“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.” – Wayne Gretzky Old school — Walter Payton, “Sweetness”, chargin’ the hills Here’s a workout that I and my good friend, Bryan Barksdale, knocked-out this week. What I’d like to cover are some of the various ways we can Autoregulate this very basic MetCon… [More…]
Touchstones, Part Duex…and a Blast From the Past
…I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth… That’s William Faulkner, whose birthday was Sunday. And who, together with Cormac McCarthy, have produced all the literature I’ll ever really need. All else, while nice enough, is simply superfluous. And speaking of “a hot wild seed in the blind earth”, check out this picture… [More…]
Of Sprinting, and Leptin Signaling Mimetics
My good friend Chris Highcock, of Conditioning Research, (and he by way of Andrew Badenoch, of Evolvify) clued me into the recent Journal of Applied Physiology article, Is sprint exercise a leptin signaling mimetic in human skeletal muscle? I won’t delve into the interesting details of this paper, as Chris has already done a wonderful job of… [More…]
A Quick Study in Contrasts
Since I have no specific athletic or body composition goal in mind — other than chasing the fullest, most well-rounded expression of my phenotype — I’m at liberty to explore, to the widest extent, the speed-strength continuum and the force-velocity curve. In English? I get to dabble with my workouts, mix it up; have fun and… [More…]
A Nifty Little Sprint Complex
Deal with the Devil if the Devil has a constituency – and don’t complain about the heat – C. J. Cherryh Not complaining, just sayin’, you know; 106-degrees F at the time I performed this little sprint routine, on the way to the day’s high of 111. No telling how friggin’ hot it was out… [More…]
The Four T’s — Tools, Techniques, Time and Tenacity
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt True for many aspects in life, but no more so than in the pursuit of a long and successful life in the game of Physical Culture 2.0. And what exactly *is* Physical Culture 2.0? Well, in essence, it’s the fully integrated pursuit of a healthy… [More…]
3/23/10; Single-Leg Emphasis MetCon Circuit, and Of Being a Jack of Two Trades, but a Master of Neither (and it’s a good thing)
I certainly don’t mean this in a derogatory sense — far from it — this is simply the makings of a well-rounded athlete. There is, of course, a wide range of phenotypical expression among athletes (and weekend warriors), along the explosive-elastic continuum. Swedish sprinter/weightlifter Lena Berntsson is a fine example of a well-trained athlete who… [More…]
3/12/10; MetCon for Sprinters, and Urban Dreaming
135 lbs hasn’t felt this heavy in quite some time. I cut down the rest time between exercises here to next to nothing — just long enough to catch a gasp of air — before hitting the next movement. If you look at the time-under-tension of each movement you’ll see that each “work” segment lasted… [More…]
3/6/10; A Nice MetCon Combo,and…Diet Nimrods Abound?
“The one common experience of all humanity is the challenge of problems.” – R. Buckminster Fuller 2 miles from my house to the gym offers a perfect opportunity for a short fixie huck/warm-up prior to throwing around a little iron. An odd combination, I know. I was asked recently if I was the only fixie… [More…]
Day One:Three-and-a-Half Hours in the Fixie Saddle; Day Two: Explosive Creds
“One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes Yesterday, in what amounted to quite a departure from my usual explosive-type workouts, I spent three-and-a-half hours in the fixie saddle, terrorizing the downtown streets and greenway trails in and around Raleigh, NC. Why the departure? Well, I… [More…]