Foundations Back in the mid-70s, when I first caught the incurable iron flu, training 6 days a week was commonplace. The intensity and modalities varied according to one’s ability to recover (What I now call the Wave and Weave method), but 2 hours a day, 6 days a week was, well… standard fare. All was… [More…]
Time Crunch Muscle Growth Methods: Pre Exhausts and Heirarchical Sets
“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.” Rumi Being an entrepreneur means there are many times when my workouts are reduced to “get in, get it done, and get… [More…]
Wave and Weave: the Aerobic Element
“It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” – Epictetus So this is my good buddy, Taz. As you can see, a dog’s life is goddamn exhausting. Which begs the question, “what does he do on his day off?” Can’t lay around, eat and sleep, that’s his friggin’ job…. [More…]
Muscular Failure, Akhilandeshvari, and the Hypertrophy Response
“The ability to summon positive emotions during periods of intense stress lies at the heart of effective leadership.” – Jim Loehr So I’ll jump right to the punchline for today’s post: we (i.e., scientists and coaches) don’t know exactly what triggers hypertrophy. Not at the cellular level, nor at the practical level. That magic, fool-proof… [More…]
Tips and Tricks for Shedding That Last 15 lbs
“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.” – Marcus Aurelius Proven methods and practicalities of body recomposition can be utterly bewildering for those outside of the fitness realm. Hell, they can even be tripwires for some *inside* that… [More…]
Cold Water Immersion Confused? Don’t be.
If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? – Dogen Sewell Park, on the Campus of Texas State University. The San Marcos river here is spring fed, and remains a constant, year-round, 68º F. Site, for me, of many a post football practice… [More…]
Post-workout underwater treadmill sessions; your express ticket to Jacked City?
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” – Carl Jung Water therapy rocks for injury recovery (for horses, too); this we know. But does it also have the potential to aid in hypertrophy gains? Readers of Theory to Practice realize that there is a difference (a HUGE… [More…]
Paleo f(x)! — and, Too Strong for Your Own Good?
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” – Virginia Woolf Not much in the way of posting the past couple of weeks. That I’ve been a little busy might be a slight understatement… 😉 So, did you attend Paleo f(x) this year? If you did, you know it was an absolutely awesome event. If you… [More…]
Hypermuscularity vs Athleticism
The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. -Vince Lombardi On the left, your normal, everyday whippet. And on the right, his myostatin-deficient, albeit slow-poke, cousin. So here’s something rather interesting — and particularly sad, too, if you’re an animal rights/dog-lover, like myself: breeding whippets for speed inadvertently produces incidences of myostatin… [More…]
The “Best” Route to Swoleville?
“Knowledge without mileage equals bullshit.” — Henry Rollins The past week has provided for an interesting convergence of physical culture themes, punctuated by the resurgence of a few instances of the age-old “HIT vs old-school bodybuilding” debate. Actually, the debate has now mushroomed so as to include many other methodologies (CrossFit, Oly lifting, power lifting,… [More…]