A question of strength Part 26
Make me vascular!
Q: Is there a way to become more vascular?
A: Yes. First you need to get to a low body fat percentage. If you are carrying around 20% body fat, you will never look vascular. Your vascularity is inversely proportional to your body fat percentage.
But there are also nutrients that can increase your vascularity. One of them is a type of glucosamine that is blood vessel specific. Resveratrol can also improve your vascularity as it strengthens the vascular system.
Compounds such as acetyl carnitine and citrulline, which increase nitric oxide production, can improve the elasticity of blood vessels when taken over a longer period of time, which will help you look more vascular when you're pumped up. A: In most cases - almost always, actually - this is a sign of zinc deficiency. Zinc is the best natural aromatase inhibitor. How many people eat organic nuts? How many people eat unrefined grains? How many people eat meat from grass-fed cattle? Shellfish or oysters? Pretty much everyone suffers from a zinc deficiency - especially people who exercise with weights. Low zinc levels are synonymous with increased aromatase enzyme activity and this means man boobs. In the last ten years, I have not seen a male client who did not suffer from a zinc deficiency to begin with. Other things that have natural anti-aromatase activity would be grape seed extracts, resveratrol and DIM. You should also try to eliminate xenoestrogens with calcium D-glucarate. This is not a source of calcium, but a source of D-glucarate, which eliminates exogenous oestrogens. Eliminating xenoestrogens is also very difficult if your diet is low in fiber. I prescribe 30 grams of fiber per day to every man with male breasts who comes to me, divided into 40% soluble fiber and 60% insoluble fiber. DIM also works well in this regard. I sell a bunch of these products in England because so many of the men there have man boobs because they drink so much beer. Beer has an estrogenic effect. Now before anyone asks - if you have to drink alcohol, it's worth mentioning that red wine prevents aromatization. Pinot Noir or Merlot are good choices. You don't see many men with man boobs in France. Stretching: good and bad news The key to very good mobility and flexibility is to use all three methods in the right order. The correct order is PNF, then ballistic and lastly static. But never do stretching before training with weights. To become flexible, you need to do flexibility training. Sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? But the scientific evidence is quite clear: 20 minutes a day, four days a week, to warm up for training does not improve flexibility. The minimum amount of flexibility training you need per week to improve your flexibility is six hours. The good news is that after 6 to 8 weeks you will be as flexible as your genetic predisposition allows. And after that, you can maintain that flexibility with just one hour of flexibility training per week. So if you're serious about your flexibility, you need to specialize in it. The good news is that once you're agile, you can maintain it with just a little training each week. A: No, only fat will do this. When iron sports were still a subculture, before Arnold popularized the sport, all iron athletes - bodybuilders, powerlifters and weightlifters - trained and hung out together. Weightlifters trained curls, powerlifters performed Olympic squats and bodybuilders trained power cleans. And powerlifters also ate cleaner back then. When bodybuilding became a mainstream sport, many of these guys gave up good exercises and this mix of training and nutrition styles was lost. Now there was a disconnect. Powerlifters started eating burgers and fast food. They got fat and people associated deadlifts with the wide waists. I've seen alpine skiers move 250% of their body weight doing deadlifts - and they had narrow waists. Deadlifting will build your glutes, but it does nothing to increase your waist size. To reiterate: the only thing that will make your waist wider is fat. It's not the training that's responsible for a wide waist, it's the diet. And remember that the abdominal muscles have a potential - albeit small - for hypertrophy in response to training. So it may well be that an elite discus thrower who has performed a million repetitions of body rotations has a wider waist than the average person, but at this point we are talking about volume. Even Greco-Roman wrestlers who perform a lot of rotational movements against a resistance can have a wider waist than average athletes. In fact, they have a thicker waist than freestyle wrestlers. The same is true for judo fighters. But we are not talking about 40 centimeters more waist circumference here, but perhaps 2 to 5 centimeters and it is muscle and not fat. However, the average exerciser or bodybuilder has nothing to worry about. There are actually two different serratus anterior muscles. One lifts the shoulders (shoulder flexion) and the other is responsible for shoulder extension. If you do a lot of dumbbell shoulder presses and pull-ups, you will also train your serratus. Pull-ups will train the other part of the serratus. Usually, a person who does not have a visible serratus, even with a low body fat percentage, will not have performed enough dumbbell exercises such as dumbbell bench presses and dumbbell rows through the full range of motion. He will have used the barbell too often (which means a smaller range of motion). Look at the people who have the best developed serratus - gymnasts. They pull and push themselves up on equipment. The average bodybuilder should simply do more dumbbell training through the full range of motion to improve their serratus development. I have no problem with faked reps if they are used to overcome concentric resistance so that you can use more weight on the concentric part of the movement. In other words, you are faking the upward movement (concentric part of the movement) because you want to lower a heavier weight than you can move up to focus on the negative portion of the movement. This is an eccentric curl. However, if a guy says he can do 8 reps of curls with 90 kilos, but each repetition gets worse and worse, then he can't do 8 reps of curls with 90 kilos, he can only do 8 deviated reps with 90 kilos. Fake reps can be used to increase the duration of a set. For example, you could do 6 reps with good form and then use some momentum on the last two reps so that you can lower the weight in a controlled manner. I think something like that is fine. The problem, however, is that most exercisers who fudge on curls do the same on bench presses, deadlifts, etc. They let their ego influence their training. So there are two situations in which abduction is okay: repetitions. However, you should make sure that you also consider this to be eccentric training. A good application for deviated repetitions is to power clean a weight so that you can lower it in a controlled manner in a reverse barbell curl movement. Another good example would be pushing a weight up in a push press movement (standing shoulder press with momentum from the legs) and then lowering it in a controlled manner. The point is that you're not training like those clowns who claim to be moving huge weights when they're only doing 40% of the work and their training partner is doing the rest - although you have to hand it to those training partners - they have great trapezius development. A: For a 90 kilo man, 300 grams of protein per day would be the absolute minimum. In fact, I think the rule should recommend something more along the lines of 4 to 4.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, assuming the person is lean. For about 70% of the population that doesn't tolerate carbohydrates in large amounts very well, 4.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is good for mass gain. It can make a huge difference. Personally, I couldn't get over 85 kilos until bodybuilder Milos Sarceb convinced me to eat 4.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. It wasn't long before I weighed more than 90 kilos when I was lean. If a person is doing very well with carbohydrates, the value would drop to 2 to 3.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So you have to individualize your protein intake to a certain extent. Nevertheless, most people do not "deserve" the carbohydrates they eat. The rule for most people is that they have to earn their carbohydrates. Overhead weight squats aren't much good when it comes to mass gains, but as a tool for assessing performance, they're unbeatable. You can gauge an athlete's risk of lower body injury when performing their sport by how well they can perform overhead squats. Perfect form equates to an extremely low risk of injury and research groups from Sweden and Switzerland have clearly demonstrated this in various studies. Why is this exercise unsuitable for mass gain? Because hypertrophy is the product of time under tension and load. It has to be heavy enough and last long enough. This will not happen with overhead squats. Even Olympic weightlifters no longer perform this exercise. The people in the know stopped using this exercise in 1975. It's a forgotten exercise for training purposes...and for good reason. The only reason that exercisers find this exercise challenging is because they are not particularly agile. It's one of those exercises that looks cool but is a complete waste of time. Scapjacks. This is a way to recruit more motor units. If you simultaneously activate the elbow flexors (biceps) on the right side and the elbow extensors (triceps) on the left side, then you recruit more motor units in both pools of motor units. Hammer Strength has even produced training machines that utilize this neurological principle. The problem, however, is that you have to adjust the weight very precisely so that you reach the point of muscle failure with both arms after the same number of repetitions - i.e. with the biceps and the triceps arm. This is difficult to achieve with the weight increments in commercial gyms. So scapjacks were a very good idea in their day and they still have their value, but they haven't passed the practical test. Every trainer goes through this phase of trying to look for things that are cool. However, as he gets older and wiser, he relies more on the tried and tested. Here's an analogy. Scapjacks are like a flying kick with a spin. You try it once in a fight and it doesn't work. A kick to the balls is still the best option there. So if you want to recruit more motor units, try pull-ups or dips on rings instead of scapjacks. Creatine is one of those things that works best when you first start using it. It's like sex - you'll always remember the first time. I still believe in the loading protocol. A lot of these guys who advise against a loading phase are basing their recommendations on studies that have used very soft-edged training protocols. No one needs a creatine loading phase for such soft-purge programs. The advanced exerciser should use a small dose (5 grams) of creatine before training and another small dose after training. Incidentally, the so-called "side effects" of creatine such as stomach problems were caused by cheap creatine brands that turned out to be contaminated with heavy metals. There was cheap creatine from China that was analyzed to contain 97% creatine and 3% heavy metals. I have never seen side effects like cramps, diarrhea, etc. after using high quality creatine (as long as you don't use too much of course). You should also keep something else in mind: Creatine has other functions besides increasing strength and muscle building, which include preventing brain aging and de-acidifying the body. Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-43,https://www.t-nation.com/training/question-of-strength-44 From Charles PoliquinNo more man boobs
Q: I have man boobs. No gynecomastia from steroids or puberty gynecomastia, just a lot of fat deposits in the chest area. This fat seems to stay even when I define. Is there anything non-surgical that I can do? What does this say about my hormone profile?
Q: What are your protocols for your athletes when it comes to stretching?
A: There are three different types of stretching, each of which has its own pros and cons. A rule of thumb is that the types that are good for short-term improvements are bad for long-term improvements and vice versa.
Deadlifts and a wide waist
Q: Can deadlifts make your waist wider?
Pimp My Serratus
Q: Even with a single-digit body fat percentage, my serratus is not very visible. Is there a way to specifically build this muscle?
Abduction - yes or no?
Q: What do you think of abbreviated reps, where you use some momentum from the body to force an extra rep or two of biceps curls?
How much protein?
Q: Does the old "two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight" rule still apply? I hear some trainers say we need less protein, while others recommend 300 grams of protein per day for a 90 kilo athlete?
The truth about overhead weight squats
Q: Are overhead weight squats a good exercise or just a fad? And are they good for hypertrophy?
Scapjacks
Q: I remember seeing a unique way of training in MM2K magazine where you did dumbbell curls with one hand and cable tricep presses with the other arm at the same time. This type of training was supposed to generate some sort of neurological overlap and increase neuromotor drive. What the hell was that?
The best way to use creatine
Q: Creatine has been around forever and has been studied to no end. What are your current guidelines for its use?