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3 Must Have Home Gym Essentials (12/15/22):
It’s a New Year's Resolution. It’s three weeks before you're on the beach. It’s a lifestyle (hopefully). Whatever the case, you’re making fitness a priority but your work from home schedule makes it tough to sneak out to the gym. Luckily in 2023, there’s no reason you can’t have a badass home gym to help you build muscle and chip away some belly fat in the comfort of your living or bedroom. Here are the Three MUST HAVE pieces of home-gym equipment for your 2023 home gym.
Chin-Up Bar:
Chin and Pull-ups, one of the oldest and most efficient exercises to strengthen your back, biceps, and grip strength. Luckily, not only does a home chin up bar allow you to bang a couple of sets out under any doorwar of your house- but you can also use it to stretch, perform leg raises or windshield wipers to blast your core, or even just perform a static hang. And if you’re worried about progressing on your chin-ups every week and don’t have time for a million sets, toss a backpack on with some books or bricks for an additional sweat.
Yoga Mat:
The Yoga Mat is another multi purpose staple. Yoga is of course a generational and multicultural mainstay in the exercise world. However, if you’re not as limber as you’d like, Yoga Mats are also a forgiving, smooth surface for push-ups, planks, crunches, and more. They save you from scuffing up your back and hands on carpet or tile floors, and (maybe more importantly) save your floor from sweat ;)
Dumbbells/Kettlebells:
As the great Ronnie Coleman once said, “Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t nobody want to lift no HEAVY ASS WEIGHT!!!”You didn’t really think you’d get through this whole list without us suggesting some actual weight training did you? Resistance training, along with calisthenics and a healthy diet, is the bedrock of muscle-building. Luckily there is no need to break the bank on an Olympic Weightlifting set as all of the key lifts can be performed with dumbbells. In fact, many dumbbell variations can be performed without a spotter and provide an even deeper stretch and activation of the muscle tissue than their Barbell variants.
Now get off the couch and push yourself- OUT
Work from Home Hacks to Keep You from Zoning Out and Astral Projecting Into Neptune or Some Other Post Jupiter Planet- (2/23/23)
If you work from home all of the time, or some of the time, or even if you’re unemployed from home you know what I’m talking about. It’s a blessing and a curse. The understood, wink-wink, “have a great weekend” slacks at 2:00 PM from your boss; the “lunch break” that leads to an Instagram audit of people you don’t care even remotely (hah! remote); etcetera. This is all great and it’s one of the few post-2020 silver linings. But this mindset can be kind of intrusive and insipid when you’re trying to actually do the damn thing they’re paying you (hopefully) to do. Here are some tips my lazy ass has found to be somewhat effective in staying on task.
Delete Social Media:
This could be a blog post in and of itself but social media and the mindless scrolling it enables is a dopamine and productivity DRAIN. I’ve found deleting the apps, at least on workdays, is the easiest way to deny yourself the temptation. Though those first couple of hours the glaring absence on your phone might feel like a phantom limb but once you’re over the hump, it’s like you never had them in the first place. And the beauty is, when you redownload them on Saturday you’ll be even more excited for your roommate’s ex’s cousin getting a new Pameranian!
Go for a Walk:
If your job is stressful, well congratulations, you’re employed. This can get magnified a million times however, when you have no coworkers or cubicle-roomies to lean over to and commiserate over your failures with. Botched the pitch? Got hung up on? Boss being a jerk? Just plain bored out of your mind? You might need something a bit less sanity-scraping than the four walls of your guest room to help out. Get outside for 15 minutes and breathe some fresh air. If it’s cold, pace around the kitchen while letting the bubbles in your La Croix pop. Great as the autonomy of working from home can be, we’re not designed to be stuck in a box and deprived of vitamin D or fresh air. We’re supposed to be hunting and gathering! Or at least taking Kujo out to sniff the other neighborhood dogs and pee on their lawns.
Talk to People:
Another seemingly obvious one. I don't care if you have the best job in the world, if you're doing it completely alone; it's going to start to suck. Let people know you're still alive and still (think you're) funny. Use Slack or Teams or good old email to say "Hey, how are you". Send a slightly inappropriate GIF you can't figure out how to delete.
When I've been able to meet my coworkers in person I've had multiple people relay to me how polite I seem over messages simply for leading with a "good morning" or a "thanks" or a "good job". The truth is, I told them, I was doing it for me. If you don't have an office to liven up, at the very least brighten your corner of your remote world. Otherwise, what are you bringing to the table?
Breathe:
Feel your toes. Feel your stomach. Observe these sensations and feel a sense of gratitude wash over you.
Okay I’m done getting all ASMR on you. But sometimes, all it takes is some deep breaths. If you’re feeling a good deal of stress, or even just checking your phone and email instead of meeting that deadline you may just need a little O2 siesta. Box breathing is one method that has saved me from many a panic, frustration, and helped me dial back in to whatever it is I was previously half assing. Breathe in for four seconds, hold four seconds, exhale four seconds, hold and repeat. And please GOD remember to use your nose, this blog isn’t for neanderthals.
Work from Home Hacks- use ‘em or lose ‘em
Seemingly Harmless Mistakes That Could Be Stifling Your Progress and Hurting Your Gains (2-27-23)
First off, I’m part of the exercise minority that cringes when using the term gains. If you’re in my camp, I apologize. If you are like many new and tenured workout or gym enthusiasts you have probably experienced one or many plateaus in your progress before. It’s easy to get frustrated when your goal of gaining X pounds of muscle, losing weight, or adding one more plate to your bench, squat, or deadlift. “Why the hell am I spending 8 hours a week doing this, pushing this f#$king boulder up a hill if I’ll never get there…” you might think. Or maybe you’re perfect and always achieve your goals on the first try. In which case, you can go ahead and stop reading this article. I’m… sorry to have wasted your time.
One very common mistake that may lead to slow-moving or non-existent progress in your weight training is not implementing progressive overload. Now, I can say firsthand this term sounded like some roided out, hardo science I would probably need a degree in biology or physiology to make sense of. Because of that, it took me far too long to understand what it really meant: do a little more next time than you did this time. Now, if you look at this as adding five pounds to X lift every single week, you’re setting yourself up for stress and disappointment. If you overhead press once a week and you added 5 pounds every week for three years, you would be the strongest man in the world by A LOT. But “a little more” every week doesn’t have to mean more weight. It can mean one more rep each week, one more set, going a little slower to increase the time under tension. Or maybe even some new age crap like wearing a Bane Mask while you do it or having your disappointed Dad yell at you as soon as you start to wince. Anyways, that’s progressive overload.
Now that we figured out the importance of doing more, it’s time we talk about the benefits of doing less. Another ubiquitous and unassuming culprit of killing your progress is overtraining. I’ll spare you the health class but we know (or we know now) that muscle is built by tearing down (training), repairing (rest days), and growing back bigger and stronger. So if we’re breaking down our muscle multiple days in a row or going to absolute failure 3-4 times a week, we’re not going to see too much progress. So what do we do? Well, for starters train less. Stop the body part splits and try a full-body training split or an upper-lower, so you can do more and rest more too.
On that note, potentially the biggest mistake that exercises new and experienced lifters make is not sleeping enough. Where do we burn the most calories? Sleeping. Where do we make the most gains and repair the most muscle? Sleeping. Where did I think up the idea for this blog post? You get the gist. 8 hours has been proven, time and time again to be the magic number. Failing to meet this minimum can not only prevent you from gaining strength and muscle, but can also drain your sex drive, energy, brainpower, and overall zest for life. Even sleeping 6 and a half hours a night for a week shaves 10 and a half hours off of the week; over a full night’s sleep. So get 8 hours of sleep, too.
Some honorable mentions of the gain-stealers:
Taking cold showers shortly after training
Avoiding Compound lifts (calf extensions should not be the main focus of your afternoon gym session)
Excessive cardio before a resistance training session
Playing your music out loud in a public gym
Diets Debunked (Rant Disclaimer):
What the hell was going on in Europe in the 17th century? A little number we look back on and call the Enlightenment. I’ll refresh any readers who were like me and spent their high school history days playing air guitar and napping with their eyes open: The Enlightenment was a period of time where the philosophical and intellectual tenets of European society were tested and reshaped to their foundations. The world moved from dogmatic religion, fear of God, and anxiously awaiting the afterlife onto science, art, culture, and thoughtfulness. In other words, we woke the hell up. I say this not to come after religion or religious folks (shoutout to my fellow guilty Catholics), but society during the Enlightenment found what worked, and they tossed what didn’t. And if I was a betting man, I’d say we’re due in 2023 for a little enlightenment.
So what is the closest thing in modernity to religion in the 17th century? What are folks blinding themselves and dying over? Well, I’d say we have two: Politics and diets. Now I have neither the just sub-Ivy League Poli-Sci degree nor the confidence in my blood pressure to write on here about politics and which side is lying to who about what. But I can say as someone with a mouth, a stomach, and a scale that the dieting world is just as, if not more so, groupthinky and terrifying as the polarized political zealots.
Intermittent Fasting, Keto, Paleo, Carnivore, Vegan, Vegetarian, the Standard American Diet, the strictly Pizza and McDonalds diet (wait, that was actually a wet dream I had). Basically, we have a lot of these and everybody and their mother thinks the school they ascribe to is the best thing since sliced bread (oh no, bread). So we have fanaticism and we also have logic:
“If you cut out carbs, your body will train itself to burn fat and therefore you’ll not be fat anymore”
“If you only eat X, you’ll cut out Y which leads to bloating, inflammation, autoimmune flare ups and also it tastes good so it’s just got to be terrible for you”
“Animal products, particularly red meat, cause inflammation, and clog your arteries, and is a probable predictor of cancer so you should never eat it again. Ever.”
So we have logic and then, God forbid, we throw in a little moral superiority too, like the vegans and Sarah McClaughlin teaming up to remind us how much we love animals so maybe we should spit out that last sip of milk. We have a crapshoot on our hands. And if you listen to any one camp, and you have a remotely open mind, they’ll probably even convince you of the merits of their diet. It’s that way or the Highway. Then you’ll find yourself pinching yourself every time you eat meat, or every time you don’t, depending on which band of Food-Pyramid Jehovah’s Witnesses showed up on your TikTok algorithm that week. And I’d imagine I’m probably not the only one who’s a little bit confused and frustrated with all this conflicting information that has all apparently come “from on high”. So what the f#$k do we make of it?
This, my dear reader, is my proposed Enlightenment: let’s eat food. Groundbreaking? I’m sure of it. Cancel worthy? You bet. Let me explain what I mean.
What is food? Well, take anything in your pantry or fridge as an example: if you have to think long and hard about whether or not it’s considered food, it’s not. WOAH. Can you find it growing on a tree, or out of the ground, or from the flesh or teet of an animal (sorry vegans)? No? Then chuck it. Can’t remember the last time you foraged a pretzel from the pretzel tree? Toss it. Don’t know if an Oreo comes from an egg or not? Goodbye. Curious why you can’t believe it’s not Butter? Because it’s not!
And if you’re feeling really, and I mean really daring and read the label: if you can’t pronounce the ingredient (assuming you read at an intermediate high school level)... probably could chuck that too. Artificial sweeteners, random seed oils, “somebody’ssecondcousin”-ose: probably not your best friend or your stomach’s.
While I have your attention, one last INSANE concept: moderation. If any of what I outlined above seems extraordinarily difficult or incompatible with your lifestyle, just exercise some self control. Don’t want to cut out beer completely? Cut back. Having ice cream or cookies four nights a week? Make it four times a month.
My point is, if you’re eating mostly whole, minimal ingredient, nutrient dense foods you will more than likely develop a healthier metabolism and relationship with food in general. If you find you’re still not where you want to be, then maybe look into one of the aforementioned dietary dogmas. I’m not here to rain on anyone’s parade. I’ve experimented or strongly considered most of the diets I outlined above (especially the Pizza and McDonalds one). And I’m not a dietician, a doctor, a personal trainer, or a model of any kind. But I’ve certainly been around this proverbial block and the internet enough times to know that it can be pretty damn hard to figure out what is best for your lifestyle. I’ve also found myself appalled and dismayed to find that no one is just recommending food. So try this, don’t try it, do what makes you happy. But don’t doubt yourself enough to think that there’s only one right way for 7 billion people. I know you’re a brighter bulb than that.
