Intermittent Fasting | Critical MAS

Intermittent Fasting | Critical MAS

Intermittent Fasting

In 2008 I began experimenting with Intermittent Fasting (IF). Intermittent Fasting means alternating feeding and fasting periods with a goal of extending the fasting portion to stimulate positive hormonal changes. For health and fat loss purposes, a period of 16 to 24 hours is the most common.

In addition to eliminating bread completely, I would say Intermittent Fasting is the best thing one can do to improve their health. Going without food builds resilience. It toughens you up. You will conquer your fear of hunger. Hunger becomes preferable to poor food choices. The confidence you build from controlling your hunger will spill over into other aspects of your life.

My Intermittent Fasting mentors are Arthur De Vany and Brad Pilon. If you are interested in learning more about the science of IF, I highly recommend the e-book Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon. I bought it in 2008 and read it twice. It really helped me understand how the human body responds to fasting.

Also check out Thor’s Guide on Intermittent Fasting.

Below are a list of posts that I have done on the topic of Intermittent Fasting.

Intermittent Fasting – Not For Everyone, But Perfect For Me – This is the disclaimer post. Read it before you decide to start an IF program.

Intermittent Fasting – Fears and Motivation – My first post where I examine the case for and against fasting.

Intermittent Fasting – Adventures in Not Eating – My second post details how a fast looks on a schedule and my early experiences.

Intermittent Fasting – Tips and Advice – Some wisdom I gained from my early IF experience.


An Empty Plate by Karithina

Intermittent Fasting – 20 Times – An IF status report.

Proving that Diet is WAY MORE Important Than Exercise – IF really helped me understand how diet is really far more important than exercise when it comes to body composition.

Intermittent Fasting – Overcoming Objections – In the post I address some objections to Intermittent Fasting.

Somehow I Stayed Thin While the Other Guys Got Fat – My discussion about IF with a personal trainer and his overweight client.

Intermittent Fasting – The Common Cold – Should you starve a fever and feed a cold? I did a test to find out.

Intermittent Fasting – Reports From the Field – Enough about me. This post solicits feedback from others.

Intermittent Fasting – Protection From Cancer – This post explains how IF could have a protective role against cancer.

Autophagy and Loading Trucks For UPS – This post touches on how cells can self clean provided that you interrupt the nutrient flow.

Intermittent Fasting – Improving Your Success Rate – Some new ideas on IF.

Intermittent Fasting – The 16/8 Update – My report after switching from 22 hour to 16 hour fasts.

Intermittent Fasting – Seasonal Strategies – My own twist on Intermittent Fasting. I am currently adjusting my fasting periods based upon the season.

Eat Stop Eat – A Guide Book For Intermittent Fasting – My review of the e-book Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon.

Intermittent Fasting – 70 Day Review of the Leangains Method – My status report after 70 days of 16 hour daily fasts.

Intermittent Fasting – Spontaneous and Random – Art De Vany reminds me the importance of breaking free of daily fasting schedules.

Intermittent Fasting – Life After Leangains – This post details how I’ve done since rejecting the daily adherence to the Leangains program.

Intermittent Fasting – The No Hunger Method – I tested this idea came from the Perfect Health Diet blog and book.

Intermittent Fasting – Mistakes I’ve Made – Four lessons I’ve learned.

Fitness Insights - Topic summary, index | Critical MAS

Fitness Insights | Critical MAS

Fitness Insights

I am not a personal trainer. I hold no certifications in the fitness industry. However, I do hold some strong opinions on fitness. I’m a contrarian by nature and I see much of what passes for expert knowledge in the gym is just wrong. The fitness industry operates with a primary desire to make one feel poorly about their physique, become a good consumer and hand over common sense to experts. The industry is also excellent at making their failures look like your failures. I’ll quote myself.

Instead of empowering people to make slow gradual permanent steps toward better health, the fitness industry attacks their insecurities and converts them into consumers of programs that just yield short term gains. Then they let them fail and then sell them again.

I’ve been a regular at the gym since 1994 and consider myself a decent researcher. I’ve tried many different exercise strategies and read from lots of experts. I continue to learn. Because I have no commercial interests in the fitness industry, you may find some of my ideas novel or radical. Don’t take my advice blindly. Please do your own research, question everything and listen to your own body.

General Advice

My 10 Gym Tips For 2010 – The year is not relevant, the advice is timeless. This is a good starting point.

The Scientific Program – Commercial fitness programs that promote excessive workouts succeed only because they promote the few highly successful survivors instead of the majority of failures.

The Minimal Effort Approach – This explains my core beliefs about fitness. Taking slow defined steps toward achieving your fitness goals has a higher probability of success than the “go big or go home” nonsense.

Avoiding Cardio

I am not a fan of steady state cardiovascular training. It is ineffective for permanent fat loss and not necessary or even optimal for cardiovascular health. It also makes one more prone to injury and illness.

Why Do I Diss Cardio? – A post from 2008 outlines a few reasons. I’ve got more today.

No Cardio Clarifications – I cover a few exceptions in this post.

Exercising To Success – Running oneself repeatably to exhaustion is hormonally stressful.

The Myth of Cardiovascular Training – You do not need to do cardio to have a healthy heart.

The Fitness Finance Analogy Updated – How is cardio like a high interest payday loan?

The Runner 1989-1995 – I am not slamming cardio because I can’t do it. This post lists the marathons and triathlons I completed before I gave up distance running.

Survivorship Bias

An important fitness topic that is rarely discussed is understanding the concept of survivorship bias.
Rambling Thoughts About Gym Survivorship – Why you shouldn’t necessarily model your fitness program based off the most successful.
Help me Understand CrossFit – I don’t think too highly of the latest fitness craze. The comments exploded on this post.
The Problem With Boot Camp Training – I go after the form of training that turns personal trainers into Army Drill Sergeants.
Responding to a CrossFit Enthusiast – Another post on survivorship bias, risk vs reward and I apply the financial term of alpha to exercise.

Nutrition is FAR MORE important than Exercise

The biggest mistake I see people making is believing that you can correct mistakes of diet by just working out or working out harder.You can not out train a poor diet. Most people would be far better spending their time learning how to cook than exercising. I believe physique transformation is at least 80% diet and probably 90% for women.

Caloric Nonsense at the Glitter Gym – I am not a fan of counting calories and steady state cardio.

CDC Confirms That More Exercise Hasnt Helped Obesity Rates – The big lie in the fitness industry is that exercise plays an important role in fat loss. It doesn’t and if you are exercising as much the experts recommend, you’ll be too hungry to control your diet.

Exercise and Fat Loss

This is my 5 part series from 2012 where I dismiss the traditional role of exercise in fat loss and then speculate on why exercise fails to assist with fat loss over the long term and what we can do about it.

Walking Didn’t Lean Me Out -I showed how diet and not exercise was the reason I lost 20 pounds of fat.

How Exercise Indirectly Kept Me Fatter – The way I exercised for 20 years not only didn’t help me lean out, but kept me a higher weight.

Fat Loss and the Case for Less Exercise – Why less exercise yields a higher probably for fat loss than more exercise.

Fat Loss and High Intensity Exercise – I believe that intensity is more important than duration when designing an exercise plan for fat loss.

Maximizing Fat Loss with Exercise – The limiting factor to leveraging exercise is not determination or passion. It is recovery times.

For the Male Ectomorph

If you are a lanky guy with long arms and small wrists then you are at a severe disadvantage for gaining muscle. As a fellow ectomorph, I have a few thoughts on the subject.

The Ectomorphs Dilemma – What it means to be an ectomorph that desires both muscle and being lean.

Exercises For Ectomorphs – An article I wrote way back in 2004-2005 listing the 10 exercises I used to gain 20 pounds of muscle.

Exercises For Ectomorphs Revisited – The sequel to the above article.

Weight Lifting Wisdom For the Tall Lanky Guy – This article is all about grip strength, which for many ectomorphs will be the limiting factor in gaining strength.

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care – Why this ectomorph is done with the bench press.

Rejecting the Naked Warrior – Why I dislike Pavel’s approach to body weight exercises, plus my approach.

Reality Check

A few of my posts will go after the claims of fitness experts or celebrities.

How Tim Ferriss REALLY Gained 34 Pounds of Muscle – Some of us will get discouraged when we read that someone gained a lot of muscle quickly. In this post, I expose a few of the tricks used to make rapid physique transformation.

How Micky Rourke Gained 27 Pounds of Muscle For the Wrestler – Uncovering the truth behind a celebrity claim of rapid muscle gain.

Fitness Role Models Revisited- I’ve changed my opinion on finding realistic fitness role models.

High Intensity Training

In late 2010, I stopped training Pavel style and decided to try out High Intensity Training. Now I am a convert.

High Intensity Training at Ideal Exercise – My first all out High Intense Workout.

Training to Failure or Training to Quit – A discussion on the merits and potential downside to training HIT style.

Training To Failure or Training to Quit Part 2 – A continuation of the previous post on training to failure.

High Intensity Training – My 6 Month Update – Reflecting on my first half year doing HIT.

The Paleo/HIT Cyclical Approach to Fitness and Nutrition – An evolutionary outlook on HIT.

Escaping the Glitter: Taking High Intensity Training Outdoors – A body weight approach to HIT.

I No Longer Give a Squat About The Squat | Critical MAS

I No Longer Give a Squat About The Squat | Critical MAS

I No Longer Give a Squat About The Squat

Jun 4th, 2012

by MAS.

Last year I said my goodbyes to the classic weight lifting exercise the bench press in the post My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care. In that post I listed 5 reasons why I no longer do the bench press. In this post, I will say my official goodbye to the most sacred exercise of them all: the squat. I actually stopped doing squats years ago.

The benefits I received in the early years of squatting were eventually replaced with injuries and back pain. Over time I stopped squatting as a pain avoidance strategy. When I did squat, I lowered the weight and did fewer reps and sets. I often felt guilty about feeling too broken to squat.

Anthony Dream Johnson just posted an outstanding blog post titled Barbell Squat: the Worst Exercise in Existence? I highly recommend reading it and watching the accompanying video. Anthony goes into the bio-mechanics and risks of spinal loading using ideas from works of Bill DeSimone. It is all great information.
Now I am going to explain how I arrived at the same conclusion.

Why Did We Start Squatting?

When we first start a weight lifting program our primary motivation is to build muscle. We then quickly learn that the squat is the most anabolic exercise one can perform in the free weight room. This is likely true. Books have been written on the squat, so there is clearly something to this exercise, especially for the untrained beginner. Not only will it make your legs stronger, but all your muscles will grow.

The problem with the squat was stated clearly in Anthony’s video. The muscles in the legs will get stronger at a much faster rate than the muscles supporting the spinal column that are being compressed during a squat motion. This is exactly what I experienced. When my squat went from 115 pounds to 275 pounds, I felt great. My legs got much stronger and I gained muscle. Then came the injuries. The result was years of back pain and scaling back on the squat in frequency, weight and volume.


My old home gym back in my squat days. 

The Myth of the Perfect Rep

I can already hear the critics that say that if one chooses a safe weight and your form is perfect then injuries are unlikely. The CrossFit crowd says the same thing. “If only” we choose a safe weight. “If only” we pick the exact number of repetitions or sets. “If only” our form is perfect every time. But not every rep is perfect – even in elite Olympic athletes. We get emotional. We add too much weight, do one too many reps or rush back to the gym before we’ve fully recovered from a prior workout. We get injured. We age.

Compound movements that use high amounts of weight and demand perfect form put the individual at greater risk of injury when that form is compromised. And fatigue is a factor in compromised form. The stakes are low when we first start squatting, because the weight usually isn’t significant. As we get stronger and the weight gets heavier, the risks begin to exceed the benefits. That is my opinion. As a 6 foot 3 inch ectomorph, the risks exceeded the benefits as I approached 300 pounds. For a short young endomorph that number might be higher.

Gym Survivorship

I’m going to go back to a point that I often make on this blog: survivorship bias. I started lifting weights in 1994. Since then I’ve lifted in many gyms across 5 states. Every single one of them had guys squatting serious weights. I would estimate that 98-99% of all the lifters that I’ve seen squatting more than body weight are under 35 years old. This ratio has held true every year since I began lifting weights. I suspect it will continue to be true.

Where have all the old squatters gone? Those 30 year old guys that were squatting double their body weight 10 or 15 years ago are gone. They’ve been replaced with another generation of young lifters. People do not voluntarily en mass quit activities that they demonstrate excellence in performing. No matter how busy life gets, someone that has worked up to a double body weight squat doesn’t just walk away from the iron game without a reason. I believe that reason is pain and injuries. They’ve been removed from the pool so we don’t see those failures.
Ed Coan Squat Injury 2002

The Squat Axiom

I know I will receive some negative feedback for this post. The critics will point to the successful and then try to extrapolate back to justify the squat. My finance background forces me to look at the problem differently.

[A] A high percentage of muscular and healthy individuals at the gym built their physique using squats.
[B] A high percentage of individuals at the gym that regularly performed squats are muscular and healthy.

I believe A is true and B is false. Humans are blinded by successful outcomes and we ignore the failures. We shouldn’t be looking for the exercise that produces the most successful outcomes without examining the downside risks. We should be seeking the exercise that produces the most positive results with the lowest failure rate.

A Better Way Forward

What is the point of being brawny at 30 and broken at 40? For me fitness is not a point in time and I don’t need to impress the bros at the gym with my squat numbers. My goal is to increase strength while doing everything in my power to reduce the risk of injury. That will be the topic of my next post. I will outline a few exercises I’ve used to transition away from the barbell back squat. My back has been thanking me every since.

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care | Critical MAS

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care | Critical MAS

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care

Nov 10th, 2011

by MAS.

I’m going to share my dark embarrassing secret. My bench press sucks!
Since I started lifting weights in 1994, there have only been three periods where I could bench more than my weight. And then I could only muster up an extra 10 or so more pounds. Until recently this has always bothered me a little. How much a man can bench press has for longest time been one of the three metrics for success in the gym. The other two being the squat and dead lift.

In the article Are You Strong? author and fitness professional Tim Henriques makes the case that a decent bench press is 225 pounds or 1.25 times body weight. Achieving a good bench press requires 315 pounds or 1.5 times body weight. This means that for vast majority of the time I’ve been lifting weights, I’ve been less than decent. This used to bother me. Not anymore.

Why I No Longer Care About the Bench Press

#1 Accepting my Somatype

I am 6 foot and 2.5 inches tall (189 cm). My arms are long and my wrists are small. I am an ectomorph. Ectomorphs across the board suck at the bench press. We have greater weak points in the movement. Shorter guys excel at this movement, as do men with thick wrists.

Back when I was a member of a hard core gym in South Tampa, the guys that could bench 400+ pounds were all under 5′ 10 and had stocky builds. Seeing a true ectomorph bench more than his weight after college is a rare site.

#2 Understanding that the Bench Press is a Technical Move

The bench press isn’t just a way to develop strength. It is a technical movement. The goal is to lower and lift as much weight as possible without hurting yourself. Although the primary muscle being targeted is the pectoralis major, the bench press will also target the anterior deltoids, serratus anterior, coracobrachialis, scapulae fixers, trapezii, and the triceps. Each muscle has a limiting factor. Getting them all to work together to share the load via form and timing isn’t just about having more strength. Like any sport, one needs to train the movement itself.

That may all seem like common sense, but the reason many men go to the gym in the first place is to build muscle, not have a better bench press. We later – falsely – draw the conclusion that in order to have more chest muscle we need to have a greater bench press. I care about muscle, not bragging rights to some number.

#3 Embracing The Negative

One of the aspects of High Intensity Training that I’ve learned to love is the focus on negatives. By slowing down the lowering of the weight, you will recruit more muscle and fatigue much faster. From Negative Training for Positive Results by Dave Durell:

During the negative, or lowering, phase of a repetition, the muscle fibers involved are lengthening under tension. Your muscles are much stronger during this phase than during the positive, or lifting phase. Even when you reach positive failure during an exercise, and can no longer lift a certain weight with good form, the truth is there is still a lot of strength left in that muscle. Negative training allows you to tap into that unused strength, overloading the muscle at a much deeper level, and stimulating it to respond by growing bigger and stronger.

This type of overload has tremendous strength and muscle building properties. It is possible to get VERY big and strong VERY quickly with negative only training.

In order to get a higher bench press number, you’ll want to avoid negative fatigue so you have enough strength to safely complete the positive portion. So if my choice is to slow the negative portion of the lift using a lower weight or having a higher bench press number with less muscle recruitment, I’ll take the lower number.

#4 Avoiding Injury

To get good at the bench press, you need to bench press a lot. This brings us back to our old friend survivorship bias. I see lots of guys in the 20s slamming serious weights. I see a few guys doing it in their 30s. Where are the 40-60 year old guys at? Occasionally I’ll see one, but it is a rare site. Where did all those guys that had amazing bench press numbers 10-20 years ago go? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: People do not en masse voluntarily quit participating in something for which they are highly skilled doing. What happened?

The fitness websites are filled with reports if injuries related to bench pressing. The body doesn’t have an unlimited capacity for recovery. And because the bench press is a technical move, being off a few inches or a second in timing can result in injury.

#5 The Modern Gym

Assume that I changed my opinion about the bench press and my goal was to get decent or even good at it. To be safe, I would need to have a spotter. Back in the pre-iPod days, guys in the free weight room acknowledged each other. Sometimes they even spoke to one another. Real conservation! We asked for spots and we offered them. Not anymore. I haven’t been asked for a spot in over 5 years now.
Gym walls today have flat screen TVs showing sports highlights and MSNBC. Back in the day, the walls displayed photos of Frank Zane and Arnold. The free weight rooms went from a group of fellow lifters helping each other out to a room full of iPod wearing, TV watching zombies. Even if asking for a spot wasn’t considered old timey 20th century behavior, I wouldn’t trust anyone in the modern gym for a safe spot and that includes the staff.

Life After The Bench Press

I’ve done thousands bench press repetitions. Although it did help me gain some muscle, it also resulted in a rounded mid back and contributed to my wrist surgery. Was there a better, safer way to develop chest muscles? I now think so.

In the past year, I have done High Intensity Training using Super Slow and static hold movements with machines. No more free weights. No more bench presses. For the first time in years, I actually gained new muscle. And I didn’t have to beat my body senseless to earn it.
How much can I bench press? I don’t know and I don’t care.