Another installment of Monday Morning QB.  Some great articles this week so I hope you enjoy.  Be sure to comment and let me know what you think or if you have any questions or want to just discuss one of these articles.

Knee Pain – The final part of a great series by Mike Robertson about knee pain and how you should perform certain exercises to help with it.

Building a Death Grip – A great article by about grip strength, how it carries over to training and daily activities, and what you can do daily to get even stronger.

New Ab and Core Exercises – A brief article by Tony Gentilcore talking about a new ab/core exercise that you should put in your training program.

Training for Coordination – Coordination training for younger (age 6-18) athletes.

Workouts for People With Limited Time – Another great Diesel Crew post about fitting in a workout even when you are pinched for time.

Squat, Deadlift, and Hip Thrust Form – Bret Contreras provides an awesome breakdown and video showing you how to squat, deadlift, and hip thrust properly.

Training Top 10 Checklist – Answer these 10 questions to see if you are really training or just working out.

How to Become a Gladiatior – 7 steps from Zach Even-Esh to make sure you don’t lose your edge training and overall

The Secrets to Usain Bolt’s Success – Usain Bolt and some of his secrets to his success.

How to Eat to Build Muscle – Chad Waterbury talks about how to eat to build muscle.

Motivational Albert Einstein Quotes – Some great Albert Einstein quotes about motivation.

Random Strength Training Tips – Some quick random strength training tips that if actually put into effect would help your gains 10x.

MMA Inside NFL Training – Famed MMA Strength Coach Martin Rooney has taken his training to the New York Jets.  This video shows how he implements MMA into NFL training.

5 Pieces of Advice Football Players Should Know – The man, the myth, the legend Jim Wendler talks about 5 things he wish he knew as a football player when younger.  It applies to every sport and ever athlete in the junior high, high school, and collegiate level.

Barefoot Training – Eric Cressey talks about barefoot training, why and how it should be done, and who would benefit the most from it.  It basically goes along exactly with how the athletes train barefoot at the facility.

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With my wife out of town, I’ve had to fend for myself when it comes food and that has caused me to crack open the recipe book in my brain. These recipes have been created with three things in mind. To create and help build as much muscle as possible, to only take 10 minutes to prepare, to be cheap, and to have the ability to make huge batches and so it can be eaten on for the next few days.

The recipe below I created back in college, and was one of the main meals I ate consistently when putting on muscle. It has everything you need. Protein, multiple sources of healthy dense carbs, natural fats, and multiple vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.

The dish is called “Mush”, but tastes shockingly well.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs lean ground beef – grass fed preferable and at least 90% lean.
• One entire box of Uncle Ben’s Minute Rice (roughly 4 bags in a box)
• 2 cans Ranch Style Beans (or if you don’t live in the south/Texas any type of beans work)
• Your favorite hot sauce/salsa

Preparation:

1. In a non stick skillet brown lean ground beef.
2. While meat is browning, in a pot bring water to a boil. Use enough to cook every bag of rice (follow instructions on box for prep)
3. Once water is boiling cook rice in pot according to instructions.
4. After rice has finished cooking drain pot, open bags of rice, and put back into empty pot.
5. Add browned ground beef.
6. Open cans of beans and pour into pot.
7. Stir thoroughly adding hot sauce/salsa to taste.
8. Split up the pot into either 4 servings to get 50 grams of protein for each meal, or 6 servings to get roughly 30 grams of protein in each meal.

Serve with a side of spinach or broccoli and you have one of the best muscle building meals you could prepare.

Give it a shot and be sure to let me know how it tastes and what you think.

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With summer winding down, I have been spending all of my time at the facility trying to get the college athletes ready to leave and get up to school stronger, and more powerful than ever before, as well as prepare all the junior high and high school athletes for this upcoming fall.  It has kept me extremely and the website articles and posts have been lacking so I apologize.  Next week things won’t be so hectic and I have some great content that needs to get posted to be sure to keep checking back.

Because I don’t want to leave you with nothing, I wanted to share a link to the blog of another top notch strength coach giving you 53 tips to build muscle and get stronger.  Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.

53 Ways to Build Muscle, Gain Strength, and Be Awesome (Minus the Expletives)

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Training is only part of the equation to become a great athlete, but nearly every athlete focuses purely on that aspect and wonders why they never see any real progress.

Let’s take eating for example.  I have every athlete I train write down a daily meal log of what they eat for 3 days and bring it to me.  Then I ask them what their goals are and 90% of the time they reply with the answers “to put on some muscle”, or “coach wants me to weigh x amount by start of the season”.  These are perfectly good answers, until I take a look at their food log.  I just look at them and think “Seriously?  You think you are going to hit your goal by eating this?”

Here is an actual food log I received from one of my football guys who plays in college and whose coach wants him to be up to 280 (currently 260) by the time school starts back up (less than 3 months away).

Meal 1:

Chorizo & Egg Breakfast Burrito

Meal 2:

Peanut Butter Sandwich & Protein Shake

Meal 3:

2 BBQ Chicken Legs & 2 Brisket Sandwiches

Drinks:

Water & Lemondae

Now reread the above meal plan.  This wouldn’t put a pound on a kid who weighs 150, much less 260.  Then after I sit down and work on nutrition with them they just say “there is no way I can eat that much…” and every time, I respond with “Well then there is no way you are going to hit your goal weight or add on any muscle.”

So what does an athlete need to do to pack on muscle and hit their goal weight?  It is simple really but it definitely isn’t easy.  Continue reading »

What should you eat to get bigger, leaner, healthier, recover better, etc.? This gets asked numerous times not just to me, but to anyone who actually looks like they workout. There are so many options, contradicting studies, fad diets, and other information out there that people never seem to get a straight answer. This makes it tough to eat healthy and a lot of people just go off something they heard and their results suffer from it.

If you have been dedicated to your training and achieving your athletic and/or physique goals, then you should already know the basic staples that should be found in any diet. Grass fed/range fed beef, free range/grain fed chicken, oatmeal, brown rice, fish, peanut butter, and a few more that you should already be consuming. If you are not consuming these already then the list below will help out but you definitely need to step up your nutrition basics.

I put this list together because the busier I get, the faster I need to prepare and consume meals without sacrificing health, or my results in training. It is easy to swing by a drive through and pound down a few cheese burgers (or Double Down “sandwiches”), but it is probably not the best option. This list of foods contains (for the most part), items that are quick and simple to prepare, or take no preparation at all. You just open and eat.

I’m a little pickier than most and have been trying to eat more and more organic so I will specify below the brands I use as well as if I actively try to go organic on that food or not.

1. Protein Powder:

I talked about this in a previous post here, but I’ll include it in this list as well just because of how quick it is to use. A few scoops and you have the equivalent of half a pound of beef or chicken made and consumed in under a minute. Again if you are curious about the brands and types I prefer check out this previous post.

2. Greek Yogurt:

This is the best type of yogurt out there especially if you eat it plain. No sugar, very low carb, low/no fat, full of protein, and has all the active bacterial cultures to help keep your digestive system fully functioning. I prefer two different brands and both are organic so that is a plus. Look for Fage brand or Oikos from Stoney Farms. Get the plain flavor and add in some protein powder for a good tasting mixture packed with protein. Continue reading »

Supplements are one of the markets if not the biggest thing in fitness currently and because of that everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. The Dietary Supplement industry averages $20 billion dollars in consumer sales each year and the majority of that comes from some fad pill, cream, or miracle drug that is currently being preached as the wonder drug and next best thing to reach all your goals in life. I want to give out a few of my own personal supplement suggestions that I recommend to all my athletes, clients, friends, anyone who asks me what they should take, use myself. Continue reading »

So you have been hitting the gym hard and trying to eat as much as possible, but still don’t see the results you are going after? If so then you need to make sure you are using this one supplement with every meal and snack you consume.

First let’s define what exactly a supplement is. Webster’s dictionary defines supplements as:
1 a : something that completes or makes an addition.

This means that anything you add to your normal daily food intake is a supplement. It does not mean that a supplement has to be a pill, powder, drink, cream, spray or whatever the stupid craze is these days in all the bodybuilding magazines.

So many people get caught up in the flashy marketing, bodybuilder type pictures, and “super new scientific” breakthroughs, that they forget about the basics. This is great when people are trying to lose weight since these supplements only make the wallet lighter, but for the most part they are worthless.

There are some fancy ones out there though that make some awesome claims, and I admit that I have fallen prey to them many times in the past. 20lbs in 3 weeks? No way that could be true… But in the back of my mind I would think “what if it is”. Next thing I know I have shelled out 60-70-80 bucks on total crap.

Well not this time. This time I’m going to save your money and time, and just tell you about a supplement that has been giving lifters tremendous gains for many years. You won’t find this at your local GNC, Vitamin Shoppe, or other Supplement Warehouse Superstore, but you can purchase it…

You ready for the secret? Ready for mind blowing muscle gains, and the ability to pack on some much wanted needed size, and everything else all those advertisements claim but never produce? Continue reading »