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How to Build Muscle: Divorcing Ego From Training

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The Problematic Male Ego

Freud referred to the “ego” as the realistic part of the brain that seeks to mediate the demands of both the “id” and “super-ego.”

Others have thought ego to be the manifestation of testosterone and the inner circuitry of the male brain that has propelled the masculine identity of arrogance and confidence over “weaker states” like that of humbleness and self-reflection.

While I would love to spend an entire post psychoanalyzing the male ego, I unfortunately don’t have my Freudian cap on today; rather, in my years of training, I have come to understand that there is an intimate connection between the ability to divorce one’s ego from the process and the ability to build muscle.

At the advanced levels, there is an intimate difference in intent between trying to get outrageously strong and building slabs of muscle.  Contrary to popular opinion, most bodybuilders are really strong but their intent while training can be much different than those chasing maximal strength like elite powerlifters.

For our purposes, getting strong and “being strong” requires one thing: the completion of a rep or reps at a weight that would make mere mortals cringe in fear.

If you compete at a powerlifting meet with 750 lbs on your back while you squat the judge nor your total will reflect that it was a 15 second grind where your knees experienced enough valgus collapse to make your ACLs cry and your back experienced so much flexion that it felt like a silverback gorilla just rode you to the promised land.

Not powerlifter strong by any means but back in the baseball days where performance and strength but not muscle were a priority.  No stringent rep cadence control.  My ego and hubris probably forced their inclusion.

Despite how unsightly the squat I just described is, it still counts as a successful squat pinning you as one strong motherfucker regardless of the fact that in all likelihood you won’t be very strong for long because of your abysmal attention to biomechanics.

The ego, in this instance, likely aided your quest for strength allowing you to undertake and successfully complete a weight that in a non-competition setting with human like levels of adrenaline would have stapled you in the hole and taught you a good lesson in humility.

The Pursuit of Muscle

Let’s contrast this to the pursuit of building muscle.

Studies have shown that the optimal range to build muscle is between 70 and 85% of one’s 1 rep max which translation from nerd speak means between eight and fifteen reps. It’s unfortunate that our friends in the white coats don’t qualify these studies with the fact that not only is it a certain rep range that’s optimal to build muscle but it is how these reps are performed that matter most.

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The GOAT

Bouncing the bar off your chest with a hip drive so powerful you wouldn’t dare try on your girlfriend with the lights off (or on since you’re jacked) is not in the same stratosphere as a bench press done with a slow descent, pause on the chest, and a controlled completion of the rep just short of lock-out to stimulate maximal tension on your pecs.

Fast-forward years and several hundred workouts down the road with these two styles of training in mind. Who do you think will build more muscle? Who do you think will inevitably be stronger because a bigger muscle is a stronger one?

The answer is clear.

Ditch the Ego

If you want to build an impressive physique, you must divorce your ego from the training process. While pursuing added strength should always be a training goal, how much weight you are lifting is a secondary consideration.

What matters is what those reps look like. Are you maximally contracting your pecs on a dumbbell fly to initiate the concentric swing or are you jerking the weight up like an adolescent boy? Are you completing a set of 8 rows in 15 seconds when if you were really serious about building muscle, it would take upwards of 30-40 seconds.

Notice the control and then watch every video on John Meadow’s channel

For this reason, commercial gyms could be the perfect breeding ground for muscle wannabees and mediocre results. It becomes almost impossible to divorce one’s ego from the process when you throw 30-40 testosterone-fueled men in a weight room. When you see your mortal enemy benching 25 more pounds than you and doing it easily, what’s your natural inclination?

“Fuck this baby weight, I can’t let that asshole show me up. Hey Sean, throw a 25 on there” – Your Ego.

What started as a stimulating, engaged training session where your pecs were under hellacious fire from your dedication to each rep, turned into a humping session where the only thing accomplished was a temporary saving of your ego.

Fail.

I can think of no faster way to stay mediocre in the pursuit of muscle than to let the training of others dictate how you approach each session.

So what can you do about it?

  1. First off, stand in the mirror, look yourself in the eye and ask yourself why are you doing what you are doing? Is it an exercise fueled by a relentless desire for self-improvement or are you chasing muscle to impress others? If it’s the latter, pick a new hobby hombre because you won’t last very long when the training gets hard and progress is all but non-existent.
  1. Go to your commercial gym (better idea – train at a private one) during dead hours. Do this for a couple weeks to a month and start to understand what it’s like to train properly. With no other bros around, you’ll be able to remove your ego and start to understand the importance of “feeling” the muscle and why a controlled rep cadence and time under tension is far superior to the 8-second jerk fest you’re accustomed to.
  1. Rather than utilizing rep ranges, train for time. For example, instead of the typical 4×8 rep setting, replace it with 4 x 30 seconds. This all but eliminates the ego-fueled desire to lift heavier weight with egregious form because you’ll have a next to impossible chance of completing the lift. Not only does it divorce your ego, but also it maximizes time under tension, which is imperative for muscle growth.  Mass by Pat Davidson is an outstanding resource.

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  1. Get a training buddy that will keep you honest. Preferably, he will be a bit stronger and bigger so you will be incentivized each training session but not so much further in development that you’ll start to try and compete with him when you are not ready.
  1. Become mindful. Our ego is allowed to take over when we get stuck inside our own heads plagued by self-deprecating thoughts about our current inadequate state. Anxiety is allowed to build and manifest itself in poor reps because you failed to be mindful. If you are present, truly present, then there is no time for debilitating self-talk. You are engaged in the moment where nothing but you and what needs to get done matters.

Give these a try and consciously work at being better at your state management. Building muscle is as much mental as it is physical and ultimately your mindset may be the limiting factor in whether or not you see a different creature in the mirror years from now or the same mediocre body plagued by the same over-bearing ego.

P.S. Chad and I would love to help you on your pursuit on building muscle, losing fat, and journey to become your most diesel self.  Email us at showmestrength@gmail.com.  We also offer online coaching.

 

Why I Failed Volume 4: How I Actually Succeeded

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Note: This is the 4th installment of the series “Why I Failed” by Travis Smith, former starting infielder at Assumption College.  

If you’ve been following this series up to this point, you know that I’ve been recounting some of the mistakes I made during my baseball career.  It’s my belief that these mistakes prevented me from reaching my goal of becoming a professional baseball player, and the hope is that you’ll use my hindsight to avoid the same pitfalls.

For this week, I’d like to take a step back and focus on something far more important than athletic performance.

By now, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the Miami Dolphins current issues, centering around the alleged bullying of Jonathan Martin by his teammates, Richie Incognito in particular.  While I don’t want to dig too deeply into the specifics of the case, because it is still such a fluid situation with so many unanswered questions, I do think there is an immediate lesson to be learned from the situation.

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Much of the Dolphins’ problems are being viewed through a lens of “locker room culture.”  This is an amorphous concept to most, and if you listen to how NFL players speak about it, something that no one aside from NFL players can understand.  They frequently cite a certain dynamic that exists inside the room, a brotherhood that can’t be understood by outside parties.

This, I think, is the important lesson here; there is no such thing as a prevailing “locker room culture.”  Just like the physical elements of each locker room are different, so too is the culture inside of it.

The Dolphins had an unhealthy locker room culture.  It’s important you don’t let this happen inside your locker room.

Andrew, Chad, and the other contributors to Show Me Strength constantly talk about being the “Alpha,” and the relentless pursuit of testosterone.  It is vitally important to remember that these are not isolated concepts; all the testosterone in the world won’t prevent anyone from being a good person who cares about the well being of their teammates.

Put yourself inside your locker room right now.  Let’s say there are 35 people in there.  You may play as a team, under one name, but there are still 35 different personalities in that room.  That’s 70 parents.  35 different hometowns.  Hundreds of different teachers and coaches.  Any attempt to apply one personality archetype to the group is going to fail.

Some teammates are going to be tougher than others.  Some are going to be quieter than others, some more out-going than others.  A true Alpha, a true silverback, as Andrew calls it, doesn’t see difference as a sign of weakness.  He sees it as an inevitable component of a team, no less tangible than different batting stances.

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The problems with the Dolphins arose because Jonathan Martin had a perceived “weakness.”  He was different from the rest of his teammates in some way, and for some reason his difference stood out amongst all the other differences in that locker room.  Because the team apparently lacked a true leader in their locker room, a true Alpha Male, Martin was exposed to enough bullying that he no longer felt safe playing for the team.

While I think it is the least important part of the story, and abundantly less important than Martin’s mental health and well being, the Dolphins lost an excellent football player on the field because of the culture they harbored in their locker room.

It is often said, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and I think that is true inside a locker room with one important caveat; only a positive tide will lift all boats.  A sense of unity, the feeling of shared struggles and shared accomplishments will make every person in the locker room a better player, and more importantly, a better person.  It sounds simplistic, but people, despite their differences, generally respond to positivity in a positive manner.

On the other hand, a tide of negativity will lift some boats, but sink many more.  And that negativity can have ramifications that extend far beyond the playing field.

Some players will perform better after they’re criticized, and can use perceived slights against them as motivation to play better.  Is it possible that a different personality, exposed to the same alleged bullying Martin experienced, could have used that anger and hurt to motivate himself on the practice field?  Sure.  Should his teammates subordinate that player’s mental health to his athletic performance?  Absolutely not.

Be a true leader, be a true Alpha.  By inspiring a sense of caring, kindness, safety, and unity inside your locker room, you will make the entire team better.

More importantly, you will be a good person.

I did not become a professional baseball player, but in this regard, I am proud to say I succeeded.

Show Me Strength Reads of the Week (October 20th edition)

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TopReads

Update: We’re excited to announce that our blog should have a brand new layout coming sometime this week.  The layout should be diesel and make it a little more sexy when reading our content!

Before we get started on a few of the great articles we found this week, here are ours.

Under the Bar by Ryan Wood

In this great piece, Ryan discusses the importance of doing in order to truly learn how to become good at something.  You can read about pitching mechanics until your eyes hurt but it doesn’t mean anything until you physically go out there and do it.  Taking action can be scary.  It probably involves failure and a good deal of it.  You’ll find if you push through the pain period, it’ll be one of the most satisfactory things you’ll ever do in this life.  Like Ryan said, “train hard, train heavy.”  In all that you do.

Hacking Your Off Season Volume 4: Three Qualities of a Good Training Partner by Chad Rodgers

In the latest installment of Hacking Your Off Season, Chad covers all you need to know when finding someone to train with.  I’m a big believer in self-motivation, especially when times are hard.  These are the moments when I feel most inspired to get up and chase my goals.  Yet, I understand that sometimes it can be hard to wake up pissed off for greatness.  Your week may be kicking you in the ass so you may need a little boost to power you through.  Find your training partner.  Find someone who is better than you and forces you to rise up.  Forces you to get motivated and train hard when it’s the last thing you want to do.  It could be the most overlooked part of training, yet one of the most important.

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Reconstructing Your Breakfast by Andrew Ferreira

In this piece, I deliver everything you need to know in order to optimize your breakfast routine.  I don’t hand out some generic cookie-cutter plan that may work for some but not all.  No, instead I deliver concepts, plans of action, and guidelines in order to optimize your breakfast to fit your goals and make you feel the best each morning.

Here are the other great reads of the week found throughout the blogosphere:

Like Hell You Could by TC Luoma

I love this article.  To put it bluntly, most people aren’t successful because they don’t want it bad enough.  It’s not because they went to a crappy school or even went to no school at all.  You aren’t successful because when there’s money to be made, you choose sleep and comfort.  You’re afraid to hustle.  Same goes for why you’re 25, full of estrogen, skinny fat, and have the shoulder width of a pre-pubescent little boy.  You wouldn’t have a better body or live more legendary if you had more time to work out.  F*** that.  There are no excuses.  Either you do or you don’t.  Either you make time or your priorities are all fucked up and that’s why you don’t succeed.  Next time you start to tell yourself that you’d have X if given Y, stop.  There are no places for excuses.  Act.  Now.

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The Best Life and Training Advice I Received from a Homeless Man by Roger Law

The problem with most people is that when they finally find the balls to take action, they’re like a deer in the headlights and they have no clue where to go next.  Honestly, if all you do is say yes and take action you’ll be more successful than 99% of the people out there but we want the best here for you at Show Me Strength.  Roger Law does an excellent job of breaking down the steps in optimizing your plan of action.  First step: “Fuck a Wish.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Use these guidelines from Rog to learn how to embrace the suck, persevere through pain, and come out better than ever before because of it.

Why Michael Jordan Didn’t Fear Failure by Chad Howse

Chad is becoming a frequent visitor to our Reads of the Week series and for good reason.  I feel inspired after reading his stuff.  Creating inspiration through words certainly isn’t easy so I’m always appreciative of someone’s work who has this knack.  With that said, I could relate 150% with this article.  I was like Chad, I spent hours upon hours working when everyone was sleeping or partying.  Problem was, when the game happened, when I had the opportunity to showcase all the hard work I had just put in, my brain wouldn’t let me.  I was so consumed by mechanics or worrying about not screwing up that I would fail and it would leave me incredibly frustrated.  When I learned to trust in my hard work, see the game as an opportunity to enjoy myself and be loose, I played immensely better.  This approach, as Chad says, comes with a caveat though.  You can’t play loose and confident unless you know you are prepared.  This only comes through inordinate amounts of hard work.

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How to Build the Perfect Breakfast

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Good ole breakfast.  The scapegoat and solution to every health problem known to mankind.

Do your cholesterol levels suck?  You must be slacking on your Cheerio’s consumption.  Everyone knows that you need to have two enormous bowls to fuel your heart.  One just doesn’t cut it.

Obese?  Better start hitting up the local Dunkin for some donuts and a nice large cream filled cup of Joe.  How else are you going to get your RDA recommended 300 grams of carbs for the day?  You sure as hell can’t skip breakfast.

Struggling to lose those last ten pounds?  Didn’t you know it’s a proven fact that eating breakfast speeds up your metabolism?

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End of sarcasm.

It’s all nonsense.  Not one single positive benefit associated with breakfast can be attributed to legitimate science.

It doesn’t speed up your metabolism. The refined carbohydrate garbage that is found in your cereal and every other common breakfast food actually worsens your heart profile, not improves it.  And big shocker here….you don’t need that glazed covered pastry to power you through your morning.

I see no benefit in furthering the deconstruction of the typical modern breakfast.  You and I both know that eating that bagel loaded with cream cheese is not healthy nor does it serve you any purpose.

What I am interested in is how to construct a breakfast that works for you.  A breakfast that is not eaten because one think there’s some sort of magic eating an egg at 8 a.m. instead of  at noon. No, a breakfast that subsists and becomes a daily habit because it makes you feel good and works for you.

How To Plan Your Breakfast

With that in mind, I have devised a checklist that you can use when constructing your own breakfast, or any meal for that matter.

1)   How does it make you feel? 

I could sit here and tell you that you need to carb load in the morning before you train everyday to ensure full glycogen stores; stimulate an anabolic environment, etc.  I could easily make a case based on the literature that this will support your training.

Problem is, if after you carb load, you want nothing to do with training.  You feel sluggish, groggy, bloated and overall apathetic to anything to do with moving weight.  Your breakfast, while the literature may support it, does not make you feel good.

Scrap it. You don’t need a literature review, you need something that makes you feel good.

Maybe you will respond better if you trained fasted or had a breakfast that induces less of an insulin spike.  Carb loading the night before might be a better strategy.

I guess I just inadvertently described my own personal experience.  I respond much better training fasted (I don’t count BCAAs and caffeine).  Carbs, especially an overload of them, make me feel terrible so I avoid them until after I workout.  My breakfast, if I’m going to have one, needs to make me feel better than it would if I didn’t have one at all.

Find a plan or strategy that makes you feel good (the satisfaction that comes with devouring munchkins from Dunkin Donuts doesn’t count).

2)   Is it healthy?

Look, I don’t think there’s ever a good time to throw shit in your body.  Don’t get me wrong,  I love 6 waffles and a double triple hash brown from America’s favorite diner…Waffle House in case you didn’t know.  But I feel especially strong that breakfast of all meals should be made up of real food most of the time.

The reason is that when you wake up, your body is primed to tackle the day.  Cortisol is at its peak, meaning that it’s a prime environment for your body to burn fat and your sympathetic nervous system is primed for a catecholamine release to turn you into a productivity machine (catecholamines: noradrenaline + adrenaline, make you more focused in a nutshell).

And what do most people do?  They emphatically tell their body I HATE YOU when they dump a donut down the hole.  I don’t want to feel productive; I want to crash with this surplus of carbs.  I don’t want to burn fat; I want to use my increased insulin sensitivity in the morning to shuttle hella glucose into my fat cells (yes, insulin sensitivity works both ways, for both fat and muscle cells).

Your body is prime for nutrient absorption.  Give it what it wants (if not what it consciously wants, please your subconscious).

“If man made it, don’t eat it.” 

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I don’t think this nutritional dogma needs to be followed all the time, but I think it’s essential in the morning.  Your body is perfectly able to handle the demands of the day without breakfast (human evolution says so) so make sure your breakfast adds value to your day.  Allow it to take your body to another level of productivity or health.  Only real food and a coffee or several can accomplish this.  Ok maybe a coffee isn’t necessary but I love me some coffee.

3)   How does it fuel my body?

Your breakfast sets the tone for the rest of the day.  How is it impacting you?  Here are some things to consider:

How are my hormone levels being affected? Is my breakfast the start of a roller coaster ride for my insulin levels?  What I mean is that in some imaginative world if your insulin went to Six Flags you want it to go on the kiddy ride suitable for an 8 yr old.  No Superman or any other ride that makes 22 yr old Andy throw up.  I don’t do roller coasters.  Though a little thrill may positively impact my testosterone levels… hmmmm tradeoffs.  May be worth it.

I’ve already brought this up, but does my breakfast stimulate my sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system?  Basically, does it make me want to go tackle the world or crawl back into bed and dream about being productive?

If I had breakfast, did I use it to stimulate protein synthesis or fuel my gluttony for refined carbs?  Some really smaht individuals like Layne Norton believe that in order to maximize protein synthesis, the effects of cortisol must be blunted in the morning with an anabolic pulse of protein.  Does your breakfast work to build or maintain your lean body mass or does it make those starving bastard fat cells happy with some glucose first thing in the morning?

4)   Does it line up with my goals?

Your goal is to gain 20 pounds of good weight in an offseason.  Obviously, you can’t gain 20 pounds of muscle in less than six months but if a good deal of muscle comes along with some fat, you’ll be happy with that.  Yet, your breakfast is three eggs and a piece of toast.

Your breakfast does not match your goals.

This includes the guy that wants to gain weight and practices intermittent fasting.  Trust me, don’t do it.  If you want to gain weight and you restrict your eating window to eight or nine hours, you will absolutely hate your life.  I did and I came to hate food.  The kitchen consumed me.  For eight hours, I did nothing but eat.  I gained weight, mostly good, but needless to say I was unproductive in life after I trained because of my constrained gluttony.  Now you could make the argument that watching all seven seasons of Dexter in six weeks is not unproductive…kidding, it’s not a good strategy. Eat breakfast and eat a hearty breakfast if you’re goal is to gain weight.

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The same can be said for the individual that wants to lose ten pounds but their breakfast is a pastry from Panera.  Their breakfast does not bring them closer to their goal.

Identify a goal. Create a plan on how you’re going to get there and make sure your breakfast (or first meal of the day) is in line with this strategy.  Set the tone from meal one.

There are plenty of other things to consider but if you take care of the first four, I’m pretty confident that your food choices are more than capable of handling the other needs of your body.  Master the basics and the rest will take care of itself.

What foods?

Come on, you know I wasn’t going to leave you hanging.  You need concrete food examples, I get it.

1)   No refined crap

‘Nough said on this.

2)   More Saturated Fat

Yes, saturated fat.  Not a typo.  Before you start yelling heart attack at me, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in a meta-analysis of 21 studies concluded “Saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or coronary vascular disease. (cite)”  Refined carbohydrates, not healthy saturated fats, have actually been found to adversely affect triglyceride and cholesterol profiles.

I understand that I haven’t come close to conclusively proving that saturated fat is the bee’s knees but performing a research review of saturated fat isn’t within the scope of this article.  Maybe another time.  For now, let’s focus on some benefits of adding more saturated fat to your diet:

a)    Positively affects our hormonal profiles (a diet with higher fat intake leads to an increase in testosterone levels).

b)   Saturated fats help your tissues retain omega-3 fatty acids better and help convert omega-3 to its final usable form (DHA) – if you can’t absorb your fish oil it’s useless.

c)    Improve our immune system – Coconut oil contains an amino acid Lauric Acid, which is primarily found in mother’s breast milk.  Lauric acid stimulates our immune system just as it does through our breast milk.

d)   Strengthens the liver against toxins and injury

e)    Contain fat-soluable vitamins and allow for their uptake

f)     Help your cholesterol profile! I’m serious!

  • Lower triglyceride levels
  • Improve HDL levels
  • Improve particle size of LDL

For a more in depth review of saturated fat, check out this article by John Meadows

What are some examples of healthy saturated fats?

a)   Virgin Coconut Oil

b)   Whole Eggs

c)   Grass-fed Butter

d)   Grass-fed Beef

e)   Raw Milk

f)   Red Palm Oil

g)   Dark chocolate

3)   Protein is a staple

The USDA recommends 80 grams of protein a day.  80 grams, which I guess is fine if you want to look sick, homely, and struggle to maintain whatever limited muscle mass you have.

I recommend at least a gram per pound of bodyweight.  Yes, for most, that’s way more than the USDA recommends.  A gram per lb/bw is a pretty standard recommendation for people in the know.  Of course it’s not for those who want to look sick and weak but for those looking to maintain a body that exudes strength, vitality, and health it is essential.

Some people prefer to eat two meals and get all their protein in through large quantities.  That has worked well for me in the past but that may also be because I’m a big eater when I want to be.  You may prefer to break your protein intake up in three or four different chunks.  Breakfast is an ideal time to start putting a dent in your total.

4)   Earn Your Carbs

Carbs aren’t an essential macronutrient.  What I mean by that is your body can produce glucose without you ingesting carbs.  Is it ideal for maintaining or building muscle?  No, it’s not but I like to think that I earn whatever carbs I’m consuming.

I earn my carbs through training, whether it be weight lifting or some variation of sprint work.  Every time I train, I go to the bank and deplete my glycogen reserves.  In order for me to continue training at a high level, I need to restore these glycogen stores.  I earn my carbs after I train.

By that same logic, on days when I rest, I generally limit my carb intake to fruits and veggies.  Yes I understand that restoring glycogen reserves can be a lengthy process (more than 24 hours), but I feel I eat enough on training days where I don’t deserve nor earn any carbs on days that I rest.  I already made sure my stores are near capacity ready to go for my next training session.

Earn your carbs.  If you know you have a hard workout ahead of you that day, include carbs like oatmeal and hashbrowns (not cooked in vegetable oil) in your breakfast.  Use it to fuel your training if you respond better with carb peri-workout.

If you’re mostly sedentary that day or in general, I highly recommend you scale back on the carbs, particularly in the morning.  I understand that going sans carbs all day can be quite difficult which is why I’m a big fan of Nate Miyaki’s intermittent feast strategy where you have lighter meals throughout the day in order to “feast” at night.  Your brain operates on a sacrifice/reward system so accomplishing this is easier than you think.

Some advantages to earning your carbs:

a)    Better insulin sensitivity – You won’t constantly be overloading your pancreas to produce insulin.  By doing so, you improve insulin sensitivity and avoid creating pancreatic exhaustion which increases your chances for developing metabolic syndrome as you age.

b)   Better nutrient partitioning – You eat carbs when your muscles need them and avoid feeding your fat cells when your muscles are idle or full of glycogen.

c)    You’ll look better – When your carb intake is low, insulin remains low, and lipolysis (fat burning) is upregulated.  That’s a fancy way of saying you’ll burn more fat.

5)   Eat more greens

Everyone knows green vegetables should be a staple in your diet, yet how many people get enough?  I’m guilty of it.  Vegetables aren’t sexy.  They’re a pain to cook and there’s no real satisfaction in eating them.  Sure, they make me healthier but I don’t feel tangibly better in the moment like I do from eating a pizza or ice cream.

Breakfast is an easy time to get your greens in.  Whether you mix it in with your omelet or throw spinach in your shake (you don’t taste it I promise, kudos to Tony Gentilcore for this quick tip), the options for variety are endless.

My Sample Breakfast

I have a confession to make… up until about three or four months ago, I never had breakfast…ever.  It didn’t matter what I had going on that day, I always seemed to enjoy doing without breakfast.  I became an intermittent faster and I loved it.  It fit my goals at the time.  I was 205 lbs, had fallen into a routine that I liked, and it worked for me.  Fast forward six months and 20 pounds later and my priorities changed.  I no longer could sustain my weight eating only in an eight-hour period.  My body needed a crazy amount of calories during that window of adaptation in order to acclimate to my new weight.

Breakfast is an every day part of my routine now.  Here’s what a sample morning looks like for me:

A) Heaping teaspoon of Athletic Greens with 6 grams of Omega 3 Fish Oil with 5000 IU of vitamin D.  Chad goes into more depth with each of these supplements in this post as there is always a method to the madness.

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B) 6 whole eggs scrambled or over well cooked in one tbsp of extra virgin coconut oil w/ 8 oz of steak cooked in one tbsp of extra virgin coconut oil with a glass of whole milk

C) If I don’t have a steak with my eggs, I’ll make myself a six egg omelet with spinach and peppers thrown in there.

D) I typically avoid any and all carbs including fruit

E) I’ll make myself a pot of coffee, mix in a teaspoon of coconut oil, and be out the door.

It’s not perfect but it accomplishes everything that I want to get out of breakfast.  It makes me feel good, it’s healthy, it adequately fuels my body, and it fits my goals.  Your breakfast may look very different and that’s ok.  As long as you align your breakfast with my brief guidelines I recommended, I don’t think you can steer yourself wrong.

Granted, I know most people’s breakfast options are limited, particularly when they’re trying to eat healthy.  In order to help your cause, Karine Losier and Dave Ruel have created an excellent product Metabolic Cooking.  It’s a fantastic resource that has more recipes than you could possibly imagine making eating healthy sexy, fun, and tasting good.  You won’t be disappointed.

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P.S.

Chad and I have some availability in our online coaching program to make people hot, strong, look good naked and anything else you can possibly imagine.

Hit us up at showmestrength@gmail.com with the subject line “Look Better Naked” and we can get cracking.   

Why I Failed: Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen (Volume 1)

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Note: Today’s guest post comes from my good buddy Travis Smith, former starting second baseman at Assumption College.  I’ve known Travis since high school and he is easily one of the hardest workers I know.  We talk all the time here on Show Me Strength about what it means when someone truly grinds.  When he played, Travis was the embodiment of a grinder and I think you’ll find a lot of value in his guest series.  

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For as long as I can remember, my dream was to be a professional baseball player.

I failed.

Of course, this isn’t the first time I’ve acknowledged that I failed; since I haven’t played a meaningful baseball game since last May, its pretty clear on a daily basis that I failed at becoming a professional baseball player.  But putting that sentence down in words leads to an interesting, and sometimes uncomfortable, path of reflection.

Fortunately for you, I made it all the way down that path unscathed, and now I’m ready to help prevent you from ever having to venture down that same road.

Originally I was going to spend some time talking about my career, but it’s a long, unimpressive story that most people would not care about in the slightest.  You’re on this website to make yourself a better athlete, and I completely understand and respect that.

As briefly as possible, I was a division-two baseball player that couldn’t hit consistently.  For reasons that had little to do with my offensive ability and a ton to do with “projectability” (AKA I was tall and could throw the ball really hard across the infield), I had workouts with some MLB teams.  I had some good seasons, I had many more bad seasons, and went undrafted.

While I may not be an authority on hitting curveballs, I am an authority on what I did wrong and how I could have improved my training, my mental approach, and everything else that embodies a successful athlete.  The point of this series will be to illustrate the mistakes I made in an effort to prevent you from doing the same.

  “Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen” in Regard to Strength Training

I’m not sure where this line originated from, or I would certainly credit it, because whoever originally spoke these words had a great handle on productivity and getting things done.  To put it in its simplest form, and stick to the original analogy, its not hard for a single chef to boil a pot of water: it becomes tough when fifteen chefs have to boil one pot of water and every one of them has a different method for boiling water, a different trick to speed up the process, and so on.

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Don’t suffer from program ADD

In short, you need to be careful who you listen to.  In the age of the internet and commercial gyms, there is no shortage of weight-training advice, and certainly no shortage of bad weight-training advice.  Just because that guy in your gym has huge biceps doesn’t mean what he says should have any bearing on your training.  Chances are, he is not an expert on building rotational core strength or optimizing the timing of your rotator cuff.

When I was playing, I always enjoyed lifting, and I loved the grind.  I may not have loved every set of Bulgarian split-squats, but I loved leaving the gym everyday knowing that I was closer to my ultimate goal.  I looked forward to going to bed early on a Thursday night to be rested and ready to go for a 7 AM lift on Friday morning.

The problem arose when I started thirsting for more information on exercises and programs, and lost my ability to stick to one program.  In this way, you need to be careful what you read and what you expose yourself to.

For me, it was T-Nation.  Every afternoon after class I would head back to my dorm and read the latest post from Wendler or Thibaudeau or Bruno.  The problem for me was that everything on T-Nation appealed to me.  And when a lifting program appealed to me, I wanted to try it.  Regardless of the fact that I was already in the second week of an eight-week strength program, suddenly, in my head, I was doing the wrong program.

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And even when I didn’t directly change my strategy, the appeal of the new program made me doubt my current program.  I might have finished the remaining six weeks, but was my heart truly in those lifts anymore?  Or was I just rushing through them in order to get to the next program?

To be clear, I’m not advocating ignorance or suggesting you avoid websites like T-Nation or Show Me Strength just because you already have a program.  There is never a bad time to read an article on perfecting your squat technique or generating more power off the floor on your deadlifts.

But if you have a program, I would avoid reading that article proposing an entirely new program.  Because chances are, you’re going to like it, and you’re going to want to incorporate it, at the expense of your current program.  Maybe you’re mentally strong enough to read about a new program and not want to try it, but I wasn’t.

Bookmark the article, and come back to it when you’re actually ready to start a new program.  No matter who you are, eight weeks of one single training program will help you more than two weeks each from four different training programs.

If you enjoyed the first volume, be sure to check back next week for part 2 of the series!

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