What's This?

The Strength & Fitness Newsletter is a weekly email newsletter which summarises the things added to Straight to the Bar (as well as a few gems from the archives). Absolutely free.

btw, I’d love to hear your feedback – both on the individual items and the newsletters themselves. Drop a comment below the relevant issue, or swing by Twitter ( I’m @scottbird ).

cheers,

Scott

Ready To Learn Even More?

I love learning new skills, and the many seminars & workshops available are a great way to do that. If you’re looking for a specific type of workshop nearby, check out the ones on Dragon Door. Great mix of kettlebell and calisthenics-based offerings.

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Podcasts

I listen to an ever-changing pool of podcasts, discussing the many aspects of training and nutrition possible. Most recently :
FoundMyFitness (Dr Matthew Walker on Sleep)

Over to you. Any you’d recommend?

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Strength Training on Instagram

It’s fair to say that we’ve checked out quite a few images over the years – on Flickr & Smugmug in particular.

A friend of mine just pointed me to Chris Stanciu ‘s Instagram feed, which contains a great mix of nutrition and workout images :

instagram.com/officialgainsthetics.

NB : if you’d like to share your own images, just add them to one of the sites noted above and send us a link.

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Strength Training on Facebook

I suspect you love talking about strength training constantly (certainly the case here), and you’re always on the lookout for places to do that. Comments on various sites, forums as well as various in-person communities.

Online, I gravitate toward both Twitter and Facebook. In addition to the SttB offerings, here’s another one you may wish to check out :

Garage Gym Reviews (Cooper Mitchell’s page)

We’ve noted a few of his videos in the past, and they’re great for diving in deep on a particular type of equipment. Nice one.

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Twitter Lists

I use Twitter for a number of things, as I’m sure everyone else here does. To talk about strength training, nutrition and many other topics. Works well.

To make this a little easier – and so people can dive right in to the topics that interest them – I use Twitter’s ‘List‘ functionality quite a bit. There’s a full list of them here :

https://twitter.com/scottbird/lists

Whatever you’re in to, it’s all there.

NB : the above lists are always being fine-tuned. If you know of someone who tweets regularly about a particular subject and should be on one of them, let me know.

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Other (Daily) Newsletters You Might Like

Finally, for a daily dose of tangentially-related information – check out the following. All are compiled daily, and cover the following topics :

Aging & Longevity (living for a very, very long time)
Electric Cars in Australia (great way to help tackle air-pollution)
Better Sleep Nightly (my favourite form of recovery)

And yes, they’re absolutely free.

Bruce Lee : The Art of Expressing the Human Body (Bruce Lee & John Little)

If you’ve ever watched a Bruce Lee film and marveled at his strength, speed, agility, endurance, flexibility or muscularity, this book should take pride of place in your collection. Unlike many other writings covering everything from Lee’s training methods to nutrition, this book is based not on the recollections of people around him; but on Lee’s own notes. Brilliant.

Definitely worthy of a place on the fitness shelf.

Bruce Lee : The Art of Expressing the Human Body.

Monday, 26 Jul 2010

This Week on Straight to the Bar

I’m constantly amazed at just how much my training is influenced by the people on this site. Whether you’re looking for a new piece of equipment, an unusual exercise variation or just an idea of how others approach things, you’ll enjoy these :

Three Technique Corrections for Tearing Your First Deck of Cards
Jedd Johnson
Just getting started? Perfect.
Combat Trainer Chronicles
Rob DeCillis
Rob‘s training log. Good stuff.

Ready to add your own opinion, workout log or training article? Just head over to the Forums, Training Logs, or swing by the Article Submissions page. They’re fantastic ways to share your ideas.

NB : if you enjoy the articles, show the authors your appreciation by voting (using the Like, Digg and Retweet icons). Cheers.

Video : How to Climb a Rope

Keen to add a little rope-climbing to your training mix, but not quite sure how?
Jim explains the most common techniques. Nice one.

Constructing : Suspension Handles

Want a great project for your next free evening? How about building a few sets of handles for use with sleds, suspension trainers and much, much more. Inexpensive, simple to make and incredibly versatile.
Over to Ryan.

Coming Events

Daniel Ng.

Twitterchat 76 – Photographing Strength Athletes

Two things I’ve been immersing myself in for years are a passion for photography (ranging from creating images to collecting vintage cameras), and a serious love of strength training. Doing, watching, supporting, and of course, talking about. Absolutely love it.
This week we’ll be combining these two incredible pastimes, taking a look at the best ways to photograph/video either yourself or a competing strength athlete. Everything from ‘which camera to use‘, to how to record the audio so people can hear it over the wind noise, to the ways of getting some great – and legal – music onto your Youtube videos. Helping us explore this fascinating topic is none other than Daniel Ng, (@daniel_hautjobb); a man who’s been combining some serious odd-object work with photography for years now. Fantastic.

Details –
Who : Strength-training fans
Topic : Photographing Strength Athletes
When : Wed Jul 28, 9pm EDT (1am UTC)
How : Include #sbgym in your tweets.
To see when it’s on in your timezone, head over to the twitterchat calendar.
See you there.
NB : If you’d like to be a guest on a future twitterchat, let me know. It’s great to hear how other people are training.

Tim Hull.

Quick update on last week’s twitterchat : Thanks once again to Tim Hull (@THull) and everyone else who took part in the discussion on Incorporating Strongman Training. Some superb ideas in there.
For those who missed out on the conversation, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you incorporate a little Strongman work in your training, and in what form?

Getting Ready For : The 1,000 Pound Total

The 1,000 Pound Total.

The third part of Brooks Kubik‘s (Dinosaur Training) incredible Legacy of Iron series (Legacy of Iron and Clouds of War) is arriving soon.
This volume – The 1,000 Pound Total – covers the real-life battle between Steve Stanko and John Davis to become the first man in history to total 1,000 pounds in the three Olympic lifts.
Fantastic.

Exercise of the Week : TTK Negatives

These are superb. For more brilliant ways to put the Titan’s Telegraph Key (TTK) to work, swing by Jedd‘s excellent article Getting the Most out of Your TTK. Good stuff.