Gym Chain vs. Results

This article is remarkably like a headline from The Onion. Planet Fitness employee requests someone cover up her clearly successful results of exercising.

Gym tells woman to cover up because her 'toned body' intimidated others

Video: Foot Drills

Jody-Lynn Reicher of Fine Tuning Therapy (and a professional fighter) and I did a video explaining some foot drills you can do to help rehabilitate your foot post-injury. It's also a great preventative set of exercises you can do, and ones I do before every training session.



Thanks to Asylum Fight Gym for giving us to space to do the videos.

3 Ways to Make Your Workouts Better Right Now

If you aren't doing all of these, or any of these, this is for you. These can transform your workout without changing a single other aspect of your training.

#1: Don't hold the weights, grip them.

When you lift weights, don't take grab the handle and hold on. Wrap your hands around the handle with intent and authority, and grip it hard. The more you squeeze, the more of the surrounding muscle you will recruit and thus the harder you can train. Your body can't generate maximum force with a minimal grip.

#2: Get Tight Everywhere.

It's easier to push a weight with a pole than with a rope. Why? The pole is stiff, and lets you transmit force from your muscles to the weight. The rope has give, and and until that give runs out the weight doesn't move. Lifting weights is exactly like that.

No matter what the lift is, you want to stay tight everywhere. Breathe, but keep your abs tight. Lock down every part of your body that isn't moving and tighten up the ones that are. Even on a simple biceps curl, you want your whole body tight. Grip the floor with your feet, tighten your abs and hips, and curl the weight up with the rest of your body locked tight. The tighter you get, the more force you can apply - and thus, the more weight you can lift.

#3: Treat Every Weight Like it's 10,000 pounds.

In other words, there are no light weights - only weights you can lift more times before you fail. Treat every weight (and indeed, every object you pick up) like it's the heaviest object you can lift. Treat it with respect. Get into the proper position to lift it, brace yourself, and practice your form as if every iota of strength, tightness, and energy you have is needed to move it. Don't get yank it up, but grip it, get tight, and take up the slack before you break it off the floor or the rack. If you don't like how your setup looks or feels, start over. Workouts are about building you up, not getting hurt, and it's always better to reset than to get hurt.

Like the other two tips, this will let you lift more and heavier. But it will also protect you from injury when you either grab something too casually or grab something that really is too much for the form you used to grab it. By treating them all with respect and as if they were heavy enough to warrant your full attention, you will maximize the benefits from them and help to minimize the risk of injury.


Remember, you get out of your workouts what you put into them. These three tips will help you put the most into your next workout.

Simple Fitness: The Flight-A-Day Stair Climb Program

Here is a simple beginning program, invented by my wife.

It works rain or shine, cold or warm.

All you need for this is a flight of stairs.


One Flight Per Day

Every day, walk up and down a flight of stairs. Do 1 x the date of the month repetitions.

For example, on March 14th, you'd do 14 flights of stairs. On the 15th, you'd do 15 flights. You'd keep going until 31 flights on the 31st, and then restart to 1 on April 1st.

Remember: Extra Stairs - Don't count the flights of stairs you walk up and down normally. This is a straight-through workout, done in addition to your normal stair climbing for work, commuting, and home activities of all sorts.

Does this work?

Yes. It's not for elite fitness, but it's a good start for basic movement for a sedentary person. It's also good as an extra bit of endurance exercise for someone who is otherwise lifting but hates getting in some cardio at the gym or outside. It's meant as a very basic, no-excuses, weather-independent and gear-independent workout.

Can I skip days?

Don't skip unless you have to (illness, injury, etc.) and accept that if you do, you need to just start back up on the next day with the current rep total (miss the 17th, the next day is the 18th so you do 18 repetitions.)

Can I change it?

Yes. You can do groups of flights up at a time and groups down, or take the elevator down, or something like that. But you are changing the program, and it will be a different workout. Try it and let me know how your change works.

Can I make it harder?

Yes. You can do that a few ways:

More Flights - Do 2 x as many as listed above, from 2 on the 1st to 62 on the 31st.

More Weight - Add weight, in the form of carried weights, or a weight vest or a backpack with weights in it, or ankle weights.

More Speed - Run up the stairs, then walk down slowly.

Can I add other things to this?

Yes, of course. Warmup first. Do some walking in addition. Lift a few days a week. It's just a simple start, not the end-all and be-all of working out.

But it does work.

Train Like An Operator

This sums up a lot of how I feel about "Tactical Athlete" training. Sometimes the real thing is on the mark, and sometimes it just feels like this:

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(NSFW - bad language)

Testing for Nutrional Needs - Sci Fi or Future?

Over on my Google+ stream, I posted this article on Nutrient Timing. One of my friends, +Jason Packer, hoped for a simple test to tell him what to eat.

The idea of a "one test" solution to diet is interesting. Could you test a person and find out how they need to eat?

Not now, as far as I know, but what about the future?

I think you'd need to know a few things:

- where you are now (point A)

- clear data on where you need to end up, for your goals (point B).

- how to get from point A to point B, with appropriate adjustments for specific problems (when injury, illness, or unforseen problems affect what you can do.)

You'd need some specific information. But that might just be a problem for Big Data. Different goals might also cause different food amounts. Or they might not. Generally when I want to gain weight, I add more of everything but especially more non-fibrous, starchy carbs and protein. Would it just be a question of changing the amount (eat x% more of everything), or would my approach of changing the proportion as well as the amount matter?

It's an interesting question. But for now, the TL;DR version is to eat quality food and not worry so much about when you get in the specific foods.

A bit of Grease-the-Groove Success

A young client who has been following the course I laid out here has had some success.

He started with 2-3 good pullups before form broke down and he needed help.

Two weeks later he was repping 5-6 reps easily, and did a max set of 10,

A week after that, he has been getting easy sets of 10.

It's not rocket science, really - reducing "strength improvement" to "practicing a skill" is very effective for setting new rep records. GTG isn't ideal for improving maximum strength, but it's a very effective way to get more reps.