Oh haaaaaiiii. What’s up peeps. Been a while, and it’s well past time for an update.

The ascribed title is a bit of an unfortunate pun, but it seemed appropriate for the occasion: rekindling the bloggin’ flame aaaaand rejacking my foot up. Bad.

But I’m skipping quite a bit since the last time I posted, so let’s rewind….

I did the SoCal Tough Mudder in March. It was badass, and I managed to finish in 2:45, which I feel like isn’t too bad for a guy who’s only run, at most, 7 miles at any one time.

Proof that I did it. Believe it or not I was even more excited at the finish.

After getting back from SoCal, with a nice week and a half vacation and ragefest behind me, I got back into the swing of lifting heavy things. My buddy Drew and I took on a program known as the “603 PTP” which was thrown together by the same people who put together the Whole 30. Whole 30 worked well for me, so I figured I’d give this puppy a shot as well.

It was hard.

603 PTP was a deadlift and overhead press centric program, which I liked because while it focused on building raw strength, but it also mixed in a lot of metabolic conditioning along with it. During the course of the program, I got my deadlift back up to #400, and improved my strict overhead press from #145 to #165. Not too bad for a 37 day program!

As is my norm, I like to decompress and celebrate a little bit after completing a program or reaching a goal, so I did a week or two of moderate lifting with the plan to start another self-composed program that mimicked the 603 PTP, but with a different focus and some other tweaks added by myself and Drew.

But theeeeen this happened…

This is what happens when your friends convince you to play ultimate Frisbee  after drinking 6 or 7 beers.

I initially thought I’d sprained it pretty bad. Ran around for another minute…. Then hobbled for another minute. Then stood there. Then sat down. Then drank another beer, then played a game of beerpong,…

Finally, after getting loads of what was most likely highly legitimate medical advice from folks around me, such as “I was premed, it’s just sprained” and “bro, you should just drink more”, I decided that the adult decision to make was to stop having fun and tend to the wounds.

Luckily, Patient First was just a couple blocks away, so I headed over there and was quickly told that what I had incurred was a “significant” break. As you can probably imagine, that put a large poop on my party.

Turned out it was bad enough that I needed surgery, and had to have a plate and a couple pins put in there.

Over the two months of brokenness that ensued, I did a few half-assed upper body workouts and a lot of feeling sorry for myself. Luckily, I got it together enough to work on the one thing I was fully able to: my nutrition.

So that means I did another Whole 30, 100% legit, no cheats. Felt pretty great and while I may not have been killing it in the gym, I felt pretty good about killing it come feeding time.

So now we’re here… Present day. Back to 100% as far as I can tell, with a slightly larger left foot, and a few pains here and there. Running again, squatting, deadlifting, and all the other goodness I’ve missed.

Tomorrow morning another 603 PTP begins. Drew got hurt before he finished the first round, so he’s hungry to give it another shot, and I’m happy to have a lifting partner to compete with and to motivate me…

That being said, I need to get to sleep asap. Game time is 6AM, so the alarm goes off at 4:45. I’m out peeps!

So about a week ago a couple buddies of mine and myself instituted a new super-secret, awesome-only club: We call it the Sandbag Death March Club. We’ve only met once, but I’m thinking we’ll shoot for monthly meet-ups. If you’ve got an 80+ lb. sandbag, you’re welcome to join… But here are the rules:

The first rule of Sandbag Death March Club is-…What? No. No, you can talk about it all you want. That’s a stupid rule, why would we say that?… The first rule is don’t drop the sandbag.

Helms returning the sandbag to an eagerly expectant Drew

Second rule? Continue to not drop the sandbag

Drew breaking the first and second rule of Sandbag Death March Club

Third rule is… Well we haven’t made any more rules up yet, but it’s a work in progress.

I mentioned the stairs at Church Hill here in Richmond, VA (RVA, hollaaaa) a few weeks back when my buddy Drew and I did the stairs a couple times with a Sandbag climb to top it off… I’d liken that to the fight Ed Norton and Brad Pitt had in the parking lot when Brad said, “just hit me… Surprise me” (Sorry for all the Fight Club references, but I was Tyler Durden for Halloween and I’m still feeling it evidently)… It was a dry run.

Last week though, we put some parameters around it. So here’s what the deal was…

Each person does:
3 stair sprints
1 double stair sandbag climb
1 single stair sandbag climb

We do the above until we’ve all finished, or until someone pukes… See, there you go: third rule.

Drew puked. Three times in fact. Right after the double stair climb, he lost his breakfast… So luckily for all of us, we didn’t have to do the last single stair climb. Gotta’ give the man respect though, he pushed through the rest of the workout regardless of his moment of weakness.

After that, we worked in some heavy core:
sandbag get-ups
sandbag oblique raises

Drew taking it like a man. Despite puke, he pushed through and finished it off in style.... sorta.

So there you have the initial agenda of the Sandbag Death March Club. It may not look like much, but I can assure you it was grueling at times. I look forward to doing it again in a couple weeks! Hopefully as we get more badass, we can make the workouts more badass.

As always, I’ll keep you posted!

I figure you guys have had enough time off from me babbling on about Paleo this and Paleo that…. So I don’t feel bad telling you that I’m doing another Whole 30. Yes, the super strict Paleo eating guidelines that I did back in April/May of this year, and I plan on telling you all about it…. again.

However, there are a few things this time around that will be a little different:

1. Technically, it’s going to be a Whole 4-2+25

I feel like I’ve got to be honest here. It’s not a hard and fast “Whole 30”…. Halloween is one weekend on which I will not concede the alcohol. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to dress up like a jackass (and I will, and like it), I will be drinking accordingly.

Other than the alcohol this Halloween weekend, I will be eating (and not drinking) exactly as dictated by the Whole 30 guidelines.

2. More carbs

Last time around most days I consumed very low amounts of carbs, and while it worked well for me the first time, I’m trying to take a different approach to this whole “strict” Paleo thing. I’ve been reading a really interesting book called The Perfect Health Diet that promotes the average person eating roughly 150g (600 calories) to maintain the necessary glucose levels in your body. While I’m not done with the book yet, it’s been an awesome read, and I’m thinking come spring I may try to do a month of the Perfect Health Diet (basically Paleo with some modifications) with all the blood work like I’ve done for Paleo and GOMAD before.

As far as quick and dirty book review/recommendations go, I’d still recommend The Paleo Solution
if you’re trying to get the basics of Paleo down (and why it’s good for your body). But if you really like to dig down and know about how the things that you eat affect your body, and why you should/shouldn’t eat certain things, ratios of macronutrients, etc… I’d definitely recommend Perfect Health Diet

Anyway, I digress… More carbs = more sweet potatoes. Done.

3. More cardio

On my previous Whole 30, my basic routine was 3 days a week of lifting for strength; and that’s it… Nothing else.

This time my routine is much, much more cardio intensive (which isn’t hard since I wasnt doing any), plus I’m still lifting 2-3 days a week on top. So we’re talking 5-6 days of working out compared to 3, and many more calories being burned.

4. Less weight available for the losing

You know how I do. I like to weigh in and get some hard numbers before doing anything like this, and while I may not be going balls to the wall and getting blood work this time, I made sure to weigh myself and take body fat measurements with the fatinator-5000 so I can see some numbers to prove the results.

Weighed in at 180.2lbs, which wasn’t really a surprise: my body loves to sit at that weight like a fat kid at Cici’s. However my loosely Paleo eating habits seem to have been paying off, keeping my body fat at a very good 7.6%.

What I’m interested in seeing, is where my body fat goes this time around. Last time I started just a little below 10% and dropped down almost 2% to settle a little under 8. So if I’m starting at 8, and with the cardio, will I end up… dead? That’s not the level of cut I was envisioning.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how my body responds this time.

5. Partner in crime

I’ve suckered somebody into doing this thing with me. Now I can share cooking duties, shopping, expand my recipe base, and just have more fun and support. She’s someone who’s just as determined as I am, and one of those “if I say I’m going to do it, then I’ll do it” people, so I’m happy to have someone with the same mindset along for the journey this time around.

So let’s do this thing!…. Again… ish.

Monday’s have unofficially been dubbed a “running day”, and after taking both Saturday and Sunday off to heal up after a pretty wicked leg day on Friday, I was ready to get after it.

The plan that was bouncing around in my brain was to do 3-4 miles of steady state running at a decent pace (for me), but my so called friend wanted to join in on the fun and add a little bit of excitement to it: stair runs.

So we settled on a compromise, and after doing a couple miles on the treadmill, we headed over to the beautifully ghetto/majestic (depends on what block you’re on) Church Hill. There, I was greeted by a great view of the city….

Which was quickly followed by a terrible view:

We did a couple rounds up the stairs, which sufficiently winded me, after which I told my buddy I’d see his stair runs and raise him an 80lb sandbag carry…. He was not happy. I’m pleased to report, we both manned up, and made the trek up the stairs with the sandbag across the shoulders. There was absolutely zero running involved. I’m fairly certain if I tried to run up stairs with a sandbag on my back I’d end up with a fraction of the teeth that I currently possess.

Anyway, great workout, and one that I think I’ll bring out of the arsenal more often. On top of the cycling and normal lower body lifting days that I’m now working with, adding this in should kick my quad strength up a few notches… At least that’s the idea.

Good news Team! I think I can officially say that the saddle has been remounted. Last week I lamented a bit about my fitnesshood being all out of whack due to change in workout routine, venue, scheduling, etc. But I think that’s all behind me now as I joined my alma mater’s gym and gave it a shot at my normal time of 5:30ish after work. It was a tad crowded, and I’m not going to say I’ll “never” have to wait for anything, but it was certainly manageable and they have much, much more equipment than my local Golds Gym.

Oh hey... There you are. Let's do this thing.

Which, by the way, is starting to suck pretty hard. I’ve actually been a big fan of Gold’s Gym over the past 4 years or so, but in the past several months I feel like our local franchise isn’t taking care of business like they used to: case in point, it took me 3 tries to finally find a decent treadmill to use the other night. First one had some weird timing issue with the belt; the second one rocked back and forth viciously when I actually tried to run; and the third one was just right… I’m just trying to workout here, not botch a bastardized version of Goldilocks and the 3 bears, so I was less than excited by it.

Anyway, the workouts have been going off without a hitch, I’m making progress with my running, and feeling good about my lifting. And when things are going well in the gym, that means things go well on the blog. So expect some content to start flowing, because endorphins make me want to do awesome things.

Well…. I’ve got good news and bad: The good news is I didn’t come in dead last. The bad news is, I think the one guy who I “beat” dropped out of the competition due to bird flu or something… or may never existed, but all I know is there was somebody on the list who’s name was below mine.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, let me rewind back to the beginning. I feel like Friday was the beginning of everything that made up my strongman experience, so we’ll start with that…

Friday was an interesting day: Obama was about a mile from my house speaking at U of R, and Sir Richard Branson was speaking at a conference that afternoon and they were having an after party at the Virginia Museum of Fin Arts that evening. Thanks to a friend, I was able to score free tickets to both events (thanks again buddy).

The conference was pretty uneventful, though the talk on Virgin Galactic was pretty cool, and I have absolute certainty at this point that I’ll be going to space at some point in my lifetime (assuming I don’t die in the next 20-30).

Anyway, the after party was what I was real excited/nervous about. Why? Because it was an open bar event. Usually I’m pretty good about being smart and not drinking the night before something important, but when there’s an open bar I always feel like I’m missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity by not taking part in that, so I did drink a few. However I am proud to report that I did not drink too much.

….At least that’s what I thought, until I woke up on Saturday morning feeling hungover like a jackass.

So getting to the gym just in time to hear the end of the rules, I start to warm-up with a little bit of trepidation about this minor hangover and the fact that I had just been told we’ll be flipping a 520lb. tire three times. The most I’d ever done was a 500.

We had about an hour to warm-up, and I spent most of that wandering trying to figure out where things were and what I wanted to do about it. An hour seems like a long time, but it flew by pretty quickly, and next thing I knew we were starting…

Initially I was pretty nervous, but even before I had to take on the first event, I realized that the environment for this type of thing was a lot different than other competitive events. Back in my baseball playing days, or even professional grade beerpong days (don’t doubt me), there’s always been the “us/me vs. them”. There’s always somebody pulling against you, talking trash about you, trying to break you down and take the wind out of your sails.

Interestingly, the attitude at the strongman was completely the opposite. Sure, everybody wants to win, and you’re doing your best to beat the other guys, but it’s interesting how you all feel like you’re on the same team. Everyone high fives everyone else, cheers each other on, and is all around full of encouragement. It was completely foreign to me, and completely awesome. It’s a great feeling to be surrounded by a crowd of people yelling and cheering for you, even if they have no idea who you are. My theory is, everyone has a high level mutual respect due to knowing exactly what it is you’re going through, since they just did it or are going to be doing it shortly after you. It’s very much an “us vs. the weights” mentality.

Anyway, I hit the first challenge, and I’m happy to say that I accomplished 2 of the 4 lifts. Successfully clean/pressing the 180lb. axle, and pulling 350lb of the floor without any trouble. I was really hoping to get the 180lb log, since I know I have the strength to do it but have a really hard time getting the technique down. As far as the 500lb. off blocks, I’m not going to lie, I never really thought that was going to happen, and like an idiot I tried several times and ended up jacking up my lower back only 45 seconds into a day long competition. I am well aware of my tendency to round my back like a jackass on the deadlift when the weight gets heavy, and unfortunately this was no exception and I paid for it.

After the power medley was the yoke walk. The most I’ve ever done was 450lb., and I wanted to get some numbers on the board early, so I started with a relatively light 360lb.

Hitting 360 with ease, I bumped it up to 440 for my second attempt, and got through that without any problem and 0 drops.

At this point I learned that you get a total of 3 drops over your 3 attempts, so I made a ballsy call and decided to skip over 480lb. and go straight for 520lb…. Well, this ended up being not a very good call, and I ended up making the fatal 4th drop about ⅔ of the way to the finish line. Oh well, I figured if you don’t push yourself to the point of at least a few drops, you’re being a pansy about it… I didn’t want that.

After that was one of my favorites, the farmers walk. I was confident I could do this without any problem, which ended up being true, however something I need to work on is how quickly I walk with the weight. I ended up not doing so well as far as placing since everyone was able to complete the event without dropping, and a couple guys practically jogged with the weight.

Then came the tire-flipping/sled pulling medley, and the 520lb tire that I was so worried about proved to be the easiest implement of all, and I flipped it 3 times without much trouble, followed by a sled drag for ~45ft. I have no idea how much was on the sled, but it wasn’t too bad.

Sadly, the last event, the Atlas stones, which I was super stoked about, proved to be my worst event. After watching the women do the stones, I was feeling pretty good about my chances, when all of a sudden they cleared away the ~48” platform, and pulled out a tiered platform that blew my mind with the height they had picked for some of the lifts. If you watch the video below, you can see that I wasn’t able to get past the seconds stone, which is 215lbs of pure, infuriating frustration.

Thankfully, the next 2 or 3 guys couldn’t get the 2nd stone up either, so that made me feel quite a bit better. Not that I wasn’t pulling for them, but if I had been the only guy unable to get it on the platform, I’d have been pretty pissed.

So having finished the last event, I packed it up and headed out, roughly 8 hours after stepping into the gym: bruised, battered, and my back already sore as sh*t.

Am I glad I did it? Absolutely. Do I think I’ll do it again? Probably. I now know what they’re like, and what I need to work on. Having seen where I’m at, I know I’ve got tons of room for growth, and I believe I can make substantial progress if I put my mind to it.

However, I think it’s time for a change in the training regimen… More on that later. For now, I’m still tired, sore, and it’s time for a beer…. I think I’ll take a couple days off. DONE.

Coming off of a week of hurricane recovery, and only having lifted a grand total of 1.5 times during that week (with a jog somewhere in there), I’ll admit I wasn’t feeling real good. I’ve discovered that much like a crack addict without, well… crack, when I take several days in a row off from serious exercise, my mood and overall sense of well-being just goes straight south. Compound that with the fact that I’ve switched back to lifting on my lonesome (sans coach), so I’m all on my own as far as programming.

Take all this, and considering I’ve got a strongman competition this coming Saturday, I was just not feeling that awesome.

Until last night…I went to my old faithful, Gold’s Gym, and decided that it’d be a good call to do two of the core lifts in the upcoming competition: deadlift and overhead press.

Well I’m not sure if it was my long rest, or the sweet knee-high snowboarding socks that I was rocking at the gym for the first time to keep myself from bleeding all over Golds, but not only did I clean and press 185lbs without too much trouble, but I hit a 15lb PR in my deadlift, pulling a 1RM @ 400lbs.

Talk about a weight lifted-HEYOOOOO. Sweet joke…. seriously though, a weight was lifted off my shoulders, and now I can take it relatively easy the rest of the week up until the event, allowing myself to go in fresh (may do a little tabata type work just to get the body sweating a bit).

Event is only a couple days away, and I’m excited. You know I’ll be writing about that mess when I’m done!

Last Monday was once again the sometimes dreaded, but always needed, squat day. If you’ll recall from a recent post, squat day didn’t exactly go as planned on the previous go around, so there was a little trepidation for this next round.

We went heavy again, but for triples rather than singles, and thankfully at 285# I hit a triple without incident, thus erasing my less than stellar squat the previous week and totally redeeming myself… Which prompted me to share this video clip, for no real reason other than the fact that it amuses me.

Ah yes, what a great movie.

Anyway, sorry for being a bit sporadic with the posting the past week. It’s been insane: bachelor/going-away party planning, pre-bachelor party cleaning, earthquake, pre-bachelor party drinking (need to flex the tolerance a bit to make sure I still got it), and then instead of the actual bachelor party, we had a hurricane induced practice bachelor party, since a lot of folks aren’t able to make the trip due to weather, but the bride-to-be was already on his way… so we just went with it.

Now my house is filled with trash, beer bottles, and dirt, and my yard is covered in debris, burned out tiki torches, and a cable line that got ripped off the side of my house.

So that being said, due to cleanup and recovery from hurricane of mass destruction (whether it be in natural or alcoholic form), and considering the fact that I’m still out of power, my posting may be a bit patchy over the next few days as well. But I’m hoping everything is back to normal here soon.

Hope everyone out there made it through okay!

Live and learn… As in, I’ll barely live, and you learn from my mistakes (that’s a little over dramatic, but there was definitely an oh sh*t moment).

A couple days ago was squat day. I was crushing weight pretty well, and we decided to give 330lbs a shot for the first time. Chalked up, and feeling confident from the previous sets, I get under the bar and lift off. I came out of the rack tight, felt steady and strong on the way down, and stable in the hole. I even came out of the hole a good 6-10 inches, and then…. stuck. I tried to grind it out for a few seconds, and then… I just started to drop. Coach tried to spot me and get me back out, but for some reason I had nothing left to give, and I quickly found myself deeper in the hole than I’ve ever been: ass practically touching the floor with 330lbs trying to push me into the floor and threatening to tip me forward and crush the hell out of me…. Finally, I actually heard what coach was yelling at me, and taking his advice just dumped it down my back.

Evidently, it could've ended up a lot worse.

…So let’s review what went wrong: I didn’t set the pins before going for a max squat. Nor had I ever thought about what I would do in the case of “missing” a squat completely.

So that’s the moral of the story: set your pins and/or get more comfortable with dumping the bar, because it was a foreign concept to me, and I didn’t even know what to do for a good second or two and that’s a legitimately scary/dangerous moment.

Only several blocks from the plasma-TV filled, Brittney Spears blasting, packed-to-the-gills-at-5pm Gold’s Gym that I’m currently a member of (and not to take away from Gold’s, because it definitely has its place), lies a little gem in the rough… uh, extreme, rough.

It’s fittingly named The Weight Room, and there are no frills, no polo’d personal trainers with clipboards meandering around rearranging stability balls for the 80th time, and if you tried to play Brittney Spears I’m pretty sure your iPod won’t make it out alive.

Believe me, this place isn’t for everyone, but then again I don’t think they want everyone working out here. It’s a small, serious gym, that attracts big, serious lifters… and me, evidently.

I went there this past Saturday to lift with my friend Chris, because they have all of the strongman implements (atlas stones, log, yoke, farmers, etc.) that a wannabe strongman could desire. According to Chris the gym was “packed” at a ungodly 5, that’s right five, other people there. Now granted, the gym isn’t very big, but believe me the 5 people in there weren’t a problem, and we didn’t wait for anything.

In fact, it’s kind of nice lifting in a small niche gym, because it forces you to get to know some people… Well, maybe not force, but you’d look like a real jerk if you didn’t at least say “hello” to the 1 or 2 other people that are in there with you… and the handful of people I’ve met there are 10x friendlier and more willing to help you out than anybody I’ve met in my years of lifting at a commercial gym. The owner, Chris Lawyer, is probably one of the nicest people you ever meet. I know that term is thrown around loosely by pretty much everyone, but seriously, sit down and talk with the guy for while and you’ll see what I mean.

Also, want to give a shout out and thanks to Joey Tedrow and Danny Clingenpool, a couple of stongman veterans that were kind enough to give Chris and myself some pointers on how to not kill ourselves while doing the different lifts.

Joey putting on a clinic... show off.

So how’d I do?

Well, not too bad, but there’s considerable room for improvement as well. I’m still stalling at 165 on the log press, but I’m fairly certain that it’s more of a technique issue than anything else.

This is how it's done

My yoke walk I maxed out around 445lbs, which I’m not unhappy with, but I almost lost a limb doing it. My right leg caved at one point and I had to drop the frame and regroup for a minute.

Chris raging on a 260lb atlas stone

On the Atlas stones… oh man, the atlas stones. I was all excited about the stones, and feeling pretty confident, but the platform at TWR is much higher than the one I used at Brute Strength, and boy did that make a difference. At 52” or so, getting the stone up on that sucker was more than a little bit of a struggle. I managed to do 215lbs 3 times, but it got uglier, and uglier every rep. No worries, just means I’ve got more work ahead of me.

After a solid 2 ½ hours at The Weight Room, we shot on over to another little ghettofabulous establishment, known as The Dairy Bar. As we were walking up, there was a guy out front chaining up the tables on the deck.

“Are you guys closed?”

“…Nope.”

I guess they were battening down the hatches in preparation for a flashmob robbery or something. Anyway, though in the ghetto, the food was awesome…. and a complete and utter Paleo fail, but after almost 3 hours in the gym I think I earned a few carbs.

Moral of the story? I think I may have found a new home for the near future (both gym and dairy barn).