Can Glycogen Loading and Eccentric reps Replace Steroids?

8/9/2019 Can Glycogen Loading and Eccentric reps Replace Steroids?

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GLYCOGEN ECCENTRIC STEROIDS

Podcast hosts: Brad Howard and John Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 1 of32

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Glycogen,Eccentrics, Steroids

Can Glycogen Loading and Eccentric reps

Replace Steroids?

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From The Desk ofBrad Howard

Dear Friend,

Welcome to the Adonis Lifestyle Podcast!

Inside this transcript, youll find a lot of actionable information that youll be able to put to useTODAY to help develop your body for maximum visual impact. With that said, here are a few

things to remember as youre reading through this document.

1. Our trainings and opinions are based solely on the end goal of creating a body based on

proportions and social influence. Just as baseball players, powerlifters, and MMA

fighters train for a specific purpose, the techniques, tactics, and strategies we talk about

revolve around looks based training and not performance based training. (although

your average performance across most all regimes will, in fact, increase as a whole with

our advice)

2. Health based training takes a backseat as the recommendations we give create bodies

that fall within all of the generally accepted parameters for good health (blood pressure,

heart health, etc) by default. And, although we do talk about health and aging from time

to time, realize that health comes with the package, without having to FOCUS on it.

3. Our opinions are strictly our own and sometimes are about as un-PC as you can get, but

well never hide from the truth or try to sugar coat reality. Our job is to help you get in

the exact shape you want, with all the BS aside. So, if you think were a little harsh

sometimes just know weve got your best interest at heart.

So, with all of that said, dive in and enjoy. If youd like more information on our workout

systems, justclick this link. We guarantee youll save a bunch of time and energy in the process.

Your friend,

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Brad Howard

Brad Howard: All right guys, welcome once again to your Adonis Lifestyle podcast. I

am Brad Howard and on the phone is John Barban once again. And today were going

to talk about some really interesting things, and we probably are going to get a little

controversial toward the end. I know John has got some questions that he wants to go

ahead and handle over really quickly up front. Were getting a lot of questions on these,

so why dont you go in and take it away.

John Barban: Okay, we are talking about glycogen and glycogen loading, glycogen

synthesis, glycogen repletion, and the question that was in the forums and people are

kind of buzzing around is, how much glycogen is optimal, for muscle growth? And

then the conversation goes a little further and wondering is it possible to be in a calorie

deficit, and then the assumption is youre also in a glycogen deficit and still build muscle

if the amount of glycogen stored in your muscle is somehow rate limiting to muscle

growth. So the quick lesson is that glycogen is just the storage form of glucose and

basically any carbohydrate you take into your body eventually gets turned into glucose

in your bloodstream and then it gets stored as glycogen, and that gets stored in all cells

of your body, in your liver and in your muscle cells, with muscle cells being the ones

were kind of talking about here.

Glycogen gets stored as a different forms so there is proglycogen and macroglycogen

and its stored in different areas, speaking of the muscles specifically, and its stored in

different particle sizes. So its not a uniformed molecule in its storage form. Its stored

in different places at different sizes and at different densities, so its kind of all over the

place, and there is a lot of research in endurance athletes, so people who are doing

long distance stuff like runners and cyclists that if you do an exhaustive exercise where



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you do a lot of exercising, like hours of exercising to deplete your glycogen stores, and

then if you force-feed yourself lots of glucose, you can super-compensate and yourmuscles will absorb more glycogen than they had before. So what that means is that

there is a standard level of glycogen that the average muscle will be holding at any

given moment. If you do a depletion exercise and then drink a lot of sugar basically, like

sugar water, you can get your muscles temporarily to absorb more glycogen than they

had before. But that doesnt mean theyre going to be huge, that just means

scientifically you can measure more glycogen in them.

But all of this type of research is done in endurance athletes and the amount of glucose

that theyre taking in is really high. Its like it would be an extra thousand calories, if not

more, per day on top of what youre eating just in sugar, so its kind of a lot. So anyone

who is focusing on trying to lose weight, I dont know that you all of a sudden want to be

taking in another 500 grams of sugar just to try to get your glycogen levels up in your

muscles. It would be kind of defeating the purpose of at least trying to lose weight, and

then none of this really has even been shown to have anything to do with actually

building muscle.

Another study was done trying to see if low glycogen levels in one muscle (and this is

on the same person they tested one leg versus another). If having low glycogen on one

leg before weight training exercise changed its anabolic response. When they say

anabolic, they were just measuring various RNA levels of different genes that promote

muscle hypertrophy, and it seemed to be a bit of a muted effect, like nothing really

happened and if anything, the low glycogen leg had a more favorable response by

knocking down the gene expression of the genes that cause muscles to shrink. I know

that was a lot to take in. So basically the low glycogen leg may have genetically turned

down muscle degradation, but not really upped muscle synthesis. But if you can turn



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down degradation, that still results in muscle growth. So basically, my overall point here

is there is not much we can really do with glycogen in our muscles as far as makingthem grow.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: I mean, if youre eating enough, and even if youre just eating to

maintenance or just eating a mixed diet, thats probably all you need to do. And if your

goal is fat loss, its your primary goal, if your muscles feel a little flatter and they feel not

quite as bloated, they probably arent, but it doesnt mean that youre not going to be

able to gain it. It doesnt mean to just give up on going to the gym. It just means for

those few weeks or months, youre going to have to kind of deal with not feeling as big

while youre losing fat, and then when you can go back to eating maintenance, you can

have that sort of big feeling again. And if strength in the gym is an issue, I dont think

any amount of glycogen can compare to just caffeine and ephedrine. If you actually

want to feel super-strong, a caffeine tablet and an ephedrine tablet is way beyond any

amount of sugar you can drink.

Brad Howard: Right. Yeah, its pretty interesting because we hear a lot of people in

the forums and just questions we get on the blog and even emails to support asking

these types of questions especially, and especially talking about losing strength while

on a diet and things like that. I think from my perspective, from what has happened to

me when I cut down, a lot of times when Im eating a lot less, a lot of its in the head,

too. I just dont feel it, I guess you can say. Like I just dont have I dont want to say

the energy, but its almost a little more of a lethargic feeling sometimes. And I know that

carries over into the gym.



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John Barban: Oh, yeah, for sure. Im not saying that there is not actually a response

there where you may not be as mechanically strong simply because the muscles arenot as bloated. But for weight training, glycogen is not really limiting. Its because

weight training doesnt burn that much. It might just be a mechanical thing. It might just

be it doesnt feel as bloated because it actually isnt as bloated because glycogen stores

a lot of water with it. Your body can only store so much glycogen because it needs two

parts of water for one part of glycogen, so you couldnt. Otherwise, you would be just

enormous if you just kept storing up glycogen. Thats why your body switches any

excess calories to fat because fat can be stored with virtually no water, so it takes up

way less space.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: Per unit of calories. Thats the difference, so its always a transient

storage system. I mean, super-compensation happens over two or three days, but it

happens in different forms and its going to go back down to normal if you dont do it

again, if you dont train again. So you have to view the size of your muscles as a

transient thing. Its kind of like for the entire time in your life that youre working out,

youre sort of always in a perpetual muscle pump state, and then the moments right

after workout where you have that even a little bit extra pump. And then lets say you

just stopped working out, a year later your just in your sort of non-pumped state and

thats kind of the way to look at it. Its like you will eventually shrink back down to what

you were before you worked out, if you stopped working out all together.

Brad Howard: Right. I know weve kind of talked about muscle memory and things like

that and I dont know if we kind of discussed on whether weve actually figured out



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where that comes from or the actual protein actually leaves the muscle, when you dont

work anymore if it really atrophies that much or if its still there and its just not pumped.

John Barban: We know that if youve been training for 10 or 15 years and you break a

limb, the muscle shrinks up. It looks like a 12-year-old girls, like my buddy, it happened

to his arm, it just shrunk right up. It looked like his arm when he was 12 years old, and

then the minute his cast came off, within six months it was right back up to its full size,

but obviously not as like as if he never trained size, but all the way back to 15 years of

training size. So there is obviously some lasting adaptations that happened in the

muscle, but it still shows you that if the muscle is full sized, it still is transient state.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: Do you see what Im saying? So something structurally or something

genetically has changed but you still need to train the freaking muscle all the time to

keep it bloated.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: Because the minute his arm was in a cast, the 15 years of training just

disappeared, but it all came back in six months, so its not like it took him 15 years more

to get back.

Brad Howard: Sure. I guess thats the reason I never worry about losing muscle while

dieting down. I mean I went a month without training just to work on my shoulder a little

bit and I was still eating decently low.



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John Barban: Yeah, sure.

Brad Howard: I dont look very different, especially when I get out of the gym and get

ready to take a shower. I look at myself in the mirror. I mean, Ive noticed that I have

less body fat on me.

John Barban: A month isnt long enough to do much.

Brad Howard: Right, but I guess before it would be like, Oh shit, my muscle is

disappearing. But now, its just, Oh well, my body fat levels are lower. Yeah, that

makes sense. Or You know, I havent worked out in a month, yeah, that makes

sense. Or I havent eaten that much today, so I dont have as much water or there is

no pump in there. I mean, this all makes sense now. Its not like this scary thing; its

just this big transient thing that I know one day will be back.

John Barban: Yeah, well, I guess its just accepting the fact that it is. I guess people

who have never been through a cut down or never coached or never been around

fitness or bodybuilders who go up and down like this, they dont realize how transient it

all is. Its really day to day, and especially when youre trying to really manipulate things

that it changes a lot and it becomes more apparent the leaner you are. Like if youre 50

pounds overweight, a fluctuation of ten pounds of water doesnt really show up because

there is just so much mass covering up the muscles. Its really hard to tell whats going

on. I mean, you just wont notice it.

So glycogen and all of that, there is not really a whole lot going on there. You just have

to be clear with your goals. If youre trying to lose weight, lose body fat, you kind of

have to accept the fact that maybe along the way down youre not going to be breaking



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records in strength. You may, but it is okay if you dont quite feel like its the biggest

your muscles have ever been on the way down. Youve got to kind of have to let one goto get the other one that really worked, but again, thats a psychological thing. You

have to remember that youre not losing muscle, they just dont. The transient state of

how bloated they are might not quite feel the same, thats all.

Brad Howard: Yeah, its like the black box of whatever the muscle is for that day, and

because there are so many inputs and outputs and things that can change and not

change and things out of your control and in your control that its kind of random.

John Barban: Yeah.

Brad Howard: I remember back in the day, this is back when I was maxing out and

stuff like that. I might have been 23 or 24, and we walked into the gym. We had no

business walking into the gym because we had just gotten in at 3 or 4 AM the night

before. I mean, we were hung over. Good God hung over. I mean, it was bad. I was

like, How in the hell are we going to max out today? And literally I lifted more that day

than I lifted ever before, but Ive never been able to repeat that.

John Barban: Oh probably not. It just worked for you.

Brad Howard: Yeah, just that day, for some reason, I was able to lift more even in that

state, but every other time Ive tried it, it was nowhere even close to that.

John Barban: The strength is day to day, and the look of your body actually is day to

day, too. I mean, generally, you will know what you look like. Everybody knows its got

fluctuations day to day.



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Brad Howard: Sure, right.

John Barban: So the glycogen and muscle thing, its a day-to-day thing, and if your

goal is fat loss, just accept the fact that you cant always feel as bloated as maybe you

would like.

Brad Howard: Right, right.

John Barban: And when I say bloated, I dont mean your gut. I mean, its your

muscles. Your muscle bloat.

Brad Howard: Sure. Okay, I think you wanted us to talk about rep speed, too. Were

getting questions about rep speed, concentric and eccentric reps and things like that.

John Barban: Yeah, eccentrics, just for people that arent sure of the terminology that

is just the negative, so that actually means the lengthening of the muscle and then

concentric is the contractions or the shortening of the muscle. So whatever exercise

youre doing, there is typically a push and then well, not really a push and a pull, but

there is the lengthening and the shortening, and those are the two, eccentric and

concentric. And then there is this idea that time under tension and all of that stuff, if you

take longer on the eccentric, thats where more muscle damage is done (and not in a

bad way, but in a trauma to the muscle that it forces it to remodel way), which then in

turn supposedly forces it to grow, but there has never been any scientific proof to say

that eccentrics alone can cause muscle growth, so there needs to be some concentric,

too, where youre shortening the muscle.



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And then the other side of that is if you believe in time under tension, then why wouldnt

you just do one super-long slow rep with like really light weight? But that doesnt workeither because the longer the rep takes, the lighter the weight has to get. So eventually

youll get to a weight thats so light that it wont stimulate muscle growth, so you cant

just go overboard with the rep speed either. So the idea of three reps, two reps, five

reps, 8-13 or whatever the rep range is, it will dictate the weight you can handle

because you basically want to be able to do that many reps in good form with that

particular weight, and that in turn determines the speed of your concentric and

eccentric. So the heaviest weight you could possibly lift, by definition, will move super

slow, and if you can move it any quicker than just really, really slow, its not the

heaviest; because by definition the heaviest is the weight that like one ounce heavier

you wont be able to move it all. So the heaviest weight you could possibly move will

move by definition very slow both on the concentric and eccentric, and then as you

slowly get lighter from that, you can start pushing it up faster and taking longer to lower

it. And then somewhere between your one rep max and your 21 rep kind of pump sets

are all of the other concentric and eccentric speeds you can force weight to go.

And so there are various calculations to what the maximum power (power being able to

move a combination of somewhat heavy weight quickly), is. There is some calculation

for what the max weight out of your one rep max you can do that with, but its not

actually that heavy. There is only so much weight you can lift with speed until the

weight itself stops you from pushing it that fast, and you cant just train with ballistic

power like throwing medicine balls or taking a light barbell and literally throwing it.

There is only so much of that you can do that will translate into how much you can lift in

the other rep ranges, its neuromuscularly specific. I mean, there is strength-speed and

speed-strength. Thats how much they split it up when theyre measuring it, when

exercise physiologists are measuring it. So you can train them all, you can do ballistic



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lifts if you want. You can throw medicine balls if you want. You can lift super, super,

heavy weights. You can do forced negatives where you put a weight on the bar thatyou cant even lift up at all, and then you get somebody to help you lift it and then the

both of you lower it, and you can do all that stuff, but what Im saying is all of those are

kind of not the core, but the sort of addition to a core program. And then you can sort of

sprinkle those things in here and there and thats kind of the quick and dirty on the

eccentrics and concentrics.

Its okay to do some slow rep, and even in the ATS, in the advanced workouts, we

actually have an entire four-week module where its all about controlling ups and downs.

Its like controlling the eccentric and the concentric. So we have that in there. Its not

the basis of an entire routine though. I guess the point is the rep range you pick, so if

youre in the five rep range or if youre in the 13 or whatever, the speed that you can

likely move that weight at, its already calibrated for you by how heavy it is.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: Like you shouldnt be moving five rep weight very quickly, nowhere near

as quick as you can move 13 reps and so on.

Brad Howard: Right, and if you can, obviously, youre not doing it right.

John Barban: Well, if you can, its not heavy enough.

Brad Howard: Right, this is one of the things we talked about time and time again, but

I guess this is one of the things we really cant show, so I guess thats why we have to

bring it up a lot. Were talking about intensity and getting the intensity right, so



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especially when people are talking about their workouts being easy or something like

that. I mean, its always every single time someone says, You know, oh man, theseworkouts are easy. Im like, man theyre not easy. I just had somebody tell me the

other day, and you actually showed me the forum posts and I actually talked to the guy

on Facebook. He was saying another muscle building guy jumped in and did our

workout and he was thrashed halfway through. He couldnt even finish, so that was

kind of funny because I know that guy.

John Barban: Well, that tells you two things. He was at least lifting the right amount of

weight and he was lifting heavy obviously.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: And then the other thing is hes just not used to the pattern.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: Like whatever he does isnt similar to what were doing.

Brad Howard: Right, yeah, exactly. But like I say, I like the guy. Hes a real cool

dude, so I hope he wont mind if I gave him a hard time. And literally, I probably cant

do what he does just because its different.

John Barban: Yeah.



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Brad Howard: I think he does a lot of body weight stuff. Id probably be just completely

thrashed like one arm about to fall off or something, so all of this stuff is very specific towhat goal you have and what youre practicing in, I guess.

John Barban: Well, yeah, like I could have sworn we were talking about building

muscle, not speed specific strength. Are we just talking about building muscle here?

Like where is this discussion going? It just seems like its so easy to get caught up

talking about things that when you bring it back to the bigger picture its like what did

that ever have to do with the goal of why Im working out in the first place anyways.

Brad Howard: Yeah, and the big question is, are you making it more difficult on

yourself than it needs to be?

John Barban: Well, yeah. Like if there is something. I mean, I get that the overall goal

seems to always land back on it, but I guess this just brings me back to the third point I

want to talk about today is what is the goal and what is it that youre after. Its the

concept of are you trying to get somewhere that these techniques cant get you. Its

kind of like exercising to manipulate hormones, like people think that squatting and dead

lift actually increase testosterone and those sorts of things. Well, Ill just come around

and say it. If what youre after is a steroid-induced look, but you dont want to use

steroids, well, there is no way around that besides using steroids. There is no fancy rep

scheme. There is no glycogen-loading protocol. There is no exercise manipulation of

your hormones to get you into a steroid looking like growth pattern.

You just cant recreate steroid growth without steroids, and that seems to me to be

where all of these discussions are coming from, not that anyone who has opened these

discussions thought that. Theyre like, Well, I dont want to use steroids, but I want



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those types of gains Thats where the rhetoric comes from. Thats when you read

supplement ads, when youre in different forums, I mean, most of all of that is peopleavoiding using drugs and trying to find another way around getting a drug-like effect,

and not realizing that. Like maybe they have an image in their head of a size they think

they should be, and theyre like, Well, you know, how come its not happening? Or

they just dont have patience. Like somebody was posting in the forum of just being a

little bit skeptical of where the program is going to get them and things like that and then

he said hes only been training for two years, and Im like, Well, Ive been training for

15, so what makes you think you can get to where I am in two. Its like there is a lack

of patience there. Like the total volume of exercise you do isnt just specific to within a

week or a month, but its specific to your life.

So Ive been training for about 15 years, someone who has been training for two, even if

were the same age or no matter what their age is, I still have 13 years of lifting on them.

I have thousands, tens of thousands of more reps done, like what would make them

think that they could get to where I am at in one-seventh of the time. Its like it doesnt

make a whole lot of sense, but then people start thinking about all these other things

like is it glycogen, is it rep speed? Do you know what it is, is youre missing out on 13

years of training, thats what it is.

Brad Howard: Yeah, its time.

John Barban: Its time over your life. Thats one thing that no one ever talks about,

and the perfect example of that is my buddy who broke his arm. Hes my age. Our

birthdays are actually like the same day, and hes the same age as me. Hes been

training for about 15 years and he broke his arm. His arm shrunk. He came out of the

cast and six months later, he still has a huge arm, like he brought it right back. Now, if



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somebody else who has only been training for two years (and that persons arm is two

inches smaller than my buddies) and breaks that arm, and then it comes out of the cast,it will only come back to whatever size it is and still being two inches smaller than my

buddies arm, like you still need to spend the next 13 years to build that up to my friends

arms size. But the point is the total amount of time spent with the number of reps over

your life also matters. If youve been training for seven years and Ive been training for

15, its not necessarily on par, like you cant really compare yourself to me and I cant

compare myself to someone who has ten years of experience more than me because

thats just ten years more reps theyve done than I havent.

Brad Howard: Well, its the reps, but its also the knowhow. I mean, you will learn a lot

of knowhow in that time where if you fall off the wagon or something, you can bounce

back and get back to where you need to be, not only just physically because all of the

muscle memory and stuff like that, but just by knowhow and knowing what to do to get

to the way you want to go.

John Barban: Oh, yeah, all of that stuff. I think it is just impatience. Everyone is just

looking for another way around it. Like it was unbelievable when Jasons pictures went

up and people were actually finding reasons to shoot him down, like, Oh, well, Jason

has got machine-like intensity and dedication in the gym, and oh, well, Jason has been

training for a long time. Exactly, and hes an example of the body you can get to, and

its like some people want it to happen in a third of the time without the intensity or the

effort.

Brad Howard: Yeah.



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John Barban: So I dont understand how you think thats going to be. Heres an

example of how you do it, and then people look at that and go, Okay, well, I dont wantto do that. I want to find another way to do that.

Brad Howard: Sure, yeah, you dont get a body like that, I mean, ripped. I mean, you

dont get that without deciding that is exactly what you want.

John Barban: It doesnt happen by accident; otherwise, everyone would have it.

Brad Howard: Yeah, I mean, it surely doesnt. Especially in weight loss and stuff like

that, you hear a lot of people talking about how they use stuff and theyre losing weight,

and we see this all the time with all these different protocols. But the fact is that all

these different protocols that people are talking about in the mainstream, nobody is

ripped. I mean, none of these people are ripped using all these different protocols. I

mean, theyve just lost some weight. Maybe theyve lost a hundred pounds, which is

great. Dont get me wrong. Its fantastic, but getting ripped, I mean, Im telling you right

now Im going for it, it takes more than just coasting. It is an active decision.

John Barban: Oh, yeah.

Brad Howard: It is every single day, and then every single day you have to decide.

John Barban: Each new level of leanness you get to thats sort of on the way, you just

have to remind yourself there is still more to go. In general, I get the feeling that there is

a lot of people who are impatient with how long muscle building takes, and even to

some degree with fat loss. And that impatience is where the diet and fitness industry

and the supplement industry and the magazines and all of those things get you because



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theyre promising speed. Theyre promising something that takes years to happen in

months or weeks, and then people become skeptical when after four weeks of trainingon a particular system, theyre like, Well, you know, Im not as big as I thought Id be.

Like four weeks, what do you expect to happen in four weeks?

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: I just dont get it. I mean, I guess its been a while since Ive believed

that you can do things that quickly and the newbie strength gains that you get and the

muscle gains you get when the first time you trained, no matter how old you are, and

once those go away and juvenile muscle growth goes away, it starts to just take a lot

longer and thats when you settle into getting that, Oh, this is just the life I live, like I live

a life of to slowly just chipping away at it. I even posted my general strength on

different exercises as a comparison for guys who were saying, Well, you know, I

thought I would be bigger and stronger. I said, Well, this is the weights I lift now. And

a lot of this is splitting hairs. People asking Well, what about post-workout repletion

and this and that and the other? In general, I can always put two plates on the bench

press and do it for at least 6 or 8 reps per sets and I always use 100-pound dumbbells,

you know, flat, maybe 90-95s inclined. With squatting, Ive made it up to three plates for

reps and somewhere around two plates now for more reps. I can curl 60-pound

dumbbells, not that this is impressive, but that is just where Im at, but it took me a long

time to get here. If youre not as big as me and youre trying to at least get as big as

me, Ive managed to get all the way here without knowing anything about glycogen

loading or trying that or messing around with rep speed or any of that stuff. So you can

at least get to as big as me without doing any of that stuff, and then from there maybe

there is something else to do, but I dont see where it fits in. To me, it just seems like



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people are looking for ways around the truth that it just takes consistency and hard

work.

Brad Howard: Yeah, but the thing that sucks about the Internet is that once somebody

puts something out, with even books, once some research gets done and this gets

published and people take it and run with it there is really no way to go back and say,

Oh, yeah, I was wrong. I mean, so many people do it, but they dont go back and edit

that blog post they put out four years ago that talked about this protocol being the next

best thing, because all this stuff changes. Just like milk was bad ten years ago, and

now its good. Its like all of this stuff changes. I mean, one of these days, maybe well

find out like low carb is the cause of cancer or something

John Barban: Oh, its cyclical. This stuff started in the late 1800s. Its not like its new.

Nothing has changed. Ironically, the only people I know who do mess around with

glycogen loading before and after exercises are guys who are already on steroids.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: The guys who are competing, guys who have already maxed out

everything else, guys who have been training for years who are using drugs and using

insulin and using growth hormone, and only those guys are the ones that mess around

with this carb and protein manipultion.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: Actually, I was talking to one of my buddies who is a bodybuilder and he

has a coach (which is more or less the guy who sells him his drugs and works on his



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nutrition/drug routine), and I dont know if Ive said this before on a podcast, but he was

just saying, Why doesnt anyone try that stuff (glycogen loading etc) without using thedrugs? Hes of the opinion that, Its not really going to do much for them. So its

another one of those things where youre trying to do something, and maybe it does

matter if you take in 400 grams of carbohydrates after a workout while youre on 2

grams of testosterone and taking like 4 IUs of insulin a day. Maybe it really does and

really makes a big difference, but it probably doesnt matter at all for the average guy

who is clean.

Brad Howard: Oh, yeah, I could see that mattering, especially with insulin.

John Barban: Yeah, so what Im saying is substrate, (substrate would be glycogen

here) the substrate, the thing that youre putting into your muscle is same with protein,

those things probably make a big difference when youre using drugs because youve

got an altered metabolism. Basically, things are growing quicker, things are adapting

faster, certain genes are turned on and certain enzymes are moving at different rates

when you have that much drugs floating through you.

Brad Howard: Sure.

John Barban: So some or a lot of the stuff we hear about is at least adapted or

borrowed from that culture. Now, some of it comes from clean athletes too, and in

normal research, but most of the research on a lot of these things, at least for glycogen

and stuff like that, its from endurance athletes and I dont think anybody listening into

our stuff really cares about being able to run a marathon faster. People are just trying to

build muscle.



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Brad Howard: Right, and the other thing about the hormones is like everything that

youre trying to do and from what Ive talked to you and Brad about it is just anythingthat you could possibly do is still going to put that hormone within the normal range.

John Barban: Oh, yeah, yeah, you cant train your way to steroid-like testosterone

levels.

Brad Howard: Right, its still in the normal range of testosterone, like if you got tested,

you wouldnt test positive.

John Barban: And you said it right, thats a range. There is high normal and normal

and then there is low normal and then below low normal is when youre diagnosed with

low testosterone.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: But you might be able to maybe move it around into the higher end of

normal, but that doesnt mean youre going to just burst with muscle. Like even guys

who inject testosterone, but just not a lot of it, even they dont really get huge muscle

gains. You needs lots of extra testosterone to start gaining fast.

Brad Howard: Right, yeah. Then thats the whole point, guys are trying to manipulate

the hormones. I mean, in trying to get this 5% gain whereas if it was that important to

you, you could literally go out, go get a little bit of testosterone, stick it in your ass or

take d-bol or whatever you want to do in just a little amount and get that same thing

without doing the crap that youre trying to do.



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John Barban: Im with you on that one.

Brad Howard: If its that damn important, just do that.

John Barban: Yeah, to me, the barrier, (and I guess this is for guys who has never

used drugs, dont get it). To me, the barrier is not realizing what you can and cant get

with a clean body, (clean being drugs versus no drugs). and then its how much drugs

do you need to get how big you want and in what speed. So if you want to gain 30

pounds of muscle this year, well, thats going to be pretty hard without drugs.

Brad Howard: Its also the blurred line of whats clean, because if youre taking

supplements, is that clean? Is that natural?

John Barban: Sure, and hey, Im with you 100%, but all Im saying is the rates and the

results that can be achieved, we already know how to do all of this stuff. If you want to

gain a hundred pounds, I know how to make you gain a hundred pounds.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: It just requires a lot of drugs that I dont have access to.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: And if you want to look your best without drugs, I kind of know how to do

that, too.

Brad Howard: Right.



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John Barban: But youve got to be clear, but it may not happen quite as fast as gainingthe hundred pounds with the drugs even, but its just two different things. So I guess

thats kind of the moral of the story and wrapping it all up. Getting into specifics of things

like glycogen and rep speed and all of that stuff is a bit of the minutiae. I mean, for

someone who is not using any drugs and just trying to build the best body they can

have without drugs, the number one thing you can do is be consistent in the gym and

work really hardyou have to push really hard. Thats the thing you have to be good

at; consistency and effort.

I mean, thats the testament to Jasons physique. He actually does push hard and he

does have effort. I think thats why he has got the shape hes in. I mean, thats the

point, like with his pictures, he is showing you how to do it, it takes effort and if you want

a shortcut, then you have to go somewhere else.

Brad Howard: Yeah, even with drugs, there is still the pain threshold.

John Barban: Well, yeah, those guys push hard, too.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: They just end up abnormally larger, thats all.

Brad Howard: Yeah, I mean, the pain threshold or the crap youve got to through, like

for instance, I was talking to my buddy the other day at the gym and hes getting ready

to go and do a show, and I was asking him if he was cutting and he was like yeah. I

mean, this dude is big. When hes not cutting down, hes probably 225, maybe 240 at

58.



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John Barban: Yeah, thats huge.

Brad Howard: Right, I mean, hes a big dude. But the funny thing about it, I was like,

Well, how many calories are you eating now when youre cutting down? And he was

like, Its 2,400 a day.

John Barban: And does he do like cardio as well as his weights?

Brad Howard: I dont see him do a lot of cardio.

John Barban: Yeah.

Brad Howard: I dont see him do a lot of cardio, but thats what Im saying, I mean,

hes using a lot of drugs, but hes used to eating 4,000 a day. And I walked in on him

while he was eating, and I was like, How is the food going? Hes like, Oh man, it

sucks.

John Barban: Oh yeah, dieting sucks. Every single fitness competitor and bodybuilder

Ive ever met knows that its not exactly fun. They just force their way through it.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: Like when I was working at the last supplement company I worked at,

there was a guy, (and I didnt know he was dieting at the time) but he had a show

coming up, and I would purposely go leave little doughnuts on his desk just to tease

him.



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Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: And then some of the other girls (everyone on that freaking company

was either a bodybuilder or a fitness competitor). Some of the girls would come over

and take the donuts and bring them back to me, and then theyd give me a lecture.

Theyre like, Would you stop it. You need to support him. Hes competing. I was like,

Oh, I didnt know he was competing. I wouldnt have done that. And so the next day I

just left even more on his desk, but it was killing him, like it was really hard for him to

have those sitting in front of him. And then another girl there, she was dieting down and

she was a national level fitness competitor, and she had like five or six almonds sitting

on her desk next to her keyboard, and I walked up. I dont know what I needed to talk to

her for, and I had grabbed one to eat it and then she slapped it out of my hand and

shes like, Dont do that. I only get to have those five. She has her calories calculated

for the day and so all five of those almonds were accounted for, so if I ate one, I just

took one-fifth of her almond snack, right? And shes said, Come on, thats all I get right

now. Im like, Oh, sorry.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: But that was how strict they were, and they know there is no other way

around it. I mean, there is still a lot of effort to be put into lose weight.

Brad Howard: Yeah, well, there is one secret that I dont think we really ever talked

about, and I think we can end with this. The secret is this: once you discover how hard

this really is, then it gets easy.



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The road gets really easy once you realize and come to grips with how hard all of this is

because everything crystallizes in front of you. It all makes sense.

John Barban: Yeah, its basically the recognition of what youre actually up against.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: And at that moment, you discard all of the minutiae that are pointless

and then you can focus all your attention on what actually needs to be done.

Brad Howard: Right, yeah. I forget who, but somebody was telling me that, and this is

years and years ago, and yeah, I blew it off, like I said, yeah, whatever. But yeah, Im

seeing it now, just in this regard, especially when youre trying to cut down. On muscle

building, Im not as much concerned with because I dont think I want to gain too much

more and not that they would be even possible, but you realize that youre like, All right,

well, this shit sucks. Its hard. Right? I mean, you just know mentally. You know it.

Its like going to war every single day. You know its going to suck. You know

something is going to get sacrificed. You know youre going to have to do this.

Something is going to have to happen. Yeah, youre still going to be able to live your

life, but I mean, once you decide that you have this ultimate big hairy goal that you want

to go and hit, man, I mean, you can have anything you want in life, you just cant have

everything. Thats really the key. I had a guy tell me that one time. I was like, What do

you mean? He goes, Well, you cant have everything. I mean, if you want, youve got

to decide what you want and then there are going to be other things that you kind of

want to do that youre just not going to be able to do it if you want that.

John Barban: Oh, yeah, if you want the red car, you cant have the blue car.



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Brad Howard: Yeah, sure.

John Barban: So youve got to pick.

Brad Howard: Yeah, I mean, its kind of the way it is. So thats kind of what were

saying about the hormone thing. I mean, lets wrap up real quick. Lets go ahead and

wrap up and then let them go, but go ahead and wrap up glycogen and all that stuff and

then well take it home. Go.

John Barban: Yeah, I guess, the take home message is there is not a whole lot to

worry about with glycogen. If youre interested you can load, but in the research, its a

lot. Like theyre taking in 800-1000 extra calories and basically just pure sugar, so Im

sure that thats not really on your radar for something youd want to do. So I wouldnt

worry too much about it. If you do feel weak in the gym, just a bit of caffeine might help,

and if its because youre cutting down, just remember that its okay if youre going to

feel a little weak or look a little flat while youre cutting down because your goal is fat

loss, not having the greatest muscle building workouts of your life while your cutting

down because the cutting down eventually will end. Muscle building goes on forever.

Brad Howard: Sure.

John Barban: Rep speed, the weight youre using, the amount of weight and the rep

range youre using more or less dictates the rep speed. So the heavier the weight, the

slower things get on their own. If you want to manipulate rep speed, you can but just

realize that the longer the eccentrics take, the lighter the weight will get, and at some

point, youve got diminishing returns. I would say eccentrics longer than two seconds



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down is kind of getting a little ridiculous, so two seconds down is probably more than

enough, if you want to experiment with it and I would only add that every once andwhile. If you browse the ATS workouts, theyre in there for a full four weeks and youre

sore the whole time during that one.

Brad Howard: Yeah.

John Barban: And we dont keep it up for the whole 12 weeks.

Brad Howard: Its terrible.

John Barban: Yeah, and then as far as the hormone manipulation in training, dont

pretend like youre going to get steroid like gains just by doing squats and deadlifts. I

mean, theyre good. Theyre definitely good foundation exercise for building mass. I

mean, thats because they work basically almost every muscle in your body. Thats the

point of those exercises, so its not necessarily because theyre mimicking steroid-like

blood levels of testosterone.

Brad Howard: Yeah, thats the other thing, too, youre thinking that one thing would

trigger it all, but there could be ten other things in your life that youre not doing like not

getting enough sleep or not doing this or not doing that, that it will totally negate any of

those effects, so its like why?

John Barban: Its an aggregate, the whole thing, its everything.

Brad Howard: Sure, so like I say, were not telling you to use roids or not use roids.

Your body is up to you, but I think both John and I agree thats it. I mean, if this is



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important to you, well, just go and do it and just see for yourself. I mean, hell, maybe

one of us should go on roids for a month or something just to show them what happens.Because I remember a guy that was one of our friends, and this guy was skinny as a

rail. He literally could not bench the bar. He could not bench the bar and he got on

Finajet, I think it was, and within three months he was benching over 225 and he was

big.

John Barban: Oh, yeah.

Brad Howard: I mean it was incredible.

John Barban: Yeah, drugs are powerful. Youve just got to make a decision and then

if youre not going to use drugs, you have to accept the fact that things just take a bit

longer.

Brad Howard: But the other thing is dont fool yourself if youre going to use drugs to

think that nobody is going to know that you dont use because people will know.

John Barban: Yeah.



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Brad Howard: All right, man. All right guys, well, I dont think we got anything else tocover with that. But for John Barban, I am Brad Howard and this is your Adonis

Lifestyle podcast.

Here are a few links for you to check out:1. Adonis Lifestyle Podcast (iTunes subscription link)

2. Listen to the audio version of Glycogen, Eccentrics, and Roids

3. Get the body you deserve and invest in the Adonis Index Systems

today!
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Can Glycogen Loading and Eccentric reps Replace Steroids?