Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

produced by the increased metabolism triggered by weight training—begin to flood the bloodstream, this increases the overall acidity (makes sense—it’s called lactic acid after all) of the extracellular tissues, and nerve irritation occurs.
    When your blood and nerves and other tissues are all acid-y, your body goes, “Dude, this sucks. I’m going to fix it.” Basically, because the cycle of metabolic waste removal is breaking down, certain processes begin to regulate acidity.
    Lactic Acid and Growth Hormone
    In order to regulate acidity, your pituitary gland will begin to produce and secrete tremendous amounts of GH, which is the single most effective biological compound your body can produce to elicit fat loss and muscle gain.
    Simply stated, training in a way that produces a lot of lactic acid—and thereby signals immense release of GH—is one of the single most effective ways to trigger simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain, especially if you’re in a caloric deficit of any kind (as you will be on non-workout days).
    As an added benefit, GH is specifically beneficial in that it can counteract the fat-storing effects of cortisol. You see, GH has an inverse relationship with cortisol—as GH goes up, cortisol goes down. And this combination is what will help you sleep better, provide an overall increase in feelings of wellness, and make it harder for your body to store belly fat.
    The important thing to note is that lactic acid is produced predominantly during the concentric (or positive) phase of the movement. So when you’re actually lifting the weight (think about squeezing a weight at the top of a biceps curl), you’re producing a lot more lactic acid than when you’re lowering it.
    In order to maximize production of lactic acid, we simply modify our lifting speed to take the greatest advantage of that fact. With most training modalities, you’re using a 2-0-2 cadence. This means that you’re lifting the weight for two seconds, pausing for zero seconds at the top of the motion, and then lowering the weight for two seconds. In some cases, you’ll use a 2-0-3 cadence, which is just a slower lowering phase.
    In keeping with that line of thought, lactic acid training can, to some degree, be thought of as inverted tempo training. To that, we lift the weight over a period of four seconds (in most cases) and lower extremely fast in order to allow for nearly constant concentric tension and high levels of lactic acid production.
    To give an example, if you were doing an overhead press, a single rep would appear like this:

    Lift the weight over a period of 4 seconds
    Lower the weight as quickly as possible in good form
    Immediately begin lifting again

    To reiterate, lifting in this way produces a tremendous amount of lactic acid, which in turn forces your body to produce exceptionally high amounts of GH, which is what will make the transformations during this third phase some of the most fun.

    SURGE: THE DIET
    Determine Your Daily Caloric Intake During Surge
    Before you can do this, you once again need to determine your maintenance calories. This is done in precisely the same manner as in Prime and Adapt; again, your body will have undergone some radical changes and in order to make the best possible use of the program, you need to have the most accurate and current information. Therefore, before you can progress any farther, please check your weight and get your body fat retested, and from there determine your new maintenance calories.
    Surge is the first time you’ll be eating above maintenance calories. Because of the long period of deficit and the hormonal environment you’ve created, your body is prepared to grow. In this phase, we’ll be taking in more calories and pairing the diet with a training modality specifically intended to increase GH—that, coupled with the volume, will lead to tremendous growth. So we hope you brought your appetite.
    Specifically, you’re going to be eating above maintenance calories on workout days and below maintenance calories on non-workout days.

    To determine your calories for workout days, add 400 to your maintenance calories.
    To determine your calories for non-workout days, subtract 200.

    MACRONUTRIENT BREAKDOWN
    Protein
    Once again, protein is determined by your lean body mass, but it’s higher during this phase. Protein intake will be set as follows:

    Workout days: 1.5 grams of protein per pound of LBM
    Non-workout days: 1.25 grams of protein per