Stephen's Fitness Chronicles

From weight loss using cycling, rowing and CrossFit, to healthy mass gain using Starting Strength, the whole time while gradually discovering the potency of the Paleo diet - Stephen H. gives you his journey from being overweight to getting lean and starting to gain muscle. All the while he chronicles his progress via graph and chart use and eventually refines his dietary approach (discovering paleo along the way) and manages to avoid med (and oatmeal) pushing doctors along the way! He did, however, leave out his markedly improved performance in his recumbent bike racing from last year. Oh well, here's his story:

Fitness and Self-Realization by Ben Lewenauer

As of Friday, October 15th, Ben Lewenauer finished his four week session of OnRamp at CrossFit Milwaukee. Below is his account of his first experience with us when he came in for an introductory class on a Saturday before starting OnRamp a few weeks later. The first workout that we use for our OnRamp is a series of 15 foot shuttle runs, air squats, push-ups and ring rows. Normally this is performed for 15 reps of each of the exercises the first round, then 12 reps of each for round two and finishing with 9 reps on the last round. That being said, we do allow modifications to both the rep scheme and to the exercises to allow for varying fitness levels. Ben did the workout for day one of OnRamp as I just described it, completing it in 4:25. Four weeks later, his time was actually slower - 4:27, but he scaled up from the ring rows to unassisted pull-ups, so I consider this a HUGE win in the power output category.Anyway, here's an account of his first experience with us from his perspective...

Motivational Moments

During my time as a fitness coach I've had the opportunity to come across some great videos posted online. Although, some of my readers may have seen me post these in blogs elsewhere or on my Facebook page, I thought it might be worth what little free time I seem to have lately to collect them in one place, as these videos are ones that I can watch dozens of times and not tire of.

As I posted each one of these I reviewed them one more time and my mind was making some associations with movies and books that I've experienced in the past which I'll quote right before the video that sparked said memory. Let's see who can figure out where the quotes are from. Post your answers to comments. If you win, you get the full satisfaction that you grew up largely a science fiction geek like myself. I'm making this WAY too easy...

Supplementing Health: Things to do BEFORE Visiting GNC*

Over a year has passed since my initial contact with athletes from Dominican High School, a private Catholic school on the north side of Milwaukee, WI. It's been a great experience working with the high school athletes from several sports and I'm excited to be kicking off the start of the school year as their Head Strength and Conditioning Coordinator. Since starting my personal training career (back in 2005 as the 11^th CrossFit affiliate), I learned very quickly from my mentors at the time the motivational power of the blog. It recognizes results, gets people talking and helps to generate excitement over the hard work being done and the achievements being made. Since there are certain issues in displaying pictures of scholarship bound athletes on the website of a private business, I took the route of creating a Facebook fan page dedicated solely to the students at the high school. This way I could provide good informational links, share some motivational material, post their pictures of their workouts, etc. without any conflict of interest. The fan page went live in August of 2011.

It only took a little over one month before it happened. One of my pet peeves. A person became a fan of the page and immediately made a post in regards to a service that he wanted to promote to the parents, coaches

Testimonial by Emiliano Lake-Herrera

OK, Gang - the next post is from one of my favorite former clients. A few months ago he and his wife moved out to Colorado so that she could pursue an awesome job opportunity. Their presence at the gym has been sorely missed as they are among the funniest, most positive, energizing people I know. That, and they had OUTSTANDING results training with us at CrossFit Milwaukee, and I want to reemphasize with my clients that they can achieve the same type of success that Emiliano had provided they 1.) adhere fairly strictly to a paleo diet, 2.) make strength training a paramount priority and 3.) emphasize consistency of training in their fitness lifestyle.

Karate, I'm Sorry For Being So Harsh..... Random Musings on Karate, MMA Training, Midline Fitness and Lessons Learned

During the course of life, important moments of growth are often preceded when fundamental beliefs are seriously challenged. Hopefully, if one is mature and ready enough, openness replaces dogmatism, new methods erode ingrained behavior and, in the end, an appreciation forms for the stepping stones and obstacles that necessitates true learning and growth. No one ever said this process was easy. Quite the contrary, sometimes one realizes that a colossal amount of time and effort have been spent on endeavors that are hugely counterproductive to our long-term goals and happiness. We see this in fitness (“I should have spent less time on curls, the pec deck; maybe more on pull-ups, dips....”). We see this in martial arts (“if only I wrestled in high school instead of taking karate class” - more on this later). We see this (perhaps) in relationships (“Man, I married the wrong woman” - Ok, maybe that's just me....) and I'm sure it pervades almost any series of events in life's endeavors. It's not unusual to look back on the activities we mistakenly pursued in disdain as 'a mistake' or 'a waste of time' to the point that we fail to notice the little gems of knowledge or experience we may have picked up without really consciously thinking of it. Another way of appreciating this viewpoint would be to look how Thomas Edison phrased things when confronted with adversity - “I have not failed, not once. I’ve discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work.”