The answer is yes. This post explains what I’ve learned living at 8% body fat, but it might also be a while before I post again. The Highlander is a space for sharing my random learnings and experiments from the frontier of strength x longevity x performance drugs. If I forced myself to write regularly, it would get boring for you and me. So I’ll keep it exciting and surprise you with another post sometime randomly in the future.

Until then, Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

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8 Rules for Living at 8% Body Fat

I’ve spent two years living at 8% body fat, and it changed my body, my bloodwork, and my mindset about health.

The 8% Experiment happened by accident. I did my first bodybuilding show in 2023, got down to 6% body fat, then just decided to stay lean. Almost two years later, I’m 8%, and I’ve never been heavier those two years than I am now.

Yes, I still look like a bodybuilder. Delt veins. Leg veins. Proof of work:

My 8% Experiment taught me eight lessons about diet and health, and they’re not the same tired “don’t eat processed foods” or “get daily sunlight” or “sleep more” recommendations repackaged endlessly on X. If you don’t already know not to eat crappy foods and to get better sleep, go read one of those lists. It won’t be hard to find one.

If you want some new ideas about diet and health, here are my 8% rules:

1. Sustainable > Optimal

The biggest trap of the modern health movement is the search for “optimal” protocols. The optimal program. The optimal diet. The thing guaranteed to get the most results in the least amount of time. All backed by science.

Optimal as a function of maximum results in minimum time doesn’t work because whatever is “optimal” is almost certainly not sustainable. That’s why we call it a crash diet. If you can’t maintain a health practice forever, how can it be optimal?

Let’s redefine optimal for health: Optimal is something health positive that you will do regularly and forever.

That means optimal lives somewhere in the space between effective and enjoyable. If you force yourself to do something super effective, but you find it miserable, you’ll stop doing it. That’s not optimal. If you only do things that are super enjoyable but unhealthy, you destroy health. You die earlier, whether functionally or literally. That’s not optimal either.

Sustainable > Optimal is the golden rule. If you want to be uncomfortably lean like 8% body fat, or uncomfortably fit, or uncomfortably strong, you need to find ways to be sustainably uncomfortable. That’s the greatest trick, and that makes finding the right space between effective and enjoyable the basis for many of my other rules.

2. The 80/20/20/80 Rule

For exercise, spend 80% of your time doing things you like and 20% things you need to do but don’t like. For diet, spend 20% of your intake eating foods you like whether healthy or not and 80% eating things you know are healthy.

The 80/20/20/80 rule builds enjoyment into the prescription for exercise and diet. We all have healthy things we like doing, and building enjoyment into our fitness makes it sustainable.

I like lifting and playing sports. I don’t enjoy endurance cardio. So my exercise generally looks like this:

• Lift 5-6x per week.

• Basketball for 15-30 minutes 3-5x a week.

• Box for 15 minutes 2-3x a week.

• Run/swim for 30-45 minutes 1x a week.

• Zone 2 cardio for 45 minutes 1-2x a week.

• Zone 5 cardio (sprints or intervals) for 5-10 minutes 1x a week.

I used to be obsessed about hitting my three zone 2 workouts a week and an interval for zone 5, so I did those at the expense of basketball and boxing and learning to swim. Now I spend more time on fun cardio, and I’m doing more of it in total. Even if I’m not getting the full benefits of zone 2, I’m getting some benefit. If more fun cardio is 80% as good as forcing myself to do something I loathe, that’s a great trade.

Same is true with diet. The trick in staying lean forever is staying sane. Conventional wisdom thinks dieting means you never eat a piece of cake ever again in your whole life. I actually eat cheesecake and ice cream every night (see rule #5). That keeps me sane enough to maintain low body fat.

Don’t look for someone else’s “optimal” exercise or diet program. Find your own 80/20 and 20/80, and build from there.

3. All Successful Dieting Ends with Math

Diet creates some of the strongest religions in health and fitness. The “calories are all that matter” vs “calories don’t matter at all” debate is one of the strongest.

The answer to the calorie question is simple. Pascal figured it out years ago with his wager on God. You should believe calories work until you have strongly compelling evidence they don’t.

For most people, consuming fewer calories than you burn over a sustained period of time will result in weight loss. Fat is stored energy. When your body needs more energy than you provide it through caloric intake, it burns fat. That’s thermodynamics.

There are edge cases where someone may have metabolic issues or hormonal issues or something else that prevents the body from efficiently using fat even in a caloric deficit. You’re probably not one of them, nor should you ever hope to be.

Math means measurement, and you can only be sure that you’re actually eating fewer calories than you expend if you track what you eat. You don’t have to do it forever, but you should track for at least a few months for two reasons:

1. You build a sense of what portion sizes look like. Most people have no idea what a serving is. The greatest example is peanut butter. People often eat a giant spoonful of peanut butter and think it’s only 190 calories because that’s what the jar says. Wrong. The spoonful is probably 2.5 servings and 475 calories. Do that every day, that’s a half a pound of weight a week. If you know how big a serving is, then you understand how much you’re actually eating whether you like it or not.

2. Tracking lets you figure out your maintenance calories. Track a couple weeks and track your weight. If your weight doesn’t change, whatever your average daily calorie intake was for those two weeks is probably how much energy you burn in a typical day.

Then put math into action. If you want to lose weight, take your maintenance calories, calculate your bodyweight in protein and eat that daily, then subtract 250-500 calories from maintenance carbs and/or fats. That should lose you 0.5-1 lbs per week.

Math is the path to diet freedom.

4. Be a Diet Ninja, Not a Diet Disciple

The religious wars of diet merely begin with whether calories work or not. Then the wars extend out to carnivore, keto, vegan, seed oils, and even eggs. Eggs always seem to be controversial.

A diet disciple grabs on to diet as an identity. He accepts the dogma of the religion that certain foods are unquestionably good and certain foods are unquestionably evil.

Diet ninjas know there are no “bad” foods. All diet religions have merits worth considering. Eating meat is probably good, and avoiding seed oils is probably smart, but food is ultimately a tool to fuel your body. Every food can be useful at times for the fit person building a sustainable 80/20/20/80 framework. I eat some seed oils now and then, and plenty of eggs. None of it has kept me from healthy blood markers and low body fat.

Unlike a diet disciple who has to rigidly adhere to religious dogma of their chosen diet, the diet ninja is flexible. The ninja can comfortably break diet rules from time to time because they understand the fundamental principles of energy. Disciples can’t because they only understand the dogma of good and bad.

5. Good Enough is the Virtue of Leanness

I make a 220 calorie pint of ice cream in my Ninja Creami every night and I eat it with a slice of 125 calorie cheesecake. The ice cream is milk, collagen powder, colostrum, and pudding mix. The cheesecake is cottage cheese, eggs, greek yogurt, and raw stevia.

Are they as good as real ice cream and cheesecake? No, but they’re good enough. Good enough is the mindset of all lean people because it saves you calories at every meal.

Protein pancake with bananas and no syrup. Good enough. Eggs with non-fat cheese and salt. Good enough. 93% lean ground beef burger with a half serving of ketchup (you better count). Good enough.

A relative of mine doesn’t understand the diet ice cream and cheesecake. She always tells me, “I’d rather just spend the calories on the real thing.” The problem with that mindset is that if you ate the real thing, you’d be in for about 850 calories of fat and sugar instead of 345 calories of mostly protein. Oh, and it’s an extra 150 calories of syrup and butter with your pancakes, 100 calories of fatty cheese, and 100 calories of ketchup with your burger. That’s what happens when you just spend the calories on the real thing. It’s all more expensive than you realize.

There’s no free lunch in dieting. Unless it’s my dessert, and that’s good enough.

6. Diets are Temporary, Lifestyle is Permanent

The longevity community touts caloric restriction as the diet key to a longer life. When I’m dieting, my blood markers often improve from already healthy levels, so there’s probably something to caloric deficits. Unfortunately many confuse the ideas of restriction and deficit. They’re not the same thing.

A deficit means you burn more than you eat. That’s the point of a diet. You’ll lose weight provided you don’t have some other health issue (see rule #3). If you try to diet in a caloric deficit forever, your body adapts. Either your deficit is no longer a deficit or you die.

Your body senses danger when you get too lean, so it makes you preserve energy through slower metabolism and less physical movement. When you prep for a bodybuilding show, your body adjusts its energy expenditure as you get lower and lower in body fat. I call the depths of low body fat “sloth mode.” When I was close to stepping on stage, there were nights when it would take 10 minutes to muster the energy to stand up off the couch. Then another 10 minutes to convince myself to walk upstairs. No exaggeration. That’s not a sustainable state.

Caloric restriction doesn’t mean a deficit. A research paper from the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation and Prevention defines caloric restriction best:

“A reduction in energy intake well below the amount of calories that would be consumed ad libitum (≥ 10% in humans).”

Ad libitum is the key word, and it means as much as desired. I live in caloric restriction now, but I’m not losing weight. I’m in balance. Even after eating a meal, I could usually eat another meal of the same size without trouble. My body doesn’t want to be as lean as it is. It wants more food, but I don’t want to gain weight, so I have to restrict what my body wants.

When I got to single digit body fat, stopping myself from eating more and dealing with energy lulls was hard. Now that I’ve been single digit for two years, it’s easy. Leanness is my lifestyle. Hunger is the consequent background noise. Movement is easy when it’s fun (rule #2). My family knows I might not eat certain foods with them, and sometimes I cook my own food on vacation.

If you want to be healthy and lean, get lean, then make it a lifestyle. Chasing diet to diet isn’t sustainable, nor is it enjoyable. The lifestyle of leanness requires you to be extreme, but if you want extreme results, you have to be willing to do extreme things.

7. Performance Enhancing Drugs are Overrated and Underused

Life is not a drug tested sport. I take testosterone (180mg/wk), but test does less to get me to 8% than conventional wisdom would believe.

I estimate drugs are 5% of the overall picture of living at 8% body fat. Diet is 35% and exercise is 20%. Mindset is the most important of all. That’s 40%.

Performance enhancing drugs enhance performance. They don’t replace it. If I didn’t take testosterone, maybe I’d have been 9% or 10% body fat because I’d still dial in diet and training and mindset. Maybe I’d still be 8%.

An unfortunate number of people think if they get on testosterone, they’ll wake up bodybuilder jacked. Nope. Test might give you more motivation to go to the gym, but it won’t magically make you lose 25 lbs and add 20 lb of muscle.

Even if you take pro bodybuilder level doses of steroids which are 10x my dose, you won’t look like a bodybuilder. You’ll just feel like shit. And probably look it too.

The common perception that if “I took testosterone I’d look jacked” ignores that everyone who’s jacked works really hard, whether they take testosterone or not. That makes PEDs overrated, but if the misperceived power of drugs creates a gateway to starting a consistent health program, then more people should take them.

When GLP-1s became popular earlier in 2024, I was a hater. I thought that people taking GLPs were lazy. They should do the hard work of learning to diet and suffer to get in shape. Then I heard Dr. Craig Koniver’s interview on Huberman’s podcast.

Koniver said that his patients would start GLPs, get some quick momentum from success with the drug, then change their lives by adopting healthy lifestyles. Being a diet ninja (rule #4) means having an open mind, and that extends beyond just diets. As a tool for getting early wins to establish a better lifestyle, drugs are underrated and underused.

8. Nothing Works Until You Believe

I believe in the “nullcebo” effect: Even if something should work to help you, if you believe it won’t, it won’t. No drug, no diet, no workout, nothing will really impact your health and wellbeing until you believe it will.

No, the nullcebo isn’t science backed. I made it up, although there’s evidence of both placebo and nocebo (that if you believe something will harm you, it does). Placebo and nocebo prove your mind has a strong power over your body, so it stands to reason that if you believe something merely won’t work, even if it should, that it won’t.

Henry Ford realized this years ago:

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”

Too many people claim they can’t lose weight, and that belief sabotages them from the beginning. Even if they try, their mind won’t let them succeed.

Everything important starts with belief. Use my diet tools, use someone else’s tools, use any tools as long as you believe they’ll work. Soon enough, it will.

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A Hug a Day

My doctor told me I should hug more often.

Seriously.

And this is a doctor that specializes in advanced medicine, hormone replacement, and longevity for strength athletes. He noted that I had a high cortisol reading in a recent blood review and hugs may be able to help counteract it.

So I looked into the science of hugs and was surprised at the power they can add to a strongevity practice.

Hugging for Better Hormone Regulation

Hugs affect three hormones - oxytocin, cortisol, and serotonin. Each impact mood, stress, and overall wellbeing, and each are particularly responsive to physical touch.

1. Oxytocin: The Love Hormone - Oxytocin is released in response to social bonding and physical touch. It encourages feelings of trust, empathy, and bonding and can counteract stress and anxiety. Studies have shown that hugging someone you trust can cause a surge in oxytocin.

2. Cortisol: The Stress Hormone - Cortisol, a hormone released during periods of stress, prepares the body for a 'fight or flight' response. High cortisol levels can become chronic and detrimental, leading to anxiety, depression, sleep issues, and even physical ailments. Hugging, by boosting oxytocin levels, counteracts cortisol production, helping to lower overall stress levels and create a calming effect.

3. Serotonin: The Happiness Hormone - Serotonin plays a crucial role in mood regulation. Low levels have been associated with depression and anxiety. Hugging, through the interaction of oxytocin and other endorphins, can lead to increased serotonin production, fostering happiness and wellbeing.

Hugging for a Healthier Heart

Hugging doesn't just improve hormone profiles; it has a direct effect on stress-related physiological responses. In a study in 'Psychosomatic Medicine,' individuals who had greater social support and received more frequent hugs had lower heart rates and blood pressure levels during stressful events.

I’ve dealt with high blood pressure in the past and lowered it with a few supplements, but perhaps the underlying issue is tied to high cortisol levels. Hugs may incrementally improve blood pressure issues in conjunction with other tactics.

Hugging for a Stronger Immune System

Hugs also contribute to a healthier immune system. Chronic stress can weaken the immune system, making us more susceptible to illness. By reducing stress and its associated hormone fluctuations, hugging can indirectly support immune system function. One study found that people who received more hugs and had a more substantial social support system were less likely to catch a common cold.

Highlanders should all want to be sick less frequently so we can train hard and allow our bodies to focus on recovery from exercise induced stress rather than immune stress.

Just Hug More

My wife has been teasing me for years that I should hug more often because it makes you feel better. I don’t know if she ever read any research about it or if she knew the power of hugs intuitively, but there is an undeniable calming effect from a hug. The research proves the power of the hug, and so does your innate response after. It's a testament to the importance of human connection, touch, and emotional intimacy even for meatheads.

Hug your loved ones, hug your kids, hug your dog, and live stronger for longer.

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Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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12.7% to 6.2% Body Fat

Highlanders must occasionally take their bodies to extremes.

Maximal strength, extreme diets, aggressive cardio protocols. Extreme physical feats teach you more about your body than any amount of reading or research.

My most recent physical extreme was a diet. In prepping for my first bodybuilding show, my final DEXA scan before the show said I was 6.2% body fat. I started around 12.7% and lost about 20 pounds of fat.

Here are the three most important things I learned from that diet extreme.

Stay Strong, Keep Muscle

The biggest mistake the average person makes with dieting is they don’t implement an intelligent resistance program as part of the plan.

When you incorporate resistance training during a diet, you tell the body to maintain muscle mass because you need it to meet the demands of training. If you don’t give the body that signal, the body won’t discriminate between burning far or muscle. Yes, you’ll lose weight, but if you lose muscle with fat, you may not improve your body composition. You may even end up in a worse place than you started as muscle is more precious as we age.

Plus, a resistance training program gives you a rough way to measure whether you’re maintaining muscle during your diet or not. As a general rule, if your strength is staying the same or going up, you aren’t losing muscle.

My coach kept the same exercises and training structure throughout my entire diet. That gave me a target every week to add a bit of weight or a rep or two to my training to maximize my chances for maintaining muscle.

It worked.

My DEXA said I actually gained two pounds of lean mass from the start of my diet to the end.

Sloth Mode

When I was three months into my diet and pretty low body fat, walking upstairs or even standing up from a chair was an epic battle. My legs felt like they were in quicksand mixed with concrete. It’s hard to imagine how much your body would fight simple motion you’d never think about when you weren’t dieted.

I called it Sloth Mode.

The longer you diet, the more your body adjusts to try to counteract the caloric deficit you’ve created. Your body goes into survival mode. It assumes that calories are scarce, so it compensates by trying to down regulate things that cost calories including movement. Your body even reduces your metabolic rate.

Sloth Mode crept up on me after about two months of dieting. For a week or two, I suddenly stopped losing weight. It’s a common issue with diets. I wasn’t counteracting my body’s energy adjustments either fewer calories or more activity.

Since food is so precious on a diet, trying to encourage more movement should be the first line of defense from Sloth Mode. I increased my walking time from almost nothing to 20-30 minutes a day. That was enough to me get back on track and losing weight without adjusting food, at least until I got deeper into my diet.

A step counter is an even better tool to fight Sloth Mode. I added one later to monitor my activity and make sure I keep hitting my steps as Sloth Mode crept in.

Be a Glutton

The reason so many diets fail is that people hit a mental wall and they can’t eat the same boring foods to sustain the caloric deficit they need.

For extended diets, refeeds and diet breaks are critical.

A refeed is a single day where you take on higher calories, primarily through carbs in bodybuilding. A diet break is temporary period, a few weeks or months, where you eat a maintenance level of calories to maintain your weight and pause weight loss. Both refeeds and diet breaks help maintain sanity as you fight against hunger and fat.

When you’re in a sustained caloric deficit, it doesn’t take much of a break to feel like a glutton. On my refeed days, I went from 2,200-2,400 calories to close to 3,000. The extra 600-800 calories do a lot for flexibility in dieting. I ate pancakes and burgers for the first time in a while. Then I was ready to go back to dieting.

Be a glutton on your diet, get lean, and stay stronger for longer.

Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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10-Minute Walks for Strongevity

Staying stronger for longer may be as simple as a short walk after you eat.

Stan Efferding, pro bodybuilder and powerlifter, popularized the 10-minute walk as part of his Vertical Diet. The idea is simple. After you eat, walk for 10 minutes.

The purpose of the walk is many fold:

• Improve digestion by reducing indigestion.

• Improve insulin sensitivity by reducing peak and duration of insulin response to a mean.

• Helps with low back pain.

• Can encourage better weight loss as increased frequency of exercise with same volume has a better effect on weight.

• Decrease all cause mortality.

• Reduce stress to improve sleep.

Frequent movement is just great. And timing it after a meal is even better.

Does the 10-minute walk really work?

My glucose monitor says they do.

I consistently see lower peaks and quicker returns to normal levels on my monitor when I get a walk in post meal. I’m currently eating a lot of carbs as I build some muscle over the next few months, so the walks help with the big spikes I get from a 100g+ carb meal. While I try to time my big carb hits around training, I also now consider whether or not I can get a quick 10-minute walk after the meal.

And walks seem to be more effective than other light exercise. I’ve tried 10-minute bikes. A few minutes of jump rope. A circuit of bodyweight exercises or technique work. Walks seem to do more to blood sugar than all of those alternatives.

Im not sadistic enough to try a few minutes of burpees, but I imagine walks would do better than those too. Certainly on the digestion front.

Add some 10-minute walks to your day, and see if you handle food better. Especially after your bigger meals.

Chocolate Protein Mousse

When you’re dieting, you get pretty food focused and creative about how to make filling meals and treats that taste good. In bodybuilding prep and post, I think I’ve collected about 50 recipes, mostly desserts, that keep me sane and within my target macros. Another Highlander was recently telling me about how he enjoyed the ice cream recipes from a few weeks back.

Here’s another of my favorite treats — Chocolate Protein Mousse — and it’s super easy:

3/4 cup 0% fat Greek yogurt (170g)

2 tbsp peanut butter or other nut butter (32g)

1/2 scoop Optimum Nutrition Natural Chocolate protein powder

If you don’t have the protein powder, you can sub a 1/4 tbsp of cocoa powder.

Mix all the ingredients together with a spoon until smooth, or use a hand blender to put air into the mixture for a mousse.

Macros for the recipe are 335 calories with 16.5g fat, 12.5g carbs, 37g protein.

Eat your mousse and stay stronger for longer.

Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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A Guide for Legal Injectable Supplements

Did you know there’s a host of injectable supplements that are legal and have powerful benefits just like controlled performance enhancers?

Two of the most promising for improving strongevity are carnitine and glutathione.

Information about how to use these supplements is limited because the hurdles are high. Injecting substances carries a steroid taboo, and injections just suck in general. It’s hard to stick a needle in your body; however, the bioavailability of some of these substances makes oral dosing ineffective. If you want to explore the strongevity benefits of these supplements, the injections may be worth it.

I use both carnitine and glutathione. Here’s my experience with them including dosing, which was one of the hardest things to find information on.

Note: Even more than usual, this is not medical advice. Seek a doctor for specific guidance on using any new supplement, including these.

Carnitine

Carnitine helps your body convert fat into energy. The body makes carnitine in the liver and kidneys to be stores in skeletal muscle and elsewhere. While the body can make enough endogenous carnitine for normal function, supraphysiological doses from supplementation can enhance many physical functions.

Benefits

Injectable carnitine may do several beneficial things:

• Mobilizes fatty acids which may help with faster fat loss in a diet phase.

• Prevents insulin resistance by helping to clear acetyl groups from muscle tissue. You may see lower blood glucose on carnitine.

• Can increase glycogen storage (anaerobic energy) which may help endurance.

• Improves mitochondrial health, density, and count.

• Increases androgen receptor binding affinity and speed meaning if you are on TRT, you might be able to get more effects with lower dosing. It may also promote some anabolic effect for those not on exogenous testosterone.

• Help with depression and cognition.

Dosing

I’ve seen a range of dosing advice from Alex Kikel, Andy Triana, and Jake Benson/Joe Sullivan. The consensus is that 200mg daily for a 200lb athlete is a good dose for sports performance. That’s my daily dose taken intramuscularly. Higher or lower weight athletes might use a little more or less. There may be benefits to taking a higher dose (600mg+) if the goal is fat loss.

One important factor with carnitine is that it loads over time (about two weeks). The loading period is where your body stores larger amounts of carnitine than it produces endogenously. It takes about the same amount of time to “unload,” meaning you deplete the supraphyisological level you loaded to. So if you miss a dose here or there, you don’t all of a sudden lose all of your carnitine stores.

Timing of carnitine is also important. You time it for three different purposes.

1. For maximum fat loss, take it about 30-45 minutes exercise. This may bias you toward burning fat for energy.

2. For maximum recovery, take it after a workout. This may improve glycogen storage, lower blood pressure, and heart rate.

3. For maximum workout potentiation, take it also 30-45 minutes before a workout. This may optimize energy available for more physical endurance.

My experience with carnitine

When I take carnitine pre workout, I feel noticeably more energetic as the workout goes on, almost like I have limitless energy. At periods where I would normally start to get tired and see performance suffer, I can sustain better output for both strength and cardio activities.

I haven’t used carnitine for fat loss as I plan to be in a gaining phase for a while, but I have read others describe some body recomp even when eating around maintenance calories and continuing normal training. We’ll see if I experience the same.

Where to get it

You can get injectable carnitine from online hormone clinics like Defy Medical or Vitastir. Since these supplements don’t require a prescription, it’s also possible to get it via some of the influencers that educate about the drug that I mentioned in the dosing section.

Glutathione

Glutathione is known as the “mother of all antioxidants.” It’s naturally produced by the liver and a critical component of immune function. Supraphysiological doses of glutathione can enhance its healing properties.

Benefits

Injectable glutathione may do several things:

• Enhance immune function to fight sickness.

• Reduce systemic inflammation and fatigue.

• May help avoid getting cancer, although there is some question about whether excessive glutathione may assist existing cancer cells.

• Improve wrinkles and whiten skin.

• Enhance cognition and help avoid neurogenerative disorders.

Dosing

Take glutathione as needed for either fighting acute sickness or accumulated fatigue. It should not be an everyday thing. 1-2x a week max. I may not use it at all some weeks.

For fighting sickness, I use about 2.5mg/kg of bodyweight or about 250mg injected intramuscularly.

For general recovery, I use 4-6mg/kg+ of bodyweight or about 500mg.

These doses are inline with Alex Kikel’s suggestions:

You might also want to take an oral NAC supplement to boost endogenous glutathione production so your body doesn’t stop given an exogenous source.

My experience with glutathione

I’ve taken glutathione for both fending off sickness and general recovery. It’s proven effective for both. When I take glutathione as I just start to feel sick — and I have young kids that are always sick — the sickness never seems to develop into a full blown cold. When my body is starting to feel fatigue from a hard week of training, I feel almost entirely refreshed the day after a larger dose of glutathione. One important reason not to take glutathione often is that we don’t want to eliminate the acute inflammation from training as that helps drive adaptation; however, using glutathione occasionally to reduce excess systemic fatigue can help create an environment better suited for adaptation.

Where to get glutathione

You can work with online men’s health platforms like Hone to glutathione (disclosure — my firm is an investor). Additionally, the same non-clinic sources that sell injectable carnitine also sell glutathione.

Last Word

Carnitine and glutathione are the frontier in longevity and performance. We’re going to hear more about these and other injectable supplements. They’re legal, but they come with the high barrier of injection. Maybe that means injectable supplements are doomed to be niche products only used by the truly dedicate, but that’s a Highlander.

Stay stronger for longer.

Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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Enjoyment of training is underrated.

We all get caught up in the dogma of “have to.” I have to bench. I have to deadlift. I have to run. We do these things even if we hate them. Even if they physically hurt. Even if they don’t get us closer to our goals.

Alberto Nunez, a pro natural bodybuilder from the 3DMJ team, recently talked about a period of his career where he just did lifts he enjoyed. He felt great, and he made great progress. But eventually pressures of “have to” called him back to doing exercises he didn’t love.

Enjoyment of exercise is important. You naturally put in better effort when you like what you’re doing vs doing what you feel like you must. It’s funny how it seems to take a decade plus of training to figure out the value of doing things we like.

Stubbornness about exercises we “have” to do is the epitome of the midwit meme I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

When you start training, you look around and see what other people are doing, you gravitate toward what feels good, and you make gains. Then you get caught in the midwit dogma. You spend a decade figuring out who you are as a strength athlete. You do the lifts you’re “supposed” to care about. Eventually, the haze breaks. You reach Jedi status. You train instinctually, and ironically the training often doesn’t look that far off from what you did in the beginning.

Making My Training Fun Again

I started lifting when I was 16. I was 130 pounds at 5'10”. A light breeze could knock me over.

Our high school just got a brand new weight room full of stack-loaded machines. So I started to go every day. Used every machine for three sets of 10. Got super sore from delayed onset muscle soreness. But I kept going. Then I found barbells. Then I started drinking a gallon of milk a day. In a few months, I weighed 180 pounds.

It was fun. Newbie gains are awesome. So are teenage hormones.

Then I spent a decade doing lifts I “had” to do to get bigger and stronger. I spent a lot of time doing lifts and accessory lifts I “had” to do to compete in powerlifting and strongman. I still made progress, but I went through many periods where progress was slow and training was a chore, not a joy.

I haven’t focused on just doing the lifts I like until recently. I’m doing more machines and cable work than ever including some new things I’ve never done before. I do a handful of compound movements I like. I do a few strongman movements I like. My joints feel great. Training is fun. I’m making great progress. I feel almost like a newbie again.

Make Your Training Fun Again

Fun training is not just about doing exercises you like. Fun training is a holistic idea that culminates at the intersection of three things:

• What you enjoy in training

• What you need to do to reach your goals

• What you’re capable of doing

Doing what you enjoy obviously contributes to fun training, but it’s not the only consideration. Progressing toward goals is also fun. If you only do exercises you find enjoyable, but they don’t progress you toward your goals then you’re not likely to find fun in training. You may end up demotivated by your lack of progress.

The other part of fun training is how your body feels. Sore joints, muscle strains, constant pain. Many of those things come with hard training, but none of them are fun as persistent states.

When you find exercises that you like doing and progress you toward your goals and don’t leave you constantly beat up, you’ve found your sweet spot of fun training.

The way I structured my program is to list a few exercises per body part that I enjoy doing that progress me toward some strength or hypertrophy goal without beating me up too much. A few examples from my list:

There are 14 exercises here. Some I can use for hypertrophy goals. Some I can use for strength or strongman goals. I’ve built the bulk of my training around these exercises and fill in a few other things depending on overarching goals at the time. And I’m having fun.

One of the reasons it seems to take a decade plus to get to the Jedi fun training state is that we all have to gain comfort with who we are as strength athletes. We need to get on stage a few times. We need to hit some PRs. We need to grow some muscle. And we associate all those things with certain musts.

Sometimes there are things you have to do. If you want to compete in powerlifting, you’re going to have to squat, bench, and deadlift whether you like it or not. Oly lifters have to snatch and clean and jerk. Strongmen have to do carries, logs, and stones. Maybe you’re lucky, and you love all those lifts. Then you’re doing the absolute right sport.

But a lot of the time, we can get ready to step on stage, we can hit some PRs, and we can get plenty big doing the things we like. Make your list of exercises you love, build your training around them, and stay stronger for longer.

Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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I love ice cream. Especially on the weekends. I ate a pint of it last night. I actually ate a pint of it almost every night through bodybuilding prep to get to 6% body fat. 

No, not the fatty Ben & Jerry’s or Talenti from the store. Nor the fake-sugar filled Halo Top. I make my own Highlander protein ice cream in less than five minutes.

A pint of Highlander Ice Cream can be as little as 200 calories. It tastes delicious, and it’s versatile. You can make a variety of flavors that taste like your favorite “real” ice cream.

Here’s how I make it and a few of my favorite flavor combinations.

Highlander Ice Cream Base

To make Highlander Ice Cream, you need a base that will create a thick ice-cream like consistency. My current base is four ingredients and ~200 total calories:

• 3/4 scoop of protein - 80-120 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total macros are 3g of fat, 14g of carbs, and 29g of protein.

Put the ingredients into a blender cup. Order matters. I usually put in the banana first. Fill ice around it. Pour milk on top. Then protein and collagen last. If you pour milk on the powder it can make clumps on the side of the cup. Blend until smooth. You shouldn’t hear ice chips crunching when it’s finished.

I use a Nutribullet to make my ice cream. A blender works fine as well. A Ninja Creami might be best.

With the Highlander Ice Cream base, you don’t even need to add any additional ingredients. The standard base will create a nice coconut-banana hinted ice cream that primarily tastes like whatever protein powder flavor you use. Two stock flavors I like are Snickerdoodle and Oreo, but I also love to get creative with Cherry Cacao Crunch, Chocolate Peanut Butter, and Coffee Mocha Macadamia.

Highlander Snickerdoodle Ice Cream

• 3/4 scoop of PEScience Snickerdoodle protein powder - 80 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total calories are ~190. Total macros are 3g of fat, 14g of carbs, and 29g of protein.

This ice cream comes out particularly well because PEScience protein is a blend of whey and casein, which makes the blend a little thicker. If you want to go crazy, you can even add a dash of cinnamon to the blend.

As I’m now trying to gain some weight, my default nightly ice cream is snickerdoodle with a protein brownie, but that’s a recipe for another time.

Highlander Oreo Ice Cream

• 3/4 scoop of Ghost Oreo protein powder - 120 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total calories are ~230. Total macros are 4g of fat, 18g of carbs, and 30g of protein.

The Ghost Oreo powder has little Oreo pieces in it to add some extra flavor, although they get fairly pulverized in the blender. If you’re not dieting, you could even crush an Oreo and sprinkle it after the blend for some added flavor.

Highlander Cherry Cacao Crunch Ice Cream

• 3/4 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Natural Vanilla protein powder - 100 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• 1/2 cup frozen cherries - 50 calories

• 3 tsp cacao nibs - 50 calories

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total calories are ~310. Total macros are 7g of fat, 31g of carbs, and 30g of protein.

Mix the cacao nibs into the ice cream after you blend it to maintain their crunch. If you really love cherry flavor (and don’t need to worry about calories), I’d add even more cherries.

Highlander Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream

• 3/4 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Natural Chocolate protein powder - 100 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• 2 tbsp natural peanut butter - 190 calories

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total calories are ~400. Total macros are 18g of fat, 25g of carbs, and 36g of protein.

Any Highlander Ice Cream version where we add nuts, we roughly double calories from the base. A tradeoff worth considering when not on a hard diet. The Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor still has fewer calories than any other pint of “real” ice cream. And it’s still delicious.

Highlander Coffee Mocha Macadamia Ice Cream

• 3/4 scoop of Optimum Nutrition Natural Chocolate protein powder - 100 calories

• 1 scoop of collagen - 40 calories

• 1/2 frozen banana - 50 calories

• 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk - 20 calories (or sub for your favorite milk)

• About 10 macadamia nuts - 200 calories

• 1/4-1/2 cup cold coffee

• 1 1/2-2 cups small/crushed ice

Total calories are ~410. Total macros are 24g of fat, 21g of carbs, and 31g of protein.

Since I eat my ice cream at night, I use decaf coffee with this one. The macadamia adds a great unique flavor that compliments the coffee, but you can sub other nuts here if you prefer. Pistachio is a great flavor, although I don’t use it with coffee.

If you love nighttime ice cream like I do, try Highlander Ice Cream next time you have a craving. Get creative. Use your favorite flavors. Try it tonight. Stay stronger for longer.

Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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My favorite meme is the midwit meme. It’s the bell curve one where the simpleton on the left and the Jedi on the right say the same simple insight while the midwit in the middle has some long complex and wrong view.

It looks like this:

The moral of the meme is that when you’re a beginner at something, you focus on the big important things because those are all that matter. When you’re an expert, you learn that the big important things are still all that matter.

The meme encapsulates the “A” of the Highlander ACT philosophy: Always major in the majors.

The midwit is stuck in the middle of the journey of knowledge when you know enough to start thinking about nuance and complexity. He naturally focuses on the little things — the minors — because he thinks he’s got the big things covered, but he doesn’t realize that all the nuance is mere incrementalism against the big important things.

We’re Creating Longevity Midwits

The midwit meme is top of mind because of a tweet that’s stuck with me from a few weeks ago:

The popular longevity community is creating a bunch of midwits. They promote quick hacks and protocols and prescription drugs that will help us live longer and perform better more than they talk about exercise, diet, and sleep.

Who can blame anyone pushing hacks and protocols and drugs for longevity? These things appeal to humans because majoring in the majors is time intensive. Everyone wants the magical program or diet that they probably won’t do anyway. Not many want the basic realities of progressive overload for strength, long, slow base building for cardio, and eating obviously healthy foods while paying attention to calories for diet. Do those simple things for years with no magic program and you are going to be strong, feel energetic, and look great.

I spend at least 10 hours a week strength training and doing cardio. Often it’s more than that. I spend a lot of time cooking real food at home. It’s an investment. No hack or protocol or drug will move the needle on my longevity than the investment I make in the majors. I’m not special either. The same is true for everyone else too.

It’s not entirely fair to bucket the entire longevity community together in this. I’ve learned a lot from Attia and Huberman. They emphasize exercise, diet, and sleep, and put out great and honest work.

Despite that, we have a growing longevity community focused on sun exposure, ice baths, rapamycin, and a bunch of other midwit activities instead of the majors.

The Longevity Anti-Protocol: Some for a Few

An idea that always stuck with me was “some for a few.” I think I read about it from Jim Wendler, an elite powerlifter who trained at Westside Barbell.

Wendler (or whoever it was) said that the biggest and strongest guys never worried about tracking accessory movements like dumbbell presses, curls, leg extensions, etc. They just knew they needed to do some, so they did some for a few. Some days maybe they did more. Some days maybe they did less. But they got it done.

That’s the approach I’ve been gravitating to for my strongevity practice. I know I need to train for strength and hypertrophy. I need to do some cardio. I need to apply discipline to my diet to keep my body composition healthy. I need to get enough sleep.

Adhering to strict prescriptions for these activities is exhausting. If I do some of all those things for a few, I’ve done 80-90% of what matters for my longevity, and it keeps it fun and flexible.

Here’s how I structure the anti-protocol:

• Strength/Hypertrophy. For strength athletes, this is always the core of our training. My core weight-related work is built around whatever I’m doing competitively at the time. Right now, I’m rebuilding lost muscle coming off of a bodybuilding show to prep for doing either an Olympic, powerlifting, or strongman meet later this year. Aside from the core strength work, I want to say strong and explosive in what I see as core functions like farmers carries, deadlifts, and throws. Those exercises aren’t in my core program right now, so I add some of them each week for a few to keep the patterns well trained.

• Cardio. Like most strength athletes, I don’t love cardio. But I know I need it, especially the longer duration low intensity base building cardio. I used to live on a rigid prescription of minimum 45 minute sessions and trying to get 150 minutes per week. Now I do some for a few. Sometimes I’ll hit 20-30 minutes. Sometimes I’ll go over an hour. Sometimes I’ll sprint. The flexibility has helped me do more cardio in aggregate as it seems less a chore. I’m sure my mitochondria won’t know much of a difference.

• Nutrition. Prepping for a bodybuilding show is an expert crash course in food tracking and meal prep. I’ve kept a lot of these principles in my current diet plan, which still largely incorporates my Three Strikes approach. I avoid processed sweets, most breads/pastas, sodas, etc. As I finish my recovery from show prep, I’ll return to eating “healthy” foods (e.g. avoiding obviously unhealthy foods) mostly untracked with a some for a few approach.

• Sleep. I try to get seven hours a night. I also have young kids. It’s usually not there. Sometimes I’ll nap some for a few to add a little to my sleep total, but until my kids get older, sleep may be suboptimal.

• Bonus: Sauna. Outside of the four majors above, sauna is the only other regular part of my programming. I’ve written about the benefits here before. I used to try to hit three sessions of 20 minutes a week. Now I do some for a few, just like cardio.

If you’ve been living on strict prescriptions for your longevity work, try the some for a few method. See if it energizes your approach to the investment you have to make to live stronger for longer. It did for me.

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Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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I have been starved, depleted, spray tanned, spray tanned again, and judged.

My first bodybuilding show is over. It was a great experience and a successful result. My main goals were to be mid-single digit body fat and to maintain as much muscle mass as possible through prep. Mission accomplished.

I was 6.3% body fat at 182 lb as measured by a DEXA the day before the show, down from 12.7% when I started training in December. Over that time, I added almost two pounds of lean tissue while dieting. My coach, Sam Okunola, programmed my training and diet perfectly.Adding lean tissue while dieting is my proudest achievement as usually one loses lean mass during the extreme depths of a bodybuilding diet.

While I hit my goals and had a ton of fun prepping (even while starving), but I probably won’t do another show.

In David Foster Wallace’s essay “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” he describes an odd juxtaposition of the luxury cruise industry. For him, the extremes of comfort lead to internal anxieties and discomforts.

For me, the extremes of bodybuilding never led to internal anxieties or discomforts. Those extremes did teach me that the objectivity and function you get from the other strength sports is more appealing than the beauty of aesthetics.

However, the extremes of bodybuilding taught me more about diet and hypertrophy than I knew before. There are three major ideas and tools that I plan to keep in my training even if I never do another bodybuilding show:

1. Tracking Diet.

2. Meal Prep.

3. Strength vs Muscle.

Tracking Diet

No other strength sport requires the nutritional competence and commitment as bodybuilding. You could argue that bodybuilding is, first and foremost, a diet sport rather than a strength sport. You are judged on appearance, not strength.

To achieve a stage-ready physique, you must weigh and track what you’re eating. Weighing is critical to successful tracking.

Most of us eat more than we think we do and more than we need to, even as athletes.

If you were to start religiously tracking, I bet you’ll find that what you thought was a serving of peanut butter or cheese was actually two and a half, or that you eat way more calories from sauces and dressings than you realize, or that you can eat way more vegetables per weight than you probably did before.

Only by knowing the specifics of portion size and macro content can you make precision modifications to get to low single digit body fat in bodybuilding. But that level of tracking is just as useful for someone trying to go from 20% to 15% body fat. Correcting portion sizes will go a long way for that person without any other major diet changes.

Bodybuilding convinced me that everyone should commit to tracking their diet for a month at least once in their lives just to understand portions and build awareness of diet behaviors.

I used MyFitnessPal to track my diet. It’s easy and free. There are other similar options. It really doesn’t matter which one you use. Just try the diet tracking and see how it changes your eating habits.

Meal Prep for Consistency

Steve Jobs famously wore the same black turtleneck sweater every day as a sort of uniform. A benefit of uniforms is they eliminate the perpetual need to choose what clothing to wear.

We give ourselves too much choice in many things, especially what we choose to eat. Choice leads to variance, and variance leads to inconsistency.

In bodybuilding prep, and for any diet, life is easier when you create a set of meals that you enjoy enough to keep eating over and over that also let you meet your calorie and macro targets.

With a 2,250 calorie goal toward the end of prep (pre final week), my general stable of meals looked like this:

• Pre-Breakfast (pre workout): Cream of rice, a tablespoon of peanut butter, strawberries, blueberries, whey protein. Aimed for some faster carbs here to fuel my workout.

• Breakfast (post workout): two whole eggs, three egg whites, Dave’s Killer toast, Fage 0% yogurt with some Kashi cereal sprinkled on top. Aimed for my highest carb intake of the day here.

• Lunch: chicken, rice, broccoli.

• Dinner: ground turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans.

Post contest, I plan to use a similar structure, up my calories to a level slightly above maintenance level, add a fifth meal, and switch a few of the foods to likes I enjoy more (e.g. ground beef over turkey).

When you figure out what you want to eat consistently to hit your goals, you shed the stress of diet choices. Discipline equals freedom.

Strength vs Muscle

Discipline equals freedom, but more muscle doesn’t mean someone is stronger.

For anyone not engaged in the strength game, this may be a surprise. A high-level 200 lb powerlifter or strongman will almost certainly be stronger than a 200 lb bodybuilder even though the bodybuilder will be physically bigger.

I always knew muscle and strength were related but not equivalent. I didn’t fully appreciate it until training as a bodybuilder.

My training helped me gain some lean mass while dieting, but I am certainly weaker than I was pre bodybuilding show. I bench less. I log press less. I can’t farmer’s walk as much.

Since I didn’t lose lean tissue, it’s likely most of the strength loss is from less specific training for strength activities. I suspect I’ll regain my strength quickly. I also think I can better balance my strength work with hypertrophy work to do a better job with muscle size. Prior to my show, I did very little hypertrophy work. My current theory is that doing somewhat less strength work and somewhat more hypertrophy work will help my joints feel better and help me look better, too.

Celebrate the Old Guys

Here’s a bonus learning: Strength is for all ages. At the show, there were several guys in their 50s. Many of them doing their first show. There was a guy who was at least in his 70s. I’ve written before that I believed bodybuilding was the best sport for longevity because it incorporates dietary regimen with relatively joint-friendly strength work. The age of those competitors helps demonstrate that point.

Anyone who can prep themselves to step on a platform or stage in their 50s, 60s, or 70s has all the tools to live a long, strong life. Those competitors are probably healthier than most 30 year olds.

I started reading Peter Attia’s Outlive around the time of the show. In it, he begins by describing the difference between longevity and healthspan. Longevity being how long you live. Healthspan being how long you live free of disease.

Seeing these older men on stage inspired me to think about strengthspan, which is how long you can be athletically strong and competitive. All strength athletes should aspire to stay strong and athletic and competitive as long as possible. That’s the mission of The Highlander — to help strength athletes live stronger for longer. In maximizing strengthspan, I believe we all naturally maximize our healthspan and longevity.

As for what’s next for me, it will probably be an Olympic, powerlifting, or strongman competition, but I expect to train and compete for a long time. Maybe you’ll see me on a bodybuilding stage again when I’m 50. Never say never.

Stay stronger for longer.

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Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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Highlander Blood Pressure Protocol

I reduced my blood pressure from consistently elevated in the 140s/90s to consistently below 120/80 in about three months.

Before I share what I did, let’s understand the key principle of why I think my Highlander Blood Pressure Protocol worked.

ACT

The Highlander ACT philosophy stands for:

• A Always major in the majors.

• C Correct excesses and deficiencies.

• T Trade off to manage fatigue.

These three ideas build the core of combining high-level strength training with longevity. You can read more in Highlander 2.0.

To fix my blood pressure issues, I corrected some excesses and deficiencies.

If you have high blood pressure, the best way to fix a blood pressure problem is to figure out what your unique excesses and deficiencies might be. Some may be obvious, like if you don’t do any cardio or physical activity or eat a lot of salt. Some may require some experimentation. The ones I’ll address here I suspect are common amongst many strength athletes.

Here’s the Highlander Blood Pressure Protocol (HBPP).

The Protocol

High blood pressure tends to come from two of the four mechanisms of Frailty:

• Poor cardiovascular health

• Metabolic dysfunction (often via poor diet)

Just because we lift weights for hours a week and are physically strong doesn’t mean we’re very cardiovascularly fit. Before I started incorporating longevity into my training, I would say I was cardiovascularly unfit. My resting heart rate was usually in the 70s and my cardio output was poor on moderate effort.

So, the first place to improve your blood pressure is to add some zone 2 cardio.

Zone 2

To add zone 2 to your strength efforts while minimally impacting strength, you need to do three things:

• Find your zone 2 heart rate (roughly 180 minus your age). Zone 2 should be done where you can have a conversation but not want to.

• Find time away from strength training to do zone 2. Ideally do them six hours apart. Try to do three 30-60 minute sessions a week. I aim for 150 minutes total per week.

• Adjust diet for caloric expenditure if you’re not trying to lose weight. Three zone 2 sessions for 45 minutes might be an extra 1,000+ calories to replace.

I think zone 2 cardio did more for my blood pressure than anything else. By programming it appropriately away from strength work and adjusting energy intake, it has probably helped with my strength training by improving my conditioning and work capacity.

If you don’t do zone 2 add it. Then you can think about nutritional changes.

Nutrition

Adding zone 2 for strength athletes who do no cardio is a universal major to improve blood pressure, and so is cleaning up your diet. If you consistently eat calorically dense foods like pizza, burgers, sweets, etc., start there. You know what is and isn’t clean. Limit those foods to a few times a week and get your calories from higher quality food sources. That alone may clean up some of the specifics I’ll mention below. Being a strength athlete isn’t a license to be a pig about your diet (unless maybe you compete at heavyweight).

Beyond eating clean, there are three areas for enhancing nutrition to lower blood pressure:

• Sodium. Sodium is a known factor for high blood pressure. While daily recommendation for normal people is to consume no more than 2.3g/day of sodium, athletes may need more like 4-6g/day to replenish sodium lost through sweat. A half a pizza has about 3g of sodium, so it can add up quickly if you aren’t starting with a clean diet. My sweet spot seems to be around 3-4g most days.

• Hydration. Many of us don’t drink enough water, and that can cause a rise in blood pressure. Via the Cleveland Clinic:

  • “When you’re dehydrated, sodium levels in your blood typically rise. Your system responds by releasing more of a hormone called vasopressin, which works to help your body hang on to water. Vasopressin also can cause your blood vessels to tighten, or constrict, which makes your blood pressure rise.”

  Try adding about 32 oz of water to the amount you normally consume and see if it helps with hydration (sign you’re hydrated — your urine should be relatively clear). That’s about three glasses. Drink one every time you walk past a sink.

• Supplements. Taurine, magnesium, fish oil, and potassium have all been shown to have the potential to lower blood pressure. I take 2g taurine, 1g magnesium, 2g fish oil, and 2g potassium per day. These may address deficiencies specific to me, but I think they’re worth a try if you have the other aspects of the protocol dialed in and blood pressure is still higher than you want.

High blood pressure is a long-term path to weakness, but these easy fixes should help improve it for many strength athletes. Fix your blood pressure, and stay stronger for longer.

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Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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Exercise Snacks

One of the hardest parts about building longevity into a strength training practice is managing the additional fatigue from that training. Everything you add interferes with something else you’re doing. Somethings interfere a lot. Some a little.

Highlanders can’t optimize all aspects of longevity in the pursuit to high level strength, but you don’t want to completely neglect too much either.

This is where exercise snacks can help.

Dr. Andy Galpin recently discussed the research on super short bouts of exercise (even 1 minute or less) to improve cardio fitness and VO2 max.

I’ve found exercise snacks to be particularly useful to keep some minimum dose of certain kinds of exercise in my training without introducing excessive additional fatigue that interferes with my core power, strength, or hypertrophy training. The exercise modalities I hit via snacks are:

1. Anaerobic capacity.

2. Muscular endurance.

3. Power/technique.

Anaerobic Capacity

Sprint as hard as you can for 30-60 seconds. I like to do this on an air bike or a rower. Track how many calories you burn or distance you cover. Try to beat your prior calorie total. You can do this for more or less time, but the 60 second limit keeps it a true snack.

A larger snack variant is to do sprints as a reverse tabata or partial tabata. Sprint 10 seconds all out, rest 20. Do it for 2-4 minutes.

Aim for a buffer of a day or two from other core leg training when doing sprint snacks.

Muscular Endurance

Pick an exercise, bodyweight ones work well, and go for max reps. Pull-ups, pushups, dips, and squats are all good options. Beat your total from last time, and program the exercise selection around your core training. For example, do pull-ups sufficiently far away from other back training, a couple days or so.

Rep max snacks are great when you’re traveling and don’t have full gym access.

Dead hangs for time are another great option that are more easily worked into programming. Just don’t do them around grip centric exercises like deadlifts or carries.

Power/Technique

Strength sports like Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman demand refined technique for optimum performance. Five minute exercise snacks are a great way to add some strength technique work.

Doing a little extra lighter power work seems best for me. Cleans, snatches, axle cleans, even throws are all good options. Just do a few sets for a few minutes. Keep it explosive with good technique.

I’ve tried doing this with strongman exercises, but they are far more fatiguing than power exercises and will interfere with other training if you get too heavy.

If you’re trying to figure out how to add a little fitness variation into your training without too much extra fatigue, try some exercise snacks. Stay stronger for longer.

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NEAT is Neat

NEAT stands non-exercise activity thermogenesis. In other words, its activity you perform that isn’t specifically exercise but does burn calories. Walking, yard work, and bouncing your knee while sitting are all examples of NEAT. Ideally, NEATa should be something mindless and automatic.

Increasing NEAT is a great tool to use during weight loss phases. Part of being a Highlander is maintaining a good body composition. For men, this is generally 15% body fat or less; for women, low 20% or less.

To lose weight, you need to create a caloric deficit. You can only do that two ways: take in less calories by eating less or burn more calories via more activity. Most of us use both when we’re working on body comp.

The easiest thing to do when starting a weight loss program is to eat less. Not eating a pizza is easier than doing two hours of cardio to work it off. But eating less gets a lot harder when you’re pushing the limits of body fat reduction. When you get to single digit body fat, and you’re counting the minutes to your next meal and you don’t want to get up off the couch, the last thing you want to do is eat less.

That’s where NEAT can help burn a little more energy.

A NEAT Secret Weapon

I’ve started using an under desk elliptical on my current weight cutting journey. It helps me burn an extra 100-200 calories a day without interfering with my training. That’s up to about 1/2 pound a week. I do it while I work, answer email, do calls.

It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but it gets the job done.

There are under desk bikes and even standing desk treadmills.

If you use one of these NEAT tools, there are a few important things to keep in mind:

• Go slow. NEAT isn’t meant to be exercise. It’s meant to be mindless movement that burns calories. You’re not trying to take your heart rate anywhere near zone 2. It’s just a tool to move around a little to burn some calories. At a slow pace, I think I realistically burn about 100 calories an hour on my under desk elliptical.

• Use low tension. You don’t want to crank up the tension on your under desk NEAT tool. Again, don’t make it a workout. I keep the tension at 3-4 of 8 on my under desk elliptical so that it doesn’t add any meaningful fatigue to my legs. The goal is to keep my legs fresh for strength work in my main training sessions.

• Be sensible about how much you burn. Most of us can lose 1-1.5 lb per week without too much muscle loss provided we eat adequate protein and continue to weight train. Manage how much NEAT you add relative to your weight loss goals and calorie expenditure. Don’t crank your NEAT up on the under desk bike to 700 calories a day and expect to do cardio and expect to weight train. You’ll overshoot what you can reasonably burn and end up losing muscle along with fat. Not ideal for a Highlander.

Add some NEAT when you need it. Don’t worry about it when you’re maintaining or gaining weight. Stay stronger for longer.

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Ranking the Four Major Strength Sports

Competing at any sport demands extremes.

When you compete, you push yourself harder and farther than the casual player. Pushing harder and farther means you can achieve higher heights than the casual participant, but it also means you expose yourself to injury and excess that might hamper longevity. Especially in the strength sports.

I’ve trained in all of the major strength sports: Bodybuilding, Olympic Lifting, Strongman, and Powerlifting. I will have competed in three of the four as of next month. My experiences in those sports tell me that the extremes demanded by each are relatively more or less conducive to staying stronger for longer.

Ever wonder which strength sports are better for longevity and which are worse?

I ranked each sport on nine criteria: absolute strength, functional strength, power, hypertrophy, diet, cardio, joint stress, injury risk, and flexibility/mobility.

To see which strength sport wins the gold for longevity, read on.

4th Place: Strongman

Strongman is my favorite strength sport. I spent most of my strength “career” training for and competing in strongman.

All that experience confirms that it’s the worst sport for optimizing longevity.

No other sport will build functional strength like strongman. The point of the sport is to lift heavy things both for reps and maxes, run while carrying heavy things, throw heavy things, and be able to hold heavy things in your hands. Strongman makes you brutally strong in ways that translate into the real world.

But brutal functional strength comes with a lot of joint stress and injury risk.

I’ve partially torn tendons, torn muscles, had my knees blow up like balloons many times, herniate disks, and more while competing at strongman. I don’t know of anyone who’s competed at strongman who hasn’t been injured in some way. The physical stress of strongman makes it hard to be the best strength sport for longevity.

3rd Place: Powerlifting

How much ya bench? (h/t Mark Bell)

Powerlifting is where many strength athletes start because it’s build on the fundamental lifts: squat, bench, and deadlift. Powerlifting objectively measures strength via common standards of depth for squat, control/pause for bench, and lockout for deadlift.

Training for the power lifts will make you absolutely strong in those lifts and in general. You’ll also build plenty of muscle.

But powerlifting suffers from many of the same headwinds to longevity as strongman. Joint stress is high given repetitive strain on knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders. Mobility and cardio are often an afterthought. The goal is not to be mobile. The goal is to be strong. To stay stronger for longer, you need a greater emphasis on all aspects of strongevity, not just strength.

2nd Place: Olympic Weightlifting

The battle with age is primarily a battle against frailty — frailty of the body, heart, metabolism, and mind.

Regarding the body, Dr. Andy Galpin says we lose muscle mass at a rate of about 1% per year as we age, strength at about 2-3%, and power up to 10%. Loss of muscle and strength should be a major concern, but the extreme loss of power should alarm any strength athlete or enthusiast. While strength is great, power is what allows us to be fast and explosive and dynamic.

Weightlifting is all about power. It’s moving weights fast and explosively. Further, a weightlifter needs to be able to put himself into full depth squat positions and maintain heavy loads overhead. While weightlifters may not be as strong as powerlifters or strongmen, they’re plenty strong, more mobile, and more powerful.

Weightlifting narrowly lost to bodybuilding as the most strongevity friendly strength sport.

1st Place: Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding has two stark advantages against the other strength sports: It demands a focus on diet and body composition as well as the use of cardio. Other strengths sports may benefit from diet and cardio, or they may be hampered by them.

Further, bodybuilding training, when done with full ranges of motion and a focus on the muscle rather than the movement, introduces the least stress to the joints of the sports. Full ROM hypertrophy training will help maintain muscle with age and also maintain plenty of strength. It should also help maintain good mobility.

And even though bodybuilding won’t build near the absolute or functional strength of the other sports, it will still make you plenty strong to stave off age-related declines.

There are even 80- and 90-year-olds that compete in bodybuilding, and they still look pretty good!

If you only do one strength sport with the aim to help longevity, I think it should be bodybuilding.

Ideally, a Highlander incorporates parts of all the strength sports in their training. Some carries like a strongman, some squats and deadlifts like a powerlifter, some explosive movements like an Olympic weightlifter, and some hypertrophy and a well-planned diet like a bodybuilder. That’s a Highlander.

How would you rank the strength sports for benefits to longevity? Tell me in the comments, and stay stronger for longer.

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Disclaimer: The Highlander is an educational Substack about how to live stronger for longer. As with all exercise, and health advice, consult with a doctor and/or trainer. This is not medical advice.

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The Rebirth of Carbs

Everything in health and fitness seems to go in and out of style given enough time.

Eggs were bad, then they were good, now I think they’re bad again? (Truth: They’re good).

The most controversial health bad guy that could make a come back is carbs. With the trend toward Keto, and now Carnivore, diets that largely eschew carbs have been the popular thing for more than a decade.

Carbs are an easy enemy. Sugar makes us fat. Bread makes us fat. Pasta makes us fat. Anything can make you fat if you consume it in excess, which is easy to do for carbs. They taste great to most people, so they must be the enemy.

But the war on cabs is a mistaken battle. At least for strength athletes.

We often think of protein as the most important macronutrient for muscle gain, but carbs are a close second. Carbs serve two very important physical functions:

1. Carbohydrates are the most efficient way to restore muscle glycogen levels. Glycogen is the fuel we rely on for sustained intensity efforts like hypertrophic training and sprinting. If you want to optimize workouts to train functions that rely on glycogen, you should be eating carbs. Pure strength training may rely more on the creatine phosphate energy system, but almost every strength athlete I know uses higher rep sets to build strength and muscle. Even they are tapping glycogen stores.

2. Carbohydrates are muscle sparing. Research shows that carbs have an anti-catabolic effect. Sparing muscle from catabolism may not matter as much when we’re in a caloric surplus, but it matters a ton when we’re dieting to lose fat. When your body is in an energy deficit and energy demands remain high, muscle proteins may be burned along with fat stores, which could result in lean tissue loss.

If you care about strength, you should at least be open minded to carbs.

Yes, there are plenty of jacked and strong people who do Keto or Carnivore. One of my favorite is Shawn Baker, MD, a carnivore. Guy is the embodiment of strongevity:

You can get jacked and strong on a low carb diet, but it probably isn’t optimal for most people who aren’t physical freaks.

Proof? Look at Elite Bodybuilders

The way high level athletes use basic nutrition tools is always instructive to mere mortals. When money and fame are on the line, we can infer from their actions that they’re engaging in the most optimal practice given everything we currently know about the sport.

I know of zero world class bodybuilders that avoid carbs in their offseason or prep. Some research shows that a Keto diet may even blunt hypertrophic response relative to a western diet.

Dr. Mike Israetel adds:

So I would say keto is OK — not great — but it’s OK during peaking phases where volume is very low, and you have a very high-intensity effort as opposed to high volume,” says Dr. Mike Israetel, an assistant professor of nutrition, exercise science, and public health at Temple University and co-founder of fitness company Renaissance Periodization. “The higher the total volume of work you perform in training, the more you’re going to rely on glycogen and carbohydrate to potentiate that performance. In strength sports, because the work is typically not as high in duration, people can get away with lower carbs in general.

If you’re a strength athlete, especially if you’re interested in hypertrophy, you’re going to have better workouts if you incorporate carbs into your diet. Is it 5% better or 1% better or 10% better? I don’t know, but it’s probably enough to matter to most athletes.

Maybe you enjoy Keto and you feel good on it, so you don’t want to play with carbs. Totally fine. But we need to kill the idea that carbs are universally evil. Embrace carbs and enjoy their anabolic benefit. Don’t stubbornly avoid carbs because of diet hype.

Carb Timing

One of the most useful things I’ve learned to do with my carbs is time them around strength workouts, pre and post.

When I eat carbs before my workout, I ensure my glycogen stores are “topped off” to fuel my coming workout. When I eat carbs after my workout, I begin to restore depleted glycogen stores from the recent effort.

Carb timing is even more important when your dieting and carbs are limited. When I’m dieting, I try to eat more than half of my total daily carb goal around my strength sessions. So, if my daily carb goal is 250g, I might eat 50-60g pre workout and 75-100g post workout.

Bottom line: Carbs are great. Don’t eat them in excess, just as you shouldn’t consume fat in excess. Both will make you fat. Use your macros as tools to achieve your goals and turn carbs from a bad guy to a good guy. Stay stronger for longer.

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Training With Arthritis

As I deloaded last week, I’m skipping a training review. Physical fatigue is down. Diet fatigue is high. Overall, feeling much better four weeks from contest. Instead of training review, this week I go deeper into dealing with. joint pain, specifically from arthritis.

Arthritis is painful. It even happens to some of us strength athletes when we’re young. But it doesn’t have to derail our strength ambitions.

I’ve dealt with arthritis in my knees for the last five or so years. Sometimes it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes it feels like knives during squats.

In that time, I’ve picked up four effective tools to sustain hard strength training in the face of arthritis:

1. Exercise modifications. My knees seem to either like full depth squats or box squats. Powerlifting-depth squats where I just break parallel with my hip crease bother my knees the most. When my knees hurt, box squats prevent me from bouncing out of the hole and let me still get work in. When my knees feel good, full range of motion (ROM) exercises keeps them feeling good. Full ROM ensures maximal hypertrophy, and I think it strengthens my quads around the knee more effectively.

   A lot of lifters don’t appreciate what full ROM means. Here’s what full range of motion leg presses look like:

   And full ROM squats:

   No, you won’t move as much weight, but your knees will be happier.

2. Managing volume. When your knees are sensitive, you should be careful beating them up with large amounts of volume. I tolerate full rom volume pretty well probably because the weights are lighter even though the stimulus may be greater than limited ROM movements. If my knees are really bothering me, I might cut overall set volume in half and keep the same intensity. It might set you back a week in your training, but it’s better than setting yourself back a month with more knee pain.

3. Function, mobility, and joint health. I think that one of the big issues that compounds arthritis issues is compromised function and mobility to deal with the pain. By shortening usage of the joint, people with arthritis get tighter around the knee, compromising it even further.

   Using full ROM exercises above helps with function and mobility, but I usually add a few additional exercises on top of my regular training on leg days. The two most effective for me are reverse sled drags and the ATG split squat:

   The more I incorporate the drags and full ROM split squats into my regular routine, the easier I find it to train legs heavy without knee pain.

4. Drugs. I’ve tried aspirin, Voltaren, stem cells, peptides. None of it really helps arthritis. The only thing I’ve used that seems to offer some relief is low-dose prescription Nandrolone (an anabolic steroid). Studies suggest Nandrolone can be effective for reducing joint pain particularly in men with low testosterone. Nandrolone doesn’t eliminate the arthritis, but it does seem to reduce the frequency and intensity of pain when I’m on vs off.

If you’re dealing with arthritis, or even just joint pain, I hope these tips help you stay stronger for longer.

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The Primacy of Grip

The ability to carry heavy loads distinguishes humans from other animals. One could argue it is what makes us human. Our ability to carry load depends on our ability to grip the load.

Given that demand, it shouldn’t surprise us that grip strength is a powerful marker of longevity. Our hands are how we translate strength to the world around us. If our hands are weak, we cannot be strong. If we’re not strong, we’re weak. If we’re weak, we won’t live a long, high quality life.

The challenge with adding meaningful grip work to an existing strength program is that it can impact other training more than you think if aren’t careful with how you program it. Deadlifting, which requires holding heavy load in your hands, is considered one of the most systemically fatiguing lifts of all the lifts. The demands of intense grip training and the movements associated with it requires careful consideration of broader programming.

Since grip is how you translate your strength to the world, you must be careful not to impair grip such that it affects the majors.

Types of Grip Work

I think about grip work in three categories:

• Holds. The most common application of grip. Holds are where you grip an object and hold it in your hands for duration. Holds include things like dead hangs on a pull-up bar, farmer’s walks, or just standing with a heavy deadlift and holding it.

• Crushes. Crushes are where you’re trying to exert maximal or near-maximal grip force in your hands for a short duration. Whereas holds are are more of an endurance effort, crushes are more of a sprint. Crush exercises include things like Captains of Crush grippers and Rolling Thunder lifts.

• Pinches. Pinches like crushes in that they are maximal or near-maximal force efforts, except the involve the fingers instead of the whole hand. Pinch exercises include things like hub lifts and Titan’s Telegraph. Pinches are probably the least used of the three

Ideally you incorporate a little from each category in your grip work.

Simple Grip Work Additions

Here are four grip exercises you should be able to do in almost any gym:

• Dead hangs. Chalk up your hands. Grab a pull up bar. Hold on.

• Farmer’s walks. Load a pair of farmer’s handles. If your gym doesn’t have one, load a trap bar or find some heavy dumbbells. Pick up the weight and walk with it.

• Plate pinches. Stand up a pair of heavy plates at the gym, chalk up your hands, and pick up a plate by pinching it. You can even carry them if you want.

• Clamp pinches. You can do this one anywhere. Find a standard large metal clamp. Pinch the clamp open using your thumb and fingers on your working hand.

How far? How long? How many reps?

Unless you’re training for any of these exercises specifically, I like to keep my effort on grip work around a 7 RPE or 70%. So if I can dead hang for two minutes, I might hand for 75 seconds for two sets. If I can farmer’s walk 500 for 100 feet, I might do 300 for a couple of sets of 100 feet.

Keeping the intensity relatively low lets me work these exercises in when convenient relative to the rest of my training. Sometimes I use farmer’s walks as a warm up for a lower body training day. Sometimes I do dead hangs at the end of an upper body day. Pinches the same.

Advanced Grip Work

If you really want to work your grip, here are two strongman exercises I always loved:

• Rolling Thunder. The Rolling Thunder is a rotating fat grip handle made by Ironmind. It requires strong crushing strength because the handle is not only thick, but it also rotates as you try to lift it. If you can deadlift your bodyweight on a Rolling Thunder, you have a pretty strong grip.

• Axle bar. The axle bar is a staple in strongman. Usually, axle work involves cleaning the bar and pressing it. Cleans with an axle are significantly harder than with a barbell because you have to hold the thick bar in your hands, and the collars don’t rotate. Use an axle for cleans or deadlifts, and you will develop crushing grip strength.

I treat these moves largely the same as the simple grip tools. Keep the RPE at moderately difficult. Occasionally test yourself for a max on the Thunder or axle. Work these after your core work, not before.

Go train that grip, and stay stronger for longer.

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Reducing Fatigue

Successful training comes down to three things:

• Goals

• Specificity

• Fatigue management

You need a goal in training to define success. Given what dictates success, you need specific training protocols to reach that goal. Throughout the course of your training, you must overreach to meet the goal, thus you must manage fatigue.

While goals and specificity are easily defined, fatigue management is often the forgotten ingredient.

There’s a common mentality amongst gym goers of being hard core. Never missing a workout. Going all out.

But a true hard core mentality is not sustainable with proper training and fatigue management. Many people who workout for the sake of general fitness don’t have any discernible goal and have never accumulated enough training fatigue to need to manage it, no matter how hard they work.

Good training programs almost always involve blocks of training where intensity and volume ramps over time. At the beginning of a mesocycle, you might train at 7 RPE (rate of perceived exertion) or 3 RIR (reps in reserve) depending on whether you’re working strength or hypertrophy. Either way, it’s about 70%. Over the course of the next several weeks you ramp toward 9+ RPE or 0-1 RIR.

By the end of that mesocycle, you should be sufficiently overreached where you need to back off for a week or so.

If you’ve never experienced true training fatigue, you feel it in many ways:

• Loss of desire to go to the gym.

• Longer rest periods.

• Doubt that you can finish a workout with the requisite intensity.

• Joint pain and longer-lasting muscle soreness.

And when you’re dieting, add a painful lack of energy where you don’t want to stand up.

That’s training fatigue. And when you feel it, it’s time to deload.

The Fatigue Monitor

I track fatigue with my Fatigue Monitor, which was down to 16 out of 30. Higher numbers are better. Lower numbers in the teens demand a deload.

Time to deload almost always looks like this for me. I’m still progressing in training, but I’m sore, injured, losing desire to train, and my energy is low. Despite accumulated fatigue, I still made good progress during the week and trained nine hours in the week. Normally I train closer to 11 hours total. The reduction in hours was my effort to manage fatigue from my longevity-related training.

How to Deload

The goal of a deload is to reduce training volume to allow for systemic and local recovery from overreach; however, this does not necessarily mean you can’t keep some intensity.

There are three common ways to deload:

1. Do nothing. Literally just don’t go to the gym for a week. While this may reduce fatigue, it’s suboptimal for many reasons including break of routine, potential loss of acquired skill, and a missed opportunity to keep practicing movement patterns. Whenever I’ve done the do-nothing deload, it always feels weird the following week to squat or deadlift again. It’s like I need to relearn the movements for a week before I can go hard again. A better deload prevents this.

2. Back off volume across the board. A common deload protocol is to do the same number of sets and maybe even reps but with 50% of a max load. Using such a lower volume protocol allows for recovery while maintaining movement patterns and routine.

3. Back off volume and taper. The way I deload now is to reduce volume is split into two parts as prescribed by Renaissance Periodization. In the first half of the deload week, I use the weight from the beginning of my mesocycle, so not overly light, but I remove a set and do half the reps from the beginning of the cycle. In the second half of the deload week, I reduce the weight even more so by the end of the week I’m doing less than 50%.

Changes for Next Week

For my deload, I plan to continue to do functional work (never above 7 RPE) as normal while reducing the weight and reps as described above. I’ll keep cardio and sauna to normal targets.

Until next week. Stay stronger for longer.

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Three Diet Treats to Battle Hunger

Serious dieting is mostly a battle with hunger.

Understanding how to create a calorie deficit is easy. Setting protein targets at around 1g/lb of bodyweight is easy. Timing your carbs is even easy. It’s the persistent energy deficit that’s hard.

You feel physically slow as body fat gets low. Your body screams for more food. And as the weeks of caloric deficit compound, the hunger gets worse. As you’re eating one meal, all you can think about is how long you have to wait until the next.

Finding ways to add volume of food without a ton of calories between meals is the hack to beat hunger as it intensifies.

As I diet down for my first bodybuilding show, I’ve stolen three ideas for diet treats from Chris Bumstead, 4x Mr Olympia in Classic Physique.

These treat all involve just protein, fruit, ice, and/or nut butter. That’s it. No sugar added. No dairy unless you want to add it

• Protein Pudding. A thick protein pudding made of protein powder, nut butter, and water. It’s the easiest to make because it doesn't require a blender. Base recipe:

  • 1 scoop whey protein powder. I use Optimum Nutrition Natural Chocolate. Use another flavor if you prefer, but we all know it’s hard to beat chocolate.

  • 1 tbsp peanut or almond butter.

  • About 1-2 tbsp of water.

  • Put the protein in a mug. Add small amount of water and stir until a thick mixture that slowly runs off spoon is formed. Add nut butter and stir to thick pudding consistency. Eat.

  • 210 calories. 28g protein. 6g carbs. 9g fat. You can cut the protein or nut butter serving to half to reduce calories if necessary.

• BCAA Slushie. Like an ice cone made of BCAAs, ice, and water. The lowest calorie option. Surprisingly filling.

  • 1 scoop BCAA powder. Nutricost Watermelon is my favorite. Experiment with your favorite flavor. Any can be good.

  • 1-2 cups of crushed or small cube ice.

  • About 1/4 cup of water to consistency.

  • Put the ice in a blender cup. Add BCAAs. Pour water on top. Blend until smooth. Eat.

  • About 30 calories. 6g protein from BCAAs. 1g carbs. 0g fat.

• Protein Ice Cream. Kind of soft serve made with just protein powder, banana, almond milk, and nut butter (optional). Tastes the best.

  • 1 scoop whey protein powder. I use Optimum Nutrition Natural Chocolate here too. Use another flavor if you prefer.

  • 1/2-1 frozen banana.

  • About 1/4-1/2 cup of almond milk. Can use water instead, but 1/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk is like 10 calories and tastes better.

  • 1 tbsp of peanut butter (optional and amazing).

  • Put the ice in a blender cup. Add protein powder, banana, and nut butter. Pour almond milk on top. Blend until smooth. Eat.

  • 330 calories. 29g protein. 33g carbs. 11g fat.

  • 240 calories without nut butter. 26g protein. 30g carbs. 3g fat.

Beat hunger with these treats. Enjoy your diet. Stay stronger for longer.

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Weekly Program Review: Training Around Knee Pain

Sometimes you get hurt training. Sometimes you’re just messed up from training for years. And sometimes that sometimes catches up with you.

I have arthritis in both of my knees. Usually it doesn’t give me that much trouble. Sometimes it does. This week, that sometimes caught up with me.

Every strength athlete I know trains around pain and injury. It’s an inevitable outcome of training for strength.

There are three tools I use when pain stops me mid-training session from doing my planned programming:

• Pauses. Pauses are my go-to when dealing with joint pain or injury. You can lower the weight and focus on engaging the muscle or technique depending on whether you’re training for hypertrophy or strength. This week, instead of regular leg pressing on my second leg day, I used a long pause deep in the bottom position of the press. It let me keep high tension on my quads without too much knee pain. Work was done. I like using a 2-3 count pause as my default pause scheme regardless of the exercise.

• Tempo. Tempo work is doing a slow eccentric movement followed by a slow concentric. So down slow up slow. Like pauses, they let you reduce weight and focus on engaging muscle or technique. A common tempo is three seconds down and three seconds up. For bodybuilding, I try to contract the muscle as hard as possible on the way up. For strength, I just focus on technique. You can even combine tempo with pauses if you really want a challenge.

• Leave. If lowering weight and keeping stimulus high with pauses and tempo still don’t agree with your injury, then it’s time to get out of the gym. Sometimes you can’t train around the pain. You need to look beyond missing a little volume in the near term for the long term. Go home. Use epsom baths. Get good sleep. Then come back to train hard for your next session. Usually you’re ready by then.

Other than my second lower body day, I progressed in weight/reps in all exercises this training week. In total, I spent just about 10 hours training:

The Fatigue Monitor

Fatigue is climbing a bit. Next week is the last week in my current mesocycle (block of training), so the intensity is high. I’m also deep into caloric restriction for my show cut. I’m going to have to start pulling some of my longevity efforts as I get closer to show.

My fatigue management score this week was down to 22 out of 30. It was previously 24. I removed zone 5 cardio work to rest my legs for the rest of week and one sauna session. I also reduced some of the intensity of my functional training.

Changes for Next Week

Next week is the peak for my current mesocycle, so I plan on continuing to keep the functional work lower intensity and still avoid the zone 5 work. After next week I reload which should reset my total fatigue back to a place where I can add some of the work that’s been removed back in.

Until next week. Stay stronger for longer.

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Not All Cardio is Created Equally

Especially for strongevity.

I’ve been experimenting with various forms of cardio in my programming and believe there’s a clear hierarchy.

Before the rankings, our goals should be clear. The addition of longevity-focused cardio to a strength program should focus on two goals:

1. Avoid excessive additional fatigue from the cardio that negatively impacts strength and hypertrophy efforts. We want to avoid both specific and systemic fatigue. For specific fatigue, many forms of cardio use the lower body as their primary mover. We should be conscious of how much we ask of our legs alongside the demands of recovery from our strength work. Systemic fatigue must be managed via a general awareness of recovery.

2. Provide sufficient stimulation to strengthen the heart and metabolic function for longevity. This means achieving and holding a zone 2 heart rate for zone 2 sessions and occasionally pushing toward a max heart rate for zone 5.

Ranking Cardio for Strongevity

Given our goals, the hierarchy of cardio for strongevity is as follows:

Great: Elliptical, air bike, incline walking

Good: Stationary bike

Bad: Stairstepper, running, swimming, rowing

The great forms of cardio have three things in common:

• They avoid excessive loading of the lower body either via incorporating the upper body or avoiding excessive knee bending

• They involve no eccentric loading so they are friendly to the joints.

• Most importantly for zone 2, they are all easy to get into a consistent rhythm where you can maintain a zone 2 heart rate. The air bike is my favorite for zone 5.

The stationary bike is good for rhythm, but it acutely relies on the legs for motion. If you do a lot of stationary biking, it may hamper recovery from lower body strength and hypertrophy work.

The “bad” cardio I assume will frustrate some.

Cardio that’s bad for strongevity are only bad in the context of our stated goals. Swimming and rowing are difficult to hold in a rhythmic pattern for staying in zone 2 even for people very proficient with the moves. Stair stepping is stressful to the quads and likely suboptimal for quad strength or growth. And running is stressful to the knees as it incorporates an eccentric loading component as you balance with forward motion.

If you have specific goals that involve running or swimming or stair stepping (?), then by all means run or swim. But if you think you have to run to achieve your strongevity cardio goals, you don’t. You’re better off avoiding the bad forms of cardio since they’re more likely to hamper our primary strength goals.

My Cardio Setup

I use a combination of incline walking and the air bike. Incline walking I use on days that are close to leg training as I find it taxes the quads and hamstrings less. The air bike I use when I have more distance away from lower body sessions. Every once in awhile I might use the rower for a short zone 5 workout, also away from lower body sessions.

Now you know how to prioritize your cardio tools.

Be smart about your recovery. Do cardio you enjoy. Stay stronger for longer.