Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (47 page)

  In one movement, explode upward and shrug your shoulders as high as you can, while keeping your arms straight.

  Weight selection: pick a weight you could lift 8–12 times.

 

Alternate C1 and C2 for 4 minutes. The goal is to get as many reps as possible. After this circuit, rest 2 minutes and then repeat the circuit with the same weight.

CHAPTER 11

Phase III: Surge

BREAKING THE MOLD

“It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.”

—
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

T
he old saying goes
that the easiest way to look like you've added muscle is to lose fat. And when you think about it, the concept makes perfect sense. We all have muscle, but fat hides it. This is only true up to a certain point, though.

By now, you should have lost a significant amount of fat. Your clothes should look better, you should be able to see more of your body, and your muscles should be bigger and harder. But the truth is, although we've been targeting your hormones and increasing testosterone, we've yet to specifically focus on muscle growth, which should excite all of you. You've gained muscle already as a by-product of hormonal optimization, and now we're going to kick your body into hyperdrive so you can have bigger muscles and even less fat.

That's the point of Surge. This isn't about suddenly becoming big and bulky. Quite the opposite—this is where you get stronger while maintaining your lean body. We'll accomplish this by focusing on two new hormones: growth hormone (GH) and cortisol. Specifically, we'll be increasing your GH and decreasing your cortisol. When combined with your improved insulin sensitivity, raised testosterone, and decreased estrogen, you've created a hormonal environment that will actually allow you to build significant muscle without gaining fat.

 

THE METHOD BEHIND THE MUSCLE

Unlike metabolic resistance training—which essentially just focuses on exercise order and short rest periods—GH-based programs require us to take a more roundabout approach, as you'll learn in Surge. While GH training isn't perfect, if you're focusing on losing fat while gaining muscle, it's one of the best methods you can use. We've built your body up in a progressive way, so at this point, your body is primed for growth.

While almost any workout will increase GH, if you want to send GH production through the roof, you want to be looking at lactic acid.

Lactic Acid and Training

With regard to exercise specifically, lactic acid is a chemical waste by-product that is created during certain chemical reactions generated by resistance training. As lactic acid metabolites—a substance produced by the increased metabolism triggered by weight training—begin to flood the bloodstream, this increases the overall acidity (makes sense—it's called lactic
acid
after all) of the extracellular tissues, and nerve irritation occurs.

When your blood and nerves and other tissues are all acid-y, your body goes, “Dude, this sucks. I'm going to fix it.” Basically, because the cycle of metabolic waste removal is breaking down, certain processes begin to regulate acidity.

Lactic Acid and Growth Hormone

In order to regulate acidity, your pituitary gland will begin to produce and secrete tremendous amounts of GH, which is the single most effective biological compound your body can produce to elicit fat loss and muscle gain.

Simply stated, training in a way that produces a lot of lactic acid—and thereby signals immense release of GH—is one of the single most effective ways to trigger simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, especially if you're in a caloric deficit of any kind (as you will be on non-workout days).

As an added benefit, GH is specifically beneficial in that it can counteract the fat-storing effects of cortisol. You see, GH has an inverse relationship with cortisol—as GH goes up, cortisol goes down. And this combination is what will help you sleep better, provide an overall increase in feelings of wellness, and make it harder for your body to store belly fat.

The important thing to note is that lactic acid is produced predominantly during the concentric (or positive) phase of the movement. So when you're actually
lifting
the weight (think about squeezing a weight at the top of a biceps curl), you're producing a lot more lactic acid than when you're lowering it.

In order to maximize production of lactic acid, we simply modify our lifting speed to take the greatest advantage of that fact. With most training modalities, you're using a 2-0-2 cadence. This means that you're lifting the weight for two seconds, pausing for zero seconds at the top of the motion, and then lowering the weight for two seconds. In some cases, you'll use a 2-0-3 cadence, which is just a slower lowering phase.

In keeping with that line of thought, lactic acid training can, to some degree, be thought of as inverted tempo training. To that, we lift the weight over a period of four seconds (in most cases) and lower extremely fast in order to allow for nearly constant concentric tension and high levels of lactic acid production.

To give an example, if you were doing an overhead press, a single rep would appear like this:

 

Lift the weight over a period of 4 seconds

Lower the weight as quickly as possible in good form

Immediately begin lifting again

 

To reiterate, lifting in this way produces a tremendous amount of lactic acid, which in turn forces your body to produce exceptionally high amounts of GH, which is what will make the transformations during this third phase some of the most fun.

 

SURGE: THE DIET

Determine Your Daily Caloric Intake During Surge

Before you can do this, you once again need to determine your maintenance calories. This is done in precisely the same manner as in Prime and Adapt; again, your body will have undergone some radical changes and in order to make the best possible use of the program, you need to have the most accurate and current information. Therefore, before you can progress any farther, please check your weight and get your body fat retested, and from there determine your
new
maintenance calories.

Surge is the first time you'll be eating above maintenance calories. Because of the long period of deficit and the hormonal environment you've created, your body is prepared to grow. In this phase, we'll be taking in more calories and pairing the diet with a training modality specifically intended to increase GH—that, coupled with the volume, will lead to tremendous growth. So we hope you brought your appetite.

Specifically, you're going to be eating
above
maintenance calories on workout days and
below
maintenance calories on non-workout days.

 

 
To determine your calories for workout days, add 400 to your maintenance calories.

 
To determine your calories for non-workout days, subtract 200.

 

MACRONUTRIENT BREAKDOWN

Protein

Once again, protein is determined by your lean body mass, but it's higher during this phase. Protein intake will be set as follows:

 

 
Workout days:
1.5 grams of protein per pound of LBM

 
Non-workout days:
1.25 grams of protein per pound of LBM

 

Carbs

 

 
Workout days:
1 gram per pound of LBM

 
Non-Workout days:
0.5 grams per pound of LBM

 

Fat

At this point, you know your maintenance calories and have subtracted the caloric values of both your protein and carb intakes. Now, you still have a balance of a few hundred calories; these will come from fat—and yes, that generally equates to a lot of fat. But, as you know by now, if you're getting healthy fats, you're taking another step on the path toward hormonal optimization.

Now, as fat has 9 calories per gram, take your remaining balance of calories and divide by 9. The result is how many grams of fat you eat.

 

THE ALPHA EATING EQUATION: SURGE

Workout Days

Going through the steps, it would look like this:

 

1. Using the information in the chart on page 169, figure out how many calories you need in order to maintain your body weight.