Seriously.

Look, unless you have an incurable metabolic condition or a chronic problem for which there is no solution, then you should be neither obese, nor in pain.

I will tell you that I am sympathetic to your plight if you are either (or both) and looking to make a change and become healthy.  But if you are a whiner and/or a complainer than save it.

I know it’s hard to trust what you read these days. What information should you trust? What makes sense?  Clearly, there is a lot of contradictory material out there and I understand if you think I am full of it. All I can say is if you happy the way things are currently that’s cool.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never struggled with my weight. Last August was about the plumpest I’ve ever been and I was about 17% body fat. Now I’m at 7-8% so what I am sharing here has been lived by me. Also, I’ve had two clients who have lost North of 50 lbs and another who has lost almost 100. They have never starved themselves. They have eaten healthy food and worked out hard but intelligently.

When I first heard about the Primal Blueprint it was early in the Summer of 2009. I read it and began applying my new found knowledge in August. I used the information in out to completely change how I eat and I also used it to alter my workouts to a small degree.

Right away I knew I had found a tool that was very clear, and would be simple to implement for many many people. If you really want change, then this book couldn’t make it any simpler. I’d even hazard to say it’s also kind of easy. In  a nutshell, you eat lots of proteins, healthy fat and limit carbohydrate to fruits and vegetable, in season if possible. Ideally, that means nothing processed. And you’ll cut grain consumption to nil. You are trying to eat as man ate before the advent of agriculture. When we gathered and hunted for our food. I can assure you that to eat as we are meant to is not hard. Quitting heroin is hard. If you have PB experience or live Paleo please share the good, bad and the ugly in the comments.

And if your workouts involved working through pain then you are doing something (or many things) wrong. Pain isn’t what you experience when the going gets tough and lactic acid floods your muscles. It’s in your joints and is a signal that something isn’t right. Would you ignore a fire alarm?

If experience the pain of injury, then you are moving incorrectly. Or maybe the load is inappropriate. Maybe you are doing stupid things of which you have no business attempting. Do you know how to execute a proper deadlift? If not then find a qualified instructor. Or don’t do it. Or understand and accept the risk.

In my opinion, there is no excuse for getting hurt while training. Competition is another matter. Sure, bad luck can play a part, but if you get hurt over and over, then maybe you need to figure out why. Getting hurt isn’t a badge of honor. It’s nothing to be proud of. It just is . But it doesn’t need to be.

Today, (This article began percolation yesterday) but today someone called me and said this to me, “Sandy, I had an MRI done on my shoulder. There is some damage to my shoulder from doing clean and jerks with the barbell. What should I do?”

I wanted to say “heal,” but bit my tongue. I did find out that this person has never had any formal c and j instruction, had been experiencing pain for sometime and finally got hurt. Not too bright.

A lot of folks who are share my philosophies with want to argue with me; especially about the training part. There seems to be this idea “if it’s not a near-death experience” then it wasn’t a good workout. Real athletes don’t train that way. They work hard and they work smart. When athletes do get hurt usually it’s competing. If it’s not trauma based then they will try to figure out why they got hurt and figure out a way to avoid it in the future.

Here’s a good quote on from Brooks Kubik. “Hard work is using the heaviest possible weight for the number of reps you set as your target,
and then DOING those reps,every single one of them – in good form.
Let me repeat that. Hard work involves the use of the heaviest possible weight that you can handle for the number of reps you set as your target , and actually DOING those reps … and doing the reps in GOOD FORM.”

Don’t get injured. Lose some fat. And have fund doing it.

Train with purpose,

Sandy Sommer RKC