KNIFE, FORK, MUSCLE_ Book I_ DI - Brooks D. Kubik (1)

carrying large amounts of muscle mass. Many lifters are big, strong, and
muscular, with the body-fat levels of an Olympic athlete, but the BMI labels
us as obese. I get it. I’m right there with you. The last time I bought a life
insurance policy I had to send photos to convince them that I was heavily
muscled rather than obese, or they would have added a hefty penalty to my
monthly premium.
But unfortunately, there are many trainees who do serious lifting or other
progressive resistance exercise on a regular basis, but who are carrying far too
much excess weight (a/k/a Lard Lumps) for their own good. Remember,
excess body-fat is associated with virtually all of the so-called diseases of
civilization, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, heart
attack, stroke, Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis and
rheumatism, metabolic syndrome, and even some types of cancer. And that’s
true even if you exercise regularly, you’re strong as a gorilla, and you’re
packing two or three times the muscle mass of the average man. Excess fat is
still a problem for you. It’s a problem for everyone.
But it’s a problem with a solution. The right kind of diet and nutrition plan –
in combination with the right kind of exercise program – can help you lose
unwanted body-fat while maintaining your hard-earned strength and muscle
mass. We’ll cover this in detail later in the book.
9. Your ability to recover and recuperate from hard workouts will
increase.
Once you progress past the beginner phase of your strength training, recovery
and recuperation become critical to your success. And for older trainees,
recovery and recuperation is critical even in the beginner stage of their
training. Remember, it’s not enough to train hard enough to stimulate gains in
strength and muscular development. You also need to recover from your
workouts. If you stimulate growth but don’t fully recover from workout to
workout, you will not only fail to make progress, you will actually begin to
lose strength and muscle – which means that all of your hard work, effort and
sweat will be wasted. In fact, it will be worse than wasted. It will start to
negatively affect your health by driving you into a constant state of
overtraining.
In contrast, once you learn how to train hard and heavy while maximizing
your recovery, you’ll increase your rate of progress enormously – and you’ll
end up building far more strength and muscle than would otherwise be
possible. So place as much emphasis on recovery as you do on training. They