Month: July 2009

Posted on by — 17 Comments

Lat Pulldown Technique

Following up on a previous article on Cable Row Technique and today I want to examine the “other” major back movement and look at lat pulldown technique.   As with previous technique articles, I’ll examine what muscles are trained, proper form and look at some variations on the movement.

Note: the form issues I’m going to address go for chins or pullups as well.  The only difference is that instead of pulling the bar down to your body, you pull your body up to the bar.  But the technique is otherwise identical. As well, I’m going to use the term pulldown generally throughout this article, just keep in mind that it refers to all of the different variants as well as chins/pullups.

Muscles Trained in the Lat Pulldown

As the name itself suggests, the lat pulldown has as its primary target the latissimus dorsi.  This is the large fan shaped muscle that takes up an exceedingly large portion of the back. … Keep Reading

Posted on by — 17 Comments

What Is The Ketogenic Ratio?

In my first book The Ketogenic Diet, I talked about something called the ketogenic ratio (KR) which is an equation/concept used in the planning of ketogenic diets for epilepsy patients.

The equation basically gives you the potential ketone producing potential of a given meal depending on the relative ketogenic or anti-ketogenic effect of the different macronutrients.

The question then becomes whether it matters or not for someone using a ketogenic diet for fat loss.  A follow-up question is whether or not Ketostix, used to measure urinary ketone levels have any value for the general dieter.  Let’s look at both topics.

The Ketogenic Ratio

So the KR of a given combination of nutrients can be estimated with the following equation:

 

The Ketogenic Ratio

 

Protein turns out to be partially ketogenic (46%) and partially anti-ketogenic (58%), reflecting the fact that some amino acids can be made into ketones, while other can be converted to glucose.… Keep Reading

Posted on by — 13 Comments

Meal Frequency and Muscle Mass Gains

The issue of meal frequency for mass gains would seem to be pretty well decided, right?  Bodybuilders have been pushing for 6 (or more) meals per day spread out every 2.5-3 hours for decades and this is taken as an almost de-facto requirement for success in terms of optimal mass gains.

Then again, the people who have used Intermittent Fasting appear to be making exceedingly good progress in terms of muscle gain despite not eating for 14-16 hours during the day suggesting that perhaps the above dogma regarding meal frequency isn’t quite as well established as folks might think.

I’ve discussed meal frequency previously.  Specifically I examined research on whether or not it matters in terms of body weight, body fat, body composition or metabolic rate.  I won’t rehash those points here.

Rather, what I want to discuss here is the potential impact of meal frequency on mass gains for athletes trying to increase muscle mass.… Keep Reading