Just getting back into Tampa after spending an awesome weekend back “home” in Philly watching the Eagles crush the Giants 40-17.
Oh how sweet it was to watch that masacre up close and personal, just 7 rows from the field :-)
Now if only the Phillies can get their their act together for the final two games of the World Series…
We’ll see.
Regardless, after a weekend away I was ready to get back in the gym today, and after completing a pretty crazy session just moments ago, wanted to share it with you.
It all started with a 5 minute warm-up on the mill o’ tread, followed by some brief stretching, and then into the below beast of a circuit:
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This week I’ve had the pleasure of entertaining some of my closest fitness buddies for a few days here in Tampa, and upon awakening, several of us found ourselves facing the all too common dilemma deciding what to eat for breakfast.
Vinny (Del Monte) chose to go with some left-over lobster and steak from our evening at Shula’s the night before (where, by the way, John Romaniello joined me in being inducted in Shula’s 48 oz. Club, by ordering—and finishing—their signature 48 oz. Porterhouse. Nice work, John), while I decided to go with the more conventional egg.
You see, truth is, I like eggs and tend to eat a lot of them.
Now, I’m sure you’ve heard a time or two before that you should be mindful of consuming too many unhatched chickens as their cholesterol content is rather high.
I’ve even heard the recommendation that eggs should only be eaten once per week to avoid cholesterol issues. If that’s the case, I’m probably due to die rather soon.
Fortunately, it’s not.
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This past weekend I was hanging out with Transformation Domination LIVE speakers Craig Ballantyne and Vince DelMonte, both of whom are collectively almost as cool as me.
No really, we measured it.
Anyway, after some informal “meetings” and such, we decided to head out to dinner at a Hibachi restaurant called Benihana, home of the official worst desert ever—the pineapple boat.
I assumed from the name that it would come with at least 3 “passenger” scoops of ice cream, some whipped cream, and a cherry, but no, the pineapple boat is simply a shallow 1/8th cut of pineapple, mostly rind, for $6.
Terrible.
Fortunately, their Japanese cuisine was much better than the dessert, which leads me to this suggestion: Order the Hibachi Chicken and Steak, not the Pineapple Boat.
Just a heads up.
Nevertheless, as a diet author it’s not too often that I go out to eat without coming home with a least some ideas for blog content. This experience was no different.
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Okay, I’ll admit it. I suck as a morning person.
In fact, I’ll go as far to say that I just may be legally “broken” until about noon every day.
Now, I don’t generally go to bed until about 2 a.m., so perhaps that is part of the problem. For example, it’s currently 1:13 a.m., and I’m just sitting down to write this blog post.
Pretty standard behavior.
Regardless, whenever I wake up (generally around 10 or so), I suck at being productive. I’m pretty good at eating, but productivity, that comes somewhere around 3 p.m.
The point, you ask?
Well, it should be pretty obvious by now that I’m about to share with you the definitive best time of day to conduct your workouts.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t so obvious.
BUT, here it goes.
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A little while back I sent you an email with the subject “1+1=3?”, informing you of the unstoppable synergy that occurs when you combine a killer metabolic resistance training program like Turbulence Training along with my Cheat Your Way Thin diet system.
And today, I’m back with another stellar math lesson to wow your friends with: 0 does NOT equal 0.
Sounds like some ass-backwards calculus nonsense, I know, but it’s actually a very practical equation. Or should I say “non-quation” (Yes, I know they’re called inequalities, but non-quation sounds WAY cooler to me, and it’s my blog).
Let me explain.
This morning, I sat down to a bowl of Bran Flakes. It was a rather large bowl, because hey, not only do I preach big breakfasts, I eat them, too.
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Previously, I made a short and sweet post that was very well received (hundreds of comments and counting) called The Best Diet Tip EVER.
In that tip, we talked about the simplest way to avoid temptation and cravings—don’t have it in the house.
Simply put, if it’s not available, it’s not a temptation.
But today’s tip digs a little deeper.
Did you know that even “healthy” foods can be a problem for some people? There are certain foods—and it’s an individual thing—that once you start eating them, it’s very hard to stop.
For me, it’s pasta. Sure, I’ll cook the whole wheat variety and sit down to a “healthy” meal, but unless I specifically portion out the amount I’m going to eat, I can easily end up downing half the box or more.
You see, if I’m not careful, “healthy” can easily turn into a massive calorie overload sent straight to my waistline.
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In the second part of our discussion on training to failure, we talked about several very important things.
For starters, we cleared up the ambiguity surrounding the term “failure” and established a simple, clear-cut definition of the term.
Alas, we were all on the same page.
At that point, we went on to discuss the pitfalls of regularly training to failure, including the extreme stress these techniques place on the central nervous system.
The end result: overtraining, burnout, skipped workouts, extreme fatigue, and an overall lack of results. Not exactly the type of things you’d hope to generate by “giving it your all” in the gym.
And that’s the point−training hard without training SMART leads to nothing more than a bunch of futile, wasted effort.
That said, training to failure isn’t all bad, and in fact there are several “intelligent” ways to use the technique to get you the results you’re after, faster.
Here are a few of my favorites:
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In Part I of our discussion on training to failure, I asked you a question:
“When do YOU terminate your sets?”
In the comments section of that post, you responded.
The consensus?
There wasn’t one. I mean, not even close.
Replies ranged from the very conservative “when the speed of movement slows down” (which I think is bogus, and I’ll provide my thoughts in another post) to the much more extreme use of “forced” reps (having a spotter assist you to complete more repetitions, as “the kid” from my previous story reluctantly had me do for him) on a regular basis.
Needless to say, due to the wide range of replies, this is an area that is an area that most here could use some clarification on, and that’s exactly what I plan to give you over these next few posts.
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Last Monday I was at the gym performing my regular “Monday” squat workout.
There are several reasons why I choose to squat on Mondays (I also squat at least one other time during the week as well), but the major reason is that everyone else seems to be working chest on this day.
Walk into any gym across America on a Monday and I can almost guarantee you that every bench press station will be occupied, along with just about every flat bench to boot.
For whatever reason, Monday has become the “unofficial” day to work chest nationwide.
And while I don’t really understand why, it works out just fine for me as the squat racks are never occupied (let’s be honest, they’re hardly ever occupied, but on Monday there’s even less of a chance).
So there I am, Audioslave pumping on my iPod getting ready to start my second set of wide-stance squats and someone taps me on the shoulder.
“Would you mind giving me a spot?”
The kid was probably about 18 years old, maybe 150 lbs.
And even though I genuinely hate to be interrupted while working out, I’m still a nice guy, so I agreed to give him a hand.
And yes, he was bench pressing.
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Okay, so here’s the deal. Yesterday I went to the gym and before I even had the chance to mix my workout drink, I was out the door.
Why? Simple: I straight up didn’t want to be there, so I left.
You see, every so often I’ll go through a period of time when my motivation to exercise is severely lacking. I’m sure you’ve experienced it, too−despite generally looking forward to your workouts, you get to the gym and just loathe the thought of going through with the next 30-60 minutes.
My advice: leave.
Now, before getting into a more “scientific” explanation for my recommendation, let’s first examine what’s most practical.
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Hey, it’s Joel! So you want to know a little more about me, huh? Well, I’d be happy to oblige :-)
I guess it all started back in 2001 (my freshman year of college) when I was just a “skinny fat” 19-year old kid. At the time, I was spending close to 2 hours a day in the gym (now my workouts last about 30 minutes), and despite my efforts, you’d probably never guess I worked out a day in my life by looking at me...