The Perfect Workout Part III now you can stand…

Now I know it seems like a skipped a few steps but I have reason for this. Yet before we go on I want to make sure you understand the importance of spending time on the first two parts of the workout. Furthermore I want you to understand that if it takes you a whole year to master the rolls keep working on them, because unless you can roll over, perform a cobra, sit up, and kneel, you’re not going to be able to walk properly, and anything like Running, skipping, squatting, doing pushups, etc… are going to end up being more risky, because the foundation for all movement is laying face up (supine), turning over to face down (prone), and everything in between.

Now I also want you to understand… YOU WILL NEVER BE PERFECT at rolling just proficient!! Furthermore just because you still haven’t mastered the rolling, cobras, and crawls doesn’t mean that you can’t try something more challenging like sitting up, kneeling, and standing. It merely means you should spend more time on the ground than on your feet! There is something called the 80/20 rule when it comes to good eating habits, and I think you should also apply it to your workout. 80% of your reps should be spent on all those primary movement skills you aren’t good at, and 20% of your reps for the day should be on trying something challenging.

So for example my workout on Friday is a dynamic Turkish Get Up (TGU) Day. Now I can do a TGU with the beast (a 107lbs kettlebell), but I am far from graceful, in fact I am quite ugly at it. Yet even better the reason I am not graceful at the TGU with the beast isn’t because I am not strong enough- almost all failure of lifts have nothing to do with the weight, but with the technique. In other words I have to spend at least 80% of my time working my form. It looks something like this: 3 sets of 3-5 reps of each transition in the Get Up- (there are 7-8 transitions)- and then I do 3 sets of 5 presses on each stationary position of the Get up. And Then I get a heavier bell (Not a maximum weight) and try 5 sets of 1 rep on the get up in a smooth graceful way.

Now on Mon I have a heavy TGU day where I try to do a TGU with a much weight as I can handle. And I do that 5 times.That’s 215 reps spent on working the form and 5 reps trying to bust out some real get ups. 215 reps where I think and analyze each position and try to find a strong position with good posture, and 5 reps of TGU with a weight that I can just barely get through the Turkish Get Up with. Now I know that’s not 80/20, it’s more like 97.5/2.5, but you get the picture. If you’re not exactly a good roller, but you can squat well and you plan on doing a total of 200 reps for the week (this is a total of every exercise you do), then 160 reps should be devoted to working your rolling, and only 40 should be devoted to all the other exercises. Therefore modify the workout accordingly.

Ok, now before you go and try something you’re not ready for, here are some other guidelines before you should move on:

1. If there is pain STOP!!!! You shouldn’t have pain during any of this workout. You may continue working on what’s not painful, but if there is pain you need to GET HELP, YOU CAN CALL ME BY CLICKING ON THE “CALL ME” LINK BELOW, AND I WILL HELP YOU MASTER SAFETY!
2. If you are Shaky, or instable, spend only about 1min a workout session doing that difficulty level. SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME MASTERING THE POSITION IN A STABLE WAY- I give you options that enable you support during the workout so USE THEM, and every now and then try without the stability- provided you can maintain good posture.
3. You cannot move on if you have bad posture during your movement in part 1 and 2. In essence if you can’t maintain a neutral spine while you are in the top of a pushup, (from part 2), you’re not merely at risk for falling when you stand (in part 3) but you have fallen. Every joint is affected by gravity, just like you are, yet no one except us professionals think about that. In other words if a joint is not supported by your body’s movement systems that joint is either defying the law of gravity (by floating- WHICH IT CAN’T DO!) or it has fallen out of position- meaning that you can have a joint that’s fallen even though you are still standing. You know this if you can’t hold every joint in it’s neutral posture, through it’s entire range of motion. Yes this sometimes means you need another pair of eyes to tell you something is buckling or looks out of grace- (remember good movement is pretty movement)! ONCE AGAIN IF YOU NEED HELP CALL ME!
4. Once liability and bad posture are removed while supine, prone, and rolling- then you need to be able to move in those positions with a sort of grace before moving on. Now this doesn’t mean you have to be as graceful as a dancer, but each exercise from part 1 and part 2 performed alone should not cause you to get out of breathe. In fact let’s even go further- you should be able to flow 3 times through without altering your breathing patterns. If you can’t flow through without maintaining composure than these are still hard for you, and you need to stick to part 1 and 2 until control of your breathing gets better. Once again I call it composure for a reason- hyperventilation (or heavy breathing) is a response to stress, and if you are an adequate mover than doing a couple of movements you can do well shouldn’t cause you stress unless you’re doing them a whole bunch of times!

Moving right along, let’s assume you’re ready for part 3 of this workout plan. Part 3 is about sitting, and getting to a kneeling position, and then pulling yourself to a standing position. It will be helpful if you start practicing your fitness and movement skills next to a fixed pole that you can reach to pull yourself from a kneeling position to a standing position. Furthermore, this is where things start to get real position specific, because you’re just focusing on balance and increasing depth of your range of motions for the squat. In essence there’s a lot of positions mentioned below, and it seems real complex, but in reality every one are just forms of squats.

Now this is just a note to you:

I want to mention that children normally stand long before they can perform a good squat or frog. This step is akin to a pull up. In essence they pull them selves up from a single or double knee position, and then they attempt to balance themselves. However all kneeling positions build squat specific strength, and because most of you can squat you will- at the end of a workout- be using a squat to test yourself.

Again, you can already stand, and you can already walk, and most of you can squat- at least a little bit- so using the squat as a test is kind of a telling movement; so after each workout you should be better at a squat than when you started. How do you know?

So you’ll start and finish each workout with 3 squats- instead of merely starting off laying on you’re back- and the squats at the end of the workout should feel deeper, better, (maybe) quicker, (maybe) more stable, and more graceful.

Ok with that said this is the workout:

1. Squat 3 times to test.
2. do the flow from workout 1 and 2 for 5 minutes as a warm up.
3. Then begin part 3:
1. lay supine and roll up to a sitting position on the left side keeping both legs in contact with the ground. (straight or bent legs do not matter). Use your hand on the same side you rolling on, to help push you to a sit. Refer to any video of a Turkish Get Up on youtube.com to help you understand what using your hand means.
2. Master your posture!!! You shouldn’t be sitting in bad posture. If you must support your self with your hands on the ground and practice good posture with support, and then remove your hands and try to keep the posture. If you can’t… KEEP TRYING!. As you sit wiggle at the hips, pull and pry your spine up toward the ceiling, think long spine!!!
3. Do step 1 and 2 for 3 sets of 5 reps on each side.
4. Once you master posture, and the roll up begin moving your arms and legs to challenge your posture. Try arm circles from a seated position while keeping your spine long. Also try bring one foot to your groin with your leg strength (no hands) and try to open up the hip and lay your knee on the ground (imagine sitting cross legged with one leg and the other one straight out). Once one leg is mastered do it with two at the same time so that you end up in a budda stretch with perfect posture.
5. Once you master this, and can do it with both legs at the same time… then you can move on to steps 6 and 7
6. lay down
7. roll to prone and flow with part 2 workout till you’re on hands and knees (quadraped).
8. Once there pull one foot forward and put it next to the corresponding hand- BOTH LEGS SHOULD BE EXTERNALLY ROTATED!!! In essence this position is not like kneeling in a lunge; it should resemble a squat or a frog except only 1 foot is flat on the ground. Do 3 sets of 5 reps on each side trying to increase the grace with which you do this maneuver. Once you can transition from quadraped to a 1/2 frog without dragging your foot or without instability move on to step 9.
9. NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE HARD PART!!! lift your hands, and Sit on the kneeling leg while maintaining balance. GO SLOW DON’T CAUSE YOURSELF A KNEE INJURY FROM RUSHING, AND PUSHING PAST YOUR MOBILITY… YOU HAVE NOT DONE THIS POSITION FOR YEARS!!!!
10. Once you have balance and the range of motion to sit on your kneeling heal begin to reach toward the fixed pole in front of you, and pull yourself to a standing position. Then lower yourself back down to 1/2 frog and flow back to quadraped. Do this for 3 sets of 5 reps. Once this is easy and graceful move on to step 11.
11. Once standing in a supported fashion lift 1 foot so that you’re in a single leg stance, and try not to fall over!!!!
12. Do this whole routine on both sides for 20 minutes. REMEMBER TALL OR LONG POSTURE, AND CONTROLED BREATHING!!! Once you can flow from steps 1 through 11 with grace and ease, then don’t do sets of each posture, try to wrap sets around the entire flow. In other words do 5 reps of one posture, and then transition into the next gracefully for 5 reps there, and then go to the next, and the next until you have done 5 reps everywhere. Then rest, and repeat 5 reps everywhere 3 times. Once you can do this without much trouble (it should be hard, but not overwhelming), then move on.
13. return to the ground:
1. Once standing lower yourself through an unsupported 2 legged squat. You should bottom out at the depth you can achieve in the 1/2 frog. In essence if you get in a 1/2 frog and look at your front leg, and the back of your thigh is touching your calf, then when you squat that’s as low as you should go. If it’s more then don’t do it!!!! Your squat and 1/2 frog should be the same depth! Keep working you’ll get it.
2. put both hands between your knees (or feet)- KEEP YOUR HEALS ON THE GROUND 3-5 TIMES. (Hey look your squatting, and you’re probably deeper and better than in the beginning).
3. slide one leg back to 1/2 frog.
4. Bring it back to the squat position 3-5 times for 3 sets.
5. pull yourself back to standing , and lower yourself in an unsupported squat.
6. put your hands to the ground and your slide other leg back to 1/2 frog.
7. Then slide the front leg back and you should be on hands and knees again (quadraped).
8. Continue flow from quadraped from part 1 and 2 till workout time runs out.
14. Test squat again and visualize yourself while you where in that single knee stance. You should be better at it than in the beginning.

Now I know this looks complicated, but in fact it’s very easy, and if you’re really trying to have good posture and reach full range of motion through your knees, hips and spine then you will be a better mover because of it. And remember part 1 and part 2 of this workout is much more of a strength and muscle builder style workout, and you’re going to be continuing to do those workouts while trying the new positions and flows in part 3. In essence it’s plenty challenging, and certainly going to build muscle for you in addition to adding to your conditioning level- which will do all those wonderful things you want, like help you lose weight and rev your metabolism. (REMEMBER IF ALL YOUR MUSCLES AREN’T DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE DOING, YOU AREN’T GOING TO BE BURNING CALORIES LIKE YOU WOULD IF THEY WERE DOING WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSE TO BE DOING!)

Get to know your ranges of motion at the knee and hip. If you can’t kneel and sit on your foot, then how do you expect to be able to achieve a full squat? If you can’t support yourself in a single knee stance how can you expect to stand on 1 foot? WORK THE POSITIONS AND THE RANGE OF MOTION!!!

And let’s be honest, this workout is more risky then the previous, and it might be time to seek professional help. If your help tells you kneeling is bad for you knee… it might, and PROBABLY IS THE CASE THAT HE/SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT HE/SHE IS TALKING ABOUT!!!! Get someone to help you that believes movement can be accomplished, and that limiting movement is not good for you!!! Remember a pile of organized bones does NOTHING! A blob of muscles attached to those bones is mere DEAD WEIGHT!!! Put all those things together in a network with a learning computer system with an energy source that’s connected, and NOW YOU HAVE SOMETHING THAT CAN DO WORK!!!! Muscles move joints, but the Central Nervous System controls it all.

Remember that a dead man’s knee joint that was piled full of arthritis can be moved through a full range of motion with the right applied torque from an outside source. And that in a live person that source is the CNS!!! In other words a joint is not bad until the CNS stops wanting to move it, and most of the time you can re-teach the CNS to establish motion in any joint without pain. However the way you teach the CNS to establish motion in a compromised joint needs to be something which doesn’t compromise other joints, or lead to poor compensation. In essence GET HELP IF YOU NEED IT!!! CALL ME!

The Perfect Workout Part II: Yahhhh! You’ve made it to your stomach.

So last month you spent entirely on your back, and now you can finally do all types of rolls:

1. Supine to prone upper quadrant soft roll

2. Prone to supine upper quadrant soft roll

3. Supine to prone lower quadrant soft roll

4. Prone to supine lower quadrant soft roll

5. Supine to prone superman hard roll

6. Prone to spine superman hard roll.

You’re on your stomach, what can you do now???

There are once again dozens of exercises you can do from the prone position, the first two namely are a cobra, and a superman. It’s kind of fitness suicide as a trainer to program only two exercises for a client, because supposedly a person will get bored with that. However, since this is not a program for you to workout with, but a movement practice with the end goal of fitness in mind, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. In essence it’s your job the next month to continue to practice all the movements you were practicing last month on your back (or supine), then roll over to your stomach (prone), and begin to add cobra’s and superman’s.

Now if you were thinking, “awwwww man this is going to be boring… it’s practically the same workout as last month,” you’re in for a real AH HA moment. Once again there are literally dozens of types of supermen and versions that you can and should do once you are on your stomach:

1. Superman jumping jacks

2. Superman jumping jacks just arms

3. Superman jumping jacks just legs

4. Swim kicks

5. Opposite arm opposite leg

6. Supermen

7. Superman just upper body lift

8. Superman just lower body lift

9. Crocodile breathing

10. Superman military presses

11. Superman frog legs

12. 90 degree arm lifts

13. Straight arm flies

Ohhhh wait I named 13 not a dozen, (hehehehe- evil laugh).

Now here’s a list of all the cobra’s you should be doing:

1. Hands wide cobra

2. Hands close cobra

3. Hands uneven cobra

4. Cobra with play at the top (swaying from side to side)

5. Cobra static holds- just breathing deep at the top for 5 breaths

6. Dynamic Cobra (repetitions)

7. Cobra to quadraped-

8. Cobra to quadraped to child’s pose

9. Cobra to quadraped to child’s pose to push up position

10. Cobra to quadraped to child’s pose to pushup position to downward dog.

11. Cobra to quadraped to child’s pose to pushup position to downward dog to upward dog

12. All of # 11 with lowering yourself with a pushup back to the ground.

13. All of # 10 with bear crawls at the end.

The flows are really endless here, and just like a child goes from prone to his/her hands and knees and then begins to crawl you can do the same.

Furthermore just like a developing baby, you are going to work on connecting with the ground through your hands, and spinal extension. If you have an 6- 8 month old around look at their play while they’re on their stomach.

They try a cobra, then they realize they can’t make it all the way up, or hold the top position for any length of time, so instead of giving up and dropping to the floor they try to lift their hands to use their back muscles instead of their arms (i.e. they try to do a superman from a cobra position). Then once they can’t hold it any more they go back to the ground, and then they pound the ground with their hands and feet.

Listen to the way they breathe. At first when it’s a new position their breathing is shallow and fast, and then they try to normalize that. In fact the largest obstacle I have with my clients that are under 12 is that they don’t want to challenge themselves to the point of having difficulty breathing- (part of this is that it’s a natural reaction to want to be comfortable, and stressful breathing is an indicator of a bad situation, thus when a child is young enough and not accustomed to harder work they try to stay away from the challenge of difficult exercise, rather than realizing that they should seek it out and make breathing easier through self control). In other words try a cobra- which ought to be fairly easy for much of the range of motion, but eventually you’ll get to a point where it’s hard, and at that point try to hold it, connect with the ground through your hands while also trying to superman with your back, and then use some self control to regulate your breathing. If it gets hard lower yourself to the ground through a superman, and then go through the 13 exercise superman sequence. Apply the same type of Posterior Chain tension (or the feeling you’re getting on the back of you) to the cobra, and try it again. Once you master pushing yourself up with your hips on the ground try to shift around moving your weight from hand to hand, and then try to lift your hands and hold the top of the cobra with just your superman muscles.

When ever you feel ready to add another part to the cobra go ahead, and try it until you’re doing a whole flow from cobra, to quadraped (hands and knees), to child’s pose, to pushup position, to downward dog, to bear crawls, to upward dog, and then through a push up lower yourself to the ground.

Take your time and keep at it, furthermore lay down whenever you need to and then do it again.

The workout should look like this time wise:

· 10-15 minutes practicing last month’s supine moves and rolls

· 30-45 minutes practicing cobra and superman’s, and trying to progress through connecting one movement to the next till

This should take you anywhere from a month to two months, and once you can move through that flow 20 times straight, you’re ready to move on to the next step in our perfect workout program! Keep Moving, and NEVER GET TIRED AGAIN!

The Perfect Workout Part I!!!

TO RECEIVE THE FULL WORKOUT COMPLETELY PLANNED OUT FOR YOU…FOR FREE!!!! EMAIL ME AT SUCCESSCOACH38@HOTMAIL.COM, OR CALL ME AT 626-722-8156

 

So the last few months as you know I’ve been rehabbing my neck injury. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you know I didn’t spend any time in physical therapy doing external rotation for rotator cuff work, or light weight shrugs for blood flow to my traps, neck stretches, or even forearm flexion and extension for my dead arm- which today just bent pressed 32kg. In fact if you were following my rehab at all it went something like this, breathing drills, body weight exercise (i.e. pushups, back bridges, and downward dog) and the Turkish Get up, then once I could do those properly I added in jurks, swings, snatches, military presses, and squats. Now I’m starting to add in some heavy benching, and of course progressing the weight on everything else. In other words what I did when I reset wasn’t isolating muscle groups, but going back even further; I went back to just breathing and mobilizing my body from the ground up. Now my question to you is when was the last time you spent a month on your back perfecting your breathing, reaching and transitioning?

That’s right only on your back! You probably think there’s almost no work you can do laying on the ground, but there are tons. Just look at all your basic exercises leg raises, hamstring stretches, hip flexor stretches, neck rotations, neck flexions, bicycles, dead bugs, hip flexion, supine budda stretches, bridges, floor presses, one arm floor presses, pullovers, skull crushers, supine French press, and of course the list goes on because there are certainly more exercises, and even more combinations of all these exercises. In fact if you’re looking to take some stress off your neck, and to get back your ab tone it’s time for you to get off your feet, and to spend an hour or more of transitioning from one exercise to the next while on your back. Why does it do this??

Ok so let’s look at the way stabilizers really work. Your rotator cuff doesn’t really do external rotation, or internal rotation your lats and peck minor do. In essence the major movers move you, but your stabilizers like your rotator cuff stabilize you. Your abs are a stabilizer the majority of the time, thus getting on your back and working on bracing and breathing behind your brace is going to work your abs back into shape- NOT CRUNCHES!!!

After a month or so of just being on your back working on tight and smooth transitions and deep breathing begin pretzel like rolling to your sides- again focusing on tight and smooth transitions, and deep breathing. Grey Cook calls this roll a supine to prone lower quadrant roll if you want to look it up. However if you need an example of how to do it watch any 6 month old. That’s their main exercise diet- lying on their back moving their arms and legs, and then using their lower body to roll over all the while maintaining their breathing. They also sit up, but like I said before, “when was the last time you spent a month on the ground…” so don’t sit up yet! Take your time and notice how what a 6 month old does rather easily takes almost every ounce of your mental effort to control and perfect. Furthermore you’re going to want to roll all the way over to prone once you get to your side… I don’t recommend it. Stay with the program and work on stopping your momentum in every position from your back to your side; you’ll get to your stomach soon.

Now once again while on your sides there are tons of exercises you can do. Hip abductions, hip circles, claims, side raises, side planks, quad stretches, I.T. band stretches, rib cage rolling/prying, presses, and side push ups. This is not to mention all the neck movements you can do, or the combinations. All this rolling and side lying will once again remove all that unnecessary neck tension, and hip flexor tension you’ve developed from sitting, and standing. Furthermore you’ll begin to learn mobility and the transfer of energy through your core to your appendages like you’re suppose to.

Even better is that after 2 months on your back, and transitioning to your side through that lower quadrant roll you can start to do harder rolls. Just try this as a test before and after 2 months of the above mentioned work: lay on your back, lift your arms above your head and your legs straight out, then lift both your arms and legs off the floor, and proceed to roll in a controlled way from your back to your stomach, and back without momentum. Once if you’ve practiced your lower quadrant rolling as well as all the strengthening exercises mentioned above on your back and side, and if you’ve mastered your breath then this roll (at least to prone) should come easily, and you can finally start doing some ground work on your stomach.

TO RECEIVE THE FULL WORKOUT COMPLETELY PLANNED OUT FOR YOU…FOR FREE!!!! EMAIL ME AT SUCCESSCOACH38@HOTMAIL.COM, OR CALL ME AT 626-722-8156, LEAVE YOUR NAME, AND CONTACT INFORMATION, AND I’LL SEND IT TO YOU BY MAIL OR ATTACHED TO AN EMAIL.

GET YOUR MOBILITY BACK, AND ENHANCE YOUR FITNESS NOW!!

hahahahahha!!!!!

I got my beast yesterday. And so I will be planning a new workout around it. BTW- the beast is a 106 lbs. kettlebell, hahahahahahhahh!!!!!

I experiemented with it today, and it looks like I'll be doing a lot of swings- I did 100 reps today to mess around ... I'm going to be sore tomorrow- farmer's carry, and rack walks. I'll probably do the VO2 max only once a week.... Who know's I'll tell you guys more when I get started. We'll call it the Beast End of the Year.

I'm backkkkk.....

Alright guys and gals,
I haven't written in awhile, but I haven't had anything new to report with my training for a couple weeks. Furthermore, I find it hard to train and tell everyone about it. Most everyone I've ever trained has wanted some sort of aesthetic quality- which is why they entered into the gym. And this is despite any injury they might have; they want to display the results of their training to everyone... they have a public approach to their fitness (this is not to say that they want everyone looking at them all the time), yet I train for different reasons.
I train to practice being fit. Fitness has 5 parts- as I've mentioned in many of my other articles. These parts are: 1. Range of Motion, 2. cardiovascular endurance, 3. muscular strength, 4. muscular endurance, and 5. body composition. In my mind only one of these 5 is public, the rest is private, thus fitness practice for me is a very private matter. Just ask my wife, I was practicing my Get Up's this weekend and nearly snapped at her for interrupting my concentration on breathing during the kneeling grooving exercises I was doing. (Sorry Veronica... and yes I know I'm bad my wife should be able to talk to me).
So the last few weeks I've keep the same block periodization model. I do two weeks of ballistics: double bell snatches, and double bell jurks, and then I do two weeks of double bell presses, and front squats. On my ballistic weeks I do the VO2 max 2 x per week and Turks, handstands, and pull ups are on the menu as well. On my grind weeks my variety days are filled with mobility work, and some other body weight training; ironically on my grind weeks I don't do much extra variety work- the presses and front squats are enough if you know what I mean.
If you've been keeping up with my training posts you know that since my injury I haven't been up to par. Well I'm writing today to let you know I'M BACK!!! Today I grabbed the 24kg with my right and my bottom up press was spot on. Furthermore on Monday my heavy day consisted of 5 sets of 1-5 reps of ladders with 4 bells! My left hand got a 20kg and a 16 kg to hold, and my right hand the 24kg and a 12kg. Today on my moderate day I did 20kg and 8kg in my left hand, and 24kg and 8kg in my right. This is what I was doing back before I pulled up lame in BJJ 3 months ago. Now it's time to stay with it and make it authentic movement. I probably won't go up in weight for a few weeks, but I'll KIT this time even though it's my personal preference to stay quite and just train.

AND ONCE AGAIN VERONICA I'M SORRY!!!

Sunday… Jump Rope

So last week first week went well. A few little bumps in the road, but all in all I felt strong on the grinds as long as I stayed fresh, thus I took quite a bit of time off between sets. I was certainly happy to lift on my light days, because I really felt strong doing my ladders to 3 reps. I still feel good when I go to 5 reps, but I struggle on that last rung.

I noticed something while training this week however; it was that my right leg although strong while in a single leg stance isn’t wedging to connect power through my core to my right arm on my presses. So today I got outside to work the top part of my Turkish get up. Nothing like kneeling and standing with a multi segmental rotation to really get my linking from ground to hand practiced. I need even more transitional work before the two weeks are up, and I’ll probably have to continue this type of movement practice through the two weeks that follow the grind weeks- even though they’re ballistic.

Furthermore I’ve started jumping rope so that I might get a little bit more jarring through my C7 in a rhythmic undulating pattern. I of course do this on grass and barefoot to really connect myself to the relaxed bounding nature of the movement. I haven’t jumped rope since an old high school basketball coach told me to do so- he said it would be the thing that made me the whole package in baseball. I remember back before I started I was a 5 sec sprint to 1st base, and 1 year later I was a 4.1 to first base. I have neglected it wrongly for too many years, and since being told by Dr. Sahara that I was an anaerobic beast, I’ve thought about what aerobic event I could do to balance my training character.

If you know me well, I hate running. Not because I don’t like to run, but because I would rather lift weights, lol. I like yoga, but it still runs me anaerobic for some reason. So up until now I’ve really just been baffled about what to add- and I’M NOT GOING TO BE DISGRACED BY SPENDING TIME ON A MINDLESS CARDIO MACHINE, HAHA. So finally today I looked into an old baseball bag of mine; I was merely moving it to another place in the garage. And I found it… my old jump rope. I knew then and there what my new activity to get me more aerobic was going to be.

Today was a 30min variety day and I love jumping rope.

Aug 9th first day of grinds

Alright guys and gals, after 2 weeks of double kb ballistic complex ladders(… man that’s a lot to say) I’m 100% back to where I was before the neck injury in those lifts. The next two weeks is grind block complexes, and because I’m not doing a whole lot of “wind” work (aka Cardio/ Vo2 Max Workout), I will add in a couple more serious variety days. Hopefully I will be fully back to my rite of passage by the 2 weeks end.

The rite of passage is 5 sets of military presses, in a 1-5 rep ladder with one 24 kg bell. I only need to get 1 more rung in my ladder- the last one of 5 reps. In essence I can do 1-2-3-4- but not 5 strict reps with my 24 kg. Before my injury I could do a 10 rung ladder (1-10 reps), but since the neck my strength endurance has been lacking. My 1 rep max has not suffered so much. So I believe it’s just a matter of work.

So the week should look like this:

Mon: kb grind complex/ turk day

- turk Get up work! 5 min

-double bell front squat (DBFSQ)

-double bell military press (DBMP)

Tues:

Variety day- push ups, back bends, pistols

Wed REST/RECOVERY!

Thurs:

Repeat Mon light

Friday: Rest Recovery

Sat: Repeat Mon light weight plus add hanging leg raises, rolling, and handstand holds to play with Christian and Eden my son and daughter.

So Heavy Monday looked like this:

Get up 5 reps each side with some grooving work (whatever needed to be unlocked. 16 kg for 3 reps and 24 kg for 2 reps.

DBMP- 1 rep- DBFSQ 1 rep,

rest repeat for 2 reps, rest and repeat for 3 reps, rest and repeat for 4 reps. The weight I used was a 24kg, and two stacked 12 kgs.

I did 5 sets of this ladder complex! With as much rest and recovery in between as I wanted to feel strong the next rung, and the next set. Usually I take about 2 minutes timed rest. Tomorrow I look forward to a day of Variety

Monday’s workout on Sunday….

I knew I wouldn’t have time Mon to workout, so I took my shirt off and got some sun in the back yard with my little girl watching on Sun. I made a video of it and wanted to post it here, but it’s 26min long so they wouldn’t let me (and I only recorded the working sets, not the warm up). All in all my total workout took about 2 hours. And my little Eden sat through the whole thing- my boy Christian doesn’t sit through anything, lol.

Here is what I did:

Swings 24 kg 20 reps each min partner swings with my wife. So basically I did 20 and then she did 20. See kettlebells can be a weird Masochistic date, lol. I think we both did about 100 reps, and then she cut out to make dinner, lol. She’s like a gremlin if she eats too late she turns into a monster, lol.

Then I did about 10 sets of 10 swings and 5 jerks of various forms. I used the 24kg for a few sets, and then the 24 and the 8 kg stacked for a few sets, and once my form wasn’t what I wanted I went back to the 24kg. I think I did 10 sets, could have been more; who knows I feel my training more than get to a destination in my practice.

BTW This is what I recorded but can’t show you. And I want you to know that Eden was not bored she jumped around after every set ended- (maybe she thought I was done and could pick her up and swing her… I internalized it as she likes kettlebells, lol. Do you think maybe she’ll do swings with me in a couple years???)

Alright the second workout of my ballistic block...

It's thurs, and I've managed to lay off for two days. but today I reversed Monday's workout.

Mobility in the beginning.
5x5 cleans and jurks
Vo2 Max, all 24kg
and then at the end I did another round of jurks this time one handed for ladders 1-5 with the 24kg, and repeated it twice.

I would say that by now my neck is about 95% better, but we'll see when I begin my grind block in 1 week.

Tues....

20 min Mobility:
AIS hams
straight leg ham contract relax
AIS ham calf
10 min of work
soft roll 3 reps
ipsilateral bird dog 3 reps
10 min of work

Monday... Finally Snatches and Swings, and more

Alright, after 3 weeks devoted to body weight training, it's time for some conditioning- which of course means high volume ballistics- if you thought I was going to spend an hour on the treadmill, you don't know me very well.

Joint Mobility,
AIS hamstrings
foam roll t-spine
Bretzle
hard rolls
breathing drills
bird dog
5 sets- it took me about 30 min to get through everything

Workout:
100 swings 3 min
Vo2 max 15"on/15"rest- for 20 min with the 16kg for the first 5 min. 25" of the 24 kg.

Support work:
KB jurks 5 sets of 5 reps.

As you can see I'm doing block training. 2 weeks grinds, 2 weeks ballistics. In 2 weeks I will go back to grinds, but this time turks will make an appearence.

Sat.... Workout???

Don't worry I worked out Sat, it's just I didn't do swings or snatches. See each weekend I get in the backyard and normally do some weird stuff (i.e. push cars), so my son Christian gets interested. So on Fri when I got home from work I lost a bet with Christian, and had to play hide and seek, and tag for 4 hours, so I didn't have time to put in the training time with the swings and snatches. So on Sat. I had to find something I could do while hidding from Christian, lol.

In my opinion even though you should be seeking ideal movement in your grind movements, you should do so even more in your ballistics; in fast powerful movements your body is going to want to work efficiently so you must make sure the stablizers do their job- otherwise only primary movers will do the work. Furthermore because of the extra momentum which is added because of the nature of a ballistic you must be particularly in tune with your motor groove. Thus you need a little bit more attention to detail when you swing or snatch (or for that matter clean and jurk). So instead this on Sat I worked my Military Press, and hanging leg raise. 5 sets of 5 reps. Be back Monday.

Thurs Workout

5 sets of 25 down dog
20 sets of 5 pushups
5 sets of 5 flat bridges

No time to workout on Fri, but will snatch and swing on Sat. !

Monday workout

It's getting to be routine:

Mobility:
AIS ham
supine breathing drills, and rib mobilization
Sun A flow 5 sets

Specific Warm up
flat leg raises 20 reps

Hanging leg raises
5 sets of 5 reps

Pushups
5 sets 5 reps

Pistols
5 sets ladder 1- 5

Played with Pull up 10 reps total

Friday Workout Swings and snatches

Mobility
Sun A 5 sets

Cycle 5 sets of 20 reps
wall downward dog
incline downward dog
flat downward dog

Workout
VO 2 15/15 cadence, but I cycled the weight between 16kg and 24 kg. 20min total time. Switching weight after each hand took a turn at one size bell

Swing complex 20 min
10 swings
5 single hand swings
rest of min rest begin again at whole minute mark

Thurs trying to repeat Mon....

Hey hey, I'm getting better I was able to repeat all of Monday, nice!

Monday workout

Once agian after the break I'm feeling great.

Mobility:
Sun A Yoga flow,

Warm up:
lying leg raised 3 by 50
incline push ups 3 by 20

Workout

Hanging leg raises 5 by 8
Push ups 10 by 3
Pistols 3 by 1-8 ladder

Thurs trying to repeat Mon....

It didn't happend.

3 sets of 1 tof 3 ladder full push ups DAMN i'M WEAK!

20 minutes of swings 20 swings each minute.

3 sets of 1 to 3 ladder pistols


AND i'M OUT! REST OF WEEK AND WEEKEND OFF

Monday workout

Yeah again I'm writting out of my training log.

Mobility:
Sun A Yoga flow, mixed in with Cook push up rolling, and hard rolls till warmed up

Cycle through 5 sets 25
door downward dog
incline downward dog
flat downward dog

Hanging leg raises 5 sets 5 reps

Push ups knees 5 sets 25 reps

KB preacher curls complext set with goblet squats 5 sets 5 reps

pistols 5 sets of ladders 1 to 8

Sunday Workout...

Took my TRX home today- (yes I'm writting about two weeks after the fact but I'm copying right out of my training journal. Alright I'll put it in past tense!) Worked to 50 flat TRX Rows- 1 warm up set of 20. 4 sets of 25 reps of flat bridges and bilateral straight leg raises, and then upside down squats. Neck feels great.

Thurs Workout...

Alright, so after a day off on Wed- I normally do a Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri schedule- this is my Thurs workout. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's workout because I'll really focus on getting stable on the pull up bar, and working back toward my handstands against the wall. My scap stability is suprisingly better just after one hard focused Tues workout. If you can't lift yourself you how can you really be strong?

Warm up:
straight leg raise (slr) work, Hamstring AIS stretching, single leg hip bridge, and quadraped (bird dog).

Specific warm up:
incline push ups 2 sets of 50 reps
kneeling push ups 2 sets 25 reps
close leg squats 2 sets of 50 reps
empty leg supported pistols 2 sets of 20 reps

Working sets:
1/2 push up 5 sets of 4 reps
Pistols 5 sets of 7 reps
hip bridge 3 sets of 20 (weight supported on hands)

Play:
incline back bend 2 reps
leg assisted pull up 2 sets of 10
eccentric pull up 1 rep
turk get up 1 rep with 24kg

day 1: tues

I know it's odd to start on a Tues but I hate procrastinating, so normally whenever I get the inclination to start doing something I jump in, and I don't wait for Monday to come. So my tues day workout looked like this:

FMS self test

t-spine, Hamstring, and ankle mobilization


Circuit 1:
- incline push up 25reps
- legs together squat 25reps
-hanging bent knee raises 10reps
went through this 5 sets

Cuircuit 2:
-1/2 push up 10reps
- inverted row 10reps
-pistol 10reps
went through this 10 times

End with play- this is basically challenge work to see if I can stabilize my scapula at movements that use to be easy:
- pull ups just the way down
- push ups from the floor just the way up
probably did a total of 20 of each of these but 1rep at a time

Support work curcuit 3:
down up dog 5 reps
stiff leg deadlift 5 reps
5 sets of this curcuit.

Health vs. Fitness???

After an almost 3 hour visit with my alternative medicine doctor Darrick Sahara, DC, AK, I’ve been questioning myself, and my purpose as a fitness professional. I’ve been wondering what exactly my purpose in the health care field is? I mean sure people who are more fit tend to get sick and ill less often than their unfit counterparts, but if Dr. Sahara can actually do what he claims to do, which is basically hit the reset button on your system, and totally make you strong again- what’s my purpose, and certainly what is the purpose of multiple sessions with me or someone like me? I mean isn’t that what exercise over time is suppose to do; be a sort of reset button for your movement so that you can adapt and get strong, endurant, flexible, better posture, or whatever… ?

Now, before you go on reading I’m not depressed, and there’s a reason why I’m putting these questions to myself and out in the open for you to read about. But to understand that you need just a little background on what has happened the last few weeks.

First, I’m injured again! If you know anything about my background, then you know I’ve been injured multiple times in my athletic career; the most significant being: my elbow reconstruction, Quadricep tear, and fractured shins- three injuries that ended my baseball career. The injury I have to deal with now is a disc herniation in my cervical spine, and the multiple other bulges shown on the MRI. The symptoms that I am having are called cervical rediculopathy from the infringement upon the root of the C7 nerve.

Second, I believe that I am the fittest I’ve ever been. In fact I believed this claim so much, that I think that even though I haven’t run in over 2 years, if someone asked me to run a 10k I could. My heart is in that type of condition, and even though it might not be smart if I had to do something I could. In fact I was once asked why I train, and my response was, “so if the world blows up and I am projected into space that I would survive in space the longest”- (to which the friend immediately responded: hahahahahahha; moron).

Why am I going to a Doctor of Alternative Medicine? That’s easy to avoid the surgery recommended by my neurologist, to avoid stoping my martial arts and strength training practice recommended by my physical therapist, and to get back to Jiu Jitzui and my crazy phone book tearing self. Furthermore I believe in the power of the body to get over a lot! I’ve been through many different stresses in my life from weeks with almost no sleep, to playing with broken fingers, muscle and joint spains/strains, and even playing baseball with 1 eye being patched; Furthermore so far I’m even surviving a life with a wife and kids - (my wife is going to “kill” me for saying that one, lol). Even furthermore, this injury was probably sustained the easiest way I’ve ever been injured; I never even knew I was injured until two days after the incident. In essence WTH- How did a guy at the fittest point of his life get injured without ever even knowing it?

My Western Medical Pro’s would suggest that I had something structurally wrong that is common in my age group that was asymptomatic before, and became inflamed after taking on new challenges. Yet I don’t believe them entirely. Maybe I’m weird but I believe I was physically fit enough to handle the stresses of my new martial art, even if I was structurally misaligned. In essence I believe something else went wrong; I believe that somehow I wasn’t recovering - (whatever I could’ve done) - and that my health failed. Enter in Dr. Sahara!

With all this said last Wed, I went into an appointment at 1230pm with him and was tested and worked on until about 3pm. Now he didn’t give me a blood and urine test, but looked at my blood pressure, and heart rate in different positions, and then pushed on my arm in an almost undetectable way, and came up with the result that I needed some sort of solution spray for adhesions and scars, that I needed 4 leiters of water/day, that I needed him to rub “the living hell” out of my chest with his knuckle, and that I needed more meat, less fruit, and no nuts- HIP HIP HURAH MORE MEAT! After all of this I then past my subscapularis manual muscle test, as well as my lat and triceps test- which have all been weak since my injury, and these were not just assessed by him, but by my PT, MD, and me. After all this I began wondering, “If it’s really that easy to get a muscle strong enough, then what am I practicing?”

First off- I thought- My practice as a fitness pro is important for biomechanical concerns, obviously. So if you come to me because you don’t know how to squat, I can teach you. But that certainly can’t take as many sessions as I sell, nor should it.

Second off I’m important to people who need to lose weight or who want to reach some sort of fitness goal- i.e. bench press a certain amount or get into the splits, run a marathon, etc. There are plenty of studies out there to suggest that people who pay for trainers get more results than those who don’t. Furthermore, because I’m NSCA and RKC certified I’m more than well versed in the science of training for fitness, sport performance, and everyday performance needs. Yet once again this stuff is just like learning to squat- it’s really purely mechanical, and a matter of your work ethic, and a little coaching; IT’S NOT REALY THE WHOLE OF HEALTH. And although all of these points make what I do important, because I do enable your fitness, performance, and health, what I do is certainly not the pinnacle of what needs to be done for great health, and because health is so much if you wonder to far from it you’ll feel it despite your fitness.

See many people sign up with the idea that somehow they’re going to achieve this healthy being from training with me, because to most fitness is health. But health is so much more than just being strong, flexible, muscularly endurant, cardiovascularly endurant, in the right body composition, or even able to perform whatever you’re doing in a better- stronger/safer way. Look I’ve said it many times throughout the years- “fitness is rooted in its five aspects!” And I should have said this more, “health doesn’t end with being fit!”

In other words, Health is this huge encompassing idea. I mean fitness isn’t small, and certainly by being fit you are helping your health in many different ways, but being healthy is so much more , and to be honest it’s so big of an idea I’m not sure how to define it. It seems like it’s not just being alive and thriving, which fitness has quite a bit to do with, but it’s something so big it takes a team of people to find, get, or even understand. Yet while health is so big it’s also so small, and easy to picture when it is absent or not wholly present. I mean we all feel when we aren’t healthy- i.e. when we need recovery/a vacation, less stress, more happiness, more faith, more support, less adversity, more security, etc… . Yet there are just so many feelings that seemingly need satisfying, that while we feel them we don’t seem to be able to meet all of them. This is where I think both Dr. Sahara, and I fit in, and perhaps everyone in the health care community- we all help people meet some aspect of the giant idea that is health. And although this experience has brought me to an enlightened perspective about just how big it all is, one thing remains completely unquestionable that in the end although fitness isn’t everything it’s a big part of what total health is. How big of a part it is, is a topic I’ll leave for another article.

What’s So Great About Hardstyle…

Over the years I’ve had so many clients question me about why working out has to be so hard. Furthermore, when they’ve witnessed the torture I put my self through, like 1000 swing days, or what my friend called the death march, they often question why I want to do that to my body… Or why put myself through so much just to tear a phone book, or just for fun?  I’ve never really taken the time to answer that question, but what I do say is it’s about experiencing movement in all it’s different variations. However to say I do 1000 swings coupled with 1000 lateral jumps, coupled with 100 one armed pushups merely to experience all these movements is asinine, because I don’t. Furthermore if you’ve been keeping up with my blogs, a few weeks ago I wrote a whole article on the benefits  of fatigue- the lessons you learn about range of motion while totally exhausted, but the fact is it’s more than that. Hardstyle fitness is about the performance coin, thus everything you do needs to focus on improving that performance in whatever ROM you’re doing at that point in time. That means that your 1000 rep workouts or your 25 rep workouts are a journey to that progression. This article is about that journey, and why you ought to be on it.

Ok, So your doctor has told you to exercise, and/or perhaps you’re looking to get in shape for the summer… lose a few pounds or whatever; there’s something you have to understand Fitness is a larger concept. A friend text me the other day asking me what he’d get out of my new Hardstyle Yoga Camp, and my answer was well, “what are you looking for?” He told me he wanted a six pack of shredded abs for the summer, so I answered him with “sure you can get that from the Camp, but you gotta make sure you’re eating clean as well.” He immediately complained and told me but if I eat clean I could get that out of any well balanced workout. He further asked me if I do hardstyle yoga and my answer to that is, “of course.” However when he asked my objective results that I want to achieve from it, I said it’s fitness!

He further said what’s that… How do you measure it? I said, “when the world ends, I’ll be able to survive the longest before I die of suffocation in space.” Latter my friend and I spoke, and he said reading my goal made him laughed. People laugh at that response, but that is what fitness is: the ability to survive in an environment, and to reproduce. Although fitness might be inclusive of, it’s neither a six pack, nor buns of steel; it’s the ability to out last, out hunt, out run, and out live anything and in any environment. It’s about that one more step when you need it, that inside strength when something needs to get done, the pain tolerance to hold on till help arrives, the ability to get whatever done with no rest all by yourself… It’s about being better than you are now “just incase,” but mostly it’s about Living anywhere at anytime, no matter what.

I do sound crazy now don’t I, lol. But there are all sorts of common sense sayings around this idea: luck favors the prepared mind, and survival of the fittest come to mind. Fitness being survival is something which has common sense value. There’s lots of people like me who enjoy setting fitness goals, and pursuing them with vigor, ask them why they want that… or why aren’t they happy with what they look like- [because they’re already ripped]? I bet whatever answer they give will point to this idea of survival. Survival is a human need, just ask any dying person if they’d like one more day. Fitness is about the one more day!

The next topic to cover here is well if we all agree that fitness is about that one more day can’t it just be easy routines? I mean most research says all you need is about 20- 60 min of light aerobic activity a day to get all the heart benefits you might need to stay- in one sense of the word- healthy. Surely you can add 30 min of whole body weights to that, and you got yourself a fairly complete fitness package. In other words what’s up with the 300’s, and the 1000’s… what’s up with the craziness?

So for anyone who doesn’t know what hardstyle refers to, it’s not the kind of fitness routine that makes you throw up- (at least not every workout, hahahaha). No… Hardstyle refers to a type of balance between the “two sides of the performance coin,” according to the RKC manual: 1. Looseness and 2. Tension. A program well versed in such a style can definitely elicit stomach cramps and vomiting, but other times (like today when I grooved my Turkish Get Up) it’s about freeing up your movement- “taking the breaks off.” In fact a Hardstyle fitness routine is always about this idea of mobilizing and patterning movements so that you can perform in an athletic and proper way. Whether you fatigue or not is a by product of merely working; it’s not the goal of the workout, better movement is. How does this relate to surviving?

Well, throughout your life you are called upon to move, and most movements take certain motor skills. Just look at the primitive movement milestones that everyone needs to accomplish to be able to go from an infant to a walking/moving being.  Even though the future of everyone’s movement is different, rolling, crawling, scooting, squating, and the like are everyone’s baby fitness program. Thus I don’t think it’s too much to believe that no matter what your movement environment involves, there still exists a few basic movements that must be worked over and over again by everyone. In essence whether you’re a baseball pitcher, a soccer player, or an 80 year old grandmother squating is important, and making that squat a better freer movement is important.

So now picture this: your car runs out of gas on the freeway and you have to walk back 5 miles to the nearest gas station, but because your next business meeting is in 2 hours you have to move quickly. With this scenario in mind what should you have focused on in the gym?  If you said speed and cardio you’d only be partially right. The answer is good movement under stress- whatever that stress may be; in the gym stress is normally a resistance, speed or a state of fatigue. That way you can survive the emergency and not break anything doing so. Would it have been a good idea to test a 5 mile walk?

Sure, but what if you don’t do a lot of walking cause your workouts have to be 30 min. How could you have been prepared?

I can literally think of dozens of ways to prepare for this situation without walking as a test- even though it’s the best test, because its the most specific. You could snatch, swing, push up, squat, lunge, combo any group of the above exercises, yoga, etc… and you’d be prepared for this; you’d be fit to survive. But a 5 mile brisk walk/jog if you’re doing a 10 min mile is going to take you practically an hour. Can you imagine how many reps you’d have to do of a circuit of any three of the above exercises to accomplish an hour of work without stopping? It’s a lot, at least 100, probably more like 300. My death march takes me 45 min to an hour dependant upon which one I’m doing; it’s a lot of sets of 5 and 20 reps.

In 30 min you could do 700 or so of almost any exercise in a reasonable amount of sets, even with some rest.  So just because a workout is 1000 reps doesn’t mean anything terrible, just that in some time frame 1000 repetitions of a movement was done. BTW doing 1000 of any of the above mentioned exercises would have prepared you for the 5 mile walk, and probably more. Furthermore would you have built an incredible body over time with such a routine? With a sensible diet- sure!

This is what’s great about Hardstyle fitness, you work a few exercises, and you’re prepared for almost anything! So stop doing 3 sets of 10 of 20 different exercises. Pick one exercise, perhaps two, and work at them until you’ve performed them in an athletic proper way. If you want help choosing here’s my advice: Turkish Get Ups, and Swings. Pattern them, balance your tension and relaxation, take the breaks off of them with mobility drills, and don’t worry about how many reps you end up doing of them in the time frame you committed to working out. Do 1 get up at a time, and try 10 or 20 random swings at a time. As you get better at them start taking less and less rest until you’re doing an entire workout in a flowing way without breaks from one movement to the next. If you’re anything like most of my clients and me, some days you’ll end up focusing on drills doing a few sets, and other days you’ll end up doing mostly swings and get ups doing 80- 100.    

Why are bootcamps good [for me], and why have I started one?

 

So I took some time off of writing after the last Cardio Series installment to work on starting this Yoga/Kettlebells bootcamp, and now I’m back hahahah! However, I’m not back to talk about Cardio even though I have the full intention of continue where I left off eventually. However today I have planned to answer a few questions that have been brought up to me over the past few weeks. One of the major questions I’ve been asked is Why are bootcamps good, and why did- [me] a guy who’s into strength training where there’s lots of rest- start one?

So this is a little different to answer since most of my articles stress hard work just as much as they stress the idea of staying away from fatigue. Bootcamps, and mine is not all that different in intensity, are designed to make you fatigue- to take your conditioning and mentality to another level. They are not teaching orientated, instead they are activity orientated. Thus they are useful to some, and not so useful for others; even better they are probably useful to everyone at different times, and not all at the same time.

I’ve actually had some people call into me asking about my Hardstyle Yoga Camp, and I’ve told them it’s probably not going to be best for you participate in it. One of them was a football player from a local High School looking to prepare himself for summer conditioning. I told him straight out, “it’s probably a good time to build a foundation of strength, not conditioning.” So whether or not you should do a bootcamp depends on what phase in your conditioning cycle you’re at, and for that football player he shouldn’t overlook the importance of spending some time on heavy strength and power training, with lots of recovery time. Perhaps you should do the same?

However if it’s the right time for you a conditioning routine might be something you need, and bootcamps normally fit the bill; (specifically if you’re looking for fat loss- one camp session could easily burn up to 700 calories plus give you a huge boost in metabolism after). Pick anyone and go for it. Why pick mine then?

Well, most bootcamps are not flow orientated, and I think there’s something to be said about the mental as well as the physical parts of accenting flow- moving from one movement to the next with intentional grace and fluidity; the weird and unscientific words capture the term flow best; it’s feeling energy move within you through your body into the ground all the way through the crown of your head and finger tips. If using the idea of chi or energy has turned some of you off, hold on a second it’s not that unscientific.

In one way or another if you’ve worked with a reputable strength coach, you’ve worked on your flow. Normally in my one on one sessions I focus on flow within an exercise rather than on transitional flow. For the squat I use words like “root yourself,” or “ be the wedge between you and the weight.” I sometimes even use the phrase “be a tree and spread yourself into the ground through the floor as deep as you can.” If you’re doing a push up you’ll hear me say don’t push yourself up from the floor, move the earth from you. All this visualization and language leads to one idea and that is a stiff, strong, and stable movement. In other words feeling your “energy” directed into pushing the earth doesn’t somehow make you one with a tree spreading it’s roots, it just makes you stable, and enables you to understand the concept of moving as one unit- keeping you as strong and safe as possible.

Yet transitional flow is just as important, if not more so, than flow during an exercise. Few know this, but if you go to physical therapy everything is an exercise, and there is a factor of independence involved. Where independence comes into play is merely getting on and off the machines. Think about it… your physical therapist planned everything for you, but getting in and out of a lying or sitting position; he/she barely helped with that. Yet ironically the reason you were probably in physical therapy was not to get massaged, or have e-stim, but to get better at daily living activities. In other words your physical therapist could, although he/she might have been using those things as assessments, have helped you more if he/she would have spent some time actually instructing your transitional flow making it more graceful and fluid. In other words Hardstyle Yoga Camp is about moving everywhere, in everyway with fluidity and grace, strength and poise, even though you might feel like collapsing from fatigue.

Now why put the fatigue in there? Well if you take the advice of dance instructors you don’t worry about fatigue, and you just practice till you get it. However, I think for the practice of fitness you have to go with the advice of Yogies. What do I mean by that?

Well if you want to learn a Jive, then you have do something pretty much daily, and in learning movements fatigue is your enemy; you’re trying to learn a motor skill. In fact even yogi’s talk about coming to your mat daily, sometimes for an hour and sometimes for merely 10 minutes to learn the flow. Yet most of you don’t care about perfecting the Sun A flow; it’s something you’re doing to get strong, flexible, in better shape, etc... . In this case fatigue is your friend sometimes.

Fatigue is obviously part of a workout to lose weight because it’s the result of work which of course is what you need to do to burn calories. But ironically fatigue can also produce quality movements sometimes.

So the best- defined by the deepest and most properly aligned- downward dog that you can do right now takes a lot of exercise to warm you, as well as the right movement that allows the muscles that need to be lengthening to do so, and a completely exhausted body that will just give in to the stretch. We notice similar effects when we use kettlebells. For instance when you swing you seem to gain better form when fatigue sets in and you stop using the muscles you shouldn’t, because they’re to tired to do the work. In essence the workout gets safer and more productive as it goes on; this is completely the opposite of strength work where you want your first rep to be your best. Therefore we’ve picked the best exercises and the best tools to perform under the state of extreme fatigue to provide you with the best results, and we’ve put the exercises that we want to build strength first in the workout so you don’t do them when you’re fatigued.

Do You practice Hardstyle Yoga…..

Hardstyle Yoga is unlike anything you’ve ever heard of or experienced. It is a combination of 2 timeless practices to create, renew, and forge the perfect body and mind!

THE HARDSTYLE YOGA BOOTCAMP!   

 By combining the amazing power of Yoga and the most effective strength-training device known to man, the Russian Kettlebell

YOU WILL GAIN:

A Strong, Lean and toned Body… SHRED FAT AND INJURY PROOF YOUR BODY!

A Strong Mind:

HARD AND READY FOR ANYTHING!

A Graceful Being:

OPEN YOUR MOVEMENT POSSIBILITES, AND MENTAL AWARENESS. BECOME WHO YOU’VE ALWAYS DESIRED!

TEST YOUR POTENTIAL WITH HARDSTYLE YOGA!

ALL CLASSES CLOSE BY APRIL 10th!

CLASS TIMES AND PLACES VARY! SPACE LIMITED TO 10 STUDENTS CALL NOW BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!!

CONTACT:

ANTHONY CHAVEZ                                                 

(949) 726-2569, or anthony.chavez@ymail.com      

OR

Michael Cianciola

(626) 391-3936, or

successcoach38@hotmail.com

Cardio: Training for the Hard!

Alright, you’re out of shape, but committed to a 3 year membership at your neighborhood chain gym. You walk into the doors see the plethora of treadmills, elipticals, bicycles, and you even see something that looks like an escalator- that for some strange reason people pay money to walk up against for 60 minutes. You figure you’ll start out easy so you hop on the bicycle for what seems like hours but is only 5 minutes. Furthermore, the seat’s so uncomfortable you think that when you leave the bike will have to be surgically removed from somewhere. This is where you think to yourself about your favorite foods, and television shows, or that maybe the girl/guy bent over on the escalator thingy will get you through the next 55 minutes you planed to workout. Time goes by and you look up thinking it’s got to be time to go home and then your mind cries“Agh,” because you’ve only spent 15 minutes cycling. You’re sweaty, burning, and you’re not even half way done, furthermore you can feel that tomorrow when you get up for work you’re going to be sore from doing something that was effortless as a kid. You think to yourself… how in the world did I get this out of shape? What am I doing here, and why does life have to be so hard? After an hour passes and you peal yourself off the bike, you vow to never hurt your prostate/ pride like that again, and when you wake up the next morning and can barely get out of bed the gym has officially become the worst place in the world. After two weeks of this you purposely give yourself a day off, which turns into a few years. The next time you think about the gym instead of dreams of grandeur, and a six pack of abs entering you mind, you think to yourself about the last time you were there, and the horrible feelings and inconvenience of it. This is not a good mindset for the future of your life in the gym, but what else are you suppose to do?

That story above is what Cardio does to first timers, but to be honest I don’t know anyone that can do Cardio who’s an avid fitness buff that doesn’t have to have some mentally preparation before doing an hour of gut busting intervals, or a long run. Furthermore I don’t know a fitness buff out there that started out doing cardio and actually liked it. Most of us do it to get ripped for “that time of the year,” or to be- just generally- in good shape. Our motivation for it is not normally, because it’s fun, or because it’s really great to be tired, but we want something and it gets us there. We’re motivated to get our results.

There’s a recent growing pile of research out there that talks about compliance in terms of mere motivation. Motivation is usually thought of as the want or drive to do something, but according to most social psychological texts, motivation is not as clear as the definition might imply. However, what is apparent is that it has two types, external meaning that the drive to do something is coming from something other than yourself- an outside factor (i.e. today you might be motivated to run if your building is about to collapse on you). And internal motivation, meaning that you got an idea and started doing steps to perform it for the mere reason of achieving that goal.

Studies continually illustrate that external motivation lasts even less long than internal motivation- specifically with regard to exercise behavior. In other words if you’ve been working out for 20 years, and it all started with your doctor telling you that you had some sort of problem that exercise would cure, it’s a good bet that you wouldn’t have continued to exercise after the problem went away unless you eventually became internally motivated to get off the couch. Yet I think this begs the question of who cares?

I mean really… who cares if you exercise now due to internal motivation, or because of external motivation? I mean its great concept for professionals to understand, because it helps us to try to move you toward a more willingness participation in exercise so you continue to buy, and so that you continue to work out, which is good for you and us. But in reality if you could come up with a plethora of external motivators for exercise why worry about making yourself internally motivated to exercise.

In other words who cares if your motivation looks like this: it starts off with your doctor telling you, then you get better, then you need to lose weight, then your sport makes you do it, and so on? The fact that matters is that you’re exercising! In essence I don’t think you should worry about having the right type of motivation to work out, just do it, and find reasons along the way; it’s just too hard to want something and continue to want it forever. So don’t want the same thing forever, do the same thing forever, and do it for different reasons- sometimes for external reasons, sometimes for internal reasons, or pick any combination.

With regard to exercise this really works out, because there is merely millions of driving forces that ought to spark your drive to exercise. Prone to falls… exercise. Prone to bone density problems… exercise. Think you look horrible naked… exercise. Feel depressed… exercise. Have a high risk of almost any disease… exercise. Need to live longer… exercise. Are you poor… exer… wait it might not solve that one, but it is noted in many studies that wealthier people tend to exercise more (so maybe we can make the connection, haha). The list obviously goes on, so pick one to focus on, or pick more than one, and get in the gym.

Furthermore since it’s so easy to see reasons outside yourself to exercise you can avoid all the weird confusion and irrationality that can be associated with internal motivation. Cognitive dissonance theory is at the head of the list when I think of why internal motivation gets irrational.

Simply, Cog Diss theory states that in order to stay away from dissonance- incoherent actions and thoughts- you will practically believe anything that backs up your actions. So for instance smokers are more likely to believe that lung cancer is unrelated to smoking cigarettes. Or have you ever had a really hard time choosing between two items of clothing at a store, and then made a random choice, and by the time you got home the thing you bought became far and away the better choice? Think about it people, that shirt didn’t become special on the ride home- your brain had to stay away from dissonance so it subconsciously found reasons to like it more. Whether or not those reasons exist in actuality is debatable. (Another excellent illustration of Cog Diss is that Marathon runners are much more likely to believe that running is the most healthy exercise; runner’s this is to you- there’s nothing special about running just because you do it, except for the fact that you do it).

In other words just because you need to exercise, doesn’t mean you eventually have to like it to the extent that you start doing weird things, like believing bench pressing makes the world a better place. Now I’m not saying embrace the hatred of it either, but why worry about liking exercise? Or finding an activity that you like? Most of us learned how to count, and I don’t remember ever liking that. Furthermore, my mom made me paint redwood furniture when I was a kid once year, and I’m pretty sure I hated that. Liking something, although it is a great indicator of whether or not you’ll do an action, doesn’t have to be indicative of every action you do out of necessity.

It’s a lesson our parents tried to tell us: “life’s hard, and you have to do what you’re supposed to do- whether you like it or not.” Yet as we grew up we substituted more and more suppose to’s with things that were more comfortable/ enjoyable/fun/etc…, and now anything we get to do with our free time somehow has to be enjoyable. In fact many of my clients when they hear how I train ask me, “Do I like torture?” No, of course not! Yeah there are things I like about long stunts of activity with limited food- ( like when I’m finished and I get to chomp down on some pizza), and yeah there are things I enjoy about trying a heavier weight (like knowing 500 pounds won’t crush my spine), but if exercise was bad for me would I miss it- NO! If I could sit all day on the couch watching T.V. to become healthy- why wouldn’t I rather do that? And let me tell you something- there are always weird/crazy people out there who would exercise even if it was bad for them, but if being a couch potato was the route to a better body, heart, mind, etc… you better believe gyms would be out of business, and for that matter probably the whole healthcare field: hell breaking your leg would mean you got to spend more time on the couch. Therefore I’ll augment the old saying for you, “if it was easy to like it, [exercise], the whole world would do it.”

Now why does this apply to Cardio? Well in my experience cardio- although the easiest exercise to do, and by far one of the cheapest, is the hardest exercise to enjoy. And remember that what I mean by Cardio isn’t a walk on the beach during sunset time- if you read my last article you’d know this. Cardio takes an intense commitment to finish, and to progress with. This doesn’t mean that other types of training are easy, but if you wanted to get stronger at bench press, and you weren’t someone who bench pressed for a living, it’d take 10-20 minutes a couple of days per week. Conversely if you wanted to get better at cardiovascular training you can’t have enough activity. I mean let’s be honest running a 12k takes a lot more time to build up to for a beginner than adding 10-20 pounds to practically any lift. Furthermore even if you’re not a beginner, with regard to training for a 12k there is a possibility of overreaching, and thus taking a day off every now and then is advisable, but if you’re trying to get better at bench pressing it’s a must. Conditioning just takes more work more often to progress.

Think about a time when you took a long time off of working out. Yeah, the next day you were feeling it, but the conditioning is what you notice first. If it was a month or a little longer (not years), when you went back to the gym it was probably hard to jump back into 60 minutes on the treadmill, but doing 3 sets of 5-10 was cake- until the next day. Sometimes I notice a decrease in conditioning after a week off, but almost never in strength. Therefore not only does it take a lot more time more often to get conditioned, it’s horrible on your schedule if it’s a priority, because eventually everyone’s got to take some time off, and when you come back the Cardio is almost certainly going to be harder to get going on.

In essence if it’s cardio you’re trying to get better at, you’re going to have to get to the thankless work that you’re supposed to do whether you like it or not; you’re going to have to commit and focus on any motivation you can. I take my friend and my Yoga guru Anthony Chavez’s advice to get through conditioning work, “you just have to live in the moment, and challenge yourself,” or “be wholly present but mentally quite” – which means to me, in non weird yoga terms, go blank and react. And to be honest I use the skills I practice in yoga as well, I link breathing with my movement and I keep breathing in an audible way. When I’m done I thank God a strength session is only a few weeks off, and the next day I go back to work on it.

In life we’ve gotten accustomed to saying and believing things like, “I deserve to do (xyz), because I have to enjoy some of my time- [thinking all the while, “I work all day I just want some time to enjoy life”]. I once had a client of mine tell me, enjoyment and fun are things you get on the way toward accomplishment, and within successful living- not ironically he was speaking about his daughter who was a freshman in college, and how she went wrong. In other words, get to work, and don’t stop. You don’t deserve any special self produced and objectified enjoyment and fun, instead the work you do, and the accomplishments you make provide their subtle yet intense goodnesses; as social psychological research suggests, don’t just smile because you’re happy, but smile to be happy. Cardio is intense work, it takes a lot of time and maintenance, and it’s really hard to like, but it’s daily practice at being the person you’re supposed to be. Becoming this person takes time, patience, and perseverance- all things that are practiced while spending long durations exercising intensely. Therefore if you like your cardio great, if not find something outside yourself that motivates you to do it, because the things you practice while intensely exercising will not only make your body hard, but your mind as well.

Caridio: Exercising Power!

Cardiovascular exercise is defined as any such activity where you are using a whole body movement that elevates heart rate. Normally people think of aerobic exercise as Cardiovascular exercise, but aerobic exercise has within its definition the ability to sustain said activity for longer durations- 2.5 minutes and longer. In essence almost all compound movements can be considered Cardio, and if you can do it for at least 2.5 min it’s aerobic. This means that when talking about cardio you have quite a bit of lead way. However in the first article in this (Cardio) series I said that I would describe in better detail about why Cardiovascular exercise is such a great power builder for most people. Therefore let’s start with talking about power vs. strength.

So when people think of power and strength they normally think of them as one in the same, but they are wholly different. Strength as an aspect of fitness that refers to how much weight you can lift. However power refers to how much you can lift in an amount of time. So think of pushing a car 50 feet. The fact that you can push a car 50 feet refers to the amount of strength you have, but if today you can push a car 50 feet in 30 seconds, and 4 weeks latter you do the same car in 20 seconds, then you’ve gotten more powerful.

Many people would say well then you’ve must have gotten stronger too, but that’s not all that correct. See the specificity principle extends to power vs. strength in lifts. So if you take an Olympic weight lifter, who’s max clean and jerks 500 pounds and ask him to deadlift the same weight as someone who’s his same size in powerlifting (ignor the name powerlifting for a second) he’s probably not going to be able to do it- 800 pound dead lifts in powerlifting are regularly reached in training. Yet turn the comparison around and you get the same result; you’d be lucky to find a powerlifter who can dead lift 800 pounds able to clean and jerk 500 pounds. Therefore power and strength take separate training to develop.

So now that we’ve established why a movement under time, or power, is a separate task then strength, and that it must be trained for let’s talk about why power is good for you. First, as I said in the past article power correlates with longer life expectancy than strength. Second, power also correlates with a reduction in falls more than strength.

We all know that falling for someone past 60 is something that can result in serious consequences like hip replacements, and all sorts of other surgeries. Falling past 70 is even worse, and falling past 80 well you might have well have just fell into a grave. The reason why power keeps you from falling is thought to be because of the type of muscle fiber that normally has to be present to produce powerful movements- fast twitch muscle fibers.

As you age fast twitch muscle fibers are lost and intermediate fibers are normally converted into oxidative fibers. Oxidative muscle fibers help you last when you walk, but unfortunately when you start an activity: running, walking, etc… you use non-oxidative pathways for energy. Thus the oxidative fibers are practically useless, for any event that lasts less than 2.5 min; so in daily life this means it’s useless for almost anything other than standing at the kitchen sink, or sitting watching T.V. Oxidative muscle is much better at synergistic functions, and long distance events. Fast twitch muscle helps you go upstairs to your bedroom or walk to the mail box. Therefore as you age if you don’t train for power when you need those fast twitch muscles they won’t be there for you, your stride length will shorten and your base of support will be really hard to keep under your center of gravity making it easier for you to fall.

So if those two reasons for keeping power are not enough I’ll give you one more- when do you move slowly in life? If you reach for a can of corn you do it quickly, not in a slow strength manner. If you get in a car you sit in quickly, not like you’re carrying 500 pounds. (If you do sit down like you’re carrying 500lbs then it’s time to seek help). So powerful movements are functional.

Ok so you’re stoked on building power, why use cardio? First off there’s a benefit in using lighter weight for power training. So when you lift for strength not only do you normally lift your body weight, but you also lift the load of resistance. In cardio training you’re only lifting you, thus you can get faster without worrying about additional momentum that an external load would have.

Second, as I mentioned at the end of the last blog, cardio training is as functional as it gets. In life you walk, run, lunge, etc… why not use those as your motor skills to get better at? Furthermore you do all of those things in a flowing way. In other words you don’t just walk, or just run- i.e. you walk to a place and do something (even if it’s sitting down). Cardio training is normally a continuious event, but because it can be any gross motor skill compound movement you just do a yoga flow, kettlebell circuit, or a walk up stairs, squat, and pushup circuit. On the tredmill you do sideways walking forward walking, you get on and off the treadmill, and for someone who can’t do a whole lot of physical work it’s fast, natural, and it flows. Even most 70 years olds can walk for 1 min go sit down, walk for 2 min, get off, get on again for 3 min etc.. until they can do at least 10 minutes of tredmill.

Now normally no one builds up to 10 minutes of straight treadmill training. Normally once they can do about 5 minutes of straight walking their conditioning and mentality is good enough to start working on progressing to a more strict interval training protocol with an exercise more suitable for producing real power, like a touch and go deadlift, kettlebell swing, etc… . (If you’re wondering why mentality is important I’ll touch on it in the next article).

In conclusion I understand that until the ladder of treadmil training gets to be a time over 2.5 minutes it is the esteemed interval training, but if you’re dealing with seniors you have to build power in a safe way, and I’m not quite certain it’s best to stop training on the tredmill until they can do this one thing for a little longer than 2.5 minutes; walking even with disfunction is pretty darn important. Waiting until everything is corrected before you work up to a power producing exercise is great, but people need what they need, and normally they need it yesterday. If that need is power making someone in this situation do strength training in a very minimal corrective way until they can do strength exercises powerfully doesn’t seem to make as much sense as picking one exercise as functional as walking, patterning it and then performing it in a ladder format until until they reach an acceptable point for doing other power movements. I further understand that at some point, you’re going to have to cut away from the steady state cardio. My number is 5 minutes and sometimes a little longer dependant upon what their condition is. Then my concentration begins a progression towards swings, and then toward snatches. Since these exercises take a lot more tension and a mastery of an outside resistance I pick walking first in a lot of these cases.

Cardio: What’s the point?

Alright, so in the Go Deep and Heavy series we talked about one of the aspects of fitness called muscular strength- which is limit strength like a 1 repetition max; it’s slow tedious form work for multiple sets, and it lights your CNS (central nervous system) on fire, because of the force needed to perform it, and because of the time under load. Cardiovascular exercise, however, is very much the opposite of limit strength. It’s movement done for long periods of time in a very efficient manner. At this point you’re probably saying “efficient manner…I thought Cardio was about burning calories so I can lose weight?”
Well in the last few years you’ve also probably heard about interval training, and the Trembley study showing that people who did intense short bursts of exercise burn 9 times more calories than those doing steady state aerobics. However, what you might not know is that for the most part exercise- (thought of in the usual sense, or even in the Trembley sense)- matters very little in the equation to lose weight. The text book Obesity does a good job of going through the research illustrating this point, yet this point is very easy to see when you look at what weight loss is all about.
Weight loss is all about expending more calories then you intake. Most Dietitians recommend intake to be around 1500 to 2500 calories/ day. Has anyone ever tried to burn 1500 to 2500 calories in a workout? If you’ve even tried to burn 1000 I commend you, because unless you’re working out for hours those types of numbers are practically impossible. 500 calories a couple of times a week is a very possible number to reach for during your workout, but even that is high and takes a really hard workout to achieve. Yes an intense workout elevates your daily calorie burning potential through increasing your lean mass, and yes it increases your metabolism through E.P.O.C. But in the end you’ll still probably have to burn up to 2000 calories more from your activities of daily living. If those activities are sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours during the day, followed by sitting in front of the T.V. for 4-5 hours at night you’re not going to get there. So if you want a sprinter’s ripped midsection, you’re going to have to start training for the Olympics.
This doesn’t mean that people don’t lose a lot of weight on a reasonable diet, and on a reasonable exercise routine. They do, but if you think that is the norm then you’re dead wrong. Most people who lose large amounts of weight change their entire lives. In essence if you’re looking to lose 10- 20 pounds, exercise can probably help, but if you’re looking to lose more than that, then it’s going to take more than a few hundred extra calories on the elliptical. You’re going to have to change your life.
So if Cardiovascular exercise isn’t going to be a panacea for weight loss, why do it? And that’s a great question, because to be honest it isn’t necessary. Any reasonable strength training routine is going to give you cardiovascular benefits. If you target strength endurance, and/or power you’re definitely getting heart and respiratory benefits. Furthermore there was a landmark study sited in the book The New Rules for Lifting for Men which illustrates that people who kept their power over the years lived 3 times as long as those who didn’t, and twice as long as those who merely kept strength. If you read my previous blogs you know that many weight training exercises focus on fast movements- (i.e. the snatch, clean and jerk, etc...)- thus targeting the cardiovascular system with training is not all that important. So what’s the point?
Alright, I’ve been in this field now for almost 12 years, and in the last 5 years there has been a huge push to get rid of strict Cardio training- and for good reason. However in the late 90’s ACSM, the American College of Sports Medicine, use to recommend that before starting any weight training routine a baseline of at least 2 weeks of Cardio training ought to be achieved, where for 14 day’s 20 minutes of constant activity was the goal each day. If you couldn’t do it you kept walking until adaptation took place and you could, and only at that point did they believe you were in acceptable condition to start a strength training protocol.
ACSM’s reasoning for this was based on the fact that weight training is rather tough on your Cardiovascular system, for more than just the duration of your training. Anyone starting a weight training protocol understands this, because they’ve gotten DOMS, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. DOMS are rather random, but one thing we do know is that if you can get the edema and inflammation out of your muscles after a workout you’ll be less sore. Since this is the function of your Cardiovascular system, training it before you started weight training was a fairly reasonable activity. Thus if you don’t like soreness Cardio training aids in recovery.
Yet there is another great thing about Cardio training in the beginning- it’s weight training with your body, and done properly it’s power training. That’s right people walking is a great lower body resistance training workout for people who can’t do lunges, plus squats, plus leg raises, plus standing rows, plus pushups, plus cleans and jerks for 5 sets of 5. Furthermore it’s a motor skill that most people have, and could practice more- remember most if not all asymmetries show up in our gait patterns, so working on gait patterns is rather functional work.
Therefore I still believe in old school aerobic work. Getting on a treadmill or an elliptical might really fit an out of conditioned client, and help them develop some baseline strength. This doesn’t mean you should jump on the treadmill as a meaningless exercise to help burn some extra calories, but as a progressive resistance training drill that works a functional skill. So the answer to the question of what’s the point of cardio training- its functional body weight training exercise. It’s about power out put – which I didn’t emphasize here but will in further articles- and your Cardiovascular system gets better at it’s job of disposing of waste and depositing nutrients to working parts. There are some draw backs, but nothing that proper instruction and progression can’t address. Thus get ready to enjoy sweating and heavy breathing.