Alright moving forward I’m going to make a major push to blog more.  I know it’s been said before, but I have a lot on my mind lately, and I’d rather not carry it around all day.  First things first, there was no Strongman Saturday/Man Day this past weekend.  Man Day is another title for our weekend strength and eating festivities, however some women came last time (July 3).  Everyone was excited for this, we’re always game to see more people come and more people get better, but per usual they started trying to plan everything out, including the post Man Day evening which is usually gloriously simple and schedule free.  Women.  In order to offend some more people I will make these comments:  Curves is going out of business, they didn’t deliver results with their 30 minute machine-based model and played Christian rock in their gyms.  Awesome.  Women why did you let this take so long?  Back to Stongman Saturday.  We’ve been noticing a trend at the park…people think we’re crazy.  Greg brought this to my attention and then he made the following statement “All the adults here think we’re crazy and all the kids hang out with us, they think we’re cool…that’s how I know we’re doing something good.”  I couldn’t agree more with this.  When’s the last time kids thought your workout was cool?  Do you think kids want to hang out with the guy on the seated chest machine reading The Wall Street Journal?  Last time we were at the park we we’re joined by many children, but this was the first time a two-year old showed up.  He came by himself, dragging a softball bat behind him – we figure this was for protection.  He shared some chicken with Wolf and then dazzled him with his deep squat and superior hip mobility.  Where the hell were this dude’s parents!  Seriously it was like 830 at night and this dude was just hanging with us, all he could say was “Hi”, “Jo-Jo”, and “Chicken”.

Lone Wolf and Cub

This past weekend kegs were thrown, carried, and dragged as my friends and I finished the first week of our summer program which breaks down like this:

Monday

Pull-ups 5/3/1     *5/3/1 is a strength training program developed by Jim Wendler, check it out here.

Squats 5/3/1

Accessory Lifts

• Pull-ups
• BB 1L RDL
• DB Press
• Wheel Rollouts

Tuesday

Hill Sprints

Wednesday

Off

Thursday

Bench 5/3/1

Deadlift 5/3/1

Accessory Lifts

• Bench
• Split Squat
• DB Row
• Wheel Rollouts

Friday

More hills or off

Saturday

Strongman

• Lift
• Throw
• Drag
• Carry
• Cookout

The Implements

The first Strongman Saturday went off without a hitch and I was delightfully surprised at the turn out, we had 8 guys in total.  The cookout almost didn’t happen however as we thought the park possessed grills, which was not the case.  After procuring some grills from the local 99 cents store we were in business.  Our shopping cart (used for carrying our equipment) created a nice level surface and before you knew it we were grilling in style.  We did have one run in with the police during our cookout, apparently they thought are kegs were full of beer and that the five of us remaining were going to consume both of them.  I explained what we were doing with them and showed him our empty keg, but it wasn’t until the police officer got a smell of Greg that he believed we had been working out.  It’s going to be a good summer.

Greg, Wolf, and our classy grill

My 29th birthday recently passed.  For my birthday my girlfriend got me two pairs of shorts, and neither of them fit.  Upon reporting this to my friend Greg he sent me the following text: “Size, the best gift of all”.  I found this text hilarious and realized that I have truly become a meathead.  As most people are looking to drop a size or two, Greg and I are currently on the quest for “size”.  We are both looking to gain about 13lb this summer (lean “size” if you will), this will put Greg at 245 and myself at 200lbs.  We must be off to a good start because last weekend when we showed up at a beer distributor looking for two empty kegs we didn’t even have to tell them why we wanted them, the teller looked at his coworker and said: “they want them for the gym”.  $60 bucks and about 10 blocks later we were sitting on our kegs in the subway.  Part of our summer lifting program is to workout outside more often using odd objects like kegs, tires, sandbags, etc.  We plan on doing this every Saturday, starting next weekend.  We will finish each session with a cookout, it will be awesome.

We got some odd looks when we arrived at Times Sq. with two kegs.

During my recent blogging hiatus my inbox once again filled with health and fitness related tidbits from friends and family.  Let’s review some of the best from the past month.

This one made me extremely happy: Jillian Michaels Sued Over Diet Pills

I can’t stand Jillian Michaels or anything related to the biggest loser.  I threw up in my mouth last night when I saw a commercial for her new show, Losing It with Jillian Michaels, the biggest moron from the Biggest Loser.  I wrote a blog post awhile back about the biggest loser.  You can read it here.

The next one comes from my sister, apparently fat people used to be so rare that people would pay to look at them, check it out:  America’s Obesity Epidemic: Bringing Sideshow Freaks Into The Discussion For some reason this makes me think about the time my Dad was at Wal-Mart and an obese individual in a scooter lost control and drove half way up a fruit display and got stuck, oh Wal-Mart.

Quite a few people sent me this one from the NY Times about lifting “heavier” weights and it’s benefits.  It’s old news to those in the know, but hopefully some of those who aren’t in the know will drop the pink dumbbells and give it a go.

I often break cell phones, I squeeze them to death, throw them at walls, I don’t know what it is, they frustrate me.  No this is not fitness related, but I’m worried about the future…Marty Cooper, inventor of the mobile phone predicts this:

“The cellphone in the long range is going to be embedded under your skin behind your ear along with a very powerful computer who is in effect your slave.”

*I don’t remember who sent that one.

Lastly my Dad always tells me that if I want to get rich in the fitness industry I need to make a gadget, preferably one that fits under the bed.  He’s probably right, lots of people seem to be getting rich from making useless fitness products.   Here’s a new one to put under your bed next to your shake weight: