SS interfering with cardiovascular fitness

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Thanks for your help Andy. I guess I never looked at it this way, it does make sense. Guess I'll stick to chilling and pigging out for as long as I'm still experiencing this "novice effect"...

Keep in mind that you CAN keep your body fat in check and keep your energy levels steady with a clean diet....it just needs to be high calorie. There is no law saying that on SS you have to stuff your face with donuts and pizza in order to recover.

I would start with something like:

1) Whole Eggs, Large Bowl Oatmeal, Fruit
2) Large Grilled Salmon Filet, 1 Large Sweet Potato or Rice
3) Steak, Sweet Potato

In between meals I would have my 1/2 gallon to 1 gallon of Milk spread out throughout the day, or if you are an older guy who puts fat on easier, you might opt for a protein shake with a piece of fruit between meals. Either way....the eating can be healthy and still put you into caloric excess.

[Michael Wolf]

Keep in mind that you CAN keep your body fat in check and keep your energy levels steady with a clean diet....it just needs to be high calorie. There is no law saying that on SS you have to stuff your face with donuts and pizza in order to recover.

I would start with something like:

1) Whole Eggs, Large Bowl Oatmeal, Fruit
2) Large Grilled Salmon Filet, 1 Large Sweet Potato or Rice
3) Steak, Sweet Potato

In between meals I would have my 1/2 gallon to 1 gallon of Milk spread out throughout the day, or if you are an older guy who puts fat on easier, you might opt for a protein shake with a piece of fruit between meals. Either way....the eating can be healthy and still put you into caloric excess.

I hope a lot of people read this post, Andy. Yes, you have to gain some fat while a novice to maximize your gains. But you don't have to become fat, and you don't need to gain so much flab that you then resort to some extreme diet and cardio program to take it off afterwards, thereby regressing on the novice gains you worked so hard for.

My experience has been that many people have a lot of trouble wrapping their head around "EAT MORE!" without it including massive amounts of crap. As your post shows, it's really not that complicated and can be done with a bit of preparation and effort.

[FatButWeak]

Women are more intellectually lazy than men and have also had more layers of bullshit information thrown at them that needs to be undone. So women are harder to sell on real effective types of training, but are an easy sell on bullshit that appeals to their emotional needs and what they have been socially conditioning to believe. Women tend to have heaps of irrational fears about exercise that are more emotional than anything, and if you learn anything from marriage it is that reason and logic have no impact on emotion. Men tend to be more skeptical of the information that is thrown at them and have a better ability to seperate bullshit from truth.

Pepper thy angus for the wrath of Spar.

[AlphaRising]

I want to post this thread everywhere I can.

Trying to PT people (yes mostly women) can be like trying to make a hole in a wall with nothing but your head.
The amount of time I've wasted in PT sessions explaing again and again and again that squats won't "make you to musclular"

Bar one small petite french girl who did everything I said (no perv)
She was about 22yrs old 5'5 55kg

Got her deadlift up to 60kgs 5x1 in 3 weeks.

before she moved back to france, gutted a rare find

[gtl]

For what its worth, my rest periods for volume day on Texas Method were getting towards 7-10 towards the end of my sets.

I decided to do a 10% reset, and limit my rest periods to 3 mins. After 4 weeks, I noticed an immense improvement in conditioning. I am back to where I was before the reset (load wise), and I've kept my rest periods between 3-5 mins.

I think this is a viable option that won't set you back very far. The other option is to add conditioning, but you better make sure that it doesn't take away from recovery.

Note: I am referring to squats.. I always tend to rest a lot less for bench.

[Matt Reynolds]

For the record, I agree with Andy on everything he said, except I believe, in general, men or more intellectually lazy than women. Although indigents are unbelievably pervasive everywhere I go.

The point of the programming stuff is that I have a hard time getting women to come to my gym to just want to get strong. Women who give a shit about being strong are somewhere around 1 in a million. Generally, women want to look good and that's all they care about. Now, if you are a woman reading the SS forum, then you are the 1 in a million who wants to get strong - but in my years as a trainer and gym owner, I've had less than 10 women total who came to my gym to get stronger. All the rest come to look better.

Now how do you get them to look better?...Ummm, by getting them stronger. Sets of 5 do amazing things to the female body - and their body's will respond in the ways they always wanted (but that pilates, curves, hot yoga, P90X, INsanity, and TRX never gave them). But the reality is, unless you are just an amazing salesman, then you absolutely WILL NOT convince women of this until it has already occurred. So instead, you have them do 3 sets of 5 on the basic lifts, then you put them through an "ab circuit" of various planks and then some fun bootcamp conditioning where they push the prowler a bit, flip a tire, drag a sled, slam a rope or a med ball. They LOVE this portion of the training, even though in the grand scheme of things it's relatively worthless to how their body is changing when compared to heavy sets of 5 on squats, deadlifts, and presses. But the stupid shit keeps them coming back, and the sets of 5 keeps their bodies changing for the better.

Really, guys aren't much better, but they don't freak out when they gain a pound like my women do. I seriously get 2 or 3 texts a day from my clients that just say something along the lines of "Why am I up 2 pounds?" Its hilarious how women can weigh 145 when they come to me, their bodyweight doesn't change a bit over 2 months - they still weigh 145, but their squats and deadlifts have tripled, they've clearly gained significant muscle and lost fat, clothes fit better, they look and feel a million times better....but they are still pissed because they weigh 145 and think that all females should weigh 115. Its sickening.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

This has essentially been my experience......exactly.

[Tamara Reynolds]

The amount of time I've wasted in PT sessions explaing again and again and again that squats won't "make you to musclular"

Except that this isn't true. It depends on how the person defines "muscular" or "bulky" or whatever term the idiots who started Strong is the New Skinny are currently using.

Plenty of women thought that I was "too muscular" when I weighed 132 lbs, and plenty of women think I am "too bulky" now at 165 lbs. Anything outside of the supermodel thin ideal is too muscular for many women. It doesn't mean that the "muscular" girl in question has to look like a bodybuilder. I have a 48 kg lifter whose mother told her she was going to look funny in a bikini this summer because she is getting too bulky and manly. THE WOMAN WEIGHS 48 KG.

I think it is more important to tell the truth, which is that genetics and diet play a HUGE role along with weight training in terms of how your body will look.

Its hilarious how women can weigh 145 when they come to me, their bodyweight doesn't change a bit over 2 months - they still weigh 145, but their squats and deadlifts have tripled, they've clearly gained significant muscle and lost fat, clothes fit better, they look and feel a million times better....but they are still pissed because they weigh 145 and think that all females should weigh 115. Its sickening.

Look, I totally agree with this.

And, those are the women who think I am fucking obese at 165 lbs. Those are the women who probably don't come to my gym in the first place because I don't have an elliptical rider or a treadmill for them.

But, I have found that even the women with smaller hang ups about body image (and I do think most women have those hang ups) slowly start enjoying the addition of weight on the bar more and more and ignoring the number on the scale more and more if you put them in a COMPETITIVE environment. There is something to be said for bragging rights. Women like to one up other women, just like men like to one up each other. I guarantee you that most of the women at my gym are very conscious of what everyone else is squatting, snatching, and cleaning and jerking. No one wants to be the weakest.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Except that this isn't true. It depends on how the person defines "muscular" or "bulky" or whatever term the idiots who started Strong is the New Skinny are currently using.

Plenty of women thought that I was "too muscular" when I weighed 132 lbs, and plenty of women think I am "too bulky" now at 165 lbs. Anything outside of the supermodel thin ideal is too muscular for many women. It doesn't mean that the "muscular" girl in question has to look like a bodybuilder. I have a 48 kg lifter whose mother told her she was going to look funny in a bikini this summer because she is getting too bulky and manly. THE WOMAN WEIGHS 48 KG.

I think it is more important to tell the truth, which is that genetics and diet play a HUGE role along with weight training in terms of how your body will look.



Look, I totally agree with this.

And, those are the women who think I am fucking obese at 165 lbs. Those are the women who probably don't come to my gym in the first place because I don't have an elliptical rider or a treadmill for them.

But, I have found that even the women with smaller hang ups about body image (and I do think most women have those hang ups) slowly start enjoying the addition of weight on the bar more and more and ignoring the number on the scale more and more if you put them in a COMPETITIVE environment. There is something to be said for bragging rights. Women like to one up other women, just like men like to one up each other. I guarantee you that most of the women at my gym are very conscious of what everyone else is squatting, snatching, and cleaning and jerking. No one wants to be the weakest.

I could not agree more with this last paragraph. I think women look at the whiteboards in the gym more than the men do. One of the first things I will try to do with a new female client is to get them into the gym at the same time as another woman who has been with me for several months or years and let them see what this other woman is lifting and that she isn't the incredible hulk.

I am honest with the women that come in to the gym as prospects for PT. I tell them that I am not really interested in making them skinnier, I am in the business of making people stronger and more more physically fit. I will gladly let them go down the street to my competitors if they have serious objections to what I am trying to do. Oddly enough, I close more sales with this approach.

[Michael Wolf]

But, I have found that even the women with smaller hang ups about body image (and I do think most women have those hang ups) slowly start enjoying the addition of weight on the bar more and more and ignoring the number on the scale more and more if you put them in a COMPETITIVE environment. There is something to be said for bragging rights. Women like to one up other women, just like men like to one up each other. I guarantee you that most of the women at my gym are very conscious of what everyone else is squatting, snatching, and cleaning and jerking. No one wants to be the weakest.

I think this piece is HUGE. And one reason why I think 1-on-1 training is a very difficult way to get the message across to women, because they never get to see other women out-doing them in the lifts, and never get to compete with anyone for bragging rights. If they're by themselves, excuses like "women can't do chin ups" or "no normal woman lifts that much weight" can't be refuted on sight. And I don't think it's fair to say that only lazy women who don't want to work hard say things like that; due to social conditioning and what most people think, that's just the way a lot of women see things, not necessarily trying to be lazy. Andy, I expect your experience here is similar.

But if you get them in a group where they can be competitive with one another, their immediate term goal might become "beating that girl next to me," even if their larger goal and view is on becoming skinny or looking better or whatever. And even though most will probably keep looking better/being skinny as their long term/overarching reason for working out 1. A few will probably switch to a performance focus 2. Even the ones who don't, still have some aspect of performance improvement on their brain, not JUST getting skinny. And both of those are good things which can only help spread the cause of strength training to a broader population.