Hey, have you been working out?

[Az]

Also, AZ, with your interval work... get off the elliptical and hit the pavement, man! What you doing on the elliptical with the fatties and women? Also, check out the Tabata Protocol.

Elliptical is much more full-body, and now I live in the middle of a dense big city so I have nowhere to run outside. I miss running through stuff - lets you think stuff over. I used to be a jogger (4-5 miles, 3-4 times a week)

[Al B. Sure!]

it means I like your photo.

Yeah well that was me a few months ago at 190; I'm 217 now so I look like the second photo, as of about two hours ago. Sorry to break it to you. I'm fat right now

And what's with frog and vomit?

[Heresson]

it means I like your photo.

[Al B. Sure!]

What the hell?

[Heresson]

I have managed to lose 19kgs (42lbs) since mid may, and gain muscle and strength. shirtless pics are due in october.

we need

- frog
- vomit
- better crying
- drool!!!!!

smilies

[Al B. Sure!]

Sealfit.com has a forum where you can ask about things. Also, a lot of questions you have could also be answered at the much more active Crossfit.com forum.

I must warn you though, Sealfit is like 6 days on or something like that. It's geared towards getting applicants ready for BUD/S (ie- SEAL school) and it is, if you ask me, too much volume for a normal person with humbler goals. It's great to spice up your workouts with a Sealfit workout every week or something like that but if you dive right in, unless you're in better shape than I imagine, you'd burn out within a week. It's a lot of grinders and I know a lot of Crossfitters have come to the opinion that grinders, while they wear you out and seem bad ass, probably are just exhausting you and not training you to adapt efficiently. There's been a movement towards reducing something like that Cindy, which is a mainstay, from 20 minutes to 12 minutes so you can go all out throughout the whole workout but never get to the point where you're grinding out the reps and destroying yourself.

It's bad ass but that's because you'd have to be bad ass to even hang with it.


Also, AZ, with your interval work... get off the elliptical and hit the pavement, man! What you doing on the elliptical with the fatties and women? Also, check out the Tabata Protocol.

[Flubber]

They must not like me otherwise... explain this to me, then:
>

Its NOT ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR LOOKS

If you look reasonably good-- first dates are easy to get-- which is exactly what you relate. Your problem seems to be mainly moving beyond the flirtation or an early date into later dates and that transition is all about being fun to be with and has very little to do with looks or fitness. You have passed the attractiveness test in getting a first date and it would be pretty rare to then get rejected for anything to do with your physical appearance

[Az]

Although this may be a case of something where it was available back then but not available anywhere like it is today since it used to be seasonal.

Bingo. Seasonal is what this is all about. And if you think about it, the chunkiest indigenous populations are the ones that enjoy a some-fruit-all-year-long diet, like pacific islanders. I have studied the metabolic pathways, and this makes perfect sense to me. All of this is my original, pure speculation. But trust me, I am a scientist.

Warm Up: Bar Bell Complex 4 rounds (start at 75# add 10# each set to105#)

Strength: Work to 1RM Bench Press (BP), then do 4 rounds of 5 x BP @ 85% 1RM, 10 x Ring Dip, Hip Mobility and Shoulder Pass through with PVC.

Work Capacity: CrossFit Cindy - AMRAP 20 minutes of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats

Durability: Sprints: 5 x 200M (:30 sec rest), 10 x 100M (:15 rest). 50 x GHD Situps, 50 x Back Extension

looks badass, is there some sort of manual for dummies - I might get started with it after I go on with my program for a couple of weeks?

[Al B. Sure!]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

As I bet you know, the body accepts energy in two currencies only: Glucose and Ketones. Fructose is not one of them. Fructose is only consumed as energy after it has been stored as fat.
Fructose=stored fat. There is no turn arounds, no other ways.

If you think of it in terms of human evolution, it makes perfect sense: fruit have a very short shelf life (unlike starchies and meat jerky), so you have to eat them all as soon as you have found them. This is also why fructose does not induce a leptin reaction: you have got to keep eating them all, because winter is just across the line, and if you won't store it, you'll be dead.

I get you but fruit is just something that humans and our ancestors have been eating for millions of years. It's kind of going against the Paleo concept to avoid it like the plague.

Although this may be a case of something where it was available back then but not available anywhere like it is today since it used to be seasonal. People would go months without eating a single fruit whereas today, you can eat it all the time. Nuts are another thing like this where you can easily consume far more nuts than would ever have been possible by our prehistoric ancestors.

That's a tricky thing.

[Al B. Sure!]

Azazel, I want to share with you the stuff Sealfit is about...

This is typical from the other day:

Warm Up: Bar Bell Complex 4 rounds (start at 75# add 10# each set to105#)

Strength: Work to 1RM Bench Press (BP), then do 4 rounds of 5 x BP @ 85% 1RM, 10 x Ring Dip, Hip Mobility and Shoulder Pass through with PVC.

Work Capacity: CrossFit Cindy - AMRAP 20 minutes of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups, 15 air squats

Durability: Sprints: 5 x 200M (:30 sec rest), 10 x 100M (:15 rest). 50 x GHD Situps, 50 x Back Extension

That's a hell of a lot of work (though typical for military applications ). AMRAP means As many rounds as possible so you're going balls to the wall.

[Az]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

As I bet you know, the body accepts energy in two currencies only: Glucose and Ketones. Fructose is not one of them. Fructose is only consumed as energy after it has been stored as fat.
Fructose=stored fat. There is no turn arounds, no other ways.

If you think of it in terms of human evolution, it makes perfect sense: fruit have a very short shelf life (unlike starchies and meat jerky), so you have to eat them all as soon as you have found them. This is also why fructose does not induce a leptin reaction: you have got to keep eating them all, because winter is just across the line, and if you won't store it, you'll be dead.

[Al B. Sure!]

I find the no eating of fruit strange. What's wrong with fruit? I say fruit should be a staple although you should be careful about dried fruit (especially dates) because they are high as crap in sugar and it's easy to eat too many of them. Fruit is just one of those things that primates always eat.

I went to OCS with a guy who was a Sealfitter (I can't reiterate enough how bad ass Sealfit is)... he used to do this thing where he would eat very clean during the week but he would go on a carb overload on either every weekend or every few weekends where he ate the most absurd stuff like piles of pancakes and waffles, whole boxes of sugary cereals, and hordes of cakes and pastries. He was a physical beast to say the least though I tried it one weekend and felt sick as hell.

If you're looking for general fitness (what Crossfit called GPP; general physical preparedness), I think Crossfit is the best way to go. If you want something specific, I say Crossfit is still the best way to go but look at one of the more focused affiliates or programs. If muscle and strength is your concern, Starting Strength and Crossfit Strength Biased are great.

[Az]

can you please record this post in vocaroo?

I am sorry, this is the fit bro zone. fat 4chan anime **** is the other way.

[Az]

Great post, Al, very informative and I agree completely, that a perfect training program has plenty of different apsects of fitness included in it. Maybe I didn't go deep enough in my explanation of my routine. The general thought is doing excercises that are using multiple muscles, however, it is quite obvious that there are main groups of muscles in action. free weights are optimal for this, although certain, newer machines involve this also.

I must admit that I don't do enough gymnastics, but I feel I am not quite there.

Diet-wise, I stick to paleo, basically, minus fruit (fructose sucks balls). I eat some carbes for a day or two rather intensively, but that is because I realized that gaining strength will help me lose weight during ketogenesis. it's carbs that never reach the fat stage - after a week of working out, I am out of glycogen, and I eat a couple of bagels, or some rice or some cornflakes to get me the glycogen, and I am done. on the week, I eat cheese and salty foods for the electrolytes, I drink coffee (no milk, no sugar) in the mornings and before training.

I love me eggs and fishies. those are the best. and those tiny GM tomatoes with cottage (no homo)

[ZEE]

AZ, spaghetti and potatoes are all carbs, man. I stay away from the stuff. Because I'm currently concentrating on strength, I do eat a bit more carbs than I should in the form of flatbread wraps and dairy (also fruit).

Overall though, you're on the right track about your diet. I subscribe to a fitness/nutrition philosophy called Crossfit. The nutrition aspect is two(possibly three)-fold... there's Zone which is the idea that the optimum ratio of calories from carbs: fats: proteins should be 40:30:30 and Paleo which is that we should eat like our prehistoric ancestors did; that is the diet that humans evolved to eat (ie- high in meats, vegetables, and fruit with very little carbs; there is also dairy paleo which is paleo but adds dairy). There is also a third concept called intermittent fasting that also represents the eating habits of prehistoric hunters who might go an entire day or more without eating anything but generally this feast or famine idea is thought to lead to increased body fat so it's not generally suggested for everyone; some people do seem to thrive off of it.

As for the fitness aspect, you got to check out Crossfit, the fitness philosophy used explicitly by the Canadian Army and unofficially by the US Marine Corps (our Physical Training Instructors referred to the stuff we were doing as Crossfit but, since it's trademarked, Training Command doesn't use the term officially). What is Crossfit?

The New York Times called it "God's Workout". Here's wikipedia:


Crossfit.com hosts a WOD (workout of the day). The WODs are on a 3 days on, 1 day off schedule. Generally, most Crossfitters who follow the offical WOD do 3 days on, 1 active recovery day (ie- jogging, skill work), 3 days on, 1 complete rest day with a light week (in which you do the WODs but at reduced intensity) after every 4 weeks. There are a hundreds of Crossfit affiliates who post WODs online, some of which are geared towards specific applications (ie- Crossfit Football, Crossfit Endurance, Sealfit [which is crazy bad ass]).

Some Crossfit affiliates have broken away from the pack for various reasons, however, including militaryathlete.com and Gym Jones. If Gym Jones sounds familiar, that's because it's where the actors of the movie 300 worked out at to get into Spartan shape.

Now, of course, you don't have to follow the daily WOD but it is highly suggested for beginners (who should actually look for the 'Brandx' scaled difficulty WOD which can be found as a link on the mainpage) at least to learn what good WODs entail and how they should be organized. Once you get a feel for it, you can switch to your own programming, as many Crossfitters do.

The basic belief of Crossfit is that what you're doing with the division into upper and lower days is bullcrap. You know, Azazel, from being in the military, that fitness is full body and that body parts never work in complete isolation.

Think about it... why are your legs getting 1/2 the days of your arms, shoulders, and chest combined? You know that legs are the most important part of your body. You need to be squating and deadlifting far more than benching and bicep curling, man!

Crossfit has its priorities in the right place. I'll give you an example so you understand what Crossfit workouts entail... this is this past week:



Now, as you can see, if you're going to follow Crossfit.com strictly, some of the lifts are technical and you'd need to learn them (I haven't gotten around to some of them myself, for example) and some things like Muscle-ups are incredibly difficult to do (for something like this, you can substitute some pullups followed by dips for each muscle-up).

But also notice the type of work. Saturday's 6 rounds for time of sprints and burpees... that's one that will wear you the hell out. It's for time meaning you're supposed to go balls to the wall. The next day, you're also going balls to the wall for time, but notice, you're knocking out 135lb thrusters and pullups. You generally don't think of yourself getting a cardio kick out of lifting weights and doing pullups... but boy would you find yourself wrong!

See that is something called metabolic conditioning. It's what Crossfit is famous for. You see, by combining high intensity intervals with strength movements, you're training yourself to recover faster, conditioning your metabolism to more efficiently get rid of waste and get your muscles ready for the next exertion. When you do metcon, your muscles are being worked hard but so is your heart and lungs.

Now, this week didn't have any specific strength training and was metabolic conditioning-heavy but you will see some days where you do something like Push Press 5-5-5-5-5 which means you do sets of 5 going up to find your max on that lift. It's not about time. You can take all day on something like that. It's about improving your max lift and being stronger.

Obviously, something like Crossfit Football is geared more towards strength and something like Crossfit Endurance is geared more towards getting better at distance running, rowing, cycling, etc.

As for myself, right now, I'm not doing much Crossfit exactly. I'm doing one of the Strength programs associated with Crossfit called Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe, a Crossfit gym owner and one of the leading figures in the community. It's considered the best way to get stronger and concentrates on only the most basic lifts: squats, deadlift, bench press, and press.

can you please record this post in vocaroo?