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Alright, stop… collaborate and listen,
Coach J’s back with a brand new edition,
My Newsletter… grabs ahold of you tightly,
You’re making those gains every day and every night, G.
-Vanilla Ice (probably)
Happy Friday, Coach J here from Anyman Fitness – and welcome to the latest edition of The N.W.A. Newsletter.
Each Friday’s N.W.A. Newsletter will have 3 parts:
- A Nutritional Tip to help make your diet healthier and easier to stick to.
- A Workout Tip to help make your training sessions more effective and fun.
- An Attitude/Mindset tip to help you strengthen your greatest asset – your mental toughness.
I will also give you my single favorite piece of social media content from AF over the past week and link to it on either Instagram or Twitter.
Without any further ado… let’s get started, shall we?
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N.W.A. Nutrition Tip Of The Week:
One of the most important supplements you can take is creatine monohydrate.
Creatine is one of the most vigorously researched compounds in the world, with countless studies proving its effectiveness over time.
Creatine usage also has a lot of myths which have become attached to it, so let’s dispel some creatine ‘fake news’ to ensure you have the proper information.
Creatine monohydrate is a cellular volumizer and hydrator. When you take creatine, the substance helps fill your cells up with water, giving you a fuller and more muscular aesthetic.
Creatine helps give you a bit more juice in the gym, so to speak. When you have ample creatine reserves in your body, you should be able to do 1-3 more repetitions than you would without it. This makes you stronger and builds more muscle over time.
Creatine works via a ‘saturation point’. It takes a few weeks for your body to ‘soak in’ the creatine. Because of this, you’ll see creatine companies suggesting you ‘load’ the creatine and take huge doses from the start. This is unnecessary and can cause stomach issues if you’re not careful.
Dosing creatine monohydrate is simple – take 5 grams per day at the time of your choosing.
Creatine is odorless and tasteless. However, it can be a bit grainy, so if the texture bothers you, consider mixing your creatine into a protein shake.
A few other tidbits about creatine:
✔️Creatine is NOT a steroid – it’s a compound that occurs naturally in red meat (if you’ve eaten a burger, you’ve ingested creatine)
✔️You do NOT have to ‘cycle’ creatine – you take it daily and there is no need to take breaks
✔️Drink ample water and stay hydrated when using creatine – some may feel slight dehydration when you first start taking it
✔️Some people are ‘non-responders’ (~10% of the population) – pay close attention and you can decide for yourself if it’s working or not
✔️Recent studies show there may be cognitive benefits to taking creatine as well
All in all, there aren’t many supplements on the same tier as creatine monohydrate.
It’s cheap, easy to dose, and it works.
That’s good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you, too.
N.W.A. Training Tip Of The Week:
I train at a commercial gym, and I often see people showing poor (and sometimes even dangerous) form while lifting.
The ego is a delicate thing, especially for us men. We don’t want to admit when we’re weak or unskilled at something, and lifting light weights at the gym can be somewhat embarrassing.
That being said, if I see one more ‘curl’ that looks more like a full-body hoist, I may just lose my mind…
If you are lifting weights because you want to enter a powerlifting competition, your goal is to move as much weight as humanly possible.
But if that’s not the case, your objective is different: You want to use the weight as a ‘tool’ to build your body and sculpt your muscle.
Your muscles don’t know how much weight you lifted. They only know how close you pushed them to failure, whether you did 3 reps, 10 reps, or 20 reps. As long as you’re using progressive overload, you’ll build muscle properly over time.
Plus, volume is a key factor in muscle growth, and with lighter weights and more reps, your volume should increase substantially over the ultra low rep ranges (< 5 reps per set).
In order to make your sessions as effective as possible, show perfect form and use the fullest range of motion you can.
If this means you need to lower the weight to lift it properly, then so be it.
Before you begin your lift, ask yourself, “What muscle am I going to be working?” and then put all of your focus on contracting those muscle strands intensely throughout each repetition.
Squeeze hard at each contraction peak for good measure.
And pay close attention to your body as you’re lifting.
Arnold called this the ‘mind-muscle connection’, and it’s arguably the most important ‘soft skill’ you can have when training.
Always pretend like your body is a ‘piston’ and show smooth, fluid repetitions and watch your results take off accordingly.
N.W.A. Attitude/Mindset Tip Of The Week:
Dieting can be a chore.
But the most important aspect of dieting is your mental approach.
If you spend all day long thinking about everything you ‘can’t have’, odds are you won’t make it for very long until you cave and break your diet.
Instead of constantly thinking about everything you can’t have, begin to focus on all of the tasty foods you *can* eat.
After all, you’re the one who’s making the conscious decision to diet for fat loss.
You are making a choice and you’re choosing the ‘Future You’ over the ‘In The Moment You’. It’s a sign of maturity to delay gratification, and you’re flexing your discipline muscle every day.
Perhaps you’ll have to make a few sacrifices, but sacrifices are always a requirement to do anything worthwhile.
Dieting isn’t something to ‘endure’.
If you think about your diet in that way, you’re putting yourself into a torturous state of mind right out of the gate.
Instead, re-frame any negative thoughts into positive thoughts.
Instead of saying:
“I can’t have fettucini alfredo because I’m on a diet”…
… you can say “I’m choosing a healthier option for dinner than a cream-based Italian dish.”
Or instead of saying:
“I can’t have cake or Coach J will be mad at me”…
… you can say “I’m going to pass on the cake today, Coach J will be so proud of my decision!”
There’s always a silver lining to every ‘negative’ thought.
It’s your responsibility to find each silver lining and keep a positive frame of mind.
One Favorite Social Media Post Of The Week:
‘Men only want 1 thing and it’s disgusting’
I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Anyman Fitness N.W.A. Newsletter.
I’ll be back next week.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
Eazy-Coach-J
Anyman Fitness
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My Dad used to tell me ‘rapping isn’t a skill’. But the funny thing is, when I would say, “Okay, pops, spit a verse”, he could never come up with one… 🙂
If you’re in the same boat, and you don’t think rappers are skilled, have a short watch of this breakdown of the rhyming patterns of Eminem.
And then try to say ‘rapping isn’t a skill’ again with a straight face…