This guest blog comes from Brian St. Pierre, a Cressey Performance staff member who specializes in nutrition. Keep an eye out for more great things from Brian; he's got a lot of excellent ideas and is very well-read.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) seems to be newest dietary fad. IF followers will choose a day or two each week, and on those days, they simply won’t eat for 24 hours. It seems simple, and a lot of people like the idea of giving your body and digestive system a break.
It also stands to reason that eating this way will help you eat less calories and make it easier to maintain a healthy body weight. Seems logical, right? Since IF usually leads to decreased calorie consumption it is often compared to Caloric Restriction (CR).
CR has been shown in a plethora of animal studies to lead to significant improvements in many markers of health and an increase in life span. Extrapolating that data, it would seem that if humans cut their calorie intake by 30-40% we would lead longer, healthier lives. Here arises the problem. In the animal studies with rats, researches observed signs of depression and irritability. With primates, it was even worse (researchers quantified the amount of monkey poo thrown for statistical analyses...okay, not really, but it's an amusing concept for future reference). If they did not consume enough cholesterol, they became violent.
So, angry monkeys aside, if you are willing to be cold, irritable, and prone to depression and flashes of violence, then caloric restriction is for you!
This is supposedly where IF comes in. More animal studies have shown that when animals were forced to fast every other day, but consume all they wanted on the off days, they were able to maintain their body weight, while also sustaining all the life prolonging benefits of CR. They had better glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity and blood pressure to name a few. It was the best of both worlds!
After these initial animal studies, human researches jumped on the IF bandwagon. People were expecting big things. Unfortunately, they were very disappointed with the results. Research started showing that people following IF, or even purposefully skipping a few meals per day were developing insulin resistance, decreased glucose tolerance, and increased blood pressure. These problems were not tremendous problems and some might argue that in real world IF, where people don’t fast every other day (only once or twice a week), the studied health problems wouldn’t occur.
Even if this is so, there is another problem with which we have to contend. The largest problem is a decrease in thermogenesis. Essentially saying that these people, even though they purposefully consumed as many total calories on IF as the control group, had drastically suppressed their metabolisms. This is why so many people have found such little real world fat loss from IF. In most real world applications - especially because people were eating diets in a significant caloric deficit - the body downregulated its thermogenesis to such an immense degree as to not allow for almost any weight loss. This to me is the final blow.
So, I guess if fasting is your thing, and it's not causing you any negative health effects, then have it. As for me, I prefer to stick to my low carb diet, eat whenever I feel like it, and receive all the benefits that IF proposes to give - except mine are real, not imaginary or hypothetical.
Note from EC: You can find a rebuttal to this post HERE.
Ryan Longwell, my kicker for this week, didn't play until Monday night. Truth be told, though, I really didn't need him, as I was already up 99-80 over Shoooooooooomannnnnn at the end of the day Sunday (113-80 was the final). So, I decided to kick some field goals myself.
How awesome is my job? It's goooooooooooood.
Speaking of good, I actually got four points from my tight end this week. Sadly, that's a season-high. Fortunately, I got some great points out of Reggie Wayne, Steve Slaton, Joseph Addai, Greg Jennings, and Kurt "no fumbles for the first time ever" Warner.
Yes, this was a short fantasy football recap. But, at the very least, it reminds everyone of my fantasy football awesomeness and foam-roller-field-goal prowess.
Next week, it's a clash of the titans with Brian St. Pierre. Speaking of Brian, we've got a guest blog from him tomorrow; I think you'll like it.
PS - For those of you who don't give a hoot about fantasy football, just check out today's newsletter instead for some good content (particularly with respect to knee pain). Or just quit complaining and deal with it!
Q: I do intervals as part of hockey training, which is basically year-round – but especially now in pre-season. In Maximum Strength, you use a pattern of high-medium-very.high-low training stress for weeks 1-4. Would the interference with intervals that you talk about decrease if I do interval work mainly during the medium and low intensity weeks? What is your experience?
A: I certainly wouldn't increase the volume of the intervals during the medium and low-intensity weeks. If you do, you simply negate the effects of the deloading period; it’s still stress on your body.
Instead, I'd just keep the interval work constant and make all your training stress fluctuations occur within your weight training.
That said, interval training isn’t necessary year-round if you are a hockey player. Check out my Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual for more information on that front.
1. I took Thursday off from blogging. I typically do HIB (high-intensity-blogging), so sometimes it wipes out my CNS and I need 48 hours between blogging sessions. While the "blog deload" was not featured in my Art of the Deload e-book, it is an important consideration in any blogging athlete's program.
2. Truth be told, things were really hectic in the life of EC with the introduction of the new e-book.
Additionally, it was an overall busy day at Cressey Performance. For those of you who aren't familiar with CP, it's the facility I co-founded to fulfill my lifelong dream of having my name on a t-shirt.
3. I just confirmed that I'll be presenting at the Major League Strength Coaches Performance Clinic in West Islip, NY on November 8-9. If you train or rehabilitation baseball players, you definitely need to check this event out. For more information, CLICK HERE.
4. The good thing about being busy is that I don't actually have time to contemplate how hopelessly mind-numbing PETA's actions are at times. Seriously, they actually wrote Ben & Jerry's a letter insisting that they switch to breast milk for their ice cream. Once they get some confidence, I'm pretty sure they'll make a pitch to have cookies 'n cream and Reese's Pieces surgically inserted into the providing mothers' fun-bags. I haven't had ice cream since high school, and while I do crave it at times, the thought of munching on frozen ta-ta juice just doesn't make me want to revert to my old ways.
5. My grandparents celebrated the 60th anniversary of their engagement on Wednesday. Unlike putting breast milk in ice cream, this is an awesome accomplishment, folks. Talk about the two ends of the human emotion continuum...
6. In the quote of the week, Danny (CP client on Warp Speed Fat Loss) checks in with: "I find myself watching Bear Grylls - the guy on 'Man vs. Wild' - and instead of merely being fascinated with his ability to stomach eating a raw sheep's heart that he just cut out (or skunk loins he seared) - I am kind of wondering how it tastes and how it would fit into my meal plan. This is ridiculous." Incidentally, if you ask me, they both sound tastier than breast milk ice cream.
7. Check out this great post from Tony Gentilcore on the women of Cressey Performance. Tony will continue to live vicariously through each of them until he gets his first 135-pound bench.
8. Mike Robertson is in town this weekend to do some scheming, lift some heavy stuff, and check out a seminar up in Andover with me.
9. I have some video clips to upload, but I've got a bunch of stuff to do, you'll just have to settle for the greatest sportscaster of all time. BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!
I pretty much wrote off Week 4 intentionally during my fantasy football draft, as I had four starters on bye weeks (three from Indianapolis, and one from Seattle). I figured that anything I could salvage this week - even if it was just a good point total for potential tie-breakers down the road - would be a good result.
I wound up losing 101-98; it wasn't even decided until Monday night. Props to Danny for putting up his best showing of the year in spite of being on a severe caloric deficit that's given rise to such gems as:
"This diet is making me sharper, angrier, cockier. Driving into work at 6am this morning, I was shoveling 8oz. of grass fed ground sirloin and broccoli with parmesan into my piehole while gargling SPIKE."
and
"I am annoyed and grumpy as as hungry grizzly bear that has been waiting at the foot of the riverbed for the salmon to spawn."
Nonetheless, he put up triple digits for the first time this year.
I picked up Steve Slaton as a free agent last week to fill in for Joseph Addai, and he scored me 17 points. As usual, though, I didn't get jack from my tight end; Heath Miller has apparently been collaborating with every other TE I've started this year on a plot to put me through years of therapy. He had a whopping eight yards receiving last night for a total of zero points - when just 22 yards receiving more would have gotten me a tie.
However, Kurt Warner is the goat of the week. With 472 yards passing and 2 TDs, you'd think he'd be the highlight of my team - but the truth is that he was the third-highest scorer because he had 87 fumbles and two inconsequential (for him, anyway) interceptions in the fourth quarter. If Warner just takes a knee, I win.
Oh, and in a game where 91 points were scored, Chansi Stuckey had just two catches for 12 yards. I watched most of the game and seriously couldn't see him anywhere on the field. He didn't get a single mention from the commentators. As it turns out, he was in the locker room playing video games wearing Laveranues Coles' away jersey the entire time trying to live vicariously through Coles, who actually catches passes.
But, all that said, 98 points on my bye week isn't too shabby. Good showing, fellas, and congrats, Danny.
Oh, and on an interesting note, the top 3 scorers this week were the three guys on the Warpspeed Fat Loss program. Coincidence? Hmm...
I figured I ought to give the official check-in report on my Warp Speed Fat Loss journey, as I'm six days in (started last Tuesday). As I noted in Friday's blog, I don't really have a whole lot to lose, so I'm just playing it by ear on how I respond. Through five days, I have dropped from 194 to 187.5 pounds.
I'm normally a pretty low carb guy anyway, so it really isn't as much water weight as one would normally think. I tend to lose "puff" from my face right away when I cut calories, and two people told me on Friday that I looked like I'd lost weight. They were right.
Performance-wise, things aren't going badly at all. On Wednesday of last week, I benched 315 for 3x3 before heading on to a bit more "metabolic" weight-training pairings. I've been doing some low-intensity cardio (walking on the treadmill), but to be honest, I am on my feet so much at the gym that it's really not necessary, especially when you consider that I'm not looking to drop 20+ pounds.
Thursday was just my 30 minutes of the where I take a medicine ball and just throw the crap out of it. It's an absolute blast; here's a little taste:
When I was done, I did two rounds of 5x40yd sprints with jog-backs between sets. It is a little bit of a compromise between actual speed work and true metabolic conditioning.
Lower-body lifting was Friday, and after doing some speed front squats at 275 for doubles, I hit up the trap bar for some higher rep work. Already with two sets of ten under my belt at 405, Pete called me out and said I could do more. He answered "14," so I went and did 14 on the next set (and another ten on the last set). It was probably a lot more amusing for him than me; my glutes, hams, and traps are all still sore.
The low carbs caught up to me on Saturday. We did quite a bit of sprint work prior to our lift, and by the time I actually got around to speed benching, I was pretty gassed. I'm working at higher percentages now, and did my 225 for 6 sets of three, and while it was fast, it wasn't as fast as it should have been. Moved on to some assistance work to save the session, and made sure to get in some good post-training nutrition and hit up Sunset Cantina that night with the crew for some lime and garlic-rubbed chicken fajitas (more on that later in the week).
Yesterday (Sunday), was my first extremely low carb day (i.e., less than 30g), and honestly, it wasn't so bad. I do fine with lower carbs, and was actually just doing boring computer stuff most of the day, so it wasn't an issue. All in all, so far, so good.
1. We finally got our act together and put up the Elite Baseball Development Program page up on the Cressey Performance website. We’ve already got more than a dozen pro ball players committed for the off-season with several more just confirming schedules and accommodations. It should be a great time. We’ll be making this blog pretty interactive with videos as the guys get after it this winter in scenic Hudson, MA, the vacation destination of choice for guys who like to lift heavy stuff, run fast, dominate medicine ball walls, and throw wicked pissah fastballs.
2. Word’s gotten out that I’ve made myself a guinea pig for the Warpspeed Fat Loss program along with Kevin and Danny at CP. It’s the truth. Honestly, I took my before pictures and they weren’t nearly as bad as I expected to be, but I’m still going to go through with it. I won’t be doing the programming to a T, but in terms of diet, I’m 100% on board. We’ll see where it takes me; I’m not really worried about making it Warpspeed, to be honest; I just want to see some subtle changes and not lose strength.
3. Eric Chessen is doing a seminar in Hanover, MA on exercise for children with developmental disabilities. Eric specializes in autism and has some awesome ideas. Check it out HERE.
4. Also on the seminar front, Dr. Mike Maxwell has Dr. Stuart McGill presenting on October 25 in New Brunswick, Canada. Dr. McGill is absolutely fantastic in seminar and I’d highly recommend you check it out if you’re in that neck of the woods.
5. I got asked this week why strengthening the external rotators of the humerus drives the bench press up. The truth is that I don't know that the external rotators have a huge direct effect on the bench aside from stabilizing the humeral head in the glenoid fossa. However, if you don't have humeral head and scapular stability, it's like trying to shoot a cannon from a canoe when you bench.
Probably more significantly, though, strengthening the external rotators is valuable because it indirectly helps you build strength by keeping your shoulders health for the long haul. I'll take a guy who can train continuously for a year over a guy who trains nine months out of the year and nurses a bum shoulder the rest of the year.
That said, in the grand scheme of things, I’d put more emphasis on a number of other factors with respect to improving the bench press independent of actually benching.
6. Thought for the weekend: hindsight is definitely 20/20. Doh!
I just got an extremely thorough review back from a happy Maximum Strength customer. Check it out for yourself!
Hi Eric,
First of all, a big thank you for writing Maximum Strength. It is an awesome book and money well spent. I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to get bigger, stronger and faster.
Improvements [note from EC: weights are converted from kilograms):
Broad Jump increased 12” from 93.5” to 105.5”
Box Squat increased 55 pounds from 297 to 352.
Bench Press increased 50 pounds from 220 pounds to 270 pounds
Deadlift increased 22 pounds from 462 to 484
3RM chin-up increased 22 pounds from BW+44 to BW+66 (BW was unchanged)
I could write a book on my verdict of the whole program, but I've just got back from Testing day at the gym and I'm shattered. The biggest thing the program showed me was that I had not been training hard enough. The training sessions in Maximum Strength were brutal and longer than I was used to prior to doing the program. My whole attitude changed. I now always dig deeper and push myself to the limit.
This brings me to another interesting point. I cannot over emphasize how important the deload weeks proved to be for me. I found that midway through the third week of each cycle, I was hammered and by week 4, my enthusiasm was nil. However, after the deload week I was always firing on all cylinders and raring to go for the first week of the next phase. I understand everyone is different, but three hard weeks followed by one easy seems to work great for me.
Needless to say, great product! I am ecstatic with my results and there will be more to come.
Thanks,
Elliot Newman
Leeds, United Kingdom
Find out more about Maximum Strength here.
