| This site is dedicated to spreading information about the most effective exercise and nutrition methods. The purpose being, to achieve athleticism, health, longevity, and optimum body composition. |
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| Here is where I'm posting interesting or particularily insightful tips aquired primarily from myself and T-Nation.com. |
| Backside Specialization
by Christian Thibaudeau, T-Nation With most athletes, the fastest way to improve performance is to get stronger and more powerful in the muscles that you don't see: those in the back of ya! I'm talking about hamstrings, glutes, calves, lower back, lats, rhomboids, traps and triceps. In the initial phase of an athletic program, performance can be increased at an alarming rate by doing a "backside specialization" program along with maintenance "frontside" work. I'm talking something along the lines of a 2:1 ratio (twice as much work for the backside muscles as for the frontside muscles). |
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| As you carefully take a look at the physique of these two world class sprinters, you'll realize why I advocate high intensity interval training (HIIT). They have aesthetically pleasing physiques that balance size, strength, and bodyfat with explosive speed. And when I say "sprinters", I mean the track athletes who compete in events that are 400m or less. So do everyone a favor and stop it with atrocious amount of all the jogging and other low intensity varieties of cardio. If you aren't already regularily doing cardiovascular exercise, I suggest you change that with extreme prejudice. By the way "runners", what you like to call "running" is really just jogging.(You know who you are) So for now on, unless you're "running" under a five minute mile, know that you are really just a jogger. -DR |
| Shawn Crawford, 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 200m.(19.79) As of June 2008, also a hopeful for defending his gold medal in the 2008 Bejing Olympics! |
| Anjanette Kirkland, 12.42 PR in the 100mH |
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| Carbohydrate Tolerance & Timing by Dr. John Berardi, T-Nation Our bodies are pretty well equipped to handle carbohydrates, especially if we're lean, athletic, and participate in sports. However, not everyone has the same carbohydrate tolerance some being far worse than others. Regardless, everyone's tolerance is dramatically increased during the time that we're working out and the time immediately after. Basically, when you haven't exercised, carb efficiency is down. When you have, it's up. Feed higher carb meals after exercise and you're more likely to have a more rapid recovery as well as a better body composition. Note: Carbohydrate tolerance is also better in the morning, after a night of fasting. |
| Amazing Fats: Eat fat to stay healthy, lean, and young by Dr. John Berardi, T-Nation Eating Fat To Lose Fat To lose fat, sometimes you have to eat fat. I know, I know, this statement just "feels wrong." After all, years of anti-fat campaigning have convinced us that fat is what makes us chunky. But did you know that monounsaturated fats and certain polyunsaturates actually speed up the metabolic rate? Eric Noreen, a lipid researcher at the University of Western Ontario, believes that the best of the fat burning bunch are the highly unsaturated omega 3s called EPA and DHA. According to Eric, these omega 3 fatty acids can potentially help burn blubber through 3 different mechanisms. 1. Allowing the body to burn fat in situations where fat oxidation (or fat burning) is normally turned off. Normally, when you eat carbohydrates, fat burning is slowed or turned off. Also, during high intensity exercise, the body prefers burning carbohydrate to fat. Therefore in both scenarios, fat burning is dramatically reduced. However, cells that receive a high daily dose of omega 3s actually burn more fat in both situations. The net result more fat burned each and every day whether you're exercising or not. 2. Increasing your sensitivity to the hormone Insulin. Insulin is both a storage hormone and an anti-breakdown hormone. When insulin goes up, a consequence of eating, ingested nutrients are stored in muscle cells and in fat cells. Likewise, nutrients already in these cells (especially the fat in our love handles) are retained as a result of this insulin boost. Since omega 3 fatty acids can make your body more sensitive to insulin, meaning that less insulin will be released each time you eat, a diet high in omega 3s helps prevent large insulin increases with eating. If insulin is properly managed, more stored fat is released each day. And guess what happens to that fat. You got it it's incinerated. 3. Increasing the heat of your cellular furnaces. In your cells, there are two metabolic organelles responsible for burning fuel to make energy. The most well known is the mitochondrion while the lesser known one is the peroxisome. Omega 3 fatty acids have been shown to increase the size of both metabolic fires, leading to an increase in the amount of energy burned in each organelle. What this means is that a diet high in omega 3s can make you a fat burning machine. In a series of investigations conducted by Eric and his colleagues at the University of Western Ontario, Eric showed that a diet supplemented with omega 3-rich fish oil promotes losses of body fat with simultaneous gains in lean mass. That's right, more muscle and less fat, baby. In addition to omega 3 fatty acids, several other fats have been shown to reduce body fat. The polyunsaturated fat CLA (conjugated linoleic acid a conjugated omega 6 fat) has shown promise, as have foods high in monounsaturated fats like olive oil. MCTs (medium chain triglycerides) are also noteworthy. These unique fats have a shorter chain length than many of the other fats discussed in this article. As a result of their unique structure, they are more readily burned than the other types of fat, meaning more energy with less fat storage. Of course, if you overeat on any macronutrient, you're going to store body fat not lose it. So pay careful attention to your total energy intake and, as Walter Willett suggests, try to get somewhere between 25% and 35% of your daily energy from fat. Eating Fat To Gain Muscle For starters, it takes a lot of energy to build muscle. Since fat contains twice as much energy per gram than carbohydrates or protein, fat's a great source of muscle building power as long as you're eating the right kinds and exercising regularly. Also, when compared to protein and carbohydrate, fat is the least costly macronutrient to digest, absorb, and metabolize (called the thermic effect of feeding). This means that fat takes less total energy to break down and therefore more of the energy consumed as fat can go toward muscle repair and growth. So what are the right kinds of fat for building muscle? Lonnie Lowery tells us: "All fats supply caloric density for supporting the energy-costly process of protein synthesis. This is a boon for thin, ectomorphic guys trying to gain weight. But since we Americans consume far too many trans fats and omega-6 type fatty acids, an increased focus on monounsaturated fatty acids (e.g. olive oil) and omega-3 fatty acids like flax and (especially) fish oils are even better." Also, if you're looking for an additional anabolic drive for training hard and building muscle, look no further than your refrigerator. Research published in journals such as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry has indicated that a decrease in dietary fat intake as well as a decrease in saturated fat intake can lead to reductions in the blood concentrations of Testosterone and other androgens. Couple your low fat diet with a high carbohydrate/fiber diet and you've got a double dose of androgenic disaster. So when trying to gain muscle, eat your fats, not your Wheaties, lest you skip the gym in favor of antiquing. Eating Fat To Prevent Heart Disease Heart disease is considered by some to be an inflammatory disease. Small injuries to the walls of the blood vessels can cause inflammation and the accumulation of fatty deposits. In an environment in which blood platelets are excessively sticky and aggregate around the injury and one in which blood clots readily form; the risk for an eventual cardiovascular event is high. As discussed earlier, omega 6 fatty acids can promote increased inflammation, platelet aggregation, and blood clots, while omega 3 fatty acids reduce all three. Therefore a good anti-atherosclerotic strategy would be to consume a ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 in the 1 or 2:1 range. In addition to reducing the atherosclerotic potential of the blood vessels, it's also important to balance out the ratios of LDL cholesterol (the bad kind) and HDL cholesterol (the good kind), these ratios being highly associated with heart disease risk. According to Cassandra Forsythe, a lipid researcher at the University of Connecticut, it's important to get about 30% of your daily energy from fat, but rather than eating any old fats, it's important to get your fat breakdown just right. In her opinion, the best blood lipid profile is obtained when saturated fatty acids make up 30% of total dietary fat, monounsaturated fatty acids make up 40% of total dietary fat, and polyunsaturated fatty acids make up 30% of total dietary fat. Think of this as "The Zone" of dietary fat. Eating Fat To Treat Cancer There are probably many causes of cancer including environmental, genetic and some interaction of the two. But regardless of the cause, dietary fat can impact the course of cancer development and the course of cancer therapy. When cancer cells are exposed to large amounts of omega 6 fatty acids (linoleic acid), they rapidly increase their rate of cell division and growth. On the contrary, when exposed to omega 3 fatty acids, cancer cells become starved of linoleic acid and begin to die. Furthermore, omega 3 fatty acids can upregulate the genetic material necessary for the destruction of cancer cells and block the adhesion of cancer cells to other health cells. Couple these facts with the fact that omega 3 fatty acids can increase the effectiveness of traditional cancer treatments and the survival rates of patients on traditional cancer treatments and it looks like omega 3 supplements should be the mainstay of any cancer treatment. Eating Fat To Keep You Young Sooner or later we all have to face the facts we're all getting older. But getting older doesn't necessarily mean dramatic cognitive and physical decline. Although scientists can't determine exactly what makes us grow older, one prevalent theory is the free radical theory of aging. This theory states that aging is a process accelerated by the constant bombardment of our genetic material by free radicals. These free radicals can damage DNA, leading to defects in gene expression and eventual decline. If there were a way to upregulate cellular protection from free radicals, we might age more gracefully. Well, there are two ways. First, exercise acutely increases oxidative stress on the body (free radical accumulation). But after a very short period of time, the body upregulates the cell's antioxidant mechanisms, leading to an overall greater net oxidant protection. Interestingly, polyunsaturated fatty acids do the same thing. Although many experts have objected to polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation because of the fact that polyunsaturated fatty acids are easily oxidized and would theoretically be more subject to free radical damage than monounsaturated fatty acids or saturated fatty acids, these experts are not thinking correctly. Just like with exercise, polyunsaturated fatty acid intake acutely increases oxidant stress but after a very short period of time, the intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids leads to a net increase in oxidant protection. So exercise and eat your polyunsaturated fatty acids in order to stay young. Eating Fat To Make You Smarter Although it's unlikely that a dietary change will take you from Fat Albert to Albert Einstein, new data have indicated that the intake of specific polyunsaturated fatty acids (namely the omega 3 fatty acid DHA and the omega 6 fatty acid arachadonic acid) may enhance cognitive development in babies. Infants fed formula deficient in these fatty acids perform more poorly on a number intelligence and vision measures when compared to infants fed formula enriched with these fatty acids or fed breast milk. In addition, some researchers have speculated that some of the cognitive decline seen in the elderly could be related to dietary fat intake. In a study conducted at Institute of Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, researchers found that high omega 6 (linoleic acid) consumption was associated with cognitive decline while high omega 3/fish oil intake was negatively associated with cognitive decline. |
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