Month: August 2011

I work with a lot of dancers.  I also work with people that spend a lot of time around dancers.  Actors, singers, move-wellers, etc.I feel that I have a unique advantage working these folks because I used to be a part of that culture.  I may not have a been a great dancer, but I immersed myself in it pretty intensively in college and studied very hard to maximize my modest talents.  I’ve also spent (and continue to spend) most of my social time with folks who live in that world, so it’s fair to say… I know them pretty well.  We hang out, we go out, we make out. Kidding!  (no I’m not.)

From Stu McRobert’s Beyond Brawn: “This gym is all appearance and no substance. It is only because we have a lot of fancy-looking equipment that we impress everyone who knows little or nothing about training. Because we have spent a lot of money on marginal, useless and sometimes dangerous equipment we must encourage our members to use it. We never encourage the old-fashioned basic exercises. In fact, to save you from being tempted to use the latter, you will never find a power rack or lifting platform here, and the squat racks we have are flimsy and unused. Who on earth wants to squat? Too much like hard work. Our instructors are as useless as we are, though some of them have very good physiques due to excellence genetics and/or use of steroids. To deter you from using the time-proven most productive (but most uncomfortable) exercises, we have joined ranks with other gyms to perpetuate the hokum that basic barbell exercises are dangerous and, at best, only useful for beginners who are not fortunate enough to train in a modern well-equipped gym like ours. This is convenient for us though, because we barely know the first thing of instructing safe and productive technique in the biggest and best barbell exercises. We promote the idea that you need a wide variety of isolation and machine exercises in every workout. We make exercise fun. You can watch yourself in the many mirrors we have, listen to music we entertain you with, talk while you train, and ogle the skimpily clad bodies of the genetically blessed, sensual female instructors we employ to keep you interested in renewing your membership. Training here is fun, and fun means lots of members, though few of them stay long term. We depend on a constant influx of new members to make a profit. Welcome to this gym. We promise we will not push you hard, and we hope you will enjoy your time here. That is, you will enjoy it until you realize that the methods we promote will not help make you big and strong unless you have fantastic genetics or are pumped up on gear. Or like our regulars you will decide to forget about getting big and strong, and come here only for social contacts and visual kicks. Welcome to our gym!”

Check out my article on www.functionalmovement.com!  I’m totally honored I was asked to do this as I LOVE me some FMS.  Thanks Functional Movment Systems!

One of the most controversial topics in the fitness industry these days is the good old crunch. More specifically, rounding the low back, something we call spinal flexion when we speak in our secret club language of Pretentious Asshole.

Here’s a super fast, but SUPER important one.  If you’re looking to get leaner, you really aren’t doing yourself a favor by drinking your calories.  

It’s time.  You’re ready to do this.  You want to lose those five pounds that are making you uncomfortable during beach time.  You dust off the gym card and hit the gym.  You start doing cardio for 60 minutes 5 days a week.  BOOM.

A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure of giving up my days off to wake up at 6am so I could attend a seminar that started before 9am both days.  You may think saying this was a “pleasure” sounds facetious.  Gentle reader… sometimes I feel like you don’t even know me.

After two and half years of a sedentary lifestyle, combined with the consumption of massive amounts of booze and food, I was not feeling or looking so great and knew that it was time to get serious about getting my body back in shape. With a few prior failed attempts at going back to the gym and sustaining a regular fitness routine, I was introduced to the incredible results that Snatched could provide – through my friend Sean. After seeing his own incredible body transformation I was convinced that this program was exactly what the doctor ordered for me to get out of my slump and back on the path to health and hotness.

It was the fear of not knowing what I was doing that set me apart from everyone else in the gym. I’d been a couple of times, looked around, and tried out some machines, tired quickly, and then, out of ignorance, left the gym. It was always a comfort to have the gym membership, but a fear to use it. No book, nor DVD, nor gym resource in the three years of my gym membership ever enlightened or brightened my outlook on fitness. It was always too non-descript, too general, and didn’t speak to me and what I was looking to get out of my membership. So for the three years of monthly fees, my fear kept me stagnant, and growing. I started to gain, and gain, and gain weight. Having always had extra weight on me, the last two years was a steady incline in weight, sizing out of all my clothing and continually purchasing larger and larger sizes. It wasn’t enough to bring my spirits down, but it certainly was an ever-present awareness that I was gaining, and becoming less confident with the way I held myself.