Growing at the Speed of Failure
Physical
6 Steps to a Healthier You: How You Will Finally Get into the Club This Year (part 2)
(continued from 12/23/2010 – read post)
3. I don’t know what I am doing – I’ll probably just hurt myself (again). Almost every gym membership comes with one or two sessions with a fitness trainer. This is a perfect time for you to ask all of your questions.
Go through the motions with little weight and have the fitness trainer correct your form. Take notes if you think it will help you do it the right way later without a trainer.
Start simple. Low weight and low reps. (more…)
6 Steps to a Healthier You: How You Will Finally Get into the Club This Year (part 1)
I use to sit in front of a computer 12 hours a day and never exercise. My wake-up call was when I was going up the stairs of our three-story townhouse apartment one day. I got to the top of the stairs and I was out of breath, my heart was racing and I felt dizzy. It was then that I realized that even though I was not “fat” and I was still young, I was out of shape nonetheless. (more…)
Tim Ferriss “Geek to Freak” Starts Next Week
In honor of the timely release of the forthcoming book The 4-Hour Body, by author, speaker & lifehacker Tim Ferriss; I’m going to have another go at his experiment he publicly posted in 2007 titled “From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks.”
Though Tim was formerly a wrestler and a solid mesomorph body type, he had stepped away from his strenuous workout plans to slim down while training to compete in a tango competition in Argentina. From that training, he had dwindled down to 146 Lbs.
So after returning to the US, he studied muscular hypertrophy and set out to gain as much muscle mass as possible in 30 days.
4 thirty-minute workouts and 30 days later, he had gained a total of 34 LBS OF MUSCLE.
After reading that, I thought to myself, “hmm… that’s pretty cool; what if I could do at least 25% of that? That would be worth it. So I did and set out for 30 days of kicking my own butt physically. I’ve never done anything like it before. (more…)
No Fat Horses
Many people feel that to lose weight, they have to cut down on how much they eat. In some cases that may be true. However, when putting on muscle and staying fit, you may have to eat like a horse.
When working through my last 30-day weight gain experiment, I found that I got what I call “food fatigue.” I was eating so much – more than twice what I normally did, that I just got tired of eating. I wouldn’t even be hungry for the next meal when the time came. I was eating 5 meals a day.
What did I do? Well, not enough. As I ate the right foods and cut out fast food, sodas, large desserts, had a “vacation day” every week where I could eat whatever I wanted and I was actually losing weight. My weight went down and I wondered what the heck was going on.
I found at the end of the 30 days that I had lost 12.9 Lbs of fat and gained 10 Lbs of muscle by doing this. (more…)
20-Year Night Owl Becomes Early Bird in 1 Day
Since about the age of 15 or so, I have considered myself a night owl. I would stay up or out late and get up late. I even carried that into adulthood. I would stay up until 1:00AM or 1:30AM working on websites, video production, etc.
However, over the last several months I have been contemplating changing my life. Not that my life was bad or I was miserable, I just wanted to raise my standards.
Around April 27th, 2009 I heard of a program about changing your daily routine. I almost immediately decided to follow this simple program on how to become more productive with my day. At the time I was waking up at about 8:00AM or 8:30AM and my wife and children were up an hour or so before me. I worked late every night and was feeling disconnected with my wife and kids – at least to the extent that I was feeling “out of the loop” in their daily routine. I wanted to contribute to the morning routine. Several changes have happened since then and I want to tell you how it happened… (more…)
It’s What’s On the Inside That Counts
I was Shocked After My First Interview with Dr. Emmett Blahnik from Matthew Peters on Vimeo.
[VIDEO 23min 30sec]
When I started my weight training program, I decided to meet up with Dr. Blahnik. I was having some neck and lower back pain and I wanted to get it checked out before stressing my body with heavy weights. What I found was shocking. The X-Rays told it all. What he showed me had me put off starting my geek to freak program for 3 weeks! I could actually see where the pain was emanating from. Dr. Blahnik is a very talented & knowledgeable Chiropractor. He’s done wonders for not only myself, but for my wife and son as well.
It was much easier to start making diet & lifestyle changes when we started to understand the reasons why they were so important.
I have been to a couple chiropractors in the past, but only at the onset of pain. They would “crack my back” and I’d be okay again for a little while. I’d get the xeroxed exercise sheet for me to follow at home and never do the exercises.
What Dr. Blahnik does differently is he combines the chiropractic visits with before and after adjustment therapies. I go in, do a few exercises, get adjusted, then do more exercises. The whole process takes about 30 minutes to complete. When I started, I went in 3 times a week. Now I go in two times a week. I’m feeling better, with less pain and less symptoms of different illnesses that I was experiencing prior to my chiro therapy. I feel better physically than I have in years and am on no medications. The video is a candid look at my spin health and a basic explanation as to why it is so important to have your spine free of “subluxations.”
You can find out more about Dr. Emmett Blahnik Here. He is an amazing athlete as well:Completed Three Ironman triathlons, U.S. National Greco Roman Wrestling Team, Wisconsin Golden Gloves runner-up, National Rugby Team and a marathon runner.
I Gained 10Lbs of Muscle & Lost 12.9Lbs of Fat in 2hrs 5min of Lifting Weights Over 30 Days
If you know Tim Ferriss and his “Geek to Freak” Experiment, you will read that he was able to loose 3 lbs of fat and gain (back +) 34 Lbs of muscle by working out a total of 8 x 30 minute lifting sessions over the course of 30 days.
I have commented back to Tim on his blog and instead of going into all of it here, I will copy my post on his blog here:
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Link to Tim Ferriss’ post that I commented on.
Hey Tim,
First off, let me say that I always hated going to the gym. I never considered myself an athlete. I was never muscular and didn’t go out for sports in school. Pretty much stayed away from athletics my whole life.
I followed this plan as best as I could read from the initial blog post and your updates for exactly 30 days. There were some questions I had about amounts of each supplement, but it seemed to work the way I did it.
Since I had not worked out for years or even jogged for 15 years, I didn’t ramp up enough to get the most out of my first two or three workouts.
Here are my stats:
Before After
Weight: 182.8Lbs 181.7 Lbs
Caliper Fat Pinch:
Chest: 22mm 20.5mm
Abdomen: 34.5mm 25mm
Thigh: 24mm 22mm
Waist: 34in 32.5in
Abdomen: 36.25in 34.75
Thigh: Right (32 inches up)
Unflexed 21.5in 21.25in
Arm: Right
Unflexed 12in 12.25in
Flexed 13.5in 14in
Shoulders: 46.75in 47.25in
Chest:
Flexed 41.5in 40.50in
Unflexed 40.5in 39.75in
Body Fat: 24% 17.9%
43.9 Lbs of Fat 32 Lbs of Fat
139 Lbs Lean 149 Lbs of Lean
Just wanted to note that my 30 days (From G2F experiment) ended on Wednesday. Overall, I am very happy with the visible results and the increased energy. I am actually continuing with the program in a modified way starting on the 15th of November 2009. About ¾ of the way through I found a couple exercises that accelerated the results and unfortunately, I experienced food fatigue and didn’t get the calorie intake that I should have during the second half – e.g. I could have had even better results.
30 day totals:
Total time at gym: 6Hours 5Minutes
Weights in motion: 2 Hours 6 Minutes
Number of lifting sessions/days: 8
Cardio: walk 23 min, jog 7 min 6 days a week
Every snack, meal, protein shake, supplement was recorded
Every lift duration, weight and reps were recorded
I am making plans to modify the program and do a second run at it starting November 15th.
Just a personal thanks to you Tim for making this public. My chiropractor (a 3x Ironman, U.S. National Greco Roman Wrestling Team, Wisconsin Golden Gloves runner-up, National Rugby Team and marathon runner) and a famous personal trainer friend who humored me and took my before and after measurements accurately, were truly amazed at these results.
It is one thing to drop weight for a weigh in, but to drop that much fat and gain that much lean muscle mass in 2 hours and 15 minutes of lifting and walking every morning for 30 minutes is another.
Tim, you really have something here and I am telling everyone about what you have. It is hard to see my friends struggle so much and face so much discouragement by overworking to lose weight and gain muscle mass.
If you need any assistance with other methods or want any records, just let me know!
P.S. The turkey-bean chili with tuna and mac is fantastic. Highly recommended.
Tim ferriss
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Much more to come…
