Ive been trying to gain weight, and am up 9 pounds in a month (6'1'' 180# -> 189#). Good start. Strength has been moving up as well, feels good to get back in to lifting more seriously. Goal is to hit at least 200# by end of football season.
That's about how I am. I'm ussually pretty gased as well. Have thought working in some front squats or something along those lines just to get some more volume in.
A word of advice from someone that has been down that road is I would back that weight gain down. Could end up like me were your in this cycle of gaining weight and strength and then cutting that weight off but losing some of the strength. More or less just spinning your wheels. At that much you are more than likely adding unnecessary fat. Here is a really good breakdown and I would stick to these limits.
I will also add that my accessory deadlift has almost exclusively been deficit deads. I feel very comfortable with my lockout once I get it above my knees. I will likely switch it up a bit on my next cycle and do some more stiff legged or paused DLs
I assume this has been posted here - Spoiler Stanford researchers' cooling glove 'better than steroids' – and helps solve physiological mystery, too The temperature-regulation research of Stanford biologists H. Craig Heller and Dennis Grahn has led to a device that rapidly cools body temperature, greatly improves exercise recovery, and could help explain why muscles get tired. BY MAX MCCLURE Steve Fyffe The rapid thermal exchange device, nicknamed 'the glove,' creates a vacuum to draw blood to the surface of the palms. Cold circulating water cools the blood, which returns to the heart and rapidly lowers the body's core temperature. "Equal to or substantially better than steroids … and it's not illegal." This is the sort of claim you see in spam email subject lines, not in discussions of mammalian thermoregulation. Even the man making the statement, Stanford biology researcher Dennis Grahn, seems bemused. "We really stumbled on this by accident," he said. "We wanted to get a model for studying heat dissipation." But for more than a decade now, Grahn and biology Professor H. Craig Hellerhave been pursuing a serendipitousfind: by taking advantage of specialized heat-transfer veins in the palms of hands, they can rapidly cool athletes' core temperatures – and dramatically improve exercise recovery and performance. The team is finally nearing a commercial version of their specialized heat extraction device, known as "the glove," and they've seen their share of media coverage. But what hasn't been discussed is why the glove works the way it does, and what that tells us about why our muscles become fatigued. Nature's radiator For Heller and Grahn, the story starts, improbably, with a longstanding question about bears. Black bears are extremely well-insulated animals, equipped with a heavy coat of fur and a thick layer of subcutaneous fat that help them maintain their body temperature as they hibernate through winter. But once spring arrives and temperatures rise, these same bears face a greater risk of overheating than of hypothermia. How do they dump heat without changing insulation layers? Heller and Grahn discovered that bears and, in fact, nearly all mammals have built-in radiators: hairless areas of the body that feature extensive networks of veins very close to the surface of the skin. Rabbits have them in their ears, rats have them in their tails, dogs have them in their tongues. Heat transfer with the environment overwhelmingly occurs on these relatively small patches of skin. When you look at a thermal scan of a bear, the animal is mostly indistinguishable from the background. But the pads of the bear's feet and the tip of the nose look like they're on fire. These networks of veins, known as AVAs (arteriovenous anastomoses) seem exclusively devoted to rapid temperature management. They don't supply nutrition to the skin, and they have highly variable blood flow, ranging from negligible in cold weather to as much as 60 percent of total cardiac output during hot weather or exercise. Coolers and vacuums In humans, AVAs show up in several places, including the face and feet, but the researchers' glove targets our most prominent radiator structures – in the palms of our hands. The newest version of the device is a rigid plastic mitt, attached by a hose to what looks like a portable cooler. When Grahn sticks his hand in the airtight glove, the device creates a slight vacuum. The veins in the palm expand, drawing blood into the AVAs, where it is rapidly cooled by water circulating through the glove's plastic lining. The method is more convenient than, say, full-body submersion in ice water, and avoids the pitfalls of other rapid palm-cooling strategies. Because blood flow to the AVAs can be nearly shut off in cold weather, making the hand too cold will have almost no effect on core temperature. Cooling, Grahn says, is therefore a delicate balance. "You have to stay above the local vasoconstriction threshold," said Grahn. "And what do you get if you go under? You get a cold hand." Even in prototype form, the researchers' device proved enormously efficient at altering body temperature. The glove's early successes were actually in increasing the core temperature of surgery patients recovering from anesthesia. "We built a silly device, took it over to the recovery room and, lo and behold, it worked beyond our wildest imaginations," Heller explained. "Whereas it was taking them hours to re-warm patients coming into the recovery room, we were doing it in eight, nine minutes." But the glove's effects on athletic performance didn't become apparent until the researchers began using the glove to cool a member of the lab – the confessed "gym rat" and frequent coauthor Vinh Cao – between sets of pull-ups. The glove seemed to nearly erase his muscle fatigue; after multiple rounds, cooling allowed him to do just as many pull-ups as he did the first time around. So the researchers started cooling him after every other set of pull-ups. "Then in the next six weeks he went from doing 180 pull-ups total to over 620," said Heller. "That was a rate of physical performance improvement that was just unprecedented." The researchers applied the cooling method to other types of exercise – bench press, running, cycling. In every case, rates of gain in recovery were dramatic, without any evidence of the body being damaged by overwork – hence the "better than steroids" claim. Versions of the glove have since been adopted by the Stanford football and track and field teams, as well as other college athletics programs, the San Francisco 49ers, the Oakland Raiders and Manchester United soccer club. The elegant muscle But what does overheating have to do with fatigue in the first place? Much of the lab's recent research can be summed up with Grahn's statement that "temperature is a primary limiting factor for performance." But the researchers were at a loss to understand why until recently. In 2009, it was discovered that muscle pyruvate kinase, or MPK, an enzyme that muscles need in order to generate chemical energy, was highly temperature- sensitive. At normal body temperature, the enzyme is active – but as temperatures rise, some of the enzyme begins to deform into the inactive state. By the time muscle temperatures near 104 degrees Fahrenheit, MPK activity completely shuts down. There's a very good biological reason for this shutdown. As a muscle cell increases its activity, it heats up. But if this process continues for too long, the cell will self-destruct. By shutting itself down below a critical temperature threshold, MPK serves as an elegant self-regulation system for the muscle. "Your muscle cells are saying, "You can't work that hard anymore, because if you do you're going to cook and die,'" Grahn said. When you cool the muscle cell, you return the enzyme to the active state, essentially resetting the muscle's state of fatigue. The version of the device that will be made available commercially is still being tweaked, but the researchers see applications for heat extraction in areas more important than a simple performance boost. Hyperthermia and heat stress don't just lead to fatigue – they can become medical emergencies. "And every year we hear stories about high school athletes beginning football practice in August in hot places in the country, and there are deaths due to hyperthermia," said Heller. "There's no reason why that should occur." Craig Heller and Dennis Grahn have personal financial interests in the company that is developing the cooling glove as a commercial product.
I agree. I think if it came from Caribbean Upstairs Medical College I'd dismiss it, but coming from Stanford gives it a little more credibility. Also, I think it would be very easy to test and disprove if it were total bs. Let's get Ihprop1 in the lab!
Did you read the last line in the story? Craig Heller and Dennis Grahn have personal financial interests in the company that is developing the cooling glove as a commercial product. Chryotherapy has been used for a while and arguably has some benefits. The Welsh rugby team was using it in the lead-up to the World Cup and I've heard of some other teams using it when their training demands are 2 or 3 training sessions a day. To limit it to something like a stupid glove and then claim it's BETTER THAN STEROIDS!!11!! ZOMG!! Bullshit. I've been around this game waaaaayyyyy too long to fall for something this silly. I know that there isn't some earth-shattering, ground breaking new method or product that is going to come along and make everyone jacked. There may be small tweaks that help you gain or lose an extra few pounds or a new program that might help you add 5-10 lbs onto your bench over the course of 6 months, but the magic fairy dust that everyone is trying to sell doesn't, nor will it, ever exist. If you train hard, sacrifice your free time, eat right, go to bed early, you will see results. That's it. End of story. The only shortcut is steroids. Just telling it like it is, kids.
I think after that cramp thing I had I pulled something. It's like my lower right side of my abs all the way to my groin is strained. Hurts like hell to even breath. Anyone else ever had an ab/groin strain or pulled it?
Wow. These are huge. Just started the 6 week strength program from candito. Starting numbers are 205 for bench, 235 for squat and 290 for deadlift. Hoping to gain strength at least somewhat comparable to your numbers. Great work.
It takes time to adapt. You'll start getting lovely calluses on your thumb, as well. Patience, my friend.
Considering testosterone will cause increases in strength and muscle without any actual exercise, i'm going to say that it's sitting comfortably at the top of the "performance enhancing food chain". A lot of the well-off athletic departments have these and I'll believe they enhance recovery but that's the extent of my expectations.
Could be something like a psoas strain or could be something more serious like a hernia. Give it a day or two and see what happens, I guess. If it persists, you may want to see someone to rule out anything serious. Abdominal strains are pretty painful, generally speaking. Moving, breathing, coughing, laughing will all be pretty painful. Whenever I see a comment like this, I wish i was a doctor or an athletic trainer
I can barely get these sausage fingers around the bar. I hate the hook grip so much, but I know I should start using it.
Thick fingers make hook grip harder unless you have long fingers that can still wrap around the thumb fully. A thinner bar would also help if you have short or think fingers.
I did see that. I would say it's probably pretty dumb to throw your entire career away to try to make money on a product whose claims could be easily dis-proven. Not saying this isn't what these guys are doing, but it just seems way too easy to show that it's bullshit. I'm curious. I'd like to see some independent research, that should put this to bed pretty quickly.
Took probably 7-10 sessions for me to get "comfortable" with the grip. When I first started I was just using it for my warm-up sets because I couldn't manage my working sets with it. Even 185 felt like my thumb was going to fucking explode. Eventually I just started using it with higher weights and it started adapting. Give it ample time and you'll get used to it. Yesterday confirmed in my head that I'm not going to miss a lift because of grip. 385 was rock solid in my hands. Had that been conventional double overhand, I wouldn't have gotten it off the floor.
Kind of what I was thinking. Wednesday was my first day trying it and I used it with 135 and it was very uncomfortable. I'll just keep trying to use it with heavier weight each session. Grip isn't an issue for me really, my man concern is a bicep tear(not really lifting heavy enough yet to worry about but hopefully soon) and just general imbalances from using a mix grip.
What's the consensus on T-Nation? I like reading some of the articles, but I also am not educated enough to know if they are legit or full of shit. And whenever they start placing marketing written into their articles, I get a little turned off. I guess I can't knock the hustle, it just makes me question a little bit.
I used to read it on occasion, but I've learned that a lot of it is just bull shit, bro-science, or top lists of random exercise stuff. Like right now on their front page there is an article titled "Top 5 most painful ways to build muscle." WTF is that shit? Sometimes there will be some nuggets in there for soft tissue work, recovery, etc... that I'll read, but I very rarely go there anymore. Sometime Bret Contreras will post some things on there that are interesting.
how to evaluate "X is as good as or better than steroids" step 1: does X migrate intracellularly to affect gene expression? step 2: when the answer is inevitably no, you can safely disregard the product
do you drink green tea / super food / something similar in the morning, or is it strictly 0 calories until your feeding window?
Can you have a "slight" hernia? On my last squat of the day, I felt a little discomfort in the area of an inguinal hernia. It isn't excruciating, but more of a discomfort. Don't see/feel any bulging. Probably just a little muscle pull?
Where is that at? I'm on day 2 of recovery for my groin/ab/whatever strain. Shit hurts nonstop. I didn't do legs this week and trying to do no impact the rest of the week. No clue still what the cause was.
When I was actually doing it on purpose I think a post workout protein shake was it from dinner the night before until ~11am.
When I would IF on purpose it was zero calories until my feeding window. I have done the feeding window where I skip breakfast and I have also done it where I skip dinner. Skipping breakfast is much easier. With out a doubt I have noticed better results trying to lose weight while IFing. Now, is that a direct result of the "benefits" of IF or does it just make me much better at being strict with my calorie intake? Tough to say, but I have experimented with it a lot and for me personally it is a pretty big difference. I have also never noticed my workouts suffering.
Just came across pretty awesome deal on adipowers from Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/adidas-Perfor...deID=6127770011&refinements=p_6:ATVPDKIKX0DER Use promo code FALL20OFF. They were $130 and free shipping since I have prime. That code took off $25.00, so $110 with the taxes to my door. I didn't get them because I already have Romaleos but that deal is very good.
C'mon now, you don't really have an ab/groing strain. You just want to grab his balls and make him cough. Admit it.
Ok, was probably just a muscle pull or something. Felt all better this morning, got a good bench workout this morning up to 295x3. Probably still had a couple more left in the tank, but no spotter so fuck it.