Whoops! I Appear To Have Broken Something...

Though it's not official, as the meet promoter's computer didn't work yesterday, so he couldn't confirm the numbers.  I happened to be passing through Georgia yesterday and decided to pop into the APF Georgia State Championships for a bit, to see what was what.  According to the APF Website:

If that's correct, which I find difficult to believe because my openers broke all of those, they'll now read:

S: 257.5 Lewis, Jamie

B: 157.5 Lewis, Jamie

D: 280 Lewis, Jamie

T: 695.5 Lewis, Jamie 

This means that I totaled Elite as a Raw lifter (no wraps, no suit, no briefs, and no belt [just as a bit of icing on the cake, however unnecessary]), as the cutoff seems to be 1396, and I hit 1531 for the 181 weight class.  So much for the internet shit talkers who predicated the entirety of their criticism on the "fact" that I hadn't competed- that's right, I did this meet almost entirely out of spite.

Tonight, the lone wolf rides alone.

It was actually a pretty good learning experience.  I decided to do this meet about a month ago, so I started cutting calories and carbs back further, and knocked my cheat meals down to 1 per week.  Due to the fact that I've only got one meet on which to base my experience, I'm not entirely convinced of the veracity of the following reflections, but here are my initial thoughts:

• I might have cut a bit slowly.  I leaned out nicely, but as of last week, I was still 195.  I hung onto my strength by cutting very conservatively, but it made the last day a literal hell, and I'm not certain how much that took out of me on meet day.  My diet for the last month generally consisted of 4 or 5 days of low carb and low fat, drinking around 5 shakes a day, supplemented with either a couple of lbs of 93% lean ground beef or a lb of that an something more calorically dense, like wings or beef ribs.  I never tested my bodyfat, but I was accused on many occasions of being a bodybuilder at the meet.
• Shrugging and squat lockouts help the deadlift immensely.  I do not think, however, that squat lockouts have much of a direct carryover into the full squat.  My hips are retardedly tight and I have a hell of a time getting into the bottom position of a squat, but 1-2" above parallel, I am a fucking beast.  This is not conducive to making people shit out their spleens watching you squat in a meet.  Additionally, if you have to pay a hobo to do so, find anyone to call your depth while squatting- it'll save you the heartache of missing lifts because you're too deep or too shallow.
• Deadlifting with straps in no way hurts your deadlift.  I didn't deadlift without straps once in training, due to the fact that my gym's bars are bereft of knurling and bent all to hell (by me).  Stiffness and boredom were my downfall in my final attempt of the deadlift (the reason for the stiffness will be addressed later, as it's awesome).

You might be asking, "how'd you lose 14 lbs in a week?"  I really ended up losing 10 lbs in a day.  I cut out my last cheat meal, opting instead for two medium carb days the weekend before the meet, and weighed about 191 a day out.  As I knew I would weigh in on Friday night, I started drinking 2-3 gallons of water a day on Tuesday, and from Monday through Thursday ate as close to 0 carbs as I could, and kept my fat under 50 g.  That basically meant 6 protein shakes and 2 meals of 1 lb of 93% lean ground beef, topped with Sriracha hot sauce, for Monday through Thursday- making sure to keep my sodium as close to 0 as possible, and my potassium as high as possible.  Incidentally, topping your food with Ms. Dash gives you the same amount of potassium as any potassium pill you'll likely to find in a health food store.  At 10PM Thursday, I stopped drinking liquids and eating.  Friday fucking sucked.  I spent the day popping ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin in an effort to stay awake, and chewed so much gum that by the end of the day my jaw was horribly cramped.  I did, however, learn that massaging the jaw muscles from the inside of one's mouth is far more efficacious than the outside- you stick your index finger inside your mouth and push outwards on the muscle.  In any event, I weighed 185 at lunchtime, so I hit the sauna for a half hour, wore a sweatshirt at work for the remainder of the day, and then started the roadtrip from hell.  Birmingham is about 2 hours from Atlanta, so I alternated full blast heat and mild heat for the first hour, and then left the heat on high, wearing a sweatshirt the entire time, for the last hour of the drive.  I arrived alive, though I'm pretty sure I followed my spirit animal on a fucking vision quest during that drive, and weighed in at a paltry 179.  That's how you fucking make weight.

Refeeding was surprisingly difficult.  By the time I made weight, I was running an awesome fever and had heat rash all over my body- it was ultra hot.  I looked like a fucking tomato.  I slammed two liters of water, at half a box of Captain Crunch, and checked into my hotel.  Thereafter, I struggled to finish a burger, fries, and rolls at Texas Roadhouse, due to the fact that my stomach is now the size of a preteen girl's, and I had so much water and cereal in me.  I knew I needed the salt and calories though, so I pushed through, nearly crashed my car from exhaustion on the way back to the hotel, made two protein shakes and left out the Captain Crunch, along with a gallon of the mineral infused water for infant you can find at any store, and crashed.  Every time I awoke, I had some protein and as much Captain Crunch as I could fit down my gullet, and polished off the water by 4AM.  

The day of the meet was a lot more Captain Crunch, Supreme Protein Bars, Baked Lays and the like.  I tried to get as much salt into my system as I could due to the cramping I was getting, and the carbs and protein for obvious reasons.

The result?  I learned:

• Cutting weight is much harder without wrestling practice to aid it.
• I should not ever drive in that state.
• Severe water and food depletion can make you oddly euphoric, in a wildly angry way, but you're too tired to happily smash anything.

As to my lifts, in anyone's interested.  I opened at 534 on the squat, as my legs were cramping badly and I had no one to call my depth.  As an aside, as much fun as it is to be the lone wolf who rides alone due to his acerbic wit and the fact that I'm surrounded by nothing but humorless, angry, judgmental evangelical Christians, having any moderately friendly person along with you to call your depth would help.  I sat way into my opener and 567, and then dropped way in the hole on 598 and crapped out halfway to the top.  Had I turned it around at parallel, my numbers would look far better.  On the bench, I opened at 331, then smoked 347, whereupon I discovered that I could reverse grip in the APF.  I had unracked the weight myself on the first two attempts and didn't want to risk dropping the weight in my mouth doing so with a reverse grip, so I stalled out halfway through my lift with a conventional grip and 363 lbs.  Next time, I'll reverse grip like a motherfucker, and hopefully have someone who doesn't want me dead doing the liftoff- the search begins.  On deadlift, I was a fucking beast on my opener at 574 and my 2nd at 617.  At the beginning of the 3rd attempts, some awesome chick named Erica projectile vomited in the midst of her pull like she was auditioning for the Exorcist and sprayed down everyone in the first row with half-digested Muscle Milk.  As such, there was a massive delay cleaning shit up, whereupon I lost my momentum and missed my 3rd attempt at 639, as did everyone else who lifted after the delay.  I wasn't pissed though, as the chick was fucking fun, tatted, and happily turned the meet (which was perhaps the most boring thing I've endured, though it gave me the time to finish a Vince Flynn novel and get halfway through Chuck Hogan's The Strain) into a fucking GWAR concert.  I've no idea what her last name is, but that chick's metal as hell, as she got three whites while puking her intestines onto the platform.

Final analysis?  APF meets are a pretty good time, all things considered; I kind of want to try to total Elite for equipped lifters while still competing raw and sans belt; powerlifting now boasts hot chicks; and finally, Alabama sucks ass- do not ever come here, as Georgia looks like fucking Vegas by comparison.  Apologies for the lack of pics, but all my cell pics were shaky, and I had no one to take pics for me.  Example of a shaky pic- me the morning of the meet:

Blurry and generally shitty.

Soy Is The Devil, And Not In A Fun Way

The mythology of the Devil is actually pretty fascinating.  I'm not going to spend an hour recounting the entire etymology of the word Satan, the historical concept of the Devil, or pantheistic demonology, though I assure you, that shit is tremendously interesting.  Once you've followed every link you can from that one, you'll have a clear understanding of what the Devil represents- pure evil.  Across every Mediterranean-based religion since ancient Egypt, however, there's existed a malevolent energy or god with which people then and now have concerned themselves.  Innumerable methods have been articulated for ridding themselves of this evil, ranging from exorcisms to jihad to a hell of a lot of prayer.  I'm not advocating any of that, and I'm informing you about a much greater evil than the entity who is conventionally referred to as the Devil- I'm referring to soy.  Would an exorcism help?  Likely not, but there are some executives at Ralston-Purina and DuPont who could do with some stabbing.

The devil in a fun way.

For those of you who are unaware, there's currently a massive push to get soy into the diets of Americans, allegedly due to the magical health-improving effects of the soybean.  Apparently positing that the American diet is bereft of soy, and that the Chinese and Japanese can fly, live to 200 years of age, and never get cancer due to their constant inhalation of so, various special interest groups have funded studies alleging this bean's magical properties.  This is, of course, utter horseshit.

1. Americans eat far more soy, per capita, than any other people on Earth.  In 2005, Americans ate 25,261,750 tons of soy.  That breaks down to 0.0852255847 tons of soy a year (25,261,750/296,410,404), or 170 lbs a year.  The Chinese, by comparison, ate only (50957450 / 1315844000) 0.0387260572 tons per person, or 77 lbs.  This is fucking retarded.(Swivel for the soy, and Wikipedia for the population)
2. According to health activist and occasional kook Joseph Mercola, soy may increase the risk of breast cancer in women, brain damage in both men and women, and abnormalities in infants, contribute to thyroid disorders (especially in women), promote kidney stones, weaken the immune system, and cause severe, potentially fatal food allergies. (Mercola)
3. Soy contains isoflavones, plant hormones that have been shown to have an estrogenic effect on the body (it mimics the actions of estrogen, which reduces test levels and inhibit muscular hypertrophy. (Nutrient Timing, 128)
4. Biological changes in the function of sex glands, central nervous system, and thyroid are attributable to soy isoflavones.  Soy also contains phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that blocks the uptake of calcium, zinc, and magnesium.  Low zinc throws copper levels out of balance, and high levels of copper can depress thyroid function. (Crazy Makers, 81-82)
5. Many beans contain toxic compounds designed to dissuade animals from eating them, and soybeans are no different.  Raw soybeans contain antienzymes, hemagglutinin, phytates and goitrogens, which will have varying effects on people based on the biological individuality, but are toxic nonetheless.  (Neanderthin, 56)

I realize that at this point, half of you are scoffing at these claims, having eaten soy your entire lives, and immense amounts of it.  Before you get too haughty, consider this- Americans are fatter, less libidinous, weaker, and more pathetic than ever, and we're eating unprecedented amounts of soy.

Why are we eating so much soy?  Because agribusiness is filled with evil assholes who hate you, and they line the pockets of politicians who also hate you and are looking for ways to make you more dependent on them, so that the politicians will do what they'd do on their own a little more quickly.  According to Joseph Mercola, soy began in the US as a product that in 1913 was listed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as an industrial product, rather than a food.  (Mercola)  Although the soybean was introduced in the US a couple centuries prior to that, it didn't really carry much weight until is was picked up by none other than Henry Ford as a super-bean he primarily used to make plastics and textiles- Ford bragged that two bushels of soybeans went into each car he sold, and even wore a suit made of faux silk (made of soy) on a daily basis. This fiber never really caught on, having been beaten by DuPont's nylon, but illustrates the fact that soy was initially considered to be primarily for industrial use.  Ford's experimentation with soy milk eventually led to Ralston-Purina's widespread use of soy in animal feed, due in large part to the fact that soy is incredibly cheap to farm and process.  

18 year old, hot as fuck Swedish chicks could kick most American males' asses.

As the years passed, and soy made its slow transition into the American diet, that industry received a welcome boost from the findings of the Club of Rome, a global think tank who focusses on political issues, and wishes "to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of the crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public."(Wikipedia)  The Club produced their seminal work in 1972, called the Limits to Growth, which was essentially a dire prediction that the Earth's industrialized societies would collapse under their own weight and the combined scarcity of petroleum and food.  This book was an outgrowth of the Malthusian catastrophe theory of Thomas Malthus, which "was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production," and it led to a variety of well-received and well-regarded works of Malthusian dystopic fiction.  The two best-known works in this genre are The Wanting Seed, by Anthony Burgess, and Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, both of which depict a future Earth plagued by overpopulation.  Both books are fucking awesome, by the way, if you like dystopic fiction, and Harrison's book was made into the epic Soylent Green.  From works like these, people picked up the notion that meat would eventually be impossible to come by or unbelievably expensive (see just about any science fiction novel written in the last 30 years for evidence of this) and nearly all of which prophesied that soy would be the meat of the future.

In I Come In Peace, Dolph protects us from a likely soy-loving evil alien.

This momentum made it easy for companies like Ralston-Purina and DuPont to ramp up their soy production, and start fleecing the fuck out of our politicians.  The politicians, greedy, soulless sacks of shit that they are, eventually changed the protein rating systems to make soy look good, which afforded those companies the opportunity to make ridiculous claims about the bioavailability of soy.  (Body Opus, 76)  Lobbyists are the reason there are so many different rating systems for protein- not scientists.  To wit, there are the following rating systems for protein:


Biological value (BV)
Net protein Utilization (NPU)
Protein Efficiency Ratio (PER)
Nitrogen Balance (NB)
Protein digestibility (PD)
Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score (PDCAAS)

Just within BV, you can get two different rankings for protein, one of which places soy at the same level as whey for bioavailability, and another that ranks it at about 3/4 of whey.  PDCAAS is the newest, and thus ranks soy on par with egg, whey, and casein, while NPU, one of the oldest, ranks whey at 92 and soy at 61.  Suspicious?  I sure as fuck am.

Up next- Will soy make men's cocks fall off and have them grow tits, and will it make women even womenier?  Studies have shown that it might...

Another pic of the above chick- Sarah Bäckman, Swedish National armwrestling champ, and painfully, ridiculously hot chick who would rip your arm off and beat you to death with it, given a reason to do so.

Sources:
Joseph Mercola.  http://mercola.com/2004/jan/21/soy.htm
Ivy, John.  Nutrient Timing
Simontacchi, Carol.  The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying our Brains and Hurting our Children.
Audette, Ray.  Neanderthin.
Duchaine, Dan.  Body Opus.

Enough Already- Sex and Baddassery Are Definitively Interwined, Part 2.

Never before have I been so pleased at my ability to sow the seeds of discord as i have been with this series of blogs.  Frankly, I thought that everyone could agree that we should all fuck more and masturbate more, since getting off is pretty much the best fucking thing to happen in the history of forever.

Apparently, I was wrong.  Some of you, it appears, find that it saps you of your will to live, or something, which is as hilarious as it is sad.  Still others are deeply convinced by a study done in China that cumming more than once every seven days is less than optimal.  That's understandable, I suppose, because recent studies have shown that 9/10 of the people on Earth suck really fucking hard, and 19/20 of the people on the planet suck anywhere between a lot and really fucking hard.(Study I just made up)

First, a logical argument for constant sexual stimulation.  It's been definitively proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that libido is heavily dependent on testosterone in both men and women.  For both, supplemental testosterone is positively indicated to treat hypoactive sexual desire, which would indicate that more testosterone creates more sex drive.  For evidence of this, you merely need to google it- I'm not going to post citations to the dozens and dozens of studies that corroborate my statement.  Should you feel the need to do so, feel free- I assure you that this is for all intents and purposes an incontrovertible fact.  Given that this is a fact, it would stand to reason that engaging in sexual activity would not negatively affect your sex drive, as to do so would defeat the purpose of the rise in testosterone in the first place.  Additionally, it would defy the biological imperative towards procreation, and diminish one's interest in sexual activity, which would indicate that one's genetic material would not get passed on to subsequent generations.  Thus, the idea that fucking or jerking off would lower test levels is fucking absurd.

Casting logic aside, as so many people appear to do when it comes to sex, let's continue to look at the science.  First, a recent study has shown that optimal sexual performance requires hormonal changes that are best developed through regular sexual activity.

"Our results showed that a 9-day training period was not sufficient for some male rats to acquire a good level of sexual performance. While 42.5% of the rats displayed excellent sexual performance during the training sessions, 17.5% showed adequate performance, 7.5% had low sexual activity, and 32.5% of the rats did not display any sexual behaviors whatsoever. Additionally, after 4 days of training, rats with excellent/adequate performance showed a significant decrease in ejaculation latency relative to the first day of training. The rats with low or no sexual activity had lower progesterone levels relative to those displaying the highest sexual performance after 9 days of training. Testosterone, in turn, was also significantly reduced in animals with low/no sexual performance compared with excellent/adequate rats."(Tufik, et al.)

This means that fucking/jerking off a great deal will reduce your downtime, make you a better lay, and will raise your testosterone levels.  Given that it's my supposition (backed by science) that sexual activity raises testosterone levels, this is fairly compelling- not only does it raise your test levels, but it provides you with the necessary biological response to get you laid more, rather than less (as the obliquely cited Chinese study above would assert).

Built for sex.

As an aside- practice makes fucking perfect with sex.  There are entire books devoted to helping you train to be a better lay (like Built for Sex and Nate Green's book), and everyone from urologists to sex therapists recommend that masturbation is the perfect way to prime the pump for people with low libidos.  Additionally, for those of you who might be a little quick on the draw, there's some evidence that compulsive levels of masturbatory activity will increase your staying power and your turnaround time. That's just a little icing on the cake for you.  If knights in the Middle Ages would practice fucking goose down with 30 lbs of weights attached to their hips so they could fuck without removing their armor, you people can spend a few hours a week jerking it like you mean it so you're not firing the second you get out of the gate when some broad finally gets naked for you.

Ready to fuck his way through his codpiece, if need be.

For those ladies out there, personal experience and some studies I failed to cite gave compelling evidence that masturbation is pretty much essential for your sex drives and markedly increase your chances of cumming during sex (although overuse of pocket rockets seem to desensitize the clit like no other, so take it easy with those things).  As I cited in the last blog, orgasms raise female test levels as well, and will thus make you stronger, leaner, and generally more awesome in just about every way, so start giving it up (at least to yourselves, if not to anyone else).

Next, there's no evidence whatsoever supporting the idea that orgasms from sex or onanism in any way have a negative physical effect on athletic performance, and there is some evidence showing that sex within 24 hours of competition actually improves it.  (BFS 205, and Discovery News)  There's anecdotal evidence, however, that the psychological affect of sex can have an either positive or negative effect on athletic performance, but it's unknown whether this is due to some particular psychological makeup, or if it's simply a placebo effect.  I'm inclined toward the latter, due to the fact that many people appear to convince themselves that certain activities or supplements will result in a given effect and create the perception of the effect simply by willing it to be so.  If your body can reduce your perception of pain due to the expectation of a reduction in pain (Mind Matters), then it would stand to reason that you could either suck or kick ass in athletics from the placebo effect as well.

Finally, and in direct relation to the title of this blog- there's direct evidence that badassery and a prolific sex life are intertwined.  One really needs to look no further than Genghis Khan, who was both the penultimate badass and the most impressive sexual athlete of all time.  There's really no evidence of a dedicated masturbatory schedule for Genghis, but this is likely due to the fact that he was far too busy fucking and killing to have a spare moment for masturbation- .5% of the people in the world trace their lineage to Genghis (34,336,748.6 people on Earth can honestly call him their super-great-grandpa) and the Mongols are credited with the deaths of 40 million people.  Additionally, he was credited with having "great physical strength", so any idea that he was weakened by sex can be discarded.

Right up there with Genghis was Rasputin, proud owner of a cervix-destroying 13" Godzilla cock, the ability to control the weather, massive physical strength, and the only libido on Earth that could match Genghis's.  He fucked every broad on whom he laid eyes, including the Empress of Russia, and survived be poisoned, shot multiple times, stabbed, and strangled, only to die of drowning after he was tossed into a river.

He might seem like a douche, but this "bad boy" gets more ass than a toilet seat at NASCAR... and he fucks Keira Knightley.

At this point, it should come as no shock to you that bad boys (who demonstrably possess more testosterone than "nice guys") get far more ass than "nice guys".(Nice Guys)  I would attribute this to a variety of factors, but they all boil down to testosterone in the end- guys with more test have more masculine facial features, better bodies, harder and bigger cocks, and smell better (due to their heightened immune system), all of which increase their attractiveness to women. (I have no specific citation here, but check out the Anatomy of Love, the Anatomy of Sex, and sundry Discovery Channel and TLC programs on this)

The Jewish god killed Onan because he refused to knock up his brother's wife, not because he jacked it or blew his loads on her back.

If you're unconvinced, at this point, that extraordinarily frequent orgasms are hormonally essential and indispensable for your overall health, you're either dyslexic or a fundamentalist Christian.  In the first case, seek medical attention, and in the latter case, you need to reread the Bible and investigate the definitions of words like "adultery" in the historical sense.  You'll be pleasantly surprised at what you find.  For the rest of you- get off as much as you can, and not only will you be some ridiculously happy motherfuckers, but you'll see positive changes in body recomposition, overall wellness, and athletic performance.

Let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

Sources:
Alvarenga TA, Andersen ML, and Tufik S. Influence of progesterone on sexual performance in male rats. J Sex Med 2010;7:2435–2444.

Grayson, A.  Why Nice Guys Finish Last: New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys.  http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5197531&page=1
Hays, Scott.  Built for Sex.  NYC: Rodale, 2005.

Mirsky J.  Expectancy and the Placebo Effect: How Cognitive Processing Utilizes the rACC to Alter the Perception of Pain.  Mind Matters: The Wesleyan Journal of Psychology; 2007:2 19-28.

Sohn, E.  WORLD CUP 2010: CAN ABSTINENCE AFFECT ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE? http://news.discovery.com/human/world-cup-soccer-abstinence.html

Enough Already- Sex and Baddassery Are Definitively Interwined, Part 1.

On nearly every strength training and bodybuilding website on the internet, there's some jackass asking a question to which the answer should be obvious- "will jerking off/fucking negatively impact my workouts?"  Now, putting aside the fact that said moron should drown himself in a fucking bucket of bleach for even contemplating abstinence were the answer to be in the affirmative, allow me to lay this sick dog to rest:

Sexual activity and Badassery are inextricably intertwined.

This should not be anything that needs to be investigated, as it seems about as obvious as anything could possibly be.  

The best in this series are Ashley Blue and Gia Paloma, fyi.

Watch porn.  Men and womens' test level raise 100% and 80% in response to sexual stimuli.  That means that both of your libidos will rise accordingly, due to the fact that both men and womens' sex drives are dependant on their testosterone levels. (New Scientist)  Additionally, studies have shown that sexual stimuli will increase both LH production and test levels, so not only will your cock be rock hard, fellas, but you'll be droppin' motherfucking loads like Nick Manning all the live long day.  (Stoleru)

Fuck or masturbate (or both) AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.  A study in Mexico showed that serum testosterone levels in rats rose markedly after two consecutive orgasms, and even further after four.  (Hernandez)  Additionally, "frequent sex improves sex hormone regulation in men and women, and boosts blood vessel health.... [and] Frequent ejaculation reduces the risk of prostate enlargement and cancer.(JSM) On top of that, studies have shown that in addition to those positive hormonal fluctuations, cumming has positive effects on your endocrine system, and causes your body to produce more adrenaline, prolactin, and killer cells, which in turn improves immune system function.(BB.com)  Thus, by getting off as much as humanly possible, you're generating a shitload of testosterone in both men and women, leutinizing hormone in men, and improving your recovery time from hard workouts in both.  It goes without saying that you're also getting off, which means that you'll have elevated levels of dopamine (which reduces pain and improves mood), and that you'll be burning calories, which will make you leaner, in addition to improving your cardio.

For those guys, who like me, want kids like they want AIDS, there's more good news with this type of a compulsive fucking/masturbating scheme- your sperm count drops like a motherfucker (to about 27% of norm).  That means (though I'm not endorsing this) you can go bareback without the bare facts and not worry quite so much.(Freund)

In the second half of this, I'll go into a bit more detail, but in the meantime, use this as a reason to spend labor day laboring your ass off in the bedroom.

Sources:

New Scientist. 22 Aug 1998, p. 11.  

Stoléru SG, Ennaji A, Cournot A, Spira A.  LH pulsatile secretion and testosterone blood levels are influenced by sexual arousal in human males.  Psychoneuroendocrinology. 1993;18(3):205-18.

Hernandez M , Soto-Cid A, Aranda-Abreu G, Díaz R, Rojas F, Garcia L, Toledo R,  Manzo J.  A study of the prostate, androgens and sexual activity of male rats.  Reproductive Bio Endocrin. 2007, 5(11):1186/1477-7827-5-11. http://www.rbej.com/content/5/1/11/abstract/ 

Emmanuele A. Jannini, W, Fisher J, McMahon C.  J Sex Med. 2009, 6: 2640-2648 Article first published online: 6 OCT 2009 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01477

M. FREUND. EFFECT OF FREQUENCY OF EMISSION ON SEMEN OUTPUT AND AN ESTIMATE OF DAILY SPERM PRODUCTION IN MAN. J Reproduct Fertil. 1963 6: 269-286.

Just Because You're An Endurance Athlete Doesn't Mean You Need To Look Like You Have AIDS

Last year, Triathlete magazine carried an article I found hilarious, due to the irony of having a hot, ripped chick on the cover, about whether or not triathletes were body image obsessed. Expecting the thing to be jammed with hot chicks, and to at least be marginally impressed by the Pavel-esque physiques of the guys, I opened the thing up to be confronted with a pack of walking skeletons unseen in the western world since the POW camps of the last world wars. Amusingly, the article went on to describe how the guys seemed to be more obsessed with being skinny than the women, as they believed that a low BMI would lead to greater victories, provided they didn't die of starvation in the meantime.  I was under the impression that everyone on Earth was aware of the exploits of Dean Karnazes, which should have laid all that bullshit to rest long ago.  The guy's not super jacked, by any stretch of the imagination, but he's not 10 calories from the threshold of death by starvation, either.  For those of you who are unaware, he's won all sorts of ultramarathons, completed 50 marathons in 50 days, ran 135 mi across Death Valley in 120 degree heat (the Badwater 135), and is an avowed paleo guy, laying all of the nonsense about high carbs for endurance athletes to rest.  

Just about every guy in your gym has smaller legs than Karnazes.

Clearly, Karnazes isn't going to be winning any bodybuilding competitions anytime soon, but he is a fan of resistance training, mostly in the form of bodyweight exercises.  This is why he carries more muscle than the average runner, which he claims is key in injury preventions.  "Too many runners only run" says Karnazes, "hence their overall muscular development isn't very good.  I carry a little more bulk than your typical runner, which may slow me down a bit, but ultimately helps with injury prevention and being able to go those super-long distances."

Lance Armstrong is also a big proponent of lifting weights, which he presumably does so as not to look like Matthew McConaughey's little brother when out picking up chicks at the bar.  He's recommended weightlifting to his legions of adoring fans, as well, and reportedly lifts three times a week.  For reasons I cannot fathom, his workouts consist of hang cleans (with form that truly makes mine look impeccable), step ups, dumbbell rows, and side lunges, all for sets of a commendable 5 reps.  Given Armstrong's credibility in endurance sports, perhaps his half-starved companions in lengthy, boring, and painful endurance athletics might take a page out of his book.

The people at the clinic told him no antiretrovirals unless he hit a sub 5 min mile.

Certainly, by now, a great many of you a silently screaming "Who fucking cares?" and considering throwing your laptop against the wall due to my acknowledgement of a seemingly irrelevant topic.  You'd be surprised, however, at the number of goofballs out there who actually train in both endurance sports and Olympic weightlifting, and who read this blog because they're quite obviously insane- birds of a feather, and all that.  Personally, I would rather trip and fall facefirst into Lil Kim's vagina during her period after she'd contracted ebola than run 10 miles, but to each their own.

Am I the only one singing "Cherry Pie" in my head right now?

Not surprisingly, science falls on the side of common sense, Karnazes, Armstrong, and anyone who doesn't want to look like they just wandered out of Auschwitz in this debate.  Clearly unbeknownst to triathletes and other endurance athletes, strength training has a wide array of positive effects for endurance athletes, not the least of which is improving their physical appearance.  Studies have shown fairly definitively that the faster a runner is anaerobically, the faster they are in endurance runs.  Although you would think that those two times would contraindicate, if you look at the times of Olympic milers, at this point, they run competitive 400s, which would put them competitive Division I 100m sprinters, as well.  Looked at that way, it makes sense that plyometric leap distance and the 50m sprint correlate very strongly with 10k times, and that the 5k and the 20m dash correlate strongly. (Paavolainen et al) Another well-respected study showed that those with the highest peak running speeds on a treadmill had the fastest distance times, and attributed that fact to greater "muscle contractility".  (Noakes)  


As such, it seems that at the very least, endurance athletes should be less worried about simply having the aerobic capacity to finish these races, and far more worried about increasing the contractile power of their muscles, which will in turn make them faster in sprints, and thus carry over into distance running.  In particular, endurance athletes should consider taking up Olympic lifting in particular, as it seems that explosive lifting correlates more strongly with improving times on endurance events.  Low repetitions with relatively high weights in the Olympic lifts should, according to these studies, produce far better distance times.  Thus, exercises like the high pull, clean and jerk, and snatch could prove extremely beneficial to distance athletes.  Additionally, quick lifts conducted with kettlebells could prove useful, as will plyometrics (and in particular depth jumps).  I would also caution distance athletes that they should absolutely not ignore their upper bodies in the belief that their lower bodies are the primary muscles involved.  A quick glance at nearly any sprinter will reveal pretty fucking good upper body development as well, particularly in the shoulders.  

Jon Drummond of the US 4x100 team.

Champion trainer of sprinters, Charlie Francis, believes that upper body strength is essential for powerful arms and fast hands, and that this will translate to faster foot strike time.  As multiple studies have shown that foot strike time contributes to faster distance times as well, you might as well make sure you've got ample upper body work in there.  Lastly, Prof. Michael Yessis asserted at one point that he had read in some uncited Soviet literature that Olympic weightlifters had, by virtue of their muscle contractility, the ability to beat Olympic sprinters over the first 10 meters of a sprint.(Yessis)  If that's true, it would suggest that the lot of you should get your asses in the gym and start moving heavy weight.  Even if it's bullshit, however, there exists enough evidence that heavy strength training will help that you might want to consider dropping some road work in favor of some good old-fashioned weightlifting, in the form of singles, doubles, and triples.  Lifts should be done as explosively as possible to enhance your contractility (which I'm not 100% sure is actually a word, but I pulled it directly from the Noakes study), so leave aside the traditional powerlifts in favor of the more explosive quick lifts and plyometrics, unless you're doing Westside-esque speed work.

I googled "Westside speed day" and got this.  Awesome pic though.

... and for the love of all that's fucking holy- start eating.  If Karnazes can 135 miles through the fucking desert without eating a bagel, you can too.  Bring on the motherfucking steaks and heavy barbells!  Be more like Lee priest and less like the half starved douche in the middle of this article and you might find yourselves winning- at least with the opposite sex.


Sources:

BISHOP D, JENKINS D, MACKINNON L, McENIERY M, CAREY M.  The effects of strength training on endurance performance and muscle characteristics.  Med Sci Sports Exerc 31(6) 886-891, 1999.
  --The present data suggest that increased leg strength does not improve cycle endurance performance in endurance-trained, female cyclists.

HICKSON, R. C.; ROSENKOETTER, M. A.; BROWN, M. M. Strength training effects on aerobic power and short-term endurance.
  --These findings provide evidence that HRT is capable of dramatically increasing short-term endurance, when the muscles involved in the training are used almost exclusively during the testing without an accompanying increase in Vo2max.  Med Sci Sports Exerc 12(5):336-339, 1980

Hickson RC,Dvorak BA, Gorostiaga EM, Kurowski TT, Foster C.  Potential for strength and endurance training to amplify endurance performance.  J Appl Physiol 65: 2285-2290, 1988
-- These data do not demonstrate any negative performance effects of adding heavy-resistance training to ongoing endurance-training regimens. They indicate that certain types of endurance performance, particularly those requiring fast-twitch fiber recruitment, can be improved by strength-training supplementation.

NOAKES, T. D.  Implications of exercise testing for prediction of athletic performance: a contemporary perspective.  Meet. Sci. Sports Exerc, Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 319-330, 1988.
  --This review proposes that the factors limiting maximal exercise performance might be better explained in terms of a failure of muscle contractility ("muscle power"), which may be independent of tissue oxygen deficiency.

Paavolainen L, Häkkinen K, Hämäläinen I, Nummela A, and Rusko H.  Explosive-strength training improves 5-km running time by improving running economy and muscle power. J Appl Physiol 86: 1527-1533, 1999
  --In conclusion, the present simultaneous explosive-strength and endurance training improved the 5K time in well-trained endurance athletes without changes in their O2 max. This improvement was due to improved neuromuscular characteristics that were transferred into improved VMART and running economy.

Yessis, Michael.  Letter.  http://www.elitetrack.com/forums/viewthread/7841/

If You're Not Cheating, You're Not Trying

I believe that scheduled cheat windows are absolutely necessary for the maximization of one's metabolic and hormonal efficiency, and that to abjure their use is to consign one's self to both dietary failure and place one's self in jeopardy of going completely insane.  I realize that there are a few vocal advocates of 100% clean eating out there, like Pauline Nordin, but frankly, I could give a shit- I'm not a competitive bodybuilder, and I can maintain mid-single digits bodyfat with no problem and no cardio utilizing scheduled cheat windows.

Awesome to look at... intolerable to eat with.

First, a bit of semantics.  I initially believed that the precepts I held regarding cheat meals were at odds with those of John Berardi, whose opinion on all things diet I value highly.  Not so, it seems- we merely disagreed semantically.  Rather than rewrite his description of cheat meals, refeeds, and planned overfeeding (as some of my fellow bloggers have done, without giving credit where it's due), I'll simply cut and paste Berardi's definitions:

Cheat meal = unplanned dietary transgression in which someone eats foods not on their diet (and not considered “clean”) and/or over consumes these foods. Cheat meals are usually the consequence of getting hungry and not having good food options available. An example of a cheat meal is being on the road and not having a chicken breast and vegetable dinner available so you stop at a restaurant and eat a burger, fries, and a milkshake.

Planned overfeeding = planned increase in calorie intake for a single meal. Planned overfeedings usually occur when eating maintenance intake or above since this meal will probably bump your calories up above the maintenance or habitual level of intake. Planned overfeedings can be carried out with excess amounts of “clean” foods or with other foods not considered bodybuilding friendly and are usually in place to allow time to eat “fun” foods so that athletes don’t feel so deprived as well as to help with recovery. An example of a planned overfeeding is ordering 4 large pizzas for yourself and 3 friends every other Sunday afternoon when in the midst of a serious strength and power phase.

Refeed = planned increase in calorie intake that lasts 8 – 12 hours and usually consists of a large increase in carbohydrates. Refeeds usually occur when dieting and are planned in order to provide a brief day of psychological relief as well as a number of physiological benefits that we’ll discuss later. An example of a refeed is following a strict diet of 1500kcal 5 days per week and consuming 2500kcal of clean bodybuilding foods (the additional kcal coming mostly from carbohydrates) on the other 2 days.

Frankly, it's never occurred to me to define an unplanned dietary transgression, because they're nearly impossible to make if you've got a scintilla of willpower.  If you don't, stop reading this blog and go back to playing with your Star Wars figurines and eating Cheetos while you wait for something, anything, to happen in World of Warcraft.  Fuck my life, that game is beyond boring.  In any event, when I refer to a cheat meal or cheat window, it is the second, not the first, definition to which I am referring.

The key, then, is that these are scheduled, timed affairs.  They should last only 3 hours at a time, in my opinion, and they should occur one to two times per week.  I plan these out in my head prior to engaging in them, purchase whatever I need for them just before doing so, eat my fucking face off, and toss anything that's still extant at the 3 hour mark.  No starving kids in Africa is going to be able to eat the two chicken fingers you were unable to stuff down your gullet, and they'd likely cut your cock off for being a godless infidel if they were around, so fuck them.  That adage is a pile of bullshit, and it will only serve to fuck your dieting goals by tempting you while you're playing Call of Duty or when you come home hammered and starving at 4AM.  Don't stock up on forbidden foods- when you need them, they'll be easy enough to find.


In re the duration and frequency of your cheat windows, there are basically three schools of thought on this- don't do it at all (Chris Aceto, Pauline Nordine, and various other psychotics), do it twice a week at regular intervals for 3-4 hours (Lyle McDonald, Warren Willey), and do it once a week for the entire day (same guys).  I've already addressed the first school of thought, so I'll now hit the latter two.  Obviously, I think that cheat meals are essential- at least one study has shown that short breaks from high fat diets will not have an adverse effect on lipolytic activity, and lipolytic activity in people who take high carb breaks from high fat diets are actually higher than those who are on a high carbohydrate diet.(Saitoh)  As I advocate low carb diets, this is rather important.  It becomes moreso when you consider one of Dave Palumbo's comments in re cheat windows, wherein he stated that if "you use a keto-diet, you'll need to have a cheat meal (to spike insulin) at least once per week to keep the thyroid functioning normally." 

Dave knows a thing or two about getting lean... and about having a gigantic fucking head.

Also, as I stated in my previous blog on bulking, cheat windows speed the metabolism, (Matsumoto)  replenish your glycogen stores, (Bowden) and increase your thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones, (Poehlman) in addition to providing an awesome forced break from clean eating.(Westrate)  Given that you're reading this blog, I think it's no mystery that I'm hyper-intense, slightly insane, and not terribly amenable to long-distance, low intensity events, which is what a cheat day would be.  For those, most authors recommend that you keep your cheating fairly reasonable, or you run the risk of undoing a lot of the metabolic goodness you've created with your 6 days of dieting.  They also recommend those days for occasions wherein dieting simply isn't feasible, like taking a trip to an amusement park, or some other day-long event at which it'd be a pain in the ass for you, and a major inconvenience and annoyance to those around you (mostly the latter, because no one gives a fuck if you have veins on your abs but you).  


In re the shorter, more intense cheats- that's not to state that it's a foregone conclusion that they're better, but the science (cited above) seems to point in the direction of shorter, more intense cheats in order to obtain the more extreme metabolic enhancements.  Luckily, that's my cup 'o fucking tea- brief, vulgar, and going for the jugular.   

I have always been uncomfortable around babies.  Now I know why- they eat motherfuckers.

Thus, in my 3 hours cheat windows (which should always come on non-consecutive days, or you'll again run the risk of obviating the point of the exercise), I eat as many calories as I can possibly fit down my gullet.  I find that I'll generally have a raised core temperature (i.e. I sweat my ass off while eating), and more energetic, and feel like a giant killer robot with a 50 foot boner who shits hundred dollar bills- that's how I know that I'm getting the proper metabolic response.  What do I eat to achieve this sensation?  This sort of shit:  


1 Small Pepperoni and Sausage Pizza
10 piece Chicken Nuggets
Small, heavily buttered movie popcorn


12 KFC Hot Wings
Most of a Digiorno 3 Meat Pizza
Half a bag of Baked Ruffles or Low-fat Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls


Medium Papa John's Spicy Italian Pizza
Cinnastix
Cheese Breadsticks


20 Breaded Spicy Garlic Hooter's wings 
Large DQ Blizzard with Heath Bars and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

As you can see, there's a pattern- I literally eat for three straight hours.  If I'm not eating, I feel like I'm missing out.  Thus, I usually pick foods on which I can graze.  There's no metabolic reasoning for this- it's just what I like to do.


For those of you who are about to throw Lyle McDonald in my face, relax, I've read the same shit.  His contention is that during these structured refeeds, you should definitely not "use the concept as an excuse to eat yourself sick or eat three times what you’d normally eat."(McDonald, 34)  I'll tell you this from experience- the farther you get in a given diet, the less you can consume in three hours- it's a matter of pure biology.  Thus, at the beginning of your diet, you'll be able to eat more during your cheats, which will likely slow your progress.  It will, however, completely obliterate any reason you'd have to abandon the fucking thing.  As you get further along in your diet, and you start seeing definition you'd never seen before, or veins you never thought you'd ever see, you're going to naturally restrict yourself on your cheats, or cut yourself down to one ball-out cheat a week and one minor one.  If that doesn't happen naturally for you, take McDonald's advice.  I, however, like challenging myself, and seeing how much food I can fit down my throat in 3 hours serves 3 purposes: physical, because I get the metabolic advantages listed above, psychological, because I get all the foods I might want on a regular day at once, and emotional, because I feel satiated and satisfied with my personal level of success and freedom in my diet.  Should you find that your body is not responding thusly, start putting the brakes on manually- treat it like you're a blind man at an orgy... you're gonna have to feel this one out.

Greatest comedic genius of our time.

Timing:  
I usually choose to have my cheat meals at night.  From a insulin standpoint this is probably not ideal, but from a lifestyle standpoint, I don't care.  There's not enough of a difference in hormone levels between morning and night to justify worrying about my insulin levels, and I find that it's awesome to go to bed full to bursting and have the night to digest and bomb out my place in peace, rather than force myself to eat a meal when it's inconvenient.  


Some nutritionists believe that pre-workout is the best time for a scheduled cheat window.  Anytime I've tried to schedule a cheat meal early in a day and train later, however, I find that my lift's a disaster, and I spend the majority of the time trying not to throw up or shit my pants, or both.  As such, evening cheats seem to be absolutely ideal, as I'm already operating in a caloric deficit, so my body's sucking up nutrients, it fits with social events like going to the movies, and it allows me to digest my massive influx of calories in bed, where blood can pool in my stomach and occur with a minimum of disruption from physical activity.  Additionally, it's on this day that I'll occasionally take the opportunity to drink absurd amounts of Jager or some other liquor, and I'm of the opinion that the cheat meal both mitigates the possibility of hangover and facilitates the assimilation of far more alcohol without negative effect, in addition to dropping the glycemic index of sweeter liquors (like Jager).  I realize that some of you may be screaming "but it lowers your test levels! SCREEEEEE!"  Relax.  According to a study published in 2003, "Heavy acute alcohol drinking decreases blood testosterone in men due to an effect on the testicular level", which means that if you drink your fucking face off, your test levels will rise accordingly.(Sarkola)  A far more in depth explanation was provided by Patrick Arnold in Muscular Development, in which he stated that alcohol consumption gives a short-term testosterone boost due to the manner in which ethanol is processed by the body.(Arnold)

Two supplements that will increase the effectiveness of your cheat meal are:
ECA stack- It increases your thermogenesis anyway, but "ephedrine alone can increase the thermic effect of a meal by 30%"(Berardi).  As such, make sure you whack that back prior to the initiation of your feeding frenzy to ensure that you're getting the optimal metabolic response to your overfeeding.


Digestive enzymes- Before, during, and after.  Trust me, they'll help.  If you've been eating clean, your body's going to have something to say about what you're eating, and it's going to let everyone in the room know what it thinks about it.  This should prevent any non-alcohol-related pants-shitting, and keep you from smelling like you've shit them.  Lastly, it'll increase the absorption of the nutrients you'd so rudely and crudely stuffed down your ravenous gullet, increasing the positive effects of that meal and hopefully negating any of the negative ones.

One last word on this, which I also mentioned in my last bulking blog- don't include these feeding frenzies if you're not already lean.  If you're a fatass, you don't deserve them from a mental standpoint and cannot really utilize them from a metabolic one.  As such, you'd be wise to steer clear until you can see some abs.  For guys, this means under 15%, tops.  For girls, that means... whatever the female equivalent of 15% is.  We'll call it 25-27%.  If you can see abs, have at it- otherwise, wait until you can.  Additionally, if you find that cheat meals are either not helping, or they're actually hurting, monkey with the timing, duration, and what you're actually eating.  I find that at times I have a hell of a time leaning out using these if I'm not on an ultra-low carb diet for at least three days out of the week and I'm eating massive amounts of both carbs and fat during the cheat windows.  Make a note of what works and what doesn't, and actually utilize that information.


On that note, it's time for me to begin mine.

One can never have too many pics of Pauline Nordin.

Sources:

Arnold, Patrick.  A Steroid for Flu Prevention.  Muscular Development, 2/10/10, p. 276.


Berardi, John.  "Q & A with John Berardi."  Iron Magazine.  http://www.ironmagazine.com/article466.html

Bowden VL and McMurray RG. Effects of training status on the metabolic responses to high carbohydrate and high fat meals. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):16-27.


Faigin, Rob.  Natural Hormonal Enhancement.  Cedar Mountain: Extique, 2000.


Matsumoto T, et al. Comparison of thermogenic sympathetic response to food intake between obese and non-obese young women. Obes Res 2001 Feb;9(2):78-85


McDonald, Lyle.  A Guide to Flexible Dieting.  Taylorsville: McDonald, 2005.


Palumbo, David.  "Q&A with Dave Palumbo." http://www.rxmuscle.com/articles/qadave/590-qaa-with-dave-palumbo-august-6-2009.html


Poehlman ET, et al. Genotype dependency of the thermic effect of a meal and associated hormonal changes following short-term overfeeding. Metabolism 1986 Jan;35(1):30-6.


Saitoh S, Matsuo T, Tagami K, Chang K, Tokuyama K, and Masashige Suzuki.  Effects of short-term dietary change from high fat to high carbohydrate diets on the storage and utilization of glycogen and triacylglycerol in untrained rats.  EUR J APP PHYS OCC PHYS; 74 (1-2):13-22


Sarkola T, Ericksson TJP.  Testosterone increases in men after a low dose of alcohol.  AL Clin Exper Res; 27 (4): 682-5.


Westrate JA, Hautvast JG.  The effects of short-term carbohydrate overfeeding and prior exercise on resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis.  Metabolism. 1990. Dec;39(12):1232-9.


Willey, Warren.  Better Than Steroids.  Trafford: Pocatello, 2007.