8 Grams by Jon Feinstein

Visions of Fast Food by Jon Feinstein “There’s this weird relationship that we as Americans have with fast food,” says Feinstein, who titled each image with the given item’s fat content, in grams. “I made a project where the food mostly looks disgusting, yet some of it is still strangely enticing—probably because the branding is so embedded in our psyches.”

Crossfit for Baseball? by Eric Cressey “The randomness of the “workout of the day” is simply not appropriate for a sport that has quite possibly the most specific sport-imposed asymmetries in the world of athletics.”

Clean Eating Gone Wrong by John Berardi “What if I told you that a diet of 1/2 cup oats, 4 egg
whites, 5 ounces of chicken, and 1/2 cup broccoli could be a recipe for getting fat?  Hard to believe?  Well, in this week’s update, you’ll find out how even the cleanest of diets can lead to weight gain…”

USC RB Johnson recovering from weights accident by Gregg Beacham                 If you haven’t heard USC RB Stafon Johnson crushed his Larynx the other day while bench pressing.  He is thankfully expected to make a full recovery. I don’t believe this is necessarily a “must read”, but more of a wake-up call.  This is an extremely rare accident, but it can happen.  Always make sure you use a spotter you know, like your workout buddy (if you don’t have one get one), and most importantly use your thumbs.

The Anatomy Trains seminar this past weekend was awesome. I found Tom Myers to be a wonderful speaker and his passion for life and health to be inspiring. I can’t say that I’ve had any breakthroughs or will be changing my training methods as an immediate result, but I’m still filtering a lot of information from the weekend. Tom did confirm that the fitness industry is moving in what he thought to be the right direction and that we’ve caught up with the manual therapists by including more soft tissue work and implementing balls, sticks, and rollers into our programming. Now the question is: are you up to date? Do you utilize soft tissue work before your workouts? Do you still used fixed isolated machines, believe in spot training, and/or follow body part split routines? The scariest part of all: how about your trainer? Even though Tom liked what he learned from us over the weekend as there was a great exchange in dialogue, since Tom was admittedly unfamiliar with what we do. This however doesn’t mean that everyone is on the same page, according to Thomas Plummer, fitness business consultant extraordinaire, who says that the average big box club is five years behind the times, and I couldn’t agree more. So, what should you do to bring yourself up to date? It’s simple: incorporate more soft tissue work. Before your next workout grab a foam roller and start working on that tissue. If your gym doesn’t have foam rollers they are definitely behind the times, and you can buy one here. Trust me, you’ve got more aches and pains than you know about so get rolling. For a more detailed explanation of the benefits of foam rolling check out Tony Gentilcore’s “Soft Tissue Work for Tough Guys” . In closing here’s a video of Tony getting down and dirty with a roller:

Tomorrow I will be attending the Anatomy Trains for Personal Training Seminar by Thomas Myers and I’m psyched!  This will be the first time Mr. Myers will be speaking specifically to the personal training field about his concept, anatomy trains.  If you are in the field and haven’t heard about Myers work or read his book get on it, I’ll have some more links for you below, if you’re too busy to read because you are trying to make it as an actor please get a new job.

Myers is the manual therapist who is responsible for changing the way we perceive fascia, “Fascia (făsh’ē-ə), pl. fas·ci·ae (făsh’ē-ē), adj. fascial (făsh’ē-əl) (from latin: a band) is the soft tissue component of the connective tissue system that permeates the human body. It interpenetrates and surrounds muscles, bones, organs, nerves, blood vessels and other structures. Fascia is an uninterrupted, three-dimensional web of tissue that extends from head to toe, from front to back, from interior to exterior.” -Wikipedia

In my early days as a trainer I’d mention fascia from time to time, but with an extremely limited knowledge I would usually just spout off, “it’s a web-like structure that surrounds your muscles, bones, joints, etc and just…you know holds everything together”  I also knew it felt good to massage it.  Apparently not many other folks were paying much attention to this stuff either, everybody just wanted to know about muscles.  This is where Myers made his breakthrough, maybe there is more to this stuff he thought, in a new Men’s Heath article which you can read here Myers describes “The anatomists he was working with were slicing right through it(fascia) because they wanted a good, unobstructed view of the muscle underneath. …”all I had to do was turn my scalpel sideways”, Myers recalls.  Instead of slicing through the gunk, he sliced along it, gently freeing it from the bone.”

In doing so Myers revealed  that  multiple muscle groups were linked via fascia.  He demonstrated this by removing very large pieces of fascia, often times running from head to toe.  This was eye-opening and has changed the way a lot of people view injury and anatomy.  No longer do the educated only look at the injury/pain site for the cure, but also above and below in part thanks to Tom Myers work with dead people.

For more images, information, and practitioners in your area check out Anatomytrains.com .  I also must mention that I will be attending this seminar with none other than my good friend Michael Wolf, who has pointed out to me on many occasion that he often is mentioned in my blog simply as “friend”.  Sorry Michael.  Also, I intended to include more links and demonstrate how Myer’s work has influenced the personal training/strength coach industry, but I’m out of words, I’ve been told I must keep these posts at 500 words, which sounds good to me because I’ve got some weights to lift.  Stay tuned for more.

The Biggest Loser has pissed off many folks in the training industry and rants about the show can be found on many a training blog.   Why? Mainly because the trainers on the show are garbage.

I know, I know.  You’re about to say ” But, look at all the weight they’ve lost!  And Jillian Michaels is awesome, she’s so tough.”

Bob and Jillian, the  so-called trainers on the show could be more fairly referred to as  idiots or entertrainers.  Entertrainers or entrainment is a term I believe was first coined by Mark Verstegen of Core Performance.  I usually use the term entertrainer to describe the crappy trainer at your local gym who has a client tangled up in a TRX with one foot on a Bosu ball and two dumbells under 10lbs.  Entertrainers favor overly complicated, flashy moves and dislike science.

The Biggest Loser, however, takes entertrainment to another level.  Appearing on a reality TV show and literally being in the entertainment industry is no excuse for the horrible training done by Bob and Jillian.  Screaming and yelling at their clients however maybe encouraged to add drama and excitement for all you reality show addicts.  Either way it is disgusting and done at the cost of humiliating another person, thus making them the ultimate enterainers or best reason to throw your TV out the window.

Mike Boyle who has written his own blog post about the show says “I’m ashamed to be a “trainer.”  I don’t even own any army clothes and I have never screamed at a fat person in my life.”   One reason so many in the personal training field hate the show is because we are compassionate, we  got in to this field to help people.  Additionally we have read a book or two and understand that making people cry, fracture their hips, or humiliating them on tv is not help.  You might be thinking that the weight loss is a great help and it is saving their lives, I’d agree if it was accomplished in a healthier  manner.

Today’s post was intended to be a guest post, a  link to Coach Dos Remedios’s “The Biggest Losers…the viewers“.  But I got side-tracked with my own rant and other links, here is another.  Coach Dos does a great job with this post and includes some shocking comments from previous contestants of the show, it is the best post on the subject yet, read it  here.

Check out some of the articles I’ve read in the past week.  They are all available online.  Read them on your computer or print them out, but never do this:

Blowing It.

The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died.  How Similar Is Big Food? This article written by Kelly D. Brownell of Yale and Kenneth E. Warner of University of Michigan was brought to my attention by Mike Boyle who wrote a post about it on his Strength Coach Blog.  If you read only one of these recommendations make it this one.

Now Hiring is a hilarious article about how personal trainer Jon Messner runs his business.  “Jon Messner Performance is a personal training studio that specializes in pain management.  JMP has nothing to do with yoga, pilates, bodybuilding, or basket weaving”

What Are Your Four Pounds Made Of? A great article from Ryan Andrews at Precision Nutrition about the importance of eating real foods and why “Mother Nature has got your back”.

Lift Strong is an organization founded by Strength Coach and two time cancer survivor Alwyn Cosgrove.  Lift Strong has recently teamed up with Elite FTS to launch an apparel line.  Check out the article and gear.  All proceeds benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.