Goal Check and a small "diet" rant

Well, sorry it's been a while since my last blog but I have had little downtime...which is a good problem to have...I guess.

Way back in my blog archives I stated I had a goal to get to 10% Body Fat. I have tried to get here before but always got sidetracked. Not this year.

I made it this year. Since January 1st I'm down about 20 lbs and walking around at 165ish. Strength is still up, conditioning is great (which is more of a concern), but I feel I could be leaner.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to make it sound like I want to be shredded. Just lean. I am opting for a 'modified' Warrior Diet eating plan and that seems to be going well, although fat will not come of as fast it did with the Ketogenic Diet. But, on the latter, performance suffered. Muay Thai was not happenin'.

I'll let you in a little secret while we're talking about 'diets' (I hate that word, by the way).

They all work.

Yep. That's right all of them. They all work. (yes, some better than others for specific goals, but I'm talking in general here)

The problem most people have has nothing to with learning what they should do or eat while on the diet.

It has everything to do with being complient to the guidelines the diet sets forth.

I don't want to get into too many specifics, but I challenge you to pick an eating plan (a better term than diet) and follow it the way it is written. I bet it will perfrom pretty close to the way the author claims.

The problem, like I said, comes in when people try to make it their own.

They start substituting foods, meals times, exercises. Or they don't change their social habbits and still hit the bars on Friday night. Once you do this, you are no longer doing that plan, now you're guessing and hoping you will still get the the results promised.

Know what?

You won't.

It's like me giving you a map to Milwaukee. I tell you to stay on I94 the whole way.

You think going to Milwaukee sounds great, after all Summerfest (Google it) starts Thursday.

But you don't like driving on I94 so you change the route.

Will you get to the lakefront?

Maybe. But, how long will it take you?

My map gets you there from my house in 20 minutes.

Get what I'm saying?

What's that? You can't decide on an eating plan?

I'll decide on one for you!

The first type of eating plan we recommend to all of out clients is Dr. John Berardi's Precision Nutrition. It's simple, easy to follow and has a healthy dose of just plain, good old common sense. Eat your veggies, watch the starches, that kind of thing.

It's easy to modify to your needs, and really doesn't restrict you the way you'd expect while on a "diet". Diet is a horrible word for this, it's more of an eating plan or a lifestyle change. It does take some work and some planning. But the dividends it pays are great.

So, why don't I use it?

Well, I have, and I still base my food choice one his recommendations. But, I also like to use myself as a guinea pig, rather than my clients. I try to use a number of different stragies for extended periods, if I find something that may be of use to my clients I pass it on. I plan ot go back to Precision Nutrition after this stint of Warrior Dieting.

While I said all diets work, be wise when choosing one. I should have written all diets work for their target audience. If you're an athlete, a low carb Ketogenic diet is not for you. If you're a Tri-athlete, don't choose a plan targeted at a body builder. Make sense?

Click on the diet titles to learn more, both about the Warrior Diet and Precision Nutrition.




+++++++++++++ONE LAST NOTE++++++++++

Please donate to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. We are off to a slow start this year collection-wise for our 150 charity mile bike tour, The Scenic Shore 150, but I know we can hit our goal of $500.

If you have PayPal you can send your donations to bjbliffert@yahoo.com. I'll have a summery of how much we raise before we set off on the ride on July 21.

Thanks in advance for your donation.
BJ

Am I In A Rut.....

Not, sure.

Could just be my "training program A.D.D." kicking in.

I love the ETK template, but like Pavel says it is boring. I may have bitten off more thatn I can chew by add deadlift ladders to it. But, I'm determined to stick it out 'til I get the 5x1,2,3,4,5, but I'm in no rush "slow and steady wins the race".

Diet seems to be going well, when I plan it. I find even on a Warrior Diet Style eating plan, I still needto couont calories using my FitDay log, or I tend to eat way too little and recover poorly from the volume I'm starting to build up to. My weight has stablized at 165, I'm happy with it.

Saturday will be a max DL day. I feel my groove is right where it needs to be sort of a hybrid between wedging myself between the bar and having my hips a little higher...carryover from my OLY lift days. Seems to work, it's where I feel the strongest. I'll pull a max and adjust my poundage to 70% for the rest of the cycle.

I apologize for not having more to say, but we have some really cool stuff coming up. Both Kori and I will be delving into the world of video blogging and posting some cool stuff on you tube. (Whitley get your mind out of the gutter)

The Red Army

Hopefully I can play with one of these bad boys Saturday morning. I had them made for a fraction of the price it would cost to buy them online. Some primer and paint from The Home Depot, and you're ready to drag.

Short and Sweet

No frills workout today. I really want to gt my Muay Thai skills back up to par, so I'l be integrating more skill work throughout the weeks ahead.

Today went like this:

5 x 2 minutes jump rope
3 x 2 minutes on the double end bag
5 x 2 minutes on the heavy bag. I woorked very basic skills. I have never felt I had a good jab so I threw in a lot of extras. 3 punch combos on the last two rounds only. First three were single punches, either jab or cross.

2x10 snatches w/ 24kg just to test the shoulder, felt good but not great great.
1x15 R/L swings w/24
3x15 two arm swing w/24

nothing fancy.
This past weekend I switched from following a Ketogenic Diet back to more of a Warrior Diet style of eating. I felt I was getting too low in weight and my performance showed it my first day back at Muay Thai last week.

The change has been smooth, I'm up 4 pounds, likely water and glycogen. My performance is noticably better. I also really like the freedom the Warrior Diet allows me to have. I don't have the most hectic schedule, but with this eating style I can focus on a project and not be interupted by a feeding. I'm ordering Ori Hofmekler's new book also, jsut to see what similarities there are, or differences for that matter.

I also have added AdvoCare's Fruit and Vegatable Formula to my supplement regime. I felt I wasn't eating enough veggies so this should do the trick.

If you're interested in the Warrior Diet, I believe the next addition isn't due out until Decmeber 4, 2007, but you can pre-order it at pretty sweet deal. I'll put the amazon link below. Ori's new book The Anti-Estrogen Diet Is available now, I'm just wating for it to be delivered.

Back In Tme...Saturday's Training

This was an interesting day. With the September TSC just around the corner (these things always sneak up on you), I'm considering competing in and possibly hosting an event.

So I better get pulling.

I remember in April at the RKC, Pavel said something that stuck with me. It wasn't the first time I have heard it, it just sunk in this time.

The phrase was, "(Comrades), If you want to get strong, use a moderate weight and lift it a lot."

The first time I heard this was form a former boss. My first 'real' job out of college was selling high end fitness equipment in a retail store. My boss was Doug Kortemeyer. Doug was a national champion OLY lifter, and one big dude, at 6' 5" and close to 300lbs, you had no choice but to listen.

We would talk training a lot and it always amazed me how his training loads were so 'light' compared to his competition loads. But his totals kept going up.

I realize now it all has to do with force, power, accelleration and a whole bunch of parabolic graphs that I'm not going to bore you with.

So here's what I did:

In keeping up with my ladders for pressing and pull ups, I just threw the deadlift in. Will it work? Don't know.

It was the high volume day so I did 5 ladders of 1,2,3

I loaded up the bar with my Elieko red and blue bumpers (which I got for free from Doug back in the day).

I pulled, pressed and did a pull up all in the ladder and took a whopping 4 minutes rest between ladders.

It felt really good, the 245 I was pulling was only about 60% of my former 1RM, but it was sufficient enough to let me know what I had gotten my self into. I plan to raise the weight slowly as the volume increases.

It's all in good fun.

One last note worth mentioning.

Kori and I participate in a fundraising event every year for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's a 2 day 150 mile bike tour that runs up the coast of Lake Michigan from Mequon to Sturgeon Bay. It a lot of fun for a great cause.

Our goal is to raise $250 each for this cause.

If you'd like to learn more and find out how to donate Please check out Kori's Train Like a Girl Blog.

What's In My CD Player...

Yeah, I stole the title from Lou Brutus on Hard Drive, but......

This is only remotely related to fitness. These are tunes we rock while training.

Now, I realize this may be too "hard" for some of you, but if you're training to go through the RKC, or just need something to keeping you pushing during that 10 minute SSST.

Here's a little Shadows Fall for you. I rocked "The Art of Balance" (sophomore release) leading up to my RKC weekend, it never let me down.

This is NOT the type of music we play during our classes, I want to make that clear, this is during our personal KB sessions.

Here's a cut from "The Art of Balance", my favorite on album.



Here's a cut from "The War Within", Inspiration on Demand...



here's a link to amazon, get a copy and you won't be sorry. Also check out "The War Within" another keeper.

Playin' Catch Up

Today I had to do the conditioning I had planned to yesterday. But I decided to throw some 1/2 TGUs in the mix.

24kg 3x3 R/L only coming up to an extended arm, then back down.

My shoulder felt unbelievable today, so for the hell of it I threw in one more full blown TGU

40kg 1x1 R/L Felt solid, shoulder was stable and no pain. Should have done a triple.

Set my timer for 20 minutes, grabbed the 16kg and my Super Boa jump rope.

I'm lucky, I can actually jump rope in my basement, yes I'm that short.

So I would rip off anywhere from 15-25 swings or snatches, whatever I felt like when I grabbed the bell. Once my form was less than an 8 on a scale of 1-10 it was time to jump.

I jumped until the timer got to the top of whatever minute I was on.

Rinse and repeat. The goal was just to work hard the whole 20 minutes, originally the jumping rope was going to be active recovery.....toward the end...not so much.

Tomorrow I hope to bust out a sled.

BJ

Kettlebells at OZZFEST Part 1, A Call to Arms

Yeah, that's right. I'm taking some bells to OzzFest this year. For those of you who don't know me very well, or Kori for that matter as well. We love Metal.

I have told many people, "If it doesn't make me want to break something, probably won't listen to it."

So every year we pack up my parents RV, and yes my dad come with us he digs Ozzy, and head to OzzFest.

This year the bells are coming with, just for fun and something to while people watching. We arrive at 8AM, cook some breakfast, and the fun begins.

OzzFest falls on Augest 12th at Alpine Valley Music Theatre.

If you haven't heard, it's free this year, so you have no excuse not to go.

So for all of you who would like to get away, here's an open invitation to come listen to some music, and swing some bells with us.

Hope to see you there.

Training Blog to come later.

BJ

Who thought 14oz could be that heavy...

Well last night I returned to one of my favorite past times, Muay Thai.

I have taken short hiatus from it due to business and other commitments. As may of you know Kori and have been working on IMPACT fitness, LLC up and running and taking our fitness coaching biz from a side project to our full time income. This has eating a lot of time, all worth it. Who knows if all goes as planned I can get my Muay Thai training in private lessons.

But anyway.

My 14oz gloves have never been so heavy. Three rounds on the pads, 3 on the mitts, and 6 on the bag did me in. My conditioning was fine, thanks to the KB training. But the local muscular endurance in regards to the specific skills like, the ever important, keeping your hands up killed me. Couple that with the Ketogenic Diet I have been following and it get tough pretty early in the round, more on the diet in another post.

So I'll just have to practice. It should come back pretty quickly.

I was hoping to get some sparring in, but it was a small session. One other girl and a beginner. There are two girls I'll spar, my wife (no I'm not kidding) and a young lady named Vanessa. Both are not afraid to hit you or get hit by you.

Tonight's workout will include, you guessed it...Ladders.

I'll admit, I have thought of scrapping this because the thought of pressing the 16kg is rough on the ego. But, this is something I have, no, need to follow this through for the health of my shoulders.

I'll be purchasing Brett Jones' and Grey Cook's new shoulder health DVD later today. Brett was my Senior Instructor when I went through the RKC. He worked out some nasty knots and worked some trigger point stuff on my upper back and it was amazing, so I'm hoping some of that is n the DVD. I'll post a review of it after watching.

So my pressing ladders for the day are pretty straight forward.

4 sets of 1,2 w/ pull ups in between
Dead lift 5x5 @ 135, yeah it's light but I need to find my groove before bumping this up
20 minutes of swings with the 16kg w/ Jump rope for active recovery.

Going with the lighter bell for my conditioning has made all the difference in my quest for leanness.

Thanks for reading...

BJ

Climbing the ladder...

Today was the 'no limit' day for my pressing ladders. But, I had the limiter on. Reason being, I have huge strength imbalances in my upper body, specifically around my shoulders. Too, much pressing when I was younger, and rarely balancing my routine with equal or greater pulling has left the posterior aspect of my shoulder girdle weak.

While I'm not too badly out of alignment, there is room for improvement.

Back to the subject, pressing. I know I could easily blast through 5 ladders of 1,2,3,4,5 with th 16kg bell I have been using. But, that isn't why i went back tothe 16kg. I did it to re-groove my press, to practice staying tight, to practice pressing from the lat and to allow my vertical pulling to catch up to my pressing.

today worked out great, 4 ladders of 1,2,3 with pull up ladders in between. Just like it's outlined in 'Enter the Kettlebell' (ETK). The presses wern't hard, but they were challenging. It was a true practice session, and since strength is a skill, I accomplished just what I needed to do.

I then played around with some Clean grip deadlifts. Just 5 sets of 3 reps w/ 135lbs. Looking for my groove, been itching to do some pulling, so I did. I just need to figure out where to stick these in. I may take a go at the TSC in September.

Tomorrow will be a balls to the walls conditioning session, and next week I'll be back to speed with my Muay Thai training.

Business and other stuff has kept me out of the gym for about 6 weeks, it'll be good to get back and get hit a couple times. After that, the plan is to hit the other person more than they hit me, the first couple shot I take are just to wake me up.

Later...