As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a huge fan of random thoughts posts, both when I write for my own website and also when I read other people’s blogs.  I think it’s a great way to transmit many different ideas/topics while keeping the read short.  So without further, here’s my newest edition of random thoughts!

1. I just had my first article published on SportsRehabExpert.com last week.  For those of you who don’t already know the website, it’s an amazing resource for fitness professionals from physical therapists, to chiropractors, to strength coaches.  The website brings you THE MOST up-to-date information on sports and orthopedic rehab and injury prevention available on the internet.  It is a membership site, but you can join today for only 1$! With names like Gray Cook, Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Mike Reinolds and Charlie Weingroff contributing to the website, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of this offer!  Needless to say that I’m really excited about writing for SportsRehabExpert.com ; it is quite an honor for me to be lined up next to those big names! You can join today by clicking on the banner below.

2. A while ago, my colleague Eric Cressey posted a picture of his med ball graveyard.

Upon seeing that picture, I was like:”How is that possible to have this many cracked medicine balls?”.  At the time, we had yet to have one pop at Endeavor!  But that was almost a year ago.  A hockey off-season and a baseball off-season later, we’re catching up!

We’re nowhere close to where Cressey Performance is yet, but it feels good to know that our athletes too can pop medicine balls!

3. I have only a couple spots left for my online program design services.  If you’re looking for a quality program that will bring you the results and make you feel better than ever (read: pain and injury free), shoot me an e-mail and I’ll take care of you.  Don’t settle for the cookie-cutter program you’ll find in a fitness magazine that won’t do anything for you anyway.  Save yourself the hassle of writing your own program, and have someone write a smart, no B.S. program geared toward your specific needs and your specific goals.  You’ll achieve your fitness goals way faster than you ever thought possible!  Visit my Services page for more details.

4. I’ve been food shopping at Whole Foods for a little while now, and I must say it is the smartest nutrition related decision I could have made.  For those who live outside the US, Whole Foods is a mostly organic grocery store that carry the freshest produce and the highest quality food.  It’s simply amazing!  You won’t see this kind of sign in any other grocery store:

Not only do they carry the best quality foods around, by they also encourage people to eat healthy and they make proper recommendations (like this one on the sign) about the basics of healthy dietary habits.

5. A big shout out to the Comcast U-18 AAA hockey team who qualified for the Nationals this past weekend by winning the USA Hockey Atlantic District.  Jared, our boss at Endeavor is the head coach of the team and we train most of the players on the team in the off-season and some of them throughout the season as well.  They won a best of 3 series with their biggest rivals, the Junior Flyers.  They won the first game 5-1, lost the second 5-4 and won the decisive game 9-2 in an amazing game!  Congratulations guys!

6. I set a new deadlift PR yesterday!  I haven’t been deadlifting very heavily lately.  To make a long story short, I messed up my back a couple weeks ago and it’s been bothering me ever since and one of my knee is pretty banged up.  Despite the fact that my whole body is a mess right now, I managed to pull 445, and did it totally pain free!  Needless to say that I’m pretty excited about that new PR…and even more about the fact that my body’s feeling great with heavy loads again.  445 might not be that much, but in my situation right now, I’m pretty pleased with that.  And the next couple of weeks are looking pretty good!

There are many important factors that account for the results you’ll get from your training: your training program, your nutrition (including supplement use), the quality and quantity of your sleep, the effort you put into your training and many other things.  Among these other things is your training environment.  Too much people underestimate the power of your training environment.  Lifting in a weight room where you’re surrounded by people stronger than you, people that push you and where you listen to loud and angry music will make all the difference in the world.

I have known this for a while, and I actually lived it the for the first time back in 2007, when I was an intern at Robert Morris University under Todd Hamer.  Before that, I was either lifting in commercial gyms or in private gyms and always with training partners that were weaker than me.  At RMU, I learned what it was to be surrounded by strong people and having the ideal atmosphere.  The progresses I made that summer were really surprising to me to say the least!  But then I went back to lifting in a commercial gym for two years and a half and most of the time I was lifting by myself.  That’s not to say that I didn’t make any progress during that time period, but it just wasn’t the same.

I have now been at Endeavor for close to a year, and I was looking back at the progress I’ve made in my training in the last year, and it’s simply amazing!  I’ve put on 18 pounds (14-15 being lean muscle), I broke my deadlift PR within 3 months of being here:

I broke my front squat PR about 2-3 months ago:

and I broke my bench press PR last month. And I’m no exception. Our athletes all experience similar results. The environment in which you lift is one of the most underrated, yet very powerful factor that will influence your results. It’s about the people you surround yourself with, it’s about the atmosphere, it’s about the coaches and it’s about the music!

If you don’t have the opportunity to train in that type of facility for different reasons and you’re stuck lifting in a commercial gym here’s two things you can do:

1- Find a good training partner (ideally stronger than you) who’s going to be reliable and who’s going to push you when you need it.
2- I-Pod! If you lift in a commercial gym and you don’t have your own music, it’s been proven scientifically that your testosterone levels are dropping at an alarming rate every second you listen to Justin Bieber. And I can assure you that the lady lifting the pink dumbbells for 57 reps of curls while chatting with her friend is going to have the best of you. So do yourself a favor and load your I-Pod with angry music. For a couple of suggestions, check out my blog post Top 10 Lifting Songs.  Rise Against, Korn, Rage Against the Maching, Eminem and Metallica are all decent options.  But let’s face it when you’ve been listening to the same stuff for a while, you need something angrier.  This is what led me over the years to become a huge fan of Slipknot and Devildriver.  If you feel like your lifting music is not kicking your ass hard enough this is a good choice to bring things to the next level: