You know, in the name of love, beards, deadlifts, and all those bloating today.

Let me preempt this before I get the hate mail – I do not consider myself a bad ass.

To optimize program effectiveness, a variety of factors should be considered.

Because I have written a few articles on gaining mass and getting big, it’s only fair that I send some love to the fat guys who want to get in shape and feel better about all that mass they (hopefully) gained from all the time spent eating big and training as heavy as they could.

The end result may be different, but the methods are the same.

It’s with a heavy and enlarged heart that I say goodbye to Rhodestown.

The very low-carb diet (VLCD) is a synthesis of the best of these approaches, but geared towards the carb-sensitive individual.

I wrote this article in order to educate women and some men who believe that doing cardio and abs will help them shed pounds on their midsection.

To understand the metabolism, think of your body like a furnace. Your metabolism controls the temperature in your body as well as your metabolic rate.

I’ve been saying for years that fat people finish marathons all the time.

As Jim Wendler would say, get “north of vag” and stay there. Seriously, anybody can do this.

I feel a man should be able to lift heavy shit, bust out 10 or more pull-ups, and get up at any given time and bang out two or three miles.

There you go again—walking in a straight line for hours on that treadmill, dancing on and off that step in your “power” aerobics class.

I aim to increase lean muscle mass toward the end of the year, which matches my diet of all out craziness due to the holidays. What can I do to maximize muscle mass while minimizing or even preventing putting on a bunch of body fat?

As an athlete, you’re taught many things—work hard, compete until the end, work together with your teammates, push yourself to the limit, and have fun.

“Chris? Oh, you mean the big fat guy?”

Everyone at one point or another wants to lose weight or get “ripped.” Some of these people succeed in their goals and strive to keep improving. However, many fail miserably and make excuses as to why they didn’t succeed.

It isn’t pretty, but it’s a reality. Our youth are getting fatter and unhealthier by the day. Physical education classes are either gone or absolutely minimized in our educational curriculum. The classes that are still intact are ill-suited for the new generation.

Weight training over long periods of time can burn out athletes from all different sports. Whether he or she is a world class MMA fighter or your average Joe who wants to stay in shape, athletes can get bored with not only their current regimen but with lifting weights period. Most will just take some time off from the gym and come back ready to hit it hard again.

It was the afternoon before the meet, a Friday. I weighed in at 240 lbs. Weigh-ins were scheduled for 9:00 am Saturday morning. In preparation for the four and a half hour drive down to the meet site, I started my cutting process by putting on four layers of sweat clothes.

Aw shit…it’s another “top 20” or “20 things” list about training. Great.

It is often said by futurists that there is an over-reaction to most new concepts in the short term, yet an under-reaction in the long term. We can all come up with countless examples of it – the high carb trend of a few years ago – which has become the zero carb trend recently.