Does anyone buy into this? For those unfamiliar here is a link: G-Flux
The concept being that the higher the energy balance, the better your results will be (i.e. a total expenditure & consumption of 3000 calories will exhibit superior results than a total expenditure & consumption of 2000 calories).
It seems if the energy balance is neutral (burning off the same amount as consuming) it shouldn’t really matter, but if you think about it, the guy with the higher energy balance is training harder and longer and should be more conditioned than their less active counterpart who consumes less calories.
I find nowadays, most people rely on their diets/caloric intake as their primary mechanism of fat loss. I remember reading about the old school bodybuilders (Arnold’s Era) and how they did not change their diets for contest prep, they just trained harder and longer.
Perhaps there is no such thing as overtraining. As long as one is consuming sufficient calories, they can train as hard or as long as they want. I think nowadays most people just eat less food, and rely on drugs to get to the condition to step on stage.
Curious to get opinions on this concept, and if anyone incorporates this as a way to get conditioned.
I’ve been very interested in Gflux for a long time; it just inherently makes sense to me.
imo, the results are more dramatic in people who are sedentary or moderately active and who bump up their cals and activity than at higher levels of activity and cals. I believe there are positive hormonal changes that occur as one increases their activity levels, but that these gains taper off to a point.
[quote]Dr. Pangloss wrote:
I’ve been very interested in Gflux for a long time; it just inherently makes sense to me.
imo, the results are more dramatic in people who are sedentary or moderately active and who bump up their cals and activity than at higher levels of activity and cals. I believe there are positive hormonal changes that occur as one increases their activity levels, but that these gains taper off to a point.
Does that make sense?[/quote]
Makes sense.
So the body tries to balance anabolic/catabolic hormones? The longer/harder we train, the higher Cortisol & Thyroid hormone probably gets, which would trigger higher levels of anabolic hormones (GH, IGF-1, T) to compensate? And then obviously enough calories would need to be consumed to support this (otherwise the metabolism would down-regulate to conserve energy)?
On a basic level, a muscle is developed through the calories it burns through. For example, compare a biceps that’s performed thousands of heavy curls versus one that’s performed only hundreds of em.
Then zoom out and consider the entire body as one unit. So, thousands of training sessions means further overall development than hundreds of em. (and note that the former entails many, many more kcals both in/out)
I’m a fan of Berardi’s work, but it’s worth pointing out G flux is essentially what professional athletes do, i.e. eat more and train more. The result, all all variables being equal, is a more efficient body (more functional muscle mass; less useless body fat). If you are not an athlete, or simply do not have an athlete’s recovery ability, then this strategy can be more problematic. Further, it is my understanding Berardi aims this more at traditional hard gainers. So if you are a natural fatty, a more conservative approach probably works better.
[quote]JamesBrawn007 wrote:
I’m a fan of Berardi’s work, but it’s worth pointing out G flux is essentially what professional athletes do, i.e. eat more and train more. The result, all all variables being equal, is a more efficient body (more functional muscle mass; less useless body fat). If you are not an athlete, or simply do not have an athlete’s recovery ability, then this strategy can be more problematic. Further, it is my understanding Berardi aims this more at traditional hard gainers. So if you are a natural fatty, a more conservative approach probably works better.[/quote]
But eating more will increase recovery ability. Maybe you can’t handle doing 2 2 hour training sessions a day, but you can still increase intake and output with the general idea that more in and out is better. It could mean something as simple as adding a couple of hundred calories and a 30 minute walk every day.