AceofFit

So You Think You Can Deadlift?

Been waiting for this series since the hugely helpful So You Think You Can Squat (SYTYCS) series launched over 18 months ago.

For anyone who’s new to deadlifting - or those who want to overcome sticking points or reassess their form, check these videos out!

Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksnAyxoF9v4

Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrV439zi54

Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSjdcZ0YNm8

Part 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV3BGGfgcTU

The scientific evidence for why there are no “healthy” or “unhealthy” foods.

Whether or not a food is “healthy” or “unhealthy” depends on who is eating it, and how much they eat.

A healthy highly trained endurance athlete or bodybuilder exercising several hours per day is going to have very different needs and tolerances than a sedentary diabetic overweight office worker.

The athletes can be far more relaxed about their diet. They can eat more total calories, more calorie dense foods, and assuming they’re meeting their micro- and macronutrient needs, more “empty calories.”

The office worker needs to eat fewer total calories, and should probably focus on far more filling, low-calorie foods, less palatable foods to avoid over-eating. They may also need to focus on more nutrient-dense foods since they’re eating fewer calories.

Personal preference also matters. Some people have a hard time eating in moderation, and it may be smart to remove some foods that they normally binge on, at least for a while.

A food that is “healthy” for one person might be inappropriate for another in a given context.

Avoiding specific foods or food groups without a rational reason is one of the  defining characteristics of orthorexia nervosa, and is common in people with binge eating disorder and anorexia.93-95 It’s no surprise this is a common disorder in athletes, dietitians, and other health conscious people.96-103

People who hinder themselves with rigid dietary rules also have a harder time maintaining a healthy weight.104-106

Food doesn’t make people gain fat — people over-eating food makes them overweight.

Eating some of your calories from less nutrient dense sources is not going to give you a nutrient deficiency.

There is no evidence that any food directly damages your health in moderate amounts in every situation. 

You’re careful about your diet, which you should be. However, there’s no reason you need to avoid any specific food to achieve optimal health, a lean body composition, and maximum longevity.

How a Suit Jacket or Sport Coat Should Fit

A couple of weeks ago, I said that there are different schools of thought on how a jacket should fit, but trousers should only fit one way. Upon reflection, I now realize that was a bit misleading. There’s a difference between style and fit. Generally speaking, style is about silhouette, whereas fit is about whether something sit on you correctly. Simon Crompton has a good article about this difference. 

There are different silhouettes for jackets, but the rules we have for how they should fit are similar to those we have for trousers. There shouldn’t be any pulls or puckers along the front or back, the sleeves should be free of any ripples when the arms are naturally hanging down, and the jacket should have clean lines all around. These principles should be true regardless of the jacket’s style (e.g. clean, draped, padded, natural, skinny, full). 

Unlike trousers, however, suit jackets and sport coats are much harder to fit well. Their construction is more complicated, so there are more things that can go wrong. Above is a set of photographs I’ve stolen from Macaroni Tomato and slightly modified. Each photo illustrates a common defect. Click on each of the photographs, and you’ll see that they’re lettered.

Fig. A. Sleevehead and Collar: The most difficult areas to fit well are perhaps the shoulders and collar. A properly fitting jacket shouldn’t have any indentations in the sleeveheads and it should stay glued to your neck at all times. 

Fig. B. Strained Buttoning Point: Here tightness at the buttoning point can result in a jacket pulling around the waist, effectively forming an “X.” To be sure, this is sometimes purposefully done in the name of fashion, but more often than not, it’s a sign that a jacket is too tight. (Note that the jacket pictured here doesn’t have problems in this area). 

Fig C. Messy Back: Likewise, the back can have unsightly folds or pulling along the waist, around the shoulder blades, and underneath the collar. A well fitting jacket should have none of these issues, but rather fit cleanly.

Fig. D. Sleeve Pitch: If the sleeve isn’t attached to the jacket at a degree that harmonizes with the wearer’s natural stance, you may see furrows along the sleeve. You can see an example of this here. 

Fig. E. Flared Vents: A properly fitting jacket should always have closed vents, like the ones in this picture. Make sure yours don’t flare out or gape. 

Fig. F. Balance: The term “balance” can refer to a few things on a jacket, but in this case, we’re talking about the relationship between the front and back of the jacket, as well as left and right sides. There are two schools of thought on how the front and back should balance. Most tailors believe that the front should be slightly longer than the back, but a few think they should evenly align. Here, the jacket’s front is even with the back. Another aspect of balance concerns the left and right sides. Here there is less controversy; these two parts should always be dead even with each other along the hem. If you wish to read more about this issue, check out this article by Michael Anton.

Like we saw for trousers, there can be a number of causes for these defects. Depending on the cause and how your jacket is constructed, an alterationist tailor may or may not be able to fix the problems for you (at least within a reasonable cost). The easiest to fix are Figures B and C. Indeed, those are rather common to clean up, so unless you see severe problems in those areas, you needn’t worry about them. The rest you should probably make sure fits right off the peg. 

Overtraining - Conclusion

If you’ve been following these posts you have probably come to the conclusion that overtraining does not exist.

I'm inclined to agree completely with this. 

Overtraining, by its very definition, is incredible hard to achieve and I would dare make the claim that it's absolutely impossible to. It requires sky-high levels of stress (physical and possibly emotional) and so much lack of rest & sleep for an extended period of time (most likely several months) that you would basically have to be on the brink of death before you become overtrained. 

To clarify for others out there, overtraining is a state where your body will shut down due to improper nutrition, rest, and extreme stress. It's preceded by a state called overreaching, which is what the majority (+99.9%) of all people run into at some point. Overreaching is commonly mistaken as overtraining as they share the same general effect: Reduced output/performance. However, the vital difference between the two states is that you WANT overreaching but not overtraining. Overreaching is the state in which you can successfully make incredible amounts of gains due to the adaptive processes of your body. The most notable example of this is the way athletes prepare for competitions (especially in olympic weightlifting and powerlifting). Typically, the periodisation techniques are applied in such a way that the intensity of your workouts decrease slowly just before the competition. This can range from 1-4 weeks but it depends on the trauma of previous training regimes, current body state (psychological and physiological), and the genetic makeup of the athlete. The aim is to allow the body to recuperate as much as possible without losing any gains you made during training. This is what makes overreaching so vital and why you want to be training in this state.

As a final note, I can add that it's also very difficult to play with overreaching and there are so many dimensions, it's almost impossible to cover in a single post.

If you train too much in the overreaching phase, you lose performance.

Too little training and you don't benefit as much from it as you could.

The bulgarian training methodology is the most notorious in this case - I suggest reading stuff from Glenn Pendlay, Ivan Abadjiev, John Broz

Overreaching can be tailored to bodybuilding too but it's uncommon due to the "randomness" of that sport

It's quite hard to find out if you're overreaching or just having a bad week or two

A restrictive diet will do more harm than good in the long run. Cheat meals are more of an indicator of a poor relationship with food or possible early signs of eating disorders. Moderation and balance in your dieting efforts is the key to long term success and making dieting a normal, healthy part of your lifestyle.  There is no such thing as clean/dirty or good/bad foods. If you speak in such ways then it’s a dead giveaway that your knowledge of the bare basics and fundamentals of nutrition science is lacking. Being healthy isn’t just about your physical well being, but also how you are mentally and emotionally which when dieting improperly can take a significant blow.

A balanced approach does not require cheat meals or days. You’ll feel like you’re cheating the system when you learn to practice moderation and flexibility in your diet and you’ll be at a healthier state.

Uhh I think ya’ll remember this post from the other night, maybe? Somehow someone (who will remain nameless) got the actual whole post (I have no clue how, maybe a friend?) and sent me the link. 

"bitches who squat will never have a real thick ass like i do anyways" OMfg hahhahaa pls stop.

…Hmm if I had to pick between my old fat saggy ass and my current rounded firm ass which happened by training my glute muscles with squats/lunges etc etc (and if you think muscle is an unnatural thing for a body to have you are actually dumber than a doorknob, seeing as muscle is a natural fucking part of a body).. I’d pick my butt now. ;)

Her arrogance and pride is clearly a false facade to cover up her shitty self esteem. People who act like this towards others with such hate and rudeness simply aren’t happy with themselves. Period. Why put others down for just living their lives and enjoying whatever else? Just because you aren’t particularly fond of it doesn’t mean it justifies you shitting all over people who actually love what they do. 

Or maybe since he’s got little biceps he’s too muscular for her. I guess she’ll have to keep searching for the perfect skinny dude.

But all jokes aside, here’s the thing: I have no problem with people being skinny, and if a woman or a man prefers to be skinny, that’s their prerogative. Even if they think muscles are not attractive. Or if they think that men look good with muscles and women don’t or whatever. That’s all their right.

The real problem is that I spent years trying everything in my power to stay skinny. Like so many young people out there, I fought endlessly to starve myself into a size 2, and my relationship with food has never been the same. It gets better, but it is a constant battle that I believe I will be fighting for years to come.

Weight lifting is how I started recovering, and so many people I know have recovered in a similar way. Weight lifting is more than just about building muscle - it’s about cleaning up your life, learning to eat what your body needs to perform, and creating the kind of discipline and dedication that you can’t have from simply dieting.

People like Amanda and Allie are complaining about the types of bodies other people want. They say that this isn’t out of jealousy; that it’s just that it’s disgusting. The problem with this is they make people think that they have the right to tell other people what is attractive and what isn’t. What choices they should make with their bodies.

What’s worse is that there is someone like this in everyone’s lives, telling us that we aren’t good enough as we are and shitting on what makes us happy. 

There’s always going to be an Amanda or an Allie on our Facebook, telling us that we aren’t good enough. And they may actually think that they’re just voicing an opinion. But you can’t let that kind of negativity bleed into your life and stop you from doing what you love.

Personally, I hope she’s wrong, and this “trend" of having muscles is here to stay. (Which is funny, because women bodybuilders have existed for decades - it just happens that more women have been trying to compete lately.) The reason I have this hope is that so many people have started their recovery of the eating disorders that this Allie seems to be so proud of by eating more and getting to the gym. But no matter what you want your body to look like - skinny, curvy, athletic, muscular or any combination or the above - don’t let the haters get you down. Surround yourself with positivity and love, because there are always going to be people out there who don’t understand you and don’t appreciate your accomplishments, and you don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.  And always do your best to be healthy.

Stay strong.

The Truth About Cleansing (via lifewithoutbacon)

“This is one of the most incredible sights you will ever see. In between the record-setting lifting, the most powerful individuals in the world will be spending time with young children who view them as superheroes. Some of the most well-known lifters in the sport take time to participate in a meet that makes them no money, and many of them have to travel great distances to get there.

Why do they do this? One word: hope."