Zoodles: A Delicious, Gluten-Free Pasta Alternative

Are you craving your family's famous Italian dishes? Try spiralized vegetable noodles as a replacement.

When I first decided to embark on a food-as-medicine lifestyle, I gave up gluten. The results were so drastically positive I could not deny it was my poison. But when you’re 100 percent Italian and live in Philadelphia, not preparing and eating the Sunday homemade pasta is almost impossible.

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Deep Squats

by Mark Rippetoe “Deep squats done with a weight that’s a little heavier each time you train affect your body in a way that no other exercise seems to do.” [A version of this article originally appeared on T-Nation, 05-02-2011] Read More var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true}; Deep squats done with a weight that’s a little heavier each time you train affect your body in a way that no other exercise seems to do. One of the best ways to waste your most important training opportunity – the one you have when you’re just starting out, and the one you don’t ever have again – is to make yourself believe that it isn’t going to be hard. The appeal of coming in the gym and going straight to the dumbbell rack instead of the squat rack is undeniably huge, and just as unproductive. The basic, heavy nature of an effective program is such that most guys want to deny its effectiveness, with their brains, based on its simplicity – they don’t think they can actually make rapid progress that fast on such a simple program. You can, for a while, if you work on the basic movements. But they also end up denying, with their asses, the fact that hard work is the key. Basic heavy movements are hard, and easier sure is more fun. At least easier is not as unpleasant.Exercise variety is not only unnecessary for a novice lifter – and yes, this probably means you – it is a counter-productive distraction. For a novice, EXERCISE SELECTION IS NOT THE VARIABLE TO MANIPULATE. Loading is the variable; you have to lift increasingly heavier weights on the same few exercises that cover all the bases until you’re strong enough that a simple program is not enough. And that may never happen, if you don’t stay motivated to train by making good progress at first.This means not doing a bunch of stupid shit that might possibly be appropriate for an advanced man (but probably isn’t, even for an advanced man) but that is NEVER appropriate for a novice. It does mean working hard on the very few things you have to do to make progress. Like getting your squats deep enough to make them actually work, while continuing to add weight every time you train, for as long as the process of novice adaptation can continue.If I had a thousand dollars for every squat I see in my gym done above parallel, I’d be a broke motherfucker. This is because we do not allow partial squats on the premises. I had a drop-in just a couple of weeks ago that showed up on a Saturday night while I was trying to train. Wichita Falls not being the sort of place that still fascinates a 55-year-old guy with its nightlife potential, I was training, as usual, by myself. The guy shows up, pays his 8 bucks, and proceeds to warm up. My hope was that the guy had read the book and was going to be on autopilot so that I could maintain my often-compromised training momentum, but I could tell pretty quick that I was going to be interrupted. He started off with 135 – not the empty bar – and most folks that look like this guy do not have a training history that justifies skipping the empty bar. I sure as hell don’t; I squat the empty bar for 4 sets before plates get loaded. If a competitive lifter wants to start with 135 or even 225, that’s fine, but the first indication that we’re about to have to perform a squat intervention is when a skinny guy starts with 135. He walked it out and did one set of five about 3 inches high, racked it, and loaded 185. With unwarranted optimism I watched the first two reps of the next set, hoping to see below-parallel perfection, like dull person might watch his cousins fight, driven by my desire to not stop my own squats (which take about 30 minutes to warm up) to triage the guy’s situation. They were the predictable 5 inches high, leading me to quickly speculate about what 405 was going to look like (a subtle unlocking of the knees?) before I walked over prior to the third rep and suggested that he rack the bar.I asked him if he would like to learn how to actually squat with correct form, and he readily agreed, no doubt out of concern for my feelings. I went through our standard squat teaching progression, with no bar, then the empty bar, 65, 85, 95, and then 105 x 5 x 3 sets. And that was about all he had left in the tank with his squat down to proper depth. In other words, the guy had overestimated his squat load by at least 100% – I had gotten the impression he was going up from 185.But, BY GOD, he had squatted deep in WFAC, even at the expense of my delayed workout, because at WFAC we do not squat high.This is because squatting high is easier, and easier doesn’t work. You actually know this already, even if you keep the secret buried down below your brain stem. Easier has never worked, and you figured this out in about the 5th grade, if you weren’t in some remedial program mandated by your State. When you memorized all your multiplication tables, arithmetic was a lot easier, wasn’t it? When you diagrammed all your sentences, the next semester’s writing assignments were easier, right? When you did all your homework the test was easier.Squats below parallel are your homework. The result of doing them is that you get stronger on all the other exercises, even the pressing movements, because squats make your whole body stronger – if you do them correctly. I know it’s harder that way, and one of the ways you know it’s wrong to do them high is that everybody else does them high. When was the last time the things everybody else is doing have turned out to be the right thing to do? Deep squats done with a weight that’s a little heavier each time you train affect your body in a way that no other exercise seems to do. And believe me when I say that “other methods” have been tried. They just don’t work. And it’s not that they don’t work as well; they don’t work at all.{pagebreak}You can quarter-squat or half-squat as much weight as you can load on the bar and growth will not occur at the same rate it does when you finally stop being a pussy and get below parallel with correct form every rep, with a constantly-increasing load on your back. And I’m not really sure why. We know that the accumulating effects of the increasing load cause the accumulation of adaptations to those heavier loads. We speculate that loading the whole body causes a systemic hormonal response, and that deadlifts don’t because of the shorter range of motion and the lack of a stretch reflex at the hardest mechanical position. But the truth is we don’t actually know exactly why it’s the squat and only the squat that produces this effect, and we’re not likely to actually find out anytime soon because the exercise “science” community thinks you can do a squat study with a Smith machine. Really. Look it up.I – however benighted I may be with regard to peer-review, academic rigor, and double-blinding – know what works and what doesn’t. The way I know that deep squats work this way and that nothing else does is because I’ve been doing this for 35 years, I’m not actually a dull person, and I’ve seen first-hand the differences in attempting to gain weight and muscle both with and without deep squats.Many of you guys have been attempting to piss uphill for quite some time, and have never gotten any real progress out of your time spent in the gym. If you have been stuck at the same bodyweight while your “squats” continue to progress upward in weight, I can guarantee you that your depth has progressed upward as well. Squats done above parallel cannot be quantified – their performances cannot be compared because they use different amounts of muscle mass, different amounts of stretch reflex, and calculate to different amounts of work (the force-times-distance kind). If the same depth, just below parallel, is used for every rep of every set, then you know that if your squat is going up you are getting stronger.It may be that your intentions are wholesome and honest, and if so, the lack of objective feedback is your problem. There are many ways to deal with this, and I’ll not insult your intelligence by suggesting video or coaching. Just get the damn things deep. But the problem, as I mentioned earlier, is really two-fold: it’s hard to train this way, and people don’t like difficult things – yet it’s simple, and people don’t think simple things can work.This program separates the men from the boys, because coming to the gym three days a week knowing that every time you show up your squats are going to be heavier than last time takes balls. Not at first, because at first you’re not strong enough to stress yourself that thoroughly. But as you grow and as your strength increases, you’ll eventually be challenging more than just your ability to do the work – at risk will be your willingness to get under the bar for your work sets. “It would be easier to do a new PR on a different leg machine,” you think. “Maybe I’ll try to max out the Hammer Strength Iso-Lateral Leg Press today. That’s hard, they say. Then Friday I’ll fry the shit out of my quads on the Linear Hack Press. Monday it’ll be the Squat High Pull machine, Wednesday the V-Squat, and then I’ll just cycle through the leg circuit, maxing out a new one every time. Yeah! FUCK yeah! That’ll be better anyway, muscle confusion, conjugate method, all that shit. More variety means better gains, I’ve heard.”Except that it doesn’t work this way, especially for a novice. We don’t want your muscles confused. We want them to know precisely what they have to do next workout: squat more weight than last time, below parallel. The squat leaves nothing out – there are no holes in its kinetic chain to patch up, unless you squat high. And since a guy that squats 405 x 5 deep is a bigger, stronger guy than a guy that squats 185 x 5 (or a guy that half-squats 405), the goal seems rather clear. Until you can do that, everything else is just a distraction. Hard and simple are the keys to Big and Strong.Don’t be distracted. We already know how this works. It’s worked for tens of thousands of guys for decades. Just squat below parallel, sets of five, and make sure that every workout is a little heavier than the previous workout. The rest of your training will follow suit, and you’ll have learned the most valuable lessons of the weight room: a simple, hard program works best, and that you get out of your training – and your life – exactly what you put into it.

Train Your Body to Love Holding Heavy Weights Overhead

The waiter’s walk might be one of your best tools to build shoulder stability and strength.

The waiter’s walk might be one of your best tools to build shoulder stability and strength.

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Aging, Performance and Health

While physical capacity inevitably declines as athletes age, fitness has dramatic effects on health and quality of life.

“How much should I be lifting?”

It’s probable every coach or trainer has been asked this question, and the query is usually qualified with variables including age, body weight and so on.

We as trainees, and humans in general, really like to compare what we can do with what other people can do, so we create standards for many common exercises. A standard is what we can realistically expect of someone with specific characteristics—sex, age, training experience—in a particular exercise. Sadly, few authoritative sources exist, and we can only strive to provide a relatively close approximation to help the trainee evaluate his or her performance and set goals.

When asked to provide performance standards, coaches must rely on a very limited data set in the literature, their own experience in training, observations of the people they train and pseudo-mathematical estimation. In many instances there is no referential data for an exercise in the literature, so that leaves only experience, observation and estimation.

The largest set of paying customers in the fitness industry is made up of people over 30, and this group is most often interested in how their newfound fitness levels stack up with people their own age. We see this in the 2015 industry report “The Wellness Deficit: Millennials and Health in America,” in which almost two-thirds of the surveyed population said it is important to track and monitor their fitness progress. CrossFit, of course, is driven by data, and few trainees ignore whiteboards and logbooks.

So what can we expect for ourselves and our clients in terms of performance as we age?

Busy, Tired, or Hurt? 3 Excellent Workout Solutions

Just because you're not at your best doesn't mean you should give up on your plan for the day.

Charles is here on a weekly basis to help you cut through the B.S. and get some real perspective regarding health and training. Please post feedback or questions to Charles directly in the comments below this article.

Today, we’re going to take a deeper look at three of the most common workout problems I hear about.

Let’s get started.

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Culture Club

What does your CrossFit affiliate say to members without saying a thing?

Anthony’s truck sagged on the driver’s side as it approached my parking lot. The balding powerlifter had worn out its springs as surely as he’d worn out his welcome at every gym in town. And now it was my turn to send him away. I met him in the parking lot and placed my hand on his door before he could get out.

When I opened my second gym in 2008, my ideal clientele didn’t include powerlifters. I thought my powerlifting buddies would be a good source of revenue, but the powerlifters didn’t mix with the other members. They didn’t fit the culture I espoused, so I started to remove them from the gym. Anthony was the first to go. As he drove away, he said, “I thought you were different, man.”

He was right: I was different. While I had all the equipment, I wasn’t running a powerlifting gym. I was running—and I still run—a CrossFit gym. The difference isn’t the equipment but the culture.

Powerlifters, weightlifters and runners are all welcome here. Their goals outside the gym might be different, but the standard inside is the same: Make everyone else happier. Failure to meet that standard is the only reason I’ve ever canceled a client’s membership.

As CrossFit culture changes fitness and bleeds into the mainstream, the spectrum of new clientele is broadening. On one end, the infirm grandmother looking to tie her own shoes is attracted to functional movement; on the other, weightlifters seeking platform space are attracted to access and equipment. And many gym owners would love to have both groups working in collaboration.

Is it possible?

Be a Team Player: Understand Your BJJ Teammates

There are many faces of BJJ in each class you attend. Which one are you, and which one is your teammate?

I cannot think of a sport besides Brazilian jiu jitsu that brings so many different people together for the same reason. I’ve seen lawyers, doctors, teachers, men, and women all training on the mats. Look around at the faces you see at your gym. Do you understand why your teammates or students are there? If you understand why they started and what they want accomplish, it will help you become a better teammate.

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Feats of Strength: How to Tear a Deck of Cards in Two

Ripping a deck of cards in two may seem like an impossible feat - but with practice, the skill will become yours.

In my previous article I covered how to rip a phonebook in half. Now we move on to a related feat of strength: tearing a deck of cards in two. Anyone who has handled playing cards before knows this is a seemingly impossible feat that will “wow” most people.

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SS Weekly Report October 26, 2015

The Starting Strength Weekly Report 2015-10-26: Topics from the Forums: “Dangers of Omission” and “How to program sprint intervals.” This week Under the Bar: Finishing October strong. View report in browser View report archive var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true}; News Announcements Submit your images to enter this month’s Under the Bar prize drawing. Brent Carter is the winner for the month of October. Articles Steve Dussia concludes his series with Bill Starr: He Wrote the Book SS Coaches’ Updates & Blogs Tom Campitelli introduces (some of) the the masses to the Low Bar Squat Chris Kurisko writes a recap and reflections on the Seattle Starting Strength Seminar Under the Bar Jordan Feigenbaum approaches the bar at the Starting Strength Fall Classic Meet in Oakland, CA. [photo courtesy of Tom Campitelli] Lifters at the Starting Strength Fall Classic Meet in Wichita Falls, TX. [photo courtesy of Nick Delgadillo] Nicole Gibson deadlifts 235lb for a double as Cody Miller provides feedback ten days out from the 2015 Starting Strength Fall Classic in Springfield, MO where she will compete in her first meet. [photo courtesy of Cody Miller] Joanne, age 66, getting back into lifting after a two year hiatus. We’re glad she’s back. [photo courtesy of FiveX3 Training] Starting Strength Coaches Chris Lane and Eric Shugars teach the squat at the 2015 MAHPERD physical education conference. [photo courtesy of Eric Shugars] Greg Wolkoff squats 245x5 under the watchful eye of Coach Nick at WSC. [photo courtesy of Inna Koppel] Clay Lacey locks out a PR 450 lb deadlift at the WFAC Starting Strength Fall Classic. Clay went 9/9 in his first meet. [photo courtesy of Nick Delgadillo] Instructing proper elbow position on the power clean at the Focus Personal Training Institute. [photo courtesy of Brent Carter] Dennis Carter pulls 275# for the first time with a double overhand grip at the recent deadlift / power clean Starting Strength Training Camp in Winston, GA. [photo courtesy of Steve Hill] Lori, age 53, deadlifts 225x3. Both Lori and her husband Nick have been consistently training at Horn Strength & Conditioning in Los Angeles for over a year and continue to make steady and impressive increases in strength. [photo courtesy of Paul Horn] 73 year old Pat Edwards of Lock Haven Strength and Conditioning deadlifts 135#x5. She has 2 knee replacements and a rod in her spine, but never an excuse not to train [photo courtesy of Rebekah Cygan] Elisha Graff pulls 225x5 beltless. [photo courtesy of Inna Koppel] Click images to view slideshow. Submit your images to report@startingstrength.com Submission guidelines to enter this month’s Under the Bar prize drawing. Best of the Week Dangers of Omission rm_sidell Constraints in time and, most importantly, adequate training space have forced me to train only the squat, bench, and deadlift omitting the press and power clean from the program. What are some potential dangers in training only the 3 movements listed following a heavy, 3 sets of 5 reps across approach (1x5 for deadlift) on a (non-consecutive) three-day-a-week program? Mark Rippetoe You omit the benefits of the press and clean: balanced shoulder strength and an incremental increase in power display. Danger!! Mark E. Hurling If you only bench press and neglect the balancing benefits of the OHP, you run the risk of shoulder problems. Your anterior deltoids will become overdeveloped and may pull your shoulders forward. This can make your AC joint miserable. Mark Rippetoe My official advice is to equip yourself to correctly do the program. Best of the Forum How to program sprint intervals par2941 I am currently doing the Texas Method and find myself carrying a little bit more pudge. I would like to start doing some metcon in the form of interval sprints, and I would like your input on how to program them. Previously, during my Starting Strength [novice linear progression], I tried to add in sprints for 2 weeks before I realized recovery was too hard. I am thinking that I will start by adding a day in either Tuesday (before my light workout) or Saturday (right after my intensity workout). Previously, I did 4x100m sprints (about 15 sec/sprint) with a minute and a half rest period. As I progress further I plan on working up to 6x100, and maybe later reducing the rest periods. Additionally, I run on an indoor track (200 meters), so that means I have to run around the curves of the track. Perhaps I should program a little differently so I can just run along the straight edges? Mark Rippetoe Add the sprints on Saturday, but do 4 x 100 with no rest control. Take as much time as you need to recover between reps. The sprints are enough by themselves. After several weeks you can start timing your rest. par2941 What is your opinion on sprints overall, when compared to other forms of metcon/energy system training? Right now I don’t have access to a prowler or sled, and the only other thing I can think of would be barbell complexes or crossfit type workouts (30 snatches for time, etc.). Additionally, I read an article on T-nation about how sprint training is dangerous compared to other forms of conditioning. I plan on disregarding that statement, but is there any truth to it? Mark Rippetoe Sprints are better than any “metcon” option, in my opinion. If conditioning is the actual goal, anything that produces the metabolic stress without the eccentric soreness is better at producing the adaptation without interfering with the rest of your training.

3 of the Best: This Week's Top Articles, Vol. 4

These pieces have caught your attention throughout the week. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.

Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we'll post up Breaking Muscle's top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.

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Lift Stuff: Add Mass to Your Body and Years to Your Life

As humans, we’ve crafted our environment to make life easy. While that’s helped us get where we are today, it comes at a potential price.

“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general.”

The infamous words of Mark Rippetoe are often used to drive the avid gym-goer to squat more, deadlift more, and bench press more. But when your goal is health and longevity, the quote takes on an even broader meaning.

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Soda War

Bills requiring health-warning labels for sugar-sweetened beverages have thus far failed to become law but still succeeded in raising awareness.

The United States’ first two legislative measures seeking to add health-warning labels to sugar-sweetened beverages aren’t winning battles against Big Soda yet, sponsoring lawmakers conceded, but they are bolstering the war effort.

“It’s part of a national movement,” said Sen. Bill Monning, the Democrat who first introduced the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act in February 2013 as Senate Bill 1000 in the California State Senate.

SB 1000 passed the Senate but ran out of time during the regular legislative session for the House to consider it. In February 2015, Monning again introduced the act—this time as SB 203. It failed to make it out of the Senate Health Committee. Monning called its failure disappointing and “a testament to the power of the (Big Soda) industry.”

During the next legislative session, which is scheduled to begin in December 2015, the senator from Carmel said he intends to revisit efforts aimed at reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.

Meanwhile, in New York state, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Democrat from the Bronx, modeled his Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act after Monning’s measure. Dinowitz introduced the bill in January. Two of the New York Assembly’s committees—Health as well as Consumer Affairs and Protection—held a joint public hearing on the bill in April. Dinowitz intends to vigorously pursue the measure come January.

In early November, CrossFit Inc. Founder and CEO Greg Glassman is scheduled to visit a handful of affiliates throughout California to rally support for a health-warning-label bill in the state where CrossFit is headquartered.

2 Simple Steps to Meal Prep Success

Meal planning doesn't have to monopolize your Sunday afternoon. Use these strategies to free up your weekend.

What if I told you there was a way to eat clean that didn’t mean setting aside two or three hours every few days to have bonding time with every appliance in your kitchen?

What if you could have a day or two worth of meals in as little as 20-30 minutes each day (the time it takes you to call in and wait on takeout, go pick up takeout, and sit down and eat it for ONE meal - not to mention the other two meals you have to find or make throughout the day)?

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Bill Starr: He Wrote the Book

Part 3 by Steve Dussia “As opposed to a set of weights however, with Elmer there were no light and heavy days. Every day was a heavy day, heavier than the day before. Elmer ate like a pig, and Bill kept lifting him, every day, rain or shine, for as many reps as he could muster.” Read More var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true}; Bill’s best friend when he was a child was named Elmer, and a nicer male cow you will never meet. Bill wasn’t writing books at this stage of his life, but one of the ones he read had a story about a guy named Milo of Croton, who, “back in the day” got the bright idea that if he lifted a cow every day, starting when it was a calf, that eventually he would be lifting a full grown cow. Well, thought Bill, we have a calf, so I’d better get started before he gets too big. I guess it goes without saying that Bill spent a number of his formative years living on a farm. Bill was in such a hurry to get started that he neglected to read the part that explained the technique used by Milo. Bill figured that the best way to lift him would be to kneel down, put his arms under Elmer’s stomach, and stand up. As we all know, cows have numerous stomachs, so maybe it would be more accurate to say “midsection.”Elmer was just doing his cow thing, mooing, grazing, chewing his cud, etc., when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Little Billy creeping up beside him. Normal life, as Elmer knew it, was about to end that day. Bill’s technique actually worked, and he was on his way to a lifetime consumed with elevating heavy objects. As opposed to a set of weights however, with Elmer there were no light and heavy days. Every day was a heavy day, heavier than the day before. Elmer ate like a pig, and Bill kept lifting him, every day, rain or shine, for as many reps as he could muster. I’m no mathematician, and I know even less about cows, or in this case, a bull, but if he gained 3-4 lbs a day, this program was going to get extremely difficult, and very soon. Considering he was eating bushels of grass every day, either he was going to gain weight like gangbusters, or the footing around him was going to get very slippery, or both. At this point, you’re probably thinking that this story is bullshit. (Pun intended) Lest you think that I’m making it up, this is exactly as Bill related it to me. The program was proceeding as planned until the day Bill showed up for his workout wearing a red shirt. To make a long story short, I think Milo still holds the record, and Bill’s contusions and abrasions healed up just fine. OK, I made that last part up.Bill’s first foray into the field of writing was, as with most people in those days, letter writing. This was in the era of post WWII, and personal computers were the stuff of science fiction. He had access to an old Underwood typewriter, on which he taught himself to type, and as anyone who’s ever had one knows, they could also be used as a fairly substantial weight. Lifting this, and anything else he could find that wasn’t nailed down, along with doing his farm chores, helped him build a base of strength, which he felt he needed for personal defense at school. This was in the days of real bullying, where you got your teeth knocked out, black eyes, bloody noses, and the like. Cyber bullying would have been a welcome relief, but social media in the late 40s and early 50s consisted mainly of disparaging remarks written on restroom walls. He learned how to box, from his brothers, and that helped also, but the desire for progressive resistance training was smoldering within him, even then. Jumping ahead a number of years found him involved with YMCAs, which of course had weights. Weightlifting in those days in small town USA was something you felt you had to apologize for, and the weights were generally a conglomeration of exercise bars, wooden benches and a selection of small-hole plates. There were usually some Indian clubs, which looked like slim bowling pins, and sometimes kettle bell handles that you slid a dumbbell bar through, and added plates. Instead of leg extension and curl machines, you used a pair of iron boots, which also had a hole for a dumbbell bar, and possibly the narrowest, most uncomfortable canvas straps available to hold them on your feet, not to mention the worst designed buckles of all time. Photos in the magazines of the era showed leg curls being performed by standing on one foot, with a broom handle to aid in balancing, and curling a dumbbell with your leg, using a technique not unlike an arm curl. At these moments, you said a silent prayer that no one would pull the fire alarm. Bill was in his glory, using this equipment in the damp dusty basements of these Ys, under the light of a bare bulb, doing exercise routines he read about in Physical Culture Magazine, by the pioneer of weight training publishing, Bernarr McFadden. These magazines were decades out of date, but Bill knew, even then, that he wanted to get to the point where he could put his ideas on paper. He also had access to the York publications, Strength and Health being his favorite, and like many of us in that era, he ordered protein, belts, neck harnesses and the like, building his body, and biding his time. He was entering the world of strength building and healthy lifestyles, long before the terms aerobics, core work, super sets, circuit training, etc. were being touted as the latest greatest things. Bill was old school even before there was an old school. But he was forced to adapt, and dare I say, innovate, as weight training trickled into the mainstream. With the success of each of his trainees, and their trainees, and theirs, he felt that he could finally have an influence on the acceptance of barbell exercises, and their application to a myriad of sports. And through it all, he just kept cranking out the advice on a typewriter that probably has antique value, no, not the Underwood of yesteryear, but a newfangled electric typewriter. He always felt that they should have given him stock in the White Out Corporation, which he admitted probably wasn’t worth much, as everyone else in the civilized world was just hitting the delete button. Bill never made the leap to computers, which makes his volume of work that much more impressive. Editors no doubt rolled their eyes when the envelopes packed with typewritten pages showed up on their desk. When their secretary said, “You’ve got mail”, she meant snail mail, straight from the postman’s bag. At this point the editor would say, sarcastically, “Let me guess…Bill Starr?” Bill went to the Post Office once a week, a routine that he never changed.The closest he ever came to seeing his contributions to Internet publishers in their finished form was when someone mailed a printed copy to him. When I had access to a computer, I would print out as many articles as I could find, and also all the comments, and mail him a copy. He enjoyed them all, and I didn’t edit out any, regardless of the opinions expressed. To paraphrase Henry Ford, Bill’s adage was, “Praise me, or curse me, just be sure to say Bill Starr.” I never found any articles by Bill that suggested cow lifting, but his name is like a rash all over the Web. Well, OK, a good rash. {pagebreak}Bill found, early on, that he was barely out of the gate as a lifter, and people were already hitting him up for advice. They got the benefit of free training tips, and he got free guinea pigs, whose results got filed away, in the recesses of his brain, for future reference. There seems to be an unwritten rule that when you have any degree of success in the weightlifting world, you are required to pass the techniques you used on to others to enhance their abilities. Some think they have better ideas, some do absolutely nothing with them, but every now and then, someone takes them and runs with them. Bill always suggested that, along with subscribing to the theory, you might want to exert some effort. To quote him from a 2011 letter, “…the reason so many people who train are still in miserable shape is they’re lazy. Unwilling to push to the limit. Or train often enough.” If you need someone to interpret that for you, here’s an example…take a weight you can lift 10 times and lift it 20 times. Rest for 30 seconds or so and do another 20. The formula is not magical…the magic has to come from you. Some will say, “That program doesn’t work for me”, and just keep blundering along, looking for the routine that gives amazing results with minimum effort. Let me know how well that works for you.Bill’s persistent vision was an information source that provided the recipe for success, and maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped that having it in print might give him a chance to get in a complete workout of his own, now and then. When that never happened, I suggested he include a chapter on how to psych up for a maximum lift, while reviewing a training program that just couldn’t wait. He didn’t have a title in mind in those early days, but the material that became The Strongest Shall Survive was accumulating. It’s certainly possible that Charles Darwin had some indirect input on the title.Bill used numerous points of reference for the material in his books and articles, but it would be unfair to leave out the name of Doug Hepburn, when talking about contributors of strength training methods. He hailed from Canada, and in the early 50s he had few peers. His programs, which he used to become the top heavyweight Olympic lifter in the world, were simplistic on the surface, but were the result of much experimentation and thought on his part, and are the basis for almost all Olympic lifting training to this day, and certainly influenced the training of many of the lifters in that time period. Hepburn’s records of the time were set with no anabolic use, and some of his lifting feats would be difficult for anyone to duplicate. He could military press 400 up to eye level, hold it there for 10 seconds, and then press it to lockout. Photos in old Strength and Health magazines show him holding a 45 lb Olympic plate at arms length in front of him, with only his little finger hooked into the lip of the plate. He had a special ring with a chain welded to it, and with this he held 90 lbs. straight out in front of him for 10 seconds, also from his little finger. (Seems like he did a lot of exercises for 10 seconds.)To fully appreciate this, hold a 90 lb dumbbell at arms length straight out in front of you, using your whole hand. (or for that matter, both hands). He is also credited with seesaw pressing (alternating hands) 100 lb dumbbells for 22 reps each hand. His numerous feats of strength are a part of weightlifting history, and make for some interesting reading. On page 70 of The Strongest Shall Survive, Bill acknowledges Hepburn as the innovator of some of the best routines for building strength. His influence on SSS was significant.Bill’s entry into the publishing world, York publications to start with, helped to fill the gap in the knowledge that he needed to even consider publishing something of his own. Patience and persistence were the keywords in the process, as it was years getting to this point, and more years before the first copy of the first printing saw the light of day. In the interim, he got to write training articles for the magazine, where he honed his ability to convert verbal instructions into print. And even though he was college educated, with a Masters degree, he had a knack for being able to write easily understandable articles. And when trainees following these programs bore fruit, in terms of producing results, well, that didn’t hurt either. Their feedback, detailing the successes and failures they experienced, all got filed into the memory bank. Suggestions were also offered, and they were considered, not just by their source, but also by their potential benefits. Success, in spite of what you are doing, is not as valuable a lesson as failure, in spite of what you are doing. The path to the best methods may not always be a straight line.US Olympic lifting had been on a somewhat protracted downswing by the time Bill arrived in York, at least as it related to the ComBloc countries. The US, once a power in the overhead-lifting world was now playing second fiddle to the state-sponsored steroid programs of Eastern Europe. York, as the hub of the US weightlifting world, was one of the first to learn of this development, and had no intention of letting this happen without responding, and Hoffman saw it as a way to add to the York Barbell’s list of Senior National team titles. That kind of notoriety couldn’t help but add to the sales of York products. As a result, Bill, upon his arrival at the York Barbell, was instructed to go to the York Pharmacy to pick up his “package.” Certainly a somewhat less scientific approach than was probably being used by the Russians, Bulgarians, et al, but with a little word-of-mouth instruction and a month or so of pill popping, it became obvious that they were definitely on to something. The York lifters had been showing amazing improvement for a while now, and the glowing reports were printed in the magazine. No mention was ever made of the pills, but Hoffman had a warehouse full of power racks that needed homes. Articles showed up in the magazine touting the use of power racks in a study conducted by Dr. Ziegler, using Bill March, and showing how isometric “holds” in the rack were responsible for his rapid improvement. From a business standpoint, the strategy worked, as power racks were flying off the shelves, and instead of lifting weights, the gullible buying public was pushing and pulling on an immovable bar. Bill himself had previously followed this routine faithfully, and after showing no improvement, figured he might have read the instructions wrong. Not really, he just hadn’t read between the lines.The good news for those who purchased the racks was that now they had a safe way to bench and squat alone. The bad news was that they were benching and squatting the same amount as before the rack showed up. Not to diminish the value of isometric holds, but they should be viewed as a supplement to weight training, not as a substitute. Tommy Suggs and Bill had an innate sense of fairness about them, and felt that unfair advantage was being taken of the lifters who did not have access to this treasure trove of pharmaceuticals. Dr. Ziegler, who himself worked with CIBA on the development of Dianabol, was disappointed with the fact that lifters had found a way to abuse this drug, and others like it. Gee, imagine that, a prescription drug being used for other than its intended purpose. Letting the cat out of the bag only becomes a relevant cliché when you try to put the cat back in the bag. Well, Tommy and Bill had a suspicion that this cat wasn’t going back in, and they were right. Now it seemed like the fair thing to do was to let other lifters in on the secret. Hoffman’s “advantage” was about to go out the window, a situation of which he was blissfully unaware.{pagebreak}When the York lifters, Bill among them, traveled to meets, lifters anxious to purchase whatever the York guys had brought surrounded them. This generally included protein powder, t-shirts, energy bars, and the like. What the guys didn’t bring was the magic potion, but all the conversations went straight to that. None of the horror stories that you hear today had reared their ugly heads, and it’s unlikely that they would have been a discouraging factor anyway. When lifters heard that the simple act of taking a pill could increase their lifts by 10, 15, or even 20 percent, they were all on board. Sharing this information was a double-edged sword for Bill, as he was in the heyday of his lifting career, and many of the beneficiaries of said info were his direct competitors. At Bill’s invitation, many of these lifters appeared at the York sessions, and in return for his hospitality, he got to pick their brains for training concepts. The one thing that they had in common was that they all trained differently. Bill’s mind was always at work, devising ways to stay highly competitive with them, while sifting through the best of the best routines for his future publications. The bottom line is that Bill was in a constant learning mode, as well as being a teacher. He and Tommy Suggs played a large role in the application of weightlifting methodology to sports, culminating in what you see today in all fields of athletics. I always felt that The Strongest Shall Survive: Strength Training for Football may have been passed over in its early existence by athletes in other sports, who may have felt that resistance training for football was somehow unrelated to their field of endeavor. Maybe Strength Training for Athletics would have been a more appropriate subtitle, at least from the standpoint of commercial acceptance. Regardless, over the decades, it has been alternately devoured, digested, regurgitated, second-guessed, adapted, discussed, and/or applied by those seeking to rise to the top of their chosen sport. It has certainly inspired others to create training regimens, and to publish everything from pamphlets to volumes explaining why their method is the best. Some have gone so far as to create “sports” designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of their methods. I’m fairly certain that Bill never jumped up onto a box intentionally, or threw a medicine ball over a 2-story building. He was a lifter, pure and simple, providing strength-training programs through his publications and articles. His philosophy was equally simple. You brought the motivation, he supplied the formula. Anyone with more than a single digit IQ could comprehend his instructions. You either got stronger, weaker, or stayed the same…your choice.In the role of teacher, Bill would be invited to conduct seminars of sorts for some pretty diverse groups. One such event took us to the Jarrett School in Honolulu to give an Olympic lift, power lift and arm wrestling demonstration. The power lifting and arm wrestling went off without a hitch, but the Olympic lift portion turned into a demo of a different kind, as in demolition. I had just started training with Bill, and had only been converted from the split to the squat-style clean a few weeks prior. I was clean and jerking just over 300 at the time. We had showed up with a bench, an Olympic bar and 6-45 lb iron plates. Everything was fine until Bill suggested that I attempt a personal record clean and jerk of 315. This was in a classroom, with a bunch of little 8 or 9-year-old kids sitting at their desks, and the bar was where the teacher’s desk would normally be. We tried to make it as entertaining as possible. We were making quite a scene; I was pacing back and forth, clapping my chalk-covered hands, which created huge clouds of dust, psyching up by slapping myself in the face and sniffing ammonia inhalants, while Bill was pacing right along with me, yelling encouragement at the top of his lungs. If you Google “the Bushwhackers,” you might get a feel for our presentation. It was weightlifting theater at its worst. We thought that the kids might enjoy the embellishment, but, in retrospect, we may have overdone it. The clean was hard, and the jerk was even harder, possibly due to the fact that I had to take a 90 lb jump from 225, and the floor was freshly waxed. Instead of the perfect storm, it was the perfect earthquake. My feet slipped, I staggered around a little, dropped the bar from overhead, and it pulverized the floor tiles, mere feet from the front row of desks. Kids started screaming and crying, teachers came running in from other rooms, and it probably would have been bedlam but for the fact that now we were just standing there, and the loaded bar was on the floor. Maybe slightly in the floor would be more accurate.Bill, with a totally straight face, said, “So Big, do you want to try that again?” I said, “Sure, but you might want to move the desks back a little.” As I recall, that plan was immediately vetoed, and we never got invited back there again. To this day, I’m not sure why we were performing for a bunch of grade schoolers, but I do remember that the teacher was about Bill’s age and rather cute. It’s quite possible that he had a hidden agenda. We were so busy leaving that I think he forgot to ask her out. She did send us a thank you note at a later date, but that was probably just a formality. We had much better luck with other seminars, but that was our most memorable. I should add that Bill was laughing so hard as we were driving home, that he had to stop the car. The more we thought about it, the harder we laughed, and Bill kept saying, “I can’t believe that just happened.” Bill and I had a deep appreciation for the absurd, and that debacle certainly qualified. I can honestly say that I never knew Bill to criticize the reams of literature, actually libraries of literature, relating to the pursuit of strength and fitness that others have presented. He understood that very few people actually followed his or anyone’s routines to the letter. I think the fact that his programs were most times beneficial, and sometimes thought provoking, is a testament to his plan. He made some people think, and at the same time, provided a road map of sorts to others, who validated his methods with their results. Mark Rippetoe and I, in a recent phone conversation, talked about how, if you scrutinized Bill’s articles over the years, you may encounter some redundancy. After all, how much can you say about a handful of lifts, most of which take only a few seconds to perform? It made me think back to the day when we broke open the first box of The Strongest Shall Survive, about 40 years ago. There were people born that day who have grandchildren now. (I was actually feeling pretty young until I re-read that last sentence.) If their children, or their grandchildren, at some point, derive some benefit from the rehashing of old ideas, I guess it will have been worth it. From my conversations with Mark, I feel that he and I respected Bill as much as anyone. Bill fought a lifelong uphill battle with Athletic Directors and individual sport coaches, who oftentimes felt that he was trying to steal their thunder. He remarked to me over the years about college coaches who said that he stressed strength too much, while at the same time they jumped on every new gimmicky method of off-season training. Maybe if he had worn a tweed jacket and smoked a briar pipe, the education that he was offering would have seemed more palatable to them. I’m sure that he was vindicated many times when super-strong athletes following his recipes, met with theirs on the field of play. More often than not, the Strongest indeed, Survive. On April 7, 2015, Bill and Elmer were reunited in that pasture in the sky. Elmer was just doing his cow thing, mooing, grazing, chewing his cud, etc. when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Bill creeping up beside him… Part 1 Part 2 ::

How to Deal With Confusing Science

Science says air conditioning makes you fat. But it also says being in cold water burns more calories. What gives?

We are constantly bombarded with the latest scientific discoveries. One article describes a set of scientific results. Then three months later, another article gives opposite results. What do you do?

With these contradictory results, it would be easy to give up on science. But I’m not sure science is to blame. Each study gives us a clue to the final answer. Here are a few thoughts to shed light on these contradictions and teach us to take a bird's-eye view of the issues at play.

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Restricted Success

Our bodies fight restrictive diets in every way possible, resulting in weight gain, not weight loss, over the long term.

Starting a new diet can be thrilling. It’s a time of hope and possibility. The process often starts with a trip to the drugstore for a notebook to write down the details of every meal. Then it’s off to the grocery store to fill the cart with strange ingredients such as chia seeds and apple-cider vinegar. Next, a post on Facebook and Instagram to let everyone know it’s Day 1 of your new diet. Through willpower and perfect eating habits, you are going to get the body of your dreams, at which point you’ll move on to other things.

And then, a year later, you find yourself exactly where you started. Or maybe a few pounds heavier, filled with disappointment.

If you’ve ever experienced this scenario, you’re not alone. And it’s not your fault.

In her book “Secrets From the Eating Lab: The Science of Weight Loss, the Myth of Willpower, and Why You Should Never Diet Again,” Traci Mann, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, shares her findings after 20 years of research. She discovered restrictive diets don’t work, often result in weight gain and might ultimately be unhealthy. What’s more, losing weight is not a matter of willpower. When we diet, we are fighting against our brains and our biology.

All this doesn’t mean we should sink into a torpor surrounded by potato chips and ice cream. Istead of riding the roller coaster of restrictive diets, Mann recommends adopting healthy eating habits, exercising and—most importantly—being happy with your leanest livable weight.

Sound familiar?

Fast Food and Obesity: Who Is to Blame?

When most of us want reliably inexpensive, tasty food - the free market responds accordingly.

Charles is here on a weekly basis to help you cut through the B.S. and get some real perspective regarding health and training. Please post feedback or questions to Charles directly in the comments below this article.

I wonder if you have seen this popular meme? It implies that even the statue of David would become obese if it resided in the United States, due to the prevalence of the evil American fast food industry.

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The 10 Commandments of the Kettlebell Swing

The effectiveness of the kettlebell swing is determined by your approach, standards, and technique. If you're not going to do them right, don't waste your time.

If you are an 80’s kid or older, you are familiar with The Karate Kid. It’s one of those movies you come across while flipping through the channels on a Sunday afternoon and just have to stop and watch until it’s finished. The real gold is found in the gems that come from Daniel and Miyagi’s conversations. One of my favorites is from a scene where Mr. Miyagi is training while Daniel is finding “the balance” in the ocean. Curiously, Daniel asks:

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Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman?

In CrossFit gyms around the world, women deconstruct the longstanding myth of “the weaker sex” and continue the march toward true equality.

In 1973, 55-year-old Bobby Riggs—the 1939 Wimbledon champion—challenged 29-year-old Billie Jean King to a tennis match. Riggs said he could beat any female player even though he was in his 50s.

The tennis match, dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes,” took place in front of a crowd of 30,492; an estimated 90 million people watched it on TV. Although the odds favored Riggs going into the match, King dominated from the beginning. She won all three sets—6-4, 6-3, 6-3—and threw her racket in the air when the match ended.

Women’s equality had a long way to go in 1973. Second-wave feminism was just gathering steam, with the goal of changing the commonly held belief that women’s biological differences from men made them intellectually inferior, more emotional and best suited for domestic life.

The realization that strength is a social construct might be the hallmark of feminism in the 2000s. The worldwide influence of CrossFit—from the affiliate level to the CrossFit Games—has played a role in this shift, helping to destroy the idea that women are the weaker sex.

3 Reasons the Ground Is Your Body's Best Friend

If you’re not accustomed to this level of body awareness, you’ll probably get some pretty surprising feedback.

If you want happy joints, you gotta get low.

As adults we may grudgingly get on the floor every once in a while, but for most of us the journey down to the floor and back up is not a pleasant one. And we certainly don’t think of it as therapeutic. But if you suffer from cranky joints and chronic tension, it may be just what your body needs.

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SS Weekly Report October 19, 2015

The Starting Strength Weekly Report 2015-10-19: Topics from the Forums: “Deltoid spinal part exercises?” and “Triples for females?” This week Under the Bar: Explanation & Execution. View report in browser View report archive var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true}; News Announcements Submit your images to enter this month’s Under the Bar prize drawing. Articles Rip starts with basic differences and ends with practical advice in Training Female Lifters: Neuromuscular Efficiency. SS Coaches’ Updates & Blogs Unnecessary, unworkable and unintelligible: Listen to Brodie Butlland discuss government licensure for the personal training industry on the Antitrust Law Source podcast. Under the Bar Starting Strength Coach and licensed teacher, Brent Carter, illustrates effective squatting kinematics at the Focus Personal Training Institute. [photo courtesy of Brent Carter] Starting Strength Coach Karl Schudt gives a presentation on Starting Strength and the Strength Registry to the new Benedictine Barbell Club at Benedictine University. [photo courtesy of Karl Schudt] Starting Strength Coach Emily Socolinsky coaches new client Patrick on the press at Fivex3 Training in Baltimore, MD. [photo courtesy of Emily Socolinsky] Carol Bournstein, at 68, learns to properly deadlift at WFAC with Coach Nick Delgadillo. [photo courtesy of Nick Delgadillo] Luke Vincent completes his second warm-up set of 5 at the Starting Strength Training Camp held in Winston, GA on October 10th. [photo courtesy of Steve Hill] Tim trains his squat at Feral Fitness in Saratoga Springs, NY. He is rapidly developing his strength using linear progression. [photo courtesy of Feral Fitness] Laurie gets ready to squat 250# for a single in preparation for the Starting Strength Fall Classic under the watchful eye of Starting Strength Coach Diego Socolinsky. [photo courtesy of Emily Socolinsky] John Musser preaches the importance of Strength to Executive Protection professionals at the Executive Protection Institute’s (EPI) Class 77. [photo courtesy of John Musser] Not accepting the fatal flaw of physical therapy, at Riata Therapy we use the barbell and Starting Strength to initiate and progress lumbar rehabilitation after surgery. [photo courtesy of Darin Deaton] SSC Nicole Rutherford coaches the deadlift during Westminster Strength and Conditioning‘s women’s strength program. [photo courtesy of Beau Bryant] Ron had polio as a child, and has no use of his left arm, shoulder, or lat. But that doesn’t mean he can’t get strong with the squat, deadlift, press, and bench press. [photo courtesy of Matt Reynolds] Brent Howard, a local private school football / basketball coach, completes his last working set. He is using Starting Strength with all his athletes and sees this as critically important since he works with few natural athletes. [photo courtesy of Steve Hill] Gaby V. pulls a PR 225x3x2 at Horn Strength & Conditioning in Los Angeles. Gaby’s persistence and dedication to training is an inspiration to everyone around her. We’re very lucky to have such a driven individual at our gym. [photo courtesy of Paul Horn] Glenn Bournstein, 68 years old, pulls a PR 315 lb deadlift while visiting WFAC. [photo courtesy of Nick Delgadillo] Click images to view slideshow. Submit your images to report@startingstrength.com Submission guidelines to enter this month’s Under the Bar prize drawing. Best of the Week Deltoid spinal part exercises? Mr. Chubbins My deltoid spinal part got really sore and started burning today while doing the annual fall cleanup. I was using a gas powered hedge trimmer with a lot of sweeping the trimmer up and down and holding the thing at head or above height. Based on my anatomy app the area that was sore is the spinal part of the deltoid, and it works lifting the arm out, please correct me if that is wrong. What accessory work can I add to strengthen this area? I squat 260, press 162.5, deadlift 300, can’t do a chin yet, and my knees are too problematic for power cleans. Still on linear progression (LP) except for Texas Method (TM) on press. M, 42, 260lb. Nothing else hurt or got sore today, although I am a bit tired tonight. Tom Campitelli I’ve never heard the posterior deltoid referred to as the deltoid spinal part, but I digress. Getting sore is not an injury. It will go away. You did something to which you were not accustomed and it made you sore and tired. You will live to fight another day. With that in mind, I have the following prescription for accessory work for you (sets x reps): Squat 3x5 Press 3x5 Bench Press 3x5 Deadlift 1x5 Chins every workout Best of the Forum Triples for females? mikeylikey My wife has started lifting with me and I’m doing my best to help her do the program. Her form is really good, but I’m wondering about something I read you say a while back re: reps for females vs. males. There were a couple of threads that touched on the idea of using sets of 3 for female lifters instead of 5s. Basically what came out of those threads was that you were looking at making this the standard protocol for women, and there were a number of members that were going to start following said protocol to see how it worked. Any updates to your thinking on this, or from the lifters who’ve tried it out? Jonathon Sullivan I have coached two women >50 yo and one in her 30s who have made excellent progress with triples on the squat and the pressing exercises. In the case of my two older ladies, I moved one of them (50 yo) to 3s after she had repeated failures and setbacks in the last rep or two of sets of five. Moving her to 3s allowed her to continue LP and make serious progress. The other one (64 yo) I started with triples. I continue to have them all do a single set of five for the deadlift workset, and 5 sets of 3 for cleans and/or snatches. Obviously, this is entirely anecdotal and purely pragmatic. YMMV. I’ll be interested to hear what others have to say. jep6095 Using triples, while training women, has been a very useful tool. And not just for older women. I had a young pilot who at times flew twice a day in the Texas heat before training but we were still able to add weight to the bar using triples instead of stalling out on a 3x5 scheme. Jordan Feigenbaum Most of my clientele are of the female persuasion and age 33-60. We’ve had lots of success pushing 5s for a long time, although I have seen that they respond well to increased pressing volume and microloading. Additionally, I find that I have to move to weekly progress after 2-3 weeks and doing an intermediate setup with volume sets of 5s and PR sets of 3 on intensity day work well. I haven’t had much success with triples for volume work unless we were working up to a heavy triple then doing back off sets of 5’s to accrue the volume. Just my experience. Gillian Mounsey My personal opinion and experience is to use 5s for as long as possible because of their ability to build the best strength foundation. Triples seem to be great to push past a sticking point but don’t require the same physiological adaptations as 5s. I will go to triples with female clients once they have graduated to the intermediate phase. I will often go back to 5s once the stick has been overcome. If I stick with triples, I increase the overall volume by adding sets such as a 7 sets of 3 scheme. In my opinion this helps to achieve the adaptation that we get from 5s. Gwyn Brookes This makes so much sense! I switched to triples when I was having recovery issues, but eventually made the decision to go back to sets of five because I really wanted to grow, was ready to eat to make that happen, and I felt that fives were more conducive to growth. I may very well use triples again when I get stuck, but right now I’m very happy with fives still.

3 of the Best: This Week's Top Articles, Vol. 3

These pieces have caught your attention throughout the week. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.

Welcome to our brand new weekend roundup, Three of the Best! Every Sunday, we'll post up Breaking Muscle's top three articles of the week. These pieces have caught your attention throughout the last seven days. So here they are in one place for you to consume, digest, and enjoy.

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First Trimester Fitness: 3 Ways to Overcome Fatigue

The first trimester of pregnancy is infamous for being a fitness deal-breaker, largely due to fatigue. But there are ways to work around it.

The first trimester of pregnancy is infamous for being a fitness deal-breaker. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of moms who were training for marathons one week, then stuck in bed drinking chicken broth and eating Saltine crackers the next. If you’ve been in this situation, you know the feeling of helplessness and frustration it can cause, especially if you’re training for an event.

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Protein Powerhouse: Gluten-Free Mexican Scotch Eggs

This variation on an everyday snack is a great protein and fat hit, packed with flavor, and full of nutrients.

We love a scotch egg. A great protein and fat hit, packed with flavor, and full of nutrients - especially the way we make them. These are great at any meal time, or as a grab-and-go snack. We recommend bulk cooking so there are plenty for other days, as you will be scoffing these straight out of the oven!

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Never Miss the Jerk

Affiliate owners work to please every client, but when an athlete is clearly unsuited to a gym, it’s time to take action.

Doug Chapman has seen it all: stalking, rudeness, willful ignorance.

There are many reasons he’s asked clients to leave his affiliate, CrossFit Ann Arbor in Michigan. And since opening the gym in 2005, he’s come to recognize the red flags early.

“When they’re noncompliant for instruction to a class,” Chapman said dryly. “Basically you know when you’re organizing a class … and somebody’s off doing their own thing, talking—it’s disrespectful.”

He added: “It basically detracts from the class, the learning process for everybody.”

When newcomers arrive, Chapman advises his team of coaches to vet them for a good fit.

“People come in with all kinds of goals and ideas of what they expect, but if it doesn’t match, you need to redirect them away from you,” he said.

It’s something nearly every affiliate owner has encountered: Firing a client. Although unpleasant, owners said, it’s necessary for the vitality of your box.

“I hate to see money walk out the door, but I had some people I got rid of in the winter time and I’m just so happy that their negativity is out of my gym,” Chapman said. “Your company is essentially what you are. If we’re not all going in the same direction, get off the bus.”

Training Female Lifters: Neuromuscular Efficiency

by Mark Rippetoe “[T]he reality of human sexual dimorphism must be dealt with. How? By taking into account what we know about the differences in male and female neuromuscular efficiency, understanding the implications for training, and planning appropriately.” [A truncated version of this article originally appeared on T-Nation, 10-14-2015] Read More var addthis_config = {"data_track_addressbar":true}; ”[T]he reality of human sexual dimorphism must be dealt with. How? By taking into account what we know about the differences in male and female neuromuscular efficiency, understanding the implications for training, and planning appropriately.” In a previous article I stated, “The reason why women’s deadlifts don’t always obey this rule has to do with the same reason women can perform a much higher percentage of their 1RM for reps, but that’s a subject for another article.” This was in reference to ideal deadlifting mechanics in a previous article, and specifically refers to the fact that women can pull a deadlift with worse technique than men can at the 1RM-level of effort.If I need to tell you that women are physiologically different than men, you either have not coached both men and women or you have not been paying any attention while you were. A 1RM effort performed by a female trainee is a different event than a limit rep performed by a male lifter. Several Observations1. Women can perform a much higher percentage of their 1RM for a set of 5 than men can. Most women can do 5 reps on the bench press within 5-7 pounds of their one rep max. A woman with a 100-pound bench can normally do 95 for 5 reps – 95% or perhaps even as much as 96-97% of their 1RM for 5. In contrast, men generally work with sets of 5 about 85-87% of their 1RM; a 350 bencher can usually triple 315 and do 5 with 300. This is not because women possess the fictional quality known as “strength endurance” – it’s not that she’s “very efficient with the use of her strength.” It is because a 1RM for a female is not the same type of limit lift that it is for a male lifter. So when she does a 5RM close to her 1RM, it’s kinda like the 1RM’s fault. Funny story: a long time ago I took a female trainee to a powerlifting meet. Rosellen was just getting started, and I have always been a believer in the power of competitive pressure to improve a person’s training. Her opening deadlift was an easy 220 – looked like a set-of-5 weight – and I, having apparently not paid close attention to her training lifts, decided that 237 would be an excellent 2nd attempt.It was welded to the floor. Didn’t move at all. A guy would have at least broken it loose, but she couldn’t put even a crack of daylight between the plates and the platform, despite pulling on it for several seconds. This was entirely my fault. My observation at that time that she could have done a set of 5 with 220 was entirely compatible with the fact that her 1RM – that day, anyway – was probably about 231. So, good second and third attempts would have been 225.5 and 231. So, 220 wasn’t heavy, but 237 was in excess of her limit by some amount – a spread of about 5% between what could have been pulled for 5 reps and a limit single. This phenomenon, and the observation that there isn’t much room between a woman’s opener and her 3rd attempt, was the reason that Olympic weightlifting went to the one-kilo rule for increases between attempts after the women’s division was added to the Olympics.2. Even after concentric failure, women can continue to exert eccentric control over a load. Second funny story: I decided to experiment with my dawning awareness of this phenomenon on a gal from the gym doing the incline bench press. I haven’t used the incline in decades, but at the time it suited my purposes because the construction of the bench made it very easy to spot the exercise. Kay was fairly strong, and had been training several months. I warmed her up, then loaded 65 pounds on the bar and started the set. She finished 6 reps by herself, and failed at 7. I helped her up with the 7th rep and told her to lower the bar under control. Kay did 13 more reps under eccentric control, for a total of 20 under either concentric or eccentric control when concentric failure had occurred at 7. Later that week, she reported minimal soreness, and was ready to train again. Damn!In a similar situation, a guy would get 2 more reps, and then be able to isometrically hold one more, maybe. But 13 controlled negatives after failure doesn’t happen to a male trainee. Because a set of 5 or 6 reps to failure produces sufficient fatigue to shut down further muscular effort in a male, but not apparently for Kay. Even after they reach failure during a set, women retain the ability to continue generating force eccentrically long after a male would have fatigued to the point of eccentric failure. 3. As previously mentioned, women can perform a 1RM personal record absolute-strength-dependent squat, press, deadlift, or bench press with less than perfect technique, which post-novice male lifters can’t usually do. No personal funny story this time – look it up yourself. Youtube is full of videos of female lifters performing record or personal record squats, bench presses, and deadlifts with sloppier form than males can use for limit attempts, although it may take a trained eye and frame-by-frame video to detect the problems. Heavy squats and pulls must move in a vertical line over the mid-foot for efficiency of balance and leverage mechanics. Yet their lifts are completed, are in fact PRs and record performances, and are impressive displays of strength, despite the fact that they could be better technically, and the fact that men would miss attempts with a similar level of technical irregularity. Women can lift “heavier” weights with a lower dependence on technical perfection than men, who must increase mechanical efficiency as the weight goes up. Women should, but men have to.More Observations1. The Standing Vertical Jump is a standard test for explosive power. It measures the difference between the height of the maximally upraised hand and the height of the hand at the top of a jump initiated with a single countermovement drop and no foot movement. The average women’s Standing Vertical Jump (SVJ) is 14 inches. It’s very hard to find a record – there is a 29.5-inch jump listed at Nebraska track and field in 2002. In contrast, the men’s average is 22 inches, with a 46-inch jump at a 2006 NFL combine being the best controlled record I can find. So both the average and the record women’s SVJ is 64% of the men’s. (This refers to the standard controlled performance of the SVJ, not the internet version.)Contrast this with the fact that women’s individual timed sports performances average about 90% of the performances of men, across all timed sports.2. Men’s and Women’s divisions exist in all athletics events in which both sexes (“gender” is a linguistics term) participate. If golf is segregated by sex, you know that there exist profound differences in physical performance between the sexes. Some sports – badminton, tennis, squash, table tennis, curling, korfball, figure skating, and a few others – feature mixed competition, where teams consist of both men and women. The equestrian sports feature both riders and horses of both sexes (including geldings) in the same event. But no legitimate competitive sport pits human women against men directly.3. Men’s and women’s combat sports are particularly segregated, due to the high injury potential a mismatch presents. Men and women train and spar together in many dojos, but there are no serious competitive venues for mixed matches that count towards the record. Yes, at the professional level, the best woman can beat the worst man in her weight class, but that’s not how fights are arranged in actual sports. And that’s not the point.{pagebreak}Some SpeculationsSpeculation 1: Women tend to be more flexible than men. Range of motion around a joint is associated with the ability to relax into a stretch, a skill that must be learned by inflexible people. I assure you that there are significantly more inflexible men than women. Could it be that this phenomenon is associated with lower numbers of motor units being recruited at any given time?Speculation 2: Most people who train women report that their female trainees have significantly less delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) than their male trainees. (DOMS is associated with unadapted-to eccentric loading.) Their soreness lasts for a shorter time, and it interferes less with their training than it does with a male. This could be attributed to either a lower volitional training intensity, or to inherent differences in the quality of the eccentric loading women experience. Kay’s ability to work eccentrically far beyond concentric failure indicates both a lack of fatigue from the preceding concentric work and a lack of fatigue during the eccentric work itself. It’s quite likely that she was unable to work hard enough against the bar to approach a more typical-for-a-male response pattern.So, how to explain these observations? It’s rather obvious that testosterone is involved, but what does it do that explains this particular aspect of sexual dimorphism? Testosterone has profound effects on neuromuscular efficiency. And neuromuscular efficiency is the primary physical difference between men and women. It accounts for the differences in strength evident even at similar lean body masses, and all the factors cited previously.Finally. The Point.A 1-Repetition Max “PR” is, theoretically, a maximum motor unit recruitment event, an indication of your motor nervous system’s ability to recruit a maximum number of the muscle’s contractile components – and therefore the maximum amount of muscle mass – into a muscular effort. A 1RM is essentially a combination of your neurological and muscular ability, a display of your maximum force production capacity through the “recruitment” of very high numbers of “motor units” (look it up) into contraction. Most authorities reckon that a true 100%-of-motor-unit-recruitment event is impossible, and I’ve seen 95-98% batted around as the most likely cap on neuromuscular efficiency.This efficiency decreases with age, unfortunately. But it also varies with genetic endowment, and sex. This explains the spread between average and elite athletic performances, between the performances of younger and older athletes, and between male and female athletic performances – athletic performance in most sports is greatly dependent on power. The ability to explode is the ability to display strength quickly, to recruit huge numbers of motor units into contraction in a very short time, and is another way to describe neuromuscular efficiency. If men can recruit 98% of their motor units into a 1RM contraction, women are only able to recruit some lower percentage into the same relative effort – maybe 90%, maybe 85%, maybe less. Quite literally, a 1RM for a male and a female are two different neuromuscular events.Strength and PowerStrength and power are intimately related. The math is: Power = force x distance/time. Force is strength, your ability to apply force to an external resistance, like the floor, an implement, or an opponent. The distance a load is moved is typically controlled by the circumstances of the display – a clean or a snatch, or a football lineman’s action across the line of scrimmage. Time is the period during which the explosion occurs, the time it takes to produce the contraction we want to measure. Resist the temptation to express power as Force x Velocity, because it’s easy to misunderstand the true situation this way. Yes, distance/time is velocity, but in trying to understand muscular power production we are only secondarily concerned with the velocity of the load being moved. Our primary concern is the time it takes to produce the force that moves the load – the explosion of muscular force itself and not the result of the explosion.Strength and the ability to display it quickly are also intimately related in that “genetically” gifted explosive athletes are also stronger than more average athletes when they start training. If a kid comes into the gym with a 36-inch SVJ, he always squats quite a bit more – maybe twice as much – as a kid with a 16-inch vertical on the first day of training.The Limitations Here’s the bad news: Human athletic capacity is pretty much limited by genetic and congenital endowment. The genetically-controlled aspects are anthropometry, which influences leverage efficiency in the mechanical expression of force production. For example, long tibias and shorter femurs are associated with sprinting efficiency, height and skeletal size often determine the sports in which the athlete may excel – basketball, football, and jockeying are obvious examples of sports that select for anthropometry. Explosion and neuromuscular efficiency are associated with nervous tissue quality (the link between brain and muscle is long and complicated, and can display varying amounts of functional capacity), the quality of the nerve/muscle interface, and the contractile characteristics of the sarcomere proteins themselves. The ratio of Type I to Type II muscle fibers is fixed, and along with neurological tissue limitations (think about how difficult it is to heal a damaged nerve), this represents a significant bottleneck. I’m very sorry, but it’s just not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. In addition, all of these variable characteristics are subject to hormonal mediation. Every system that influences human physical development is dependent on the hormonal environment in which it develops, and in which it functions. Males and females and old and young people have different hormonal environments, both developmentally and functionally. A male, having bathed in testosterone since his pre-natal days, shows its effects in every system of his body, from neuromuscular to behavioral to tonsorial, just as a woman shows its absence in hers. This means that women who take androgens and anabolic steroids can make up some of the differences, but nowhere near all of them. It also means that Caitlyn Jenner shouldn’t get to enter the masters division women’s heptathlon. And there is huge variation within the abilities of these systems to respond to their particular hormonal environment, to the extent that much of the cause of this huge amount of variation remains unknown. What is known is that every aspect of physical development is focused through the lens of the hormonal milieu into an individual expression that varies with sex, all other genetically-determined characteristics, and the physical environment in which development takes place. To save time, we’ll abbreviate this complex concept as “genetics.”SVJThe SVJ test is a very good measurement of this “genetic” explosiveness endowment, because it measures your ability to accelerate your own body’s mass to impart sufficient momentum to carry you up in the air a measured distance after you stop applying force to the ground. Since the force production that generates this acceleration must occur in the short time it takes to produce a counter-movement jump, the height of the jump is a very precise measurement of your ability to recruit a lot of motor units right now – your ability to explode. Strength improvement helps, but doesn’t much affect this beyond 10-15% because the weight you’re moving is only your bodyweight – pretty light relative to a strong athlete’s squat. If you gain muscle mass, force production has increased enough to compensate for the increased bodyweight, but absolute force production isn’t the limiter in the SVJ – instantaneous recruitment of the submaximal contraction is. For this reason, the SVJ is a test of genetics, a pretty good way to assess the genotype of the prospective athlete. It responds quite minimally to practice, because it’s not very technical and there’s no way to “game” the test if the test administrator is paying attention. A kid who first tests his SVJ with a 95-pound squat, and who later tests it after accumulating a 365-pound squat will show a little improvement, maybe 15%, because the quantity being tested is not absolute force, but the ability to recruit. For this same reason, some very strong powerlifters do not have big SVJs.The relatively limited ability for neuromuscular efficiency improvement is born out by the evidence of SVJ testing over time. Barring a large bodyfat loss, SVJ improvement is limited to perhaps 20% under the most optimum of circumstances for males, and usually 10-15%. Most women show very little improvement, maybe 5%, and maybe none at all, because of their inherently less efficient neuromuscular capacity. Strength coaches with no countervailing agenda all agree – you just can’t improve the SVJ very much, and to the small extent it can be improved, a strength increase is the primary factor. Because of “genetics.”And why would you want to anyway? The test is designed to reveal your natural explosive capacity, not your ability to game the test. It demonstrates the difference between the 12s and the 36s, not the ability of a 26 to get to 30.{pagebreak}The Hard Reality There will be screaming, I know, but show us your data. Rate of force development (RFD) training is very very popular right now, completely replacing actual strength training in many athlete’s programs. Once again, Youtube is jam-packed with videos about how to avoid getting your squat and deadlift strong. Seminars are available that will certify your ability to teach agilities, cone drills, plyometrics, balance tricks, single-leg dumbbell exercises, and explosive movements with weights too light to make you stronger, in lieu of coaching the heavy lifts. But RFD training is largely a waste of time, a mere display of what the athlete can already do and not a way to make him better at it. Even if you increase the RFD around a single joint – the knee, for example – this improvement does not result in significant improvement in explosion within the whole system. SVJ does not significantly increase with RFD training, because the only variable in the power equation that is truly trainable is F. Force. Strength.Athletes at the professional and D1 college level are explosive, quick, agile, balanced, and coordinated, or they wouldn’t be playing at the professional and D1 level. They are elite athletes, hired for their genetics. Explosion and power is a genetic endowment, and this is why God made college sports recruiters – and the NFL Combine, which tests for both “genetics,” that can’t be trained, and strength, which most assuredly can and should be trained. Since many, if not most, of these gifted athletes have never been effectively trained for strength, because their coaches have been caught up in the latest trendy RFD/strength-avoidance protocol, the potential remains undeveloped.Sex. Hey, It Sells.Sex obviously determines most of the hormonal milieu, in that sex is an obvious aspect of “genetics.” But variations between individuals in sex hormone receptor efficiency are also a major determinant of hormonal response. Two young men with the same height and bodyweight, perhaps even the same testosterone level, will have different physical capacities. In general, a younger man will display more neuromuscular efficiency than an older man. In general, a male will show more neuromuscular efficiency than a female. The difference between natural athletes – the explosive guys with 36”+ SVJs that learn visually quite easily – and their less gifted brethren is quite profound. An explosive athlete, who by definition recruits more motor units, and therefore more muscle mass, into a contraction, receives a different training stimulus from that contraction than an athlete who recruits less muscle mass into the contraction. This explains why less-talented athletes cannot benefit from the same training programs that produce world-class performances for athletes with better “genetics.”The Bulgarian Olympic weightlifting team may well be able to snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat, and that’s all. For them, that may be enough training because they’re working more muscle at a higher capacity with every snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat – because of who they are and what they are. Your narrow ass, on the other hand, probably needs to squat, deadlift, and press heavy if you want to have a chance to lift in the same meet with them.There will be examples of gifted older athletes who are better than less-gifted younger athletes, as well as gifted females who are better than average males, especially older males – Ronda Rousey can whip my narrow ass, and yours too. Male and female differences, however, remain the most profound predictor of absolute physical capacity. For the same reason that the average male cannot be trained to the level of neuromuscular efficiency of the gifted male, the average female cannot be trained to perform beyond the average male’s trained capacity. Another obvious implication is just lying there, waiting to piss people off. The role of women in infantry combat positions in the military is controversial, and it shouldn’t be. If there is a way to quantitatively evaluate the role of strength and power in the physical demands of combat, and the preparation of soldiers for combat readiness, the differences between male and female physical potential cannot be ignored. As unpopular as this may be politically, the fact remains that the reality of human sexual dimorphism must be dealt with.The Application of All This Previous MaterialHow? By taking into account what we know about the differences in male and female neuromuscular efficiency, understanding the implications for training, and planning appropriately. A 1RM for a female is a different neuromuscular event than it is for a male, perhaps only an 85-90% recruitment effort, perhaps less, perhaps more, depending on individual differences. If this is the case, and decades of training experience and much empirical evidence indicate that it is, then a 5RM is also a different neuromuscular event, a different stress, and therefore a different training stimulus. It is lighter relative to a male’s 5RM, to the extent that 3 sets of 5 reps do not constitute the same training stress for males and females. After the first couple of months of training, “heavy” sets of 5 for a female may not be heavy enough to drive the stress/recovery/adaptation cycle the same way it does for male trainees. Therefore, the productive training stress a male can apply with sets of 5 may have to be produced with relatively heavier weights, heavy 3s for example. Volume can be maintained with more sets, and 5 sets of 3 reps have been successfully used to drive a strength adaptation for females longer than 5s have.And by this reasoning, sets of 10 reps are as pointless for females as 20s are for males who are trying to get stronger. Any weight a male trainee can do for 20 reps is not heavy, even though it may feel like shit at the end of the set. If force production is strength, a weight that requires such sub-maximal force production that it can be done for 20 reps is not heavy enough to drive a strength adaptation for any significant length of time. For women, 10s are the equivalent waste of time if strength is the training objective, and after the initial weeks of training, 5s aren’t that much better, because they just aren’t heavy enough for her. Sets of 3, or perhaps even 2s, are required to get close enough to a weight that is actually heavy enough to drive a strength adaptation. And in fact, experience has shown that 5 sets of 3 for women works as well, and for as long, as 3 sets of 5 does for men. Where men will plateau on 3s after a few weeks, women can train productively with this relatively-heavier-but-really-about-the-same-heavy-for-them program, for months.Women can train heavier more frequently than men, because they get less sore, they recover faster, and they can deal with more frequent exposures to a training stress, since the stress is lower relative to a male’s capacity to beat himself up. Heavy 3s for 4-5 sets 3 days per week, with no light days may be necessary to drive a strength increase in more advanced females. Such a schedule would kill most men, and is necessary for most women.Women can also train the deadlift more frequently than men, and need to do so to drive it upward. Most men cannot recover from frequent heavy deadlifting, and most men cannot tolerate multiple sets across in a workout. Women need the heavy volume as well as the high intensity of multiple heavy triples, and this is some of the highest quality strength stress they can apply. Women need less rest between sets than men. Heavy squats for 5 sets across for an intermediate male might take 15 minutes between sets, adding up to a very long workout when the other lifts are added in. Women can recover faster between sets of work that for them is not as taxing as it is for men. This is necessary to keep in mind, especially considering the need for more heavy workouts in the week’s schedule and the ability to do the work in a more manageable time frame.And women’s lifting technique, while it can withstand more slop than men’s technique will tolerate at limit weights, still obviously needs to be as close to perfection as possible. Just because a lift can be completed with an inefficient bar path doesn’t mean you, the coach, are off the hook. If you can’t produce close to perfect technique in your lifters, you aren’t a competent barbell coach, even though you may be able to hide behind your naturally talented female lifters like many D1 S&C coaches hide behind their recruiters.But really, what we do know for sure is that women respond to the stress of strength training in a different way, because they produce a different quality of stress from which to recover and thus adapt. The adaptation curve is different, but it still trends upward, like that for all humans exposed to an adaptive stress. We’re still learning. Keep these things in mind, and we’ll all learn together. Tom DiStasio SSC, Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at Sacramento State University, contributed quite a few ideas to this article. I’m grateful for his experience, his judgement, and his time.