Foods that claim to be gluten-free are not always gluten-free. Many of those foods actually have enough gluten to cause gastrointestinal distress in those who are intolerant to wheat protein, also known as celiac disease. Gluten is actually defined as the protein contained in wheat, barley, rye, and other similar grains.
How can food manufacturers get away with this? It’s actually not entirely their fault, as there has never been an established US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation to define just how much gluten can be in gluten-free foods.
What is the Standard for Gluten-Free?
As of this writing, manufacturers can decide how much gluten they put in their gluten-free foods. However, the FDA is now planning to push through a standard for gluten-free food, that manufacturers will be required to meet before they can put gluten-free labels on their packaging.
The Feds are proposing that gluten-free food – usually wheat products like cookies, cakes, and breads – should contain no more than 20 parts per million of gluten. At those levels lab tests are unable to detect the presence of gluten, thus meeting the label claim of “gluten-free”.
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Tags: barley, celiac, Diet, disease, food, gluten, gluten-free, intestines, Medical, nutrition, Research, rye, wheat, wheat protein
How to Effectively Combine HIIT Sessions with Endurance Cardio
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please: walking or jogging for hours on the treadmill, peddling for hours on the stationary bike, climbing a mountain on the StairMaster, and plodding away on the elliptical trainer is NOT the best way to burn calories!
We’ve seen a hundred studies telling us that high intensity interval training (HIIT) burns more calories and fat, speeds up your metabolism, and is less catabolic than hours of endurance cardio. HIIT can also be far less boring, will actually help you build more muscle tissue, and increases your resting metabolic rate.
HIIT: Twenty minutes of HIIT cardio improves your VO2 max, burns a ton of calories, increases your metabolism, and maintains or builds muscle tissue all at once.
vs.
Endurance Cardio: Sixty minutes of endurance cardio is not only boring as hell, it also increases cortisol, burns muscle tissue (protein) for energy, and halts protein synthesis.
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Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
It’s not this easy, but these 10 basic tips will get you started in your quest to accomplish your strength and bodybuilding goals.
- The basics have always and will always work best. You can build a core workout routine with just squats, deads, bench, overhead press, pull ups / chin ups, dips, and situps. Rows and curls can be added as needed.
- Find what works best for you and keep doing it until it no longer works. Start with the basics, optimize for your personal needs, repeat until you plateau.
- As long as you are making progress, stick with your routine. No need to change workout routines every month just because you don’t want to plateau. If your routine is working, stick with it UNTIL you plateau.
- Strength is greater than bulk. If you are strong you have nothing to prove and it is easy to get bigger. If you are big it’s tough to get stronger and strong guys will tell you “well, at least you LOOK strong.”
- Three months is the minimum trial length before you can pass judgement. Six months is even better. What I’m saying is, you need to stick with a plan for 3-6 months before you can say it does or doesn’t work.
- Free weights rule.
- Excuses will hold you back for your entire life if you let them. Stop making excuses, stop reading and researching, stop thinking. Just do it!
- You will become your environment. If you want to be weak and small, surround yourself with weak and small. If you want to be big and strong, hang with those guys, ask questions, and take advice from those who have accomplished what you want to accomplish.
- You have to really want what you think you want. If you REALLY wanted to be strong, you’d be strong by now. So change your mindset today. If you really want to be something, you have to want it more than anything else.
- Eat to grow. You have to eat if you want to get stronger. You have to eat if you want to get bigger. If you’re not getting bigger or stronger, eat more food. Especially protein.
Tags: basics, bodybuilding, Fitness Tips, Motivation, muscle, strength, strong, strongman, tips
I’ll get around to writing up a more detailed explanation shortly. For now, here’s a great video showing you how to do windshield wipers. It’s not an easy exercise but it will pay off with wonderous results.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvN7uGX5QP4Tags: 6 pack, ab training, abs, adominals, Conditioning, exercise, fitness, ripped abs, windshield wipers
Posted July 26, 2011 in
Injuries 3 Comments »Rick Kaselj is a personal trainer that focuses on helping clients overcome their injuries. Rick’s specialization is the shoulder and did his Masters’ degree project on designing effective exercises for the rotator cuff. He shares with rotator cuff injury suffers and fitness professionals what he has learned in school and from his clients and has put it all into the Effective Rotator Cuff Exercise Program.
Exercises for Injuries Feedback
This is the first of what will hopefully be a series of posts by Rick about injury prevention and rehabilitation. Although you won’t learn about the finer details of effective rotator cuff exercises or knee injury prevention in this post, I do hope it will encourage you to think about your own aches and pains.
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Tags: exercise, fitness, health, injuries, injury, injury prevention, knees, mobility, pain, prevent, rotator cuff, shoulders, stability
History of amino acid supplements
The evolution of amino acid supplements have generally been well pronounced since the ancient times. From as early as 1960’s, ancient body builders are known to eat a diet rich in essential amino acids. Wine and meat were the most essential foods used for natural nutrients such as proteins and vitamins.
Nowadays, amino acid supplements are generally used by bodybuilders and other athletes for building muscle, losing fat, and enhancing performance. There are a lot of amino acid supplements that one can choose from, if you are interested in building your muscles, but it’s always advisable to go for the best. In my opinion, based on 17 years of weight training and supplement use, XTEND is the most effective, best tasting, and least expensive amino acid supplement on the market.
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Tags: amino acids, build muscle, gain muscle, muscle building, muscle gains, nutrition, protein, supplement, Supplements, xtend
How to Workout in 100+ Degree Heat
Weather experts have predicted that it’s going to get up to 105 degrees today, where I live in southern NH. Those crazy temperatures have prompted me to write this quick note about exercising in the summer heat.
If you are dedicated to fitness, that means you are exercising even when it’s 110 degrees outside in the middle of summer. Unfortunately, that level of dedication can get you into trouble if you don’t make safe decisions. The kind of trouble that can put you in the hospital or worse.
Here are 3 mistakes that people commonly make when they exercise in the dead heat of summer.
Wear proper clothing
Cotton is your summer nemesis. When you exercise, cotton clothing will hold sweaty moisture, which can cause chaffing and rashes. Cotton socks swell with moisture, causing them to lose their shape, which can lead to blisters – the deadly enemy of lower body training. Sweaty clothing also weighs you down, making exercise harder, which causes you to sweat more. It is a dangerous cycle.
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Tags: deydration, exercise, fitness, health, Healthy Lifestyle, heat stroke, skin, summer, sun, sun poisoning, tips, workout
A study by Canadian researchers has deflated the hopes of lifetime bachelors every where. 4400 subjects; some single, some married, some widowed; participated in the study, so it is seems pretty legit. The researchers determined that the married men are officially healthier than single men. Why?
When asked why, male participants in the study gave credit to their wives. Wives are really good at reminding us about doctor appointments, making sure we take medicine, resting when we are exhausted, getting medical help when we are hurt, and don’t forget that sex is a major anti-stress technique.
Faster Emergency Medical Treatment
On average, married men who are victims of a sudden heart attack, arrive at the hospital 30 minutes quicker than their single counterparts. Not only can that fact explain why men are healthier, it could explain why married men have a longer lifespan than bachelors. A 30 minute delay in treatment for a heart attack, quite often means the difference between life and death.
Interestingly, the wives don’t even have to be present to elicit this caregiving effect. Some study participants noted that even if their wives were not present, they would hear the female voice of reason telling them to seek medical attention immediately.
It is unfortunate to note that there is no difference in the time it takes women to get to the hospital, whether they are married or not. Come on guys! Pick up the slack!
Women Will Find the Answers
Wives also ask lots of questions. You would know this if you ever got ‘lost’ on a road trip with a female. Married women reportedly ask their own doctors for advice on behalf of their husbands. After all, isn’t pretty much every wife also a nurse? You kind of have to be a nurse when you have a pack of young children and one really big really hairy ‘kid’ to take care of on a daily basis.
This post is an excuse to post a picture of a super sexy wedding dress (yes, obviously it is the dress that is sexy), which you can see at the top of the page. But I also want to take a moment to say, “Thanks!” to all the wives out there who remind us that good health is sometimes more than benching and squatting triple bodyweight.
Resources:
Effect of marriage on duration of chest pain associated with acute myocardial infarction before seeking care
Tags: bachelor life, bachelorhood, bachelors, health, Healthy Lifestyle, marriage, married, men, wife, wives, women
I am not going to get into a long detailed post today. Instead I am going to supplement my top 6 back training mistakes post with another guest post about back training by expert Mike Robertson. I’m not cool enough to get Mike to post on my website though, so I have to link to the post from another blog entirely.
Find it here: 3 back training mistakes you could be making.
Mike tells you how people go wrong by training without a neutral spine, without a neutral pelvis, and without paying attention to detail. This is just another example of how every aspect of your physiology has to be healthy and aligned, or you risk injury.
About Mike Robertson
Mike Robertson received his Masters Degree in Sports Biomechanics from the world-renowned Human Performance Lab at Ball State University. He is also the president of Robertson Training Systems and the co-owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training, which has been named one of America’s Top 10 Gyms by Men’s Health magazine in 2009 and 2010.
About Rick Kaselj
Since the guest post is actually posted on his site, this is a lead in to another awesome fitness blogger, a guy named Rick Kaselj who is an expert on sports injuries. Hopefully he will write a couple guest posts for Project Swole soon. I’ve requested some serious rehab / prehab articles and I know if he can find the time to write them, you will be amazed.
Tags: back, exericse, fitness, injury, mistakes, spine, Sports, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Why You Can’t Stay Lean When You Get Off Your Structured Diet
We have all heard of The Atkins diet, The Warrior Diet, The Paleo Diet and every other nutritional plan that promises to burn fat, build muscle, and allow you to achieve your physique related goals with minimal effort.
They make big promises, sound good in practice, but fail to deliver. Even if you do reach your goal, after you discontinue the diet, the fat piles right back on and you are back where you started.
What a waste of time.
Why does this happen?
It’s really simple. The proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” comes to mind…
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Tags: atkins, Diet, dieting, fat loss, food, lose fat, lose weight, meal planning, meals, tips, weight loss
Plyos, Olympic Lifts, and Dynamic Efforts are not the Only Ways to Increase Speed and Power
Strength coaches around the world prescribe plyometrics and Olympic lifts to increase force production – to build speed and power. Powerlifters around the world utilize dynamic effort lifts – box squats, speed deads, board presses – to increase their speed and power.
We can all learn A LOT from those methods, but there is one constituent of force development that the above methods don’t take into account. Consider reversal and/or starting strength, acceleration, and stretch reflex actions of the muscles that act as the antagonists to the primary sports movement.
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Tags: agonists, antagonists, athletes, concentric, eccentric, force, muscle, power, speed, Sports, strength, weightlifting
I finally joined a gym that’s worth blogging about. It is called Powerzone Fitness and it’s located in Hooksett, NH.
Check out their website here: Powerzone Fitness and their Yahoo Local page with a 5 star rating and 4 glorious reviews here: Powerzone in Hooksett, NH
Why is Powerzone Fitness the best gym in NH?
- It is open 24×7. You get in after hours with an access card.
- No one is ever there. Turn the lights and fans on, crank your own music on the radio.
- No crazy meat heads taking up all the machines. It’s like the opposite of Gold’s Gym in Manchester, NH. If you ever go there you’ll know what I mean.
- It is owned by a former powerlifter. That means you can deadlift, lift over your head, and grunt without getting in trouble.
- They supply the chalk. Like using chalk when you deadlift or do Olympic lifts? They have a box of chalk beside the power rack.
- The have a power rack. They have a smith machine too, but they only use it for shrugs.
- Dumbbells up to 120 lbs. Not bad.
- They have a reverse hyper machine! It’s old, but it works.
- Training at Powerzone is like working out in your own personal basement gym, except they actually have all the equipment you could need.
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Tags: Business, gym, gyms, Powerzone
Do Bodybuilders Have to “Max Out” to Gain Muscle?
You may have seen or heard cliche slogans like “Go heavy or go home.” You may have been asked “How much do you bench?” You may even be impressed by Olympic lifters, powerlifters, and professional strongmen, all of whom regularly use maximum effort triples and singles to prepare for competition, to try to set a personal record, or just as a component of their regular training routines.
Well guess what? None of those sports are like bodybuilding. Sure, Olympic lifters are typically pretty jacked, powerlifters and strongmen are just plain “big”, but very few of them could compete in a bodybuilding competition and hope to win, without first dieting and training like a bodybuilder for several months.
This brings us to the question – do bodybuilders ever actually have to test their 1 or 3 rep max on any exercise? Do they have to lift super-heavy?
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Tags: bodybuilding, building muscle, fitness, gain muscle, heavy, max, max effort, maximum effort, muscle growth, myth, myths, powerlifting, strength, strongman, training, weight lifting, weightlifting
Should Bodybuilders Train When They Are Sore?
This is one of the top offending bodybuilding myths. Have you ever canceled a workout or skipped training a body part because it felt sore, even though at least 48 hours had passed since you trained it? If you said “Yes”, then after reading this post you will never make that mistake again.
Your muscles will get sore when you use:
- heavy weights
- slow negatives
- forced negatives
- assisted negatives
- drop sets
- high volume
Do you need to avoid these training methods completely in order to prevent soreness, so that you can train again in two days? Not necessarily.
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Tags: bodybuilding, building muscle, doms, fitness, gain muscle, heavy, max, max effort, maximum effort, muscle growth, myth, powerlifting, sore, sore muscles, soreness, strength, strongman, training, weight lifting, weightlifting
Should Bodybuilders Use Static Stretching Before a Workout?
It’s such a simple component of your workout routine that you may not even think about it. You might just automatically hit the mats before you train, to stretch every muscle group for 20 seconds. If you haven’t been reading Project Swole or other popular fitness blogs in the last 5 years, you might even think this practice is good for you. Think again.
If you have been reading fitness blogs, websites, magazines, or keeping up to date on regular fitness news, you would know by now that this myth has been debunked. It has been decided with 100% assurance whether you should or shouldn’t stretch before weight lifting. So what is the final answer?
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Tags: dynamic stretch, fitness, Flexibility, static stretch, stretch, stretching, workout
Should Bodybuilders Restrict Their Intake of Dietary Fat?
We all know sugar is bad. It is fun to eat but it is bad for your body. It belongs on the bodybuilding blacklist, I’ve got no qualms there. We all know protein is good for bodybuilding. That is a simple and obvious discussion. But what about fat?
Possibly left over from the 1980’s war on fat, a common myth is that fat calories have no place in a healthy diet, let alone a bodybuilding diet. Around that time fat was demonized and carbohydrates were praised. The myth still lingers, but isn’t it time to let that battle go?
The Myth
A bodybuilding diet consists of lean meats like turkey, chicken, fish, egg whites, and fat free dairy products. Bodybuilding newbies learn this practice almost immediately. We must keep calories low, so we must keep fat consumption low.
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Tags: bodybuilding, build muscle, Diet, dieting, fat, fat loss, food, gain muscle, lose fat, lose weight, meal planning, meals, muscle gain, myth, myths, saturated fat, weight loss
Should Bodybuilders Do Cardio After Weight Training?
Spend some time in a corporate gym and you will see hundreds of bodybuilders lifting moderately heavy weight for sets of 10-15 reps, then you’ll see them hop on a StairMaster or elliptical machine for about 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity endurance cardio. There are many reasons for this behavior, the most common being that weight training is just a hell of a lot more fun than cardio.
Apparently the weights-first-cardio-second protocol is considered the most effective way for bodybuilders to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. But is it?
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Tags: bodybuilding, cardio, cardiovascular, Diet, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, myth, myths, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Can Bodybuilders Build Muscle and Lose Fat at the Same Time?
There are the hard-gainers, the obese slackers, the off-season bodybuilders, the weekend warriors, the overweight housewives, and a million other kinds of aspiring athletes. Everyone has a goal. Some goals are simply to lose weight, while others are mainly to build muscle, but for most people fat loss goes along with muscle gain for a variety of reasons – everything from general health, building a beach body, sports performance, competition prep, and even to combat aging.
The most popular fitness newbie belief is that you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Every personal trainer in the world then tries to convince the newbie that he or she simply can’t try to accomplish both goals at the same time. Why? Because gaining muscle and losing fat seem to be mutually exclusive.
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Tags: bodybuilding, build muscle, Diet, dieting, fat loss, food, gain muscle, lose fat, lose weight, meal planning, meals, muscle gain, myth, myths, weight loss
Can Bodybuilders Digest More Than 30 Grams of Protein in One Meal?
This myth has been around since the late 1970’s, and I really can’t figure out why or where it originated. There are about a million theories about how much protein, fat, and carbs should be eaten each day, each meal, even each hour. Most bodybuilders are concerned about eating exactly the right amount of protein, because they want to maximize muscle gain but they also want to avoid any excess calories, even from protein, getting stored as body fat.
So, how much protein should we eat in a single meal? How much can our bodies process at once? Some nutritionists say only 20 grams, while many professional bodybuilders consume as much as 100 grams in a single meal! What’s the truth?!
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Tags: bodybuilding, Diet, eat, eating, food, how to eat, meal, myth, nutrition, protein, when to eat
Should Bodybuilders Eat Sugar?
Another food myth. This time we have to decide if eating sugar is acceptable in a bodybuilding diet. Sugar can do some nasty things to the body, but it can also help sometimes. Let’s look at the pros and cons of eating sugar so we can decide how, when, where, and why to eat sugar, if at all.
The Myth
Similar to eating before bed, the sugar myth is another controversial subject about which everyone seems to have an opinion, whether educated or not. The two common opinions on sugar are as follows:
- Sugar will cause obesity, diabetes, and rotten teeth, so it must be avoided at all costs.
- Artificial sweeteners are bad for your health or taste horrible, so we must use sugar in our meals, drinks, and recipes.
The first opinion, that sugar has no place in a bodybuilder’s diet, is the most common myth that needs to be debunked. The second opinion is gaining in popularity, and although there is some sense in this approach, it too can be over used.
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Tags: bodybuilding, bodybuilers, Diet, eating, food, Fruit, healthy food, nutrition, post-workout, sugar, sugary, unhealthy food, workout
