Random Friday Thoughts: 8/14/09

Written on August 14, 2009 at 6:23 am, by Eric Cressey

1. I work about 315 days per year at Cressey Performance, so when I can get a weekday off, it’s pretty darn special – and that’s the case today.  I got in a great squatting session last night, so I don’t feel quite so bad about staying home today to sit on my duff and catch up on writing, programming, reading, and planning Tony’s Sweet 16 Party (he’s 32, so we’re going to have double the fun with both Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers as themes; isn’t he lucky?).  Actually, it won’t be that exciting; the goal is to get all of the following done before noon (and I’m writing this at 7:13am):

a. this blog
b. the first two blogs for next week
c. one tag-along manual for our new products
d. five programs
e. some emails
f. reading with any time that’s left over

I’m hoping that by mentioning all of this to you that it will make me more accountable to going into tunnel-vision-mode to get it all done.  We shall see…

2. Congratulations to Chad Jenkins of Kennesaw St. – and now the Toronto Blue Jays, who signed a good ol’ $1.359 million contract on Wednesday after being drafted in the first round back in June.  Chad’s been an incredibly hard worker on my programs and deserves all the success that comes his way.  Nice work, buddy!

3.  Here’s a pretty good article about why eggs are actually GOOD for you.  I say “pretty good” not because I think it’s new information to those of us in the know, but because it comes from a registered dietitian in a mainstream publication, who are normally brainwashed to adhere to stupid guidelines.  Kudos to Yahoo on this one, but I’m sorry to say that Dr. John Berardi and others have been preaching this for over a decade.

4. Here is a landmark study on how athletes have gotten taller, heavier, and faster during the past century. You can tell that the study was done by an engineer, because any strength coach could have easily told him that this was the case because resistance training and better nutrition habits were implemented over the course of that time.

5. Right now, in addition to a more geeky textbook, I’m reading Blunder, by Zachary Shore, on Gray Cook’s recommendation.  So far, so good, although I haven’t gotten too far into it (hopefully will this weekend).

Have a great weekend!

2 Responses to “Random Friday Thoughts: 8/14/09”

1. Niel Says:
   August 14th, 2009 at 10:40 am

   Nice how the egg article mentions skipping the yolk to keep fat & cholesterol low, but fails to mention that’s where all the vitamins are.

2. Jerry Gershon Says:
   September 12th, 2009 at 10:47 am

   Kudos to Yahoo, the author and everyone else for that matter needs to read the June 2008 edition of Alan Aragon’s Research Review.

   http://alanaragon.com/research-review-entrance.html

   Take home points in the review:

   1. The American Heart Associations restrictive recommendations for cholesterol are not rooted in a complete data set that includes controlled human experiments. Rather, they are based on experiments done on rats in the 60’s. (I don’t know about you but I don’t have any rodent in my family lineage).

   2. The majority of epidemiological evidence does not support the hypothesis that increased egg or cholesterol consumption increases the risk for cardiovascular disease. Some even correlates an increased risk of CV disease with lower cholesterol intake.

   3. The cholesterol in eggs has been found to produce HDL-C and does not affect the HDL-C to LDL-C ratio negatively, nor does it increase LDL-C.

   4. Recent research has shown eggs reduce markers of inflammation thus playing a cardioprotective role.

   5. Fortifying eggs with n-3 (omega 3 eggs), has shown to be positive but cooking these eggs at high temperatures (scrambling) has the harmful drawback of producing oxidation compounds.

   6. Omega 3 eggs are less economical when one can obtain their n-3’s from elsewhere in the diet or supplementation. They’re another form of marketing/thinking that says more n-3’s are better and that eggs need some sort of compensatory crutch for their cholesterol content – which hasn’t proven harmful in the first place.