IOL Strength and Conditioning

This simple device is a T-Handle. Dan John calls this bad boy a Hungarian Core Blaster, a name that obviously has a lot more panache than “t-handle.” Legend has it this device was the secret of the Hungarian hammer throwers’ success years ago. I like that name, but it is so flashy I think it may give people unrealistic expectations. They may be let down when they see the simple device to the left. It just can’t compete with the dozens of core gadgets on late night infomercials for flash and glitz, and to date lacks bikini clad miracle makeover endorsements.

But for results, I’ll stack the T-handle against anything you can make in five minutes for ten bucks. Nobody is let down by the effects of the swing, the exercise for which this tool is ideally suited.

If you are considering buying kettlebells, by all means make a t-handle and swing away. The swing is one of the most basic kettlebell movements. With a t-handle, you can decide what weight kettlebell will suit you.

Even if you aren’t interested in kettlebells, just about anyone can benefit from some swings. You can do swings Tabata style - eight sets of eight with ten seconds rest between sets - for a four minute, minimum cost, minimum footprint interval workout. You can do light swings as part of your warmup.
Directions for making a T-handle (for those of you who use directions) can be found in the IOL Wiki.

Trans fat, what is that? Most of us don’t really know; heck, we don’t even know how to spell it, we just know it’s bad. And now we know it’s to be banned in Manhattan restaurants. Well, why? And how are the chefs going to replace it? Let’s take a look.

Most of us don’t know what trans fats are because we tune out the instant we see the description. For some reason, reporters can’t tell the story without adding molecular blah blah blah. See what I mean? Tune out!

Here, I’ll tell you what trans fatty acids are: Think Crisco. There you have it, trans fat, a big white glob of it, and obviously bad for you. Easy!

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We took a look under the hood of the new DietFinder to determine the best diet with which to ring in the New Year, and now we need to figure out how to keep track of all the goodies soon to slide down the gullet.

In this diet analysis software and calorie logging suggestions thread, I opened with the pros of FitDay (both the free and the much faster $29 personal computer version), and some of my buds backed me up, while others offered more diet journal suggestions.

What I wanted to point out today is a new food journal site called The Daily Plate. A bit different than FitDay, the Daily Plate really drills down, presenting a plethora of fast food and restaurant items documented to help you pick out your Friday lunch spot.

Huh! Would you look at that? Dave’s favorite protein-style burger from In ‘N’ Out: Double/Double, lettuce wrapped, no bun, 520 calories. 351 of ‘em fat. Ouch.

What’s outstanding about this new site is what comes next: other choices from the same restaurant having less cholesterol, more protein, fewer calories, what happens when you add fries, what other diners have to say about the meal.

If you live or work in the city and don’t feel like brown-bagging it, an hour at this site will narrow your focus, making it easier to choose what you’ll be having for lunch the rest of the week. Forewarned is forearmed, so it’s said, and I believe it.

By the way, if you want to log your workouts, a free online solution is Gym Journal, very popular. Sticking with offline logging, here’s a $12 workout log that’ll last you a couple of years, tucks nicely in your gym bag end pocket.

Want a little peer pressure? Well, I’m sure you don’t actually *want* it, but since you know accountability works, here’s the spot in our forum that welcomes your new online training log.

 It’s been about five years since my own personal ‘Saul of Tarsus, knock me off my donkey’ epiphany. It was shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and I was fresh out of (1) excuses and (2) the hospital, after a mini stroke had slapped some (but not much) sense into this thick head of mine. I had thought somewhat seriously about getting with a plan to shed the weight I had been lugging around. The day was cool and a wind was pushing leaves before it as I drove past a gym. Some rain appeared on my windshield. The Pittsburgh radio station was doing pledge break and they got their tenth  pledge call and the guy on the radio put a song on.

 ’twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
“come in,” she said,
“i’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
I recognized the singer and the song as one of my favorites. I’d listened to it numerous times, but never quite heard it like I was hearing it now. It was like it was sent to me from another space and time. I found myself turning in to the parking lot of the gym. Now, when you’ve had a life changing event happen to you, there is a tendency to feel like some mundane thing has some special meaning to you. Sometimes you think of it and let it pass through your conciousness. Sometimes it sticks with you. This time it stuck. I parked the pickup and walked in to the gym. I listened to the sales manager’s pitch, took the tour of the gym and found myself feeling at home. Don, the manager, told me of the high you could get from the act of exerting yourself. I hadn’t felt that sort of high in some years. I remembered it and after some negotiating, I signed up for a three month trial. I felt the lure of the gym almost from the first day and soon found myself going daily and the pounds began to strip off my frame. I felt a warm feeling of fellowship with my compatriots at the gym and my rehab from the stroke made excellent progress.

I’ve suffered from manic depression for many years and the daily workouts served to flatten out the peaks and valleys for me. The feeling of desperation gave way to a feeling of control and I can only thank my workouts. I heard the song again tonight as I was leaving a rather hard workout.

“And if i pass this way again, you can rest assured
I’ll always do my best for her, on that i give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
“come in,” she said,
“i’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm.
“come in,” she said,
“i’ll give you shelter from the storm.”
 

The time I get to spend in my gym, where all is exactly as it seems and two hundred pounds is alway two hundred pounds is a gift that I will always treasure in a world of uncertainty.

You’re not exactly planning a complete dietary failure this month (or maybe you are), but chances are good you’ll scarf up a Christmas cookie, which may lead to a dive into that most-tempting box of Gram’s homemade Christmas candy. Creamy, luscious caramels, that’s how I remember it.

Only… ugh! The aftereffects!

The best thing about carb overload is how rotten you feel about an hour later, or, especially this time of year, that whole week between Christmas and New Year’s.

The upside of feeling so rotten? Desperation for a clean diet just in time for resolutions. Perfect!

How’d you like a trick way to choose the right diet? Here’s the hottest new thing you haven’t seen on CNN: DietFinder, an archive site of the top 50 diet plans… with a big twist: The reader uses a set of sliders to choose what’s personally important. From diet goals to food choices, each of the twelve slider settings instantly changes the diet list to upgrade the match. Pretty Darn Slick.

Once the top choice is selected, the diet synopsis is remarkable. Let’s take a look at the Zone diet as an example of the information available for a relatively mainstream, healthy diet.

• Description summary, leading to a full eight book-like pages of how-to details. Available for printing or to email.
• A nutritionist weighs in with a summary, followed by five more pages of thoughtful remarks. We can get an instant pop-up bio of the writer if we ask for it.
• Submitted reader ratings (more popular diets = more reviews, and vice versa), including top reasons to love or hate the diet
• Links to the diet’s main website, news reports and dieters’ blogs — submissions are thin because this new DietFinder site is only a month old, however as we know from sites like Epinion, Amazon and Wikipedia, people like to make suggestions to other readers. This section will flesh out nicely, although perhaps that’s a bad way to describe the upside of a diet website.

Why don’t you use this opportunity to scope out a nutrition program that’s right for your lifestyle? Planning January’s menu now might keep your hands out of a cookie jar in December.

In Will You Keep it Up? we saw how easy it is to test our home gym sticktoitiveness with a single kettlebell. Okay, let’s say you’re game. Now all you need is an example of a simple kettlebell workout.

Swings.

Wow, that’s pretty simple, alright.

Will it get boring? Maybe. Especially at first when your head tells you to do more, as the swing workout’s got your heart ramming through your chest and your lungs can’t gain any traction.

There’s not much to a swing workout if you’re putting in the time physically, but your head’s still wrapped around your work project — a common enough symptom with first-time home gym trainees. Kettlebell swings can be very taxing, each single rep at a time; the movement also lends itself to mindlessness, and it may take purposeful attention to excel rep by rep.

That’s what makes it such a good testing ground for a beginning home gym workout program. After all, we’re trying to find out if you’ll last at home training before you invest the money and space in a home gym.

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The biggest downside of switching from a commercial gym to a home gym? You can’t borrow your bud’s to give it a test run.

How are you going to discover if this home gym stuff is for you? Will you use it or hate it? If you’re not sure you’ll use your home gym equipment, you’ll be afraid to let your gym membership go, afraid to commit the money for workout equipment you won’t use. Heck, you won’t even want to clean out the garage.

Well. For sure you don’t want to clean the garage. What’s that got to do with anything?

Bill’s three-part series on setting up a home gym opened with his minimalist option, but I’d like to back that off further, all the way back to one single item: a kettlebell.

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Which work better, adjustable dumbbells or Power Blocks? How about one of the alternative hand weight systems, such as the Ironmaster adjustable dumbbells, Hoist locking dumbbells or the Nautilus/Bowflex quick-lock weights? These are questions that come up quickly when building a home gym; let’s review the possibilities, get some pros and cons so you can make the right decision for your new home gym.

Big alert upfront: Try before you buy.
More than just a grab-and-feel, you need to get underneath these things to discover which set will suit your hands, or if you’ll even feel comfortable with a pair of selectorized dumbbells overhead. Do your hands fit in the pocket and can you get them out quickly when you need to? The locking sections, are they tight enough to suit you, or is there a bit too much rattle? Can you snatch them overhead without banging up your knuckles, and when they hit the floor — carefully with but aggression — do they feel solid enough to handle the impact? These are questions that can only be answered by a full test, whether that’s in a local fitness store or driving upstate to an internet buddy’s garage gym for a trial.

The big draw: saving space in your home gym. A four-foot square yields a set of dumbbells that covers the range from five pounds to up to 125.

The secondary draw: easy switching between sets. Adding ten pounds to your next set involves a quick switch of the weight selector lock, as opposed to changing the weights on all four sides of the handles that make up a pair of dumbbells.

The major downside: the balance is different than that of regular dumbbells, and one design may suit you while another may not. If you don’t live in a big city, it can be tough to test the options.

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