5 Tips to Avoid Screwing Up Your Bulking Plans
Folks sometimes complain that "bulking and cutting" (overeating to gain muscle & fat, then dieting down for net muscle gain) doesn't work. That's just not true. It's like saying "squats hurt the knees and bench presses hurt the shoulders." No, squats and bench presses DONE POORLY (OR BY THE WRONG PERSON) hurt the knees and shoulders. In other words, a bulk and cut cycle that's more like "eat...
Five Boner Friday – Over-40 Training Advice, Frequency, Workout Times
1. Most over-40 training advice is bullshit. There are 40-somethings in the best shape of their lives and 30 year-olds (even 20 year-olds) that would get winded just touring a Planet Fitness. So there's a whole lot of individual context there. Over-40 type advice should focus less on exercise and more around managing stress. Now stress has become a vague buzz term -- I think of it as managing...
Reframe Time: Similar macros, similar “results,” but…
"Health Washing" is a pet peeve for many health advocates. It's when food companies try to position highly processed packaged foods as "healthy" by slapping irrelevant or dubious nutritional claims on the label such as, "100% natural, gluten-free, made with all-natural ingredients" and so on. Smarmy practice. Though I can't help but pity the fool who rationalizes crushing a dozen Oreos a day...
Five Boner Friday – Big Bag of Random Edition
1. The other day I showed up at the gym for what was supposed to be a heavy squat workout, but.. ...after just a few warm up sets it was abundantly clear my lower back still wasn't recovered from the previous leg workout. So I switched to machines and single-leg work for higher reps. Success. That’s how you “listen to your body.” Calling audibles in terms of exercise to get a training effect...
Things that do NOT have to happen: My Injury Made Me Fat
You suffer an injury that forces time off from the gym for a few weeks or even months. As a result, the diet "falls apart" and you gain a significant amount of fat. This is frustrating because it's almost entirely preventable. Because the injury and subsequent loss of exercise didn't cause the diet to lose momentum -- it's the loss in engagement and rhythm. So something goes pop and you're...
Five Boner Friday – Snowy Saturday in October (aka WTF) edition
1. Here's the supplement I want to design... It's a one-a-day pill (hell, suppository for all I care) that forces people to sleep 7-9 hours a night, seven days a week. It's not a new ask. Fitness types have been harping about sleep for decades. But 20 years ago clients would offer apologies or make excuses for poor sleep habits. Today operating "like a boss" on five hours or less is like a...
Program Design: Just Play the Music
There are plenty of "rules" in program design that have stood the test of time. Mainly because they work (or seem to) but also they just make logical sense. A simple example of a "rule" in program design would be not directly training the same muscle two days in the row; another would be not training more than 2-3 days in a row without taking a day off, or keeping workouts to around an hour or...