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Can You Go Past Your Genetic Ideal with More Protein?

July 18, 2012 by

Here’s the second part of this month’s UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.

Here’s what you discovered in the first part (link to the 1st part here):

  • What’s catch up growth
  • What’s the disinhibition/inhibition model and how does  it apply to muscle growth
  • How taking drugs basically means adding another engine to your car (body) meaning what bodybuilders do, doesn’t apply to your case in any way
  • That fitness media completely loses touch with scientific research
  • You can’t stimulate your body to grow more than it’s designed to, you can only remove inhibitors to allow your body to keep growing to its full ideal
  • Different inhibitors that are preventing your muscle from growing
  • That almost every single image you see of bodybuilders is enhanced, but after a while you’ve gotten used to it and started thinking of it as your genetic ideal

What Role Do Protein and Amino Acids Play in Muscle Growth?

It’s generally accepted that higher amino acid intake allows for muscle synthesis in the otherwise fasted state, but…

Can higher protein intake stimulate more muscle growth?

…the truth is, you can’t eat your way to muscle growth.

That’s just not going to happen.

In reality your goal should be to hit an adequate amount, in both calories and protein. Everyone thinks the key is in some sort of excess, but that’s the “stimulation model” forced at you by fitness media.

You have to realize that everybody has an energetic reserve. In fact a large person can go days without eating and still not have it affect the metabolic processes in his body.

It’s no the deficit itself that’s the determinant, but the ability to handle it, which depends on the amount of the reserve. In other words, the leaner you are the more and more frequently you will eat.

…And what if you try to eat more?

Well, in a nutshell your body deals with excess by burning it, storing it or by getting rid of it.

So, let’s say you buy a weight gainer product and you try to dose your way up to bigger muscles.

Well, once you listen to todays podcast you’ll understand that you’re consciously investing in storing these excess calories as fat! That sucks, doesn’t it?

But that’s pretty much what the food and supplement companies are selling you. You are paying to be fat, how crazy is that?

Now that applies mostly to excess calories, but too much protein works almost the same. Most guys think you have to take a protein shake five times a day and even in the middle of the night, because your “body is starving“, right?

The truth is that your body is pretty well-designed and it handles excess protein in a smart way – it stores it as a reserve and uses it during your fasted state.

There is a sweet spot to every biological process. You can also imagine each process as a spectrum. On the left side you have a malnourished, 14 year-old marathon runner and on the right side you have the wanna be bodybuilder who is mega dosing calories and protein, but he is just getting fat. Both are extremes, you want to be in the middle, eat enough protein and calories to maintain what you have and build even more muscle while losing all the fat and getting ripped.

One of the keys to understanding how all this works is realizing that your body is not static, it’s dynamic.

Your body is breaking down and building things up every day – you are not built of the same stuff as you were a year ago.

Just like your bank account, something goes in, something goes out, so over time it may look the similar, but it’s never the exact same money.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will discover and learn:

  • What’s the genetic ideal and genetic ideal shape for you and if you can go beyond it
  • What role does protein play and what you need to do to remove protein intake as an inhibitor
  • The answer to whether extra protein intake helps with muscle building
  • What happens when you get from the adequate intake spectrum below to the low levels of caloric and protein intake or on the other hand to high levels of excessive intake
  • What are your only ways of affecting the shape of your body
  • How the environment you live in translates into your ability to get in shape
  • What body are you capable of building when you remove all of the inhibitors
  • What’s novel stimulus and how it relates to muscle growth
  • What’s the difference in muscle gains and strength gains
  • If small forearms are preventing you from making your arms bigger
  • How a calf injury can mean shoulder pain and inability to work out properly
  • Revealing an argument why you should fast to remove yet another inhibitor
  • Whether working out and or running is removing an inhibitor, introducing new inhibitor or accelerating your growth (hint: it’s not the one you think)
  • How to look at your life with a new mindset and target all the inhibitors and remove them

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Filed Under: Sage Advice Tagged With: , , , , ,

Eliminate Inhibitors and Muscle Growth Will Be The Default State of Your Body

July 4, 2012 by

Welcome to Season 2 of our UNCENSORED Podcasts!

What really is muscle growth? Do you think it has been studied and understood by scientists?

In the bodybuilding community, there is a strong belief that we don’t have any research on muscle growth and muscle building.

That’s not true.

There are a ton of papers on this subject, the results are just not what we would like them to be, that’s why it’s usually brushed under the table.

A New Way of Thinking about Muscle Growth

We’ve always been lead to believe that you need to “boost your muscle growth”, find ways to eat more protein, more calories, basically do everything you can to stimulate your muscles to grow even more.

The only issue with this approach is that you can’t do it, because it’s impossible without the use of drugs.

Today, Barban and Pilon will show you how the typical approach, as explained by others who focus on bro-science in this industry, is completely the opposite to how your body REALLY works.

To explain this in simple terms, let’s imagine your body works like a car and you are the driver. In this case, you would have one foot on the gas and the other one on the brake. However, in this case, you can’t press your foot further down on the gas pedal: you already are crashing the floor with it.

What you need to do is something else – you need to completely remove the other foot from the brake. Because once you get your other foot off the brake, the car starts going forward. To complete the analogy, your body starts growing.

So instead of trying to “force” your muscles to grow, you just need to remove the inhibitors that are preventing you from reaching your golden body shape.

The minute you are born, you start growing, but let’s take away juvenile muscle growth and even steroid induced growth from this to make things really simple.

Now, you may be saying, if this is true then why don’t I already have a 20 inch bicep, right?

Well, here’s how this works. Your body has a predefined way of growth, so if you are supposed to be 190 pounds at 6’1” it will try to get there by default and it will ALWAYS try getting there until you are 190 and 6’1”.

If your body isn’t where it should be yet, then it’s not because you haven’t done enough to boost the growth, yet it’s rather because you haven’t removed the things that are preventing your body from growing the way it wants.

Let me repeat: Your body wants to grow, however there are roadblocks called inhibitors that are preventing it from growing.

These inhibitors can be nutritional, environmental and even mental. There are also genetic inhibitors that keep the body from uncontrolled or unchecked growth, which like it or not is not something you would want. (ex: a tumor or cancer is an example of uncontrolled or unchecked growth)

So some inhibitors have to be there.

In essense, what you can do is find a way to remove some of them, so your body can reach it’s full potential.

In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will discover and learn:

  • Why removing inhibitors is a way to go to build more muscle
  • How many calories you need to eat to build 5 pounds of muscle a month
  • Some of the inhibitors that are preventing your body from growing
  • Why studies on rats are completely irrelevant when making a point about human body
  • Why ‘extra’ protein will not help you build muscle
  • The reason behind “How I gained 30 pounds with this workout” marketing stories and why they’re all likely true, and also to be expected
  • More insights from the Disinhibition theory of muscle growth that makes most fitness marketing seem outdated
  • Why running marathons might be detrimental to muscle growth

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Filed Under: Muscle Building, Uncensored Podcasts S02 Tagged With: , , , ,

Give Yourself Permission to Lift Light

May 4, 2012 by

We have talked about the permission to be light a lot lately, especially it comes up in the interviews, because guys are starting to realize that being 200 pounds might not be the answer to a great looking body. You would have to be about 6’2” and train for at least 10 years in order to be lean and ripped at 200 pounds, that’s just how it is, no one will tell you this, but height is an important factor in determining your weight.

Today, we are going to discuss something similar, yet different. We won’t talk about the ideal physique, but rather about the training itself that will be responsible for building you such a physique.

If you have been listening to the last couple of interviews you may have noticed that more and more guys are starting to focus on things like

  • Training rather than on the supplements
  • Workout structure rather than on the high protein diets
  • Mind-muscle connection and muscle contraction rather than on the amount of weight lifted

And this goes completely against the conventional saying: “lift heavy, sweat blood in the gym, take protein shake exactly 3.8 minutes after your workout followed by post-workout meal 30 minutes after that”.

Well, Adonis Index made it’s name on going against the conventional approach. However, it’s also made it’s name on having a string of dozens of successful transformations from guys having 4 kids and 4 jobs or guys with injuries lasting decades, yet despite their condition or lifestyle circumstances or training history, they still achieved their physique goals and honed in on their ideal body shape. And more and more of them as they progress are focusing on this unconventional training approach.

The headline of this article is to lift light. And let’s be honest that just doesn’t sound all that sexy, does it? Chances are this would not get printed in a fitness magazine, yet if you get this concept it might be the difference between gaining 8 pounds compared to 3 pounds of muscle mass in the same time period.

What’s the deal with this mind-muscle connection and workout structures anyway, why can’t you just lift heavy to grow more muscles?

permission-lift-light

Is your training just about lifting heavy or are you really training your muscles and focusing on the contraction?

Well, the truth is that a fare amount of guys that try to lift really heavy, thinking that’s the way to go, experience a loss in their strength.

Have you ever done a really tough workout, but instead of just feeling sore, you felt really weak for several days? Or you may have just noticed that your strength decreased over a couple of weeks.

Well, if that happened to you, you may count yourself lucky, because you could have also seriously injured yourself.

I’ve even seen some serious chest tendon injuries as an immediate result of heavy bench press and testing the “max”.

Let me tell you something, if you are a guy that can’t do a bench press without someone else helping you with the bar and your whole body is shaking and almost dancing on the bench while you are lifting the bar up, you may want to reconsider your training style. Not only that your friend can do a biceps curl on his own without you lying under the bar, but you alone are not training instead you’re simply stroking your ego by attempting to lift more weight than your current body can.

Best case scenario – you will simply just look dumb, worst case scenario – you will get injured and won’t be able to work out for months or years.

Not only that lighter weights are bearable on your joints and CNS, but with lighter weights you can do something that you just can’t with the heavy weights.

What it is?

Well, you can actually focus on TRAINING the muscle.

If you are lifting so much that you are only thinking about putting the bar down after the first two reps, you are not really training.

Workout Structure Should Dictate the Resistance

What really drives me nuts, well apart from the whole fitness industry, is when somebody comes up to me and says: “Hey how much do you lift on bench press?” or “How strong are your biceps?”. This just doesn’t make sense and just shows that you have no idea what you are talking about if you ask a question like that.

Most people do the 3 set-8 reps-rest until fresh type of training that they’ve heard the first day of their workout life from some trainer. Some people will do that for the rest of their lives.

The truth is that there is no universal way to train, every workout type is different, so asking about the weight without mentioning the other variables of your training is kind of short sighted.

If you asked me how strong I was in the middle of the 2nd workout in the week 7 of the IXP on my biceps, then I would tell you. However, this is a completely different question, you are being specific and we both know what type of training structure are we talking about.

Let’s elaborate on this a bit.

If you do the regular Adonis Index Workout, then most of your training will be around 5,8 and 13 reps with around 90 or 120 seconds rest. However, if you decided to follow the IXP protocol, you may be doing three supersets in a row with no rest in between. So, this means 6 sets in a row, back to back, no rest. Do you think that you can lift the same weight in both of those training protocols in a given exercise?

Of course not.

Just like with look, weight itself tells nothing, because it’s all about proportions and shape, and the same applies here. If you said just how much you lift, you gave a number that holds no meaning, because nobody would know whether you did 3 reps or 21. And that’s a pretty big difference. Not speaking of the fact that in that given workout day, you may have been doing the exercise as a first one, while normally you do it as a last.

Here is test for you.

Take one routine you normally do, change nothing, just add three sets of 10 reps with 90 sec rest of pull-ups. In the first week, do this exercise as the first exercises of the day, so before you start your regular routine. Next week once you are fully recovered, do the same routine, but this time do the pull-ups as the last exercise, after the your routine.

You see where we are going with this?

There is just so many variables that will translate into you changing weights all the time on the same exercises.

Here is a short list of the stuff that will dictate how heavy you will be able to go:

  • Sets, reps done in the exercise (3×21 vs 6×6)
  • Rest after each set (30 sec vs 90 sec)
  • Regular sets vs Supersets vs Pyramids and other types
  • Frequency of your workouts and frequency of you training each muscle group
  • The sequence in which you will do the exercises in your workout
  • Sleep – how much you got the night before, the quality of that sleep

There might be a few others, but the point is to show you, that it’s important to detach yourself from the number on the plate or on the dumbbell and choose based on your workout structure.

A smart choice of the weight will help you stay away from injury and allow you to train your muscles properly. Which brings us to the last part of today’s lesson.

You Can’t Expect Your Muscles to Grow from Lifting

Not only that most guys believe that protein intake is the trigger for muscle growth, but they also think that the lift itself gives your muscles incentive to grow.

Well, not really. Your muscles don’t know how much you lift, what workout you use, how many reps you do, only your mind does.

The only thing your muscle feels is the repeated contraction against greater resistance, which makes it grow.

Big difference.

So, next time you are in the gym, make sure you don’t pick the heaviest dumbbells in there, thinking how amazingly strong you are going to look to everyone around you, but pick a reasonable one and focus on doing the motion with perfect form and really feeling the muscle contracting and working.

If you apply this advice you should see results in both strength and look.

Summary of Today’s Lesson:

  • Leave your ego out of this, preferably at the gym’s entrance
  • Try to detach yourself from the numbers on the plates and focus on feeling the muscle working rather then lifting some specific weight
  • Realize that muscles grow not because of protein intake or weight lifting, but because you are repeatedly creating strong contraction against greater resistance…weights are just a tool to create resistance
  • Understand that there are different workout structures and they will determine how heavy will you be able to go
  • Focusing on mind-muscle connection, feeling the muscle, contracting it in the fullest way possible is way more important than lifting the heaviest weights you can manage…form ALWAYS trumps weight…ALWAYS
  • Try several different workouts like AI 3.0, ATS or IXP to understand this concept in more detail, you will learn all this by experience
  • There is a difference between lifting and training, ask yourself: “Do I want to be a weight lifter or be in killer shape, what’s more important for me?” and act accordingly
  • Of course you still need to lift a reasonable amount of weight, doing curls with pencils will not get you anywhere (I know, stupid, but had to be said)

Talk to you soon,

Vaclav Gregor

Filed Under: Greg's Lessons, Muscle Building, Workout Design Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

“State of the Adonis Union” Inaugural Address by Allen Elliott

April 27, 2012 by

“The State of The Adonis Union is getting stronger.  And we’ve come too far to turn back to the couch.” – Allen Elliott, Adonis Lifestyle Ambassador

My Adonis Lifestyle Journey began when I made the Watch List in Contest AT3. I received tremendous support from members of the AI/VI community to pursue my fitness endeavors. After winning the AT7 Open Level 2 Contest Category I'm inspired to support and motivate others to begin their own Adonis Lifestyle Journey.

Hello, my name is Allen Elliott and I’d like to share my “Adonis Lifestyle” Story with you. While stumbling upon the Adonis Index website over three years ago, I could’ve never imagined the incredible amount of success and personal satisfaction this system has provided for myself and my fitness endeavors. As an ex-athlete, I’d hear the horror stories’ of guys who started off in great shape only to be de-railed later in life & never recovering.  Now that training for performance was no longer a goal or requirement, I was desperately looking for direction.  I found the Adonis Index Systems  to be straightforward and applicable to anyone desiring to improve their overall “Look” as opposed to specific performance training.

After completing the First Week of Workouts, I took the plunge and never looked back.  Training exclusively with Adonis Index Systems, I have competed and placed with top honors in Natural Bodybuilding/ Men’s Physique Fitness Competitions, graced the runway in several prominent fashion shows, and have published work as a fitness model. Following the Adonis Lifestyle has given me unstoppable confidence to pursue my fitness goals with a relentless tenacity.

Allen Elliott | Fitness Model Comp Card || Credits: N3K Photo Studios | Bertron Anderson Photography | Michael Martin Photography

When John contacted me and asked if I would like to become a guest blogger on the site, I was deeply honored and graciously accepted his offer. My Goal while giving back to the Adonis Index Community is to: Supply, Train, and Build.

Supply–As a guest blogger, I will post helpful tips for contest preparation, provide insight on making the transition from an AI Contest to a “Live Show”, and share updates from my Journey in the World of Fitness Modeling.

Train–I’ll also be active in the AI forums to chat with members about training styles, body-part specialization within the AI system, and any other topics that may arise that I can help with.

Build–Preparing for the road ahead, John and myself are masterminding to bring you the next Adonis Index workout.  This advanced workout will show you how I prepare for Fitness Competitions and Model Photo-Shoots, Adonis Index Style.

As we carry forward the plans and programs to better help you achieve your fitness goals I’d like to remind you to enjoy your fitness journey, the results are worth the effort. Stay Tuned! The best is yet to come.

Allen Elliott

Filed Under: body image, Contest, Fat Loss, Featured Articles, Goals, Muscle Building, Podcasts, Reviews, Weekly Guide, Workout Design Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How Do Muscles Grow? Uniform versus Non-Uniform Muscle Growth

November 30, 2011 by

Working out with weights causes muscles to adapt and grow, this is nothing new. The pattern of muscle growth however, is not as obvious as we might have thought.

Most people think you train a muscle and the entire muscle simply gets bigger in a uniform and evenly spread out way…but this is a false assumption.

New research is showing that muscles do not grow in a uniform pattern, in fact research is showing certain areas or ‘chunks’ of the muscle grow to a greater degree than other ‘chunks’.

This non-uniform growth is due to many factors that come into play when we start working out with weights. These factors include:

The Anatomy of a Muscle

1. Volume of training

2. Intensity of training

3. Frequency of training

4. Velocity of reps performed

5. Muscle pennation angle

6. Muscle fiber length

7. Distribution of muscle fiber types within a given muscle group

8. Type of exercise performed

9. Previous training experience

And this is just the short list.

Modern imaging techniques such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and 3D MRI are starting to reveal what is really going on in the muscle when we lift weights in an effort to make them bigger and stronger.

In the UNCENSORED audio program named “Non Uniform Muscle Adaptation – How Do Muscles REALLY Grow?”, released today, we review the latest research on muscle adaptations to strength training and determine how much or how little of a muscle we can really activate while working out and what is necessary for maximum muscle growth.

We also look into the research that the same muscle does not grow at the same rate from top to bottom and we may indeed be able to change the ‘shape’ of a given muscle group if we know how to active the entire muscle.

John

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

Adonis UNCENSORED Premium Podcast

 

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

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?

 

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