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6 Best Conditioning for 6-pack Abs

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

First and foremost, I hate jogging for long periods. I think the word “conditioning” has been misused that led people to believe that its with either hour long jogging or hour long cycling and is usually reserved for fat people. The problem is that training for extended period triggers the release of cortisol, the hormone that triggers muscular protein breakdown. Hence why its very hard for long distance runners and cyclist to gain muscle mass. Not only that, long steady-state, low intensity cardio is not very efficient at burning your spare tire. So below are 6 forms of conditioning that works the whole body, does not require you to spend long period of time to get your heart rate up, increases your athletic performance, and best of all, help loose that spare tire:

Farmer’s Walk

Farmer_walk

This is probably seems like the least sexy of all exercise. You basically grab the heaviest pair of dumbbells or load the hex bar as heavy as you can, then start walking around with it. It will train your grip, shoulders, core and legs. Mind you, your core consists more than just your rectus abdominis (6-pack muscle) and obliques (the sides), it also consists of your QL (Quadratus Lumborum) that is usually neglected but essential for spine health. The farmer’s walk will help you train your QL and be more athletic. The issue I have with doing this exercise at commercial gyms are that they usually have neither a hex bar nor dumbbells heavy enough for me to use, and those that aren’t familiar with this exercise might give you a weird look. When you want to try this exercise, make sure that your shoulders are pushed all the way down (no shrugging) and your spine is in neutral position.

Sled Push

sled push

This is also a great exercise for those that wanted to loose weight as efficient as possible. If you want to increase your running speed, use less weight and push faster. If you want to increase your pushing strength for your rugby/American football game, load more into the sled. This training will build your shoulders, core and legs real fast and you will be gasping for air in minutes. One thing you must keep in mind is again, keeping the spine in neutral position and your knees in proper alignment, otherwise you will be visiting the physiotherapist real soon. No sled at your gym? Use your car!

Sled Rope Pull

So the first two exercises focused on gait and pushing, the third exercise will now focus on pull and stop-twist. Simply tie a thick and sturdy rope to the loaded sled or car, walk about 10 – 15 meters away, plant your feet and start pulling your weight. The key is to use your body twist to pull the rope instead of using your arms. Make sure your spine remains locked and the twisting is generated from the hips. If you pose like the image above, don’t blame me for the subsequent back problems. This conditioning will do wonders to your grip, lats, obliques and glutes.

Rope Slam

rope slam

A great full body conditioning for those with lower body issues (knee or ankle problem, obesity, etc). This training will do wonders to your grip, arms, shoulders, core and legs. Of course just like the great three training above, the main issue with this exercise is stupid trainers who don’t know how to do them properly, demonstrating improper technique to their clients. If you do this exercise with shrugged shoulders, or drive the energy from flexing your spine, be assured that you will be visiting a GP or physio soon.

Boxing

090814-N-1245S-007 PACIFIC OCEAN (Aug. 14, 2009) Aviation BoatswainÕs Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Hector Castro and Aviation BoatswainÕs Mate (Handling) 3rd Class Roman Vasquez train on a punching bag aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68). Nimitz and embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 11 are underway on a scheduled deployment to the western Pacific Ocean. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gregory A. Streit /Released)

OK, so just hitting the punching bag in this case. Hitting the bag is a great way to work up your cardio and working the whole body. And the greatest knock out artists know how to use their stiffened core to fully transfer the hitting power from the hips to the knuckles. If your have pinched shoulders or weak wrist, your trainer should probably address your weak points first before allowing you to go at it.

Sprint

sprint

No, I’m not talking about a slow jog. I’m talking about a fast sprint with vigorous swinging arms. Run like you just stole something. Only by running like this would you be able to work the whole body and feel the pump in no time. Now you might say that the previous 5 conditioning exercises involved equipment you or your gym don’t have. But surely you can afford a pair of sneakers right? And compared to other forms of training above, a sprint is much safer and easier to do.

So there you have it folks, my favorite forms of conditioning that will help you loose weight, get more toned, and build whole body strength. After all, if you want to loose your belly fat, you must loose your body’s overall fat. Doing 1000 sit-ups a day will only get you spine disk herniation while these exercises above will burn far more calories in shorter time.

Harvard Bribery and Other Bad Sciences

Posted on by Damien Sutanto

When I first started out my serial on the non-relation between fat and heart disease, quite a few people, some whose opinion I highly respected, doubted me although they cannot deny the fact that the researchers I quoted were valid. Over the past few weeks, there’s been a flurry of articles on neutral media that justified my position. Everybody from DailyMail, New York Times, STATNews, Quartz (itself a Harvard publication), NPR,  and Reuters were all busy publishing their take on JAMA’s bombastic review of internal Harvard documents that disclose the Sugar Lobby’s influence in medical research. So let me guide you through this and other bad sciences I’ve been seeing in the news:

Harvard Bribe, Heart Attack, and Sugar Consumption

bribe

As I have mentioned in my past post, there was never any statistical proof to support the claim that high animal fat consumption blocks arteries.  However, the Sugar Lobby wanted to increase US consumption of sugar without making us too fat, hence need to keep the total calorie consumption equal, so something gotta give. Hence Henry Haas, president of Sugar Research Foundation simply pops the idea about having the public reduce fat consumption instead. Regardless of fat’s contribution to satiety and as important vitamin solvent for our body to absorb.

In fact, most neutral researches has proven since 1962 that low-fat high-carbohydrate (sugar is simple carbohydrate) is the main culprit in cholesterol increase. So what did SRF did? simple, SRF vice president, John Hickson started his crusade to “change the negative attitude towards sugar” since 1964, regardless that blood sugar rather than blood cholesterol or high blood pressure is the better predictor of atherosclerosis. Long story short, SRF put Dr. Mark Hegsted, Harvard Professor of Nutrition and Fredrick Stare, another Harvard nutritionist in their pocket. This bribe amount was so big, that Marion Nestle of New York University simply said “I thought I had seen everything but this one floored me”.

Again, all these were not something I made up on the spot, they are all within the disclosed Harvard documents JAMA publishes, you can read them yourself. And we haven’t even looked at SRF’s relationship with other universities.

As a comparison, modern day scientific recommendation of added sugar consumption is 25 gram for normal adult woman and 36 gram for normal adult man. A regular sized can of coke (355 ml) contains 39 gram of refined sugar and a regular sized bar of snickers (57 gr) contains 28 gram of refined sugar (yes, more than 1/2 of your bar of snickers is made of pure sugar). So if you ate a bar of snickers and drank a can of coke, all in a single day, you already consumed double your daily recommended consumption of refined sugar.

To clarify my position on this. I do think that the healthy sugar recommendation mentioned are for average people. Manual laborers and athletes that does a lot of aerobic and anaerobic training definitely need more sugar consumption during particular windows of opportunity. Sugar itself is also better than high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. The “good fats” mentioned here are also natural animal fats, animals raised chock-full of antibiotics are simply not as good and food deep fried in vegetable oils high in Omega-6 (soybean oil, canola oil, etc) need to be avoided.

Now moving on to other bad sciences

Low Back Pain is Caused by Your Mind

mind

Yes, basically Dr. John. E. Sarno and his big fan at Forbes, Edward Siedle thinks that because of the mind-body connection, low back pain is basically caused by your mind. I.e., they are implying that people that experience deliberating low back pain are simply going mad. Euhm.. one advice Edward, stick with covering pension funds.

As Dr. McGill, the leading expert in spine research with over 30 decades experience salvaging careers gold medal winning athletes has said, there is a cause for every back pain, and low back pain has many causes, hence you can’t treat it like diabetes where there is one common cure. The mind does have an affect on the body in a way that the mind can cause the pain to feel worse than the actual issue. However, the must be a fundamental physical cause of the pain to begin with.

Hence “pain clinic” that advises you to note your daily pain level should be avoided as this will cause you to dwell in your pain even more. And when your doctor said that “its all in your head”, he’s basically implying that he has no clue on what causes your pain. If you want to read more on how to self diagnose your own back pain and how to deal with it, I highly recommend you read Dr. McGill’s book, Back Mechanics.

Weight Training Damaged Your Back or Knees

Well, unfortunately the web is full of misguided advice from individuals that should know better. Trust me, doing side lunges like that this fitness model does is a quick recipe for knee problems.  If you follow the advice of this blogger regarding kettlebell workout where she told you to suck your tummy in for abdominal bracing, then trust me, you will end up with low back pain. Dr. McGill in his research already proved that this method is simply bunk in his research and this is why powerlifter does simply the opposite to protect their backs. For the athlete in you that wanted to be more athletic while sparing your back, I highly recommend you read Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance for actual science based training.

So yes, weight training is a wonderful way to increase your athleticism, maintain joint health, boost up metabolism and testosterone level, and reverse osteoporosis. But the key is doing it the right way. Doing it the wrong way, either wrong posture or wrong programming will cause all these nasty diseases like rhabdomyolysis, knee pain, low back pain, etc.