"Do you suppose they will choose to make war against lean, solid dogs rather than against fat and tender sheep?"
So it feels like an ever-new mystery to get overpowered in fight training by short, thin, or otherwise gracile people who, it seems to me, can’t possibly have as much power. Not just outmaneuvered and outskilled, but manhandled or just plain pounded. I’m talking thin teenagers, featherweight women, even a girl who’s too young for PG-13 and weighs less than my checked luggage. What gives?
Good news: The “core” isn’t the all-important missing link anymore. The cool kids have moved on. Now feet are the new core. Thank heaven, because I got bored of direct midsection work long before the fools in marketing renamed it the “core.” When did they coin that phrase anyway? I missed the Nineties, living in... Continue Reading →
"However, the champ often 'took ill' with a pathogen transmitted in oak barrels known to disparately afflict the Irish community."
I weigh in for my first kettlebell competition in 2001 as Com. Angelo looks on. That day I weighed 156lbs. Granted, I had to cut some weight, but these days I'd have to cut off a leg. This is an experimental post, summarizing my training for the past week. If I continue to publish these... Continue Reading →
Feeling fat, looking fat, and being fat are three separate things. You can “feel fat” without looking or being fat. I’ll hazard a guess that it's mostly emotional, but even when you’re not being particularly neurotic, you can feel fatter or leaner depending on the fit of your clothes and your posture. You can also look... Continue Reading →
Part 6 of our series "Tao of the Lazy Badass" and part 7 of our retrospective series, "Twenty Years of Pavel Tsatsouline." (Follow the links to find all previous installments.) In our last post, we talked about “fragmenting the load,” a fancy way of saying that you should chop up your workload into small, easy... Continue Reading →
Final installment in my after-action report from the GORUCK D-Day Heavy Challenge. The faithful, indomitable, light, nimble "Moose Head" rucksack. I love this thing. Made in the 1930s, it was intended by the Swedes as a cheap mass-production item for hurriedly equipping a big army that Germany would choose not to tangle with. Eighty years... Continue Reading →
It's always some heavily muscled personal trainer. My toughest moments at Goruck challenges are when I must fireman's carry a teammate, and it's never the vegetarian triathlete who works for a socially conscious startup. I always get the dense, hypertrophied Paleo stevedore-type who runs a gym. It's amazingly easy to fireman's carry someone, but it's... Continue Reading →
Goruck Heavy (May 31 - June 1) commemorating D-Day. San Francisco. Thirteen entered (eight men, five women), ten finished. These are the lessons I learned, first about individual performance (part 1), then about us as a team (part 2), then about my gear choices (part 3). Absolute Strength and Strength-Endurance Absolute strength is essentially one-rep... Continue Reading →
What my training was supposed to look like... This year I was forced to train much differently for the Heavy than planned. I suffered an injury to one shoulder and both hands that ruled out some of the very training that I intended to rely on, namely pushups, heavy kettlebells (32 to 40kg), and carrying... Continue Reading →