During the winter months I wrote up some research I had done into different carbohydrate sources, highlighting the need to select your sources carefully.   Part of this was a discussion of fructose, so I decided that it was time I pulled together some recent articles about fructose to help you make your own decision about the benefits and problems of fructose.

• Suspend your complaints for a moment.  Fructose is the same structure sugar as is found in high fructose corn syrup (‘HFCS’), although whether the levels of fructose found in a bowl of fresh fruit is as bad as in a standard “helping” of HFCS in a processed meal is not something I know the exact numbers for.  Having got that up front, NephroPal has outlined some studies which connected excessive fructose consumption with scarring of the kidneys.   I would imagine that excessive consumption is easier to do with HFCS, but that doesn’t mean that those of us with a taste for fresh fruit shouldn’t also be wary.
• Dr Briffa has written up a study looking at the possible cause of fatty liver in those where alcohol is not the obvious cause (a condition known as NASH – non-alcoholic steatohepatitis).  It seems that, in mice at least (yes, I know we are not mice), extreme fructose intake may be a cause (though not necessarily the only cause) of this condition.  Another strike against fructose.
• NephroPal finds and highlights some interesting news and studies, and the link for this point sends you to all sorts of interesting information.  Top of the list though was a study which has concluded that people who took in 74grams of fructose a day or more (about 2.5 sugary drinks, thanks to HFCS) had a 28% risk of increased blood pressure and a 77% higher risk of extreme high blood pressure.  Nutrition Horizon also wrote about this.
• Seasonality is, of course, a key element of the fructose debate.  In the wild it is pretty difficult to lay your hands on fructose outside the summer months so, if you subscribe to the primal theories, we potentially shouldn’t be consuming fructose in the winter months.  Mark Sisson has done a well-written and thorough article about this issue of fructose and seasonality which I recommend anyone reads.

So it seems from this that we need to be pretty careful about how much fructose we ingest.  Stripping out processed foods with their HFCS is a good start but it seems that there is also a strong argument to avoid fruits outside season while making the most of the summer berry opportunities.  So, on that note, I’m going to delve in the fridge a refill my bowl of strawberries which has run low while I’ve pulled this together.

Let me know if you see anything else of interest in relation to fructose – I’d love to know if there are some positives for fructose!

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: low carb diets
2. Blog-watch: pregnancy diet and exercise
3. Blog-watch: saturated fat

On the Saturday I finally admitted a temporary defeat and decided to completely re-write the training program from scratch.  I had two main reasons:

1. work-related things at the moment mean that it would be handy to have a bodyweight equipment-free workout that will be effective and which I can bring out whenever I need it – a completely new program like this needs a testing period of a few weeks to make sure it is effective and none of the exercises start to aggravate anything (eg. does it contain more push ups than my elbows can survive?); and
2. I couldn’t face my workouts any more.

A few weeks ago I started struggling to motivate myself to go into the gym and do my workouts.  I would do my first warm up set of squats and feel the enthusiasm drain out of me, or not even get as far as the gym before I felt my heart sink. 

I tried to fire up some fun by reintroducing Farmer’s Bars but that wasn’t enough.  I’ve been doing the same workout pattern, very successfully, for nearly five months and mentally I have just had enough of going into the gym and doing almost the same thing every week with some minor variations to assistance exercises.

On Saturday afternoon I was standing on the threshold of the gym, depressed at the thought of starting and wishing I was doing something else with my life.  It was time to change the program.

Losing the plot entirely

On Sunday I then tried to do day two of the exciting new workout.  There were brand new exercises and exercises I’d not done since 2009.  And there were pull ups.

The previous weekend I’d had a disappointing showing of 7×3 reps and 3×2 reps on my ten sets – at the time I had put this poor performance down to post holiday issues since I routinely lose a lot of lat strength while away on active holidays (a problem I need to solve).  On Sunday I set out to significantly improve yet the ten sets looked like 5×3, 1×2, 4×1 – a massive loss of strength on the previous week.

Needless to say I burst into tears, although in my defence I was suffering from PMT as well.

Is work to blame?

I am, unfortunately for my gym work, a conscientious employee.  I work hard, do my job and, if something goes wrong with the staffing on my projects, I’ll do whatever needs to be done to make sure that we still meet the deadlines.

Recently we’ve had a lot of junior staff unavailable due to training, holidays or secondments.  Suddenly a batch of urgent deadlines came up and there was nowhere for the work to go.  I don’t blame my employer for this – sometimes things just don’t work out the way you intended. 

No-one could anticipate that one project, originally with a 30 June deadline when three people were around, would have a hiatus with the deadline moving to 26 July and only one week’s notice when all staff were on holiday or sick.  No-one was to know that an annual recurring project, for which I’d diligently trained up two staff members, would come through a week late with only two days left to complete it – two days that coincided with one staff member being ill and the other having just gone on holiday. 

Getting the work-life balance wrong

Thanks to these sorts of issues, my last seven weeks have each been 50-55 hour work-weeks except for week three (holiday) and week five (ill for four days).  Once you take into account time to sleep, eat, travel and shower there isn’t much time left in the day.  On top of that, the stress levels mean that even in those few free moments my brain never really switches off. 

The impact on the rest of my life includes:

• Poor quality sleep, waking up frequently and unable to sleep for the full night;
• Missed workouts;
• Inability to recover from workouts;
• Lost enthusiasm to do anything outside work (including workouts);
• Apparent loss of strength in the gym;
• Mental exhaustion when faced with anything outside of normality or office work;
• Tension and knots in my shoulder, impairing my ability to do effective upper body workouts (as much from the hours spent sitting at my desk as from the stress);
• Cascading stress about everything else I’m not getting done at home (eg. missed/failed workouts, filthy kitchen, no clean clothes left to wear etc).

Fighting the guilt-factor

There are limited solutions to this issue since giving up work or changing to a completely stress-free job is a non-negotiable option right now.

I was amused to read a scenario from Poliquin.  In it he robustly pushes back on a woman who has missed workouts because she “doesn’t have time”.  In reality, most women feel these contradictory pressures and it can be difficult to find time for ourselves. 

I struggle to express to Chris the levels of guilt I feel when I no longer find time to wash clothes, iron shirts, wash the dishes, clean the kitchen and the myriad of other things I do.  The guilt I feel when he does some of them instead to take the pressure off me.

It’s ridiculous to feel guilty – we both know that if I don’t have some time to relax or do personal things like workouts or blog posts I end up in a downwards spiral of depression.  However, it’s a curse of guilt which seems to plague plenty of women.

Get it right!

For the conscientious woman (or man) who wants to remain in robust health, enjoy non-work activities and/or maintain progress in the gym we must consider our work-life balance.  There will be times, like those I’ve just been through, when the pressures are difficult to avoid but when that happens we ought to take action to resolve issues as quickly as possible and not let it become normality.

So far this week I’ve found two hours to try a taster session of Krav Maga and tonight I plan a long soak in the bath.  It’s a long climb back through recovery though and it’s a hard lesson that has impacted excessively on both my health and fitness during the learning process.

Related posts:

1. Increasing work capacity
2. Lessons learned: getting work capacity right!
3. Cortisol

Personally I don’t have any idea what the difference is between a casserole or stew (searching on the internet seems to suggest that there isn’t really a difference).  It doesn’t really matter.  The key is that it is slow-cooking meat in a gravy sauce with some vegetables which means that the whole meal is in the pot ready to serve it up and, because it’s slow-cooked, you can get away with some pretty cheap meat cuts.

I usually keep 500g bags of casseroling steak (cheap beef stewing meat chopped up into inch cubes) in the freezer, buying it when it is on special offer.  I was really glad to have this to hand when we were contacted by a couple of touring cyclists through the WarmShowers network (a mutual overnight hosting scheme for touring cyclists).  We wanted to welcome them with a decent dinner and concluded that dinner with touring cyclists needed to be a no-frills, simple, filling meal that we could sit round, having as much or as little as we wanted while exchanging stories over numerous glasses of wine.  What could be better than a large pot of beef casserole (and some rice to fill in the extra corners for our guests)?

It was the week that I was off work ill (so no wine for me).  Going to the shops for extra ingredients was not going to happen in a hurry and several of my usual casserole ingredients (like wholegrain mustard) had recently run out.  As a result I discovered, by accident, that you can make very simple casserole in a completely paleo way, without thickening agents and without the extra paraphernalia, and still find that it tastes good.

Beef casserole

Ingredients (serves 3-4, depending on hunger levels):
500ml beef stewing steak (casserole/chuck steak), chopped into 1 inch cubes
4 large onions, chopped
6 carrots, roughly chopped into inch wide slices or similar sized pieces
8-10 mushrooms, chopped into large pieces
1 handful fresh oregano, finely chopped
700ml beef stock
100g tomato puree

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C.
2. Put some oil in a large heavy-based flameproof casserole dish with a lid that can be used on the cooker top as well as in the oven.  If you don’t have a pan like this then prepare the casserole in a large wok or frying pan and then transfer it to the casserole dish at the end of step 4.
3. Wait until the oil is hot, almost on the verge of smoking, and add the meat.  Brown the meat quickly, turning it frequently.  For best results don’t let the meat start to stew in the pan, you are just trying to brown it.  If the oil isn’t hot enough the meat will start to stew before it is browned.
4. Once the meat is browned you have two options.  If you are cooking in the casserole dish add the onions to the meat and continue to cook, stirring frequently, to allow the onions to soften.  If you are cooking in a separate pan remove the browned meat from the pan (into the casserole dish) and then cook the onions separately.
5. When the onions are also cooked through add the mushrooms, carrots, oregano, beef stock and tomato puree to the pot (it is easiest to mix the tomato puree into the beef stock before pouring it over the meat and vegetables).  Put the lid on the pot and cook in the oven for 2 hours.
6. At the end of cooking time move the casserole back to the top of the cooker.  If you aren’t using a casserole dish that can be used on the cooker top, pour the sauce off the meat into a separate pan (it doesn’t matter if the odd bit of veg or meat ends up in the pan too).
7. Put the casserole (or pan with sauce) over a high heat and boil vigorously for about 20 minutes (long enough to cook some rice if you have non-paleo friends joining you for dinner).  If you are doing this with the whole casserole then stir it round every 5 minutes or so to make sure that none of it burns onto the bottom.  Over time the sauce will start to reduce and thicken.  Keep an eye on it and stop reducing the sauce when it is the consistency that you want – a good casserole gravy shouldn’t be too thick and gloopy but ultimately you can have it however you like it.  It’s your casserole!

I tend to serve it up by putting the casserole pot in the middle of the table with a big ladle in it to serve.  It means people can help themselves to as much or as little as they want.  It’s good with either green veg or a green salad on the side.  Whatever takes your fancy really!

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: sausage casserole
2. Paleo recipes: spicy beef bolognese
3. Paleo recipes: beef burgers

I’m recording my progress in this series: powerlifting progress.  It is serving as a journal and makes me a bit more accountable to my goals. 

This week

A good week for quality of workouts, not such a good week for getting into the gym in the first place.  I’ve had a really busy week at work – it seems that nearly everyone is on holiday or sick with the same illness that Chris and I had a few weeks ago – so I’ve been doing some 15 hour days in the office which doesn’t really leave enough time for a productive workout.  However, there was still a (very) little progress to be reported.

Strongman events

I must confess that my strongman workout was done the day after a hen party and I was still suffering from a slight hangover when I started.  Alcohol and I don’t mix very well so I wasn’t expecting miracles that day.

I repeated 60kg.  Partly because the week before was also a tough week at work and partly because it had been raining all weekend so the expectation was that the sandbag would have soaked up an extra kilo or two of water (and partly because of the hangover).  However, I found 60kg much easier than the week before which was pleasing so next week I will have to bite the bullet and go through the fiasco of unknotting the string which holds the bag closed and adding a 2.5kg plate.

I also kept the Farmers Walk weight the same since I’d missed a few laps of the patio the week before.  I didn’t improve much on the previous week, with only an extra half lap to show for my efforts.  However, I previously had attempted my pull ups after my farmers walks and this week I did them as the first exercise of the workout.  As a result, my grip was already a bit fried so I was pleased to see any improvement.

Bench

Action plan

• Maintain – technique
• Develop – lat and shoulder strength

 Progress this week

32kg is still flummoxing me on my bench press.  Having got through it last time I was disappointed to get an extra rep out on my fifth set but then to fail on the rest of the workout, thus taking me from 4×4, 1×3,1×1, 3×3, 1×2 last week to 5×4, 1×1 this week.  I think part of my problem lies with having moved this down in the workout to exercise three and I think I’m also seeing slower gains because I now only bench once a week instead of twice.  However, I’ll keep going for a couple more weeks to check this wasn’t just an anomaly.

I did finally get a full ten sets of pull ups out, although it was a mix of sets of three and two reps, however experience tells me that once I get to that point I can quickly get back to the ten sets of  four and three reps which represent my PB.  It feels a bit like wading through treacle on my pull up progress, but given my starting point of nothing at all, I should really be quite pleased, and my lats certainly felt this workout.

Squat

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

Only time for one squat workout this week but I put it up to 58kg and got eight of my ten sets of three reps out (before dropping to pairs).  This represents a tick in the box and the weight will go up again next week.  I certainly seem to have finally got through the pain of the extra depth.

I’m also planning on swapping my Good Mornings back to RDLs for a few weeks, starting with next week, to give my hamstrings, hip mobility and lower back something different for a change.  I haven’t done them for about six months so I’m looking forward to how they will go.

Deadlift

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

As explained last week, I’ve stopped doing these on a weekly basis.  Instead I’m trying out following the advice of the old-time strongmen and powerlifters, as highlighted on the Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban site. 

This week was a final run on Good Mornings and T-Bar Rows with the intention of swapping to RDLs and Bent Over Rows next week.  I’ll keep you posted on progress with these.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-two
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-three
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty

• Years ago in our evolutionary past women would have wanted to find the strongest males to mate with (therefore ensuring robust and strong offspring).  But how could women work out who was strongest?  It seems that how strong we are can be assessed from our voices.  Fascinating!
• I keep seeing things about no-shampoo experiments.  I’d love to try them since I have a terrible time with my hair when I’m away on week-long expeditions and its thinness makes it difficult to handle for smart events.  Unfortunately the nature of my job means that I can’t find the opportunity to work my way through the period when it could well look really unpleasant but still, somewhere in the back of my mind, I read articles about a shampoo-free life (like the latest one from Mark Sisson) and wonder if I could maybe find a chance to try it one day.
• A great article from Bret Contreras and Keats Snideman this week with videos and technical information about doing screening and assessment.  While this is principally aimed at screening and assessing other people there is no reason why, with a little help from a friend, you can use it to assess yourself too.
• Have you heard of meatza?  Meatza is pizza made with a minced beef base, almost like a slice of meatloaf with pizza toppings.  I can’t say I’ve tried it yet, despite being told that it is really good.  However, I was interested to see Richard Nikoley posting up a video about a restaurant in France that is embracing Paleo eating and serves up meatza which, I have to admit, looks absolutely fantastic.
• I have been on a quest for two years now for a pair of hot pants.  I reckon I’ve got legs I could be proud of now.  My problem is that the UK shops seem to assume that anyone with a waist as small as mine also has stick-like legs, so I can either have the legs of the hot pants cutting into me and making me look like I have tree-trunk legs, or I can have something that fits my legs but gapes around my waist so that people can see down my hot pants.  I’d concluded that the answer may be to buy a pair of jeans form a charity shop that are two size too big, cut the legs off and then spend a weekend adjusting the waist and hip fitting, however I’m wondering if these merino hot pants might be the answer instead.
• I really enjoyed reading the top ten reasons why men and women over 30 should compete in bodybuilding.  There’s a few duff reasons in there, but some of the logic is really sound and it’s something worth passing on to friends and co-workers who say they aren’t interested but who you think would actually buy into these reasons.
• It’s been a while since I wrote about cholesterol.  I was aware that the amount of cholesterol in the blood was regulated by the body but I was interested to learn that some of this regulation is done by the brain.
• This week’s pussycat picture features a slightly larger cat than usual.  Chris posted this series of photos up on his blog last week and I loved it so much I just had to share it with everyone else this week.
• I got a great laugh reading the abstract of a recent study which found that men are perfectly able to implement key dietary messages when going onto a weight-loss program as long as they don’t involve eating more vegetables or reducing alcohol.
• Everyone at work seems to get excited about their Wii.  They come into work raving about how they spent the previous evening “bowling” or “playing tennis” in their front room.  I’ve been a bit scathing about these things, but then I wonder whether, actually, a bit of physically interactive gaming is actually a good thing.  At least they are moving about rather than sitting about on the sofa all evening.  Son of Grok seemed to reach the same conclusion in an article that was posted up a few weeks ago.
• I am fairly proud of the definition in my back, however I know I’ve got a long way to go in improving my shoulder packing.  The nice thing about these articles on shoulder packing is the excellent accompanying videos of the Prone Y (a picture or video can provide better explanation than pages of words)  I particularly like the fact that it’s a woman in the videos.  It provides a great example of the beautiful way definition in the back can enhance a woman’s figure.

 Tabitha Klausen is a relatively new IFBB Figure (Bikini) Pro.  I found this video interview where she talks about how she got into Bikini (while we get to watch her upper body workout) really interesting.  To see more videos about her, try following this link.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJvZ-0lfBK8

Related posts:

1. Great links for the weekend!
2. Great links for the weekend!
3. Great links for the weekend!

I'd like to still be doing this when I'm 90!

Some time ago I did a blog-watch about longevity and this is a brief update with a few recent articles, thoughts and findings about how to achieve this.

• Sirt1 is a protein which is one of the mechanisms by which calorie restriction prolongs life in yeast and worms.  NephroPal has pulled up some studies looking at this protein and summarised them in the context of the evolutionary “Summer” and “Winter” modes.  It’s well worth a read and the conclusion I drew from it was that we should be looking at trying to follow a more seasonal diet and fasting/non-fasting pattern to achieve longevity.
• Looking a bit more at intermittent fasting and longevity, the Inhuman Experiment blog has done a summary/comparison of various studies looking at the issue of intermittent fasting and longevity which is well worth scanning through.
• There was a slightly depressing study highlighted by Chris on Conditioning Research suggesting that sarcopenia (loss of muscle as you age) is not just caused by older people being less active, but is potentially down to metabolic changes and perhaps isn’t as controllable as previously thought.  As Chris points out, the study was based on people undertaking endurance training and it’s worth considering people like Clarence Bass when looking at how resistance training fits in with this.
• It’s worth reading the review of BioMarkers, written up by Chris at The Garage Gym Online (and the guy I share my life with, before anyone accuses me of not revealing related interests).  Biomarkers is about the signals for aging and how to reduce or prevent these and is therefore an important read for anyone who is concerned about aging and ensuring visual and physical longevity.
• Finally, I got a good laugh out of the graph shared by Brad Pilon on his blog.  This seemed to suggest that, if you start out age 20 on all the things they suggest, you could add 60-80 years to your lifespan.  Since I come from a family of reasonably long-lifers (at least they’ve certainly all made it to at least their late eighties on my mother’s side) this implies that I could live to 160?  I think not!

For anyone interested in longevity and long-term health and well-being I hope these are helpful for you.  If you find other articles on this topic please let me know – I’m always glad to hear more ideas on how to achieve my life ambition.

Related posts:

1. Blog-watch: longevity
2. Blog-watch: exercise for mental health and brain development
3. Blog-watch: protein

I was starting to think about changing my workout and putting a few new exercises in recently.  As a result I had to dig back through my training records which reminded me about the importance of keeping them. 

My lastest records sheet

What to record

To make my records useful to me I find that each time I go into the gym I need to record all of the following things from my workout:

• the date (obviously)
• exercises done
• order of the exercises (generally you’ll perform better if it’s the first exercise of the workout than if it’s at the end)
• weight used
• set and rep combination
• rest period/timing for each set.

Some people also record their bodyweight.  While this can have a significant impact on certain exercises, especially bodyweight exercises, I don’t tend to see this as a necessity.

Choose your format

I started out with a cute little notebook for my records but quickly became frustrated with endlessly flipping pages looking for things. 

Next, I tried keeping records on a “Training Log” on Facebook, but rapidly became disillusioned with the difficulty of trying to quickly glance back over earlier workouts.

For a while, Chris maintained my records on his computer using a complex spreadsheet that he had built but we quickly fell into disarray – Chris’s computer wasn’t always present when I wanted to start a workout, when it was I sometimes had to wait to boot it up first, and I was reliant on Chris to maintain the spreadsheet.

In the end I have shunned technology and settled on using sheets of paper. 

When I start a new program I usually start a new sheet of paper, recording the data in the most sensible way for that program.  When I did three very different workouts each week, I put the three workouts on different parts of the paper and completed a line in the relevant section after a workout.  For a while I recorded each new workout on a separate small square of paper.  At the moment I have a series of workouts which all have the same four-exercise structure so I maintain a four-column sheet with a new line for each workout.

There’s no rule for how to record your numbers and ignore anyone who tries to tell you that there is only one way to keep them.  Find what works for you. 

Benefits of keeping training records

A few things instantly sprang to mind when I started thinking about the benefits I’ve had from keeping detailed training records.  In case you’re not already a dedicated record-keeper, try considering some of the things below and see if you are convinced enough to make record-keeping a new habit.

• Getting consistent progress each week:  It may seem obvious, but are you really going to remember the weight, sets, reps and rest period scheme of every workout last week when you walk into the gym tomorrow?  Sometimes you might, but can you guarantee it?  If you want to consistently progress then you need to know what you did last time in order to put up whichever element you want to increase (reps, sets or weight) without risk of overshooting yourself or repeating a workout and missing out on potential progress.
• Being able to get instant benefits from changing your program:  Unless you select your exercises from a small pool and are always doing all the exercises in your repertoire, there will be times when you want to incorporate an exercise back into the program that you haven’t done for some time.  In my case, I started doing Good Mornings a couple of months ago after an eight month break from them.  If you don’t have any records to look back on how do you know what weight to pick for that first workout?  At least with a record you can see what you were doing before, what weight you were using on other exercises at the time and shift the weight up or down a bit depending on how other contemporaneous exercises compare.  It is likely that you’ll set the first weight fairly well which should mean you get some training benefits from the very first workout.
• Making you feel better when things are bad:  We all go through those times when things get tough in the gym.  You don’t feel like you are progressing or you are convinced that you were lifting a heavier weight ten months ago when the exercise was in your training program before.  Records can stop you beating yourself up over mythical failures.  The number of times I’ve been convinced that I was squatting or deadlifting something heavier several months earlier and, on checking the records, I find that there was a crucial difference.  Perhaps I was doing doubles and now I’m doing triples or maybe the rest period was twice as long before.  Sometimes I really have just forgotten and I’m lifting a PB.
• You can celebrate the PBs:  While I’m on the subject of PBs, records can help you be certain that you’ve smashed the record.
• Gaining a sense of perspective:  I sometimes get frustrated with my progress.  When that happens I can do one of two things.  Option one is to rant, rave and cry about what a failure I am.  Not a productive solution, although it still happens – see the dark, diagonal line near the top of the page in the photo where my pen tore through the paper.  I was angry and frustrated to not even be able to do my first exercise, so records can tell interesting histories too.  Option two is to get out my old records and scan over them, finding similar exercise schemes from a year or two ago and realising just how far I’ve come since then.

Do you find any other benefits in record-keeping?  Do you keep them meticulously or sometimes forget to write down what you did?  Do you have other ways to maintain records?  If so, I’d love to hear your ideas!

Related posts:

1. Lessons learned: getting work capacity right!
2. Lessons learned: training outside the box
3. Lessons learned: workouts to suit your body

The recipe below is made with lean beef mince, because that’s what I tend to have to hand.  However, I heard on a radio cookery show (how exciting are my drives to work and back…?) several months ago that the burger holds together better if you cut this half and half with minced fattier cuts.  Apparently the meat fat helps act as a binding agent.  This isn’t something I’ve tried.  The latest batch of burgers that I made seemed to hold together well enough, although they were a fraction dry – I suspect that a little more fat in the meat may have given them a slightly juicier texture.

Paleo beef burgers

Ingredients (makes about 7 burgers):
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon dried chilli seeds
500g lean beef mince
2 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard
1 large egg

Directions:

1. Put some oil in a pan, add the chilli seeds and heat so that the flavour of the chilli infuses into the oil.
2. Add the onion and garlic to the pan and gently fry over a medium heat until the onion is soft, keeping it moving so that it doesn’t burn.
3. Meanwhile put the mince, mustard and egg into a bowl.  Once the onion is ready add this to the bowl and then mix it all together thoroughly with your fingers.
4. Take handfuls of the mince mixture and form these into patties that are about the size of the palm of your hand (unless you are hulking beast of a lifter in which case aim for something that is about 3 inches in diameter) and about three-quarters of an inch thick.  Press them down slightly in the centre so that the burgers are slightly thinner in the middle than at the edge to ensure more even cooking.
5. Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a frying pan, turn the heat down a little so that the burgers have time to cook through before they go black on the outside (I prefer to fry homemade burgers to ensure I can rescue them if they start to fall apart – usually I would grill burgers and this, along with putting on a BBQ rack is still ok with these burgers, just be wary that if the mix is too moist then you might find that the burgers ends up in pieces in the fire!).  Fry for a couple of minutes on each side, varying cooking time depending on how rare or well-done you like your burgers (note that if you are doing this in a grill or on a BBQ they’ll need a little longer).

Variations on a theme…

Once you’ve mastered making beef burgers you can do anything you like with them. 

For example, you don’t have to form the mix into burger patties.  As an alternative, form it into a ball with a 1 inch diameter and fry these as for the burgers, noting that it takes a little less time for these to cook through.  You’ve now got the perfect meatball!

My preference is to put wholegrain mustard into the mix, as shown above, but you can actually add any flavours you like, as long as the mix remains at the right consistency.  Some suggestions for alternatives to the wholegrain mustard include:

• Fresh chopped herbs
• Cayenne pepper (chilli powder) and some finely chopped chilli for a bit of spice
• Finely chopped apricot or plum for a fruity treat
• A favourite treat of mine is to leave them plain except for adding a splash of port wine (though with this last one you need to take care not to make the mix too wet otherwise you’ll end up with a pile of tasty mince again, instead of a burger). 

Let your imagination go wild!

Related posts:

1. Paleo recipes: spicy beef bolognese
2. Paleo recipes: beef curry
3. Paleo recipes: beef chilli

I’m recording my progress in this series: powerlifting progress.  It is serving as a journal and makes me a bit more accountable to my goals. 

This week

I’m back on the band-wagon now.  Many thanks to everyone who boosted me up again, sending me positive comments and emails after the previous week’s depressing episode.  It made a real difference with this week’s workouts.

Strongman events

Having failed to manage to pick up the sandbag last week, I got it on the first try this week and successfully completed my 10 carries.  That’s 60kg re-achieved so I can now return to the weight I finished on before I went on holiday – 62.5kg.  Interestingly, it felt much easier than before I went away (I’d been struggling since I put in a new bag of sand in week twenty-three which made the sack fatter).

Chris spotted that I was struggling to get my left glute/hip as low as the right side and that my left arm wasn’t staying locked back (so that I started to lose my hold on the bag towards the ends of some laps).  This latter issue points to a potential weakness in my back muscles in the left side or an excessive tightness in the pec muscles on that side (they’re quite knotted at the moment), so there’s some soft tissue work and some one-arm work to be done there.

I also put some farmer’s walks back in and was pleased to find that I could complete nearly all my reps with 48kg which was only a fraction less than the weight I finished on last time I did this.  However, the wide grip handles were an interesting reminder about grip again!

Back to the fat-grip farmer's walks again

Bench

Action plan

• Maintain – technique
• Develop – lat and shoulder strength

 Progress this week

I learned my lesson last week and dropped the weight some more to 32kg.  I still didn’t complete all of my repetitions – trying for ten sets of four reps I instead pushed out 4×4, 1×3,1×1 (I hit the pins on the way back down and it put me out for the rest of the set), 3×3, 1×2.  There’s some work to be done, but I’m going to hold at that weight and the strong burn in my triceps at the end of the session suggested that I’ve hopefully got some of my strength back and the next workout should be an improvement.

I’ve been doing T-Bar rows and pulls ups for lat strength.  The rows were fine but the pull ups were a total failure.  I forced out a set of two reps and then decided to leave it for this week, which I know isn’t the right attitude, but my grip was sore from farmer’s walks.  I need to work out why I lose so much pull up strength whenever I go on holiday.  I dropped down to forcing out ten sets of two reps then too.

Squat

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

The new depth has taken me a week to master with two squat workouts, but I finally completed my starting weight of 55kg.  Thankfully that means I can start putting the weight up and hopefully I can rapidly put the weight back up at this new weight.

Meanwhile glute bridges using DC-style training as a finisher continue to build up my glute strength.

Deadlift

Action plan

• Maintain – leg strength and ab strength
• Develop – hip mobility and lower back strength

Progress this week

I’ve stopped doing these on a weekly basis.  Instead I’m trying out following the advice of the old-time strongmen and powerlifters, as highlighted on the Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban site.  

Obviously I’m doing rows, pulls ups and farmers walks which all work and develop my upper back strength.  To target the lower back muscles I’m doing Good Mornings twice a week, although I’ve dropped these from ten sets of four reps to three sets of five reps so that I can work with heavier weights.  On Good Mornings I got to 60kg this week but I’d like to hold that weight for my first workout next week since I’m suspicious that I’m dropping my knees too much.

Related posts:

1. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-nine
2. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty-two
3. Powerlifting progress 2010: week twenty

A mixed bunch of links this week though, sadly, nearly all serious and interesting with limited comedy.  To make up for it, I’ve included a slightly comedic video at the end instead.

• I absolutely loved this testimonial sent to Robb Wolf by someone who decided to try training for, and completing, an ultra-endurance event using the paleo diet principles without having previously done an event like this.  I’ve been thinking about trying an IronMan event in a few years time (despite not being a runner) and this has definitely made the idea stick a little harder.
• Eric Cressey is getting married this year.  I really liked his idea of having a wedding list of gym equipment.  Why not?
• It appears that scientists have come up with a new formula to calculate the max heart rate for female athletes and it is different to the one used to calculate the max rate for men.  It doesn’t give hugely different results, but different enough to potentially make a difference to those crucial training ranges for women who train at sports like running and cycling where a mix of different intensity work is done based on keeping your heart rate in certain percentage brackets.
• Grip strength is something we should make sure we don’t neglect.  Jason Ferruggia did a great article about why we should make sure we work on our grip strength.
• I recently got promoted at work.  As a celebration present to myself I thought about finally getting pairs of Vibram Five-Fingers for both me and Chris since I’ve been longing to do our local 5 mile walk barefoot but don’t fancy the gravel and wood sections without anything on the soles of my feet.  It was therefore really interesting to read two articles by Richard Nikoley who has other “non-shoe” preferences and hasn’t entirely got on with Vibrams.  This is the first set of comments I’ve seen that have dared to suggest that Vibrams aren’t “amazing” and I’ll be looking into Soft Star RunAmocs as a possible alternative.  Richard has also done a video about them.  Have you come across Soft Star RunAmocs?  Do you have views either way?
• I absolutely loved reading an article which suggests that women in their late thirties and early forties have higher sex drives than younger women.  So there’s nothing to fear about your thirties.  Or forties.
• Do you suffer from poor eyesight.  Research suggests that poor eyesight can be improved with good nutrition (or at least, reduced sugar in the diet).  This isn’t entirely surprising, but it’s nice to see it written down somewhere.  However, I think that Chris on Zen Fitness has focussed too much on the nutrition aspect in his article.  My eyesight was dreadful when I lived in London and I found that it improved by a dioptre in each eye within months of leaving my London lifestyle.  I was eating the same things but my stress had dropped through the floor compared to before.  My optician explained that stress can severely impact on eyesight, so perhaps it’s the combination of increased stress that we put young people under and their poor diets that are resulting in the vision problems we find in today’s society.
• The issue of airbrushing models has featured on my blog today so I wanted to flag up the news that they are doing something about it, making magazines and newspapers include a disclaimer warning readers that the image has been airbrushed where this has happened.  Only in Australia though.  Let’s hope other countries follow their lead.
• Tony Gentilcore previously interviewed Bret Contreras.  Now Bret has interviewed Tony.  Well, actually it was a few weeks ago but this interview includes some fantastic insight into Tony as well as an awesome clip of him achieving a massive PR deadlift a few months ago.  Good going Tony!
• Finally, for all the heart-broken out there, it seems that we can be addicted to romantic rejection and that returning time and again to the person who dumped us is potentially hard-wired into our psyche.  Oh dear!

I’ve heard of rock climbers who do mid-difficulty routes (harder than I choose to do on a standard day in the climbing centre at the moment) with no hands, relying purely on balance, leg strength and some judicious use of shoulders and elbows on flat surfaces to stabilise them on the most complex moves, but a 275kg squat with no hands?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1giQN1GoesY

I promised you a non-serious video and here it is.  A Star Wars toy that thinks it’s a dog:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CVYOCMpJRY

Related posts:

1. Great links for the weekend!
2. Great links for the weekend!
3. Great links for the weekend!