Home Improvement

“This is like doing a big wall,” I said to Mike as the clock hit midnight and I just nailed my already bloody thumb with the hammer, again. We were tired, beat up, had an impending goal we couldn’t retreat from and the only way we were going to get there was to keep plugging away, move after move. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking for a couple of days,” added Mike.

Sometimes life gets in the way of your plans. A few week’s back I got the call the temporarily changed mine. I’ve been trying to transform our disaster-of-a-garage into a training facility but haven’t been able to find the right contractor for the job. One of the Castle-crew, Mike aka Kid Dynamite, was the guy I wanted but he lived in Oregon. Fortunately, for me, the housing market in Bend is one of the worst in the country and the company he worked for had recently folded. Now he was playing Mr. Mom while his wife brought home the bacon. I offered up some work but there were logistics to sort. In early November he showed up with a truck full of gear and two weeks cleared from the schedule.

When climbing a big wall you never know exactly what you’re getting into when you leave the ground. Mike had his bike and hoped to ride in our state championship cylcocross race. I was training and hoped to send my project on or before my birthday. We began at a civilized pace; me doing my job and helping when I could, Mike working steadily into each evening but leaving a little time for socializing. After a few days he even managed a ride. Then we took a hard look at the schedule and things changed.
5th class painting

“Is this all you got?” screamed Mike towards the torrent of snow that was broadsiding us. It was Mike’s last night and we were in the zone, having been at this from first light to midnight for over a week. But, before he left in the morning, the roof had to go on the carport and we weren’t dealing with light and fluffy Wasatch powder. What began as rain had turned to sleet and then snow. Our footing was icing up but, hell, we’re climbers. We plugged away, frozen fingers manipulating power machinery in the dark. We doubted the unions would approve.

It was my birthday and this was the year’s challenge; to finish the carport (part of the deal for renovating the garage was providing a covered place for Romney to park). My parents were in town and it was a celebration of work. They were cleaning up. Lisa and Scott (my brother-in-law who worked on most of the project) were measuring and cutting boards that I was nailing to the rafters and Mike was cutting supports and adding details to the “White Spider”, Mike’s name for the 40 degree ice field we were creating (comes from the world’s most famous ice field on the north face of the Eiger). With one panel to go we had to call it quits because, if it were placed, we’d have nothing left to hang on to. In the morning we’d rig the roof and finish in safety but, for now, we’d accomplished the goal of getting all the work done that required Mike’s array of tools. We showered until the house ran out of hot water and then had the first lazy and relaxed meal of his trip.




The aftermath sure feels as though I’ve ticked a wall. I’m tired and beat up but have certainly lost specific fitness. But wall climbing does build base fitness, along with heightening your ability to suffer and a sense of accomplishment. I’ve always professed that you should only climb walls with good friends because things will always get ugly at some point and you want to be with people who can laugh with you about the absurd situation you’ve created. This was exactly the case. I’m happy to get back to my life, as I’m sure Mike is, but the little serendipitous epic we created was blast and I look forward to our next adventure.

CrossFit

Apparently I’m not the only one who feels “Crossfitters” are over the top. I mean, I do enjoy the vomit-inducing challenge that CrossFit can bring but, man, talk about a group of people who take themselves way too seriously. I know some educated people who understand the merits of Crossfit but most of the dudes you see spewing about it are about as informed as the crazy McCain rally lady.

In my research I’ve run across blog after blog of misguided Crossfit nonsense. The common sentiment seems to be that only they truly understand the meaning of training and human performance, pretty much like the bros in this video. What I always find most entertaining is when they’re using Crossfit to training for a sport but aren’t actually any good in the sport they profess to be training for. Instead of copping to the fact that, say, there might be a more effective way to improve, they chastise those who are bettering them at said event by boasting that they wouldn’t be able to hang down that the Crossfit gym.

My favorite example was a triathlete stating that none of the “wimpy little fuckers” passing him in a race “could dead lift shit”. It’s kind of like a restaurant critic condemning a taqueria for not making sushi.

I’ve been doing my own version of Crossfit lately, which is spending all of my spare time doing construction. The goal before the snows his is to build Romney a carport and turn the garage into a first rate training facility. In order to keep my weight down and balance out my training, I’ve been jack hammering concrete, hanging dry wall, digging foundations, hauling lumber and other great cross training movements until late into each evening. My friend Mike is in charge of the construction. He’s better at all those things than I am. He can also beat me on a bike. But who gives a shit? I’d like to see him do an 8 exercise Tabata and then jump out of a barrel. Now you must excuse me while I take my shirt off and cover my entire hands and forearms with chalk so I can shop for cool new board shorts on the net.

Big In Japan

For your Monday morning reading enjoyment I present:

How Japan Defines "Fat"

I don't really have much to crack wise about on this story. The article, and its comments, are an interesting discussion that shed a oddly-restrained light (for a comment thread anyway) on an important topic; you know, the one about America leading a world wide obesity epidemic that's spearheading a global recession and increasing the division between rich and poor that, essentially, could lead to the entire planet living in a third world state until we figure out how to colonize a new resource base to ruin.

Bravo to Japan for taking such a pro-active response to the problem. And before you write them off as being draconian and un-realistic, consider that the punishment is education. We'd do well to follow suit. Unfortunately, I think the only way our lobbyist driven government will allow that to happen is if Conagra, Monsanto, and Coca Cola are allowed to do the educating. And as we've seen from the way these people do business, that's hardly going to lead to a more enlightened public.

Got Stoke?

How far would you go to save your secret spots?

My friend Belt's movie opens tonight, in the surf capitol of Texas, and will be playing all weekend. You can also catch it in SoCal in Dec. Don't miss out!



If you're still waffling about catching the next flight to Austin, consider this is from the makers of Invasion From Planet C. For the latest, check the Stoke Films web site.

Now ask yourself, without the stoke is life even worth living?

Short Cycle

Yesterday I explained training cycles (muscle confusion) in general. Today I’ll lay out my plan for a short cycle designed to help me send a route in the next couple of weeks.

I’ll begin with an anecdote from the shed days. Back then we were really into training—and I mean really into it. Some would say that I still am but, though smarter (I hope), I don’t train with near the fervor that I did back then. We trained for climbing but, compared to a lot of people, we didn’t actually climb that much because we lived in an area that didn’t have much rock. So we trained like maniacs in long cycles and would only peak a couple of times per year. In fact, each year I would do almost all of my hard climbing during a couple of few-week-long peak phases. The rest of the year I’d kind of suck because I’d always be in the middle of some phase of training.

Contrary to us our friend Hans climbed all year around. He loved training, too, but because he made his living by traveling and climbing he was forced to climb more and train less. So he made up amalgams of what we were doing into more targeted short cycles, designed to give him mini peaks for events or competitions. As I began traveling more I began using these as well to try and peak for various objectives on the road.

Move ahead 15 years, give or take, and things really haven’t changed that much. You’ve got the Simpson types, who put in countless hours of training designed around peaking for a few weeks a year. You’ve got Sharma types, who “wake up, have breakfast, and go climbing…everyday.” And you’ve got people in between, like Salt Lake climber Steve Maisch.

Ben sent me an article titled Steve Maisch’s 4 Not-so-easy Steps to More Power (unfortunately no longer available on the web but check this pic to see how it works) that’s a great explanation of what short cycles are. Maisch begins the article stating that he has no background in exercise physiology but a lot of experience in trial and error. I’ll take this over someone with a lot of schooling and no experience any day, especially since Maisch climbs harder than any of us every dreamed of.

Essentially, Maisch came up with a system using 8-day training cycles that combine, on different days, campus boarding, system wall training, hangboarding, and bouldering using 4 by 4s. It’s a lot like what we used to do but more refined. To train for my route, I’m going to use this system, tailored to fit my goals.

Essentially, this system combines power and power-endurance training into one block. The more stressful power work happens on day one, followed by PE work the next day, followed by rest. To maximize gains you’d want to train these systems separately but, sans time, I’ll compromise maximal improvement for smaller gains.

I can climb the route now from the bottom to the last boulder problem. I can do the last boulder problem but it’s right at my limit. My goal is therefore to increase my power so that I can use lower threshold muscle cell motor units for the last section, while increasing my power endurance so that I’m less tired when I get there. Also, there’s a difficult boulder problem at the start, so increasing power will make this easier and leave more reserves for later.

Day 1 boulder for about an hour, campus
Day 2 4-by-4, 2 sets
Day 3 rest
Day 4 system wall, 2 sets, fingerboard 1 set
Day 5 4-by-4, 1 set
Day 6 rest
Day 7 rest
Day 8 do route

If one cycle doesn’t work I’ll revamp based on where I fail and keep trying until the weather craps out. But I’ve only got a couple of shots at it because these are very intense cycles of training and can’t be duplicated too long without a break. But that’s okay, because in a month (or less) I won’t be able to get to the route anyway.

As Johan Bruyneel said about Armstrong’s plan to win the Tour de France, “The plan was very simple. Making it happen was not so simple.” Now comes the fun part, the training.
vid: one of my favorite training videos showing an absolutely ridiculous training session with sonnie trotter. my old shoulders and elbows will never be able to take this kind of abuse but i find this absurdly inspiring nonetheless.

Muscle Confusion Explained

I finished cleaning, bolting, and doing the moves on a route in the Wasatch this weekend. I can do it in sections but linking them is going to take improvement. With winter around the corner I don’t have much time to improve as well as peak. It’s time for a short cycle.

One of the concepts that seems the hardest to impart to our P90X athletes is how (or why) to peak. Even though Xers tend not to consider themselves athletes because they lack a performance-oriented goal, it’s important to understand that all training at this level adheres to athletic principles. The entire theory of “muscle confusion,” as we call it, is based on periodization, or training in targeted cycles that keep your body adapting and growing, while minimizing the plateaus that happen in between.

All periodized programs are structured around some sort of peak. This is why most of our customers get the best results during the latter phases of our programs. It’s by design. In a less intense program, customized for less conditioned clients (like Power 90), the structure is less rigid because the adaption takes longer. The fitter you are the quicker your body reacts to training.

Most science shows that a three week on, one off, cycle of training is about as short as you can go to maximize the adaptive and growth phase so that’s what we’ve used in P90X (though we often recommend that certain individuals lengthen the training blocks). The idea is the halt the growth phase before a plateau happens, recover, then re-shuffle and add intensity in the subsequent training block. In X, the final block adds a week of high intensity, at which point we recommend a break before taking your final fitness test. This is where we’ve designed your peak to happen, about a week or more after your final hard workout.

The longer you have to meet your goal the more effective your training can be because you can focus entire training cycles (the 12 weeks of P90X is one cycle) on your weak areas and still have time to blend this new strength into your body’s system for performance (integration training). This is why athletes make their biggest changes in the off-season.

But none of this helps me. I’ve got a few weeks, tops, to train (foundation, adapt, growth phases) and peak (integration and recovery phases). This requires a whole different mindset about training, which I’ll explain tomorrow.

And You Thought Warehouse Stores Just Looked Depressing

I get depressed at the thought of my food options anytime I take a road trip. Turns out this trepidation is more clinical than I thought. In a new study out of England, researchers at University College London have discovered that people with a diet high in processed foods have a 58% higher risk of depression.

Processed food link to depression: research

The perils of road food in the USA are a thing of lore; satirized in films and literature almost anywhere you look.

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny's
But if you’ve ever wandered in to a big box food chain you know that we have more to fear than AM/PM markets. At least 90% of the food options are these stores falls into the convenience category, basically because only things with preservatives fit the big box model of doing business. This is probably why most of these chains now also have a drug counter, so you can fill your prescription for the Zoloft you’re going to need because of the food you’re buying.

Scary Or Not Scary?

If P90X has become so popular that it's now a Halloween costume, how come the obesity epidemic isn't dropping? Check out this email that went around the office today:

Subject: P90X is now, officially, part of pop culture.

Among the expected Michael Jacksons, Jon & Kates and Balloon Boys, this entrant showed up at a mutual fund company’s costume contest this morning. He calls himself “P90X Graduate” and it looks as if he didn’t finish the program.

Perhaps part of the clue is in his Hans and Franz like physique. Our society is obsessed with size and nary a day passes by when we don't get customers asking us how to get bigger. And even though Tony is a slim guy with muscles I think many of our clients see him as a version of the hulk in the same distorted way some women don't want to stop losing weight until they look like heroin addicts.

So if anyone shows up on your doorstep looking like this guy ask yourself, what would Tony do? Then give him an apple, and tell him it's Tony's favorite snack, because he ain't gonna look like an X grad chowin' down on Reece's.

Progression

Yesterday I tossed balance aside to have a Patxi day—2,500 moves in the gym. This was inspired by the film Progression. In particular, the segment of World Cup champion Patxi Usobiaga’s training, which appears anything but balanced.

I was actually referring to muscular balance, not lifestyle. As some my friends enjoyed pointed out, balanced lifestyles ain’t exactly my thing. I’m still testing out the Kevin Brown training system, daily yoga sessions, barefoot running, a new time trial position, and a chia and pinole laced diet. Now I’m adding 2,500 move climbing days and, I suppose, there’s nothing really balanced about that. If there were, my standing Beachbody’s lab rat might be endangered.

2,500 moves is a lot, especially in a gym. And since I have almost no idea what Usobiaga actually does I was making stuff up based on my experience with climbing specific training, knowledge of training in general, my years of specific training for other sports, and a five minute segment of him doing movements in the film. At some point it all started to click, and now I’m fairly certain that I’ve found a missing link for me when it comes to how to train for climbing. It’s going to take some time but, for a test run, it was one of the best climbing workouts I’ve had.

Obviously it’s not a missing link for everyone but, as Patxi’s livelihood depends on his training, I’m guessing he’s sharing his secrets along a similar vain as “The Lance Armstrong Training Method” book, which was/is a complete joke. The Texan’s training is no more revealed in that book than the history of the Bible in Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I’ll hit him up, for sure, but am expecting to do a lot of my own research on this one.

Besides, I’ve got my copy of Progression. All you really need to train hard is motivation, and not many climbing films are inspiring as the latest film from Big Up Productions. Progression is a string of vignette’s showing climbers that are pushing the standards in various disciplines. It claims no lame ethical stance on the various pursuits, nor is it your standard sprayfest of climbing porn. It’s a well crafted, beautifully shot, story about the cutting edge of sport and where it could be headed in the future. Basically, it shows a bunch of people who’ve dedicated their life to pushing the boundaries of their sport and the limits of human performance. If you can’t get psyched about that, you’re not an athlete.

Download Progression here.

Immune Boost

With the swine flu spreading through the west like a wildfire I’m glad I’ve got my Immune Boost. While my job is to evaluate and edit the products we make, or create a component of them, I rarely get to invent a entire product. The desire for an immune boosting formulation came from my bosses, Jon and Carl (mainly Jon on this one), but the formulation came from me. Because of this, I’m not going to have to deal with swine flu!

It’s not really magic, nor is the formulation really mine. As is the case with most things, there are people in the world who know more about herbs than I do. Luckily, I know a lot of these people. I consulted friends in the field, studied some science, and haggled with our lab until we had a formulation that was state-of-the-art. And while it’s not magic, exactly, when I remember to use it prior to times of stress, I never get sick.

Out my window I’m looking at snow. Yesterday I was running in shorts. This is a text book situation for when to start taking this stuff. But that’s just me. I’m not a supplements all the time guy. I’m situational; meaning my supplement intake varies along with my training. At times I take none; at others I practically live on them. I take immune boost during time of stress: flights, changing seasons, when my friends are getting sick, or anytime I feel run down and vulnerable.

This is not the only time to use it. Holistic science shows that it should be useful as a daily tonic. My stance has always been to try and not overdo certain things so that your body doesn’t adapt to them, saving their effects for times of need. It’s a theory based on science but every individual case is different. In this one, I could be wrong. Team Beachbody coach Tamara Kaye claims she hasn’t been sick since she began taking Immune Boost daily, which is now approaching two years. Guadajuko! Or, for those not versed in Tarahumara: cool by me.

Balance

My entire training philosophy is now based around balance. I’ve always known about the importance of balance but my endeavors as a human lab rat have meant that I was pushing the envelope in one discipline or another, meaning that balance was something that I advised other people to seek. With my ability to perform threatened for keeps, I’ve finally begun to follow my own advice and, in the process, entered a new world where I’m soaking up info like a kid in kindergarten.

I’ve blogged about both yoga and the Kevin Brown Training system. I work in both of these realms daily. All other training, along with my usual climbing, riding, and running, is focused on foundation; merely keeping my engrams primed for the harder training that will follow, once I’m up to speed on all of my benchmarks.

Benchmarks are the cornerstone of Kevin’s training method. These are tests that gauge the strength of your stabilizer muscles. Until they are strong enough to work in harmony with your prime mover muscles, your body is at a high risk of injury. In short, this is exactly why major sports headlines are as much about injury as they are about performance. With all the technological advancement in sport, you’d think we’d get injured less. But it’s exactly the opposite. This is because we focus too much on the prime movers, the large muscles we see that are primarily responsible for our feats of strength, and not enough on the stabilizers that hold our structure together. Essentially, we’re getting so strong that we’re literally tearing our bodies apart.

All you need are headlines to understand how rampant the problem is, but Kevin has done a lot of testing and has scary data. One example: he tested participants at an elite soccer camp and found that less than 10% of the athletes weren’t at high risk of knee injury. These were athletes being coached and doing high level training. Imagine how bad those stats would be for the average weekend warrior who tends to focus on sexier training that graces most books and magazines.

When I told Kevin that I’d be following his program he scoffed, “yeah, for two days!” His skepticism is valid. I’ve known him for close to twenty years. I see him whenever I’m injured and follow his advice until I’m no longer injured, at which point I go back to pummeling myself. I like pain, suffering, and, as one of my friends put it, “chasin’ the hairy edge”. This training is slow, controlled, and pretty much exactly the opposite of what I do for fun.

It also feels kind of, um, dorky. When I asked my friend Bob if he wanted to join me in a hip medley, he looked at me as though I’d just asked him to catch a Bette Midler show. At our meeting a few weeks ago, one of the attendees, who trains military, just shook his head at one of the exercises and said, “I’ll never get my guys to do that. They’d rather get shot.”

It’s hard to look outside on a beautiful fall day and not venture into the mountains. I’ll still go, but instead of spending eight hours traipsing through the backcountry until I’m exhausted, I’ll just get a taste and then come home and do hundreds of slow easy repetitions with puny weights aimed at training every tiny muscle in my body, and follow it with yoga.

And while I yearn to feel the deep pain that prolonged suffering brings, I’ve got to admit that I feel good. Really good. I’ve been at this since July and my range of motion—that was worse than it’s ever been in May after recovering from my injury—is probably better than it was in high school. Along with daily yoga (which also focuses on stabilizer muscle strength), Kevin’s system uses the theory that strong stabilizers reduce the strain on prime movers. This freedom increases range of motion without increases in muscle flexibility (which helps too), and thus increases the muscle’s workload capacity.

My benchmarks are up to the high school level in some things, college level in others. Most people aren’t close to the high school level, and neither was I when I started. When I hit pro, I’ll begin to ramp up my other training. Assuming all of my personal testing goes well, we’ll hopefully have a way to get this info out to all of you by then.

Virtual Suffering...

...can almost be as good as the real thing. I’m adding a 24-hour solo race to my things-to-do list. In general I don’t like to race my mountain bike. I find it much more satisfying to just enjoy the wilderness. I’ve done Moab as part of a team. While fun, we all agreed that riding the same laps over and over pales in comparison to exploring new trails together. Watching this video held little interest to me; that is until things started to get ugly. Now I want that experience.

If you've ever wanted to do a 24hr solo event this is required viewing:

24 Hours of Moab

Suffering keeps life in balance. And while I don’t like all the time, I think finding various venues to test your mettle is important. Riding 24 hours never seemed difficult enough to be intriguing. Hard, sure; but nothing that extends you into survival mode. But seeing Josh Tostado as he realizes that he has to go out for another lap is inspiring. He looks absolutely devastated. And you have to consider that this is what he does all the time, and he’s still just shattered. It’s friggin’ awesome, and I am so in.

Thanks for Superhumanmag.com and Reed for sharing. Like me in January, Reed’s got some couch time to search for videos to in order to motivate recovery.

pic: it may not be suffering but riding though the night still must make you loopy. my line through what seems like a simple corner looks pretty tentative, but that guy behind is definitely not where he wants to be.

Gina Kolata And The Art Of Saying Nothing

Today the NY Times ran an article deconstructing the time-honored exercise cool-down, finally deeming it unnecessary for most of us. The problem with the article, however, was that its deconstruction forgot to mention the primary reason most fitness experts include a cool-down: to speed up the recovery process.

Is the Exercise Cool-Down Really Necessary?

We’ve seen this kind of misguided analysis before. From the same author, in fact. In 2007 Kolata made the best seller list with a book claiming that our genes were making us fat. Never mind the right-in-front-of-our-eyes fact that there’s no way genetics could explain the massive increase in body fat percentage over one generation, Kolata’s son trained for a marathon and only lost 3 pounds. OMG, there just has to be a money-making hook in that story!

In the same vein, she’s now demystified the reason behind the cool-down, and deemed it useless. Except she hasn’t because she didn’t bother identifying that actual reason.

In what she does present, she still refutes herself by showing some science that a cool-down can be medically dangerous to avoid after intense exercise.

“If you are well trained, your heart rate is slow already, and it slows down even faster with exercise,” he (Dr. Paul Thompson) said. “Also, there are bigger veins with a large capacity to pool blood in your legs.”

So, well, most of us aren’t well trained. But what if we are? Most of us who begin any exercise program have a goal of being well trained at some point and then, well okay, we need to cool down.

But she means the rest of us. For all of the lazy, deconditioned masses, she states, “… it’s not clear what the cool-down is supposed to do. Some say it alleviates muscle soreness. Others say it prevents muscle tightness or relieves strain on the heart.”

“Ooo, ooo,” I say, raising my hand from the back of the room. “I know why we cool down after a workout!”

But, apparently, she decided that interviewing someone who might know the answer, like a trainer, would be counterproductive to her main point. So no one asked me, nor any trainer, or if she did she didn’t like what they had to say and omitted it. So I’ll answer her anyway and maybe someone will tell her.

The reason we cool down is to lengthen muscles that have been contracted during the workout. I mean, there’s the heart/blood pooling thing to avoid to but, as one of her cited experts stated, most of us do this anyway by showing, changing clothes, etc. But there’s a passel of good science showing the benefit of post-exercise stretching leading to increased performance. Apparently, it just didn’t fit into her sales pitch.

Born To Run

I recently had one of the more pleasurable reading experiences of my life. I read a lot. As you might imagine, much of this is fairly technical in its nature so it’s probably not too hard to knock my socks off. But I’m fairly well versed in the classics as well. And while I’m not saying this guy is Shakespeare, or even Hemingway, he certainly spins a good yarn. I admit that the four books I’d read previous were dreadful, so maybe it’s a right place right time experience. But from the time I picked up Christopher McDougall's Born to Run I was captivated to the point that if my flight had been longer I would have finished it in one sitting.

The book is about a bunch of things, but mainly running. I’ve recorded my disdain for such literature in the past but this is different. It’s written by a writer, not a runner. More and more the writings of “experts” are filling up our bookstores. What our publishers have seemed to overlook is that a good writer is an expert, who can write on any subject. I think it’s a disservice to the public to assume that just because someone has credentials in a subject they should be allowed to write about it. After all, would you choose the person who wrote ER as your emergency room doctor?

The main characters are a native Mexican people called the Tarahumara, or Raramuri (running people) and a gringo called Caballo Blanco. The story of Tarahumara is fascinating.

In Tarahumara Land, there was no crime, war, or theft. There was no corruption, obesity, drug addiction, greed, wife-beating, child abuse, heart disease, high blood pressure, or carbon emissions. They didn’t get diabetes, or depressed, or even old: fifty-year-olds could outrun teenagers, and eighty-year-old great grand-dads could hike marathon distances up mountainsides. Their cancer rates were barely detectable. The Tarahumara geniuses had even branched in economics, creating a one-of-a-kind financial system based on booze and random acts of kindness: instead of money, they traded favors and big tubs of corn beer.

You’d expect an economic engine fueled by alcohol and freebies to spiral into a drunken grab-fest, everyone double-fisting for themselves like bankrupt gamblers at a casino buffet, but in Tarahumara Land, it works.

It’s also a story of the history of ultra-running, biomechanics, the shoe industry, and the evolution of human beings.

For example, you probably didn’t know that “runners wearing top-of-the-line shoes are 123 percent more likely to get injured than runners in cheap shoes...” and this is because we do things like build arch supports:

Dr. Hartman explained, “Blueprint your feet, and you’ll find a marvel that engineers have been trying to match for centuries. Your foot’s centerpiece is the arch, the greatest weight-bearing design ever created. They beauty of the arch is the way it gets stronger under stress; the harder you push down, the tighter its parts mesh. No stonemason worth his trowel would ever stick a support under and arch; push up from underneath, and you weaken the whole structure...”

And if I told you that humans evolved as the most-efficient endurance runners on the planet you’d probably think I was a looney, but read Born To Run and then come argue with me.

The book is not above a bit of hyperbole and often borderlines the Largo-ian “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” mantra for writers. But it never strays so far as to lose credibility. But do keep in mind that for anything to land on the best seller list it’s got to take a spin through the hype machine. For an example, watch the news piece below. While it does lay a nice hook for the story, Caballo Blanco himself states “I was NOT happy with that information...did me, the Raramuri, nor the canyons any favors...take it with a grain of salt.”


I was inspired enough to get in contact with Caballo Blanco himself, and will be running with the running people come March. You’ll get the straight dope then but, for now, I recommend finding a copy of Born To Run.

pic: scott jurek y arnulfo quimare en las barrancas de cobre, por luis escobar.

Action Direct

Think you're training hard enough? Well you're probably not training as hard as Rich Simpson was for Action Direct. Last month I posted video of Hubble. This month is the climb that usurped its title of "hardest route in the world", along with the story of Simpson's obsession to do it. Not only do we get to see some sick-hard training, but some of the travails in trying to tick something at your physical limit whilst on holiday. Great documentation from filmmaker Chris Doyle but, man, does it make me feel like a lazy uncommitted slob!

Obsession from Chris Doyle on Vimeo.

You Can’t Fire A Cannon From A Canoe

I’ve spent the last week at a conference. Well, it’s more of a brain dump, actually. A good friend of mine has cancer and, with his future uncertain, rounded up his friends to put his state-of-the-art training system on the record. In attendance were Olympians, world record holders, college athletes, golf pros, coaches, trainers, filmmakers, photographers and writers. Even though most of us had worked with Kevin on some level, were more credentialed on paper, and had spent most of our lives in athletics, the common sentiment was that we were being given an entirely new blueprint for athletic training.

The title comes from one of the clichés about stability training that seemed pretty appropriate because, until the base is solid, nothing works as efficiently as it should. The system we covered isn’t entirely new. It’s a hybrid of many popular systems based around core and stability training. But it was a lot more than Chek Institute stuff. Kevin’s philosophy is to identify the weak link in the system. Then, by strengthening the weak link, the process allows the strong links to do their job more efficiently. This results in improved performance prior to making gains in prime mover muscle strength (10% improvements in a few months prior to prime mover training seemed about average, which is off the charts).

What’s also revolutionary is that most of us tend to think of this style of training as injury prevention only. And, certainly, that is a big part of it. One of Kevin’s clients, a professional golfer, began working with him at age 14. He’s never had even a minor injury. The high school and university programs that have used his system (which is still evolving) have seen the instances of non-contact injury rates drop to almost zero. In a world where championships are won by the team who keeps the most players on the field, this is not an area to be discounted.

Perhaps the biggest upside is that the system is simple to implement. It doesn’t require expensive equipment or a trainer to supervise your every move. Most of us feel it’s going to change the way we train our athletes on a global scale.

I’m going to leave things a little vague for now. I’ve got 40,000 words to begin to edit and organize. We’re not sure where this will end up but you’ll be hearing a lot more about it here.

Jack LaLanne Challenge

Jack LaLanne week, as it should, culminated with a challenge. On Thursday night I got to meet Jack at a party thrown in his honor. As I told Denis, I don’t care one bit about meeting celebrities but, to me, Jack’s not a celebrity but a hero. I was pretty excited.

Jack LaLanne’s Birthday Bash

On Saturday, I got to do my own little Jack impression. Someday maybe I’ll muster up the motivation to attempt one of his actually challenges. For now, I’ll continue with my own personal multi-sport themes where I try and combine power and endurance sports.

I began the morning of Jack’s actual 95th birthday by doing 95 Jumping Jacks, After his signature move, I continued the warm-up with some Jack LaLanne yoga, which is more functional than traditional. For example, down dog and up dog are described as thus (from memory, so this quote won’t be accurate),

“This is what Happy (his white German Shepard) does before he chases a ball or runs around in the yard. C’mon, show us Happy…”

I’ve never heard Jack use the word yoga, but his old TV shows are rife with yoga poses turned into exercises. Then I did 95 reps of 9 of his more famous movements, including finger tip push-ups and chin ups. These seems so good to warm-up for climbing that I only did 70 reps before jumping on my bike for 95 minutes (which I spent doing climbing intervals to try and get my climbing totals for the day close to 9,500’). Post ride, I finished the exercises and heading up to a V9 traverse to attempt 95 moves with 9.5lbs strapped to my back.

En route I spent some time helping someone whose car was broken down. This resulted in that my objective had already gone into the sun. So I turned around to try another traverse, Merrill’s 5.14 (no name that I know of), that had been shaded when I drove by. But I was too late. As I began climbing the sun hit it. 95 moves at my limit, in the sun, with a 10 pound ball on my back, was more than a little tedious. I wasn’t very familiar with this route (though I am now). This caused more failure on the moves than I was hoping for (meaning lots of re-dos). Still, I was able to get all the moves but three or four (or five) of the 30-some move route. Not bad.

I was now hot, sweaty, and my fingers could barely grip the steering wheel. But that was okay because all I had to do was to run for 9.5 miles over two mountains. Romney dropped me off in my heat resistant garb (she was laughing at me and saying that I looked like a pirate) and I headed up Grandeur Peak in the afternoon sun.

Grandeur climbs over 3,000 feet in less than two miles and has almost no shade. We’d been having perfect air quality but a fire from somewhere had sullied the air. The combo had me pretty cooked near the top, when Mick called to fill me in on my proposed second half of the run. When I told him where I was he groaned and asked, “is it hot?” When I filled him in on my objective he said, “Wow, you’re having a big day.” Then I told him what I’d already done, and he just laughed.

Having Mick laugh is a little daunting. He gets up a four am most days and usually has a peak or two in the bag before I’m awake. We’ll often go climbing on these days and he’s never seems to be any worse for wear. And he’d just won a rugged 50 mile trail race in Moab. Yet, to him, what I was doing sounded “grim”. Awesome. Jack would love it.

I recovered somewhat on the descent into Mill Creek Canyon where Romney met me with a salad. The last part of my challenge was to eat 95 fruits, veggies, and legumes (Jack eats 10 different veggies every day). I’d knocked off a bunch with my morning Shakeology and a veggie sandwich. My next meal with a small box filled with everything in the salad bar at Whole Foods. Now, in no way, is this a normal sports food diet, but it worked just fine. My energy was good all day.

As it turns out, my next objective was a wee bit longer than I’d planned—like twice as far. So I was hoping for a good landmark to shoot for that would get me closer to the goal. Also, Romney and Beata would be joining me, and we weren’t geared up for 8 miles of game trails, so almost certainly we’d be turning around at some point. As serendipity would have it, we made a wrong turn that led us to an overlook. It was 2 miles (and 2,000-some-odd feet) to reach it. Perfect.

Romney was a trooper in support. She claimed to not feel good but didn’t complain much, except that she was very quiet. She made it through the run, and then began vomiting on our way to the taqueria, where she still managed to be good company as I polished off the rest of my veggies, which mainly consisted of various types of chili. My wife rocks.
pic: nothing at all to do with jack lalanne, romney hits one of the crux moves on her first 5.12
Back home, I drank a glass of red wine. Jack drinks red wine daily (“because the French outlive everyone”) and finished Jack week with some restorative yoga. The next day I actually felt decent. I learned that I was accepted into a race where I’d be running with the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, the famous Raramuri (running people), so I went for a long run on a perfect trail that I just happened to find, and spotted a cliff so large and steep that it could be the version of my own Echo Wall that I’ve been looking for. But these are other stories.

Feeling Old?

Check out this 74-year old. Apparently there are over 40,000 people in Japan that are over 100 years old, and I'm sure this has much more to do with lifestyle than genetics (do we even have an over 75 bodybuilding category, because this guy is nervous about moving up because the competition is so stiff?!). Culturally they eat a plant-based diet and a lot of fish. Plus, their snacks are so weird that it must self limit overindulgence. Regardless, this guy is an inspiration and a perfect fit for Jack LaLanne week.

Another perfect fit, as to just why Jack week is so important, is the ad before the vid, brought to us by Jimmy Dean sausage. Yahoo also released this and one-upped the Brits with an ad from Dunkin Donuts. How dare another country try and usurp our obesity title!

Preaching The Here And Now

On Thursday I'll be attending Jack LaLanne's birthday party. On Sat, I'll be doing a fitness challenge in honor of his birthday. I guess that makes this officially Jack LaLanne week. I'm still not sure what my challenge is going to be yet. 95 is a pretty big number to play with. In the mean time, I've stumbled on another great article on LaLanne. You know, the guy who claims he "spent a lot of time on the floor with your mother." This one is from Sam McManis at the SF Chronicle.

Raising the bar
At 88, fitness guru Jack LaLanne can run circles around those half his age

It may even top the article I posted last week for its entertainment value. LaLanne's story is inspiring. His personality is amusing. Here we get a glimpse of the catalyst the got him into exercise in the first place:

"I'd eat a quart of ice cream in one sitting, shove my finger down my throat, heave it up and have another quart," LaLanne said. "There's nothing more addictive on this earth than sugar. Not heroin, booze, whatever. It's much worse than smoking. Boy, I tell you, I had blinding headaches every day. I was mentally screwed up by sugar. I was psychotic. I was malnourished. I was always getting sick. I got kicked out of school. I wanted to die."

And on what it was like to eat healthy as teenager in a world where humans are like "walking garbage cans."

"They thought I was crazy," he said. "I had to take my lunch alone to the football field to eat so no one would see me eat my raw veggies, whole bread, raisins and nuts. You don't know the crap I went through, boy."

LaLanne invented a lot of fitness gear, exercise regimens, dietary practices, and opened one of the first fitness chains in the USA, which caused a lot of people to eye him suspiciously.

LaLanne said Bay Area newspapers, except for The Chronicle's Herb Caen, treated him like a "crackpot who doesn't eat meat and wants everybody to rupture something lifting weights." Few people joined at first, but one who did, restaurateur Vic ("Trader Vic") Bergeron, gave LaLanne some advice one day while getting a massage from him: Wear a tight T-shirt and strut your stuff on high school campuses.

Eventually people sought him out, apparently even Clint Eastwood as a 16 year old. This led to a career in TV, the place I first saw him as a kid. This appears to not have been exactly smooth sailing for him either.

A TV novice, LaLanne's initial reviews were not great. He heard those same old "crackpot" epithets, this time from newspapers back east: Women will look like men if they work out. That health food is bad for the body. On his very first show, Jack looked into the camera earnestly and said, "If man makes it, don't eat it." Then he took a loaf of Langendorf white bread, smashed it into a tight ball and flung it to the floor with a thud. "See," he said, "that's what it does in your stomach, too."

Langendorf, it turned out, was one of the show's sponsors.

It goes on from there, all the while referencing LaLanne's famous cultural diatribes, such as:

On the evils of sugar and junk food: "It destroys the B vitamins. It destroys your mind, affects your memory, your concentration. Why do you think so many of these kids today are screwed up? It's what they're eating. You know how much sugar Americans consume today in white flour, cakes, pies, candy and ice cream? Would you get your dog up in the morning and give him a cigarette, cup of coffee and a doughnut? How many millions of Americans got up this morning with a breakfast like that? And you wonder why people are sick and obese."

On whether people should consume dairy products: "Are you a suckling calf? No. Do you have two stomachs? No. Name me one creature on this earth, except for man, who uses milk after they wean. Why do you think so many people are fat and have heart attacks? Cholesterol! Butter, cream, cheese, ice cream, whole milk. They got these athletes prostituting their souls by posing with milk mustaches. Those guys ought to be thrown in jail."

On celebrity: "I hated it. I was just doing my job. Celebrities give me a pain in the butt. Some of the biggest bums in this world are Hollywood people. They're drunkards, do dope, don't exercise."

And finally, on life:

"Billy Graham preaches the hereafter. I preach the here-and-now."

the challenge of challenges: pulling 70 boats and people across Long Beach harbor with his hands and feet shackled, at age 70.

Join The Jack LaLanne Challenge

I started the feats because everyone said I was just a muscle-bound charlatan. I had to show them I was an athlete.

"Maybe you don't believe in Jesus," Jack continued, looking me up and down. "But was Jesus a showman? Why did he go around making the blind see and the lame walk and those kinds of things? He did it to call attention to his philosophy."

On September 26th, next Saturday, Jack turns 95. Instead of doing my own birthday challenge this year I'll be doing one in honor of the man who started all this, Jack LaLanne (here's the history of how I began doing challenges). Why not join me?

Someone has actually started a site to help you organize a Jack LaLanne challenge on "Jack LaLanne Day". If you do something cool, make sure and record it and we'll post it on Birthdaychallenge.com.

I'm not sure what it's going to be just yet, but the number 95 (Jack's age next Sat) will be in the mix. It's going to be epic but, mostly, it's going to be fun. I don't think it'll be epic in Jack-ian terms, exactly. Check out his list. Or even in mine (2007, 2003, 2000), but it will be hard for me in my current state of recovery. A challenge is anything that challenges you personally. If you think that you can't do it but also think that, maybe, just maybe, if you do everything right that you might be able to, then you're in the ballpark. If this goal is something you've always wondered about, then your golden. I'll announce the exact plan next week.

In the mean time, here's one of my favorite Jack LaLanne articles, courtesy of Outside Magazine.

There are so many gems in this article that it's almost a training bible. Here are a few:

Think you're training too hard?

After he opened the Jack Lalanne Physical Culture Studio in 1936, Jack got clients by going around to the homes of overweight and underweight adolescents. He sold their concerned parents on memberships as a way to save their children's lives. "I checked daily on their nutritional habits and their grades in school," he said. "If they didn't show up, I'd know why. Only mistake I made was I might have worked the kids too hard."

"How did you know you'd gone too far?" I asked.

"They'd heave and pass out," he said with a nostalgic smile.

Why do I always recommend changing your routine every three weeks?

Out near the pool, as three dogs lapped at the water, Jack pointed to a pile of neoprene straps tied to a chrome railing. "I change my program every three weeks," he said. "Out here, I've been strapping myself to the side of the pool lately and butterflying for at least an hour. You oughta try it."

On snacking before bed and other bad habits:

Then--thoughtlessly, perhaps, and only because I do it myself--I asked Jack LaLanne if he ever snacks before bedtime.

"Never!" he snarled. "You don't get it. I am one runaway son of a bitch! I am an animal! I want to eat everything! I want to get drunk every single night! I want to screw every woman there is! We are all wild animals. But we must learn to use our minds. We must learn to control the bestial and sensual sides of ourselves!"

On supplementing your diet:

After his dawn-to-dark workouts, Jack will pour several hundred different vitamin supplements into a blender along with great handfuls of yeast and liver tablets, a pile of kelp, some carrot and celery juice, a few pieces of fruit, some egg whites, and a splash of half-and-half. He says it's the worst-tasting stuff in the whole world, but he drinks it down every day. He says that the secret of his endurance swims through cold and treacherous waters is a massive infusion of "B complex, liver, and defatted government-inspected yeast."

On fad fitness equipment:

"Have you seen some of the crap they're selling as exercise equipment now?" Jack wondered. "How about that Suzanne Somers? She should have been thrown in jail for selling the piece-of-crap Thigh Master. It just develops a little muscle on the inner thigh. What good is that? And have you seen Tony Little, the guy who screams on TV? He's like an imbecile. He says you need this little thing to hold you while you do a sit-up. Why does the government let him get away with it?"

On age:

"Don't talk age!" he interrupted. "Age has nothing to do with it. One of my guys who started out at my gym is 87 now, and he still does ten bench-press reps with a hundred-pound dumbbell in each hand. He's training to set a leg-pressing record. I put things in the guy's brain way back when, and now he'll never get away from it."

And, now that I think personally about my life, on why I train the way I do:

"I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest." Then he segued into a mantra I'm sure I heard dozens of times as a very young boy: "How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth--and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years."

Inspired yet?