Diet culture has become so serious these days that many people base their self worth on how they identify with their eating habits. For some, it’s practically a religion and like religion you’re likely to hear it in everyday conversation and to be on the receiving end of an attempted conversion. Like religion, you have …
Continue reading "Thoughts on Diet Culture and Identification"
Use the RPE scale for conditioning/energy system work For weight training, we always focus on percentages of 1-rep max and conditioning tends to focus on percentages of max heart rate. There may be a better way though. The rate of perceived exertion scale wins in my book. The original scale ranged from 6-20 but the …
Continue reading "Dump Read: Energy Systems, 1 Minute Workout Progression"
Understanding the habit loop Changing your behaviour starts with understanding how habits form. Habits often form without us knowing and are responsible for a large portion of our daily lives. The habit loop consists of 3 parts: The cue The routine The reward When we perform a behaviour enough times the brain learns to run …
Use a stopwatch for rest intervals One simple but effective way to improve the effectiveness of your workout is to use a stopwatch. Two things are true when it comes to rest intervals – people rest too much during hypertrophy work and they don’t rest enough to improve performance in strength and power work. For …
Now that I’m a dad with 2 kids, a full-time job and I like to keep my house and such on the positive side of shambles, I haven’t made much time to write and post things on the interwebs. For free. My brain has been all over the place when I have sat down to …
Continue reading "Announcing A Small Change At firstalarmstrength.com"
When my wife got pregnant with our second kid I followed the same protocol: get into the best shape I can before baby gets here. This proved much harder with a 2-year old and real adult responsibilities. I was already “in shape” but I wanted to nudge that needle a little further to allow for …
One. It’s a powerful number. One is the first number, the very first; zero doesn’t count, it’s nothing. The one-minute-workout, the first follower, January 1st, the 1-percent. What is it about one? Is it a number you should get familiar with? In an ever-expanding world, the number “1” should be at the front of your …
When the big red trucks show up on scene all the homeowner expects is a group of decathlete-brain surgeons to jump out and fix the problem. Not too much to expect, right? But what do they actually get? Hopefully, someone well trained and fit enough to do the job. Everyone hired is required to pass …
This time last year I shared a post I had written about how I don’t make resolutions at on January 1st. I thought I would just share it again, kind of a like a holiday greeting card – like some of the much larger, more successful fitness websites do. But it kind of sucks. I …
Continue reading "I Still Haven’t Made a New Year’s Resolution"
What your diet or exercise routine (or lack thereof) looks like today doesn’t mean anything with regards to what it will look like in three months, a year or five years from now. What you’re doing today simply determines your start point. Thinking about what “perfect” looks like can be intimidating, which is why I …
Continue reading "Your Start Point Influences Your Path; It Doesn’t Dictate Your Endpoint"
