This week, I kept an old nail color, a light and easy one – Ballet Slippers – to match my ‘take it easy’ training day when I was recuperating from a major migraine headache.  Everyone’s body has such issues of one kind or another. We struggle to do strongman, just as we struggle against pain, cancer, and even conventional thinking.  At the end of the day, for all the mental attitude, it’s you against the dumb tire, you against a stupid rock, and you picking up something heavy.  It’s hard to do.  You have to find the most efficient way, and you have to make yourself strong enough to do it.   

 

What’s the best way to get there?  The first thing to do is to be honest, to challenge assumptions, imagery, and fitness dogma.  For example, at first glance, chocolate milk would seem to be horrible, associated with junk food and sugary sweets.  And yet, if one uses sound nutritional principles, low-fat, chocolate milk is a perfect post-workout choice.  In fact, for a long time, it was the only post-workout drink allowed in the NFL.  No, no, no, don’t think you can just start guzzling chocolate milk all day.  But if taken immediately after a workout, the sugar will drive the protein content into the muscles, to replenish and rebuild them.  John Ivy and Robert Portman provide some good information on this and other topics on the timing of nutrition in their excellent book, Nutrient Timing.  The authors dig through nutritional myths by pointing out that it’s not so much what one eats, as when one eats it, and in what combinations.  Just as with working out with kettlebells, good nutrition is about interactions.   

 

The key is to not accept or apply simplistic rules and assumptions about nutrition and fitness.  For example, a common belief is that one should exercise with more reps and lighter weights to sculpt and tone.  This is simplistic and misleading.  The way to “sculpt” and “tone” is to improve one’s strength by working on performance.  Appearance comes with serious effort. That is the only way to have visible results. 

 

It’s not about isolating a “problem area.”  It’s about working all the muscles interactively, replicating the complexity of human movement.  Working multiple muscles in concert prepares one for all athletic and general activities.  Isolation exercises, like biceps curls, do very little to improve strength and performance.  Try pull-ups instead. 

 

Another area of confusion is over the deep squat and whether it harms knees.  It’s too valuable an exercise to dismiss so easily.  In truth, squats strengthen knees and help knees to accomplish what they are, in fact, designed to do.  The squat produces bigger muscles, more muscular control, and stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments.  This is elaborated on by Mark Rippetoe in his readable, if opinionated, book Strong Enough? Another consideration is that the kettlebell front squat works the abs more than any crunch can do.   

 

Also of particular interest to me are general attitudes about “bulking up” and women.  As some of us know, working out with weights and doing strongman does not need to produce bulk.  Bulk requires testosterone, abundant in men, not women. It causes the difference in how men and women’s bodies react to exercise.  Like everyone, women get the best results when they train for performance.  We workout with kettlebells, not for puffed up bodies, but for health and fitness, in other words, for strength.   

 

That’s why we have to set aside well-known and often repeated fitness dogma, such as some popular fitness magazines regularly spread.  We must get at the truth, complex but fundamental and based upon careful and logical analysis.  The strongman struggle is against ever-increasing weights, against one’s body and one’s mind, against setbacks, and just as much against misconceptions.  It is a struggle to achieve strength, health, and fulfillment, but it can be done. 

 

 

New bag for Staci - this one from Lulu Lemon is Staci’s next and best pick for her carry everything with me lifestyle.  With more pockets than seemingly any other bag out there, the Cruiser Back Pack Pro will assure nothing gets left behind.FOOD

 

 

Ingredients

 

 

 

In a medium bowl, mix water with wasabi powder, and whisk until blended. Add Dijon mustard, salmon, egg white, soy sauce, and sesame seeds, and stir until mixed well. Form into a burger, and grill 2 to 3 minutes per side (or until desired doneness).

 

 

It’s beautiful over here on the east coast and with this weather and it’s long sun filled days comes picnics and playgrounds.  Staci’s granddaughter, Isabella, has been all too eager to head out on one of these picnic adventures and for that Staci has come up with the perfect package.  Substituting sparkling raspberry water for wine, she’ll be filling the basket with all the usual fairings, including, fruits cheeses and of course sandwiches.

 

Isabella’s sandwich of choice?  Italian Tuna - healthy and delicious and with a recipe below.