Pre-Thanksgiving Madness
It’s that time of year to appreciate all that we’re thankful for, spend time with friends and family, eat a lot of good food and lift a bunch of weight! Since we are going to soak our cells in calories anyway, why not get a good strength training session in before the feast? Do a few sets of squats, presses, and pull-ups, and your body will likely be a little less willing to store all the calories as adipose tissue.
But for those of you who really want to turn it up a notch and do something borderline insane, here’s a few physical challenges that will push the limits of your body and mind.
20-Rep Squat
The 20-rep squat, aka The Widowmaker was an infamous old-school way of packing on mass and showing the world that you’re tougher than Chuck Norris. The objective is fairly simple: load the bar up with a weight that you could hit a challenging ten reps with, and do twenty. How!?!? Get under the bar and start squatting. You will probably blast through the first half of the reps smoothly. When you feel like you want to rack it, stay disciplined and keep the bar on your back while forcing yourself to take several deep breaths. Then perform another rep. Then breathe again, and do another rep. Repeat until you hit twenty reps. Yes, this one set of 20 will take forever, and no, it will not be pleasant.
Triceps Death
All the bench press heroes will like this one. You’ll need a bunch of boards, a spotter, and another friend to hold the boards. Set up as if you were doing a close grip bench to a 1-board. You’ll do five reps to the one board, and right after your last rep dgfev online casino your friend will switch it to a 2-board. Do another five reps and have him/her switch to a 3-board and do another five. If you have a 4 and a 5-board handy throw those in the sequence too.
Kroc Row
Popularized by powerlifter Matt Kroczaleski, this exercise will really smoke your grip and upper back. Grab the heaviest dumbbell or kettlebell that you can pick up with one hand, and row it for as many reps as possible. Whether you choose to do a 3-point row or a row on the bench with your hand and knee supported is up to you. Chalk up and bang out as many reps as you can, rest a bit, and match the reps with the other side. I should add that a little common sense is in order here, and when the movement starts to resemble a series of mini seizures more than row, it’s time to put it down and walk away.
Strip Sets
This is a great way to deplete your muscle glycogen levels so you can fill them back up with pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes. Although you can apply a strip set to almost any exercise, I’ll use push-ups against chains as an example. Set up in a push-up position and have a friend throw chains on your back (let’s say you use 4 chains). Start doing as many push-ups as you can. When you are a rep or two shy of failure, have your friend take off two chains and immediately continue with your push-ups. When you come close to failing again have your friend remove the last two chains and do bodyweight push-ups until your triceps explode. Then go to your knees and do a few more. Then do an iso-hold at the bottom. This example may have gone a little further than I intended at first but whatever, it’s Thanksgiving!
Conditioning Challenges
You can be creative with this one. Load up the prowler and go for a max effort trip, or load it up lighter and get as many trips as possible in a specific window of time. You can push it, pull it, drag it, even use a harness and bear crawl with it. You can also use the implements and do farmer’s walks for distance or again go for a super heavy 1-trip max.
Keep in mind that these challenges should be used once in a blue moon, and not as a staple in most of our programming. It’s fun to step away from your regular program once in a while and do something a little more on “the wild side,” but remember that real progress comes from consistency and adhering to a well-designed training plan.
But it’s the holidays so enjoy yourself, move some heavy things around and eat up! Stay safe and I hope to see you all out at the Thanksgiving lift tomorrow!
Know Your "Why"
What do you spend most of your day doing? Do you know why you do what you do? If you’re an athlete, why do you play your sport? Motivation can determine effort, resiliency, and ultimately have a profound impact on performance. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs (see the pyramid below) speaks to why we act the way we act. Our needs vary, but our self-actualization and esteem needs are greatly in our control, and vary from person to person. However, if we recognize our motivation and why we desire certain things, then we are able to feed our motivation rather than starve it.
Take a look toward the top of the pyramid and determine why you do what you do. That explanation should be embedded into you and be a constant reminder when the going gets tough.
Sign Up for the SAPT 3rd Annual Thanksgiving Lift
Thanksgiving morning we will be hosting the SAPT 3rd Annual Thanksgiving Lift. It goes without saying that it is an utter blast, and a great way to prep your body for the inevitable engorging to take place during the Turkey Feast later in the day.
Sign Up Details
We're actually having a sign up this year, to ensure that we're not overcrowded and everyone has ample room to move around. You can sign up for either 8am or 930am. We'll be shutting down at 11am. Please contact Kelsey, at kelsey@studentathletept.com, and let her know what time you'd like to arrive, and to make sure you have a spot.
Also: Note that you don't have to be a current member of SAPT to join in the fun. We love to use this as a time for friends, family, and those who simply live locally (or not so locally, as we have those driving up from Richmond), to share a good time before heading off to our respective celebrations!
Common Exercise Corrections: Pain in The Knee During Lunging
Installment numero three-o in the common exercise fix series. To recap: 99% of the time it's not the exercise, it's the execution that's causing issues.
So, let's say you're doing a split squat, step back lunge, forward/walking lunge or some other lunging variation that I forgot to mention and, oh bugger, your knee hurts.
If you have pain in the front knee...
- Check your shin angle. If it's not perpendicular to the floor... then you probably are experiencing pain in the front of your knee.
Look at that shin!
- Check your variation. Some folks just can't do forward-moving lunges. Switch to a reverse lunge (above) or split squat variation, thus minimizing the sheer force on the knee (also, of course, maintaining that vertical shin).
- Still having problems? Check how you're applying force through your foot. (Sorry, that was an awkward sentence) Are you pushing through the ball of your foot to stand up or your heel? Pushing through your heel will put the stress of standing up on your glute (instead of the quad) and your glutes are a LOT better at producing hip extension than your quads. Matter of fact, think about pulling yourself upright through your heel as you stand up. (This applies to step-ups too.)
If you have pain in the back knee...
- Check your back leg's placement. Are you in line or is the back leg at a goofy angle? You want to stand about hip-width apart and make sure that your knee is going straight down (instead of in or out at an angle). How does one create such a delightfully descending back knee? Squeeze your butt. It should straighten out any wild knees.
- Check your variation. Maybe switch to a lunge exercise that doesn't require the back leg to work as hard, a Bulgarian split squat, might work as you're not supposed to use the back leg as much.
Note* this has an ISO hold at the beginning of the set.
- Still hurting the back knee? Perhaps try a different single leg exercise such as a bowler squat, a single leg squat progression or single leg RDL. Those will help train the posterior chain (which might be the source of your knee pain, weak glutes or hamstrings) as well as your hip stabilizers (adductors, glute medii, quadratus lumborum) as it might be an instability in your hips that are causing the knee pain.
If, after trying all these fixers, your knees still hurt, well, don't do lunges (you're in the percentage of folks that just need to stay away from them). There are plenty of other single-leg exercises out there that are just as awesome!
From the Hills of Ireland into the Mountains of Switzerland
I spent the middle seventeen days of October backpacking around Europe, and am finally settled back into things here in Northern Virginia. I took the trip with my good friend, Jason, and it was one of the more epic adventures I've partaken in during my life, to say the least.
While I generally prefer to write about topics concerning the reason all of you visit this site daily - you know, subject matters like athletic performance enhancement, picking heavy things, getting faster and stronger, or anything involving The Lord of the Rings - I didn't think most of you would mind if I took today to share a few highlights from my trip. I thought it may help/interest some of you reading who have traveled to Europe, will travel to Europe, or maybe just simply enjoy reading this sort of thing.
I possess a certain affinity for lists and bullet points so, what follows is, in list format, some notes and tidbits from a few of the locations we visited. I can't promise to part company with prolixity during this synopsis (it's over 1,000 words), but I hope at least some of you get something out of it!
Switzerland (Interlaken, Grindelwald, and Murren)
- Talk about a decent view for a morning cup of coffee, huh? The photo above is from our stay in Grindelwald.
- Switzerland is, in a word: majestic, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, and paralyzingly-beautiful. Ok, maybe a few words.
- This was my favorite country of all the places we visited. Don't get me wrong, Ireland and Italy were incredible in their own right, but there's something about being surrounded by a panoramic view of the Swiss Alps no matter where you go. The very air you breathe is pure and crisp, the skies are perpetually blue, and the "menu items" for outdoor activities are virtually innumerable.
- I think it goes without saying, but the hikes in Switzerland are unreal. Extremely difficult (think 3,000 of elevation in a single short hike), yet euphoric. Imagine walking along, breathing in the sharp tang of pine needles mingled with the earthy scent of rotting leaves, feeling the cool mountain air blow on your face and filter through your lungs, and everywhere you look you see something like this:
During the mountain hikes we experienced, I felt as if I was slapped awake from a long, deep, fuzzy slumber that had encapsulated me for years in the cities and suburbs of Washington DC.
- CANYONING!!! This was arguably the coolest experience I had the entire trip. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we decided to do it twice while in Switzerland. What exactly is canyoning, you ask? Aside from forcing you to abandon caution and question your sanity, canyoning is where you cliff jump, rock slide (yes, you go sliding down ROCKS), and repel, all within a water-carved canyon. We were taken right up into the heart of the alps, and then submersed ourselves into the beautiful canyon of Chli Schliere, in which we remained for 4+ hours.
To any of you who will travel to Switzerland, and are perhaps slightly mental: DO IT. You won't regret it, it's literally the experience of a lifetime.
Below is a video I threw together of a few of the jumps and slides my buddy Jason and I completed. The most asinine, what-would-Kelsey-do-to-me-if-she-saw-me-doing-this jumps where the ones where we had to jump off a cliff, then rotate in midair and back into a rock wall, sliding down the 30ft sheer drop into the water; you can see one of the ones we did at the 1:00 mark. Unbelievable. Keep in mind, I completely loathe heights, so this was a major step in quelling that fear, along with the reason for the occasional dubious expressions thrown in the video:
- The chocolate in Switzerland really is to die for. I'm not talking about chocolate from Switzerland, imported into the U.S. or wherever else you may be, but actually consumed in Switzerland. You know when cows who produce the milk for the chocolate are grass-fed from the lands of the Alps, it's gotta be good.
- My last recommendation for any of you who may travel to Switzerland is to head wayyy up to Schilthorn. Some of you may recognize it from the old James Bond movie, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where part of the film was set. It's a revolving restaurant and viewing platform situated right up at 10,000 feet above sea level, and provides the most spectacular view I've EVER seen. You're literally on level with the highest peaks in Europe, and able to look down upon some of the mountains that appeared huge from the Swiss train station.
What was also really sweet was that I was the only one up there when I went, so I had a full hour and half by myself to relax, read, and take in the view. Yes, a complete dream for an introvert like me.
Pictures and video can't quite capture what it's like in person, but here's a video I shot while up there that I hope gives you a decent idea:
And yes, I pronounced "Schilthorn" incorrectly.
- Expensive, expensive, expensive. Switzerland's only downfall is that it's the most expensive country in Europe. It cost an average of 19 CHF (Swiss francs) for a BURGER - no, the burger wasn't made out of gold, or even filet mignon - and 4+ CHF for a simple shot of espresso. Oh, and by the way, the US dollar is valued less than a franc, so that's over twenty bucks for a burger and over four bucks for a simple coffee. Let's not even go into the cost of a full course dinner. I even had to pay 2 francs to use a public restroom, and 15 francs to do a load of laundry! So yes, very expensive.
- Did I mention Switzerland is expensive?
Hint: Switzerland is expensive.
Galway, Western Ireland
- Amazing town that has tons of live music (awesome!) in most of the local pubs, every single night of the week. There's also a bunch of small restaurants & coffee shops, each unique in their own way.
- I was pleasantly surprised how many locals we saw and were able to interact with here. Maybe it was because we traveled in October, but the town didn't feel very touristy, and there were loads of local college students here.
- The Irish accent isn't very hard to understand so long as they speak slowly. If they get going fast though, heaven help you to try and understand them; they may as well be speaking Japanese.
- In general, the west coast of Ireland is much more scenic than the East side (where Dublin is). In contrast to the ragged, roaring splendor of Switzerland, the hills and landscape of Ireland possess a very gentle beauty that I've never quite experienced before. From Galway we would drive (we were brave or stupid enough, depending how you look at it, to rent a car in Ireland) north and south along the coast, stopping at random castles we found and enjoying the many rolling green hills and "midevil-like" countryside. The two most notable spots we visited were the Cliffs of Moher and Kylemore Abbey. The next three pics are from are from taken at these two locations, respectively; I think it'll be self-evident which is which.
- Sheep are ubiquitous in Ireland. This was a surprise to me. Makes for some pretty good lamb stew, though.
- Going back to that whole renting the car thing. Many of the roads are laughably narrow and windy, and the Irish drive extremely fast. You're also on the left side of the road, and the driver's seat is on the right side of the car. Fortunately for us, the drivers there are much better than Americans, so we walked away unscathed.
- The people of Galway, and Ireland in general, definitely know how to enjoy life, and take moments to "step back and smell the roses" during their work week. Such a stark contrast from the Northern Va mindset. I didn't hear a single car honk/beep, the restaurant servers never (even passively) rushed you out from your meal, people would take two-hour lunch breaks if they felt like it, and still finish their workday around 3pm, and while waiting in line for coffee or food, people would, *gasp*, actually talk to one another rather than remain glued to their iphones. Not to mention, the bartenders would spend a full two minutes to perfectly craft each and every pint of Guinness they served.
- Yes, the legends are true: Guinness straight from a true Irish pub tastes better than it does in the U.S.
- I saw a 45 y/o man in a business suit run up and give an unsuspecting older gentleman, who was clearly a friend or co-worker, a firm butt slap as he danced past along the town streets of Galway, gleefully laughing as he continued to prance on down the road in the middle of his workday. That was entertaining.
Cinque Terre, Italy
- Cinque Terre, or "The Five Lands," is an 8-mile stretch along the coast in which the five little villages are situated, each with their own unique feel.
- You can hike along the coast from village to village, enjoying a plethora of fine Italian cuisine. There seafood is especially good, no surprise due to their location right on the Mediterranean. When I ordered a sea bass, I was literally handed a full sea bass, head, bones, tail, and all. It was (wild) caught that very day however, and grilled to perfection, so who am I to complain.
- Many of the restaurants are right on the water, and since Cinque Terre is on the west coast this gives you quite the sunset view for dinner.
- I ordered an Americano in one of the caffes, and the picture below shows what I was provided. I thought it very cool how they served me the hot water in a separate container from the espresso, so that I could dilute it to my individual preference.
- Despite the "must sees" in Italy like Rome and Florence, I'll call you a fool if you travel to Italy and don't take a couple days to enjoy Cinque Terre. (Hint: Go there.)
Random Notes
- I've never missed Metamucil so much as I did while backpacking Europe. Yes, it can lend itself to quite the horror stories/memories, but boy was I glad to use it again upon returning home. 'Nuff said there.
- Minimalism was key for this trip. I normally pack wayyy WAY too much for even a weekend getaway (just ask my wife...), so I was quite proud of myself for not packing more than necessary for the first time in Stevo's autobiography*. I only packed 2 pairs of underwear**, 3 t-shirts, 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of hiking pants, 1 rain jacket, 3 pairs of smartwool socks, and 1 pullover jacket. Score.
- All the photos in this article were uploaded straight from our cameras.
- America needs to take a few notes from Europe's public transportation system.
- I dreamed of going to Ireland in 6th grade. I then started saving for this trip in high school, putting $5-$20 away into a separate account whenever I could from paychecks, Christmas cash, etc. This money wasn't allowed to be used for anything but traveling to Ireland.
By the time I left for my trip, I had over $4,000 saved up which allowed me to do things like travel to other countries as well, enjoy fine food each evening, go canyoning in Switzerland for two separate days (heck, just surviving the Swiss costs in general), or anything I wanted while I was over there, really. So to those of you youngsters who may be reading, you'd be surprised at what you can accomplish if you start saving, even a little bit, now.
- I really can't thank my wife, Kelsey, and co-workers (Sarah, Ryan, Tadashi) enough for allowing me to take this trip. Without you all, it wouldn't have been possible, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you did before and during my trip.
*Soon to be a bestseller.
**I can't recommend Ex Officio highly enough for travel. I'd wash them with me in the shower at night and they're quick-dry so they'd be good to go by morning.
Warm-up for the Overextended
It's pretty common to see people walking around with the devastating condition of anterior pelvic tilt (it probably sounds scarier than it actually is). These poor souls end up with overextended lumbar spines that can cause a lot of strain on the lower back. Some people never have any serious issues with it, while others may experience significant pain or injuries. If you fall into this category of the overextended it's important to keep some of the factors in mind and begin to start neutralizing your spinal position. A good preparation before a training session can help put your body in a better position to smash big weights, stick jumps cleaner, and stay injury-free. So how do you do it?
Step 1: Lengthen the Tight Muscles Cranking on Your Spine The hip flexor muscles, including the psoas, illiopsoas, and rectus femoris tend to tighten up and create this duck-like appearance of overextension.
So whip out your foam rollers and lacrosse balls and loosen up your hips and quads. These hip flexors get a lot of attention for being the culprits behind the swayback posture, but they don't work alone. The lats are a significant accomplice to this less-than-ideal spinal curvature. Because the lats attach so low on the back, they can yank on the spine and worsen the situation, so be sure your lats get some foam rolling love as well.
Step 2: Mobilize Stiff Joints A key component to positioning your spine into a better alignment is thoracic spine mobility. A hyperlordodic posture is often acccompanied by a rounded upper back, so get some t-spine extension work in. Some good ones include t-spine extensions on a foam roller, quadruped extension rotation, side lying windmills, and t-spine dips.
Then go ahead and loosen the hips as well with some hip flexor mobs, adductor dips and adductor rockbacks. Hurdle drills are also great for getting the hips moving.
Step 3: Turn on the Posterior Tilters Being stuck in anterior pelvic tilt is not solely created by tight muscles, but also the failure of the antagonists to pull things back into place. Two of the most important muscles needed to tilt your pelvis back towards neutral are the glutes and the abdominals. These two muscle groups are your soldiers in the war against overextension. Get them going with plank variations, reverse crunches, and glute bridge variations. I think this is a great place to add half-kneeling anti-rotation presses. With this exercise you tighten up your abs to resist rotation all while contracting your glute and providing a stretch for the hip flexor on the same side. A win-win-win situation.
