Marty Gallagher: October 2008 Archives
Knowing what to do when gains inevitably grind to a halt is the key to fitness success
The Purposeful Primitive approach is rooted in decades of empirical experience gleaned from working with elite athletes. I have taken this direct knowledge (and direct knowledge trumps reflected knowledge every single time) and modified the methods of the elite to make them user friendly for regular folks on their own more modest fitness quests.
The goal of the Purposefully Primitive system is simple: we seek to favorably reconfigure the human body. What constitutes a favorably reconfigured body? If you add a significant amount of muscle and melt off a significant amount of body fat (within a specified time frame) you create a favorable reconfiguration. Systems exist that can and will build muscle and strength. Systems exist that can and will mobilize and melt off stored body fat. The seasoned elite athlete understands that every effective system, albeit training or nutrition, no matter how sophisticated or effective, at some point ceases producing results.
The Soft Machine is a remarkably adaptive mechanism; given time it will figure out how to neutralize any and every training and nutritional system. The human body is hardwired with a primordial mission statement: achieve homeostasis. The body seeks normality. Unfortunately normality is not conducive to building muscle or oxidizing body fat.
Only when subjected to "abnormal" circumstance will the body build new muscle and mobilize body fat to use as energy. Hypertrophy is the cellular equivalent of a nuclear explosion. Hypertrophy is not a gradual process. Hypertrophy is a sudden event; like flipping a light switch or squeezing a trigger. Body fat can only be mobilized and used for energy when the body senses it is operating at a caloric deficit. This is a razor-edged proposition in that if the body senses starvation (as opposed to a mild caloric deficit) it will cannibalize muscle tissue in an effort to preserve precious body fat - body fat is the last line of defense against death by starvation.
These are inconvenient biological facts. When the Soft Machine successfully re-establishes homeostasis, physiologic normality, muscle gain and fat loss cease.
The only way progress can be stimulated anew is to discard the neutralized training and eating template and institute a radical departure to what the body perceives as the current status quo.
Coincidently two of my phone clients each achieved homeostasis in the same week: Jim Vee hit a predictable peak in week seven while Beck hit his peak in week ten. Both men, one 54 the other 59, lost 25 pounds of body fat and added 5 pounds of muscle using an identical training and nutritional template. In both cases each man had gone as far as they could go using our ultra basic, entry level, Purposefully Primitive approach. It was time for some sweeping, across-the-board changes. The Soft Machine in a state of homeostasis has no problem neutralizing minor changes to the status quo. This is why changes need to offer significant contrast to the current regimen. Here are the dramatic contrasts we instituted for both men in the resistance training portion of the Purposefully Primitive training paradigm...
Status Quo (thesis) New Prescription (antithesis)
Train twice a week Train three times per week
Entire body worked each session Shift to a split routine
Multiple low rep sets A single high rep set
No "assistance" exercises Add assistance exercises
Muscles attacked twice weekly Muscles attacked once weekly
Paused reps "Touch-and-go" reps
Both men had made fabulous progress using our PP entry level "Thesis." This was mathematically demonstrated by each man's dramatic increases in poundage handling ability and muscle gain. As every Old School Purposefully Primitive trainee knows, all resistance, cardio and nutritional regimens, no matter how sophisticated or advanced eventually run out of steam: not that we discard a program that has proven effective - we simply hang the proven-effective approach on a hanger and place it in our "fitness closet" for future use, after the body has "forgotten" it. Here are the specifics of the antithesis resistance prescription I worked up for each man...
Monday - legs/shoulders
Back squat work up to one all out set of 15 reps
Leg curl super-set with calf raise
Seated or single leg calf raise three alternating super-sets of 15-30 reps
Overhead press 2-3 sets of 15 reps
Wednesday - chest/triceps
Bench press - moderate grip work up to one set of 15 reps
Bench press - narrow grip work up to one set of 15 reps
Bench press - wide grip work up to one set of 15 reps
Tricep extensions 2 sets of 15 reps
Tricep pushdowns 2 sets of 15 reps
Friday - back/biceps
Deadlift work up to one all out set of 8 reps
High pull to belt work up to one all out set of 8 reps
High pull to pecs work up to one all out set of 8 reps
Barbell row 2-3 set of 12-15 reps
Curls 4 sets of 15 reps
Thesis-antithesis-synthesis: Hegel had it right; every system that develops critical mass becomes a thesis and this thesis-status quo eventually gives rise to a contrasting system that becomes the antithesis. Eventually the antithesis that once seemed so radical and different becomes the new thesis and the whole cycle commences anew...I have prescribed the resistance training antithesis and we'll keep you posted as to the effectiveness of this radical progress inducer....
Anyone wanting to become a 'phone-train' client of Marty Gallagher can contact him at MGSO@embarqmail.com.
Or... "How I lost 25 pounds of fat and added 5 pounds of muscle in 7 weeks by talking to some guy on the phone!"
Followers of this column are aware of Beck's ongoing tale of transformation. Unbeknownst to readers, another of my Purposefully Primitive "phone train" clients was undergoing his own dramatic transformational odyssey simultaneous to Beck. Jim Vee contacted me a few months back and engaged my over-the-phone personal trainer services. I set him up using a virtually identical training and nutrition template to the one I had put Beck on a few weeks earlier. Jim was a few years younger then Beck, 54. Both were the same height, 5 foot 10 inches. Jim Vee started the program off a weighing 206 while Beck commenced weighing 227. Both were out of shape and serious about getting back into shape. Both were determined to shed pounds and add muscle. Interestingly both men hit identical benchmarks last week...
➢ In week ten Beck registered a 25 pound fat loss and a five pound muscle gain
➢ In week seven Jim registered a 25 pound fat loss and a five pound muscle gain
Beck started off on our Purposefully Primitive program weighing 227. This past week he tipped the bathroom scale at 207. Jim Vee started his program weighing 206 and this past week he weighed 186. The training and nutritional protocol for each was identical...
➢ Resistance training: three exercises were performed exclusively three times a week: squat, bench press and Sumo deadlift. By purposefully limiting the exercise menu, each man became quickly proficient at each of the three core lifts. Both started off with high-rep, no weight squats. Once they were able to perform the 'no weight' flatfooted squat while maintaining an upright torso, keeping the hips under the shoulders at all times, we proceeded to the 'plate squat.' Weeks later I eventually transitioned each to barbell back squatting. Both men had experience bench pressing though they had to 'unlearn' some bad bench habits. Dumbbell bench presses were done using a 'stretch and pause' start and a complete lockout. The Sumo deadlift was taught as a 'reverse squat.' Both used a kettlebell (initially) before transitioning to the barbell Sumo deadlift. I actually cut back on their weight training after four weeks: dropping the middle day and reducing weekly weight sessions from thrice weekly to twice weekly.
➢ Cardio exercise: each man used outdoor 'power walking' as their lone cardio mode. Both obtained heart rate monitors and logged results. Outdoor walking is a vastly underrated aerobic mode. Overweight individuals can easily generate 80-90% of their age-related heart rate maximum by simple power walking - so why would an out-of-shape untrained person resort to jogging, running or some other high impact, potentially injurious form of cardio? Walking outdoors is an invigorating experience for those who've never tried it. Ever wonder why they now install TVs in fancy cardio machines? To take your mind off the drudgery of aerobic exercise done in a gym while using a machine. Both men fell in love with early morning outdoor cardio. Beck got to a point where he was burning 1,000 calories in his extended walking sessions; Jim Vee was able to rip through 500 calories in 31 minutes. Intense power walking amplifies a sluggish metabolism, bestows endurance and inhaling fresh, highly oxygenated outdoor air infuses the walker with what the Russians call Zdorovye, roughly translated as 'vitality.'
➢ Nutrition: The first order of business was to assure both men that starvation-style eating is NOT the way of the Purposeful Primitive. We train hard and eat lots of healing, regenerating, nourishing calories. Meal timing is important. We suggest the trainee either subscribe to the bodybuilder-inspired multiple-meal plan wherein small meals are eaten at equidistant intervals throughout the day OR subscribe to my friend Ori Hofmekler's Warrior Diet approach wherein one large meal is eaten at day's end - other than a post-resistance training 'recovery meal.' Both Jim and Beck selected the Warrior Diet approach. I didn't get too mental about their nutrition; initially I had each man 'clean up' their food selections. Past that there is a natural, predictable process that occurs when an individual actually makes tangible gains: the deeper they get into the process, the more gains they reap, the more they seek to clean up their eating - without my prodding. I call this 'creeping incrementalism.' Real results spur self-discipline.
Each man developed an ever increasing physical momentum the deeper we got into the process. As the weeks slipped by, as each man saw the irrefutable physical changes, they naturally exerted more effort in the gym, during their walks and they ate with ever greater discrimination - all of which further amplified results. Jim Vee shed 25 pounds of fat and added 5 pounds of muscle in 49 days. It took Beck 70 days.
On day one of week one Beck was able to perform 2 sets of 10 in the no-weight squat and finished with one tough set of 10 reps holding a 25 pound plate. These were deep pause squats: on day 64 Beck barbell-squatted an ultra-deep set of 5 reps with 125 pounds. On week one, day one Beck deadlifted a 54 pound kettlebell for 10 reps and pulled 135 for 5 tough reps in the Sumo deadlift. 70 days later he deadlifted 205 for three easy reps.
On day one of week one Jim Vee hit a set of 30 reps, then 20 and finally 16 reps in the 'no-weight' pause squat: on day 45 JV blasted up two sets of 8 reps with 140 pounds in the barbell back squat. In week one on day one Jim sumo deadlifted a 54 pound kettlebell for three sets of ten reps: on day 46 he deadlifted 225 for a triple.
It's one thing to lose body weight - it's quite another to lose body fat while adding muscle in the process. Both men continue to roll on. I am all about "teaching people to fish" instead of continually "selling them fish." These two men now understand the 'system' and at this juncture each man has successfully been taught how to fish.
Anyone wanting to become a 'phone-train' client of Marty Gallagher can contact him at MGSO@embarqmail.com. He limits phone clients and currently has only one spot available.
Beck hit a 211 pound bodyweight at the end week nine. When we started this process, the out-of-shape 59 year old weighed a portly 227. Our mutually agreed to goal was to whittle him down to a 199 bodyweight by the time his 60th birthday rolled around on December 30th 2008. The subtler specifics of this goal were positively daunting: he would lose 35 pounds of body fat while simultaneously adding 5 to 8 pounds of muscle. On the down side he was physically out of condition; on the upside, psychologically he was extremely motivated. He had a life situation conducive to success: he had the time and inclination to train and his wife was an excellent cook always urging him to eat healthy. I felt strongly that he had the moxy and determination and Beck could and would attain the goal. So off we went.
Anyone can lose bodyweight. Simply stop eating! The trick is to lose body fat while simultaneously adding muscle mass.
Bodyweight loss can be accomplished by starvation dieting. The problem with the calorie slashing approach to weight loss is that the human body has primordial hardwiring that dates back to caveman times and when the body senses it is starving (as it does when subjected to a sudden and precipitous drop in calories) it goes into "starvation mode" and seeks to preserve its precious body fat - body fat is the last line of defense against starvation. When starvation times hit, regardless if it is real or induced, the human body will actually cannibalize muscle tissue in order to preserve precious body fat. This is called metabolic shutdown.
Fad diets work (for losing bodyweight) because they are calorie restrictive. Cloaked in nutrient slogans, the reason the cabbage soup diet, the Hollywood diet, the ice cream diet or the avocado diet work is - not because there is something miraculous about eating cabbage or ice cream or avocado - but because you are eating far fewer calories than you did before taking up the fad diet. Ditto with the massively advertized prepackaged diet food plans wherein makers send you meals through the mail. On the glitzy commercials (using celebrities and sport stars) they glibly talk about being able to eat cheeseburgers, pizza and chocolate cake using their frozen foods because of the "breakthrough miracle of carbohydrate regulation" - Bullsh@t! These meal plans work (sort of) because they limit calories, pure and simple. Fat diets cause individuals to lose more muscle than fat.
This is why people who have lost massive amounts of bodyweight using a calories restrictive approach end up looking haggard, saggy, weak and still obese.
The optimal way to lose weight is to melt off body fat while preserving or adding muscle. This can only be accomplished by slowly and methodically peeling off the pounds over a protracted period. By keeping weight loss to a rate of 1-pound per hundred pounds of bodyweight per week, (a 150 pound person would look to shed 1.5 pounds per week) body composition can be favorably manipulated. This approach requires a multileveled and methodical approach...
*The trainee needs to engage in a progressive resistance program. Weight training is "underpinned" by consuming a goodly amount of lean protein. The combination of hypertrophy-inducing weight training and ample amino acid intake ensures the dieter retains or adds muscle during the weight loss regimen.
*Cardio exercise is critical. Aerobic activity amplifies the human metabolism, the rate at which the body consumes calories. Cardio improves digestion; cardio builds and strengthens the internal organs and burns calories. Sedentary obese people have inadvertently shut down their metabolism. Aerobic activity reawakens sluggish metabolisms.
*Nutrition is critical. All calories are not created equal: certain calories are preferentially partitioned towards fueling body movement and building new muscle tissue. Other calories are preferentially partitioned into the construction of body fat. Eight ounces of shrimp are virtually impossible to end up stored as body fat while eight ounces of pecan pie are virtually assured of ending up as stored body fat.
Our Purposefully Primitive body renovation approach is based on the subtle and studied interplay between resistance training, cardiovascular training and nutrition. We are continually monitoring and tweaking the protocols and procedures as the process unfolds. Always have a game plan and always set the game plan into a timeframe. Weight training combined with a steady intake of lean protein ensures muscle is added. Continual cardio and attention to nutrition ensures stored body fat is mobilized and oxidized. In Beck's case we lost a week to travel and then injury. Still, in eight "full weeks," Beck has lost approximately twenty pounds of fat and "added back" five pounds of muscle resulting in a 15-pound net/net bathroom scale loss.
This week starts a new phase. Individuals new to our three-pronged Purposefully Primitive philosophy obtain results easily for the first few months. When a person is initially subjected to our comprehensive exercise approach, the gains pile up remarkably fast. Decades of empirical experience have shown that the real work begins when the initial gains start to fade in around day 60. In some ways, for Beck everything leading up to this point has been a requisite preliminary. It has all been exercise foreplay needed to get Beck into basic shape to handle the "real work." After nine weeks he is no longer an old guy seeking to regain some degree of condition - now he is a middle-aged man ready, willing and able to take on some serious training invoking a much more disciplined and sophisticated approach towards nutrition. Let the real work commence!
Anyone interested in phone-training with Marty can contact him at MGSO@EMBARQMAIL.COM
I was thrilled to see that this week Beck dropped another two pounds of body fat. He now tips the beam at 212. He has methodically and consistently added poundage or reps to all his training lifts. Simultaneously he has been tearing up his cardio regimen, hitting every predetermined weekly goal. For the eighth consecutive week Beck has made progress on every front. I am real big on "keeping score" on a weekly basis: hit the small incremental weekly goals and the big overall goal takes care of itself. Way back when we started this process he told me he would be "thrilled" if he could drop 30 pounds of fat and add 10 pounds of muscle in fifteen weeks. Not coincidentally the end of the 15 week period would coincide with his 60th birthday. At the end of week eight we have lost 19 pounds of fat and added 5 pounds of muscle, so we're actually ahead of schedule.
One huge change to his training regimen made at the end of week seven was dropping his weight training sessions from three per week down to two per week. This is something I will often do when a trainee is making staggering progress. As is often the case, when newcomers are subjected to my Purposefully Primitive regimen I often reduce weight training sessions from three (the industry standard bare minimum) to two session per week. Fitness instructors and insiders freak out. "This is completely unorthodox and counterintuitive: how can a person make progress only weight training twice a week? This seems impossible!" Personal Trainers nationwide routinely recommend 4, 5 even 6 weight sessions per week using a huge menu of training exercises. Here I am dropping from three sessions to two using three exercises. This is mainstream fitness heresy!
The less-is-better rationale all relates back to the original plan and the individual's goal. The goal of the resistance element of the Purposefully Primitive philosophy is simple: build and strengthen muscle. That's it. We seek to strengthen target muscles simultaneously using key exercises that force groups of muscles to work together to complete the assigned muscular task. Make a muscle quantifiably stronger and that muscle is forced to grow. That is a physiological fact. Being a Purposeful Primitive, when it comes to muscle building we believe in doing fewer things better. We do the same workout every session: we squat, we bench press, we deadlift. Since the end of week four Beck added some light, end-of-workout curls and tricep pushdowns. That's it : five exercises done three times a week. For seven straight weeks he made rep or poundage progress in every exercise in every session. He was showing signs of fatigue.
His training poundage in the squat, bench press and deadlift had gone up so radically, so dramatically, so consistently that, while improvement came easy, recovering from one session to the next became problematic. Young people recover from draining physical tasks far quicker than older individuals engaged in identical tasks. My solution is one that I've used for decades: eliminate the middle training day. Each week we have predetermined weekly goals: if the trainee achieves the specified weekly poundage or rep goal - what difference does it make if he achieves the target improvement using two instead of three sessions? By lifting on Monday and Friday instead of Monday/Wednesday/Friday, Beck indicated that he felt far more rested and recovered. He rolled into Monday and Friday's weight sessions "fired up instead of dragging ass." He now weight trains twice a week for 30 to 40 minutes. That's it.
His trusty heart rate monitor indicated that in week eight Beck oxidized 600 + calories in his two weight training sessions and 2,200 calories in six weekly power-walk sessions. Last week we instituted a cardio training procedure where he would forget about aerobic session duration and simply walk for as long as it took to burn off 500 calories. Keep in mind that as a 212 pound, 59 year old man, his caloric expenditure rate is far greater than say a 120 pound athletic woman. Beck powers along using a brisk power-walk pace that (for him) burns calories at a nice 12 to 15 calorie-per-minute clip. Nutritionally Beck has followed the Warrior Diet strategy since day one. He eats little during the day. If he feels famished he'll "day binge" on fruit. At night he eats lots of great tasting, nutritious food. His wife is a chemist and a terrific amateur gourmet cook and on the weekends he'll have some wine and not feel guilty about it - if you are "good" six-and-a-half days a week, have some pizza and beer or wine and pasta on a Friday or Saturday night - have it and have it guilt free. Just get back on the proverbial wagon the next day. So far, I could not be more pleased with Beck and his progress. Our goal is for him to weigh 199 by January 1, 2009. He will drop 35 pounds of fat and added 8-10 pounds of solid muscle. Having a renovated body will be a great way for a 60 year old to roll into 2009.
Want to train personally with Marty? Email him at: mgso@embarqmail.com
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