I remember my dad’s 60th birthday. We had a surprize party for him and we stayed up late playing guitar and having a few beers. We ended up in the garage so my mom could sleep and sometime around 4 AM my dad stood up saying “I don’t feel 60″. He jumped up, grabbed one of the rafters and started doing pull-ups. I think he managed 5 or 6.

I remember thinking that there was no reason why he shouldn’t be able to do 5 or 6 pull-ups when he’s 70 or 80 because I’ve never been a big believer that people have to decay as they age. Frankly, I think your body will continue to do what you get it to do until you die. Of course there have been heated debates with people who believe that muscle wasting is a symptom of aging.

Making A Strong Case For Building Muscle by Ellington Darden Ph.D presents some evidence that my belief is correct.

… researchers found that inactive men gradually lose muscle as they get older. But the athletes who continue to train throughout their 30s, 40s, and 50s, tend to keep their muscle mass stable. The loss of muscle was not age related, they concluded.

“We can see that the amount they have is directly related to the amount of time they spend exercising,” says Evans. He also referred to strength-training research in which 80- and 90-year-old men and women significantly increased the muscular size and strength of their leg muscles.

Life is long and even as the years continue to mount, the body continues to function as it always did. The key is to keep doing what you want to be able to do when you get older. This is important for EVERYONE. Start NOW to ensure that you will be able to as you get older.

Did you hear me? START NOW!

The Myths of the Squat and Bench Press - by Rob Wagner is a great read for anyone who as been forced to consider the injury potential of squatting ATG (ass to ground) and it is well referenced. It is worth mentioning that I have yet to receive a single citation from an ATG squatting nay-sayer about why full and deep squatting is bad from someone with healthy knees; they can be passionate detractors but lack any evidence to support their claim that it will destroy healthy knees.

Myth # 1. Squatting is bad for your knees.
Dr. Klein’s can take the credit for launching this one. Studies carried out over the past twenty years have rejected Klein’s findings. In a study that looked at the effects that full squats and half squats had on knee stability showed no change, over eight different tests for stability, when compared to a control group. To determine the long-term effects the same researchers looked at the knees of competitive powerlifters and weightlifters and found that powerlifters and weightlifters had tighter knee joints than the controls (Chandler & Stone, 1991). Another study found that the involvement of the hamstring in full squats plays a role in helping protect the anterior cruciate ligament (Manariello, Backus & Parker, 1994).

If you do squat and don’t go down very deep, you are limiting your growth potential as well as capping the sports specific performance benefits of the exercise for a few reasons:

• If you squat through 50% of the range of motion, you will need to do twice the number of reps to do the same amount of work.
• Partial squats either limit the time under tension (which is critical for hypertrophy) or force the athlete to move very slowly to achieve the time under tension. Slow movements tend not to be very sport specific.
• Partial squats do not cause the same amount of GH release because they do not force the body to work as hard.
• Partial reps do not improve strength along the entire length of the muscle belly so you will be weak once your knee flexes into the untrained range.

NOTE: there is a time and a place for partial reps if you have good knee integrity but the bulk of your squatting should be ATG deep. If you have poor knee integrity, deep squatting my not be the right exercise for you.

I closed on Saturday so I decided to do a full body functional workout. I did the following movements:

• Tire flipping
• Battle ropes
• Farmer carries
• Pull-ups
• Dips
• Keg press
• Log press
• Sled pulling

It was an energy systems workout so I used perceived exertion as the guide for how much work I should be doing. I did 4-5 sets of everything except the sled pulling. It took me about 45 minutes.

What I liked:

• Most of the movements are new to me so it was easy to stay focused.
• The keg and log press are a lot easier than Olympic lifting because I wasn’t afraid of banging my hips into the bar.
• I got that lung burning feeling that I only get during the first hill ride or race of the season.
• My heart rate went up very quickly.
• The tempo of the workout is closer to that of trail riding than my usual weight training because pull-ups and dips do not work the entire body like tire flipping or farmers carries.
• It was fun to really push myself that hard.

What I learned from it:

• Battle ropes are brutally hard on the body and lungs - I was expecting the tire flipping to be the toughest aspect of the workout but after about 25 seconds of whipping the ropes I was “fall on the ground” tired.
• A keg that is partially filled with water is a tough implement to hold overhead.
• New and novel movements are a lot more physically taxing than well practiced movements with substantially more load.
• It is possible to get a really good workout in a junk yard using “crap” so you don’t have to rely on state of the art equipment.

I was a little sore yesterday, particularly in my chest and lower back, but it felt good. I think I’m going to enjoy closing on Saturday’s a lot more now!

Last summer Tony agreed with me that I was probably killing myself with all the cycling I was doing. Soon there after I wrote Shortening your life by too much exercise to capture what I call the finite beat hypothesis - the heart has the potential for a certain number of beats and once these beat occur the heart stops working. It is a theory that seemed to make sense to me at the time.

In September when I started working at SST it became evident that the volume of cycling that I was doing was slowing my muscle growth because of the high level of cortisol associated with exercising longer than 45 minutes. Once I dropped down to one cardio session per week my lean body mass started to increase. If cortisol can have that dramatic an impact on lean mass creation what impact does it have on other body tissues?

A devastating impact.

Stress hormone may speed up brain aging outlines the findings of a recent study on an elderly population. The goal of the study was to determine if there was a relationship between cortisol levels and hippocampus size and neural density. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that is implicated in memory and spatial awareness functioning. It has long been known that in most individuals, there is a decrease in hippocampus size as they grow older and, as a consequence, ones performance on memory and spatial awareness tasks decreases with age. However, this new study indicates that the degree of deterioration is related to cortisol levels such that those individuals who have higher levels of cortisol show greater impairment and the size of their hippocampus is reduced when compared to those individuals who have lower cortisol levels.

What are the practical implications of this finding?

If you want to keep your brain functioning at a high level for the duration of your life you need to decrease the amount of stress you experience. This doesn’t just mean psychological or mental stress, it also means physiological stress.

Steady state cardio sessions that last more than 45 minutes have been shown to increase cortisol levels as have intense resistance and strength training sessions of the same length. Limit the length of these to less than 45 minutes and if you can’t, make sure you consume some simple sugars during the sessions to mitigate the bodies natural cortisol release in response to a drop in blood sugar level.

Very low calorie diets or eating behaviours that include not eating for more than 4 hours in a row should be avoided as they will cause a release of cortisol.

You should eat within 20 minutes of waking to help lower the level of cortisol in your body - cortisol is very high in the morning because you have not been eating. The sooner it is reduced, the sooner the negative aspects of cortisol will be eliminated.

Remember that cortisol is a wasting hormone that causes your body to consume itself to maintain functioning. When cortisol levels are high very little of your body will grow and we now know that this includes your brain. If you want to maintain a high quality of life into your senior years you need to avoid activities that promote cortisol release when you are younger.

From the CrossFit website we learn that “CrossFit is the principal strength and conditioning program for many police academies and tactical operations teams, military special operations units, champion martial artists, and hundreds of other elite and professional athletes worldwide.”

They have a lot of videos on youtube if you would like to see what it is all about. ‘DL, J RingDip, RopeClimb‘ is one that tells the story. It is a little messy but it is a great example of determination and how the body responds to high levels of lactate.

Throwing-up is a natural response by the body to high levels of lactate and high levels of lactate is the natural response to intense exercise without sufficient oxygen. Lactate inducing workouts are fantastic for fat burning because of the massive amount of EPOC (excessive post-exercise oxygen consumption) they create.

I believe that this type of training is going to become very popular because it is effective at leaning a person out, building relative strength and developing mental toughness. It teaches a person how to ride the line between too much exercise and just enough exercise and this will allow them to get the most out of their time at the gym.

I don’t see many people working out like this at commercial gyms but did get people to the threshold a few times when I was a trainer at one - my boss didn’t like it very much because it was “bad for business.” I don’t know what he was talking about because my clients got results and renewed with me; but it could have had something to do with the fear instilled in the new members who see them holding buckets to their faces.

Inspired by T-nation author Eric Cressey’s What I Learned In 2007, I decided to put together my own list of things that I learned in 2007 (note - Eric’s 2006 article was my first ever post so be sure to read this years version).

1) Gifted athletes do not necessarily look remarkable but there is something weird about the way they look when they train. A few weeks ago we did the athlete testing for SST’s 12 week football academy. There were a variety of assessment tests but the one that stood out to me was the penta jump. This is basically a standing long jump with 5 jumps instead of just one, all linked together in a fluid unstopping order. It is a skill, but talent does impact ones performance.

Many of the athletes performed unremarkable, which is what we expect to see at the start of the camp because many of them are untrained and are coming off of a month or two layoff from exercising. But one of the athletes, a 14 year old, look weird doing it. He seemed to float away from me when he jumped - each jump took him so much further down the turf than any of the other athletes. His distance way 6-8 feet longer than any one else in his age group. I wasn’t very surprised to see his sub 5 second result in the 40. He’s 14 years old and pretty small. I’m looking forward to seeing how he’ll continue to improve as he grows pounds of muscle and gains more complete neural control over his muscle firing patterns.

2) Fish oil supplements eliminate most of the shoulder pain I experience when I’m lifting heavy. I’m both shocked and happy to have found this to be the case. There is practically no fire in my shoulders in the days following my chest / back workouts. There used to be pain that prevented me from sleeping and stopped me from training heavy in the summer. This is all but gone now, thanks to 6-10 grams of fish oil per day.

3) Great athletes embrace coaching, lifters tend to ignore it. How someone responds to feedback plays the biggest role in the quality of feedback that they get. The gifted 14 year old listens to all the advice and coaching that he is given and he continues to improve, and people continue to coach him. This isn’t surprising because people do not like to waste their time. IF someone isn’t going to follow the advice that is given to them, people learn very quickly to stop giving it to them. Personally I begin to disengage from a person after the first time they role their eyes and DON’T change their movement pattern - they can role their eyes, call me a prick but so long as they change their movement pattern I’ll keep coaching them.

When it comes to lifters most of them do not want to lift correctly. They lift the weight and not the movement. I look away a lot when I’m at the commercial gym because I don’t want to see someone hurt themselves and feel responsible from helping them. I’ll offer advice to a young lifter on the off-hand chance that they want to become better, but more often than not they don’t want to hear it. This is too bad for them and good news for Rachel because she’s going to be an athletic therapist and will have a lot of people to work on.

4) Energetic coaching is more important than knowledgeable coaching when it comes to working with young or inexperienced athletes. Young people don’t not have the movement inventory or body awareness that older people have because they have spend less time in their bodies interacting with the earth. Most athletic movements are going to be new to them and they are not likely to have the motor control to move their bodies in the way that is required in order to be performed the movement correctly. For this reason, advanced coaches are not going to be able to use their knowledge to facilitate improvements within this population. More importantly, given that it is frustrating to be bad at something, particularly when a coach or another athlete does it with ease, inexperienced athletes may find quitting an easier choice if they do not find any enjoyment in an activity. An energetic coach can help bridge the gap between a lack of experience and learning a new skill and will often help the young person find joy in an otherwise unrewarding experience.

5) Rotator cuff muscles are primarily fast twitch fibers and should be trained in the 7-10 rep range with fast effort and slower negative tempos. This one could have read - people should train their rotator cuff muscles. I started doing internal and external rotation exercises just after I started working at SST after the cause of my horrific posture was pointed out. While I am still imbalanced in this area, I’m catching up and standing taller than I ever have.

6) Steady state cardio promotes fat storage while high intensity interval training creates more EPOC that will result in greater fat loss over the long haul. I credit RPM with starting my brain thinking about this one. The choreography is interval based with exertion levels growing from comfortable to breathless. One of the things I found once I stopped trying to keep my heart rate at 150 was that I was more tired at the end of the workouts and couldn’t do so much riding. I also noticed that there is only have a finite length of time that I can get my heart rate above 160 and once this time is up I get too fatigued trying to bring it up there again.

As this relates to fat loss: you need to workout very intensely to promote fat loss, but you need to workout at various levels of intensity to get the most fat loss because it requires the most amount of energy to adapt to many different level of effort. Also, if you workout at just one intensity, your body will quickly adapt to make it more and more efficient to work at that level the next time. This means if you are working out at a level that requires fat as fuel, the body will adapt to store more fat to fuel the effort next time. If you keep it at a steady state, your body will become so efficient at working at this level that it will stop losing fat. Given that your activity level will not change, it is unlikely that you will alter your diet to account for this improved efficiency and will begin to eat a calorie surplus thus promoting fat storage.

7) Spell check and proof read your resume a number of times before you submit it. We initially passed on a trainer candidate because of the typos on his resume. I looked over his resume a week later and thought that maybe there was a good reason why the mistakes were there. When we chatted it was obvious that there wasn’t a good reason but that he was a good candidate. He did fantastic in his interviews and we hired him. He is a gifted trainer with a wonderful demeanor that allows him to connect with almost everyone he engages. I’m glad I called him because he is a real asset to the team and a good human being. But I almost didn’t take the chance because of something that is very easy to avoid.

It is January and the busiest month of the year for all commercial gyms. This month alone counts for 15-20% of the years new memberships. The problem is that 5% of the people who sign up will NEVER set foot back in the place except to cancel. In 6 weeks another 25-35% of them will have stopped coming. In three months another 25-30% will have stopped. By this time next year, only about 15-25% will remain.

I appreciate this time of year for a few reasons. There are a lot of new people in my class, so I have a new opportunity to change peoples lives by helping them find that “oh my God” moment when they have pushed harder than they thought they could and realize that they are still in the fight. My classes are full and there are people waiting at the door to get in; this means that those who do make it in are going to work harder and not leave midway through.

But on a more cynical / realistic level, this time of year marks the start of one of the worst periods for 75-85% of the people who join the gym. It represents the moment in time when they made a mistake and actually believed that they had the ability to change their life and become the healthy person they thought they were.

I’ve seen 1000’s of people join and quit the gym. I’ve sold 100’s of people on the dream that they could look like me, the trainers, the regulars and the sexy people on TV, only to have their dream fall apart a few weeks later when they realize that they are not ready to achieve their goals. I used to feel bad about it so I stopped selling at a commercial gym.

When I’m teaching RPM at GoodLife, I try to be encouraging, upbeat, high energy and honest about what the participant are about to go through. I tell them that it is going to hurt, I let them know that it is going to take a few weeks of sustained effort before the class starts to get easier, I mention that I was once brand new at it and that I found it to be one of the toughest gym experiences I had gone through in spite of the fact that I raced mountain bikes and had been active for most of my life. I try not to sell anyone on the “you can do it” dream and instead try to sell them on the “it’s going to suck until the end of class” reality.

I’ve learned that there are 10-15% of the population that are going to burn 80% of the calories. These are the people who are already working out and will remain working out regardless of everything. These people need coaching on form and that is it. They supply the motivation and will find their way to the gym when the roads are closed due to snow, on Christmas day when everyone else is at home, and when they are in their time of need. Working out for these people is similar to prayer for the faithful - it’s what they do when they need to find peace.

How do you become one of the 10-15% if you are not one of them?

The easiest way is to get a personal trainer (PT). Over the years I’ve gone from considering PTs as jocks who count reps to considering most of them to be jocks who hold the unmotivated to their promises. I’m not certain but I have the feeling that most people show up to their appointments because they have public integrity and don’t want to go back on their word to another person; but it could have something to do with the $0 refund for no-show appointments - the notion of losing $60 for not showing up to an hour appointment may serve as more of a motivator than the fear of dying from an obesity related illness.

There is a lot of talk in the business about personal training and how much commercial gyms profit from it - very often the gym pays the trainer only 25-35% of the hourly cost of the session. This means they get 65-75% PLUS the monthly membership cost. But, when you get down to it, most PTs are getting a fair wage based on what they actually know and they also get to be “Personal Trainers”, which carries some prestige in many gyms.

But it is an undeniable observation that those who train with PTs WILL stick with their workouts for a longer period of time. If you are not one of the 10-15% who treat working out like worship, getting a PT will allow you to behave like one of them and it will help you stay diligent with your workouts.

I have nothing to gain directly from encouraging people to train with a PT because I do not work for a commercial gym - SST uses floor coaches to offer guidance to all of the members who are working out. My suggestion that working out with a PT will increase your likelihood of success is based on years of observing the sales cycle in a commercial gym. If you are not already working out there is a 85% chance that you will fail to become one of the ones who work out UNLESS you get professional help. Get an expert and change your life. Otherwise you may just be helping to buy all the new and shinny equipment I love to workout on.

Branched Chain Amino Acids (BCAA) have been given a lot of publicity recently as a possible way to boost recovery, performance and size. However, much of the *evidence* for their efficacy comes from the supplement companies who have a vested interest in people buying them given the high price they can charge for them. On Saturday Rachel and I have a big debate about them and, since my friend Pete in Ottawa is waiting my review of them, I figured I’d address both of their concerns with a newstasis.com article.

Branched Chain Amino Acids are the essential amino acids leucine, isoleucine and valine. These three amino acids have aliphatic side-chains that are non-linear. It is estimated that 1/3 of muscle is made up of these amino acids and there is evidence linking them to a variety of processes including protein synthesis. BCAA do not provide energy to the muscles during workouts and as of yet, there is no evidence linking them to any improvements for endurance athlete.

The evidence in favor of BCAA supplementation:

Muscle is 1/3 BCAA. While not evidence per say, the fact that so much of the muscle is made up of BCAA is a good case for consuming more of them. Providing sufficient raw materials for building muscle is a good idea if you want to build muscle because the inverse is true - you will not grow if you do not eat sufficient amounts of protein.

Promoting insulin activity. Insulin is an anabolic hormone because it promotes cell storage and protein synthesis. It also lowers blood cortisol levels; cortisol is released in response to stress in an attempt to liberate sugar from protein. Of all the amino acids, leucine is special because it can promote insulin release in the absence of blood glucose. It is believed that BCAA supplementation will inhibit protein degradation because it increases the release of insulin.

Promoting translation of protein. Translation is the first state of protein synthesis and it is mediated by intercellular insulin and leucine levels. It is believed that BCAA supplementation will promote protein synthesis because it provides the body with leucine with acts as both a trigger for translation and a promoter of insulin release.

My rational for taking BCAA goes something like this - I know that my body enters a catabolic state when I work out. I know that muscle protein is broken down when I’m in this state and therefore my muscles will not grow. The sooner I can rid my body of cortisol, the sooner it will begin to grow again. Insulin decreases cortisol. The first step in protein synthesis is translation which is initiated by leucine and insulin. BCAA supplementation will increase insulin release and initiate protein synthesis. I believe that I will grow more because my body will be less catabolic, more responsive to insulin and have what is needed to initiate the first step of protein synthesis.

I’m not sure if my reasoning holds up in the real world or if I am supplying my body with enough material to advance protein synthesis once the increased levels of insulin and leucine have started translation but I feel comfortable with my understanding of what is going on with this small be key aspect of the puzzle.

I have gained 8 lbs since I started working at SST. My body fat has remained more or less the same. I credit this to a number of variables but the most significant one is the dramatic decrease in the amount of cardio exercise I am doing. I’ve gone from riding 2 to 3 hours a day to doing 1 or 2 cycling classes a week. Doing 15-20 hours of cardio training a week is stressful on the body and causes a dramatic increase in the amount of cortisol that the body releases and, since cortisol helps the body liberate energy from protein, I wasn’t growing very much when I was riding in the summer.

I have been aware of the theoretical implications of excessive cortisol secretion for a while, this is just the first time that I set out to eliminate it. When I was bulking last year, I cut out most of the cardio and dramatically increased the amount of resistance and strength training that I was doing but did so much of it that I don’t think there was as big a decrease in cortisol secretion as there has been recently (heavy lifting is very stressful on the body and it causes a release of cortisol). I’m doing about 4 hours of lifting with one hour of cycling per week vs about 10 -12 hours of lifting last year.

Given the time of year and the dramatic drop in temperature recently, I don’t miss riding so much because I’m used to having to stop. I also don’t miss doing hours of indoor riding. In fact, I enjoy the one class I teach a week MORE than ever because I have enough energy to give it 100%. The intensity is much higher when you have had enough time to recover completely and I am more authentic on the bike - when the choreography calls for breathless I am able to get to breathless which makes the participants work that much harder - a big change from the summer when I was teaching 7 or 8 classes a week, most of them in the evening after riding the trails for a couple of hours.

The approach I am taking this year is smarter because I have a lot more support from the coaching team at SST. They have filled in many of the gaps I had in my understanding of how the body functions and what I need to do to get more growth out of it. Their insistence that I eliminate most of the steady state cardio to decrease cortisol secretion and keep testosterone levels high has made my body more anabolic, and their suggestion to change my diet to replace most of the grain carbohydrates with fish oil and protein has helped me avoid gaining fat.

I know the summer will return and I’ll race again next season, so I’ll be back on the bike again next spring. But for now I’m enjoying the changes in my body composition that the decrease in cortisol and the off season bring.

So far I can say that it is by far the most gruelling workouts that I have ever done. It starts off fairly easy because the weight isn’t anywhere close to a maximum lift (it’s closer to 75%) but after a few sets the fatigue begins to set in and it becomes tougher and tougher. By set 5 I am questioning whether or not this is the day that I’m cutting my workout short because I realize that I’m only half way through.

Others report that sets 7 and 8 are the toughest and then things begin to get easier, and I’m starting to notice this too. Mentally, set 6 is the worst and physically sets 7 to 9 are brutally hard - particularly on back day when I’m doing pull-ups.

The pump I get is decent but my body tends not to hold it for the full duration of the workout. The only exception is day 4 when I train arms for 10 sets of 10 then 2 shoulder exercises for 3 sets of 12. My biceps get so bloated that I find it really tough to curl the weight completely. I don’t normally train my arms because they have always seemed to grow enough with just the back, and the chest and shoulder workouts that I do. They’ve responded extremely well to the direct training GVT prescribes.

I have been at it for just over 3 weeks and am enjoying the changes that my body has gone through over the last 24 days. My muscles look fuller than normal and I have delayed onset muscle soreness throughout the entire length of the muscle vs. just at certain parts. While DOMS doesn’t necessarily indicate that you have had a good workout, paired with the new fullness of my muscles I’ll take them as a good sign.