The SHOP

NEW HOME

2011-03-17T05:40:00.001-05:00

Effective today, this blog will no longer be updated. Please go to the SHOP’s new web address:

Be sure to update your bookmarks, favorites, RSS feeds, etc.

A GUEST IN THE SHOP

2011-01-30T09:21:00.000-06:00

I had the great pleasure of hosting a friend of mine in the SHOP a few days ago. Bryan Guido Hassin, whose list of credentials is longer than my … well, it’s pretty long: Rice alum with two undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering as well as a Master’s degree in Computer Science, an MBA from IMD in Switzerland, and a successful entrepreneur many times over. Bryan was in town to pitch his latest entrepreneurial adventure (Smart Office Energy Solutions) to potential investors (I’m already an investor because I believe both in his business and his abilities).

Bryan stayed at my house while he was in Dallas, and of course my house rules clearly state that anyone who spends time in my house must also spend time in the SHOP before departing. I put Bryan, along with one of the SHOP regulars Craig Stansberry, through a serious workout, and he recapped it in a serious blog post:

INTENSE WORKOUT AT THE SHOP

I love having guests in the SHOP, and not because I get to destroy them with a really hard workout. For the record, Bryan was exhausted at the end of the workout because he pushed himself that hard. Some of the movements may have been new to him, but he is no stranger to good, old-fashioned hard work.

Anybody can make someone tired (for example, go do 1,000 pushups), but my purpose with Bryan (or anybody else) was to help him improve. As he concluded at the end of his blog, he learned three important lessons from just one SHOP workout: the benefit of early morning workouts, the importance of pre-workout fueling, and the value in anaerobic activities.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, a short clip that shows some of the action. A few things to note about this video:

a short training montage from the SHOP

It was 30 degrees outside (same temp in the SHOP), so we’re all in Under Armour and hoodies.
It was 5:15am, so there wasn’t any natural light (plus the garage door was shut)
My explosiveness is significantly greater than my other buddy’s (Craig Stansberry, professional baseball player).
My Flip camera’s battery was acting up, so we got very little footage from the workout.

That’s all for now.

A SNOWY SUNDAY IN THE SHOP

2011-01-09T15:53:00.001-06:00

REMINDER: The SHOP has moved! www.shop-training.com!

It has been snowing non-stop for about the last 3-4 hours! This is unheard of here in Dallas…although it happened last year too (record snowfall at that). I don’t think this happened in the previous five years at all!

I had plans to take my Prowler up to JJ Pearce high school with a few buddies…the rain and snow put a stop to that idea though.

It has been a while since I busted the Prowler out due to holidays and traveling and such, but it’ll be back!

Anyway, the snow may have changed my plans, but I was still able to get a solid training session in. Today was a heavy focus on soft tissue work (foam rolling, lacrosse ball), flexibility and mobility (primarily hips for me), core work, and finally some conditioning. It looked like this:

CORE

Turkish Get Ups

Using the TGU as a warm up and mobility drill

2 reps with a 50 lb. DB

1 rep with a 70 lb. KB

Standing Ab Wheel Rollouts w/ Weight Vest (20 lbs.)

6 reps with a 20 lb. weight vest

CONDITIONING

KB Swings x 12

Burpees x 10

Rest 1 minute

Repeat for a total of 5 rounds

1 round of the KB swings/burpee conditioning

I can’t think of a better way to spend a cold Sunday morning! Especially since I followed it up with a pumpkin protein shake, a coffee, and some venison roast that I smoked yesterday.

A SOLID SATURDAY

2011-01-08T18:55:00.001-06:00

REMINDER: The SHOP has moved to www.shop-training.com!

My goal for this blog in 2011 is to hit it hard and hit it regularly. Obviously it would be nice to post a variety of themed blogs…training-related blogs, book reviews, collections of articles, etc. so I am going to do my best to make that happen. I’m off to a good start with two blogs on the same day!

As the title indicates, and as Ice Cube would say, today was a good day!

I started out with jiu jitsu practice at 10am for about 2 1/2 hours! I have big goals for my jiu jitsu training this year. I want to get my blue belt, I want to train several hours per week, and I want to compete in at least one tournament (whether it will be gi or no gi is to be determined). I actually spent my time today about 50/50 between gi and no gi. I also got roughed up pretty good by a purple belt and a blue belt…my face is all scraped up. When I got home Lauren thought I looked pretty funny and she asked “you actually enjoy this?” YES, absolutely.

I also got to try out one of my Christmas presents this afternoon…a smoker!

Using some hickory wood chips I smoked two venison roasts and some backstrap:

It was my first time smoking meat, and I my backstrap, which was thin and small, probably got a little too dry (that won’t stop me from eating it). The roasts, on the other hand, turned out damn good. Juicy, flavorful, and they will probably only last about another day.

First meat smoking session…a SUCCESS!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2011-01-08T17:14:00.000-06:00

REMINDER: The SHOP has moved to a new location!

www.shop-training.com

Don’t forget to update your RSS feed or your bookmarks! I will post updates to both blogs for a while, but then I will drop this one for good.

Happy 2011! Hopefully everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Lauren and I went to Santa Barbara, CA for the holidays and had a great time. As you would expect, I got plenty of training in. Lauren’s aunt even setup a training session for me with an RKC so that I could learn a few kettlebell moves…namely the Turkish Get Up (“TGU”) and the KB Swing. The TGU happens to be one of my favorite moves now…it trains so many things at one time: core strength, mobility, stability, coordination. I personally like to do them without any weight (or with light weight) as part of my warm-up. On other days, I load them up as heavy as I can for singles or doubles.

One of my buddies from the Rice baseball team is in Dallas and he’s been coming over to the SHOP in the mornings since he is gearing up for Spring Training. We had a pretty solid session yesterday morning (Friday) that went a little something like this:

A DB Snatch – 4 x 3 with 100 lbs

B Single-Leg Squat (Goblet hold) – 4 x 6 with 50 lbs

6 reps on each leg with a 50 lb DB

C1 Chest Supported Row – 4 x 12 with 100 lbs

C2 DB Lunges (walking) – 4 x 7, 7, 7, 6 with 100 lbs (each hand)

It’s still dark because it’s only 5:30 am! And it’s about 30 degrees!

D Towel Pullups – 14, 10. 8

E DB Rows – 3 x 8 with 100 lbs

FINISHER

Mountain Climbers (using furniture gliders under my feet on the carpet)

5 x 20 seconds on the minute

It was a solid session!

RELOCATING

2010-12-30T20:56:00.000-06:00

The SHOP is relocating!

The new blog is still under construction, but I was able to transfer all of my old posts over (with only some minor formatting issues). I'm still experimenting with appearance, design, etc. on the new site, but it'll get the job done.

www.shop-training.com

Be sure to update your bookmark and RSS reader.

WHY QUICK, CHEAP FOOD IS ACTUALLY MORE EXPENSIVE

2010-08-22T14:03:00.000-05:00

I just read a very good article from the Huffington Post:

Why Quick, Cheap Food is Actually More Expensive

The concept here is basically that one cannot only consider the short-term costs of food. It's not about how much you pay at the cash register, but what that food will "cost" you over your lifetime. TIME Magazine actually ran an article that talked about this same concept about a year ago:

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food

There are some great take-away points from both articles (which I'll include later in my FAVORITE EXCERPTS section), but each of these articles can be summed up in the following way:

You will spend both time and money on your health, and you get to choose whether your time and money are spent proactively or reactively.

Now I'm not going to steal credit for that quote. I read it from one of Mike Boyle's blog posts, but I'm not sure if he was the creator.

FAVORITE EXCERPTS

The odd paradox is that food insecurity--not knowing where the next meal is coming from or not having enough money to adequately feed your family--leads to obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.

And most of those meals eaten at home are produced in plants, not grown on plants, are from a food chemist's lab, not a farmer's field.

Unhealthy food is cheaper because our government's policies support its production. We're spending nearly $30 billion a year to subsidize corn and soy production. Where do those foods go? Into our food supply as high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil (trans fats), that are the foundation of almost all fast food and processed foods that are "manufactured" by the food industry.

Corn and soy are also used to feed cattle for the production of meat and dairy. In fact, 70 percent of the wheat, corn and soy farmed in this country is used to feed animals used for our food. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--more than the entire human population on Earth!

...one expert has estimated that healthcare costs related to obesity are $118 billion per year. That's nearly 12 percent of total healthcare expenditures--and more than twice that caused by smoking! Seventy-two percent of Americans are overweight and over one third are medically obese. One in three children born today will be diabetic in their lifetime and the life expectancy of our population is declining for the first time in human history.

As these numbers prove, the costs of eating fast, junk, and processed foods are often deferred until later. And that's the key point: When you go to McDonald's for a cheap burger and fries, you might immediately compare that lower price to whole organic foods which are more expensive in the short term. But the total cost isn't reflected in how much you pay for your meal in the immediate moment, it's the cumulative cost of what those decisions cost you over a lifetime.

SATURDAY IN THE SHOP

2010-08-08T15:27:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I did a training update, so now seems to be as good a time as any! I didn't start working out yesterday until about 3:00pm, so it was nice and toasty in The SHOP (probably 102 degrees outside and very comparable inside my garage). Oh well, I had two fans blasting on me and plenty of fluids so I was fine.

Yesterday was a strength day that went something like this:

WARM-UP

Foam Rolling

Static Stretching

Mobility Drills and Activation work (namely the glutes)

STRENGTH

A Bulgarian Split Squats - 185 x 6, 6, 6, 6 (each leg)

B1 Sandbag Shouldering - 6, 6, 6, 6 (I'm guessing my sandbag is about 150 lbs or so)

B2 T-Bar Row - 90 x 12, 12, 12, 12

C1 Band Hip Abduction - Mini band x 17, 17, 17 (more glute work and hip strengthening)

C2 Pullups - 13, 10, 9

D Band Rows - Black Band x 10, 10, 10

For my post-workout recovery I had a gigantic shake and then a dip in our neighbor's pool! It feels so good to jump in the pool after a workout, especially when it is over 100 degrees outside!

OBESITY RATES IN THE USA

2010-08-07T07:49:00.000-05:00

I read another interesting article in the NY Times yesterday:

Obesity Rates Keep Rising, Troubling Health Officials

There are now 9 states that have obesity rates greater than 30% (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia), with the national average coming in at 26.7%! That means 72.5 million people in the United States are considered obese.

The real scary thing is that the data was collected by telephone surveys of 400,000 people. The simple survey consisted of asking them their height and weight. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I seriously doubt that people really gave accurate information, and I tend to think that people would underestimate their true weight. Just think what the real numbers could be!!

Now just to be fair, the researchers used BMI to determine if these people are obese, and BMI is not really a good measure (it is just a function of height and weight and ignores things like muscle mass). It may work well for a large scale research project, but at the individual level it simply is not the best approach. For instance, my BMI (I'm 5'11" and 195 lbs) is 27.2 which puts me right in the middle of the "overweight" category (obese is greater than 30.0). HINT: I'm not overweight.

What's probably the most disheartening thing about this article is that the annual medical cost of obesity is estimated to be $147 billion!

FAVORITE EXCERPTS
Researchers blame the usual suspects: too little exercise and too much of the wrong kind of food, which means not enough fruits and vegetables and too many high-calorie meals full of sugar and fat, like French fries, soda and other sweet drinks. Children do not get enough exercise during the school day; Dr. Frieden noted that even in gym classes, students are active for only about a third of the time.

The nine states with obesity rates of 30 percent or more are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia. The highest rate, 34.4 percent, was in Mississippi.

Only Colorado and Washington, D.C., had obesity rates under 20 percent. Researchers are not sure why. Dr. William Dietz, director of the nutrition, physical activity and obesity division, said that Colorado had spent money from a state lottery on biking and walking trails and that many people were using them. The state seems to have “a culture of physical activity,” he said.

LOADING BODYWEIGHT MOVEMENTS

2010-08-06T09:43:00.000-05:00

In previous posts I've talked about the need to progress bodyweight movements by using more difficult variations (1-arm pushups instead of regular pushups, 1-leg squats instead of regular squats, etc.). Of course when I say "the need" I am assuming that someone who is training in the first place is looking to actually improve. If you don't progress, why the heck are you training?

Anyway, those were a few examples of how you could progress those movements without any extra equipment. However, if you happen to have a fully-loaded SHOP like I do, you can simply perform the movements with added resistance like a weight vest!!

1-LEG SQUATS W/ WEIGHT VEST (45 LBS)

PUSHUPS W/ WEIGHT VEST (75 LBS)
Feet elevated and hands on blocks for greater ROM

I love the weight vest, and it can be added to virtually any movement: pushups, squats, pullups, dips, lunges, etc.

I'm not saying anybody needs to go out and buy one, but for those who may be interested this is probably the best place to look:

WEIGHT VEST

And no I will not receive any commission if you go there, I'm just really happy with the product I have from them so I wanted to share the love!

And yes, I did shave my head!

VITAMIN D

2010-07-28T21:28:00.002-05:00

There was a great article online the other day at the NY Times:

What Do You Lack? Probably Vitamin D

WHAT IT IS AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

From Wikipedia (with my comments in [brackets]):

Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble secosteroids [A, E, and K are the others]…. Vitamin D3 is produced in the skin of vertebrates after exposure to ultraviolet B light from the sun or artificial sources, and occurs naturally in a small range of foods.

When synthesized in the kidneys, calcitriol circulates as a hormone, regulating, among other things, the concentration of calcium and phosphate in the bloodstream, promoting the healthy mineralization, growth and remodeling of bone, and the prevention of hypocalcemic tetany. Vitamin D insufficiency can result in thin, brittle, or misshapen bones, while sufficiency prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults, and, together with calcium, helps to protect older adults from osteoporosis. Vitamin D also modulates neuromuscular function, reduces inflammation, and influences the action of many genes that regulate the proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis [programmed death] of cells

“Fat-soluble” means that these vitamins must be dissolved in fat before they can be absorbed in the bloodstream and carry out their vital functions. Also, any excess of these fat-soluble vitamins are stored in the liver, which means that they are not needed on a daily basis (that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to get them daily though).

From the NY Times article:

Every tissue in the body, including the brain, heart, muscles and immune system, has receptors for vitamin D, meaning that this nutrient is needed at proper levels for these tissues to function well.

HOW TO GET IT

Primary Source: the sun (more specifically, ultraviolet B rays absorbed through the skin)

Other Sources: wild-caught oily fish (salmon, mackerel, bluefish, and canned tuna) and fortified dairy products and cereal.

HOW MUCH TO GET

The article quoted some recommended serum levels of vitamin D (>30 nanograms/milliliter), but that means you have to get a specific blood test to determine your current level and a follow-up test to see if you then exceed the minimum level. Instead just follow this simple advice to ensure adequate levels:

Regular, but not excessive, sun exposure during peak sunlight hours (10 AM – 3 PM), unprotected by sunscreen. If you stay outside for longer than about 10-15 minutes, then you can apply some sunscreen.

Chronic sunscreen use decreases circulating concentrations of vitamin D.

Can’t I just supplement?

While I do take a supplement, I keep it at a constant but minimum level. The dosage I take would not be enough to meet the minimum suggested serum level alone. Further, if acquired naturally through skin, the body has a built-in cutoff system that prevents excess levels of vitamin D. When enough is made, further exposure to sunlight will destroy any excess. If the source is an ingested supplement, it goes directly to the liver with no cutoff mechanism to prevent excess levels.

In addition to the supplement, I also regularly eat wild salmon, tuna, and other fish that are natural sources of vitamin D.

I still try to make sunlight my main source. As a guy stuck in the office all day, it can be difficult to get outside during peak sunlight hours without getting yelled at! So I just make a concerted effort to get outside whenever possible: walking the dogs, throwing the football with Lauren, or even taking my SHOP workouts outside of the garage and into my driveway or the alley!

CONCLUSION

Get some dang sunlight!

FAVORITE EXCERPTS / MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Although more foods today are supplemented with vitamin D, experts say it is rarely possible to consume adequate amounts through foods.

But the less sun exposure, the darker a person’s skin and the more sunscreen used, the less previtamin D is formed and the lower the serum levels of the vitamin. People who are sun-phobic, babies who are exclusively breast-fed, the elderly and those living in nursing homes are particularly at risk of a serious vitamin D deficiency.

Such low levels could account for the high incidence of several chronic diseases in this country, Dr. Holick maintains. For example, he said, in the Northeast, where sun exposure is reduced and vitamin D levels consequently are lower, cancer rates are higher than in the South. Likewise, rates of high blood pressure, heart disease, and prostate cancer are higher among dark-skinned Americans than among whites.

ADDITIONAL INFO

QUICK FACTS: Vitamin D

MARATON DE RIO DE JANEIRO - UN RESUMEN DE LA CARRERA

2010-07-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

**This is a guest post from my sister, who just competed in the Maraton de Rio de Janeiro with her husband Federico**

You can find my other Race Reports HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Hola - from Argentina! Drew asked me to recap my race report, so here it goes... Federico & I ran the Rio de Janeiro Marathon (42Km) on July 18, 2010. Official Time: 4 hours 18 minutes 32 seconds (which is approximately 6 minutes per km). Not bad if I say so myself!

We decided we would embark on a 23 week training program and run the marathon crossing the finish line together (the couple who runs together, stays together!). Before I get into to the training & the race, I want to tell you that this whole experience has been something we will always look back on and think "we did it!... together!!" We selected the Rio marathon based upon the view of the beach, not too many inclines, a cool course/ experience, and a great excuse to go to Brasil.

As our Valentines Day gift to each other, we decided to start training on February 14! Here is a look at the breakdown of our "Distance Days"

1/ Feb 14 - 3 miles, 5 K
2/ Feb 21 - 3 miles, 5 K
3/ Feb 28 - 5 miles, 8 K
4/ March 7 - 5 miles, 8 K
5/ March 14 - 4 miles, 6.4 K
6/ March 21 - 6 miles, 9.6 K
7/ March 28 - 8 miles, 12.9 K
8/ April 4 - 10 miles, 16 K
9/ April 11 - 8 miles, 12.9 K
10/ April 18 - 10 miles, 16 K
11/ April 25 - 12 miles, 19.3 K
12/ May 2 - 10 miles, 16 K
13/ May 9 - 14 miles, 22.5 K
14/ May 16 - 12 miles, 19.3 K
15/ May 23 - 15 mile, 24.1 K
16/ May 30 - 18 miles, 29 K
17/ June 6 - 12 miles, 19.3 K
18/ June 13 - 18 miles, 29 K
19/ June 20 - 14 miles, 22.5 K
20/ June 27 - 21 miles, 33.8 K
21/ July 4 - 15 miles, 24.1 K
22/ July 11 - 13 miles, 20.9 K
23/ July 18 - RACE DAY, 26. 2 miles, 42 K

This is the same "Distance Day" training schedule I used for my first marathon in 2007. I think this is a friendly schedule if you are not in the recent habit of running for over an hour comfortably. I might have used the same outline for my long distance days, however I made many changes in general training. The biggest and most helpful change would be that I lift weights. This is HUGELY important. You do not train for a marathon by just running. You MUST lift weights. Your training (lifting & running) will vary as you go further into it, and you will have to adjust as your body responds to the many changes and demands. I consulted Drew many times throughout my training to ensure my weigh lifting was "SHOP-approved"... I can say that for me, the squats had the biggest impact on my leg strength. I have also recently dominated 75 push-ups, but that's a different blog! 23 weeks of training can be very monotonous, so make sure you add variety to spice things up. Not only did my "SHOP-approved" weight lifting improve my race time by over 30 minutes (that's right - 35 minutes people! I crushed my first time), but it also improved my general health of my joints and ability to recuperate faster after long runs. I previously experienced more knee pain, and longer periods of soreness after running. This training I was able to bounce back sooner, and just dominate as well. Thanks SHOP!

There is not one secret that works for everyone... just push yourself (on your runs, and in the gym), and listen to your body and make adjustments.

OK - now for the race day report!

We arrived to Rio on the 16th to some seriously stormy weather. Thank goodness we had so many rainy training days! We were very nervous about the weather. One thing is to run in a little rain, it is another to run a race in fierce winds and torrential downpour! Luckily, the rain stopped for the race! Whew!

We woke up at 4am, and were at the bus by 5:15 am to take us to the start line. The bus ride was about an hour long and took us to Recreio where we waited for over an hour. It was quite chilly outside, so we hunkered down next to a heater.

The race started at 7:30 am, and we were off! I was unfortunately already starving by 8am since I had breakfast at 4am (next time bring a snack). Every course is different, and no matter what you prepare for, there will always be surprises that serve as more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge. For example: the approximate 3-4 kilometer stretch where there was cobblestone every ten steps you took. I hated this, and it made this stretch take forever (and at such an early part of the race). But, we had constant views of the beach, which were quite nice.

The longest distance we trained to was 34 kilometers (21 miles), so we often hit a distance of 20 kilometers. I felt so strong at the halfway mark. I was mentally strong, and felt my legs just powering away. The course was completely flat thus far, so we hadnt experience any "challenges" yet. The only course surprise we had received was the total lack of crowd support. There were no cheering stations, or cool shows set up. We thought for sure there would be a "Carnaval Station" and a "Samba Station"... but no! Thank God for the iPods!

Sailing through kilometer 22

This was both of our favorite part of the race. Incredible views, and just feeling good (approx kilometer 24).

Sorry for the fuzzy pic - I was running you know!

Federico and I both hit a slump around kilometer 33 when we entered Ipanema Beach. I am not sure if it was the recent incline that took some steam out of me, or just some other reason. Luckily we know better than to tell each other "I am dying", as the feeling of dying is contagious! So, as I was dying, I looked at Federico who seemed perfect - and vice versa. We made it through. I knew once we hit the Copacabana we were so close to being there. I was so focused on the need to see the final stretch that I dont think I once looked (or cared) about the beach while in Copacabana. Ha! Also, my power song came on just in time to get me going again! Thank you Muse "Uprising"!

Once we hit the home stretch, we were so excited. Every amount of pain that you feel in your legs disappears (momentarily) and you just love it. We grabbed hands and raised them as we crossed! WE DID IT!

Rocking the SHOP t-shirt with the Marathon Medal at the Corcovado - Cristo Redentor

CHANGES TO DISD SCHOOL LUNCHES

2010-07-24T15:14:00.000-05:00

Lauren and I get a weekend edition of the Dallas Morning News (it's free, so I think everybody gets it), and there was a really interesting article in it yesterday:

Dallas ISD taking lead role in making school lunches more nutritious

FAVORITE EXCERPTS

So long, nachos. Hello, brown rice. Dallas school students can also say goodbye to high-sugar cereals, potato chips and sundry other snacks when they return to school this fall.

Finally! Not that school lunches have any impact on me since I don't have any kids, but this at least shows that somebody is paying attention and making things happen. This new system still may not be perfect, but who could argue that taking nachos off the menu isn't a step in the right direction!

The marching orders to improve children's nutrition come from the top. First lady Michelle Obama has made the issue a hallmark of her office, and the U.S. Agriculture Department has a competition encouraging schools to offer more nutritious food.

I am absolutely not going to get into a political debate, but this is a move that I will applaud.

Hamburgers and oven fries will be offered only once every two weeks at the middle school and elementary level. And breaded and pre-fried foods will be on the menu more sparingly. New items will include black bean burgers, hummus plates and Asian chicken bowls. Romaine lettuce and spinach will take the place of iceberg lettuce in salads. Brown rice will replace white rice.

Just like with most things, to truly make change it must be addressed via progressions. Rather than eliminating fries, they will bake them in the oven vs. deep-frying them and they will serve them less often. Continue to serve burgers, but instead of beef (low-quality, most likely) all the time mix in some black bean burgers. Iceburg lettuce = waste of space. So seeing this get replaced with spinach and romaine is a wonderful thing. Over time, significant changes will definitely take place.

The healthy upgrades do come at a price. DISD already spends about $80 million each year providing 120,000 lunches, 46,000 breakfasts and 10,000 after-school snacks. The new menu's food and supplies could cost up to an extra $3 million this year, said Brad Trudeau, the district's director of food production and procurement.

Sure $3 million is a lot of money, but let's be honest, it only represents a 3.75% cost increase over the previous year and an infinite improvement in quality. We can't even begin to calculate the costs saved in other areas such as a reduction in the childhood obesity epidemic, future healthcare costs saved for these children, and so on.

Bravo DISD.

EATING TO LIVE OR LIVING TO EAT?

2010-07-24T14:57:00.000-05:00

I was on a plane about two weeks ago coming home from Minneapolis, and I saw the guy in front of me reading the Wall Street Journal. On the front page of the “Personal Journal” was the following article:

Eating to Live or Living to Eat?
Stomach vs. Brain: Discovering Why Some People Can Resist Dessert While Others Can’t

Needless to say, it caught my attention. When he was done reading it I asked him if I could take a look. If he objected, I was going to take it anyway and then kick his ass for being a jerk. Luckily for him, he didn’t object.

The premise behind the article was actually very interesting (why are some people “able” to resist dessert while others are seemingly “unable”). They also used a scenario that hits very close to home…the office birthday party! Ever since I entered corporate America, I have been “that guy” who never eats cake or brownies at someone’s mid-afternoon birthday celebration. And I always get chastised for it, but it doesn’t bother me. I actually enjoy it! (Quick tangent: for my birthday, some of my co-workers served raw veggies, hummus, and fruit, and everybody destroyed it and raved about how good it was. For the next birthday, though, it was back to cake…how disappointing)

Basically what the article tells us is that there are two systems that govern hunger cues, the homeostatic system and the hedonic system.

Eating for Survival – The Homeostatic System
This system controls signals from your body to indicate that your body is lacking in something such as water, nutrients, or energy.

Eating for Pleasure – The Hedonic System
This system is governed by the reward system in your brain. Simply seeing or smelling a food can result in the release of dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter that has many roles in the brain, one of which is reward.

FAVORITE EXCERPTS

Scholars have understood the different motives for eating as far back as Socrates, who counseled, ‘Thou shouldst eat to live, not live to eat.’

Socrates: Born 469 BC, Died 399 BC. That’s a long time ago, but he was obviously onto something!

This reminds me of another of my favorite quotes, also from a Greek (but a physician, not a philosopher) who lived around the same time as Socrates:

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”
-Hippocates, known as the father of Western medicine: Born 460 BC, Died 377 BC.

‘When obese people see high-calorie foods, a widespread network of brain areas involved in reward, attention, emotion, memory and motor planning is activated, and all the areas talk to each other, making it hard for them to resist,’ says Susan Carnell, a research psychologist at the New York Obesity Research Center at Saint-Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital and Columbia University and one of the investigators.

I really dislike this comment. Perhaps this is truly a “chicken or the egg” scenario, but I doubt it. The researcher gives the impression that obese people react differently to seeing the foods simply because they are obese. I tend to believe that certain people react differently to seeing foods and as a result (over time) they have become obese.

Studies have found that a diet of sweet, high-fat foods can indeed blunt the body's built-in fullness signals. Most of them emanate from the digestive tract, which releases chemical messengers including cholecystokinin, glucagon-like peptide and peptide YY when the stomach and intestines are full. Those signals travel up to the brain stem and then the hypothalamus, telling the body to stop eating.

This concept was the main premise behind the book The End of Overeating. More specifically, how the food industry manipulates the combination of sugar, fat, and salt in foods to influence the quantity of food people eat.

Obesity also throws off the action of leptin, a hormone secreted by fat tissue that tells the hypothalamus how much energy the body has stored. Leptin should act as a brake against overeating, and it does in normal-weight people. But most obese people have an overabundance of leptin, and somehow their brains are ignoring the signal. All these findings beg the question, which came first? Does obesity disrupt the action of leptin, or does a malfunction in leptin signaling make people obese?

…are some people obese because their brains overreact to tempting food, or do their brains react that way because something else is driving them to overeat? Researchers at Yale and elsewhere are turning to such questions next. ‘It's possible that these changes reflect how the brain has adapted to eating patterns in obese people, and that could create a vicious circle, putting them at risk for even more disordered eating,’ says Dr. Small.

CASE STUDY FOLLOW-UP

2010-07-18T10:34:00.002-05:00

If you haven't read the story behind the SHOP Training Case Study, you can find it HERE.

The results from Max Out Day are in. The pre-test was as follows:

1-arm pushups - max reps with each arm

1-leg squats - max reps with each leg

Pullups - max reps

5k time trial

RESULTS:

1-arm pushups - 7 (R), 5 (L)

1-leg squats - 10 (R), 7 (L)

Pullups - 6

5k time trial - 22:09

First thoughts: there appears to be a dominant side! Nothing too shocking about this though, and there is a very easy way to shore up that discrepancy. When performing a unilateral exercise (e.g. 1-arm pushups), simply start with the weaker side. When you get to the stronger side, don't do more reps than you did with the weaker side even if you have some gas left in the tank.

After talking through goals and such, I came up with the following template for the week:

DAY 1 - Strength Training
DAY 2 - Yoga
DAY 3 - Aerobic Conditioning (such as 5k, 10k, swimming, etc.)
DAY 4 - Explosive Training
DAY 5 - Anaerobic Conditioning (such as hill sprints or interval training)
DAY 6 - Integrated Circuit Training (including burpees and other conditioning drills)
DAY 7 - Active Recovery (swimming, beach volleyball, walking, extra flexibility/yoga, rest, etc.)

The basic template won't change much from week to week, but the specifics of each day will certainly change. The volume and intensity of strength training and occasionally the specific exercises will change, the form of conditioning will change, and the exercises used in the conditioning circuit will certainly change. I think this will provide a nice mix and I think the post-test after his 7 week training cycle will show some good improvements.

PROGRAM DESIGN CASE STUDY

2010-07-11T15:07:00.000-05:00

SHOP TRAINING CASE STUDY

A friend of mine contacted me earlier in the week to get my thoughts on training while out of town (and I mean out of town for an extended period of time, not just the weekend). More specifically, he said he had "the intention of doing plenty of strength work without setting foot inside a gym."

I already had a decent idea of the things he was interested in, but before I could actually put together a program for him, I needed to determine a few more things:

What are his goals?
What type of training does he actually enjoy?
What has his training consisted of for the past 6 months?
How much time per week can he commit to the program?

After a little back and forth, I sent him a Google Doc containing the first 2 weeks of his program. I will share the details in a subsequent post.

The next order of business was to establish a baseline. In order to have meaningful feedback at the end of the program, we need to know exactly where he is today. That means MAX OUT DAY!! However, since one of the criteria was "without setting foot inside a gym," that meant we had to get a little creative with our exercise selection and testing criteria. The test was as follows:

1-arm pushups - max reps with each arm

1-leg squats - max reps with each leg

Pullups - max reps

5k time trial

Since we didn't have the luxury of added resistance, we just had to use a more challenging variation of each particular exercise. Also, that makes it difficult to actually find a 1-repetition maximum, so instead we opted for max reps of each particular exercise (since we were going with harder variations, the total reps stayed relatively low).

Here is our trade-off: I gladly put the program together, and it was completely gratis. I will be available for ongoing technical support for the duration of the program (should he need it). In return, he will keep detailed records of his performances throughout the week and his progress over time. When possible he will provide video content that I can use on my blog. Also, at the end of the program, if he is happy with his progress and has achieved his short-term goals, he will write a guest post in which he details his experience with my programming.

A couple of things I hope to determine with this case study:

I know I can effectively program for myself, but can I do it for others?
Equally as important as results, can I put together a program that has the correct mix of things "someone should do" and things "someone likes to do"?

JIU-JITSU UPDATE

2010-07-11T14:32:00.000-05:00

I've been training at Machado Jiu-Jitsu for a little over 3 months now and my attendance has been very consistent. Except for 2 weeks when I was out of town, I have been regularly 3 times per week.

Anyway, last Friday July 9th was belt testing! This is where you get to demonstrate the skills and techniques that have been taught over the previous 3 months so that the instructors can determine if you have demonstrated mastery of said techniques.

This was my first belt test and I had no idea what to expect. The testing was to begin at 7pm and go until 9pm, so I showed up at about 5:30pm to warm up and review some techniques with a few other people there. The best part about the more advanced guys is that they remember what it was like to be a white belt. There were several guys, ranging from blue belt to purple belt to brown belt, who offered to run through some technique with me.

After I was loose, we started from the feet. We reviewed some takedowns and some throws, and we would have to know several of each for the test. Next we moved to the ground and covered some guard passes and a few submissions once you passed guard (either from side control or the mount). We also had to know several escapes...this time when I was the guy on bottom of side control or the mount.

We practiced for well over an hour, and then it was time for the testing to start. We broke out into our various ranks...white belts stayed with white belts, etc. With about 6 instructors walking around, Master Carlos would shout out a situation (e.g. guard passes!) and then each of us would have to demonstrate anywhere from 2-4 techniques depending on the situation while the other instructors walked around and took notes and critiqued.

After 2 solid hours of technique work, plus the hour that I put in before hand, I was pretty well spent. I feel like I learned more in those three hours than in all of my training combined.

Also, before they actually awarded the new ranks to everybody, we each had one 5-minute round of rolling. There was an odd number of white belts, so they picked my to roll with a guy who was going for his blue belt. He definitely had better technique than I did, but I was able to hold my own and even get him in a few tough spots!

I'm in the back row towards the middle

The instructors, Master Machado in the khaki gi third from right

They belt test every three months, so in October I'll be going for a second blue stripe on my white belt. After three stripes, it will be time to move on to the blue belt!

WHAT I'M READING

2010-05-31T14:23:00.000-05:00

I just started a new textbook called "The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition." This is a text written by the guys at Precision Nutrition. It's approximately a 450 page text, and it is definitely not a quick read, so I think as part of my studying I will make each chapter into a blog post (not a bad way to review the material, eh?). There are two "units" of the textbook. Unit 1 covers Nutritional Science (starting at the atomic level) and Unit 2 covers the Art of Nutrition Coaching.

I read two chapters yesterday and filled out the accompanying workbook (basically some review questions to make sure you understand the material in each chapter).

Chapter 0 - What is Good Nutrition?

The best way to achieve any goal is simply to identify the limiting factors (in other words, what is stopping you from reaching that goal?) and remove them. From a health perspective, there are essentially three types of limiting factors:

Genetics
Physical Activity
Nutrition

Although genes play a role in every single function that occurs in the human body, it is unlikely that someone's genetics are their true limiting factor. Everyone has the ability to improve in some meaningful way, but perhaps not everyone can be an Olympic-level athlete. That leaves us with just physical activity and nutrition.

Exercise is a crucial component of health and longevity. Regular movement or activity of any kind is essential for maintaining movement quality throughout one's lifetime (think "use it or lose it").

Nutrition, however, is the most important aspect of one's health, and it is almost always the biggest limiting factor that prevents someone from reaching their health-related goals. So what is good nutrition?

Good nutrition must meet four criteria:

it must property control energy balance
it must provide nutrient density
it must achieve health, performance, and body composition goals
it must be honest and outcome-based

Now to cover each of those four in a little more detail...

Energy balance is simply the relationship between all sources of energy intake and energy output. Someone can be in a state of energy balance, positive energy balance, or negative energy balance. There are also many ways of achieving energy balance. One can increase energy outputs to match a high level of energy inputs. One could also decrease energy inputs to match a low level of energy outputs. Also, any combination of those could also work.

So should someone be in balance or in a positive or negative energy state? As with most questions, the answer is "it depends". There are positives and negatives to each scenario, and also whatever the "correct" answer for someone may be today will likely not be the case at some point in the future. Both positive and negative energy balance affect everything from metabolism to hormonal balance and mood.

A negative energy balance will lead to weight loss, but either a sustained or intense negative energy balance will also result in your body going into starvation mode. All non-survival functions will begin to slow down or shut down altogether (metabolic function, brain function, and reproductive function to name a few).

A positive energy balance will lead to weight gain (not necessarily bad if the weight is lean body mass), and it can also lead to poor health and cellular fitness. Plaques can build up in arteries, blood pressure and cholesterol can increase, and insulin resistance can result. Also, risk for certain cancers is correlated with weight gain (or being overweight).

Nutrient density is just the ratio of nutrients (vitamins, minerals, fiber, etc.) to calories in a food. A food with high nutrient density contains a large amount of key nutrients per 100 calories of food. Calorie density, on the other hand, is simply the ratio of calories to the actual weight of the food. Unless someone is purposely trying to gain weight (a young, undersized athlete or someone just wanting to pack on muscle for aesthetic purposes, etc.), the best combination of nutrient and calorie density for improving health would be a diet high in nutrient dense-foods and low in calorie-dense foods. The benefits of this combination or the following: easily controlled calorie intake (it is difficult to overeat broccoli!), longer periods of satiation, higher total essential nutrient intake, and more essential nutrients per volume of food.

Good nutrition is more than just weight loss or weight gain (which are just transient indicators of energy balance). Good nutrition must be a long-term set of habits that include goals related to health, performance, and body composition. To use an extreme example, someone who was solely interested in weight loss could get liposuction. In the short term, it would definitely result in a loss of body mass. However, it would do nothing for that person's health (think blood pressure, cholesterol, insulin sensitivity, etc.) or performance (performance doesn't have to be a sport, it could simply be moving around easily without pain).

Finally, good nutrition requires one to be honest with themselves and use outcome-based decision making. If someone says "I followed the plan exactly, but I still didn't lose the weight" then it is likely that one of two things is happening: they didn't really follow the plan, or the plan sucks. If someone consistently does the right things, results must follow. Cause and effect. So if the results aren't coming, it's time to evaluate both the plan and the compliance with said plan.

My next blog will cover Chapter 1 - Cell Structure and Function. I'll try to strictly limit it to how nutrition impacts cellular structure and function.

MIKE TYSON AND ZION NATIONAL PARK

2010-05-23T18:28:00.000-05:00

Q: What do Mike Tyson and Zion National Park have in common?

A: I saw both of them last weekend!!

First I'll cover Zion National Park...

I wrote the first installment of destination training about 2 1/2 months ago (HERE), and Lauren and I just got back Sunday night from the second episode! This time we were in Utah (Springdale and St. George) trekking through Zion National Park!

On Thursday morning we drove to Springdale, UT, which is where the entrance to Zion is located, and we hiked for about 5 hours! We went up to Angel's Landing, which was absolutely incredible! Once you got near the top, the path was only 3-4 feet wide with shear drops on either side...kinda freaky, but badass for sure.

ANGEL'S LANDING

The second morning we woke up early and set out on a longer hike with greater elevation gain called Observation Point. The morning started off pretty chilly (mid-50's) and we were in the shade for the first 2 hours! Once we climbed high enough, and as the morning got older, we started to feel the sun. It warmed up to a very nice mid-70's temperature and it was incredible. Total distance round-trip was 8 miles, total hiking time was 6 hours, and total elevation gain was over 2,100 feet! The peak featured some spectacular views as well!

OBSERVATION POINT

Finally, to cap off a great weekend, guess who we saw in the Las Vegas airport while waiting for our return flight home...

MIKE TYSON!!

I took that picture of him, and I was actually next in line to get my picture taken with him, but his entourage told him it was time to move on. DAMN! I actually thought about getting some video of him knocking me out...that would have gone viral in under 30 seconds!!

In honor of Iron Mike, here are a few of my favorite quotes. Enjoy!

"Everyone has a gameplan until they get punched in the face."

"My main objective is to be professional but to kill him."

"He called me a rapist and a recluse. I'm not a recluse."

FAMILY FUN AT THE TRACK

2010-05-23T17:30:00.000-05:00

Yeah you read that right, today is Sunday, and for fun Lauren and I went up to the track to spend some quality time together (and by "quality time" I mean we busted our asses running 800m intervals).

After a thorough warm-up including foam rolling, stretching, and mobility drills for the hips, we headed up to the track. We spent about 15 minutes on the agility ladder performing various drills to get the blood flowing and to prepare for the more strenuous work we were about to do.

The workout for today was 4 x 800m. We ran them separately, so while I was running Lauren was resting and vice versa. Since our times were comparable, our work:rest ratio was right at 1:1 (I'll detail the times below, but is was basically 2:30 of work followed by 2:30 of rest).

Here were our times:

DREW

Sprint #1 - 2:25

Sprint #2 - 2:32

Sprint #3 - 2:34

Sprint #4 - 2:33

I was going to punish myself with some burpees if my 4th sprint wasn't faster than my 3rd...I barely made it!!

LAUREN

Sprint #1 - 2:29

Sprint #2 - 2:34

Sprint #3 - 2:33

Sprint #4 - 2:33

Lauren managed to improve her time from #2 to #3 and then maintained it for #4, so she was exempt from burpee punishment as well.

It was a solid workout, we were both completely spent by the end of it (there was a terrible head-wind on the home-stretch that really made us push), and it was sunny and not too hot (about 85 degrees).

CERTIFIED STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING SPECIALIST

2010-05-17T22:00:00.000-05:00

I am officially a member of the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) and a true, card-carrying Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), although my card hasn’t arrived in the mail yet!

The CSCS is universally considered the gold standard in the industry.

I took the test about a week and a half ago (May 7^th), and I just got the results back this past Friday (May 14^th) while Lauren and I were on our vacation in Utah (hiking and mountain biking).

So obviously I passed since I mentioned that I’m officially a member now, but I didn’t just pass…I got a 90% and I finished the 4 ½ hour test in approximately 1 ½ hours! That’s not to say it was easy, but rather that I studied my ass off and I was very well prepared. For the last 8 weeks I was up at 5:00 am (including Saturdays and occasionally Sundays) to study for about an hour and a half before I had to leave for work (but after enjoying a delicious mushroom and broccoli omelet with some coffee and a grapefruit). That’s considerably more than I studied for any one thing in college despite the fact that I was a double-major in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Rice!

Anyway, back to the CSCS…

Taken straight from the website:

Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialists (CSCSs) are professionals who apply scientific knowledge to train athletes for the primary goal of improving athletic performance. They conduct sport-specific testing sessions, design and implement safe and effective strength training and conditioning programs and provide guidance regarding nutrition and injury prevention. Recognizing that their area of expertise is separate and distinct, CSCSs consult with and refer athletes to other professionals when appropriate.

What I really liked about this designation and the studying that was required was that the foundation was based on anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, and biomechanics. It obviously includes detailed sections for exercise prescription, but even those sections are scientifically-backed as opposed to just throwing out blanket statements for a general population. Further, the CSCS is sport- and athlete-specific. It is not geared towards the typical personal training client.

More about my CSCS in a future post! Just one piece of the puzzle that is life!

5 WAYS TO BE INVINCIBLE

2010-05-17T21:57:00.000-05:00

The folks at Precision Nutrition put together another great article that touches on nutrition and related topics, but it’s actually more about human nature! Very interesting stuff!

5 Ways to Be Invincible

Here’s the opening line, and needless to say it hooked me:

Do you think the following habits would enhance your chances of living a long, healthy and productive life?

Exercising for 2 ½ hours each week
Maintaining a healthy body weight (BMI under 25)
Eating at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables each day
Not smoking

So it seems pretty clear that the answer is a resounding “YES” right? Well, according to one study sample that is presented in the article, only 3% of Americans engage in all of these behaviors! That is embarrassingly low.

A few more interesting statistics from the article:

50% of Americans will die of either cardiovascular disease or cancer! Check out some of these diagrams that detail the contribution of environment and lifestyle on cancer:
49% of Americans take prescription drugs (I’d love to know if this statistic is actually 49% of American adults or just Americans. If it is the latter, imagine how high the percentage of American adults who are on prescription drugs would be once you remove children and adolescents!)
The cost (both direct and indirect) of cardiovascular disease in 2008 was estimated to be $475 billion.

Now, for the conclusion of the article, several of the experts on staff at Precision Nutrition answered the following question:

If you could only choose 5 top strategies to prevent disease and enhance wellness, what would those be?

Of course most of them mentioned the importance of eating plenty of vegetables and getting adequate exercise, but quite a few of the responses included some of the lifestyle habits that we don’t often think about such as sleep, stress management, socializing, and accountability. Coincidentally I blogged about each of these in a previous post HERE.

SLEEP – Sleep and rest help keep a clear and focused mind, as well as allowing for better control over our hormonal physiology.

STRESS – Excessive stress can hinder every component of our lives, and most stress is either imaginary or self-imposed. Purge stressors.

SOCIALIZING – Basically, 100% of the longest-lived societies on the planet have strong social networks…why try to reinvent the wheel?

ACCOUNTABILITY – A lack of success is very rarely a case of “I tried, but it didn’t work.” More likely it is something along the lines of “I didn’t make the necessary changes to achieve my goals.”

WEIGHING THE EVIDENCE ON EXERCISE

2010-04-23T07:49:00.002-05:00

The New York Times just ran an article titled Weighing the Evidence on Exercise in which it discusses the effects that exercise has on bodyweight. All in all, I thought it was a really good article. The author presents the latest evidence from the scientific community, but excludes the sensationalism and personal anecdotes that were littered throughout that terrible article from TIME Magazine titled Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin (don’t forget about my blog post about that article HERE).

A couple of my favorite parts:

“Exercise burns calories, no one doubts that, and so it should, in theory, produce weight loss, a fact that has prompted countless people to undertake exercise programs to shed pounds. Without significantly changing their diets, few succeed.”

“…a growing body of science suggests that exercise does have an important role in weight loss. That role, however, is different from what many people expect and probably wish. The newest science suggests that exercise alone will not make you thin, but it may determine whether you stay thin, if you can achieve that state.” [emphasis mine]

“In a study published late last month in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from Harvard University looked at the weight-change histories of more than 34,000 participants in a women’s health study. The women began the study middle-aged (at an average of about 54 years) and were followed for 13 years. During that time, the women gained, on average, six pounds. Some packed on considerably more. But a small subset gained far less, coming close to maintaining the body size with which they started the study. Those were the women who reported exercising almost every day for an hour or so.” [emphasis mine]

“…if you can somehow pry off the pounds, exercise may be the most important element in keeping the weight off.”

I really liked the fact that the author simply presented the evidence as is and lets the reader decide how (if at all) to apply it to their own lifestyle. Providing a blanket exercise or diet prescription to a large population will never work because those two concepts are highly variable among individuals.

The truth is there are no universal truths.

This article was from the PHYS ED section of the NY Times Health Blogs. I have only glanced at the article archives, but it appears to be a pretty solid source. Here are a few others that caught my eye:

Risks for Youths Who Eat What They Watch

How Exercising Keeps Your Cells Young

ACTIVE RELEASE TECHNIQUES

2010-04-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

One of my main goals following hip surgery was to restore movement and mobility of my hip, but not just to the level that it was at previously…I wanted to exceed my previous levels! Proper movement doesn’t just feel better, it actually results in improved training, increased resistance to injury, and improved restoration and recovery from training (not to mention the obvious longevity benefits).

My surgery cleared up the movement limitation related to my bone structure, now I have to deal with the limitation related to my soft tissue structure (muscle, fascia, tendons, etc.).

This is where Active Release Techniques (ART) come into play!

Taken straight from the website, ART is a “soft tissue system of movement based massage technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves.” Muscles and other soft tissues can develop tough, dense scar tissue in areas as a result of acute conditions (pulls, tears, collisions), accumulation of small tears (micro-trauma), and from a lack of oxygen (hypoxia). This scar tissue restricts tissues that need to be able to move freely and as a result muscles can become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons can cause inflammation, and nerves can become trapped.

So, I found an ART provider right by my office and made an appointment to get checked out. This guy performed a very thorough battery of tests to assess my movement quality and to determine areas where I may have issues. Not surprisingly, my hamstrings were tight, my hip flexors and hip rotators were tight, my pelvis was in poor alignment (anterior tilt) and my mobility was pretty bad as a result. I do sit at a desk all day, which pretty much explains every one of those conditions! Although I do foam rolling (a form of soft tissue work) and mobility almost every day, that only takes about 15 minutes. Conversely, I am sitting down at my desk every weekday from about 8:00 am to 6:00 pm (10 hours), plus roughly an hour roundtrip commute…11 hours everyday in the seated position. This is a big problem!! I can do all the soft tissue work in the world and this ART practitioner can work his magic on my affected areas, but if I keep up the same behavior that caused the problems in the first place, none of it will matter!

Back to my ART session…. As part of the assessment, I had to lie on my back while he pushed my knee towards my chest (the other leg remained flat). It didn’t come very close to my chest, and he said it was due to my anterior pelvic tilt (top of my pelvis was tilted forward as a result of excessively tight hip flexors). With my pelvis in that position, my hip will essentially hit a “road block” before it can be flexed fully. To treat this, he put manual pressure on my hip flexors while my hip and knee were in the flexed position. I then performed a series of contract-relax motions (while he resisted my movement so my leg wasn’t actually going anywhere) and after each contract sequence he would push my knee further towards my chest. After just 3 attempts, my knee was able to move all the way up to my chest with ease!! I was in uncharted territory!!

There were several other tests that I initially failed and then magically passed after just a few minutes of soft tissue manipulation. Now don’t get me wrong, the changes he was able to make are not permanent. In fact, if I don’t work hard to maintain this soft tissue quality and movement it will all have been for naught. After all, I will create soft tissue “damage” every time I train, but now it will be up to me to manage this damage as well as I possibly can.

There was also one of those “it’s a small world” moments at my first appointment. As soon as I walked in, he introduced himself to me and said “you look familiar.” I figured he was just trying to be personable, so I responded “well maybe, but this is my first time in this gym.” He then asked me if I train in jiu jitsu over at Carlos Machado’s, and I said F*CK YEAH I DO! This guy is actually a purple belt under Carlos Machado!!

As if this situation couldn’t get any better, this guy offices in the Telos Fitness Center, which is a bad-ass gym, and they just happen to have 2,500 sf of jiu jitsu mats down in the basement of the facility! I had two appointments with this guy last week for ART, and after the second appointment we went downstairs and rolled (that’s jiu jitsu for “practiced”) for an hour. Since he’s a purple belt, he could toss me around quite a bit (he’s also pretty big…about my height but about 225 lbs compared to my 195 lbs), but he also taught me quite a few things. We’re going to try to get some weekly rolling in!

JAMIE OLIVER'S FOOD REVOLUTION - EPISODE 2

2010-04-12T07:41:00.000-05:00

Check out my RECAP of Episode 1 of ABC’s new show called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

For all episodes and other short clips, go to Hulu’s “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” Channel.

Episode 2

RECAP

EPISODE 2

Jamie invited some of the kids from the elementary school to his kitchen (just some retail space in the town that they built out for him) to run a little experiment. All of the kids know what chicken nuggets are, but none of them wanted to eat the real chicken that he prepared for them yesterday (see my previous post about Episode 1 HERE). So, he ran what he calls a “fool proof” experiment to see if these kids would still like chicken nuggets if they knew how they were made.

He proceeded to take a whole chicken and cut off the breasts, thighs, legs, and wings. He chopped up the remainder of the carcass and threw it in a food processor to make a chicken “sludge” that looked absolutely disgusting. He ran it through a strainer to remove the bones, but all of the rest of the non-meat (e.g. connective tissue) was still in there. He then formed little patties, breaded them, and fried them up in a skillet. All of the kids were thoroughly disgusted. However, when he actually offered the finished nuggets for them to eat, they all accepted!!

In the next part, he returns to the elementary school for a shot at redemption. The catch this time is that the kids will only have one option…Jamie’s meal! This time he prepares a tuna pasta with seven veggies, a mixed salad, and homemade focaccia bread.

My favorite part about this segment:

The lady from the school board tells him that he doesn’t have enough vegetables in his dish! Despite the fact that it contains seven different veggies, the volume just wasn’t enough. SOLUTION: add French fries!! That’s right, French fries technically count as a vegetable.

Jamie then checks back in with the family that I mentioned from Episode 1 to see how they were doing. After each person said they loved the recipes and were surprised how easy they were to make, he decided to check in the fridge. Sure enough, all of the food he bought was still in there and they hadn’t eaten any of it! The daughter revealed that they had been eating pizza all week since they didn’t have their deep fryer anymore.

Interesting piece:

The teenage boy from this family was taken to the doctor to evaluate his health. The doctor, before performing any tests, tells him that he likely has diabetes based on the discoloration of the skin on his neck. Fortunately for the kid, the test came back negative, but the doctor told him it would only be a matter of time if he didn’t make drastic changes.

Jamie offers the kid one-on-one cooking lessons so that he won't be dependent on his parents for meals (which hasn't seemed to work out very well), but more importantly because it will help him with the ladies!

Back at the cafeteria, the kids actually enjoyed his meal (amazing what happens when you take away an option like pizza)! The one problem, his meal came in over budget. The woman from the school district allows him to continue his project after Jamie's assures her that he can get the costs down. He is even allowed to extend the program to the local high school to see how his ideas will work with a different demographic.

Episode 3 Recap following soon...

100 BURPEE CHALLENGE

2010-04-11T10:23:00.000-05:00

Since my hip surgery, or I should say since the successful completion of my rehab, I've been incorporating quite a bit of conditioning work (anaerobic conditioning...I'm not a huge fan of steady-state cardio). I decided to set a baseline on Friday (April 9th) from which to gauge my progress.

The baseline workout: The 100 Burpee Challenge!

It's pretty simple...do 100 burpees as fast as possible. Rest as needed, drink water as needed, but just get 'em done!

I wasn't sure what to expect from my baseline time since I haven't done the 100 Burpee Challenge since sometime before my surgery (it's been at least 6 months). But I didn't really care either, because that is the whole point behind setting a baseline. Just figure out where you are at a given time, then work to improve.

Here's the proof:

The breakdown:

In my opening set I got 30, which I was pretty pleased with. I tried to keep rest in between sets to about 30 seconds. The rest of my sets went like this: 20, 15, 15, 10, 10. So the whole thing was 30, 20, 15, 15, 10, 10 and I shortened the rest before the last set to only 15 seconds since the end was within reach.

Total Time: 7:15 (this was actually a PR by 35 seconds!!) I am very pleased with the time, and best of all, immediately after I was done I thought of a few places where I can shave off a little bit of time! I think I'll retest this coming Friday to see if I'm right.

JAMIE OLIVER'S FOOD REVOLUTION

2010-04-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

ABC has a new show out called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. It airs on Friday nights, but you can always just do what I do and watch it online:

For all episodes and other short clips, go to Hulu’s “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” Channel.

Episode 1

PREMISE

There have been three episodes so far, and I must say I’m hooked! It’s like a car wreck…you just can’t look away! The premise is pretty simple, so I’ll just steal it straight from ABC’s website:

“Jamie Oliver is here to start a revolution. The impassioned chef is taking on obesity, heart disease and diabetes in the USA, where our nation's children are the first generation NOT expected to live as long as their parents.

The series is loosely based on Jamie Oliver's U.K. series, Jamie's Ministry of Food and Jamie's School Dinners, which saw his successful grass-roots efforts improve the school lunches in communities there. For the latter show, it resulted in a total overhaul of the school dinner program in the U.K. In America, he's turning his attention to helping people of all ages eat more balanced meals and cook with fresh ingredients, not only at schools, but also homes, and workplaces.”

RECAP

EPISODE 1

Huntington, West Virginia was named the unhealthiest city in America, so Jamie decides to use this town as the starting point of this grass-roots movement. The local school district gives him one week to take over the kitchen at one of the elementary schools to see if he can provide the kids with healthier options while staying within the current budget.

A couple of interesting points about the current food system:

· They serve the kids pizza for breakfast

· There is only 1 thing made fresh in the school kitchen…rolls (but the kids never eat them and they are thrown away). Everything else comes pre-cooked, packaged, and all the lunch ladies have to do is heat and serve.

Later on in the episode Jamie was introduced to a family of 6…all obese. He discussed their typical eating habits with them and went through their fridge and pantry to assess the situation and, needless to say, it was pretty grim. He decided to give them a shopping list and even paid for 1 week’s worth of groceries along with cooking lessons and recipes that they can make for the week. Their progress will be revisited in a later episode.

An interesting note about the family:

· Their most-used piece of kitchenware was a deep fryer! Jamie buried it in the backyard.

Finally, at the end of this episode, we get to see Jamie’s trial run at the elementary school cafeteria. On the first day, the kids will be given a choice between their usual fare (pizza, bread, and chocolate milk) or Jamie’s special menu (roast chicken, brown rice, salad, yogurt and fruit). As I’m sure you would guess, virtually all of the kids chose pizza.

A few of my favorite tidbits from this part:

· Jamie’s meal was deemed nutritionally insufficient by the person in charge of food for the school district! His meal had protein, fruits, vegetables, and yogurt…but guess what it was lacking…MORE BREAD! In order to conform to the current guidelines, his meal would have to feature TWO bread items (the rice counted as one). WTF??

· To comply with the rules, he just used the fresh made bread from the cafeteria, but the kids didn’t choose his meal and they don’t eat the bread anyway!

· I’m amazed at the amount of food waste that they showed from this one elementary school.

After the first episode, this show looks promising! If all it does is raise awareness about the horrendous situation in public school cafeterias then it will be a win!

TRAINING UPDATE

2010-03-17T07:30:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, the doctor has given me the green light to resume full activities, and I have done just that! Not only have I started training in jiu jitsu (I'm a white belt, and my gi just came in the mail...I'll take a pic when I get it back from the dry cleaners), but I have also started performing all of the lifts and explosive movements that I enjoy so much in the SHOP.

Although it has been a week and a half since my doctor's visit, I was finishing one of my 4-week cycles last week, so I waited until this Monday to switch up my training. Here's what my workout looked like on Monday:

POWER
A1 Box Jumps
A2 MB Slams

STRENGTH
B1 Front Squat
B2 Chinups

C1 Bulgarian Split Squats
C2 Single-Arm Chinups (negatives)
C3 Standing Ab Wheel Rollouts

It certainly felt good to squat again, but I was extremely conservative. I was front squatting only 95 lbs (for reference, before my surgery I was performing sets of 4 reps with 275 lbs). I started that conservatively for a few reasons...first, this isn't a race and I've got the rest of my life to do front squats. Secondly, by starting out even lighter than I actually could have, I allow myself to increase the weight linearly for quite some time. I always like putting more weight on the bar, and I usually get pissed off if I have to use the same weight for a given exercise that I used the last time I performed it (even though constant linear progression is impossible).

Also, I had forgotten exactly how hard Bulgarian Split Squats are. My first set really jogged my memory though!

Tomorrow morning (Thursday) will be my first morning track workout since back in September. I'm fired up, and I'll definitely post a TRAINING RECAP similar to the ones back in the day!

JIU JITSU UPDATE

2010-03-13T15:58:00.000-06:00

I've been to two practices now...the first one was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and the second one was "No Gi Grappling." The main difference is the absence of a uniform in "No gi." The techniques are more or less the same, however in BJJ you can actually use your own gi or your opponents gi in your favor (to grip onto, to control your opponents arms, legs, or body). So far I have really enjoyed both types, and fortunately I don't have to pick just one. I can go to as many classes as I want (they even offer kickboxing, which I will probably go to from time to time just to work on striking...no sparring though...well maybe).

I really like the way the classes are structured too. After warming up, the instructor demonstrates a technique and then we partner up and drill that technique for a few minutes, making sure to cover both sides (offense and defense). Next, the instructor adds the "next move" to the technique and we drill the 2-step technique now for several minutes. Then, we try to apply these moves in more realistic scenarios (where your opponent is actually resisting). By first learning the technique, then practicing it, and finally trying to implement it in a "game situation" we learn in the best way possible while also learning to adapt when something doesn't work.

In other words, you have to develop a game plan, but always remember that the game plan is not written in stone. That reminds me of one of my favorite Mike Tyson quotes of all time:

Everyone has a game plan until they get punched in the face.

As for my hip, practicing these moves has really helped my mobility. It has taken my hip through pretty extreme ranges of motion, but not in a violent manner. As a result, I think it is actually improving my hip. I was a little tentative at first, but after taking it slowly and making sure that I'm always nice and warmed up I am getting more and more confidence in my hip every day. After practice today my hip felt incredible. I think this is the most mobile my hip has ever been...not just since my surgery!

Eventually I'll be tested to progress from belt to belt (with stripes in between). Maybe I can talk Lauren into coming to watch some of my belt tests and shooting some video!

MACHADO JIU JITSU

2010-03-11T07:08:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to train in jiu jitsu for some time now, and I actually did it for a short period several years ago. While I enjoyed the jiu jitsu training, the place I was at was more of a "fight club" and not a martial arts school. On my first night, I had to spar (boxing) against guys who are competitive fighters, and they were agressive and couldn't have cared less that I was a beginner. READ: They beat my ass! I wouldn't even mind the beating so much if I just stood a chance or could use it to learn and improve. None of that was happening...I was just a punching bag.

Anyway, to celebrate my good news from the doctor on Monday (he said "you're healed and free to resume full activities!"), I decided to look for a jiu jitsu school. Fortunately I found one just a half mile away from my office! Incredible!! I researched the school and the founder, Carlos Machado, and was thoroughly impressed.

If you read the Wikipedia entry, you'll notice that Carlos Machado was the personal jiu jitsu instructor for Chuck Norris!!

I attended an intro class last night where it was just me one-on-one with an instructor to teach me about the school and the coaches and their coaching style. AWESOME. I was sold. In fact, I signed up for 6 months already and my first class is tonight!!

WHAT I'M READING

2010-03-07T11:04:00.000-06:00

First, some good news about my hip. This Thursday (March 11th) represents the 20 Week mark in my recovery, which means that I will officially be cut loose to do whatever I want! No more limitations on my hip!!

This is actually a perfect segue into the post about what I'm currently reading:

The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer by Jonny Bowden

The title pretty much says it all, but the key words actually are in the subtitle (which I realize you probably can't read on such a small picture). They are "...optimum health and longevity." So it's not just about making it to old age, but more about getting there in the best way possible. With medical technology, doctors can prolong life, but that doesn't mean the added time will be of high quality.

On the very first page he talks about the "Functionality Curve" of aging. The typical curve (with function on the vertical axis and age on the horizontal axis) shows a steady decline in function as age increases. The concept of "rectangularizing" the functionality curve means maintaining high levels of functionality into older age, so instead of a downward sloping curve, you would see a level or ever-so-slightly decreasing curve. Rather than accept the "inevitable decline" associated with aging, I'm going to try to prove that theory wrong!! Because accepting the status quo just isn't as fun.

As a result of my hip surgery, I have thought long and hard about longevity, quality of life, and the pursuit of optimum wellness (I use the term wellness to encompass health, fitness, quality of life, mental fortitude, etc.). Although nothing I was doing prior to my hip surgery was in conflict with optimum wellness, the concept just wasn't at the forefront of my mind. It's safe to say that it is now firmly cemented there!

So on to the book...

I thought this book was incredible! Dr. Bowden does a great job of simplifying these complex topics without dumbing them down. In other words, he provides the scientific explanations that are backed up by tons of research and he explains them in ways that can be easily understood. He doesn't just say "vegetables are good."

The first section of the book was titled "Rein in the Four Horsemen of Aging." There are basically four processes that occur in the body that, either individually or more likely collectively, are responsible for the majority of what happens to the human body as it breaks down. The four processes are:

Oxidative damage (from free radicals)
Inflammation
Glycation
Stress

I don't want to recite the whole book (you should read it!), so I'll keep the explanations brief about the Four Horsemen:

Free Radicals

What they are: dangerous molecules created from oxygen that attack your cells and damage your DNA and “age you from within”

What to do: eat plenty of vegetables and fruits, all of which are high in antioxidants

Inflammation

What it is: a basic way the body reacts to injury or irritation; chronic inflammation is not noticeable because it does not necessarily cause any pain or symptoms but it damages vascular walls and is a factor in every single degenerative disease including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer, and obesity

What to do: eat plenty of vegetables and fruits, which are high in natural anti-inflammatories such as quercetin; supplement with fish oil and flax seeds (or flax oil)

Glycation

What it is: when sugar molecules glom onto protein or fat molecules, which results in circulation problems and the generation of free radicals

What to do: reduce sugar in your diet (or foods that the body quickly converts to sugar, such as breads, pastas, and other heavily refined starches); supplement with carnosine (which is also a powerful antioxidant)

Stress

What it is: any physical, mental, or emotional factor that causes mental tension or bodily harm; stress produces hormonal reactions in the body that can shrink parts of the brain, damage your vascular system, and increase blood sugar levels, heart rate, and blood pressure

What to do: meditation, deep breathing, and relaxing; a full night of restful, recuperative sleep; removal of the conditions that create stress, or balancing those conditions with exercise or other rewarding activities

The book is only about $16 on Amazon, and this section alone was well worth the cost. In fact, if this was the only section you read, you would be well armed to defend your body (or allow it to defend itself) against aging and breakdown.

Obviously I gave minimal explanations and recommendations above, but in the book Dr. Bowden gives very specific advice and recommendations. He even has a great chart that details specific antioxidants found in particular foods and what each antioxidant can do for your body (some provide benefits to the heart, others benefit the brain, etc.). This chart is further proof that variety is crucial!

Section II – How to Keep the Key Players in Your Body Fit

The Seven Pillars of Longevity

1. Food – There are more elements in them that can extend your life than science has been able to put it’s collective finger on (synergistic action of nutrients…no action in the body takes place in isolation)

2. Supplements - the more we learn about aging, the more we understand how specific nutrients can help (and often the doses necessary for a therapeutic effect are beyond what we can get from food alone)

3. Detoxification - we are constantly bombarded by toxins (from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the chemicals in our soil, medications, the hormones, antibiotics, and steroids in our meat, as well as countless other sources); giving the body a break from these toxins all of a sudden seems pretty important

4. Exercise - "there isn't a long-lived society on earth in which the members are not active"

5. Sleep - not getting enough sleep can impair immune function, elevate stress, and contribute to weight gain

6. Stress Reduction - "stress exacerbates virtually every disease of aging and many others as well"

7. Emotional Intelligence - "the absolute universal truth about anti-aging is that there is no anti-aging without a strong social fabric"

Further, Dr. Bowden goes into detail on the following critical components of longevity:

Keep Your Heart in Shape

How to Keep Your Brain Sharp

How to Protect and Maintain Strong Bones, Muscles, and Joints

Boost Your Immune System

In the interest of length, you'll have to read the book to get the details on these sections!

Section III – The Secrets of Emotional Intelligence: Underrated and Ignored – Until Now

I'm actually just starting this section, so I can't review it yet.

FINAL CONCLUSION: buy the book! You will learn a ton, your body will thank you, it's an entertaining read, and as previously mentioned it is only $16.

I've read two of his other books, and they were great as well:

I fully intend to read everything else he has written.

DESTINATION TRAINING

2010-03-06T12:33:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I were in Copper Mountain, CO last weekend for some skiing (or snow-shoeing in my case) and we had a great time! There was good snow, and of course it was really cold, but when you're prepared it actually feels great! At times the temperature was as low as 6 degrees, but no complaints from us.

Lauren got to ski most of the time, but she did break away from the pack (her sister and brother and their significant others) to come do some snow-shoeing with me. We also went over to the Frisco Nordic Center, which is just 5 miles down the road from Copper, to try out cross-country skiing. We rented the equipment and then went out on the practice course to get used to it and work on technique. Unfortunately, cross-country skiing did not agree with my hip! On the curves, which were all left turns like a running track, my left ski would stay in the tracks but my right ski would wander outside of the tracks (in effect, opening up my right hip)...NOT GOOD. After it happened twice, I decided that the risk wasn't worth it and I traded in my cross-country skis for snow-shoes again. The Nordic Center had the best trails that I got to experience. They were long, steep, and narrow with deep snow. It was challenging to say the least!

In case you were wondering about the title of this blog post, the reasoning is simple...I didn't just walk with my snow-shoes on, I did hill sprints!! What did you expect??

One afternoon, after a 3-hour long snow-shoe hike in the morning, I went back out to one of the hills and ran 8 sprints. It was absolutely exhausting!

Lauren and I have more destination training coming up too! Two of our friends are getting married in Utah in May, so we're going out there a few days early to spend some time in Zion National Park for hiking, mountain biking, and all kinds of other activities!

MORE AWESOMENESS FROM PRECISION NUTRITION

2010-02-13T13:17:00.000-06:00

If you didn't read my previous post about Precision Nutrition, check it out HERE.

PN just posted another great entry to their blog titled Label Lies: Misleading Calorie Counts. As you've probably concluded by now, I'm not such a big fan of the food industry, and this revelation just adds fuel to the fire!

After a little background about what a calorie actually is, they get to the real heart of the blog post...restaurants and food manufacturers incorrectly label their products and meals! Specifically, products that are touted as "low calorie" are the real culprits here (as that is what was actually tested by the researchers).

Some of my favorite excerpts from the post:

On average the 10 frozen meals had 8% more calories than the amount given on the labels. This doesn’t seem too bad, unless you eat these meals regularly.

If you thought you were eating 2000 calories/day, but were actually eating 8% more (160 calories) because all your meals were frozen or prepared foods, then by the end of the week you would have an extra 1120 calories.

Hmmm…now you have a problem, because by the end of the year you will have an extra 58,240 calories, or over 7.55kg (16 pounds) of fat!

That statistic applies only to the frozen foods. I'm sure plenty of people eat frozen dinners on a regular basis, particularly the ones that they think are low in calories. Even worse, there are probably far more people who rely on restaurants for a fairly large percentage of their meals. Check out the stats on restaurant meals:

In this study restaurants underestimated the calories of their meals by an average of 18%!

The worst estimates were from Denny’s for their toast and grits. Dry white toast was 283 calories per slice instead of the 97 calories listed. Grits served with butter were also much higher in calories than reported by Denny’s (258 calories instead of the reported 86 calories).

Thus, if we do the same calculation as for the frozen food — i.e. if you think you’re eating 2000 calories a day, but are eating all your meals at these kinds of restaurants — you’ll be taking in 18% more than you realize, or 360 calories a day — 2520 a week, or 131,040 a year, for 37.44 additional pounds of fat.

The real unfortunate part about this is that people who are making a conscious effort to "watch what they eat" are the ones that are negatively effected.

Now for the most shocking part...where the federal government fits in:

This is the typical good news, bad news scenario. The good news is that there is some regulation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The bad news is that it only applies to packaged food. And there’s more bad news: for the FDA, an “acceptable underestimation” of calories is 20%.

Restaurants don’t have to follow any regulations, but frozen food manufacturers have to be within 20%. Really, 20%! That 250 calorie meal could be 300 calories and still be within regulations.

I'd be lying if I said I was surprised. I guess this just further reinforces the need for consumers to educate themselves first, and secondly to never believe the food industry or its regulators.

TEXAS MED CENTER 5K RACE REPORT

2010-02-09T21:05:00.001-06:00

*This is a guest post from Bryan Hassin. See my other race reports HERE and HERE.

In response to the sissy half marathon posting of sissy Steve Herce, I felt it necessary to post a blog entry about my own new experience with competitive racing. In contrast to Mr. Herce, I entered high school in the fall of 1993 at 5'7" and 190 lbs. While my mother, like his, was reluctant to expose me to the dangers of football, she could not stand in the way of destiny. By the end of high school I had reached 5'8" and had gone from taller than most of my peers to shorter, which pretty much ruled out my middle linebacker career at the next level. However, I had bulked up to 210, could sprint well, and hit even better; my compact frame turned out to be great for a power fullback, using my low center of gravity and explosive power to knock over just about anyone in my way. At the peak of my playing days in Division I-A football I was 235 lbs, bench pressed ~400 lbs and worked out with 495 on squats (never maxed out). Suffice to say, one would be hard pressed to find two body types more different than mine and Mr. Herce's.

When I stopped playing football I looked for new sources of sport and exercise. For sport I fell in love with beach volleyball and for aerobic activity I turned to running. Never mind that my body was hardly suited to either! Running was totally new to me. Rarely before had I run any distance greater than 100 yards and I really had no idea what I was doing. The first time I tried "distance" running, I set out on the 2.9-mile (I realize that most runners would hardly consider this "distance," but it certainly was for me!) Rice Outer Loop and had a really hard time pulling myself back and pacing myself. My instinct was to lean forward and run low, ready to hit someone. However, that was hardly sustainable technique for the half hour or so it took me to complete the Loop. That very first time I managed to make it all the way around but my back killed me the next day, aching from the struggle of pulling my torso upright and slowing myself down.

Since then I've never embraced running very seriously but I have always included it as a component of my cardiovascular fitness regime. I have never trained for anything in particular, but I have always set out to do a little better than I had the previous time. Originally this meant running fixed distances and working to increase speed. Once a week or so I would run the Rice Outer Loop, or the equidistant Memorial Park loop, both of which provide a nice, soft running surface (Important for my thundering, heavy-footed running mechanics!), and I would track my completion times in a spreadsheet.

Looking back through my archives, I see that in 2002 I was running these 2.9-mile, mostly flat courses in 27:xx times, a 9:xx pace. 2003 saw me move into 26:xx times, 2004 25:xx, and 2005 24:xx, an 8:xx pace. So over three years I reduced my mile pace by a minute just by running several Outer Loops a year.

Then several things happened at once to motivate me to take running a little more seriously. My strongly competitive nature and fierce data orientation motivated me to purchase a Garmin Forerunner heart rate monitor/GPS. This allowed me to analyze--both during my runs and after--my pace and exertion level at any given point on the course. I had the opportunity to train with legendary NFL strength & conditioning coach Dan Riley, who helped me understand more about training the body's different energy systems.

By 2006 I had begun varying my running workouts to focus on different objectives. For aerobic health I no longer ran fixed distances as quickly as I could (which frequently bumped me into anaerobic mode). Instead I ran for 30 minutes while keeping my heart rate below my maximum aerobic threshold and each time tried to increase the total distance I ran within those parameters. When this started I was only able to eek out 2.5 miles or so. For anaerobic conditioning, I ran different interval programs and sometimes ran a timed 5k.

In 2007 it first dawned on me that I could compete against other runners while running these distances. As mentioned before, I <3 competition, so I signed up for the first annual Rice Flying Owls 5k. I didn't train for it per se other than running a couple of 5k distances, coming in around 27:xx.

When I showed up at Rice the morning of April 14, 2007, I weighed 210 pounds and really had no idea what to expect. I set a stretch goal for myself of 26:00 and drank plenty of water. The latter kind of backfired on me as moments before the race began I seriously had to pee! Fortunately my knowledge of the Rice campus helped me out and I was in and out of the nearest bathroom before the starting gun went off. On the starting line next to me was a 15yo kid built like the cross country runner I imagine Mr. Herce was at that age: tall and lanky and wearing goofy running tank top/shorts. He was also a big dork, making the Herce comparison even more apt. When I told him I was shooting for a 12:00 finish time he seemed to take me seriously and was very impressed.

The race was hard. I probably came off of the starting line too fast as I was fighting against fatigue as soon as my adrenaline wore off. I pushed and I pushed, though, and passed other runners one-by-one. I had pre-planned an MP3 playlist that would have "Gonna Fly Now" (the Rocky training theme song) come on at 25:00, motivating me to sprint hard through the last 60 seconds. However, by the time I rounded the corner for the final 100 meters, it hadn't come on. I cursed myself for mistiming the playlist and used that instead as motivation to sprint through the finish. Then I saw my time: 24:26! The Rocky theme song hadn't come on because I had finished the race before it was due to start! My mile pace of 7:48 was hardly anything to brag about but, given my expectations, I was euphoric--and THEN the Rocky theme song came on, which was awesome. Never underestimate the power of competition to bring out the best performance in a competitor.

I finished up that day #35 of 87 total runners, #24 of 36 men, and #7 of 9 males in the 25-29 age group--60th, 33rd, and 60th percentiles respectively. Clearly I would have a lot of work to do if I ever hoped to beat Mr. Herce's 91st, 84th, and 82nd percentiles!

And a lot of work is exactly what I did--although it would seem pretty meager relative to that of serious runners. Throughout 2008 and 2009 I lived in Switzerland and gradually increased my aerobic load to 45 and then 60 minute runs. Although I neglected anaerobic runs in 2008, I added them back to my program in 2009--albeit only on the treadmill.

Upon my return to Houston at the end of 2009, I decided that it was time once again to test my running on the field of competition and I made a New Year's resolution to run at least three races in 2010--at least one 5k under 22:00 and at least one 10k under 55:00. I also resolved to run barefoot. There are enough reasons to run barefoot that the subject warrants its own blog post. You can see some of them here (http://bit.ly/9TSnoe) and here (http://bit.ly/dCnckK) but my reasons are less scientific: I saw people doing it, read a little about the barefoot running movement, and thought, "Yeah, I can get behind that."

So I began running in December in Vibram Five Fingers barefoot running "shoes" (more like foot gloves). They provide enough sole to protect your foot from glass or sharp pebbles, but not so much as to alter your gait from that of a natural, barefoot runner. At first I developed blisters and could not run my full 60 minutes. Within weeks, though, my feet had adapted and running felt GREAT. Springing off the balls of my feet rendered even my heavy footfalls light. I resolved that I would not just train barefoot; I would race that way as well. I signed up for the January 30th Texas Med Center 5k and prepared to make my barefoot racing debut.

Here again I didn't train for the 5k per se. The week before it, though, I did run a timed 5k at Memorial. When I came in at a PR 22:35 I thought that maybe I hadn't set my new year's goal aggressively enough. The competition would be on asphalt, though, and I didn't know how well my bare feet would hold up on it. To make matters worse, I woke up on the day of the race to find the weather cold (30 F) and drizzly. Part of me said that there would be no shame in running in shoes given the conditions. The stronger part of me, however, reminded me that I had committed to something and that I would be no better than Mr. Herce if I didn't see it through.

When I arrived at the race site, Houston's medical center, I got out of my car and warmed up a bit. At a trimmer 195 pounds, I had less insulation than I used to. Thank goodness I had spent two years running in Switzerland so I had plenty of Under Armour Cold Gear to keep me warm before the race. As we lined up I was surprised and inspired by some other men who were running shirtless. Props to them; that will be me next time. This time, though, I set out with three major goals: 1) don't come out of the start too quickly, 2) run my last mile more quickly than my first, and 3) run the whole 5k under 22:00 (which meant targeting a 7:04 pace),

When the starting gun was fired, I was reasonably close to the front. Data at the end of the race showed that I passed the starting line 6 seconds after the gun. Although I felt like was clipping along at a good pace, I was being passed by people on all sides. My heart rate was higher than it should have been already and I used wisdom from The Big Lebowski to keep me on pace: "They're just a bunch of f'in amateurs," I told myself.

The first leg of the race was on the streets of the medical center, where many tall hospital buildings confused my GPS somewhat. As such, I couldn't confirm my pace for some time. However, my heart rate stabilized at the right level and I felt good. I had decided to run this race with no music so that I could savor the experience and be more mindful of feedback from my body. That proved to be a good decision when I was running 'blind" with an inconsistent GPS signal.

As we emerged from the hospital complex, my GPS stabilized and showed that I was about to finish the first mile--and sure enough, there was the first mile marker. I had run the first mile in 7:10 and my heart rate was 180--about 96% of my theoretical maximum and exactly where I wanted to be for this anaerobic run. My bare feet (protected by Vibram Five Fingers) felt great.

The second mile was good. I passed most of those who had peaked early out of the starting line and I was feeling good. A few times I caught myself increasing the pace a bit and I intentionally backed off, purposefully keeping some gas in the tank for the final leg. I hit the second mile marker at 14:12, meaning I had run the second mile in 7:02 and was averaging 7:06. At this pace I would approach the finish line close to 22:00 and would have a good chance of beating that time with a final sprint. My heart rate was 185, 99% of my theoretical max. I felt good; no need for drastic changes.

The third mile was good and my heart rate remained at 185. Runners around me were now pretty sparse but I still passed a few with slow overtakings. I removed my hat and let my head sweat profusely into the 30-degree air; that felt great. At 2.8 miles I began to stride it out a bit, increasing my heart rate to 190, my theoretical maximum. I hit the three-mile marker at 21:00, meaning I had run the third mile in 6:48 and was averaging 7:00. I rounded the corner and could see the finish line 0.11 miles (176 m) away!

I downshifted and urged my legs to move faster. Reluctantly they picked up the pace and my heart rate climbed to 193--so much for theoretical maxima! I passed one or two other runners during the final stretch but I was also passed by someone who blew by me and clearly had kept more in reserve than I had. I crossed the finish line at 21:43, meaning I ran the final 0.11 miles at a 6:31 pace and my final mile at a 6:52 pace. I stopped my watch, cleared the finish line, dry heaved a little, and then returned to the final stretch to cheer on my girlfriend, Katie, who finished two minutes under her goal time.

So awesome, all three goals accomplished. How did I do relative to the competitive field?

I finished #46 of 1,068 total runners (Overall race results: http://bit.ly/cYtpTp, visualized: http://bit.ly/bGOXIm), #37 of 419 men, and #9 of 109 males in the 30-39 age group (Age group results: http://bit.ly/ac7W0l)--96th, 91st, and 96th percentiles respectively. I hit my goals and set a good base line on which to improve for the rest of the year. Most importantly, this heavy-footed, lumbering fullback crushed Mr. Herce's sissy 91st, 84th, and 82nd percentiles--the best he could do after 15 years of running training! The gauntlet is cast and I hereby publicly challenge Mr. Herce to stop whining about his hip and do better. I furthermore challenge him to post a video training montage to let the world know that he is actually doing something and not just sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

Still, if there's one thing on which Mr. Herce and I *can* agree, it's that the shop's co-owner is ridiculously more accomplished than either of us at running and we both have a *lot* of work to do to take it to that level.

PRECISION NUTRITION AND G-FLUX

2010-02-08T19:15:00.000-06:00

I have been a fan of Dr. John Berardi's work for a while. He's a really smart dude, and he has put out some top notch articles, books, and other products over the years:

Precision Nutrition is his most comprehensive product (a "lifestyle plan" more or less)

Gourmet Nutrition is an incredible cookbook that Lauren and I have used a ton!

Anyway, getting back on track...I am subscribed to his PN blog, and today they posted one titled "All About G-Flux". G-Flux, or energy balance, is the whole premise behind Dr. B's recommendations for health and body comp.

Note: You might have to be a member of his site to view the blog post, but membership to the site is free.

I definitely recommend giving it a thorough read. It will only take 5-10 minutes, but you will walk away from it a much smarter person potentially with a whole new outlook on your approach to training and eating.

The blog is meant to be more of a broad overview, but they have several links at the bottom for additional resources in case anyone is interested.

A couple of my favorite excerpts:

G-Flux involves training more and eating more as long as your training and nutrition plan are well designed.

If you increase G-Flux through exercise, nutrition, and supplementation, then you’ll enjoy:

simultaneous increases in lean mass and losses in fat mass
increased metabolic rate
more rapid adaptations to training stress
better recovery
improved health
increased sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity
improved nutrient partitioning (in other words, what your body does with what you eat)
improved micronutrient delivery (in other words, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients get where they need to go)
increased tissue remodeling and turnover

More exercise means improved nutrient partitioning, insulin sensitivity, protein turnover and tissue remodeling. More nutritious food consumption means sustained sympathetic nervous system activity, elevated metabolism, and better overall nutrient status.

WEEKEND RECAP

2010-02-08T08:47:00.000-06:00

The Rice Alumni Baseball game was this past weekend (February 6th), and I got to see and catch up with a lot of friends that I haven't seen in quite a while! It was a great weekend with perfect weather to be outside!

As you would expect, I had to get a workout in! I went to the Outer Loop at Rice (my old running route), but I ran it a little differently than I used to. The loop is approximately a 5k, so I broke it down into 6 3-minute sprints. I know 3 minutes is not an all-out sprint, but I was running as hard as I could for those 3 minutes. I took a 1 minute walk in between.

On Sunday, I waited until I got back in town to get my workout in. It was a random assortment of things...lots of foam rolling and mobility/flexibility work, followed by glute/hip strengthening exercises, followed by some ab work:

Slideboard Planks

These are a much more difficult variation of the traditional plank, and it is much more effective (both in terms of the quality of the workout and the time spent). I can't stand to just do planks for a longer period of time...not nearly as much fun in my opinion.

My conditioning was in the form of Minute Drills. These are inspired by rosstraining.com, and it is basically this:

3 3-minute rounds with 1-minute rest in between.

Each round consists of 6 30-second periods:

Heavy Bag

Burpees (no jump due to my hip, I still can't do explosive work)

Sledgehammer

Heavy Bag

Burpees

Sledgehammer

Now I know my boxing skills leave a lot to be desired, but this isn't a boxing match. I'm simply just throwing bombs because it is very metabolically taxing and will wear your ass out!

SIX MEANINGLESS CLAIMS ON FOOD LABELS

2010-01-31T13:34:00.000-06:00

I just read an article from NY Times titled "Six Meaningless Claims on Food Labels" and I must say it's pretty good. You'll probably recognize at least one of the bullshit claims that I've gone over before HERE.

I'll list the six here, but I recommend you read the article for the reasoning behind the bullshit.

Lightly-sweetened
A good source of fiber
Strengthens your immune system
Made with real fruit
Made with whole grains
All natural

I'd even argue that 6 isn't the correct number. If there's a claim on a food label, it's probably meaningless, which would put the correct number closer to 10,000 or so.

SATURDAY IN THE SHOP

2010-01-31T10:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a great day in The SHOP. It was about 35 degrees, and my space heater blew the breaker in my garage so I had no heat and I couldn't play any music. No problem though, as I was forced to work even harder to keep my bodyheat up!

I actually did 2 sessions yesterday. The first one in the morning was my strength session, and the second one later in the day was purely conditioning. Here's what they looked like:

SESSION 1

POWER
MB Slams

STRENGTH
A1 Ring Pullups w/ weighted vest (50 lbs)
A2 Good Mornings (with band...great glute-hamstring exercise)

B1 One-Arm Chinups (assisted)

B2 Slideboard Hamstring Curls

C1 Cross-body Tricep Extensions
C2 T-Wheel Rollouts

That was it for the first session. You've probably noticed by now that I'm a huge fan of bodyweight movements (pushups, pullups, one-leg squats, and all the variations of those). I also love to make them as difficult as possible (one-arm, one-leg, weighted vest, etc.). That's pretty much the point behind the one-arm chinups. Although I can't perform a true one-arm chinup yet (but I will get it soon), using the towel to assist is a great progression. The towel mainly provides stability and not much vertical assistance. If I let go of the towel, my body actually starts to rotate around making it very awkward to try to pull. But holding the towel I stay relatively stable and it makes it a better angle to pull from.

As for the tricep work that I've been adding in, that's more to aid with the lockout portion of any pressing exercise that I do (pushups, dips, bench press, whatever). I haven't focused on lockout specifically, so by doing so I think I can get a pretty immediate boost to my performance.

SESSION 2

CONDITIONING
Minute Drills
3 rounds, 3 minutes each, 1 minute rest in between rounds

Each round looked like this:

Heavy bag - 30 seconds
Burpees (without the jump) - 30 seconds
Sledgehammer swings - 30 seconds
Heavy bag - 30 seconds
Burpees (without the jump) - 30 seconds
Sledgehammer swings - 30 seconds

9 total minutes of work, and I was pretty exhausted by the end of it. My conditioning has definitely gone down since my surgery (simply because I haven't been able to do all the things I like to do), but it isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. It's coming back pretty quickly too!

FRIDAY IN THE SHOP

2010-01-30T09:33:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I were up bright and early yesterday to get a little work done in The SHOP. It's starting to get cold again here in Dallas after almost two weeks of temperatures in the 50's or 60's. Yesterday morning was pretty cold, but this morning is even colder (mid-20's).

Anyway, back to the workout.... In keeping with my 4 week rotation, I have recently switched up a few of my exercises to keep the gains coming and stave off any plateaus. Here's what my workout looked like yesterday:

POWER

MB Chest Pass

STRENGTH

A1 Handstand Pushups (off of cinder blocks for increased ROM)

A2 One-Leg Squats (pay close attention to my right leg)

B1 Weighted Dips (120 lbs.) this video is old, but you get the idea

B2 Slideboard Lunges

C1 Bodyweight Tricep Extensions

C2 T Wheel Rollouts

So, did you notice anything about my one-leg squats? I have now progressed to full range-of-motion on my right leg (the one I had surgery on)!! Yeah baby!

I'm about to do some work in the SHOP (it's now Saturday morning), so stay tuned for another workout update...

MORE MICHAEL POLLAN

2010-01-29T07:29:00.000-06:00

I came across this video interview yesterday with Michael Pollan discussing a few things about his new book Food Rules and answering some questions submitted by readers. It's quick and entertaining, so if you've got just a minute or two give it a look.

Additionally, Michael Pollan appeared on Oprah either yesterday or the day before. I just found this video, but I haven't had a chance to watch it myself. The segment is called Food 101, and I'd imagine it's good (because Mr. Pollan is the man).

RUNNING UPDATE

2010-01-24T09:33:00.000-06:00

It's been about 10 days since I started running, so I thought an update was in order...

I have run 6 times in 10 days, starting at just 5 minutes at a very slow pace. I increased the time steadily to about 12 minutes over the course of 4 runs (while staying at about the same pace). Last night I decided to keep the time at approximately 12 minutes, but I broke the run down into 4 800m runs (not full sprints, but definitely a faster pace than I was running). I managed to run each 800m in about 3:18 with a 1 min rest in between, which translates into a 6:36 min/mile pace. Not too shabby for taking 4 months off from running.

Today I am going to add in some easy work on the agility ladder. There will be some change of direction and foot movement, but nothing drastic or that fast/quick. I really just want to get my feet moving in various directions without stressing my hip too much.

HOUSTON HALF-MARATHON RACE RECAP

2010-01-21T07:19:00.001-06:00

The following is a guest post from a friend of mine. Steven Herce just competed in the Houston Half-Marathon last Sunday (January 17th, 2010). Here is his race recap...

In the fall of 1995, upon entering high school, I stood 5’5” and tipped the scales at a whooping 145lbs. Mom and Dad would not let me play high school football so I went out for the cross country team. I’ve been running “long distance” ever since.

With 15 or so years of running under my belt I got it in my head that I should run the 2010 Houston Marathon. Given my athletic background and stubborn need to compete in all that I do, I started training early. By the time I registered for the race (within a few hours of registration opening over the summer of 2009) I had already run 10 miles twice.

My goal was to cover the 26.2 miles in 3hours and 30minutes, which is roughly 8:15 per mile. That’s a pretty serious time for a first time marathon runner and plenty of people were willing to tell me such.

But, alas, it was not meant to be. Readers of The Shop Blog: prepare yourselves for a familiar tale of joint failure. My hips! My Goddamn hips!

I began to notice prolonged hip fatigue following my long runs in August/September 2009. Interestingly, I called Drew about steps to take just days after he learned he would have hip surgery. Despite increased warm-up routines and incessant stretching – plus some SMR (foam rolling) – my hips just couldn’t take me to the promised land.

In training, I was never able to surpass 17 miles. Three times I setout to run 17-18 miles and didn’t complete the run. My final attempt came the day of the race-switching deadline (up until December 10, 2009 one could switch from full marathon to half marathon and vice versa). I left the house and ran 9 miles east, turned around and headed home. I was still 1.5 miles from home when my hips locked up. It took me well over an hour to walk that last 1.5 miles with locked hips.

I walked in the front door and switched to the half marathon.

I ran the Houston Half Marathon on Sunday, January 17, 2010 and I had a blast! I’m absolutely going to run another half marathon, if not before then definitely the 2011 Houston race. Despite having trained at a slower pace for a longer race (and battling those blasted hips) I did really well.

First, my one caveat before divulging the race statistics: because I switched from the full to the half at the last possible second I was stuck in the second wave (slower group). While my per mile pace for the entire race works out to ~8:17 my watch read 9:33 at mile 1! I just couldn’t work past the slower runners (and walkers). The first mile of the race is over the Elysian Viaduct (read: bridge). That makes for some tough maneuvering.

According to the race website:

· 9,988 runners finished the half marathon

· 1,539 men and women ages 25-29 finished the half marathon

o 44 of these men and women are considered “elite”

· 552 men ages 25-29 finished the half marathon

o 27 of these men are considered “elite”

I ran a 1:48:40 placing me 896^th overall. I was the 673rd fastest male and finished 101^st in my division (men ages 25-29). In terms of percentiles: I was faster than about 91% of all runners; 84% of male runners: and 82% of my division (men ages 25-29).

The Houston Marathon and Half Marathon provide all kinds of awesome race statistics. Check out this link:

http://www.runpix3.com/hou10/00/finord.php?LastName=34307&lan=&aset=0&dist=21

I don’t know how they make the calculation but I think it is very cool to see that I passed 333 runners over the last 4 miles while only being passed by 18 over the final 4 miles. That got me thinking: they record a chip time and a gun time for every participant. The chip time is electronically kept by wearing a tag on your shoe that is read by scanners at the start and finish lines as well as throughout the course. The gun time is simply from the starting gun to you crossing the line. In looking at my chip time versus my gun time I figure I passed 809 people from start to finish!

I’m looking forward to my next half marathon. Hopefully by training for that specific distance I will be able to improve my time tremendously. Maybe I’ll run a smaller race where I won’t get boxed in for the first mile.

Lord knows I have to do something because the Shop’s co-owner crushed me by about 21minutes!

[DREW] By the way, he's referring to this LINK when he talks about getting crushed by the SHOP's co-owner!

MONDAY MORNING SHOP WORK

2010-01-18T15:53:00.000-06:00

I have the day off from work today, so what better to do than get some work done in the SHOP (I would've done work in the SHOP anyway even if I had to work).

I started a new 4 week cycle of my program today, which really just means that I'm switching up a few exercises in an effort to maintain progress and avoid plateaus.

Here's what I did today:

POWER

A Behind-the-Back Clap Pushups (clapping behind the back just means you have to explode higher off the ground)

STRENGTH

B1 Weighted Decline Pushups

B2 One-Legged Squats (I progressed to full ROM on my right leg!!)

C1 One-Arm DB Press

C2 Slideboard Lunges (technically I'm not using a slideboard, but it accomplishes the same thing. These are great for my hip because there is no impact from landing on your foot to lunge and I get to go through a nice, long ROM)

FINISHER

D Farmer's Walks (I just loaded up my DB's to 105 lbs and carried them back and forth in the alley. I would go until I was just about to drop the weights, then rest for a minute and do another set. Great exercise for grip strength since the best way to hold something heavy is to practice holding heavy things)

Later this afternoon I'm going to get some conditioning done on the Airdyne. Since I still can't sprint or do burpees, there's nothing quite like some intervals on the Airdyne to make you tired as hell.

FOOD RULES CONT...

2010-01-18T07:27:00.000-06:00

I posted a review of Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules in my last post HERE.

In this post, I'm just going to list a couple of his rules from each of the three sections. This isn't an exhaustive list (for that, just buy the book for $5), but rather a couple of my favorites:

WHAT SHOULD I EAT?

Avoid food products that make health claims.
Eat only foods that will eventually rot.
If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.

WHAT KIND OF FOOD SHOULD I EAT?

Eat animals that have themselves eaten well.
Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks.

HOW SHOULD I EAT?

Pay more, eat less.
Eat when you are hungry, not when you are bored.
Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it.
Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does.
Cook.

MORE MICHAEL POLLAN STUFF

So far I have read 4 books my Michael Pollan and they have all been great. In no particular order, I recommend all of the following:

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

Second Nature: A Gardener's Education

He also writes for the New York Times Magazine (and other newspapers and magazines I'm sure), but one of his better articles is the following:

Farmer in Chief

WHAT I'M READING

2010-01-17T15:01:00.000-06:00

I just started (and finished) Michael Pollan's new book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. It's basically a follow-up to his previous book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. In that book, he developed his stance on how and what humans should eat:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

In his new book, he came up with 64 rules to help us adhere to those 7 words (you can also check out an interview he did with the New York Times HERE).

The beauty of Food Rules is that each one is based on science, culture, and tradition (he says he interviewed many grandmothers and great-grandmothers). Despite this, each rule is easy to understand, memorable, and often funny (e.g. Don’t buy cereals that change the color of the milk). In case you are thinking that 64 rules is quite a few to remember, he actually doesn't advocate adhering to all 64. He suggests that you start with one or perhaps a few, and several of the rules overlap anyway and would accomplish basically the same thing. There are three sections of rules, one to cover what someone should eat ("Eat food"), one to cover what kind of food someone should eat ("Mostly plants"), and finally one to cover how someone should eat ("Not too much").

This book can pretty much be read in one sitting, but there are quite a few important take-home messages despite its brevity (more than 64 in fact). Here are a couple of my favorites:

Nutrition science, which after all only got started less than two hundred years ago, is today approximately where surgery was in the year 1650 - very promising, and very interesting to watch, but are you ready to let them operate on you?

Four of the top ten killers in America are chronic diseases linked to this diet. [He's referring to the "Western Diet"]

Populations eating a remarkably wide range of traditional diets generally don't suffer from these chronic diseases.

While it is true that we generally live longer than people used to, or than people in some traditional cultures do, most of our added years owe to gains in infant mortality and child health, not diet.

For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed rather than a whole food. Don't take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.

Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970's, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories per day, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar.

I pretty much didn't even get into the rules with my review, but that's actually a testament to how valuable I think his (brief) introduction is. I highly recommend buying this book, and it only costs $5 on amazon.com.

AN OPEN LETTER TO TACO BELL

2010-01-16T07:47:00.000-06:00

You may remember my blog about Taco Bell's new "Drive-Thru Diet", but if not, you can read it HERE.

As a follow-up, one of the blogs that I frequently read (Mark's Daily Apple) just posted about the same thing. Mark went in to much greater detail about the absurdity of the "diet" and he also framed it as a hilarious "Open Letter to Taco Bell." Check it out HERE.

He mentions some of the ridiculous aspects of this new ad campaign...for instance, the only difference between the "healthy" fresco items and the regular menu items is cheese. To give you a little taste of his post, here's a quote:

"First, I am slightly confused by the math of calorie reduction. I understand that a Fresco taco is 20 calories less than a regular taco (kudos for that feat of engineering!). If I am trying to reduce my daily consumption by 500 calories by eating Fresco tacos rather than regular tacos, does that mean I need to eat 25 Fresco tacos a day? (20 calorie reduction x 25 = 500 calorie reduction). That means I need to eat roughly six tacos a meal, including, of course, fourthmeal. Speaking of which…"

He finishes by suggesting 8 ways in which Taco Bell could improve their "Drive-Thru Diet" and even offers to donate $10,000 to Taco Bell's charity of choice if they actually implement those 8 things.

Read it! It's hilarious.

12 WEEKS POST-OP

2010-01-13T07:20:00.000-06:00

As of today, it has been 12 weeks since my surgery. That is actually a huge milestone in terms of my physical therapy prescription. One very important thing happens today...I GET TO RUN!

I'm also able to progress my biking to a real bike instead of just a stationary bike (or Airdyne in my case) and I can add in "balanced squats"...whatever that means. I have a PT appointment this afternoon at 3:40, so I can't wait to actually run and find out exactly what a "balanced squat" is.

I'm not so naive as to believe that I'll be doing a full-on track workout today, like the ones I posted about HERE and HERE, but I'll be running nonetheless!

WHAT I'M READING (IN THE NEWS)

2010-01-07T19:21:00.000-06:00

I read 2 articles in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week:

The Hidden Benefits of Exercise

…And Why More May Even be Better

I really liked these articles. The first article may seem a bit redundant…everyone knows exercise is good for you, right? Also, there have probably been thousands of other articles in print or online telling us that exercise is good for us. So why is it necessary? Well it seems that the health and overall well-being of the American people isn’t getting any better (and is likely getting worse). So even though the information may seem like nothing new, I think it was timed perfectly. Right now is the time of year when everyone hits the gym (sometimes just for a week or two, others until Spring Break), so I think it is the perfect time to start feeding people the positive vibes.

As for the second article, I think the general message is awesome! Some exercise is good, more exercise is better! Everyone seems to be so concerned with the minimum in terms of health and fitness.

For example, “You should get at least 30 minutes a day of exercise.”

Yeah, but an hour is even better! Think you’re too busy? I think the following cartoon sums things up nicely:

There were some pretty good quotes from the articles, so I’ll share two of my favorites:

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS OF EXERCISE

“Exercise can be used like a vaccine to prevent disease and a medication to treat disease.”

…AND WHY MORE MAY EVEN BE BETTER

“...exceeding the federally recommended exercise guidelines can reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack, glaucoma, diabetes and other diseases by as much as 70% above the benefits of merely meeting the guidelines.” [emphasis mine]

GRIP TRAINING

2010-01-07T08:00:00.001-06:00

I'm still playing around with my new Flip HD video camera, so below is my first attempt at making a movie complete with intro, credits, and music!

I recorded a grip training session I did this past Sunday (temperature in the SHOP = mid-30's). I perform all kinds of grip exercises, such as farmer's walks with heavy DB's, Captains of Crush grippers, leveraging, etc. This particular session was a bit different as I performed more traditional exercises (pushups and pullups) with a hand/grip strength focus. For instance, instead of regular pushups, I did both knuckle and fingertip pushups. Instead of regular pullups, I used my Eagle Loops from Ironmind.

So, here's what my sequence looked like:

CIRCUIT

Knuckle Pushups

Eagle Loop Pullups

Fingertip Pushups

Wrist Roller

Rice Bucket

For each exercise, I perform a "quality" set...meaning I don't go to complete failure but I get a good number of reps in.

Rest 30 seconds between each exercise, then 1 minute between circuits. Complete 3 circuits.

For your viewing pleasure:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

2010-01-01T15:59:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a successful and productive 2009, and I hope you have even bigger and better things planned for 2010!

2009 was an interesting one for me to say the least. There were ups (5-year wedding anniversary, 30th birthday, and many accomplishments related to my training, nutrition, and education) and downs (Lauren's surgery, my hip surgery), but all-in-all I would call 2009 a success. I learned a lot about myself and life (thanks in large part to the two aforementioned surgeries). In fact, I would no longer consider those surgeries the "downs"...they both turned out very well and I think we are both better and stronger as a result.

I'm still working on my 2010 goals, but once they are finalized (or close enough), I'll start posting some of them. I'd love to hear some of your goals. Remember the acronym S.M.A.R.T:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-Bound

Not SMART: Get stronger.
SMART: Add 25 lbs. to my Squat by March 31st.

Here's to another great year!

THE APOCALYPSE MAY BE NEAR...

2009-12-31T08:18:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I were just eating breakfast and we were watching Sportscenter (or maybe I was watching), and then the following commercial came on:

TACO BELL'S DRIVE-THRU DIET

I literally almost choked on my broccoli and smoked turkey scramble made with eggs from pastured hens!

It was also kind of eery given that today is New Year's Eve...could the apocalypse occur tonight at midnight??

Obviously I did the first thing that anybody would do after seeing a commercial like that...I googled it! Turns out this isn't really a "diet" that Taco Bell is selling. Rather it's just a new section of their menu that they claim is healthy for you (IT'S NOT). The "Drive-Thru Diet" is just a catchy title that they are using.

This new Fresco Menu is actually just a reduced calorie option from their regular menu, but they still use the same shitty ingredients (white flour tortillas, poor quality beef, etc.). In fact, even in their disclaimer at the bottom of the menu website they state "Not a low calorie food." So, while it is reduced from their regular menu, it was not reduced enough to use the phrase "Low Calorie."

I guess the lesson here is that "A lot of calories" is still less than "A shit-ton of calories."

HIP MOBILITY

2009-12-30T19:30:00.000-06:00

I was doing some stretching earlier today and I must say I was pleasantly surprised when it came time to test out the flexibility and mobility of my right hip. It is actually better than my left hip! This makes me feel really good about my surgery (even though I obviously can't go back and undo it) and further proves that all along my tight hips were more of a mechanical problem (misshapen femoral head/neck) than a flexibility problem.

I have never been able to sit Indian-style, but my right leg can actually do it now! It's still tight from the surgery, which means that over time it will continue to get better. Combine that with the fact that I'm working hard on my flexibility and mobility and you've got yourself some mobile hips (or at least one, in my case).

This first video to demonstrate some awesome hip mobility is from Steve Cotter, and he's pretty ridiculous. Check out that link and watch some of his other videos, particularly the one where he performs jumping pistols (single-leg squats) up onto a table that's about 3 feet high. Ridiculous.

IDEAL HIP MOBILITY

This second video is of BJ Penn, the current lightweight champion of the UFC. He's an insane athlete and if you watch some of his fights you'll see where his flexibility and dexterity really sets him apart from other fighters. When he's grappling with other fighters, he can actually use his legs like arms to control the other guy in order to free up his own arms to apply choke holds and joint locks. Pretty sick stuff.

RIDICULOUS HIP MOBILITY

I'm nowhere near his level, but I've got plenty of time to work on it!

WHAT I'M WATCHING...

2009-12-28T19:30:00.000-06:00

Lauren and I have come to Pensacola for Christmas and New Year's for about the last 5 years (ever since we've been married). Every year I finish up my book list with a strong showing, and start the new year off strong as well. In the 8 or 9 days that we typically spend here, I can usually finish 3 books AT LEAST!

This year, I'm taking a slightly different approach. I'm definitely killing the books, but I brought along some DVD's as well. It's a set called "The Functional Strength Coach" by Mike Boyle (one of the most highly respected strength coaches in the business, and he always puts out good stuff). I read his first book, Functional Training for Sports, a little while ago, and he recently released another book that is on my list, Advances in Functional Training.

Anyway, back to the DVD's.... I'm actually watching version 2.0 which was released a little while ago, and he just released version 3.0 (which I also bought).

So far the DVD's have been great, and they're actually making me even more anxious to get back to full training. I have so many ideas that I want to try, in addition to practically re-working my entire training methodology!

I'll do a more thorough review after I've gone through the whole set. Also, I just finished watching The Big Lebowski here with Lauren and her sister and husband. It's probably been 6 years or more since I last saw it, but it was just as funny as I remembered!

WORKOUT IN THE PARK

2009-12-25T18:54:00.000-06:00

I'm at my mother-in-law's house in Mandeville, LA for Christmas, but that doesn't mean I can't still get some work in. There's a park at the front of her neighborhood with some monkey bars, which means I can pretty much get in a full workout. Of course I brought some of my own trinkets as well (namely bands, because they are the perfect travel tool).

After some extensive foam rolling and hip/glute work (for rehab), I walked about 5 minutes down to the park for my workout. It was probably about 40 degrees, but it was sunny and it felt great to be outside! Here's what my workout looked like:

POWER

Explosive Band Pulls (this simulates a med ball slam, perfect for on the road)

STRENGTH

A1 Muscle ups (did these on a straight bar, which I found more difficult technique-wise than using rings)

A2 Band Good Mornings (a great hamstring, glute, low back exercise)

B1 One-Arm Chinups (with a little assistance from the non-working arm...I can't quite do these unassisted yet)

B2 Single-Leg Glute Bridge

After the walk back to the house, I did a bunch of stretching to try to further loosen my hip up. I've been dedicating about 10 minutes after every workout to stretching and I must say it feels good!

That's it for tonight. I'm gonna drink a little coffee and do some reading to cap off a great Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2009-12-25T18:46:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has had a safe and happy holiday. I sure have, and I've also been destroying some delicious (and of course nutritious) food.

I got a couple of sweet presents this year. First, my sister-in-law and her husband gave me a t-shirt from Mental Floss:

I would definitely say something like that, so I think the shirt is awesome. In fact, I am wearing it right now and while I was working out at the park earlier (more on that in my next post).

Secondly, my mother-in-law gave me a Flip HD video camera:

This thing is pretty incredible, and you can shoot up to 2 hours of HD quality video from this thing. That means more SHOP videos for the blog!

Merry Christmas again and Happy New Year!

8 WEEK POST-OP APPOINTMENT

2009-12-22T17:02:00.000-06:00

I had my 8 week post-op (even though it's almost 9 weeks) appointment with my surgeon this morning and it went very well. He was very pleased with my range of motion and strength levels on my right hip. He told me that I can now take my range of motion as far as possible now (before I was limited to the point where tightness would occur). Also, I can step up my strengthening a notch or two. The main thing for me to avoid now is any activity that results in pounding (running, jumping rope, etc.) until mid-January.

Sweet!

THE 6 WEIRDEST, SCARIEST PROCESSED FOODS

2009-12-14T18:57:00.000-06:00

Here’s a link to an interesting article detailing the “6 Weirdest, Scariest Processed Foods.” It’s a pretty entertaining read to see just how disgusting the food industry has become (and also to see how many of them you may be guilty of eating).

Anyway, I thought it would be funny to show some pics of these “foods” and follow it up with some quotes right out of the article. I may add a few comments of my own if I feel like it.

1. Spray Can “Easy Cheese”

“Dipping a butter knife into a tub of cheese spread and putting it on a cracker takes a lot of time and effort. Thankfully for all of us, the wizards at Kraft have developed a product that ensures we’ll never again run the risk of hurting our wrists trying to spread processed cheese. Kraft’s Easy Cheese cans combine the soulless tastelessness of its cheese products with the convenience and simplicity of whipped cream cans.”

I’ll admit, I’m guilty of eating “Easy Cheese” back in the day, but I never took the dispenser straight in my mouth and ate just the “Easy Cheese”. That’s disgusting.

2. Oreo Cookie Death Filling

“You see, typical frosting is made mostly from butter, milk, sugar and vanilla extract. No one will ever accuse it of being good for you, but at least you're eating fairly natural fats. Oreo stuffing, on the other hand, is basically sugar-flavored Crisco. Seriously, that’s what you’re consuming when you eat an Oreo.”

Oreos and milk are a pretty tasty combo for sure, but now that I am older and wiser and I can read the list of ingredients, I will never touch them again!

3. Condensed Soups

“Well, consider that a mere half-cup of Campbell’s Vegetable Soup contains a heart-stopping 890 mg of sodium, or roughly 37 percent of your daily recommended sodium intake. But wait, there’s more! The typical Campbell’s soup can contains one-and-a-half cups of soup, meaning that one can of soup contains more than 90 percent of your daily recommended sodium intake.”

Instead of buying canned soups, I just recommend you pick one of the 1,000’s of recipes available to use with your Crock-Pot that combine only quality, healthy ingredients that take barely any time at all (obviously it has to cook all day in the Crock-Pot, but it doesn’t require any attention or work from you to do that).

4. Spam

“Spam was really a major miracle of food science, as it solved a mystery that humanity had been trying for centuries to figure out: namely, how to make meat-flavored Jell-O.”

I don’t even know what to say other than “GROSS!”

5. Artificially Flavored Blueberry Bits

“An apt description would be ‘purple globs of sugary goo,’ but they’re actually called ‘artificially flavored blueberry bits.’ Their ingredients include sugar, dextrose, soybean oil, soy protein, salt, citric acid, cellulose gum, artificial flavor, malic acid, Red 40 Lake, Blue 2 Lake and…that’s it. Notice anything missing? Oh yeah: blueberries!”

6. Kraft’s Avocado-Free Guacamole

“This right here may be the pinnacle of processed food magic. Kraft has managed to make a food product without an actual main ingredient, akin to tomato-free tomato sauce or potato-free baked potato. Yes, there are no avocados in Kraft’s guacamole. Then what is it made of, you ask? How about some modified food starch, coconut and soybean oils, corn syrup, food coloring…in other words, you’re eating green-colored oil.”

The story behind this one is actually pretty funny. Some customer sued Kraft because she felt misled into buying guacamole that was not made with avocadoes. As a result, Kraft changed the product name to “Guacamole Flavored Dip,” and as you can see they made the change before I could snag a picture of it from their website. I think it’s also funny that Kraft eliminated the primary ingredient from a traditional dish and the healthiest one at that!

FAT FEES AND SMOKER SURCHARGES

2009-12-12T15:00:00.000-06:00

I read a very interesting quote the other day, and it was basically this:

You will spend time and money on your health. Fortunately, you get to choose whether that time and money is spent proactively or reactively.

Man I thought that was brilliant. I think it also segue's perfectly into this article that just came out in Time Magazine a few weeks ago. It basically asks the question "Should smokers and overweight individuals have to pay more for health insurance than their healthier counterparts?"

I think the answer is absolutely YES. I can only give an example on how my company currently handles it since I know those details.

How much more do you think the insurance premium is for a smoker at my company vs. my premium? $7. Smoking has been proven beyond any doubt to be a death sentence but that person will pay only $7 more per paycheck than I will (I don't smoke, by the way).

How much more do you think the insurance premium is for an obese person with Type II diabetes at my company vs. my premium? $0. We pay the exact same amount.

Anyway, it's a great article, so check it out. I have a few quotes and comments on it below as well.

Fat Fees and Smoker Surcharges: Tough-Love Health Incentives

“North Carolina this year became the second state to approve an increase in out-of-pocket expenses for state workers who smoke and don't try to quit or who are morbidly obese and don't try to lose weight.”

On the surface, I think that policy is awesome! I also think it is fair. It doesn’t immediately penalize someone who smokes or who is morbidly obese. It actually gives that person the chance to change those unhealthy habits. They are only penalized if they don’t try to change their situation.

The one counter-argument I have is where are the rewards for those people who not only maintain good health, but actively seek to continuously improve it?

“Nationwide, employee insurance premiums have increased 131% over the past decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And it's well documented that smoking and obesity are associated with higher medical costs.”

Given that information, why shouldn't smokers and obese people shoulder the majority of the costs?

CONS:

There are a couple of reasons why such programs are hard to administer. First, for the overweight issue, the plans described in the article use the Body Mass Index (BMI) as their determinant. BMI is a number based on a person’s height and weight that attempts to categorize them into one of four categories: Underweight (<18.5), Normal Weight (18.5 – 24.9), Overweight (25 – 29.9), and Obese (>30).

I just ran the numbers on myself (5’11”, 190 lbs.) and my BMI is 26.5. Holy shit! I’m overweight!

BMI can be effective for quickly categorizing a large population with decent accuracy, but at the individual level it just doesn’t cut it. It completely ignores the fact that muscle has a greater density than fat.

I think systems like this should be in place, but there has to be a better way to administer them. It might mean that actual bodyfat testing and blood tests should be run (perhaps at the expense of the individual). I would pay to have those tests done if it would result in savings on my premiums.

"'We're trying to get across to the population that they have to take responsibility for their well-being and engage in more healthy behavior,' says Jack Walker, executive director of the North Carolina State Health Plan."

Are penalties unfair? What if there are no penalties, but only rewards for meeting certain criteria? For example, from the article:

“In 2005 the Safeway supermarket chain implemented a voluntary wellness plan. Employees who take and pass tests for such things as blood pressure and cholesterol levels can reduce their annual insurance premiums by nearly $800.”

Why are drivers penalized for speeding tickets and accidents? Why are homeowners penalized based on what zip code they live in? Simply, it’s because those people represent a higher risk to the insurance company. So why doesn’t the same theory apply to health insurance? Should those people who are more at risk (obese and smokers, for instance) pay a higher premium than those people who are less at risk?

Your thoughts?

FACT OR FICTION?

2009-12-11T07:31:00.001-06:00

It should be no surprise that I think the food industry is evil. I’ve talked about it here, here, here, here, and here.

96% FAT FREE: FACT OR FICTION?

Here’s my latest example of how the entire food industry is a scam. Look at the picture below and you'll see that they market this deli meat as 96% Fat Free. But is it really?

OSCAR MAYER DELI FRESH MEATS HAM COOKED 96% FAT FREE

Serving Size: 28g

Total Fat: 1g

% Fat by Weight: 1g / 28g = 0.036 (rounded to 4.0%)

Technically they aren’t lying. That product is in fact 4% fat by weight, or in other words it is 96% Fat Free.

Now here’s the twist. There are a number of ways to fudge that number. If you look at the ingredients list you’ll notice that water is the second ingredient. Why the hell would you need to add water to meat? Well as I’m sure you know water has 0 calories, so it obviously doesn’t contribute to the caloric load of the deli meat. However it does have mass, which means it does contribute to the total mass (or serving size). This effectively dilutes the Fat Free figures in favor of the food company and can mislead the consumer.

So let’s look at it differently. We’ll use the same label and information that is provided right there in plain sight, it just hasn’t been emphasized in bold letters or anything like that to catch the consumer’s eye.

Calories per Serving: 30

Calories per Serving from Fat: 10

% Fat by Calorie: 10 / 30 = 0.333 (rounded to 33.3%)

That’s quite a dramatic difference! How many packages of that deli meat do you think Oscar Mayer would sell if they labeled the package as “66.7% Fat Free”??

Now imagine if you apply this same technique to a creamier product or even a liquid (e.g. yogurt or milk) where even more water could be added without significantly affecting the texture of the product.

If you want an even more dramatic example of this, check out this video from Jeff Novick. This guy is a smart dude. He has Masters’ degrees in both exercise and nutrition and more abbreviations after his name than I care to list. Anyway, if you have a few minutes, watch this video.

POST-WORKOUT SHAKE

2009-12-08T07:22:00.000-06:00

I just made an amazing discovery the other day...pumpkin is good in everything!! And fortunately, pumpkin is ridiculously good for you. High in fiber, full of vitamins and minerals (vitamin A and beta carotene in particular), and light on the calories (another high water volume food).

For about the last 4 or 5 years, I've had a protein shake after virtually every workout I've done. It has evolved over the years to include more and more high quality ingredients while removing any "less good" ingredients. The one thing I've always struggled with though is how to include vegetables in my shake. The thought of a blueberry banana and broccoli shake is just kinda gross! That's where pumpkin comes into play! I always eat a ton of it around Thanksgiving and Christmas, but this year I am absolutely destroying it...I've been going through a couple of cans per week. So here's the recipe for the greatest shake of all time:

Water (the amount depends on how thick you want your shake)

Vanilla protein powder - 1 heaping scoop

Milled flax seeds - 2 tbsp

Oats - 1/2 cup

1/2 Banana (frozen)

Canned pumpkin - 1 cup

Cranberries (frozen) - 1 cup

Try it!

PRE-EATING

2009-12-05T15:29:00.000-06:00

It’s been a while since I have posted a non-training entry, so I figured today would be a good time! I was trying to figure out what topic to cover, but lo and behold a combination of the internet and my co-workers provided me with the inspiration I needed.

Thanksgiving was about a week and a half ago, and people around my office ever since have talked about how they gorged themselves on turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and of course pumpkin pie! Now don’t get me wrong, on three separate occasion I ate more than my fair share of all of those (except the stuffing…never been a fan). I guess the main difference is that some of my coworkers were talking prior to Thanksgiving about how they were going to try not to pig out this year. For me, on the other hand, I had every intention of feasting on some pastured turkey, vegetables, and homemade pumpkin pie with a whole wheat crust! I follow the 90/10 rule (eat well 90% of the time, relax the other 10%), so as long as I was on point leading up to Thanksgiving then I was free to eat to my heart's content.

What I find interesting about my co-workers’ situation, though, is that they frequently talk about how they try not to pig out at Thanksgiving since they are trying to lose weight or something of that nature. The same thing applies to Christmas Parties since it is that time of year again.

Let me clarify something first: if you want to eat the pumpkin pie, then by all means dig in. That’s what I did. However if you truly want to be “good” this holiday season and avoid the sweets, then prepare for it! It should be no surprise that pretty much anywhere you go around the holidays WILL have some form of seasonal dessert (and probably more than one to be honest). So how do you prepare?

PRE-EAT!

It sounds like a simple concept, and it is. Additionally, it’s an incredibly health-conscious concept! Just eat something before you go (such as raw broccoli and hummus or celery and baba ghanoush). That is the crucial part though. If you pre-eat with crappy food, that defeats the whole purpose of pre-eating. In fact, you'll probably be worse off than if you didn't pre-eat since crappy food tends not to be filling thereby allowing you to eat even more!

If you pre-eat with high quality foods, then the benefits of this are several-fold. First, and most obvious, you’re eating vegetables or some other healthy food. That cannot be bad. Secondly, since you are consuming a fibrous, high volume foods (as in water volume), it will help to satisfy your hunger without a ton of calories. When you actually get to your destination, you will be fairly full from pre-eating and therefore less likely to give in to temptations. Even if you decide to eat desserts and sweets, it is very likely that you will consume less of them because you will be so full.

I pre-eat all the time. In fact, Lauren and I have a Christmas party to go to tonight where I'm not sure what to expect in the food department. As you probably guessed, I plan on pre-eating. As a matter of fact, I have some lentils and veggies cooking in the Crock-Pot as I type this. You can check back to one of my earlier posts about the greatness that is the Crock-Pot!!

Here’s a perfect example of when pre-eating can (and should) be used:

Movie popcorn still a nutritional horror, study finds

The very first paragraph from the article states the following:

“A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation's largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter….”

That’s absolutely ridiculous. The article goes on to give a few specifics on movie popcorn that detail just how bad it is:

“It found that a Regal medium popcorn -- 20 cups -- contains 1,200 calories, 60 grams of saturated fat, and 980 milligrams of sodium. That's without the buttery topping that can be drizzled -- or poured -- on the popcorn, which adds another 200 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat per 1.5 tablespoons.”

A couple of things jump off the page here…the most unbelievable to me is that a medium popcorn is 20 cups!! How many cups are in a large? I’d be willing to bet they offer an extra-large too! I’m not terribly surprised by the calories and fat content. The numbers are huge to be sure, but I expected that. I guess I never had considered the actual volume of a popcorn tub before.

Anyway, back to the pre-eating concept. If you are susceptible to the temptation of a big, buttery tub of popcorn at the movies, just eat before you go. You can ensure that you eat high quality foods that are highly nutritious and will keep you on track to accomplishing whatever your goals may be (that is, assuming your goals are NOT to pig out on movie popcorn).

BEARD AND HAIR UPDATE

2009-12-05T15:09:00.000-06:00

As much as it pains me to admit it, I failed the Rehab Beard! I actually shaved it about 2 weeks ago. I made it pretty far and it was starting to look extra shaggy, but it was bothering the crap out of me so I made the executive decision to get rid of it.

You'll all be happy to know that I have kept the hair! I don't remember the last time I got a haircut, and my hair is probably twice as long as it ever has been before. I'll update with a picture soon to show my mop.

Also, as punishment for shaving the beard, I have instituted a new rule for myself. Whenever it is time to get a haircut, I can't just get a regular haircut. I have to get a mullet and keep it for at least 24 hours which has to include one work day.