tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-132489742012-02-02T09:34:09.784-08:00FIGHTING ADIPOSE DEPOSITS SINCE 1987Andrewnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2011100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-16572276525683128912008-07-13T14:30:00.000-07:002008-07-13T14:38:14.670-07:00

In case people are still checking back here for updates, I'm now blogging over at Male Pattern Fitness, so if you haven't already, head on over and check it out! Some stuff, same guy, different heading, and fingers crossed, more regular posting. Enjoy and thanks for the support at this site.Incidentally, a reader wrote in to ask that I not delete this blog, and fear not, I won't! This

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-73344170951917103332008-07-08T18:04:00.001-07:002008-07-08T18:08:08.388-07:00

Big News! A few days before embarking on my trip to Lapland, I got an email from Lou Schuler, whom most of you will know as the author of The New Rules of Lifting, former fitness editor for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and general fitness guru, as well as the proprietor of the “Male Pattern Fitness” blog. Lou recently got an offer he couldn’t refuse from a site called T-Nation, which I’ve

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-9869328930880201742008-06-10T11:37:00.001-07:002008-06-10T11:40:02.895-07:00

Inexplicably, I'm off to Lapland this evening and will be gone through the 26th of June. When I get back I intend to start a reindeer-wrangling class at CRUNCH. Meantime, everyone stay well--Andrew

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-91820199317014676892008-05-29T09:21:00.002-07:002008-05-29T09:22:01.159-07:00

A few weeks back Lou Schuler blogged about a study, which indicated, in short, that Shoes are Bad. The evidence is fairly convincing: examining the bones in the feet of a few thousand cadavers, researchers discovered that the feet of indigenous peoples, and others whose footwear was typically minimal, were far healthier than those of Europeans who spent their lives with their feet swathed in

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-53192126222640907952008-05-22T14:05:00.001-07:002008-05-22T14:25:24.520-07:00

Back at Hanover High School I had a Latin instructor who said that teachers had to repeat themselves seven times before students would remember what they said. I don’t know where she came up with that number, but since then I’ve heard similar stats cited about sales—you need to hear about something seven times before you’ll buy it, or consider buying it, or even remember the name of the product

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-18600736889583040902008-04-15T20:21:00.000-07:002008-05-03T20:12:50.301-07:00

It's happened to every fitness geek at least a handful of times. Although the hours of his local chur--er, gym--are tattooed across his forehead, we will, on the rare occasions, show up at the gates of our own personal Emporium of Pain only to discover them locked shut. Maybe they're closed for renovations or inventory or pool-cleaning. Maybe they're observing Passover or the Chinese New Year.

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-11869657399609348462008-04-03T15:43:00.001-07:002008-04-03T15:45:16.731-07:00

So what if it’s been a million years since you’ve heard from me, you folks are going to fall at my feet when I hit you with THIS: I just got myself a new certification! From now on, when you see me in the ‘food supplement’ aisle at the Piggly Wiggly, mulling over protein/carb rations from behind my cat-eye glasses, you’re going to tell your shopping partner, in awestruck tones, “Look! There’s

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-82568028723613677132008-03-11T14:08:00.000-07:002008-03-11T14:09:16.762-07:00

The last four weeks or so I've put myself on a variation of a program called the "Strength-Focused Mesocycle" from Chad Waterbury's book MUSCLE REVOLUTION, which I've just about worn myself out recommending to anyone interested in strength training. The SFM, as Waterbury affectionately calls his program, is pretty simple in design (that's one thing I love about Waterbury): three workouts a week

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-17806001854067082322008-02-27T12:26:00.001-08:002008-03-04T12:27:18.029-08:00

Dear Fitness Scavenger: I am trying to make my calves "bigger". I was hoping you would have a few ideas. --"Mary," Hollywood, California Hi Mary in Hollywood: I get this kind of question all the time: how do I build this and shrink that, how do I get bigger here and smaller there? In addition to her famous red and blue pills, didn't Alice have different multi-colored ointments that you

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-9579324039854530082008-02-26T15:43:00.000-08:002008-02-26T15:44:35.370-08:00

This past weekend I attended a fitness expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Along with the predictable booths shilling various fitness-oriented products were some altogether more interesting types: diminutive power lifters hoisting three times their body weight; beer-bellied strongmen muscling around what appeared to be outsized bowling balls; mixed martial artists demonstrating their

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-79804170749035957132008-01-24T13:35:00.000-08:002008-01-24T13:48:34.997-08:00

A few weeks ago, just before the holidays, a pair of very sheepish-looking sales reps knocked on my door. Those clipboards give them away every time; door-to-door types should really start dressing like distressed neighbors or something—people would be so much more inclined to talk to them. Anyway, turns out these guys were from our wireless company and had been calling repeatedly to offer a

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-62118725426643314402008-01-14T18:52:00.000-08:002008-01-14T20:10:35.798-08:00

So I was listening to a little of the NPR whilst navigating LA traffic this afternoon and heard an interesting interview: a very emphatic researcher has concluded that the recent surge in obesity can be attributed, in large part to our modern "food environment," that is, to the instant availability of a vast array of junk foods in all their highly-caloric and nutrient-deprived glory. It's not

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-84891028131842656142008-01-05T12:33:00.001-08:002008-01-05T12:52:28.638-08:00

Well, I’ve taken myself a nice long break from the world of blogging, and it’s time I got myself back in the saddle. No excuse, really, except holiday sluggishness. What finally got me going again was an email from my colleague Alan Aragon, a nutritionist and dietician whose seminar I attended (and discussed here) about a year ago. I don’t know Alan that well, but I really liked his angle on

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-64745094846349274602007-12-19T22:20:00.001-08:002007-12-20T11:34:27.702-08:00

Between the hours I spend carving out six-packs, loading and unloading Olympic barbells, and wiping up clients' sweat, I try to pretend to be a normal human being interested in normal human things like politics and NASCAR, but it can be tough sometimes. I can't seem to help seeing things through the lens of a Fitness Guy. I take comfort in thinking that Einstein probably couldn't help but

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-70472106946468708972007-12-18T14:02:00.000-08:002007-12-18T17:47:30.307-08:00

Quick metaphor for fitness poeple out there with a poetical bent: when my wife and I bought our house in the spring of 2006, the back yard was an atrocity. Concrete covering 90% of the area, a gravelly, dirt-covered space on one end that the flyer had referred to as a "patio," the ugly side of a hideous fence separating our yard from the neighbor's. It needed work. So I spent an exhilerating

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-61141136359710050622007-12-12T21:29:00.000-08:002007-12-13T19:59:41.327-08:00

I've never been a big "workout partner" guy. Whether running or biking or lifting weights or swimming or practicing kata or hitting a heavy bag, working out has always felt like an inherently solitary endeavor to me, ever since my initiate days of pumping concrete-filled "DP" weights in my parents' basement. My few forays into "social" exercise--in triathlon clubs, boxing gyms, and martial

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-45347761282404221482007-12-11T17:28:00.001-08:002007-12-15T11:13:56.355-08:00

A reader named tommythecat (not--presumably--his real name) wrote to me recently and asked me to do a post on CrossFit, a popular training system whose devotees and detractors lock horns on chat rooms with alarming frequency and leave the rest of us wondering what the big deal is. Taking away all the hoopla--and there's plenty of that, believe me--CrossFit offers brief, intense workouts that

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-39327340407258136522007-12-05T08:35:00.001-08:002007-12-05T10:21:48.519-08:00

In Andrew Niccol's 1997 sci-fi movie Gattaca, Ethan Hawke plays an aspiring astronaut in a dystopian future where the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of your genes. It's a world where, "with the right helix tucked under your arm, you can go anywhere." Unlike his brother, who was engineered to be a perfect combination of his parents' best features, Hawke's character was conceived

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-22328201898307619332007-11-29T13:08:00.000-08:002007-11-29T14:56:00.654-08:00

So I had myself a nice little workout this morning at the local low-frills YMCA: lifted some decent weights (for me), worked up a pretty good sweat, and generally got myself into a narcissistic froth over my own manliness (it helped that the only other people working out at the time was a group of Korean women, none of them a day under seventy-five). Lots of fun. While I was completing my

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-48140822414790863332007-11-26T11:44:00.000-08:002007-11-26T14:15:38.608-08:00

Most guys will break off from their Thanksgiving binge to watch football; my brothers-in-law and I, all of us inveterately indifferent to sports trying frantically to compensate, did some arm-wrestling instead. "Quien," I ask, "es mas macho?" A quick rundown on the arm-wrestlers:The older of my wife's brothers, Brennon, is heavy into weight training. You'd think that would mean I'd love the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-74650299062136920492007-11-22T09:45:00.000-08:002007-11-22T10:00:48.605-08:00

Okay: Just a couple of things here, I swear I'm going to make this short, because I've stolen away from my family's pre-feasting festivities at our little rented home and am blogging with my wife's borrowed laptop perched on top of a clothes dryer that is currently drying sheets, blankets and towels that my two-year-old nephew spent last night dowsing in vomit. Don't ever say I never did

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-80807432209912495102007-11-16T12:09:00.001-08:002007-11-16T20:51:55.451-08:00

Although I'm sort of a journeyman in this industry, I like to think, as Robert De Niro says in THIS BOY'S LIFE, that I know 'a thing or two about a thing or two.' But there's one thing I'm not and never can be without a lot of surgery, hormones, and therapy, and that's a woman. I like to think that fitness is fitness is fitness, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander and all that,

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-63854510772650013662007-11-14T19:32:00.000-08:002007-11-15T16:07:26.397-08:00

Some things are repeated so often you stop hearing them.Or at least, that's my theory based on the kinds of things many people believe when they darken the door of the gym for the first time.On some level, we wish--fervently--that getting in shape could be easy. That we could somehow fob it off on someone else, buy, or cajole, or bargain our way to glowing health and drool-worthy physiques. And

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-65979801349282620262007-11-07T14:29:00.000-08:002007-11-07T14:54:18.432-08:00

Today's blog is going out to my Irish-Catholic New England cousins, of whom there are 32 (did I mention the Irish-Catholic part?). For the past few Thanksgivings, they have played a fiercely competitive annual Ultimate Frisbee match called the Marie's Cup. I played Ultimate with these guys at our family reunion last July, and they don't fool around. Just about all of them are former varsity

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-32640819856585914752007-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:002007-11-05T11:46:18.664-08:00

So I was reading THE OPRAH MAGAZINE yesterday--and there’s nothing wrong with that--and came across an article by Selene Yeager called “Exercise: The Least You Can Do (Would You Believe Ten Minutes?)”. Like most pieces on exercise in that publication, it’s short—and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. I have to remind myself sometimes that the vast majority of the population doesn’t

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-26845873750326428972007-11-02T13:51:00.000-07:002007-11-02T15:18:32.552-07:00

Alwyn Cosgrove had an interesting post recently that got me thinking. Dangerous, I realize, but hear me out here, gang. Ready for my new crazy assertion that will have everyone talking? There's No Difference Between Cardio and Strength Training. There. You heard it here first.The American College of Sports Medicine, which recently laid out new exercise guidelines for average folks (and whose

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-26805540750593878952007-10-31T14:48:00.000-07:002007-10-31T22:28:15.569-07:00

Well, the time has come. On this Halloween day--fittingly, a day when we celebrate darkness, death, the ending of all good things and the rising of all things evil--I now must step down as the holder of the coveted spot as JP Fitness' Blog of the Month. It's been such an exciting whirlwind I can barely believe it's all over now. First there was the official tattooing ceremony, when the image

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-47893937585776757722007-10-24T13:58:00.000-07:002007-10-24T14:05:38.110-07:00

Choice in just about everything can sometimes just be a plain distraction. Take, for instance, the gym where I’ve been working out these last couple of months up here in Washington. There are, and I counted, five resistance machines that are variations on rowing, none of which can hold a candle to the bent-over row exercise that one can do with a good ol’ Olympic barbell set. There are almost

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-82252049636732529182007-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:002007-10-22T16:39:21.857-07:00

In my five decades as a personal trainer (okay, maybe not quite that many), I’ve noticed that just about all my clients at some point bring up their memories of the Presidential Physical Fitness Test. For those of you who escaped particular ritual, the Presidential Physical Fitness Test is a series of drills that elementary and middle-school students are required to perform, usually twice a year,

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-38010593057031586862007-10-18T15:23:00.000-07:002007-10-18T15:32:40.291-07:00

In my travels this week I wound up sitting next to a woman I’ll call Darla. That might in fact be her real name; I don’t know since she never told me her name. If so, Darla, sorry for not protecting your identity. Anyway, Darla said she was having trouble losing weight following the difficult birth of her five-month-old son, which had been preceded by three months of bed rest. Having told her

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-27788393561964899242007-10-17T11:45:00.000-07:002007-10-17T12:01:02.532-07:00

Yesterday I found myself hungry in a Stop-N-Go, which for anyone remotely interested in good health, represents the Third Circle of Hell. There is literally almost nothing in such a store that you can put in your mouth that won’t do you more harm than good, no matter how hungry you are. Every food item should just be labeled “Sugar/Trans Fat Delivery System,” regardless of its nut-like,

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-86193252874226853642007-10-14T20:27:00.000-07:002007-10-14T20:31:49.774-07:00

About halfway through the first (and best) TERMINATOR movie, the CSM-101 cyborg (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) sits in a seedy hotel room paging through a stolen address book belonging to his quarry, Sarah Connor. Having had some of his external flesh--including one eyeball--torn away in various high-octane misadventures, the CSM-101 is partially rotting, and is surrounded by buzzing

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-87621194865116482402007-10-11T17:11:00.000-07:002007-10-11T17:22:13.912-07:00

A friend of mine delicately let me know that the words "a bit of a bloater" were NOT spoken by Slough Regional Manager David Brent from the BBC "Office," as I thought when I [mis-] quoted him here, but by the Assistant to the Regional Manager Gareth Keenan. My friend was even kind enough to find the clip for me, which you can access here..As this ESSENTIAL to the fitness of my readers, I'm going

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-54806445352847539242007-10-10T17:12:00.000-07:002007-10-10T17:23:12.404-07:00

I’ve never been much of one to tout workout programs of my own design on this blog. When it comes right down to it, any specific training program you can name is pretty easy to pick apart. If I say, for instance, you should do four sets of five reps of the clean and jerk and rest 90 seconds between sets, some wiseguy trainer will instantly send me four studies saying how eight sets of two reps

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-80115621320275742332007-10-09T15:38:00.001-07:002007-10-09T18:02:55.730-07:00

A few weeks ago Sanjay Gupta wrote a piece for TIME about doctors' apparent unwillingness to tell their patients that they need to lose weight. It seems that even physicians get a little squeamish about telling their patients that they're overweight:"Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., recently released the results of a survey of more than 2,500 obese patients who went to their

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-8617334371735399092007-10-08T17:35:00.000-07:002007-10-08T17:37:27.938-07:00

Last week Chad Waterbury very kindly sent me a copy of his latest eBook, called THE 10/10 TRANSFORMATION (available here, which is a nutrition and workout program designed to get you to lose 10 pounds of fat AND gain 10 pounds of muscle over the course of nine weeks. It’s a nifty program, and looking it over I can see that it would be effective: the workouts are varied, and progressive, and, (

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-29287608143557409362007-10-06T17:30:00.000-07:002007-10-06T17:40:29.899-07:00

Okay, here’s something hilarious, at least to me:I’ve gone off on the “functional” thing a few times in the past, largely on the basis of questioning what ‘function’ means exactly: what function is the exerciser trying to develop, who are the functional training devotees to tell us what functions are ‘legitimate’ and what which ones aren’t, and how exactly does spending 20 minutes working the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-28921434299395479872007-10-05T09:05:00.000-07:002007-10-05T11:39:55.696-07:00

Received an email a few days ago from none other than the famous "JP" of JP Fitness.com, who runs the most civilized and informative fitness website and forum out there. It's sort of a "Star Wars" Cantina of fitness gurus, with all the heavy hitters sitting around talking shop over protein shakes and creatine; anyone who reads my blog should check out JP Fitness (just promise you'll come back

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-49366597775324960342007-09-29T20:25:00.000-07:002007-09-29T20:28:00.903-07:00

There are reasons both sublime and ridiculous to build one’s glutes. On one hand, they’re your largest muscles and therefore deserve some pretty close attention. As I’ve said repeatedly in the past, many, many people suffer from glute inaction, or an inability to literally get their butts moving: their hip flexors are short, tight and overactive from sitting all the time, and as a result, the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-51645537147534839232007-09-26T08:34:00.000-07:002007-09-26T08:35:41.434-07:00

Back when I was in college in the fast-receding days of the early 90’s, I used to shake off the crackling of my overtaxed brain synapses by hitting UVa’s Memorial Gym around 10 PM for an hour every night. I was pretty fanatical about it and rarely missed workouts, even during exam week. I always figured the time away from the books kept me just a little saner and more balanced than my

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-6457751873875813552007-09-20T12:17:00.000-07:002007-09-20T13:56:09.642-07:00

Are leg extensions, leg curls, all manner of direct bicep-and-tricep movements, any form of shoulder raises, and calf raises pretty much useless?There's a fairly assertive and well-credentialed group out there that argues that yes, in fact, that's true: all your weight training needs should be covered by deadlifts, squats, rows, overhead presses, supine presses, and chin-ups, and that further

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-33027834516378708002007-09-12T10:51:00.000-07:002007-09-12T11:26:33.081-07:00

Last week I went to lift some weights at the local gym—I figure Macbeth should be sort of a buff type, being that he swings a broadsword for eight hours a day—and found that many of my mainstay movements were uncomfortable on account of the low-back strain I incurred a few weeks ago. Deadlifting, for instance, one of my favorites because my knuckle-dragging arm length makes it one of my better

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-70306657479280745852007-09-05T10:44:00.000-07:002007-09-05T11:54:39.617-07:00

Since I'm hanging my hat in the Pacific Northwest at the moment, I thought I'd spend some time talking about knees.Wha--?I went for a long walk yesterday, trying to jam some of Shakespeare's words into my cranium in such a way that they'd stick. At the end of my walk I realized that I was experiencing some knee pain, which is one kind of pain I haven't experienced much of over the years. Oh

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-87020707649996466282007-09-03T13:08:00.000-07:002007-09-03T14:59:02.322-07:00

Happy Labor Day, everyone; I hope the Labor Day elf is generous to all of you.I've been off the map for a couple of weeks there because of a certain dirty secret: in addition to being a fitness coach, I'm also an actor. So the reason I've been incommunicado for a couple of weeks is that I was prepping for a gig up here in the Pacific Northwest (Olympia, WA, to be precise), where I'm doing a

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-56726298962268940582007-08-15T13:42:00.000-07:002007-08-17T23:16:04.037-07:00

An anonymous poster left a comment about chiropractic this morning, which everyone who wants a little more insight than I can provide on the practice should read in its entirety (click on "comments" after my "Chiro-Skeptic" post below). He wrote about my chiropractor's recent diagnosis that I have forward head syndrome and the chances that chiropractic treatment will successfully fix the problem

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-16316334384980508522007-08-14T09:38:00.000-07:002007-08-14T22:25:25.925-07:00

Well, as seems to happen on occasion over here at www.blog.dynamicfitness.us, I'm going to be tucking into a nice slice of humble pie today. Lemmie splain.About a month ago I was thrashing away in the gym, very excited about the new program I was embarking on by my colleague (in the sense that Pop Warner footballers are 'colleagues' with guys like Tom Brady) Chad Waterbury. Now I was coming off

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-2153957019997429482007-08-10T09:04:00.000-07:002007-08-10T11:03:02.073-07:00

A client of mine sent me this story about Mike Murphy, the guy who managed to snag Bonds' historical #756 Tuesday night at San Francisco's AT&T Park and the possible tax penalties Murphy will face if he keeps the ball. Worth a look. In an effort to keep my readers in the loop, I rigged up a quick time machine and travelled a hundred years into the future to see what would become of our national

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-75989196133378028372007-08-05T19:16:00.000-07:002007-08-09T18:35:13.814-07:00

I've been taking step lately to rectify my god-awful money management skills lately and, after interviewing a handful of money-management types I realized that, even though I build muscles and they build portfolios, we essentially speak the same language.As I sat there listening to the third guy I'd seen chatter on about risk tolerance, global funds, 529K's and ROTH IRA's, my mind drifted to a

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-35411051322922439952007-08-02T20:14:00.001-07:002007-08-10T09:05:43.270-07:00

Well, it's here at last folks! What we've all been waiting for. No, I'm not talking about the confounded iPhone! Not the '08 election results! Not the answer to those small-minded questions "Are we alone in the Universe?" or "What happens to our souls after we die?" I'm talking about the new exercise parameters for optimal health offered by the American College of Sports Medicine and the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-15902880794178511182007-08-01T08:07:00.000-07:002007-08-04T19:35:23.167-07:00

Recently I joined the National Strength and Conditioning Association, which is the hoop-di-doo club for people who take this fitness thing a liiiitle bit too seriously. Like, well, ME. One of the perks of membership is that you receive a quarterly journal packed full of scientific articles with titles like "Effects of Electromyostimulation Training on Muscle Strength and Power of Elite Rugby

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-82895597338008280452007-07-29T16:25:00.000-07:002007-08-01T08:22:42.895-07:00

I had lunch with Karen Jashinsky about a year ago, having met her through some relatives, and recently did some poking around to see what she was up to. Turns out the answer is 'a lot.' Anyone in the fitness world will probably be hearing her name soon because she's got herself a pretty nifty business plan: a gym for teens. Sounds like one of those things that should have been in place around

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-61505143114421272452007-07-27T15:12:00.000-07:002007-07-28T18:20:21.958-07:00

If you can look into the seeds of timeAnd say which grain will grow and which will not,Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate.Macbeth, I.iii.59-62I'm not in the business of prognostication, and I don't exactly want to imply that I'm one of Shakespeare's witches, but I think I know what the next big thing in fitness is going to be: playgrounds for adults. Here's

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-61042564502236880972007-07-24T12:50:00.003-07:002007-07-26T06:16:41.312-07:00

When President George H. W. Bush described Saddam Hussein's initial aggression in the first Gulf war as 'kicking sand in the face' of Kuwait, pretty much everyone knew that he was alluding to the story of 'Mac' in the Charles Atlas ads. Indeed, to anyone who picked up a comic book during most of last century, the sand-kicking phrase remains about as familiar as ad copy gets. In readers of

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-30409150398123160342007-07-22T09:25:00.001-07:002007-07-22T12:05:13.938-07:00

A reader from Australia sent me a correction to my entry on "External Rotation." Contrary to what I said in the blog, apparently the lats are NOT involved in external rotation but actually assist in INTERNAL rotation. I did some research, and shiver me timbers, he was right. Gray's Anatomy, which used to be an authoritative textbook on the human body before it was a TV show, tells us that "The

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-58552139266842520382007-07-20T06:51:00.000-07:002007-07-22T09:43:56.874-07:00

Check out your average male gym rat, and chances are you'll notice something vaguely simian about his posture. When standing relaxed, their arms curve in so that their hands hang right around the tops of their front thighs. When standing relaxed, their arms curve in so that their hands hang right around the tops of their front thighs. They look like they're perpetually performing a mini-version

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-33264705398026511322007-07-18T13:00:00.001-07:002007-07-19T09:35:28.852-07:00

A few weeks ago I mentioned an old buddy and lifting partner of mine in this blog. As Internet karma would have it, he wrote me shortly after that and we started up some online fitness gabbing. Now Deano's no fitness aficionado like me, just a lowly, barely-literate Ph.D in biology, so, predictably, he had a few questions for me. I thought I'd post a piece of our back-and-forth here.A

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-15213560933495267512007-07-17T10:06:00.000-07:002007-07-17T20:02:24.175-07:00

Two pieces of fitness advice happened to cross my radar over the last couple of days.The first one was in Outside magazine. Thanks to the efforts of an impressively persistent door-to-door salesman, I believe I hold the longest subscription to a single periodical in human history. Should global warming sink, roast, or suffocate us all, I'm told an enterprising band of cockroaches will continue

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-74096895373936981982007-07-11T17:29:00.000-07:002007-07-11T17:42:48.262-07:00

Just reminding anyone who visits my site that I'm out of town through Tuesday the 17th, hanging out with my 200 Irish Catholic relatives up here in the Pacific Northwest, so blogging will be sporadic. In the meantime, please check out the video below and my Greatest Hits link at right, both free! Also, if you're interested in the upcoming video "12-Minute Back Care," shoot me an email with '

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-58413179937490131622007-07-10T15:33:00.000-07:002007-07-10T19:57:46.060-07:00

Below is my first foray into Richard Simmons/Jane Fonda territory! It's a demonstration of a terrific back relaxation/pain relief movement called the Diagonal Twist / Arm Circle: Click To Play In the next few weeks I'll be releasing 12-Minute Back Care, a downloadable digital video of simple, healthy stretches and relaxation techniques which can dramatically reduce

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-77045175994353407222007-07-10T10:14:00.000-07:002007-07-10T16:43:48.404-07:00

I have to admit that I'm pretty abnormal in that a new workout program or idea gets me really excited, especially when it's one that I can incorporate into my own regimen. I certainly like hearing about the latest trends in resistance training for seniors, but it's nothing like when I read an article by a coach I respect who says, "Descending sets have magical properties!" or "Seven sets of four

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-30201323395116761302007-07-07T17:30:00.000-07:002007-07-09T01:13:22.893-07:00

I've been back in the gym and off swimming, biking, and running for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say it feels good, not only to get out of the globally-warmed temperatures of Southern California, but to bend cold, hard iron to my will, get a massive pump on, and feel like a huge, macho stud -- that is, until an actual huge, macho stud walks up and asks me to leave my maximum poundages on

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-54089350509040923362007-07-05T09:11:00.000-07:002007-07-06T13:15:18.979-07:00

There was an article in SLATE Wednesday by pediatrician Sydney Spiesel called "Beware of Diet," which concludes that diets are overwhelmingly not effective in helping people to lose weight and keep it off. At one point Spiesel summarizes the findings of a study by UCLA psychologist, Traci Mann:"...the experimental subjects were kept on their low-calorie diets for 18 months without other

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-71366968842677615682007-07-04T11:54:00.000-07:002007-07-05T02:08:38.156-07:00

I was driving past our pediatrician's office a few days ago and saw that there was a sign soliciting letters in support of the office of Dr. Weitz (that's not his real name). When I returned home, a short internet search revealed that Weitz was being charged with medical negligence. According to prosecutors, he failed to counsel the mother of one of his young patients not to breast-feed her

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-39061352539097446682007-07-02T22:19:00.001-07:002007-07-03T10:58:25.918-07:00

There's a lot of dogma around the subject of strength and conditioning, most likely because of all the gurus and hangers-on that swarm around the fitness field. Even the average non-gym goer can rattle off a list of the top fitness crazes that have periodically swept the nation like angry locusts over the last decades: aerobics, core training, Tae Bo, Pilates, spinning, yoga, Step... a new

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-78112423259675560542007-06-30T11:49:00.000-07:002007-07-02T16:36:17.492-07:00

MILO OF CROTONA (Μίλων): Five-time wrestling champion from the 62nd to the 66th Olympiad, (532 to 516 BC); also a student of Pythagoras, the mathematician and philosopher. He wore a lion-skin cloak and carried a club like Hercules. In exhibitions, he would grasp a pomegranate so firmly that nobody could wrest it from him by force. It is said that in training he would hoist a calf upon his

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-34918045582649783302007-06-28T15:16:00.001-07:002007-07-03T17:04:35.191-07:00

There was a recent article on that 'We-Don't-Allow-No-Sissies' strength-training site, T-nation, about fragmentation within the strength-training community. T.C. Luoma argues that powerlifters and bodybuilders don't get along; figure models and female bodybuilders give each other the cold shoulder; mixed martial artists and practitioners of CrossFit stare angrily at one another from across the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-74402291933096791672007-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:002007-07-02T12:41:13.164-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I read an article in THE NEW YORKER called "The Way We Age Now" by Atul Gawande. It's not an easy read, not so much because THE NEW YORKER uses a lot of big words that aren't in my PlaySkool dictionary, but because it's about what happens to us when we get older, and who wants to think about that?Well, no one, but after reading the article I decided that everyone, myself

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-76878985705271724852007-06-26T17:37:00.000-07:002007-06-27T13:46:36.327-07:00

Tell me if you haven't seen this at your local gym: a trainer who has every client perform every set of every exercise standing on some kind of unstable surface, one eye closed, perhaps juggling two balls in one hand and spinning three plates in the other. It doesn't matter whether the client is an overweight, middle-aged woman or a skinny fifteen-year-old boy, the guy looks like he's prepping

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-16198537944501260102007-06-24T18:10:00.000-07:002007-06-27T03:13:08.418-07:00

So much of my time is spent helping people change the way their bodies LOOK that it's a breath of fresh air to be at an event where all anyone cares about is what your body can DO. Such was the case at the Dina LaVigna Breath of Life Triathlon in Ventura, where I competed this morning. Here's an event where men and women -- in often near-equal numbers -- compete first in swimming gear (wetsuits

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-29080418349441237962007-06-22T11:02:00.001-07:002007-06-27T03:10:38.332-07:00

Anyone following the saga of my triathlon prep will be pleased to know that have resisted extreme training this week and am, as of right now, healthy and up for my race on Sunday. Exercising moderately has been a revelation that I dimly recall from the last time I detrained in the week leading up to the LA Triathlon a couple of years ago. On Wednesday I biked 19 miles -- my usual to-and-from-work

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-44322763880922896982007-06-20T07:40:00.000-07:002007-06-27T03:09:13.553-07:00

Back in 2003 I got in touch with a doctor who used to treat my asthma when I was but a wee wheezy lad in the allergen-rich back woods of rural New Hampshire. In the years since I was a regular patient of his, Dr. Robert Klein had managed to chip away at the ever-growing American asthma epidemic, diligently chasing down every lead in the search for how to control and cure this vexing condition.

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-39080881626787544632007-06-19T23:02:00.000-07:002007-06-27T03:05:48.255-07:00

This Sunday, God willing, I'm participating in a triathlon -- the Ventura Breath of Life Sprint-Distance triathlon, to be precise. The distances aren't exactly Ironman-intense: 1/4 mile ocean swim, 12.7 mile bike, 3.1 mile run. It's not a long-hauler -- this race is all about finding a fast, lactate-threshold pace and sticking to it for the entire race, which I'm thinking will take me about 1:10.

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-47273751075286977862007-06-18T09:00:00.000-07:002007-06-27T03:04:04.745-07:00

A few months ago my wife discovered this poem online. It's by Mark Doty.At the GymThis salt-stain spotmarks the place where menlay down their heads,back to the bench,and hoist nothingthat need be liftedbut some burden they've chosenthis time: more reps,more weight, the upward shoveof it leaving, collectively,this sign of where we've been:shroud-stain, negativeflashed onto the vinylwhere we push

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-31341203152870643042007-06-15T15:53:00.001-07:002007-06-27T02:53:11.308-07:00

The fact that I get up early makes me sound like some kind of Ben-Franklin clean-livin' type, which isn't entirely inaccurate, but it definitely has its downsides. Chief among these is that I'm terrible company after about 8:30 PM. If Heidi makes arrangments for us to go out to dinner with another couple, she'll usually suggest that we dine at something like 4:45 in the afternoon, giving the

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-9969879198518090962007-06-13T22:41:00.000-07:002007-07-02T18:24:38.652-07:00

I just got this a couple of days ago from a reader in Chile (Chile! I love the internet!):Hi! I love this blog. I have a question for you. I live in a Santiago, Chile, where the pollution gets so bad that they sometimes recommend that you only go outside if you have to. The only places to go running are on busy streets. I don't mind that, but I have read that it's horrible for your lungs to

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-71163131734553731522007-06-13T14:52:00.000-07:002007-07-02T16:26:06.084-07:00

In the musical puppet show Avenue Q, there's a hilarious number called "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," wherein each member of the show's ethnically diverse mix of puppets admits to unconscious stereotyping. In its gentle, up-tempo way, it's one of the most effective rebukes of political correctness I've ever heard:Everyone's a little bit racist, sometimesDoesn't mean we go around committing

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-59934882111573564722007-06-12T12:03:00.000-07:002007-06-27T01:57:33.602-07:00

For anyone who's interested, I am now offering ONLINE TRAINING. Details will be up at dynamicfitness.us anon, but anyone who's interested should shoot me an email. Thanks!And for people just checking this site for new stuff: "Stealing Workouts," below, is a new post, that I wrote JUST FOR YOU, so don't miss it.Andrew

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-48283492331832425132007-06-12T11:46:00.001-07:002007-06-12T15:43:27.176-07:00

A few years ago I read an embarrassingly-titled book called "The Men's Health Cover Model Workout" by, yes, a Men's Health cover model named Owen McKibbin, who probably has the most coveted physique in the kingdom of average guydom. He looks -- and this is probably what has made him such a long-standing ambassador for the magazine -- ALMOST like a guy whose body the average exerciser could

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-70530961489729990382007-06-10T09:40:00.001-07:002007-06-27T02:09:44.057-07:00

Well, ladies and germs, time for your host to help himself to a sizable slice of humble pie, topped with a healthy dollup of crow.I've got a tip coming up that will be posted here and going directly out to subscribers (which you, yes, YOU could become if you submit your email address at dynamicfitness.us!) on the concept of "stealing" workouts -- that is, cramming in an exercise session when

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-7196213306280899872007-06-09T08:07:00.000-07:002007-06-27T02:06:57.150-07:00

A reader named Jeff submitted a couple of questions about my periodization tip from a few weeks ago.1) How much fitness is enough? Do we really have to keep improving? Eventually, our bodies age to the point where we can't keep up the same intensity (I am starting to feel this now). Is there some safe plateau?I guess I'd say that ideally you're keeping up an activity level that is challenging and

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-48176481314729685312007-06-07T18:03:00.000-07:002007-06-09T00:44:07.908-07:00

Okay -- short one today. My journalist sister wrote about this in the New York Times recently -- and it's relevent here so I'm going to plug it too. There are many "Fat Rants" on YouTube right now, but this is the first and the best. It's by a woman named Joy Nash, who's essentially standing up for her right to feel good about herself, to be and feel sexy, and to say a well-deserved f-you to

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-16190069694178472822007-05-15T11:48:00.000-07:002007-05-16T14:06:31.951-07:00

Just got back from Chicago, where I attended a three-day summit put on by PERFORM BETTER, which makes fitness products and puts on educational seminars like this one.The main thought that ran through my mind throughout the conference was: wow, there are a lot of people in this field who are far smarter, better informed, and richer than I am, and let's face it, Freckles, many of them are about 10

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-30132947701713703362007-05-01T20:15:00.000-07:002007-05-01T20:52:35.899-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I roused myself from my inveterate tightwadhood, went out to the sports store and sprung for a new pair of swimming trunks and some nice running shoes, making for a purchase of about 130.00 bucks (150.00 if you count the fancy insoles that I was easily talked into buying). Always stings me to spend money on frivolous things like sporting goods--even if it is part of my

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-23485570510580613972007-04-27T07:33:00.000-07:002007-04-27T14:08:59.973-07:00

There's a little party game that's making the rounds among fitness professionals of late called "What do you know that you can’t you prove?" I'm not sure who started it but it's a pretty interesting little exercise, and a lot of the first-string fitness pros have weighed in with some pretty great ideas (T-Nation.com did a roundtable a few weeks ago). In my tip from a few weeks ago, "A Little

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-49056745472253980752007-04-26T14:43:00.000-07:002007-04-26T14:44:42.299-07:00

Now and then I'll be at a party and an acquaintance will sidle up to me at the hors-d'oeuvres table and ask me about my favorite topic. Muttering something about the little-known healing properties of the French bread-with-brie-and-fig-jam that I'm jamming down my gullet, I'll be hit with a question that goes something like this: "How's this fitness routine: I take two soup cans, lift them

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-75568434331506493862007-04-24T11:05:00.000-07:002007-04-25T19:35:49.644-07:00

Quite some time ago this blog began as a training diary; a couple of people have been mildly interested in my training these days -- which I'll also touch on in a tip that's coming up -- but the bottom line is that I'm training for another season of triathlons. My first will be either June 9th or June 24th. Don't know whether I'm doing the one on the 9th yet, but now that I've written it I

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-57868090689138853402007-04-23T15:30:00.000-07:002007-04-25T19:48:50.658-07:00

Last weekend I took a couple hours and drove up the 5 freeway to Newhall, where the legendary Alwyn Cosgrove runs a gym called RESULTS FITNESS.I met Cosgrove a couple of months ago at a seminar and chatted him up. I knew his writing and fitness philosophies; I also know about his gym and expressed an interest in seeing how he ran things; he kindly told me I could drop by any time.So last Friday,

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-14584730954450672082007-04-22T10:42:00.000-07:002007-04-26T14:49:16.252-07:00

UNINTELLIGIBLE DESIGN?So for a year or so now I've been posting these tips, and am going to continue to do so, but I've finally become just a little more computer literate, and have been poking around the net quite a bit for other fitness information. Turns out that, to put it mildly, I'm not the only one doing this "fitness blog" thing. Most of the other folks appear to post... pretty darn

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-75368476981886788482007-03-16T12:20:00.001-07:002007-03-17T14:46:43.605-07:00

So there's this new thing called "science" that has a lot of people talking these days and I thought I'd spend a tip talking about it, just because, gosh, I'm thinking it might have some applicability to the fitness world.As a personal trainer I am compelled to renew my certification every couple of years by attending continuing education classes. These classes usually take the drab, drone-y form

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1169904179698926212007-01-27T05:22:00.000-08:002007-01-28T00:21:49.843-08:00

When was the last time you went outside and ran as fast as you could? If you're like most adults, you're probably groping for a memory that's at least a couple of decades old. You might remember a more recent incident if you take public transportation regularly or if you're the father of a three-year-old with Joyner-Kersee-esque foot speed, as I am. But the vast majority of us -- dedicated

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1165883092549419752006-12-11T16:24:00.000-08:002007-07-02T17:41:56.286-07:00

This morning I was reading a well-traveled blog by an exercise guru (I'll call him David), who claims that when it comes to fitness, we've got it all -- or most of it, anyway -- wrong. There are very few topics he isn't willing to take on: fitness, genetics, dental care, the movie industry, economics, the Loch Ness Monster... Okay, not that last one. But it's clear that David fancies himself

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1160898459036576782006-10-15T00:46:00.000-07:002007-06-11T02:12:35.159-07:00

My wife Heidi takes a stripping class every Tuesday from 8-10 PM. The class she takes is called S Factor, though recently other such classes have popped up in gyms and dance studios across the country. Men aren't allowed in, but Heidi tells me that every week the teacher leads the students through a warm-up, followed by some intense muscle toning and ab work. She'll show them how to do a pole

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1159426822402736592006-09-28T00:00:00.000-07:002007-03-18T20:31:14.113-07:00

When I decided to do a triathlon last season, the thing that scared me most was the swim, probably because prior to January 2005, the longest distance I'd ever swum was at a swimming hole in New Hampshire. That particular odyssey was accomplished by flailing, gasping, splashing around like a wounded harp seal, nearly drowning, and, finally, utterly spent on the swimming dock 12 yards from shore.

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1156388235146485392006-08-23T19:57:00.000-07:002006-08-23T21:50:30.996-07:00

Okay, boys and girls. Last week I covered some of the basics: frequency, exercises, food, stretching and the like. This week we get just slightly more subtle. Fear not, we’re still talking about weight training here, a practice that's about as subtle as a freight train and only slightly less noisy. Still, now we're talking about things like rest and variation and duration, which are going to

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1155241746842000242006-08-10T13:23:00.000-07:002006-08-14T07:18:08.650-07:00

When I was but a wee lad, I used to sneak into the weight room at the local college. I'd try to squeeze in as many sets as I could before the beefy supervisor would kick me out (again), rightly convinced that the scrawny kid putting up 23 pounds on the bench press couldn't possibly be a college student, much less a college athlete. The guys in that gym seemed to be from another planet,

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1153211927940432152006-07-18T01:34:00.000-07:002006-07-18T14:04:49.116-07:00

In his terrific book The New Rules of Lifting, exercise guru Lou Schuler quotes an old exercise adage:1) Everything works -- and, the corollary,2) Nothing works forever.Think about all the testimonials you hear during infomercials from practitioners of, well, just about ANY Get-Fit-Fast system (doesn't everyone watch exercise infomercials?). They all sound remarkably alike: "I tried everything

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1151323343105107142006-06-26T04:45:00.000-07:002006-06-27T06:35:24.106-07:00

A few weeks ago, my family and I moved from our apartment in Hollywood to a house in the suburbs. Aside from a few 3:00 a.m. "This is Not My Beautiful House" moments, it's been great, and I can hardly complain.Still, the fact that I'd be joining the legions of Angelenos who commute to work every day caused me a little anxiety. I spent the last year or so building up a clientele at a gym just

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1150006158139643852006-06-10T23:03:00.000-07:002006-06-11T12:35:16.256-07:00

Okay, so I've been a little negligent when it comes to these tips lately. Several factors have contributed to this: my wife and I have moved into a house, business is pretty good -- thanks, clients -- I'm out of town at the moment, and, well, the summer's officially here, and with it, a little natural aversion to doing things that require me to sit down for long periods. So I apologize for my

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1147062201276167532006-05-07T21:03:00.000-07:002007-07-02T13:02:51.045-07:00

Some of my best friends are doctors.Saying "some of my best friends are…" is the kiss of death, of course, and I admit that what follows does indeed contain a little dig at our white-coated friends. Nonetheless, it's true: some of my best friends are doctors, I love every one of them, and would place my health in their hands in a heartbeat.Having said that, aren't doctors the worst??Item: I've

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248974.post-1145565601755705722006-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:002006-04-21T23:06:39.240-07:00

I'm twelve years old, sitting on a bench in my high school gym, head held tipped back, a bloodstained swatch of the brown, fine-grained sandpaper that passes for paper towel in public schools clutched over my nose, which bleeds profusely. Through swollen eyes, I see my classmates running frantically about, alternately grabbing for or running from a half-dozen dark red public-school-issue rubber

Andrewnoreply@blogger.com3