CategoriesStuff to Read While You're Pretending to Work

Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work: 8/10/12

Raise your hand if you’ve spent the better part of this past week driving with reckless abandon down various side streets, looking over your shoulder around every corner, and/or jumping down the sides of buildings in anticipation of The Bourne Legacy coming out this weekend!

I totally have.  Amongst other things – like this exchange I had with a cashier yesterday.

Cashier: “Excuse me sir, will that be paper or plastic?”

Me: “Who’s running Treadstone now?

Cashier: “Tread wha?  What are you talking about? Will that be cash or credit?

Me: “I SAID WHO’S RUNNING TREADSTONE!?!??! DON’T MAKE ME PUT YOU IN A CHOKEHOLD!!!!”

“By the way, Greek yogurt is buy one get one free, right?”

While the new installment is Damonless (nooooo), and Paul Greengrass isn’t directing, I have full confidence that Tony Gilroy (who actually wrote the screenplays for all the previous films) will do a great job taking the reigns, and that Jeremy Renner (who’s not playing Jason Bourne but another super agent, Aaron Cross) will nail it.

Fitness Bullies? – Jen Comas Keck

I thought this was a fantastic post written by Jen, and something that more fitness professionals need to read. I’ll be the first to admit that there have been times in the past where I’ve been a fitness bully myself.

I’d scoff and judge and stick my nose up in the air if someone wasn’t going out of their way to lift heavy stuff.

But then I came to the realization that that was kind of a douchy way to approach things.  If someone is exercising – even if it is super-duper-red-hot-naked-metabolic-yoga-insanity-pilates-extreme – isn’t that a good thing?

Train Like a Man Part 4 – Martin Rooney

Martin always has a knack for keeping it real and lighting a fire underneath people’s asses when it comes to training.  I LOVE his stories, and I especially like some of the brutal circuits he outlines in this one.

Tips for Your Strength and Conditioning Internship – Kyle O’Flaherty

Kyle’s a current intern here at Cressey Performance and he wrote this guest post over on Ben Bruno’s site that I felt hit the nail on the head.  I’m constantly getting emails from people asking what it’s like to intern at CP (it’s kind of like watching The Dark Knight Rises while driving a tank, only a little less awesome) and questions on what we look for in prospective interns.  This post elucidates on both fronts.

Enjoy the weekend!

 

CategoriesStuff to Read While You're Pretending to Work

Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work: 8/3/12

The other day while walking around on the gym floor, I ended up having a small chat with one of our current interns, Doug, on the education system. Random topic I know, and I honestly have no recollection as to how we even got there, but it definitely was something that got the two of us fired up.  While I won’t bore everyone with the details, I will say we both came to the conclusion that we can’t believe how ass-backwards everything has gotten.

Maybe it has something to do with reading several books on how higher education isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be – The Education of Millionaires and most recently, Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup – or maybe it’s because I’ve been getting some emails as of late from undergraduates asking me if they should pursue their Masters Degree (in and effort to gain a few more letters next to their name and hopefully have a leg up on their competition), or maybe it’s because I have a sister who’s a teacher.

Either way, the “system” is broken. In today’s society we’re basically programmed right from the get go to think that higher education is the key to being successful, and as a result we have more and more people going into disheartening amounts of debt.

Although, to be fair:  no one is pointing a gun at someone’s head that they HAVE to go to a $40,000/per year school….to major in Humanities.

Now, I am in no way saying that going to college is a bad thing or is something that shouldn’t be strived for.  But it’s gotten to the point now where 3rd graders aren’t even allowed to go outside and play and have upwards of 2-3 hours of homework per night.

3rd graders!!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but when I was in 3rd grade I was pimpin it on the kick-ball field and figuring out whether or not red Play-Doh tasted any differently than blue Play-Doh.

FYI: it totally doesn’t.

I certainly wasn’t memorizing my multiplication tables.

Anyways, in light of our conversation Doug sent me this TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson that I thought was amazing, and totally worth 20 minutes of your time.

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Coaching the Kettlebell Swing – Kettlebell Form Check for Tony Gentilcore – Troy Pesola

Last week I posted on how we go about teaching (and implementing) the Turkish Get-Up and kettlebell swing at Cressey Performance (HERE).

From what I could tell it was received well (no hate mail), and at the end of the post I opened it up to the masses to go a head and give ME feedback on how I could go about improving my technique and coaching cues.

Wouldn’t you know it – someone did just that.

Here, Troy Pesola throws me under the microscope and breaks down my KB swing.

Contraindicated Exercices vs. Contraindicated Lifters

This post is a blast from the past that I randomly came across while searching for something else.  I re-read it, thought it didn’t suck, and figured that since I wrote it over two years ago and there’s a lot more people reading the site now, it wouldn’t hurt to re-post it again.

On that note, Enjoy the weekend!

Who’s going to see Kate Beckinsale be Kate Beckinsale Total Recall?

 

CategoriesStuff to Read While You're Pretending to Work

Stuff To Read While You’re Pretending To Work: PPT, Arnold, and Fitness Writing

Going to keep this one brief today.  Ben Bruno’s in the house and we’re about ten seconds away from getting our gunification on.

Yeah buddy!

Don’t Be Like Donald Duck – Bret Contreras

While this article may be a little high on the geek factor for some, for those interested in pelvic mechanics and the dichotomy between anterior pelvic tilt and posterior pelvic tilt (and who isn’t?), this one is right up your alley.

As someone who “suffers” from excessive APT myself, Bret hit the nail on the head with this one.

As he notes, while standard advice is to:

  1. Strengthen the rectus abdominis, external obliques, gluteals, and hamstrings.
  2. Stretch the psoas, iliacus, rectus femoris, tensor fascia latae, and erector spinae.

This advice is legit, but incomplete.

I guess you’re going to have to click on the article to find out why.  DO IT!

The Art and Business of Writing in Fitness – Kellie Davis

I receive a lot of emails from various trainers and coaches who in one way or another are looking to dive into fitness writing and end up asking advice on how they should go about becoming, well, writers.

I usually say something along the lines of “how do you get better at riding a bike, or deadlifting, or sucking at life?”

Answer: You ride a bike; you deadlift; you listen to Coldplay.

HAHA. Okay, I don’t really say that, but I do often recommend that they just try to get in the habit of writing every day, on any topic.

More to the point, I direct them towards people like Kellie who is someone I really respect as a writer (and trainer), and this article proves why.

Old School Muscle – Adam Bornstein

Awesome article written by Adam on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s site that I was lucky enough to be asked to contribute to (along with several other awesome fitness peeps). Um, yeah, I’m quoted in the same article as Arnold freakin Schwarzenegger.

How cool is that?