I have written my first proper commercial book. Its called “Iron Power Palm” and is a how to manual for people that want to train to break with the hands for martial arts.

The book is 285 pages and fully illustrated. I expect to have it available for purchase in ebook form in the next few days and as a hardcopy book after xmas.

Yeah it really sucks. I just spent a week with chronic diarrhea after eating at a fast food chicken joint. I got very weak and dizzy for the whole time and finally got back to the gym today.

I hope to be back to normal tomorrow. Haven’t had a bug like that for many, many years. Lucky I had no vomiting, just diarrhea and dehydration.

Anyway the best thing is to eat lots of natural yogurt to counter the bad bacteria and rest up.

Pretty sure I had Staphylococcus but who knows there are so many bugs that can cause the same symptoms.

Cissus quadrangularis

Cissus quadrangularis is an ancient medicinal plant native to the hotter parts of Ceylon and India. It was prescribed in the ancient Ayurvedic texts as a general tonic and analgesic, with specific bone fracture healing properties. Modern research has shed light on Cissus’ ability to speed bone healing by showing it acts as a glucocorticoid antagonist (1,2). Since anabolic/androgenic compounds are well known to act as antagonists to the glucocorticoid receptor as well as promote bone growth and fracture healing, it has been postulated that Cissus possesses anabolic and/or androgenic properties (1,3). In addition to speeding the remodeling process of the healing bone, Cissus also leads to a much faster increase in bone tensile strength. In clinical trials Cissus has led to a fracture healing time on the order of 55 to 33 percent of that of controls. That cissus exerts antiglucocorticoid properties is suggested by a number of studies where bones were weakend by treatment with cortisol, and upon administration of Cissus extract the cortisol induced weakening was halted, and the healing process begun.

While the increased rate of bone healing may be of great significance to persons suffering from chronic diseases like osteoporosis (4), the antiglucocorticoid properties of Cissus are likely of much more interest to the average bodybuilder or athlete, since endogenous glucocorticoids, particularly cortisol, are not only catabolic to bone, but catabolize muscle tissue as well. Numerous studies over the years have suggested that glucorticoids, including the body’s endogenous hormone cortisol activate pathways that degrade not only bone, but skeletal muscle tissue as well. A recently published report documented exactly how glucocorticoids (including cortisol) induce muscle breakdown: They activate the so-called ubiquitin-proteasome pathway of proteolysis (5). This pathway of tissue breakdown is important for removing damaged and non-functional proteins. However, when it is overactive during periods of elevated cortisol (e.g disease states, stress, and overtraining) excess amounts of normal tissue are broken down as well. By exerting an anabolic, antiglucorticoid effect cissus helps preserve muscle tissue during times of physical and emotional stress.

Although the bulk of the research on Cissus centers around bone healing, the possibility exists that Cissus may act to improve bone healing it may improve the healing rate of connective tissue in general, including tendons. If this is the case it would be of great benefit to bodybuilders and athletes.

Besides the above-mentioned properties of Cissus, the plant is also rich in the vitamins/antioxidants vitamin C and beta-carotene. As analyzed, Cissus quadrangularis contained ascorbic acid 479 mg, and carotene 267 units per 100g of freshly prepared paste in addition to calcium oxalate (6).

The typical recommended daily dosage of Cissus extract is between 100 and 500 mg, depending on the concentration of the extract and the severity of symptoms. For the powder of the dried plant, the Ayurvedic texts recommend a dosage of 3 to 6 grams to accelerate fracture healing. Safety studies in rats showed no toxic effects at dosages as high as 2000 mg/kg of body weight. So not only is Cissus efficacious, it is also quite safe, in either the dried powder form or the commercially available extract.

Cissus also possess analgesic properties on a mg per mg basis comparable to aspirin or anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen. Cissus quadrangularis constitutes one of the ingredients of an Ayurvedic preparation, `Laksha Gogglu’, which has been proved to be highly effective in relieving pain, reduction of swelling and promoting the process of healing of the simple fractures as well as in curing the allied disorders associated with fractures (7). The mechanism through which Cissus exerts its analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties has not been well characterized. It may act centrally, but the anti-inflammatory features suggest that it acts by preventing the conversion of arachidonic acid to inflammatory prostaglandins.

1) Chopra SS, Patel MR, Awadhiya RP. Studies of Cissus quadrangularis in experimental fracture repair : a histopathological study Indian J Med Res. 1976 Sep;64(9):1365-8

2) Chopra SS, Patel MR, Gupta LP, Datta IC. Studies on Cissus quadrangularis in experimental fracture repair: effect on chemical parameters in blood Indian J Med Res. 1975 Jun;63(6):824-8.

3) PRASAD GC, UDUPA KN. EFFECT OF CISSUS QUADRANGULARIS ON THE HEALING OF CORTISONE TREATED FRACTURES. Indian J Med Res. 1963 Jul;51:667-76.

4) Shirwaikar A, Khan S, Malini S. Antiosteoporotic effect of ethanol extract of Cissus quadrangularis Linn. on ovariectomized rat. J Ethnopharmacol. 2003 Dec;89(2-3):245-50.

5) Combaret L, Taillandier D, Dardevet D, Bechet D, Ralliere C, Claustre A, Grizard J, Attaix D Glucocorticoids regulate mRNA levels for subunits of the 19 S regulatory complex of the 26 S proteasome in fast-twitch skeletal muscles. Biochem J. 2004 Feb 15;378(Pt 1):239-46.

6) Chidambara Murthy KN, Vanitha A, Mahadeva Swamy M, Ravishankar GA. Antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of Cissus quadrangularis L. J Med Food. 2003 Summer;6(2):99-105.

7) Panda, J Res Ayurv Siddha, 1990, 11, 7

I believe I have lost fitness doing LSD running. Its made me slow like a slug. If you have never exercised & need to lose fat and ease your heart into training then it has value.

But I am an ex infantry soldier, I have lifted weights 26 years. Thanks to LSD my cardio level is very poor.

The fix ? Kettlebell snatches and the viking warrior workout will save my ass. I expect that only 1-2 months doing the cardio KB snatch routine will have my cardio in pristine condition. No more long slow runs to the beach for me.

Kettelbells are far more effective for improving cardio and fat loss while maintaining and increasing muscle.

I’m resting my left arm due to Tendinitis for a couple of weeks minimum. Sucks but there is no alternative. Here is a document showing Chinese massage therapy which should be done with Dit Da Jow liniment.

The Chinese treatment differers a little from western treatment. Ice is contraindicated as is compression to some extent as you want to encourage blood flow. You can use Ice & compression initially to get any immediate swelling or inflammation down but after 24-48 hours just use the massage and rest the arm for 2-3 weeks

Weight vest training has begun to make a change in my physique. I am a lifter of 26 years but have a smooth midsection. I don’t enjoy running at all. It feels good at the end but I don’t think the muscle fibers in my legs are suited for it. At 100 kg its not so good either.

I’m a weight lifter not a runner.

I tried jump rope which is more effective but again I am just not made for it. I thought jump rope was the most strenuous cardio workout but I was wrong.

Kettlebells and weight vest training combined will change your training regimen. I get an extreme endorphin hit doing this training. It puts a grin on my face and I am now highly motivated to do cardio. The main exercise with kettlebells for cardio is the snatch. Look up the “viking warrior conditioning” program.

This is just plain killer cardio that takes you well into the red zone – nearly heart attack material.

It really is very strenuous – but so damn good.

So being an ex-grunt I have to add the weight vest. Fatigue and stamina are pushed to the limit.

Get a 16 kg kettlebell, a weight vest, a doctors seal of approval (seriously) and be prepared to do battle. Really this is military grade training fit for any combat soldier.

My body weight is unchanged at 100 kg but in the last two days both my gym instructor (who I never ask for instruction) and a complete stranger have commented on my physique. The stranger asked me how to lose abdominal fat. Well I am far from ripped but it wont take long training in this way.

I still do my regular weight training with barbell & dumbell but add 2-3 weight vest sessions per week preferably with the kettlebells.

Deadlifts are also killer with the vest on.

As you should know telomeres are the end caps on your chromosomes that break down over time.
This is how nature kills us through natural aging. Other factors can cause cellular damage but it is the breakdown of the telomeres that is the fundamental aging mechanism.

The body uses an enzyme called telomerase to repair the telomeres – all of this is old news (no pun intended).

So what we want to do is activate the telomerase enzyme to repair our healthy cells and prolong life – potentially indefinitely with this biotechnology.

Certain enzymes inhibit telomerase in such a way that destroys cancer cells & others activate it in such a way that restores healthy cells that we don’t want to age. The aging in the cells can be reversed by restoring the telomeres.

OK like I said this is old news, now products exist that do this. Cycloastragenol is a saponin from the Chinese herb astragalus – not just any astragalus though. TA-65, is the telomerase activator agent derived from the Chinese astragalus plant.

Geron corporation is distributing this product under license. http://www.tasciences.com/ are the original developers of the substance. Unfortunately as is often the case just taking astragalus is not going to save you as you need piles of the stuff to extract a daily dose.

Telomerase activation does hold the key to biological life extension.

It seems those myostatin blocking drugs are not far off. They will be beneficial in fighting cancer, aging and enhancing performance.

From http://www.acceleronpharma.com/content/products/ace-031.jsp

ACE-031 (Neuromuscular Disease)

ACE-031 is a novel, muscle-building agent that is being developed for the treatment of patients with neuromuscular diseases with the goal of improving strength and preserving physical function.

What is ACE-031?

ACE-031 is an investigational protein therapeutic that builds muscle and increases strength by inhibiting molecules that bind to and signal through a cell surface receptor called Activin Receptor Type IIB (ActRIIB). ACE-031 is a recombinant fusion protein that is produced by joining a portion of the human ActRIIB receptor to a portion of a human antibody. This creates a freely circulating, decoy version of ActRIIB which removes proteins, such as GDF-8 (myostatin) and other related molecules that limit the growth and strength of muscle.

The Role of ActRIIB Signaling and Muscle Growth

Muscle growth is regulated by proteins in the TGF-? protein superfamily that serve as “on” or “off” switches for muscle production. Several molecules including GDF-8 interact with the ActRIIB receptor and send an “off” signal to stop muscle production. In the absence of these “off” switch molecules that signal through the ActRIIB receptor, muscle mass increases dramatically.

In nature, this effect has been observed in numerous species, particularly in animals that have been bred for increased musculature and strength. For example, Belgian Blue cattle lack the gene for GDF-8, which is one of several molecules that activate the ActRIIB receptor. A deficiency of this protein results in cattle with tremendously developed musculature and strength. Similar effects have been observed in other species, including rodents, dogs and even humans.

Treatment with ACE-031 Builds Skeletal Muscle

Treatment with ACE-031 promotes muscle growth by inhibiting ActRIIB signaling. ACE-031 binds to proteins that signal through the ActRIIB receptor to limit muscle growth. When ACE-031 binds to these proteins, it prevents them from interacting with the ActRIIB receptor, thus allowing muscle to grow. Moreover, because ACE-031 prevents GDF-8 and other proteins that regulate muscle mass from signaling through the ActRIIB receptor, its effects on lean muscle exceed those of inhibitors of GDF-8 (myostatin) alone.

Non-Clinical Results – When animals are treated with ACE-031, they experience growth in lean muscle and are considerably stronger than their untreated counterparts. This has been shown in several species, and in both healthy animals and in animals with diseases associated with muscle weakness and wasting.

Clinical Results – Recently, Acceleron completed a clinical study of ACE-031 in healthy volunteers. These subjects received a single dose of ACE-031 across a range of dose levels. At higher doses, the effects of ACE-031 on skeletal muscle were encouraging. After a single dose of ACE-031, subjects developed roughly 1 kilogram (over 2 pounds) of muscle at 2 weeks. Moreover, ACE-031 was well-tolerated at all dose levels, with only mild or transient side effects observed.

Effects of Single-Dose Treatment of ACE-031 on Lean Mass (Human)

Acceleron is developing ACE-031 for the treatment of patients with neuromuscular diseases, such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), with the goal of improving strength and preserving physical function. By affecting the muscle directly, ACE-031 may one day offer hope to patients suffering from these debilitating diseases.

References

A mutation in the myostatin gene increases muscle mass and enhances racing performance in heterozygote dogs, Mosher DS et al. PLoS Genet 3(5): e79, 2007.

Regulation of muscle growth by multiple ligands signaling through activin type II receptors, Lee SJ et. al., PNAS 102:18117-18122, 2005.

Inhibition of myostatin in adult mice increases skeletal muscle mass and strength, Whittemore LA et al., Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2003 Jan 24;300(4):965-71.

Regulation of myostatin activity and muscle growth, Lee SJ et. al., PNAS, 98:9306-9311, 2001.

From http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100819/full/news.2010.419.html

Drug flexes muscle against cancer

Decoy protein helps to fight cancer in mice by stopping muscle breakdown.

Researchers have created a molecule that, in mice, can fully reverse the devastating muscle loss that often accompanies advanced cancer — and thereby increase the lifespan of animals with the disease.

The molecule blocks the activity of a key muscle-limiting protein called myostatin by acting as a decoy. Instead of myostatin binding to its normal receptor and triggering muscle wastage, it is ‘mopped up’ by binding to the decoy molecule instead.

Muscle wasting — called cachexia — is thought to account for about 30% of deaths in patients with cancer, but how exactly cachexia is spurred by cancer — or indeed exactly how it leads to a patient’s decline — isn’t known. It is thought that several molecular pathways work in tandem, “activating an axis of evil to control muscle mass in a negative way”, says H. Q. Han, lead author of the study and scientific director of the metabolic disorders division at Amgen, a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, California.

Han and his group wanted to find the dominant pathway responsible for cancer cachexia, and then design a way to block it in order to treat patients. Several studies have shown that blocking the myostatin pathway can promote muscle growth, says Han, and some have shown that a molecule closely related to myostatin, called activin A, becomes more abundant in patients with some cancers.

“We examined a large random collection of cancer cell lines in vitro, and found that one-third of them secreted large amounts of activin A,” says Han. “This led us to believe that activin A must have some systemic function when overproduced in a cancer setting.”
Muscling in

The researchers created a soluble version of the activin A receptor — which is thought to affect both myostatin and activin A signalling — by fusing a piece of human activin receptor to an antibody. This decoy mopped up the ligands that usually bind to the real receptor, thus blocking receptor activation.

“There’s really an overwhelming amount of data now showing the benefits of targeting this pathway.”

A single injection of the soluble receptor into normal mice boosted their muscle mass by 25% or more in a week or two. When it was given to mice implanted with colon cancer cells, their muscle mass returned to normal, even though their tumours continued to grow. Strikingly, all of the animals that did not receive the soluble receptor were dead 40 days after cancer cells were implanted, but more than half of the treated animals survived to this point. The study will be published tomorrow in the journal Cell1.

Han’s group isn’t the first to try to manipulate the myostatin pathway to treat muscle wasting. “There’s really an overwhelming amount of data now showing the benefits of targeting this pathway,” says Se-Jin Lee, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who co-discovered the myostatin gene and its role in regulating skeletal muscle mass in 19972.

The fact that disrupting the myostatin pathway caused such strong muscle regrowth isn’t so surprising, says Lee, because other studies have shown that this pathway has an extremely negative effect on muscle growth.

Ken Fearon, a surgical oncologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who has studied cancer cachexia, agrees. “They’ve antagonized one of the main in vivo brakes” to muscle growth, he says. “If you take the brakes off a car, it’ll keep going down the road.”
Limited options

What is most exciting is that the treatment prolonged survival, according to Lee and Fearon, because few treatments for cancer cachexia currently exist. “The reason that oncologists don’t bother measuring — let alone treating — cachexia is that they feel their options are so limited outside of treating the cancer,” Fearon says.

Despite the molecule’s powerful effect in mice, “does blocking this pathway in humans also cause muscle to grow?” asks Lee. “That question has not been answered yet.”

It is also still unclear whether the myostatin pathway plays a causative role in regulating the condition, he says, and the study doesn’t provide all the answers. “The fact that you can prevent the muscle loss doesn’t say that it’s due to overactivity in this pathway,” he notes.

Several pharmaceutical and biotech companies have begun clinical trials to test compounds that target the myostatin pathway. In the only such study published so far, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and drug firm Wyeth (now part of Pfizer) used an antibody to block myostatin in an attempt to treat the muscle-wasting disease muscular dystrophy3. “Those results were quite wishy-washy,” Lee says.

Other trials, including on testing a similar form of the soluble activin A receptor by pharmaceutical company Acceleron, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are still in progress. Unlike many of the other compounds being tested, says Lee, this particular compound can bind not just to myostatin and activin but also to many other related molecules. This could make it more potent, he notes, “but of course it might also be the downfall” if this lack of specificity leads to unwanted side effects in patients.

*
References
1. Zhou, X. et al. Cell 142, 531-543 (2010).
2. McPherron, A. C. et al. Nature 387, 83-90 (1997). | Article
3. Wagner, K. R. et al. Ann. Neurol. 63, 561-571 (2008). | Article

Yes I convinced the gym instructor at my gym some months ago to buy some KB’s.

Coz they ain’t cheap – right ? I used them a bit but found it a little lame. Well having got my new weight vest it seemed the KB’s may be a good combination.

Some barbell work is inconvenient with a vest (like bench press) – dead lifts are excellent though.

Same with machines – its not quite what the vest was designed for.

Kettlebells’s and the weight vest give the most killer intense workout you can imagine. Throw in some dead lifts and barbell curls and you will be sore the next day.

I like to use my vest for 3 hours at a stretch. Normally this will include a weights workout and a good long walk.

THIS IS NOT ME (I’m handsome) LOL

Image from : http://swingsnatch.blogspot.com/

Really training with Kettlebells alone is lame – once you have hit them with a vest there is no turning back.

Weight vests are serious kit – DO NOT RUSH !!!

Be very careful to break in to using a vest – no plyometrics for the first 3 months. No running or jumping for the first 3 months.

You want your hips, spine & knees to slowly adapt to the added weight. Do stretches and joint strengthening to adapt to the vest. After some weeks you can slowly add more movement oriented exercise.

Weight training and walking are fine for the beginning as are low impact calisthenics like push ups and pull ups.

After time you can add weight and plyometric moves.

I was sixteen when I started lifting. I got two dumbells and a barbell for my 16th birthday. I used to train at a small town gym too.

At nineteen I finally left home and started training at Youthtown gym in Auckland. At that time & for many years it was a power lifters gym & many competitive Olympic lifters trained there.

I’ve trained at this same gym for 23 years now.

At Home I have a bunch of stuff:

2x Fat grip dumbells
Weight vest
Gripstik
Power Twister
Chest Expander
Eagle Catcher
Hand Grippers
EMS machine
Sledge Hammer
Jump Rope

So although I hit the gym 3-4 times a week if I am not sick or busy with work I can still squeeze in a decent workout at home.