The springs coming and I’m super excited about that. 

It’s a great time to plant out some vegetables and get set for the summer ahead. I’m a big fan of some home-grown rocket, various herbs, tomatoes, courgettes once you get going it’s really fun, delicious and rewarding. You can grow in pots, inside or out you don’t need loads of space or a garden.

R5 Orange Aminos are back in stock, along with Alpha Greens, Spices, Vitamin D/K2 complex. I normally stop vitamin D in April / May – but if you are still inside you can continue on 1 tablet per day (2000ius).

Been busy running around on various corporate projects as well as keeping the clubs I work for ticking along. The corporate team I’m working for has lost 35kg of fat and gained 14kg of muscle in 3 months as a group – plus they all look about 10 years younger. There’s 13 of them.. 4 of them are trying to gain weight and muscle.

How did I do that? As part of the Coreperformance system, I told them;

• The impact of glycemic carbs and relationship of insulin to metabolic syndrome
• How to exercise and move more
• Why high fructose corn syrup is a toxin and basically ditch that crap
• Stay out of fast food establishments – I don’t like to Demonise food, but if you want to dine with the Devil then I’ll tell you where he eats
• Correct omega imbalances and fix vitamin D deficiencies
• Track stuff to make sure you are on the right track
• Smile more and enjoy the process
• Run more, walk more, lift more, train more
• Salad is good, eat salad – with protein
• Drink more water, green tea etc.
• Protein is your friend
• Hunger isn’t the enemy – embrace hunger
• Pain is temporary (non injury pain)
• Stuff not moving – track things closer
• Fluid balance means daily weighing is a good idea
• Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day
• Fasted training still rocks for fat burning
• Morning routines establish your intent for the day and should be employed
• All of this is sustainable – most of them say they didn’t think it would be so easy

 The diet is as follows 

• Modified lower carb
• High nutrient density low energy density
• High fibre
• High protein
• Periodic fasting
• Occasional overfeed
• High movement and dynamic training
• Process and outcome based
• Simulation not annihilation
• Sustainable base with fast forward strategies

It’s amazing the difference dropping some fat weight can make to your appearance. Gaining some muscle also tightens things up nicely, also increases metabolic rate. 1lb of muscle will burn about 50 extra calories at rest each 24 hours.

Not that much on the face of things, but then if you gain 10lbs of muscle then the extra 500 calories per 24 hours makes maintaining a leaner body composition much, much easier.

As muscle is slightly denser than fat, some of the females in the group have dropped 20lbs of fat, gained significant muscle mass and dropped 4-6 dress sizes.

In a way to stay healthy you need to be on a mission to stimulate the muscle and starve the fat most days. Missions are good.

As we lose 3-8% per 10 years of our muscle mass after age 30 and 1-2% per year after age 50, you can see how frailty and loss of capacity are on the increase. Thinking about that just staying as strong as you can after 50 is making progress in some ways, just not going backwards.

Of course, you can still get stronger as you age. There’s no reason why you can’t do as much as a 25-year-old until you are 65-70 – you just need longer between sessions to recuperate. Plus, you gotta train with weights, your body weight – you just got to think about creating force and power each day.

Some of my favourite training programmes for clients include insanity, convict conditioning, and Al Kavadlo ‘We’re working out’ he trained me as a body weight conditioning instructor.

If you use these principles and invest in a comfy weights vest, I like the cross over ones so they don’t rub your nipples.. get a 5kg, 8kg, 10kg and maybe a 12kg. You can use a 20kg one but those are better for chins and dips rather than burpies. A weights belt is also cool for chins and dips once you get stronger. 

There’s nothing sexier in my opinion than a woman who can do some chins and strength stuff. Strong females are sooo cool.

Ideally do something which means you gotta run, lift, climb like the cops are chasing you for something you didn’t (or did) do…… try and sweat until you are rinsed with sweat most days. Try to do something a little bit harder today than you did earlier in the week.

 There are all kinds of ways to increase muscle, but generally you have to do something progressive, e.g. make it harder each time you do it. The legend of Milo is a great way to understand and apply the principles of progressive overload. 

I was happy to see glycerol was off the banned list last year. You can use glycerol for pushing loads of nutrients into the muscle and it helps stretch aided hypertrophy. I’ll be talking about and updating that section from the Old Regenerate system I wrote about 15 years ago.

Inch by inch life’s a cinch, yard by yard life is hard. Stretch aided hypertrophy or the ‘pump’ all good.

Right now, I’m gonna go and do insanity plus lift some weights. Have fun today. If you need anything drop me a line.

Till next time.

Matt

Amino Man