*Eat Like a Motherfucking Caveman, and You'll Look Like a Motherfucking Caveman

According to a study published in the journal Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology in 2003, skeletal remains show that paleolithic humans developed muscularity similar to today's superior athletes. (1) That's pretty awesome on the one hand, because everyone back in the day was fucking jacked, but on the other hand, it sucks that humanity has devolved to the point where your average American looks like a shaved walrus and is weak as a newborn kitten. Unless you're me, of course, in which case it rules because I'm a god among men. Or a man amongst pussies. Whichever one you like.

In any event, the fact that these bad motherfuckers of yore probably looked a lot like Maxick (about whom I shall blog very soon) is due to a combination of diet and exercise that is rarely emulated in the modern world.

What the Fuck are You Getting At?

Well, my fuckers, I'm getting at Paleolithic Nutrition. Back in the turn of the century, a rough-and-tumble professor who apparently grew bored enough with the ease of daily life decided to roll up to snowy Eskimoland with no gear and live amongst the Eskimos while studying their culture. Whilst he lived amongst those silly, snow-blasted freak, Vilhjalmar Stefansson ate nothing but meat, and found himself to be healthy as shit thereafter. He rolled back into NYC with tales of his diet, which everyone called insane, and then decided to be studied for a year to see if it would ruin his health. It didn't. In 1929, doctors concluded that his all meat, high-fat diet was the shit, and so was Stefansson. R. Buckminster Fuller picked up on this deal (he's the guy who invented the geodesic dome), and expanded it to include some fruits and veggies, but little else.(3) Later, a dentist from Ohio named Weston Price noticed that his patients' teeth were becoming an ever-worsening shitstorm of cavities and dental caries. He started traveling all over the world and studying the teeth and diets of indigenous cultures, discovering that none of the problems he was seeing in Ohio were extant in cultures that ate no refined grains or otherwise processed foods. Surprise! He wrote a book entitled "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" detailing his finds, though his ideas and the foundation that promotes them is essentially considered a pack of quacks by the ADA, as his dietary recommendations would all but put the ADA out of business. About as useful as a pack of syphilitic whores, the ADA. In any event, the diet then sat dormant for years, until mainstream medical journals picked it up in the 1980s and ran articles about "ancestral diets", which then spurred the development of "evolutionary medicine."

Stefansson, looking harder than everyone.

So, in a nutshell, proponents of evolutionary medicine contend that mankind developed primary adaptations to their meat-filled diets during the paleolithic period, as hunter-gatherers who ran around in loinskins, killing shit and eating it. Secondary adaptations occurred later, and were localized based on the available foodstuffs. Since the Neolithic Revolution, people in the Subarctic and Central Asia evolved to eat very high fat and protein diets, containing little or no vegetable matter. Others, like the Indians of Central America and various peoples in Central Asia, adapted to higher carbohydrate, lower protein and fat diets. Outside of those groups, wide variations in adaptations exist, but they even exist within ethnicities (the ancestral Russian diet versus that of the Mediterannean).(2, pg. 281) Irrespective of where they were, paleolithic people ate, on average, half the fat we currently eat, but 3x the protein. The fats they did eat were by and large polyunsaturated, but their cholesterol was much higher than ours (which lent itself to higher test levels, I'm sure). Additionally, they ate very little in the way of refined carbs, a quarter of the sodium in the modern diet (and much more potassium), two times as much calcium, tons of micronutrients, and 130-150 g of fiber a day. That's a fuckload of fiber, in case you're wondering. (4, pp. 82, 86) As a result, cases of metabolic disease amongst Paleolithic people were rare, and findings of them are often steeped in controversy. (1, p. 6)

What was their diet? Meat and veggies, mostly. Their macronutrient profile essentially breaks down to 42% protein, 26% fat, and 32% carbs, eating roughly 3000kcals a day. (4, p. 79) Modern hunter-gatherers have varied diets due to geographic limitations and the general availability of various types of food, but it generally comes down to 30-40% protein no matter where they live, save for a couple of vegan tribes in Africa, who manage to eke out an existance in a place that barely even has dirt, much less any food worth cramming down your suckhole. (1, p.373) The result, however, is that they're strong little fuckers, are ripped to pieces, and can outperform Western athletes in their indigenous athletic events.

Like log running.

Let's Break This Motherfucker Down!

Ten Commandments of Paleo Dieting, as described by Ray Audette:

Do Eat

• meats and fish
• fruits
• veggies
• nuts and seeds
• berries

Don't Eat

• grains
• beans
• potatoes
• dairy
• sugar

Farly simple, and I can tell you from experience that the shit works. I've combined that with metabolic typing and carb cycling to spur greater gains in the gym, but the basis of my diet will always remain Paleolithic. Now, there are a couple of caveats. One, this diet is a pain in the ass, as you can't eat sandwiches. I find myself eating a shitload of italian chicken and turkey sausage, sliced relatively thin, and just carried around in tupperware. It transports easily and tastes good, but it gets old after awhile, just as turkey meatballs lose their luster after a month of eating nothing but. Audette also cautions against cheating, as he states that certain foods have a "druglike effect" that may cause withdrawal symptoms. I personally think this is horseshit, and I love me my 3 hour cheat windows on Tuesday and Friday nights. Lastly, both Audette and Cordain counsel against eating tubers, which is odd, as Cordain stated in the Evolution of the Human Diet that cooking arose at the same time that tubers came to prominance in the human diet. HG's eat a shitload of them, as did our ancestors. near as I can tell, the tubers of yore were much more fibrous than those of today, so they're pretty much apples and oranges, but I see nothing wrong with a post-workout yam, or one in the morning on a high-carb day.

Paleo does a body good.

There's a shitload more to this deal, so this will be merely the first installment of me schooling you fuckers on PDing, but I'm tired and this fucking thing is already too long. Thus, I bid you goodnight, my fuckers.


If you can't beat em, eat em.

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1. Eaton, SB and Eaton SB III 2003. An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Physical Activity: Implications for Health. Comp Biochem Physiol A 136, 153-159.
2. Wharton, CH. Ten Thousand Years From Eden: Metabolic Man. Orlando: Winmark Publishing, 2001.
3. Audett, Ray. Neanderthin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
4. Eaton, S. Boyd, Shostak, Marjorie, and Melvin Konner. The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and a Design for Living. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
5. Ungar, Peter S. Evolution of the Human Diet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
6. Cordain, Loren. Paleo Diet. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
   

*Fluidity in training

So, my new job requires a shitload of lifting and carrying, which adds a great deal of volume to my total work. How, then, should I modify my training to accomodate this new workload?

I'll tell you. the Bulgarians train between 7-9 hours a day, 6 days a week. this is brutal weight training, sticking between 70% and 990% of their ME the entire time. As such, it should be no problem for me to conduct 8 or 10 hours of lifting and carrying for the day and follow it with weight training, right?

This past week, I found that my energy was solely lacking when I hit the gym, and I dragged myself into the gym after a nap with about 45 minutes to train. though it seemed to me that I would lie to go light, given my total workload for the day, it occurred to me that the most prudent course of action would e to lift as heavy as humanly possible for the 30-45 mins I was there. That way, I taxed my CNS and hit the fast twitch fibers as hard as humanly possible, while still achieving a high overall volume over the entire span of my body due to the repetitions and duration of lifts that I performed during the course of the workday. As such, it was not necessary to modify my workouts drastically, as I simply needed to focus on hitting the highest percentage of my 1RM possible in as short a period of time as possible, thus activating the fullest span of muscle fibers possible.

Chaos and Pain can work with any activity level, and every skill level. they key is to remember the words of the Barbarian Brothers:

There is no such thing as over training; just undereating and undersleeping.

*The Legend- Pullups for real mothafuckin g's

I've changed the name of these quite a bit over the years, but I'm going with "The Legend" as the name for this exercise, as I become a fucking legend in every gym where I perform them, from Top Gym in Austria to Iron Sport in Philly, and everywhere else I've done them.

I developed this ridiculous pullup variation out of boredom with doing regular pullups. They are not for the weak or the timid. To perform them, you will need the following:

1. A squat rack with a pullup bar towar the front at the top
2. the ability to do at least 10 pullups in a row
3. big brass balls

Here's the deal. You're going to set up a barbell in the squat rack on the highest or second highest hole. That's near the top, in case you were curious. Now, hang from that bar, with your arms slightly bent (not a dead hang). I suppose you could go from a dead hang, but you'd not have the "coiled power" necessary for doing long-distance legends. Next, you pull yourself up as hard as humanly possible and throw yourself upwards, grabbing the top bar midflight. You then drop back down to the barbell and repeat. As you get better, and braver, drop the lower bar progressively deeper. I've not measured my best for a single, but it's in the neighborhood of 36". That's right. I fucking rule, and so does this exercise.

Peep this video, which shows you how motherfuckers get down:


Now, go forth and spread the gospel, get a huge, ripped fucking back, and become a legend in your own right.

*GS Aftermath

I ended up only getting 535, but after weighing in at 175 at the meet, not too shabby.

So, I learned a valuable lesson in this weekend's experiment- Glycogen Supercompensation WILL work for a strength meet, but needs to be in or around the 36th hour to have an effect. My meet went badly for a variety of reasons (note to self- LISTEN TO THE FUCKING COMMANDS BY THE JUDGES!!!) and I only squatted 535, but the following day, after a powerlifting meet and an impromptu, inebriated strongman competition that lasted well nigh two hours, I push jerked 308! Given that my previous best was 285, and the state of exhaustion I was in, that's pretty goddamned good. Thus, my advice to you, gentlre readers- do a 5-7 day keto run, and then do a glycogen supercompensation lasting about 36 hours before the meet. The results match the science- you will see results.

Looking fucking huge at 181, 48 hours after weighing in at 170.

*My Digestive Tract Hates Me, But I Look Awesome

Today is Glycogen Supercompensation Day! Today caps off a 5 day keto run, during which time I did not have more than 30g of carbs a day. A normal person would lose a considerable amount of water weight during such a time, but not me, my fuckers, not me. Apparently, I exist in a near-constant state of glycogen depletion, so I lost a mere 4 lbs this week, taking me from 170 to 174. I am ripped to pieces though. Two weeks out from a bodybuilding competition type ripped.

"But Jamie, I have been living under a rock and have no idea what glycogen supercompensation is!"

Well then allow me to shed some light on the subject. I've no idea which mad scientist figured this out, but I read about it in two separate places simulatenously- Better Than Steroids, by Dr. Warren Willey (which I HIGHLY recommend), and an article written (I think) by Christian Thibedeaux on T-Nation (the two methods are vastly, vastly different, which I just discovered by reading an article on it.

I tried the T-Nation method and really saw no difference in my physique, so I'm trying the Wiley one now). Anyway, one spends between 5 and 14 days on a keto run (that is, running a constant macronutrient ratio of about 60-70% Fat, 25-35% Protein, and 5% Carbs). That sounds like fun, but it's actually harder than you'd think to stick to, even with my insanely strict regular diet. Food literally dominates all of your thoughts, and eating out is a massive pain in the balls, unless you're eating wings. Wings are the key to that diet, in my opinion. If you look at my diet for last week, practically all I ate were wings and ground chuck burgers.

I intend to look like Marius at the end of this.

So, at the end of the week, you have a 24-48 hr supercompensation period. Wiley explains the metabolic pathways in great detail, but in my carb-depleted state, I forgot the fucking book, so I will relate the formulae to you from memory (but here's an article giving you a bit more background). I'm that good. He recommends a 36 hr supercompensation period, but I honestly don't see myself waking up all night tonight to feed every two hours.

On a wholly unrelated note, Annotations of an Autopsy has a Song called "Sludge City", in which the only intelligible lyrics in the song are at the beginning during a brutal breakdown, and are "SHE BLED FROM EVERY FUCKING HOLE" and "WHEN I'M FUCKING DONE, SHE WON'T HAVE A CUNT LEFT." That's bringing the brutal, and it's what I am currently enjoying on my iPod while typing this nonsense on my Mom's Mac. I am a bad person.

Back to supercompensation. It breaks down into three parts.

Part One- Liquid Carbs (0-12 hrs)

Lean bodyweight in kilos x 12 / 6 meals. That'll tell you how many grams of carbs per feeding. Thus, my feedings are:

170x.93=158 lbs lean mass. I then divide by 2.2 for kg = 71.81

So, I then multiply my lbm in kg by 12 grams of CHO, and get a total of 861.81, and divide that by 6 meals, which gives me 144g of carbs every two hours.

Part two- Solid carbs (12-24hrs)

Same deal but half of the carbs, and they are high-glycemic solid carbs (he likes Lucky Charms).

72 g of carbs for me, and I'm going with Cap'n Crunch

Part 3- Solid carbs again, but halved again. I doubt I'll do this.

So, this morning I awoke for my first feeding at 6AM to start refilling my glycogen. I made two shakes last night so I wouldn't have to stand around mixing while half asleep. The shakes were so big that I had to put them in Tupperware, rather than my shaker bottle, and consisted of 3 cups of nonfat milk, 1/2 cup of Hershey's Syrup, 2 tsp of creatine, and 1 scoop of whey protein. Thus, I had two meals of 44g PRO (double what he recommends, but I got a lot of pro from the milk), 142g CHO, and 1.5G of fat, and 20g of creatine in two hours.

My stomach informed me at about 930AM that those shakes were not my best idea. I never drink milk, due to its pasteurization and homogenization (which I'll address another time), so I was whacking back a couple Multi-Enzyme pills with the shakes to help me digest the lactose. Either that or the creatine disagreed with me though, so I switched to three lemonade vitamin waters (I needed the water anyway), a scoop of protein with 1 tsp of creatine, and 1/4 cup sugar, which gave me in the neighborhood of 148g CHO, 17g PRO, and no fat at all. That's waaaaaay too much to drink in a sitting, so I'm switching to 3/4 cup sugar in my protein shake for the next meals.

*I'm a Hardgaining Ectomorph, and Stuart McRobert and a bunch of Other Pussies Say I Can't Lift Hard or Get Big! Whaaaaaa!

Guess what? Go fuck yourself. I will guarantee you right now that none of you, and yeah I MEAN YOU, have read the book detailing the various somatotypes, yet nearly everyone has classified themself as either a Mesomorph, Ectomorph, or Endomorph. I would also venture to guess that since you've been reading the bodybuilding mags, most of you think that you're either Endo- or Ectomorphs, because the mags have told you that only a couple of people on the planet are blessed enough to be mesomorphs. Well, you're wrong. Know how I know? I read the book, fuckers. Allow me to feed you, baby birds.

Somatotyping was the brainchild of a psychologist named William Sheldon, who originally began his study of body types as part of a study of the physical and psychological attributes of criminals. This grew into a massive project that culminated in his book "Atlas of Men", which he published in 1954. Sheldon published the book to promote a method by which people could differentiate between specific body types, and proposed it as a sort of alternative BMI.(1) To achieve this goal, Sheldon studied and diligently cataloged 46,000 men, proportionately representative of America's ethnic mix at the time. 13,000 were from 31 different colleges, 12,000 came from various social, industrial, and military agencies of the WW2 period, 9,000 were patients of hospitals, and the remainder were men 30 years or older who were totally random volunteers. (2) It's important to note that all of the subjects were either untrained or detrained.

Ectomorph, or an ambiguously gay man?  Science says the latter.

Sheldon then developed a unique, three digit system by which each person was rated on their endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic features, giving them one of 88 somatotypic identifiers that he then named according to the physical attributes. A score of one meant the person showed none of the tendencies of that somatotype, and a 7 meant you were all up in that bitch.

So, Stuart McRobert have you convinced you were a "hardgainer"? Either a fatass or a skinny fuck practically hopeless in the gym? Well, you're in a mighty small minority if you are. 3 men in 10,000 are pure mesomorphs (the most common of the three pre types!), while 2 in 10k are pure ectomorphs, and 1 in 10k is a pure endomorph.(3) How the fuck have those Beyond Brawn books sold so many fucking copies? YOU'RE NOT DOOMED. YOU'RE JUST A LAZY PUSSY.

The most common somatotypes are 4-4-3, 3-4-4, and 3-5-3, at 60, 57, and 56 in 1000, respectively, and every somatotype with a frequency over 34 in 1000 has a 4 or a 5 for mesomorphic traits, meaning just about everyone can put on a decent amount of muscle.(4) Likewise, your chances of being a 6 or a 7 in each somatotype are 33/1000 for endomorphic, 70/1000 mesomorphic, and 41/1000 for ectomorphic.

So, chances are far likelier that you're mesomorphic than anything else. But wait, there's more! YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR SOMATOTYPE. Sheldon doesn't actually explain how, but he details how true ectomorphs (Walking Sticks) change from looking like extras in Schindler's List to Wasps, with a bigger ribcage and a little more muscle, over time.(5) This echoes my own experience, and the experience of a lot of people I know, who started out skinny-fat, or fat, or simply skinny, and are now jacked and ripped to pieces.

It's not that he's genetically gifted- it's that he breaks his ass in the gym and at the dinner table.

Sheldon attributed a lot of ridiculous psychological tendencies toward each body type, and is now a bit of a laughingstock in the psychological community as a result. He was also a noted numismatist, but apparently used his knowledge to steal a lot of rare coins, so is a pariah in that field as well.(6)

So what have we learned? SOMATOTYPES ARE HORSESHIT. Your real genetic potential relies on a variety of factors ranging from heredity to diet and training styles. Modern reliance on the produce of agriculture has degraded the human form considerably, so that humans are only now reaching the stature we attained as Cro-Magnons. (7) Know what that sounds like to me? Train like a fucking beast and eat like a Neanderthal, and you'll end up built like one.

No mercy for the weak.

1. Sheldon, William. Atlas of Men: A Guide for Somatotyping the Adult Male at All Ages. New York: Gramercy Publishing Company, 1954. P. 3.
2. P. 11.
3. P. 30.
4. Ibid.
5. Pp. 38, 136.
6. "William Herbert Sheldon", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herbert_Sheldon. Accessed 2/11/2009.
7. Eaton, S. Boyd, and Marjorie Shostak. The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet and Exercise and Design for Living. New York: Harper and Row, 1988. P. 72

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*What the fuck is ChAoS and PAIN?

This is a bit of a rehash of a couple of earlier posts, but I'm posting it because I had to write it for the broad who is putting the design I conceived for C&P into Photoshop, so I'm posting it for the edification of anyone who gives a shit about why I started training like this.

Chaos and Pain is a training and diet methodology I designed in response to the spate of nutrition and exercise physiology texts that espouse a one-size-fits-all philosophy that typically presents little challenge, and thus yields few results. As any student of finance knows, there are essentially three types of investments- low risk-low yield, medium risk-medium yield, and high risk-high yield. Just as most people invest their money into low yield mutual funds or CD’s, many people adopt pathetically inane, nearly useless training and nutrition philosophies designed to be all things to all people, and are thus yield mediocre results at best. Chaos and Pain spits in the face of these philosophies and embraces the concept that:

MODERATION IS MEDIOCRITY
EXCESS IS EXCELLENCE

If I wanted to be a mediocre lifter, I'd jock Mark Rippetoe like half the fucking idiots online, spend the bulk of my free time blathering on about how efficacious his ridiculous philosophy is, and generally suck at life. Pendlay Rows? Are you fucking kidding me? So, 5x5 with 135 on ultra-strict Pendlay Rows will yield the same results as some 10x2 with 405, rocking straps and a bit of body swing on bent over rows? Sure. And I'm a fucking Chinese jet pilot. If you're scared of injury, stay the fuck out of the gym and out of my way. Frankly, if you avoid doing anything that's not outright suicidal out of fear of minor injury, you'd best look elsewhere for training advice. Nothing risked, nothing gained, my fuckers.

This fucking retard is a Rippetoe mark. Whee!

Nowhere in this philosophy will one find a prescription for sitting on a padded bench and lifting light weigts. People sit all day at work. Modern life is cushioned enough. Hard bodies are forged with hard work, and extreme strength and body composition is achieved only by extreme methods. At the same time, this philosophy is a fluid, organic, living thing. Nutrition on this plan is guided by a combination of Metabolic Typing, Biochemical Individuality, Paleolithic Nutrition, and cutting edge sports science. As such, the very best physiques will not be a once-a-year, flash in the pan phenomenon, but will be maintained year round by optimizing individual nutrition to achieve strength and body composition goals simultaneously.

Me, three days out from a powerlifting meet.

The end result: the strength and physique of a superman, a Neanderthal, and a godlike archetype. The cost- pain. Lots of pain.

The Farnese Hercules, circa 3rd Century AD. I guarantee you the guy who posed for this never did a single set of leg extensions, seated anythings, or any exercise that didn't involve being a complete and total badass.

Lastly, this program is not simply the demonic conjurings of a depraved mind. Nor was it designed by a meathead with no conception of how the human body works. I'm an MBA with personal training certifications from NSCA and ACE, in addition to group fitness certifications from Les Mills in BodyPump and BodyCombat- I lack a CSCS because I see no reason to go back to school once more to get a degree in Exercise Physiology, relearning shit I already know (and shit that is probably less cutting-edge than what I shall impart to you). I'm also a winner of multiple regional push-pull meets in Arizona, the 2007 WNPF International champion at 165 lbs., and the best lifter in that meet. I back my nutrition and training philosophies with hard science, however esoteric, and draw upon such diverse sources as population genetics, longevity nutrition, and little known sports science studies, in addition to the programs developed by renowned trainer Chad Waterbury, the immensely successful and unbelievably brutal Bulgarian training regime, Arnold Schwarzenegger high volume routine, and an abject hatred of Mike Mentzer and his idiotic High Intensity Training philosophy (look for an upcoming blog ripping all of his shit to shreds and pissing on the remains) thrown in for good measure.

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