thenaturalone’s BodyBlog

This is rather sore and also very debatable topic. I realize everyone has their own opinions based apon experience so I can only give you my outlook on subject based on my experience. I’d say from a competitive stand point your screwed either way. I competed in the all natural midwest bodybuilding championships a few years back and certain events left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. Everything was right on target for me leading up to the show until I had to go in the day before the show to do their so called drug test which was a polygragh test. The woman conducting the test had me sit down and asked me if I had used any performance enhancing drugs of any kind and of cource being a life-long natural  bodybuilder my answer was NO! Then she asked me if I had taken any over the counter meds or Rx meds within the last few days so I was honest and told her that I had Insomnia and I had taken just 1/2 of a unisom tablet the night before to help me sleep. On that note she piped up and began screaming at me, yelling, shouting that I used the Unisom the night before to try to mask my responses to the polygragh test and that I was trying to cheat and cover up the fact that I was using performance enhancing drugs and she was going to continue to go ahead and run the test anyway and that if my test came up inconclusive then I would be disqualified from the show the next day and I would be suspended by the INBF for the next 7 years and not allowed to compete. I was in shock!!! No where in the rules did it say anything about over the counter medicines not being used and Unisom? All it is, is a mild anthihistamine to help you relax. The stuff would of been out of my system long before I had my drug test. I was furious! I had dieted and trained so hard for 9 months straight, spent hundreds of dollars on supplies for the contest, not to mention all assanine fees they charge you to compete, and now this dumb bitch was going flush it all down the toilet with me having no say of defense in the matter! My test came out inconclusive but she did say she was going to test me one more time before the show in the morning and if I tested inconclusive again then it was over for me. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, I was so pissed! I showed up the next day and did the test over and I did pass but it helps when you don’t have mean bitch with penis envy screaming in your face right before the test. I went on to compete in the show and took second place to some guy that looked like crap and had only been doing it 2 years versus my 19 years but that’s a whole other story. Now the next year I decided I couldn’t go through another show and have happen to me what happened in the last show which was a INBF show, so I decide to try an NPC show. I had never competed in an NPC show before so nieve me went ahead to compete in the NPC Mr. Wisconsin not knowing that NPC actually stands for Necessitates Pharmaceutical Chemicals! This was a mind blowing experience as well. In the natural shows I was always viewed as a freak because of my mass and thickness but at this competition I was very mediocre. I couldn’t believe it during the weigh in! These guys were coming in at 5′ 8 and weighing 235 lbs absolutely shredded! I didn’t know at the time but the Mr. Wisconsin was opened up for anyone to compete nation wide and it was a pro qualifier so as far as I was concerned it may as well of been the Mr. Olympia. Super heavy weights were showing up 6′4 weighing around 280 lbs shredded! So many of the competitors looked like circus freaks or something you see at the Olympia! I over heard guys backstage talking among each other about the steroid cycles they were on which many of them said they were running anywhere from 5-9 different steroids and also taking insulin shots and HGH and IGF-1 shots along with prescription diuretics and also cutting out water completely starting 3 days out from the show. Alot of these guys were young too, some just around 20 years old and already all gased up on drugs! All I could think was Holy sh*t! These guys are pumping all this sh*t in their bodies to try and make the top 10 in their class of the Mr. Wisconsin??? Some of these guys wil be dead or on dialysis within the next 5 years so they can have a little glass plate worth about $2.00 that says: 5th place Wisconsin Bodybuilding championships. Worth it? This is where promoters really fail by allowing this to happen. To set the bar so high in a local or state bodybuilding competition that competitors have to use riduculous amounts of illegal drugs in order to have a fighting chance at placing. I ended up placing 6th out of 16 guys in my weight class which was fair considering I was all natural, but never would I have a chance to win a contest such as this where the bar is set so high that it becomes more about how many drugs you can dump into your system without dying then it does how healthy, and naturaly lean and muscular you can become as a result of your experience, hard work and education as it relates to bodybuilding. This is a disaster to the sport! At what point will the line be drawn? How many men and women will have to die and suffer career ending health problems? I personally know of many local bodybuilders who are now dead that never even lived to see age 40. What kind of example is being set for young soon to be bodybuilding and fitness enthusiasts who are about to enter the competitive seen? I guess the bottom line is if you intend to compete then you need to do it for yourself and strive to be the best that you can be without feeling the pressure to give in and sacrifice your health in order to impress a panel of 5 or 6 people that don’t give a crap about your well being. Strive to acheive a look that you feel good about and can be happy with for many years to come. Whether you compete in drug free events or non drug free events or no events at all.

Having the option of a forum for people to review the multitude of supplements that are available out there and theoreticaly sounds like it would be a good idea and would be a great help for anyone who is looking to start taking some supplements but just doesn’t know where to begin. However, there seems to exist a very large cult of specially challenged, cyber-geek, bodybuilding spectator’s who feel the need to storm these forums and cut on and bad mouth the legit bodybuilding/fitness competitors who write reviews in these forums and also the supplements they are recommending. Just an example. I wrote in a forum regarding supreme protein bars which happen to be my favorite and I liked the nutritional profile, and really liked the taste of them compared to so many other protein bars on the market that I’ve tried. Right away some cyber-geek gets on the horn and writes how pathetic it is to try to promote Averge-Joes’s bars on a forum and represent some other company like that and how misleading that is and how much is Average Joe paying you to promote their products, and they suck and they’re a bunch of crooks, blah-blah-blah, then he started blabbing quotes that Benjamin Franklin said, blah-blah-blah! What the f***! I had a few things to say to that. First off, Average Joe does not make supreme protein bars! They sell them, big deal, so do a thousand other companies including the local 7-11’s. Supreme Inc. manufactures them. Now if I was working for another company trying to promote their products, why in hell would I be recommending a product that costs $2-3$? I wouldn’t! I’d recommend the product that costs $100.00 a piece. Bars are the least profitable item for any supplement company to sell. Then what the f*** does Benjamin Franklin have to do with protein bars? Was he a bodybuilder? Did he have something to do with the protein revolution or something? Judging by that big double chin he was sporting, I’d say he don’t have a damn thing to do with either or! Then I’ve wrote some good reviews about the Gaspari products I like and right away you have cyber-geeks on there accusing me of working for Gaspari and then bad mouthing the products, saying they don’t work, blah-blah-blah. The forums are meant to help people through the knowledgable experience of others who have tried products and used them the way they were supposed to be used and report their experience (positive or negative.) For the cyber-geeks who want to play the devil’s specially challenged advocate just for the sake of ripping on a product or an honest person who has actually used the product, then I say to you cyber-geekazoids, stay the hell off of bodybuilding forums! You’ve got nothing to do with bodybuilding or fitness, you haven’t even tried the products your ripping on so f-off, and go find some microsoft forum to whine and cry on! Let people have the option to hear honest reviews about products they’re interested by people that have actually used the products and used them the way they should be used.

It’s funny how the general public looks at us in terms of what kind of people they think that we are based on our appearances. I for one have had countless situations with people out in public because of being a bodybuilder, and though some experiences have been good, many of them unfortunately have been negative. The most common sterio- types based on feedback I’ve received is that all bodybuilders are on steroids, they are all dumb,  they all either work as bouncers cause they enjoy beating people up or they’re strippers cause without brains they must rely on their boddies to make a living, that they all are narsasistic, and if they happen to be men then they’re on verge of roid rage and ready to snap at any moment, and that they are unathletic and slow because they are muscle bound. These prejudices can get very annoying to say the least. And being drug free, well educated, humble, and compasionate, I for one take offense to these view points. How do I know people feel this way? Hell, they’re not discrete or smart about it. People will just blurt these things right out so that you hear them, and sometimes right to your face! There was a day when I would get so mad that who ever made a rude comment like that to me would find themself getting a mud hole stomped in there ass. Over time I realized that by doing that I was just supporting their stupid view points and giving all bodybuilders a bad rap. So now I just bite my lip and ignore it or respond back with something witty to show them how dumb they sound. Still it can be testing to the most patient of us. I remember being in a bar one night and a girl approached me, came right up and said "your on steroids!" I looked at her and responded "Pardon?" Once again she said "your on steroids! I know because I’m a nurse and I know the signs." "Really?" I said. "And just what are the signs?" She said " your veins stick out and you have a square jaw." Funny, when she was in nursing school she must of missed the semester that they taught about DNA, all the men in my family have square jaws. Anyway, I said to her "oh yeh, well you have breast implants." She said "Oh my God! that was really rude! Why do you think that anyway?" I said " because your ear lobes are pointy and you have a blue purse." She responded " I’m so offended! you are such an a**hole! I cant believe anyone would say something so rude!" Now, do see the idiocy here? Another time my girlfriend and I were on our way into a restaurant and there were two well to do couples, probably in there mid 40’s, standing in the parking lot next to their brand new cadilac escalade’s chatting and the two men that were standing there were both very out of shape and their wives appeared to be in pretty good condition. Anyway , we walked passed them on our way to the front door then one of the men blurted out " so, we do a few steroids do we?" they all laughed and thought it was very funny till I reponded back "so, we eat a few krispy cremes do we?" At this point the men weren’t laughing but their wives sure were. Crazy stuff! I don’t have enough time to write all the stories about people in public that I’ve encountered, but I thought I’d just give a couple examples. If you find yourself in these situations I recommend just saying something back that will undermind them and made them realize how stupid they sound. For other bodybuilders out there I ask that you do your best to prove all these nieve people wrong. Be polite, be humble, be witty, have a sense of humor and be compassionate. We are after all our own subculture in society. We have an image to uphold. We stand out among others and will have more attention directed apon us as a result of that. Enjoy the good attention but don’t sweat the bad. Just understand that you are a much more complete human being than those who insult you. Sure, there will be a handful of us out there that do fit the common steriotype, however the bodybuilders I know are doctors, pastors, lawyers, policemen, firemen, personal trainers, dental hygienists, factory workers, business owners, ect..ect…And they are all great ambassadors for the sport of bodybuilding.

Just got back from an appointment with my orthopedic doctor and he gave little hope to the possible future of my right knee. I was born without an anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee which has resulted in multiple knee dislocations and cartilage tears. All of the torn cartilage which was about all of it, had to be removed. I began my bodybuilding career at age 16. I won my first competition and not long after that is when I suffered my first massive dislocation in which the doctors discovered that I was ACL deficient when they went into remove most of the cartilage out of my knee. The prognosis wasn’t good as far as what this condition would do to my bodybuilding career. Most people who have tore their ACL or are ACL deficient have the ACL reconstructive surgery. I on the other hand was born with deformed bones in my knee, the doctor said, and the way the bones were formed would make it impossible to do the ACL reconstruction. Despite the gloomy prognosis I went ahead and trained as hard as I could dealing with the knee pain and competed in multiple bodybuilding shows over the years and even won a couple of contests. Though the pain was there, it wasn’t cripling. I had limitations but the pain never bothered my day to day activities. I’m now 33 years old. In October of 07′ I suffered another knee dislocation that resulted in surgery to remove 3 large tumors that had grown in my knee and acually pushed my knee cap out of it’s track. Since then the pain has been holding me back. As a result of not having an ACL in my knee and all the stress I put on it throughout the years has caused severe arthritis in my knee. There’s so much arthritis under my knee cap that when I extend my leg it sounds like corn flakes being crushed up with a rolling pin. It’s nasty! I’ve been able to get back to doing some leg work but I can’t go all out as there is a constant feeling of instability in my knee. My doctor said he was gonna get me doing a series of these shots called synvisc in my knee. It’s a series of three shots you get in three consecutive weeks in a row. It’s supposed to act as a lubricant and inti-inflammatory within the joint hopefully bringing some relief. Currently there is pain whenever I walk and I can’t do my favorite cardio machines, the only cardio that don’t kill it too bad is the excercise bike. I don’t know what the future holds for my long term bodybuilding career but what I do know is that I’m not gonna stop. Not even if my bones crush and crumble I will still find a way to keep doing it. If I have to make modifications in my training I will, if I have to eliminate certain exercise but do new one’s I will but I"m not gonna stop and I plan on setting foot on stage in the very near future. Maybe I won’t have Tom Platz legs but people will know exactly what I’m about. One scarey thought though, what will it feel like in another 20 years? Yikes!  

By far the number one mistake that I see people making at the gym is overtraining. Are you stuck at a platue and feel like when you go workout, your exhausting yourself, pushing your body so hard but nothing good seems to come of it? When it’s time to hit the gym do think to yourself " oh s**t!, I don’t feel like doing this today"? Do you feel sluggish, low on energy, and depressed? If you answered yes to any of these questions your most likely a victim of over training. How does this happen? The reason this happens to so many people is this: When, you perform a set on an exercise, and push yourself 100% squeezing every last rep out that you possibly can until you cant do no more, then you have gone to complete muscle failure on that set. Once this happens there is an inroad cut deep into that particular muscle’s recovery system. This inroad puts that muscle in a state of undercompensation, meaning that muscle has less than it did before you performed that set to total muscle failure. So what next? What needs to happen in order for that muscle to get bigger? That muscle now needs to compensate (to back what was there before) before it can overcompensate (put back more than was there before) which is building the muscle, making it bigger and stronger than it was. So how do we get the muscle to go from an undercompensated state to an overcompensated state? The answer to that depends on the number of sets you perform to muscle failure and the amount of recuperation time you give that muscle before you start tearing it down again. As far as the number of sets go, When I train a body part like biceps for example, I never do more than 1 set to failure on any exercise. I may do 2-3 warm up sets using lighter weight just enough to get my muscles and joints warm and stretched out a little. For example, if I’m gonna do barbell curls, I will do a warm up set with 135 lbs and complete it for 5-6 reps even though I could do 20 reps if I wanted. Then for my second set I will put on 155 lbs and perform 3-4 reps even though I could do it for 15 reps if I wanted. At this point my biceps are warm and stretched and ready to do my one big set of barbell curls and push till complete failure. So now I load 185 lbs on the bar and perform 9 reps and at that point I have reached 100% muscle failure, I go all out to get that 9th rep and now the job is done. No more barbell curls until my next arm workout! The body contains a mechanism in which it will send off an alarm when it detects that it’s own physiology is being threatened or under assault. This alarm goes off when a muscle has been pushed to complete failure on a set. Like my bicep example I gave earlier, doing that set of barbell curls at 185 lbs X 9 reps. The switch has been tripped in my body, it detects a threat to it’s physiology where the biceps originate. Now, via multiple chemical reactions the body collects it’s resources it needs and directs them to strengthen that muscle to compensate for the stress it was just put under. At this point the compensation will begin. Putting back what was already there. Now understand this! The biochemical resources the body uses to recover and grow are strictly limited. So limited that if I were to perform a second set of barbell curls to failure, I would be cutting an even deaper inroad into my muscles recovery system, delaying the recovery and growth process, now making my efforts counter-productive. You see the body is very mechanistic. Doing one set to complete muscle failure activates that switch that tells the body it’s time to make that muscle recover and grow to protect against further assault. Once this switch has been activated, it’s on! Just like when you walk into a dark room and flip the light switch on you are confident that the mechanism within that switch will turn on the light. There is no need to keep flipping that switch up and down over and over again, it wont make the light any brighter, it will just wear out the switch! Make sense? So how often should you train each muscle group? Well that depends on your level of strength. If you do a set on bench press with 135 lbs X 10 reps, you won’t need as much time to recover as would someone who does 315 lbs X 10 reps. As a general rule of thumb, I suggest that nobody should hit a particular muscle group more than ounce per week. People seem to do well on a varying split style routine in which they weight train 3 times per week and not train any one muscle group more than once per week. This style of training yields very good results for most. This will allow you to recover and grow for a while but remember that as your level of strength increases so does the necessary recovery time in order to make that muscle grow. So if you hit a platue where your strength ceases to increase, I recommend adding in two more recovery days between all weight training sessions from that point on and you will see your strength begin to move up again. I’ve had people comment to me that " well yeh training like that might make you stronger but it won’t make you bigger." My response to that is " well ok, if you don’t get bigger by getting stronger, then how do you get bigger? By getting weaker?" Make no mistake about it, if your getting stronger than your moving in the right direction. Now I don’t want you to take my word for it just because I’ve done a few physique competitions. I want you to believe it because it’s logical. You see, Im not an advocate for less training, however, I am an advocate for the precise amount of training to produce muscle growth. It’s sad to see all the same people that have shown up at the gym every night to lift for 2-3 hours per day, and have for the last 10 years of their lives, and have absolutely nothing to show for their time and effort. Going through the motions day in and day out thinking that one day the routine they are doing is just going to magicaly start producing results. If a workout routine hasn’t produced results for months let alone years, then it’s not going to, EVER! What about the pro bodybuilders I read about in Flex magazine? They have their workouts printed and they do 4-5 sets to failure on each exercise and they train each muscle group 2-3 times per week? Yes, true but let us not underestimate the power of anabolic steroids. And your kidding yourself if you think there are IFBB pro’s out there that aren’t using multiple combinations of steroids! Steroids alter the chemistry of the body on multple levels, two of them being the ability to greatly enhance nitrogen retention and protein synthesis. Yes this will make you recover much, much faster so you can train much harder, more frequently and yet not overtrain. This information is directed more at people like myself who have chosen to follow this path the natural way. Best of luck to all of you out there. I hope the information I’ve provided will help you take a second look at your current training routine and make a clear judgement on whether or not it’s an effective one. 

This is a continuation of Do"s and Dont’s that should or should not be practiced in the gym. Go ahead and check out part 1. if haven’t already. The purpose of this blog is to bring to light some of the behaviors that are seen in the gym that shouldn’t be. If you know anyone who performs any of the actions under the list of Do Not’s, by all means refer them to this blog. Ok, here we go. DON’T- Wear a mouth guard while lifting in the gym. This is an annoying new trend that seems to be unfolding at my gym. How necessary is this? I’m not sure but I think I’m gonna start wearing a jock strap on my head from here on out whenever I train. DON’T- Use weights that are so heavy that you have no control over them to the point that you can only get one realy bad sloppy rep with them and then chuck them in the air causing them to bust when they hit the ground. This one has been a problem for a long time. I go in to do some dumbbell presses with the heaviest set (the 150’s) which I can control and bring back to the ground without damaging them, and those weights will either be busted laying in a pile or out of the gym completely cause some dolt used them and could’t control them, then when the people come in who do use them and are able to control them can’t use them now and have to wait 1-2 months for them to get fixed. DO- Use weights that you can control and take through a full range of motion without destroying them. DON’T- Scream at the top of your lungs when you train. I understand that when your body is under alot of stress when your pushing it to the limit that sometimes you breath heavy and some grunts and groans spew out, that’s understandable. But it is not necessary to scream at the top of your lungs (like Howard Dean did that time at the Iowa caucus!..yuck-yuck!) Look where it got him. DON’T- Blow dry your genitalia out in the main isle of the locker room where everyone can see. Yes I do see this happen( Unfortunately). One guy imparticular who will stand out in the main walk-way of the men’s locker room and blow dry his testicles for a long, long period of time. What can I say? This is just plain wrong! Being exposed to this type of thing is enough to give the strongest of men nightmares! DO- Quickly towel dry privates first, then get some underwear on for God’s sake! DON’T- Go into the restroom and walk up to a urinal and drop your pant’s and underwear to your ankles while you stand there and pee so that other guys can be subjected to seeing a big, naked hairy ass when they walk in to use the restroom. Yes this really happens also! DON’T- Accompany your hot looking girl friend to the gym only to follow her around and give all the other guys in the gym dirty looks while groping her because your affraid they might look at her. DO- Workout while your there with your girlfriend and work at improving your physique as well so that she has something nice to look at outside the gym too. After all, women hate insecure guys. Well that’s about all for today. Happy training to you all and don’t be affraid to pass on the rules of gym etiquette to your fellow gym members. Will there be a part 3? I hope not but time will tell.   

Just a little tid-bit here on a few things that I’ve noticed at the gym where I train. I guess I’m writing this to vent a little bit about the very confused etiquette many people have at the gym, so I thought I’d compile a list of Do’s and Dont’s that I’m sure most of you will agree with. Here we go! DONT- Show up at the gym stinky and unclean and buzz all over the place radiating offensive body odors to eveyone else. It’s rude to go days on end without showering and expect people to tolerate being around you. DONT- Walk up to a line of 20 tread mills where there’s only one person on and jump on the machine right next to that person when you have 19 other machines to choose from. That person doesn’t want to smell your B-O! Oh, and the term natural as it relates to bodybuilding doesn’t mean that you don’t shower or use deodorant. DO- Practice good personal hygeine on a daily basis. DONT- Go up to a pretty girl and stand 3 feet away from her and blatently stare at her and check her out. This is very rude and distracting to the girl your doing it to and nothing says "stalker" quite like a dude standing there learing at some poor girl trying to workout. There’s nothing wrong with appreciating a woman’s fit shapely body but theres no need to be a pig about it. DO- Keep your focus on your own workout and be respectful to those around you. DONT- Go hock luggies or spit in the water fountains. This is truely discusting! Nobody wants to go get a drink and come to find a giant phlem bomb in the drinking fountain. DO- Go to the restroom if theres something you have to spit up. DONT- Walk around the locker room naked before or after showering and try to start up conversations with people. Put some clothes on for God’s sake! Nobody wants to have a conversation with you when your twig and berries are sticking in their faces! Absolutely no weiners should be exposed during casual conversation. DO- Cover your genitals ASAP. You should only be naked long enough to shower and dry off, that’s it! DONT- Show up at the gym wearing a UFC fighting T-shirt and give everyone around you dirty looks like your gonna make them tap out. If you realy are a UFC fighter your probably not going to do this. DONT- Walk around the gym trying to look like your bigger than you realy are, holding your arms straight out as though your lats are so big you can’t put your arms down. My friends and I call this " Infate-lat syndrome. This doesn’t impress anyone at all, in fact, everyone thinks your a jack-ass and is making fun of you, please just try to be realistic about who you are and walk naturaly. DO- Be humble and be real to those around you. You will be respected much, much more! That’s it for now folks, happy training to you all! And oh yes, I will be writing a part 2.

For those who may be new to the subject of gaining muscle and losing bodyfat. Perhaps you are spending alot of time in the gym but not seeing the results that you think you should. I’m not saying that I’m some famous guru on the subject or anything like that, however, I do have some idea’s that I have have practiced and had phenominal results, and have passed these idea’s along to other people who have asked me for advice and have had amazing progress as a result. First off, the subject of cardiovascular training as it relates to weight training. You have one type of exercise, aerobic, which by definition should be low intensity and long duration. Then you have anaerobic, which by definition should be high intensity and short duration. The two forms of exercise are opposites and should be treated as such. In terms of fat loss the most important thing to focus on is preserving muscle tissue. Here is why. Your muscle is your metabolism. Muscle is active tissue and needs to burn calories 24/7 in order to survive which means that the more muscle you are able to maintain, the more calories you will burn and the faster your metabolism will be. Your muscle in your body is the same as an engine in a car. The bigger the engine or the more muscle you have, the more fuel that is burnt up. The biggest mistake I see people make is doing these very intense, balls to wall cardio sessions that last 45 minutes to an hour which is very catabolic (eats up your muscle), and sometimes weight training directly afterwards, even more catabolic. When cardio training is done at a high intensity it no longer is aerobic exercise, it becomes anaerobic which means that you will be tapping into your anaerobic pathways that your muscles need to recover and the body can’t replenish it’s biochemical resources fast enough and as a result your body will begin to metabolize it’s own hard earned muscle tissue for energy causing your metabolism to slow down and your body will be more prone to store fat. Now, how to avoid this so your getting the most bang for every minute you spend in the gym. Here are some idea’s that have worked tremendously for people that have asked my advice. 1.) Try to keep your weight training and aerobic or cardio training seperate. I never do them on the same day. If you do need to do them together on the same day try to keep them as far apart as possible. Idealy, if you could do cardio training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, then do your weight trainging later in the afternoon or at night that would be best. If you need to do them together at the same time then always do your weight training first and cardio second. 2.) Don’t go balls to wall on your cardio training. You should not be huffing and puffing and turning purple with veins popping out of your head gasping for air. You should go at a nice steady pace so that you would be able to carry on a conversation with someone while your exercising. I like doing the gauntlet stair climber, only at about level 4 or 5 for around 45 minutes does wonders for me. Brisk walking or a low/moderate intensity on a cross trainer or eliptical runner would be good also. 3.) Before training, take some branched chain amino acids on an empty stomach along with a green tea supplement and an acetyl-L-carnitine supplement. I cannot stress this enough! Branched chain amino acids or BCAA’S can make all the difference in the world! BCAA"s are your insurance policy to make sure that your body doesn’t start eating up it’s own muscle tissue for energy, while at the same time helping to keep your blood sugar levels stable and your metabolic rate high. Take them before you do any form of exercise. They come in capsules and also powdered form. The capsules are easier to take but the powder is much more cost effective although doesn’t taste good and is very gritty. Add some crystal lite to it and it will be much less painful to ingest. Take about 10 grams worth for every 100 lbs of bodyweight seems to yeild the best results. The Acetyl-L carnitine works wonders for fat burning when taken before exercise and is also a neurotransmitter which will help you focus during training. It also speeds recovery. This is a fairly priced supplement also. Take 1-1.5 grams or 1000-1500 mg for every 100 pounds of bodyweight before you train. One last supplement that is cheap and easy to take is green tea. You can drink a cup of it or take it in capsule form to help increase your metabolic rate so you burn more calories when you train and also help give you an energy boost. For this one the effective dosage is whats directed on the package or bottle. 4.) The next thing I want to touch apon quickly is diet. Try to get at least 5 meals per day consisting of quality protein sources along with a lower glycemic index carbohydrate. These meals don’t need to be big. An example would be a tuna fish sandwich on 100% whole wheat bread with a cup of steamed broccoli. There also some good meal replacement drink mixes and bars out there supplement companies offer. I like MHP’s macrobolic MRP packs. Good combination of quality protein and carbs and essential fatty acids. Small but frequent balanced food intakes will help keep your metabolism moving fast and give you more energy. 5.) The last thing I want to touch on is weight training. Although resistance training is essential to keep building a lean muscular body, if you over do it it can be counter productive. I have had my best success weight training no more than 3 hours per week. I suggest keeping weight traing sessions very intense but not to let any workout go over 45 minutes. Also, try not to train each bodypart more than once per week. The body has very limited biochemical resources to recover with and and when you go hit muscle group hard before it’s had a chance to recover not only will you not see gains but it will actualy be counter-productive. Anytime you work a muscle to failure, you create an inroad into your muscles recovery ability. The next step is that you have compensate (put back what was there before), before you can over over compensate(put back more than was there before), which means add more muscle. This process can take days to weeks before a muscle can fully recover unless you take steroids, than the rules change but we wont get into that now. The stronger you become and more weight your able to lift than the deeper the inroad will be into your muscles recovery pathways and the more recovery time you will have incorporate between workouts from that point on in order to compensate for the stress increase on your muscles. If your stuck at a platue then you may want to through in a few extra recovery days between your workouts from here on out and your strength and muscle growth can move forward again. Cardio may be done every more frequently because the intensity should be less so you recover from it much more quickly. Intense weight training though shouldn’t be done frequently. No more than 3 times per week as the recovery will take much longer. I hope that this information will be helpful to who ever reads it so they can avoid making alot of the mistakes I have made in my 22+ years of experience. Good luck to everyone out there and keep striving for your goals!

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