How not to do drugs…

A primer in harm reduction: As a society, we tell our kids from a pretty young age that drugs are dangerous. In school we give them the dry clinical facts about the harmful effects of each of the drugs; alcohol, cannabis and other illicit drugs. This information is useful but it ignores the reality that […]

I lost 10 years

10 years. I lost 10 years. 10 years in which I completely lost the plot. 10 years that I survived, rather than thrived. I wasn’t depressed or unhappy, but neither was I happy. But I was stressed. Constantly. 10 years when I was so strung out on work stress I couldn’t stop to ask myself […]

Tulum – Douchebag mecca or victim of it’s own success?

If one were to magically procure Admin rights to Instagram and was able eliminate all post from Tulum, I’m fairly certain that’d reduce total content on the platform by at roughly 30 percent. Why is that? What makes makes Tulum the ideal backdrop for the willfully self-obsessed narcissists weirdly expending a great deal of energy […]

What to do when you don’t feel like training…

Sooner or later, it happens to everyone. You take your physical training regimen for granted and little by little, it becomes less of a priority. Whereas before you’d broach no interruption to your training program, now work and family stress become a valid reason for missing workouts. Inevitably, as your training become crappier, so too […]

Why is this so popular? Rant o’ the day

Today I’m going to bend one of the golden rules of this blog The gym should be a judgement free zone, not in the infantile, disempowering “here, have a donut” Planet Fitness sense, but rather a positive place where you do challenging things. Mirin’ is encouraged, but haughty disdain of one’s fellow gym-goer is the […]

Powerlifting, skateboarding and why keeping it real is so much fun.

I’m a middle-aged man who, in his lifetime, has had some modest athletic gifts that have allowed him to compete in Karate, Boxing, Kick-boxing, Baseball, Cross-country, Track and Field (high jump), various semi-marathons and, most recently, Powerlifting. Try as I might, I can’t do “fitness”, it bores me to tears. The idea of working out […]

Germany Competition Recap – stuff happens.

So last weekend I competed in the stand-alone bench press event in the 2018 German Powerlifting Championships for my federation. It was an interesting weekend in many ways, I learned a lot about what I should, and should not, do for my next competition, how I feel about “stand-alone” events vs. the traditional 3 event […]

Why some blog posts work and others don’t: an analysis

As a blogger, have you ever taken to the time to examine your readership statistics to discern what seems to garner the most attention…and what doesn’t? I’ve been blogging for a year now and have published dozens of posts. During that time, I’ve had some spectacular failures as well as a few relative successes. […]

The dark side of the Gym

This blog is about to get real. This morning I read an excellent post from Awkward Brown Guy (https://theawkwardbrownguy.wordpress.com/ – I highly recommend his blog) in which he describes his motivation for going to the gym, and how it’s changed over the years. It got me thinking about how we all like to post about […]

The reasons that absolutely nobody should be intimidated by strength training

We’ve all been there. Most of us mere mortals have been in lousy physical shape at least once in our lives. At some point we think “hmm, I should really go to the gym” but we hesitate. A quick perusal of social media, YouTube videos and blog posts reveals that a big reason many people […]