Just over a month ago I attended a seminar/internship with Canadian National Weightlifting Coach Pierre Roy. His method of teaching the very technical Olympic lifts was the fastest and most effective I have ever seen.
My own technique has improved alot ever since practicing for a few weeks since I’ve been back from this internship.
The way Coach Roy teaches, may be equivalent technically to what is used in other countries Olympic lifting coaching. But the main point is that it can be taught in … 1 hour as opposed to 1 year! (For a fairly coordinated guy).
Just the same for anyone trying to achieve their fitness goals. Both our fitness bootcamp and personal training programs have the same idea – time saving, maximum efficiency and world class results.
At my gym, I recommend only the best supplements to my personal training and fitness boot camp clients. That is because there is so much that is “hidden” in the supplement making process, so we want to use a brand that is trustworthy. Recently there have been several well known companies who make omega-3 fish oils who are being sued for excessive levels of contaminants. The list of companies is below
CVS Pharmacy, Inc.
General Nutrition Corporation (GNC)
NOW Health Group, Inc.
Omega Protein, Inc.
Pharmavite LLC
Rite Aid Corporation
Solgar, Inc.
Twinlab Corporation
I recommend only medical grade brands with proven track records. At our gym we use mostly Poliquin brand supplements. An article written about the latest fish oil contamination situation is at Poliquin’s website here.
The world is a toxic place for sure. That is why I am fond of detoxing and asking my personal training clients to do the same perhaps 2 weeks per year. But toxicity not only applies to humans, but also to animals. The animals that we get our wonderful omega-3 oils from are also contaminated. So we need to get out supplements from the best possible sources. Even some repuatble brands that many internet stores sell, are implicated in the above report.
While the report is not outright against these brands, my tolerance for contamination in supplements is… ZERO! I mean… how much poison would you like to eat? Just a little? Of course not… NONE at all! (Or at least as little as is humanly possible). Because the supplement industry is so unregulated, I choose carefully which products and which brands to sell. And my clients never have to worry about reports like the one in this link to ABC news.
After all, the bulk of the cost of producing fish oils is not the extraction of the oil. It is the PURIFICATION of the oil. So that is where the sub par companies (all except a few in the world) will cut costs.
Supplements are not something you want to save a few dollars on. The great supplements cost just a bit more, but have alot less nonsense in them, and have alot better potency!
Just a quick tip… save your money on creatine when you are working on high volume programs (10-12 rep range etc). Creatine has the most benefits when used for low rep work under 10 sec time under tension e.g. sets of 2 or 3 reps.
For higher volume work, try creatine with beta alanine:) To use beta alanine (contact me to get some:)) test the dosage by starting at 2-3g pre and during workout. Then up the dosage gram by gram each workout till you find a itchy/tingling sensation on your skin. That is the limit for you and your tolerance.
I have decided to resurrect my old IPPT training website! I have so many questions about the training for IPPT especially the broad jump and the chin-up. It is still being constructed but will be updated as I put my IPPT training articles back online!
Body fat (everybody wants to know this!): 1-2% drop. 2mm on the 1 site supra illiac. 2mm on the abs. I did not biosig myself (because I can’t self measure 12 sites!) but there is a clear difference.
Waist drop 3cm each down to 78cm (smallest point) and 81cm (around belly button)
Weight down 2kg total.
I did the same food today, and I feel quite drained (did not take an off day the last 7 days to keep the lymph fluid flowing) so I just did some lower weight prowler pushes. Anaerobic capacity was not bad I still managed 8 laps of my gym’s 35m track with only a slight desire to throw up haha.
Bowel movements were good, I am also getting great sleep. At least 7 hours straight at night and a nap in the day. Once again, the topical magnesium + capsule magnesium combination seems to do very well. I highly recommend this combination especially if you KNOW that your digestive system has issues. The topical application (on skin) is wonderful for absorption.
I would probably do shorter cleanses of 1-3 days every month for health. In the future I will rotate the “extra supplements” to detox new things. I have a package for detoxing heavy metals, one for plastics and one for estrogen. All the detoxes will start when my far-infra red sauna comes in.
I am a healthy and quite a “clean” guy and I benefitted. Imagine somebody who has not taken care of themselves in the past or has worked/lived in a more toxic area or has genetic tendencies to store/be affected by toxins. They will benefit even more!
I lost a bit of fat although this is NOT I repeat NOT a fat burning plan. There are ways to burn fat faster. It is just that those ways get “stuck” by poor health or toxicity. That is that this plan is for. Detox removes obstacles to future progress. And that is part of reaching your goals!
Athletes benefit because toxicity can affect tendon and muscle strength. As well as aerobic and anaerobic endurance as it prevents cells from producing energy effectively. So guys and girls wanting to be strong should be on a detox at least twice a year as well.
THE END of detox!
I will slowly reintroduce food to my life! I think I need to put some fat back into my diet ASAP. I miss it even more than protein.
A question came in about carbohydrate levels, yes they are quite high during the detox because the protein used is rice based and will have some carbs. But its only 100+g which is not going to help you strip fat, but its not high enough to make you a tubby either. Also the carbs are always with protein and often with fiber so its not so bad:)
Closing in on the end. Sleep was good. 7 hours straight with a nap in the afternoon. Finally the bodyfat measurements are moving. Supra illiac as down another 1mm. Weight is down 1.7kg which is pretty good. Not much muscle lost.
The diet is same as before. But today was hard to resist. I had a family dinner with really nice food. Satay, Salmon soup and veggies with garlic. Very healthy and actually good for you food! And for the sake of the detox (and all of you readers!) I ate NONE OF IT! It was hard! But if I can do it, so can you when you detox!
Bowel movements are evening out. I think the majority of the bad stuff is out, now the bowel movements are smooth but the volume is alot less.
So far the results…
Leaner by about 1.5% body-fat
Maintained muscle (due to high doses – up to 70-80 caps of amino acids/day)
Better sleep
Better bowel movements
More energy (due to better sleep)
Many other people report clearer minds, but I did not notice that that much – but I’m pretty clear headed usually haha.
But am getting tired of the taste and thats part of what made sitting at the dinner so hard!
Training was alright, power snatch weight for 3 reps stayed alright at 75kg. Can’t wait to train hard again and eat lots of good quality food!
Me looking sad and not eating the yummy stuff
See my plate with medicinal food, while there was much nicer stuff all around!
Did things right sleep wise, computer off, phone off etc… and had 8 hours straight. Just as it should be. But still needed a short nap in the afternoon. I have been using a bit of topical magnesium along with the capsules. I think the topical one absorbs through the skin fast, so there is a quicker effect, and then the capsules to continue the release of magnesium through the night. The overall combination is better than either one alone.
Food was same except I ate a big bowl of seaweed + veggie soup at lunch.
I trained arms and shoulders today, the strength is clearly lower, and so is the ability to recover between sets. Most body fat sites are dropping a little 1-2mm which is quite slow considering considering the results I can get for clients haha. But because this is kind of a higher carb diet than I usually have (100+g/day) my love handle site (carb intake related) isnt dropping much.
Im not too worried though. This isn’t some radical fast fat burning diet, it’s for cleaning up stuff inside. I believe it potentates further fat burning in the future and sets your potential “standard” bodyfat level lower.
Nutrition was same as previous days, unfortunately the organic + non allergenic nature of the supplements mean they are rice protein based rather than diary, the taste takes some getting used to!
Some things to take note if you want to try such a detox program
You need to be taste tolerant – this is not for gourmet taste buds
You need to be good at swallowing capsules – there are lots of these and it would be best if you can swallow at least 4 at one time easily
You need to be able to handle social situations and get out of messing up the detox. I had a lunch today with an old friend from school. I managed to eat a small house salad and some broccoli while he ate a large yummy rib-eye ARGH.
Bowels were great as usual, weight loss is not too much considering the limited amount of food I’m eating. So far about 1-1.5kg in 4 days.
Some water/glycogen loss. It can be felt in workouts, the first few sets are ok, but feel drained after that.
Gasp on my 5th set of chin-ups I could only do 6 good ones- barely! Normally I can do 6 with 30kg weight added! But its only temporary. I also think heavy lifting is slightly affected because there is ZERO fat in this detox.
Fat is important in building the nervous system. You can maintain muscle (like I do with the big bunch of amino acids) but strength is hard to keep without saturated fats – yes that’s right nutritionists – go have a spasm!… saturated fats!
Sleep was not as good last night. I actually stayed up late reading. Also I forgot to move my work phone away from my bed. No mistakes tonight!:) Sleep is important!
Many personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches miss out on the key to grip training. As I mentioned in my previous grip training post, the key is variety, in the tempo, the exercises, the angles, the weights, the isometric holds, the finger positions, WHICH finger is used, and which type of wrist or hand strength you are trying to develop.
At Singapore’s best gym, our personal training and sports performance programs allow for a great variety of grip training and thus grip is not a limiting factor in out athlete and personal training clients. Here are some of our grip tools shown below, these are made by what I consider the best hand strength training company, Ironmind. They sponsor the world’s strongest man contest so their stuff is tough! Not cheap for sure (but hey I’m learning to buy once and never worry again) but it should last many lifetimes, and help our many personal trainers at Genesis get the clients strong! You have, from left to right… A lifting pin (we have a couple of these and they are the best way to load grip training as well as chin-ups and dips), hand opening training, mini grippers for individual finger training, bands to train hand opening as well, finger loops to train finger closing strength, hub cap grip, box grip, grippers, finger loops so you can train finger strength, wrist roller which can attach to a power rack or squat rack so that the wrist gets the training while the shoulders are supported, and a wrist roller to train an often underdeveloped part of grip strength, moving the wrist “sideways” for anatomy nerds like me, this is called radial and ulnar deviation. Strong hands here we come!
Entries (RSS)