Lifting Club Email

Here's the email I sent out to my "club" today.
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Sup,

I hope everyone is enjoying the easy first week back after a relaxing break (except for seniors finishing apps). Wait, no, our teachers seem to have conspired against us and made this week annoyingly hard. Yipee.

Anyway, the workout/meeting this Sunday at 12:30 is inspired by a recent article (link below). The workout is a test of strength and endurance. The goal is complete 21 reps of 4 exercises (deadlift, bench, weighted pullups, curls) in under 30 minutes. How heavy the lifts and the time it takes you to complete the workout determines whether you go to heaven or not and how awesome you are. Obviously, there's a lot at stake here.

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/test_your_metal_introducing_valeria

I know all of you read "Born to Run" over break... for those of you that didn't, the moral of the story is that your feet are better at doing their job than shoes. This statement makes sense because humans have spent bajillions of years evolving to be fit and strong without shoes.

To make up for you slackers, I read "Spark," the book from the ASM meeting about exercise and its effect on the brain. If I could sum up my review in one sentence, I would say this: some mumbo jumbo that I didn't understand, but the take away messages and practical information are terrific and make it worth the read. Por ejemplo (I'm flexing my spanish muscles), one Duke study showed that exercise was as effective as Zoloft for treating depression as well as other studies that showed a correlation between "fitness" and scores on intelligence tests.

My one complaint is that his take on nutrition is, to put it politically correct terms, "so stupid and hypocritical that I wanted to slap the author." Trust me, that's a toned down version of my thoughts. To support the need for exercise in modern life he uses the logic that humans evolved to exercise and, therefore, exercise is critical to optimum performance. However, he doesn’t believe this logic applies to nutrition. He spends about one page in the entire book discussing nutrition and recommends a conventional diet consisting of whole grains, fruits, veggies, and low meat intake, effectively screwing the pooch. I think he underestimates the importance of nutrition to health and well-being and should have looked into the “caveman/paleo” diet before blindly following conventional wisdom. And that grinds my gears.

That rant went on long enough. I have one recommended reading this week, which is a Navy SEAL's testimonial of his experience with training and diet. When Navy SEALs speak, it's worth listening because these people are the crazy.

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/12/25/panu-eating-and-high-intensity-training.html

Here's to a ballin' 2010,
Palmer