Muscle Recovery: Pills or Produce?

So a few weeks ago a friend on Twitter @emptyowe asked Tim Ferriss if he still takes creatine monohydrate, because he wanted to improve muscle recovery.  I made a different suggestion:

I don’t want to seem like I am slamming on Tim Ferriss too much.  I like a lot of Tim’s stuff, I’ve read his 1st book and I read his blog occasionally.  He definitely is a very smart guy.  Even though I’ve been studying health and nutrition for a shorter time, I have a completely different model, and respectively disagree with his approach.

Personally in my experience I found my athletic recovery got 500% better when I switched to a diet that was predominantly fruits and vegetables.  This basic organic banana-spinach smoothie recipe costs about $4-5 to make and is delicious.  Not sure how much creatine powder and pills cost but this smoothie is inexpensive, helps with recovery, also nourishes you for a meal and has no negative side-effects.

What makes more sense?  Taking pills or powders from a lab?  Or eating the food humans and primates have eaten for over a million years?  It’s simple, it’s easy and it’s delicious.  Improving your diet for better athletic performance is not as difficult as some people make it out to be.  Try the fruits and vegetables approach and see what happens to your muscle recovery.  You’ve got nothing to lose and a ton of things to gain.
Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

This Week’s Grocery Haul

Here’s a look at what I brought home from the grocery store this past weekend.

Just wanted to show you what a typical (or actually really good in this case) grocery haul looks like for me.  So if you’re looking for some ideas whether you’re veg*n, omnivore, paleo or something else I picked up some pretty decent stuff you might want to try out.

Have you picked up anything cool from the grocery store lately?  Feel free to share in the comments.  I am definitely looking for winter produce ideas when the fruit availability isn’t as good.

Tough Mudder Recap

I competed at Tough Mudder TX Coast in Edna, TX on 1/29/12.  This 12-mile 25+ obstacle course DEFINITELY challenged me.  I had run the race a year ago, in Austin, when it was 10 miles.  I am in better shape now, but the course definitely got harder.  The weather was perfect.  2 of the miles were through a swamp about knee deep!  Everything was going great until the 11-mile mark.  The last 3 obstacles were absolutely brutal.  But I survived and made it through.

Now I’m signed up for:

• Tough Mudder Dallas 4/1/12
• Tough Mudder Austin 10/7/12

See you out there!  Train hard

Tough Mudder: 28 Days Out

On 1/28/12 I will be doing Tough Mudder TX Coast.

I did this race last year when it was 10 miles, this year it will be 12.  Last time I finished in about 2:40, this year I hope to do it even faster, despite the course being 2 miles longer.  I wanted to share a post with you each day about what I’m doing to prepare both training-wise and diet-wise.  First off is a video of my 10-mile run the other night:

Happy New Year!

Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

Going Vegan Makes A World of Difference

This video was too awesome, I had to share

Vegan Gym Rat is a blog about health, fitness, and pushing your limits on a plant based diet. You can get in touch with me via email ironcladben at mailbolt dot com or on twitter @IronCladBen

You Gotta Suck Before You Get Good

Recently I’ve transitioned from an indoor gym, to an outdoor gym.  Calisthenics is body weight exercises using minimal equipment, mostly metal bars.  It’s been a bit of a rude awakening to find I’m not as strong as I thought in many areas.  On the flip side, it’s been a lot of fun to be a total n00b, and suck pretty bad at this stuff.  Here’s a video I made talking through some of my struggles:

Bottom line: anything you want to get good at, anything you want to improve at: you have to accept that you’re going to suck in the beginning.  Once you get over that, and realize that with practice you’ll improve, your mindset changes.  It no longer becomes, frustrating, it becomes fun.

Thumbs Up To The Vegan Black Metal Chef

Have you seen this guy yet?  The Vegan Black Metal Chef.  As someone who drinks A LOT of vegan smoothies and enjoys heavy metal (although black metal not so much) I thought this video was fantastic.

I don’t really recommend using pasteurized concentrates though.  (Pasteurized fruit juice is a whole ‘nother topic).  Use real fruit whenever possible, frozen is the next best.  Also, personally I like to sneak some lettuce or spinach in there to get extra nutrients without really changing up the taste.