Don’t let this happen to you:

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For years I had a nice body…when at the gym. After loading my body up with NO boosters, creatine, and beta alanine, I was a beast.

Outside of the gym, once the pump went away, my body really wasn’t where it needed to be.

A year ago a friend introduced me to the concept of muscle density. Muscular density refers to the hardness your muscles have when at rest. Muscular density is also referred to as muscle tone:

In physiology, medicine, and anatomy, muscle tone (residual muscle tension or tonus) is the continuous and passive partial contraction of the muscles, or the muscle’s resistance to passive stretch during resting state.

Everyone can have big muscles when the blood is pumped up with blood, nitric oxide, BCAAs, and creatine.

But unless you’re doing push-ups at the club, a body lacking muscular density isn’t going to do you much good. I needed to find a way to always look big.

I’ve found two ways to increase muscular density. The first method I learned from my fitness model friend. The second is from Dante Trudel.

Static holds. When I first started training static holds, I changed my body over the summer. Although I didn’t gain any weight, I looked bigger. I immediately had my friend start doing static holds. His body changed in a couple of my months and he looked bigger at 168 pounds than most guys look at 200. (Most people assume I weigh 200-210, even though I’m only 186 pounds. My fitness model friend looks like a running back, even though he “only” weighs 207.)

Here’s how to do static holds: During your last work set of a major muscle group (chins, bench, dips, etc.), hold the weight at the top of the movement. Fight the movement for 30-60 seconds. When training friends I actually countdown aloud 30, 29, 28…

Imagine you are doing a pull-up. At the top of the movement, hold it. Gravity is going to keep pulling on your body. Fight gravity for as long as possible.

Your muscles will continue contracting while you are holding yourself on the chin-up bar.

At the top of the squat or deadlift , don’t just rack the bar when your set is complete. Slightly bend the knees and support the weight.

The takeaway is to get your muscle fibers contracting while sustaining a load, not just when moving a load through a range of motion. Today I did a hellacious static hold/ab workout.

Raise yourself to the top position of a chin-up. Do leg lifts while holding your chin over the bar. Brutal.

Unconscious nerve impulses maintain the muscles in a partially contracted state. If a sudden pull or stretch occurs, the body responds by automatically increasing the muscle’s tension, a reflex which helps guard against danger as well as helping to maintain balance. Such near-continuous innervation can be thought of as a “default” or “steady state” condition for muscles. There is, for the most part, no actual “rest state” insofar as activation is concerned.

1-and-1/3 reps. Most reps are “down-up.” You lower the weight in the bench press. You press the weight. One rep. Down-up.

• Bench press/pushing movements: To do a 1-and-1/3 rep, you will lower the weight in the bench press all the way to your chest. You will press the barbell 1/3 of the way up. Then you’ll lower it again. Then you will do one full range of motion repetition.

Each rep is thus more than one rep. It’s one-and-one-thirds of a rep. Do 5-7 of these reps.

• Rows/pulling movements: The 1-and-1/3 rep works best for back. Do a cable row. At the top of the movement (your have the weight pulled back at your body), let the weight go 1/3 of the way back. Pull the weight back towards. Then let the weight go all the way down. Then pull the bar back towards your body.

Doing one-and-one-third reps will ensure that your back remains contracted throughout the entire movement.

I know guys who never got a pump in their rear lats whose back growth exploded after adding 1-and-1/3 reps.

Although this method works best for the back, you can do 1-and-1/3 reps for other exercises.

You can also vary where you add the 1/3 rep. Maybe you are stronger at the bottom of the bench press and weaker at the top of the movement. In that case, do not lower the weight all the way to your chest.

Instead you should lower the weight 1/3 of the way towards your chest. Then press the weight up. Then do your full repetition.

How to add static holds and 1-and-1/3 reps into your training. Static holds are hell on your joints, so use them with caution. Start off with 10 second holds and work your way up.

You don’t need to do static holds for every movement. Just pick one major movement for your large body parts. I do static holds for t-bar rows, pull-ups, and the hammer strength chest machine.

I don’t advise using static holds for free weight movements like the bench press or shoulder press. Your neural system may give out, causing you to dump the weight. Ask yourself, “If I dumped the weight, would it fall on my head?” If so, don’t do a static hold.

Avoid using static holds for smaller muscle groups, as they will wreck your biceps tendon.

1-and-1/3 reps are much easier on your joints. I even use a form of 1-and-1/3 reps for my biceps.

21s (biceps curls):
Start at the top of the movement and lower the bar 1/3 of the way. Do 7 reps.
Start at the bottom of the movement and raise the bar 1/3 of the way. Do 7 reps.
Do 7 full reps.

Start incorporating static holds and 1-and-1/3 reps and within eight weeks you will notice a major improvement in how your body looks while at rest.

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Although my lifestyle is extremely clean during the week, I’m no ascetic. The pleasures of alcohol are no strangers.

But I refuse to let an enjoyable Friday night ruin my entire Saturday. I researched the medical literature for hangover cures and devised one after experimenting on myself and my friends.

The medical research is sparse: ”More than 4700 articles have been written about alcohol intoxication since 1965, but only 108 have addressed alcohol hangover.” - Jeffrey G. Wiese, MD, The Alcohol Hangover.

Much of the literature explored the effect of a hangover rather than a hangover cure. “It is evident that awareness needs to be raised that performance the morning after alcohol consumption is at the same level if not worse than when participants are at the legal limit for driving (0.08% blood alcohol concentration).”

Science supports two supplements that mitigate hangovers. The first is the common aspirin, taken before a night of drinking. “Prostaglandins may be involved in several acute or short-term reactions caused by alcohol. Chlorpropamide-alcohol flush, alcoholintolerance and hangover are effectively alleviated by a prophylactic use of PG-inhibitors.” Aspirin is a PG-inhibitor.

The second is vitamin B6, in pyridoxine/pyritinol form (iHerb; Amazon):

Prophylactic vitamin B6 (pyritinol) reduced the number of hangover symptoms by approximately 50% in one study (57). Seventeen men and women attended two parties and were asked to drink the alcoholic beverage of their choice until intoxicated. Fifty percent of participants received 1200 mg of vitamin B6 (400 mg at the beginning of the party, 400 mg 3 hours later, and 400 mg at the party’s conclusion), and 50% received placebo. At the second party, participants received the alternate tablet. A survey instrument of 20 symptoms was used to assess hangover severity. On a scale of 1 to 10, the mean symptom score (±SD) was 3.2 ± 2.8 with pyritinol and 6.8 ± 3.8 with placebo (P < 0.01). The mechanism of this effect is unknown.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the science there is.

But I devised my own cure through the guidance of Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and stoic philosopher who advised: “Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.”

What’s the essence of a hangover?

The essence of a hangover is intoxication. We use intoxicated and drunk synonymously for that very reason.

What organ is responsible for detoxification? The answer is the liver. How does the liver detoxify your body? By using glutathione.

Thus to mitigate or prevent a hangover, we need to ensure that the body has adequate stores of glutathione.

Direct supplementation of glutathione is ineffective. However, you can increase glutathione levels by supplementing with a potent glutathione precursor called N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine (N-A-C sustain).

Alpha lipoic acid is another powerful detoxifying agent. In Germany it’s approved for the treatment of liver disease. A practical assay of lipoate in biologic fluids and liver in health and disease.

Alpha lipoic acid regulates blood sugar as well, which probably prevents the blood sugar crash that seems to accompany a hangover. For whatever reason, alpha lipoic acid prevents hangovers.

So here’s what I take before going out:

3 N-A-C Sustain;
1 Super Lipoic Acid;
1 B Complex.

(Although aspirin may help, my hangover cure is so effective that I don’t feel the need to add it.)

As long as I’m able to sleep in, I wake up without any hangover symptoms.

Some of you may feel tricked. “That’s not a hangover cure. That’s a prevention.” Exactly.

Three thousand years ago, the youngest of three physician brothers was asked why he was a better doctor than his two older brothers. Thuis put the young man in a precarious situation, since in China is disrespectful to elevate yourself over your elders.

The young doctor explained:

“My first brother heals sickness before it even develops, so his methods appear hidden, his science is an art form and he is known only within our village. My second brother deals with illnesses while they are minor, preventing sickness from getting worse and returning the body to health. I deal with sicknesses when they have reached the level of disease and threaten to destroy the organism of which they are a part. This requires numerous medicines, and skill and knowledge in their use. For this reason my name has become famous throughout the kingdom and I have been asked to be physician to the king. Yet my first brother has the knowledge to deal with sicknesses before they arise and my second brother is able to treat them at an early stage and prevent them getting worse. Though my fame has spread throughout the land, their knowledge is greater.

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This is an insightful and amazing argument against suicide:

“1. It is extremely common for people to experience ‘time dilation’ at the moment of an accident or intense experience. Thus, the moment one jumps, the intensity of the event brings about a dilation of subjective time making it feel like much longer than the few seconds they are in the air.

“2. The psychological pain that motivates someone to take their own life is one of seeking relief.. a release from burden. The act of jumping and the sensation of free fall is so intense that it serves to do just that. They experience a radical and instant psychological release.

“The combination of these two factors, imo, makes it so the majority of people who fall to their death, immediately regret it as they begin falling… and even have the time to recognize that their problems are workable. So it’s a terrible tragedy on many levels.

“In fact, of the people who have jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge…

Most survivors (30+) have said afterward that they wanted to live as soon as they went over the side. In the words of one man, ‘I realized that everything in my life that I thought was unfixable was totally fixable, except for having just jumped.’

“That is chilling…

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What color are your barista’s eyes? You probably do not make eye contact with people, and it’s costing you opportunities.

Making eye contact will teach you a lot about yourself and about others. The Power of Eye Contact.

If a girl looks down ground, she views herself as lower status than you. Do not neg or be cocky to a girl who looks down. She is already feeling insecure and you will sabotage the exchange if you go on strong. Go direct with a simple, “Hi.”

Girls who look to the side after making eye contact view you as an equal or an inferior. Run hard game on girls who look at you sideways. Use indirect openings, negs, etc.

If you look down, it means you’re submissive. If you look down after making eye contact with a woman, you have subconsciously told her that you’re a worm. You’ve lost the game.

Girls seem to enjoy getting into staring contests. Hold the gaze and then smirk. If she smiles back it means she is mirroring you reflexively. Call her over to you.

If you want to fuck with someone’s head, stare at her forehead. This is called the “power stare” and it’s extremely effective on women you meet out and it works in the workplace too.

If you don’t really care about your job and want to get out of the office, look down after your boss chews your ass. He will subconsciously process the eye movement as a sign of victory.

If you care about your career, make eye contact and hold it. To avoid a power contest that you are sure to lose (but you don’t want to submit either), divert your attention to something on your boss’s desk. Then say, “I never noticed _______ about ________ before.”

The only time I compliment a woman is when I compliment her eyes. But don’t just say, “You have purty eyes.”

Say, “You have an intense gaze. Do men sometimes find that intimidating?” Then start talking about how infrequently people make eye contact. If you say something like, “People spend too much time looking at their iPhones,” she is less likely to answer texts while you’re talking to her.

Women are addicted to eye contact. If you frame the conversation by talking about her eyes, you will make a deeper connection with her.

All women like to believe that their eye color changes. This is especially true of girls with green eyes. If a woman has green eyes, say, “What color does your eyes change to in the sun?”

A quick way to learn how to make better eye contact is to practice on baristas, cashiers, and clerks. Imagine you are taking a quiz tomorrow. The quiz will ask you the eye color of 10 people you interacted with the day before.

When buying coffee, ask yourself, “What color was the barista’s eyes?”

Then find out your co-workers’ eye colors.

If you can’t say what color a person’s eyes are, then you’ve failed the quiz.

Then move on to advantaged stuff like eye contact game.

Bonus tip: Your eyes will follow your chin. If you want to maintain good eye contact, keep your chin up.

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I’ve always been a bargain hunter and buyer in bulk of supplements. GNC once had a buy-one-get-one-50% sale of Muscle Milk, which had a cost-per-can of around $18. I bought a year’s supply of the stuff.

Although there are dozens of online supplement companies, I ended up buying most of my stuff from Amazon.

A few months back I was looking for an obscure multi-vitamin. It was around $70 on Amazon, so I shopped around.

Then I found a site with a really shoddy look to it. I Googled, “scam” next to the company’s name, as the prices of many supplements seemed too low to be legit and the site wasn’t very attractive.

It turns out that iHerb is a California-based company that is totally legit. I started shopping there around 9 months ago.

About 3 months ago I felt comfortable enough with their products and services to start sharing their coupon code: EKO606.

iHerb runs really good specials all of the time. For first time customers, you get $10 off your order over $40, or $5 off an order under $40. Everyone gets free shipping for orders over $40.

Last month every customer got 5% off orders over $60 and free shipping on orders over $20.

I still price compare Amazon and iHerb. Sometimes Amazon has a better price; sometimes iHerb does. But I only use those two sites for my online supplement shoopping.

Anyhow, I buy now my Vitamin-D, ZMA, B-12 lozenges, vegan protein (I use vanilla to for my modified juice fasts, to make some of the nastier green juices more palatable and to preserve muscle, and chocolate when blending smoothies), coconut oil (which is for cooking and also great in smoothies; economy size for serious users), Probiotics, and probiotic yeast (fights candida and yeast infections).

They have non-supplement stuff that I use too, such as their mouth wash, tooth paste, chewing gum, shampoo, and conditioner.

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It’s hard to know what to begin juicing (assuming you have a juicer.) The best way to begin is with what I call the “working man’s juice.”

In the South, an RC Cola and a Moon Pie were known as the working man’s lunch. Working people wanted something that would provide quick energy while tasting good. The “working man’s lunch” appealed to everyone.

The hardest thing about getting people to drink juice is getting them to drink juice. Everyone expects a juice to be nasty. You see a lot of pursed lips, scrunched noses, and squinting eyes. “What’s in this, man?”

This juice will appeal to everyone, and is basically the entry point into juice:

• 4 carrots
• 1 apple
• 1 small piece (size of your pinky finger tip) ginger

Everyone likes that juice. Whenever a person has the above juice, he or she says, “Oh, that’s not bad.”

It’s actually really good, but expectations influence taste perception. People expect the juice to taste like grass clippings. The carrot-apple-ginger juice is so good that it overcomes the anti-juice bias.

From there you should start reducing the sweet content and start increasing the vegetable content. For example:

• 3 carrots
• ½ apple
• 3 large leaves of kale, romaine, or some other green
• ginger

Eventually you’ll want to be increase the greens to as much as you can tolerate and decrease the sweet fruits and vegetables.

After you’ve had some beginner’s juices, you can start making your own. To make your own juices, think of combining three bases: green water, vegetables, greens, and fruits.

A green water is a vegetable that gives off a lot of water. Celery, zucchini, broccoli, cucumber, bok choy, and cabbage all provide a lot of green water per pound of produce. (That is, they have a high yield.) They are also low in sugar.

Leafy greens are kale, Swiss chard, collard greens, spinach, red lettuce, and other nutrient rich, dense, greens. Greens do have what’s called a high yield, that is, it doesn’t give much juice per pound of produce. So you don’t want to make greens your base.

The sweet base is fruits and sweet vegetables like carrots and beets. Carrots and beets have a really high yield.

Giving recipes are hard because as you juice, your tastes will change. You’ll want more carrots or apples in your juice today than you’ll want a year from now. My juices might be too green for you.

But.

There’s no wrong way to juice. Keep adding stuff, tasting it along the way, and you’ll find out the right ratios.

Now you just get all mad scientist in the kitchen.

Here’s what I juiced this week:

[Read more...]

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There are several different types of juicers. There are centrifugal, masticating, single-gear, and singer-auger juicers. There are juice presses. There are dozens of juicers and you can go on message boards to debate which is better.

Juice people remind me of BMW owners. They’ll argue forever over the most trivial details.

The debate is stupid.

Your first juicer needs to be fast, easy-to-clean, and inexpensive. If your juicer is slow or not easy-to-clean, then you won’t use it. If your juicer is expensive and you don’t like juicing, then you’ve just wasted a bunch of money.

These are two awesome entry-level juicers:

I did a bunch of research on the issue, i.e., I read Consumer Reports. The Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Juicer 67650 is only $60 or so with free shipping on Amazon. I’ve had mine for six months and have juiced hundreds of pounds of produce. It’s still going strong.

The Breville BJE200XL Compact Juice Fountain 700-Watt Juice Extractor is also a great buy, at $99. It’s more aesthetically pleasing that the Big Mouth Juicer.

Why are they good? First, they are fast. They will rapidly cut through carrots, beets, apples, celery, and other hard fruits and vegetables. You can juice a half-gallon of juice in about 15 minutes. If you just want a glass of juice, you’re done in 1-2 minutes.

Second, the price is right. Even the Breville at $99 is a good buy. The Breville and Big Mouth both have reputations for lasting a long time. They are well constructed and thus great values.

Finally, they are easy to clean. Everything but the blade is dishwasher safe. The only challenging part is cleaning the blade. There’s a special brush that comes with the Breville and Big Mouth. I timed myself, and it only takes 90 seconds to clean the blade after juicing several pounds of produce.

(Pro tip: Use one of your produce bags to line the pulp waste bin. That’s one less piece you have to rinse off.)

With those juicers, you are in-and-out of the kitchen, depending upon whether you’re making one juice or a full day’s juice, in 5-20 minutes.

If you really enjoy juicing, as I do, then you’re ready to step it up a level.

If you have a big budget a lot of of space, then the Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite 1000-Watt Juice Extractor is awesome. (My boss just bought one for me to use at the office.) You can juice pineapple with the rind on. It’s a serious machine and also beautiful.

Like the above juicers, it’s fast. It’s easy to clean.

For Christmas, I’m going to buy myself an Omega VRT350 Heavy Duty Dual-Stage Vertical Single Auger Low Speed Juicer. The Omega juicer is slower than the above juicers. It’s main benefit is that it provides a higher yield. (Yield describes the relationship between the ounces of juice you’ll get out of a pound of produce. The more ounces per pound of juice is referred to as a higher yield.) Since I juice a lot of kale and other green leafy vegetables, the Omega makes a lot of sense for me.

But when you’re a beginner juicing, it doesn’t make sense to sweat the details.

If you enjoy juicing, you’ll never want to be without juice. You’ll wind up bringing your entry-level juicer to the office and buying yourself a nicer one for your home.

Save up to $10 on your first order at iHerb (free shipping for most orders, too!) with coupon code: EKO606. Shop at iHerb.

You got on heels, you ain’t that tall.
You got on makeup, your face don’t look like that.
You got a weave, your hair ain’t that long.
You got a Wonderbra on, your titties ain’t that big.
Everything about you is a lie, and you expect me to tell the truth? Fuck you!

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