The Summer has only a couple days left and while that means shorter and cooler days are looming, it also means that the Fall TV lineup is right around the corner. Personally, I don’t have many favourite TV shows anymore, but as a glutton for super-hero related stuff, I like to set aside space on my PVR specifically for NBC’s Heroes.
Heroes Season 3, “Villains”, begins September 22 and looks sweet as usual. With the season premiere being less than a month away, I thought it prudent to do some Heroes related research to see what king of training the cast actually go through. I came across this video of Hayden Panettiere at a “training session” in West Hollywood with her trainer :

Now, granted, Hayden has youth on her side (she’s 18). So maintaining a fit physique requires minimum effort (relatively anyway). Keeping up with this “routine” her “trainer” puts her through, along with a middle of the road diet would probably keep the cameras on here for some time to come. But seriously this routine is as good as my baking and unfortunately is a similar routine to what probably 80% of the people do at a given time at a gym.
Here’s two reasons why I think it sorta sucks:

1. Stair Master - unless you’re stair mastering full tilt, you’re looking at a waste of time. Working glutes isn’t a bad thing at all, but there are more efficient ways of doing so. Lunges ring a bell. Cleans and snatches fit the bill too. The bonus of these exercises is being able to get more work into less time. Intensity is the name of the game. 15 minutes of lunges and cleans with weight will get you light years further than an hour on the stair master. And there’s nothing more bothering to me than watching people on the stair master for an hour, reading magazines. If, however, you’d like to incorporate stairs in your routine, then just use a box or some real stairs and go hard. Bah… I loathe the stair master.
2. The Curl - curls with heavy weight aren’t the greatest exercise as they target such a specific group of muscles and are such a non-functional exercise. However, heavy curls do promote biceps tone\hypertrophy and if that’s what you’re looking for, then so be it. But curls with a small weight (less than 75% max, I’d say) are useless. You’re not going to “tone” anything with that - in fact, you’re not going to be doing much of anything for yourself either. With curls, go heavy or don’t bother. And if fitness or getting lean is a goal, then curls are worthless and at best just a bonus exercise (with max weight).

The biggest problem with these exercises is that when included in a routine as major elements, they’re really just a waste of time. A superior workout, done in a 10th of the time would have simply been something like 50 dumbbell snatches + 50 lunges.

Was in Fort Lauderdale for the week.  It was hot and muggy, but still had a blast.

The muscle-ups are coming along. My “training” effort to get 10 in a row has paid off a bit as I’ve more recently been able to get 8 in a row. I think if I were fresh I’d have gotten at least 10.
Anyway, I’ve been concentrating on stricter form and using less of a kip, which is paying dividends in arm strength. I’ve also managed to get a back lever and I’m now working on a front.
The video below demonstrates.

P.S. Can’t believe it’s already the end of July!!!

Woke up this morning and decided to capture some parallette “training”. The 20 second l-sit is quite a hurdle to get past. I’m expecting that by mid-July I should be able to hold at least 30 seconds. As far as my handstands on the parallettes are concerned, I continue to have difficulty balancing in a locked out handstand. There were only a couple of attempts that had a somewhat solid balance. Strength wise, however, I’m feeling far more comfortable with the parallettes.

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

Recently our crossfit classes have been inundated with a bunch of young high school aged guys.  I enjoy it - they’re a nice group of kids and fun to work out with.  But one thing that has become apparent to me is that at that age, reaching their fitness potential is far easier (and far less limited) than when you’re older (in my case, 30).  It took me months to get proficient at pull-ups and a half a year to get comfortable with the muscle up.  Just a couple weeks into the program and these guys are hitting muscle ups like a pro.  Of course, us older guys tend to be a little heavier (and are thus able to lift a lot heavier too), but these kids are able to pick up the technical stuff with ease.

Now that they can muscle-up on the rings, however, we’ve started a little competition for bragging rights - the first to 10 consecutive muscle-ups.  I’m already ahead of them as I can consistently get 5 in a row now, but there’s no doubt that these guys are going to catch up in no time.  So it’s pedal to the metal muscle-up time.  Goal: 10 solid consecutive muscle-ups. Timeframe: ASAP…  Ok, so now what’s the plan??

How can one go from 5 to 10 MU’s in just a couple of weeks?  What kind of training would be necessary and is there any way to accelerate the process?

At the very least, I plan on attempting either max MU’s or several smaller sets on a daily basis.  This, in itself, would probably get me to my goal, but it would likely also be a longer process.  So I’ll need to supplement the training.  With pulls and presses being the primary movements involved in a MU, I plan on using dips, pull-ups and seated rows as secondary training exercises.  So in short, MU training is going to be every day - MU sets plus 2 days per week of dip\pull training (likely Saturday and Tuesday).  This is in addition to my already almost every day workout schedule (albeit mostly fairly short workouts).

Not being very certain of how to best approach my schedule, I’m going to try the following the first week:

M: 5×2 MU
T: 3×8 Weighted Dips 40#, 3×8 180# seated row, max MU attempt
W: 4×3 MU
TH: max MU attempt, 5×1 MU
F: 6×2 MU
SAT: 5×5 40# Weighted PU, max MU attempt
SUN: max MU attempt

As for accelerating the process, I’m toying around with the idea of dropping a few pounds before my final max attempt and additionally working on my kipping technique.  We’ll see where I’m at next week.

We recently got our hands full and have been seriously short on “free” time lately.  By having our hands full, of course, I mean that we just got two kittens who’ve been having a hard time adjusting to a new environment and each other.  They’re cute, but they sure are two little terrors.  So between them, work and other misc life things, it’s been difficult getting a bite in to eat, much less have time to workout.  But as I was pushin through my 175th squat tonight, I thought to myself, anyone could fit this in.

15 minutes and a bucket of sweat is all it really takes to get in some muscle building, fat busting burn.  It may not sound like much, but after 150 or so squats and 40 hand stand pushups it certainly feels enough.

Welcome to the newly designed version of www.thefitblog.net!  Gone are the days of the default blue wordpress theme and here to stay is the minimalist custom job of yours truly.  Yes, it’s simple, but it works nicely and I like it :)  I also used the opportunity to install a much needed upgrade to wordpress.

Now that’s a little more like it.  Today I managed a 265# squat.  I think I had a little more in me, but I didn’t want to push it too much.  So no more benching more than I can squat - that was ridiculous

This post is a major ramble… Apologies in advance if you’re looking for anything coherent.

If you don’t eat well, you will never completely reap the rewards of working out. In fact, not eating well can physically set you backwards, completely negating any potential gains from the gym. We take eating for granted so often, but nutrition is key to our health and well being and truly sets a base from which other aspects of our lives can either flourish or flounder.

But as I’ve said before, it’s not necessarily easy to make good nutrition choices all the time, nor do we necessarily know what good nutrition choices are. In the practical sense, we don’t really need to keep track of every morsel that we put in our mouths. We don’t need to weigh every ounce of chicken or spinach to eat healthy. In fact, it’s completely fine to indulge on ocassion without feeling guilty. We need to consume food, but we should never let what we eat consume us.

Good nutrition in 6 words: Avoid sugar, refined or processed food. Stick with this and you’re well on your way to eating healthy.

Supplement your diet. It’s nearly impossible to expect to get all your required nutrients through eating food alone. Vitamins help greatly with this. Don’t be afraid of protein powder - it isn’t just for hardcore body builders. Get lots of Omega-3’s. Fish oil!

Preparation makes eating healthy so much easier. Buy big tubs of mixed greens and use heaping handfuls as the base for you lunch. Top it with chili, chicken, bacon, egg, cottage cheese, tuna or some other high protein food source. Add some more veggies and you’ve got yourself a good meal.

Make large batches of food for dinner, on the weekend, and freeze portions for later. Make lots of left overs. When you’re not prepared, you are more likely to choose an unhealthy meal. But when you’re in a pinch, don’t feel guilty for eating a burger. Try not to load up on bagels.

Go to the bulk food store and buy lots of nuts. Buy loads of nuts and seeds. Peanuts, cashews, almonds, soy nuts, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, walnuts, pecans. Also grab some dried cranberries and dried apricots and you’re set for snacks. Combine several cups of smashed up nuts and seeds with some whole oats and honey and artificial sweetener and bake and make your own cereal.

Watch the video linked here: http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/003398.htm Notice the pyramid. Remember the pyramid.

Food - breatharians may claim it isn’t needed, but for the overwhelming majority of us, there’s no denying that food is a critical part of life. Unfortunately, what we should eat to be healthy is a seemingly constant debate resulting in ever changing diet books and programs.

Trying to dissect the volumes of volumes of information is incredibly difficult for the average person. What makes it even more difficult for us is that none of the information is consistent and it seems that even the experts get everything wrong. If they can’t figure out what we should eat, then what’s a guy looking for a healthy diet supposed to do?

The answer is research, and lots of it. Over the last little while I’ve been reading all that I can on nutrition, attempting to not get stuck in the fads and one solution fits all kind of mentality. It’s difficult trying to make heads or tails of nutrition, but I’ve come across some great stuff that I thought I’d share.

While there are more and more “fad” diets coming out with books and all sorts of highly marketed material aimed primarily at sucking dieters dry of their hard earned cash, many of the more recent diet programs are incredibly closely related and for the most part, they follow similar principles. Atkins, Zone, Paleo, Glucose Revolution, South Beach and countless more diets all basically revolve around the idea of low carbs. While some of them such as Zone and South Beach mask the low carb idea around insulin or glycemic indecies, ultimately they paint refined, high density carbs as evil and prescribe significant amounts of protein and fat as a crucial part of the diet. Read on…

On Saturday morning, I did some deadlifts at a high intensity at 185#.  This is well below my max, but 72 hours later, my back is still killing me.  I suspect it’s just DOMS as the pain didn’t start until about 24 hours later, but I don’t doubt that I need to work on my form quite a bit as lower back pain is somewhat debilitating.

A really nice interview with powerlifter Eric Cressey is over on  Precision Nutrition.  Eric provides some good advice on technique and how the wrong technique can cause injury.  For me, I think I lift too much with my lower back instead of my hips.  Actually, I know that’s the problem.  For my next deadlifting session, I’m going to go lighter and work on form.

Ok, ok… It isn’t a fluid motion by any means, but it’s a start, right??

Last night my wife and I headed to Toronto to see the latest Cirque du Soleil act in town, Kooza. In short, it was absolutely brilliant.

Since this was my first Cirque experience, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Driving in to the parking lot to see the huge circus tent, in all its blue and yellow stripes was really quite neat. Once inside the tent, the seating was fairly squished, but at least that let everyone view the show from fairly close up.

Even before the show started, the audience was treated to entertainment as the characters ran around the tent, acting in various situations with or within the crowd. Once the lights dimmed and the show was underway, however, my jaw literally dropped and had to be picked up off the floor when the lights came back up at the end. It was that amazing.

The strength and talent that I witnessed last night was like none other that I have seen first person before. Handstands galore, flips, lifts, dexterity, amazing flexibility, strength and sheer commitment - the show had the whole package and then some.

The best part was no doubt the giant double pendulum thingy that circled around (vertically) essentially like a ride right out of the midway. It had two fearsome looking guys doing acrobatics within and on top of the two pendulum ends. The entire crowd gasped every time one of them would jump and fall down to land on the swinging pendulum end.

The contortionists were freaky, but despite their extreme limberness, they had a crazy strength. The seemingly youngest of the three of them made a one handed planche look easy. While in Toronto, the contortionists actually made a World Record for highest ever circus performance. Kind of a lame record, but here’s a vid of their routine (skip to about 2:35 into the vid). Freaky stuff - especially the part where the one girl’s legs walk around her upper body like a ghost in the Grudge.

Other highlights include the guy who did handstand presses while balancing on a skyscraper of chairs, the juggler, the unicycling waltz, among many others. A bonus was a great live music performance throughout the whole show.

Cirque du Soleil is definitely something that, should you have an opportunity to see, you shouldn’t miss out on.

For more on Cirque and, specifically Kooza, take a look at their site, here.

I’m back from the big Greece adventure.  Sleep cycle is out of whack and I’ve been eating like crap for 10 days.  But it’s called vacation and once in a while, it’s needed.  Yes, vacation even from working out and eating healthy can be a great thing.

However, for those who have been to the Acropolis or Santorini before can understand how much we may take for granted our ability to walk up or down a set of stairs.  My wife and I do plenty of squats and lunges but walking up and down hundreds of tiny steep stairs daily caused both of us to wince a little at the burning in our thighs.  Needless to say, we also did a lot… a lot of walking.

But if you’ve ever been thinking of taking a trip to Greece or to the Greek Islands, do it.  It’s definitely a beautiful country and combine its beauty with its magnificent history and you’ve got yourself a great European adventure.