Just got back from Vacation. Took a 7 day cruise out of Boston (my home town) to Bermuda. Prices were cheap, so we took advantage of that. As you can see, Bermuda is a very pretty place. Ultra blue water, friendly people, etc. Here’s a few pics from the trip, with more on my photobucket album if interested.

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I’ll admit it— I think way too much when I lift. Maybe not during the actual lift, where I tend to focus on 1-2 primary movement cues, but between sets. Here’s what’s been on my frontal cortex lately…

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I just finished attending this Symposium - held triennially by the International Atherosclerosis Society - offers the world’s largest presentation of new research and clinical findings regarding Atherosclerosis. This important meeting was held June 14-18, 2009 in Boston MA, which is my home town… As Atherosclerosis is the underlying cause of both heart disease and stroke, with CVD the number one killer of US citizens, making headway against this diseases would result in millions of lives saved. This scientific/medical meeting covered a wide range of topics, from detection, prevention, and treatment of cardiovascular disease to the pathogenesis and biology of this disease as well as intervention, such as lifestyle and drug therapies, that may prevent it from developing in the first place.

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Here I present three methods which, when used consistently, will help you spend less time in the gym while getting better results at the same time.

Only applied knowledge is power, so don’t just read, but apply!

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Here are 10 of the most overlooked and misunderstood facts about abdominal training - some of these may fly in the face of what you THINK you know to be facts! Keep an open mind and read the explanations.

You may still not agree but it might just change your ideas on how your abs should be trained.

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So I had a cookout/ B Day party thing yesterday. The GF  was having a Labrada banana RTD on ice as she was hungry and wanted something quick. I wondered what it would taste like with some good vodka in it. The answer is, it tasted pretty damn good. I’m calling this new drink The Labrada

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I was interested to see how much people cared about “natural” vs. Synthetic sweeteners in their protein powders, so I put a poll up on a handful of representative forums.

The forums below range from mostly young men (e.g., Muscular Development) to mostly young women (e.g., Oxygen) and the results are fairly consistent.

If you combine the answers from question 2 and 3 (which are in essence the same question in terms of purchase decisions) you get a clear picture; the majority of people in this demographic cares much more about taste and cost ( though cost was not in the poll that was a common response on the forums themselves…) then “natural” vs. synthetics.

The poll question I asked were:

• I strictly use products with natural sweeteners/flavors
• I prefer natural to synthetic, but it’s not a deal breaker
• I don’t pay attention to how they do it, as long as it tastes good!
• I prefer protein powders with no flavors of any kind/flavor myself

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I frequently receive requests from people asking me to explain some of the health-scare claims made by Joseph Mercola, the overwrought professional alarmist, in his regular e-mails. Usually this involves sorting out the wheat (eg, the possible health advantages of food items from grass-fed animals) from the chaff (eg, Mercola’s resultant conclusion that we all should eat only raw eggs from chickens that we raise in our back yards). Occasionally all I have to do is explain the obvious error in a Mercola headline—“Sunlight Can Cut Your Risk of Death in Half” was one such proclamation.

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Eat Curry, Lose Fat?

A new study performed on mice shows that the Curcumin (found in the spice turmeric) may cut body fat and weight gain.

The study showed that curcumin, the natural pigment that gives the spice turmeric its yellow colour, may prevent or reduce body weight gain.

Mice fed a high-fat diet and supplemented with curcumin were found to have reduced body weight gain, as well as lowering blood cholesterol levels, according to findings published in the Journal of Nutrition.

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I’m now going to write my first “old guy” blog that’s going to start with the stereotype “darn kids today!” intro…so here goes:

Darn kids today! If there’s one thing I don’t understand about the younger generation I see in the gym - doing almost everything wrong - is, they really have no excuses. Back in the day, we had nothing to go on. We had some of the muscle mags, which were generally full of training articles written by genetically gifted drug assisted bodybuilders, and the advice of other clueless people in the gym, and that was it! There really was no solid science at the time, all that great east block training that has flooded the world was kept firmly in the east block, and there was no internet!

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