The Predator Program

[infinite_shore]

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
I’ve read your experiments and it seems that you confuse our body’s adaptation to utilize virtually any food products for survival with some evolutionary or physiological loophole.

It does make for interesting reading though, so good luck.
[/quote]

Both adaptation and evolution have overlap through epigenetics. I can appreciate your point, but I personally don’t think we can discern the two.

Thanks!
[/quote]

Not a single predator I can think of does breathing squats.
[/quote]

Bullshit! Our cats do them every day. I strap a DB on their back and make them do it. They are jacked as hell. I plan on releasing an ebook very soon.

[Chris_Colucci]

I’m all for experimenting with different stuff, but there are at least a dozen points in your article/rant/explanation that are inaccurate, illogical, or just absurd.

I think you’re way, way oversimplifying the idea that humans are “just another animal”, and I think you’re misinterpreting predators as being strictly carnivores, which they aren’t always.

Also, the training structure you’re proposing is a recipe for injury on a few different levels. No warm-ups, because we don’t get warm-ups in nature, like, seriously man?

Anyhow, good luck. I’m at least interested to see where you end up in three months.

[PureNsanity]

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Anatomically we are a lot more similar to the great apes. But they’re omnivores, aren’t they?
[/quote]

Yes, but as I mention in the discussion we cannot get as close to their diets. Gorillas don’t drink water because they consume so much vegetation (about 40 lbs a day). In ape diets you have soil, insects, and roots too. For the foods that are similar like nuts and fruits the kinds that they’re eating aren’t the variety we’re buying in the store either.

I’ll acknowledge that the nutritional profile of a domesticated bovine is probably far different from a wild gazelle, but I do think overall we can more closely mimic the eating and activity patterns of a lion.

Really it was all the name. I tried The Herbivore Program and it went no where.

[infinite_shore]

Have you tried the “meth diet” for fatloss? Seems insanely effective. Way more fun, too.

[PureNsanity]

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
I’m all for experimenting with different stuff, but there are at least a dozen points in your article/rant/explanation that are inaccurate, illogical, or just absurd.
[/quote]

Can you summarize them or elaborate on the others some more?

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
I think you’re way, way oversimplifying the idea that humans are “just another animal”, and I think you’re misinterpreting predators as being strictly carnivores, which they aren’t always.
[/quote]

It is a bit of an oversimplification yes. It’s easy to argue about the anatomical differences in our intestine, the pH differences in stomach acid, etc; however, I’m looking at the similarities. I find way too often that people dismiss many similarities based off of few differences and vice versa. We must acknowledge all similarities and all differences without complete dismissal of one or the other.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Also, the training structure you’re proposing is a recipe for injury on a few different levels. No warm-ups, because we don’t get warm-ups in nature, like, seriously man?
[/quote]

I’ve been working out like this for 5 months now. Warm ups and stretching have very little scientific evidence they help prevent injury. Additionally since I’m usually at 50% - 70% of my 1RM the first so many reps usually serve as the warm ups for the sets at exhaustion.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Anyhow, good luck. I’m at least interested to see where you end up in three months.[/quote]

Awesome.

[SkyzykS]

[quote]infinite_shore wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
I’ve read your experiments and it seems that you confuse our body’s adaptation to utilize virtually any food products for survival with some evolutionary or physiological loophole.

It does make for interesting reading though, so good luck.
[/quote]

Both adaptation and evolution have overlap through epigenetics. I can appreciate your point, but I personally don’t think we can discern the two.

Thanks!
[/quote]

Not a single predator I can think of does breathing squats.
[/quote]

Bullshit! Our cats do them every day. I strap a DB on their back and make them do it. They are jacked as hell. I plan on releasing an ebook very soon.[/quote]

I would read that. I taught my dog to walk on a treadmill but even she gets bored with that after about five minutes.

[magick]

Why breathing squats? Why not balls out sprints or 3-5 reps of heavy weight with really short rests?

Or doing like 50 reps in under 2-3 minutes or some other ridiculous time constraint.

The problem is that predators don’t lift weights. They move as fast as they can in an effort to get the meal that will sustain them until they’re hungry again. They’re not actively building muscle mass or looking to get stronger.

Sure, animals are big and strong, but I’m pretty sure they’re not at their potential. In fact, they’re probably at their minimum. Animals are strong because they use their muscles almost constantly and they just have a different nervous system/muscle composition/a fuck-ton more muscles than we do.

I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to get an animal stronger, then you’d do the same thing we do- get them on a near constant caloric surplus and do some form of progressive overload.

[LoRez]

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:
I’m not sticking to programs I know work because although my lifts are decent for an amateur and slowly progressing, I haven’t seen results that I’m 100% satisfied with. There are a lot of valid reasons why people can say that is according to current methodologies, but this is something that I’ve stirred on for a bit in my research and I want to experiment on.
[/quote]

I don’t think this is a particularly good motive. If you’re doing this to make better progress on your lifts, I’d stick with one of the many different proven approaches.

However, as far as “I’m curious and I want to see how I respond”, that’s cool.

I mean, there are documented cases of people living for months on nothing but pemmican and ascorbic acid, and at least one case where that was the sole diet for over a year. Other than the fat ratio, you’re not too far from that.

(Pemmican was usually a 50/50 mix by weight of dried meat with rendered fat.)

How are you going to be eating the meat? Seasonings, sauces, or just chop it up and eat it? Which cuts?

[PureNsanity]

[quote]magick wrote:
Why breathing squats? Why not balls out sprints or 3-5 reps of heavy weight with really short rests?[/quote]

Because breathing sets push me to a level I haven’t gotten to with any other technique. That level of effort is what I feel will illicit physiological response closest to adaptation for survival.

[quote]magick wrote:
Or doing like 50 reps in under 2-3 minutes or some other ridiculous time constraint.[/quote]

I actually end up doing 50 reps in under 3 minutes. Usually it’s a 5 - 10 second breathing break along the lines of 15,5,3,3,3,3,3,2,2,1,1,1,1,1,1 when I’m using 185 lbs for 50+ reps. For 225 lbs I usually start off around 9 and I’m at doubles by 20 reps, but it’s still close to 15 “chunks”. I’ll have to time it next time to verify…

[quote]magick wrote:
I’m pretty sure that if you wanted to get an animal stronger, then you’d do the same thing we do- get them on a near constant caloric surplus and do some form of progressive overload.[/quote]

I don’t think we can say with any certainty. This is an assumption based on what we presume to be true, but seeing how many people (like myself) that struggle to make progress compared to others expending far less effort I’d have to say there’s more to the picture.

I feel we’ve essentially pigeon holed exercise science to what we know works for a particular subset of people. I think a great example is how there is a smaller subset of body builders that have utilized high volume routines. High volume and typical hypertrophy techniques are fairly different, and I guess my overall question is what other methodologies have we not discovered that will work for other subsets?

It’s really a search for what I may respond best to and the only way to know for sure it to experiment with different theories.

[PureNsanity]

@LoRez

Thanks for sharing those thoughts. As mentioned in my prior response yes this is more of a “let’s test this theory and see if it works for me” rather than here’s my genius idea I’m trying to sell to everyone.

[quote]LoRez wrote:
How are you going to be eating the meat? Seasonings, sauces, or just chop it up and eat it? Which cuts?[/quote]

I’ll be eating everything completely raw. Organ cuts will be liver and kidney. For muscle meat I’m just doing 85% ground beef to cut costs. I’ve got some eating videos on my YouTube channel with raw beef and raw liver, but I’ve been eating meat like that for 20 months now. I’ve consumed about 600 lbs of raw, untrimmed beef in that time.

[Chris_Colucci]

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:
Can you summarize them or elaborate on the others some more? [/quote]
Serious apologies ahead of time. I’m not trying to hijack the thing here. I just laid out most of the things that caught my eye. Certainly don’t feel the need to address them all, it is what it is, I’m fine agreeing to disagree on some points.

While researching diet and nutrition I often look to nature to analyze how animals eat because animals live relatively free from obesity and chronic diseases.

Obesity in animals can’t be looked at with the same perspective as in humans. Presuming obesity means “an excess of bodyfat”, there are plenty of fat animals and the majority of the time that fat is necessary. So, it’s a non-issue.

A good example is how chimpanzees stuff their face with fruits. Some nutritionists have cautioned against eating too much fruit because of the sugar content; however, if we look to nature we see they can do it without issue. If they can do it why canâ??t we?

We can. People can absolutely eat fruit as part of an effective fat loss/muscle-building diet. Again, non-issue. Anyone “stuffing their faces” with anything is likely to be cautioned against by nutritionists.

Contrary to many vegetarian proponents we cannot mimic vegetarian diets very well.

Here’s where you might’ve means “herbivorous” instead of “vegetarian.” And Humans absolutely can thrive on a vegetarian diet. It’s been debated tons of times on the forum, but there are plenty of successful vegetarian bodybuilders.

Most vegetarians are grazers and literally spend the entire day eating. The pure volume of food they eat and time it takes to eat it is not feasible for a modern diet.

Some omnivorous bodybuilders graze by eating every 2-3 hours. It could be argued that “grazing” is one of the most successful ways to achieve body composition changes.

We actually eat closer to a predatorâ??s diet which is based on large, infrequent meals which is an eating pattern that is possible to accomplish.

Again, by “predator”, did you mean “carnivore”? If so, I think that’s making a very big and so far-unsupported leap.

I propose that if we mimic activity and diet close to a predatorâ??s activity and diet that there may be some significant health and strength benefits.

This is a fair stance, and basically what you’ll be testing. No problem.

A predator eats meat and only meat.

Again… carnivore? If so, that’s not always accurate. Also, bears are an example of a predator which eats meat and plants fairly regularly. Semi-related, with all this over-focus on eating like a predator, why not try reflecting on how Neanderthals ate (kind of a well-researched Paleo diet, so to speak). In which case, studies claim they did eat plants as well (sometimes from the stomach of whatever they already hunted).

Part of the problem with our current eating habits is when we do eat meat weâ??re eating a small amount usually with a variety of other foods to include carbohydrates.

A presumption, and something that’s easily varied from person to person and meal to meal.

Carbohydrates actually speed up the digestion of the meal by helping push the food out.

If I eat a steak, broccoli, and a baked potato, the meal will be digested faster than if I just ate a steak?

It is a rarity to find a food in nature that has both significant quantities of fat and carbohydrates.

It’s also a rarity to find a food in nature that has high-quality protein, other than in animals which often prefer not to become food. Perhaps that’s an indication that we shouldn’t be consuming protein, since it requires potentially life-risking effort to obtain? (See what I did there?)

Perhaps these are all indications we shouldnâ??t be consuming fat and carbohydrates together in the same meal?

Reminiscent of Berardi’s old concept of having separate protein-fat meals and protein-carb meals. No problem. Though I believe, years later, he went on to basically say it didn’t really matter.

When a lion makes a kill it gorges 2 â?? 3 times eating upwards of 75 lbs of meat each time. It then will not eat for a couple days.

False premise. Lions don’t require that much meat. From my reading, it takes a fraction of that, 11-15 pounds, to get through the day. They’ll gorge when necessary, but it’s not their go-to method of eating.

I will eat around at least 3 lbs of beef in each sitting consuming at least 6 lbs of beef each day. I will subsequently fast for 2 days after an eating day.

Is that an arbitrary fasting period? Wouldn’t it make more “sense” to fast until hungry, however long that takes, and then eat or gorge again?

One of the wonderful things about exercise is the body cannot tell if youâ??re running from a cheetah for survival or on a treadmill for fun â?? it will adapt either way.

I’d disagree with this. The adrenaline dump, and associated physiologic effects, of legitimately running for your life isn’t comparable to a very, very fast treadmill sprint.

I believe part of the reasons why animals in the wild are so much stronger than humans is that our bodies have learned they do not need to change to survive.

That’s not really why you think a 100-pound chimpanzee is stronger than a 200-pound Csulli, right? There’s a little more to it that that, and the “plateau of man’s evolution” or whatever you’re getting at, is just a small factor.

I believe we can change that by implementing a balls-to-the-wall workout strategy that mimics real world survival situations.

Nothing in the weight room will mimic a real world survival situation, period.

In the wild there is no warm up. When a predator has an opportunity for a kill or a prey has to evade a predator there is no stretching, pyramid progression, or other warm up. It is act now, do now, or die.

There’s also no structured schedule, so in sticking with this theory, shouldn’t the training be as randomized as possible? Varying the days off, exercises trained, and between-session rest?

While warm ups are still a common piece of many routines there is little scientific evidence to suggest they have any benefit. Warming up does allow you to perform better, but performance does not necessarily equate to grow or physiological change.

Okay so, there’s no evidence that warm-ups are beneficial, but they do help you perform better, but performing better doesn’t mean you’ll get bigger or stronger. What?

Besides, if the purpose of lifting weights is to exhaust your muscles there is no better way to do so then an all out set.

One set to failure is obviously a classic method of lifting. But the effectiveness is also highly debated.

By only completing sets like this I believe itâ??s also signaling to the body there will be no easy physical demands which could cause greater physiological response.

Couldn’t the argument be made that stopping after just one set is the easy way out? I mean, you get attacked by a pack of wolves and fight one off, there’s another ready to pounce while you’re still recovering.

[quote] Group A Group B Group C
Lower Squats Deadlift Clean & Press
Back Pull-ups Horizontal BB Row Reverse DB Flys
Chest/tris Military press Bench press Cable Flys[/quote]
Are all of these exercises being done “breathing style” Breathing flyes, breathing deadlift, breathing clean and press? The risk:reward for these is pretty out of line. Seems like a decent training technique being seriously misapplied.

I will embark on this program for 90 days.

I know you said you’re looking at weight loss, but will you track other variables? Strength? Biweekly pics?

If you are interested in trying this program with me I would love to hear about it or your end results.

Nah, I’m good thanks.

[PureNsanity]

@Chris Colucci

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks! Lot of great points and observations, of course need a few to respond…

[LoRez]

[quote]PureNsanity wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:
How are you going to be eating the meat? Seasonings, sauces, or just chop it up and eat it? Which cuts?[/quote]

I’ll be eating everything completely raw. Organ cuts will be liver and kidney. For muscle meat I’m just doing 85% ground beef to cut costs. I’ve got some eating videos on my YouTube channel with raw beef and raw liver, but I’ve been eating meat like that for 20 months now. I’ve consumed about 600 lbs of raw, untrimmed beef in that time.
[/quote]

Found your channel.

Eating raw meat and raw eggs

[anon50325502]

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
…there are plenty of fat animals and the majority of the time that fat is necessary.
[/quote]

A lot of predators have a considerable amount of fat.

[anon50325502]

http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/

Hope this helps.

[Melvin_Smiley]

I think it’s nuts, dude. But I mean that in a very curious/complimentary way. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

[PureNsanity]

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Obesity in animals can’t be looked at with the same perspective as in humans. Presuming obesity means “an excess of bodyfat”, there are plenty of fat animals and the majority of the time that fat is necessary. So, it’s a non-issue.[/quote]
While the exact percentages of what qualifies as animal obesity may be different, it is definitely not a non-issue. Animals carry fat yes but animals don’t eat themselves so fat they cannot walk. Without any nutritional knowledge animals don’t develop near the excess body fat or chronic disease humans do. Before you just say they’re more active I’ve seen a lot of lazy animals too. As pointed out animals are doing squats, using periodization, or doing maximal effort work.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
We can. People can absolutely eat fruit as part of an effective fat loss/muscle-building diet. Again, non-issue. Anyone “stuffing their faces” with anything is likely to be cautioned against by nutritionists.[/quote]
Cautioned yes, but I don’t feel the scientific literature warrants any reason to be cautioned against fruit consumption.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Here’s where you might’ve means “herbivorous” instead of “vegetarian.” And Humans absolutely can thrive on a vegetarian diet. It’s been debated tons of times on the forum, but there are plenty of successful vegetarian bodybuilders.[/quote]
Okay I want to address all the herbivore, carnivore, and predator stuff here. Yes I did mean to identify that it’s most predators are carnivorous but you’re absolutely right predator does not equal carnivore. While there are body builders that are vegan it’s only possible due to supplementation. Additionally some people, like me, respond very poorly to vegan diets. As a quantifiable example my HDL drops to 30 - 40, where as my vegan wife who thrives on that diet has a 90+ HDL.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Some omnivorous bodybuilders graze by eating every 2-3 hours. It could be argued that “grazing” is one of the most successful ways to achieve body composition changes.[/quote]
My argument is that eating every 2 - 3 hours is not grazing. Grazers literally spend the entire day eating. Eat a pound of raw spinach every 2 - 3 hours and you’ll get an idea of what grazing really is… If I’m not pushing myself that takes me around an hour.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
A presumption, and something that’s easily varied from person to person and meal to meal.[/quote]
Carbohydrate interference with protein and fat absorption (fat absorption particularly) is incredibly well scientifically established. I’ve got several references if you want, but this is why fiber “reduces” cholesterol.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
If I eat a steak, broccoli, and a baked potato, the meal will be digested faster than if I just ate a steak?[/quote]
Yes. Meals are digested as a whole not as constituent parts. The speed of digestion is why glucose response from carbohydrates slows down with protein and fat consumption and why fiber interferes with fat absorption.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
It’s also a rarity to find a food in nature that has high-quality protein, other than in animals which often prefer not to become food. Perhaps that’s an indication that we shouldn’t be consuming protein, since it requires potentially life-risking effort to obtain? (See what I did there?)[/quote]
Isn’t animals preference not to be eaten the evolutionary drive behind predators?

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Reminiscent of Berardi’s old concept of having separate protein-fat meals and protein-carb meals. No problem. Though I believe, years later, he went on to basically say it didn’t really matter.[/quote]
Yes Berardi has gone anti-nutrient timing and meal composition it seems, but I’d argue that the research wasn’t designed right. Since it takes 6 - 8 hours to move food through the stomach and small intestine you have to wait at least 8 hours before eating another meal to make sure they don’t mix in the digestive process.

I’ve got experiment data, for instance, that supports fiber doesn’t have an active role in cholesterol reduction when separating meals with enough time. If you’re interested PM me because that’s a completely new discussion. Additionally we tend to look at nutrient timing on a 24 hour scale which I don’t think matters either. This pattern is on a 72 hour scale though.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
From my reading, it takes a fraction of that, 11-15 pounds, to get through the day. They’ll gorge when necessary, but it’s not their go-to method of eating.[/quote]
Good, because 6 lbs a day is no where near the body weight equivalent consumption of 75 lbs. Heh…

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Is that an arbitrary fasting period? Wouldn’t it make more “sense” to fast until hungry, however long that takes, and then eat or gorge again?[/quote]
It’s far from arbitrary. It’s a 72 hour cycle that will allow my glycogen levels to go from high to low inducing mild to moderate ketosis at the end.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
I’d disagree with this. The adrenaline dump, and associated physiologic effects, of legitimately running for your life isn’t comparable to a very, very fast treadmill sprint.[/quote]
Which is my exact reason on prescribing a balls-to-the-wall breathing set methodology. As mentioned in early paragraphs I think most people have trained their body they don’t need to adapt to survive - they quit when it gets tough.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
That’s not really why you think a 100-pound chimpanzee is stronger than a 200-pound Csulli, right? There’s a little more to it that that, and the “plateau of man’s evolution” or whatever you’re getting at, is just a small factor.[/quote]
An adult chimp is up to 150 lbs and yes, no offense Csulli, I think a 150 lbs chimp could take him.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Nothing in the weight room will mimic a real world survival situation, period.[/quote]
Doesn’t mean that getting as close as we can won’t be beneficial.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
There’s also no structured schedule, so in sticking with this theory, shouldn’t the training be as randomized as possible? Varying the days off, exercises trained, and between-session rest?[/quote]
Point taken. I tried to implement variation in workouts to help simulate, I’ll have to vary some fasting periods to only 1 day.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Okay so, there’s no evidence that warm-ups are beneficial, but they do help you perform better, but performing better doesn’t mean you’ll get bigger or stronger. What?[/quote]
Does eating less guarantee weight loss? It helps most the time but is far from guarantee. What if less warmup and training to failure produces more results that than total performance? It’s similar to an intensity versus TUT debate. After one breathing set like I’ve described my legs are spent.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Couldn’t the argument be made that stopping after just one set is the easy way out? I mean, you get attacked by a pack of wolves and fight one off, there’s another ready to pounce while you’re still recovering.[/quote]
Sure, but you could also say that it meant you killed all the wolves. My theory is if you’re still alive it represents the latter more.

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
I know you said you’re looking at weight loss, but will you track other variables? Strength? Biweekly pics?[/quote]
Normally my experiments are done with DXA scans, blood work, and BMR measurements but so far those haven’t done much for the naysayers of my work. They’ve found ways to dismiss my DXA scan results showing 13.3 lean mass gain in 4 weeks and a 26 lbs lean mass gain in 7 weeks. I’m going to do training logs of the workouts, weekly pics, weight, and some video at least.

[SkyzykS]

For the sake of accuracy, shouldn’t you do an intense bout of exercise followed immediately by gorging?

Basically-squat til you drop, then while on the floor eat yourself into a stupor.

Also, since I’m a Discovery channel junkie- most lions do have a warm up. They do a low prowling which turns into a trot as they stalk prey, then as they attack from multiple angles it breaks out into a full speed chase followed by close melee to kill the prey.

So maybe some slow prowler work, a nice short jog, an intense sprint then an mma match- followed by something to eat only if you win.

[Jlabs]

The animals don’t do breathing squats analogies are killing me ha ha.

[PureNsanity]

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
For the sake of accuracy, shouldn’t you do an intense bout of exercise followed immediately by gorging?[/quote]
Yes. There will be a short delay to finish workouts and get home to eat, but my gym is only a couple minutes from my house. It would be better if one exercise could produce total body exhaustion to adequate levels so the break would be even smaller, but that doesn’t really exist.

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:
Also, since I’m a Discovery channel junkie- most lions do have a warm up. They do a low prowling which turns into a trot as they stalk prey, then as they attack from multiple angles it breaks out into a full speed chase followed by close melee to kill the prey.

So maybe some slow prowler work, a nice short jog, an intense sprint then an mma match- followed by something to eat only if you win.[/quote]
Point taken, but I’d have to question how much actual warm up the low prowling does. I could military crawl for a while I guess… I’ll definitely have to consider it, but I think that a typical pyramid scheme warm-up is still well above the low-prowling equivalent.