EMOM - Your Thanksgiving Travel Workout Guide

You’ve probably seen “EMOM” written on the white board or your sheet by now. If you’re not familiar, EMOM stands for Every Minute on the Minute, it’s a simple way to cram an effective workout in a short period of time.

Let’s say you’re driving 8 hours this week to get to your aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. You get out of the car, you’re stiff, sore and can’t believe you decided to drive instead of fly this year. You have a great night and wake up early the next day itching for some movement, enter the EMOM.

The most simple formula is a lower body exercise on the even minutes, and a core exercise done on the odd minutes. You pick a rep scheme you can complete within 20-40 seconds. Once completing the exercise, you rest the remaining time in the minute before starting the next exercise. If the first few rounds are easy, good. You’ll appreciate those easy rounds as the workout catches up to you on round 8, 9 and 10.

Here’s a workout you can use this week:

EMOM 10 minutes

Even minutes: 10 bodyweight squats

Odd minutes: 10 breaths in low plank

At the end, you’ll have completed 5 rounds of each exercise. Nothing crazy, but the compressed time frame gets you a bit of a cardio boost and you’ll be sure to break a sweat. Give it a shot.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Rome

Thursday is my favorite day because of James Clear’s email newsletter. He always sends something that makes me think for a few days. The first idea he shared this week:

"Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.”

Be patent with your habits, they’re not going to change over night. At the same time, you better be working towards new goals and habits all the time, bit by bit.

Reading this reminded me of a training analogy: building fitness and health is about moving dirt from a big pile to another pile. Some days, you’ll move a truck load, other days a spoonful, regardless, move some dirt everyday.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Gain Holiday Party

Mark your calendars, people. Each year, this party get more fun. Its our favorite thing we do all year and I hope you can make it.

Saturday December 14th at 5pm.

We’ll be serving food and drinks, just be sure to leave your gym clothes at home!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Practice

What if instead of working out, or hitting the gym, we called it movement practice. Practice to develop skills to help you outside the gym - to build a better understanding of your body. Practicing building strength and learning different techniques and most importantly, practice building habits and routines.

I know, its a little out there, but we need to work towards changing what most people in society think workout out is. Most people imagine, and perhaps are only exposed to, high intensity drastically beyond their abilities. Framing it as “practice,” takes the pressure off the intensity and instead focuses on the quality.

An NFL team doesn’t practice at in-game intensity. They work on fundamentals, refine technique and get in quality reps. If we’d all focus on doing the same instead of needing to redline and burn more calories, we might just have more lifelong fitness enthusiasts.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Productive

All weekend I was thinking about this question from James Clear’s newsletter:

“If you were forced to work for just one hour per day, what would you work on during that hour to be most effective?”

He asked the reader this question after sharing this quote:

“If you’ve reached a certain age then you know what works for you. You should know by this point in your life what time of day you’re ‘good’ — like what time of day is your brain at its best. Because the reality is we all get, maybe two good hours a day where were actually feel awake and alert.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

For me, I’m an early morning person. If stuff needs to get done, my best chance of doing it well is to do it pretty much first thing in the morning with some coffee. When I was a kid, I loved doing my homework the morning it was due, Sure, most of that was procrastination, but looking back, and seeing how I am as an adult, I probably was always able to concentrate better early in the morning.

What’s your best time of day? And more importantly, what do you do with that time?

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Garage Gym Experiments

I’ve always wanted a home gym. I love the thought of being able to have everything you need for an effective workout in your garage or basement. We’ve been hitting the garage gym for the past couple weeks and it’s been great. After a workout slump the latter half of October, the garage gym workouts were perfect to break my slump and shake things up a bit.

We’ve been working out early in the morning, which means we’re a little crunched for time. With 10-20 minutes, you can really get an effective training session in. We often think that more is better or longer is better, and sure, there’s a time and place for that. However, it’s been refreshing know that I can get a lot done in a short period of time.

For each workout, we jumped roped (or danced to Lizzo in Hannah’s case) and did bodyweight squats. The goal, try to break a sweat, because it’s cold in there! After that, we pair and upper body movement like pull ups or chin ups or push ups with a lower body movement like a squat variation or a deadlift. We keep an eye on the clock a try to do a round of each every minute or two.

We get a lot done in a short time period. We get out of breath, increase our heart rates and practice full body movements. Even if you don’t have a full gym set up, you can get a great workout in doing bodyweight squats and holding planks. Give it a shot this weekend!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Fall Nutrition Program Meeting #4

Tonight is our 4th meeting for the Fall Nutrition Program. This challenge is all about flexibility and maintaining consistency. It’s funny, in the previous meetings, we’ve barely talked about food, and instead talked about our habits, the tricks our mind can play on us and when it’s worth diverging from the plan to have some fun and enjoy yourself.

There’s always going to be that battle of, "I should stay strong and not break," vs “Screw it, I deserve a break.”

I don’t think that ever goes away, it just gets easier to deal with. See you tonight at 6:30!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Data

For the past couple months, I’ve been tracking my resting heart rate (RHR). My watch takes a reading as soon as I wake up and charts it in a line graph so I can see any deviations day to day. While this is really nice, and I enjoy watching the number and seeing it move up and down, it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know.

On nights that I get less than 6 and a half hours of sleep, slight increase. On nights I have more than two beers, slight increase, and much worse sleep quality FYI. If I’ve been training really hard without a day off, increase in RHR.

There are other signs of my RHR, my baseline increasing from the norm. Poor sleep quality, no desire to train or just needing to take a day or two off to let my body recover. The technology is nice to correlate, to figure out where I’m at and learn what a rising baseline feels like. After a while though, you can tell if those things are happening without the technology telling you.

If you’re a smart watch person, check that resting heart rate when you’re unsure if you should work out or skip the gym and take it easy. The key though, learn from the data, don’t rely on it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

I can't vs. I don't

I was reminded of James Clear’s use of language yesterday during a conversation about habits. In Atomic Habits, he makes the case that the way you talk about habits you’re trying to change is a big difference maker in sticking with it. The bigger point is that you must be willing to change your identity as it relates to that habit. This change in language will help get you there.

Let’s say I’m trying to quit drinking Diet Coke.

I come to a party and meet you there. You offer me a Diet Coke and I say, “No sorry, I can’t.”

You’d probably ask, “why?” And convince me to have one, my stance on if I drink Diet Coke or not is on the fence and you can sense it.

Let’s try again.

“Here’s a Diet Coke for you.”

I reply this time, "No thanks, I don’t drink Diet Coke.”

I can’t and I don’t mean two different things. I don’t implies you’ve made a stand, it’s your choice. I can’t makes it seem like you want to, but can’t… It’s a weaker statement. Be careful of how you talk about things you’re trying to improve.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Painting and Breathing

I spent a good chunk of Sunday painting our living room and kitchen. As a perpetual rusher, painting can be hard, I want to finish fast and end up making a mess. Yesterday, I did a good job of not rushing and I have a secret weapon I’m going to share with you today.

I paid attention to my breathing.

Sounds simple, and it really is, but each time I was stretching the paint on the roller a little too far or reaching off the ladder too far I noticed I was holding my breathe, I’d take a big one, relax and slow down. It kept happening over and over, but towards the end I got into a nice painting groove, didn’t make too much of a mess and the walls looks good!

Our breath can tell us a lot. If we’re breathing quickly, shallow or holding it, if we recognized that, we can slow down, get some deep breaths in and feel a lot better.

Many of you are workout rushers. You have a hard time remembering sets and reps, it’s hard to count and you’re thinking about all the other stuff you have to do that day. I get it, we all have full schedules and busy lives. The next time you’re in the gym and you catch yourself not paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, take a few deep breaths, slow down and get back to it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Is That the Answer?

I saw an Instagram ad yesterday about a tech-savvy weighted bar that syncs with your phone and TV to provide a guided workout. Pelotons, the bike with virtual spin classes are making their way into everyone’s home and you can find endless follow along yoga videos on YouTube.

The convenience of this in home health-tech is the draw. It’s the, I don’t have time to workout, but if I had a way to workout at home without having to think, that will do the trick! Don’t get me wrong, you will build serious fitness suffering on those Peloton bikes. The issue is how do you progress? How do you get better?

The bike’s answer is do more. More rides, more speed, more watts, longer duration. That’s the only way to progress, there isn’t any skill involved. In our world, the strength and conditioning gym, we can always progress by improving the quality of movement. We can add tempo, range of motion, speed and load amongst many other variables. We can adapt on the fly, call an audible and most importantly, focus on quality.

The in home tech doesn’t know what quality movement is. It wants you to progress by doing more. Which, will work until you eventually can’t do more and the Peloton collects cobwebs becomes a clothes hanger. These new at home workout modalities are great tools to supplement your training.

You still need full range of motion, mobility work, functional exercise, community, accountability and someone in your corner cheering for your success. Until the at home fitness tech can do that, I’d hang on to my gym membership.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Foam Rolling

You might be someone who loves it or hates it, but we like clients to start their training session by spending a few minutes on the ground using the foam roller. There’s a nuanced discussion happening about what rolling actually does, all I know is that when I do it, I feel better.

The pressure stimulates a massage and gets your body prepped to move around. We increase blood flow and hopefully, relax some tense tissues. Foam rolling is also like running a diagnostic check on your body. What I mean is that after a while, you’ll learn what baseline feels like. After a heavy or hard training day, you’ll notice the sore muscles are much more tender while rolling.

That’s a clue to do two things. First, don’t rush, breathe and spend a little more time rolling that area. Secondly, let us know! If you’re sore, we’re always happy to show you another rolling technique to dig little deeper or add a stretch into your routine to help you restore baseline.

No matter what, don’t rush those few minutes on the roller. The longer you can do it, usually better.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Moving and Sleeping

You ever have those days where you had a full schedule, worked really hard, moved around a lot and hit the gym? What happens at night on those days? For me, I can barely stay up after dinner. I head to bed early and crash hard. Those nights are always filled with great sleep.

A new study showed that the more active you are during the day, the better you’ll sleep at night. It wasn’t tracking planned, intense exercise. In fact, some studies report that can hinder sleep. Instead, this study looked at walking throughout the day, or what I think of as non-exercise physical activity.

The participants wore a monitor and tracked daily movement and filled out a self-assessing questionnaire each morning about sleep quality. According to the researchers, the more people move, the better they sleep.

The more ground they covered, the better they slept. Especially on days that they hit a higher than average step count. If you’ve ever been on vacation when you’ve walked around a lot, you know what I’m talking about. Now remember, this isn’t saying the more you walk, the more you sleep. But there seems to be evidence that the more activity you get, the more you’ll want to sleep.

If I were someone who struggles with sleeping each night, I’d try to increase my activity level - not through working out more, but trying to walk and move more throughout the day.

If you want to read the article, check it out here

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

What Are You Training For?

In my second weekend as a homeowner there was no shortage of tasks to be done. Cutting trees, splitting logs, painting, leaf blowing and organizing. It was a lot, and I crashed hard every night.

The most difficult task was getting the logs out of the wood to be split. All I could think of while I was going back and forth with heavy loads was, “Well, this is what I train for, right?” What I mean is that I didn’t specifically decide to train to do homeowner chores, but I do train to be physically capable, independent and unafraid of physical and mental challenges.

This past weekend, and many more in the future will allow me to use my training and have a confidence in my abilities because of it. So, I’ll leave you on this Monday morning with the question: what are you really training for?

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Short and Sweet

I mentioned earlier this week I was having a hard time getting good training sessions in over the past couple weeks. I realized this was okay and that I needed to prioritize other things. My goal this week was simple, I wanted to get two good gym workouts in.

Each time, I paired a full body lift with about a minute of something to get my heart rate up like running or skiing or rowing. This time efficient workout allows me to lift something heavy, get out of breath and be deliberate about skill and technique.

Simple workouts are often the best ones. We can get bogged down with complexity, variations and trying to not get bored. A short warm up and a compound lift paired with some conditioning work is all you need to get good results.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Temptation

Last night on my way home, I stopped to get a bag of candy. I laughed at peoples’ advice to buy Trick or Treat candy you don’t like… I like it all. I put the bag in the back seat, out of reach for my drive and left it there once I got home. I stayed strong until Trick or Treat rolled around and after the two hour window we still had a lot of candy left. I started eating it.

I ate my third Almond Joy without taking a breath. I made the hard choice and I asked Hannah to hide the candy from me. I can’t be around it or I just mindlessly grab one, unwrap it and eat it. When we surround ourselves with something we don’t want or need, we’re going to have it.

Willpower is finite. If you have candy or ice cream or chips available to you, you’re going to obsess over them and eventually cave. We’ve got to keep that stuff out of the house! If you’re trying to clean up your eating there’s no better option than taking away your choices. If it’s within the house, you’re going to eat it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Hands, Wrists and Forearms

There’s a part of your body that gets constant abuse and none of us think about it until a problem arises. It’s your hands, wrist, forearms and elbows. The joints and tissues that make up the arm are constantly on. We’re typing, gripping barbells, chopping onions, washing dishes, texting, holding our phones, driving, doing pull ups and farmer’s carries.

There’s no shortage of work for those muscles, yet, we never stretch, roll or massage them. You can start right now. Stretch each of your fingers back with the opposite hand, then, pull them all back together to stretch your wrist. After that, stretch the wrist the other way by pushing your palm towards your forearm. From there, do 10 wrist circles in each direction, be slow and deliberate.

What’s nice about stretching your hands and wrists is that you don’t need to change into gym clothes. You’re not going to get sweaty and it counteracts things we do everyday. Build in some time to move your hands and give them some love by stretching them a couple times a week.

Next time you’re in the gym, ask us how to use a ball to massage the forearm muscles. It’s an area that you don’t know needs attention until you try. After I do it, I always feel like my hand opens bigger.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

This Week

Good morning! A couple of announcements for you today.

If you’re participating in the Fall Nutrition Program, the third meeting is tonight at 7pm.

Since tomorrow is the final Wednesday of the month, that means it would be Beer Night. Since Beer Night is conflicting with Trick or Treat, we’re going to skip Beer Night this month.

That’s all for now, have a great day!

Justin Miner

@portmouthcoach

Life

The past two weeks have been a bit hectic. Packing, closing, going to a wedding, moving, unpacking and diving straight into homeowner projects. My training has been suffering. I haven’t lifted in a while and have barely done any running.

One side of me is rational and knows that this break will help me in the long run, let me fully recover and will leave me reinvigorated once I get back to some regular training. The other side feels lazy and unproductive. I feel like I “should” be doing more, even thought there really isn’t any time or motivation for me to hit the gym or the trails.

There’s no big revelation moment here. Just sharing that this happens to all of us. Life gets crazy, new things happen. The key is to get back to it once you can. Too many people hit this wall, and never get back to training regularly. I’m hoping to ease back in this week with some easy internal training and 30 minute gym workouts.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Routines and Habits

What happens to your normal routine when you throw in a variable like being in a new place?

Last night, we stayed at the new house for the first time. When I woke up today, everything was the same. Shower, let Clementine outside, feed her, and then make coffee and do dishes. I fell right back into my normal routine even though I was in a new place.

I almost forgot to write and post a blog though. Being in the new spot made me forget my newest addition to my morning routine, writing a blog. The other habits have been around longer than the writing, which is probably why they felt more natural to do.

You probably have some new habits you’re working on too. Make sure you stick with it until they feel as natural as all the other habits you’ve developed over the years.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach