Making Muscle – Page 8 – newstasis :: a blog about improving wellness

An Interview with Dr. Christopher Mohr

You may not have heard of him before but you’ve likely seen some of his work – he was the nutrition consultant for LL Cool J’s book “Platinum Workout”.

T-nation’s Chris Shugart asks Dr. Mohr to weigh in on a number of topics on this thread. I really liked his advice about low carb vs. low fat.

When looking at carbs vs. fat for weight loss, let’s look at some of the research. First, any reduced calorie diet is necessary for weight loss, whether that reduction comes from carbs or from fat. I understand that there are some intricacies with each, so I’m not recommending a blind reduction in calories, as long as it’s a reduction. I’m all about nutrient quality and would rather have folks focus on eating a high nutrient diet rather than looking for anything that remotely resembles a carbohydrate and acting as if it’s kryptonite.
Now, there are data supporting both lower carbohydrate approaches and lower fat approaches. That basically means whatever you want to believe in can work — and there’s data to support it. However, what’s most important, and this data has been shown most recently in a publication in JAMA, is adherence to a program. It’s not as much about carbs or fat as it is about you following something… anything!

Pick one, stick with it and you’ll get results.

4 Ways To Get More Out Of Your Workouts

Four things that will improve your workouts:

Focus on being present during the workout – when you are working out, work out. Focus all of your attention on the task at hand and be mindful of what you are doing. You will not achieve your potential if you do not put 100% of your awareness into your movements.

Increase the intensity – when you are completely present, the intensity of your actions will increase. The more intensely you move, the greater the amount of work you will completely in a given period of time. More work equates to faster results.

Increase the frequency – if you increase the frequency of your workouts, you are going to see an increase in your results even if you keep the volume the same. For example, people experience better results doing 2 25-minute carido sessions a week than doing 1 50-minute session. The same is true for resistance training, you can increase results by doing half the work in 2 workouts instead of all the work in one one workout. This has to do with intensity – you can work out harder for 25 minutes than you can for 50 minutes, and you can lift with more intensity in the early sets than you can in the later sets.

Increase the amount of overall work you are doing – this is a general statement (use the stairs, walk more, etc…) but as it applies to working out, use equipment that forces you to do more work. For example, use a plate machine instead of a pin machine (loading and unloading plates requires a lot more energy than pulling a pin), use dumbbell movements instead of barbell movements because you need to pick the dumbbells up from the rack and return them when you complete the set and place weights on the ground instead of dropping them.

Muscles for Athletes Part II by Christian Thibaudeau

Muscles for Athletes, Part II The Hypertrophy Methods by Christian Thibaudeau of T-Nation is mandatory reading for athletes and training professionals who want to keep their clients at the front of the pack and on the podium. It covers a variety of topics including concentric, ballistic, eccentric and isometric muscle contractions as they apply to athletic performance and functional muscle development. Christian also includes exercises, instruction and periodization cycles to maximize your gains.

I do not pretend to understand everything he is writing, but I will say this, when I have followed his advice before, I have seen improvements in my speed and times on the trails. His advice on isometric training mirrors exactly the advice Rachel gave me a couple of weeks ago – I’m not surprised by this given her immersion in the athletic therapy field and Christians track record with training performance athletes.

If you are going to be racing against me this year, DO NOT read his article.

Refeeds To Enhance Muscle Growth?

Nutrition Quest 3 by Mike Roussell of T-nation.com covers refeeds, a topic that I find very interesting.

Refeeds are best used when interspersed throughout long periods is calorie and/or carbohydrate restriction. As the name implies, you’re acutely refeeding nutrients (calories and/or carbohydrates) into your system after it’s been deprived of those nutrients for a predetermined period of time (5 days, 7 days, 2 months, etc.).
It’s important to distinguish between a “refeed” and just trying to rationalize going off your nutritional plan (e.g. cheating). Refeeds are strategically placed and when used right are integral parts of your nutritional plan. Cheating on your diet is more often than not an unplanned event brought on by poor planning or exposure to a situation in which your will power is compromised and you succumb to the primal urge to stuff your face!

I find this topic very interesting because I’ve noticed things happening to my body composition and weight that seem to confirm Mike’s claims. I don’t spend a lot of time doing the same thing so my diet / nutritional plan seems more random than a steady state of sustained caloric restriction. My food intake is restricted Monday to Thursday evening, then I will tend to eat a lot. It’s lower again Friday and Saturday until dinner time when I will eat a lot. Sunday is the same as Saturday with a large dinner and usually a couple of helpings of dessert. There are consistent meals thoughout, post workout shake, breakfast every morning, casine protein before bed, eating at least every 2.5 to 3 hours, etc…, but what I eat as whole food is varied both in terms of what it is and when I eat it. It is a conscious decision to vary the food and the timing because it prevents the body from adapting and become more efficient at processing the food. Some people call this calorie cycling.

I feel my best on Monday and Tuesday so I plan my hardest workout for these days. It’s most likely that I am more completely recovered from the over eating on the weekend. But I tend to carry a little more water and look slightly bloated, both indications of an increase in muscle glycogen. I tend to look my leanest on Thursday afternoon but have the least strength so I try to focus on doing only cardiovascular exercise because it doesn’t suffer the same drop in performance.

Sometimes though, I will eat clean for longer periods of time – my Thursday, Saturday and Sunday evenings will seem more like Monday or Tuesday evenings with normal sized clean meals; usually happening when I’m in a bulking phase and performing a lot less cardio. The goal is muscle gain without too much fat gain so the diet has to be clean. Lasting 6 to 10 weeks, these phases are tough because of the restriction in what I eat, but I have noticed that there is a period of a couple of weeks afterwards when I seem to keep growing bigger. This period sees me eating a lot more food that is higher in calories that I won’t eat the bulk – foods that contain more moderate to high GI carbs. It seems that I experience a two to three week period of dramatic overcompensation from the workouts in which my muscles seem to fully recover and grow to adapt to the increased workload they’ve been subjected to.

The problem I run into in determining what is going on is that I don’t train for the same reasons or sports year round. I consider myself an endurance athlete more than a power athlete. I build mass and work on strength in the winter because I can’t be riding outside. While I like building muscle, I will focus on building it for less than 4 months a year, the rest of the time I’m working to maintain it and build my endurance. As a consequence, I have no idea what the long term muscles building impact would be of following my eating approach year round.

There is something to the approach of refeeding. While I’m not sure what specifically is happening, it does seem to give the body a boost in recovery department. Lifters and endurance athletes will benefit from this extra kick.

The Discipline High – Part One

Every now and then someone will say something that makes me laugh out loud, ask them if they actually said it, and then laugh at how profoundly important yet completely obvious the comment is.

“Discipline high” was one of those comments.

I had been talking to a friend and discussing the merits of the body building bulk that I was on. It was late winter and he was getting ready to start back to the gym to shed the extra winter weight he had gained. He does this almost every year and has become pretty good at it.

When the topic of diet came up, he mentioned that one year he ate nothing but organic food. He enjoyed the taste of the food a lot more and felt that meats were more dense. He said that he figured dollar for dollar it worked out to be close to the same price, maybe a little more for the organically grown food. But he said that during this particular year, he got more of a discipline high from eating good quality food.

I laughed, asked him if he said discipline high and then laughed again. It had never crossed my mind that someone could get a high feeling from NOT doing something. This is, of course, how it works with me. Whenever I exercise I am rewarded with a chemical high (the release of neuro transmitters and endorphins) that promote the feelings of well being along with a cerebral high that is accompanied by feelings of accomplishment. Whenever I’m eating better, there is a rapid elimination of the negative physical feelings associated with a poor diet and a similar cerebral high that comes from making better food choices. The discipline high comes from this cerebral feeling and it reflects the sense of accomplishment that following through on your desire to make a positive change in your life creates. Given my tendency to seek pleasure or avoid pain, I must be getting something out of the strict diet if I’m to follow it. I believe that the discipline high is the pleasure that allows me to continue the pain (not eating whatever I like).

I have thought a lot about the discipline high since we spoke about it and when I read JoLynn’s daily Motivation: Creating Healthy Eating Habits post it hit on me that not everyone will experience it from following a strict diet. Maybe it is a learned behavior and the lucky one’s learned how to experience it when they were younger.

It isn’t clear to me if I am gaining more than I am giving up when I will myself to eat appropriately. What is clear is that I get enough out of it to keep doing it and the longer I do it, the easier it is to find that reward in the experience.

Post Work Out Nutrition – The Window Of Opportunity

If you are going to the gym or training at all, you should be paying particular attention to what you eat immediately following your workouts because this is the most important time for muscle recovery. After 40 minutes of intense exercise, the body’s initial response to the introduction of sugar is to replenish muscle glycogen and start protein synthesis for muscle repair and not an increase in fat storage which is the non-exercise response. If you can consume the right combination of sugar and protein in water within 30 minutes of ending your workout, you will capitalize on this tendency.

After reading and trying what the author’s online in the following articles I noticed a dramatic increase in my recovery ability in both the gym and on the bike trails. I highly recommend carbohydrate and protein shakes after every workout.

The Window Of Opportunity
The Window of Opportunity—Layman’s Version (Non-Technical)

Reducing Catabolic Hormones

All body builders have a sworn mortal enemy—cortisol. This hormone acts to breakdown muscle tissue, and creates a catabolic environment, contrary to growth.

The most effective way to decrease these catabolic hormones is:

To consume an easily digested carbohydrate
Stack it with an easily digested source of protein

Protein Synthesis and Degradation

Skeletal muscle protein synthesis can be defined as the formation of whole muscle proteins, from individual amino acids.

Protein degradation can be defined as the breakdown of proteins, into individual amino acids and peptides.

Muscle growth is ultimately the difference between protein degradation and protein synthesis. Therefore, we want to both minimize protein degradation, and maximize protein synthesis.

Consuming protein is generally responsible for enhancing protein synthesis; while carbohydrates play an intricate role in decreasing protein degradation. The role carbohydrates play in protein synthesis is in debate. However, it appears that when easily digested carbohydrates are accompanied with proteins, the enhanced effect from these nutrients increases muscle growth.

What Is The Best Workout For People Over 40?

Bodybuilding.com asks the question what Is The Best Workout For People Over 40? and their members reply.

Blink41 wins a $75 store credit with is workout and nutritional recommendations, but it’s conciseness is worth more than that.

The older you get, the weaker your body becomes. An adult over age 40 should start to experience a decrease in muscle size, strength and recovery time. Bones becomes increasingly more fragile and more prone for injury.
Testosterone levels begin to decrease and the ability to build quality muscle decreases greatly. Joints begin to ache after a hard days work. However, there is an easy way to slow this aging process down. Simply follow a good diet with a good routine and you can slow down this decay on your body.
The Workout:
* Monday: Chest / Triceps
* Tuesday: Rest
* Wednesday: Back / Biceps
* Thursday: Rest
* Friday: Shoulder / Traps
* Saturday: Rest
* Sunday: Thigh / Calves / Abs
Do 5 minutes of light cardio before workouts to get the blood flowing through the body. Do 30 minute of moderate intensity cardio after workouts. Be sure to stretch before and after workouts. Allow 2 to 3 minute rest periods between each set.

“How to Make Easy Exercises More Difficult and More Effective”

In How to Make Easy Exercises More Difficult and More Effective by TC from T-nation he gives us a few ways to save time by making some exercises more difficult. I really liked:

Real-World Squats
Let me ask you a question: how often in your life do you walk up to an object hanging from a tree, carefully place it on your shoulders, and lower it to the ground?
Hunters typically don’t find dead deer hanging in trees. Generally, the thing’s lying on the ground and they have to pick it up.
What I’m trying to get at is the conventional squat is screwed up. It’s not a real-world movement. Our entire motor program, from childhood on, was developed to pick things up from the ground instead of the opposite.
That’s probably why a lot of people have trouble learning how to do the squat.
Well, I’ve adjusted the movement. I’ve made it more “real world,” but in doing so, I’ve also made it harder — and consequently, more effective.
I rarely start my squat from a standing position. Instead, I place the loaded bar onto the safety bars of the power rack and start from the ass-down position.

Guess what I’ll be doing next leg day?

10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look

In this first post from new T-Nation author Jen Heath 10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look, Part I we get keys 1 to 5. The article is geared towards women.

What most people call “toning” is actually a muscle getting a little big bigger (yes, that does mean it increases in “bulk”) and the fat cells covering a muscle getting smaller. You put those two things together and you get “tone.”
Most women I talk to would like more muscle in their arms yet don’t necessarily want behemoth guns. Whenever a woman tells me she just wants to “tone” her body with light weights, I usually end up having a conversation similar to this:
Jen: “Okay, so if I understand you right, your arms now measure 9 inches, but you wouldn’t mind getting them up to a firm and solid 12 inches. At the same time, you don’t want to get 16 inch monster arms, right?”
Client: “Yes, that’s exactly right!”
Jen: “Well, let me ask you this: Would you rather take a month or two to build that 12-inch arm or would you rather it take you forever?”
Client: “I want it now!”
Jen: “The reason I ask is because the same thing that builds the 16 inch arm the fastest will also build the 12 inch arm the fastest — lifting intensely with progressively heavier weights. Once you achieve the amount of muscle you desire you can always reduce the volume to maintain.”
Client: “Ah, I see!”

I think most trainers have a similar conversation with 90% of their new female clients. Jen’s approach just nails it.

Great article, check out the original and part two.

My First Bulk

I got pretty sick at the beginning of November 2006 and when I went to the doctor, their preliminary test indicated that there was protein in my urine – a bad sign and an indication of kidney dysfunction. I got a second test a week later. I went to Toronto to see my doctor and when I left his office with the “all clear”, I sort of floated along College Street to Union station in a blurry happy fog. I was going to have the time to do all the things I thought I would be going without. It was a fantastic feeling.

That night I started planning my first bulk. For those who are not familiar with a bulk, it’s a body building term use to describe a period of deliberate over eating to force the body into a more anabolic state allowing it to create more muscle. It’s an approach with a long history and it is generally accepted that you need to hold your body in a caloric surplus state to facilitate growth.

At the beginning:
Before I started, my weight was 168 pounds and my body fat level was 10.4. My weight has been around 168 for the last 3 years, basically since I started mountain bike riding. There is a seasonal fluctuation in body fat, with it bottoming out at around 9% at the end of the summer. My goal was bulk for 3 or 4 months to try and get to 190 pounds with little consideration being given to my level of leanness.

It was going to be a clean bulk, which meant that I wasn’t going to be eating everything that I wanted. A lot of lifters will treat their bulk as a period of non-stop gorging and will eat foods that are very high in calories but not very high in nutrients. The goal of a clean bulk is to limit the amount of body fat that you gain while providing enough nutrients and energy to build dry lean body mass (actual muscle vs. water and glycogen stores).
I needed to create and maintain a caloric surplus. That meant that I had to drastically limit the amount of cardiovascular exercise that I did. This turned out to be the toughest part of it because I LOVE cardio – I race a mountain bike and love indoor cycling classes and find my bliss state when my heart rate hits 150. Unfortunately for me, I had to limit both the volume and intensity of my cardiovascular work. I did one or two sessions a week trying to keep my heart rate below 140 and my usual high intensity warm-up was scaled back to the same level.

The diet and food management:
I followed all of the rules that I have outline in the Newstasis.com weight management program with very few deviations. I would occasionally eat when I wasn’t hungry because I needed to ingest the calories. My daily calorie count went from about 2000 per day to about 3000 per day and my daily meal count went from 4 to 7 or 8, a meal every 2 to 3 hours usually right after my stomach emptied into my intestines.

My breakfast was always the same, 150 grams of oatmeal, 50 grams of whey protein powder, 50 grams of dextrose and 5 grams of creatine, all mixed with water and eaten within 15 minutes of waking up.

My post workout shake was always the same, 80 grams of sugar (dextrose and maltodextrin combination), 50 grams of whey protein and 5 grams of creatine, all mixed with water and I would start to drink it within 10 minutes of finishing my workout. It was the same regardless of the number of workouts I did in a day.

My first whole food meal after the gym was usually the same for my first workout of the day, whole-wheat toast with a smear of margarine, and scrambled eggs with sliced turkey. I would use 250 ml of egg whites and 1 whole egg. I would drink water with this meal.

The rest of the meals would contain either lots of carbohydrates or lots of essential fats, but NEVER both because the body will use carbohydrates for energy if they are available and, when fats are also present, the body will just store the fat. Fats consumed in the absence of carbohydrates will be utilized for immediate energy.

I drank 2-4 liters of water a day.

I consumed no alcohol for most of the bulk because alcohol suppresses growth hormone release. I was sacrificing so much that it didn’t seem to make any sense to me to slow my progress because of a couple of beers.

I would eat 150 grams of cottage cheese before bed to make sure my body had a long acting protein available throughout the night and I made Venom’s Protein bars to make sure I didn’t go to sleep hungry. I’m one of the few people I know who admits to eating in bed before falling asleep. Venom’s recipe offered a low GI carb option that tasted fairly good.

The workouts:
This was an over reaching program, one that had me doing way more volume than my normal routine. In hindsight this was too much work. It burned a lot of calories that could have gone to repair and muscle building but at the time, I didn’t feel like sacrificing workout time and enjoyment. I just replaced my cardio with resistance training. Some days have me working out three times and I was more than happy to do it most of the time although there were a couple of times when I got to the gym and knew I needed to skip the workout.

The workouts were shorter than usual, each about 45 minutes, and I did a lot of high intensity training methods to completely fatigue the muscles, like retraining a muscle group later on in the day and it was during this time that I discovered the concept of training movements and not body parts. All I all, it was an amazing program and I felt stronger and bigger with each workout – I bench pressed over 200 pounds for the first time in my life and finally broken the 20 rep mark with wide grip pull-ups (something I haven’t done since university). I learned a lot of biomechanics and how my body responds to exercise stress and movements. I also introduced plyometrics training and added skipping as a warm-up exercise.

The results:

They were fantastic! I broke the 180-pound mark on January 21^st with a body fat level of 11.4%; 50 days after starting the bulk. I gained about 9.5 pounds of lean body mass and a little over 2 pounds of body fat. I was very pleased with the results.

When I weighed myself today (March 6, 2007) I was 176 @ 10.6% body fat. That means that I have lost just less than 3 pounds of lean mass and almost 2 pounds of body fat.

Here are the numbers:

Nov 3, 06 Jan 21, 07 March 6, 07

Weight: 168.6 181 176

Body Fat: 10.5 11.4 10.6

Lean Mass: 150.9 160.3 157.3

Body Fat: 17.7 20.6 18.7

The toughest parts were not being able to do as much cardiovascular exercise as I wanted and all the extra eating I had to do. Human beings are state dependent creatures, so my body had adjusted to function effectively on ~2000 calories a day with 4 or 5 intense cardio sessions per week. When I started cramming in an extra 1000 calories of nutritionally sound foods, the body wasn’t used to them and it didn’t need them as it had found stasis with 2000 a day and some cardio, now it had to adjust to find stasis on 3000 with almost no cardio. I was forcing a caloric surplus of ~1500 calories through increased eating and decreased exercise. There were some digestive consequences to it and elimination frequency increased.

The best part of it was the feeling of gaining weight – I actually felt like there was more of me and that I was taking up more space on the planet. The workouts were awesome as well. They were both fun and all the volume I was doing meant that I needed to come up with some creative exercises to find new ways to attack the muscles. My favorite exercises to do were ISO leg press shrugs and wide grip platform dead lifts, two movements I had never done before.

I don’t think I’ll go on another bulk again because I don’t see the need for it. As a learning experience goes, I would recommend it, providing you are in good health and have your doctor’s approval. As a lifestyle, and that is what you have to make it to get the most out of it, I’d have a very hard time keeping up with it. There were times when I didn’t feel like eating and I have to force myself to eat. Plus, I missed working out the way I like, with intensity and my heart rate soaring.