Strength training for once I get my back straightened out

Ok, so my back has obviously been having its problems but I keep getting more and more excited about working out the closer I become to getting this thing straightened out.

So here is where my head at right now as far as exercising goes.

I have no doubt talked about the 4-hour body in previous entries and have mentioned the book Building a Gymnastics Body. Well I am starting to think that I want to combine some of the different things discussed each book.

My goal is to build up my strength and flexibility to the maximum I can achieve while maintaining my current body weight (or at least around it plus or minus about 5lbs due to Creatine supplementation).

The diet part is going to be tricky, I have never been one to eat very unhealthy but I am probably going to have to start restricting my diet in order to raise my natural testosterone levels. That means lots of eggs and red meat for me. In the morning when I wake up it will be eggs and at night it will be eggs before bed. Meh!

Also, I am beginning a supplementation program that includes drinking a mixture of cayenne pepper and water, fish oil, creatine ethyl ester and multi-vitamins. Most of those things are pretty self-explanatory except for the cayenne/water mixture. This combo will be taken for its thermogenic nature and will allow me to lower my body fat.

I am not overly concerned about being ripped so my diet wont be some insanely complicated thing where I watch every carb, count every calorie and have a freak out about raising insulin from eating to much fruit.

Next thing I will be making sure to do is to make all my bathes cold bathes because this again raises testosterone as well lowers body fat.

As far as the exercise program goes I intend to get up at around 5 a.m. M-F before I have to go to work so I can do a little egoscue, kettlebell swinging and yoga.

After work I intend to do that superhuman strength training protocol discussed in The 4-Hour Body. Which basically is doing bench and dead lift three times a week. The way this is done is low reps and long rest periods between sets.

I want to figure out a way to include squats into this plan but I'm not sure how I am going to do this. I was thinking since I work out at home that I could do low rep squat work by doing one zercher dead lift and then proceed to squats for reps before setting the bar down.

After all this lifting I intend to do the work out of the day from the gymnastic bodies website to build some foundational gymnastic strength. I say I intend to because the super human protocol is designed in order to allow the athlete to do weight training along with their sport specific training.

Once again I'll end this with some yoga.

Finally, assuming I am not completely exhausted from all this I want to run a little on weekends either normal or retro running depending on how I feel.

That is the plan lets hope that I can stick to it, but first I just need this back to heal.

Barefoot style running in the winter and for the cheap

So ever since I read the book Born to Run I have been dying to try my hand at barefoot running or at least running without normal running shoes.

Well now there are all these shoes coming out that are being marketed as barefoot running shoes like the Vibram 5 Fingers, Nike Free and I think Timothy Ferriss mentions something called Terra Bosa in his book The 4-hour body.

The problem with all of these shoes are well there expensive and I don't really have that much money at least not enough to justify quite yet purchasing shoes that look like a pair of socks.

My alternative so far (as of yesterday) is to wear those beach shoes you can buy at Rite Aid for $10 in the summer. The soles are flat and thin and are actually surprisingly warm when worn with a thin pair of socks inside them.

I'm not sure if I am reaping all the benefits from running this way as opposed to running in those other shoes or going barefoot, but until then I will probably continue to run this way and since it is winter I will keep my socks on underneath the shoes.

Overall, I have to say that running this way yesterday was quite a bit different then running in normal running shoes or even in Converse Chuck Taylor's (which was my previous solution to running barefoot).

I have to say that when I ran this way the muscles in the middle of my feet got pretty tired and my ankles actually felt like they were getting worked out. I'm guessing that as far my ankles are concerned is that running this way is forcing them to stabilize body and work at keeping its balance more when running this way.