Fitness Challenge 2

Last week, I referred to a fitness challenge to pursue while you watch TV.  This isn't an unrealistic expectation and you can gain some significant strength, at least without weights, while doing it.  So now, a new challenge has come to mind, this time focusing on flexibility.  I even have a hard time focusing on stretching, especially since it's not the most exciting thing in the world.

So, here it goes:

If you watch a 30-minute show, perform 5 minutes worth of stretching your upper body while you do it.  Focus on the front of your shoulders and the rear (place your arm behind your back, stand up tall; place your arm in front of your body and pull into your body).  Get your ears to touch your neck on both sides.  Do all of this 2x.

If you watch an hour show, start off on the floor...keeping your legs straight try to touch your head to your knees.  Then pull the soles of your feet in together and "force" your knees down to the floor.  Next, lay on your back and pull your knees back and try to get them towards the floor.  Do this for about 10-15 minutes.

It's simple, especially if you're watching something.  If you watch a sporting event such as a basketball game or a football game (it's March right now as of this initial writing, so football is likely out), do this for 10-15 minutes per half.

In the end, your body will thank you....and me for writing this post advising it.  Don't
' stop training and making yourself better. 

Take a rest!

So this week was a planned rest week.  This ended up being a wonderful thing because I got sick for the last day and a half, so lifting would've been next to impossible.  Rest is one of those things that is necessary for us but if you're anything like I am, you're too stubborn to take a day or so.

My original plan for the week was to lift Monday and then do some light-moderate cardio most of the week.  Even if I did say I hate doing cardio in my last post.  Honestly, cardio is something that I need to maintain weight or it all falls apart on me.

Next week I begin a new lifting plan.  It doesn't seem nearly as aggressive as the last one, which was extremely aggressive.  This also only has me lifting 3 days per week instead of 4.  Sometimes cutting it down really helps.  I think the problem was with the last one is by the time I got to the point to where I could max, I was burned out and unable to perform at optimal levels.

That's what makes this rest week wonderful.  Other than I was sick, it's something that helps for me and many others reset the system.  Likely if I were to go ahead and max on Monday or Tuesday of next week, I'd perform well.  I'm not planning to, however, just start a new thing with similar goals.

So, if you're feeling the burnout and need something new, don't hesitate to take a rest day or even a rest week.  It's hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around, but it is vital to your success or failure.

Why I hate cardio and love lifting weights

I freaking hate cardio.  It's not really the feeling after that I dislike, but mostly the process.  Now, there's some amount of cardio that I love, and it's boxing and Muay Thai, but most of your "conventional" cardio like running or cycling or swimming I find to be extremely boring.

Weights, on the other hand, don't lie to you.  Now I'm not talking about hitting up some biceps curls or some machines, I'm talking real weights like squats, deadlifts, overhead pressing, and bench press.  The weights are either "I can do" or "I can't do," when you make the attempt.

Cardio, in the conventional sense, is drawn out and honestly not very exciting.  I used to love running and honestly I have some great memories running with some very awesome people.  Sadly, I just don't enjoy that action anymore.  Swimming is something that I can do to survive, but not for fitness.  Honestly, I just like the ability to not drown.  Cycling hurts my butt, so enough said.

When you lift, it's short and sweet.  Yeah, it may suck something awful at the time, like sets of 10 squats, but nevertheless you can hit it and quit it.  In the end, you keep adding weight to the bar and see what you can do.  Honestly, being able to lift over 400lbs is much more satisfying than bein
g able to run a mile at all.

The best application of both cardio and strength is in combat.  Muay Thai and Boxing both highlight strength and cardio by being able to strike hard and often.  This is a thing that anyone at any age can go ahead and do and in addition to your normal fitness goals with it, it helps to reduce stress.

Obviously, I'm an advocate for the martial arts and combative
.  I believe that in addition to improving your fitness that it helps to improve your life in general.  Combine this with weights and I think you've hit a gold mine.  

Fitness Challenge 1

Something I'd like for my readers to try is a fitness challenge.  It's pretty simple actually, all it requires of you is to do it.  Depending on your level and experience with fitness, I'll have a couple of different challenges for you.

If you watch TV regularly, which is what this challenge is based upon, then each type of commercial will have a different exercise.  Depending on the type of show, you'll have a stretch associated with it to perform for at least 2 minutes.

Pharmaceutical Commercial = Bodyweight Squats or Chair Sit-to-stands
Car Commercial = Wall Push-up/Knee Pushup/Traditional Push-up
Fast Food Commercial = Plank or Situp
Any other commercial = Jumping Jacks or Marching in place


For the TV shows themselves:

Upper Back/Shoulder Stretch

Comedy = Shoulder Stretches
Drama = Anterior (Front) Hip Stretch
Action = Posterior (Back) Hip Stretch
Any Other = Neck Stretch

Push-Up (Traditional); Left side of picture is also a plank

Sit to Stand

Jumping Jacks

What are you made of?

What challenges you?  Do you ever really see what you can do either mentally or physically?  If you haven't, why haven't you?  If you have, what did you do with that knowledge?

For myself physically, it's the deadlift that I consider my challenge.  It's also a lift that I'm not terrible at.  It's widely considered the "king of the lifts" because of it's muscular activation and neural activation.  I enjoy the rawness to it, as it cannot be cheated.  My challenge with it is to constantly improve it without taking out any other aspect of my life.  Every time I attempt a max to it, my body is extremely fatigued for several days afterward, which I consider the worst part. 

Mentally I'm always looking for some type of challenge.  To engage this, I've decided to learn a new language (amongst several other things I'm doing).  The language I chose is Russian.  Unlike m
ore traditional languages such as Spanish or French, this uses an entirely different alphabet, which adds to the fun.  I've been on it for a little over 2 weeks now, using an app called Duolingo.  In truth, the goal for learning Russian will be to conduct business, with the MBA I'm working on, in the future.

I bring these both up because of the constant feedback that each provide.  The deadlift will tell me whether or not I'm able to do it, and it's simple.  The barbell either moves or it doesn't.  For the language, the app tells me when I spell a word incorrectly or identify a word incorrectly, which happens a lot.  But ultimately I feel that success will happen regardless if I keep it up.

What do you do to push yourself?  Most people fear this push rather than thrive on it.  They fear the failure, but forget that you learn from failure.  You don't learn from success, success only allows for goals to be set.

Identify what drives you, what challenges you, and what motivates you.  Decide on it now what you'll do about it and set forth on a quest to be successful.  You'll be all the better for it. 

Why exercise is only 20% of the equation and the time dedicated to it may be futile

As I've alluded to in previous posts, I tend to be on the slightly fluffier side of things.  To give you a full-fledged idea of how ineffective exercise can often be, I do 2 very intense kickboxing classes per week, 2 moderate intensity boxing classes, 4 low to moderate boxing classes, 4 lifting sessions training both the upper and lower body in its entirety, and I usually average 11,000 steps per day.  Those 11,000 steps are around an hour and a half of movement on top of everything else.  Therefore, if exercise was the solitary answer, I'd be super ripped by this point.

I've pointed out in my last post the quantity of exercise performed by the average person, which equates to about 3 hours per week.  Easily, I surpass that.  On the positive, I would consider myself much stronger than average, but also am still not necessarily the most lean person in the world.  Therefore, exercise isn't the only answer.

For novice exercisers, exercise may be up to 40% of the equation in terms of weight management.  That number dramatically reduces as your body adapts to the various forms of exercise.  However, for many people, they devote so much more time to exercise than in dietary preparation or just nutritional education in general.

Generally changing what you eat is hard.  Often healthy food consists of vegetables, which aren't the most popular things in the world.  However, the more veggies you eat, the leaner you tend to be.  This, combined with an increase in protein consumption, say around 1 gram per pound of body weight can significantly offset any fat mass that could be gained.

To maximize your exercise effectiveness, skip the cardio.  Hitting the weights can have a longer, more prolonged effect on managing your weights over traditional cardio.  This is not to say that if you like running or cycling or whatever to skip it, on the contrary, go ahead and keep it up.  However, overall the weights can have the larger impact on your metabolic rate and improve your health.

When you look at your health, think about how eating can have the more profound impact on your life.  Exercise is still important, only less so.

There are 168 hours in a week. You train for 3. Any results yet?

In a week there are 168 hours. You can account for approximately 56 hours of those 168 to be sleeping, unless you are like me and have small children.  This brings us down to 112 hours per week of time to be awake.  If you spend approximately 40 hours at work this brings us down to 72 other hours.  These 72 hours make up the time during the week dedicated to things that aren't sleeping or working (for those of you who do).

If you think about most people, and this can include yourself, likely 3 hours of any given week are spent dedicated to exercise.  Therefore if you expect results, you need to consider the percentage of a week dedicated to it.  Approximately 1.7% of a week, if you exercise, is dedicated to it.

You're probably surprised with the math listed above, but when you realize that you aren't going to get results that way, it all actually makes sense.  To add even more math to this, consider your meals.  Assuming you spend 30 minutes per meal, at 3 meals per day, you're eating for approximately 90 minutes per day.  This breaks down to approximately 10.5 hours per week of food consumption.  So now we're at 61.5 hours remaining, assuming we don't include the exercise to that number....yet.

Now consider meal preparation.  For breakfast and lunch, you may be at 30 minutes combined, depending on what you decide to do.  But for my examples, we'll go with it.  Dinner is usually substantially longer, and therefore we'll give it another 30 minutes by itself.  So now we have another 7 hours per week and this brings us down to 54.5 hours.

Next, we consider the average daily commute, which according to the US Census Bureau is 25 minutes.  This gives us another 50 minutes per day, but for only 5 days per week, so a little more than 6 hours per week.  Bringing us down to 48.5 (ish) hours.

We can get really particular and consider restroom times and whatnot, but I'd rather not get weird.  But assume we have several hours per week dedicated to that and we'll get down to 45 hours per week left.  In any case, we are seriously dwindling down our original time from the 168 to the now 45 ish hours.  From this point it's entirely individual.

You see my point do you?  We don't spend a lot of time dedicated to exercise, which would bring us down to 42 hours if you consider the average person's 3 hours per week.  The rest could be divided up between cleaning house, watching TV, and other recreational activities.  Unless you're fortunate enough to have a job that requires a high level of physical activity, it's unlikely you'll ever perform a truly adequate amount of exercise.