Ravi

I am still holding onto a shred of hope that there is some rational explanation for all of this. Last year Lance Armstrong was accused of doping, and an independent investigator found evidence of tamering/spiking of samples and weak testing protocol. Perhaps a similar thing happened to floyd?

I only took a few at the farm sancturary, but here they are...

I think Eyore won!

4 stacked vega bars!!!! looks like he's already been training with the pizza!

Thanks Rob for putting in all the hard work to pull this event off! I wish I could've stayed for the full week; but my computer @ work is co-dependent....makes it hard to get away for more than a couple days at a time!

Watermellon for me. can't get enough of it....well, actually you can (as I learned last week after eating almost half of one!)

I had a big juicy mango for break-fast, a wheatgrass shot around 10am and just had a big plate of fresh watermellon, honeydew and pineapple for lunch. I am en fuego!!!! really, I have crazy amounts of energy which is interesting because my caloric intake hasn't been that high. I've spent a lot of time thinking about my diet during the last decade, and even as a vegetarian or vegan, I ate mostly garbage. waay too much grain and processed foods. I probably ate 1 or 2 pieces of fruit per week at most (and mostly bananas if anything at all!). I think this has been the missing link as when I up my fruit content, I definitely feel better. It seems to have a much bigger impact on my body than just eatting lots of veggies (raw or not).

welcome! good to see others from seattle joining in!

wow ,congrats on the massive progress!!

http://www.physiquecompetitor.com/images/articles/issue5/Fruit.jpg interesting article.

great resource! ...but I ain't gonna read it till the sun goes down....time to go out and enjoy some 100 degree seattle weather today!

Hows everyone doing in the summer shape up challenge? After three weeks, I am definitely feeling lighter, but have a LONG way to go to reach my goals...getting the diet and weight routine dialed in is a fun but challenging process. I've lost a few pounds of fat, and my strength and flexiblity is steadily increasing (doing lots of yoga), but haven't hit the point yet where the returns can be seen visually. I feel waay better though.

perhaps I am just not strong enough to do squats properly, but I find that I can go much deeper with lunches than squats. It also focuses the effort more on the legs and takes away the chance of using your back to "cheat". I also like the fact that lunches bring stability and balance into the equation. so yes....I was one of the few voting for lunches as da bomb!

OK, time to start one of these! Yesterday: did a static contraction workout with my friend Kris. Unforuntately, I forgot to write down the weights and times for each hold, but we went through the following exercises, performing just one rep where we hold each exercise at 2-3 inches below the point of maximum extension. The length of each hold varies (30-40 seconds usually), but in each case is held to failure (spotter is required for this!). Pretty short workout but very intense. 6AM 10 minutes bike cardio Flat Bench HS (Hammer Strength) Lat Pulldown HS Incline Bench HS Upright Row HS Shoulder Press Standing Preacher Curls Skullcrusher (Tri Extensions) Low Pulley for Abs 25 minutes bike cardio 5pm 2 x 25 pushups stretching

Hey Rob, I am just now discovering this section of the BB with training journals...pretty cool! I see that you do quick a lot of sets for each exercise (up to 7 for each exercise). Have you always trained this way? I've always stuck to 2-3 sets for each exercise (sometimes 4) and find myself completely wiped out by the last set.

gonna be 95 in Seattle tomorrow YIPPPEEE!!!!

I am pretty anxious to see how much progress folks have made. I'm 3 weeks into the summer-shape up....and right now my body seems to be "shedding" more than "building." I've heard the convential wisdon that you cant really gain signficiant amounts of muscle and lose signficant amounts of fat at the same time. As both of these are my goals, I hope I can manage to prove them wrong! It would be interesting to hear some details from those who finished the spring shape-up, and how they managed their diets and training to achieve their results.

but doesn't frequency impact size and top-end power? with any sport I have done (cycling, swimming, running)...more frequency is great for endurance, but always come at the expense of short-term power and in my mind, size/mass as well. Not that I think this is a big issue, as most of us should rather aspire to have great endurance over short-term power....it is more useful for us to live an energetic life and be active throughout the day and all this takes endurance (having massive biceps doesnt help at all here ) .....but some of us are looking to increase mass as well, so when it comes to resistance training, I think fewer workouts with heavy weights may be more effective. I'll get my endurance from running/swimming, etc. Ravi

kanye, linkin park, snoop, fall out boy, U2, biggie, jayz

I just posted about my experiment with a mostly raw food diet (viewtopic.php?p=43802#43802) I fell off the wagon for 2 weeks but got right back on. My first 17 days of mostly raw food felt amazing....but now I'm about 8 days into it after a 2 week break, and I'm feeling good, but also a little tired. Dont have the zip I had during my first 17 days. Not sure if this is normal or not...more details in my other post.

Bigbwii: Did you find that the longer you've been fruitarian, the less food you have had to eat to maintain/gain strength and energy?

Dear god that is LOT of food!!! may I ask how tall are you and how much did you weigh at the time? I don't think I could eat half this much on a dare...

Quick update on how my raw food experiment has been going. I made it 17 days on an 80% raw food diet. After this, I went on a weeklong trip back home and it was just too hard to say no to my mom's cooking. For that one week I was home my diet was probably 10% raw (ate TONS of veggies but they were cooked/stir fried). I then returned home and bumped it up to about 30% raw for a week (basically 1 totally raw meal per day). Then, on July 12th, I bumped it back up to 80% and have kept it up. What is interesting, is I am noticing some side-effects after increasing my raw food intake the second time around. * I am not feeling as energetic as I was before, I feel a little bit tired, sort of like I sat in a sauna too long * I am not waking up in the morning as alert and awake as I was during my first few weeks of going mostly raw * My mental clarity is really good, almost meditative....hopefully not "sedatative" ....I can focus on things for much longer periods of time when I am moving around my daily life * In contract to above statement, I find that when I actually try to meditate, it is HARDER! This is very odd. I find myself quite ancy and wanting to move around. During my first 17 days being raw I didn't have this problem, in fact, I found the excact opposite to be true...I could medidate for longer periods of time * My flexibility is ridiculous! I am doing a lot of yoga right now...but I am getting gains that are starting to scare me this is a good thing! * I am getting more vascularity in my arms and hands * My bodyweight isn't changing but, my bodyfat percentage is dropping (dropped from 15% on July 1st to 10% on July 15th with no change in bodyweight) * I feel much lighter * When I lift, I can push up the same amount of weight, but I find myself tiring fast. For example, my one-set max for pull ups has increased from 7 to 12 over the past three weeks but after the first set I am now totally hosed for the second set. I used to do 7-7-5 reps, now I do 12-5-4 if I am lucky. * my skin is clearer than normal, but not completely clear. My uber question is, do other people who go on a RAW FOOD diet feel this decrease in energy/lethargy after a few weeks? How long does it last? I read the article on RAW FOOD that Bigbwii posted that talked about this...but would LOVE to hear from others that have had a similar experience. btw...hope ya'll are training hard for the summer shape-up challenge...I am gonna win that thing Ravi

just sent in my pics and ready to go! ya'll better watch out!!!!

also, and interesting fact: brocolli is about 1/3-1/2 protein (by calories)!!!! came to a suprise to me, but looking at the back of some frozen brocolli shows this to be true! 3g of protein = 12 calories out of a 25 calorie serving. I do understand there is may be some issues with the quality of the protein from brocolli (in terms of amino acid profile and completeness), but I still think this is cool fact for those people who say veggies can't help u get strong!