I received a lot of photos from my good friend, and Swedish IFBB Pro, Martin Kjellström and his Norwegian sponsor Proteinfabrikken today. After skimming trough and sorting them into categories, I did a quick update of Martin’s website with some photos from his contract signing with Proteinfabrikken. More photos, including training and posing, will be up tomorrow and during the week.

You can find Martin’s website at:
www.martinkjellstrom.com

One question I often get from new clients concerns the post workout shake. A lot of athletes, especially women in the bodybuilding and fitness industry, still consume solid food after a training session as their “recovery nutrition”. When I hand them a nutritional program with a personalized post workout shake, the usual respond is; “Is that really necessary? Can’t I have a fruit or a sandwich instead when I get home?”

As I’ve written before, it’s crucial that you get carbs and protein immediately following a workout if you want to gain muscle mass and/or recover from the exercise. A liquid shake are palatable, easy and quick to consume, and can easily provide all the nutrition you need at this vital time. Since this shake should be made of whey protein and high-glycemic carbs like maltodextrin or Vitargo, it’s also absorbed much faster than solid food; usually within 30 to 60 minutes. Whole solid foods may take two to three hours to absorb and fully affect the muscle; thus missing the critical forty-five minute metabolic window.

The sooner your post recovery nutrition gets to the muscles, the better your chances are for recovery and muscle building. Waiting until you get home, or consuming solid foods won’t cut it. If you’ve busted your ass in the gym, make sure you get the most out of it. Don’t neglect the power of liquid post workout nutrition.

More on recovery (previous blog-posts):

Antioxidants as a postworkout weapon

Workout drinks

My favorite show, by far, is back on the air again; season 4 of The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) premiered last night after a two-hour warm-up in the form of Ultimate Fight Night VI.

The Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) athletes are, without a doubt, the most well-trained and fit athletes in the world of sports today. As a MMA fighter you must possess high levels of strength, endurance, and flexibility. It’s always a joy to see them in action.

While shows like The Contender (boxing) leans more towards the usual drama of reality shows and has edited fights, The Ultimate Fighter let you see more of the training and, best of all, the fights in full. I only wish the episodes where even longer; showing more of the training and pre-fight preparations.

If you’ve been living in a cave for the last 10 years; check these out:

video.ufc.com/
www.theultimatefighter.tv/
www.spiketv.com/

From Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training blog:
http://turbulencetraining.blogspot.com/

Sports for Fat Loss?

Lots of you are playing sports and wonder how does this fit into your fat loss schedule.
Can you replace interval training with a sport?

Absolutely – assuming of course you are talking about a sport that requires high-intensity sprints (such as soccer, basketball, rugby, hockey, or Ultimate Frisbee).

Sports such as golf should be kept to your day off (you can also perform the sports listed above on your day off as well).

Sports can be a big help to your fat loss program.

BUT…

Sports can ruin your fat loss program if you follow them up with 3 pints of beer and 2 pounds of wings. Take a look around the dressing room after next game.

Even while everyone’s shirt is soaked with sweat, some people are lean and others remain overweight. Despite giving the same effort on the field, those that don’t eat right will get fat. Playing sports and working out hard don’t make you immune to the side effects of a junk diet.

Now let’s turn our attention to kids. Sports and other unstructured physical activities are essential for children. Research has shown that kids who regularly participate in at least 3 h per week of sports activities won’t get fat, while kids that avoid physical activity have a greater tendency to become overweight.

Sports also help kids develop more muscle mass and stronger bones. Both of these are important to overall health for the rest of their lives.

Another study from the International Journal of Obesity identified the following factors associated with overweight kids:

• Parental obesity
• Low parental educational level
• Low total family income
• Long hours of TV watching
• Playing videogames or computer utilization
• Absence of breastfeeding
• Physical inactivity

Now personally, I grew up with some friends that met most of those conditions above, but my friends were not overweight.

Why not? Because while they watched a lot of TV, played a lot of vids, and didn’t have a Cosby-show family background, my friends played a lot of sports in and out of school. Heck, we probably played sports at least an hour everyday.

So for young kids, physical activity can trump almost every “obesity-causing” effect…
EXCEPT…maybe for the nutrition problems that exist today.

While it wasn’t hard for us to get jumbo sodas at 7-11, we just didn’t seem to buy those as much as kids do today.

So keep an eye on your kids nutrition…and…

I encourage you and your family to be as active as possible,
CB

To find out more about Craig and his services, please visit: www.cbathletics.com

This morning, it was time to pull out the caliper and step up on the scale for some measurements again. It’s been a week since I changed the diet (again) to keep the fat coming off. In short; I’ve been eating some extra carbs during and after my weight training sessions. And on off-days, I’ve been restricting carbs to veggies only (as usual). You can see the actual scheme in my last update, from August 5, complete with all the numbers.

This week has been kind of hectic. I and my business companion, Fredrik Carlsson, came back after a couple of weeks of vacation on Monday morning. We both had a lot of clients to attend to, especially those who will compete in the National Bodybuilding, Classic Bodybuilding, Fitness, and Body Fitness Championships on October 7 and 8. I also had some priority clients along with new requests of training- and nutritional programs. It’s easy to lose focus on your own diet and meal schedule when you are up over your ears in work and put every ounce of concentration into your clients.
Anyway, the week went very well. The extra carbs around my workouts seem to have helped in re-gaining some muscle mass. When it comes to fat loss, the 7-sites caliper readings show a loss of about 1 lb this week. This is not totally accurate, since I see a lot of improvement in other areas that isn’t measured; like serratus anterior, external oblique, deltoids, forearms and calves. Since it’s now getting a bit harder due to the stubborn deep fat, I’ll start taking some other reference readings for future reference, like medial deltoid, lower back, calves and biceps (pretty much like the Parillo formula, except for the delts).

The results now after a total of eight weeks (56 days), August 12:

Morning body weight: 165.66lbs (75.3kg), down another 0.44lbs (0.2kg) from last week and a total of 18.34lbs (8.3kg).
Body fat percentage: 6.83%, down from 7.4% last week and from 14.8% at the start.
Fat weight: 11.31lbs (5.14kg), down another 0.98lbs (0.45kg) from last week and a total of 15.89lbs (7.2kg).
Lean body weight: 154.35lbs (70.16), up 0.54lbs (0.25kg) from last week.
Waist measurement: 33.15” (84,2cm), down another 0.31” (0.6cm) from last week and a total of 3.65” (9.0cm)

Here’s a little diagram for all you number and statistic-junkies. (Click to open)

A new update with photos will be up next weekend.

For decades we have focused on what to eat. In the last couple of years we’ve started to focus more on when to eat. This concept is known as Nutrient Timing; and the most important nutritional window, for us who train, is postworkout.
Now, a carbohydrate and protein supplement taken immediately after a workout will stimulate both glycogen replenishment and protein synthesis. It also stimulates insulin release which in turn increases the muscle blood flow, thus eliminating metabolic wastes at a doubled rate. These are the first steps to cover with your postworkout nutrition. However, there is another step to consider.

Heavy training also causes a suppressed immune system and a huge buildup of free-radicals. This often leads to upper respiratory infections during periods of hard training. Researchers refer to this as the “open window” theory, which means that after hard exercise bouts the immune system is temporarily compromised for three to seventy-two hours.
However, several studies has shown that a carbohydrate and protein supplement taken immediately after the training session will help the immune system to fight infection. This postworkout supplement can be further enhanced by adding powerful antioxidants like vitamins E and C. These antioxidants fight free-radicals which suppress the immune system and also are linked to aging and many diseases.

I recommend a minimum of 80-120 mg vitamin C and 80-400 IU vitamin E taken with your postworkout supplement.

If you often suffer from colds and infections, give this formula a try!

You can read more about postworkout nutrition in my Workout drinks article and in my Carbs, Glycogen and Performance article.