic. So I'm going to opt for straight fructose. Plenty of research has shown that fructose is the king of adiposity. The sucker goes straight for the liver turns into fat pretty quickly and does a whole bunch of other good damage along the way. Check; mate. http://www.jci.org/articles/view/37385  http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/04/fructose-vs-glucose-showdown.html Anything with high-fructose corn syrup is going to be a staple of my daily intake. So lots of soda. I like cactus cooler and Dr. Pepper, personally. Bam!

• In the off occasion that I start getting sick from all the sugar, I might want something less sweet, but just as blood-sugar spiking as sugar, if not more. What I wouldn't want is any other nutrients distracting from my body from my goals. I'm going with flour based products. I"d try to just eat dry flour but that's hard to do; it's a choking hazard. So I'll go for a nice, moist, chewy product. Let's call it low-fat bread. Why low-fat? Like I said, fat will interfere with my leptin saturation. I have to make sure and optimize. The key here is NOT a balanced diet (whatever that means anyway), the key is to maximise my adiposity potential. I want all the cards in my favor. Low-fat white bread, like a bun or a roll or biscuit would be great. I'd probably add some jelly packets or some fake maple syrup to really give me a boost.

• After a while of this, my pancreas might not be able to produce enough insulin to keep packing away all that sugar in my blood and I can't have any of it going to waste. Also, I might die if my blood sugar levels stay high for too long. So I'll need to start supplementing myself with insulin injections as my pancreas breaks down and I succumb to diabetes.

• I won't want to exercise because that will burn up blood-sugar, but I do want my cortisol levels to stay high. Cortisol is a stress hormone that will contribute to elevated blood-sugar. So in addition to moving as little as possible, I'm going to want to avoid restful activities like sleeping. So I'm just going to plant myself on the couch and watch TV with my sodas and buns nearby.

This is a bit of a generalization, but I think it's a pretty bullet-proof plan. This still doesn't guarantee that I'll put on all that adipose tissue, but it's the best way. Either way I'm looking at diabetes, so there's always that. How many people do you know that inadvertently eat and live like this? Maybe not to the extreme degree, but even partly? I see it quite a bit.

I realize that this may come off as a little insensitive to the current state of the obesity problem in this country and world-wide. Personally, I contend that sugar-coating the problem only exacerbates it. Pun definitely intended. Take what you will from this, but the obesity epidemic is not a freak accident. Like I said before, adiposity is a very precisely controlled process in the body that we have inadvertently and unknowingly learned to optimize rather than maintain naturally.

* Addition: Drinking booze not only wreaks havoc on metabolism in the liver but also makes the liver store any and all sugars in the system as fat until all of the alcohol is metabolized out. So that's a no-brainer. Beer in one hand, soda in the other, I'm primed for success.

Here's some more fun readings:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-fat-setpoint-part-ii-mechanisms-of.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110627183944.htm   Diet soda won't help!

Why the Campaign to Stop America's Obesity Crisis Keeps Failing

Government tries to shut down paleo diet blogger

http://www.diabetes-warrior.net/


Enjoy!

Goals: Either hold hollow position for 30 seconds 3 times. Or 3 sets of 30 hollow rocks with a minute rest between sets.

Walk Hard

Note: Please make sure you tend to your belongings if we ever move away from the bleachers for the workouts. The track is pretty accessible by the general public although we're working on changing that. If you can avoid bringing lots of things, that would be best; otherwise you'll have to be very mindful of your things.

Walking Hard

There you go, folks. A picture of a scantly-clad male to drive a point home. Happy? Didn't think so.

Of all of the things I've heard that "it's bad for your knees", or "you shouldn't do it", or "not too many/in moderation"; I've never heard any of that regarding walking. Even the most inept doctor or therapist knows that walking is a good thing. Walking can lower life-insurance policies (counts as exercise) and can spark romance ("likes to take long walk on the beach"). It can be done at any age since the able body is functionally designed for it. Frankly, I don't think there is anything better for ones health than a good hearty stroll.

Some folks may argue that walking is reserved for those who can no longer sustain high intensity activities. Bubkis! First of all, unless you're conditioning for football season or you play hockey in the NHL, high intensity activities need only be a marginal fraction of your "training". (I consider sleep, food, mobility, etc. part of the training regiment.) Realistically, few, if any people on this planet wouldn't benefit from walking as a supplement to their training or lack of. For many, like my grandparents, walking has been a major staple of their exercise. In fact, I've never known them to do anything besides that.

Walking has many therapeutic qualities that are inherent almost exclusively to the movement. The world's leading authority on back and spinal health, Stuart McGill can't praise walking enough. Essentially he says that the rhythmic, multi-planar and multi-directional movements through the hips and shoulders help alleviate a lot of the tension that resides in the spine from sitting around in poor posture or from various injuries. He suggests adding BRISK walking into every one's daily regiment. Furthermore, brisk walking requires a better posture than simply schlepping around for a while, so you're going to have to pick up the pace a bit. If that's not enough, you can periodically challenge yourself by adding in a back-pack or a ruck or a vest which will create a bit of a postural overload and create a little extra traction which will strengthen a lot of those little muscles that protect your posture and subsequently your spine.

Here is a little more info as to the benefits of walking: http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/walking.html

Personally, I am very lucky. I get to walk at least a couple miles a day as part of my job and my activity levels. I've always walked a lot. To and from school. Walked a good 5+ miles a day every day during college. I still enjoy walking and choose to walk every chance I get. It tends to piss others off when I park a mile or 2 away from where I'm supposed to be but oh well, at least I feel good, and that's what matters to me. I do notice though, after a few days of reduced or eliminated walking, like during long trips or rides, I become much more stiff and rigid, especially in my hips and knees. My shoulders start to slouch and my neck and lower back hurt. I have a sticky IT band on my right leg and it will just glue itself to my vastus lateralis causing me to have a nice limp that I grow less and less aware of. So I love the fact that I "have" to walk a lot. It's a blessing in disguise.

Here's what I suggest:

Separately from exercising, add in a good, brisk, walk like 4 days a week for 30-60 minutes a day. Preferably in the evening when it is nice and cool or if you have time after work, walk over by Sunset as the tree cover will keep the air a little cleaner. You're only duty is to walk briskly, walk tall, but not too hard. Save that for these guys:

* Powerwalking is an Olympic sport. I'll leave it at that and let you all make your judgements on your own.

Too easy?

Ever feel like life is getting too easy or that you might be getting too strong? Perhaps a dose of reality is in store.

Those hollow rocks are rough, but you should be able to do them for a good 30 seconds to a minute. So if you can't, I suggest you work on that. If they get a bit easy, there's a solutions.

Enter the AB WHEEL:


hopefully this isn't a new image for you. It's simply a wheel with a handle as the axle.

Here's a video of how to use it, more or less.



You can really see the hollow position coming into play dynamically. As the guy move through the motion, he has to hold his abdomen really tight and pull the wheel back using upper body rather than just rolling the hips back. Notice when he demonstrates a poor execution how his belly drops and his lumbar dumps into his belly and the whole thing falls apart.

These things are dirt cheap so don't go trying to make one of your own, trust me on this.

Just make sure you have something under your knees.

Combine it with the back/hip extension supplementary work and you're looking at a pretty bulletproof mid line. Add in some grip training and some sprinting/jump-roping and you're about to go beast-mode.

Don't forget reminding your mind that life isn't too bad either. Keep the mind strong. Read "Mind Gym". If you already read it once, read it again; you probably forgot something important.

Here's a pretty decent write-up of mental strength with references from some of the worlds toughest and most resilient individuals.

(I would skip down to the part where the actual SEALs contribute.)

http://ashotofadrenaline.net/navy-seals-how-they-made-it-through-hell-week

Enjoy.

PR!? How did that happen?

Note: Make sure you're enrolled and squared away with the membership this week. If you need help, walk over to the cashiering desk and they'll take care of you. Read: $$$

Weather: Just a reminder, if it rains this week, then we will suspend any outdoor activities, but you'll be able to come inside the Wooden Center or KREC and do your own thing or jump in on IFT. You know the drill.

A few newer people have asked whether we share the workouts and for help with their own workouts. No, we do not make our workouts public. A lot of reasons for that and I'll save you all the boredom of it, but we just don't. You all have journals and you can easily track your own workouts. As far as your own workouts go: I used to put up a workout a week, but they got repetitive and often I find that it's too much for most people, yet they're doing them out of obligation and eating into the next day's training session. So for those that want to do something extra, go for it, you know how to put workouts together by now and a lot of the sessions have groups that meet up on off days to exercise. Just make sure you're listening to your body. If you feel tired and wasted, REST. If you feel like you can fly, go big. Any fluff in between if just a tiresome waste of your time. Go for a pleasant walk instead and call it a day. The key is to enjoy the things you spend your precious time on.


Method, Madness, PR, Why..

Last week we dead lifted. A day that many look forward to and others dread. That day, when all you have to do is grab a bar that weighs a little too much and stand up tall with it, elicits quite a bit of anxiety in most of us. In one sense, you think: what can possibly go wrong; in reality, those that have gone heavy and have experience that deep dark hole where you feel lucky to be alive know the feeling and want to avoid it at all costs. But the glory of the PR (personal record) doesn't come without a price to pay. And that one lift, the one single attempt, is the culmination of weeks upon weeks of invested training, so there's quitea a bit of interest in it.

So everyone went after it. We warmed into the heavy weights and then hit it with all our might. We held on tight to the bar and kept pushing the ground away from it. Our faces tensed up and some even let out a mighty roar (loosely stated). The will was relentless and letting go would mean losing it all and that's just unacceptable. Bam. Finished. You're standing tall and still holding it. You look around and everyone has their jaw dropped. Well done! You PRed. You're feeling quite victorious. As well you should. Progress is no easy task.

A number of people then asked about how that's possible since we don't really dead lift that much. This is a very valid question that we consider during programming but don't really expose much. The concept is called "transferrence". It literaly means transferring skills and strengths to bigger "things". So a lot of little things we do end up stacking together and amalgumating into bigger, more compound strengths and skill sets. Over several weeks, we have many opportunities to develop very useful strengths and skills to then apply into the subsequent workouts. It's like a snowball.

Think about something as simple as jumping. Jumping seems pretty straight-forward, but how does an individual get better at jumping? You could try to overload a jump but if you go too far past your work-capacity, you're just going to tire yourself quicker than usual or snap an achilles tendon. Bad news either way. So, with some smart coaching, you decide to break the jump down into it's parts. Hip extension/leg power; great, let's train it. Power cleans, kettlebell swings, plyo depth drops, jumping lunges, jumping slam ball, push press. Sweet, eay peasy. Wait, how do I get better at those things though? Well, lets' take the clean and kettlebell swing. Those depend very heavily on hip strength and back strength and how quickly you can apply those strengths. So how do we get at those? Well, the squat is always the big daddy king of them all and the dead lift is close behind (but we can't dead lift often because of neurological issues) so let's do more of those. But wait, how do you go about putting a heavier bar on your shoulders? Well pullups, pushups, dips, and pressing will help that. Don't forget about the hand strength needed to even think about holding onto a heavier bar or a kettlebell. Hand-hangs and farmer carries help those. Lets not neglect the massive amounts of midline stability needed for any progressions in structural overload. After all of these things, the most important part of them all is actually having the energy resources and the nutrition to develop and recover. So food and sleep and rest are imperative.

So you see? Jumping is simple, but getting better at it is not. Big deal.. Who cares about jumping, right? Well you might not, but if you're paycheck depends on it, you might. Welcome to athletic strength and conditioning. Developing these progressions and programming them for athletes that need to become faster runners or more powerful jumpers or swimmers or throwers is no easy task. But you see the idea here? We take lots of seemingly unrelated and pointless workloads and transfer the developments into much more focussed and precise movements. Think about why a runner should do pushups, and why a hammer thrower might want to squat 500lbs.

So this is what we do in BHIP. We do lots of different things that all somehow culminate into bigger and broader strengths and skills. This is something to think about when involved in performance-based training, which is what BHIP is. There is always a purpose and a method to the madness, and if you can think about it that way, maybe it will help motivate you. A bicep-curl is fun and all but it's only good for just that, unless you're addressing that weak link in a clean when your legs push and your arms get yanked so hard that you can't hold the bar.

This leads me to address some things I saw in the deadlift. Most people had breakdowns in their hand strength, which is pretty expected since we don't get to hold heavy things all day like our hands were designed to do. The other was core strength. Every dead lift should feel like you just held a plank for like 5 minutes. Once the core breaks down, the spine either rounds backwards or forward into the abdomen. This causes a massive power bleed and the whole structure falls apart under load and the legs give out. The bar falls to the ground and makes a loud crashing sound indicative of failure.

No, situps will not address this issue. The situp develops hip FLEXION. The fact that your abs burn just means you have weak abs, not that you're training them. Dead lifting is about hip EXTENSION. I told everyone long ago to start holding the hollow position and I'll remind you again now. Hollow rocks are the key. Then transfering the hollow strength into other skills will develop the midline strength you need for lifting and running and swimming and sitting upright.

Here's the video again: http://gymnasticswod.com/content/hollow-body
Check out the progressions he shows as well. Ring a bell?

Read this article: http://www.mensjournal.com/laird-hamilton-says-make-yourself-uncomfortable
Good stuff in there. Think about the transference of Laird's training into his sport.

Go do some hollow rocks. Do them till you can't, then do like 50 more.

Enjoy

Incoming!

Welcome to BHIP, on ramp cohort # who knows what. I lost count. This is that fun transitional period where we start making new friends and welcome in new people. So take a minute and introduce yourself to someone new this week.

As always, this is a reminder as to what we're about. STRENGTH. That's it. Pretty simple. Our aim is to increase an individual's work capacity and general physical preparedness with gains in strength. Those gains in strength then trickle down into other aspects of life, which along with proper, performance-oriented nutrition will result in some pretty cool things. Many have experienced it, but it takes focus and commitment.

If your goals are anything other than strength then you may have a hard time with this. You will not reap the same psychological reward as a strength fiend will and as such may find your motivation dwindling fairly quickly. So it may behoove you to start thinking about your strength(s) and addressing them. Turn your weaknesses into strengths; make your strengths enviable; and just be strong in general. No one has ever been deemed "too strong", so there's no reason to stop.

I encourage all new people and even the veterans to go through the blog archives and read some of the older posts. Check out the links. This will give you a pretty good idea as to what we're all about. It's just exercise, but there's a little more method in our madness.

Here's an interesting read: Beer makes men smarter: study.

*Note: no wonder this study was done in Chicago. The Loop is like Disneyland for alcoholics. Entertaining "study" nonetheless.

Compilation

FYI:
There will be no session this FRIDAY 4/13. The track is occupied by an event along with Wilson Plaza, Janns Steps, and other places. Instead, you are all welcome to come to the JWC or go check out KREC on Kinross ave. Thanks.


Greatest Hits Album:
So with another on ramp matriculating by the end of this week, we will have a nice influx of new friends to exercise with. Unfortunately they have not had the privilege to follow this blog before and as such have been lacking the vast amounts of information dropped on them. The incoming cohort is going to be in the same excited state that all of you have been in before and will probably want to know a lot of the same things that all of you did. Questions like: "I know this wasn't really a weight-loss program but I didn't lose any weight and I actually gained a couple pounds (but I look and feel better), why and how do I lose weight?" Or: "Why am I more hungry than ever before?" Or: "What can I do on off days?" See where I'm going with this?

I'm not about to start rewriting all of the musings we've already move far past as a group, but it might be fun to compile a sort-of "Greatest Hits Album" of posts or links that you all found especially helpful or that resonated with you. So if you could do that, that would be great and I too will go through and scour through them. This way I can just put together a list of links to the posts in some sort of hierarchical order and we can move forward. Post the links in the comment thread.


Parenting advice:
I saw a billboard yesterday that said something like: "How do I talk to my 13 year old about alcohol?" That made me laugh. The reality is, you don't. There is nothing you can tell a kid that will magically inspire them not to want to do what the others are doing. Absolutely nothing. Not even the threat of a good beating helps. Trust me on this one.

As parents, your job is to inspire and lead. Chastising and admonishing will work very temporarily. If you want to facilitate some sort of positive "good" behavior or character in your younger generations, you might want to be that way yourself and make it look easy. Parents worry about their kids fitness and weight.. Well, when junior sees his dad scarfing down donuts, twinkies, and doritos, no amount of coercion will prevent him from following in those footsteps. It's inevitable. Your kids see you being a turd and whining and complaining over the most minute and petty things; being lazy and complacent; cutting corners, cheating, shirking work, being malevolent they're probably going to follow in those footsteps.

Kids emulate their leaders/; it's their job. To a kid, a parent is bigger than superman. Every boy talks about how strong and awesome their dad is to the other kids. Boys have to admire their fathers as do girls their mothers. It is up to the parents to personify the characters that they want their kids to grow into. Otherwise, it's a lesson in futility and impending dissapointment for both.

I am lucky, in a way. I grew up in an adversity-forged family of a couple generations of people who are more resilient and withstanding than any other I've met. I'm not going to get into too much detail about this, but my parents and my grandparents had it rough. As a kid, I watched as my parents did the right things and learned from my grandparents about their lives as well. I knew what was right and wrong based on what my elders did, not what they told me. Every time I did something wrong, I knew exactly what I was doing without exception. But at the end of the day, I still had to walk down the path that they paved for me.

So if you want your kids to grow up healthy, hard-working, tenecious, perserverant, unrelenting, and strong. If you want your kids to be success-oriented, to have good work ethic, and excellent, then constant pressure and bribes and punishment might work for a while. Being those things yourself might work better. Especially when it comes to health and "fitness".


Read:
Why Runners Should be Rowers

Normal Plasma Cholesterol in an 88-Year-Old Man Who Eats 25 Eggs a Day — Mechanisms of Adaptation

Glute-ham developers are evil.

It's getting warmer. That means hydrate to stay cool and to keep moving. You don't want to have to sit out because you're getting dizzy. If you do start feeling dizzy, flushed, cold sweats, or you actually stop sweating, make sure you let us know immediately. What you don't want to do is start gulping tons of water. You want to cool off first and then drink small amounts of water. Pour water on your head and neck first. Pour some in your mouth, swish it around, and spit it out. It's not thirst that will kill you, it's the heat; and if you start vomiting, you'll just dehydrate even more.

Also, a bunch of people have already asked me about what to do while on vacation.. This may seem like a novel concept to some, but what about enjoying your friggin' vacation!? Adhering to strict personal obligations seems to counter the entire concept of vacationing and traveling to get away from the obligations of normal day-to-day stuff.. Seems like I'm in the minority with that thinking though.

I was glad to see the postitive feedback from the back muscles write-up I did last week. Glad everyone enjoyed the visual aids as well. Female athletes really do help drive the point. Females don't grow big muscles like guys do (I'm refering to competitive sports, not body building/sculpting) and as such don't have the extraneous musculature like a guy athlete would. It would have been hard to explain the value of that specific muscle group if the athletes also had very well-developed shoulders or pecs or other muscles. But they didn't. The olympic pole vaulters are lean and very efficiantly designed. There is no room for spare muscles since it's just more baggage to travel with when flying upside-down over a pole that stands at just shy of 20 feet. So they have to make the most of what they have and need. Thus the value of a big strong back above all else becomes very obvious, especially in their sport. We can even look at swimmers and notice how developed their backs get and how skinny their legs are. You don't want big heavy legs sinking your bottom end; you just want enough muscle to keep kicking. I can keep going on about the erector spinae's value for any and every sport, but I think everyone gets it.

I am a huge fan of the Glute-hamstring developer, or GHD for short and we happen to have 2 of them in the wooden center. Few people know what the machine is let alone how to use it properly, but maybe some of you will like it.

Here's a video of how it is utilized: This is the most challenging movement on it as well.




This variations is probably the most beneficial and doable by most:




Here's a variation to emphasize spinal extension:




And finally, here's a good use of the abmats and a car if you feel like getting a little brave at home:



Note: This peice of equipment is quite advanced and will demoralyze even the best of athletes. So if you get on it and dangle like an ornament, please keep in mind that its incredibly challenging and must be progressed into. Meanwhile, keep building the back muscles in more doable fashions.

You can try holding a bridge for 3 sets of 1 minute on, 1 minute off. You can alternate between bridge and plank for various time intervals. You can do like 15 hip extensions into a bridge and then hold the bridge for 30 seconds. You can add those movements into some high-output sprints, but make sure you do them slowly and controlled instead of you you all do your supermans (looking like flopping fish to crank through them fast). Get creative but stay focussed and purposeful.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'll try to adress them in the comment thread.

Enjoy

I'm out!