WOD

WES Scale

Intensity is a very important part of exercise. Intensity is also very delicate. It will depend on your current physical state, emotional state, and which exercise you are doing. 

But, intensity is very important in order to push yourself he body and nervous system to adapt. If you are not pushing, your body will not make the demanding physiological changes to your body to adapt to the new stress. 

Firstly let me explain that intensity IS NOT volume. It is actually inversely correlated to volume. The he longer a workout the less intense it has to be. You can use a 100m all out sprint vs a PR 5k. Both are hard work, but the effort put in for 60 seconds of work is going to be a much higher output of effort that what is required to maintain an effort for 20+ minutes. 

This is where the WES scale comes in. This will allow you to choose an exercise that allows for maximum intensity. This was developed by my old mentor Julien Pineau of Strongfit. He spent many an hour just thinking about how to explain complex systems in the simplest of terms. 

The WES scale is very simple. 

W - Weight. The heavy the weight, the lower the intensity. If you had to do a thrusters with an empty bar, you would probably stop because of pain before strength runs out. But if you thrusters at 135, your muscles would give up first. 

E- Eccentric. This is the part of the exercise where the muscle lengthens under load. For example, lowering in the squat. This is generally the part where the muscles “loose” it causes the micro trauma that ends up causing the delayed muscles onset soreness as well as the greatest risk of injury. The added benefit of not doing the concentric part is it also leads to more type 2 muscle fiber growth and recruitment

S - Skill. The higher the skill demand the lower the intensity. Think triple unders vs double unders vs singles va penguin jumps. Take away the skill and there is less reason to slow down and stop. 

If you have ever used a light sled to failure you understand the WES scale. It’s a perfect example, almost no weight, no eccentric movements and just keep putting one foot in front of the other until you can’t. This is why I like adding in simple low WES movements into the workouts to allow the intensity sort to be pushed. 

Carnivore Update: I will be brief on this one, I will write up an instagram post with more detail. But it worked amazingly for me. I dropped almost 6% body fat and I am at close to the same body fat when I did my bodybuilding show last year and a little over 5kg more muscle. I stepped on stage at 5.5% and I am comfortably walking around at 7.5% right now. The eating was super easy for me, felt great, training was good, absolutely no complaints. I am going to continue eating like this for the next couple weeks as I am leaving on vacation and I will have limited food selection in Cuba anyway. I am interested to see what another 2.5 weeks and a bunch of sunshine and relaxation how I will look/feel. I will keep everyone updated. My advice, if you are looking to drop some body fat and reduce inflammation, give it a try. It might be hard for some people, but even my wife, who is a major foodie, has jumped on to try it. 

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