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UF FITNESS COMPENDIUM

Disclaimer: This article is work in progress. The second and third part are incomplete and will be modified when I have time to add in more information. The third part, especially, will be udpated numerous times as I add more and more information to it with hopes to make this thread more complete. The part on periodization, particularly, is only half done and doesn't include everything I have to say on the topic...

It would be good if the first few posts after mine were also compilations of what links, information and ressearches you guys might have to add to this.


Part I: The Foundation

Here we will discuss the basic things that you will need to consider for living a healthier life. These are all little things that you need to take into account every day in order to succeed. The most important thing when choosing a new diet or exercise plan is commitment. In this first article I am mostly going to discuss the very basics of good nutritional habits for those who have no clue where to start. If you already have some knowledge in these things, simply brief over this section and move on to the next.

Goal setting
You don’t generally decide to change your life habits just for the heck of it. People do that because they have goals that they want to achieve (be it losing weight, gaining muscle, or improving athletic performance). The first and most important thing is to USE these goals to your advantage. This isn’t a psychology paper, but you need to know that goal setting is the most important part of anything you take up. If you have no goal, you won’t commit to what you are doing and you will just give up after a few weeks. Set yourself some realistic goals to reach within a realistic time frame. Log your results in a chart to see how you progress, look at yourself in the mirror to see any changes… Do whatever it takes but you need something to motivate you, to keep you pushing on. Enough of that now, and let’s get into the more interesting stuff.

Veggies
We have all had some things hammered into our heads by our caring parents in our childhood, like “Eat your veggies, they’re good for you!”. I’m sure everyone has been told that once. Well our parents couldn’t have been more right. Too many people look at nutritional data in terms of proteins, carbs and fats. This is wrong because even though you can find yourself meeting your daily requirements of these macronutrients you can have a severe lack of micronutrients (vitamins & minerals) that will hamper your recovery and diminish the effectiveness of your workouts. Studies have proved that most amateur athletes had this problem. Unfortunately it cannot be fixed by simply popping a few multi-vitamins in the morning. It will help, but a balanced eating plan will make that so much easier. What this means is simple: eat as much fruits and vegetables as you can. They are good for you and you can sue me if you manage to grow fat by eating too many apples and carrots.

Macronutrients
Another important thing to consider is the macronutrient balance. You can vary it quite a bit depending on your current exercise plan and goals, but there are basic rules that you need to know of. First of all, high GI carbs are the plague. What is a high GI carb? Anything that’s remotely close to sugar is one. Carbohydrates have the property to trigger an insulin response when they are digested. High glycemic index (GI) carbs will cause a massive insulin spike in your bloodstream. In fact, an increase in your blood sugar level (or glucose) will cause the pancreas to increase insulin production. Insulin is an anabolic hormone that does a number of things. Mainly, it increases glycogen/fat/amino acid synthesis by a great deal, forces the reduction of protein degradation and forces cells to absorb circulating amino acids. These high GI carbs also tend to be stored as fat if there is nothing else to do with them. Lower GI carbs generally release their energy at a much slower rate so there never is a surplus of glucose to be absorbed in your cells. There is one moment in your day where it is advisable to consume high GI carbs, but I will be covering that later on. On the other hand, low GI carbs are excellent for you. They provide you with a steady amount of energy that will last a few hours after the meal instead of having a peak.

Second, trans fats should also be avoided as much as possible. They are un-saturated fats (aka good fats) that got transformed into a very nasty type of fat. This happens when the manufacturers add hydrogen to a vegetable oil to make it more stable. There would be no trans fats if the process was allowed to complete it’s cycle, but the problem is that fully hydrogenated oils would be like a solid wax and could not be used for anything. So they partially finish the hydrogenation of their oil (which is why we always see “partially hydrogenated” oils) and this causes the molecules to reconfigure, swapping the hydrogen atoms around the chain of the double bonded carbons that did not become chemically satured. This is why they are called “trans” fatty acids. Their has been a direct link that has been made between the consumption of trans fats and such things as obesity, metabolic syndromes and diabetes.

Third, un-saturated fats can be consumed more than you think. A lot of people think all fats are the same and should all be avoided. Fats are a very calorically dense food that provides you with quite a bit of energy. Essential fatty acids are even more required because they cannot be synthesized by the human body from the other fatty acids. This means that if you don’t eat them, you won’t get them. EFA’s are mainly hormone related, and most of their functions remain unclear to the public. I have to admit I have never looked into this myself and therefore I can’t say much about them, except the fact that you need them if you want a healthy and balanced diet. Other unsaturated fats such as those found in cold pressed vegetable oils are also excellent for you. They are a healthy source of calories that should not be overlooked.

You should also know that there are certain combinations that are good and others that are bad. This mainly has to do with the carbs spiking the insulin. Since an increased nutrient uptake will follow a high GI carb consumption, it is better to avoid consuming any fat along with these carbs. This would cause the fat to be sucked into your cells and stored there for later use. Obvioulsy this is not something desirable. On the other hand, if you consume some high GI carbs (after your workout, mainly), do take advantage of the increased nutrient uptake and consume some quality proteins with them.

Proteins really can’t harm you. Generally the old saying “the more the better” can apply for protein consumption as long as you try not to exceed 1,5 grams of proteins per kilogram of bodyweight. If like me you have a big appetite you’ll end up eating more than required, but if anything it will be evacuated by your body (a.k.a. you'll piss it out) if there is any excess.

Fluids
Now we have pretty much covered the basics of healthy eating. But what about healthy drinking? We all heard that it was good for our health to have some red wine at dinner. The thing is, alcohol fucks up your hormones every time you ingest even the smallest quantity of it. And the active ingredients that are good for you in wine are all found in better concentrations in green tea. So you’d be better off drinking that instead, since it also has the very interesting property to speed up your metabolism. Some brands have other things added to them, like my favourite: “Ginseng & Lemon Green Tea”. Tastes real good and the ginseng helps with providing a bit of energy. But you’re not going to be living off green tea. One or two cups of it each day will be enough for a sufficient metabolism boost. I honestly have no idea of the actual benefit it gives for the metabolism, but in the complicated fields of metabolic balancing any boost is a good boost.

Now something else you need to consider is water consumption. Intense athletic activities such as parkour or working out will undoubtedly cause your body to lose a lot of water. You need to replace this water by drinking A LOT. Probably a good 80% of the population doesn’t drink enough water. It’s a pure fluid, that helps clean your body by washing out the bad stuff. When you don’t drink enough water, the kidneys can’t function to their full potential so part of their workload is transferred on to the liver, who has to work double time. Water helps fat metabolism by reducing the stress on the liver (by making the kidneys more efficient) so it can fully perform it’s duty at maximum capacity. On the other hand, water costs nothing. Compare that with the standard energy drink at two bucks per bottle, and you should be saving a lot of money. There are numerous other benefits that I won’t list here because it would be way too long, but I want you to understand that water is ESSENTIAL for you. Drink as much of it as you can.

Generally it is a good advice to avoid any beverage that contains calories. Now obviously you are not going to stop everything – I know I like my orange juice in the morning – but you definitely need to cut out all the sodas, energy drinks, gatorades, powerades, etc. Some of these can be good after your workout to replace the lost fluids while spiking your insulin, but if they are consumed at any other type of day they are just contributing to make you fat. Also avoid the diet sodas, even if they have no calories the crap they contain is of no good to your health.


Part II: Basic Training Methodology

The idea of the following section is to give you a broad overview of the different training and conditioning methods that are available to traceurs. We will take a look at different types of training protocols and most importantly, at how you can perform them. If you already know what you’re doing, skip this. I won’t go into details because training is an extremely broad topic that is rather difficult to summarise.

Muscle 101
Let’s start basic here. There are many types of muscles in your body. The ones you can train are of the skeletal and cardiac types. Skeletal muscles are physically attached to your bones through tendons and ligaments. Voluntary contractions of these muscles create movement by applying force to the bones. Cardiac muscle, on the other hand, can’t be controlled and is what your heart is made of. However you can still make it stronger by means of cardiovascular training.

Skeletal muscle is composed of two different types of fibers: Type I and Type II. Type I muscle fibers are also known as slow-twitch, and are the ones responsible for the longer, sustained contractions. They are fuelled through the oxidative energy pathway. Type II fibers are known as fast-twitch and are responsible for rapid and forceful contractions. Fuelled by the anaerobic energy pathways (ATP & glycolysis), they can be further divided into types IIa (moderately fast, medium force production) and IIb (very fast, best force production but will not work for much longer than a minute).

What this all comes down to is that you can’t train different muscle qualities (such as strength, speed and endurance) at the same time. This is because the working parameters are very different and an exercise or activity that puts the emphasis on type IIb fibers will see an almost non-existent response from their slow-twitch buddies.

Some weight lifting basics
As I explained, there are different parameters that are specific to developping different muscular qualities. Here I will be giving you some terminology tips that are useful for reading and deciphering the complicated programs that you can sometimes see on the internet.

Reps, Sets & Volume
The total amount of repetitions (reps) that you perform in a workout for one given muscle or exercise is called volume. The number of reps per set are usually expressed in terms of AxB, where A is the number of sets and B is the number of reps per set. So if you see «4x5 – Barbell Overhead Press @ 135», it would mean that you have to perform 4 sets of 5 on that exercise, with 135 lbs of weight. The «@» simply stands for «at» here. The same principles apply to bodyweight exercises such as chin-ups and dips. If someone says «3x8 – Pull-ups @ BW», it means that you would perform 3 sets of 8 at your own bodyweight (with no extra weight). In case you didn’t know, it is possible and very easy to add weight to these exercises with a simple device called a dip belt. If you don’t have it, you can always use a backpack loaded with dictionaries, ankle weights and other such devices.

The number of reps per set usually used for different goals are the following:
1 to 5 – strength (with some hypertrophy but little endurance)
6 to 12 – hypertrophy (with some strength)
12+ – endurance (with some hypertrophy but little strength)

As you can see, there is a crossover between the different abilities in that shifting your rep schemes from only a few digits won’t completely alter the results that you are getting. The total volume for one exercise should generally range from 20 to 60 total reps. More than that is generally unnecessary, unless you need to build up a lot of endurance, and less than 20 won’t build much of anything. You should also know that, generally, higher intensity training calls for a lower total volume because you are lifting more weight every time, and therefore straining your CNS a lot more with every rep. If you were to attempt performing lots of volume and intensity at the same time you would most likely end up over training within a few weeks.

Intensity techniques
Intensity techniques are there to allow you to take your sets a bit farther, past your conventional muscle failure. They shouldn’t be abused and definitely shouldn’t be used all the time because they can result quickly in over-training. However, since they are used in almost every single program that you’ll read, I’m going to summarise the most important ones here.

A super-set consists of two sets done immediately one after the other, with a minimal amount of rest between the first and the second exercise. You can do two-types of super-sets: agonist-antagonist (such as one upper body pushing motion super-setted with a rowing motion) or agonist-agonist (such as super-setting your squats with leg extensions).

A drop set consists of one set taken to failure, at the end of which you quickly strip the weight from the bar and proceed immediately with another set to failure. This can be done as long as there is weight to remove, but generally speaking it’s time to stop when you’re having difficulty moving something that’s 60-70% lighter than your normal working weight.

Forced reps are done with a spotter that helps lifting the weight for you after you’ve hit failure (and can’t lift the weight up by yourself anymore). This one is over-abused in gyms everywhere, and it becomes a problem when you see kids «benching» 225 for reps while all they are really doing are assisted quarter reps.

Partials are simply completing a movement but only going through a limited part of the range of motion. Lowering the weight down to half your normal depth would be considered a partial. This is usually done at the end of a set, where once you’ve hit failure and cannot complete the movement through it’s full range of motion you can continue straining through half reps and quarter reps until you have absolutely no juice left.

Some gym myths
The dogma barks that the knees should never cross the toe line, that you should never go below 90 degrees on squat (that’s not even parallel!), that deadlifts are bad for the back and that the only way to lose weight is to pump out 45 mins of steady paced cardio every day. All these claims are wrong and most usually based on the limited knowledge of some skinny-fat personal trainers that got their accreditation 20 years ago and never bothered learning new things since then.

What the dogma should bark is the following. The knees can cross the toe line in a loaded environment, as long as proper technique is being used. Squats should be done as low as you can maintain proper posture (that depends on everyone’s flexibility), and should minimally stop at the point where the upper leg is parallel to the ground. Deadlifts build healthy backs – again, as long as proper technique is used. And the best way to lose fat is through hardcore weight training coupled with high intensity interval cardio.

For good explanations and more, I suggest you go read this article by John Berardi, Ph.D
www.johnberardi.com/updat..._myths.htm

Exercises – The good and the bad
The first thing you must understand is that isolation exercises are relatively worthless to most trainees, and hold absolutely no value for a traceur. There is just no point in you doing bicep curls and kickbacks if you’re seeking to be better at parkour. There is some limited value to these exercises for bodybuilders who seek to have the perfect look. However, if you’re going to be also training for PK I’m assuming that you don’t have unlimited amounts of time to spend in the gym. We all want to go out for skill work, don’t we?

So we want to pick the exercises that have the most bang for your buck. We want to pick the exercises that will make you stronger and faster. These exercises are, in no particular order:

Deadlifts (conventional, romanian, stigg-legged, snatch-grip on podium)
Squats (conventional, ass-to-grass, box, bulgarian)
Pull-ups (chin-ups, wide-grip pull-ups, close-grip chin-ups, one armed chin-ups)
Standing overhead presses (with all dumbbell and barbell variations)
Bench presses (with all dumbbell and barbell variations)
Push-ups and handstand push-ups
Dips
Plyometric exercises (depth jumps, step-ups, leap-ups)
Muscle-ups
Unilateral (one-armed or one-legged) versions of all of the above, when possible

The ones you should try to avoid, and the first to be dropped when you don’t have much time to train are all of the exercises that work only one muscle at a time and/or don’t comply with your current training goals. Now if you have never hear of or are not sure of how to perform any of the above exercises, you can just google for them and I’m sure you can find detailed and insightful tutorials.

Training for Parkour
The very essence of Parkour, of moving freely in your environment without any boundaries or restrictions will result in two main abilities that you will seek to train and maintain in order to perform at your peak efficiency:

1)Be able to clear any obstacle that comes in your path with ease. This is taken care of by the strength training and parkour skill practice.
2) Be able to maintain a good run at a high intensity for as long as you can. This is taken care of by the use of a method called interval training (for cardio).

A parkour run can be split into two major segments: running and vaulting (consider that vaulting includes all parkour techs you can think of). A vault is, in my opinion, a full body max effort plyometric movement. Now don’t get me wrong here, as I am perfectly aware that some amount of strength endurance will be needed to keep going, but since the effort is not at your maximal intensity then you shouldn't tire yourself out too quickly. The strength endurance needed is just coming from your excellent strength to weight ratio (from strength training). If you can move heavy weights with ease it comes to reason that moving your own weight will be a joke, because it is only a small percentage of your 1RM. For example I haven't trained endurance AT ALL on my pull-ups in the past year and have focused heavily on strength. Last time I checked I could do 19 unweighted ones, and I'm guessing that although far from what I would consider elite, it's plenty enough to suit a traceur’s needs.

So, we want to be strong and explosive. The development method that we will choose will therefore lean towards lower reps/higher intensity. So rep schemes such as 3x3, 10x3, 4x4, 5x5 and 4x6 are all good. The classic 1RM progression (8-8-5-5-3-3-1) can also be done from time to time, but don’t use it too much. Actually, I suggest you don’t do it on more than one exercise per workout as it puts enormous amounts of stress on your CNS).

Moreover, the single most important exercise for a traceur has to be the muscle-up. Climbing out of a cat leap or simply overcoming a wall-run fluidly is what most beginners struggle with. The key to that is building a strong muscle-up. If you can’t already do one, work your way up to it by means of weighted and plyo pull-ups. After that you just need to develop it, eventually adding extra weight to the exercise. Once you’ve done that, climbing up anything will become extremely easy and fluid for you.

Organisation
The first thing you must consider now that you are ready to establish your first program are the very basic ways to split your training. What this basically means is choosing between a body parts split 4-8 times per week or a full-body workout 2-4 times per week. The classic body parts split comes from the bodybuilding culture and involves devoting an entire workout to one muscle or body part. Alternatively, a full-body workout involves working everything that needs to be worked in one workout.

For parkour, it is more advisable to choose the full body option as it frees more time for your skill training sessions (since you don’t have to go to the gym as often).


Part III: Diggin’ Deeper

Metabolism & hormones
Your metabolism is probably one of the hardest things to understand about your body as it fluctuates greatly throughout the day. There are an almost infinite amount of causes that will make these fluctuations happen and for the most part they are hard to define. However, muscle building and weight loss are both closely linked to your metabolism so you better know the basics of how it works. Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) represents the amount of calories you will burn throughout a day if you sit still and do nothing. It depends mostly on your age, fitness level and genetics. Some people are born with lightning fast metabolisms that burn 3400+ calories per day while others have very slow ones that will burn a short 1700 calories per day. The average is located somewhere around 2400 calories per day. The more muscle you have, the higher your RMR will be to maintain this muscle mass. As an example, we can take two 200 pound guys weighing 5’9’’ at 20 years old. One has 8% body fat and the other has a whopping 24%. The lean guy will have a much higher RMR since most of his mass is composed of muscles that need to be fed if they are to be maintained while the fat guy will probably have a very low RMR. Makes sense? Good.

Now, the basic hormones in your body that you want to keep at a high concentration in your bloodstream are HGH (human growth hormone) and testosterone. There are tons more, but they will generally react favorably to the things you will do for increasing HGH and testosterone levels. In short, hormones have key fat burning, muscle synthesizing and cell regeneration&growth properties that really cannot be overlooked. Hormonal balance, coupled with your metabolism, is what will make or break your success in the gym for the most part. These are of course affected by your life habits, so it is exact to say that your general life habits (eating, sleeping, etc.) are what will have the most effect on your fitness level.

Now you have probably figured out that having a high RMR is a good thing. It allows you to eat more and not risk getting fat and generally people with higher RMRs will have more energy throughout the day. Here are a few things that you should do to ensure that your metabolism and hormone levels are high all the time. Keep in mind that these tips are VERY important since a high metabolism, combined with high levels of growth inducing hormones will undoubtedly generate very impressive results in the gym.

First off, a regular sleep pattern is required if you are to have any success. A hard working athlete needs to have a minimum of 8 hours of sound sleep per night. This is not easily done for most of us college students since most of the social life at this age seems to be happening at night. You can get away with 7 hours of sleep, but less than that will really hamper your results by a good deal. Find a way to get in this sleep as it is extremely important. When you break up your muscles in the gym, they essentially remain broken up all day. It’s when you’re sleeping at night that your body repairs these micro-tears in the muscles to make them bigger and stronger. Not getting enough sleep will make your muscles take longer to recover and they’ll generally end up not being ready for the next workout, still sore from the last.

Metabolism and hormones are also affected to some point by the exercises you do in the gym. Working all in isolation exercises, for example, won’t trigger much response for your body. For maximum hormonal and metabolic response to be reached, you need to recruit as many muscles as you can for every exercise. This means you have to pick compound movements that will make many muscles work at once. Such exercises are the squats, leg presses, deadlifts, bench presses and pull-ups (and all of their variations). It is okay to work on isolation exercises to finish your muscles after they have been thoroughly exhausted by the compound exercises but this kind of exercise that work only one muscle group at a time should never be the bread & butter of your workout plan.

Another thing that will play an important role is keeping your body well fed throughout the day. This means splitting up what you are currently eating into 5-6 smaller meals per day, that have to be taken at a 3-4 hour interval. This will keep a constant flow of nutrients coming to your muscles and organs so they never have to destroy their own cells for energy. While the whole of America seems to be stuck with the idea that 3 square meals per day is good for you, it’s really time for things to change. People tend to over-eat at all of these three meals and this is what is making the populations more and more fat. Eating a reasonable amount of food 6 times per day is incredibly better as it will keep your metabolism constant, and your body will remain an anabolic environment (anabolism = creation of new cells because there is an excess of energy ; catabolism = destruction of existing cells for energy purposes) all day long.

Post-workout nutrition
Good, well-planned, post-workout eating habits will also tend to favour an anabolic environment and good hormonal levels. The science of post workout nutrition has been researched a lot throughout the years and it is one of the only things in the fitness world that most trainers agree on. As explained earlier, high GI carbs will cause a massive insulin spike. You can see insulin is a nutrient shuttling platform. So, if you consume a rather large amount of fast GI carbs immediately after your workout, you will have an increased nutrient uptake capability. This is very much enhanced by the fact that after an intense workout your cells are literally starving and they are dieing for these said nutrients. These two factors create a “window of opportunity” that will last approximately an hour after the workout where nutrient uptake, carb efficiency and protein synthesis will all be maximized. To make the most out of your workouts, you need to use this by consuming some proteins along with this high GI carb drink.

What happens is that the increased carb efficiency will cause close to 100% of your high GI carbs to be stored as glycogen in your muscles. This is because your glycogen stores are depleted and need to be refilled. This analogy should help make things clearer: when your car’s gas tank is empty, you need to fill it up if you want to keep going. If you think of your glycogen stores as the gas tank, your body works the exact same way as a car. You’re out of fuel and you need to refill. Isn't it simple?

The reason you want to consume these proteins along is simply because their synthesis is maximized at this time, so some fast digesting proteins are called for if you want to quickly get these amino acids into your muscles. Optimally a hydrolyzed protein shake would be called for, since hydrolyzation is a process that makes the proteins partly digested so that your body can absorb them almost immediately. These proteins (generally in powder form) cost quite a bit of money however, and are not easily accessible to anyone who is running on a tight budget. So if these are not an option, simply opt for some egg whites not too long after the work out.

Now the ratios: this all depends on your weight and age, but consuming between 50 and 80 grams of the fast sugars, along with 30 to 40 grams of proteins has been found to work best. Some people go crazy on the sugars and will end up consuming up to 160 grams in their post-workout shake. This can be good for hard-gainers with very fast metabolisms but it is not advisable for most trainees since some of these sugars are likely to be stored as fat. A very cheap and effective weight gainer combination that I am using is 600-800ml of chocolate milk with anything that contains proteins. Sometimes an energy bar, sometimes liquid egg whites, and sometimes protein powder.

Periodization – What, when and how ?
Okay, so we will now take an in depth look at different ways to organise your training. According to my little friend the online dictionary, periodization is the attempt to categorise or divide time into discrete named blocks. Applied to training, it is a way to organise it into blocks that focus on specific skills or abilities. Allow me to take you through the main methods you can use to periodise your training.

Linear Periodization
That’s the old school way of doing things. The Russians first invented it in the 60’s and it stuck along ever since. Even if it’s not always the optimal way of doing things, it is a time proven method that works. A program using straight-up linear periodization would have many small cycles, each devised to work on a specific ability or skill, with pre-defined time frames for each cycle.

So for example, you could have a 15 week program divided in 3 blocks. The trainee’s goal is to increase his maximal strength on the squat, so the first 6 weeks could be a hypertrophy phase (4x"> in order to increase his lower body muscle mass so that he has more potential for maximal strength later on. He would then lower the reps and transition into a strength phase (5x5) for the following six weeks. On the last three weeks, he would peak into a low-rep, high intensity cycle (3x3) to finally start hitting some max effort lifts every workout. The reason why this last cycle is relatively short is that max effort activity unfortunately can’t be sustained very long by the CNS (Central Nervous System) without resulting in overtraining (burning out).

What about progression, you ask? Well, linear periodization generally goes hand in hand with the traditional progressive overload methods. Let’s suppose that our trainee wants to have a 5% increase on his maximal squat. He would take his 1RM at the beginning of the program and would put 105% of that as the poundage to be lifted on the last workout of the 15th week. His progression would be based on that, so that he would always augment the weights slightly every workout or every week.

Block 1 – 4x8 (58-76% of 1RM)
Block 2 – 5x5 (77-85% of 1RM)
Block 3 – 3x3 + 1-2 ME attempts (86-105% of 1RM)


Links
This is a compilation of all the useful/interesting articles I have read over the past year on training and nutrition. It's meant to serve as reference if you're looking for something in particular more than as a ''must read'' list of articles. Some of these things aren't the most interesting papers ever written and could be of little interest to some of you. Just read what you want.

Waterbury Method (Waterbury)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=534922

HFT (Waterbury)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=905832
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=827930
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=960811
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1324625
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=755131
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=725763

Program design (Cosgrove)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=766996

Shoulder savers (Cressey)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...4-training
www.t-nation.com/findArti...5-training
www.t-nation.com/findArti...1-training

Shoulder the load (Robertson)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...9-training

Precision pulling
www.t-nation.com/findArti...e=295prec2

Dead Zone (Tate)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...e=194dead2

Squatting from head to toe (Tate)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...cle=298dt2

Squat 900 (Tate)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...y_149squat

Periodization Bible I&II (Tate)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...ody_129per
www.t-nation.com/findArti...ody_133per

ZONE DIET:
www.zoneperfect.com/nutrition.aspx
www.mitymous.net/weights/zoneblox.htm

Cardio Confusion (Cressey)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...2-training

Cardio Progressions (Berardi)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...0-training

Cardio roundtables 1&2
www.t-nation.com/findArti...e=262card2
www.t-nation.com/findArti...263cardio2

High octane cardio (Mahler)
www.t-nation.com/findArti...e=244high2

General stuff
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1308241
www.johnberardi.com/artic...habits.htm
www.johnberardi.com/artic...chen_1.htm
www.johnberardi.com/artic...chen_2.htm

Lean eating (Berardi)
www.johnberardi.com/artic...ting_1.htm
www.johnberardi.com/artic...ting_2.htm

Athlete diet (Berardi)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=1000588

Nutrient Timing
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459474
www.t-nation.com/findArti...le=308sci2

Importance of dietary fats
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=644939

Temporal nutrition (Lonnie Lowery)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461927
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=460539

Roundtables
Protein: www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=462192
Fat 1&2: www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461360 & www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461947
Carbs 1&2: www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461157 & www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459360

Velocity diet (Chris Shugart)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=546491
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=563877

Summary of some Berardi articles (by Shugart)
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=460027

Soy
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459861
www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=461709
www.t-nation.com/findArti...dy_87prote

SHOULDER FLEXIBILITY www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=818555

LAZY MAN STRETCHING: www.t-nation.com/findArti...e=215lazy2

Caloric restriction and intermittent fasting: Two potential diets for successful brain aging
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr...med_docsum

Johns Hopkins Researchers Find Link Between Cell's Energy Use and Genome Health: Another Possible Link Between Diet and Aging
www.lef.org/news/LefDaily...tion=AGING

Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake
www.pnas.org/cgi/content/...00/10/6216

Intermittent fasting and dietary supplementation with 2-deoxy-D-glucose improve functional and metabolic cardiovascular risk factors in rats
www.fasebj.org/cgi/conten.../17/9/1133

Fasting and rejuvenation
www.healthscience.org/Art...rticle.htm

IF and workout timing
www.crossfit.com/discus/m...24127.html

IF planning
www.crossfit.com/discus/m...24188.html
www.crossfit.com/discus/m...29194.html

UF Threads on training
p202.ezboard.com/furbanfr...1616.topic