Chicago Workshop Weekend – September 24 and 25
In a few weeks I’ll be back in Chicago for a lifting and programming workshop on September 24 and 25 respectively. For more information, location, and scheduling, click the link above. We’ll be having a jolly good time followed by local ale drinking, but we may find some Dornish red or Arbor gold. Prepare thyself.
NFL Season Starts Today
After the shittiest off-season in memory, the NFL is finally back starting this evening. The last two defending Super Bowl champions will play each other in this league-wide season opener of two incredibly evenly matched teams. 70’s Big will have a live chat during the game for football fans to actively discuss what should be an entertaining match up (or at least an entertaining chat).
Not looking forward to the world fellating Rodgers again
Chat Tonight
There will be a chat tonight. The first portion will start at 8:00 PM EST and be a streaming chat where we’ll look at lifting videos (be ready with your videos that you want form checked) until the game starts. Then we’ll move it over to our classic IRC chat and dick around. USTREAM Link for 7:00 PM Regular IRC Chat for after the streaming chat
Fantasy Football
With so many people wanting to play Fantasy Football and an inability to open several linked leagues without having to play in each one (compounded with the busy few weeks I had), the leagues are NOT set up. I’m trying to just create them and let you guys join freely (disregard the divisions). If you are wanting to play with randoms from the site, go ahead and see if you can sign up in the following link (I’m trying to figure out how to post it easily). If it works, I’ll make the other leagues and will put one of you in charge of the league. League 2
FIT
My as well plug FIT again. Some folks have finished reading it and said it’s a great resource. I’ll be doing podcast interviews with Dr. Hartman and Kilgore soon, so be on the lookout for question submissions. The book is available on Amazon and B&N.
If you’ve been considering adding some conditioning to your strength program or are actively trying to lose body fat, barbell complexes will make a nice addition. I’ve talked about them before, but want to further the discussion.
What is a Barbell Complex
A barbell complex is one large superset of various exercises completed without stopping or setting the bar down. The number of exercises and reps can vary, but four to six exercises with five to ten repetitions each is standard. Running through all of the exercises once would constitute a set and is usually followed by a rest period. Multiple sets would be completed in a given session — typically at least three. When ability improves, more than one set can be completed before resting. For example, one round can consist of running through the exercises twice. Doing three rounds would result in six sets overall, but grouped in twos.
Endurance Capacity
Conditioning the energy systems occurs when lots of musculature is worked to the point of having a deficit in substrates. That deficit acts as the stress, and the body adapts so that can handle that same stress easier in the future. This capacity is best done with high intensity since it’s more effective than low intensity (read FIT for more on this topic). If you haven’t been doing any conditioning work, then barbell complexes will have a high intensity effect because the stress is relative to your current adaptation.
Good barbell complexes will hit up several large movements that move multiple joints through a full ROM and subsequently work lots of musculature. The more musculature working will establish that deficit of substrates to provide a good stress. Using movements like back squats, front squats, deadlifts, presses, jerks, and rows are ideal. By doing more sub-maximal reps, you can improve muscular endurance as well as overall endurance (the uptake and delivery of energy substrates).
Swollertrophy and Muscle Mass
It’s possible to maintain and even improve musculature by using barbell complexes (even when on a body fat loss program) because of the number of reps done at one time and the total number of reps done in a session. By doing eight to twelve reps of each exercise, the muscles will receive a hypertrophy rep range. Now compound that with the muscles receiving upwards of fifty additional sub-maximal reps in a hypertrophy range and you can see why muscle mass can improve (it’s like big rest-pause sets). Since good complexes use the big exercises (think squats, pulls, rows, and presses), they provide a systemic hit that is significantly more effective than circuit training done with isolation exercises. Finally, take into consideration that this is done after a strength training session and you can see how barbell complexes would be a good compliment for muscular growth.
Drawbacks?
The only drawbacks of regularly including complexes are recovery issues and skill development. If you add complexes to an already strenuous program, then it may be difficult to recover from. In this case, the strength program can be reduced to just the big lifts and can even reduce the rep scheme (shifting to triples instead of fives, for example). This way there would still be an intensity-focused stress with lower volume while the complex provides extra tonnage and work stimulus for growth. Complexes can even be treated as light assistance — throw rows and RDLs in instead of doing them during the strength session. The load during the complex won’t be as heavy, and strength won’t be actively developed, but strength will at the very least be maintained after altering the primary strength session.
Skill development won’t really occur with barbell complexes since the same lifts and exercises that are normally performed in a gym are repeated during the complex. It’s good to use different forms of training — whether it be with implements, body weight, or new sports that demand unique body awareness — to improve the body’s overall athleticism and capability. Just because performance is good in the gym doesn’t mean it will be on the field, dance floor, or shag pad, and utilizing other activities will develop these skills.
Lastly, barbell complexes will be more effective when you’re strong(er). If you can use 135 lbs (~60kg) during a complex, the muscles will receive more work than had you only been able to use 95 lbs (~43kg). Being stronger will yield more efficient conditioning, whether it be from an energy or muscle development perspective.
Here’s a video I recently made with Chris (who is incorporating barbell complexes and sled pulling into his program). It demonstrates an incredibly simple barbell complex and touches on some other topics like not sacrificing form for the sake of quickly completing the workouts.
Hey Justin I saw the video you put up with Mike and his shakes. My training has taken a dip the past 5 months and most of the inconsitency of not training was due to failure to eat right. I made my best gains last year when I did SS + drank a lot of milk. The only problem is that milk gets me very sleepy and groggy. My brain gets all cloudy, I can barely function on anything requiring any sort of mental or physical effort, it’s almost like I feel drugged. Also, I get VERY bloated. I go from size 34 to size 38. And I also stay bloated, it doesn’t really go away unless I don’t consume anything for at least 5 hours or so. I was drinking Homo Milk by the way, and I was also taking lactaid before drinking the milk but it didn’t do anything.
Is there anything I can do to prevent tiredness from milk? If there’s nothing you can think of, do you have any suggestions as to what I can put in the shakes that Mike makes to make up for the macros lost by using water instead of milk?
Thanks.
This e-mail touches on an interesting subject while highlighting a misunderstood concept regarding training and diet. Milk is a delightful beverage with impressive nutrition. A cup of whole milk will be about 150 calories and 8 grams of protein — this makes for easy additional calories when needed. Milk inherently provides proper nutrition for growing mammals before they are able to digest regular food. Aside from the macronutrients, milk contains the sugar lactose which is broken down by the enzyme called lactase. Many people complain about being lactose intolerant (the inability to digest and metabolize lactose), yet they are merely not allowing their bodies to adapt to abrupt changes in milk and lactose ingestion.
Certain ethnic groups have more of an intolerance than others, but it may still be possible to use a patient method of increasing intake over time — AKA not being a dumb ass. Most white people of European descent will handle milk fine while ethnic groups like Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians can experience some trouble. In any case, lactose intolerance doesn’t exist just because smelly farts occur after drinking milk. If you enjoy milk or want to use it to help your training, then simply have small amounts (as little as two ounces) and see how your body reacts. If it fucks your world, then you may have a problem. Start once a day if you’re terrified, and then increase the frequency (perhaps two times a day, then three, four, etc.) and then slowly increase the amount. It shouldn’t be a shock that there isn’t lactase readily available if there chronically hasn’t been any lactose to break down; allow time for this to occur if you haven’t had milk in awhile. The same thing occurs with Paleo folk; they eat a cupcake and complain about congestion like it’s the black death. As IronGarm says: you aren’t very elite if you’re taken out by a happy meal.
But wait — do you even need milk? Are you skinny and think you’re a hard gainer? Are you a pain in the ass about gaining weight? Then yes, you’ll benefit from including milk in your diet when on a good strength program since it will add necessary calories that you are (for some ungodly reason) not able to eat. But are you a big guy? Fat? Really fat? If so, obviously you shouldn’t drink milk since it’s designed to put on weight. It’s the same with puppy food; it has more calories to help them grow. If you or the dog is fat, they don’t need food sources that are biologically designed to induce growth. Duh.
What if you have gained some size, have some decent structure, but aren’t really defined? The same concept applies to someone who wants to lose body fat; a high caloric growth substance is not going to help decrease body fat. Unless you look Herculean, milk really isn’t an ideal choice and you can get leaner with better calorie choices.
Large quantities of milk act as a filler for people who don’t eat properly, and it particularly helps skinny kids get more calories when they’re incapable of scheduling food intake throughout the day. The concept of drinking a gallon of milk a day, or GOMAD, is familiar to people who don’t even train. Ultimately, telling someone to do this is just putting a band-aid on the “eating like a dipshit” problem that will still need to be addressed. Yet many people will follow GOMAD like a religion, including my new pen pal “dee pee” above.
Jacob texted this to me earlier this year
The first question I have for dee pee is what his ethnicity is. If he’s one of the intolerant ethnic groups, his milk relationship may not work out. He may even have some sort of allergy to milk. Without knowing any of this, I’d have to assume that by “drinking a lot of milk” he didn’t set his body up to handle this amount (see progression example above). I’d also assume that he is relying on milk for a major source of calories. In Mike’s shake video, he has five shakes a day with milk, yet that amounts to merely 40 ounces of milk total added to his regular food intake (that includes two pounds of pork and beef). A gallon is 128 ounces — over three times the amount Mike is actually drinking. If you’re not absurdly skinny and not complaining about not being able to get bigger, then you need to learn how to eat properly instead of using milk as the solution.
In dee pee’s case, he could try “lactose-free milk” (which is a fucking mummer’s farce since lactase is added — you can’t remove lactose from milk. That’s like removing fructose from fruit. Or teeth from your mouth by my fist when you drink soy or almond milk), but it sounds like he should just reduce the milk and tighten up his diet instead of continuing to do something that makes him feel like shit. As a general rule, if you ingest something and it makes you feel like shit, you shouldn’t continue ingesting that thing (my dog learns this pretty well and there’s no reason you can’t either).
It’s possible to improve the body’s ability to handle milk, yet you should reconsider whether milk should be what your diet revolves around. If you don’t need it, then save it for special occasions (like what comes up when you Google “sexy milk” with safe search off).
Hectic week, yet we can rejoice in PR Friday. Post your weekly training updates to the comments. Discuss football: Boise State vs UGA and LSU vs Oregon.
This video took forever to upload. This is Mike making his shakes for his next day of work. He’s real meticulous about eating and making it consistent every day. He also gets a lot of calories and protein from shakes since they are convenient and cost less. He still eats about two pounds of meat a day. I’m not saying that what Mike does is necessary, but it’ll show you how he plans his food intake and keeps it consistent over time.
I asked if folks were interested in a 70’s Big Fantasy Football conglomerate, and lots of people responded. Typically 10 works well in a league — much more and the amount of quality players gets too low. Here are the 4 leagues, the first being set in stone and the others broken up by region (mostly).
70’s Big League (people that I’m friends with)
1. Me
2. Nate – brother
3. Sean – friend
4. Jake Briskin
5. Jacob Cloud
6. Kittensmash
7. Patrick Stroup
8. Chris
9. Alex
10. Justin Springer
West
1. A. Reed
2. R. Jordan
3. W. Riddle
4. A. Dao
5. Z. Huddleston
6. M. Wiegers
7. N. Jaffery
8. G Mirra
9. A. Galvan
10. M. Humphries
11. K. McCormick
12. E. Zwier-Tieda
Northeast
1. P. Humphries
2. T. Doherty
3. J. Prudhom
4. J. Farina
5. J. Forde
6. S. Skelley
7. M. Crispell
8. G. Noble
9. H. Macdonald
10. F. Prior
South
1. W. Cook
2. A. Koontz
3. C. Huebner
4. C. Kilgo
5. J. Coons
6. H. LaHatte
7. N. Hefner
8. J. Sandifer
9. W. Foster
10. J. Fultz
11. J. Jones
12. OPEN
1. I need one person from the West, Northeast, and South leagues to volunteer to be the League Manager.
2. We’re using ESPN.com.
3. All four leagues will use the same scoring (just to keep it congruent).
