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.    

Put the "Dope" in Dopamine. Knock out Parkinson's Disease!

There's a lot of research related to Parkinson's Disease.  The outward signs of this disease begin as a tremor in one or more parts of the body and can extend into another section or part of the body.  While many who look into exercise and fitness look at the musculature and composition, we must remember that the nervous system and the diseases that may affect it are just as important to work on.

One thing about lifting weights is that there is a nervous system component to it.  Most people only focus primarily on the muscle but we forget that the body functions as a system, a sum of its' parts.  Looking at the body in its entirety is a much more effective way than looking at it in parts.  Where the nervous system comes into play is really everywhere.

Without your nervous system, you can't do pretty much everything.  From talking to smelling to picking up heavy objects, your nervous system is involved with everything.  Parkinson's disease is essentially a disruption of your nervous system, primarily dopamine which is a neurotransmitter. With this disrupted, things that you could or were able to do start to fail.
neurotransmitter takes the signal and travels across the nerve's junction(s).

Parkinson's disease is incurable, once you have it you have it.  The goal, especially the sooner you can find out, is to slow the effects of the disease.  Inevitably it will win.  Using boxing, ironically the sport of which Muhammed Ali performed (who recently passed from Parkinson's Disease) we, as therapists and exercise professionals, are helping to turn the tide on the disease.

About 200,000 new diagnoses of Parkinson's Disease are diagnosed each year.  Therefore there are millions of people living with this really slow, brutal disease.  Now an unconventional method of exercise, boxing, is being used to help fight the disease.  Boxing empowers a person.  It allows for an individual to feel strong and in control, even when often they don't have it.  Over time, we can see an increase in functional ability and confidence, which can go hand in hand.

My classes have several components to it.  We have more or less the "mindless" conditioning components, predominantly using heavy bags where an individual either focuses on strength or endurance.  We have the more focused, heavier mental output, of the double-ended bag and speed bags.  And finally, we have the interactive components with include punch mitts, agility ladders, cones, and strength work.

I bring this up because it is something that has now made me who I am.  I love having the opportunity to work with every one of these individuals and hopefully change their lives.  For further information, you can check it out yourself here. 

That looks hard, so I can't do it. Will you help me?

Something that I often see are people watching someone else perform an activity.  In a gym, it's a pretty common thing to see.  Very often these people don't attempt to try it due to fear of its difficulty or perspective difficulty.  And very, very often, they don't ask for help.

If your background isn't in exercise and you go into the gym and mainly focus on machines, then you aren't an expert.  So what is it about asking for help, in a gym, that many people struggle with?  If your car breaks, you don't just drive around for awhile until it completely fails, do you?  If you don't know how to wire an electrical socket in your house without lighting it on fire, do you do it anyway?

Now, I know these are examples of more "acute" things, like your car breaking or needing to wire your house, but nonetheless, they are still good examples of needing to ask a professional in that field.  So why do you, if this applies to you, assume that when you walk into a gym or any fitness related activity that you know what you're doing.

Looking at people who exercise regularly, I'd say only about 10% of them truly know what they are doing, especially if they are not employed in the field.  Even then, many of the ones that do know what they are doing don't go it alone.  Sometimes they have a friend or hire a coach to help them.  Very often, this is for motivation or accountability, but still, they do it.  Even amongst professionals, many train with someone.  I train with another at the facility that I'm primarily employed with, most of the time at least.  Honestly, without it I probably wouldn't push as hard or want to push as hard.

In fitness, it seems that there is a stigma with asking for help.  There's nothing wrong with asking for help be it with a specific exercise, program design, nutrition question, or anything really.  Asking for help allows for you to expand your knowledge and sometimes you can make a friend or two in the process. It's not a sign of weakness or stupidity, as I've alluded to before, you ask for help when you don't know how to do something.  And unlike your car or house which often have step by step instructions for you to follow, which are generally reliable, your body is an adaptive machine which can do amazing things.  Very often you don't see or know what those amazing things are.

Asking for help can sometimes be the smartest decision that you make.  Sometimes it's just the validation that you need, other times it's the entire process that you're looking for.  But if you don't ask, you won't know.

Which muscle does this work?

A question that routinely is asked is "which muscle does this work?"  The question that I have is "what value do you receive knowing the answer?"  What purpose for you, as the exerciser, does knowing which muscle is the one being used?

Part of my undergraduate and graduate studies consisted of anatomy, physiology, and biomechanics.  Each of these allow for me to understand which muscles are being used, which energy systems are dominant, agonist/antagonist movement, and a variety of other fairly important items when it comes to understanding how the body responds to exercise.  So for me to answer that question to myself or better yet, why am I working this muscle, is much more relevant than what muscle is it.

The specific muscle being worked isn't hugely important unless your bodybuilding or in therapy.  For many, it's the bio-energetic system(s), the energy systems the body uses, which is usually more relevant.  The amount of muscle recruited to perform a task is also generally more relevant to me than which muscle I'm working.

Now, don't get me wrong, if I tell you that you're working your "lats" while performing a pull-up I'm not lying, they're being used.  But, what does this tell you?  It honestly doesn't fully help me unless I'm trying to hypertrophy (grow) or recruit (contract) the lats.  And even still, lats isn't really the name, it's shortened for lattissimus dorsi.  It is however, one of the primary movers in a pull-up.  It helps to stabilize the spine and the upper body in general. Generally speaking, it's involved in all large compound movements such as dead-lifts, squats, and bench press.

So knowing which muscle being worked, has it helped you with this knowledge?  Or is it important to ask "why am I working this muscle?"  Think of questions like that as opposed to which muscle, which really doesn't serve a practical matter.  

A curve-ball to the face

Life can send you into many directions, some of which you prepare for and some that you cannot.  In my previous post, I talked about how life will ultimately kill you in the end.  Here I want to talk about how you need to adapt to life and what happens within it.

My life is generally fairly simple.  It's wake up around 5-6 a.m. most days, go to work and train anywhere between 5 & 10 people (excluding any classes), come home around 5-6 (depending on the day), eat dinner, get the kids ready for bed and to sleep, prepare for the following day, and hopefully spend a little time with my wife.  Most days follow that schedule pretty well without any variation in it.

Trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle when you've got that much going on isn't an easy thing to accomplish.  Yet daily my wife and I generally do that.  She tries to go for a walk with her friends each day around lunch, and if you have ever been to the western North Carolina mountains, you know those walks aren't easy.  I try to lift each day or at least most of them, and I also am pretty active in my boxing & kickboxing classes that I teach.

As you can see, it's pretty busy in general.  Sometimes the difficulty lies in what we eat or not eat.  What I alluded to in my previous post regarding the one individual who gave me a little crap about what I was eating has no idea what I do in my life on a daily basis.  What I know about him is that he's single, no kids, doesn't really have to pour himself emotionally and physically into the people he works with, and lastly can likely spend the time to prepare his meals weekly without having to deal with the chaos of life.

Many live the life that is much more similar to mine than his.  When you're dealing with kids the only consistency is that there is no consistency.  For the record, my oldest is 4 years old, just so you get an idea of the chaos that we deal with.  Planning meals is relatively easy for when I'm at work, it's the home ones that become challenging because of when we get off work or any number of other things.  There have been days where I've been off work first, made dinner, the kids and I ate, and my wife was home a couple-several hours late.  The curve-ball to the face.

If your life is this hectic, you're not alone.  The first step is to identify what you want most, exercising or eating better, you can have both but if you're not used to it it's better to pick one and start there.  With some coaching you can receive a profound difference in your life, but if you try to go it alone you will struggle because it's not like you have enough on your plate.

Welcome to life in all of it's glory.  Just keep up with it and you'll be fine.  

You know that will probably kill you?

Do you know what the leading cause of death in the world is?  It's life.  Life will ultimately kill you in the end. Our ultimate goal with "healthy eating" or "exercise" is to prolong the inevitable death that we will all face.

Not to be morbid, but it got your attention right?  At work the other day, I had a...well let's call it an encounter rather than a conversation, with someone who is probably more than knowledgeable about healthy foods and exercise.  He is another employee from our parent organization, however, we don't have the same "chain of command" and we don't have the same purpose, I'll leave it as that so I don't even accidentally let loose who or what he does.  

In any case, I was just finishing up a fairly intense workout when I went into the break room for something quick to eat prior to my going to the university for a class that I teach.  He walks in and sees that I'm pulling out food.  He came into microwave a sweet potato and I am at this point eating oatmeal for lunch. That day I packed the oatmeal, some peppers & carrots, a Greek yogurt, peanut butter, and some summer sausage that I've had since Christmas (just opened it though).  He gives me a little shit about the summer sausage having sodium nitrates, which is true, but honestly I didn't care.  

In truth, if I weren't active for the majority of my day I'd probably care about sodium nitrates.  They might kill me in the end, but they might not.  The reality is that I have probably a hundred other things ranging from accidents to genetics that will take me in the end and I really didn't care if there were sodium nitrates in my lunch.  He may have been benign and just telling me or somewhat of a douche and telling me.  Not sure, didn't feel like asking nor did I really take anything he said into great value.  

What I'm driving at here is that ultimately life will kill you, so enjoy it while you have it.  I maintain a healthy lifestyle overall, with 2-3 boxing classes per day of which I'm moving around and coaching and taking hits.  I lift 4-5 days per week, depending on which plan I'm working on.  I eat vegetables and generally lean proteins nearly every meal, though in truth I probably don't eat enough (yes, I said that; more on that concept later).  

My main concern is keeping my stress level low.  I feel like I do that, most of the time.  You can eat the cleanest diet on the planet but if you're stressed no amount of clean eating or exercise can fix that.  Anyway, I would like for you to think about the face that in the end, life will kill you, so you might as well live. 

The thrill of the fight!

As I pointed out in my previous post with a boxing class for people living with strokes, I have been running a boxing class for people living with Parkinson's Disease for the last year.  We've modeled the program loosely off of a national non-profit program, but we've kept it in line for our needs and our facility.

I have about 16-20 people spread out in 2 sections of our Parkinson's Boxing Class per week. I'm almost to the point to where I have to add another section to fill our demand.  We spend most of the time boxing, rather than other type of work such as medicine balls or anything like that.  However, we do include agility & mobility and a recent addition has been basic strength training.

Even within the boxing itself, we focus on various elements of fitness such as strength, endurance, reaction time, coordination, and cardiorespiratory endurance.  Some of what we have set up is fairly "mindless," but some of what we do requires a tremendous amount of mental awareness and thought.  These areas more than offset our "mindless" options which serve mostly as conditioning (to include all of those elements I discussed before).

I love having the opportunity to get to know each of my boxers.  They truly are wonderful people with wonderful stories.  Many of them have shown a resurgence in life and have taken their lives back over from the disease.  It's this triumph that has been inspiring above all.  I'm happy to serve them all in any capacity that I'm able to.

If you or someone you love is dealing with Parkinson's Disease or any neurological disorder, please don't hesitate to get them assistance.  It may be scary at first, but it'll allow for you to take back your life or theirs.  Remember "Courage is being scared but saddling up anyway."  -John Wayne

A punch stroke

One of the things that I love about working with neurological conditions is the puzzle factor.  Each person has a uniqueness that is not as evident in healthy people.  Each person poses a unique challenge that must be overcome to be effective as a trainer.  This challenge is thrilling and satisfying in ways that are unmatched.

On 2/28 I began leading a boxing class for individuals who have been affected by strokes.  Each participant has been hand-selected to help for us to "pilot" this program and is excited for us to get it off of the ground.  The purpose behind the boxing class is for us to hone in on strength, endurance, cardiorespiratory endurance, weight transfer, balance, and with any luck, neuroplasticity.

Much of what we are trying to accomplish is to take the "medical" perception out of therapy.  Our program is supervised by a Physical Therapist specializing in neurological conditions, of which I refer to her as the "strategy."  I'm next in line and the lead on the "tactical" front, of which once we're in the room and engaged in the program, what I say goes.  From there we have several physical therapy interns and other trainers to assist in safety.

I'm excited about the program and it is our intention to spawn other programs.  We have been running a Parkinson's Disease boxing program for the last year with a high degree of success and participation.  In the same capacity, I'm the lead once in the room and the class beginning.  We have our own "proprietary" program which allows for us to be different when related to other programs that are in existence.

I'm excited for what the future holds in terms of helping these people heal.  In all honesty, I never would've imagined that this is what my life had in store for me and for that I'm appreciative.