Month: April 2007

Become An RPM Fitness Instructor – Personal Account

I decided to become a group cycling instructor. I selected Les Mills International’s RPM program. The training consists of 2 8 hour days of practice and lessons. There were about 17 people in the group and we had 2 trainers. There were about 10 people who were already teaching another LMI discipline and there were a couple of cyclists in the class. It was an eclectic bunch of people, not quit random, but very nearly. The only thing we all shared in common was an enjoyment of cycling (indoor or outdoor). The weekend was amazing and I’ll write more about the specifics in another post.

After the training weekend, the real work began. I wasn’t a fitness instructor and before I would be able to teach I needed to find out why I was doing it, how I would know when I was successful, what I expect to get out of it, what I expected out of the participants, what I was trying to bring to the experience that was uniquely me and what was the biggest thing that I needed to work on.

Initially – before I taught a class

  • Why I was doing it? Since I think my purpose is to try and help others actualize some of their potential I thought that was a good reason because many of the participants aren’t as hooked on exercise as I am. When I’m in front of the group, I’m trying to lead them to a place were they find the strength within to work harder than they believed possible, were they move more efficiently than they did before and when they find enjoyment in the physical sensations of working hard were none existed before.
  • What I expected out of it? A free membership and permission to ride the bikes to practice.
  • What I expect out of the participants? To listen to what I say and try to work hard.
  • How do I know when I’ve been successful? I am successful if I deliver the participants to a place where they make the decision to work instead of stopping. I am successful EVEN if they decide to stop because they make the decision. My success is determined by my ability to get them to see that there is a decision.
  • What I bring to instructing that is uniquely me? By teaching with passion I will be giving permission for participants to be better. I have a belief that if people copy what I do in the gym, on the bike and if they eat like I do, they will enjoy the same level of energy and passion that I have. I try to model passion to let them know that there is nothing wrong being good at giving something your all.
  • What do I need to work on? The choreography and knowing the music.

But something happens when you actually do something, you realize what the experience is really like and your reasons for doing it will change. You may still hold on to some of the initially reasons and add to the list, but one thing is certain it will be different once you have lead a class.

Evolving reasons – 1-3 classes

  • Why I was doing it? Once I started doing it, I realized that it’s fun and it feels good because it’s exercise. There is a part of the experience that is immediately gratifying and that is something that I’m going after now. I maintain my initial reason to help people find success, it’s just fun as well.
  • What I expected out of it? To get a bit of a rush from performing and leading the class.
  • What I expect out of the participants? To give me feedback of things I was doing wrong and to fix their form when I coached them.
  • How do I know when I’ve been successful? If any of the participants took my coaching advice or if they were able to follow the flow of the class.
  • What I bring to instructing that is uniquely me? Hopefully someone will see me NOT feeling shame for trying to be better and will join in.
  • What do I need to work on? Voice qualities should match expected perceived exertion. I need to lower my effort because I am working way too hard.

As you gain more experience, you get better at it and can start to focus on improving certain parts of the process. As certain parts of it become automatic (the choreography or form on the bike) the liberated energy is directed to other areas.

Evolving reasons – 4-10 classes

  • Why I was doing it? I do it because it is fun and because it helps people, but now I want to get better at it for the sake of improving. I’m starting to get a feeling that if I pour myself into it with all of my passion I could become very good at it which will increase my chances to do it. The more I can do it, the more fun I’ll have and the greater the impact on other people. I want to be the best at it not to say that I am the best at it but to enjoy the rewards of being the best.
  • What I expected out of it? I’m focusing on delivery now – precuing and cuing and the performance aspects of instructing. I expect these things to improve with each class.
  • What I expect out of the participants? To learn what they view as success and work to achieve it. I’m delivering an experience template, they are filling in the work and determining their effort. I expect them to actually consider the workout in terms of what they can get out of it, how they need to behave to attain it and finding what they need to follow through on these predictions.
  • How do I know when I’ve been successful? I’m feeling comfortable with the template that I’m delivering to the participants so I feel successful when I see the results of their hard work (sweat, breathless states, eye contact and facial expressions that indicate a high level of engagement and effort) and when they give me feedback that indicates that they got something out of it. I will know that my performance is improving when the participants are doing the choreography the same way I am – the precuing and cuing are sufficient to help the participants find the flow of the class.
  • What I bring to instructing that is uniquely me? The understanding that I need to be seen as vulnerable by some of the participant. I had the realization that I am a lot fitter and better at RPM than 95% of the people who take the class, so a little dorkiness in the presentation is going to endure me as an instructor.
  • What do I need to work on? Lowering my effort level. I’m still working too hard. I’m very nervous before each class and have learned to direct that energy into working hard. It’s hurting my ability to connect and communicate with the participants.

What now? Well, I record and submit my video to get my certification. I start teaching my own class on Saturday mornings starting in April. I’ll try to create interest in group cycling at club so they offer more classes and I get to teach more. I’ll start to bring more of myself into the classes and try to create a community of cyclist at the club so I’ll have people to ride and train with this summer.

One thing that is certain, RPM is becoming part of my goals and it’s going to be interesting to see how they evolve as I actualize some my potential.

5 Advanced Mountain Bike Racing Tips

1) Give your brain the information it needs to guide you through the race

Your brain knows everything that you do. It may seem like a silly statement but many people will ignore what they spontaneously think in favor of something they consciously think. Don’t look at rocks and think “there is a rock”, scan along the trail ignoring what you see. Come back to the rocks only if your eyes come back to them, but it is most likely that your brain will determine a better line and look at something other than the rocks. To do prime your brain with sensory input, deliberately move your eye fixations back and forth along the upcoming trail allowing the sensory input to flood into your brain. Doing this will give your brain the best chance of creating an accurate mental image of the trail that it will then work with to determine the best line and effort level.

Doing this requires a lot of focus and it is pretty draining. The good news is that you’ll only need it when you are going very quickly or riding on pretty technical terrain.

2) Do not pay attention to things that you cannot impact

When you are riding fairly quickly, there is little point in looking at what you are about to ride over because there is very little you can do about it – if you cannot react to what you see, you are not looking far enough ahead and you shouldn’t be aware of it.The same applies to other riders. Do not count on them to make a mistake or call you round because that takes the out come of the race out of your control. Your goal is to get to the finish line injury free and as fast as you possibly can. Anything that takes away from that goal should be eliminated from your race behavior. Flawless riding will get you to your goal and that will only come to be if you focus on the riding.

3) Start your nutritional recovery as soon as you cross the finish line

You should consider consuming dextrose / maltodextrin during the ride. This will allow you to take advantage of the window of opportunity for increased cellular transport.If you have no idea what dextrose and maltodextrin are you should read my post on Post Workout Nutrition. It represents the most up to date science available for body building nutrition and deals with getting the most amount of recovery sugar and protein to the muscles to promote the fastest recovery. Studies have shown that there is a finite absorption rate for each macro nutrient and my recommendations are based on these values – bring in ONLY what your body can use per unit of time. If you bring in more than your body can use you are increasing the likelihood of fat storage. While still unlikely after intense racing, it is possible when you are dealing with high GI carbs like dextrose.

4) Follow an adequate training tapper before your races

If you have no idea what I’m talking about here, just make sure you are well enough rested on race day to perform will as much intensity as you need. Athletes and their coaches tend to come up with complete ways of describing their simple behavior and for they’ve come up with the term tapper to mean a reduction in training before a competition to ensure complete recovery.

Depending upon the event you are participating in, you will need to vary the amount of rest you get. Cross country racers will need to about 2-4 days of dramatically reduced work load before a race because this event does not rely heavily on coordinated muscular strength or power; you are basically holding your top maintainable pace for the duration of the ride. Downhill racers may need to reduce work volume in the week leading up to the event to make sure the nervous system is completely recovered allowing for improved muscle coordination and synchronous firing that can be needed for aggressive down hill racing.At the very least an athlete should not ride with full intensity in the 3 days leading up to an event and they should focus on nutritional recovery after any training or pre-lap rides they take.

You are going to need to experiment with the volume and duration of your tapper for find the perfect balance between rest, recovery and performance. When you find that sweet spot, I’ve found that most of the nervousness about racing goes away because you know you are as well prepared as you can be.

5) Train all year round

This will have more impact on your racing results than anything else you can do. While less important for younger riders, the over 27 crowd doesn’t have a choice in the matter. If you are close to your 30’s, you are going to lose cardiovascular functioning during the off season UNLESS you train with high intensity for 30 minutes 3 times a week. Note, this is just the maintenance level. Improvements are very unlikely with 90 minutes of training per week – think about the gains you make during the season, they are based on riding almost every day. The rule of thumb is the more you train the more you will improve, both in skill and in your body’s ability to adapt to the work.The training needs to be varied and you will benefit from cycling through different phases – strength building, cardio building, maintenance phases, and race tappers.

During the race season you should continue to perform some resistance training to maintain muscle and connective tissue strength. This will help you stay strong throughout the season and avoid injury. It has the added benefit of helping to burn up any extra calories that you may consume after your rides. 4 or 6 sets per body part per week should be sufficient to allow you to hold on to your strength and size.

Priming Your Brain With Sensory Input

Sometimes when I’m trail riding a tough rocky section I notice nothing at all. I see but I do not narrate, my mp3 player is wailing but I hear silence, there’s a shaking in my body but I feel nothing. It doesn’t last very long. In fact, it only lasts as long as my fear, so until the tough part is over. I’ve noticed the same thing with snow boarding, at some speed it stops being snow boarding and it starts being a state of pure awareness. Csikszentmihalyi referred to this as the flow state and outlined the benefits of functioning in this state.

What I like the most about this state is that there seems to be no separation between what I see and how I interact with it. I can’t use the word react to it because the actions have a mindful quality in that they do not cause a fight or flight reaction that one would expect from sustained fear. My brain is processing the sensory information and directing my body to perform the correct action, or at least one that doesn’t see me falling. The key part is that my consciousness does not have to control the seeking of information part, looking at the trail, and it doesn’t need to be involved in the processing and syntheses of a solution, assessing the obstacles and determining the best available path. My brain will do this automatically whenever it has to.

Over time I’ve experimented with this state and have tried to deliberately engage my conscious mind with very poor results. It dramatically disrupts the flow of the experience. On the bike I hit things, my peddles will crash off of rocks, my back tire will find grooves and I clip out or fall when the front tire runs into something that I should have avoided. The bike awareness I have seems to disappear almost completely. It seems that I am aware of ONLY what I am deliberately looking at and commenting on. The creation of the mental map that my brain uses to determine the best route is severely impaired. My involvement in this process is definitely not needed. I’m better off if I let my unconscious brain solve these types of problems.

So, how do I increase the likelihood that my brain will come to the right conclusion and direct my body to perform that correct action? Step one is practice so you teach your body how to move on the bike / snow board / your legs. This step takes a long time depending upon the complexity of the task. Once you are well versed in the movements needed to perform that task effectively you move on to the next phase. Step two deals with providing your brain with the sensory information it needs to create an accurate mental map of the environment on which to base solutions. Think about it this way, if you know 10% about something, what are the chances that you will be able to answer a question on that topic? About 10%. As you increase your knowledge, you increase the chances that you know the answer to the question. This is pretty much the same thing, with one big difference, this information only needs to exist as information in your brain for a very short time therefore a verbal representation is not need because you do not need to repeat it in to memory. That means you simply need to bring the information in and your brain will filter for relevance and encode meaning.

To ensure that you give your brain enough information to come up with the best solution you need to deliberately scan the environment in a mindless fashion. Normally we look at the world in terms of patterns or things we recognize as meaningful somethings. For example, you don’t need to know that the car that is approach is a Ford to know that if you get hit by it you will get injured, you just need to know that something big that is moving can be dangerous so you take appropriate action to avoid the collision. With flow sensory priming you just need to keep scanning the approaching area of the trail or somewhere were you MAY end up going. Very often your brain will find a tight line that is fairly straight, but occasionally you’ll find yourself darting to the other side of the trail and following a better line. You won’t know that you have seen it until you start to change direction and then as you begin to ride the better line you’ll notice it. The key is to continually scan the terrain bringing in as much information as you possible can.

Initially it is very draining to do this but once you find yourself in the flow state it becomes effortless because it is what you do when you are in that state.

It is worth directing you to Steve Pavlina article 7 Rules for Maximizing Your Creative Output because it’s an effective way to help you achieve a creative state of flow. Sports participants take notice that by virtue of the fact that you are participating in a sports activity (e.g. snow boarding or mountain biking) you have already taken the 7 steps. With a little bit of increased intensity (speed) and deliberate sensory priming you should be well on your way to finding that state of being one with the bike, hill, board.

The Discipline High – Part One

Every now and then someone will say something that makes me laugh out loud, ask them if they actually said it, and then laugh at how profoundly important yet completely obvious the comment is.

“Discipline high” was one of those comments.

I had been talking to a friend and discussing the merits of the body building bulk that I was on. It was late winter and he was getting ready to start back to the gym to shed the extra winter weight he had gained. He does this almost every year and has become pretty good at it.

When the topic of diet came up, he mentioned that one year he ate nothing but organic food. He enjoyed the taste of the food a lot more and felt that meats were more dense. He said that he figured dollar for dollar it worked out to be close to the same price, maybe a little more for the organically grown food. But he said that during this particular year, he got more of a discipline high from eating good quality food.

I laughed, asked him if he said discipline high and then laughed again. It had never crossed my mind that someone could get a high feeling from NOT doing something. This is, of course, how it works with me. Whenever I exercise I am rewarded with a chemical high (the release of neuro transmitters and endorphins) that promote the feelings of well being along with a cerebral high that is accompanied by feelings of accomplishment. Whenever I’m eating better, there is a rapid elimination of the negative physical feelings associated with a poor diet and a similar cerebral high that comes from making better food choices. The discipline high comes from this cerebral feeling and it reflects the sense of accomplishment that following through on your desire to make a positive change in your life creates. Given my tendency to seek pleasure or avoid pain, I must be getting something out of the strict diet if I’m to follow it. I believe that the discipline high is the pleasure that allows me to continue the pain (not eating whatever I like).

I have thought a lot about the discipline high since we spoke about it and when I read JoLynn’s daily Motivation: Creating Healthy Eating Habits post it hit on me that not everyone will experience it from following a strict diet. Maybe it is a learned behavior and the lucky one’s learned how to experience it when they were younger.

It isn’t clear to me if I am gaining more than I am giving up when I will myself to eat appropriately. What is clear is that I get enough out of it to keep doing it and the longer I do it, the easier it is to find that reward in the experience.

“Where Are You Really From?”

When I started reading Where are you really from? Asian Americans and the perpetual foreigner syndrome by Frank H. Wu I was shocked because I hadn’t realized that it was offensive to ask someone about their heritage.

“Where are you from?” is a question I like answering.

“Where are you really from?” is a question I really hate answering.

“Where are you from?” is a question we all routinely ask one another upon meeting a new person.

“Where are you really from?” is a question some of us tend to ask others of us very selectively.

For Asian Americans, the questions frequently come paired like that. Among ourselves, we can even joke nervously about how they just about define the Asian American experience. More than anything else that unifies us, everyone with an Asian face who lives in America is afflicted by the perpetual foreigners syndrome. We are figuratively and even literally returned to Asia and ejected from America.

Often the inquisitor reacts as if I am being silly if I reply, “I was born in Cleveland, and I grew up in Detroit,” or bored by a detailed chronology of my many moves around the country: “Years ago, I went to college in Baltimore; I used to practice law in San Francisco; and now I live in Washington, DC.”

Sometimes she reacts as if I am obstreperous if I return the question, “And where are you really from?”

But as I read on, it dawned on me that it isn’t offensive to ask that. What is offensive is to assume that just because someone doesn’t look like you they do not share the same citizenship as you or that they aren’t more Canadian or American (or British, or whatever) than you are; by more I mean having actually been born in the country. There are a lot of Canadians of Asian decent who have lived in Canada longer than I have.

Post Work Out Nutrition – The Window Of Opportunity

If you are going to the gym or training at all, you should be paying particular attention to what you eat immediately following your workouts because this is the most important time for muscle recovery. After 40 minutes of intense exercise, the body’s initial response to the introduction of sugar is to replenish muscle glycogen and start protein synthesis for muscle repair and not an increase in fat storage which is the non-exercise response. If you can consume the right combination of sugar and protein in water within 30 minutes of ending your workout, you will capitalize on this tendency.

After reading and trying what the author’s online in the following articles I noticed a dramatic increase in my recovery ability in both the gym and on the bike trails. I highly recommend carbohydrate and protein shakes after every workout.

The Window Of Opportunity
The Window of Opportunity—Layman’s Version (Non-Technical)

Reducing Catabolic Hormones

All body builders have a sworn mortal enemy—cortisol. This hormone acts to breakdown muscle tissue, and creates a catabolic environment, contrary to growth.

The most effective way to decrease these catabolic hormones is:

  • To consume an easily digested carbohydrate
  • Stack it with an easily digested source of protein

Protein Synthesis and Degradation

Skeletal muscle protein synthesis can be defined as the formation of whole muscle proteins, from individual amino acids.

Protein degradation can be defined as the breakdown of proteins, into individual amino acids and peptides.

Muscle growth is ultimately the difference between protein degradation and protein synthesis. Therefore, we want to both minimize protein degradation, and maximize protein synthesis.

Consuming protein is generally responsible for enhancing protein synthesis; while carbohydrates play an intricate role in decreasing protein degradation. The role carbohydrates play in protein synthesis is in debate. However, it appears that when easily digested carbohydrates are accompanied with proteins, the enhanced effect from these nutrients increases muscle growth.

Fake It Till You Make It

I was getting caught up with Suzanne last week and one of the topics that came up with the whole “fake it till you make it” approach to life – just do the things that someone who is what you want to be does and eventually you’ll find yourself being one of those people.

From a practical point of view, I like this approach because I tend to just jump right into things once I decide to do them. I won’t spend much time learning the back ground and theory until I can see the value of knowing them because knowing these things before I start doing something has rarely helped me in the past. I need to be immersed in the experience and work hands on prime my brain for working with experience. This is the only way to decide it you like something enough to try it again. Often it will turn out that we didn’t really want to be something we thought we did.

When you’re doing something, even just pretending to be something you may not be, you will most likely be surrounded by other people who are doing the same thing. This is a great opportunity for you to learn how to be more like something. Take bike racing as an example. Good racers do a bunch of things differently than most riders because they’ve learned how to get more out of their bodies on race day. Surrounding yourself with these people is going to teach you a lot of what you have to do to be successful “bike racer”.

Faking it does actually allow you to tap into your intention. If you really want to be something, why not just be it? It is the doing that makes the difference. Knowing a lot about a bike is very different from racing a bike. If you want to be a bike mechanic, learn about bikes. If you want to be a bike racer, race bikes. When you get right down to it, the only thing you need to do to be a bike racer is to race a bike. This approach answers the philosophical question “what does it mean to be something?”

The catchall is that even if you don’t become one of them you get to do the things you wanted to do and that isn’t so bad.