Damn.

Hello 2008!

Limbang: Christopher's Wedding

Of sweat and bones...

Since HST will not work for me (time and equipments constraint!), I have changed the program into one of my own. But understanding that there might be some essence of which the program I created might not be effective, I decided to scout around for another program. One that I might be able to adopt and adapt into. And I came across the Optimized Volume Training. Have started incorporating it into my training since last week. It's intense yet simple. No words can describe the excitement...

Check out the Optimized Volume Training here!

Attended a presentation of the Final Year Projects done by the Mechanical seniors last Tuesday. Attended the presentation and definitely caught a glimpse of what's in store for me next year! I'll be doing a project based on the heat generated from the drills in bone drilling. Taking it because I have experienced first hand bone drilling during the ACL repair two years back. I think it's really interesting though.

Been trying to clean the room again! There's so much shit lying around I'm at the point of giving up!

Updates:

- Waiting for Ms Mok's confirmation on the Kuching gig.

- Gig in K.K. on the 1st of March for Jacky Chin's Engagement.

- Most probably the big show at Marriott (end of the year) is cancelled.

- My body fat percentage so far = 22%

Holidays... BEGIN!

So the exam period has ended. Putting my time into training this holiday. Darling complained about me not writing enough stuffs about things other than training. Guess my life ain't so interesting...

Anyway, was supposed to move into Hypertrophy Specific Training but decided that if I started, it may be hard for me to stop. If I skip one or two workouts for HST, it might be hard to catch up as its an overall body training. I don't have the time to faithfully go to the gym, for various reasons. As the gym I go to opens only at 3pm. I sometimes train in the morning at home. Thats why I got myself the set of weights. I train at Uncle Chee's gym. Its one of the best I've seen so far for the price I'm paying ($6 per mth).

Training in this place feels really great. I can't get myself to workout in an air conditioned gym. I tend to breathe heavily and it hurts when I inhale cold air during workouts. Despite the lack of cardio equipments (none actually but I usually do my cardio at the park anyway) this place is just perfect for me...

word.

Tread softly...

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths,
Of night, and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams...

W.B. Yeats

Halloween Party 2007

Checked out the Halloween party at Imperial Mall last week. It was a buffet dinner cum bodybuilding event. It was a great inspiration for me as well as a drooling session for Bel... Exams are coming up so I'm leaving this blog to breathe on its on for this moment. For those sitting for the upcoming finals, all the best! Will be back when I'm free enough. Meanwhile, adopting the Hypertrophy-Specific Training program in a few days time. Updates will be entered into my training journal...

word.

Bodybuilding Myths That Aren't True!

Adapted from:


Bodybuilding Myths That Aren't True!
By T.C. Luoma and Bill Phillips


You can get as big as a pro bodybuilder without taking steroids; it just takes longer.

Despite what many of the magazines say, all professional bodybuilders use either steroids or steroids in combination with other growth-enhancing drugs. Without manipulating hormones, it just isn't possible to get that degree of muscularity, the paper-thin skin, and the continuing ability to pack on mass, despite sometimes having poor workout habits and relative ignorance of the principles involved that many pro bodybuilders have. Many supplement distributors, in order to sell their products, would have you believe otherwise.

Still, that's no reason to give up. By using state-of-the-art training principles, consuming a nutrient-rich diet, and by getting proper amounts of rest, almost every person can make incredible changes in his or her physique. The competitive bodybuilder circuit may not be in your future, but building the kind of physique that gains you respect is certainly achievable, as are self-respect and robust health.

The training programs that work best for pro bodybuilders are best for everyone.

You see it happen every day in gyms across the country. Some bodybuilding neophyte will walk up to a guy who looks like he's an escaped attraction from Jurassic Park and ask him how he trains. The biggest guy in the gym likely got that way from either taking a tremendous amount of drugs and/or by being genetically pre-dispositioned to get big. Follow a horse home and you'll find horse parents.

The guy in your gym who is best bodybuilder is the guy who has made the most progress and done the most to his physique using natural techniques. He may still be a pencil neck, but he may have put on 40 pounds [19kg] of lean body mass to get where he is, and that, in all probability, took some know-how. That person probably doesn't overtrain, keeps his sets down to a minimum, and uses great form and concentration on the eccentric (negative) portion of each exercise repetition.

Many pros spend hours and hours doing innumerable sets--so many it would far surpass the average person's recuperative abilities. If average people followed the routines of average pro bodybuilders, they would, in effect, start to whittle down what muscle mass they did have or, at best, make only a tiny bit of progress after a couple of years.

You can't make gains if you only train with weights three days a week.

Although you probably couldn't find a single steroid-assisted athlete who trains only three days a week, there's absolutely no reason why a three-day-a-week routine couldn't work for many natural athletes. As long as your routine attacked the whole body and you worked to failure on each set, you could easily experience great gains on this sort of routine.

However, you need to pay even more attention to your diet if you only train three days a week, especially if your job involves little or no physical activity, and you like to spend your idle time eating. Ignore those who say three-day-a-week bodybuilders are only 'recreational lifters'. Think quality and not quantity.

If everyone took the same amount of steroids, everyone would look like a professional bodybuilder.

One of the ironies of steroid use is that some people are genetically 'gifted' in terms of steroid receptors. That means that they have a large number of receptor sites in the muscles with which a particular steroid can combine and exert its mass-building effects. The man or woman who won the last contest might very well have the most active steroid receptors rather than being the most dedicated, knowledgeable bodybuilder. On the other hand, some people might possess very few receptors for a particular steroid. That's why they experience very little, if any, growth on a particular steroid.

Another factor that influences receptor affinity is age. The highest receptor affinity seems to occur in late teenage years. This is a generalization, but it seems to be true for a good number of people. Since there is a greater uptake in these individuals, they are often able to take lower dosages for longer periods of time and make better gains than older users. The truth is, two bodybuilders could take the same steroid stack, train and eat the same, and one could turn out to be in the Olympia, and the other might never even win a local contest. The difference in how people react to these drugs is incredible.

The more you work out, the more you'll grow.

No, no no. This is one of the most damaging myths that ever reared its ugly head. 95% of the pros will tell you that the biggest bodybuilding mistake they ever made was to over-train--and this happened even when they were taking steroids. Imagine how easy it is for the natural athlete to overtrain! When you train your muscles too often for them to heal, the end-result is zero growth and perhaps even losses. Working out every day, if you're truly using the proper amount of intensity, will lead to gross overtraining. A body part, worked properly, i.e. worked to complete, total muscular failure that recruited as many muscle fibers as physiologically possible, can take 5-10 days to heal.

To take it a step further, even working a different body part in the next few days might constitute overtraining. If you truly work your quads to absolute fiber-tearing failure, doing another power workout the next day that entails heavy bench-presses or deadlifts is going to, in all probability, inhibit gains. After a serious leg workout, your whole system mobilizes to heal and recover from the blow you've dealt it. How, then, can the body be expected to heal from an equally brutal workout the next day? It can't, at least not without using some drugs to help deal with the catabolic processes going on in your body [and even they're usually not enough .]

Learn to accept rest as a valuable part of your workout. You should probably spend as many days out of the gym as you do in it.

The longer you work out, the better.

It just isn't necessary to do 20-30 sets for a body part, or even 10 sets like many 'experts' would have you believe. In fact, research has shown that it's possible to completely fatigue a muscle in one set, provided that that set taxes a muscle completely, i.e. incorporates as many muscle fibers as possible and takes them to the point of ischemic rigour where, rather than contract and relax, the muscle fibers freeze up, sort of like a microscopic version of rigor mortis. Any further contraction causes microscopic tearing. Hypertrophy is just one adaption to this kind of stress and it's naturally the kind most bodybuilders are interested in.

This kind of intensity can usually be achieved by doing drop or break-down sets where you rep out, lower the weight, and continue doing reps until you either can't do another rep or you've run out of weight. It can also be achieved by doing your maximum number of reps on a particular exercise: by a combination of will, tenacity, and short rest periods, you complete ten more reps. You achieve the short rest periods by locking out the weight-bearing joint in question without putting the weight down. In other words, completely surpass your normal pain and energy thresholds.

If you can truly work your muscle to the point described, it will afford you little, if any, benefit to do another set (Westcott, 1986). The exception would be the body parts that are so big that they have distinct geographical areas, like the back, which obviously has an upper, middle and lower part. The chest might also fall into this category, as it has a distinct upper and lower part, each with different insertion points.

You don't have to be strong to be big.

For a variety of reasons, people, even those with an equal amount of muscle mass, vary in strength enormously. It might have something to do with fast-twitch/slow-twitch muscle ratios, or it might have something to do with the efficiency of nerve pathways or even limb length and the resultant torque.

But it is still a relative term. To get bigger muscles, you have to lift heavier weight, and you, not the guy next door, have to become stronger -- stronger than you were. Increasing muscle strength in the natural athlete, except in a very few, rare instances, requires that the tension applied to muscle fibers be high. If the tension applied to muscle fibers are light, maximal growth will not occur (Lieber, 1992).

You can't grow if you only work each body part once a week.

If you work out -- work out intensely-- then it can take 5-10 days for the muscles to heal. Although the following should be taken with a grain of salt when determining your own exercise frequency, a study in the May 1993 issue of the Journal of Physiology revealed it can take weeks for muscles to recuperate from an intense workout. The study involved a group of men and women who had worked their forearms to the max. All of the subjects said they were sore two days after exercising, and the soreness was gone by the seventh day, and the swelling was gone by the ninth day.

After six weeks, the subjects had only gained back half the strength they had before the original exercise!

By no means are we advocating that you wait two months between workouts, but we are trying to prove the point that it takes muscles longer to heal than what you might have previously thought. For some people, especially natural bodybuilders, waiting a week between body part workouts might be just what the doctor ordered for size and strength gains!

In order to get really big, you have to eat a super-high-calorie diet.

Well, that's true; you'll get really big if you eat a super high-calorie diet, but you'll look like the Michelin Man's fraternal twin. However, if you want to get big, lean-tissue wise, then super-high-calorie diets are probably not for you unless you are one of those very few people with metabolic rates so fast you can burn off these calories instead of depositing them as fat. Unfortunately, studies show that, in most people, about 65% of the new tissue gains brought about by high-calorie diets consists of fat!

Of the remaining 35%, approximately 15% consists of increased intracellular fluid volume, leaving a very modest percentage attributable to increased lean muscle mass.

According to Dr Scott Connelly (MM2K, Spring 1992, p. 21), only about 20% to 25% of increased muscle growth stems from increased protein synthesis. The rest of the muscle growth is directly attributable to increased proliferation of the satellite cells in the basal lamina of muscle tissue, and dietary energy (calories) is not a key factor in the differentiation of these cells into new myofibres (muscle cells).

Of all factors determining muscle growth, prevention of protein breakdown (anti-catabolism) seems to be the most relevant, but adding adipose [fat] tissue through constant overfeeding can actually increase muscle pro-teolysis (breakdown). Furthermore, additional adipose mass can radically alter hormone balances which are responsible for controlling protein breakdown in muscle. Insulin balance, for one, which partially controls anti-catabolism in the body, is impaired by consistent overfeeding. So much for the eat-big-to-get-big philosophy!

Stay away from the super-high calorie diets unless you're a genetic freak, or you're woefully lean and don't mind putting on fat [or you're using appropriate pharmaceutical supplements].

If you eat a low-fat diet, it doesn't matter how many calories you take in, you won't gain any fat.

The bottom line is, if you exceed your energy requirements, you'll gradually get fatter and fatter. It's true that eating a diet rich in fat will pack on the pounds quicker for a variety of reasons, the most significant being that a gram of fat has nine calories as opposed to the four calories per gram that carbohydrates and proteins carry.

Fat is also metabolized differently in the body. It takes a lesser amount of calories to assimilate the energy in ingested fat than it does to assimilate an equal (weight wise) amount of carbohydrates. Consequently, more fat calories get stored than carbohydrate calories. However, the gross intake of carbohydrates, as facilitated by many of the weight-gain powders, will make you fat very quickly.

You can't build muscle on a sub-maintenance calorie intake diet.

It may be a little harder, and it may require a little bit more know-how and a little bit more conscientious effort, but it can be done. The fact is, the obese state in humans and animals is not universally correlated with absolute levels of caloric intake and neither is the accrual of lean body mass. The ability to realize changes in lean/fat ratios is regulated by components of the automatic nervous system working in concert with several endocrine hormones; this is called nutrient partitioning.

For example, certain beta-agonist drugs like Clenbuterol increase meat production in cattle over 30% while simultaneously diminishing bodyfat without increasing the amount or composition of their feed. Other drugs, including growth hormone, certain oestrogens, cortisol, ephedrine, and IGF-1 are all examples of re-partitioning agents. All increase oxygen consumption at the expense of fat storage--independent of energy intake.

Drugs are not the only way to do this, however. It's true that a significant component of this mechanism is genetically linked, but specific nutrients, in specific amounts, when combined with an effective training programme, can markedly improve the lean/fat ratio of adult humans. MET-Rx is one such nutrient re-partitioning agent, and several companies are trying to duplicate its successes.

You should only rest 45 seconds in between sets.

That's true if you're trying to improve cardiovascular health or lose some bodyfat. But in order to build muscle, you need to allow enough time for the muscle to recuperate fully (i.e. let the lactic acid buildup in your muscles dissipate and ATP levels build back up). In order to make muscles grow, you have to lift the heaviest weight possible, thereby allowing the maximum number of muscle fibers to be recruited.

If the amount of weight you lift is being limited by the amount of lactic acid left over from the previous set, you're only testing your ability to battle the effects of lactic acid. In other words, you're trying to swim across a pool while wearing concrete overshoes. When training heavy, take [at least!] two and three minutes between your sets. Notice I said, "when training heavy." The truth is, you can't train heavy all the time. Periodization calls for cycling heavy workouts with less intense training sessions in an effort to keep the body from becoming overtrained.

You have to use fancy weightlifting equipment in order to make the best gains.

Futuristic-looking, complex machinery designed to give your muscles the 'ultimate workout' is typically less effective than good-old barbells and dumbbells. Using simple free weights (barbells and dumbbells) on basic multi-joint exercises, like the squat, bench press, shoulder press, and deadlift, is still the most effective means of resistance exercise ever invented. Scientific research has shown that many exercise machines lack the proper eccentric component of an exercise that's necessary to stimulate muscle tissue to remodel (grow).

Weight training makes you big; aerobic exercise cuts you up.

Manipulations in your nutrient intake are the main factor in getting cut up, and how you do it doesn't matter. If your daily caloric expenditure exceeds your daily caloric intake on a consistent basis, you will lose fat and get more cut.

Aerobic exercise is generally meant to improve cardiovascular efficiency, but if you do it long enough, you will burn up calories and in the long run drop the fat. However, weightlifting can do the same thing, only better. Studies have shown that the body burns far more efficiently if exercise is performed at a moderate pace for periods longer than 20 minutes. (It generally takes that long for the glucose in the bloodstream to be 'burned up', causing the body to dip into glycogen reserves for its energy) Once the glycogen reserves are used up, the body must metabolize fatty acids for energy. That equate to lost bodyfat.

In the long run, bodybuilding is more efficient than aerobics for burning up calories. Let me explain--if researchers were to undertake a study of twins whereby one twin performed daily aerobics and the other practiced a bodybuilding program where the end result was increased lean body mass, the bodybuilding twin would ultimately be a more efficient fat burner than his aerobic twin.

Why? Well, by adding lean body mass, that person's metabolic requirements are higher--muscle uses energy even while it is not being used. The aerobic twin might use more calories during the time period of exercise itself, but the weight-lifting twin would use a higher amount during rest time, leading to a higher net 24-hour expenditure. The weight lifter burns fat just sitting there.

You can completely reshape a muscle by doing isolation exercises.

You can't limit growth to only one area of a muscle. Larry Scott, for whom the 'biceps peaking' Scott curl was named, had tremendous biceps, but he didn't have much of a peak. The shape of your biceps, or for that matter, any muscle, is determined by your genetic makeup. When you work a muscle, any muscle, it works on the all-or-nothing principle, meaning that each muscle fiber recruited to do a lift -- along the entire length of that muscle -- is contracted fully.

Why would a certain number of them, like the ones in the middle of the biceps, suddenly start to grow differently or at a faster rate than its partners? If anything, the muscles that are closest to the insertion points are the most prone to mechanical stress, and you don't see them get any bigger than the rest of the muscle. If they did, everyone would have proportions like Popeye. This is true of any muscle, but you're probably thinking, what about quads? I know that when I do hack squats with my feet together, it tends to give me more sweep in my legs.

Sure it does, but the quadriceps are made up of four different main muscles, and doing hacks with your feet together forces the vastus lateralis muscles on the outside of the leg to work harder; consequently, they grow proportionately along their entire length and give the outer quads more sweep.

As further evidence, take a look at a picture of any young professional bodybuilder before he was developed enough to become a pro. He will have virtually the same structural lines as he does today. All that has changed is that his muscles are now bigger.

If you get a pump, you're working the muscles adequately to ensure muscular hypertrophy, or if your muscles are burning, that means you are promoting muscle growth.

A pump, despite what Arnold Schwarzenegger said about it "feeling better than cuming", is nothing more than the muscle becoming engorged with blood from capillary action. It can be achieved easily by curling a soup can fifty times. It by no means equates to the muscular intensity needed to promote growth. The same is true of the coveted 'burn' that Hollywood muscleheads advise the public to 'go for'. A burn is simply an accumulation of lactic acid, a by-product of chemical respiration.

You can get a burn by peddling a bicycle or simply extending your arm straight out and moving it in tiny circles [or sitting in a burning fireplace!]. It does not necessarily mean you are promoting muscle growth. For hypertrophy to occur, you have to subject the muscles to high levels of tension, and high tension levels are best induced by heavy weights.

If you do hundreds of sit-ups a day, you will eventually achieve a narrow, washboard-type midsection.

There is no such thing as spot-reduction. Doing thousands and thousands of sit-ups will give you tight abdominal muscles, but they will do nothing to rid your midsection of fat. Thigh adductor and abductor movements will give women's thighs more firmness, but they will do nothing to rid the area of fat, or what is commonly called cellulite. Nothing will rid the body of fat, unless it is a carefully-orchestrated reduction in your daily energy intake; in other words, if you burn more calories than you ingest (or do that in conjunction with a nutrient partitioning agent.

Training like a powerlifter --deadlifts, heavy squats, bench presses--will make your physique look blocky.

Blockiness, like baldness or a flat chest, is a genetic trait. If you were born blocky, then powerlifting will simply make you a bigger blocky person. The only way to offset a blocky appearance is to give special emphasis to the lats, the outer muscles of the thighs, and to a fat-reducing diet which will keep the midsection as narrow as possible. With these modifications, you will give your body the illusion of a more "aerodynamic" appearance. The truth is, powerlifting exercises are excellent for bodybuilding.

High repetitions make your muscles harder and more cut up.

Although there is some evidence to suggest that high repetitions might induce some extra capillary intrusion into a muscle, they will do nothing to make the muscle harder or more cut up. If a completely sedentary person began weightlifting, using either low reps or high reps, he or she would experience a rapid increase in tonus, the degree of muscular contraction that the muscle maintains even when that muscle is relaxed, but that would happen regardless of rep range.

The only way that high repetitions would make a muscle more cut up is if, by doing a higher number of reps, your body as a whole was in negative energy balance, and you were burning more calories than you were ingesting. The truth is, heavy weights, lifted for 5-8 reps per set, can build rock-hard muscles. You just have to get the fat off them to see how "hard" they are.

Instinctive training is the best way to promote gains.

If bodybuilders followed their instincts, they'd go home and pop open a Beer. Instinctive training is a wonderful catch-phrase, and it might even work for drug-assisted athletes since the very act of opening up a Bud would probably induce muscular growth in them. However, in a natural bodybuilder, the approach to long-term, consistent gains in muscular mass has to be, shall we say, a bit more scientific.

Research results conducted by exercise physiologists recommend a systematic approach such as the one encompassed by periodization where the bodybuilder, through a period of several weeks, lifts ever-increasing pre-set percentages of a one-rep lift. This heavy period is also periodically staggered with a lighter training phase 'cycle'. Ultimately, the percentages increase, the maximum one-rep lifts increase, and lean body mass increases. There is nothing instinctive about it.

Women need to train differently than men.

On a microscopic level, there is virtually no difference between the muscle tissue of men and the muscle tissue of women. Men and women have different levels of the same hormones, and that's what is responsible for the difference in the amount of muscle a man can typically put on and the amount of muscle a woman can typically gain. There is absolutely no reason why either should train differently than the other sex, provided they have the same goals.

The only difference in training might be as a result of cultural, sexual preferences. A woman might desire to develop her glutes a little more so she looks better in a pair of jeans. Conversely, a man might want to build his lats a little more so that he fits the cultural stereotype of a virile man.

There are food supplements available that are just as effective as steroids, yet safer.

The only things as effective as steroids are other steroids. Despite the proclamations of some supplement distributors, usually in giant, 35-point type, no currently available supplement works like steroids. However, nutrients and supplements can be extremely effective, especially if your diet is lacking in some critical component or you're genetically predisposed to accept that nutrient or supplement.

Biochemically, individuals vary enormously, and the interaction of genetics, coupled with the widely varying diets that each of us eats, makes it virtually impossible to gauge just what will work for one individual and what won't. That is why some supplements work better than others for some people, just as some people are genetically predispositioned to accept steroids more readily than others. Food supplements do have benefits that can't be overlooked -- they're generally safe, and they won't get you arrested. But none of them build muscle as fast or as well as steroids.

Professional bodybuilders represent the epitome of health and fitness.

The ultimate irony is that the IFBB is facing in trying to get bodybuilders into the Olympics is that while every athlete in every other sport is presumably the healthiest they've ever been so that they are able to compete athletically and break records, the bodybuilder is so weak on competition day that he or she would have trouble fending off the attacks of an enraged mouse. The weeks of constant dieting, workouts that continually tax the body almost beyond recovery, and a constant influx of potentially harmful drugs and diuretics have brought most of them to total exhaustion.

To think about the huge amounts of food some steroid-using bodybuilders eat. In all the longevity sites in the world where people routinely live to be one hundred, the only common denominator is that they all either under-eat or eat just enough to meet their daily caloric requirements. By ingesting less food, they ingest less harmful chemicals, and fewer free radicals are formed in the body. The average professional builder probably eats at least four or five times what these aforementioned people eat.

As a result, bodybuilders often suffer from high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Plus, with all that extra mass, the heart has to work that much harder and will probably stop beating years before it was designed to. That's why professional bodybuilding is the ultimate act of vanity. It was done strictly to fulfill some misguided notion of the superhuman ideal, and health was not even a consideration. Almost without exception, these guys and gals are not healthy, and they'll probably be among the first to tell you so. However, weight-training and consuming a nutrient-rich diet is very healthy, as long as it is not carried to extremes.

Training with weights causes your muscles to get tight and hinders flexibility and, consequently, athletic performance.

If anything, when done properly (slowly and using a complete range of motion), weight training increases flexibility. Many athletes now engage in weight training in order to improve their performance in their chosen sport -- witness Evander Hollyfield or any number of track athletes, basketball players, or gymnasts; the list goes on and on.

This lie goes all the way back to the 1930s. Companies that were selling isometric exercise programs by mail were trying to convince people not to exercise with barbells, simply because it wasn't practical to send weights through the mail. So they made up the 'muscle-bound' lie.

This lie might have been fueled from the feeling of 'tightness' that accompanies an intense workout. If the workout was intense and a sufficient number of muscle fibers were recruited and microscopically damaged, then even the normal tonus (the normal amount of contraction experienced by a relaxed muscle) is more than enough to cause a feeling of pain and tightness. The tightness is compounded by the 'tugging' of the tendons on the muscles. Stretching, however, would do much to alleviate this tightness, and stretching is a recommended part of any athletic pursuit.

The only possible confirmation of this lie concerns a baseball pitcher's arm. An intense weight training program might affect a pitcher's ability to throw a fast ball, but it wouldn't be because of a lack of flexibility. The speed a pitcher can generate seems to be determined more by a complex relationship of tendon length and strength and nervous system efficiency as opposed to muscular strength, and weight training could, possibly, upset this delicate balance.

Loading up on carbohydrates is an excellent way to enhance your athletic performance.

The traditional manner in which athletes carb up' for an athletic competition usually involves first depleting the body's stores of carbohydrates through exercise and diet. This is then followed by rest and a high carbohydrate intake. However, studies have shown that this type of preparation is unnecessary.

An athlete who eats a balanced, high-carbohydrate diet and is in reasonably good shape has plenty of carbohydrates in his or her system to meet the demands of short-duration exercises that don't exceed roughly one hour. Anyone that does exercises that last more than an hour, like long-distance running or cycling, may benefit from 'carbing up', but the ability of muscles to use fat as a source of energy rather than carbohydrates in endurance events may be even more important to performance at that level.

Consuming foods high in sugar before training provides your body with extra energy to sustain workouts.

Simple sugars like sucrose don't need to be broken down by the body's enzymes to be used as energy like complex carbohydrates do. Therefore, they elicit a rapid release of insulin, the hormone that regulates blood-sugar levels. The trouble is, the sudden, rapid influx of sugar into the system causes the body to release insulin in what must be considered a haphazard method, i.e. the amount released is usually more than what's needed to metabolize the sugar.

Consequently, your blood sugar often temporarily drops to a point that is actually lower than it was before you had the sugar, which might cause you to become more exhausted much earlier than it normally would. Your body is then forced to dip into its glycogen reserves in order to correct the imbalance.

To ensure that you have enough energy to complete a workout, eat nutrient- rich foods with low glycemic indices (those that elicit a smooth, steady stream of sugar into the bloodstream) like barley, lentils or beans.

All anabolic steroids are extremely toxic and dangerous.

Here's a good trivia question borrowed from Dan Duchaine's Underground Steroid Handbook: if you lined up a bottle of Dianabol (a popular steroid), a bottle of Lasix (a diuretic used by heart patients and bodybuilders who want to 'cut up' for a competition), a bottle of Valium, a bottle of aspirin, and a bottle of Slow-K (a potassium supplement), which one, upon eating a 100 tablets, wouldn't kill you? Well, most likely the Dianabol.

This isn't an endorsement of steroids; it's just an effective illustration of the stigma generally associated with all steroids: 'they'll give you brain tumors like Lyle Alzado . . . they'll cause your heart to enlarge and eventually give out [they cause spontaneous decapitation . .]'. Maybe, but all steroids are different. Some are more dangerous than others. Birth control pills are steroids. Testosterone patches have been used with great success to enhance the quality of life for elderly men. Some of the steroids that bodybuilders use are very mild, and the risk associated with them is virtually negligible.

Still, there are dangerous steroids, and that's all the more reason that athletes who choose to use them must be more knowledgeable about them. Of course, the physical changes that steroids bring about might cause adverse psychological effects in the user, and that fact shouldn't be ignored.

If you stop working out, your muscle will turn into fat.

This is almost too preposterous to address. Muscle can no sooner turn to fat than gold can turn into lead. Muscle is made up of individual cells--living, 'breathing' cells that undergo all kinds of complex metabolic processes. Fat cells are simply storage packets of lipids. The possibility of one changing into another is alike to the football in your storage closet turning into your Uncle Sam.

If you stop working out, if you stop applying resistance to your muscles on a consistent basis, they will simply adapt to the new condition. In other words, they'll shrink. If the degree of inactivity or immobilization is severe, the muscles will shrink faster than the surrounding skin, and a temporary condition of loose skin might be experienced, but that too would remedy itself with time.

Ingesting MCT (medium-chain triglyceride) oils will give you tons of energy, but they won't make you fat.

MCTs first gained prominence for treating persons suffering from fat mal- absorption, pancreatic deficiency, or stomach or esophageal diseases. Researchers found that MCTs, because of their better solubility and motility, underwent a rapid hydrolysis by salivary, gastric, and pancreatic enzymes. Consequently, they were able to reach the liver and provide energy much more quickly than long-chain triglycerides.

There was also some evidence that MCTs reduced lipid deposition in fat stores compared with that resulting from LCTs under identical energy intake conditions. However, this is no reason to believe that ingesting these oils in excess will not result in a positive energy balance which the body stores as fat. MCTs, like regular oils, like regular fats, have nine calories per gram. Even though they are metabolized differently, using them in excessive amounts will add inches to your waistline.

Someone with a well-built body must be knowledgeable about fitness and physique development.

Despite popular belief, just because some guy has 20" arms or 32" thighs, that does not automatically credential him as a bodybuilding expert. Unfortunately, in a society where looks count for so much, well-built lifters are often regarded as bodybuilding scientists. The unfortunate fact is, many well-built athletes, even pro bodybuilders, have no idea how they got where they are.

Many of them are so genetically gifted and embellish their genetic potential even further by using tons of bodybuilding drugs that they actually succeed in spite of themselves. With few exceptions, elite bodybuilders are the last people in the world you want to turn to for bodybuilding advice if you're genetically average like the best part of 98% of us. You're more likely to find expert advice from someone who is just like you.

I'm loving it!

I know I'm not...

The challenge is set and every inch of my body can't wait to reach the 3rd of March 2008. Progress has been steady but I understand that it takes time to recover as well. So recovery is crucial, what else is new? In a way, I look at training at a whole new level. Every decision I make in a day is influenced by the training and the challenge. It feels good but taxing sometimes as well. The key is self control. Without the ability to care for myself, how can I care for others?

Contrary to the belief of the masses, self love does not equal vanity. Vanity incorporates pride and envy where as self love simply means that we care and we want what's best for our body. Be it both physical and emotional. This challenge exhibits an introduction of myself into immersing in self love. To understand myself better. Where I stand now, and where I want to be in the future.

To some, self love might mean embracing their current state. A few examples being that they accept themself as fat, lazy, stupid, and all the negative shit. Demotivated and all. Being lazy certainly pays off in the future in the form of diseases and bad karma. It's a simple science where everyone can be someone if they choose to yet not many take on their own personal 'challenges'. Failure to do so may just keep dreams as...

Merely dreams...

The point is, I'm loving every second of this torture cos I know I'm goin to a better place...

The Roger Huerta Story

Picture from SHERDOG.COM

Source - Yahoo Sports

LAS VEGAS – Roger Huerta's phone wouldn't stop ringing. Friends showed up at his home. Everyone he knew, and many people he didn't, suddenly wanted to speak to him. Unbeknownst to him, a photo of Huerta in a UFC bout graced the cover of the May 28 issue of Sports Illustrated. He was the first mixed martial artist on the magazine's cover, an event so big in the MMA world that UFC president Dana White carried copies with him for days after it was published.

Huerta's reaction, though, was different. "I just went to ride the bike and train more," Huerta said. "I was totally shocked and totally humbled, but I knew I would have to be even better. I needed to get to work." Huerta is one of the sport's rising stars, though he's known as much for his incredible life story as for his 17-1-1 MMA record. Appearing on the cover of the country's foremost sports magazine was the latest act in an improbable rise to prominence for a man who concedes he could easily have been dead years ago.

Huerta, who fights unbeaten Doug Evans on a Saturday UFC card at the Palms Hotel, was twice abandoned as a child in foreign countries and used to sell chewing gum and rosary beads on a street corner in Mexico to earn money to survive. Everyone who hears about his life story, he says, listens with an open jaw.

"They all tell me my life sounds like a movie, but that if it were a movie it would be hard for people to believe it is true," Huerta said.

His normal childhood life was shattered at 7 when his father, Rogelio, began an extra-marital affair. Huerta's mother, Lydia, was unaware of her husband's philandering and suffered a mental breakdown when she learned of it, Huerta said. His father gained legal custody of him and things briefly returned to normal. But in an attempt to flee the heartbreak, Lydia Huerta snatched her son from his home in Texas, without his father's permission, and fled to El Salvador, where her parents lived. She wasn't, Huerta said in a voice little above a whisper, stable enough to raise a child.

After a short while, she fled the country, leaving him with her parents in the midst of a civil war in El Salvador. Lydia Huerta returned to claim him nearly a year later, but instead of raising him dropped him on his father's doorstep. That turned out to be a nightmare. Huerta says his stepmother physically and mentally abused him. His father took him to Mexico and left him with his paternal grandparents, who were living in near poverty and were in no position to raise an 8-year-old. His father eventually returned, too, but began to abuse drugs, so after suffering more abuse from his stepmother, Huerta wound up living on the streets, coaxing favors out of sympathetic friends. He got to eat only when school was in session, and looked forward to the morning so he could eat breakfast in the school cafeteria and satisfy the burning in his belly. For several years, survival was all Huerta knew.

"When you're desperate, you do what you have to do to survive," he says. "I'm fortunate that there are a lot of good people in this world and that God eventually put me in touch with them."

The first was Maria King, who gained legal custody of him, brought him into her home and treated him like one of her own. And when he was a senior at Crockett High School in Austin, Texas, he said his life changed forever when he met wrestling coach Bryan Ashford and English teacher Jo Ramirez. Ashford helped him to become a star wrestler and he began to think of going to college on a wrestling scholarship. When he asked Ramirez for help writing letters to colleges to drum up interest in him, he told her the story of his childhood. She never had a hint of what he had been through. She was so impressed that she adopted him during his freshman year at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

"Maybe someone will write a book or do a movie and if they do, maybe it will be an inspiration to people who believe they have no hope and nothing good will happen in their lives," he said. "I had a lot of bad times, but I never gave up and I fought my way out. And now look at the life I have."

That life only promises to get better. UFC president Dana White conceded that Huerta needs a lot of work to compete with the top 155-pounders in the world like B.J. Penn and Jens Pulver, who will fight in Saturday's main event, but he said Huerta has the spirit to become a star. "He's got that dog inside of him that's going to fight and scratch and keep coming," White said. "He's got incredible determination. He's great at standup and he's very good on the ground. He's trained for years with a good team, with (ex-UFC welterweight champion) Matt Hughes and Jens and (ex-UFC heavyweight champion Tim) Sylvia, and so he's learning from good people.

"You can't throw him to the wolves yet, but he's a tenacious kid with a lot of ability. Give him six months, maybe a little more, and he's going to be a bitch for anyone to fight."

Koscheck vs St-Pierre

Josh Koscheck vs Georges St-Pierre (UFC 74: Respect)

Koscheck, of course in great condition, goes against Georges St-Pierre. As much as I like Koscheck, I'm putting it on St-Pierre. I've seen his fights and he's never failed to impress me with his mix and variety of moves. St-Pierre was also obviously bigger in size compared to Koscheck in this bout. St-Pierre wastes no time like some other fighters that waste time tapping gloves and shit. Straight to the point. St-Pierre, as expected, won the bouts.

These fighters motivate me to reach their point of conditioning. Gotta re-focus on reconditioning and high intensity training...

Guerilla Cardio

Hari Raya falls on this Saturday!

So, SELAMAT HARI RAYA to all my Muslim peeps!

ps: iboh lupak invite to ur cribs!

Ten people have commented and participated in the challenge. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. Anyway, thanks for the support. I'm sorry guys but I WILL let y'all down. Don't count on the money. Been working hard to keep up to it. I think a size 32 waist is easily achievable. It's the 12% body fat that's gonna be a challenge. But I gotta find a way to motivate myself and there's nothing better than an extreme challenge. So there... For those who are interested in doing some cardio, do check this out:

Guerilla Cardio

Its a short but super intense cardio plan. I did this a year back. It was intense as hell and I didn't stick to it like I should. I am guessing that this will be a tool to help me get on track for the challenge. Its a series of 20 second sprints followed by 10 seconds of rests and this goes on as much as one can do it. I have yet to fully try this plan and I will record the max number of sprints I can do. Just so I can track my performance and progress. Gonna recover in a while...

word.

The Challenge...

This is one BIG commitment I'm making but it'll definitely be the one most powerful thing that will motivate me to do and fulfill it. So I need all of your support... Here goes:



The objective:
- To reach below 12% body fat percentage before the 3rd of March 2008.

or

- 32" Waistline. (I'm 35-36 now I think.)


SHOULD I FAIL to achieve any ONE of the objective, here is:



The PAYOFF:

- Two hundred bucks for the first TEN person who leaves a comment on this post.

- A nude picture of me will be posted on this blog.

There. Cash and humiliation becomes my motivation. Body weight is not counted in the process as it can comprise of water retention and etc but my aim is to add lean body mass. Updates will be constantly posted on this blog. Nothing to lose in this for y'all... so support guys! :D

UFC 74

The Temptress

Bloating to the max. Gotta workout way more... Upping cardio and HIIT into my workouts.

Watching UFC 74, 1 fight at a time...

This is like the most action packed episode I've watched. Right now it's Huerta vs Crane. I'm vouching for Huerta. Seen his fights but both of them are in great shape now so I think it's gonna be a tight competition. Huerta seems is in great condition by the way. Pellegrino vs Stevenson rocked before this. I've always supported Joe "Daddy" Stevenson but his performance was so-so in the previous fight. Pellegrino actually brought some action into the Octagon.

updates....

Finally...
Updates:
Curtin Prom was great.
Killed myself working on an overdue assignment.

Evil things piled up and I lazily conquered them...
Very very stressful...
Evenings are the only time I have to chill...
Relaxing the mind was something I yearned...
Yesterday I finally achieved it..
The climax of relaxation...
Hate the fact that mind fatigue aint a beautiful thing..
In the event that it happens, everything shuts down... Physical, mental...
Nothing can really heal it... Not even a million Aspirins..
Glad its over.