I’ve written only a handful of posts in December, so here is a smorgasbord of random thoughts for you on this Christmas Eve morning.

1. Doing lunges at a rest stop is weird, but not impossible

The trip from Maine to Pennsylvania begins with busy highways, three lanes of traffic, and the claustrophobic feel of the busy New England life. Gradually, as Massachusetts and Connecticut give way to New York, the exits get further apart, the highways merge to two lanes, and eventually, we’re making the final two hour drive on Interstate 80 to get to State College.

A Bonnie Raitt squat is a bodyweight squat. The rest of these exercises can be found on my YouTube Channel.

And I’m going batshit crazy because I’ve been in the car for too long. Sheila does all of the driving since she gets car sick, so I vacillate between singing Barry Manilow songs and trying not to puke in stop and go traffic.

It’s delightful.

By the time we hit a rest stop, we park far away and I lunge to the bathroom, jog back and forth a few times, and do wide stance t-spine mobilizations in front of vending machines. 

Strangers make a wide arc to go around me. “I don’t know what you’ve got,” they’re thinking. “But I hope I don’t catch it.” 

2. I travel with my grid stick

My friend John always told me to travel with a mag flashlight, as it could be used to break a window should my car get submerged, or take out a stranger at the knees, but in a pinch, a good whack with my grid stick would at least stun someone.

Both of us like to be prepared, ok?

But that’s not why I travel with it. I use my grid stick to get the blood flowing when we get to the hotel or our final destination. I can use it in the car, and it feels good to aggressively work on some of those knots when I just. can’t. Listen. To. NPR. For. one. More . minute. 

3. Something is better than nothing

Yesterday I popped into the gym with my little brother for a quick workout. I was tired, hadn’t slept well in two days, and the last thing I wanted to do was train. But we both went anyway, and I got in a solid 45 minutes of work. I only did six exercises after a brief warm up, but it got my blood flowing and improved my mood. Sometimes I struggle to train if I’m not following a specific program, so it’s good for me to remember that doing something is better than nothing.

It was also great to see my brother isn’t doing any of the program I wrote for him, so it was a good reminder that I’m not necessarily a “coach” but just someone who makes suggestions to family members when they ask and then they largely ignore them.

Cheers :-)

4. Training during the holidays helps to promote kindness

You know that I believe in kindness as a core value for everyone. Well, we’re all less likely to get in screaming matches over politics or the last piece of monkey bread Christmas morning if we’ve done a little workout to get those endorphins flowing. Or to work out aggression. Either or.

And when I say workout, I mean you can go outside and take a walk.

5. You don’t need a gym to train

Sure I practice deadlifting my dog into the car, up the stairs, and onto the couch, but even if you didn’t have to lift your 55 pound hound, you can still get a good bodyweight circuit in. Follow the circuit on the picture to get your heart rate up, your endorphins going, and make people at rest stops stare at you sideways.  

Cheers. 

Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.

By the age of 10, my belief in Santa was waning. I still believed, but my 13 year older brother was, by then, a non-believer and pointing out the flaws in the existence of the man. Most notably, he pointed out that our chimney ended in a wood stove that was constantly in use.

"He can't come through the flames," he said. "And....he's too fat."

Skeptical though I was, I nonetheless sat on Santa’s lap at the annual Ebensburg Moose Christmas party and parlayed my request to ol’ Saint Nick.

"I’d like a Pete Rose baseball card,” I said.

In the mid-1980’s Pete Rose was everything to me. Despite living in Western Pennsylvania and carrying a healthy allegiance to my home town Pittsburgh Pirates, it was Pete who was on my Wheaties' box and the poster on my wall.

It was Pete I pretended to be when we played backyard baseball.

In the days before my parents had cable television, I don't recall any fanfare when Pete passed Ty Cobb to become baseball’s All-Time Hit’s Leader. I knew because I read it on a Wheaties' box. And it was on the Pete Rose poster I sent in box tops to acquire.

Pete Rose was more than the all-time hits leader when I was a kid growing up in the 80’s. He was the definition of the way you played the game. When you slid into home, you did a Pete Rose slide, which meant sacrificing your body to take out the catcher on the way into home plate.

His nickname was Charlie Hustle. If you watch clips of Pete playing baseball, he was not the graceful athlete that Derek Jeter was or Mike Trout is. He lumbered when he ran, and hunched and poked out hits at the plate, offering more of a chop than the beautiful swing of a Ken Griffey Jr. He was an average looking guy who hustled and worked his way to being a super star.

And so that’s what my Dad taught me to do.

When Pete was at the plate, he watched the ball into the catcher’s mitt on every pitch.

Dad said I should do that too.

So it should have come as no surprise that all I wanted for Christmas when I was 10 years old was a Pete Rose baseball card.

When asked if I wanted anything else, anything at all, I said no. There was honestly nothing I could think of more than to add Pete Rose to my healthy and growing baseball card collection. I had Ricky Henderson and Roger Clemens and some guy named Cal Ripken Jr.

I’m sure the request turned my parents sideways. Sports card shops had not yet blown up in our part of the country. In a few years you could walk into a store and pick out a Pete Rose rookie card or something else from his early years. But not in rural Western Pennsylvania in the mid 1980’s.

So my parents did what they could do.

On Christmas morning, I woke up and shuffled through the presents under the tree. There were several packs of baseball cards - Topps and Donruss - and I ripped through them all - finding Nolan Ryan and Andy Van Slyke and other stars that I admired.

But there was no Pete Rose.

My dad called a friend whose son collected baseball cards to see if he fulfill my wish, and was assured that there was a card to be had for me.

I eventually did get myself a Pete Rose baseball card to go with the thousands of other cards that sit at my parents' house.

Of course as you read this, you probably wonder why Pete Rose. These days he's almost kryptonite to the game of baseball, setting up his yearly protest in Cooperstown during the Hall of Fame inductions. And admittedly, he was the first hero to fall for me, when he was banned from baseball permanently for betting on his own team while managing the Reds.

As I re-read this post, it sounds kind of sad, but I don't remember it that way. I think very fondly about the year I wanted that one simple thing because of what it represented. Pete Rose symbolized the most important thing in my little 10 year old world.

Baseball.

As I've gotten older, and life has gotten more complicated, I take great pleasure in having memories of Christmases past that I can look at with such fondness, even if the memories are likely tinted with rose colored glasses.

How lucky I am to have memories so dear.

Wishing you and all of those in your life a very happy holiday.

I don't want to blow up the internet, but I actually have no sentimental attachment to the traditional Thanksgiving Day meal. 

None.

Turkey? I can take it or leave it. Same with stuffing, and mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce. 

Wait, wait. Don't stop reading just yet. I like apple pie. 

Yes, there is a Terrible Towel for every major holiday. No, I don't have all of them yet. 

Kind of.

While I don't have an attachment to the food, I do love that we have a day that reminds us - reminds me - to be grateful. 

I try to be mindful and grateful for all of the opportunities and blessings I have in my life. But I don't always succeed. I get lost in the negatives - the day to day struggle reminding me of what I haven't done and who I haven't become. I often spend time in the weeds, forgetting to take a step back and look at the larger landscape.

I forget the flowers for the weeds.

Today I am especially thankful, that I have the privilege of aging. Despite every joke I could make about getting older, I can think of too many friends from high school and college who were not so lucky.

That, thanks to the efforts and struggles of many who have come before me, I have the freedom to marry the person I love. 

That I have the physical health and well-being to go for long runs and lift heavy weights until my heart is content. 

That I have family that I love and who loves me. 

That I have chosen family. And living so far away from Pennsylvania, they get me through, especially on days like today when we can't be home.

But this year, more than anything else, I am grateful that I now have a career as a strength coach. That I get up each morning and drive to work at the facility and get to experience cool moments like the one below.

Yesterday, our client Tracy came in with her son Chris for a mother-son workout. Chris, watching his mom crushing a new PR of 250lbs on the deadlift, wanted to crush a PR of his own. So he went from a 65lb trap bar pull to a 105lb PR. And he had plenty more in the tank.

And it was my good fortune to be a part of the moment.

Wishing you and your family every peace and happiness today and always.