Goals & Motivation

Choices to make: strength or endurance?

I feel fantastic these days. My varied lingering aches and pains are dwindling to fleeting annoyances. I actually feel like some sort of athlete! And now my mind turns to various athletic goals. I have strength goals–pulling 500 lbs. on the deadlift, mastering the barbell snatch, and cleaning and jerking my body weight (at the very least) for instance. I also have endurance goals such as running a marathon and doing the Epic Single Track mountain bike race series at Winter Park next year. I want to do it all! But as I’ve mentioned before (here and here) it’s not realistic to pursue both high-end strength and endurance goals at the same time. If you work hard enough in one direction, then your abilities at the other end will suffer. From the injury and burnout perspective, doing a lot of endurance work plus heavy strength/power work will very likely put you in a bad spot very quickly. So I’ve got to choose, and it’s a tough call.

Short-term reward vs. long-term benefit

I mentioned previously that getting stronger helps one’s endurance abilities but it doesn’t work the other way. Increasing one’s endurance work tends to make one weaker. Further, dropping weight via dropping muscle mass makes running and biking much easier. Hauling around extra weight never helps. The whole idea of losing strength and mass is sort of tough to swallow. But if I continue to lift to the degree that I’ve enjoyed–then I’ll impede to my endurance abilities.

As I’ve thought about all this, I realize I’m facing the sort of dilemma faced by many of us who want to get in better shape. The issue boils down to a short-term reward vs. a long-term goal. We know in some part of our brain what we should do, but in some other part we desire something else in the here-and-now. We’d like to be thin some day for example but a bowl of ice cream is looking mighty good right now. Or maybe I’d like to have more muscle mass and better bone density, but I really feel like watching TV right now. Does this sound familiar? In most cases, the short-term reward wins out. This can be a titanic struggle at times. It’s you vs. your brain!

Add weight to be strong.

One of the most respected and knowledgeable strength coaches in the country is Mark Rippetoe, owner of the Wichita Falls Athletic Club, and co-author of the books Starting Strength and Practical Programming for Strength Training. (If you want to get stronger, stop reading right now and order both books. They are superb.) If he’s talking, I’m listening. Recently, I watched a video from his site about tall athletes. (I’m 6’3″ and that qualifies as reasonably tall.) It’s a forum discussion with Rippetoe, former Olympic weight lifting champion Tommy Suggs, big time powerlifter Jim Windler, and strong man/nutritionist John “Johnny Pain” Shaffer. An audience member asks about training concerns for tall athletes. (See, tall people have long limbs or levers. Long levers can’t move as much weight as short levers. Thus we tall people have a few questions sometimes on what we should do to get stronger.) The discussion moves to eating and body weight. Shaffer recommends one weigh 3 lbs. per inch of height–as a starting place— in order to be able to use your levers effectively. For me that’s 225 lbs. Right now, I’m just about 200 lbs. Here’s the video in case you’re interested:

Roundtable: Tall Athletes from stef bradford on Vimeo.

Weigh more. Go slow.

So, to be strong–really strong–I should eat to get big. But the creator of the universe is a comedian and he or she has dictated that if I’m big I’ll also have a really hard time running very far or biking up through the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s obvious: As body mass goes up, endurance performance goes down and vice versa.

I’ve had personal and dramatic experience with this sort of thing. Back in college I went to Europe for four weeks to take “classes.” (It was a vacation disguised as school. Had a wonderful time!) At the time I was riding bikes with a group from a local bike shop in Denton, TX. I didn’t touch a bike while overseas. I ran a lot. I lifted a very few times and I walked constantly. I dropped about 1o or 15 lbs without thinking about it. I got back to TX and the next time I rode I smoked everyone but the very fastest rider in the group. So I became a much better cyclist without improving my cycling skills. The weight made the difference, and this shouldn’t surprise anyone. Here’s some more evidence.

An article on Peak Performance Online cites a study from the University of Georgia that compared run times of men vs women. Part of the study had the subjects perform a 12-minute run test. Here’s a discussion of the results:

“Males did significantly better on the test, running an average of almost 3300 metres in 12 minutes, while females covered just 2750 metres. Although male performances were about 20 per cent better, males didn’t run more economically than the females, and male V02max values were only slightly (5 per cent) higher. What caused the big difference in performance?”

“As it turned out, percent body fat averaged 20 per cent in the females but only 11 per cent in the males. When Sparling analysed the data, he found that 74 per cent of the variation between male and female performances could be accounted for by the difference in body fatness, while a much smaller amount (20 per cent) of the difference was determined by the males’ higher V02max values. The higher amounts of body fat in the female runners acted as ‘dead weight’, increasing the energy cost of running and making quality running paces seem more strenuous.”

Now, clearly fat and muscle are different types of tissue, but too much muscle will still count as “dead weight” during a ride or a run. So the debate in my head continues. Fortunately, as I’ve eluded to before, strength work does help endurance athletes. So as it stands, I can still get a lot stronger and improve my endurance performance. The downside is that I will not reach my genetic potential in strength so long as I continue the endurance activity. I’m also going to focus on reducing my body fat. I don’t carry too terribly much body fat but I also don’t work much to reduce it, and I probably should.

Cures all that ails!!

Unless you live in a sensory deprivation chamber, you know that we’re awash in news stories and advertisements for food products, drugs, pain remedy potions, supplements of various sorts and all kinds of fitness and health fads. White-lab coated doctors appear on popular TV shows extolling the virtues of antioxidants, fiber, raw foods ionized bracelets, colonic cleanses and more.

We’re often told these products are “clinically proven” or that “Studies show” huge life-changing success when we use these products. But what do these terms mean? Are the hard-to-believe claims possibly true? Which if any of these “sciencey” sounding products are worthwhile, effective or even safe? I’m not a scientist, so what should I believe? (I should add that I’ve probably been convinced more than a few times of the worth of some worthless things.)

In an effort to understand some of this stuff, I’m reading Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science, and I’m learning a lot. He discusses in clear terms some of the strange claims made by practitioners of complimentary alternative medicine (CAM) such as homeopaths and nutritional gurus. We learn about the extraordinarily powerful placebo effect and why this effect is often at the core of alternative treatment methods. We get an in-depth look at the shocking and strange situation surrounding the recent HIV/AIDS denial controversy in South Africa. (This was the conflict in which South African president Thabo Mbeki and his cohorts fully ignored all scientific data regarding treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. The result was many thousands of premature deaths due to denial of antiretroviral drugs to HIV/AIDS patients in that country. One man, Mathias Rath, a German vitamin pill peddler, profited tremendously from this situation.) Goldacre also takes the pharmaceutical industry to task for various dubious, dangerous practices and manipulation of data. Bad Science is a look inside all sorts of snake oil.

Thus far I’ve found the chapter on nutritionists particularly interesting. We get some history of nutritional quackery. We learn about a man named John Harvey Kellog. You may recognize his last name. He helped create the cornflake. He sold granola bars, ran a sanatorium where patients were treated with “holistic methods,” advocated colonic cleansing which is popular today (By the way, that’s putting stuff in through a very clearly marked exit.), and he campaigned vigorously against masturbation. (He had some particularly stringent views on incorporating pain into circumcision as a way of inhibiting the enjoyment of sex in boys, and he advocated using carbolic acid on the clitoris to similarly dissuade sexual excitement in girls.)

What you start to realize is that ALL this stuff has been around for a long time. Charlatans making outrageous “sciencey” claims have been with us for decades if not centuries. They claim in one breath that cutting edge science is on their side. Yet when their methods and practices are subjected to truly rigorous scrutiny–and their methods are shot full of big holes–they huff and puff (sometimes they sue) and insist that the medical community is against them. Beware of these people. A lot of them–guys like Dr. Oz, Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra–are very popular and highly respected in some circles including the popular press. They’re entertaining and they deliver very interesting messages. They also run in quite another direction from much of mainstream science.

If we’re looking to summarize the differences between CAM and conventional medicine, the following statement from the site Quackwatch.com says it best:

“Until now, alternative medicine has generally been rejected by medical scientists and educators, and by most practicing physicians. The reasons are many, but the most important reason is the difference in mentality between the alternative practitioners and the medical establishment. The leaders of the establishment believe in the scientific method, and in the rule of evidence, and in the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology upon which the modern view of nature is based. Alternative practitioners either do not seem to care about science or explicitly reject its premises. Their methods are often based on notions totally at odds with science, common sense, and modern conceptions of the structure and the function of the human body. In advancing their claims, they do not appear to recognize the need for objective evidence, asserting that the intuitions and the personal beliefs of patients and healers are all that is needed to validate their methods.”

One statement I found resonated with me, and I think it will help me keep a proper perspective. “There’s a word for alternative medicine that holds up to scientific scrutiny: Medicine.”

Goldacre doesn’t spend all his time bashing CAM, just most of his time. Early in the book he discusses one area where many CAM practitioners outdo their conventional medical counterparts and that’s in listening to the patient. A huge part of a patient’s feeling better relies on the doctor/patient relationship–the doctor’s bedside manner. Many of us have experienced a doctor’s appointment in which we’re rushed through, talked down to, not listened to, and the doc doesn’t do a good job of explaining what’s happening. This does not help us feel better. In contrast, much of the benefit of CAM may lie in the experience of someone taking time to genuinely listen to us, thus calming us and giving us hope that we can feel better.

Bad Science is a fun, snarky read. Goldacre’s criticism of the CAM industry is very direct. At times he’s sarcastic and creatively belittling of alternative medicine. If you’re an advocate of CAM then you might get a little worked up and defensive. If you’re interested in getting a deeper understanding of all the confusing medical and pseudo-medical information around us, please get a copy of Bad Science. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand what Goldacre is saying. For more fun and good information, have a look at Goldacre’s site BadScience.net.

Behavior Change & Healthy Choices One Step at a Time

Working out plus eating right: Feel free to choose only one

In my line of work, I often speak with people who have physique goals (most people want to lose weight). Often these folks are eager to exercise. They like to lift heavy objects and sweat. For them this is fun! When the conversation turns to nutrition though, the mood often changes. These enthusiastic exercisers often express mild to severe dread at confronting their various dietary Darth Vaders.

“Yeah… I know I should eat better. I’ve tried but it’s hard…”

Many a New Year Resolution starts with the idea of getting in shape via “eating better.” But what does it mean to “eat better?” Could be any combination of eat more vegetables and fruit, eat less sugar, eat less processed food, eat less gluten, drink less soda and/or booze, eat more “natural” foods, eat more organic foods, eat less meat… “Eating better” can mean a great many things. There are a lot of choices and it’s tough to pick a place to start. If we try to take on all these changes at once then we’re looking at climbing Mt. Everest. Couple this with efforts to “work out more” and now we’re looking at climbing K2 as well. Typically the individual will try hard for a while, fail and then bum out at their defeat. Gloom and doom at the end of another effort to get in shape.

The problem is, we may not be ready to tackle both of these issues-eating better and exercising–at the same time. We may be ready to exercise but we may plain ol’ not be ready to change our eating habits. We may realize the importance of changing our current behaviors, but trying to change too many things at once may be too difficult. The solution: Pick one. Then at some point in the future–when you decide it’s time–start changing the other.

Find easy success first

With regard to eating, instead of trying to “eat better,” which is very general, can you make one single concrete decision on one of your eating habits? Can you pick one single better thing to eat today than you did yesterday? Can you make a specific choice–just one–that’s better than a previous choice you’ve made?

Ideally, it should be an easy choice to make. (Don’t try to give up your favorite food altogether. That never works.) Just today can you get fruit instead of chips with a sandwich? Instead of drinking three sodas today can you drink only two? Can you have dessert only four times this week instead of five? In other words can you make a very small painless yet definite modification to your behavior?

Psychologically, small but definite victories will give you a feeling of success. And these victories actually matter! They’re small steps but they are steps. Deal with the easy stuff first and you’ll develop truly healthy habits that will stick.

My Workouts These Days

I’ve got strength goals and I’ve got endurance goals. Right now I’m leaning toward the endurance goals. I want to race the Run the Rocks 5k in October (my first race in two years). I’ve also been mountain biking a lot and it’s been an enormous amount of fun. Because of this I need to pull back on my lifting.

Overall, I’ll be doing less strength training and more endurance training. I recognize that if I increase exercise stress in one direction, I’ll have to decrease it in another direction. Otherwise I’ll very likely get injured and burnt out. What will this look like?

First, I’m going from lifting three days per week to only two per week. This will permit me to perform a higher volume of endurance work and I’ll be able to recover adequately. Next, I’ll change my goals. Previously I was working on strength and power. Now, I’ll work on strength and strength-endurance. My focus will be on the squat. One workout I’ll do a 3×5 (possibly progressing to a 3×3) routine to increase my strength and the next workout I’ll do a 20-rep set for strength-endurance. I still want to maintain my technique in the barbell clean, so that lift will remain in my workout, but at a reduced intensity and volume from before. Sadly, I will eliminate my beloved deadlift for a while. Finally, as an all over strengthener and a tremendous trunk exercise, the Turkish Get-Up will stay in my workouts every time.

Several Sources of Gluten: Top: High-gluten wheat flour. Right: European spelt. Bottom: Barley. Left: Rolled rye flakes.

Gluten and ailments related to gluten such as celiac disease and gluten sensitivity have received a lot of press over recent years. It seems that more and more people are experiencing some sort of adverse reaction to gluten. Symptoms vary from mild to severe and may include various digestive issues, breathing issues, skin irritation, joint pain, and lethargy.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with getting the gluten out of my diet. I believe cutting gluten gluten has played a strong role in reducing in my various aches and pains, particularly my Achilles and heel pain. Are You Too Sensitive? is a recent article in Outside Magazine that provides some anecdotal evidence to support my observations.

As I mentioned at the start, gluten seems to cause some degree of distress and inflammation in a good number of people. This may not rise to the level of severe illness but it may be perceived as a threat by the nervous system. So now we’ve got dietary stress. Let’s add that to any number of the other stresses we have including job stress, money stress, or even the normally good stress of exercise. Maybe we’re not sleeping all that well–oh and our seasonal allergies are getting to us. At some point all this stress builds and the nervous system senses a building threat. We’ve got a threshold below which we don’t feel pain. Once our stress hits that threshold, things change. The nervous system which is always looking out for our best interest (survival) wants us to reduce this threat level. The result may be pain–an action signal–that will alert you to reduce your stress. And what better way to get our attention than via a nice efficient pathway such as our old back pain, knee pain or foot pain?

And gluten is everywhere! Bread, pasta, anything with malt or barley like beer, pancakes, pastries… Gluten is often found in sauces, ketchup, marinades, soy sauce and ice cream. It’s often found in processed meat. (Have a look here for a big long list of gluten-containing products.) So we’re swimming in gluten. While this stuff may not be so bad in small amounts, if we’re constantly consuming it then it may build to a toxic level. This chronically elevated gluten may well then contribute to chronic pain.

In addition to reducing my heel and Achilles pain, I believe getting the gluten out has helped me recover after tough workouts and bike rides. I noticed this maybe a week or so after eliminating gluten. Typically it was easy for me to either lift, ride or run to the point that I’d be sore to some degree for a couple of days. The result was my next workout would be inhibited. Now I can say with certainty that I’m simply not as sore as I used to be. This observation is echoed in the Outside Magazine article:

“That’s old news to Robby Ketchell, the director of sports science for the Garmin-Cervélo pro cycling team. Since 2008, riders have experienced improved post-ride recoveries, which Ketchell attributes to the team’s gluten-free diet. ‘When our guys ride, they’re tearing muscle fibers, and that creates inflammation in their bodies,’ says Ketchell. ‘We need to get rid of that inflammation so they can ride strong the next day. The last thing we want is something that causes more inflammation.'”

So if you’re struggling with chronic pain and you’ve tried many methods to address it, addressing your nutrition–and particularly your consumption of gluten–may be a way to move forward.

Shifting Gears from Strength to Endurance Work: Part I

Springtime in Denver means it’s time to bicycle. So now I’ve shifted my focus from heavy strength and power work to endurance work. (I never did hit 500 lbs. on the deadlift. I did however pull 435 lbs. for two reps. I’m content with that.) Endurance activity and strength/power work lie at two opposite ends of the exercise/movement/exertion continuum. From what I’ve read and in my own personally experience, it’s very difficult if not impossible to develop a high-end level of strength while also training for an endurance event like the Sunrise Century (which I’ll be doing in June.) Simply put, trying to maximize one area of performance means the other will suffer. If you try to maximize all areas then you won’t reach your potential in any one.

Terminology: Endurance, Strength, Power

I’ll define some terms. Endurance work is something like long distance cycling, running, or cross-country skiing. These are long-duration activities executed well below the participants’ maximal abilities.

Maximal strength work is often a slow moving, short duration type of thing. If you attempt to lift a maximum weight you won’t be moving it very quickly. Heavy deadlifting, bench pressing and squatting typically move slowly. These activities can only be sustained for a very brief amount of time–several seconds at most–before the muscles fatigue significantly.

Power sports require a combination of strength and speed. Think of a shot putter, long jumper or an Olympic weight lifter. These athletes must move a fairly heavy object very quickly. Maximal power may be expressed in two seconds or less. Power sports and endurance sports occupy the furthest opposite ends of the exercise spectrum.

So what happens if we decide to mix endurance work, strength work and power work together?

Endurance Work May Inhibit Strength Abilities

The National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) offers a document titled Concurrent Strength and Endurance Training for Strength/Power Athletes. Here we have evidence that suggests mixed results for combined strength and endurance work. Several studies suggest that endurance work impedes strength gains. Other studies show no interference.

Confusion and questions come up when we start to dissect the studies. The article states:

“Differences between these studies may have been due to differences in the length of the studies, experience level of the subjects, and the training protocols utilized. For example, studies differed with respect to the specific exercises performed, whether strength and endurance training were performed on the same or different days per week, the sequence of training modes (strength before endurance or endurance before strength).”

We don’t have a definite answer to this question.

In my personal experience I run into difficulty if I ride/run a lot while also lifting a lot. I become too sore and stiff from one activity to perform well at the other. So I have to reduce one type of stress as I increase the other. Further, I find that riding my bike up mountains quite sufficiently addresses my strength needs. (Now we’re starting to get into the SAID Principle or Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Then we start to ask whether strength developed in the gym has any effect on strength expressed on a bike…)

In subsequent posts I’ll examine the effects of endurance work on power performance. Then we’ll drive the other way up this street and ask the question, “To what degree does strength and power work affect endurance performance?”

The Dangers of Sitting & How to Fight Back With Z-Health

I’m behind on the news here a little bit but a fascinating story appeared recently in the New York Times Magazine. Is Sitting a Lethal Activity discusses the idea that spending too much time sitting is harmful to our health. In fact the article suggests the following:

“Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. ‘Excessive sitting,’ Mayo Clinic researcher Dr. James Levine says, ‘is a lethal activity.'”

Okay, so this is no revelation to most of us. We know that moving is generally healthier than sitting. So if we exercise enough then we should be able to counteract the effects of sitting right? Not so fast. The Times article suggests that in fact we may not be able to exercise our way out of the risks of our seated lifestyle. The article states:

“A growing body of inactivity research, however, suggests that this advice makes scarcely more sense than the notion that you could counter a pack-a-day smoking habit by jogging. ‘Exercise is not a perfect antidote for sitting,’ says Marc Hamilton, an inactivity researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.”

So what does this mean? It seem that according to the evidence in the article, sitting is unhealthy. (Specifically we might say that lack of movement not sitting in and of itself.) If we do too much of it we’ll get sick and die early–whether or not we exercise a lot. This isn’t good! Most of the Western world sits for a living. We sit at computers. Then we sit in cars for transportation. Then for entertainment we sit in front of a television. HOURS and HOURS of sitting is our way of life. So what can we do?

Well, part of the research into this issue by Dr. Levine included the wearing of a special electronically wired “magic underwear” that measured the wearer’s movement. The researchers found that healthier people moved more during the day but it wasn’t necessarily in the form of exercise. They fidgeted more or simply engaged in many small movements throughout the day. Even leaning down and tying a shoe can generate a burst of movement that should ultimately lead to better health. (The term for all this small, non-exercise movement is NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. Read more about NEAT here, here and here.)

Z-Health R-Phase joint mobility drills are tailor made to address our modern lack of movement. Any number of these drills directly counter the hours we spend immobilized in chairs. Following are three joint mobility drills that you can perform while seated. Moving our joints in these ways sends bursts of mechanoreceptor signals to the brain and basically lets the nervous system know that we’re still alive.

Z-Health: the Performance Enhancement System

For about two years now I’ve been involved in an exercise system called Z-Health. I’ve suffered from various chronic pain issues and the methods employed by Z-Health have helped me reduce my pain and regain function to a tremendous degree–far more than any other treatment modality I’ve ever experienced. (I’d like to give great thanks to Dr. Eric Cobb, creator and founder of Z-Health.) I get to share this unique system with clients every day. As a Z-Health Certified Movement Re-Education Specialist, I get to help them find their way out of pain and dysfunction. For clients in pain, Z-Health R-Phase and I-Phase are key to calming the nervous system and re-establishing good, pain-free movement. But Z-Health isn’t only about pain relief. It’s also about performance enhancement.

On that theme, I’d like to show you a couple of articles (here, here) and a video on a 14-year-old Seattle area sprinter named Hannah Cunliffe. She’s a nationally ranked in both the 100m and 200m events for her age group and she’s able to hold her own against college sprinters. She hopes to compete in the 2012 Olympics. She’s also one of Dr. Cobb’s clients. For someone like Hannah, Z-Health S-Phase offers powerful visual and sport mechanics drills. Sprinting, agility, acceleration, decelerating and jumping are all part of S-Phase.

So the big message here is that Z-Health isn’t just about addressing pain. It’s about achieving the highest level of performance you want.

Here are a couple of videos:

I Need More Rest & Recovery

Sometimes I tell my clients, “I make all the dumb mistakes so you don’t have to.” Well, I continue to make less-than-intelligent decisions from time to time when it comes to exercise. I’ve been working out very hard for several weeks and I seem to have overstepped my boundaries. I’ve got some aches and pains that are proving difficult to resolve. Therefore it’s time to dial back my efforts, prioritize rest, and let all my various tissues and functions restore themselves.

I want to deadlift 500 lbs. That’s my big goal this year. In order to hit this goal I must put in very hard work. Hard workouts must be balanced by adequate rest–but not total rest. I’ve been lifting three days per week with the idea that I’m doing one heavy workout, followed by a light workout 48 hours later, then a medium workout again 48 hours after that. Then it’s two days off lifting and I start it all over. As important as it is to lift hard on the hard day, it’s equally (maybe even more) important to ease up on the other days, especially the light day. So while I’ve definitely been hitting the hard days, I believe I have fallen short of my goal of lifting light.

So here’s my strategy. I’ve based the next few weeks on a variation of the Texas Method as discussed in Practical Programming for Strength Training, the brilliant book by Rippetoe and Killgore. This calls for a Monday/Wednesday/Friday type of pattern with a medium workout on Monday, a light workout on Wednesday and and the heavy workout on Friday. Here’s my plan:

Monday: Medium Day

Back squat: 3 x 8 reps
Pushups: 3 x to exertion (10-25) but not exhaustion; alternated each workout with
chin-ups: 3 x 5 (I may play around with band chin-ups to get more reps; I’m not terribly strong on the pull/chin-ups and my forearm is banged up.)
Back extension: 3 x 8-10 reps
I must stay far away from anything that feels like exhaustion or muscular failure.
I’ll likely add back bench press and/or overhead presses once my wrists and shoulders feel better.

Wednesday: Light Day

Turkish Get-Ups: 1×5 reps each arm–AND THAT’S IT!

Friday: Heavy Day

Deadlift: work up to 1 x 2 reps near goal max
Speed deadlift: 3 x 3 around 70% of goal max alternated each workout with kettlebell swings
Romanian Deadlift: 3 x 5 reps
chin-ups: 3 x 5 alternated each workout with
pushups: 3 x to exertion (10-25 reps)

The key to all this is paying attention to how I test during each workout after every exercise. I’ll be assessing and re-assessing my range of motion frequently (most likely with a standing toe-touch type of assessment), and I’ll be performing Z-Health joint mobility drills often. If I tighten up at all or if I feel any pain then I MUST stop and call it a day. This is of course counter-instinctive to me but I know I’ll feel better if I do. The ultimate goal is 500 lbs. on that deadlift and I won’t get there if I’m beat up.

How’s Your New Year’s Resolution?

It’s exactly 45 days into 2011. Do you have a New Year’s Resolution? If so, what is it? Is it specific or vague? Does it involve measurable steps tied to a timetable, or is “just something you’re working on?” Do you feel you’re moving effectively towards your resolution or is it sort of sliding sideways and backwards out of your thinking?

Just wondering….

Denver Fitness Journal

All Things Health and Fitness by Kyle Norman, MS, CSCS, FMS, RRCA Running Coach

Observations