Looking Forward....

Hope this finds everybody well and that you all had a great Christmas.. I love this time of year because it's an opportunity to look back on the past year, think about what went wrong and what went right, and how I can improve on things for the coming year. The past year saw the opening of my dream gym, which was huge. New Hampshire now has its first functional strength training gym right in downtown Nashua at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. The response has been phenomenal and everybody is really excited about the way we're redefining the way to get in shape. I want to thank everybody who has been coming to the gym and talking it up with their friends and family. The only way a gym like this works is through the excitement and commitment of its members. Michele and I are totally committed to helping each of you reach your goals.

At this time last year I made a list of goals for the year.. On the list I had things like, "open a gym", "come top 20 in a cyclocross series", "top 10 in the Green Mt Stage Race, masters group".. These were in there with the regular stuff like "save the world" and "be kinder to the French".. I have to admit that I wasn't real good about reaching many of my goals, but that was because opening the gym took so much effort that everything else kind of took a backseat. I wasn't able to train for bike racing so I actually didn't get to do one race last year. To reach the racing goals I had for myself I would have needed to be at about 15 hours a week on the bike. I just didn't have the time with a 40 hour a week day job and then trying to get a new business going in my spare time. Oh well, there's always next year, right? Which brings us to "next year".

In 2009 I've set my primary training goal to get top 10 in my age group for the Mt Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb.. 7.6 miles of relentless uphill at an average grade of 12%. No breaks. No downhill. I've done this mountain 3 times in the past. Best time was 1:20:00 two years ago.. This year my goal is to get 1:10 and if conditions are really tough then I want to be no slower than 1:15. Once you get above treeline at about mile 6 the wind gusts get up around 50mph+ and riders have been known to get blown off their bikes. There's really no way to describe how difficult it is to finish this race. At mile 1 you feel OK, but know there's a long way to go. At mile 2, you've been going uphill for about 20 minutes and your heart rate is up over 90% max and it has been since mile 0.4. Things are really starting to suck. Then right around mile 3 you hit a section that's an average grade of about 18% for a mile and you question your sanity. You know you're not even half way, you're working super hard, and your mind is telling you "there's no shame in getting off the bike. this is stupid and i think we might die if we continue. i don't think we're going to make it to the top today. please stop."... It only gets worse and your mind gets less polite and starts saying things like "what are you thinking, you fking asshole!!". After mile 4 the road goes from pavement to gravel. On the gravel sections, it's steep enough that when you stand up on the pedals to give your back a break the rear wheel spins out on you so you have to sit back down. The last 3 miles are completed, literally one pedal stroke at a time. The last 50 yards of the race are at 22% which is like climbing a wall on a bicycle. I'm sitting here getting nauseous just thinking about how much it sucks. So why do it? I don't really have a good answer. But it's the single toughest thing I've ever endured (physically anyways) and I always like to prove to myself that I can endure things that test you at the highest levels mentally and physically. Plus they give you a really cool fleece blanket at the top after you fall off your bike in a shivering heap because it's 26 degrees and you're in a state of shock with cold sweats. It's all about the blanket :)

So that's the primary goal for 2009.. I have a bunch of other goals too.. 

- Buy more organic food and clothes.. I'm not saying I'm going to become the guy at Starbucks with the pony tail and the t-shirt that boldly states "The Hippies Were Right".. What I'm saying is that eating organic is really good for your health and wellness and that dressing in organically made clothes is good for the planet.. If it makes the planet a better place for my kids' grandchildren then I'll pay a couple extra bucks to wear wool, organic cotton, and clothes made from recycled water bottles. 

- Continue to learn and train hard so that I can give our gym members and personal training students the best experience possible. I can't teach it if I don't live it. I spend hours a day training in the gym and reading books and watching video to make sure I'm the best trainer and coach I can be. I live it and I love it. None of you will ever have to wonder whether or not I'm the real deal.

- I'm planning to bring some of the top functional strength training coaches in the world to Nashua for workshops in 2009. I'm already working out the details for a visit from Steve Maxwell in March and Jon Hinds in May or June.

- 100 burpees in 5 minutes. I'm not saying anything else about this one. It hurts too much to even think about it.

Oh yeah, and save the world and be kinder to the French....

Here's a workout for you for today:

250 revolutions on the jump rope

100 hindu squats

25 hindu pushups

10 pullups

10 burpees

Repeat for 4 rounds total...

All the best,

kevin

Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge, Final Day

We completed the Downtown Nashua Dynamic Fitness Challenge yesterday in the middle of a massive snowstorm that has dumped about a foot and half of snow on us over the weekend. Everybody was in good spirits and even a little nervous with the butterflies you get in your stomach the day of a big event. The Dynamic Fitness Challenge was a 60 day fitness event where 12 people from the Nashua area signed on for 3 workouts a week for 8 weeks. We performed body measurements and fitness assessments at the beginning so we had something to compare to at the end of The Challenge. The fitness "test" was a workout in what we call a "Prison" format where you do descending numbers of repetitions of each exercise for each round. In this particular workout the challengers needed to complete rounds of 10-9-8-7 down to 1 repetition of each of the following: Pushups, Situp and Reach, Burpees, Body Rows, and Box Jumps. At the end, prizes were given to best overall time and best improvement in time for both men and women.. You'll see a chart at the end of the video that shows the improvements everybody made. Absolutely outstanding!

The results of this Challenge were phenomenal. Everybody lost between 1 and 2 inches off their waist measurements.. The men added inches of muscle to their arms and thighs. The women took inches off their hips. Their fitness level improved so much that their times in the Challenge decreased by as much as 55%! To watch the improvements these people made over the past 2 months was a true inspiration and it made me and Michele incredibly proud to have been involved with the group. 

We're starting the next 60 Day Challenge on January 5th and still have some spots available.. I guarantee that if you stick with the program you will get results that you didn't think were possible.. 

Enjoy the video!

All the best,

Kevin

Sorting Out the Pretenders...

In my efforts to continually improve myself as a coach and trainer I do a lot of reading and watch a lot of video. There is so much material out there in print and especially on the internet that it can be overwhelming. How do I know when I'm reading something that is really useful? How do I know when I'm reading something written by some out-of-shape armchair trainer trying to make a quick buck? The first thing I look for is proof of how fit the person is that I'm looking to for guidance. Guys like Steve Maxwell, Ross Enamait, Jon Hinds, Steve Cotter, Mike Mahler are absolute freaks of nature. The second thing I look for is how much their training philosophy lines up with my own. My training philosophy is essentially that I strive to get in the best condition possible through functional conditioning and healthy eating. And I'm willing to train very hard to attain my goals. The guys mentioned above share this philosophy. You won't see any of them trying to sell you on a new piece of fancy equipment or bizarre diet.. They're not going to have you wasting your time on the bench press or the leg press when they all know that different variations of pushups and squats kick the crap out of the bench press and leg press for functional strength.. Now don't get me wrong, I'm open minded enough to know that there's a place for bench pressing and leg pressing. They're great for bodybuilders who need to isolate muscles to bulk them up and take all the functionality out of their bodies. They're also great for people who care more about what they look like in a mirror rather than how they feel or function in real life. But there's lots of coaches out there who will tell their athletes to do these exercises which, in my opinion, makes no sense at all. An athlete needs full body explosive power to be competitive. Not a limited range of motion and a lot of bulky muscles. I guess if you suck at football and find yourself on your back a lot with heavy opponents on top of you then the bench press is a good exercise to strengthen your chest and triceps so that you can push the opponents off of you and get back to the huddle. At the NFL combines they have people see how many times they can bench press 225 pounds.. In 2007 the best performance was from a defensive lineman  that benched it 42 times.. Holy Crap!!! He must be super strong, right? But he weighs in at 307 pounds so that's really only 73% of his body weight.. Not so impressive now is it? I wonder how many "true to form" pushups he can do? Probably not 42... OK, enough ranting about isolation exercises where most of the muscles in your body are completely supported... 

My main point today is to make sure you don't get sucked in by hype. Getting really fit is simple. Hard work, natural full body exercise, healthy eating.. The reason not everybody is fit is because most people don't want to work hard and they don't put the effort into eating right.. Anybody on the internet or in books or on video that is trying to sell you some kind of "secret" to get you in the best shape of your life without a lot of hard work is full of crap and is only out to make a buck. The longer it takes for them to describe their "secret", the more crap they're full of. (You know what I'm talking about.."But wait, there's more! You'll also get........". This goes on for about 3 pages.). Also, if you have no proof of how fit the individual is, then you have no proof that they are living the life that they're trying to sell to you. Stay away. If a person doesn't actually live it, then they can't teach it. I read a lot of stuff from noted "professionals" that prescribe 3 sets of this, 3 sets of that, rest this much between sets, blah, blah, blah.. And I think to myself, "I know people can work a lot harder than that because I do it every day.. How is this supposed to get an athlete in top form?".. So common sense tells me that if this person can't put a workout together that I think is difficult, then this person doesn't know what it's like to work hard himself.. 

You don't need to subscribe to 17 different newsletters to get in shape. It's very easy to get into information overload. Find a half dozen or so sources that you trust. People that you know work hard, are in great shape, and are not trying to sell you some "secret to better fitness". People that keep it simple with natural, full body exercise. Here's a workout for you that I had a group at the gym perform the other day.. It has everything in it that you need and it was intense; pushing, pulling, squatting, jumping, every muscle in your body engaged, all the time.

In a 40:20 format (40sec work followed by 20sec rest) for 5 rounds:

Kettlebell Swing

Burpees

Uneven KB Military Press (Great neuromuscular development by having one arm push a different weight than the other)

Jump Rope

Renegade Row

Scissor Pushups (which are a twisting pushup where one leg gets twisted under the body and out to the opposite side, sorry no video)...

See? No secrets. Just intense exercise that works your whole body..

All the best,

Kevin

 

Developing Full Body Power During the Power Outage

It's been 5 days without power at home now due to the ice storm.. When I got out on the roads on Friday morning it was like a war zone, trees and lines down everywhere.. Any of you that live out here, I'm obviously not telling you anything you don't already know. But where some people look at the power outages and damage to power lines and trees as an inconvenience, I immediately thought about the opportunity of getting full body workouts playing with downed trees.. My workouts for the past weekend consisted of finding big, broken trees anywhere from 10-20 feet long and weighing anywhere up to over a couple hundred pounds and doing things like flipping them over end to end, carrying them around, pressing them, and just basically doing stuff that gave me a tremendous workout.. It's also a great workout to just go up to a tree that is definitely not moving and put everything you have into trying to knock it over.. I would do sets of end over end tree flipping followed by isometric pressing on trees that wouldn't move.. Anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds of an all out isometric effort, engaging every muscle in my body, putting all the energy into the tree.. Awesome stuff.. Can't wait to get back out and do it again next weekend!

In the gym yesterday, I continued with the "awkward load" type of workout and did sets of Sandbag Get-Ups (SGUs) with my 109 lb sandbag (73% of my bodyweight).. You basically start on the floor and roll the bag onto your body and then get up to standing "turkish-getup" style.. I did four rounds of 10 sandbag getups (5 continuous on each side) followed by 25 burpees.. This was an intense workout.. 40 SGUs and 100 burpees total. After getting up 40 times with a 109# bag on you it's amazing how light you feel walking around when the workout is over.. It was awesome..

Today's workout was a great workout as well.. I'm starting getting miles on my bike to train for the Mt Washington AutoRoad Hillclimb in August.. Known as the toughest hillclimb race in the world.. Having done it before I won't dispute their claim. It's easily the most difficult thing I've done in my life. So today's workout started with an hour on the rollers in the gym.. Riding on rollers is great because it's so unstable that you really need to keep your entire body engaged otherwise you crash..

I followed the bike ride with 5 rounds of 15 ring dips followed by 20 pistols... Ring Dips are a phenomenal upper body exercise. Actually, anything on the rings is a great exercise since they force the body to engage all kinds of stabilizer muscles that wouldn't need to work on a fixed piece of apparatus. Pistols are a great strength move that require a lot of leg and core strength. Both the ring dips and pistols are excellent power moves.

I wrapped up the workout with 100 windmills with a 16kg.. But i had to try to get 50 on each side consecutively without putting the kb down.. I honestly had no idea if I'd be able to make it, but like a lot of things I do I just try to pick a number and then go for it.. I decided that 25 windmills with a 16kg might be tough so I doubled it.. I was right, it was very tough. I got to 45 on the left side before I almost dropped the kettlebell on my head.. Only got to 40 on the right side but I think part of that failure had to do with the fact that I already had done the 50 on the left side.. Anyways, I almost got my 50 on each side without stopping and now I have a goal for next time :)

Totals for workout:

60 minutes on the rollers

75 ring dips

100 pistols

100 windmills

Who said anything about a power outage?

All the best,

Kevin

Hindu Hell

Every two or three weeks I throw a session from Hindu Hell at myself... Actually, this is probably not an appropriate analogy since the Hindus are reborn after they die and therefore never go to Hell... But if they did, it would be something like this...

A ladder workout with ascending numbers of Hindu Squats, Hindu Pushups, and Jacknifes.. Last time I did a workout with these exercises was a few weeks ago and I did it in a format where I did as many rounds as possible in 30 minutes of 100 Hindu Squats, 20 Hindu Pushups, and 20 Jackknifes.. I got 7 full rounds for a total of 700 Hindu Squats, 140 Hindu pushups and 140 jacknifes.. Not too bad for 30 minutes of work, but by limiting the number of each exercise per round I was able to really crank without putting myself into maximal effort.. Today I went to another level.. It was a ladder workout where I did 4 rounds with ascending reps. The rounds were:

-100 Hindu Squats, 25 Hindu Pushups, 25 Jackknifes

-200 Hindu Squats, 50 Hindu Pushups, 50 Jacknifes

-300 Hindu Squats, 75 Hindu Pushups, 75 Jackknifes

-400 Hindu Squats, 100 Hindu Pushups, 100 Jackknifes

The first round was a nice introduction to the torture I'd be experiencing over the next hour. It took a little under 5 minutes and I quickly calculated that this workout would take me close to an hour to complete and that I was going to put myself into some serious pain to complete it. In each round I completed the number of hindu squats without stopping. I had never done more than 200 of these in a row, so doing 200,300 and then 400 in a row was brutal. At a pace of about 40 squats per minute the lactic acid in the legs builds to a very uncomfortable level (in other words, really starts to suck) right around 100, so the push to continue after that is as much mental as it is physical. Beginning a set of 400 squats with 600 already in your quads is daunting, painful, and kind super challenging on a number of levels. The last set of squats took me 10:30. No stops the entire time. Walking really funny when it was over... The Hindu pushups were pretty agonizing for the rounds of 75 and 100. On the round of 75. Having already completed 75 of these, I had to stop at 60 before continuing on. And on the round of 100 I had to stop at 55 and 85.. The rounds of pushups were brutal. I went until my whole body was shaking and I had to take 3 breaths between reps just to complete another one, until the point that one more rep was impossible.. I would then rest 30 seconds and go again until I completed the number of reps I needed.. There was a lot of noise coming out of me, mostly unintelligible with some R rated wailing mixed in.. The rounds of jackknifes were just as difficult if not more so since it got to the point where I had to finish my last 50 in the round of 100 by doing 10 and taking 10 breaths, then 10 more jackknifes, and then 10 more breaths...

This is what training hard means. It means not knowing what your limits are but always training to try to find out.. My totals for the workout were 1000 Hindu Squats, 250 Hindu Pushups, and 250 Jackknifes.. Completed in 4 rounds of increasing difficulty. That's key.. I could just as easily have broken this down into 10 rounds of lesser reps and not pushed myself one quarter as hard as I did. I went into this knowing the number of reps it would take to put me in pain and I doubled it.. That was my goal for the workout and I achieved it...

To cap it off, after a 20 minute break I got on the power wheel and knocked out 200 yards of power wheel crawl and 80 power wheel hamstring curls in 7 minutes... 200 yards of power wheel crawl is much tougher when it follows 250 hindu pushups and 250 jackknifes... 

I think I'll take it easy the rest of the day... 

Train hard, be well,

Kevin

Nutrition: Part 2

Earlier I wrote about how, if your ultimate goal is to get strong AND lose weight, then you need to burn more calories than you're taking in for the losing weight part... Keeping a nutrition log and determining what you're putting in your body is the first step.. Eating well is the next step and it's not rocket science. I read a book by Michael Pollan called "In Defense of Food, an Eater's Manifesto".. He has a quote on the cover of the book that pretty much covers all you need to know. "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."... Simple, right? 

There are so many "diets" and magic pills out there that "guarantee" to have you losing weight in no time. But they're all a crock. If you want to be healthy, then you need to eat natural foods and you need to exercise. Simple as that. When you exercise, you have to work hard. 30 minutes of walking or gardening is a nice break from doing absolutely nothing, but it's really only a step or two above napping. If you exercise hard and eat naturally, then you will become strong and lean.

What does eating naturally mean? It means eating fruits, vegetables, and nuts. If you're not vegan then eat fish and lean meats. Eat stuff that has expiration dates that time out within a week or two. If you have something in your cabinet that's good until October of 2011 then toss it.. 

Think of it this way. Every living organism is designed to survive under a certain set of living conditions. If living conditions change, then the organism evolves to adapt to the new conditions. This takes thousands, if not millions of years.. Our bodies were designed for the hunter/gatherer lifestyle. It's designed for hours of strenuous exercise every day that is fueled by mostly carbohydrates.. I can guarantee you that our ancestors of just a few hundred years ago were not sitting around worrying about getting 30% or more of their calories from protein or restricting their carbohydrate intake because it makes them chubby and have less energy. Our genes are essentially the same as the ones the cavemen had. The problem is, we don't exercise as much as they do and we take in way too many processed carbs and refined sugars. For you Creationist types out there who don't believe in evolution, just remember that Eve tempted Adam with an apple, not a Twinkie. Carbs give you energy. They're not the evil that anybody selling a diet book tries to tell you they are.. If you eat processed crap and refined sugars and drink lots of alcohol then you're filling yourself with empty carbs and you will be fat and lethargic. If you're eating fruits and vegetables to get your carbs then you'll have great energy. I get 60% or more of my calories from carbs. Nobody is going to come into the gym, look at me and say "He's not very energetic.. Must eat too much carbs.".. But I eat natural carbs. I eat 2 or 3 bananas a day. I eat a couple apples and oranges every day. I eat vegetables two or three times a day. I get my protein from nuts, fish and lean meats.. I train hard and I eat well..

As for the training hard part... Obviously we live in a time that makes it impossible for most of us to get hours of strenuous exercise in every day like our ancestors did. If you're a farmer or in certain types of construction then you have the ability to work your body hard all day.. But if you have a sedentary job, you need to find the time to exercise hard.. Going to a chrome and fern palace like Best Fitness and jumping on a treadmill or elliptical machine is pointless. Spending two hours among the chrome and fern while you perform a set of biceps curls every 5 minutes and spend the rest of the time chatting up some fountain of botox is even less useful. You need to train your body at a high intensity for short durations to raise your metabolic rate and give the body the type of exercise it was designed for.. That's what we do here at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. It doesn't take long either.. 20 or 30 minutes of work like we put in here at the gym will give your body all it can handle. Doing it 4 or 5 times a week will increase your metabolic rate to that of a caveman. Ever seen a fat caveman? Not even in the Geico commercials, right? 

Train hard, eat naturally.. Sounds easy, but if it was easy then everybody would be fit.. Come to our gym and we'll help you take care of the training hard part.. We can guide you with the eating naturally part but it's on you to make it happen. 

All the best,

Kevin

A Continuum of Suffering to Achieve Optimal Wellness

Sound contradictory? Why would I need to suffer to achieve optimal wellness? Good question, and to be honest, only a few push themselves to a place of true suffering.. But suffering is the ONLY way to get to the top of your game.. There's no pill, diet, DVD, or new age shiny fitness machine at Gold's that will get you there.. It's in your heart and it's in your head. Top level cyclists know what it is to suffer.. Nobody suffers more than a guy like Lance Armstrong climbing Alpe d'Huez or a guy like Tim Johnson throwing it down at a cyclocross race.. The ability to get your heart rate at above 95% max and keep it there for 20,30,40,60 minutes... I did it climbing Mt Washington on my bike.. At the top I got off the bike and dry heaved for 3 minutes with a smile on my face because I knew I just pushed myself beyond the limits any sane person would. Most people can get their heart rate to that level for well under a minute and then they stop because something in their head tells them to. For those that push past those signals, we benefit by achieving a fitness level that few will ever realize.

I'll give you an example of a workout that I did just this morning where my head was telling me to slow down after 2 minutes but I pushed through and suffered for 10.. I did a 10 minute workout of burpees (with full pushup and jump with hands overhead) in a 45:15 format where I would do burpees straight for 45 seconds and then rest for 15 seconds (if i had to guess, 15 seconds of rest after 45 seconds of burpees is about enough to get your heart rate from about 100% max to about 95% max).. After the 2nd set I was already saying "holy shit" knowing that I had 8 minutes to go.. But I pushed, and pushed, and pushed harder.. My numbers for the sets were 15, 14, 14, 14, 14, 13, 14, 13, 13, 15 (last one i went through the beep at 45s so I could get 15).. 10 minutes, 139 burpees.. My heart rate couldn't be measured.. It was a random mess of something resembling a burst from a John Bonham solo followed by a second or two of silence.. Is this dangerous? I don't know.. But I do know this.. I'm in the best shape of my life, I'm 41 years old and I'm at about 6 or 7% body fat.. I'm this way because I push myself using old school methods of training.. I use my bodyweight, kettlebells, medicine balls, sandbags, ropes, monkey bars.. No machines, no pills, no magic diet.. I train for performance.. You want to train for aesthetics and not have to feel pain, I'll point you to a nice shiny gym with showroom models toting around clipboards that will set the pin on the leg press machine for you.. What a joke!

After the burpee workout I played with the power wheel for a bit working on a new exercise I've been playing with called the Power Wheel Handstand Press... And no, you won't find anybody doing this at Gold's.. Because they can't.

Later in the afternoon I did the workout that I put a few people through this morning and I have planned for the Spartan Workout tonight.. I put a really fit detective from Nashua through it at 10am and then I had two of the fittest people at the gym do the same workout at noon and they also had to push really hard to get through it.. So I had to try it out for myself.. The workout consisted of:

-Battling Ropes (50 ft 2" rope wrapped around a pole.. Grab both ends of the rope and repeatedly slam it into the ground. This is a super difficult exercise. 30s of this is the longest 30seconds of your life)

-Kettlebell swing

-box jumps

-burpees

-double kettlebell press

I did this workout in a 30:30 format (30seconds work, 30 seconds rest) for 4 rounds with no breaks.. I give the groups a 2:00 minute break after 2 rounds but I wanted to push myself a little harder.. I did the swings with a 32kg bell, jumps on a 24" box, and presses with double 20kgs... I can see why everybody had to work so damn hard to get through this workout. Definitely a decent level of suffering when you push yourself hard with this group of exercises.  And I got to add another 40 burpees to my total for the day since I was getting 10 burpees every round... Mental, I know....

Train hard, be well.

kevin