Client: what do you eat before you lift?
Me: nothing. Client: don’t you feel tired? Me: nope. Every study on fasted exercise confirms higher growth hormone production and increased circulating fatty acids. That said, when depleted, you must weigh the costs and benefits. Here I am at the end of a 52 hour fast. I missed on 585, which should’ve been easy with reverse bands; and I was shot at 10 reps with 405, which I could normally do without bands. So, does the benefit of GH and fat breakdown outweigh the cost of much lower intensity? I don’t know. It depends on what you’re trying to do, and expectations. During concerted cutdown or just maximizing longevity, I think so. During mass gain or athletic peak performance, I think not.
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People: “What should I eat before exercise?”
Gurus: “BCAAs, meals, carbs, etc.” Science: “nothing, plus maybe caffeine and salt.” For the average person who wants to breakdown body fat, it’s non-controversial: insulin low plus epinephrine releases stored fat to be used in the citric acid cycle. What does that mean? You have to have glucose low enough, be fasted enough, and then be excited/moving enough, or there is no biological mechanism for lipolysis (the breakdown of fat). This is not opinion. The eating guidelines for competitive athletes stop at 60 minutes prior to training. That is, if they are COMPETING in 4 hours, carbohydrate intakes should be high (up to 4 grams per kilo of bodyweight). If they are training in 2 hours, 1 gram per kilo. If they are training in 1 hour, 0.5 gram per kilo. STOP. This is for high level athletes, mind you. Meanwhile, I watch the average person who wants to lose fat walk into a workout (0 minutes prior to training) while sipping orange juice and eating a banana. Then they’re confused about why they can’t get leaner. There’s no confusion necessary. You blocked the biological pathway. A couple months ago, we had what I thought was a fluke, 30,000 visits to the website and 9 inquiries in the course of 2 days. Well... not a fluke.
Keep in mind that I delete these from my inbox once the person is scheduled, a client, or involved in our classes. So it’s far in excess of the 12 pictured above (those aren’t duplicates). This also doesn’t include referrals or people who reach out directly or through social media. I can’t even meet them. When I originally posted this in August I was having to schedule people for October and November just to be able to connect. Current clients are my priority; but I believe in servicing those who reach out. So, if you are a nutrition/life/strength coach who is a pragmatist with over 10 years of full time experience, please connect to me, because I can’t even handle the traffic. Our part time coaches and class instructors don’t do strategy coaching. Thus, they can’t really meet with some of the inquiries who are looking for what I do. Busy isn't an excuse. I understand being busy. I do. I have two kids. I have a wife. I have a house. I have cars. We're involved in a variety of charities. I have a business to run. I have all of the normal life stuff as well, like groceries, and doctor appointments, and dental appointments, and taking kids to school, and parent-teacher meetings, and so on. I also have abnormal stuff, like writing or presenting for different organizations, and special allergist appointments for the kids, and on and on. In the screenshots above, there were only 3 same-day cancels/reschedules for the whole week. The double-populated spots are not double-bookings, just emblematic of how little time I had to delete a changed hour when I placed someone else in that spot.
This was a good week, in that all of Tuesday and Thursday was spent with the kids and wife. The 3 last-minute opened hours afforded me short lifts/personal time. But frankly, this was a fairly typical week. They're been like this or crazier for the past two years without relenting. The screenshots are from August; but in the past few months since then I've had to turn down over 30 coaching inquiries. I literally CANNOT take another client. I know how much I can manage in a week. I manage that. I don't go around talking about how impossibly busy the week is. If I need to reprioritize, I do that. If I need to spend 3-4 hours on the phone to rectify a mistake with our private insurance (this actually happened, by the way), I reorganize the week. It's called being a grownup. So a few sentiments linger: 1.) does this represent more or less time available for food and workouts than the average person who uses the time excuse? 2.) at the time of originally posting this, I still had to get through 8-10 appts that day, Friday, but made time to write this to help people with the reality check. My point is simple: you can talk about how busy you are (when in most cases you aren't even that busy; you're just not organized). Or you can DO. Aristotle’s Ethics
It’s been sitting in my home library for years. I’ve read it. But something new struck me this last week. Aristotle put so much effort into thinking about every little nuance of interpersonal relationships, marital equity, political or business partnership, friendship evaluation, how long it is reasonable to be angry over an offense, the futility of grudges, and so much more. I don’t agree with many of his conclusions; but he really poured his heart into these observations. And I think most modern readers would be shocked at how much these writings are applicable today. One of the themes that sticks out in his writing is a hard practicality on managing oneself, which I would argue is the centerpiece of health and fitness. That is, even when you have determined how right your approach is while another person’s is so wrong, is that sentiment profitable? How are you enriching your life or the world by your unerring malcontent? What about a THIRD option? I’ve seen the notion elsewhere, attributed to Buddha, something like, “the definition of anger is a punishment we give ourselves in return for a mistake someone else made”. Giving up peace in your heart in order to prove rightness is a bad trade. Many who are thinking they are justice warriors are more often hubris showmen, wielding a sort of “truth” avarice. Rather than think harder about the problem (like Aristotle was challenging himself to do), there’s this tendency to don an unofficial position of apparatchik alongside whatever group of agreeable yes-men we can find. But that’s so unsatisfying. You can see this. The more combative an individual is, the more unhappy she always is. There are good fights to fight, to be sure. But there are far more ways to think about a disagreement than the two popular ones. We can forgo powerful problem solving by fixating on the fallacy of either-or. Or we can find third, fourth, fifth possible positions to take, freeing our hearts from the insistence on one superior argument versus one inferior argument. 70+ years old ➡️ 3 Months Later
Never Lifted ➡️ 225lb deadlifts I began working with this phenom about three months ago, along with his wonderful wife. As usual, we lay the groundwork for activation and good control, and NO resistance. Then, slowly, we add range, planes, and load. At this stage, I generally don’t create the false expectation that we will completely revise posture, so much as improve bracing and control in the inequities (thus, kyphotic thoracic curvature, as long as static, isn’t “bad” form). Inhale. Hold breathe. Feel glutes contract. Turn knees out. Activate low lat. Squeeze weight up, don’t jerk. Following these cues, there could be 1000lbs on the bar, and no one will get hurt. It’ll move or it won’t. But you won’t get hurt. So, we wrap up the workout yesterday. He’s spent. And he says to me, “are we going to deadlift today?” Um. Ok. We can. But you’re already cooked. “Maybe sub max singles,” I said. Double-overhand, we did single efforts, here at 225lbs, with clearly a lot more in the tank. I thought age was an excuse? I thought no prior lifting experience was an excuse? You too? I guess we thought wrong. Some call it density training. Pick a big structural lift. Pick a period of time like 3 minutes or 5 minutes. Place a weight on the bar you can move around 15 reps. Do as many as you can fit in the time. Each week, match the weight and add a rep, or add the weight and keep the reps. Or increase the both. BUT DO NOT DO MORE TIME.
In less than 5 minutes, this workout does more than most people’s 90 minute training. Aiming for 345 x 23, 4, 3, this week, I’ll have 10 more reps at 60 more pounds than 5 weeks prior (video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz-broqDVPc/). Don’t burn up time. Just aim to get better. Make time, but not a lot. One way you make time is to train smarter. When you implement strategic progressions, you don’t need more than a few minutes to warm up and a few minutes to throw down. . About 13 years ago, I saw a single mom who worked three jobs sign up to train with an employee of mine the same day a bachelor surgeon signed up with another trainer of mine. The mom was looking at the prospect of being around for her kids; and she had determined that the discomfort of time and money invested for her health HAD to happen if she could be around for those kids in the best way possible. It stretched her thin. But that is precisely why it worked. The bachelor surgeon, on the other hand, floundered. He often no-showed my employee, because the whole transaction was comfortable. He could throw away the money. He was always willing to revert to his prior lifestyle. He was unwilling to face his patterns and discomfort.
I’ve seen tens of thousands of people during their fitness transformations; and I’ve always tried to figure out the common trait that successful ones share. There are circular reasoning explanations, like compliance and consistency. But what makes them compliant or consistent? As best I can tell, it’s prioritization of discomfort. There is a common mindset among people who fundamentally change their health and fitness: they all deeply acknowledge they must live in a new manner. I don’t mean theoretically. I mean they actively look for a way to revise everything in their behaviors. They don’t seek a way out of the new practices. They look for ways to NOT get out of the new practices. They move work meetings. They change jobs. They change sleep patterns. They shop at new grocery stores. They change laundry detergents. Whatever it is they used to do, they’re willing to see each prior behavior as a cause or symptom of unhealthiness. I’m not saying to change any of that. I’m merely saying that in tens of thousands of case studies, this is the trait. I once had a prospective client tell me that he had never as an adult been consistently exercising for more than 6 months at the absolute maximum. I said, “then you ought to commit to a year.” He paid in full for a year of coaching; and before he made it through week 1, I knew he would be successful because he was willing to embrace the discomfort to overcome his pattern. It’s simple. You want to grow? Prioritize discomfort. Here’s a variant for people who can do a weighted pull-up with around 75% of bodyweight. Lightly assist with the other arm, primarily to avoid the swinging and rotation (which you can see still occurred on the right and led me to smash my recovering knee in the metal rail: https://www.instagram.com/p/BzA5Su7j7uB/).
I’ve found that once you can do 2-3, you can usually begin with an unaided eccentric version (climb up and lower yourself with only the one arm). Watch closely where my body is facing at the top and at the bottom of the movement. Keep this in mind, because even elite gymnasts and climbers don’t have the body facing the exact same direction at bottom and top of movement. It’s actually most natural to finish a one arm pull-up in a chin-up position. As with most supramaximal training (doing eccentrics with a greater load than you can work concentrically), the rule tends to be work up to 3-5 clean reps in close succession before the concentric will occur. I’ve used this metric for standard pull-ups with hundreds of clients. Once they can lower themselves in a controlled fashion for 5 reps, they will automatically complete a full clean rep without being cued to do so. You might’ve noticed that banded pull-ups never result in full pull-ups. Kipped muscle-ups don’t result in real muscle-ups. That’s because the full load is never even handled in the eccentric portion. At some point, you must encounter the tension which you want the body to produce. Your abs are dead. Bring them back to life. Balance your full body weight atop the abdominal wall on a surface no wider or longer than the six pack. The height may be adjusted so as to avoid floor contact (video here: https://www.instagram.com/p/By7o8ZiDAq6/).
Recently I was playing around with optical illusions only to find that balancing stomach atop a yoga brick is harder than most core exercises, since there is NO way to cheat it. There is no momentum component. There is no hip flexor cheat. There is no fakery. You must create maximal intra-abdominal tension or it just won’t happen. You might have watched or experienced taking a real punch or strike to the stomach. You can’t fake it. You have to contract the abs. This is like that except a longer-lived effort. And unlike the typical plank which requires ZERO abdominal activation, you are required to call on more than a phony bridging pretense. |
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