• Exercise

    Blast Strap Sissy Squats

    Looking for a reasonably safe bodyweight style exercise for your quads and legs? The Blast Strap Sissy Squat is a great option for you to explore. I have done Sissy Squats using a number of different hand-holds, from doorways to bars to railings, but none of them gave me the full range of motion and focused the movement on the quads like the Blast Straps have (and as of this writing they’re on an awesome sale). I hooked my straps to the top of my power rack, and there’s enough other weight on the rack that it doesn’t slide or tip when I use them. For those of you who…

  • Nutrition

    Healthy Food – Eat Like a Bodybuilder

    This is an example of my recovery evening meal the day after a 10 mile training run on the trails in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah County. I ran a connector of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail near the power towers on the bench below Mount Timpanogos yesterday. Today I had mostly protein shakes during the day, and a massage to work out my IT Band issues, and tonight I’m having steamed chicken breast strips with steamed broccoli and steamed cauliflower. This is actually quite similar to the types of meals bodybuilders eat to rebuild muscle after their intense training. Though if they’re large enough, they’d have it 3 or 4…

  • Training

    Grays Peak Training Hike

    Drove to the Stevens Gulch road, then up to the Grizzly Gulch junction and parked. Hiked about 2 miles to the trailhead, then about a mile up the trail. I was wearing old hiking boots I haven’t worn in two years, but my feet seemed to have changed shape in the meanwhile (probably from all the running) and they were cutting into my tendons above my toes. I ended up removing the insole to allow for more room, which helped a bit, but let me slide around some. I was planning on doing both summits (Grays and Torreys) but decided to just call it a good training hike and return…

  • Exercise

    Seated Calf Raise Machine

    This video shows me doing one of the most common calf training exercises, the seated calf raise. I normally do sets of 25 at 85 pounds on the arm. I’ve never checked the amount of leverage, but the weights are at the end of the arm, with your knees about the middle of the arm, so if you just do the math that way, it’s about a 5/8 mechanical disadvantage, but the weights swing about a pivot point that your butt sits around, so not sure if that helps or hurts? I’d have to use some type of scale to measure. Anyway, physics aside, I like to push fast on…