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Lean and Hard: The Body Youve Always Wanted in Just 24 Workouts
Lean and Hard: The Body Youve Always Wanted in Just 24 Workouts
Lean and Hard: The Body Youve Always Wanted in Just 24 Workouts
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Lean and Hard: The Body Youve Always Wanted in Just 24 Workouts

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Mackie Shilstone is an expert in getting world-class professional athletes as well as ordinary people into peak shape in record time, helping them tone their bodies and maximize lean muscle. Now Shilstone lays out his time-tested, medically sound strategies for building lean muscle with his “work out smarter, not harder” plan for training rotation, nutrition, and state-of-the-art supplements.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 17, 2011
ISBN9781118038895
Lean and Hard: The Body Youve Always Wanted in Just 24 Workouts
Author

Mackie Shilstone

Mackie Shilstone is no newcomer to the fitness field. With a degree in sports nutrition, Shilstone has worked with an impressive group of professional athletes, including world heavyweight boxing champion Michael Spinks. Intensely athletic, Shilstone has a long list of his own achievements, including once being named the most physically fit male at the National Fitness Classic Competition. The president of Mackie Shilstone and Associates, Inc., Shilstone still remains a much sought-after trainer and speaker.

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    Lean and Hard - Mackie Shilstone

    Introduction

    They Said It Couldn’t Be Done

    In 1982, I was contacted by a man named Don Hubbard to develop a nutrition and exercise program for him and his wife, Rose. He was so impressed with the results that he asked me to take on a very special client. Hubbard was one of the principal investors in Michael Spinks, who had won the Olympic gold medal as a middleweight boxer in 1976. Spinks was considered the best light heavyweight boxer in the world and owned two out of three belts in his division.

    This was a great opportunity for me. In 1975, I was volunteering as a strength and conditioning coach at Tulane University. In 1982, Spinks became my first pro athlete.

    From 1982 to 1985, I became what Hubbard referred to as Spinks’s secret weapon. Rather than use what I considered archaic training principles that weren’t serving Spinks, I taught him how to better manage his strength, increase his speed and stamina, and perfect his technique. Under my guidance, Spinks went on to become the undisputed world light heavyweight champion, defeating fighter Dwight Braxton, who held the third belt in his division.

    Spinks had an even bigger dream: he wanted to increase his strength and lean muscle weight so that he could qualify to fight in the heavyweight category. He would then be able to fight Larry Holmes, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Holmes was a large, fast, and powerful legend, with forty-eight straight wins and every belt in boxing—and this was when opponents fought fifteen rounds instead of the twelve that they fight now.

    For thirty years, light heavyweight boxers had been trying to move up and defeat a heavyweight title holder, but it had never been done. While these men had achieved the mandatory weight to challenge the larger men, they had all been defeated. The conventional boxing wisdom of the time was A good big man will always beat a good little man.

    I believed otherwise. As a young man, my goal had been to be a walk-on receiver for a major college football team. At 5’ 9 I was the smallest guy at the Tulane University tryouts. Yet I persevered, learning everything I could about high-intensity exercise and performance nutrition, and developed the attitude Never give up." I became the smallest guy on the team and the smallest college football player in the country, but I won my varsity letter.

    Building lean muscle and superior athletic performance in others became my specialty, and I had the knowledge and experience to help Spinks get where he wanted to go.

    The Spinks/Holmes fight was set for September 21, 1985. To get Spinks ready for the fight of his life, I worked with him intensively for eight weeks, employing the same basic strategy that I offer readers in this book: high-performance nutrition, performance supplementation, and high-intensity interval training. Many of the things I had Spinks doing, such as lifting weights and running short sprints on a track versus running long distance, were considered unorthodox in boxing training. When Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s trainer, saw what I was doing, he said, This is crazy. Spinks doesn’t stand a chance. Archie Moore, one of the greatest light heavyweight champions of all time, told the press that it couldn’t be done: You don’t put muscle on in two months. It takes a lifetime. Moore had tried the same thing and been beaten by heavyweight boxers Rocky Marciano and Floyd Patterson.

    But I knew from my experience working with football players that it could be done—and I had the faith and trust of the people with whom I was working. Spinks was a lanky 6’ 2 so we had to put a significant amount of extra muscle on his frame to enable him to face up to the 6’ 3 Holmes, who at 221½ pounds outweighed him by 21½ pounds. During the eight-week training period, Spinks went from 175 pounds and 9.1 percent body fat to 200 pounds and 7.2 percent body fat. He was ready, both physically and psychologically. Unlike other boxers who come to a fight edgy and hungry because they have been dieting for two months to lose fat weight, he was metabolically energized because I had put him on a high-performance nutrition and supplementation plan.

    The night of the Spinks/Holmes fight, Holmes was going for Rocky Marciano’s record. If he beat Spinks, he would tie Marciano’s record of forty-nine straight wins, the longest winning streak in the history of boxing. Instead, we were the ones who made history. Spinks won a unanimous decision and was declared the new undisputed world heavyweight champion, since defeating Holmes made him the holder of all of Holmes’s title division belts. Six months later when Holmes challenged him to a rematch, Spinks won that fight too, reaffirming his tremendous, historically unprecedented achievement.

    This victory made me one of the most highly sought after performance enhancement experts in the country. I went on to work with athletes like NBA basketball player Manute Bol of the Washington Bullets (now the Washington Wizards), Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals, and Roy Jones Jr., the light heavyweight champion boxer who moved up and beat WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz on March 1, 2003.

    Most recently, I made history again doing the impossible. Bernard Hopkins, who at age forty-one holds the record for the greatest number of successful middleweight title defenses, wanted to end his career by challenging Antonio Tarver, a younger man, for the light heavyweight championship. To prepare him for this fight, I designed a six-week training program very similar to the one presented in this book. During that time, Hopkins went from 165 pounds to the qualifying weight of 175 pounds. His body fat dropped from 12 percent to 8.75 percent, resulting in a 3.25 percent gain in lean muscle.

    On June 10, 2006, Hopkins beat Tarver in a unanimous decision.

    Creating the Lean and Hard Study

    In 1997, I was approached by Marty Herman, an executive at AmeriFit, a company that manufactures premiere health and wellness supplements. Herman was forming a small advisory board of sports and nutrition experts to create a cutting-edge performance nutrition/supplement program. Herman funded a $30,000 research grant, and we conducted a study at the Louisiana State University Health Care Network, which was then a division of the LSU Medical Center, where I was a full-time clinical health instructor.

    This was the only high-performance muscle-development program that I knew of to be tested by a major medical center. It was also the first study of its kind to examine the results of a high-intensity workout coupled with performance nutrition and safe performance supplementation. Other studies had looked at only one of these factors. Our goal was to study the dynamics of these three elements working in tandem.

    I made an announcement on my daily radio show that we were looking for twenty volunteers to sign up for this study. We selected a wide cross section of people, ranging from those who never exercised to the superfit who wanted to use our program to increase their already significant lean muscle mass. The participants included an out-of-shape businessman, a high school athlete, a navy SEAL, a homemaker, and a female marathoner. My friend Dr. Jim Flarity, the clinical exercise physiologist who supervised the original Lean and Hard Study, supervised this study. He got a baseline profile on each subject’s body composition (ratio of lean muscle to body fat), as well as his or her aerobic fitness, resting heart rate, and overall stamina before beginning the program.

    Our aim was to see what could be accomplished in six weeks of high-intensity interval training—lifting weights four days a week, with a day off on Wednesday—for a total of twenty-four workouts. Saturday and Sunday were recovery days, on which participants could do an optional cardiovascular workout. We also asked our study participants to follow a daily eating plan and a performance nutrition supplementation plan. First, we gave them a complete medical evaluation supervised through the Department of Comprehensive Medicine at Louisiana State University Medical Center. Then we gave them an orientation, the manual describing the high-intensity exercise program and nutrition plan, and a six-week supply of supplements.

    What the Study Accomplished

    At the end of the Lean and Hard Study, Dr. Flarity retested each subject. The results were amazing. In just six weeks, participants saw significant and startling changes in their bodies. The average study participant experienced the following results:

    • A gain of 10 pounds of lean muscle

    • A loss of 6 pounds of body fat

    • An increase in the efficiency of his or her cardiovascular system (endurance) of 31 percent

    • An increase in the efficiency of his or her anaerobic system (stamina) of 13 percent

    • A ten-point reduction in his or her resting heart rate

    • A dramatic increase in his or her strength and power

    This was one of the first studies to demonstrate that even without any cardiovascular training, high-intensity interval training increases endurance. The Lean and Hard Program, which arose from this study, has replicated these results many times since then. In fact, a recent study published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise that compared the effects of moderate- and high-intensity training backed up many of the results of my study, for example, the effectiveness of high-intensity training (HIT) over moderate-intensity training (MIT). The study stated: Despite being matched for total work and producing similar increases in aerobic fitness, 5 weeks of HIT resulted in a significantly greater improvement in RSA (repeated sprint activity) than MIT. The study also showed that the increase in aerobic fitness (or VO2 levels) and rising fatigue levels carried over into all areas of sports. No matter who you are or what kind of shape you are in, you can benefit from the program. In as few as twenty-four workouts spread over six weeks, you can begin to get the lean and muscular body you’ve always wanted.

    What This Book Offers

    The latest studies in the science of sports medicine show that high-intensity interval training is the quickest way to a muscular physique. Yet there is a great deal of confusion about how to get the most from this type of workout. Many people are also afraid of rigorous exercise programs because they fear that they are not physically fit or knowledgeable enough to handle this kind of a workout. The Lean and Hard Program outlined in this book is so clear, concise, and accessible that anyone can follow it with success. Lean and Hard will do the following:

    • Give readers a detailed understanding of their bodies’ energy and hormonal systems and how to make them more efficient

    • Answer questions about effective nutrition for high performance such as How much protein do I really need? and How many calories do I need with a high-performance workout to make sure I am building muscle, not losing it?

    • Explain performance supplementation, providing readers with a simple and safe supplementation program that makes a difference in their workout

    • Educate readers about the importance of the recovery phase between high-performance workouts and how to eat and supplement on days between workouts

    • Discuss proper hydration before, during, and after high-intensity exercise

    Lean and Hard is the ultimate strength-building workout book for those seeking to build the powerful muscular physique they have always dreamed of having. It offers a comprehensive, safe, and intelligent program that can be followed by anyone, whether he or she is a weekend warrior, an athlete, or just an ordinary person who wants to become more buff, lean, and chiseled. This program has worked for a wide variety of people from many walks of life and at different levels of fitness. In this book, I will give you the facts and case histories to prove why this program will work for anyone willing to make a commitment to just twenty-four high-intensity seventy-five-minute workouts—just four workouts a week for six weeks. As with any exercise program, you must consult your doctor before beginning.

    My father, who was a combat-decorated captain and company commander in World War II, used to tell me, Son, you need to train like you fight and fight like you train. Over the years I have modified his words for the thousands of athletes I have worked with, telling them to Train like you compete in sports and compete like you train. The secret to having the body you want is to train with passion and approach your life with passion. As you age, the lean muscle you gain will pay you dividends in energy, health, and longevity.

    PART ONE

    Learn the ABCs of High-Intensity Training

    1

    What Lean Muscle Will Do for You

    What Exactly Is Lean Muscle?

    When we talk about gaining lean muscle, we are really talking about building up and maintaining all the components in the body that are supported by amino acids. Amino acids are the building blocks of your body. They support the critical cell structure not just in your muscles, but also in your internal organs, red blood cells, connective tissue, enzymes that direct metabolism, and antibodies that maintain immune function.

    Fat is metabolically inactive—it only serves as a reservoir for excess calories. The body’s stores of fat grow or shrink depending upon how active we are and what we eat. Since every protein molecule has a role in maintaining homeostasis, or balance, and health, the body does not have excess protein storage. Loss of any body protein is harmful to the body. That is why the high-intensity workout program presented in this book is accompanied by high-performance nutrition and supplementation, so that you will gain lean muscle, not waste it.

    Six Benefits of the Lean and Hard Program

    Over the years, I have seen the importance of maintaining a healthy level of lean muscle. Being lean and firm not only makes you look better, it improves your performance, your energy levels, and your overall health. Following the Lean and Hard Program can help you achieve the following:

    1. Increase your metabolism and energy levels. Fat is something you carry around—it makes you feel tired and metabolically sluggish. Muscle weight carries you around—it is metabolically active. The leaner you are, the more energy you have to perform at your job, play with your children, enjoy life with your spouse, and pursue the sports and creative activities you enjoy.

    2. Stop lean muscle loss. Even if your scale weight doesn’t change from the time you are twenty years old to the time you are seventy, your body composition is changing. The natural loss of lean muscle (sarcopenia) begins around the age of twenty-five and increases with age. After the age of thirty, most people lose an average of half a pound of muscle and gain about 2½ pounds of fat per year because of the lowered rate of metabolism that muscle loss creates.

    The only thing that can stop lean muscle loss is doing weight-bearing exercises—lifting dumbbells, pushing against machines in a gym, or high-intensity interval training—such as those offered in this book.

    3. Prolong performance and an active life. Many of the characteristics people associate with aging—being overweight, slowing down, having joint pain, limited mobility, and being less able to do a demanding job—are directly tied to how much lean muscle one has as opposed to body fat. Maintaining and increasing lean muscle mass as you age keeps you active and fully functional.

    4. Build your immune system and speed healing. The immune system needs a basic amount of protein to function efficiently. If you have too little lean muscle tissue, your vulnerability to disease and your ability to heal from injury, illness, or surgery can be compromised. Studies have shown that people who have a healthy amount of lean tissue need about 0.8 gram of protein per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of body weight to maintain lean muscle weight. However, people who are undergoing either physical or emotional stress require between 1.5 and 2.0 grams of protein per kilogram to meet the greater metabolic needs placed upon their bodies, which are struggling to repair the damage and normalize all the metabolic processes.

    Since most people do not know this, they lose ground during illness—and some never recover from this lean muscle loss. I have a friend who lost 18 pounds undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. When she was placed on corticosteroids for six weeks to minimize the negative side effects she was having from a chemotherapy agent, she immediately became ravenously hungry and began gaining back the weight, but it was mostly fat. Her body felt soft and ungainly to her. Now she is working out, eating nutritiously, and taking supplements to transform her body to its former lean and trim shape.

    5. Look and feel more youthful. I always tell my clients, You are as young as you are metabolically active. And you are metabolically active in direct proportion to the amount of lean muscle tissue you have. There is a difference between chronological age and physical age, and gaining lean muscle is one way to turn back the clock. I am fifty-five and my body fat percentage is somewhere between 10 and 12 percent, meaning that most of my weight is lean, metabolically active tissue. The last time I had a physical, my doctor told me that my physical age was nineteen. When I work with athletes, I don’t just sit on the sidelines and tell them what to do—I do it with them. And most of the time, even at my age, I can outrun them.

    6. Become trimmer. Muscle takes up a third of the space of fat. As you build a higher percentage of lean muscle, your body will become more firm and compact. You may even drop a clothing size while maintaining almost the same scale weight. Sometimes the changes in physique can be dramatic. I have one client who dropped from a size 12 dress to a size 6 after three months of following a performance food program and working out to increase lean muscle. Of course, she lost some weight as well, but her body was dramatically tighter and leaner. She couldn’t believe how different she looked.

    Lean, Not Skinny

    Most people don’t realize that there is a dramatic difference between being skinny and being lean. Just because a person’s arms, legs, and waistline have a small circumference doesn’t mean that he or she is healthy and lean. In fact, many skinny people have a high amount of body fat compared to muscle. This is especially true of sedentary people or those who engage in numerous aerobic activities without any kind of strength training. For example, someone might jog 4 miles a day or swim laps for an hour, yet have a body that looks very skinny and wasted. Cardiovascular activity stimulates little, if any, increase in lean muscle.

    Everyone has a certain amount of lean muscle and body fat, but there are healthy and unhealthy percentages. For example, the average body fat percentage for a man is 15 to 17 percent, and lean is considered to be in the range of 11 to 14 percent. For women, 18 to 22 percent is considered average, and 14 to 17 percent is considered lean.

    Unless you are a football player loaded with size and muscle, the more body fat you have, the lower your metabolism. You can only increase your metabolic efficiency by increasing your lean muscle mass. The more muscle you have on your frame, the easier it will be to maintain a lean and firm body.

    How lean you are has little to do with scale weight. Let’s take an example of two men who are both 5’ 10" and weigh 220 pounds. The first man is a bodybuilder and has only 7 percent body fat. All the rest of his scale weight, 204.6 pounds, is muscle—metabolically active tissue. His body is lean, firm, and strong. The second man has 35 percent body fat, which is very high for a man. He only has only 143 pounds of metabolically active tissue. His appearance is soft and flabby, he feels sluggish, and he carries a good deal of fat weight in his abdominal area.

    The Biggest Misconception about Working Out

    Most people believe that if you want to build lean muscle, you must exercise very hard daily. While high-intensity training does demand more effort, it has to be the right kind of effort. The amount of recovery time you allow and your nutritional support are just as important as your workout. Dr. Jim Flarity sums this up well when he says, It’s not just putting in a lot of effort, it’s working intelligently. It’s difficult to get people to understand that a day of rest can be as important, or more so, than a day of hard training. A day of rest and recovery helps to clear out the lactic acid that exercise creates. Exercise breaks down lean muscle. If you don’t allow proper recovery time, when the muscle is challenged again the next day you can overwork it and go backward. Not only will you not improve, you can actually make your body weaker.

    The best technique for building lean muscle involves not only the exercise program itself but the time spent recovering from exercise, performance nutrition, and safe, effective performance supplementation.

    High-intensity exercise, when done properly, is not about expending energy—it’s about learning how to efficiently manage your energy. For example, imagine two long-distance runners who are identical in every way. If one expends his greatest effort right out of the starting gate, and the other paces himself, there’s no question who will go the distance. The man or woman who learns how to manage his or her energy system—effort, rest and recovery, and nutrition—will receive the greatest gains in lean muscle and strength over time.

    And because you will be working out according to your rate of perceived exertion (RPE)—your subjective feeling of what level of effort feels light, medium, or hard to you—this program will never overwork your body.

    The Ozzie Smith Story

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