Thanksgiving- some thoughts to chew on

The more fat a meat has, the better natural flavoring it has, right? That is why deer meat needs a lot of seasoning and can be pretty tough most of the time... it is a very lean meat.




Where am I going with this? If some ridiculously diesel cannibal overpowered me and cooked me, I would want to be the toughest, most-meaty meal he/she ever had. I wouldn't want to be a squishy, enjoyable dinner. I would want him/her to have to use all kinds of ketchup, seasoning, and milk to get me down.

On what I am eating for Turkey day:

I am going to focus on meat and veggies... I can get all of those carbs every other day. If you eat a ton of carbs AND desert, well, any gains you made the last couple weeks you just flushed out with your mass overeating. I am not going to quote a study, but I guarrantee people eat more when they are around other people overeating... large family dinner anyone?

Enjoy yourself, but don't hate yourself the next day.

Make time to workout, even if it is a bunch of sprints early one morning before a shower, do something. Don't use a holiday weekend as an excuse to be another sedentary American.

Today's workout:

incline bench press

flat cable flies

DB shoulder press

straight arm front raises SS with cable lateral raises

dips, pushups, and pushdowns

I'll let you know weights, sets, and reps afterwards

Chew on that

New Energy Drink?

As I was dirnking my Rip It energy drink last night before working, my buddy pulled up this energy drink spoof video... hilarious



Have a good weekend

STTB.com thanks

Thanks to Scott Bird and every one that came out to talk squat on last night's twitter chat. You can find a recap here. Check out the forums at http://www.straighttothebar.com/ , there are tons of videos, articles, and topics that you can learn from and comment about.

My workout today:
warm up
DB shoulder press
*only set standing 65's x 10
90's x 6
95's 2x6

superset 1
lateral cable raise 40 2x12 50 3x 12 60 2x6
straight bar front raise 80 6x8

superset 2
face pulls 140 2x12 130 2x12
rope tricep pushdown (easy on cable) 120 4x12

superset 3
bodyweight dips 3x12
straight bar pushdowns 75 3x12

let me know what you did today in the comments, be easy...
enjoy the weekend.

Realizing you aren't where you think you are...

I had a true confession by a client yesterday. She said that weighing her in last week was one of the best things we have done recently... and not because she saw some super low number. She was motivated by the number because it wasn't where she thought she should be.

To give you a quick background on this particular doc, she met with me last fall and spring semester and got down to 132lbs for a vacation trip she was taking. She was very pleased with how she looked, felt, and how her clothes fit. Between my transition to a full-time job from full-time grad student she worked with another trainer this past summer. She also got into a rut of poor eating habits and a skewed view of her actual weight, mostly from never weighing in.

I wanted her at a certain weight that I know is possible since it is just three pounds less than the previous weight we got her to in the spring. She was squeemish about weighing in. The entire previous month she had gone on trips on weekends and would come to me Monday morning with so-so nutrition stories so I pushed for it and got her on the scale. She was 8 pounds heavier than she had perceived herself to weigh.

At first there was disbelief.
"Is that scale right?" Yes, I calibrated it this summer.

"I don't feel like (insert weight here)." But then came true motivation: Knowing exactly where you are so you can properly go to where you wish to go. She told me after that weekend that she was very strict with her diet and cardio and even thoughing weighing in for her "sucked," as she put it, it was a true marker of exactly where she is.

Now, I am also not for obsessive scale stalking, because weight it just a number in a lot of cases. I would never recommend some one to weigh in more than one every two weeks. You need to stay focused, eat right, be held accountable, and train hard. Everything else will fall into place and you will be knocked out of any rut that you might have fallen into.