Here's the short version: if you are any kind of athlete (except pure endurance athlete, like a marathoner), you need (need!) to buy one of Ross Enamait's books. Go with Infinite Intensity if you want to work weights into the mix, or his new one, Never Gymless if you want to go (mostly) equipment-free. Absorb what he teaches, put in the work (and boy, do I mean work), and you'll reap tremendous benefits in strength, power, speed, and endurance. Now, the long version...

Never Gymless is the third book I've bought from Ross. I previously reviewed The Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness and Infinite Intensity. It's going to be difficult to bring anything new to the discussion, as Never Gymless is essentially a combination of those two books, bringing the emphasis on bodyweight exercises from TUGTWF (which has been discontinued, as Never Gymless supercedes it) and program creation from Infinite Intensity.

The book is fantastic. You can't go wrong with either it, or Infinite Intensity. The primary difference is in the training methods presented: Infinite Intensity includes bodyweight exercises, but also lots of dumbell exercises. There are no dumbells in Never Gymless. It's all bodyweight exercises, but there's no doubt from reading the book (and watching Ross's videos) that you can get very strong with bodyweight exercise alone (Ross does include additional material on intensifying certain exercises with resistance bands). The book goes way beyond being a mere catalog of exercises though. Perhaps I can give you a good sense of it by going through the table of contents with some thoughts and a few short excerpts (page numbers in parens):

• Introduction (3)

  "I am constantly trying new things in a never-ending quest to improve my abilities and the abilities of those individuals I train. Rather than revising The Underground Guide for a fourth time, I wanted to start from scratch. I felt the need to create a true one-stop resource for training methods that require little or no equipment."

• The Duel (bodyweight training vs. weight lifting) (5)

  "Whether you use bodyweight exercise, weights, or sandbags, each modality is simply a means to an end. The end is the development of a complete athlete. There have been world champion fighters who swore by bodyweight exercise, while others thrived in the weight room. What does this tell us? The obvious answer is that several roads can lead towards the developmentt of an elite athlete. With a regular dose of hard work and a properly designed program, you can use almost any modality to enhance your physical perparation. This book will outline a bodyweight driven path."

• Training Principles (15)

  No quote here: just the section headings: Variety; Long Term Development; Purpose Driven Training; and Training for Specific Qualities. Great chapter, loved learning about intensity and recovery, training multiple strength qualities like maximal strength vs. explosive strength vs. strength endurance, etc. All the pieces, with conditioning, that need to be assembled into a plan.

• Pulling Strength & Power (32)

  26 pages on pulling exercises: pull-ups, muscle-ups, one-arm varieties, progressions for beginners to advanced athletes. You wouldn't think there'd be that much to say on this subject, but it's all good, no filler.

• Pushing Strength & Power (58)

  See above, but for pushing exercises. So many interesting varieties, and again, the progressions are great. Probably one of the best things about the book. Lots of creative uses of cinderblocks and tow straps as well.

• Lower Body Strength & Power (90)

  See above again, but for the lower body.

• Isometrics (110)

  These really seem worth including in any fitness plan, especially when you consider the short time commitment to produce what sound like excellent returns: "Another study examined the effect of weight training and explosive isometrics (together) on martial arts kicks and palm strikes. The experimental group working with weights and explosive isometrics realized significant increases in both peak force and speed. This study confirmed that speed can be enhanced by supplementing your martial arts training with strength work and explosive isometrics (Olsen, P.D & Hopkins, W.G, 1999). Fortunately, after reading this text, you can use bodyweight exercise in place of weight training. Therefore, you can produce noticable improvements in kicking and punching speed without equipment."

• A Powerful Core (127)

  One of the things I loved about Infinite Intensity was what it did for my core strength. More good stuff here in Never Gymless. "Exercises such as the crunch and sit-up do in fact offer some benefits, but clearly not enough. These exercises fail to address many of the movement patterns assoiated with the core. Primary movements of the core include extension, flexion, lateral flexion, rotation, and stabilization." Creative equipment hacks here, including powerful-looking resistance band movements, and some killer homemade double-wheel exercises.

• Conditioning is King (157)

  As usual, thankfully, Ross's conditioning workouts are again from hell (in a good way), emphasizing high speed, high intensity, and high fatigue. Love the "enhanced interval training" and "integrated circuit training" descriptions.

• Nutrition (173)

  The nutrition chapter is fascinating, and marks the biggest departure from The Underground Guide. That book talked a great deal about supplementation, while this book focuses on eating natural and healthy. Quite a few well-deserved slams against the food industry to go with tons of common-sense advice. One gets the impression this chapter could have been expanded into it's own book. I'm definitely going to have to check out some of Ross's sources for further reading.

• Program Design (194)

  Ah, like in Infinite Intensity, program design is the heart of this book. The individual pieces are great, but it's how to put them together into a program that will take you to higher levels of athleticism that Ross really wants to teach.

  "My training philosophy is one that integrates several methods, all with the goal of creating an athlete who is always ready for whatever life or competition may throw at him. Unfortunately, many training plans fail to comply with this simple concept. Rather than training for multifaceted development, individual attributes are developed separately. For example, an athlete may develop maximal strength for several weeks. He then shifts his emphasis towards explosive strength. After serveral weeks of explosive strength training, he shifts gears yet again, this time towards strength endurance. While working on this attribute, the improvements in maximal strength, which were developed several weeks earlier, are all but lost. Explosive strength also fades as the athlete dedicates all of his time towards strength endurance. As one attribute improves, previously developed attributes gradually decline."

  I've never liked the "peaking for one event" model of periodization I'd come to associate with the term, and love Ross's "always ready" approach to periodization. For me, this alone made Infinite Intensity worth the price of admission, and I'm happy to see the ideas reiterated here. Like Infinite Intensity, this book includes a sample 50-day plan, but Ross emphasizes again and again that you must tailor the plan to your needs. I think the sample plan in Never Gymless forces you to put a bit more thought into this as an individual, and that's a good thing.

• Frequently Asked Questions (224)

  Rather than discuss this, check out Ross's online FAQ (which includes how to pronounce his name :-). It's not the same FAQ as in the book.

• Works Cited (230)

  An excellent reading list.

• Exercise List (232)

  I count 136 different exercises listed here.

Well, another Enamait product, another rave. Sorry for being a broken record, but I simply feel the man puts out the best fitness books on the market.

P.S. I realized I've been presenting buying Infinite Intensity or Never Gymless as an either/or proposition. Personally, I'm happy to have both, as I plan on liberally borrowing from each when I design my next 50-day plan.

When I saw the headline I thought it was a joke, but Jim at Beast Skills does indeed have a tutorial up on the no-handed one-arm chin.

Via Crossfit comes a bombshell, lactic acid is your friend:

[George Brooks] and his UC Berkeley colleagues found that muscle cells use carbohydrates anaerobically for energy, producing lactate as a byproduct, but then burn the lactate with oxygen to create far more energy. The first process, called the glycolytic pathway, dominates during normal exertion, and the lactate seeps out of the muscle cells into the blood to be used elsewhere. During intense exercise, however, the second ramps up to oxidatively remove the rapidly accumulating lactate and create more energy.

Training helps people get rid of the lactic acid before it can build to the point where it causes muscle fatigue, and at the cellular level, Brooks said, training means growing the mitochondria in muscle cells. The mitochondria - often called the powerhouse of the cell - is where lactate is burned for energy.

"The world's best athletes stay competitive by interval training," Brooks said, referring to repeated short, but intense, bouts of exercise. "The intense exercise generates big lactate loads, and the body adapts by building up mitochondria to clear lactic acid quickly. If you use it up, it doesn't accumulate."

Awhile ago I quietly updated my Turkish Get-up post by adding a link to an Art of Strength video clip. I finally tried their approach to the TGU myself, and it's well worth a special post to call your attention to it.

Often TGU instructions are along the lines of "get up any way you can", which is how I did it. My own way of getting my feet under me felt particularly awkward though, and put a lot of shear stress on my knees, as my legs were almost completely folded at one point with my weight well behind my center of gravity (I'll leave it to your imagination). The Art of Strength approach solves that for me, although I did have to cut the amount of weight I use in half initially to get the mechanics down. That kick-through move seemed odd, but now that I've got it down I really like it. I like the way it gets my legs under my cleanly, provides a nice balance movement, and makes you flex through the lower back and shoulders.

Anyway, give it a shot. Even if you use light weight it's a nice full-body coordination movement.

puddleduck asks:

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on skills development and ultimate specific training. Currently I play 2-3 times a week and hope to become an impact player at this level (RIPUL Summer League ... roughly equivilent to Buda's Hatleagues) over the next two seasons.

Other than playing as often as possible, and testing my wife's patients for throwing with me, do you have suggestions for learning the game? I missed out on the opportunity to get coached in college and I don't see myself making a club team anytime soon.

Alrighty! Instruction for new players with perhaps an emphasis on throwing seems to be the target, so here goes:

1. Buy a copy of Ultimate Techniques and Tactics by Jim Parinella and Eric Zazlow. It's fantastic. You will learn much more from it than you will from me.
2. Throw as often as you can. I sometimes feel that players that come to the sport after college are at a big disadvantage. When you are on a team in college, you throw every day, sometimes in multiple sessions, and that doesn't even count practices. You'll see teammates between classes and you'll kill time by tossing. You almost can't help but become a good thrower. I play with a fair number of guys who came to the sport after college, and their throws have taken much longer to develop. Repetition, repetition, repetition.

3. Fix your grips sooner rather than later. When I first started playing I threw my backhand with my index finger laying along the rim. It took six months before a more experienced player noticed and said to me, "you know, nobody who's any good holds their backhand like that." Argh (thank you, Will Heyman). Fortunately, with only six months under my belt the rebuild wasn't too painful. You should squeeze your backhand in your fist, all fingers curled under the rim. Much more power than the finger-out grip.

   As for the flick, they tell me you should have two fingers on the rim but I can't help you there, as I've been using the split-finger grip (index finger on the rim, middle finger pointing towards the middle of the disc) for 17 years and it's too late for me to change now (I've tried). But if you're still finding your style, you should probably get a two-finger flick thrower to teach you. Watching the teams warm up for the finals at Open Nationals last year, seemed like the split-finger grip was the rare exception.

   (A story about my inferior grip: a teammate was trying to convince another split-finger thrower to change grips. He was going around demonstrating that all the good throwers threw two-finger. Until he got to me, and was shocked to discover I was in the split-finger camp. Kinda undermined his case. So I've made do. But still, if I had it to do over again...)

4. When you practice throwing, throw like you will in a game. Fake, pivot, throw. Don't just stand upright and casually toss. Especially if you aren't throwing every day. Make your rare throwing sessions count. Most importantly...

5. Get your body low when you throw! Practice pivoting wide and throwing from a lunged position. Bend from the knees, not the waist. You want to be able to pivot from the forehand lunge to the backhand lunge and back while maintaining balance about your center of gravity. There are throwers that can break the mark at will while standing more upright, but in my experience many of the good mark-breakers do it with the legs and low throws.

   (Another story: the player that gave me the biggest nightmares was Jeff Capella. I often ended up covering him, and was always woefully outmatched. I remember once trying to mark him, and he had pivoted way out for the forehand. Then way back for the backhand. The thing was, he never came out of the crouch when transitioning. It was like he was on rails, and his shoulders never got higher than three feet off the ground. The worse part was when he'd get to the middle of transitioning from forehand to backhand, and would rapidly juke back-and-forth in this crouched position before extending out for an easy throw around my hapless mark. Nightmares, I tell you.)

6. Don't learn a high-release backhand. You will fall in love with it, and you will always use it to break the mark to the forehand side. You will use it at the expense of your low-release backhand and break-mark flick. It will become a crutch, but one that you can't use at all in the wind. You will use it for years anyway, before finally admitting to yourself that it sucks, and going back to learn the throws you should have been using all along. Trust me on this.
7. Get in shape, stay in shape. It feels worse to get beat by bad players who outrun you than good players who outplay you.
8. There are two ways to mark effectively: cheat, or move your feet. Cheating is easy, moving your feet is hard. You have to decide which kind of marker you want to be: [a] ineffective, [b] dishonorable, or [c] really, really tired from working so hard. Most guys that stop me from breaking the mark do it by blatant fouling on the pivot, so I really admire the guys that do it with footwork.
9. When covering a cutter, adopt a proactive mindset. Reactive defense generally sucks (when you wait to see what your man is going to do and then you chase him). Get where your man wants to go first. Even better, make him go where you want him to. This is a pretty subtle skill, requires a good team defense, and is not one I'm particularly good at. But every now that then I've felt it, and it feels great.

That's all off the top of my head. You'd think 17 years of play would amount to more advice. Any tips from readers?

After my sunflower seed butter post, I really should get you the rest of the way to a healthier PB&J (SSB&J, in my version). Alvaredo St. Bakery makes my breads of choice, and you can get 'em in Price Chopper and Stop & Shop (at least in MA). Check out the ingredient list on their multi-grain bread:

Sprouted Organic Whole Wheat Berries, Filtered Water, Wheat Gluten, Honey, Molasses, Organic Millet, Organic Cracked Wheat, Organic Corn Meal, Fresh Yeast, Sea Salt, Organic Oats, Organic Rye, Organic Sunflower Seeds, Organic Flax Seeds, Soy Based Lecithin, Cultured Wheat.

Definitely the tastiest mass-produced healthy bread I've encountered (I know a fair number of you will likely think the phrase "healthy bread" is an oxymoron). Here's the nutritional info:

Their sprouted wheat bread has another gram each of both fiber (good) and sugar (bad).

Last piece of a healthier SSB&J is the jelly. Smuckers makes a nice low-sugar strawberry jelly that doesn't use artificial sweeteners. It is interesting to compare Smucker's regular strawberry jelly (12g sugar), low-sugar strawberry jelly (5g sugar), and their "100% Fruit" strawberry jelly (8g sugar). Only "low sugar" lists "strawberries" as the first ingredient. Still, when I look at the ingredient list you gotta figure homemade low-sugar preserves are the way to go (like I'm made of time, though).

Too busy/lazy to comment, so I'll just tease you with the first three paragraphs of the lead-in to Clarence Bass's interview with Dr. Pat O'Shea:

For two months now we've been challenging the common belief that low intensity, long duration exercise is best for fitness and fat loss. We've shown that very brief and very hard interval training is amazingly effective in developing both aerobic and anaerobic capacity - and far superior for fat loss. (See articles #10 and 11)

Now, it's time to step back and ask where intense intervals fit in the total spectrum of fitness training. What's best for endurance athletes? Bodybuilders? Older athletes? For total conditioning?

Who better to go to for a broader perspective on interval training than Patrick J. O'Shea, Ed.D, Professor Emeritus of exercise and sports science at Oregon State University? Not only has Pat been a student of sports physiology for four decades, he has excelled as an Olympic and power lifter, a cyclist, a mountain climber, a skier and a coach.

Remember that unbelievable "big strength" video I posted awhile ago? Well, today I found Junior's home page, and you really must check out the video in the "Videos" section. It's all amazing stuff, but he's got this move that starts at 2:31 of the video that can only be described as a rapid-fire repeated planche-to-L-sit. For me that was the jaw-dropper in a reel full of stunners.

One of my favorite healthy snacks is a swab of nut butter, usually almond butter or, if I'm feeling particularly decadent, cashew butter. While they are tasty and great for you (esp. the almond butter; cashews are fattier), they are expensive (esp. the almond butter, which you would think had a fine gold powder mixed into it at today's prices). Enter sunflower seed butter! Definitely the closest match in taste and consistency to peanut butter, just about as cheap, and check the nutritional profile:

The above comes courtesy of Sunbutter. And here's a bonus for you folks with peanut allergies (like my four-year-old). Unlike all other nut butters (in my experience), it's actually possible to find sunflower seed butter that's peanut free (the nut butters always have the "processed in the same facility as..." warning)! And the taste really is close to peanut butter. If you eat it right off the spoon you can tell, but with bread and jelly it's almost indistinguishable. To a grown-up, anyway. Believe me, I know all about how infinitesimally picky kids can be when it comes to food.

It's been awhile since the last big update from Jim at Beast Skills, but he's started making up for lost time:

• New tutorials for the One-Arm Elbow Lever and the One-Arm Elbow Lever to Handstand.
• An article on callus removal (how timely!)
• Finally, a new training log entry (no permalink, this refers to the 4/15 entry).

Ross Enamait's new book, Never Gymless is now available to order! Just put my order in. Review to follow...

Finally got to play some disc outside yesterday! Very windy Goaltimate. The gang has had some lovely weather and sevens for Ultimate previous to yesterday, but conflicts have heartbreakingly kept me away. Anyway, aside from one gymnasium session mid-winter, this was my first play since the ankle sprain closed out my 2005 season. I was curious how I'd feel, as I've been training pretty hard all winter, but with a conspicuous lack of running. Would all those burpees translate? I was worried, as in my experience you can be in great shape and still suck at running if you haven't been doing it, but I was pretty happy with the day. Legs and lungs felt great, although I'm sure the wind and lack of full-field Ultimate helped with that. And I had to quit early with a "deep blister", the second of my life. Let me tell you, when the FixingYourFeet guy says:

Am I a stickler about calluses? You bet. I've seen the grimaces on the faces of athletes who have deep blisters that cannot be repaired without a lot of pain. I've seen them hobble off, knowing it won't get any better.

... he knows what he's talking about. Much worse than a surface blister. I didn't even think my calluses were too thick, but I'll definitely be doing some maintenance. There, that's more than enough about my feet.

Man, White Mountain Open is only like four weeks away! Psyched.