Author: newstasis_waavrk

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.

10 Things That Will Make You A Better Mountain Bike Racer

I love to race. It was tough at the beginning because I tried to beat other people. Once I realized that I couldn’t go any faster than I was able, it began to make a little more sense. If you are new to racing, you may find this “10 Things That Will Make You A Better Mountain Bike Racer” helpful.

Training:

  • 1) Practice fixing a flat – You won’t need to do it very often, but when you do, you’ll be glad you know how. The best practice is to switch your tires – move your front tire to the back wheel and you’re back tire to the front wheel or buy a different set of tires and switch them on. Make sure you have plastic tire irons and new tubes. When you practice be sure you run your fingers along the inside of the tire to check for protrusions that would have caused a real flat. Try to make it an automatic process because when it happens during a race, don’t assume that you’ll be able to think clearly because your heart rate will be elevated. Considering hydrating during this time.
  • 2) Train all types of terrain – hills, rocks, single / double track, if you’ll be riding it race day, make sure you know how to ride it.
  • 3) Dedicate training time to hill climbing – probably the biggest bang for your training buck right here. If your races are 60 minutes, train hill climbing for 60 minutes once a week. Find a hill and just ride up and down focusing on seated spinning and standing climb. Mix it up because you’ll be using both during any race. Hills end 50 meters AFTER they level off so continue climbing effort until you find your top speed and then recover.
  • 4) Learn how to identify when your thinking abilities are being impaired by the intensity of your work. Racing effectively and safely demands that you keep your wits about you. There are countless studies demonstrating the relationship between elevated heart rate and cognitive impairments. Rates of between 160-170 are associated with tunnel vision, impaired judgment, and an inability to think logically and rationally. You need to learn how to avoid this, or at least, gain the ability to remain aware that your thinking is impaired. What seems like a good pass at 165 may actually have been a concussions.

For race day:

  • 5) Make sure your cables will make it through the race. Losing rear derailer function or rear breaks makes for a tough race. Cables wear out, change them before they break. Change damaged cable housing while your at it.
  • 6) Make sure your gears are tuned up. “Grind it till your find it” is what happens race day. I know this because I only see broken chains on race day. Bring it to the shop if you don’t know how to do it yourself. You want crisp and precise gear changes. You need it to stay in gear until you change it.
  • 7) Race with an empty stomach or one containing liquid only. Until you find what works for you, try not to over eat. I need to avoid fat as much as possible because it takes me longer to digest it. I eat mostly low GI carbs and whey protein powder before races. These things clear my stomach quickly and if I need to get sick, they come up pretty effortlessly and without that burning acid.
  • 8) Be well hydrated but freshly peed right before the race begins.

During the race:

  • 9) Try to keep your heart rate in an effective range. Everyone has a sweet spot, a level of exertion that is their best. Try to find this as early in the race as you can and hold it. Your goal is to be close to spend at the end. A heart rate monitor will be very helpful to you here.
  • 10) Assume that all of the other racers have tunnel vision from an elevated heart rate. State your intentions of other riders and, if they won’t call you round to pass, don’t yell back at them when they call you on your aggressive riding. They are tired and not thinking clearly so if you scared them, they are going to call you an a-hole. Most people will do what you tell them because they don’t want you behind them. If you hear a rider approaching you and you want them to pass, tell them when and point to the opening you are giving them. If someone lets you by, say thank you.

Get Off The Hedonic Treadmill – See Your Friends Regularly

The post A Mercedes Benz or a best friend? Hmmm…. by Colin Beavan has very little to do with Colin’s blog, I grabbed onto it because of his question “who doesn’t feel a tension between the time it takes to sustain their personal relationships and the time it takes to “get ahead”?” as he relates it to the hedonic treadmill theory.

When I was driven by a lust for money I figured that I was putting my relationships on hold temporarily and would, as a result of getting ahead, have enough money to free up the time to work on them later. It is equal parts brilliant and ridiculous. Brilliant for the few people that are able to make this approach work for them and retire young and ridiculous for the rest of us who work out our lives in vain sacrifice. But we do it because we have learned that this is how it works.

At some point my mind became aware of what I was doing and I started to consider my role in the whole thing. I made some changes after I considered what I want out of life and am now actively doing the things that I need to do.

I think that is a part of what Colin is getting at. Having become aware of the experience of not seeing his best friend, he’s seen the relationship between working hard as measured by sacrificing personal relationships and getting ahead as measured by job, creative and academic successes. One has the immediate known reward of seeing the people you like while the other has a delayed unknown reward of whatever achieving these successes will bring you. This reminded me of shortcut one from Happiness Is A Choice – make happiness a priority.

With regards to finally getting to hang out with his best friend, Colin says

Yesterday, at last, Tanner and I debriefed about our marriages, our work, people we know in common, hot chicks we saw on the street, the first coffee I was having in three weeks (social exception from the local food rule), movie stars, our therapists, computers, and politics. I felt, after all that time without each other, like a dry sponge soaking up water.

Sounds like they had fun and, for an afternoon at least, they both got off the treadmill.

Do You Know Art When You See It? Bouncy Balls: The Sony Bravia Commercial

About a month ago Des had some people over to play guitar. As is the case with most of these evenings everyone sits around chatting and getting caught-up before we play a lick. And we usually have a few drinks.

The TV was on in the back ground and something like Media Television was doing a special on recent commercials that were worth watching. When the segment featuring the Sony Bravia commercial with the superballs bunching down a couple of San Francisco Streets everyone in the room stopped talking. The commercial features José González’s song Heartbeats, a moving acoustic guitar gem, and 250000 brightly colored superballs. The show played the extended version of the commercial which is about 2:02 long and only referenced the product during the last 10 seconds.

Like I said, we were speechless. It is a beautiful way to spend 2 minutes of your life and a couple of things stood out about the experience.

Watching it, everyone knew there was something different or important about it. Visually, we had never seen anything like it before in my life. The balls looked like they were swarming and had a collective consciousness that directed their movement. The shadows that the balls threw to the ground added to the overwhelling visual stimulation. This was a brand new visual experience and I think everyone gained a huge insite into some of the untaped power that our eyes hold.

Listening to it I realized that Heartbeats was one of the songs that I had on my mp3 player during my trip to the east coast last summer and I had listen to it a lot. But I had never heard it in the context of passive stimulation before, always when I was riding my bike. When it was paired with what was happening on the screen, I appreciated the lyrics for their beauty and for the feelings they are attempting to capture.

It was such a collectively moving experience that I concluded that it must have been art. I’m not sure if you’ll agree, but I’m pretty certain that you’ll enjoy the commercial.

For more information about the commercial and how it was made, visit the Bouncy Balls: The BRAVIA Commercial site.

NOTE: the video does take a while to load depending upon your internet speed.

Are Lifters On Their Way Out Of Fitness Clubs?

I really like lifting weights and building mass. It’s a lot of fun and I like having a nice body. The experience of building muscle is fantastic because it looks and feels good, it makes doing physical things easier and it gives you a huge lesson in body awareness. I’m going to stick with building muscle.

But I’m also a cycling instructor. Riding an indoor bike is an athletic activity, like running fast on a tread mill, but it isn’t a mass building activity. In fact, of the 6 different fitness classes that are offered at our gym, only one of them is geared towards mass building. And there is very little cross over between the fitness class participant members and the mass building members. I’m one of the rare members who participates in both weight lifting for mass and group exercise. But I’ll do whatever is put in front of me to do. And that brings us to cardio equipment.

There is a third type of exercise that people come to the gym for and that it cardiovascular exercise. This is the middle ground between lifting and Group Ex. Many lifters and Group Exers use the cardio equipment to burn extra calories. Some people actually use it as cardio equipment, working at high enough intensities to dramatically improve their cardiovascular health.

So of these three types of members, lifters, group exers and cardio freaks, what drives the bottom line of a gym? Well, moving forward I think it is going to be group fitness and here is why:

Lifters are always lifters. There are a few people who turn to the plates later in life. It’s a lifestyle if you want to make it work and most people don’t get that much out of it to start doing it when they’re any older than their 20’s. This group more or less stays the same size and grows or shrinks based on the number of people who are in the lifting age range. The point is, don’t count on there being a big increase in the number of lifting only members at your gym. The good news is they cost very little to keep once the initial over head has been laid out. Their retention depends more on the initial cash outlay for equipment than anything else. Keep the equipment working and leave them be.The cardio only people are the same way. Buy enough good equipment when you open your club and you won’t have to worry about this group. Cardio only people train themselves and they keep to themselves. Their numbers are dependent upon the age of the population.

This leaves Group Ex. Group Ex is where you need to focus your effort because it entices members who need more than just the equipment to perform a workout, it grabs them because Group Ex provides the motivation and education to help members get their workout. Along with helping to get people involved, Group Ex makes it fun. It adds enjoyment to an otherwise joyless experience which will help to ensure participant retention. Since the classes are very effective at building fitness, making them fun is going to improve your bottom line.

Group Ex will open your gym up to a much larger audience than the traditional group of users, thus driving your bottom line.

The beauty of it for a gym owner is that there is very little overhead associated with group exercise. The initially start-up costs are marginal in comparison to resistance training or cardio equipment. Operating costs are also low when compared to cardio and only slightly larger than resistance training costs.

The only cost that group exercise has that the others do not is the cost of the instructor. This is were you are going to need to invest the most effort to ensure that you maximize the growth potential of the group exercise market. Good instructors will facilitate exceptional experiences for participants, turning them into vocal advocates for the classes. They generate really positive word of mouth opinion about your club.

I compare instructors to personal trainers because both serve a very similar role and appeal, to a large extent, to the same type of people, those who need social accountability or external motivation in order to engage in fitness activities. Group Ex is going to do to that fitness studio what personal training has done to your lifting section, turn it into a money maker.

What Is The Best Workout For People Over 40?

Bodybuilding.com asks the question what Is The Best Workout For People Over 40? and their members reply.

Blink41 wins a $75 store credit with is workout and nutritional recommendations, but it’s conciseness is worth more than that.

The older you get, the weaker your body becomes. An adult over age 40 should start to experience a decrease in muscle size, strength and recovery time. Bones becomes increasingly more fragile and more prone for injury.

Testosterone levels begin to decrease and the ability to build quality muscle decreases greatly. Joints begin to ache after a hard days work. However, there is an easy way to slow this aging process down. Simply follow a good diet with a good routine and you can slow down this decay on your body.

The Workout:

* Monday: Chest / Triceps
* Tuesday: Rest
* Wednesday: Back / Biceps
* Thursday: Rest
* Friday: Shoulder / Traps
* Saturday: Rest
* Sunday: Thigh / Calves / Abs

Do 5 minutes of light cardio before workouts to get the blood flowing through the body. Do 30 minute of moderate intensity cardio after workouts. Be sure to stretch before and after workouts. Allow 2 to 3 minute rest periods between each set.