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Home | jamcoretraining.com

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Weights & Cardio Mix.

BUILDING MUSCLE & ENDURANCE TRAINING. – CAN THEY MIX?

Endurance athletes such as long distance runners, cyclists & elite triathletes are skinny, lack defined & full muscles, & their very low bodyfat levels reveal their sinews & their ribs. But what if you want to indulge in endurance sports, have low bodyfat levels & still keep your muscle? Is it possible? There is a reason why endurance athletes are stick thin. The bigger you are, the less suited you are to running, in particular, marathons & triathlons. Your bigger surface area means that your body has to expend more energy just to keep you cool, let alone keep those miles flying past.
If you want the cardio health benefits of running/cycling & a cover model body, then you’ll need to weight train.

Also, you must keep in mind that too much endurance activity will deflate your muscle size gains from weight training. Scientists have discovered that weight training & endurance sports make uneasy bed-fellows & have described what they call the “interference effect”. This produces a set of contradictory physiological responses that will

(1) have little direct benefit to enhance endurance sports performance, &
(2) make building bigger muscles almost impossible!

Basically, when you weight train & endurance train at the same time, you are asking your body to work against itself & you are training opposing energy systems. Your muscle building fast twitch muscle
fibres will be being pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, with aerobic endurance training, they will be attempting to develop greater oxygen processing capacity, & on the other, through anaerobic weight training, they will be trying to increase their cross-sectional area. (Weight training breaks down muscle tissue &
in the period when you are not weight training, they repair & grow bigger & stronger.) The result in this is “the interference effect.
And for all those women who are about to tune out because you don’t want to get big pecs & biceps, you too can benefit from building muscle by increasing your metabolic rate so you will be able to burn more calories, even while sleeping, & you will preserve your precious bone density through weight training. There is also an aesthetic
appeal of a lean, muscular body. While not many people think a pro-bodybuilder’s appearance is attractive, buff & toned beats skinny & frail any day, by any standard.

Personally, I strongly believe that one of the most important issues to be addressed in the quest for a muscular body & aerobic fitness is nutrition. What follows are several strategies & tips for adding muscle while maintaining
sports performance:

(1) Divide your calories into five to six smaller meals/snacks per day. Eat regularly throughout the day & you
should never feel too hungry or too full. You won’t store fat eating this way & you will keep your metabolism
stoked & deliver a constant supply of nutrients to your muscle cells for repair & growth. Your muscles will need
protein & amino acids especially, all day long as raw materials to keep you anabolic. As fat loss is not really the
issue here, you will need to ensure a slight, daily calorie surplus to build new muscle. If you ever feel
“starving”, you are catabolizing your own muscle tissue – not good!

(2) Always eat breakfast & include protein & complex carbs.

(3) Eat protein at every meal & aim for 7 grams per pound of bodyweight each day. Whey protein supplement is
best for pre & post workout meals for quickest absorption & assimilation. Start with 20g per serving. Whey protein
sets the anabolic environment in motion. As you will both be strength & endurance training, you will have much
higher protein requirements. Muscle is made up of protein after all!

(4) One – two hours before your workouts, eat a small meal containing about 60g of mostly complex carbs &
about 20g of whey protein. Oats are a great choice. Also, bear in mind that anaerobic strength training exercise
uses carbs/glycogen & muscle ATP for fuel. Aerobic exercise uses mostly fat for fuel. So, before hitting the
weights, you should top off your glycogen stores so you can lift adequate weight to engage the maximum amount of
fast-twitch muscle fibres during exercise to stimulate maximum growth!

(5) Your post-workout meal is the most important you eat. Within 30 minutes after you train, there is a
critical nutrient & sugar uptake window where your muscle cells are extremely insulin-sensitive & ready to restore
glycogen for muscle repair. This meal should ideally consist of 20 grams of whey protein, along with about 60 grams
of simple carbs or sugar. At this time you are actually trying to maximize insulin release to shuttle glycogen &
amino acids into your muscle cells. Plan ahead for this meal & never miss it! You could also add 2-5 grams of
creatine supplement to take advantage of this muscle cell insulin-sensitive window. The creatine will be driven
into the muscle cells to provide ATP replenishment, cell hydration & further anabolic effect.
(6) One – two hours prior to going to bed, have a small protein based meal to keep your muscles supplied with
amino acids throughout the night, when your body is under repair & growing most. Cottage cheese is a great protein
choice for this meal as it is very slow digesting. It congeals in the stomach. If you don’t like dairy or lactose,
then choose some other form of “time-release” protein like egg whites that will not give you heatburn.
Alternatively, there are some very good supplements suited for this meal. You can include some complex carbs in
this meal for added taste & to increase serotonin levels to help you fall asleep easier. Carbohydrates allow the
amino acid “tryptophan” to cross the blood-brain barrier where it can be readily converted into serotonin, the
“pleasant neurotransmitter”, which then converts into melatonin.

(7) Ensure you get a good night’s sleep. This is important for many things, including muscle & tissue growth &
repair, & a big boost of growth hormone release. Another benefit of intense training is that you will sleep
sounder, deeper & longer. You’ll be surprised how much difference an intense exercise programme can make in your quality of sleep.

(8) Drink as much water as you can. Any chance you have to down some water, do so. As soon as you become
dehydrated to any degree, you are no longer anabolic & your muscle growth shuts down. Plus, drinking abundant
amounts of water is good for overall health. Similarly, limit the amount of diuretic-type drinks you consume, eg
caffeinated & alcoholic beverages as this can interfere with adequate hydration.

(9) Consider supplementing with a high-quality whey protein isolate powder throughout the day to help you meet
your protein requirements. Whey protein isolate has a higher biological value than any other protein source – even
eggs. Again, this is especially beneficial pre & post workout, when immediate assimilation into the bloodstream is
critical.

(10) Creatine is by far the best non-steroid, safe & legal muscle building supplement to hit the market since
whey protein. It works by increasing levels of muscle cell ATP allowing you to complete a higher number of
repetitions with more weight. It also volumizes the muscle cells with water & glycogen to make them fuller & more
anabolic. Lastly, it increases insulin sensitivity causing your muscle cells to uptake sugar/glucose from the blood
stream more readily & store it as glycogen for energy.

To build & maintain running/cycling muscle you should:

(1) Emphasize raining phases where you focus only on your weight training. –Every six weeks, you should incorporate
a 3-week block of training which comprises of three intense strength weight training workouts & only two
running/cycling sessions lasting no longer than 20 minutes.

(2) Utilise compound weight training exercises .
To get the biggest muscle building benefit from your weight training do exercises such as the squat, clean dead
lift, bench press and leg press. These ‘compound’ exercises work across a number of joints and recruit large
amounts of muscle fibre. Forget the biceps curb, you want to create a large anabolic effect when you weight train.
Compound muscle exercises do this as the trigger the release of large amounts of the muscle building hormones,
testosterone and growth hormone (known as androgens). In terms of reps and sets, you should go medium to heavy and
use medium rep ranges and sets, 3-5x6-8 reps at 75% of one rep max. This type of workout will hit your muscle growing fast twitch fibres and create maximized androgen release.

(3) Include High Intensity Cardio from Time to Time.
Sprinters run and weight train and still have great physiques. Their training is much less affected by the interference effect. For most of their training time they are only training their anaerobic energy systems. This creates optimum muscle growing conditions. It would be a good idea to train like a sprinter every 3 months for about 3 weeks. The anaerobic run training performed by a sprinter can maintain your aerobic fitness.

UNDERSTAND YOUR BODY TYPE
There 3 main body types – more specifically known as ‘somatotypes’

– these are ectomorphs, mesomorphs and endomorphs.

These are also commonly know as ‘thin’, ‘athletic’ and ‘fat’! William Sheldon, the originator of the body type classification theory, believed that each body type had its own distinct physiological and psychological traits.Many of the top endurance athletes are ectomorphs and their slim build means they will find it hard to put on
muscle, even if they wanted to. If you have a similar build you too will find it difficult. In order to stand a decent chance of gaining muscle, you should reduce your endurance activity significantly. It may be a good idea, if you have been a regular endurance athlete for 6 months or more, to reduce the cycle/run/swim time to a minimum and go through a 2 month muscle building phase.
If you have an athletic body type then the chances are you will be able to maintain your muscle mass pretty well, even when endurance training. ‘Mesomorphs’ bodies will respond quickly to virtually all types of training and will be less affected by the interference effect.
Endomorphs will be carrying a lot of muscle and potentially fat and will be more able to maintain size when endurance training. To put it simply, they have more to lose! However, running will place more strain on their joints and this could lead to injury. Mileage should be built up gradually. Once the weight is off, endomorphs
have potentially the best opportunity to look big and strong as they run.

The most important factor in building muscle is your training. You need to push yourself and train with intensity. You need to experience some discomfort as you squeeze out that last rep! It is good to have some soreness. Likewise, muscles grow when they are resting. Over-training can be a common issue for athletes. If a certain muscle group is still sore, don’t train it again until it is fully recovered. Simply put, to gain muscle and maintain cardiovascular fitness, you have to train hard and train smart!

Protein Packed (warming) Meals

Protein-Packed Meals.

Cream of Tomato Soup with Cubed Chicken and Wild Rice
This is a delicious, protein-packed twist on the classic tomato soup. Fast and easy to prepare and so warming and comforting.
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
3 cups of chicken stock
3 cups of water
1 cup long grain wild rice
10 plum tomatoes (pureed in your food processor or blender)
4 skinless, boneless breasts of chicken (with excess fat removed), cubed
1/2 cup fresh basil
Fat-free sour cream
Directions:
In a large, heavy pot, combine chicken stock, water, rice, pureed tomatoes, and cubed chicken (uncooked).
Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and reduce heat to a simmer.
Cook on low heat for one hour.
Before serving, dollop with sour cream and top with fresh basil.




Chicken and Black Bean Wraps
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
4 large skinless, boneless breasts of chicken (remove all excess fat), grilled and chopped
1/4 cup red onion (peeled and chopped fine)
1 15-oz can black beans (rinsed and drained)
2 jalapeno peppers (remove seeds and sliced thin)
1 6-oz can yellow corn (drained)
Romaine lettuce (cleaned and shredded)
1 cup fat-free sour cream
1/4 cup fat-free ranch dressing
2 Tbs low-sodium taco seasoning
6 large whole-wheat wraps or soft whole-wheat tortillas
Directions:
Preheat grill to medium-high heat and cook chicken until golden brown and juices run clear when pierced with a fork.
Or
Prepare in oven at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown. Chop into small cubes.
Combine chicken, onion, beans, peppers, corn, and lettuce in a medium size bowl and set aside.
In a small bowl, combine sour cream, ranch dressing, and taco seasoning. Pour mixture into the bowl of chicken and mix until all is coated well with the dressing.
Fill wraps and roll like burritos and serve immediately.
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Turkey Chili

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
2 Tbs light olive oil
2 cups onion (peeled and chopped)
1 medium red bell pepper (seeded and chopped)
5 cloves garlic (peeled and minced)
2 lbs lean ground turkey
3 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 Tbs chili powder
1 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
2 tsp coarse salt
Fat-free sour cream
2 green onions (cleaned and chopped)
Directions:
In a large heavy pot, combine onion, pepper, and garlic with 1 Tbsp olive oil over med-high heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until medium brown and onion is transparent.
At the same time, in a large skillet, brown ground turkey over medium-high heat.
When turkey is browned, add to the onion mixture (once it's fully cooked). Add broth, chili powder, cayenne, cinnamon, salt, and pepper.
Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for 1 hour.
Serve warm and topped with fat-free sour cream and chopped green onion.
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Chicken and White Bean Chile
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time Crock-pot: 3 to 4 hours
Ingredients:
2 lbs skinless, boneless breasts of chicken (with all excess fat removed), cubed
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1 cup white onion (peeled and diced)
3 jalapenos (seeded and diced)
1 Tbs light olive oil
2 Tbs chili powder
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 16-oz can white (northern) beans
Fat-free sour cream
Fat-free cheddar cheese
1 jalapeno (seeded and chopped fine)
2 green onions (cleaned and chopped)
Directions:
Pour 1 Tbs light olive oil into a large, heavy skillet. Add chicken. Cook over med-high heat until golden brown.
In a large Crockpot, add all ingredients and cook on high for three to four hours or until desired consistency.
Serve warm, topped with fat-free sour cream, green onion, jalapenos, and fat-free cheddar cheese.
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Lemon-Pesto Chicken
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:
4 skinless, boneless breasts of chicken (remove all excess fat)
3 Tbs pesto sauce (your favorite brand or homemade if you have it)
3 large fresh lemons (juiced and seeds removed)
1 tsp lemon zest
1/8 tsp both course salt and fresh ground pepper
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butterfly your chicken.
In a large bowl, combine pesto, lemon, zest, salt, and pepper. Add chicken and coat well.
In a 9 x 11 baking dish, bake chicken at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until the juices of the meat run clear.
Serve with rice and steamed or roasted veggies.
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Chicken Macaroni
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
2 skinless, boneless breasts of chicken (all excess fat removed), chopped
3 cups chicken stock
3 cups water
1 can garbanzo beans (aka, chick peas)
2 cups whole-wheat macaroni noodles
1 small can tomato paste
1 lb baby spinach
Directions:
In a large, heavy pot, combine chicken, stock, water, and garbanzo beans. Bring to a rapid boil over medium-high heat for five minutes. Reduce to medium-low heat.
Cook over medium-low heat for 20 minutes.
Add macaroni noodles and tomato paste. Cook until macaroni is tender when pierced with a fork (about 15 minutes).
Add spinach and cook for three more minutes.
Serve warm.

My Nutrition & Training Programmes. 2011.

My personalized coaching is designed to get you up and running with a streamlined diet, workout and nutritional supplement plan -- to help you get results fast.
During this coaching you will receive:
1 on 1 Consultation with Keith Cormican.
Meet with me via Email, SMS, Skype or whatever you prefer.
Whether your goal is to build muscle or to lose fat, I will begin crafting your customized diet, workout and supplement plan after our consultation.
Please keep in mind that this is not some set formula system. It’s not an e-book and it is not something that is premade.
I have to create each diet and workout based on your experience level, your goal, your current fitness condition and your dietary preferences.
With that said, it takes a bit of time to create, so please be patient as I gather the information I need to do this for you.
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Supplement & Diet Program
I will create a personalized diet and supplement schedule that will help you get results fast.
We all know that diet can account for as much as 80% of your program success.
Unfortunately, creating the proper diet can be very difficult and time consuming. So much so that many people never really have a solid diet that they follow -- making success very difficult.
I create the diet for you, based on foods that you like to eat. All you have to do is follow it.


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Workout Training Program
In addition to your diet and supplement plan, I will also create specific weekly workouts just for you and your goal.
The workouts will take into consideration your training experience, any injuries or physical limitations you may have, your available equipment and of course your overall goal.
If I am creating a fat loss program for you the training program will also contain a specific schedule for your aerobic/cardiovascular activity.

Phosphatidylserine.

Phosphatidylserine.
Phosphatidylserine, or PS for short, is a member of a class of chemical compounds known as phospholipids. PS is an essential component in all our cells; specifically, it is a major component of the cell membrane. The cell membrane is a kind of "skin" that surrounds living cells. Besides keeping cells intact, this membrane performs vital functions such as moving nutrients into cells and pumping waste products out of them. PS plays an important role in many of these functions.
Good evidence suggests that PS can help declining mental function and depression in the elderly, and it is widely used for this purpose in Italy, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe. PS has also been marketed as a "brain booster" for people of all ages, said to sharpen memory and increase thinking ability. However, the evidence to support this use is incomplete.
Where can I get it?
Your body makes all the PS it needs. However, the only way to get a therapeutic dosage of PS is to take a supplement.
PS was originally manufactured from the brains of cows, and all the studies described here used this form. However, because animal brain cells can harbor viruses, that form is no longer available. Most PS today is made from soybeans or other plant sources.
There are reasons to expect that plant-source PS should function very similarly to PS made from cows' brains, and some animal studies suggest that it is indeed effective. However, in preliminary trials, soy-based PS and cabbage-based PS failed to prove beneficial.

Therapeutic Dosages
For the purpose of improving mental function, PS is usually taken in dosages of 100 mg two to three times daily. After maximum effect is achieved, the dosage can reportedly be reduced to 100 mg daily without losing benefit. PS can be taken with or without meals.
When taking PS for sports purposes, athletes sometimes take as much as 800 mg daily.

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Therapeutic Uses
Meaningful evidence from numerous double-blind studies suggests that animal-source PS is an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of age-related mental decline. Vegetable-derived PS has little supporting evidence.
PS is widely marketed as a treatment for ordinary age-related memory loss as well. While there is little direct evidence that it works, in studies of severe mental decline, PS appears to have been equally effective whether the cause was Alzheimer's disease or something entirely unrelated, such as multiple small strokes. This certainly suggests that PS may have a positive impact on the brain that is not specific to any one condition.
Animal-source PS has also shown to be a benefit in aiding depression.
Recently, PS has become popular among athletes who hope it can help them build muscle more efficiently. This use is based on weak evidence that PS slows the release of cortisol following heavy exercise. Cortisol is a hormone that causes muscle tissue to break down. For reasons that are unclear, the body produces increased levels of cortisol after heavy exercise. Strength athletes believe that this natural cortisol release works against their efforts to rapidly build muscle mass and hope that PS will help them advance more quickly. However, only two double-blind placebo-controlled studies of PS as a sports supplement have been reported, and neither one found effects on cortisol levels. Of these small trials, one found a possible ergogenic benefit, and the other did not.
Interestingly, PS has also been advocated as an aid to recovery from heavy exercise, according to the theory that use of PS would help reduce muscle soreness. This would seem to contradict the proposed effects on cortisol, as cortisol has anti-inflammatory properties. Nonetheless, researchers performed a double-blind study to evaluate whether 750 mg daily of soy-source PS would reduce muscle soreness following downhill racing; no benefits were seen.
One study found preliminary evidence that a combination of soy-based PS and lecithin may moderate the body's reaction to mental stress. Another study evaluated use of phosphatidylserine for reducing stress in golfers, but the benefits seen failed to reach statistical significance. Participants who were given phosphatidylserine did, however, tee-off successfully at a greater rate than those given placebo.
Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia
Overall, the evidence for animal-source PS in dementia is fairly strong. Double-blind studies involving a total of more than 1,000 people suggest that phosphatidylserine is an effective treatment forAlzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
The largest of these studies followed 494 elderly subjects in northeastern Italy over a course of 6 months. All suffered from moderate to severe mental decline, as measured by standard tests. Treatment consisted of either 300 mg daily of PS or placebo. The group that took PS did significantly better in both behavior and mental function than the placebo group. Symptoms of depression also improved.
These results agree with those of numerous other smaller double-blind studies involving a total of more than 500 people with Alzheimer's and other types of age-related dementia. However, all these studies involved cow-brain PS; studies of plant-source PS for dementia have not been reported.
Age-related Memory Loss
There is some evidence that PS can also help people with ordinary age-related memory loss. In one double-blind study that enrolled 149 people with memory loss but not dementia, phosphatidylserine provided significant benefits as compared with placebo.33 People with the most severe memory loss showed the most improvement.
However, another double-blind trial of 120 older people with memory complaints but not dementia failed to find benefits.
Athletic Performance
Weak evidence suggests that PS might decrease the release of the hormone cortisol after intense exercise. Among its many effects, cortisol acts to break down muscle tissue—exactly the opposite of the effect desired by a strength athlete or bodybuilder. This double-blind, placebo-controlled study on 11 intensely trained athletes found that 800 mg of PS taken daily reduced the cortisol rise by 20% as compared with placebo. Another small study on 9 nonathletic males found that daily doses of 400 and 800 mg of PS reduced cortisol levels after exercise by 16% and 30%, respectively. Another study found that phosphatidylserine could relieve some overtraining symptoms, including muscle soreness, possibly due to effects on cortisol.
On the basis of these preliminary trials, PS has been proposed as a sports supplement. However, there is as yet no direct evidence to support the claims that PS actually helps athletes build muscles more quickly and with less training effort. Furthermore, the most recent and best-designed study, using vegetable-source PS, failed to find any effect on cortisol release, muscle soreness, or markers of muscle damage.

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Safety!
Phosphatidylserine is generally regarded as safe when used at recommended dosages. Side effects are rare, and when they do occur they usually consist of nothing much worse than mild gastrointestinal distress. One study found that use of phosphatidylserine did not alter results on standard medical screening tests. However, the maximum safe dosages for young children, pregnant or nursing women, or those with severe liver or kidney disease have not been established.
PS is sometimes taken with ginkgo because they both appear to enhance mental function. However, some caution might be in order: Ginkgo is a "blood thinner," and PS might be one as well. PS is known to enhance the effect of heparin, a very strong prescription blood thinner. It is possible that combined use of PS and any drug or supplement that thins the blood could interfere with normal blood clotting enough to cause problems. Some medications and supplements to consider include warfarin (Coumadin), aspirin, pentoxifylline (Trental), clopidogrel (Plavix), ticlopidine (Ticlid), garlic, ginkgo, and vitamin E.



What You Should Know
If you are taking:
• Prescription blood thinners, such as warfarin (Coumadin), heparin, aspirin, pentoxifylline (Trental), clopidogrel (Plavix), or ticlopidine (Ticlid): Do not use phosphatidylserine except on a physician's advice.
• Ginkgo, garlic, or vitamin E: Taking phosphatidylserine at the same time might conceivably "thin" the blood too much.