Elevating Fitness

The evidence against sugar continues to mount– now there’s good evidence that sugar in the diet may contribute to heart disease risk.

Researchers looked at the diets of over 6,000 people over the course of 7 years (from 1999-2006) and put each person in one of 5 groups depending on the percentage of added sugars in their diets.

Those who consumed less than 5% of total calories as added sugars were the reference group; the second group consumed between 5-10% of total calories as added sugars, the third group 10%-17.5%, the fourth group 17.5% to just under 25%, and the fifth group consumed a whopping 25% or more of total calories as added sugars.

Next the researchers looked at measures in the blood known to be associated with heart disease. Among other things they looked at HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels, triglycerides and ratio of triglycerides to HDL (a low ratio means very low risk for heart disease).

As you may know by now I suffered a torn rotator cuff and labrum that required surgery. The injury was a long time in the making and the destruction of my shoulder began many years ago when I was doing stupid things like isometronic training in the power rack and other high risk, low reward methods.

Before surgery I was sitting at about 227 pounds. After several months of being incapacitated and eating like a normal human I was down to 179! Like I’ve always said, my hardgainer genetics are freakishly bad. Hell, my wrists don’t even measure seven inches around.

Anyway, the comeback has been long and frustrating. Because I have the undying urge to go heavy whenever I get near iron and the fact that rational thought processes go out the window after I start warming up, I have reinjured my shoulder a couple times throughout the rehab process. Needless to set these setbacks have been incredibly stressful and annoying to deal with.

While training together at CJ Murphy’s gym in Boston once, my friend Dave Tate commented, “You think Jay’s a smart guy until you see some of the stupid shit he does when he’s training.”

And he was 100% right. I do stupid shit. Often and with reckless abandon. It’s my greatest downfall in life. Has been for as long as I can remember. Whether it be flipping dirt bikes, jumping off cliffs or trying to do heavy cleans with an injured shoulder, I just lose control of my rational thought processes when the adrenaline kicks in.

TheAlieness

It is tempting to get by on less sleep, fuel up on caffeine and get on with our lives. Unfortunately when we are sleep deprived we can think we are doing a better job at things than we are. It is not until we are well rested that we notice how different things feel.

We need to re-learn how to switch off our minds and allow them to peacefully rest. The truth is modern insomnia is not our faults but rather a consequence of the society we live in and our inability to switch off or focus.

Office workers are interrupted every three minutes, so at best we have a three-minute attention span, and 62% of us are addicted to email.

A recent study at the University of California calculated that we are bombarded with 34 gigabytes of information a day, including roughly 100,000 words (a figure that has more than doubled in the past 30 years).

In this article I’m going to try to please the male readers, female readers, and trainers. If you’re simply looking for a good butt workout then skip down to the bottom of this article. But if you want some substance and you really want to understand the glutes, then you should probably read the entire article.

Ladies

Okay ladies, you say you want a nice butt. You like to talk about how you’re going to get your butt into top shape. You get envious when you see a woman with a perfect butt prancing around. Well here’s your opportunity! I’m going to give you the ultimate program to improve the appearance of your butt. Best of all, it’s free!

The World’s Best or Worst Relationship Advice Ever…

I’ve trained enough women in my time as a personal trainer to know that most of them would do just about anything to get their man to pay more attention to them. I’m far from a relationship expert but here’s one thing that women could stand to learn about men. We are all very shallow. Have you ever witnessed the crap that an attractive woman with a perfect booty can get away with? She can tell stupid jokes and every guy will laugh. She can nag at her boyfriend and he’ll cave in and comply with her every demand. She’ll get job opportunities that she doesn’t deserve. In essence, she can get away with practically murder. Why do guys act like this? Because the mere thought of getting to see her naked turns us into robots!

Want to know the single best thing you can do to get your man’s attention? Work overtime on your booty! I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it’s a fact of life. Even women have a hard time keeping their eyes off of a woman with a perfect booty even if they have no lesbian tendencies! It’s almost hypnotic. As a matter of fact, I bet this article alone would cause most men’s’ testosterone levels to rise 30% just from looking at the pictures. Sexual attraction is biochemical; don’t ever underestimate the role of hormones when dealing with relationships.

In Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 1, I gave a detailed definition of overtraining which I’ve reproduced below.

Overtraining occurs when there is a long-term imbalance between the training load and recovery processes that, for a given athlete, leads to a decrement in performance that takes more than 2-3 weeks to return to normal.

Today, I’m going to wrap up the tedious definition above and then call it a day.  Next week I’ll actually look at some other issues related to overtraining and get into some practical ways to either monitor, avoid or fix overtraining when/if/before it occurs.   If I’m optimistic, I might finish in a mere 6 parts. That’s pretty good for me.

Long-term

As I noted in Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 1, overtraining has sort of become synonymous in a lot of people’s minds with “I got tired from training.”  I recently saw on a forum  “I ran a 10k yesterday and I’m exhausted today, I think I’m overtrained.”   I’ve also seen “I trained the hell out of my legs yesterday, I’m really tired today, I think I’m overtrained.”  Hopefully by this point in the series, you realize that this is not what overtraining is or represents for a number of reasons.

And having looked at all of the other issues in my definition above, this is the final one: the long-term nature of how overtraining develops.   I want you to keep in mind the discussion from Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 3 in terms of overtraining ultimately being caused by an imbalance between training stress and recovery.  They key point I want to make here is that overtraining, true overtraining only occurs, when that imbalance persists for a fairly extended period.  How long is up to debate and probably varies quite a bit but the simple facts are this:

One of the biggest keys to long-term health and fat loss is being consistently good with your nutrition. Many people know this, yet they often struggle to find the motivation or willpower to consistently eat healthy. This causes people to fluctuate between eating right and going through periods of overeating or eating unhealthy foods. Until these behaviors change and healthy eating become the norm, long-term success will remain elusive. Fortunately there is something you can do to improve your ability to consistently eat the right foods and keep progressing with your health and fitness.

     I can’t count the number of times people have said things to me such as, “I wish I had your motivation” or “I just don’t have that much willpower.” These comments were generally made because I eat healthy the vast majority of the time and have exercised consistently for over 15 years. I can see why people could make those types of comments, but the reality is my motivation and willpower are probably not any better than those of the average person.

     Like most people, if there is a lot of junk food sitting around at home I will feel tempted and probably eat some or maybe even a lot of whatever is around. Of course, to avoid this type of problem, I rarely have junk food around the house. This is a simple example of the secret to developing the willpower to succeed. The truth is that problems attributed to a lack of willpower generally have very little to do with willpower and are actually related to your environment and how well you prepare yourself for success. In other words, the better your preparation, the greater your willpower.

There’s good news for chocolate lovers!

Consuming as little as a square of chocolate per day could help reduce the risk of hypertension and heart disease, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.

Researchers analyzed data from over 19,000 middle-aged men and women in a study called the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC).

The subjects were followed for an average of 8 years. Measurements- including blood pressure- were taken upon enrollment, and the participants were given dietary questionnaires.  They also completed questionnaires every two to three years reporting information about chronic disease and the incidence of both heart attack and stroke.

The data revealed some very good news for chocolate lovers.

Participants whose chocolate intake ranked among the highest 25 percent (an average of 7.5 grams per day of chocolate) had lower blood pressure and a significantly reduced risk of heart attack or stroke compared to subjects whose intake was lowest (average of 1.7 grams per day).

Room For A Little One!

In Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 1, I gave a detailed definition of overtraining which I’ve reproduced below.

Overtraining occurs when there is a long-term imbalance between the training load and recovery processes that, for a given athlete, leads to a decrement in performance that takes more than 2-3 weeks to return to normal.

Having examined the details of performance decrement/underperformance syndrome in Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 2, I want to back further up the definition and look at the idea of the balance between training load and recovery being the root of the issue (at least at a global level).  I also want to make the point that explicit training and recovery is not all that needs to be considered here.  Finally, I’ll also look at the idea of underrecovery as a bigger issue than overtraining per se.
 

What Causes Overtraining Part 1

A long standing question among sports scientists is what the actual ’cause’ of overtraining is, although they are usually looking at it in more of a biological sense than what I am going to talk about today.  I may talk about that later in the series but, for the most part, much of what research has looked at (e.g. muscle glycogen, muscle damage, etc.) is neither practically nor easily measurable.  Rather, in this section I want to look at the more global ’causes’ of overtraining.

In simple terms, we really need to consider two major and interacting processes on the body which are:

1. Training load: volume, intensity, frequency, etc.


2. Recovery processes: representing a whole mix of different stuff.

Or think of it more simply as stress on one side of the equation and recovery on the other side. Where the balance of the two determining whether a given athlete improves, stagnates, or regresses during their training.  Simply but reasonably accurately, we can say that:

Stress is one of the biggest problems in today’s society, because it causes numerous health problems and leads to premature deterioration in virtually every part of your body. Having a high stress level can also derail even a great exercise and nutrition program and leave you with little to show for all your hard work. To make matters worse, many people don’t realize how stressed they really are, so they don’t think about taking steps to reduce their level of stress. Therefore, I write this post to tell you about a simple stress reduction technique you can use everyday to reduce your stress level.

First I should point out that I did not come up with this stress reduction technique and I learned it from listening to a talk by Dr. Andrew Weil. This technique primarily involves deep breathing and there is an element of meditation, but what most people really like is it is very simple and can be done in just a few minutes, although it takes some time and practice to really become good at using it.

Posture. I don't talk about it much here because it seems a little, well, boring. On the other hand, when it comes to fitness, it's of major, major importance: where your 'neutral' is determines everything about the way you move, how the various parts of your body are stressed all day, every day, indeed, it determines a lot about how you're going to age: whether you're going to look vigorous and fit in old age or more like Liam Neeson in Ethan Frome after the sledding accident (obscure movie reference alert!).

Most health-conscious people know this already, however, and many will take steps to improve their posture in the gym--some by doing core exercises, some by working the scapular retractors, some by doing lots of low-back movements. As far as I can see, however, trying to 'fix' your posture through traditional exercises is almost always ineffective.

Here's the trouble with postural exercises as I see them: optimum posture is not really a matter of muscular strength, or even muscular endurance. In many, perhaps most cases, flexibility or joint mobility isn't really the major key either. So working to improve posture by addressing only muscular strength, flexibility, and/or joint mobility, though it would seem to solve the problem, only addresses the symptoms of the root cause of bad posture.

As you may know my new book, ‘The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer” is out, and I’ve been doing a round of TV and radio appearances to promote it. Recently I appeared on KTLA in Los Angeles, where the moderator asked me for my five top tips for living longer.

The challenge- for me- is always to narrow a list like this down to so few items.

I came up with 14 tips but whittled it down to five for the KTLA appearance. But I thought I’d share all 14 with you, in a two-parter here in the newsletter. (For a full list of strategies for living longer and healthier, please see read my book!)

Here’s part one:

1. Drink green tea every day
   

   Catechins in green tea help fight cancer; they’re also effective for boosting your metabolism and helping fight weight gain



2. Eat five ounces of nuts a week
   

   A 14-year study of more than 86,000 women in the Nurses Health Study showed that people who ate more than five ounces of nuts weekly had a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those who ate less than 1 oz of nuts a month.

Let’s face it.

You’re busy.

And you have very little time to spend debating what you should do in the gym or what you should be eating.

So I’m going to make it easy for you.

First, let’s cover your workouts. You’re going to train 3-4 days per week and you’re going to get in and out of the gym in 45-60 minutes. This helps to keep your testosterone levels high and allows you to maintain maximum focus throughout.

You’re always going to choose big, compound exercises for each body part. Starting from the top down you will do the following movements:

• Traps- deadlift.


• Shoulders- dumbbell or barbell military presses.


• Chest- dumbbell presses, weighted pushups or barbell bench/incline presses.


• Back- chin ups and 1 arm dumbbell rows.


• Biceps- barbell or dumbbell curls.


• Triceps- dips and close grip benches.


• Lower back, glutes and hamstrings- more deadlifts.


• Legs- squats, squats and more squats.

Simple, right?

Sometime we fail to enjoy times we have free. We have lost the art of loafing or doing nothing, in the modern world not many people can do it without feeling guilty or at least like they should be doing something.

All nature loafs, while man alone works for a living. He works because he has to, because thanks to the progress of civilization life gets incredibly more complex, with duties, responsibilities, fears and ambitions, born not of nature but of human society…….. – Lin Yutang

When first reading this I was struck by the truth behind the words of the wise Lin Yutang much of the work we do and things we do are spurred out of fear from human society and go totally against our nature. We can all relate to this I have had countless a day off in which I have felt lazy or unproductive for lounging around and doing pretty much nothing, this feeling pushed me into running around and finding trivial things to do. While there is always “something” that needs to be done we can forget that sometimes that “something” is to rest, relax and re-cooperate the body initiating a healing process we all need to repair from the strains of everyday life…….

Carbohydrates are misunderstood and needlessly made confusing by so many self assuming experts. Carbohydrates are often viewed as the enemy and consuming them is a fate worse the death! Well not that bad, but why are so many people scared of Carbs?

 
Some people are more scared of Carbs than death!

It comes down to understanding. Understanding carbohydrates can be confusing because there are many different ways to categorize carbohydrates and (systems used to measure carbs). Here in lies the problem. So my solution is to give you a schooling in carbs, lets begin.

The eight main different types of carbohydrate are (with examples):

• Low G.I Carbs (Sweet Potato)
• Hi G.I (White potato)
• Fibrous Carbs (Green Vegetables)
• Starchy Carbs (Rice, Potato)
• Refined Carbs (Processed sugar, white sugar or Soft Drink)
• Natural Carbs (Fruit, Fructose)
• Simple Carbs/Sugars (Glucose, Lollies)
• Complex Carbs (broken down into 2 categories, fibrous and starchy)