Brain Food #9: Winter Wonderland & The Sham of Power Bracelets

I would be complaining if we got buried like this - PROMISE!

The weather gods must not like the South too much this year. Breaking character completely, they decided to dump another 5-8 inches of snow in the Chattanooga metro area. For a transplanted Yank like myself, this is not much of a bother, having built up a resistance to snow after going to school in upstate NY. We would be routinely bombarded with 12-18 inches of white nastiness several time each winter. The trials and tribulations of driving in that crap actually led me to keep a snow shovel in the back of my pick up truck because I would get stuck so much. Sad but true.

Basically, these experiences hardened me to all manner of inconveniences related to snow but this is the land of sweet tea and BBQ after all and this much snow generally creeps people out. I guess when you aren't used to it, you don't know what to do with it and a certain level of "I'm going to drive into a ditch and freeze to death because no one will come to rescue me" paranoia sets in (I tried to keep my Yankee snarq out but I failed - ooops - haha). When I first came South, it would not have occurred to my Yeti-like self to cancel training sessions on a day like this, assuming incorrectly that people would actually show up. However, I know better now the kryptonite-like effects of snow on the average Southerner and got on with the early cancellations today (to which all of my younger clients surely rejoiced). After all, what better workout could there be to them than sledding and goofing off all day?

If you can't appreciate this - please check your pulse - NOW

Sooooooo...what the heck do I do now? Being a bit of a work-a-holic who actually enjoys their job, I am not used to random days off. I am a creature of routine and I feel totally jacked up at the moment because my whole day has been set adrift in a white wash of snow- literally. My fiance will read this and surely mock my dread of 11 hours of "un-plannedness". Unlike me, she thrives in the unknown and actually seems to embrace days like this. Indeed - today is a true winter wonderland for her. Me? I will probably read some blogs and create a few videos for YouTube and be totally boring. Well...at least until she heckles me about being too much of a grinch and gets my old butt to go sledding.

Before the fun police calls, a quick comment on "work"... opening up the new Fury Performance has left me little time to do my Week in Review posts so I have decided to discontinue them. I also started to realize that I was reporting the same stuff from week to week due to the make up of the given training cycle. I will try to write a review posts when I switch programming themes to keep it more interesting for all. The hustle and bustle of the new FPT start up also left me little time to go digging for cool articles to share and the Brain Food column has suffered as a result. The new FPT is 90% complete (I think/hope?!?!) and my time is freeing back up so I am back on the attack on this post series. Eat up!

Power Bracelets = SCAM!

Watch this video featured on ESPN's Outside The Lines and SAVE your money! It amazes me how much these guys have made off this. They just recently admitted that there is no research to support their product!

Interactive Supplement Rating Chart

I saw this blog chart on Tony Gentilcore's blog and it is wicked cool. Click on a "bubble" featuring a particular supplement and it will link you to some information (study, journal, website, etc...) that will tell how effective or not the supplement is. If you are a nutrition geek like me, you might get lost on here for awhile.

An awesome video of INTENSE PNF hamstring stretching

This blog post comes from Tony Gentilcore and discusses some possible causes of hamstring "tightness" and some strategies on how to regain lost range of motion through retraining the associated neural patterns (think mind to muscle connection). He does a better job of explaining that stuff than I could but I think the highlight of the whole article is the embedded video of a therapist simply going to town on a guy's hammie using PNF. I have never seen someone demo this and simultaneously explain it so well. I have used this with many of my clients but I even picked up some pointers. IT IS EPIC!