Glycerin can increase water uptake by muscle cells. I’ve used BCAA supplements in the past that include Glycerin hoping to capitalize on the increased uptrake.
S
[quote]Gym Savvy wrote:
What is a Siff Squat? Is it similar to the Siff lunge, i.e. as a normal lunge but up on your toes to stimulate the calves? [/quote]
Exactely. I often do them with dumbbell. I also like dumbbell Siff jump squats for neural activation.
[quote]NickChristensen wrote:
Awesome, I like to view my training the same way. Approach every session like it’s a privilege.[/quote]
It certainly is a privilege 
[quote]cyruseven75 wrote:
thank you for this thread, your time, insight, and inspiration. This thread and a few others (Stu’s contest stuff) are great resources to those of us who love this lifestyle and the training, diet, science, theories behind it all. Seeing the methodologies put to use is far more fruitful than reading 10000 threads on misc. bodybuilding minutia.
While i’m am not stepping on stage anytime soon, my partner is doing her first women’s natural BB show, i’ve been taking bits and pieces from threads like these and helping tune her prep. all thanks goes to threads like these.
good luck in 2011 and 2012 w/ all that you do.
[/quote]
Thank you very much!
You really don’t have to compete to be a bodybuilder. It’s about the road we are traveling 
Cool. What organization will she start for? All the best for her prep! I like to work with women better than preparing men for shows. I just feel that it needs more individualization and “brain work”. Generally speaking, putting a male competitor on a low-carb diet with one or two high(er) carb days a week will work 80-90% of the time. Not so for women. I don’t know why that is, but the challenge to get a female competitor in shape is huge. Always.
If I can offer any assistance, let me know.
Cheers, PA
[quote]MAF14 wrote:
i always thought glycerin was mainly for aesthetics more-so than anything else… primarily just for contests but you said you use it for your high carb days as well? i think poliquin said it only lasts 2 hours in an article so…
would the normal gym-rat/trainee see any benefit to using glycerin?
(hope this isnt a dumb question but a quick google/site search didnt give me any answers)[/quote]
I mostly use it for preps because of what Stu mentioned. On high carb days, I mainly use glycerine to sweeten my food. I feel that it also helps to push nutrients into my mucle cells. Glycerine can “push” water into a muscle cell and, I suppose, nutrients along with the water. On high carb days I really want to flood my muscles with nutrients and water and get the most out of the increased intake in carbs, aminos, etc.
However, frankly speaking, this really belongs to the category of things I believe but just can not prove.
The average gym rat could still see benefits from using glycerine pre-workout to superhydrate the muscle cells. I thing Thib wrote about that in the past.
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
Glycerin can increase water uptake by muscle cells[/quote] So, glycerin with some BCAAs, creatine and salt pre-WO would be a good combo?
[quote]ParagonA wrote:
[quote]MAF14 wrote:
i always thought glycerin was mainly for aesthetics more-so than anything else… primarily just for contests but you said you use it for your high carb days as well? i think poliquin said it only lasts 2 hours in an article so…
would the normal gym-rat/trainee see any benefit to using glycerin?
(hope this isnt a dumb question but a quick google/site search didnt give me any answers)[/quote]
I mostly use it for preps because of what Stu mentioned. On high carb days, I mainly use glycerine to sweeten my food. I feel that it also helps to push nutrients into my mucle cells. Glycerine can “push” water into a muscle cell and, I suppose, nutrients along with the water. On high carb days I really want to flood my muscles with nutrients and water and get the most out of the increased intake in carbs, aminos, etc.
However, frankly speaking, this really belongs to the category of things I believe but just can not prove.
The average gym rat could still see benefits from using glycerine pre-workout to superhydrate the muscle cells. I thing Thib wrote about that in the past.
[/quote]
thanks man. appreciate it… oh and about when those guys were trying to make it seem like you were being weird about taking the stairs, i envy you. i swear i’ve almost fought people over dumb comments like that - lol.
[quote]tolismann wrote:
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
Glycerin can increase water uptake by muscle cells[/quote] So, glycerin with some BCAAs, creatine and salt pre-WO would be a good combo?
[/quote]
Would be a combo interesting experimenting with. I would rather experiment with baking soda instead of the salt and start with little glycerine (can really set your stomach off if you are not used to it).
I’d go for 30oz water, 20g BCAA, 5g creatine, 50ml glycerine and a packet of backing soda 30 minutes before the workout starts and then sip another of these cocktails during the workout. See how it works and go from there.
MEN NEED THEIR TOYS
One thing is universally true: the toughest men will - on the inside - will always remain little boys. You can easily tell by the fact that men, all men, love and need their toys! Be it cars, motor bikes, sports equipment, fire arms, the latest iPhone, or power tools, like Tim Taylor in “home improvement”.
Well, personally I am not so much into electroncis, but I certainly love my bike, car, and my weight lifting gadgets.
Here are some of my current favourites:
- IronMind Captains of Crunch
I have pair at work and another one at home. The one at work have been life-saving in the past… I’m not talking about my life, of course.
This is from EliteFTS, where I buy my gadgets:
“No. 1 will stop most guys who lift weights; the No. 2 is rarely closed the first time it is tried; the No. 3 represents a world-class crushing grip; and the No. 4 has still been closed by only one man. When you close our No. 3 or No. 4 Captains of Crush gripper under authenticated conditions, you will be certified and added to the Ironmind list.”
2) My Foam Roller
Foam rolling is great. I do it almost daily and it really helped me with recovery, prevention of injuries and sleeping (bacause I often do it at home in the evenings, and it’s fantastically relaxing… after the pain goes away…).
Bought mine from Dave Tate, of course…
- Resistance cables
I always take those with me when I’m traveling. Sometimes it’s hard to find a gym and it’s certainly better to do some cable work in the hotel room than not to work out at all. Mine are pretty tough. If I use the heaviest cables I can go from 100 to 210lb. Good stuff.
Who are you? Just kidding, nice read mate. :]
DON’T DRINK AND… POSE!
Just a little story from my second competition (from, like, a million years ago).
I remember my second competition. I started as a junior (19 years young), and, since bodybuilding has never been very popular in Switzerland, we were only a very small field of competitors. I remember we were only three guys in my class.
Switzerland is a small country and since there are only a few contests a year you can compete in, the faces you see there back and in front of the stage are always the same ones. That’s fun. Feels like family.
I didn’t know much about dieting and contest preparation then. Much less did I know how to prepare myself for the stage the minutes before posing. All I knew was that I had to “pump” my muscles, or some muscle groups, before stepping on stage.
A fellow competitor had brought some chocolate liquor with him and told the other guys that he always had a few sips of it before hitting the stage. The sugar and the alcohol combined would increase vascularity through increase blood flow.
Imagine what happened: a group of five or six bodybuilders pass a bottle of liquor from one to the other in between sets of pumping. The longer we “prepared” and the more rounds the bottle had made, the funnier it all got. I’m sure the audience could here us laughing from behind the stage. I was so heavily dehydrated and starving that I instantly got drunk, even though the actual amount of alcohol consumed wasn’t really that big. My body wasn’t used to alcohol, anyway. Back then, I didn’t drink at all. Never. (Today I have an occasional glass of wine every once in a while or, at birthdays and Christmas, maybe a whisky or two…)
When it was finally my turn to step on stage I was really drunk. I could hardly walk straight.
I somehow felt that I might behave a bit stupid, but I couldn’t fully control myself, though. I didn’t exactly feel embarrassed, but could somehow glimpse at the next day’s embarrassment. When the judges called me out for comparisons, I walked in the wrong direction, took the wrong position and, of course, hit the wrong poses.
I found that all very funny and, not to burst out laughing, tried to look extra serious, concentrated, focussed - which, as my friends in the audience told me later, meant, that I stared at the judges as if I wanted to kill them…
The other guys from my class must have drunk much less, or at least they were able to control themselves better than I, because the still knew what a “front double biceps” was and didn’t hit a side chest pose or so instead.
Needless to say I got third. Still top-three and a bottle of protein powder won. That was totally ok for me. And believe me, that story already survived almost two decades now, and every now and then, a friend or old-school competitor comes up with it, which always causes a good laugh.
My friends, bodybuilding is so much fun and has given me so much. Hope I can at least give a little bit of it back.
Cheers, PA
HAHA. great story, got any more?
[quote]MAF14 wrote:
HAHA. great story, got any more?[/quote]
Many more I’ll post the next one soon…
I’m hanging on this too! Competition related stories are usually great (everyone’s usually in a barely conscious state!)
S
If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get those resistance cables? I travel a lot and am looking into getting a set myself…
If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get those resistance cables? I travel a lot and am looking into getting a set myself…
[quote]PerformanceOne wrote:
If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get those resistance cables? I travel a lot and am looking into getting a set myself…[/quote]
You can buy them (and lots of other cool stuff) at www.elitefts.com
Cheers, PA