I just returned from a mini-vacation to Myrtle Beach and am now back in the thick of life.  While we were in Myrtle Beach they were having their yearly Marathon.  The runners passed right by the front of our hotel.  I happened to notice this at a point where the mid-pack runners and stragglers were passing by.  It was quite possibly one of the worst looking collections of human specimens you could imagine…it looked like you emptied out a Wal-Mart and told them all to take off running.  Lots of limping and knee-wraps going on.

Because of my work schedule and UE being booked solid, I had to work out at Clemson University’s Fike Gym.  Because of how my shifts are staggered, I have decided to perform a 3-way split that will occur about every 5th day over the next few workouts.  Yesterday’s workout was aimed at chest, back and abs.

Weighted Chin-Up

Dumbell Bench Press on 15 degree incline

Dumbell Row

Infimetric Chest Fly using a parallel grip pulldown bar

Hammer Abdominal Crunch (similar to the old Nautilus Clam-shell abdominal machine.

This was a fun workout.  I am quite sore in my chest today, and I presume this is from the infimetric chest fly.  I found that to get maximal inroad, I had to alter range of motion and cadence as the set progressed.  Ultimately the inroad was so deep that I could no longer hold the bar that I was using to transfer the infemtric force.  This was definitely an “intrinsic” experience.

The podcast at bulletproofexecutive.com should be up in the near future.  Dave Asprey and Armi Legge are great interviewers, so it should be worth a listen.  Today I also did a podcast with a Dr. Duke in Europe and I will provide that link when available.

Doug Holland sent me an email with a youtube attachment of him performing a 20 rep squat with 247 pounds.  This has got to be the best squat form I have ever seen.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kV5BAevh7q4

Post your WOW’s and your thoughts.

I did the following WOW on Sunday morning.  It was a quick solo mission as we had to drive to a neighboring town to spend the day with friends.

Lumbar Extension on SuperSlow Systems Pulldown (as pre-exhaust for)

MedX Leg Press (with end-stop technique).

MedX Chest press

Nautilus Pullover with SS retrofits

MedX Compound Row with SS cam

This was a brief, but intense and satisfying workout.  Today I feel great with very little systemic fatigue.  It has been very busy, so I do not have a scientific topic for this week’s WOW.  However, my overburdened schedule did prompt me to think about about the efficiency of the BBS approach.  The following is not intended to boast in any way (because anyone can do it), but it does illustrate the effectiveness of the BBS approach.  Here are some factors….I am 50 years old,  I am a full-time emergency physician in a high volume/high acuity emergency department (one of the most stressful occupations in existence), I work on a rotating shift basis (7am-3pm, 11am-7pm, 3pm-11pm, 7pm-1am, & 11pm-7am are this shifts I rotate amongst).  I have two active and willful children ages 8 and 10.  My children attend a school that is 45 minutes from our home, along with a full compliment of after school activities.  I have been happily married for 28 years.  I am a full partner in my practice.  I own and operate Ultimate Exercise which has 3 employees.  I write, travel, and lecture.  I post this blog every week.  Despite all that is going on,  the BBS approach allows me to be as strong as I have ever been and feel as good as when I was 19 years old.  If I can do it, anyone can do it.

In order to serve as grist for the discussion mill, I offer the following link to Chuck Spencer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Efc73sGYfk&feature=youtu.be

This is a very provocative video that will take you “further down the rabbit hole”.  Also, not the amazing condition that Chuck is in!  Not long ago, this man was dying of advanced rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.  He turned it all around with his own variation of the paleo diet and high intensity exercise.  Now what you see is the amazing condition that this 50 year old stays in at baseline.

I did the following WOW this weekend.  It was a good workout even though I was working evening shifts.

MedX Overhead Press

EZ bar biceps curl

Triceps pushdown on the SS Pulldown

Formulator Flex/Ext

Calf Exercise on the MedX Leg Press.

This week I was disappointed to learn that the presentation that Eric Daniels and I had planned for the 2012 Ancestral Health Symposium was not selected for inclusion.  The title of the proposed lecture is: From Spontaneous Organization to Central Planning in Just One Year:  How Policy Produced the Health Crisis and Will Cause Ancestral Health to Fail.

With a title like this it is little wonder that it was not accepted at an event run by the Harvard Food Law Society.  Like Leonard Peikoff once said…”if you are openly putting your head in a buzz saw, you should expect to get bloody”.  I proposed this talk after AHS11 because I saw a mounting tide of progressive sentiment that felt that things would be better if only public policy could be dictated by the “really smart people” at the meeting.  I wanted to show how when great ideas emerge from spontaneous organization and market forces, that there is a tendency to want to capture those great ideas that percolated from the bottom up and make them into societal policies that are enforced from the top down.  However, the enforcement of even good ideas from the top down by necessity stifles further creativity, prevents incorporation of new knowledge, and results in the good knowledge being applied improperly or out-of-context by a populace who receives its knowledge by an argument from authority.

The following article was recently published in the Journal of Exercise Physiology Online:  Is Truth in Authority or Authority in Truth? Limitations to the Publication of Scientific Research

James Fisher1, James Steele1 1Southampton Solent University, Southampton, UK

ABSTRACT

Fisher J, Steele J. Is Truth in Authority or Authority in Truth? Limitations to the Publication of Scientific Research. JEPonline 2012;15(1):57-64. This paper examines the limitations and potential bias that exist within efforts to publish articles in exercise physiology. By discussing perceptions that: (a) greater truth appears to exist based on the publishing authority or journal title, (b) that some organizations appear reluctant to change or progress their philosophies and thus recommendations, (c) that there is a large potential for bias in the peer review process, (d) that many research articles may end up in “the file drawer” unpublished because of their apparently insignificant findings, as well as (e) the importance of the impact factor, and (f) open access journals, we hope to enlighten young authors and remind experienced peers that science should be nothing more than an attachment to the truth. We believe the unbiased processes considered are invaluable in the scientific publication process, but that both perceptions and evidence presented herein support that the limitations exist and need consideration.

The full article shows the bias that exists in the academic/scientific publishing world and how to be vigilant against it.  There are many important scientific studies that never see that light of day because they have negative results, are clinically but not statistically significant, or they simply go against the grain of the establishment.  Most importantly, the concept of “Impact Factor” (getting published in a prestigious journal) is causing many good studies to not be noticed.  This occurs because authors are giving up if they cannot make it into a high Impact Factor journal that will gain them academic notoriety and also because readers of the literature think the less prestigious journals have less stringent review criteria (which is seldom true).

Accepting an argument from authority is damaging in any realm, including academics.  Bravo Dr’s Fisher and Steele!  The link to the full article is attached below.

http://faculty.css.edu/tboone2/asep/JEPonlineFebruary2012Fisher.pdf

P.S.  I am hopeful Dr. Daniels will still want to record the presentation to be posted at this site and on YouTube.

I did the following WOW around 11am Sunday.

SuperSlow Systems Pulldown (camless prototype)- Done in Jrep 1/3rds

Nautilus Pullover with SuperSlow retrofits.  Squeeze technique employed.

Med X Compound row with SuperSlow cam and retrofits.  Squeeze technique employed

Med X Chest Press.  Slow cadence, but no end-stop technique

Lumbar Extension on SSS Pulldown (as pre-exhaust for…)

Med X Leg Press with end-stop technique.

I was in the shower before my workout (when you can work out in an ideal environment you shower before your workout) when it dawned on me that I got to enjoy one more year on Earth than did Mike Mentzer.  Just when you begin to feel sorry for yourself for turning 50, you realize just how much you have to be grateful for (credit to my wife Wendy for putting me on this track).  As I look back one of the things I have been thankful for is the fact that I have gone out of my way to meet my heroes.  When I was about 32 years old I decided that I would try to meet as many of my heroes as possible.  The first thing I did along these lines was to visit the Hammer Strength Facility in Cincinnati and meet Gary Jones and Paul Brown.  After doing so I called Arthur Jones cold-turkey and asked to spend a day with him.  He very graciously spent an entire day with Wendy and I and proved to be one of the most memorable days of our lives.  I again spent a day with Arthur in 1996.  At this time I also got to meet El Darden while he was conducting his studies with “Upside Down Bodybuilding”.   In 1997 I met Greg Anderson and got put through the toughest workout of my life.  Later in 1997 I cold-called Ken Hutchins and had many lengthy discussions about exercise.  We got to meet personally in July of 1997 when I was invited to speak at the SuperSlow Guild convention.  In 1998 I got to meet my childhood idol Mike Mentzer courtesy of Greg and Anne-Marie Anderson and their HIT seminar.  After spending 2 years hashing out BBS with John Little, we finally got to meet in Fiji in the Summer of 2010.   The best thing about meeting my heroes is that they give you the sense that anything is possible.  They are able to do so not because they are superhuman.  They showed me what was possible because they were super humans.

Post your WOW’s and your thoughts.

I did the following WOW before going in to work.

MedX Overhead Press-used pop-pins for a triple drop

EZ bar biceps curl

Nautilus plate-load triceps extension

Formulator Flex/Ext

Med X Leg Press- Entire stack at “0″ holes and using a packing strap for end-stop technique

I was still in recovery mode when I arrived at work, but I was back to baseline as I began to see patients.  It has been a busy series of shifts, and I am again amazed at the poor protoplasm of the folks we see in the ER.  It is sad to know that almost everything I see could be prevented or reversed with simple diet and exercise interventions.  On the up side, lots of patients have an i-phone or i-pad with them to pass the time.  A lot of patients will “google” my name which unleashes a treasure trove a BBS articles, interviews and youtube clips.  This has led some of them to seek further advice on the lifestyle we advocate on this blog, whereas they otherwise never would have been receptive to any such advice.  Slowly and steadily we are changing things.

I have always maintained that muscle is the storehouse for “the active genotype” and that proper strength training results in a spontaneous rise in physical activity.  The following article is another one for the “BBS told you so file”.

High-intensity training increases spontaneous physical activity in children: a randomized controlled study.

Ed had an opening in the schedule at 10:00am, so I was invited down to UE for a 50th birthday beat-down.  We repeated my last WOW as Ed had everything tuned from the prior workout such that he could really deliver a whopper.  Without any awareness of my prior performance, I added a rep on everything.  Despite the intense urge for carpet time, I remained standing.  This was truly a fantastic workout for my 50th birthday, and I felt a much better tribute to the day (and to the spirit of BBS that John and I try to represent) than some psycho “milestone” workout.

Lumbar Extension on SS Pulldown- as pre-exhaust for….

Med X Leg Press- set up for end-stop technique

Med X Chest Press

Nautilus Pullover with SS Retrofits

Med X Compound Row with SS Retrofits

There is some fun stuff going on in the training world.  Chuck Spencer (Chasberi of the Darden forum) has moved his thinking and insights to his own blog.  If you are ready to “take the red pill” and “see how deep the rabbit hole goes” then hop over to www.go2strength.wordpress.com. Get a big cup of coffee and put on your thinking cap before you do, though….Chuck delves into some really deep material.  For every time you’ve done some HIT protocol and felt that something just wasn’t quite right, only to bury that feeling; Chuck will resurrect that feeling and offer some shocking insights into the origins of that feeling.  There are incredible similarities between his internalized approach to exercise and that of the RenEx guys, even though he has gravitated toward infimetrics instead of an “external load-based protocol”. What is coming out of this guy’s mind could change everything, or at the very least stimulate some fascinating discussions.

Chris Highcock over at www.conditioningresearch.com has a new book out called Hillfit. It is basically a high intensity training program directed toward hikers and climbers.  Even though it is directed at this particular sport, it is pertinent to any sport as it effectively shows how to combine (and separate) physical conditioning and skill conditioning in the most user-friendly fashion I have seen to date.

Speaking of Chris Highcock, hat tip to him for uncovering this gem that goes into the Body by Science “told you so” file.

The role of skeletal muscle glycogen breakdown for regulation of insulin sensitivity by exercise.

Since the interview at Dr. Mercola’s website (www.mercola.com) Body by Science has been selling like gangbusters!  This morning Amazon has listed BBS as “temporarily out of stock”.   You can still make purchases and Amazon promises to ship as soon as it is available and not to charge your credit card until your order ships.  I have contacted the publisher and made them aware of the situation and they will be re-stocking Amazon as quickly as possible.

Anyone wishing to order from Amazon should do so without concern for a significant delay in their order.  Anyone visiting from Dr. Mercola’s site, please feel free to join the discussions on our weekly WOW (workout of the week).

I had a day off and had to work day shifts on the weekend, so I took Ed and Sherry’s invitation to workout with the UE team.  I got to put Ed and Sherry through the paces incorporating some of my new toys for end-stop technique.  I went through the following workout supervised by Ed and Sherry (who were both anxious to deliver payback for the workouts I had just put them through).

Lumbar Extension on SuperSlow Pulldown (as pre-exhaust for…)

MedX Leg Press (set up for end-stop/squeeze technique commencing on the third rep)

Med X Chest Press (used a foam yoga block between the handles for end-stop/squeeze technique).  Also used pop-pins for a triple drop (heavy, medium, light)

Nautilus Pullover with SS retrofits (as pre-exhaust for…)

MedX Compound Row with SS cam

This was an incredibly intense workout.  Definitely on par with my RenEx visit…so much so that I was worried that I would be wiped out the next morning for my day shift.  Amazingly, I felt better systemically than I have in a very long time.  I actually felt like I could have worked out again Sunday or today.  Perhaps the supervision really curtailed “outroading” and extraneous, non-productive workload.  I have one more workout before my first workout at age 50.  I am trying to decide if I should have a benchmark workout (you know, the “I’m not really that old, look what I can do” sort of thing) versus just another well-planned productive workout.  I may lean towards the latter, because in the end we are all getting older just one day at a time.  Perhaps the BBS community can offer their thoughts and suggestions on this dilemma.

Post your WOW’s and your thoughts.

What better way to start off the New Year than with a WOW?  I did the following workout before heading into the ER for an afternoon shift.

MedX Overhead Press

Thick Bar Biceps Curl

Nautilus Plateloader Triceps Extension

Thick Bar Wrist Flexion/Extenison

MedX Leg Press

All sets were done to simple failure.  The only intensity amplifier was using an end-stop technique/squeeze on the leg press.  With the amount of ER work that I have been doing over the Holidays I have found it necessary to modulate the intensity of my workouts.  The interesting thing is that my (subjective) results seem to be just as good as when I am more rested and am able to push the intensity and inroad further.  My experience seems to show that the point of failure seems to be the optimal target.  Going a little beyond that line (deep inroad technique, rest-pause, rep-assist) seems to require a disproportionate attention to recovery.  Stopping at the instant of failure allows a good response when there is a lot of work or other stressors going on.  Stopping at form failure (as soon as failure is approaching) allows for a disproportionate increase in volume or an ability to maintain during much more stressful periods.  For those new to BBS, follow the WOW’s on this blog and observe how the experienced trainees learn how to “surf” along the edge of this continuum.  With a little experience listening to your own body, you too will develop this fine tune dial.

Happy New Year!  Post your WOW’s and your thoughts.

Once again, I apologize for the delayed post.  Between the Holidays and having to work it is hard to find a spare moment to post.  Now is that moment.  I worked a day shift on the day after Christmas.  I worked out at 6am before work.  Since Christmas fell on a Sunday, the entire rest of the world (including the medical world) seemed to feel that Monday should be a holiday.  Needless to say, I got to follow this week’s WOW with an unbelievably busy shift.   Oh well….I love my 6am workouts, and if you mess with the bull, you sometimes get the horns.

Lumbar Extension using the SS Systems pulldown

MedX Leg Press- set with a hard end-stop so I could do a squeeze technique

MedX Chest Press

Nautilus Pullover with SS Retrofits

MedX Row with SS fall-off cam

I hope everyone had a great Holiday and that we can all expect a great 2012.  As for discussion, there has been a lot of back and forth on the discussion boards about end-stop technique and the effect on inroad.  Many in HIT focus on the inroad theory as the key stimulus in training.  Personally, I do not believe in a single key stimulus.  There is not a single biologic system that seems to respond to only one stimulus.  Instead, there are usually complex overlying stimuli with intricate feedback loops.  I do believe the inroad theory is useful because it likely describes an event that occurs when multiple stimuli are optimally overlapped (for further discussion use the blog search engine to the right and search “Venn diagram”).  However, like so many things in the world of science, we have to remember….it is still just a theory.

Post your WOW’s…and your thoughts