I’ve been thinking about this question again now that I’ve added cardio back into my week. Although I know HIIT is the coolest thing there ever was, I find it far too shocking to my system, so I just do old-school steady state cardio, twice a week, at high intensity for 60-70 minutes.
What I will do sometimes, if I have extra energy after 60 minutes, is switch to something like HIIT: 30 second all out effort followed by 30 second jog, and repeat for 5 minutes. This pretty much finishes me off completely.
People will say, “if you are doing 60+ minutes of high intensity cardio, you are burning muscle! Stop it!”
Am I? Because I am getting bigger despite adding my cardio back in. In fact, I was kind of stagnant until I added it.
Speaking totally unscientifically here, I think this idea is total bullshit. One explanation I’ve heard is that since muscle requires more calories to maintain, your body prefers to remove it first when under cardiovascular stress. Ehhh…?
Your body is bizarrely complex, and it does some weird stuff sometimes with regard to fat storage and cannibalizing muscle, but for the most part, it is a brilliantly assembled machine when it comes to being what it needs to be. If you are strength training 5 days a week, building muscle and getting stronger, while eating clean all the while, there is no logical reason your body would decide to break all of that down just because you decide to go for an hour run. Even if muscle does require more energy for maintenance, it is far more useful to you in the long run, and your body knows it.
What I think is going on is this:
You know those really fat guys who walk around the gym like bodybuilders? They can lift a ton, and they look huge and intimidating, but they have absolutely no definition whatsoever. Big, strong 20 inch arms that just look like tree trunks?
Ok, imagine that guy going home every night, measuring his arms, legs, chest, etc, and concluding his time in the gym is paying off. Then he adds cardio, and all that fat obscuring his muscle strips away. Now his 20″ arms are 16″ of cut muscle. Can you imagine this guy freaking out that he’s accidentally burned off all his muscle?
He hasn’t, of course, he just lost a crapload of fat.
That said, from what I’ve found, your body WILL consume muscle for protein when under starvation, or when under EXTREME, endurance cardio work. Like running a marathon. Other than that, you’re fine.
I’m very aware that the vast majority of people have absolutely no concept of science, how science works, or what scientific truth is. While it is fun to point at these people and laugh, the truth is, the human brain is wired more for superstition and horseshit than facts and evidence. I suppose there is some evolutionary advantage to cavemen believing in odd things like sun gods, and maybe even some advantage to modern humans believing in zombie deities and ghosts and hell and whatnot.
Because we are wired this way, a sad number of people think that what they feel or believe is more important than what is true. This is why we have many, many more religious freaks than scientists, but more interestingly (to me, anyways), why we also have a few scientists who are religious freaks. The human brain has a hard time letting go of superstition, even when it has been fully convinced that the superstition isn’t real.
On to the point of this post: the supplement industry depends on the superstitious nature of the human mind. People spend outrageous amounts of money on totally unproven herbs and spices that have absolutely no clinical proof to back them up. They want them to work, so they buy them, and they never question it.
If you go to your local vitamin store, you’ll see a ridiculous amount of products that claim to put on muscle, take off fat, cut you, build you up, reshape you, give you more energy, etc. I personally know people who spend hundreds every month on this stuff, and spend a good chunk of their day just swallowing pills and powders, hoping it is all having some effect. Most of it doesn’t.
Not only do they not do anything for you, but keep this in mind: every time you put something in your body, you are forcing your liver to deal with it. If there is no chance of it doing anything for you, give your damn liver a break already.
That said, there are a few fitness supplements that actually have science behind them. These are the ones I take regularly:
Creatine Monohydrate
Fish Oil
CLA
Multitamin
L-Glutamine powder
Whey protein
That’s it. You can research those yourself, but that’s a pretty standard, basic workout supplement load.
If you are trying to burn fat, the most effective is the (now illegal) E-C-A stack of ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin. I have heard people swapping one of those out for yohimbine. I still think the best way to burn fat is eat right and do a bunch of cardio though. Why tax the hell out of your heart with pills when you can tax the hell out of your heart with exercise?
One thing that is interesting to note though: although there are supplements that are proven to have some beneficial effect, you next need to ask yourself how MUCH effect can I expect?
Just because something has been proven to work, doesn’t mean it is worth taking.
I remember a commercial for some bogus weight loss pill that claimed it was CLINICALLY PROVEN TO BURN FAT*. If you could pause your tivo fast enough you’d see that the results of the clinical trial showed something like 3 pounds lost over 20 weeks or some other absurd amount. In other words, you’d be paying a ton of money for something that was proven to have a negligible effect on your weight loss. Yes, it had an effect, but the effect didn’t equal the cost. Or the extra work for your liver.
Everything on that list up there (except for the protein) has a pretty small effect on your results, but for the most part, the stuff is cheap, and in some cases (fish oils, eg.), good for you anyway.
Really, how stupid is this. It’s about the worst measure of fitness available, because 95% of the men (or women, for that matter) with visible abdominals have them because they are genetically blessed. They still need to exercise, lift weights, do cardio and eat right, but for the majority of people you see with a six pack, they got it really quickly and without much focus or effort. They didn’t need to kill themselves to do it. It just happened, because they have all the right genetic cards for it to happen. In particular, they have just the right body structure, fat storing mechanism, and abdominal wall shape which all come together to make a great core.
What about the other 5%? They had to work at it. Hard.
There was a story on CNN over a year ago about a kid who decided his goal was a six pack. After a bit, CNN checked back in on him and, sure enough, he had a six pack. The problem was, he also looked like death warmed over, and the Internet momentarily lit up with much criticism of how this guy did it. Essentially, he starved himself and trained only his abs for months and months. He got the six pack, but he looked like absolute hell regardless.
I, personally, am convinced that the deck is stacked against me. My ribcage sticks out way past where my abs lay, I store most of my fat in my lower belly, and I have thicker skin. But since I don’t want to have a rib removed or get liposuction or anything else equally ridiculous, if I’m ever going to have a ripped stomach, I’m going to have to work for it.
Here’s what I’ve learned after researching the hell out of this subject:
1. Just because you don’t have the genetics to get a six pack instantly doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
That’s the good news.
2. BUT… it might be impossible.
That’s the bad news. This might really just not be in the cards for you. If so, you should probably not waste years on this ridiculous goal and focus on everything else on your body.
3. Abs are mostly a result of diet.
Don’t do 5000 crunches a day then eat at McDonald’s every day. You are wasting your time. You’d be better off doing a ton of cardio, eating REALLY clean, and skipping the crunches completely.
4. There is no such thing as UPPER and LOWER ab training.
The reason your upper abs show first is because most men carry their fat in their lower belly — from the belly button down. You aren’t building your upper abs, you are losing fat on your upper stomach. If you want to see your lower abdominals, lose fat from your lower stomach.
Even though the abs are made up of a bunch of muscles, they work as a single unit. When you crunch, they all activate, so you can’t really focus on one part versus another. The benefit of doing leg raises AND crunches is the same as doing 4 different bicep lifts — different exercises keep the body from developing tolerance.
5. You can’t spot reduce
Everyone should know this by now, and yet I still see guys with positively MASSIVE guts at the gym doing crunches like a maniac. No no no, go do cardio, eat right, and lose that fat. Stop wasting your time.
6. When you train your abs: quality over quantity
Without fail, the really fat guy next to me in the ab room at the gym is banging out 2000 crunches in a row like a machine gun. I am burning in pain after 25. That guy next to me might be getting a little bit of cardio vascular exercise convulsing around over there, but he’s not doing much for his abs.
When you do crunches, do them slowly. Breathe out while you crunch up, flex and hold at the top for a second or two, then breathe in as you come back down. If you do them right, it should start to hurt really, really quickly. Like after 10 or so, not after 1000.
Also, make sure you are doing an actual crunch. One tip that helped me do them right was this: imagine you are trying to touch the bottom of your ribcage to the top of your hips. That’s a real crunch.
When you do leg lifts, the rules are the same. Ribs to hip, breathe out, hold, and breathe in. I can maybe do 15 before I absolutely have to rest.
7. Train your abs like any other muscle
Because they are like any other muscle. That means, once a week, hard, with weights if possible, and then rest them for the rest of the week.
Here is my once a week ab ritual:
5 sets of 10 leg lifts
8 sets of 25 flat crunches
4 sets of 10 incline crunches
3 sets of cable crunches (see video below)
300 wood chops with weight (see video below)
The cable crunches are the ab killer. Since I added those, I really feel like my abdominals are being punished. Scooby had the best video on cable crunches I could find:
The woodchops are easily the most brutal, probably because I do so many of them. I break them down into sets. 25 in each set, lower-to-upper, side-to-side, and upper-to-lower, then repeat.
Here is a video of the upper-to-lower woodchop:
The most effective of these for me has been the woodchops, which work the obliques. Since doing those, I don’t have to worry at all about love handles, and I’ve got that weird ken doll thing going on around my hips.
No, that isn’t me. The obliques are under the armpit down to the hip. And my obliques do look like that (my abs, not so much).
If you want to develop your abs, what I think you need to do is figure your own body out, so you can figure out what you need to do to it.
Is fat your problem? Then eat better and do more cardio.
Are your abs too small? This is rare, but in my case, true. Then work them hard like any other muscle.
Is your bone and/or muscular structure just not made for this? Then stop trying, and build up the rest of your body.
Most importantly, I think, is to not focus so much on your abs. Work out your entire body, and once you get to a level of lean muscularity you are happy with, you can start to focus on your abs. Then go over the stuff above and focus on the areas you need to pay special attention to.
After adjusting my focus and routine a little bit, I am FINALLY starting to see my abs. Not much, but they are starting to show. Two years of daily crunches didn’t do it. A diet change and a slight modification to my workout routine did.
So the most important thing:
8. Get your body fat % as low as you can
For men, that means around 8% or less. For women, maybe around 12% or less. Anecdotal: this is easier for women to attain than men. Men tend to store fat on the stomach first, and lose it there last. Women have preferential storage elsewhere.
To get your body fat low: cardio, and diet. That’s it.
I love pasta. Particularly, I love thick spaghetti, thick sauce, and before I stopped eating beef 7 years ago, spaghetti bolognese was my absolute favorite food.
When you take the meat out of the sauce, it usually means boring old marinara. And pasta is pretty damned horrible for you. Just gross, empty carbs.
If you love spaghetti, but don’t eat it because it makes you fat, I have a recommendation for you:
Pasta: Ezekial 4:9 Sprouted Grain Pasta
This stuff looks like hell, you have to drain it — and I’m not exaggerating here — 9 times before the water stops running black, and it is expensive as hell. Around 5-6 bucks for a small box. But it is ridiculously good for you, has a metric shitton of protein, and actually tastes really good. If you like whole wheat pasta, you will probably like this. If you don’t, stay away because it will probably make you puke. 9g of protein per serving, the usual crapload of carbs (but good carbs), and 2g of fat. Good stuff.
I’ve also looked at Quinoa pasta, but I haven’t tried it yet. It is available though as an option.
Sauce: Newman’s Own Sockarooni or Trader Joe’s Organic Spaghetti Sauce with Mushrooms
Both are good. The Newman’s is spicy. Both are cheap. Both have enough flavor to make you forget their is no meat in your sauce.
Using these two, you can make 4 small spaghetti meals for around $12. And you won’t feel like you betrayed yourself when you’re done eating it.
Recently I’ve been thinking about getting a personal trainer certification. I don’t necessarily want to be a personal trainer — although it sounds fun, it would be a hell of a pay cut. But I do want to legitimize some of the things I’ve figured out over the years, and I definitely like the idea of helping people get in better shape. Here in Los Angeles, it’s easy to forget that people are horrifyingly out of shape in the rest of the world. But as soon as I step out of the westside of LA, it becomes pretty clear that people either don’t know how to take care of themselves or don’t care.
I am also pretty appalled at the insane industry that has built up around scamming fat people out of their money while offering nothing but junk products, junk food and junk advice in return. Taking care of yourself isn’t rocket science, but for some people it kind of seems that way.
So, in my spare time, I’ll be posting some of the stuff I’ve figured out over the years.
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