Since moving to Pittsburgh, I’ve been putting a good amount of effort towards establishing my new routine. This includes my work schedule, training schedule, time with my fiancé and friends, sleep, and of course, FOOD! For myself, as well as with many of the people whom I’ve worked with, I have found that one of the best ways to stay on track is through establishing a structured routine and sticking to it. One of the easiest ways is by developing a nutrition and food plan. Now, I understand that we all enjoy going out to eat occasionally, and eating the same things throughout the week can become mundane, but if you want to get the most out of your hard work in and out of the gym, routine and discipline are absolutely necessary. With that being said, my meal of the week is New York strip on the grill with potatoes and asparagus. This is something that I incorporate into my diet 2-3 times per week. It’s simple, easy to make, nutrient-dense, and delicious. Part of finding what foods are best for you is finding out what foods best agree with you. If you’re one of the lucky ones, you can eat a bucket of nails and come out unscathed. I, however, am not that lucky. So for me, this meal is very easy on the digestive system, and since it is very nutrient-dense, it is a great source of fuel for the body. 

Here’s a list of ingredients that you’ll need:

Koser salt

Ground pepper

Garlic powder

Garlic salt

Olive oil

Steak seasoning of your choice (I use McCormick Brown sugar & Bourbon)

1. First, you’ll want to let the steak sit out and come to room temperature before grilling. This will ensure that it cooks evenly all the way through. During this time, coat the steak in olive oil, add salt, pepper, a bit of garlic powder, and steak seasoning (if you choose). 
2. Next, with your potatoes and asparagus in a bowl, add olive oil, salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic salt, then mix by hand. Transfer them onto a sheet of aluminum foil and wrap up.
3. Once the food is prepared, fire up the grill and set to medium heat. Once the temperature is around 450, throw the steaks on the bottom rack and the potatoes and asparagus on the top rack (still in the aluminum foil).
4. Check periodically, especially if it’s your first time. All grills are different, so it may take some time to figure out the best duration. For me, around 15 minutes usually does the trick for a “medium” finish.
5. Grab a Landshark and enjoy (Optional).  

Part 1: Feedback

For many people, getting started on the path towards fitness can be overwhelming. You come to a new gym, are faced with lots of new equipment, don’t necessarily know the etiquette, and have no idea WHAT TO DO. We often find ourselves gravitating towards the few things we do know: the treadmill, maybe some dumbbell curls, maybe the bench (for all my bench bros). This will work for awhile, because if nothing else it’s building the habit of just being in the gym. But at some point, you may want more. That’s where a real training program comes in.

I believe that the best program is one designed specifically with you in mind. Over the years, I’ve adapted my custom program system to be more flexible and more interactive with clients. I typically program on a week-by-week basis. Why? I need your feedback.

Personally, I’ve dealt with programs and coaches that varied from providing a 12-week training block up front that we only discussed at the end, to a coach that put my workouts in EVERY DAY after reading my comments from the day before. Each style has positives and negatives. The 12 week program was satisfying for me in that I could plan out three whole months of my training life way ahead of time (I love having a plan), but left no room to adjust for minor injury or illness. I just had to guess on my own and see how I fared at the end. With my daily-updating coach, I saw a lot of improvement (particularly with my running), but had NO IDEA what I was going to get into on any given day. In addition, if he ever went on vacation or had a sick day, I would be out of a training plan (or receive it late).

Weekly updates are the middle ground that seems to have work best for me and many other coaches I admire. But it doesn’t work AT ALL if I don’t get your feedback! What do I mean by that? Here are some terms and concepts you need to know:

Provide the weights used, sets and reps completed

This seems obvious, but often gets skipped!
I will sometimes program AMRAP (as many reps as possible) sets, where I ask you to do 5+ reps with a given weight. There’s a big difference between hitting 6 reps vs 16 reps! I need to know that to adjust your weights for the following week.
I also frequently program rep ranges vs. an assigned number of reps (eg. Do 3 sets of 8-12 push-ups vs 3 sets of 10 push-ups). I want you to have a chance to push yourself towards that higher number, but know you still got in the required work even if you don’t. And it’s important for me to know if you did 3 sets of 8 (indicating the movement was difficult but achievable) or 3 sets of 12 (indicating it’s time to move up in difficulty)!
Sometimes I won’t provide a weight to use on certain assistance movements, leaving it up to you (with some guidance using the RPE scale, which I’ll touch on in a moment). If you just mark it as done, I can be missing some really valuable input. An example I often see: a client with a bench press max of 135lbs is assigned a Fatbell bench as an assistance movement. They end up using the 26lb Fatbells (so 52lbs total weight), and really struggle to do sets of 8, especially with their right arm. That indicates a huge opportunity of growth for that client, that would have been missed if they never let me know what weight they were using.
Finally, if I give you a very straightforward set and you just can’t get those reps in, that means I miscalculated or you need some extra recovery time. All of that can be adjusted for the following week, with the right feedback.

Tell me how hard it was!

It’s that simple! If I get no feedback about difficulty, I have to assume everything felt just fine. I’ll continue progressing your exercises and weights as though the previous workout was adequate. But if you really struggled with your deadlift on Week 3 without telling me, imagine how it’s going to feel in Week 6 when I’ve added more weight or increased your reps? It can be really demoralizing to miss lifts, and neither one of us wants that.
I use the Rate of Perceived Exertion scale to make it easy for clients to let me know how a movement felt. There are a variety of ways to explain this scale, but this is my preference for beginners (or those that are new to thinking about training in this way):
RPE 10: I almost died. This set was my absolute max on this day. Couldn’t have done another rep
RPE 9: This was extremely challenging. I could maybe have done one more rep, but my form may have been sloppy.
RPE 8: Very challenging but doable. The last few reps were difficult, but I could have done 1-2 more if I had to.
RPE 7: A comfortably difficult weight. I could definitely do 3 more reps.
RPE 6: Basically a warm-up
RPE 5 and below: Don’t matter. So easy.
This is the bread and butter of client feedback. If you’re doing a workout where everything is an RPE 9-10, you can imagine the following week we’re going to back off a little bit. If you’re doing an entire workout that’s an RPE 6, it looks like we need to ramp it up for you!

Videos, life, feelings
I always leave a section in my programs for general notes. I want to know what else is going on with you. Are you super stressed at work and can’t understand why training feels terrible? I can probably guess, and now know you may need a deload. For my female clients, your cycle matters. Are you knocked out with cramps for 5 days a month? You probably don’t want to max your squat at that time. Let me know and I’ll adjust for you.
Did you just LOVE deadlifting one day? I want to know that too! One of my favorite coaches always tells me to program “80% of what they need and 20% of what they want.” Knowing what you love and what you hate helps me create a program that you enjoy (and are therefore more likely to stick to).
Finally, VIDEO. I can’t be with you during every training session unfortunately. By recording your sets, I can provide a lot more information than going on RPE and comments alone. That’s where we catch your knee collapse in the deadlift and work out your weaknesses. It can also be useful to record yourself doing assistance movements that you’re unfamiliar with: I can let you know if you’re doing it totally right or very, very wrong. And you’ll only get better from there!

Conclusion? Give me as much information as possible after your training sessions. That means better training sessions in the future, that will help you reach your goals faster. It takes a little bit of extra time, but it’s worth it every time.

I’ll be continuing this series over the coming months, so stay tuned.
Next up: TRUST THE PROGRAM.

If you’ve been involved in sports for any extended period of time, chances are you’ve sustained some type of injury. Whether it be minor or major, most people will go through their share of bumps and bruises along the way. This past January, I suffered a substantial glute strain while preparing for an upcoming powerlifting meet. I was around 14 weeks out from the competition, so I knew I had a good amount of time to put some attention towards proper recovery before I resumed my planned training. Over the next few weeks, I focused on doing specific rehab work in order to get myself back into training. I was feeling better each week. I wasn’t perfect, but I knew I was at a good enough point where I could compete, or so I thought. Three weeks out from the meet, I tore my hamstring during what were my final heavy deadlifts of the prep. Needless to say, I was not able to fully compete in the meet.

After getting multiple opinions, I decided to take 8 weeks off from any lower body resistance training in order to let the damaged area completely heal. I focused on PT exercises, light stretching, dry needling, and other various recovery modalities. Once I was able to return to training, things felt better, but something still wasn’t right. I swallowed my pride, put my ego aside, and looked for some professional help. After setting up an evaluation with my good friend and Physical Therapist, Jared Caroff, we discovered the underlying causes of my injuries. My right ankle had become locked up from a sprain which I had suffered a few years back. I never took the steps that I should have in order to properly rehab it, so as it healed, it became “locked up.” When this happens, other surrounding areas become at risk for future injury. In this case, that area was the knee joint. So, in order to protect the knee, the body placed more stress on the much larger and stronger hip joint in order to protect the knee. This caused mobility issues at both my right ankle and right hip. My glute stopped firing and my hamstring just couldn’t carry the load on its own anymore.

Now that we knew exactly what was going on, it was time to address each area individually and then the system as a whole. The following is a list of stretches and exercises that Jared and I put together, and their importance towards my performance.

1. Ankle flossing: Restore movement by increasing ROM, decreasing inflammation, and promoting circulation in the area: Daily (5-7 minutes).
2. Banded ankle distraction: Increase ankle mobility by working through soft tissue and joint restriction: Daily (3-5 minutes).
3. Standing gastroc and soleus stretches: Promote increased ROM and elasticity in areas that were limited in activation: Daily (2-3 minutes)
4. Single leg kettlebell pass: Build strength in the ankle stabilizers and promote ankle stability: 3-4 times per week (2 sets x 10 each hand).
5. Standing and seated calf raise: Promote strength and stability throughout the newly established range of motion: 3-4 times per week (2 sets x 20 reps).
6. Banded hip distraction & “Worlds greatest stretch” : Improve hip and thoracic mobility and focus towards correcting hip impingement: Daily (3-5 minutes).
7. Banded lateral walks w/ high step emphasis: Glute activation, hip stability, and coordination: Daily (2 sets x 10 steps each direction).
8. Copenhagen side plank: Improve adductor strength as well as hip & knee stability: 2-3 times per week (2 sets x 20-30 seconds each).
9. 1 & 1.5 goblet squat: This movement is tying everything together. Focusing on the system properly performing as a whole and establishing the correct movement patterns: 3 times per week (4 sets of 5 reps).

Be sure to stop by and ask how this approach could help you reach your goals.

Mornings are sacred to me. Because I work long days and into the evenings, I don’t get a ton of time to decompress at night. I actually do most of my relaxing in the AM, before heading to work and to train. Fun fact: when UF first began, one of my requests was to work the opening shift. I function way better earlier than later. I didn’t get it (but stayed on anyway), and it ended up being a good thing for me.

We’ve talked about having routines in previous blogs, and I have my morning ritual fully hashed out:

Alarm goes off at 7:30am. I search for my sad dog. Snooze the alarm for 10 minutes of cuddle time. He takes it.

Out of bed and into the bathroom at 7:40. Regain my sight (aka contacts in), wash BB slobber off my face.

Start my coffee – French press always. Drink a glass of water with a little sea salt and lemon juice. Gotta rehydrate before I start guzzling caffeine.

Now that the weather is amazing, head out on the balcony with BB. I’m working through a meditation that lasts anywhere from 10-45 minutes as you build it (if you’re interested, I recently read Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself and it has been truly life-changing). Post-meditation, I start on my skincare (Vit C serum), my coffee, and a little reading (I’m re-reading and note-taking Ryan Holliday’s Ego is the Enemy currently). BB cuddles up with me. There’s always a candle going and a breeze and some plants. It’s heavenly.

By this time BB is fully awake and ready for his walk. We do a trip around the block, then he gets fed, then he goes back to sleep because he’s old. While he’s sleeping, I take 10 minutes to clean up my apartment. It’s a new habit I’m trying to build.

Notice no mention of my phone. I use my Amazon Echo for an alarm and keep my phone far away from me overnight. Only after doing some meditating and reading will I pick it up.

At this point, it’s time to eat. I’ve written about my low appetite struggles a lot recently and not much has changed. Getting something in me early in the day can sometimes help stoke the appetite fire, so I prioritize eating a delicious breakfast that’s full of both calories and nutrients. For me, it’s avocado toast all day. Every day. Seriously. I do have a special ingredient that I add, so read on:

Lindsey’s Special Avocado Toast

The What

• 2 thick slices of good bakery bread (pumpernickel shown here, but usually sourdough)
• 2 eggs
• 1 whole avocado
• 1 tsp horseradish (yes I mean that)
• Squirt of lemon or lime juice
• Avocado oil for frying eggs
• Salt, pepper
• Whatever kind of fruit I have, usually mixed berries

The How

1. Get the bread in the toaster oven.
2. Set a medium pan over medium heat; add your preferred amount of oil for frying the eggs.
3. Halve the avocado, dice it and scoop it out into a small mixing bowl. Add your horseradish, citrus juice, and salt and pepper to taste. Mash it up good. Set aside.
4. Clean and cut your fruit, add to a little bowl.
5. Fry your eggs, try to keep them separated. I do mine over pretty hard because it’s less messy. Cool to your desired level of doneness.
6. When your bread is toasty, plate it and cover it in your avocado mash. It’ll be a lot, this is good.
7. When the eggs are done, put one on each slice of toast.
8. Take to a comfy spot and enjoy with coffee!

The horseradish gives it a kick and helps cut through all the fattiness of the avocado and egg yolks. If you haven’t tried it, I would HIGHLY recommend, just be sure you’re using real horseradish (from the refrigerated section) and not a horseradish sauce.

I usually eat at my desk and get started on work. It’s nice to get emails and administrative things out of the way before getting to the gym.

After eating, it’s time to get ready to leave. I have a habit of doing my hair and makeup while watching home design and lifestyle videos on YouTube. I let myself indulge in it right before heading out.

Once I’m presentable, BB gets another trip outside, then I’m off!

Hope this inspires some of you to (1) get a morning routine together and/or (2) to try something weird in your breakfast!

Heat exposure is not a new discovery.  Its benefits of cleansing, recovery, and purification have been recognized for thousands of years and used by many cultures. For the purposes of this article and for familiarity’s sake, we’re going to refer to a specific type of heat exposure: sauna use. The sauna is technically short exposure to high heat that results in hyperthermia. And hyperthermia is just an increase in your body’s core temperature, so don’t be alarmed! The optimal temperature of a sauna is between 175 to 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Exposure time can range from 5-20 minutes.

People use saunas for a variety of reasons, but a few of the most common are: increasing blood flow to sore muscles/joints via blood vessel dilation and the delivery of nutrients, stress reduction/relaxation, and for deep sweating to purify, cleanse, and detox the body.

I wanted to write this for two reasons.

1. I am constantly engrossed in the many ways we can naturally recover better and potentially increase longevity.
2. I wanted to share my findings in this blog to hopefully give you more tools to add to your routine to aid in both internal and external gym health.

FOUR noteworthy benefits of sauna use:

Cardiovascular

With sauna use comes many heart health benefits. When sitting in such high temperatures, our body requires the heart to work harder. Physiologically, heart rate increases like it would during a moderate-to-high intensity bout of physical exercise. This in part is due to the rising need for oxygen and blood flow to the skin to aid in the production of sweat. On average, most people lose about 1.1lbs of sweat in the sauna. We are told exercise is good for our heart…but why? Exercise improves arterial compliance. Exercise can aid in blood pressure regulation because of the stretch and relaxation that we progressively overload on the walls of our heart and vessels, as well as improving the efficiency of the left ventricle of the heart, the main driver. Like exercise, the sauna induces these responses. This does not mean you can nix the idea of exercise and just sit in the heat. It does mean that this a great addition to exercise, to further improve longevity, and to help us better handle stress.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one driver of death. If we can prevent this through lifestyle and behavior changes (ie. exercise, nutrition, sauna exposure, etc.) then we are one step ahead. In a pilot trial, 20 subjects with diagnosed peripheral artery disease (where the arteries that supply the head and extremities decrease and weaken), were given 50 sauna sessions for 10 weeks. After 10 weeks, the subjects showed improvements in walking, blood flow to the lower extremities, and a reduction in pain levels. [1] This study is one of many that show significant improvements in cardiovascular health from sauna use.

*Note: always consult with a doctor if you have any medical condition before introducing your body to high heat exposure.

Toxin reduction

Most of us sweat in some capacity. But, many of us do not DEEP sweat. Throughout our daily endeavors, we absorb many toxins in the environment. These toxins are chemicals and naturally-occurring metallic elements known as heavy metals: lead, cadmium, nickel, copper, mercury, and zinc. Studies have measured heavy metal levels in blood, sweat, and urine. Sweat is shown to have higher levels of these toxic elements than the others. Deeply sweating has been shown to get rid of these harmful metals. Sweating has been used for centuries to release chemicals and toxins that we pick up from day to day. So…with that being said, hop in a sauna or find ways to deeply sweat!

Cognitive health:

Heat exposure has the potential to be very beneficial for both mental health and cognition. Heat has the propensity to increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein in the brain responsible for the production of new neurons. BDNF is found in parts of the brain such as the cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, and basal forebrain. For cognitive function, we need both the generation of new neurons as well as optimal blood flow, two things that the sauna has been shown to improve.

Two studies exposed subjects to 176 degrees Fahrenheit of sauna heat, both showed a significant increase in norepinephrine levels (hormone/neurotransmitter) as well as an increase in prolactin (the pituitary hormone responsible for myelin growth- faster brain signaling). [2][3] What does this mean? Better focus.

Lastly, let’s touch on mental health. Have you ever noticed when leaving a sauna, you feel at ease and euphoric? Sauna use releases beta-endorphins, which are a part of our body’s opioid system. These are the same feel-good endorphins we receive from exercise.

Physical activity

As mentioned above, the sauna increases blood vessel dilation as well as the release of endorphins, both needed post-training. Why? Blood vessel dilation is going to improve circulation, delivery of nutrients needed for muscle repair, and a speedy recovery. Have you ever experienced the feeling of “hitting a wall” near the end of your workout? This is because your glycogen stores within your muscles are depleted. Therefore, it’s important to replenish those store. Some of the nutrients we receive via blood are glucose, fatty acids, oxygen, and growth hormones.

Sauna use has been shown to increase both growth hormone and heat shock proteins. Two mechanisms in the body for increasing hypertrophy and minimizing the muscular damage following a workout. Not only is this cool news for muscle growth, changing our body composition, and speeding up recovery, but also for preventing muscular atrophy – a result of aging, immobilization, and disease.

Another great benefit is heat acclimatization. Sauna use helps our body adapt to heat exposure making exercise more tolerable in high heat environments.

So, to recap how sauna use can benefit us in the gym: sauna use can improve heart function, which means better oxygen delivery to our working muscles. The heat exposure helps us improve our thermoregulation. We get an increase in both endogenous growth hormone and heat shock proteins. Plus, sauna use can increase red blood cell production. Another great addition to improve our work capacity.

I hope with some of these findings, we not only consider introducing more heat exposure but also, remember how important it is to keep asking how we can improve our body on an entire spectrum and not just gym recovery. If you are not a habitual sauna user, the best way to start is to go in for short 5-10 increments. Take short breaks and listen to your body. Gradually increase the length of heat exposure over time and remember to ALWAYS hydrate!

References

1. Tei, Chuwa, Takuro Shinsato, Masaaki Miyata, Takashi Kihara, and Shuichi Hamasaki. Waon Therapy Improves Peripheral Arterial Disease Journal of the American College of Cardiology 50, no. 22 (November 2007): 2169-71. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2007.08.025.
2. Hannuksela, Minna L, and Samer Ellahham. “Benefits and risks of sauna bathing” The American Journal of Medicine 110, no. 2 (February 2001): 118-26. doi: 10.1016/s0002-9343(00)00671-9.
3. Laatikainen, T.,L. Salminen, A. Kohvakka, and J. Pettersson. “Response of plasma endorphins, prolactin and catecholamines in women to intense heat in a sauna” European Journal of Applied Physiology and Occupational Physiology 57, no. 1 (1988): 98-102. doi: 10.1007/bf00691246.

If you talk to any coach in the industry for long enough, they’ll tell you they face burn out in their own personal training from time to time.  As coaches, we want to gift our time, energy and attention to the positive changes that are taking place within our clients’ lives.  It’s not uncommon to give so much of yourself to your clients that there isn’t much leftover for your own endeavors.  Sometimes our own training gets set to the side.  My dedication to my clients is unwavering and I wish I could say the same about my training.  But here I am, and I’m accepting that it’s just a phase in my life right now. 

So to accommodate the burnout I’m feeling in my training, I switched my focus to full body training days.  This way, if I can only manage to fit in one or two sessions a week at least I’ll hit all the major body parts. I have three days per week programmed and lately I’d call it a great week if I get to all three. C’est la vie, I guess!

Below is day 1:

A1. Zercher Box Squats 3×6

A2. SL D-Ball Walking Lunge 3x one Turf Length per Leg

B1. Tempo RDL’s [3 sec ecc. 3 sec bottom pause 3 sec top pause] 3×8

B2. Ring Rows 3x 15

C1. Bench Press 3×5

C2. Eccentric Cable High Row 3×8

D1. Pause Leaning Lateral Raise 3×8

D2. Back Ext. Oblique Twist 3x 15

Let me start out by saying that yes, I realize this meal is seasonally inappropriate. I run cold for some reason so when it dropped down to the 50s Sunday evening, I took full advantage and made myself a stew.

I’ve been traveling a lot recently, so haven’t had a ton of time for meal prep. I have a few staples when I’m lazy that I’ll post on here at some point. This weekend I finally had a day to get caught up, so in this log I want to focus on the big piece of chuck I slow roasted.

I’ve been lucky enough to go in on a Butcher Box membership with a friend. It’s a monthly meat delivery service and I cannot recommend it enough! Every order has been full of delicious, ethically sourced meat, and it ends up being WAY more cost effective than what I was doing (going to the Giant Eagle in my neighborhood every other night). I’ve had chicken, pork, and beef from them and have loved every bite.

Since I was chilly and had this piece of chuck sitting in my freezer, I went all out and actually turned my oven on to roast it (and later some broccoli, which is my absolute FAVORITE roasted veggie – all you need for this is to toss that broccoli in a bunch of olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then roast for ~20 minutes at 375 deg. F).

For the stew, you’ll need:

A 2-2.5lb beef chuck roast
Avocado oil (or your favorite cooking oil)
5 carrots, cut into large chunks
1 yellow onion, halved
~3 cups of beef stock
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme (getting Christmas-y in here)
Salt and pepper

To make it:

Let your chuck roast come to room temperature, then pat dry and season all over with at least salt and pepper.
Preheat your oven to 275 deg. F.
Heat your oil of choice in a heavy bottomed pot that’s oven safe and has a lid for later.
Add the halved onion, brown on each side, then remove to a plate.
Add the carrots to the hot oil, browning for 1-2 minutes. Remove to plate.
Add more oil if needed, then sear your roast on both sides. Remove to plate.
Add ~ 1 cup of beef stock (or red wine if you’re fancy) to deglaze the pot. Really scrape all the good brown bits off the bottom. You won’t regret it.
Add the roast back to the pot, and then add your remaining beef stock. It should come about half way up the roast.
Add your carrots and onion, plus some more salt and pepper to taste, and the fresh herbs.
Cover and place in the oven. Roast for ~2.5 hours, depending on your oven.
Pull it out, let it rest for a bit, and enjoy!

We have a rice cooker at work, so I’m eating this on a bed of rice every day. Would also be fantastic with some rosemary and garlic roasted potatoes!

If you’re not weird and cold like me, maybe save this for the fall. It’ll still be good then!