The Grind...

Training Over 35 Lifter
1081

[quote]Canada_K wrote:
I AM FURIOUS!!! I’m livid! Utterly outraged!

Check out the ridiculous note from my coach:

“Diet pop: sorry dude, it’s got to go.”

What the F##K does this guy think he’s doing here!!! This is utter horses##t!
[/quote]

Not to be a shit disturber, and I don’t know much / anything about contest prep, but I do recall reading John Meadows saying he drank a LOT of diet pop prior to his most recent contest. Maybe your coach knows what he is talking about, or maybe its broscience.

1082

[quote]kmcnyc wrote:
dude-
diet soda while essential for my caffeine love

I know its bad for a few reasons
the sweetness does something funky with insulin release
and carbonated stuff is hard to process

[/quote]

X2

Canada K, I love you like a brother from another mother, So dont take this the wrong way…It’s time to man up and accept it,Its all part of it, if you want to play the game.

1083

[quote]bulldog9899 wrote:

[quote]kmcnyc wrote:
dude-
diet soda while essential for my caffeine love

I know its bad for a few reasons
the sweetness does something funky with insulin release
and carbonated stuff is hard to process

[/quote]

X2

Canada K, I love you like a brother from another mother, So dont take this the wrong way…It’s time to man up and accept it,Its all part of it, if you want to play the game.[/quote]

…ahem…

DUDES! I was being sarcastic. I knew the day was coming where my aspartame habit would go under the knife. I’m just whining about it. I stopped my (diet) coke habit Sunday and don’t intend to go back. I don’t particularly like giving up my one remaining vice, but it’s sure as hell not the toughest thing I’ve had to do by a long shot.

Al though I quite enjoyed all the bitch-slappery.

1084

[quote]Canada_K wrote:
My 11-year-old son Ryan today at around 11:00 am:

“I really want to play a game with you now, but I know you’ve got to do your cooking all day.”

My heart broke right open at that one. This contest prep is completely unfair. I know I can handle the work, but stuff like this is going to do me in.
[/quote]

Oh, wow.

I hope you at least gave him a hug and invited to help you with the cooking.

1085

[quote]Canada_K wrote:

[quote]bulldog9899 wrote:

[quote]kmcnyc wrote:
dude-
diet soda while essential for my caffeine love

I know its bad for a few reasons
the sweetness does something funky with insulin release
and carbonated stuff is hard to process

[/quote]

X2

Canada K, I love you like a brother from another mother, So dont take this the wrong way…It’s time to man up and accept it,Its all part of it, if you want to play the game.[/quote]

…ahem…

DUDES! I was being sarcastic. I knew the day was coming where my aspartame habit would go under the knife. I’m just whining about it. I stopped my (diet) coke habit Sunday and don’t intend to go back. I don’t particularly like giving up my one remaining vice, but it’s sure as hell not the toughest thing I’ve had to do by a long shot.

Al though I quite enjoyed all the bitch-slappery.[/quote]

I have shamed myself…

1086

WHAT THE HELL…

Why is there a Tampax in the garbage can in the men’s room at work?

Two-a-days are killing me. They work like gangbusters, though. The top two rows of abs are visible, my pants are falling off, and I’ve lost 3 inches off my waist since Christmas. But holy hell, two-a-days are kicking my f##king a$$!!

1087

Post pix! Post pix!

1088

Of him ??? or the Tampax in the mens locker room?

1089

Sorry - of Kent. I’ve seen Tampax.

1090

I’m PROFOUNDLY unmotivated to keep talking about my training and diet. All I do is think about training and diet. Today I want to talk about my sordid University days. Right now my coach has me adding a tbsp of cocoa and a tsp of cinnamon to each of my morning workout drinks (it’s for the phytochemicals). These drinks are already vile tasting poisons because of the BCAAs and hydrolysate, but the cocoa and cinnamon make it damn nearly unbearable. The only thing that helps me through is my skill at chugging… finely honed drinking beer at Uni.

As an engineering student, beer drinking was practically part of the curriculum. During Engineering Week (the faculty’s debauched version of the Olympics) the finale event was Boat Racing… which is really just chugging beer. Teams of four, each person chugs one mug and one bottle. I can down a mug in seconds flat, but I can’t do bottles. It’s an acquired skill, and I just dont have it.

I’m reminded, though of the Pub Crawl event. This was a 10 km running course, where teams of four had to run the course visiting each of the seven bars along the route and drink two beers at each. Now obviously, you can just imagine what it would be like running with 14 glasses of beer in your gut.

This is where the strategy comes in.

After each stop, the runners would stick their fingers down their throats and throw up the beer they just drank (usually still cold) and run to the next stop. Now let me be clear I NEVER PARTICIPATED, I was one of the running judges that shadowed the teams to make sure they didn’t cheat.

So one year, this fellow is lumbering along the course, and having a hell of a time. “I can’t throw up” he keep complaining. Well after the FIFTH stop this guy is still complaining and then suddenly…

KABANG!

The dude explosively puked all over a spruce tree. It was minus 25 degrees celcius outside. It froze instantly. I was nearly sick myself.

1091

sheer awesomeness

1092

Congratulations. You just made me lose my appetite. And that’s a feat.

1093

[quote]Canada_K wrote:

Why is there a Tampax in the garbage can in the men’s room at work?
[/quote]

Have you checked missed connections or casual encounters on craigslist? That might have your answer.

I love the college story. Everyone should go to college simply to have to stories like this to tell.

1094

CK, your log is always a hoot to visit. I was personally glad that your coach slapped your diet soda whoredom. Now is time to man up and drink a real man’s drink…bland water! blank stare

1095

The Medievil combat sport I do requires groin protection so a word of warning.

Cups WILL break.

When they break they split down the middle.

“Stuff” can get caught between the two pieces if you don’t change the broken cup out.

This is VERY bad.

1096

Friday - funday
Wide grip chins: 35x5, bwx5, 35x2, bwx5 (no rest between sets)
supinated grip chins: 35x5, bwx5, 35x2, bwx6 (no rest between sets)
neutral grip chins: 35x4, bwx5, 35x1, bwx5
tri-grip pulldown drop sets: 130x8/110x8/90x8, 150x5/130x6/110x4, 110x12, 90x8, 70x10

A1 unilateral cobra pulldowns - 50x12/35x12, 50x12/35x12
A2 unilateral staight arm pulldowns - 50x12/35x12, 50x12/35x12
A3 unilateral X rows - 35x12/30x10, 35x12/30x10

B1 front squat hold shrugs - 115x12, 115x8
B2 hanging shrugs - 15,13
B3 Behind the leg shrugs - 12x180, 10x180

30 min of hell on the treadmill.

Every day when I head to the hamster wheel I say to myself “It won’t hurt to skip just ONE day. Let’s just skip today and go home. Okay I’ll do the first 2 songs on the iPod then we’ll quit. Well I might as well complete 10 minutes. Well hell, I’m almost at the half way point, might as well get to there. Well I’ve gone halfway, might as well tough it out. Man this sucks”

And every damned day I finish my damned cardio. I hate cardio.

1097

MICHAEL MOORE IS DELUSIONAL

Say what you will about public/private health care, but when Michael Moore showed a picture of a Toronto hospital emergency ward, and the waiting room was empty …? There must have been some serious CGI involved in getting that imaginary scene onto film. The usual wait for me in my small town of 65,000 is usually 4 hours minimum.

Anyways, awhile back I woke up with CHEST PAIN and decided to go to emerg. Now this wasn’t anything severe, but when the pain is in your CHESTmy opinion is you don’t mess around. So as I walk through the waiting room to the triage nurse I see the place is jammed so I get myself ready for a looooooong wait with nothing to entertain me but 12 year old copies of Chatelaine and Reader’s Digest (50 uses for recycled toilet paper…ooo I can hardly wait to read this one).

I tell the nurse I’m having chest pains.

She grabs my hand, drags me immediately at a dead run into a private room and hooks me up to the ECG. Within 10 minutes I see the doctor. Holy crap. This is service!

It turns out I had an inflammation of the rib end at the sternum. The recovery was quick with anitbiotics and I get the added bonus of being able to crack my sternum like most people crack their knuckles. It sounds like a gunshot and is a great trick at parties.

The moral of the story: whatever your actual condition, when you go to the emergency room, also say you have chest pain. It’s like a VIP pass.

Excuse me, miss triage nurse, I have this broken foot… and chest pains.

1098

Tough workout. And yeah, sometimes you have to psych yourself out to do the unfun stuff. Way to go!

1099

SEXY, HOT, FIT… ELBOWS

I’ve made an observation. You can tell a lot about a person’s body comp and fitness level by their elbows. REALLY! I work with a group of people with a wide variety of fitness levels: skinny but untrained ladies, generally pudgy and sedentary, big and lean, fit but unconcerned with body comp, and young kids pushing iron in an unfocused way.

What I’ve noticed is that the people who are approaching (or at) a level of elite body comp have a depression on the inside of their elbow at the bend in the arm, with a visible vein (of five). For some reason this is a sign of both above average muscle mass and below average body fat.

1100

WOMEN AND WORKING OUT

Who exactly spawned the misbegoten theory that men and women MUST workout differently? Men use the weight room; women use the aerobics room and the cardio equipment. Never the twain shall meet.

Men eat steak. Women eat salad. Men pump iron. Women tone.

It’s been “the way it is” for as long as I’ve been alive, and quite frankly, ladies, you’re getting the shaft. At some point someone decided that the real road to physical fitness and elite body comp was too much for your deliacate sensibilities and started building a marketing machine around convincing you that what you really want is “fitness lite”.

So why am I on a tear?

My wife is very dissatisfied with her body. She is beautiful, and well within average, but wishes she could be 110 lbs again like she was in junior high school. She already knows the right way to get what she wants: lots of steady state cardio on the elliptical rider (but not getting too sweaty), skipping breakfast, portion control at all meals, lots of clean carbs.

Oh, and here’s the kicker, no weights of any kind. WHY!!?? Because she doesn’t want “to get bulky”, as if she was at risk of becoming uncontrollably muscular.

Now it’s all fine and dandy for me to ridicule my wife, but she is merely a victim of what the multi-billion dollar fitness industry has been telling her for her ENTIRE LIFE! And quite frankly, I have yet to meet a woman who doesn’t think exactly the same way. But what really browns me off is that she has no interest in hearing MY opinion.

WHY!?!?! Doesn’t my own transformation give me at least some credibility that I might know a thing or two about this? Doesn’t the fact that she sees how I live and how I eat and how I look hold any sway over her decision making? Isn’t that fact that I’ve completely changed my body from flabby to tight evidence that maybe I know something?

Apparently no. Because I’m a guy. And apparently the physiology between human males and human females is compeltely different. I am actually pretty aggressively and loudly put down when I try to offer any kind of opinion. So I don’t offer. I’d like to. I’d like to engage in a debate about where I think popular fitness programs are selling her short, and how Weight Watchers isn’t set up for her success.

Again it’s not just my wife. She had one of her ladies groups over and they were discussing working out, and losing weight. When I tried to say how I felt women should be in the weight room, how it’s not how much you eat as much as WHAT you eat, I was laughed out of the room. Perhaps a bit too aggressively. I got the distinct feeling they didn’t WANT their beliefs challenged.

Let me say for the record: WOMEN ARE CRAZY. The whole lot of you.