Do beginners need amino acid supplementation? Hell, no! No, no, NO! You don’t even need protein powders. Don’t rely on supplementation. There are no magic pills. Well, there are magic pills with magical effects. But they can also kill you or cause serious chronic diseases. Reasonably safe supplements on the other hand, regardless of what advertisements say, have way lower potency. So don’t rely on supplements, you would only be deceiving yourself and wasting money.

I frequently hear oversimplified explanations and defintions such as L-Cartinine is a fat burner or proteins build muscle. Human body is a complex machine. It is just naive to believe you can simply stick something in your body and expect (positive) results. For instance L-Carnitine helps burning fat, but if you don’t combine it with physical activity you will have no results. No matter how much L-Carnitine you take, you won’t lose fat just by taking it. Same goes for protein supplementation. The more the better approach will only make you fat.

Master The Real Food First

How should beginners supplement then? First of all, know what you are doing. Since you are reading this now, you have Internet access. Just try to educate yourself as much as you can. This is your health, it should worth the time. Second of all, keep it simple in the beginning. Here is my short list of supplements:

• Real food. Rice, chicken, eggs, fruits, vegetables… You need to make sure you are getting enough of these. Enough and not too much. Not too much but diverse enough. If you are not eating right, supplements will have even less positive effects.
• Vitamins and minerals. I know you want to start munching those animal-giga-nitro-x’s right now. But your body won’t really respond hype. Make sure you take enough micronutrients. Remember extra stress caused by workout increases your need. Consult your doctor for precise amounts. Especially important for bodybuilders are:
  • Vitamin C
  • Vitamin B
  • Zinc
  • Magnesium
  • Potassium
• [optional] Post workout shake. This is not a necessity, but if you happen to have a fast metabolizing protein (such as powdered whey protein) take it just after your workout. This is one of the best times to take supplements.

Take-away here, is that you don’t need fancy supplements when you are just beginning. They won’t do wonders as they are advertised. They won’t even make a significant difference to be honest. Concentrate on other aspects of bodybuilding. Learn how to train right. Make sure you rest enough. Eat real, healthy food.

And of course; have fun!

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The Womb Method

Before we get into the details of the box method, I should mention about the womb method. It was implemented quite successfully in the gym before the previous one. The gym was run by a group of young Sports Academy graduates. The manager was the oldest of them. He converted a not much used space into an office for himself (this is the womb). The door of the office was towards the main entrance, and the back and side walls were (frosted) glass bricks seperating from the main studio. So he sat in his office his face to the door and his back to the gym. When I say he sat there, I mean he sat in that office all the time. He was spatially in the gym, but actually he was never there (hence the womb). The music would stop and he wouldn’t notice (or care?) until I walk over there and tell him to turn it on again. I don’t know what he was doing there, but I guess he was doing something (on his laptop) more important than finding out what was happening in his gym.

I witnessed the conditions degrading over a period of time. There were less and less people working out. At one point only regulars were (me and) a bunch of students living there. Then the so-called instructors’ mocking those young members became more disturbing for me. And did I mention about the music. The music was horrible. I guess they had made a management decision on building new offices instead of investing on an MP3 player. Load a CD with grandmother music, endure tracks sequentially, go remind the manager the CD is finished. This is the womb method for you.

One day I was in his office, we used to get along well actually, chatting about how my business goes and then the ever shrinking member count. I asked him “are you really doing all you can to prevent it?”¹, he said “yes, of course”. Two days later I had a new gym membership.²

Is The Box Method Applicable For You?

If you have an hierarchical organization, you can let the information flow from the bottom up to you. This way you get the aggregated information from every branch under your management. Like a birds eye view. This doesn’t necessarily imply lack of detail. But it definitely implies lack of objectivity. If you have the means to measure the performance of a branch accurately, this upwards flow of information in the hierarchy is not a bad thing. For example, a sales branch can’t safely lie about the inventory. Or an advertisement team’s performance can be determined with the help of an expert advisor.

If you are running a gym. The single quantitative indicator is the number of members. More new members doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing good, but not renewed memberships is conclusive that you suck. Therefore it is stupid to try the information flow described above; it will simply be too late when you find out something is wrong. This is where the box method comes to rescue.

The box method in a nutshell is delegating management to a box³. A good manager should know how to delegate, right? But forget about good management. The most powerful selling point of the box method is that it not only doesn’t require good managers, it encourages bad management.

My current gym implements the box method successfully. Whenever something goes wrong, or you have a question you are told to write it down and put it in the box. How well does it work? I haven’t tried it yet. But I am convinced that the results are quite consistent. Pretty much everybody, members and employees alike, tells me they have tried without any results and I should also give it a try. Now, isn’t this a mighty example of how efficiently the box’s capabilites are utilized.

Advantages Of The Box Method Is Numerous

I would like to share a little incident, which happened before I learned about the box method at all. There is this huge machine, one of those total body workout promising complete fitness systems. I think it is called Kinesis or something. Anyway, the point is this thing has a huge wooden frame. So they decided to put it right in the middle of the weight room. In front of the mirrors in the middle, where it will block most the daylight. And it did create a really depressing environment successfully. So, one day so stressed up that I couldn’t contain myself, I stormed upstairs to the customer represantative lady who has taken my registration. I am neither polite nor subtle, especially when I’m pissed of. So I directly said:

"Whoever decied to put that thing in the middle of the weight room, can
not be possibly working out here. Otherwise he would have realized that is
a horrible placement."

She gave me a quick horrified look and then turned to the table at the opposite side. Apparently, that moron, who made the decision was sitting there. I’ll keep what happened afterwards short. I basically took both of them, no I actually only wanted her to see the situation but the instructor come along anyway, and explained why that was a very very bad idea to put a huge wooden frame in front of the main mirrors⁴ in a room without tall windows. And what happened? The customer represantative lady kept looking at me like a lobotomized monkey and let the instructor defend (well, at least that’s what he would have called it) his decision and find solid arguments (like “oh, there are mats there”, MATS?! Can’t you just MOVE them somewhere else!) against the alternative position I offered for the machine. And the most pathetic thing was he kept on assuring me once the thing is assembled completely, they’ll push it all the way to the mirror so it won’t take that much space. Putting aside the question not being the space but being the concealment of the mirror, it was obvious that it would never ever fit between those two columns. I have seen this with my eyes in a second. How can they possibly fail to realize that it won’t fit with tools and days to work it out. And it didn’t fit of course. Anyway that is not the point. The point is I have learned that my so-called customer representative was just too incompetent and inexperienced to even lie to me saying “OK, I have listened your complaint, I will relay it to management.” The machine is still there. And they turn the lights on even midday, because it is dark. If you have a problem with that, write a letter to the box.

Yes, the box takes care of it all. You can get away with anything! Customer representatives who only know how to say hi very enthusiastically, so-called instructors who can’t even crank out a solid set with proper form themselves, even with tinyier weights, cleaning people who call the person 50 m away (and there is a whole changing room in between with doors closed) yelling and swearing… It all works harmoniously. I hear some people complain. They complain about reception people giving them adjacent lockers where most of them are empty. Fixing all these little problems and keeping track of what is going on in the gym is quite some work. It probably means increased expenses (hiring competent people?) at the same time. The box method alleviates all this burden acting like a filter for customer complaints. Have a complaint? Write a letter and throw it in the box. Very effective.

Does It Really Work

Enough satire for one post I think. Yes, it does work. My current gym is really using the box method. The non-existance of a proper management is so obvious that you, as a member, can’t help notice it. It sucks, period.

What do I do when I have a suggestion or a complaint? I can’t go to the customer representative who is not equipped to carry on an intelligent discussion. Telling the instructors doesn’t produce much better results. In the best case they tell me “we have been trying tell this and that for long time to the management, but nothing happened yet” and encourage me to write to the box. Some of the resons I can come up with for not writing to the box:

• There is no guarantee the letters are read. I make a consious effort in my life to make sure what I say is heard every time.
• If they are read; I have no idea who reads them. It might as well be the janitor. Believe me I wouldn’t be surprised at all in that case. If I am going to write a letter seriously, I’d like to know someone who can make decisions read them.
• Let’s assume someone with the authority to fix things is reading these letters. And she is reading them because she wants to improve conditions of her facility. Then, why can’t she simply show up, see things with her own eyes and maybe talk to people? Why the hell do I have to sit down and write a stupid letter to put in a stupid box? Why do I have to do her job?

This narrows my options to; do nothing or blog about it. I prefer the latter. Writing always helps seeing things in a different point of view. And I would like to hear what you think about this as well.

Both the earlier (womb) gym and this one are still in the business. They are probably getting less memberships than they would if they operated well. But they don’t close up shop. People keep coming. This is one half of the real problem. Because there is no real community, you don’t get to learn, before you sign-up, that this place is not a good choice.

The other half is more dramatic; people don’t know what to expect. This is so sad. Everybody can complain when they blow cold air from outside in (this is called the air conditioning here, it blows instead of sucking). But you should actually complain when they tell you to do side bends with weights, if you are trying to reduce your waist. We don’t know what to expect, therefore we get what we deserve. Maybe this is the perfect management for us. After all a box can’t tell that you will never be able to achieve your goals⁵ with your current level of determination. But this is a subject for another entry.

1: No, it didn’t tip him up. Yes, they are still in business.

2: Which was a short, but great experience for me. Actually I just went there did my workout. After all that torture at that previous gym, just doing you thing feels great though.

3: Yes, box. As in tip box.

4: What I mean is that almost 70% of the light contributing the room reflects from that single mirror.

5: That you so ambiguously define, yet fail to hide.

Related posts:

1. Sign of a Stupid Programmer
2. Was it the imperialism that made the west rich?

I could have just told him to get lost. That is usually what I do, because these so-called instructors think of themselves as gurus and all you can be is a newbie to be guided and advised and… Yes, instructed . They are usually stupid people with a crappy education. But this was a nice person, so I didn’t gave him the usual. Instead I tried to explain him. I thought that if I explained things calmly and simply, he would at least understand part of it. But I was wrong.

I decided that it was enough when he told me “perhaps you have the prejudice that you know better than us (instructors)“. Prejudice? Prejudice! I asked a single question “Have you ever done bodybuilding?“. The answer was of course no. “Then how the hell can you tell me that you know about this stuff?“. Really, it is not something you can learn from books. For training other people, or even for your own training. So I don’t have a prejudice, you moron. I have seen you show people incline bench press on a 45 degrees bench. Forget bodybuilding, you simply don’t know the first thing about weight training.

Guru Happens In Three Months

I see this happening in gyms all the time. A newbie trains for three months, and then decides that he has mastered it all. He compassionately comes to you, the pathetic loser who obviously know nothing, to share his infinite wisdom. And you tell him to go bother someone else, directly and probably in the presence of others. Not a pleasant scene. I believe he acts with good intentions, but that doesn’t make it less insulting.

Well, fools are fools. I can never imagine to surmount the limitless power of foolishness. But there is a pattern, and I think it is worth drawing some attention to it. What happens is not significantly important. Neither your reaction. But it is important to realize and observe it.

I have worked as a cashier for a brief period of time. If you are working at a busy place it is not at all easy to get used to. But once you do, you start experiencing something (IMO) unique. Time slows down for you, relative to the person paying of course. While she is hurrying to get it over with and (hopefully) get it right, you do your part efforlessly. Simply because you have done that for too many times before. The customer has no way of seeing this, she is just too busy with finding her purse, counting the money or whatever. On the other hand it has become a reflex for you, so you can observe the person in front of you shutting down everything but the task at hand. My point here is; who has a better understanding of the subject inevitably can see things in a much larger field of view, but the other is oblivious to this fact.

What happened this morning made me think; I must be doing the same thing (being a fool) on some other subjects. Of course I am not aware of it. I am oblivious to my own ignorance. Isn’t that convenient?

What Is Missing In This Picture

Human eye has about 200 degrees viewing angle. It is a pretty wide angle. But still it is just a little more than half of panoramic view. Half of the truth. Actually it is much less than the half, considering a 3 dimensional space. Our vision is just a projection of our surroundings, very limited information in this sense. And how many of us now feel like visually inadequate?

Not likely. Because our brain compensates for the holes in our knowledge. It puts the pieces together and infers for what is missing. We think we know what is around us, but in reality we just make things. up.

This is not a necessarily a bad thing. We can work with limited information and create art. An artist might reach exactly the same result as she imagined it to be. But most of the time there is no instantiated idea that makes it to the final creation. Another example is martial arts. There is no way to stop and observe your surroundings and your opponent. And these change constantly with time. Unless of course you are already knocked out. Yet your mind can fill the gaps in this very limited 2 dimensional information to create a 4 dimensional model and makes predictions based on that. These activities (artistic creation, martial arts) have significantly different time scales. But a lot more than we are counciously aware of is happening in both. Autonomous nature of this guessing shouldn’t mean becoming aware of and having some control over it is worthless.

This counciousness can sometimes save you from being fooled (or being a fool). As crude example; people with high self-confidence speak loud and clear, right? Yes. And people with low self-confidence do that as well, they are possibly even louder. If you buy into this stereotype you will probably end up misjudging people. Or worse, you might speak too loud when you feel unconfident.

Actually relying on this mechanism too much might lead to a kind of lazyness. Adults are much less explorative than children. I don’t think this is because they have learned so much, or opinionated themselves after rigorous thinking. It is simply easier to be lazy and after a while it becomes a routine. Growing up, after a certain age, is replaced by getting old. Sure, we all get old. But we don’t have to stop growing up. And then we don’t have to reverse the process, to the point live life on auto-pilot.

A Meta-Solution

How do we protect against this exporative lazyness? I don’t even know what it is and how it works exactly. But I will try to apply two principles that works well with regular lazyness;

• Setting expectations the right way. Getting rid of habits and building skills are two different things. You are not trying to free yourself of the non-existance of the skill, and the habit is already working on you from t=0. You can not expect incremental gains. You will win some, and then lose some. Think about the process as many iterations instead, many being a strictly unknown number. Expect to get back to where you have started, hopefully with positive changes.
• Taking advantage of external forces. We are affected from both internal and external stimuli. But external stimuli has much power than internal. This is great of course, because our lazyness is internal. The tricky part is to find out that external thing we can use. We need to get out of our comfort zone, for two reasons. Outside our comfort zone is a world stranger to us, this should supply material to observe. Getting out of our comfort zone is naturally forcing ourselves out, this should supply enough irritation. Think of it as a slap in the face. “Hey! Wake up!“

You Are Too Naive Too Fool Me

I never claim to be an expert on bodybuilding or something like that. But when people around are really clueless, as in thinking sit-ups will give them a six pack, and I point it out, it appears to be I am making such a claim.

It is sad actually. I see people everyday, thinking they are working out. But it is not working out. Can you imagine a perfectly healthy 30 year old and a pyhsically inactive 50 year old following exactly the same program. Oh, sorry; not exactly the same. Younger one is additionally doing sit-upa. To get a six pack of course. Good luck.

1: I’m on a diet now, so I do my cardio in the mornings and my weight training in the evenings.

Related posts:

1. Sign of a Stupid Programmer
2. Was it the imperialism that made the west rich?

I frequently hear “why do go through all this, it is really unnecessary”. Why do people say that? I find it really annoying. What could be more natural for someone to take care of one’s pysical existance? You do brush your teeth right? How is staying fit different or less important than that? Let us hang 15 kgs of fat around your waist and you live with it just for a week. And see if your opinion changes.

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We quickly drafted a plan and decided to start immediately. A 2 month diet period. I was enthusiastic because I was thinking all that food I can ingest, and I had done dieting before (I had lost 16 kg). Easy, right? I wonder if it would mean anything had he told me the truth; that I would suffer so much and feel so bad to the point the hunger would be comforting. I guess it wouldn’t make a difference.

Difficulty Is Not Incidental

At the end of 2 months I have lost 7 kg and took 11 cm off my waist. I would like to note that I lost almost no muscle (only 2 cm from my arms). It is of highest importance that you lose fat and retain muscle mass. So I am very happy with the results, much better than I had expected.

But make no mistake; it was not easy for me. It was especially difficult to sleep. Because you stop eating early (7~8 p.m.). Also because you increase your metabolism to the point where you hear a loud thumping noise when you go to bed. That is your heart rate at rest. This is the key to diet.

Many people believe that the exercise itself is burning the fat. NO! You exercise to increase your metabolism. You typically burn 300 calories per hour with the (aerobic or anaerobic) exercise. How long can you keep doing it? Your basal metabolic rate is likely to be around 1700 KCal/day. Do the math. When you start cutting calories your body reacts trying to utilize energy efficiently. Your metabolism decreases. This is where the cardio training becomes important. You keep yourself active and work against your body to keep burning fat.

Learn Through Pain

Everybody has a different physique, and react differently to individual types of food. I mean junk food, and unhealthy fats in general. But even with the most convenient genetics and lifestyle; sugar messes with your insulin levels and saturated fats find a way to stay within your fat tissues. Then why do we do this to ourselves, why do we keep eating the wrong stuff? I guess besides the obvious reasons[2], we find comfort in our ignorance.

I love cheese, for instance. Not that I am saying it is bad food. But good cheese has a lot of saturated fat. After this last diet, I started eating much less cheese. Being the Pavlov’s dog is nothing to be proud of, but it works. Even the thought of triggers your brain to remember all that pain you had to suffer during the diet. So subconciously you eat less junk. After that it is up to you to conciously eat healthy food. Remember; nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or should I say; no pain no gain.

I still workout for fun. But I plan to eat clean and stay in shape. Diet if necessary. Because I am not getting any younger. Next time you are in the supermarket, take a good look at the fat on meats. Some of it is chopped of course. But you can still see the white tissue that serves no real purpose[3]. It gives me creeps when I think I was carrying that 10 kg of fat everywhere, just like the fat on that meat only much bigger. And I still have at least that much on…

1: Ok, this might sound funny now. But come see me working out one day, and you will understand why animal.

2: I am one of those people who eats more when depressed.

3: Have you heard of a drought nearby recently?

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