So, you think your 20 inches biceps are huge? You probably need to check out Greg Valentino. At one time, Greg’s upper arms are 27 to 28 inches (about 71 centimeters). Just imagine some girls having 25 inches of waist and his one arm alone is bigger than those slim wait. Therefore, until today Greg Valentino still holds the unofficial title of “the world’s biggest biceps”. Greg claimed that he has been working hard on his biceps for more than 20 years. He even said that he was doing 300 pounds of dumbbell curls. Let’s see whether he was really bullshitting. Greg Valentino’s arm when he was 14 years old. With the weight of 145 pounds that time, his arm was about 18 inches. Greg Valentino when he was 20 years old Greg Valentino when he was 23 years old Greg Valentino arm when he started taking steroid Greg Valentino proudly showed off his arms after rumor saying that he started using synthol. Rumor said that Greg Valentino has used synthol to pump up his size of biceps and triceps. Synthol is one type of Site Enhancement Oil (SEO) which is a liquid substance, usually a mixture of oils. Synthol is used by few bodybuilders to increase the size of muscles. This oil just changes the cosmetic look to make the muscle look as if it has been trained hard. It does not increase the muscular performance. Though Greg Valentino admitted that he has used steroid and vitamin B-12 injection before, he denied that he has injected synthol into his arm. His argument is, “If my arms were all synthol, why wouldn’t I just keep using it and keep my arms 27 inches all the time?” Now, at the age of late 40s and height of 5′ 6″, his arm is 24 inches. No matter what, almost all bodybuilding magazine or online discussion boards accuse him on inflating his arms with that oil. Everyone has the right to increase, shrink, enlarge, harden or do whatever he wants to his body. Girls have resorted to silicon implant for breast enlargement and some guys have tried to pump up the size of their penises. As long as they are ready for the side effect, it is their business. At one time, Greg had abscess in his right arm (abscess is a painful swollen area which contains pus). He mentioned that he could fill up a jar with puss and blood from that arm. He eventually had to be admitted to emergency room and the doctor has to slice his bicep to clear the puss. At that time, he lost his “peak” arm. But only for a short while before he appeared in TV again with that amazing bicep which was “recovered”. Many years ago, when people started doing weight lifting, their objective is to exercise and build muscles to help them in doing daily activities. Some went a step further to take bodybuilding seriously. They trained hard and watched their diet with great discipline to join competitions. But, some bad apples took an easy out by blowing weak body parts with synthol injection and showed them off as a product of their hard work. I am not saying steroid is a better choice. But, people who use steroid still need to do their work, train hard and eat. Synthol is just a shame. As long as you can afford to buy it and endure the painful injection, you can have 20 inches of biceps without training. No, I do not wish to have biceps as huge as 24 or 27 inches like Greg Valentino’s. This guy is just obsessed with size and have forgotten the aesthetic side of bodybuilding. He does not care about whether his left arm and his right arm is symmetrical. Side effect, he does not give a damn either. He just wants them big. As long as he can have the world’s biggest biceps, he is happy. In fact, Greg Valentino does not represent many other bodybuilders out there who are training hard. Some people labeled him as the most despised man in bodybuilding world. A laughing stock, some said. For me, he is just a freak and the reason he commands such a high

CrossFit Kids CrossFit Kids Sri Ram Ashram The 2013 CrossFit Kids Elementary Curriculum is now available in the CrossFit Kids store. Warm-Up/Skill – Varsity, Junior Varsity and Novice: 3x or 5:00 10 squats => 10 mountain climbers => 3 broad jumps => balance beam traverse => basic dot drill x 10 => 10 PVC pass-throughs => couch stretch => pigeon stretch Elementary and Preschool: 3x or 5:00 10 squats => 10 mountain climbers => 3 broad jumps => balance beam traverse => basic dot drill x 10 => 2 monkey hangs => 3 push-ups => 2 monkey hangs WOD – Varsity: 5 rounds 250-meter row 5 back squats, 225#/165# 200-meter run Junior Varsity: 5 rounds 250-meter row 5 back squats, 95#/65# 200-meter run Novice: 5 rounds 250-meter row 5 back squats, 65#/45# 200-meter run Elementary: 5 rounds 100-meter row 5 front squats, unloaded-10# 100-meter run Preschool: 3 rounds 5 sumo deadlift high pulls, unloaded 5 front squats, unloaded 50-meter run Cooldown/Skill – Varsity, Junior Varsity and Novice: 100 double-unders for time Elementary and Preschool: 50 double-unders or singles-unders for time Or 3x 10 side-to-side hops Rest 1:00

Day 6 Mid-Day Snatch 1 RM- 3-2-1-1-1 CJ 1RM 3-2-1-1-1 Back Squat 1 RM 3-2-1-1-1

Rest Or Day 5 “AR” Sled Push & Pull (30min) 5min Prowler Push (Shooter’s Choice) 5min Sled Drag (Forward) 5min Sled Drag (Backward) 5min Push 5min Row 5min Single leg & Arm Sled Drag **(Shooter’s Choice, All Directions!!!)**”

The pre-conference workshop was 5:15 on Thursday and I made sure I left about an hour ahead to beat Boston traffic into Northeastern. Art has hosted the BSMPG for years and is having pre conference workshops to stimulate learning and allow great people to network. The main interest I have is seeing the cross-fertilization of ideas from different people. If we have the same cult year after year we inbreed. We need fresh ideas, even if we don't agree with the speaker. I find the best speakers share areas that I don't have experience with and while they may have different conclusions or methods, it makes me think about what areas can be explored. Three speakers spoke last night, they were Dr. Marchese, who has his own clinic up in Woburn. Fergus Connolly, a high performance advisor out of Ireland, and Val Nasedkin from Omegawave. Each session was under a half hour or so and this was not easy to do. Dr. Marchese- The dirty secret is that when an athlete isn't getting better in the Boston area and are desperate, you may go up to Woburn. I have witness several athletes fly in after seeing some very public super therapists and come back with tales of reality. Emotionally it hurts to hear after spending good money that the quality of care is so poor. The reason I think this happens is placebo. Think about it (no pun intended), if you fly to a super therapist and believe you will get better, a shotgun of massage and light exercises and of course time, people get better. Rest does help everyone get better, so we need to appreciate that nature is helping us on the backend. Dr. Marchese was interesting because he was following the WCT model of presenting, meaning bring citations and share what you do. I like the idea of handouts as I am always going to be a paper guy. His presentation ran longer than the allotted time and that is a classic error. Remember that the time we have affects the presenters behind us. Aside from that it was very similar to a typical neurological exam based on classic neuroscience and testing. The challenge here is the huge array of possible interpretations. This is why I suggest checklists and flow charts. The brain is a big area and while it's impressive, we are human and can't juggle everything in one's head. One EPL team bought an algorithm for post concussion testing to ensure athletes are lowering their risk to ACL tears and it's a glorified checklist that calculates risk into a 10% chunks. I liked the presentation but felt that the tests should have been cut in half and shown some sort of transfer to game specific results via motion capture or similar otherwise it is patient feedback and that is very subjective. Fergus Connolly- I have known Fergus for a long time and it's great to see him climb the latter to high performance advising. If you go to his website it's a bit of a mystery but perhaps that's part of the adoption cycle of a private consultant. His presentation was sort of a inspirational powerpoint full of Ken Burn effects and great visuals. He basically gave wisdom nuggets for 25 minutes and was clearly prepared. He was polished and prepared, but my concern is the people in the audience would copy the style. I think a Garr Reynolds presentation done too much is annoying because the visuals are just pretty stock photos. With any visual it must display a lot of information if we are doing an educational presentation. Inspiration or wisdom is a different beast so you can bust out the keynote software on your mac and be stylish when telling stories or giving tidbits of help, but sharing what people should do to get athletes better should follow the Edward Tufte model. Show the data. I felt that Fergus was appropriate for last night because he was trying to get the point of getting athletes to buy in, and I hope he shares what he does Saturday in detail and not show slides with a few quotes. If one is a top consultant one has to show why, wit

Complete 6 rounds: 1 Minute of Calorie Row 1 Minute to perform 15 KB Swings - 2 pood *You have one minute to row for calories. You have the second minute to perform 15 KB swings. Post total calories rowed to comments. Jonathan Cedolia

Hands down one of the hardest parts of bodybuilding is following a proper nutrition program. Most serious bodybuilders actually enjoy going to the gym, it’s something they really look forward to. For many lifters working out is the highlight of their day, rather than feeling like a chore. But preparing meals and eating several times a day is usually the challenging part. It’s what consumes the most time and often is what makes or breaks a successful bodybuilding program. However, a simple tip that you use to make your nutrition program a little bit easier, is to prepare your meals in bulk. Rather than cooking and preparing for 1 meal at a time, prepare and cook for several meals in advance. It doesn’t take any more time to fire up the grill and cook 10 chicken breasts than it does to cook 1 chicken breast. It doesn’t take any more time to cook up 10 cups rice than it does to cook up 1 cup of rice, or bake 10 potatoes than it does to bake 1 potato, etc. So when you are in the kitchen and planning out your meals, don’t just think about cooking one meal, always think about cooking for several meals at once. Then all you have to re-heat the left overs for fast meal later on. This will cut down significantly on your meal prep time and save you the confusion of wondering what are going you to eat for your next meal because you’ll already have it prepared in advance. Click PLAY To Watch The Video: Note: if you are on an iPad and can’t watch the embedded video clip above, you can watch it right on my YouTube Channel by Clicking Here Bonus Tip: When cooking in bulk for future meals, purposely under cook your food like chicken, steak, etc. just a little bit. Then when you re-heat your food later on it won’t dry out and get over cooked. Related posts: 7 Killer Cooking Tricks To Help You Burn Fat Faster! Save Money On Groceries – lower cost protein! Question: What’s The Best Way To “Bulk Up”?

A few weeks ago my fellow SFG Master instructor and very good friend Geoff Neupert stopped by my house as he was moving cross-country. Obviously we spent a lot of time talking about training and some of the stuff we have been working on lately. He showed me some of the Original Strength (the evolution of Becoming Bulletproof) stuff he and Tim Anderson have been doing in workshops. We decided that they need to come to Nashville, so a couple days ago he asked me to send this video out to you as a taste of what will be offered. The date for the Becoming Bulletproof workshop in Nashville will be the weekend of August 10, 2013. More details coming soon...

I love Vitamin D, when it’s sunny out you can see me run outside as if to collect as many free samples of Vitamin D as possible. Although I knew that the sun could provide Vitamin D, I didn’t exactly know what it was or what it did. I was very happy when our COO Dai Manual sent the following. Vitamin D is well known for keeping your bones and teeth strong and healthy but did you know that it can also affect your energy level? Vitamin D is linked to Energy Production A recent study has shown that vitamin D also helps to eliminate the feeling of fatigue caused by inefficient function of your cells’ mitochondria. The Mitochondria is the cell’s powerhouse, and works to convert energy from the food you eat into forms that can be used by your cells. Vitamin D enhances the activity of this organelle and allows your power producers to perform more optimally. The Sunshine Vitamin Sunlight is an amazing natural source of vitamin D and spending 10 – 15 minutes outside in the sun everyday provides us with an adequate dose. Body fat acts like a storage battery for vitamin D – during periods of sunlight, vitamin D is stored in fatty tissues and then it is released later when needed. But what if it’s cloudy outside? Depending on where you live, there can be weeks of rain. Here in this rain forest we call Vancouver, we certainly are accustomed to this. Oily fish, including salmon and tuna, are incredible sources of vitamin D and fortunately, most ways that these fish are typically cooked preserve the vitamin concentration. But sunshine and fish eating contests aside, there are also some great supplements on the market. So, if you’re feeling more fatigued than usual, it’s possible that you aren’t getting enough vitamin D. Consider taking a vitamin D supplement and you’ll likely experience an increase in your energy levels. We hope you have a fantastic long weekend. Relax, enjoy the outdoors, and soak up some vitamin D! Or as the forecast here suggests come in store and check out our ProPharma Dream Team with Omega-3, Multi-minerals and of course Vitamin D!

10 years of consistent trainingEveryone is in such a hurry to get 'ripped' or 'stacked' or whatever stupid term is in vogue these days. The truth is you are not going to build a great physique, great strength or become anything in any sport without a considerable amount of time and effort. They say it takes 10,000 hours of consistent work in a subject to become a master. I don't know how true that is but in the world of weight training and all it encompasses I believe 10 years of effort will get you well above average. There are exceptions to the rule - genetic freaks and excessive steroid use. Genetic freaks are rare but they exist and you should never follow the advice of a genetic freak. They can grow, get stronger and generally do what they want and still make improvements. That's not to say genetic freaks don't work hard and don't know anything but they do tend to have massive advantages. Genetic freaks are often the guys and girls that don't work hard and yet have it all. Annoying. Genetic freaks that work hard are champions. Steroids. Massive subject. They work. They are not without their inherent risks. They will speed up the process. They will cause problems. Maximise your potential without them, far more rewarding but of course, it's gonna take a while longer. For the rest of us that aren't in a hurry 10 years of 3-4 times a week hitting the gym with a few weeks a year off is what it takes. Do that for 5 years and you'll get some solid results. Do that for 10 years and you'll be right up there. The other great thing about training for this much time is that after 10 years it's a way of life. You will maintain what you've built far easier than someone who yo yo's in and out of training all the time. After 10 years it's just like brushing your teeth, it's a part of what you do. 10 years. Sounds a long time, it's worth it though. BST  10 years? Try a lifetime. Has Stallone ever not looked good in the last 30 odd years (except for Cop Land).