T NATION | Stuff We Like: Vol 12

Stuff We Like
Consumer reports for bodybuilders
by John Koenig and Chris Shugart

There are literally thousands of bodybuilding tools on the market today. These include exercise gadgets, athletic training devices, books, videos, and supplements. They run the gamut from complete garbage to products you shouldn't live without. It's probably no surprise to you that most of these toys and tools fall into the recycle bin category.

Therefore, we've decided to act as a sort of bodybuilding Consumer Reports and review all the various stuff aimed at the typical Testosterone consumer. Don't worry, though, we won't waste your time writing about the infomercial crap you see late at night on cable. Well, maybe we will, but just so we can poke fun at it and humiliate the shills who push this crapola.

Instead, we'll focus on the more serious side of training devices and information sources. That doesn't always mean we'll give the product a glowing review, but we won't waste the space reviewing something that you and everyone else already knows sucks. And since we don't accept outside advertising here at the web site, we're free to tell it like it is without having to worry about da man telling us what to think about a product.

Each product will be rated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best. At the end of the article, we'll tell you where the items can be purchased.

Attention all Slim Fast Drinkin’, Deal-a-Meal usin’, fat-free fanatics out there that have accidentally stumbled upon T-mag and are now sitting at your computers like frightened rabbits caught in the spotlight of a deranged redneck with a new .22 rifle and a hankering for wabbit stew: Fat ain’t bad. In fact, some kinds of fat are really good for you and if you’re trying to build a buff body without it, then you’re in serious trouble. (Susan Powter, kiss my monkey ass.)

On one hand, you’ve got your "bad" fats, like saturated fat. Actually, a little saturated fat is okay as part of a healthy diet and has been linked to increased Testosterone levels. Still, you don’t need to be eating lard with a spoon. The "good" fats are where you should really focus your diet. Take, for example, polyunsaturated fats like omega-3 and omega-6.

Most of us get enough omega-6 fats, which are found in vegetable oil, corn oil, safflower oil, peanut oil, sunflower oil, and sesame oil, but very few get enough omega-3s. These fatty acids have a plethora of benefits including improved cardiovascular health, decreased muscle soreness, and reduced blood pressure. They can even increase insulin sensitivity and may improve mood in very large dosages.

Where do you find omega-3s? Flaxseed oil, canola oil, walnut oil, and green leafy vegetables all have omega-3s, but I prefer fish oil myself. Why not the ever popular flax oil? Flax is fine, but its source of omega-3s comes from LNA (alpha-linolenic acid). Once in the body, LNA is converted to EPA and DHA, known in scientific circles as "the good shit."

Now, this is just a theory (and not one of mine), but some say this conversion can be inefficient, meaning you may need to take in more flax than you think to see benefits. With fish oil, there’s no conversion necessary since the fish take care of that in their own scaly bodies. So with fish oil, you’re getting nothing but EPA and DHA. For that reason, plus a few more, I prefer fish oil to flax.

Why not just eat more fish? Well, mainly because I’m a lazy bastard who eats 90% of his meals out of the microwave or a blender. Even if I chose to cook up fish every day on my handy-dandy George Foreman grill, this still may not provide enough omega-3s. (Farm raised fish may be deficient in omega-3s, probably because of their diets or perhaps from the stress caused by the knowledge that they’re headed to Long John Silvers to be part of a $3.99 lunch special.)

Okay, so I like fish oils and when I see something new on the market involving them, it catches my attention. Like most people, I get my fish oil in gelatin capsules. They’re cheap and except for the occasional fishy burp, they’re easy to incorporate into your diet. (I’ve also heard about flavored liquid fish oils, but haven’t tried them yet.)

Now along comes Coromega. Picture a ketchup packet filled with an orange flavored paste. This paste contains 350 mg of EPA and 230 mg of DHA, plus some folic acid and vitamins C and E. Believe it or not, this fish paste doesn’t taste a thing like fish. The orange flavor isn’t exactly orange sherbet, but is isn’t bad either. You can add it to shakes, juice or yogurt, or you can just suck it out of the packet like I did.

Coromega’s patented production process is supposed to not only remove all the fishy flavor and insure the stability of the oil, but to remove all the impurities through molecular distillation. Actually, the higher quality fish oil caps out there, like those made by Zone Perfect, also use this process.

The verdict: This appears to be a high quality source of omega-3s and may be perfect for those tired of swallowing pills or who want to avoid fish breath. The downside is the cost. A box of 14 packets will run you $8.45 and a box of 28 will cost you a little over $15. Most plain fish oil caps are much cheaper and even the high end ones are cheaper than Coromega. Still, it’s a quality product and as always, expect to pay more for quality.

Rating: 8 — CS

If I begin by telling you this product is "cute," would you hold that against it? Don't, 'cause this is one quality little machine. The FatTrack is a small, computerized fat caliper, designed to remember the characteristics of three different bodies at a time. Once you have your gender, age, etc., programmed in (which is a snap), you're good to go. This piece of equipment makes it easy to keep track of your changing bodyfat percentages, and best of all, it's accurate!

FatTrack works on a three site method. The instructions tell you how to pinch your skin correctly and talks about body fat percentages in general. There's even a chart so you'll know where you stand in relation to the rest of society (most T-mag readers are probably aware that they're ahead of the pack that way). Guys use sites on the chest, waist and upper quad. The machine beeps when it takes the measurement, records them, and after the third pinch, one push of a button tells you your bodyfat percentage.

After using this on myself, my son Bob, and training partner Todd, I can say it's spot on and very accurate. I highly recommend the FatTrack. It's simple, it's easy and it works. It’ll run you about $50.

Rating: 8 — JK

Physically Incorrect and
The Science of Martial Arts Training
by Charles Staley

Most major coaches and trainers in this field have their own "manifesto" that sums up their basic philosophies about training, diet, recovery etc. Poliquin has The Poliquin Principles and Ian King has Get Buffed! Two books by Charles Staley could be put into the same manifesto category. Let’s take a closer look at them.

The Science of Martial Arts Training — First things first: Do not be thrown off by the title! While Staley does cover many different aspects of specific martial arts training, the book is useful for anyone involved in weight training, whether you do it just to look good or to improve your performance in sports. There are chapters on the principles of sport training, periodization, muscle assessment and training, nutrition, injuries, technical and practical preparation, and even a chapter on psychological preparation. The book has about 200 pages.

This isn’t a book about doing martial arts either. You won’t find any pictures of guys in gis sparing. It’s about training to become a better martial artist or athlete. Can a bodybuilder benefit from this book? You bet (I really liked the ab stuff, for example), although it’s obviously geared towards the competitive athlete.

This is one of the better books I’ve seen from the popular coaches in terms of quality. Many of these "manifestos" look cheap, are badly edited, and either have no or poor quality pics. The info is what’s important, of course, but having a quality piece of physical work to hang on to is nice as well. The Science of Martial Arts Training has both.

Rating: 9 — CS

Physically Incorrect — First off, this isn’t a hardcopy book. This is an "e-book". That means you download it onto your computer from the Myodynamics site and read it with Acrobat software. E-books have their upsides and their downsides. On the downside, unless you have a laptop, it’s hard to read e-books on the toilet or laying up in bed.

On the upside, you get the book instantly and with no shipping charges. And if you want to print it off and put it in a three-ring binder, you can. Another cool thing about e-books is that they’re "clickable." Find a term or exercise you’re not familiar with, click on it, and it’ll take you automatically to the definition or a picture.

What Staley did here was gather up every article he’s ever written, throw in several new ones and publish the whole shebang as an e-book. This amounts to a whopping 518 pages consisting of over 180,000 words! There are 43 articles, two interviews, 26 photos, a glossary and a big Q and A section. That means if you want to print it out, you’d better have two reams of paper and a fat three ring binder!

The articles range from Muscle and Fitness pieces published back in ’94 to Staley’s most recent work here at T-mag and the now defunct Mind and Muscle Power. It even includes the articles he had published for the old Muscle Media 2000, back when they had real experts and not skinny contest winners writing their training articles.

Staley has gone back and added a little update to each article as well as provided some "behind the scenes" info about each. For example, he hated it when T-mag changed the title of his article called "How Many?" to "The Thinking Man’s Guide to Sets and Reps". I don’t know, I kinda’ like ours better.

So, is it worth it? Well, if you’ve been a Staley groupie since the beginning, collecting every article he’s ever written and following him around asking if you can carry his Swiss balls for him, then no, you probably don’t need this. For the rest of us, sure, it’s a great "book" and well worth $30. Personally, I’ve followed Staley’s work for years and there were still a dozen articles here I’d missed. Plus, it’s really nice having them all in one place.

Rating: 7 — CS

Brother Iron Sister Steel:
A Bodybuilder's Book by Dave Draper

Hopefully, Dave Draper doesn't need any introduction to Testosterone readers. He retired from professional bodybuilding competition in 1970 while still very young, having gained the Mr. America, Mr. Universe and Mr. World titles (back when they meant something). The "Blond Bomber" was a favorite cover subject in Weider titles throughout the '60s and '70s.

This passionate embrace of working out with weights and the dietary discipline necessary to be successful weave themselves firmly throughout this new book. No matter what topic he's writing about, whether reminiscing or encouraging the reader to strive for new goals, Dave Draper loves bodybuilding and can't help but transmit this through his words.

Don't get the idea that this is a motivational book. It’s not a training manual, either; nor are these 330 pages one long history lesson. As anyone who’s read any of Dave's newsletters know, he's a product of the California 1960s and '70s and retains a huge fondness for bodybuilding in that era. His stories of workouts, gyms (Santa Monica in the basement, pre-Gold's Gym) are priceless, classic war tales. These guys worked out for freakin' hours each day and ate seemingly the rest of the time, all while working part-time at whatever they could find that wouldn't interfere too much with training.

I know I'm a bit vague about the exact contents of the book, but what I'm trying to get across is that this is an exciting book. There aren't any others like it in the field. Everyone will pull different things out of it, whether it be inspiration or plain old knowledge.

Dave has a way with words, is so passionate and firm in his resolve, and exhibits so much common sense, that I found myself agreeing out loud with him at times while reading.

Bonus: A huge amount of wonderful photographs from his career, including cool old magazine covers. Double bonus: A great deal of reference information at the end of the book.

Rating: 9 — JK

I admit it. I love being jacked up on legal stimulants. Ephedrine is my friend. Caffeine is my co-pilot. But I’ve backed off recently because I was getting rather immune to their effects. A shot of Power Drive and an MD6 capsule (or, in lieu of the latter, a plain ol’ caffeine tablet) is my basic "mood enhancing" stack of choice these days. But then came the Arnold Classic Weekend a few months back.

Since T-mag contributors are spread throughout the US and Canada, we don’t get to hang out together much. When we do get together, we like to stay up half the night talking about Romantic literature and playing Scrabble. Okay, okay, actually we sit in bars, ogle women and bullshit each other until 4 AM. That’s what happened during the Arnold. With a whopping three hours of sleep, we trudged into the convention center that morning looking for something to get us going.

Luckily, I found the Premier Nutrition booth and they were giving away samples of their Red Bullet drink. The ad promises "instant energy" that will keep you going for hours. It also says, "Red Bullet is a one-of-a-kind, unique energy supplement because of its cutting-edge formula of concentrated Ephedra, Caffeine and Ginseng." In other words, this an ECA stack in liquid form. (Cutting edge? I don’t think so.)

Anyway, it took about two swallows to get it all down and although the bottle promised a "vanilla blast", I was immediately reminded of cough syrup. Honestly, I didn’t feel much. But then again I had nine hours of sleep in a three day period, so this stuff must have kicked in a little because I was at least standing and mostly coherent all weekend.

Basically, Red Bullet is a tiny little bottle (2 oz) that contains 100 mg of caffeine in the form of guarana extract, 12 mg of ephedra from ma huang extract, plus some herbal aspirin (white willow bark) and some Siberian ginseng. One warning about herbal stimulants: sometimes they give you a nice kick in the pants and sometimes they don’t. Unlike drugs, herbal products can vary in effectiveness because of a variety of conditions; even the soil condition from which the plants are harvested or the climate. That’s why the old Ripped Fuel formulas would sometimes jack you up and sometimes fall flat. That said, most companies control the quality pretty well these days.

A liquid stimulant kicks in faster than a pill, so there’s one point for Red Bullet. Also, you don’t have to have anything to wash it down since it’s already in liquid form. That’s two points. The big question is, is that worth the extra cost? Well, a case of fifteen bottles will run you about 22 bucks. That’s about $1.46 a bottle. Obviously, just buying pill-form ECA would be cheaper. You wouldn’t get the ginseng but I think we can all agree that, as a stimulant at least, ginseng sucks a fat one.

So, is Red Bullet worth it? In an emergency (like the Arnold Classic), a couple of bottles would be nice to have around, but for me, I’ll stick to pills. Besides, the dosage of the active ingredients is fairly weak in my book.

Rating: 4 — CS

Each year, Mitsuru Okabe gains up close and personal access to the workouts, meals, and lives of the professional bodybuilders preparing for the Mr. Olympia title in the fall. From about twelve weeks out, and throughout the last three months, he follows them through their workouts. The camera travels with the athletes to restaurants where they explain how and what they're eating. They even explain to the camera about their dieting strategies, and most of them strip down to their shorts for their on-camera workouts (if you’re into that kind of thing.) What you won’t hear them discussing are their anabolic strategies and cycles, but we can't have everything, can we?

I find it fascinating to see how some of these guys, such as Kevin Levrone for example, really turn their workouts into heavy duty weight sessions for Mits and his movie camera. You know these guys are dieting hard, their carb intake levels are quite low, they're ripped, and yet they'll work up to four or more plates for incline bench. The competitiveness that comes to the forefront, especially when two of them are working out together, is one of the aspects of all of Mits' productions that sets them apart from all the other videotape producers in the bodybuilding game.

Sometimes the viewer learns really interesting stuff. Orville Burke says he actually increases his carb intake during pre-show training and dieting weeks! But he does take his daily calories down to 6000 from 7000. Just goes to show you what superior metabolisms the pros have (or perhaps the extent of their, uh, "supplement" usage.)

These are not posing sessions, but some of the guys strip down after their workout and hit a few shots; these are mean, yelling, big iron workouts with the biggest and best pro bodybuilders in the world. While this video might not teach T-mag readers anything all that useful, their workouts are, frankly, damn interesting and very motivating.

Productions values are top notch. Mits has learned to let the workouts speak for themselves, rather than add annoying soundtrack music. I'd rather hear big plates banging against each other, frankly. That's music to my ears.

Rating: 9 — JK

What’s the difference between a true gym rat and a wannabe sissy boy? Easy. True gym rats squat. They do back squats and front squats and one-and-a-quarter squats and anything else they can think up. They know there’s something about a good free weight squat session that will push your physique and athletic performance to a whole new level. Based on this, I was more than a little skeptical when I first heard about the Hip Belt by Ironmind. I thought, hey, I don’t need a contraption to squat, just give me a bar, a rack, and turn up the new Staind CD! But given the fact that Ironmind only produces the most hardcore devices and tough-as-nails training equipment on the market, I figured I’d give it a shot.

The Hip Belt looks like a fat, padded up squat belt that ties in the front. On each end there’s a carabiner and a "daisy chain", which is not what you think it is, you pervert. You attach these to a barbell so that the bar is in between your legs. (This looks like an old school "Jefferson lift", only your hands will be free instead of hanging onto the bar.) The idea here is to do squats while you’re strapped in. Basically, the quads will have to do the majority of the work since the back is taken out of the equation almost entirely.

After some trial and error, we figured out that an EZ-curl bar works best with the Hip Belt. A straight bar will work, but it’s harder to get the straps in the right place to balance the bar. After I was strapped in I noticed the major drawback of this device: You look like you’re wearing the world’s most wicked sex toy. This is the most profound phallic symbol I’ve ever seen! This isn’t really a problem of course, but I have to admit I felt funny standing there with this big iron erection strapped betwixt my legs.

After a couple of sets, we discovered several things: 1) It’s much easier to breathe using the belt as compared to back squats. The position was comfortable and the back was never stressed. 2) Despite the comfort, this thing was a quad killer! The front of our thighs were on fire, especially right above the knee. It felt a little like a front squat in that it really targeted the quads. The glutes and hams get some work, but man, the quads take most of the punishment, especially if you elevate your heals as the instruction book suggests. 3) It doesn’t take as much weight as you think. Although the belt is built to handle up to 3,500 pounds (yes, really), you won’t use near as much weight as you normally would with a back squat. Even if you can lift some big weights, it’s better to use smaller plate to increase the range of motion.

An advantage of the Hip Belt is that you can train to failure if you want, something that’s tough to do in a regular squat. If you fail, you just kneel down and unhook yourself. With your hands free you can even push off the floor or place you hand on your quads to force out another rep.

This is a great device for those who train at home or without a regular partner. It will also act as a dipping belt in a pinch and it’s possible to do calf work with it (although I tried it and didn’t really like the movement.) Ironmind has recently beefed up the padding and the price, but this is a quality piece of equipment so that’s cool with me.

Will this replace regular squats for me? No, but I am going to cycle Hip Belt squats into my regular leg training. I may even take a month off back squats and do nothing but Hip Belt squats, just for a change of pace.

Rating: 9 — CS

Where to Buy

Coromega Omega-3 Dietary Supplement is available at health food stores. A list of retailers can be found at Coromega.com.

For more info on the FatTrack calipers, visit AccuFitness.com or AccuMeasureFitness.com.

Physically Incorrect & The Science of Martial Arts Training by Charles Staley are both available through MyoDynamics.com.

Brother Iron Sister Steel: A Bodybuilder's Book by Dave Draper with cost you $24.95 plus $3.20 shipping at DaveDraper.com.

To order Red Bullet or for more info, visit Red-Bullet.com.

The Battle for the Olympia video will run you $39.95. plus $4.00 at MOCVideo.com.

The Super Squats Hip Belt is available at IronMind.com. It will set you back $89.95.

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed by Chris Shugart and John Koenig don’t necessarily reflect how the entire staff feels about the reviewed products.

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