[Throttle hold! recommendations]

From best to worst:

1) Throttlemeister

2) Nep CC-3

3) Vista Cruise

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Keto Info Week 1/26]

CATEGORY: biology/anabolism

TECHNICAL: ***

SUMMARY:

This document talks about post-exercise response,

and one method for aiding in post-workout recovery. It's

a bit technical, but most people who train will understand

the reasoning behind it. I send it in response to a previous

article which suggested that protein, alone, was the most

important factor aiding recovery after training. As you will see

as you read through it, there are many hormones involved, and

timing is crucial. I've used this technique before (about

2 years ago), but found it to be not much more beneficial

than just carbing 1-2 times a week after training low-carb.

The main reason I no longer use it _all_ the time is the fact

that post-workout glucose blunts the effectiveness of the massive

increase in NK cells which could be used to advantage with the proper

supplementation of AFA algae. In fact, I plan to try this

new theory (with AFA post-workout) on myself to see what, if

any, immune benefits it may have.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 21 Jul 1996 18:01:23 -0400

Subject: Insulin, GH, and IGF

The following is a brief explanation of what happens to the muscle

tissue during exercise and post-exercise. During a bout of exercise

catabolic responses cause the proteins and muscle tissue to be broken

down. Obviously the higher the intensity of the exercise the more

catabolic the response will be. Meaning the more protein and muscle

tissue is broken down while exercising. During the exercise phase there

are loses in vitamins, minerals as well as increases in the adrenal

production of catecholamines and glucocorticiods. So cortisol increases,

glucagon increases, and insulin decreases. Thus, protein tissue

degradation increases and protein synthesis decreases or stops while in

the exercise phase.

Immediately after exercise in the post-exercise phase, a restorative

rebound in the naturally occurring anabolic hormones occurs. These

hormones include insulin, growth hormone (GH), IGF, pineal and thymic

factors, as well as the steroid hormones testosterone, DHEA, and

estrogens. This post-exercise response is also known as biochemical or

metabolic supercompensation. During this supercompensation period HIGH

LEVELS of these anabolic hormones, particularly INSULIN, GH, and IGF, are

NECESSARY during close post-exercise restorative phase to provide MAXIMAL

PROTEIN SYNTHESIS. High levels of these same hormones are also necessary

to restore the negative metabolic effect created by catecholamines and

glucocorticiods produced during exercise. It should be noted that

testosterone is not involved in the earlier stages of post-exercise as the

hormones insulin, GH, and IGF. Testosterone usually appears during later

phases of post-workout recovery. So this tells us that immediately

following a bout of exercise, there will be an increase in the production

of both GH and INSULIN. Both INSULIN and GH ARE very necessary for

optimal protein synthesis.

In summary, it should be easily understood now that the rebound

effect or rises in the anti-catabolic hormones insulin, growth hormone

(GH), IGF, pineal and thymic factors, occur immediately after exercise is

stopped. The steroid hormones testosterone, DHEA, and estrogens naturally

start to occur later in the post-exercise phase. The combination of these

hormonal actions stops the protein and muscle degradation caused by

catabolic hormones produced during exercise and starts protein synthesis

after exercise. It should also be noted that literature does support the

theory that INSULIN and GH both INCREASE protein synthesis in combination

with several other natural occurring hormones. In fact, insulin rebound

is required for the release of GH, which in turn releases IGF. It should

also be noted once again that synthesis will not be able to occur if there

is not a sufficient supply of energy (as in calories) or insufficient free

amino acid pools. Many of these sources revealed as I had previously

recommended, that amino acid or protein supplements with some added carbs,

taken within 2 hours post-exercise, while insulin, growth hormone (GH),

IGF, pineal and thymic factors are high, further aids in createing a

beneficial environment during recovery by further increasing these hormone

levels. The addition of dietary carbohydrate causes increases insulin

production, which further increases GH release, which in turn, further

increases the release of IGF. These increases, have been shown to further

increase protein synthesis and muscle growth after a bout of exercise as

well as increasing the uptake of free amino acids. By adding amino acids

immediately after exercise, we have further increased the available free

amino acid pool needed for growth. So without the insulin rebound after

exercise, the body would remain in a catabolic state .

How much of each would I recommend? 20-25 g of protein with 50-100 g of

carbohydrate the first 15-30 minutes after training.

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Upper body workout]

Redd....to properly evaluate your situation...we would need un-clothed photos of your upper body. :razz:

You have strokes of brilliance at times, you know that bud?

:wink: TJ :wink:

[Low-carb snack recipe]

Reminds me of my recipe for elephant stew..

1 Medium elephant, diced into 1/2 inch cubes

salt/pepper to taste..

TJ

[Keto Info Week 1/19]

CATEGORY: diets/paleo

TECHNICAL: **

SUMMARY:

This document is another that illustrates the incredible

importance of avoiding man-made processed foods. It is the

basis for some of the things I have told many of ya'll about.

It points out, early on, one thing that I have begun to notice

as of late. If you look at photos of people taken in the

first half of this century (or earlier), you'll most likely

notice that people tended to get lighter/smaller and lose weight

as they aged. Today, however, it is a common fact that people

will gain weight as they age..

One of the most interesting things about this note is

the discussion of the Kitava study. Keep in mind that these

people smoke all of their lives practically but, yet, do not

suffer from CVD nearly as much as we do here in the US. In

fact, the article reports them as "lean" even though a significant

portion of their diet is "coconut" which is the most saturated

(natural) fat source there is. As some of you know, I advocate

the consumtion of coconut (if you can tolerate it) because

it does boost metabolism.

This most ironic thing is the last paragraph which

describes a "western-ized" Kitava individual. After exposure

to the western diet, he too started to experience the same

difficulties plaguing America today. So you see, there's nothing

"genetic" about CVD, diabetes, obesity, etc..

-------------------------------------------------------------

On the Benefits of Ancient Diets

The fact that man is an OMNIVOROUS HUNTER-GATHERER is sometimes taken

as an argument that western foods would be without adverse health effects.

But then an important point is missed: For a typical Westerner at least

70% of calories are provided by foods that were practically unavailable

during human evolution, namely dairy products, oils, margarine, refined

sugar and cereals. These typical western foods are low in minerals,

vitamins and soluble fibre but high in fat and salt. There is much

evidence indicating that some of these dietary factors are important

causes of common western disorders like CORONARY HEART DISEASE, STROKE and

DIABETES which furthermore appear absent or rare in populations pursuing a

traditional subsistence lifestyle.

Every traditional population so far studied has, after adopting the

western lifestyle, developed a more or less typical western morbidity

pattern where cardiovascular diseases play the dominant role.

Fully developed ATHEROSCLEROSIS of the coronary vessels of the heart

is part of normal ageing in westernized populations but has not been

demonstrated in other free-living mammals. Every studied case of mature

atherosclerosis in animals (laboratory animals, domestic swine etc) has

been proceeded by a diet which is not eaten by the animal in its natural

context. Among lifestyle interventions it is only dietary changes that has

been shown to lead to regression of atherosclerosis.

It is apparently only in westernized humans that ageing is

accompanied by increased WEIGHT and BLOOD PRESSURE as well as several

other alterations.

CANCER rates may have been low due to a high intake of fruits and

vegetables which apparently prevent some common forms of cancer in western

populations.

Expectedly, hunter-gatherers would furthermore be protected from

OSTEOPOROSIS, another modern epidemic, since their lifestyle implies lots

of walking, much sunlight and plenty of vegetables fairly rich in calcium

that was highly available due to the low cereal intake. The low sodium

intake would probably minimize renal losses of calcium. Some data indicate

higher bone mass in ancient human skeletons, although osteoporotic

fractures are commonly found in archeological Eskimo skeletons.

As for children, the possible absence of RICKETS in preagricultural

skeletons, its apparent increase during medieval urbanization and its

epidemic explosion during industrialism can hardly be explained only in

terms of decreasing exposure to sunlight. An additional possible cause is

an increasing inhibition of calcium absorption by phytate from cereals

which took increasingly greater part during the Middle Ages, and since old

methods of reducing the phytate content such as dampening and

heat-treatment may have been lost during the emergence of large-scale

cereal processing.

IN CONCLUSION, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes,

osteoporosis, rickets and other common western diseases can probably to a

large extent be prevented by diets resembling those of hunter-gatherers.

THE KITAVA STUDY

Against the above background we have made a survey on cardiovascular

disease incidence and related risk factors among 2300 subsistence

horticulturists in the tropical island of Kitava, Trobriand Islands, Papua

New Guinea. Semi-structured interviews concerning disease patterns were

performed among 213 Kitavans aged 20-96 years. Age estimations were based

on known historic events as reference.

Our most important findings so far published are that sudden cardiac

death, stroke and exertion-related chest pain were non-existent or

extremely rare in Kitavans. Infections, accidents, complications of

pregnancy and senescence were the most common causes of death. All adults

had low diastolic blood pressure (all below 90 mm Hg) and were very lean

(weight decreased after age 30), while serum cholesterol was somewhat less

favourable, probably due to a high intake of saturated fat from coconut.

Tubers, fruit, fish and coconut were dietary staples in Kitava. The

intake of western food and alcohol was negligible. Saturated fat intake

from coconut was high (mainly lauric and myristic acid), and the estimated

proportions of energy derived from total, saturated, monounsaturated and

polyunsaturated fatty acids were 21, 17, 2 and 2% of dietary energy (en%)

compared with 37, 16, 16 and 5 en% in Sweden. The intake of n-3 PUFA,

soluble fibre, minerals and vitamins was high, while salt intake

approximated 40-50 mmol/24h, as compared to 100-250 in the West.

The level of physical activity was roughly estimated at 1.7 multiples

of the basal metabolic rate, which is slightly higher than the levels of

sedentary western populations. Eighty per cent of both sexes were daily

smokers, supporting the concept that smoking alone is not sufficient to

cause cardiovascular disease. Our survey methods preclude any speculation

as to the role of psychosocial factors.

The only available migrant was a 44 year-old urbanized businessman

who had grown up on Kitava and who came for a visit during our survey. He

differed markedly from all other adults regardless of sex: he had the

highest diastolic blood pressure (92 mm Hg), the highest body mass index

(28 kg/m2) and the highest waist to hip ratio (1.1), indicating that

Kitavans are not genetically protected from hypertension or abdominal

obesity.

IN CONCLUSION, the virtual absence of cardiovascular disease in

Kitava further emphasizes the potential of its prevention. Among the

analysed cardiovascular risk factors, leanness and low diastolic blood

pressure appeared to be the most important modifiable ones in this

population. Our findings are supported by clinical experience by three

medical doctors working in the Trobriand Islands since the 1960s.

1. Lindeberg S. Apparent absence of cerebrocardiovascular disease in

Melanesians. Risk factors and nutritional considerations - the Kitava

Study [M.D. Ph.D.]. University of Lund, 1994.

2. Lindeberg S, Lundh B. Apparent absence of stroke and ischaemic heart

disease in a traditional Melanesian island: a clinical study in Kitava. J

Intern Med 1993; 233: 269-75.

3. Lindeberg S, Nilsson-Ehle P, Terént A, Vessby B, Scherstén B.

Cardiovascular risk factors in a Melanesian population apparently free

from stroke and ischaemic heart disease - the Kitava study. J Intern Med

1994; 236: 331-40.

4. Lindeberg S, Vessby B. Fatty acid composition of cholesterol esters and

serum tocopherols in Melanesians apparently free from cardiovascular

disease - the Kitava study. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis 1995; 5: 45-53.

5. Lindeberg S, Nilsson-Ehle P, Vessby B. Lipoprotein composition and

serum cholesterol ester fatty acids in non-westernized Melanesians. Lipids

1996; 31: 153-8.

6. Lindeberg, Berntorp E, Carlsson R, Eliasson M, Marckmann P. Haemostatic

variables in Pacific Islanders apparently free from stroke and ischaemic

heart disease - The Kitava Study. Thromb Haemost 1997; 77: 94-8.

7. Lindeberg S, Berntorp E, Nilsson-Ehle P, Terént A and Vessby B. Age

relations of cardiovascular risk factors in a traditional Melanesian

society: the Kitava Study. AJCN 1997;66:845-52.

8. Srikumar TS, Källgård A, Lindeberg S, Öckerman PA, Åkesson B.Trace

element concentration in hair of subjects from two South Pacific islands,

Atafu (Tokelau) and Kitava (Papua New Guinea). J Trace Elem Electrolytes

Health Dis 1994; 8: 21-6.

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Upper body workout]

Mostly because we would hate to see your new avitar :shock:

Cool! Thanks for givin' me an idea for my new avatar!

(kiddin')

:razz: TJ :razz:

[Advanced power program..]

He's a fecking NASA rocket scientist... Dude probably takes a laptop into the gym.

ha ha ha, how did you guess!?!? Kidding...

Nothing but love for my nerdy brother! :razz:

I know bro, I know.. :wink:

I'm sure that'a great program, but the first time I read it I was like WOOOAH... to many calculations and too much to keep track of.

Mine is way easier for a dummy to remember! LOL

Hey, if you got something that works -- go with it! I'm all about

_results_ and you're obviously gettin' em :grin:

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Advanced power program..]

Hello TJ,

Do you keep a log of all your workouts?

Yep!

That is way to much data to keep track of properly in your head.

What does your log look like?

Pretty much what you see there.. With the exception that there

is only one day per page..

(do you use a spread sheet, or some type of pre-printed form, or do you just have a notebook with some type of notation that you jot down that you can understand?)

Yep.. Little spiral notebook in my gym bag. The notation is identical

to above. The only difference is that weights are written in and not

percentages.. The "+reps | +weight" scheme works well for me.

Each time I go up a rep, I add one to the count.. Each time I increase

the weight I add to the weight column and set the rep count back to

zero..

How often do you test your 1 rep max in order to calculate your percentages? Maybe...every 12 weeks or so?

I only compute my 1RM when I start a new exercise or use a new

machine, etc. After that. I just continue to update my progress

incrementally. In general, you know what your 1RM is, because if

you keep records properly you can make a guess (just extrapolate

to 100% from 85%, etc..)

I'd be glad to explain anything in further detail if you'd like, just

ask..

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Upper body workout]

I really need to increase my upper body strength and endurance, but I dont want to get too cut.

The two are practically mutually exclusive.. Only someone who

is a beginner can gain power and "get cut" at the same time.

By "getting cut" are we talking about losing boobs? -- that's more

diet related..

Strength ONLY comes from increasing resistance. "Getting cut",

or "Getting bigger" is more of a diet factor than a training factor.

Bodybuilders and powerlifters do similar regimes, with the exception

of "impulse" type lifts. The bodybuilder will typically eat MUCH more

in the way of calories, and the powerlifter will typical do more sets

of 2-3 reps at 90-95% max.

Heavier weights, less reps? I was using lighter weights with more reps, but this isnt increasing strength, as much as I would have hoped.

That's because you are not stressing a muscle, but only fatiguing it

when you increase reps.

The best way to improve strength is to use the rep schemes I suggested

in my "power program" post. 6-9 reps at 85% max weight, 12-16

reps at 70% max weight, and 24-36 reps at 45% max weight.

That hits all 3 types of muscle fibers, and they will respond by growing

stronger. (you can avoid plateus by varying the angle of attack on

a muscle as I suggested in the same previous post.)

I used heavier weights last night and today I can barely wipe my ass, I am so sore.

And now you will grow as you recover. (consume enough protein or

you will overtrain -- 30% of your calories in proteins..)

And what is the deal with this? Some people I talk to say that you SHOULD be sore, and others say that you should never be sore at all.

You will be sore if you do it right.. The longer you do it, the faster the

soreness will go away. I've been training for 7 years now, and I still

get quite sore. I'm totally healed in about 1/2 a day though. Using

the scheme I mentioned, I was able to more than triple my strength.

I do alternate my upper body and lower body workout, but I am finding that I usually experience my sorest time the second day after landing on the day that I work that area out again. Could this be hindering any progress?

You should only use a muscle group once a week. It can take up to

96 hours for a large group (IE: quads, triceps, glutes, etc.) to recover.

As I mentioned earlier, I only use a group in exactly the same way

once a month. Each week I'll hit a group, but from a different angle

than the previous week.. This provides for maximum power development

and maximum recovery at the same time.

Split your workouts into 3 sessions: lower body, upper body, and

midsection. Try to put a full day in between each lifting session for

recovery and get lazy during off times as much as possible.

Increase your caloric intake to 15 kcal/lb. for your lean body weight.

Don't worry, Pee Wee Herman has more of a chance at "getting big"

than you do, because you have no testicles :wink:

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Rejetted Birds]

I'm running a DynoJet Stage 1 Kit, Jardines RT-One Carbon

Slipons, and a K&N aerocharger air filter.

I'm in Houston, which is at sealevel and has a mean temp of about

80 deg. F.

DJ142 Mains (one size up from default)

Clips 3rd from the top (default)

#40 Pilots (one size down from stock)

Pilot screws 2.5 turns out (stock)

It makes 5+ peak horsepower over stock, more in other areas..

Great torque curve too..

If you don't wanna spend money on the pilots, you

can use the stock #42 and set the pilots at 1.5 turns out

(but it'll run a bit rich up to 4K RPM)

:cool: TJ :cool:

[TJ.... Green Tea????]

There's caffeine in that?

Tons.. In fact, most Japanese families drink it daily, but

are afraid to give it to their children (taboo) because they

feel the caffeine can stunt growth..

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Keto Info Week 1/12 (part 2)]

Paleolithic Cave Art Evolutionary Fitness

What Evolution Teaches Us About How to Live and Stay Healthy

Copyright ©1995 by

Arthur De Vany, Ph.D..

Essay

This essay is an extended summary of my research project exploring

what the evolutionary evidence tells us about how to stay fit and young.

My aim is to contribute to an evolutionary physiology and science of

exercise. It combines my experience as a professional and amateur

athlete, and as someone who has spent more than 40 years exercising, with

my scientific interests in evolution and complex adaptive systems. It

begins with the premise that our bodies and minds are adapted to an

ancient environment that passed more than 10,000 years ago. We evolved as

hunter-gatherers over at least three million years and that lifeway

shapes our attributes, behaviors, and capabilities as human beings. It is

by understanding the hunter-gatherer adaptation and incorporating the

activity and eating patterns of our ancestral lifeway that we can live a

natural and healthy life in a modern world that is very different from

the one in which human beings evolved.

In developing this idea, I take the Darwinian approach that has been

so successful in the new fields of evolutionary psychology and medicine

and apply it to physical fitness. This book will integrate what is known

of the conditions of our ancestral existence, what is known of the

lifestyles of the living hunter-gatherers, and the new sciences of

complex adaptive systems with modern research on metabolism and

physiology to find an effective model of a healthy lifestyle.

When the body is viewed as a far from equilibrium, complex adaptive

system exploiting evolved mechanisms, it becomes clear that conventional

thinking about diets and obesity is wrong. I argue that the evolutionary

evidence and modern research shows that high intensity, intermittent

training (activities that are personally challenging, but so brief as to

not promote exhaustion) combined with walking and playful activities is

the most productive form of exercise for any person of any age or sex.

Such exercise is productive because it is more like the activities

that were essential to the emergence and evolution of the human species.

High intensity, intermittent and brief training mixed with power walking

and play is closer than aerobic exercise, high volume weight training, or

sedentism to how our ancestors lived. Our brains and bodies are dynamic

objects and they thrive on challenge and movement; intensity brings key

adaptations in body composition and power and play integrates mind and

body.

We differ in no significant ways from our large and powerfully

muscled ancestors of the last Ice Age. We are hunter-gatherers and have

been for all of human and pre-human history. Only 15,000 years have

passed since the last Ice Age, not long enough for bodies suited for the

sedentary modern age to have evolved. If such bodies ever do evolve they

cannot have our minds, for the human mind lives in a brain adapted to an

energetic, versatile and dynamic body.

What follows is a sketch of ideas that are developed more fully in the

book.

Evolution of the Human Body and Mind

The story of human evolution is one of adaptation in a patchy and

dangerous environment. We are generalists, not specialists, and that is

why we are adaptive two-legged omnivores with broad territorial range,

small stomachs and big brains. Humans embarked on a risky strategy for

survival: we "chose" to live by our wits by exploiting a wide territory

and many foods along with opportunistic capture of high nutrient, but

fugitive and random, food sources. We lived virtually all of the 3 or so

million years of human and prehuman history as scavengers or

hunter-gatherers. Exploiting our generalist niche led to the elegant

evolutionary design of the human body and mind. In order to exploit a

patchy environment with plentiful low grade nutrients and scarce and

variable high value nutrients, the human mind had to become clever. We

became adaptive opportunists. The human body had to solve the energy

storage problem. Given a random food supply and variable energy

expenditure, our metabolism is evolved to solve a complex stochastic

energy management problem.

Many of the characteristics of our metabolism derive from the

evolved solutions to the energy flow problem. We clearly are designed to

live at an energy surplus, not at the balance preached by modern, steady

state models of fitness. I won't go into that here, but it is enough to

say that, given random energy intake and expenditure, a precise matching

of the two is impossible and matching on average would guarantee an early

death. One answer to achieving stochastic energy balance is male/female

pairing. Another is the ability to carry high density nutrients in our

hands so that nourishment can be taken to safer grounds and given to

mates. Yet another answer is our ability to store energy as fat, along

with the appetite to rapidly gorge fat-laden meat and bone marrow. These

adaptations to the ancestral environment can turn against us in a crowded

world where adaptive opportunism may have undesirable social

consequences. Our metabolism can turn against us when calorically rich,

but nutrionally depleted, food is all around us and available at little

expenditure of energy.

Life in a patchy resource environment requires the capability to

perform a wide variety of activities. Clearly, the body's design tells us

that extreme exertion of brief duration was an important human attribute,

essential for our survival and evolution. Our upright, bipedal posture

gives us the mobility to cover the range required of an omnivorous

generalist. A large brain is required for hominids to cover the widest

range known to any animal species. High value nutrients are essential to

the energy-demanding brain and small stomach required for high mobility

in a patchy savanna where high value nutrients are variable and fugitive.

Our muscle fiber composition reveals that we are adapted to extreme

intensity of effort. And the energy sources of these fibers shows that

the highly intense activities through which our ancestors "earned a

living" were of short duration (anaerobic metabolism came before aerobic

metabolism, which was grafted on later and the quickly exhausted fast

twitch fibers are likely to be the most primitive of our sources of

movement). Our ability to sweat, our relative hairlessness, our upright

and, hence, cool posture, our mobility, as well as our temperature

regulation and appetite mechanisms are designed to solve the problem of

keeping an energy-hungry, but delicate, brain alive in an energetic body

capable of high mobility and peak energy bursts.

Evolutionarily elegant design economizes on processes and energy. As

a consequence many structures and processes serve dual functions. Evolved

design resulted also in many compromises. These dual and compromised

designs, which are reliable at the high and variable energy flows of our

active ancestors go awry at the low energy flux typical of a modern,

sedentary individual. Many of the metabolic disorders--obesity,

carbohydrate intolerance, diabetes--that we see today are a result of

these design compromises. These "Western Diseases" are rare among

hunter-gatherers and were not part of the human ancestral experience.

They reflect an adaptation of the human body, which was designed for high

energy expenditure and variable diet and activity patterns, to modern

life. Because human metabolism is conditional on activity patterns, diet

alone is not sufficient to control body composition and obesity. The body

"reads" its food intake and hormone messengers in the context of its

activity patterns, so the message contained in a biochemical messenger is

decoded through the dynamic patterns of our actions. This is why

inactivity and food deprevation are so counterproductive in controlling

obesity. It is also why sedentism and its associated low energy flux

produce overeating.

The essence of human beings is that they are complex, adaptive and

self-organized systems. Adaptation is the essential human characteristic

and movement is the canonical form of its expression. Self-organization

is anchored by reference to a dynamic body image which lets there be a

self to serve as the fixed point from which the world is perceived.

Inactivity not only changes the human body, it alters the very structure

of our perception and understanding. Sedentism flattens the energy

landscape and weakens body image which is the reference of an organized

and autonomous self. The result of inactivity is a lack of purpose and

will. It takes good dynamics to produce a coherent, self-organized

individual and actions that are metabolically challenging produce a good

body image which anchors a strong and convergent dynamics. The brain is

adapted to action and its structure and health depend on movement. Long

ago, Darwin noted that the brains of wild animals were larger and heavier

than the brains of domesticated animals.

Metabolic Revolutions

Two metabolic revolutions shaped the evolution of homo sapiens. One

important revolution was when archaic homo sapiens adapted to the

glaciations and made the transition from hunter-gatherer to big game

hunter. This was some 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. This revolution

supplied the dense, high quality nutrients and lipids that let the brain

expand. Brain size expanded rapidly during the past 250,000 years, more

rapidly than in the preceding 2 million years. Brain expansion was

preceded by an expansion in body size, so much so that archaic humans

show bodies with fully modern features. They seem to have been at least

as large as the latest generation of well-fed Americans and far more

powerfully built. It is significant that the development of the

magnificent human body preceded the evolution of the human brain. Such a

brain could not live and would have no purpose but for the supremely

adaptive human body whose actions and perceptions it integrates.

The second metabolic revolution, and arguably the most important

revolution in the history of homo sapiens, was the agricultural

revolution beginning about 10,000 years ago in Asia and near the

Mediterranean. Agriculture came later to Europe, perhaps only 6,000 or

2,000 years ago. Great Britain was still making its transition to

agriculture at the time Caesar's army entered around 100 BC. The

paleoanthropological evidence shows that with the agricultural revolution

there was a decline in stature, cranial capacity, and muscularity, along

with a general decline in health and nutrition. (How do they know our

preagricultural ancestors were muscular? The bones are thick and dense

and the points where muscles were attached are robust.) This metabolic

revolution substituted routinized, repetitive work of grinding intensity

and a diet of low variety and protein content for the metabolically

varied physical activities of hunting and gathering and the enormous

variety of food and high protein content of hunter gatherer diets. Within

a few thousand years much of humanity had come to rely on a few starchy

crops for the overwhelming bulk of their calories. The repetitive work of

agriculture and grain processing left their mark in the high incidence of

arthritis that is found in the skeletons of our agriculturalist

ancestors.

Even today, most of the third world lives on a few starchy crops and

they exhibit the damage that a high carbohydrate diet with too little

fresh plant and animal foods can inflict. Those people who populate the

areas where agriculture began earliest show what is called a

Mediterranean physical type characterized, according to Webster, as

medium or short stature, slender build and small heads. Third world

children, living in rural, agricultural areas, live almost entirely on

grains. They rarely eat fresh fruit or vegetables and eat meat even less

often. They achieve less stature and test performance than urban children

and suffer skeletal and dental deficiencies. It is easy to tell from the

skeletons of our ancestors whether they were agriculturalists or hunter

gatherers. The agriculturalists have bad teeth, bone lesions, small and

underdeveloped skeletons and small craniums compared to hunter gatherers.

The important metabolic revolutions to follow agriculture were the

industrial and information revolutions. These energy conserving

revolutions lowered the level and variety of the metabolic challenges we

face still more.

Our ancestors are us. It was only 10,000 years ago that agriculture

changed the human lifeway from hunting and gathering to settled

agriculture. And the dramatic decline in human energy expenditure of the

industrial age occurred no more than 200 years ago. The information and

television age is no more than two decades old. In this brief time span

evolution has made few, if any, changes in what we inherited from the

prior 3 million years.

Fitness in a Modern World

The adaptive and variable energy demands of our ancestral existence

are gone. We live a low energy flux and metabolically unvaried existence

in bodies designed for another lifeway. We are hunter/gatherers in

pin-stripe suits, living a sedentary life and it is killing us in ways

our ancestors never experienced. Virtually all the degenerative

diseases--atherosclerosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporesis,

declining muscle mass--of modern civilization are unheard of among hunter

gatherers and were not part of our ancestral experience.

Most modern fitness prescriptions are static and agricultural. These

programs model the body as a machine, not as an adaptive organism.

Consequently, they prescribe a regime in which the body is underfed and

over-trained. They are not based on adaptation, but on steady state

analysis. These models assume the body is a linear process that maintains

a steady state. In fact, all bodily processes are highly non-linear and

these non-linearities must be exploited in any effective fitness program.

The key to exploiting the highly non-linear and dynamic adaptive

metabolic processes of the human body is to achieve the right mixture of

intensity and variety of activities.

Here is an example of the Zen-like twists that adaptive, non-linear

systems like human metabolism follow that confound mechanistic thinking.

The body uses fat in the aerobic (ST and lower IT) zone. So, linear

thinking suggests that to burn fat you should operate in that zone. It

would not surprise someone trained to understand the adaptive

capabilities of the human body that if you burn more fat the body will

find a way to produce more. And this is just what happens when you flow

energy through the aerobic pathway; your body releases hormone messengers

that signal higher fat production.

You do burn a higher proportion of calories as fat in the aerobic

zone, but that is no reason to stay there. You burn more calories and

more fat in total when you train at high intensity. And you do not open

the metabolic pathways that cause your body to make more fat. Energy that

flows over the anaerobic pathway signals your body to make more muscle

and to burn fat.

You incur an oxygen depth that raises metabolism for days after a

high intensity session. Above all, you bring adaptations that burn fat.

As the body remodels in response to the adaptive challenge presented by a

brief, high-intensity session, it preferentially burns fat. In addition,

you put on lean muscle mass that burns energy continuously. From 60 to 70

per cent of the energy you burn is at your basal metabolic rate. If you

gain lean muscle mass you raise your basal metabolic rate and, thus, burn

more energy 24 hours a day.

Too many people bring the wrong technology to their exercise. They

carry over the same technology they use in the office or factory, where

high volume and the ability to work long hours at routine tasks are often

the keys to success. Or they bring the technology of the research lab to

their exercise. Research on exercise physiology focuses almost

exclusively on aerobic exercise and creates a bias against anaerobic

exercise. High volume, repetitive exercise is the wrong technology for a

living organism and it is not the stuff the human body is adapted to do.

The right exercise technology is the one that shaped the human body; it

is the activity patterns characteristic of the hunting and gathering our

ancestors practiced 40,000 years ago, when the first fully modern homo

sapiens appeared on the scene. These same activity patterns are seen in

the movements of living hunter gatherers and wild animals.

If your personal trainer is working you out three days a week, doing

three sets of the same exercises, or, worse, 5 or even 6 days a week,

find another trainer. You are flooding your body with hormones that

consume lean body mass. These hormones also preferentially consume fast

twitch muscle, the very substance you are after for strength, lean mass,

and vitality. You are draining your adaptive capacity so that you cannot

build, or even keep up with the load. Worse still, you are compromising

your immune system.

Mechanistic prescriptions fail because they do not present the

metabolic challenges and variety of the ancestral environment for which

our bodies are designed. Working out 5 or 6 days a week doing many sets

of exercises per body part and spending over an hour per workout imposes

a chronic load on the body for which it is poorly designed to adapt.

Virtually all the body's adaptive mechanisms are designed to deal with

acute, not chronic, stresses. Exercise should mimic the activities of our

ancestral existence; we are adaptive organisms that thrive on variety,

not machines designed for high volume routine.

The importance of play to the human species is evident in the degree

to which adults retain juvenile characteristics. This form of

developmental delay (neoteny) let the brain grow relative to body size.

Neoteny allows us to retain the capability to adapt and invent and remain

playful well past the age typical of other species. The typical gym head

or jogger logging hours of weight or miles at moderate intensity is

working, not playing. He or she is engaged in a chronically stressful

activity, not healthy play. Neither of these methods for achieving

fitness is a model of activity that conceivably could been typical of our

evolutionary past. An adaptive hunter-gatherer designed for mobility,

variety and play cannot thrive on an industrial or agricultural program

for fitness. The human body is an organism, not a machine.

The Evolutionary Model

The evolutionary model combines activities of varying intensity to

mimic our ancestral hunter-gatherer existence. The key is to hit the

right balance of intensity and variety. You have to live in the fast

twitch (FT) muscle fiber zone where your metabolic rate is many times

your basal metabolism for intermittent, brief intervals. Most sedentary

individuals live entirely in the ST region and never achieve the

metabolic peaks that are essential to adaptation. Grim aerobicizers and

high volume weight trainers live in the slow twitch (ST) and intermediate

twitch (IT) muscle fiber zone and do way too much work.

The evolutionary model of a healthy lifestyle is to combine brief,

but intense, work outs in a gym (the FT zone) with a wide variety of

activities that mix intensity and duration randomly (mixing the IT and ST

zones with brief spurts into the FT zone). Roller blading, bicycling,

walking, sprinting, tennis, basketball, power walking, hitting softballs

and so on are the sorts of activities that mix IT and ST fibers with

intermittent FT action.

Activities are spaced randomly according to a power law distribution

which not only fits the hunter-gather activity rhythms but also virtually

every process in a healthy human being---healthy heart beats, brain

waves, cellular ion channel pulses, and the coordination dynamics of

movement all have the distinctive signature of self-similarity and power

law variation. It is when these patterns show too much regularity that

organization and coordination break down; for example, epileptics show

too much, not too little, regularity in their brain waves. Heart attacks

are the result of too much regularity in contractions that leads to a

loss of coordination and seizure.

A power law looks like this: Most of its mass is located at the low

intensity activities and there is little mass at the highest intensities.

The evidence strongly indicates this kind of intensity-frequency mix was

typical of our ancestors. The far left zone, at the peaks and with brief

duration, is the FT zone. The middle zone is the IT and ST zone and the

long tail at the right is the ST zone. Most people live in the right hand

zone. Even when they exercise they only make it into the IT zone and do

not trigger the adaptive metabolic pathways that open only when you enter

the FT zone.

You need to live intermittently and briefly in the FT zone to live

according to our ancestral lifeway. You also need to enjoy the variation

at the far right tail and get plentiful rest. One of the worst features

of modern life is its compression in the variability of our

activities---both the right hand and left hand tails are compressed

relative to the variation in a power law. When the ends of the activity

distribution are compressed to the middle, our activities fall within a

narrow frequency band. A compressed distribution is a chronic stressor,

we get neither enough playful, intense activity nor enough rest. Animals

in the wild move according to power laws. Think of a lion or jaguar. They

are muscular and lean and spend long periods in languid rest and brief,

highly intense periods in the hunt.

Power Law Training

Why is a power law a good model of adaptive training? A power law

describes a statistical distribution of intensity and frequency of action

that is characteristic of a complex adaptive system functioning at

maximum efficiency. Power law variation represents a balance of order and

variability that is representative of self-organized, adaptive systems.

All humans are self-organized dynamic systems. Systems that live in the

critical region between order and chaos display power law behavior.

How do you train according to a power law? A power law of the form

Intensity = Frequency- beta, gives the right balance of structure and

novelty. The music of Bach and Mozart contains the mixture of structure

and novelty characteristic of power laws. The power law is a statistical

distribution, meaning it describes probabilities, not certainties. Hence,

randomization is an essential element of power law training. But, so is

pattern. Your activities cannot become too random, or they lose pattern

and drift without memory. There will be some drift in frequency so that

there will be time periods when you will not do high intensity workouts

for two or more weeks (periodization falls out of the power law

naturally). At other times, you may have 2 or 3 high intensity sessions

in a row.

The real point is to embrace randomness and variety within the

context of structured repetitiveness. Good intuitive models of power law

variation are the movements of the wild lion or the music of Bach or

Mozart.

NBA basketball is an example of power law variation. Pro basketball

is not an aerobic sport, it actually is an anaerobic sport full of power

moves, quick bursts, sprints, and leaps mixed in with half time rest,

quarter breaks, pauses, free throws, time outs, and bench time. What NBA

players have is the ability to use these brief intervals to quickly

recover their phosphate energy stores (they use the alactic pathway

discussed below).

NBA athletes and NFL defensive backs provide evidence that power law

training makes you powerful and lean. NBA players are the leanest and

most powerful in any professional sport (their body fat is around 5 to 7

percent). NFL defensive backs and running backs come close (around 8

percent body fat). Like NBA players, NFL defensive and running backs do

burst/rest moves through out the game, randomly timed, with a duration

and intensity pattern that looks like a power law (patterns are not

bunched up around a mean, they are spread over all scales and with the

characteristic power law shape shown in the graph above).

Low intensity, ST activities are the high frequency activities in

the long right hand tail of the power law distribution. These ST

activities include maintaining posture, walking, and slow running.

Intermediate intensity activities, such as moderately paced jogging,

tennis, and aerobics, mix IT and ST fibers and their frequencies are

distributed over the middle range of the power curve. Less frequent, high

intensity activities like jumping, sprinting and high intensity training,

hit the FT fiber. These high intensity activities must be infrequent and

brief in duration as shown by the left hand tail of the power

distribution.

A power law distribution of activities means the intensity, spacing,

duration and volume of training are variable in order to present a

constant novelty in metabolic challenges while retaining enough structure

and repetitiveness to maximize adaptive capability.

When you train like a hunter, you follow a power law distribution of

intensity and frequency. You distribute activities so that you hit highly

intense metabolic peaks briefly and intermittently. This is the FT fiber

region. You also scale intensity within a set.

ASCENDING THRESHOLD SETS

In order to hit all the fibers and scale intensity according to a

power law, I do supersets of ascending weight and descending repetitions.

The sequence is intended to move up the energy and muscle fiber

hierarchy, recruiting successively more muscle fibers and different fiber

types until all but the FT fibers drop out. This exploits the "size

principle" which says that the threshold of intensity needed to stimulate

the motorneurons that fire the muscles increases with the size of the

motorneuron. The FT fibers have the largest motorneurons and, therefore,

require the highest intensity to fire. Power law training exploits this

feature.

You apply the technology by doing one long superset of ascending

intensity to force the ST and then the IT fibers to drop out until only

the FT fibers are left. I begin a set with a fairly light weight, lifting

and lowering the weight slowly to prefatigue the ST fibers. Do this for

15 repetitions. Then, taking only enough time to increase the weight do 8

to 10 more repetitions at a faster speed. Increase the weight one more

time and do 4 to 6 repetitions at high, but controlled speed. I also

slightly increase the speed within each set of repetitions, aiming at the

FT fibers near the end of each stage.

I pause between stages of the superset just long enough to change

the weights and this 10 to 20 seconds is enough to regenerate the ATP and

PCr to do the next set. By the third phase, the lactic acid is burning,

but it will quickly be taken up because I don't do any more of that

exercise and move on to something completely different. (This is an

advanced technique. It takes conditioning and a tolerance for lactic acid

to get to this stage. To begin, do only two stages of the superset,

aiming for 12 and 7 reps. Then move on.) I may aim at 15 reps, 8 reps, 4

reps in each phase of the superset, but no one is counting; it is always

the acid burn that tells me when to stop, not some preset target of reps.

I do not go to complete failure, ever. Failure at the last rep is

over rated because by then the high energy muscle phosphates are gone and

the lactic acid is limiting your power. You lose form and get hurt when

you push too hard on the last rep. You don't develop strength using the

muscle when its power is depleted and restricted by lactate, it is better

to use alactic training (see below) for power.

Each exercise is one brief superset with only 10 seconds rest

between. Then it is over and that is all I do for that muscle group and I

move quickly to the next group.

ALACTIC TRAINING

Another variation in the power law technology I use in my training

is designed to work what is called the alactic energy pathway. This

training exploits power law variation as well; it just works farther to

the left on the power curve, well up the intensity scale into the FT

fiber region. In this region, the duration of effort must be extremely

short, on the order of a few seconds and milliseconds. Here, you imagine

an ancestor like homo erectus sprinting on the grassy savanna to a patch

of trees to escape one of the formidable predators that roamed over

Africa 2 million years ago. The alactic pathway is what supplies this

energy in the first few seconds; it is the engine for the "fight or

flight" response that permits us to make our quickest and most powerful

moves.

The alactic pathway is called that because it relies on the high

energy phosphates stored in our muscles whose metabolism is rapid and

does not produce lactic acid. Hence, it is a-lactic. The muscles contain

enough phosphates (PCr and ATP) to generate extremely high force for up

to 3 seconds. During that time the movement is powered primarily by FT

fiber. Beyond that time you begin to use muscle glycogen and produce

lactic acid. Those extreme physical feats you hear about---mothers

lifting cars off their children and so on---draw on this high energy

pathway. At peak intensity, some athletes may generate up to 7,000 or

8,000 watts. This power is generated in very brief episodes, for example,

in a high jump a power of 4,000 watts is produced in 0.02 seconds. For

durations exceeding a minute, a rate of 350 watts can be produced only by

elite, highly trained athletes for no more than 4 or 5 minutes. Beyond a

second or two at high power levels, lactate begins to accumulate and

limit performance. These data fit a power law perfectly in the way power

declines with duration (see the power curve above). They are further

support for the power law training techniques developed in my book.

In working for power one wants to hit the alactic pathway. The ATP

and PCr energy sources for alactic power are quickly regenerated within 5

to 10 seconds for trained individuals. Those who are new to power law

technology may take longer to recover until they have worked at it

awhile. One can hit the alactic pathway to gain power and not build

lactic acid by doing what I call alactic training. It is very easy to do,

not tiring, and a real source of power. It hits the FT fibers more

completely than just about anything else.

I do sets that I call 1/5s or "one, fives" because that describes

how I do them. I do one repetition, then put the weight down for 5

seconds. Then I do another rep and put the weight down another 5 seconds.

Then another, and so on for a sequence of about 4 to 8 repetitions.

That's it, then move on to the next exercise. What you have done is to

achieve between 4 and 8 high quality repetitions without building

lactate. The 5 second pause between reps is enough to regenerate the

muscle phosphates if you are in reasonable shape. Up to 10 seconds pause

is appropriate until you have acquired the ability to recover quickly.

You can use reasonably heavy weight without the risk that goes with doing

multiple repetitions with heavy weights.

Alactic training is much safer and more productive of strength than

training to full failure. The reason is simple, doing multiple

repetitions builds lactic acid which limits your power and ability to

handle heavy weight. By doing just 1 rep and resting 5 seconds you retain

nearly all of your muscle power. This lets you handle heavier weight and

do quality movements. You never force yourself to work to failure, as

many muscle magazines and training authorities seem to recommend. There

is no danger because you use a weight that is below your maximum and do

not try to force a depleted muscle through another repetition. There is

no straining to try to do that "last rep".

The theory that the "last rep" is the best one is wrong in my

opinion. You have little strength left by then because the high energy

phosphates are gone and the lactic acid limits your strength. This means

that the reps leading up to that last rep must use a weight well below

what will tax your muscle when it is at full strength. Multiple reps

build endurance, not power. Your endurance is developed by the ascending

sets discussed above. Also, much of what passes for endurance is actually

the ability to recover quickly from peak effort (this is the kind of

endurance NBA players have). By doing a sequence of 4 to 8 or more 1 reps

with 5 seconds in between, you train your recovery ability so that you

restore power quickly. Because phosphate replenishment uses the aerobic

pathway, and uses fat preferentially over carbohydrate, you indirectly

develop your aerobic capacity and burn fat as well when you do alactic

training.

Even though you are doing only 1 rep, you don't try to do maximum

weight. Just use a challenging weight as low as 25 and as high as 10 per

cent below your maximum. You can even progress to a higher percentage of

your maximum as you to these 1 reps. With 1/5s you get up to 8 quality

reps at high weight.

An alactic program that works well for me.

Plyometrics are another form of alactic exercise. Plyometrics really

get the FT fiber. I find them to be quite safe (given my condition and

experience, that is) if you do not do drop jumps; that is, you jump up

rather than down from height. I leap to catch a high bar, trying to hit

my chin on the bar and starting a few feet away from the bar to extend

the distance. With a jump and walking back to the starting position this

is an alactic exercise (the return gives time to regenerate the

phosphates). If there is no high bar, jumping to touch a high point on a

wall will do.

Bench push offs are another safe use of plyometric technology. When

I do them I stand away from a low bench. Feet together. Fall to the bench

to catch it by your hands at chest height (you should be in a push up

position at this time). Then I explode with my arms to return to the

standing position, keeping my legs as straight as I am able and still

attain the starting position.

POWER WALKING

Our ancestors walked a lot carrying heavy weight in order to move

camp and bring back as much of the kill as they could. Power walking,

laden with real weight on the order of 35 to 100 pounds, is an effective

modern version of what our ancestors did. Power walking with a back pack

or scuba diving weights around the waist dramatically increases the

intensity and effectiveness of walking. And it is about as effective as

jogging for aerobic capacity, without the pounding and damage. It is what

women among hunter gatherers do when they gather. For example, Kung San

women typically carry an infant on a seven mile trip foraging for plant

foods and return with a 35 pound load. They only do this 2 or 3 times a

week for they live in a kind of natural affluence where food is readily

available.

Males among hunter gatherers do not carry the large game our

ancestors did, so they are not a good model of power walking for males.

Consider this instead as a model. A historical source reports that 5

Indian braves drove 5 bison into a pit. After they killed these 2000

pound bison, they pulled them out of a pit more than 10 feet deep, lined

them up and skinned and butchered them. Then, they carried as much as

they could back to camp to get others to return for the rest. What a

wonderful model of fitness, combining speed, power, strength, and

stamina. You can be sure this successful hunt was followed by plenty of

rest and play and feasting. This model is always on my mind when I think

of what fitness means.

YOUR PERSONAL TRAINING

Everyone has to adapt their own workouts and activity patterns to

their own capacities and intentions. If evolution teaches us anything it

is that we are all different even though we share a large set of common

attributes and metabolic processes. For most people, a move from

mechanistic training to adaptive training would consist primarily of

cutting back on the number of sets and how often they work out. This is

combined with a little pushing up of the pace and intensity of the

workouts and cutting way back on how long they are and on the rest

between sets.

The sophisticated variations on the power law that I use are not required

and are there when you gain condition and strength. A brisk

and intense workout that leaves you feeling challenged in each

exercise, whatever your personal level of fitness, is what we are after.

One upper and one lower body workout per week, of no more than 40 minutes

duration, and one all around workout per week of completely different

exercises is a good model to begin with. The all around work out should

be focused on symmetry and grace and the more intense workouts on the

large muscles.

SYMMETRY

Symmetry is crucial for it is a reliable evolutionary clue to health

and, hence, it is something we find attractive. Tumors and pathologies

produce gross asymmetries and our love of symmetry reflects the

reproductive success of our ancestors who were sensitive to these clues.

Stay away from biceps and triceps stuff, they make you lose symmetry.

Work on calves, traps, neck and back. You look taller, another reliable

evolutionary clue that women use to find good genes, if you move more

mass to the neck and shoulder girdle and to the calves. And you will be

more balanced and powerful. A thick trunk is another evolutionary clue.

It is a signal that suggests pregnancy in the female and pathology in the

male. I strive for the X-look---mass in the shoulder girdle, upper (not

lower) chest and back, the calves and lower quads. This requires strict

form so that you do not use your trunk to heave weights. If you work out

like a grunt, heaving and cheating on reps, you will look like a grunt.

INTENSITY AND BREVITY

Power law training requires intense but brief work outs and long

intervals between sessions. Intensity and brevity are the keys to

promoting the hormone drives that are essential to adaptation. So

important are these drives that one could say they are the real objective

of the workout. A workout that is over long depletes the adaptive

hormones and causes a surge in destructive hormones.

The open intervals between high intensity sessions are filled with

activity of intermediate and low intensity, with a spurt into the FT

zone. These activities include roller blading, hiking with one of my

grandchildren in a back carrier, or walking and sprinting in deep sand at

the beach, riding my motorcycle on back canyon roads and high mountain

dirt trails (wind chill is a very effective device for shedding fat),

shooting baskets, and so on. This is not a frenetic schedule, filled with

mandatory exercise. It is playful and fun, not work.

Variation in weight, repetitions, and speed is consistent with power

law training because there is no characteristic scale in a power law.

Power law activities exhibit self-similarity at all scales. This means

for speed, weight, and duration. My work outs are randomly timed; they

may fall on two consecutive days, though this would be rare. At the other

extreme, they may be a week apart. I aim for one upper and one lower body

high intensity work out per week along with one easier, all round work

out. Sometimes, I feel like more and may do up to 4 workouts of varying

intensity during a week. Often only one or two workouts fill out the

week. An average workout is 25 minutes. No workout is more than 40

minutes, most are less. I often finish my whole workout while other

people are still doing sets on a machine or a body part. I never leave

the gym tired, just relaxed and feeling good.

Motivation

If you think about the challenges our ancestors faced it will help

you realize that what some fitness and motivational experts see as

motivational problems are actually evolved adaptations. Recognition and

acceptance go a long way toward helping you make healthy changes.

1. The fact that you are alive is a remarkable thing. The odds against it

are great. The genes you carry contain information from a continuous

strand of surviving organisms that extends 2 billion years back in time.

You are an improbable event and your existence is testimony to the

toughness and adaptiveness of the ancestral line from which you come. You

are a survivor, well equiped to live and be successful in the world for

which your body and mind are adapted. Recognize, however, that the world

for which your genes encode a successful design is not today's world; it

is the world of some 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.

2. Your brain and body "expect" you to live as a hunter gatherer. They

are highly adaptive by design, for that is the key requirement of our

ancestral lifeway. But, a natural life is one of movement and action, of

challenge and response, of variety and adaptation. Your brain still

"sees" sensory inputs as though you are a hunter gatherer and, at the

instinctual level, directs your actions according to what spells adaptive

success in the environment of your ancestors. (Example: you freeze before

a large audience because your ancestors increased their odds of surviving

when exposed on open ground by freezing to escape detection.) If you

accept that some parts of this metaphor are true of you, you will be more

relaxed and less apt to punish yourself for things you do, or don't do

(like get out and move around).

3. Laziness and over-eating are adaptations that let your ancestors pass

their genes down to you. These labels place over-critical value

judgements on what are evolved adaptations. Energy was a precious

resource in the ancestral environment, and it still is in the third world

where people barely get enough to eat. What we call laziness is an

adaptive, instinctual behavior that kept our ancestors from wasting

precious energy in a world where high energy expenditure was required for

food. Because the agricultural revolution dramatically lowered the price

of carbohydrate, we have abundant and cheap food energy available at

nearly zero energy expenditure. Because cheap carbohydrate is all around

us, the caloric return to our foodseeking energy expenditures is so high

now that we have to find ways to expend energy in healthful ways.

Evolutionary training "tricks" the brain into thinking it is still 40,000

BC and resets your metabolism as well.

4. Variety and play are the essential human attributes. By keeping your

work outs brief and exhilarating you won't get bored. By adding lots of

outdoor activity and play, you will enjoy the power and fitness you gain.

If you start a new sport, or pick up one long neglected as you begin

evolutionary training, you will see how the power you gain improves your

play. The feedback between the training and your new power in the sport

will be habit forming. (The evolutionary basis of sport seems clear. For

example, the number of players in most popular team sports today is about

equal to the number of prime age males that would be alive in a typical

paleolithic band of hunter gatherers.)

I fail to see how anyone can train 5 or 6 days a week in the gym and

for hours at a time. That is factory or agricultural work, not anything

human beings were evolved to do. And the paradox is that you will gain

less strength and fitness if you overtrain. And you will join the

thousands who quit out of sheer boredom.

I keep no records for this encourages the accounting mentality which

is the bane of adaptive training. It is the burn and heart rate that tell

you when you are in the FT zone. Record keeping focuses you on the wrong

goals. You begin to think it is important how much you can bench press or

how big your arms are. It is what you can do outside the gym that

matters, not what you can do in it. Big arms ruin speed and coordination

for they locate too much mass far from the central axis of the body,

creating a high polar moment of inertia.

Lean Body Mass and Health

Intermittent, intense and brief work outs build muscle mass that

burns energy continuously. They promote hormone drives that keep you

young. They switch the body's metabolic pathways so that food goes to

muscle and organ mass and not to fat. The intensity is the key to

reaching the fast twitch fibers of the muscles, which are the key fibers

to staying young. A primary indicator of aging is loss of fast twitch

muscle fiber. Retaining your metabolic headroom through intense, brief

and variable training promotes retention of lean body mass, organ and

brain mass---you stay younger and smarter than joggers and dieters who

lose muscle, organ and brain mass. Aerobic exercise of long duration and

moderate intensity isn't the answer. It promotes free radical damage

through the oxidation of fat and when it is done often enough and at low

intensity, it catabolizes muscle mass. There is a suspiciously high rate

of cancer among marathoners.

Lean body mass is the primary indicator of health status. Death is

universal among persons who lose 40 per cent of their lean body mass.

Lean body mass is the most accurate predictor of survival time for

victims of starvation, trauma, infection, AIDS and other acute diseases,

regardless of the nature of the disease. So powerful a predictor of

health status is the rate of loss of lean body mass that it seems to be

part of the process of dying. Rapid protein wastage is a mediator, not

just an indicator of death.

Dieters beware. Rapid weight loss wastes lean body mass. Starvation

studies show that brain mass may decline as much as 3 to 5 per cent with

food deprivation. Other organs lose far more mass. A pigeon lost 93 per

cent of its fat tissue, but 45 per cent of its heart, 42 per cent of its

skeletal muscle and 71 per cent of its spleen on a starvation diet. These

experiments are hard to do on humans, but the Nazis did do such human

experiments and found similar rates of loss of lean body and organ

tissue. Brain scans on anorexics reveal that they have shriveled brains.

People who eat only once a day waste lean body mass all day. They

are awash in catabolic hormones that use lean body mass to try to keep

their brain alive on the glucose it requires. When they finally eat, they

eat so much they get a surge of insulin that packs the energy in the food

away in fat. Over time, their body composition changes---they come to

have this small body inside a relatively inert shell of fat. They look

large, but the active part of them is small.

Don't keep track of your total weight, keep track of your lean body

mass. Your lean body mass is the real, metabolically active, you. It is

the tissue that allows you to function and think and live. If you gain

lean body mass, you lose fat and you keep it off because your metabolic

rate rises. Everyone should keep track of their lean body mass to monitor

their health status.

Aging is a slow form of lean body mass loss. Adults lose about 5 per

cent of their lean body mass per decade after they enter their thirties.

Most of the muscle they lose is FT fiber, for they cease by some age to

live in the FT region. They settle into the ST region and, consequently,

as they age their muscle fibers atrophy. The 40 per cent rule may hold

here too. Progressive aging and deterioration resulting in a 40 per cent

loss of lean body mass may be a precursor or mediator of the dying

process. The aging just die over a longer time scale than do acutely ill

individuals. The aged lose lean mass and most of it is FT fiber. Because

they do not and cannot stress their skeletons, they lose bone density.

Their skeletons are vulnerable to falls and their muscles are not strong

or quick enough to keep them from falling because their FT fibers

atrophy. Keeping your FT fibers is the best way to stay young.

Feeding

Eating is dead simple.

1. Homo sapiens is an omnivore; it is not all that important what you eat

as long as it contains ample variety and lots of amino acids and

essential lipids. Hunter gatherer diets contain an enormous variety of

plant foods and are high in protein (the median is about 35 per cent of

calories from protein). The only universal characteristic of ancestral

and living hunter gatherer diets is the almost complete absence of simple

carbohydrates. There were no simple carbohydrates like sugar and pasta.

Fruits were tough and fibrous, not the refined, sweet stuff we have

today. The closest thing to a simple carb was honey, rare and guarded by

wild bees. There were no grain or cereal sources of carbs in the

ancestral diet.

2. Live at high energy flux and eat randomly, varying food intake to the

scale of activities. This includes the odd brief fast, as though hunting

is lean. The body regulates food intake naturally when you live at the

high energy flux of an evolutionary trainer. It is when we are sedentary

and live at low energy flux that our appetite mechanisms fail to match

energy intake to expenditure (the evidence shows that infants regulate

energy intake precisely and children only lose this ability when they

become sedentary). Animals confined to feeding pens or cages eat more

than they expend in energy. That is how cattle are fattened for

slaughter. Humans who live at low energy flux because they are sedentary

and inactive will over eat, just like cattle in a feeding pen. Even

though they are free to move about and are not caged, their metabolism is

trapped in a feeding pen mode.

Its another one of those wonderful evolutionary paradoxes. When we

are inactive, we trigger an eating response and eat more than we expend

in energy. The basis of this may lie in an adaptation that would let our

ancestors recover from the intense activities of the hunt by eating

beyond their energy requirements when they rest in order to rebuild

tissue and energy stores. The ability to eat beyond energy needs would be

essential to the survival of any organism that lived in the world of our

ancestors with its variable energy expenditure and intake.

The answer is clear: live as though you are a free-ranging, adaptive

human being, not like some animal being fattened in a pen for the kill.

It is hopeless to try to attain the precisely balanced intake and

expenditure of calories preached by diet promoters. And it is impossible

to do if you are sedentary for you trigger this evolved over eating

adaptation.

Our ancestors were better nourished than all but a few of us because

they ate low calorie, nutritionally dense foods, all fresh and

uncontaminated, and they ate in large quantities to fulfill their high

energy needs. Dieters who face calorically rich, low nutrient foods and

eat in small quantities face a real risk of malnutrition. If they are

sedentary the risk is even higher because they must restrict food intake

so severely.

I am more concerned with energy expenditure than intake, for it is

energy expenditure that determines energy flux and appetite. High energy

flux brings our appetite control mechanisms into the ancestral range

where they were evolved to operate.

3. Live as though you are in the world that existed before the invention

of agriculture. There was no grain or cereal or manufactured food in the

ancestral environment. Our ancestors ate fresh fruits and vegetables and

meat. They got no milk beyond the age of 4. They ate no cereals and

consumed no vegetable oils. Their diets were not particularly low on

fats; indeed, for a few million years prehuman hominids may have lived on

the fatty bone marrow and brains of scavenged kills more than on fresh

meat. Even when they became premier big game hunters, humans preferred

the fatty cuts of meat. Our brains use glucose for energy (and hence our

preference for sweets) but are made of lipids. Some of these essential

brain lipids can be gotten only from animal fat. At least, that is where

our ancestors got them.

Seeds did not enter the diet until about 14,000 years ago. Vegetable

oils are a completely novel substance in the evolution of human eating.

The processed oils now recommended so heavily by nutritionists are no

more than a few decades old. There is zero evidence to indicate that

eating this stuff is a good thing to do. And, it is well known that

processing alters the shape of the fatty chains making them nearly

impossible to metabolize and that they are readily oxidized to form free

radical chain reactions that damage body tissue.

The intolerance that many people show to grains, milk and seafoods

can, in part, be explained by how recently they entered the human diet.

Many of us are poorly adapted to these foods, particularly if we are from

a culture that began to rely on agriculture or dairying recently. We are

not adapted because gene frequencies have not settled to the range where

such individuals become rare in the population. That will happen only

after enough time has passed for the lactose-and grain-intolerant among

us to leave fewer children to carry our genes into the future than those

who can eat the stuff.

Epidemic carbohydrate intolerance is another clue that we are not

yet adapted to a post-agricultural, post-industrial, information age

diet. To emphasize once more, the only universal in the omnivorous human

eating record as reflected in hunter gatherer diets and in the ancestral

diet is the absence of simple- and grain- or cereal-based carbohydrate.

The conventional wisdom and diet advice of the experts that you should

eat grain- or cereal-based carbohydrate flies in the face of the

evolutionary record.

4. Eat when hungry. For me, that is at least 4 times a day, often more,

but sometimes less. Eating once a day degrades lean body mass and reduces

your metabolism. Your lean body disintegrates and your fat mass

increases. Nobody who wants to be lean and healthy should eat only once a

day.

5. I take antioxidants. Our food sources of minerals and antioxidants are

not as rich as those of the ancient past. Free radical oxidation of body

tissues is one of the primary aging mechanisms. Scavenge these free

radicals with antioxidants.

The beauty of the 40,000 BC eating model is that you eat no canned,

frozen, packaged, or manufactured food; all fresh foods, never fried,

always roasted, broiled, boiled, or whatever. You don't have to read

labels because nothing you buy to eat comes with a label (nature doesn't

do this). Some latitude is necessary (I do not believe in rigid rules for

anything anyway), but the 40,000 BC model is always guiding your choices.

In short, live, eat, work and play like it is 40,000 BC while you

enjoy what the modern world has to offer. Live on the power curve where

life and intelligence are maximized.

Does evolutionary training work? It does for me. At 59 years of age,

I look like an NFL running back: 6' 1", 205 pounds with a dense and

athletic musculature and less than 8% body fat. Based on body

composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time, and blood profile, a

research institute rates my biological age at 32. Evolutionary training

is so productive I spend very little time in the gym, usually from 1 to 2

hours a week. The intensity of training like an adaptive hunter is

exhilarating and the brevity leaves you feeling fresh. You gain time for

work and play. You also gain a toughness and energetic plasticity that

leaves you poised for the many adaptive challenges that life brings.

[TJ.... Green Tea????]

TJ, what do you think of green tea?

Yes? No?

I drink 16 ounces of it atleast every other day..

It's LOADED with antioxidants.

Good before a workout or after?

Much better before, the caffeine will amp you up too

much if you drink it afterwards.

In fact, I'll have a cup of Panax Ginseng before I

hit the gym as well -- excellent at preparing the adrenals

for a hard lift.

I don't drink coffee at all, and during the winter,

with the try air, I like to sip something hot...Just curious

what you think of green tea...

Mixed with some stevia, it's excellent on a cold day..

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Keto Info Week 1/12]

CATEGORY: training/anaerobic

TECHNICAL: *

SUMMARY:

This short note summarizes a thing known as "evolutionary

fitness" which is a strategy designed by Arthur De Vany to promote

health and longevity via diet and exercise. The main crux of

his work was to define a training program to take advantage of

the way we evloved. To a degree, I believe he's done that.

In fact, I agree mostly with his suggestions. I have another

article that goes into greater detail about his plan. For now,

I just send this note. In a short while I will post my complete

training program to the list and show you how it is very similar

to his. He focuses on intensity and variety, and that is a key

to any successfull program.

The program I have to offer uses something similar but

defines itself in more specific terms. You will hear things like

"progressive overload", "holistic training", and "periodization".

Those 3 things have combined to help me surpass my wildest

expectations in the gym, and they will help you too.

Suffice it to say that, if you train scientifically,

strength plateaus will be a thing of the past..

-------------------------------------------------------------

Arthur De Vany's EVOLUTIONARY FITNESS

Copyright © 1995 by Arthur De Vany.

This is a brief description of my in-progress book on the

evolutionary diet and physical fitness program. You may download this for

personal reading but may not redistribute or archive without permission.

The book should be published in 1998.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

Evolutionary Fitness is a result of my personal and scientific quest

to stay fit and young. It combines my experience as a professional and

amateur athlete, and as someone who has spent more than 40 years

exercising, with my scientific interests in evolution and complex adaptive

systems. It begins with the premise that our bodies and minds are adapted

to an ancient environment that passed more than 10,000 years ago. We

evolved as hunter-gatherers over at least three million years and that

lifeway shapes our attributes, behaviors, and capabilities as human

beings. It is by understanding the hunter-gatherer adaptation and

incorporating the activity and eating patterns of our ancestral lifeway

that we can live a natural and healthy life in a modern world that is very

different from the one in which human beings evolved.

Darwin and Fitness

In developing this idea, I take the Darwinian approach that has been

so successful in the new fields of evolutionary psychology and medicine

and apply it to physical fitness. But, I integrate a Darwinian perspective

with the theory of chaos and complex systems. A deeper look at the

evolutionary record, the new revelations in the biological sciences, my

scientific work in complex systems, and my own personal experience as a

life-long student of fitness tell me that the right model for

understanding health and fitness must combine insights from evolution and

chaos.

Non Linear Systems

When the body is viewed as a complex adaptive system exploiting

evolved mechanisms, it becomes clear that conventional thinking about

diets and obesity is wrong. The human organism is an open energy system,

operating far from equilibrium. Diet and exercise programs that are mired

in linear thinking are completely inappropriate for understanding human

energy metabolism.

The primary objectives for any exercise and diet program must be to

counter hyperinsulemia (chronically elevated insulin) and hypoexertion

(wasting the body's lean mass through inactivity)---these are the number

one health risks according to the National Institutes of Health. A natural

diet, based on the evolutionary record effectively counters

hyperinsulemia. Intermittent, intense exercise in brief spurts promotes

hormone drives that quench hyperinsulemia and build muscle and bone

density that keep you young and lean.

Ancestral Dynamic Patterns

Intermittent, intense, and playful exercise mimics the activity

patterns that were essential to the emergence and evolution of the human

species. High intensity, intermittent and brief training mixed with power

walking and play is closer than aerobic exercise, high volume weight

training, or sedentism to how our ancestors lived. We are hunter-gatherers

and have been for all of human and pre-human history. Only 15,000 years

have passed since the last Ice Age, not long enough for bodies suited for

the sedentary modern age to have evolved. If such bodies ever do evolve

they cannot have our minds, for the human mind evolved to live in a brain

adapted to an energetic, versatile and dynamic body.

Fitness from Chaos

In the book, I present new technology for exercise --- power law

training --- that is, in reality, as ancient as life itself. Power law

training is the technology consistent with the chaotic natural dynamics

that science finds in all living things; it matches the rhythm of life

itself and is found in the movements of wild animals, healthy heart beats,

neuronal dynamics in the brain, and the music of Bach.

Mind-Body Integration

Our brains and bodies are dynamic objects that thrive on challenge

and movement; intermittent intensity brings key adaptations in hormone

drives, neurological function, and body composition. The mixture of

variety, intermittent intensity, and play bind perception and kinesthetics

to create a dynamic and positive self image which is the reference point

on which our knowledge and living are organized. Movement and play build

muscle and cognitive maps in the brain and repair the mind/body continuum.

The Big Idea

Your brain and body are evolved for life in 40,000 BC; take care of

the hunter gatherer body and mind that you carry in that pin-striped suit.

Outline of the Book

Figuring out how our ancestors lived occupies the first part of the

book. Understanding what these ancestral living patterns mean in terms of

body/mind processes is the challenge I tackle in the second part of the

book. The disease that results from adaptations to modern living patterns

is the puzzle I investigate in the third part of the book. Learning to

live and eat like it is 40,000 BC while living in this modern world and

enjoying what it has to offer is the challenge I take up in the last part

of the book.

The Author

I am not a "trainer to the stars" or a reformed overeater (the most

common types of authors in this genre), but I am a scientist and athlete

and a successful example of what I preach. At 60 years of age, I look

like a Cro-Magnon ancestor from the Paleolithic: 6' 1", 205 pounds with a

dense and athletic musculature and less than 8% body fat.

Based on body composition, strength, flexibility, reaction time, and

blood profile, a research institute rates my biological age at 32. Not so

remarkable when you understand that what we call aging in this modern

world really is the accumulated damage of inactivity and dietary abuse.

Hunter gatherers don't age like Westerners do.

Art De Vany, age 60, September 1997

------------------------------------------------------------------------

:cool: TJ :cool:

[1mm longer spark plugs = 1-2 bhp gain?....]

Which brings up an interesting question.. I'm running platinum

plugs in my '97 (recommended), but I see that newer models

run iridium eh?

Seems to me the hotter plug might give me better performance,

(better detonation), so am I crazy or what?

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Ice Cream]

This is great if ya got an ice cream maker and 30 mins handy..

1) Pour 2 cups heavy whipping cream into a pot and heat it

to body temp - beat/whip it the whole time..

2) Dump in 4 egg yolks, one at a time, and continue blending, the

mixture should start thickening by now.

3) Pop in 2 tbs. of sugar free Jello Pudding Powder (banana and

choco work the best..) and continue beating/mixing until it's rich

and creamy with no clumps.

4) remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. After cooled,

pop in 8-10 packets of Aspartame (Equal) (or your fave sweetener)

and blend in 1 tbsp. of vanilla extract.

5) pour into ice cream maker and spin up until done..

6) ENJOY!!

Makes soft-server "Dairy Queen" like very low-carb ice cream..

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Bear hug and sloppy wet one for Redd ;-)]

That flax-o-meal is GREAT!! Thanks for the awesome tip!

:cool: TJ :cool:

[No formatting?]

Glad you figured that out, since I just realized it actually used the tags and didn't show them...duh...

Don't feel too bad.. It was monday, ya know?

:cool: TJ :cool:

[No formatting?]

Thanks bud! I stumbled into the "pre /pre" earlier and

got it to work reasonably well :grin:

:cool: TJ :cool:

The browsers do that automatically. English rules were changed a while back so that the double space after period is no longer correct, and browsers were made to fit that new rule.

You can use %nbsp as a space character, but I'm not sure if browsers will respect that or not. You could use the

 and 

tags at the start and end of a section of text, and then the browser will display it exactly as typed (carriage returns, tabs, etc).

[Advanced power program..]

moving it upwards :wink:

:cool: TJ :cool:

[No formatting?]

How do you post formatted text without losing the extra spaces?

Seems like the forum software extracts consecutive space

characters..

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Chompie's low-carb bagels]

> Chompie's

Hey, isn't that guy a user on this forum?

:cool: TJ :cool:

[How To Remove Needle Jet From Slide?]

The pilot screw resembles a "D" try a .22 or .17 rimfire shell empty of course with a dent in it, or tweezers.

Just get out your dremel tool and slot the pilot screw. Then

you can turn it with a straight-head screwdriver..

(makes it much easier to get accurate turn counts)

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Supplements]

Hey TJ, have you tried that Flax-o-meal hot cereal?

Nope! But boy howdy, that sounds good! I'll have to check it

out. Thanks bunches for the tip! (used to love oatmeal)

Another question,

Shoot!

when buying Flax seed oil, I noticed some stores have it refrigerated and some dont, and this happens with the same brand of products. From what I understand it is somthing that should be refrigerated, am I wrong?

Yes, it should always be refrgerated. In fact, I stick it in the

freezer when I get it home. (it won't freeze solid, it's too unsaturated.)

I never buy flax seed oil unless it's kept cold and is in a totally

pitch-black container (not see through). Light and heat can denature

the oil and ruin it.

"Barleans" is my brand of choice around here. It's cheap, cold

pressed and packaged properly.

Make sure you open the bottle at the grocery store and take a

taste of it before you buy. That way you don't go home with

a rancid bottle (tastes fishy)

If they complain, tell them you're buying it if it's fresh, and

helping them to remove a bad product if it's rancid :wink:

:cool: TJ :cool:

[Supplements]

Not sure if its just coincidence or not, but I started squirting flax-seed oil into my meals...

Not a coincidence bud. The omega-3's in the oil are helping you.

You'll get even better results if you mix the tablespoon of flax oil

with 1/4 cup of cottage cheese and consume it on an empty stomach.

(anti-cancer, anti-viral Budwig approach)

:cool: TJ :cool: