Most people a week before going home for Christmas are thinking about Christmas trees, eating 15lbs of Turkey in one sitting and how to stitch up Uncle Tommy with a whoopee cushion.

I’m usually in this category, but this year found myself in the freezing valleys of South Wales with the UK’s top strength and conditioning coach Phil Richards who has worked with Glenn Ross (the UK’s strongest man), pro-boxer Amir Kahn, numerous top level Rugby teams and a variety of other athletes from endurance runners to swimmers.

He has also interned with doctors and strength experts like Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell so I knew I was in for some AWESOME information and I wasn’t disappointed.

Phil literally blew my mind with what he has learned and studied, but most importantly, applied on a level where rapid results aren’t a nice surprise every now and then but an absolute must if you want to keep your job. One mistake in program design or nutrition protocols and you’ve got some big-ass hairy rugby playing Samoan brute on your back wanting to know why his contract hasn’t been renewed.

The beauty is that Phil is all about performance, yet takes a stand point of building health first and the results speak for themselves. 

Some of what he talks about you may have heard from one of those airy-fairy yoga types. What I now know  is how to apply these principles  in a strength and conditioning setting so that the overall result is a person who is super healthy but also an animal in training!

Unfortunately many people believe you have to be EITHER a tree hugging yogi or an iron-bending strength freak. Life is much more healthy, productive and enjoyable when you learn to merge what are all great principles.

I’m going to be drip feeding this information to you throughout early 2010 and also getting strong results from the new Intense Conditioning guinea pigs for 12 weeks to prove the theories.

You can still be a guinea pig for the completely revamped 12 week nutrition, strength and conditioning program – check out what to do ——-> Intense Conditioning Guinea Pigs (Its free)

In the meantime here is a very brief version of a small part of what Phil taught me (some of which was already fairly certain in my mind) and how you can apply it straight away.

Please post your thoughts and questions in the comment box below!

In no particular order:

1) There is too much focus on carbs, fat and protein in fitness nutrition with little regard for first getting the body into an alkaline state which is able to fight off disease and illness and, from a performance point of view, give you incredible levels of energy. This is like trying to build a house on quick sand!

Nothing works without healthy, hydrated blood so pay careful attention to eradicating where possible, sources of pollutants in your life and those foods which cause an acidic environment. Failure to do this is what has our bodies literally swimming in toxic waste. This acidity is often mistaken for tiredness

Spend as little time as physically possible on your mobile phone.

Remove all mercury fillings from your mouth which, no matter how hard you train and how much organic food you eat, will pollute your body such that the concentration of heavy metals in your saliva is greater than the legla limit for municipal dumping in the UK. Preferably get a dentist to do this….

Do not, under any circumstances other than life or death, drink tap water.

Eat organic food wherever possible in particular meat to avoid all the steroids and hormones injected and the pesticides eaten by the animal.

Start and end the day by alkalizing your body to counter-act some of the unavoidable nasty effects of modern life such as polluted air and halogen-filled shower and swimming pool water.

This can be done by consuming small, inexpensive amounts of sodium bicarbonate, iodine drops and green drinks.

2) Consume 80% raw foods and keep meat consumption to just 10% of your diet.

Before you start hyperventilating as I nearly did at the thought of such low meat consumption, try it and see how much your energy levels and digestion improve.

Unfortunately in trying to ‘eat like our ancestors did’ many people forget that meat would only have been consumed once per day in the evening after a days hunting and that was only on a good day.

Vegetarians and vegans tend to have sky high energy levels for a reason. However, they may be like a kangaroo on speed but are also often very weak and lack testosterone to push hard in strength training sessions, hence a need to keep a degree of organic meat in your diet.

Fill up your calorie levels with healthy fats if you want size and, as I have said for a long time, restrain carbohydrate consumption to after training only when insulin sensitivity is naturally higher.

3) Commerical protein supplements are largely just sugar in a tub

Supplement with highly recommended amino acids and a pure carbohydrate supplement before, during and after training for animal like training sessions. Avoid all the commercially produced protein shakes and make your own in this way.

If you feel a need for extra protein at other times use a good rice protein isolate and pea protein isolate supplement.

Other supplements are best taken transdermally (through the skin) and have fast effects on cellular metabolism – magnesium being a great example.

4) Don’t forget the sun!

The sun gives us life but modern medicine and villainized it with talk of unhealthy sunbeds.

If you live in a sunny place – make sure you get 15-20 minutes of high noon sun every day to keep you in a good mood and to get the most effective source of Vitamin D which is critical for many processes from cancer prevention to strong bones and teeth.

Phil has had great results with pro athletes who have come from sunny climates to the UK’s soccer and rugby leagues and within months been suffering from depression and inuries. A few short sunbed sessions each week of around 5 minutes did wonders for mental and physical performance so don’t underestimate it. Yes, long doses of sun exposure can be harmful but regular doses of UVB rays are positively beneficial even if they come from a sunbed.

5) If you can’t gain – don’t train.

I love this phrase from Phil and it served as a reminder that often we train for the sake of training with no regard for whether we will actually improve strength or performance. Often we are just compounding fatigue for no benefit. Clearly there are times you need to push hard when you don’t want to, but there is a time and place.

On a more detailed level, don’t fill your sessions with 8-10 exercises just because you feel you should – know exactly what you are doing and why rather than fluffing out your program sheet! If you perform 3-4 exercises with intensity you will see gains in strength and lean muscle within days or weeks.

I’ll be proving this with the Intense Conditioning Guinea Pigs over 12 weeks from January to April!

Phil had me Zercher squatting 115kg (failed at 120kg) which wasn’t very nice.

6) If you are looking to improve strength and power you need to invest enough sets in it!

Phil has found that the nervous system only really starts firing after 7-8 sets so you need to be looking at the best part of 10 sets of deadlifts, box squats, hang cleans or any other ‘big bang’ exercise to see your performance increase week in, week out. This does wonders for mental strength believe me.

7) Random acts of violence are good…

You must know exactly what you’re doing and why in training, but don’t forget the mental and physical benefits derived from occassional random act of slef-inflicted brutality – more on this soon…

Conclusion

There is much, much more I need to teach you on this and other training and nutrition topics but hopefully this will serve as little reminders or sparks in your brain going into 2010. We also need to look at why all this ’say no to cardio’ bull needs reviewing.

Stay tuned and pop any comments or questions in the box below!

Don’t forget if you want to be on the new and improved Intense Conditioning 12 week test check out what you need to do – some of the original applicants have let me down so there’s a few spaces left! I know the Guinea Pigs will see amazing results but I need the testimonials!