The following was something posted on the Irish Weightlifting Forum.  But, I thought it was appropriate to repost it here as a precaution (it would be a shame if that site crashed or something, and we lost access to it).

Transcript – Abadjiev Training Lecture (Transcribed by Jim Hooper, donating member of Weightlifting Exchange)

Content

First of all I would like to thank the Weightlifting Federation for inviting me here.

This material that I have prepared here for you for today is the same material that I lectured on in front of the Greece Committee last spring.

They specifically asked me to present my material because one of their athletes, Ekatarina Tanou, was using this method of training and has incredible results using this method. She was third in the world for 100 meter sprint, and last year she was one of the best white athletes, and she has been using my methods of training.

If you pay attention to what I am saying and if you think logically about what I am saying then you will see that this method is applicable to almost any sports training. We will be concentrating on weightlifting nonetheless.

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I want to fly
shipwrecked and comatose
sipping on mango juice.

From the theme song to the BBC science fiction show Red Dwarf.  Now that’s what I call a Zen Koan.

OK, the title of this post is a bit misleading.  But, it seems as though many people believe that “Diet vs Exercise” is a valid question with an obvious answer: Diet. 

They may not believe it consciously.  But, in their actions this is what happens.  In truth, of course, there is not an exclusive “or” separating diet and exercise – you need both.  If you want to change your body composition; if you want to increase performance; if you want to live healthier; then you have to pay attention to both.

That said, there is an ordering of the two. 

I can sum up my entire fitness-philosophy with two phrases:

1. Exercise before Diet.
2. Weightlifting before Cardio

These two phrases imply an ordering of the list {diet, weightlifting, cardio}.  My ordering is

1. Weightlifting
2. Cardio
3. Diet

What is amazing is that my ordering is precisely to opposite of the order in which most people go about getting “in shape”.  When someone first decides they want to make a change, the first thing they do is go on a diet.  After they’ve gotten that down, they add in some cardio.  And if by some miracle they haven’t given up yet, they finally throw in some half-ass weightlifting. 

I’m here to tell you to do the opposite. 

If you want to get any benefit at all related to fitness (fat loss, muscle gain, strength gain, etc) then you must begin with weightlifting.  Slowly add in cardio (but not the kind most people think).  And finally get a diet plan that makes sense.

Why? You ask.

Dieting by itself doesn’t work long term.  If you’re goal has anything to do with performance or muscle gaining, then you know this. But, people looking to lose fat seem to delude themselves into thinking that they can solve their physical problems with a “magic” diet.   I’m not even talking strictly of “fad” diets.  Even a well-designed diet is worthless in the long run without exercise.

When you go an a calorie restricted diet you put your body in a catabolic state.  This lowers many of your bodies “good” hormones, and increases many of the “bad” ones like cortisol. (OK, strictly speaking there are no good or bad hormones, but some are better for your fitness goals than others.)  The negative hormones will decrease muscle mass, lower metabolism, and make it harder for you to lose fat. (Ironic, ain’t it!)

This hormone change is a negative byproduct of dieting that you have to deal with. However you need to mitigate it.  Exercise increases the positive hormones and decreases the negative ones.  It helps preserve muscle mass, and increases both metabolism and fat loss. 

Yes, if you want to make fitness progress you have to have a diet in place. But, you can’t rely on it by itself.

OK, so exercise first, diet second. Got it. But, why not start with cardio?  There are 2 reasons.

One, even when we’re talking about interval training (like sprinting) we’re only hitting part of your body. 

Let’s be honest, however.  When most people start their programs with cardio, they are not doing hard sprints (or metabolic circuits which involve weights), they are using steady-state cardio (jogging and its ilk).  Steady-state forms of cardio just don’t confer the same metabolic effects that interval training or weight training do.  While both intervals and weight training (done with intensity) raise your metabolism for up to 36 hours after exercise (called the EPOC effect), steady-state doesn’t.

In addition, steady-state cardio will cause your body to become more efficient at fat burning.  While that may sound good, it is very bad.  A more efficient car uses less gas to go the same distance.  You want your body to be a gas-hog.  You want it to burn tons of fat with little time – not tiny amounts of fat with massive time!  Weightlifting makes you the Hummer of fat-loss.

Two, starting with cardio can increase injury rates.  Weight training is very controlled.  You only lift the amount of weight you can safely in a controlled pattern of movement.  Cardio is not as controlled – even on a treadmill or other machine.  Think about how many “repetitions” your legs do every time you go jogging, or when on on the stair stepper.  It’s in the hundreds to thousands.  That is a lot of potential damage.  Each impact is worth many multiples of your bodyweight, slamming down on your joints. 

Conclusion

When you start with weightlifting, you increase the positive hormones you body needs to reach its goals, you increase metabolism, you lose fat, you gain muscle, and you decrease injury rates.  No other one thing can do all of that.

Once you are comfortable in your weight training routine, you can add in some cardio work.  I strongly suggest some kind of intervals over steady-state (the only exceptions are distance athletes – like marathon runners, tri-athletes – and strength athletes, as odd as that sounds).

And finally, when you have a solid weightlifting routine and a cardio routine, THEN you can start worrying about your diet. 

Check out this video Roy sent me.  Seriously, this dude is INTENSE.  That’s the way to miss!

Today’s tip is a simple one, and one I’ve mentioned before. But, it bears repeating (a lot): Throw away your scale.

That may seem harsh, but unless you are a competitor in a weight-classed sport (weightlifting, wrestling, etc) then owning a scale and getting on it regularly is a sure-fire way to screw up your progress.

Here’s the problem. Women especially, but increasingly more men, are obsessed with weight loss. Not fat loss, as they should. And when you care about weight loss, then you’ll do some stupid things that will cause you to lose more muscle and gain more fat.

Most of the advertising for fitness-related products and programs promise big weight loss. What they do is they devise a way for you to lose a bunch of water weight in a short period of time. Any moron can lose up to 20 pounds of water in under 2 weeks. But, odds are, you didn’t lose a single pound of fat, and you might have lost some muscle – a lose/lose situation!

You all know how much I love watching the Biggest Loser (read my defense of it here), but they are particularly bad about this issue. Every week, contestants get on the scale and compete to see who lost a higher percentage of bodyweight. Since the contestants are so dramatically big (some of them carrying 300 pounds of extra fat), weight loss is highly correlated with fat loss in the beginning. But, once they get nearer to their goal weight, it gets brutal.

The reason being, they are gaining muscle at the same time, and that makes weight loss hard. They can still be losing fat at the same rate they always were on the show, but because it’s based on percentage of body weight, and their overall fat levels are now lower, they can’t possibly lose 2% per week! It’s just basic middle-school math, people.

What’s wrong with all of this? Weight loss is not the same as fat loss. Period. It’s only marginally related. You can lose both water and muscle at a much faster rate than you can lose fat. And guess what, you’re body would rather you did.

Some of this state of mind in our culture is the fault of the medical establishment that still pushes the BMI, the Body Mass Index, on an unsuspecting public. The BMI only tells you if you are heavy for your height, based on some antiquated notions of what “heavy” means.

Want to know something funny? Nearly every single one of the athletes I train is considered overweight by their BMI. In fact, I’m considered clinically obese!

How can that be possible?

Because scale weight tells you nothing important. Please read that again, and again, and again … till it sinks in.

Scale weight only tells you how much you weigh. It doesn’t tell you if you have a high bodyfat percentage, a large amount of muscle mass, strong bones (which weight more than weak bones), or if your carrying a lot of water. (Some women can gain a solid 10 pounds of water during their period – they didn’t get fatter. It’s just water, and it goes away when they are off their period.)

Scale weight is a lie.

What you should care about is if you have a low bodyfat percentage (teens to low twenties for women, high single digits to low double digits for men), a good amount of muscle, and strong bones.

Since muscle weighs a lot more than fat, then you can lose a lot of fat, gain a little muscle and not change your scale weight AT ALL.

This is common. Especially among people who have not seriously worked out before. If you have never done any serious weight training, expect to gain about 10 pounds of bone-mass alone. This won’t show in the mirror. You’re bones have been hollow for a long time, and now that you have been lifting weights, they are filling in. This is a GREAT thing. But, it makes you heavier.

If you are tall, then you can gain even more weight.

My best friend Brandy is 5’8”, and regularly weighs over 160 pounds. She’s well within the healthy range of bodyfat, and is carrying a ton of muscle. She looks great and is in great shape. But, when some women hear that she weighs over 160 pounds, they flip out!

“Oh. My. God!”

She looks so much leaner than that.

And there we hit the problem. They associate “lean” with “light”. When in fact it is usually the opposite. Athletes are the leanest and strongest people around. They are also heavy. If you are both small and light, you are either under 5’3”, have a remarkably small bone structure, or you are “skinny fat” and you need to lift more weight.

Throw away your scale. Start paying more attention to the mirror (and maybe a tape measure around your waist), and be more of an intellectual about your body composition. I promise you, you’ll be happier AND healthier.

Gary Snyder:

It is hard to even begin to gauge how much a complication of possessions, the notions of “my and mine,” stand between us and a true, clear, liberated way of seeing the world.  To live lightly on the earth, to be aware and alive, to be free of egotism, to be in contact with plants and animals, starts with simple concrete acts.  The inner principle is the insight that we are interdependent energy-fields of great potential wisdom and compassion – expressed in each person as a superb mind, a handsome and complex body and the almost magical capacity of language.  To these potentials and capacities, “owning things” can add nothing of authenticity.  “Clad in the sky, with the earth for a pillow.”

Most of you know how much I love milk.  In fact, I should have a milk-mustache sponsorship!  But, that said, I’d be hesitant to tell someone to jump on the “drink a gallon of milk a day” bandwagon just because they were skinny and trying to gain weight. 

JC, from JCD Fitness, has a post on exactly this topic.  Is the gallon-a-day of milk weight-gain plan really all it is cracked up to be?  Read here to find out.

By Ryokan

Which way
did you come from,
following dream paths at night,
while snow is still deep
in this mountain recess?