Stop Talking To Myself: The Bane Project

A few weeks ago I saw The Dark Knight Rises (and if you haven’t yet then what the hell are you waiting for?) and it sparked a conversation between myself and my roommate. The actor Tom Hardy reportedly put on thirty pounds to play the role of the villain Bane.

While this did indeed make him the imposing figure cast from the pages of the comic, we began to wonder what toll putting that kind of mass onto your body takes on you. Anyone who hit a pronounced growth spurt at any time in their adolescence knows that a rapid change in size has a huge impact on all aspects of your movement. For example, I grew ten inches in middle school. Ask anyone who knew me and they'll tell you I looked like a baby deer learning how to walk any time I tried anything athletic for the first two years of high school. It took me until well into my junior year to both develop the strength and proprioception to feel comfortable in my body again. While in my case this had to do with limb length and not overall mass, I believe the same effects could be felt when putting on a large amount of mass in a small time frame.

The most extreme example of this is Christian Bale in his role in 'Batman Begins' (I swear it is just a coincidence. This post isn't entirely about Batman). Prior to being cast as Batman, Bale filmed a movie called 'The Machinist', wherein he plays an extreme insomniac and dropped down to 110 pounds for the part (he's 6'1" and reportedly did so by eating only a can of tuna and an apple a day). After receiving the part of Batman, Bale turned around and put on 100 pounds of mass in six months to film 'Batman Begins'. To put it in perspective, that is roughly a pound of mass every other day. When asked about it, Bale calls the experience an, "...unbearable physical ordeal." No shit.

Christian Bale in 'The Machinist'

Christian Bale six months later in 'Batman Begins'

In training, we often take into account how "functional" someone is, meaning does the person in question's body (whether it be a result of size or other factors) work the way it should and does it move well enough to meet any reasonable task asked of it. This is especially important in athletics, where dysfunction or immobility in a joint that should be mobile (and vice versa) can lead to injury. Taking factors such as mobility into account lead to questions like "Is bodybuilding a sport? or, perhaps more specifically, "Is bodybuilding athletic?"

Sure, he can bench 500lbs easy, but can he scratch his own back?

In my previous post, I suggested that "skinny" was by no means synonymous with "healthy". I also believe the same could be said for the terms "muscular" and "athletic". Don't get me wrong. I am by no means taking away from the work bodybuilders put into their craft. They spend countless hours working to "perfect" (a relative term for their chosen activity, which I will get into more later) their bodies and the incredible discipline, especially when it comes to nutrition, they have is commendable, to say the least. I simply mean to suggest that being extremely muscular (jacked, yoked, massive, beefed out, whatever you want to call it) does not, in and of itself, make one an athlete. Though, to be fair, in order to make that claim I suppose I would have to give my definition of athletic, so here it goes: Athleticism is defined by a combination of qualities that work together to accomplish a desired act. To go further, I believe that those qualities are as follows:

Strength-the ability to exert force upon an object using the muscular system
Power-the rate at which you exert the above force
Flexibility/Mobility-the ability to move properly through a given range of motion
Endurance-the capacity to endure prolonged exercise without a breakdown in form or efficiency
Body composition-the ratio of lean mass to fat mass in the body (some may disagree with the inclusion of this one, but I think an important quality to consider is a person's ability to maintain a body composition that allows them to remain as healthy as possible)

I believe these criteria apply to all people, as we all have tasks we look to be able to achieve. I use the term "task" because this does not specifically apply to people looking to achieve extremely athletic goals like running a marathon or competing in Strongman competitions. Some people simply wish to be able to carry their groceries from their car to their house. Some may laugh, but this is an all too common goal for many people, especially in the elderly population, and it requires a certain level of fitness to accomplish. If you keep in mind that all people's goals may be different, then it is important to understand that all of these criteria are on a sliding scale, with an optimum area for each to be in to reach the desired goal.

For example, a cross country runner obviously needs to have a very high level of endurance, but in order to stay healthy they cannot neglect all of the other aspects. If all they focus on is endurance, the lack of strength, power, and mobility, will (not if, will) eventually lead to injury. Do they need to be power cleaning 200 pounds? Absolutely not, but a baseline level of strength and the ability to properly activate the correct muscle groups at the right time can do wonders for their performance. I have seen this first hand. Unfortunately, body issues also run rampant in cross country runners. If they neglect proper nutrition and continue to run 50+ miles a week their bodies will (again, WILL) eventually break down. Proper nutrition is key to building and maintaining athletic gains.

Now, compare the needs of a cross country runner to those of a football player. Endurance is still important for fourth quarter performance, but more of an emphasis must be placed on strength and power to be successful in such a violent game. In that same vein, mobility becomes incredibly important as players are often put in awkward positions during tackles or pile ups and an immobile joint will become injured if it cannot bend to compensate (just don't say that to Willis McGahee). Body composition is also important given the needs of the various positions. So there you have it. Two athletes with two very different skill sets and requirements to be successful in their sport, but with a common set of categorized needs to reach that success.

To bring this full circle, the question raised by my roommate was can someone put such mass on themselves in a short amount of time and still stay functional or "athletic". After some discussion, I decided to find out for myself.

The Bane Project

The objective of the Bane Project is relatively simple: find out if a given level of athleticism can be maintained, or even improved, with a sharp increase in mass. I began by running several baseline tests encompassing the aspects of athleticism I listed above on myself and over the next several months I will attempt to put on a substantial amount of muscle mass (around 20-25 pounds, I'm not Christian Bale, sorry) with a combination of weights, high intensity cardio, and eating everything in sight. I predict the last of those will be of utmost importance. If you forget every bullshit shortcut and "diet secret" pedaled to you by every asshole trying to make a quick buck, the key to weight gain/loss, at the end of the day, is "calories in, calories out". To put it simply, if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight, and vice versa. There it is. There's the secret. Save your money.

So, in order to gain mass I need to be sure to always take in more calories than I burned that day. To ensure this, I wrote up a spreadsheet that will calculate my resting metabolic rate (RMR), or the number of calories my body will burn in a given day. If I add the RMR to the calories burned in whatever exercise I do that day, that will give me the number of calories I need to exceed with my diet. To ensure I am eating enough, I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app to my phone to help keep a daily log of how many calories I am taking in. (A quick side note: I highly recommend this app. It is incredibly convenient and easy to use. It also has a huge database of food items as well as a bar code scanner that you use the camera in your phone to scan a given food item for a complete nutritional breakdown.)

Is it an exact science? No, but it gives me a ballpark idea of whether I am staying anabolic (positive caloric balance) or catabolizing the mass I already have to meet the energy demands. This also allows me to challenge my long time "cop out" of being what is referred to as a "hard gainer". I have a high metabolism and have often used this as a reason why I cannot put on a lot of muscle mass. The rigorous keeping of data will be able to show once and for all whether this is the case or, as I actually suspect, is a complete crock of shit.

Before you completely tune out and look at this blog as another meat head that just wants to talk about his training, the Bane Project (seriously, how much of a nerd am I?) will NOT be the focus of the blog. I will still be posting about various topics in fitness. I may just give updates every now and then as to how it is going. Honestly, it should be entertaining for you (at least I hope) to watch as I put myself through this. I started on Monday and already have the following gems in my training log:

Mother of God, what have I done?
Got stuck on the toilet for half an hour because it hurt too much to stand up.
Was complaining about how much I have to eat and a starving kids commercial came on the television. I'm an asshole.

So there it is. This is my next several months. Keeping with the Batman theme I believe there is only one thing left to say: