I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Strawberry Coconut
Turned pink… but coconut is white anyways so…. pink it is.
In the end… no. I mean, it tastes like you might think Strawberry NesQuik plus coconut would taste… maybe like a Mounds bar without any chocolate. That sort of sugary coconut sort of confectionary taste.
It’s not to my liking. I like coconut, but real coconut. Artificial is just to sweet-fake for me.
It’s not horrible, it’s not disgusting. Just not to my taste.
I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Strawberry Banana.
This one we guessed might be a sort of pink-yellow color, but no… just pink.
It tastes like strawberry banana… artificial, strawberry banana. It took a bit for me to find the right way to describe the banana flavor, but I think I know it: like a Banana “Now and Later”. That sort of really artificial banana flavor.
Not really my thing.
This wasn’t horrible by any stretch. In fact, I’ve been really happy that everything has tasted good so far. But it’s just a bit too artificial-flavored for me. Another one that I could probably have a few times, but there’d be no way I could stomach 10# of it.
I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Wild Berry Blast.
We’ve started a little game. Before I mix up the next flavor, guess what color it will turn. For you see, in the little baggie it’s that off-white color of whey. But once liquid is added, so far they’ve all been turning colors. The 3 strawberry flavors I’ve already tried have all turned pink… as you’d guess from years of consuming artificially colored foods.
So now… Wild Berry Blast. We guessed blue or purple. And sure enough, that’s what it was. It was a light blue (greenish) sort of color.
The flavor? We thought about Crunch Berries cereal. Daughter has taken to taking sips and tasting along with me. We both thought the same thing.
This is probably a flavor that I could enjoy for a little while, but it would get old. Artificial-type flavors don’t always last with me. I can do them as one-offs, but trying to down a 10# bag of such flavors would be difficult. But again, that’s me. YMMV.
I also wondered what these were sweetened with. True Nutrition offers a lot of sweetening options, and I’m guessing some sort of artificial sweetener was used because 1. there’s aftertaste, 2. I’m wondering if the headache I’m getting is because this is the 3rd packet I’ve consumed today (spread over the course of the day). I understand why they do this, because carbs are the most evil to most whey consumers. But I’m thinking, depending what flavor I end up getting in bulk, about getting it unsweetened. First, if adding it to milk sweetens it enough, that’s fine. If I want something more, adding a little sugar is fine in my book. I’d rather have a pinch of sugar than HFCS or artificial sweeteners or other such crap.
So far, I still think the strawberries and cream is winning.
I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Very Berry Strawberry.
It’s well… strawberry, straight up. Where as the other strawberry-like flavors I’ve tried, strawberry cheesecake and strawberries and cream had other flavors to them, strawberry tastes just like strawberry. Well, not like real strawberries, but like any sort of familiar “artificial strawberry flavor” type of stuff. Like Strawberry NesQuik or the like.
It’s not bad, tho I had to drink it in water and I’m sure that degraded the flavor a bit, compared to drinking it in milk.
In terms of strawberry flavors so far, I think I like strawberries and cream the best because of that “cream” flavor… kinda smooths things out a bit, not as “sharp” a flavor (not that any of these are necessarily sharp). It’s all very subtle differences between the three flavors, but there’s certainly a difference you can taste.
First day trying out sled drags with my DIY tire drag sled.
Start out light, start out easy, ease into things.
The Andy Bolton program I’m modelling after said for the first week:
So I based upon that. Andy’s program starts you on 45# figuring that’s enough for most people. It progresses by reducing the rest between sets, 5 seconds per week. Once you’re at 30 seconds of rest, it increases the number of trips one per week. At 8 trips, you can see about upping the weight and “starting over”.
The deck block made the whole sled about 80#, and the tire on concrete will give fair resistance. So I tried without the block, but the tire was too light, felt like there’d be no workout, and just bounced along the pavement. I found a 7-8# rock in the landscape border and put that into the tire. That was a good choice as it held the tire down and gave me just enough work.
I don’t recall if I did 6 or 8 trips… I lost count. And I only rested perhaps 30-ish seconds between sets, with almost no rest before the last set… just turned around and kept going. I walked, tho with a brisk pace. I faced forward and just held the ropes and dragged the tire behind me.
Oh, and before I dragged I walked a few hundred yards to warm up. While walking I did things like arm circles, neck circles, and so on… things to loosen my upper body up. After I dragged, I walked a few hundred yards again to cool down.
It was not the toughest workout… but I was sucking wind by the end. I felt it in my glutes and calves. So it was good for a first workout. Let my body adjust and adapt and I’ll slowly increase the workload.
I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Strawberry Cheesecake.
Tastes like the name says, tho being a cheesecake lover, I expected a little more “cheesecake” flavor. Didn’t thrill me as much as the Strawberries and Cream, and the aftertaste wasn’t as nice in my mouth. Not offensive or anything, I’d drink this again for sure. But for MY tastes, not as good as Strawberries and Cream.
I might be taking the week off from the gym, but I’m not taking the entire week off from working out.
Behold…
My tire drag sled!
I’ve been wanting to get back to doing conditioning. Sure I walk to/from the gym, but it’s not enough… makes for a good warm up and cool down, but doesn’t really do much for my conditioning levels. There was a short time where a guy brought his Prowler to the gym and that was awesome, but he stopped coming at that hour. I tried sprints, but it was hell on my knees and shins. Machines at the gym are boring as hell and don’t work me enough. I’d do hill sprints… if there were hills around here within easy distance (I’m not going to drive an hour just to sprint). I’d love my own Prowler, but they are costly and they’re going to make a LOT of noise. I’m trying to be somewhat considerate of my neighbors. A drag sled would be cheaper, but being a sheet of metal would still be loud. I read a lot about these tire drag sleds and figured why not give it a try.
My goal? Improve conditioning. If it helps me shed some fat? I certainly would like that end result. But I really do just want to bring up my conditioning levels because getting winded sucks.
I stopped into a small Mom & Pop auto repair shop on the drive home from the A-Zone range and asked if they had a tire I could have. They had a stack, gave me one. Awesome. Cost me nothing but a little time and trouble, and it was very kind of them to just give me a tire. Thinking about it tho, next time I might seek a truck tire instead of just any old tire, as a truck tire will be a bit bigger and heavier.
I’ve been researching ways to put this together. There are a zillion ways online, but here’s what I did.
Materials:
I took my drill, inserted a 3/8″ bit, and drilled 2 holes in the tire.
I just picked a spot for the first hole, and opted to drill it just above the midline in hopes that will affect the balance of things and keep the tire flat on the ground (instead of putting it at midline or below it, or even too close to the edge). In terms of where to put the other eye bolt? I just held my hands out and measured that way — it’s basically “shoulder width” apart.
It’s a little tough getting the bolts in there, due to all the steel belting, but just keep working at it. I did opt to put a fender washer on each side, to ensure a good hold, but no need for anything like a lock washer since the tire will give enough and should put ample backpressure on the nut to keep things secure.
I took the rope and cut it in half. I tied large loops in one end using a double bowline knot. These will be the handles. I wanted thick rope to make it easier to grab, and large loops so it doesn’t compress my hands too much when pulling. The double bowline should remain secure. I must admit this is NOT the material I wanted to use… the rope doesn’t hold the knot very well, and I probably should have gotten 30′ instead of 25′ because I lost a lot more than I anticipated to the knots… it’s just thick and doesn’t hold very well, tho you can pull VERY hard and get the knots to tighten up better. I would have loved chains, but that would be very costly. I did look at tiedown straps, but they all would come with a ratchet and I don’t need it and the price was just getting too costly.
The other end of the rope was tied in a sliding knot. I forget what it is… it’s not a two-half hitches nor a taught-line hitch, but a similar variant. I figured a sliding knot would be necessary so I could fine tune the rope lengths to ensure they were the same size after all this knot tying. I opted to go for 2 separate rope handles because I felt that might be a little more secure and might give me some more options in pulling… but I could be wrong… it could become hampering if I try to do things like sideways pulls. But we’ll see. There are so many options out there on how to make a sled.
I had some scrap wood that happened to be just the right size to fit in and fill the tire. I did have to use my circular saw to cut it in half so it would go in, but that’s all I did.. just cut, put it into the tire, and let it be. No securing it down, nothing. It should be fine.
And then finally there’s the patio block to provide some weight. I weighed the whole contraption and it’s about 80#. My understanding is, for my goals, that’s potentially a lot of weight…. maybe too much to start with. I might start with just the tire itself to break myself into it. Start light, even too light.
In the end it cost me about $25, most of that for the rope. The eye bolts and nuts were $0.85 each, the 4 fender washers $127, the patio block was like $6, and the rope made up the rest of it. Of course, the more you use junk you have lying around the house, the cheaper this project can be.
I paced off 75 yards up and down the street outside my house. My goal? Lift Mon/Thu, drag the tire Tue/Fri. I have some simple routines from Andy Bolton and I’ll start with those and see how I do. It won’t be just a pure drag. I’ll probably do some light stretching, basic calesthenics to get my body warmed up, then drag, and a little cooldown and stretching. I doubt it’ll take me more than 30 minutes.
We’ll see how it goes. 🙂
I bought the TrueNutrition.com 38 Flavor sample pack.
Strawberries and Cream.
Tastes like the name says. I liked it. A little weird to see this white powder turn pink when you mix it (I used milk), but the taste was fine. Strawberry-y and creamy. Nothing too bad.
Not going to the gym this week.
Last week I woke up questioning the need to roll to the gym. The last workout only got me through 2 sets of assistance work. Not that assistance is something to live and die by, but it’s evident I need a break.
2x/week is a nice template, and by design it doesn’t have a deload week. I don’t think I need to add in a formal deload week, but every so often I probably need one. Now is one of those times. When I start back up again next week, I’ll just start cycle 12 over.
That said tho, I did pick up something over the weekend, and if I can get to the store today to buy a few parts, I hope to start working with that this week. More later.
What was I thinking, increasing volume! 🙂
“Week 1”
I hit it pretty hard today, really went out on the deadlifts. I figure it’s a rep PR. I’ve been looking back over training logs and I see how many reps I did at X weight and I try to at least match tho prefer to exceed. I did that with deadlifts. I matched with Press. I wanted to exceed with press but it just wasn’t going to happen without blowing things out.
Then I hit assistance work and geez… after 2 sets my body said enough. I could have pushed through and done a third set, but it’s about being submaximal, about less is more, and geez… it’s assistance work. Not going to sweat it.
Going to 4 sets on assistance… what was I thinking? 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 