SHR

It drives me crazy when I watch people do cardio at the gym. We’ve all seen it. The guy or gal who ramps the  Model: Alex Leaf treadmill incline all the way up and then hangs on to the control interface or the side rails in order to stay on the treadmill. I’ve asked people over the years why they do this. I’ve gotten many answers. Most say “I’m burning more calories” referring to the calorie counter on the treadmill. One gal said “I’m toning my glutes” explaining that she read an article that walking or running up a hill works the glutes. One older gentlemen told me he was trying to improve his balance. In all of the above cases what evades these trainees is that these effects are only conferred if you’re actually working to walk up the inclined surface unassisted. Not holding on for dear life! Your glutes...

I recently saw a post on Face Book depicting a video of some very hard working muscular women. A particular comment caught my eye. The poster simply posted the word “gear”. This post angered me. I have to go back to 2008 in order to understand why. Back during the Anabolic Steroid Control Act hearings in front of congress, then Senator Joe Biden complained that he wanted to become a pro baseball player but was convinced that every athlete that outperformed him was using performance enhancing drugs. Even though he had no proof of this. He told congress that his inability to make it pro was directly tied to his unwillingness to use drugs. This assumption by then Senator Biden is a slap in the face to every hard working athlete in the world. To simply reduce his or her ability to make it pro to drug use and having nothing...

So here’s the plan. Train early and train fasted. Then have 75% to 80% of my food intake after my training over the course of a few hours. Taper intake into the evening focusing on getting the majority of my fat and some protein. Here’s my thinking. In the book Dove’s Diplomats and Diabetes - A Darwinian Interpretation of Type 2 Diabetes and Related Disorders by Dr. Milind Watve (book here – SHR interview here), the good doctor explains what can be the only evolutionary scientific mechanism that influences nutrient timing and the ensuing partitioning to fat or muscle. He illustrates that as hunter gathers our brains were influenced by the tasks of getting food in the first place. That influence programmed the body as to what it would use that nutrition for – creating fat or muscle mass. The act of going out into the dangerous unknown was possible because...

Regardless of your goals – weight loss, improved health, disease management, performance enhancement, and gaining muscle mass – nutrition is the cornerstone and quite possibly the most important factor. It’s for this reason that most who are serious about their goals make food preparation a priority. And those who fail to make food preparation a priority quite often never reach their intended goals. For most, food preparation is something we do several times a week. It can include cooking of your chosen foods, portioning, packaging and making these finished meals portable. Entire blocks of time are set aside to perform these tasks. I stumbled upon something recently that a friend of mine, Ravi Reddy, showed me that he does for his food prep. It’s actually elegantly simple. Ravi prepares all of his meals in one crockpot the night before and then brings this with him to work then next day. I’ve...

January 2, 2017 Chest & Tri’s Today I did fasted cardio upon waking up and then headed off to the gym to train chest and triceps. My giant sets looked like this: Seated Chest Press Machine + Pec Deck + Cable Triceps Pushdowns Giant sets were done with no rest between movements and ~2 minutes between circuits. Seated Chest Press Machine: 150 lbs. x 25 reps + Pec Deck: 140 lbs. x 20 reps + Cable Triceps Pushdowns 50 lbs. x 25 reps Seated Chest Press Machine: 170 lbs. x 20 reps + Pec Deck: 150 lbs. x 15 reps + Cable Triceps Pushdowns 57.5 lbs. x 20 reps Seated Chest Press Machine: 190 lbs. x 15 reps + Pec Deck: 160 lbs. x 10 reps + Cable Triceps Pushdowns 62.5 lbs. x 15 reps Seated Chest Press Machine: 210 lbs. x 10 reps + Pec Deck: 160 lbs. x 10...