I think I got my first real taste of weight training in 8th grade. My high school football program had just hired a new coach and his first rule was: if you're going to play JV or varsity football next fall, you're going to participate in the off-season lifting program. Of course, I had Danny DeVito's height and Justin Bieber's muscle tone back then, so there was little chance I'd be playing with the big boys the following year, but for us 8th graders, it was an optional opportunity to get a head start. So on day 1, a couple of my middle school buddies and I walked over to the 9th grade school across the street and took the bus to the high school. I hit a max squat of 175 and the rest is history...just kidding. I did successfully load 175# on the barbell and flex my legs a bit, which impressed some of the older but still very inexperienced guys, but for some reason I doubt I hit competition depth on the first day. Whatever; a seed was planted that day.
I kept lifting pretty consistently through high school; I eventually hit puberty (like junior year, was it?) and even saw some real muscles! When college came I followed the off-season workouts ran by my baseball coaches, found my ravenous appetite at the dining hall, and even bulked up to 185 pounds by my sophomore year. All I knew about nutrition that point was that "PROTEEEIIIN" was important and so drank my chalky shakes and a lot of milk, and ate everything in sight. I was pretty strong but I was carrying quite a bit more fat than I do today. I also had the worst year of my baseball career - whether those things are related I guess I'll never know, but I decided to trim up a bit over the next couple years; watched what I ate a little more closely (low-fat, duh) and continued to load up the barbell.
When my college career ended in 2009, I had a summer internship and too large of a social agenda to keep lifting. I put that fat layer back on and appeared to lose quite a bit of muscle. When I was hired as a baseball and strength and conditioning instructor for high schoolers in October, I figured it was as good a time as any to get back into the groove. I followed Brad Pitt's Fight Club workout and drastically lowered my carb intake, and within 2 months I was close to as lean as I'd ever been and continuing to regain my strength.
I don't know what really sparked it for me - I guess it was seeing those fast results - but right around Christmas time of that year I started reading Muscle & Fitness and the Bodybuilding.com forums and carrying multiple "meals" whenever I left the house. I played around with complex carbs a little bit over the next year or so (oatmeal in the morning!) but I maintained an irrational fear of nighttime carbs, after all, ditching those had been main driver in my success. I tried a bunch of different supplements, did my cardio, even gave my first shot to a cyclical ketogenic diet but ended up doing it wrong, since I was also afraid of saturated fat (think chicken breasts, egg whites and olive oil).
Roughly two years ago, a buddy of mine turned me on to Martin Berkhan's Leangains program. (When you're done here it would behoove you to spend at least a few minutes browsing around on his site, but be warned: the man has a handle on physiology and research methods that few others can claim and he does not hesitate to make it known).There's a pretty good chance that by now you've heard of Leangains or at least some sort of intermittent fasting, but if you haven't, here's a very brief and incomplete summary: you fast for 16+ hours a day and eat for the other 8- hours, during which you overeat (high-protein and carbs) on your 3 days of heavy lifting, and undereat (still high-protein, less carbs) on your 4 rest days.
While fasting seems to be all the rage these days, remember that at the time I was your typical Tupperware toter eating every couple of hours (Rubbermaid, actually - but "relayer" didn't sound right). So imagine my disbelief when I found a program promising leanness by skipping breakfast and stuffing your face like I did in college after every workout. That part stuck right away; I started fasting the following week and it wasn't even a difficult transition (fast forward to now and I still usually eat one or two enormous meals a day). But, there were some things about the program that just did not appeal to me. The workouts seemed appropriate - focusing on a few compound moves that you should already be doing - but too boring for someone like me. I'd always enjoyed cross-training, and Martin's program is pretty much the antithesis of any power or athletic moves. That's not to discredit the program at all, but aesthetic goals and performance goals aren't always exactly in line. In addition, there are very specific calorie and macronutrient recommendations for individual goals (bulking, cutting, etc.) and even a nifty little calculator to help you out. I never really wanted to obsessively weigh and measure my food - that just always seemed a little unreasonable to me - so I kept an 8-hour window and started eating more "healthy" complex carbs but pretty much maintained the same exercise schedule.
This worked pretty well for a while. At some point during that year I read Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution." It didn't seem all that life-changing at the time; I slowly added Paleo principles in to my schedule, at least during the work week. No grains, a little less peanut butter and daily fasting coupled with a lot of heavy lifting a bunch of random stuff thrown in. My performance definitely increased; I even ran a Tough Mudder one weekend without changing my training one bit; conquered a longer distance than I had EVER run in my life (probably 2-fold) and finished in the top 5% of the sold out event.
I was loving it. I was probably in the best overall shape of my life (current status included) in the winter of 2011, but I was trying to do it all - sometimes working out in the morning, continuing to fast and lifting again at night before finally eating. Look at my blog entries from that time frame to see what I mean. It was a little nuts; I took on too much, and my performance eventually began to decrease. My first real burnout.
At that point I had basically been programming my own "CrossFit," except I avoided the things I didn't like and overtrained the things I did (as MANY CrossFitters tend to do). I figured if I let someone else do the programming for me, I'd eliminate that risk. So I joined the local box in March of last year (if you need a new gym check out NOVA - awesome people over there) and got going. I was pretty successful at the start; I had my diet dialed in (Paleo and CrossFit? No way!) and was able to give every workout my all. There was a lot more focus on conditioning than I'd been used to, and I built a pretty solid metabolic engine in just a few months.
But then in June I traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark for my job and of course, joined a CrossFit affiliate out there. Things were done a little differently than I was used to; the gym offered classes, but they were mostly for beginners. The gym was huge and there was plenty of space for the more experienced athletes to do their own thing. So I did. I enjoyed the freedom of doing my own workouts again, and proceeded with the caution not to overtrain. I read "Never Let Go" by Dan John and it really opened my eyes to what training should be about. I actually hate doing long workouts and high reps (not to mention I've come to realize that the return on investment of doing 150 wall balls for time will never compare to 3 sets of heavy front squats with adequate rest. Personal message me if you disagree!), so I just stopped doing the traditional metcon. I did some conditioning but mostly in the form of sled and prowler stuff, and it was great.
My 10 weeks overseas was probably my favorite block of training in recent memory because I was able to train consistently hard without too much pressure of an agenda. I made personal best when it felt right, not because I planned to. But ever since I came back to the states in August I have struggled to find that balance. It's kind of been a combination of summer activities, work, the holidays, a sprained ankle, vacation, etc.; you know how it is. I haven't been too worried about it; I won't ever let myself veer to far and I'm not in markedly worse shape than I was then. I have developed my ideals about what I need to do from a physical standpoint, but now it's just time to get back on track mentally.
So like I said, I'm doing pretty well since my last post but it's not significant enough to mention at this point. I know I left you in suspense last time, and unfortunately I'm doing it again. Sorry for that, but only like 6 people read this thing and I've gotta maintain some excitement. I will give a personal update in a few weeks, but if there's anything any of you want to see covered on here in the mean time, please feel free to let me know!
Just because.
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