This past week I learned new concepts and revisited some basics. My own training plan reached a well-deserved recovery week and I'm trying 24 hours fasting again. Let's unpack all of this!
Table of content
What is mTOR?
mTOR stands for Mammalian Target Of Rapamycin. It's an enzyme (a protein that helps other chemical reactions in our cells) that regulates cell growth and protein synthesis.
It is present in a vast multitude of processes without our body.
I didn't delve very deeply into this as it looked like a rabbit hole I'd rather not get lost in.
The importance of mTOR is its key function in protein synthesis. Without it, we won't grow bigger muscles. The interesting thing is that this chemical is bad when it comes to cancers. Since cancers are caused by cells proliferating, mTOR becomes a facilitator.
Since I have zero knowledge in oncolgy, and since I didn't go down the rabbit hole, I'm adding mTOR to my base of knowledge but don't know quite yet how it will be useful.
I have gleaned some info about how heavy loads in the gym increase mTOR. Does that mean that working out with heavier weights yields more muscle mass? Maybe. Should that be the only factor to consider when designing our workout plan? Definitely not.
Taking some of your sets to failure still seems like one of the best ways to achieve muscle growth. I won't go into all the details on how to do this right now, but the gist is this: heavier loads allow you to reach failure faster than light loads.
Autophagy and longevity
Autophagy is the process of your cells recycling its own components. It's longevity holy grail. The more your cells can recycle themselves the better.
I'd heard of this concept in the past but never really paid it any attention. What is best to promote autophagy? Not eating, aka fasting. What is bad for muscle growth? not eating.
So here we have a fun little balancing act to choose from depending on our goals. When we put everything on the side of muscle building, we decrease our longevity efforts and vice versa.
I think this is where fasting can actually become useful. Instead of doing it to lose weight, which I think is absolute malarkey, leveraging it to promote autophagy seems like a better approach.
Before I start recommending to others what to do, I'm going to test it on myself this year and see how it goes.
I'll tell you my current fasting thoughts later in this article.
One thing that I am acutely aware of about autophagy and longevity as a whole, is the impossibility of verifying results. Longevity has become a popular subject over the last couple of decades, meaning that even if the people currently studying it are doing all the right things, there is no way to know if it will actually help them live longer simply because they haven't reached an old age yet.
And even if those people turned out to live a very long life, would it be because of all their fasting, nutrition and exercise routines? Huge, unrealistic studies would be required to verify the usefulness of this approach.
Medecine ball workouts
I was recently reacquainted with med balls, those medium sized exercise balls of different textures and weights.
I started using them in my warm ups in the gym which has been quite engaging. Classic slams against the wall have been my go to move. It creates rotation in the body, you can gauge the intensity however you want and let's face it, throwing something against a wall is just fun.
They also offer a gigantic selection of exercises, depending on how you want to throw them: side ways, straight on, kneeling, standing, half kneeling, under hand, over head, on one leg or two.
My current training plan
I've recently switched from doing a lot of HIIT workouts for Youtube to more strength training in the gym. I started a new job as a personal trainer so I'm spending a lot more time in the gym than at home. I've been hitting the weights once a week and doing some sort of cardio once a day as well. Yes that's two workouts a day and I love it.
In order to maximize muscle gain, strength, and cardio adaptations, I'm carefully planning my routine. I'm periodizing it on an eight weeks cycle with recovery weeks every 5-6 weeks depending on fatigue.
The whole point of recovery weeks is to avoid injuries and burnout. The training is pretty intense, and I need to give my body a rest from time to time. I don't like pre scheduling them in advance because sometimes life gets in the way.
Instead, I pay close attention to how my body feels in between workouts. When I notice my sleep starts getting wonky and my muscles ache a lot, I take a rest week. It usually ends up being every 4-6 weeks.
I've organized my training split into three weightlifting days, focusing on heavy loads, and two speed days focusing on power generation. These are the days I do my plyometrics and barbell cleans.
The the weightlifting days I mainly focus on the big three: deadlifts, squats and bench press.
I started this cycle by doing six sets of six reps on the main lifts and three sets of 8 eight reps on the secondary lift.
I periodize the main three exercises like this:
Week 1-2: 6 sets of 6
Week 3-4: 5 sets of 5
Week 5-6: 4 sets of 4
Week 7-8: 3 sets of 3
This progression scheme goes from high volume to high intensity. Every other week, I'm able to lift heavier weights because I do less sets and reps. This exposes my muscles to more intense loads which in theory makes me stronger and bigger.
My auxiliary lifts will follow a different progression model, going from low volume, to more volume.
Week 1-2: 3 sets of 8
Week 3-4: 3 sets of 10
Week 5-6: 4 sets of 8
Week 7-8: 4 sets of 10
This is another way to expose my body to more and more work, this one specifically targeting hypertrophy.
I think there are moves that are better suited to perform with heavier loads, and others that are better for higher volume. I wouldn't try to do 4 sets of 12 deadlifts for example. I also wouldn't want to do 3 sets of 3 bicep curls.
If you want to see my full program, you can see it here as I fill it out.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ywAvdrLCkIRbQ0seDsaDR5IpsTbx2drUmouZCQ7kK2I/edit?usp=sharing
My views on fasting
I've dabbled in the past with fasting. From 24 hours fast without much deliberation. Can't say I loved it, can't say I hated it.
It's the incessant jabberwocky that I find intolerable. When intermittent fasting becomes touted as a magic formula that will make you lose weight, get stronger, live longer and happier all I once, I start to lose interest.
From a weight loss perspective, it's all about your caloric balance. Are you eating fewer calories than you spend yes or no? If fasting helps you achieve this great, but it won't be superior to reducing your calories and just eating less throughout the whole day.
From a strength perspective, intermittent fasting will not make you stronger unless you eat more calories than you spend. I found that hard to do when I need to eat 3000+ calories in one sitting without eating junk food.
I have found fasting useful from time to time. A long day at work can be done more smoothly if I don't have to think about eating. Or a long day on a hike. I can just focus on hiking all day and when I get home I have a massive dinner.
Fasting also helped me alter my relationship with hunger. On a 24 hour fast, I found no alterations in my energy levels, despite some hunger pangs. For me, this was a light bulb moment that showed me I didn't need to eat right away when I got hungry.
This whole autophagy process has made me reflect a bit more on the use of fasting. Once again, it is impossible to know the long term effects of this. I think that the most important thing here is to find a lifestyle that we can stick to. If fasting makes us happy that's great. If it makes us crave food more, not so great.
Moving forward, I'm going to try again 24 hours fast, probably on Fridays. I'd like to see what the effects of longer fast do to me and I'll schedule them during a cutting phase in the gym. Right now I'm focusing on getting bigger and not eating for 24h+ is not aligned with that goal.
Hope you all have a phenomenal weekend!
Clem
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