HMG: a primer

     Much has been and will continue to be said about hCG, or human chorionic gonadotropin. This pregnancy hormone produced in the placenta has been used in fertility treatments, anti-aging medicine, testosterone replacement regimens, doping, and weight loss scams. Its many off-label uses have lead to perfusion into a wide array of areas, and if you are involved in a strength or physique sport, or any elite sport you've likely at least heard of it being used to prevent testicular disruption from anabolic androgenic steroids. But you probably aren't as familiar with hMG, which is a similar hormone (actually a set of hormones) that, for the purpose of fertility and testicular health, has some interesting aspects that many consider superior to hCG.

     Human Menopausal Gonadotropin, or hMG, is a mixture of gonadotropins secreted by menopausal and post-menopausal women. This life stage tends to include hypergonadism and thus lends itself to the creation of a virtual biological gonadotropin factory. The primary gonadotropins in vertebrates are luteinizing hormone (LH) and Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and both are present in large amounts in HMG. HCG may be in the mixture as well in some cases.

     At this point, if you are familiar with male enocrinology, you'll understand why hMG is so valuable for men with secondary hypogonadism (testes can function but brain isn't sending the signal)or who use endocrine-suppressing steroid drugs. LH stimulates the production of androgens in the testes and FSH stimulates sperm production. While hCG mimics LH and doesn't directly stimulate sperm production, hMG is the real thing. It exerts a direct impact on both androgen production and sperm production, making it an effective fertility drug in most cases and providing an excellent tool for men wanting to maintain not only testicular function but fertility while using steroid drugs.

     As with hCG, though, there are concerns for sensitivity with administration in large regular doses.  Too much for too long will have a deleterious effect, desensitizing target tissues to the gonadotropins and reinforcing the negative feedback loop creating the suppression in the first place. Men seeking to use this as a fertility aid or as a replacement for hCG need to consider the other classic hCG issue with hMG as well: aromatase. Aromatase production will spike in response to the pulses of gonadotropins, adding elevated aromatase levels to the mixture of potential problems.

     In summary, what is hMG? It's a stronger gonadal stimulant than hCG, enhancing both testosterone and sperm production. It has the same uses and carries the same potential risks. Please take it upon yourself if you choose to use illicit PEDs to educate yourself so that risk can be minimized and health optimized. It's not just your performance at stake. You have to live with your health forever, so treat it accordingly.

An Example of Meet Week Prep

       I've been asked quite a bit what my final week before a meet looks like. So as the opening competition of my 2014 season approaches, I want to take the opportunity to put up a basic outline of the things I do during the final week of prep, at the end of training or even after training is over. This is my final prep timeline for this year's WABDL North American Championships, where I'm cutting weight to hit the 125 kilogram class. There will be a 24 hour weigh-in.

1. Monday: hit BP opener for a single, squat (light) to keep the lower body from tightening up into an unusable coiled mass, and do a little barbell rowing; water consumption increased by 50%.

2. Tuesday: PNF and soft tissue work on biceps, triceps, shoulder girdle, and T-spine.
   
     *Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation

3. Wednesday: depletion training to begin my weight cut

4. Thursday: depletion day 2; cals at maintenance, carbs at 150 g. Recovery walk in PM.

5. Thursday at dinner, reduce fluid intake to sipping on water; afterward suck on ice chips and sip herbal tea.

6.  Sleep if possible. Probably not though because I'll be essentially camping in the bathroom epitomizing the concept of the over-active bladder.

7. Weigh at 5 AM, 6 hours out from checking in at the meet. Hit the steam room and take a walk if needed. Monitor weight every half hour until target is hit, sucking on ice chips to keep from over-dehydrating. Continue to monitor until I check in.

8. Check in at 11 AM after vacating the bladder and bowels.

9. As close to 11 AM as possible, start drinking gatorade and eat an easy to digest breakfast; over the course of the day I'll have a gallon of gatorade, a gallon of water, and as much food as I can eat for the rest of the day.

10. See chiropractor and neuromuscular therapist. Adjustment, soft tissue work, and mechanical analysis.

11. Bed early.

The Cardio Boogeyman Exposed

       At this point everyone seriously involved in lifting weights has probably heard the refrain, "cardio limits gains and causes fibers to switch." It's well known that excessive endurance training can impact strength training negatively, and it's well-established in the literature that the two types of training don't always jive well. Additionally, it's been demonstrated that strength training and endurance training don't carry over well to performance in the respective alternate field.

       But be that as it may, the reality for many athletes is that the health benefits or performance improvements from endurance training can help them in their endeavors, and training in both areas is needed for a competitor to excel in many sports. Mechanisms for training adaptations are understood to be specific to context, so we know that performance increases of the type that would be significant to the athlete's game require training that matches the demands. A rugby player certainly needs to be strong, but he also needs to be able to run a 5k during a game while hitting other players, jumping, throwing, falling, and getting crushed by a pile of similarly stressed individuals. A trail runner needs to be in fantastic condition, but if he's got weak legs he'll get crushed by a dude who does his squats regularly when an 800 meter hill comes up. For lifters and bodybuilders, while cardio may present some hindrances, you also don't need to be a sloppy fat-ass with no work capacity and horrible circulation, so you may find yourself in a situation where a little cardio will make you healthier, and thereby better able to train and perform adequately.

       So, having established that there are times where you'd conceivably want to address both endurance and strength, we need to establish the extent of the potential hindrances to performance with concurrent training. Once we understand these and understand the context of the adaptations, we can plan these different training stresses and adaptations to be minimally incompatible or compatible completely in the best case. Let's look at some literature first.

http://www.jappl.org/content/56/4/831.short

http://www.portalsaudebrasil.com/artigospsb/ativfis150.pdf

http://jap.physiology.org/content/59/6/1716.short

       Endurance training induces changes to skeletal muscle. This includes metabolic as well as fiber-type adaptations. Duh. But since some of the cardio extremists insist on harping about how endurance training is too low-threshold to affect muscular development, we'll put these links up there. You'll adapt to endurance training just as you'll adapt to any training. We get better at what we practice. If you are still with me after the remedial assertion that the training you do has a physiological effect, good. You are now ready for freshman health class. If not, I don't know how you found this blog but it's beyond your current level of understanding. Please stick around, but do some major studying too.

http://sriechman.tamu.edu/629/2012/Nader%202006.pdf

       Another concept that should be simple to grasp but still eludes some is that too much endurance training can hinder both hypertrophy and strength development. This is not a problem confined to endurance training. Too much of any training that doesn't carry over to your sport directly will carry risk of hindering progress, for various reasons.

       There should be no debate about whether excessive endurance training can hinder strength and muscular growth. Many of the adaptations caused by endurance training run counter to many       
caused by strength training and bodybuilding. Many have said cardio has no or limited benefit in populations seeking strength and size.

       But looking at the issue in a black-and-white fashion completely ignores how things work in the real world: Energy systems do not function in isolation. All systems are working to keep you alive and functioning. Low aerobic capacity will affect your health and performance in major ways. Adaptation is a way to cope with a changing environment; much of it is transient. And lastly, the biggest thing the no-cardio-ever crowd forgets: a little bit of cardio isn't going to cause the same adaptations as intensive endurance training.

       Clearly, there is a time and a place where endurance work is appropriate. Considering that, it behooves us to look more deeply into how the resulting adaptations occur, especially when combined with strength training. Luckily, the good folks in the military-industrial complex have already figured it out:

http://allasamsonova.ru/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/12/1995_Kraemer-W.J.-at-all.pdf

       This study examines in depth the interaction of endurance and strength training, noting that the two seem to be incompatible. But what is more interesting to us at this moment is the hypotheses about why this is the case and how we might manage it. "Thus, incompatibility of training may be attributed to a large extent to the extreme stress of adrenal activation due to the total amount of high intensity exercise. Whether successful adaptations can occur remains dependent on the ability of various anabolic compensatory mechanisms (e.g. testosterone, IGF-1, and GH) to eventually override a catabolic environment." Later, the author states, "...such data and previous studies have indicated that total work stress may be a potentially significant factor in the development of incompatibility of exercise training. This concept is now supported from an endocrine perspective."

       While attenuation of adaptations was occurring in this study, it's important to note that strength, size, and endurance all increased significantly in groups training concurrently. It's hypothesized that, as discussed above, the limiting factor for the compatibility of the two training types could be determined more by the ability of the athlete to recover from training stresses than by an inherent attenuation. The author goes on to say that rest, periodization, and control of outside stressors contributed to continued improvements even with the attenuation, and suggests controlling these factors may decrease incompatibility of the two training types.

       We also need to note that fiber type conversions took 12 weeks to become apparent, and that other markers of endurance adaptations took a while as well.

       If you want a sound-bite answer to the question of whether cardio is okay here it is: it's not cardio
that kills gains. It's excessive cardio. Controlling training volumes and intensities and making sure the bulk of your work is specific to your goals continues to be the best way to train. Adding some cardio is not going to immediately impact your strength training in any negative way unless you go whole-hog into intensive and specialized endurance work. Appropriate modes of endurance training in appropriate volumes will aid you rather than hindering you.

       The question now is only, "what is appropriate?" If you've learned anything from me so far then you already know the answer. It depends.

The way I do it.

       Since some programs I've used to train for competition were well received upon my recent posting of them on some facebook groups, I've been in several conversations that set off huge waves of requests for my current training methodology. I've discussed alot of training programs and methods I use with clients in detail in various outlets, but it's been pointed out that I haven't really explained the way I train myself. The following is the basic template I set my training up on, and is the result of my experiences as a lifter and my education/study. It took me a long time to work up to this so don't expect it to treat you nicely if you decide to jump in without prior experience with this type of training.

Off-season



 

       I train relatively infrequently in the off-season, which for me is typically 3 months. It's very simple during this time, with low volume. The focus is on full recovery, abbreviated training, and hypertrophy. This template is pretty standard in the HIT crowd, and was heavily influenced by the work of Ellington Darden.

 

       Every 3rd day: 6-8 exercises encompassing the major muscle groups. One set to failure of 6-15 reps after adequate warm-up. Sometimes I break these up into A and B sessions, with squats or DLs in the beginning of session A for a heavy set of 1-5 and bench presses in the beginning of session B. The two are then alternated, so that each main lift is hit roughly every 9 days for a single heavy set.

 

 

In-season

 

       During the season, I swing all the way in the other direction. Training is high volume, high intensity, and high frequency. Training load and volume are purely autoregulated. Targets for average load, total volume, and fatigue level are decided on weekly but are subject to change. The goal is to increase average weekly workload, average weekly volume, and total tonnage throughout the season, with minimal accumulated fatigue and absolutely no over-reaching. I only ever take weights I know I can hit and I err on the side of too light or too few lifts instead of letting fatigue and injury limit me. The daily and even the weekly performance doesn't matter. Daily capacities change. What matters is the trend should always be toward heavier loads and more work. After all, the strongest man is the one who lifts the most weight the most often. This one is less a template and more a set of guidelines.

 

1. Every lift every day.

2. 4-6 times a week.

3. Do singles with a load exceeding 70% in every session.

4. 80/20: 80 percent of my work is squatting, benching, and pulling; the remainder is essential support work.

 

       At present, this takes the shape of:

 

Monday: 

     SQ and BP: heavy triple, then repeated down-sets until fatigue reaches goal

     Sumo DL:single, then a single down-set for 3+ reps

     Row: one top set to failure and a second set either at less weight or using rest-pause reps

 

Tuesday:

     SQ and BP variation (pause squat, close grip, etc): heavy single

     Hip hinge movement (RDL, GM, etc; occasionally GHR, despite it not being a hinge): 6RM

     Upper arm accessories: one set for bis, one for tris, both to failure

 

Wednesday:

     SQ and BP: 80% of Monday's top weight, either for 3 triples or a single set of reps

     Olympic lift variation: work up to a daily max and follow with down-sets of 3

     Upper back/ rear delt: varied depending on the movement chosen

 

Thursday:

     SQ and BP variation: heavy single

     DL from varying positions: heavy single

          *mid shin, knee, and 1-2 inch deficit are the ones that carry over for me

     Upper arm accessories

Friday:
    SQ and BP volume work: see Monday
    Conventional DL: heavy single, then a down-set
    Chins: 2 working sets, typically with negatives on the second, or a reduction in load

Saturday:
     Active recovery: during the warm parts of the year, I hike at least an hour on this day; other times I do LISS cardio, a circuit, yoga, or whatever I want that isn't powerlifting.

     There you have it. I think I'll call it "Boring and Hard."