Ask a Fitness Model - Page 4

Waterbury also advocates higher frequency (hitting a group 2x a week), so that plays a role as well. Right now, I'm doing full body workouts as I'm just getting into the swing of training for a triathlon this summer and think splits would be counterproductive, but my most recent split routine was something like this: A: chest, tris, shoulders B: quads, hams, calves C: back, bis, traps D: off Rinse and repeat.

Thanks My friend challenged me to do it, so I think I'm gonna drown him in the lake right at the start. It's a mile swim, 20 mile bike ride, and 5 mile run. I'm 6'3", ~215 right now; I blew out my hamstring playing soccer in the fall, so I'm still leaning back out from a couple months of inactivity. I think I'll be down to 195-200 for the triathlon.

It's wrong. When someone can fluctuate with water weight in excess of 8% of their body weight per day, how could you possibly say how many calories are in one pound of muscle? It also depends on the muscle and intramuscular triglycerides as well as glycogen. There's a reason for the classic bodybuilder carb load before shows. Heck, 4 calories worth of glycogen actually can weigh 3g due to its chemical binding properties with water.

And besides, like I said, it's all eventually worthless because the body doesn't use muscle as a ready fuel source like it does for fat. Throw in the endocrine system, protein metabolism's complexities, etc. and trying to make a statement like 'there's 600 calories in one pound of muscle' is misleading and false.

hmmm... You can be a fitness model at that size? Can you get me a job? What's all this mumbo jumbo? All I needed to get there are squats and eggs. Eason, when I first started reading your posts, I really didn't like you. But I found out that you're the most pragmatic exercise folk in this forum, and I've come to terms with my deep and longing love for you.

i've never understood why chad says that. if you have more in you, how do you know you've satisfied the muscle's need?

Yeah, I always look pretty skinny (especially with clothes on) despite having an overweight BMI. I've always been envious of the guys with just slightly narrower shoulders than me; their shoulders always look so much more powerful and they all seem to have bigger arms. Their shirts fit better, too.

At work, a couple dudes thought I weighed 125 lbs. Keep in mind they're fat and clueless, but still... it hurt.

Because the program says you have. Most programs outside of the bodybuilding world measure fatigue and progress because of peak fitness levels at certain times. There's a 4 year off-season for Olympic lifters during which they usually go through a few training cycles for instances and the goal is to peak for the Olympics. Runners do it often with tapers before long runs to minimize fatigue. Failure causes issues with sports performance and neural strength because of the high rate coding during the last few repetitions. It also reinforces a slower movement to the muscle because of the struggle during failure. There's also more microtrauma due to longer time under tension, again causing more fatigue. In the sports world most people train for their sport and don't care about chest size vs. waist size and such unless anthropometric differences play a large part (femur:tibia ratio for runners, torso:leg ratio for lifters, etc.). That's why I find it so funny reading these forums and seeing 'yeah but you don't look like X' or 'you should do Y to feed the muscle' because it's such a basic and ridiculous way of looking at strength, speed, and overall how the body works compared to more practical training methods that have been around for decades. It's also why there's such a large amount of voodoo and thinking that 'thou shalt not eat less than 2000 calories/day or drink alcohol or do Z' and less real knowledge people have when they actually commit to a training program. They do something because some guy said so and never understand why. That's a pretty common way people go around in the world outside of fitness as well, but that's a digression that's too complex and subsequently lengthy that I won't make here. People watch Usain Bolt run as fast as he does or watch Razzadezahh lift as much as he does and brush it all off with 'well, he's genetically...' or likewise. It's partially apathy regarding how talented they are, but it's also a lot of ignorance. I have such purposely iconoclastic views on this forum to highlight fitness outside of the Flex magazine hand-me-down knowledge that's so pervasive in the fitness industry and hopefully get people to actually think for themselves instead of regurgitating the same old nonsense.

yeah, i suppose vanity is my sport, so failure it is. total overload is the only way i've ever grown.

Try a more traditional program. You'll probably be pretty surprised and start to question a lot of what you've been doing.

failure is trad. no failure is not.
been on modified 5 x 5 for weeks. gonna stick to this for 3 months.

Doesn't alcohol inhibit muscle growth or destroy it or something?
I like getting drunk so it would good news to hear otherwise.

Can we trade shoulder width?

If you're an alcoholic maybe. It makes me more sore than I would be otherwise but so does sitting down or driving for long periods of time. Actually some of my best runs have been on mornings after a hard night of drinking. It's almost like a carb-load/painkiller.

Alcohol does inhibit muscle growth slightly, but since most people a) don't know what they're doing to begin with, b) think muscle equates to strength/power/speed, and c) aren't the type of chronic drinkers that will be affected by this I say have your beer and enjoy it. Chances are your program is too sloppy to notice any difference and if your program is sound you'll know when to cut back on the beer if it is actually inhibiting performance.