Happy Holiday's

I wish all of you a restful winter break and hope you get to spend some quality time with your family. My gift to you is no blog for this week and we will only have one more blog for the semester.

Take some time over the break to reflect on what went well this past year. What things were you successful in and where could you use more work? Set your self up for a great 2014 by making a plan to address those areas that need work, by either tackling them head on if they are necessary or letting them go completely if they are not.

See you in the New Year,
Mr. Kirk

How processed are your foods?

Here is a great explanation I found on line about what processed food are, you can find out more at Link: http://betsywild.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/what%e2%80%99s-wrong-with-processed-foods/

Processed foods are foods that have been altered from their natural states in order to extend their shelf life. Foods that come in a box, can, bag or carton are processed. They are often poor quality and usually cheap. About 90% of the money Americans spend on food is used to buy “edible foodlike substances” as Michael Pollen, well-known author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and professor, calls them.

Processed foods have been implicated in most of today’s chronic diseases and health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. What makes processed foods so bad? Many processed foods contain trans fats (or hydrogenated) a dangerous type of fat, which raises the bad cholesterol and lowers the good. Most processed foods are extremely high in salt, which is also not good for the heart and addictive. Have you ever tried to eat just one potato chip?! Another addictive ingredient you'll find in processed foods is high fructose corn syrup, linked to obesity and diabetes. Sugar is burned and turned into energy; high fructose corn syrup turns into fat. Potato chips and French fries often contain Acrylamide, a carcinogenic substance that forms when foods are heated at high temperatures, such as during baking or frying.

Processed foods also contain a lot of additives. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a list of over 3,000 chemicals that are added to the processed food supply to add color, stabilize, texturize, preserve, sweeten, thicken, etc. Some of these additives have never been tested for safety and require no government approval. They belong to the FDA's "Generally Recognized as Safe" list.

Some examples of processed foods are

• Canned foods
• Breads and pastas
• Packaged high-calorie snack foods such as chips and candies
• Frozen fish sticks and frozen dinners
• Packaged cakes and cookies
• Boxed meal mixes
• Sugary breakfast cereals
• Processed meats - deli meats, hot dogs, bacon, etc.
• Nutrition bars and shakes

For this weeks post, I want you to think about what you eat on a regular basis and what percentage of your current eating is comprised of processed foods. Use the meals you put on the blog last week and let me know if your current way of eating has :

Very little processed food mostly whole foods
Half processed foods half whole foods
Very little whole foods mostly processed

A Look at Nutrition

You have been working hard all semester in weight training, learning how to move correctly and you have now developed your own program that you will be following for the next several weeks. If you remember back to the beginning of the semester I said there are three things that have to be addressed if you are going to be successful in being as healthy as you can be. Those three things are exercise, lifestyle and nutrition. We have covered the exercise portion and started to address the lifestyle factors by talking about stress and relaxation, we will talk more about sleep in the near future, but for the next few weeks we want to talk about Nutrition.

The quality of your health is directly proportional to the quality of nutrients you provide yourself in the way of food. Garbage in = garbage out. Good quality food in = Good quality health.

We will start by taking a look at what you are currently eating. For this weeks blog, I want you to list for me everything you ate yesterday, including drinks. Be detailed and give me everything including quantities and be sure to include what you drank. 

A Look At Your Progress

This second half of the semester we are going to hand over some of the control of programing your workouts to you and you will begin to set up your program based on your individual goals. For this weeks blog I want you to take a close look at your measurement sheet and analyze your midpoint results. 

Answer the following questions:
1. Are they headed in the direction you expect and want? 
2. Is there anything that surprised you about your results?
3. Is there anything that disappointed you about your results?

Use the information from your midpoint measurements to set realistic goals for each measurement for the second quarter.

I will give you time in class this week to complete this assignment, but expect your measurement sheet to be completed with goals by the end of the week.

Deadlift Form

Take a look at the following video.

I will give you a hint and let you know that his form is pretty bad, but I have seen similar form in several of our classes. If this young man were in your lifting group, how would you help him? Remember when making corrections people can only fix one thing at a time so I want you to prioritize. What are the top three things this athlete needs to do to fix his deadlift form?

For this weeks blog. I want you to list the top three things this young man can do to work on correcting his deadlift form.

What Am I Saying?

I use a lot of teaching cues during class in an effort to get you to move in a certain way. For this weeks blog I am interested in knowing how well you understand the most common cues I use in class. Below are five of the most common cues I use in class, for this weeks blog I want you to tell me what each one means to you. What do you think when I say these things? There is no right or wrong on this. I simply want to check for understanding and see if what I am trying to communicate is getting through.

Like last weeks blog, this one will not post, but will be sent to me first. Remember we have a short week this week, so get your blog done early.

1. Chest out, shoulders back
2. Push your ribcage down.
3. Knees out
4. Brace the core
5. Move through the hip

The Supercompensation Curve

For this weeks blog we are going to take a look at a theory of training that was first introduced by Nikolai Jakowlew in 1976. We are going to do this by trying to interpret the graph above. One of our school initiatives this year is to analyze and interpret complex text. In physical education, charts, graphs and performances can all be considered text.

For this weeks blog, I want you to analyze the graph above an answer the following questions.

Based on what you have learned in weight training so far this year, I want you to explain what this graph means to you and how it can be used to plan your training sessions.

Your comment will not post to the blog this week but will be sent to me so that I can review all of responses before posting at the end of the week.