Alright, so I know it gets boring to hear me go on and on about esoteric work out stuff. I know I spend more time bitching and moaning, climbing up on my soap box and ranting at you about “the influence of ego on training,” “misplaced priorities” and my general pissy-ness about the fitness industry than giving you want you want.

Water. Two-thirds of the planet is covered in the stuff. It’s everywhere – plants, animals, oceans, lakes, rivers, diet coke – no wonder it’s considered essential to our lives.

The combat sports community has made great strides in regards to embracing the world of "functional" training, and shedding the ineffective shackles of bodybuilding-style training. In that transition, though, the value of training for strength has become neglected. It is almost as though an aversion to basic, practical weight training has been cultivated in pursuit of ultimate functionality.

The deadlift. One of the central "slow lifts" and a mainstay in powerlifting and strongman competitions. You're probably already familiar with this movement, but we're going to break it down in a little more detail, pointing out some common mistakes, and get you pulling more than you ever imagined.

Fitness is sorely lacking in a cerebral component. For some reason the physical has become disconnected from the mental – except, perhaps, in the most banal and superficial ways possible (“it’s all in your head” or other such painful clichés). Mass-market fitness focuses entirely on appealing to the visceral, foregoing any pretense of intellectualism and reducing its opinion of the public to a horde of slobbering idiots. Truth be told, you don’t have to be a scholar of any discipline to be fit, but it doesn’t hurt. At times it seems an impossibility to rectify strength and conditioning with intellectual pursuits, but this week we’ll talk about how it might be possible to be both the brains a...