Ceviche…for Breakfast? You Bet! And a Couple of Workouts, Too

Oh yeah, I’ll take Ceviche anytime…so why the hell not for breakfast?

Now this dish might be a little fruit-heavy for some of my more fructose-avoiding friends, but really, the amount of fruit per serving here is not all that much.  And, too, we’re talking whole fruit here, not the bereft-of-fiber, liver-hammering (and insulin spiking) fruit juice.  That said, the total fruit (read fructose) content of this meal is of little real worry to me, and so this dish – with it’s wholesome, fresh ingredients and very little prep time — is way high on my Paleo grub list.  By the way, I picked up the sea scallops for this dish from my local farmer’s market – another perk of living near the North Carolina coast.

And there is absolutely nothing to making good Ceviche; I followed this basic recipe (though I did add a ripe mango to the mix) from the New York Times’ Mark Bittman.

Simple, yeah – but damn friggin’ good  🙂

Relentless TV –

I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend Roger Dickerman, host of the new (at least to me) and uber-cool Relentless TV website.  I must say, I really like Roger’s concept here – kinda reminds me of a Physical Culturalist’s Sports Center (duh nuh-nuh, duh nuh-nuh!).  And Roger has a wonderful “screen presence” — intelligent, witty, animated — which makes each episode (they’re usually about 15 minutes, or so) a real treat.  Make sure you check him out, and see what you think.  And especially so, check out episode #3, where Roger covers my post in reference to the mental side of training, and especially so, HIT.

And speaking of recent TTP-press, check out episode #36 of the Paleolithic Solution, where the dynamic duo (Robb Wolf and Andy Deas) tackle my question in reference to the mainstream’s implication of testosterone and DHT as being potentiators of prostrate cancer.   This is a complicated subject, no doubt – props to Robb for taking it on.

On to the workouts…

Friday Night Iron –

whip snatch-to-overhead squat: 95 x 8; 115 x 3 sets of 5

~ straight bar muscle-ups x 2 for each round, in superset with both the whip snatch/OHSs and deadlifts~

sumo deadlift: 155 x 10; 235 x 6; 305 x 7, 6

then, a couple of sets of Bradford presses, 100 lbs x 12 and 10.  1 rep = front-to-back.

Sunday Iron –

Sunday’s workout is a prime example of where being at least somewhat proficient at the Autoregulation process can pay some serious dividends.  Between Friday night’s gym session and this Sunday afternoon session, I did A LOT of fixed-speed biking, sprinting (running), plyos…just a hell of lot of non-quantifiable, though tiring, stuff.  And even this session itself occurred on the tail end of a good deal of hard saddle time.  In fact, my original plan was to perform this particular gym session tomorrow, but as I was out riding, the weather started to turn a bit sketchy, so I altered course and made a bee-line for the gym.  What ensued was short, sweet and heavy.  Then I saddled back up and busted-ass to get home before the rain hit.

On a side note: so here it is the middle of July, and I’ve yet to be caught in the middle of a ride and in the middle of a downpour yet this year *knocks on wood*.  For those of you unfamiliar with the south-east US of A coastal plains, severe downpours can crop-up in the blink of an eye around here, and every evening carries about an even chance of just that happening.  Anyway, so I’ve yet to come home this summer looking like a drowned rat.  Maybe I need to buy that ticket to Vegas right about now?

Ok, enough blather – here’s the session; a superset of the following –

close-grip floor press: 135 x 10; 165 x 6; 215 x 5 (2), 5 (2, 2)

bent-over row: 135 x 10; 255 x 5; 300 x 4, 3

*The numbers in parentheses indicate rest-pause repetitions.   So, on the final set of CGFPs, I performed a set of 5 straight reps, racked the weight for a moment, hit 2 rest-pause reps, racked the bar again for a moment, then hit 2 more res-pause reps.

I then finished-up with some Nautilus 4-way neck work: front/side/side – 55lbs x 10, 65lbs x 12 (last 2 reps rest-pause).

Thursday Morning (6/10/10) GPP, and Good Eats on a Buck a Day? Yeah, Right…

Nothin’ fancy about this one, just a straight-up, down-and-dirty, early morning GPP iron session.

farmer’s walks: 100 lb DBs for 1 lap (150 yards) x 1, 1, 1, 1
whip snatch + OHS: 115 x (3, 3), (3, 3), (3, 3), (3, 3)

Want to make 115 lbs feel like a friggin’ ton?  Whip snatch and overhead squat that piddling amount following a hundred-and-fifty yards worth of farmer’s walking with a pair of 100 lb DBs.  I did two “sets” of 3 each round — with a minimum break between the 2 “sets” — because I couldn’t perform 6 straight; not with anything resembling decent form, anyway.  I completed each lap of the walks with a single short break about midway through; had to take 2 breaks, though, on the 4th lap.

I followed that 4-round lovely with an additional 150 yards of farmer’s walking; this lap, though, with a break at the half-way point for some Nautilus 4-way neck work: 50 lbs x 10, front and each side and 60 lbs x 10 to the rear.  I reduced the tempo with these to 5/0/1/0.

Good overall workout.  The real key to pulling off this kind of a session is the same as in pulling off a successful HIT/SS session — battling the mind’s incessant calls to “throttle-down!”.  There’s just not much for the mind to fixate on during a farmer’s walk other than the suffering that the body is enduring.  I played mind-jedi games (20 more steps, 19, 18, 17…) and concentrated on “walking the line”, which also doubled as working the hip girdle even more (moving toward a “crossover” step.  Using these techniques, I was able to squeeze out a little more distance between breaks.

I Appreciate the Guy’s Moxie, I Really Do — But…

…but this seems to me more like a speed-shift into the metabolic-derangement fast lane — all for a low low $1 a day!! — than any kind of long-term “bargain”.  Hey, there’s a reason why these foods are cheap — for the most part, they’re subsidized by the government.  How many coupons do you ever see for grass-fed beef or locally grown vegetables?  Good food might cost me a little more than a buck a day, but I’ll gladly pay it.

The Past Weekend’s Workout Happenings

Saturday, 5/15/10
So the local farmers’ market is located about a hard 15-minute fixie burst from my house.  Soon after rolling out of bed on Saturday, splashing some water on my face and, after savoring a few cups of joe, I saddled-up and headed out for some provisions.  15-minutes later and without a hitch, I’m picking up 3 lbs of beef sausage and a couple of pounds of ground beef (all locally raised, grass-fed).  Life is great!  I saddle back up and hit the road, and 10 minutes into the return blitz I’m met with the pop/pffffft! and squiggly rear-end that all riders dread.  Damn.  Ok, time for some quick roadside (the parking lot of the Rocky Mount Telegram, to be precise) triage/tire swap — made a tad more urgent, now, due to the 5 lbs of frozen steer in my backpack.  No blood, no foul, as they say (that’ll come later), and in a few minutes I’m back on the road, rockin’ out a good, leg-burning pace.  The culprit, BTW?  A V-bent hunk of wire (clothes hanger wire?) that found its way into my sidewall.  What are the odds of that?  Oh well, shit happens.

OK, so I made it home, chucked the meat in the freezer, and headed back out with the intent of doing one of my favorite “endurance” workouts, the 15 x 15 in 15 — that’s 15 x 100 yrd sprints, each completed in 15 seconds or less, with all 15 sprints completed in a total time of 15 minutes.  In other words, 15 sec’s “on”, 45 sec’s rest x 15 rounds.  Sounds easy, huh?  Uhh, yeah…anyway, like a friggin’ dumb-ass, I decide not to don the ol’ Vibrams, opting instead to attack these au natural over the brick-hard ground.  Why, you ask, would I do such a stupid-ass thing?  I don’t know…the sparse grass felt good between my toes?  Who knows why I do some of the things I do.  Now sometimes this quirkiness pays big dividends in that I find a new wrinkle to add to my exercise tool box, and sometimes, well, it leads to something like this —

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On a brighter note, the placement of these blisters indicates a proper sprinting foot-strike.  Hey, when life hurls lemons your way, go fetch the tequila and lime  🙂

Yeah, so I cut the sprint session short at 10 rounds.  Oh well, what to do but saddle-up and head to the gym, right?  You bet.  After fixie-ing around a good bit more (Weather’s too nice to be inside just yet), that is.  Once I finally did make it to the gym, though, I did this nifty little superset:

btn push-press: 135 x 5; 155 x 3; 165 x 3; 185 x 2, 2
straight bar muscle-ups: x 3, each round

Then it was back on the bike for more riding.  I’d guess that by the time it was all said and done, I’d put in a good 2-and-a-half hours of combined saddle time.

Oh yeah, I began all of this madness in a 15+ hour fasted state, with the post-workout re-feed not occurring until after hour 20 (ish).  Any detrimental effects?  None.  If I were a sugar-burner, though, I’d have been a drooling, blithering, palsying spectacle — and that would have been even before I started my barefooted sprints.  Hmmm, maybe I can blame my non-Vibram wearing, abject stupidity on being in a fasted state?  Nice try, but I don’t think so.  About IF’ing: the bottom line is that IF can definitely help in eliminating those last few stubborn pounds, while at the same time contributing to improved, overall health.  However, IF does present an additional stress to the body.  As such, you need to first get your other dietary and lifestyle ducks in a row prior to dabbling with IF; to do otherwise is simply to add suction to the stressor/cortisol death-vortex.  There’s a place for radical and a place for reason — the key is realize the right time for each approach.  By the way, if you’ve got a membership to the Crossfit Journal, check out trainer E.C. Synkowski’s recent take on IF, here.

From the Crossfit Journal site:
HQ trainer and athlete E.C. Synkowski is no slouch in the gym and has had great success using intermittent fasting as an approach to insulin regulation and recovery. In this video interview by Patrick Cummings, E.C. takes us through the process of getting used to fasting and explains why she does it and how her body has responded over the last few years.

Sunday, 5/16/10
It’s gonna rain, it’s not gonna rain, it’s gonna rain, it’s not gonna rain…
So the plan today was to saddle-up the mountain bike and hit the trails, but the rain situation scared me off.  I don’t do fickle.  And yeah, I’m a fair-weather mountain bike kinda guy; I steer free of the rain and muck if I can avoid it.  Anyway, on to plan B —

More fixie riding — about an hour-and-a half worth today (and I can tell my legs are getting zorched) — broken-up by a 45-minute iron session, that went a little something like this:

Cuban press (very strict form): 3 sets of 10, fat Oly Bar.  Note: no need to press the bar to full lock-out from the intermediate position (as in the demo clip); in fact, this motion allows for unneeded rest between the “meat” reps.

whip snatch to overhead squat: 115 x 5 sets of 5.  Each rep as fast as possible without sacrificing form.  Very little rest between sets.  115 pounds feels like a 300 pound slosh tube by the 5th set.

Then this superset —

clean grip high pull, from the floor: 185 x 3, each round
weighted dips: 45 x 7; 70 x 3; 90 x 3; 100 x 3; 105 x 3

Note: I used standard 35 lb plates for the high pull set-up so as to force a lower starting position in the pull from the floor.  Just another way to change things up.

The take home message
Ok, so shit happens, and your workouts plans will get mucked-up at times.  Don’t let that be an excuse to wuss-out, hit the couch and nurse a cold one.  Think on the fly, and pull out another trick from the bag.  Maybe even try something totally off the wall.  Do you think your body really cares, in the grand scheme of things, that you substituted X workout for Y?

And a public service announcement about this weekend’s heavy volume —
I do a heavy volume “something” like this every now and then, but only when I feel like it — never do I force it.  It’s a random, chaotic thing, and when I feel it, I go with it.  Keep a pace like this for long, though, and an injury of some sort will see to it that you take it easy for a while.

3/20/10; A Little Bit of Everything Workout & Some Thoughts on Explosiveness vs. Elasticity

“Age is mind over matter — if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter” – Mark Twain

A long bout of fixie intervals, some barefooted sprints, and a little bit of iron heavin’.  Spring broke in a beautiful way here in eastern NC, so I got out and about and made the most of it.

After about an hour-and-a-half of fixie intervals about town, I hit the Rocky Mount soccer fields where I shifted from clipless bike shoes to Vibrams, and proceeded to knock-out 7 x 120 yard sprints; this following a good bit of hip mobility work to act as a transition between the “biking motion” and the “sprinting motion”.  I’ve mentioned before how difficult a transition this is — especially the longer and more intense the former activity (in my case, almost always biking) vis-a-vis the later movement.  Two more non-complimentary endeavors you’re likely to find.  I love each, though, and so I’m okay with the fact that each, by bio-mechanical necessity, reduces the efficiency and proficiency of the other.  At this point in my “career” I’d rather be a generalist than a specialist anyway.

Following the sprints, I went into the gym and, following a Bergener warm-up* (explanation here), I lit into the following:

Whip snatch to OHS x 1 + heave snatch x 3 @ 115 lbs
straight bar muscle-ups x 3

Three rounds of that, then –

GHR: 40 x 5; 50 x 4, 4, 4
Straight bar muscle-ups: x 3, 3, 3, 3

So, 7 total rounds of muscle-ups here.  The whip snatch, OHSs and heave snatches were mighty tough following the fixie ride and sprints.  *If you have access to the CrossFit Journal (if you don’t, you’re really missing out), make sure to check out coach Bergener working with Owen Franks of the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team at Mike’s Gym in Bonsall, Calif.

Explosiveness and Elasticity

I’ll come back to this more and more over the coming days, because it’s been kicking around in my mind lately; mostly because I hear the terms used — and wrongly so — interchangeably, and too because I think it might help to clean up some confusion when it comes to sporting comparisons and exercise prescription.

Explosiveness and elasticity came up in a recent discussion I had with a friend of mine, concerning the recent NFL combine and the collegiate “pro days” currently ongoing here in the US (basically, these are “tryouts” for the  professional level of American-style football).  Then, in a way that only S & C geeks will truly understand, our discussion shifted to a fantasy sprint match between American-style footballer Chris Johnson, (he of the 4.2 second 40 yard dash fame) and Olympic gold medalist and world record holder, Usain Bolt.  We agreed that CJ would have a good chance of winning a hypothetical 40-yard dash square-off, and most assuredly would take any version of a three-cone drill.  We also agreed that Bolt would take the hypothetical, straight-up 100 meter sprint, hands-down.  That he agreed here was a no-brainer.  But, the why behind our predictions is where we differed in opinion.

Bolt’s 100 meter superiority doesn’t all have to do with his gi-normous stride length — although that is no doubt a huge advantage, especially among athletes of similar, superior sprint-specific gifts.  No, I’d also say that Bolt has the one-up on CJ in what is commonly known as elasticity — the property of the human body to store and release energy.

Ahh, but CJ has the one-up on Bolt in explosiveness.

Think “shot out of a cannon” — explosiveness — vs the repetitive, bouncing super-ball; elasticity.

Plenty of ground to cover, here; more on this idea to follow.

And, as a nice segue into what will be the most obvious question to stem from an explosive/elastic discussion — can these qualities be effectively trained? — Here’s an interesting KQED Forum discussion on the “nature/nurture” debate; David Shenk (author of The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong).  Now, although I am convinced of the reality of significantly affecting your genetic hand (in both intellectual and physical realms), I happen to give a little more credence to the genetic side of the equation than does the author.  Still, though, and interesting talk, and certainly good food for thought.

In health,
Keith

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 enthusiast/Paleo-proponent/physical culturalist that I know of.  Well, I don’t know about that, but it sure does feel at times as though I were deposited here from an alien ship.

…let’s just say I’m a member of a very, very small subset  🙂

Today’s Workout –
My focus is still primarilly on unilateral, lower-body work, and today’s MetCon session did not deviate from that theme.  The reps in each exercise are still fairly low, with the emphasis being placed on the explosiveness of every rep of each exercise vs attempting to reach some predetermined rep number.  I moved smartly between exercises, but I did not allow much, if any, degradation in my form.  Here’s how it shaped-up:

Post warm-up “bridge”: whip snatch to OHS, 3 sets of 5 at 95 lbs

The day’s combo:
whip snatch x 5
single-leg clean* x 1 (left)
high box step-ups (front squat bar position) x 5 (left)
single-leg clean* x 1 (right)
high box step-ups (front squat bar position) x 5 (right)
muscle-up + L-dip combo (1 mu  + 2 L-dips = 1 rep) x 3
rear foot elevated “elastic verts” x 6 each leg
~ all weighted exercises @ 135 lbs.  4 total rounds ~

The single-leg clean is simply, and in the end, a regular power clean — however, the pull phase is done with a single-leg emphasis; the catch is a normal, i.e., bilateral, catch.  I do allow a “balance touch” with the off leg when needed (i.e., as fatigue set in).  From the catch, I moved directly into the step-ups.  The box height here is just below knee level.  Notice that today’s step-ups were done with a front squat bar position; this translates to a bit more of a quad-dominant movement vs the normal back squat bar position.

Moving on to nimrods in the news…

The following quote is all you really need to see of this recent NYTimes article on obesity to realize we’re dealing, once more, with a blindered, simpleton take on diet.

“…The answer lies in biology. A person’s weight remains stable as long as the number of calories consumed doesn’t exceed the amount of calories the body spends, both on exercise and to maintain basic body functions. As the balance between calories going in and calories going out changes, we gain or lose weight.”

Ugh!  To be fair, the author did interview a couple of dietary “bright stars” — and then conveniently dumbed-down their message.  How is it that the sane voices in pieces such as this become so marginalized?  I suppose it boils down to sound-bite journalism, and the general public’s reluctance to spend the time required to delve further into subjects that may lay outside their fields of specialization; a destructive, symbiotic relationship, of sorts.

I believe it was Dr. Richard Feinman (he of the Metabolism Society)  who so eloquently equated the “calorie-in/calorie-out” theory of weight managaement to (and I’ll use my own wording here):

“…considering the affect of gravity upon an object, absent of friction.”

A nice corollary, I think.  Real people and real metabolisms must operate in the real world.  No consideration of how a type of calorie affects metabolic response is as ludicrous as the aforementioned consideration of gravity absent friction.  A nice thought experiment, maybe; any real-world application, though, is not to be found.

And then there was this, uh…free-verse, anti-paleo ramble?  Not sure what Ms. King’s “Problem with Paleo” is, exactly — maybe she thinks animals are shouldering the load and/or bearing the brunt of abuse so as to satisfy the faddish whims of hipster caveman wannabes?  I dunno.  My thought is, fine, be a detractor — I rather enjoy having my convictions rattled — but please come to the fray with a grounded, plausible argument for Chrissakes.  Sheesh…

I refuse to end on a negative, though, and here to save me from that is a fabulous and recent TED talk given by chef Jamie Oliver.  I’m quite sure everyone with a diet/physical culture bent has seen this by now, but I wanted to “store” it on TTP because I believe in Jamie’s message — and in his dire warning.  Please show this to someone in your life who may not be as diet-centric as you — and for God’s sake, if you have kids, please, PLEASE pay attention.  This really is a matter of life and death.

In health,
Keith

2/22/10, MetCon and Unilateral Work, and a Couple of Interesting Stories Courtesy of NPR

Lead-off this morning’s workout with the following bout of MetCon work:

Barbell Whip Snatch* to full Overhead Squat: 95lbs x 6 reps each round

Reverse-Grip Pull-Ups: 45 x 6; 70 x 6, 6, 6

Weighted Dips: 45 x 7; 70 x 6, 6, 6

Four rounds of that, concentrating on the quality of each exercise’s reps as opposed to attempting to squeeze in everything in minimal time.  Overall time was a distant second concern.  Notice that the rep scheme here for each exercise was such that the time-under-tension fell at approximately 10 seconds.  This was not by accident, as I was targeting work on the anaerobic energy system.  I should have increased the weight a bit on the whip-snatch to OHSs and decreased the reps to 4 or 5, as I ran a little over time-wise here (approximately 12 seconds TUT to complete 6 reps, i.e. approximately 2 seconds per rep).
*Think explosive barbell muscle up, with a little more hip kick.  Or, somewhere between a power snatch and a barbell muscle-up.  Note: googling “whip snatch” or “power snatch” is…er…an interesting experience to say the least, and not necessarily safe for work  🙂

Then it was on to some more unilateral work — and some marked improvement in the function of my right leg’s pistol ability.  Good news!

Single-Leg Deadlift (reaching variation): 25lb plate x 7, 7, 7 (each leg)
Pistol Squats: 25 lb plate for both right and left legs x 7, 7, 7 (each leg)

These two exercises were done in superset fashion.  Nice to see the functionality in my right leg returning so quickly.

And in other news…

My contention has always been that diet success has more to do with one’s ability to adequately manage emotion and situations more than anything else.  Knowledge, combined with emotional maturity, can overcome any obstacle (be it weight issues or otherwise).  And to that end, NPR’s Morning Edition ran a story this morning (Rational or Emotional?  Your Brain on Food), that you might find interesting.

Hmmm, you say — leptin…what’s that hormone all about again?

Stephan, of the wonderful blog Whole Health Source, did a fantastic Leptin / Lectins series a while back (part I, part II, part III) that you might want to revisit after having taken in the NPR stories.  It always comes back to the avoidance of sugar and grains, doesn’t it?  How simple can you get?  Eating a healthful diet doesn’t require advanced intelligence, but it does require a bit of determination — and probably most important, emotional intelligence.

And then we have the follow-up to the Rational / Emotional story, Why We Gain Weight as We Age, with lots of discussion on age-onset muscle loss (sarcopenia).  All that’s required is the proper stimulus, though, coupled with the proper diet, to maintain healthy muscle mass well into one’s later years.  Just ask Art DeVany and his lovely wife, “Wonderwoman” about that.