Didn't mention that for a while. I did Tim Ferriss' slow carb diet for 3 weeks and gained at least 5kg. Kind of not what I was hoping for. So project good-looks is dead for now. Probaby trying it some other time again. Focussing on my studies for now, I guess. They're kind of lame, though.

This is an interesting service. You email them anything, and they host it for you, put it on your .posterous.com blog and even autopublish it to your real blog. Looks awesome, too. Time to get rid of wordpress?

And neither does anyone else. But why not simply admit it? That's right, because you're scared. Scared of not knowing why people shoot their classmates and then themselves. I'm kind of pissed at the german magazine "Der Spiegel". Of course I never buy it. But a friend brought one over and I read the article on the recent maniac who killed 15 kids in his old school and then shot himself in the head. This time they know literally nothing. He ate Spaghetti. His father had a Mercedes CLS with a 6.3l V8. The sign on his fathers company is grey (they actually wrote that). He liked table tennis and computer games. They write that "experts agree all amok runners have access to weapons". I guess they expect people to run amok with just their bare fists. Amok boxers. Experts also agree that "kids in their puberty seem out of reach". What the hell is wrong with you? Didn't anyone at "Der Spiegel" go through puberty themselves? Seriously. I get that you feel obliged to fill six fucking pages about this guy. But if you really know nothing? Why not just print the following in big letters:

We don't know shit and it scares us!

Maybe I'm just pissed because the same things that make this guy suspicious are those they usually WANT one to do. Like NOT get drunk every weekend (and consequently be a social outcast), being competitive (instead of a lame loser like our whole generation seems to be), eating pasta (wtf.. how is this relevant to ANYTHING), get good grades in school. This guy actually did everything right. And then he ticked out and killed everyone.

Ok yesterday was really bad. I had cravings for meat all day. I didn't have that on a normal vegetarian or even vegan diet in months. The last time I had those were when I tried eating only fruit for one month. They took longer than one or two days to develop, but then they were also stronger. This time I just gave in, thinking they'd get a lot stronger soon. So, in some way, I developed negative will-power. Great. In the evening I sprinted home, not Tabata-fashioned, but still intervals. But I didn't do my max strength routine. I have to focus on learning how to squat before doing actual squats. I subscribed to the excellent  CrossFit Journal and they have some videos on how to do proper squats. I'll try those. Don't want to injure myself. They also have an "optimal" diet. It's the zone diet. It basically says: eat 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat in your meal. For convenience, CrossFit meals are divided up into equal "blocks" of each of the three macronutrients. A sample meal from one of the videos is: a steak, large side of broccoli and some blue cheese dressing (for the fat). This is a lunch- or dinner-type meal, they also have 2 snacks per day. Those are something like: almonds (fat), cottage cheese (protein) and an apple (carbs). Those are off the top of my hat now, probably not the right proportions. See the CrossFit Journal on "Zone Diet" for that. It sounds fascinating. Also: while vegans all sound nice and healthy, do I want to look more like Steve Pavlina or the guys from CrossFit, who eat the zone diet? Steve is probably healthy too, but he doesn't look as healthy as they do. AND THE CROSSFIT GUY HAS A SIXPACK! Which is what I want. Strive to be like your idols, right? So should I go zone? On the other hand this might just be another fad that I'm trying, like Fruitarianism. Maybe the key is actually not the diet so much as it is the working out for the CrossFitters. Sigh!

Just a little update here. Diet went mostly fine, I cheated on the friday evening meal because a friend came over and we watched some movies. I had some nuts, dark chocolate and drank coke. Over the weekend I didn't binge too much, "regular" consumption of sugary stuff I guess. I made tofu burgers, but they weren't very good. Working out also went pretty well. I sprinted every day that I marked on the list. I also did most of the workouts, though I skipped the squats several times. I have some kind of squat-phobia. Maybe because my knees start to hurt when I do lots of squats. I'm afraid to hurt my knees. Any results yet? I can't tell. I look pretty much the same in the mirror. Don't have a scale to weigh myself. I like my new beard. Fascinatingly, it's not too boring to eat the same dinner every day and drink the same post-workout-shake every day. I get the rice right most of the time now. That seems important, because the rice gives it texture. If the rice is too wet, it tastes too soupy (not in a good, creamy way). If it's burnt, well, it tastes burnt. I also calculated how much I need my daily needs in nutrients and vitamins. I took the German RDAs and all my food in a table. I meet some of them, fail "a little" (as in only get 70%) on others, and completely fail in a few (Vitamin D for example). I'm thinking about writing a calculator for this that can scrape the nutritional stats off Wikipedia. Typing every single food item by hand into Numbers is getting really lame.

Hey folks, Here is the translation of an article I wrote for the german www.FighterFitnessForum.com, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's not a 1:1 translation as I left out some of the introductory stuff specific to Fighter Fitness.

Introduction

Bodyweight Exercises are great. They're fun, you don't need anything to do them and they work great to get stronger, fitter and look better. But while there are hundreds of example movements online and in books, there's a lack of planning and systematic material. I found it difficult which movements to put together, how often and how long to train, etc. This is a conclusion of what I read in many forums and articles and books over the months. If you have any comments, please let me know.

Training goal

To start everything off, you need a goal. What do you want? Lose fat? Build muscle? Improve in your sport? Build strength? Nobody can tell you what your goal is. You have to find out yourself. But don't focus on a single aspect of training exclusively. Know the powerlifters from TV, legs like trunks and bellies like minivans? Or the skinny marathoners that resemble skeletons more than athletes? Nobody wants to look like that. Yes they're strong, or have great endurance, but I think they make a great case for balanced training. But most sports have a need for well-rounded fitness, so don't worry. Also it's not difficult to train the different aspects at the same time.

Training unit

A "unit" contains about 4-6 weeks of training. At the end of each unit, you should take a week of "rest training". More about rest training later. In each of these larger units of training you should use similar movements and workouts. This way your body gets used to the style of your training. When you do the next unit, e.g. after one month, mix the movements up a little. This way your body can't get used to the workouts too well. Just a little. This is just like working: after a few weeks you know what to do, but if you work the same job for 20 years, it's probably boring and not getting you anywhere.

Training "week"

This doesn't have to be an actual week. Ross Enamait from RossTraining.com uses a 5-day-plan, CrossFit uses a 4-day-plan. I use a whole week for convenience. There are four big areas of training: max strength, strength endurance, conditioning and explosiveness. Ideally, you'll have at least one session of each in every week. After that, train those you want to focus on. E.g. do two or three max strength sessions if you want to concentrate on that. But be careful with the order of sessions, more on that now:

• Don't forget to put in rest days
• For max strength training and explosiveness, your central nervous system (CNS) should be fully rested. Best to put these after a rest day.
• The CNS regenerates slowly. Don't put one of the very taxing max/explosiveness days after another. Also don't train max/explosiveness more than 3 times a week.
• When training max/explosiveness, stop training BEFORE your muscles fail. This way you don't risk injury and overstressing the CNS. You can go all out in the conditioning sessions.
• Strength endurance doesn't tax the CNS so bad, but your muscles will need rest after this. Don't go to failure, but you can go a little further than with max/explosive.
• Conditioning is intended to train your heart and lungs. Your muscles shouldn't be stressed too much. You can really go all out. If you like, train until you puke. It doesn't take that much really. The movements here should be selected so that they're trivial to perform and you don't risk injury due to sloppy technique.
• Your cardiovascular system regenerates quickly. About 10 minutes after a conditioning session, you'll start to feel well again. You might even want to do another one ;)
• Muscles take longer to regenerate: about 1 or 2 days, depending on how far you went. If your muscles are sore for longer than 2 days, you probably trained too hard.
• The CNS takes a while. Don't put two max/explosiveness days in succesion.
• Split-training (i.e. training different body parts in different workouts) doesn't really work with BWEs. Most movements train different parts of the body at the same time. Just train the whole body every workout.

Workouts

Max strength workout Few repetitions each set (small sets) Long rest periods between set (up to several minutes) Low volume Very intense exercises (it's max strength after all) A very intense exercise is one you can't do more than 3-10 times in one set. This is not very specific, but it's not so easy to tell with BWEs. For example, even when my max pull-ups were around 12, it still felt like max strength. Just use your intuition. If you feel a movement is too easy, make it more difficult by changing the angle or putting your feet up or something. It's generally easy to scale BWEs, just look around the internet. Example workout: 3 sets of 3 pistols (one-legged-squats) 3 sets of 3 pull-ups (if too easy, make them more difficult by grasping a chair between your legs or something) 3 sets of 3 dips After each set, rest for 2 minutes to regenerate muscles and the CNS. Strength endurance workout High volume Low to  medium intensity (big sets) Medium length rest between sets (30-90 sec) Example workout: 3 sets of 20 push-ups 3 sets of 50 squats 3 sets of 10 pull-ups (if too difficult, jump up to the bar to make them easier) Rest for 60 seconds between sets.   Conditioning workout The goal here is to get your cardiovascular system running and keep it up. No or little rest between sets Medium repetitions per set, so your muscles don't get tired but your heart keeps pumping Easy to medium intensity of movements Your whole body should be involved. Use whole body movements like Burpees or combine push-ups with squats. The intention is to keep going while not going to muscle failure. To do this, we can use circle training. Each muscle group is involved shortly, but then has time to rest. If your muscles fail during this, you did too many repetitions or movements of too high intensity. If you can't breathe and feel like puking, you're doing it right.  Example workout: 5 circles of: 5 push-ups 10 squats 3 pull-ups 5 burpees No rest (or just a little, if you need it). These conditioning circles look pretty harmless on paper, but they're pretty fucked up. Try them! You'll regenerate quickly after on of these. If you don't have much spare time, you can put one in days normally reserved for other training. If you're training 5 days a week already, you can put a conditioning circle in a max strength or strength endurance day. Just push it back to the evening when you train max in the morning.   Explosive workout The fast-twitch-muscles that are responsible for your explosiveness are only activated at a certain level of intensity. This means you have to "max" it out a little before doing explosive movements. Explosive movements tax the CNS very much. Don't overdo it! A little explosive training is enough to stimulate the fast-twitch-muscles. Once a week should be enough, and the workout can be pretty short. Example workout: 3x the most difficult push-ups you can do (activate FT muscles) 10x clapping push-ups 3x pistols (one-legged-squats) or squat while carrying a weight (activate FT)  30x tuck jump 3x weighted pull-ups (just grasp something with your legs) 5x clapping pull-ups Do 3 rounds of this. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.   

Rest training week

Ross Enamait says in Full Throttle Conditioning (great book, like all his training manuals) that one should put in one rest week after about 1-1.5 months of training. So we put one in after each of our big scale training units. He also says to not reduce intensity or the number of workouts, but the volume! This means we only do 1/2 the number of rounds or 1/2 the number of repetitions, but the intensity stays the same.  

My workout plan explained

The biggest difference between what I recommend above and what I put in my own workout plan is this:

• I have no dedicated conditioning circles
• I have no explosiveness training
• I do short sprints 5 days a week instead

Sprints are mostly a conditioning workout until the legs get tired. They also train explosiveness a little, but I removed explosiveness for two other reasons: I'm too heavy to do most explosive movements (clapping push-ups and clapping pull-ups) safely. I can do them, but I'll fall on my face 50% of the time. Also they're quite loud to do indoors, and I don't fancy doing clapping push-ups on the street. Maybe when I'm a little lighter I'll incorporate a dedicated explosiveness workout. Why do I do 5 little sprints instead of one big conditioning circle? Getting the cardiovascular system high pumps up your metabolism for the whole day to burn more calories. So instead of having one day of high-metabolism a week, I'll have 5. Hopefully this helps me lose fat.

Phenomenal book. Awesome! It's part biography and part writing bible. And like everything King, it reads really well. Apart from some tips on how to write BETTER and how to find an agent, it is just plain motivating. I've read it for the 3rd time now, and every time it lifts my spirit and I want to become a full time writer. Despite the biography part. So if you have ANY aspiration to write fiction, READ THIS BOOK!

Seems to go pretty well. Despite basically eating the same meal for every dinner, it tasted different each time. This may be because I'm a bad cook. Most of the time I was too lazy to put the rice, lentils and spinach in different pots, so I just threw everything in one. This led to a very watery meal. Not so good. But I'll get that handled, I guess. Spinach is great with rice and all the other stuff. So are onions! Since onions are healthy, tasty and almost never spoil, they're great for this.

Workout-wise

I've been doing half a Tabata sprint each workday morning, 5 so far. Although 4 Tabata intervals is not nearly as taxing as the full 8, it's still heavy on the lungs and heart. Exactly like it should be. And I don't feel it in the legs the next day, meaning I can do it EVERY day! Only when I tested my max squats on tuesday did I feel weaker on the sprints the next morning. But doing max tests isn't going to happen all the time. I devised a cunning plan on how to not only incorporate sprints but also strength and strength endurance training in my goal to get a fucking sixpack. This is based on an article called "Fitness planning 101" I wrote for a german workout forum at www.FighterFitnessForum.com. If you're german: it's a very nice forum with lots of helpful people. Like me.  I'll translate the article later and post it here, so you can understand how or why I conceived my personal plan. Sprint means half a Tabata sprint, i.e. 4x20s sprint and 10s rest. Sometimes I did the first half, sometimes every second interval. The latter is easier. Monday: Sprint, Max strength Tuesday: Sprint, Strength endurance Wednesday: Sprint Thursday: Sprint, Max strength Friday: Sprint strength endurance Saturday: - Sunday: - So basically one sprint every work day, twice max strength and twice strength endurance. Max strength after a rest day, so the nervous system is rested. Strength endurance after max strength, because you don't need to be completely rested for this, and the movements are easier. Weekends are off. This is mainly for convenience, it'd probably be more effective to spread it out over the weekend or work out more. But weekend = off time is a motivational factor. Also weekends are my cheat-days for the Fuel Diet. So I just hang around stuffing myself on weekends and work out and eat well during the week. I should find out if I get all the vitamins and nutrients from my Fuel meals. Note to self: calculate and post that.

Ok, I'm done. I give up. I WANT A SIXPACK! There are two components of a sixpack:

1. Some abs
2. Very low bodyfat

I think 1. is no problem. If you can do a few sit-ups and do Knee-To-Elbows on a pull-up-bar, you probably have enough abs. We used to do belly-boxing in Muay Thai class to harden our abs. But 2. is going to be tricky. I'm pretty fat, and I've never been thin. 90.6kg was my all time low as an adult, and at 184cm, that's pretty heavy.  There are two options on how to lose body fat:

1. Slow, boring and tedious roadwork, like jogging
2. Sprint intervals

Yay for sprint intervals! I've done them in the past, but not a lot. Why? Because they hurt so much. After a decent Tabata sprint, my legs are wasted for four days and my lung and heart almost kill me. So yea, they work. But they're fucking tough. So I never got myself to do them regularly. Well, I guess now that I want a sixpack, I have to do them. I'm not sure if I'm going to do them EVERY day or every second day. Since they are pretty hard, I'll have to go easy in the beginning. Maybe I'll do every 2nd and do push-ups etc. every other 2nd day. I sprinted a little today, but it was "only" back from university. And only three intervals, not 8. It still killed my lungs, but I don't feel anything in the legs. Maybe that's a good idea, since the lungs are okay after a few hours, but the legs take ages to regenerate once they're wasted. Diet wise I'm going for my Fuel Diet concept (see last post). I made the dinner today, and while I made about 2x the amount I ate, completely burned the rice, it was still okay. I'll have to see if I can eat it every day, though. The shake is still amazing, after making it every day for almost two months now. Or is it more? I'm still on the Warrior Diet and it's not a problem. More natural this way, I don't like to force myself to eat three times a day anyway. Since I get up between 17:00 and 18:00, the dinner is more of a breakfast, though. But I guess that counts, kind of. I'm thinking this whole sixpack operation will take between 3 and 6 months. Wish me luck. And discipline.

WARNING: The rage contained in this post may be fueled by me having watched "RocknRolla" twice, everybody in it being fucking RIPPED, except of course for me, sitting on the couch, not working out, lazy fat bastard that I am. Ok. When I talk about my diet to people who know absolutely nothing about diet, they always say something like the following: "I don't think [insert any diet concept] is really necessary. If you just choose a balanced diet and eat consciously, there's nothing wrong with that." I hate those people then. Of course many of them are offended just by the idea that you think differently about diet than they do. It's a little like religious people. By choosing a vegetarian or - god forbid - vegan diet, you attack their way of life and their belief that killing animals to eat their flesh is alright. And by choosing any kind of restriction on your diet, like no sugar, you attack their unhealthy habits. But this is not what makes me angry. People behave stupid all the time when you're not like them in some way. BUT: I also think it's wrong. Eating consciously? When I eat consciously, I want it to taste great. I want it to be special. I will take a lot of time and cook something very tasty. And something very tasty isn't always something healthy that will actually fuel me. Now there are some things that are healthy and taste great, sure. But there's also a lot of stuff that tastes amazing and gives you ZERO fuel and is perfectly poisonous. Everything with sugar, for example. So I say: down with conscious eating! When I eat consciously and to enjoy it, it's highly likely that I will choose a non healthy meal. When I treat food as fuel though, eating healthy becomes much easier (and also fixing food is quicker). Now depriving yourself of eating with pleasure for ever is not going to work, obviously. And here I will be stealing shamelessly from the amazing Tim Ferriss: he eats "routine" every breakfast and supper, and enjoys his dinners. He also eats for pleasure on saturday, his diet-off-day.  (From Tim Ferriss)

5. Don’t strive for variation—and thus increase option consideration—when it’s not needed. Routine enables innovation where it’s most valuable. In working with athletes, for example, it’s clear that those who maintain the lowest bodyfat percentage eat the same foods over and over with little variation. I’ve eaten the same “slow carb” breakfast and lunch for nearly two years, putting variation only into meals that I focus on for enjoyment: dinner and all meals on Saturdays.

Since I'm on the Warrior Diet, I only really eat two meals a day: my fruit shake and dinner. The shake is almost always the same, healthy meets tasty here. No problem. But for dinner I often buy things that aren't really healthy (fake soy meats, white flour pasta). So I should really do a "fuel" diet as a 30 day Trial. 

The Fuel Diet

Weekdays: just eat to fuel. This means one or two standard meals that are easy to fix and healthy.  Shake (from the Thrive Diet):

• Bananas - vitamins and "good" sugar
• Flaxseed/Sesame - healthy fat and a little protein
• Dates - more good sugar and gives great texture
• Almonds - healthy fat and for texture
• 100% pure Cocoa powder - taste and color
• Water - everybody loves water!

Dinner:

• Brown rice - for texture, carbohydrates, a little protein and vitamins
• Beans/lentils - for protein
• Canned tomatoes - to make it soupy and for some vitamins
• A little olive oil/coconut oil - for healthy fat
• [some green vegetable] - more vitamins and nutrients - thinking spinach? Have to try

To my current knowledge, everything you need as fuel is in there. Weekends: eat for pleasure. Not necessarily binge on everything poisonous out there, but eat something special to enjoy it. This could take longer, e.g. a fake soy meat with ketchup and fries, or vegetable stew.   I kind of want to start this now, and not wait until the 21st.