One of my favorite movies of all time is Top Gun. Any opportunity for a Top Gun reference will be seized immediately.

The wonders of modern life are an ever-present temptation to write checks your body simply can’t cash.

A typical cheeseburger and small fries at the popular chain Five Guys weighs in at a whopping 1400 calories. Now if you are a 180lb male with under 10% body fat, that meal is less than half of your daily calorie expenditure. Is that you?

However if you’re a average size female and your primary goal is fat loss, then a burger and fries is more calories than your body can consume in an entire day. You can eat it, in fact you might not even feel too full afterwards, but you are writing a check your body can’t cash.

Guys, you’re not off the hook. Unless you’re the above-described specimen, the burger and fries are already 70% of your daily need. Is that all you’re eating?

The modern food industry has made it possible to consume more calories in one meal than your metabolism ever imagined possible. Not only can you do it once, but you can do it several times a day every single day. Sure, you can keep writing those checks and getting away with it, but at what cost?

More than likely you’re reading this blog post at work right now, sitting at your desk. More and more Americans spend the vast majority of their day at a desk. Sitting in a chair is one of the most unnatural things you can do to the human body. In fact, the amount of pressure on the disks in your spine is similar in a sitting position to the pressure while lifting something heavy off the floor.

If you are spending 8 hours a day sitting at a desk, 2 hours in the car, and 2 more hours on a couch watching TV you are simply writing a check your body can’t cash.

It is only a matter of time before you will run into back, hip, knee, ankle, heart or other problems. A body out of balance will break.

Keep this in mind next time you are eating in a way that doesn’t support you and your goals or skip the gym for the 3rd week in a row:

Are you writing checks your body can’t cash?

“I’m bored.”

You are connected to the largest, most easily accessible repository of information in the history of time by so many orders of magnitude that words are insufficient to convey the significance of the difference. In less than half a second you can watch a tutorial video on nearly any topic from gunsmithing to philosophy. You can take courses from Ivy League institutions that people pay tens of thousands of dollars for – for free. There is a device that is smaller and lighter than a paperback book can hold over 2000 books at a time and access over 1 million books including approximately 42,000 classic books that have stood the test of time and are free. You can start a business in any number of directions ranging from selling arts and crafts to an enormous marketplace of buyers to charging $5 for quick digital tasks. There are online communities for every hobby, fetish, disease, sport, addiction, job, or desire imaginable filled with people who have a desire to connect on the topic they have in common.

But you’re “feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity?”

No, you don’t get to be bored.

As I get a little bit older the aphorisms my parents taught me as I was growing up have bubbled to the surface. One of the things my mom would say was “I’m bored is something idiots say.”

You’re not an idiot, are you? I don’t think you’re an idiot.

If you’re bored you have the choice to change direction and do something to occupy your mind or body.

There are some things that don’t give you a lot of choices. If you’re tired you have to go to sleep. If you’re hungry you have to eat. If you’re bored you have a million and one different ways to change that.

 

 

 

 

There are two exercises that have the lamest of lame connotations when I think of them. Maybe you too. The step-up and the clamshell. At least when I think of the clamshell, I think of the Eric Prydz Call On Me video:

But the step-up. Holy hell what a lame exercise, right? Invariably you see it demonstrated like this:

How many repetitions do you think our friend would have to complete to affect a stimulus? My guess is somewhere between 1500 and 15,000.

Almost any time you have an exercise that seems lame or ineffectual, you can find out if that’s true or not by making it heavier. When it doubt, go really heavy.

What happens when you go really, really heavy on a step-up? You get:

• Massive core stability demands due to the offset position and asymmetrical force transfer.
• Huge end range hip extension requirement.
• Less ankle dorsiflexion requirement than a comparable squat – can be good for people with poor ankle movement.
• Depending on the loading position & implement, upper back recruitment comparable to a similar squat or carry.
• Less lower back stress than a squat or a deadlift due to the more upright torso position.

You’ll find many people raving about heavy carries and for good reason. Ambulating with a heavy load is a fantastic way to build strength in a useful, usable range of motion. Heavy step-ups are like dialing carrying up to 11, and I think they’re an underrated strength exercise.

If you have access to one my favorite way to do heavy step-ups is with a safety squat bar. The next heaviest option is in a back squat position. Finally, if you want to work on your grip strength or you already have ferocious grip strength then very heavy kettlebells or dumbbells can be a good option as well.

It seems like a simple exercise, and it is, but there is a coaching point that I think is useful that I picked up from Nick Tumminello. In short, Nick teaches to lean forward onto the working leg, and then lift the heel on the non-working leg. This combined with driving through the heel of the working leg virtually eliminates the cheating, double-leg step-up you often see.

Here is a guideline I tell my gym members when it comes to the relationship between box height and weight:

If a tall box tests well, go lighter.
If a short box test well, go heavier.

Tall-light, short-heavy.

Different heights have different benefits and are in many ways very different movements from each other. Do what tests the best.

Get it on with some heavy step-ups and let me know what it does for you.

Here’s a demo of a heavy-ish set: