Water works Part II

I thought I would take the benefits of water a step further and explain how I personally use water for health, training and bodybuilding competition.

My usual water intake can range from 2-4 litres most days and I know if I drink any less I feel sluggish, think less clearly and fatigue easier both in and out of the gym. I start off each day with 1-2 glasses of water and half a lemon.  This helps my body to optimise the detoxification process and lose body fat.  I have also found that it helps with unblocking my nose during hay fever season. 

My water intake before and during training is vital in terms of getting a good workout.  Before training (about ½ an hour) I will drink 2-4 glasses of water with a nitric oxide supplement.  This ensures that I will get an awesome pump and be in the zone to train. During the workout I will drink steadily between sets and get through at least one litre of water (definitely more in summer). This strategy means I maintain the pump and my energy levels throughout the whole workout.  The great Steve Reeves (the original Hercules) used a concoction of water, lemon and honey when he trained and I have found it to be useful on occasion too. I feel water is just as important as protein, creatine and other bodybuilding supplements in helping me achieve my training and physique goals.

I then make sure that I continue to drink water regularly throughout the rest of the day.  Water needs to be consumed regularly as all food and supplements are delivered to your muscles in an aqueous solution.  So remember if you are not properly hydrated you will not get the full benefit of your food and supplements.

Water is often seen as the enemy to bodybuilding competitors trying to get as shredded as possible onstage.  My experience over the last 10 years is that the times I have tried to restrict water it was because I wasn’t in decent shape in the first place. Restricting water intake always made me look smoother, flatter and I felt terrible! How many times have you heard a competitor say I was holding too much water when in actual fact they were just not lean enough? (Some bodybuilders can have hardly any water 2 to 4 days before a show-sometimes even longer which I feel is a very unhealthy practise!)  Natural athletes need to maintain their water intake as much as possible leading up to a show- remember your body is around 55%-75% water, so if you are dehydrated your muscles will be flat, you will be tired and you will not look your best.

The Monday before a show I will increase my water intake slightly to around 4-5 litres and maintain that all the way to Thursday.  On Friday the day before a show I will drop my water intake to around 2-3 litres and on the day of the show I will sip water whenever I feel I need to.  This strategy has always worked for me and it works because the body thinks it will continue to be supplied with a plentiful amount of water so it only holds onto the bare minimum. If you have been limiting water over several days which appears to be common practice for a lot of bodybuilders then your body tries to rebalance very quickly(about 1-2 days) by holding onto water so that normal body functions can still take place properly.  Also everyday detoxification is compromised and this can also contribute to water retention on the day of the show.  It will also mean you have difficulty getting a decent pump backstage and will be more prone to cramping up when posing.
Straight after the show I have 1-2 litres to replenish the water lost during the pump up backstage and posing under the lights.

Obviously being as lean as possible and looking your best for competition is a difficult feat to accomplish and requires a lot of knowledge, hard work and dedication but if you can see that water is your friend in the pursuit of looking your very best then try some of the ideas here, fine tune them for you and look forward to better health, energy and success onstage!

Improve your posture for a better physique. 2010

         NABBA/WFF Nationals 2012

Posture has a significant part in how we gain muscle and even how our physiques look (You only have to look in the mirror with your chest puffed up compared to being slouched over to realise the latter claim). It is important that you consider posture when you train so that you develop muscle in the right places, remain injury free and look your best. Below are some features and reasons for poor posture with some strategies to improve it for a better physique.
Forward head posture is a common problem in the gym. You would have noticed people at the gym who walk around with their heads slightly slouched forward, or who when completing exercises lurch their head forward on each repetition.

It usually occurs because people: 

• Use momentum to complete a lot of their exercises.
• Crunch their torso forward during exercises (to stabilise their body) which can further encourage the problem.
• Have poor posture (they slouch: their spine is in kyphosis) to start with.
This over time usually leads to neck and shoulder problems. Realising also that if your head is forward and down (instead of straight and directly over your shoulders) gravity is working on it all the time. Imagine in 10 years what your posture would look like if you did nothing to correct it (you would definitely have a more hunched over look).

Internally rotated shoulders are another problem that can exacerbate kyphosis of the spine and poor posture. Often weight trainers love to train the showy muscles like the chest and front deltoids while neglecting the muscles of the upper back like the traps and rhomboids. Over time the chest muscles become overdeveloped in relation to the back causing the shoulders to slouch forward. This will definitely make your physique look narrower, less aesthetic and more prone to injury the longer you are involved in weight training.

Another reason for poor posture is the core; the abdominals, hip flexors and lower back not being strong enough (or not being used properly) to stabilise you during exercises. Most people who have kyphotic posture tend to perform exercises crunched over or leaning forward which usually means their upper and lower back muscles are not flexed properly, leaving them open to injury.

So how do we correct these common problems? 

• Make sure you are aware of your own posture. Some people are more naturally kyphotic than others so assess your posture (or get someone else to) so you can select exercises that will improve your posture.
• Learn what good posture is and looks like. My students in the weight room at school are taught to stand with their chest puffed up, belly button in, feet shoulder width apart and knees slightly bent with their head above their shoulders looking straight ahead (usually this is enough to get their posture right). I also show them what poor posture looks and feels like so they are in a better position to correct themselves.
• Make sure you train with controlled movements and that you maintain a neutral head position (looking straight ahead, head over shoulders and no movement).
• Use exercises that put muscle on your upper back like:
Deadlifts, Barbell, dumbell or machine rows (rows with elbows out will generally hit them better- but experiment to see what feels the best), Low pulley upright rows-make sure you stand about a metre from pulley station (this position seems to be better on the shoulder joint and hits the upper back muscles hard), shrugs with a focus on pulling up and slightly back (not to be confused with rotating up and back).
• Put less emphasis on chest training and focus on the upper back muscles. A good rule is for every chest exercise you complete, do at least two exercises for the back. For example my Chest & Back workout at the moment looks like this:

Exercises
1. Deadlift
2. Incline DB fly press (cross between DB fly and DB bench press)
3. Bent over row or machine row (On machine rows I focus keeping my ribcage high and pulling my scapulae back and down in one fluid movement).
4. Chin up
5. DB Pullover
I naturally have a tendency to slouch a little (a combination of a slightly kyphotic spine or natural tendency to slouch, working on a computer a lot and not giving my upper back muscles the priority they needed) so training like this has helped a lot in changing my posture for the better. I have noticed that because my shoulders are not as internally rotated (because of a stronger back) it is easier for me to feel my chest exercises better as my shoulders are taken out of the movement more; as a result I am making more improvements in my chest than when I was doing three times the work!
• You can perform some easy exercises at home like locking your hands behind your back, then, with straight arms raise your hands as high as they can go slowly. Repeat 10-20 reps a couple of times a day. You can also hold your bent arms up, out to the side (parallel to the ground) and perform scapulae squeezes for the same amount of reps as above.
• Make sure you stretch your chest, shoulder and neck muscles after workouts so that the muscles do not become tight. You could also use a broom stick- rest it on top of you traps with arms wrapped around the broom to get a good shoulder/chest stretch.
• Train your core muscles by performing heavy compound movements with good form. I feel these are more beneficial than the focus on stability ball training which seems to be the rage at the moment.
• Perform a movement like the Plank where you are in a press up position on your elbows with a straight back. Suck belly button in and hold for 2 minutes +. Progress to the rollout.
• Focus on the lower aspect of the rectus abdominus by performing reverse crunch movements.
• When you are out of the gym make sure you walk with good posture, imagine the top of your head being attached to a hook, chest up and relaxed.
• When seated in front of a computer make sure the screen is high enough so that you do not slouch and take regular breaks to perform some of the exercises mentioned above.

Although this only scratches the surface in terms of ways you can improve your posture, I hope it gives you a good starting point to consider what you can do to develop muscle in the right places, remain injury free and look your best.

Do you need to get any bigger? 2014

Classic Men’s 2008. I weighed 64.7 kg

I ask this question because it seems to be one of the main reasons people never reach their goal of achieving a physique they are happy with; whether they want to look good for the beach or compete in bodybuilding.  Often they have a fixed idea of what they want to weigh based on unrealistic expectations derived from bodybuilding magazines, claims made on the internet or the person they see at the gym who is using more than just food and natural supplements.

Another side to it is that people often believe that they can “bulk up” and gain a lean muscular physique faster through force feedings and eating junk followed by a “cut”.  This can work for a few gifted or “enhanced” athletes, but what usually happens is the majority of the weight gain is fat. So they then have to work extremely hard both physically and mentally to lose all the excess weight- sometimes with no gains to show for it at the other end.

Staying relatively lean through the muscle building process is better for several reasons; it allows you to see your progress and provides a better picture of what needs to be worked on in terms of weaknesses.  There is less chance of losing the hard earned muscle you have gained and ironically when you are leaner and lighter you often look bigger as the separation between individual muscles and the increased differential between the waist and shoulders creates the illusion of more size.

So what is the best way to achieve a beach body or competitive physique for a natural athlete?

Firstly we need to have realistic goals of what can be achieved naturally; below are some yardsticks to measure yourself by:

As covered in a previous article; Steve Reeves, a bodybuilding icon before drugs became widespread, presented a simple formula for calculating the ideal muscular body weight for your height. (Probably around 8-12% body fat which would be a good beach body look).

Height   Weight (pd)   Weight (kg).

5’5”            160               72.7 (note- professional bodybuilders can weigh 95kg+ with 5% body fat at this height!)
5’6”            165               75
5’7”            170               77.2
5’8”            175               79.5
5’9”            180               81.8
5’10”          185               84
5’11”          190               86.3
6’0”            200             90
6’1”            210               95.4
6’2”            220              100

Martin Berkhan, the creator of leangains.com suggests that a lot of natural athletes, when dialed in for a bodybuilding contest (around 5-6%), are not far off this formula: “Height in centimetres – (96-102) = bodyweight in kilos.

So for me this would be 165 – (96-102) = 63-69 kg.  As a natural athlete in competition condition I feel this a realistic goal as I look my best around this weight- usually around 60-65kg.  Obviously there will be exceptions beyond this as genetics play a large part in determining your muscular bodyweight potential. If you surpass this naturally then congratulations- awesome work!

Now that we have some realistic goals to shoot for we need to train smart by using exercises that suit our unique leverages, muscle belly lengths and can be overloaded progressively over a long period of time (see “Finding what works for you 1-4 in archived articles”).  Also using a combination of low rep (myofibrillar) and higher rep (sarcoplasmic) training should be used to maximise muscle growth.

Eat good food that meets your macronutrient and micronutrient needs to gain muscle without gaining excess fat.  I am not a fan of IIFYM (if it fits your macros) as people think they can eat junk food with little micronutrient value and think it will help them achieve their physique goals. Find out how many calories, protein, carbs and fats is required to maintain your weight now by eating meat, eggs, fruit, veges, nuts, dairy……. Then eat a little more of these foods to help the muscle building process. Augment this with a range of good supplements like whey, creatine, fish oil, vitamins and minerals. You won’t gain body weight as fast, but what you do gain will be mostly lean mass- in fact you may even gain muscle and lose fat at the same time!

Finally, I frequently see people at the gym who think they need to get bigger who really just need to get leaner and they would have an extremely impressive physique (either on the beach or for competition).  If you have been training a while, eat lots of nutritious food, use good natural supplements and are still not happy with how you look consider this- do I need to get any bigger? In a lot of occasions I would say probably not.

So there you have it, set realistic goals, train smart, eat quality food and supplements to allow muscle growth and lose enough body fat to show off the muscle you already have. Not only will you be happier with your physique but you will also be the envy of all those around you who are stuck in the mindset that they have to get bigger!

 

Does alcohol negate your efforts in the gym? 2014

Alcohol or ethyl alcohol is the most popular drug throughout the world and is a sedative hypnotic drug that has numerous effects on the human body.  Alcoholic drinks like beer, wine, spirits and RTDs are popular choices. The media often reports the positive health benefits of alcohol consumption, however, I would like to look at the other side of the story and ask the question-does alcohol negate your efforts in the gym to improve muscle size and to get lean?

Alcohol provides no nutritional value with 7 empty calories per gram which is almost double the amount compared to protein and carbohydrate.  As a result alcoholic beverages can be quite high in calories with very little nutritional value; an average 330ml bottle of beer has around 150 calories with half of these calories coming from alcohol.  If you consider that if the average drinking session for a male is around 6-8 beers (I think it can often be more) that is a whole lot of extra empty calories.  Some research has suggested (I know from experience too) that your appetite increases after drinking.  Often this leads to poor food choices too-so you can see how easily alcohol can prevent you from achieving a lean physique

It also slows down your metabolism and ability to gain muscle through a number of different pathways.

  • It negatively impacts on the body’s ability to process vitamins and minerals which can reduce energy production.
  • It can inhibit protein synthesis which compromises your recovery and muscle growth meaning you will have less active muscle tissue to burn calories.
  • Our bodies work in an aqueous solution and since alcohol is a diuretic it dehydrates you and slows down the proper functioning of your body. (Read my two articles on the importance of proper hydration for muscle growth and strength; Waterworks I & II)
  • It also depletes the body of essential vitamins and minerals that perform vital processes that encourage growth and recovery within the body.
  • It decreases your testosterone levels and increases cortisol production which can decrease the amount of active muscle tissue you can gain and increase body fat levels.
  • Your muscle recovery and actual muscle growth can be hampered if you drink because your body has to deal with the alcohol first before it can begin the process of restoring your glycogen levels. If you consider it takes the body one hour to remove one standard drink you can easily miss the “growth window” after training.
  • It can shorten the amount that you sleep causing a drop in growth hormone production and increase cortisol levels.

Binge drinking (7+ standard drinks in one sitting for males and 5+ or more for females) on a regular basis can also have a negative impact on long term health. (see alac.org.nz for more information).

Alcohol can have an impact on your mental approach to training- just try and have a good train the next day after a hard night out drinking. Your motivation will be next to zip! Binge drinking can also cause brain damage (scary considering your brain is still growing until you are 20-25 years of age).  It can also cause mood disorders like depression and anxiety which can put the brakes on achieving your physique goals.

As you can see alcohol’s positive effects which are often reported in the media are easily outweighed by the negative effects it can have on your mind and body if your goal is to improve health, gain muscle and lose fat.  Just think of the time and money you invest in your training, diet and supplements –do you want all that effort wasted?  So reduce the amount you drink or even better swap that alcoholic drink for a protein shake and watch your results in the gym go through the roof!

 

 

How to sleep better 2013

Recently I discussed the health and fitness benefits of sleeping.  However getting 8 hours of quality sleep each night can sometimes be harder to get than you think.  Everyday life, eating habits and stress are just a few things that can stop you getting the muscle building slumber you need to make better progress from your time in the gym.  Below are some strategies you can use to help you sleep better.

  • Keep doing exercise like weight training! Research has shown that exercise definitely helps you sleep better.  Just make sure you don’t over train as this can raise cortisol levels too high and cause you to sleep lighter and for shorter periods of time.  Also most people should avoid training late at night as this can cause you to “wake up” when your body is supposed to be ready for sleep.
  • “Set your body clock” Have a fixed sleeping schedule so your body gets used to a routine. Some research shows that going to bed before 11 pm and arising around 6-8 am as optimal sleeping times.  However it depends on the individual as our natural body rhythms can differ.  Also our normal work hours impact when we get to sleep too.
  • Have a pre bed ritual of having a warm cup of milk, reading a book or listening to some relaxing music. It could be a massage or some form of light stretching.  Anything that makes you feel relaxed.  Others suggest watching something funny on TV as opposed to horrors or thrillers.  If you go to bed with unresolved problems it can increase stress and prevent sleep.  Make a habit of writing them down before you go to bed with the intention that you will deal with them the next day.
  • Avoid using electronic devices late at night. The blue light from computers, smart phones and TVs can affect our circadian rhythm (our body clock over 24 hours) which regulates our body’s ability to get sleepy.  So keep all electronic devices out of the bedroom!
  • Make sure your room is completely dark and quiet. Any light can trick your body into thinking it is day time and wake you up.  Even face your alarm clock away from the bed so the light does not disrupt your sleep.  If noise is unavoidable wear ear plugs.
  • Make sure you get some light first thing in the morning and during the day- get outside and take in some rays as this will help to regulate your natural body clock.
  • Reduce stress during the day. Take little time outs or make sure you change tasks on a regular basis.  Don’t take on too much at work if it makes you feel too stressed and have the ability to say “No” when you need to.
  • Eat a diet balanced in protein, fats, carbs, vitamins, minerals and water so that your body has the nutrients it needs to support your body to induce and sustain sleep. Something as simple as drinking enough water so you don’t wake up thirsty during the night can make a huge difference in the quality of your sleep.  The time that you eat can also impact on the quality of sleep you have.  I eat most of my calories at the end of the day around 4-6 pm as I find this helps me to sleep better.  When I used to only have a small meal at night I would struggle to go to sleep and wake up too early.
  • Avoid stimulants 4-6 hours before bed like caffeinated drinks as the stimulatory effect can keep you awake for hours. I personally can only get away with having a coffee in the morning otherwise two things happen- I go to sleep at a normal time and wake up at 3 am or I can’t go to sleep until 2-3 am.  Either way it is a shocking sleep!
  • Utilise supplements to regulate sleeping patterns. I use methylcobalamin (B12) first thing in the morning as it helps to set my body clock.  It helps switch off melatonin in the morning (the hormone that induces sleep at night) so when bed time rolls around melatonin kicks in when it should to help me go to sleep.  Magnesium is another awesome sleep aid- I use it every night (400-800mg).  Research shows that a deficiency in magnesium can stop the brain from relaxing and settling down at night.  There are also a number of effective sleep inducing formulas you can buy which can include 5-HTP, magnesium, valerian, passion flower, vitamin C and  zinc to name a few.

If a lack of sleep has been compromising your gains in the gym give these simple strategies a try and I guarantee a better nights’ sleep!  Awesome dreams everyone!