Amped Training

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Anabolic Steroid Users Are Educated, Older Professionals, Study Says

Recently a new study was released regarding the characteristics of anabolic steroid users.

The conclusions, while shocking to some, are hardly surprising. Most users of anabolic steroids are not elite athletes, nor do they meet the image of the desperate addict to recreational narcotics. They're also not the poor children that have been used to justify the USA's ban on anabolic compounds.

No, in fact, the average steroid user is a different and, to many a surprising, animal: approximately 30 years old, well-educated, earning above average income in white-collar jobs. Most reported that they were not involved in any athletic competition, nor did they use the drugs as teenagers.

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Anabolic Steroids and Drug Prohibition 

Anabolic steroids are a tricky subject.

On the one hand, they're illegal, and most of you have been told your entire lives that these drugs are harmful if not deadly, that they have no value, and only cheaters would use them.

Like it or not, you've been lied to. About the drugs and what they do, about who uses them, about realistic effects (desirable or otherwise).

You've been lied to by a largely uneducated legislature that has given in to the demands of sport.

This has many obvious issues with the foundation of America itself, in the concept of individual liberty so long as it does not infringe on the rights of another.   

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Machines vs. Free Weights: A Problem of Context

This is one of the oldest and most frequently debated subjects in the field of weight training.

As per the status quo in these arguments, you have camps that are polarized on both sides of the issue.

I'll give a little summary of each side, then throw in the Common Sense outlook.

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Adrenal Fatigue: A Quack Disease for the New Millennium

Adrenal fatigue is the new fad for all the quack doctors and fitness trainers of the modern day. Just don't ask anybody with medical training.

Why, you may ask? Well, when this first started cropping up as the Next Big Thing, I did a little checking around on Google, and the top results were from a doctor yes, but not in the way you might think. The results belonged to one Dr. James Wilson. More accurately, his website designed will all the standard Inner Circle Marketing cliches.

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Just to let everyone know that was wondering about it, in lieu of trying to start up and run my own board which is inevitably a pain in the ass, I've paired up with my long-time friend Kyle Coleman to start something new, over at www.strengthmill.com

Some of you might know Kyle better by the screen name Fortified Iron, a former owner/admin of the site by the same name.

We've started up Strength Mill, which is essentially the YouTube of strength and fitness. You create your own account and upload your videos to share.

Since I'm helping to admin the forum there, it's just going to be easier to consider that the AMP Training home.

We've got Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength and Practical Programming, two books you need to own if you don't already) doing a Q&A spot in his own forum, and we're looking to add more to it all the time. 

So go sign up.  Now.

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Block Training for Bodybuilders

For those folks out there that don't know, Professor Yuri Verkhoshansky who is considered one of the fathers of Russian sports science, has a new website up at www.verkhoshansky.com that contains a lot of his articles (some translated, some not). 

This is not exactly light reading, mind you, but if you're a sports science geek (like I am), you'll find it pretty interesting to read through. 

It just happens that he's got a forum up on his site as well, and with the help of his translator, Prof. Verkoshansky has had a lot of interesting things to say.

The big one has been shooting down all the terminology-wankers that are constantly screaming "Westside isn't conjugate!!!!" He clarified that the "conjugate method" used by WSB is not the same thing as the conjugate-sequence system he spoke about, but that it really doesn't matter in the final outcome. 

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Louie Simmons on Bodybuilding

Read it in printer-friendly mode  

I was going to call this "Westside for Bodybuilders" but I didn't want Louie, Dave Tate, and Jim Wendler making a funny YouTube video about me. And they'd be right to do it, really: this isn't "Westside for" anything. This is a program based on the principles that Louie Simmons popularized at his Westside Barbell club. 

This came from an old issue of the now-defunct Peak Training Journal where Louie was discussing how he went about training IFBB Pro bodybuilder Mike Francois (allegedly, as I haven't been able to track down an original copy of this article, I'm going by faith that the Internet hasn't lied to me).

The influences of Louie's more widely known Westside Barbell System are obvious, and following with his entire philosophy: an athlete must be strong to be effective. All other qualities flow from strength, and then it's simply a matter of filling in the weak points. Weak points, in this instance, refer to anywhere the athlete is lacking.

UPDATE 20 October 2007 - I've been sent a copy of the original article from the Peak Training Journal titled "Beast Meets West" (thanks to Lyle McDonald for scanning it and sending it over), and man I dunno where the program originally listed here came from exactly (I found it on a web forum awhile back), but while similar, it's not the program laid out in the article.

Then again, the article flat-out says that this is a sample routine anyway, so it's just as likely anything falling in these parameters would capture the theme. Your mileage may vary. 

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Realistic Expectations

Have your mind right, the rest will follow

When people start weight training, they come in with a lot of pre-conceived notions. For the average raw newbie with the common if ill-defined motivation of "looking better", most of these notions can be anticipated.

For men, they want a 6-pack set of abs. Women need to tone up the legs and firm up the butt.

Neither the average man or woman wants to get "too bulky, like the guys/girls in the magazines".

In logic, it's generally considered that if you start with a false premise, you will invariably end up with a false conclusion. If you're in the gym busting ass and watching your diet like a hawk week in, week out, under the wrong idea, you're probably not ending up where you want to be. A false premise has created the expectation of an outcome that doesn't follow from what you're doing.

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Female-Specific Training and Diet for Physique Development 

Part II - Nutrition and Diet

Download as PDF 

Just when you thought you were done, not quite. The training is only one part of the puzzle.

You'll variably hear people talking about diet as being various percentages of your results. I think this is stupid, because diet is both everything and nothing.

If you lift but don't eat properly, you won't do very well. If you diet properly but don't exercise properly, you won't do very well. To discuss either element as independent of the other is frankly dumb. Both have to be done, and done properly, for the best results.

Nutrition, much like training, has a ton of myths surrounding it. Also like training, most of what you'll hear is bullshit.

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Nuggets of Vitriol

September 8, 2007

I've been slacking on my Hater Nation updates lately, mainly since I've been on a sub-vacation. With that in mind, I threw together some hate that's been brewing and decided to let it fly as a single Q&A type article. So behold, the new Nuggets of Vitriol feature.