Since I eat a Paleo Diet all of the time I decided to do my own type of challenge. 5 weeks of only home cooked meals! After realizing this might be too tough, I decided I am allowed to eat out one night a week.

I also wanted to use this as a chance to show you all what I eat and how fast and easy it is to cook your own food. As I update this blog with my meals I will list how long, and what ingredients I used. Hopefully you will learn the tricks I use to save time and start cooking more on your own!

Saturday Dinner:

Orange Pepper and Guacamole Appetizer
Grassfed sliders with Spicy Kimchi and a Sweet Potato. Cooked in Kerrigold Pasture Butter

Appetizer took about 2 minutes, burgers and sweet potato took about 20 minutes

Hot Pork Sausage from farmers market, Pasture Raised Eggs, Jicama and Clementines. I use a lot of Turmeric on my eggs cause it's awesome.

Took me only 15 minutes to cook suasage and eggs separately for myself and Jodi

 Sunday Dinner:

Olive Oil and Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Breasts, Steamed Broccoli and Mushrooms in Coconut Oil. I used lots of garlic, pepper, and parsley, salt to taste

Cook time on this was longer because I baked the chicken in the oven for 20 minutes with foil over the dish and then 15 minutes without. Total time about 40 minutes start to finish. But wow were those chicken breasts juicy and since we cooked 3 pounds worth we have lunch for tomorrow.

Never thought I would do this but I just can't avoid it any longer. A post directed towards women. First off, I am in the business of making people look and feel better. For most clients this means leaning down. The disconnect occurs when I tell them how to lean down.

First, before I go any further, I will not use this post to discuss diet in depth. Simply eat a Paleo Diet based on REAL food and you will be well on your way to success. I will also not argue for the importance of diet in this post. It is at least 80% of the equation when reaching your health and fitness goals. 

Ok, now back to the original post. Why aren't you leaning down? First we have to look at what the average woman believes they should be doing to lose weight. So here they are, the top 4 things I see countless women do to lose those extra pounds. 5 is a cooler number but I can't think of a 5th right now:

1. Yay Cardio!!! Gotta get my run on, right after my zumba class, and then maybe some extra elliptical thrown in there!
2. Gotta stay away from those weights, don't wanna get too bulky. I like that long and lean muscle!
3. Oh crap it's been 2 hours since my last meal, gotta have a quick snack to keep my metabolism revved up!
4. I still haven't lost any weight, I must need to eat even less!

If you couldn't tell from my tone and use of exclamations, I believe each and every one of these unfortunate pitfalls is absolutely ridiculous. Let's tackle them one at a time.

1. Cardio may help you lose weight but it won't be the weight you want to lose. Too much cardio will ultimately burn muscle along with fat, decreasing your metabolism and doing nothing for your body composition. If the goal is to be leaner, then we need to burn fat and only fat. I am not saying you should never run, only that running should not be the majority of your training. If you enjoy running, then get strong and lean first. I can't even tell you how many people I see who have issues caused by running too much without any foundation of strength.
2. You will not get huge and bulky from lifting weights. You will not look like a body builder from squatting. There is a difference between strength training, and body building. If you want to get lean, challenge yourself. The body likes homeostasis. By increasing the intensity of your workouts, and challenging your nervous and musculoskeletal systems by lifting heavier, you will lean down. Also, there is no such thing as lengthening your muscles. This is a myth. 
3. This one always makes me chuckle. I imagine our hunter gatherer ancestors with leather fanny packs full of snacks so they could eat every 2-3 hours. Maybe they had a Flinstonian refrigerator to keep all their meat from spoiling. For millions of years our bodies were used to going long periods without food. There has never been a study to conclusively prove that more smaller meals icreases metabolism. Eat when you are hungry, and eat till you are full. Three meals is plenty if you eat enough at each meal. Snacking promotes bad food choices so avoid it.
4. Stop checking the scale. It lies. Focus on body composition and how clothes fit. Take before and afters so you can see the changes. The most important thing you can do for your body is help it recover. Not eating enough to recover from your workouts will mess you up! Worry about the quality of your food, not the quantity. 

Obviously there are tons of other things that attribute to leanness like stress levels and sleep. I merely wanted to touch on the training aspect of things. I have seen lots of people reach their goals, and after a while you notice similarities. Those that reached their goals the fastest, and made the biggest strides, all followed the principles above. You really have nothing to lose by trying a different approach to your training, so skip your morning run and lift some weights.

How many times have you witnessed a person enter the gym, little to no athletic backround, who is quickly able to produce a lot of top end strength? I know it frustrates you, because it frustrated me for a long time too. I would think, how the hell is this person so strong so fast, and then chalk it up to them just being more genetically gifted.

Is it really genetics though? How much of what makes someone strong has to do with their genetics? Because I have always been intrigued with this, I think a lot about what makes someone naturally strong, or what most would describe as a natural athlete. I have some good news for you, it's not all genetics. Natural strength has a lot more to do with specific skills than a person's physical make-up. You can argue that these skills are innate to some due to genetics, but let's not go there for this discussion.

Let's define strength. In simple terms strength is a person's muscular capacity to produce power. If we use this definition to work with and continue with my claim above, being a natural athlete has some to do with muscular capacity, but more to do with the efficiency in which the muscles are incorporated to do work. Here is the cool part, you can teach someone to be more efficient.

So what have I noticed all naturally strong individuals do and what can you learn from them?

1. They are aggressive in their movements

No one ever lifted anything heavy being timid. For any movement that requires power and explosiveness, a level of aggressivenses has to be present. Most natural athletes put it all on the line and trust their bodies. The next time you go for a max clean, pump yourself up a bit first and prepare yourself. This doesn't mean scream and yell and act like a jackass, it is possible to get aggressive without macho bravado. For instance, I often close my eyes and simply visualize myself moving fast and aggressivelly before I perform a lift or movement that requires a lot of strength.

2. They tighten the right muscles, but relax the ones not involved

Think of every loose muscle as a shock absorber in your body. Your torso is basically one huge shock absorber, a very important safety mechanism we should all be happy we have. For what we use it for in weightlifting and gymnastic movements, we often want a rigid structure instead. There are people at the gym who have twice as much muscular capacity, but because they don't know how to keep their body tight in the right places, they cannot lift nearly as musch as they should. Before you lift something, it is very important to get yourself organized, a term I like to use from Kelly Starret. Performing movements like planks, hollow rocks, and superman holds are a great way to train this static rigidness. I often go through a very quick checklist in my head before I perform any weighted movement. A simple reminder to squeeze down through your entire torso will do wonders. 

Although we want to be rigid in many muscles when performing weighted movements, it's also important to realize that squeezing every muscle in your body would render you immobile. We obviously need to be relaxed in some areas to allow the body to move fluidly. On top of that, many complex movements such as the snatch and clean and jerk require quick transitions of muscles being tight, loose, and then tight again, allowing for quick and snappy movements. When I teach people to punch up under the bar on a snatch or jerk, I often have them clench their first and tighten their arm as much as possible as an example. I then have them try and punch to see how it feels. Do this yourself, you will notice its very hard to punch fast if everything is squeezed tight. Now loosen your arm and relax your fist. Finally, punch as fast as you can and tighten every muscle only at the very end of your punch. Feels better right? Remember, it's not just being tight, but being tight at the right moments.

3. They don't overthink movements

Naturally strong people know when to think about the movement, and when to let the body do its thing. Thinking about too much during a lift is distracting, and lessens the ability of your brain to send signals to all the muscles doing the work. I like to give myself a short pep talk before my lifts. Just a few quick reminders to my body about what I want it to do. Once I grab the bar though, I trust my body to do it. Does my body always do exactly what I tell it to? Of course not, but that's what practice is for. The more you drill a movement, the more your body will remember without thinking about it. This is also why it is very important not to overperform movements incorrectly. Each poor movement is just another incorrect reminder that you will have to fight to erase over time.

A few things have been bothering me lately. There are a lot of people out there doing it wrong when it comes to training for their desired goals. I am going to make a tiny assumption here. Most of the people I see training want a few or likely all of the following:

Be Leaner (lose fat, be more defined)

Be Stronger (less injury prone, more capable)

Be Healthier (as it applies to blood work and bodily function)

Hopefully I am correct in my assumption. So we have a lot of people wanting the above, but then failing to achieve these goals. Why? I am going to list the top reasons people fail when their intentions are good. These are in order of importance.

Not eating correctly:

Doing the wrong type of training:

Certain types of training promote fat loss more than others. Don't get this confused with "what exercises burn the most fat" this is a common misconception. We are more interested in using the body in a way that will promote healthy hormone levels and muscle development that will lead to the body storing less fat, and using it for energy.

Anaerobic vs Aerobic

Anaerobic exercises (shorter duration and high intensity) promotes lean and healthy muscle development. It also promotes fat loss, improved bone density, cardiovascular health and much more. Things like strength training with weights, sprints, and interval work with little rest all fall under this category.

Aerobic exercises (longer duration and lower intensity) will do some of the above, but to a lesser degree and at a detrement to important factors such as bone density and muscle mass. Although it is important to be well rounded, it is much better to spend most of your time training in an Anaerobic state which is much less oxidative to the body.

I often see many people shy away from weights and instead choose to run more thinking this will help them lose body fat. Unfortunately this is rarely the case. What usually ends up happening is they reduce their muscle mass, therefore reducing their resting metabolic rate putting them in an even worse place than before. Sometimes the scale will read less, but this will primarily be because of the loss of muscle, which is much denser than fat. 

I see this ALL THE TIME! You have to commit to coming on strength days if you want to see your body change. Look around the gym and pick the leanest / fittest looking bodies. 99 times out of 100, those people have bigger deadlifts, cleans, snatches, push presses, squats, etc. This is not a coincedence. Strong leads to lean, not the other way around. If you are not happy with how your body looks, go squat, and trade those running shoes in for lifting shoes. 

More is not always better:

This is a huge pet peeve of mine. For some reason, when somebody sees little results doing their current routine, instead of evaluating what they are doing, they decide instead "That I must just need to do more! I am running 5 miles a day, my knees ache, and I am not losing any fat, so let's run 8 miles a day!" This is such an easy pitfall for many people. PLEASE STOP!

This even applies when people are seeing the changes they want but become greedy. Quickly it turns into "I PRd my deadlift by 10 pounds doing deadlift once a week, I bet I could PR by 30 pounds if I deadlift 3 times a week!" DON'T!

Conclusion:

If you aren't seeing any change, then you need to look at your program and ask yourself if you are falling trap to one of the three pitfalls I mentioned above. Don't get stuck in a routine that isn't working for you, assess it and make a change in the right direction.

I know it has been a while since I last made a post on here. There are a combination of reasons for my lack of posterous attention.

In no particular order...

#1 Jodi
#2 Injuries
#3 I suck

Long story short, I met an amazing girl, I kept running into nagging injuries that were hampering my training, and I didnt want to bore you guys with that stuff.

Now that I am feeling a lot better there are some updates to make! The Arnolds are in a couple weeks and my training has been going great lately. I can finally say I am almost 100% again. Back still bothers me on Jerks over 110kg but it's getting there. This post does have a direction by the way.

I wanted to talk a little about the rehab process. Like I said, I am finally feeling pretty damn good, back squatted my old max with ease on the 4th day of a max effort week for instance. How I worked back up was a combination of the following:

1. Removing Stress
After the American Open I was a shit-show. I felt like crap, had little motivation, everything hurt every day and all day, was sleeping hours and hours during the day and I had no idea what was going on. Turns out I had done a number on my adrenals training for the American Open. Training wasn't the only stressor, there was stress from the need to do well, to not let my coach down, to keep up with my friends in my weight class, etc. I didn't notice it at the time, but after the event I shut down completely.

I realized I had to really let myself heal up, not just physically, but mentally. I started meditating, deep breathing techniques, and I took a lot of time looking inward at those feelings of regret, frustration, and failure to live up to my own expectations. Sorting out those feelings really helped me move forward and it was crazy how quickly I started feeling more relaxed.

I also decided to remove caffeine to help my adrenals recoup and started taking a few supplements that seemed to help me sleep better and got rid of my daytime drowsiness and anxiety. I added Theanine and 5-HTP to my normal regimen of magnesium at night. I also started mixing Natural Calm with my water in the morning. After about 5 weeks I felt like my normal self again.

2. Specific Warmups and Accessory Work
Without getting too technical, I basically had a very poor hip and core position on the dip on the Jerk, as well as my split position in the catch. This led to a lot of strain on my QL, Glute Medius, and Aductors, leading to straining the muscles in my back quite a bit.

I added a number of mobility and warm up drills to help get these muscles rehabbed. One of my favorites that I think really helped were single leg and half bridges. These were great for firing up the glutes. I am also a huge fan of the perform better bands for doing monster walks and side lunges. All of my warmups basically involved getting my over active hip flexors to calm down, and my under active glutes and hamstrings to take over a lot of work.

Accessory work such as back extensions, gh raises, planks, and ab-wheel roll outs helped improve core strength to protect my back.

3. Smart Training
Training at weights that are 50-60% is quite frustrating. Each week my goal was simply to get through with as little pain as possible and see small improvements.

It is important to not get ahead of yourself when recovering from an injury. Trust your instincts, if you think a weight might push a muscle a little further than it is ready to go, back off a bit. The only thing that I hated more than training with weights that used to feel light, was the potential of hitting another set back.

I remember worrying that it would take months to hit 90kg on snatch again. It took 2 weeks. It felt really heavy, but nothing hurt.

Next...
So I have the Arnolds up next where I hope to be back to where I was before the American Open. My next post will deal with training programs.

To finish I will post a song that has to do with Jodi's current location.

I don't know how to stress this enough. I am sure most people have heard the famous Woody Allen quote "90% of life is just showing up." I really believe this to be true and it applies very well to training. If you don't show up consistently, you won't find a lot of success. There are plenty of different regimens you hear about in the CrossFit community. 3 on 1 off, 3 on 1 off 2 on 1 off, etc. I honestly believe that it doesn't matter too much which training schedule you choose, as long as you stick to it and show up.

Recently we opened another gym and I noticed that for about 2 weeks I didn't stick to my standard 4 on 1 off 1 on 1 off schedule. I will say that those 2 weeks were easily my worst training weeks in a long time. The second I started showing up consistently on my standard training days, the way I felt and lifted immediately improved again. I want to be clear that this doesn't mean you should show up to lift or do a tough CrossFit workout when you are sick, injured, etc. There will always be circumstances that make missing a training day unavoidable. It is important to differentiate between an acceptable excuse for not showing up, and a bad excuse. My favorite bad excuse is "I just don't feel like it." This is probably the most dangerous phrase ever uttered. It is like a virus that takes hold and will easily turn into multiple just-don't-feel-like-it days.

This leads to my second point and my own take on the above quote: 90% of excuses are bull-shit excuses. I have found in my very short 26 years of life, that almost all excuses I have used myself, or heard from others are BS. This is very helpful to me and I hope it helps others. Sit down and go through various excuses you have used and determine how many were truthfully valid? Now the next time you find an excuse not to lift, stick to your diet, or just plain show up, think about whether or not it is a valid excuse, or if you are just cheating yourself.

Commit to consistency and commit to throwing out BS excuses to not train hard. If you want results, whether they are related to diet, health, strength, or whatever, you need to show up.

The below video has nothing to really do with this post except the word Excuses in the tile. I only posted it because I love The Morning Benders and this song.

I find dichotomies interesting in general, but even more so when it pertains to Olympic weightlifting. While I was lifting today I was thinking of a couple that really stand out. I believe there are several qualities an athlete must have to really be successful when it comes to weightlifting and sometimes these qualities butt heads.

Stubbornness vs Adaptability
The first is the ability to be very stubborn. Stubborn athletes don't like to give up when giving up is easy. But stubborness is also dangerous, and this leads to the first dichotomy. There are times when stubbornness will get you nowhere. When this happens, the best course is to adapt to the situation and make the most out of it. The athlete really needs to be stubborn enough to not give up on an important lift, but at the same time, adaptable enough to know when continued effort is detrimental. I have seen lifters attempt 1 rep maxes 20 times. This shows a lot of stubbornness, but the smarter thing would have been to use that energy to squat heavy afterwards.

Remembrance vs Forgetfulness
This one is interesting. You want an athlete that can remember things when needed, but able to forget them in an instant as well. Sometimes missing a heavy lift can really mess with the head. Trying to attempt a maximal load while still thinking about the missed lift is never a good idea. You have to whipe the mind clear of the previous failure, and only remember what you need to be successful in the lift. Sometimes I will remember failures to gain motivation, but dwelling on failure too much will limit your ability to move past it.

Remember these qualities and make sure to use the right one in the right circumstance.

This could easily become a thesis paper so instead I will write several posts over time that deal with the issue of mental strength. Today I am going to relate it to Olympic Weightlifting, but trust me, there is plenty to be said about mental strength and how it applies to CrossFit as well.

I think you can tell a lot about a person by how they react to failure. The tough part about Olympic Weightlifting is that failure is something you pretty much have to get used to. I will definitely say it gets better as time goes on, but it will always be there. If you are ever looking for an awesome candidate for Olympic Weightlifting, look for people that are not discouraged by lots of failure.

Now to the main topic, mental strength as it applies to missing during training. Missing is frustrating. Simple as that. Continued misses during training will usually compound that feeling of failure and aggrevation ensues.

I wish I took my own advice, but luckily I have people around me who kick me when I need it. Last week I wasn't concetrating at all and missed several light snatch balances warming up to my work sets. I was getting extremely frustrated after every miss. I was stuck in what seemed like an endless pattern. Drop the bar forward, power clean it back up, rack it, take it off the rack, miss again, etc. Sometimes people get in these patterns of failure and for whatever reason, it is tough to take a step back and make the necessary changes. Luckily Spencer looked over at me and said, "so are you going to just keep doing that or are you going to change something?" That was a good kick to the head for me. I thought to myself, shit, where is my mental strength today? I am fumbling around like an idiot and not concentrating at all.

So after missing 165 about 7 times, I was able to hit every rep of my heavier work sets after finding my focus. Below is a vid of me doing 190x3 which was more than I was supposed to do that day. Moral of the story is that no matter how badly your training may be going, chances are it can be salvaged, you just need to get your mind right. Don't just let yourself get pissed off. Sit down, think about what you are doing wrong, identify a few key things to concentrate on, and go back and do it again. I bet you make the lift the next time.

(download)

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