The Body of A Greek God The Snob's Guide to Transforming Your Body and Feeling Fantastic By Harrison Mullin
Table of Contents The Body of A Greek God......................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements, Legal Stuff, and Dedication......................................................................................3 Who This Book Is For................................................................................................................................4 Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 5 What Makes A Body Godly....................................................................................................................... 6 How This Book Works............................................................................................................................... 8 Why Both Methods? Why Not Just Maxalding?...................................................................................9 Why Not Just Use HIT Then?............................................................................................................. 10 How To Start Building the Body of A Greek God in 24 Days................................................................. 13 HIT Principles..................................................................................................................................... 14 Finding Your HIT Starting Weights.....................................................................................................16 Repetitions...........................................................................................................................................18 Breathing............................................................................................................................................. 18 The 24 Day Workout Exercises........................................................................................................... 19 But I Want To Work The GUNS Man!................................................................................................ 20 24 Day Workout Schedule and Logs................................................................................................... 21 The Final Touches: Sleep, Naps, Staying Lazy................................................................................... 22 What To Eat During the First 24 Days.....................................................................................................24 I’m A String Bean. What Should I Eat?.............................................................................................. 25 How Much Water Should I Drink?......................................................................................................26 Optional Extra..................................................................................................................................... 27 Some Tips............................................................................................................................................ 28 Recap: Eating + Drinking for The First 24 Days................................................................................ 29 How To Maintain The Body of A Greek God, Forever............................................................................30 A Sickly Boy....................................................................................................................................... 30 My Experience With Maxalding......................................................................................................... 32 Muscle Control.................................................................................................................................... 33 Gain Without Pain............................................................................................................................... 34 Skeptical Much?.................................................................................................................................. 35 It Wants Your Blood............................................................................................................................ 36 How To Do Maxalding........................................................................................................................ 37 Contraction..................................................................................................................................... 37 Breathing.........................................................................................................................................37 Some Tips (These Get Weird).........................................................................................................38 In and Out Through the Nose: Proper Full Tidal Breathing................................................................38 Running Farther, Easier.......................................................................................................................39 Cons and Pros of Maxalding............................................................................................................... 41 A Beginner's Maxalding Routine........................................................................................................ 42 Technique........................................................................................................................................43 Exercises......................................................................................................................................... 44 The Routine.................................................................................................................................... 44 On Motivation..................................................................................................................................... 45 The Next Steps.................................................................................................................................... 46 Advanced Techniques..................................................................................................................... 47 What My Daily Maxalding Looks Like.............................................................................................. 47 Routine 1: Single Rep Technique................................................................................................... 48 Routine 2: Dynamic Muscle Control Technique............................................................................ 49
Routine 3: Dynamic Body Weight Technique ............................................................................... 49 The Maxalding Diet.............................................................................................................................49 Eating..............................................................................................................................................50 Drinking..........................................................................................................................................50 An Ending................................................................................................................................................ 51
Acknowledgements, Legal Stuff, and Dedication This snooty guide would not be possible without the giving kindness of my friends and family. Thank you for listening to me bitch and moan about how every one else is wrong but me. Thank you for giving me the space to let me discover on my own just how far my head is up my own intestines. And thank you for all the laughter and love. I couldn't ask for a better life than this, with you all. This guide, and all its contents, are completely un-copyrighted. The information herein is sourced from personal experience and would not be possible without the hard work of those committed to keeping intelligent exercise alive. I am forever indebted to you for showing me a wise path to proper health. To all those who wander and live to give and love and try foolish new things, this book is for you. Via negativa, Harrison Mullin
Who This Book Is For This is for the man who wants to have a body like a greek god. He is not interested in building giant arms or a huge chest. He doesn't want to become a meat head and hates everything about gym culture. He doesn't want to pay for memberships or be told that if he just buys the newest equipment or supplement then he can finally have the body he wants. This is for the man who is sick of hype and bold promises that can make his body-beach ready in 30 days. This is for the man who doesn't want to lift weights endlessly. He doesn't want to be tied to a gym and only be able to feel healthy if he's there 6 hours a week. This is for the man who wants to love his body and treats it like a temple. He knows that lifting weights and running destroy his body more than they make it stronger. This is for the man who looks at the statue of David and thinks, "That's the body I want." This is for the man who will have a body that looks like it belongs cast in marble. This is for the man who wants to have a body like a greek god.
Introduction Everything in this book is wrong. It’s methods have been “proven” wrong for over a century by scientists and professional athletes. It will probably not get any attention from modern athletes and scientists. That’s okay. Actually, that’s better than okay. Because how fantastic will it feel to know that you’ve transformed your body into something healthy, fit, strong, energetic, and beautiful using methods that are “wrong” and “proven” not to work? Pretty damn fantastic. Like I do everyday. The laws of exercise state that you need to go to the gym and lift weights and run if you want to look good. There’s proof that almost any way of getting fit is false or somehow won't work. This proof always comes from a competitor with something to sell; who want to show that their product is superior by putting somebody else’s down. There’s nothing wrong with that, even if it is childish. And what works for me, what keeps me fit and strong, what’s given me a body that I’m proud of every minute of every day, has nothing to do with what is popular or what is proven. And I think you’ll find it works pretty damn well for you too. Stay well my friends, Harrison Mullin June 4, 2013
What Makes A Body Godly The greek god's body is defined and muscular, certainly. But it's not excessive. This is not a body builder's physique. His is a warrior-athlete's body. Based on the needs of an original Olympic athlete, this body is not designed to be fantastic at one event. It is designed to be good at, and most importantly, ready for anything. These were war-based games after all. Because he is preparing for the unknown, he must stay loose, ready to flow and respond to whatever adversary arises. To be loose, his body needs to be supple. Okay okay, by supple I mean the muscles need to not be stiff or so hard that they're not very flexible. When muscle is pliable, it is springy and can absorb more shock and safely carry the joints it is supporting through a greater range of motion. Pliable muscle is not weak; it is just not stiff. Stiffness in the muscle limits the range of motion, motion a warrior needs. Modern perception is that muscle should be hard. The harder something is, the stronger it is. Many athletes and weight lifters (myself formerly included) take pride in the hardness of their muscles. To borrow it from Bruce Lee, "...the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while
the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind." The wise warrior knows when to yield, and that yielding is often the best way to turn the attack back on his opponent. Imagine, then, that the muscle that can yield --that is pliable, soft, and supple-- is actually the strongest muscle because it goes with the flow and turns it around. While the stiff muscle, the muscle as hard as oak, is the one that resists all change in flow and, very nobly, will crack first when the tide of battle turns. The methods in this book are designed to show the usefulness of both approaches: hard, surging muscle growth, and supple, constant muscle control. The first is a teaching tool to create a base of understanding the necessity for the second. The second is the tool that makes your body strong, healthy, and beautiful. Like a Greek God. Vague enough for ya? Good! Let's get to it.
How This Book Works This book will use a two pronged approach to transforming your body. For the Start chapter, you'll lift weights in the gym using an entirely different method from what every fitness magazine advocates, and from what you'll see in the gym. You won't spend more than 6 hours in the gym in an entire month. You'll be using a method of weight lifting called High Intensity Training, or HIT for short. For the Maintain chapter, you won't go to the gym at all. In fact, after the Start chapter, you won't use weights ever again. Instead you'll use nothing more than your body and some serious mental concentration. No, I don't mean pushups or any other bodyweight exercises. You'll be using a fitness method called Maxalding. Don't worry, no one else has ever heard of it either. These methods are not popular. It doesn't make too much sense to try something different if what's popular seems to work so well. This is even more true if you are just starting out at the weight room and don't really want to be too adventurous. Fitness magazines might pay lip service to some of these methods, but will quickly refute their usefulness for one very good, unspoken reason: It is almost impossible to make money off of either of these methods. Traditional HIT methods don't call for you to buy lots of protein powders or expensive supplements from GNC. Weirdly, they don't even want you to get a lot of protein at all. More on that later. Maxalding uses no equipment whatsoever, not even the ground. It requires nothing, absolutely nothing. It is without a doubt the most effective and powerful way I know to become realistically strong and build a beautiful
body. The only people who ever made money with Maxalding were the founders over a 100 years ago through their "Course by post". But that's changed. Now every single written instruction on how to do Maxalding is 100% free to you and me thanks to a passionate group of giving individuals dedicated to keeping Maxalding alive. You can teach yourself the basics in an evening, and won't ever pay a dime for Men's Health or a gym membership at New Years ever again.
Why Both Methods? Why Not Just Maxalding? Maxalding may be the best method around for building a beautiful body, but it is so different from exercise that we're used to that simply going cold turkey and doing nothing but Maxalding can be a recipe for failure. Instead of getting straight to Maxalding, we'll start your body off with some weight lifting using HIT principles. The reasons for this are: 1. Laying a foundation with HIT teaches you basic muscle mechanics which makes Maxalding easier later on. 2. HIT uses the same equipment as regular weight lifting. This makes HIT kind of familiar and familiar things help ease the transition from normality to living well. 3. HIT is just different enough from regular weight lifting that you'll feel like you're not just falling into the trap of short term motivation to work out and "get fit". If you only used regular weight lifting, chances are good you'd find very little reason to be proud of your work if you're just doing exactly what everyone else is. You must be proud of the work you're putting in, because that'll make you proud of your body and we want you to be loving with your body, not abusive. 4. HIT works. It truly does. There is no better or safer way to gain muscle
mass as quickly as HIT. 15 pounds of lean muscle in one month is not uncommon, even without any additional supplements.
Why Not Just Use HIT Then? Among other things, HIT ties you to the gym. This is fine for the first 24 Days, but one of our goals in building the body of a Greek God is to fully extricate ourselves from the gym and it's damaging influence. Do you think the models of those statues hit the gyms of 500 B.C. Athens? Of course not. They led a life of activity, and that's how they built and maintained their ideal physiques. They also didn't look exactly like those statutes, because as we've discussed, those obliques are unreal. We'll get to more of this later. Once you've finished the first 24 days using HIT, we'll get you out of the gym for good. HIT puts a lot of strain on your body. This can, of course, be a very good thing because muscle can grow stronger when it's stressed. (Read Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile for a very long winded explanation of how stressors are good for us.) But there's a limit to the goodness of stress on muscles. Most bodybuilders use something called Split Routines in their workouts. A split routine means you work out one part of your body or muscle group while your in the gym, and then you work out a different group of muscles the next time you're in the gym. An example would be doing your legs and abs on Monday, chest and back on Tuesday, arms and shoulders on Wednesday, then back to legs and abs on Thursday and so on. Using split routines is useless to us in this book. More importantly though, split routines make it very difficult for your body to ever fully recover. You may be giving your legs enough rest time between Monday and Thursday, but that's not the only thing that needs to recover.
There's a saying in some bodybuilding circles, "Every day is liver day." Every day that you work out, you put your entire body under a lot of stress, not just a particular muscle. Your organs too need to process what's going on and that's a lot of strain on something that can never grow and adapt as quickly as the surface muscle you can see on your arms and chest. The stress of working out is made worse for your liver, kidneys, and other organs because of the extra food that usually comes with working out regularly. It's a real drag on the liver and kidneys just to process the extra protein that people seem to think they need to build muscle. A lot of sports nutritionists will tell you to get nearly 0.8 grams of protein for every pound of body weight, and gym rats/meat heads will tell you that you need even more than that. That's a hell of a lot more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of 0.36 grams. The idea seems to be that because your using more energy to build muscle, you'll need more protein to make up for that extra energy expenditure. (That's a huge simplification, but is enough for this conversation.) I don't believe that for a second. First, intense, heavy exercise is signals your DNA to grow your muscle fibers, not protein. Second, any nutrients you consume only become important after you've already stimulated your DNA to do its thing. The fact is that only 20% of muscle in humans is protein, no matter how big the muscle is. Water is nearly 70% of that muscle. So why would you possibly need 2x-3x your normal protein intake to grow muscle? That makes zero sense, and my experience supports this.
Just drink more water and eat a little bit more carbs, fats, AND protein and you'll have all the nutrients you need to build muscle. But how unsexy does that sound? How much more profitable is it to market an amazing new protein that absorbs at a micro level (as if all other nutrients absorbed on a macro level…) than just telling people to get more calories and water? If Men's Health and Men's Fitness did that, do you think they'd last another year?
How To Start Building the Body of A Greek God in 24 Days Tools necessary 1. Decent blood sugar 2. Empty stomach 3. Hydrated 4. A notebook and a pencil 5. A gym (There is no substitute, I'm sorry. However, the gym will be entirely unnecessary after the 24 Day mark.) For 24 days you will be lifting weights for about 40 minutes a day, 2 days a week, for a total of 6 hours gym time. I suggest going to the gym between 4 and 6 pm when it's decently quiet and when you've still got some good blood sugar from lunch. If you don't, have a snack 30 minutes before. A couple tablespoons of peanut butter on some celery works well. When you go to the weight room, remember these three things: 1. You are here to work, not play. Be a recluse and don't talk to anyone beyond what is courteous. 2. You are here to grow. If you cannot complete the goal your schedule dictates for the day, leave the gym and do not look back. 3. You must record everything. Take a note pad and pencil. When you are at the gym, you will not use the standard 3x10 method of 3 sets of 10 repetitions. I don't know who invented this system, but it's advantages are unclear and I've had no remarkable success using this method. I can see how it became a common method because it is very simple to remember and can be applied to every exercise in the weight room, but nothing more. Consider it dead to you. Instead you will do one set of 7-12 repetitions depending on the exercise and part of the body you're working out. Much more on this below.
HIT Principles Before we start, here's a list of basic weight lifting terminology that you should familiarize yourself with. Repetition = Lifting a weight to its top position, returning it to its starting position one time. Set = How many repetitions you do consecutively without pausing between each repetition. While lifting weights, you will use the principles of High Intensity Training (HIT). Here's how it works: 1. Use perfect form. How you move the weight is more important than how much weight you're moving. Move the weight slowly, don't jerk it at any point. Use no momentum, don't cheat and swing the weights to help you lift it higher or a few more times. All that does is put your joints and muscles in dangerous positions when they are at their weakest. 2. Lift for 4 seconds, lower for 4 seconds. Do every repetition with this cadence. No matter what exercise you're doing, lift it for 4 seconds and return it to the starting position in 4 seconds. Don't pause at any point in the movement. Don't grant yourself momentum. Move slowly, change direction smoothly, start and stop carefully. 3. Do one set to failure. Do as many repetitions as you can, and then try one more. Using perfect form, lift for 4 seconds, lower for 4 seconds, repeat the exercise until you can't anymore. This is called One Set to Failure. When I say "until you can't anymore" I mean until you physically cannot move the weight one more millimeter. Learn your body. Understand what your true point of failure is and not just your delusional sense of "well my muscle's a little tired so that's my point of failure." 4. Rest at least 3 minutes between exercises.
Ignore all claims that you should only rest 30 seconds between sets and exercises (remember: there are no multiple sets in HIT). You must rest between exercises to let your body become prepared for the next exercise. I strongly suggest 4 minutes instead of 3, but 3 is the minimum. 5. Work out your entire body each session. Ignore such things as split routines (working out parts of your body one day and doing other parts the next day). Working out your entire body is a healthy stressor that signals your brain to release more hormones to help with muscle recovery and growth. Not working out your entire body in one session will not elicit this same hormonal response. That equals slower body transformation and wasted gym time. 6. Do no more than 8 exercises per session. This keeps concentration and mental energy high. Doing 12+ exercises every workout session is a recipe for waning attention and ineffective lifting. HIT requires extreme mental concentration to reach your point of failure. If you're attention is low, you won't reach your true point of failure and you'll waste time in the gym. That's it. For our purposes, there are no exceptions to these rules. HIT is based on the concept of failure. Like any master archer or Seduction Enthusiast, you only get better when you reach your failure point. Your failure point is what lets you know just how good you are; that you're only good up until a certain point. So in the case of the archer, he begins shooting at the target from 5 paces. He easily places all 3 arrows in the bullseye well within the 20 second time limit he's allotted himself. He then retreats to 15 paces. Again, he places all 3 arrows in the bullseye, with ample time to spare. Continue back to 50 paces. All 3 arrows reach their mark, but with only 5
seconds to spare. The archer is now experiencing the stress of approaching his failure point. He stands at 100 paces. The target now is mostly occluded by tip of his arrow as he draws the bow. With delicate mastery he deftly sends two arrows to the bullseye, while the third parks within ring #3. There is less than 1 second to spare. The archer has reached his point of failure. But instead of returning to the comfort of 50 paces where he knows he'll do perfectly, he moves to 80 paces from whence 3 arrows find their mark with 2 seconds to spare. The archer is looking to fail. When he fails, he knows how good he is at that moment. Now he knows where to start, where the sticking point is. Once he masters the foundation, he increases the distance. He is always mastering new foundations. With each practice, his point of failure is farther and farther out, and the archer becomes better and better. As you lift weights using HIT principals, understand that you too seek failure. If you do not reach your point of failure and adjust weight incrementally around it, you will not grow beyond your failure.
Finding Your HIT Starting Weights Because HIT requires you to do an exercise until you can't anymore, we need to figure out what weight is a good one to start with. This process might look tedious, but it's really not. Figuring out your starting weights for the 24 Day routine below won't take you more than a 40 minutes at the gym (this time is included in your total gym time for the 24 Days)
Let's use the leg-extension as our sample exercise.
Determine your starting weight by completing one Maximum Weight Repetition (MWR). Your MWR is the most weight you can successfully lift once, but is impossible for you to lift twice in a row. This isn't a competition. You're just trying to figure out where you should start. Be honest with yourself in the following steps. And remember, this starting weight is arbitrary. Yours will probably be totally different and that's okay. Set the weight to 150 pounds and try to move it as shown in the photo above. ◦ If you can do more than one rep at this weight, rest for 1 minute, then add 10 pounds until you can only do one rep. ◦ If you can do only one rep at this weight, but not two reps, this is your MWR. • Now that you've got your MWR, lower the weight 20% to reach your Starting Weight Repetition (SWR). So if your MWR is 150 pounds, your SWR would be 120 pounds. •
◦ Your SWR is the weight you will use to actually do a set of leg extension repetitions. • The next time you go to the gym, you'll now know to set the leg extension machine to 120 pounds. Of course, reducing your MWR 20% on every exercise is not going to work perfectly. In a lot of cases you'll quickly figure out that your SWR is a little too hard or easy. That's fine. It's necessary to correct course as experience dictates. Just be sure that you're honest with yourself when figuring out if a weight is too easy or too tough. Remember, you want to do an exercise until you can't anymore because that final, moment-of-failure repetition is the one that is going to help reshape your body more than all the other repetitions before it. Repetitions How many reps should you do for an exercise? Well, it varies from body part to body part. 8-12 repetitions for any exercise is de rigeur in HIT circles. For upper body exercises (including every muscle on your torso except for your abs), go for 8 repetitions. • For all lower body exercises (including your abs), go for 12 repetitions. •
Once you reach the repetition threshold for an exercise, increase the weight by no more than 10% the next time you're in the gym. Keep increasing like this every time you reach the appropriate repetition threshold. Breathing Much has been made on proper and improper breathing techniques suitable for intense weight lifting like that of HIT. I've found all of it to be moot.
When you're heart is going a mile a minute as you struggle to squeeze out the 12th rep on the leg extensions, breathing has a way of just happening on its own. There's a few points in a few exercises where it'll be naturally tough to breathe. That's okay, just be aware of it and try to give yourself a little extra oxygen if you suddenly find yourself not breathing. We'll talk at great length about breathing later on in, but for now this is all that needs to be said as relates to HIT and the first 24 days. Okay! Enough of the boring stuff, let's get to the actual exercises that'll get you on your way to building your Greek God of a body.
The 24 Day Workout Exercises The 24 Day Workout is broken up into 2 different routines: Day 1, and Day 2. Each routine has you working out the larger muscles for a full body workout, which unlike split routines (working out one half of your body in each routine) promotes a much better hormonal response. Note: The “+” below indicates a super set in which you do not rest the requisite 3 minutes; you go straight to the next exercise. Day 1 1 Leg Curl Machine Video 2 Straight Arm Pullover with One Dumbbell Video 3 Leg Press Machine Video 4 Lateral Raise with Dumbbells Video + Overhead Press with Barbell Video 5 Myotatic Crunch Video
Day 2 1 Leg Extension Video 2 Bent over Row with Barbell Video (Note: I prefer underhanded grip instead of the demonstrated overhand grip because it stretches the back
muscles a bit further which puts them through a longer, and still safe, range of motion.) 3 Squat with Dumbbells Video 4 Lateral Raise with Dumbbells Video 5 Myotatic Crunch Video + Oblique Side Bend Video Check out these instructive videos for how to do each exercise. Keep in mind that most of these demonstrations are not done using HIT principals, which means the people in the videos are doing them waaaaaay faster than you will be doing them. (Remember our 4 seconds up, 4 seconds down cadence?) Mimic the form in each video, but not the speed they’re using. The only exercise video that you should mimic EXACTLY is the Myotatic crunch video because this one is done using HIT principals. The Myotatic crunch is something special. It’s borrowed from The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss and is truly an excellent abdominal exercise. It’s different from the other exercises here because you won’t use weights with it when you start out. Once you can do 10 reps with no weight, hold a 5 pound weight in your hands to increase resistance.
But I Want To Work The GUNS Man! Maybe. You might notice that there are no arm, calf, or chest specific exercises in either routine. This is because the smaller muscles don't seem to do much toward promoting the hormonal response that will start altering your physique. The small muscles also get a great workout just by being there to make your big muscles work. Every upper body exercise uses your arms, therefore your arms are just as involved as your back when you're doing a Bent Over Row.
The same goes for your calves and chest. They're all supporting actors on the stage dominated by your back, shoulders, upper legs, and abdomen. When I was 19 I worked out only my arms and abs. Everything else --diet, sleep, hydration-- stayed constant. When I started my arms measured 14 7/8 inches (the circumference around the bicep and triceps on one arm). At the end of two months of intense arm focus, they measured 15 inches. This is by no means scientific, but the correlation is enough for me to have written off arm specific weight lifting for good. At age 24, after over 4 years of avoiding arm specific weight lifting, my arms measured 15 1/2 inches. The same is true for calf and pectoral weight lifting exercises. After over 3 years of not doing calf raises or bench presses, both are larger and more well defined than ever before. The big muscles matter. Ignore the little ones for the 24 Days. We'll get to them later.
24 Day Workout Schedule and Logs
Alternate between the above routines each time you go to the gym. Use the following table as a template for your 24 day workout schedule. No matter what date you start on, give yourself 2 days full rest between workouts. You will go to the gym 9 times total, then you'll be gone for good. You need to keep track of precisely how many reps you're doing and what weight as you go through the first 24 days. To make that easier, print out these super simple 24 day workout logs on the Extras and Resources page on the website here. The Final Touches: Sleep, Naps, Staying Lazy Going to the gym in these first 24 days is going to take it out of you. As long as you super-hydrate (as described earlier), soreness and muscle cramping are rare. HIT is exhausting, even if you don’t realize it. Therefore I highly recommend
sleeping as much as possible during the 24 days. 9 hours a night is optimal. If you only get 6-7 hours, honestly you are pissing away a lot of the work you’ve put in at the gym. Sleep’s been called a “force multiplier” when it comes to gaining muscle and this is true in my experience. Muscle doesn't grow while you’re in the gym, it happens while you’re resting. Only when you rest, and rest well, can your muscles actually rebuild bigger and better than before. Rest is so important during the first 24 days that I suggest a 15 minute afternoon nap if time allows. Your muscles will rebuild that much better. Finding the right time to nap during the day that doesn’t screw up your sleep schedule can be tricky and takes some trial and error. For an excellent guide on how to find your optimal nap time, use this handy Nap Wheel by Dr. Sarah Mednick, Ph.D. Moreover, don’t get tricked into the idea that more exercise is better. If you’ve done your HIT workouts properly, you need to avoid extra exercises like the plague during the 24 days. That means no cardio days or light workouts beyond your scheduled HIT workouts. If you just can’t sit still, go for a walk. Or take a nap. That’ll take your mind off of wanting to work out… Working out and sleeping are just one piece of beginning the make your body look like a greek god. The real magic happens when you enter the kitchen.
What To Eat During the First 24 Days Quick Note If you're overweight: Read this chapter. If you're skinny: Go straight to I'm A String Bean I'm not going to pretend that losing weight is easy because I have never needed to lose weight. Putting on weight has always been a challenge. But I've witnessed 3 friends weighing from 15-80 pounds overweight lose pounds quickly using the methods below, and get to their optimal bodyweight more painlessly than with other diets. Like I said, I don't know what it's like to need to lose weight. I cannot feel your pain. All I can offer here is observational guidance and show you the doors that have helped loved ones in my life recreate themselves. The motivation, psychology, or whatever you want to call it that you might need to lose weight are entirely up to you. I wish you the best on this journey. The end is worth it. At this point there are probably millions of books written on how to lose weight, drop 7 pounds in 7 days, et cetera. Ignore all of them. You will drop fat like it's going out of style if you follow the dietary guidelines of the Slow Carb Diet. It's a diet in vogue to be sure, and as it turns out there's good reason for that. Popularized by Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Body, the Slow Carb Diet is more or less the Paleo Diet with a few tweaks here and there. (If these are unfamiliar terms, don't worry, they don't really matter.) It's simple, it works, and it's dirt cheap. It is beyond the scope of this book to get into dietary theory. Therefore I recommend that if you need to lose weight in order to transform your body
into a Greek God's, try the Slow Carb Diet first, and if it doesn't work, chances are you didn't do it correctly (which is almost nigh impossible because it's so simple). Just kidding. If the Slow Carb Diet doesn't work, and if you have the extreme mental fortitude to pull it off, only do these two things to initiate some serious weight loss. 1. Eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up (See the slow carb diet link for some good ideas here.) 2. Stop drinking calories. That means no juice, no soda (not even diet), and no milk. Instead, only drink the following: • Water (and lots of it. See the Drinking section later on in this chapter.) • Black coffee (with cinnamon on top!) • Unsweetened tea (peppermint works best for me) • Red wine (pinot noir is my favorite) Learn the 5 simple rules of the Slow Carb Diet at this link. If you need more information about the Slow Carb Diet, I highly recommend picking up a copy of The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss, and finding lots of great slow carb recipes in The 4-Hour Chef.
I’m A String Bean. What Should I Eat? Gaining weight has been a struggle for me ever since I started weight lifting 8 years ago. I lifted for 6 hours a week for 6 months. I gained less than 10 pounds of muscle in that time. That, I thought, was complete bullshit. What a waste of time! Protein shakes, meal replacement shakes, not running, nothing seemed to help me put on the mass I wanted. Then one of my incredibly skinny, eloquent friends dryly suggested I just eat more of what I was already eating.
I did. I ate about 20% more of what I was already eating at every meal. I drank 16 ounces of milk a day instead of 8. I gained 5 pounds of muscle in a month. Scientific? Nope. Did it work? Yep. If you are a string bean and want to put on weight (muscle mass or just plain fat), you must eat exactly what you've been eating, plus a little more. No need to get scientific, just eat more at every meal. That line would not sell a single issue of Men's Health, but it is 100% realistic. If you’re skinny, there is no sane reason whatsoever to eat anything different from what you normally eat when you're trying to gain muscle mass by lifting weights. If you want to get more calories without eating more, there is no better solution than good ol' milk. Not Soy milk, not skim milk, I'm talkin' straight up whole milk. Drink two liters every day for the 24 Days without adding any more food to your diet and you'll get all the calories you need. Remember, only 20% of muscle is actually protein, and nearly 3/4 of muscle is water. Whole milk is thus a fantastic way of adding calories in the fat/protein/carbohydrate/water ratios that match a regular diet. However, even though milk is an excellent calorie adder and pretty good way of getting the water your muscles need to grow, it pales in comparison to just drinking more water and consuming a bit more solid food calories. How Much Water Should I Drink? Get ready to invest in Depends, because you're going to drink a gallon of water a day for 14 days.
Because 70% of muscle is water, that is precisely what you need more of. A gallon of water a day is definitely a lot, no two ways around two. But it is imperative to stay super-hydrated when you are gaining muscle mass. Once you're past the first 14 days you can cut it back to a half gallon a day. Obviously if you try to drink half a gallon of milk and a gallon of water in one day you are literally going to do nothing in a day but stay within 20 paces of a bathroom. So if you choose to add calories with two liters of milk rather than just eating more, cut your water for the day down to a half gallon.
Optional Extra Tools: Creatine Monohydrate, less than $9 at GNC or any health food store. Buy 300 grams, look for it in a large gallon-sized tub. You may have heard of something called creatine before. Creatine is a substance close to protein in make-up and is made naturally by your body all the time. To make a long story short, creatine is extremely helpful in building muscle, particularly if you are just starting to work out. Creatine has been described as giving your muscles a few more cylinders, thereby increasing their power. You can find creatine in powder form in big tubs at just about any health food store or GNC. There's a lot of types out there, each one claiming to be better than the rest, but the only kind you should be interested in is called Creatine Monohydrate. It is the simplest, cheapest, and most effective muscle building supplement and is the only one that has been consistently proven to not just be a placebo or a creator of expensive urine. Creatine is the real deal. That being said, it is not necessary for our purposes and is just a nice thing to have. Your choice here. Normally, creatine monohydrate (a powder) is just mixed in with with water and you're good to go. If you choose to use it, I suggest a slightly different
tact. 1. Get a big 32 ounce Nalgene or something similar that you can shake. 2. Fill it up, and scoop 5 grams of creatine into the water (1 heaping teaspoons, or 1 of the little scoops that usually come in the creatine jug is about 5 grams) 3. Shake until it looks nicely dissolved 4. Scoop 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) of regular white sugar into the Nalgene* 5. Shake it nice and good 6. Drink it all in the next 3 hours 7. Repeat 4 total times per day (32 ounces X 4 = 1 gallon) 8. Eat, pee, and be merry Like super-hydrating with water, you should drink 1 gallon of the water/creatine solution every day for 14 days, then back off to just a half gallon of plain water. *The sugar boosts your insulin which helps muscle absorb creatine much better, and also acts as most of your extra calories for the day. Read Option C below for more details.
Some Tips • Finish your liquids at least 2 hours before bed unless you want to know what it feels like to be an 80 year old man with an inflamed prostate • If you opt to go the creatine route, get a 1 gallon jug that you can fill with your water/creatine solution for the day. Fill up your Nalgene from this jug; it's more convenient than carrying all the sugar and creatine with you. (1 gallon of water/creatine solution recipe: 4 heaping teaspoons creatine monohydrate + 1/2 cup of white sugar) • Caffeine negates some of the creatine's goodness, so if you have a cup of tea or coffee, add 1 extra creatine teaspoon to your total for the day.
Recap: Eating + Drinking for The First 24 Days Tools: One 32 ounce Nalgene bottle Optional: Slow Carb Diet, 1 gallon jug, creatine monohydrate, milk, sugar If you're overweight, get skinny before you commit to going to the gym: - Use the Slow Carb Diet to drop fat safely and quickly. OR - Stop drinking calories, period. If you're skinny and/or just want to get to it: Day 1-14 Option A) Drink 1 gallon of plain water per day + eat more in general Option B) Drink 2 liters of whole milk per day + half gallon of plain water Option C) Drink 1 gallon of water/creatine/sugar solution per day Day 15-24 Option A) Drink a half gallon of water every day + eat more in general Option B) Drink 2 liters of whole milk + 32 ounces of plain water Day 24 and On Drink a half gallon of water every day + go back to eating normally Optional Use the Slow Carb Diet throughout the entire 24 Day process and beyond to expedite physique transformation.
How To Maintain The Body of A Greek God, Forever Pat yourself on the back, because you’ve just finished the first step on the path to building the body of a Greek God. The second step is endless. Hooray? In the first 24 Days, you recorded everything. You knew exactly how much weight you could lift on the leg press, shoulder press, or how many myotatic crunches you could knock out. That is all done. You now have no set goals, you simply enjoy your effortless strength and beautiful physique. You’re going to venture into the unknown. You no longer need to count repetitions, add weight, or go to the gym. You're going to do something called Maxalding from here on out. I know. No one else has heard of it either. Maxalding doesn't use weights, equipment, or even clothing (finally!). Instead of tracking how much weight you can lift or how many reps you can do, you'll measure all your progress with Maxalding by how damn good your body looks. Nothing else.
A Sickly Boy Max Sick was a sickly boy. That's no joke. Max was a tiny boy born to tiny parents in southeastern Germany on June 28th, 1882. Incapacitated by chronic lung trouble and dropsy, young Max did not even stand on his own two feet until the age of 5. He was so small in stature and scrawny for his age that he was not even allowed to attend school until age 7. Parents, doctors, and relatives coddled Max, urging him to believe that rest and relaxation —not sports and fun and games— were what was necessary for such a decrepit boy.
But of course, like any good boy, Max dreamed of being strong. Upon spending his savings to go to the passing traveling circus and witnessing a strongman of herculean proportions, Max became determined to realize his dream. Flush with energy and inspiration, he raced home and began furnishing a crude dumbbell from a slab of stone, eager to lift it as he’d seen the Hercules do. Max’s father was not pleased and promptly destroyed the dumbbell, berating the boy for his insolence, reminding Max that the doctors told him to rest and not exert himself in any way. As Max would later recount, the destruction of his stone dumbbell was a pivotal moment. Because he was not allowed any weights or tools, he began experimenting with stretching and tensing his muscles while he lay in bed, thinking that somehow this could make him strong. This became the foundation of Max’s life work. The once feeble Max Sick (anglicized “Maxick”) soon became known across early 20th century Europe as the epitome of physical prowess and male beauty. How did he go from sickly boy to Adonis? Muscle Control.
My Experience With Maxalding October, 2012 Stumbled onto tiny health blog with a black and white photo of a muscly little man with a mustache. Followed link to Maxalding
website. Read through it for 3 hours straight. Started trying to do Maxalding at 1 AM. Gave up my thrice weekly High Intensity Training and once a week 2 mile run for one month trial of Maxalding only. November, 2012 After 1 month of Maxalding only, returned to gym for strength test (same number of repetitions as in my pre-October HIT routine), result: increased strength on average 14% on every single exercise. I was sufficiently weirded out. Ran 2 mile test run: same time as in October, just way easier. December, 2012 Continued with Maxalding for about 20 minutes each evening, 6 days a week. Noticed that I wasn't hungry all the time anymore, so I started to eat a lot less than back in October. January, 2013 Returned to gym to test strength, result: increased strength on average 26% since October baseline. Eating about 2/3 of what I used to eat. Weight has dropped from 168 to 162 (unknown if this was fat or muscle). 2 mile run started to feel like 1 mile run. February, 2013 Strength test result: increased strength on average 31% since October baseline. Gave away all my dumbbells and weight equipment. March, 2013 Eating less than any other healthy 25 year old male. Indigestion completely eliminated along with all protein shakes. Reduced meals with meat of any kind to 2x a week. Starting to consider that I've been wrong my entire life about strength training.
Between October, 2012 and May, 2013, I successfully: 1. Increased strength on average 33% on all exercises 2. Lifted weights four times 3. Reduced recovery time after 2 mile run (time it takes to regain normal heart rate) from 7 minutes to 3 minutes. I ran at the exact same 14 minute pace each run. 4. Lowered daily calories from about 2800 to 1900 while keeping same carb/protein/fat ratio 5. Dropped from 168 to 154 pounds (very little of this was fat because I'm skinny by nature) 6. Waist to Hip Ratio (WHR) went from 0.83 to 0.81, Waist to Shoulder Ratio (WSR) went from 0.65 to 0.62 (I truly do not understand how this is possible because I actually lost muscle mass during this time period and had very little fat to lose anyway) So Maxalding works well for me. Chances are it will work well for you too. But that doesn't mean its all roses and puppies. Maxalding does have some downsides that we'll get to later.
Muscle Control Try this: • Concentrate on your bicep. Try to contract it using nothing but concentration. Don't move your arm at all. Focus on your bicep, imagine it getting hotter and pumped full of blood. • Now slowly move your arm like in the photo to make it contract further. Hold the contraction to the level just below when the muscle starts vibrating. • Hold this level of contraction for 5 full,
gentle breathes. • Breathe out slowly and relax the contraction in the same way. Contract a muscle without contracting the muscles around it. Gain control over it. Control it independently. Become it's master. That is muscle control and is what became known as Maxalding. This is a vast simplification of an exercise system that is unlike any other. Remember how HIT works your muscles until they fail? Maxalding is the exact opposite.
Gain Without Pain In college, I was taught that muscle grows like this: 1. Exercise (lifting weights, running, etc.) strains the muscle 2. Strain causes the muscle to break down a little bit, its fibers splitting on an incredibly tiny scale 3. Rest and nourishment from food and water feeds the muscle and makes it repair itself stronger than before There’s more to it than that, but this is the gist of most muscle building principles. All of this is probably true. But it’s not the only explanation for how muscle grows, it’s just the most common one. What if we could bypass the breaking down and muscle strain altogether and go straight to the nourishment and making it stronger? What if using energy to lift weights and stress your muscles is not just unnecessary to gaining strength, but actually destroys your ability to build the physique you want?
Skeptical Much? It takes some getting used to the idea that not lifting weights can actually transform your body into a strong, beautiful thing. Facts say Maxalding should not work. They say that moving weights back and forth, up and down is how you become strong. They say that running is how you increase lung capacity and reduce body fat. Waiting for the facts to line up and tell you conclusively that something will work is, frankly, an incredibly boring way of living. Facts mean little because they change with whoever proves them. Think doctors in the 1950s proving that smoking was good for you. I don't know; maybe smoking actually is good for you in some way that we haven't come to understand yet. What matters, and what changes your physique for the better, is the willingness to try. I don't mean try stupid things like smoking for 20 years to see if it really is good for you. I mean try things that are reversible. Not lifting weights is reversible because you can always go back to lifting weights. If you try out Maxalding for 2 weeks and it doesn't work for you, all you've lost is 2 weeks worth of regular exercise. Big whoop. But if it does work for you, you'll never see popular exercise the same way again. Whenever I see a Bowflex commercial and endure 45 seconds of glistening shaved chests and the narrator calling my testicle size into question because I'm not actively putting $1300 onto my Visa, I smirk. P.T. Barnum would hate that smirk.
It Wants Your Blood Maxalding states that it is “not work, but nourishment” that grows muscle.
Nourishment comes from your blood which holds all the nutrients you’ve consumed from food and drink. Thus the main purpose of Maxalding is to improve circulation so that your muscles can get all the nourishment they need to grow. Go back to flexing your bicep. When you flex it, you’re sending blood to it, which is partially what helps make it harder. The harder you flex it, the harder the muscle gets. But if you flex it so hard that it’s shaking or vibrating, blood isn’t flowing easily through the muscle anymore. That’s not good. The goal of tensing the muscle is to irrigate it with nourishing blood. Bizarre, I know. Remember how the old school teaches that muscle grows because you put it under stress and make it break down a little bit? Maxalding teaches that you skip the entire process of breaking it down and get straight to giving your muscle the nourishment it needs to grow stronger. What's more, focusing on the muscle and getting it to contract mentally, without moving your body, builds a strong neural connection between your mind and body, which helps increase the muscle's ability to tense harder and harder. The harder a muscle can tense, the more weight it can move and therefore the stronger it is. Finally, by focusing on the neural connection between the muscle and mind, your brain quickly learns how to use each muscle independently. Once you’ve got control over each muscle on its own, bringing them all together is a piece of cake. For example: learning to control your hamstrings (backs of your upper legs), quadriceps (fronts of your upper legs), and lower back independently makes it super easy to bring them all together to do a really heavy barbell squat. Keeping blood flowing through your flexed muscle is incredibly important. This is the reason why you won’t flex your muscle as hard as you can in
Maxalding. At peak contraction, the muscle’s too tight to let blood flow through it, just as if you were lifting really heavy weights. So when we say to contract your muscle just below vibrating point, you’re flexing the muscle as hard as you can while still letting blood flow freely through it. As soon as the muscle starts shaking or vibrating, you’re shooting yourself in the foot by keeping the blood stagnant. Okay, enough about blood! Let’s get you Maxalding.
How To Do Maxalding Contraction •
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Do not increase your heart rate or breathing. Be gentle. If you're breathing heavier than normal, you're contracting too hard, not breathing smoothly, or both. Do not force the contraction, coax it. Remember: Trying to force the muscle to contract and become hard defeats the entire purpose of Maxalding, which is to improve circulation. Focus all your mental energy on that muscle alone, try to keep other muscles from getting tense. Gently contract on the inhale, gently release the contraction on the exhale.
Breathing • • • • •
Do not breathe in or out through the mouth. Do not breathe with your abdomen. Meaning, your stomach should barely move when you breathe. Use Full Tidal Breathing (See section below) Breathe smoothly. Breathe quietly.
Some Tips (These Get Weird) • •
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Stay warm. Blood doesn't flow when you're cold. If you're cold while you're Maxalding, you're wasting your time. Do the contractions in front of a mirror if you like. It can be a lot of fun to watch your physique progress and see the muscle fibers moving under your skin once you're more experienced. However, don't rely on the mirror to tell you if you're contracting the muscle correctly. You must be able to feel, with your eyes closed, that you're contracting the right muscle correctly and completely. In your mind's eye, see the muscle fibers becoming thicker and redder, coursing with nutrient-rich blood, as the muscle becomes stronger and larger. Feel the muscle becoming hot with the blood that makes it strong and beautiful.
In and Out Through the Nose: Proper Full Tidal Breathing Of all the things that keep you from ever feeling healthy, breathing may be the most elemental and has huge immediate and long term benefits. You may have heard of abdominal breathing (imagine filling your stomach with air every time you breathe) and its health benefits. Perhaps they are true. After all, abdominal breathing is a central tenet of health systems like Yoga. But that doesn't mean that abdominal breathing is the best way of getting oxygen to the muscles that need it the most. That includes the most important muscle of all: your heart. In my experience, and per Maxalding's recommendation, Full Tidal Breathing is far and away the most efficient way of getting oxygen to where it counts, fast. See those little finger-like muscles below left and right
of his nipples? Those are called the serratus magnus muscles and they are an integral tool to making breathing easier. Full Tidal Breathing means using the serratus muscles between the ribs when you inhale. These little muscles spread your ribcage, letting your lungs to expand as much as they can. The more the lungs expand, the more oxygen they can hold, and the easier it is for you to oxygenate the blood that is going to carry all those nutrients to your contracted muscle. Stand tall, look straight ahead. Inhale gently through your nose. Fill your chest with air. When you've got as much air as you think you can handle, imagine your serratus pulling your ribs wider and wider. See your lungs expanding and filling that extra space in your rib cage. Then gently exhale through your nose. This is how you must breathe when you're Maxalding because this helps you breathe gently enough, and with great lung capacity, to match the gentle muscle contractions you'll be doing. Running Farther, Easier Full tidal breathing works well just about everywhere, all the time. However, it is not the best way of breathing when you're running. The next time you go for a run, notice how you breathe. Chances are you (myself included) will naturally start to match your breathing to your foot steps. In for 3 steps, out for 3 steps. Something like that. It sounds good and it makes sense. But it's not. And it doesn't. When you match your breathing to your steps, you are merely keeping pace with the oxygen needs your body is asking for. That's fine because meeting minimum requirements works most of the time. It also effectively means that you are giving the same amount of time to
inhaling as you are to exhaling. That's a problem because when you're running and under stress, you're body needs new oxygen, not stale air, in the lungs. If you want to improve your distance, your speed, or just making running easier, you've got to increase the time that you inhale, and decrease the time that you exhale. • Increasing inhalation time gives your body a bit more time to use the oxygen in the air that's coming in. • Decreasing exhalation time means the useless, deoxygenated air that's taking up space in your lungs gets out of the way faster to let new, oxygen rich air in. Try this: Run for one minute at a normal pace. Breathe in over 3 steps, breathe out over the next 3 steps, and repeat for the whole minute. Rest a few minutes. Now run for another minute. This time breathe in over 4 steps, and breathe out over 2. You'll notice, quite obviously, that with the second method you're not nearly as fatigued as you may be been before. This method is called Anti-Rhythmic breathing and this alone will make running farther, easier. Ideally you'd do this in and out through your nose. But as you get more and more fatigued, it's okay to switch to in-through-the-nose, and out-throughthe-mouth. Keep the same inhale/exhale pace though. If you want to speed recovery time after a run (or whatever), keep using anti-rhythmic breathing for a couple minutes after you've stopped running. Breathe in powerfully for about 3 seconds, and exhale as easily as possible. Don't force it out, just let the air fall out of you. Use the nose for both inhale and exhale here if you can.
Using these methods I improved recovery time (the time it takes to get heart rate back to normal) after my weekly 2 mile run from 7 minutes to 3 minutes. No changes in speed or diet were made. If you want to improve your distance, your speed, or just make running easier, you've got to change your breathing. Now.
Cons and Pros of Maxalding Cons • Maxalding can be frustrating Muscle control is not as simple or easy as lifting weights and running. It takes mental effort and for some people that is an unattractive concept. • Maxalding is weird Let's face it: you're making your muscles fill with blood in the quiet of your room, not at the gym grunting and sweating. If your friends hear about this you will be ribbed and ridiculed. Get used to it. After a few months you'll be able to show your jesting friends how you can contract 3 of your 6 pack autonomously. That tends to quiet their jokes. • Maxalding doesn't feel like exercise If you're addicted to the sweating and exhaustion that comes with lifting weights and running, Maxalding will not fulfill that and can leave you feeling empty. However, if you're addicted to results and not the process, Maxalding will give you the most beautiful body you can imagine without the need for sweating or dramatic grunts. Pros • Maxalding is location-less In the words of the founders, "Anywhere you are, there is Maxalding." You can do it anywhere. You are not tied to the gym or track for building strength and endurance. You are free to grow stronger wherever you want. This is scary for some people
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and can actually be a negative because some prefer the location specific association of exercise; e.g. "If I'm not in the gym, I just don't have the motivation to exercise." Maxalding is free 100% free. You pay nothing. No gym memberships. No running shoes (unless that's your thing). Nothing. Maxalding doesn't waste your energy Because you are not using up lots of energy lifting weights or running, you are always energetic. And when the need/desire arises to lift something heavy or run, you have the energy to do it while your compatriot who uses her energy for training is never fully rested and capable of performing at her best. Maxalding does not destroy your body Inherent in weight lifting and running is the need to destroy your body in small ways in order to become stronger. Maxalding does away with destruction and goes straight for strengthening and nourishing. Your knees, hips, back, ankles, wrists, shoulders, and neck will thank you now and when you're 50. To paraphrase Mr. Raymond Brennan, your joints are not manufactured from plutonium. Treat them as such and you'll reap what you sow.
A Beginner's Maxalding Routine There are 52 official Maxalding exercises by my count. That's a lot to memorize. And if you did all of them in a row, would take way to long for someone has hyperactive as me. Fortunately, few Maxaldists recommend doing all the exercises in the same session and I don't recommend it either. Maxalding was designed to compliment the exercise you're already doing. It helps you learn better muscle coordination for your favorite sport, even weight lifting. Most importantly, Maxalding never wears you out so that you can't go do your normal workout the next day.
Maxalding will never interrupt the other exercise or training you're already doing. But Maxalding is also an excellent stand-alone workout. In my experience it's the only exercise I need to stay in fantastic shape as evidenced by my increasing strength 33% overall, running easier after a few months of doing little but Maxalding, and that my body is actually significantly more Greek God-like (slightly wider waist, slightly bigger hips, blocky muscle definition rather than slender muscle definition). You can use Maxalding to improve your strength and endurance in whatever sport you're into or the work you need to do. So if you're a prospector (hey, you never know) you'd focus most of your Maxalding exercises on your shoulders and back so you can swing the pick harder and more accurately. If you're a chef, you might want to spend some time on your forearms so you can grip the knife with greater precision and strength. There are some small differences in technique between how I do Maxalding now and how I recommend doing it as a beginner. We'll cover both in this book. But my chosen exercises have not changed because I am looking for a fantastic body that can do a lot of things well, but isn't necessarily great at a particular sport. If you're reading this book, chances are you're most interested in how your body looks, not necessarily how strong it is. That's great! As the saying goes in Maxalding, “Train for shape, and the strength will come.” Technique Maxalding comes down to 5 steps in the beginning: 1. Contract a muscle hard, but not so hard that it’s shaking, for 5 full and gentle breaths 2. Relax for 1 full breath 3. Contract it hard again, but still not so hard that it’s shaking, for another
5 full and gentle breathes 4. Relax for 1 full breath 5. Move on to the next muscle and repeat Exercises Maxalding can be kind of tough when you first start out. It's weird just standing in one place, thinking about your muscles. I got really antsy and even sleepy the first few times I did it. But I made the rookie mistake of trying to do it perfectly right off the bat. The more mistakes I let myself make, the faster my progress came. So instead of trying to force yourself to go through a fully body Maxalding workout (which can last over an hour), we'll keep it short and focus on the main muscles that make the most difference in changing your physique. The following routine should take you no more than 20 minutes. Do it every day for 2 weeks. Once you have a really good handle on these exercises, using the technique described above, you can then move on to more advanced techniques and exercises. Don't fool yourself into thinking you're better than you are, and that you're ready for more advanced stuff: you'll only frustrate yourself and waste your time. I've been there. The best advice comes from the originator. So instead of me telling you exactly how to do each Maxalding exercise, I'm going to point you to the original instructions. When there's a gap in the original material (like "how long should I hold each contraction?"), my advice then comes into play. My advice is not theory; it is how I do it as a result of 6 months of experimentation. There is no theory to the guidelines I've put forth. The Routine The original Maxalding booklet, Muscle Control by Maxick is the foundation for all my experience. There is no better place to start than with the
exercises in this completely free work. The abdominal exercises can get tedious, so if you get a little frustrated, just do the first three parts of the ab section (Complete Relaxation, Depression, Double Perpendicular Isolation). Try to do the routine in Muscle Control every day for 2 weeks. If you must, take a day off every 6 days. Once you've got the hang of it, this routine won't take you longer than 20 minutes per session. On Motivation A full session of Maxalding takes 20 minutes, and optimally, you'd do it 6 days a week because the neural connections between brain and muscle seems to dissipate pretty quickly unless you do it almost every day. 20 minutes can be a really long, or really short, amount of time depending on your mood, motivation, or how full of Ben and Jerry's you are. It takes energy to do the things that will change your body to how you want it. Energy comes and goes. So does motivation. It's hard to pin down exactly what gives you the sudden motivation to exercise. It's even harder to channel that motivation every day for 20 minutes. Let's make Maxalding as automated as possible. So that doing it is almost robotic. Forget passion. You want a body like a greek god. Save your passion. Try this: Focus on just one muscle group each day. This will take exactly 1 minute and absolutely zero preparation time. Choose the part of your body that you love. The part that you think is the sexiest. Maybe it's not as sexy as you want it to be right now. That's the point. To love it into it's prime.
I was gung-ho about Maxalding for the first 4 months, then I lost my motivation (like I did with normal exercise and just about anything else too). Some days I didn't want to spend 20 minutes standing around flexing my butt. After 3 days of skipping, I decided to just do one muscle group. No more. After 1 minute of haphazardly muscle controlling my shoulders, I felt pretty good. So I did my back. Then my obliques. The dominos started to fall. Commit to just one muscle each day and soon you're committed to all of them, most days. No one is perfect, no one does them all every day. Don't try to be perfect. That'll kill you and your beautiful body.
The Next Steps So here you are. It's been 2 weeks since you started Maxalding. You probably didn't do it everyday, but that's okay. Like anything, Maxalding can get stale. Remember, there's no reason to just do Maxalding and completely ignore all other exercise or sports or hobbies. Maxalding has become my favorite sport and one of my favorite hobbies, and this is one reason I actually do it every day and have benefitted hugely from it. Even if you don't do it every day, or even that often, the principles are still enlightening. The next time you're lifting a weight, you'll suddenly find yourself focusing on the muscle itself and not the movement of the weight. You'll become aware of your body and appreciate its intricacies like never before. This is beautiful. Once you feel comfortable with the basics, it's time to compliment them with some advanced techniques to fine tune your physique even further.
Advanced Techniques You can learn many wonderful ways of advancing your Maxalding in Juan Antonio Martinez Rojas's Philosophy, Science, and Practice of Maxalding (totally free PDF at that link). But to keep things simple we'll just cover the three techniques that have helped me the most. • Single Rep Technique ◦ Hold the contraction for 10 full breaths. This is 1 repetition. Slowly contract on the exhale, slowly relax on the last breath's inhale. Only do 1 repetition, then move on to the next muscle group. And then once you're comfy with 10 breaths, try 20 breaths. THAT takes some focus! • Dynamic Muscle Control Technique ◦ Hold the contraction for the normal 5 full breaths. While you're contracting it, move the muscle slowly through it's full range of motion. Maintain the contraction the whole time. This will be difficult. Slowly relax on the last breath's inhale. • Dynamic Body Weight Technique ◦ Do body weight exercises while contracting all the muscles involved in that exercise. Do no more than 3 repetitions of each exercise. Do no more than 4 body weight exercises in a single workout.
What My Daily Maxalding Looks Like I do the following routines in succession, one each day, 6 days a week. Most of the time. Don't forget: You need to decide which muscles are most important to you, and focus on those. If you want a full body, slightly advanced routine, by all means follow my routines in the exact orders listed. Some of these photos are hilarious, and even a little creepy. They're all from the early 20th century. Be forewarned.
Routine 1: Single Rep Technique Hold the contraction for 10 full breaths. This is 1 repetition. Slowly contract on the exhale, slowly relax on the last breath's inhale. Only do 1 repetition, then move on to the next muscle group. • Neck ◦ Platysma myoides • Shoulders: ◦ Trapezius/Dorsal ◦ Deltoid (to my mind, there is no decent traditional Maxalding shoulder exercise for the more experienced student. I raise my arms straight out to my sides and try to contract my deltoids without contracting my trapezius.) • Arms ◦ Biceps, Triceps ◦ Forearms • Back ◦ Latissimus Dorsi ◦ Spine • Chest ◦ Pectoral ◦ Serratus • Abdomen ◦ Obliques/Intercostals ◦ Ab vacuum ◦ Central ab wall • Legs ◦ Thigh muscle groups ◦ Glutes (again, no original exercise does this justice. I stand with
feet shoulder width apart, angle my toes out a couple degrees, lock my knees, and lean back a bit at the waist. This makes your butt flex like crazy.) ◦ Calves (put leg in the same position as part 1 of the Thigh Muscle Groups. Point your toes and focus on the calf not the thigh.)
Routine 2: Dynamic Muscle Control Technique •
Perform each exercise from Routine 1 using Dynamic Muscle Control Technique. ◦ Hold the contraction for the normal 5 full breaths. While you're contracting it, move the muscle slowly through it's full range of motion. Maintain the contraction the whole time. This will be difficult. Slowly relax on the last breath's inhale.
Routine 3: Dynamic Body Weight Technique • Perform each of these exercises using Dynamic Body Weight Technique. ◦ Do body weight exercises while contracting all the muscles involved in that exercise. Do no more than 3 repetitions of each exercise. Do no more than 4 body weight exercises in a single workout. ▪ Pushup ▪ Squat (Double leg or Single leg) ▪ Bridge 1 or Bridge 2
The Maxalding Diet This is actually nothing special, but with a couple little twists. Eating • Chew your food until it's liquid before swallowing to get nutrients out of your food more easily.
• Always leave the table feeling like you could eat just a little bit more. • Dark chocolate is totally fine. The less sweet the better. • Avoid lots of sugar, including particularly sweet ones like oranges, mandarins, and pretty much any tropical fruit. If a fruit's been growing by the Mediterranean Sea for over a thousand years, chances are it's lower on sugar (apples, dates, figs, peaches, grapes, apricots). ◦ Side note: Eat your fruit, don't drink it. Blending and juicing destroys the fiber in the fruit that helps your body process the natural sugars. Without that fiber, fruit is basically just plain white sugar. Seriously. Drinking • Drink a glass of hot water when you wake up to help flush your system. • Drink little or nothing while you're eating. Try not to drink 30 minutes before or after a meal. • Drink at least 50 ounces (1.5 liters) of water per day. Spread it out over the whole day, don't gorge all at once. • When it's hot out, drink more. It shouldn't feel like work to drink 100 ounces a day if it's hot enough.
An Ending And here we are. There's no reason to tie this all up in a neat little bow because there is no ending to this. What I've shown you is my exercise mantra. I live by all that I've said herein. Not all of it is right, but I am love with how it all helps me live. I am in love with how I feel because I have love for my body. When I wake up in the middle of the night and stumble to the bathroom, I
sometimes glimpse myself in the mirror. Bleary eyed, hair askew, dragging my feet. I smile. Inside. Call it arrogance or whatever you like. I smile because I'm so damn happy with how I look. I won't always look this way. I might not always be so surly and pleased with myself. I don't care. I'm happy now. If I may be so bold, this is what I want for you. And that is an end of that.
