Yeah, I love to eat pizza or a bowl of pasta but I’ve never had any pasta that tastes as good as a steak. I absolutely love some good oatmeal but it doesn’t compare to bacon and never will. I won’t lie, I still eat pizza and drink beer but a lot less regularly these days and now, I really enjoy it when I have it…especially the beer. But I’ll be honest, stripping my diet down to just the basics of meats, veggies and fruits, and some nuts here and there was hard. It took a few months of talks and dropping hints to my girlfriend before I put the plan into action. I plumbed blogs, articles, and books just to get information. I sucked up blog articles on what to eat or not eat faster than a Hoover. I understood most of it, I didn’t get all the chemical science behind it (I’m also not reading blog posts the length of novellas to do so), but I didn’t need to, I understood the anthropological science behind it. I knew that out of all the primitive cultures I’ve studied, all of them were extremely fit and healthy until maize and corn consumption effectively replaced other foods (warning: I’ve only deeply studied indigenous American tribes, not their more agrarian European counterparts).

But still, there were things I didn’t get because it felt like there was kind of feeling that knowing what was good and what wasn’t was only for the upper echelon of the Paleo blogosphere. Were things like green beans and turnip greens OK to eat or did I need to start eating more kale and broccoli? I saw a heavy emphasis on eating vegetables, especially green ones, but I could never figure out if my weekly staple veggies — the beans and greens — were OK. So I read some more, understood a little more, but still had a boatload of questions. Now I wish I had just waited a few months. Why?

Because Richard Nikoley has now written literally the easiest book on Paleo dieting I’ve ever read. His 111 page ebook was more informative than everything else I’d read thus far because he cut through all the bullshit, the big words, most of the science, and fluff. He distilled the entire Paleo movement and ideals down to literally half of what his peers are able to do to say the same thing. I’m not dissing other writers, their books and blog posts are absolutely wonderful but for someone just starting out in the Paleo way of eating, they need the basics, they just need to get started in the right direction and Richard does this perfectly. He provides the perfect kickstart to get you going on your journey while setting you up to keep asking questions that require the more in-depth books from Sisson, Wolf, or Jaminet.

Hell, it’s cheap as dirt too. His book is a whole $4 with lifetime updates to the text and they give you 4 different digital copies for that price. From now on, when anyone asks me about this “crazy” diet I’m on, Nikoley is where I’m pointing them.

(disclosure: Richard did not pay me to write this and frankly, he’s not even going to notice I wrote it either. I just really like his book.)

**Warm up**
10 sledgehammer around the worlds/windmills
5 kettlebell halos
15 knees to chest (and some other goodies from KB master Mike Mahler)

**Workout proper**
2-hand slam, 5 rounds alternating 5/5
Tire carry, ~26lbs ea, approximately 140ft between rounds of slams
10-10-10-10-13 2-hand overhead slam
~36lb water carry approximately 140ft between rounds over overhead slams
10-10-12 butter churn ladder

**Cool down**
10 sledgehammer around the worlds/windmills
10 kettlebell halos
5-4-3-2-1 burpees ladder
12-10-8-4 knee to elbow plank ladder

This workout itself has made me rethink my future workout regimen. I’ve got two “heavy things” to lift and use to workout (as the line goes from Richard Nikoley and Mark Sisson:

1. Sledgehammer
2. Kettlebell

Working out with both is very fun and very challenging but I think I may stop the kettlebell training for now as I’m very worried about tweaking my back. Or I’ll stop until I can take a few classes with a reputable RKC to tweak and refine my form rather than continuing to swing mine and do some serious harm. I think I’ve got the form down but I am not terribly certain that it’s exactly right as my KB workouts don’t totally kill me despite doing 5 or 6 sets of swings with upwards of 15 reps. Sure, I’m sweaty but really, I’m not feeling it especially the next day.

But that’s where I like the sledge workouts, it’s totally self-correcting. If I’m swinging wrong, I’ll feel it almost immediately either in my shoulder or my delts. If I hit the tire wrong, the sledgehammer’s head twists and wrenches right on my wrist. It’s immediate and it hurts like hell. But with my KB, it’s more nuanced and it’s hard for me to always track whether I really am popping my hip flexors or if I’m just using the bell’s momentum to swing. Doing that with a sledgehammer will either result in it not moving at all or bouncing off the tire straight into my face…and then not moving at all, probably because I’d be on the ground gushing blood and passed out. That lack of pendulum-like motion is an excellent feedback loop, I just don’t get that so far with my kettlebells. I like feedback, it’s important to get it to make sure you’re not about to crunch a disc or pop a joint out.

So, perhaps for all of February I will train with sledgehammer work only until I can get enrolled in an RKC-led kettlebell class to get some input on what I may or may not be doing wrong and go from there. Plus, I think swinging a sledgehammer looks way more manly.

7×10 kettlebell swings, 1 pood (linked to a series of Jeff Martone videos from his CrossFit KB cert class)

5 kettlebell military press r/l

A bunch of half assed one arm swings

Farmers carry, ~36 lbs each, 140 feet, 6 rounds (used 5gal buckets of water)

8-6-4-2-1 burpees

10-8-6-4 Everest climbers

Stretch cool down

Elapsed workout time: roughly 40 minutes

Today, my delts are smoked from the presses and farmers carry. I’m still not terribly confident in my swing form as I do not believe I’m generating enough power, either through an improper hip hinge or something I haven’t identified yet. I cannot believe I’m so busted up over such a simple workout, I’m still feeling it. I think February may be the month of all sledgehammer workouts, those ripped my abs last time.

C25k training, week 1 day 1, 0:24:39 1.58 miles

Half marathon/Spartan race training, 0:34:34 3.17 miles

Total for the day: 4.75 miles

That was my longest run that I’ve logged so far. Surprisingly, except for some calf tightness, I was not too sore, even my ITB was OK. That was, it was OK until I actively stretched it out. During the State of the Union address, in an attempt to help stave off any ITB tightness, I seemingly overstretched and since then, it’s actually been hurting a little bit so I have laid off the runs for the last two days. Hopefully I can log another one this weekend before the run resumes on Monday, but I may just lay off and do some strength work instead.

No puking!

Woke up today after the workout a little sore, but nothing too bad. I expected my upper back and arms to be much more sore after the sledgehammer work but they’re surprisingly nice and noodley feeling. I do have a little tweak in my lower back which is of my own doing since I did a round of swings completely wrong and now I’m paying for it. Luckily, I shouldn’t be hurting much if any tomorrow for the next workout. I will be writing a short workout plan to separate out the KB days from the sledge days and to add in a light variety day just to mix it all up. I definitely do not want to do kettlebell and sledge work back-to-back again, that was absolutely brutal on me. After I was done, I could barely pick up my tire, I had to roll it back to storage. I am very surprised at my legs though, I’m feeling a little tightness and slight muscle soreness from the workout, I never expected that to be honest.

Later today after class, I’m beginning my new runs at campus, so we’ll see how those work out. Looks like I need to clock at least 2.25 miles today, I hopefully will get closer to 5k without blowing myself out.

Now that we’re well into January, I’ve been developing and integrating a new training plan into my life. This new training has included an expansion of my kettlebell workouts and I am now going to be including sledgehammer work and I want to integrate some strongman-type work such as tire flipping, farmer’s walks, and I want to add in some rope climbing work. I’m still shying away from the craziness of CrossFit, especially after seeing more videos from CrossFit gyms like this one (h/t to Conditioning Research) where all the CFers are visibly struggling with their workouts and are clearly setting themselves up to get seriously injured, without any worry from the trainers; in fact, they’re encouraging these people to lift weights they can’t handle or do movements they can’t complete. This gym should be ashamed of themselves for simply taking these people’s money without any concern for their well-being, just watch the video to see what I mean. I’m generally more interested in improving my GPP than just relegating myself to gaining fitness through running only or working to prepare just for races or events.

So far, this has worked to help improve the injury in my hip from last September although it does still hurt on and off, I’ve now realized part of the issue is my office chair so I’ll be getting that replaced as soon as possible as well. I’m not 100% sure if these changes along with ART will get that pesky ITB fixed or if it’s going to make it worse, but we’ll see what happens.

I’ve also moved into adding music back into my workouts only because it’s pretty boring listening to myself breath in and out while jumping rope, so I’m going through Bluetooth headsets like you wouldn’t believe. Since December, I’m on my third pair for evaluation. I’ve only returned one pair because they were just incredibly terrible and poorly thought-out, the Motorola S10-HDs. I don’t know how anyone can wear those things and say they’re comfortable. When I got them in the mail and plunked them on my head, I got a massive headache within 30 minutes from the neckband simply squeezing my head to death. I never actually got to test them during a workout because I couldn’t even wear them. I’ve since returned the Jaybird JF3 Freedoms as well, the wire connecting both earbuds would get caught on everything and that was just unbearable, so now I’m trying out the Arriva Leo headset. My first impressions are:

Crazy design

Incredibly light, you hardly notice them

Getting them to fit is the hardest part

Using the included Acoustibuds, they have great sound

They’re sweat resistant but we’ll see how long that lasts, I’m expecting a few months at most, if that. The worst part about them is getting them adjusted to fit your head since they use stiff-but-adjustable arms that need to be slightly molded to your head and ear shape. Once they’re adjusted, you’re good to go. Just be careful when removing the earbud tips, you may pull off the speaker mesh.

Now, I gotta get back to work, although I really don’t want to.

Anyway, we just got back from our two week trip in Germany a few days ago and it was a total blast. Celebrating Christmas and New Year’s in a much older culture was wild, I observed so many traditions we do in America that date back centuries over there. We spent New Year’s Eve in Frankfurt which basically turned into a huge fireworks show after dinner. Just about every shop in the city closed at 2PM at which point the fireworks started off lightly then started going off more frequently throughout the night, which basically turned into the most insane show I’ve ever witnessed by the time midnight rolled around. I was on the Alte Brueck Bridge in east Frankfurt and I swear about 5,000 people set off fireworks at the same time, insane. Plus, everyone was drinking.

It was cold, at least to me. The average temperature in Niedersachsen where we spent most of the two weeks must have been about 40F with a crisp (re: freezing) constant breeze from the North Sea. It snowed only once while we were there and it was the first snow of the year, a sign of good luck. We visited my girlfriend’s entire family and they were all pretty awesome people. It’d been nearly two decades since she had seen many of them and then there were many new cousins for her to meet as well. They all knew how to eat well, much better than our standard American diet. Except for a small handful of meals, everything we ate was a home cooked meal for every meal. I totally blew my primal lifestyle and ate gobs of bread and drank mountains of beer and didn’t gain a single pound, proof that the diet itself works to make our bodies work more efficiently. Interestingly, when I got home, I gained four pounds. I’m almost positive that it was from the food here rather than any exercise, which I did pretty much none of aside from walking a few miles a day due to sightseeing. Other than that, I did nothing but eat and drink, literally, as can be seen on my food blog.

A few things I learned from Germany:

1. Traffic lights are literally the most inefficient traffic control method ever invented. This trip once again confirmed to me that roundabouts are one of the best things to ever happen to traffic control, ever. In Germany, we never sat at a traffic light for more than a minute and that was even rare. The day we got back to the States, we sat at a 4 way traffic light for 5 minutes for no reason. I’ve gone around roundabouts larger than the intersection I was sitting at here in the States and they’ve caused no issues with traffic.
2. The public and private sector in the US have absolutely murdered any advances in traffic and auto technology. For one thing, roundabouts. When I experienced them for the first time 20 years ago, I was terrified but they make sense now that I can drive. Engine efficiency is another thing. My girlfriend’s cousin owns an A-class Mercedes with a diesel engine that gets 1000km to a tank, that’s 621 miles. That would get me from my house to my mother’s house in Georgia. Granted, I know diesels get better mileage anyway but even the traditional gas cars had better efficiency.
3. Public transportation is the way of the future and every country knows it except the US, thanks to the government. Out of the dozen or so times I’ve been to Europe, transportation has never once been an issue. If I needed to get somewhere, I could get there very easily. This was ever true in Germany. We took trains, buses, a cab, and public trams just about everywhere further than a few miles away.
4. Americans will continue to be huge fat blobs until we all realize that suburbanization is a horrible idea and our food production industries are horribly corrupt. As mentioned above, I ate like a king for two weeks and ate more bread in two weeks than I have in a year and I gained exactly zero pounds and my body measurements stayed within 1% of their 6 month margins. If I did that in America, I’d still be fat. Everything we ate tasted awesome because it was cooked with real fats or real olive oil and spices rather than things like HFCS or other frankenfoods.
5. Germans eat more potatoes than any country I know of. Potatoes in some form were served with practically every meal, mostly in the form of fries.
6. I think Nutella is a national treasure. Everyone looked at me funny when I said I prefer peanut butter because apparently, they simply don’t eat it. It’s Nutella or nothing.
7. Beer is cheaper than both water and soda, everywhere. Every city and village we went to, beer was typically almost a Euro cheaper than soda and 50 cents cheaper than water. Despite this, Germans aren’t the drunkards we think they are, at least not Northern Germans.
8. When you ask for ‘water’ in a restaurant, they’ll give you sparkling water. When you say you want water “without gas”, they look at you like you’re insane. Not a single person could explain this to me.
9. It seems like 40% of the population smokes. Everywhere we went, we saw tobacco stores and people smoking, it was totally normal.
10. Above all else, Germans value their family ties. My girlfriend has not seen her cousins in nearly two decades and when we arrived at the train station, a dozen people met her there to greet her and 16 people saw us off when we left! They organized a dinner in which nearly 50 people came just to see her and see each other. I’ve never seen this with my already tight-knit family and it’s almost unheard of in America. Every parent was profoundly involved with their children and they were incredibly close. Granted, this was just Northern Germans, I have no idea how Bavarians and Southern Germans act.

We’re still pooped from the jet lag and trying to get everything back on track. Going back to work sucked, I realized how much my job is unfulfilling aside from paying bills. This also means it’s time to start training for my upcoming obstacle course races, I’ve got two Spartans and another Superhero Scramble in the next two months. I’m most worried about the Super Spartan next month because it’s about 10 miles and I haven’t hit that distance yet and I’m worried about my hip still. I’m still recuperating from wearing cowboy boots and walking around half of Germany, terrible idea! I’m now in the market for new boots and so far, everything is either very expensive or has a huge heel, which worries me.

So far, 2012 is off to a rousing start! My girlfriend still has two Christmas presents to get me, one of which we have to drive about 2 hours to get. That worries me.

I’m enjoying the end of year wind down and I’m pretty much doing nothing but sitting around. On the suggestion of my sports doctor, I’m taking the rest of the month off from running to help heal my ITB up and I’m trying to mix in some cross-training to keep me from sitting around all the time. That worked out pretty well but sort of petered off once the weekend came — I’m not a fan of having to do all this packing, haha. But hey, who doesn’t like two weeks off from work? For now, I’m relying on kettlebell training until I can get a stable mount for my TRX strap, hanging it over a door is not an option. Did that last week and the door popped open before I ever put weight on the system, that’s totally not safe. I’ve noticed my swing form is improving as my piriformis region isn’t as much in pain as it was the first time I did the swings, looking forward to expanding to other kettlebell exercises as soon as I can.

Next year is looming fast and I can’t wait. I plan on getting the photo biz back on track since I’ve taken the last ~6 months off from shooting for various issues, mostly due to health. Now that my health is more on track than it has been in years, I think it’s time to re-enter my previous scene and get things going again. I certainly won’t be going to as many shows as I used to, mostly because it’s too expensive but also because it’s just too stressful. Going to 2+ concerts a week and having to edit photos from those in addition to work and school? That’s unneeded stress and it’s unnecessary. If I don’t have to be stressed, I will do my best to not put myself in positions to be stressed.

But now, work’s calling, packing is calling, and I’m starving.

I am looking forward to this as the work with my ART specialist/chiropractor/sports physician has been paying off big time. When I first started seeing the guys over at Health-Fit Chiro, I could barely run 1.5 miles because of my hip and now my weekly runs are at least 5k distance or slightly more — I am edging closer to 4 miles in my Vibrams. But the physical therapy exercises they are having me perform makes me realize I need to get stronger overall, so I will be doing at least one TRX session and one kettlebell session per week until January rolls around. That should give me at least 6 weeks to train back up for the upcoming Super Spartan Race in Miami in February while giving me a sound base for the Spartan Sprint in GA in March.

I am giving kettlebells a try since I already bought some and I have the room to workout on my patio, same place I will be doing my TRX workout. I already did some swing exercises last night and they kicked my butt. For doing little else other than popping your hips, I was winded! Anyways, it should all be fun and games as long as I can stay healthy and get that girdle tightened up.

Now, I think I am going to go out and do what will probably be my last training run of 2011.