A case of the Mondays.....

A bunch of random thoughts:

1. With Thanksgiving coming up this week, I plan on taking some time away from training athletes and clients. I think it is important to spend some time with Family and Friends this week and in the coming holidays. Having said that (any Curb fans out there), I do plan on getting into the gym on Thursday morning, Friday morning, and once more over the weekend. These will be brief but intense workouts to combat the caloric intake of the holidays. Usually at about 8pm on Thanksgiving, I take two pieces of Italian bread and begin to build...layer of stuffing, pile of turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, miracle whip, salt and pepper. I literally have to step on it to get it in my mouth, so I figure I need to keep training.

2. For my winter athletes, this is their last week of training before hockey tryouts. These kids are in the best shape of their lives and are looking forward to attacking tryouts. These kids were all beginners when they came in. Most are still relatively skinny kids but their strength levels have shot up as well as their mental toughness reserves and I believe they are ready to go.

3. The past couple of weeks I have had the pleasure of working out with my longtime friend, Chris Cullen, who is in town for Thanksgiving. Chris is an Army Pilot who flies Blackhawk helicopters (how cool is that) and is stationed in Alaska and recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. On Friday we did a team competition in which we pit civilians (Brian Sull, Joe Fernald, and myself) against US Military (Chris Cullen and Mike Aylward USMC). The workout consisted of 5 chinups, 10 steps lungewalk, med ball side toss x 3 (left and right), and a 100 yard sprint out and a 100 yard sprint back as fast as possible. We competed head to head in each round and am sad to report that the Civi's lost 5-3.