Beast Skills - Tutorials for Bodyweight Feats

August 12th, 2008

Michael Phelps on 10,000 calories a day

(picture courtesy, Speedo USA/Michael Muller)

I've been reading and watching a lot on the Olympics lately and one statistic that I read over and over again (in articles like this: http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200801/wellness-michael-phelps.html) is the number of calories Michael Phelps puts down in a day. During training, he strives to get 8,000 - 10,000 calories in a single day. I doubt that some people get that in an entire week!

Of course, Phelps is training harder than you or I could imagine - swimming miles upon miles every week, in addition to supplementary dry-land work. If he didn't consume this many calories, his body simply wouldn't recover properly from this level of training.

And this brings me to the point of this post. Focusing on proper recovery is just as important as focusing on working hard in the gym. Many times this requires eating a lot of food. If your progress in the gym has stalled, look toward your diet and make sure that you're feeding the machine that you ask so much from.

We don't need complicated equations or scales to determine how much more to add, just simply eat an extra snack during the day, or add a 1/2 serving to several meals throughout the day. Keep these additional calories in your diet for a couple weeks and take note of your strength and energy levels, weight, and bodyfat percentage. You may be surprised in how your body reacts. A bit of extra food is often the "kickstart" your body needs to start back towards its goals. If nothing happens, don't be afraid to add a little more.

This little experiment holds true for people building muscle AND losing fat! I can't tell you how many times I've seen a client come into the gym and when we go over their diet log, they're hardly eating anything all day! (nearly always skipping breakfast) You'd think someone on a low calorie diet would be thin as a rail, but this is often not the case! The body will go into starvation mode and slow down your metabolism. Your body doesn't care that you want to look good naked, it's just trying to survive!

And of course if you want to build muscle, you have to give your body the "bricks" it needs. Muscle doesn't appear out of thin air from wishes and good intentions, we have to supply the body food!

So eat, drink, be merry, and eat some more!

-Jim

July 15th, 2008

New personal best!

I've been working to get some of my numbers up in my lifts, and just got a personal best in the weighted chin-up! Read about it in the training log.

June 8th, 2008

Thanks to everyone!

Thanks to everyone who supported the Pushing Past Autism event through direct donation or the purchase of a t-shirt! 100% of the profits with be donated to Autism Society of Connecticut.

Best of luck with all your training!

June 1st, 2008

Charity Event for Autism - June 7th

plus new t-shirt design!

This Saturday, June 7th, at the O’Neill Center of Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT, will be a charity event for children with autism -- it is a pushup event! - try to do as many (or as few) pushups as you want to do in four hours. If you can't make it to the event or find sponsors, a flat rate donation is also perfectly acceptable.

Money raised goes to the Autism Society of Connecticut and to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism. Check out all the information here - Pushing Past Autism

And as part of my contribution, I will be donating 100% of the profits from my t-shirts this week to this event. Feel free to make a straight donation to the charity, but also know that a t-shirt purchase this week will help out the cause as well.

This is the perfect time to announce a new t-shirt for the store! What better picture than a gorilla doing a one arm chin-up?? The design below was drawn by the very talented artist, John Amore. You can check out his myspace site here - http://www.myspace.com/ortprod or his website (and further examples of his amazing artwork) here - http://www.airdrawn.net/~evilgummy/omegaredtooth.html

Thanks for contributing to such a great event. Good luck with all your training!

May 5th, 2008

NEW! FRONT LEVER TUTORIAL!

The front lever tutorial is finally done.

I appreciate everyone's patience with my severe lack of updates and tutorials for the site for the past year and a half. The whole situation frustrates me just as much as it frustrates you. Trust me.

I'm working to fix things to be able to update more frequently. Thanks for your continued understanding. Your emails and support mean a great deal to me.

Train hard.

-Jim

Looking for old news? Check the archives.