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Sorry to reply to everything in one burst, after the
group traffic went up, I switched to "Digest Mode".
Maybe not the best move, but it keeps my inbox sane.
This is my third eMail address, so one of them has to
be!
Warning, this is a really long post.
On Crunches:
Nols, I did mean to say, yes, that crunches are
useless. I didn't mean to say that "every exercise
where you lie on your back and move your body" is
useless. I like bicycles a lot, and I also like an
exercise called a Janda situp, and there are various
other exercises I like, lying on your back (paradox
crunches, reverse crunches, vaccums). I say "crunches
are useless" because there are better selections in
exercises, including the much-maligned sit-up.
The crunch is based on a flawed premise: that we need
to "isolate" the muscle that we are working on. (In
the crunch's case, the idea is that we have to isolate
the abs from the hip-flexors, which are also
involved.) But nothing could be further from the
truth.
I'm starting to think I need to put disclaimers on the
things that I say. So here's a disclaimer for this
little bit of advice: Yes, if you are an advanced
bodybuilder who is looking for "separation" etc. it
makes sense to do isolation exercises. Otherwise, for
the vast majority of genetically average trainees,
most of their exercise program should involve
compound, free weight, movements.
Why? Make a fist. A white-knuckle fist. Harder! Okay.
Now, feel the tension in your forearm travel up to
your bicep and even into your shoulder. Okay, shake it
out.
What does this mean? It means that no part of your
body works in isolation. The muscle groups around it
come into play to amplify the neurological signal to
the muscle to flex. (This is one of Sherrington's
Laws, if I'm remembering correctly.) This means if
your big muscles are under a heavy (for you) load,
that the smaller muscles surrounding them are forced
to come into play to 1) stabilize the load and 2) help
generate the neuromuscular tension to move the load.
So the idea (when you're building muscle) is that you
want to do the hardest possible exercises to generate
the most tension and involve the largest number of
muscle-groups.
The problem with crunches is that they're not the
hardest-possible exercise. In fact, they're kinda
easy. If you took little EEG measures of how hard the
abdominal muscles are working when you're crunching...
the answer is... not very. So what do people do? They
do a ton of reps! (Okay... feel the burn.)
Time for another disclaimer. For exercises that use a
large percentage of the body's musculature with a
lighter load like running, swimming, shoveling,
swinging, etc. it makes sense to do a lot of reps. But
for an isolation exercise, it doesn't. Get a picture
of "Captain America" in the Guiness Book of world
records. This guy set the world record for number of
sit-ups (like 25,000+) and he doesn't even have a
ripped six-pack to show for it! The "burn" comes from
running out of ATP, so your muscles are literally
"worked out". The problem is, once your body
inevitably restocks its ATP, you lose that "pump" and
"tone" that you're looking for. (The only way to keep
it would be to kill yourself. A corpse has no ATP,
hence, it's a "stiff".)
The better way is through lower-rep, harder training.
If you train with low reps (but high weight!) you'll
get neuromuscular tone that's unmatched--because tone
is simply resting levels of tension--your muscles are
ready to spring into action at any time. Match this
with something (like shovelglove and NOS) to burn off
excess bodyfat... and there you go. The recipe for
abs.
The weird thing about abs is that you don't even have
to do ab-"specific" exercises to get them. Like I
mentioned before, the primary function of the
abdominals is stablization. If you lift with heavy
weights that you have to stabilize (i.e. if you
deadlift, squat, pullup, press overhead, etc.) your
abs have to flex hard to keep up and they get this
benefit.
Okay, that's really more than I wanted to write on
that subject. If this line of thinking is interesting
to you, please check out "Power to the People" by
Pavel Tsatsouline--where I blatantly stole some of my
examples. He describes a great routine and goes into a
lot more detail about why low-rep training is
effective, and isolation is a flawed premise.
On Soy.
Maybe I'm a little alarmist, but I avoid soy. Why?
Okay, the big whoop-de-doo about Soy is all about its
"heart-healthy-protein" effects and how good it is for
women.
I wouldn't reccomend soy to anyone. (Except Vegans,
and only... because there aren't a lot of other
choices.) I would especially avoid eating it if I was
a man (which I am),or trying to alter my body
composition (fat to muscle ratio). I would also never
feed it to an infant. The phytoestrogens which can be
beneficial to women undergoing menopause can screw up
both male and female babies endocrinologies. The
isoflavones in Soy, among other things, interfere with
testosterone production, block HDL (the good
cholesterol) production, and are actually toxic to
testicular cells and lead to increased risk of
prostate cancer.
So that leaves women undergoing or post-menopause. I
don't reccomend it for them either. Why? Because soy
also increases the risk of breast cancers.
In short, soy is terrible. All of this stuff is in the
research, but the mainstream media just isn't talking
about it.
I'll eat a bowl of Miso soup or have some soy sauce,
but I don't sit down to a bowl of tofu or drink soy
protein in my protein shakes.
Let me know (eMail me here) if you need references--I
have them.
On being skinny-fat:
Yes, I was being a bit harsh on Jared. Anyone who can
lose 235 pounds (a whole one of me!) in a year is okay
with me. My point was a little different, though--he
needed to eat more protein (he was taking in about 35
grams a day) and do some weight training exercise to
help maintain his muscle mass. This is the problem
with "dieting" in the traditional manner. Your body
basically has two things it can tap into for energy
(when it's low on fuel--glucose): your muscle mass, or
your fat mass. If you just cut calories without making
sure to exercise, it will eat into your muscle-mass.
Why? Because muscle mass is far more metabolically
active.
Let's try a grisly example.
Imagine, for a moment, that you're the cook at a table
with five lumberjacks and five couch potatoes. The
lumberjacks each eat four times as much as the couch
potatoes. They are all starving and yelling for food.
You can kill and serve one person to the others. Which
do you kill?
The answer is, you kill one of the lumberjacks. Why?
Because they're pigs! They eat way more than the couch
potatoes. For each one you kill, you have to serve
less and less food to the rest.
Now imagine that the lumberjacks are your muscle and
the couch potatoes are your fat. You have to convince
to cook to shoot the couch potatoes. (Because as long
as the lumberjacks are alive, they eat a lot more,
which means, YOU can eat more and look healthier and
more fit at your bodyweight.) How do you do that?
First, you eat enough protein (dead lumberjacks). If
you've got a supply of dead lumberjacks coming in, the
cook won't want to kill any of yours. Second, you make
sure to exercise. (Give your lumberjacks something to
do.) If the cook sees that the lumberjacks are
actually DOING something, the cook will be much less
likely to kill them. Third, eat breakfast--the
lumberjacks and the couch potatoes haven't eaten for
9-14 hours before breakfast, and they need something
to eat. When the cook sees this, the cook is going to
panic and start shooting lumberjacks left and right,
unless you make sure that the cook has something to
feed the troops (breakfast).
Now that I look at that example, it seems a lot
weirder than I thought when I made it up. Oh well.
Maybe I've been watching too many horror movies:
"Cannibal Lumberjacks 6: the Reckoning"
So why is all of this a problem? If you get to your
goal weight, you're at your goal weight, right? And
who cares how you got there?
It's great that you're at your goal weight, but the
problem is maintaining it. Since you've just killed
off your army of lumberjacks, all you have left is a
bunch of lazy good for nothing couch potatoes who
don't eat much... so you can't eat much! If you tried
to get down to 150 pounds, you're going to have more
bodyfat than someone who has always been at 150. So
you try eating a "normal" amount... and all of a
sudden, your weight creeps back up (faster than the
first time, because this time you have less
lumberjacks siphoning off energy). Now you're fat
again, and your metabolism's all screwed up. Not a
great place to be.
Anyway, the point of all that is 1) eat protein 2)
exercise and 3) eat breakfast. Also, don't lose weight
too fast, or the cook's gonna start shooting
lumberjacks. Don't diet "beyond" the diet. (I.E. "One
of my three meals will be a cup of coffee and an
apple.")
A Little On Alcohol:
Calling Alcohol an "S" is a great idea. There's a
reason they call it a "beer gut". How about no
"Scotch"? Well... takes care of mine, at least...
I think it depends on how you're using alcohol. If you
have one-two drinks with lunch and/or dinner, daily,
it's good for you. If you drink more than that, or you
suspect it's a problem... there you go. You just found
one of your personal "s-es". (Like Peanut Butter)
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© 2002-2005 Reinhard Engels, All Rights Reserved.