A Post-Ride Paleo Meal, a Workout, and a Couple of Thoughts

To diet is to suffer, right? Uh-huh, yeah...right...

So this is what I chowed-down on Sunday evening, following a rather long day spent in the fixie saddle.

What you see here is a 1 lb, applewood smoked ham steak, from my good friends at Greene County North Carolina’s Rainbow Meadow Farms.  You can’t really tell from the photo, but that good-tastin’ bad boy takes up the entire bottom of the plate.  At the 5 o’ clock position there is a little bit of Tropical Tradition’s Atchara (fermented papaya); tasty and highly recommended.  And that’s a stir fry of chopped broccoli, red and green cabbage, carrots, green peppers, radish and celery there on top, obscuring the real size of the ham stake.  I “fried” the steak – actually, I just seared each side, as it was already smoked – prior to tossing in the veggies so that I’d have olive oil and the ham drippings to stir fry with; damn it made those veggies taste fantastic!  And the contrast with the fermented papaya was out of this world.

I also spent quite a bit of time in the saddle on Friday and Saturday as well.  It will be interesting to see how I integrate, after my move to Austin, what I anticipate to be much more of biking and running (sprinting)-centered lifestyle, with my weight training.  Of course, I will have the tremendous advantage of having access to varied and state-of-the-art equipment at Efficient Exercise, so I’ll be able to intensify my workouts, and thereby shorten my actual gym time.

I also plan on finally piecing together a full garage gym.  Anyone in the Austin area looking to unload some bumper plates, Oly bars, and plyo boxes, be sure and look me up  🙂

Ok, so here’s what I did in the gym on Saturday evening, on the tail-end of that day’s extended fixie session:

DB snatch (aka, the Cred) + single-arm split jerk: (reps listed are per-arm) 65 x 3; 75 x 3; 85 x 2; 95 x 1; 100 x 1; 105 x 1, 1, 1.  Missed the left-side jerk on the 1^st and 3^rd attempt; 2^nd attempt wasn’t pretty, but it was a “green lighter”.   Made all three attempts on the right side.  Hopefully once I get resettled I can get some clips of this movement to post.  It’s one of my favorite combination movements but, unfortunately a combination that’s rather difficult to explain; one of those things that’s much better shown than discussed.

following that, I shifted into Mentzer-esk mode with the following –

Atlantis pull-down machine: 350 lbs x ~10 reps (5,0,5,0 tempo) to positive failure, then 3 cheat concentrics + “extended” negatives.  By “extended” I mean that the first round was about 8 secs, roughly 6 or so for the second, and the third was an ugly 3 or 4 second negative.  Holy lat and bicep pummel, Batman.  Total TUL was approximately 135 seconds.

… moved right along then to the following pre-exhaust pairing:

Atlantis pec-deck: 180 lbs x ~ 10 reps (5,0,5,0 tempo) to positive failure + an approximate 8 second static “push”.  ~ 60 seconds TUL

then immediately to:

Atlantis machine flat press: 180 lbs (5,0,5,0 tempo) to positive failure, followed by 3 forced reps + extended negatives.  I lost count of reps, here – but really, though, that doesn’t matter so much, as I know what the total TUL was (approx. 75 seconds).

Again, it’s much, much better to perform this method of training with either a great partner (and one who’s not checkin’ out the babes on the stair-steppers), or a trainer who’s well versed in HIT applications…and who is also not checkin’ out the babes on the stair-steppers.  We do the best we can with the options we have, though.

Depth vs Spin –

I’ve long considered Seth Godin as one of amongst a very small group of individuals (including Rob Bell, and Clay Shirky for example) who totally “get” the new social construct, and Seth’s recent post, How long before you run out of talking points? is another in a long list of the guy’s outta-the-park hits.

Those of us who immerse ourselves in the world of Physical Culture are especially sensitive to all of the “spin” and surface-level (at best) understanding that’s unleashed upon the public on a daily (hourly?) basis.  Just listen to all the “leading authorities” on this subject or that; the total lack of knowledge/understanding displayed is shocking.  And unfortunately, this is the window through which the vast majority of the population “sees” Physical Culture.  Is there any wonder as to why our society in embroiled in the heathcare crisis that it is?  The real wonder is why we’re not actually worse off than what we are.  I guess I should concentrate more on “H8’n the game, not the playuh”, but things such as Shape Ups and the Cookie Diet just ain’t gonna cut the most direct path to to an exemplary expression of Physical Culture, folks.

“When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”

As a correlate to “Depth vs Spin” idea – and certainly applicable to the realm of Physical Culture — is the notion of following one’s intuition and intelligence to gather knowledge, and what, for that matter, the true definition of “knowledge” is to begin with.

Seth Roberts recently posted this piece, “A World Suppressing the Uniqueness Inside Each of Us” in which he references this fabulous Valedictorian address purportedly given by Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School, on June 25, 2010.  Now whether this was truly a Valedictorian address or not, I can’t be sure of.  What I am sure of, though, is that the message is *spot-friggin’-on*.  And not only is this is the case in “education”, writ large, but the same can be said of diet, health, and fitness writ large — the totality of what I term “Physical Culture”.  Take an n=1 approach toward achieving your own ultimate phenotypical expression.  Keep both eyes on the path; the destination will take care of itself.

6/2/10, Some TUL-Intensive Horizontal Pushing and Pulling, and a Severe Case of Carb Lust? WTF?

Went out for a little “hair of the dog” fixie huck last night.  Nothing major, though; simply an attempt at working some of the soreness out of my legs resulting from Monday’s Tour De Raleigh.  The TDR ride was only supposed to be a 24-ish mile gig; dumb-ass that I am, though, I turned that into something more along the lines of 35 to 40 miles due to my knack for getting completely and utterly lost.  What, ask directions?  Are you kidding me?  Oh well, what’s an extra and unexpected hard hour or so in the saddle, right?  Anyway, like I said, nothing major last night — just a quick trip out for coffee, then back to mi casa.  Couple of short sprints to juice the legs and stoke the metabolism; a dose of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind to rev the spirit and intellect.

Carb Lust…WTF??

So after 3 pretty damn tough hours in the saddle on Monday,  I finally wheeled into Cup-A-Joe’s for a badly needed shot of caffeine, and to introduce my lovely daughter — who’s moving to the Raleigh area — to the awesome Cup-A-Joe’s vibe.  Anyway, I rack the steed, hydrate a bit, attempt to stretch my lactic acid pumped legs, then hobble up to the counter to order-up — only to have the most delicious poundcake/brownie/whatever-the-hell platter of scrumptiousness looking me straight in the eye…wantonly, even.  Whoa!  I haven’t been hit by that kind of an intense carb lust since way back in the initial stages of my Paleo transformation.  And I’m talkin’ mouth-watering lust, here.  Funny thing, though: after about 5 minutes, and few sips of coffee, the craving passed; completely.  Now, I don’t know if the craving subsided because I was no longer face-to-face with the the instigating entity, or because of the coffee ingestion, or what.  In fact, my daughter arrived to meet me shortly after I’d settle-in with my cup o’joe and IndyWeek, and as we chit-chatted, she munched-away on a cookie the size of a cup saucer (I know, I know…and so does she) — never once, though, did I suffer a recurrence of the carb-noshing urge.  I can only guess that I was a good bit hypoglycemic (having just come off the bike) while at the counter, so it was just a perfect storm of momentary low blood sugar, and “offender appearance” timing.  Strange, though, to have felt that feeling again, and a good reminder of what new initiates the the whole Paleo gig have to suffer.  It’s all so easy for those of us who have crossed the bridge — sometimes it’s good to look back and try to recall what those dark days of transition were like.

Tuesday AM Training

Still working the TUL angle, here.  Next time in the gym I’ll hit a more explosive modality.  Gotta keep it all in rotation.

A giant set of the following:

Atlantis pec-deck (seat @ 6): 120 x 5, 4.  No forced or negs.

ballistic push-ups: bodyweight x 6, 6

Atlantis semi-pronated grip press (seat @ 6): 5, 4+ 4 forced reps/negatives (6-count for 3, lost on 4th)

Atlantis seated row (semi-pronated grip, seat all the way down, 2 holes visible on pad): 120 x 6, 5+ 3 forced rep/negs (6 count)

Tempo on all reps was maintained (except on the ballistic push-ups, of course) at 10/x/10/x, with “x” signifying no pause at the top or bottom of the movement.  Forced reps and/or negatives followed concentric failure on the 10/x/10/x tempo reps.  Again, I realize that weights used on machines is meaningless to anyone but me, but I use this blog as a workout tracker and as an extension of my gym notebook.

I followed the above up a superset of:

GHR: 30 lb vest x 10, 10, 10

kneeling jump squat: 30 lb vest x 6, 6, 6; all for max height

Then, a round of Nautilus 4-way neck: front and each side 40 lbs x 10; rear 50 lbs x 10

So why limit the TUL work to upper body only?  Well, the short answer is that all that biking I do is, in and of itself, a good amount of TUL work for the quads, and a fair amount (since I ride a fixie) for the glutes and hams.  The GHR’s were thrown in as restorative work, and the kneeling jump squats were put in in an attempt to maintain a bit of explosiveness in my legs.  I find if I don’t keep up with a bit of explosive work in the midst of a heavy riding spate, my legs tend to lose “pop”, and though they maintain strength well, explosiveness is another story.

And finally, a little good news, and a little bad, on the HFCS front.  Look out rest of the world, the US has a care package for you, and it ain’t pretty.