Beer N Biceps Podcast

Our last Beer N Biceps episode of the year is a xmas special where we drink Elf Juice by Bad Company and talk about the ways in which you can maintain your weight, prevent weight gain, or even lose weight over the Christmas holiday. This is not something that you need to do, and Todd and I are quite honest about why we’re not going to be following the rules too strictly ourselves. But if you decide that this is the year when you don’t gain weight over the holidays, then this podcast can really help you.

This episode is quite a bit shorter than our usual ones, at a brisk 30 minutes. This was for 2 reasons: 1) We had a shorter message to share this episode, and 2) We have decided to try and keep our podcasts a little bit shorter in the future. An hour is a lot of time to perform and to ask our listeners to pay attention for that long is tough! So we have used this xmas special to try out the shorter format. Let us know whether you prefer it this way, or you enjoyed the longer episodes more.

We were drinking Elf Juice during this podcast, a beer from the Bad Company Brewery which is situated in North Yorkshire. While looking up this particular brewery (that has been operating for just 3 years) we found that Yorkshire really does seem to be becoming a hotbed for newish quality beers. You’ve got Saltaire Brewery which opened near Bradford in 2005, Black Sheep near Harrogate which was opened in 1992, York Brewery (1996), and Vocation Brewery in Hebdon Bridge, which we reviewed in episode six.

While Elf Juice was surprisingly nice, it doesn’t have too much competition in our opinion. Xmas special beers tend to be very overpowering, too high in alcohol, and basically a bit gimmicky (a bit like xmas special podcasts I guess). Elf Juice is guilty of all of these issues, but it seems to work in spite of this. It’s too strong tasting, filled with flavours that you’d find in mulled wine, and it’s a very dark looking beer. But we still enjoyed it a lot.

Well that’s about all we are going to talk about in this episode. Have a great Christmas, have a decent New Year, and we’ll see you in 2018 with a brand new training program, a new-look podcast, and a whole host of awesome things planned.

This episode is the last of series one, when we started out there was no plan to split the episodes up into short series (which is why series one ended up with 18 episodes). Looking back on what we have achieved so far is the focus of this episode. We’ll be looking at our favourite beers over the course of the series, and what we’ll be offering in series 2.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was meeting Todd in the Duck in the Pond pub in Harrow. It’s a pretty decent pub owned by a company called Ember Inns, their beer selection is fairly up and down. Sometimes they’ll have some amazing beers on tap, while other times there’s almost nothing. We hadn’t seen each other in around 2-3 months, which was quite unusual for us. When we were in our early 20s we’d usually see each other about 6-8 times per month. But if growing old has taught me one thing, it’s that socialising is a difficult thing to do.

Friends move away, your social circle becomes fractured, and you lose touch with people. There are falling outs, and break ups that can split a group, there are an endless number of things that can affect how often you see people. As relationships grow, family becomes more of a commitment. You aren’t living with your parents any more, so now you spend weekends going to visit them. Then your partner also wants to visit their parents, suddenly 15-20 of your precious 52 weekends per year are taken up.

But there’s one thing that you can say about Todd, that guy never turns down a beer if he can help it! We sat down and went through their entire beer collection in methodical fashion. At one point the bar staff themselves congratulated us on our collection of bottles and glasses. Well at least I think they were congratulating us, they definitely said “That’s a lot of bottles you’ve got their guys, and there’s only two of you?”. This sounds like a compliment to me.

While we drank we set the world to rights, well the sporting world anyway. But we also talked about beer, we made each other laugh, and we reminisced about the time Todd got in crazy shape for a personal training competition that I had entered. We also got exceedingly drunk. As we were heading off, Todd to the loving embrace of his family, me to a girlfriend who was just SUPER happy that I was 2 hours later than I had said I would be, I asked Todd something that I had asked only one person before. Whether he’d like to do a podcast with me.

I didn’t even mention the subject that I had in mind, because I was scared of rejection. But he seemed pretty excited. I casually mentioned beer, which he readily agreed with, and then I mentioned doing it on fitness. I held my breath (okay I probably didn’t but allow me some artistic licence here) and he said the following, incredible words “Yeah sure, whatever you want to do it on mate sounds good to me”. One day I want those words engraved on a marble statue of Todd.

Usually, when I have a really good idea it falls flat almost immediately. I’ve started 3 bootcamps in my life, all of them have fallen apart in fairly spectacular fashion. The first was in Regents Park, me and a couple personal trainers decided that it would be a great way to make some extra cash. I booked a spot in the park, printed t-shirts, created flyers, and even got some media interest (two journalists and a photographer came for a photoshoot and interview).

I offered the class for free to around 20 people, and turned up to session one with one of my PT buddies (the other had already quit) at 6:30am. Nobody showed up. We waited 20 minutes, then went to a Walkabout pub in Shepherds Bush to watch some Rugby League and have a beer (yes the pub was open at 8am and was filled with Aussies drinking).

I have failed in projects like this more often than I care to say, and a lot of the time it has been due to a burst of enthusiasm on my part, and absolutely no enthusiasm on anyone else’s. So I was surprised (and insanely pleased) when Todd and I met up just 2 days later and recorded our first episode.

I’d love to say that the episode was a home run, but it was actually pretty bad. Todd and I are prone to going off on large tangents but this episode took the piss! We covered sexism in sport, Todd’s trip to a Spanish restaurant, and about 20 other completely random subjects. The episode clocked in at 90 minutes, and we both agreed that a do-over was required.

When we finally did complete episode one we were really pleased with how it came out. All I had to do now was publish it …. This was the most frustrating week of my life. To say that apple have made publishing podcasts a difficult endeavour would be an understatement. I would rather dip my balls in acid than go through the process of starting a podcast again.

Nothing was simple, small issues would cause day long delays, and nowhere was there any information on 1) why the problem had occurred or 2) how to fix it.

Luckily, I managed to get some idea of the problem from a few YouTube videos, a couple of blog posts, and a podcasting forum. To this day I have no idea how my podcast works, and if anything were to go wrong I would immediately give up and never look back. But episode 1 was finally uploaded, and is our most successful episode so far (with 200 listeners to date).

After our first couple of episodes we really got into the swing of things. Todd would come round to my flat or I would go to his. I would plan out the fitness side of things, while Todd researched the beer. One or the other of us would bring the beers, usually me because I am overly-excited, and we would open it up and start talking. We have no fancy equipment, just an iPhone and a notebook. This has served us well, except for episode 16 where we pushed our luck and attempted a podcast in a crowded bar. The acoustics were not favourable and as a result it’s very hard to hear anyone. This is a shame because we had our first guest speaker (Leandros) who was incredibly knowledgeable and funny.

We’ve had a number of mishaps, I got a phone call 30 minutes into a podcast (which was recording on the phone that rang) meaning that we had to start all over again. We’ve had people walking in talking loudly during an episode, and Lucy knocking on the door right at the end of a recording to tell us to “keep it down!”. I’d love to say that I admonished her afterwards, but the truth is that I am terrified of her.

Excuse this title, but I want to explain. Now that we have hit 18 episodes we want to do more with this podcast. Meaning that we need to look back on what it was that we set out to do with it. We wanted to have a laugh, check. We wanted to discover amazing beer and share our knowledge, check. We wanted to champion unfashionable beers that are getting overlooked due to a crowded market of craft beers, check. We wanted to share fitness and nutrition knowledge that might help our listeners to improve their training and diet, check. We wanted to lose lots of weight and build muscle ourselves …. erm ….

There have been many successes, but there are still some goals that we didn’t hit. We didn’t really manage to keep our video series up nor did we manage to do any individual short podcasts (something I definitely want to do in the future). We also NEED to start being better at training and dieting correctly. Right now, Todd is running weekly while I am back in the gym following the same program I started with. Looking back on what we wanted to achieve and what we have managed to achieve leaves us very happy though. We can’t believe how many people have listened to us talking rubbish for 18 hours (at around 1 hour per episode).

So series one is now complete and we have a number of people that we would like to thank. Firstly our partners, Lucy has put up with about 10 hours worth of Todd and me using up the living room and getting pissed. Lottie was our guest speaker for this episode and was absolutely fantastic. Todd’s parents have put up with us using their garden/office to get drunk, and Todd’s dad Paul even managed to guest speak in episode 12 when we drank Bacchus and discussed the importance of sleep.

Todd’s brothers have both been helpful in giving us advice (particularly when it came to splitting it up into series), and hopefully they’ll join us for an episode later. My sister and her fiance have given us loads of useful questions and support. Tring Brewery were amazing and gave us free beer to review on our podcast, Beer Asylum in Pinner allowed us to hold a podcast in their shop and provided us with Leandros. Also, finally we’d like to thank you guys. All 1,474 unique listens to this podcast have been incredible. We’ve had listeners from Japan, America, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, Jamaica, and Australia.

Thanks to everyone who has shared our podcast, has supported it, and has told friends and family about it. You guys absolutely rock, and the support has been so much more than Todd and I expected when we drunkenly decided to start a podcast last Summer.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the episode, just give it a listen! But I will discuss the beer. It came from a company called Muscle Foods, and I use them sporadically to buy meat from. They are always doing insane deals and I’ll fill my freezers with their products as often as I can. A while back they brought out protein beer. At first I thought it was a joke, but it’s completely real. Each bottle contains 21g of protein, which is more than some protein shakes!

If this beer could taste nice, I thought to myself, then it could revolutionise my diet. I could come back from a hard workout, crack open a protein beer, and relax. A session could lead to me hitting 210g of protein! A lot was riding on this beer tasting nice ….

It was the worst beer I have ever had in my life, the initial smell was actually all right. It smelt sweet and hoppy. But the taste was horrific. Way too sweet, and with a horrible chemical aftertaste. This was a beer that did not get better the more you drank it. Each sip was worse than the last. In a panic, I poured some prosecco into it, and this massively improved the taste. The prosecco was dry and fizzy, this complimented the sweet taste and removed the aftertaste completely. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t an amazing drink, but it was 1000x better than the beer alone. I predict that barbell brew would make an okay shandy, but the prosecco/beer cocktail is probably as good as it will get.

Avoid unless you are desperate for protein and alcohol! Looking back on everything, this beer was the worst we tried by a country mile.

After last episode’s adventures in Beer Asylum we decided to record this week’s episode in the relative quietness of my flat (which worked for me as I’m incredibly lazy). We will probably record another episode at that fantastic shop in the future, but at a quieter time. This week we talked about quick fix diet tricks that you can do to lose weight, we looked at West Sixth Brewing (a Kentucky brewery), and we rank our favourite IPAs from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.

What makes quick fix diet tricks so satisfying? Their effectiveness or their ease? Probably a combination of both, this is not something exclusive to diet either, people love hacks, tricks, and shortcuts, that can instantly make a difficult task easier. It is important that I make this clear first, quick fix diet tricks are only effective when you have the big building blocks of diet and exercise in check. These quick fix diet tricks can help you to hit your targets a little easier, but they won’t work alone. But now that we’ve got that out of the way we can get started. So here we go:

This week we actually looked at three different beers from a Kentucky brewery called West Sixth Brewing  which was founded in 2012. We were experiencing these beers for the first time, and had bought them from a beer delivery service called Beer52. The three beers that we tried were: an IPA, a porter, and a wheat beer.

The porter is called “Pay it Forward Cocoa Porter” and while I enjoyed it immensely, Todd was not a fan. Not because it was a bad porter, but because he dislikes porters in general. I know what he means, they are a very unpopular beer, and a surprising choice for a Kentucky based brewery. But this porter tasted excellent and is well worth a look, strong cocoa flavours along with the standard coffee taste, not particularly thick or thin, and while I wouldn’t order 2 in a row, I’d be pleased with a pint of this.

The IPA was decent, but a bit strong (7%) and rather bitter tasting. It reminded us both of an English Pale Ale rather than the lighter American hops that make American IPAs so delicious. This was not a bad IPA but it certainly wasn’t our favourite.

The final beer (which we actually drank first) was the Lemongrass American Wheat. Which was nothing like any wheat beer we’d ever had before! A look at the website has shown that it is a “non-traditional” wheat beer, and I would describe it best as a lager-like beer that has a strong lemongrass taste. It was nice, but when you buy a wheat beer you expect a wheat beer! So I was a little disappointed by that.

Of the three, the beer that surprised me the most (in a good way) was the Porter, the Wheat beer was nice but not as good as the German or Japanese wheat beers we’ve had in the past (or even an American wheat beer like Blue Moon). The IPA was a little disappointing, but still a perfectly decent beer. I enjoyed West Sixth Brewings offerings and hope to see some more of them in the future.

Obviously this list is subjective, and maybe you’ve got your own favourites but Todd and I were looking for our favourite IPA from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Ireland proved tricky as we literally could only find one IPA from the Emerald Isle. But the other three countries had strong contenders. Scotland was a no-brainer. Brewdog is probably the most well known craft beer company in Europe, and is largely responsible for the beer revolution that is sweeping the country. Their Punk IPA is stunning, and probably their most popular beer.

England has hundreds of IPAs from both large and small breweries, and we could have easily had a 40 minute podcast discussion on which is the best. But I jumped in straight away, yelled Citra an American Style IPA from Oakham brewery in Peterborough. It’s one of my favourite beers of all time, and sometimes you just have to overrule your mate. By the way, another great IPA from Oakham is called Scarlet Macaw and should definitely be on your list of beers to try.

Wales was easy. Tiny Rebel Brewery is amazing, and their CLWB Tropicana IPA (yeah I did spell that correctly) is possibly the best IPA I’ve ever had. If you like your IPAs light and fruity then this is the beer for you. It does what Sierra Nevada tried to do with their tropical IPA, only much better (and I liked the Sierra Nevada version). Definitely worth buying if you can find it.

Ireland was a challenge, we’d only had one IPA from them before and thought that it was only okay. It was called Chieftan and I’ve had it twice in my life. Once at O’Neill’s Irish Bar in Harrow, and once at Waxy O’Connor’s in Central London. It’s good but not great. An IPA from Cork, Ireland. You’ll like it, but it won’t stop you in your tracks like the previous beers did. Perhaps Ireland has better IPAs out there, in which case, please mention them in the comments!

NB: Leandros (our guest from last week’s episode) mentioned a Northern Irish IPA called Boundary which he said was nice, neither myself or Todd have tried it so I can’t say for sure whether it’s good or not, but 1) Leandros knows a hell of a lot about beer, and 2) It completes the Home nations so it’s being added.

This week was a bit experimental, we attempted to record our podcast episode in a beer shop/bar called Beer Asylum in Pinner. While the bar itself was incredible, we made the (naive) decision to record it at 7:30pm on a Friday night. Consequently the bar was heaving, considering we were recording off my iPhone we were reduced to shouting into it! But luckily we’re still able to be heard, and you can listen to us discuss the question “is the media failing fitness?”.

Photo from Beer Asylum website

I discovered this place on a Thursday morning a couple weeks ago, I had a meeting in the bank booked for 11am. Lucy (my ever patient partner) had agreed that we should check it out when it opened. I pointed out that it didn’t open until 12pm and there’s no chance that we’d be that long in the bank … At 12:15 we exited Halifax and walked in.

It was stunning. Everything you could want in a shop. There were 5 beers on draught, hundreds of German, Belgian, American, and English beers, and an incredibly knowledgeable owner called Jason who talked to me for a good 30 minutes about beer. I arranged with Jason for myself and Todd to come round and record a podcast episode here.

Jason was even kind enough to throw one of his staff members under the bus by subjecting him to an hour of our podcast. I left that shop with 100 bottle caps (my crazy girlfriend collects them), and 5 beers. The Sweet Stout from Japanese Brewery Hitachino Nest was particularly good.

Yes that’s right we had a guest this week, Leandros was an incredibly interesting and entertaining guest, who knows his beer (though both Todd and I blame him for our subsequent hangovers the next day). We’ll definitely try and get him on another episode, hopefully at a quieter time!

If you’re in London then please give this place a visit, it is a truly unique, friendly, and entertaining place to while away a few hours. Check out their website here

Not a week goes by where I don’t sit at my desk, dumbfounded by a ridiculous headline from the media. In the episode we covered quite a few of my favourites, including: “EATING STEAK CAN INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF DYING FROM NINE MAJOR DISEASES” from the Daily Mail. The titles are sensationalist, inaccurate, exaggerated, and too focused on the short term (without looking at the bigger picture).

Perhaps you are thinking that bad articles are to be expected from the Daily Mail, but you wouldn’t see such shoddy journalism from the Guardian. Well, in my opinion they are worse. I am aware that they have many different writers, and that not everyone is going to have the same opinion … but let’s compare two headlines from the same newspaper.

“‘IT’S INTOXICATING – I BECAME OBSESSED’: HAS FITNESS GONE TOO FAR?”

“EXTREME FITNESS: ARE YOU TOUGH ENOUGH?”

So which is it Guardian, are you going to rail against the machismo culture in the gyms? Or are you going to encourage it? Of course, the first title is ridiculous. While there are definitely some people who have got carried away, there is no way that fitness has negatively affected the lives of more than 1% of the population.

It’s like worrying that we’re reading too much, or having too many holidays. Fitness has 1000x more positives than it has negatives, and the problem is that too many people are not being encouraged to pursue it.

In the podcast I had a drunken pop at Joe Wicks, and now in my sober state I regret that. He seems like a really decent bloke, and he’s worked damn hard to get where he has. But here is a serious question, why is Joe Wicks the face of UK fitness? Is it for his knowledge? No, because both his fitness and dietary advice are sub-par. It’s because he’s bubbly, energetic, handsome, and he knows how to market himself and his product. Before him Jaime Oliver was the face of British nutrition, and Davina McCall was the face of fitness. What is happening in this industry?

Can you imagine the face of British physics being Charlotte off Geordie Shore? Or the face of British chemistry being Bez from the Happy Mondays? It wouldn’t happen. But sports science is still seen as PE by most people in the general public, and personal training is still seen as knowing how to perform exercises really well, or knowing how to cook a delicious lasagna.

That’s why Jaime Oliver is talking about a subject he has no education in, that’s why Joe Wicks is promoting a form of exercise that is not suitable for the majority of his followers, and it’s why Instagram models are selling training programs based on how nice they look in their underwear, rather than how respected they are in this industry. I blame the media for this, while also acknowledging that the media does a lot of good, and by writing this blog I am contributing to that very industry that I scorn … Damn!

So IS the media failing fitness? Yes, but it is also fitness’ only saviour

In July 2015 I was standing opposite a statue of a pissing child in the centre of Brussels. My girlfriend was standing next to me as I tried to take a quick photo of this most famous of urinating statues.

Opposite the statue was  the quintessential Belgian bar. It was called Manneken Pis Cafe. I walked in and ordered one of the first beers that I saw on a menu (it had about 50 beers on it). We sat outside and I fell in love.

This beer was incredible, the glass really caught my eye, as did the skittle shaped bottle. I sat there with Lucy and watched an endless stream of tourists walk past, take a photo of a pissing statue, and walk on. This is one of my favourite memories, and the moment that I saw a couple bottles in Beer Asylum I knew that I had to have this beer for our podcast.

Orval beer was first created in 1931 by the monks who live at the Abbey, but beer has been brewed in this spot since 1628. The monks only brew this one beer, and their brewery is only open to the public twice a year. The famous beer writer Michael Jackson was a fan of this beer, describing it as a classic. I loved it in Brussels and I loved it during the podcast, possibly my favourite Belgian Beer.

This week we are discussing the famous German Beer festival known as Oktoberfest, we drink Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier, and we discuss how to fix the UK. No we haven’t gone all political, we’re just looking at what we would do if we were in power to combat the UK’s serious obesity crisis. The discussion was a lot of fun, and hopefully we raised some interesting points.

In September, my dad and I finally completed the trip we had been talking about for years. We went to Munich for Oktoberfest. Despite having talked about wanting to do it for a long time, we didn’t really know too much about it. I’d been to Germany in 2016 for the Christmas Market in Cologne, and had been struck by how much I loved German culture. It really is similar to England, they work hard, they eat a lot of meat, and they drink a lot of beer. What’s not to love? My trip was soured slightly, by the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas Market a day after I had returned. To be honest, I was a little worried travelling to Munich as I imagined Oktoberfest to be a high level target. Luckily it was perfectly safe.

The first thing that you notice when you enter the fairground (yeah Oktoberfest is a giant carnival with beer tents) is the organisation. There were loads of security measures but they were 1) sensible (no full body scanners) and 2) efficient. You were basically through security in 30 seconds and as such the crowds travelled through quite fast. The second thing that struck me was that entrance to Oktoberfest was completely free. In the UK this event would probably cost £20 entry. But you could walk in to the festival, enter as many beer tents, and even sit down (if you were lucky enough to find a seat) without paying a penny (or cent).

Another thing that really surprised me was the seriousness over Lederhosen. I always assumed that they were worn by tourists and people who wore them ironically. But actually the outfits were really impressive, and were just worn like you’d wear a suit to the wedding. I actually felt a little self-conscious for not wearing them! During the day the place was quite busy, but at night it really was a different story. My dad and I had got a seat when we had arrived at 12pm on day 1, but on day 2 we arrived at 4pm and the place was packed. The atmosphere was electric, serving men and women would wade through crowds of drinkers carrying massive boards over their heads, women would walk to tables carrying 6-10 steins at a time, and an Oompah band played music at deafening volumes. It was an incredible experience.

Oktoberfest started as a celebration of the marriage of King Ludwig I in 1810, it has been situated at the same fairground ever since. By 1819 it was an annual event, and the carnival elements were now part of it. Not until 1892 were the traditional glass steins used to drink beer from though, and by the 100th anniversary in 1910, the festival was all about the beer. Over the years, Oktoberfest has had to be cancelled for numerous reasons (mostly war). In 1811 Bavaria was fighting in the Napoleonic wars (on both sides at different points in time), the festival was interrupted again during the Franco-Prussian war, and Austro-Prussian war, and due to several Cholera outbreaks. During the World Wars the festival was also cancelled.

Since 2005 the festival has attempted to go back to its roots, with music being quietened before 6pm, I definitely noticed the difference between the day and the evening, and enjoyed both times for different reasons. Today it is one of the biggest events in Europe and absolutely needs to be on the list of every beer lover.

This guide is based on my own experiences, and is therefore the opinions of a rank amateur! Therefore please use this opportunity to find a better guide …. okay I guess you couldn’t be bothered to do that? Excellent.

Before we go into how to fix the UK we’ll take a brief look at our beer of the ween. As this is an Oktoberfest themed podcast/blog, we had to drink an Oktoberfest beer. We chose the Paulaner Munchen Oktoberfest bier as 1) It was the first tent that I visited in Munich, and 2) It was the only beer left after Todd and I had drunk the rest.

There’s not much to say about this beer that wasn’t covered in the podcast, but suffice it to say I loved it. I pretty much love all German beer though, and could go on forever about the wheat beers, lagers, and dark lagers that I have enjoyed while either podcasting or when in Munich. The beer is 6%, sweet, strong, and refreshing. The only issue that I found was that it was over too fast, but that’s because I’ve grown accustomed to litre servings!

The UK is currently at a low point fitness-wise, we are more obese, less fit, and physically weaker than we have been at any point in history. Well that’s what the papers say. So Todd and I decided that we would look at how to fix the UK from a fitness and nutrition stand point. We discussed making food technology compulsory for all high school students. Most of our nation’s issues stem from people not knowing how to cook quick, easy, low calorie meals. But food technology was always seen as a “girl’s” subject when I was at school (which is exactly why I signed up). This attitude needs to stop as its holding people back.

We avoided making PE compulsory as too many people hated it, but perhaps finding a non-competitive version of fitness would help? A lot of people were put off at school as they didn’t enjoy sport, or competing. Other things we looked at were automatic calorie totals on fast food orders (so you know exactly what you’re ordering), chefs who teach basic cooking (rather than the unrealistic cooking shows we all love), and better nutritional targets.

In other words, stop telling people they need to drink 8 glasses of water a day when it is unnecessary. Stop telling people they need to eat 7-12 fruit and veg portions per day, when most people struggle to eat 2. After looking at how to fix the UK the one thing that I feel we both realised was that being a politician would be an absolute nightmare! Are we the right people to ask about how to fix the UK? Probably not, but we can’t be doing worse than the current experts.

Todd and I have been a little slow in bringing out new episodes recently, and I hope you can forgive us. In the last three weeks we’ve had Todd going on holiday to France, me going to Germany, my mum’s 60th birthday, my 30th birthday, and we’ve both moved (or are in the process of moving) flat. Trying to fit in podcasts to that insane schedule has been challenging. But we’re back this week with an episode on creating the perfect training program.

I’ve talked before about the importance of not focusing on perfection, and instead focusing on getting the work done. But it should also be said that I have created 5,000+ training session plans in my life (complete estimate) and have gotten rather good at it. No two people are exactly alike, and as such no one training program can suit everyone. So this training program is going to be aimed at my most common client: Male, looking to build some muscle and lose weight who has been training for a few months but isn’t getting anywhere.

To start off with, we’re going to add in some of the basic lifts: Deadlifts, Barbell Squats, Bench Press, Lat Pulldown, Bent Over Row, Romanian Deadlift, Push Press, and Lunges. These are the big exercise building blocks that you create your program around. Next you would add smaller exercises, isolation work that targets single muscle groups. These would include: Bicep curls, tricep extensions, hamstring curls, leg extensions, rear delt flyes, face pulls, and abdominal crunches.

As we are aiming to lose weight and build muscle (something borderline impossible for experienced lifters) we are going to use a slightly higher rep range than you would for a strength training program. The only exception to this will be the deadlifts, as this exercise only suits low reps. We will split the training sessions into an upper/lower split, which works well if you train 4 times per week. If you only train 1-3 times per week, then a full body program works best.

Rest periods should be around 60-90 seconds per set, and 3 minutes for the deadlifts. But you should definitely listen to your body at first. If you aren’t particularly fit then you will need a little more recovery time. Make sure that you are properly hydrated throughout, and that you have an emergency banana/isotonic drink (in case of emergencies). Anyway, the session looks like this:

So there you go, my version of a perfect training program. If you follow this exactly you should get some seriously good results. Of course, as always if you have any questions please contact me and I can help you sort it out.

This week’s beer was a special Oktoberfest beer from Spaten. It is specially brewed in Spring to be ready for the Oktoberfest in September/October (which I attended this year). The beer is really decent, and is quite strong (5.9%). The bottled beer tends to taste quite a bit stronger than the draught beer, but both are excellent. We will be going a lot more in depth on Oktoberfest in our next podcast. We also discussed the various differences between bottled, canned, and draught beers, and some examples of beers that we preferred in each form.

Hello again, it’s time for another beer n biceps podcast episode. This time we are taking a look back on what we have achieved, and looking forward to the future of our podcast. Apologies for the delay between episodes. We were interrupted by Todd going on holiday to France, then work/flat search scheduling conflicts, and finally me travelling up to my parents’. As I am off to Munich for Oktoberfest I can see potential for another slight delay, but hopefully after that we will be back on schedule. I am uploading/writing this now as fast as I can in the brief period of time I have available before I head off again.

Todd is very soon going to have fully moved to Watford, and if all goes to plan I will have stalked/followed him to a flat in Bushey that I am currently in the process of moving in to (after enough drama from robbing landlords to fill a Hollyoaks Omnibus). So we are not realistically going to be able to exercise together in the gym as often as we would have hoped. In fact this is not too much of an issue because we have been lazy buggers over the last 6 weeks. Something we need to address.

But that is not going to be a problem. I am an experienced online coach and therefore have a plan to set. I will create a training program that he can follow, check in with him weekly, schedule sessions, sort out his diet, and allow you to see what we are achieving. Should be fun.

From a business point of view, we will carry on as normal. While we will both be out of Harrow, we should still be pretty close to each other and podcasting will hopefully be unaffected. But we will be looking to get someone to join our team within the next month or so. This is to help us build on our listener base, and take advantage of our terrible social media team (me). We will also be resetting goals, and looking back on what has worked, and what has not worked. This is something that anyone who uses goal setting needs to do occasionally.

In this podcast we drank two different beers from the Sierra Nevada brewery, we tried a Tropical Torpedo, and Hop Hunter IPA. They were both fantastic, though as we mentioned in the podcast it was difficult to drink them together as the Hop Hunter IPA tended to overpower the Tropical Torpedo. In the future it would make sense to separate these two. But they really were excellent. As I told Todd, I first tried Sierra Nevada around the age of 16-19 and was initially not a fan. But that was during a time when I liked Ales and Lagers. More recently I had their most common drink, the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and I loved it. If you enjoy IPAs then Sierra Nevada is a great shout. You can check out their website here.

This list we created is a bit of a funny one, in fact you could say that about most of our beer lists. We created a list of beers that we had fond memories of from holiday. Sounds good so far, but as we did this list we realised that actually the beers were nearly all terrible! This is fine with us, many beer memories are based on nostalgia, the setting, the people you were with, and what you were doing. For example my favourite beer memory from visiting Cardiff in 2013 was drinking Guinness in an Australian Themed bar. None of that makes sense, but it was still an excellent memory. So here is our list (listen to the podcast for the full explanation).

M = Matt, T = Todd, M&T = Matt & Todd

It’s difficult to justify any of these beers, except Keo which is a perfectly acceptable beer. But we had great memories associated with them, and would love to hear your favourite holiday beers (no matter how terrible). Well that’s enough for this week, apologies for the shortened blog post, but I was in a massive hurry! We are hoping to knock out another blog post on Friday, which means that next episode should be ready by Sunday/Monday. But planning for the future is clearly a struggle!

This was a momentous week for Beer N Biceps, our humble little podcast received its 1,000th download (we’re currently at 1,031) and we have had over 700 unique listeners. These numbers are NOT that impressive, but considering the completely amateurish approach we have demonstrated, and our very low goals, we are both extremely happy. Thanks to everyone who has listened. This week we discuss the benefits of sleep, review a Cherry beer by Bacchus, and talk about our top 5 most overrated beers.

You’re probably aware of some of the many benefits of sleep, particularly if you only managed to sleep a few hours last night. If that happened then you have probably been feeling grumpy, tired, low energy, and hungry. What’s that? You weren’t aware that a lack of sleep could increase hunger? Well it can.

After a bad night’s sleep your body tends to increase a hormone called Ghrelin which is responsible for stimulating appetite. This increase can lead to you feeling more hungry than usual, and feeling hungry more often than usual.

Your body also reduces the amount of Leptin that you produce, this is a hormone that is responsible for satiety (just like Peptide YY which we talked about in our decaffeinated coffee article). Lowered Leptin can result in you requiring more food to feel full. Which obviously will lead to overeating (unless you are very careful). This theory was confirmed in a study by Taheri et al in 2004 [1].

Another study, by Hanlon et al in 2016 found that a lack of sleep can produce a similar affect on diet as smoking canabis [2]. It found that after a few nights of severely restricted sleep, participants tended to reach for snacks that had twice as many calories as they did when fully rested. They also looked for foods that were higher in fat and in carbohydrates (the bodies preferred fuel source). It’s not just that the symptoms of lack of sleep and smoking weed have the same effects, they actually activate the same receptors as marijuana which leads to “hedonic eating”.

So if a bad night’s sleep can lead to overeating, then it would be fair to say that one of the benefits of sleep would be appetite regulation. When you sleep well you are less likely to eat junk food, or overeat during your main meals.

Sleeping badly makes you cranky, that’s not just an opinion – it’s a scientific fact. A study by Mah et al (2007) on Collegiate athletes found that the more sleep you have the better your mood is [3]. On a similar subject, good sleep can also improve cognitive function (how well you think). This means that you can make decisions quicker and more decisively, your short and long term memory will be better, and your puzzle solving abilities will be greatly enhanced. This can help you at school/uni, at work, or in the gym. It can also obviously have massive effects on the sports field, which is why the big Premiership teams have all installed state of the art sleep pods.

As we touched on in the last point, sleep can massively improve performance in the gym and in sports. Another study by Mah (2011) looked at the effects of extended sleep on basketball performance in Collegiate players [4]. The study found that when players slept longer than usual they played better, had improved reaction time, increased endurance, increased power, reduced fatigue, and a whole host of other benefits of sleep.

While sleeping more won’t increase your testosterone levels, it will prevent them from dropping. A study on Asian men found that those who slept less tended to have significantly lower testosterone levels than their well rested peers [5]. As increased testosterone levels can lead to improved body composition, improved mood, increased libido, reduced body fat, increased strength and hypertrophy, you can see why getting your 8-9 hours per night is a really good idea.

But that’s enough on the benefits of sleep, let’s get onto the good stuff. It’s time for our beer of the week!

This week’s beer was a complete surprise to me. Firstly because I would never have expected Todd to have chosen it (turns out he let his dad pick it), and secondly because I really expected I’d hate it. I have a love/hate relationship with fruit beers, and I first mistook Bacchus for a Lambic beer (similar to Cantillon’s Kriek beer). My trepidation increased when I read that it was a sour beer, I hate sour beer! But my first sip completely changed my mind, it was gorgeous. Normally fruit beers taste nothing like the fruit they purport to be, but this is one of those rare cases where the beer tasted exactly like it was supposed to.

The label is made of paper which wraps around the bottle

Todd talks about the history of the brewery in the podcast and it is definitely worth a listen. The brewery has been around since 1865 but was renamed in 1953 (which caused Todd and I some confusion on the podcast). The beer won’t be to everyone’s taste (but what beer is?), but it feels like the perfect Summer beer. It would also be really good for any long suffering partner who has been dragged to a Belgian bar by their beer-loving significant other.

One of the first things that we made clear in the podcast is that this is not a list of beers that we don’t like. It is a list of beers that we think are overrated. You can like a beer while still thinking that it is overrated. Basically every beer on this list is a nice beer, and if you offered either of us one of them in a pub we would drink them. The first beer that we talked about was Grolsch, something that I order often whenever I see it. But I mainly buy it because it comes in a cool bottle!

Take Grolsch out of the bottle and pour it into a regular glass and I would think of it as a very average lager, nothing special at all. I also find that a lot of Belgian beers in particular are improved by the glasses that they come with. Serve them in a regular glass and suddenly they seem quite average. I bought my dad a Kwak beer for his birthday with the proper glass, and the beer is excellent. But would it taste as nice if it was served in a regular glass?

Kwak Beer with Stand

Whilst mocking Grolsch I also took pot shots at other dutch lagers (Heinekin, Amstel, Becks). All very popular, but in my mind a little overrated. This does not mean I don’t like them, nor does it mean that dutch beer is bad. I just feel that a lot of these mass produced lagers are starting to feel a little dated when we look at the current beer scene. Next we turned our attentions to cubanista (rum infused) beer. Not terrible, but not great. Innis & Gunn also do a rum infused beer, and it’s just not my cup of tea. I like Rum, I like beer, but I don’t like them together. It feels like everyone is trying to copy Desperado, the only spirit infused beer that seems to work.

We also added Cobra beer to the list. It’s everywhere in England thanks to Indian Restaurants, but it’s not even the best Indian lager (my personal favourite would be Mongoose). Then Todd added Guinness, which I can understand completely, even though Guinness is one of my favourite beers. It’s probably one of the top 5 biggest selling beers in the world, but it’s not even that great as a stout. It is mostly sold around its history and its connection to Ireland. There’s a romance there, and it’s quite bland so most people find it easy to drink. I love it, but I definitely don’t think it is one of the best beers in the world.

Todd added Frulli to the list, which is very similar to the Bacchus beer we were drinking (though strawberry flavoured). Personally I really like it, and have fond memories of trying my first. But it’s definitely a one beer drink if you know what I mean. You couldn’t drink 5 in a night! We mentioned a couple more, but the ones we listed here are the main ones. I’ll reiterate the fact that we enjoy all of these beers, and don’t think they’re terrible. They just aren’t as amazing as their reputation makes them out to be.

In our next podcast we will be finally measuring Todd, and reviewing our goals. It’s going to be quite a laid back podcast where we will talk honestly about what we think has gone well, and what hasn’t. We will as ever have an awesome beer to sample, and hopefully we will have another great topic of conversation for the beer! So hopefully you have learned a lot about the benefits of sleep, and you will now GO TO BED!

[1] Taheri, S., Lin, L., Austin, D., Young, T., Mignot, E. 2004. Short sleep duration is associated with reduced Leptin, elevated Ghrelin, and increased body mass index.PLoS1(3): e62

[2] Hanlon, E., Tasali, E., Leproult, R., Stuhr, K., Doncheck, E., de Wit, H., Hillard, C., Van Cauter, E. 2016. Sleep restriction enhances the daily rhythm of circulating levels of endocannabinoid 2-Arachidonoylglycerol. Sleep 1;39(3): 653-64

[3] Mah, C., Mah, K., Dement, W. 2007. The Effects of Extra Sleep on Mood and Athletic Performance amongst Collegiate Athletes. Sleep30[suppl]

[4] Mah, C., Mah, K., Kezirian, E., Dement, W. 2011. The Effects of Sleep Extension on the Athletic Performance of Collegiate Basketball Players. Sleep34(7): 943-950

[5] Goh, V. Tong, T. 2010, Sleep, sex steroid hormones, sexual activities, and ageing in Asian men. Journal of Andology31(2): 131-7

Hello again, and welcome to our 11th episode of Beer N Biceps. I really can’t believe that we are about to hit 1,000 downloads! A pretty big achievement in my opinion (we really expected to get about 200 so this is crazy). Thanks to everyone who has downloaded and listened to us talk rubbish and get drunk. In this episode we discuss NEAT otherwise known as non exercise activity thermogenesis. The topic is very interesting, and I believe that it can have a huge effect on body composition.

We also discuss our top five desert island beers, an idea that I had before the show, which turned out to be a lot more difficult to implement. For two reasons 1) We hadn’t chosen any before going live (because we live by the YOLO philosophy), and 2) There were two of us who have very different opinions on beer (kind of the reason why we have such fun discussing beer in the first place). But it was still fun and we did end up with a top 5 of sorts …. which we will probably change about a million times. But such is life.

I’ve mentioned NEAT in the past, and it really is a fascinating subject. If you have ever spent any time trying to gain/lose weight you’ve probably heard about your metabolism and whether it is a fast metabolism or a slow one. Whether this is the case or not has always been unimportant, your metabolism is the grand total of all of the chemical processes in your body. So having a high metabolism is a reflection on your activity levels as a person. Obviously it’s a little more complicated than that, but the takeaway message here is that you have the power to affect your metabolism.

NEAT is one of those ways, it represents all the small (and large) actions that you do during the day that you wouldn’t class as exercise. Walking ten steps to the kitchen will still burn calories, even if it’s only 3. Doing the washing up will also burn calories, as will standing up, typing on a computer, and climbing a flight of stairs. No matter how small the movement, it still costs energy, and it still affects your metabolism. Disagree? Well pick the lowest calorie activity that you can think of (that’s not sitting down or sleeping), and perform it for 10 hours straight. Even if it is just swiping right on Tinder, you’ll still burn calories.

NEAT is the total of all of these small activities added together, and you might be surprised by how many calories this can add up to. If you’ve ever had that friend who never goes to the gym, eats what they like, and never gains weight, check out their daily activity. They probably have a super high NEAT. In fact your overweight friend may also be able to shift some of the responsibility to their NEAT levels too. A study in 1999 by Levine, Eberhardt, & Jensen found that as people overeat their NEAT levels drop [1]. Leading to a vicious cycle where people gain weight due to overeating which slows their activity/metabolism, leading to more weight gain.

If you want take control over NEAT, it can be a difficult task. Remember that NEAT is mostly an unconscious process, people who fidget when they sit down, or tend to clean the house thoroughly because they can’t stand mess, aren’t thinking about it. They aren’t doing four sets of washing up, they are just doing the washing up! Luckily there is one aspect of NEAT that you can have control over, your step count. A study in 2006 found that sedentary and overweight adults who started walking 10,000 steps per day lost significant amounts of weight [2].

Purchasing a step counting app on your phone, or buying a fitbit can really help you to increase NEAT massively. Hitting 10,000 steps may seem impossible at first, but over time your step count will rise and rise until you’re easily managing it. This will really help boost your metabolism, and provided you stay within a calorie deficit (by using myfitnesspal.com or other calorie counting app) you will lose weight.

This week’s beer was a Belgian Wheat Beer from Hoegaarden, my girlfriend Lucy had chosen the beers but I got so excited that I actually bought the correct Hoegaarden glass to drink it out of. As you might remember, I’ve become a massive fan of wheat beers and reviewed the German beer Erdinger back in episode four. This is another one of those beers that I used to hate, before completely flipping my opinion and deciding that I now love it!  The beer has a lovely citrus taste, and is incredibly refreshing. It tasted really good out of the glass too.

The top 5 desert island beer list was definitely a work in progress, we managed to add Stella Artois, Big Wave, Everyday Hero, Brewdog IPA, and the number one pick was a bit abstract. It was any beer that you have on holiday – when you first arrive, you sit down at a table in a restaurant or in a bar, and order your first beer, and sit back and finally feel relaxed. If we were on a desert island that would be our pick, and maybe that island wouldn’t seem so bad.

We will be discussing sleep and how it effects your recovery, weight loss/gain, and many other factors. It should be an absolutely amazing episode.

[1] Levine, J., Eberhardt, N., Jensen, M. 1999. Role of Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis in Resistance to Fat Gain in Humans. Science283(5399): 212-214

[2] Patrick L. Schneider, David R. Bassett Jr, Dixie L. Thompson, Nicolaas P. Pronk, and Kenneth M. Bielak (2006) Effects of a 10,000 Steps per Day Goal in Overweight Adults. American Journal of Health Promotion: November/December 2006, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 85-89.

Hello again, welcome to our 10th episode of Beer N Biceps – coming to you a little later than usual due to our incredibly busy schedules (I was tidying the flat so had to reschedule from Monday to Thursday, exciting!). In this episode we talk about the Great British Beer Festival that we attended on the 11th August, we also talk about a grapefruit infused beer called Elvis Juice from Brewdog – a Scottish Brewery that really helped put British Craft Beer on the map. We also discussed some frequently asked questions that I have encountered as a personal trainer – and answer them … obviously.

I have a long history with this beer festival, it was the first one that I attended. I went with my dad and his friend, I mainly remember drinking beer from Badger Brewery (or Hall & Woodhouse as they are apparently named), eating a pork pie, and going for a Chinese meal afterwards. Okay so maybe I have boring memories, but they’re still good ones. I went back on several occasions and have always enjoyed myself.

This year was no exception, Todd and I managed to bring quite a large group from our Beer N Biceps page (plus my dad) and we all had an amazing time. We’ll definitely be looking to bring even more people next year!

There were some really good beers on offer, Tiny Rebel Brewery’s Stay Puft Marshmallow Porter was probably the best we tried but other excellent beers include Bunny Hop Pale Ale by Purity brewery, Pale Rider by Hooded Ram Brewing Company, Reverend James by Brains Brewery, Misty Law from the Kelburn Brewing Company and Moonshine from Abbeydale Brewery .

As I mentioned before, being a personal trainer for 7 years has led to me being asked a LOT of questions, most of them concern the same subject (how fast can I lose weight doing the minimum amount of work). I can’t judge these questions, in a lot of ways my job is to find out the answer, and if I did I would make approximately ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD. But I thought that answering some of the more common questions would be a great use of this podcast, so here are five frequently asked questions that concern fitness and nutrition.

Whether it is a young lady asking how she can lose her bingo wings, to a 20 year old guy who wants to lose fat from his upper thighs, a lot of people have asked me about losing fat from specific parts of their body. Sadly this is not possible. You have no real control about where your body loses fat, but if you are looking to get lean and healthy you will eventually lose excess fat from all over your body (including the area that is causing you grief). Which means that you will eventually hit your goal, no matter what specific exercises you follow (provided you are in a calorie deficit).

This is actually a GOOD THING, because it means that instead of spending time on body specific training, you can use exercises that burn the most calories: Deadlifts, squats, lunges, presses, bent over rows, pull ups, even burpees for crying out loud!

As I explain in the podcast, this question is usually a bit longer, it goes along the lines of “What is the best diet if I want to lose 3 stone before my holiday in 2 weeks?”. Truth is that most diets are poor when it comes to long term results. If you really only care about getting in shape for your holiday – and don’t care about anything else then the answer is simple. Cut calories drastically, exercise a lot, sleep lots, and keep protein as high as possible. 

Long term, the best diet is the one that works for you! Everyone is different, and as such no diet will work the same for two people. But there are some things that all good diets should include:

If your diet contains these four things then you are probably on to a winner, just remember that the diet is for life not just for (post) Christmas!

This question is very common. While I should first state that supplements are lowest in importance behind: Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, Stress Management, and NEAT (more on that next week), they are still useful. For people who don’t often consume caffeine, a high-caffeine fat burner can be quite effective (when combined with the above). For us caffeine-addicts the best fat loss supplement that we can purchase would be a whey protein shake. Protein is very effective at preserving muscle during a diet, suppressing appetite, and increasing your metabolism. Combine a high diet with a calorie deficit and you’ve got yourself a great recipe for fat burning.

This is a variation on a question that I heard 50,000 times as a personal trainer. Some person would approach me in the gym (or one of my clients) and they would ask me whether this supplement really was a miracle fat burner or not? It almost always wasn’t. One of the first articles that I ever wrote was on the subject of Raspberry Ketones and while I know a lot more about the subject now, I still agree with the main point – Raspberry ketones are useless, and even if they did work … you still shouldn’t be wasting your time on them.

People want magic bullet solutions to their problems, they want amazing results but aren’t prepared to put in the work. I can sympathise with this (Hell! I LIVE this) but it isn’t helpful. If you want to be successful with fat loss then you need to exercise regularly, follow an effective diet, sleep well, and be patient. Unless you can do that, you will never see any results.

I’m going to keep this last one short: There is no such thing as a superfood, it is a marketing term. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be eating them! Just don’t think that fancy food necessarily means diet-friendly food (avocados are healthy but are still high in calories).

Now that we have got the frequently asked questions out of the way, we can turn our attentions to beer again! Brewdog are a fantastic brewery that I (misguidedly) hated for years. I visited their Camden pub about 5-7 years ago and was thoroughly underwhelmed. The beer was odd tasting, the place was filled with hipsters, and my mate managed to knock a board game onto a table of drinks, while another friend ordered a 60% alcohol beer and described it as “The worst beer ever”.

I left and spent many years complaining about their beer. Until one day I was mid-rant and my friend pointed out that the beer that he had just bought me (that I was really enjoying) was from Brewdog. Luckily I am not overly proud, and could immediately admit that I was wrong.

Since then I have completely changed my opinion and now love them. I have done this with many beers in the past (Belgium beers, Sierra Nevada, Wheat Beers, Carlsberg etc) and I will probably do it with many more. Anyway, Elvis Juice is a grapefruit infused IPA and it is fantastic. I’ve tried quite a few grapefruit beers in my time (well 3 that I can remember) and the issue that I usually find is that the grapefruit taste is over powering. I am not a fan of real life grapefruits, and certainly wouldn’t want to drink grapefruit juice. But where Brewdog get it right is to keep the taste light, rather than being hit by a huge taste of grapefruit, you just notice it towards the end of the sip. A subtle addition which really works.

In next week’s podcast we will be looking at NEAT or Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, and how it can help you on your fat loss goal. We’ll also be drinking beers, and talking about masturbation as always – we know what our audience love!!! Also, just because we have completed a frequently asked questions podcast, doesn’t mean that we don’t want any more. Please chuck us as many as you can, and maybe you’ll be featured in our next frequently asked questions podcast (or we’ll just answer it straight away as per usual).