Full Circle

After so much training ADD and too many months of wasted workouts doing things that seems more fun than productive, I've now come full-circle back to the style of training that got me into this field in the first place.

My early days of training started with a strong HIT influence. For those that are unaware, HIT training is about using fewer "work" sets for a given bodypart. And the sets that do count are taken to failure and beyond using various methods such as drop sets, partials, rest/pause (my favorite) and forced reps with a partner.

I had gone through phases where I tried out new theories and used several of the most common methods of strength training. I benefitted from a few such as Westside Barbell style powerlifting and tried other methods not to my benefit.

With the aches and pains that come from heavy lifting, I've taken up bodyweight exercises but not really long enough to make good use of them. Plus I get bored easy enough, let alone going weeks not lifting heavy stuff!

More to come...

Oooops! Change of plans!

Well, put this one in the S#!T happens catagory. My very first heavy box squatting session resulted in sciatic pain (again) which has made me lose more sleep than I'm wiling to accept.

So with that in mind, I'm changing course. I'm going to switch back to lots of bodyweight expercises, short rest, hitting the heavybag (highly recommended by the way) and higher reps.
I'm going to dip/chin/prisoner squat 3-4 days per week. I'm going to use my sandbags as well. The lighter ones for high rep clean and press and the medium and heavy ones for squats and shouldering.

Diet-wise, I'm going to do the fruit thing... Eat loads of fresh raw fruit and vegetables all day with one protein meal at night. It's been a great, healthy break from the normal diet and really helps my digestion/elimination and lose bodyfat as well.

2008!

New year, new ideas, new inspiration!

I'm not totally sold on making resolutions. They're often too vague to be achieved and many times they're not very well thought out. With that said here's mine and what I've done or will do to see them through!

1) To start powerlifting again. I already started box squatting.

2) To get my bodyweight up to 240 or so from my current 226 while maintaining bodyfat levels. I purposely lost about 30 lbs using my "Primal Diet". I've gotten so many "You're so thin" comments to last me a lifetime. Of course I then get asked how I did it. I then touch on my diet and almost invariable get told "That doesn't work" or "Isn't that exactly the oposite of what everyone else does?". Well it does work (you just told me how thin I looked) and yes it IS opposite of the current experts advice. "But Derek, I was told to eat 5-6 small meals throughout the day." Oh yeah? How's THAT workin' for ya?

3) To stop being so understanding and start handing out some tough love.

4) To continue thanking God for my great fortune with my family and friends.

New diet and workout evolution

I've been slowly modifying my fitness plan over the last few months. I've been very busy moving my gym to a new, bigger location AND moving my home back to my old home town of East Bridgewater. I'll post details and pictures later but I want to elaborate on the title of this entry.

Since I always like to keep an eye on our ancestral past and use it to give me clues on how to act NOW, I've been experimenting on myself with some interesting protocols pertaining to both exercise and nutrition. In my research, coupled with a little touch of logic, I've figured out that eating heavily throughout the day is anethema to being alert, aggressive and driven. We all know how we feel following a heavy meal no matter what food is eaten. A large meal slows us down. It HAS to! It's the old warning our mothers gave us to not swim on a full stomach because "you'll cramp up". They may not have known why they were right, but they were right nonethless.

The reason is that we have only so much blood in circulation at one time. When we eat anything substantial, our blood is diverted to our digestive organs (and away from our extremities) in order to facilitate digestion. Our muscles are not able to recieve enough oxygen etc. to sustain intense physical activity. On the flip side of the coin, when we exercise intensely, our blood is diverted to our musculature and brain and AWAY from our digestive organs. Quite often, our bodies reaction to us asking it to both digest and exercise simultaneously is to puke. Far better to throw up lunch and survive a battle than to cramp up, lose the battle and be killed.

How I've decided to use this new thinking is this: I've been doing is making my espresso (I love coffee, what can I say?) at 6:30am, Then another by 9 or 10. At some point before lunchtime, I'll have some melon, a banana or an apple and plenty of water. I may have a small amount of protein around lunchtime but very little else until I get home from work. And then it's go time! I usually consume three meals' worth of food in one sitting.

I'll get more into details of how much I eat, the order I eat etc. in my next few posts. I'll be honest though. I get quite a bit of inspiration from Art DeVany and Ori Hoffmekler. If you know either of these guys, you'll know what I mean. I do want to add however that I have a short book I wrote almost eight years ago about evolutionary eating and activity. Perhaps a full six years before I had heard of either of these fine gentlemen. That's all I got to say 'bout that.

New beginning

I've recently gotten down to business as far as training and diet are concerned. I am no longer very concerned with increases on the scale. I am concerned much more than ever with lean mass gain and/or fat loss. I've recently made the following changes which seem much more "radical" in print than in everyday practice;

1. No milk, beans, grains or cereals.

2. Focus on vegetables first, meat second and fruit last (not exactly the typical food pyramid huh?)

3. Made my gym workouts more random, condensed them to make them shorter and added in more sporting activity. I walk with a heavy pack, run hill sprints, hit the heavy bag and do bodyweight conditioning workouts using variations of squat-thrusts, jumps, chin-ups, dips etc. usually in a random "routine".

4. My diet has become more random in timing, size and content.

The effects I've felt thus far are the following;

1. Better, more sound sleep.

2. More usable energy.

3. Less aches and pains (probably due to less inflamation from the above excluded foods).

4) Reduction in bodyfat.

More to come...

I'm going to revise my last post. I thought about it and realized that naming specific sports and being proficient at them was a bit hasty. Instead, I'd like to keep the attribute of that "cross trainer" but substitue a new, more acurate definition. What would be more appropriate would be to say "I'm going to strive to be strong, fast, explosive, agile, flexible, tough and enduring all at the same time."

Care must be given and I must remember that when one tries do undertake too many training modes at one time, all of them can be severely compromised. For example, working toward extreme strength AND extreme leanness concommitantly is many times an exercise in frustration.

However, I believe one can be "quite" strong and "quite" lean at the same time. Perhaps the extreme ends of either or both will be compromised but I believe the uotcome will be well worth the effort and experimentation.

Cross Training

No, I'm not talking about being too skinny and too weak to do anything properly. That's what comes to mind when I see that term used. It's usually describing someone who jogs a little, hits the machines at the gym and plays softball once per month.

I'm talking about a new, improved definition of cross training. Maybe even a new name. The question is this; is it possible to be a fairly proficient olympic lifter, powerlifter, fast sprinter, tough fighter, high jumper and my true love; Highland Gamer?

I'm going to find out! Stay tuned.