Matt Metzgar

Six Meals A Day Is Dead

Ask most nutritionists how often to eat and they will usually respond with the refrain of "a number of small meals per day".  Where this idea came from I have no idea, as there is little to no research to support its effectiveness for fat loss or any other goal.  This concept has invaded bodybuilding as well, as the usual advice is to eat six or even seven small meals a day to build muscle.

In comparison to the many meals a day idea, you have intermittent fasting - a concept that is not only being confirmed by research but also matches up with our evolutionary heritage.  Intermittent fasting is also slowly beginning to filter down to the fitness world and be applied by innovative trainers.

For example, have a look at the "Leangains" website.  This trainer is having great success with intermittent fasting as a tool for clients to lose fat and gain muscle.  Be sure to view the testimonials section, and look at the results of correctly applied intermittent fasting.

The six meals a day model isn't dead yet, but it should be and will be as time goes on.  People shouldn't have to force themselves to eat on a set timetable.  It takes up too much time and planning, and yields no better results than a flexible meal schedule.

Intuitive Bodybuilding

I have been spending a lot of time looking into muscle research lately, and it has been frustrating.  For one, some of the research or speculation doesn't match up with the practices of bodybuilders.  This is troublesome for a few reasons. 

Professional bodybuilders are the result of great genetics, training, and often performance-enhancing drugs.  Their tremendous muscle is often credited to the genetics and drugs, while the training methods are often overlooked.  But their training does produce results, and they are constantly experimenting to produce more and more muscle.  Also, there is obviously an incentive for each individual bodybuilder to find better training methods.  Given two bodybuilders who both have great genetics and access to drugs, the one who finds better training methods will produce more muscle.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have scientists or pundits who try to preach about building muscle.  Yet some of these people don't possess much muscle mass themselves.  My thinking is, if you have the secret to building muscle, then let's see it.  Quit telling me about it and show me the results.  Not everyone has great genetics and can become huge, but if a training method works it should be able to add muscle to most people with varying degrees of success.

One problem with all this is that bodybuilders often train by "feel", and this can be hard to translate into training instructions.  Some people may have "figured out" intuitively how to build muscle, but are not able to communicate specifically how it works. 

For anyone who has a grand theory about how to build muscle, this theory must also be able to explain how the top bodybuilding champions have built muscle.  To this end, I think the people over at "X-Rep" are trying to do just that.  They seek to integrate their training theories with how top pros actually train.  They haven't figured it all out yet, but I think they're off to a great start.

Office Plant

As it turns out, office plants are quite good for people.  Here's a short article(pdf) that highlights some research on the subject.  Humans evolved in an environment filled with plant life, and recreating that environment in an otherwise dreary office setting yields benefits.

Muscles and Tension

Here's a good article that got me thinking about time under tension.  The article covers muscle-building from a variety of angles, including some NASA research on what builds muscle.  The article quotes trainer Alywn Cosgrove, who believes a muscle has to be subjected to 90 to 120 seconds of total tension in order to trigger growth.  It seems likely that there is some minimum of total tension necessary for muscle growth; after all, bodybuilders usually do three or more sets of an exercise, not just one.

There's no hard science yet on how many total seconds of tension are necessary for muscle growth.  It's also unknown if it's better for the tension to be continuous or broken into shorter segments with rest periods.  Yet there is plently of anecdotal information out there on the subject.

Here's one transformation that took place on The Learning Channel.  The challenge was to transform an out-of-shape professor into a male dancer.  According to the press release, the subject was able to gain 10 pounds of muscle in six weeks.  The weight training was 3 sets of 60 seconds of slower repetitions, 3 seconds up and 3 seconds down. 

Here's another transformation by author Tim Ferriss.  According to him, he gained 34 pounds of muscle in only 4 weeks.  Who knows if there is any funny business going on with this claim, but the pictures do show he made tremendous progress no matter what the time frame.  Ferriss performed compound movements for 8 to 12 repetitions, with slower repetitions of 5 seconds up and 5 seconds down, for a total time under tension of 80 to 120 seconds.

Finally, I just saw a ton of copies at the supermarket of trainer Jorge Cruise's new book, The 12 Second Sequence.  Cruise has "discovered" that slow repetitions are effective at building muscle.  He recommends 4 repetitions of 10 seconds up, a 2 second static hold, and then 10 seconds down, for a total of about 90 seconds time under tension.

From these three possibly legitimate sources, it would appear that a threshold of tension for muscle-building may exist, perhaps in the range of 80 or 90 seconds.  I would like to see some good studies done on this, but in the meantime it seems like a good idea to pass this time threshold when exercising a muscle group. 

At The Gym

Roger Bannister Training II

I recently found this great study(pdf) which looks at concurrent strength and endurance training.  The study was designed to see how the order of strength and endurance training affected outcomes, but I was more interested in the structure of the endurance training itself.

Subjects were divided into four groups: endurance only, strength only, endurance before strength and vice versa.  Training was performed twice per week.  The endurance training was all interval training, similar to Roger Bannister's training.  Subjects ran hard for about two minutes, and then recovered by jogging easy for the same amount of time.  This cycle was then repeated until speed dropped below a certain threshold.

All the groups that did this endurance training significantly improved their 4k time.  Endurance training before strength training was better than the reverse as far as improving 4k time.  But it's amazing that such a simple system of twice per week interval training, without an additional mileage base, can significantly improve aerobic capacity and running performance.

Roger Bannister Training

I've tried a number of approaches to endurance training over the last few months.  I've tried running 3 times per week, once per week, interval training, sprints, etc.  The other week I decided to simplify things and follow the training principles of Roger Bannister, the first man to break the four-minute mile.

Bannister's training in the 1950s was pretty bare-bones compared to modern plans.  Bannister was in medical school and had little time to devote to his training.  His workouts lasted about 35 minutes and were performed a few times a week.  To save time, his workouts had no warmup or cooldown.  Generally, he ran one lap fast (400 meters in just over 60 seconds), and then jogged a recovery lap in about 2 and half or 3 minutes.  This cycle was then repeated about ten times.

With this simple system of interval training, Bannister was able to break the world record in the mile.  Modern elite runners now perform a huge mileage base in addition to their interval training.  Judging from the results, this can help lower times.  But for the non-elite athlete, the question is whether such a mileage base is necessary.

Could Bannister have run the mile even faster by adding a big mileage basis to his training?  Maybe.  But even if this were true, he probably achieved 98% of his running potential by performing interval training only.  So for the average person looking to get the most out of their endurance training, the Bannister model seems like a very reasonable way to achieve this goal.

Results-Only Work

Here's a neat article about how Best Buy is radically restructuring its approach to work.  The employees in their corporate headquarters have no set schedules, no set hours, and are held only accountable for work objectives.  The whole concept is called Results-Only Work Environment or ROWE.

Under this framework, employee productivity and satisfaction has soared.  Voluntary turnover has dropped to zero in some departments.  Things have gone so well, Best Buy is trying a version of this for its retail employees.

This approach struck me as a very logical, very healthy approach to work.  In this setup, employees are accountable for work produced, not hours put in.  The hours model is just a leftover relic from the Industrial Era.  Back then, more hours might have equaled more work.  But today, with intellectual and creative work, this relationship does not hold.

I would love to be able to work in such an environment.  Best Buy has created a spin-off company called CultureRx which offers consulting services for companies looking to adopt this approach.  To me, this is the future of work.  Being chained to a desk for a certain number of hours per day is an inefficient and ill-conceived way to structure a workforce.  It's time for a change.

Do You Need Extra Calories to Build Muscle?

The conventional wisdom for building muscle is that you need a calorie surplus to build new muscle mass.  This simple logic has fueled a huge industry of "gainer" drinks and supplements that supply these extra calories.  But are extra calories really necessary to build muscle?

You often see an association where someone who is muscular eats a lot of food.  For example, bodybuilders do consume more calories than the average person.  Seeing this, it's easy to think that eating more equals more muscle growth.  But what I really think is happening is that they are eating more after the fact, that is, after they've already gained the muscle.

The body balances its intake of food through hunger and satiety.  Given natural (Paleo) foods, the body will seek to maintain a certain weight based on a variety of factors.  If a person gains muscle, this raises their basal metabolic rate, which the body should then compensate for by increasing hunger.  Therefore, a person who has added muscle will naturally eat more, as the body attempts to maintain this new muscle (given continued training).

How about the actual process of building new muscle tissue, does this require extra calories?  First off, no one really knows how many calories it takes to create new muscle tissue.  Second, if building new muscle tissue does require "extra" calories, then the body would naturally compensate again by increasing hunger during this process.

For example, if a person increases their activity level, their appetite will tend to increase as well.  So if the body requires a certain number of additional calories to create muscle tissue, this need should be covered by increased hunger and the resultant increased intake of food.

In conclusion, I don't think there's any reason to force-feed extra calories in order to build muscle.  The hunger mechanism is strong enough to make sure a person consumes enough calories to fuel all bodily processes, including muscle growth.  Sufficient fat and protein are needed for muscle growth, but as for the total number of calories, hunger should be the ultimate arbitrator.

The Big Fat Payoff II

Last week, I wrote about how fat was the real payoff for hunter-gatherers.  These fats came from bone marrow and organ tissue, and were unique for their brain-building abilities in humans.  Now a new study shows there is another piece to the puzzle: cholesterol.

This new study shows that higher dietary cholesterol led to increased gains from resistance training.  This finding fits right in with the fat payoff model: intense muscular effort (hunting) followed by a feast (protein, fat, and cholesterol) equals success (more muscle mass).