The Best Damn Cardio for Natural Lifters

Figuring out the best way to train for muscle growth and strength is already complex. And it gets even more complicated when you add cardio to the mix. You’ve probably heard or read statements like these before: “Fasted cardio will eat into muscles!” “Low intensity cardio will make you look like a marathon runner!” “Cardio after lifting will negate your gains!” We’ve reached a point where we’re almost scared of doing cardio. We’re afraid of losing our hard-earned muscle. Well, don’t look to “enhanced” bodybuilders for applicable advice. Their use of anabolic drugs counteracts any drawbacks that cardio could have on muscle mass. But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water either. Cardio remains a tool that can help us get leaner and healthier. Let’s look at the best and worst forms of cardio for the natural lifter. Cortisol is Key Cortisol has a significant correlation with muscle mass, albeit an inverse one: the higher someone’s cortisol production is, the harder time he’ll have building muscle and gaining strength. In fact, a higher cortisol level has been correlated with a drop in strength in older individuals (1). And while producing it is necessary for proper human function, too much can kill your gains. It may do so in a few different ways… It can increase muscle catabolism. Cortisol will lead to a breakdown of the tissue to make amino acids that can then be transformed into glucose to be used for energy (gluconeogenesis). That’s one of the main functions of cortisol. It’s not a self-destruct function, but rather, a function designed so that you’ll have fuel when you need it. It may inhibit the immune system. This is important because muscle damage repair (important for growth) is driven by the immune system. By inhibiting the immune system, cortisol can slow down muscle repair and impair growth. It can increase levels of myostatin. Myostatin plays a big role in how much muscle your body will allow you to build. The more myostatin you have, the harder it is to build new muscle. So that means, by increasing myostatin, cortisol can once again diminish muscle growth. An enhanced lifter can handle a lot more cortisol with less negative impact on muscle growth because of the exceedingly high levels of anabolic hormones in his body that can counteract (to an extent) excess cortisol production, at least when it comes to muscle growth. But a natural lifter wants to avoid producing too much cortisol from his cardio work. As such, the best damn cardio for the natural lifter is the one that can deliver results with the least amount of cortisol being released. Two Things Cortisol Does During Training Cortisol has many purposes during a workout. The most important are: It mobilizes energy. It will free up stored glycogen, fatty acids, and even break down muscle tissue to have energy available to fuel muscle contractions. The more energy you need to mobilize, the more cortisol you’ll release. Of course, since the goal of cardio is often to lose fat, you do need to force the body to mobilize some fuel. But too much might offset the fat-loss benefits. It gets us amped up. It increases adrenaline levels by increasing the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline. If you need to get amped up, motivated, or are facing something that’s perceived as stressful, you’ll produce cortisol. Doing a high volume of cardio will lead to high cortisol levels and so will pushing to an extremely high intensity level. It helps us maintain blood sugar levels. If blood sugar levels are too low, cortisol and glucagon are released to bring it back up. Why is that important? Because if you exercise in a fasted state, you’ll increase cortisol to a greater extent, especially if you need to mobilize a lot of fuel. “Yeah, but I train fasted and it energizes me!” Of course it does. Go back to what I just wrote – cortisol increases adrenaline levels. Feeling energized is the byproduct of jacking up adrenaline. And while it might make you feel good in the short term, it can do more harm than good if you stay like that for too long or produce it too often. So we have three elements that raise cortisol: Volume or burning a boatload of energy Pushing yourself to the limit Training fasted The Worst Types of Cardio for Natural Lifters The worst types are those that combine a high level of one element or a combination of elements, increasing cortisol above what’s necessary for fat mobilization. 1. Fasted Interval Training Why pick on fasting? Well, I’m not. Taking a 45-minute walk on an empty stomach in the morning is fine, but doing intense intervals fasted in the morning is not. In the first case, sure, you’re fasted (which is one factor to release cortisol) but the intensity is very low (taking a walk can even be calming) and the energy expenditure is low too. A 45-minute walk doesn’t require much glycogen mobilization and doesn’t have a big caloric expenditure. While it’s fasted, the total cortisol output will not be
Origin: The Best Damn Cardio for Natural Lifters

The Best Damn Cortisol Article Ever

Cortisol is like the boogeyman. To scare lifters away from doing extreme things, we tell them that cortisol will eat their gains. While there’s some truth to that, it’s not the whole picture. Believe it or not, there’s no hormone in the body whose purpose is to destroy the body. Cortisol has many key functions, but sometimes the hormone causes a little collateral damage when it comes to looking good naked. Let’s take a closer look. The Functions of Cortisol I call cortisol the “readiness hormone” rather than the stress hormone. Its main purpose is to make sure you’ll be capable of facing any potentially threatening situation. It increases wakefulness, focus, energy, and drive. It does so by raising adrenaline. Cortisol increases the level and activity of an enzyme called Phenylethanolamine-N-methyltransferase (PNMT). This enzyme converts noradrenaline into adrenaline. It’s through this action that cortisol increases adrenaline, which has a direct impact on your state of mind. It increases heart contraction strength and rate. This helps with oxygen transport to muscle and the clearance of metabolites. This is also done via the increase in adrenaline. It increases muscle contraction strength. This is the third impact of increased adrenaline. It mobilizes stored energy. It does so to keep you from running out of fuel when you’re fighting a sabre-toothed tiger or fleeing from it. This is a non-selective process, meaning that all potential energy sources can be broken down and mobilized by cortisol: muscle and liver glycogen, fatty acids from body fat, and amino acids from muscle tissue. It helps you maintain stable blood sugar levels. It increases blood sugar when it’s too low (along with glucagon and growth hormone). It inhibits the immune system. This happens so you’ll have more resources to fight the enemy. Just like in Star Trek when the captain would say, “Divert all available energy to the deflector shields” in the midst of a battle, the body does the same when cortisol tells the body it’s facing danger. For example, during times of fight the immune system will be inhibited. As soon as cortisol goes down, it’ll be brought back to full force to repair the damage from the battle. Note: You can’t dissociate cortisol from one of its functions. When it’s elevated, all of the six things above will happen. So, cortisol is actually quite necessary. It’s essential to have a boost in cortisol when you’re fighting a tiger, deadlifting a PR, or trying to tackle a running back. But if it stays elevated for too long it can have negative effects. Let’s take a look at how that affects our muscle growth, fat loss, recovery, and well-being. Cortisol and Muscle Growth When cortisol becomes chronically elevated it can severely hurt muscle growth via several mechanisms: It directly increases muscle breakdown. The amount of muscle you build depends on the difference between protein breakdown (catabolism) and protein synthesis (anabolism). If you increase protein breakdown (which cortisol does) it becomes a lot harder to be in a significantly positive balance. It decreases nutrient uptake by the muscles. This makes it harder to shuttle amino acids to the muscle to build new tissue and restore muscle glycogen stores. It increases myostatin. Myostatin is a myokine (protein) released by the muscles which limits muscle growth. The more myostatin you produce, the less muscle you can build. By increasing myostatin, chronic cortisol elevation will limit your potential for growth. Over time it can decrease testosterone levels. Testosterone and cortisol are both made from pregnenolone. If you overproduce cortisol, you can decrease the amount of available pregnenolone that would otherwise make testosterone. It slows muscle tissue repair. Repairing damaged muscle tissue after a training session is heavily dependent on the immune system. Chronic cortisol elevation weakens the immune system making muscle damage repair less efficient. Note that after a workout, protein synthesis is elevated above baseline for 24-36 hours (although significantly only for 24-30 hours). This is the timeframe you have to repair the damage and add new tissue. If your immune system is weak, it might take you the full duration just to repair the damage you caused. This means you don’t have time in that enhanced state to add muscle. It’s a predicament that can make muscle growth a very slow process. Cortisol and Fat Loss If you’re familiar with coach Poliquin’s body composition analysis approach (biosignature, bioprint, metabolic analytics) you know the system claims that excess cortisol leads to abdominal fat storage. But if you remember what the functions of cortisol are, you might see a contradiction here. After all, one of the functions of cortisol is to mobilize stored energy (including fat), not store it. Cortisol is, in fact, a fat loss hormone, at least when produced in a pulsatile manner. But that doesn’t mean chronic cortisol can’t
Origin: The Best Damn Cortisol Article Ever

The Best Damn High Volume Workout Plan for Natties

In Olympic weightlifting, the word “tonnage” is used to indicate how much total weight was lifted during the session. We also call it the “volume of work.” Tonnage is important, but when it comes to hypertrophy and the natural lifter, there’s an optimal dose. If a natural lifter goes overboard on volume, he or she will burn out their nervous system or skyrocket their cortisol – both of which will make gains stall. But I developed a system for natural lifters using high volume. Before we get to it, let’s take a look at who we’re talking about here and what their bodies do. 4 Kinds of Lifters Different people are stimulated by different types of training: 1 – Volume People Lifters who naturally prefer to perform a greater number of sets to achieve muscular stimulation. They normally don’t push each set as hard to be capable of doing the planned volume without crashing. If you follow the various experts, Dr. Mike Israetel, Pat Davidson, and John Meadows fall in that category. For them, gradually increasing volume over time is the main driver of hypertrophy. 2 – Intensity People These are people who prefer to do fewer work sets, but push these extra hard – to failure (or very close to it) or even beyond. Dr. Scott Stevenson, Dorian Yates, Mike Mentzer are good examples. Paul Carter’s preferred style is also more slanted toward intensity than volume. 3 – Load People These people are mostly about adding weight to the bar. We’ll find them more often among the powerlifting crowd, or they see themselves more as powerbuilders. In that category we can have a wide variety of approaches, from linear progression/progressive overload to the conjugate model. But they have one thing in common: strength is the number one goal. Think: Jim Wendler. 4 – Process People They’re all about precision. Perfecting their technique, writing down everything, analyzing data, and seeing a well-planned program deliver results is what they train for. They’re all about minutia and often suffer from paralysis by analysis. We don’t have that many of them among bodybuilders or strength athletes. Sure, many lifters love geeking out over technique and data, but it’s not their number one priority. Note: This type tends to be common among keyboard warriors who love to argue about everything and then need studies to allow themselves to try something new. When Hypertrophy Is The Main Goal Among those who are mostly interested by muscle gain, we have mainly the volume and intensity people. The intensity people tend to kill themselves and get worse results when they go higher volume because they can’t scale down their effort. They are all-out or nothing. And if they force themselves to “stop short” they don’t feel satisfied and it kills their motivation. The volume crowd often burn out on high intensity programs because of the high adrenaline/cortisol it produces. They’re often unable to reach the required level of intensity to make low volume work and, even if they do, the low volume is unsatisfactory and kills motivation. Cortisol – Enemy Number One Cortisol is the enemy of the natural lifter trying to get jacked. It can limit muscle growth, if chronically or excessively elevated, by: Making protein breakdown higher than protein synthesis Increasing myostatin levels (which inhibits muscle growth) Inhibiting the immune system (muscle damage repair is driven by the immune system) Reducing nutrient transport to muscles There’s a strong connection between training volume and cortisol production. One of the functions of cortisol when training is the mobilization of stored energy so that you have enough fuel for your workout. The more volume you do, the more fuel you require and this means more cortisol release. Understandably that’s one of the reasons why, if you reach a certain amount of volume in a workout, results will start to diminish. However, intensity (and load) can also increase cortisol. See, we often call cortisol the stress hormone, but “readiness hormone” would be more accurate. Basically, cortisol’s purpose is to put you in a physical and mental state to be able to fight or run away. It mobilizes energy so that you don’t run out of fuel in the middle of the fight, but it also increases mental alertness and focus, blood flow (to deliver oxygen to the muscles), and muscle contraction strength. The latter three are done indirectly via an increase in adrenaline levels. So let’s get into that. How Cortisol Increases Adrenaline It does so by increasing the amount of the enzyme responsible for converting noradrenaline into adrenaline (Phenylethanolamine N-methyltransferase). The more a situation requires alertness and drive, the more adrenaline you’ll produce which means that cortisol goes up too. In lifting, the more threatening a set is, or the closer to your limit you go, the more adrenaline/cortisol will be released. A “death set” will spike adrenaline a lot more than a set with 3-4 reps in the tank. A max effort lift will also
Origin: The Best Damn High Volume Workout Plan for Natties

Stop Squatting and Deadlifting So Damn Much

Any trainer worth his salt will say the big compound movements like squats, deadlifts, and overhead presses deserve an important place in your program. They deliver the most dividends for strength development, calorie burning, fat loss, and even carry over into hypertrophy (size gains). The problem is, this applies predominantly to beginners. They work best for folks who need to build a solid foundation of muscle and strength. But look at what happens when lifters approach intermediate or advanced status: They often eat up 45 minutes of their hour-long lunch break workout just ramping up to their working weight for their squats and deadlifts, where they stay for 5 or so sets. The uncomfortable truth is that many lifters spend way too much time squatting and deadlifting. No Dis. Just Truth I’m not here to discount the big lifts that built your foundation. Nor am I saying that you should forego those lifts altogether. But I will say that the stronger you get at squatting, deadlifting, and barbell pressing, the less you need them in every last corner of your programming, at least if your goal is general health, fitness, and hypertrophy. Once we become better lifters, we seem to forget to add variety to our training. Instead we focus on not placing a ceiling on how good we get at just 3 or 4 particular skills, which often leads to some form of injury. At the very least, it creates lesser returns for the investment made. It took me a double knee injury, the most invasive of surgeries, and a summer in a wheelchair to see the reality in these truths, and you shouldn’t have to experience the same thing to learn the lessons I learned. If you want, you can instead depend on people who’ve gone spiralling down a rabbit hole of all-or-nothing barbell strength training for advice. But these are often the same folks who think you’re making a grave compromise simply by using a trap bar instead of a regular bar to do deadlifts. In this game, don’t miss the forest for the trees. If your goal is to be stronger than most people, respect your own maturation in the weight room and provide it with more challenges than just the “big 3.” No Squats, No Problem Now that you’ve (hopefully) made the mental adjustment and are willing to spend less time on the big 3, it’s time to gain some perspective on other movements that deserve some of your attention. For instance, it says a lot if you can squat or deadlift a ton of weight, but a simple stability-based trunk training drill leaves you shaking like a leaf! Try these: 1 – Lateral Plane Exercises Stuff like Cossack squats and the glute L-bridges in the video would be a good place to start. 2 – Lunge Patterns Whether we’re talking forward, reverse, deficit, lateral, walking, or drop lunges, lunges are a prime unilateral movement pattern that often gets forgotten in strength training programs. 3 – Leg Presses Stop hating on them. They’re a staple in many bodybuilders’ routines for a reason. There are few exercises that allow you to really isolate the muscles of the lower body while also moving a ton of weight in the process. If great quads are your goal, then it’s time to recognize the benefits leg presses can bring. 4 – Swiss Ball Curl (2 up, 1 down) This is one of the most deceptively challenging movements to do really well, especially if you’re a big, muscular lifter. Pairing this with high reps of kettlebell swings will leave your hamstrings torched for days. 5 – Chinese Plank Variations You’ll be surprised how fast your hips sag with this movement that’s largely based around using just bodyweight or light loads. It’s times like this when you realize that the big lifts alone just aren’t enough to cut it. 6 – Hip Thrusts/Back Extensions/Swings All three of these movements enforce the same biomechanics as a deadlift while utilizing different force angles and curves. 7 – Sled Pushes/Tows/Loaded Carries If you really want to make heavy weight training the basis of your conditioning work, then don’t just pick it up, try moving it somewhere. Take a page out of the strongman book. Embrace the Suck Look, when you choose a new skill that you’re not yet good at, your body has a harder time being efficient at that movement, and that’s something we should welcome. If you’re a strength training hobbyist who strictly wants to improve performance of the big lifts, that’s one thing, but if you’re a health-oriented lifter who’s looking to have skin in the game for life, you need to build some perspective. The amount of good training that strong, experienced people everywhere are foregoing in order to protect the sanctity of their precious squats and deadlifts is exactly what’s holding back plenty of their gains. The truth is, most people don’t have the time (or the energy) to do a two-hour workout, especially when doing barbell squats takes up three quarters of their training time. Hell, most would be lucky to squeeze in two extra exercises before it was time to hit the showers
Origin: Stop Squatting and Deadlifting So Damn Much

The Squat: 10 Damn Good Tips

The Question What’s your best squat tip? Bronwen Blunt – Nutrition and Strength Coach Do heavy squat stand-ups. Warm up to about 90% of your max but don’t squat this weight. Unrack it and hold it for 10 seconds then put it back down. Continue to add 5-10% for each set and up to 20% over your 1RM. Be conservative if it’s your first time trying this. This is a way to overload your squats, which will allow your body to recognize and adapt to heavier weights beyond your current capabilities. It stimulates your nervous system and makes you feel more comfortable with heavy weight on your back. Once you become more comfortable with these overloads, your current 1RM is going to feel a lot less taxing. Pay attention to your setup to maintain stability during the movement. Proper breathing and bracing is extremely important to avoid injury. Most people neglect the importance of proper breathing while unracking the bar. It’s a problem that can get you out of position and make or break your squat. – Bronwen Blunt Jake Tuura – Strength and Conditioning Coach Jump first, then squat. For years we’ve known about the benefits of something called “post-activation potentiation.” Get warmed up, then do a heavy, low-volume squat or deadlift. Afterward, do a jump or sprint. What happens? Explosive jumping and sprinting performance increases after the heavy lift. Put another way, loading muscles with high resistance acutely improves explosive muscle action. Heavy helps explosive. But we never look at it the other way. Will explosive help heavy? Research by Masamoto et al. tested this out. They tested the 1RM of several athletes: sometimes they did tuck jumps and drop jumps first; other times they just performed their usual warm-ups first. The result? When they jumped before squatting heavy, they lifted more weight. Next time you’re getting ready for a heavy squat workout, do a few jumps before training. Not only will it develop explosive ability, but it can significantly add poundage to your squat. Joel Seedman, PhD – Strength and Performance Expert Do eccentric isometrics – lower slowly and pause at the bottom. Visually, the squat pattern is simple. However, neuromuscularly and biomechanically it’s actually very complex. It requires a number of precisely executed components to lock the movement in. Some of these include: Set the hips back without bending over. Spread the knees apart but not excessively. Keep a neutral spine while maintaining a very slight natural curvature of the back. Squat somewhere between 90 degrees and parallel (don’t collapse or go ATG). Pull yourself into the bottom position rather than allowing gravity to push you down. Brace the core and tense your abs. Keep the chest out without hyperextending the back. Screw the feet into the floor by pushing slightly more to the outside of the feet. Keep the feet relatively straight and aligned with the each other. Pull the bar into your back by activating your lats. Keep the head neutral (don’t look up but don’t let the head drop). Maintain maximal full body tension each and every rep. Move in a perfectly vertical fashion without shifting horizontally. Load each leg as symmetrically as possible without favoring one side. And this list doesn’t cover everything. So how the heck do you actually learn to squat without going through an exhaustive myriad of endless cues? The answer lies in performing eccentric isometrics. Now I’m not talking about simply collapsing down into the bottom of a squat, then pausing for a few seconds while you hang out on your tendons and ligaments. That’s a bastardized version of an eccentric isometric squat, and it won’t do anything to improve your squat mechanics… not to mention strength or muscular development. Instead, squat with painstaking attention to sensory signals and proprioceptive feedback using Jedi-like focus and intensity. Lower slowly under control, stay tight, then pause in the naturally stretched position while attending to as much somatosensory feedback as possible. Why does it work? Your own body can provide all of the necessary feedback, coaching, and cuing you need. You simply have to learn how to listen to the sensory feedback coming from your proprioceptive mechanisms and you’ll immediately begin to use the “sense of feel” to make subtle adjustments and fine-tune your movement. The best way to do this is through properly executed eccentric isometrics. This also means learning to sense where the natural stopping point and optimal range of motion is, which happens to be somewhere between 90 degrees and parallel. And just in case you were wondering, no, your body is not an exception to the rule. A proper squat including optimal range of motion and ideal joint angles will look almost identical from human to human if it’s performed correctly, regardless of individual anthropometrics. – Joel Seedman, PhD Lee Boyce – Strength Coach and Performance Expert There are two that I recommend. 1 – Squat the bar
Origin: The Squat: 10 Damn Good Tips