A Month-Long Experiment in Strength Training

       Periodization is an important aspect of a resistance training program.  Every month or so, you should change your repetition and load on your workouts.
       Let's say  you're just starting on a resistance training program.  The proper periodization would be 2-3 sets of 20 repetitions the first month, 3x15 the second, 3-4x12 the third, then 3-4x10, 4-5x8, 5-6x6 and then 5-6x5.  This is to train different parts of the muscle.  The higher your repetition count and lower your weight the more you are working the sarcoplasm of the muscle, the area that surrounds actual muscle fibers.  In lower rep, higher weight training, you are increasing the cross-sectional size of each muscle fiber.

The Mighty Muscle Belly - You're Ally at the Beach

       The question on today's post is 'which period is most effective?' 
       I gathered my body fat and circumference measurements from my one month of 20 rep training and then again from my 8 rep training.  The first five measurements are from my five superficial fat measurement sites.  In short, the smaller the numbers, the lower in body fat.  The second chart of measurements are from the circumferences of my various body parts.
       If my circumference measurements go up and my fat level goes down, it is safe to assume that I gained more muscle than fat.  If my circumference measurements go up and my fat measurements stay the same, I put on about equal muscle and fat.  If the circumference measurements go up and my fat measurements go up, that means I put on more fat than muscle 

Rep Count 20 8 Bicep caliper measurement 3 2.5 Tricep 4.0 3.0 Subscapularis 9.0 7.5 Suprailiac 4.0 4.0 Below belly button 9.0 7.5 Body fat % 7.96 6.08 Weight 157.0 161.0 Muscle mass 148.18 151.2 Arm circumference measurement 12.5 13.0 Chest 40.1 40.5 Waist 30.25 30.5 Hip 36.75 38.0 Leg 21.5 22.0

       In conclusion, I dropped from 7.96 to 6.08% body fat within just a month of training at heavier weights and lower volume.  I also gained four pounds and and increased my body size (No wonder things were fitting a little tighter everywhere).  My first counter to the conclusion that heavier weight training yields more muscle and less body fat would be diet.
       The rule is that the more you eat, the heavier you become.  My diet, however, stayed consistently at 3300/day over the past month, which would not account for the weight/muscle gain and fat/drop. 
       Everyday for the past two months, I ate oatmeal with fruit and low sugar jam and coffee with almond milk for breakfast.  Depending on what fruit I ate, breakfast was between 700 and 1000 calories.  Lunch was consistently at another 1000 calories, with either rice, quinoa or couscous, some kind of lean meat (e.g. shrimp, chicken or turkey breast), 210 calories worth of sweet potatoes and a cup of black beans (180 calories).  Mid day snacks were protein bars, equaling 420 calories.  Supplements were 120-240 calories of whey protein and 100 calories of gatorade.  Dinner was a salad with lite dressing, mixed low calorie vegetables and avocado.  This tapped me out at around 3000-3300 just before bed.
       The other variable would be aerobic training, which would need to drop in order for my weight to increase.  But cardiorespiratory work stayed consistent during this time: 6 hours/week at 80-85% of my maximum heart trate of either running, biking, swimming or stairmill.          
       Probably accounts for weight gain could be the working of muscle fibers and not sarcoplasm accounted for more water being retained within the muscle fiber.  Muscle fiber that expands can also hold more creatine and ATP,  making a pound of muscle "heavier" than a pound of fat.
       Or the sudden change in the workout was just what my body needed and I was able to gain more muscle, thereby burning more fat by raising my basal metabolic rate (resting calorie burn).  We will find out of this is true when I go back to 15 rep training next month.  Stay tuned.   

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Carbohydrates

Last weekend, the girlfriend and I went to a wedding on Treasure Island for two of our college friends.  On Treasure Island, California Street is the main road on which the convention center is located and where all of the special events occur.

Coincidentally, a Crossfit convention was just wrapping up in the same parking lot that the girlfriend and I were pulling up to.  The irreverent mess they left seemed a little inconsistent with the "all natural" approach to their diets.  But who am I judge?

It got me to thinking about my bike ride earlier that day.  The last hour was abysmal.  It got me to wondering whether or not I had eaten enough carbohydrates for breakfast.  Breakfast that day consisted of oatmeal protein pancakes and low sugar jam and coffee with almond milk.  I discussed this with one of the wedding guests who had coincidentally shown up from the Crossfit event.  His words exactly were "why are you eating those kinds of carbs anyway?" 

Gaze upon the harbinger of your dietary demise: carbohydrates (they live under your bed).

The pondering of breakfast and the conversation with the Crossfit zealot led me to this particular post: the importance of carbohydrates in your diet.  Thanks to earlier readings of "Nutrition Essentials for Nursing Practice," I accumulated an extensive list of the importance of carbs.

Carbohydrates are the most efficiently burned and abundant source of energy for your body to fuel cells, thus muscles, physiological processes and the brain.  Though muscles (smooth and articular) can use both glucose and fat, the brain can only use glucose.  Carbohydrates also prevent ketosis.  More on that later.

When you eat carbohydrates, they are converted to glucose, which is stored in the muscle as adenosine triphosphate, the main fuel for muscle contraction and, thus, all movement in the human body.  Any excess of carbohydrates is stored in the liver as glycogen.  When the liver is at capacity of glycogen, it becomes fat, just like any excess of protein and fat.   

If there is a low amount of carbohydrates in one's diet, the body will end up stealing calories from muscle or fat to keep its biological processes going.  If you are doing something like Crossfit, the indoctrination of which demands a low carbohydrate diet, you're going to find yourself using a lot of precious muscle mass to get you through a rigorous workout.  All that hard work for nothing.

On a tangential note, the more rigorous a workout becomes, the more the body relies on carbohydrates as fuel.  If you are doing something as sadistic as Crossfit, you better well be eating carbs.

If you opt out of carbohydrates, your body will experience the following symptoms: mood swings, nausea, dizziness, weakness and depression.  As your body goes into ketosis, a  bodily state in which fat and protein is burned for fuel instead of carbohydrates, your body will produce compounds called ketones that can show up in your saliva and cause bad breath. You might also notice that your thinking gets foggy as your brain runs out of glucose to fuel its normal activity.

Above: Carbohydrate Withdrawal

As ketone levels increase in your bloodstream, your blood will become more acidic, placing stress on your heart, kidneys and liver.

Because many of the foods containing carbohydrates are rich sources of other nutrients, you might also develop nutrient deficiencies if you stop eating carbohydrate-containing foods.

The importance of carbs in the diet might force one to wonder how they got such a bad rep in the first place.  This is where the subject becomes complicated; there are good carbs and then there are bad carbs.  Ultimately, all carbs end up as sugar in the body.

Good carbs are typically complex, meaning they contain more fiber and micronutrients and minerals and won't spike you blood sugar.  These complex carbs take a longer time to digest than simple carbs.

Simple carbs are things like white flour and granulated sugar.  These spike your blood sugar levels and ultimately insulin.  Eventually the over consumption of simple carbs can lead to diabetes.  But, sometimes even these simple carbs have a time and place, like during or immediately before a workout.  We've all heard of Gatorade, right?  That's a simple carbs - just sugar and water.  Yet we consume it during prolonged workouts because its quick way to get glucose into the body.  Even Michael Phelps will eat something sugary like chocolate chip pancakes before getting into the pool if he hasn't had time to consume a high quality carb. 

Carbs have garnered controversy over the years thanks in part to Dr. Atkins' famous article "A New Concept in the Treatment of Obesity," published in 1963.  He then released a book in 1972, Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution.

Atkins hypothesized that eating carbs such as white flour and sugar were the reason for the burgeoning obesity epidemic in the states.  Being overweight himself at one point, Atkins cut all starches and sugars from his diet, getting back to a normal weight.  He is also the one who hypothesized the whole "carbs before bed would cause the body to store them as fat" theory.  This is, however, also true of protein and fat.  An excess of calories of any kind of macronutrient will cause the body to store it as fat.  That's they way the Krebs Cycle works!

For the book, Atkins put a number of his test subjects on his diet.  Commonly overlooked, the reason why all of Dr. Atkins' test subjects lost weight was not because they lost fat but because they lost muscle and water weight. 

Ask any nutritionist and they will more than likely tell you that the best diets consist of half or slightly more of carbohydrates, 20% fat and 20% protein.  There may not be a definition of what a balanced diet is, but it should at least involve carbohydrates.  As a general rule, women should intake around 1600 calories a day and men 2200.  Calories in, calories out, as a general rule.

Above: "Caveman Diet" Proponent

Had I not frozen on the spot and forgotten all of this valuable information, this is what I would have told that Crossfit fanatic.  Instead I passively posted on my blog, where he will probably never see my retort.  Revenge is sweet!   

As for me, I'm going out to breakfast this morning.  I'm thinking waffles before the 13 mile run.    

 

      

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MIA and Triathlon

So I haven't posted anything in a while.  Life got in the way.  But now that Wes and I are hyper vigilant with the social networking PR, you should expect to see a lot more from me.  That's the first piece of news.  

The second piece of news is I just finished my second triathlon: TriSantaCruz.  The event took in Santa Cruz, west of the San Lorenzo river.  The swim was in the Pacific Ocean at Cowell Beach, near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.  

I had never done an open water swim in the ocean before, but I had been practicing in a lake over the past two weeks.  I thought the two mediums would be more or less the same.  Not the case.  For the first hundred yards, I choked on seawater, fulfilling my daily intake of sodium.  I almost lost breakfast.  I resorted to keeping my head above the waterline.  That cost me some time.  

My heart monitor strap also constricted by diaphragm, making breathing somewhat difficult.  I felt like I was on the verge of drowning.  

Luckily, I kept pushing through it and got accustomed to the putrid taste, enough to be able to do breast stroke.  I was able to pace another racer doing freestyle.  That kept me pushing hard.

For this race, the transition area was a quarter of a mile away from the ocean.  That added a couple minutes to my final time.

Biking was a struggle.  My legs didn't feel quite warmed up.  They were still a little sore from my workout on Thursday.  That's a long recovery time.  Pistol squats will do that to you.  

The run, however, was awesome.  Since I was not so concerned with time in this race, I did an extra 5k just to get the extra burn.  Finished a 15k in just under an hour.  It might not be the fastest time, but it was good for me considering everything else that came before it.  

Final time was 2:38.04.

Afterwards, me, my hosts and one of my old college friends went to a Brazilian restaurant for lunch.  I had a Caesar Salad and plantains.  Oh yeah, and my protein shake.  Can't forget that.  

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