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The Body of A Greek God
The Body of A Greek God
Table of Contents
The Body of A Greek God......................................................................................................................... 1
Acknowledgements, Legal Stuff, and Dedication......................................................................................3
Who This Book Is For................................................................................................................................4
Introduction................................................................................................................................................ 5
What Makes A Body Godly....................................................................................................................... 6
How This Book Works............................................................................................................................... 8
Why Both Methods? Why Not Just Maxalding?...................................................................................9
Why Not Just Use HIT Then?............................................................................................................. 10
How To Start Building the Body of A Greek God in 24 Days................................................................. 13
HIT Principles..................................................................................................................................... 14
Finding Your HIT Starting Weights.....................................................................................................16
Repetitions...........................................................................................................................................18
Breathing............................................................................................................................................. 18
The 24 Day Workout Exercises........................................................................................................... 19
But I Want To Work The GUNS Man!................................................................................................ 20
24 Day Workout Schedule and Logs................................................................................................... 21
The Final Touches: Sleep, Naps, Staying Lazy................................................................................... 22
What To Eat During the First 24 Days.....................................................................................................24
Im A String Bean. What Should I Eat?.............................................................................................. 25
How Much Water Should I Drink?......................................................................................................26
Optional Extra..................................................................................................................................... 27
Some Tips............................................................................................................................................ 28
Recap: Eating + Drinking for The First 24 Days................................................................................ 29
How To Maintain The Body of A Greek God, Forever............................................................................30
A Sickly Boy....................................................................................................................................... 30
My Experience With Maxalding......................................................................................................... 32
Muscle Control.................................................................................................................................... 33
Gain Without Pain............................................................................................................................... 34
Skeptical Much?.................................................................................................................................. 35
It Wants Your Blood............................................................................................................................ 36
How To Do Maxalding........................................................................................................................ 37
Contraction..................................................................................................................................... 37
Breathing.........................................................................................................................................37
Some Tips (These Get Weird).........................................................................................................38
In and Out Through the Nose: Proper Full Tidal Breathing................................................................38
Running Farther, Easier.......................................................................................................................39
Cons and Pros of Maxalding............................................................................................................... 41
A Beginner's Maxalding Routine........................................................................................................ 42
Technique........................................................................................................................................43
Exercises......................................................................................................................................... 44
The Routine.................................................................................................................................... 44
On Motivation..................................................................................................................................... 45
The Next Steps.................................................................................................................................... 46
Advanced Techniques..................................................................................................................... 47
What My Daily Maxalding Looks Like.............................................................................................. 47
Routine 1: Single Rep Technique................................................................................................... 48
Routine 2: Dynamic Muscle Control Technique............................................................................ 49
Introduction
Everything in this book is wrong.
Its methods have been proven wrong for over a century by scientists and
professional athletes. It will probably not get any attention from modern
athletes and scientists. Thats okay.
Actually, thats better than okay.
Because how fantastic will it feel to know that youve transformed your body
into something healthy, fit, strong, energetic, and beautiful using methods
that are wrong and proven not to work?
Pretty damn fantastic. Like I do everyday.
The laws of exercise state that you need to go to the gym and lift weights
and run if you want to look good.
Theres proof that almost any way of getting fit is false or somehow won't
work. This proof always comes from a competitor with something to sell;
who want to show that their product is superior by putting somebody elses
down. Theres nothing wrong with that, even if it is childish.
And what works for me, what keeps me fit and strong, whats given me a
body that Im proud of every minute of every day, has nothing to do with
what is popular or what is proven.
And I think youll find it works pretty damn well for you too.
Stay well my friends,
Harrison Mullin
June 4, 2013
body.
The only people who ever made money with Maxalding were the founders
over a 100 years ago through their "Course by post".
But that's changed. Now every single written instruction on how to do
Maxalding is 100% free to you and me thanks to a passionate group of
giving individuals dedicated to keeping Maxalding alive. You can teach
yourself the basics in an evening, and won't ever pay a dime for Men's
Health or a gym membership at New Years ever again.
Just drink more water and eat a little bit more carbs, fats, AND protein and
you'll have all the nutrients you need to build muscle.
But how unsexy does that sound? How much more profitable is it to market
an amazing new protein that absorbs at a micro level (as if all other
nutrients absorbed on a macro level) than just telling people to get more
calories and water? If Men's Health and Men's Fitness did that, do you think
they'd last another year?
HIT Principles
Before we start, here's a list of basic weight lifting terminology that you
should familiarize yourself with.
Repetition = Lifting a weight to its top position, returning it to its starting
position one time.
Set = How many repetitions you do consecutively without pausing between
each repetition.
While lifting weights, you will use the principles of High Intensity Training
(HIT). Here's how it works:
1. Use perfect form.
How you move the weight is more important than how much weight you're
moving. Move the weight slowly, don't jerk it at any point. Use no
momentum, don't cheat and swing the weights to help you lift it higher or a
few more times. All that does is put your joints and muscles in dangerous
positions when they are at their weakest.
2. Lift for 4 seconds, lower for 4 seconds.
Do every repetition with this cadence. No matter what exercise you're doing,
lift it for 4 seconds and return it to the starting position in 4 seconds. Don't
pause at any point in the movement. Don't grant yourself momentum. Move
slowly, change direction smoothly, start and stop carefully.
3. Do one set to failure.
Do as many repetitions as you can, and then try one more. Using perfect
form, lift for 4 seconds, lower for 4 seconds, repeat the exercise until you
can't anymore. This is called One Set to Failure. When I say "until you can't
anymore" I mean until you physically cannot move the weight one more
millimeter. Learn your body. Understand what your true point of failure is
and not just your delusional sense of "well my muscle's a little tired so that's
my point of failure."
4. Rest at least 3 minutes between exercises.
Ignore all claims that you should only rest 30 seconds between sets and
exercises (remember: there are no multiple sets in HIT). You must rest
between exercises to let your body become prepared for the next exercise. I
strongly suggest 4 minutes instead of 3, but 3 is the minimum.
5. Work out your entire body each session.
Ignore such things as split routines (working out parts of your body one day
and doing other parts the next day). Working out your entire body is a
healthy stressor that signals your brain to release more hormones to help
with muscle recovery and growth. Not working out your entire body in one
session will not elicit this same hormonal response. That equals slower body
transformation and wasted gym time.
6. Do no more than 8 exercises per session.
This keeps concentration and mental energy high. Doing 12+ exercises every
workout session is a recipe for waning attention and ineffective lifting. HIT
requires extreme mental concentration to reach your point of failure. If
you're attention is low, you won't reach your true point of failure and you'll
waste time in the gym.
That's it. For our purposes, there are no exceptions to these rules.
HIT is based on the concept of failure. Like any master archer or Seduction
Enthusiast, you only get better when you reach your failure point. Your
failure point is what lets you know just how good you are; that you're only
good up until a certain point.
So in the case of the archer, he begins shooting at the target from 5 paces.
He easily places all 3 arrows in the bullseye well within the 20 second time
limit he's allotted himself.
He then retreats to 15 paces. Again, he places all 3 arrows in the bullseye,
with ample time to spare.
Continue back to 50 paces. All 3 arrows reach their mark, but with only 5
Your SWR is the weight you will use to actually do a set of leg
extension repetitions.
The next time you go to the gym, you'll now know to set the leg
extension machine to 120 pounds.
Of course, reducing your MWR 20% on every exercise is not going to work
perfectly. In a lot of cases you'll quickly figure out that your SWR is a little too
hard or easy. That's fine. It's necessary to correct course as experience
dictates. Just be sure that you're honest with yourself when figuring out if a
weight is too easy or too tough.
Remember, you want to do an exercise until you can't anymore because
that final, moment-of-failure repetition is the one that is going to help
reshape your body more than all the other repetitions before it.
Repetitions
How many reps should you do for an exercise?
Well, it varies from body part to body part. 8-12 repetitions for any exercise
is de rigeur in HIT circles.
For upper body exercises (including every muscle on your torso except
for your abs), go for 8 repetitions.
For all lower body exercises (including your abs), go for 12 repetitions.
Once you reach the repetition threshold for an exercise, increase the weight
by no more than 10% the next time you're in the gym. Keep increasing like
this every time you reach the appropriate repetition threshold.
Breathing
Much has been made on proper and improper breathing techniques
suitable for intense weight lifting like that of HIT. I've found all of it to be
moot.
When you're heart is going a mile a minute as you struggle to squeeze out
the 12th rep on the leg extensions, breathing has a way of just happening
on its own. There's a few points in a few exercises where it'll be naturally
tough to breathe. That's okay, just be aware of it and try to give yourself a
little extra oxygen if you suddenly find yourself not breathing.
We'll talk at great length about breathing later on in, but for now this is all
that needs to be said as relates to HIT and the first 24 days.
Okay! Enough of the boring stuff, let's get to the actual exercises that'll get
you on your way to building your Greek God of a body.
Day 2
1 Leg Extension Video
2 Bent over Row with Barbell Video (Note: I prefer underhanded grip instead
of the demonstrated overhand grip because it stretches the back
muscles a bit further which puts them through a longer, and still safe,
range of motion.)
3 Squat with Dumbbells Video
4 Lateral Raise with Dumbbells Video
5 Myotatic Crunch Video + Oblique Side Bend Video
Check out these instructive videos for how to do each exercise. Keep in
mind that most of these demonstrations are not done using HIT principals,
which means the people in the videos are doing them waaaaaay faster than
you will be doing them. (Remember our 4 seconds up, 4 seconds down
cadence?)
Mimic the form in each video, but not the speed theyre using. The only
exercise video that you should mimic EXACTLY is the Myotatic crunch video
because this one is done using HIT principals.
The Myotatic crunch is something special. Its borrowed from The 4-Hour
Body by Timothy Ferriss and is truly an excellent abdominal exercise. Its
different from the other exercises here because you wont use weights with
it when you start out. Once you can do 10 reps with no weight, hold a 5
pound weight in your hands to increase resistance.
The same goes for your calves and chest. They're all supporting actors on
the stage dominated by your back, shoulders, upper legs, and abdomen.
When I was 19 I worked out only my arms and abs. Everything else --diet,
sleep, hydration-- stayed constant. When I started my arms measured 14 7/8
inches (the circumference around the bicep and triceps on one arm). At the
end of two months of intense arm focus, they measured 15 inches. This is
by no means scientific, but the correlation is enough for me to have written
off arm specific weight lifting for good. At age 24, after over 4 years of
avoiding arm specific weight lifting, my arms measured 15 1/2 inches.
The same is true for calf and pectoral weight lifting exercises. After over 3
years of not doing calf raises or bench presses, both are larger and more
well defined than ever before.
The big muscles matter. Ignore the little ones for the 24 Days. We'll get to
them later.
Alternate between the above routines each time you go to the gym. Use the
following table as a template for your 24 day workout schedule. No matter
what date you start on, give yourself 2 days full rest between workouts. You
will go to the gym 9 times total, then you'll be gone for good.
You need to keep track of precisely how many reps you're doing and what
weight as you go through the first 24 days. To make that easier, print out
these super simple 24 day workout logs on the Extras and Resources page
on the website here.
The Final Touches: Sleep, Naps, Staying Lazy
Going to the gym in these first 24 days is going to take it out of you. As long
as you super-hydrate (as described earlier), soreness and muscle cramping
are rare.
HIT is exhausting, even if you dont realize it. Therefore I highly recommend
into a Greek God's, try the Slow Carb Diet first, and if it doesn't work,
chances are you didn't do it correctly (which is almost nigh impossible
because it's so simple).
Just kidding. If the Slow Carb Diet doesn't work, and if you have the extreme
mental fortitude to pull it off, only do these two things to initiate some
serious weight loss.
1. Eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up (See the slow
carb diet link for some good ideas here.)
2. Stop drinking calories. That means no juice, no soda (not even diet),
and no milk. Instead, only drink the following:
Water (and lots of it. See the Drinking section later on in this
chapter.)
Black coffee (with cinnamon on top!)
Unsweetened tea (peppermint works best for me)
Red wine (pinot noir is my favorite)
Learn the 5 simple rules of the Slow Carb Diet at this link. If you need more
information about the Slow Carb Diet, I highly recommend picking up a copy
of The 4-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss, and finding lots of great slow carb
recipes in The 4-Hour Chef.
I did. I ate about 20% more of what I was already eating at every meal. I
drank 16 ounces of milk a day instead of 8.
I gained 5 pounds of muscle in a month.
Scientific? Nope. Did it work? Yep.
If you are a string bean and want to put on weight (muscle mass or just plain
fat), you must eat exactly what you've been eating, plus a little more. No
need to get scientific, just eat more at every meal.
That line would not sell a single issue of Men's Health, but it is 100%
realistic. If youre skinny, there is no sane reason whatsoever to eat anything
different from what you normally eat when you're trying to gain muscle
mass by lifting weights.
If you want to get more calories without eating more, there is no better
solution than good ol' milk. Not Soy milk, not skim milk, I'm talkin' straight
up whole milk. Drink two liters every day for the 24 Days without adding any
more food to your diet and you'll get all the calories you need.
Remember, only 20% of muscle is actually protein, and nearly 3/4 of muscle
is water. Whole milk is thus a fantastic way of adding calories in the
fat/protein/carbohydrate/water ratios that match a regular diet.
However, even though milk is an excellent calorie adder and pretty good
way of getting the water your muscles need to grow, it pales in comparison
to just drinking more water and consuming a bit more solid food calories.
How Much Water Should I Drink?
Get ready to invest in Depends, because you're going to drink a gallon of
water a day for 14 days.
Because 70% of muscle is water, that is precisely what you need more of. A
gallon of water a day is definitely a lot, no two ways around two. But it is
imperative to stay super-hydrated when you are gaining muscle mass. Once
you're past the first 14 days you can cut it back to a half gallon a day.
Obviously if you try to drink half a gallon of milk and a gallon of water in one
day you are literally going to do nothing in a day but stay within 20 paces of
a bathroom. So if you choose to add calories with two liters of milk rather
than just eating more, cut your water for the day down to a half gallon.
Optional Extra
Tools: Creatine Monohydrate, less than $9 at GNC or any health food store.
Buy 300 grams, look for it in a large gallon-sized tub.
You may have heard of something called creatine before. Creatine is a
substance close to protein in make-up and is made naturally by your body
all the time. To make a long story short, creatine is extremely helpful in
building muscle, particularly if you are just starting to work out. Creatine has
been described as giving your muscles a few more cylinders, thereby
increasing their power.
You can find creatine in powder form in big tubs at just about any health
food store or GNC. There's a lot of types out there, each one claiming to be
better than the rest, but the only kind you should be interested in is called
Creatine Monohydrate. It is the simplest, cheapest, and most effective
muscle building supplement and is the only one that has been consistently
proven to not just be a placebo or a creator of expensive urine.
Creatine is the real deal. That being said, it is not necessary for our purposes
and is just a nice thing to have. Your choice here.
Normally, creatine monohydrate (a powder) is just mixed in with with water
and you're good to go. If you choose to use it, I suggest a slightly different
tact.
1. Get a big 32 ounce Nalgene or something similar that you can shake.
2. Fill it up, and scoop 5 grams of creatine into the water (1 heaping
teaspoons, or 1 of the little scoops that usually come in the creatine jug is
about 5 grams)
3. Shake until it looks nicely dissolved
4. Scoop 1/8 cup (2 tablespoons) of regular white sugar into the Nalgene*
5. Shake it nice and good
6. Drink it all in the next 3 hours
7. Repeat 4 total times per day (32 ounces X 4 = 1 gallon)
8. Eat, pee, and be merry
Like super-hydrating with water, you should drink 1 gallon of the
water/creatine solution every day for 14 days, then back off to just a half
gallon of plain water.
*The sugar boosts your insulin which helps muscle absorb creatine much
better, and also acts as most of your extra calories for the day. Read Option
C below for more details.
Some Tips
Finish your liquids at least 2 hours before bed unless you want to
know what it feels like to be an 80 year old man with an inflamed
prostate
If you opt to go the creatine route, get a 1 gallon jug that you can fill
with your water/creatine solution for the day. Fill up your Nalgene
from this jug; it's more convenient than carrying all the sugar and
creatine with you. (1 gallon of water/creatine solution recipe: 4
heaping teaspoons creatine monohydrate + 1/2 cup of white sugar)
Caffeine negates some of the creatine's goodness, so if you have a cup
of tea or coffee, add 1 extra creatine teaspoon to your total for the
day.
A Sickly Boy
Max Sick was a sickly boy. That's no joke.
Max was a tiny boy born to tiny parents in southeastern Germany on June
28th, 1882. Incapacitated by chronic lung trouble and dropsy, young Max did
not even stand on his own two feet until the age of 5.
He was so small in stature and scrawny for his age that he was not even
allowed to attend school until age 7. Parents, doctors, and relatives coddled
Max, urging him to believe that rest and relaxation not sports and fun and
games were what was necessary for such a decrepit boy.
But of course, like any good boy, Max dreamed of being strong. Upon
spending his savings to go to the passing traveling circus and witnessing a
strongman of herculean proportions, Max became determined to realize his
dream.
Flush with energy and inspiration, he raced home and began furnishing a
crude dumbbell from a slab of stone, eager to lift it as hed seen the
Hercules do. Maxs father was not pleased and promptly destroyed the
dumbbell, berating the boy for his insolence,
reminding Max that the doctors told him to rest
and not exert himself in any way.
As Max would later recount, the destruction of his
stone dumbbell was a pivotal moment. Because
he was not allowed any weights or tools, he
began experimenting with stretching and tensing
his muscles while he lay in bed, thinking that
somehow this could make him strong.
This became the foundation of Maxs life work.
The once feeble Max Sick (anglicized Maxick)
soon became known across early 20th century
Europe as the epitome of physical prowess and
male beauty.
How did he go from sickly boy to Adonis? Muscle
Control.
Muscle Control
Try this:
Concentrate on your bicep. Try to
contract it using nothing but
concentration. Don't move your arm at
all. Focus on your bicep, imagine it
getting hotter and pumped full of
blood.
Now slowly move your arm like in the
photo to make it contract further. Hold
the contraction to the level just below
when the muscle starts vibrating.
Hold this level of contraction for 5 full,
gentle breathes.
Breathe out slowly and relax the contraction in the same way.
Contract a muscle without contracting the muscles around it. Gain control
over it. Control it independently. Become it's master. That is muscle control
and is what became known as Maxalding.
This is a vast simplification of an exercise system that is unlike any other.
Remember how HIT works your muscles until they fail? Maxalding is the
exact opposite.
Skeptical Much?
It takes some getting used to the idea that not lifting weights can actually
transform your body into a strong, beautiful thing.
Facts say Maxalding should not work. They say that moving weights back
and forth, up and down is how you become strong. They say that running is
how you increase lung capacity and reduce body fat.
Waiting for the facts to line up and tell you conclusively that something will
work is, frankly, an incredibly boring way of living. Facts mean little because
they change with whoever proves them. Think doctors in the 1950s proving
that smoking was good for you.
I don't know; maybe smoking actually is good for you in some way that we
haven't come to understand yet.
What matters, and what changes your physique for the better, is the
willingness to try. I don't mean try stupid things like smoking for 20 years to
see if it really is good for you. I mean try things that are reversible. Not lifting
weights is reversible because you can always go back to lifting weights. If
you try out Maxalding for 2 weeks and it doesn't work for you, all you've lost
is 2 weeks worth of regular exercise. Big whoop.
But if it does work for you, you'll never see popular exercise the same way
again. Whenever I see a Bowflex commercial and endure 45 seconds of
glistening shaved chests and the narrator calling my testicle size into
question because I'm not actively putting $1300 onto my Visa, I smirk.
P.T. Barnum would hate that smirk.
Nourishment comes from your blood which holds all the nutrients youve
consumed from food and drink. Thus the main purpose of Maxalding is to
improve circulation so that your muscles can get all the nourishment they
need to grow.
Go back to flexing your bicep. When you flex it, youre sending blood to it,
which is partially what helps make it harder. The harder you flex it, the
harder the muscle gets. But if you flex it so hard that its shaking or
vibrating, blood isnt flowing easily through the muscle anymore. Thats not
good.
The goal of tensing the muscle is to irrigate it with nourishing blood. Bizarre,
I know.
Remember how the old school teaches that muscle grows because you put
it under stress and make it break down a little bit? Maxalding teaches that
you skip the entire process of breaking it down and get straight to giving
your muscle the nourishment it needs to grow stronger.
What's more, focusing on the muscle and getting it to contract mentally,
without moving your body, builds a strong neural connection between your
mind and body, which helps increase the muscle's ability to tense harder
and harder. The harder a muscle can tense, the more weight it can move
and therefore the stronger it is.
Finally, by focusing on the neural connection between the muscle and mind,
your brain quickly learns how to use each muscle independently. Once
youve got control over each muscle on its own, bringing them all together is
a piece of cake. For example: learning to control your hamstrings (backs of
your upper legs), quadriceps (fronts of your upper legs), and lower back
independently makes it super easy to bring them all together to do a really
heavy barbell squat.
Keeping blood flowing through your flexed muscle is incredibly important.
This is the reason why you wont flex your muscle as hard as you can in
Maxalding. At peak contraction, the muscles too tight to let blood flow
through it, just as if you were lifting really heavy weights. So when we say to
contract your muscle just below vibrating point, youre flexing the muscle as
hard as you can while still letting blood flow freely through it. As soon as the
muscle starts shaking or vibrating, youre shooting yourself in the foot by
keeping the blood stagnant.
Okay, enough about blood! Lets get you Maxalding.
How To Do Maxalding
Contraction
Breathing
Stay warm. Blood doesn't flow when you're cold. If you're cold while
you're Maxalding, you're wasting your time.
Do the contractions in front of a mirror if you like. It can be a lot of fun
to watch your physique progress and see the muscle fibers moving
under your skin once you're more experienced. However, don't rely on
the mirror to tell you if you're contracting the muscle correctly. You
must be able to feel, with your eyes closed, that you're contracting the
right muscle correctly and completely.
In your mind's eye, see the muscle fibers becoming thicker and redder,
coursing with nutrient-rich blood, as the muscle becomes stronger and
larger. Feel the muscle becoming hot with the blood that makes it
strong and beautiful.
of his nipples? Those are called the serratus magnus muscles and they are
an integral tool to making breathing easier.
Full Tidal Breathing means using the serratus muscles between the ribs
when you inhale. These little muscles spread your ribcage, letting your lungs
to expand as much as they can. The more the lungs expand, the more
oxygen they can hold, and the easier it is for you to oxygenate the blood
that is going to carry all those nutrients to your contracted muscle.
Stand tall, look straight ahead. Inhale gently through your nose. Fill your
chest with air. When you've got as much air as you think you can handle,
imagine your serratus pulling your ribs wider and wider. See your lungs
expanding and filling that extra space in your rib cage. Then gently exhale
through your nose.
This is how you must breathe when you're Maxalding because this helps you
breathe gently enough, and with great lung capacity, to match the gentle
muscle contractions you'll be doing.
Running Farther, Easier
Full tidal breathing works well just about everywhere, all the time. However,
it is not the best way of breathing when you're running.
The next time you go for a run, notice how you breathe. Chances are you
(myself included) will naturally start to match your breathing to your foot
steps. In for 3 steps, out for 3 steps. Something like that.
It sounds good and it makes sense. But it's not. And it doesn't.
When you match your breathing to your steps, you are merely keeping pace
with the oxygen needs your body is asking for. That's fine because meeting
minimum requirements works most of the time.
It also effectively means that you are giving the same amount of time to
Using these methods I improved recovery time (the time it takes to get heart
rate back to normal) after my weekly 2 mile run from 7 minutes to 3
minutes. No changes in speed or diet were made.
If you want to improve your distance, your speed, or just make running
easier, you've got to change your breathing. Now.
Maxalding is weird
Let's face it: you're making your muscles fill with blood in the
quiet of your room, not at the gym grunting and sweating. If your
friends hear about this you will be ribbed and ridiculed. Get used
to it. After a few months you'll be able to show your jesting
friends how you can contract 3 of your 6 pack autonomously.
That tends to quiet their jokes.
Maxalding is location-less
In the words of the founders, "Anywhere you are, there is
Maxalding." You can do it anywhere. You are not tied to the gym
or track for building strength and endurance. You are free to
grow stronger wherever you want. This is scary for some people
Maxalding will never interrupt the other exercise or training you're already
doing.
But Maxalding is also an excellent stand-alone workout. In my experience
it's the only exercise I need to stay in fantastic shape as evidenced by my
increasing strength 33% overall, running easier after a few months of doing
little but Maxalding, and that my body is actually significantly more Greek
God-like (slightly wider waist, slightly bigger hips, blocky muscle definition
rather than slender muscle definition).
You can use Maxalding to improve your strength and endurance in
whatever sport you're into or the work you need to do. So if you're a
prospector (hey, you never know) you'd focus most of your Maxalding
exercises on your shoulders and back so you can swing the pick harder and
more accurately. If you're a chef, you might want to spend some time on
your forearms so you can grip the knife with greater precision and strength.
There are some small differences in technique between how I do Maxalding
now and how I recommend doing it as a beginner. We'll cover both in this
book. But my chosen exercises have not changed because I am looking for a
fantastic body that can do a lot of things well, but isn't necessarily great at a
particular sport.
If you're reading this book, chances are you're most interested in how your
body looks, not necessarily how strong it is. That's great! As the saying goes
in Maxalding, Train for shape, and the strength will come.
Technique
Maxalding comes down to 5 steps in the beginning:
1. Contract a muscle hard, but not so hard that its shaking, for 5 full and
gentle breaths
2. Relax for 1 full breath
3. Contract it hard again, but still not so hard that its shaking, for another
I was gung-ho about Maxalding for the first 4 months, then I lost my
motivation (like I did with normal exercise and just about anything else too).
Some days I didn't want to spend 20 minutes standing around flexing my
butt.
After 3 days of skipping, I decided to just do one muscle group. No more.
After 1 minute of haphazardly muscle controlling my shoulders, I felt pretty
good. So I did my back. Then my obliques. The dominos started to fall.
Commit to just one muscle each day and soon you're committed to all of
them, most days. No one is perfect, no one does them all every day. Don't
try to be perfect. That'll kill you and your beautiful body.
Advanced Techniques
You can learn many wonderful ways of advancing your Maxalding in Juan
Antonio Martinez Rojas's Philosophy, Science, and Practice of Maxalding
(totally free PDF at that link). But to keep things simple we'll just cover the
three techniques that have helped me the most.
Single Rep Technique
Hold the contraction for 10 full breaths. This is 1 repetition.
Slowly contract on the exhale, slowly relax on the last breath's
inhale. Only do 1 repetition, then move on to the next muscle
group. And then once you're comfy with 10 breaths, try 20
breaths. THAT takes some focus!
Dynamic Muscle Control Technique
Hold the contraction for the normal 5 full breaths. While you're
contracting it, move the muscle slowly through it's full range of
motion. Maintain the contraction the whole time. This will be
difficult. Slowly relax on the last breath's inhale.
Dynamic Body Weight Technique
Do body weight exercises while contracting all the muscles
involved in that exercise. Do no more than 3 repetitions of each
exercise. Do no more than 4 body weight exercises in a single
workout.
Always leave the table feeling like you could eat just a little bit more.
Dark chocolate is totally fine. The less sweet the better.
Avoid lots of sugar, including particularly sweet ones like oranges,
mandarins, and pretty much any tropical fruit. If a fruit's been growing
by the Mediterranean Sea for over a thousand years, chances are it's
lower on sugar (apples, dates, figs, peaches, grapes, apricots).
Side note: Eat your fruit, don't drink it. Blending and juicing
destroys the fiber in the fruit that helps your body process the
natural sugars. Without that fiber, fruit is basically just plain white
sugar. Seriously.
Drinking
Drink a glass of hot water when you wake up to help flush your
system.
Drink little or nothing while you're eating. Try not to drink 30 minutes
before or after a meal.
Drink at least 50 ounces (1.5 liters) of water per day. Spread it out over
the whole day, don't gorge all at once.
When it's hot out, drink more. It shouldn't feel like work to drink 100
ounces a day if it's hot enough.
An Ending
And here we are.
There's no reason to tie this all up in a neat little bow because there is no
ending to this.
What I've shown you is my exercise mantra. I live by all that I've said herein.
Not all of it is right, but I am love with how it all helps me live.
I am in love with how I feel because I have love for my body.
When I wake up in the middle of the night and stumble to the bathroom, I
sometimes glimpse myself in the mirror. Bleary eyed, hair askew, dragging
my feet. I smile. Inside.
Call it arrogance or whatever you like. I smile because I'm so damn happy
with how I look.
I won't always look this way. I might not always be so surly and pleased with
myself. I don't care. I'm happy now.
If I may be so bold, this is what I want for you.
And that is an end of that.