Moguls at Saddleback Ski Resort in Maine

Someone who is trying to gain weight should typically avoid cardio exercises. Cardio will cause you to burn a lot more calories than heavy lifting exercises, impeding your weight gain goals. Thus, us hard gainers usually stick to heavy weight lifting, muscle bulking activities.

One of the best muscle mass weight gaining exercises for your legs are squats. Squats work out virtually every leg muscle, targeting mostly your quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and calf muscles… (depending on your stance you can significantly alter which muscle groups are effected). The bad thing about squats is that it is easy for you to strain your back or other muscles from loss of balance, and it is very easy to strain from poor form. Teetering a few hundred pounds of weight on your shoulders is inherently risky anyways.

I can only think of one alternative to squats that is just as, if not more effective at targeting your core leg and back muscles… The activity I’m talking about is skiing, and not just any sort of skiing. I’m talking moguls. Big fat bushy moguls on steep skiing slopes that you pound into relentlessly at over 20 MPH on your way down the ski slope. What are the advantages that Skiing Moguls have over squats?

• Skiing doesn’t put any weight on your shoulders, you remain with a steady low center of gravity.
• Your entire body gets a workout when maintaining balance through moguls (from pole planting with your arms, to heavy leans with your back and abs, to the relentless hits you take with your legs), as opposed to mainly just your legs in squats.
• Skiing moguls keeps your heart rate up for a significantly longer amount of time than plain old squats without the lean fat burn of cardio.
• You get to be outside, enjoying nature!

Skiier hitting Moguls

(Picture right, skiier in lowest “squatted” position after just landing on the top of a mogul)

Of course, there is a significantly larger learning curve to being able to ski moguls than there is to learn how to do squats. I have been skiing Maine slopes since I was a toddler and consider myself a pretty advanced skier. Moguls are a pretty big deal in Maine. Most ski hills will have quite a few natural skiing areas either through the trees or trails left un-groomed to develop moguls. It was not until this year that I really got comfortable with moguls. There are a few reasons for this. Moguls are intimidating. The first few times you go down them, you will find it incredibly hard to stay in control. The backs of moguls are icey and they are usually on steep slopes. People often try and turn through the moguls and end up scraping down the back side of them (the icey part) and falling. Stopping can be difficult because of the large amount of ice usually associated with moguls. The next biggest reason people avoid moguls is the difficulty of the trails. Moguls are usually on the double diamond trails (You will rarely find moguls on a blue trail), double diamond can make for some bad falls and can be dangerous if you are a beginner that doesn’t know how to handle very steep slopes. For these two reasons, most people give up after one or two tries.

But there is an art to skiing moguls… And you probably wont even start to understand it until you have gone down the same mogul trail at least 5-10 times. People are used to turning to slow down, thus beginners try and turn around and through moguls on the icy parts and fail miserably… But the trick to slowing down on moguls is to hit the big bushy top of the mogul where all the loose snow has built up. The snow on top of a mogul is usually so loose and puffy that you could stop instantly if you wanted to.

Think of it like you are literally jumping from mogul to mogul, using the moguls as your fluffy landing pads. Once you understand how to start planning for which mogul you are going to “jump” to next, it gets much easier. And by jump, I dont mean you should be going air born. You should never actually get any “air” off the ground unless you’re purposely trying to.

Skiing Maine Moguls at Saddleback

Hitting these moguls requires a tremendous amount of leg power. If your legs cannot absorb each mogul hit like a shock, and then re-extend before hitting the next mogul, you will either lose control and fall, or you will do a jump off the mogul and end up in the air.

(Picture left – skiier using entire body to throw weight balance after hitting mogul, preparing for the next hit)

So how can I equate this to a squat like workout? Imagine that you have the barbell on your back, except it is empty, and instead of performing a squat, you are jumping down a large stair case, skipping 2-3 steps each jump, for about 25 stairs. Your legs go through the same movement as a squat but they are constantly absorbing energy. It really feels completely different than a squat because there is no lifting, gravity is just pulling you down into obstacles you absorb and move over… and its a very addictive feeling… And I assure you, in every was as difficult as good a workout as a squat, if not better.

Saddleback Ski Resort in Maine is one of my favorite ski locations. They have a huge variety of terrain, and the most “Steep Skiing” terrain in New England. This massive area of just Black and Double black diamond trails has a huge variety of conditions to offer, from glades and tree skiing, to steep groomed trails, and a lot of natural mogul skiing terrain. Definitely worth the trip and a lot bigger than you think!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

I work at Romano’s Macaroni Grill part time and our dishes vary hugely in their amount of calories. Some are as little as 500 calories, some are over 1500 calories, usually with little price difference.

It will be much more convenient to have the calories listed right in the normal menu rather than having to hunt down a nutrition menu or just guess how many calories I’m eating. Some restaurants don’t even have nutrition menu’s which makes calorie counting very aggravating!

Everyone who counts calories should be in favor of this right?

One of the dishes at the Macaroni Grill, the “Parmigiana Crusted Sole” has 1700 calories in it, and its not very filling… Its a mid-priced dish too. I wonder how it will effect consumer behavior /  the amount of people that order it once they see they are consuming 85% of their daily calories in one sitting!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

New Progress Pictures will be up tonight.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

But the reality is that there is no Silver Bullet food that is going to rid you of all of your problems… God knows Jaime Lee Curtis must be having constant diarrhea from her danactive, which claims to be a 1 stop solution to bowel irregularity… One of these healthy foods it not going to offset a poor diet. When you eat anything you should make an attempt at choosing something healthy. Don’t depend on miracle foods like pomegranate juice to balance out that trans-fat filled double cheeseburger you had at McDonald’s today.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

But I recently played racquetball with my buddy John (who I just found out plays) and hes more around my level, still a little bit better than I am, but we get great rally’s going that can last for over a minute (and that’s a long time in racquetball!), and it’s really fun, so I figure I’ll be playing more often now.

Other than racquetball I really don’t do any cardio for fear of losing weight (burning too many calories)… But i guess it is good for my heart and everything. I was surprised by how quickly I became exhausted. I guess the mass gaining style of bodybuilding I do really only builds strength because it has done nothing for my endurance. By the end of 2 rounds of racquetball I was drenched in sweat and really tired. Playing this regularly should certainly start to build up my endurance.

Couldn’t lift as much….

After a few minutes to cool down, I hit the weight room to crank out day 1 of my routine. Dead lifts, Shrugs, and chin ups. After racquetball, the amount of weight I was able to lift was significantly reduced. Dead lifts were down 30lbs from where I wanted to be, shrugs weren’t that effected, but my second set of chin ups left me failing early and shaking hard with exhaustion. The thing is though, that I was still sore the next day in those targeted muscle groups, so whether or not I could lift my targeted weight was over ruled by the fact that I still exhausted myself during the workout.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Bro full of bro-science

Have you ever been at the gym and some guy, in miserable shape, try’s to offer you workout advice? Beware of this. Its called Bro-Science. Its what idiots on the internet come up with in forums to explain how the body works. These guys learn their bro-science from other teenage bro-scientists, take this pseudo-knowledge to the gym with them, and share it with whoever will listen.

I can see by your jiggly biceps and flat pecs that I should really be listening to your speech about how I should be dieting and what routine works “best”….

Moral of the story? Don’t trust what people tell you about bodybuilding unless they have the type of body you are trying to achieve, AND they started in the same position as you. My trying to gain weight and muscle is not the same as a guy who just lost 100lbs and is trying to gain muscle.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites