This is the first issue in a series on Extreme Athletes, those who push themselves to the max to achieve their goals and, possibly, greatness.

But, while the information in this series applies very strictly to extreme athletes, it applies just as much to anyone else trying to achieve peak performance for themselves in fitness and athletics, while staying healthy overall.

Also, while we will cover points individual to specific sports, most of the information is applicable to all sports and performance, energy, and recovery as a whole.

In this first article we’ll start with one of the key, over-riding aspects to maximize not only the ability and performance of an elite athlete, but of anyone.

Because, when you put your body through as much stress and pressure as an athlete does, every one of your organs, muscles, nerves, bones, hormones, etc., all play a part.

And, while any weak links will bring down the rest, improving any weak spots in health will help increase the energy production and performance of the overall.

When we look at Lean Bulking, building lean muscle without the excess body fat, we need to look back at what the original body builders did, the golden age body builders.

Because it was very different to what is done now.

And I'm not talking about the 70s or 80s when counting macros and Bulking & Cutting became popular.

We're going earlier.

To the time of Jack LaLanne and the other greats, before egg protein powders, whey powders, creatine, and BCAAs were first introduced.

Back then body builders ate very differently. But very effectively.

Welcome to the fully updated Lean Body/Lean Bulk Guide & 30-Day Challenge!

This guide and the accompanying protocol aim to achieve one of a few things, depending on what your goals are.

You may just want to attain a lean, toned and shaped body. An hourglass shape for women or a V-shape for men. This is the Lean Body portion of the protocol.

You may want to build significant lean muscle without adding excess body fat that has to be worked off afterwards through cutting or fasting.

Or you may what to achieve something somewhere in between.

That’s fine. This protocol was designed to be tailored to you — where you are at now and where you want to be — so you can achieve your goals.

But this isn’t just a program where you count calories and workout.

No.

If we want to build lean muscle without the excess body fat of bulking, or attain a lean, toned and shaped body and keep it, we need to do more that.

We need to look at digestion, cravings, recovery, sleep, energy levels, blood flow and hormones.

Bulking and Cutting has been around for decades now.

We work out hard, we count our macros, and eat and eat and eat.

And we build lots of muscle.

But at the same time that we’re building muscle, we also build body fat. And we build each at about the same rate, a pound of muscle for a pound of fat.

Then we do a cut, cutting back on our calories, and in some cases starving ourselves (which is never necessary), and do a lot of extra cardio — running, biking, sprints, etc. — all to lose that extra body fat we gained.

And hopefully we don’t lose too much of our muscle gains in the process.

Now, I have no problem if someone enjoys that. Many people do. But many others don’t.

And the thing is, it isn’t necessary.

At all.

If you’d like to build lean muscle without the excess body fat, either to build significant muscle or just to tone your body, and all while raising your overall health, energy levels and mood, then the Lean Body/Lean Bulk Protocol is for you.

We know about amino acids, hormones, and how different foods affect our ability to build lean muscle, burn fat and stay healthy.

But if we want to achieve maximum levels of energy, recovery, health and performance, and build the most lean muscle, then we need to go down to the cellular level.

After all, our bodies are just one big mass of some 100 trillion cells all bonded together.

How well we're doing is an exact reflection of how well our cells are doing.

And they require a multitude of nutrients and biochemicals, all held in equilibrium, to ensure they can work properly, produce energy, build muscle, and keep our body going.

When these aren't properly balanced we can get headaches, brain fog, low levels of energy, muscle cramps, slower recoveries from workouts, and imbalances in hormones.

But when everything is in place, we have the most powerful you that you can be.

So let’s see how this works.

In this article we cover how PerfectAmino has a near zero caloric impact on our body, and this is important.

When we work out and take 20 or 30 grams of whey or pea protein, or collagen powder, we think our bodies are getting 20-30 grams of protein or collagen.

But that's not true.

This is because protein and collagen aren't used by our bodies in the forms they arrive in.

Instead, they're broken down into their building blocks — the amino acids.

Amino acids are what our body actually needs, and are the only things of value in protein from our body's point of view.

But the ratio of amino acids present in different proteins determines how much actual useable protein we get from them and how much calories.

And this has a larger impact on our fitness goals than most people think.

How does PerfectAmino actually work? And what is it really doing in our bodies?

PerfectAmino is the perfect protein source. But there is a point there. It’s the perfect protein source. It isn’t protein in itself, but amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

When these amino acids are bonded together into chains, that’s when it becomes a protein.

That’s what any protein molecule you eat is — hundreds or thousands of different amino acids all bonded together into a long chain.

But PerfectAmino is different than other protein sources you’ve had. Very different.

If you’re over 40 years old, you’ve probably noticed that weight loss can become harder.

When we’re younger, in our teens, 20’s and 30’s, we can often (not always) get away with a lot. We can eat more carbs without gaining weight, and keep up our energy and strength levels.

But after 40, things change. And this is a factor in aging. A factor related to changes in our hormones as we age.

It hasn’t been understood by most people just how vital our gut health is to our heart health.

But in truth, it’s key. If our gut health is good, and our digestive tract working properly, the risk of poor heart health is much lower.

If our gut is in poor condition, however (heart burn or acid reflux often, bloating, pains, regular diarrhea, or worse), then this will, over time, lead to poor heart health.

But gut health among Americans has diminished drastically in recent times, worsening every year mainly due to our processed foods and sugars, and the 50x increase in toxins in our environment in the last 7 decades.

Now, younger and younger people every year are experiencing more and more gut issues which were rare even in older individuals in earlier generations.

And along with them, they're experiencing more cardiovascular issues.

This is something we need to address now, for each of us, to ensure a long and healthy life.

Cardiovascular Disease, or Heart Disease, is the number one cause of death not just in the US, but in the world.

And, despite spending more on medical treatment for this, per person, than any other country, the US has one of highest rates in the world, higher than most so-called developing countries that don’t have the same money to spend on medical treatment for it.

As of 2019, approximately 7,617 in 100,000 Americans had heart disease. And many more are on the path to it, with this number growing every year.

Compare that to the early 1900s when there was very little heart disease.

(This is actually a created problem, and we’ll get to that.)

But the saddest thing is that while it is, in most cases, preventable (even when we’ve already started on the path to it), the solutions provided only allow us to “manage it” or slow it to a degree. Not reverse or prevent it.

And they don’t even do that very well.

If we want to lower our risk of heart disease, then we need to know the exact factors that do cause it so we can prevent them.

And it starts inside our blood vessels, at a very thin mucous lining that runs all along the inside walls of these blood vessels, protecting them from harm.

In the last article in the Heart Health Series we covered how consuming cholesterol is not actually the cause of heart disease.

And how lowering cholesterol levels with drugs, to lower high blood pressure, actually increases the risk of heart disease among those 60 and above.

But while the idea that cholesterol intake causes heart disease may be a myth, heart disease itself is quite real.

In this article we’ll dive more into this, covering what high blood pressure is, why and how it occurs, and what’s actually behind it.

Before we cover what actually causes Heart disease, I want to cover something that doesn’t, or at least not in the way most people think: cholesterol.

You’ve probably heard of the Cholesterol Hypothesis.

This hypothesis states that higher levels of cholesterol, particularly LDL Cholesterol, are associated with higher rates of Heart Disease.

To prevent heart disease then, we take drugs known as statins that lower our liver’s ability to produce cholesterol.

This hypothesis has been so deeply ingrained in our understanding of how the body works, that the idea of challenging it is almost laughable. (Even though it’s still just a hypothesis after all this time.)

However, over the last decade, more and more scientists and doctors have been doing just that, and for one very glaring reason: there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.

Let's see what's happening here.