The Transmogrification - Part II

I was out on my bike yesterday wrapping up my miles for the week with a fairly easy recovery ride through Brookline, Pepperell, and Hollis. Recovery rides should probably be a little easier than the ones I do, but living in Hollis it's impossible to go out the door and not have to climb at least a couple hills. The alternative is to ride the trainer or rollers and I refuse to ride inside when it's so nice outside, even if my body is calling for a recovery ride. Regardless, I took it as easy as possible, even on the hills. During the ride yesterday I went by this hole-in-the-wall place in Brookline with a sign out front that read "Live Music - Country Felix".. I was thinking that was kind of redundant. I mean is there ANY chance that a dude named Felix is going to be playing anything other than country music at this shack in Brookline, NH? I didn't think so...

When we last left my transmogrification I had just caved in and bought a pair of the spandex biking shorts, which from here on out we're going to call high performance wicking power lycra cycling gear, because spandex is for people who do Jazzercise :)  I also bought some clipless pedals and bike shoes. I was becoming a real cyclist at this point and I found that I was getting treated a lot differently. Now when I was out for rides, other people on bikes dressed in colorful high performance wicking power lycra would smile and wave to me when they went by on the other side of the road. These are the same people that would shun me before when I was dressed in my sweats and sneakers. It was like my clothing gained me access to some cult of strangely dressed fitness freaks. I was accepted. On the other hand, I was now the target of every redneck, homophobe in a pick up truck (excuse the redundancies).. The people who probably have Country Felix blasting on their 8-track player. I've been sworn at, spit at, had beer cans (with varying amounts of beer left in them) chucked at me, and I've been nearly run off the road by countless assholes that want to see how close they can get their rear view mirror to hit you in the ass on their way by as they rev the engine and blast the horn. I have visions of how funny it would be to drive by a 5'6" 150 lb cyclist in spandex kicking the crap out of some flannel clad trucker on the side of the road some day. It could happen, I have chased some of these people down. Last year I was almost taken out by a guy towing a horse trailer. I caught up to him as he was taking a turn, got in behind the horse trailer and drafted him for the next 4 miles at speeds up to a little over 40 MPH.. When he finally had to come to a stop I came out from behind the trailer and rolled up to the driver's side window where I politely told him to be more careful and that he almost killed me about 4 miles back.. He almost swallowed the cigarette hanging out of this mouth. It was classic! But I digress....

Now, as a full fledged member of the cycling geeks cult and target of the redneck truckers, I was starting to put in some serious miles. I was doing rides of 30, 40, 50, 60 miles. I completed my first century (100 mile ride). My legs and lungs were getting ridiculously strong. I stopped going to one of those crappy Globo Gyms and started complementing my riding with functional conditioning workouts. Pushups, pullups, trail running, jumping. Having fun and getting in better shape than ever before!

Up next in "The Transmogrification" series, developing mental toughness to get me through the toughest period in my life...

I've put myself through a very difficult two weeks. I've started to crank up my miles (330 in the past 2 weeks) and I've continued to push it with my functional strength and conditioning workouts achieving 5 new PR's in the last two weeks. Yesterday I did 100 Hindu Pushups in a row for the first time! My body is in dire need of a rest day so today is the day. I will do nothing. This is what me doing nothing looks like, haha...

Taking a day off is the toughest thing for me to do, I have a voice in my head that tells me I should never let up. But I also know better, and I know that if you don't let the body rest once in a while you will burn out and continued intense workouts will have an opposite effect of what you're going for. I can also tell you from experience that when I come back the next day after taking a complete rest day I am completely recharged. One of these days I might even take two days off in a row :) For now, it's all I can do to take one rest day per week and I think it's working pretty well for me...

Best,

kevin

Mixing It Up

I got an email earlier this week from a triathlete who was interested in how I would mix up my bike racing training with my functional strength training.. My response was that it would basically be a mix of cycling, kettlebell work and bodyweight work focused on muscular endurance. Most of my kettlebell work will consist of swings, snatches, long cycle, Turkish Getups, Windmills, Overhead Squats. I put in a killer bodyweight workout on Tuesday (see last blog about murdering stress :).. 

Yesterday I got out for 51 miles and I followed that up with another 29 miles this morning. Then I got a break for a couple hours this afternoon and put myself through an excellent kettlebell workout that consisted of snatches, heavy swings, and heavy TGUs.. Typically, for muscular endurance I would go with lighter weights and longer sets, but my goal is to work up to longer sets with heavier weights. So today was a bit of a compromise.. I started out with 20 rounds of 15:15 of 1 arm snatch with a 24kg kettlebell.. After my long layoff from kb snatches I'm finally back to where I can start pushing the weights up :) Today's snatch workout felt better than it has in almost a year with the 24kg. I was very psyched. I was getting 6 or 7 per round and finished the 10 minute set with 63 snatches on each side. Then I did a 12 x 30:30 round of kettlebell swings with 32kg.. This was pretty tough. It wasn't a maximum effort, but it was definitely a tough effort. I finished up with what was supposed to be a 10 minute set of TGU with a 32kg but I ended up going 11:05 because at the end of 10 minutes I only had 9 on each side and I couldn't very well stop at 9 on each side, could I?

Totals for the day:

29 miles on the bike, about 200 W avg pace with 300-400W efforts on hills, 1082 calories burned

10 minutes of 1 arm snatch with 24kg, 126 total snatches

12 minutes of 32kg swing, ~170 swings total

11:05 minutes of Turkish Getup with 32kg.. 10 on each side for 20 total..

Best,

kevin

Stress Management 101: Murder It!

I had an exceptionally stressful morning. High anxiety. The type of anxiety where it feels like there's a hornet's nest in the middle of your chest and somebody just whacked it with a stick. Anybody know the feeling? Similar to if you swallowed a palm sander, turned it on and let it start sanding your insides.. So how do you deal with it? Do you have a couple drinks? Smoke something (legal or otherwise)? Take a bath? Read a book? Have a cup of tea and watch re-runs of "What's Happening"? Some of these are healthier ways of dealing with stress than others.. I spent a lot of years dealing with stress in an unhealthy manner. And if there's one thing I learned it's that it never actually helped, and in most cases made it much worse. For example, alcohol is a popular way to temporarily escape your issues, but then when you wake up the next day feeling like crap has it really done anything to solve your problems? Of course not. 

Since I've committed myself to a healthy lifestyle, both mentally and physically, I am much better at dealing with stress than I ever have been and I continue to get better at it. The brutally difficult workouts that I've put myself through over the years have given me an amazing amount of mental toughness so that I know I can deal with anything. Now, when I'm confronted with stressful situations, I deal with it rationally. The pressure inside still builds up from time to time (like the hornet's nest previously mentioned). If that happens I either get on my bike or I go to the gym, and I absolutely murder it.

Today, the wind is howling with 30mph gusts and the wind chill factor is in the low 20's. Biking was an option, but if you know what it's like to ride into 30mph headwinds then you know how demoralizing that is. I felt the ride would have just raised my stress level, not helped it.. So today's implement of stress destruction was a Bodyweight Prison Workout at the gym.. We have a Prison Workout we do here for a fitness assessment for incoming 60 Day Challengers. It's a 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 format of Pushups, Situp-n-Reach, Burpees, Body Rows, Box Jumps.. I've done that workout in the past in 9:30.. A sub 10:00 wasn't going to be enough to kill all the hornets in my chest so I had to make it harder. So I made it a 20-18-16-14-12-10-8-6-4-2 workout.. I went at it with everything I had today, and to be honest, I hoped I would have done better than the 23:22 that it took me. On several occasions I had to take about 5-10 breaths, mainly after the burpees or box jumps. I didn't want to take breaths, I needed to take breaths. The alternative was to collapse. 

Totals:

23:22

110 Pushups

110 Situp and Reach

110 Burpees with full pushup and jump

110 Body Rows

110 24" box jumps

It was brutal, and it was effective. The buzzing in my chest is gone (replaced with wheezing from exercise induced asthma from spending over 20 minutes at about 95% max heart rate). My head is clearer. The stress is gone. It wasn't postponed, or pushed off to the next day. It was murdered. And I'm a stronger person for having dealt with it...

Train hard.

kevin

The Transmogrification - Part I

I have no idea how this word got stuck in my head or where I even heard it. I may have even thought I made it up. So I looked it up in the dictionary. 

Transmogrification - The act of changing into a different form or appearance, especially a fantastic or grotesque one... 

It occurred to me that I probably heard it in an X-Men movie (new one coming out this year, very psyched!). 

It makes me think of my own transmogrification, from a normal kid who liked to ride his bike, into a grown man who puts on colorful spandex outfits, shaves his legs during race season, and schedules his Summer around going to places to race his bike against other 40-somethings that wear spandex and shave their legs.. I may not be an X-man, but I sure as hell transmogrified into something :)

Like any kid, I loved my bike more than just about anything (except maybe the Farrah-Fawcett poster on my wall). It meant freedom. It got me everywhere well into my teens. I've really only been into road cycling since I was 29 and that's where this story will start. Similar to the story about Jesus, my years between the early teens and 29 were somehow lost and forgotten, (that's really where any Christlike similarities end.) My first road bike was something that I had won in a raffle at work. The contest was that you'd get an entry for every resume you put in for a referral when the company was in the middle of an employment drive. So I went online and pulled about 30 resumes off and entered them. Cheating? It didn't say I had to know the people :)  And it won me the bike that changed my life...

So here I was on my free $700 bike.. I used it as my primary rehab after a knee reconstruction surgery to repair a blown ACL from a ski injury. I didn't want any helmet or biking shorts, I didn't want clipless pedals, I didn't want that stupid little bicycle seat ("Don't these things come with the banana seats that my Huffy had when I was 7?").. I did want some cool shades, but I didn't need the rest of the crap. I was definitely not going to become one of those skinny weirdos in the bright outfits. My first ride was about 10 miles and I almost died going up a couple hills.. Wearing my sweatpants, a sweatshirt, sneakers, and my cool shades. After a few rides like this, I started really enjoying being out for an hour and working my butt off. I didn't like getting passed by 60 year old men and women on tandems and started to wonder if it was something about the clothes and funky plastic shoes they were wearing. I went to the bike shop and was talked into clipless pedals and bike shoes and I bought my first pair of spandex biking shorts with the little chamois pad in it. And the transmogrification began.....

Stay tuned for part 2 where I make friends with the rednecks....

Back to the present where I'm finally getting some serious miles in outside. In my experience, it really doesn't matter how many miles or intervals you put in on the trainer or the rollers, the road will still kick your ass when you first get out. Everything....seems....so......damn....heavy.....and......slow......... In the past 7 days I logged 170 miles and burned over 6000 calories on the bike. The first 140 miles were harder than I had hoped. But by Friday when I went out for a 41 miler my legs actually started to have some "Pop!" which I was excited about.. Yesterday I rode my bike to the gym at 7:30am when it was 18 degrees so that I would be able to get my miles in for the day (another 30).. I was coming down a hill at 30 MPH and I thought my eyeballs were going to shatter. It was pretty brutal. I have to fine tune my nutrition for this.. I am hungry ALL THE TIME.. I need to be at somewhere between 4000 and 4500 calories to fuel my workouts on the bike and in the gym which isn't the easiest task when you're trying to eat clean. It takes a lot of fruits and veggies to get up to that many calories. I'm very psyched to get my racing season underway in April. First race, Turtle Pond in Concord on April 25th!

All the best,

Kevin

And The Winner Is.... You!

Most of you already know that The Hippo Best of 2009 came out Thursday and Dynamic Strength and Conditioning won Best Gym, Best Blog, and Best Fitness Instructor.. I can't thank you enough for voting for us. It means a ton to me and to Michele to know that you feel strongly enough about what we're doing to vote for us. I was thinking that maybe I could thank everybody by giving a week's worth of workouts free of burpees and bear crawls :) But then that would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? (Sorry, Jill :). People don't come to us to take it easy. You're coming because you want to do what it takes to feel better than you ever have. 

The title of this entry is "And the winner is... you!".. The reason I say that you're the winner in all of this is because you're the biggest part of what we're doing.. I might have built the playground, but it's all of you guys that get to come play in it. It's you that has realized what a joke the corporate fitness industry has become. You've come to us and taken your fitness back to its roots. You're working harder than you ever have in a gym, you're moving better, feeling better, and having fun pushing and supporting each other. Just this week I had 5 people tell me about (or show me) things that they've never been able to do. And I'm not talking about bragging that they can bench press 10 more pounds than before. I'm talking about people who are incredibly excited about how their body is functioning now compared to before. To me, that's what getting in shape is all about. This is why I feel that Dynamic Strength and Conditioning truly is the best gym around. Nobody cares as much as Michele and I do about helping our members get in the best shape of their lives and achieve their health and wellness goals.

While we're on the topic of "Best of.." surveys.... NH magazine runs a fairly prestigious "Best of" survey as well.. I say it's prestigious because anybody who wins always puts a plaque up in their restaurant or place of business if they win. Honestly, does anything say prestige like a plaque? I didn't think so ;)  So I figured, what the hell, let's take a shot at winning Best of NH 2009.. As I was looking through the list of topics you could vote for I came across, Best Buffalo Wings, Caesar Salad, Fried Clams, French Fries, Fried Crab, Cupcakes, hotdogs, salon, day spa, music venue, bartender, etc... Essentially, this poll is a list of the best things you can either put in you or have done to you.. No gym, no parks, no playgrounds, no cross country skiing, no swimming holes... You can vote for your favorite place to be subjected to drunk people singing badly (aka Karaoke), but you can't vote for your favorite place to go mountain biking. And then I saw it at the bottom of the list... "Other".. Oh, I guess that's us.. So if you want to go to the Best of NH 2009 and vote for us you can write us in as "Other". And when we win, I am definitely getting a giant plaque to put on the wall that says "Best Other of 2009!".. And while you're in there voting make sure you vote for Patisserie Bleu in Nashua for any bakery-related topics and Jake's Old Fashioned Ice Cream in Amherst as best ice cream.. They are both, without a doubt, best in class :)  And, if you're thinking, "Hang on, how can a bakery and ice cream shop be mentioned in a fitness blog?".. It's because Deb and Roni use all natural ingredients and when you're working as hard as we do at keeping our bodies fit it's OK to have a treat once in a while.. You're much better off getting your treats from a person who cares what she's putting into it rather than something that comes in a plastic wrapper.

Thanks again for voting for us in The Hippo and we promise to continue to help get you in the best shape of your life!

All the best,

kevin

St Patrick's Day Overload

I've been in heavy overload mode for a little over a week now.. I finished up last week with 110 miles on the bike in 3 days which included a 63 mile hilly ride with over 5000 feet of vertical gain. Last week also had a brutal tabata workout, the Spartan workout with 200 yds of PW crawl and 100 KB complexes with the 24kg, and a rings workout on Saturday that torched my midsection so much I was literally nauseous for the next two days... I took yesterday off and went back at it today.. Today's workout was a 5x5 workout. These are designed for max strength building. Low reps, heavy weights, huge efforts.. I would alternate between two exercises for 5 sets of 5 before moving on to the next two exercises.. Today's choices were:

a1:Weighted Pistols

a2: Weighted Towel Pullups

B1: Depth Handstand Press

B2: Weighted Ring Dips

C1: Double Snatch

C2: Double Thruster

I did the weighted pistols with 24kg. My best ever for weighted pistols with 24kg had been 3 sets of 3.. Today I did 3 sets of 5 and the last 2 sets I was able to get 3.. New PR! On the weighted towel pullups (doing pullups on a towel hanging over the bar with a weight tied around your waist) I used a 12kg kettlebell and got 5 sets of 5.  Another PR! On the handstand press I set up the parallettes and stacked yoga blocks underneath them as a target for my forehead. Doing them this way forces you to go much deeper in the press than if you do handstand press from the floor. My first set I stacked a couple yoga blocks so that the target was 7.5 inches below the parallettes. This was very difficult for me and I could only get 3.. For the next 3 sets I added one block so that it was a 4 inch drop and I got sets of 4, 3, 3.. My last set I did from my hands on the floor and got 8. For the ring dips I strapped a 16kg kettlebell around my waist and got 3 sets of 5, 1 set of 4. I did my last set unweighted and got 12. For the double snatch and thrusters I used double 20kgs for 4 sets and 24kgs for one set.. The double 24kgs, at about 70% of my bodyweight, were a little too much for me on the snatch right now. I got 3 reps out of it and started to worry about my back as the bells were swinging down from the top position so I stopped. I was pretty happy with that considering that I'm just getting back into the snatch with heavier weights. I'm happy to say my forearms are feeling awesome under the heavier loads and I think the worst of my issues are behind me :)

It's nice to push yourself to this point and see the progress. I set several new PRs today. It takes a lot of hard work to continue to make gains. It hurts like hell, but it's very rewarding to know that all the hard work pays off.

Train hard.

Kevin

Tragically Fit: The Legend of Lurg

Lurg was the leader of a neanderthal tribe about 20,000 years ago

 in the area of the world now known as The White Mountains of New Hampshire. Lurg was an incredibly strong caveman who had built a fierce physique through a lifetime of grappling with friend and foe, climbing trees, rock walls, and mountains, lifting heavy stones and smashing wild animals with heavy clubs. He lived off the land, ate wild animals and fruits and vegetables grown naturally (He never shopped in the middle aisles of "the Caveman Grocer"). 

Lurg loved the Winter in New Hampshire and the challenges brought on by the harsh conditions. He was an avid ice climber and it is believed that he was the inventor of the first ice ax built from

 sticks with sabertooth tiger fangs fastened to the ends. One morning, after killing a wild boar with his 80 lb club, Lurg decided he wanted to treat the family to a bacon and egg breakfast. Lurg knew of an eagle's nest at the top of a large ice face close by so he set off with his Sabertooth ice axes to round up a few eagle eggs. 

It is unknown what happened to Lurg on the ice that day, but he never returned. It is suspected that as Lurg approached the eagle nest a chunk of ice broke loose, cracking Lurg in the skull and knocking him unconscious. With his wrists fastened securely to the ice axes, Lurg was suspended on the ice face. A massive storm moved in, encapsulating Lurg in a cocoon of ice and snow where he would spend the next 20,000 years frozen in time.

One day a couple years ago a group of ice climbers were making their way up an ice face in a secluded section of the White Mountains that has ice year round when they came across an incredible discovery. One of the climbers planted his ice ax, breaking away a large chunk of ice, and found himself face to face with a big hairy dude who had been frozen into the wall. Luckily he was on a solid belay as he catapulted himself off the wall in terror... The authorities were notified and Lurg was extracted from the wall and brought to the nearest hospital. 

Lurg was thawed out and attempts at reviving him were made. To the amazement of the doctors and nurses, Lurg started to show vital signs. There was an international buzz about the revival of the neanderthal. Lurg couldn't speak to tell them his name, so they just called him Bob. The doctors decided they needed to get "Bob"

into a physical rehabilitation program. And this is where the story really got tragic.....

Lurg was taken to the local Globo Gym where he was met by their two top trainers, Barbie and Ken. They were gorgeous! Megawatt Smiles, high cheekbones, Blue Eyes, perfectly pressed Khaki pants, brightly colored polo shirts and armed with clipboards. Lurg's eyes had trouble adjusting to the gleam off the shiny chrome machines. He didn't quite understand all the PEople on machines that allowed them to run, pedal, and climb stairs but they weren't actually going anywhere. He also didn't understand all the people standing around in front of mirrors making funny faces and flexing their arms. Ken brought Lurg over to a large machine, had him sit down and strapped him in. He then set a pin into a stack of metal plates and explained to Lurg that today they would be working on Biceps, "because chicks dig a guy with big biceps", and Abs, "because in addition to a nice set of bi's, you have to have a ripped six pack!". After two months of "training" at Globo with Ken and Barbie Lurg started to bulk up and lose his flexibility, mobility, and functionality. He also noticed how much weaker he had become in the real world where it was necessary for him to use his entire body to engage in activities like running, jumping, climbing and crawling. Things that he used to do every day as a Caveman. 

One day as Lurg bent down to grab a newspaper, he hurt his lower back. Nobody was around to help him up so he just hung out on the ground and opened the paper to a story about a functional strength training gym in NAshua, NH called Dynamic strength and Conditioning. In this article Lurg read about people training the whole body the way it was meant to be trained. They didn't use machines, they didn't have mirrors or TVs, they didn't allow headphones. Nobody in the pictures looked like Ken or Barbie. These were real people doing real workouts getting real results! Lurg decided he was done with the posers at Globo. Ken and Barbie tried to convince Lurg that he was making a tragic mistake to which Lurg replied, "then I will become Tragically Fit!".

After a few days Lurg's back was feeling a little better and he made his way over to 100 Factory St in Nashua to check out the Dynamic Strength and Conditioning gym that he had read about. After climbing the 67 steps to the gym, Lurg had to rest for several minutes to catch his breath. He got inside and he became immediately excited at what he saw. The people there were lifting tires, climbing ropes, swinging clubs, hammers, and kettlebells. Throwing large balls that looked like the stones he used to smash

 over the heads of wild boar. They were running, jumping, crawling, laughing. They were having fun and they had a ton of energy! Lurg was taken in by Michele and Kevin and was immediately started on a functional strength training and natural nutrition program to get him back in the shape he was in 20,000 years ago. Within 2 weeks

 Lurg realized increases in strength, endurance, flexibility and mobility. He was able to bound up the 67 steps to the gym without running out of breath. His loin cloth had become a little looser on

 his body. He had the kind of energy that he had before when he would be out hunting buffalo herds for days. After 6 months of training with Dynamic strength and Conditioning Lurg decided he was ready to return to the wild. He had built an incredibly lean, powerful physique that rivaled the spartan warriors of a thousand years ago. He was moving better than he had at any

 time in his life. KEvin and Michele took Lurg on a hike into the Bondcliff region of the White Mountains and unleashed him on the Pemi Wilderness. Lurg hasn't been heard from since, but there have been sightings of a big hairy dude doing crazy free climbs in the most remote areas of the Whites. Lurg was home at last....

A Sandwich I'm in No Hurry to Repeat...

Today's workout was a Power Wheel Crawl/Kettlebell Complex Sandwich. This is the same workout that the Spartans are suffering through today at the gym. The way it works is I have 100 kettlebell complexes sandwiched between two 100 yard power wheel crawls. I started the workout with 100 yards of power wheel crawl in the gym. 10 yards up, 10 yards back, 5 times without touching my knees to the ground.. Tough start to the workout. Then it's on to the 100 kettlebell complexes.. The kettlebell complex is a compound exercise grouping together several kettlebell exercises. For this particular complex, one rep was equal to a 1 arm snatch into a windmill into a thruster..

I wanted to push myself to the max today so I used a 24kg kettlebell which is 35% of my bodyweight. I've done 100 snatches with a 24k before but I've never done 100 windmills or thrusters with a 24kg, and I've certainly never done them in this format with this much weight. As expected, this workout brutalized me. I broke it down to 5 reps on each side for 10 rounds. After the first round I wasn't sure I was going to make 10 rounds with the 24k. The thruster at the end of each rep was very difficult, especially on my left side. Beyond the 5th round was as much mental as it was physical to continue. By the 6th or 7th round I would walk 5 times around the kettlebell for rest after 5 reps on each side, cursing the stupid weight as if it was its fault I was in so much pain. I got through all 100 reps, rested 30 seconds and strapped the Power Wheel back on for the last 100 yards. 100 yards of power wheel crawl was significantly more difficult at this point in the workout than it was at the beginning. I got 60 yards without stopping, rested 5 breaths and finished the last 40 yards.. Total time for the workout was 30:15. Could have went lighter for speed but I wanted to use a submax weight for power today. Brutal workout. So glad I won't be doing that one again for a while :)

Best,

kevin

It's The Butterflies That Remind Me I Still Got It....

Or maybe it's the butterflies that prove I'm nuts.. There are certain workouts that I literally get nauseous just thinking about them. Like the butterflies in the stomach before a race or some other event that I really want to do well in. But for a workout at the gym? Does that make any sense? Here's why it makes sense. I use certain workouts as measuring sticks.. Like when I try to do 100 burpees as fast as possible (PR 5:56). Or when I do my 300/3000 workout where I do 300 yards of power wheel crawl and 3000 jumps on the jumprope for time (PR 28:34). These are brutal, all out efforts that take me right to the limit.. 

I did another one of these workouts today.. It's a Tabata interval workout with 4 different exercises done for 8 rounds each in a 20:10 format with no rest between rounds. Repeat 8 rounds of each exercise before moving on to the next exercise. The exercises were Strict Pullups, Strict Pushups, Bottom to Bottom Squats, and Jackknifes.. I emphasize "strict" pullups and pushups because it makes a pretty big difference when you do these exercises properly. Pullups are done from a full extension of the arms and pulling up to chin over the bar, every time. No kipping and if the chin doesn't come over the bar it doesn't count. Pushups are done with elbows in, bring the chest and hips to the ground on each repetition. The elbows are not allowed to flare out which collapses the shoulder blades and gives you more of a bounce off the shoulder blades rather than a press from your torso. Big difference. I've seen people do 100 crap pushups that can't do 20 proper ones. The bottom to bottom squats are a fairly miserable exercise where you do as any body squats as possible (heels flat, butt to heels, not hindu squats) in 20 seconds and then hold the 10 second rest in the squat position with legs just above parallel for maximum quad activation. You can't sit in the bottom position of the squat with your butt resting on your heels. 8 rounds of this suck, there's no other way to put it. More rules.. For the pullups, you have to stay on the bar the entire 20 seconds, even once you're unable to perform any more pullups for the round. All 8 rounds of the exercise are completed and then you move directly to the next exercise with no rest (other than the 10 seconds rest from the last exercise).. So you complete 8x 20:10 of pullups, go directly to 8x 20:10 of pushups, to b2b squats, to jackknifes.. You are scored by the lowest number of reps completed in any round.. For example, if you did 12 pullups, followed by 10, 7,4,3,2,2,1 then your score would be 1.. Get it? This is 16 minutes of pure hell.

Now do you understand why I was nauseous before starting? Or maybe I'm just a big baby... Here's my scores.. 

Pullups 3

Pushups 10 

B2B squats 16 (i was pretty psyched about this number), 

jackknifes 9... 

I didn't keep track of my exact totals, but I have a good idea about what I was getting per round and it was something like this, give or take 1 or 2:

38 pullups

95 pushups

130 b2b squats

85 jackknifes

Pretty good amount of work for 16 minutes....

I took a 5 minute rest and then did 20 minutes of hand balancing work.. Made it all the way around the gym walking on my hands until I hit the climbing rope which I had forgotten to wrap around the pole and it took me down.. Fun way to wrap up a workout :)

Best,

kevin

"Name Me Something You Get at a Gas Station..."

So I'm at the gas station today filling the truck up and the gas pump has one of those scrolling LEDs on it. You know the kind that asks you whether you're using a credit or debit card, do you want a receipt, how about a car wash, etc., etc.. Once I'm done answering the 32 questions and start pumping my gas the scrolling info-bar (don't really know what else to call it) starts advertising.. Out comes "Come in for cigarettes, soda, and chips!!!".. And if you're anything like me you immediately think to yourself "What, no crack?".. Would it be wrong to tell people to come in for a granola bar and some water? Granted, that would probably only warrant one "!" instead of the three "!!!" that were given to cigarettes, chips, and soda. Granola and water just aren't that sexy. 

It made me think of when I was a kid and we used to watch Family Feud with Richard Dawson as the host. Classic! "Name me something that you get at a gas station".. I think the survey would say "gas" was number one, but who would have known "cancer" and "fat" would also be on the list? 

Am I being naive to think that we should be better educated by now? Do the people pumping gas in their cars really need to be reminded to go in and get some butts, a bag of chips and a Coke. Do they see the info-bar and say to themselves "Shit, why didn't I think of that?". I guess I don't get it, but then again that's why I'm a trainer and not a marketing guy :)

Need More Motivation? Tell Somebody What You're Up To..

I've said here many times how setting goals is such a key way to continually challenge yourself to reach new levels. For me, it's a great motivator to push myself on a regular basis. When I set a goal it's typically something that will take a great deal of effort, pain, determination, mental and physical strength.. But sometimes I need something more for motivation. I'm pretty good about holding myself accountable to my goals, but there's always going to be a time when you want to let up a little bit. I've found that by telling people about my goals, it not only holds me accountable to myself, it also holds me accountable to the people that are now counting on me to come through. So when I'm sitting inside on my bike and I start thinking about how much it sucks to be riding my bike indoors and what's the point anyways since my big race isn't until August, I then think about the many people who I've told about my goal. There's a handful of people from the gym who are even going to come to Mt Washington to watch me race and cheer me on! So how can I possibly let them down? I can't and I won't.. And this is what got me through my interval session on the bike rollers yesterday when I was really not too psyched about spending another second riding indoors. So if you need more motivation to get fit, lose weight, run a marathon, race in your first triathlon, go back to school, quit drinking or smoking, whatever... Tell somebody you're doing it. The more people that are counting on you to come through, the more motivation you'll have to do it.. Trust me, I know.

Workout yesterday consisted of the Spartan Workout from the night before:

20-40-60-40-20  28kg kettlebell swings (no putting the kb down)

15-30-45-30-15 pushups

10-20-30-20-10 28kg goblet squats

5-10-15-10-5 20kg Renegade Rows

This took me 18:49.. The 60 consecutive swings with a 28kg were brutal! Doing 20 and 30 28kg goblet squats while your HR is at about 90% makes it feel like an elephant is standing on your chest. This was a really difficult workout.. After about 5:00 minutes of recovery I did a 6 min set of one arm snatch with a 16kg for 130 snatches (65 on each arm).. Forearms were pretty cooked after all the swings.

Followed the snatches up with 1 hour on the rollers.. 10 minute warmup followed by 5 intervals where I'd go at tempo (about 225W) for the length of one song and then recover with easy pedaling (about 120W) for one song.. About the third interval I needed that added motivation I was talking about.. I thought of Michele and the other people who have said they're going to come to Mt W to watch me race. A great Zeppelin song came on the iPod for my last interval, Bron Y Aur Stomp off Zeppelin III.. I cranked my power output up to 275W+ (my target Mt W power level) and held it for the 4:16 of the song.. Felt pretty good. To everybody who reads this, now that I've told all of you about my goals I expect you all to hold me accountable. Thanks for helping to motivate me :)

Best,

kevin

Dashing Through the Snow...

Welcome to March! We all woke up to a nice March blizzard this morning.. Lots of moaning and groaning following the few really warm days last week that got people excited about Spring and Summer.. I have to admit, I was a little psyched myself last week since I really want to start getting some miles in on the roads.. But you can't change the weather and it doesn't do any good to complain about it. Like all things in life, it doesn't do any good to get upset about things you can't control. So as I walked around my empty gym this morning, assuming that the people who normally come to my morning classes decided to stay home and do the shoveling burpee workout I posted on my other blog, I wondered what kind of punishment I could put myself through. 

Seeing how I need to get some miles in on Mondays I decided a bike workout was in order, and it needed to be intense.. So I did something I've never done before, an interval session on the rollers. This is difficult because to get to a high power output on the rollers you have to pedal really fast in a big gear since the rollers don't provide as much resistance as a trainer does. I train with a power meter which allows me to know exactly how much power I'm putting out. This is a great method of training for cyclists since it's fairly easy to calculate the amount of power you need to put out to achieve certain milestones. For example, for me to hit 1:10 on Mt Washington at 145 lbs (I plan to lose about 5 lbs by race time) I need to average 275 Watts which is about 4.2W/kg.. That's a really high power threshold and will be very difficult to achieve. If none of these numbers make sense to you think about the last time you went out for a ride with your kids or even on your own and you were riding over gently rolling terrain at a conversational pace. You were probably averaging somewhere between 75 and 90 Watts. It's also important to realize that the more power you're putting out, the harder it is to go higher. For example, it's much easier to double your speed on a bicycle from 5MPH to 10MPH than it is to go from 20MPH to 22MPH which is only a 10% increase... OK enough numbers,  my interval workout went like this:

10 minute warmup followed by 10 rounds of 60 seconds of work followed by 60 seconds of active recovery (spinning at an easy recovery pace). The 60 second work periods were at increasing power levels and went like this:

200W, 220W, 240W, 260W, 280W, 300W, 320W, 340W, 360W, 380W. 

Then I spun for 2:00 at an easy recovery pace and then did 5 more 60:60 intervals at:

250W, 280W, 310W, 340W, 400W

The intervals above 320W were in the biggest gear on the bike spinning at a cadence of between 100 and 130 RPM.. The wheel speed at 400W was 40 MPH. To hold this for 1 minute was very difficult, especially for this early in the biking season. The scariest part of it was that I was essentially in a sprint on the rollers with the wheels turning at 40MPH, a bunch of kettlebells to my left and a window that opens to a 50 ft drop in front of me. The rollers were making noise like they were about to blow apart so it was a little scary. This was a great interval workout and by doing it on the rollers it added a level of engagement that you just can't get on the trainer since you have to stay 100% focused on your technique while going as hard as possible. Very difficult and very intense!

I finished my workout with 100 consecutive 16# sledgehammer hits on the tire, switching sides every 25 hits. It took 3:50.. That was a lot harder than I thought it would be!

Enjoy the rest of the blizzard...

kevin