Uncategorized

Yahoo Sports ran a story a few days ago about Bonnie Richardson, a junior high school track and field athlete, who won the state 1A team championship for Rochelle High school–by herself.

Richardson was the only Rochelle athlete to qualify for the state meet and stunningly won the team title. University Interscholastic League officials said it was the first time they can remember a single athlete winning a girls’ team title.

Richardson’s title march began with field events on Friday when she won the high jump (5 feet, 5 inches), placed second in the long jump (18-7) and was third in the discus (121-0).

On Saturday, she won the 200 meters in 25.03 seconds and nearly pulled off a huge upset in the 100 before finishing second (12.19) to defending champion Kendra Coleman of Santa Anna. Richardson, a junior, earned a total of 42 team points to edge team runner-up Chilton (36).

With temperatures hovering in the mid-90’s throughout the entire week, Richardson was thankful that the meet was split up into two days. Additionally, she laughed off a suggestion that she could have won more if UIL rules didn’t limit individual participation to five events.

“I don’t think I could handle any more,” she said. “It was hot and I was tired.”

Oh please. Where I’m from, girls win the team state title by themselves all the time and they never complain about how hot and tired they are. My mom actually won one yesterday (on the sun…..true story) and she still had enough energy to cook dinner and clean the house afterwards. High five mom! Now where’s my meatloaf?

UPDATE: Picks up phone. Beep boop boop beep beep. Hello, can I speak to franktalk(scroll down)? Oh hey, what’s up dude? Good good. Yeah well, I just wanted to call to let you know that the above paragraph is what I like to call sarcasm. I just didn’t want there to be any confusion. I mean, what Bonnie Richardson accomplished is amazing and is in fact why I decided to blog about it in the first place. How’s your golden retriever doing studying for his CSCS exam? Wait what? You were being sarcastic when you said that? Hahahahahaha. You’re hilarious!!111!

When it comes to planks, many trainees (as well as trainers) are under the assumption that the only way to “progress” is to perform them for longer periods of time.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather swallow a live grenade than perform planks for MORE time. Furthermore, if I’m working with a client and only have 45-60 minutes with them, why would I waste 3-5 minutes just performing planks? That’s about as exciting as watching a marathon session of The Hills; only with far less puking and stabbing myself in the eye. Haha, get it? The Hills makes me want to stab myself! I should totally write a children’s book.

Once someone can perform a plank (correctly) for 30 seconds, instead of progressing with more time, I’ll make the movement more challenging. Here is an example of some simple progressions:

Prone Planks (wide stance), prone planks (narrow stance), prone planks with feet elevated, prone planks with weight vest, prone plank on stability ball, side planks (two feet), side planks (one foot), side planks with perturbation, and the list could go on.

Another great way to progress planks is something I came across and “stole” from strength coach Will Heffernan called prone plate switches:

Essentially you’ll take upwards of 8-10 five pound plates (I use four in the video) and stack them to one side. Assume the plank position and switch the plates from one side to the other. Make sure that your body makes a straight line (basically you should assume the same position as if you were standing), and that your hips/pelvis don’t shift back and forth. It’s harder than you think. Again, I like to shoot for 30 seconds maximum. To make this more challenging you could either narrow your stance or use 10 lb plates as well. Have fun!

Just wanted to pass along a really great article written by Paul Caldwell titled, “Training Versus Talent.” In short, Paul states:

Over the course of working with hundreds of clients from different backgrounds and sports, I’ve noticed a disturbing phenomenon. I’ve become even more aware of this phenomenon since I started scouting and training athletes. More often than not, the “talented” players don’t put forth a fraction of the training effort that their less talented counterparts do.

I couldn’t agree more with this assertion. Every week at CP, we get new athletes who walk through the doors who are often the athletic stars of their respective school. A fraction of them believe, falsely, that they can “get by” with talent alone. For whatever reason, they feel that because they’re already fast or strong (relative to their competition), that they don’t have to train hard (if at all).

For these athletes, I kindly show them our CP high school leaderboard where they’re shocked to find out that they wouldn’t even make the top 13 in any category (front squat max, 3 rep chin-up max, broad jump, vertical jump). Matter of fact, I also point out that there’s a 97 lb teenage girl in Texas who is warming up with their max.

” alt=”Teenage Powerlifter” />

If given the choice between athlete A, who has been named to countless all-star teams (but has a piss poor work ethic) and athlete B, who may not be quite as talented (but has the work ethic of an ox), I’d prefer to coach athlete B every time. Of course, all of this is pointless if said athlete happens to be former Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard.

In this case, I’d definitely prefer to coach her. And by “coach” what I really mean is offer to dry her back off for her. What can I say, I’m a philanthropist.

I came across a “blurb” on Yahoo a few weeks ago regarding shady food labels and it’s rather astonishing the extent that food companies will go to dupe people into thinking they’re eating healthy food. Terms such as lite, low-cal, or free of trans fat are often deemed “good choices” by many consumers and mistakenly thought of as a guilt free pleasure. Well, I’m here to tell you that if it sounds (and looks) too good to be true, it probably is. A few examples…….

When it comes to comfort food, has it got to be Kraft’s Macaroni and Cheese? Look twice. Like many boxed food mixes, the confusing label lists two sets of nutrition stats — and the first one is for the dry mix only. Unless you plan on eating your mac-cheese mix straight from the box, the prepared version (made with margarine and 2% milk) adds an extra 15 grams fat and 150 calories per serving to the figures on the label.

My Thoughts: Pretty sneaky if I may say so myself. But I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, any “real” man knows that eating his mac-cheese straight out of the box is the shizzle. What could possibly be more manly? The only thing I can think of is hunting deer………………..with a tank. Bonus points if you do it while wearing a camouflaged lumberjack suit. Even more bonus points if you use the tank to run over Pete Wentz’s eye liner, which is conveniently located on his face.

Just downed a tall (23.5-ounce) can of AriZona Mucho Mango juice blend? Brace yourself. The sugar hit is 75 grams, not 25, as a glance at the label suggests. And the calorie hit is 360, not 120. That’s ‘cause one serving is only 8 ounces — you’re supposed to save the remaining two-thirds of the can for two more drinks.

My Thoughts: If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times………..”ditch the calorie containing beverages from your daily diet!” You never listen to me. It’s like I’m a ghost. And don’t even get me started on the fact that you never compliment me anymore. Did you notice my new haircut? Yeah, I didn’t think so. I hate you! Runs away crying

Sometimes you really need a cookie, right? Happily, the nutrition label on your favorite brand says 0 grams of both, fat and trans fat. That’s good enough that you can deal with the sugar guilt tomorrow, right? Sorry, but 0 doesn’t mean zero. It means less than 0.5 gram per serving. Sure, that’s not much — unless a serving is, say, two Snackwells Chocolate Mint cookies and by midnight you’ve finished the whole box.

My Thoughts: Another great example I like to use here is fat-free cooking spray. Most people will literally cake their pan with fat-free cooking spray, thinking that because the label says 0, it must be healthy. Think again. A serving size with most containers is 1/3 OF A SECOND; and there are roughly 550-570 servings per container. I’ve watched some people spray their pan for 10 seconds, which if we take the info given to us above, equates to approximately 10-15 grams of fat. Ten seconds equals 30 servings. 30 servings will elicit anywhere from 10-15 grams of fat (remember 0 really means 0.5 grams or less).

My good friend Eric Cressey just released his new book titled, Maximum Strength.

Do yourself a favor and buy this book. As the back of the cover states, “most of the 23 million American men who lift weights do so to get bigger; unfortunately, many of them are going nowhere with watered-down bodybuilding routines that don’t help them actually get stronger.”

I’ve long stated that if people focused more on strength and actually getting strong(er) that the aesthetics will follow. Start training more like an athlete, you may actually start to look like one. Weird how that works, huh?

In Maximum Strength you’ll get 16 full weeks of top notch programming that will not only get you a helluva lot stronger, but I’m willing to bet you’ll shed a significant amount of fat as well, and girls will be less repulsed by you. It’s a win-win situation.

Think of it this way – what you have been doing in the gym just isn’t working. Chances are you still have a spare tire around your mid-section and your bench press hasn’t increased since the last time David Hasslehoff was sober; which by my calculation was around 1994. Following a body-part per day split for three sets of ten is just going to keep leading to less than spectacular results. Not to mention you’ll still be weaker than a baby’s fart. Oh snap! Click here and thank me later.

Note: Eric was kind enough to include me in his acknowledgments page for his book. To celebrate my very first acknowledgment in a nationally published book, I’d like to give an acknowledgment to my acknowledgment:

Tony Gentilcore would like to thank the following individuals whose invaluable help and complete awesomeness made this acknowledgment possible: Optimus Prime, Sgt. Slaughter, Dirk Diggler, Kate Beckinsale, Papa Smurf, and that random chick whom I made out with at that party back in college. I don’t remember your name but I…….wait what? Okay, okay you called me out on it. We didn’t so much as make out as hold hands. Alright fine! We didn’t hold hands either, we just talked. And by “talked,” what I really mean is that I said hi and she rolled her eyes at me and laughed. God, I suck.

Nothing witty to write today. I’m off to Vegas in literally 10 minutes and just wanted to say that I won’t be updating my blog till next week. Vegas is currently taking bets on whether or not I piss my pants during the plane ride. Also, if I happen to cross paths with Criss Angel, I’ll kick him in the shins.

A quick good luck goes out to Steph, who is running her second Boston Marathon today.

Toodles!