The GLP-1 Drugs

In recent years, the topic of the GLP-1s, drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, Zepound and others has taken the forefront of the discussion of the treatment of overweight and obesity.  And understandably so, given that they represent the first true improvement on the issue.    For a field that has, for decades, failed to achieve its goals of helping people to lose weight and fat and, more importantly, to keep it off, the GLP-1s have truly changed the game.

But while many articles hold the GLP-1s as magical compounds, others decry them for various reasons (which all fundamentally come down to rationalizing moralistic beliefs about overweight and obesity).  Side effects are continually overemphasized and reported in such a way as to make the GLP-1s sound much worse than they are.  People are confused, bewildered, misled and scared in equal amounts.  Someone needed to set the record straight and I figured it might as well be me.  … Keep Reading

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The Instagrammatization of Fitness

I’ve watched the online fitness industry develop for nearly 25 years now.  And in recent years, it’s gotten funny in a lot of ways.  Among these is the Instagrammatization where people only seem capable of communicating or reading pretty Infographics.  Said Infographics placing a primacy on being short.  Which means that they cannot convey nuance.  Rather, people tend to make singular (and often trite) absolutist statements because that’s all there is space for.

Add to this the trend where something becomes “true” by repetition. … Keep Reading

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“Do Your Own Research”

That’s not meant to be as critical as it sounds.  You can’t know what you can’t know and I imagine most readers of my site know how I feel about the whole “do your own research” thing.

Mind you, powerlifting arguably has more good information on the web available than many other activities.  It certainly does compared to things like bodybuilding/physique sports or general fat loss.

I think the reason is that powerlifting is an objective thing.  What you did either worked or it didn’t.  You either improved or your didn’t and there isn’t any of this “Well I think this worked” nonsense to it. … Keep Reading

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But now it’s time to move past that nonsense, as I said last time I won’t waste any more time addressing of Mike’s bullshit.    To my knowledge he hasn’t brought anymore of it. Even if he had, I no longer give a shit about it.  Facts talk and bullshit walks, buddy.  So start walking.

Instead, I am going to followup on the original series on muscular failure and look at people who succeeded at failing. … Keep Reading

The post Succeeding to Fail: Part 1 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

A fair number of them were of me showing what training to true failure is in terms of how rep speeds change and the effort involved.  In a few cases a set that started with a roughly 1 second or less rep ended with a final grinder at 4-7 seconds or thereabouts.

I put up videos of some other folks as well.  Vicky Mirceta, my powerlifter Sumi Singh.   And some random guy back squatting to failure to show what that looks like.  Since I doubt most of the people training have ever seen it done deliberately and they sure as shit haven’t done it themselves.… Keep Reading

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Following that I started to examine a paper by Escalante and colleague(s?) that also looked at the topic.  They started by looking at the acute studies which I don’t find terribly relevant.  Then they moved onto the chronic studies which are few and far between.

One was the Ramadan study that was poorly controlled and from which I don’t think you can draw many conclusions.  They next looked at meta-analysis of 5 papers pointing out that only 2 of them had BF% as an end goal.  Then they began looking at some detail at a single paper, the one that seems to be driving the idea that fasted cardio is useless.… Keep Reading

The post Is Fasted Cardio Useless for Fat Loss: Part 2 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

So having addressed Layne Norton’s ad hominem, strawman, deflection guru hatrick regarding the “debate” over failure between Mike and I, I want to move on to what will be my final comments on Mike’s similar guru-tastic nonsense.

Mike has failed to bring a single FACT to this debate, relying instead of misdirections, deflections, appeals to authority and ad hominems. It may be typical guru behavior but that doesn’t make it any less intellectually honest. But that’s Mike Israetel for you. Hell, that’s most of the supposed “evidence based” fitness industry these days.

When the science supports them, they argue science. When it doesn’t, they bring nothing but excuses, anecdotes, deflections, misdirections and logical fallacies.  The kind that they would NEVER use in an actual scientific debate but think is ok on social media. Because they are hypocritical gurus.

For the majority of this video I address Mike’s attempts to dismiss me in detail.… Keep Reading

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You can’t know what an RPE 9 is if you haven’t experienced a true 10.  And you can’t know that you have 2 reps to failure/2 reps in reserve if you’ve never reached true physiological muscular failure which I define as:

The inability to complete another full repetition despite providing a maximum effort.

Muscular failure isn’t when you stop pushing.  It’s not when you decide it hurts to much.  It’s when you can’t complete a rep despite giving a maximal effort.  Yes, yes, form failure in free weight exercises adds another wrinkle.  We’ve been over this.

I finished that part by asserting that most people training have never experienced a true 10 RPE or a true set to actual physiological muscular failure.… Keep Reading

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