2 huge workouts - 2 huge meals!

Got up early this morning.... did a couple of hours of work and then biked to Dell's 9:00 am Dance / Stretch exercise class at Anytime Fitness.

Don't let the name Dance & Stretch fool you - this is a strenuous body weight only workout with extreme range of motion stretching and a lot of movement in a full flexed leg position.  You try maintaining a deep wide stance squat for a minute straight while stretching your arms over your head and side to side.  It's something that everybody should do.  As Dell emphasizes during the workout.... These are excellent Anti-Aging movements. I have to agree.

Cycled back to the condo and was famished so broke out the big cast iron skillet and filled it with all kind of wonderful veggies.  Smoking hot skillet - NO OIL! This is a dry saute'.

With the lean ground beef - veggie mix, some Tuscan Kale and 3 eggs kicked up with Soy and Balsamic standing by....

Add the kale to the sauted veggies.

Then make room on one side of the skillet for a healthy big patty of the ground beef mix.

Once the ground beef is grilled on one side, mix everything together.

Cut off the heat and add the beaten egg - soy sauce - balsamic mix....

Mix in the egg mixture well and then cover.

The residual heat in the food and the skillet with the cover on will cook the egg in about 3 minutes.

While the egg is cooking, let's do the clean-up.

Yep, by the time the cooking is done, the clean-up is done.

Everything you see done in this series of photos from beginning to end including the cleanup took less than 15 minutes!!!

There's the final product.

Lots of veggies, lots of protein, tons of flavor, color and texture.

Sided with a Creatine - Chocolate Protein Mix drink for another 30g of protein.

That's a meal that will help you recover from any workout.

A 5.5 mile bike ride got me to the 5:45 pm Praxis workout.  

Remember the Grand Opening for Praxis is this Saturday 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM!
3221 Richards Lane
Suite B
Santa Fe NM
505-699-8856

www.thepraxislab.com

Pretty simple workout right?

I guess the age is starting to kick in because I seem to be pulling up the rear in almost every workout.

3 minutes behind the previous slowest person.... What can I say?

I  just can't seem to breathe.  Whether it's the elevation or a heart / lungs problem or just old age I don't know but I was max'd out during the whole 18 minutes of the WOD.

Oh well - at least I finished.

And by the time I pedaled the 5.5 miles back up the hill to the north side of Santa Fe, I was just about dead.

Mark Martinez, the Praxis trainer for the 5:45 session asked me what I was fixing for supper.....

That's a whole purple heirloom carrot sliced with a potato peeler, the last of the kale on the left and TJ's Sweet Basil Chicken and Turkey sausage in the back.

Everybody in the pool

Add a good portion of the lean ground beef mix and 2 slices of tofu marinated in soy sauce and balsamic.

Garnish with fresh basil and sweet onion and pair with a glass of TJ's Coastal Cabernet.

How's that Mark?

So an extreme stretch - yoga workout, 4 hours of work, a short nap,  a kick ass Praxis workout, 17 miles of bike riding, 2 platters of Paleo and 1 day done.

This is the kind of day that makes you feel.....

ALIVE!

A day of recovery with Metal and Food!

I got up this morning knowing I had 2 hard workouts the day before.

Yep - I was sore and stiff.

So I just resolved today to let my body recover.

Years back I would've pushed it today and done another workout.

But I've learned that there is a fine line between training at the limit and overtraining.

Today was full of metal music....

And a 3 egg omelette at Clafouti's after a nice walk around Marcy Park.

No whining and crying from this old man....

Or this old man....

I went totally strict Paleo on this recent weight loss throwdown challenge with my son so I've been substituting grilled eggplant slices for bread - 

Which has worked out pretty well..... 

There's 3 discs of eggplant covered with the lean ground beef - veggie mix and one with the last 3 oz of roasted chicken.... 

Straddled with grilled jalapeno slices, kalamata olives and tomato with a little sweet onion on the side.

For supper - there's a buried link of TJ's Sweet Basil Chicken - Turkey sausage, 4 slices of tofu marinated in soy sauce and balsamic, 2 eggs with fresh jalapeno slices, diced tomato and fresh basil.

So a day of recovery with a little walk, a meal out, several hours of work, 2 nice meals in and plenty of metal in between.

Not bad Old Man.... Not Bad.

Standing, Applauding and Deadlifting for the Young Lady at Praxis

I have to relate a funny, yet important experience from my workout at Praxis yesterday.

I have written in the past about CrossFit women.... they are a different type.

I mean, come on, any woman that would routinely put themselves through these type of mind bending, body punishing workouts is gonna be a little different.... and I mean in a good way.... a lot of good ways.

Almost without exception, these women are strong and independently minded and self-disciplined - these are all prerequisites to a CrossFit / Praxis type workout.

And, in most cases, they are equally strong bodied.  It's kinda hard to go through multiple months of heavy squats, deadlifts, snatches, pullups, jumproping, box jumping and you name it without your body armoring itself for these kind of assaults.

Strong is the new Sexy right?

So, anyway, I was going through the Praxis warm-up yesterday with my other 2 cohorts - one of which happened to be a young lady that met and exceeded all the characteristics and criteria noted above.

And I remember that last Friday at Open Gym, she had brought a male friend along and I remember she was showing him some basic movements - Squats, Deadlifts, Overhead Squats, Pullups.  At the time, I thought..... well good for her.... taking the time to show what I assumed to be a new boyfriend the tips and techniques for productive and safe lifting and working out.

And as we were warming up, this lady was discussing with another lady at the box the disappointment she had that her new boyfriend was just not cutting the mustard in the world of workouts.  She focused on his deadlift performance relating it I suppose to our coming WOD which included 225# deadlifts and pullups in a Fran 21-15-9.

The conversation was going something along the lines of.....

"I can do a 215# deadlift so I told him he better be able to do the Rx of 225# deadlifts."

My ears kinda perked up at this cause I was looking at the WOD and thinking about how I felt and was just about resigned to sub-Rx'g this Fran down to 185#.

The listener to the young lady tried to offer a reasonable compromise to this hard-line stance by saying "Well, he has just started working out.... it will take him time to work up to the Rx weights".

And I chimed in remembering the size and build of the guy saying "Yeah - he probably only weighs a buck - fitty - a 225# deadlift is hard for a small guy like that who's just started lifting".

But the young lady stood her ground and continued to relate how she was just gonna have to move on from this guy cause he was so physically inadequate.

At first I thought "Man, this is one tough and demanding person".

But then, after some consideration and time, I thought to myself....

Good for her.  She knows what she wants and besides she's in here busting her ass 3 - 4 times a week on these workouts so she should expect her male companions to be as disciplined, dedicated and developed as she is.

Nothing wrong with that - better to set that as a prerequisite and a priority for a future relationship than try to "change" or influence a non-workout person to turn into something they have never been and likely something they don't want to be.

Then I thought about the effect her hard line stance had on me.

Like I said, I was considering a sub-Rx deadlift before I encountered this Masculinity Beatdown from the young lady.

After I heard her verbally pound the shit out of her workout date I said to myself....

"I'll be damned if I'm gonna take the easy way out".

Especially considering I was set up facing her bar to bar on deadlifts.

So I grunted, slobbered, gasped and cussed my way through 45 - 225# deadlifts and as many pull-ups.

The little studette finished ahead of me but I finished the workout - totally gasping for air and tingling from head to toe with the exhaustion of a workout that was a little beyond my physical means but not beyond my sense of shame for the whole male population.

So what did I learn from this experience?

1. There's nothing wrong with knowing what you want out of a relationship and future companion, partner or spouse and laying down the criteria up front.  It saves you and all of the potential companions a lot of wasted time, money and effort.
2. Sometimes you don't know what you want or don't want until you see it.  That's OK too.  That's part of getting to know someone and more importantly, getting to know yourself.
3. I am totally motivated by hard-line, definitive people who express and issue challenges.  If it had not been for this young lady's declaration of minimum manly expectations, I probably would have had a good but uninspiring workout.  But with her little soliloquy of masculine contempt, it caused me to step up my game and experience a top 10 workout.

So what do I think about all this?

I stand and applaud this young lady.

Good for you.... we could all learn something from you.

I know I did.

Eating like this is a matter of survival

What's my eating and nutrition goal?

One of them is to take in as much protein as possible for the least amount of calories.

This is one way to do it.

Season and wet the meat with an egg-sweet mustard-sriracha-balsamic-soy sauce mix.

Then dice up and season your favorite veggies.

and add to the meat.

My #2 food and nutrition goal?

Make what I eat as tasty / flavor-filled as possible!

A quick pre PIYO Strength meal - tomato, avocado, boiled egg - fast, easy, tasty.

If I could convey just one idea / concept to the World, it would be to eat healthy - Lean Protein, plenty of veggies, fruit and nuts - and lay off processed foods, gluten-containing food and dairy.

Me and the Mule definitely get around Santa Fe.... after the PIYO Strength workout, stopped by the State Employees Credit Union - a partner with my very own Credit Union back in LJT.

Grilled squash and lean ground meat - veggies mix.

Over Spring mix with tomatoes and kalamata olives.

With more protein and good carbs and sugars added via....

a Nutribullet slushee.

Kitchen sink skillet dish with sliced heirloom carrots, jalapeno pepper, sweet onion, yellow squash, Tuscan kale and 8 oz of dark meat roast chicken and a handful of red seedless grapes.

After a warmup, 5 sets of heavy squats with stretch straps and a Fran 21-15-9 of 225# deadlifts and kipping pull-ups with an 11 mile bike ride....

I have to eat like this to recover.

My body is fighting to get better and stronger and I'm gonna give it every chance to do that.

Well now.... That was fun!

Well it started off good....

And we made it to the ridge where we would view the eclipse and had a nice view of the sunset.

And got to watch all phases of the eclipse...

But the return trip was a little henky....

Seems the Hiking Group Leader is a dead reckoning sort of guy that lives in the area, hikes in the area a lot and....

Doesn't carry a compass!

Huh - WTF?

Is that a case of ignorance or....

Pride?

You tell me.

Anyway... yours truly knew we had hiked from west to east to get there cause the sun was going down....

And I seemed to be the only SOB in a group of 18 that had a compass.

So I kept nudging us west by southwest on the way back.

And we made it back.

Don't think I'll be going with that guy again.

Good night!

Lunch - Grocery Shopping and headed for a Full Moon Hike

What do you notice in this picture?

Neither good nor bad...

I find myself somewhere in between....

Serena would disagree.

You're either in one or the other.

Steak salad at Santa Fe Baking Co.

Grocery run at TJ's.

Nothing but the good stuff ma'am.

A quick throw down meal of cast iron skillet eggplant, squash, red bell pepper and chicken breast.

A gathering of moonlight madness hikers.

Supposed to be a bad ass lunar eclipse blood moon wolves will be running and all that good shit.

I just hope I don't blow a knee or Achilles' tendon.

Wish me luck.