Guest post from: THE FOODSMAN

It's high time for a guest post from another of our illustrious internet colleagues, this time from the one and only Foodsman! His website, The Foodsman, A Post-Modern Critique of Modern Cuisine, is one not to miss if you like food, don't like food, or do or don't like humanity.

Without further ado, here is the official review of TFN Training from The Foodsman! Fasten your seatbelts and enjoy.

~TFN

For the first time since the 1970's, we live in an era when lifting weights is becoming cool again. Lucky enough for the millions of people who only train according to the latest fitness-fads, this is a good thing. Unless of course you're into random exercises, chronic injuries, and flopping around like a dying fish while some golf-shirt bro yells at you to hit "one more rep (see: 'Crossfit'). If that's your thing, there's plenty of classes and boot-camps that will gladly rip you off for an overpriced membership, and help you make reverse-progress. However, there is an oasis among the barren wasteland of fitness-fallacy around us today.

As a powerlifter, a true Foodsman, and a wildly successful venture-capitalist, I know a great business when I see one. This brings us to TFN Training, located in McLean, Virginia. TFN is not a health-club, a "box", or a physical therapy facility. It's a private studio staffed only by those who actually walk-the-talk. The staff are as friendly and inviting as they come, but can also probably lift your stupid Smart Car off the ground and out-sprint you in flip flops. I'd consider them to be real coaches, not health-club trainers. As a bonus, they even bring their cute dog, Buffy, to keep an eye on things, along with her silly-looking friend Daisy. Who doesn't like having cute dogs around? It's my professional opinion that the only people who DON'T like cute dogs around are sociopaths (see: 'Crossfit').

(Buffy at great leisure)

Now, more importantly, back to my story. As a life-long Liftsman and Iron-Slinger, the squat is a very important movement to me. However, there came a time, as I began learning how to actually execute the movement and squat more frequently, that I couldn't hit a squat without feeling like there were knives digging into my hips. I chalked it up to "Bad Hips", and a doctor diagnosed it as a possible labrum injury.

I was then referred to a "great physical therapist" (who coincidentally shared a practice with my doctor), and I began seeing him three times a week. For the low price of two-hundred and fifty bucks a visit, billed to my insurance company, this man would have me do some side-steps, stretch me out, put a bag of ice on my hips (which they billed as "cold therapy"), and then tell me that lifting heavy weights is dangerous. Thanks a ton Doc, but if I wanted the Blues Clues version of fitness I'd still be watching Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe I could kick you an extra fifty bucks to suggest I eat more vegetables, and make sure I know that smoking is bad? Needless to say it didn't work. I had to refrain from squatting for months, and started to plan out a surgery for an issue that, turns out, didn't even exist. Luckily I made an appointment with Kim Limon at TFN.

If you don't know her, Kim is a former powerlifter who snapped her shit up really bad over and over, and was told that she could never lift again. She had all kinds of wild treatments done, and was pretty much considered a lost cause. She then proceeded to learn an absurd amount about the human body, and study something called NeuroKinetic Therapy (aka, "Kim Voodoo"). Long story short, she was able to lift again, after getting fixed up with these new-found techniques. Ever since then, she's been putting broken people back together, and successfully stressing herself out by signing up for ten million classes to improve her craft (great for clients, hectic for Kim). I can't really explain NKT, so I'll just tell it through the eyes of a visionary (me).

Kim plopped me down on a table, and started poking around my hips and moving my legs in all sorts of weird ways. She would have me apply pressure and try to resist hers, jab her thumbs deep into my hips (which hurt like hell by the way, because of how jacked-up they were), and had me try to balance in weird ways. I had no idea what was going on (and still don't, in general). By the end of the session, we repeated all of the movements that I couldn't do in the beginning; and it worked. I could squat without pain, and felt like all of the muscles were actually firing again. She sent me going with some homework, and taught me how to "de-compress" my hips (which was causing the chainsaw feeling during a squat), and strengthen the weak areas. A few weeks after that, I squatted 315 for the first time ever (a 75 lb personal record), and then squatted an easy 380 in competition after that. Pain free (no surgery required). PRO TIP: Squatting 380 is really not all that sweet, but considering I couldn't squat 135 without pain 6 months prior, I'll take it.

 
(Kim Limon)

I'm not one to advocate for anything "new age" or remotely "granola". I can't stand that shit, and I scoff at the thought of "all-natural anything". I don't care about GMO's, I hate Whole Foods, and I won't eat Chinese food unless it has tons of MSG. To this day I have no idea what Kim is doing for NKT, PDTR (her new thing), or XYZ. Whatever. All I know is that when my arms hurt from holding barbells, she smacked the muscles around, jabbed something sharp thing under my armpits, and taught me how to release my diaphragm (W.T.F). I don't know, and I don't care, because I'm a man of results, and it FIXED that problem too. Today she used PDTR on me, because I have this hobby of straining my lower back every few months, while trying something stupid in the gym. She poked around the muscles, whacked some reflexes with a hammer, and literally made it feel better instantly. Apparently it also re-wires the brain (or something), but I'm no physicist.

I could go on and on about the quality of TFN's coaches, and Kim's Voodoo Magic, but I'll hold off for now. Whether you're a yuppie looking to golf better, a broken person, or a soccer mom, TFN is the place to train. Don't waste time with commercial gyms (I can vouch, I used to train people at one), or silly group classes. Even if you're not looking to compete one day, keep in mind that anyone who can squat over five-hundred pounds, without being injured, probably knows how to move better than you. Alternatively, you could keep starving yourself on salads and running twenty-miles a day, and maybe burn enough calories to look like a gross marathon runner one day (do a Google image search of 'marathon runner vs sprinter' if you think I'm bluffing).

Foodsman, out.