ripped

Abdominal Exercises Are Useless. I Promise.

My friend asked me an interesting question the other day: “What do you think is the most useless exercise, and what is the most useful?”

The second part of the question is tough to answer, but I told him that if I could do only one exercise, it would be the front squat deadlift. Sure, there’s no such thing as a front squat deadlift, but cheated on the answer because I think they’re the two most effective strength exercises a human can perform. But the answer to the first part was a no-brainer: any exercise that targets the abdominal region directly–like sit-ups, crunches, leg raises/ lifts, and certainly torso twists–is the most useless. Blech.

Look at the two photos below. In the one on the left (July 2014) my abs are a little more defined than in the right (Jan 2015). Is it because I stopped doing direct abdominal work? Definitely not, because I haven’t done any–I repeat ANY–direct ab work in years. My abs are slightly more blurry now because I’m purposely carrying more fat. On the left I’m sub-7%; on the right, I’m just over 8%, which on my body equates to a couple of pounds. My strong core is purely the product of heavy front squats, heavy back squats, and heavy deadlifts. I truly believe that direct abdominal work is a waste of life, except of course for the pros who are interested in carving out fine details (which is only worthwhile at the sub 5% bodyfat level.

None of this is to say that you can’t develop abs with crunches and other stuff [crap], but why bother? Isolation exercises do nothing for intermuscular coordination and development of proportional strength i.e. the right ratio of strength between muscle groups for optimum functional balance. So if you’re doing tons of direct ab work, you’ll also have to do tons of lower back isolation work, and if you do that, you’ll have to make sure you’re getting the right amount of hamstring stimulation, which means you’ll also need to make sure you hit the muscles of your hip complex and the three heads of your quads. There’s just no way to know if you’re developing strength in all those areas in proper proportion to one another. Seems complicated, right? It is. But it’s not if you just stick to the basic giant compound lifts and forget about hitting individual muscles.

How I Got Ripped Eating Fat… and Carbs (a calorie is AND isn’t a calorie).

Despite what some experts say, all my experience strongly points to the fact that losing fat boils down to energy balance i.e. calories in, calories out. There’s lots of internet discussion to the contrary about how carbs make you fat and how fat makes you skinny, but I completely disagree (I disagree mightily with guys like Gary Taubes); I don’t think any macronutrient is good or bad. I do strongly believe, and have through experience come to understand that certain types of carbohydrates stimulate some combination of physiological and psychological response that creates a desire to eat more of them, but it isn’t the calories in carbs themselves that are creating fatness.

Let’s say I want to eat a doughnut. Let’s also say it’s 400 calories, about all of which comes from flour and sugar. Should I be full? Definitely, because by the time I’m done eating one of my 400 calorie salads with meat and other stuff in it, I’m normally stuffed to my uvula. So then yes, this doughnut will fill me because it’s 400 calories, the same as the salad.

Obviously, this isn’t true (at least not for me); the salad is more filling because it’s bigger and contains a good macronutrient mix and fiber and all that good stuff. Accordingly, it doesn’t stimulate the severe insulin response that the sugar and flour in the doughnut does. Buuuut, they both contain the same energy. The real issue is that if I have the doughnut, I know I’ll have to white-knuckle the ensuing insulin-blood sugar roller coaster. It’ll make me want to eat more, but if I can hang on and not cave into doing that (pounding another doughnut), I’ll have consumed the same number of calories as I would have had I eaten the salad.

I think this pretty clearly illustrates how a calorie both is and isn’t a calorie. Energy wise, a gram of sugar and a gram of protein are the same. Similarly 36 calories from a few tablespoons of oats is the same as the 36 calories in 1/3 tablespoon of lard because each of those 36 calories requires the same amount of energy to be burned. But chemically, the foods (and molecules) with which those calories are associated can elicit wildly different hormonal responses and chemical reactions in the brain. This is directly connected with how we feel after we eat a certain food, like if it makes us feel full or slow or hungry or energetic or some combination of those.

Insulin response curves.

Since my diet is part of my lifestyle, and I’m not into white-knuckling my lifestyle, I’m definitely not into white-knuckling my diet, which is why I typically prefer not to eat sweets and things from boxes and bags (unless they’re carrots). I know how I react to calories from the wrong sources. Although I have great will power, I do my best to never have to exercise it.

I used to think that walking was only for obese people…

…because ripped people did crazy cardio and metabolic training. P90X. CrossFit. Boutique bootcamps. I was one of them. An 18-mile run on a Saturday morning was just the way I woke myself up. Jump squats. Fifty burpees. Repping out on TRX bands. Heavy ropes and jump ropes and more running. Sprinting! A half hour of sprints! No, make it 35 minutes! Walking was exercise for grandparents, the sick, the recovering, the fat and the lazy. I scoffed at the Surgeon General’s recommendation that every capable individual walk at least 10,000 steps per day. How pointless. My view was that walking only counted as exercise for the overweight. Except for the minor detail that I had it all wrong.

My first several days of not performing any structured cardio required an act of brute force will that I was seriously unaccustomed to. I was addicted to brutally difficult, gut-busting metabolic work and grueling endurance activities. I literally ran 20 miles for fun on some days. I was going hard seven days a week. Weekends were “awesome” because I got to spend more time burning myself. I’d complete a workout (i.e. a body mutilation session) on a Saturday, get home, shower, and be totally blown for the rest of the day. Playing with my son took every last ounce of energy I had. I felt like my body temperature was perpetually elevated. On weekdays, I’d blast my body early in the morning to the extent that I’d be dripping sweat for the next several hours. Let me tell you, if there’s something more unprofessional in a business meeting than huffing out a big, flappy fart, it’s having to wipe your upper lip and brow every 90 seconds because your body is doing all it can muster not to spontaneously combust as a result of a stupid-ass workout.

On the first day that I didn’t go to the gym in the morning in favor of taking a walk outside, I felt like an alien in a strange new world. There was fresh air. The sun was rising. I was one of the first people out on the street (6am); the city had a different feeling at that time. I didn’t need music to walk. I listened to NPR (National Public Radio) instead. Education while exercising? Wow. But was it actually exercise? My heart wasn’t pounding. I was barely breathing. No burning in my muscles. Just… just… easiness. The walking motion felt simultaneously so familiar, yet so foreign. Until that time, I’d been doing this walking thing out of necessity. Since my family and I live in the city and don’t own cars, walking is just a mode of transportation (along with biking/ longboarding/ subway). But now I was doing it without a place to go.

And I enjoyed it.

Fast forward to present day. I can, without reservation and with a clear mind say that I not only enjoy walking for pleasure and exercise, but I have actually come to love it. Yes, I used the L word. Now, it’s the only form of cardio I perform. I do it on both lifting and rest days, and my FitBit One has become such an instrumental piece of fitness equipment for that reason. Because it tracks steps and integrates with MyFitnessPal, it motivates me like nothing else.

There are so many reasons why I love walking

1) It helped me get ripped

I am religious about walking at least 10,000 steps (about five miles) on a lifting day and 12,000-13,000 (about six miles) on a rest day. That might sound like a lot, but spread out over the course of a day, it’s really not at all. All those steps add up to 400-600 calories daily, which, in addition to intermittent fasting enables me to easily maintain a daily caloric deficit that has been and continues to be conducive to my ripped goals. For me, learning how to get ripped meant learning how to walk.

2) I have lots more energy

I find the act of walking itself to be energizing, but what’s even more beneficial for me is how it doesn’t leave me feeling wasted and hungry like traditional cardio and metabolic training.

It’s low impact and very low stress

Call me nuts, but I believe that humans are built to walk before anything else. I don’t think that running for long distances is natural to us. Sprinting occasionally, yes. I am an experienced endurance runner. The reasons I enjoyed running were less physical than they were mental. I enjoyed the feeling that I had completed a mini-odyssey after a 25 mile run, in addition to the mental challenge. But physically, that endurance stuff wreaked havoc on my body. Tightness everywhere, aching joints, lots of sweating, dehydration. What I was doing was so unhealthy. Walking is the opposite. When I dropped hard cardio, I also noted a marked improvement in my immunity. I’ve read that too much intense cardio can impair immune function by reducing white blood cell count as well as chronically increasing stress hormone levels. A big part of learning how to get ripped entailed learning how to stay healthy so that I could maintain my productive gym work.

Walking lets me spend less time inside gym

The gym is a petri dish rife with who knows what strains of freakish Franken-microbes. This goes to the point about immunity above.

Walking has improved my mobility

Since I have a daily step goal and I don’t take all 10,000 or 12,000 steps in a single bout, I get up and walk a few times per day. This is powerful for two reasons. In the olden days, I performed hard cardio and/ or CrossFit style stuff early in the morning, biked to work, then sat at my desk for seven or eight hours. So basically I was saying a big “screw you” to my muscles, muscle facia and tendons. The repetitive fast contractions of the muscles associated with all that cardio and plyometric/ CrossFit/ metabolic work caused tightness throughout my body, and then I sat frozen in a position that’s conducive to generating tightness all on its own. Does that sound smart? Walking fixes all that. First, it’s low-impact and doesn’t cause the tightness endemic to high-impact stuff. Second, it’s spread over the day, meaning that I can’t stay seated for all that time. A win-win if you ask me.

Walking lets me spend more time with my family

Here’s what a Saturday or Sunday used to look like for me: destroy body at gym. Make little progress. Get home. Shower. Muster every last drip of energy interacting with family. Drag myself around outside with them. Collapse at end the of the day.

Now, it looks like this: if it’s a gym day, lift according to the RF Strength Method, spending no more than an hour in the gym. Get home. Shower. Energetically engage with family. Walk to park. Play with son in park. Walk around the neighborhood with family. Walk home with family. That’s all my “cardio” now.

Walking can be done virtually any time with no equipment

I don’t really have to explain this one. A couple of days per week, I don’t achieve my step goals by the time I get home. OMG!! What to do?! Walk back and forth in the apartment for a while, while pondering how to create a cohesive meal out of fish heads, lard and oatmeal. Literally. Jog lightly in place for a few minutes here and there until my FitBit tells me I’m good. It all counts. It’s all energy out. No sweat.