Hauling Paleo Ass!

Up at 4 for prep for another client meeting in Alvin at 9.

Everybody needs somebody who's got their back.

Worked in my home office up to the last minute and then rushed downstairs and threw together a 5 minute lunch of ground turkey breast and salad, tomato, avocado, banana and boiled egg.

As you can see, I literally just threw everything in a big container and hauled ass...

But hey, it made a great tasting nutritious Paleo lunch.

Grabbed a 15 minute cat nap in my truck at lunch and then worked another 3 hours at the client office and raced home for another cat nap and then to a killer 5:45 WOD at CrossFit WMD...

Strength exercise was bench press with big rubber bands holding 35# kettlebells suspended from the ends of the bar. You talking about crazy. Try bench pressing with kettle bells swinging from each end of the bar.

I loved it. My favorite CrossFit exercise so far and one of the reasons why CrossFit is so effective. Non-conventional exercise applied dynamically.

Check out this WOD...

Nobody busted this WOD. It was an ass kicker.

Then to Family Fitness for a shower and a weigh...

171.... That's a Miller Lite.

So how do you put a cherry on this busy day???

How bout a blackened pork chop and veggies - asparagus, sweet peppers and summer squash...

Add a small banana, strawberries and white grapes for that sweet and salty combo...

Man - that's beautiful and will give your body what it needs to recover from a busy day.

A little music on iHeart...

And then watch the 2010
Crossroads Guitar Festival on Palladia....

Man - that was a day worth living!!!

Follow up to the Pain Free Zone and Daily Priorities and Planning

Woke up this morning with my back hurting....

Tells you something about my knee pain.

Gotta busy day ahead?

Get up....

Get some coffee...

Get your mind and thoughts organized and make a plan.

Take 5 minutes to write down your daily To Do items....

It's your best chance of gaining some control over your day.

What are the highest priority items?

What do you need to prepare to meet those High Priority items?

Stretch a little....

Knock out a few sets of bodyweight squats just to get you loosened up.

Prepare a light Paleo breakfast and pack a lunch or write down what you plan to eat if you go out to lunch.

When will you stop working and begin prep'g for your workout?

When are you gonna workout today? How long? What type of workout will it be?

Put that in your daily schedule.

Does this type of detailed daily planning sound stupid to you?

Let me ask you this -

How's chaos and disorder working for you?

Ribeye for Lunch for Dinner

Let's throw together a 10 min Paleo meal with the 1/2 ribeye left from lunch...

Diced zucchini and squash, sweet mini peppers, asparagus

Throw all the veggies in a hot cast iron skillet...

While that's going, let's make a delicious post workout recovery drink - 1/3 Body Fortress Fruit Punch Creatine mix, 1/3 Fresca, 1/3 HEB Cul-de-sac Sangria wine...

After turning the veggies for 5 mins, throw the leftover ribeye in the mix to heat up. Cook for another 5...

Plate and enjoy!!

10 minute Paleo!!

No Explanation Required...

Welcome to the Pain Free Zone!

Been talking about my planned campaign to get better range of motion and less pain in my left knee.

Plan has been to:

Workout as intensely as the knee would allow....

Try different workout programs - Body Pump, Boot Camp, MMA and now CrossFit.

Lose weight - get as light as I can possibly be.

Rotate NSAID's (Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) every few months.

Part of the Plan was to get below 180 and stay there and see if that relieved the knee pain.

Check that off.... been below 180 for over a month.

And it didn't help....

So enter Phase 2...

Rehab and Physical Therapy...

Enter the Dragon...

http://bzrehab.com/aboutus.html

Or the Lifeline if you will...

Brazosport Rehabilitation and Wellness aka

Allison Bennett and the Crew....

More on the Crew later...

Lemme just say going into this....

I was a little discouraged and....

Skeptical.

I mean - come on - what's physical therapy gonna do for me that CrossFit's grueling workouts ain't gonna do??

Or the intense cardio of Boot Camp?

So I sit down with Allison Bennett and I had been warned about her already...

What was it Stephani Bradley said on the recommendation?

Oh yeah.... "Y'all are gonna get along fine - she's beautiful and fit".

Jury's still out on the getting along part but the beautiful and fit was an understatement.

Hell just looking her in the eyes I felt better already...

But back to the real story here.

She examined my knee much like my orthopedic surgeon.... Flexing and pushing and asking me where it hurt.

But then she had me do some exercises - squats, lunges, one legged squats...

"Well I think we can do something here" she says.

"You've got some weakness in the glutes and left hip and the muscles around your left knee. We're gonna work on getting you stronger and that will relieve your pain".

Huh? Get me stronger?

Geez - I'm busting my ass on max weight in all the CrossFit WODs, squatting 315 and jumping up and down on 24" boxes....

And you want me to get stronger...

How's that work?

Well Old Dog, it's time to learn some new tricks...

Enter the Crew....

That's the Bevy of Beauties that support the Indomitable Miss Bennett...

I walked into the Physical Therapy Room....

And thought I'd fell off in the middle of the comeback tour for the Spice Girls.

I mean first of all, there's 4 of 'em besides the one at the front desk....

That's a whole nother story....

Geez don't get me started on that - just suffice it to say that caramel is involved....

So where was I - oh yeah - the Spice Girls.

So first of all, they're all dressed in different colored scrubs - no two the same.

I asked about that and was told that there are different colors that can be worn.

And I'm thinking WTF are they doing - calling each other at 6 o'clock in the morning and coordinating their colors?

I don't know but it looks like a freaking M&M convention....

And I love M&M's.

Back to the knee treatment...

So AB starts off with ultrasonic heat treatment where one of the Spice Girls rubs this heat conducting gel on my knee and then massages it with this heated paddle that shoots ultrasonic waves into my knee and heats it from the inside out.

Let me go back to the part where the Spice Girl is rubbing gel on my knee.

At this point, I'm thinking I don't know if this works and I really don't give a shit if it works or not....

In fact, I'm actually thinking I hope it has the opposite effect and messes up my knee, cause I done fell off a shit wagon and landed in a rose garden.

Okay, ultrasonic over...

Go to the bike with Upper Body Ergo meter option...

That's one of em where you pedal with your feet and hands.

First time I did it was Ok cause Easy Spice set the resistance pretty low....

2nd time I did it, Queen Mama set the thing....

I think she was pissed cause I was wearing a tank and workout shorts to PT and talking loud and being all obnoxious - like I am all the time - cause she cranks the bike down to "I'm climbing Mt Everest" mode and says "Ok - Do 15 mins for me" and walks off.... I know she's thinking "I'll show this loudmouth who's in charge". Well I hunkered down and grinded out Level 807 or whatever it was and got off the thing and Grumpy Spice looks at me, scrunches up her cute little nose and says "Ooh you're sweating".

No shit Sherlock. I just pedaled up an HC in the TDF.

Whadduya expect?

So then Mama Spice says "Now we're gonna do the TRX".

I'm thinking No Problem - dunnit at FF - I got this.

Whaddup AB?

1 legged squats holding the TRX strap....

20 on each leg.... Both legs.... 2 sets.... 80 reps total.

Oh and I want a 5 second negative and a 5 second positive - a 10 second rep.

Gulp....

So lemme see....

Naught carry the naught....

That's 800 seconds or a little over 13 minutes of 1 legged squats.

So I do the first few and I'm wobbling all over the place cause it's a strength, control and balance exercise.

And it's hard to do.

"Yeah - I can see we got some room to improve. If you'd've done those easy, I'd've said we might not be able to help you. But we can get you stronger and that will relieve some of the pain" Beauty and the Beast says and tells me for the 3rd time to slow down on the reps.

Thanks.... I think.

"Oh... and when you're done with those 1-legged squats, knock out the same with lunges with your back leg in the TRX sling..... and hurry up cause Me and the Home Girls got a High Noon Workout on the TRX Machine and you're in the way."

WTF?

So that's the exercise part - let me rephrase that -
That's the workout part.

And I mean there's no mercy cause AB is hard core bad ass in shape so she don't listen to no whining.

So there's ultrasonic heat, workout and....

Kinesiology tape...

I did a post on it last week....

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_therapeutic_tape

http://science.howstuffworks.com/kinesiology-tape.htm

www.rocktape.com

If I'd've got $5 for every person that asked me about it at the 3 day RedFest Music Festival in Austin this weekend, I could've paid for the trip.

Question 1:  Is that a tattoo?

Answer 1:  No Moron.... it's KT.

Question 2: Does it work?

Answer 2: YES!!!

So much so that I had the right knee (which ain't much better than the left knee) taped also...

Thank you Young and Beautiful Spice!!!

So what's this whole post about other than having a good time ribbing the best Young and Beautiful Physical Therapy crew ever?

After 2 weeks of PT, how's the knee?

Best it's been in years.

Now there's a lot of other things going on....

Down to 171 this week so still cutting weight which is a big help.... For every 1 lb of weight loss, you reduce the felt impact on the knee by 10 lbs.

And I did get a cortisone shot from Dr. Hudson last week.

So, hard to determine how much of the pain relief and increased range of motion is attributable to what....

If I had to put numbers on it, I'd say it was:

30% weight loss
20% Cortisone shot
50% Physical Therapy and KT

Doesn't really matter how I got here....

I'm somewhere I haven't been in a long time....

I'm in the Pain Free Zone.

So DJ Outback Willie.... What's on the Tuesday Turntable???

Nothing but Nirvana station Baby!!!

"To be yourself is all that you can do".

Sounds like good advice to me.

"I'm just a sucker with no self esteem".

Story of my life - get over her / him and move on.

"Hang my head
Drown my fear
Till you all just
Disappear"

Fell off in a couple of these in my lifetime....
Not a good place to be...

And we're walking.

"Take time with a wounded hand
Cause it likes to heal".

I say.... Fuck the hand... It's my knee that's bothering me.

"When I think more than I want to think
Do things I should never do
I drink much more than I ought to drink
Because it brings me back to you".

Pretty song....

"I know someday you'll have a beautiful life,
I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky,
But why, why, why can't it be, can't it be mine?"

Damn.... This is getting depressing.... Do I need to change channels?

"Now dance, fucker, dance
Man I never had a chance"

I can do that and
I knew that.

"Hush little baby, don't say a word,
And never mind that noise you heard,
It's just the beast under your bed,
In your closet, in your head"

So that's why I'm having trouble sleeping at night.

"Think I'm just happy
I think I'm dumb"

Ignorance is Bliss...

And the beatings continue....

Random Images...

Just me and my shadow...

Shocking Blue / Atomic Mango Nike Force 5.0...

And No I didn't get them.... Yet.

A duplex in Lake Jackson that was built in 1943 that I bought in 1985... I lived in the 2 and 3 bedroom side for a total of 11 years and rented it the rest of the time. I sold it to HEB holdings in November of last year. HEB bought all the old duplexes to get the land to build a new Super HEB.

Looking forward to the new HEB but sad to see the old duplex in a pile.

Moving on....

Tonight's entree....

Pork Chop over salad, veggies and fruit...

With a side of Creatine / Fresca / Cabernet.

I told you it was random.

When it comes to living the High Life....

Ain't nothing like my original namesake....

Prep'g the Meat for the Strong for the Week

Part of sticking to a diet is making the diet food taste good.

For me and meat, that means tenderizing and marinating the meat with a dry rub of sorts.

Here's how I do it...

Gather meat and rub ingredients -

Ribeye on sale, pre-seasoned pork chops (yes I'm gonna season them again cause I know what I like), Adolph's Unseasoned Meat Tenderizer, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper.

Dust on both sides and the edges with tenderizer, s and p and cayenne and then fork the seasonings into the meat on both sides.

Put meat in a sealed container and refrigerate overnight.

This 3 minutes of prep makes an incredible difference in the taste which in turn will result in you sticking to the diet and eating less.

Yes I said you will eat less if the food you prepare is well seasoned and prepared and looks good.

One of the reasons people keep eating when they're full is because their palette is not satisfied because the food they're eating tastes like shit and has no nutritional value.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!