Mass Production vs. Exodus: How You Can Crush Catabolism, Kickstart Hypertrophy and Trash the H Word: "Hardgainer" Forever (April 1996 IRONMAN)

by Steve Holman

Saving money is a lot like trying to pack on muscle. As soon as the amount starts turning into something you can be proud of, an emergency sucks a lot of it down the tubes. Emergency response is the number-one reason many of us are merely treading water in both the mass and monetary departments. Since this is IRONMAN and not Money magazine, letŐs focus on how you can force your body, rather than your bank account, to successfully deal with emergency responses and generate mass production as opposed to mass exodus. The first step is understanding what happens physiologically in an emergency situation. When your body encounters a severe stress like a heavy workout one of its responses is the production of cortisol, a stress hormone that is connected to everything from ulcers to heart disease. ItŐs part of a free-radical chain, but the worst partÐat least for the bodybuilderÐis that it forces the body to eat muscle tissue. Because of this fact, one of the keys to rapid muscle growth is to limit cortisol production.

According to Bob Fritz, whose article "Phosphatidylserine: Have We Found a Medically Proven Cortisol Antagonist at Last?" appeared in the February '95 IRONMAN, our bodies produce cortisol because of a primitive survival mechanism. In the caveman days, when an emergency arose, like a saber-toothed tiger wandering into Mr. Cro-MagnonŐs living room, his body pumped adrenaline to give him the energy to fight with superhuman strength or run faster than he'd ever run before. This is one of the things that prevented man from becoming easy prey (read animal chow) and ensured his survival. The problem is that this survival mechanism is still with us today, and while it can be beneficial in some emergency situations, it's devastating to the bodybuilder because the resulting cortisol helps provide the body with energy by cannibalizing muscle, yes, the muscle you work so hard to build and preserve. Every time you encounter an intense stress, like a blistering workout or a heated confrontation, muscle can get flushed away like so much useless sludgeÐunless you take action to prevent it. Why doesn't the body use fat or glycogen for energy instead of muscle? It does, but in an emergency situation it also relies heavily on muscle tissue.

Therein lies the most frustrating fact about bodybuilding. In order to stimulate muscle growth, you stress your body with intense training, but this triggers the fight-or-flight response and your body shoots cortisol into your bloodstream, which in turn literally forces your system to eat its own muscle tissue. What a vicious, cruel cycle. It makes muscle mass sound like something only the Wizard of Oz can give you. There are, however, ways to gun down cortisol and accelerate mass production.

Phasing Out Cortisol

Have you ever been forced to skip a few workouts, and then when you hit the gym, say, a week later, you look bigger and fuller and you're just as strong as or stronger than you were before you missed? This is one of the ways your body shows you that interspersing a month of hard training with a week of medium-intensity workouts or, for those who can stand it, four or five days of complete rest is the right strategy for perpetual progress. This no doubt has something to do with allowing your entire system to recover and your cortisol levels to stabilize.

True, it's extremely difficult to back off when the gains are piling up faster than tattoos at a Harley convention. You train hard, make steady progress for five weeks and tell yourself it1s time to take one baby step back after your three big steps forward, but that little voice of greed keeps whispering, ŇKeep going. YouŐre different. You can gain for at least 10 weeks.Ó So you put the pedal to the metal and then, screech!, your gains hit the brakes and you start feeling burned out. Now your body figures out a way to force you to take a layoff, for example, with an injury or a miserable cold. Those are the effects of cortisol overload. If only you'd listened to your common sense instead of greed, but at least you learned your lessonÐor did you? Most bodybuilders fall into the same train-till-you-strain-or-come-up-lame trap again and again. It1s the nature of the get-big beast.

While impatience can be a virtue (such as when you change your routine every four to six weeks, which, by the way, is a great automatic intensity downshift) you must coax your body to stay on the gain plane, not continually hammer it into catabolic submission. You do this by using a phase-training approachÐfour to six weeks of high-intensity training alternated with one week of medium-intensity training or four to seven days of complete rest. This medium-intensity, or downshift, week allows your body to rejuvenate and supercompensate for the high-intensity training and cortisol production you forced it to endure.

Phase training is especially important if you're a thin, high-strung individual, a.k.a. a hardgainer, because your body pumps out even more cortisol than usual during the day as you stress over everything from work to relationships to the big game on Sunday. Cortisol is the hardgainerŐs mortal enemy, so you must do everything possible to avoid its ravenous effects.

The Cortisol/High-Carb Connection

We all know individuals who cope by overeating. Do these people overindulge because they have no other outlet for their aggression, or is it their body trying to attack a biochemical problem like too much cortisol, the result of too much stress?

Research suggests that overeating, especially carbohydrate foods, helps suppress cortisol. This is one reason many bodybuilders make better size gains when they're on a high-carb diet with frequent meals spread throughout the day, the keys being high carbohydrates and frequency. A high-carb diet triggers insulin, and eating frequently squashes the starvation response, both of which keep cortisol under control.

ItŐs interesting to note that your body regards missing a meal as stress and thus produces cortisol as a defense mechanism against starvation. If you don't eat every few hours, your body thinks it may be starving, so it begins to break down muscle for fuel. What this says is, if you're a serious bodybuilder, you don't want to miss meals. Period. And if you crave mega-mass gains, you'll want to make sure these meals have sufficient carbohydrates and protein (the carbs to help suppress cortisol and the protein to keep you in positive nitrogen balance).

If you're eating five to seven meals a day, each with calorie totals made up of 55 percent carbohydrate and 30 percent protein (at least one gram per pound of bodyweight) you're adding one more spoke to the wheel of anabolic acceleration by halting the starvation mechanism and stimulating insulin, both of which help minimize cortisol. Of course, insulin can cause the body to be more receptive to storing bodyfat, which means if your goal is to lose fat and retain or build muscle, you'll want to lower your carbs, eat lower on the glycemic index and perhaps take a cortisol-suppressing supplement to make up for your lower carb intake. [See "Carbs, Cortisol and Catabolism" on this page for more on eating for size vs. eating for fat loss.]

Cortisol Suppressors

While there are drugs that help block this catabolic hormone, like RU486 (yes, the French abortion pill [see Sets & Reps, February '96]) natural over-the-counter products are being introduced that act as cortisol antagonists; for example, Cort-Bloc, offered by Muscle Linc [1-800-667-4626]. This product is newly on the market, but based on preliminary reports, it sounds promising.

The manufacturers of this product say that it suppresses cortisol by about 30 percent. Note that it doesn1t reduce this hormone to extremely low levels, because cortisol does have a purpose, such as minimizing post-traumatic joint inflammation, and you don't want to completely shut down its production in the body. Besides, it's virtually impossible to shut down cortisol production completely. While these new products are somewhat expensive ($89 for a starter kit that includes a 10-day loading cycle and one-month supply or $49 for a 150-gram one-month maintenance bottle) they're worth trying for those who are serious about building muscle. If you want a fat-to-muscle transition and to minimize insulin surges with a lower-carb diet, these products may be a big help in keeping muscle growth coming. If you're a thin, high-strung ectomorph, you should do everything possible (including high carbs and cortisol blockers) to minimize the overproduction of this hormone, which may be the primary reason you consider yourself a hardgainer in the first place. Phase training, a high-carb/multimeal diet and over-the-counter cortisol blockers will give you a big head start when it comes to getting bigger and stronger. Do everything you can to win the battle against cortisol overload. YouŐll accelerate mass production and minimize mass exodus, and you may forget that the word "hardgainer" even exists.

Carbs, Cortisol and Catabolism

One reason high-carb, medium-protein meals, like those suggested in IRONMAN Bulletin #1: 10-Week Size Surge, are ideal for gaining muscle mass quickly is because of their cortisol-suppressing characteristics. High-carb meals, with up to 60 percent of total calories from carbohydrates, tend to force the body to secrete more insulin, which, in turn, shoots down cortisol and helps you get a better anabolic effect from heavy, high-intensity training. Some studies suggest that insulin can also increase fat storage, but this isnŐt a problem for those ectomorphic individuals looking for rapid weight gain. In fact, a little bodyfat helps fill out lanky frames along with pounds of new muscle. If youŐre on the overweight side, however, your carb, protein and fat percentages should be a bit different to prioritize fat burning, with muscle building coming in a close second.

In IRONMAN Bulletin #2: Fat to Muscle, the suggested carb percentage is around 40, and many of the carbohydrate foods listed are low on the glycemic index, which means they cause minimal insulin secretion. You balance this with a little more protein and fat to keep your system burning bodyfat, but keep in mind that you do give up some of the cortisol-suppressing effects of insulin with this strategy. Unfortunately, this is necessary to prime your metabolism to burn fat as fuel. If you use a cortisol blocker, however, you'll continue to suppress cortisol along the lines of a high-carb diet. The moral is to adjust your macronutrient percentages according to your goals. To gain weight rapidly, use a high-carb diet for glycogen replenishment and cortisol suppression; for more of a fat-to-muscle transition, lower your carbs somewhat, shift them to the lower-glycemic-index category, increase your protein and fat to minimize insulin, and, if your budget allows, try a cortisol-suppressing supplement.