Chicken breasts offer a great source of protein, and they can be cooked so many different ways and compliment a variety of dishes. For example, for dinner I would have a chicken breast with sides of rice, potatoes and asparagus/broccoli. A chicken breast contains approximately the same amount of protein as a scoop of protein powder, so next time you get out of the gym try this recipe instead of guzzling down that sandy mixture.
Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons minced garlic (9 cloves)
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon lemon zest (2 lemons)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 whole lemon (3 lemons in total should do the trick)
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
salt and black pepper
4 boneless chicken breasts
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Warm olive oil over medium-low heat, add garlic, and cook just for a minute, not letting the garlic brown. Remove from heat, and add the white wine, lemon zest, lemon juice, oregano, thyme, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Pour mixture into a baking dish.
3. Pat chicken breasts dry and place them in the sauce. Brush the chicken breasts with olive oil and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Cut the lemon in 8 wedges and stick them in between the chicken breasts.
4. Bake for about 30-40 minutes.
Enjoy! (sides: tomato salad and soy sauce eggplant w/ rice)
I've probably said this before, but here are my fitness goals:
1. Bulk up via strength training to about 150 lbs (~10-15% body fat is fine) 2. Join the 1000lb club (Deadlift, bench, and squat must add up to at least 1000lb) 3. Bring my conditioning up (Cut back on strength training and focus on circuit training ~5-8% body fat)
Obviously when I start the conditioning, my weight will drop a bit, maybe settling down around 145lb. The idea is to become lean yet still strong, so I have to gain a bit of extra weight when I'm bulking to anticipate the weight loss after.
Moving to Grande Prairie kept me busier than I thought it would, and during the transition I didn't go to the gym for about a month. Now I'm finally settled in, I'm back in a routine and going to World's Gym for my weight lifting needs. Like I mentioned in previous posts, I said I would start a new program to help me break over some of the plateaus I was experiencing. This new program is called the Madcow Program. There's speculation over where exactly this program came from, but these 5x5 programs are nothing new and they have been proven again and again. Essentially 5x5 programs are structured around the ideology of 5 sets of 5 reps. 5 reps is less than the usually 8-10 rep standard that many in the fitness world preach, but in order to really get strong, you need to lower the reps and increase your load. To offset the low number of reps, you maintain the work output by increasing the standard 3 sets to 5 sets. There is a popular lifting program called Starting Strength, and it is a 5x5 program aimed at people fairly new at lifting weights. It gets people strong pretty quick! It's a program by Mark Rippetoe, a highly regarded coach with 25 years in the fitness industry and 10 years as a competitive power lifter. He has a website here: Starting Strength, with lots of useful tips and videos and he also has a book by the same name. Needless to say, more and more people are starting to jump on the 5x5 bandwagon.
Now the Madcow program is a intermediate lifting program, usually for people that have completed programs such as Rippetoe's Starting Strength. Because gains are harder to come by, the program ensures optimal recovery, and slowly ramps up weight over the course of weeks. Here is some more information on the Madcow program: http://stronglifts.com/madcow-5x5-training-programs/
Some fantastic person created a spreadsheet that is easy to use and follow where you enter how much weight you can normally lift at max, and it calculates exactly what weight to use each workout. Here's a screenshot of the spreadsheet and you can see in the red box my workout for today. This is my second week doing it. During my one month hiatus, I lost a bit of muscle and I'm finding myself not as strong as before. I still kept my "maxes" the same as before though, so I'm hoping that I regain my former self pretty quickly here. By week 4-5 you should be breaking your old personal records, so until then it's supposed to be pretty easy. Also, if I stick to this, by week 12 I should have hit the 1000lb club!
Now you might be asking, so do you really only do 3 lifts a day? In short, yes. These compound exercises are your bread and butter and should result in the most gains for what you are putting in. Since you are stressing your body so much with a lot of weight, you need a lot of recovery. However, there are complimenting exercises that you can throw in. As long as you don't spend another hour working your biceps, you should be fine. For example, one day i did some pullups, the other day I did some light clean and jerks. Don't overdo it. Of course, what do I know, this is my first time doing this program. What I do know is though, in weight lifting there is the law of diminishing returns. Up to a certain point you can work out for hours on end and not get corresponding gains. Ever worse, you can overtrain and get sick, and that throws your body really out of whack.
Anyways, food doesn't cook itself, so I better get off the computer and make some lunch. Oh and on that, I'm going to post some of my new nutrition and put up a recipe I tried out and like. It's nice and simple, and got lots of protein for your weight lifting grunting needs!
Sorry, it's been over a month since I've posted. To be fair, I didn't have my computer or internet access for about 3/4 of that time. I've finally moved to Grande Prairie, and this is the first weekend where I'm settled down and not too busy. I was in a hotel for the first week because I couldn't move in until August. It would have been 2 weeks in the hotel, but luckily the manager let me move in a week early. Not to say the hotel was horrible... the place I stayed at had it's own kitchen so I was able to cook at least!
I ordered Internet and TV from Telus as soon as possible, but somehow they always manage to disappoint me. They screwed up my address and when I called them to correct it they said "oh yeah, we have the right address, don't worry". Sure enough, they call me that day and tell me that they can't hook up my services because of the wrong address. ugh. So I had to wait an extra week and a half before I had internet/tv. It wasn't too bad though, because I drove to Calgary for the long weekend and drove back up with my girlfriend. She stayed for a week, and on the weekend we drove down to Two Lakes and did some hiking. We got lost in the bush, but it was a pretty fun adventure. It was a rainy day and by the end of the day we were soaked from head to toe. Here's some pictures:
My muddy truck!
Amazing
Beautiful girlfriend at the wapiti river!
Missing the cowboy hats...
For whatever reason, the grasshoppers in GP are breeding like crazy this year, and these little buggers seem to really like my grill...
Anyways, my girlfriend is gone now, and I'm settled in, and it feels like every minute of my time is spent cleaning and cooking! I joined World's gym, and also joined the team at GP boxing. They're a small group of guys but a great bunch and we can all help each other improve our game. Anyways, I train Monday to Thursday at the boxing gym, and then I work out 3 times a week. As a result, I don't have much time for cooking and I need to cook a lot of food in advance and I've become best friends with tupperware. Here's a picture of one of my better creations :)
Baked Lemon Chicken with herb roasted potatoes with rice and broccoli. Mmm!
I'll make another post about my new training, but until then, here are pictures of my new apartment! I really need to go to sleep cuz I'm bagged!
Over the years I have seen people do some pretty stupid stuff at the gym. For example, the other day I saw 3 high school kids walk over to the squat rack, put 10 lb bumper plates onto the barbell, and proceeded to do bicep curls. I stared at them in disbelief but they were too busy comparing their biceps to notice me. Cutting to the chase, here are the 3 biggest mistakes in my opinion in weight lifting:
1. Forgetting to breathe: When going for that new personal record sometimes people forget that their brain needs oxygen and that by holding their breathe they are some how stronger. Breathe!
2. Lifting on an upset stomach: for all those who know what I mean, I empathize. For those who don't, just don't do it. Make sure you do what you have to do in the washroom before lifting.
3. Overestimating one's abilities: Not only does this hinder your progress, if you're lucky you can end up on the internet for everyone's amusement.
Now that I've explained that, I'm sure a few people will disagree with me, but rest assured I was not completely serious when I came up with these. In fact, they really just complement the videos below... and although they may not be the biggest mistakes... we should all take note.
Enjoy!
Note: Pay attention to the area between the lifter's feet in the first video
Gains! The past couple weeks has been good in terms of personal records for me. Last week I clean and jerked 165#, and few days later followed it up with a 195# clean. My weighted pullups went up to +55#, and I managed to lift 375# on the deadlift! It's interesting that most of these new records were done at times when I'm training minimally. I'm really busy right now, with finding an apartment, buying furniture, booking hotels and flights, etc etc, and I just can't train as much as I did before. It's actually probably because of this that I'm able to lift these weights in the gym. My body is well rested and strong when I go into the gym, and it's not struggling to recover from previous days workouts. Sometimes when I take a week off from the gym, either because I'm busy or I'm going on vacation, I come back to the gym expecting that I will be weaker, but usually it's the opposite. So I figure it's good to give the body a break once in a while, let everything recover back to 100%, and then get back at it after.
More on deadlifts, I was talking with a friend who competes in strongman competitions, and we're going to try and race for the 3X bodyweight deadlift. I'm around 135#, so I would have to DL 405#. He's around 190# and would have to DL 570#. I think right now he deadlifts just over 500? Anyways, it seems like a fun challenge and a good goal to set. Hopefully I can get there in less than 6 months. I finally went out and bought wrist straps and chalk, so that should help with my deadlifting.
Anyways, this was a pretty boring post, but like I said I'm busy. I'll try to make something more interesting when I get time!
I just got back from a 3 day trip to Grande Prairie. I'm moving up there for a couple years for work, and I needed to find an apartment. While I was up there I took the opportunity to check out the gyms, and I think visited the majority of them, if not all of them. I'm sorry if I missed a few but I went to all the ones that were listed online. Being sent to a small town for 2 years and not knowing anyone? Hello gym, my new home. Ok here we go.
World Gym
These guys let me try out the place so I did my back workout there. It's the biggest gym that I went to and it's similar to the YMCA. With lots of machines, a couple bench presses and squat racks on the main floor and cardio machines on the second floor, it'll have most of what you'll need. They even have an olympic platform which is a must for me. The weird thing is they don't have bumper plates for their platform, only plastic covered weights which isn't as bad as the normal ones but I can't imagine it being good for the platform. Oh well not my problem. Membership is $60/month if you sign up for a year which isn't bad I think.
Snap Fitness
There's two of these in Grande Prairie, and they're rather small gyms. They are 24/7 gyms if you're into that kind of thing but I'm not going to be working out at 3AM at night. When you walk in the people are quite friendly, and the atmosphere of the entire place is nice. They keep the place clean and for the average person it's not an intimidating place at all. Compared to world gym you walk in and it's like Gold's gym in Schwarzenegger's "Pumping Iron". However, since this is a 24/7 gym there are times where the place isn't staffed and because of that, they don't have a lot of barbell stuff like squat racks etc, due to liability issues. They have a smith machine, but well... it's a smith machine. Membership is fairly cheap, depending on what kind you get you can pay from $40-50 a month. Also, their membership plans are fairly flexible so they don't lock you in like other gyms. There's one of these gyms right in my backyard of my apartment, but with no squat racks to do squats, cleans, deadlifts and such, it's really not much use to me. But again, it's got a variety of machines and you're not that picky then this gym would be a great choice.
Winston's Health & Fitness
This place is located on the upper floor of a building. It's a smaller gym, definitely smaller than World's gym but bigger than Snap Fitness. It's got a squat rack, and bench press, but again it doesn't really compare to World's gym. The staff were really nice though! The other thing is that since it's on the upper floor, I'm sure cleans and deadlifts are out of the question. Olympic platforms and bumper plates are very important to me, as you can tell. I didn't inquire as to the membership prices, but I'm sure it's around the same as the others.
The Club
A part of the ranchlands apartment complexes, this gym is one of the nicest gyms I've seen at an apartment. But that's not saying much. It's ok though. They've got a swimming pool, two squash courts and a small gym. Again, no place for cleans, and squats, only a smith machine. If I got an apartment there though, I wouldn't mind a membership here since it's less than $30/month if you're a resident. However, since I didn't get an apartment here, I will most likely never set foot in here.
Grande Prairie Regional College
Ok I lied. I didn't go to all the gyms. There's a gym inside the college in Grande Prairie, but I didn't go check it out. I've spent 4 years working out at the University of Calgary gym and it's great, but I was glad to switch gyms afterwards. Everything is just more convenient when a place is just a gym, I find. GPRC isn't small compared to UofC so I could be totally wrong, so maybe it's worth a look at.
VO2 Max
I decided to save the best for last. Actually I was pretty disappointed in the selection of gyms so far, and VO2 Max was my last stop. This place is a private gym, and they're not your typical gym. They have a few machines, but the majority of their warehouse is filled with gymnastic rings, barbells with bumper plates, prowlers, ropes, medicine balls, etc. When I walked in I felt like I was in heaven, I knew that was the gym I was looking for. They do a lot of personal training, but they also do group classes. They specialize in Crossfit, with a few classes in power lifting, olympic lifting, and bootcamps. I've always wanted to get into Crossfit after I put on some mass to condition my body. Anyways, after looking around the place I came back the next day to attend a Crossfit class. We started with a 500m row to warm up, followed by some stretching. The focus of the class was the Clean and Jerk, so we did 1x1x1x1x1x1, increasing the weight each time until we maxed out. I never did a clean and jerk before, and I lifted a personal record of 165#! I was pretty happy. After that, we did 30 clean and jerks for time. I had 135# on the bar, and it took me 10 minutes to complete... hah hah... Pretty bad, but I know my conditioning is terrible. It was a great class, they instructors are professional and friendly and the other people in the class help push you too. Membership rates are pricey, with almost $200/month to sign up, but I think it's worth it if you are serious about getting in shape.
P.S. Wondering what a clean and jerk is? Get your mind out of the gutter and watch this hilarious attempt at one.
Conclusion
World Gym and VO2 Max were definitely the two places that stuck out for me. I would join VO2 Max right away, but I'm trying to put on 15 pounds of mass first so I might join World Gym for a month or two and then switch to VO2 after. I still need to do more research because maybe it's possible to put on mass with VO2's classes. Crossfit isn't typically a program for putting on mass, but I with proper nutrition I might be able to. If there's any gyms I missed I'd love to hear about them so I can check them out as well.
I went to a few martial arts gyms too, but a couple of the places were closed when I got there so we'll save that review for another day ;)
On March 24, 2010 I broke my foot during MMA training. This will be the first post of my recovery journal. If you're curious how this happened, I found a video where the same exact move happened to this person during a fight.
At the hospital, it was discovered that I had sustained a Homolateral Lisfranc Fracture and spent the next 3 days there, and had surgery to try and fix the mess that was my foot. All 5 of my metatarsals were dislocated and displaced with heavy tendon damage. When I had first arrived at the hospital, nobody actually believed that I had broken my foot, since my shin guards were covering my leg and foot. The nurse kept asking me why my soccer shin guards were slid down to my foot. I kept telling him they were kickboxing shin guards but he had no idea what I was saying. He kept wanting to just yank it off, but as anyone who's worn the cheap fabric shin guards, knows that it's incredibly hard to pull off after training even when you don't have a broken foot. Anyways, I insisted that he cut the shin guard off, and when they took it off and saw my foot then they took me serious. I snapped this picture with my phone at the time:
I went to get my x ray done and when they came back, now there were 3-4 nurses around me and 2-3 doctors. They wouldn't believe that I was just doing MMA, since they said that usually injuries of that sort take alot of force and they've only seen it in car accidents.
Aside: The Lisfranc injury is named after the French surgeon Jacques Lisfranc. It was common in war for horsemen to fall off their horses and their foot would be caught in the stirrup and they break their foot. Lisfranc discovered the joints in the metatarsal and he found that he could amputate the foot quite easily by cutting between theses joints. It was said he could amputate a foot in less than 5 minutes. Needless to say, I was honoured to have sustained an injury named after this upstanding man.
Anyways, after the surgery, I had 3 pins in my foot as you can see in the banner in my xray. I was in a hard cast for 2 months and a walking cast for one month. Here's a picture taken after I took my hard cast. It certainly looks straighter but it was swollen and looked like a tube of toothpaste.
I was anxious for a speedy recovery so by the time I was in a walking cast, even though the doctor told me not to, I was walking around without crutches. I can't remember how long after the walking cast came off that I started to walk normally, but I think it was around the 6-8 month mark that I felt like I could start to go back to BJJ class and practice technique and stuff.
It's been over a year, and I just started to feel a bit confident with my foot. I didn't do any physio, because my doctor said it wouldn't help, and I think it had something to do with why my range of motion of my foot was so limited but at least it wasn't hurting to walk around. Last night, I was rolling with someone and I had his back and I didn't even have my ankles crossed. But he decided to try and ankle lock me anyways, and coincidentally he went for the injured foot and torqued it in the same direction that I had broke it. I let out a scream and felt like a wuss right after, but I knew I had pulled something. It's in quite a bit of pain right now, and I'm limping around but I really hope it's nothing serious. I'm thinking that I should listen to my coach and not the doctors anymore and go to physio. I'm sure physiotherapists have seen all kinds of injuries and they'll be able to help a bit with strengthening up the tendons and working on my range of motion.
The lisfranc is a dreaded injury in sports, being common in football. Usually it happens when a player is on the ball of their foot and someone lands on the heel of their foot. When that happens it's a season ender usually. When I got it I searched the internet everywhere, looking to see how people's recoveries from this injury were like. It certainly didn't look good, with most people saying after 1-2 years they still couldn't walk normally. I'd like to think I recovered better than most, and hopefully this gives people a little bit of hope when they sustain this injury. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn't try to avoid using the foot. I cycled right after getting my cast off, snowboarded, worked out and tried doing rehab on my own. Although I realize now that I had overlooked certain parts of rehab, I strongly believe that I can recover quickly if I tried. So don't let the doctors tell you can't do something. If you have enough dedication to something and the willpower, I believe the body has tremendous healing capabilities and there's always ways to continue doing what you love.
