Precision
Nutrition
and the
RKC
The Training Vault
I will repeat here the disclaimer from our training page. It is as follows: If you are of the mindset that training should never hurt, then this is not the place for you. The videos, articles, and random training rants that occasionaly show up here are built for an elite. A lot of this stuff has a really high chance of injuring you if you don't approach it with a certain amount of fear and easy access to soft tissue work. As to where to find older articles that have been moved off this page, the videos can be accessed through either our youtube channel, or on the video page. Newsletters, and other randrom stuff eventually ends up in downloads. If there is something you remember seeing but can't find just drop us an email at info@irrationalfitness.com and we will see if we can get you access to it.
Intense Finger Training
This video didn't get shot until after about three weeks training these pull-ups, not the most encouraging statement, but it took a while for my muscles and tendons to adapt to the loading. Then there was of course the need to just become accustomed to the pain of the weight on the fingers. I have seen some guys do similar work with their fingers all the way through the loops of whatever they are using for the pull-ups, but if you stay on your pads this whole exercise just becomes brutal.
This whole series of finger tip work grew out of an obsession with trying to strengthen tendons, not just building up strength. A number of sources such as Supertraining, and much of Pavel's work talk about the need to put a pretty extreme load on the tendons if you are looking to actually see them get stronger. This was my adaptation of that idea for climbing. It is way easier to hang out and rest on a small pocket when your tendons and musclulature has become used to bearing a load much higher than your body weight. The next training video in this particular series that I hope to get out is the work I have been doing with lock offs, forgetting completely about pull-up reps and just looking for static holds in various positions and with various hand positions.
Weighted Rope Climbs
It seems a little over the top that I always talk about how much stuff hurts, and perhaps it is just that I am soft and weak... but climbing our particular ropes with 70 odd pounds dangling between ones legs really hurts. Since getting the partial climb with the 70 I have gone back and gotten all the way to the top, but that isn't coming out as a video until I can put it in as the warm-up to climbing with the 88lb kb afterwards. As to training this, I would recommend that people use a bunch of chalk, get a good dipping belt, and start small. If a rope climb isn't effortless than doing this with added weight can be brutal, especially when you know you really can't fail with it.
Forced Evolution Excerpt on... "Eating More Slowly and Enjoying Food"
"This goes back to the basic premise that I have been trying to build; that you need to enjoy the food you are eating if you are to stick with any dietary regime. These days in North America most people eat their food way too fast. Normally this is a rant that is coming from those people who are concerned with the failiure of the family unit and with the appaling state of North American culture, yet there is a big nutritional issue here as well. The issue I am trying to highlight here actually has very little to do with where you are eating, or who you are eating with, but pertains very specifically to how we eat and how we digest food.
So lets step back and assume that you are about to sit down and consume a piece of grilled salmon marinated in lemon and garlic along with a stunning greek salad made from fresh garden vegetables. If we don't mindlessly plunge into the meal but actually take some time to look at the meal, to smell the aroma of the food we'll quickly begin to salivate. I mean, I am salivating just thinking about this food, so lets assume that when you look at well cooked tasty food you start producing saliva. This is the first step to digestion. For your body to be able to properly process and digest foods it needs to be mixed with saliva. If you toss food into your mouth, chew twice and swallow then you are getting these huge chunks of food being shoved down your esaphagus without the oh so essential saliva. Compare that to eating slowly and actually chewing food. We get the pieces of food into much smaller pieces, plus all of the food gets mixed with saliva which kick starts the whole process of digestion. So many people end up skipping this step and before you know it they have limited their bodies capacity to actually get the nutrients out of the food we are eating. When so much of the North American diet is already pretty low on nutrients, to further limit our capacity to actually digest foods by eating too quickly is really bad idea.
A good standard to take note of is this. If you commonly drink a lot of water while you are eating there is a good chance that you are literally using the water to wash food down your esaphagus. A huge issue that signals that you not getting enough saliva in with the food. As a rule of some, some dieticians actually argue that you should limite intake of water with meals as it is likely to dilute the acids in your stomach that play such a huge role in breaking down food. This situation obviously spirals quickly out of control if you are not chewing food into small enough pieces, not getting the saliva needed to start digestion, and then diluting the stomach acids that have to take up the slack due to the large pieces of unsalivated [probably not a word] that are getting dropped into it.
A classic example of this would be the post-workout shake. That essential hit of carbs and proteins is so often wasted. Rarely do I see trainees enjoying that shake. Rather they pound it as quickly as they can to avoid tasting the nasty chalky taste of low quality bulking proteins. Just because it is a liquid doesn't mean it shouldn't be swirled around in your mouth. I mean it isn't wine, but it actually needs to be consumed as if you were at a tasting. If it tastes awful, buy a better quality product or start mixing in fruit.
So back to the beginning, enjoying food. If we slow down and actually taste and enjoy the food we are eating then all these basic bodily functions work the way they are supposed to. Plus this cool thing happens when we actually stop to eat food, we start caring more about what we eat. If the texture and flavor aren't great it isn't a huge issue if you can polish the whole meal of in under five minutes. However if you find yourself stopping on a regular basis to savor the food and it tasts like sawdust, then you are going to have to learn to cook a little better. You are going to have to care a little bit more about what you put in your body."