What were they thinking?

I've gotta start this one out with a topic unrelated to training, but more related to the lack common sense.

I got to the gym this morning and started my monday opening routine. Set up the debit machine, check for leaks, check to see if we have any clean towels to put out (usually never), and then head to mens locker room to dump the massive heap of dirt towels that builds up saturday night and sunday. Today was a bit different, before I even went to the change room I noticed that the laundry hamper was out in the hallway. So I expected a pile of dirty towels on the floor.
But thats not what I found. Nope. I found the garbage can to be loaded with dirty towels and garbage. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? DON'T BE SO GODDAMN LAZY. If you are too tired from your training just throw it on the floor. But the garbage can was loaded.
Very nice.

And moving right along, I want to give a shout out to my training partner Beartrap. He travelled 6 hours to compete in 4 events at the Woodstock Strongman. Every time you compete, you learn many valuable lessons about your skills, your strengths and weaknesses, and how well you prepared for the comp.
I just want to point out to you Trap, that you will shit your pants a few times, but hopefully you've got things figured out now. Saying and doing are 2 entirely different things.
Learn and move forward.

I've got a few good vids that I'm almost done editing and should have up on our website soon. Yes of course I will post them here too.
Especially once I get a hold of the video Shane made this weekend at Montreal Barbell, where he benched 600lbs. Congrats on the 600 club douchenstein. (among other great feats achieved this weekend)

And now it's time to blow my own horn. I bench pressed a PR of 385lbs RAW, on sunday.

That's pretty much it. I'm looking for someone to give me a great performance on the prowler and show us how well they deal with the prowler flu. To sweeten the deal. The first guy to push it till he pukes, will get a free T-shirt from me when we get a new batch.

The Long Haul

How long have you been hitting the iron pile? How long has it been since you seriously began training, with direction and a plan? A plan that has either been well thought out, or built by a fitness professional.

The reason I'm asking, is because lately I've noticed a lot of people in my gyms that are frustrated and dissatisfied with there results after only a month or three.
And these are people that we are working with directly and I know for sure there training is well planned and they are working hard.

Everyone wants to get to there Ultimate goal as fast as possible. I know I do. But the reality is, it often takes much longer than we ever expected. (If they reach the ultimate goal quicky, they've probably set there sights too low and/or have settled for less than desired result)
I've been at this game for over 10 years and I still haven't reached my ultimate goal.
The key is to set that ultimate goal, know exactly what it is, and then work backwards and set many smaller goals that will move you towards the ulitmate goal.

The timeline is different for everyone. How fast things happen depends on YOU. (and don't you ever fucking forget that!)
It depends on how much YOU are willing to sacrifce, how much YOU are willing to listen, who YOU surround yourself with, how strict YOU keep your eating habbits, how often YOU show up for your training sessions.
The speed of your success rests square on YOUR shoulders.

Set a small reachable goal, set a deadline and then do whatever it takes to get that goal completed. Start piling these little goals one on top of the other and over a period of YEARS, you can reach that ultimate goal.

Now that we've got that clear.

Have a great weekend.

Prolwer Season

You may remember the end of prowler season last fall. It was a sad affair.



Things are warm and for the most part dry and the prowler has been out a few times already.

I'm going to go on record and say that May will be the official start to the prowler season at Ultimate Fitness.



On a side note, I've been shipping prowlers all over the country, so I'm hoping we will see and hear of the prowler flu from all corners of Canada.



Last night was my 5th prowler session of 09. The first 2 sessions came in march, when the warm and rain cleared up the snow for a couple of days. I was getting pretty bored with the rower and we jumped on the chance to push. I can't remember what the protocol was but it didn't feel too bad.

Sessions # 3&4 came last week. They sucked. I felt like a true beginner. My legs were't co-operating and my lungs burned from start to finish.

I did single plate suicides for both sessions. We push in the one way street beside the gym and I use the parking spaces as markers for the suicides. Roughly 10yds per parking space.

(Suicides means you push to the end of the first parking space and back to the start, then without stopping, to the end of the second space and back, then all the way down (aprox 40yds)

and back.



Last night was the first night I dared to put my hands on the low handles. I did 2 singles (low/high) and 3 double ups (low/high) all with one plate per post.



Here's Sarah hitting a double-up last May at the EFTS compound

Things are coming around.



I noticed that Elitefts has put the call out for the most cases of prowler flu caught on tape. I'm going make sure the camera is out from now on to document our suffering and improvements.



You can buy a Canadian Made prowler HERE

Shouldering a load

For a lot of you out there, what I'm going to cover here is common knowlegde and pretty much goes without saying.

But for some, this is your wake up call!

Quite often, I have people (mostly men) tell me about how their shoulders are really sore and explain how the pain is near the front of the shoulder, right near the armpit.
My first response is usually a question. "How often do you perform rows, chins and face pulls?"

They answer, "what the hell are face pulls? I just bench 4 times a week and pump my biceps for 1 hour every day."

This is why your shoulders hurt kids. If you bench, a lot, and pump the gun show, you most likely have strong pecs and biceps. These muscles over power the smaller and neglected muscles of the upper back. The shoulders are also going to get a shit kicking from your horrible bench press form. This leads to what the doctors and science people refer to as "shoulder impingement". (They think they're so cool using their big book words)

How do you know if this is your problem?
1, You have a hunch back
2, Your shoulders almost touch together in the front
3, You walk around with imaginary lat syndrome
4, You bench press more than 2 days per week
5, Your upper arms are bigger than your upper legs
6, You always wear long pants to hide your peg like lower legs
7, Okay, I'm getting a little carried away, but I think you get the point.
8, shitty posture throughout the day

What can you do to avoid or reverse this problem?

-Make sure you do a lot of rows, and chins.

-Chins can be done almost everyday, even if it's just a set or 2.

-Make sure you get as much rowing volume in your upper body day as you can handle.

-Superset all your bench pressing with face pulls.

-Stretch the hell out of your pecs and biceps. Stretching your imaginary lats is probably a good idea too.

-Stop benching so goddamn much and let those sore shoulders heal up.

Playoff Beards

Fuck it, I'm growing a playoff beard. It's a great way to support the most exciting time of year when it comes to hockey. And a great excuse to look like a samsquench for a couple weeks.

As usual it's a mayhem monday. I got the bright idea to do some outdoor barbell lunges on Saturday in lieu of heavy event training at the Garage. I used a 135lb barbell and lunged down and back on the 100' long driveway at Pete's Garage.
Not extremely heavy, so I did 4 trips.

Needless to say I'm walking a little slow today.

The point that I want to convey here is that even though I wasn't able to beat myself to a pulp with the usual flurry of heavy event training, like stone lifting, farmers walks, yoke carry's and tire flipping, I was still able to get some forward progress.

Here's what a typical Saturday would look like:
Warm-up
Log jerks
Farmers walk, working up to a heavy weight (300+lbs per hand) or distance.
Atlas stones, either runs, reps or heavy singles
Tire fliping

This is what I did this Saturday to change gears a bit (mostly because I'm still nursing a fucked up back)
Warm-up
Light log press (no jerk pressing)
Kicked a soccer ball around for about 10mins
Barbell lunges
Arm over arm sled drag
running sled drag for cardio

I know how easy it would've been to just stay at home. But I wanted to show up and help out loading plates and coaching the other guys that train at Pete's Garage.
I ended up having a pretty intense leg session via the lunges and I feel that the movement that I did do has helped me improve my mobility in the tight hips and low back.

Lets review.

Don't be a pussy and stay home, get out and do whatever you can and then go and pat yourself on the back on the internet like any internet tough guy would.

Powerlifting Criticisms

Okay, most people, by now have heard about my wife and her powerlifting endeavors. She's getting pretty good. She's strong, and just starting to get better with the powerlifting equipment. (most specifically bench shirts)

We traveled to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan way back at the start of April so she could compete at the Canadian Nationals.

If I've discussed the results of this meet with you in person, you already know I was a fair bit dissappointed in her performance. I'm not really going to get into what went wrong (mostly because we are still not 100% sure exactly what the fuck up was on her squats)

What I am going to say is that while everyone thinks that second place is "oh that's great", it's not to Sarah or me. Even if she had won the gold on the lifts that she lifted, she would be pissed off. Powerlifting isn't about beating the other lifters in your weight class (actually it is, but there's more to it) It's about lifting the best lifts you have ever lifted. You can't control what the next person can lift, you can't play defence. All you can do is prepare yourself and lift your ass off on the platform.

Here's a clip of some of her lifts. I'm sorry that it has no sound. The sweet soundtrack that I laid down on this vid was apparently not suitable for Gheytube. Youtube is really outgrowing it's coolness. It's starting to get too scrambled with rules.

Still Kickin'

So..... I missed just over 1 month of posting here. That kinda sucks ass.

Not that I feel I need to justify myself to anyone but the shit-slide started out due to me not having any creative or productive thoughts to put down on the blog. Then it kind of spiraled further down the pipes as I fell out of the habit of hammering out daily ideas.

This is a good example of how developing good/productive habits is extremely important to becoming and staying succesful.

I broke the morining habit of hammering down my thoughts and the blog went to sleep.

Well this is the post that is proof to say I'm going to bring it back from the dead.

A lot has happened in the past month. It's been a whirlwind of chaos. And I've developed some new views and ideas that I will share here.

I also have a few vids and stories from competitions that occured recently.

So there it is. This is going to mark the beggining of the end of my shitnami of shitacular proportions.