It's time for another live Q&A here at EricCressey.com! To get your questions answered, just post your inquiry in the comments section and I'll approve it and then reply.
My only rule is that your question must be limited to five sentences or less. I'll answer the first 25 that are posted, so please don't bother posting questions if you come to this post days, weeks, or months after it was originally posted.
With that said, head on down to the comments section below and ask away!
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Check out this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:
9 Hardgainer Training Myths: Part 1 and Part 2 - I thought this two-part series from Jason Ferruggia was excellent. It's definitely something anyone who claims they "can't put on size" should read.
Round Back Deadlifts - This was an EPIC blog post from Mike Robertson. Of particular interest to me was his commentary on getting your breath TWICE in an ideal deadlifting set-up. This is something I've always done - once standing, and once in the bottom position - and I suspect it's had something to do with my deadlifting success over the years. Coincidentally, I pulled heavier earlier today and you can pick up on the two points at which I set my breath before the first rep: the 10-11 second mark and the 12-13 second mark.
As an aside, you can tell I was strongly considering taking this for a third rep. I had it in me, but decided not to be stupid today. I guess I'm getting wiser in my old age.
How to Eliminate Distractions from Your Strength and Conditioning Program - I wrote this post up last summer, and was reminded of it during a conversation I had with one of our adult clients. If you're looking for strategies to improve your exercise adherence and the quality of your training, this post is a must-read for you.
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Here's this week's list of strategies to get your nutrition and strength and conditioning programs headed in the right direction. This is a collaborative effort between Greg Robins and me.
1. Add amplitude to your conditioning.
Let's face it: jogging on the treadmill and riding the elliptical or recumbent bike is about as fun as watching paint dry. While an exercise causing boredom doesn't mandate that it be thrown by the wayside immediately, it does become concerning with this exercise modality doesn't broaden the amplitude - or range of motion - that you encounter in your daily life. Moving better is about improving mobility, which is defined as one's ability to reach a certain posture or position. For some folks, this means actually lengthening short tissues or reducing tension in overly stiff tissues, while for others, it's about establishing stability in the range of motion that one already possesses. Unfortunately, while you're burn some calories on these cardio machines, you aren't going to do much to improve your mobility.
The solution is to implement variety in your conditioning, whether it means taking a bunch of mobility exercises and doing them right after another, or integrating several strength training exercises with lighter loads. Step-ups, sled pushing/dragging, side shuffles, lateral lunges are all ways to get your hips moving in ways they normally don't.
In the upper body, innovative rowing and push-up variations can keep things fun while improving your movement quality.
The next time you're planning to do some interval training on the bike, try substituting some wider-amplitude movements and see how you like it.
2. Get your Vitamin D right.
I've seen studies that have shown great benefits from getting vitamin D levels up to normal, but to my knowledge, those effects were most observed with respect to body composition, hormonal levels, and tissue quality. Interestingly, I just came across this study that showed a significant improvement in power production over four weeks in the vitamin D supplementation group, as compared to the controls. These results are tough to interpret, as the subjects were overweight/obese adults; ideally, we'd study trained athletes with smaller windows of adaptation ahead of them to see just how beneficial vitamin D supplementation is on performance. However, it certainly makes sense that if we're improving body composition, endocrine status, and tissue quality, folks are going to get more out of their training and make faster progress.
Vitamin D is one of very few supplements that I view as "must-haves' for the majority of the population. I'd pair it up with a good fish oil and greens supplement to cover one's nutritional foundation. This is one reason why I'm a big fan of the Athletic Greens Trinity Stack; you can a high quality version of all three in one place.
3. Plan out regressions and progressions.
People like to be good at things. This is especially the case when they are surrounded by a bunch of other people. In the case of group exercise, your attendees are going to have a much better time, get better results, and stay safer if they are performing movements correctly. Group settings aren't ideal from a coaching standpoint, though, as you can't spend as much individualized time coaching technique. Therefore, exercise selection becomes paramount to these classes' success. In other words, you need to have both progressions and regressions in your exercise library.
A common flaw in group classes is that each week, there are 15 new exercise variations on the agenda. The week before, it was 15 other ones, and the following week, it will be 15 more. I know, I know; people want you to "keep it fresh." In my mind, by changing the exercises so often you are taking the easy way out.
Instead, have people become incredible at the basics. Have them squat, swing, push up, row - all basic movements. From there, set up progressions and regressions. This is much easier to do when you keep the original exercises basic.
Here are a few examples:
TRX Supported Squat > Counter Balanced Squat To Box > Goblet Squat > Double KB Front Squat > Offset KB Front Squat
Hands-Elevated Push-up > TRX Chest Press > Push-up > Feet Elevated Push-up > Push-up vs. Band
This is mostly for teaching purposes, as an example. The goblet squat is accessible to most people, and it falls in the middle, with two levels of regression and progression built in.
I'm a big fan of more work up front and easy sailing there out. You might need to take some time to develop your class program, but it will make for a better product and better results thereafter.
4. Use leftover vegetables in your omelet.
I don't know about you, but leftover vegetables never taste quite as good as they do when they've just been cooked. They're cold, and often soggy to the point that even heating them up in the microwave doesn't really make them sound appetizing. Rather than throw them out and skip on your veggies for a meal, try adding them to your omelet the following morning, as the other ingredients - eggs, spices, oils, cheese (if that's your thing), salsa, and ketchup - can help to liven up their taste. I've done this with previously cooked asparagus, broccoli, peppers, onions, spinach, kale, mushrooms, cauliflower, green beans, and tomatoes. Some vegetables - squash and turnip, for instance - don't have the right consistency to make for a good omelet ingredient, though, so experiment carefully!
5. Learn to stand correctly before you even try to train correctly.
Many people think moving well is all about picking the right corrective exercises to get the job done. While that's certainly part of the equation, the truth is that before you even talk about exercising, you have to educate yourself about how to simply stand with good posture. As an example, if you have an excessive anterior pelvic tilt and lordosis, you need to learn how to engage your anterior core, activate your glutes, and prevent your rib cage from flaring up up when you're standing around. Conversely, if you do all your exercises in this aberrant posture, you just get good at sucking!
Have a great week!
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Back in July, I presented at the NSCA National Conferences in Providence, RI. My topic was "Individualizing the Management of Overhead Throwers: How to Spot What Your Throwers Need." The NSCA films all the presentations, and this excerpt was just made available online, in case you'd be interested in checking it out. You can access this video HERE. A special thanks to the NSCA for making this available online.
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Q: Unfortunately, my gym doesn't have a power rack. I don't want my strength training program to completely fall to pieces without it. Any ideas?
A: First off, in most cases, you have the option of finding a new gym - even if it just means driving a bit further and buying a day pass for the day of the week that you'd need a power rack for one or more of your strength exercises. Of course, all this additional planning can throw you for a loop if you've already got a busy schedule.
This is a common limitation that is surprisingly easy to work around in your training. To be honest, the only components you’ll miss are squatting, barbell overhead pressing (and push presses), and barbell incline pressing (this, of course, assumes that you have a flat bench press set-up).
You might also be surprised to know that we actually have quite a few athletes who we don’t allow to squat because of functional (e.g., poor thoracic spine mobility, short hip flexors) or structural (e.g., rigid ankle anatomy, femoroacetabular impingement) mobility limitations. These athletes rely predominantly on extra deadlifting variations and plenty of extra single-leg work. My personal favorites for replacing squatting variations are barbell lunge and split-squat variations because they provide the benefits of axial loading. If you're strong enough to clean the weight up and get it into position, you can do these for higher reps and get a good training effect.
Unfortunately, without a power rack in place, it's tough to set up for these single-leg variations. Fortunately, you can also use variations where dumbbells are held at the sides and still get appreciable loading. Heavy sled pushes can also provide variety, if you have access to the appropriate equipment; the only downside is that you don't get much of an eccentric stress challenge.
So, a "typical" lower body training session for someone with no power rack might include sumo deadlifts, walking dumbbell lunges, and barbell supine bridges. Even if you aren't squatting, you're still getting a hefty lower body challenge.
With respect to barbell overhead pressing, simply replace it with dumbbell overhead pressing, or have two training partners hand the bar up to you so that you can receive it in the “rack” position. Incline pressing can be replaced with either dumbbell pressing from this position or a flat bench press variation.
Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:
4 Things That Will Kill You Way Before Cholesterol - This was an excellent post by Dr. Jonny Bowden. As an interesting aside, he references the book Blue Zones (about the longest living folks in the world) in this post. I actually got to spend an entire day with the author, Dan Buettner (of National Geographic), in Costa Rica. Purely by coincidence, my wife and I were on the same snorkeling trip as his family while we were on our honeymoon. It was fascinating to chat with him (he'd been on "Oprah" the week before, so I joked that hanging me was obviously the next step in career advancement!).
Outmuscling Major Depression with Creatine - Here's a cool Science Daily report on recent research that shows creatine may have merit in combating depression. It's nice to see that people are realizing that creatine isn't just safe, but actually has far more benefits than we previously thought.
Why President Obama Throws Like a Girl - I just realized that with the upcoming election, there's an outside chance that I might not be able to refer back to this old post because we might have a new president. So, I figure I ought to milk it for all it's worth now.
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At the end of the day yesterday, I took a quick glance at my Facebook feed and was quickly drawn to a "highlight" video from a baseball strength and conditioning program. The athletes' energy was great, and there was a ton of camaraderie. The only problem was that if you had watched the video without first seeing the word "baseball" in the title, you would have never known it was a baseball team training. The exercises - and the way that they were/weren't coached - clearly didn't reflect the unique demands of the sport.
With that in mind, I thought I'd use today's post to quickly highlight the most important positions you need to understand when you're training throwing athletes: stride foot contact/full external rotation.
Stride foot contact occurs just before maximum external rotation takes place. As the foot touches down, the pelvis has started rotating toward home plate while the torso is still rotated in the opposite direction to create the separation that will enhance velocity. Maximum external rotation - or "lay-back" - signifies the end of this separation, as the energy generated in the lower extremity is already working its way up the chain. Nissen et al. (2007) presented this tremendous diagram to illustrate the separation that takes place. This image represents a right handed picture, where the top image is the hips, and the bottom image is the torso (right and left shoulder joint centers of rotation).
Based on this image alone, you should be able to see where most oblique strains and lower back pain originate; this is ridiculous rotational stress. Additionally, you can appreciate why hip injuries are higher in throwers than they ever have been before; it takes huge hip rotation velocities to play "catch up" so that the pelvis and thorax are squared up at maximum external rotation (if they aren't, the arm drags). This just refers to what's happening at the lower extremity and core, though. Let's look at the shoulder.
At full lay-back (maximum external rotation), we encounter a number of potentially traumatic and chronic injuries to the shoulder. In a pattern known as the peel-back mechanism, the biceps tendon twists and tugs on the superior labrum. The articular side (undersurface) of the rotator cuff may impinge (internal impingement) on the posterior-superior glenoid, leading to partial thickness cuff tears. Finally, as the ball externally rotates in the socket, the humeral head tends to glide forward, putting stress on the biceps tendon and anterior ligamentous structures.
Likewise, at the elbow, valgus stress is off the charts. That can lead to ulnar collateral ligament tears, flexor/pronator strains, medial epicondyle stress fractures, lateral compressive injuries, ulnar nerve irritation, and a host of other isssue. I don't expect most of you to know what much of this means (although you can learn more from Everything Elbow), but suffice it to say that it's incredibly important to train throwers to be functionally strong and mobile in these positions.
And, this brings to light the fundamental problem with most strength and conditioning programs for overhead throwing athletes; they commonly don't even come close to training people to be "safe" in these positions. "Clean, squat, deadlift, bench, chin-up, sit-up" just doesn't cut it. You need to be strong in single-leg stance to accept force on the front side with landing.
You need to be able to apply force in the frontal and transverse planes.
You also need to transfer this force to powerful movements.
You need to have plenty of rotary stability to effectively transfer force from the lower to upper body.
You need to be strong eccentrically in the 90/90 position.
You need to have outstanding hip mobility in multiple planes of motion.
You need to attend to soft tissue quality in areas that other athletes rarely have to consider.
These demands are really just the tip of the iceberg, though, as you have to see how all the pieces fit together with respect to throwing and hitting demands at various times of year. Training for baseball isn't as simple as doing the football strength and conditioning program and then showing up for baseball practice; there are far more unique challenges when dealing with any rotational sport, particularly those that also integrate overhead throwing. Watch the sport, talk to the players, appreciate the demands, and evaluate each individual before you try to write the program; otherwise, you're simply fitting athletes to existing programs.
For more insights like these, I'd encourage you to check out one of our Elite Baseball Mentorships; we have two of these events scheduled for this fall.
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In this momentous installment of this series, Cressey Performance Coach Greg Robins introduces you to some valuable lessons he's learned from the past 14 months of competitive powerlifting training.
With this being the 20th Installment of the series (whoa!), I decided I want to do something different. This post will be longer than the others, but I urge you to read it in its entirety, as the lessons from this past 14 months of training will be worth your time. These tips are based on my own experiences and are applicable to any fitness goal.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
-Theodore Roosevelt
The quote above has followed me for a long time. I keep it in my wallet (it was on a business card I once received). I kept it in my locker when I played baseball, and I taped it inside my wall locker when I went through basic training. My powerlifting journey began at Total Performance Sports in June of 2011. I noticed a corkboard on the wall, and in bold letters, this quote was pinned to the top corner. Surrounding it were updates from different powerlifting and strongman events.
At first, it didn't convince me to train for a powerlifting meet. However, it did kind of bug me. I’m like that; if you can do it, I can do it. For better or for worse, that’s largely how I operate. Give it a month or so, and training with a group of guys who are all trying to get brutally strong rubs off on you. It’s sort of a survival of the fittest environment. It wasn't just a pride thing; it was a challenge. If you know me well, you know I am always working on a physical challenge.
Fast forward to July 2011, and the quote got taped inside my training journal; I decided I wanted to do this.
The process was a major change in how I was used to doing things. I had just finished OCS that summer, and for the past two years, my training had been focused on building a lot of relative strength and aerobic capacity. I decided if this was my goal, then I’m going to go after it hard. This included eating a ton, training hard, and taking time to recover. When it was all said and done, I could reassess and see what I thought. This was my first lesson:
1. Embrace a three phase training mindset.
The three phase training mindset is something I live by now. I first learned to embrace it after reading this post from strength coach Dan John. I encourage you to read it, but the important part is in the last paragraph. It reads "Plan the hunt, hunt the hunt, discuss the hunt." This boils down to approaching training in three phases.
First, you plan your training. With the help of my training partner, and co-worker at the time, Jamie Smith, a 12-16 week training cycle was born. Additionally, I had always been someone who, in retrospect, was held back in possible strength gains by constantly avoiding gaining too much weight. I decided on day one that I would forgo the constant nutritional dilemma in my head, as well as the urge to finish every workout, and fill every off day, with "conditioning". I had a plan: do the program to a tee, execute the assistance work I decided ahead of time would target my weaknesses, stop conditioning excessively, and eat like a horse. When it was over, and not before, I would discuss the results.
If you are going to go after a goal, sit down and figure out the best way to get there. Furthermore, assess what you are doing now that may interfere with your success. Prioritize what will have the best transfer and execute with unyielding intensity. As I tell all the athletes at CP, train with a purpose. Once you have carried out your plan with a 100% effort, then you can sit down again and re-evaluate.
This is precisely what I did, and I got exactly what I wanted. I improved all my lifts dramatically, gained 25lbs, and had a whole host of ideas to bring to the table for my next planning session. This leads me into lesson #2.
2. Learn to tweak a program, not "change" it.
Coming off my first meet, I was very happy that our program had produced results, I stuck to my guns with regards to my nutritional approach, and avoided any extra conditioning. That being said, I had managed to gain a fair amount of not-so-lean body mass in addition to a lot of new muscle. Likewise, I was slowly developing into a one trick pony – or a three trick pony (Squat, Bench, Deadlift), as the case may be. While I was surely able to lift a heck of a lot more than ever before, I was getting winded walking up multiple flights of stairs, and feeling a little disgusted in my physique.
While the power lifting purists may scoff at that comment, I knew enough to know that progress could ensue without continuing to become a sloth. I had lived the first two phases of my training mindset, and now it was time to re-evaluate. The important lesson here is that I kept the nuts and bolts of my training program the same. I planned to work off the same percentages, hit the same supplemental lifts in the same sequence, and choose accessory movements that targeted my weakness.
The difference this time around was in how I approached my nutrition, and additional "moving." Common sense would tell us that you can't remove two sources of energy (calories, and the addition of more physical activity) and continue to gain. So. I chose to remove one source of energy, and tweak another. I made sure that my calories were still very high, but that they came from better sources.
On top of that, I decided to utilize a nutrient timing protocol to make my calories work towards my goals more productively. I did that by slowly adopting the principles of Carb Back Loading, which you can read about here.
Knowing that my caloric intake was more than enough to gain muscle and strength, I simply placed in "movement" days in a fashion that would promote more calorie burning, but also enhance recovery. This was done by intelligently approaching these days with less intensity, as well as by optimizing the means. An example of this would be running sprints at low intensities 50 - 70% on an elevated (hill) soft surface (grass).
Fast forward 16 weeks, and the new plan had worked as well. I was stronger, leaner, and much more confident in my physique. I even got girls to like me again...phew!
Too often people jump from program to program. Most people jump before the first one is even done; this is silly. There are also a fair amount of people who finish one program and think the most logical choice is to scrap it and start something completely different. This isn't always stupid, depending on certain factors. However, I would strongly encourage you to think about tweaking programs, rather than abandoning them all together. Conveniently, this leads me to lesson #3.
3. Know thyself.
Being able to put lesson #2 into practice is largely a function of learning to know oneself as a lifter. At this point, I am 3 weeks out from my second powerlifting meet. It is also the 30th or so week I have followed the same program.
It's pretty funny to think back on the three separate training cycles and how I felt at any given point during the training. I remember saying to myself in week 10 of my second go: "Wow, I feel horrible." Then, I thought about how I felt during week 10 the first time around: the same. Come week 10 this time, it was same thing. It's important because I was able to locate an exact point where the volume was getting to me. This means I was able to do two things.
First, I didn’t abandon ship, because this was normal, and I was beginning to taper the volume anyhow. Second, I was able to slightly tweak training sessions in order to optimize my training. As a young fitness enthusiast, I would read about the difference between advanced and novice lifters. A common theme was that the advanced lifter was able to auto-regulate his training. He or she could make calls on how they felt while staying within the parameters of their training approach as a whole. I even thought a few years ago I was one of these people. I would smash it when I felt good, cut back when I felt crappy. In some ways this was beneficial. However, now I am able to do this on an entirely different level, and I'm still new to understanding it. This is a little over a year of understanding how to train for optimal outputs; the best have decades of experience!
If you want to be great, and have great success in the gym, you need to understand how you react to all the stresses put upon you. It may be possible for some of you already, but I guarantee you it is possible for all of you if you stick with a certain approach over an extended period of time and remain cognizant of how you feel under different circumstances.
Bottom line: do something consistently enough to be able to determine what works, what doesn't, and what can be improved. Furthermore, listen to your body. As a side note to coaches: listen to your clients and athletes.
Moving on, my next two lessons don't flow from the previous ones quite as smoothly as the others. I’ll never be described as a literary genius, but nonetheless, they are good ones!
4. Hammer home technique, technique, technique!
Powerlifting has filled a void in my life. One thing I loved about playing baseball was working on my swing, and receiving skills as a catcher. The neat thing about sport performance is that the most elite athletes are able to blend both tremendous physical outputs with mastery of their sport skill. When a high level of each is achieved, the result is simply amazing to watch.
When I would lift weights in the past, I knew form was important, mainly so that I didn't get hurt. After all, my weight room antics were mainly done in order to improve performance in activities outside the weight room. Now lifting weights is my sport, and technical mastery of the three lifts is hugely important. While I have obviously gotten a lot stronger over the past year, I attribute a large amount of my success to dissecting my form. I have well over 250 videos of different lifts saved on my computer, and I’ve watched each multiple times and scrutinized for flaws in technique. If you have seen some of my videos on Facebook, you are probably wondering what the heck I am looking for, as it isn't always pretty. In all seriousness, it has been the single biggest factor in improving my squat and bench press, and a good way to locate little mishaps in timing with my deadlift. If you are a competitive lifter, break down your technique and learn the nuances of each lift from people who have lifted weights you hope to someday lift. If you are a coach or fitness buff, I would advocate the use of video on the big lifts. I also think becoming meticulous with your technique will add a rewarding piece to your training as a whole!
The last lesson is the most important, and in light of what it is, and the fact this article is already a short novel, I will keep it short.
5. Do Less, get more.
If powerlifting has done one thing for me, it has proven this mantra. My training has become focused. I have three lifts I am looking to improve. I have learned that doing too much physically outside of these lifts will negatively impact them. I have learned that doing more mentally (looking at video, crunching numbers, assessing training stress) with these three lifts will improve them.
This is the lesson that can be most easily applied to everyone's training and life. Don't do so much that you become mediocre at a lot, and great at nothing. Don't create so many variables that you cannot locate and manage the ones that matter.
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Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance coach Chris Howard.
As a “nutrition guy” at Cressey Sports Performance, I spend a considerable amount of time looking over three-day food logs from our clients and athletes to help them create healthy food options for their menus. A common dietary trend among our young athletes and even some of our adults is a serious lack of vegetables. As a way to help the world at large consume more vegetables, I have come up with this list of seven strategies to get more vegetables in your diet.
1. Learn to Cook (or at least follow a recipe).
This strategy is a bit different from the other six, but it’s really where getting more vegetables in your diet has to start. Sure, you can eat vegetables raw; in fact, it’s encouraged, but you certainly get more variety from cooking them. Use Google as your friend and search for recipes that include vegetables or just different ways of making something as simple as broccoli. See some of the recommendations below for more information.
2. Include Vegetables in Smoothies.
In this post, Greg Robins talked about eating more pumpkin, and it made me think of a great smoothie recipe to enjoy this time of year. Here it is:
½ cup Canned Pumpkin (make sure it’s the pure pumpkin, NOT the pie filling)
½ cup Plain Greek Yogurt
1 scoop Low Carb Vanilla Protein Powder
¼ cup Walnuts
¼ cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
8oz. Vanilla Unsweetened Almond Milk
4oz. Water (just to thin it out a bit)
Throw all the ingredients in a blender and enjoy!
Of course, adding vegetables to smoothies doesn’t begin and end with pumpkin. Spinach is another smoothie-friendly vegetable common among the CP staff. It works in pretty much any smoothie and will usually be overpowered by the other ingredients so that you won’t even taste it. Still, you may get some weird looks from classmates and colleagues as they wonder what is in the green sludge you are drinking.
3. Make Soup/Chili.
Soup and chili recipes are a great way to hide vegetables. Brian St. Pierre has written extensively about his wife’s chili recipe, which is still one of my favorites. However, I have a new recipe that while technically not chili, looks, feels and tastes pretty darn similar. The recipe comes from Sarah Fragoso’s Everyday Paleo website. Be sure to check out her version of the recipe here. To make this recipe easier and quicker to make, I have chosen not to stuff the green peppers with the meat mixture, but to chop up the peppers and include them in the meat mixture, instead, which makes it more like a chili. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
4. Don’t Forget about Stir Fry.
While participating in the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating Coaching Program, I was introduced to Robb Wolf’s Food Matrix. He outlines a simple set of instructions that really hammer home how simple cooking and eating healthy can really be. Try this “recipe” with your next stir-fry:
1. Put oil in a skillet or wok;1-2 tbsp coconut or olive oil will work well.
2. Put some meat on the skillet or wok; think chicken, beef, or whatever you like
3. Let the meat cook for a minute or so.
4. Add a ton of veggies; I tend to use frozen broccoli, cauliflower, or stir-fry mixes.
5. Stir it around a few times.
6. Let it cook for 5-10 minutes, until the veggies and meat are cooked to your liking.
7. Eat and Enjoy! It's as simple as that.
This is not only easy to do, but you can also literally change the recipe every night for variety while still using the same cooking methods. Plus, I think this is something that even high schoolers can manage to do without burning down the house.
5. Add Flavor with Spices/Dressings.
Learning how to use spices on foods can really liven up a dish. Sure, there’s going to be some trial and error here, but it’s definitely worth a shot. Here’s a simple way to make kale, a superfood, taste better in the hopes of becoming a staple at your dinner table:
Ingredients
1 bunch kale
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon seasoned salt (you can substitute any spice you like here)
Directions
1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F.
2. With a knife or kitchen shears carefully remove the leaves from the thick stems and tear into bite size pieces. Wash and thoroughly dry kale with a salad spinner. Drizzle kale with olive oil and sprinkle with seasoning salt.
3. Bake on a cookie sheet until the edges brown but are not burnt; it'll be approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
6. Make omelets a regular breakfast selection.
One of the questions I always get is how to get vegetables in at breakfast. I usually suggest either a smoothie with spinach or pumpkin (see above), or - even better - an omelet. Again, from a variety standpoint, the options are really endless with an omelet. Here are some ideas:
a. Peppers
b. Onions
c. Tomatoes (Yes, they're technically fruits, but who cares? They are good for you.)
d. Salsa (best for those who are “easing” their way into vegetables)
e. Spinach
f. Mushrooms
g. Asparagus (if you're feeling bolder)
h. The list goes on and on…
7. Substitute Lettuce for Tortillas on Tacos and Fajitas.
What kid doesn’t love tacos? I know I could eat them every day for the rest of my life and never get sick of them. One way to make them healthier - and maybe a bit messier - is to substitute lettuce for the tortilla. Try experimenting with different types of lettuce to see which you like the best.
Eating vegetables doesn't have to be boring as long as you're willing to put a bit of thought into preparing them. Give these tips a shot - and by all means, share any additional strategies you may have in the comments section below.
Note from EC: While we're on the topic of healthy nutrition, in case you haven't heard, here's a quick heads-up that Metabolic Cooking - my favorite cookbook of all time - is on sale for just $10 through the end of this week. My wife and I have used the recipes in this resource for years with great results. You can learn more HERE.
About the Author
Christopher Howard received his his Bachelor’s of Science in Exercise Science and Masters of Science in Nutrition Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo. In addition, Chris is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the National Strength & Conditioning Association, a Licensed Massage Therapist in the state of Massachusetts, and a Level 1 Certified Precision Nutrition Coach. Chris has been a strength coach at Cressey Sports Performance since 2010. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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Here are some good strength and conditioning reads to peruse this week:
Do You Have a Management Problem? - Martin Rooney always has some great content not only in terms of training, but also with respect to how to take control of your life and make all the pieces fit together. This is one such example.
10 Mistakes Coaches Make - My good friend John Romaniello reminded me that yesterday was the tenth anniversary of my first article at T-Nation. While it certainly wasn't my best of all time, I thought I'd use this opportunity to highlight a different one that I wrote over the past decade that stuck out in my mind.
Training the Lactate System - Patrick Ward brings to light some great points that a lot of folks overlook with respect to understanding work capacity, optimizing recovery, and training sport-specific energy systems. If you liked the discussion of heart rate variability that I posted last week, you'll enjoy this as well.
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