cabecita de musculos

Well, Vale has now officially warned me not to be a muscle head. This after she thought the protein shakes I was drinking after workouts (incidentally, I've decided to move to chocolate milk: cheaper and evidently just as good in most respects) were steroids! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! GROSS! For the record, I am NOT a muscle head. What a negative label that is.

However, I do seem to get more interested in training every day. It'll be interesting to see how all this translates to frisbee when that starts up again in earnest. The St. Hatrick's Day tournament in Occoquan on 3/14 ought to be a good indicator. Speaking of which, I need to figure out how I'm getting down there.

Here are some training thoughts that I will now collect in one place:

1) Last night I took the beep test (see here for an explanation). I got 11 rounds and 3 beeps, which translates to a VO2 max (a measure of aerobic capacity) of about 51. That's above average for my age group but not very good. My new goal is to get to 13 rounds and 3 beeps, for a VO2 max of around 58. This will mean more dedication to interval training at least once a week. I found some really appropriate-looking workouts here.

2) I talked with Jean and Fred a little about diet when I saw them this past weekend because apparently Mom and Dad are telling people now that I'm on a health kick. I've reached a point with this interest now where I love talking about it because it's very interesting to me, but I realize that a lot of people aren't really that interested or don't care enough to change their current way of thinking. Take eggs, for example. There's a whole heck of a lot of evidence that eggs are very, very healthy and have little to no effect on the cholesterol levels in your blood. However, most people are stuck thinking that eggs raise your cholesterol. This is at best an exaggeration, but when it comes up, how hard should I push back? Do I tell people that they're flatly wrong? People don't like to hear that, I know I don't. Or going on a low-fat diet. I read somewhere yesterday a brilliant quote: "All diets are high-fat diets." To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn. This is simple math. The energy deficit - the rest of the fuel that your body needs to function that's now not coming from food - comes almost entirely from the fat that your body has stored. So if your body burns 2500 calories a day and you cut back to 2000 calories a day from food, fully one-fifth of your body's "diet" is from pure animal fat, even before you get to what's in your food! Your body - down to each individual cell - needs fat to survive and be healthy. Plus it tastes awesome. Don't cut it out! But then, when dieting comes up, how should I bring that up? It makes people feel awkward to find out that everything on TV is wrong. Jared might have lost a lot of weight on the Subway diet, but he's still flabby and out of shape. WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT TO BE HEALTHY?!?!?! I don't get it.

3) This week is an unloading week. Next week I will retest the things I tested in December with Jimmy: deadlift, front squat, and vertical jump. Not in that order. My numbers in December were: DL 275#, FS 215#, VJ 25". I'm hoping for 315/245/29. We measured overhead press, too, but I have worked on that approximately twice since; I'm so much more concerned with lower body strength that I've mostly stuck to bodyweight stuff for my upper body (other than DL, obviously). This (the testing next week) makes me nervous. How am I coming along in my goals? Is all this training actually making me stronger and more powerful? It's hard to make this stuff up as I go along. I'm learning a lot but when it comes down to it nothing beats having a coach who knows his or her shit. But that's expensive.

4) It's lunch time.