CHRISTMAS = PRESENTS

The fire light dances off the wrapping paper as you are surrounded by a subtle glow from your family’s Christmas tree. The wrapped gift in your lap says, “To: You, From: Santa”. The welling of excitement is nearly pouring out of your body as your parents give you the okay to open your gift. What could it be? Surely it is something wonderful and fun. Your hands tear the paper away to reveal not only your first Christmas gift, but jubilation.

This scenario is similar to most childhood Christmas experiences. Traditions are kept alive and passed to children, and each family has their own way of celebrating Christmas. Some people don’t celebrate Christmas – they either have conflicting religious beliefs or lost interest over the years – but these people are the American minority. Most celebrate Christmas for religious reasons, specifically the symbolic birth of Christ. This symbolic birth is often cited as the “true meaning of Christmas”, but deep down nobody actually believes that. Christmas is all about presents.

I know what you’re thinking. Presents are a materialistic and you were always taught that there is more to Christmas than just opening presents. WRONG! Christmas = presents.

Christmas is about getting presents. The anticipation of presents is sometimes better than the gift itself. Most presents are thoughtful, helpful, or amusing, yet unwrapping gifts fills us with a childlike sensation that only occurs next to that colorful tree.

Christmas is about giving presents. The reciprocal of getting is giving, and once you mature you realize how much joy you get out of giving gifts. It can be hard figuring out what the perfect gift is, but in reality it doesn’t matter; you did something thoughtful for someone you cared about, and that’s all that matters.

Giving and receiving presents creates a fun, exciting atmosphere that resonates outside of the living room. Folks at work are relaxed, people at the store are nice, and there is a growing level of anxiousness that looks forward to Christmas day. This brings me to the most important point:

The greatest Christmas present is your family. Family is relative; it can mean your parents and siblings, your friends, or anyone else that you genuinely care about. The gift of spending quality time with your family is a present that is insurmountable. This may be the only time of year you get to see your family, and it’s the holiday season that allows this to happen. The sights and sounds of Christmas are all a pleasant prelude to the true meaning of Christmas: presents.

Nobody thinks about religious meaning or pagan traditions as they rip away wrapping paper; instead they are enjoying the emotions and nostalgia of sharing not only gifts, but each other’s presence. I hope you and your family create beautiful memories this holiday season while holding past Christmas memories close to your heart.

Merry Christmas. And shit.

What is mobility?
Injuries, tweaks, muscle pulls, and slight irritations are a part of a strength and conditioning program. Knowing how to deal with them is beneficial, but doing all you can to prevent them — known as “prehab” — is more important. Of the three components of fitness — strength, mobility, and endurance — I lump prehab into the mobility portion. Mobility is the ability to change directions, maneuver through an environment, and react to changing demands accordingly. Relevant metrics to mobility are flexibility (ROM), balance, coordination, and agility. Range of motion concerns are most relevant to prehab, and it’s what will be the focus here.

Regardless of what you want to call it — flexibility, limberness, range of motion — improving these qualities will improve mobility, and that’s why they are often summed up as “mobility training”. The most notable contributor to this area of training is Dr. Kelly Starrett (KStar). KStar posts a video every day on his Mobility WOD that will improve flexibility, joint positioning, or postural positioning so that when you train, you aren’t exacerbating any existing problems.

This basically aims to improve the pliability of soft tissue to allow for proper positioning. Mike Hom likes to think of it as a buffer between being able to do things that will or will not injure you (he’s also going to write up a post to share more info). Having this improved “mobility” helps you do the things that you want and need to do as well as protect you against potential injurous trauma.

What Lifters Need To Do
Now that you have a basic understanding of the prehab version of mobility, I want to briefly explain what lifters need to focus on with some examples. If you are lifting hard on a regular basis, specifically if you are gaining lots of strength on a novice progression and are gaining lots of weight, you will probably run into some soft tissue problems. The problem areas include musculature in the entire hip region and the sacral/lumbar region. It makes sense as to why; the external rotators of the hip are always contracting to shove the knees out in squatting, cleaning, snatching, and deadlifting while the lower back is always contracting to maintain proper extension. These structures need to stay pliable, and they can’t if they don’t ever get stretched amongst all the contracting.

Here are some basic stretches that I think are necessary for lifters who are training hard. Note that you don’t need any special equipment to do these (foam roller, lacrosse balls, bands, etc.), yet those tools are necessary to do the more advanced stuff.
Kelly Starrett has already posted videos with the stretches, so here they are.

Low Back
At :40s Kelly talks about how the reverse hyper is an excellent tool. Then around 1:00 he shows a lumbar spinal decompression stretch. You can do the same thing by hanging from a bar, but you have to let your hips sink down by not contracting with your abdominals. There’s also another method at :50s of this video.

External Rotators of the Hips
This is a standard stretch that appears often throughout KStar’s videos. You can do it on the floor with the same principles (there’s a video for the floor version, but I couldn’t find it after searching for 2 seconds), but in this video they do it on a box. Stretch starts at :47ish, but the intro is still good.


Hip flexor
This is a standard stretch that is an important lesson for most people. The largest hip flexor is the rectus femoris, and it’s also one of the quadriceps. So it flexes the hip and extends the knee. In order to stretch this long muscle, you’ll have to do the opposite at each joints (the hip and knee are proximal and distal attachments respectively); extend the hip and flex the knee. Kelly shows you how in this video. The stretch starts at 2:17ish, but I recommend watching the beginning. You’ll see why.


There you have it: three basic stretches that are very easy to do without equipment or a partner. These could even be preparatory stretches that you do before lifting to get loosened up. I used to do a method of all three with some light foam rolling to help get loosened up, but I think most of you could use them on a daily basis. I KNOW you guys aren’t doing any mobility work, so start with these simple exercises.

Short post today. This is a video of Zach Krych, and 85kg Olympic weightlifter. This video details an incredible story where he suffered a devastating injury to his wrists. It shows his recovery and rehab process in chronological order. Zach not only recovers from his injury, but he also performs at the highest level by winning the US Senior Nationals and closes in on Kendrick Farris’ (the top American 85kg lifter) total. This is one of the most impressive videos I’ve ever seen, and this is one of the biggest comebacks in any sport. Congrats to Zach and good luck.

If you are a fan of the 70’s Big Facebook fan page, then you already saw the Meatball Deathstar by Epic Meal Time (that’s smart). This next video isn’t their most violent or intense, but it’s fucking impressive. It’s the Slaughterhouse Christmas Special:


Edit:
The chat room was last night (every Tuesday evening) and was interesting. There weren’t as many questions as week 1, and the topics got kinda weird at times (I blame this on AC). Anyway, we’ll do the next one next Tuesday.

This is a post from my pal Ben Claridad. He’s a lifter, an artist, and a coach. Check out his website; it posts art work every day with some funny comments.
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“Big Screen TV Ass” or alternatively Supersize my Legs

I want legs so big that they make babies cry, so startling that they shake the foundations of your soul and you wake up in a cold sweat, relieved that my legs aren’t in the same room as you. If I were to travel by airplane, my ticket would read: row 34, seat A and D. Those wishing to cross the isle to gain access to the bathroom would have to pay my left leg a toll. My right leg will be busy counting the money collected and using it to buy no less than 10 airplane meals and something to read during the 2 hour layover. But before this becomes a reality, some background information is in order.

I’ve been competing on Olympic weightlifting for about 6 years now. My most recent trip to the American Open resulted in me going 2 for 6, making only my openers at 135 and 160. This was good enough for a 4th place finish and a celebratory meal at a mostly empty Japanese Steakhouse with the rest of my crew from Hassle Free BBC. In my experience, a lot of weightlifting is problem solving. And it was during this meal that I decided what my main problems are, the most glaring being my relatively weak squat PRs (F. squat 200/B. squat 230). I’ve also decided that (at least for the time being) I really don’t care about how I place at competitions. I’d rather walk around at comfortable 110-112 kilos and be looking for a 340-350 total instead of having to cut to 105 kilos and be looking for the 310-315 total. Am I saying that by simply being a heavier lifter, I’ll be guaranteed to achieve my goal of a 340 total? Not at all, but it couldn’t hurt to try. So for the time being, I’m going to implement a new strategy: get fucking huge.

Last night at the gym, I measured my thigh and ass circumferences (no homo). This ultimately ended up in a large group of lifters, rugby and football players taking amusement in the ridiculousness of what I was doing, and did the same (yes homo). The middle of my thigh measured 27 inches around and my ass (measured by wrapping the measuring tape around the waist and then sliding it down until you reach the plumpest point of your ass) measured 44 inches. Impressive when compared to the untrained individual? Sure. But when compared to guys who can Clean 2 hundo, my lower half just doesn’t cut it. Essentially what I’m looking for is somewhere between 30-32 inches for my thigh and for my ass: as close to 50 inches as I can get (people buy big screen TVs that big).

Taking measurements is very scientific. But good science needs solid data, so for the next 8 weeks (depending on when I start) I’m going to write down everything I do. This has the added benefit of A) keeping me accountable, B) forcing me to organize and implement a proper program, and C) allowing me to troubleshoot for what works for me and what doesn’t.

Here’s a video of me in the best shape of my life (with my Conan hair). Hopefully be the same time next year, I’ll be bigger, stronger, and faster than ever. (Note: the 1st snatch is actually 140, which at the time was a 3kg PR).

Tom is a belligerent Australian bloke and he sent me an e-mail with info on Jonah Lomu a while ago. This is his story.
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G’day Justin,

Seeing as though you’ve had rugby players on the blog twice now, I figured I might add another suggestion.

The subject of the post today is Jonah Lomu. He played for the All-Blacks from 1994 to 2002 and in that time managed to change the face of Rugby Union. He came to prominence in the 1995 World Cup where over five matches he managed to score seven tries, including 4 against England. He became the sports first superstar and in the time that he played was the most fearsome player on the field. He generally played as a Winger (a position reserved for the fastest, most agile players) and did this at 6’5 and 275lbs. This is the equivalent of a linebacker playing as a running back. He scored more tries in the World Cup than any other player and did I mention he did all this after being diagnosed with Nephrotic Syndrome in 1995? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephrotic_syndrome).

Here’s a few clips you might enjoy. Some are big hits, some are incredible runs/footwork and then there’s a few Maori Sidesteps (which involves pretty much running straight over a bloke haha).

Jonah could stop players:


But players couldn’t stop Jonah:

A particularly big tackle, Jonah looks like he’s pouncing on prey in this clip.

I see Jonah as being 70s big for a number of reasons. Firstly, the bloke was 6’5 and 275lbs… This is not little. He carried this bulk and strength while remaining fast and conditioned as hell. He dominated in his chosen sport and endured through a debilitating illness. Big, strong, bad, and tough. 70’s Big.