About a week ago I whined about being in a rut, and I received some nice supportive messages in response. The first one was from Dusty Rhodes, and suggested (among other things) doing a few workouts with a training partner. I figured I'd take his advice today, without letting my complete and utter lack of a training partner stop me. So I piggy-backed on today's Pike Workout (click through for exercise descriptions in the comments):

This was a challenge. The idea is to do it as quickly as you can:

Get a Deck of Cards.

Shuffle them.

Spades: Burpees
Clubs: Mahlers
Hearts: Pushups
Diamonds: Squats

2-9 = Face Value
10-K = 10
A = 15

Go through as quickly as you can and keep time. My time was 28:09.

So that gave me something to shoot for, but I fell short, finishing in 30:09, and I took advantage of the optional Mahler substitution (two-count Mountain Climbers), which has gotta be miles easier (or at least tons faster). Dang. Overshooting 30:00 by a mere nine seconds particularly rankles. Surely I could have gutted out another ten seconds somewhere in there?! Still, the training partner who had no idea he was my training partner certainly helped me push myself. With about a quarter of the deck to go I really wanted to quit, but since I swore to myself I'd post the results I couldn't bear the thought of reporting "failed to finish."

Very interesting interview with Eric Cressey all about deadlifting. The whole thing is good, but in particular read his response to the question, "what are the unique benefits of deadlifting?" Here is the first of the 10 points he makes in response:

First, I'd say that (along with box squats) it's the single-most effective movement for training the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, adductor magnus, and lumbar erectors). The posterior chain is of paramount importance to high-level performance; watch the best sprinters run, and you'll see that they seem to just "float"—and it's because they're running with their hamstrings and glutes. In contrast, watch a guy who runs with his quads, and you'll see that his hips are bouncing up and down; there's a lot of wasted movement. The glutes and hamstrings are all fast-twitch fibers with a lot of strength, speed, and size potential—potential you'll never realize without deadlift variations.

Suddenly juggling is popping up the fitness weblogs I frequent. First I noticed Ross Enamait posted a piece, Juggle Your Way To Improved Performance, and then Straight to the Bar posted a link to the YouTube of juggling sites, JuggleTube. They have a terrific old video of Francis Brunn on the Jack Benny show. I then searched for a Kris Kremo performance I'd seen before, but they didn't have it. Good ol' YouTube to the rescue!

I really need to do more with this weblog than repost the Crossfit WOD when it looks like a particularly good one, but until then, today's looks great:

Five rounds for time of:

• 45 pound barbell Overhead walking lunges, 50 feet
• 21 Burpees

The guy leading in the video knocks it out in 9:10 (which, incidentally, beats my time for just the burpee portion). Monstrous.

What can you do against a guy who makes shots like this? Not much, I guess. Roger Federer is the athlete I'd most like to see live, and I have no particular love for tennis over any other sport. (via kk)

Update: I just got an e-mail with a link to a Federer between-the-legs winner.

A few days ago a fellow named Dusty Rhodes posted some advice on my Jumping Out of a Rut post. Today I happened to notice another comment by him on a different Ultimate weblog, and I followed that back to his weblog, which is excellent. My only excuse for missing it to date is that it's not on Ultimate Talk, as far as I know. It's enjoyable to read, and he seems to track many of the same sources I do (and, as a bonus, he's posting more regularly than I've been lately). He's even a fellow Never Gymless fan. And here I thought (self-centeredly) that I was pretty much the only Ultimate player to have discovered Ross Enamait and his books!

This is perhaps an odd collection of links, but they all relate (to varying degrees) to the pursuit of excellence, and how it develops in the brain. Basically, it takes lots of work and lots of time. There are no shortcuts.

• The Genius in All of Us: The Myelin in All of Us.
• The Genius in All of Us: Savants and Us
• New York Times: How to Grow a Super-Athlete.

I can't really tie this John Berardi post on chocolate into the overall theme of this post, but what the heck. I like chocolate, and that Domori brand sounds awesome.

I seem to be stuck in a pretty deep rut at the moment. Training, parenting, pet projects, work, you name it. But for our purposes we'll stick to training. I think my big three obstacles are:

1. Winter sucks. My basement, pretty dismal under the best of circumstances, truly starts looking like a prison by February.
2. Big (but largely good) changes in my schedule from last winter have left me without a regular workout time, and the times left to me are often abbreviated or during times where my body really doesn't want to do it. So I might have a choice of doing a 15-minute blitz midday (we don't need no stinkin' warmup) or a longer workout late at night when I really should be sleeping. The lack of routine is proving to be very difficult to deal with.
3. Motivation. I'm sure the schedule feeds into this, but ouch, even when I'm feeling gung-ho it takes a strong amount of will power to force myself to hit the intensities I'm aiming for, and when my heads not in it, it puts a big crimp in the quality of my workout.

Anyway, enough whining. Open question: How do you folks deal with your training ruts?

Here's a workout I tried tonight, trying to address my detrained state, and trying to build a warmup right into the workout to get my thick, syrupy, late-night blood flowing:

• Minute 1: 1 burpee.
• Minute 2: 2 burpees.
• Minute 3: 3 burpees.
• etc.
• Minute 10: 10 burpees.
• Minute 11: 10 burpees.
• Minute 12: 10 burpees.
• Minute 13: 10 burpees.
• Minute 14: 10 burpees.
• Minute 15: 10 burpees.

I bumped minutes 11-15 up to 75 seconds (told you I was detrained), and did lots of "just 3 more rounds and you can quit without hating yourself, you #$%@&$" self-flagellation to get through it. I hope this marks the beginning of a turnaround. After a couple months of just going through the motions, I'm due.

Two videos:

• Badminton is fantastic, especially when you play like this. This spring I'll have to share my badminton setup with you.
• Check out the prodigious effort in the wallball video attached to this Crossfit WOD. I do believe I'd throw up a lung.

"Janda situps" are supposed to be an excellent exercise, and super-hard. Lots of folks say you shouldn't be surprised if you can't even do one. They work by taking your hip flexors out of the equation via reciprocal inhibition (i.e. you tense the glutes and hamstrings and your hip flexors automatically relax). There are lots of Janda situp descriptions out there, and the evil Russian even sells a $150 machine so you can do them unassisted.

Of coursre, I figured, "who needs a machine?" So I anchored one of my Iron Woody bands, put my legs through it, and slid back until the thing was pulling mightily on my calves. I had my legs at 90 degrees, feet flat on the floor, and the band pulling hard enough that I had to resist pretty strongly to keep my legs in place. I did the situps, and didn't have too much trouble doing 4 sets of 10. I mean, 10 isn't a lot of situps, but based on descriptions I figure I'm either [A] Superman, or [B] doing them wrong. Given I still haven't mastered the flag, the standing rollout, or the front lever, I think we can rule out [A] (I'd like to cut myself some slack because I'm 6'4", but really I'm only in the ballpark of the flag, and I'm nowhere close to the rollout or the front lever).

Anyway, anybody have pointers for me? Perhaps I need to anchor the band higher such that it's also trying to pull my calves off the ground in addition to pulling them away from my butt?

T-Nation is running an excellent article by Christian Thibaudeau titled, The Training Strategy Handbook. It lays out the major set/rep schemes with pros, cons, and applications of each depending on your situation.

I'm behind on this, but it's a long article and I wanted to read it first before posting. If you haven't checked it out already, Michael Pollan's article, Unhappy Meals, is a must-read. Fascinating and engaging. I may have to check out The Omnivore's Dilemma.