One Month on the Farmer Strength Program

Plus an Olympic-level ab workout.

Welcome to HEAVIES, a spiritual and modern Substack about health and wellness written by Chris Gayomali, a journalist and former GQ editor.

Notes and housekeeping:

• I did a really fun interview about what’s in my fridge with Plant Based, Katie Stone’s wonderful Substack that doggedly covers the wellness industry. Topics covered included people whose taste I admire, what I think its overrated/underrated in the wellness space, and my chicken adobo recipe.

• The HEAVIES post about white rice > brown rice seems to have set more than a few groupchats ablaze! Sorry to all the titas. And thanks to The Morning News for picking it up.

• I love the social headline on this Business Insider story - “Gen Z Loves the Gym. That’s a Big Problem for Gyms.” Is the problem making too much money?

• If you’re looking for a challenging ab workout, might I suggest this 4 minute, 30 second gymnastics routine? Fair warning: At the gym, my friend and I only made it through the first two minutes before tapping out like weak babies. Brutal.

Anyway, at the top of this post is a photo my friend Scott sent along of former NHL star Bobby Hull, who would spend his offseason working on a farm. Dude is built like a fire hydrant. I thought the image appropriate for a little coda after one month of doing a kettlebell routine designed to mimic and build “farmer strength.”

My goal was to design a workout that was quick (~15 minutes) and easy enough to repeat five days a week—something that would get me feeling strong and capable of lifting a bale of hay with a pitchfork.

Here’s what I learned going through the program and what I’m going to tweak going forward. But first, the results pic: