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Chapter 1 – Fat Loss……………………………………………………3 Chapter 2 – General……………………………………………………30 Chapter 3 – Science……………………………………………………81 Chapter 4 – Training…………………………………………………127 Chapter 4 – Post Contest………………………………………….144 Chapter 5 – Weight Cuts…………………………………………..155 Chapter 6 – Supplements………………………………………...166

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Fat Loss

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Justin, I'm starting to see some progress, but I'm worried about losing muscle while dieting. I work so hard to build it in the offseason and don't want to lose it while dieting. Will adding extra protein slow down my progress?

Yes--adding extra Calories from any source will slow progress. It's all thermodynamics. The law of conservation of energy. All a calorie is, is a measure of energy--the amount of heat energy it takes to raise one gram of water by one degree Celsius (we use kilocalories, or Calories, with a capital “C,” which is 1,000 times the energy of a calorie). If you eat more Calories than you burn, you'll store those Calories in the body (typically as fat...but if you're depleted of glycogen, some Calories can be stored as glycogen. A very small portion can be stored as protein (new muscle), but the maximum case of this is about 20-25g per day. People might want to think there's more to the equation, but there isn't--conservation of energy is one of the most powerful laws of science. Every physicist alive wants to prove it wrong. If you can violate it even one time, it's a guaranteed Nobel prize. But....no one would even care about the Nobel prize, because if you can violate it you can solve the energy crisis and become a trillionaire….many times over.

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So, ALL that matters is that you eat less Calories than you burn. Adding more protein is more Calories--which means you won't be burning stored fat, but storing MORE fat instead. I know people think that eating protein will turn to muscle--but that’s not the case either. You can do the math yourself. You’ve seen many people who claim to be eating 500g of protein per day, right? 500g is 1.1 POUNDS. If you were actually using that protein for muscle growth you'd be gaining 1.1 POUNDS of muscle per day....or in other words, you'd be gaining over 400lbs of muscle per year. Since you're not over 500lbs ripped after 1 year of training, I think it's safe to say most of that protein wasn't being used to build muscle. So how much is being used to build muscle? How much muscle did you add last year? Let's go on the high end and say you're going to add 25lbs of muscle per year. (Even that isn't possible forever, because you'd be gaining 75lbs of muscle every 3 years and 125lbs of muscle every 5 years. I've been training almost 25 years, and I can guarantee you I haven't gained 625lbs of muscle.) But let's say you're a super freak and will be bigger than any body builder in the world in just a few years....so you are going to gain 25lbs of muscle every year.

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Well—you and your “super freak” growth rate of 25lbs of muscle per year is a result of converting ONLY 30g of protein per day to new muscle. Yes—25 pounds of muscle growth per year works out to 0.068lbs per day...or 30 GRAMS per day. That means, that even if you are the greatest muscle building human in the history of the world and will gain 300lbs of pure muscle every 10 years...you're STILL only converting 30g of protein to muscle each day. Now if you’re eating 500g of protein per day, then (even in this impossible case where you're gaining 300lbs every 10 years) ONLY 30g of that is actually going to build new muscle. What happens to the rest? Some of it goes to replenishing normal muscle breakdown. How much? Well....I'm sure you're saying "I'm training HARD! I'm breaking down a lot of tissue to repair!" Well....even a marathon runner probably breaks down less than 100g of protein during an event. I know...you're saying that you train with weights...and a marathon runner is just running. Well...100g of protein is 400 Calories—JUST from protein. Since the vast majority of Calories will come from stored glycogen first, and then fat stores next….if you’re burning 400 Calories of muscle tissue, you can

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guarantee that you burned well into the 1,000s of Calories from glycogen and fat. How many Calories do you think you're burning while training with weights? 200? 500? 1000?!? Let's say you train like an animal--you make Ronnie Coleman look like a pussy. You're doing 1000lb squats for sets of 20 reps---more than any human on earth has ever done, and you do it every workout! But not only that, you're burning 1000 Calories EVERY workout--even when training arms! Okay---that's 1000 Calories—hell, maybe even more on leg day! Do you think that's all protein being broken down? Do you want it to be? Because the way we breakdown protein for energy is we breakdown muscle tissue...so even if you were doing that, you'd be losing over 1/4lb of muscle per day. I don’t think any of us believes we’re losing 1/4lb of muscle every workout…so it’s easy to see that most of the Calories we burn are not protein. Clearly almost all of it is stored carbs (glycogen). But...let's continue this, let's say you ONLY break down muscle for energy when training. You're also a super freak who squats 1000lbs for sets of 20 reps and you're losing over 1/4lb per DAY just from training, so you NEED a shit ton of protein.

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1000 Calories of protein is 250g of protein.... SO.... Let’s assume that you are this impossible SUPER freak who gains 300lbs of muscle every 10 years, squats 1000lbs for sets of 20, burns 1000 Calories every single workout--even when training arms, trains 7 days a week, AND ONLY uses protein for energy (no carbs or fat AT ALL)—every set of your workout is fueled by breaking down muscle tissue. What are your net protein needs as this impossible super freak? 280g of protein per day. 250g to replace the 1/4 POUNDS of muscle you lose every day in training and 30g to build the 300 POUNDS of new muscle you gain every 10 years. Now, if you're eating 500g of protein, what happens to the rest? Well...it doesn’t get used as protein, it gets converted to glucose through gluconeogenesis and used for energy as a carbohydrate. And, when you eat too much and don't have a need for that extra sugar, it gets stored as fat. What does this all mean? It isn't the amount of protein you eat! Eating more protein doesn't directly correlate to more muscle—there’s more nuance than that! 8 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

And even if you're training harder than any human has ever trained in the history of the world at every single workout--you're not breaking down enough protein to ever require 500g per day. You're just not losing and rebuilding over a pound of muscle per day--no one is. The VAST majority of the protein you eat (that anyone eats) doesn't get used as protein by the body--it gets used as a carbohydrate or as a fat. YES--you need to eat enough protein to fuel recover and growth--and you need to eat protein frequently so that those amino acids are always available in the blood stream---but if you're eating too much protein, it's no different than just eating a bunch of sugar--you won't burn fat, and if you're eating more Calories than you burn (even if they're from protein), you will gain fat....no matter how much cardio and training you're doing. In summary, To lose fat—you need to eat less Calories than you burn. To guarantee that as much of those excess Calories come from stored fat as possible, you need to eat appropriate macronutrients that drive the body to burn fat as much as possible. That macro nutrient ratio is higher in protein and lower in carbs and fat—but it still MUST be less Calories than you burn. To build muscle—you need to eat more Calories than you burn. 9 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

But, since we know that even 30g (120 Calories) of excess Calories converting to muscle per day results in 300lbs of new muscle mass every 10 years, we don’t need thousands of extra Calories per day to grow. The macronutrient ratio that fuels muscle growth without gaining fat is probably even lower protein than in the diet scenario because we need a higher carbohydrate amount to provide the high glycogen stores to fuel weight training without breaking down protein for energy.

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Fasted Cardio Math Why you're over complicating things (again)

There's always a huge discussion in the fitness world about fasted cardio and whether or not it's better at burning fat. You'll typically hear two points of view. The coaches with degrees in nutrition/exercise science will shout that it doesn't matter when you do the cardio, while those who learned their craft through the bodybuilding world will typically side with fasted cardio, taking the “it’s worked every time, so why fix what isn’t broken?” So, does fasted cardio burn more fat?

Yes—it burns a higher percentage of fat than doing cardio following a meal. Okay—does that mean it’s settled then? Let’s see… Now, since I like to do the math on these things, let's see just how much more fat you will burn with fasted cardio. We're going to consider two scenarios: 1. Non-fasted cardio, where the person has a blood sugar reading of 100 mg/dL 2. Fasted cardio, where the person has a blood sugar of 70 mg/dL

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With fasted cardio, your blood sugar will probably start lower, and there's no food to keep the blood sugar stable (instead the liver does that...and possibly also glycogen from the muscle when the liver runs low). So, with less sugar in the blood to be used for energy, the body will need to offset that difference with energy production from fat. That's the goal, right? Well, how much sugar is actually in the blood? I don't think I've ever seen this discussed, so let's do the math. Taking person 1, with a blood sugar of 100 mg/dL, that's only 1 gram per liter! And since most people have 4-6 liters of blood in the body, we're talking about 6g of sugar--TOTAL. Since person 2 only has a blood sugar of 70 mg/dL, they have 30% less sugar (1.8g less) in the blood to be used as energy before fat is used. At 4 Calories per gram, we're talking about a 7.2 Calorie difference. That's less than a single gram of fat difference. Now, I know what people in prep are thinking; "Even if it's a small difference, I want to do everything 100%!" Well, let's say you do a 16-week prep....hitting fasted cardio 6 days a week for all 16 weeks....and bumping it to 7 days a week for a full month. That's 100 sessions of cardio. At 1.8g more sugar being burned per session, that's 180g of sugar being used for energy that could have been used as fat. How many Calories is 180g of sugar? It's 720 Calories. So how much of a difference in fat is that? 12 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Considering that there's around 3500 Calories in pound of fat (there's possibly more, a direct conversion of 9 Calories per gram gives around 4,000 Calories), that's 0.2 pounds of fat difference. How much difference does 0.2lb of fat make? Assuming you're dropping around 2lbs of fat per week, that's ONE DAY of fat difference--or a difference that isn't noticeable in the mirror and is completely overshadowed by the difference water manipulation will make. If you want to look at it from a percentage perspective—one day in a 16-week diet is 1/112th of your progress…IF you miss EVERY SINGLE fasted session and have to do the session later in the day. So, what is the take away? I’m not telling you to avoid fasted cardio—all of my contest prep clients will be on fasted cardio--largely because it ends up working out best from a timing perspective for people who train with weights in the afternoon. What I’m telling you is to not throw away the baby with the bathwater. If you can’t make a fasted session—the day isn’t lost. People far too often have the perspective that things either need to be perfect or there’s no reason in doing it at all. You’ll see this in a similar manner with intra-workout shakes. You’ll have people miss 2 meals, go out for drinks with friends, but then flip out when they forget their intra-workout shake. It’s the same thing here with cardio—if you can’t make the fasted cardio session, don’t call it a wash—get the session in later in the day whenever you are able

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to….and that session will be 99.91% as effective as your fasted session would have been

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Tropical Creams and Why Diets Fail

Topical Creams The skin is semi-permeable, meaning that the skin will not absorb what it does not want to, or any more than it wants to; otherwise, we would be poisoned every time chemicals came in contact with our skin. To make the skin more permeable, the local blood vessels must dilate and create an inflammation response. Inflammation is a necessary byproduct of topical creams getting absorbed. This response triggers the area to turn red, water being pulled to the area, and a burning sensation, it is the body’s natural response to help “heal” the inflammation. The process increases the permeability of the skin and lets more of the supplement into the blood stream. An opposite effect may happen as well. When creating a localized vasoconstriction, water is pulled out of the area, and blood vessels and capillary beds are constricted and smaller, making the area look tighter and leaner. The problem with this is that the effect is only temporary, and in the long run reduces fat loss in the area due to the vasoconstriction; it is less likely that fat from the area will be oxidized and taken into the blood stream. Why Diets Fail There is an unfortunate thing that happens in almost all situations: things that make you look better in the 15 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

short-term make you look worse long-term, and vice versa. For example, the average person starts a diet. They cut Calories and carbohydrates, and their food tastes bad, so they add more seasoning. They think that they are hungry, so they drink more water in order to not intake more Calories, which leads to getting bloated. They think, “I’m gaining weight! My body refuses to lose weight!”, then give up on the diet because the initial water retention makes them think that they are gaining weight, when the reality is that they haven’t dieted long enough to see the benefits yet. Another example is when people who want to lose weight cut out all salt and drink less water so that they lose a significant amount of water weight right away-tricking themselves into thinking that is the only way they can lose weight, without realizing that they are actually making it harder for their body to burn fat. They are just seeing a short-term diuretic effect that is going to bite them in the ass when they return to normal eating and get extremely bloated. At that point, they will think that they have gained the rest of the weight they lost and more once they break their diet. - Justin Harris, Tasia Blaesser -

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Cardio Timing

Insulin Let’s talk insulin for a second. Insulin is a storage hormone, and it gets released by beta cells in the pancreases in response to GLUT2 monitoring blood glucose. Once it gets high, GLUT2 will signal for the release of insulin. As the blood glucose raises, the pancreases secrete insulin. Insulin binds to an insulin receptor on a cell, and through a cascade of events, signals GLUT4 to translocate to the cell membrane where it uptakes glucose, thus lowering blood glucose. As blood glucose lowers, the secretion of insulin gets reduced. You can find insulin receptors on muscle, adipose, and some organ cells, including liver. When insulin binds to an insulin receptor, the cell increases the uptake of amino acids, carbohydrates, and fats. When a receptor is bound by insulin, that cell cannot breakdown fatty acids to be used as energy. The lower amount of insulin in the blood will allow a greater number of cells to be able to burn fat. For cardio, avoiding times where insulin levels are high is a good idea. Steady state cardio is effective at burning fat for energy. It burns a higher percentage of fat during the cardio session compared to other types of cardio. There are some ways you can make sure you are burning even a higher percentage of fat, by the timing of your cardio session. As stated earlier, fat cells have insulin receptors 17 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

and when bound, that cell cannot breakdown fat to use as energy. The higher your blood glucose, the higher insulin. If you do steady state cardio with a lower blood glucose, less cells are bound by the hormone insulin, and more cells can be broken down, the higher the fat loss will be. 1. Fasted Fasted cardio is very effective at burning fat. When you just wake up, you went through multiple hours without eating food. Blood glucose at this time will be low. Doing your cardio fasted will ensure that the cardio you are doing is even more efficient at burning fat. 2. Post workout Muscle contraction during exercise is a more potent physiological stimulus of skeletal muscle glucose uptake than even maximal insulin [1]. During exercise, muscle contractions cause GLUT4 to translocate from its storage vesicles to the cell membrane to uptake glucose, which lowers blood glucose. After your workout, your blood glucose will be at one of the lowest points it’s going to get during the day due to this contraction stimulated glucose uptake. This is a good time to do cardio. 3. Prior to your next meal. If you are eating every 3 hours, your highest blood glucose will be immediately after you eat, and each hour that goes on, blood glucose will lower. If you have 20 minutes of cardio to do, doing it 20 minutes prior to 18 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

your next meal would be the best-case scenario in terms of having more fat cells being available to be catabolized as energy. 4. Low carb days On days I do not train, I eat much lower carb diet compared to training days and my total Calories are much lower, usually I am hypocaloric during these days. This day is a great day to focus on burning fat and getting in that cardio. On these days, I am eating the least amount of carbs I eat all week, my Calories are low, and I will be burning more energy that I am taking in, so my blood glucose should be lower this day. Choosing to do cardio on this day is a good idea, due to the low blood glucose. 5. Multiple sessions I looked through PubMed briefly to see if there were any differences between 1 long cardio bout or the same length split up into multiple sessions, and most studies that I have read suggest that both are similarly effective. This is cool, because it can be hard for some people to sketch out 30 minutes of your day, just to do cardio. But if you can go on 2, 15-minute walks throughout the day, or 3, 10-minute walks, in all scenarios you are still getting in your 30 minutes of cardio. Just be sure that your heartrates are consistent and monitored to be in the target range you want them to be. - Thomas Lackie, Justin Harris

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References 1. James D.E., Kraegen E.W., Chisholm D.J. Muscle glucose metabolism in exercising rats: comparison with insulin stimulation. American Journal of Physiology. 1985;248:E575–E580. 2. Murphy, M., Nevill, A., Neville, C., Biddle, S., & Hardman, A. (2002, September). Accumulating brisk walking for fitness, cardiovascular risk, and psychological health. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/122187 40

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Justin, I’ve been dieting hard, but I’m not making progress as fast as I’d like. I’m trying stay as patient as I can, but obviously I just wanna hop on T3, Clen, and do it the “short cut” way.

A couple of things: 1) The “short cut” way is the muscle loss way. 2) T3 and Clen aren’t the magic “short cut.” It’s extremely difficult and requires a ton of work and suffering to get into contest shape even with those two. Let’s look at the numbers: Dropping 2lbs of fat per week is a 1,000 Calorie daily deficit. The most you can hope for in a perfect world is maybe 3lbs of fat loss per week (1,500 Calorie daily deficit). More than that, and you're burning muscle. Jumping on T3 and clen too early, will just eat muscle eventually. Ideally, you hold off until you can no longer maintain 2lb of fat loss per week, and then bring those in to boost metabolism so that you don't have to go into starvation levels with the diet. There's a reason that top bodybuilders take 16 weeks to prep for a show...and it's not because they're avoiding short cuts. There isn't a bodybuilder out there who is holding back on ANY supplement for any noble reason or health reason or ANY reason other than it's not the most effective thing to do. The only reason guys aren't taking 10g of test per week is because you get test flu, lose your appetite, and can't get out of bed to train. It's not because they’re worried about health or anything like that. Everyone is taking as much as they can before 21 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

side effects start making them worse (if you have the flu, can't eat, and can't train...it doesn't matter how much gear you're on). So--there's no such thing as a quick route or shortcut in this sport. At least not in the way that taking more of something or starting it sooner will help you...because everyone in this sport is taking as much as they can as long as it is still making them better. There's no nobility or morality in the doses. The doses and timings are because that's the most effective. If taking 100mcg of t3 and 200mcg of clen on day one of the diet was the most effective way--then that's what I'd be having you do. Your coach isn’t holding back on anything out of any moral reason or anything like that—a coach only gets clients if they’re better at what I do than other coaches. And they’re only better than other coaches if their clients progress better than other coach’s clients. If there's one thing I can say about the subject, it's this: If you read it on the internet--it's probably wrong. It's almost by definition incorrect information. Because if it were correct, then it wouldn't be given away for free on the internet, and if it worked, the person giving it would be a top bodybuilder...not some local gym rat who looks like shit. Ever notice how anytime a pro mentions anything about training, nutrition, or gear...the whole internet insists they're lying or wrong? Think about that.... 22 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

EVEYRY TIME a pro mentions something about training, nutrition, or gear, ALL the people who look nothing like a pro insist the pro is wrong. Well...if everyone who looks like a pro says "A" And everyone who looks like shit says "B" Why the hell does everyone still think "B" is the best option? It's the craziest fucking phenomenon on earth. The whole internet bodybuilding community holds themselves back by some weird fetish where they force themselves to believe everything the pros say must be a lie...and everything the skinny fat local gym rats on the internet say is correct--even though it isn't working for ANY of them. If there were a way to get faster fat loss results that produced a better bodybuilder in the long term—your coach would already be having you do that. Coaches don't get clients if they don't do that. The short cut way of running T3 and clen from day one on a diet isn't a short cut to a better physique. It will lead to a shorter diet--yes...because you'll eat through 5lbs of stored energy per week...but at least 2lbs of that will be muscle. So, you'll be 185lbs in a hurry...but you'll be as lean as you could have been at 200lbs if you went the other route. And since muscle loss is ALWAYS faster than muscle gain (The fastest any human has ever grown new muscle tissue in history as far as I can gather was big 23 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Ramy from 2010-2014, where he went from 220lbs to 300lbs. That's a rate of 0.38lbs of muscle per week. Compare that to how easy it is to lose 2lbs of muscle per week and you'll see that for long term progress rate, preventing muscle loss is ALWAYS more efficient than gaining muscle mass)

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Justin, I’ve been dieting for almost a month and I feel like I just look smaller and softer. I don’t know how much fat I need to lose, but I’m having a hard time not going out and eating until I get sick just so that I can fill out a t-shirt again.

You're in the skinny fat phase of the diet. You’ve lost the fullness but aren't lean enough to look ripped. This is where the people who never achieve their ultimate goals go one of two routes: 1. Rush the fat loss process. They then eat up most of their muscle in the process....and never progress in the sport because it can take a year to regain the muscle loss that you can lose in 8 weeks of eating tissue on a diet 2. Quit the fat loss process. They don't want to take the time required to get in shape because they want' to get back to getting big. They end up as perma-bulkers who never end up as big or as lean as they want. Muscle growth tends to slow as body fat climbs above 10-12%. This is because aromatization rates start to climb and anabolism rates decrease in males as body fat climbs. The ones who end up as known bodybuilders are the ones who can get past the pain of the skinny fat phase, continue working the diet, amplifying the metabolism when it's the proper time, and finish the diet lean-while also holding their muscle mass 25 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Justin, I’ve been trying to follow a carb cycling diet. I think I’ve made good progress so far. I’ve lost 5lbs, so that’s good-- I’m down from 222-225lbs to 217lbs. Is it okay if I stick loosely to the diet? I mean, do I have to follow the carbs and protein exactly? I’m not on any bloating drugs like Anadrol, so I figured the gear would take care of the rest as long as I try to eat pretty good.

You will get the most optimal gains by follow the diet exactly. I know I've emphasized the point by now, but bodybuilding is diet. Without the diet--it's powerlifting/strongman/etc. You won't look like a bodybuilder without the diet. I realize everyone wants it to be the drugs--and you can't look like a bodybuilder without them, but everyone who lifts seriously is on gear. That isn't the deciding fact--of the people using gear, the ones that look like bodybuilders are the ones who eat like a bodybuilder. If there’s one thing I wish I could emphasize and have people really understand, it’s just that—DIET is what makes a bodybuilder. Training is for performance. Gear improves performance and recovery. It also maximizes the effects of the diet as far as nutrient uptake to the cell and rates of protein synthesis—but that can only provide benefit if the diet is where it needs to be. Walk around any gym in the country and you’ll find dozens of guys doing the exact same workouts and dozens of guys on a cycle. What you won’t find is dozens of guys that look like bodybuilders—and that reason is the diet. 26 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Justin, I have a general question. What's the science behind carbs going to glycogen and not being stored as body fat on high days? More specifically, how does keeping fat intake low on high carb days affect the partitioning of the carbs that day?

I have some articles/videos on this that will go into more detail up on MuscleMentor.net and in at least some book or article I've written if you want to dig deeper, but I'll do my best to do it justice here. Thermodynamics is king. It dictates the energy in/out of everything in the Universe. And by the law of conservation of energy, if you eat more energy than you burn, you will store that exact amount of energy (it can’t just vanish). Conversely, if you eat less than you burn, that excess energy must come from somewhere. In other words, you can’t gain weight unless you eat more energy than you expend. Now—people really want that to not be true, and it would be wonderful if that were the case because then we’d solve the world energy crisis. We just put people in a room and collect the heat loss from their bodies. Since they would be consuming less energy than they burn, the net result would be free energy, and those people would be the world’s first trillionaires. A calorie is just a measure of energy (the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius) 27 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

So, all dieting is, is this: If you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose that exact amount of calories (energy) from stored energy reserves in the body. The body stores energy in 3 ways: Fat (obviously), Carbs (glycogen), and protein (muscle). Now, we hope all the stored energy comes from fat and none from muscle or glycogen, but it's not a perfect world and glycogen is the preferred energy source of the body. So, over the week, you lose fat but also lose glycogen. A large male might be able to store 1,000g of glycogen. Let's assume you get 350g of glycogen depleted over the course of the week. Now, let's assume that your natural metabolism lets you burn about 3,000 Calories per day, or around 500g of carbs in the macro set up of the high day. Now....if we have you eat that same macro set up, but add 350g of extra carbs, you are eating more than you burn--which means you'll store the extra calories as energy (as fat, glycogen, or muscle). BUT, since you're glycogen depleted going into that day AND we supply those extra calories as carbs, we can create a situation where you're eating more than you burn, but with the extra calories coming from a source that's depleted in the body---you STILL store the calories of those 350g of carbs, but instead of fat, you store them as glycogen. This allows you to fill out, keep your metabolism from falling, stave off the hunger hormones from telling you 28 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

that you're starving, and provide some relief from the diet. That means you get to go into the next week's med and low days with a higher metabolism and more energy so that you burn more fat on those calorie deficit days that you otherwise might have. The long and short of it is that it's somewhat a dietary trick to allow you to eat more than you burn on that specific day, but without the fat storage that typically comes with eating more than you burn. It’s not magical or necessarily innovative, it’s just a method of partitioning energy stores in the body to keep metabolism high without storing body fat.

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General

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Justin, I want to add muscle, but I’m also worried about being too fat. I feel like I’m always either trying to bulk too fast and end up wishing I was leaner or trying to lean out too fast and losing all my muscle. If you were me…with my genetics, my shape, my frame…what would you do right now?

Get settled in to a good eating program, train hard every workout, making sure that every workout was a good workout and I improved in some way. Then I'd just let time pass--do everything hard whether I was blasting or cruising, and just let time pass. in 5 years it's going to be 2024 (and if you’re reading back on this in the year 2024, this is going to have an even bigger impact). Look--it's going to be 2024 no matter what you do, and it's going to be here pretty fucking quickly. If you stay on plan with eating, train as hard as you can, and run through your blast cycles properly, then you can be carrying 50lbs of new muscle in 2024 and walking around f’n jacked (you'll still want to be bigger though...but that's how life is). The other option, and the option that ruins people in this sport, is they don't do that. They want to be 50lbs bigger. Well--you don't get to just be 50lbs bigger. You get to eat your meals today--not missing any. You 31 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

get to train hard today--making sure to get better. And if you continue to do that every day, then there will come a day where that 50lbs happened...it's just sometime in the future. You can't gain 50lbs of muscle. All you can do is eat meat and rice today. Train your ass off today. And do it whether you're blasting or cruising. If you do that every day, day after day, and never stop-at some point that 50lbs happens--but it's not the 50lbs that happens, it's today that happens. but if it happens a thousand times in a row, that 50lbs occurs at some point along the way.

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Justin, I want to get as big as possible as fast as possible. Should I just try to add size by any means necessary? Wouldn’t trying to stay lean slow down muscle growth, and I’d be better off just maximizing muscle growth and taking the fat gain that comes with it?

If you gain too much fat, you have to diet down or you won’t continue to add muscle. The goal is to stay in a growth state without gaining fat as long as possible. That’s where people go wrong—they want the scale to move too fast, which is mostly just fat gain, so they constantly have to diet back down and never end up gaining any real size because they try to make it happen too fast. Pure muscle growth is maxed out at 10-15lbs a year long-term. People don’t want that because it seems too slow. But that’s the fastest there is. So instead they shoot for 30, but most is fat, and after dieting the fat off, they’re back where they started. Then they repeat for 5,8,10 years and are the same size they started plus a few lbs of muscle instead of 100lbs of muscle heavier if they would have gone the right route (which no one wants to do because it seems too slow).

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NO ONE has gained more than 15lbs per year for an extended length of time—which makes sense, because that’s 150lbs every 10 years. Even 25 lbs is a one and done type of magic year. If I had to guess, I’d say that Big Ramy from 2010-2014 probably added muscle faster than any human in history. He went from something like 220lbs to 300lbs in that 4-year span. That’s 20lbs per year! So….20 lbs per year for 4 years is the most rapid growth rate in human history, yet EVERY guy coming up is SURE he’s going to add 30lbs of pure muscle from every 12-week cycle he runs. That’s not how it works. Even if we assume that you’re going to gain size faster than ANY human in history ever has—that is, you’re the one who’s going to gain 20lbs of pure muscle each year for 5 years, that’s still only 1.66 lbs per MONTH. Since the scale can vary 5-10lbs per DAY depending on water weight, that means that even if you grow faster than any human in history—on a day-to-day basis, the scale DOES NOT MOVE. Even on a month to month basis, daily water weight fluctuations will be greater than the muscle mass gain. That means that even if you’re growing faster than any human in HISTORY, you’re still weighing roughly the same from month to month. If the scale is moving faster than that, it is NOT muscle. It just isn’t. So, any scale change greater than about 2lbs per month indicates fat gain—and as a bodybuilder, any added fat must later be lost, which means the potential for MUSCLE LOSS when you diet down.

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Staying relatively lean IS the fastest way to add size— because the fastest rate of growth is slow enough that the potential for excessive fat gain will always over power the muscle growth over time. You won’t find top bodybuilders walking around fat (and no—the offseason guest posing pics where guys are watery but still have abs does not mean they’re fat. If you think it does, go put on a posing suit and hit some poses in your offseason glory and realize just how much leaner they are than you). You WILL find local gym rats walking around fat year after year, deluding themselves into the idea that walking around at 20% body fat is somehow the best way for them to reach their size goals. To put it bluntly, you can be 250lbs and fat this year….and stay 250lbs and fat forever, or you can be 220lbs and lean this year (carrying the same muscle as you would if you were 250lbs and fat), but then be 250lbs and lean in a few years….and eventually even larger. But fat is never muscle, and don’t let yourself convince yourself that it is.

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Justin, I want to use insulin, but I was a fat kid and worry about insulin making me fat again. Is there any way to use insulin without getting fat?

If done correctly, insulin and high carb diets can actually keep you leaner (by increasing the probability that excess unburned Calories may be stored as glycogen or synthesized as new muscle protein, where they would be more likely to be stored as fat without the effect of insulin increasing amino acid uptake and glycogen storage) People tend to use it wrong though—the once a day post workout approach that everyone seems to start out with just isn’t the most effective method. You also want to dose it in a manner that maximizes your already determined diet—not take a ton and use the hypo feeling to over eat, because that just leads to fat gain. I recommend the use of insulin a few times a week (13...rarely 4), but multiple times during that day. Protein synthesis is a slow act....if you can convert even 25g of your daily protein to new muscle per day...that’s 20lbs of muscle per year. So realistically, the maximum amount of protein we can synthesize per hour is about 1g. Let’s look at why that 1g per hour means the “daily insulin post workout” approach isn’t the path to success.

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Taking insulin once per day post workout—even if it DOUBLES the rate of growth during its active life (Humalog being around 1.5-3hr), means you’re adding about 1-3 grams above that 25g point...meaning that if you train 5x a week, you’re gaining one extra pound of muscle per year. But, if you use it on select days, multiple times on that day, on a day where you have prepared yourself to be in somewhat of a glycogen depletes state, then you can double that growth rate for most of the day—so maybe 18 hours you get 2g per hour. If you do that 3x a week, that’s an extra 6-7lbs of Muscle per year instead if 1lb—a 700% increase in effectiveness. I also recommend metformin or berberine to keep insulin sensitivity high—especially if A1c begins to climb.

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Justin, You made some pretty rapid progress in the mid2000s. What was your diet like then? It’s been a while, but if you can remember back that far, I think people would be curious what your daily intake looked like.

I can tell you exactly what my diet was throughout the 2006-2007 offseason and pre-contest because it was the most precise and OCD period of my life. Looking back—I rarely deviated by even an ounce here or there during the entire year and a half from when I won the supers at the 2006 Jr. USAs and when I did the 2007 USAs. This was great in the fact that I added nearly 20lbs of contest weight (after adding 15lbs of contest weight already leading up to the 2006 Jr. USAs) and nearly 50lbs of contest weight in less than 3 years after winning the Mr. Michigan in 2004. However, looking back, it wasn’t so great because I was absolutely and completely burned out by the time I stepped on stage at the 2007 USAs. I had made great progress (looking back…50lbs in 3 years after having already been training for almost 10 years at that point was a hell of a lot of progress in a short period of time), but I was so rigid and OCD in my diet and training that I kind of got lost in the whole process and forgot what I loved about lifting. Anyway—here’s what I was eating then:

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Offseason diet 2006-2007 Meal 1 (7:30am): 2 scoops whey isolate, 2 cups oatmeal w/ raisins Intra-workout (9am): 1 serving Anatrop, 50g waxy maize Post workout (10:30am): 1 serving Anatrop, 2 scoops whey isolate, 100g waxy maize Meal 3 (12:30pm): 6oz flank steak, 2 cups rice, 1 cup veggies Meal 4 (2pm): 2 scoops whey isolate, 100g waxy maize Meal 5 (4pm): 6oz flank steak, 2 cups rice, 1 cup veggies Meal 6 (6pm): 2 scoops whey isolate, 100g waxy maize Meal 7 (8pm): 6oz flank steak, 2 cups rice, 1 cup veggies Meal 8 (10pm): Whatever my wife made for dinner (usually fajitas or some kind of meat and potatoes. About twice a week I’d get 4 seared Saji wraps from a Mediterranean place that is no longer there) Meal 9: (before bed): 2 scoops ON casein protein (drink half) Middle of the night: finish other half of the casein shake High day deviation: About once or twice a week I would have a “high carb day” where I would lower the protein drinks to one scoop and replace that with about 400g of extra carbs throughout the day. Non-weight training deviation: On days I didn’t train with weights I would usually sleep in a bit longer (if my

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kids didn’t wake up too early) and only have the meal 1 and then have meal 3 when I got to work.

Notes I really did eat flank steak and rice every single meal (I think you can see me prepping my meals for the day in Project Superheavyweight). The only time I’d vary from that is if we ran out of either item for whatever reason—usually it would be rice, which I would replace with potatoes or plain pasta. I ate so much flank steak that my wife would buy every bit of flank steak the supermarket had available every single time she went shopping. After a few months of this she had a funny encounter with the staff. While she was grabbing all the flank steak off the rack and loading up her cart she noticed a group of people kind of staring at her from behind the double doors to the back freezer/butcher area in the supermarket. One of them eventually came out to talk to her since it was a bit awkward. They had been trying to figure out where all the flank steak was going for months. They kept increasing their flank steak quantity, but no matter how much they would put out….it would always be gone all at once before the end of the weekend. They were taking bets on who was buying all the flank. They had assumed a new Asian restaurant had opened up and they didn’t have a bulk supplier lined up yet and 40 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

were waiting for the week when that restaurant finally hooked up with a bulk supplier and their flank steak would suddenly sit un-purchased on the shelves and go bad…but it never happened. When the flank steak bandit ended up being a 120lb female they were all doubly confused. My wife got a chuckle out of it and told them that her husband was a bodybuilder, and flank steak was his protein of choice. Pre-contest diet 2007 My changes were very simple in the pre-contest diet. I dropped the rice to 1 cup per meal and increased the flank to 8oz per meal. I also dropped the shakes and stuck with whole food as much as possible. Meal 1 (7:30am): 2 cups egg whites, 1 cup oatmeal Meal 2 – post workout (10:30am): 2 scoops whey isolate, 100g waxy maize Meal 3 (1:30pm): 8oz flank steak, 1 cup rice, 2 cups veggies Meal 4 (4pm): 8oz flank steak, 1 cup rice, 2 cups veggies Meal 5 (7pm): 8oz flank steak, 1 cup rice 2 cups veggies Meal 6 (10pm): 8oz flank steak, 2 cups veggies High day deviation: Usually once per week I’d have a high carb day where I’d drop the protein down to 6oz per meal and would generally shoot for 1000g of carbs from a mix of waxy maize and rice

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Non-weight training deviation: On days I didn’t train with weights I would replace meal 2 with another meal of flank steak and rice. I would also occasionally drop the rice from meal 5 and possibly meal 4—these would be my “low carb” days

Notes: Looking back, I don’t know how I stayed so lean with my offseason diet. I’m currently back up to around 275lbs and relatively lean and there’s no way in hell I could handle that amount of Calories right now. I think my ability to assimilate such a large volume of food in the offseason was the biggest factor in my muscle gain from 2004-2007. Another thing that I’ve struggled with scientifically over the years is how my body weight didn’t change with my pre-contest diet. I started my prep at 262lbs at 17 weeks out and was 266lbs at 10 days out (if anyone followed my progress back then— the “back porch pics” where me at 266lbs and 10 days out). My weight stayed steady at right around 260lbs throughout the prep and I slowly leaned up each week at that weight. It would fluctuate with my high carb days—going up over 260lbs on the high days and dipping as low as the mid-250s on my low days. I was lucky enough to start the prep very lean—I could have easily gotten by with a 6-week prep with how lean I was when I started, so I didn’t really have to make dramatic 42 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

changes. And to be honest, a shorter prep probably would have helped me. With the idea that I had so long to dial things in, I sort of sat on that final “push” too long and ended up not really improving at all the final 56 weeks of prep. By the time it was necessary to make that last push to drop the final bit of fat, I was too burned out, too obsessed with holding size, or too dumb to make it happen. For much of the prep I mostly just readjusted my Calories—replacing carbs with protein and fat (from the flank) and trusting in the thermal effect of digesting protein to be my Calorie deficit. I’ve never actually counted out the Calories (I’ve never counted the actual Calories in any of my diets—I know how much protein/fat/carbs are required to do what I want to do, so those are the units I use), but I expected my precontest diet to be a bigger drop in Calories than my weight change showed.

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Justin, I have a few questions please. How important is the diet? I can stick to a diet to some degree, but I don’t want to bullshit you I may stray--from the occasional drink or drinks, to going to a restaurant, etc. Honestly, I have always been a little loose with my diet. Tell me straight up--HOW important is the diet to gaining mass?

100%, without a doubt THE most important part of gaining mass. If you don't follow the diet, you won't grow properly. ALL muscle growth is, is a conversion of amino acids from the diet into proteins (muscle) in the body. You can take all the gear in the world. You can train harder than anyone. If you don't follow a proper diet, you won't grow. I’m just curious exactly how serious I need to take the diet. I know that sounds like a stupid question, but I will see guys I know eat garbage sometimes, yet still look decent and gain size. I think the key point there is the word “sometimes.” You MAY find someone who looks decent who follows a shitty diet--but they absolutely won't look NEARLY as good as they would by following a proper diet...and the fact that they look decent is because of genetics. You won't find a top bodybuilder who doesn't eat like a bodybuilder. If you want to weigh a lot, look like a fat guy with your shirt off (but still be able to pull off the “big guy” look 44 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

with a shirt on), and have people ask you if you used to play football, then take gear, train hard, and eat like shit. If you want to look like a bodybuilder--you need to eat like one. When should I use protein shakes? How often? What type whey? Casein, blends? Never (unless you can't eat whole food protein at some time). They aren't as good as whole food. They're only to be used if you can't eat a whole food protein source. If you must have one, they're all pretty similar-a whey/casein blend is probably best, but it won't be as good as whole food protein (meat or eggs primarily) What pre-workout should I use? Any that you like. I really try to avoid pre-workout stimulants if I can. If I absolutely need something, most of the time I'll just use straight caffeine (I use no-doz caffeine tabs). What intra workout should I use? I tend to keep my intra workout supplementation rather simple these days. I’m certainly not against making it more complex, I just tend to look at things in the long term and try to take a step back and look at things from a sort of observational science approach—in other words, “what are the top guys doing?” I don’t believe there has been a top 6 Olympia competitor who has made intra workout nutrition a standard in their daily routine. 45 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

That certainly doesn’t mean that there isn’t benefit to an intra workout nutrition plan, it just means that whatever level of benefit it has, it isn’t high enough to keep the top guys from being top guys, and it isn’t enough to make non-top guys into top 6 Olympia competitors. For my intra workout nutrition, I like to make sure there are the proper amino acids to fuel muscle growth if protein synthesis occurs. In this case, that would be essential amino acids. Given the fact that the long-term size gains from even 1g of protein synthesis per hour results in hundreds of pounds of muscle growth over a decade of training, it’s clear than we’re not going to synthesis more than a few grams of new tissue in the hour or so we’re at the gym. Because of this, I tend to stick to around 10g of EAAs per workout (I get them from truenutrition.com - our discount code is "tropo," but you can get them from wherever you like The carbs can be any high molecular weight carbohydrate that you prefer. HBCDs are good, Karbolyn is good (my favorite from a taste standpoint), and waxy maize has been solid since the get-go. If you find that you digest and assimilate simple sugars without issues, then feel free to use them instead. For my post-workout meal, should I use a whey shake? No protein shakes post workout--just whole food. Going back to the idea of “1g of protein per hour is the max rate of protein synthesis you can sustain long term,” let’s look at protein powders. 46 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

A rapidly digesting source like Whey isolate or hydrolysate is going to be mostly digested in 90 minutes or so. Let’s assume we’re synthesizing new muscle at THREE TIMES the max rate we can expect to sustain long term—that means that in those 90 minutes we are using LESS THAN 5g of that protein powder for actual muscle growth. The rest is going towards other energy requirements. When you consider that, your 50g shake becomes an expensive simple sugar. How many grams of protein should I take with shakes? No shakes. If you need to have a shake because you don't have meat cooked, then that’s a different story and you do what you have to in that situation, but shakes should ALWAYS be a supplement to the base diet—and never a replacement for whole food meals. What other supplements and vitamins should I take morning or night pre/post etc. I want to cover all the useful supplements. There aren't really that many useful OTC supplements if you're using gaining muscle as the metric of what is useful. The only one I'd probably recommend for that would be berberine. The dose is: Berberine: 500mg, 3x a day. It will improve insulin sensitivity. As far as other supplements, these are all helpful for health and joint stuff--but they don't directly help with gaining muscle. 47 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

curcumin - joint health multivitamin/multimineral - overall health astragalus - kidney health As far as training, should I do one body part per day or should I split which would be the most optimum method to build more muscle? An entire book could be written on training ideas and philosophies, so I won’t go into too much detail here. I will say two primary things about training. 1: I have always preferred higher frequency, lower volume programs that focus on progressive overload and intensity modifications to make the workouts more difficult. 2: I don’t believe there has been a top 6 Mr. Olympia competitor who has utilized that type of routine as their main approach to training for the bulk of their career. Nearly every top bodybuilder seems to follow the standard “bro split” in some way or another. A notable exception that people love to mention is Dorian Yates (at least in terms of volume). My response to that is this. Go re-watch blood and guts and tell me how low volume his back workout is. He does seven different movements, each with some amount of warm up. Even if each movement only has a single warm up set and then the max set, that’s still 14 sets for the day—well within the range of “volume” that most people envision when they think of the “bro split.” *with that being said, Dorian’s style is probably the closest (along with possibly Ronnie’s style….although

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the total weekly workload is very high for Ronnie) to what I would consider the optimal training protocol. At the end of the day, most people are probably creating more stimulus for protein synthesis than their body can cover—which is why more volume doesn’t equate to more growth in nearly all cases. So, find a training routine you get excited to go to the gym for and spend the rest of your effort on improving nutrition and supplementation. Basically, I would train 5 days straight take any days off? I would split that type of routine like this: Chest Back Arms Off shoulders legs off Repeat Then start again or could I train 5 days straight and then no days off train again 5days straight? You can train 7x a week if you want--just repeat the 5day cycle every 5 days, but I don't think that's most effective for results. If it were, everyone would already be training 7x a week. People aren’t avoiding workouts because they don’t enjoy being in the gym. It’s the best part of the day for most of us.

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In my experience, 4-5x a week is the most productive. Most people enjoy training too much to only go 4x a week. I've never really seen anyone add a ton of size training 6-7x a week, although a lot of people like to do that because they enjoy being in the gym. Is this the best training for mass building? A muscle either gets bigger or smaller, so all training is essentially for mass in that aspect. This is the training routine I would have you follow whether you were trying to add size, trying to cut, getting ready for a bodybuilding contest, or anything in between other than possibly preparing for a powerlifting meet. I believe that most training is just for mass building and should be that way with a 2-3 week cruise of deloading. I agree except for the de-loading. I wouldn't plan any de-loading (I am very different than most people in this approach, so adjust this idea to your recover abilities). Your body will have shitty workouts when it's beat up. If your body is ready to hit it hard, then hit it hard. I don't plan de-loads for muscle growth. Should I do some type of cutting or light training? Focus on one thing at a time. Most of the year should be focused on building muscle without gaining fat. Since you need excess Calories to build muscle, there's almost always going to be some fat gain. When you have a contest to prepare for or feel you're too fat, 50 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

then switch gears and focus on a fat loss plan. this is a muscle building plan--which your questionnaire said was your primary focus at this time. The ultimate goal of any offseason is to supply the proper nutrients to fuel growth, but with as little fat gain as possible. That’s all it is—meat and rice—enough to fuel growth, but not so much that you gain fat, repeated day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I think that one of my main problems, which I realized a little later in lifting, is I don’t think my progressive load has increased overtime (I think I overlooked methods to achieve this). So, I think that has been holding me back as well. I know that genetics also limit people, so I get that as well, but this is why I was asking you how to work the reps and sets. Do I want to focus on my progressive load over time? Especially, at the high end of the rep range? Or only on the lower end rep range? The rep range that builds muscle is 8-15 reps for the most part. For legs and arms, going up to 15-20 reps is beneficial as well. Going to 6 reps on some sets is good on occasion. I don't believe much muscle growth occurs with sets under 6 reps (it's mostly time under load--but that's roughly the rep range that puts you in that time). You won't find a top bodybuilder who doesn't spend 90% or more of his training time in the 6-15 rep range. The only people you'll find saying that you need to train lower rep than that are people who aren't top bodybuilders (as a general rule--if you read something about bodybuilding on the internet, it's probably wrong. For one, if it worked, the person wouldn’t be giving it 51 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

away for free on the internet, and two…if it worked for them, you’d know who they were because they’d be a top bodybuilder, not some unknown guy on the internet) Lift as heavy as you can in the proper rep range and focus on getting stronger in that range. An easy approach is to focus on one main compound movement per workout. Get stronger in that movement—not by being more efficient in the movement, but by making the muscles that move the weight through the movement stronger. After that, it's still good to get stronger in the other movements, but the other movements are more focused on contracting the muscle and bringing blood flow and nutrients to the area. But don't over think things. There's a reason that bodybuilders are often known for being dumb--it's because being dumb is good for bodybuilding (no disrespect to bodybuilders—I consider myself one too). Overthinking things causes paralysis by analysis. All you need to do to get bigger is train hard, follow a bodybuilding diet, and depending on your goals, include gear (genetics does the rest). Do you have different routines for different goals? Not really. A muscle either gets bigger or it doesn't. You're either trying to build a muscle or trying to keep it from getting smaller. The same routine works in both cases.

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On the power movement how many warmups should I do? As many as you need How many total sets? As many as you need. On squats or deadlifts, it might take me 5 sets of warm ups. On a shoulder movement, it might only take 2. Should I do any warm up sets for the other movements? Not unless you feel you need them. If you're not warm after 5 warm ups and a max-out set of squats, you're never going to be warm. Also, what training methods you recommend that work for building mass getting those reps out? Drop sets? Running the rack? DC rest and pause? Stretching? Static holds? Assisted lifts? Forced reps? Heavy reps even if form is not good? etc… Whatever gets you fired up to train that day. there is no training secret other than hard work. I do straight sets most of the time. On occasion, I'll do a rest pause set. I'll do a forced rep or two every once in a while as well, but I don't count those as reps towards my PRs. Also, there is no such thing as "good form." good form is whatever works the muscle. You're not training a movement, you're working a muscle--whatever form for any movement that hits the muscle the hardest is the correct form. As far as EMG analysis shows, explosive 53 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

lifting with constant tension (the way Ronnie Coleman lifted) seems to be the best approach. Also, what percentage of weight should I be moving for all the movements to aim for the low or middle or high end of the rep range? Don't over think it--the warm ups are just to get warmed-up so that you don't tear a muscle, and so that your joints are ready for the heavy weight. If you're looking to do 6-10 reps (straight set...if you're doing DC you need to get at least 11-15 reps total) with 275, then 3 warm up sets like you have listed should work fine. If you're warmed up after 2 sets though-that's fine too. The warm ups are just to get ready for the main set. After that, there are only additional warm ups if you need them, or if you need to get a “feel” for the groove of a new movement. You're already warm and have gone to failure for the muscle--you should be ready to go right into your heaviest sets on all other exercises. Really try not to over think the training. Training is the least important aspect of building muscle. The eating does the work. As long as you're training as hard as you can, you'll build muscle pretty optimally. It's the diet that makes all the difference. Now—about gear--I would like some more detail on what I should run. I realize it can’t be medical advice, but I wish someone would be up front and talk about what works and what doesn’t without just dismissing 54 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

the whole thing. I want to know the best methods and what I should have in my arsenal to get the most benefit out of my cycles. Honestly, there are more people being up front about their use and explaining what works and what doesn’t than there has ever been in the sport. The problem is that what the “top guys” are recommending in videos, podcasts, and their member sites tends to be different than what the local internet guru is recommending. The logical way to look at this would be to realize the skinny fat dude on the internet is probably giving the wrong advice, and the top competitor giving advice on his member site is probably giving the correct advice, but people were burned by the magazines for so long that they’re hesitant to believe what they read (unless it’s from some anonymous dork on the internet—then they soak it up like gospel). It’s also partly the fact that they believe that the only possible explanation for why they don’t look like Mr. Olympia themselves is because Mr. Olympia is taking SO much more than them, so they form a mental block to believing anything else. Here’s the truth: Keep it simple. In the offseason, test and an anabolic is probably all you need. That doesn’t mean the doses have to be low, it just means that you don’t need 30 compounds and a fistful of exotic I like test and EQ. I'm attaching a little rant I wrote on gear--it explains my philosophy for the most part. All I ever ran in the offseason was test and EQ. I'd do 1-1.2g of test and 800-1000mg EQ at my peak. Most top guys are in the 2-3g of total gear per week range. Above that and 55 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

you don't really see results (you're lethargic and you can't eat. If you're too tired to train and can't eat then you can't grow...so there's no reason to take more than that. The "magic" range is usually somewhere around 2-3g of total gear per week. After that it's all GH) I literally have any gear related product you imagine and its almost all pharma grade with a few exceptions like tren or primo and even that is some of the best. If you can run high dose primo with test--that's as good as it gets in the offseason as far as I’m concerned. One of the largest bodybuilders on the planet ran this in the offseason a few years ago: 1.5g test 800mg primo 10iu GH Primo (if you can run at least 600mg long term) along with test is about as good as it gets. The risk of side effects is as low as any compound there is (other than PIP), and you’ll rarely find anyone have an issue with appetite or lethargy...so you can train your ass off, eat perfectly, and grow. Again—there is no magic cycle with gear. Everyone responds differently to different doses and protocols. The optimal dose for anyone is going to be with compounds that cause minimal side effects at doses high enough to maximize protein synthesis without negatively affecting appetite, sleep, motivation, and energy.

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I have every ancillary I have every product known to bodybuilders. From gear to GH to insulin, to Clen and T3, to appetite suppressants, to peptides, and everything in between. And like I said, almost all is pharma-grade, so I want you to know that the product and dosages will hopefully be accurate. Contest prep is when you throw the kitchen sink at it-that's when you take all the different shit. Offseason is basic. Test and an anabolic. If you have GH--add it in as high of a dose as you can. Use insulin on high days. Find the dose that maximizes the diet plan you ALREADY HAVE IN PLACE, not the dose that makes you go hypoglycemic and down a box of cereal—because that box of cereal is not all turning to muscle—it’s going to turn to fat. More isn’t better--if you take too much you go hypo and just pound sugar to keep from passing out and get fat. Find the dose that just about makes you go hypoglycemic but doesn't. That maximizes the diet--it maximizes glycogen storage and amino acid uptake As far as anti-estrogens in the offseason--stick to Nolvadex or Proviron. Nolvadex at 20mg/day or Proviron at 25-50mg/day. Proviron is also an androgenic, which is nice, but Nolvadex is the best on lipid levels. Keep Arimidex for precontest. It's horrible on the lipids and it can spike blood pressure--which is what ends up fucking bodybuilders up--the high blood pressure ruins the heart and kidneys.

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So, I want to know what cycles you recommend for mass? Basic shit. Test and an anabolic. After that, GH as high as you can/want (above 5ius a day and you'll need to manage blood sugar though--so you'll want to add at least berberine and probably metformin also). It really is that simple. Find yourself a test and anabolic injectable combination that you feel good on, can eat on, can train on, and have little to no side effects. At that point you’re at LEAST 90% of the way to maxing out the results you’ll see from gear. At that point, get your diet and training to 90%--and if you think they’re both at 90% already, you’re wrong, or you wouldn’t be asking about cycles for mass. Most people hit 90% or more on their max gear benefits pretty early—and they’re usually less than 80% on training, and often less than 50% on diet. Then they worry about dialing in that last 10% of the gear use without taking the time to truly appreciate the fact that they still have 70% or more to improve on their diet and training. Get diet, training, and gear to 90% and you’ll find yourself worrying FAR less about what cycles are the best….mostly because you’ll be too busy making huge leaps in size year after year. Do you run gear in a different fashion during a contest prep?

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Pre-contest sees most people add more compounds-but there are multiple reasons for that. The pre-contest period has more boundary conditions. You’re no longer free to adjust diet without limit. You’re stuck with the condition that you must eat less calories than you burn—so things like androgen to estrogen ratios become more important. Body composition changes due to increasing androgen levels become a bigger player, and the idea that you don’t want to minimize appetite goes out the window. In contest prep, you're not going to grow, but you want a high androgen levels and low estrogen levels in order to maximize the body composition changes from the calorie deficit. And in the later stages of contest prep, you’re actually looking for products that will reduce appetite. Because of this, the fine tuning of your cycle and compound choices become a bigger player—which is why most people end up running a larger variety of compounds. What compounds do you love and what has worked great for you over the years? Test and EQ with GH, that's my favorite. Not everyone agrees with that though—and a lot of people will tell you that EQ isn’t worth much in the offseason, which is why everyone needs to find the compounds that give the greatest benefit to risk ratio for them. I’ve never ran high dose primo in place of the EQ, but everyone I've seen who has legit primo seems to grow great with primobolan as their base anabolic.

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What products you think are not useful in any way to even bother. Orals are hard on the liver and can spike blood pressure. Blood pressure is what kills bodybuilders. I’m not a fan of using orals outside of contest prep or meet prep for powerlifters. I just don’t think the risk/benefit ratio is good enough to run them outside of those situations.

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Justin, In an interview I watched, you said you were getting close to 300lbs. How did you keep increase size and weight with lean mass at that level to keep creeping up in size?

I got stronger and ate more meat and rice. My gear didn't change. It was test and EQ…same as it has been since 2003. I just changed my nutrition from trying to stay relatively lean year-round to a diet focused on adding size. Again, I’m not saying that gear isn’t important or that guys aren’t using what most would consider “large doses.” I’m just saying that there isn’t a magic cycle, and there isn’t a 1:1 correlation between dose and size. The difference between me at 260lbs and me at 300lbs is nothing more than a difference in food intake. Seriously--that's all there is to this sport. It's all food. Gear isn’t magic…well, compared to no gear it’s magic, but it’s not some alchemy project that can turn air into protein structures. Steroids increase nitrogen retention and allow for a greater rate of protein synthesis, but they don’t create the protein—protein, the stuff that actually turns into muscle in the body, still has to come from the diet. Gear is like the engine of a car. A more powerful engine can accelerate faster—but it still needs the fuel and the fuel delivery system. A good engine will let you convert more fuel to mechanical energy faster, but it’s still the 61 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

fuel and how well the fuel delivery system is designed (the macro nutrient structure) that lets the engine do its thing. The most elaborate cycles I've seen are always from local guys. Every pro I've ever worked with has ran boring basic shit in the offseason. They almost always seem to run simple protocols of somewhat high doses of 2-3 products with GH. Now, you’ll tend to see more compounds and more of the “exotic” products introduced in a pre-contest cycle, but even then, the craziest pre-contest cycles are always from the small local guys. The pros just stick to basic shit there either. I've never seen a pro run MENT (or whatever that is), peptides (most pros couldn't even name a peptide other than maybe IGF1), SARMs (I’m sure they try some when they get it for free, but I don’t see many people paying money for it), or any other of the weird ass exotic shit I see people online talk about. Ever pro or top amateur I've worked with runs the basic shit--the most effective gear is already known--the new shit is just elaborate filler. It's adding a deck chair to the titanic...you’re not going to notice a difference. If you don’t agree with that—look at the progress of the sport of bodybuilding. 1960s-1980s – steroids at mild doses  There was a certain size and look that competitors were limited to 1980s-early 1990s – higher doses of steroids  Size and conditioning of bodybuilders improved dramatically Early 1990s – GH comes into play 62 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy



Size and conditioning improved dramatically (1993 Dorian Yates) Mid-Late 1990s – Insulin and higher dose GH  Size improved dramatically (Ronnie Coleman) 2000s-2010s – Peptides and SARMs come into play  Is there a leap in progress over the days of Ronnie and Jay? In EACH of those time frames, something new was introduced to the sport in terms of supplements. And in each of those segments, the physiques progressed DRAMATICALLY in size…..EXCEPT for the introduction of peptides and SARMs. Look at the top 6 of the Mr. Olympia from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Has there been a noticeable improvement in physique? If the physiques haven’t improved with the introduction of those new compounds—I don’t see how can we expect them to improve our physiques to any dramatic effect.

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Justin, What are your thoughts on grass-fed butter? I’d like to use that as a fat source. It’s better than regular butter, right.

I’m not a huge fan of grass fed butter, or any type of butter, or really of high fats in general to be honest. I’ve always found lower fat approaches to be easier to make the proper physique changes in bodybuilding. Now--that’s for bodybuilding, where physical appearance is the goal and any health benefits (although far too often it’s negative health effects) are a side benefit and not the primary intent of the diet. With that being said, grass-fed butter is probably better than regular butter for general/overall health–and that’s because it contains more of a few “good” nutrients like vitamin E and CLA. However, in any first world country, a lack of nutrients (good or bad) is rarely a concern or issue. We die from over nutrition, not from a lack of any particular nutrient. Long story short, I put grass-fed butter in the list of added fats in my diets. I consider it better than regular butter, but not as good as other forms of added fats like nuts, avocado, or some nut butters. In the end, it’s splitting hairs. If a particular meal calls for 15g of added fat, whether that fat comes from grass-fed butter, avocado, or probably even regular butter won’t have much impact in your physique--aside from some 64 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

possible potential for reduced long term health risk if choosing grass-fed butter over regular butter. Is that ambiguous enough? lol What I’m trying to say is that it’s a healthier choice than regular butter, but as far as physique is concerned, it probably doesn’t make a noticeable difference as long as you include the correct amounts to meet your Calorie and macronutrient profiles in that meal

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Justin, I won’t bore you to death or make your eyes bleed by listing all the experiences, programs and diets I have done in the past, but I think a few things are important: (1) I’m 34, 5’11 303lbs. I’d like to get below 250 at some point. Then eventually stay under 225 for long term. (2) The current diet I was given is really just lean meat, vegetables, some dairy and a 150 gram carb meal once a week. No set macros or Calories. (3) So, the “success” I’ve really had with this diet is just eating healthy foods haha.

Honestly, it sounds like you were given a rather solid diet given your starting conditions. I wouldn't worry too much about any crazy specific diet until you were in the 12% body fat range. I would focus on a few select foods and eating them until you're satisfied until your body reaches a point where progress stalls. Most people can eat lean proteins, green vegetables, and complex carbs as much as they want, and the taste/hunger hormone levels tend to cause you to eat below Calorie output until you get into a body fat range where hunger hormones start elevating. I'm not going to argue against anything your coach says about carbs, but I wouldn't worry about minimizing carbs until you get to that point either.

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Carbs don't make you fat--Calories above what you burn do. There's no magical macronutrient that can violate the laws of physics and create energy on its own (thermodynamics). I would try to find a base meal plan of something like 6oz lean meat  

1 cup rice or 10oz potatoes 1-2 tablespoons guacamole or 1/2 avocado

Make a ton of those meals and eat one whenever you're hungry--but don't eat anything else. Once a week have a cheat meal. It might sound boring, but it's only been a luxury of the last 100 or so years where that isn't how people were forced to eat. We've become so weak minded that we can't go a few meals of the same bland food without losing our minds, when our ancestors went decades eating ONLY the small variety of foods that were available locally...and which depended on the season. Our ancestors ate whatever meat they killed or raised, combined with whatever basic grains they had around...potatoes, maybe oats, or other grains they could pick up at the local store after half a day's wagon ride into town. If they were lucky, they’d get to add some wild berries in the summer, but that's it.

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People lose their mind at the idea of eating the same food every meal, but for some reason the fact that they eat the exact same breakfast every single day doesn't seem odd to them....a lot of people do the same with lunch too....so they already eat the same breakfast, get the same sandwich and whatever the wife packs for lunch....so is it really that hard of a leap to go one step forward and just eat the same (from a small variety of meats and grains) thing at dinner as well?

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Justin, I have a couple of questions if you don’t mind: Current Situation (1) I have very limited time to train throughout the weekdays. My wife is a teacher and I work 2nd shift as a distribution center supervisor. I hand off our 3 kids (5, 2 and 10 months) to her in the parking lot of her school before I take off to work. We do this to avoid daycare for the kids. My oldest son goes to preschool from 12:30-3pm so I have a window of time to train after we drive home from dropping him off. If I can’t train then, I have to do it after work around 1am.

Training doesn't burn fat—or at least it fat burning shouldn’t be the primary goal of it. Training increases performance/strength and creates a stimulus to create new muscle mass--how you look is all diet. If you don’t agree with this, then all you need to do is look at any type of strength/performance activity to see people who are incredibly strong, but don’t look like bodybuilders. If you’re talking about short term changes (less than a year), then weight training might actually be the least effective thing in changing how you look. Certainly far below diet. You can kill yourself in a 2-hour workout and burn 800 Calories....and then get a meal from Wendy's for 1200 Calories and ruin that entire 2-hour workout plus the first hour of the next workout. 69 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Body fat levels are all food. I've had clients win actual bodybuilding contests without working out. This is a true statement—a client in the mid-2000s competed as a light heavyweight and won his class without lifting a weight for the entirety of his contest prep. This was a person who typically competed as a heavyweight, so there was a definite loss in muscle mass—but his conditioning won him the show). (2) My job from 3:30pm-12:30am is not physically demanding at all. I basically make sure the building doesn’t burn down. I could walk around for 8 hours a day if I wanted to. Try to be more physically active, but you can't out work a poor diet. Walking for an hour might burn 200 Calories. You can eat 200 Calories in a single bite depending on the food source. Another stat that often puts it into perspective is this: the average person burns 40 Calories per 1,000 steps. (3) I did a “if it fits in your macros diet” recently for 12 weeks and I lost 2 lbs. Daily macros were 210g protein, 65g fat, 315g carbs. I ate tons of bread and rice and it makes me super gassy, so towards the end, I drank a bunch of Gatorade and ate sugary candy (at their recommendation) to hit the carbs number. In that case, the diet was too high in Calories. It’s as simple as that. As far as forcing Gatorade down in order to hit your macros—that should be a clear sign that it’s more 70 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Calories than you need. The simplest approach is to stick to basic whole food sources. They provide the most satiety and least Calorie density. They don’t have an enormous amount of taste benefit either. They don’t have to taste bad, but it’s easy to “think” you’re hungry when you’re about to eat a brownie. You’re only going to think you’re hungry if you really are hungry if that brownie is replaced with chicken and broccoli. If you're not hungry, don't eat If you're hungry—eat but eat from a basic food list. People "crave" junk. That's different than being hungry. Take a starving kid and give him a raw potato and he'll devour it. If you're not that kind of hungry, you're just craving tasty food. If you are that kind of hungry, then you'll devour your chicken and rice meal. If you're not hungry enough for that boring meal, then don't eat--because eventually you will be hungry enough. Goals: (1) If I can’t do it all through diet, I want to learn about supplements that can help me gain muscle. I realize that pretty much any diet can help me get from 300 to 270 at this point, but I want everything to focus around training. I need to make this my “hobby” again.

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ONLY food can build muscle. Muscle is created by amino acids in the diet. There needs to be a stimulus for those amino acids to form new proteins at the muscle cell, but you can create as much stimulus as you want—it's only the food that can create the new muscle. And another fact that most people don’t consider is that protein synthesis is often actually higher after a meal than it is after training. Simply eating food triggers a stimulus for protein synthesis for about 1.5 hours following the meal. Training builds strength and performance. Food builds muscle. (2) In the past when I have started a low carb diet or Anabolic Diet, I feel great but eventually get off track with the convenience and lack of food prep. Exactly--which is why those diets can never be long term life changes. What can be a life-long change is learning to eat lean meats, green vegetables, and complex grains when you're hungry. Every meal I eat tastes good to me. I look forward to every meal, but it's always a lean meat source and a rice source, possibly with the addition of vegetables and maybe guacamole or avocado....so it tastes good, and when I'm hungry, I devour it. But if I'm craving something just for taste and I'm not actually hungry, it's not going to be that meal that I want.

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(3) Even though I’m very heavy, I’ve never had any physical limitations, which is kind of weird. I’ve always been able to walk long distances, hiking on vacations, run sprints, do metabolic workouts, shovel snow, work on house projects etc. I have written a high-volume plan for myself along with a conditioning plan that covers 7 days per week that I intend to use. Again, physique and performance are not a 1:1 correlation. Look at any NFL defensive Lineman or look at a heavyweight MMA fighter (Daniel Cormier for example), or any Olympic lifter, or just about any sport outside of sprint-based sports/events, and you'll see very quickly that there is a difference between body composition and performance. Being lean does not mean you're an athlete. It just means that you don't eat enough Calories to get fat. Training builds strength and performance. Food dictates your body composition and how you look. Training dictates your performance improvements. The body composition I have now is a result of horrible eating, and a sedentary lifestyle and shitty mindset. I know you never recommend someone going full bore at a Diet, but I’m ready to make a change. Last night after work I re-watched your video clips with Dave Tate at Elitefts a few years ago where you talked about protein, cardio, overthinking training, etc.

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Don't over think things. Pick a lean meat source (chicken, 96/4 ground beef, flank steak, round steak, turkey breast, egg whites) pick a lean carb source (rice, potatoes) Pick a green vegetable source Maybe add guacamole or avocado (fats are 9 Calories per gram where carbs and protein are 4, so you can EASILY double your Calorie count from a small amount of guacamole....so if you're not good at gauging that stuff, I'd just avoid the fats). When you’re hungry, at a meal consisting of those sources. When you’re full, stop until you’re hungry again. The food sources are important though—they need to be high in satiety and low in Calorie density. For example, I wouldn’t recommend including nuts-they're too high Calories. A small package of nuts is as many Calories as 3 snickers bars. For some reason overweight people have this odd love affair with nuts. “They’re high in protein!” “They’re a great healthy snack!” No—they’re not high in protein. There are almost 4.5 TIMES as many Calories from FAT as there are from protein. They’re high fat, high Calorie, and low in satiety. That’s really a show of how brilliant the proper marketing campaign can be. One doesn’t have to look far to find a very overweight 74 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

person discussing with another overweight person about the healthiness of nuts. Conversely, one doesn’t have to look far to find another set of overweight people talking about how fruit is “pure sugar.” Or course, neither set of overweight people takes the time to look at their snack size bag of peanuts and realize that there are 700 Calories (compared to around 200 Calories in a Snicker’s bar). And of course, no one takes the time realize that there isn’t a single episode of “My 600 pound life” where the main character struggles with the fact that they “just can’t stop eating oranges!” I have been selected to do a Ted Talk in Columbus, so it would be neat to see how much of a transformation I could make between now and then. Cook a ton of lean meat cook a ton of rice (get a big box of minute rice...boil 9.5 cups of water, pour the rice in, stir, and then let it sit while covered--you'll have 18 cups of rice in 10 minutes) Whenever you're hungry eat a meat and rice meal until you're not hungry. If you don't want a meat and rice meal, then you're not hungry yet--you just want the taste of good food. Use as much salt/seasoning as you want--but no sauces unless they're Calorie free. That’s really all you need to do (you just need to continue to do it every day and year after year). Companies sell garbage and fad diets to people who don't know any better, but you can watch ENDLESS 75 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

numbers of YouTube videos of "a day in the life" of whichever fitness celebrity you want. In those videos, there’s a few things you’ll notice: You won't see an "Atkins bar" You won't see packaged “low fat” snacks. You won’t see “reduced Calorie” treats. You won't see weird ass fat diets, fad drinks, or any supplement (outside of the brand they're sponsored by as they pretend to drink it). You WILL see them eat lean meats, leafy vegetables, and complex carb sources like rice and potatoes--over and over and over and over and over and over and over. When you get below about 8-10% body fat (where you'll already be considered "ripped" to everyone in the world), then it becomes important to fine tune things-but you never need to fine tune things until then, and if you haven't already eaten chicken and rice for several thousand meals in a row, then there's nothing to fine tune

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Justin, I’ve recently been doing a lot of thinking about my health and am curious about my kidney function. I’ve been going through some of my past blood work and I’ve noticed my BUN is usually top of the range and recently it was over the range @ 25. Creatinine was 1.17 and GFR non-AA was 84. The highest my creatinine has been was 1.3. My numbers aren’t bad but from research I’ve done, my GFR isn’t great. I have just started my first cycle and now I’m wondering if I should continue. Any help would be appreciated.

GFR is not bad at all if you carry a decent amount of muscle mass. The GFR is a calculation assumes a certain level of muscle mass (the reason the AA and non-AA numbers are different is because the AA calculation assumes a higher natural muscle mass in that population). Anything above 60 is generally considered normal function (partly because of the guesswork involved in the calculation). If a reading below 60 is found, a doctor may request a 24-hour clearance test, where they directly calculate the filtration rate of the kidneys over a 24-hour period. As reference, I once had a large bodybuilder come to me in a panic after being diagnosed with stage 3 kidney failure and a GFR of 36 by his primary care physician. He went to a nephrologist where a clearance test was given and his true GFR was found to be 135. Now, this doesn’t mean that the GFR of 36 isn’t concerning—and he was referred to a nephrologist who is currently tracking his kidney function—it just shows 77 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

how far that calculation was off from his true GFR given his very large amount of muscle mass. To anyone reading, PLEASE do not assume your low GFR reading is automatically wrong because you have some amount of muscle--It’s just an example of how extreme levels of muscle mass can throw off the equation used to measure GFR. Any abnormal reading should be a wake-up call to take better care of yourself, but if you’re holding a lot of size and seeing a non-AA of 84, it’s unlikely that you’re in any state of renal disease. Your BUN being high is likely related to a high protein diet. High protein intake will lead to high nitrogen levels in the blood, which is what BUN measures. If you’re in an anabolic state (synthesizing new muscle tissue), it will lower your BUN (in a normal protein intake, a low BUN is a sign of anabolism). If protein in the diet is too high, then even if you’re actively synthesizing new muscle, your BUN will still be high. This goes back to the articles/videos where we’ve talked about how we can only really use a small portion of the protein we eat per day to actually build new muscle tissue, and the rest is used for other energy purposes (most of it being converted to glucose and used as a carbohydrate most likely). The creatinine is a better indicator of kidney disease in someone with a high protein diet (high BUN from a high protein diet, with a normal GFR and normal creatinine is probably nothing to worry about…but if creatinine is 78 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

high, GFR is low, then a high BUN becomes another strain on an already overworked renal system). Most blood tests consider somewhere between 1.2mg/dL and 1.4/1.5mg/dL (106-132 µmol/L) as the upper limit of normal for creatinine. If you’re under 1.2, then a doctor probably isn’t going to do anything about it other than monitor it for increases in the future. long story short: Your kidney function seems pretty decent. Most places won’t give an exact GFR number if it’s over 60 (it’ll just list >60). Since your GFR is in the 80s, your kidneys appear to be filtering fine Your BUN is most likely high from protein intake Your creatinine isn’t high--especially if you're carrying a lot of muscle mass. A fun fact about BUN that people don’t ever seem to make note of when posting their blood work is that BUN is a sign of anabolism. A low BUN is a medical signal for the patient being anabolic.

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Justin, I heard you say that you would only supplement with GDAs if A1c was elevated or if the person were using products that reduced insulin sensitivity (like higher dose GH). Why?

If blood glucose (bg) is normal, then think about what you’re doing--you’re increasing insulin sensitivity on a normally functioning system. You can’t increase it until you go hypo....because your body isn’t going to just let you lapse into a coma and die. So, you’re artificially lowering bg...which the body is then forced to fix by increasing bg back to a normal range. All you’re doing at that point is teaching the body to deplete liver/muscle glycogen when your whole goal is to do the opposite. This whole sport has a 1-dimensional view of things...the more is better view. Things are more involved than that though. Look at gear. Everyone things more is better. If that’s the case, then wouldn’t at least SOMEONE have tried that by now? The idea isn’t complex...it’s the first thing people thing when they think about gear. So if more is always better...then why isn’t me Olympia just a contest of who was born into wealth? ...because there are more factors. After a point, high doses have increasing side effects. When you get to 80 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

doses where your appetite is dead, you have test flu, you’re so lethargic that you can’t train, etc etc....you clearly aren’t benefiting. If you can’t eat, can’t train, and are eating muscle tissue with permanent flu symptoms...then you’re not improving. It’s like that with everything. If 3 sets is good, is 300 sets better? With anything in this sport, take whatever thought you have to infinity....if this dose works, what happens if i double it? Triple it? Do 100x the dose? You’ll see that clear issues develop...and that helps you paint a logical framework of when benefits start to taper. Once you do that, you’ll start seeing why some guys are succeeding and others aren’t...and you’ll see that the ones who aren’t are the ones stuck in the 1-dimensional thought process in too many areas of the sport

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Science

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High Molecular Weight Carbohydrates

It has been standard practice for many years for serious athletes to consume a high-carbohydrate meal following intense exercise. As time has gone on, this post-exercise meal has been scrutinized and analyzed to make sure that the correct type of carbohydrates are consumed to maximize the replacement of glycogen lost during exercise. Following exercise-induced depletion of glycogen stores, levels of the enzyme glycogen synthetase become elevated. This very important metabolic enzyme enables the body to replace lost muscle and liver glycogen. Typical rates of glycogen re-synthesis after short term, high-intensity exercise (i.e. weightlifting) are much higher than glycogen resynthesis rates following prolonged, lower intensity exercise.

“glycogen synthesis rates are higher following short term, high-intensity exercise than during long term, low intensity exercise.”

This is largely due to the fact that fast twitch muscle fibers, which are the predominantly used during short 83 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

term, high intensity exercise, have a higher level of glycogen synthetase activity than slow-twitch fibers. (4) What this means is that the body has a greater need (and a greater ability) to restore depleted glycogen stores following short term, high intensity training.

Carbohydrate Supplementation Studies show that delaying the ingestion of a carbohydrate supplement post-exercise results in a reduced rate of muscle glycogen storage. (3) Because of this fact, it's common to ingest a sugary carbohydrate source following exercise.

“A lack of carbohydrates post exercise results in reduced storage of muscle glycogen.”

The Glycemic Index (GI) gives a number to carbohydrates based on how quickly they enter the blood stream. The higher the GI, the quicker it will enter the bloodstream and raise insulin levels. The highest GI food is glucose, with a score of 100. One particular form of glucose (D-glucose, aka Dextrose) quickly became the post-workout carbohydrate of choice based on the speed with which it enters the bloodstream and raises insulin levels. It's important to understand that not all 84 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

sugars are created equal. For example, fructose (or fruit sugar) rapidly restores liver glycogen levels at the expense of muscle glycogen stores. The bottom line is that it's important to ingest quick-acting carbohydrates to begin the repair and rebuilding process.

What if there was a way to improve this practice? High Molecular Weight Carbohydrates Recently, a new player has emerged in the postworkout carbohydrate war: High molecular weight carbohydrates. High molecular weight carbohydrates (HMW) have shown great promise in providing a wide range of post-workout benefits. The words most often thrown around when talking about HMW carbohydrates are "gastric emptying" and "osmolality." These terms essentially go hand in hand with each other. Osmolality, often confused with osmolarity, affects the transport of water and other solutes over the cell membranes. (10) Osmolality is related to the specific osmolality of the blood, which is 280-303 mOsm/kg in humans. A solute that has the same osmolality of blood is said to be isotonic while a solute that has a lower osmolality than blood is hypotonic. The more hypotonic a solution is, the quicker it passes through the stomach into the small intestine where the bulk of nutrient uptake occurs. (11) A very

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low osmolality means the solution will get to your muscles with great speed and efficiency. The higher the molecular weight of a carbohydrate, the lower its osmolality. The lower the molecular weight of a carbohydrate, the higher its osmolality. Therefore, a carbohydrate's molecular weight varies inversely to its osmolality. Knowing this, you can begin to appreciate the difference between HMW carbohydrates and dextrose. The molecular weight of the typical HMW carbohydrate that is marketed today has a molecular weight of 500,000-700,000; whereas, the molecular weight of dextrose is approximately 180. (11) This statistic helps quantify the difference between the two carbohydrate sources. The osmolality of a particular HMW carbohydrate is 11 mOsm/kg in a 5% solution, which is considerably lower than the osmolality of blood at 300 mOsm/kg. With an osmolality that low, the HMW carbohydrate is extremely hypotonic, and we know that the more hypotonic a solution is, the quicker it passes through the stomach into the small intestine. (11) This means that in the world of carbohydrates, the HMW carbohydrate is a Ferrari Enzo, and dextrose is your mother's Buick Skylark.

“In fact, one popular HMW carbohydrate drink has been shown to pass through the stomach 80% faster than dextrose, allowing restoration of glycogen 70% faster than any other carbohydrate. (13) How would you like 86 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

to like to start rebuilding muscle 70% sooner than you already are after a workout?”

One study, in particular showed that the mean glycogen synthesis rate was significantly higher for a HMW carbohydrate drink compared to a glucose drink for 2 whole hours after ingestion. The scientists in the study concluded that "the osmolality of the carbohydrate drink may influence the rate of re-synthesis of glycogen in muscle after its depletion by exercise."(6) In essence, the scientists are saying that HMW carbohydrate will get to your muscles significantly faster than whatever carbohydrate you're currently using." Another study that observed glycogen synthesis rates in rats following starvation showed that HMW glycogen was initially synthesized at a faster rate than low molecular weight glycogen. (8) However, blood sugar and insulin levels were not statistically different between the HMW carbohydrate and the glucose solution. What this means is that despite being a complex carbohydrate, the HMW carbohydrate still raised insulin levels to about the same level as dextrose. We're dealing with a complex carbohydrate that powers through the stomach, causing no bloating, and reaches the blood stream as fast as dextrose; yet, it restores glycogen 70% faster.

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Does it sound too good to be true? It gets better. The osmolality of HMW carbohydrates can potentially speed up the rate of glycogen synthesis post-workout, as well as increase the uptake of whatever vital nutrients are added to the HMW carbohydrate drink. That's right, all the "stuff" you've been ingesting after your workout, in the hopes of getting it to the muscle as quickly as possible, can be sucked up right along with the HMW carbohydrate, faster than ever before.

“A HMW carbohydrate can actually improve the uptake of the OTHER nutrients it is consumed with as well”

The only problem is that amino-based nutrients such as whey protein, amino acids, and creatine all have a much lower molecular weight than the HMW carbohydrate; therefore, when adding other nutrients into the drink mix, you must consider the effect they will have on the total molecular weight of the solution. In theory, too much protein, creatine, and other nutrients will reduce the effectiveness-specifically the speed--of the HMW drink.

For this very reason, it's my belief that added aminobased nutrients should be kept to a minimum during 88 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

ingestion of a HMW carbohydrate drink. My post workout recommendation for a 200 lb bodybuilder would be 75g of a HMW carbohydrate mixed with 5g creatine, 8g L-leucine, and 5-10g of BCAA's. This meal should be followed, approximately 15-30 minutes later, with a meal containing protein and complex carbohydrates; preferably a fast-digesting liquid protein such as a whey isolate, and some complex carbohydrates. If you understand the composition of muscle, you'll see that there's much more to it than just contractile tissue. Don't forget the water, stored glycogen, minerals, blood vessels, and capillaries. By employing HMW carbohydrate powders, carbohydrate reserves can be quickly replenished, along with water and any other cell volumizing nutrients you consume along with it. Remember, faster glycogen restoration decreases catabolism and increases the rate of protein synthesis. And as an additional cosmetic benefit, the extra glycogen and water will create full, round-bellied, muscles that will be the envy of all your bodybuilding friends!

89 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Marijuana and Bodybuilding

I wrote a research paper about cannabis my freshman year at the University of Memphis, where I first started studying marijuana. Regardless of political orientation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny cannabis as an effective drug to treat multiple diseases certain individuals. There are a few publications from PubMed that could make a case for marijuana aiding bodybuilders and others to improve appetite, fasted insulin levels, lower insulin resistance, a smaller waist circumference and lower inflammation markers that can help reduce diabetes and potentially other diseases.

The first study was published in 2013 and was the first study to investigate the relationship between marijuana use and fasting insulin, glucose, and insulin resistance. The study consisted of 4,657 adult men and women, 579 being current marijuana users and 1,975 were previous users. Participants use was assessed by selfreport in a private room. Participants provided blood samples in the morning after a 9 hour fast. In the multivariable adjusted models, current marijuana use was associated with 16% lower fasted insulin levels and 17% lower HOMA-IR. HOMA-IR is the method used for assessing B-cell function and insulin resistance from fasting glucose and insulin or C-peptide concentrations (2). The study also found significant associations between marijuana use and smaller waist circumferences (3). 90 Property of Troponin Nutrition – Do Not Copy

Another study I found interesting was published in 2012 and its objective was to determine the association between diabetes mellitus and marijuana use. The total sample was 10,896 adults put into 4 groups, nonmarijuana smokers, past, light, heavy, and current marijuana users. The prevalence of elevated C reactive protein (>0.5 mg/dl) was significantly higher (p