Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for Podcasts

Build Muscle From Just 52 Grams of Protein Powder: Interview with Calvin Chen

October 17, 2011 by

Calvin Chen is one of the younger guys who entered the Adonis Index Contest. He placed 5th in the transformation class.

Apart from Mike, who was interviewed last week and was focusing mostly on fat loss, Calvin needed to build muscle and that’s exactly what he did.

12 weeks is a very short period of time to build muscle. Calvin had the advantage of juvenile muscle growth.

You can check it yourself, here are his before and after pictures.

 

Calvin - Adonis Index Transformation Front

Calvin obviously put on some muscle. Just check out his arms and shoulders.

 

Calvin - Adonis Index Transformation Side

Calvin's side shot.

 

Calvin - Adonis Index Transformation Back

Look at Calvin's back, this is a pretty big difference after just 12 weeks.


It’s obvious that Calvin has built bigger shoulders, this is because Adonis Index Workouts are focused on building upper body width.

Calvin is a college student, so he doesn’t have much of a training background yet. Before he found the Adonis Index, he started like most young guys. He was lifting some dumbbells at home, he didn’t have any good program to follow, he did everything just learning from fitness magazines. He trained only his bicep, triceps and chest.

This is probably one of the most common mistakes – not having a proper workout program to follow. If you look around yourself in the gym, you will see that most of the guys don’t look that good and don’t have a quality plan at all. Obviously this training is good only if you want to lift something…anything, but if you want to actually see any change in muscle mass, you have to take a different approach.

What you need is this, a workout program that:

  • Is designed to help you achieve your goals (performance OR look)
  • Has variety of reps and sets
  • Has fixed rest periods (This makes a big difference as far as intensity goes.)
  • Requires mostly free weights (dumbbells and barbells)
  • If the purpose is to look better, it should focus more on your shoulders and back rather than arms and legs.

During the 12 weeks Calvin did the most difficult task – build muscle. It’s easy to strip off the fat in 12 weeks, but to build muscle? Not so much. Usually you will see only little change in muscle growth in such a short period of time. Building muscles takes years of dedicated training. Calvin’s advantage was through his juvenile muscle growth. If you are his age (19) and you are not yet working out, you should start as soon as possible, because this is when you can get the best gains. This is as close to a steroid effect as you can naturally get. A lot of older guys beat themselves up, because they started late, the difference in the possible physique if you start young is huge.

Average Protein Intake Was Enough

Nowadays almost every guy is obsessed with protein intake. It seems that we are so affected by advertisements that we feel something Brad Pilon calls protein guilt. It’s really hard to avoid this. Most of the guys try to eat as much meat, eggs and protein foods as possible and supplement it with protein shakes on top of that. But is this really necessary?

Calvin views protein intake differently. He was following Pilon’s advice from the book How Much Protein. He didn’t watch or track his protein intake, the only thing he knew exactly is that he took 52 grams of protein powder each day and that’s it. Based on his diet, his protein intake was around 80-100 grams, which goes against the conventional wisdom of eating 150-200 grams a day to build muscle.

Calvin didn’t even worry about calorie intake. To prevent from gaining fat, he was eating mostly fruits and vegetables and regularly fasting.

Not exactly something you would find in a fitness magazine.

And all this obviously worked for him. He gained several pounds of muscle, and is no longer called skinny and is definitely on the right track.

Here is the take away for skinny guys who are interested in gaining more muscles in a short period of time:

  1. If you don’t have the experience don’t create your own workouts based on advice from fitness magazines and bodybuilding forums, find a professional workout program that is designed to help you achieve your goals
  2. Be consistent with your workouts
  3. Focus on your lifting form rather than lifting as heavy as possible with crappy technique
  4. Push hard, don’t be afraid of doing the hard work
  5. Follow the workout as it is written, if it says do 10 reps, pick the weights that you will be able to do only 10 reps with perfect form
  6. Take creatine every day, protein supplement might also help a bit
  7. Don’t worry about the protein intake so much, if you get about 80-100 grams a day, it’s enough. Focus on the training because that is what will force your muscles to grow

Here are few questions that you will get answers to during the interview:

  • How fast can I expect my muscles to grow?
  • How would I know if I plateaued on muscle growth?
  • How many years I have before muscle growth slows down?
  • If you don’t eat enough protein what will happen to the muscle?
  • How can weight training help my body become more efficient at protein consumption?
  • Do I have to count calories every day?

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Muscle Building, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Adonis Index: The Shape of an Athlete

October 12, 2011 by

Building your body into it’s best shape is also going to build it into a high performance shape. Many top level athletes have a distinct body shape that is determined by the sport they play. More specifically the type of training they do starts to shape their bodies into it’s overall form that makes them recognizable as an athlete of their chosen sport.

The Adonis Index ratio is not meant to be a sport performance look but rather it falls inline with research on what is the best looking body…but it also happens to be a body that fits inline with the look and shape of some of the top power athletes in North America, namely professional football players.

Football is a unique sport because it has players of widely varying sizes all on the field at the same time. It’s quite common to find offensive linemen as tall as 6’8 and in excess of 350lbs in weight as well as defensive backs around 5’9 and 170lbs…and every size in between.

Various professional athletes will have a specific and recognizable form that is dictated by their degree of fat mass and muscle mass.

Taken from Mens Health. Each athlete is comparably lean but with varying degrees of muscle mass, starting with a distance runner, NHL hockey player, UFC figher and NFL linebacker.

The look and size you end up at will also be dictated by your fat mass, muscle mass, and the specific size of each muscle group.

In today’s podcast, we talk about the specific size and strength of some of these athletes and how their measurements fit inline with the Adonis Index ratio. Make no mistake, a body at the golden ratio is also a high performance powerful body.

John

Login and Download Podcast Here

For more information as well as how to get access to Adonis UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Adonis UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

 

Filed Under: Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: ,

Overcoming Emotional Eating: Reprogramming Your Mind to Control Your Weight

October 10, 2011 by

Changing the look and shape of your body requires a holistic approach. This means the change has to come both with your physiology and psychology especially if you struggle with emotional or stressful eating.

Physiology simply means getting your calories under control, making more sensible food and eating decisions as well as sticking to a regular exercise program that is well designed to move you towards your health and fitness goals whatever they may be.

Dr Nicola Bird Founder of Self Imaging Therapy

You can even think of the physiology part as the things that are obviously outwardly such as going to the gym, choosing smaller portion sizes, and ensuring that your diet is based more on whole foods that satisfy your needs without over consuming calories from dense sources.

The physiology is what you read about in fitness magazines, and it’s the information that gets cluttered, contradicted, and over consumed. This is because the physiology for many people isn’t the problem. For some people it’s the psychology.

Getting a handle on the psychological aspects of weight control is an entirely different matter and it’s not so obvious what is happening in your mind and with your emotions. Taking control of your psychology and learning to reprogram yourself for weight loss success requires just as much work as the physiology, but this is a different kind of work.

If you think you have an emotional or psychological issue with eating and weight control the first step is getting to the root of the issue. This is hard and in many cases uncomfortable work, and the answer isn’t always obvious. In many cases you’ll be the last person to know what the real issue is until you start doing the work to find out.

Click this image to check out Nicolas book on Amazon

These are usually deep rooted issues that touch on your sense of identity and self worth. It will involve undoing old psychological patterns and laying down new ones, and it requires repetition to make it stick, just like working out.

To truly change your body for good, you must change both your physiology AND your psychology. Changing one without the other isn’t enough.

In today’s podcast, I interview Dr. Nicola Bird about changing your psychology to help overcoming emotional and stress related eating to make a real lasting change in your body. She is my psychotherapist and the ace up my sleeve that helps me stay balanced and keeps me moving forward.

We’ll discuss the root of the identity crisis that many people face when they do finally make a change in their body. We will also talk about why so many people self sabotage and become their own worst enemy when they try to change their bodies.

This is a great interview and I suggest you take notes if emotional or stress eating is an issue you’ve been struggling with.

Finally if you like what you hear from Nicola you can visit her website here and even book a session to start working through your own issues with her over the phone. I highly recommend it if you feel stuck or hitting a sabotage point that you cannot overcome. I find that her methods are the most effective way to start getting your psychology inline with your physiology for a lasting change.

John

LISTEN:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: body image, Food, Podcasts, weight loss Tagged With: , ,

Unethical Diet and Fitness Marketing: It’s Everywhere.

October 5, 2011 by

The diet health and fitness industry has it’s fair share of shady salesmen and dubious claims. In fact, it might be the worst offender for false claims and marketing ‘hope’ with no real science or evidence to back up the claims. The marketing in the diet and fitness and health industries are largely based around a fear based model.

This sign should be outside of every health food store in north ameica.

The basic pattern is to get you to become aware and afraid of something that you were never aware of or afraid of, work you  up into a frenzy about it, then sell you a solution to remove the fear. This is the easy way out of marketing and sales. It’s also irresponsible and in many cases can cause serious psychological harm and turmoil for the unassuming customer.

The problem stems from a blurring of the lines between what is a real health practitioner vs a pseudo practitioner. Who can you trust? Who has a read background and a real degree that qualifies them to give you real health advice and guidance?

Should you be listening to the ‘fitness co-ordinator’ at the local gym? Or even worse the sales rep who is trying to hustle memberships and personal training? Or should you restrict your  advice to your family physician? It’s hard to know where to draw the line and who to listen to and who to ignore.

In todays uncensored podcast we’ll discuss these blurry lines and give an example of advice gone wrong. The industry is inherently irresponsible so the onus is on you to take responsibility for your health, and for what advice you  choose to follow.

Coincidentally the day we recorded this podcast this story about reebok having to pay $25 million for false claims on their ‘toning shoes’ hit the interwebs. Check it out here: Reebok gets slammed for false claims

John
John

Login and Download Podcast Here

For more information as well as how to get access to Adonis UNCENSORED, click the link below:

Adonis UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

 

Filed Under: Podcasts, Uncensored Podcasts S01 Tagged With: ,

How Protein Bars Kept Him from Losing Fat: Interview with Mike Schaefer

October 3, 2011 by

Mike Schaefer placed third in the Adonis Index Transformation Contest. He has done an amazing job. Obviously he lost a lot of fat and managed to achieve great muscle definition. In today’s interview Mike talks about his journey of struggle. He explains how he was trying all sorts of different approaches and what finally helped him get into the Adonis Index Contest shape.

Here take a look at his before picture’s and compare them to his afters.

Mike's Adonis Index Transformation Front Pictures

Once Mike lost all the fat he was able to finally see how much muscles he has built over the years. Listen to the interview to find out how he did it.

Mike's Adonis Index Transformation Back Pictures

Mike's back shots.

If you are currently not very comfortable going to a pool party or to a beach with your friends you are exactly where Mike was a few weeks ago when he started the contest. Mike was working out pretty much his whole life, but he never had six pack abs or even a lean body. It all started several months ago with him wanting to change and making a commitment to get in the best shape of his life. The trouble was he didn’t really know what getting in shape meant and how to do it. After reading a few fitness magazines he decided to get the look of the guys on the cover and started following the advice he read in those magazines.

He thought that in order to lose weight he needed to add some new muscle. You probably heard this in the past. Add an “extra” 20 pounds of muscle by bulking up to 200 lbs to speed up your metabolism and you will burn all the fat and your muscles will just somehow magically pop out. Mike calls this “muscling your way up to leanness”.  Because he wanted to start losing fat and believed this approach to be true he started working out like a maniac and eating like a maniac as well.

This is what he read in the magazines and believed to be true: “You need eat to be big. You need to eat tons of protein. Protein is a building block to all muscles, without it muscles just “fade away”. Without pre-workout and post-workout supplements you will not be able to build muscle, which means you won’t burn those extra 50 calories per pound of muscle and start losing fat.”..yadda yadda. Mike fell for all of it.

When you look at his before picture you will see that it didn’t really help him lose any fat at all. Quite the opposite. He didn’t believe in adding cardio or other activity, adding calories was on the radar not cutting them.

He thought that if professional bodybuilders eat 7000 calories and spread that in 10-12 meals a day he should do something similar, so he started eating up to 4000 calories EVERY day. He ate as much as he could. He always made sure he ate lots of protein bars to get enough protein every day. He was taking lots of supplements that didn’t really do anything for him, but like he said, he was convinced that he should be taking them, so he did, despite the results.

Does this sound familiar? Have you ever tried something like that in the past yourself? If you did my guess is that you haven’t lost any weight at all. This is because fat loss doesn’t work that way and there is a much better approach.

After Mike got to 210 lbs the fat was still there, he wasn’t able to see his muscles and that raised some self-doubt about what he was doing. Then he hit the 220 lbs and he got really worried, these results just weren’t part of the plan. It felt really uncomfortable, he started to be having some weird retention issues and even things like his ankles would get swollen. Not a nice thing to go through.

Because his previous weight loss attempts resulted in weight gain and mostly fat gain he decide to look for a different approach. His new goal was to get rid of all that fat for a beach vacation and get six pack abs for the first time in his life. Here is what Mike did for this contest (the difference between the pictures above).

Fat loss is pure math. There is no secret in specific food combinations or macro nutrient ratios. It’s all about calories in and calories out.

We could break this into several steps:

  1. Calculate your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate).
  2. Figure out how much fat you wanna lose
  3. Decide on how big deficit you are going to create per day/week/month

Mike decided to shoot for1000 calories deficit a day, which makes it 7000 calories per week (almost 2 pounds of fat loss per week). At first he tried to do it just through diet alone. He though that this will help him finally start losing fat. Well that didn’t really work as he explains he couldn’t sustain this. He decided to eat around his maintenance and not go below BMR, but instead create a deficit by working out and doing additional cardio. This pattern worked, he managed to keep his energy during the day, he wasn’t moody and he still could work out to max intensity in the gym.

If you are a big guy like Mike, eating below your BMR might be way too strict and not possible to maintain for a longer time than a few days. However, cardio and additional physical activity might be the path for you if you manage to keep the calories around your BMR. This might be the key for you to finally start losing fat.

Listen to the interview to get the complete picture of what Mike did to prepare for the contest photo shoot and find out what you need to do yourself.

Here are the programs mentioned in the interview:

Listen to the interview here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Fat Loss, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , , , , ,

Adonis Index Coaching Call

September 28, 2011 by

It’s been approximately 4 weeks into the 6th Adonis Index transformation contest and it’s a perfect time to do an inventory of what has been working and what needs some work.

If weight loss is your issue you have to remind yourself that the process is not linear. Some weeks are going to go really smooth and others are going to be a lot bumpier. Muscle building is the same thing, some weeks just feel like a lot more progress is happening than others.

It's time to find your exercise groove just like Meatwads 'powerwalking'

This is sometimes tough to deal with as your  daily and weekly effort seems to feel linear and consistent even though your results are not. The key at this point is recognizing that the path has it’s ups and downs and to be consistent over the long term. Twelve weeks is going to go by in a flash. Finding a groove is important and sticking with the parts that are working is going to keep you moving forward.

Give yourself some room for change, but don’t try to change everything at once. Review your list of what is working and what needs changing, pick the one or two most important things that need to change and make a plan. Give it about 1-2 weeks to see if what you’re changing is working then move on. If something doesn’t work, discard it and try something else.

Remember that this process is not perfect or smooth, it’s a controlled stumble forward.

In todays coaching call we’ll cover what to do at the quarter contest point and how to set up your inventory list, and how to think your way through the next 4 weeks of the contest.

John

LISTEN TO THE COACHING CALL:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Android | RSS

Filed Under: Contest, Podcasts, Transformation Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »
Support