Fitness Friday - Fitness News You Can Use

It's time for another Fitness Friday. Just because summer is winding down (Labor Day being the unofficial end of summer) does not mean we can stop staying fit and healthy.

This week we have a primer on the Anabolic Diet, a guide to high-intensity interval training, why the box squat is over-rated, Charles Staley on his training philosophy for clients, and finally, four myths about having a big bench press.

Complete Anabolic Diet Guide With Sample Meal Plan

The Anabolic Diet is a muscle building and fat loss eating protocol developed by Dr. Mauro DiPasquale as a method to induce safe steroid-like gains for natural lifters.

Table of Contents:

1. 1. Introduction
1. 1.1. What are cyclic ketogenic diets (CKDs)?
2. 2. The Anabolic Diet
1. 2.1. Principles behind the Anabolic Diet
2. 2.2. Anabolic Diet phases
3. 2.3. Anabolic Diet macronutrient cycling
4. 2.4. Purported physiology behind the Anabolic Diet
5. 2.5. Anabolic Diet food choices
3. 3. Sample Eating Plans
1. 3.1. Sample weekday menu ~2800 calories
2. 3.2. Sample Weekend Menu
4. 4. FAQs about the Anabolic Diet

This Guide Teaches You:

• What a cyclic ketogenic diet (CKD) is.
• About the main principles of the Anabolic Diet.
• The 3 phases of the Anabolic Diet: the induction, bulking and cutting phases.
• How to cycle protein, carbs and fats.
• What kind of meals you should eat on the Anabolic Diet.

The Anabolic Diet is a book/diet that was written/introduced into the health and fitness subculture in 1995 by Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale, a licensed physician from Ontario, Canada that has vested interests in sports medicine and nutrition. The Anabolic Diet is essentially Dr. Mauro Di Pasquale’s twist on a cyclical ketogenic diet (CKD).

Aside from his educational background in molecular biology and genetics and completion of his medical degree, Dr. Di Pasquale was a world-class powerlifter in the late 1970s. After he was finished competing he opened up his own practice to help athletes and even just lay-people achieve their health and fitness goals. The Anabolic Diet [currently out of print] is one of his first compositions, and he has since written a handful of other pertinent books.

But just because the Anabolic Diet is one of his older works doesn’t mean it isn’t still useful today, if anything it has quite a few worthwhile principles behind it. This guide will delve into what the Anabolic Diet is, the proposed science behind it, how to start your own Anabolic Diet regimen, and answer some frequently asked questions about it.

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High-Intensity Interval Training: The Ultimate Guide

by Josh Bryant Aug 28, 2014
Website: www.joshstrength.com  

Get the story behind high-intensity interval training (HIIT), its muscle-building and fat-burning benefits, and how you can integrate it into your workouts!


Have you ever compared the physique of a world-class distance runner with that of a world-class sprinter? The sprinter's body resembles that of a Greek Adonis, with chiseled arms and powerful quads, while the skinny-fat distance runner makes Richard Simmons look like a Mr. Olympia contender.

These different body compositions point to the fact that not all cardio is created equal, which is why it's important to choose a form of cardio that meets your goals. A recent study compared participants who did steady-state cardio for 30 minutes three times a week to those who did 20 minutes of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) three times per week.

Both groups showed similar weight loss, but the HIIT group showed a 2 percent loss in body fat while the steady-state group lost only 0.3 percent. The HIIT group also gained nearly two pounds of muscle, while the steady-state group lost almost a pound.1

Excessive aerobic activity can decrease testosterone levels, increase cortisol production, weaken the immune system, handicap strength gains, and halt any hope of hypertrophy. But this doesn't mean you can't maximize muscle mass and strength gains while conditioning. It just means you need to be smart about your cardio.

Check out the different forms of conditioning you can use to trim down the smart way—without giving up your strength and muscle gains. 

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Why the Box Squat is Overrated

By Tony Gentilcore

 

There are a lot of things I don’t do anymore that I used to.

1. Unlike when I first moved here eight years ago, I no longer refer to Boston as Beantown. That’s a big no-no amongst locals.  Doing so is as sacrilegious as wearing a Laker hat or a Derek Jeter jersey down Boylston!

2. I don’t watch Saturday morning cartoons. That much.

3. I don’t start hyperventilating into a brown paper bag anymore if a baseball player walks in on day one and lacks internal range of motion in his dominant throwing shoulder. As Mike Reinold brilliantly states HERE, glenohumeral internal rotation deficit (GIRD for short. Who wants to write all that out?) is a normal adaptation to the throwing shoulder.

4. I no longer feel Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is the weakest chapter in the Star Wars saga.  That title goes to Episode II: Attack of the Clones.



5.  And, I don’t pick my nose in public.*

Wanna know what else I don’t do?

I Don’t Place Box Squats Into Any of My Programs

Yes, yes I did.

Well, I do and I don’t.  Let me explain myself a bit further.

So that I can stave off the barrage of hate mail and people reaching for their pitchforks at the notion of me saying something so batshit crazy….

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Maybe All You Need Is Lifting 

by Charles Staley | August 28, 2014

Here's what you need to know...

• Too often, we adopt practices like stretching, elaborate warm-ups and corrective work reflexively rather than strategically.
• The Friction Principle states that whenever we dislike doing something, we're less likely to do it. If we dislike various "extra" work in the gym, like pre-hab, we may begin to dislike training itself.
• The Suitcase Principle states that we only have so much room – time and resources – available. Don't spend all your gym resources on things you most likely don't need.
• How flexible do you really need to be? How much endurance do you really need? We must ask these questions to better be able to plan our workouts and focus on the things that have the biggest impact.

I have a confession to make. Before I do, I'd just like to remind some of you that I've been coaching professional and Olympic athletes, teaching seminars around the world, and writing about fitness and strength training for over 30 years. In addition, I've been a competitive athlete the whole time, from martial arts and Olympic weightlifting to powerlifting. I've also been fortunate enough to pick the brains of many of the world's top coaches and athletes. So while what I'm about to share with you might strike you as unorthodox, I want you to know this isn't my first rodeo.

Now about that confession: I don't really warm-up. I don't stretch either. I don't do dynamic activation drills. I don't foam roll. I don't do corrective exercise or "pre-hab." I don't do conditioning work. Pretty much all I do is lift.

I'd like to make it clear that every item on that list can definitely be worthwhile for specific people in specific contexts. I just think that all these things are too often done reflexively rather than strategically. So I'd like to give you some insight on my decision making about what training activities I do, and don't do, and how and why I make these decisions. Then, you can think about these decisions and apply them – or not – to your own training.

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4 Bench Press Lies 

by Tony Bonvechio | 08/27/14

Here's what you need to know...

• Big triceps won't help you if you can't break through the sticking point off the chest. So stop it with the board press and floor press and work on your incline and overhead press.
• Big traps and strong scapular retractors are more important than the lats for a solid bench press foundation and stable bar path.
• The bench press is no more dangerous than any other barbell exercise and can be shoulder-friendly when done with good technique and common sense.
• Great raw benchers press the bar in a J-curve, not a straight line, to maximize leverage.

The misinterpreted words of multi-ply powerlifters has trickled down to the masses. And now, raw (no bench shirt) lifters are experiencing undue suffering and frustration as a side effect.

Like a game of telephone, the truth has been lost as each piece of information is transferred from the mouths of giants to internet forums and gyms. Good advice from strong people gets twisted into something laughably false and useless.

If you've ever been wronged by bad bench press advice, I feel you. I've been there. After years of struggling to increase my bench press numbers despite following the dogmatic suggestions of the armies of keyboard warriors, I finally discovered the truth. The barbell is a great teaching tool, but it's easy to ignore its teachings if you get brainwashed by the propaganda.

In less than a year, I added 50 pounds to my competition bench press. What's my secret? I abandoned everything I'd learned about benching and listened to what the bar had been telling me for years. Here are four bench press myths I busted during my journey.