HealthyWealthyWiseProject

An Investment In Knowledge Always Pays The Best Interest

Main Menu

post

Random Thoughts by Dogg of DC Training

by Leave a Comment

(source: http://intensemuscle.com/showthread.php?t=9658)

a)I have no problem with anyone on leg training switching the exercises they do from the 6-8 heavy set to the 20 reppers on as long as the 20 repper gets done. Alot of the super large guys I train (270-340lbers) have serious trouble breathingwise doing a 20 rep free squat. Hell I have trouble doing it myself. You are carrying alot of bodyweight, breathing like a locomotive and hey lets not die on leg training day-LOL. Ill give you an example–One of my guys does smythe squats, free squats and leg presses as his three leg movements. On leg press day he does the heavy 6-10 (I make him do 10 reps on it) and then does the 20 repper on the same leg press. On smythe day he does his heavy 6-8 and then does the 20 repper on a horizontal hack machine. On free squat day he does his heavy 6-10 and does the 20 repper on a Cybex (different) leg press machine at a slightly different angle than the other leg press day. I got no problem with any of you guys doing that especially you large beasts. Now if you start doing only leg presses with the same leg press machine for all your 20 reppers then Im going to call you on it that your taking the easy way out.

b)Alot of people ask me how I come to conclusions on things…..alot of all this you can deduct from what you see going on around you at gyms and from just watching people. Alot of what I do is “reverse engineering”–I think things out backwards to find out the reasoning. You can sit there and study medline all day long but until you have a practical brain to think how it pertains to bodybuilding, your not going to get very far in applying it. For example alot of people freak out about the controlled negative on reps in DC training and why the heck its done. Besides what science agrees with, think of certain instances or hobbies or jobs with repetitive movements with the repeated same load. Boat rowers, sawing lumberjacks and gymnasts. They all do repetitive movements with the same load, a boat or canoist rower is trying to power along a boat as fast as he can, a sawing lumberjack is using power to saw down a tree, a gymnast does repeated movements with bodyweight. All are pushing the limits trying to use as much power as possible for the task at hand. Which one of those three has a discernable musculature? Boat rowers dont have huge backs, sawing lumberjacks dont have huge arms but gymnasts always have that musculature. They sure arent eating to get huge and most likely they arent doing incredibly heavy weight training but you can always see the musculature on a gymnast. Why? Well which one of those three does controlled negative movements? The rowers and sawers are just using positive movements and it does virtually nothing for their musculature (science agrees with that theory-concluding that the positive movment is a strength/priming phase and the eccentric is where the magic happens)–the gymnasts on the other hand are all doing heavy eccentric and controlled negative work (iron cross/rings, pommel horse etc etc etc)–the moral of the story is your whole thinking in all this should get to the point where your curling a weight up just for the simple reason of controlling the descent downward so you can get bigger

c)There was a study some years back which included 3 groups–elite sumo wrestlers who did no weight training whatsoever, advanced bodybuilders and advanced powerlifters–about 20 in each group. Now there is a lot of variables here but they took the lean muscle mass of each group and divided it by their height in inches. Surprisingly the sumo wrestlers came out well ahead of the powerlifters (2nd) and the bodybuilders (very close 3rd). This is a group who did no weight training at all but engorged themselves with food trying to bring their bodyweight up to dramatic levels. How is a group that is doing no weight training having more muscle mass per inch of height than powerlifters and bodybuilders? For anyone that doubts food is the greatest anabolic in your arsenal, you better get up to speed and on the same page as what my trainees have found out. Gee now what would happen if you actually ate to get dramatically larger like a sumo, but actually weight trained like a powerbuilder (which is what we train like), and also did enough cardio/carb cuttoffs etc to keep bodyfat at bay while doing all this? Are you guys coming around to how I think yet….in how to become the biggest bodybuilder at the quickest rate but keeping leaness on that journey?

d)Something you guys might want to try for your forearm belly that has worked better for me than alot of other things is a (belly of the forearm) extreme stretch done exactly after biceps or wrist curls or whatever you are doing for forearms. Its as simple as this–once youve done biceps and forearms and have already stretched your biceps–or directly after your last rep of seated wrist curls…sitting on a seat with your forearms resting on your legs and the barbell in your palms face up…let your hands sag downward and let the barbell roll down the palm of your hand and hold onto it with your fingers until you feel that stretch and then the fun begins (30-90 seconds thats what your trying for)..dont let the topside of your hands hit your shin because that defeats the purpose….at about 30 seconds youll start shaking…45 seconds your head will be twitching from side to side because there is so much pain and it feels like your going to lose the barbell with your grip and if you make it to 60 YOU ARE THE MAN…but 90 seconds is the goal…(trust me you wont make it–its too fucking painful)….youll get to the point youll have to drop the barbell on the floor and take 30 seconds just to get your wits about you. Be very careful with this movement, I dont want you tweaking your wrists here so be cautious. For those who do this, take a long look at your forearms the very next day in the mirror, flex your forearm and I think youll be very surprised at how different/swollen it is. Thats all that needs to be done—let me know 3 months from now how different they look

e)Its about time I start showing you guys some new exercises from the DC arsenal–I got about 50 you guys have never seen but Ill throw this one at you for now. Maybe Ill just have you guys throw out a bodypart one of these days in a post and ill give you new exercises you can do for that bodypart (time willing)
Pulley row high pulls-awesome for lat width here guys–this is going to be a pain in my ass to explain but lets see if i can do it–god its so much easier showing someone these in person. First up–do you know that position that is at the bottom of a stiff leg deadlift if you do it very deep (some people dont)–remember that position because that is key here ok?
Ok-Your on a seated cable row with a close grip parallel handle–your legs are slightly bent–your aiming for the greatest amount of stretch possible at the very beginning of the pull ok so remember that you should be in that “position” above or close to it (I talked about earlier) thruout this whole movement. With your back rounded and you leaning forward (huge stretch) you pull the handle to right about 3 inches above the kneecaps, thats it. At no point do you stick your chest out and arch your back and pull the handle into your midsection and sit straight up as in a seated pulley row, what you do instead is flare your lats at the stretch at the very beginning and keep your lats flared till you pull right over your kneecaps and then control the return to the stretch and repeat. Because your bent forward in a position that doesnt put your back in a precarious safety position you will have no worries with a rounded back. I guess a simple way i could describe it is
a)huge stretch at beginning
b)do half a pulley row movement but dont lean your torso backward or arch your back–keep it stabilized maybe only moving a few inches the whole movement
c)keep your lats flared outwards the whole way thru and dont crunch your scapula together–pull with your lats and pull the handle 2-3 inches over your kneecaps and return——15-30 reps rest paused is the deal on these and you will not be using the weight you use on seated pulley rows so wipe that from your memory banks

PAYING YOUR DUES

This post is for everyone in this forum–its very important to read over–VERY IMPORTANT. Want to know the average trainee that comes to me? He is 35-45 years old and after 10-15 years of lifting weighs 175 to 210lbs. He looks at me as the guy that somehow can pull a bunny out of a hat and make him that 250lb ripped bodybuilder walking the streets…. where he couldnt even get close to that level by himself. He is scrambling around because he doesnt want to get to 50 years old never feeling what it was like to walk thru a crowd and people gawk, stare, and point because he is a damn good bodybuilder. Well what the hell have you been doing all these years?!?!?! You should of put in your f*^&ing dues like the rest of us. These same guys think Im a miracle worker that can somehow add 80lbs of muscle mass on their frame while losing 30lbs of fat while keeping incredibly lean thruout the journey to get there. Well guess what? YOU FUCKED UP. Want to know the fastest way to walk around at 250 ripped–THE ABSOLUTELY G’DAMN FASTEST WAY TO GET THERE? TAKE 2 YEARS AND EAT HUGE AMOUNTS OF FOOD, AND TRAIN WITH BRUTALLY HEAVY WEIGHTS, AND BECOME A BIG FAT OFFENSIVE LINEMAN LOOKING GUY AT 330LBS….AND NO IT WONT BE PRETTY…AT ALL. MOST OF ALL DONT DO ANYTHING THAT COULD POSSIBLY EVEN IMPEDE THE SLIGHTEST IN MUSCLE MASS GAIN. Just eat copious amounts of food (up to 500-600 grams of protein) and bring your bodyweight up the charts which will allow you leverage and strength gains to allow you use the incredible weights you have to use in the gym to accomplish this. Then after being at that level for density reasons for awhile, you can slowly take it down and I mean slowly and most likely have the most muscle mass gain your genetics allowed in that time frame. That is the probably the fastest way in the shortest time to get there. But definitely not the most desirable but truth is truth. Am i recommending that approach–HELL NO, but if we are talking about getting this done as fast as humanly possible then I have to be blunt. Noone wants to look like a fat slob even if it means the end result will be much closer to their ideal. And these guys 35-45 years old want me to keep them pretty boy lean and wave the magic wand and make them into Milos Sarcev after they pretty much just wasted 10-15 years of training.
I dont like using myself for an example but I will here. I started training at about 20 at 137lbs and predominantly spent the next 15 years eating tremendous amounts of food, training with very heavy weights but keeping active so I am at a leaness I personally am satisfied with. I topped out at about 303lbs and but currently hang around 283-288 because thats what I like to be at. I put my dues in here. I might jump in a show if time allows but because of my schedule currently we will have to see how that works out. Mainly Im looking forward to the day I can kind of relax and not push the limits like I have all these years. The 6 meals a day every day, and the war with the logbook along with lugging around 285-300lbs sometimes becomes very tedious. I go to bed at nite thinking exactly what Im going to do and what all this hard work will easily allow myself to do when I decide to crank the dial downward. Cardio will be done 6 times a week for health and bodyfat reasons and that will take priority.
Back to the subject on hand here. So what will all this hard work for the past 15 years allow me to do? I’m in my mid 30’s now so for the rest of my 30’s and thru my 40′ and 50’s i can pretty much walk around at 250lbs hard as a rock at a very low bodyfat percentage. Ive set myself up so that will be very very easy. I actually have to do much less than everything I do now (except cardio) to be there. Ill use guys in this forum for examples, Inhuman and massive G are both around 5’9″, 5’10” and are offseason 280 to 300. They have spent the time and food consumption and paid their dues to get there. Massive G I believe is mid 30’s and Inhuman is early 40’s I believe. Both these guys will be able to crank this down and enjoy walking around with full abs, hard as granite with veins everywhere at 240-260lbs. They have set themselves up and paid their dues in their 20’s and 30’s to do that. You guys that are 35-45 years old who want this but weigh 175-210lbs are playing catchup and are so behind the race its sad. My point of this post is to get guys in their early 20’s to think, to get guys who just blew 10 years of training who are in their 30’s to think, and to get guys who just blew 10-15 years of training who are in their 40’s to think. Am I advising bulking up? No that was a hypothetical example. Im advising you get your freaking head on straight if you want this so bad. That means extreme food intake pronto, with the heaviest weights in good form that you can use progressively, extreme stretching and enough cardio (and bodyfat protocols) that it keeps you at a leaness your satisfied with as you get dramatically larger. This sport isnt unlike a career. You have to set yourself up early so you can be right where you want to be late. Theres alot of you guys 35-45 years old in this forum, some that I even train, that think they want it but really dont have what it takes to go get it. I see it in their workouts they send me (they take the easy comfortable road never pushing the limits) and for those that I dont train I sometimes see it in your posts—you just dont have what it takes. I can only provide a guide to get there, I cant create an inner drive for you.
You have to start thinking in terms of point B from point A. Do you really think that eating 3000 calories with 225 grams of protein and doing the Weider “confusion training principle” to keep your body offguard will somehow magically make your 175lbs into 250lbs of rock granite monstrosity? Every year of training is so damn important. If you just trained for a whole year and only gained 2lbs of muscle mass, you just pretty much wasted a productive year of training–its gone–its lost and you arent getting that year back. Three weeks ago I was contacted by someone in his early 40’s who had been lifting for many years, weighed about 170lbs and showed me a picture of Geir Borgan Paulsen and said thats what he wanted to look like and can i get him there?!. Laughable. Geir Borgan Paulsen is 50 years old and looks freaking phenomenal. He is a tiny bit (and i mean every so slightly tiny bit smaller) than he was when he competed in his 30’s. Instead of wasting years and years of lifting getting absolutely nowhere, Geir spent his 20’s and 30’s eating huge amounts of food and training with heavy heavy weights so that he could walk around all thru his 30’s, 40’s and now 50 years old jacked to the hilt. Not many people have a better front double biceps than Geir no matter what age they are…..here he is http://www.nutritionoutlet.nu/galler…02/borgan.html
What Im hoping to relay to you slackers and dreamers that are in this forum is that you have to put your time in and pay your dues in this sport. Your 2-3lbs gain a year arent going to get it done so unless you want to get to 55 years old and look back and think “wow besides the people I told and myself, noone even knew I was a bodybuilder and I never made it”….you better get your ass in gear and your head on right and get this done now. Gaining fat is easy but if you never lifted how long would it take for you to gain 80lbs of fat from 175 to 255lbs? Probably a year and you would have to forcefeed yourself to get there. Just think how long it takes to put on 80lbs of muscle mass which is an extremely “hard to come by” commodity. This sport is about extremes–using weights you havent used previously, taking in amounts of food to build greater muscle mass-in amounts you never have done previously, and GETTING THE CARDIO DONE to keep you at an acceptable offseason training bodyfat that keeps you happy. Get your act together and think this all out or quit your complaining and dreaming and take up tennis.

OVERANALYZING

Im seeing a repetitive phenomenon with the people I train that I want to state here. Ive trained alot of people now in the last 2 years on the net and also in person previously. I keep noticing the same things-basically on how various trainees brain’s work. When people contact me for training, the guys who have a big work ethic and believe in a system of training whether its mine or westside or 5×5 or whatever, and hammer it and hammer it hard come to me as big people already. These are the bodybuilders you see out there in the street. Big guys that you know lift, there is no doubt that they are bodybuilders. On the other hand I have gotten alot of guys who have been lifting 5-10 years and you would never know they lifted even once unless they made it a point to tell you about it (and many do–LOL). And Ill tell you what the overwhelming continual trait those guys have. THEY OVERTHINK THIS, OVERANALYZE, keep second guessing themselves, follow this routine this month and that routine the next, and Flex magazine the third month. It all depends on what they happen to read that week. HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW WHAT WORKS IF YOU SWITCH IT EVERY DAMN MONTH? Ive showed TPC some of these emails in the warehouse and he didnt realize the extent of what I was telling him about. Ive had a couple guys in the last 2 months who have been lifting for 5-10 years and by their pics it would be embarrassing to tell anyone that they actually lift. Both of these guys are sending me emails talking about iso-tension at the top of bicep curls, worrying up and down about the statics, should i flex the pinky finger inward to make more of a contraction on my alternate curl, should my forearm be perpendicular to the earths axis at the bottom of the shoulder press (you get the drift). I went off on one guy and felt bad about it after but he kept saying “well how I used to do it is…” and “well Ive always done it this way” My answer was “well why do you look like shit if your old way worked so well”? Noone will ever know who these trainees are because its my business only but I want them to read this to get it clear in their heads. If you double triple or quadruple your training weights in good safe form over the next year/s or so your basically (with diet) going to be double or triple your current muscular size. If your going to sit there and overanalyze this shit like its rocket science (which it isnt I dont care what anyone tries to make it out to be) and worry about things that really arent going to add up to pounds of muscle mass, then blame yourself when you never get there. Are you going to be a happy man at 50 years old when you look back and think “Wow I screwed up, I never looked like a bodybuilder, never achieved my goals, never got dramatically bigger, and its gone now…..IM too old to make up for that lost time” because thats where alot of you are heading if you dont get your heads on straight. I blame alot of the muscle magazines for this. Alot of articles are ghost written for pros or are solo articles by people who are 165lbs who never made a huge change in their physique themselves. They try to portray lifting weights as this huge science (and they splurge up their articles with 8 vowel words and searching thru the thesaurus to find a word that makes them look extremely intelligent)–I go back to the beggining of cycles for pennies on this—The absolute strongest you can make yourself in all exercises, coupled with food intake to eat your way up to the new musculature will allow you to hold the most muscle mass on your body that your genetics predetermine. You want to worry bout something? Worry about that damn logbook. Worry about staying uninjured in your quest. Worry about not missing any meals. Worry about somehow someway making yourself the strongest bodybuilder you can become. Im not talking singles here. Im talking 9-15 reps rest paused. A brute. A behemoth. A human forklift. I guess i had to use this post to vent because TPC saw me pissed off in the warehouse today after answering emails such as “Dante should I try to isolate the upper portion of the pec muscle and hold the peak contraction and flex hard at the top of every rep for about 5 seconds?” If you have been lifting many years with no muscle mass to show the last thing you need to worry about is peak contraction–GET THE DAMN WEIGHT UP AND BEAT THE LOGBOOK WITH BIG WEIGHT JUMPS (and then Ill and you will be happy)

MISCELLANEOUS

Someone asked about DC mods here in a post last week and I thought i would add my input here. I always stay in the scheme of things but I tune things to myself.
For example: I always look for ways to make an exercise harder and safer for myself. By safer-such as back thickness movements such as deadlifts, rack deads and rack drag deads….I have gotten very strong on these and now I will only do them with overhand grips instead of an over under. I dont want to be tearing a bicep due to the very heavy weight i have to use on these and going overhand forces me to lighten up somewhat and takes alot of stress off that undergrip bicep. (Ive gone as high as 765lbs on rack deads and really felt it pull there and will never tread those dangerous waters again)
Tricep exercises: i will not do any extension movements at any less than 15rp and ill keep the range 15-30rp on those. I can get very heavy on ez bar movements and feel the potential for a muscle tear is great when you start grinding out sets like 6+3+2=11rp
Bicep exercises I always keep in the 20rp range just because i seem to respond better that way and also for the safety factor
Quads, I tell everyone to do a 4-8 backbreaker set with very heavy tonnage and then a widowmaker set of 20 reps and i do this myself but honestly at this heavy of a bodyweight, there have been times where I really thought I was going to cease living after getting off a 20 rep squat because I was breathing so hard and couldnt get enough oxygen in my lungs to sustain me. My gym is on the second floor with no open windows at all, just central air ducts—for some strange reason, its ok breathing sometimes and other times (especially in a crowded gym) your gasping for air after a heavy chest set nevermind the 20 rep squat set. I do believe the lighter guys in the 150 to 250lb range in this forum can still get away with doing things normally but the very heavy guys might be biting carpet on a hot day after a 20 rep squat. So at times Ive done it like the following–on day one i do free squats shit heavy and then the hack for my 20 repper (which leaves me breathing like a locomotive anyway) and on the other day I do the newer leg press for both my heavy and widowmaker sets and on the last leg day i do smythe squats shit heavy and then the widowmaker on the older leg press. So as you see same scheme just some tweaks i do for myself if you were curious.

DC workout schedules for various people

——————————————————————————–

I probably should of written this a while back but I see alot of people asking about it now. Schedules. Most of the people I personally train I have them on the monday wenesday friday monday scheme with bodyparts split like this
a)
Chest
Shoulders
Triceps
Back width
BAck thickness

b)
biceps
forearms
calves
hams
quads

What is important about that is there is always a day between workouts and that lends itself to all important recovery/rest. Another variation of this above that some of the really heavy trainers I train like is Tues (full workout) Thurs (full workout) Sat (half workout) Sun (other half workout)

Some of my extremely advanced trainers and some of the guys who need very short workouts I have them do the following. What I do with those people works right along the same lines as the M W F M scheme I always use–almost the same frequency with extremely short workouts. And if anyone who has been doing DC training for a long while, likes this schedule better I have no problem with them going over to it. It is Mon Tues Thurs Fri (with weekends off) or something to that effect according to their schedule and the body is split up like this:

A)
biceps
forearms
back width
back thickness

B)
Chest
Shoulders
Triceps

C)
Calves
Hams
Quads

So you see that on Friday biceps and back is hit again and then the next week workout b will be hit twice and during week 3 workout c will be hit twice. The frequency of bodyparts hit is almost like the original M W F M plan. On this split which i use with highly advanced trainees I use it to bomb their weak bodyparts (which I dont feel you can do without potentially overtraining on the MWF scheme) The downsides to this 3 way split are the obvious non day off between workouts and you have to be very very careful with order of exercises on this plan. For example I would never have you doing full range deadlifts the day after a squat day–you would be destroyed. You have to look over the whole scheme and make sure your back thickness exercise is not going to be effected by your hamstring or quad exercise. I would probably skip stiff legged deadlifts for hamstrings totally during this routine because of the heavy back thickness exercises. I would probably rotate seated standing and lying leg curls for someone doing this. Your workouts though would be 30-60 minutes tops and thats tops and your out of there. The bad points of setting it up this way is that you lose that whole day of rest between workouts and Ive seen over time that most people seem to gain a slight bit better with that full day of rest. The other bad point is although the frequency of bodyparts trained is similiar, its a bit less over time (bodyparts trained about 81 times a year in the M W F scheme and 69 times a year in the second scheme above) ………

PS: I put back/bis before chest/shoulder/tri in the rotation because alot of people get really sore in the shoulder/chest area the day after chest. This can make it very hard sometimes on back width and back thickness exercises (especially back width) and Im trying to keep injuries to a minimum. The downside to this is when leg day falls directly after chest day, you are going to have to stretch out thoroughly in the delt/chest area to get your shoulders/arms on the bar for squatting.

Without a doubt–the mon wed fri split gets people bigger faster than any other split and the 3 way mon tues thurs fri split is a step below it on that front, but I am able to get up weak bodyparts a little bit better on the 3 way split–so remember that if you are overanxious to jump to the 3 way split, your actually gaining overall muscle mass slightly faster with the mon wed fri split

post

Supplements for Weightlifting

by Leave a Comment

Below I’ll lay out my weightlifting supplement plan, which is based in large part of the research of Dr. John Hussman (www.Hussmanfitness.com) as well as several other sources.

Links go directly to the product at TrueNutrition.com.  They have by far the best tasting protein mixes in my experience and according to several weightlifting forums.  Search their forum for flavor ideas.  Of those I’ve had, Premium Strawberries ‘n’ Cream is delicious.

Pre-Workout:
Small cup of coffee (caffeinated, no sugar);

Creatine Monohydrate, mixed with Apple Juice (cloudy juice is best)

Post-Workout:
Whey Protein; minimum 10g, 100 calories
I use two mixes from TrueNutrition.com:
1) DC’s Protein Formula
2)  Team Skip Formula 
TrueNutrition mixes easily with water or milk simply using a spoon, and they have awesome flavors.  My favorite is Premium Strawberries-n-Cream.

Leucine (free-form, L-Leucine)
I use 4:1:1 ratio recommended by Hussman

HMB

Glutamine (free-form)

Other:

Omega 3 Fish Oil

Vitamin C

Note: As a mixer for mixing any of above powders with water, can use Crystal Light (Raspberry), or Gatorade mix.

Source:   http://www.hussmanfitness.com/html/TLEnergySystems.html
Summary: Training your four energy systems
Workouts [need to do a mix of below in order to train all systems]:

CP System: Short wind sprints and low-volume high-weight sets (4-7 reps)
Anaerobic System: Extended wind sprints and mid-range resistance training (8-12 reps) [primary muscle-building system]
Aerobic System: Sustained aerobic activity (20-40 minutes)
Fat Burning: Glycogen-depleting exercises (all of the above)

Supplements:
CP System: Creatine monohydrate mixed with small amount of apple juice
Anaerobic System: Post-exercise protein (whey, leucine, HMB), glutamine, vitamin C
Aerobic System: Post-exercise carbohydrate (45-60 minutes after)
Fat Burning: Pre-exercise coffee (caffeinated, no sugar), restrict breads, sugars and other high-glycemic carbohydrates except possibly in the post-exercise meal. Avoid dangerous supplements containing ephedra or “ma huang.”

 

http://www.hussmanfitness.com/html/TFPostProtein.html

Remember, high-intensity exercise is a form of stress, and stress raises the level of a hormone called cortisol which triggers muscle breakdown. Even about 40 calories of whey protein (or 1-2 grams of free-form leucine) is evidently enough to trigger new protein synthesis. This is useful after both weight training and cardio workouts. After weight workouts, you might also combine that protein intake with a few grams of carbohydrate (even the amount in a serving of Betagen or an ounce of apple juice). This can shut down cortisol without significantly impairing your fat-loss progress. If you’re after fat loss too, you should still wait about 45 minutes before having a more complete meal. But the research is increasingly clear that a little bit of protein-rich nutrition – less than 100 calories – can be very effective after workouts.

Also:

http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2011/05/11/whey-protein-shown-superior-to-other-milk-proteins-for-building-muscle.aspx

post

The Perfect Grilled Salmon

by Leave a Comment

I’ll be grilling a lot more fresh salmon now that I found out how to grill it with the skin on.

Summary: On a very hot grill, grill skin side UP for 2 minutes; then grill skin side DOWN for 5 more minutes.

I adjust these times +/- a minute depending on thickness of filet. After cooking, the skin is removed easily with a spatula.

post

How to Build 50 Pounds of Muscle in 12 Months

by Leave a Comment

by Nate Green
via T-Nation

I tossed my cell phone onto the couch, stood up, and exhaled loudly. Instant relief. I had just finished an hour-long phone interview with SM, the insider responsible for schooling me on what is allegedly one of the world’s most effective hypertrophy programs, and now I understood.

The phone call with SM was the last piece of the puzzle on my quest to dissect the specifics of Doggcrapp training — “DC” to its advocates. Were people really gaining up to 50 pounds of muscle in one year while training just three days per week? Was “extreme stretching” a viable methodology rooted in science, or was it a branch of mookonomics, the peculiar belief system of the most passionate but least informed muscleheads?

And just what the hell was “blasting” and “cruising,” and how did it differ from other periodization models? These were all questions I wondered before we began.

A few days before, I’d read more than 100 pages of forum posts and articles, and even traded short emails with Dante Trudel, the creator of the program, who promptly rejected my request for an interview. His note caught me off guard.

“I just don’t want to talk about it with anybody. Sorry.”

I immediately replied. “Is there any one else I can talk with?”

The next day, Trudel emailed me back. I had a feeling he did so reluctantly.

“There’s a guy I have full confidence in who could answer your questions. I attached his number.”

So I called Trudel’s mystery informant.

“He just doesn’t want DC training to be this huge, popular thing,” SM told me when I asked about Trudel’s detached disposition. “He hates trends and doesn’t want people to see it as one.”

Trudel’s response suddenly made a little more sense. Perhaps it was a protective measure from a passionate coach tired of seeing his master thesis bastardized and manipulated by unenlightened gym rats. Or maybe he was just really sick of talking about it.

Regardless, T NATION readers aren’t your average gym rats. We know the beauty of a well-written program, but also carry a healthy skepticism and demand proof of results, whether they come from the laboratory or from gym experience. We won’t just swallow any old turd of a program, even if at first glance it appears to be a Snickers bar. We’ll at least sniff it first.

Stepping in Crapp

“So why did Dante send me to you?” I asked SM when our conversation began.

“Because I got where he was coming from. I did so much research — more than I probably should have — and he caught on that I knew my stuff. Most other guys make it way too complicated.”

A DC convert since 2006, SM has gained over 50 pounds of muscle since he started.

“Dante’s a great observer,” he told me soon after we started talking. “He started off like most guys and did high-volume programs he got out of Flex.” But at 19 years old, six-foot-one, and 137 pounds, it was obvious it wasn’t working for the DC creator.

“He started interviewing a bunch of top bodybuilding pros, and realized the biggest guys often had three things in common,” SM said. “They trained as heavy as they could. They trained each body part more than once per week. And they were all relatively flexible. That, I think, was the impetus for DC training.”

Armed with a new philosophy to go with years of gym experience, Trudel came up with a system that not only stood in direct defiance of the traditional bodybuilder’s routine, but also helped him pack well over 100 pounds of muscle onto his frame. By his own account, he reached 242 pounds training drug-free, got up to 303 with steroids (and felt miserable at that size), and now, at age 40, is content with a body weight that ranges from 270 to 287.

Trudel unleashed Doggcrapp, named after his screen name on a popular bodybuilding forum, to the masses in 1999.

Developed exclusively for the advanced trainee interested in rapid hypertrophy — “Don’t even think about trying DC if you’ve been in the gym for less than three years, or are a weekend warrior guy,” SM warned — Doggcrapp training has been called sadistic, intense, traumatic, and amazing, and has garnered attention from professional bodybuilders such as David Henry, Junior USA champion Jason Wojciechowski, and thousands of other pro, amateur, and wannabe bodybuilders around the world.

Dogg Pause

DC is centered on the belief that using progressively heavier weights, training with lower overall volume, and hitting each body part more than once a week is the perfect way to stimulate muscle fibers and subsequently build mounds of muscle.

While a typical bodybuilder might train each individual muscle group once per week — 52 times a year — with multiple sets and reps, DC focuses on hitting the same body part at least 50 percent more often, but with only one real work set per training session.

That one set, as you probably guessed, is absolutely brutal.

“The cornerstone of DC training is the rest-pause technique,” SM explained. “It’s what makes DC so damn hard and effective.”

If you read this recent T NATION article by Clay Hyght, you’re familiar with rest-pause training.

Here’s the official DC methodology, which is slightly different from Dr. Clay’s version:

Say you’re getting ready to do barbell military presses. After a few warm-up sets (there’s no specific guideline for this, according to SM; just do what you need to do to get your joints and muscles ready to work), you load the bar with a weight you think you can lift 10 times. Do as many reps as you can with perfect form until technical failure, the point at which you can’t do another perfect rep.

Put the weight down and take 10 to 15 deep belly breaths. “The deep breaths help supply the body with oxygen and let you partially recover,” SM said.

Pick up the weight and do another set of perfect reps until you once again reach technical failure.

Set it down, take 10 to 15 more breaths, and then bang out a few more perfect reps.

Your goal is to do between 11 and 15 total reps. “If you get 15 or more, you know you’ll have to increase the weight the next time you do the exercise,” SM explained. And if you get fewer than 11, it means you need to either lower the weight or shoot for more reps the next time.

To make it even more brutal, some advanced guys do one static rep to extend the set. Continuing with the shoulder press example, after you set the weight down for the third time, you’d take 10 to 15 more breaths, pick it up, and then hold it in a “power position” (elbows slightly bent), with the muscles under tension for 30 to 60 seconds. But this is only recommended for advanced guys.

Not every exercise uses the rest-pause technique. “For safety reasons, we don’t do it on quads, calves, or back-thickness exercises like deadlifts, rack pulls, or bent-over rows,” SM said. They do straight sets for those exercises.

Not every rep range is between 11 and 15. On the Widowmaker, for example, you do an all-out set of 20 reps on the squat with a heavy weight.

Even on rest-pause sets, the reps will end up between 20 and 30 for biceps and triceps exercises, and if you switch to dumbbells over barbells or machines on compound exercises, you’ll also increase reps.

The reps may be high, but that doesn’t mean any aspect of the training is easy. On DC message boards, a regular theme is the need to work hard enough to elicit a positive response from each rep.

“If guys stopped being pussies in the gym and actually started pushing themselves, they’d see a lot more muscle growth,” SM said. “That’s why we usually only have one set to complete, technical failure. You have to work hard.”

Since I’ve heard those words before, I had to ask: How is this different from high-intensity training?

“Arthur Jones’ HIT had 12 to 15 exercises done in circuit fashion, and he hardly used warm-up sets,” SM replied. “Sure, they used low volume and trained to failure, but that’s where the similarities end.

“Darden’s stuff about only picking eight exercises and stopping short of failure is a step in the right direction, but it still wouldn’t work long-term for advanced guys. And Mentzer had the right idea, but then went way off the deep end with post-failure training and pre-exhausts. He threw negatives, statics, drops, and everything but the kitchen sink into his sets. His trainees were toast.”

According to SM, Doggcrapp is the perfect middle ground because it allows you to combine the best aspects of all-out failure training with optimal training frequency.

Cutting the Crapp

To the outsider, DC training can be confusing, since the methodologies seem to have been written in stone, and at the same time left open to personal interpretation. Make changes to the plan too soon after starting, and you’ll feel the wrath of the Doggpound — the fervent followers of DC — who’ll say you’re setting yourself up for failure. But if you don’t change the program to meet your individual needs, they’ll say you’re begging for lackluster results.

Here’s what I mean:

Trudel recommends that every DC beginner start off with what’s called a two-way split. T NATION readers would probably recognize it as an ABA, BAB split, which looks like this:

Week One:
Monday — Workout A
Wednesday — Workout B
Friday — Workout A

Week Two:
Monday — Workout B
Wednesday — Workout A
Friday — Workout B

Every “A” workout targets these body parts, in this order:

Chest
Shoulders
Triceps
Back width
Back thickness

The “B” workout hits these muscles, in this order:

Biceps
Forearms
Calves
Hamstrings
Quads

That’s the “written in stone” part. “We really hate it when guys start tweaking the program and start moving body parts around,” SM told me. “Dante’s been doing this for 17 years, and has tried all the variations. I don’t know why people think they need to make it better.”

I can tell him why: Because it’s completely counterintuitive to train big, strong muscles like hamstrings and quads at the end of the B workout, after training smaller muscles like biceps, forearms, and calves.

SM has heard the question about exercise order many times before, and has an answer: “We try to put the hardest exercises last so we don’t have to save energy for the rest of the workout if we were to do them first.”

When he hears the predictable follow-up to his response — “What the hell does that mean?” — he offers some clarification:

“After doing a straight set of squats, followed by a Widowmaker, the last thing you’d want to do is train more. That’s why we put them at the end. So we can wait 15 minutes and then crawl out of the gym.”

Old Dogg, New Tricks

Next comes exercise selection — the “open to personal interpretation” part. For each muscle group, you pick three exercises, which must meet two criteria:

• They offer the best results for the effort.

• They offer you the best chance to significantly increase the amount of weight you lift, over time.

So a military press is a good choice for training shoulders in Workout A, since you can progress from 100 to 200 pounds. But a lateral raise is a bad choice, since you can only increase in smaller increments — from 25 to 50 pounds, say. In either case you’d be doubling your strength on that exercise, but the focus is on the raw numbers rather than percentage increases. (That’ll make more sense when you read the next section, in which SM explains Doggcrapp’s approach to progression and periodization.)

These are considered the best exercises for each body part:

Chest:

Incline press (barbell, Smith machine, dumbbells)
Decline press (barbell, Smith machine, dumbbells)
Chest machine (Hammer Strength, Cybex, Nautilus, etc.)
Dip (wide grip, if shoulder health allows it)

The barbell press on a flat bench is shunned, although it’s fine to use dumbbells. If you really can’t resist the urge, Trudel recommends benching like a powerlifter, with your elbows tucked.

Shoulders:

Military press (standing or seated, using a barbell or Smith machine)
Dumbbell press
Machine press

Triceps:

Wide reverse-grip Smith machine press
Close-grip press (barbell or Smith machine)
Dip

Back width:

Pull-up or chin-up
Lat pulldown (wide, close, reverse, neutral)
Pulldown machine

Back thickness:

Deadlift
Barbell bent-over row (overhand or underhand)
Hammer Strength row (this is the only back thickness exercise on which you’re encouraged to use the rest-pause technique)

Biceps:

Barbell standing curl
Dumbbell alternating curl
Cable curl (any bar attachment)

Forearms:

Hammer curl
Pinwheel curl (a diagonal hammer curl, in which you bring the weight to your chest)
Barbell reverse curl
Forearm exercises use straight sets exclusively.

Calves:

Doggpounders train calves with one straight set, 10 to 12 reps. Sound easy? It totally isn’t. On each rep, you do a five-second negative, hold in the fully stretched position at the bottom for 15 seconds, and then do an explosive concentric, coming all the way up on your toes. According to SM, calves are one of the most intense and painful body parts to work.

Standing calf raise
Seated calf raise
Donkey calf raise

Hamstrings:

Leg curl
Romanian or stiff-legged deadlift
Glute-ham raise

Quads:

All quadriceps exercises are done with one straight set of four to eight reps, followed by as much rest as you need, and then a Widowmaker — 20 reps — of the same exercise.

Back squat
Front squat
Leg press

Once you’ve chosen your three exercises for each body part, you slot them into Workout A or B, and then rotate through them. (You’ll find a complete sample workout at the end of this article.)

So the first time you do A, you’ll use your first selection of each exercise. Next time, you’ll use your second selection, and the third time you’ll use your third selection. Thus, you do six different workouts — three each of A and B — in the first two weeks, then repeat those workouts in weeks three and four.

The exercises you select should reflect your needs and goals. “If you have a weak chest, you don’t want to do skull crushers for your triceps,” SM said. You’d pick dips or close-grip bench presses instead, giving you an extra exercise for your chest without cheating your triceps.

Interestingly, Doggcrapp followers are agnostic when it comes to exercise equipment. They’ll train with barbells, dumbbells, cables, Hammer Strength machines, and even the widely condemned Smith machine.

“You’re going to run out of free-weight compound exercises pretty fast,” SM explained. “Besides, machines allow you to get into different mechanical positions and grips. It’s not a last resort. It’s a regular part of the program.”

I asked SM how often should you change exercises. The answer is pretty straightforward: “As soon as you’re no longer adding weight to the bar, or if your progress has significantly dropped off, then you know it’s time to switch the exercise up.”

According to Trudel, one of the worst things you can do is to change exercises while still gaining strength on your current program. The idea is to squeeze everything you can out of each exercise you do. Once you’ve topped out, try something else … and squeeze the hell out of that one, too.

“You can always come back to the original exercise after a few more cycles,” SM told me. “You’ll actually be surprised at how much more weight you can handle when you get back to it.”

Cardio Is Crapp

Doggcrapp, unlike HIT and some other all-or-nothing training philosophies, includes regular cardio. Trudel recommends that most guys start off with three to four 30-minute sessions of low-intensity cardio on non-training days.

“We usually do it before breakfast so we use fat instead of glycogen for energy,” SM said.

What about high-intensity interval training, or martial arts, or sports in general?

“If you think you can do HIIT or MMA, or even play flag football on the weekends, then you’re out of your mind,” SM explained. “The training is just way too intense to be able to do any of that on your off-days.”

A Dogg with Wings

So far, what I’ve described seems like a complete training program. You’ve got wipeout-intensity strength training, with low-intensity cardio on your non-training days. What else could there be?

Stretching. And not the kind that feels good, or that you do to improve mobility or function. They call it “extreme” stretching, the goal of which is to expand the fascia surrounding the muscle bellies, allowing the muscle to grow bigger than it otherwise would.

“Dante got it from John Parrillo back in the ’80s,” SM said. “There was a particular study done on birds that showed after they stretched a muscle and did a biopsy on the wing, it had a significant increase in muscle fibers and size.”

Whether you agree with the theory or not — the study cited was from the mid-1990s, and involved birds that didn’t need to fly after the researchers finished stretching their wing muscles — it’s an integral part of the DC program and not taken lightly. In fact, the stretches are usually done with added weight. A stretch for your chest, for example, may involve holding some relatively heavy dumbbells in the bottom position of a flat dumbbell flye.

“You have to try and hold each stretch for 60 to 90 seconds, although most people can only handle 30 seconds or so at first,” SM explained. “It’s hell.”

Crapping All Over Your Book

Walk into any gym and you’ll see two types of people who carry logbooks around: absolute beginners, and really advanced guys.

Unfortunately, most of us fall right into that middle area.

“The logbook is the whole program,” SM told me. “How the hell are you supposed to progress if you don’t even know what you lifted two weeks ago?”

That’s why every single DC training session — from the actual working sets to the stretches — is meticulously documented.

“With my methods, you’re held accountable for today’s workouts versus the last time you did the exact same workout,” Trudel explained in an interview a few years ago. “My trainees look back on their logbooks and find out that they are sometimes lifting 50 to 200 pounds heavier on those exercises months later. What does that equal? Adaptation and rapid muscle-mass accumulation.”

Spend some time surfing through the posts here and you’ll see quite a few mentions of “beating the logbook.”

If there’s one thing to learn from Doggcrapp training that applies to just about any other system you try, this may be the most important.

Bonus: A Complete Doggcrapp Workout

I put together this sample DC workout, with SM’s guidance, to show you how the system fits together. As explained earlier, you select three different exercises for each muscle group, and do one of them per workout. So in each blast phase you’ll have three different A and B workouts, which take two weeks to complete. After two weeks, you repeat the cycle, adding weight and/or reps with each exercise.

Quick notes:

• Do one to three warm-up sets before every exercise. Don’t skip warm-ups entirely, for any exercise.

• Every rep should consist of a controlled eccentric (lowering) and a rapid concentric (lifting).

• Rest as long as you need to between sets.

The following charts use three definitions specific to Doggcrapp:

RP — rest-pause
SS — straight sets
WM — Widowmaker

Remember that A workouts hit chest, shoulders, triceps, back width, and back thickness, in that order. B workouts train biceps, forearms, calves, hamstrings, and quads.

WEEK 1

Workout A1
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Barbell incline bench press     1     11-15 RP
Dumbbell seated military press     1     15-30 RP
Dip     1     15-20 RP
Wide-grip lat pulldown     1     15-20 RP
Deadlift     2     5-8 or 9-12 SS

Workout B1
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Barbell curl     1     20-30 RP
Hammer curl     1     11-20 SS
Standing calf raise     1     10-12 SS*
Glute-ham raise     1     15-20 RP
Leg press     2     4-8 SS +WM

* Explode to the top, perform a 5-second negative, and then stretch at the bottom for 15 seconds on every rep.

Workout A2
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Dumbbell flat bench press     1     20-30 RP
Barbell seated military press     1     11-15 RP
Close-grip bench press     1     11-15 RP
Hammer Strength pulldown machine     1     15-20 RP
Barbell bent-over row     1     10-12 SS

WEEK 2

Workout B2
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Preacher curl     1     20-30 RP
Barbell reverse curl     1     11-20 SS
Leg-press calf raise     1     10-12 SS
Lying leg curl     1     15-20 RP
Back squat     2     4-8 SS + WM

Workout A3
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Hammer Strength flat bench press     1     11-15 RP
Smith machine seated military press     1     11-15 RP
EZ-bar skull crusher     1     15-30 RP
Close-grip chin-up     1     15-20 RP
T-bar row     1     10-12 SS

Workout B3
Exercise     Sets     Reps
Dumbbell curl     1     20-30 RP
Pinwheel curl     1     11-20 SS
Seated calf raise     1     10-12 SS
Machine hack squat     2     6-10 SS + WM
Barbell Romanian deadlift*     1     10-15 SS

* The only time you train hamstrings after quads is when you do Romanian and stiff-legged deadlift variations. They only appear in workouts with leg presses or machine hack squats, so you avoid stressing your lower-back stabilizers after they’ve already been challenged with exercises like front or back squats.

Two cautionary notes:

• Several weeks into your first blast phase, you may feel more run-down than usual. Feel free to take off a Friday workout, use the long weekend to recover, and start fresh on Monday.

• If you’re over 35, you may want to go for more reps with somewhat lighter weights on the rest-pause sets. So you’d shoot for 15 to 20 total reps, rather than 11 to 15.

But most important of all is to log every rep of every workout, and continue cycling through these workouts as long as you’re still “beating the logbook” and making gains. Remember, if you aren’t beating the book, you’re just beating your meat.

post

Daniel Craig ‘James Bond’ Workout

by Leave a Comment

Great Tabata Workout:

Daniel Craig’s James Bond
AS DEVISED BY SIMON WATERSON

PHILOSOPHY

Training hard, concentration & consistency is the key to any programme this is not for the faint hearted I don’t beleave in beating around the bush so straight in hard & shocking the body into a reaction ,
You have to truly beleave that a programme does work so through yourself into this programme 100% please I don’t do things bye half this is what you asked for so don’t waste your money or my time.
Training at this level is intense & fast acting but remember how the body work as much as you train hard you also need to know that you have to rest , refuel & therefore rebuild so sleep, food,rest,& the right balance is imperative

OUTLINE WHAT THE TRAINING WILL DO.

The Training programme is an all over body workout comprising of large compound exercises that will raise the heart rate but add lean muscle tissue it can be used at any level beginner to pro athlete but most importantly it will complement your own workout plan & sport , strength , stamina & cardio capacity will improve , posture , sleep, digestion will become better training easier. Etc etc .

RECORDING YOUR RESULTS,

Buy please a little black workout book to record your results it’s the best way to keep your consistency & training on track & keep those strength & stamina gains going up,
I also think investing in a good heart rate monitor is a great way mate to monitor your recovery rate HR Should return to normal (i.e. pre workout heart rate ) within around 3-5 mins post workout .

THE PROGRAMME SETS REPS & INTENSITY

4 SETS 1 WARM UP/FORM SET +3 REAL SETS.
15 REPS FOR EACH SET IN PERFECT FORM.
GOING FROM ONE EXERCISE TO THE NEXT IN THE MINIMUM TIME TO KEEP THE HEART RATE HIGH WILL HELP WITH THE CARDIO CAPACITY SIDE OF THINGS.
6 WEEK PLAN I have devised a week just follow this for 6 weeks bye repeating week 1 exercises but I want you to alternate between reps and weight.
FOR EXAMPLE
WEEK ONE 15 REPS MODERATE WEIGHT IE LAST 2 REPS ARE TOUGH.
WEEK TWO 10 REPS INCREASE THE WEIGHT PLEASE BYE 10%
WEEK THREE 20 REPS BACK TWO WEEK ONE WEIGHT
WEEK FOUR 8 REPS 5% INCREASE ON WEEK TWO
WEEK FIVE 25 REPS AT WEEK ONE WEIGHT
WEEK SIX 6 REPS 5% INCREASE OF WEIGHT FROM WEEK FOUR.

This is why its so important to record your results & monitor your progress .

EXERCISES

1 CLEAN & JERK / OLYMPIC LIFTS (SHOULDERS)

FORM start with heals on the ground, use a 6ft bar bell ,grip just over shoulder width apart, chest high ,look in the mirror 3 point move thighs, flip to chest,push over head.

TIPS use a little spring in the knees to complete the move.
Use overhand grip please.
Use same technique in the downward phase and the power phase.

2 SQUATS (LEGS)

FORM Feet shoulder width apart, chest high , barbell resting on the back of your shoulders ,arms only supporting, the bar .

TIPS Ensure you go down to 90 degrees
Push always through the heals & don’t lock out .

3 BENCH PRESS (CHEST/TRI,S) followed bye PUSH-UPS in-between each set ON THE BENCH.

FORM lye on a flat bench , grip is just over shoulder width apart lower the bar to the chest then breathing out return to the start position without locking out .

TIPS a count of 3 seconds down as well as 3 seconds up,

4 PULL UPS /CHIN UPS

FORM Start with a wide overhand grip look in the direction you are going in ensure your chin goes all the way over the bar, lower yourself down slowly to the bottom then start again.

TIPS if this is two difficult then try to use the pull up machine that will aid you .
Please ensure you always complete 15 reps start on a free bar end on the aided machine.
FOR EXAMPLE 3 FREE PULL UPS THEN 12 ON THE MACHINE = 15REPS

5 DIPS

FORM Ensure that when your on the bar you cross your legs at the back end your elbows go to 90 DEGREES
AS WITH PULL UPS DO AS MANY AS YOU CAN FREE 4/5 THEN USE THE AIDING MACHINE
(USUALY CALLED GRAVATRON)

6 BI-CEP CURLS

FORM Good old fashioned bi-ceps but effective, keep your elbows locked in & always do the full range of movement please.

TIPS Try to squeeze the muscle to get the mind to muscle function going this applies to all the exercises.

7 LATERAL ROTATION

FORM Ensure your arms are at 90 degrees out in front of you with your elbows locked into your side ,push the moderate sized weights away from each other squeezing the shoulder blades together return to start & repeat.

AB ROUTINE 3 POSITION ABS

1 CRUNCHES – Normal everyday crunches knees bent slide your hands to the top and repeat.
2 CRUNCHES LEGS RAISED -Straight away legs up and crossed hands on temple bring elbows & knees together .
3 AB LEG RAISES- legs straight in the air lift with no momentum your lower back 3 inches off the ground.

ABS Start with 15 reps on the first set 20 on the second,&25 on the 3rd set.

TIP Remember that abs are all one muscle you train one you train them all , but don’t over train them ,

CARDIO

END PLEASE WITH 1000M ROW AS FAST AS YOU CAN ON LEVEL 10 RECORD YOUR RESULTS .
STRETCH LEAVE ,

FREQUENCY

This circuit is designed to be done 3-4 times a week i.e. every other day using the day off as sport specific or alternative exercise, you may wish to drop a day and add something of your own i.e. cardio.

TIME

You may have time restriction so do half the circuit choose what you like mix and match that’s the beauty of this plan .

NUTRITION GUIDE

PHYLOSOPHY – remember food is fuel that will allow you to train hard , I generally use rules not facts because your life changes from day to day & there is no point in stressing over food as there is always a resolution ,

RULES
1 NO REFINED CARBS AFTER 2 ( WHITE BREAD , PASTA,WHITE RICE)
2 NO STARTCHY CARBS AFTER 5 BREAD PASTA POTATOE , WHITERICE & PASTA,SUGARY DRINKS)
3 2LTRS OF WATER A DAY
4 2 PIECES OF FRUIT A DAY
5 VEGTABLES EVERDAY
6 ALCOHOL ONLY ON FRIDAY & SATURDAY PLEASE.
7 EAT 3 MAIN MEAL + 2 SNACKS
8 HAVE A PRE & POST WORKOUT ENERGY SNACK
9 ALWAYS TRY TO EAT AT THE TABLE TO AID DIGESTION.
10 TAKE YOUR SUPPLEMENTS.

TYPICAL DAY

BREAKFAST porridge with ½ a pink grapefruit or 2 poached eggs of brown bread (no butter)
SNACK -Protein shake with some nuts or fruit/nuts & raisons
LUNCH- MEAT/FISH with salad & small amount brown rice /or baked potatoes
SNACK- Protein shake with nuts or yogurt/ rice cakes low fat cheese etc
DINNER MEAT/FISH with dark green leafy veg i.e. asparagus, spinach, Broccoli

PRE WORKOUT SNACKS ARE ½ A BANNANA & SUGARY DRINK & THE SAME STRAIGHT AFTER PLEASE.

THIS IS A TYPICAL PLAN so if you can mix & match and stick to it 90% you should feel more energy less fat more uncovered or extra muscle to .

SUPPLEMENTS
1CREATINE CELL VOLUMISER/STRENGTH POWDER FOR
2GLUTAMINE FOR IMUNITY/TO PREVENT YOU GOING CATABOLIC (EATING MUSCLE)
3GLUCOSAMINE FOR YOU JOINT HEALTH
4 PROTEIN SHAKES MUSCLE TISSUE DEVELOMENT.
5 SLEEP GET 8 HRS BECAUSE THIS IS WHEN THE BODY REPAIRS ITS SELF.

SUMMARY

So this is a six week plan mate so remember if you can stick to this 90% im sure you can get good result remember this should complement your existing routine or maybe your want this as your total routine for 4 weeks as I have said this is a great routine for tri-athletes ,boxers, anyone who enjoys extreme sports etc,

GOODLUCK SIMON WATERSON . :\?

post

Captain America Workout / Nutrition

by Leave a Comment

Chris Evans workout for Captain America movie..

via GQ.com by Jamie Millar

Chris was trained by Simon Waterson, who trained Daniel Craig for both Bond films and Jake Gyllenhaal for Prince Of Persia, among others. “They briefed me on how they wanted Chris to look,” explains Waterson. Ultimately it is about performance rather than just looking good. He has to be able to sprint, throw a shield, jump over a wall. The aesthetics are almost like a byproduct of being an athlete.” Here Waterson tells GQ.com how he turned Steve Rogers from toy soldier to super-soldier…
Your mission, super-soldier…

“Chris’ training routines were very functional with lots of movement and variety. I’d tend to make him wear a weighted jacket of six to eight kilos, simulating what he would have to wear throughout the movie.

We’d always start off with a plyometric circuit: pull-ups dropping into squat thrusts with a press-up and and then jumping back up into a pull-up. Then kettlebell swings, weighted step-ups down into a squat thrust and then maybe some suspension exercises on a TRX. Then overhead barbell squats, for example. Once you add all those five elements together, you’re toning, you’re building muscle, but also you’re working with very high heart rate so you are working the cardiovascular system as well. That would take about 20 minutes.

After that I would go into a split-body routine, which is where the aesthetics comes into it. On Monday we would do a circuit, then [focus on] back and arms: a lot of big deadlifting, shrugging, the usual bicep curls. On Tuesday I would do a little bit of cardio and abs. On Wednesday we’d do a circuit then heavy, heavy legs. On Thursday, cardio with some abs. On Friday, a circuit then chest, arms and shoulders.

I like to work with a lot of different angles and grips so for chest I would do close-grip incline press, incline bench flies, incline press-ups with your feet raised. Kneeling shoulder-press so you incorporate more abs – that makes it harder because when you’re stood up, it’s easy to bend your knees and use that recoil to muscle the weight back up in the air. When you’re on your knees, you can’t use your recoil and also you have to have your abs engaged so you’re getting a secondary benefit.

Saturday would normally be a rest day and then Sunday would be what I call a “catch-up day”, if something hasn’t been fatigued or needs working on or is looking a bit out of place. Or perhaps the posture’s looking bad so we have to do more retraction work – rear delts, romboids – because obviously when you start working very heavy on the arms, chest and back, you’ve got to be so careful that the shoulders don’t start rolling forward and you end up looking gorilla-like instead of having amazing posture and presence.”

Every superhero needs a sidekick

“We worked out together – I did the same for Daniel and Jake. It’s great having that competition and seeing your trainer in pain, and they can watch my form without feeling like I’m teaching: you’re just watching and mimicking set for set, rep for rep. You become like buddies and the competition is good – you push each other. The things that we felt we were getting the most gains from were the bodyweight exercises. But again, we took it past that to where bodyweight wasn’t enough, so we were having to hang weight off us to add even more resistance. Pull-ups holding maybe a 15-kilo weight in between your feet and still being able to do three sets of 10-12 – we were getting to that kind of stage. Dips, again with 20 or 30 kilos dangling between your legs. Press-ups with a 25-kilo plate on your back. Those types of exercises are very simple but once the body starts to adapt to it the gains you get are just phenomenal.”
Captain cardio

“The cardio training that Chris did was fairly standard. I’d maybe add a few sprints in there, just to make sure that his hip flexors were loose and that he was capable and conditioned. What we forget is when we watch the movie, we see the one shot of him running down the street after someone. That shot was done in eight takes: that’s like doing eight 100m sprints right after each other. You’ve got to condition for that and be very aware that is potentially what could happen. If it ends up being an absolute nightmare where you’re out of breath and it takes five or ten minutes to recover then more make-up has to be applied. Then you start sweating so you’ve got to change your top. You’ve got to be really careful because being out of condition eats up a lot of time with all these other departments as well. We’d warm up and do some intervals for ten to 15 minutes. Really though the cardio training comes from doing the circuits, which are much, much more effective because you’re working at a much higher heart rate.”

Dining on the Captain’s table

“As far as the nutrition goes – not diet; the first few letters of that are die, which is what people do when they diet – the philosophy was very simple in that it was very high protein-based. The equation is around 1g of protein for every pound of bodyweight, so 180g of protein a day, or 2g of protein for every kilo of bodyweight, whichever you use. That would be achieved with as much protein as possible from actual food and then supplements, so a couple of protein shakes a day. I would also use some branched-chain amino acids, a little bit of glutamine and that’s kind of it. The BCAA are basically there to fill the chain of repair of protein, which in turn makes up the majority of muscle, and that’s what you’re trying to do: keep hold of as much muscle tissue as possible. Glutamine again is another substance you use to stop you going catabolic or burning muscle tissue as energy. It’s also great for your immunity because when you’re working at such a high intensity for such a long period of time, you’re very susceptible to getting ill. Then 500mg of Omega-3, -6 and -9 every single meal to make sure that your joints are functioning well – it also gives you very good, healthy skin. The protein shakes during the day would be normal whey-based shakes containing around 30g of protein. Prior to going to bed I would use a protein shake that was primarily casein, which is a slow-release protein to feed the muscles overnight.”

“It’s so difficult when you’re working to have the perfect day nutrition-wise because every day because there’s so many different factors that come into that day. An ideal day would be waking up in the morning and having a good, hearty breakfast: porridge, walnuts, raisins, mixed in with low-fat Greek yoghurt, a scoop of protein and sliced banana. You’ve got all the factors in there that are going to give you a lot of energy. Then you would work out an hour after that and maybe 20 minutes beforehand you would have an energy drink. After an hour and a half working out with a litre of water, you would consume a little bit of fruit and nuts straight away to replenish your depleted glycogen. Then you’d have a protein shake and two hours after that, lunch. The best thing to do is have a good protein source – fish, meat – with salad. Lots and lots of salad. Two hours later, a snack: a protein shake with a handful of almonds. Two hours later – you can see a pattern emerging; you should be eating every two hours- a protein source again with a lot of dark green, leafy vegetables. In the evening, your casein protein shake and again almonds. With 500mg of omega-3, -6 and -9 with your three main meals. That would be just about right.”
Even superheroes need a day off

“Weekends are your own nutrition-wise – I normally say from six o’clock on a Friday to eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. To be honest, I always say that but [when you’re training] by that time you’re not really craving [forbidden] things. You think you’d be saying, ‘Oh I really fancy a pizza and a big bowl of Häagen-Dazs.’ But you don’t really crave those things anymore because you get into such a routine. It’s just good psychologically saying that [you can cheat] because if I tell you, ‘No, no, no,’ you always want to go, ‘Yes, yes, yes.” In actual fact, you’re not.”
Advice for superheroes-in-training

“I don’t think you can ever give anybody who’s joining a gym one single piece of advice. There are so many things. Look at your own genetics. Be realistic. Set yourself micro-goals through the month on a week-to-week basis. Even if the goal is just getting to the gym three times in a week, you’re constantly achieving. Don’t over-commit and announce, ‘Right, I’m going to the gym five times this week.’ Be realistic: three times a week for an hour and take the weekends off. That is the start point and that is the hard part. Try to enjoy it. For a lot of people, it ends up becoming a chore rather than leisure time: time when you can think and you’re doing something for yourself.”

Taking patriotic pride in your work

“I don’t know if ‘pride’ is the word for how I feel when I see the end results. When I’ve got six producers sat there who have put me in a hotel in Boston for five months and my job is to make Chris look like that in order for them to film him for two or three days, “relief” is the word I would use. The only recognition I want is when the head of Marvel says, ‘That’s absolutely perfect, thanks Simon.’ I’m like, ‘Cheers mate, no problem.’ That’s it – it’s my job. But every day you’re going, ‘God, I hope this is all right…'”

post

Sheryl Crowe’s Tuna Salad Recipe

by Leave a Comment

Found this in Parade Magazine, from Sheryl Crowe’s new cookbook “If It Makes You Healthy”. Posting the original recipe here for safe keeping.  Tuna Salad is a typical lunch for me so I like trying different versions.  I like this one because it’s big on celery, which as we’ve learned increases testosterone levels.

2 (3 3/4 ounce) cans organic wild albacore tuna, dolphin-safe
1/3 cup finely diced tart apple, such as Granny Smith
1/4 cup finely diced celery
2 tablespoons vegan mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped flat leaf parsley
1/3 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
salt & freshly ground black pepper

Directions:

In a glass or plastic bowl, mix with a fork the tuna, apple, celery, Vegenaise, parsley and lemon juice. Avoid over stirring, you don’t want it mushy. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve right away – with salad greens and other veggies, if desired-or cover and refrigerate for up to 48 hours.

Notes:
Above is original recipe.  I use regular low-fat mayonnaise.  I don’t measure ingredients, just add what feels right.

post

Evolutionary Fitness: The Diet That Really Works

by Leave a Comment

from the Sunday Times, August 17,2008:

Bryan Appleyard thinks he has found a diet that really works: it took him three weeks to shed 14lb with healthy ease. But he had to go back 5,000 years to discover the science behind it.

A half-naked 71-year-old with 8% body fat and the testosterone levels of a boy of 18 greets me at the door of a large house overlooking a golf course near St George, Utah. He has the physique of a very fit young man and the springy, energetic demeanour of somebody who has cracked most of life’s outstanding problems. I am calling on him because, ever since I heard of him, I have begun to look uncannily well.

And so here I am in the red desert of Utah saying hello to Superman’s slightly fitter grandad. Now, I know all you men will be wanting to know the secret of Arthur’s testosterone trick. I’ll come to that – it couldn’t be simpler. But first a word of explanation.

Feeling bloated and absurd after seven weeks in America, most lethally Texas, where the steaks are bigger than your head, I went on a diet. I do this periodically and lose up to 20lb over three months or so. Then, slowly, I put them all on again. I console myself with the thought that this inflate-deflate regime has kept me from the more severe middle-aged inflations I see around me. Many of my contemporaries are beginning to look like Sylvia Plath in pregnancy – melons “strolling on two tendrils”.

My usual diet is simplicity itself: eat too little and lay off the booze. All other dietary schemes struck me as over-elaborations or, in many cases, cunning excuses to keep eating. Calories in, calories out was, I thought, the only rational basis on which to lose weight. The body is a bag that gets lighter if you take out more than you put in. This time, however, I had a more sophisticated plan – Arthur’s – and boy, did it work.

I adopted the Arthur plan because the last time I was in America I had encountered Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He wrote a brilliant book called The Black Swan, superficially about risk in financial markets but, in fact, about life. He couldn’t stop talking about the Arthur diet. Nassim embarked on his regime after someone told him he looked like the writer Umberto Eco, a fatty. He had lost 20lb in three months after getting hooked on Arthur via his website (arthurdevany.com ). Nassim still looks a bit like Umberto, but not fat.

Now, as I say, I have never believed in smart diets. But for the first time, Nassim gave me a justification for a diet that made sense. (I’ll come back to that just before I get back to the testosterone.) And so here I am in Utah, now 13lb lighter, confronted by a half-naked Arthur.

I am early – I am always early, it’s a curse – and he has just got out of the shower. Unlike most 71-year-olds he feels no need – and has no reason – to cover his body. A good thing too. It’s 103 degrees and I, fully clad, am sweating like a thinnish pig. But it’s cool, tranquil and immaculate inside the house. The only signs of familial chaos are the bits of wire botched together in the garden to keep in their Yorkshire terriers, Django and Bela. Otherwise, Arthur’s world is disciplined and active. He listens to jazz on a stratospherically expensive Krell hi-fi, he has motorbikes and push-bikes in the garage, also a Range Rover that I assume is brand new, but which is in fact a couple of years old; he just looks after it. Arthur’s stuff, like Arthur’s body, is the best there is and all very carefully maintained.

He was always an athlete, but he has been on his regime – it’s called Evolutionary Fitness – since 1984. The first benefit is that he is never ill.

“I’m not on any medication, except for some Waklert that I bought online for my narcolepsy. I had a fair number of colds before I began this programme but I’ve only had two episodes of food poisoning since then – both were in high-end restaurants – and that’s it since 1984. My insulin is unmeasurably low; insulin is the ageing hormone – it tells you to go ahead, reproduce and die. My HDL [good cholesterol] is enormously high, my triglycerides are way down, my blood pressure is perfect, scans of my carotid artery show there are no lesions there, no build-up of plaque, so my brain is getting lots of nourishment. I was just motorcycle-riding with a gang of guys in Elba, riding all over the hills. I play softball; I was the only guy in the seniors to hit them over the fence. I can hit a golf ball 340 yards. I’m fast as heck, I’m very strong…”

And the testosterone? “We do have a lot of sex for a 70-year-old couple. I had to close the door the other night, she was screaming so loud – she sings!” Perhaps luckily, his wife, Carmela, is not around to be embarrassed by this: she is in Las Vegas for the day. But on the other hand, she probably wouldn’t mind. She went on Arthur’s diet after they married and dropped six dress sizes. “You don’t see many 70-year-olds who are a size four [UK size eight] and have such a cute, petite figure.”

This bouncy, clear-eyed, low-insulin, horny rebuke to unfit fat slobs everywhere was born in Davenport, Iowa, but his home town is really LA, where he finished high school and was signed to a minor-league baseball team. He was always fit but his sight wasn’t good enough for pro baseball. He started working out – primarily weightlifting – at 16 and has done so ever since.

Ah, you’re thinking, he’s a fitness freak – no hinterland, no brain, all biceps; we may be slobs, but we’re smart. Sorry. Arthur studied economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and now, in retirement, he is professor emeritus of economics at the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He has written the most important works on the economics of the movie industry and he worked out the best ways of privatising the electromagnetic spectrum: broadcast frequencies. “It was the template for the establishment of spectrum markets throughout the world,” he says with charming egotism. “I am told I am a legend in Guatemala, for example.”

This isn’t just background, it is essential to an understanding of Arthur’s approach to diet and fitness. It is very rigorous and thoughtful – which is why Nassim’s advocacy got me on the diet. The first point is that economics happens inside the body as well as outside. His work is all about the dynamics of complex, adaptive systems; he calls himself a complexity scientist. Central to this is the overthrow of old statistical models. Basically, we have all been taught that events – human wealth, earthquakes, blockbuster movies – cluster round an average forming a graph in the shape of a bell curve. This is an illusion and the concept of the average leads to fatal errors.

In reality, almost all events of significance follow what are known as “power laws”. This means, to simplify, that what are thought of as rare events are, in fact, more important than any average. We think of bank crises, like the present one, as rare and the rest of the time the banks go on making money. In fact, they don’t. Bank crashes are so devastating that they wipe out all the investment profits of the banking system. Look at the average and you don’t see this; apply power laws and you do.

“The average,” says Arthur, “is always misleading and may not exist.”

The obsession with the bell curve and the average has corrupted us. We tend to think of stable models not just of the human world but also of the human body. Almost all dietary and fitness regimes are based on a homeostatic view of the body – meaning it is a self-regulating system that maintains itself in a continuous, stable condition. The average is the ideal. So we are told to eat regular meals consisting of a balance of the food groups and to take regular exercise, dominated by steady aerobic activity like cycling or jogging. This is all wrong.

But though Arthur’s economics feed into his Evolutionary Fitness regime, that’s not how he got there. He married his first wife, Bonnie, in 1957. They had three children, two of them adopted. Their biological son, Brandon, was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes at the age of two. “I went down to the Chicago University bookstore and bought everything I could on metabolism, including the big, thick textbooks, and I started ploughing through all that stuff.”

Some years later, Bonnie received the same diagnosis. By now, Arthur had decided most of what they were being told by doctors was wrong. “We had to neglect a lot of advice from doctors.”

He began experimenting with diets. Prolonged high blood sugar is fatal to diabetics.

It is lowered by insulin injections. But, Arthur reasoned, why not keep the blood sugar low in the first place? “I was frustrated with the doctors. We were having reactions day after day. So I decided to start testing. Something was driving her blood sugars up, so I started systematically eliminating foods that drove them up. Beans – something as simple as beans sent her blood sugar sky-high. Pasta was disastrous. There was something wrong here, this can’t be the case, you’re shooting her blood sugar up like this.”

It was clear that carbohydrates were the problem. By removing them from the diet, Bonnie and Brandon’s need for injected insulin dropped dramatically – so dramatically that one doctor refused to believe Bonnie had diabetes. But it wasn’t enough for her. She developed a rare complication – systemic vasculitis – that was eventually to kill her. Brandon, though lapsing from the low-carb diet, has done well.

Arthur asked himself what was going on here – and, basically, decided almost everything we thought we knew about diet and metabolism was wrong. There is a parallel with his work on the economics of movies. Hollywood producers sit around in meeting rooms telling each other stories about why a film succeeds or fails – the stars, the directors, the trailers, anything. Marketing men join them and tell them more tall tales. And everybody feels good about themselves. “The stories give them the illusion of control, they reinforce prejudices and biases, and they all like to feel important.”

But the stories are all false. The reality, as Arthur discovered, is that 5% of movies pay for the other 95%, and success or failure is unpredictable. The best the studios can hope to do is find contractual mechanisms that back success after it happens and thus leverage their profits. This was what they had with distributors and cinemas, and it worked. They just didn’t realise it was these deals and almost nothing else that was paying for their Cohiba cigars. The movie industry was what Arthur loves best: “a complex, adaptive, decentralised system”. Exactly like the human body.

The trick is to look at what happens in the real world and not listen to stories –producers’ tales or medical theories. Similarly false stories are told about diet and metabolism, the big two concerning homeostasis and the diet heavy in hydrates and low in saturated fats. It didn’t matter what stories the producers told – they went on making money. But, with homeostasis and high-carb/low-fat diets, the stories mattered because they affected the behaviour and health of ordinary people. Bombarded with the fat bad/carbs good (FBCG) advice, they just kept on getting fatter and sicker.

But why are carbs such a problem? The very persuasive answer to this is why I went on the diet. Humans evolved over millions of years, probably on the African savanna. We were, for almost all our existence, hunter-gatherers – agriculture and settlement began only 10,000 years ago. Both sides of the dietary debate agree that this means we are omnivorous – hunter-gatherers have to be – and that because of our massive brains we have unusual energy requirements. Both sides also agree that settlement and civilisation changed our diet and living conditions radically. We may live longer because we are better protected from predatory beasts and all the other traumas that would have afflicted early man, but we also have new diseases, new miseries.

“We live,” says Arthur, “like lab rats. A lab rat has a life expectancy three times that of a wild rat because it is protected from accidents or disasters… But it doesn’t live better.”

Advocates of FBCG believed that the big dietary change behind our new miseries was increased consumption of animal fats on the basis that, for early man, there were lots of vegetables and fruit lying around, but a good kill would be rare. Recent research, however, suggests that kills could be very large and our ancestors did not, as we do, carve out the best bits; they ate the whole animal. Their fat intake was, in fact, much higher than we thought.

The truth is that the big dietary change was not fat but carbohydrate consumption. Agricultural settlement resulted in the cultivation of cereals and root vegetables. Bread, potatoes and rice became the staffs of life. The FBCG people didn’t think they were a problem: pound for pound, they contained fewer calories than meat.  But what carbohydrates do is stop you burning fat, so the fat you do consume gets laid down in your arteries and on your stomach. It’s not the burger that bloats, it’s the bun.

Furthermore, carbs become sugar in the body. In the case of refined carbs – white flour or sugar – the effect is instantaneous. “Some of these starches, as soon as they hit the saliva in your mouth, become sugars. Pasta is a bowl of sugar, briefly deferred.”

This produces blood-sugar spikes that stress the pancreas and put millions in a pre-diabetic condition. They develop metabolic syndrome in which fat accumulates about the midriff and fundamentally alters body chemistry. This, it is thought, may well be either a primary or secondary cause of the diseases of modernity: cancers, heart attacks, strokes and, of course, all the woes that flow from obesity.

Arthur is not alone in understanding the lethality of carbs. The whole FBCG ideology is now on the run. One very successful book, The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes, exposed how threadbare the science behind the ideology actually was. A recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine seemed to show conclusively that a low-carb diet was a better way of losing weight than either a low-fat or a Mediterranean diet. It also showed it reduced bad cholesterol – a clear refutation of most orthodox dietary advice. The Palaeolithic diet, meanwhile, a regime based on the diet of early man, was first advocated in 1975. And, of course, there was the most famous low-carb regime of all: the Atkins diet.

But what’s different about Arthur is, first, he is not selling anything, except for subscriptions to his website. He has long thought about writing his Evolutionary Fitness book, but he has never got round to it. In fact, until I interviewed him he wasn’t even thinking about it. He is much more interested in a financial instrument he’s invented and is now selling through a firm called Extremal Securities. He reckons it will transform, among other things, the mortgage market, which, let’s face it, needs transformation.

Secondly, he puts much more stress on vegetables, fruit and exercise than Atkins, and is convinced that, though carbs are the main problem, massive intakes of saturated fats are, at least, unwise. Thirdly, he is very smart. His reasoning is immaculate and he knows a lot more than your average doctor or nutritionist. Fourth, Evolutionary Fitness is not just a focus on weight. I feel better, not just lighter. And, fifth, as I say, he looks like Superman’s fitter grandad.

The trick he is trying to pull off is to find a way of combining the Palaeolithic and the modern lifestyles; to free us from being lab rats. People in the wild – isolated tribes – do not get fat and neither do other omnivores and predators. But, of course, they die younger. We can’t drop the comforts and protection of modernity. But we can fight its sugary seductions.

So how do you live the Arthur life?

First, you free yourself of the homeostatic delusion. We are not made to eat regular meals or take regular exercise, nor are we meant to suffer chronic stress in an office. Our ancestors ate when they could and kept moving. Most of their life was stress-free, but occasionally they would be subject to acute stress in the form of an attack by a predator. So Arthur e-mailed me these recommendations. “Don’t eat three square meals a day. Skip meals now and then. Work towards an extended overnight period of no eating. This means eat sometime before you sleep and don’t be in a hurry to eat breakfast? Do not fear hunger. Nothing but good will come of it, but it must be episodic, not chronic.”

And on exercise: “First, everybody over-trains. Don’t do it. Don’t trudge away on a treadmill, count sets or repetitions, or work out according to a top-down Soviet model. You will hate it and it does not produce results. You must let it happen. You must have a playful, intermittent form of exercise. And you must exercise. The benefits are profound!  Make it fun, intense according to your own fitness and goals, and brief. The goal of an exercise session is to promote growth-hormone release, to build muscle, and to elevate insulin sensitivity. Brevity and intensity are keys. Intensity means a little burn in the muscle, not heaving and straining. Brevity means you do not release stress hormones. So, you are favourably altering your hormone profile.” Superman’s grandad, it turns out, gets by on no more than 45 minutes in the gym and only when he feels like it.

Getting the food right is hard work. Arthur shops only on the outer edges of the supermarket, where they keep the fresh stuff. And cutting carbs completely, as I did, results in a few days of hell – raging hunger and gloom. On the fourth day I woke up so depressed I could barely move. Then I ate a peach and I was fine and I’ve stayed fine, more or less, ever since.

I’d suffered an enormous drop in blood sugar, which the peach instantly corrected.

Breakfast is hell at first – no cereals or bread – but you can have almost everything else. Arthur sent me an example of his breakfast: “Four thin pork chops, well trimmed and browned in a bit of oil with rosemary and pieces of fresh apple. Some canteloupe melon with it.” Trust me, after a month or so, the spectacle of toast or a bowl of cornflakes will revolt you.

In the end, I am not qualified to say that Arthur is right. But I am qualified to say that it works for him and for me – 20lb lighter at the time of writing – and that he is the most articulate definer of a paradigm shift in our thinking about the human metabolism that is still in progress. Carbs, not fats, are modernity’s most deadly assassins. And, even if they don’t kill you, they make you feel worse. I sleep better without them and I seem to have become a nicer person; what with that and the weight loss, my friends – or were they enemies? – barely recognise me.

Arthur drives me down to the golf club in his perfect Range Rover. It is still blindingly hot; the red desert is shimmering. We sit down for lunch. I stare critically at the menu.

“The turkey wrap’s good,” says Arthur.

“Wrap! Are you mad? It’s carbs.”

“You’ve got to live in the real world, Bryan.”

We end up with salads. Mine arrives with a cigar-shaped toasted bun on top.

“He doesn’t eat bread,” says Arthur, whipping it off and handing it back to the waitress.

He’s right, I don’t. I am early man, hunting and gathering, fighting lions, treading the outer reaches of the supermarket, spear in hand, picking up armfuls of celery. Celery? Yep, that’s what I meant to tell you – it works wonders for the testosterone.

The good, the bad and the tasty

The fundamentals of Arthur De Vany’s diet: bin the carbs and packaged food, and delight in lean meat and at least two veg meals

Cook by colour and texture so that meals look beautiful. If busy, skip meals with little worry. You don’t have to have three square meals a day. Snack on nuts or celery. Drink plenty of water. I also drink tea, coffee and a little wine.

Carbs
Avoid bread, muffins, bagels, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereals, vegetable oils, beans or anything in a package — empty, high-calorie foods with a high carbohydrate content.

Flavour
Spice up your food with fresh ingredients such as basil, garlic, parsley, rosemary, spring onions, avocados and nuts, and use various oils, such as olive oil, for flavour.

Celery adds texture (and is good for testosterone too).

Fruits
Fresh fruits of all sorts are good; I focus on melon and red grapes. Fruit juice is out. I have one or two fruits with most breakfasts; now and then a piece with other meals.

Vegetables
Eat lots of fresh raw, steamed, sauteed or grilled vegetables. I never use frozen, canned or packaged vegetables.

Protein
Eat plenty of meat, such as ribs, steak, bacon, pork loin, turkey and chicken, but trim fat from the edges. Fish, seafood and eggs are also good choices.

Breakfast
I tend to eat last night’s leftovers: turkey with jarlsberg cheese and fruit, bacon with red grapes, omelettes with rosemary, olives and spring onions.

Lunches
Usually salads, with red cabbage, romaine lettuce, spring onions, garlic, kale, broccoli or cauliflower, with salmon, tuna, turkey, chicken, pork or steak.

Dinners
I sometimes eat a whole rack of ribs with salad and vegetables. Or a large steak, trimmed of fat. Almost always there is a beautiful salad and vegetables.

post

How NOT to Drink & Drive: Know Your Limits Using This Chart

by Leave a Comment

Use this chart as a guide to the number of ‘standard’ drinks you can have and still remain under 0.05.  For example, a 60 kg (132 lb) female can have 2 drinks in the first hour, followed by 1 drink in the second hour, then skip an hour, then 1 drink in the 4th hour and 1 last drink in the 5th hour.

Under05Table
50 kg = 110 lbs
60 kg = 132 lbs
70 kg = 154 lbs
80 kg = 176 lbs
90 kg = 198 lbs
100 kg = 220 lbs

drink and drive chart

Remember: the only way to be certain of your BAC is to have a breath or blood test.

Source: Government of South Australia – Drug & Alcohol Services

The complete, printable wallet card is attached below.

More tips to help you stay under 0.05:
> use standard drinks to monitor your drinking
> get to know how many you can have to be under 0.05
> eat before you drink
> drink slowly and don’t top up drinks
> choose alcohol-free or low-alcohol drinks and have alcohol-free spacers between drinks

If you think you may drink too much to drive, plan ahead:
> choose a designated driver
> take a taxi, bus or train
> share a ride with others