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“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: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Goal Hijacking and the Muscle Index

October 18, 2010 by

The Muscle Index

The Muscle Index

The Muscle Index

We talked about the Muscle Index last week and how it’s a better measure of true lean muscle mass gains.

My latest Muscle Index score is 33.4

So this is the relative number that goes with the look and shape I have right now. Anyone with a similar Muscle Index will likely have a similar look as I do (regardless of their height)

If you’re significantly more muscular than I am your number will be higher than this and if you’re less muscular or have significantly more bodyfat your number will be lower than this.

For me the Muscle Index is the best way to measure real progress towards building a lean muscular physique.

The Adonis index ratio is part of the Muscle Index and therefore having a good AI ratio is incorporated right into a good MI (Muscle Index).

The actual measurements of the muscle index are outlined in the manual which is now included in the base Adonis Index Workout system. I suggest reading this manual and following the strength testing procedure as indicated to come up with your true strength measurements.

This way you will have an accurate and comparable baseline to start charting your true lean muscle mass progress. I believe that the Muscle Index is the best way to measure real changes in muscle mass.

Goal Hijacking

If you are the type who regularly exercises you already know that it’s easy to lose track of where you are in the gym or at home. Bouncing from one workout to the next and trying new things is very common and it’s easy to get distracted from what your trying to do.

You’ve got to own your goals in the gym no matter what they are. I don’t care if you want to be bigger or leaner, or both, or want to run a marathon, or a triathlon or bench press 500lbs…you can even have multiple goals, some performance based and some based on the look and shape of your body.

Whatever it is be sure that you’re on target with the real goal as it is very easy to adopt a training idea or style as an identity that completely derails you from the original goal you had in the first place. This can happen with powerlifting, crossfitting, ‘functional training’, and many other styles of exercise. If you’re honest to goodness goal is just to bench press 400lbs no matter what it takes to do that, then that is great, but our program isn’t really going to help you with that…in fact most programs won’t, the real answer for that is years of powerlifting and likely some steroids.

If on the other hand your goal is to build a great looking lean muscular physique without drugs then we got something for you!

In today’s podcast we’ll talk about the Muscle Index and how to apply it and how to recognize when your goals might have become hijacked from you when you weren’t looking.

John

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Filed Under: Goals, Muscle Building, Podcasts Tagged With: , ,

“Stubborn belly fat” – What it really Is

October 11, 2010 by

Serge Nubret was RIPPED!

Measuring muscle growth and fat loss isn’t as easy as stepping on the scale although this seems to be the default way most people try to do it.

The look of your body is determined by fat mass, muscle mass and water. But this isn’t as straight forward as you might think.

Body Fat Storage Patterns

Fat mass is not stored uniformly around your body, and there is a storage rate and burn patter to your fat as well. In other words some places store more fat than others (ie: Belly) and some places burn fat slower than others (ie: Belly).

We know that on a mans body, fat tends to store faster and to a higher degree in the abdomen area viscera (underneath your abs around your intestines and organs). The visceral fat actually burns quickly and this is part of the reason why your waist measurement can decrease dramatically without your abs becoming visible right away.

This fat that is above your abs is what most people refer to as ‘stubborn fat’. In reality this fat doesn’t have a bad attitude and is no more ‘stubborn’ than your shoes (I don’t know why people try to give fat a personality like this). The fat covering your abs has a lower blood supply and less fat mobilizing receptors than other fat compartments in your body, this means it takes longer for this fat to be completely burned off compared to other areas…hence the reason why your abs are the last thing to show when you’re dieting down.

This doesn’t mean you can’t get rid of this fat, it just means that it’ll be the last place you’ll finally see definition, and it’s likely not going to correlate with pounds lost on the scale when you get to your leanest look.

Measuring Muscle Growth

For experienced lifters muscle growth is also difficult to measure with a scale. Daily fluctuations in body weight can easily mask any short term change in muscle mass. The size of a muscle is somewhat transient and true changes in it’s size require longer term measurement intervals to truly track changes (6-12 months).

Measuring circumferences is a much better and more accurate way to measure changes in muscle growth compared to the scale, at least this way you have proof of where the size/muscle really is.

Measuring Fat Loss and Muscle Building Progress

Measuring both muscle building and fat loss progress at the same time is virtually impossible on a scale as you can do both with no change in your bodyweight.

Since bodyweight simply cannot tell you much about your short term changes in fat or muscle mass a new and better metric is necessary…enter the Muscle Index.

As we talked about last week the Muscle Index is a way of measuring how muscular your body is withing relying on the scale and correcting for gains in weight due to fat or extracellular water weight.

In other words, if you gain 10lbs, but it’s all from fat, water and thanksgiving dinner the muscle index calculation won’t lie, but the scale will.

In todays podcast I recruit the help of a good friend Bryan Chung. Bryan is a plastic surgeon resident and has his PhD in sports medicine. You can read is critical review of fitness research at his blog: http://www.evidencebasedfitness.blogspot.com/

We discuss how hard it really is for the average person to guess how much bodyfat they have and what they assume their body should weigh when they’re ‘in shape’. We also talk about the uneven fat distribution patterns of men and women and why relying too much on the scale can play mind games with you and derail your progress.

John

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Filed Under: Fat Loss, Muscle Building, Podcasts Tagged With: , , ,

The Muscle Index – Measuring Muscle Gains

October 4, 2010 by

Arnold had a good Muscle Index

Muscle building is probably one of the most misunderstood things in fitness. This lack of understanding is partly why we can fall for scam products and false claims.

As I’ve said before muscles are much more like water balloons than bricks, and the way we build them is much more like inflating a balloon than laying bricks.

Water accounts for over 80% of your muscle volume, and the amount of water you can fit/force into your muscles plays a major role in determining how big you can make them.

The actual protein ‘scaffolding’ of your muscle fibers/cells are what make up the rest.

Weight Training for Muscle Building:

1) It builds more protein so the scaffolding of your muscles cells is larger

2) It forces more water, glycogen and protein into your cells hydrating and filling them with more fluid (pumping them up)

The Slow Leak Theory of Muscle Growth

Your muscles are in a dynamic state of synthesis and degradation. If you don’t workout your muscles will eventually shrink back to their genetically predetermined original size.

In fact, if you don’t move or use your muscles at all (ie: immobilization in a cast or 100% bed rest) they will shrivel away to almost nothing.

The point is that your muscles function on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis. They will always revert back to a smaller size if you don’t force them to get bigger by lifting weights. As soon as you stop lifting weights they will start shrinking again.

Imagine that your muscles are constantly slowly leaking back to their original smaller size, and constant weight training is the only way to keep them pumped up.

How To Measure Muscle Growth

Most supplement ads and fitness sites will talk about gaining ‘pounds’ of muscle. This however is not an accurate way of measuring true changes in muscle mass. You and I could gain 5-8lbs of lean mass in one day simply from eating more food and drinking water. Our lean body mass would increase, our percentage of fat mass would decrease, but our muscle mass would not have changed.

True changes in muscle mass are harder to detect in experienced lifters and therefore there must be a more precise way to measure these changes. I have come up with a new way to measure changes in muscle mass that account for bodyweight and fat mass. This new measurement is called The Muscle Index.

Toxic Calorie Level

We’ll also talk about the Toxic Calorie level and how eating at this level is what causes fat gain, heart disease, diabetes, and other inflammatory disorders. Eating ‘big’ every once in a while isn’t so bad, but eating at your toxic calorie level on a regular basis will overwhelm your body and cause major problems.

In todays audio lesson we’ll talk about the Muscle Index and how to accurately measure changes in muscle mass.

We will also talk about the slow leak theory of muscle and why you must continue to lift weights in order to keep your muscles growing and even to maintain the size you’ve already built.

John

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Filed Under: Featured Articles, Podcasts Tagged With: ,
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