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About steroids and other performance enhancing drugs-

When Marion Jones got busted (or any other sprinter ie.Ben Johnson) why don’t they test all the sprinters. After all, the second and third place winners are only hundredths of a second second behind the winner. Chances are that all of them are on drugs. Perhaps to compete at that level they need to use roids. Many of today’s human performance standards should be questioned.

It seems as though certain athletes are being used as sacrificial lambs. I think that the IOC is scared to have the second and third place winners tested. They don’t want to be shamed and lose $$ when certain ad sponsors decide to pull their support. Just look at the fiasco that professional bicycle racing is going through. ie Tour de France Just google ‘tour de france drugs’

I find it interesting that the steroid investigations are focused on baseball. In baseball, the performance of a drug user vs. a nondrug user can be fairly close due to the high need for skill (eye hand coordination).
Why don’t the investigators start with sports that concentrate on strength and power, which are the main attributes that steroids enhance.

How about checking out the NFL???

Perhaps there is too much money involved? Maybe powerful people don’t want to be embarrassed?

Professional Sports DOES NOT EQUAL Health

I think that spacing short multiple exertion and recovery sessions throughout the day will lead to faster adaptation to the stress imposed, rather than one concentrated session of greater duration.

This would also correlate with more of a natural phenomena in our hunter/gatherer environment. Once the individual’s tolerance has built up, then he/she could do multiple sets of exertion recovery in a concentrated time period if so desired.

What do you think?

I combine PACE Heart Rate concepts http://www.alsearsmd.com/pace/ with my weight training.

I follow certain rules with workout design and performance.

Some being:
Work close to, but not all the way to muscular failure during most workouts
Use primarily compound joint exercises
Form is most important
I check my hear rate between sets and let it come down to about 40 to 50 beats above my resting rate before performing my next set.
I keep my workout under an hour for hormonal optimiztion.
I follow a cyclical build up in the weight I use over 2 week periods. (please see HST link http://www.hypertrophy-specific.com/hst_index.html)

I bracket my workout with the consumption of easy to digest protein.

Here is my current wokout:

Squat 10 Reps
Pullups 10Reps
Squat 10 Reps
Pullup 10 Reps

Deadlift 10 Reps
1 leg at a time dumbbell calf raise 10 Reps
Deadlift 10 Reps
1 leg at a time dumbbell calf raise 10 Reps

1 Arm dumbbell row 10 Reps
Rear Lunge while holding 2 dumbbells 10 Reps
1 Arm dumbbell row 10 Reps
Rear Lunge while holding 2 dumbbells 10 Reps

1 Arm Overhead Dumbbell press 10 Reps
Seated Cable Row 10 Reps
1 Arm Overhead Dumbbell press 10 Reps
Seated Cable Row 10 Reps

Plank (Abs) 50 Sec. hold
Standing dumbbell curl 10 Reps
Dip while holding dumbbell between my feet 10 Reps

Plank (Abs) 50 Sec. hold
Standing dumbbell curl 10 Reps
Dip while holding dumbbell between my feet 10 Reps

That’s it. This takes me between 40 mins to an hour, depending on my heart rate recovery between sets.

By lifting in this manner, I keep my recovery time between same exercise sets long. This allows me to lift more weight while keeping workout efficiency.

I hope this post or some of the ideas in it help others.

There are 3 basic rules to follow in order to enjoy a healthy diet:

1) Eat foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. Choose the least processed foods.

2) Consume a rainbow of vegetable and fruit colors.

3) Choose calorie poor and nutrient rich foods.

The more that a food has been altered by humans, the less nutritious it becomes. For example, brown rice is much healthier than white rice. You might have already heard this, but do you know why?

Brown rice image

1

VS. White rice image

2

Comparison pic:

3

The brown rice contains more vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

The outer layers of the rice contain an abundance of valuable nutrients, as evidenced by the chart above. Generally, processed foods can be stored for years without going bad, whereas brown rice and other natural state foods deteriorate at much faster rate.

Brown rice goes bad within 6 months due to the natural fatty acids contained in it. The fatty acids become rancid. These fatty acids are important nutrients which contain Vitamin E and beneficial phyto chemicals.

White rice can be stored for years without going bad. Big business and big agricultural companies prefer producing white rice because the shelf life of the product is so long that they will not lose money due to having to trash a product that has spoiled.

There are many reasons why the least processed food is the healthiest including a better nutrient profile, favorable glycemic index (GI) / glycemic load (GL) values, and greater appetite satisfaction with fewer calories.

In the next post we will explore rule number 2 further.

Foot notes

1) http://www.goodnessdirect.co.uk/detail/211027b.jpg
2) http://www.buhlergroup.com/news/20398EN.jpg

3)Nutrition Chart
http://www.drlam.com/opinion/brown_rice_vs_white_rice.cfm