Coach,
For rear delt exercises, do you prefer to use DB’s or cables for maximum results?
Also, after reading your Violent Variations IV article, I was wondering if you favor the functionally-correct DB flies over various cable fly versions or if you generally prefer cable variants if using flies.
[quote]shoelessjones wrote:
Hey coach,
Has this ever happened to you or a client… I have been doing awesome with my low-carb nutrtion for the last 100+ days and by awesome I mean keeping it below 50g easily. There have been two or three PWO in there where I had a mango or pineapple, but that’s it.
Anyway, the other night, I decided to have some chips and salsa as a late evening snack and holy shit… the next day… I could not stay away from the toilet until about noon. Could the carbs from the chips and salsa done that because my body wasn’t used to that way of eating any more?
Thanks for your time.[/quote]
Your body adapts to its current situation to become as efficient as possible. When it comes to food, if you are constantly eating the same types of nutrients (in your case protein and fat) and avoiding another one (carbs) it will increase its production of protein/fat digestive enzymes and reduce its production of carbs digestive enzymes.
Your fine when the amount of carbs ingested is small OR divided into small intakes. But if you take a big amount of carbs at one sitting your body might have problems digesting it.
[quote]NoisePollution wrote:
Thib,
Is this method best kept for muscle-gaining phases, since it recruits a lot of MU’s and causes quite a bit of muscle damage?
And is there a placement within a given workout where this method fits best,say towards the middle or end as opposed to the beginning?[/quote]
It’s typically an hypertrophy technique. If you include heavy work, the heavy work should indeed come first in the workout.
[quote]ThorsHammer wrote:
Coach,
For rear delt exercises, do you prefer to use DB’s or cables for maximum results?
Also, after reading your Violent Variations IV article, I was wondering if you favor the functionally-correct DB flies over various cable fly versions or if you generally prefer cable variants if using flies.[/quote]
I have something like 200 variations of DB lateral raises that I use; cables and DB both have their pros and cons. Cables allow for a greater ‘‘under tension range of motion’’ while with dumbbells you normally have a greater peak tension, but less overall tension.
Most of the time I prefer cables, but DB are also used around 30% of the time.
When it comes to flies, it’s much the same thing, but my favorite fly variations are:
I find that the former puts more emphasis on the medial portion of the muscle fibers (YES it is possible to put more stress on one section of the muscle fibers, read my article on the subject).
The floor flies puts the pecs under a tremendous amount of tension in the semi-stretched position, which really works the external portion of the muscle fibers.
The FC decline flies are also very very effective since it targets both major functions of the chest.
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
shoelessjones wrote:
Hey coach,
Has this ever happened to you or a client… I have been doing awesome with my low-carb nutrtion for the last 100+ days and by awesome I mean keeping it below 50g easily. There have been two or three PWO in there where I had a mango or pineapple, but that’s it.
Anyway, the other night, I decided to have some chips and salsa as a late evening snack and holy shit… the next day… I could not stay away from the toilet until about noon. Could the carbs from the chips and salsa done that because my body wasn’t used to that way of eating any more?
Thanks for your time.
Your body adapts to its current situation to become as efficient as possible. When it comes to food, if you are constantly eating the same types of nutrients (in your case protein and fat) and avoiding another one (carbs) it will increase its production of protein/fat digestive enzymes and reduce its production of carbs digestive enzymes.
Your fine when the amount of carbs ingested is small OR divided into small intakes. But if you take a big amount of carbs at one sitting your body might have problems digesting it.[/quote]
Thanks. So the carb digestive enzymes, even with all the green veggies I am eating daily are not increased, correct?
Thib,
Ive seen you reference certain areas of the body where fat is gained due to a deficiency, such as fat gain around the abdomen is due to poor insulin sensitivity. Could you provide a complete list of these sites and does it change between men and women?
Thanks
hey Thibs is there any way to tweak your hungarian oak leg blast and only do it twice a day or in your opionon will it have little affect. i know you didnt make the program but what do you think?
[quote]Lift76 wrote:
Thib,
Ive seen you reference certain areas of the body where fat is gained due to a deficiency, such as fat gain around the abdomen is due to poor insulin sensitivity. Could you provide a complete list of these sites and does it change between men and women?
Thanks[/quote]
Abdomen is NOT related to insulin sensitivity but to elevated cortisol.
Supra-iliac (love handles) and upper back are related to insulin sensitivity.
Chin & Cheek: these first two measures are the first one to go down and they are not associated with any specific hormone imbalances. However if facial fat increases while other sites stay stable it is an indication of adrenal burnout. This might be one of the reason why modern bodybuilders are often ripped to the bone, yet still have a round face (Jay Cutler is a good example).
Triceps: indicate how male you are. The lower the triceps is, the more testosterone (natural or from an injection) you have. A natural (not using steroids) woman cannot have a triceps fold of less than 6mm (give-away for steroids use in almost all cases).
Pectoral: indicate if you are prone to aromatization (converting testosterone to estrogen) or not. If the pectoral measure is higher than the triceps then you are probably converting too much of your testosterone into estrogens.
Subscapular: genetic predisposition toward handling carbs. The higher this measure is, the more insulin-resistant (do not tolerate carbs well) you are.
Supra-iliac: current situation regarding insulin levels. If it is too elevated you are consuming too much carbs.
Umbilical/abdomen: a high measure here compared to the rest is indicative of bad cortisol modulation. Note that elevated abdominal fat is representative of long term cortisol elevation, not of what happened in the past weeks. If your abdominal fat is high compared to other measures it means that your cortisol has been out of whack for a while.
Mid-axilary: a high measure here indicate bad thyroid modulation. Either you are not producing enough thyroid hormone or the conversion from the relatively inactive T4 into the more active T3 is inhibited.
Knee & Medial calf: these two measures indicate growth hormone production (so the quality of sleep too). A high knee measure compared the the calf is a sign of liver toxicity.
Quadriceps & Hamstrings: these are the estrogen sites. When these are elevated compared to the upper body it means that the body is producing too much estrogen. In males this obviously means lower testosterone too (either because a lot of the testosterone is aromatized into estrogen or because both hormones are made of pregnenolone… overproducing one thus means underproducing the other).
[quote]shoelessjones wrote:
Thanks. So the carb digestive enzymes, even with all the green veggies I am eating daily are not increased, correct?
[/quote]
There is not ONE carbs digestive enzyme, there are several ones, all ‘‘working’’ on one or several type of carbs. So you could be high in one type of carbs digestive enzymes and very low in 6 others.
For example…
Sucrase breaks down sucrose into glucose and fructose
Maltase breaks down maltose into glucose
Isomaltase breaks down maltose and isomaltose
Lactase breaks down lactose into glucose and galactose
Pancreatic amylase breaks down starch, glycogen and cellulose
Gastric amylase breaks down starch
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Umbilical/abdomen: a high measure here compared to the rest is indicative of bad cortisol modulation. Note that elevated abdominal fat is representative of long term cortisol elevation, not of what happened in the past weeks. If your abdominal fat is high compared to other measures it means that your cortisol has been out of whack for a while.
[/quote]
Concerning this what are some effective ways to put cortisol back in it’s place?
[quote]q99q wrote:
CT,
If you had to rank quad-dominant exercises that you know of from placing the most stress on the quads to the least(relatively speaking, what might that list look like? I’m particularly curious as to how exercise choices such as heels-elevated front squats, heels-elevated “classic” hack squats, duck-stance snatch-grip deadlifts off of a podium, decline steps-ups, sissy squats, belt squats, and any other choices you might be able to think of would rate relative to one another.[/quote]
Listen, if I only include lunges, I have around 30 exercise variations. If you count all the forms of squats, lunges, step-ups, extensions, deadlifts and leg presses /hack squats I have around 300 quads exercises. I’m not about to rank them all!!! Not to mention that the effectiveness of an exercise to target the quadricesp is highly dependant on someone’s levers and muscle domiance.
[quote]pvieira wrote:
Hi Coach Thib,
Would it be acceptable taking a generic/store brand fish oil caps in addition to Flameout in order to increase my daily intake, and for cost reasons.
I’ve always used 4 capsules of Flameout per day plus a few tbsps of flaxseed, but to take 8 capsules or more a day would be a bit pricy for me, since a bottle would then only last about 10 days.
Thanks[/quote]
Flaxseed is an extremely inferior source of omega-3 fatty acids. Why? Because contrary to fish oil it doesn’t directly provides you with the ‘‘effective’’ omega-3 fatty acids (DHA and EPA), the fatty acids from the flaxseed or flaxseed oil have to be converted by the body, and it just so happens that the body has a limited capacity to accomplish this. I never recommend flaxseed oil to any of my clients.
It’s fine to go with a less concentrated fish oil to increase the amount of omega-3 in your diet. HOWEVER cheap fish oil is often high in impurities and can contain a high level of mercury which is VERY problematic over time. Not to mention that the ‘‘money’’ part of the fish oil is NOT the actual amount of oil, but rather the amount of EPA and DHA.
For example, Flameout has around 3.5 grams of essential fatty acids (EPA, DHA, CLA) per 4 softgels. That’s 3.5g for 5.6g of total oil.
A ‘‘normal’’ fish oil normally has a total of around 300mg of essential fatty acids per 1000mg softgel… So it will take you around 12 caps of ‘‘regular’’ fish oil to equal 4 softgel of Flameout… and even then it’s not ‘‘equal’’ because normal fish oil doesn’t provide CLA. So yes a bottle of ‘‘normal’’ fish oil will seem to be less expensive, but you need 3x the dose of Flameout to get the same amount of good stuff. Remember that oil is oil, and it’s not what we are after… what we are after is DHA and EPA.
[quote]Spencerulz wrote:
Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Umbilical/abdomen: a high measure here compared to the rest is indicative of bad cortisol modulation. Note that elevated abdominal fat is representative of long term cortisol elevation, not of what happened in the past weeks. If your abdominal fat is high compared to other measures it means that your cortisol has been out of whack for a while.
Concerning this what are some effective ways to put cortisol back in it’s place?[/quote]
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Spencerulz wrote:
Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Umbilical/abdomen: a high measure here compared to the rest is indicative of bad cortisol modulation. Note that elevated abdominal fat is representative of long term cortisol elevation, not of what happened in the past weeks. If your abdominal fat is high compared to other measures it means that your cortisol has been out of whack for a while.
Concerning this what are some effective ways to put cortisol back in it’s place?
Thanks I can’t afford the 11-T and I’m just getting out on my own (just turned 18) so stress isn’t going anywhere. but Phosphatidylserine looks pretty cheap is there any brand you would reccomend? I know some trust worthy brands for Glycine and Rhodiola rosea.
CT, I am currently following your physique transformation plan. I have been doing so for about 6 weeks and have seen results. I just added creatine however and was wondering whether I take it only pre-workouts or every single day?
[quote]gaddismotivate wrote:
CT, I am currently following your physique transformation plan. I have been doing so for about 6 weeks and have seen results. I just added creatine however and was wondering whether I take it only pre-workouts or every single day?[/quote]
‘‘CHEAP’’ OPTION
5g 45 minutes before training
10g right after training
‘‘BEST’’ OPTION
5g morning (training days)/10g morning (non-training days)
5g 45 minutes before training
10g right after training
5g in the evening (only on training days)
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
q99q wrote:
CT,
If you had to rank quad-dominant exercises that you know of from placing the most stress on the quads to the least(relatively speaking, what might that list look like? I’m particularly curious as to how exercise choices such as heels-elevated front squats, heels-elevated “classic” hack squats, duck-stance snatch-grip deadlifts off of a podium, decline steps-ups, sissy squats, belt squats, and any other choices you might be able to think of would rate relative to one another.
Listen, if I only include lunges, I have around 30 exercise variations. If you count all the forms of squats, lunges, step-ups, extensions, deadlifts and leg presses /hack squats I have around 300 quads exercises. I’m not about to rank them all!!! Not to mention that the effectiveness of an exercise to target the quadricesp is highly dependant on someone’s levers and muscle domiance.[/quote]
Sorry, coach, I should have realized that you would have a virtually limitless list of variations with all of your knowledge and experience.
From your reply, though, would it be correct to infer that someone with a shorter torso and shorter arms would likely get more stimulation for the quads out of heels-elevated front squats than out of heels-elevated hack squats or duck-stance snatch-grip deadlifts off of a podium and that the opposite would likely be true for someone with relatively long arms?
Thib,
I’ve seen it recommended to get approximately 1/3 of fat intake from polyunsaturated fats, which means roughly 15 percent each of omega 6’s and 3’s for a 1:1 ratio.
As far as omega 3 intake is concerned how much of total omega 3 intake should be gotten from EPA and DHA? Should we strive to make EPA and DHA almost 100 percent of omega 3 intake with trace amounts of ALA making up the remainder or should ALA factor in a bit more prominently while still favoring EPA and DHA more heavily?
CT,
If consuming fruit post-workout, do you think kiwifruit and papaya are two of the best choices possible? Supposedly kiwifruit is loaded with more vitamin C than oranges and contains something called actinidin, which is a protein-dissolving enzyme similar to papain. I wanted to get your take on these two fruit choices, since I highly regard your opinion.
Coach Thibaudeau,
What are the main differences in the proper starting position of a deadlift versus for the Olympic lifts?
I was also wondering if there are any particular resources (books, dvds, manuals, etc.) for learning about the Olympic lifts in greater detail, including how to perform them(in addition to seeking out a qualified USAW coach for in person coaching, of course).