Hey all, I apologize for the spotty postings as of late (insert lame excuse about the cyclical nature of the personal training business here) and unfortunately, it’s about to get a tad spottier.  I’m headed to Utah tomorrow morning for an 8-day snowboarding trip with the fam and friends.  It’s something we’d like to do every weekend we do every year and this trip looks to be no less awesome than in years past.

So don’t fret over whether or not I actually test out my ‘wacky’ conditioning theories – I do, on the mat and on the mountain (in my humble experience, the mountain is less painful).

I’ll be back on schedule after the Superbowl.  My sincere thanks for reading.

…my sincere thanks for the (bunless) Five-Napkin Burger at Nice Matin yesterday.   And the conversation.

Apologies for the way things look around here.  My webmaster is kicking around some new design ideas and the layout may suffer slightly in the interim.  Posts and articles should still be completely readable, but there may be some funky stuff going on in the headers and widgets.

Bear with me.

It’s instructive to realize that some folks still have to live by the sweat of their brow (and keep smiling) the next time you think your workout is hard. Photo credit: Juliette Lasserre/BIPs/Getty Images

Monday bonus validation and link love: As the Hogans would say, have you been Eugenized yet? I don’t claim to have all the answers be a health and fitness guru, but it’s nice to see that even established health and fitness gurus like Mark Sisson (who writes an awesome blog, BTW) agrees with me. If you read nothing but his Primal Blueprint and followed it, you’d easily outlive everyone you know.

With proper coaching, this should never happen.

Why does stupid stuff (like the “cleans” in the video linked above) happen on a routine basis?  Because you (or your coach) has chosen to emphasize intensity over quality.

Intensity (read: level of effort) is vitally important.  In fact, the main reason most people get absolutely nothing out of their workouts is due to lack of intensity – they simply aren’t working hard enough to stimulate change in their body.

The flip side, of course, is what’s typically true of guys in the gym (and the freshmen in the video) – too much intensity improperly applied. It’s a poor strategy to work with a high level of effort before you develop proper form and technique.

Develop good technique first. There’s plenty of empirical evidence that shows that people who work out hard without first perfecting form have atrocious form, and even when they are taught proper form, quickly revert to atrocious form if not monitored and corrected.

By ensuring you have your form down first, you can:

• Avoid injury.
• Ensure proper exercise of working muscles.
• Maximize exercise efficiency.

Case in point - If you learn how to jump rope with proper technique, one day you’ll be able to work up to doing this:

Welcome. Please bear with me during this transition period.

All of my previous posts and articles can still be found on eugenization.wordpress.com

I hope to have everything transferred over by the end of the week.

To all, I wish you a happy holiday, whatever that holiday may be.

You can either take this day to rest, feed, and be merry with your loved ones, or take a cue from Santa and get a few reps in before tucking into that Figgy Pudding (I know which one I’ll be doing.  Dinner table, here I come):

(Santa Automaton by dugnorth.com)

I know some of you were wondering how I did:

(Sorry Corrie, next time I’ll avoid taking trips to China immediately before a competition.)

Thanks to everyone for all of your support. Currently training hard for October (My sempai Jin has a wicked Uchi Mata - ouch).

I’ll be away for 10 days or so visiting my parents in our ancestral homeland, China. I don’t expect to have too much Internet access available to me so you’ll have to wait till I get back to hear what I thought of that breast cancer/fruits and veggies study that came out recently.

If I don’t get thrown in jail for it, I’ll try to do Tai Chi with the rest of the folks in the middle of Tiananmen Square and post a pic of it here, like this:

See y’all in August.

I’ve just been informed that Sairalyn put up the pictures she took of my NAGA match. Here’s the link.

She commented that if you watch the slideshow with less than 2 seconds between each pic, it’s like watching the match again.

Strangely enough, she didn’t take a pic of me nearly getting my ankle ripped off. That’s love for you!

Enjoy the shots.

Above: They were all screaming to me, “He’s not tapping!! Rip his —— foot off! Rip it!!” I still don’t know why I didn’t. My fateful decision to abandon a completely sunk toehold.

Above: Heh – I didn’t even realize I was up on points, 9-7. Whoops. Me in some bizarre mix of side mount/kesa gatame.