The Fit Blog

I was hard up for some food this evening, so had to make a trek out in the snow to the grocery store to find some healthy snack alternatives. Near the deli aisle, I spotted what at first looked like a pack of peperoni sticks, but what turned out to be turkey sticks! Yes, the Old Style (the brand name) Kielbassa Turkey Snack Sticks are a turkey based kielbassa that actually tastes rather good.

The bonus? Not only are these things pretty tasty, each serving (just under a stick) is only 2g of fat and has “only” 360mg of sodium (lots, but small compared to most meat sticks). The Kielbassa snack sticks also pop a good 7g of protien and only 1g of carbohydrates.

Combined with some cheese sticks and some crackers, I’d say we have a fairly good zone snack on our hands (despite the arguably high salt content).

No Comments | In: Uncategorized, nutrition | tags: diet, high protein, kielbassa, Paleo diet, turkey, turkey snack sticks, Zone diet. | #

Lance Armstrong is going to attempt to win the Tour de France for an eighth time, coming out of retirement for the 2009 cycling season.

With seven consecutive Tour wins from 1999 to 2005, Armstrong is an icon around the World, known for an ability to fight not only severe lactic acid build up, but undeniable odds, also winning a serious battle with cancer in 1996.

Armstrong has also dealt with a very weak relationship with the French sports community. The guy has been accused again and again of using banned substances in previous seasons. In fact, the Tour de France organizers, the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), said in October that his return would be “embarrassing.” In his memoir, Every Second Counts“, Armstrong talked about the countless times that he’d get surprise visits from anti-doping specialists to make sure he wasn’t using.

And he never was. Despite wild claims otherwise, Armstrong has never tested positive for banned performance enhancing substances. Yep - it turns out he’s all natural power and win or lose in 2009, I’m certain he’ll give us a display of pure fierceness that we’ve come to expect from the man.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: cycling, Lance Armstrong, Tour de France. | #

I recently moved.  Both my wife and I found ourselves driving a 45 minute commute twice a day and eventually I made the suggestion we move closer to work and we figured there was little stopping us, so we did it.

We’ve been in the house for about two weeks now.  One of my first priorities was to setup a small area in the unfinished basement to workout.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have much equipment.  I’m a firm believer that all anyone really needs is a bar, some weight and some space.  That said, I have a pair of rings as well that I abuse on a regular basis.  The grip tape on them has been worn out several times now.

One thing that’s been missing from “my gym” has been a pullup bar.  At my old house, there weren’t many options for putting one up.  I toyed with the idea of a bar that works in a door frame, but from what I’ve heard and read, you can’t kip with those things.  I like to kip.  For me, a pullup bar has to be rock solid.  Also, given my frugal nature, a bar has to be cheap as well.

Fortunately my new house is right around the corner (literally) from a Home Depot.  The other day I picked up the following:

• 2 2×6 cut 18″
• 1 48″ steel pipe 3/4″ diameter
• 6 5/16″ carriage bolts, nuts and washers

That’s all it took for a sweet, totally solid pullup bar that I can kip on till my heart’s content.  I drilled out a 3/4 inch hole in each 2×6 and used the carriage bolts to attach to two joists in the basement.

I also purchsed some $25 rubber matting from Walmart to keep my feet from freezing off in the basement when barefoot and to buffer the sound of the weight hitting the floor.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized, nutrition | tags: home gym, pullup bar. | #

Finally, after lots of work, I’ve finally hit my goal of 10 unbroken muscle-ups.  Frankly, I could have hit this goal months ago, but I’ve been busy (which is also the reason for such infrequent updates in the last little while).  Unfortunately this feat was attained at home and there were no witnesses.  Fortunately, however, I managed to catch it on camera…

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

Ok - I know I’ve been pointing countless videos of my handstand efforts, but I keep progressing, so I’ll just keep posting.

In an attempt to focus on the following details, I’ve been finding it much easier to maintain balance:

• Arms fully locked out
• Tighten core (abs and glutes in particular)
• Legs together

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

Saw this video linked from Beast Skills. Dominic Lacasse enters the Guinness book of World Records with a 39 second flag hold. Brilliant.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

This past weekend I attended a crossfit certification in Toronto at Moss Armory. In all honesty, I really had no idea what to expect, but I was absolutely blown away by the whole experience. I’ve often read in the comments on the crossfit main site from others who’ve raved about crossfit certs and how amazing they’ve been, and through the course of Saturday morning to Sunday evening, I’ve been completely convinced of the same.
I expected getting squashed by a couple of hardcore workouts, so no surprise there, but for some reason, what I didn’t expect was the professionalism of the whole thing and the incredibly high quality of the lectures and teaching.
It was a brilliant weekend and I encourage anyone thinking about attending a crossfit cert to do it - it’s worth every penny and then some.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | tags: crossfit certification. | #

Still working on the handstands.  It’s a slow process…

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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!!!

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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

3 Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

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.

No Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #