Can you be a Trekkie and a Jedi? Well thanks to J.J. Abrahams we can be! I love both and I think it is cool he has worked with both franchises. But this post is not about me finally seeing the film, what I thought about it, or accidentally triggering any spoilers. It is however about being a Jedi in real life!

A little background to begin. When George Lucas originally set out to make the first Trilogy, he originally wanted to make a Flash Gordon film, but couldn’t get the rights. So he made his own. Now it is very clear and no secret that he borrowed a lot of his ideas for the saber dueling, the Jedi and Sith, from Japanese culture. Specifically the Samurai, Aikido, and the modern sport Kendo. Now unless you live under a rock you will be aware that in the films our heroes and villain share a power that is called “The Force.” With training it not only allows them to be exceptional fighters, but they also can do really cool telekinesis tricks from crazy choke holds to reaching for dropped or lost lightsabers to lifting a spaceship out of a swamp. What I want to discuss here is the concept of the force, or to bring it back to Earth, and not in a galaxy far, far away, the notion of Ki/Chi.

It is a real thing! Now it can be explained via physics and relaxation. But speaking from experience, as when Ben Kenoki tells Luke he has taken his first step into a much larger world, it still feels pretty cool! There is a level of awe that comes from learning how to apply the principals of Ki into your activities. And like with a lot of journeys, despite what the true limitations gravity and the laws of physics might impose, you will have this feeling that you will only be limited by your training and skill development.

My first real introduction to Ki, aside from martial arts movies and of course Star Wars was a few years back when I took a 10 week T’ai Chi course. It was in taking the class where my instructor who weighed all of 140 lbs was able to toss me around like a rag doll and when it came to being my turn to try and push or throw him…  I couldn’t budge him. So needless to say I was impress as such this led to more studying and ultimately reading Ki in Daily life by Koichi Tohei.

So what is it? Well to put it simply it is a meditation practice/exercise/technique where you focus on your center of gravity, also known as your one point. It is a little different for everyone, but it is roughly located a couple inches below your belly button and 3-4 inches inside. It is from here you learn to relax and generate movement from. There is also the idea of “extending Ki” from your one point outward through your body and beyond.

Of course it is not the scope of this short blog to rehash his entire book, but I will say in using this technique it helps build a tremendous mind body connection. As it pertains to sports performance I have found this approach remarkable in consistently achieving the ever so elusive “Zone” as what many athletes and coaches call it.  Again Ben Kenobi pretty much sums up the whole philosophy of Zen and Ki and of course the force when he tells Luke to let go of his conscious thoughts and trust his feelings and act on instinct. One point Ki meditation/training has worked for me in helping that happen. Another way of stating it would as Maverick does in Tom Gun when he tells Charlie, “If you think. You’re dead!”  At any rate, I have found it remarkably helpful in my athletic endeavours, as well as other pursuits, and strongly recommend the book Ki in Daily Life. You can also google/youtube it to learn a great deal more about the inspiration for George Lucas’s Jedi.

Yes really!  Only once a week, now you can’t be a couch potato. But if you really want to see some great gains in strength, reduce over-training and dramatically reduce your risk to injury as a result. If you also want to increase your chances of really sticking to a strength training regime. This is remarkably effective. Is it the only way. No of course not, but for the majority of the population, if we could shift the paradigm, many would really benefit.

I have noticed an interesting thing since I’ve opened up shop down here in Puerto Rico and have been advertising “Change your life, once a week.” Friends of my clients are asking, and they will ask my clients. Is it really only once a week? They’ll say yeah! I only go and see him once a week. I’m the strongest I’ve been in years!  If ever! Experiencing this approach helps with creating that shift in attitude, but despite my clients success, I also do not have people lined out the door clamming to get in and train with me. I sense that they just can’t wrap their brain around it.

Ironically, or sadly, there are many who may have never picked up a weight, or done intense exercise, but thanks to the Industrial Fitness complex and its permeation throughout the culture, still have been brainwashed to believe that you just can’t get the results you want without training multiple times a week. The result is that there are so many who just are not willing to even experiment and give this approach an honest shot.

Now I’m also not surprised by this. Arthur Jones experienced this battle his entire career, so did Mike Mentzer. Even Dorian Yates, despite all of his success, still seems to work with a lot of trainers, coaches, and other various athletes, who just struggle to believe that one hard, intense working set is all that is required to really trigger the stimulation we are looking for to build more strength and muscle.

What is often forgotten in this debate is that the lads I mentioned above, didn’t just make this up. It came from years of experience and discovery. When I was certifying in I.A.R.T. We read Arthur Jone’s notes and published work on nautilus training and his biography. What was great to read was over the years, he gradually reduced the frequency of his client’s training and often surprised himself that despite the reduced volume, and frequency, his clients would see even better gains/improvements.

In fact pretty much all of the trainers and athletes you meet who are advocates of this approach came upon this largely because they had experienced some setbacks or plateaus and started doing this because they literally had tried everything else. They also, if they were anything like me really struggled to dial down the frequency of their strength training. I have written before how it took a while before I finally settled on once a week, and being okay with occasionally having to miss a week.

I’ll conclude with a couple great stories I read in the book titled “The Sport Gene” by David Epstein. In it he recounts the story of Danish shot putter Joachim Olsen. In it one of his coaches, So Jasper Anderson, after testing Olsen’s fast twitch to slow twitch fiber ratio, had discovered in fact that he had a much higher ratio of fast twitch fibers than many others he was competing with and against. Now some brief science.  Your fast twitch fibers are powerful! They are the fibers that can grow in size when stimulated and take much longer than your slow twitch fibers to recover/heal. They are chiefly there for your fight or flight response and are therefore used sparingly by your body. As in even in an “all-out” power effort they are the last to fire. So what did they do?  Coach Anderson, reduced Olen’s frequency and volume of weight training. Dramatically! Instead infrequently having him lift really heavy weight. The result?  Joachim Olsen’s muscles ballooned and he won bronze at Athens in 2004.  He had a stellar career, becoming something of a celebrity in Denmark, so much so that they elected him to the Danish Parliament in 2011. Now strength training, using weights, is designed primarily to force you to work your fast twitch fibers. Regardless of those ratios in your own body and genetic limits, the reality is that it requires more time for them to recover. These fibers simply cannot tolerate as much training as the other fiber types. This means that athletes who have higher ratios of fast twitch fiber, simply can’t tolerate as much training as other athletes. This has been pointed out as an issue for the Danish soccer team as well. In soccer, speed kills, but where are Denmark’s speedsters? Amazingly most end up washing out early in their careers from injury. “The guys with a lot of fast-twitch fibers that can contract their muscles very fast have much more risk of a hamstring injury, for instance, than the guys who cannot do the same type of explosive contraction but who never get injured.” – (The Sport Gene)

With these new insights into fiber type and genetics, Denmark’s soccer federation is slowly coming around, but the changes are slow. It is the old school training paradigms and the “doing as much as possible” philosophy which is very difficult to override. But there are more intelligent ways of training and these ideas are slowly filtering into the mainstream as more and more experience the resulting success of using these approaches.

“If you didn’t need a pill to get fat, why would you need one to get unfat?”  – anonymous

So I am in my motel room in Orlando this past weekend and happen to be flipping through the tele.  We don’t have a television at home, so I’ll admit it was, for a couple of hours, kind of nice to just flip and be reminded how little there is of “good” television. Anyways, while I was flipping I came across an infomercial for a product called Lyposene. It is not the first diet pill to be sold, and it won’t be the last.

It promises/guarantees that you will lose weight without having to change any other aspect of your lifestyle.  In other words, if you’re lazy and don’t do squat, never mind doing squats, this will still work. Now that is a pretty bold claim! That being said, I bet you it does work and I am going to tell you why I think so.  I looked at the ingredients. Turns out its active ingredient is glucomannan, more commonly known as the Japanese root Konjac.  Apparently it is used in Japan as an herb to help lose and maintain weight, etc. for generations and that it is one of the most studied weight loss agents. So what is Konjac root?  Well its fiber. When mixed with water it becomes a more gel like substance filling your stomach more making you feel fuller. Therefore ultimately leading you to eat less and consume fewer calories resulting in weight loss. Okay sounds good!  Sign me up!  OR I could eat more leafy greens and other vegetables, like celery.  Get all the nutrients I need. Get more than enough fiber. Therefore eating less crap because I feel full and satisfied because I am getting the fiber I need and all the nutrients I need for superhuman metabolic efficiency. Now if that doesn’t do it for you, I suppose you could try their 30 day money back guarantee.

“Cheers to another new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

– Oprah Winfrey

It is December, and we are all gearing up for the holiday season.  Soon we will blink and it will be the New Year, and many of us will be making our New Year’s Resolutions. This is what I would like to address in this post. On January first, we will say that we want to lose the extra holiday weight and get stronger, and therefore, decide to join the local gym. That’s good, and I am excited for you to make this happen. However, too many of us start out with good intentions, but very quickly stop going to the gym. We fall off well before we form the habit of working out regularly. So, I would like to offer a way to make it happen this year, and for you to stick with it for the long haul—for the rest of your life—and make a resolution that you will be able to keep as a habit from now on.

Firstly, almost 80% of people who sign up the first and second week of January will, by the second week of February, no longer be going to that gym. This is mainly why the majority of gyms enforce yearly contracts, and do not offer refunds. They know that no matter how great their facility might be, there is only a 1 in 5 chance you will actually use it the entire year.

Why does this happen? Why do people start out so strong, but a month later are no longer going to the gym? After seeing this for so many years as both a member in various gyms and P.E. teacher, and later as a trainer myself, I have repeatedly seen a major mistake that people make. It is called overtraining. What I mean is that you came to the gym, inspired, motivated, and excited about improving yourself this New Year, so you hit that gym pretty hard, three, four, or even five times a week. The first week, you are pretty sore. It was a shock to the system, but you are going to stick it out. You go the next week, you fight the good fight, still really sore, not seeing any improvements in anything and you just feel tired. Week three, you don’t feel so good, you feel like that holiday cold is coming on, and it takes all of your willpower to get to the gym. By week four, you don’t even make it to the gym; the kids had some recitals, you got sick, and work picked up again at the office. Then it is week five, and despite your ambition in week one, you did not go this week either, and it is not looking good for the next week, is it?

By overtraining, you wore yourself out. It was too much, too soon, and your body and subconscious can’t handle it and thus, sabotage your efforts. Here is what I suggest. Because it has likely been a while since you last exercised, start slow. Commit to only 1 time a week—but commit to that time every week. Schedule everything else in your life around that one session per week. Now you can’t say, “I’ll go tomorrow.”  No, you go today. Life will throw enough curve balls and emergencies that this will not always be possible, so you do not need to schedule business meetings when it is your day to hit the weights.  That’s it! This is the only thing I want you to start making a habit of. Each week do 5 to 8 exercises that will work your full body. Do it in 20-30 minutes, then leave it alone until the following week. But when the next week comes, add 5 lbs. or try and do a couple of extra repetitions. By recording the results of your workouts, you will immediately start seeing improvements. This reward mechanism will offer positive reinforcement and encouragement to keep it up each week.

When it comes to losing weight in the New Year, don’t do anything else the first two months until you are feeling really good about your once-a-week intense training session.  After a couple of months, then you can start removing the added and unnecessary sugar in your diet, and increase your intake of vegetables. But wait on this, and progress with it naturally, and at an easy pace. Too many of us try and make these changes all at once, and get really frustrated when it all falls apart on us. Too much, too soon, is too much for the body to handle at one time, so we will take small—but solid—steps. As Lao Tzu said, “A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.” Start training once a week, avoid overtraining, and this will be your first step—which is the most powerful step in your journey this year—to building the best you.

“Mars and my stupidity keep trying to kill me.” – Mark Watney, The Martian

Wow!  What a book.  It’s like Cast away, 2001 A Space Odyssey, and McGyver all had a kid together.  I’m not writing this as a promotional piece, (although I do recommend it, it’s great!) But to get us thinking about food. In both Castaway and The Martian, survival is the name of the game. Food is of limited supply, neither one had an abundance of it, as a result being overweight was a non-issue, in fact they both had quite the opposite problem. Being too lean and on the brink of starvation was the real issue.  So I guess ultimately if I was to have a point it would be to watch the films and think about that aspect of them. Now I would suggest eating real food over vitamins and Martian freeze dried potatoes, so I would suggest thinking more like Tom Hank’s character in Castaway. Now he was not on the brink of starvation, but his diet was nothing but whole foods with no added sugar. His diet was coconut, crabs, fish, leafy greens growing on the island. It was a true “Paleo-diet.” Nowhere was there any high-fructose corn syrup, refined sugar, refined flour, none of it! Just good, solid, island eating and island living. Try being in this state of mind the next time you are at the grocery store. It might help.

“I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.”                         – Erma Bombeck

That is what I call what I did last week. I had some great meals last week and I enjoyed every single bite! So yesterday I did an intermittent fast and only ate two large bowls of salad and had some great red curry soup. Plus coffee, I did have a few cups of coffee. But that was it. Today will be much the same and so will the rest of the week. Salads and soups. I might have a couple eggs along the way, but after the amount of roast beef sandwiches, turkey, and ham, well let’s just say there was no shortage of “protein” last week.  This week will be lots of broccoli.

Since google makes it so easy to follow up on the nitty gritty details of the science behind this concept, I’m simply going lay out the basic premise and finish with “The research does support this.”

So why is an occasional couple days of indulgence, or in my case, a week not such a bad thing. Well if you are dieting and have reduced your calorie intake, your metabolism will slow down.  Remember our bodies do work like thermostats, so it does love balance and the maintaining of the status quo.  When increasing your calories, you will briefly speed it up again, thereby being able to ‘trick’ your body a little when you return to the reduced, but nutrient dense, calorie intake.

Another aspect of overeating is that you do create a surge/spike in insulin production, as well as our other anabolic hormones. Insulin is an anabolic hormone and the one that we have the most control over due to diet and exercise. So I’ll add it must be respected and not abused. When strategically over eating we still need some discipline in our food choices so that it helps build muscle tissue rather than belly fat.

My ultimate point here with this post is to lessen the guilt if you enjoyed your holiday last week. In fact if you have been working hard and eating well the last few months, you earned some R & R and pumpkin pie. But Thanksgiving is over now, so for the next 2-3 weeks I would suggest being back in the saddle with your routine, then you can enjoy Christmas. Also now you are aware that when done in moderation. Overeating can provide tremendous benefit to the body and not the harm that repeated, daily overeating has.

 

 

Happy Turkey Day!  (In the U.S.)

“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.”    –  Erma Bombeck

A couple of weeks back I shared some wicked recipes for what was a little late for the Canadian Thanksgiving, but perfect timing as the U.S. gears up for the busiest travel holiday of the year. This has proved to be both awesome and bad for me and my lady. I must admit, thanks to some delicious pumpkin pie, both at home and at Denny’s, and my famous homemade pumpkin spiced lattes… we may have put on a couple of unnecessary pounds, which –truth be told—will probably continue next week. Many of you may have noticed, or will be aware now that I’m mentioning it, that you seem to be instinctively drawn to these delicious and calorie-rich foods and, despite knowing better, seem to be putting on a couple of pounds.

I’m here to tell you: it’s honestly okay!  Enjoy the holiday season! Don’t feel guilty if you sneak that extra serving of stuffing, or turkey, or (in my case) pumpkin pie. You will cause yourself more pain fighting against what are our natural rhythms. You see, we are programmed to “bulk up” a little this time of year because of winter. Even living in the tropics for a year can’t undo 34 years of living in northern climates, or another 6000 years of evolutionary adaption to North European climates. But I will tell you that here is where most of us get into trouble: As we get through winter, in the old days, food would become less available and would need to be better rationed. Plus, it did get pretty cold, so a few extra pounds came in handy to get us through to spring. Unfortunately, what happens to us in modern times is that food is always abundant. We have tremendous technology, in both clothing and heating systems, that we stay pretty warm, so we never end up losing that little bit of holiday weight. So, how do we solve this? Well, again, one thing we can do is be realistic. Enjoy your Thanksgiving! But bear in mind: there is a difference between indulging and binging. You do not have to behave as if you will never have stuffing in your life again. But we can also exercise a little more willpower in the New Year when our system has been designed to absorb it and utilize it. For as much as there is a weekly and monthly cycle, there are yearly cycles, and the more we are aware of this, the more we can work with these cycles and rhythms. Then the happier, and healthier, we will be! To my U.S. family and friends: have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving! For everyone else… You, too!

 

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”
– Franz Kafka

The DTOP is Puerto Rico’s version of the DMV or Ministry of Transportation.  Basically, it’s the place you go to get your driver’s license. Yep; if you want to experience the place where outrageous bureaucracy and a lack of logic exists, this is the place to go. Firstly, here you have to stand in line and pay for a stamp. Then you have to go over to a doctor’s office and have them fill out a medical form, which you also have to pay for separately. Well, let us just say it’s a sham; they do not check your eyes, or your blood pressure, or your heart rate, or any vital sign that might be important if you are going to operate a 2,000-lbs. weapon.  Nope. He asked me how tall I was, how much I weighed, and signed off that I had all four of my limbs. I paid him $20.00 for this useless form. Then I had to go back in and wait another 2 hours before my number came up. When I got to the desk, I showed them all of the required documents (again), which was also amusing and redundant and maybe even illegal. Why does the place that gives me permission to drive a vehicle, need my social security card? I don’t need to be employed to drive a car, do I? And the original at that? Why do they need my passport, and my Green Card, and an electric bill? All I need is a card/permit that grants me permission to drive legally. Why is it as if I am joining CISS? Or the CIA? Then at the end of the day, it turns out that Puerto Rico, as being only a U.S. territory, is not allowed to accept foreign licenses…  So I, at this point, had wasted 3 hours, and $31.00 only to be denied. (I also need to point out the stamp and doctor’s cert. were separate expenses/taxes.  I still would have had to pay for my new license.) But why didn’t the lady at Information, who is supposed to check off that we have all of the correct documents, not say something, then? Needless to say, I was furious! I did get my money back for the stupid stamp and doctor cert., but it is obnoxious how horribly inefficient Puerto Rico’s government is!  But we’re not alone. We all have our horror stories; we all can’t stand, no matter where we live, how bloody awful it can be having to deal with government offices and services. No one is ever happy about it and yet, the problem persists. So why are your workouts like that?

“You can look at any sprinter and all you see are big bulging muscles in the legs, but the real secret is the power generation in the hips. Usain Bolt ran on vary fast legs as a Youth and Junior athlete, but the big difference now is the power from the hips.  Plus great technique.”

– Jimson Lee, “Glen Mills on Usain Bolt and Good Sprinting Technique”

Better stated, the power comes from the glutes! This is a short piece about athletic performance and literally getting your butt in gear. Sprinting is critical to success in a very large number of athletic endeavors. Athletes are always looking for that new thing that will help give them get an edge, but we, as a result, often end up over looking something as simple as using the largest and strongest/most powerful muscles in the body (I know pound for pound the tongue is the strongest, but running your mouth is not quite what I mean here).

Some of you might already be doing this and if that is the case, great! But I have a feeling that most are not and are therefore struggling, despite their athleticism, to find that next gear. Again, this is one of those stories where I was obviously late to the party and only wish I knew this (I mean really knew this) when I was younger. This one change made a huge difference in my athletic performance.

But the secret is not in doing any crazy drills; I mean, obviously, sprinting is highly technical and drills help build strength in the right places. The secret is in being able to engage your glutes and really feel them being used, and this will change how running fast feels!

Charlie Francis was quoted as saying, “You run on the ground, you sprint over it.” In this, he was describing what is known as the “sprint position.” The basics are simple enough:  Coaches all have their various coaching cues, such as running tall, shoulders down and relaxed, strong arm drives, high knees, etc. But many lack the strength to get into and hold this position, and many more, I don’t think, can really imagine what it’s supposed to feel like.  Once you feel your hips (I really mean your glutes doing all the work), a lot of the above will begin to take care of itself.  After the initial breakthrough occurs, refining will be what it takes to really perfect it.

The reason why I feel pretty confident in believing that most athletes are not engaging and using their glutes as much as they could be was based on my experience teaching middle school P.E. in Maryland. I had had the breakthrough myself after coming off of a pretty long layoff from a knee injury (rugby related) and was immediately enjoying a great deal more success on the pitch. So when it came to doing track and field with my kids, I decided to show them my discovery and see if it could help them. Instead of doing the usual boring A and B skips, etc., I skipped all of that and had the kids, instead, do some light accelerations to safely warm up before we tried my experiment and really take off.

This also gave me the chance to watch them and develop a baseline–especially the fast kids–to see if maybe they weren’t already doing so. As I watched them running and then building up to their fastest, I just wasn’t convinced that any of them were really employing the power of their gluteus maximus muscles.

It was at this point that I started asking questions about how running their fastest felt, where they felt it the most, and most felt it in their quads and calves. It was here that I had them do some basic A marches but encouraged them to try and feel their glutes pulling the leg down rather than thinking about ‘pushing’ the leg down with their quads. I even would have the kids push their raised leg down into my hands have them tell me which muscles they felt doing the work. Again, most felt the stress in their quads, just as if going up stairs. So I had them shift focus and really pull the leg down into my hands using their glutes. Most picked up this little tweak pretty quickly, and I could immediately feel them pushing into my hands with a lot more force. Once we had figured out how to feel our glutes being involved, a really cool thing started to happen:  As they sprinted across the field, there was an almost night-and-day difference. They all looked like little Usain Bolts trucking across the field. You could see them having more power in each stride, bouncing down the field. This part was another coaching point:  I had them visualize and imagine their feet and ankles were giant springs. I could see stronger plantar flexion as they ‘toed off’ and their strides were bigger. They couldn’t necessarily move their limbs any faster, but the power they were generating by using their glutes was propelling them that much further with each stride, which was something I knew from finally figuring it out myself. Visually, their technique just looked that much better polished, and… dare I say it? world class. It was pretty cool, and the kids really could feel the difference. Now they were feeling (until they got tired) like they were flying.

The other by-product of feeling the power coming from your glutes is that you will feel taller and higher off the ground. You can’t have your hips too high off the ground; you want your hips as high off the ground as possible. Once you start experiencing this sprint position, as efficient as it is, initially, fatigue will come quick. Therefore, you will have to reboot your training to build the right strength and endurance to hold that new feeling for all-out sprints.

There is a tremendous amount of material out there, obviously, but if you are an athlete who is looking to gain a little more speed, I strongly suggest Charlie Francis’s book, The Charlie Francis Training System, and watching a great video produced by Coach Bud Winters. They will offer other insights into technique and movement that will be very helpful. I can guarantee that what they teach will be profoundly more helpful if you already have your butt in gear!

 

http://www.budwinter.com/videos/

http://www.charliefrancis.com/

 

 

“The poor man must walk to get meat for his stomach, the rich man to get a stomach to his meat.”
  –  Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanac

So, the most recent study that has been published and made all the social media rounds states that processed red meat is, in fact, a cancer-causing carcinogen. Yes, processed meat is. But if you’ve been up on the science and following this small blog, you would not be surprised by this. On the contrary; you could tell all of your friends why the conclusions that the scientist have drawn are real and legitimate.

Why? Well, processed red meat is generally corn-fed and has added hormones and antibiotics, which wreak havoc on the cows’ or pigs’ systems, and by default, will do the same to us. It is an inflammatory food. This creates inflammation in our bodies. Research has linked this to all kinds of age-related chronic diseases including many cancers.

Do you need to completely avoid red meat? Of course not; in the same way the occasional cigar is not going to get you, neither will this. However, on the other side of this study and internet chatter, is of course, grass-fed, non-processed red meat. It is a great deal healthier for you. Now, can too much of a good thing become a bad thing? Sure, but now we are getting into slippery slopes and philosophical debates.  So I will avoid all of that by saying the following: If you make your diet plant-based, and treat yourself to a good steak once in a while, nothing but good can come of that. If all you eat is processed, corn-fed red meat… Well, let’s just say your colon will not love you!