“If you don’t practice you don’t deserve to win.”

– Andre Agassi

Death of the athlete

I noticed a new trend developing at the time that social media really started to take off. Regular people started to call them themselves athletes.

Participating in two 5K races a year somehow made ordinary folks into dedicated runners. Going to the gym for half-an-hour turned guys into Arnold Schwarzenegger. And taking one bike ride in the summer meant you were an off-road adventurer.

Exercising and getting into shape is great. I have no problem with that and think everyone should be physically fit. However, I do have an issue with people declaring themselves to be athletes. It’s disrespectful.

I’ve boxed since June of 2013.

Would I call myself a boxer?

Of course not.

I’m able to spar a little and throw a few hooks, that’s nothing compared to what guys like Adrien Broner and Floyd Mayweather can do. There are even a lot of other amateurs who could whoop me in the ring. Declaring myself to be a boxer undermines everything that these guys have worked for and accomplished. Fighting with your friends on a Saturday afternoon and training full-time are worlds apart from each other.

Some time ago I was at a bar and ran into a dude who’d been on the All-Army Boxing Team, worked as a bouncer in Vegas, and owned an MMA gym. The entire time I kept my mouth shut and didn’t try to seek out validation by saying “I can box too!” It would have been rude since I didn’t that same level of dedication. This guy’s warm-ups were more intense than a lot of my routines.

I know that everyone likes to pretend their special in order to get more attention, but almost none of us are athletes. And we shouldn’t try to act like we are either. Being an athlete requires a level of skill and dedication that most of us will never have.

Walking a marathon, dusting off your bicycle for a few rides a year, or going to the gym three times a week does not make you an athlete. Unless you are literally dedicating the majority of your time to the mastery of a specific sport you shouldn’t use the term.

“Prison is like high school with knives.”

– Raegan Butcher

Prison yard workout games

Around this time last year I was taking a weekend trip and was unable to hit the gym. While this wasn’t the end of the world, I did want to get a little exercise. Three days  of doing nothing is a bit much.

Before my trip I asked around for some advice on body weight  exercises. I obviously knew about stuff like push-ups and sit-ups, but I didn’t know how I could work my whole body.

A guy who actually started working out while in jail, and later became a powerlifting champion, ending up telling me about a game that him and the other inmates used to play. They’d take a deck of playing cards and assign a different exercise to each suit.

Clubs might be squats or diamonds could be push-ups. As long as you had upper and lower body routines it didn’t matter.

The face value of the card indicated how many reps you had to do. A two meant two reps, an ace was 11. It’s a pretty simple formula.

You started with a full deck and then worked your way through it. At the end of the exercise you’d have hit all your muscle groups. While it wasn’t a great substitute for lifting weights, it was better than sitting around all day.

I followed the advice and did the routine. It was, surprisingly, harder than I thought it would be. By the end I was dripping sweat and exhausted.

Why this routine works

According to my math, which isn’t particularly good, you end up doing 95 reps of each exercise. 95 squats, push-ups, sit-ups, and leg raises is a lot. That’s a total of 380 reps.

Having a deck of cards that tells you what to do also prevents you from losing motivation. Personally, I can’t concentrate unless I have a specific goal. Saying, “I’m going to do some push-ups” isn’t enough to keep me on track.

With cards you have a set objective that’s a lot harder to blow off.

Also, this program is easy enough that you can do it anywhere. I follow it when traveling or when there’s a snowstorm that keeps me from the gym. You don’t need any special equipment or a lot of space.

Lastly, this prison yard workout costs nothing. Forgetting your deck of playing cards at a hostel in Costa Rica isn’t a financial burden. You’re going to be out a dollar.

While I’ve upgraded to a FitDeck, simply because I use it at the gym too, I usually leave this at home when going off the beaten path. In a few weeks when I go hiking I’ll just be bringing my ordinary playing cards with so that I don’t lose anything valuable.

Is this a good alternative to lifting?

I like body weight exercises, but I don’t feel like they are nearly as good as a heavy lift. Picking up a couple hundred pounds will do far more for your muscles. However, there are plenty of situations where going to the gym is near impossible.

Guys who live in small towns, I’m from Iowa and have heard of this happening on several occasions, are sometimes unable to lift because their gym closes for a week around the Christmas season. Or dudes who are backpacking through another country won’t have any access to weights. And sometimes going to the gym in certain cities is just way too expensive.

In these cases doing some body weight exercises with a deck of cards is a great option. It’s going to keep you healthy no matter where you’re at in the world.

“I prefer life in Latin America. However, some things are frustrating. Weightlifting culture isn’t as developed. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Muscle Beach, and Pumping Iron made it mainstream in America only a generation ago. It diffuses to other countries later.”

 – Colin Post, Expat Chronicles

Favorite gym characters: Latin America

[Today’s post is a homage to the old “Favorite gym characters” series from the now defunct Bronan The Barbarian! If you never saw these posts in all their glory you can get a taste of what they were like here.]

Peru is an interesting place since there really aren’t any obese people. Coming from the Midwest I’m used to seeing mammoths lumbering down the street. Even in “big” cities, like Chicago or St. Louis, you see plenty of overweight slobs who put zero effort into their appearance.

While the streets of Latin America aren’t Model Mayhem, people generally take pride in how they look. You won’t catch girls in sweatpants and flip-flops, or guys in ratty old t-shirts. That stuff isn’t acceptable here.

Because of this, I was actually a little intimidated when I joined the gym. Silly as it might sound, I was worried that everyone there would be way bigger and more dedicated. Going from a tiny fitness center in Iowa to Gold’s Gym in a place bigger than New York City was a little unnerving.

In Iowa there are plenty dorks who workout by walking on a treadmill and humming along to the latest Pitbull song. They put on zero muscle every year and basically just exist to take up space and be annoying.

Crossing the border made me worry that I’d be one of those guys. Inconveniencing real lifters as they tried to do serious exercises.

Fortunately I was wrong.

A bigger gym meant more clowns. While there are obviously plenty of serious lifters, there are also quite a few dudes who have zero idea as to what they are doing. Instead of asking a trainer, or picking up a fitness book, they just do whatever they feel like doing. And it’s usually something stupid.

Here are my three favorite gym characters in Latin America:

1. Quasimodo

Gym safety is for cowards. Quasimodo throws all form out the window so that he can… Really hurt his back?

This guy comes in on occasion and makes a bee-line for the Smith Machine. Once there he proceeds to jump up and down with the bar on his back. While my Spanish isn’t good enough to communicate with him, I suspect that he’s trying to perform some type of jump squat.

However, Quasimodo never actually does the squatting portion of the exercise. Instead he just slams the bar into his back for a few sets before staggering off in pain.

2. The human crab

In America ab exercises are all the rage. Guys spend their entire workout trying to develop a six-pack when they should be lifting weights.

Here biceps are a huge deal. The dumbbell area is always filled with dudes who stand around and do curls for hours on end.

As a result you see a lot of guys with massive arms, and legs that look like two bread sticks.

3. Grandpa Hot Pants

This rare treat can only be sighted on Sunday mornings. Grandpa Hot Pants is a 60 year-old male expat who wears a pair of super tight, and dangerously small, LYCRA shorts.

While he doesn’t really exercise, Grandpa Hot Pants has mastered the art of sitting down on whatever piece of equipment you were about to use and coating it with sweat. Cleaning off equipment is still a foreign concept here. This means that you’re almost always going to have to sit in a pool of LYCRA induced old man sweat. Hopefully you packed your soap.

“One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast.”

– Robert A. Heinlein, Friday

Best muscle building breakfast

I used to eat a protein shake for breakfast every single morning. It didn’t taste that good and was kind of expensive to make. At the time I was earning $10 an hour at my retail job and spending $70 on tubs some silly supplement with “peak anabolic” in the name.

In other words, I was sacrificing seven hours of my time to afford powdered garbage that’s actual value was less than two dollars.

To put it bluntly, I was a fool.

Since then I’ve focused more on eating real food. Instead of a shake I’ll have a steak. Buying magic muscle powder has been replaced with eggs and yogurt.

Real food is a cheaper, and better, source of protein. The shakes that I used to drink had a fraction of the protein that my normal breakfasts do and they were more expensive.

Best muscle building breakfast under $5

Below is an actual picture of what I ate for breakfast. I had a quart of milk, three eggs, two packages of instant oatmeal, and three Italian sausages. The total cost of all this was less than five bucks.

Preparation is simple too. I fried up the eggs and cooked the sausage in the oven. You can make this meal in less time than it takes to cook a frozen pizza.

How much protein is in this?

Cooking time and price are great, but they mean nothing if you aren’t getting a lot of nutritional value.

A box of graham crackers is cheap, but it isn’t going to help you bulk up.

In order to determine how much protein I was getting, I had to do a little math:

• One cup of milk contains 8 grams of protein. I drank four cups.
• A three ounce sausage link contains about 16 grams of protein. I ate three links.
• One egg houses six grams of protein. I consumed three eggs.

That means that my total protein intake, for breakfast, was roughly 98 grams.

(8 x 4) + (16 x 3) + (6 x 3) = 98

When I used to buy powder I’d get about 50 grams of protein from two scoops. Since I mixed these with two cups of milk, I got about 66 grams of protein total. Not that much considering how much I was paying.

Where to find great deals on food

I live in Peru and we have a pretty decent selection of health food here. I got 15 organic eggs for less than $1.50 and a quart of milk for just over a dollar. Those sausages were two bucks for the whole package.

If you live in the United States finding deals like these is going to be difficult. However, it is doable.

Most grocery stores have cheap cuts of meat. National chains like Sam’s Club and Costco are great for stockpiling meatballs, mixed nuts, and ground beef. Local retailers frequently run discounts on perishable good like meat and milk. If I was back in the states I’d probably even use Amazon to buy 52 packages of instant oatmeal for less than $17.

Protein powder and supplements are way too expensive for what you’re getting. For less than $15 a day you can get almost 300 grams of protein by simply eating eggs and meat with a few glasses of milk. Coupled with a nice post-workout meal you’ll be getting more than enough food for less than $20.

Where I got my nutritional information:

Why Milk Is The Ultimate Post Workout Food

The Nutrients in Italian Sausage

How Much Protein Does 1 Egg Have?