After weightlifting for some time in my crazy Vibram barefooting shoes, I’m finding that I’m hitting new peaks and busting through quite a few plateaus I’ve had for well over a year now. I became convinced it was the shoes when I trained in sneakers a few times around a month ago, and found that my squat and deadlift were very unstable compared to how they are “barefoot”.
It looks like I’m not the only one that things so – check out this article on barefoot strength at T-Nation.com.
The only negative with the Vibram’s is that they are unique, so you do need to be the kind of person who’s not afraid to differ a bit from the norm.
I just did my first run in my new pair of Vibram FiveFingers barefoot shoes. It really is a liberating feeling running barefoot. It made me feel like I was a kid again… I just wanted to run.
That was until my calves started reminding me that this was my first run “barefoot”, and I need to get more practice in. I stopped at around 2 and a half k’s. My calves are killing me now, in a good way.
I’m a huge believer in strengthening parts of the body that are underworked, rather than using band-aid type measures, such as inner-soles or heavily cushioned running shoes. I see these as a great way to learn to run and work out naturally. Actually going barefoot and stepping on sharp stones and glass isn’t really an alternative, so these are the next best thing.
There is a great article on the principles of barefooting at New York Magazine. It’s quite long, but got me inspired.
I did the 10km run in the Gold Coast Marathon yesterday with my wife. I usually am not a big fan of running, but I enjoyed myself yesterday. I clocked in at just under one hour (58:33).
Now we plan to do the Bridge to Brisbane in September. Maybe I will train for that one 
There’s nothing like that feeling of hitting the gym and feeling strong. Every rep slots into place. You finish knowing you’ve put in your best effort. I just had it. Beautiful.
If you’re anything like me, you spend hours in front of a computer at work, and then spend a bit of time in front of a computer at home as well. Any fool can tell you that this isn’t good for your posture, and wreaks havoc with any number of muscle imbalances that show themselves as inflexibilities, and often, the dreaded back injury. Not to mention that poor posture looks terrible, even if you’re physically fit.
The excellent sports training website Testosterone Nation have released a series of articles about what training you should do in the gym to counteract the effects of sitting at a computer for hours a day, and also provide some practical advice as to what you should do when you’re not at the gym.
The first article, (De)-Constructing Computer Guy, what exercises to do in the gym in place of more popular ones so that your body can correct posture imbalance, rather than exacerbate it.
The second article, (De)-Constructing Computer Guy – The Other 23 Hours, gives a series of tips we can use in the office or at home to prevent injury from all this un-natural sitting.
After my back injury in January, numerous physio appointments, training carefully and following a bit of a rehab program, I’m finally back to full strength.
Today I squatted 140kg for 10 reps – the most I’ve ever done – so I think I’ve burst through a plateau with the rehab work I did as well. It feels good to be healthy again. My current training goals are to squat 180kg for 3, and bench press 120kg for 3.
I’m staying away from deadlifts for a while yet.
I’ve had a back problem for almost two months now. I’m don’t usually get many injuries, so it really surprised me when it came about. I’d taken some time off from the gym over Christmas, and was feeling a little stiff. Coming back to work in the first week of January, I was a typical egotistical bloke and tried to work out just as hard as I had before I took my break.
Big mistake.
After doing a few squats and chin ups, I thought I’d pull a deadlift. The deadlift is one of my favourite exercises, and involves pulling an olympic barbell loaded with as much as weight as you can lift off the floor, and standing up straight. Like this. I’ve done hundreds of them and it gives me a great feeling of power, because you tend to be able to lift a pretty heavy weight. I loaded up the bar with my previous 3 rep max (140kg), going for two reps. Using an over/under grip to stop the bar slipping at that weight, I pulled it. It hurt my back a bit – I think I rounded it slightly. When I put the weight down, I felt like I’d damaged something, just a little.
So what did I do? I did it again, of course!
In an amazing show of wisdom, I decided that I needed to make sure I didn’t develop a muscle imbalance by doing a single rep. You see, with an over/under grip, you should alternate which palm is facing you and which palm is not so that each side of the body develops strength in the same places, at the same rate. The second rep hurt a bit more.
I guess because I’m not particularly injury prone, I didn’t think about going to the physio straight away. I’ve been a little sore before, and this seemed no different. When it was still hurting after two weeks, I decided it was a bit different. The first physiotherapist I went to, a bloke at Browns Plains, wasn’t any good. He couldn’t tell me what was wrong with it, and didn’t give me any specific rehab exercises. He pretty much told me that it would get better on its own.
Two more weeks on, and I could swear it was getting worse, not better. I’d been avoiding doing a lot of things in the gym, and whenever I slightly hyper-extended my back, it screamed with pain. I really wanted to know if I’d caused some major damage. Enough people have back injuries that stick with them throughout their lives, and I’d rather get this sorted out sooner or later. On a recommendation, I went to Axis Physio, and ended up being treated by Brooke there. She was very good. She told me what I’d done to my back, checked my flexibility and sore points, and gave specific rehab exercises and stretches to sort it out. I had compressed one of the discs in my lower spine. A disc sits between two vertebrae, and acts as a flexible cushion between them (or something like that). I probably stuffed it up at the gym, and prevented it from healing by having bad posture in my chair at work, and doing too many crunches at the gym – some exercises can be bad for you!
After a couple of weeks of treatment and a range of rehab exercises, I’m about 80% “back” together. (*badoom*). The scariest part about the whole ordeal is that if I hadn’t sought treatment, and continued the way I was, I would probably have ended up with a permanent back problem. There’s enough people with those out there already.
I was originally going to do the Velocity diet in February with my wife, but we’ve decided to put it off until March. I’ll start posting about my experiences when we start it.
One of my goals for the year is to get lean, while at the same time gaining muscle – or at the very least, losing as little as possible. My weight has been pretty steady now for some time, varying only a couple of kilograms either direction of 86kg. The problem isn’t my weight – the problem is the flab on my belly. I need to get rid of it, and I’m an impatient man.
In my quest for leanness, I discovered an experimental diet called the Velocity Diet, or V-Diet for short. The whole idea is that rather than significantly alter your eating patterns forever, you follow an ultra-strict eating plan for 28 days, and then you’re off it, and back onto moderate eating. For the 28 days, you eat only one solid meal per week, with the day-to-day nutrition being entirely comprised of very specific protein shakes, some flax seed meal and fatty acid tablets, and a whole tank of appetite suppressant and muscle loss prevention supplements. It will probably end up a pretty expensive exercise, but if the results are worth it, I won’t mind in the least.
Based on my weight, I’ll be eating around 1400 calories a day on non-training days, and 1700 calories a day on training days. I plan to start it some time after my birthday.
The Velocity Diet is the brain-child of Chris Shugart at t-nation.
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