Parrillo Performance Products: timeless supplemental perfection…Lagging thighs…Boys and weight training…Cardio 101

Vic Steele,

How come you guys at Parrillo Performance Products keep selling the same old stuff – beef liver tablets, Muscle Amino™, Pro-Carb™, Hi-Protein™ etc, etc, that stuff has been around since Frank Zane was Mr. Olympia, before I was even born! Other supplement companies seem to change products every six months – so what’s up with the Old School approach? Even the newer Parrillo food products seem to use the same old stuff as the base. Are you guys behind the times?

Larry, Scranton

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Look Into Leucine

By Cliff Sheats

Leucine is one of three  branched-chain amino acids (isoleucine and valine are the other two BCAAs.) It may be the most important because it has the unique ability to trigger protein synthesis. Leucine, which comprises about one-third of muscle protein, enters muscle cells and turns on key biochemical processes that result in more muscle protein and, thus, more muscle development. Supplementing with leucine may help maintain your protein synthesis, and could decrease muscle breakdown. Leucine also increases secretion of the anabolic hormone insulin, important for encouraging growth. Therefore, this essential amino acid is not only a building block, but it is also needed to turn on the muscle-building process.

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Tips & Tidbits of May, 2010

Nutrition Tip of the Month:

What is Food Efficiency? It’s the calories consumed of a particular food divided by the resulting weight gain. Different foods are metabolized differently and are converted into body weight with different efficiencies. You may not have realized it, but a given number of calories from one food may have a very different effect on your body weight than the same number of calories from a different food. This is easy to prove: Just pull out 1,000 calories of potatoes and rice from your diet and replace it with 1,000 calories of candy and ice cream and see what happens.

So you must consider the net energy balance (calories consumed vs. calories expended) but also the type of calories consumed. To the human body, not all calories are the same. Different foods are digested at different rates and with different efficiencies, and different nutritients perform different functions within the body. Generally speaking, calories from protein are used for maintenance, repair, and growth of tissues and organs; calories from carbs are used for energy; and calories from conventional fat are very prone to be stored as body fat. Simply put, the net energy balance determines whether you’ll gain or lose weight, but what kind of foods you eat will determine if it’s muscle or fat.

Training Tip of the Month:

Pre-Contest Peaking: During pre-contest training, many bodybuilders shift to lighter weights, thinking that this practice will sharpen muscularity. This is a big mistake, however. You should continue your heavy training to support the mass and density you have achieved up to this point. Reducing your poundages will only make you look softer and smaller.

By promoting further gains in muscle mass, heavy work during pre-contest training keeps your metabolism revved up. Remember, the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is for fat-burning and muscle-building.

In the final weeks before your competition, perform one or two additional high rep sets at the end of each body part workout in order to increase the load on your red muscle fibers. By continuing your heavy work and combining it with high rep sets, you can better achieve your contest peak.

Question of the Month:

Question: What is sports anemia?

Answer: The condition known as sports anemia occurs when an athlete experiences a decrease in red blood cell count and serum iron levels during the early phase of training. This condition could be due to the fact that aerobic training causes an increase in myoglobin (an oxygen carrying protein) and cytochrome content of muscle tissue, and the protein and iron required for their formation could be obtained from destruction of red blood cells. In other words, myoglobin may be increased at the expense of hemoglobin if protein intake is inadequate. Furthermore, skeletal muscle fibers are damaged during intense exercise training, and this damage must be repaired during the recovery period following exercise. If dietary protein intake is inadequate, the body will draw on red blood cells, hemoglobin, and plasma proteins as a source of protein to repair the muscles. All the more reason to be sure you are fulfilling your body’s daily protein requirements during high intensity training and endurance exercise.

News & Discoveries

In Fitness & Nutrition

Vitamin D & Calcium Interplay Explored

Increasing calcium intake is a common—yet not always successful—strategy for reducing bone fractures. But a study supported in part by the Agricultural Research Service underscores the importance of vitamin D and its ability to help the body utilize calcium. The study also may explain why increasing calcium alone isn’t always successful in dealing with this problem. Currently, calcium intake recommendations are not tied to vitamin D status, which may explain why markedly different recommended calcium intakes exist among countries. In the United States, the recommended calcium intake is 1,200 milligrams (mg) daily for adults aged 50 and older.

The body’s skeleton needs adequate dietary calcium to reach its full potential in terms of bone mass. Still, many other factors affect bone mass, such as exercise, smoking and vitamin D—the latter through its effect on calcium absorption and direct effect on the skeleton. The study involved a close look at about 10,000 men and women aged 20 and older participating in a nationally representative survey.

Blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D are used as the primary indicator of vitamin D adequacy. Within the study sample of U.S. adults, a large fraction of younger and older adults were below a suggested desirable serum vitamin D concentration of at least 75 nanomoles-per-liter (nmol/L). The study supports the idea that correcting inadequate blood levels of vitamin D is more important than increasing dietary calcium intake beyond 566 mg a day among women and 626 mg a day among men for better bone mineral density. For example, a higher calcium intake beyond 566 mg a day may only be important among women whose vitamin D concentrations are low (less than 50 nmol/L), according to authors.

Quick Tip of the Month:

Here’s an idea for the warmer months coming up when you want a delicious frozen treat: Parrillo “Cookies and Kreem” Protein Ice Kreem! When you’re making Parrillo Ice Kreem™ in your ice cream maker, just add in some crumbled Parrillo Chocolate Shortbread Contest Cookies™. You’ll need to read your ice cream maker’s instructions to find out when you should add cookie pieces during the mixing process for best results.

- Rosalie Marion Bliss, Mar. 2010, Agricultural Research, Service, USDA

Dominique’s Time Cruncher

Ú Now’s the time to fire up the grill, so take advantage of the warm weather and use the grill to make your meals ahead of time. You can grill up a big batch of chicken all at once, then divide it up into containers for each meal. You can do the same with your veggies, like potatoes, onions, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, etc.

RECOVERY SECRET: BCAAs

By John Parrillo

Since the 1980’s there has been mounting interest in branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) by sports nutrition scientists. For even longer than that, I have recommended that active people, from bodybuilders to endurance athletes to exercisers, supplement with BCAAs and amino acids in general. The BCAAs, leucine, valine, and isoleucine, are known to enhance energy, reduce muscle breakdown, increase brain function, reduce body fat, build up immune function, blunt muscle soreness, aid recovery and, of course, boost muscle growth.

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FORCED REPS!

By: Duke Nukem

Take the target muscle past capacity: John Parrillo was his usual matter-of-fact self when asked at a seminar a few years back about his strategy for muscle building. “First and foremost – you have to push yourself past your current limits in training. Keep in mind that “limits” can take many different forms. Nothing of any particular muscular significance is going to happen if you never push past your limits in training. The adaptive response is only triggered if and when a muscle is pushed past capacity. In response to stress, the body reacts and makes a muscle stronger and larger to cope with the repeated muscular stress of regular weight training sessions. If the human body favorably reacted to mild or light workouts, everyone would look like a professional bodybuilder.

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Episode 38: Where the mind goes, the body follows

I hadn’t seen much of my client Jared’s father, Jeff, in a long time. Aside from passing him driving around town and waving hello, we hadn’t had a conversation since he witnessed in horror as I inhaled several large cups of ice cream smothered in sugary toppings following my last contest over six months ago. Jeff was 53 years old and had competed a couple times in 1978 and 1979, right around the time the movie Pumping Iron had inspired a whole generation of Arnold wannabes to take up bodybuilding. Until that landmark movie, the sport was literally so underground that men were about as ashamed to buy a bodybuilding magazine as they were a porno mag.

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Tito Dudley-Indomitable bodybuilder overcomes cancer

Tito Dudley is one of New York City’s top natural bodybuilders. Tito has been living the bodybuilding lifestyle since age 15 and has been competing since age 20. Now age 28, Mr. Dudley is a fulltime fitness professional, and rapidly coming into his own as a mature bodybuilder entering into his prime competitive years. “My physique really took off when I began working with Dr. Mike Feulner.” Tito related. “Mike revamped my approach to nutrition and introduced me to Parrillo supplements. I really took to Mike’s unique nutritional strategy; which I later determined is nearly identical to the Parrillo approach towards nutrition. Mike had me take a wide variety of Parrillo supplements and my body responded quickly and dramatically.

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Parrillo Training Camp Pictures

CapTri® or FatTri?…Toss the Arnold Press! Beer Man…Bend-over Squatters

Steele,

I consider you a propagandist for the Parrillo Empire. You should be ashamed for pushing the Parrillo HIGH FAT diet! Saturated fat is artery clogging crap and responsible for heart disease – too much fat in the American diet is the reason we are fat and unfit. The whole CapTri^® thing is all about promoting high fat for profit and I find it irresponsible. Are you aware that in some of Parrillo’s “recommended diets” he has bodybuilders consuming 1000 calories a day worth of CapTri^®?! Or should I say FAT-TRI! Is it your goal to turn bodybuilders into heart attack victims? Because that is what you are
doing!                   Incensed in Reo, Linda

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Training “around” an injury & using nutrition to accelerate injury recovery

By Duke Nukem

If you lift weights with the ferocity and intensity needed to trigger muscle growth, sooner or later you will pull, tear or rip a muscle. Lifting weights isn’t ping pong or croquet. At some point every serious iron pumper incurs an injury. If you perform cardio on a regular basis and attack it with the intensity needed to melt off fat, sooner or later you are going to pull, rip or tear a muscle. When it comes to hard training, be it weight training or cardio, injury comes with the territory. A sissy or a poseur will use the risk of injury as an excuse to avoid result-producing training – and that’s why sissies and poseurs never progress past a certain level. As Mike Tyson once said about boxing, “Boxers get their noses broke and sooner or later lose teeth and get knocked unconscious…and I’m just the guy to do all three!” On the other hand, by training hard and training smart, by staying true to technique and not being reckless we can keep training related injuries to an absolute minimum. What is smart weight training? Staying within the technical boundaries of a
particular lift; 99% of weight training injuries occur when the bodybuilder loses the proper form as he/she tries to squeeze out an extra rep. In order to complete that rep they might contort, bend or twist and that’s usually when the injury occurs. Examples of bad, potentially injurious techniques include: letting the butt come up off the bench while benching, bouncing the bar off the chest on benches and inclines, rebounding off the floor when deadlifting, pushing or pulling in an uneven fashion, how about jerking a barbell to get it moving, using excessive backbend in the overhead press or bending forward when squatting? These are the usual ways in which we self-inflict injuries.

Stay within the proper technical parameters of a lift, learn how to miss a rep safely and not succumb to ego and attempt to lift poundage you are clearly incapable of lifting. Insofar as cardio, if it is done on a machine the usual injury culprit is attempting to go way too fast, way too far or continuing to push after intense fatigue sets in. While we all seek to equal or exceed personal bests, the majority of aerobic machine injuries occur when the athlete pushes way past their realistic limits. Outdoor cardio is a minefield of potential injury: step in a hole on a trail run and twist or break an ankle; run on pavement and create shin splints; perform interval sprints and rip or pull a hamstring…the injury possibilities are limitless for the hard-charging athlete. So the question becomes, what is the serious bodybuilder to do when the inevitable injury occurs? The worst solution is to quit training altogether and the stupidest solution is to continue to train as if the injury never occurred. The smartest solution is to “train around” an injury and use Parrillo-style nutrition and supplementation to accelerate the injured muscle’s healing and recovery. As one famous Parrillo athlete said after breaking his leg in a freak skiing accident, “In some ways this is good – it forces me to concentrate on bringing up my lagging upper body.” The broken leg required this elite bodybuilder to embark on a long overdue upper body specialization program. That man knew how to make lemonade out of lemons.

Training around
an injury:

Bobby Bodybuilder severely pulled his upper pectoral muscle at the delt/pec tie-in during Tuesday’s chest workout. It happened when a dumbbell got slightly out of position on his third set of incline flyes. Foolishly, he ignored the stab of pain that shot through his chest and fought through the pain to complete the rep. When he sat upright on the bench he knew something was seriously wrong. “Stupid!” he thought, “Why didn’t I just drop the bells the instant I felt the pain?” Why indeed: what would have been a minor pull had he bailed out on the rep instead of finishing the rep, was now a major pull that would take weeks to heal. If it was any consolation, he was damned lucky he didn’t rip the muscle clean off the bone. A too-heavy set of incline dumbbell flyes ripped Mike Mentzer’s upper pec clean off the bone and prematurely ended his bodybuilding career. Bobby immediately iced the muscle and drove home. He awoke the next morning and rubbed the “sore to the touch” pec/delt tie-in. He walked into the bathroom and examined the injury in the mirror. At least there was no visible discoloration or blotches of purple beneath the skin; discoloration is a sure sign of a ripped muscle, usually requiring surgery. “Now what?” he thought as he prepared for work. By day’s end he had arrived at a workable solution: he would embark on a leg specialization program designed to bring up his thighs and disproportionally small calves. He devised a “work around the injured muscle” training regimen. While his upper body was healing, he would bring up his legs.

Day one:  Legs
Cross-handed front squats	warm-up, then four sets of 8 reps using a static weight
Leg presses	warm-up, then four sets of 8 repsusing a static weight
Lying leg curls	four sets	12 reps
Standing calf raises	six sets	15 reps
Donkey calf raise	four sets	12 reps

Three days later he would blast his legs again, this time using different exercises and higher reps. Bobby could not perform back squats: his pec pain was too intense if he tried to back squat, or front squat using the standard clean grip. Front squats using the no-stress cross-handed grip allowed him to squat pain free. On his second leg specialization day Bobby performed the following
routine…

Day Two:  Legs – Six Phase Parrillo Giant Set
Squat machine	15 reps	move immediately to…
Seated calf raise	100 reps	move immediately to…
Hack squat	15 reps	move immediately to…
Standing calf raise	50 reps	move immediately to…
Leg extensions	20 reps	move immediately to…
Standing leg curls	20 reps	rest before repeating the cycle

He would hit each successive exercise with no rest between sets. Bobby started off performing two Parrillo Giant Sets and after a few weeks he added a 3rd Six Phase Giant Set. After completing three giant sets, his legs, particularly his calves, were so fried that walking down the gym stairs to the street after the workout required he hang onto the handrail with all his might to avoid collapsing and falling down the steps. Still, after the first week, he could see the improvement and knew he was onto something. Bobby trained legs twice a week and on his two other training days Bobby performed a series of upper body exercises that did not affect the injured pec/delt.

• one arm machine bench press with his good arm

• one arm overhead dumbbell press

• one arm lateral raise

• two arm seated curls (no pain in the bad shoulder)

• two arm tricep pushdowns (no pain
in the bad shoulder)

• one arm lat pulldowns

• one arm seated cable row

• one arm Hammer Strength pulldowns

• Prone hyperextensions

It took Bobby six full weeks to nurse his injured pec/delt back to complete normalcy. In six weeks he brought his thighs up almost two full inches while adding a badly needed inch to his skinny calves. After he was able to recommence regular training, the thought occurred to him that his severe pec pull was the best thing that ever happened to his legs. One day his training partner was marveling at Bobby’s “new legs” as he posed them in the gym mirror. The training partner said only half joking, “Maybe you should let me break one of your legs so you can bring up your lousy chest.”

Injury healing using
Parrillo-style nutrition

Would you like a surefire way to accelerate the healing process for any injured muscle? Eat tons of nutritious bodybuilding food and fire down a ton of nutrient-dense Parrillo supplements. As any competent sports doctor will tell you, the key to healing a rip, tear or pull is to leave the injured muscle alone and supply it with loads of quality nutrients. The expert use of Parrillo-style nutrition, combined with potent Parrillo supplements, provides traumatized, damaged muscles precisely what they need to heal themselves. So what is the optimal food/fuel to help heal torn or pulled muscles? First off, starving oneself is counterproductive; to the contrary, a high calorie diet makes complete sense. Obviously if the injured athlete decides to consume the wrong type of calories in the post-injury period, a shapely athlete will become a fat athlete, particularly if the injured athlete simultaneously decides to quit training altogether. Be smart and train around the injury. CapTri® would have to be at the top of the list of supplements used during the post-injury recovery phase. Muscles are made up of amino acids and it is only logical to “heavy up” on protein consumption during recuperation and recovery. Let’s take a look at one potential post-injury recovery diet; this multiple meal eating schedule (see below) could be used in those critical weeks following a
serious injury.

Don’t use an injury
as an excuse:

The natural inclination for a lot of injured athletes is to quit training. That is the wrong course of action: if your injury is in the upper body, train the lower body. If the injury is in the legs, train the upper body. If you can perform cardio then do it! If you can train the opposite uninjured limb using machines – do it! The worst thing a true bodybuilder can do is use an injury as an excuse to quit training and quit dieting – but then again, a true bodybuilder would never consider quitting. One of the most inspirational sights is to see a real bodybuilder with a broken leg hobbling into the gym on crutches and then proceeding to knock the hell out of bench presses, incline bench presses, flat flyes, lat pulldowns, machine rows, seated shrugs, seated curls, single dumbbell tricep extensions, one-leg leg extensions, one-leg leg curls, one-leg leg presses and single leg calf raises. This truly inspiring sight puts to shame the slackers that use an injury as an excuse to quit. Nowadays every half decent gym has a terrific selection of exercise machines. An exercise machine is the best friend of the injured athlete: push or pull using two good arms – or one good arm if the other is injured. Perform all manner and type of machine exercises to work the good leg if the other leg is injured. Double down on the diet: don’t toss the diet or quit the diet; diet harder, diet stricter and above all diet smart. Remember to take in lots of calories but make sure the calories are quality calories. Take in tons of healing, regenerative protein and use potent Parrillo supplements to round out the diet. Remember the words of the champion bodybuilder that famously viewed his broken leg as the perfect opportunity to bring up his upper body. Above all else, never quit and never give up! Learn to make lemonade out of lemons!

A Sample Post-Injury Recovery Diet

Meal I	Egg white omelet with vegetables cooked in CapTri®, oatmeal
Meal II	All-Protein™ shake, Parrillo Protein Bar™
Meal III	Tuna salad, sweet potato, green beans and a Parrillo Muffin™
Meal IV	Post-workout: 50/50 Plus™ shake, Parrillo Energy Bar™, Muscle Amino™
Meal V	Chicken breasts, brown rice with CapTri®, garden salad
Meal VI	Parrillo Cake™ with Parrillo Frosting™, Optimized Whey™ shake
With each meal: 1 Essential Vitamin Formula™, 1 Mineral Electrolyte Formula™, 1 Bio-C™, 5-8 Liver Amino Formula™ tabs
Each Day: Natural E-Plus™, Ultimate Amino Formula™

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