Archives for June 2015

Roots and Mentors: Mac McCallum’s Profound Insights Are Still Relevant

June 25, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 8 Comments

John McCallum: our mentors had to walk the walk before we listened when they talked the talk. He wrote 100 + articles; he gave us our marching orders every month.

There is no school like Old School!
“Train, eat, sleep, grow – repeat!”

John “Mac” McCallum was a hugely influential figure that burst onto the muscle and strength scene in the 1960s. He built a cult following with his superb column in Strength & Health magazine. The “Keys to Progress” series ran for years and presented a viewpoint and tone that struck a resonant chord with alpha males worldwide. Mac was a man’s man, he offered up a vision of the idealized man—then provided a blueprint for morphing yourself into that ideal. In Mac’s way of thinking, the ideal man was large, muscular, athletic and smart. He loved the rugged, functional physiques of the Olympic weightlifter. Mac was generally dismissive of bodybuilders: they were too effete, preening, egotistical and un-athletic. But, having said that, he worshiped the “power bodybuilders” as exemplified by Reg Park and Bill Pearl.

First and foremost, Mac’s goal was to become strong. The key to transforming into the idealized alpha male was to grow dramatically stronger. Everything flowed from strength; in order to grow stronger, Mac championed the strategy of getting bigger. How did a man grow bigger and stronger? He first and foremost lifted weights in a very specific and disciplined fashion. Secondly, the acolyte purposefully ate a massive amount of food. The goal was to lift weights hard, heavy, often and with incredible training intensity, or “effort,” as he called it. To “support” the intense lifting Mac wanted athletes to eat big and eat often. The emphasis was on protein but his nutritional approach was the “seafood diet,” i.e. see food, eat it. When it came to packing on muscle size, intense lifting and intense eating will grow a body.

He was also a huge proponent of rest, and deep sleep. He rightly believed that if a man shatters himself to the required degree in weight training—lifting long and often—food and rest are needed to recover and grow. The entire growth equation was simple: lift, eat, sleep, grow. Genius.

Mac’s strategy was lift hardcore and eat like a ravenous animal—purposefully and repeatedly, unapologetically… What a profoundly fun, easy and delightful philosophy for a young man to follow! Eat as many calories as possible from the time you get up until the time you go to bed. Protein was favored over all nutrients; McCallum had one article entitled, “Protein is King! But other calories were welcome too”. One particularly awesome Strength & Health article circa 1966, but not a Mac column, described the successful “bulk up” strategy of an air force sergeant stationed in a hut by himself at the North Pole monitoring the missile-detecting DEW line. He had a 500-pound set of weights, unlimited amounts of food, and nothing to do for six straight months in 1965. His inspired tale told of how he spent his time: he lifted weights daily in marathon sessions, and why not? There was nothing else to do! He actually had some metabolism-spiking cardio activity as each day he had to slog around outside in sub-zero temperatures and 60 mph winds for hours each and every day. Then he would come inside, eat like a starving wolf, and sleep for as long and a soundly as he liked. The radio was his only company. Six months later he came back to civilization having gained 100 pounds. That man was a hero to me—I longed to be sent to Greenland, exiled with my books, LP records, weights and unlimited amounts of delicious food.

As a stud high school athlete, I ate two lunches and drank four pints of milk for less than a dollar. Being an alpha male leader of boys, I routinely had food offerings from other students dropped off in front of me. Whatever class followed lunch I predictably went narcoleptic. I was forcefully morphing my body. I engaged in lots of aerobic sports activities which kept my metabolism kicking. The lifting built muscle and the copious calories supported recovery and growth. Shot full of teen testosterone and training hard enough to trigger hypertrophy, I grew muscle—lots of muscle. I was burning thousands of calories in sports activities and eating thousands of calories of all types. I had hit upon a metabolic nirvana. I inadvertently combined my immersion into hardcore weight training with a hormonal growth spurt manifested by dramatically elevated levels of testosterone. The results were immediate and sensational. By age 14, I was a regional weightlifting champion. By age 17, I weighed 200-pounds at 8% body fat. I set my first national records and won my first national championships. Only awful grades prevented me from attending a Division I school on a football scholarship. All of my progress was rooted in the profound teachings of Mac.

Forced Evolution

The goal was forced evolution; we would morph ourselves by exerting our iron will. We would faithfully combine copious and indiscriminant consumption of calories with hardcore weight training. We sought to morph from human to inhuman, from normal into abnormal, from forgettable into gargantuan. We would not become another cog in societal machinery; we sought distinction from our fellow man. We were of the warrior caste. This martial mentality dug its talons deep into me, and by the time I was 14 years old I had been into the hardcore progressive resistance scene for nearly four years. I took my training cues from heavyweights like Bill Pearl, Norbert Schemansky, Reg Park, Paul Anderson, John Grimek, Bill Starr, Terry Todd, Tommy Suggs, Pat Casey and Morris Weisbrott—not in person, but through the pithy, informative, no-bullshit, all-man training articles untainted by any whiff of commercialism.

The Mac Daddy communicator was Mac: a folksy writer who made his bones by engineering his own radical physical transformation. Mac was both the curator and repository of the cutting-edge philosophic protocols of the day. Yet he was no dry academic; he taught his lessons using a storyteller’s approach. Like an Iron Aesop, he beguiled us while relating profundities.

“Nobody knew much about squats twenty odd years ago. {Written in 1965} Nobody bothered with them and bodybuilding standards were way down. If you had a fifteen-inch arm you looked like the village blacksmith and a 40-inch chest would bring out the beast in your old lady…you can solve all of your muscle and size problems with squats alone. You can make gains you never dreamed of before. You can build unbelievable size and power.”

Prose like that put me on the squat bandwagon right then and there. Fifty years later, I can tell you that everything Mac said about squats was and is true: mastery of squats opens the door to everything of value in resistance training. McCallum pointed his acolytes down the right pathway on a dozen interrelated topics. In his “Keys to Progress” article, “The Time Factor”, he inadvertently outlined the generalized workout schematic I would use for the next half century…

“There aren’t many exercises in this {resistance} training program. Work hard on every one. Work out three times a week—no more! Don’t touch the weights at all on your in-between days. When you finish your workout, take a shower and forget all about weight training until your next training day. Get plenty of sleep and rest and eat lots of good food.”

Mac had Boy Scout earnestness, a lack of irony and a great, Mark Twain-like sense of humor. His lessons were all about building power and how power begets muscle. The idea of morphing from whatever you are into a muscle monster has motivated men for eons. McCallum’s modus operandi was purposeful primitivism: Mac was the first one to get us to stress the 5-rep set in all our exercises. I am not quite sure how or why he came to the conclusion that 5-reps strikes the perfect balance between low rep power and torque acquisition, but per usual he was prophetic. I think it no accident that “the five” became universally practiced in powerlifting. Mac’s was the first to say, “Men, seriously, concentrate on 5-rep sets in all the big movements.”

He was a big fan (deservedly) of Reg Park and the preference for the 5-rep set might have originated with the Englishman. Other possibilities include Maurice Jones or Bill Pearl. Bill loved 6-rep sets, a miniscule yet significant differentiation. The mystery of Mac and the 5-rep set was buried with him—all I can attest to is that based on his advice (which we slavishly adhered to) we began subsisting on 5-rep sets in squats, overhead presses, bench press, deadlift and power cleans. Our Olympic lifts used lower reps and our arm work used higher reps. He wrote in an era before there were warning labels on cigarette packs, seat belts in cars, computers or access to information we now take for granted in this day and age. This makes the rightness (to this day) of his prognostications all the more impressive. If you’d like to read the collected works of Mac, Randy Strossen at Iron Mind has collected all the Keys to Progress columns and placed them sequentially between two covers of a book. Genius.

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Marty Gallagher is the author of Strong Medicine, The Purposeful Primitive and Coan: The Man, The Myth, The Method. Gallagher coached the United States team that won the IPF powerlifting world team title in 1991. He is a 6-time national masters champion and national record holder. He was the IFF world master powerlifting champion in 1992. He currently works with elite athletes, spec ops military and governmental agencies.

Norbert Schemansky: World & Olympic Champion, Transitional Strength Figure, Mentor to My Mentor…

June 18, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 10 Comments

How it was done: Norb lays back, stands partially erect in photo three, before laying back a second time as shown in photo four. He eventually pressed 420 using this style.

The press photo sequence above is of Ski pressing 396 at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games where he went on to take the bronze medal. He stood 5’11” and in this photo weighed a rock hard 260 pounds. At his awesome peak he was capable of a 420 press, a 370 snatch and a 460-pound clean and jerk. He could squat 650 for reps. Norb was the prototypical modern power athlete, both physiologically and psychologically. We want to relate (and embellish) a strength parable that was first told in Strength & Health magazine in 1966 by Bill Starr. The tale bears retelling because the lessons it aimed to teach are still valid in 2015.

The year is 1966 and a young trainee approached Norbert Schemansky—world and Olympic champion—with great trepidation. The Polish-American lifter from Detroit was infamous for brusqueness; he did not suffer fools lightly, particularly if he was interrupted when training. And at the moment Ski was training and not in a particularly jovial mood. The setting was the venerable and ancient York gym on a typical Saturday. Most every Saturday in the 50s and 60s, a mini-Olympic weightlifting competition was conducted in the York gym. The public was welcome and you could see a veritable cavalcade of national and world champion weightlifters in action. Lifting acolytes from around the country made their way to this American lifting equivalent of the Haj in Mecca. The vast majority of the onlookers were lifters seeking tips and tactics that would improve their own weightlifting efforts.

On this particular day, Norb was midway through the overhead press portion of his extended workout. An 18-year-old regional weightlifting champion had driven to York with two training partners. The young men were positively enthralled and agog, absorbing new data about lifting that they would use in their own herculean efforts; they could barely wait to return home and put into practice all the new training protocols and lifting techniques they had gleaned and observed. Our earnest protagonist knew that he and his pals would have to leave for home in the next hour in order to return in time to meet their parental curfews.

The youngster was bursting at the seams to ask Schemansky some pointed questions about tactics and training. The problem was Ski had been training for a long time and looked as if he might continue for quite a while longer. Under normal circumstances, the clean-cut young man would never bother Ski, or any other elite lifter while they trained. A training session was sacred, and amongst the Iron Elite interrupting the sacrosanct training atmosphere with mindless blather was considered sacrilege.

The youngster was impaled on the horns of an irresolvable dilemma: interrupt the fearsome Schemansky’s workout and risk incurring the legendary wrath—he’d been known to get physical with those who irritated him—or miss the opportunity to ask Ski questions. If his burning questions were left unanswered, it would haunt him forever. Summoning up his courage, the young lifter took in a sharp breath and strode to where the champ sat between sets on a steel folding chair.

Ski caught the youngster approaching him out of the corner of his eye and thought, “Oh Hell no!” He mumbled and muttered under his breath; he knew what was about to happen. Schemansky was a month out from competing at the American National Championships; his last major competition had been the 1964 Olympic games, where he’d taken the 3rd place bronze medal behind the legendary Soviet world and Olympic champions Yuri Vlasov and newcomer Leonid Zhabotinsky. An uncontrollable scowl spread across his already dour face as the well-built boy pulled up to a halt four feet in front of Ski and stood wordlessly at attention. After a long silent pause, the youngster said in a single breath…

“Mr. Schemansky, Sir! I am sorry to interrupt you, my press has been stuck at 205 for the past six months. Could you be so kind as to give me some advice about how I might increase my press?”

Ski exhaled a cooling breath and proceeded to talk himself out of the trees; he was NOT going to go off, explode, or go ape-shit on this earnest young man. Ski was trying to turn over a new leaf and would not resort to cussing this kid out—as he would have in the not-too-distant-past. Truth be known, as Ski looked the kid up and down like an expensive side-dish he hadn’t ordered—despite wanting to hate all interlopers—he got a good vibe from the boy.

Norbert takes 3rd place at the 1960 Olympic games: A fantastic-looking Yuri Vlasov wins for Russia with America’s Jim Bradford in second place. Bradford lived and lifted in Washington, DC. He and my mentor Hugh “Huge” Cassidy would periodically train together. Bradford could clean and strict press 400 pounds. What a great trio.

Ski had a secondary motive: despite the pure joy he derived from going off on a civilian, any emotional outbursts—while terrifically satisfying (a guilty pleasure)—would derail and destroy the workout. He had eleven training sessions before leaving for the national championships and every single session needed to count; each week he had to show tangible improvement.

He decided to be tolerant and understanding with this clean-cut polite boy—no yelling, profanity, or rebuffs; he would avoid ‘leaking’ any of his precious emotional psych. Plus there was something oddly endearing about the bearing, manner, and presence of the youngster who stood in front of him. The boy was deferential and reverential, akin to a young soldier addressing a general. Ski always and forever had a place in his heart for the military man so he grunted a reply…

“FIRST OFF it is RUDE to interrupt a man prepping for a national championship—WHAT is so GODDAMNED IMPORTANT!”

Schemansky was pleased with himself. He considered that a measured response and quite restrained, compared to previous “alleged” incidents. The boy literally quaked, shook, and was on the verge of peeing himself; his training partners slunk backwards four steps. Norbert then switched gears and said,

“Son, if you want to improve your press—PRESS!”

Ski deliberately made eye contact with the youngster. A look of confusion and consternation spread across the boy’s face. Puzzled, but elated by the fact that he had not been physically assaulted, the youngster decided to press his luck and posed a second question.

“Mr. Schemansky, sir! Any suggestions on how to improve my snatch would be greatly appreciated. I have been stalled…”

Ski decided to reinforce a point. “Do I look like a give a Tinker’s damn if your snatch is stalled?” It was a rhetorical question. “If you want to improve your snatch THEN SNATCH!”

The rugged champion leaned back in his chair and drilled his eyes into the youngster until the boy winced and wilted. Yet, instead of skittering away, the youngster gathered himself admirably; he knew he was pressing his luck, but plunged onward anyway. “How about my clean and jerk, sir? Please sir, my jerk stinks and yours is great—no, incredible—what can I do to improve my clean and jerk, sir?

“More Clean and Jerks, son!” Norb was warming to the kid.

“Squat?”

This actually made Norbert laugh. The boy had big balls. He looked at the boy and with a quick jerk of the head wordlessly indicated that the audience was over. The boy, being smart and perceptive got that he was being dismissed. He wanted to express his gratitude for the great man’s time.

“Thank you sir.” He extended a limp, damp hand that hung there suspended in space for the longest time before Ski sighed and engulfed the boy’s hand with his own callused hand and gave the youngster a real man’s handshake, a small jolt, just a taste of his raw power, transmitted through a crushing handshake. The boy winced in pain. He would remember those 15 minutes for the rest of his life.

50 years later the strength elite would still talk about and marvel at the Zen wisdom and sparse economy of Norb’s precise answers. There was (and remains) so much truth in his advice.

Ski spikes 440. He came back from back surgery to snatch a world record

There is a famous Zen Koan: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” The answer is a hard slap across the face. The student poses the question and the Roshi slaps the taste out of the acolyte’s mouth. Often that unexpected slap would jolt the Zen student out of his conscious mind, allowing him to attain the level of consciousness that cannot be reasoned out. Ski’s irreducible answers were akin to the Zen face slap.

Truly, as Ski succinctly noted, if a man is serious about improving his press, snatch, clean and jerk, squat, deadlift or any other major resistance training exercise—the best possible way to improve is to do that specific lift—repeatedly. Remember Aristotle’s truism: “We are what we do repeatedly.” Sport specificity applies to strength training movements. As my old lifting coach Hugh Cassidy would say, “The best way to improve in any lift is to do that lift and do it a whole lot.”

Further, the best assistance exercises (adjunct lifts) for any of the three powerlifts most closely resemble the core lift. Hence, the best assistance exercise for bench press is the bench press with a wide grip or a narrow grip; in keeping with Cassidy’s timeless axiom, variations on flat benching are superior assistance exercises to say, incline bench press or decline bench press.

There is tremendous wisdom hidden deep within Schemansky and Cassidy’s pithy pronouncements. Schemansky classic power strategy for improving strength could be described as “doing fewer things better.” This old school philosophy could be summarized as, “Perform the major lifts and do them often—and do very little else.” Old pros knew that a universe of variety and variation exists within the core four lifts and their assistance-lift brethren.

In this day and age, it is very chic and fashionable to avoid doing the lifts. The prevailing wisdom in our information age is that you can improve the squat, bench or deadlift without doing the actual lifts. You can get just as strong, stronger in fact, by using bands, boards, chains, board presses, box squats—anything to avoid the harsh starkness of that most primal and ancient of strategies… “Just do the lifts.” Ski and Cassidy (and John Kuc, Jon Vole, Kaz, Pacifico, and all the other all-time greats of the 1960s and 1970s) would do the three Olympic lifts or the three powerlifts—and little if anything else. It would never occur to these powerhouse men NOT to do the core lifts.

How did we arrive at this upside-down bizarro world? It think it is no coincidence that the physiques of Doug Young, Kaz, Gamble, Cash, Roger Estep, and all the other muscled-to-the-max men of yesteryear blow away the physiques of today’s “smarter” athletes. The ancients bore the weight, embraced the sticking points, and did full and deep lifts. They performed the ultra-basics over and over and over and over, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. How do you get really good at doing the core lifts? By doing them repeatedly, world without end, amen.

Perfect pull technique: Man mountain Roger Estep at the exact instant he launches a 744-pound conventional deadlift. He uses leg power to break the bar from the floor and will fire his hip-hinge (purposefully held in reserve) as the bar approaches his knees. Estep stood 5’6” and lifted in the 198-pound class. A nuclear engineer from West Virginia, he died early from cancer. He had the prototypical power physique; the kind that can only be built by a man who has mastered all three power lifts.

Lift performance, the classical report card, has been inflated through the use of supportive gear, the mono-lift and corrupted judging. It appeared that lifts were skyrocketing and all as a result of this get-better-at-the-lift-without-doing-the-lift philosophy. Actually, if you strip the modern lifter of his lifting apparel, make him do below parallel squats and bench presses without wearing the bench shirt, then guess what? The modern “athlete” is weaker than the ancients. Talk about an inconvenient truth…

Ski and Cassidy, Rigert and Pacifico, Mel Hennessey and Roger Estep knew that in order to get really good at a thing, you needed to do that thing, endlessly. By doing the lifts to near exclusion, they built physiques and levels of raw power and strength which are unrivaled and unmatched to this day. Those lessons have been lost to history: in our age, everyone is looking for the next new thing. However in the universe of radical physical transformation—more muscle, more strength, more power, radically reduced body fat percentile—the answers lie in the deep and primal past.

The smart trainee needs to look backwards for breakthrough strength strategies; back to the ancients and their “plain vanilla” training strategies that relied more on effort and degree of difficulty than in sophisticated user-friendliness. These stark, barebones training strategies discovered by the ancients need to be resurrected. Those who tell you that modern strength and power strategies trump what came before are false prophets speaking with forked tongues. It is time we destroyed the golden calf of delusion and get back on the Old School good foot: to get super-strong become super-simplistic.

Ski was “the sophisticated brute,” fast as lighting on his split cleans and split snatches. Here he pulls 330—look at the balletic athletic poetry of this bottom position. He would whip the snatch bar to sternum height, then dive under the barbell in an eye-blink, attaining this precarious position at the low point. From here he would “recover” and stand erect. Ski snatched a 363-pound world record at age 38.

Norb Schemansky was born in 1924. The Detroit native learned his fundamentals early. He came into his own during the post-war period. Norbert stayed at the top of the strength world from the 1940s all the way into the late 1960s. He cut his teeth on simplistic pre-war training templates and over time modified them; he grew larger and stronger as he got older. Norb set the world record in the snatch, 363lbs at age 38, some twenty years into his competitive career. Norb adapted and adopted, yet he always retained the simplistic sophistication that earmarked his training strategies. Even as he matured, he never lost his pre-war, depression-era work ethic.

Norb become the first weightlifter in history to earn four Olympic medals, despite missing the 1956 Olympic games due to back problems. Norbert won an Olympic gold medal; a silver medal and two bronze medals spread over four games. He won the world championship three times and won the Pan American Games. He was the Olympic champion in 1952. He set an all-time world record in the snatch in 1962 when he split-snatched a seemingly miraculous 363-pounds. Norb set 75 national, world, and Olympic records.

According to his biographer Richard Back, Schemansky related that the most impressive feat of strength he ever witnessed took place at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games during a rare joint training session when the American and the Russian lifters were both in the same training hall at the same time. Trench-coated KGB secret police lined the walls of the training hall just in case a desperate communist athlete dared try and dash for sanctuary and freedom. This stuff was real and Ski saw the Big Red sport machine up close and personal for decades.

Ski’s number one competitor in 1952 was the 180-pound Soviet champion Gregory Novak. Novak held the press record at 309 pounds and during the joint training session the stumpy, thick Russian effortlessly pressed 281 pounds, and then—no doubt for Norbert’s benefit (Novak was well aware that Schemansky was watching)—pulled a psych maneuver that blew Ski’s mind.

“First he presses 281 and I am impressed with the strictness and lack of backbend. I mean back then (1952) a press was still a press.” Norb then related, “Then, just for the hell of it, Novak lowers the 281 pound weight down behind his neck and presses it three times! I’m thinking, I better have a damn good snatch and jerk because I surer than hell was not going to beat this beast in a pressing contest.”

Rare photo of Russian powerhouse Gregory Novak; this photo was taken with his two sons 20 years after his retirement. Reportedly, even at age 50, he was still capable of a strict 130 kilo (286 pound) clean and press.

Schemansky struggled with life outside of weightlifting. He stayed in Detroit and was reduced to working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet between national and world championships. While Big Daddy Hoffman would cover the expense of sending Norb to the national and world championships, between those trips and excursions Ski had to pump gas and scrub toilets. It became so bad that Sports Illustrated magazine ran a feature article called, “Looking for a Lift,” an expose’ on the hard times that had befallen one of America’s premier Olympic athletes.

This wasn’t some retrospective on how some former great was now laid low—Norbert was on the national, world and Olympic teams at the time, winning and placing at the highest levels of the sport. In the SI magazine photo, Norb stood desolate, wire scrub brush in hand in front of a commode he was about to scrub. This was a MAN, a man with a wife and kids who in his spare time was kicking ass internationally for his country. At home he was a pathetic nobody, always two paychecks away from disaster, destitution and homelessness.

Despite the feature in SI describing his plight, no sugar daddy, organization or corporation stepped forward to offer Ski any relief. In nearly every retrospective written on him, the phrase “bitter” enters into the article. Ski was once asked what he was most bitter about and he wryly commented he was “bitterest about always being portrayed as bitter.” It was yet another one of his barbed comments about an athletic career that was nothing less than astounding contrasted with compensation nothing short of pathetic.

Indirectly, Norbert heavily influenced the fledgling sport of powerlifting. Norbert trained in Detroit with a young engineer named Glen Middleton. When Bechtel transferred Middleton to Washington, DC, Glenn sought out and began training with Hugh Cassidy. Hugh was taken with Middleton’s urbane sophistication and his intellectual approach towards strength training. Hugh, another intellectual with a first-rate brain, appropriated the essence of the Schemansky approach—a simplified exercise menu, ferocity in training, singularity of purpose, preplanning (a revolutionary concept at the time) and the idea that over time a lifter needed to grow more muscle.

Ski rose to national prominence as a 180-pound lifter and finished out his career weighing a massive yet lean 260 pounds. Hugh took the lessons learned from Ski, via Glenn, added his own empirical-based technical and tactical modifications and won national and world championships. In turn, he mentored national and world champions. Cassidy’s teachings were passed to me and I passed them along to others. In turn, I created world champion athletes who set all-time world records using these primal Ski/Cassidy techniques and tactics.

We need go back to the future and revisit the methods of Iron Immortals; their simplistic, primal approach towards transformational strength training is so much more effective and applicable for today’s time-pressed individual than the “revolutionary” power and strength methods pedaled by modern day fitness hucksters seeking to turn a profit. As my own cliché goes: There is no school like Old School.

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Cardio Revolution: Part III

June 11, 2015 By Dr. Chris Hardy 2 Comments

Cardio Revolution Part Three

In this final installment of the Cardio Revolution trilogy, I will give you some of the basic scientific principles behind the benefits of 4-limb exercise. The best way to do this is to break down the techniques and tactics that Marty outlined in his Fan Bike protocol.

Marty’s Fan Bike protocol is very similar in concept to the high intensity “Burst Cardio” protocol described in Strong Medicine (SM p.424). Both protocols generate periods of very high intensity that shift us squarely into anaerobic metabolism (burning glucose for energy without oxygen). The high intensity anaerobic bursts are incredibly beneficial for metabolic health and promote a strong positive adaptive response in the body.

Metabolic Health

Intermittent anaerobic bursts are the best way to clear out muscle glycogen (glucose) stores.

Muscle Glucose Container Diagram

As discussed in Strong Medicine, emptying the glucose stored in muscle creates an “empty container” to deposit circulating blood glucose. This is one of the reasons why high intensity training is so valuable to Type 2 diabetics. Traditional “moderate” intensity exercise doesn’t do as good of a job of emptying the muscle glucose (glycogen) “containers”.

As many of us know, glucose that is not stored in the liver or in muscle will be eventually stored as fat in adipose tissue. This is a protective mechanism to keep glucose from building up to toxic levels in the blood. Emptying the muscle glycogen “containers” gives excess blood glucose somewhere to be safely deposited without contributing to increased body fat or causing damage to the body by creating “Advanced Glycation End-products (AGE)” (SM p. 244).

Four-limbed anaerobic cardio such as Marty’s Fan Bike protocol maximally empties total body muscle glycogen “containers” by rotating and distributing effort to all four limbs instead of just the legs.

Glycogen Depletion With Fan Bike workout — Lucas is low on muscle glycogen after a high intensity Fan Bike workout

Four-limb high intensity anaerobic exercise is also one of the most powerful interventions for restoring insulin sensitivity in a diabetic. The adaptive response of muscle to clearing out glycogen is to try to “fill up” the glycogen tank. A main function of muscle glycogen is to provide a rapid source of energy for flight or fight situations. From a survival perspective it makes sense for the body to have mechanisms to make it easy to replenish lost muscle glycogen. Your body can’t distinguish between a Fan Bike protocol and running away from a bear. It wants to prepare you for another flight or fight situation as soon as possible so it bypasses the normal mechanisms for getting glucose back into the muscle (glycogen is the storage form of glucose in the muscle).

This bypass mechanism is very powerful for normalizing blood sugar in a Type 2 diabetic. Insulin is required under resting circumstances to pull glucose from the blood into the muscle cells for use in energy production. A Type 2 diabetic has insulin resistance, in other words, the signal insulin gives to open the muscle cell to allow glucose in is not working well (illustrated below in a graphic from Strong Medicine).

Insulin resistance: inflammation (in this case from enlarged fat cells) in diabetes short-circuits the insulin receptor, preventing glucose from entering the muscle cell.

Bypassing Insulin Resistance Diagram — Bypassing insulin resistance: high intensity anaerobic exercise opens the muscle cell to allow glucose in **without a signal from insulin**. This is why protocols such as Marty’s Fan Bike routine are so beneficial to diabetics. As the muscle glycogen (glucose) stores are emptied by exercise, excess blood sugar can be transported into the muscle cells despite insulin resistance via the bypass mechanism. This can help tremendously to normalize blood sugar for the diabetic. Over time insulin sensitivity can be restored.

In addition to being a superior form of exercise to normalize blood sugar and maintain insulin sensitivity, intermittent high intensity exercise promotes a favorable adaptive response after the exercise is complete. The night after a high intensity exercise session, growth hormone secretion is maximized during slow wave (deep) sleep. Growth hormone is one of the most potent “fat-burning” triggers in our body’s arsenal. This is another way four-limb anaerobic exercise protocols help us lose more body fat after the exercise session (another reason why calories burned during exercise are not as important as the after effects).

Additional Benefits

Marty’s four-limb high intensity cardio protocol for the fan bike makes strategic use of alternating motor patterns. Switching from pedaling forward to pedaling backwards, using different arm positions, and alternating pulling and pushing, all challenge the nervous system, preventing us from becoming too efficient during the exercise session. Using myself as example: as a mountain biker for many years, I can generate fairly high power outputs with traditional forward pedaling for a substantial length of time. Backwards pedaling is very foreign to my brain and is hugely challenging. I am only fractionally as efficient backwards as I am pedaling forwards. This inefficiency with movement translates into much more effort overall to generate the same amount of power output as a movement that is “hard-wired” from years of repetition.

Marty’s protocol makes use of these shifting motor patterns to minimize efficiency and maximize the adaptive response for exercise. People training for a specific sport such as cycling or swimming want to maximize efficiency to get the most performance out of the least amount of effort. We are trying to do the opposite, maximize our effort (and resulting adaptive response) by minimizing efficiency. Whether it is with the kettlebell or the Fan-Bike, challenging the brain with new movement patterns is good for both your neurological and metabolic health.

Brain Heart Workout Benefits

The Fan Bike is a great option for four-limbed high intensity cardio, but certainly not the only way to go. The principles of Marty’s protocol can be adapted to many implements and in myriad systems. Use your imagination and have fun!

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Chris Hardy, D.O., M.P.H., CSCS, is the author of Strong Medicine: How to Conquer Chronic Disease and Achieve Your Full Genetic Potential. He is a public-health physician, personal trainer, mountain biker, rock climber and guitarist. His passion is communicating science-based lifestyle information and recommendations in an easy-to-understand manner to empower the public in the fight against preventable chronic disease.

Cardio Revolution: Melding an Old Protocol with a New Tool – Part II

June 4, 2015 By Marty Gallagher 6 Comments

Strong Medicine Cardio Revolution Part Two

The Fan Bike has been around for decades. All mechanical, this cardio push/pull device has stood the test of time. It is the technological equivalent of a diesel locomotive engine and has the obvious advantage of making the arms equal partners in creating the sum total of the aerobic/anaerobic effort. The Fan Bike also allows the trainee to encounter the requisite resistance as they go backwards, this effectively doubles the number of Fan Bike exercises. One can pedal using ‘legs only’ forward, or push using ‘arms only.’ We can even use a single limb at a time. Pace possibilities are endless: we can push, we can pull, we can push and pull. We can pedal forward and backward, with and without the arms. We can vary our speed, duration and pace. The modern fan bike has the ability to monitor rpms (at any given instant) and watts generated. These two readouts make it possible for the user to create cardio categories and establish performance benchmarks.

When we are able to categorize and establish performance personal bests we can periodize our cardio efforts. Using the watts readout, the Fan Bike user can have personal best efforts (expressed in watts generated) in each of the various exercise drills. For example, while pedaling forward, arms and legs together, work up to 100% all-out effort–then make note of the highest watts reading you are able to generate. You now have a personal record for that particular drill, something you can seek to improve upon.

Once you have a concrete benchmark, a number expressing watts or RPMs (or heart rate, or all of them) the gains lie in attempting to equal or exceed these current personal bests. You can establish numeric benchmarks in over a dozen separate and distinct Fan Bike arm or leg possibilities.

Over time, this continual striving to exceed current limits has proven to be the true path for obtaining real results. Long-term adherence to a serious Len Schwartz-inspired aerobic protocol, wedded to a Fan Bike, has proven to be an inspired pairing, a “long strength” marriage-made-in-heaven.

fan bikes Airdyne and Assault Air Bike — The original Schwinn Airdyne was the forerunner to the modern Fan Bike. It was the model of simplicity and a brutally effective cardio tool. Unfortunately the classic Airdyne is no longer made. We are currently using the Assault Air Bike for our protocols. It is an updated industrial-grade cardio monster inspired by the original Airdyne.

We can use the Fan Bike in every imaginable way, establish mathematical benchmarks in every imaginable category; and then seek to continually approach, equal or exceed these benchmarks in some way. We will go 100% in every training session. Adhere to this protocol for a protracted period and reap radical increases and improvements in endurance and sustained strength. Cardio capacity will improve dramatically; the metabolism will accelerate.

If your nutrition is in sync with the exercise, body fat will be mobilized and oxidized at an astounding rate. The body, through skillful blending of nutrition and exercise will “relearn” how to use stored body fat as fuel, and drain the various fat storage areas of the human body.

Muscles subjected to intense cardio for protracted periods will reconfigure themselves in response to the intense and continual self-inflicted stress. Mitochondria are cellular blast furnaces that live within every muscle. Nature allots us a certain “mitochondrial density” at birth. Over time, as we age and abuse ourselves, the mitochondria will start to “flame out” and die. Science indicates that sedentary individuals experience premature mitochondrial flame out. Conversely, those who engage in intense physical exertion, profound and prolonged, forestall burnout. Further, if the exercise is intense, prolonged and consistent, new mitochondria are actually created to deal with the continual stresses. New cellular blast furnaces are constructed within the muscles that are constantly worked and stressed.

Mild and moderate cardio efforts are insufficiently intense to cause the creation of new mitochondria and the resulting muscle reconfiguration. When we exceed capacities and establish new performance levels when we train with intensity and consistency, the body is compelled to construct new cellular blast furnaces. Nature intended and designed the human body to possess strong, powerful muscles with a high mitochondrial density to enable a muscle to operate at optimal physiological efficiency. We can really get after “it” when we use the Fan Bike. By going fast and in multiple directions with all our limbs, we derive maximum benefit from our cardio efforts.

Why This Tool?

The Len Schwartz HeavyHands-inspired protocol was as dead as Sanskrit scrolls–it was an ancient, long forgotten strategy. Now, we will resurrect his approach and match it up with a “modern” tool. The venerable Fan Bike is not really modern, but it is the perfect cardio tool for reenacting and reviving the defunct (yet still potent) HeavyHands strategies. Like HeavyHands, the Fan Bike allows and enables the trainee to stress one, two, three or all four limbs, individually or together, forwards or backwards. The cardio effort can be “shuttled” around the body in a very strategic and calculated fashion.

The underlying, unifying concept is to work up to 100% of exertion max in a wide range of aerobic exercises and drills, all done on the Fan Bike. We will work the arms and legs separately, or together, we can alternate cardio “zones,” we can be clever and innovative in our exercise sequencing. Once they grasp the fundamental concepts, the athlete is then able to create their own exercise templates. Once the techniques and tactics are mastered, the trainee then purposefully modulate the exercise intensity to create the desired cardio inroad and achieve the overall desired physiological effect.

Quad-Limb Fan Bike Core Protocol

For each Fan Bike exercise, the procedure is the same, regardless of the drill:

Warm-up gradually: pedal and/or push-pull, light and easy…
Gradually pick up the pace: warm-up to and maintain 50% of capacity…
Allow the body to acclimate at each subsequent intensity level
Move to 70% of capacity: the body is now completely awake and alert
Move to 85%
Move to 100% of what you are currently capable of–today, at this time
Hold 100% for as long as is comfortable
Be cognizant that capacity is a shifting target and will shift, session to session
Gains occur when we equal or exceed these (diminished or enhanced) capacities
Log the watts, RPMs, and, if possible, heart rate, when attaining 100% max

Once we achieve a 100% all-out max effort in an exercise, we relax and go into the slowest, easiest warm-up iteration of the next sequenced exercise in the cardio chain. Our procedure is to hit 100% of capacity in each exercise, and then immediately shift into the easiest version of the next exercise. We sequence exercises in such a fashion that whatever muscle or muscle-groups are taxed to 100% are rested as another “section” of the body takes over the cardio effort. We again and again hit a 100% effort. Our report card is the watts, the RPMs and the heart rate monitor reading.

100% means that you go as fast as you can go, at that instant of time. Your capacities might be diminished, normal, or enhanced. After a thorough warm-up, exert to 100% in each of the selected exercises.
We can continually assault our limits, safely and effectively if we train smart. All 100% efforts need to be preceded by a comprehensive warm-up. We do all that we can do (safely and sanely) on this particular day at this time.
The gains we seek (improved endurance, increased athletic performance, better body fat percentile, quicker, lighter and healthier, a radically improved physique) are attained by equaling or exceeding current limits.

Specific body parts are taxed maximally, then rested while other body parts are bought online and taxed maximally in turn; the rotation goes on and on without repeating. This strategy allows us to repeatedly exert maximally. Over the course of the entire cycle, this particular Fan Bike protocol requires the trainee hit a 100% maximum twenty times in a row.

Fan Bike Training Template: The 20-Exercise “Cycle”

Arms and legs forward
Legs only forward
Legs only backwards
Arms only push (bench press the handles)
Arms only pull (over-grip row)
Arms only pull (under-grip row)
Arms only push and pull (burn it out, fast as possible)
Legs only forward
Legs only backward
Legs & arms forward (standing up)
Legs & arms backwards (standing up)
Left leg forward
Right leg forward
Left leg backwards
Right leg backwards
Right arm forward (push)
Left arm forward
Right arm backwards (pull)
Arms & legs forward
Arms & legs forward (stand)

Cool Down: arms & legs forward

Work up to a 100% push or pull max on every exercise. This cycle will take between 10-15 minutes to complete. In each instance we seek to go as fast as we can go (within safe, sane and rational limits) then immediately shift into the next exercise. Use the slow ramp up in each exercise. Starting a new exercise is the recovery period from the previous exercise. In about the time the athlete fully recovers, it is time to push the accelerator to the floorboard for the current exercise: twenty times we “max out”, cool down, recover, then hit it again.

Check out the video below as Chris demonstrates a portion of the Fan Bike protocol.

“Cardio zone” training strategically rotates training stress: sometimes we work all four limbs, sometime we work them in pairs or singly–we “spread out” the cardio effort. We rotate the exercises in an effort to keep the intensity high for an extended period of time. We can attack all four limbs simultaneously, we can blast the legs while resting the arms, we can blast the rested arms while resting the blasted legs. Further, we can attack one limb at a time while purposefully resting the other three. Finally we can do all of this magical stuff backwards–doubling our exercise universe. The sheer number of possibilities is positively mind-blowing.

Compelling and Persuasive

Knowing what you now know, why would anyone remotely interested in purchasing a cardio training device select an aerobic tool that could only go in one direction, forward, and that only uses the legs to generate 100% of the cardio effort?

Aerobic tools that depend on legs alone to create the totality of the exercise effort are woefully inadequate when compared to the astounding possibilities of quad-limbed cardio. Single-limb cardio and reverse-direction cardio are exciting new avenues of potential progress.

Consistent and intense cardio, cardio with a purposeful muscular effort included, builds locomotive-like endurance while infusing muscles with new mitochondria. The quality of the aerobic and anaerobic effort generated (using a multitude of exercise variations combined with the 100% effort) is designed to exponentially magnify endurance, release endorphins, build mitochondria and burn off stored body fat. That is a mighty list of highly desirable benefits!

Intense cardio triggers the release of endorphins, a telltale precursor of the adaptive response. The appearance of endorphins is a positive indicator that the training effort was productive. Intense cardio improves internal plumbing, flushes arterial walls, power-washes clinging plaque and sludge as torrents of blood rip through veins in a supercharged circulatory rush. The heart muscle accelerates, and toxins are removed as nutrients are carried to the muscle while the athlete achieves Len’s ideal of “optimal aerobic efficiency”.

Cardio exercise is a critical component in the eternal quest to physically transform. The need for cardio exercise is not in question–what is in question is the optimal tool, mode, and method. We feel the Fan Bike is a fabulous tool (not the only tool, but a valid tool for our fitness toolbox) and when paired with Len’s particular and unique protocols, we can create an exceedingly effective way to obtain optimal results from our cardio efforts.

Comparing a contemporary stationary bike, a standard treadmill or any “legs only” cardio device to a Fan Bike is akin to comparing checkers to chess. Why be purposefully stuck with a one-dimensional workout tool when you can explore four dimensions and open up an exciting new cardio universe?

Editor’s Note:

The Fan Bike will give you all that you can handle as a cardio tool. Marty’s protocol can be very taxing. Keep in mind the daily state of your “Stress Cup” (see Strong Medicine for more on this) and feel free to alter the order of exercise and volume to suit your daily needs. Adequate recovery is just as important as exercise intensity. I filmed the above video the day after a hard jiu jitsu session. Five minutes was about all that I needed (and could handle) to get a beneficial adaptive response while also avoiding overtraining. In Part III, I am going to discuss some of the science behind the benefits of four-limb cardio and specific advantages of using the Fan Bike.

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