All You Need to Know About Weightlifting for Size

Weight Training: HYPERTROPHY
By: Randy Goodman, BA Kinesiology

For a couple reasons, we're going to start this weight training series by focusing on the "Hypertrophy" column of the chart. The bodybuilding protocol. First of all, this is what most people think of when they think of weight training. Going to the gym to get your swole on, bro! The other reason is in a periodized athletic program, an athlete that wants to put on muscle should do so immediately after the end of a season, as far away as possible from the next competitive season. This is due to the slow, unathletic nature of hypertrophy training and the risk of injury that is associated with attempting to perform athletic movements while muscle fibers are broken down. Basically, athletics and bodybuilding don't mix so you do your bodybuilding first before you get fast, agile and powerful.

Variables

Load- Amount of weight lifted in lbs or kgs.
Rep- Lift weight one time up and down.
Set- A given number of reps done at once without a break.
Duration- Estimate of how long a set should last.
Speed per rep- Tempo of one lift. Time up, time at top, time down, time at bottom of the lift.
Rest- Between sets and between workouts


When it comes to weight training, these are the variables that are manipulated to achieve the desired outcomes of power, max strength, hypertrophy or muscular endurance. 

Break Down Muscle Fibers

When we look at the Hypertrophy column we can see that high training volume, moderate to heavy weight, and short inter-set rest periods are associated with muscle growth. The goal is to break down the muscle fibers during the training session and allow them a full week of recovery to repair and build back up bigger and stronger.

How Much Weight to Lift

The load percentage refers to the amount of weight you lift in relation to your 1 rep max (1RM). The process of finding out how much you can lift for 1 rep is not recommended for beginners. The important thing to know is that you want to be lifting a weight with good form for 8-15 reps. No more and no less. You should "fail" within that rep range. Because you are aiming to fail (to unsuccessfully lift the weight on your own) on your final one or two reps, it is highly recommended you use a spotter. A spotter is a lifting partner that helps you safely get through your final reps in a set. Those failure reps can induce major trauma on muscle fibers and help yield the size gains you are looking for.

Single Workout Volume

Each time you lift the weight 8-15 times, you have completed one set. Perform 3 or more sets per exercise then move onto the next exercise. Perform 4-5 exercises per muscle group with 60-90 seconds rest between sets. The idea behind the short rest is that you want to hit the muscle before it's fully recovered to inflict as much trauma on the muscle fibers as possible. This is a key difference in training for size verses training for maximum strength or power. You break down the muscle fibers and when your body repairs them they are built back up bigger and stronger to adapt to the stress of the lifts.

Lifting Tempo and Types of Lifts

The "Speed per rep (% of max)" for bodybuilding is set at 60-90. To simplify this, use a count of 2 seconds up- 1 at the top- 2 down- 1 at the bottom (2-1-2-1). In other words, use a slow deliberate tempo that promotes muscle fiber demolishing time under tension.

When you’re picking exercises for a workout you want to perform 2-3 compound exercises first. Compound movements are exercises where more than one joint is moving through a range of motion (ROM), like a squat, dead lift, bench press, or shoulder press. These movements allow you to move heavier weight which is key for building muscle. You then “finish” the muscles with isolation exercises, where only one joint is moving through a ROM, that allow you to safely feel out or concentrate on the muscle fibers you are working. These include exercises like leg extensions, bicep curls and chest flys. While performing isolation exercises you should be attempting to achieve a deep mind/muscle connection, picturing the muscle fibers as they lengthen and shorten and fill with blood during each rep.

Example of a Weekly Training Split

Monday: Legs, Lower Back

Tuesday: Shoulders, Forearms

Wednesday: Back, Biceps

Thursday: Chest, Triceps

Friday: Core, Maintenance

* Abs and Calves done daily between sets. These muscles respond best to excessively high training volumes. 

Weekend: Active recovery to promote blood flow and healing.

Hugh Jackman puts on muscle for another Wolverine role.

Muscle Soreness

Approximately two days after a muscle group has been hit, you will experience DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness). This is when inflammation associated with muscular repair is at its greatest. Muscles will be very sore and will lack function during this time. DOMS is felt more with Hypertrophy training than any other form of weight training.

Build Muscle to Burn More Calories

As an added benefit, as you pack more calorie burning muscle onto your frame, it becomes much easier to stay lean. First of all, it takes energy to repair muscle after you break it down during a workout. Secondly, larger muscles use more energy throughout the day. Combined with a nutrition program, a hypertrophy weight training program is a great way to burn fat and get that lean, toned look.

Summary

Squats using the hypertrophy protocol will help you build that big round booty.

To increase the size of your muscles you want high enough volume and intensity to sufficiently break down the muscle fibers. The body then utilizes protein building blocks called amino acids to repair and upgrade the muscle fibers in an attempt to adapt to the new stimulus. This is why it's important to continue to increase the stimulus from week to week. You need to continue to increase the stimulus to promote further adaptation and growth. Rest periods between sets are short enough that you hit the muscle before it has fully recovered from the last set in order to create maximum trauma in the muscle fibers. Inter-workout rest for a given muscle group should be about a week to allow for full recovery and adaptation. It is during rest that growth occurs. At this time it is normal to feel soreness and a decrease in function, with soreness peaking about two days after the workout (DOMS). It is not recommended to perform athletic feats at this time due to risk of injury.

There you have it, once you have spent some time in the gym and know how to safely perform each lift, you can take this info and create your own hypertrophy program. This is the style of weight training that will add shape and curves to your body. Hypertrophy training isn't just for meat heads. Whether you're someone that wants to change how their body looks or an athlete that wants to put on some size, this is how you do it. You want that big booty or broad shouldered, V-shape torso? Don't want to get thrown around in the corners next hockey season? Follow this protocol and you will begin to gain lean calorie burning muscle mass within a month or so. Happy lifting!

Add Healthy Foods to Your Diet To Lose Weight

We know that weight management doesn't come down to simply calories in vs. calories out. But, it's a good place to start and it goes hand-in-hand with how hormones influence fat storage and ability to put on lean mass. Here, we give you a simplified approach to managing your weight. Basically we are saying, add a nutrient dense meal, like a smoothie, and you choose what foods that displaces. Here's how that works:

*TheGoodsMethod for Weight Management*

Find your basal metabolic rate (BMR- the amount of calories you naturally burn in a day) and use that as the baseline for the amount of calories you take in through your daily diet. You can accomplish this by using an online BMR calculator or a wearable fitness device.

Use a user-friendly app like Under Armor's MyFitnessPal to track diet calories (do this for at least a week). Once you know roughly how much food is suitable for you and what that looks like in real life, you can begin to tweak your diet. MyFitnessPal will also calculate your BMR and allow you to import workouts from your wearable heartrate/activity tracker.

If your body needs 2000 cals to operate on an average day, then take in roughly 2000 cals through your diet. From there, begin introducing nutrient dense, low glycemic index (GI) foods that make you feel good. Low GI foods don't cause insulin spikes that promote fat storage and lead to type 2 diabetes. Make sure your new foods taste good or else you won't keep consuming them. Because you only have a given amount of food calories you can take in daily, you will begin forcing not-so-healthy things out of your diet.

Once you are consuming more real whole foods- a variety of plants, healthy fats and proteins- and less processed foods your body will down regulate fat storage, you will find the intense simple carb (sugar) cravings dissipate, and you will begin to experience the benefits of a nutrient dense diet. 

Remember, we're playing the long game here, folks. Small positive changes stacked up over your lifetime add up!

Cheers!

RG

5 Tips For Establishing a Health & Fitness Resolution For the New Year

New year, new you!...hopefully. Right? "I'm gonna get myself in shape this year!" This is one of the most, if not the most popular New Years Resolutions, and undoubtedly one of most failed resolutions year after year. Here, I give you five tips to consider when setting up your health and fitness resolution so you don't end up high in January and low when it comes to that beach wedding in Mexico in June. 

1. DON'T TAKE THE ALL-IN OR ALL-OUT APPROACH

Before you start your new health and fitness regimen step back and look at how your life is structured, who you are as a person, how your current schedule can be altered, what your finances are, and what your relationships with family and friends look like. Then put your new plans to improve your health into the mix and look at how it will affect your life. If there are too many negatives that are attached to your good intent, then it is not going to be sustainable. Neglected family will let you know in a hurry and eventually your squeezed schedule will start causing you to miss workouts. Those of us who have been successful at adding a health and fitness practice to our lives do it with a realistic approach that is flexible. We may miss a few workouts in January, but we are still at it in April!

How many times have we seen the scenario where someone comes flying out of the gate in January, eating nothing but bodybuilder chicken and broccoli, showing everyone their pile of supplements that sits in the corner on their counter, going to the gym for two hours a day 4-5 days per week and posting #fitspo selfies on their social media pages? Then you see them in March or April and they have already quit and have excuses till Tuesday about why they aren't working out any more.

They are gone by March because their approach was completely unsustainable and out of character. Of course they weren't able to keep it up! Eating food you don't like is going to make you miserable. Going to the gym for ridiculous lengths of time is stupid and doesn't fit into the schedule of most adults. Buying copious amounts of supplements is expensive and unnecessary, and posting selfies showing everybody that you are in the gym is some sort of superficial effort to legitimize physical self worth that has nothing to do with long term health, function or longevity. What do you think we have in common here? All this shit is one big setup for failure! You are sacrificing so many other aspects of your life in order to do your gym thang that it ends up not being sustainable; family, finances, enjoyment to name a few. All for what? For a month or two where your friends are impressed because you have put on a front that this is how you live your life now? Not that it matters, but show your family and friends that you've sustained your new lifestyle for all of 2017, not just January/February, and they will be impressed.

2. MAKE YOUR RESOLUTION MEASURABLE AND FLEXIBLE

"I'm going to get in shape this year." "I want to lose my beer gut." Those are all well and good but, in my opinion, they are byproducts of achieving a measurable goal rather than the goal itself. They are subjective and narrow in focus and there is nothing in those statements that says how you are going to accomplish them. "I am going to do a 300-500 calorie workout, 15 days a month" is a better goal (or resolution) to make. When you make the measurable action the resolution, you can easily quantify whether or not you are attaining it. You either did the workouts or you didn't. That being said, if you miss a workout or even a week of workouts due to unforeseen circumstances it absolutely does not mean you have failed your new goal. You have made your resolution flexible by using a large enough measurement window, a month, so you can get right back on the horse and make up for missed workouts. Remember you're playing the long game here, folks. We're trying to win more weeks than we lose over the course of our entire lives. Accept small setbacks because they don't mean shit in the long run!

The cool thing about making real actionable items the resolution is that you don't have to worry about results. "Getting in shape" will take care of itself because it is a byproduct of you accomplishing your resolution. If you add 3 hours of physical activity a week to your life and keep everything else the same, your body will be forced to adapt to that input and you, for sure, won't look or feel the same 365 days later. Hell, if you add in three 7-minute workouts per week your body will change.

3. REVISIT YOUR GOALS MONTHLY, NOT YEARLY

If you are just getting started, ease into the change you are making in your life. Maybe your goal is 11 workouts in January, 12 in February, 13 in March and so on. At the end of each month you assess the pros and cons of the amount of time you allotted to your health and fitness progress and take them into account when setting your goal for the next month. If you allotted too much time to fitness and personal relationships are suffering because you aren't spending enough time with a spouse or your children, you have an opportunity to address that and make scheduling adjustments accordingly. Either move the timing of your workouts or scale back the amount of time so your life remains well rounded and nothing suffers.

Take that initial progress picture so you always have a reference of where you started and take one monthly along with a set of notes that allow you to compare where you're at currently in relation to where you started. The notes allow you to document setbacks and things that worked well for you in that month. Program a reminder in your electronic calendar and set some time aside to take your progress picture and document some notes. During this time you also set your new micro-goals for the upcoming month. Some examples of monthly goals may be to increase hip mobility, improve shoulder posture, or even to start growing a big ol' booty.

The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. It is very motivating to see you look and feel completely different than the person you were six months ago and a before and after is a clear way to accomplish that. It's also a great reminder that temporary setbacks don't put you back to square one. You can still see that you are miles ahead of where you were initially when you have your initial starting picture and documentation to reference.

4. FIND ACCOUNTABILITY

Whether it's a workout partner, a trainer, a spouse or a friend, find someone who is going to support you and hold you accountable for what you say you are going to do. You are waaaaaay more likely to stick to your health and fitness practice if you have support! Even the professionals use others to hold them accountable. My whole life I have had various lifting partners that I'd give permission to call me a dick if I didn't make it to a session. Now, my wife and I workout together in order to provide accountability to one another. Professional fitness models have built in accountability in that they won't get any more magazine covers if they start missing workouts. Runners won't win any more races if they don't get their roadwork in. Athletes get kicked off the team if they show up out of shape.

You may not be trying to win races or land magazine covers, but the idea is essentially the same. Your workout partner will probably find another partner if you stop showing up for them. If you're someone with pride, the shame you feel from letting somebody other than yourself down makes it that much more real and gives it some color that goes beyond the self-shame you're able to privately hide the back of your mind.

Surround yourself with like-minded folks, sign up for future competitions that you need to prepare for, join classes or groups where you see familiar faces weekly or use a personal trainer. The more ways you can find accountability the better.

5. TAKE A HUMAN HEALTH, FUNCTION, AND LONGEVITY APPROACH

This is the foundation of The Goods Method, where we practice things that are correlated with a body and mind that work well in all situations, stay disease and injury free, and last forever. The vanity stuff is a beneficial byproduct. There is nothing wrong with liking the way you look. That being said, do not enter the New Year with a goal that is oriented at building a figure that you perceive to be appealing to others. That is an unhealthy mindset and fuck what they think! Build a body that can bring you where you want to go and do what you want to do. Functional bodies and minds are sexy as fuck IMO! When you aim for function, your physiology takes care of itself. After all, it's harder to get shit done when you are hauling around 40 lbs of excess weight.

Another part of the health, function, and longevity equation I want to touch on is to be smart about how you train. I've been in the game a long time and seen it all. Guys folded and crushed by squat bars, shoulders blown out by doing Olympic lifts while fatigued, people flying off the back of treadmills, backs blown out by one too many 500 lb dead lifts. It's one thing to injure your self playing a sport or doing a challenging hiking expedition, but there is no reason to injure yourself in the gym, especially if you are just a regular guy or gal looking to improve your health.

Modern human beings and have evolved over 200,000 years (and ancestral origins over 6 million years) to move certain ways. We walk, we run, we jump, we throw, we pick shit up. You get the point, move like a damn human being! You are not a kangaroo that only hops without contra-lateral reciprocation (walking or running), you are not hoist that just lifts heavy things, you are not a monkey that just swings from things.  Each of these essentially does one thing. We, as human beings, do a variety of things. I'm not saying don't do any of those movements, but know that overuse injuries will arise if you get caught up in doing one movement pattern too much. Unless you want to end up with a blown out back or bone spurs in your elbow, you need to follow a few rules when you are trying to achieve optimal human health, function and longevity.

One, proper biomechanics and technique always come before increasing load. Two, remember your gains come during proper recovery, so seek out information on recovery protocol. Three, listen to what your body is telling you. If it hurts in a bad way, stop doing what caused the pain. Four, being under large overhead loads when you are blacking out does not correlate with long-term health. Olympic lifts, to be done in the 1-5 rep range when fully recovered, are for nervous system development, not cardiovascular conditioning. If you're training for competition purposes and need to push your limits, do it in a safe manner where slight faults in your form don't end in catastrophic results. Five, your human body works in a variety of ways, so have variety in your training. You will achieve balance in your body and avoid monotony and physical injuries by incorporating a variety of movement patterns on a variety and combination of planes. The fastest way to derail a health and fitness plan is to injure yourself, so be smart about how you train and seek professional tutelage if you don't know what you are doing.

Whether you are just getting started for the first time or looking to aim for some new goals in 2017, I hope this helps! Good luck to everyone in the New Year!

Note: This article was written and edited with input from my wonderful wife, Coach Evelyn.

Do you even Beast Mode, Brah? My Top Five Spartan Beast Tips for Noobs.

Those of you who I’ve pissed off or annoyed enough to want me to have keeled over and died on the side of Sun Peaks are going to have to wait until I find some other “fun” activity that 99% of the population thinks is “stupid.” Accompanied by my lovely support staff, Coach Evelyn, I drove my sorry ass out to Sun Peaks and completely surpassed any expectation of what kind of effort I’d be able to put forth in a 24 + km, 34 obstacle race on a ski hill and I completed the race in under 3 hours and 47 minutes.  Not only that, I managed to maneuver my pile of meat and bones through the unforgiving course injury free!

Now that I’m done (for now) fulfilling the competitive urges that boiled to the surface after having children, focusing on my career and rehabbing debilitating injuries, I’m ready to return to practicing fitness and nutrition more in the vane of health and longevity rather than performance. I plan on steering away from the kind and amount of workouts that cause excessive oxidative stress and get back to enjoyable short workouts that optimize my chances of staying disease free and living forever. Coach Evelyn has giant stack of custom workouts that I’ve got my eye on at the moment, so I think I’ll delve into those over the next little while. I hear good things about them.

 

So how did a big 200 lb buffoon like me manage to haul his bulbous ass, at a sub-four hour pace, around a course like the Sun Peaks Beast and bounce back feeling like he just did a heavy leg day a couple days ago? Here are my top five tips on how to conquer a Beast and not feel like a bag of dicks during or after the race:

 

1.       Have an established health and fitness practice. These are your day-to-day habits that you have formed over the course of months and even years. This is your foundation and it’s what all of your race preparation is based on. If you don’t have big biceps and eat 300 grams of protein a day, you aren’t going to be able to run a Spartan Beast! Wait, that’s my tip for picking up chicks at the beach like a boss. My day-to-day practice (not my performance practice) includes a high variety, plant-biased diet that that works for my body and a physical practice that develops my strength, power, cardio, balance, mobility and mind. Remember, this is a practice, not an end goal. Your practice is there to allow you to not only be as functional, long-lasting and disease free as possible, but to also put you in a position to reach goals you establish throughout your lifetime. Keep your practice variable, fun and sustainable! Eating the same foods and working out “till the blackness” every day isn’t a sustainable practice. We are looking for adventure, variety and enjoyment, not burnout and monotony when it comes to adopting a proactive health practice.

In the pain cave! My calf was cramping on an over/under log obstacle.

2.       Prepare yourself mentally and physically. This is such an obvious thing to say, but these races are going to mess with you. They are going to beat you down, scrape the shit out of your luscious skin, freeze your nips off and blister the feet you keep so cozy in your $200 loafers everybody at the office makes fun of behind your back. Precisely the reasons why we sign up for these events! We want to interact with some real-as-it-gets shit that makes us feel alive!

You are going to have to put yourself through a 6-8 week camp that is structured to beat you down, recover stronger, beat you down again and so on until you reach a crescendo of a bulletproof you that you step to the starting line with. Most strength and conditioning coaches agree that six weeks is a minimum starting point where you start to see real physiological adaptation to a training protocol. Start pounding pavement and get your ass over to your local Crossfit and let the coaches coax you into sweaty state of black-out a couple times a week. The workout I used to accomplish this is my own version of a hurricane workout (10 sets that consist of a 30 second max effort incline sprint followed by two 12 rep compound lifts). When you are out in the elements on the course grinding away, your muscles are going to rebel and cramp, your lungs are going to leave a taste of blood in your mouth and your vision is going to blacken around the edges. It is best you go through that in a controlled environment and learn to adapt to it so it doesn’t happen so readily on the course. I'm nowhere near considered a runner and I didn’t run more than 10 km at a time during training due to the time constraints of being a Dad, but be able to sustain locomotion for long periods of time and make sure your work that grip strength because it comes in real handy (cheesy pun intended) during OCR. Find ways to train that mimic obstacles you are going to face. There are 5 km OCRs almost every weekend during the summer, so grab some friends on get out for a “Spartan Spa” treatment once or twice to get a little taste of what OCR is all about. If you skip your race specific preparation and you attempt a Spartan Beast, your 4-6 hour race can easily turn into an 8-12 hour experience and, unless you planned on doing an OCR for that long, you are going to be one miserable little mud monster!

3.       Get your nutrition on point. Two words: whole foods. Don’t even take your grocery cart down the middle isles of the store. Stick to the perimeter and fill your cart with plants and dead animals that haven’t be fucked with. You get what the difference is between and leaf of kale and a “gluten free” bag of veggie chips is, right? Yeah, more of the former and less of the latter is what we’re going for here. Get yourself a good blender and start pouring copious amounts of blended plants down your gullet. A good spice rack and some dope recipes can really make a nutritious, whole food diet sustainable and enjoyable. Coach Evelyn is starting to become quite the whole foods chef, so I get some killer healthy meals these days. Everything you put in your body is to fuel your next workout or recover from the one you just did. Pizza Pops do not accomplish this even though they are delicious and make me nostalgic. Fluid intake should almost double when you are training for performance. Another reason why smoothies are so rad is that they contribute to your fluid intake. Your dopamine hits come from crushing burpees now, not buckets of ice cream!

In the three days before the race, when you have tapered back your training, this is your time to not worry about your sexy figure and pack glycogen (energy storage molecules) into your muscles. Basically, you’re going to eat your balls off during this time. Low glycemic index (GI) carbs should be consumed liberally at a ratio of 4:1 with protein. If you aren’t drinking at least 4 liters of water a day at this time, you’re missing the boat. Geek tip number one; the day before the race a five minute, high intensity workout has been shown in studies to allow more muscle glycogen to be stored, so get up and get moving before you start eating.

In race nutrition is not something you want to overlook. Your body is going to cramp, you are going to run out of energy and you can become severely dehydrated if you go out there without proper hydration and nutrition. I know some people can do these races without bringing nutrition because they are gritty as eff, but I also watched several people fall, writhing in agony on the side of the mountain because their muscles were involuntarily spasming and balling up from not being fueled properly. The research shows to optimize performance for events lasting longer than an hour (provided you aren’t a fat adapted athlete), you should be taking in simple sugars about every 45 minutes or so. Hammer or Clif gels will do the trick. Muscles will begin to spasm when pushing them to repeat high demand movements for hours on end. You want them cooperating with your nervous system as efficiently as possible. In your hydration pack you should be carrying an electrolyte mixture that is going to help you regulate intracellular hydration and keep your synapses firing efficiently. My second geek tip for you is if it’s too late and your calf or hammy is cramping, you can release the cramp by simply tasting salt. Crack open a high quality salt tab and put it under your tongue then rinse it out.

After the race, you won’t have much of an appetite, but it’s paramount that you get some food back in you to start your recovery and prevent injuries in the coming days. A ratio of 4:1 carbs to protein is ideal for replenishing glycogen stores and promoting tissue repair. My brother managed to have a pizza lined up for him at the finish line while I opted for fruit and milk.

4.       Geek out on gear. Get on the Google box and see what people are using for gear when they run a Spartan Beast. At a minimum you will need to find some compression gear (I wear full body compression), anti-chafe stick or rub, a hydration pack, merino wool or synthetic socks (no cotton!), trail runners with good drainage and grippy gloves if it’s cold out. I recently switched up my trail runners and tried a new minimalist hydration pack so look out for my reviews on those products in the near future.

Your choice of gear has the ability to make or break your race. A big part of your experience is going to be related to how comfortable you are on the course. One blister, rash or cut could completely occupy your mind and make life a living hell. So lube up those tootsies, pits, and gouch with anti-chafe and choose high-end gear that you have gotten used to by using it during training.

Me and my bro with our first green medal. It hurts so good!

5.       Have a support staff and get in touch with the online OCR community. My support was my amazing wife, Coach Evelyn. Preparing properly for an event like this can become a selfish endeavor and it’s going to take up a good chunk of your time and energy. Queue awesome, wonderful wife! She picked up slack with the kids, she prepped nutrient dense meals and she put up with me when I was grumpy and tired from training. Surround yourself with people that are going to have a positive impact on the outcome of your OCR success.When I got word that my younger, Crossfit kid, brother was going to run the race with me I got a huge mental boost. I was able to push harder during my last two weeks of workouts and on the course he definitely pushed me, especially on the way up the mountain. 

 

      If you got’em, use your kids as motivation to push through any adversity that you face in training and on the course. If you’re anything like me, you feel like a damn freight train when you think about your kids. My pain tolerance goes up and my willingness to quit goes down. Must be some sort of instinctual monkey genetics left in me or something.

 

Finally, the OCR community is growing at a rapid pace. There are online websites and courses, like Obstacle Dominator, on how to do each obstacle. The Spartan Race website has training and nutrition tips and most of the athletes, pro and amateur, are on social media spreading the mud-bro propaganda. Take advantage of it because you’re going to learn a crap load and it just gets you jacked up about OCR!

 

There you have it! My two cents on how to feel good going into, competing in, and coming out the ass end of your first Spartan Beast. Remember, you don't have to be a top level athlete to challenge yourself with something like this. You just have to have it in your mind that you can do it and then embrace the grind. I guarantee when you cross your first OCR finish line you are going to be hooked. I know it's got me! Hope to see some of you freaks out there next summer!