Sunday, 16 September 2012
Back and biceps routine
This is the routine I have been following for the past eight or nine weeks. It is time to change it, so before I do, I thought I'd log this one. Details of weights / sets are in the video description. I finished with some roll outs, which I have been working on intermittently for the past few months. My last video to include this exercise shows that I was not getting my body close enough to the floor. Now I am happy with the proximity to the floor and just need to focus on extension of my arms, trying to avoid bending them at the elbow.
Thursday, 13 September 2012
Obscure lifting injury
For the past nine weeks or so, I have had to put up with an unconventional injury I acquired whilst lifting. It's not the conventional injury you'd associate with lifting, which would typically be some sort of strain, torn ligament or muscle. This is in fact oral and was the result of biting my lip! Typically, you'd get an ulcer, it would heal and that would be that. But in my case, it healed but then came back and persisted as such, repeatedly healing and coming back. I have now since been to a consultant who specialises in such things and has diagnosed it as a Mucocele. Typically these things will heal themselves, but when they have persisted beyond three weeks or so, surgery is inevitably required to remove the gland.
Here is an article on Mucoceles: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1076717-overview
Hopefully I will get an appointment to have the faulty gland removed and that will be that. There are some risks associated with the removal, but really, I am not that worried given how annoying this thing is and how painful it gets when swollen. My advice is to avoid biting your lip when you lift and of course when eating. If you are struggling not to, it might be worth investing in a mouth guard and wearing it to stop you from lip biting.
Might I add that this is generally only an issue when lifting heavy, since it's the strain associated with lifting heavy that can make you do irrational things, such as biting your lip!
If all that wasn't enough to put you off your tea, here is a photo of my Mucocele.
Here is an article on Mucoceles: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1076717-overview
Hopefully I will get an appointment to have the faulty gland removed and that will be that. There are some risks associated with the removal, but really, I am not that worried given how annoying this thing is and how painful it gets when swollen. My advice is to avoid biting your lip when you lift and of course when eating. If you are struggling not to, it might be worth investing in a mouth guard and wearing it to stop you from lip biting.
Might I add that this is generally only an issue when lifting heavy, since it's the strain associated with lifting heavy that can make you do irrational things, such as biting your lip!
If all that wasn't enough to put you off your tea, here is a photo of my Mucocele.
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Update: 8th Sept
Have been using the jump rope as a warm-up / cool-down routine for the past two years now. I only spend between 10 and 15 minutes a day, excluding weekends, practising different techniques. For the past four or five months, I have been able to incorporate side swings (see them here if interested, I won't embed this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q5d_RlfNxw ). However, I have been eluded by double-under to running in place to double-under transitions for a while now, so these are my next skills to acquire on the rope. A few days ago, I managed a rather scruffy looking set of transitions, so it's a start. Definitely need to panic less when making the switch, then I think I will maintain a smoother rhythm. Skip to around the 2 minute mark to see where I got a good set of transitions in.
I haven't done a video of my usual training programme for a while, so I made a small montage of Weds leg workout. I failed on the 200kg deadlift at the end after hitting 190kg, so maybe next time! I have put the info for weight, sets and reps in the video description if you are interested. Oh, it's probably worth mentioning that it is a strength building programme that incorporates body building protocols, if you are wondering why the rep range is so high.
I haven't done a video of my usual training programme for a while, so I made a small montage of Weds leg workout. I failed on the 200kg deadlift at the end after hitting 190kg, so maybe next time! I have put the info for weight, sets and reps in the video description if you are interested. Oh, it's probably worth mentioning that it is a strength building programme that incorporates body building protocols, if you are wondering why the rep range is so high.
Monday, 23 July 2012
BBC News: Reducing salt 'would cut cancer'
BBC News: Reducing salt 'would cut cancer'
I do my best to avoid consuming salt, for other reasons than those highlighted here, but if you are a consumer of heavily processed food, then you are fighting an ever losing battle. Retailers are the least consistent when it comes to labelling of food, sometimes labelling quantities per 35g serving, other times per 100g. Interestingly, they also often have diluted ideas about what constitutes a portion size, so often you will buy something that looks to be low in salt, because you bought it on the presumption that it would be consumed as one serving, but in actual fact, the retailer has labelled the serving size to be a quarter of the contents, and thus there is actually four times the amount of salt than you first thought.
My advice, steer away from processed foods entirely. It's okay to eat processed food occasionally, like a pizza once a month, but don't make it a weekly habit to consume salty food, especially Monday to Friday. You should treat the working week as a time to abstinence from luxury foods and alcohol. Doing this alone, cuts the amount you consume in a year when you think about how many weeks there are in a year. As much as you might feel that this is a restraint on your liberty, actually the opposite is in effect. Retailers lead you to believe that it is your desire and an expression your liberty and free will to consume junk food, when in actual fact, you are playing into their hands making them millions in profits through sales of cheap, easy to produce, crap.
I do my best to avoid consuming salt, for other reasons than those highlighted here, but if you are a consumer of heavily processed food, then you are fighting an ever losing battle. Retailers are the least consistent when it comes to labelling of food, sometimes labelling quantities per 35g serving, other times per 100g. Interestingly, they also often have diluted ideas about what constitutes a portion size, so often you will buy something that looks to be low in salt, because you bought it on the presumption that it would be consumed as one serving, but in actual fact, the retailer has labelled the serving size to be a quarter of the contents, and thus there is actually four times the amount of salt than you first thought.
My advice, steer away from processed foods entirely. It's okay to eat processed food occasionally, like a pizza once a month, but don't make it a weekly habit to consume salty food, especially Monday to Friday. You should treat the working week as a time to abstinence from luxury foods and alcohol. Doing this alone, cuts the amount you consume in a year when you think about how many weeks there are in a year. As much as you might feel that this is a restraint on your liberty, actually the opposite is in effect. Retailers lead you to believe that it is your desire and an expression your liberty and free will to consume junk food, when in actual fact, you are playing into their hands making them millions in profits through sales of cheap, easy to produce, crap.
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Athletic greens
You can buy it in the powdered form, but this is fresh. A while bag of spinach, 2 kiwi fruit, milk, basil and a dash of lemon.
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Nutrition: BCAA powder mixing issues
I have read and heard a lot of people complaining about this stuff, saying it doesn't mix well, tastes awful, etcetera, etcetera. Well, though I can't do much about the taste, if you really can't bear drinking or eating something you don't like, hide your BCAA down the back of the dining room wall unit, along with the broccoli you hid from your parents when you were a child. But, if you can man up to the expectation that generally things that taste bad are actually good for you, then here is a simple tip that will change your opinion about its ability to mix well with liquids...
I have found BCAA powder to have the same solubility of salt or sugar in water. Though less dense than sugar or water, hence why it floats like sawdust, it still dissolves completely given enough time. You don't even have to stir it, since it will dissolve all by itself, as is the nature of soluble substances. The taste is still as grim as always, so don't expect the foul taste to have disappeared just because you can't see it any more.
I hope now, you will drink it and STFU! ;-)
- Place 5g or 10g of BCAA powder in a cup or glass.
- Add water.
- Wait for ten or so minutes, viola!
I have found BCAA powder to have the same solubility of salt or sugar in water. Though less dense than sugar or water, hence why it floats like sawdust, it still dissolves completely given enough time. You don't even have to stir it, since it will dissolve all by itself, as is the nature of soluble substances. The taste is still as grim as always, so don't expect the foul taste to have disappeared just because you can't see it any more.
I hope now, you will drink it and STFU! ;-)
Post 10 week program summary
As I have mentioned in a few previous blogs, I have started incorporating body building protocols in order to experiment with fat loss and mass gaining. For athletes, too much emphasis on body building as opposed to strength building can have dire consequences, often leading to impingement or injury. Since my previous protocols have always been about strength rather than size, I was a little apprehensive about switching to something more muscle development oriented, with less emphasis on nervous system development. So to try and maintain some level of functional strength, I have applied a 50/50 split of compound and isolation, applying body building protocols in both cases.
So what do I mean when I talk about protocols? Well, think of body building and what the aim of body building is. If you thought the aim of body building is to build muscle then you are right. In essence, the real aim is to cause as much damage to your muscle fibres as possible, in order to promote growth and repair when resting, without injuring yourself of course. With goals like this, it's inevitable that you will be sore the day after if not suffer an onset of DoMS the day after that. However, with strength training, the aim is to gradually build strength, by training your nervous system to activate more muscle tissue, with the side effect of building muscle at the same time.
Strength Protocols
Strength training has the disadvantage of being a slow mechanism for building muscle, while being extremely effective at developing the nervous system. Because strength typically involves more weight and fewer repetitions, soreness is often less noticeable, enabling an athlete to train every working day of the week and even multiple times a day; I have been there, training as much as eight times a week, twice a day on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, whilst resting Wednesday and on weekends. During this program, which lasted for about six months, my strength gains were enormous, even though I didn't actually gain that much actual lean mass. However, the nervous system is much quicker to adapt to changes than muscle tissue, meaning loss of strength over time is more costly than loss of mass over the same period.
Body Building Protocols
Body building is the natural opposite to strength training. Whilst both are focused on a similar goal, in that you want to maximise your potential in terms of strength and size, body building focuses on the aspects of weight lifting that will ultimately result in more muscle mass and definition than practical strength. For example, you will rarely see a body builder whose nervous system is adapted enough to allow them to lift atlas stones or perform other feats associated with power and strength. What they are however, are masters of being able to recruit individual muscles on demand, rather than collectively, hence why they are extremely good at flexing pectoral muscles. The protocol that enables this is isolation and frequency. Muscles are trained to failure on each set, sometimes even past failure when performing X reps or drop sets. Typically, the repetitions would be moderate to high, with fewer sets and less overall volume. That's not to say one protocol is better than the other, they merely have two different goals.
My Protocol
So what have I put together? I have incorporated a moderate repetition program that takes each set to failure, while still incorporating specialist compound movements, like dead lifts, roll-outs, snatches, cleans and squats. Body builders would usually favour leg press machines over squats, since it isolates the legs, requiring less stabilisation and engagement from the upper body. By maintaining some compound movements in the program, the hope is that the nervous system will maintain familiarity in recruiting muscle groups collectively rather than individually, which will ultimately mean I will still be able to continue the enjoyment of strength related lifts on non program specific days. However, this is experimental, so only time will tell.
My Program Results
So ten weeks has now gone by in the blink of an eye, and I feel it's time to share some of the results before I start my next ten week strength/body building program. The figures for the body composition are not accurate in the slightest, but they are consistent. I used a set of scales that employs BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) to calculate body fat percentages. The scales are cheap and this method of body fat calculation is poor in even the best scales, so I just had to run with it. The percentage is out by about 10%, though the thing about these scales is that they are consistent. So although the fat percentage is wrong, it will hover around that same area allowing me to plot changes in body composition. For the next ten week program, I will look at obtaining some callipers and measuring body composition properly.
Start of program
Weight: 82.7 kg
Body fat: 21.25 kg
Lean mass: 61.45 kg
End of program
Weight: 84 kg
Body fat: 22.18 kg
Lean mass: 61.82 kg
Gains
Weight: 1.3 kg
Body fat: 930 g (32 oz)
Lean mass: 370 g (13 oz)
Though I gained some fat, about a kg according to the scales, though in reality this is probably more like 500g based on the good old reliable finger calliper test, there was actually an extraordinary amount of muscle tissue gained. In a year, if this consistency is maintained, would equate to a gain of nearly 2 kg of lean mass. Impressive!
Since I am able to maintain my body fat quite well through intermittent fasting protocols, it wouldn't take much to shed the excess weight gained at the end of the next ten week program, repeating the process every twenty weeks for maintenance.
How it all looks:
As you can see from the charts, there was a definite steady increase in mass, if you ignore the fluctuations from the inclusion of non reference day weigh-ins. At the same time, my body fat didn't really increase all that much, even though there was some peculiar spike mid way through. Again, I can only attribute this to the BIA calculations being sensitive to other factors like humidity or my hydration levels.
Lean mass chart:
.png)
Fat chart:
My Program
So what did I do for the last ten weeks? Here it is:
Monday:
Dumb bell bench press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Shoulder press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Dips: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: Push ups to failure
Tuesday:
Light jump rope work, conditioning finisher and stretching
Wednesday:
Dead lift: 3 x 8-12 to failure week 1,3,5,7,9; 3 x 15-18 to failure week 2,4,6,8,10
Leg press: 3 x 20-25 to failure
Hamstring extensions: 3 x 15-20 to failure
Finisher: Lunges to failure
Thursday:
Light jump rope work, stretching
Friday:
Lat pull downs/pull ups: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated biceps curls: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated rows: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: EZ bar cheat curls 3 x 8-12 to failure
Weekend: Rest
The dead lift followed a weight reduction repetition increase on even weeks to maintain strength endurance. Also, I found the strictness required for the body building protocol meant I had to move away from pull-ups for lat pull downs, until I was able to increase the weight to beyond body weight; which was difficult given that my weight was increasing at the same sort of rate.
Onwards an upwards for the next ten weeks, incorporating some changes to the program...
So what do I mean when I talk about protocols? Well, think of body building and what the aim of body building is. If you thought the aim of body building is to build muscle then you are right. In essence, the real aim is to cause as much damage to your muscle fibres as possible, in order to promote growth and repair when resting, without injuring yourself of course. With goals like this, it's inevitable that you will be sore the day after if not suffer an onset of DoMS the day after that. However, with strength training, the aim is to gradually build strength, by training your nervous system to activate more muscle tissue, with the side effect of building muscle at the same time.
Strength Protocols
Strength training has the disadvantage of being a slow mechanism for building muscle, while being extremely effective at developing the nervous system. Because strength typically involves more weight and fewer repetitions, soreness is often less noticeable, enabling an athlete to train every working day of the week and even multiple times a day; I have been there, training as much as eight times a week, twice a day on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, whilst resting Wednesday and on weekends. During this program, which lasted for about six months, my strength gains were enormous, even though I didn't actually gain that much actual lean mass. However, the nervous system is much quicker to adapt to changes than muscle tissue, meaning loss of strength over time is more costly than loss of mass over the same period.
Body Building Protocols
Body building is the natural opposite to strength training. Whilst both are focused on a similar goal, in that you want to maximise your potential in terms of strength and size, body building focuses on the aspects of weight lifting that will ultimately result in more muscle mass and definition than practical strength. For example, you will rarely see a body builder whose nervous system is adapted enough to allow them to lift atlas stones or perform other feats associated with power and strength. What they are however, are masters of being able to recruit individual muscles on demand, rather than collectively, hence why they are extremely good at flexing pectoral muscles. The protocol that enables this is isolation and frequency. Muscles are trained to failure on each set, sometimes even past failure when performing X reps or drop sets. Typically, the repetitions would be moderate to high, with fewer sets and less overall volume. That's not to say one protocol is better than the other, they merely have two different goals.
My Protocol
So what have I put together? I have incorporated a moderate repetition program that takes each set to failure, while still incorporating specialist compound movements, like dead lifts, roll-outs, snatches, cleans and squats. Body builders would usually favour leg press machines over squats, since it isolates the legs, requiring less stabilisation and engagement from the upper body. By maintaining some compound movements in the program, the hope is that the nervous system will maintain familiarity in recruiting muscle groups collectively rather than individually, which will ultimately mean I will still be able to continue the enjoyment of strength related lifts on non program specific days. However, this is experimental, so only time will tell.
My Program Results
So ten weeks has now gone by in the blink of an eye, and I feel it's time to share some of the results before I start my next ten week strength/body building program. The figures for the body composition are not accurate in the slightest, but they are consistent. I used a set of scales that employs BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) to calculate body fat percentages. The scales are cheap and this method of body fat calculation is poor in even the best scales, so I just had to run with it. The percentage is out by about 10%, though the thing about these scales is that they are consistent. So although the fat percentage is wrong, it will hover around that same area allowing me to plot changes in body composition. For the next ten week program, I will look at obtaining some callipers and measuring body composition properly.
Start of program
Weight: 82.7 kg
Body fat: 21.25 kg
Lean mass: 61.45 kg
End of program
Weight: 84 kg
Body fat: 22.18 kg
Lean mass: 61.82 kg
Gains
Weight: 1.3 kg
Body fat: 930 g (32 oz)
Lean mass: 370 g (13 oz)
Though I gained some fat, about a kg according to the scales, though in reality this is probably more like 500g based on the good old reliable finger calliper test, there was actually an extraordinary amount of muscle tissue gained. In a year, if this consistency is maintained, would equate to a gain of nearly 2 kg of lean mass. Impressive!
Since I am able to maintain my body fat quite well through intermittent fasting protocols, it wouldn't take much to shed the excess weight gained at the end of the next ten week program, repeating the process every twenty weeks for maintenance.
How it all looks:
As you can see from the charts, there was a definite steady increase in mass, if you ignore the fluctuations from the inclusion of non reference day weigh-ins. At the same time, my body fat didn't really increase all that much, even though there was some peculiar spike mid way through. Again, I can only attribute this to the BIA calculations being sensitive to other factors like humidity or my hydration levels.
Lean mass chart:
.png)
Fat chart:
My Program
So what did I do for the last ten weeks? Here it is:
Monday:
Dumb bell bench press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Shoulder press: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Dips: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: Push ups to failure
Tuesday:
Light jump rope work, conditioning finisher and stretching
Wednesday:
Dead lift: 3 x 8-12 to failure week 1,3,5,7,9; 3 x 15-18 to failure week 2,4,6,8,10
Leg press: 3 x 20-25 to failure
Hamstring extensions: 3 x 15-20 to failure
Finisher: Lunges to failure
Thursday:
Light jump rope work, stretching
Friday:
Lat pull downs/pull ups: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated biceps curls: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Seated rows: 3 x 8-12 to failure
Finisher: EZ bar cheat curls 3 x 8-12 to failure
Weekend: Rest
The dead lift followed a weight reduction repetition increase on even weeks to maintain strength endurance. Also, I found the strictness required for the body building protocol meant I had to move away from pull-ups for lat pull downs, until I was able to increase the weight to beyond body weight; which was difficult given that my weight was increasing at the same sort of rate.
Onwards an upwards for the next ten weeks, incorporating some changes to the program...
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