Batman pins

I travel every so often for work and on my current client I'm out in the Pacific time zone which is 3 hours behind Atlanta's Eastern Time Zone. Anyway, I'm out on client site this week and thus my sleep schedule, workout schedule, caffeine intake and food intake are all jacked up this week.

Yesterday I ended up waking up at 2:45am Pacific time. Today, 4am. Improvement! Anyway, I decided to wait for the sun to come up at 6am before I trekked over to starbucks to get my venti-unsweened-no-room-for-cream-iced coffee. One of those + an AM walk + 2 alpha GPC will make those client-site, working more hours than you can count on both hands, days easier to bear.

Anyway, today my barista had some superhero pins on his apron. When I completed my order I told him I liked his "batman pins".

He told me "Actually one of them is Aquaman, but thanks."

dick.

He looked vegan which means he's calcium deficient, smug, depressed and in desperate need of some sunshine. Naturally.

I laughed and carried on, caffeine in tow.


In other news I've started doing lots of drop-setting in the gym. I've progressed a lot more and expect to a. have progress pictures up soon since it's been 6 mos and b. have videos to post soon of my feats. Also, the squat issues i was having at the beginning of the year are quickly fading into only my memory. I have MUCH improved since going to see that physical therapist.

onward.

Level Playing field

Last week at work we had a team outing at lunch to celebrate a couple birthdays that came and went over the past month. My boss was one of them. I drove my car to the restaurant with him and another co-worker. My boss was telling us on the way back that he's a little nervous because he would be giving a presentation to our CEO (we'll call him Paul) the following Monday.

I often see Paul in the gym at lunch time and based on his workouts, I'm definitely stronger than him. So, I tell my boss this fun fact and he replies with "So you've measured yourself up against him." y u p. I said, "In the gym, it's a level playing field. It doesn't matter who you are in the real world when you're in the gym." Of course he laughed and said "ok, I'll keep that in mind during the presentation."

I often tell people, especially chicks, why I love lifting so much and why I could never go back to endurance sports and why it's worth a shot and why I'm so confident and why you wont get big and why I can't wait for deadlift day etc etc etc. This level playing field is one of the 234718573405 reasons why I could never go quit or stop progressing or make it easy. ever. I can be in the same gym at the same time with my CEO and boss but it doesn't matter at that point what my status is at work, we are still in there waging war against the same piece of iron.

It's the ultimate empowerment for the "little guy". Keep that in mind the next time you're in the gym or searching for some extra motivation. You may be surrounded by CEOs but at that moment, none of that matters except the bar in front of you getting off the ground.

-Happy Lifting

Sore-asaurusrex

I haven't been this sore since I began lifting. On Saturday I wasn't feeling very strong since I was pretty sore from working my glutes and my abs hard all week. Anyway, I ended up pulling around 5600 total pounds of 36 reps of Deadlift that day. Which turns out to be my car twice (I've got a mini cooper). This included a single of 195. My average was 155. Sounds about right. 15 of the reps were 135 (5 warm up and 10 in a row at the end). Totaling the weight really puts it into perspective when you've got a shitty day and decide to work volume.

Turns out I did some serious muscle murdering that day and it's left me sore sore sore sore sore sore sore for 2 days now. Soreness = broken muscle --> new, stronger, lean muscle for more awesomeness to come soon. I can smell 225.


Here's to progress and kicking ass.
rawr.

Arse.

Here's a video of my squat form from this past Monday. It's basically a video of my ass. This was a day before I went to a physical therapist for the FMS. THIS is what I'll be fixing. note around rep 3 my form seriously degrades.

Here's to stretching my calves and firing my glutes...

-happy lifting!

I'm firing my glutes

As you well know from posts earlier this year, I've been focusing on squats. I've gotten to the point where I can "squat" my BW which is awesome in theory but in practice my form is god-awful. I've posted videos of the issues I have going to parallel and below. As I approached squatting my BW I noticed a weird leaning movement I'd do where my hips would go to the right and my body would lean to the left.

I thought it was abs and hips.

So I hit up Bret Contreras (the glute guy) about this weird issue. He informed me that he's definitely seen this and that I should go see a physical therapist to run a FMS on me. FMS is a Functional Movement Scan. The FMS is a series of drills you run through with a Physical Therapist where they score you on each movement. The drills are weird to say the least but incredibly effective at determining flaws in stability, mobility, strength and flexibility. 3 is the highest score you can get on each drill and it's totaled up to 21 points. Anything above 15 is good. I scored a 16 out of 21 with my shoulders and hamstrings achieving a score of 3 each. right on.

My weakest points of strength and stability were my rotary muscles. I also have incredibly tight calves (inhibiting my squat depth) and tight quads. Another one of my weaknesses was kind of shocking. If you know me or you've watched any of my videos you can see pretty prominent glutes on my body. (I've got a booty) I'm sure you already know where this is headed. Turns out I'm not using my glutes during the squat, like almost not at all. I can't think of a time my ass got sore from doing squats, honestly. I was blown away.

Turns out I'm relying solely on my stabilizers (adductors, hips) and quads during the exercise thus causing the weird leaning. All of that + tight calves = shitty squat form at higher weight.

Basically I am going back to the drawing board, so to speak, to re-learn squats; from scratch. I'm also incorporating glute bridge and deficit split squats on a more regular basis. As for rotary stability/strength I'll be doing lots of cable chops, reverse crunches, planks and exercises posted by Bret recently. On top of all that I have to loosen up my calves so I can actually get to depth and focus on firing my glutes. Bring it.

I gotta say, recommending the FMS was some of the best advice I've gotten in my short time as a powerlifter. I'd advise any serious or recreational lifter to have this scan performed on their body. For the price ($75) it was TOTALLY worth it. This is going to save me months and months and months of frustration trying to figure out my form issues, stability issues, and various other weaknesses. Now I will focus on improvement so I can kick more ass, just faster.

-Happy Lifting

Paleo treats

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with the greatest paleo pancake NAY greatest pancake recipe ever. Also, I finally created a non-bread like cookie. It's more of a shortbread consistency as my roommate's BF told me but I'll take it. It's FAR superior to my other paleo-cookie attempts. The key here was an absurd amount of butter (kind of like a standard sugar cookie or shortbread, weird) so good thing I love butter... and I'm not afraid of fat or extreme deliciousness.

First the pancakes:
Smash 2 ripe bananas & mix in 4 eggs then mix in tsp of vanilla
Stir in 2 scoops of vanilla casein and 1/4cup of coconut flour
Stir in 1tsp of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp of baking soda
Stir in 1/2 cup of water

Heat up a pan to low-medium heat, melt a tbsp of coconut oil.
Scoop 1/4 cup of pancake mix onto the pan.
At this point you can sprinkle nuts on top of the pancake circle - totally optional but totally delicious
Flip when you see bubbles on the top - just like normal pancake cooking

When they're done you can decorate them with some jack daniels syrup & butter, or you can put cottage cheese and black berries on top and die in the process of devouring extreme yum. I aim to bring back breakfast for dinner to your table at least once a week.

Paleo chocolate chip cookies

1lb butter softened, unsalted
1/2 cup coconut flour
4 scoops of vanilla casein
^Beat the above ingredients together
 

1tsp vanilla + 1 egg beaten together
^stir in vanilla + egg mixture into the butter/flour

1/2 tsp - bakikng soda + 1/2tsp baking powder +1/2 tsp salt
^stir that up and stir in with the butter flour mixtre

add in your fav dark chocolate chips & nuts(optional) - stir
oven@400, drop scoops of cookie dough on the sheet, bake for 10mins

Let cool completely. Then, get in your belly!

Hip Mobility and my first injury

After my posts about squats I have come to figure out with the help of caveman that my hip mobility is lacking. This is why I can't go down far enough with weight on my back. I'm really not shocked to find that out. I sit for 9 or so hours a day during the week and I used to be a runner during the years of rapid development (teens through early 20s). Both of these activities (or non-activities) will cause tight, inflexible, immobile hip flexors.

I follow Eric Cressey's blog like a hawk. He is a Major League baseball trainer in Boston. He's smart, knowledgeable and practical. He is extremely good at assessing an athlete's weakness when it comes to flexibility, mobility and thus strength. He has a great post for a home test you can do to check your hip mobility here. (another good test can be found here and here)

The good news, though, is that this issue is reversible with diligence and hard work which most lifters have. A lot of manual work including foam rolling, tennis ball/LAX ball rolling and stretching will eventually fix this problem.So yours truly is going to fix this fast because I'm sure it's not just affecting my squats.. Anyway, here are a couple videos I found that I'll be performing to fix this issue.

1. the music might be straight out of a porno but the exercise is awesome - Wall Hip Flexor Mobilization

2. Foam Rolling

3. Knee to Knee Mobilization

4. LAX ball rolling - Just like foam rolling above but I find that the lacrosse ball digs a lot deeper than any foam roller does. It hurts more but it gets the job done better.

So here's to better hip flextion and deeper squats!

On a side note, I was doing cleans yesterday and I injured my ankle going into the catch. My right foot did not want to get under the bar so when I caught it on my chest my ankle twisted funny and the bar and I went to the ground. It's my first gym injury! I am quite the clumsy cavewoman so I'm sure this wont be the last injury either. Hopefully it'll heal fast!

Cleans: right before I sprained my ankle.

Happy Lifting!