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.

Health and Fitness Excuses I've Heard and Tips on How to Avoid Being the Person That Makes Them

"We’re going to make our body great again! We’re going to build muscle. We’re going to keep the bad stuff out and let the good stuff in and it’s going to be great. We’re going to be great. We’re going to make our body great again."

- Health and Fitness Donald Trump, probably

You want some real substance? Here I take four excuses that I have heard come out of people's mouths, call them lame, and give you some applicable tips on how to not be the person making the excuses. By now we all know that living a healthy life is more of a mental game than anything. I know what it's like to think you can overcome a mental struggle only to find yourself back a square one after thinking you've got it beat. Folks, sometimes we need to find the right approach and sometimes we need to reach out to others for help. I have found help for my struggles and I am here to help others conquer theirs.

"I didn't have time to make a smoothie so I just made some toast."...LAME! That excuse doesn't even make sense. It takes 3 minutes to make a smoothie and you are mostly in control of how long it takes. With toast you are at the mercy of your crappy toaster when it comes to how long it takes. If there is any difference in the time it takes to make toast vs a smoothie, it's negligible. What isn't negligible is the nutrient value of toast vs a well-rounded smoothie. Toast, muffins, and bagels are not breakfast. They are treats to enjoy on occasion or as part of a well rounded breakfast. They are addictive, inflammatory and shouldn't be consumed every morning if you don't want to be fat. If you feel hungry two hours after your smoothie, it could either be that you're addicted to wheat products- which, when digested yield morphine-like compounds that bind to your brain's opiate receptors- or your smoothie isn't well rounded enough. Your smoothie should have enough bulk, healthy fats and protein that it should satiate you for a few hours. An example of a good morning smoothie that tastes great and will hold you over looks like this: 1 generous hand full of kale, half cup pineapple, half cup mango, 1/2 scoop Vega vanilla protein powder, 1 scoop super greens powder, 2 tbsp chia seeds, 1 heaping tbsp coconut oil, ½ cup coconut water, ½ cup orange or apple juice.

This workout can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be.
It all depends on the effort you put in.

"I was going to work out but I was super busy and wasn't able to."...LAME! What, you couldn't find 7 free minutes to move your body? Seven minutes! That's it! I guarantee you were on your smartphone for at least an hour during the day. I am a father of two demanding toddlers, working a full time job, contributing to household chores, and running a side business and I can find time to work out for 7 minutes. Anybody can. Give your body 7 minutes to move, pump some blood around, heat up, and lube those rickety old joints. And don’t give me the “that’s not enough time to make any difference” line. I use this workout and it DOES make a difference. If you do three 7 minute workouts a week for a year your body is going to have to adapt to that hormetic stress. Three 7 minute workouts a week for a year works out to a little over 18 hours of vigorously moving your body. You are going to change physically, but more importantly you will change mentally. You will feel loose, energetic, and it will influence every decision you make, including what you decide to put in your face. Yes, you will choose foods that make you feel good about yourself if you exercise regularly.

“My back is killing me and my knees don’t like to bend anymore.”…LAME! Your back and knees are like that because you abuse the shit out of them by not moving them. Then, when your bros are watching you'll willingly grunt that barrel of oil into the back of your pickup by yourself so you look tough even though your body isn't even close to being ready to lift a heavy object. If you don’t use your body’s full ROM on a regular basis you are going to stiffen up. MOVEMENT IS MEDICINE. The way to fix your body is to move it. Not move less, not take pills…just MOVE! Right now I’m recovering from rotator cuff surgery (it was wrecked from all the stupid stuff I did in my twenties). I can barely move my arm. It hurts to move it. But guess what, the protocol that I have been prescribed to get full ROM and get rid of any pain is MOVEMENT. I have to move my arm every way that it's supposed to move in order to become pain free and fully functional again. I’ll tell you what the doc didn’t tell me to do, “don’t move it anymore and sit around eating cheesypoofs because you said it’s stiff and sore.” So move often, and move in a variety of ways under your own body weight as well as under load in a controlled environment. Use active (your muscles change related joint angles) and passive (keep muscles relaxed and use external source to change joint angles) techniques to move your body. Doing the 7 minute workout I mentioned above a few days a week goes a long way towards battling body pain and arthritis. I know this from experience.

Don't cripple yourself because you like treats.

"Well, I've been eating like shit and I haven't worked out in two weeks so I might as well just keep that going."...LAME! With this kind of thinking you are asking for a diseased retirement. When you take that kind of narrowed perspective and you allow two weeks to become so significant that it overshadows what should be a life-long practice, you're automatically set up for failure. Here's an analogy for you. Think of a sniper looking through a scope. He can only see one small portion of the big picture. When the sniper takes the shot at the target in his scope of vision he either knocks the target down or the target flees. Either way, if he just called it a day after one shot and didn't step back to regroup and focus on a new target he would be considered a terrible sniper. He wouldn't be very effective at contributing to the cause he's fighting for. That sniper's activities need to be guided by a wider perspective. He needs to take into account that the war he is fighting goes far beyond what is in his scope of vision. In the same way, you can't work out in January (knock down a scoped target) and quit in mid-February (target flees) and just hang’em up because the target no longer exists in your narrow scope of vision. You would never accomplish your ultimate goal of health, function and longevity. No, you step back and look at things from a broader perspective and refocus on the target you missed the first time or another target you want to knock down. In other words, your lifespan is the full war mission and map. You always revert back to the full map and mission objective where things are happening on a grander scale and then focus in on a target. That can be a short term goal like a race you want to run or a specific body composition you wish to achieve. Whether or not you succeed at knocking down that target, you revert back to the full map and continue focusing in on smaller missions that are going to help you achieve your ultimate goal of lifelong function and longevity.  You pick them off one at a time. At the end of each year you will have missed a handful of targets but you should have taken down a whole lot of them and developed a pile of successful strategies and tactics you take into the next year. If you eat crappy and don't work out for two weeks, you regroup and get the ball rolling again by consuming a few good smoothies and doing a few 7 minute workouts. You focus in on a small mission and use tactics that have proven to work for you. The bikini bod you want for vacation will always be there if your mission objective is lifelong health, function and longevity.

Stay healthy and functional so your senior years aren't a
 burden on you and your loved ones.

No more excuses for not striving towards health and function. If not for you, do it for your family and friends. Don’t end up crippled by your own actions. If you like eating snacks and drinking beer while watching other people move their bodies there are going to be consequences for doing that on a daily basis. Consequences will either come in the form of obesity and disease or a greater need for you to make sure you are getting exercise and eating nutrient dense foods when you aren't watching sports in order to mitigate the obesity and disease. Be aware of that and choose the latter. There are no free rides when it comes to gluttonous activities. If you like sports so much, then get out and play some. You shouldn’t be hobbling, obese and diseased by the time you are 50. I believe you should be able to enjoy quality time with your kids well into their adulthood and well into your senior years.  Just focus on what you have control over and practice things that contribute to function and longevity over the course of your entire life.

Asics Gel-FujiRunnegade 2 Review

Solomon Speedcross 3. Whether you're into hiking, OCR, trail running or bright colored shoes, the Speedcross 3 has been THE dominant go-to shoe for outdoorsy folks looking for a durable, water resistant runner that keeps you velcroed to the side of the mountain. I loved my Speedcross 3s and at one point I thought I'd never move away from them. But times have changed and I've had a chance to peek over the other side of the fence.

Before putting them through the grinder.

Enter the Asics Gel-FujiRunnegade 2! I fricken loved this shoe from the moment I slipped it on my foot. My feet had been in all sorts of trail runners shopping that day- Solomon, Columbia, Adidas, Nike- but none of them felt like the FujiRunnegade 2.

I digress. Here are the deets on why I love this shoe:

THE TREAD

They offer the same grip, if not better, as the Speedcross 3. The tread lugs are burly and they performed exceptional during a 24 km Spartan Beast. They dig in like a cleat and allow you to scramble up and down the steepest trails without slipping. Unlike other shoes, all of the lugs were intact after throwing everything I had at these FujiRunnegade 2s. None of them were cut, chewed up or missing. This shoe's performance on wet surfaces also gets an A in my opinion. Never slipped on wet rocks or logs.

THE FEATURES

Look how clean the interior of these babies stayed!

If you're looking for a shoe that keeps all things uncomfortable from snuggling up with your feet, then look no further. They offer a water repellent upper that minimizes water entering the shoe, but if water does enter it doesn't get stuck, making your shoes feel like they weight two pounds each- a problem I had with my Solomon Speedcross 3s. Asics has branded this shoe's water resistant upper material which allows water to drain as Plasma Guard.

The second feature that keeps your tootsies from getting intimate with sticks and grit is the sock-like fit. They don't have a tongue like most shoes. They are built more like a wet suit for your foot. Your foot enters what feels like a neoprene sock that seals up against your ankle, minimizing the chances of any foreign material entering the shoe. After running and crawling through knee deep water, not a single grain was to be found in my shoes at the end of my race!

THE FIT

Like I said, my feet and these shoes got along from the start. They don't have a huge heel drop (6 mm) like the Speedcross 3 (11 mm) I used last season which is important for me as I've moved away from a heel strike running style toward a mid-foot strike. That being said, they didn't feel like they lacked cushion or comfort. Because this shoe has such large lugs, you can feel them when you are on hard surfaces, but that feeling goes away once you step on a trail.

Muddy, but still intact.

The one concern I had when I was breaking these shoes in was the stiffness of the upper's Plasma Guard material. Where the shoe bends when your walk, I felt like it was digging into my foot beside the knuckle of my big toe. After a week of wearing the shoes, the stiff wrinkle in the upper softened up and stopped pestering my foot. It became a non-issue and unnoticeable during my race. To my delight, my feet came out the the 24 km race blister free and feeling great!

THE DURABILITY

After one Spartan Beast, there are no rips, tears or delaminations to report. Looking at the upper on this shoe going into my race I had my doubts that is would be able to stand up to all the pokers and sticks my feet would be acquainted with. There were a few instances where I distinctly felt a stick stab the side of my foot and after I washed all the mud off these shoes, there were no holes to be found. It'll be interesting to see if that durability holds up over a full season.

So there's my hot take on my new favorite trail runners. The price point is right in the ballpark with the other big players in the trail runner game. They outperformed my previous trail runner during obstacle course racing, which is about as hard as you can be on a pair of runners, and so far they haven't fallen apart. I know I kind of sound like a shill, but if you're in the market for a new pair of trail runners, the Asics Fuji-Runnegade 2 needs to be given serious consideration. See you on the trails!!!

All cleaned up looking like new!!!

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!

Don't Always Listen to Your Doctor

You ever take on something so foreign and outside of your wheelhouse that it scares the crap out of you? In a few days I will be in a situation I’ve never been in before. This Saturday I will be running a long distance race on a ski hill. But I’m not just taking on a distance I’ve never even come close to attempting before, I’m taking on the distance in an OCR (obstacle course race) format with stupid amounts of elevation change. In some sort of masochistic fever, I clicked my mouse, typed in my personal information, and hit enter on signing up for an event that will inevitably leave me cold, bloody and exhausted. The race is called a Spartan Beast. Over 24 kilometers and over 30 muddy, miserable obstacles designed to test the mental and physical fortitude of the group of fleshy humans who will congregate at Sun Peaks, British Columbia on that brisk autumn day.

If you’re reading this, you've probably made it here because you’re in the health and fitness circles or you’re a good friend that is helping me feel like my crappy writing efforts haven’t gone to waste. Those who know me, know I went through a traumatic event in March of 2012 that changed my entire outlook on life. I will save that story for another post, but it involved a broken knee and doctors telling me I could basically quit thinking about running any significant distances. At the time, I didn’t really have an inkling to run any distance longer than that needed to warm up for the hour I was going to spend in the squat rack. But, someone told me I couldn’t do something and I was triggered like a social justice warrior that was just told we only need two public bathrooms. I was offended! How dare they?!!!

Since those brutal days of physiotherapy in 2012 I’ve been spiting the doc and dabbling in the distance run game, going for the odd run here and there. I don’t overdo it because I know there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to pounding pavement, especially for someone running on a knee that was put back together with metal hardware after being shattered into pieces. The big 215lb brute traded in the muscle for a set of lungs and some semblance of an ability to deal with lactic acid (wish I had done this in my hockey days). I’ve scrapped my 500lb squats in exchange for a (mostly body weight) HIIT based program that gives me more energy and endurance and allows my body to freely function without dealing with nagging impingements and tweaks that come with putting up big-boy weight and not truly taking care of yourself.

Fast forward to September 2016; the “incident” has forced me to give up the power lifter routine and the bodybuilder diet (and thankfully the high parts-per-million farts) and trade those in for the protocol I currently follow. I now need to keep a more slender build in order to deal with my arthritic get-away-stick.  If I want pain free locomotion I need to stay under 200lbs and move in a variety of ways on a daily basis. Unloaded, non-linear movement is now a huge staple for me. Being sedentary and physically heavy is a recipe for pain for this beat up (stupid 20s!), middle-aged, meat vehicle. Now I’m this dude who uses HIIT training, regular mobility work and a decent plant-biased diet in order to live (somewhat) pain free.

So, if I have this crappy old arthritic robot-knee, then why the hell am I doing a 24km mud run on a ski hill? I am using this somewhat unhealthy event- an event chosen to scare the bejeezus out of me- as motivation to progress my health and fitness practice and end up with more of a net gain than I would if I didn’t have something to work towards. Even a health coach like me needs to find new ways to stay motivated.  I knew when I hit enter on my keyboard at the beginning of the summer that I could be in a dangerous situation up on Sun Peaks, September 24 2016, subject to extreme fatigue, acute injury or mental breakdown had I not taken care of myself all summer. Or, I could prepare myself accordingly and test our new protocol, TheGoodsMethod, to see how well it prepares a regular working father like myself to deal with extreme conditions.

I chose the latter! With a base of HIIT training (three days a week), a moderate amount of running and a diet that is designed to fuel performance I am in the best shape of my life! My leg that was literally folded sideways to where my left foot was sitting next to my left hip bone feels great. My body feels limber, energetic and balanced and, four years removed from not being able to walk, I’m ready to take on the Spartan Beast!

Create your own destiny, folks! It’s not up to others to decide whether or not you are able to do something! I didn't blindly listen to my doctor when he told me I wouldn't be able to run. I went out and found that answer on my own. With that said, I'm going for my last run before I taper for this race. See you ‘round!

Aroooo!!!