Check yourself before you wreck yourself: Part 1 -Warm-ups, mobility and flexibility

Let's sort one thing right from the off - I am hideously under-qualified to give specific injury or recovery advice. I am no sort of medical doctor, physiotherapist, osteopath or any other professionally certified muscle-knowing-person. If you have a genuine joint/muscle/tendon etc issue, you should go to see one of the aforementioned professionals, you should not look for answers from a guy who very occasionally likes to write silly/helpful shit on the internet in his spare time.

Ideally this medical professional

However, my body is a wonky, injury prone mess that feels like it was thrown together from left over parts that don't quite fit together right, so to keep myself somewhat functional and pain free, I've had to learn a little bit about how to keep one's body in something approaching good working order. As I seem to find myself noting in every article, to explore every aspect of this subject would require far more than one small article, this is simply my attempt at providing a bit of an overview and a few tips that hopefully you find useful.

Warm-ups

The Venn diagram of warm-ups, mobility and flexibility exercises overlaps largely, but I will attempt some distinction. Warm-ups are movements that are performed before a workout to prepare the muscles, joint and nervous system for exercise; while specific warm-ups where one performs a few sets of a given training exercise with successively heavier weights are encouraged by almost everyone in the S&C field, that is not what I'm covering here, rather more general warm-ups which can be performed first in a session to get one moving well. A general warm-up does not need to take a long time (and can in fact be worked in between sets of specific warm-ups) and will generally pay dividends in allowing for range of motion and quality of movement.

The ways in which you can warm up are myriad, google the phrase and you will see thousands of articles with the 'ultimate' warm up routine, so I will not try to add too much to the noise, below I will simply list some of what I have found to be the best bang-for-your-buck warm-up movements to get you maximally moving in a minimum of time.

This doesn't really show form, but it does show butt.

Deep lunges - get the legs and butt working and dynamically stretch the hip flexors all in one sexy movement.
You know how this works: with both feet pointing forward and your torso upright, step forward, then slowly lower your rear knee to the floor, keeping your front knee directly over your foot.  Add a slow twist of the torso towards the front leg in the bottom position and/or a forward lean for a greater stretch of the rear hip musculature. Push back to the start position and go again with the other foot, repeat as you see fit, try not to make eye contact with others.

Cossack squats - is there a better warm up for the entire leg musculature that also serves as a great groin and ankle stretch? is is it okay to call them that? no and probably not.
Get in a wide sumo stance with your hands held in front of your chest. Squat down towards one side, keeping that foot flat on the ground, whilst keeping the other leg straight, with the heel in contact with the floor. Try to keep the knee of the squatting leg in line with the toes, but let it move forward over the toes or you will likely fall backwards. If this is too difficult, keep your hands on the floor to maintain balance and make the movement easier or if you are a true Cossack warrior, hold your arms directly overhead for additional demands on the upper back and core. Descend as far as you can then reverse the motion and repeat on the opposite side. Feel the connection to your Eastern European brethren.

According to my scientific Google searching, this is a Cossack. Become the Cossack. 

Glute bridges - If you sit for most of the day, your glutes will likely need some activation for optimal athletic performance. I've talked about glute bridges before, refer there for more information, or watch the handy video provided. Basically, lie on your back with your legs bent, push through your heels, bridge up, squeeze butt. Repeat. If you are strong you can do alternating single leg bridges. Maintain eye contact with an attractive member of the opposite sex at all times.

Something for the upper back - another area that tends to get screwed over by sitting and working all day is the upper and mid back, also known as a thoracic or T-spine, correct hunched posture and improve performance by using the upper back muscles. As you can see, I've been super specific with my recommendations here as there are loads of possibilities, quadrupled t-spine rotation, band pull aparts, LYTPs and light row shrugs are all good ways to go about this, but to hit everything with one move, I find the face pull hard to beat. Grab a cable rope attachment/2 D-handles/a resistance band at shoulder height. Pull slowly towards the face (hence face pulls) keeping the elbows paralell to the floor or higher, externally rotate the arms and extend through the upper back, hold and reverse the motion. This exercise should be felt all through the upper back and rear delts, while also providing a bit of a stretch to the pecs.

Shoulder dislocations - these prepare the shoulder joints, surrounding muscles and scapulae for all of upper body movements. Personally, since putting these into most workouts, my shitty shoulders feel and move significantly better. To perform, grab a broomstick/PVC pipe/resistance band with an overhand grip at about twice shoulder width, more if you are made of wood, less if you are limber like a Russian gymnast. With your arms remaining straight throughout, move the broom/pipe/band in a controlled motion from in front of you in an arc over your head until it touches your back. Repeat, slowly moving the hands in if your flexibility allows it.

Push ups - an absolute bloody classic, warm up the arms, pecs, shoulders, serratus and core in one move. I'm not really sure how you managed to get here if you don't know what a push up is, but there are a few finer points to get the most out of them. Set up so your upper arms are at an approximately 45 degree angle to your torso in the bottom position, if viewed from above, you should look like an ↑, not a T; this allows for better utilisation of chest musculature and chance of shoulder discomfort. When performing push-ups, make sure the hips don't sag which will cause the lumbar spine to fall into a bad position, tense the abs and glutes as if you were doing a plank to maintain full body tension. Finally for added serratus activation and scapular movement, when the arms are locked at the top of the rep try to push your upper back further from the floor by 'sliding' the scapular and shoulders forward.

Mobility and flexibility

Onto mobility and flexibility exercises, which really overlap, but generally refer to movements which allow you to move comfortably through a normal range of motion (generally called mobility) and increase the available range of motion for a joint or series of joints (generally called flexibility). Splitting hairs and discussing semantics won't actually achieve anything so I'll just plow on with things that I find useful for mobility/flexibility and probably use the two terms interchangeably.

There is regularly confusion over when, relative to a training session, one should perform various mobility and flexibility movements; do you foam roll before a workout? what about static stretching? Whilst there isn't perfect agreement on this issue, most of the experts (and namely Dr. Kelly Starrett, the expertise of whom I will be calling upon throughout this section) agree that before a workout, some dynamic stretching, as in many of the above warm-up exercises, and maybe a small amount of myofacial release massage, is appropriate. Longer massage, myofacial release and static stretching sessions are best left to after a workout, or an entirely separate session on their own, ideally late at night as they will active the parasympathetic nervous system, putting you in a relaxed state.

For your flexibility and mobility practice, there are a few things tips that will help you get the most of it.

• Post workout massage of the muscle groups trained in a workout may have a small positive effect on recovery and reduction of muscle soreness, don't expect any miracles here though. 10 minutes of broad foam rolling of the muscle belly should be enough if you are eager to (maybe) experience a little less DOMS after leg day.
• When it comes to more specific mobility exercises, don't feel like you have to massage and stretch every single muscle in your body. After a while, you will likely know which of your joints get stiff or muscles get tight and knotted up, so need some TLC; focus on a few of these and don't waste your time on areas where you have good mobility.
• When stretching or performing myofacial release breathe deeply and slowly to further active the parasympathetic nervous system and facilitate relaxation of the muscles.
• If something feels tight or a little painful when you are massaging it, it likely means it needs attention. As cliche as it sounds, listen to your body, if something doesn't feel right, see to it. If you experience real pain (not just a bit of discomfort, don't be pusillanimous), stop what you are doing and see an expert.
• If you are doing a static stretch, it needs to be held for a long time to be of any use. No more quick counts to 10 and waltzing off like you achieved something - you didn't. 30 seconds is the minimum for stretches, 1-2 minutes is ideal.
• Mobility and flexibility are probably the most boring part of training, but try to work them in little and often, 15 minutes 3 times a week is probably better than an hour once a week.

Here are some of the movements that I have witnessed yield the greatest benefit for both myself an others:

Lacrosse/Hockey/Golf ball mashing - The smaller, yet meaner companion of the foam roller. The small size lets a ball hit some areas that a large roller can't and put an awful lot of pressure through your tissues and work out any knots or tightness in the muscles. Top places usually in need of some mashing are the glutes (in particular the piriformis, or the muscle that is underneath the side-ass dimple), upper back (everything around and and on top of your shoulder blades), chest (especially up near the shoulder) and feet.
As far as technique goes there isn't too much to say: get yourself in a position where the ball is between your muscle and a floor/wall. Support some of your weight with muscles that aren't being mashed (eg. if you are mashing your right pec, try to support yourself with your legs and left arm only) and put as much of your weight through the ball/muscle as is comfortable. Slowly move your body to lengthen/shorted the muscle being mashed as well as moving yourself around the ball to hit different areas of the muscle. Breathe deeply, try to relax, swear loudly as necessary.

Couch stretch - A Kelly Starret classic and probably the best way to balance out the ill-effects of sitting on hip mobility and leg muscle flexibility. Tight hip flexors are one of the biggest road block to optimal lifting performance; this should take care of that. It was called the couch stretch by Starrett but all you need is a floor and wall/chair/sofa at a right angle; get in a lunge and put you back foot up against the wall, get your knee right in the corner then move your butt back as close as you can to your foot (just look at the picture).
Now, it is crucial that you don't flex in the lower back, this isn't the time for booty popping; instead you should be flexing the abs and glutes hard to force posterior pelvic tilt and increase the stretch in your quads and hips of the back foot.

Hip capsule stretch - This one is a weird one, but everyone that I get to try it sees immediate improvement in their hip function. Our aim here is to give the ball and socket hip joint a little more wiggle room (technical term) so it can achieve greater range of motion and clear up and impingement which may be occurring. To perform, get on all fours (hey now), hands directly below shoulders, knees directly below hips. Now direct your weight entirely through one knee, leaning to that side and taking the weight off the other knee. You want the line of force to give you the somewhat grisly visual of the ball of your femur being forced back through your butt cheek, which should give you a nice deep stretch in the hip and piriformis. Move the shin of the leg being stretched across your body to further stretch the hip in external rotation. Repeat on the other side. Stand up and feel the amazement at how good your hips feel in a full squat. Write me adoring fan mail.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

Gymnast's/Wrestler's bridge - This one is a bit more of an isometric strength move than a stretch/mobility exercise per se, but it is an isometric strength move that will pay dividends in mobility benefits. Got that? Good. The bridge is a classic, also referred to as the crab by some, it essentially involves a tight back bend while supporting your weight on your hands and feet (gymnast's) or head and feet (wrestler's). To assume the gymnast's position, lie on your back, bring your feet towards your butt, keeping them flat on the floor and put your palms on the floor next to your head, fingers pointing to your shoulders and elbows up. Now push with your hands and feet, squeeze the glutes and upper back and pop yourself up. Walk your feet closer to your butt if it all feels a bit too easy and push your chest as high and towards your head as you can to really work your thoracic extension and open up the chest. You can simply hold the bridge at full extension for as long as possible, knock out inverted push ups from this position, or lower yourself onto your head and rock back and forth for the wrestler's bridge which will build up the neck muscles. WWE here I come.

Pike stretch - it's a classic for a reason. Hammies, calves and spinal erectors regularly get tight and short, this bad boy hits them all. You can do this seated or standing, I honestly don't know if one is inherently better, but I'd say probably only go for the standing version if you have decent flexibility and spinal health already. There isn't a lot to say for this one, sit/stand and reach for your toes in a controlled manner, be less shit than the people in the photo above. If you are standing, gravity does a lot of stretching work for you, otherwise, grab your feet or the backs of your legs and gentle pull yourself further into the stretch, if you are total weaksauce like the fella above, a rope or band around the bottom of the feet can be used to pull yourself towards a less shameful position.

Doorway stretch - The chest can get pretty tight on desk workers and the 'every-day-is-bench-day' brigade. If you fall into both then your chest is probably so tight that your knuckles face each other and you can't touch your own back. Open your chest up by standing in a doorway, holding your upper arm parallel to the floor and your elbow bent at 90 degrees and placing your forearm vertically along the frame. Pull your shoulder blades back and down to protect the shoulder and lean your weight forward, allowing the arm against the door to gently pull back on the pec, you can overdo this one so go easy. The stretch can be done on both sides at once, but that limits position; stretching one side at a time allows you more freedom to get the stretch hitting the right places, going single armed also allws you to turn your head away from the stretching side to increase the stretch. To bias the pec minor over the pec major, place your entire arm, shoulder to palm, down along the door frame and proceed in the same way, this has less of a stretching feeling, so take care not to force it.

Overhead lat stretch - Most people don't train back, so probably don't have to worry about the muscles being short, but for strange backwards people like me, lat smashing and stretches are a necessity to avoid tightness which leads to bad shoulder movement and anterior pelvic tilt (those aren't good). Anyway, the overhead lat stretch is a good 'un and is also pretty much unlimited in how you do it.
It basically works like this: grab something sturdy around shoulder height with one hand (a band also works nicely), keep your arms straight and hinge at the hips, sinking the torso down and leaning until you feel a stretch. You'll likely need to do some moving around to find the position in which the stretch is greatest, feel free to lean the hips towards the side being stretched and also rotate the torso to target different areas of those big bastards. Repeat for both sides. Stand straight and feel the amazement at how good your arms feel in overhead extension. Write me more adoring fan mail.

Do you smell what DC is cooking? - Part 2: Cow, pig, chicken and other delicious animals

The first instalment was a lot of fun, so let's just plough ahead with part 2.

This isn't even my final form

As I said in previously "what I'm going to give you in this mini-series is a not a how-to-cook guide, rather a bunch of recipes, preparation tips and ideas", combine this with the fact that meat generally tastes pretty good and therefore needs little to no fancy business and you probably shouldn't expect any huge revelations here. Anyway you might pick up a tip or two and you are probably just mindlessly browsing the internet in a perpetual state of 'what the hell am I doing with my life?', so why not waste your time here.

Salt your meat - if you don't, you are wrong.
Not only is salt incredibly important for those who train but salting meat (especially beef and lamb) properly can transform a so-so cut into a slice of meaty heaven. How do we salt a piece of meat 'properly'?

1. Weigh your meat (if bone-in, make an estimate of the weight sans bone)
2. Measure out 0.5-0.8% of the weight of your meat in salt (go to the higher end for tougher cuts or if you really like salt)
3. Rub the salt into the meat.
4. Rest for a minimum of 1 hr for small steaks, overnight or even multiple days for bigger cuts.
5. Stick in a sandwich bag and put in the fridge for longer rests (unless you have a suitable environment for dry ageing meat, which, if you are reading this, you likely don't).
6. Cook and enjoy

Yes, you have to do a little bit of maths. Here is 1.8 kg of topside and 13.5 g salt. No need to get the quantum calculator out. 

How is this in any way special, you may ask. Well, many people will salt meat before cooking, but not many home cooks will salt and rest meat, and this steakhouse secret is where the magic happens, and by magic, I mean science. Without getting too nerdy, this is what happens.

• Salt initially draws water out of the meat via osmosis.
• This water dissolves the salt, forming a concentrated brine on the meat.
• This brine permeates back into the meat, performing 2 actions.
• Firstly, the salt denatures some of the proteins in the meat, unwinding some of the tightly knit structures and allowing the meat to hold onto a greater percentage of moisture once cooked. This makes the meat more tender.
• Secondly, the salt is now distributed throughout the meat; salt is a flavour enhancer, so this seasoning of the entire cut of meat as opposed to just the surface makes for meatier tasting meat.

Cheap roasting beef + a bit of science = a not bad steak

This very small amount of time and effort can make inexpensive beef eat like a decent steak. Especially if you know how to cook it...speaking of.

Cook your beef like a fucking pro - Finish high, start low. That is the mantra to cooking a delicious chunk of cow. When applied to steaks this is usually called the 'reverse sear method', but the general principles can be expanded to a range of meats.

The idea behind the reverse sear is to bring the entirety of the meat to the required 'doneness' using a gentle heat that will create a very even cook and then finish with a quick blast of heat to trigger the Maillard reaction that adds hugely to the depth of flavour. Compare this to a piece of meat cooked for a shorter time at a consistent medium-high heat, generally the meat will have a gradient of 'doneness' when looking at a cross section, with a relatively overcooked at the outer comparative to the centre.

The really fancy way to do this (and the way many steakhouses do it) is to use 'sous vide' for the first step, which is a fancy way of saying vacuum pack the meat and put it in a water bath set at a precise temperature. For example a medium rare steak would go in a 52 °C water bath, equilibrate at this temperature  after an hour or 2, at which point a quick sear in a pan to form a nice golden crust makes for a perfect steak every time.

Sous vide is the reverse sear for restaurants and rich people, but this method can give you results that are almost as good.

The basic premise is as follows:

1. Cook your meat in an oven that isn't far (10-20 °C) above the desired final serving temperature until the centre of the meat reaches said temperature (eg. 55-60 °C for a medium steak)
2. Whip it out of the oven, then either crank the oven to full heat, or get a pan raging hot.
3. Chuck your perfectly cooked meat in your smoking hot oven/pan for the shortest possible time to achieve a golden brown crust (patting the meat dry with a paper towel before searing helps)

If I can do it, so can you. Note the even finish on the interior and the deep golden brown crust.

The best way to monitor step 1 is with a meat thermometer (which I highly recommend), but with a bit of practice, the old poke and guess technique is usually good enough, and if in doubt a cut and peek won't necessarily ruin a steak. Any meat that is of a roughly homogeneous composition and you would want to keep at a precise temperature will benefit greatly from this method: beef roasts, lamb shanks, skin-on chicken breast; the limiting factor is really how much time you can be bothered to commit.

A 4 kg rump roast that was smoked for 6 hrs. Same rules apply regardless of cooking medium. 

Slow cooking is the lazy gourmet's panacea - any meat that is either somewhat fatty or has a significant amount of tough connective tissue can and should be cooked low and slow. This means whole chickens or and single cut that isn't the breast, any piece of beef that isn't a classic steak cut, and most lamb and pork (but especially shoulders).

Slow cooking may really be the most idiot proof of all cooking techniques:

1. Cut your meat to fit (if necessary), brown in a pan if desired (you can usually skip this)
2. Season generously, add herbs/spices/whatever else you think will taste good
3. Add some liquid (anything from a small splash to about 2/3 full); this can be just water or stock, beer, soda...
4. Put the lid on, set it to low (usually somewhere around 100 °C) for most things, high (usually somewhere around 140 °C) for if you are a bit more time pressed

I outlined a very hand-wavey recipe for my pulled pork cooking sauce in the last instalment, but I'll reprint it as I'm nice. So for step 1 above, get a few kilos of pork shoulder, then for steps 2 and 3, mix up the following (scaling up or down as necessary):

• 200 ml Diet Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper
• 3-5 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 finely minced garlic cloves or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon black Pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt

In general pork does the best with sweetness and complex flavours in the cooking sauce, beef doesn't like sweet and generally doesn't need many extra flavours, if I'm slow cooking brisket in a similar way to the above, I'll just use salt, pepper and smoked paprika. Chicken is probably the most versatile meat, you can throw super flavourful marinades at it or just cook it in a brine and it will turn out pretty well. Just experiment, if something sounds like it would taste good, it probably will, if it sounds like an unholy union of disparate flavours, maybe give it a miss. If you are still unsure which flavours to opt for with each meat, below there is an extremely handy, if aesthetically displeasing chart for your consideration.

Two ways to roast a chicken (that are better than whatever you do now) - Most people don't roast whole chickens any more, but I have no idea why. Unless you are eating super-low fat (which would be a debatable strategy), whole chickens are regularly cheaper, offer a range of macro profiles depending on the cut you eat (breasts for low fat meals, legs for higher fat meals) and simply have so much more flavour than skinless, boneless breasts.

Roasting a chicken in the conventional manner isn't a particularly hard task, stick it on a baking tray and put it in the oven at somewhere around 190 °C for between 1 and 2 hours depending on whether you have a little baby or some roided up monstrosity. The problem is, simple roasting can regularly give you dried out breast meat or underdone legs. One option is the divide and conquer, get your butcher hat on and hack those birds up, then give the legs more time in the oven than the breasts, but ... hassle.

This idea 100% stolen from The Food Lab

Significantly easier (though admittedly still a bit of hassle) is to split those bad boys right down the back bone (or cut it out if you have some good shears)then press down hard on the breast bone to flatten the whole bird out. Whack the butterflied (or spatchcocked if you want to use a silly word) chicken on a flat tray and hammer it with heat (like 200-210 °C). Through the magic of an increased exposed surface area and thinner profile the chicken will cook much faster (under an hour, probably around 45 mins) and the smaller legs on the outside of the pan will cook even faster than the larger breast on the inside of the pan, which means everything ends up perfectly cooked all at once. Crispy skin all over and ease of carving are just added goodies.

The easiest of all (though a longer cook) is to keep the chicken whole and simply flip it over. This exposes the legs to and shields the beast from the high heats, and will do so even better with a bed of veg and a splash of water or stock in the pan. Cook it at around 160 °C for an hour or two (sorry for the hand wavy directions, cooking is more of an art than a science), when it seems done (even better, when the breast is above 65 °C and the legs 75 °C), take it out, flip it back over, whack the oven or grill as hot as it goes and chuck it back in for a 10 minute crisp up. Poultry perfection.

No fuss fish - Cooking fish can be a royal pain in the arse. It's easy to dry out in the oven and because it's delicate can stick and fall apart if cooked in a pan. To help with either problem, baking paper is a kitchen superhero. If you are cooking your fish in the oven, grab a rectangle of baking paper and fold your fish plus herbs/lemon/veg/whatever into a nice neat little parcel. This allows everything to steam and cook in it's own juices, so drying out or getting bland, diluted flavours aren't a worry. If you'd rather pan cook your fish, the most simple but game-changing technique: line your pan with baking paper. The paper has a super high heat tolerance and an incredibly non stick surface, so you can still crisp up the fish skin, get a nice sear and just slide it out of the pan. No sticking, no falling apart.

Perfect poached eggs, en mass - This one requires two of my favourite kitchen tools, a slow cooker and a meat thermometer, but if you have both, it is absolutely worth the minimal hassle (alternatively, if you have a fancy pants sous vide set up, this is absolute child's play). Eggs are super awesome in how versatile they are, depending on the time and temperature at which you boil and egg, can get any combination of textures from the yolk and white. This awesome egg calculator tool tells all and says it better than I could: "Want fudgy yolks and runny whites? Runny yolks and custard-like whites? Jammy yolks and tender whites? Whatever you're after, this tool can help you achieve it".

My go to 'slow poached egg' recipe is to hold the eggs at 75 °C for 15 min. This gives you runny yolks and just-holding-shape-but-still-pretty-soft whites. To do so, chuck as many eggs as you want in your slow cooker (but don't fill it much beyond half way), add boiling and cold water, fiddling around until you get the temperature right and the eggs covered, switch the slow cooker to low and bugger off for quarter of an hour, returning to find delicious slow poached eggs, conveniently still in their shell, ready to be cracked on top of/into any and every meal that you have.

You will be adding poached eggs to absolutely everything.

I hope this ramble through a few strung together cooking techniques helps somewhat; Delia Smith I am not. However, cooking is largely a game of experimentation and experimentation is just fucking around and making a note of what works... so go experiment.

Music in your ears and fire in your belly

Update: Check out my playlists on Spotify! (links in the sidebar)

Music is great; we all like music, or at least, we all should like music. Music has been shown to have a whole host of positive benefits on the human psyche, mood and performance, but as this is a fitness blog, we'll stick to that topic. There have been a multitude of studies on the effect of music on sports performance, so here is a little, in-no-way-comprehensive round-up of a few relevant studies I happened across in 10 lazy minutes on Google Scholar.

This paper found that synchronous music enhanced performance in a 400m run; this paper found that both slow and fast music enhanced the time to completion (over a no music control) for 500m rowing sprints, with the fast music slightly outperforming slow. So for anaerobic performance, fast music or music that is in time with our activity is preferable, but if you prefer slow music, go for it. These two papers found that listening to 'arousing' (their word, not mine) music during warm-up (and only during warm up) leads to higher heart rate, which subsequently led to greater power outputs in tests. This means that you don't have to be hammering your ears into oblivion throughout your workout, in fact a quick blast of music before a set may be all you need to see a positive effect.

There is literally no article in which I will not put a picture of a scantily clad female. 

You may want to keep that music going through your set however, as this paper showed that self-selected motivational music increased muscular endurance, allowing subjects to hold a weight for longer than in a white noise condition; so your favourite pump up song may let you grind out an extra rep or two on a hard set, leading to bigger and better gains in the long run. Furthermore, this paper found that "significant increases in strength performance occurred when arousal was high", the arousal in this study was the result of imagery and breathing exercises, but as the above studies show, spinning a tune that stirs some emotion in you will achieve arousal, ergo likely bringing about these increases in strength performance.

If one entertainment source isn't enough to satisfy you, and like most millennials you need a constant stream of digital media into your face, this study showed that a combo of motivational music and video enhanced performance on a maximal effort run. It's probably not ideal to start watching Braveheart in the middle of your next set of bench, but if it could be safely done so, watching the right videos could make your cardio sessions both more fun and more productive.

At this point, I am going to share some of my own favourite lifting music which is almost entirely aggressive hip-hop, metal and hardcore; this certainly will not be for everyone so if you want to clock out now with the knowledge that listening to the music you like will let you get more out of your sessions, feel free to do so. If you are lacking angry songs by angry men (and ladies), then read/watch/listen on.

Hip-Hop
I considered jumping in at the deep end (double meaning full intended) with some of the heaviest stuff I listen to, but that would scare 99% of people, so we'll start crowd friendly...ish. Firstly, I listen to hip hop, not radio rap (call me a snob) I don't listen to anywhere near the amount that I used to, but what I do listen to tends to be verbose and magniloquent (think Lupe Fiasco, KOOL A.D., Jay Electronica, Elzhi, Aesop Rock) not always the in-your-face high energy tunes that lend themselves well to a high intensity training session. Nevertheless, here are some suggestions that may be lesser known (as I will assume everyone knows that The Chronic was a good album and Biggie may have had a decent song or two):

I love Danny Brown, he treads the line between intelligent and ignorant rap like no-one else. Either way, he always has incredible production (including loads of big 'EDM' names on his newer stuff) and rarely, if ever, has a bad verse.

Snowgoons are a production team from Germany who consistently make huge sounding boom-bap beats. All MCs are guest spots, so the verses can vary, but they have loads of material, and there is some gold in there.

P.O.S. brings a strange blend of hip-hop, punk and electronic; not all tracks are super high energy, but when they are (like the above, one of my favourite songs ever) there is no pause for breath.

Run the Jewels are getting some well deserved recognition finally, as El-P has had 10 years plus repping the ultra minority of gingers in hip-hop. High energy production and non-stop bars from 2 top calibre MCs, also not afraid to get political on videos, if that is your thing.

Despite the name, Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire fires out smart lyrics at a million words a minute with one of the best flows in rap. Get him on a big beat and it's absolute magic.

Wu-Tang. You should know them. You should listen to them. You should also watch this video if you haven't.

Hardcore
If you see me in the gym, its highly likely I'm listening to something like the following:

If you are an emotionally dark and crippled human being like me, you too may fall in love with Counterparts. With some of the most profoundly negative, yet cathartic lyrics ever committed to tape (or whatever they commit to these days), pushing your physical capacities to their limit whilst blasting Counterparts is a near transcendental experience.

A band that just does everything right, Hundredth make pitch perfect hardcore, just try listen to the "don't you fucking test me" drop in the above song without feeling a hit of adrenaline.

Von Wolfe appeared, dropped a 6 track EP of disgustingly good hardcore and then swiftly and tragically disappeared. Wasted potential aside, what we do have is a masterpiece of raw aggression.

Proving that anything the boys can do, girls can do just as well, we have Vales. Female fronted hardcore that pulls absolutely no punches.

The Ghost of a Thousand make music that makes me want to break things.

Liferuiner adds 20kg to your squat. Just look at the singer, I bet he can bench 4 plates.

This video has criminally low views for how incredible Statues are. Please watch it and be as blown away by both their music and the singer's glorious beard.

In case it is not clear, I love hardcore.

Metal(core)
It's different to hardcore. Sort of.

Misery Signals, the masters for over a decade.

Leaders of the new school. Northlane's first 2 albums were incredible, then their singer literally screamed his voice to it's breaking point. That's the price you pay for greatness. I can't think of any other singers that have the range of highs, lows and cleans that Adrian managed on early Northlane.

The Devil Wears Prada keep getting better, they just do everything right. Fantastic cleans, booming yells, one of the tightest live bands I've seen and even if it is not exactly on my wavelength, I have to admit there is something pretty cool about loving Jesus so much that you scream your face off about it.

When you need some Dillinger Escape Plan, only Dillinger will do. Is it genius or is it noise? Well, it's both. Also the singer is jacked, so clearly his music is fit for lifting.

The closest I have ever come to a religious experience is seeing this song live. The Chariot were something special. Their last album 'One Wing' is genuinely considered a modern masterpiece. Something about being a God botherer compels you to make incredible metal apparently.

Embrace the End do not let up. Speed riffs, blast beats and 2 guys screaming at you, this is the musical equivalent of PCP.

Call it technical metalcore, call it progressive deathcore, Born of Osiris know how to make some incredibly heavy beautiful music.

Speaking of technical deathcore (and finishing this list deeply in the stupid heavy regime)...Animosity.

If you have made this far, congratulations, you are probably me. Hi David, you should go and do something useful with your life now.

Do you smell what DC is cooking? - Part 1: Sauces and such

Dropping recipes on you fools like The Rock drops the People's Elbow on jabronis. I still don't actually know what The Rock was cooking; shit loads of Test, GH and D-Bol is what I assume from looking at how absolutely ridiculously jacked the guy is these days. I can't promise that these recipes will have anywhere near the effect on you that The Rock's cooking had on him, I just wanted a silly title for my article. As I know you all love me going on about hip hop in a way which is completely unrelated to the article, I'll let you have this fun fact: The Rock's original intro tune was recorded by Method Man (of Wu-Tang fame). It is possibly the best song ever recorded.

He is starting to look like a caricature of himself that came to life.

Anyway, back to cooking. Cooking is really easy. Some people can't fathom cooking for the life of them; those people are called idiots. If you can't steam or stir fry some veggies and roast/pan-fry/grill some meat until it is passed the point at which ingestion will make for an inadvertent colon cleanse, then I cannot help you. I feel that the basics should be intuitive and/or learned through some simple experimentation, but that is probably vastly overestimating many people's intuition and experimental aptitude. Thus if you are the type that can burn soup, maybe consult a book or two on the basics before you unleash yourself on the kitchen. A degree of competency in the kitchen is however pretty much essential for health, physique or performance minded people, as the vast majority of conveniently available food is sorely lacking in nutritional punch required to meet your goals. A conveyor-belt assembled chicken sandwich, a pack of prawn cocktail crisps and a coke is the lunch of of a depressed office worker, not the lunch of champions.

Of course on the flip side there is the commonly held (and not unwarranted) assertion that all fitness-minded folk will take their tupperware everywhere and joylessly chow down on tasteless chicken breast, broccoli and rice on the clock. Whilst this is true of many, and in fact most meals should be consisting of variation on the theme of protein and vegetables with or without a starch (depending on goals, timing and activity levels); the food needn't be tasteless or the act of eating joyless. Therefore what I'm going to give you in this mini-series is a not a how-to-cook guide, rather a bunch of recipes, preparation tips and ideas, so the food that makes you look and feel good, can taste good as well.

Sauces, marinades and other flavour saviours

A good sauce to slather over your meat and veg (hey now) can save the most boring of meals. Firstly I will hold my hands up and say that it's very hard to beat Sriracha sauce; if you have not tried Sriracha sauce, then the most important thing you can take from this article is this: Go and get some Sriracha sauce. You may be asking "but what is this unpronounceable condiment?"; basically, imagine ketchup was made with mild chillies and a hint of garlic in place of tomatoes. Now imagine a sauce that shits all over whatever you were just thinking in every conceivable way; I'd go on but The Oatmeal does a much better job of describing the joys of Sriracha than I ever could.

Sriracha: like thousands of tiny sexy devils dancing on your tastebuds

Moving on from the greatest condiment ever, some actual recipes:

Chimichurri - this Argentinian garlic and herb sauce is a revelation, similar to salsa verde but better all around, once you've had it, a steak sandwich will seem incomplete without it. This is slightly more calorific than some options on here, but between the olive oil's heart healthy monounsaturates, anti-oxidant phenolic and polyphenol compounds from the oil and the parsley, and the cholesterol reducing, anti-cancer, legitimate superfood properties of garlic; this sauce packs a load of health benefits.

Serving suggestion. Strongly suggested.

•  a couple of red chillies (to taste)
• 8-12 garlic cloves 
• 2 large handfuls of parsley (or coriander for a variant)
• 2 heaped teaspoons dried or fresh oregano
• 2 heaped teaspoons dried or fresh mint
• 2 teaspoons salt
• about 100 ml red wine or sherry vinegar
• about 100 ml extra virgin olive oil

Peel the garlic, chuck everything in a food blender and blitz until well chopped but slightly chunky. Alternatively chop for hours and do it by hand. This will keep at least a couple of weeks in a sealed container in the fridge as the garlic and vinegar will kill most things, it also tastes best after a couple of days as the flavours seem to develop. If you like spice use more chillies, if you like your garlic, add more of that. If you are weak and want a less punchy sauce, cooking the garlic beforehand will greatly cut down on the 'bite' of the sauce and give it a much more mellow, almost nutty flavour, however any Argentinians that hear about you doing this will probably slap you. Either way, spoon liberally onto any meat and enjoy.

Home made hot BBQ sauce - A short while back I had a few months where I became slightly obsessed making batches of home made BBQ sauce, altering and tweaking each batch; not to give myself too much praise, but what resulted were literally the greatest condiments ever to be created on Earth (bar Sriracha, obviously). I, however, have a habit of not writing any of this stuff down, so what follows is my best guess at the mana I created.

Individual results may vary

• 200 g tomato paste
• 75 ml cider vinegar
• 75 ml water
• 3-5 teaspoons (or tabs) sweetener (I use Stevia for pretty much everything, alternatively any other sweetener or sugar will do, but amounts required will likely vary)
• 3-4 teaspoons soy sauce
• 3-4 teaspoons smoked paprika (or more)
• 1-2 teaspoons onion powder
• Cayenne pepper/chilli paste/some ridiculously hot hot sauce (to taste)

Mix everything, tasting and adjusting as you go. You can chuck it in a sauce pan, bring it to a simmer and stir well for 10 minutes to give it a better texture, but to be honest I'm usually too lazy for this. For heat I bought the absolute hottest hot sauce I could find, the type that doesn't convey much flavour other than fire, so I could add literally a teaspoon or two to a whole batch of BBQ sauce and get a bit of heat without any extra flavours. I put this on pretty much any savoury food, so my serving recommendations are pretty broad: meat, veg, sandwiches, rice, whatever. While this tastes delicious, the tomatoes will give you a significant intake of lycopene, which is a powerful antioxidant and protects cardiovascular function, and the combo of tomatoes and paprika makes for a shit load of vitamin A, which will benefit vision and immune response. I'm just some dreadlocks, a good tan and a bad song away from getting a deal on Dragon's Den out of this.


Korean(ish) sauce - This is my new obsession now I'm bored of making BBQ sauce; the taste isn't a million miles away from BBQ, bringing sweet, savoury and spicy together, just with a lot more garlic. Again, I tend to just intuitively chuck together ingredients to make a big batch of this, tasting and altering as I go.

This is apparently Korea's premier fitness model, therefore this photo is relevant.

• 100 ml light soy sauce
• 100 ml rice vinegar (or cider vinegar with some sweetener of choice)
• 100 ml tomato paste
• 40 ml sesame oil
• At least 8 minced garlic cloves or 2-3 tsp garlic powder
• To taste minced chillies/chilli paste/cayenne pepper (these can vary hugely in heat from type to type, so add a bit, taste and repeat)
• To taste sweetener (again, sweetness will vary depending on whether you use sugar/stevia/sucralose etc.)

Proceed as above: mix, taste, adjust. Repeat until happy. And happy you will be. This contains a few of our superfood buddies that we introduced above, garlic and tomato, so again we get the all the healthy stuff from them. In addition, if you decide to give this a good kick of chilli, evidence suggests the capsaicin can give a slight boost to fat burning and decrease inflammation, which is nice considering this tastes so good you'd probably want to eat it even if it was awful for you.

Tzatziki - A counter to the above fiery, flavour packed options. Tzatziki is a cool, mellow Greek dip/sauce that  is ridiculously easy to make and you can use as a far less calorific, better tasting alternative to mayo.

Fuelled by tzatziki ...maybe.

• 350g low fat thick Greek yoghurt
• 1 cucumber
• Juice of 1 lemon or 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 garlic cloves
• Pinch of salt

Peel and grate the garlic finely, peel the cucumber, remove the seeds, grate finely and give it a good squeeze to get some of the juice out. Now throw everything in a bowl, mix around and enjoy. Beyond being nice and calorie light, if you use a decent Greek yogurt this has a modest protein boost, a decent amount of calcium and a bit of potassium and vitamin K from the cucumber, so your muscles, bones and heart get a benefit as well as your boring ass meals.

Cheater's BBQ meat marinade/slow cooking liquor - I call this "cheater's" because the fact that this makes meat taste super good essentially piggy backs on the fact that Cherry Coke/Dr. Pepper tastes pretty damn good. The soda confers sweetness and acidity to the marinade and due to the phosphoric acid content, actually helps to tenderise the meat slightly. If you are using this as a marinade, cover your chicken/beef/pork in it and leave for anywhere between a few hours and a whole day before frying/grilling/baking. If you are using this for slow cooking, pre-sear some meat, throw it in the slow cooker, cover in the tasty tasty liquid and cook. I use this to make pulled pork by cooking trimmed and seared pork shoulder for 8-10 hours on low and if I may say so myself, it is God damned delicious.


All the below 'measurements' are very approximate and are more 'best guesses' than actual guidelines.

• 200 ml Diet Cherry Coke or Dr. Pepper
• 3-5 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 finely minced garlic cloves or 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon black Pepper
• 2 teaspoons salt

As far as health benefits go, due to this being a marinade or cooking liquid you aren't consuming much of it, so they are essentially negligible, but screw it because it tastes good.


Simple stir-fry sauce - Stir frys are a quick easy and healthy (as long as they don't get too oily) food option. To minimise the use of cooking oil, I tend to go for a steam/stir-fry hybrid, cooking chopped vegetables in a wok with a splash of water, refreshing if the wok goes dry. Once I have almost-cooked veg and little-to-no water remaining, I'll throw in chopped pre-cooked meat, rice or noodles and a sauce not unlike the below. I'm sure this isn't an authentic recipe, but it tastes good.

• 50 ml light soy sauce
• 50 ml rice vinegar (or cider vinegar with a bit of extra sweetener of choice)
• 1 minced garlic clove or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• ~2 tsp minced ginger or 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1-2 tsp cornstarch mixed in ~50 ml water
• Sweetener (if desired)

This is really easy to throw together and makes a good base sauce, but feel free to add more fun ingredients: chilli, galangal, lemongrass, coriander, Thai basil, Chinese 5 spice, fish sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, coconut milk, peanut butter, lemon zest; variations are plentiful.

You may be wondering what purpose the cornstarch serves, at high temperatures this will form a gel, which forms a sauce with thickness and body that will coat your food, as opposed to a watery sauce that will pool at the bottom of your bowl. For the most part this sauce doesn't even need to be pre-mixed, just have the ingredients on hand and throw them in one by one, adding the cornstarch solution last and  then stir like a mad man (or woman).


So there we are, a few ideas to inject some life into your food. Anyone eating dry chicken breast or limp tasteless vegetables now has no excuse.