Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Several weeks back Jodi posted a Cosmo-esque quiz to determine if any of us are really athletes (Defining the Obvious, May 27, 2010). Happily, we are! Obviously we are all at very different places, stages and salary ranges (ha!) in our athletic careers. So upping the ante will mean different things to each of us. Heather pointed out the need for balancing your sport with your life, as well as your bod, honoring what it needs and not just pounding it into submission. Amy explained that determining your specific goal is key before you can up anything effectively. These two gals know what they’re talking about too. But since my goals are way modest (participating and finishing a 10k this September while losing 5-10lbs and a few body fat percentages points), and I’m making satisfactory progress with training, upping the ante for me means adding more variety in my diet and getting it together in the kitchen.
Here’s the back story with me and cooking. Ready to hate me? I don’t do the cooking for my family, my husband does. He LOVES to eat and so really enjoys cooking. I don’t care much for cooking because I kind of don’t care too much about eating except that I have to eat WELL to have vibrant health and thus good skin, hair, nails, and an overall healthy appearance. I have to eat to feel good and not be a zombie, and I have to eat to fuel my workouts. (I like some foods a lot, like beautiful crusty bread with fresh salted butter or a caramel or peanut butter ice cream dessert over a chocolate cookie crumble crust, but even that would get old, so occasionally is fine for indulgences like these.) Cooking is also time consuming and generates dishes that have to be cleaned up. So yeah, he said he wants to cook, I let him, and I don’t feel bad about it.
But here’s the catch … he LOVES to eat things like tacos, burgers, barbeque, and pasta, so that’s what he cooks, but I can’t eat that stuff and have the healthy, looks, energy and physique I described above. He’s a master with meats but not so much with veggies. He makes me grilled chicken breast, turkey jumble and salmon to have at the ready but not veggies. Because I don’t love to cook, I usually end up with steamed broccoli and green beans. All. The. Time. Upping the ante for me is in the form of a challenge to take advantage of the gorgeous produce departments at my local markets and really boost the variety in my diet, as well as that of my family.
For instance, there are two very good restaurants nearby that serve a beet salad that is to die for. (One has goat cheese and pistachios, the other Stilton blue cheese and walnuts, and both are served over arugula with a balsamic reduction drizzle and probably a dash of olive oil.) I looked up beets and they’re easy to prepare! So I bought a few, made it tonight and had it with diced chicken for dinner. I love that I got to customize it with out special ordering anything on the side – easy on the goat cheese and balsamic, flax oil instead of olive, and double the arugula.
A week or so ago on Yahoo I saw some recipes for summer salads that had my mouth watering. One was with endive lettuce, smashed blackberries, avocados, Romano cheese, and a dash of olive oil and raspberry vinegar, salt and pepper. Another was with watermelon, mint and something else. But I’m freaking out because I can’t find them now!, but I am determined. It was a video on Yahoo Shine with Holly Robinson Peete and some chef, so if you saw it and know how I can get to it again, PLEASE let me know! Men’s Health this month (with Cullen Lutz on the cover) has 9 or 12 recipes for summer produce like tomatoes, watermelon, squash, and fresh corn that all sound wonderful and not too involved. I tore them out and WILL try at least half of them out.
Recipes are great, but so are foods in their natural state or close to it, especially fruit. So instead just the usual apples, blueberries and raspberries, I’m keeping peaches, nectarines, oranges (not the best this time of year, but not bad either), pears (same as oranges), pineapple, kiwi, blackberries, apricots, watermelon, cantaloupe, those other weird melons, etc. on hand too. Frozen fruit is great for shakes, but since there is so much that’s fresh right now, that’s what I’m getting and either eating it as is or chopped up and topped with plain yogurt or stirred into it. We made a double batch of a fruity protein shake and made popsicles (eating one now in fact.)
Lots of veggies are good raw and in salads. Really give the huge variety of lettuces a try. Arugula I love, as well as spinach for a salad base. Zucchini and summer squash are good diced up raw and thrown in as are fresh herbs – try fresh parsley, tarragon or cilantro. I love citrus fruit in veggie salads, but any juicy fruit would do – berries, melon, or something crunchy like apple, pears, etc. Adding your starch to a salad is nice too. Jodi likes warm brown rice on top, but barley or quinoa would work, as would roasted root veggies (although not so summery but still perfect starches).
One more veggie I MUST get back to making is greens, any and all kinds. There is almost nothing more nutritionally beautiful than the humble green. I need to find a recipe that doesn’t include pork of any kind, or figure out how to season them well without it. Like the Mens Health salad recipes, I’m determined to make this happen too. There are lots of veggies that are available fresh around here that I want to work into my life. I think the trick for me is to search out simple, tasty recipes and plan time into a few days each week to put them together. Just plan for it, schedule cooking in like a workout. It’ll be weird, but so is getting up at 4:30am, leaving at 5am for boot camp. For crying out loud, that’s early.
Here’s the bottom line – In general, I want to have vibrant health, look gorgeous and feel great as I age. In the meantime though, I want to get a little leaner and feel good too at the end of a 10k in September. The training part (check) is going great and I’m on track to finish in less than an hour (yay!). The get leaner part is very achievable but along with the focused, specific changes to my training to support and achieve my specific goals, I have to do something different with my eating, bring in a change, to elicit the response from my body that I want. Reducing cals and tracking macros isn’t going to cut it this time around because I’m older, I’ve done this lots of times before and my body seems to be on to me. I don’t necessarily want to spend my time cooking or cleaning up afterwards, but that’s too bad. My overall long-term goals are general, but the short term ones are specific, I know what I have to do to up the ante and achieve both sets of goals – get over it and get to work in the kitchen. I can do this.
So what about you? Is the kitchen where you need to up the ante too? What’s your plan to get it done?
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
A lot more goes into upping the ante than merely adding on more volume. I think it goes without saying that most athletes are more than happy to increase the volume of their training. Runners want to add on mileage to prepare for a race, lifters want to lift heavier and usually believe that comes from lifting more often and a soccer player equates more practice time with a playing better in the game. However, we must always remember the old adage “you can go long and you can go hard, but you cannot go long and hard.”
There comes a point when adding on more volume provides diminishing results. More so than diminishing results, eventually it will work against the athlete. This is where the “more goes into upping the ante than volume” comes in.
The first consideration to be made is whether your goal is skill oriented or physique oriented. If you are skill oriented, everything you do will revolve around that skill: training, supplementation, diet and rest. For example, if a basketball player wants to improve her vertical jump, every part of her program will focus on that jump. On the other hand, a physique oriented person who wants to lose body fat will not have a program based on a specific skill, but geared towards a physical effect.
To illustrate the difference lets break down the training. Our basketball player will have plyometrics in her program. Execution of these jumps is of the utmost importance. We want her muscles to remember perfect form and to improve over time. She will likely have less foot strikes per session and more rest in between sets. To up her ante, we might push for one or two more good jumps. Or add on an afternoon session of training after she has adequately recovered from the morning session.
On the other hand, while we don’t ever want anyone to train with bad form, execution is no longer the most important aspect of our fat loss gal’s training. She will have less recovery time and potentially more foot strikes. We are using plyos in the fat loss gal’s program to elicit a response from her body, not to improve on a skill. To up her ante we might push for the workout to be more metabolically demanding.
The same distinction can be made between a soccer player running sprints and a person who wants a shapely backside. A soccer player needs fast pick up, i.e. to go from 0 to 60 in very little time. A two second delay in pick-up can change the game. Therefore, we want our soccer player to practice sprinting 20-50 meters and want at least a few minutes recovery in between sprints. To up her ante we will push the intensity of the workout, not add on more volume. We might add in visual queues to her training or add a direction change, but we will not take away rest in between spints to the detriment of speed and form.
On the other side of the spectrum our “I want a tight booty” gal does not need 3 minutes in between 50 meter sprints. She is not concerned with improving her pick-up, instead she wants the training effect sprinting has on the lower body. Further, visual queues will not aid in her in reaching her goal. To up this gal’s ante, we might add on a bit more volume, or reduce her rest periods between sprints.
Now let me point out that I am not saying that the soccer player will not end up with a more defined and shapely lower body nor am I saying the gal who wants a cute booty will not end up improving her pick-up. However, those results are the secondary affect of the each individual’s goal.
After looking at how training differs, food and rest will also differ. After we put our basketball player through her plyo workout, she will go home and recover. Additionally, post workout nutrition will be essential for this gal. Anything we took out of her during her training we want to put back in!
Our physique oriented person might have plyo mixed in with her lifting or her cardio; or even have plyos first and then a session of cardio after. Specific recovery from that one session is not as imperative. Further, her nutrition will not necessarily put back all that it took out.
The point of these examples is that upping the ante is not a one size fits all. It is individual and it is goal specific. Before embarking on this trip, make sure you have clearly identified what it is you want and make sure you keep that in mind throughout your journey. The last place you want to find yourself is thinking you are upping the ante, but you are doing so for a goal you do not want because what you are doing is not serving your desired outcome.
I can’t help but toot our horn while discussing this topic. Our philosophy at MP4 is that you cannot be the best in your sport until you are the best you. Thus, we help you up the ante for the goal you chose and make sure the secondary outcome serves you – remember, making your jump better WILL improve your overall conditioning.
In closing, making sure the work I am doing suits my desired outcome has been tricky for me. I love training and constantly want to do more, more, more. There have been many occasions when Jodi/Heather has given me a nice long lecture gently nudged me to rethink what I am doing. What about you? Are you upping the ante right now? We’d love to hear how. Or have you ever upped the ante only to realize it was suiting a different goal than the one you had in mind?
Monday, June 28th, 2010
This week’s theme at MP4 is “Upping the Ante”. We’re going to challenge you to consider how you can uplevel your per4mance. Then make a bold suggestion: Do it. In the spirits of both transparency and humility—two themes that present themselves frequently in the MP4 Team’s posts—there will likely be some tail-tucked tale-tellings of how we didn’t follow our own advice, or what boo-boos and events led us to finally do so. (Wait, maybe that’s just me…) Either way, here goes my most recent effort to raise the bar on myself since my “Are You a Silly Monkey?” post regarding overcoming limiting thinking…
If you’ve been following MP4 posts for a while, do you remember my shoulder injury? The one that led me to experiments in acupuncture, along with receiving the same therapeutic bodywork I dish out, AND {gasp!} resting? Yeah well, it has a friend: my knee. In “Silly Monkey” I mentioned overcoming some issues I had with not imagining myself as an athlete, climbing literal walls being scary for me, how that translates to mental walls, and so forth. Well I blasted through those suckers by sailing through a running-muddy-obstacle-laden race. No problem, Mon. Shortly thereafter, however, as my shoulder sort of found an ouchy-but-doable holding pattern, one of my knees started whispering to me… then barking… then screaming its head off until full flexion was not an option about 1-1/2 weeks ago.
I’m thrilled to say that I didn’t wallow in self-pity and “Why me?” and “Is this what 40 is like?” For long, anyhow. I went quickly to task. I have DRASTICALLY limited my activity. No weight training, no plyos, no high-impact, no running. Even walking has to be carefully considered. I will admit to making Jodi and Kas iterate what I already knew. I just had to hear it from someone other than myself. Oh, and juuust in case they said: “No girl. Go nuts on that thing. Squat jumps galore!” No such luck. I’m benched. I’m surprised I didn’t become catatonic on the spot. Instead, my husband, the PT, has performed monstrously painful friction therapy on it. I take a therapeutic dose of ibuprofen daily {cringe}, I ice a few times/day, after all activities and right before bed especially. I signed up for swim lessons immediately. Luckily, I’m inefficient (not quite human-egg-beater-spastic, but…), so I seem to burn a lot of cals. Good thing, as my weight is my #1 panic when limited. I’ve asked my current yoga instructor what type of classes to safely add, and I’m shopping around the county for a pool in which I can lap swim. I’m determined to rehab this sucker to pain-free full flexion before my rowing class starts mid-August.
Can you believe it? Trying to rehab enough to be able to do the thing I signed up for in order to prevent injury? The irony in my life this year is profound, and I’m not ignoring it. You might not know it from most of my posts, but I’m actually quite spiritual. It is SO not lost on me that {insert: the universe, God, whatever your fave higher power term is} knows how to get my attention. This year in particular, divine intervention is coming by way of physical mayhem. And I’m listening. It’s already a sign of growth that I only boo-hooed just so much before going “Okay, how do I deal with this? What are my objectives and how do I meet them?” I’d say that’s upping the ante for me per4mance-wise because previously I might have spent more time panicking about what to do, and perhaps I’d have done so while still trying to keep up my current routine, thus further damaging myself. I’m learning. Quickly.
Likewise, wisdom came earlier this year during the shoulder drama, but I’m just now “getting it”. Example: My acupuncturist telling me I needed more water in my life. When I started defending my daily intake of the good stuff, she explained that some of what she meant was being in/near/around more water—getting more “yin” because I was decidedly too “yang”, as most Westerners are. She added that yoga and easier forms of exercise, such as moderate walking, were things she recommended I rotate in with the more intense stuff. Confession: My ample inner thighs and I ignored her a little bit. How interesting that now I and my pissy knee head to the pool several times per week, I have a list of local pools with lap times and deep water aqua classes in front of me, and I just got back from visiting a local club I might join with a pool and free use of water jogging vests and such. A friend has even jumped in saying I can come to her house for pool use any time. I’m confident after all of this time IN the water, I’ll be ready to be ON it come the fall once the 3x/week rowing class starts. Then, of course, there’s the ongoing yoga, which I now love, and anything else joint-friendly that I might add in. Heck, even the icing counts as water, and is therefore yin-ish, right? LOL You see, I’ve gotten a good dose of yin lately, and I’d like to keep it going.
Without further ado, let’s keep this relevant to this week’s theme since upleveling is a process. Here’s how I went about upping the ante on moi, so that I could continue to do so. Forever.
First, I listed my objectives:
-Rehab this injury ASAP without having to stop everything and lie down.
-Continue to lose bodyfat while maintaining as much of my good muscle as I can.
-Keep sane. Exercise is my Prozac. Panicking is not productive. Therefore some exercise must occur.
-Improve posture. Gravity is definitely trying to take over lately and it’s making me more injury prone than I originally thought. Not to mention the position of my boobs, but I digress…
-Age gracefully. Rock 40 this year, then rock the rest of my birthdays until I’m done here. (On Earth, that is)
-Honor my aches and arthritis by finding activities I can learn now, develop some mastery of those over the next several years, then carry them into old age.
Then I made a list of how to achieve those, even challenging myself to keep them extra-budget friendly:
-Get in-house PT on the case, ice ice baby, schedule sports massage appointments. (check, check, check!)
-Tighten diet more. It was already pretty tight, but my activity (especially training) is less, so my starch intake is even lower. (Might have to increase it back though—swimming makes me ravenous!) Basically, portions of all but non-starchy veggies have gone down slightly. Appetite will guide me some here as I figure this all out. (check!)
-Learn to swim! (again) I’m not afraid of water, and I can get across the pool and back fine, but I wanted to be able to successfully lap swim for an extended period to get a good workout. Found TONS of el cheapo community classes. Um, you get what you pay for, so I’m starting small group intermediate adult classes at a private swim facility tomorrow. Not too bad: $26 per 1 hour class. (check!)
-Find places to lap swim. In my area, many county aquatic centers are only $3/visit or class. Lap lane times and class times are listed for all online, all I need is a county parks and recreation ID to register for them online going forward. (check!)
-Enroll for next yoga workshop. Alert instructor about the knee. (check!)
-Find more low-or-no-impact workout options. Same idea as the county aquatic centers. Many county and city parks and rec programs offer really inexpensive facilities and classes. I have a thing about gyms. Bad experiences = total distrust of contracts and gym management. And I can work myself out all on my own, thankyouverymuch. But sometimes a person has to admit that it’s time to try new things, or at least get some variety. I don’t want to have to sign a contract and pay a huge monthly fee to do so. So I have picked up some schedules around town and I’m comparing them to mine to decide which class times/days/locations are most convenient for when I have the urge to get my pilates on or something. And then there are the spendier things that I care to do, such as rowing classes, so I’m doing them because their value just went up for me. (check!)
-Find back up places to exercise. I’m all set at home for training, but I don’t have a pool or an in-house pilates instructor. In the event that county or city facilities and classes are not what I’d hoped, there are some clubs around—not big chain ones, but small private office park or hospital system type ones—that have inexpensive month-to-month memberships. They usually have pools, group fitness classes, and they are usually nice and clean and generally uncrowded at any time other than lunch. (I’m in the process of checking that off the list now as I ferret these out and tour them)
I’m positive that, not only will my knee come around, I will too. I am committed to keeping any new forms of exercise in my routine. Not only will this have all the obvious boredom-busting bennies, it will no doubt make me more well-rounded physically, and possibly more structurally sound. (I sound like I’m describing a horse or a bridge, don’t I?) Not to mention, it will give me a broader range of activities that I can continue doing into old age. So you see, dealing with last year’s back injury, my spring shoulder, and now my summer knee, is raising the bar on me each time to cast off body image (weight) issues more quickly, allowing a speedier transition to gitterdun mode. Indeed, while borne of discomfort and vanity, my horizons have been broadened.
Final note: With the inevitability of chronology on my mind so much lately, I’ve asked my husband, a physical therapist who specializes in geriatrics (who is especially excellent with “cute little old ladies”), what he feels the keys to successful aging are. Without hesitation, he responded: “Strength, balance, flexibility.” Then he added: “And attitude.” I recognize that I have those first three down pretty well, and I’m well on my way to improving and maintaining them. I’ll commit and recommit to those until my physical self dies. The latter needs some work, but my-oh-my how I’ve grown. And it can only grow and grow and grow, staying with the most important part of me forever. No time like the present.
Just call me “Ante Heather”. 
Friday, June 25th, 2010
Whether you are a fan of NBC’s the Biggest Loser or not, you probably have heard this line of their theme song…
What have you done today to make you feel proud?
I think that’s a good question for today’s blog post. What little victories have you had lately?
Have you…
Let’s here it! Show and tell. Bring and Brag.
What have you done lately to make you feel proud?
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
It’s summer time in New England which means we have about 4 weeks of summer left, 4 weeks of rainy season that will pop up somewhere in June/July and an early winter that will show up in August. Oh the joys of New England Weather!
During this time we urge you to get off of the elliptical, get outside and try something new. This time around, I am asking you to try sprinting outdoors on a track.
Any time I ask a client if they do sprints they always say yes. As I dig further I realize they are talking about sprinting on a cardio machine, not outside on a track. Please let me set the record straight by saying, if anyone from MP4 says sprints—we mean out on a track. Sprinting on cardio is like having non-alcoholic beer—really, is there a point?
Since we work with all types of athletes—not just endurance athletes—such as soccer players, hockey players and so on, our sprints are more about making you a lighter, more agile athlete than they are about making you a great sprinter. Keep in mind our main goal here at MP4: to make you a better athlete by bringing you in to your ideal competition weight. Whether that means dropping weight off of you while enhancing your sport performance or adding some weight to you through sport performance, it does not matter. Our primary focus is to make you a lighter athlete through any athletic means necessary. Hence the sprint.
There are many different ways to sprint outside but before you feel all Usain Bolt and all, please note some important safety rules:
So now you are ready to sprint outside and bang out a great conditioning session. When it comes to sprints, do not think length of time but instead think about what you want to accomplish. Since we want to use it as a means to shaping the body and conditioning you for any sport, we are very interested in the starts and in the number of sprints that you do. Notice we did not say speed here because we are not trying to make you the next best track star (unless that’s why you hire us;).
In terms of starts:
In terms of number of sprints:
You may do as few as 9 sprints (or 3 sets) and as many as 12 sprints depending on your level of conditioning. Anything more than that is unnecessary and you are most likely not sprinting anymore—just trying to run fast.
Doing a set up like this 1 to 2 times per week on top of your weekly regimen really does help change your body composition. It also allows us to be able to cut down other aspects of your training without affecting your performance because too much activity is a weight loss killer.
We challenge you to add sprinting in to your weekly regimen and if you have any questions on how to do so, or any suggestions, hit us below. We’d love to help you out.
