Music in your ears and fire in your belly

Update: Check out my playlists on Spotify! (links in the sidebar)

Music is great; we all like music, or at least, we all should like music. Music has been shown to have a whole host of positive benefits on the human psyche, mood and performance, but as this is a fitness blog, we'll stick to that topic. There have been a multitude of studies on the effect of music on sports performance, so here is a little, in-no-way-comprehensive round-up of a few relevant studies I happened across in 10 lazy minutes on Google Scholar.

This paper found that synchronous music enhanced performance in a 400m run; this paper found that both slow and fast music enhanced the time to completion (over a no music control) for 500m rowing sprints, with the fast music slightly outperforming slow. So for anaerobic performance, fast music or music that is in time with our activity is preferable, but if you prefer slow music, go for it. These two papers found that listening to 'arousing' (their word, not mine) music during warm-up (and only during warm up) leads to higher heart rate, which subsequently led to greater power outputs in tests. This means that you don't have to be hammering your ears into oblivion throughout your workout, in fact a quick blast of music before a set may be all you need to see a positive effect.

There is literally no article in which I will not put a picture of a scantily clad female. 

You may want to keep that music going through your set however, as this paper showed that self-selected motivational music increased muscular endurance, allowing subjects to hold a weight for longer than in a white noise condition; so your favourite pump up song may let you grind out an extra rep or two on a hard set, leading to bigger and better gains in the long run. Furthermore, this paper found that "significant increases in strength performance occurred when arousal was high", the arousal in this study was the result of imagery and breathing exercises, but as the above studies show, spinning a tune that stirs some emotion in you will achieve arousal, ergo likely bringing about these increases in strength performance.

If one entertainment source isn't enough to satisfy you, and like most millennials you need a constant stream of digital media into your face, this study showed that a combo of motivational music and video enhanced performance on a maximal effort run. It's probably not ideal to start watching Braveheart in the middle of your next set of bench, but if it could be safely done so, watching the right videos could make your cardio sessions both more fun and more productive.

At this point, I am going to share some of my own favourite lifting music which is almost entirely aggressive hip-hop, metal and hardcore; this certainly will not be for everyone so if you want to clock out now with the knowledge that listening to the music you like will let you get more out of your sessions, feel free to do so. If you are lacking angry songs by angry men (and ladies), then read/watch/listen on.

Hip-Hop
I considered jumping in at the deep end (double meaning full intended) with some of the heaviest stuff I listen to, but that would scare 99% of people, so we'll start crowd friendly...ish. Firstly, I listen to hip hop, not radio rap (call me a snob) I don't listen to anywhere near the amount that I used to, but what I do listen to tends to be verbose and magniloquent (think Lupe Fiasco, KOOL A.D., Jay Electronica, Elzhi, Aesop Rock) not always the in-your-face high energy tunes that lend themselves well to a high intensity training session. Nevertheless, here are some suggestions that may be lesser known (as I will assume everyone knows that The Chronic was a good album and Biggie may have had a decent song or two):

I love Danny Brown, he treads the line between intelligent and ignorant rap like no-one else. Either way, he always has incredible production (including loads of big 'EDM' names on his newer stuff) and rarely, if ever, has a bad verse.

Snowgoons are a production team from Germany who consistently make huge sounding boom-bap beats. All MCs are guest spots, so the verses can vary, but they have loads of material, and there is some gold in there.

P.O.S. brings a strange blend of hip-hop, punk and electronic; not all tracks are super high energy, but when they are (like the above, one of my favourite songs ever) there is no pause for breath.

Run the Jewels are getting some well deserved recognition finally, as El-P has had 10 years plus repping the ultra minority of gingers in hip-hop. High energy production and non-stop bars from 2 top calibre MCs, also not afraid to get political on videos, if that is your thing.

Despite the name, Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire fires out smart lyrics at a million words a minute with one of the best flows in rap. Get him on a big beat and it's absolute magic.

Wu-Tang. You should know them. You should listen to them. You should also watch this video if you haven't.

Hardcore
If you see me in the gym, its highly likely I'm listening to something like the following:

If you are an emotionally dark and crippled human being like me, you too may fall in love with Counterparts. With some of the most profoundly negative, yet cathartic lyrics ever committed to tape (or whatever they commit to these days), pushing your physical capacities to their limit whilst blasting Counterparts is a near transcendental experience.

A band that just does everything right, Hundredth make pitch perfect hardcore, just try listen to the "don't you fucking test me" drop in the above song without feeling a hit of adrenaline.

Von Wolfe appeared, dropped a 6 track EP of disgustingly good hardcore and then swiftly and tragically disappeared. Wasted potential aside, what we do have is a masterpiece of raw aggression.

Proving that anything the boys can do, girls can do just as well, we have Vales. Female fronted hardcore that pulls absolutely no punches.

The Ghost of a Thousand make music that makes me want to break things.

Liferuiner adds 20kg to your squat. Just look at the singer, I bet he can bench 4 plates.

This video has criminally low views for how incredible Statues are. Please watch it and be as blown away by both their music and the singer's glorious beard.

In case it is not clear, I love hardcore.

Metal(core)
It's different to hardcore. Sort of.

Misery Signals, the masters for over a decade.

Leaders of the new school. Northlane's first 2 albums were incredible, then their singer literally screamed his voice to it's breaking point. That's the price you pay for greatness. I can't think of any other singers that have the range of highs, lows and cleans that Adrian managed on early Northlane.

The Devil Wears Prada keep getting better, they just do everything right. Fantastic cleans, booming yells, one of the tightest live bands I've seen and even if it is not exactly on my wavelength, I have to admit there is something pretty cool about loving Jesus so much that you scream your face off about it.

When you need some Dillinger Escape Plan, only Dillinger will do. Is it genius or is it noise? Well, it's both. Also the singer is jacked, so clearly his music is fit for lifting.

The closest I have ever come to a religious experience is seeing this song live. The Chariot were something special. Their last album 'One Wing' is genuinely considered a modern masterpiece. Something about being a God botherer compels you to make incredible metal apparently.

Embrace the End do not let up. Speed riffs, blast beats and 2 guys screaming at you, this is the musical equivalent of PCP.

Call it technical metalcore, call it progressive deathcore, Born of Osiris know how to make some incredibly heavy beautiful music.

Speaking of technical deathcore (and finishing this list deeply in the stupid heavy regime)...Animosity.

If you have made this far, congratulations, you are probably me. Hi David, you should go and do something useful with your life now.

Is your personal trainer a waste of money?

There are over 20,000 PTs in the UK, you may have regular sessions with one, you may be thinking about hiring one, you may even be one. Some of these PTs are fantastic; they create smart personalised programming for their clients, adjust based on objective and subjective feedback, keep things interesting (but don't introduce variety for the sake of it), provide motivation and deliver results. Some tick a few of the boxes, which may be all you need. However others to provide little more than could be gained from a Googling 'workout' and playing a tape of someone saying stock motivational phrases.

- Plato, circa 400 BCE

Before we get into it, I should probably try to rub off the target that I painted on my back by deciding to write this and make sure that I'm not totally hated by every PT I know (just a little bit hated, because I'm a generally disagreeable person). This article is not a slur on all personal trainers, there are many, many good PTs out there; nor is this a claim that I know more or can deliver a better service than said trainers, it is simply my opinion on what you should be looking for if you feel like spending your hard earned money on some professional fitness guidance.

Not a personal trainer, just an opinionated loud mouth

With that said, your personal trainer is likely a waste of money if...

1. Your sessions are an unplanned collection of exercises with no structure for progression

"How about we start with the curl machine, then maybe some burpees, then uhhh, some push ups... on a bosu ball... super-setted with TRX mountain climbers, then we'll see how much time we have left and use whatever equipment is free."

"Confuse the muscles"...also confuse anyone trying to make sense of your routine

If you hear something like this from a PT, just leave. Completely improvised sessions that have no week to week structure like this are far from uncommon, and usually occur for one of two reasons. The first is caving to the need to make sessions seem as varied and interesting as possible, throwing in all the exciting bits of equipment, fun exercises and pseudo-advanced techniques to make new trainees feel like they are getting great value. While this may seem fine, lack of a structured, personalised plan makes it far harder to objectively progress in the areas which you want to. Added to the fact that paying a PT to reel off random exercises represents terrible value and provides you with none of the tools to construct your own effective training in the future. The second reason is pure laziness and lack of preparation, if a PT is unable to construct a solid training plan and know exactly what needs to be achieved in your coming session, they are likely not worth your money. However, just being given a plan doesn't mean all that much if...

2. You are given a generic programme/diet, identical to all other clients

Generic/cookie-cutter/off-the-shelf programmes can be great, from 5/3/1 to Smolov to whatever the hell Olympic lifters do, to the deep, dark vaults of Bodybuilding.com, there are many very good programmes out there, written by men and women far more knowledgeable about training than you or I. Programmes such as these provide training frameworks that have proven to be successful in allowing trainees to reach the stated goals of the plan.  The cost of obtaining these programmes ranges from 2 minutes of your time spent locating them on the internet to around £30/$50 for the most pricey training (e)books. As that amount of money might not get you 1 hour with some trainers, it is not unreasonable to expect a custom designed programme for your goals and personal needs, or at the very least, some tailoring of a pre-made, tried and true programme; especially as many of the off-the-shelf programmes encourage and detail a degree of customisation to the trainee's wants and needs. This means that a trainer that simply hands you a pre-written programme with no thought is literally less useful than a 12 page PDF. We may not all be completely unique snowflakes, but all trainees will all differ somewhat in their aims, abilities, preferences and attitudes; a good trainer will recognise this and adjust their methods accordingly.

A cookie cutter AND a special snowflake. Mind blown.

A training plan customised to your needs is a great start, however, a you will not achieve all you can if...

3. Your progress is not monitored

Whether you are trying to lose fat, gain muscle, increase endurance or get stronger, physical self improvement lends itself very well to objective measure as a means of tracking progress. If your trainer is not weighing you, taking body composition measurements or regular photographs, you cannot get accurate feedback on your rate of muscle gain or fat loss. If you are not performing the same exercises under the same conditions on a regular basis, you cannot accurately determine whether you are getting stronger or increasing your endurance. Every session does not need to be a test and indeed doing so would be counter productive, but monitoring progress under standardised conditions is the most accurate way to determine whether progress towards a given goal is being made. This allows good trainers to observe whether what you are currently doing is working and tweak your diet/training accordingly, optimising to reach your goals.

If your sessions look like this, you may have gone a little too far

If a PT checks the above 3 points off the list, they are likely a good trainer and you will make good progress when working with them; however the best trainers set you up to keep making good progress, long after you stop paying for their services, which won't be the case if...


4. They complicate, instead of simplifying and tell you what to do, but not why

Many trainers will complicate to profit, leading you to believe that their special methods are key to progress and for that reason, you need to keep paying them as long as you want to be making gains. In truth you can get very deep into the complex minutiae of nutrition and exercise science, but for 99% of people, this is completely unnecessary and learning basic, overarching concepts will serve you far better. A PT that teaches the principles behind training for your goals and gives you basic knowledge frameworks to construct your own training is worth far more than the trainer that gives you fancy, complex workouts, but doesn't explain the concepts behinds them.

If you can find a PT who will listen to your needs and goals, construct a training plan and/or diet to help you reach those goals, take objective feedback to track progress and modify your plan accordingly, all while educating you and giving you the tools you need to a self-dependant and motivated trainee, that is someone worth throwing a fair stack of cash at.

Alternatively, you can pay someone a couple of bills a week to pluck a few exercises out of their arse and shout at you while you sweat a bit. Rinse and repeat for weeks/months/years, until you notice that you have absolutely no gains. Realise your personal trainer was a complete waste of money and time. Cry a little.

How not to be the guy that everyone hates at the gym

I try to make most of my posts useful to the general training populous, so everyone from the rank beginner to seasoned gym rats can hopefully pick up something useful here or there. I also try to make them positive in general, some friendly advice or a word of inspiration. This one fits more in the category of 'shouting into the void'.

If you learn something from this article, you may be inexperienced and naive, in which case you get a by, assuming you take the points herein to heart. However if you are you have been training long enough to know better and still are ignorant enough to violate basic etiquette, you should probably be sterilised before you can find a mate of equal ignorance, create offspring (with an extra concentrated dose of ignorance) and effectively contribute to the devolution of humanity.

Without further ado, some ground rules on how to use the gym and not be a complete dickhead. It's basic etiquette; we're not animals, we live in a society, let's act like it.

1. Don't break stuff

Oh, you just managed a clean and jerk with 50 kg did you, big man? And now you are dropping that bar from overhead? Then that will make a big crash and then you'll look really cool to everyone in the gym. Alternatively, lower the fucking weight and rack it or put it down, get a bit of extra work in and save the barbell, plates and platform from extra abuse. Of course there are exceptions, if you are at a suitable facility, with suitable barbells and plates and you are hitting work sets for Oly lifts loads or actually competing in a CrossFit challenge, go ahead, but this is a minority of instances. If you are repping light weights for 'conditioning', warming up or generally fucking around, keep the weight in your hand and stop throwing things around trying to look hardcore. You are not hardcore. Same goes for dumbells, if you feel the need to throw the 15s after a br00tal set of lateral raises, kill yourself.

Matthias Steiner cares about gym equipment so much he cushions its fall with his neck

All gym equipment, as with anything in life, will eventually fall apart and die. Whilst there may be some preventative measures, such as rubber coated dumbells, bumper plates and rubber flooring in place, everything will take a whole lot longer to fall apart if you don't chuck it around like a chimp throwing its shit.

When you sign up to a gym, you are essentially taking part ownership of all the equipment therein. If you break some equipment, in addition to pissing off all your fellow gym goers, it is your retarded self that loses out.

Don't be that guy, respect the equipment.

2. Everything in its place

Look at the picture above. Tiny children, barely able to talk and still shitting themselves, have the ability to put the coloured shapes in the right place. Yet many gym goers can't seem to put the 30 kg dumbells back in the recesses handily marked '30 kg', if you are one of these people, well done, you were literally more cognitively advanced in nursery than you are currently.

Alternatively, you believe that once you've completed what you want to do, it's no longer your problem, even if it leaves the next person inconvenienced. In this case you are a low grade sociopath and should probably seek help. Strip your bar when you are done, put the plates back in the right place on the weight tree (or whatever organisation system your gym has), rack your dumbells and put any specialised equipment back where you got it from. If you see someone leaving the gym, a wake of ditched dumbells, fully loaded bars and random gym items strewn behind them, you have full license to bitch slap them with no further explanation.

Don't be a dickbag, put everything back where it belongs.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

3. Don't get in my zone, son.

No one tends to like strangers getting in their personal space at the best of times, but if that person has a heavy weight on their back/over their face/halfway off the ground, you best stay the hell away. This includes not walking over someone else's lifting platform, not taking plates from someone's rack during their sets, not standing over someone doing a bench/floor exercise. Furthermore if someone is using a mirror to check form (or their pump), don't stand directly in the way.

What was that about personal space?

The same goes for your gym equipment; by all means bring your stuff into the gym, but tuck it away, don't be the guy who uses the bench as his personal bag stand or the guy that leaves his mobility equipment in the middle of a busy walkway. The gym shouldn't be an obstacle course full of protein shakers, foam rollers and brain-dead mouth-breathers with no courtesy for personal space.

Get yourself (and all of your shit) out of the way.

4. Communicate, but know when to shut the hell up

Some people like to promote the ethic that no talking should take place in the gym and that if you are able to have a conversation, you aren't working hard enough. Maybe they are right, it's better than the other end of the spectrum; if you have been giving a blow-by-blow account of your life to someone for the last 8 minutes, chances are they currently want to kick you in the face and get the hell on with their workout. We can probably settle on a middle ground, discussion of training can be useful to all involved and a bit of a social chat isn't a bad thing, but don't forget that other people have things they want to do that don't involve listening to you.

There are times in the gym where communication is a necessary part of proper behaviour. If someone is using equipment you want to use, ask to work in, conversely offer if you can see someone clearly wants to use what you are using, check that no one is using a piece of equipment before you jump on, ask for/offer a spot; these are all situations in which a bit of chat helps everyone.

Just shut up the rest of the time. No one cares.


5. Time and a place for everything

'Functional' exercises are all the rage, I get it, they can be fun, some are extremely beneficial and people think you look cool. Many of them also take up a hell of a lot of space. I love/hate prowler pushes as much as the next man, they are great, but trying to shove a big metal sled through a busy gym at peak hours...not the best idea. Same goes for anything that requires a large space and/or cumbersome equipment: farmers walks, walking lunges, loaded carries, battle ropes, sled dragging, tyre flipping, sledgehammer work ...all great exercises, but don't be the fool who gets in the way of multiple other people and makes a hazard of themselves because they think they'll test their 1RM snatch in the middle of the gym at 5.30 pm.

Good exercise? Yes. Suitable for peak time in a busy gym? Not at all.

Similar rules go for supersetting or (Lord forgive) 'WOD's which use multiple pieces of equipment, you're probably not in danger of injuring anyone, but you are likely pissing them off by hogging all the toys like the kid everyone hated in nursery.

Finally, don't do simple, easily portable isolation exercises in squat racks/on benches/on platforms that people want to use for their intended purpose. 'Curling in the squat rack' has become the cliché, but people are guilty of plenty more, I have waited to use a bench whilst someone (I shit you not) wrist curled on it. Don't be that person.

If you are inconveniencing multiple people so you can do an exercise, just don't.


6. Don't be gross

Wash your gym clothes, have a shower and wear some deodorant, please. There aren't many things worse than finishing a hard set, sucking in some air and finding it thick with someone else's stench.

Further, if your reps for Jesus end up leaving a full body sweat halo like the Shroud of Turin on any piece of equipment you touch, wipe it down, you're not the messiah, you're a very naughty boy, now go away.

Finally, I know we are all pounding the protein shakes, and I know this can cause a bit of bubble-gut in some people, but if you need to send out the old sphincter siren, at least step outside.

Be clean, don't smell.

7. Don't be a dick

Every gym has a few guys that they are the biggest, hardest, coolest guys there, the sort of guys that insist on staring other people out, strutting around chest puffed out and convincing themselves that they are the biggest person there. I'm sure these guys won't be reading this, as they likely can't read, but fuck 'em anyway.

Try not to be too narcissistic either, granted, there is absolutely a streak of vanity to almost everyone who trains in the gym, that's why we are there, but don't take it too far. By all means have a look at the sweet pump you are rocking, but don't spend 5 minutes posing at yourself and lifting up your top right in front of the mirror; if you are small, people will laugh, if you are big, people will assume you have a tiny penis.

Bit of column A, bit of column B.

In summary (of the whole article), don't be a dick and training can be fun for all.

A Christmas f**king miracle - How to enjoy the festive season without adding extra padding

As usual, we have a post title lifted from some of my favourite hip hop; this time it is so called after a track from El-P and Killer Mike as Run The Jewels' self-titled, free, highly critically acclaimed début album.

So 'tis the season of rampant consumerism and terrible songs on loop in celebration of the birthday of a guy that was essentially the David Blaine of 2000 years ago, but his tricks were apparently so good, people are still going on about them. There are however, some good aspects of this holiday season; time off work to relax, see friends, enjoy time with your family and most importantly stuff delicious food into your fat face until you are uncomfortably full, then repeat hours later. While most people don't have 5 kg of extra fat on their Christmas list, that seems to be pretty much what they get every year. What this article will hopefully share with you are some strategies that you can use (along with some willpower) to make sure this year you can have a lean Christmas (in the good sense), as it's not 'bulking' if you are just getting fucking fat.

Jacked Santa said all you're getting for Christmas is the gift of "Stop being a little bitch"

For most people the 24th - 31st of December become an absolute physical shit show, where the most activity they get is repeatedly lifting copious of food and alcohol from the table to their mouth. While short overfeeds can actually be very useful in the war on fat (as explained in a previous article). Week long food binges are not. When you overeat a whole host of processes are triggered in your body; insulin levels rise which decreases the mobilisation/oxidation of fat and increases the storage of nutrients as fat/glycogen/muscle. Parasympathetic nervous system activity is increased, which means you feel relaxed and sleepy and probably can't be bothered to move. Thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) are released in increased quantities, this will serve to temporarily up regulate metabolism as your body attempts to burn through the piles of food you have just eaten. Thermogenesis will increase due the the thermic effect (TEF) of all the food you have just eaten; ever had meat sweats after eating half the turkey? That's TEF. As we can see, not all of these things are bad, thus is why short bursts of overeating work. It is when overeating becomes chronic (say, for a week) that the negative aspects such as high insulin and down-regulated fat mobilisation will become real issues. Furthermore, adding alcohol to the gamble can really start to mess with things as this will down-regulate both carbohydrate and fat oxidation, meaning pretty much everything you eat will go straight to storage.

Turns out Santa has a pretty sweet deal

This leads us to my first tip: endeavour not to eat big and drink big on the same day.
Preferably, keep the alcohol consumption low in general, but I know for many this just won't happen. Instead, when you are sitting down for your big Christmas meal, keep in mind that if you want to get stupid drunk with only your family as company, you are fucking weird. Also keep in mind that if you are drinking, all those delicious calories are going to end up on your belly/ass/hips/chins/bingo wings/eyelids ...you get the idea. Most will then probably be going out for drinks with friends on some other day in the festive period (Boxing Day Pub Crawl, anyone?), if this is the case, I am not going to tell you to moderate consumption (other than don't kill yourself), moderate your food intake instead. Luckily, I have already written at length about this here. In general, eat loads of veggies and lean meat, keep fat intake very low throughout the day and only eat a moderate amount of carbs at least 3 hours before you plan on drinking. Then when you are getting boozy, preferably drink low-calorie drinks, don't eat during/after drinking, just hydrate well when the night is done and go to sleep.

Andreas Cahling has no time for binges like you weak people.

On to the second tip: Do some exercise around your food binge.
This tip is split into two, the first option is preferable but is potentially not feasible on Christmas day. The second option is your back-up plan and the only thing stopping your from implementing that is pure laziness. Option 1 is to perform a glycogen depleting workout prior to your food binge, the best way to deplete your glycogen stores will be an intense, hi-rep weight lifting (15-20 reps) workout, hitting as many major muscle as possible in your workout. This glycogen depletion will mean that your muscle's "fuel tanks" are running low, as such, a large portion of the approaching food-gasm will end up re-fuelling your muscles, rather than sitting on your waistline. Now, I realise that this is impractical for most people as not everyone will have the time or facilities to perform such a workout on Christmas morning. Enter Option 2; around half an hour before and an hour after you inhale the same amount of calories that the entirety of Ethiopia has consumed this year, perform 60-90 second contractions for a few major muscle groups. I'd recommend something like a set of squats, a set of push ups (or a scaled back version) and a set of inverted rows. This will only take a few minutes but will serve to active so-called GLUT4 receptors in your muscle by moving them to the surface. GLUT4 receptors are responsible for directing glucose after ingestion, by performing these brief exercises you are able to preferentially direct the food you eat towards your muscles and lesser so towards your belly, albeit with less efficacy than if you took option 1.

Sure he's old and fat, but he has the right idea

Tip number three: Try to minimise the insulin response from your meal.
There are a few ways to do this, the first, best and arguable easiest is to primarily eat meat and veg with lesser quantities of starches and sugars; meat is the best part anyway, you can disagree if you are content with being wrong. By not going too overboard on the starchy and sweet stuff, your insulin won't go too mad, which will go a great ways to limiting the amount of fat you store (if any). Another strategy is to have a planned first meal which is high in protein and fibre, but not fat or simple carbs; this lets you take advantage of the "second meal effect". This refers to the fact that following a high fibre meal, a subsequent meal will have a lower glucose and insulin response as well as less effect on triglyceride levels, all of which are beneficial if you wish to remain jacked and pale (because, really, who is tanned at this time of year?). A third strategy which is easy to implement is to drink green tea throughout the meal, this has a two-fold effect; first the green tea flavanols serve to improve your response to secreted insulin. Second, the caffeine serves to speed up the transit of food through your digestive tract, whilst this isn't optimal when we want to extract all the nutrition from our food, but when we are hugely overeating, a degree of incomplete digestion serves as a convenient damage control strategy. A final strategy is to consume citrus (grapefruit, lemon or lime) as part of your meals, as these foods serve to decrease the insulin response of a meal, probably the easiest way to do this is to squeeze half a lemon in every cup of green tea that you should already be drinking.

Anyone who thinks that potatoes come close to being the best part of this meal should be sectioned

Tip number four: consider implementing intermittent fasting on the days around your binges.
I have previously discussed intermittent fasting at length. When implemented the day after a food binge, IF just feels pretty natural as you will probably be a disgusting bloated mess, so a morning of not eating, just drinking water and giving your digestive system a rest is probably exactly what you feel like doing. You can also implement a longer than normal fast as a means of calorie restriction to help offset the huge calorie surplus on binge days. As an added bonus a fast will also serve improve insulin sensitivity, which will play into tip 3.

So there you have it, a few dietary tips to reduce the impact of the holiday spread. So Merry Christmas, Happy New year and don't get too fat.

Girl put in work - Why females should lift heavy

If you are wondering about the title, it is from The Morning by the The Weeknd. If you are unfamiliar with The Weeknd, you are missing out on literally the greatest sexy-time music created. He definitely wasn't singing about lifting, but I don't care, it's an absolute tune.

This one will be old hat to anyone that has talked to me for any amount of time on the subjects of health, fitness, physique and looking jacked and tan. My thoughts are pretty straightforward - if you are an adult without any debilitating medical conditions, you should be lifting or at the very least performing some sort of anaerobic exercise on a fairly regular basis. This tends to be an easy message to convey to guys; most fellas want to look significantly more like Arnold and less like themselves and thusly will realise that they should be lifting more and generally being less shit than they currently are. Whether they follow through on these thoughts is entirely up to the mental/testicular fortitude of said male, but at least most know that lifting is the unsurpassed means to the ends of a better body.

No hetero

The fairer sex, on the other hand, present a different challenge. Whilst some females are now warming to the weight room and the idea of women lifting is becoming more mainstream, many woman are stuck in the misguided "weights for men, cardio for women" mindset. What I plan to present here, with my usual semi-factual, highly opinionated, sometimes funny, always obnoxious style, is my treatise on why the world would be a better place if all women lifted weights. If you are reading this and happen to be the proud owner of a cock and balls, then it goes without saying that you might not gain a whole lot from the process, but feel free to pass my arguments on to any and all females in your life, that is assuming you want them to become significantly more awesome in every way.

Men can also stick around for more of this sort of thing

Most females find themselves exercising, whether inside the consecrated ground of the temple of iron or in some lesser venue, with the aim of losing some fat and 'firming', 'toning' or 'tightening'. Firstly a minor aside; the phenomena that are supposedly described by those last 3 words don't mean anything in a physiological sense, they are buzz words, created by advertisers and thrown around by people that don't know their HIIT from their tit. When it comes to changing your physique, there are two process that you need to concern yourself with, the loss of fat and the gain of muscle. That is all; as far as you are concerned, one of these processes should always be your goal. 'Firming' is not the body's response to resistance training, muscle building is; 'tightening' of the midsection will not be the product of endless sit-ups, however fat loss will occur with hard training and proper diet. Minor diatribe over and back to the original programme, if fat loss is your goal, you may mistakenly think that hours and hours of steady state cardio, pounding the treadmill or revolving your life away on the elliptical is the best route to a leaner you. The truth, as you may have guessed, is that weight training, specifically lifting heavy using large compound movements (such as the squat, deadlift and overhead press) is in fact the most efficient use of your time and effort in your quest to lose some wobble.

Take heed.

A weight lifting session will cause 'micro-trauma' to your muscles, this may sound a bit terrifying, however this is a good thing as your body will go about repairing these tiny tears in your muscle fibres and in the process making the muscle slightly bigger and stronger. You might now think this has precisely dick all to do with fat loss, however hold your proverbial horses as we delve a little deeper. This repair of micro-trauma requires an energy input, this means that for a period of around 24-72 hours your rate of energy expenditure (i.e. metabolism) will be significantly increased. This depends on the volume and intensity of your workout with studies showing that heavier weights (in the 6-8 rep range) are the most beneficial.  This essentially means that the day(s) after a hard workout, you are burning fat whilst you are out buying handbags and tampons (or whatever girls do in their free time, I don't know). Another factor to consider is that the new muscle tissue that you will be building is highly metabolically active, with each extra kilo of muscle raising your basal metabolic rate by around 80 calories a day. Over the long term these increases add up, leading to a leaner, hotter you.

I'm not a big fan of Crossfit, but I am a big fan of Crossfit girls

Whilst aerobic cardio training has it place, and can be effectively used for weight loss, the result is tends to be just that: the loss of weight, from both fat and lean tissue. It should go without saying that this is not a favourable situation as the hours of time invested in the treadmill lead to you becoming a smaller version of yourself; you may weigh less but there will likely be no significant improvement in body composition, with all the jiggly bits you didn't like probably remaining jiggly. This mainly comes down to hormones; low intensity long duration exercise gives little to no boost (or even drops) to endogenous testosterone and growth hormone levels. As previously explained, these hormones are vital, even for females, if looking lean and sexy is your goal; this is because these hormones promote the growth of lean tissue and the burning of fat. To add insult to injury, long duration aerobic activity causes a large increase in your bodies cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone which serves to break down tissue, this includes fat, which of is nice, but also includes lean muscle tissue and as we all know, there is nothing more tragic than the loss of sweet, sweet gains. It also causes an increase in appetite, so the fat loss effects might well be negated if you succumb to the cravings for delicious, sweet, comforting carbs that tend to hit as the product of excessive cardio exercise.

If there's two things I love...

Anaerobic exercise (i.e. lifting or high intensity work such as sprints), on the other hand, promotes the specific loss of fat and gain/sparing of lean muscle tissue. This is because, as previously mentioned, there is a large calorie burn effect on the hours post-exercise (which isn't achieved with aerobic exercise) but also importantly because of the hormonal milieu that is created in your body. When it comes to changing your body composition, you cannot think of the body as purely a calorie in vs. calorie out 'furnace', hormones are highly important as they essentially signal to your body what tissue should be broken down and what tissue should be built. High intensity weight training will not raise cortisol as much as extended duration cardio, as such the environment which leads to breakdown of muscle tissue is not reached. As I have written in past articles, heavy weight training will serve to increase your testosterone and growth hormone levels, which are key to a lean, muscular, 'tight' physique, rather than the small soft physique which is regularly the product of endless hamster wheel aerobic training.

This photo of a hot girl standing near a barbell totally proves my point

So we have established that weight training is a hugely beneficial route to losing fat and keeping it off, but the reasons that damsels should get acquainted with the dumbells don't end there. To state the completely bloody obvious, lifting heavy weights will build muscle; to state the slightly less obvious, muscle building is something females should be looking to achieve. Now I know, I know, you aren't trying to be a bodybuilder, you don't want to get 'huge', you are scared of 'looking manly' and so on, so on. In truth, building muscle will add curves, make you look 'toned' and 'firm' (shoot me now for using those words) and add to a more feminine, shapely overall appearance. Legs, bums and tums end up looking far better from a diet of heavy squats deadlifts and hip thrusts than they ever will from hours on the elliptical; arms and shoulders will look much more shapely from diligent training of heavy presses and rows than they will from spending hours waving around 1kg dumbells in some terribly named aerobics class.  Instead, heavy weight training will force your muscles to adapt to the stresses you are imposing on them and grow stronger, denser and slightly larger, leading to a more firm, sculpted body.

As she's doing strongwoman, she undoubtedly lifts heavy as hell and damn is it doing good things.

World record holding powerlifter Caitlyn Trout lifts more than almost every guy you know.

If you are still worried about somehow getting too big, consider that no one has ever had a couple of weight sessions and suddenly realised they are fucking jacked; building muscle is a very slow process, so the chances of accidentally waking up one day and being 'too big' are about as likely as Rick Ross waking up with healthy blood pressure. Furthermore, as a female you have at least five times less testosterone than the most effete man, with typical values more like one tenth to one twentieth. This means that the muscle building potential for females is significantly less than that of men; women literally don't have the balls to get huge.

It's only fair to give the ladies something to look at.

There are also veritable ass-loads of peripheral health benefits that are the product of lifting (or the accompanying fat-loss and muscle gain), these might not be as sexy as the prospect of fat loss or building a great booty, but being a bit healthier is always nice. Lifting has been shown to decrease resting blood pressure and be cardio-protective as well as warding off type-II diabetes due to increasing glucose and triglyceride uptake by muscles. Heavy weight training also increases bone density and protects against osteoporosis, which is nice as it will stop you falling apart as you age. Furthermore, lifting leads to post-exercise endorphins releases which help combat stress, in addition to heavy lifting itself acting as a perfect venting mechanism for those that require a stress release. High stress levels can wreak havoc on your body so finding a way to combat stress is important; heavy lifting is pretty much like meditation for people that aren't hippies.

This is much cooler than listening to whale song.

An overlooked benefit of females taking up lifting is getting strong. Many girls might not have getting strong at the top of their 'to do' list, but being strong is awesome, whoever you are. Just think of all the jars you can open with your new-found strength! No need to call a man again. In all seriousness though, being fit, strong and muscular makes you a generally more useful person to yourself and others. Seeing yourself get stronger month-to-month is a great feeling, knowing that now you can throw around weights that you couldn't budge half a year ago is empowering and gives you a great boost in confidence. Not to mention that there is literally endless variation and progression possible once you get comfortable with the weight room, so you should always be able to keep moving on to bigger and better things. There are loads of reasons to lift, but personally, I'd say start lifting just because it is fun.

and because a girl lifting is super damn hot.

If my rambling has somehow convinced you to get under some iron, check out my free guides in the top right of this page.

Pride, achievements, haters, doubters and detractors

I couldn't even pick a rap lyric for the title of this one. If you want an example of a rap lyric denouncing haters, listen to any rap album ever. I warn you before you start, this one has no real substance to it, it's just a rant more than anything. You could call it a bit of 'training psychology' or 'self-empowerment' if you wanted to be kind; 'a metaphoric two fingers in the air to denigrators and an invite for others to do the same' would be more accurate.

You want to know why I work out? Partly because I love it, partly because getting stronger is pretty awesome, but also to look damn good, even if it is only from the beard down. I'm not a pretty man, I've long accepted this. I can't lose any weight off my nose or build my hairline an inch forward, instead I build my chest and shoulders, I lose fat until I have visible abs. I don't think doing this makes me narcissistic or saying it so directly makes me vainglorious, I'm just trying to be the best me I can be.

If you work out to look good or even if you don't work out to look good but it comes as happy a side effect; in my mind, there is nothing wrong with being proud of what you have achieved and the progress of your physique. There seems to be a feeling amongst some people that a sense of pride in this sort of progress makes you cocky or conceited, I've got no time for this sort of thinking. If you transform your physique, it is solely you who is to credit. Yes, you may be helped by others (who knows, maybe even me), but the willpower and resolve, the effort and toil; that is all you. I don't know about you, but I think if you have earned something fairly, you can do what the hell you want with it, including putting it out there for others to see.

Tom Platz being jacked as hell and rocking a stride of pride past some weedy proles.

I wouldn't expect a self-made millionaire to be driving around in a beat up Ford Fiesta, not enjoying the fruits of their labour; nope, that dude (or lady) is rolling up in a slick Benz/Beamer/Bentley and letting people know he (or she) has made it. To extrapolate this idea to our realm of fitness and physique, if you're a dude who has been benching and doing pull ups religiously for a year, wear that size-too-small t-shirt. You've earned the pec definition, that V-taper, those arm cannons; why the hell would you throw a baggy T-shirt on and look like any other guy who hasn't put in the hours and effort? Ditto for the girls, if you've invested in squats and deadlifts, that little black dress is going to look damn good, so wear it with confidence, knowing that the reason it looks good is because you worked for it to look good.

Maybe not the most practical choice of outfit to go to the supermarket. Not that I'm complaining.

Like I have said before, and probably will say many times again, there is nothing wrong with training and eating well with the aim of looking good. Even if it isn't your primary goal, training for aesthetics and having some pride in your appearance has its place, especially as the general attributes associated with good aesthetics, ample muscle mass and low body fat, will improve performance in pretty much all sports and improve general health. You can see this in most sports these days, the players may not need to look great, but they do anyway. Let's have a look at a few sports and some examples of people at the top of the game that have great physiques as well: Powerlifting? look at Dan Green. Olympic lifting? Klokov. Strongman? Pudzianowski. MMA? St. Pierre. American football?  Terrell Owens. Rugby? Manu Tuilagi. Football? Christiano Ronaldo. Tennis? Nadal ...the list goes on. Have a look at any of those guys and tell me that they aren't concerned with form as well as function. The truth is if you want to be a top athlete, it doesn't hurt to look like one. Doug Young summed it up pretty well and he was a fucking tank so that automatically makes him right:
"I definitely would not want to be very, very strong and not look very, very strong. I want to look just as strong as I am. Looking pretty is, I think, very important to the majority of the people, and to the people that say it's not important, I would consider that they are not telling the whole truth." - Doug Young

Maybe not everyone's idea of pretty, but god-damn-jacked.

Being pretty stacked is even an advantage in lame non-contact 'sports' like tennis.

Now there are always going to be those that insist on talking behind your back; the detractors, haters and backbiters. People might say you've changed, you're like a different person. The thing is, you have changed, and if you've made big changes to yourself, your lifestyle and your habits, then yeah, to a degree, you have become a different person. You've progressed and become a better version of yourself. Those people will be there wherever you are in your fitness/body transformation journey, whether they are doubting you before you begin or finding something to pick on now you have improved yourself. The cliche is that this comes down to jealousy; that may be the case sometimes. I think it's generally more because people don't like change. They don't like you changing and getting better. You're making them look bad, you selfish fuck. Stay average like them, never change, never progress, never stand out. That way, no one will ever hate.

If you don't know this MMA legend, do yourself a favour and watch this.

For those that have just made the decision to get in shape, other people can be the biggest road block to success. There will be doubters, even if it is just offhand comments, these sort of things can psychologically impact you. Do your best to ignore these people, or even better, tell them to eat a big bag of dicks; you have made the decision to positively change yourself, fuck anyone who says you can't. The other group of people you need to watch out for are the sneaky saboteurs, some of these people might not realise what they are doing, like your nice old nan who give you a cup of tea with a huge plateful of biscuits when you visit. In this case you need to explain to these people that you have made the decision to get into better shape and even though they are trying to be nice, their efforts are draining your willpower, with a lot of people it only takes so much temptation before you yield. Others in this category are less innocent, think of the best friend who insists you should just be happy however you look, so just eat some Ben & Jerry's and have a duvet day. Are these people really just talking about you when they say things like this? Or are they projecting their own weaknesses on to you and keeping you down with them? Sometimes you need to objectively take a look at relationships like this and in many cases you need to unambiguously tell these people that they are dragging you down, that you want to get better and that the way they are acting is simply stifling progress.

No better than a crack dealer selling to addicts.

In the end I'm not really sure what I'm getting at with this, no one really needed this article, it's just a some words I felt like sharing with the internet. There's a couple of loosely connected things I'm getting at here: The first is to never feel ashamed of training with the aim of looking better, some small minded people might say it's vain, I say it's making the best of yourself and if you're changing yourself in positive ways, you should be proud of those changes. The second is to block out the doubters and detractors, to avoid the efforts of those who try to derail your progress and to stick to the path of the challenge that you have set for yourself. Hopefully that last sentence in some way made up for a whole page of me justifying why I like to wear tight t-shirts.

Is there more to lifting than being really, really ridiculously good looking? - a discussion on the whys and wherefores of weight training

"Trying to get big muscles, are you?" That's what the nurse asked a 17 year old me, wincing like a little bitch, whilst she drilled through my black big toe nail, setting forth a pretty impressive spurt of blood. I'd been playing silly buggers in the gym the day before, tried to roll a 20 kg plate out of my way and ended up dropping it on the very end of my toe. I was thinking about this not-so-fun ordeal the other day whilst looking at my mangled nail and  remembered the nurse's attempt at small talk to distract me from my Evil Dead-esque toe. Of course, back then I knew nothing and her assessment of why I was dicking around with weights was spot on, but that's far from the only reason someone should step into the weights room.

Ask someone about their image of people that lift weights and more often than not their first answer mentions something of vanity, whether they point to oiled up dudes posing in little budgie-smugglers or something akin to the tanned, posturing, vacuous wastes of sperm from Jersey Shore. In truth, there are countless goals people look to achieve through weight training and a huge variety of benefits that people from all walks of life can gain from hitting the iron.

Yeah, if you guys could just cease to exist, that would be great

In our funny little lifting sub-culture, there are 4 main competitive sports (powerlifting, Olympic lifting, strongman and bodybuilding) which are either pure lifting events, or deeply rooted in the world of weights. The people that have an interest in these sports will almost always become avid lifters or conversely, many fledgling iron disciples will find themselves drawn to one or more of these sports. These groups hardly need me to extol the virtues of lifting weights, so what follows is more of a quick primer on each for the uninitiated.

In powerlifting, the competitors (usually huge, bearded, grizzled, half-man, half-bear hybrids) take 3 attempts at each the squat, bench press and deadlift, aiming to lift the biggest weights they can. The competitor that successfully lifts the most weight in all 3 lifts combined in their weight class is declared the winner and general alpha.

I was in no way lying about these guys being part bear

Some competitors are more easy on the eye

Olympic lifting (sometimes, slightly confusingly, known as weightlifting), is unsurprisingly the strength sport which is contested in the Olympics, in addition to more regularly held competitions. It is similar to powerlifting in that competitors get 3 attempts to move the biggest weight they can for each lift and the biggest combined total at the end wins. Here there are only 2 lifts, both concerned with putting the weight overhead; the clean and jerk, in which the weight is moved from floor to overhead in two separate movements and the snatch, which is one movement. I don't know who named the movements, but on behalf of childish weight trainees worldwide, well played.

Pulling a hilarious face is an integral part of the lift

Most people are somewhat aware of strongman contests such as The World's Strongest Man, in which meat titans compete in a variety of strength and power events and generally look bloody awesome whilst doing so.   Common events include moving gigantic weights over a certain distance in the shortest time possible (farmer's walks and the yoke), pressing huge weights overhead (log or axle presses), pulling cars/trucks/buses/obese people on mobility scooters, deadlifting for reps, loading huge stones onto raised platforms (Atlas stones), fighting rhinos and destroying small towns. Basically, they find shit that is impossible for the average man to move, then get these behemoths to chuck it around for your entertainment.

Maybe not the sport for everyone, still really fucking cool.

Everyone knows what bodybuilding is; from the golden era of Arnie et al. to the mass monsters of today, the aesthetic ideal has changed a fair bit, but the general idea remains the same: build muscle, lose fat, strip to your skimpies, pose on stage and get judged on how good you look. Some may think today's bodybuilders look a bit messed up - all big, swole and veiny - like if a boner was a person. Whilst I'd probably tend to agree with you there, bodybuilding is a sport that takes huge, huge dedication, so I've got nothing but respect for guys that compete. There's also a bunch of different divisions now, in which not everyone looks like a human chode. For men there's natural bodybuilding (i.e. not juicy), in which competitors are less monstrous and thus probably more appealing to the average person, and men's physique in which the emphasis is more on aesthetics, less on pure size and definition. Women also get involved; there's women's bodybuilding which is generally a bit scary, women's physique in which the emphasis is on shape, symmetry and definition, and women's bikini which is most men's favourite on lonely nights in.

I don't wanna sound gay or nothin', but those are some good looking fellas.

I feel this is needed. For balance.

In terms of competitive outlets for those that love lifting weights, these are the main routes, but this isn't a complete list; there's things I haven't covered like the Highland Games, which is guys who like to wear dresses (I'm not judging) throwing weights as far or high as they can. There's also Crossfit, which people seem to like, but I'll save my ranting about that whole cult(ure) for another time.

You may now be thinking something along the lines of "I don't give a crap about tanning up and posing in front of judges or pushing my body to lift metric fuck tonnes, why should normal people care about lifting?" Firstly I would commend you on phrasing the question that way, and secondly I would say to read on.

If you play sports, there are very few sports in which your performance will not benefit form putting in some hours with the weights. Need to run faster or jump higher? Weight training will increase your maximal power output and let you do just that; there is even proof that strength and power training improves 3 and 5 km run times, if the slow torture of distance running is your thing. If you play any sport that requires contact, the double benefit of increasing your power and adding muscle to essentially act as body armour makes weight training pretty much indispensable. I don't care how skilled you are at Rugby, if you're 70 kg soaking wet, you are going to get absolutely smashed playing with the big boys, so you better get lifting. Even footballers, the oft mocked skinny boys, can absolutely benefit from strength and power training; just tell me you don't want to play like Akinfenwa.

Would you want to try stop a shot by this man?

What about us non-athletes? I hear the over-dramatic among you cry. Well the good stuff keeps coming. You, like almost everyone, probably want to lose some fat or 'firm up' for summer, well weight training (with a good diet) is the most efficient way to do that. This is because your metabolism is boosted after a heavy weights session as your body repairs your muscles, leading to you burning more calories while sitting around watching The Valleys or some other such shite; the best part being that this extra energy expenditure comes mostly from fat. Due to this metabolism raising effect, weight training generally represents a more time efficient form of calorie burning versus steady-state cardio style training.

You also can't tell me that you enjoy a 40 minute monotonous slog on a treadmill, screw that. Instead go for 40 minutes of heavy squats, presses and rows any day and take the added benefits of added strength (which makes most things in life easier), building muscle (which in itself raises your metabolism just by being there, as well as making you look better), increased bone density, stronger tendons and ligaments (leading to less chance of injury), lower blood pressure, better blood glucose control ....I could keep going but I'll save you and put it simply. Lifting weights is the unabashed balls for anyone, male or female, young or old, who wants to lose fat, 'tone up' or just improve general health markers.

...or lift because this old dude is making you look fat and weak.

Another great aspect of lifting is the mental benefits. There's no doubt that seeing your body transform is a seriously motivating thing and is going to do wonders for your confidence and self esteem. I'm not saying it's a good thing if you turn into a narcissistic dick-bag, but a happy middle ground of being comfortable in your own body definitely is. Then there is the benefit of stress relief; if you have had a shit day, turning that anger into brute force and throwing some metal around is an incredibly satisfying release. Exercise also triggers endorphins to be secreted, which bio-chemically improves your mood (as well as reducing the risk of depression) making you an all around happier person for having a good workout.

A thing that I like about a powerful workout (although this is fairly likely just me being weird) is the feeling of just going primal, getting in touch with the human animal. We humans as a species have descended into a pretty poor state; the chubby, weak, office-bound physical wrecks many of us currently are pales in comparison to the hunter gatherers of a bygone age. Evolutionary biology has the tongue in cheek model of  the things that we as a species are programmed to do, the three Fs - feed, fuck and fight. I won't discuss the first two here, but I'm hoping they are past-times you all enjoy. The third, however, not a lot of us are in touch with (martial arts enthusiasts and anti-social cock holes aside). In my odd little mind, putting your thoughts and worries aside and throwing all your effort and will at an inanimate lump of metal is a good way to keep a bit of that primal spirit alive in you, whilst not getting sectioned. I realise I might sound like a bloody whack job saying this, so I'm going to drop in a fitting quote from an undoubtedly great mind to attempt to back up my ramblings:

Civilised life has altogether grown too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting - Bertrand Russell

Okay, maybe he wasn't talking about lifting per se, but it fits, so fuck you, I'm using it. My point is, there is something raw and just plain awesome about exerting full force, screaming, shouting and giving the weight everything you have got. Sure, it's not quite as awesome as spearing an antelope and carrying it home to feed your tribe, but most zoos frown on that sort of thing. 

Probably not a historically accurate depiction of a cave woman, but a lot better to look at.

The thing is with lifting, it can be a means to an end or an end in itself. Lift because you want to be stronger for next rugby season, lift because you want to improve your 400 m time, lift to increase your numbers for your next powerlifting contest, lift to blow off some steam after a hard day, lift to keep your body from getting frail with age, lift because you simply enjoy it or just lift to look fucking sexy when you get naked.

There aren't many wrong reasons to decide to pick up a weight, but there are a hell of a lot of good ones.