Muscle Ventures Podcasts

[Important update:  As Nancy mentions on her blog, she annnounced her upcoming bodybuilding competition in this podcast.  Stupidly, I forgot to include it in the following notes.]

In this podcast (Quicktime ipod compatible, 30MB; Google streaming flash video), Nancy Arnold and I (Bud) go over our rather disastrous 1 RM performance two weeks into the low carb phase of the anabolic (metabolic) diet.  As we've described elsewhere, the metabolic diet begins with a two week period of carb depletion at 30g carbohydrates per day.  I was attempting these on the last day of carb depletion.  Nancy had completed her induction a week earlier and was at the end of a 5 day short carb depletion phase.

DiPasquale, the creator of the metabolic diet notes that it takes a while before the body becomes efficient at burning fat for fuel instead of carbs.  My personal experience with low carb diets is that I typically need carbs to help with explosive power.  However, once I get in steady state, the level of carbs I typically need to achieve this power is quite low, typically on the order of 50 to 100 grams of carbs per day.  One thing that attracted me to this diet was the fact that it made allowance for adding in carbs at key times.  That had not kicked in by the time we were doing 1RMs.

Our 1RM performacne was disastrous.  We went down on all measures, not even completing the squat.  That was quite disappointing because we had done a reasonable job in our last cycle that mixed hypertrophy with max strength training.  Personally, I expected to go up a little at least in bench.  Had I done the measurements today (after my first two day carb load), I think the outcome would have been different.

We will soon be publishing some interviews with Troy Garver, General Manager of Gold's Gym in Ann Arbor, in which he remarks that trial and error involves some error.  I think we can chalk up these measurements to some error.

Additional Links

• Jason Paris provided us with this method for measuring 1RMs.
  

Nancy and I had this conversation on April 26, the day of her last workout before her April 29 competition. You can download the 27.5 MB Quicktime movie by clicking on Nancy's image. Nancy was doing 20 grams of carbs that day and was scheduled to go see Kevin immediately after our workout. If she was sufficiently depleted, he was going to put her on carb loading that night. We both agreed she was probably sufficiently depleted.

A large part of this conversation focuses on her experience with spray-on tanning. At the time we spoke, she had gone through two sessions and was scheduled to go through two more. Tanning experts recommend spray-on tanning as a way of receiving a final even coat before bodybuilding competitions.

As Nancy humorously describes her experience, spray-on tanning can be unpleasant. She stands in a booth, and they mist one side for a few seconds. Then she turns around, and they mist the other side. The mist is cold. She then removes the excess.

A theme that emerges during the conversation is the extent to which aesthetics are important in bodybuilding. The whole last week of her competition prep has been focused almost exclusively on aesthetic self-mortification.

In this podcast recorded April 24, Nancy and I discuss her decision to drop MCTs shortly after recording a podcast describing her experience with them. She was going back to a carb depletion diet "with food". You can download the 17.5 MB Quicktime movie by clicking on Nancy's picture.

Stomach difficulties are a commonly cited side effect of MCTs. Perhaps just as significantly, Nancy had had a sour stomach since the Friday before and had had trouble consuming her 1200 calorie allowance both days prior. Further, right before the stomach problems that precipitated her decision to drop MCTs, she had been working out for 2 hours and 15 minutes, and we were in the process of doing another hour plus of weight training. In other words, her body was under significant, general stress, and it is hard to know to what extent her difficulties were due to MCTs.