As with all the rest of our programs and services here at our Singapore Gym, the Genesis Performance Center, we are constantly trying to deliver the best possible value to our personal training and fitness bootcamp clients.

We try out everything we offer ourselves before asking others to try, and certainly before asking others to become paying customers.

Do you seriously think we would just market this rather “controversial” program without trying it out first?

1. Though I highly respect Coach Poliquin’s writing, we should still think critically and try things for ourselves… (extremely smart though he is, it does not excuse us from thinking).

2. Have you considered how much it would cost to buy all you need for the program yourself?
- the latest workout/supplement stack is in the new arms training book – $50
- one bottle of every supplement you need (less the 1 item we don’t have cos its – for no real reason… a controlled substance in Singapore) -$400+++
- Gym membership at our fitness center for a day $$$priceless$$$ cos you can’t get it otherwise – its for fitness coaching clients only.

When you thin about all this the PRICE is not low, but the COST is LOW
- This activity is for fun. Profit is near zero. (just go count the pills you get and the price of the supplements and food)

But most importantly, there is the RESULT!! Many people trying to gain mass in their body struggle for months or even years to put on 3/8 to 1/2 an inch on their arm diameter. Is $97 (for a bunch of food and supplements) worth it to get that gain? After all, that money only buys you a bottle and a half of low grade protein powder!

Jen (SG strongest man last yr) tried the program about 2 months ago and has a permanent (TILL TODAY) 3/8 of an inch increase on his arms + increased work capacity that he has retained for all upper body workouts.

He already has trained for 10+ years, has 18 inch arms and could bench 160+kg… and he got those gains.

Beginners and intermediate trainees should get even better results. But hey… talk is cheap. Below are two pictures. One taken before the training, and one taken today. Both are cold, un-pumped and flexed pictures of Jen’s right arm. The top picture is at 17 3/4 inches, the bottom one is at close to 18 1/4.

I finished reading this book in 2 long sessions over 2 days. That should be the first sign of how intersting I found it. Some other medical books that I read are a chore. But this one was exciting because it seems to relate closely to the problems some of our personal training and fitness bootcamp clients face.

Some clients do their best but get slow results. And there are many gems in this book that help explain why.

The author, Dr Mark Schauss writes from the perspective of both a scientist, as well as the father of a child suffering from seizures that no one else seems to have a clue about. So that sets him upon his journey of learning with great passion and enthusiasm.

Because of his wide range of experiences in the “health industry” while finding help for his daughter, I feel he has a very balanced viewpoint about both the pharmaceutical as well as the alternative fields of health care. His points are made in (nice!!) short chapters so you could probably pick up this book and read it from any point instead of front to back.

Even less excuses for not reading it.

One (out of the many) nice points that relates to body composition i.e. weight loss or fat loss, is that because of the toxic world, we accumulate toxins in our body. To reduce the amount of damage done by these toxins, our body slows down its metabolism to minimize the toxic effect.

No wonder people with toxic issues that lead to hormonal disturbance (seen in both our functional testing, and bio-signature results) can’t lose weight. Their bodies are in slow down mode.

He also likes the accuracy and quality of Metametrix labs which I have also found to be good.

All in all, this is a great guide for anyone who is interested in maximizing their health and productivity despite a toxic world.

BTW Dr Schauss has a free and very useful podcast on itunes. You can find it here.

I was in Sweden over the last week on a private internship with coach Poliquin for personal trainers and fat loss specialists. We learned alot about the customization of nutrition and training for rapid fat burning. One of the main things that I learned that has already helped me customize my own supplementation methods, is the use of supplements to improve neuro-transmitter balance. Different people have different dominant brain functions and when we realize this, we use different nutrients to help each person perform better.

Better brain function, better sleep, better motivation, better growth hormone output, better training focus, better results.

Results is what all our training programs aim to deliver!

Take this test called the “braverman” test. Print it out and do it honestly – after all, its for your own improvement. And tell me what your scores are in the comments below:)

Quite a number of the personal training and fitness bootcamp clients at the Genesis Performance Center are Muslims. And in August, they begin their fasting month. Most of them would still like to exercise to maintain their strength and weight loss / fat loss results. Last year I wrote about what to eat and how to schedule training during the fasting month of Ramadan.

Here are some additional tips and supplements that can help you or your Muslim friends during Ramadan.

The general idea is to make sure that everything you eat is nutritious! Because you will eat more infrequently, and there is only a certain amount of food that you can stomach at one time, every ounce should be full of nutrients. So, the same “caveman” rules apply. No refined food, and if a caveman didn’t have it, you shouldn’t either. This ensures that you are eating whole, non-refined foods.

Eat red meat, with fat. This is slower to digest than white meat or purely lean meat. That is good for keeping you full, and reducing the impact of the infrequent meals. Lamb, mutton beef! Yum.

Eat healthy fats in larger amounts. These include fat from meat, fish oils, and nuts. Fats slow digestion so that keeps nutrients coming in nice and slow over time. You feel more full, you don’t get elevated blood sugar, and you will store less body fat.

Supplements that can help you are things that will maximize digestive health (to get as many nutrients as you can from limited/infrequent meals) and stuff that will reduce the impact of stress hormones on your body because semi-starvation increases overall stress on the body.

Stuff like….

HCL to aid digestion

Omnizyme – a broad based digestive enzyme formula

Probiotics - to keep the good/bad bacteria ratios healthy in your digestive tract

Glycine with evening meals – to relax the nervous system and fight stress

Some form of herbal stress buster like serenity 2.0 or yin-hance

Something to get you up and going early in the morning, like Acetyl-L-Carnitine found in Yang R-ALA.

There we go! It’s tough to make maximal gains during Ramadan, but with these suggestions you should be able to train and maintain the gains that you have gotten from your past year of training.

There have been more “scary stories” in the past week in the media in Singapore about the “dangers” of being in the sun. How skin cancer is a huge threat and how we are not designed to be in the sun all the time.

The mainstream media is out to sensationalize things and scary stores are a great way to get readership. But they are wrong. (and it wouldn’t be the first time, and probably not the last). Here is what I believe to be the balanced and smarter way of doing things…

Here are some truths about how the sun affects us. And how we should deal with the risks, while getting the most benefit from sunlight!

• The sun helps us produce vitamin D, and it its best possible form. I recommend vitamin D to many of my personal training, fitness bootcamp and nutrition coaching clients because it is a wonderful nutrient that has great benefits from immune system health, less allergies and autoimmune diseases, fat burning and muscle building as well. An interesting point is that EVERY kind of tissue in our body has vitamin D receptors that means that correct vitamin D levels boost ALL areas of health. That means that However, even the best quality supplemental vitamin D is possible not as good as the vitamin D produced in our own bodies when we are exposed to sunlight. In fact Dr. Michael Holick, an expert on vitamin D has researched and found out that vitamin D produced from skin exposure to sunlight lasts longer (2x or more) in our blood as when it is taken as a supplement.
• The risk to benefit ratio of having sunlight vs not having it is excellent. The most common damaging problem of EXCESSIVE sun exposure is what is known as basal cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer. Certainly it is not a good idea to get skin cancer. However basal cell carcinoma is relatively non-malignant, and almost never results in death. However the cancers who have a REDUCED risk with higher sun exposure (we know this because they are more common in less sunny areas of the world) are very deadly. Colon, breast, prostate and others are very dangerous cancers and they are all positively influenced by sunlight! Yay!
• We need to condition ourselves to sunlight. And our bodies will adapt. Sunlight has 2 types of ultra violet rays (UV). Type A, and Type B. UVB burns us but also stimulates vitamin D production. UVA tans us but is also damaging to the skin. Most sunscreen blocks only UVB. So we don’t get vitamin D production. Yet it allows us to feel “unburnt” so we stay longer in the sun, and absorb alot of UVA which eventually causes skin problems.
• In short, if we are not accustomed to sun, we will get burnt, that is the sign that we have had enough, and should go inside. However sunscreen “turns off” the burning and helps us stay outside longer than out current level to tan and tolerance allows.
• It is a bit like training an athlete. If he is gradually conditioned (getting a tan over time) he can withstand great physical training and stress. However, taking a suntan lotion is like training while on painkillers, you feel no pain so you don’t know when to stop and you get a serious injury because your body cannot actually handle the training loads.

What have we learned?

• The sun is good for us
• Too much is bad for us
• Don’t use suntan lotion
• Get a tan gradually if you want one
• When you are tanned, you can tolerate more sunlight

One of the more common ailments that my Singapore personal training, nutrition coaching and fitness boot camp clients have when they first start their fitness programs at Genesis, is gout.

Here are the tips that have really helped many of my clients (and my own dad) get rid of gout once and for all.

Water is important for everything and speeds up elimination of toxins. I prefer filtered, alkaline water. I finally found a good contact for water filtration systems in Singapore. So if you are interested in getting one, please contact me with the subject “water filter” I can get you in touch with a trust-worthy seller.

So getting high quality water aside… here is what you need to do to fix gout.

Stop eating processed meats. Its not meat that gives you gout, its CRAP meat. Please note that…chicken nuggets are NOT meat, bak-kua is NOT meat, sausages are NOT meat. Eat meat, just not the nonsense kind, it has to look like it was recently part of an animal!

The world’s highest rates of gout is in Germany i.e. land of sausage (crap meat)

Also you need a proper multi-vitamin that boosts liver detoxification. For clients with gout at my center, I use Multi-Intense. Why? It has the best content quality that I have found, and the tablets dissolve well so you don’t wast ingredients that are not dissolved for digestion. In fact when you touch the tablet with even a moist finger, they start to break down. This is wonderful because it means that the nutrients will easily break down in the acidic environment of your stomach. For men and post menopausal women, choose the iron free version. For ladies, the version with iron works best.

My own dad had gout for many years especially while working in the middle east (crap meat) but once hes back home he eats alot better and no gout attacks for 2 years following the steps above.

Ingredients:

• For about 9-12 mini muffin size pieces
• 2 Scoops chocolate whey powder
• 2 teaspoons nut butter (This time I used organic brazil nut butter, but peanut or caschew butter seems to work fine too)
• 3 tablespoons melted butter (about 1/4 of a cm slice of a regular size block).
• 4 squares of organic dark chocolate
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 pint Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Ice cream (sorry kidding!)

Directions:

• Cut the chocolate into small pieces.
• Melt the butter (or don’t melt it, just mix it thoroughly)
• Mix it all together
• Heat oven to 170deg C and cook for about 2-3 mins (not kidding its fast) till you see a bit of “bubbles” on the surface of the muffins.

Take a look at the picture, once you see those bubbles form, get it out of the oven.

This should give you a slightly crisp outside with a nice moist inside. Like warm chocolate cake. Just with a much smaller effect on your buttocks and abs.

No need to grease the tray, the high saturated fat (yes nutritionists, clutch you hearts and go into shock) content is self lubricating!

You will notice the tray is not full… thats because those have been eaten!

Take note: This is not better than meat, veggies and other food that suits your body type and genetics. However it is a billion times better than the nonsense most people eat when they are pressed for time and convenience.

One of my fellow coaches from Texas, Luke Leaman pointed me to this article at consumerreports.org. While I don’t agree full with all the protein recommendations (I see better results with slightly higher protein content in food and less starches for most personal training fat loss or fitness bootcamp clients), this is a non-profit, unbiased lab test of some common protein brands.

Shocking levels of heavy metal toxicity and other toxins.

That is why I started a new website to sell only the best supplements in Singapore. I call it www.singaporesupplementstore.com. Check it out. As an extra service, my staff and I give customer support and QnA help to those who buy from this site through my distributor links.

Saving money is good. But not at the expense of your health. And with supplements, like many other things, cheaper is NOT better!

As people who are interested in maximizing our health and life, we have to beware of what I call the “online attitude”. That attitude is that we can get whatever we want for free. Download free music, movies and books. Take whatever you like, it is easy to get whatever  you want.

Besides the legal side of things…

The “easy way out” attitude carries over into our training and our buying decisions. Cereal for breakfast instead of high quality protein – after all, the ads say it’s good for you. But in reality, the cereal box is more nutritious that the cereal

Just do a bit of “easy” brisk walking and that should get you the awesome physique you desire, when in reality you will look exactly the same and likely fatter 3, 6, 12, 24 months from now if that is all you do.

Just choose the cheapest possible supplement instead of looking for the best quality after all, supplement companies never try to skimp on ingredients or fool customers with deceptive advertising. In reality the supplement industry is one of the most unregulated and scammish in the world.

Recently on an online forum, I was “accused” of making a profit of unsuspecting buyers of supplements. “How can you charge the prices that you do, you are making a cheap profit” was the claim. This is where, unfortunately the freedom of speech of the internet makes talking without proper consideration the norm. This poor soul forgets to take into account shipping, taxes, holding stock and currency conversion rates.

In fact, unless a client orders a big quantity, buying from me is actually cheaper than getting supplements of this quality directly from the supplier! And he forgets the service and support that is provided to help clients choose and buy the correct nutrients and supplements in the correct amounts… the internet certainly has its ups and downs!

But in general the “easiest and cheapest” mentality rules. But don’t let it rule you. Choose the nutrition, supplements, personal training, fitness services, exercise routine that gets you results, not wasted time and effort!

Alot of personal training or fitness boot camp clients who want to gain muscle mass or burn body fat are concerned about whether carbohydrates are good for them post workout. There are also questions about “new” forms of “better” post workout carbs like waxy maize and so on. In general I don’t like buying carbs as supplements. They simply are not worth it because you can get them naturally, with more nutrients, for less cost. However if you do want to take carbohydrates (carbs) post workout, there are some things to consider.

The key for post workout carbs is critical – how fat you are. If you cant see abs, use a greens drink like primal greens or phyto Px + glycine + glutamine + whey (preferably organic whey it causes much less bowel irritation).

This pretty much works for everybody who is more than 10% (men) or 16% (women)… so far I haven’t found anything that works better. The green drink alkalizes your body ASAP (training stress is acidic) so you start recovery faster. The glycine calms down the nervous system, the glutamine fills glycogen without carbs (for fatties, no carbs is better).

Remember, when your central nervous system (CNS) is all fired up you cant relax, so you can’t recover as well.
Also, remember that this is POST WORKOUT if you do glycine pre-workout you will feel like sleeping, glycine is in fact a sleep aid.

But for lean boys, the variety of carbs post workout works well.

If you are not fat and want to get the most benefits out of carbs, there is no “super duper magic carb” the thing you look for is a VARIETY of carb sources so that they give a different time release of the carbs at different speeds. this leads to greater glycogen refilling than any 1 type of carb.

If one super “fast” carb is used, the muscles can’t take it all in that fast, if a super slow one is used, the muscles hunger for replenishment is not satisfied fast enough. That is why a variety of speeds is good. I personally like to use a mix of maltodextrin, dextrose, and fructose. This is found is a product called “Quadricarb” by Poliquin. It also has D-ribrose which is a great source of cell energy as well.