Self-Aggrandizement: Fitness Archives

Exactly
Filed March 26, 2008 3:15 PM.

While press for CrossFit seems to be cropping up everywhere these days (cf., the NY Times Magazine, whose piece about how 'the superfit walk among us' has already given Jess endless opportunities to make fun of me), it's Gawker that deserves special recognition for summing things up way better than I can whenever people ask about the gym:

"CrossFit is an internet-based cult of fitness for psychos, itinerant preachers, ex-killers, and crazy people of all stripes."

Sounds about right.

Get Fit: Introduction
Filed January 8, 2008 5:48 PM.

It's a new year, and you're still fat.

Fret not, though; by popular request, I'm pulling together this ongoing, intermittent series to help you get in shape.

Like fitness itself, the series breaks down into two interlocking halves - exercise and nutrition. Getting fit requires both working in your favor.
Nutrition primarily determines body weight. Exercise primarily determines body composition. If you're pear shaped, eating less can make you a smaller pear, whereas only exercise can redistribute things around.

Both parts, though, aren't short-term commitments. How long do you have to keep exercising and eating healthfully? Well, how long do you have to keep brushing your teeth? So this series focuses on sustainable solutions, the kinds of things you can start now and still be doing happily at the end of the year - or the end of next decade.

Coming up, we kick things off on the nutrition side, with some general principles: the three golden rules of eating.

Bigger and Blacker
Filed November 19, 2007 6:18 PM.

About three years ago, I started doing CrossFit workouts, following the free routines posted daily on the crossfit.com website. They were brief, they were intense, and they worked. I made faster progress in far less time than with anything else I had tried. I was hooked.

About two and a half years back, I started getting together with a couple of other idiots who had tried this CrossFit thing, for monthly workouts in Central Park. Misery loves company, and I quickly found I had more fun, pushed myself far harder, when working out with a group.

When the weather turned cold, we found a small gym on the Upper East Side that would let us, for ten bucks a head, use their space for our group workouts. A few more people heard about it and joined in, and they, too, made fast, significant progress. People would walk in the door unable to do a pullup, and six months later they'd be doing sets of twenty. Other clients at the gym, who over the same stretch of time might have moved up one notch on the lat pulldown machine, would leave their private trainers to work out with us instead. Then, fairly predictably, the trainers would get the owner to ask us to leave.

Lather, rinse, repeat. We lived through that find a place, grow the group, inadvertently steal clients, get kicked out cycle five times. After which, we were just bright enough to start seeing a pattern.

So, back in January of this year, we opened up a space of our own, the Black Box, just below Times Square. It was only 1500 square feet, up on the fourth floor of an old building. I cash-flowed the place myself, unsure whether it was a really dumb idea to have just opened a gym, unsure of whether anyone might actually show up.

But show up they did. And so did their friends. People would get results and brag about it, and now, ten months later and with zero advertising, we have more than a hundred members and nowhere near enough space.

My brother David very kindly took some time out of running his real estate development company to play unpaid broker, and helped find us a new space. We're still trading lease documents back and forth, but by December 15th we're hoping to be in our new home.

This second Black Box is nearly six times the size, and on the ground floor (which is good, as we inadvertently knocked down part of our downstairs neighbors' ceiling in our current space with all of our jumping around). This time through, the stakes are higher. And so is the rent. I'm equally unsure whether opening this considerably larger space will turn out to be a really dumb idea.

But, as they say in CrossFit: get some, go again.

Footsy
Filed November 12, 2007 4:39 PM.

Here's something I don't often admit: I was a ballerina.

Okay, technically, I was a danseur. But still.

My mother, who did masters work in dance at Stanford, enrolled me in ballet at a very young age. And I loved it. I was good at it. I danced for years, until, presumably, the fear of cooties contamination from such a female-dominated pursuit caused me to rebel.

Looking back, of course, I realize I should have stuck it out a few more years. Post-cooties, I would have been one of the very few straight guys surrounded by a swarm of lithe women in spandex.

But, anyway, I stopped. Still, to this day, I often look down and catch myself in first position. I have terminal, intractable duck feet.

About a month ago, I badly sprained my ankle. Seeing me hobbling around on crutches and air cast, a physical therapist friend pointed out that my 'everted feet' might be to blame. He sent me a copy of the Egoscue Method, in the hopes that fixing my post-ballet posture might save my ankle from a repeatedly sprained fate, and similarly protect my knees - the next joint to go in what appears to be a fairly standard progression.

And, well, I think he might be right. Egoscue's theory is persuasive, and though I've only been doing the exercises for about a week, and so can't yet vouch much for the results, I already feel better. I'm standing a bit more solidly, with my joints squarely aligned from my ankles up through my shoulders and neck.

His other books, Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC also seem to have garnered rave reviews. So, if you find you're not standing how you'd like, or if you have pain in your back, your shoulders, your knees or your wrists, they might be worth a read. I'll post a further review after I've had a chance to do the exercises for another month or two. But, in the meantime, for ten bucks a pop, seems certainly worth checking out for yourself.

Merde!

DOMS
Filed August 30, 2007 5:50 PM.

Most of the time, I no longer really get sore from working out.

Except for from workouts involving walking lunges. Enough of those, and - though they don't seem too bad at the time - for days after, I can barely walk.

Take the deceptively simple "400m walking lunges for time": find a track, start a stopwatch, and time how quickly you can walk in lunges around that track - 400 meters.

The last time I did this one, I was so sore the next day that I missed my subway stop. I was literally unable to stand up. I had to wait for the woman next to me to get off so that I could slide along the seat, and hoist myself by the bench-side railing.

The workout cropped up again two days ago. And, indeed, yesterday I was brutally sore. But today, for whatever reason, I'm far, far worse.

That coincided, of course, with the first time this year my office elevator has broken down. So, for a slew of meetings, about ten times so far today, I've had to haul myself, slowly, slowly, up and down all six flights.

Normally, I could take those six flights without even losing my breath. But, today, I reach the top (or worse, the bottom, as descending is even more excruciating) bedraggled, sweating through my shirt, and smelling vaguely like wet dog.

I'm sure the bankers I've been meeting can't help but have been impressed.

Effaced
Filed May 21, 2007 1:42 PM.

This weekend, the gym I co-own hosted a seminar with kettlebell guru Steve Cotter. The event was great, and brought in fifty or so folks, ranging from a Navy SEAL and a member of the New York FBI Swat Team through to a couple in their late 60's.

One thing I've noticed about the people our gym, and seminars like this one, tend to attract, is that they're actually really, really humble and friendly. It's something I noticed, too, in the world of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts fighting. Take Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, who's a member of one of our sister gyms, and a world MMA champion. And also an amazingly nice guy.

He's a strong contrast with a lot of Tae Kwon Do or Aikido black belts I've met, who seem proud to proclaim themselves the second coming of Bruce Lee. Or with the body-building mooks at most Gold's Gyms, who do their best to condescendingly freeze out any less steroidal folks unfortunate enough to walk into their facilities.

In both of those situations, as there's no reality check on performance, it's easy for folks to start eating their own dog food, believing they really are as good as it gets. But in a mixed martial arts gym, anyone training is all too aware that, on a given day, some guy with no formal training but a natural right hook might walk in the door and knock one of the most seasoned fighters onto their ass. And, similarly, at CrossFit NYC, the top ranked finisher of a workout one day might the next place 'DFL' - dead fucking last.

It's a good reminder that, in real life, no matter how good you are, there's always somebody better. And no matter how well you do some things, there are others at which you, in short, suck balls. It can even keep a self-aggrandizer like me from believing his own hype. Which means it's, undoubtedly, some strong - and hugely beneficial - medicine.

[I haven't really been pimping out CrossFit NYC on this site, as the gym has been growing almost faster than we can handle without any outside effort. Still, if you're looking for a great community, the most effective and efficient way to get into world class shape from wherever you're starting, or just a quick route to looking hot in a bathing suit, stop on by.]

Get Some, Go Again
Filed January 11, 2007 4:12 PM.

While I'm using this blog as a bulletin board to announce various facets of my life: CrossFit NYC, the workout group I've been helping run, just opened a gym of its very own, The Black Box, in midtown Manhattan.

The gym is essentially a nonprofit, so I don't make any money by pimping it out. Instead, I just honestly believe CrossFit is simply the most effective and most efficient way to get in excellent shape.

We have CrossFit NYC members of every fitness level - from military special forces guys on through to eighty-year-old grandmothers - and as I'm fairly sure you fall somewhere between those two, you should fit right in.

The CrossFit approach has been praised in publications from Skiing Magazine to Men's Fitness (though, conversely, the NY Times did make us sound a bit like whack-jobs). And we have member testimonials galore (consider an attorney who came to us barely able to do a pullup, and was banging out sets of nearly twenty inside of eight months).

So, come on down, and give it a try. Classes are free throughout January, giving you the perfect chance to actually stick to your New Years resolution for a change.

To the Pain
Filed August 4, 2006 1:30 PM.

One big disadvantage of having my younger brother here in New York is that we often work out together. Which, in some ways, is an advantage - working out with someone else always being more fun than working out alone. The problems set in when we start competing with each other. Because, after twenty-some years of practice, the two of us have honed to an art the act of pushing far more than we sanely should, just to edge the other out.

This was made particularly clear yesterday, when the CrossFit Workout of the Day called for maximum weight deadlift attempts. [A deadlift, for those not familiar, essentially involves picking a weighted barbell up off the ground, then putting it back down again. Cf.]

So, we started with the bar and a 45 pound plate on either side, and proceeded to pile on additional weight after each attempt. There's a point somewhere after adding two such forty-five pound plates on each side that, as you stand up, the metal barbell visibly bends. And, it was about at that point that other people nearby began to stop their own workouts, gathering to watch us go back and forth, back and forth, each time adding more and more weight to the bar.

In the end, as he does about half the time these days, my brother edged me out, though not before we had well crossed the 300 pound mark. But, today, we're both the losers. I, for example, am typing this standing, because my legs are far too sore for me to lower myself into the chair.

They say love hurts; apparently, that's doubly true for the brotherly sort.

To the Pain
Filed June 4, 2006 2:38 PM.

With all the craziness of the past few months, my workout schedule has been erratic at best. Yet, despite that, I've continued to teach a couple of CrossFit classes each week.

There's a CrossFit saying that 'men will die for points' - meaning that, given a bit of competition, people push themselves far, far harder than they would alone. I find that's doubly true when leading a class, weighed down with the vague idea that whatever instructor street-cred I possess stems entirely from my ability to demonstrate exercises and blaze through workouts well enough to inspire the rest of the class.

Fortunately, years of competition with my younger brother instilled in me the ability to push myself far harder than wise, for the sake of shaming others. So, in class, regardless of my current overall fitness level, I put up more than my body weight in the Snatch or Clean & Jerk, do twenty-rep sets of handstand pushups or clapping pullups. (Yes, clapping pullups.)

When I'm working out regularly outside of class, that's fine; the instructor days don't really make a dent. But, at times like this, when lax workout schedules leave me sustaining in-class effort with nothing but grit and curse words, the day after, I'm inevitably a mess.

Today, for example, I could barely lift myself out of bed, started the day unable to squat down sufficiently to pick things up off the floor, unable to raise my arms above shoulder level.

But, perversely enough, that pain got me to the gym. First because, contrary to conventional wisdom, pushing through a workout when sore inevitably leaves me feeling far better by the end than when I started.

Second because, unless I get back onto a regular workout schedule, I'm going to feel like this after every class I teach. And I'm pretty sure I don't have the Advil budget to make that work.

more than one way to
Filed February 2, 2005 12:04 PM.

A little while back, I plugged CrossFit's Workout-of-the-Day as the best approach I'd found for high-level athletic training. I still think it is. And I'm even more impressed that they put up their WotD for free. So, to support them, I recently subscribed to their monthly journal, which talks through some of the theoretical underpinnings of their approach.

The latest issue, which I received yesterday, is all about gymnastics, about how great gymnastics movements are for developing general fitness. And, in the journal, they suggest that CrossFitters add a gymnastics stunt to their warm-ups, to learn them one at a time. Looking over their list for one to add in, I noticed they included 'skin the cat', which I remember hating, hating, hating when I last did gymnastics, at seven or eight years old. So, naturally, 'skin the cat' was the first one I tried.

For those who've never seen it, skinning the cat looks like this. Basically, you start in a regular pullup position, lift yourself into an inverted pullup position (where your legs are pointed up at the ceiling - the first frame in the photo), then keep rotating through. If your shoulders are flexible enough, you can roll all the way forward to an eagle grip (the last frame in the photo); if your shoulders are strong enough, you can then reverse the movement from that eagle grip position and flip back through the motion in the opposite direction to end up in a regular pullup again.

And, in short: Holy crap, I can totally do it! I can do it repeatedly! I could totally kick seven-year old me's ass!

anti-lardass service journalism
Filed January 7, 2005 4:35 PM.

If your New Years resolutions included 'start going to the gym', I'd suggest you instead take the cost of two month's membership and pick up a kettlebell (along with an instructional DVD). Small enough to wedge away in even the tiniest New York studio, they give a remarkably effective strength and cardio workout in ten or fifteen minutes - less than the time it probably takes for you to get to the gym, much less start exercising.

And, for those of you who've been working out (more or less) consistently for the past year, head over to CrossFit and start following their Workout of the Day. Usually under a half hour in length, it will still convince you quickly that you're nowhere near as fit as you thought.

ass whoopin'
Filed April 14, 2004 11:34 PM.

Today, after fight practice, a bunch of the guys I train with crossed over to the other side of the gym to spar for a bit with the New York Russian Sambo Team - Sambo being the former USSR's version of Judo.

I ended up paired with a guy named (I kid you not) Vlad, a large Russian who seemed to think it would be an easy couple of matches. Much to his (and his coach's) surprise, however, I went 2-1 in the three rounds against him, tapping him out with a choke and then an armbar in the first two before getting sloppy and tired in the third and opening myself up to a an ankle lock that left me hobbling the rest of the way home.

Still, there's nothing like testing your fight skills against a large and uncooperative opponent to see that your training is actually paying off. Vlad seemed impressed and vowed to drop in for a couple of our classes; if he does, I'm pretty sure I deserve a cut of his training fee.

spiderman, spiderman
Filed March 19, 2004 10:06 AM.

Yesterday, I headed over to Paragon Sports, New York's finest sporting goods store, to buy a new rock climbing harness. Which, in my mind, was money very well spent. Sure, in lots of sports, ailing equipment can limit the quality of your game - a dented bat, for example, can drop yards and yards from your best home run swing. But in climbing, as in very few other sports, equipment reaching the end of its life can rather quickly have you reaching the end of your own. Not relishing the idea of plummeting to my death, making sure my safety equipment is in prime form always strikes me as well worth the time and money.

Hence heading to Paragon to buy a new harness. Based on how and where I climb, with the help of the salesman I narrowed my choices down to two main contenders: the Petzl Calidris and the Black Diamond Focus. As both would cover the full range of situations where I hope to use the harness, the decision was mainly one of comfort. How would they feel after a day of wear? I strapped on both pairs in turns over my jeans trying to judge, but the fit of a harness when walking around is vastly different from the fit of that same harness after it stops a fifteen foot fall. The wedgie (or worse, 'melvin') potential is hard to explain to those who've never felt the effects of a bad harness first hand. In my case, let's just say that a borrowed harness once left me hoping I'd still be able to have kids.

So, wanting to avoid purchasing such a harness myself, I asked the salesman if there was anywhere I could actually test out the fit by hanging. Indeed, it turned out, there was a rope attached to the store's ceiling for just such a purpose, though, oddly, it was nowhere near the climbing department, nor even near hiking and mountaineering in general, but rather hidden in a distant section full of backpacks and book bags.

Clearly, few people had actually used this test rope, and for good reason, as it ended about six feet above the ground, making clipping on the crotch-level harness a rather onerous task. I had to climb the rope, arm over arm, then hold myself up with one hand while clipping in with the other. Unattaching to switch harnesses required the same process made even more difficult in reverse, and going back and forth several times between the two certainly provided my workout for the day. Waking up this morning, my back and biceps were sore to the point of painful.

Still, the effort was well worth it, as, when hanging in them, the Petzl turned out to be vastly more comfortable than the Black Diamond, making the choice easy. Plus, as an added bonus, it's hard to overestimate the joy of swinging, Tarzan-like, over the heads of shocked and unsuspecting little kids shopping for backpacks.

shape up - part 2: eat like a caveman
Filed March 3, 2004 1:28 PM.

In the last section, I explained why eating old-school, waaaay old-school makes sense: our bodies evolved for it, and function much better when we do. Paleothic eaters, like more modern hunter/gatherers, were lean, fit, and free of most of the chronic diseases that plague society. So what, exactly, did they eat?

Well, lots of different things. Obviously Paleolithic hunter/gatherers in the heart of Africa ate wildly differently from those living in the Swiss Alps or along the coast of Alaska. Fortunately for you, with the miracles of the modern food system, you likely have access to the vast majority of what any of them ate. Unfortunately for you, you also have access to all kinds of other items that almost certainly didn't show up at Paleo dinnertime. What makes the cut? First, two rules of thumb:

If you were stuck out in nature with nothing but some sharp sticks and rocks, would the food still be available to you?
Could you eat it raw, unaltered and unprocessed, and still extract the nutrients from it without becoming sick?

If you can answer yes to both, the food fits. That doesn't mean you have to actually procure the food yourself using rocks and sticks. Similarly, that doesn’t mean you have to eat it raw. (In fact, given the number of bacterial contaminants in today's food system, eating uncooked meat, poultry, fish or eggs is probably a very bad idea). You just need to choose the foods where you could if you had to.

Functionally, those two questions boil down the world of food into six very easy guidelines about what you should eat:

All the lean meats, fish and seafood you can eat.
All the fruits, nuts, berries and nonstarchy vegetables you can eat.
No cereals / grains.
No legumes.
No dairy products.
No processed foods.

That's it. A paragon of simplicity. Of course, the tough part is actually following those guidelines day to day. To that end, a few relevant questions:

1. So how long do I have to eat like this?

Try this question instead: how long do you have to brush your teeth? Obviously, as long as you'd like to keep your teeth. Similarly, you need to eat Paleo as long as you'd like to stay fit and healthy.

2. Whoa, whoa, whoa! So you're saying I can never again eat chocolate cake or a slice of pizza?

God no! Yesterday evening, I met Krissa at the Magnolia bakery, and you can be damn sure I didn't pass up eating a couple of cupcakes because of some caveman guidelines. This is where most diets get ugly. People follow Atkins or South Beach or whatever obsessively for a few weeks. Eventually, however, the cravings add up to the point that they basically crack and end up eating an entire carton of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting. Then they beat themselves up about being unable to follow the diet and simply quit trying.

Instead, I recommend shooting for eating 90% of your meals Paleo. I've been hitting that level myself, and it seems to be more than enough to create great results. If you end up at a nice restaurant, by all means, eat dessert. But a Harvard study about a decade back showed that most people eat the same twelve meals again and again. Replace (or modify) those with Paleo-friendly alternatives and you can hit the 90% mark exceedingly easily.

But, if you're jonesing for some item of food, eat it. Nobody ever got fat at a single meal. It's what you do most of the time that generates most of the results.

3. No grains? So is this one of those low carb diets?

No. Actually, the avereage hunter/gatherer got between 30% and 40% of their daily calories from carbohydrates (not far from the 45% to 50% in the average US diet). The difference is simply that the carbohydrates they ate (in the form of fruits and vegetables) were much healthier than the relatively nutritionally empty (and glycemic load heavy) ones in refined grains.

As compared to Atkins or any other low-carb fad diet, the Paleo approach has more protein and carbohydrates, less fats overall, though more healthy fats and a better Omega 3 to Omega 6 fat balance. Plus it naturally includes vastly more fiber and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).

4. But all the lean meats, fruits and vegetables I can eat? Don't I need to cut calories to lose weight?

Not really. Despite what Weight Watchers would have you believe, metabolism isn't a simple linear system where calories gained = calories in - calories out. Foods are subject to enzymes called partitioning agents, which decide what to do with the incoming fuel - use it for immediate energy, store it as fat, flush it out of the system, etc - and different types of foods inact partitioning agents in different ways. In other words, decades of research have shown that what you eat is significantly more important than how much. Additionally, as fruits and vegetables contain lots of fiber, they have very low calorie density - you can eat a lot of them without getting an unreasonable number of calories in. Similary, as protein and moderate amounts of fats activate the satiety sensors in your digestive track, your body naturally tells you when you've eaten a good amount of lean meats and seafood, no conscious calorie restriction or other deprivation needed.

5. What do I do if I'm a vegetarian?

This one's tough. The reality is, you were made to eat other animals as part of your diet - that's why you have those sharp front teeth. You can certainly eat Paleo sticking to just eggs and seafood as protein sources. If you're strictly vegan, though, you really can't make the diet work. (If you are, I'd suggest you at least take a moment to thumb through the Beyond Vegetarianism site, which presents, very level-headedly, some of the nutritional problems vegan and fruitarian diets present.)

6. Won't eating this way mean really simple, bland meals?

Definitely not. For a slew of Paleo-friendly recipe ideas, check out Paleo Food.

More generally, for further information about eating Paleo, and the science behind the idea, you might wish to explore the PaleoDiet page.

So, in summary:

Eat all the lean meats, fish and seafood, fruits, nuts, berries, and nonstarchy vegetables you want.
Skip the grains, legumes, dairy products and processed foods.
Aim to stick with it about 90% of the time.
Get slim and healthy as a result.

Next up, a first look at exercise, the other half of the equation, in "Train for the Hunt" (or, as Greg prefers, "Walk Like an Egyptian".)

shape up - part 1: listen to darwin
Filed March 3, 2004 10:39 AM.

Take a look at Fido: lying on your kitchen floor, fat and arthritic. Then take a look at dogs in the wild: lean, muscular, with healthy teeth, bones and joints. That, basically, is the problem.

Like your faithful companion's, your body evolved to live, work and eat in the wild. For over 100,000 generations, your ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers. Then, only about 500 generations back, they domesticated themselves, completely changing the way they went about life. Problem is, in evolutionary time, 500 generations is chump change. Your genes are almost identical to your ancestors' from tens of centuries back. Somewhere along the line, how you use and feed your body, and how your body evolved to be used and fed, got horribly out of whack.

"So what?" I hear you say. Well, for a moment, let's take a look at the fossil record those way-back Paleolithic ancestors left behind. As Hobbes wrote, lives that were "poor, nasty, brutish and short," right? Well, no. Certainly, the average life span was shorter. But almost entirely because, research shows, of infectious disease and other now easily curable problems, especially among infants and children. Those Paleo hunter/gatherers who did make it through the perils of childhood (and past the ever-present danger of ending up as a sabre-toothed tiger snack) were remarkably healthy. Many lived surprisingly long lives, and virtually all of them were free from heart disease, cancer and stroke, today's three leading killers.

Medical records gathered at the turn of the century from the few remaining hunter/gatherer tribes show the same thing: lean, physically fit people almost entirely free from the chronic diseases that plague the civilized world. Interestingly, in every one of those tribes, as their people moved to a modern diet and lifestyle, the health advantages disappeared, the populations quickly rising to obesity, cancer, stroke and heart attack rates on par with any other group's.

An increasing body of research bears out the obvious conclusion: eating and living the way our bodies were evolved to makes us leaner, fitter, and less susceptible to chronic disease. But what exactly were we evolved to eat and do? Check back for part two, "Eat Like a Caveman" for a look at the food end of the equation.

shape up - introduction
Filed March 2, 2004 2:26 PM.

With the recent spate of warm weather, it feels as though spring is already upon us. Which means one thing: less clothing. And, with bathing suit season just a few months further, the likelihood of much less clothing in the near future.

Which, so far as I can tell, is the main motivation behind getting in shape: the desire to look good naked, or in some scantily clad approximation thereof. Of course, there are plenty of other reasons as well; living longer and healthier certainly spring to mind. Still, whatever your motivation, I hope you enjoy and benefit from this short series of 'shape up' posts about fitness.

Am I qualified to dispense advice on the topic? Probably not. But as there's nothing like the specter of getting beat up in front of large crowds (the joy of competing in full-contact combat sports) to keep you motivated, over the past five years, I've methodically examined the science behind all kinds of fitness ideas. Then I've practiced what I'm about to preach, and I've been impressed by the results. With fairly minimal time and effort, I've managed to push myself into the best shape of my life, keeping my body fat at 6-8% year round, and ending up faster, stronger, more flexible and generally better feeling than I've ever been in the process.

While I'm hoping to flesh out ideas on training for athletes interested in high-end competition elsewhere, this series is a bit more narrow in scope. In short, it looks at the question, "what's the very least I can do to get into excellent shape?" I hope you not only enjoy it, but put some of the ideas to work in your own life. I think you'll be impressed by the results.

glass joe
Filed February 7, 2004 3:48 PM.

This morning, after several months off, I returned to Ronin Combat Athletics to resume mixed martial arts (i.e. "no holds barred") training. I'd been working out regularly during my time away, so at least I was rarely left winded, but there's no amount of throwing around weights that can prepare you for being actually thrown around yourself. I came home this afternoon with an assortment of cuts, bruises, aches and pains likely to stick with me for at least the next few days. By which time, I'll head back in for another practice and start the cycle of suffering all over again.

No pain, no gain.

[Side note: oddly, though most of the people who train at Ronin are well over six feet and two hundred pounds, today was apparently the Lollipop Kid special. Aside from one really tall guy (who we nicknamed Gulliver for the day), the rest of the group was comprised of literally all the Ronin fighters under 5'8". Which, while I would have though would be easier, was actually tougher, as we had apparently all developed the same dirty tricks and leverage-(rather than strength-)based techniques. That made squaring off against people my own size sort of like fighting fire with fire. Still, I can at least finally understand why the really big guys hate to spar with me; constantly keeping pace with fast-moving little pit-bull types really tires you out.]

dedication
Filed August 13, 2003 11:56 PM.

While most people would let the tropical locale throw off their workout routine, I've managed to keep my nose to the grindstone, sticking to a strenuous circuit training program: beach, pool, hot tub, pina colada, repeat.

Exactly Filed March 26, 2008 3:15 PM.

Get Fit: Introduction Filed January 8, 2008 5:48 PM.

Bigger and Blacker Filed November 19, 2007 6:18 PM.

Footsy Filed November 12, 2007 4:39 PM.

DOMS Filed August 30, 2007 5:50 PM.

Effaced Filed May 21, 2007 1:42 PM.

Get Some, Go Again Filed January 11, 2007 4:12 PM.

To the Pain Filed August 4, 2006 1:30 PM.

To the Pain Filed June 4, 2006 2:38 PM.

more than one way to Filed February 2, 2005 12:04 PM.

anti-lardass service journalism Filed January 7, 2005 4:35 PM.

ass whoopin' Filed April 14, 2004 11:34 PM.

spiderman, spiderman Filed March 19, 2004 10:06 AM.

shape up - part 2: eat like a caveman Filed March 3, 2004 1:28 PM.

shape up - part 1: listen to darwin Filed March 3, 2004 10:39 AM.

shape up - introduction Filed March 2, 2004 2:26 PM.

glass joe Filed February 7, 2004 3:48 PM.

dedication Filed August 13, 2003 11:56 PM.