Click to enlarge. Graphic from http://massivehealth.com/
A great visual explanation of carbs and the human body – if counting calories aren’t working for you – you should be having a look at this.
Tag Archives: Think Athlete
The Advanced Gym Goers Lifeycle
Isn’t it funny how the life cycle goes:
You’re unfit
You go gym and have an induction. You spend a couple of weeks pretending to know what to do on the machines. You even think your getting fitter.
You learn what to do in the gym
You pick up a copy of men’s health and use the workouts in there. Hey, it works!!
You want to bulk up
Enough of that men’s health stuff – you want to get MASSIVE. So you eat every bit of meat and protein you can find – because protein = muscle right? You might even take a weight gain supplement. Weight gain 4000 anyone? (Beefcake)
You realise you are fat and bulky
Those beach body photos didn’t work out, yes you have huge ‘guns’ but unfortunately 8 months worth of protein took its toll. Mostly on your stomach.
You do a cut
Running those 5k’s is hard with the extra 12lbs of ‘bulk’ you collected. Time to keep the muscle and get trim.
You feel small so you bulk up
You get nervous and lose focus on the trim goal. Oops.
You get chubby again
See ‘you want to bulk up’ above.
You realise that being lean is actually what you want
You wanna have a physique your happy with, you don’t want to be a body builder but want low maintenance fitness and to feel better everyday.
You’re lean, you wanna stay lean and improve you life/job etc get more time
Welcome to nirvana, your journey is complete. It’s time to eat well, be better at sports and have a balanced life. Time to be a CogitoAthlete.
Why not skip a few steps in the cycle and make life easier?
(Story above may or may not be based on a true story *cough*me*cough*)
Chris
How To Put On 5kgs Of Muscle in 30 Days
How To Put On 5kgs Of Muscle in 30 Days
Having reduced gym time to 2 hours a week to cut weight and build lean muscle, there was still some capacity to train with more focus and intensity – and make some improvements.
While following the previous program, I took time out to read books and articles by some of the best trainers in the field. Notably Charles Poliquin, Joe De Franco and Pavel Tsatsoluine. One theme was constant, to build lean muscle, you need a combination of slow focused weight orientated exercise – and a fast intense weight orientated exercise with rest periods.
With this in mind, I created the following gym program:
Slow and focused HIT Style Exercises (Every Rep is 5 seconds up, 5 seconds down, for a total of 100 seconds under tension). No rest unless specified.
- Pullover – x10 (Super Set)
- Yates’s bent row – x10
- 3 minutes rest
- Zercher Squat – x10
- 3 minutes rest
- Pec-deck – x10 (Superset)
- Weighted dips – x 10
- 3 minutes rest
- Reverse curl – x10
- 3 minutes rest
- Military Press – x10
- 3 minutes rest
Fast and intense exercises.
- x100 2 handed Kettlebell swings 28kg
- 3 minutes rest
- 6 Min Abs
Outside the gym
Press ups in the morning and in the evening. These could vary from 100 a day to up to 500 a day.
Frequency
I would perform this program on every 3rd day. So if you went to the Gym on Monday, the next day you would go was Thursday. This gave my body time to recover enough to make the next strength increase. For slow and controlled exercises, the weight was increased by 10% every time I could complete 11-12 reps. Sessions would take about 45mins to 1hr.
Why?
A combination of the most efficient way to gain muscle, with minimal recovery time, and the minimal time required in the gym (lifes too short to spend 5 days in the gym, right?).
Supplement Program
Creatine Monohydrate (Speeds up recovery and lead to faster strength gains)
Food
2 Litres of Unhomogonised Milk Per Day (To increase my daily calorie intake)
Low carb diet based on The Slow Carb Diet from the 4 Hour Body By Timothy Ferriss.
The results?
Before: 66.1kgs
August 2011 - 66.1kgs
After 71kgs
September 2011 - 71kg
Contact me if you have any questions by form here or @twitter here