Muscle Ventures Podcasts

In this podcast (Quicktime, 12.7 MB; Google Video, no download), Nancy and I (Bud) close out our series on her prep for her April 29, 2006 contest. This podcast combines three video clips from Nancy's posing practices on April 14 (two weeks out from the contest), 21 (one week out), and 28 (day before). We follow this set of videos with a slide show of the different mandatory poses taken on each of the days. For those interested, Nancy is currently doing an exercise analysis series on bodybuilding poses.

It's interesting to note the progression in Nancy's physique and attitude during this period. The photos on the left show Nancy doing the Front Double Biceps pose. In the first photo in the series, Nancy is two weeks out from the competition. She was still in her heavy diet phase and had some fat left to trim. In the second photo, you notice less fat and some more definition. This is even more apparent in her back. By the third photo the day before the competition, she has really trimmed down.

I have to say, I had some concerns about Nancy during this period, she was losing weight so fast at the end. Some of that concern comes out in our final podcast before the show when we discuss her water depletion strategy.

Finally, I should point out that it is rare for bodybuilders to point up their imperfections in this way. They're in it to look perfect at the end and typically only want to put their best foot forward. One exception is John Hansen's decision to post weekly photos for 6 weeks leading up to his Natural Mr. Universe and Natural Olympia contests in 2004. That particular series shows a rather dramatic progression from someone who already looks very strong and fit to someone who is prepared to compete in a bodybuilding contest.

In this podcast (Quicktime, 11.5 MB; Google Video, no download), Nancy Arnold and I (Bud) go back to basics and discuss her motivations for starting on our current periodization program and what she hopes to accomplish during the hypertrophy mesocycle (phase) we just started. We also muse about what diet should be during this phase and discuss features of the metabolic diet recommended in Serious Strength Training, the book we are following.

Nancy is basically looking for change. Periodization combines a number of different weight training disciplines to develop all aspects of muscle function. The hypertrophy mesocycle lasts four to twelve weeks and focuses on muscle growth. It relies both on explosive power to get the heavy weights up and on endurance to sustain performance over multiple repetitions in multiple sets. The program also devotes mesocycles specifically to power and endurance. Varying the focus in this way is key to maintaining progress in training.

Finally, Serious Strength Training also suggests that we should be gaining two lbs. per week during this phase. It also recommends following the metabolic diet, a low carb diet that uses carb loading on the weekend to give the metabolism a little fillip. Neither Nancy nor I are following this diet. An open question is whether we are consuming enough calories and the right kind.

Additional Links

• Wikipedia gives a good overview on periodization and its history in modern sport.
• Periodization is based on Selye's work on General Adaptive Syndrome. Essentially, if stress is never varied, the body ceases to adapt.
• Tudor Bompa, lead author of Serious Strength Training, is well known as the father of periodization in sports training.

In this 14 minute podcast (Quicktime, 26.3 MB; Google Video, no download), Nancy Arnold and I (Bud) discuss at length the role of nutrition during the hypertrophy mesocycle of our new periodization training program. The motivations for this discussion were many. As Nancy was going through the preparations for her last show, all she did was cut calories to gain definition. Her diet guru, Kevin, discussed at length the difficulties of getting women to lose weight, and women in fitness competitions consider diet to be 80% of the preparation. The goals for controlling weight are well-defined, but there is much less emphasis on how to effectively gain weight as is required in the hypertrophy phase.

The emphasis on body fat control is heightened by the recommendation in our periodization book, Serious Strength Training, that men target a body fat percentage of 10% as they attempt to gain muscle. On my blog, Michigan Muscle Boy, male lifters expressed that this goal would be hard for them to attain. Well, what's the recommendation for women? Particularly in light of the fact that women's essential body fat is typically considered to be around 12% or above. Below that level, menstruation stops and general health is at risk. For competitions, top-end women bodybuilders target in the 6–10% range, in other words below essential body fat. In the long run, as Nancy and I remark, that level is not sustainable.

However, Nancy is willing to dip down there for competitions largely because she does not view it as putting her too at risk.

In the second half of the conversation, we return to the question of how much weight to gain. As Chris Dorr points out in a discussion on Michigan Muscle Boy, if you weigh more, you can lift more, and that's what hypertrophy is all about. Nancy mentions that she would like to gain 5 lbs. of muscle in a given year. I suggest that is a bit light. But again, how high can a woman go in a year? Most men, with the right training regimen, could easily do 10 lbs or more in a year. But, men have testosterone. As of this conversation, it was unclear what was a good target for women.

Additional Links

• As we discuss in the podcast, medically approved products exist that tout as their main benefit lengthening the time between women's periods.

Two months ago, we initially talked with Mary Reiter about how she got started bodybuilding ten years ago. We covered how she had begun working with a woman named Karen, who is now incidentally a horse trainer in Florida. At the time, we promised a soon to follow sequel about how she transitioned to male coaches. Well, over Memorial Day Weekend, I managed to catch up with Mary and get the scoop on two coaches, Frank Nuñez and Kevin Kelsey, as well as her plans to do a 900 lbs. leg press.

This podcast (Quicktime, 14 MB; Google Video, no download) chronicles Mary's transition from Karen to Frank. Frank was a self-taught bodybuilder who started when he was a student at University of Michigan in Kinesiology. Mary started by helping him prep for his first shows. Training with Frank tended more toward conditioning, and his current personal training business in Chicago is more oriented toward fitness.

A frequent observation is that women bodybuilders tend to gravitate toward male partners. One major reason this occurs is that women bodybuilders quickly reach beyond the training capacities of most other women, and there are typically just not a lot of female bodybuilders they could pair up with.

Additional Links

• Frank Nuñez currently resides in Chicago and runs a successful fitness business.

In this podcast (Quicktime, 17.7 MB, Google Video, no download), Nancy Arnold and I discuss our progress in our current periodization program. As Nancy has mentioned in her blog, we both like the periodization program, and as I note, periodization seems to facilitate progress by priming the body for adaptation.

Periodization is not unknown in bodybuilding. Keats Sniderman has written an introductory article on bodybuilding.com which provides much of the history and an introductory workout. However, periodization departs from the repetitive effort method used by most bodybuilders and thus might appear dubious. Nancy and I agree that the key seems to be measurement.

Dave Tate makes the case for periodization well in his Periodization Bible when he notes that if all someone needed to do was the same motion all the time, then powerlifters would only do the three basic exercises: the squat, the bench, and the deadlift. However, everyone recognizes the need to do additional exercises to improve on the basic ones. The body needs more than just monotonous repetition.

The question then becomes how to vary. Proposals abound, particularly in the powerlifting camp. Tate recommends conjugated periodization. Cosgrove recommends undulating periodization (very close to the method Nancy and I are following from Serious Strength Training). And in a rare focus on diet in the powerlifting camp, Cressey actually recommends periodizing the diet in sync with training (also close to what is recommended in Serious Strength Training). The underlying theme seems to be to vary it up in all aspects of your training so that your body does not fall into a rut.

What we don't discuss in this podcast, but is discussed in the linked articles, are the types of variety to put in the workout over time. We'll touch on that in future posts.

In this podcast (Quicktime, 18.4 MB; Google Video, no download), we cover Mary Reiter's transition to her second male coach, Kevin Kelsey. Kevin was also Nancy's coach for her bodybuilding competition in Flint this past April.

Mary met Kevin as Frank was preparing to move on from the gym where she trained and worked. One morning during her training for a show, Mary came to the gym, only to discover that it had flooded. Frank suggested she go to another gym, Champions. It so happens Kevin owns Champions.

It took Mary some time to convince Kevin to accept her as a trainee. They trained together several times, and it was only after Kevin saw her willingness to train intensely that he agreed to take her on. Mary makes several remarks about feeling the need to gain the respect of the men in the establishment.

Additional Links

• Many female bodybuilders choose male trainers. However males and females respond differently to weight training, in part because women have more slow twitch muscle fibers than men.
• Over time, hormonal differences between men and women affect flexibility and morph as well as the potential for gaining muscle mass. These differences impact the effectiveness of different exercises by sex. They also impact susceptibility to injury.

In this podcast (Quicktime, 57 MB; Google Video, no download), Nancy and I continue our discussion concerning how much weight women should gain as they attempt to build muscle. Available research on the topic has been sparse, but a recent report in The Journal of Women's Health (originally spotted by Maspik Teruzim in Wired via Instapundit) sheds some light on the issue. Women are indeed very different from men but respond to intensive training.

Three studies are cited in the article, in particular one from The Journal of Applied Physiology. That article suggests that a woman weighing 150 lbs. and following a moderately strenuous training regimen focused on strength and endurance could gain about 2 lbs. of muscle in 6 months (or a 2% increase in muscle). As a response to our last podcast on this topic, John Yeo (blog defunct), suggested Nancy might gain 6 – 8 lbs. of muscle in a year, sacrificing 2 as she dieted down to bodybuilding perfection, leading to a total gain of 4 – 6 lbs. That number seems attainable as the women in the study lost fat as they put on muscle.

In the podcast, we note that Nancy intends to follow the recommendation from Serious Strength Training that she gain no more than 15% above her ideal contest weight. The question will be what body fat percentage she can hold to. Women in the Journal of Applied Physiology study had 33% body fat and so were relatively poorly conditioned even at the end of the study. Nancy is in extremely good condition.