Injury Prevention

Exercises to Avoid:
This list will probably anger a lot of purists.  That is OK.  Most of these exercises can be passably safe if done completely perfectly while being observed by three or more people to correct your form, but avoiding them is easier and safer. 

       

      1.  Bench Press:  Easy to do improperly, and when done improperly, will eventually ruin -shoulders, elbows, and wrists.  No exercise inspires more dumb risks than the bench press.  The shape of the barbell and bench lead people into unnatural body positions, and the exercise’s notoriety causes plate obsession.

-Alternatives:  Floor Press (if you must), pushups, dumbbell press.

      2.   Barbell Shoulder Press:  Even Gregg ‘The Man Whose Arms Exploded’ Valentino had this to say about barbell shoulder press:  “It’s a great way to kill your shoulders.”

-Alternatives:  Dumbbell shoulder press, bench reclined to 70 degrees.  Rotational dumbbell lifts.

      3.  Behind the Neck Pulldowns/Pullups:  More shoulder killers.  Your arms are not supposed to go back that far.

-Alternatives:  Pretty much every back exercise that doesn’t involve pulling something onto or behind your head.

      4.  Leg Press Machine:  Great for your ego, terrible for your lower back.  Inspires poor form, muscle imbalances, and lower spinal injuries.

-Alternatives:  Lunges, Bulgarian split squats.  Both of these hit stabilizers much more effectively


Again, many of these exercises can be done safely.  But most often they are not, and cause severe repetitive stress injuries at best, or catastrophic damage at worst.  I always cringe when I hear about someone trying for their 1 Rep Max in any of these exercises. 
               
Number and plate obsession come entirely from a need to dominate, rather than a desire to create.  Working out is not about battling iron, but about creating a new you, someone who takes shape with each movement.  In the words of Henry Rollins:

“It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong. When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn't teach you anything. That's the way the Iron talks to you. It tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.”

Workout Things That Took Me YEARS To Learn (that you can know in five minutes)

Workout Tips That Took Me YEARS to Learn

The 7 Day Cycle:  I’m going to ask you a simple question:  Who invented the week?  People did, your body didn’t.  This means that although it fits better into our schedules, the seven day lifting cycle is a completely arbitrary one.

More Work = Bigger Muscles:  Muscle grows not in the gym, but outside the gym, during rest and sleep periods.  Most workouts are designed by people on steroids, FOR people on steroids, and they trickle down to the normal people like you and I.  The human body doesn’t get that much better at repairing muscle and joints, and the rate is set by the internal organs which act as filtering mechanisms (not nuclear power plants) for the raw building blocks of the human body.  Proper cycling time PLUS weeks off are incredibly important.  Three rules for putting on a consistent amount of size:

 1.  8 Hours of sleep.

       2.  Eat Protein

       3.  Do not work-out too much.

However, this doesn’t mean you can half-ass it in the gym and expect results.  It means you need to sorta kick your ass without murdering yourself.  This brings me to my next point:

Lifting for Tone:  No such thing.  Being ‘toned’ just means someone has a low body-fat %.  Classic ‘toning’ exercises tend to be exercises that hit stability muscles that most people have difficulty hitting with standard hypertrophy exercises.

Ten pounds of muscle in a month!:  Another lie.  The most lean muscle a normal male can put on in a month is about one pound.  Two pounds is for a serious genetic freak following a perfect diet and lifting program.  Most people who put on “Ten pounds of muscle” are adding water weight, intramuscular fat, glycogen around the liver, or just plain fat.  I can put on five pounds of water weight in a day by laying off the coffee, eating pickles, and drinking whey + water.

No pain, no gain:  Advice normally given by ex football players who are plagued with injuries and can’t workout past their mid-twenties.  This is what it means when your body is in pain:

              
It is being damaged.

If an exercise hurts, it means one of three things:

      1.  You are doing the exercise incorrectly

      2.  You are not strong enough to do the exercise (due to weakness, muscle imbalance, etc)

      3.  It is a bad exercise

None of these reasons are anything to be ashamed about.  I myself have muscle imbalances and  a strange bone structure that determines my workout.  Weakness and pain are useful information to determine the next step you take.

Next Week:  Exercises to avoid, forever, and a delicious recipe.

Food & Iron

Part I:  I am an ex-fatkid. 

 I always loved food, and always will.  I was born chubby, grew up chubbier, and ended up breaking, not tipping, the scales at 260 pounds.  This was nobody’s fault but mine.  6’4”, two hundred and sixty pounds:  great stats for an offensive lineman, not so much for someone who lifted a couple of times a week.  During my years at school I lived with my friends I knew from the hockey team.  Some of them spent some time in the NHL, and to them my nickname was “big guy”.  This was not a compliment.

I am better now.  I do not rearrange floor boards when I walk, and my head is only gigantic rather than pumpkin sized.  During the course of my weight-loss I worked manual labor and still went to the gym during all the time, and what I changed was my cooking and eating habits, not the frequency or intensity of my workouts.  I am now down to 205 pounds.  I feel better every day, and all of my clothes (including my shoes) are smaller and less than two years old.  I work out roughly the same amount of time I did when I was a fatty.  In fact, if anything, I lift less intensely than before.

I originally started cooking years ago in an attempt to eat healthier and shed some of my formidable size. My first recipes were embarrassingly simple and pretty all around bad:  grilled, defrosted chicken breasts covered in whatever stale, pre-mixed seasonings I could afford.  I stood in front of my parents’ giant cast-iron grill, overcooking the hell out of anything I could get my giant ham hands on, and somehow loving every minute of it.  My years of cooking taught me two things:

1.        Cooking is a science
2.        Flavoring is an art

Part II:  So Why the blog?

Make Awesome Food

While reading about weight-lifting, inevitably one comes across recipes, and what I can tell you about them  is that they are all...uniformly...terrible.  It's almost all crap, because the large amount of people who are into working out view food as fuel.

Avoid Injuries

Most of the work-out advice forums are filled with ex-football players (play through the PAIN!) or people on steroids.  They give bad, bad advice.  My workout advice will be which exercises to NOT do.

 

            Lose Weight
           
            There are a million different diets out there.  All the real scientific studies coming out now support a lower carbohydrate, restricted sugar, healthy fat diet.  Except for trans-fats, which are still terri-bad for you.
             On the other hand, many workout diets demand stunningly precise caloric and macro-nutrient splits.  Most of us aren't cutting down to 4% body fat for a show; we just want to look better naked..  You can always get more complicated, but starting is the most important part.

So to sum up:

1.        Make Awesome Food.
2.        Avoid Injuries
3.        Lose Weight

My name is Stefan, and I’m here to help.