How To Be a Human Guinea Pig: The Benefits of Self – Experimentation

First a public announcement:

The At Home Performance Fitness eCourse is now Live!

Question:: Why did we decide to launch an online fitness correspondence course?

Answer: Because we wanted to provide solutions to the three biggest problems as to why people fail to succeed when it comes to their health and fitness goals, which include:

1. Not having the knowledge to construct a program that will meet their needs

2. Lacking a plan of action to put all of the components of a program together

3. Not having a support structure to keep you motivated and accountable.

What the eCourse offers are three solutions to these common problems

Solution 1. We have developed a comprehensive program that can be tailored to just about anyone’s goals.

Solution 2. We roll the program out to you in a structured, straight forward, and effective way that is clear and easy to follow.

Solution 3. We will keep in regular contact with you in order to help monitor your progress, keep you motivated, and stay on track

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Here are a few sample complexes from one of our routines. You can expect many great, challenging complexes like this in the eCourse which are fantastic for metabolic conditioning and hacking off body fat.

Self experimentation has been a hobby of mine for sometime.

Statement: “Everybody is different”.

Question: Do you believe that?

My Answer: To an extent I do, and is why I attribute self-experimentation to a lot of my success.

And In order to find out what will work for you, you’re going to have to be willing to experiment.

Let’s clear the air. Self-experimentation is not hopping from diet to diet, or from fitness trend to fitness trend. A true self-experiment, in order to be effective and worth your time, must be carefully planned and controlled.

The first step is to find a testable hypothesis that interests you. Let’s keep this fairly simple…

Say you read a claim from your favorite blog (cough chroniclesofstrength cough) that states how a diet relatively low in carbs, moderately high in protein, and moderately high in fat may be the best way to hack off body fat while preserving lean muscle. Certainly a testable hypothesis, and an interesting one at that. So how would you go about conducting a self-experiment to find out whether or not this type feeding is indeed effective for you in terms of fat loss and preserving lean muscle?

The second step is to consider all variables that may effect the outcome, which in this example are quite a few, including but not limited to: diet (the variable we want to change, exercise habits, sleeping habits, stress levels, etc.

Ceteris Paribus is Latin for ” All else constant”.

If you are going to conduct a self-experiment, then you first must decide what variable it is you are going to change and how you are going to monitor the effects over time. But in order to examine such potential changes successfully and to arrive at an accurate conclusion, then you must keep all other variables constant.

For example; say you want to go ahead and monitor the effects of following a relatively low carb diet for three months. Over the aforementioned time period you are going to record everything that goes into your mouth, take weekly photos, and have your body fat measured by a bod pod bi-weekly.

Now in order to target solely the effects of following a low carb diet as accurately as possible (there will always be some unavoidable error), then you must hold all the other variables that may have an effect on the outcome constant.

How do you know if your conclusion is accurate at the end of the experiment if you changed your workout routine and sleep habits as well? You won’t!

So before you begin any self-experiment, write down all of the variables in your life right now that you think may have an effect on the outcome. Choose one variable to alter, and be sure to keep all else constant.

In order to get the most out of a self-experiment, you must be committed to it for an adequate amount of time.

For me, I give at least three months to any given undertaking. This is the minimum amount of time I would recommend for just about any experiment related to nutrition or fitness.

Here are a few of the following nutritional self-experiments that I’ve conducted in the past and my findings along with them.

1. The Warrior Diet –I followed the Warrior Diet for a little over four months. During the day I opted mostly for a water fast, occasionally I would have a grapefruit or some sort of other low glycemic fruit or veggie, but nothing substantial. I would overeat at night, consuming upward of 3000 calories during this time.

My conclusion: The warrior diet certainly promotes a sense of alertness and higher levels of adrenaline throughout the day. I lost a substantial amount of weight (10lb), both body fat and
some muscle mass. My appearance was quite sinewy and lean, but lacked fullness (this is actually when I filmed my “secret to great abs” youtube video which I feel I look quite frail in). My workouts however felt strong, but my strength gains were nothing to boast about while on the warrior diet. I was able to maintain a high level of conditioning however.

2. Low Carb Diet – Almost immediately after the warrior diet I then conducted a low carb (ketogenic diet) experiment. I dropped my carb intake to less than 20% of my daily caloric intake. During this time I ate substantial amounts of red meat, eggs, olive oil, etc.

My conclusion: The adaptation into a ketogenic state is pure misery, but once I got through it, my energy levels throughout the day were always constant. My bodyfat levels dropped substantially, well into the single digits, yet I was able to maintain a significant amount of muscle mass. I actually gained the weight back that I lost from the warrior diet. My strength gains were good, but not great. But my endurance was fantastic, which I certainly attribute to my body using fat as it’s primary fuel source. To this day, I still follow a diet relatively low in carbohydrates because of how convinced I am of it’s effectiveness for me.

3. Eat Stop Eat – This is my current and on going self-experiment. Once a week, I must fast for 24 hours. So far, it has been going quite well. I am three weeks in, yet there are still no tangible results. My weight again fluctuated two pounds this week, but again as of now, such a change is immaterial and insignificant. Strength gains however are still coming along as they were prior to following ESE, so I have noticed no negative side effects there. The picture below was taken today; again no noticeable aesthetic differences yet.

As for self-experimentation when it comes to training, I have plenty of those as well, but I’ll save most for a later time…Here are two of my more worthwhile findings:

1. Metabolic Conditioning – I explain metabolic conditioning in my eBook; but to put it simply, it is when you simultaneously engage the cardiovascular and the muscular systems. When I perform metabolic conditioning, I typically opt for kettlebells as my tool of choice.

My conclusion: Nothing keeps me as ripped as metabolic conditioning, especially through the use of kettlebell complexes and when coupled with a relatively low carb lifestyle. I have tried just about everything when it comes to “fat loss” protocols, and what I can conclude, is that for me at least: the higher the misery index, then the great the fat loss results. True metabolic conditioning is absolute hell; as you should all be well aware of by now if you have given my Kettlebell Complex eBook a go. But the benefit of fat loss is only one perk of metabolic conditioning. My overall conditioning has never been better. On a whim, I recently gave the secret service snatch test a go, and got in my 200 reps with time to spare. I attribute my ability to do this, due to the amount of metabolic conditioning I perform.

2. Aerobics – Running on the treadmill was one of the things that I used to do the most of during my high school years. I would typically run 2 to 5 miles per day, 5 to 6 days a week.

My conclusion: Aerobics did help me to initially lose weight (but at the time I was pretty overweight), but the results quickly plateaued; even as I switched forms of aerobics from running on the treadmill to cycling outside. But overall, I would certainly recommend aerobics over doing nothing, but for me it is nowhere near as effective as heavy weight training and metabolic conditioning for fat loss and conditioning. I no longer do any sort of aerobic training by itself, with the exception of a light recovery jog every now and then.

3. Power to the People Approach – This approach to strength training implements feed-forward tension techniques, low rep sets, and adequate amounts of rest between sets and tactical periodization. To simply even further, you make Strength gains through “practice”, rather than “working out”.

My conclusion: I was not always a fan of Pavel Tsatsouline. But like anything else, he made claims, and I decided to put them to the test. Around the time I discovered Pavel, I was reading some works by many other strength authors as well, but Pavel’s caught my attention the most, as it seemed to me at the time to be the most unconventional and old school type of training that I was looking for. And it was because of this, that I have become such an advocate of RKC training principles and Pavel’s work. My strength gains from following this approach were undeniably more profound than any other routine I had ever followed up to that point. The poundage of all my major lifts increased dramatically, and I tacked on 15 pounds of muscle withing the course of three months (diet held constant of course).

But I certainly do not limit my self-experimentation to my diet and training. I have constantly experimented with all aspects of my life, and I will continue to do so for as long as I am able. This blog is a war for me to share with you all my findings, and for you all to share with me your own.

Have you ever conducted a worthwhile self-experiment? What were the results, and what were your conclusions? Post in the comment section, I’d love to hear about it!

Self – experimentation is just as much about self-discovery as it is anything else. And it is certainly not limited to health and wellness either. I am constantly conducting self-experiments in all areas of my life, which I will share with you all periodically.

Do not be afraid to experiment. And do not expect each experiment to turn out how you think it will, as this is rarely the case. But nothing is more beneficial then figuring out exactly how your body works, because once you understand how you work, you then have the power to manipulate and mold yourself into whatever you want.