O
nce again, we caught
up with Dean the
Protein and Actor
Martyn ‘The Monster’
Ford. They are in the third
phase of their diet prep now,
and FLEX went to see how
they’re getting on and how
things have changed during
these final stages of prep.
It’s been a little difficult
catching up with the guys, as
they have both been tied up on
the UK 5% Nutrition tour.
We knew we couldn’t leave
you in suspense, so we tracked
them down to tell us all about
the last stage of their diet prep.
LAST MONTH;
Dean reflects on the cardio
changes since last month:
He says: “In the March
issue, we left you at the
point where we had cut carbs
by 50%. We also had both
started doing fasted cardio
3 times a week. Since then,
we have increased the
cardio to 45 mins, 5 times
per week. This is still all fasted
cardio. We have dropped our
intake of carbs down to 150g
per day also.”
You may recall from previous
articles that changes are only
ever made when fat loss has
stopped or slowed down.
Dean says: “I’m really not a big
fan of doing too much cardio.
As it’s anaerobic, too much can
leave your body looking small
and stringy. Plus, if you pound
away doing hours of cardio, your
fast twitch muscle fibres can
start to adopt the characteris-
tics of slow twitch muscle
fibres, which do not grow. The
body is very clever and it will
adapt quickly to enable it to
become more effective at what
you do the most of. So too much
cardio and your body will be-
come more efficient at it, and
less efficient at growing huge
muscles.
“Not only that, as your body
gets better at doing cardio, it will
over time burn fewer calories
doing the same cardio as when
you first started. This is one of
the reasons I don’t do cardio
off-season. It just makes more
sense to me to concentrate on
holding and growing more
muscle. The more muscle you
have the, more calories your
body will need to burn in order
to maintain that muscle. This
really does speed up your
metabolic rate. The more muscle
you carry, the more glycogen
receptors you have to hold
(carbs) in the muscle, rather
than being stored as fat.
“If you’re training with heavy
weights, over time, the body will
also become more efficient at
glycogen storage. Therefore, if
two guys both weighing 200 lbs
ate the same amount of carbs
per day, but one had trained for
10 years and the other had
trained for 10 months, the guy
who’d been training ten years
would be more likely to stay lean
and grow muscle. The guy who’d
only trained for ten months
would not utilise the carbs as
efficiently and would be more
likely to store fat.”
ADDITIONAL CHANGES
FOR THIS PHASE:
Dean says: “The other change
we made since last month was
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FLEX | APRIL 2018