Practical Training While Fasting.
An International Athlete's Experience.

by John
(Lennon,MI,USA)

I was a national and international competitive athlete from ages 4-20. I have competed in a variety of sports including Weight lifting, Wrestling,Track, kettlebell lifting, Running, Judo and Tae Kwon Do.

I have trained many H.S. athletes and have also worked with top college athletes from time to time locally. I have gone from great shape, to fat, back to great shape, back to fat. I was training to go in the Army right after college and was in great shape. But then I injured my ankle and for the next three years was almost crippled.

I sat on my sofa and ate myself to obesity!!! I have tried all kinds of diets and they seldom work for long or at all. So with that said I after reading a lot of the questions about fasting and training I have some ideas on what might work.

Intense physical training while fasting is not recommended because the more damage you do to the muscles the higher your protein intake needs. Since we are talking about juice and water fasts, your protein intake is almost nothing at all.

The fat your body is going to be consuming can fuel all process but can not be used to replace or build muscle tissue because muscle tissue is made from protein not fat. So what we need are forms of training that do not involve lots of muscle damage and are not cardio based.

The reason for ruling out long slow cardio then a short walk is because cardio if done in excess will negatively alter your male hormone profile to more closely mimic a womans or an older Geriatric Males which is not what a young man wants at all.

So what do we have left??? We have Isometrics. Best book on the subject is John E. Peterson's "Isometric Power Revolution". This causes almost no damage to the muscles and will build tremendous strength and muscle control and can be done in a very short time as in less then 25 minutes a day.

There is no movement involved and no equipment is needed. In fact you can be bed ridden and still work this program. It will have you sweating like crazy in no time flat. The best part is that it is friendly to the joints and most obese people have joint issues any ways due to their weight.

Next we have Iso-Power-Flexing which is also in the same book I mentioned above but is a completely different system then classic isometrics. Oh, and do not believe the myth about Isometrics being bad for people with high blood pressure it is now being used to treat high blood pressure with great results.

Next we have a program called "Flexercise" or "PowerFlexing" by Jim Forystek. This program is movement based and is very much like a modern version of the old Atlas Dynamic Tension course. It uses a series of self resistance and body weight exercises to train the entire body.

Next we have VRT training which is a form of load less training. It has been tested by the Russians and proven to work great when weights are not available. It was used by their athletes when on the road.

It has you using antagonistic muscles to create resistance for the protagonistic muscle you want to work. You are basically mentally picturing the act of lifting something really heavy while you use one set of muscles to oppose the others.

You normally use traditional weightlifting exercises and mimic their motions. This is great for someone that has already learned to contract their muscles well with either isometrics previously or someone with a past history of weightlifting. They offer a Video/DVD for like $49 and a book for about half that.

Then we have various forms of power yoga.

These would be my first choices for programs to use while fasting. I am getting ready to try a 30 day juice fast along with the various methods I spoke about above.

I would be very afraid to under take intense weightlifting or kettlebell lifting during the fasting phase. I would save that for those periods between fasting when your food intake is higher and you have some fresh protein hitting your system each day.

If you train hard and do not have a fresh source of daily protein you could very well lose more muscle then fat which is counter productive for long term fat lose. So I think moderate intensity with one or more of the above techniques will prove far more useful during the fast.

The best part is that other then maybe two kitchen chairs their is no equipment needed and even the chair's are not a must they just help a bit with some of the exercises to increase the range of motion.

For what it is worth I have a Bowflex, Free Weights and a 36 lbs. and 70lbs. kettlebell in my basement and do not plan on using any of them during my 30 day juice fast at all!

I already have some before photos if I manage to stick to the 30 day fast I will take after shots. While I know that one fast cycle will not be enough to take off all the excess body fat I am carrying around with me it should be visible though in photos.

This way we can judge if the above advice is sound or if I need to rethink it!