i can’t blame fatherhood for that, and i am far from sleep deprived. if anything i have been overworked between regular work, per diem moonlighting at other nursing homes, and my private practice. i’ve also had time-intensive house projects that have taken up some afternoons, but i know despite that i can get good, hard workouts in and eat healthy like i have been the past several years. i typically get more accomplished in 15 minutes than most people get in 90 at a gym. i just haven’t wanted to.

last week i worked out twice. the week before, once. the week before that, once. my diet has been total horse shit, snacking on whatever is laying around. skipping meals in order to do this. my alcohol intake has increased as well. i guess i can blame football sunday for that.

nothing is irreversible, and the scale has not moved, which is a good thing. i was 164.6 the other day. but i pride myself on being a healthy, active person who is able to do whatever it takes to be in the best shape i can, and this is not congruent with that.

The question “What went wrong?” keeps creeping into my mind.

I feel the world got to me around middle school. Much of this has to do with stuttering, and the rest is probably general growing pains. Before that time I looked engaged and happy with life, without fear or worry or judgement from anybody else, and with limitless potential about what I could be or do. There are too many things I did not accomplish that I cannot go back and change.

I am sure when Liam is born I will envision how he will grow up and I will try to teach him to be a man, but there will be times I cannot make his decisions for him or protect him from the world. This is something I just don’t know how to deal with.

-Bought a house in Shirley, MA. Contemporary split level. We’ve done a lot of work, still going on, but it’s looking pretty nice. Certainly most responsibility I’ve ever had.

-Bought a puppy, the long-awaited miniature dachshund named Winston, who is simultaneously the most fun and frustrating little guy I’ve ever met.

-Working ten minutes away from our house, which is the shortest commute I’ve ever had, apart from working at the golf course in Plymouth (which doesn’t really count).

-Sort of missing the long drives every day where I could listen to lots of music.

-Quit the gym in Worcester about 5 months ago. Working out with body weight exercises, Super Bands, a kettle bell, pull-up bar, and a TRX in the basement.

-Currently weighing in a trim 166 pounds (lowest was 163, typically fluctuating between 164-166 on any given day).

-Listening to a lot of rap music: a lot of Wu-Tang, Kanye, Rick Ross, and Lloyd Banks. plus new guys like Kendrick Lamar. Anxiously awaiting my Dre headphones for Christmas.

-Listening to a lot of Christmas music. Love the Vince Guaraldi Trio, James Taylor, and the Christmas station on Pandora.

-Listening to Taylor’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on repeat to the point of near-tears.

-Spending a lot of early hours reading and researching stuttering therapy to prepare for my entrance into small-scale private practice.

-Currently open for business after regular work hours in my home office. Hoping to have 1-2 clients soon to supplement my current job. After about a year of contemplation, finally pursuing a dream.

-Doing the bare minimum as far as workouts and nutrition, due to professional interests and new house/puppy responsibilities.

-Finding it exhausting to balance and maintain interest in all of these things at once. Maybe it isn’t possible?

-It shows the effectiveness of the diet and the short, hard Turbulence Training workouts that I can maintain my current fitness level and body composition (which I have to say is as good as it’s ever been) with little mental effort and two-to-three 30-40-minute workouts per week.

-Though, not going to make any more real gains until I increase focus, which I don’t have much of a desire to do right now.

-Learning that growing up is hard to do, even when things are seemingly going very well.

-Maybe I’m just the type to be in a permanent existential crisis.

I took about a week off from the gym after I re-injured my back and in the past week back at it, I’ve been screwing around with some upper body stuff, including a ton of chin-ups and shoulder rehab. No lower body yet, as I still feel a little pinch every now and again, so I’m keeping it safe. I haven’t had the heart to do more than 10 minutes of intervals or steady-state cardio lately. That’s when the Spike would help.

Nutritionally I’ve been in a good place, watching my portions at dinner and on the weekends. I haven’t weighed myself in god knows how long, but I look good and my clothes fit great, if not too loose.

That’s enough for now, just figured I’d write a bit about the past two weeks before I go back into hiding.

First things first, I switched to another building for work. I now work at Apple Valley Center in Ayer, MA. It’s been 3+ weeks including the trial period, and so far it appears I made the right decision. I’ll leave it at that for now. Don’t want to jinx it.
Jaylynn and I are also actively looking for a house at the moment. We looked at three last weekend, and we’ll look at three more this weekend, including one in Clinton we have our heart set on. If we move fast, we can make that first time homebuyer’s deadline, so keep your fingers crossed for us.

In the area of health and fitness, things were banging on all cylinders until yesterday when I re-injured my herniated disc while doing chest-supported rows. Trying to keep my shoulder blades retracted, I arched my back too much and on the lift felt a sharp pain. Packed it up right there and headed home to cry. At first it felt as though it was worse than before, but as today as gone on (I took the day off to rest and ice) it feels a bit better. This does mean at least another week or two off from the gym, but I’m okay with that. Looks like my back training will be relegated to pull-ups and chin-ups at this point. Beach season is coming, gotta work on that V-shape.

Speaking of shape, I have to say I look pretty damn good right now. I had been three weeks into a self-modified version of the Built for Show Summer program, and once I recover I can then modify it again to keep the back healthy. Basically any back exercise that involves a row will be replaced by more pull-ups (I don’t think anybody has ever died from doing too many pull-ups). Biceps and forearm veins are popping, as are the lower abs and obliques. I haven’t weighed myself at all, so not sure what my scale weight is, but I’m not really too concerned. My self-discipline has been dialed in, I’m down to one (real) cheat meal per week (at this point I consider cream in my coffee or ketchup on my eggs as cheats), and we’re trying all kinds of new recipes, including stuff from Gourmet Nutrition, TNT, and the Women’s Health Perfect Body Diet book I bought for my wife (Tuesday night we had healthy shepherd’s pie, made from ground turkey, sweet potato, parsnips, and peas. It was insane. Better than actual shepherd’s pie). We’re enjoying cooking new, healthy meals, and the results have been excellent so far. Tonight I’m making spaghetti squash with a bison tomato sauce.

So that’s life the past few weeks. A few big things on the horizon.



Grow! is their whey protein (not to be confused with Metabolic Drive, their whey/casein blend) and so far it’s pretty good. Supposedly it’s a better quality whey than some of the cheaper stuff I’ve been buying, and it’s very economical considering the company. Biotest often gets blasted for overhyping their products, but the consensus seems to be they are still quality supplements. I trust Brian St. Pierre’s reviews and Grow got one of his stamps of approval, so I’m trying it out.

I’ve written about Spike a lot before, and I love it. With 300mg of caffeine plus a shit ton of B-vitamins in each can, it gets the engine revving before a workout, or even a study session. Regular coffee doesn’t really affect me that much anymore mentally (though I’m back down to 1 cup of black a day, occasionally 2), but Spike is the one thing that gives me that mental edge for whatever I’m doing. Instant mood elevator. I usually have about 2 per week, and I definitely have to watch the caffeine intake during the day to allow for it.

Other than that, the supplements are just creatine monohydrate, fish oil, and maybe some magnesium before bed.

Anyway, here goes the first one.

This article, titled “Principles of motor learning in treatment of motor speech disorders” by Maas, et. al. (sorry, I forgot how to properly note articles) has been useful in working out some of the bugs in my treatment plan for one of my patients at work. The article compares (as the title states) how typical motor learning for all physical activities might (and the key word is “might,” in basically all articles related to speech or anything, “little current research exists” and “more research must be conducted on this subject” apply to the treatment of motor speech disorders, which I am focusing on apraxia of speech.

Apraxia is a disorder of motor control, meaning an impairment of purposeful movement. The connection between intention and production is damaged.  This is usually caused by a stroke affecting part of the brain. Different types of apraxia exist, including limb and facial apraxia. As it relates to speech, apraxia presents as poor articulation of certain sound classes. Production of  speech sounds by moving the lips, tongue, and soft palate becomes extremely difficult. Apraxia often co-occurs with a language disorder (aphasia), or a muscular disorder (dysarthria), which can make it difficult to tease out and treat, but by itself, it is purely a disorder of volitional movement. Apraxia of speech (AOS) is generally treated by having the patient repeat targeted sounds (in words, phrases, or sentences) in an attempt to reestablish old motor pathways and/or create new ones. The goal is for the patient to transfer any learned skill outside of the therapy room.

This article offers a few basic strategies for treating apraxia of speech, and here are the eight that I found useful:

1) Target more complex items to increase transfer to simpler items, not the other way around. Targeting a consonant cluster can help to generalize to singletons.

2) Use other sound classes to assess generalization and avoid overgeneralization of targeted sounds.

3) Use serial (ABC…ABC…ABC…..) and random (ABC….CAB….CBA….) practice as opposed to blocked practice (AAA….BBB…CCC) to facilitate improved transfer. This is most important for patients with more experience with this goal. However, for inexperienced patients, blocked practice may be more effective.

4) Train an external focus by utilizing acoustics, as patients with AOS and an internal focus often freeze while attempting to produce complex utterances. Think of it like a golf swing: It is easier to practice club placement and aim for a target than it is to focus on keeping knees bent, hips back, etc. With speech, there isn’t a lot to focus on outside the stimulus other than how it sounds, so it’s better to keep focus on this than to keep instructing the patient on placement of articulators.

5) Select fewer target items and practice these items more frequently, rather than using a large set and targeting only a few times. However, to avoid the patient becoming bored and losing motivation, increase and alter the items as necessary.

6) Use a random order of stimulus items to increase unpredictability.

7) Use variable practice, such as changing stimulus type or setting, thus reducing tedium and increasing transfer.

Reduce frequency and immediacy of feedback to increase the patient’s own internal feedback system.

The article definitely goes more into a lot of motor learning principles, including schemas, memory consolidation theory, and generalized motor patterns (GMPs) that, frankly, I don’t totally understand, so I won’t attempt to explain them.

In any case, this is a good article for anybody troubleshooting their work with patients with AOS.  I imagine I will end up setting up another blog dedicated to these article reviews, which I think is a good thing. I’d like to touch on more language and swallowing disorders, and of course on stuttering.

Who knows, this may become my thing and my SLP friends can get a kick out of it.

“The gap between where you are and where you want to be is called ‘frustration.’ Frustration is remedied by education and action.”

“There’s an inherent flaw built into New Year’s resolutions. While a new year brings along the hope of a fresh start and a chance to right all wrongs, the concept of new beginnings means something else: Starting from ground zero. And as any person knows, when you’re at the bottom, the only way to go is up. For most people, this concept is daunting, intimidating, and ultimately the reason why so many of us fail to accomplish our goals, especially when it comes to fitness.

We all have times when our goals seem unreachable, even if your heart is in the right place. Last week marked the anniversary of a horrific injury that led to a complete knee reconstruction. Name a ligament in my knee and it was shredded. The only thing that was worse than my knee was my confidence (my legs were never smaller). Instead of looking forward to new goals in the new year, I found myself starting back at square one, much like many guys on January 1. But after the initial moments of self-pity, I looked forward to my reconstructive surgery and proving all my doubters wrong, and more importantly, proving to myself that I could reach my goals.

My road back was long and arduous. The first week after my surgery, it took me about 5 minutes to move my leg from straight to 90 degrees. Despite a few setbacks during my recovery (note to knee patients: Stay away from small children. They will take out your knees and shock your new ACL), I eventually recovered and became stronger and more athletic than ever. And it had nothing to do with my individual abilities, and everything to do with my endless resolve to be patient and work towards making myself better.

Injuries will humble anyone, but they’re not the only reason to be patient. Consistency is the secret to any success, which means it doesn’t matter where you start. Maybe 2009 was your best year yet. Or maybe it was the year you fell off the wagon and struggled to eat well and make it into the gym. It doesn’t matter. What does is moving towards your goal. And as long as you end better than where you started, you’ve been successful. 

Good luck to all of you in 2010. I’ll try to do my part to provide the tools that’ll help you reach your goals this year.”

At the gym (lightly) working on my issues to get better than ever.