30 Is The New 20

Today’s installment of the WFH will discuss lean muscle; the stuff women are always on about over at our message boards. Well, ladies, I’ve got something you might want hear. Any of you seriously worried about gaining too much muscle mass can fret no more. The key is to make 30 your new 20. Or maybe we should call this part II of things your trainer will never tell you.

We’re talking about repetitions, of course. If you’ve been following along you know I’m in the first phase of the Workout From Hell where each set of exercise is done to as close to failure as possible at 30 reps. This is more or less un-heard of down at your local Gold’s, and for good reason. It makes it virtually impossible to gain much size. Conventional iron head wisdom would say “why bother?” So I’ll answer the why, which isn’t going to change their minds. But it might change yours.

Let’s open with the big caveat; the reason you haven’t heard me recommending 30 reps for any Beachbody program over the years. Well, we do 30 reps for some things, mainly abs and other slow twitch areas of the body that are trained well with volume, but never for the prime movers as a sustained target. It’s because it hurts. It hurts and it takes a long time. It hurts, it takes a long time, and it doesn’t yield the type of results quickly that most people are looking for. At this point it no longer sounds like a good idea to me.

What 30 reps does is train your glycolytic energy system. As I said in an early post, the glycolysis is what allows a fast 100 meter sprinter to win at 400 meters. Essentially, it’s the system that uses glycogen and oxygen to recharge your body’s anaerobic (Kreb’s Cycle) system. I ran the quarter and we used to refer to something we called The Bear. The Bear lived in the “block house” (housed the track equipment) that was located at the last turn of the track. In the 400, The Bear attacked at the last turn and slowed you down. Unless, that is, your glycolytic system was firing on all cylinders. Then you’d kick home, passing a bunch of guys who looked like they suddenly had a bear on their backs because their anaerobic system was finished at 300 meters (about as long as you can hold your breath while sprinting) and their glycolytic wasn’t trained well enough to keep their fast-twitch muscles firing.

But life isn’t the quarter so why train this? Essentially because it’s another energy system and the more efficient your body is that better it will work in life. It will allow more progress during your other training, no matter what it is, that leads to better results long term. A strong glycolytic system would be particularly useful for the latter rounds of P90X and high-level programs like Insanity (your ability to do Insanity should improve drastically). Basically, the more efficient your body runs the better it utilizes nutrients and can improve at other things.

During 30 reps sets you can actually feel your system load change. The weight you use may seem impossibly light during the first 6-10 reps. Around 15 (or less later in the workout) you’ll start feeling it. At 20, the point where most traditional weight exercises end and about as long as your can reasonably hold your breath under duress, you’re muscles will begin to give out as you change systems. From then on it’s a fight to the finish (providing you’ve used enough weight which takes a little practice). If you do these sets correctly you’ll be dying (in my case screaming) to get your last five reps done.

There are two very important techniques to adhere to. First is form. Reps should not be rushed and form should remain perfect throughout the set. If your form falters you should stop. There is no benefit to finishing a set with bad form, and anytime you do you risk injury.

Secondly you need to breathe, perhaps both loudly and exaggeratedly. Deep rhythmic breathing is the key to every single set. Remember that you are working on an oxygen based system. The more oxygen your force into your system the better chance you are have of finishing. This seems silly when you hoisting five pound weights because you could do this easily, with no focus at all, in the beginning. But if you don’t breathe early in the set it will catch up to you and you’ll fail near the end. When you nail your breathing it makes the transition between creatine phosphate and glycolytic systems smooth. The sets then get easier and more resistance can be added on your next set.

You should not do 30 rep sets for very long. I’m doing a three week cycle and I’m tired at the end of week two. It’s hard, stressful, and you could simply not remain focused for much longer than 3 to 4 weeks. In fact, 400 meter runners spend very little time actually running 400 meters. They train both under and over and save that targeted distance for peak periods and races. It pushes your body beyond where you want it to be very often.

For anyone looking for a performance edge I would recommend a block of 30 provided you have a decent fitness foundation. You could incorporate it into any weight training program. I think a block of P90X targeting 30 would be awesome. Keep in mind is that your resistance workouts will take a long time so you’ll need to use the pause button. Also, I haven’t guinea pigged this one so, until I do, you’re on your own.

pic: i can’t say whether isabelle patissier ever did the workout from hell but climbing definitely targets your glycolytic system and she did plenty of that. the former world cup champion showing off the fashion sense that made her a late-80s pin-up girl.

The P90X Newsletter Archive

The P90X specific newsletter began in 2009 and we've got an indexed archive up on my site:

P90X Newsletter Archive

It's not too differenent from the normal Beachbody Newsletter except the content is often geared more towards graduate-level workout programs instead of any workout program. Topics may include anything about nutrition or fitness but you'll also find targets subjects customizing P90X, how to create hydrid programs with Insanity, Turbo Fire, 90X and any of our graduate programs, a how to use our workouts for sports specific training. If you don't find a subject you're looking for don't forget to look on our standard archive, which goes all the way back to 2000.

Beachbody Newsletter Archive

Shhh, I Have A Fat Burning Secret

There’s always stuff that works that no one wants to talk about condoning, like steroids and ephedra. I won’t say “won’t condone” because, often times, it remains as insider secret and kept for the greater public, often in fear of them abusing it. But not all of it is dangerous, especially if you know why it works and how to do it properly. Take what I did this morning for example: the Workout From Hell Back & Chest workout on an empty stomach.

No trainer would advise doing a WFH (or any kick-ass workout) without an ample storage of blood sugar (which converts to glycogen in your muscles and liver and fuel anaerobic performance). Hard training, sans glycogen, sends your body into a deep stage of the bonk. You have to push harder than you should and, in turn, do more muscular damage than normal (and brain damage, which runs on glycogen). While this sounds bad there’s a flip side—as there inevitably is—in that your body, being forced to the brink of its performance capability, turns to body fat for energy. This is cause for no great shakes as even the most casual athlete has probably heard that your body turns to stored adipose tissue for energy when its preferred fuel, glycogen, is kaput. But what most of us (trainers) don’t discuss is that this fat for fuel equation can be trained to improve. And nothing trains it as well as pushing it to the brink.

More conventional wisdom has us train this process doing low to moderate exercise on an empty stomach. In fact, it’s what you’ll hear from me all the time (in our Beachbody literature and elsewhere). And it works pretty well. But in the sports world we’re always looking for an advantage and it doesn’t work as well as trying to perform anaerobic intervals without any fuel.

If this sounds familiar it’s because there was just an article on the wires about this process and I blogged about it a couple of weeks back. But I didn’t get into specifics, which is why you shouldn’t do it if it works so well, or why I’m doing this right now.

First off, this is not a recommended training modality because, well, people have a hard time with moderating anything they think works “to burn fat”. And it’s definitely not the kind of thing you want to do often. Even then, when you do it the recovery process must be maximized or the damage you cause will outweigh the positive training effects. So let’s go over the rules:

First, you should only do this once in a while; max once per week and in cycles of no more than 4 weeks in a row. Next, you need to eat after your workout. This, more than any time I can imagine, is the slot for Recovery Formula or something similar. Whatever you choose you want 200 or so calories of something that digests rapidly. And then an hour later you should eat a small balanced meal to keep the recovery process going. Even then don’t expect to be at your best. If there aren’t a lot of typos in this post I’ll be surprised. And I certainly wouldn’t want to take a test or try and climb something at my limit this afternoon.



PS - read the comments if you're interested in more on this topic.

pics: more than any other group of athletes, climbers tend to get pushed anaerobically sans fuel and, hence, tend to get lean. in fact, older (and far less science-minded and more food deprived) climbers seemed like the most ripped of all.

WFH: Stabilization

While by far the easiest day in the rotation, day 3 is vital for both performance and non-performance. Stability work keeps injuries at bay but, if done correctly, will also free up your prime mover muscles to function more effectively. I dedicate my knowledge in this area to the late Kevin Brown, who taught me much more about stability training than I learned from books, classes, training rooms and medical offices.

He was an innovator in the field of “prehab”, which is addressing injuries before they happen. Sports programs that worked with him saw their non-contact injury rates mostly disappear. Most of his breakthroughs seem obvious once in practice, yet are overlooked by athletes the majority of the time. Over the years he would continually take something conventional and mildly effective and tinker with it until he found something more effective. Eventually he came up with a system that worked for any group of athletes no matter what their given sport.

While training with Kevin could get complex, the cornerstone of his system is simple. There are a few key movements he used that, when done regularly, keep your musculature balanced and greatly reduce the chances of injuring your knees and shoulders, the two hot spots in the athletic world. My stabilizer days feature these movements with a couple others adding for climbing specificity.

Hip stabilization

Hip Medley
A series of four exercises, done in successive 45 second sets, which target the gluteus medius. The benchmark is 3:00 with 5 pounds. Hard to explain so you’ll have to wait for video.

Windshield Wipers
The “my guys would rather get shot” exercise, again targeting the gluteus medius. Do 3 sets of 25 reps with a 10 second hold at the end. Again, you’re going to need video.

Shoulder stabilization
I do three sets of one exercise that targets the muscles of the rotator cuff region. It’s a standard move, sometimes called scarecrow, though I do it one arm at a time. I use both a theraband and a weight to keep the resistance constant throughout (the benchmark goal is 50 reps with 15lbs). The trick is that I push down on a stability ball with my elbow. This deactivates the deltoid muscles that tend to take over the movement, focusing the exercise onto the correct muscle group. Again, vids coming.

Wrist
I do reverse write curls to work the extensor muscles in the forearm. 3 sets of 30.

Core
The same bridge and plank series from the day before, but I’ll do three sets. The benchmarks are a 3 minute plank and 10 sets of one-legged bridge held for 20 seconds rotated back and forth.

TA muscle
Normally I add the exercise from the preceding day on stabilizer days as well.

I can mainly hit my benchmarks so I don’t always do these exercises. During this program, however, I will do them religiously and try and exceed all benchmarks. The stronger these muscles are the better and when you’re spending a lot of time doing other stuff it’s hard to focus on them. I find a few intense periods will give you some margin for error so you can safely slack off at other times.

pic: in the 80s we had lycra, which instantly increased both your range of motion and stabilization strength. it was subsequently banned from competition.

WFH: Back & Chest (and even some legs)

Lactic Acid Bath is the name of a New River Gorge sport route that was famous in the early 90s. But you don’t have to travel for such an experience. Just train your chest and back, in a volume workout, on the same day. Toss in a few sets for your other big muscle group and you’ve got a veritable pukefest in waiting.

Day 2: A step down in focus from day one but every bit as painful. Working two large muscle groups together is brutal, and today we throw in a third.

The Warm-Up

Because such light weight is being used I do not warm-up thoroughly. I generally do a bit of easy movement, some ballistic stretches, and then practice each movement to determine the weight I’m going to use, doing about 10 reps.

Back
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. 1 minute rest between sets.
Wide late pull-downs
Seated rows
Pronation pull-ups – done on rings
One arm rows

2 minute break

Chest
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. 1 minute rest between sets.

Dips – I can’t do 30 dips so I’ve rigged a way to do dips from my knees.
Cable Flys – I use a band
Wide fingertip push-ups – These are fairly climbing specific. I’m on my knees and they still hurt at this point.
Diamond push-ups – I do these from Tony Horton power stands, on my knees, and at this point in the workout I’m dying from about rep 10 on.

Note: I try and hold a long stretch between each set. Bodybuilders claim this stretches out the fascia and will lead to more hypertrophy. At a minimum it counteracts all the muscle contraction by forcing the actin and myosin strands of your muscle cells apart.

Legs
I can’t do much for my legs right now because I can’t bend at the waist under duress. If I could I may change the schedule because I’m dying on the little that I’m doing.

Wall Squat – One set to shakiness with my low back flat on the wall. I will probably increase this to two and then three sets but it’s vital at this point not to put too much strain in the low back area.
One leg calf raises – 3 sets, each from a different angle: toe in, toe out, and neutral. This is somewhat climbing specific.
Tibialis Anterior exercise – I set to failure of form. I consider this a stabilizer exercise but do it here because it feels right. Back flat against a wall, feet about a foot’s length in front, raise the toes. Should be able to do 40-50 easily.

Core
Again, I’m limited what I can do so I train core two days in a row. Today is easier.

Bridge – one set until form start to go- at least 2 minutes today, which doubles when you haven't done the above workout.
Plank – on elbows, back flat, to failure of form. 2 minutes or so at this point in the workout.This is a far cry from what I do when healthy but the point is back rehab right now.

pic: from the back in the day files, me climbing in mexico, sometime during the 90s.

WFH: Shoulders & Arms

Hell hath no fury like a climber who can’t go outside on the longest day of the year. So instead of climbing the largest limestone wall in North America I’ve been hitting the WFH like a man possessed. I’ll go through each workout I do day by day. The first workout in the series is for shoulders and arms.

Training Overview

Each training block consists of a three day rotation, done twice per week with a day off after the second round, done for three weeks. The goal is to improve significantly each week. There is no recovery or transition week between each block because they are each so different it’s not necessary. Other than the workouts listed I hike daily and am doing a little (careful) climbing.

By far the hardest block is the first. It’s difficult for most people used to traditional weight training that generally consists of doing 15 repetitions or less. 30 reps shifts the energy systems stressed from phosphate to gycolytic. This transition is difficult and painful, like the difference between running the 100 and the 400. Doing 30 reps forces you to breathe in order to recharge your Kreb’s Cycle using oxygen. Theoretically you could do less than 15 reps holding your breath (though you would not want to). This is why Largo says “the difference between 20 and 30 reps is the difference between 5.8 and 5.12.”

Day 1: This is my hardest day. It's very climbing specific and takes a lot of focus, which is why it has top billing on the schedule.

The Warm-Up

You can get away with a lesser warm-up during this block than the others because the top end stresses are very low. However, I begin each arm day with a fingerboard workout that is climbing specific, so I warm-up thoroughly.

Hangboard (fingerboard)

The workout I’m doing for the first three weeks is described in detail here. It will transition during each block.

I take a short break after this part of the workout, maybe 5 minutes.

Shoulders
3 sets of 30 reps for 4 different exercises. Whereas Largo’s version of the WFH stresses doing simple isolation movements I’m doing more climbing specific movements when applicable.

I rest of approximately one minute between each set.

Front delt pull-downs – This is very climbing specific. I use an exercise band and do a front straight armed pull-down from full extension up all the way down to my waist. Feel this in your front deltoid area. Keep your core very rigid.
Lateral raise
Standing rows
Standing dumbbell military press, elbows in

I won’t describe traditional exercises. Look them up if you don’t know what they are.

Triceps
3 sets of 30 reps of 3 exercises. I do tris before bis because I think the exercises are harder.

Overhead tri extension w/ band (cable) – forward
Switch-grip kickbacks – rotate hand position every other rep
Overhead tri extension with weight – straight up

Biceps

Dumbell curls
Hammer curls
Reverse grip curls – works forearm extensors

Forearms

I do this workout.

pic: more back in the day: wolfie, the late german powerhouse, training his famous shoulders and arms in the valley

The Workout From Hell For Climbing

After nearly a week I’m finding more merit in the WFH than I was expecting. Maybe it’s just because it’s so damned hard, but I’m enjoying my pumped up trip down memory lane. I also may be on to some type of breakthrough so this is going to be an ongoing series about doing a climbing specific WFH. For those of you not into climbing (most of you) there will be other things to learn in this experiment. In fact, it’s possible that the rep scheme for WFH might be appropriate for those of your trying to do X and get leaner. I’ve written an article on this here but my new training program could be the next evolution.

Essentially the WFH is three, 3-week blocks of training that target muscular endurance, followed by hypertrophy, followed by power.

The first block targets muscular endurance by having your work til failure doing 30 reps—yep, you read that right! If you do these reps til failure (or close—if you never fail on a set you’re not using enough weight). This is the “hell’ part of the program. These workouts are ridiculously long and hard. The plus is that it’s almost impossible to not have some sort of physical or mental transformations occur from the process.

The 2nd block targets hypertrophy, though the reps stay at the high end, 15, in order to limit muscle growth (since the whole concept promises that you won’t gain weight).

The final strength or power phase targets only 5 reps. Again, we’re looking to strengthen the muscles yet limit growth.

Due to the excessive nature of the program, especially the first training block, sports specific training must be minimized. But during my round I’ve altered Long’s version by adding more sports specific movements to target some of my weaknesses.

Essentially, my endurance-driven decade has caused me to regress in certain aspects of strength, especially when it comes to big muscle power. My ability to lock-off, do one-armed pull-ups, etc, has all gone way down. If I can improve this during the program, when my endurance comes back later my overall climbing ability should go way up-- theoretically higher than its ever been (of course age will come into play but still, we’ll see). Also, I was in my early 30s during my last round of the WFH, so that’s another aspect to observe.

Because of my injury I can’t do any strength tests at the moment so I’ll start just looking for improvements in body fat percentage (when I can do one-arm pull-ups and muscle-ups I’ll know my strength has improved). Currently, my body fat % is somewhere between 6% and 15% (using two different devices, which are always wrong). I’d say in reality its in between. The goal is 5% at 50. My weight is 173.

Tomorrow I’ll start describing the actual workouts.

pic: i know, the WFH isn't supposed to make you big, but you do plenty of screaming so i couldn't resist using a pic of one of the masters of the iron days, tom platz (who also taught my first fitness seminar)

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The Workout From Hell

My damaged back has turned the summer plans upside down, with the upside being that I’m so limited in what I can do it will add some focus to my training. The last few days I’ve been testing my limits to see what I should and shouldn’t be doing. In conclusion, I’ve decided it’s time to dust off the “Workout From Hell.”

My buddy Largo wrote this workout program for a climbing magazine back in the 80s. While no one questioned its difficulty, it never became a part of the climbing lexicon because, frankly, it’s not very good training for the sport. These days it’s pretty antiquated as training for anything. In a world where symbiosis and functionality are king, it’s preaches isolation and iron so strongly that it conjures up black and white images of Arnie, Franco, and Muscle Beach.

Though dated, the program is not without merit (note above pic of a ripped Largo back in the day). Its graduated rep scheme that begins absurdly high and transitions to very low is great for targeting energy systems. And it’s even more intriguing given I lack mobility and can’t do complex movements. The lack of functionality doesn’t bother me because, when I’m healthy, I spend too much time playing and too little time training so my sports specific engrams (neuromuscular patterns) are firmly in place.

Of course I’m already very familiar with the WFH. I try everything. I began my first cycle of this program the day after I read about it. Back then we’d try anything to improve our climbing. Without resources like the internet we weren’t privy to why the Europeans had come out of nowhere to dominate the sport that we’d ruled for a couple of decades. It wasn’t due to the WFH but we didn’t know that, so I hit the gym with the fervor of an amphibious rodent being dropped into a bath.

Like Largo, the first time I did this I was so sore that I couldn’t reach my hands above my head to wash my hair, much less climb anything. And while it didn’t improve my climbing it helped my fitness. Over the years I tinkered with it. I’d do a cycle each year, in the off season, to build base fitness and avoid muscular imbalances. And while I’m not sure it was the most efficient tactic for my climbing only lifestyle, as I was doing back then, I think it will help with some weaknesses that I currently have and be good overall training for my current multi-sports lifestyle.

I’m not sure how much help the WFH is in the modern world. Something like 90x, for example, is a far more thorough training regimen. But some of its aspects can still help improve fitness, especially for those targeting specific weaknesses. And the structured repetition scheme, which never became popular for the masses, is pragmatic for sure as it directly addresses muscular endurance, hypertrophy (though Long misidentifies this phase, though it's a semantics error as he knows what it does), and power. My evolved version of the WFH is quite different than the original and I’ll post it when finalized.

Forearm Training

Unless you play baseball you’re probably not too interested in how your forearms look. However, strong forearms are more important than they appear. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, along with most finger, wrist, and elbow injuries stem from muscular imbalance in your forearms. This video shows a simple workout that can keep these injuries at bay.

In my series I add one more extensor exercise, which is driving your closed hands deep into the bucket and opening them outward. I think this is the most important exercise in the series for muscular balance. This simple 5 -10 minute workout, done a few times each week, is a great insurance policy against many common maladies. It will also, undoubtedly, help impress your colleagues at your company softball game.

My bucket is a gardening pot, wide enough for both hands to open next to each other, filled with 20lbs of rice. In the past I’ve used sand, which provides a bit more resistance. Either way, it’s a cheap and easy insurance policy.

Morning Yoga

I re-injured my back mountain biking a couple of months back and have been trying to play through it. Finally, alas, I’ve been forced to deal with it head on and take some time off. Well, not off exactly, but focused. And the primary point of this focus has been on morning yoga.

Yoga and stabilization exercises were the cornerstone of my rehab last year. A year after the injury I felt as though I was 90% back. After my Mexico trip in March I allowed my focus to wane a little. I was still doing both but not with the same fervor. I wrenched my back a bit in a small crash but it was pain that I could deal with so I kept trying to perform and ramp up my biking mileage. The pain, however, has steadily increased to the point where it’s no longer possible that it’s residual. Something new is wrong.

My standard policy on most injuries is to rehab first and see doctors later. My theory is that the rehab is going to happen, one way or another, so you might as well try it first. This keeps me (and clients) out of the doctors’ office 9 times in 10. After a week it seems to be going well again.

I hadn’t been totally avoiding yoga but I hadn’t been doing actual classes or videos. As a trainer I usually don’t need these things. I know what I want to do and, in fact, almost always train harder when I’m alone and not doing a video. Probably due to my sports background I’m more intense by myself. My sets are more focused. I also concentrate better and, thus, recover quicker between exercises. This competitive nature has the opposite effect on yoga, where intensity is not the objective. Classes and videos slow me down, reduce the intensity, and increase its effectiveness. A lot.

Now, like all those months when I was acutely injured, each day begins with a yoga class (in video or in person). I’m going to keep this up until the pain is gone. I’m so much better than I was a week ago that I find it hard to conceptualize how I went so many years not doing yoga at all.

pic: romney in the canyonlands

Does That Really Work?

My friend Ben, a firefighter, says guys at the station are always asking him if P90X really works. He usually just shakes his head, in amazement, and replies with something banal like “its diet and exercise, of course it works!” I guess people are trained by their television to think everything is a magic pill that’s probably nothing but snake oil. And, certainly, the infomercial world that’s been dominated by Thighmasters and psychic friends has done its part in perpetuating that myth. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: diet and exercise, assuming you’re following sound advice, always works.

Ben isn’t your average fireman. He studied pre-med, climbs, trains in jiu jitsu, and spends so much time doing off-the-beaten track activities that the guys at the station call him “the most interesting man in the world.” But that doesn’t mean his baffled demeanor comes from an Ivy League intellectual stance. When he was a kid basic health education was taught in school and, apparently, he was one of the few people who listened. Therefore he wasn’t nearly as surprised as most people are when I told him that all of our programs work. And each program works just as well as the next. That’s right, the test group for P90X and Insanity had pretty much the same stats as those from Rev Abs and 10 Minute Trainer.

This doesn’t mean the P90X isn’t more intricate than Project You or Slim in 6. It’s just targeted towards a different audience (one that requires more subtlety). Every Beachbody program, from Hip Hop Abs to Turbo Fire follows the same principle: diet and exercise targeted toward a specific group of people. And when you get that specific group to train hard and eat to support the exercise they are doing you get results. It’s a 100% fact. There’s no big trade secret, no miracle supplement or style of training; its simple human (animal, actually) physiology. Train hard and eat well and you’ll be as fit looking as a lion (or shark, gazelle, eagle, marlin, marmot… ). The only things in the animal kingdom that don’t look like fitness models are domesticated animals, whom we’ve also deprived of their simple life lessons from Health Ed 101. In fact, I guarantee you that when P90X canine comes out it will work every bit as well as Yoga Booty Kitty or Brazilian Body Gospel For Birds.

above: based on an idea from this photo, we're thinking that p90xII will allow you to do any training you want so long as you catch your own meals on foot. we are quite certain that this modern concept will revolutionize fitness.

The Big Blue

I've been writing a lot lately so here's a mid-week interlude that's purely for entertainment. Props to Reed for sending this video that combines two of my favorite things: freediving and climbing. Also note that the camerawoman is also holding her breath. Both beautiful and impressive.

Spartan Logic

It’s great when science confirms what we already know. Somehow, the thought of a bunch of folks wearing white coats, wielding test tubes, and nodding with approval gives us comfort. Denis over at the Fitness Nerd points this out in his latest post about whether or not when should eat before exercise.

I believe it was the ancient Spartans who first asked the question, "Should we have a small snack before we conquer Aigitida? Or is it best to pillage on an empty stomach? After all, while we want to be at our blood-thirsty best, we also wish to continue shedding fat, as to accentuate our glorious, hard-earned abs."

The study he’s citing is no great shakes, at least if you’ve been hip to sports nutrition over the last couple of millennia or read my blog. Essentially, researchers at the University of Birmingham concluded that it’s better to eat prior to intense exercise and not to eat for easier exercise.

To be fair the study’s provocative-ness goes a little deeper, concluding that some hard training on an empty stomach will help you metabolize fat better but not recommending it as a regular course of action because it exacerbates tissue breakdown and hinders performance (you bonk, in modern colloquial). This is pretty useful info; essentially that our bodies work in a negative-feedback loop so negative reactions generally cause something positive to happen. Running out of blood sugar stores (glycogen) is bad because we are forced to revert to adipose tissue (body fat) for energy. And while it doesn’t do as good a job, meaning performance drops and muscle tissue breaks down more rapidly, it’s a process your body can improve at which has benefits at the other end of the spectrum because you can work harder using stored fat and, thus, save your limited stores of blood glycogen for when you really need it. This is especially important for long events, like a bike race or, perhaps, storming across the country to Thermopylae.

When I talk about this process I often refer to an old experiment done with cyclist Chris Boardman that showed he could burn a much fat in three hours as it took the average person 18. This is somewhat common knowledge in the outdoor sports world, as one of the scientists point out:

"Science is finally catching up with what smart runners have always known," said Ron Maughan, a professor of sport, exercise and health sciences at Loughborough University in Britain. "If you have a long, hard run without breakfast once a week, that hard run will train you to burn fat," he said. "And for the rest of the week, have plenty of carbohydrates so you can train hard."

But since most Beachbody-ers are more interested in Spartan physiques than conquering Troy, here’s another tidbit for you. Daniel Kobbina, a personal trainer who also runs a martial arts school in London, said the method requires discipline — but it works.

"If you train on an empty stomach, you'll see that six-pack a lot sooner," he said.

Salt: The Empire Strikes Back

These are dark times in a galaxy of a food consumers worried about health. Last month, TSD reported that sodium recommendations were changing due to an outcry from the public. It was a new hope; government being spurred on by a public concern for personal safety. But empires aren’t afraid of little populist regimes and it appears Salt Vader has enlisted the dark side of the Force to change their minds.

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.”

The campaign by Cargill, which both produces and uses salt, promotes salt as “life enhancing” and suggests sprinkling it on foods as varied as chocolate cookies, fresh fruit, ice cream and even coffee. “You might be surprised,” Mr. Brown says, “by what foods are enhanced by its briny kiss.”

Unfortunately, there’s more than taste at stake when we analyze proper nutrition. There is no question that high salt consumption is leading to thousands of deaths (health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year in the US alone) and millions of people becoming ill. The issue is that a huge industry is dependant upon us consuming salt--a lot of salt. And these people make a lot of money and, hence, wield a lot of power and will do their darndest to keep it that way.

The article, The Hard Sell On Salt, from the NY Times, is long and goes into a lot of depth. I suggest you read it. For those who won’t here’s the Cliff Notes version:

Most processed foods aren’t really food. They’re just amalgamations of chemicals that bind together that are flavored in a way that some scientists have figured out will cause you to crave them. For example:

As a demonstration, Kellogg prepared some of its biggest sellers with most of the salt removed. The Cheez-It fell apart in surprising ways. The golden yellow hue faded. The crackers became sticky when chewed, and the mash packed onto the teeth. The taste was not merely bland but medicinal.

“I really get the bitter on that,” the company’s spokeswoman, J. Adaire Putnam, said with a wince as she watched Mr. Kepplinger struggle to swallow.

They moved on to Corn Flakes. Without salt the cereal tasted metallic. The Eggo waffles evoked stale straw. The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no actual butter, simply disappeared.

The main addictive qualities of these foods come from salt, sugar, and fat; incidentally (or not) the three culprits of the obesity epidemic. There’s not much nutrition in these foods, which are fortified with a few “essential vitamins.” This may sound great on TV to kids but is done, essentially, to keep you from dying quickly. Real food has all the vitamins, minerals, macronutrients, micronutrients, and phytonutrients you need to be healthy and doesn’t need to be fortified with anything.

The bulk of processed food is generally corn but can be the by product of pretty much anything because it’s been processed so thoroughly it’s simply a binder that is now devoid of any nutritional use it once had. So when you eat processed foods you eat some sort of unnatural balance of salt, sugar, and fat that enhances some empty calories that are fortified with some random vitamins. Based on this so-called logic the processed food industry is arguing that forcing a reduction in salt would just lead to an increase in sugar or fat. Health should not come into play because it’s not what consumers care about.

“We were trying to balance the public health need with what we understood to be the public acceptability,” said William K. Hubbard, a top agency official at the time who now advises an industry-supported advocacy group. “Common sense tells you if you take it down too low (salt) and people don’t buy, you have not done something good.”

So the industry argument is that people want to eat junk that will kill them so we’re beholden to supply them with junk and it’s unfair to ask them to change for the good of society. That’s like not feeding your child vegetables because they’d rather eat candy and then saying it was okay that they died of diabetes because it’s what they wanted. Except it’s not like that; it’s like doing that and then demanding the other parents follow suit because candy is what their kids really want to eat.

In closing, one corporate spokesman who did not give a name but was dressed in some type of black cloaked Halloween costume stated in a deep, breathy voice:

We do not yet realize salt’s importance. We have only begun to discover its power. Join me, and I will complete your salt training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.

Doping And You

"I don't think it is possible for a weight man to compete internationally without using anabolic steroids," says Dr. H. Kay Dooley, director of the Wood Memorial Clinic in Pomona, Calif., one of the few physicians who openly endorse use of anabolic steroids. "All the weight men on the Olympic team had to take steroids. Otherwise they would not have been in the running."

That excerpt is from article from Sports Illustrated on doping in sports. I mentioned last week that I got sick of covering this topic because of the way it’s handled in the media. This article is fresh and candid. Of course I’m interested in doping. Any person’s whose job is human performance can’t ignore anything, medical or not, that improves it because the latest research always trickles down. Whatever sports scientists are doing to help athletes win gold medals will in some form become a component of the next version of P90X.

In both training and nutrition we distill what’s happening at the pinnacle of the sport; tossing aside anything dangerous and embracing that which works. Of course we never advocate doping but drugs generally stimulate natural reactions which can be improved through diet and supplementation. The latter is not as effective but trends still follow medical research. We look through natural pathways for similar reactions. Famous sports surgeon Dr. Robert Kerlan explains the problems with this difference in the article.

"I'm not a therapeutic nihilist," says Kerlan "Situations arise where there are valid medical reasons for prescribing drugs for athletes. There are special occupational health problems in some sports. However, the excessive and secretive use of drugs is likely to become a major athletic scandal, one that will shake public confidence in many sports just as the gambling scandal tarnished the reputation of basketball. The essence of sports is matching the natural ability of men. When you start using drugs, money or anything else surreptitiously to gain an unnatural advantage, you have corrupted the purpose of sports as well as the individuals involved in the practice."

Doping is a well known problem but the press, for the most part, has done a horrible job explaining it. I guess our love of black and white has led the media to create heroes and villains and pit them against each other. The article paints a slightly different picture of drug use in sports.

The whole matter has been succinctly summarized by Hal Connolly, a veteran of four U.S. Olympic teams.

"My experience," says Connolly, "tells me that an athlete will use any aid to improve his performance short of killing himself."

In the press Americans that are yet to be busted often take a holier than thou approach. After getting beaten by some Chinese swimmers one American woman proudly proclaimed she was “the fasted clean swimmer in the world.” The press loved it. However, Americans appear to be leading the race, not following.

"American athletes have the most expensive urine in the world," says Ray Baldwin, trainer at Xavier University.

After all, Americans are, by far, the most doped society in the world as the article points out.

Setting aside ethical considerations for the moment, there are obvious reasons why athletes should use so many drugs. The most obvious is that there are more drugs available these days for everyone than ever before. Furthermore, we have all been sold on the efficacy of drugs. We believe that the overflowing pharmacopoeia is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the age. We have been sold on drugs empirically because we have tried them and enjoy the results. We have been sold by countless magazine and newspaper stories about wonder drugs—many of which later turned out to be less than wondrous—by massive pro-drug propaganda campaigns mounted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, by TV actors dressed in doctors' coats and by real doctors, many of whom are very quick with the prescription pad. Generally, we have accepted rather uncritically the central message of this persuasive pitch—drugs are good for you. These days it is a cultural reflex to reach for a vial, an atomizer, a capsule or a needle if you suffer from fever, chills, aches, pains, nausea, nasal congestion, irritability, the doldrums, sluggishness, body odor, obesity, emaciation, too many kids, not enough kids, nagging backache or tired blood.

The press doesn’t seem to acknowledge this at all, treating dopers as if they some form of modern freak show. Old school athletes are lionized. When plucked from the woodwork of retirement they feign surprise. Instead of copping to the fact that drugs may have been around in their day, they offer their opinions in an air of denial similar to Louie, the corrupt police chief in Casablanca’s reaction when coerced to change his stance on gambling in Bogie’s bar, “I’m shocked, SHOCKED, to see gambling going on in this establishment!”

Yet drugs have been a part of sport for as long as they’ve been a part of society:

By bringing together athletes from all over the world and dumping them into the most formidable sporting pressure cooker yet devised, the quadrennial Olympic Games have traditionally (it took four physicians to revive the marathon winner of the 1904 St. Louis Olympics, an American, Tom Hicks, who proved to be loaded on strychnine and brandy) served as an exchange for drugs and drug recipes.

When Barry Bonds came clean his entire era of sluggers’ records were dismissed by the traditionalists for cheating. The press wants records to revert back to an era where sports where clean. You know, like Hank Aaron’s numbers from the 70s. Greg LeMond, the time Tour de France winner in the 80s, has been once of the most vocal opponents of modern cycling’s drug addiction yet he hardly mentions drugs during his career, even though the most famous drug-related cycling death happened to Tom Simpson in 1967.

But the most fascinating aspect of this article is that it was published in 1969. No matter how the press wants to handle it, we can’t escape the fact that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ken Ferguson of Utah State University, who went on to play professional football in Canada, has said that 90% of college linemen have used steroids. "I'd say anybody who has graduated from college to professional football in the last four years has used them," said Ferguson in 1968.

When Not To Diet

Over the past month or so Romney and I have been fighting a bug we picked up in Europe. While we’ve been able to perform through it—meaning we’ve been able to work and exercise—it hasn’t allowed us to train and diet with our usual vigor. I’ve written a lot about not training when you’re sick and other times when it’s best to back off of your training, but I don’t think I’ve written much on when you shouldn’t diet. Fighting illness is one of those times.

It probably seems obvious that your need nutrients when you’re sick. Illness is both the opposite and the same thing that exercise is to your body. It’s physical breakdown. So in the same way that your nutrient needs change while you’re training they change while you’re sick.

There is one big difference. Training is—-or should be—-planned and self induced. Illness obviously is not. This means that you can attempt to match your diet to your training. For example, you can both lose weight and gain targeted muscle mass if you eat well and target your nutrient intake properly. When you’re sick, however, you can’t guess exactly what is wrong and, therefore, you can’t be as precise with your diet. Attempting to reduce caloric intake when you’re sick could deprive your body of nutrients needed to fight your illness and end up prolonging it. So during times of illness I always err on the side of eating more.

Of course this is dependant on your daily lifestyle. If you’re over indulgent in general than you may end up eating less when you’re sick. You’re body doesn’t need a six pack, bag of chips, or pint of ice cream when it’s sick. It needs nutrients. If those are part of your daily regimen you can eat healthy foods all day long and still probably be reducing your caloric intake. But if, say, you’re doing Insanity and it’s lean diet plan you’ll, for sure, want to start eating more until you feel better.

Professional athletes during the height of their seasons, especially those in weight dependant sports, are always on the verge of getting sick. This is because they fine tune their bodies to the upmost; watching every calorie and training full bore. When you’re training hard and eating clean, especially if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re body is similar to one of an athlete. The more finely tuned a machine is the easier it is for something to go wrong. When you throw illness into the fray it’s time to stop redlining, throttle back your RPMs, and cruise for a while.

It’s always tough to shed germs picked up on a different continent. Adding a lot of air traveling into the mix makes it harder to shake. We’ve both been on the move since we got home and finally, a month later, we’re ready get our training and diet back on the rivet; eschewing extra calories and burning off the stored body fat we no longer need for protection with some hard training.

Ridin' Dirty

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Zig Zag Dieting and Listening To Your Body

This is a reference post, which I’m creating because I couldn’t find this info for what I was planning on writing today. Given that we dish this advice all the time I thought we must have an FAQ about it on the Message Boards. Alas, we don’t. So instead of writing the information down over and over I’m creating a post to reference each time anyone at Beachbody refers to zig zag dieting. You hear the phase “listen to your body” all the time. Zig zag dieting actually teaches your body how to have a conversation with you.

Not to be confused with yo-yo dieting, zig zag is a technique that should be used any time you want to increase or decrease your daily caloric intake and can be used to find out what your caloric intake should be. Instead of moving straight to a new daily caloric number you move in smaller increments on a staggered schedule. Here’s an example of how it works:

Say, for example, you’re eating 1500 calories a day and have been for a period of time where you’ve lost weight. Now your weight loss has stagnated. This is one of our most common scenarios because the new, fitter you has a different body composition than the former you. You have more muscle and a higher basal metabolic rate (BMR). In order to continue your weight loss you need to eat more because 1500 calories isn’t enough—even though it once was—and now your body is reacting by slowing its metabolism and releasing cortisol in a protective response (often called starvation mode because this is how your body would respond to being starved).

At times this could be a lot more because huge caloric reductions can work in the initial stages of a program for deconditioned people. Let’s say that the individual in question runs a caloric calculation and figures they need 2,500 calories per day.

Weight times 10, plus 10-30% for daily activity depending on how active you are, plus the estimated caloric burn of your exercise, or just go here.

You don’t want to jump straight to 2500 calories. First, it would create some shock to your system and, second, it may be wrong as those calculators only give ballpark figures. The most effective thing to do is to zig zag your caloric intake. In this instance I would recommend eating 2000 calories per day for 3-4 days per week and 1500 calories the other days. Then you note how your body responds, which I would expect to be positively on the higher caloric days and by feeling famished on the low-cal days.

You want to be energized but not hungry, so after a week or two of this I would bump up to around 2200 cals for 4 or 5 days and 1500 cals on 2 days for, maybe one week. If I’m still starving on the low days try bumping them up to 2000 and see how you respond. Use this tactic until you regulate, which means that you’re energized but not hungry and also not full. You can tell when you’re eating too many calories because you’ll begin to feel full, you won’t digest your food between meals, and you’ll feel more lethargic at the beginning of workouts.

Zig zag dieting works whether you need to reduce or increase your caloric intake, and whether you need a subtle change or dramatic change. There is no numbers formula except to increase/decrease in small increments between 200 and 500 calories a day and to zig zag your caloric intake two to four times per week. Then you just listen and let your body tell you how much you should eat.

Salt: How Much Or How Little?

The US government recently lowered its recommendation for sodium consumption, which has led to a lot of questions on our Beachbody diets. Salt, which is made up of sodium and chloride, is one of the least well understood nutrients we consume. It’s absolutely essential for life, so much so that wars have been fought over it. Yet over consumption of this prized mineral is one of the greatest health risks our society faces. The problem is that most of us haven’t a clue on how much we need and the government, which hands out a blanket standard for an entire population, isn’t helping. Fortunately it’s not all that complicated. So let’s take a look at how much salt we need daily, and how to avoid getting too much.

The above is a sneak peek of an article I’m writing on salt consumption. Today’s blog is primarily to reference a great article by Dr. Bill Misner, who unknowingly has been one of my mentors. Misner, now retired, is an outstanding age group athlete and formerly the nutrition expert at Hammer Nutrition. Many of his theories were once at odds with the nutritional musings of the national “experts”. Over time most of those experts were proven wrong. Misner’s once maverick ideas on nutrition, especially for endurance athletes, is now the standard most adhere to.

DOES A HIGH SODIUM DIET INHIBIT ENDURANCE PERFORMANCE AND HEALTH?
BY WILLIAM MISNER, PH.D.

As you’ll see Dr. Bill, as we call him, likes to throw numbers and science around. In the article I’ll interpret and deconstruct his commentary, along with a few others, but for this blog I’m going to over simplify.

Essentially, this problem with salt is this:

We don’t need very much of it at all to function daily if we’re sedentary, maybe 500mg a day at most. In fact, a recent study concluded that 70% of Americans were sedentary so even though we’ve chopped around a thousand milligrams off of the RDA we’re still high at 1,500mg/day.

Exercise, however, is a massive variable. The more we exercise the more salt we need. In fact, we can burn off 2,000mg of it in one hour of intense exercise in hot weather. So simple math shows us that the RDA should be between 500mg/day and perhaps 10,000 or more mg/day for someone doing an Ironman in July. Of course you only need that 10,000mg on the event day. Each day’s consumption should reflect activity to some degree.

As a society we eat far too much salt. In fact, the average sedentary person eats over 2,000mg/day and the average endurance athlete over 6,000mg/day to account for how much they sweat. Restaurants and convenience foods are the culprit as they are loaded with salt. Now here’s the rub:

“Limiting sodium is recommended since research supports that chronic consumption of more than 2300 milligrams per day may contribute to Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Hypertension, Muscle Stiffness, Edema, Irritability, Osteoarthritis, Osteoporosis, Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS), Liver disorders, Ulcers, and Cataracts.”

But athletes need to worry about hyponatremia, a life-threatening situation where sodium levels are diluted due to sweating and excessive water consumption. However, randomly consuming more sodium along with more water does not seem to be the best course of action. Instead, athletes who lessened both water and sodium intake to 24-28 ounces of water and 300-600mg of sodium/chloride, along with other electrolytes (calcium, magnesium, potassium) per hour while training and racing, along with lowering their overall daily sodium consumption, performed best. The bottom line was that athletes who lowered their overall salt intake and only increased it based on the needs of their daily training performed best.

The article doesn’t go into this but lowering your salt intake is easy if you eat natural foods, which contain almost no sodium. This is why wars were fought over salt before there was a processed food industry; we were always looking for more. But 500mg is only about a quarter teaspoon. If you’re someone who eats out a lot, or buys packaged foods, you should pay attention to the sodium content on the label. It is then vital that salt is added to your diet to account for exercise. 300-600mg/hr should be added in normal condition, and more in hot weather.