Time Ferriss is the author the New York Times best selling books the 4 Hour Work Week and the 4 Hour Body. The second book caught my attention. Well who am I kidding they both sounded great but im more into changing bodies than I am into working or marketing ……
Anyway as I was at my local bookstore I decided to pick 4 hour body up. Much to my surprise it wasn’t your regular diet and exercise book. It was more based on experiments done by the author. And to me since we are all individuals, this is the best way. Now this is definitely a MANS book, with topics ranging from fatloss, muscle gain, injury rehab and you guessed it better sex. But what struck me as interesting was the story of Tracy Reifkind, a lady who lost a lot of body fat and made a radical body composition change based on good nutrition and the KETTLEBELL SWING. Yes you heard me, the Kettlebell Swing .

 Tracy husband Mark is a senior RKC kettlebell trainer and has been in the game for a long while . Tim calls this exercise one of the most beneficial things you can do for body recomposition . Which means muscle gain and fat loss. Here is her beginners “100 Kettlebell Swing workout” Ive been saying this to clients since I picked up a Kettlebell for the first time years ago. A whole chapter is based on this exercise. Its funny when we get calls from people reading the book and looking for someone to teach them this exercise. Its happened a few times so far its just a matter of time when most people give up the way of training like bodybuilders if they are not going to be one. Im going to say it again. I really do not think there is a better type of resistance training than kettlebells coupled with bodyweight exercises for the general public to use in their exercise routine. NOW get to swinging!!!!

heres some stream of conscious type writing.

• apparently ive lost sensation on my right big toe.  probably from a bad landing  from the ring. maybe the fact i deadlifted 480x 2  the n 8 sets of 3x 390 the next day.   the nerve is mangled on the ball of my foot

• 

  not my toe, but to convey what it feels (or doesnt ) feel like to the reader

• went to the chiro.  he said it doesnt seem bad but to keep an eye on it.     ( dont worry chiro haters, he didnt charge me) but without sensation in the big to my balance skills need a handicap now.
• took sadie bel ( my bambina)  to the shoe store  to get some more cushy shoes to wear for a while. see ive been wearing vibrams and merrells for a long time and i dont want the risk of pounding that nerve for a while so i re purchased the only pair of nikes ive ever deemed a good show.  the lunar fly.    . wore em home.  baby getting upset.  probably wants mommy. stopped in the borders bookstore to get a raw foods book.  wished i had a thousand dollars to spend on books.  then the crying babe took me back to reality.    see she is only happy out of my arms  when im swinging her  in her carseat outside the hip like a kettlebell.   serves me right i hear you mocking.
• went to Swing This and worked out.

1. Workout consisted of dynamic leg warmup/ foam rolling quads
2. box 90 degree  spin jumps  med ball slams and ab wheel
3. 20 snatches each side with 61 lb bell   then  circuit of  body weigh row/ pushups on USA ladder then 30 sec battle ropes
4. 20 snatches each side with 70 lb bell  then previous circuit 2x
5. 10 snatches 79 lb bell each side then  circuit  3x.
6. water bag single leg deadlifts   ( hard to do with numb toe)
7. tabata of battle ropes and jump rope
8. heavy bag hits until fatique 4 rounds.

post workout shake consisted of    ( im sure there is only one other person that will drink this)  thanks joel for the bacopa and mucuna)

• scivation vanilla whey
• mucuna pruriens powder
• 1 organic egg
• bacopa powder
• raw honey
• bee pollen
• lentil and brocolli sprouts
• beet , carrot, parley, celery pulp  from  previous day juicing  ( i dont waste healthy food)
• black hawaiian sea salt
• raw cacao
• 1 scoop greek yogurt
• and some mulberries.

see i told you  you  wouldnt drink it.

• now heres the crazy part.  after talking to new Swing This  members,   it was 8 pm since i had rode my bike to work i had to push Sadie back home in her stroller . since she was asleep apparently i got this weird bug to jog from a block away from the gym to my house . not far. but hadnt jogged in 4 years. and first time ever with a stroller and sleeping babe.  well i made it home.  with a  runners stitch  and a large remembrance of why i hate running.
• 
• took heaping dose of magnesium bath salts and soaked in the worlds hottest tub. at least my big toe didnt feel scalded.  finisjed with alternating hot cold shower. felt great.
• 1 hour later im typing with the runners stitch still kicking, body still sweating ,( even after ice cold shower)
• hungry as hell.
• baby still asleep.  apparently im a good stroller jogger.
• but i still feel incredibly manly.
• good night.

• calipers can only detect SUBCUTANEOUS fat.  we have fat stores viscerally ( under the abdominal muscles and around the organs of our abdomen)   and we also have fat stores INTRAMUSCULARLY   (inside  the muscle)
• Picture a steak.  you have the thick white fat on the outside of the cut. That is our subcutaneous (pincheable) fat, underneath our skin. Then you have the marbling in the beef ( intramuscular fat) on our bodies, which is not measurable by calipers.

So when using the caliper method to measure changes in fat and body composition  we rely on the measurement of  the pinches  plugged into an equation in which the other variable is bodyweight.

Here is how it works

Say youre 150  lbs .  and the scale doesnt move for 3 months. yet your clothes are feeling looser and you look drastically different in the mirror naked.  What has happened is you have recomposed your body.  you have lost fat and gained LEAN MASS.  Now lean mass is basically what cannot be measured with a caliper such as

• skeletal system
• organs
• muscle
• and more which ill hit on at the end….

So we want to say that by training we have increased our muscle mass and lost fat.     a starting body fat of 30% at 150lbs is 45 lbs of fat.    now say 6 months later ( probably not going to build this much muscle) but you are 150 lbs at 20% you are  now only 30 lbs of measureable subcutaneous fat.  Subtract that number from the 150 weight and you have how much LEAN MASS you have.  Here we have lost fat and gained LEAN MASS.  Basically 15 lbs of lean mass in that hypothetical case.

So this brings me to my main point.    How can a Super lean person getting ready for a bodybuilding or physique competition lose  2-4 lbs of LEAN MASS  when they are just as strong if not stronger between measurements??

For example one week you weigh 135 at 10% then the next you have the same caliper pinch measurements but weigh 3 lbs less!!     OH MY GOD you must have LOST LEAN MUSCLE!!!!!!

Well wait a second lets, before we go changing everything upside down and getting super upset,  lets  look at what commonly gets overlooked  in caliper measurements .

• water balance.    electrolytes can make a big difference in where the water is in your body.  we want it in the muscle cell not subcutaneous area  (looking puffy)    losing a lot of sweat  is weight lost not FAT lost.
• carbodydrate  load (glycogen storage) of the muscle   for example  if your muscle is the gas tank of the car how much gas is in the tank??   1 gram of carbohydrate can pull in 2.6something grams of water into  the muscle  with it.   Perhaps last week you had 180 grams of carbs in your diet this week you have only 100. believe me it makes a difference in your energy level and muscle fullness.
• DIgestive tract fullness.  perhaps you ate a meal or were constipated pre measurement and werent the next time you were measured.   everything should always e the same when measuring  such as time of day and food intake, but we cant always make mother nature stay on a schedule.   If you read between the lines , you could literally flush pounds ( hopefully not pounds!)  of  LEAN MASS down the toilet……..
• USER ERROR     pretty self explanatory, we all make mistakes from time to time.
• SUPER SLIPPERY SKIN On client.  makes it hard to get accurate reading  if someone has enough lotion to win a luge competition……………
• VISCERAL AND INTRAMUSCULAR FAT  LOSS.   Now here is the kicker.  youre three weeks away from the show of your lifetime and you cant really lose any more  millimeters on your pinches, but your weight is down 1.5 lbs. trainer says you lost muscle mass and must be doing too much exercise..  yet you are stronger than ever …  Even if  none of the above mentioned possibilities are a factor, we still can lose the visceral and intramuscular fat.   this is the major reason that when you are really paper thin skin, you can start to lose weight and get more SEPARATION AND definition.  yes you will lose weight that seems to be LEAN MASS.    but seriously what are you looking for?  the look for stage or the numbers on a sheet?   yes i agree that you shouldnt lose 5 lbs or more when your pinches dont change but come on dont sweat the 1 -2 lb loss of  so called muscle mass.  .   if youare at this point of letting this bother you then why dont you go ahead and spend the big bucks and get a DEXA scan??

come on .  youll be fine.  go on with your life and quit worrying .   are you stronger ? do you look better?   there you go.

First of all Caffeine is found in many products like tea, coffee, energy drinks, cocoa  and even headache medicines. Basically it is every where you look in a convenience store gas station. From candy bars with caffeine , water with caffeine,  soft drinks, caffeinated gum, to straight caffeine pills like No-Doze.   Different blends of coffee can have varying levels of it as well.  (The reason i think Starb&ks coffee makes me feel like a nervous junkie…..)  Which makes it very easy for children  to get a very high dose of caffeine.  We still wonder why they have so much energy….  ( this will lead me to a blog later why i think energy drinks should be restricted much like alcohol…)

Caffeine has many uses.  We use  it to  produce a sense of awareness and energy for our activities.  Medically it is used as a heart stimulant and diuretic.

What does it do??  

Caffeine looks much like adenosine (a chemical secreted by the brain to slow us down and make us drowsy so we can get the sleep we need )  so it can bind to the adenosine receptors and block its activity.   Here is where caffeine is different. It has the opposite effect of adenosine. It actually SPEEDS UP the nerve cell activity.  Caffeine can also raise the brain neurotransmitter dopamine that activates the feeling of pleasure  perhaps causing addiction.  Caffeine is a stimulant based on what it does to chemicals in the brain producing an excitatory effect.

Caffeine  stimulates the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline. ( fight or flight hormone)   This can also produce cortisol to help  ”prepare for battle”.

Adrenaline triggers the following:

• airway and pupils dilate
• increase in heart rate
• blood pressure rises due to the constriction of subcutaneous  blood vessels
• blood flow to the stomach is reduced.
• liver releases sugar into the blood to give extra energy.

What is caffeines’ effect on sleep??

First of all caffeine lasts relatively long in the body. While you may not feel super awake at 10 pm, the coffee you had at 4pm is still working its magic on your body.  If we cant get enough deep sleep, we may wake tired and look for more caffeine.   ( a  seemingly normal american instinct)  So on and so forth the cycle will continue. If we try and go without, we may experience headaches due to dilation of the blood vessels in the brain   This once again can be a link to increased cortisol by not getting enough recuperative sleep.     This is incredibly true for all us athletes that take preworkout drinks that contain caffeine and train late in the day.  most of these drinks are  astonishingly high in caffeine and the information  is shrouded in a “proprietary blend”.   Caffeine is also is guarana seed extract as well as green tea extract, prevalent in these energy drinks. Thia explains why so many of us have a hard time falling asleep  after training at night and taking some  ”MAYBE -ExPLODE”……..

Caffeine And MAYBE no Fatloss

Heres a scenario.  Sean works in a pretty stressful  office job.  He sits in a desk all day and travels in car alot.  He wants to lose 60 lbs and is working out  with a trainer.  He is lowering his caloric intake and  watching his junk food intake.

Sean wakes up in the morning and drives to work with his normal large cup of coffee to get the day started.  He has a small breakfast of a yogurt and an apple. At work he gets busy and gets more coffee. then gets called out on a sales call to meet clients. Needing gas, he stops to get it at a convenience store and finds  a sale on  GORILLA POWER SLAM!!! drinks 2 for 3$. and grabs a few.  of course the have 45 grams of sugar and almost a gram  of caffeine in them and now he is driving 90 mph to his destination.  after 30 min with the client, his sugar drink wears off causing his blood sugar to crash.  Quickly he finds the nearest food source, which happens to be a MCDaniels  and gets  a couple sandwiches that he knows  that arent on his clean  eating list.  oh well at least he doenst feel like passing out anymore.  Back at the office, he gets another cup of coffee to tackle a spreadsheet  hes been putting off  and  due to the fact that caffeine  slows blood flow to the stomach, his greasy food sits there for a long time not getting digested properly and he doenst eat anything until its time to stop work and go to the gym. On the way to the gym he drinks  his MAYBE ExPLODE  and gets his adrenal glands firing ( or whats left of them) to make a war on the weights.     After his hour of training and sweating ,  he has a protein shake and drives home to   almost crash on his couch.  After his shower he gets another cup of coffee to wake up and get his emails done . before bed he eats a small bowl of cereal and falls asleep after tossing and turning for an hour at 1pm.  He wakes up to the ringing of his alarm clock at 6am the next morning.    wanna bet he starts the day over ????    I will.

The many ways Sean increased cortisol levels all day…..

So what Sean  did was constantly put his body in a fight or flight situation by

1. being stressed at work and consuming caffeine all day. This caused cortisol levels to be elevated not just shortly as being shocked  by a  deer running in front of your car, but all day  the cortisol never letting down.
2. under a stress by not eating near enough food to fuel his metabolism and activity. his body adjusted to a small amount of food by slowing his metabolism.  the caffeine kept him with   “Fake ENERGY”      calories from food create energy nt caffeine.   remember caffeine is non caloric it just stimulates the nervous system and brain.
3. Trained very hard .    Although this is  a good STRESS,  he is already overstressed as it is. by constantly pushing harder, he dug himself further into a stress hole…….this can make immune system function lower and injuries be easier to achieve.
4. took lots of caffeine in the GORILLA MAYBE ExpLODE juice mix  at 6pm before training .  HE took multi doses since he didnt “feel” it anymore.  so all this caffeine made him exhausted by the time he was done training  due to the fact of nervous system overstimulation and the lack of nutrition.
5. Cup of Coffee to finish emails , and all carbohydrates at night before bed  ( was he gonna run a marathon in his sleep???? didnt think so”
6. all this caffeine was still in his body causing him to toss and turn not getting sleep even though he was tired.

sounds like a lot of cortisol to me… see how  an unwise use of caffeine can cause the body to NOT  USE FAT???  even on a hard training schedule and low calories???

What I do.    ( or at least 75% of the time) 

• Try to limit caffeine consumption to the morning . ( to get better sleep)
• try decaf if you like the taste of coffee
• find how much caffeine (or other stimulants ) are in your preworkout drink if you take one.
• Dont drink it to “make it through your day”
• take some herbs to stimulate adrenal recuperation.  such as Rhodiola Rosea , or Relora,  maybe even Holy Basil.

While in the short term caffeine can be fine , its the long term i’m worried about.  This was just so you pay a little more attention to how much caffeine you take in.

thanks for reading ,

Joe

then snatch workout of

• 1 min each side 61 lb bell
• 2 min each side 52 lb bell
• 2 min each side 44lb bell       no rest between sets.   forearm pump from hell.

Single arm swing workout of

• 1 min each side 61 lb
• 1 min each side 52 lb
• 1 min 44lb bell.      fingers wont open now.      sweating from legs.  eating sea salt and raw chocolate. think im gonna puke.   good job josh thanks for being my workout partner.   my spinal erectors are on fire.

post workout meal    wild caught salmon broccoli and saurkraut.

• seated double kettlebell presses
• swing, deadlift and snatch combos
• turkish getups into single leg deadlifts
• trx ab work combos

• 

  intense cardio for intense definition.

Towards the end of the workout we always do Tabata protocol cardio finishers.  being such a nice day we took the stations outside.  stations included,

1. swing squats
2. outdoor jumping rope
3. dual partner 50 foot battle rope down the sidewalk.  ( can you imagine how many cars stared as two people shook a huge blue rope back and forth between each other??)
4. Glute/ ham bench
5. aqua bag crunches on stability ball
6. plyo box jumps
7. and more battle ropes.

your training does not have to be stuck inside the gym.  we will be doing much more outdoor type training in the coming months.    The cool part about today is we have a few competitors getting ready for competition this weekend.  and after training was done they all took off for a long post training cardio walk through old latonia. there is always a sight or two to be seen…..   we will make this a great workout and fitness community.  you can bet on that.  so its spring lets get outside  anyway you can!

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For Learning Form we like to do 10 -20 with a lighter bell  This ensures you feel the motion and  understand it.  In beginner classes we may do this for 2-3 sets.  Most people actually use a bell that is too light to swing and therefore dont need to use their hips to accelerate the bell.  So i give them usually a much heavier bell than they think of trying themselves . Remember a kettlebell swing is NOT A LIFT with the ARMS.

For Endurance we like to use seconds, or minutes or HIGH reps such as 50 to 100.    its all about progression to become more efficient.   swinging the 106 lb beast bell 100 times is an incredibly taxing task.   this will help with conditioning , breathing, cardio respiratory/vascular.

For Building  muscle mass we tend to do 4-5 sets of anywhere from 8-12 reps with a HEAVY bell  to 15-20 reps with a  Moderately heavy bell. This is accomplished  by swinging heavy bells with shorter rest periods between sets or even supersetting the  swing with another glute based exercise to really break down the tissue

For Sports Training we tend to do a little it of it all….  be cause you have to be ready for the unexpected!

hope this helps.