Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I am writing this post from Chicago’s O’Hare airport on my way back to Maine from LA, after giving one of my Equinox Workshops to Tier 4 candidates.
While it’s unfortunate that my Patriots didn’t make the big game (and I ran into several Bronco’s fans on my travels this past week), there is a silver lining:
Eric Cressey is putting his flagship product, The High Performance Handbook, on sale for only the second time since its release. From now through next Sunday, you can get this incredible resource for $30 off the regular price.
Simply head over to the highperformancehandbook.com to find out more. And no coupon code needed, Eric has already taken $30 right off the top for your convenience.
And of course, I highly recommend the gold package option, which comes with my High Performance Handbook Nutrition Guide. It is the most comprehensive nutrition guide I’ve ever written, with 100 pages of nutrition, health, and lifestyle information and guidance to help you eat and live better.
I know it has been quite some time since I have blogged. Well I can tell you much has happened since April 4th!
My wife and I closed on our first house just a few days before that, and we spent many weeks renovating, updating and painting the entire place. In the process I also cut the hell out of my hand, requiring 12 total stitches. Mind you this was at about 8pm the night before my daughter’s first birthday party. It was awesome timing.
We are moved in and mostly settled, though we will be working on small projects throughout the summer, and from what everyone tells me, the rest of our lives.
In addition, as noted in the title, I also accepted a position with Precision Nutrition! I have taken a position as a Lean Eating Coach, in addition to writing articles and working closely with Dr. John Berardi to develop top-notch seminar presentations. At the moment it appears that I have a few speaking engagements set up, and as they become finalized I will let you guys know.
All in all this is going to be a pretty cool job. I get to work from home, help hundreds of people every year lose tons of weight and change their lives, do some writing and speak at some cool events. Not too mention I get to do all of this for an awesome company that is doing things the right way, and I get to work for the guy that was probably the single biggest reason I got into this field in the first place.
Now this doesn’t mean my blog is done, it simply means I will probably post less than I used to, though more than I have in the past 2 months!
A long time ago I posted a blog linking to a talk called How I Fell in Love with a Fish. It was a talk on Ted.com and it was truly incredible and I urge you to check it out. I am pointing this out today because Ted.com is simply an incredible website with incredible talks by incredible people. I watched a video this morning of a 17 year old kid who created nuclear fusion in his parent’s garage when he was 14! How is that even possible?
I watched another video recently about the surprising science of motivation. In this talk Dan Pink discusses how our ideas of extrinsic motivation in today’s work environment are actually inhibiting work and creativity, and allowing people more autonomy and the use of their intrinsic motivation is a far more compelling option.
Specifically he highlights a very interesting comparison. Back in the 90′s Microsoft put together this huge, well-paid team to create an online encyclopedia. Two years later another company had the same idea, except that no one got paid, people simply wrote the information for fun or passion. This company was Wikipedia. Which model won?
I realize my blogging has been lagging lately due to spending an inordinate amount of time on my thesis. Unless you guys want to learn about the starch and fructan content as well as the ORAC value and free phenolic content of hard red spring wheat grown in different soils, under different conditions with different amounts of nitrogen added? Any takers? Didn’t think so.
Doing research has certainly been enlightening, and doing research on ORAC values has definitely been eye-opening. I can tell you first-hand that it is not a great measure of the antioxidant capacity of food. This is mainly because the procedure is just so sensitive! It is incredibly dependent on the skill of the technician, and the temperature of the plates that it can be highly variable. The take home point is that while ORAC is nice, it is just one facet of the story of a food’s worth and only one measure of it’s antioxidant abilities.
I can also tell you that while I have enjoyed my time in the lab (for the most part), being a researcher is not my cup of tea. I prefer to work with people and teach them how to change their lives and reach their goals rather than measuring the moisture content of wheat, no matter how exciting that is! Note the sarcasm.
I promise to continue to provide as much kick-ass content as I can, it just might be less often than it had been for a little while. Please bear with me.
Currently over at precisionnutrition.com they are sharing a video series from a talk JB gave at Perform Better last year. To be honest I think this is some of the most important information I have ever heard. While that may seem over the top, I assure it’s not.
JB is explaining why understanding physiology is not enough. As he put it (about it himself but I feel it applies to most of us in this industry) – we are hobbyists trying to be professionals. How can we teach people to change when we have never been taught how to do so? There is far more to getting people fit and healthy than just knowing the physiology of how to do so, which is what we are taught. You must understand the psychology of getting your clients to buy into your program and consistently do what needs to be done.
I highly recommend you check it out whether you are a fitness professional or not. Even if you are just someone who loves fitness and nutrition but doesn’t practice it professionally, I assure you that you will take away some incredibly helpful material from these videos. Plus they are just freely posted on their site, no sign-up or membership required.
A while back I alluded to an interview I did with Rick Kaselj of exercisesforinjuries.com. Well Rick posted it up today and I think it went quite well!
If you are unfamiliar with Rick he is the creator of the Muscle Imbalances Revealed DVD/Seminar Series (Upper Body and Lower Body) featuring the likes of Bill Hartman, Dean Somerset, Tony Gentilcore and more.
This is an absolutely hilarious video from BJ Gaddour. If you work in the fitness industry you will appreciate it even more, but even if you don’t it is fantastic (my wife was laughing out load throughout the video). Enjoy!
I have been tied up all weekend and all day, so unfortunately I don’t have much time to write anything awesome today. What I do have however is a pretty damn cute picture of my now 7-month old baby girl. I also want to point out that I picked out that Christmas dress. Not too shabby if I do say so myself.
Fat Tissue Insulin Sensitivity and Obesity – by Stephan Guyenet. This post by Stephan is one of the most compelling and clear cases against the idea of the carbohydrate and insulin hypothesis of obesity. The comments section alone is just as enlightening as the article!
Posted on February 7th, 2016 by Brian St. Pierre
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