Archive for the Physical Performance Category

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The 2,000-year old cocktail: it tastes as bad as it looks… but it works.

My back hurts. So does my throat, and I feel like a sumo wrestler is sitting on my head trying to pop my eyes out.

Alas, the common cold has got me. Fortunately, I expect to be rid of it in 48-72 hours.

Like millions this time of year, I have the bug. But, thanks to Chinese and German friends and several helpful doctors, I’ve found a few effective treatments — the closest to cures I’ve experimented with — that can get you back on your feet faster. I suggest you test them in stages, from oldest to newest, as the side-effects tend to increase as we include modern drugs.
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There are options for extending your life, but is it worth it? (Photo: Megan*)

This is the second half of our two-part article on real experiments (and successes) in life extension, authored by Dr. Michael Eades. Part 1 covers supporting research for caloric extension (CR) and intermittent fasting (IF).

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Dr. Eades continued from Part 1:

We fooled around with a number of different eat-fast-eat regimens and came up with something that works pretty well. We set up our cutoff time as 6 PM. On the day we started, we ate until 6 PM, then fasted until 6 PM the next day. On the next day we ate supper right after 6 PM and ate breakfast and lunch (and a few snacks) the next day until 6 PM when we started fasting again.

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Can you slow the sands of time? The research say yes… but what’s the best option? (Photo: Thomas Ellis)

Most people don’t want to die.

Since even before Ponce de Leon and his search for the fountain of youth, man has been on a quest to achieve immortality.

Some people think we’re getting closer. In recent years, caloric restriction (CR) has been demonstrated to increase lab rat lifespans more than 20%. “Intermittent fasting” (IF), a much lesser-known and more lifestyle-friendly alternative, has shown results that even surpass CR in some respects.

Following up on the popularity of his last post on this blog (The Science of Fat-Loss: Why a Calorie Isn’t Always a Calorie), Dr. Eades examines these two options and his personal experiments with both.

If you want to live longer, this two-part article is an excellent place to start for avoiding common mistakes, pain and wasted effort. Read More

Breakfast is a hassle.

I want it to do one thing: provide nutrient-dense food and proper macronutrient ratios in the least time possible. It’s a functional meal.

The above is a video of the 3-minute high-protein and “slow-carb” breakfast that I find perfect for fat-loss and cognitive performance. Read More

(Found via Coudal Partners)

The land of frog legs and baguettes has produced, in recent years and unbeknowst to most, some of the worlds most mind-numbing acrobats. I found the above video last night and had to share it. Two questions:

What the hell are kids eating in France?

[Postscript: readers have noted in the comments that this first video was actually in Mexico, though some also claim Brazil.]

If you could have the physical capabilities of any athlete in the world, who would you choose?

I might opt for another French lad named Junior. I used to breakdance (at about 1:40 of this video), but he is superhuman. The clip below is from the Red Bull BC One competition of 2004. Be sure to watch the whole thing or jump to 2:40 — you won’t believe the move in the last five seconds… Read More

Photo: Rickydavid

I once went almost five days without sleep in 1996 just to see 1) if I could make a week (I couldn’t), and 2) what the side-effects would be.

I was a new neuroscience major at Princeton at the time and hoped to do research with famed serotonin pioneer, Barry Jacobs.

Hallucinations cut my sleep deprivation trial short, but I’ve continued to experiment with sleep optimization and variation as a means of improving performance.

Here are a few effective techniques and hacks I’ve picked up over the last five years from sources ranging from biochemistry PhDs to biologists at Stanford University… Read More

After holding off for nearly two years, I’m posting this because too many people have asked for it. The lasses should read it, too, as the same principles can be applied to bodyfat loss.

I weighed 152 lbs. for four years of high school, and after training in tango in Buenos Aires in 2005, that had withered to 146 lbs. Upon returning to the US, I performed an exhaustive analysis of muscular hypertrophy (growth) research and exercise protocols, ignoring what was popular to examine the hard science. The end result? I gained 34 lbs. of muscle, while losing 3 lbs. of fat, in 28 days.

Before and after measurements, including underwater hydrostatic weighings, were taken by Dr. Peggy Plato at the Human Performance Laboratory at the San Jose State University, and I had blood tests taken on September 30 and October 20. Though this ridiculous experiment might seem unhealthy, I also dropped my total cholesterol count from 222 to 147 without the use of statins. No joke.

Here are a few comparative shots. Oh, and I forgot to mention, all of this was done with two 30-minute workouts per week, for a total of 4 HOURS of gym time:

How did I do it? Read More

Be sure to check out this month’s issue (May 2007) of Fortune Small Business, where I am profiled in the “How I Work” section. It covers how I limit information intake, fire customers, control voicemail, and otherwise dodge bullets to do one of the things I enjoy most: MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) with professional UFC fighters.

Blame it on my mother, who put me in “kid wrestling” at age 8 to drain the hyperactivity out of me and avoid Tasmanian Devil action at home. It worked like a charm but forever gave me the neck thickness of a small cow.

Getting punched and thrown isn’t everyone’s idea of fun (for those fans out there, my favorite fighter of all-time is Kasushi Sakuraba), but fun is what you make of it. The one ingredient you cannot do without? Time. Learn how to create more of it and do what you want — take a glance at the digital version of this article for free (beginning on page 47).

Adriaaaaaan! ;)

It is possible to lose 20 lbs. of bodyfat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or drug/supplement regimen. I’ve seen the elite implementation of all three in working with professional athletes. In this post, we’ll explore a variation of the “slow carb” diet as used by Dean Karnazes, an ultramarathoner famed for completing 50 marathons on 50 consecutive days in 50 different states. The most impressive part of this, for me, is that he did so, not with the typical anemic marathoner build, but with a well-muscled mesomorph body.

In the last six weeks, I have cut from about 180 lbs. to 165 lbs., while adding about 10 lbs. of muscle, which means I’ve lost about 25 lbs. of fat. This is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat (damn you, Scandinavian genetics). Here are the four simple rules I followed… Read More