TL Health and Fitness Initiative 2010 - Page 178

On November 18 2010 06:24 JeeJee wrote:
thanks for the diet advice guys
i'm not sure i'll be giving up pasta any time soon though (for one, i have to learn how to cook tastier potatoes first lol), but i won't forget about it. =D

random update from me: i feel like i should lighten up the load on my squats this week, just fall back to last week's levels and repeat it. it's my 7th week of linear progression, couldn't hurt. i definitely notice a flattening of the back when i go below parallel (my shitty hammies) which is basically beginning of rounding, and just as bad i suppose.

i've been trying to stretch out my hammies just because i'm SO inflexible. you know the typical bend-over-touch-toes exercise? i used to strain when my wrist was on my knee... now it's a few inches below the knee.. maybe i'll get to touch my toes soon!! (i've never done it in my life, i'd probably freak out if i did lol)

HOWEVER, i don't know how useful that stretch is to my deadlifting/squatting exercises. i'm not flexing my back during squatting (ideally) so i went ahead and invented another exercise:
stand with normal lumbar curve and bend at the hips (maintaining natural arch). i feel a stretch after like 20 degrees bend, wtf? i'm pretty sure that's messed up. i guess i physically can't even do a bent-over row yet without significantly bending my legs.

so yeah, atm i'm stretching 4-5x a day, just those 2 poses, slowly ease into them, hold for 30sec, release. making slow progress..
any other good hammy stretches i should know about (preferably no towels or anything. walls/frames are fine)

so weird i'm so inflexible in my hammies, but my arms are quite flexible... i can grab my whole palm behind the back with the other hand when most of my friends can barely touch fingers. oh well.

On November 18 2010 07:20 sJarl wrote:


On the 7th week on linear progression, I just entered my 9th consecutive progress week on the bench press...just eat more

The stretch you just invented sounds just like Good Mornings...look it up if you like.

I've always preferred to do the hamstring stretch sitting down, once managed to place my forhead on my knee!


Today's workout:

BB Bench Press: 82,5kg x 5 x 5 (+2,5kg FUUUUUUCK YEAH!)
Close Grip Bench Press: 77,5kg x 6 (same as last but meh, the regular bench was taxing and I got less rest than prefrerred)

On November 18 2010 03:42 ShaLLoW[baY] wrote:


i'm hoping eshlow can debunk this one

On November 18 2010 02:41 Ingenol wrote:

Here's a good review referencing a lot of studies and explaining how it came to be that most people think more meals spread throughout the day is good for you. If you look around the site I think he even has a review of Venuto's book.

Certainly a single meal a day is not a good way to live for a lot of reasons, but spreading 5-6 out over 18 hours of waking has no scientific basis behind it.

On November 18 2010 13:28 RosaParksStoleMySeat wrote:
OK, I have to ask.

Is it just me or does iHerb have the worst customer service in the world? Like, they started by screwing up my first order and shorting me a bottle of vitamin D3, and then agreed to charge that money back to my credit card. I asked what they would do about the shipping cost (since I would have to re-order the stuff again later), and they basically told me I was SOL.

Then I ask them to add my apartment number to my order because for some reason it wasn't saved in their system memory, and they told me again that I was SOL because all orders are "automatically processed." What the hell man?

On November 18 2010 05:39 Sinep wrote:
I am really sick of eating 5 meals a day, it is a pain in the ass and a lot of work. I've read through a lot of the material on that website, and it seems to make sense. Since my goals are to be as big and as lean as I can be year round, this approach seems to be exactly that and outlines many of the same issues I have with more traditional methods. However, he does not seem to go much into detail... well about anything besides when to fast and when not to fast (but does not even say if you should do this every day, off days, or whatever). If my goals were to add muscle and stay lean, what would I do on an IF program? anybody able to fill in the blanks here? He even mentioned that he doesn't do curls or ab work and well... look at him, rofl. I don't need an education in healthy foods, but does anyone have enough experience with IF programs to fill in these blanks? thinking calories, workouts (throw in cardio?) and how often to fasting days.

On November 18 2010 12:15 Slithe wrote:
Nutrition/Supplement Question:
What's the verdict on Muscle Milk? My exercising coworkers seem to be fans, so I was wondering if it was worthwhile.

On November 18 2010 13:56 eshlow wrote:


Ingenol already posted a post with studies that debunks it.

Re:

On November 17 2010 17:46 Sinep wrote:


Most of what I'm saying is based on the book called "Burn the fat, feed the muscle" by lifetime natural bodybuilder Tom Venuto. I like to follow bodybuilders advice when it comes... to well... everything. they are the biggest and leanest people on earth, and I don't know a single one of them that does not eat around the clock (6 meals a day usually). One even gets up in the middle of the night for a meal. Do you have a link to studies/experiments about the effect of 3 meals vs 5-6 a day? Or any research saying that food digests over a period of 8 hours? It seems pretty logically to me that if you did the extreme and ate one meal a day, you'd have awful results compared to if you spread that one meal out over 6 in the same day (both muscle gain and fat loss wise).

I'll keep this short and to the point. The gist of the review was that I think BFFM is an excellent book, despite one major flaw; your stance wrt meal frequency and how it boosts your metabolism. This is simply put not true, as you probably know. In response to the review, my blog readers (and I) want to know if you have revised your stance wrt meal frequency

OF course! Anyone who has read my recent work knows that I've become an absolute stickler for scientific accuracy.

In fact, this is EXACTLY why people should listen to me today, because unlike some others in the diet field who are too emotionally and financially vested in their dogma to change, I believe its our responsibility as fitness/nutrition professionals to acknowledge errors, omissions or new data.

I haven't read your post but Ive read all the literature on meal frequency (I have at least 40 full text papers in my files), actually I read them a long time ago.. which is why its' my "bad" that I havent updated the book yet. The first edition was written in 2002.

yes there will be a new edition. Burn the Fat 2.0 may get released later this year, or at the latest early 2009.

heres what you will see in the new edition:

You will still see me recommend 5-6 small meals per day,and rather strongly. But not dogmatically. What you wont hear me say is that 6 meals increases metabolism or weight loss over 3 meals at an equal caloric intake.

You will also not hear me say that your metabolism slows down if you miss a single meal. (starvation
response) I already reviewed that data on my public blog last year:
http://www.burnthefatblog.com/archives/2007/11/is_starvation_mode_a_myth_no_i.php

On November 18 2010 05:39 Sinep wrote:
I am really sick of eating 5 meals a day, it is a pain in the ass and a lot of work. I've read through a lot of the material on that website, and it seems to make sense. Since my goals are to be as big and as lean as I can be year round, this approach seems to be exactly that and outlines many of the same issues I have with more traditional methods. However, he does not seem to go much into detail... well about anything besides when to fast and when not to fast (but does not even say if you should do this every day, off days, or whatever). If my goals were to add muscle and stay lean, what would I do on an IF program? anybody able to fill in the blanks here? He even mentioned that he doesn't do curls or ab work and well... look at him, rofl. I don't need an education in healthy foods, but does anyone have enough experience with IF programs to fill in these blanks? thinking calories, workouts (throw in cardio?) and how often to fasting days.

On November 18 2010 10:01 JeeJee wrote:



yeah i guess it's the start to a good morning. except i can't even come close to finishing it :S
i also do the hammy stretch seated before i go to sleep, but it's basically the same thing as a standing toe-touch so i didn't really think of it as another exercise
i guess i just have to keep at it.. these silly hammies are definitely holding me back from proper deadlift and squat form. =( just to confirm, i'm supposed to feel the stretch behind my knees right? >.>

as for eating more.. yeah, i'm still eating tons, although i toned it down a bit. still gaining noticeable weight week-to-week though, so eh.

either way i figure this light week is only gonna set me back a week in terms of weight-increases, and i think i've drifted from perfect form over the last 2-3 workouts. so a flawless form reinforcement will do me well.

p.s. 9 weeks straight of progressing on your bench is pretty crazy, haha. have you lifted before or is this your first 9 weeks?

On November 19 2010 10:02 decafchicken wrote:
Vit d3 shipped whee (this better be as awesome as advertised lol)

Planned on having a rest day. So obviously that turns into heavy squat/bench day by the time i get to the gym.
Squat 10x225 8x325 6x350 4x375 2x400 1x425. Back to where i was ~end of august. At least i managed to maintain throughout the season instead of a big drop off like i usually do.
Bench 10x135 8x170 6x185,200,215,235 (fail last rep )
then some inverted rows/planks.
Checking out the local oly club tomorrow, fucking super excited.
COMING 4 U DIMSUM (first i need to match your lifts...then in like 3 years maybe i'll have comparable bodyweight:lift numbers rofl) Watching vids of pyrros dimos makes me want to be more of a man.
After reading more into oly lifting i feel like i should have been doing it for the last 8 years of my life T_T

On November 19 2010 11:13 RosaParksStoleMySeat wrote:
Fuck me.

Squat: 242 x5, x5, x3.5
Bench: 180 x5, x4, x5 <- WTF
Chin (unweighted): 9, 7, 5

What the hell. I was at 205 x 5 x 3 on bench before I got pneumonia. Basically, I lost like 25 pounds off my bench when I was sick? I must have just had a bad workout day, but there's no way I'd do even 195 x 5 x 3 right now.

Man, I'm so jelly of Decaf's squat. I'm coming for you man. Once I cut to 8%, I'm going to start to pack on muscle like a madman.

You're safe until then .

On November 19 2010 12:03 AoN.DimSum wrote:


http://www.youtube.com/user/RutgersDunker#p/a/u/0/8RhmuoNLcIg

Check this guy out. Only a year of lifting and broke the teenage powerlifting records for squat and deadlift in his weightclass. Now he is transitioning to weightlifting.