Pork Chops, Beet Greens, a Nice Iron Session, and “The China Study”, Debunked

So here are the greens from the beets that I made on Wednesday night, making an appearance alongside Thursday night’s totally awesome, locally/pasture-raised cut of smoked pork.  Damn fine eats, I gotta say.  The greens were sautéed with onions in a liberal amount of coconut oil, then splashed with a bit of coconut vinegar, salt and pepper.  I made two same-size chops (the other is going with me to work this morning).  Actually, all I had to do with these was heat them up in a coconut-oiled pan, as they’d been smoked previously by my supplier.  How cool is that?

Thursday night iron games –

I reeled-off a good bit of hard riding before I hit the gym which skewed my deadlift numbers substantially.  I’m shifting to a sumo stance for a while, for no other reason than to do something that I suck at.  I never have felt comfortable, or been able to pull well from a sumo stance.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not a super exercise, though – the weakness is all mine.  We’ll see about fixing that over the next few weeks.

Sumo deadlift (clean grip): 245 x 5; 275 x 5; 300 x 7

Then,

btn jerk : 115 x 3; 135 x 3; 165 x 3; 185 x 1; 195 x 1, 1, 1

then a superset of,

feet-elevated push-ups (24” box): bw x 50, 40, 31

parallel-grip pull-ups: be x 15, 16, 13

Just a quick thought on what I’m sure by now everyone has had a chance to look at.  If anyone can take T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study as anything even remotely resembling serious, quality, ethically-performed science after considering Denise Minger’s complete dismantling of the work…well, there’s just not much hope for them.  And I use the term “work” loosely, here.  Agenda-influenced farce is more like it.  But, hey, some folks still believe that the earth is 6,000 years-old, too.  So it goes.  Anyway, be sure to check out Denise’s exhaustive work.  All I can say is, wow , well friggin done, Denise.  And thanks to Richard, of Free the Animal, for giving Denise’s work the exposure it deserves.

The following paragraph, taken from Denise’s conclusion, really struck a cord with me (emphasis mine):

In rebuttals to previous criticism on “The China Study,” Campbell seems to use his curriculum vitae as reason his word should be trusted above that of his critics. His education and experience is no doubt impressive, but the “Trust me, I’m a scientist” argument is a profoundly weak one. It doesn’t require a PhD to be a critical thinker, nor does a laundry list of credentials prevent a person from falling victim to biased thinking. Ultimately, I believe Campbell was influenced by his own expectations about animal protein and disease, leading him to seek out specific correlations in the China Study data (and elsewhere) to confirm his predictions.

Question authority (or supposed authority, as the case may be).  That single attitude will serve you well.  “Show me the properly performed science!!” doesn’t exactly have the same ring, but our enthusiasm in requiring it should be no less emphatic.

Have a great weekend, folks.

Paleo on the Fly

OK, so I’m much more creative in the gym than in the kitchen, but I don’t exactly starve, either.  Most times I don’t plan my meals so much as I throw them together at the last minute; maintaining a strict Paleo household saves me from doing something (eating something) stupid.  I guess my point with these food post is to show that one needen’t be a master chef — or even a decent chef — to thrive in the Paleo world.  That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate finely crafted meals — I love Meesus TTP’s knocked-out creations! — but left to my own devises, I eat pretty damn basic.  It boils down to this: after a long work day, I just don’t have all that much free time, and the free time I do have, I choose to spend on the bike, in the gym, or engaged in Vibram-shod “play”.

Anyway, here we go –

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Got a couple of shots here of a brunch I made of sweet potato, bacon and grass-fed beef sausage.  The other meal you see here carries the sweet potato theme forward by roasting some chicken quarters over a bed of sliced sweet potatoes.  On the side, we have some boiled beets, the greens of which I’ll saute tonight and have along side some pork chops.  The white plate contains a “salad” of apricot, walnuts, crumbled bleu cheese and vinaigrette.

By the way, If you haven’t done so, make sure you check-out Jimmy Moore’s interview with Dr. Robert Lustig of Sugar: the Bitter Truth fame.  It’s a fantastic, informative, and fast-paced nutritional and biochemical romp.  Grab a notebook, check out Jimmy’s show, and come on back in a couple of days to check-out my take on the good doctor’s message.

Easy Paleo Chow, and Ethics, Reason, and the Erosion of Government Relevance

No more than a single iron skillet and a few minutes of prep time for these two.  Grass-fed eye of chuck, butternut squash and cauliflower mix, free-range pork sausage, roasted free-range chicken quarters and a little sweet potato.  Good meals, and plenty of leftovers to boot.

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By the way, you’ll notice that there’s very little here — content or proportion — recommended by the USDA’s newly updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans report.  *Sigh*…what is there to say about this document?  Selling-out the American people to perpetuate the vicious cycle of lobby-subsidy is not what I consider — how to put this? — ethical? There’s just too much freely available knowledge out there (with experts to explain it) for me to believe that this “guideline” was the end result of a lack of intelligence.  No, this is all about greed at the expense of the nation’s health.

Jimmy Moore has a good summary of the new guidelines, here.  No surprise, really — high carb., low fat, yada, yada, yada…

Now, combine these brain-trust “guidelines” with the reality that is the state of America’s physical readiness, and we have the makings for an immanent, healthcare disaster on our collective hands.  And make no mistake, everyone will suffer the hit — physically, financially, in loss of personal freedom via increased government “interaction”, or a combination of all of the above — you name it.  And, unfortunately, no one will be immune — even the most healthy and knowledgeable among us will feel the sting.

And speaking of America’s (lack of) physical readiness, Mary Collins — author of American Idle (love that title!) — sums-up the topic nicely in the clip below.  Hat tip to University of North Dakota S&C coach Aaron Schwenzfeir for the clip find.

Just makes me shake my head, wondering how we ever sunk into such a mess.  How is it that any entity, government or otherwise, can perpetuate such pseudo-science over a populace?  How does a populace become dumbed-down and weakened (spiritually, and physically) so?  Well, here’s an oldie-but-goodie (yeah, 2-years is old in the internet age, I suppose) from one of my favorite current political “thinkers”, Susan Jacoby.

Ignorance may very well be bliss, but it’s sure as hell costly — in more ways than one.

The thing is, truly intelligent people see through this lobby-subsidy, greed-and-graft inspired smokescreen.  And established organizations — whether it’s the government as a whole, the USDA, or other establishments/organizations (for example, the NSCA) — are becoming increasingly more irrelevant as clearing houses for credible, non-biased, information.  I just want the truth, warts and all, whether it agrees with my preconceived notions or not.  Spun “truth”, filtered “truth” does me no good.  Of what relevance are these organizational filters to me, when I can search out credible information on my own?  The Paleo movement is the poster child for this loosely-grouped, n=1 information sharing.  Who needs these other “official” entities/middle-men when I’m fully sufficient in the art of reason, and plugged into a network of intelligent, n=1 “scientists”, each willing to share their findings for no more the cost than for me to do the same in return?

On the Fly Paleo Chow, No Dip Session is the Same, and Other Weekend Tidbits

No Dip Session is the Same…

…Or, for that matter, is any selected movement within an exercise session ever the same; there are just way too many variables at play — and that, in and of itself, is a good thing, serving to keep the trainee from becoming both mentally and physically stagnant.  It does, however, mean that tracking progress in a particular movement — once beyond the beginner stage — can be a nebulous (and to some, a daunting) thing.  What does it mean, for example, that my dip is “improving”?  Raw strength?  Power?  Strength Endurance?  Yielding strength?  If I “improve” in my Gironda-style dip, will that improvement necessarily carry over to the more conventional version?  And, if it does, does that necessarily portend anything meaningful?  Well, a lot depends on what you consider to be a “conventional” dip.  I happen to be strongest in the more upright version of the movement, where I can fully engage the triceps throughout the full range of motion.  Others choose to lean-in, engaging the pecs to a greater degree, and would therefore — theoretically, anyway — see more of a benefit carry over from the pec-dominant, Gironda version.  A lot depends as well on what the dip movement as seen as a proxy for.  Athletic enhancement?  Aesthetics?  As a means to an end in its own right?  You can see how this can become very convoluted in a flash.

Much, of course, depends upon one’s training goals.  At either extreme end of the spectrum, we have the pure bodybuilder, and at the other, the pure athlete.  One’s concerns revolve solely around physical appearance, the others’ primarily around performance (as defined by the sport).  One’s idea of “improvement”, therefore, can only be understood in light of that individual’s ultimate goal.  I tend much more toward the athletic side of the spectrum, though I have no defined “event” or “season” to shoot for, and my performance markers are haphazard at best (“engaging” with the environment is tough to quantify); in other words, I’m not aiming to peak for a world-record 100 meter, or a particular Oly lift — and hey, let’s face it — on top of it all, I still want to look good nekkid as well  🙂

Friday Night Iron Works –

Kind of unusual for me to delve into a night session — but hey, that’s just the way it came about, so I rolled with it.

I love to tinker with different variations of Istvan Javorek’s barbell and dumbbell complexes.  Mostly this tinkering has to do increasing the intensity (via heavier loading), and busting-up the complex as a whole into many, “mini complexes” with very short rest periods between.  This gives more of an interval feel to the enterprise, and fits my goals a little better that performing the Javorek complexes “as prescribed”.  For instance, I kicked-off Friday night’s session with Javorek’s “Whoop Ass” dumbbell complex.  Now, Javorek uses a lighter weight and rotates through the three exercise for 6 continual rounds, then ends with a few finisher exercises.  Good stuff to be sure, however, I work this energy system a plenty (for my particular needs) with all the biking that I do, SO,  I chose heavier DBs (40’s), and did “broken” rounds consisting of:

• the first 3 lunge exercises as depicted in the clip, followed by
• DB squat thrusters x 6
• DB muscle-ups from the floor x 6

I hit each of 6 rounds as hard and as fast as possible, but rested between each round so as to turn the workout into more of an interval experience.  Tough as all hell, I have to say.

Following that I did this complex:

cable flye (swiss ball, 5/0/x/0 tempo): 70 x 5 sets of 5
reverse cable flye (bent-over position, 5/0/x/0 tempo): 30 x 5 sets of 5
weighted dips (ratchet sets, 1/0/x/0 tempo): 45 x 1, 3; 70 x 1, 3; 80 x 1, 3; 85 x 1, 3; then 7 rest-pause singles @ 90 lbs

5 total rounds of these three, with round 5 of the dips being the extended rest-pause set.  The cable work could be thought of as “pre-exhaust” sets when paired with the weighted dips.  Ratchet sets: the first single allows the body to adjust to the weight and movement, then I can fully engage the 3-rep set.  These were done in an explosive fashion — come down fast, then immediately blast back up.  I cut the sets when I sensed that I was losing speed on the concentric portion of the movement (a drop in power production).  At that point, I moved on to the rest-pause set.  I hit these explosively as well.

Saturday –
I reeled-off approximately 25 miles of tough, tough mountain biking, and was totally zorched by the end of the day.  The temperatures were between 95 and 100 degrees here in NC, and I lost A LOT of fluids.  If I could ever get my crap together, and remember to take along some coconut water, it would make for a nice n=1 recovery study.  Mt theory is that coconut water, combined with a Paleo diet approach, may just be the the one-two punch endurance-leaning athletes are looking for.  If you lean toward endurance activities and have tried coconut water as a replenishment means, please chime in and let me know how it worked for you, how it sat on your stomach and, in general, what you think about its efficacy.

Sunday –
Saturday’s “recreational” ride is a great segue into a quick discussion on the importance of auto-regulation in the weight room.  In the initial stages of a trainee’s weight room career, step-by-step adherence to a linear progression type program (a 5×5 scheme, for example) gets the job done nicely.  And the truth of the matter is, the vast number of trainee’s need not ever progress beyond pushing the limits of this type of modality, OR beyond a HIT/SS/Body by Science type of program.  Unless one is a competitive athlete or, like me, is one whose life hobby involves training akin to a competitive athlete, the benefit to risk ratio is just not there.  The basics of auto-regulation, though — regardless of one’s training experience or training “age” — ought to be known, and the principles practiced.  As in all things, practice might not make for “perfect”, but it at least moves one toward that end.

The weighted dip executed in Friday night’s workout, for example, simply cannot be considered outside of the context in which it was undertaken.   Look at all of the variables that might conspire to alter the rep/loading scheme here at the selected target modality, which, in this case, happened to be the strength-speed aspect of power production.  Auto-regulation is, in essence then, the ability to push one’s self sufficiently to make gains, with an eye towards — but not at all fixated on — external loading parameters and rep schemes.  85 and 90 lbs for me, in this movement and under the strength-speed modality, is not a particularly heavy loading.  However, given the context of, not only this individual workout’s exercise selection and the exercise order as a whole, BUT the way the training week as a whole shook out as well.  This, then, was the most productive loading for that particular moment in time.  This is a huge act of mental jujitsu, however, that many a trainee simply cannot grasp.  How does one quantify improvement, if not by incremental loading and/or rep increases?  You just have to trust yourself, brother — it boils down to that.  Because the fact of the matter is this: when one fixates on external loading, rep numbers, etc. at the expense of becoming adept in the art of auto-regulation, a total crash-and-burn (both mental and physical) is inevitable.

Having become adept at auto-regulation early on has kept me fully engaged in the physical culture game for 30+ years, and it will keep me engaged for the next 30…40…50 years…and beyond.

So, given that I was totally pummeled by Saturday’s mountain biking excursion, then, let’s look at how Sunday’s BTN jerk/Muscle-up combo shook out:

btn jerk: 115 x 3; 135 x 3; 155 x 3; 175 x 3; 185 x 2; 195 x 1

straight bar muscle-ups: bw x 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2

The jerks felt surprisingly light, given the blistering mountain bike outing yesterday.  I’d planned on a short go of it — just a little bit of work to loosen things up.  Just when you think you’ve got this exercise physiology thing figured out, you get pitched a (nice, in this instance) curve like this…

Anyway, once again I rolled with it, and ended up completing a pretty tough gym session.

From the btn jerk/muscle-up combo, I moved on to Bradford presses: 115 lbs for 6, 6, 6, 5 (front-to-back = 1 rep.).  Then, a little repetition work for the bi’s and tri’s, in superset fashion:

cable bicep curl: 60 lbs x 10, 10, 10
cambered bar triceps push-down: 75 x 12, 12, 12

I then finished-off with a round of Nautilus 4-way neck work; 45 lbs x 10 front and side-to-side, 55 lbs x 10 to the rear.

The cable curls were done in an upright position, a cable in each hand, with the pulley of each set at the lowest (ground) level.  The resultant curl motion was then at an approximate 45 degree angle from the bottom-out, arms extended position to fists just under the chin.  No real magic to this particular angle; just one of a million I could have chosen.

Some Good Paleo Grub ~

Cuban Picadillo

Nothing at all wrong with this recipe as it is; just as with Javorek’s work, though, I took the basic idea and molded it to fit my own needs.  In this case, I had some leftovers on hand, a hankering for bacon, and a want not to go out to the store.  Hey, I’m not big on being a slave to the post workout re-feed window, but I do know that post workout hunger will kick-in after about an hour or so.  The solution?  Take the basic recipe, add some creative substitutions, and roll with whatcha got at home.

So, I fried up a few strips of bacon in coconut oil, added a leftover link of beef sausage to the mix, subbed El Pato Mexican style hot tomato sauce for the regular variety, and added in some Gaucho Ranch Chimichurri sauce to the concoction.   I also subbed the dry white wine for an equal amount of coconut vinegar.  Unfortunately, I wolfed this down before I remember to that  a picture of the final product.  It’s easy to make, and definitely a keeper in the rotation, so next time around I’ll (hopefully) remember to take a shot of the final product.

Sunday Brunch

A trip to the farmers market Saturday netted (among other things) some fabulous, massively yoked duck eggs, free-range ham steaks, and North Carolina ruby sweet potatoes.  Nothing like fresh, locally raised food!   Yum-O!

Now That’s a Scramble!

The Paleo diet is such a sacrifice, right?  I mean, damn, what’s there to eat?  Well, here’s yet another meal I had to suffer through — some pay-off for spending a tough hour of intervals in the fixie saddle yesterday evening, huh?

That’s bacon and avocado on the side.  In the free-range egg scramble are mushrooms, spinach, cherry tomatoes and raw cheddar cheese.  In the glass we have some Rex-Goliath Cabernet Sauvignon.

This is truly a monk’s life of deprivation, I tell you.

Burnout? Overtraining? Not if You Cycle Exercises, Volume, and Intensity Properly

Here’s the deal: if you fail to rotate through a number of different exercise variations, and choose, instead, to continually hammer-away at a few specific exercises — the bench, squat and deadlift are, to a great detriment, rarely rotated out of a “serious” trainee’s program — you will eventually stagnate, regress and/or tumble into an overtrained state, both physically and psychologically.  Why can I go heavy and hard with very few down periods?  First, I continually rotate exercises and I continually juggle methods, volume and intensity.  This keeps me mentally, physically, and neurologically fresh, and able to push each and every rep to attain maximum power output relative to the exercise load I’m handling.  At 60% of 1RM, yes, the bar speed is actually blazing fast.  At 98% 1RM?  The bar speed is noticeably slower to be sure, however, the intent to move the bar as fast as possible is present — it’s a mental and neurological habit that must be incorporated and nurtured.

Some trainee’s will claim that their “big three” lifts will suffer if they don’t pound away at these lifts routinely.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  And try telling that to Louie Simmons, and the rest of the Westside gang.  Ask them how often they actually perform a competition squat, deadlift or bench.  The short answer is rarely, and/or only at an actual competition.  They do, however, rotate through a plethora of similar exercises, performing max-effort lifts weekly in both the pressing motion and squat/pulling motion.  All this max-effort, balls-to-the-wall training results in a severely overtrained athlete, right?  Again, ask Louie how overtrained his athletes are, and how stymied each athlete’s progress is.  And before you think this applies only to powerlifters, think again — this is simply the application that the science has been applied to.  The science, is fact, is relevant across any discipline; all that must be tweaked are the discipline-specific applications.

One thing, though: don’t confuse strength and power development with the “10,000 hour” principle of skill acquisition; fine motor skills and “reflex”, or “do without doing” is an entirely different animal.

The Last Couple of Days Worth of Action:

Thursday evening: 40-minutes worth of intermittent-intensity fixie romping;  20-minutes on, break for library cruising (about 15 minutes), then 20-minutes on.

Friday morning iron works:

elevated feet ballistic push-ups: bodyweight x 5, each round.  Rebound fashion (i.e., “hot floor”, minimize hand-to-ground contact time).  Used as a set-up, or “prime”, for the press.

standing front press (minimal hip kick): 115 x 5; 135 x 4; 155 x 4; 175 x 2; 185 x 2; 190 x miss; 185 x 1, 1

pull-up bar muscle-up: bodyweight x 3, each round

8 total rounds of that, then a superset of:

dimel deadlifts: 135 x 20, 20, 20
flat DB triceps extensions (palms facing one another): 45 x 8, 8, 8

Very little rest time between movements, even with the heavy presses.  Total workout time was approximately 45 minutes.  I perform Dimel DL’s as a release-and-catch on the eccentric portion of the movement.  Not much load required in this movement; in fact, too much load will destroy the speed of the movement.  Find the sweet spot here between enough load and the maintenance of speed.

New Book in the Rotation
This one is a re-read of something I devoured many years ago, something that nudged me on to my own particular, spiritual path.  I’m curious to see how I relate to it now: The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman.

What’s for Dinner?
Check this free-range egg scramble out: mushrooms, spinach, cherry tomatoes, raw, grass-fed cheese, all scrambled-up in a generous amount of bacon fat.  Yum-o!

So Easy, Even a Kitchen Dolt Can Pull It Off

NPR covered an interesting story yesterday in relation to the Institute of Medicine‘s recommendation that the FDA seek some form of governmental regulation in regard to the salt content of processed foods.  From the NPR site:

“The Institute of Medicine issued a report Tuesday on reducing salt intake. They are recommending that Americans reduce their salt intake significantly, and that the FDA take the lead in leveling the playing field for food processors so that salt content can be systematically reduced over a period of years…”

And Ex-FDA Chief David Kessler’s take on the matter, here.  Mr. Kessler, you might recall, is also the author of “The End of Overeating“.

Both David Kessler and Dr. Robert Lustig (Sugar, the Bitter Truth) speak to the notion of food manufacturers designing of foods for the “optimal bliss point”; that is, purposely manipulating the salt and sugar (or, more commonly now, HFCS) content of a processed “food” so as to create a consumption hyper-drive effect in the unsuspecting gnosher.

Of course, the fail-safe answer here is to simply avoid any and all processed crap — a line that the Paleo tribe ascribes to.  However, as the healthcare/health concerns of our neighbors becomes more and more (due to taxation and shifts in governmental approach to healthcare; i.e., “reform”) our collective concern as well, we would be remiss to just stick our collective, Paleo heads in the sand on this issue.  I — and you, as a fellow Paleo “tribesman” — may not ever be personally affected by this issue, but you can better believe that our wallets will be.

And here’s a good bit of BBC reporting on vitamin D deficiency.  Not only is this an informative bit of reportage, but it’s done in that oh-so-cool English accent that makes a statement like…

“…unless, of course, you want a rickety child, a bended, knock-kneed, large-headed, pale and rickety article…”

…such an absolute auditory joy to behold.  Hat tip to Methuselah, at Pay Now, Live Later for the find.

As a correlative to the above mentioned BBC report, there’s this (Diet, Lifestyle, Poorly Predict Vitamin D Levels) from Futurity.org.  Good thing you can have your own vitamin D levels measured relatively cheaply from ZRT Labs.

Tonight’s Paleo Chow

Another hit-and-run meal tonight.  What could be more simple than a sweet potato, a few sunny-side up eggs and a little bit of leftover pork sausage?  The baked sweet potato, by the way, makes for a great yoke-soppin’ medium.  Easy to make, but  damn friggin’ good.

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Heh, a funny aside: The best pork sausage in the south (in the world?  Some think so!) can be found approximately 5 miles from my humble abode here in beautiful eastern North Carolina.  How better to get there than on the trusty fixie?  And then?  Well, you guessed it — 6 pounds of sausage stuffed in the ol’ backpack 🙂  That quick, intense, 10-mile round trip huck makes the most fabulous sausage around taste even that much better!

Huck on!

Tracking Insulin Response?

I’ve often been asked, in various forms and fashions, why I don’t bother with tracking my insulin response to various consumption and/or activity inputs and events.  My response has always been, “what’s the point?”  The fact of the matter is that insulin will increase even following a strict Paleo meal — hell, insulin will increase in response to a tough workout.  Yes, insulin is the “mac daddy” hormone within the overall metabolic cascade, however, the modifying factor here is what that insulin is in the presence of, and this leads us back to what was consumed (or, maybe more importantly, what was not consumed).  In any event, Robb Wolf and Andy Deas cover this idea (among a slew of other topics) thoroughly in episode 23 of Robb and Andy’s Paleolithic Solution, podcast.

It’s my belief that one needs to track a questionable substance’s affect upon one’s body composition via a weeks-long n=1 assessment; tracking short term insulin response to that substance really isn’t going to give you very much practical information to work with.  Think dairy might be your bug-a-boo?  Cut it out for a while, and note how you respond.

Now I’m the biggest Paleo-geek there is, but the real-life, fact-of-the-matter is that we all have to function within the constraints of the real world.  Are you really going to tote a glucometer around for the rest of your natural-born days?  Look, I know that if I want to get ultra-cut, all I need to do to to eliminate my beer consumption (sad, but oh so true!), and up my sprint sessions.  No amount of glucometer-jockeying would have told me that — simple n=1 experimentation lead me to this conclusion.

By the way, huge hat tip to Brent Pottenger (the healthcare epistemocrat) for so deftly verbalizing and defining the n=1 concept as it applies to self-experimentation.

Another On-the-Fly, Paleo Chow Dinner –

One small sweet potato, one onion, a pound of grass-fed ground beef, olive oil, Tropical Traditions coconut cream concentrate, 1 can of coconut milk, raw butter, 1 packet (dry) Lipton mushroom onion soup.

Once again, I’m a piss-poor excuse for a gourmet; I’m sure as hell not going to starve, though, or cave to quick-fix, fast-food.  The above is what I happened to have on hand when I got home from work (among some other various items), so I set about an impromptu session in food bricolage.  Hat-tip x 2 to Brent for his ongoing commentary  honoring the Paleo bricoleur.

Anyway, nothing much, here: thin-cut and “stir fry” (in the olive oil, coconut cream and butter mix) the sweet spud; remove and set aside.  Same treatment to the onion, then add-in the ground beef and cook until about half done.  Pepper heavily.  Add-in the soup and coconut mix and simmer the concoction until ” all-the-way done”.  Ladled the meat-mix over the spud, and chowed-down.  Not too damn bad, if I do say so myself.  Note: the dry soup is not celiac-friendly, nor particularly Paleo-friendly, for that matter.  It is, in my opinion, one of those dose-relevant ingredients, though, and the amount used, relative to the meal, was negligible.

Some pics:

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4/13/10; In the Gym with a Strength-Speed Emphasis Plan and, Another On-the-Fly, Paleo Dinner

Cranked-out about an hour’s worth of mixed-intensity fixie riding yesterday evening (rode for a half-hour or so, hung-out at the coffee shop for a while, then hit another half-hour or so on the way home), just to keep the legs loose.  I’d put a tri-tip roast, celerity, and carrots into the crock pot prior to leaving for work that morning, so I had a nice Paleo meal waiting for me when I got home from the ride.

This morning’s workout was basic iron game fare — deadlifts and weighted dips.  Nothing fancy, here — simply basic movement patterns performed at a super-high intensity.

I lead-off each set of deads with box drop jumps (3 reps) as a CNS primer, and each set of weighted dips was preceded by a 3-rep primer of ballistic, bodyweight dips.   Here’s how it all shaped-up:

box drop jumps*: x 3 each round

Conventional deadlift (over/under grip): 225 x 5; 315 x 3; 365 x 3; 385 x 2, 2, 2

ballistic dips: x 3 each round

weighted dips: 45 x 5; 90 x 3; 100 x 3; 105 x 3, 3, 3

The deadlifts and dips were performed with an emphasis on speed of execution — there was nothing slow about any of the day’s movements, everything was geared toward targeting maximum power output.  I probably could have used a little more weight in the deadlifts without sacrificing any speed, however, since I’ve been sprinting and biking pretty hard lately, I decided to err on the side of being too light.

*Step off an 18″ box and, immediately upon landing, rebound over a 30″ box.  Emphasis on minimizing ground contact time.

On-the-Fly Paleo Chow:

Tonight’s dinner:

What do I call it?  Hell if I know.  Hot Italian beef sausage, stir fry beef, cubed lamb, fresh broccoli, olive oil, beef stock, cilantro…spices of various kinds…

I browned the meat and sausage, then threw in the rest of the ingredients and let that simmer for awhile.  Whatever you want to call it, it was pretty damn good.  And I’ve got plenty for leftovers.

Here’s an interesting commentary on Bart Hoebel’s (et al) recent HFCS study; a question/answer format that is rather illuminating.  As you can well imagine, much uproar over this study has come from HFCS-central, and its minions (another take, via the Huffington Post).  I won’t waste a whole lot of time on this; it’s needless, really.  Vet the evidence, and tell me if you’ll want to ever consume this crap again.  ‘Nuff said.