It’s almost a universal goal, but one that is rarely achieved. Why?

Two main reasons:

1. Not knowing what we want
2. Not planning for what we will want

With those two truths in place, failure is assured.

Avoid this common fate by taking time to assess where you are, what the differences are between this place and where you want to be, then extrapolating into the future to get ahead of the “changing desires” curve.

There are, of course, unforeseen changes we will all experience. If your air supply is suddenly cut off, getting approved for a mortgage takes a back seat rather quickly. Being flexible will come in handy, but that is no reason not to have a plan.

What I’m about to say may strike you as ridiculous, weak, or even revolting. If so, then please keep reading. Shelve your anger and keep an open mind. You future self will thank us both.

There’s More to Life Than Your Deadlift PR

As a lifelong active person (and “exerciser” for the past 22 years) I have chased my fair share of performance milestones. None of them ever changed my life the way I hoped (believed?) they would.

I know people who hold world records, national records, and so on. The same goes for them. They put the bar down after that lift and they are still the same person they were before. Same problems, same house, same car, same list of other things they haven’t done yet that won’t really change anything for them either.

Not that goals are pointless. Goals are fine and, for a few and in certain circumstances, required, but they are always transient. When your needs change, which they will, your goals change. Having a vision, on the other hand, can keep you on track for a lifetime.

Life is a string of events. The density and frequency of events you deem “positive” in that string is going to determine how satisfied you are with your life. Goal setting stretches out the distance between the high points, leaving you feeling like you always want something more, that you are never satisfied. Vision allows you to enjoy the journey.

You’re Not Impressing Anyone

As I get older (and hopefully wiser), my perspective on life and training has expanded to include much more than “right now.” I’ve adjusted my training toward longevity and away from aesthetics, “performance” (whatever that means), or impressing anyone, myself included.

Please don’t take this the wrong way. I am not saying that you are training incorrectly, that you shouldn’t do what you love doing, or that going hard is a bad idea. I am far from proposing that you go easy all the time.

I am bringing up the idea that training for the moment should be balanced with training for the future, for health and longevity, that both short- and long-term goals deserve consideration. And, by the way, no one cares what you can lift.

Training For Health

What does training for health look like, and how does it differ from going to the gym three to five times a week for an hour?

If you’ve been following along for the last eight weeks, you already know how bad a desk job is for your health and how little an hour of working out does to alleviate that harm.

The desk workouts are the answer to that problem. They get you moving consistently throughout the day and combat that health degredation.

Any training you do for performance is up to you, and encouraged as long as you remain uninjured. Add in this training program if you work a sedentary job, drive everywhere, or otherwise spend lots of time sitting but still want a long, healthy life.

Weeks 9-12: Adding in Strength Work

The key to countering the negative effects of long intervals of sitting is simple – shorten those intervals. To accomplish this while also getting stronger, we’re taking the “greasing the groove” technique to work with us.

Choose three to five movements that require little or no equipment. Each minute for three to five minutes do a set of one of the exercises you chose, stopping well short of failure. Use absolutely perfect form. Stop before your form is compromised.

Once your set is done, walk or stretch for the remainder of the minute. Then, move on to the next exercise on your list. Do this once each hour that you spend sitting.

While most offices would disapprove of bringing a barbell to work, there are numerous strength training tools that are easy to stow under your desk, in a closet, or in the corner. My favorites are kettlebells and sandbags, but club bells, bands, medicine balls, and dumbbells are some other fine options.

Many offices contain items that can be used to create resistance, even variable resistance.

Water bottles:

• Bear hug squats
• Bent over rows
• Suitcase deadlifts
• Single leg deadlifts
• Shouldering
• Overhead press
• Farmer’s carry

Reams or cases of printer paper:

• Bear hug squats
• Two arm bent over row
• Twisting reverse lunge to high pull
• Twisting reverse lunge to press (start with the resistance in the racked position)
• Lumbar carry
• Shouldered squats

I’m sure you get the idea. Neither the list of objects nor the list of exercises is exhaustive. Use your imagination.

In case none of the above are possible, you still have an incredible training tool with you all the time – your own bodyweight. There are so many fantastic movements you can do to strengthen and mobilize with no equipment at all.

Some of the basics:

• Squats
• Lunges
• Jumps
• Running
• Push ups
• Crawls
• Backbends and bridges
• Supermans
• V ups
• Kneeling and half-kneeling

For the next four weeks of this twelve week cycle of desk workouts, your assignment is to do at least four rounds as described above. Start as slowly as you need to, perhaps with three easier exercises with light loading.

Each day or week, as possible based on how your body feels, add another exercise (and therefore another minute of work each round), a little more weight, or even a rep or two to the exercises you’ve been doing.

It might look like this:

Monday

1. Push ups, 9 reps, round out the minute with walking and upper body stretches
2. Body weight squats, 27 reps, round out the minute (not much time!) with forearm stretches
3. One arm kettlebell rows, 20kg, 7 reps per arm, round out the minute with walking and gentle neck stretches

Tuesday

1. Two handed crush grip overhead press, 20kg kettlebell, 11 reps, round out the minute with chest opening stretches
2. Reverse lunges, 15 reps per leg (used the entire minute)
3. Walk for one minute

Wednesday

1. Band resisted seated rows, 12 reps, round out the minute moving from plank to down facing dog
2. Push ups, 11 reps, round out the minute with walking and upper body stretches
3. Body weight squats, 30 reps, round out the minute with a standing forward fold

Thursday

1. Feeling sore and stiff, walking for 5 minutes each hour is fine for today. Include some stretching from phase 1 while walking.

Friday

1. Two handed crush grip overhead press, 20kg kettlebell, 13 reps, round out the minute with chest opening stretches
2. Weighted reverse lunges, 15 reps per leg (used the entire minute)
3. One arm kettlebell rows, 20kg, 9 reps per arm, round out the minute with walking and gentle neck stretches

Saturday and Sunday: Keep active! Instead of sitting watching TV all weekend, use the time to move and enjoy your super functional, healthy body.

The following week, try adding another exercise to one or two of the days. Take a rest when you need it, and stop adding weight, reps, or exercises when you consistently take rest days.

Shoot for four days of exercise and one walking-only day per week. If you go too light, use your rest day to do a little extra, If you go too hard, take an extra rest (walking) day.

Keeping a journal is very important in this process, espcially at the beginning while you figure out the optimal intensity, volume, frequency, and progression for your body.

Click here to download this article and training program as a PDF.

If this is your first exposure to the desk workouts, check out the first eight weeks:

• Desk Workouts: Cycle 1, Weeks 1-4 – Habituation
• Desk Workouts: Cycle 1, Weeks 5-8 – Intensification

The post Having it All – Strength Gains at the Office appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Training for the “unknown and unknowable” is a popular reason to go hard in the gym these days. While it is important to be ready for whatever we can be ready for, if we use our brains and do a simple triage of what we are likely to encounter, it’s obvious that we are misallocating much our time.

Just what will a bench press personal record, clapping push ups, a big squat, or thirty kipping pull ups do for you in the thirty seconds it takes for the situation in the picture above to unfold? At least you’ll leave a pretty corpse.

What Is Best in Life?

Sometimes, distilling a situation down to the basics helps us focus.

You have two options:

1. Take care of yourself for real
2. Die young

Take an objective look at your life and your training program. Are you preparing for a long, beautiful life or will you just be a pretty, young corpse?

Life on Our Asses

You probably sleep about six to seven hours (too little), then get up early. You shower, then go sit down to eat breakfast. A few things to do – take out the trash, get the kids moving, then you climb into the car for your commute to work. Sitting again.

Once at work, you park close by and walk a few feet to your desk and sit down. You might be one of those “active people” and take the stairs. At break time, you most likely sit in the break room. Lunch time? Eat while sitting at your desk.

After work, you hit the gym and feel like a god for an hour, to ensure you’re “prepared for anything,” then sit for the drive home to sit and eat dinner before sitting to watch TV and going to bed too late, again.

You’re training for a sitting marathon.

If you haven’t already, check out the first four-week cycle: Habituation

Desk Workouts, Weeks 5-8: Intensification

For the second four-week mini-cycle, decrease frequency and volume and increase intensity. The movement sessions will be five minutes of exercise each hour instead of five minutes every 25 minutes.

Set your timer for 55 minutes, When it goes off, perform the movement of your choice for the next five minutes. Don’t try to pack every second of the five minutes full, but do move deliberately and consistently. The idea is to create regular, rhythmic muscle contractions to improve blood flow, not to work up a sweat.

READ MORE: Greasing the Groove: How to Make It Work for You

Three options for your five minute rounds for weeks 5-8:

1. A single movement you can sustain for five minutes
2. A circuit that you can sustain for five minutes
3. A “chipper” (a list of movements that you go through once) followed by walking or other easy movement for the blance of the five minutes.

Examples:

1. Walking stairs, skipping steps
2. 3 push ups, 5 lunges per leg, 5 bodyweight rows (in a doorway if you don’t have a bar or rings), 3 piked pushups, 5 bodyweight squats
3. 25 push ups, 100 body weight squats, walk stairs for the balance of the five minutes

There are myriad movements that can be effective for our purposes. The basic idea is that the work not be so difficult that it creates a need to recover much, if at all. Mix up different movements plus walking to provide stimulus without doing damage.

What we are doing is very free-form because our goal is simply to move your entire body on a regular basis. Be sure to mix upper- and lower-body movements. If there’s a movement you’ve been struggling with in your gym workouts, this could be good opportunity to work the progressions.

Here are some good choices for movements to include:

The Pistol: Everything You Need to Know to Do a Perfect Pistol

The Push Up: Pimp Your Push Up: 3 Common Mistakes and 5 Challenging Variations

Almost anything from MovNat founder and coach Erwan Le Corre:

In weeks 9-12, we’ll add fun options for externally loaded movements.

Click Here to Download a PDF of this Article

The post Beyond Longevity: A Program to Feel Great Working at a Desk appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The next four weeks can change your life, if you really want it.

Welcome to the real world. The one where nothing revolves around health and well-being, but instead around your “productivity.” The one where you slowly trade your present and future health for a paycheck.

The next four weeks can change your life, if you really want it.

Download This Program as a PDF – Click Here

Your Job Will Be the Death of You

There’s a scene in the movie Fight Club that comes to mind here. Tyler Durden pulls a late-night convenience store clerk out behind the store, points a revolver at his head, and informs him that he is going to die.

Then, Tyler asks him what he really wanted to be when he grew up. A veterinarian. Tyler lowers the pistol and gives Raymond thirty days to be on his way to achieving his dream (being a veterinarian) or he’s coming back to kill him.

Fight Club raymond k hessel from Giorgi Gavashelly on Vimeo.

That was Raymond’s wake-up call. This can be yours, if you choose to hear it.

You might be productive and healthy now, but as the days, weeks, months, and years go by, you’ll find that your body will become so decrepid that even simple tasks become a humbling challenge. Then, you will die, most likely sooner than you needed to.

Three to Five Hours a Week Is Not Enough

Study after study is revealing that health isn’t maintained by an hour at the gym three to five days a week.

Consider that hour your “pleasure workout” – do it because it’s fun, do it because it makes you look good and feel good, do it because it lets you eat dessert, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that it undoes eight hours of sitting each day.

According to this study, long periods of unbroken sitting puts you at greater risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and death, with the strongest correlation to diabetes. Fortunately, this study determined that taking short walking breaks each hour counteracts many of these negative effects.

Working a sedentary job has been equated to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of health outcomes. Sobering?

The desk workouts are not only a collection of activities to perform throughout the day, but a framework to plug them into. This enables you to maintain or even boost your work productivity while staving off damage to your health associated with sedentary work and long periods of sitting.

The Pomodoro Technique

To correspond to the five minutes per hour recommendation of the second study, we will use the Pomodoro technique to schedule our activity sessions. The Pomodoro technique is a timeboxing technique that creates artificial deadlines (increasing motivation and efficiency) and breaks up monotonous work.

You are invited to watch the short video at the Pomodoro technique link, but keep in mind that our first concern here is freeing up the necessary time, not becoming Pomodoro experts.

The Plan

You will need a timer. Whether it’s your phone, an online app, or a simple kitchen timer, it doesn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t disturb you until it’s supposed to.

We’re going to ease into this, so to start, set your timer to count down from 55 minutes. When the timer goes off, re-set it for five minutes and perform an activity for the entire five minutes. When you’re done, set it for 55 minutes again and the cycle begins anew.

Alternately, you can set an alarm for each hour, then time your five minute sessions. Whatever works for you is fine, as long as you achieve five minutes of activity per hour.

What is the Point of Five Minutes of Effort?

Here are some benefits you can expect if you follow this plan consistently:

• Consistent production of BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor – you want this)
• Improved bloodflow
• Postural benefits (and therefore reduced pain and injuries)
• Improved alertness and productivity
• Increased lifespan
• Increased sense of wellbeing

Weeks One and Two Practice and Activities

1. Sitting up straight

Your poor posture is making you weak, injury-prone, and is definitely not sexy.

2. Walking

This one should be easy, but is also the most important. For your five minute “breaks,” simply walk. Stand up straight, extend your hips, look around you, and walk.

Walk for the whole five minutes. Not only will this help to pump blood throughout your body using the rhythmic contractions of the muscles, but it will also wake up your brain.

3. Upper Body and Forearm Mobility

While you’re walking, you have a great opportunity to help yourself in other ways.

The second video shows the stretch being done with the palm against a flat surface, but we will be doubling up on our time by doing it while walking.

Three thoughts on this:

1. Performing this stretch in the air with an outstretched arm is better than not performing it all.
2. You could do it when you aren’t walking, too. Combining them just seems like efficient use of time to me.
3. Since you will be walking for five minutes, you’ll know that you had plenty of time to benefit from the stretch.

In addition to the above activities, you can add in a simple chest and shoulder opening stretch while you walk.

Clasp your hands together behind you, palm-to-palm with fingers interlaced. Work to open up the chest and shoulders, standing up nice and straight while pressing your palms together evenly. Breathe into this position.

4. Drinking Water

This one is easy, too. Aim to drink half your body weight in ounces each day. For example, a 160lb person would try for 80oz of water.

See, this whole thing won’t be that hard! Getting enough water is a basic foundation of health, just as getting enough sleep is.

5. Sleep Well, and Enough

If you are getting less than six hours, that is simply unacceptable and you might as well forget all other attempts at fitness until you’ve fixed that.

If you regularly get less than eight hours, your health and ability to recover from training is still compromised.

For more information, check out 4 Deadly Things Caused By Lack of Sleep & 2 Reasons to Get More and our extensive library of sleep-related article.

The Plan for the First Two Weeks, Bulleted Version:

• Save yourself – no one is going to do it for you.
• Sit Up Straight – or you’ll get stuck that way.
• Walk and mobilize for 5 minutes per hour that you sit.
• Drink enough water.
• Get enough sleep.

During week two, add in the following flow before lunch:

By the end of two weeks, you’ll already be healthier and begin feeling better, not to mention you’ll likely be more productive. Win-win.

Weeks Three and Four

As I wrote earlier, we are easing you into this. New habits and lasting behavioral changes take time to manifest.

If you watched the Pomodoro video, you noticed that the true Pomodoro technique uses cycles of 25 minutes of work and three to five minute breaks, not five minutes per hour. For the next two weeks, you are going to practice your new skills with this denser time table.

WAIT!!! Winslow, are you crazy? I already can’t explain why I take five minutes per hour “off.” How am I going to explain this behavior to my boss and coworkers? My suggestion? Enroll them in an outcome.

You: “Excuse me, boss, but I’d like to try something novel that could create big benefits to the office.”

Boss: “What would that be?” (Skeptical, of course.)

You: “Well, I have a well thought out plan to make myself, and eventually, the entire office, more productive, and you look like a star. How does that sound?”

I think you get the picture from here. You’ll be committed to giving this an honest effort, to preserve your boss’s and coworkers’ trust in you, and everyone benefits in one or more ways.

From the Wikipedia entry:

There are five basic steps to implementing the technique:

1. Decide on the task to be done
2. Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally 25)
3. Work on the task until the timer rings
4. Take a short break (3–5 minutes)
5. After four pomodori, take a longer break (15–30 minutes)

The key to making the Pomodoro technique work is the fact that we perform more efficiently under a deadline. By creating “artificial” deadlines (they’re all artificial, btw) twice an hour and monitoring our productivity, we get more done in less time, and are less stressed because of it.

Summing up, for weeks three and four, you will simply implement the Pomodoro technique as it was designed, filling in your “breaks” with the activities we established in the first two weeks.

Download This Program as a PDF – Click Here

The post Cheating Death: How To Thrive In a Sit-Down Work Environment appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Regardless of your food choices, from unconscious omnivore to vegan or anywhere in between, if you have a vision of yourself that is different from what you are today, you are going to have to do something differently than what you have done in the past. Are you with me so far? Okay, good. Keep reading.

Learning how to create and pursue a vision using proven tools and techniques, rather than trudging along but getting nowhere like Conan on the mill wheel, can help you achieve a new level of self-control and determination.

For Body Composition, Calories Matter

First, I’m sure you’ll agree, we need to start with a basic set of relevant facts. Just as a physicist cannot discount the law of gravity, and an economist cannot choose to ignore supply and demand, we cannot operate outside of the basic laws that govern the human body.

The painstaking process of dispelling food myths has been undertaken by others many times, and to their great peril. I will not repeat their mistakes. Instead, I will make a series of statements of fact, the understanding and internalization of which your success depends upon. Go with the positive, right?

• Calories in versus calories out is valid on some level.
• More movement means more calories expended.
• Failing to plan is planning to fail.
• Consistency is key.
• There are no shortcuts.

How much you eat does matter. To wit: If I can plainly see that eating too little has an effect, how is eating too much different? It’s a rare person who would argue that going on a three-day backwoods hike would not warrant bringing food along. Likewise, if one is not going on a grueling three-day hike, equal calories would not be required.

But, Somebody Told Me…

Some in paleo circles have put forth the notion that portion size and total calories are made irrelevant by dispensing with Neolithic foods. Still others argue that timing of calories makes all the difference. As I sit here watching Animal Planet, the bear getting ready to hibernate is having a different experience. Regardless of food type or quality, there is a relationship between caloric intake and body composition.

I don’t believe I have to defend, or remind you of, the truth of the remaining items on the list. Should you have questions about the other bullet points, please ask them in the comments.

Be a Visionary

Goal setting is nearly dead. It has been intubated, but the relatives are moving to pull the plug. I scarcely need to say more, but I will in case you are behind the times. Goals simply don’t work the way we were told they do. Goals do not inspire us. In fact, failure, even the fear of failure, to achieve milestones creates negative emotions that reduce intrinsic motivation. I don’t know about you, but I can use all the intrinsic motivation I can get.

Okay, goals are dead. What now? Try creating a vision instead. Unlike a goal, which requires you to write a plan that includes demotivating check-in points along the way and fails to inspire, a vision almost creates a plan for you and pulls you along every step of the way. Instead of telling you that you’re a failure for falling behind, the way a goal does, a vision congratulates you for another day of good behavior.

Create Your Vision

How to create a vision for yourself is the topic of another article, but I’ll get you started. A vision is built around a desired feeling or set of feelings, around fulfillment and satisfaction. Every day that you pursue your vision, you are rewarded with a bit of that satisfaction and fulfillment.

I did 300 kettlebell swings today. An actionable part of a vision of myself as a person who did 9,000 kettlebell swings in one month. Visions drive behavior, while goals demand it. Chasing a hundred-dollar bill on a windy day is a lot more fun, and more inspiring, than being told to flip burgers for twelve hours.

Now that you know why you want a vision of your success, it’s easy to create that vision. Many of the most successful people in history became successful because they relentlessly pursued a grand vision. Create your own grand vision now. Grand as in grandiose. Delusional level. With intricate detail. The more grand and detailed, the better. You are building an inspiration engine that will propel your life toward your vision. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was probably conceived in five incredible minutes.

Live Your Vision

Take a look at your vision and see how it differs from who you are today. Maybe you appear more muscular, maybe you can jump higher. Perhaps you have lower blood pressure and reduced anxiety. It can be anything you can imagine.

Let’s say that your vision of yourself is leaner and more muscular than you are now. Create a template for your nutrition that matches your vision and inspires a behavior change. I will use a simplified approach (albeit one that often works to get started) for caloric need calculation in this example. Here it is:

1. Calculate basal metabolic rate (BMR) by multiplying lean mass in pounds by twelve for women and by fifteen for men. Add to this if you have an exceptionally active job.
2. Add appropriate calories to cover workout activities.
3. Add up weekly caloric needs and divide by seven.
4. Add to, subtract from, or do not change the result according to your vision.

Here it is using actual numbers:

• Nancy’s vision is to look a certain way in a bikini. She knows that this means having a low-ish body fat percentage (BF%) as well as a decent amount of muscle mass to fill out her frame. Currently, her BF% is higher than she’d like it to be and she has less muscle than her vision of herself does. If Nancy is working with a good coach, her coach can insulate her from these numbers if she’d prefer, as they are only needed for calculations.
• Nancy currently weighs 169 pounds and carries 38% body fat. That leaves Nancy with about 105 pounds of active tissue to feed.
• 105 pounds X 12 calories per pound = 1,260 calories
• Nancy trains 4 times per week, expending about 360 calories each time she trains.
• 1,260 X 7 + 360 X 4 = 10,260 / 7 = 1,466 calories per day
• Since Nancy wants to add muscle and lose fat at the same time, we’re going to leave her calories right there for the first month, then reevaluate.

A variety of methods are useful for tracking caloric intake. Weighing and measuring is a tried-and-trued method for driving oneself crazy, but is effective and useful if you have no baseline at all for what a cup or a pound or a tablespoon of something looks like. It gets old fast, though, and can also trigger negative feelings, emotions, and behaviors in people with a history of eating disorder.

Nancy is going to log her food for two weeks and bring her eating behaviors in line with her vision. When done this way, it is far more natural than setting goals and creating a “win or lose” atmosphere around one of the most basic human functions. Would you create numeric goals around sex?

Nancy can use a mobile app to track her calories if she wants to. Often, it’s easier than trying to remember everything each day. By putting in 1,466 as her daily calorie target and eating until she gets to that point, but not beyond, it soon becomes automatic. As her body changes, though, so will her caloric needs. Adjustments need to be made regularly based on whether she is approaching her vision or moving away from it.

Using a template allows you to follow any eating protocol and preference (or lack of preference!) and still be working toward your vision. Meal timing, food choice, and macronutrient ratios also have an effect, but until quantity is dialed in, the effect of other variables may be more difficult to notice. If this seems like too much to think about, welcome to the club. Rather than get derailed, get a coach.

Vision drives and rewards behavior, goals crush motivation. Be a visionary.

Stay tuned for more on vision and achievement for other purposes in the future, both here at Breaking Muscle and at the 300 Swings Facebook page.

Photos 1 & 2 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Why Are You Eating That Way? How to Be a Visionary About Your Nutrition appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As I have written before, the term paleo has become a catch-all for anything from simply eating gluten-free to consuming a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet consisting almost entirely of vegetables and animals. Rather than try to navigate this quagmire of ideas or fight the tide of public perception, author Adam Farrah has taken the idea of paleo to the next level. His position is that the ideal paleo diet is as individual and unique as your fingerprint.

The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link by Adam Farrah is now in its second edition. What was previously an eBook has been expanded and bound in hardcover with color plates and high-quality appearance. I had the pleasure of reading the new edition and also interviewing Adam about his book.

When not only modern medicine, but also a variety of alternative therapies and nutrition gurus failed to heal Adam’s ulcerative colitis and other health problems, he set about healing himself through diet. Incredibly, he had been told that his diet had nothing to do with his health problems. The book is the product of years of research and ultimately successful self-experimentation.

Part One: “Paleo, the Diet Landscape, and Defining a ‘Healthy’ Diet”

In part one ofThe Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link, Adam specifies his idea of a healthy diet. He lays out the tenets of said diet and gives a concise history lesson, starting with the nineteenth century, and mentioning every popular and obscure permutation, influence, and offshoot as well as the people involved. I’ve been in this game a long time, and there were people and data mentioned that I didn’t know I didn’t know. Anybody heard of Jordan Rubin? How about Vilhjamur Stefansson?

Tell Me, Adam, What Is a Healthy Diet?

In answering this question, Adam does something different than I’ve seen before, but it makes sense when you consider his background. Once upon a time, Adam was studying toward an MBA. He also has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut. Where Adam is from, you work for a chemical company – that’s just what you do. Adam is a scientist.

Rather than write another book on how the “paleo” (also known as “ancestral,” “hunter-gatherer,” or “primal”) diet works and why grains are bad, he sets down a list of assumptions. Like a good scientist, he knows that new work rests on previous work. In order to progress, we need to accept something that came before as true based on the evidence at hand.

The assumptions made in The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link:

• “Healthy” means supportive of an individual’s physical and mental wellbeing.
• “Paleo” is a general approach that attempts to approximate a modern hunter-gatherer diet.
• The ancestral diet idea is solid.
• Meat is good for people.
• Grains are not great, but may be tolerable to some in limited amounts.
• Dairy is also questionable, but may have value in some forms for some people.
• “Modern, Processed Foods Suck” (direct quote)

Part Two: “Your Paleo Diet”

In part two, Adam spends a scant twelve pages explaining the nuts and bolts of paleo and states that it is “just a roadmap.” One of the most important ideas in the book is laid out in this paragraph:

As far as I’m concerned, the point of paleo – or any diet – isn’t to see how perfectly you can do the diet. The point is to build outstanding health and performance. If you find better health, performance, and quality of life with a non-paleo tweak here or there, that’s what you need to do. And if certain paleo foods don’t work for you, don’t eat them.

You might want to read that again if you didn’t have an “Aha!” moment.

Instead of food groups as we know them, Farrah divides foods into five categories:

• “Foundational Paleo Diet Foods”
• “Foods of Early Agriculture”
• “Paleo Foods to Use Sparingly”
• “Supplements”
• “Modern Foods (Avoid)”

Yes, supplements are one of the five food groups. Supplements are products such as coconut oil and protein powders. They provide calories you weren’t likely to come across in your hunting and gathering activities.

The book contains numerous departures from “classic” paleo thinking. One of these departures is suggesting the calculation of calorie needs and macronutrient ratios. Although Farrah doesn’t insist (as is the main idea of the book) that everyone should count calories, he does describe six populations that he feels would benefit from a weigh-and-measure approach, at least initially.

As we progress through the book, most every subject of debate in paleo circles is at least touched upon: coffee and caffeine, fasting, alcohol, and bodybuilding, to cite a few.

Part Three, “The Hidden Aspects of Paleo Success: Lifestyle”

“You’re going to have to let some things slide.” -Robb Wolf to Adam Farrah, 2010

“Paleo lifestyle” is where the second edition of the book builds on the first edition. The breakthrough that Adam had was that our minds, like our bodies, also need to operate as if in the Paleolithic age. Being present in the moment was a prerequisite to staying alive back then. If our body hasn’t evolved, why would our mind? Adam argues that the coping abilities and stress reactions we have today are not so different from 10,000 years ago.

The difference is the nature of the stress. We get constant stress from work, technology, cars, houses, loans, complex relationships, and so on. Is that serving us?

Through the use of various techniques, Farrah argues, we can simultaneously be successful, productive members of society and agents of our own best interest, all with less stress. He defines a process by which we can work to achieve “paleo mind,” doing for our mental health what the paleo diet does for our physical health.

Quiet and Boring – The Paleo Lifestyle Suits Me Fine

The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link concludes with an extensive reading and resource list to help you apply the ideas and concepts discussed in the book. If you currently eat a paleo diet or are interested in trying it, then this book will be of interest to you. In addition to a concise history and overview of how the diet came to be and why, Farrah explains how to optimize your diet for peak health and performance. All in all, the book is a quick read with a couple fresh angles on the entire “paleo lifestyle.”

“The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” is available for $18.14 at Amazon.com.

To learn more about Adam and his book, you can listen to my entire interview with him here.

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When it comes to training, athletes who care about performance know that small details matter. You probably know people who track a million things about their training, from heart rate to carb grams. One of the newest things you can track is your heart rate variability (HRV). And, as it turns out, it might be just as relevant for fitness newcomers as it is for veterans.

The BioForce HRV system is a device used to measure the variability in the rhythm of your heartbeat that results from training and recovery. The system includes an app that you download and a transmitter you plug into your phone. You may also purchase a Polar heart rate monitor from the BioForce website or use any variety of heart rate strap that you already own.

The BioForce HRV system is not the only HRV monitor on the market, but the app is propriety, so the readings you get from one system compared to another could vary. All the different systems are doing the same thing in essence, though – measuring the space between your heartbeats and tracking changes. According to Joel Jamieson, the creator of the BioForce system, too much change in HRV, either positive or negative, can be indicative of accumulating fatigue.

Ideally, you take your HRV reading every day at the same time. It is recommended to do so right after you get up. Basically, you get out of bed, put on the strap and open the app, then lay supine for two to five minutes before taking your reading. You need to be in a relaxed state. My experience was that the app errored out more than I wanted it to while I was trying to get a reading, but the book’s troubleshooting section does address this issue.

Since HRV numbers are relative to each person, at first the app doesn’t have any idea who you are or what a normal HRV is for you. It will take a few days to establish a baseline, during which you should do light exercise or active recovery. After that time period you can resume regular training. Each morning when you take your reading, the app will give you a number and will be colored green, yellow, or red based on the difference from the previous day’s reading. Like a traffic light, these colors indicate go, caution, or stop.

One thing that needs to be noted is that the BioForce HRV system tracks your number. It does not interpret your number. This is where the accompanying book, The Ultimate Guide to HRV Training comes in. The book is 138 pages in length and explains how to use and interpret the information the HRV app provides you. An explanation of HRV takes up the first 59 pages of the book, and the rest is on training and program design.

The idea is that the green, yellow, or red indicator helps you determine how you should train that day – or even if you should train that day. You would adjust your intensity, volume, or level of recovery accordingly. In an ideal world, every one of our workouts would be exactly as hard as it needs to be, and no more. You would do just enough to cause an adaptation, but not damage. This allows you to train with the most frequency and have the least need for recovery. Most of us do this based on feeling, which can be highly inaccurate. The goal of the BioForce HRV system is to give you a solid metric on which to base your training.

The problem with this concept is that many factors potentially affect your HRV in anomalous ways. In fact, the accompanying book cautions more than once that many factors besides training intensity and volume will affect the HRV reading, including stress, hydration level, and sleep quantity and quality. Even things like caffeine intake have an impact even though they are not part of the normal recovery process. If you have an energy drink out of the blue and the next day your reading is off the wall, take that into consideration.

The nice part is, when this happened to me I found an answer to my confusion pretty quickly on the forums (Blue Monster = red number!). The support for the system on the Internet is good and the information in the book is invaluable. You really can’t do anything with the device without the knowledge in the book.

Ultimately, this tool is a powerful one, but the information it gives you requires interpretation and the experience to make that interpretation. In my opinion this system is most useful for an advanced athlete – someone like a triathlete, MMA fighter, or anyone who is training daily or near daily and is always on the edge of too much. Another small population who might find the BioForce system useful is serious powerlifters. These athletes may intentionally want to venture into overreaching for periods, but not go too far.

That being said, the BioForce system could also be useful in the hands of an experienced trainer to use with his or her clients. As many of us have discovered, sometimes our clients don’t believe us when we tell them they’re doing too much. If you have irrefutable data taken from an HRV monitor, then you can show them when they overtrained and how that correlates with their activities (chronic cardio, anyone?). In that way, an HRV monitor could be a useful tool for a trainer and might even increase client adherence to programming.

For the populations described above, the BioForce HRV system is easily worth the money and actually quite affordable. It doesn’t cost any more than a good heart rate monitor, but as a tool it does much more. If you find yourself often to be sick, injured, or suffering from overtraining, then there is probably no better investment you can make than this system and the time it takes to understand its usage.

The BioForce HRV system is available in three different packages at BioForceHRV.com:

• The app, transmitter, and book are available for $197.00
• The app, transmitter, book, and Polar heart rate monitor are available for $279.00.
• The app, book, and a Polar Bluetooth transmitter are available for $247.00.

Photos 2 and 3 courtesy of Sally Arsenault.

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Vitamin C is well established in the scientific community as a beneficial nutrient. It is also an essential nutrient, meaning that the human body cannot synthesize it. We must get it from our diet. We are very good at absorbing small amounts – we will absorb about 19mg out of 20mg we take in. As the dosage increases, however, our ability to absorb vitamin C drops off quickly due to limiting factors in our digestive system.

Enter Altrient C and LED, or liposome-encapsulated delivery. What? A liposome is basically a tiny sphere of fatty acids used to encase, protect, and transport a nanoparticle of something. In this case, the sphere is made from an apparently secret substance derived from soy lecithin and the something is vitamin C. The LED protects the nanoparticle of vitamin C from the harsh digestive environment and allows it to slip, undigested, right through the wall of the small intestine and into the bloodstream. The result is greatly increased absorption.

Why does it matter, though, how much vitamin C we get and how much we absorb? According to Altrient’s website, the benefits of vitamin C supplementation include:

• Reduced free radical damage through antioxidant action
• Enhanced cellular recovery in the post-workout period
• Reduced DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness)
• Improved skin appearance through enhanced collagen synthesis

Altrient C is made in the United States and packaged in single-serving packets, each containing 1000mg of vitamin C and 1000mg of “essential phosholipids.” It is a brown, gel-like substance, and the gel is not water soluble.

Directions for taking Altrient C say to squeeze the contents of one packet into a couple ounces of water or other liquid and swallow, or you can squeeze the packet into your mouth and wash it down with a drink of something. The gel does not have a pleasant appearance, flavor, odor, texture, or mouthfeel. Having consumed many thousands of servings of some very terrible tasting supplements over the years, taking Altrient C by either method was not problematic for me. For those who are sensitive to any or all of those factors, taking Altrient C may require some getting used to.

While the benefits of vitamin C are clear, and the LED appears to be an excellent way to take vitamin C, I do have a few caveats to offer. Like anything, these may or may not mean much to you, but I include them in the pursuit of completeness. First is the price. At $39.95 plus shipping for thirty packets, with a recommendation to take one packet per day plus one post workout, you could be looking at almost $80 a month for your vitamin C. Second, though the product is not labeled “contains soy,” the essential phospholipids are derived from soy lecithin. This makes me wonder about the “supports a paleo diet” claim on the website.

That brings me to my last concern. This one relates to the company more than the product. There are numerous statements on the website that I find misleading. Having a background in the supplement industry, I know how tempting it can be to make claims about your product, and also how dangerous. When there is accepted clinical research, it’s always a boon to your marketing efforts. The Altrient website, though, fails to make clear the statements of benefit that apply to vitamin C in general (backed by clinical research) and those that apply to their product in particular, a vitamin C with a particular delivery system.

It may be that Altrient C is a great product, but I would encourage the company to lend greater clarity to their website. For anyone who can afford it, is okay with the soy issue, is currently using some other form of C, or wants to start using C supplements, Altrient C appears to be a good option and will certainly do you no harm.

Altrient C available for $39.95 at Altrient.com.

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While Paul Wade remains a secretive and elusive character, the techniques he divulges in Convict Conditioning are simple, effective, and obviously useful. Using progressions, you are shown how to work the “Big 6” movements to create your own personal fortress – a strong, injury-resistant, highly functional body.

The “Big 6”:

1. Squat
2. Pullup
3. Leg raise
4. Bridge
5. Pushup
6. Handstand pushup

I hear you thinking, “Well, that’s fine, but I can already do all those pretty well.” That might be true, but you probably haven’t achieved the “mastery level,” as Wade puts it. You might not have perfect form, either. Both form and cadence are stressed many times throughout the book, and there is no doubt that an exercise performed properly yields a better training response with fewer injuries (and keeps you humble.)

Through detailed instructions, every major movement is broken into ten steps, from beginner to mastery. Within each step, there are rep and set requirements to move on to the next phase. The pushup, for example, begins with wall pushups. When you can perform 3 sets of 50 wall pushups with perfect form and cadence per the instructions, you may begin working incline pushups. The tenth and final step in the progressions is 1 set of 100 one-hand pushups. Per arm.

So now you know the system the book outlines and you’re thinking, “That’s great, but what does it get me? How is this useful?” For my training I used Convict Conditioning as a ten-week bridge between powerlifting cycles. This turned out to be a smart move for several reasons. First of all, the easy movements that I started out with were terrific active recovery after a long and crushing strength cycle. Next, by paying close attention to form, which is made easier by starting with sub-maximal resistance, I was able to improve muscular endurance, build the mind-muscle connection, and enhance joint flexibility and mobility – aspects of the game that powerlifting is not known for improving.

I am seeing the benefits now that I am back to a powerlifting/strength cycle. My core is noticeably stronger, improving my squat and deadlift numbers; my ankles and hips are more flexible, allowing better form; and my shoulders are more mobile and feel better than they have in a long time, improving my bench press and military press progress.

Unlike highly specialized approaches to strength training, Convict Conditioning includes a great deal of mobility work as part of the training, disabling you from skipping that important piece when you’re tired after a grueling training session. The “Big 6” progressions build strength and improve mobility simultaneously.

Overall, I have to give a big thumbs-up to Dragon Door, Paul Wade, and Convict Conditioning. Attention to detail makes the program very safe even for beginners seeking a basic level of fitness, but there is no lack of challenge for accomplished athletes. If you are a coach, I would recommend this book highly. A new trainee could benefit from an initial 6-week stint of bodyweight-only workouts to get them ready to meet the barbell safely. With the possible exception of a gymnast, there are few who would not benefit from the information in this book. And, the workouts can be a hell of a lot of fun, too.

“Convict Conditioning” is available for $39.95 at DragonDoor.com.

Also check out our review of “Convict Conditioning 2.”

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MCTs, or medium-chain triglycerides, are one of those products that seem to have been around forever (the medical community has been experimenting with it since the 1950s), but never really caught on with the mainstream. You probably remember Robb Wolf mentioning them and that they exist in coconut oil and coconut milk. With the rise of paleo, low-carb, and ketogenic diets in the past several years, MCTs may finally take a place among the staple foods of lean, healthy people.

Body First brand 100% Pure MCT Oil is derived from coconut and palm kernel oils. It is pharmaceutical grade, suitable for vegetarians and vegans, and contains nothing but MCT oil – no flavors, preservatives, or additives of any kind.

In the food and supplement industry, ingredients are subjected to “organoleptic analysis.” This is a fancy way of saying that we taste, smell, touch, and view a product to characterize it. Body First MCT oil has no smell, no flavor, and is a completely clear, slightly viscous fluid at room temp. This is great news. This means it will disappear into your foods and leave their flavor and odor unchanged.

If you’ve ever tried to add lean muscle, you know that eating lots of extra calories every day can feel like a chore and add fat to your waistline. A single tablespoon of MCT oil contains 100 calories. MCT oil is rapidly absorbed and transported to the liver for metabolism into usable energy. This unique quality allows it to be available quickly, similar to a carbohydrate, while sparing the user the glycemic reaction associated with carbohydrate intake.

MCT oil can be used as a substitute for conventional oils in salad dressings, sauces, or cooking and as a source of beneficial fatty acids. It does have a low boiling point, though; so don’t fry with it.

MCT oil has been shown in research to increase lipid oxidation, improve insulin-mediated glucose metabolism in both diabetics and non-diabetics, and increase fat loss when used in place of long-chain fatty acids (such as olive oil) in an otherwise identical diet.

It should be noted that some users report gastric upset with large initial doses of MCTs, so it is recommended to begin with small amounts (¼ to ½ teaspoon) several times/day until tolerance is known. I have personally taken 1-tablespoon shots of it without any unpleasant effects.

If you are trying to get or stay lean, increase endurance, improve your blood lipid profile, add lean mass, or reduce the amount of carbohydrates in your diet, you may want to experiment with MCT oil in your cooking, on your salads, or even by the spoonful. Body First MCT oil is a pure, easy-to-use way to do just that.

Body First MCT Oil is available at AllStarHealth.com for $14.29.

References:

1. Marie-Pierre St-Onge and Aubrey Bosarge, “Weight loss diet that includes consumption of medium chain triacylglycerol oil leads to a greater rate of weight and fat mass loss than does olive oil,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 87 (2008): 3 621-626

2. Hiroaki Tsuji, Michio Kasai, Hiroyuki Takeuchi, Masahiro Nakamura, Mitsuko Okazaki, and Kazuo Kondo, “Dietary Medium-Chain Triacylglycerols Suppress Accumulation of Body Fat in a Double-Blind, Controlled Trial in Healthy Men and Women,” Journal ofNutrition131 (2001): 11 2853-2859

3. “Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs) Beneficial Effects on Energy, Atherosclerosis, and Aging,” Nutrition Review, accessed November 29, 2012

4. Eckel RH, Hansen AS, Chen AY, Berman JN, Yost TJ, Brass EP, “Dietary substitution of medium-chain triglycerides improves insulin-mediated glucose metabolism in NIDDM subjects,” Diabetes 41 (1992): 5 641-647

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