Daily Burn Health & Fitness

10/06/2024

Tip: How Sunlight Shrinks Your Fat Cells

Imagine you just stepped out of your time machine after being transported back to Muscle Beach in its prime. You arrive to spot the likes of Vic Tanny, Joe Gold (of Gold's Gym fame), Jack LaLanne, Steve "Hercules" Reeves, Jack Delinger, and later, Dave Draper or even Arnold with his friends.

They were all hanging out and lifting outside instead of being inside a commercial gym. Did they know something special about sunlight?
Fast-forward to modern bleeding-edge research from Dr. Peter Light who's been investigating the effects of light on fat cells, or what researches call adipocytes.

When the researchers subjected fat cells in a dish to blue light, it caused an increased glycerol release and reduced lipid droplet size. Yep, that means the fat cells got smaller.

This is from an increased rate of fat being broken down (lipolysis) or reduction in the free fatty acids and glycerol backbone being reassembled, known as fatty acid re-esterification. In addition, smaller fat cells are healthier since large fat cells are associated with increased insulin resistance and inflammation .

"When the sun's blue light wavelengths – the light we can see with our eyes – penetrates our skin and reaches the fat cells just beneath, lipid droplets reduce in size and are released out of the cell. In other words, our cells don't store as much fat," wrote Dr. Light.

Who needs an excuse to get out and soak up some ray's slip slop slap on some sunscreen and enjoy.

12/12/2023

Larry Wheels’ Lost Eight Pounds During Peak Week and showed up in amazing condition for his Classic Physique Amateur Olympia Debut in Nov 2023, then after the show he choose not to reverse diet, instead he gained 53 lbs in 5 Days! Do you think this was a good decision?

12/09/2023

You have to be focused on your goals to get there🙏🏽

30/12/2021

May you have a safe and prosperous 2022, and remember a bad day can always be made better by going to the gym.

06/06/2021

This is what you can achieve if you commit to a goal and have the drive to never give up, next step WFF NBBA Nationals.

07/04/2021

Tempted to splurge? Kill your cravings with a double dose of protein. Thank me later.
It's easy to avoid junk food when the alternatives taste better. Turn this childhood favorite into a grown up dessert... one that fuels gains.

Ingredients:
2 scoops vanilla Protein Powder
1/2 cup Jif peanut powder (de-fatted peanut butter)
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup water
1/2 cup Splenda or sweetener of choice
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 heaping cup fresh or frozen berries
Optional: coconut flakes
Directions:
Mix everything but the berries together.
Layer that mixture with berries in a glass mug.
Top with coconut flakes if you'd like.
Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.
Makes two smaller servings or one fairly large one.

19/03/2021

Feel Your Rhomboids, Finally
Most lifters rarely feel the individual regions of their back working. You may have never felt your mid-back experience excruciating tension. Let's change that so your rhomboids and mid-traps can grow thicker. Try this:

Cable Mid Back Pull-Aparts

Flare your elbows and squeeze your shoulder blades together at the end of each rep.

It's not quite a row and not quite a pulldown. It's a hybrid that directly pulls in the direction of the rhomboid fibers. Cramping is normal if you're not used to this. Enjoy that.

30/12/2020

TIP: HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU CHANGE YOUR WORKOUT?
That's a good, but somewhat complex question. Here's the nuanced, smart answer.

"How Often Should I Change My Workout?"
Changing your workout can mean different things to different people. Are we talking about using all new exercises or methods, or simply modifying a few elements like the number of reps per set or the tempo used?

I plan small changes weekly. My clients rarely repeat the exact same week of training. We can add or remove sets, change the rep schemes, or even alter the tempo a bit. But within a training phase, this is done without changing the exercises or the zone of training.

For example, we can change the set/rep scheme to something like this:

Week One: 8/6/4/8/6/4
Week Two: 7/5/3/7/5/3
Week Three: 6/4/2/6/4/2
Week Four: 5/3/1/5/3/1
Or we can change how the reps are performed:

Week One: 3 sets of 6 with a 5 second hold at the position of greatest tension
Week Two: 3 sets of 6 with a 6 second eccentric/negative phase
Week Three: 3 sets of 6 with a 3 second hold at the position of greatest tension
Week Four: 3 sets of 6 normal reps
Or we can even add intensification methods:

Week One: 3 sets of 8-10 reps, 1-2 reps short of failure
Week Two: 3 sets of 8-10 reps to failure
Week Three: 3 sets of 8-10 reps to failure, rest 15 seconds, then as many extra reps as possible (rest/pause)
Week Four: 2 sets of 8-10 reps to failure, rest 15 seconds, then as many extra reps as possible (rest/pause), then hold the position of highest tension for as long as tolerable
But if you're talking about changing the whole training program, 3-4 weeks works best for most. That doesn't mean you need to change everything though.

For example, let's say that you want to use a 5/3/1 plan. Each training phase lasts 4 weeks (5-3-1-deload).

After your deload, you'd start a new phase on the big basic lifts, but with adjusted weights. And you go on like that until death do us part.

I personally would plan changes in assistance exercises with every new phase. In other words, keep up the four main lifts of the 5/3/1 plan, but change the assistance movements every 4 weeks.

I believe that the longer you stay with a certain workout, the less effective it becomes. That's why I always have some elements of change from week to week.

But changing the exercises too often can also limit your gains because you never become efficient in a movement. To make it simple, change some of your exercises every 3-4 weeks and alter the way you do your sets or reps weekly.

14/11/2020

TIP: SMALL CALVES EQUALS SHORTER LIFE
Multiple studies indicate that there's a correlation between the size of your calves and your mortality. For real.

I haven't done much direct work for my calves for years. It's not because they were naturally big and didn't need it. Far from it. Training them was just so... unsatisfying.

A 5-inch range of motion? Big snore. Besides, my calves never really responded that much. So I gave up.

I figured that if anybody wanted to take a picture of me, sans long pants, I'd do what the young Arnold Schwarzenegger used to do during photo sessions before he fixed his lower-leg shortcomings: Just stand knee-deep in some lake to hide the suckers. And if a body of water wasn't handy, I'd find a horse trough or one of those freeway safety barrels full of water.

It turns out, though, that my disdain of calf work might actually lead to my premature death because there's increasing evidence that calf circumference correlates with cardiovascular disease – the smaller your calves, the harder your heart has to work.

Big Calves, Healthy Heart
I know it sounds a little far fetched that the size of your calves could have anything to do with the ultimate health of your heart, but multiple studies seem to have confirmed it.

In 2014, The Journal of Biomechanics reported that men and women with chronic heart failure have smaller calf muscles than people with healthy hearts.

Similarly, another study, this one published in Geriatrics Gerontology, found a direct correlation between calf circumference and the Framingham risk score (FRS), which is an algorithm used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk of an individual.

The latter of these two studies included 540 men and 683 women and they found a significantly negative association between the FRS and smaller calf circumference in both sexes. The bigger the calves, the lower their risk of cardiovascular disease.

How the Hell is This Possible?
When you root around a bit, this association between calf size/strength and the health of your heart actually makes perfect sense. The calves are part of what's known as the "veno muscular pump," which includes all the muscles of the lower limbs. Together these muscles, but particularly the calves, form a kind of "second heart."

The real heart, the one in your chest, uses powerful contractions to send blood surging through the arteries to provide oxygen and nourishment to every cell in the body. It's such a strong and efficient pump that it only takes a few seconds for all that blood to permeate the lower limbs.

But all that blood, now sucked dry of oxygen, needs to find its way back to the lungs so it can get re-oxygenated and then travel back to the heart to start the bloody roller coaster ride all over again. The trouble is, that blood has to work against gravity. That's where the muscles of the lower leg come into play.

The first part of the "veno muscular pump" originates in the foot. When you take a step, blood that's pooled into your heels is ejected upwards into the small vessels of the soleus muscle and the larger vessels of the gastrocnemius.

During walking, the veins in the gastrocs act like nozzles and eject a powerful jet of blood into the popliteal vein, which then continues northwards where it gets an additional muscular heave-ho from the thigh muscles.

The one drawback of this veno muscular pump system is that the upward pressure stops when you stop moving or sit down. Luckily, the veins in the lower body have one-way valves that prevent the blood from flowing backwards.

Nevertheless, these vessels can become weak (from disease, inactivity, or old age) and allow blood to flow backwards into the lower legs and feet, potentially leading to swelling, cramping, blood clots, and even leg ulcers.

Remarkably, even a stiff ankle can impair this venous flow, as can weak and underdeveloped calf muscles. Oh, you'll still get by without an efficient veno muscular pump system, but it puts more strain on the heart, which, over the long run, can increase your chances of cardiovascular disease or inefficiency.

What to Do
The answer of course is to work your calves regardless of whether or not you have any aspirations of being a sock model, a men's shorts model, or a competitive bodybuilder.

I, for one, will no longer ignore them in my training, and if I stumble across any heart patients, I'll urge them to start training their second heart.

26/10/2020

22/09/2020

THE TESTOSTERONE-BOOSTING BREAKFAST

What's the best breakfast for people who want to build muscle, get strong, and stay healthy? Cured meat from even-toed ungulates, bird o**m, fermented dough, and the leaves of camellia sinensis steeped in hot water.

Okay, I'm being cute here, but if I answered "bacon and eggs with toast and a cup of green tea," you'd think it ordinary, maybe even uninformed.

I get it, but while my breakfast order is virtually the same one your 90-year-old grandpa eats, it's a perfectly healthy breakfast – when done right – and an exceptional bodybuilding breakfast.

The Breakdown
Eggs
Lots of protein. No argument there, right? But consider also that eggs contain cholesterol, which is a precursor to testosterone production. They also contain vitamin D, B12, selenium, riboflavin, and big squawking amounts of leucine, which plays a monumental role in protein synthesis.

Bacon
While it's often portrayed as the poster boy for bad eating, bacon is actually one of the healthiest foods. It's of course a protein source, but its nutrient density is almost unparalleled and its fat is benign, if not downright healthful. Nearly 50% of the "grease" it floats in as you cook it is oleic acid, which is the same stuff we worship in olive oil. The rest of the fat is mostly stearic acid, which is, yes, a saturated fat, but the body converts most of it into, again, oleic acid.

And both bacon and eggs contain relatively large amounts of arachidonic acid, which, while pro-inflammatory in some instances, plays an important role in testicular production of testosterone.

Toast
Not just any toast, but sourdough toast. Sourdough is the sauerkraut of breads. It's made by exposing the dough to millions of lactobacilli, which produces an incredibly complex bread with tons of nutrients. Furthermore, the fermentation process has broken down any gluten it contains, which should placate the anti-gluten people. It also contains almost no phytic acid, thereby allowing your gut to absorb most of its nutrients.

Lastly, the fermentation process has changed the molecular structure of the bread, thereby lowering its glycemic index and improving your glucose metabolism in general. Toasting it accentuates these changes. Top it off with a tablespoon of grass-fed butter, which contains lots of body-building and fat-burning conjugated linoleic acid (CLA).

Green tea or coffee.
Coffee has plenty of healthy attributes, but green tea is particularly suited to bodybuilders because it burns fat. It also gives a buzz similar to coffee, but with less of the anxiety-producing effects.

Additional Notes
So yeah, while the age-old bacon, eggs, toast, and a cup of coffee/tea breakfast is an American cliche, it's also a breakfast choice that makes a whole lot of sense, especially for the athlete or bodybuilder. Here are some things to keep mind:

Have 4 to 5 eggs (since each egg contains only about 6 grams of protein).
Have at least 2 to 3 slices of bacon (each contains roughly 3 grams of protein). Make sure the bacon is "pastured" or grass-fed.
Put grass-fed butter on your toasted sourdough. Kerrygold's pure Irish butter appears to be the best.
Steep your green tea leaves in hot water for at least 5 minutes.

16/09/2020

Improve your conditioning and get ripped... in the squat rack. Here's how.

Training every minute on the minute (EMOM) is a very demanding conditioning method. EMOM means starting the clock and performing your reps "on the minute" while the clock runs. Once you've finished your set, you get the remainder of that minute to rest.

Begin your next set at the top of the next minute. A typical EMOM set usually ends up giving you 35-45 seconds of rest before the next set begins.

Now let's apply that method to the squat.

Warning: You're about to say "too easy!" Talk to me after you reach the halfway mark or 10 sets into it.

The Challenge
Time Length: 20 minutes of EMOM
Weight on bar: 80% of your bodyweight (If you weigh 200 pounds, load to 160)
Reps: 3 reps per set
Method: Controlled eccentric, full range, strong concentric. Use a 20X0 tempo. That means squatting down over a count of about 2 seconds and then exploding upwards with no rest at the top or bottom.
If you're obeying the clock, using full range of motion, and following the tempo guidelines, you should be drenched by the second half of the workout.

If you normally belt up or wear knee sleeves for only your heaviest sets, go ahead and wear them for this workout in the name of safety. Even though the loading is light in a relative sense, your recovery time will be limited and your heart rate will probably never go down for the entire 20 minutes.

Good Luck