Category: Becoming More Active

This category covers things that relate to increasing the amount of physical movement that a person does. We are a mobile species and movement plans a big role in helping us regulate our bodies, our brains, our mood, and our spirit. It can include things about exercise programs, exercise movements, or general mobility such as walking, picking things up, or the activities that make-up our jobs and recreational life.

On Instructing Well

It turns out that I have been teaching a good cycling class for a long time. I haven’t really been sure if I’ll be able to do it in the hours leading up to the start of class, but each week the right words seem to flow out of me; and for this I am grateful. I have taught for more than 5 years and been on stage for 500 or 600 times, spend 1000’s of hours practicing and am moving towards being an expert.

Something odd was happening though, I was getting better and better, participants were saying that they really enjoyed my classes, but it was never clear to me why they were. I always thought it was because I would work hard and deliver a high energy performance. This is part of it, but it isn’t the entire thing – and I’m not sure it is very much of it now. I posted the following to facebook this morning:

If you anchor the feelings of athletic performance, accomplishment, fun and success to your class participants they will fall in love with your classes, your performance and their Group Exercise enrollment. Get them to feel their heart beating faster, the pain in their muscles as they grow stronger. Have them hear their quickened breath and the sound of the room gasping for air. Ask them to look are their hands, arms, legs and the other members of the class to see the sweat and glow of extraordinary effort. Coach them to notice what their highest moment looks, sounds and feels like and start being their most powerful inner voice.

THAT is why I am getting better. My classes remind people of just how great their bodies can make them feel when they are training. I take them on a physical journey that connects many of the things that are what it means to be truly alive – hard work, passion, intensity, fun, crushing limitations, creating and being new possibilities, love of life and existence in the moment – and anchor these to the room, the bikes, and the experience that is a class.

Life gets clearer, a little bit each day!

Changes To Eating For Fatloss Optimal Health

The approach to eating is very simple and it doesn’t require that you change much about the way you eat. In fact, you’ll probably like it get because I ask you to eat more and change a few things about the way you currently eat.

Knowledge, Nutrition, Protein, Timing, Hydration, Recovery

Step one – keep a detailed food journal for 7 days. It should include the time of each feeding, what the meal consisted of, the number of hours of sleep you get each night and the amount and type of fluids you drink.

The purpose of this is to give you and your coach a good idea of what you are eating and your eating habits.

Step two – eat 3 green leafy salads each day before your larger meals. This will be made up of LOTS of dark green vegetables such as spinach, green and red leaf lettuce, asparagus, broccoli along with other garden vegetables like mushrooms, peppers, celery, etc… Avoid carrots and other root vegetables and corn and other field vegetables. Eat these salads at least 15 minutes before you eat your meal along with a 1-2 glasses of water.

The purpose of this is to make sure you are getting sufficient vitamins and nutrients in your diet as poor nutrition is NOT just about eating the wrong things and is often about not eating some of the right things. Also, the vegetables and water before your meal will decrease the amount of food that you eat.

Step three – eat more protein at each feeding – around 0.65-1 gram per pound of body weight each day.

The purpose of eating more protein stems from the fact that protein is used in almost every body process, it requires more energy to process, and it supplies very little energy to the body.

Step four – eat smaller meals every 2.5-3 hours.

The purpose of eating small meals more consistently is to supply your body with nutrient and energy BEFORE the body runs out of them as this promotes fat metabolism.

Step five – drink 2-4 liters of water per day and more when you are exercising / sweating.

The purpose of drinking this much water is that it is somewhat filling and it helps the body function at an optimal level.

Step six – reduce the amount of stress you experience and get sufficient amounts of deep sleep each night.

The purpose of reducing stress and getting enough sleep each night is that they allow the body to recover more completely as stress impairs recovery and a lack of sleep is very stressful to the body.

That’s it, that is all there is to it. I have come up with this approach through years of working with hundreds of people and seeing / hearing most of them claim that it is too hard to eat for optimal health. While I haven’t found this to be the case, the fact remains that many do so the approach needed to change. Frankly, it someone has a tough time eating a few salads before they eat their normal food they don’t really want to change. The same goes for not eating a little more protein and eating more consistently throughout the day.  If these things seem like too much work are you really all that unhappy with the way you look and feel?

Our Generations Wake-up Call

It may be time for many in our generation to read the writing on the wall. The recent winds of change have blown away a lot of the haze for so many of us revealing one fact that creates two possibilities.

Fact:

Each one of us will die.

The possibilities:

Accepted that your life is for living and navigating the world as an opened-minded Adult, with an child-like curiosity and joy. Realize that your past has taught you many skills but not necessarily the need to shamelessly and compassionately apply them.

Or continue to wait for something before you begin to engage your world. Be it a degree, children, for children to be older, the perfect body, the cosmetic surgery, an apology or forgiveness, the ideal job, the right person to come along, any partner to come along,… it could be any number of things that simply kick living down the road a little longer.

If you are continuing to wait remember there is always going to be a reason for your life to stay exactly as it is. It isn’t the reason you are giving though, it is the person who is making the excuse.

Now High Risk For Cancer

Des let me know that he and I are now a high risk of developing cancer given that our dad and our grandmother on our moms side got it. I haven’t really thought about cancer in those terms before.

From a purely statistical point of view, up until December, my actions had a much bigger impact onto my future with the disease than anything else. For all intents and purposes my body was the same as any other low risk body in terms of fighting off mutations that become disease – if diet, exercise, stress and sleep needs were balanced the potential for life was not handicapped by anything.

That isn’t the same anymore. It is now evident that written into my DNA is a lower finite potential to correct cell replication errors. The fact that my grand mother smoked has nothing to do with how you interpret the statistics because she ended up getting cancer. And on its own, my dad’s brain tumor is random and has an much consequence on my mom’s chances for cancer as it does on Des or me. But when both sides of the family are paired together there is a significant statistical relationship worth considering.

Dealing with an increased risk for something means creating an environment that is NOT conducive to it being there. With cancer there are two things to do, the first is avoid things that cause cancer – keep away from chemicals and stuff that is burning. The second is to do things that promote a healthy immune system, the most effective cancer defense you have.

Below is a list of some of the things I can do to help my body stay sharp and stop disease:

  • Eat more leafy green vegetables and more plants in general. They help with reducing the acidity of the body which can help reduce inflammation and lower physiological stress. They also provide antioxidants which help clear the waste associated with metabolic functioning.
  • Consider supplementing with some plant based vitamins. The bio-availability of the nutrients may be higher than for those made from raw earth. The is a link however between increased vitamin supplementation and some cancers, so be cautions and consider eating whole food as the preferred source of nutrients.
  • Lower sugar consumption to reduce insulin secretion. Insulin is a critical and nontoxic hormone when present in the body for short periods of time. Insulin secretion is a sign that something has gone wrong (we’ve eaten too much). The less it is around, the better for over all health.
  • Stop inhaling things that aren’t good for me, be it smoke, the fumes from cutting wood or plastic, the pieces of insulation that break off when I’m making panels, the disinfectant spray at the gym.
  • Eat more diverse types of protein and as much from wild sources as possible.
  • Reduce stress in all areas of life. Create a budget and save a fixed amount of money each week.
  • Restore a normal social life that gives me a variety of opinions and personalities. Close off any open loops in terms of grudges or crap that isn’t going the way I need it to.
  • Stop judging myself for my past actions and present thoughts. There was no malice in them, and I’m as susceptible to the fundamental attribution error as anyone else.
  • Update my goals to reflect the needed changes in my life in order to live to as close to my life expectancy as possible. Change my behavior to move me towards these goals.
  • Treat myself with as much respect as I treat other people and this means approaching everything with win:win or no deal. This may mean less short term gain, but it will come with less long term pain. The sadness of a relationship ending before it gets off the ground is a small price to pay for avoiding the enormous heart ache that seems to come from ending all of my relationships that last longer than a few months.
  • Balance my training to make sure all areas of wellness are being addressed – cardiovascular functioning, strength, flexibility, join mobility, and spiritual health.
  • Surround myself with people who are able to love compassionately and unconditionally; this also means learning these skills myself. This is a big one, stress is a major contributor to disease and illness and social interaction is a great way to relieve stress and feel connected to others and therefore the universe. Social interaction serves not to transfer the stress, but to allow for the healthy emptying of whatever is on the mind.
  • EVERYTHING I do is a choice so when I say that I can’t change something I am lying to myself. I will be sad about loss, but I do not have to feel that loss non-stop. It is fine to table dealing with parts of it until I’m in an environment were it has less impact on others.
  • Start to see yourself as someone of worth and value who SHOULD live a long time. More over, start to do the things that PROVE to me that I have worth and pay more attention to the Adults who are engaging me about my talents. After Natalie died I wanted to be dead but wasn’t going to actively end my life. It’s a paradox in this world, but legal enough are the things that you can consume that will kill slowly – smoking, drinking, low quality food, raves in condemned warehouses, and a “woes me” attitude. I don’t want to die sooner than I have to, so taking the action to eliminate these types of things from my life will go a long way at helping me achieve my life potential.
  • Cheer-up, let go of the nonsense and go with the flow. I can steer myself along the river, but I can’t paddle upstream back into my past. What’s done is done. Be grateful for having had the chance to do your best with it.

The future is coming, and I will pay for my past when it arrives. What damage was done, IS done and now get round to reducing it by restoring the loving relationship with myself. I have to care because I haven’t cared for a while, and that attitude shows in my actions, my thoughts and my essence.

Running, Eccentric, Exploring

I went for a 20 minute run yesterday, it was the first run of the year. Although my heart rate never went about 70% my breathing was fast and my legs got tired. It’s hard work!

With cycling having been my primary training activity for the last number of years my body isn’t used to the impact of running. With cycling, there isn’t much of an eccentric muscle contraction involved. If done correctly your leg muscles will perform nothing but concentric movements. The goal is to shorten under load and that is possible while riding a bike. With running you add in lengthening under load as each step sees you catch, slow down and propel the weight of the body. I must have done 3000 single leg eccentric movements, which is why my quads felt a lot like coal when I finished and for most of the day. Today they feel like I did a bunch of squats.

The person I was running with commented about the lack of efficiency in the way I run and also commented about the path I take. I bounce. I bounce normally when I walk and even when I’m standing in one spot. My center of gravity is always moving up and down or side to side. When I was running it was obvious that this is happening. Not sure how much energy this burns, but it’s at least 25% more effort than it needs to be.

The path I run is ADD. I couldn’t focus on running because I wanted to run everywhere. Off the rocks, over fences, up the retaining wall, over benches, whatever wasn’t in the way I was putting in the way. When I hike I try to do the same thing. Find things to jump off or onto making a game out of whatever there is to play with. It feels good to move creatively and athletically about the earth and it makes as much sense to do this as it does to run for 20 minutes. Running everywhere at once did blunt some of the physical nagging that I find with running – I find it tough to forget that I’m running and it has never been a zen or flow inducing activity. Maybe that might change.

After 20 minutes I was done, they continued to run. As I watched them leave it was clear that there is purpose in their running style. It’s flat and shuffling. From the back, the head and hips don’t bounce much, from the side you see legs moving beneath a stable torso and mildly swinging arms. It’s efficient and very clear why people don’t bounce marathons.

Hamstrings – Cyclist Do Not Neglect Them

The one piece of advice I would give to someone concerning strength training and cycling would be to learn how to fire the hamstrings correctly and to train them to be as strong as possible. The reason for this is because the back side mechanics of an effective cycling stroke is not an intuitive or practiced motion like the quad dominated front portion. The role of the hamstring is also very complex in that it needs to contract isometrically to add tension for knee stability, then contract concentrically to aid in both hip extension and knee flexion. There’s a lot going there and it can take a while to make the whole thing feel normal and powerful.

Step One – Feel them working while you are on the bike. There is nothing like an indoor bike when it comes to discovering your hamstrings. Set the bike up as normal, clip in or strap yourself to the pedals and ride for 5 minutes to warm-up the body. Once you are ready to work, release one of your legs and put the free foot on the cross bar just above the crank. Correct your posture, engage your abs and start pedaling paying particular attention to your crank speed. You want to feel like you are powering the entire time vs. just as you press down at the top. It may be helpful to think about making a “J” shape with the ball of your foot from 5 o’clock to 9 o’clock (as the foot moves down, back and up). It will be a lot easier to feel them working if your core is tight and you are stable on the saddle. Do this for a few minutes then switch to the other leg. After 2 or 3 sets of 2-3 minutes, clip in with both feet and focus on making the speed more even. Do this 2-3 times per week for 4-6 weeks and you’ll notice a huge improvement in your power output.

Step Two – You need to train your hamstrings be strong during the isometric and concentric phase of hip extension and strong during the concentric phase of knee flexion. They are mostly isolated when they are trained as knee flexors, so keep the rep range here between 6-12 and focus on a quick concentric contraction. When they are trained as hip extensors (stiff leg / Romain dead lifts, good mornings, back extension, kettle bell swings, battle ropes) the contraction should be quick and the rep range should be higher between 10-25. When they are trained eccentrically (glute ham raises) the lengthening motion should be between 4-8 seconds and the rep range between 4-8.

Step Three – You need to understand how and when the hamstrings generate the most power and work with that. Given that the hamstrings play a key role for knee stability with sprinting they tend to be made up of a high percentage of fast twitch fiber. They are also not very active as we break inertia – meaning we get very little out of them in terms of force production with slow concentric contractions. However, as they begin to contract more quickly, they start to contribute more output. So, as with training, when you are on the bike you need to contract them as quickly as possible and this is only going to happen when you are cranking at a minimum RPM – about 65-70. At this speed, your legs are moving quickly enough for the hamstrings to contract with sufficient speed to drive considerable force to the pedals. Anything slower than this and they lose much of their efficiency and output.

Once you have become proficient at recruiting the hamstrings with the pedal stroke, you may find that your riding improves by switching focus from the quads to the hamstrings, particularly after cresting a hill, accelerating and sitting in the saddle as your quads tend to be more active during standing hill climbs and they will benefit from the recovery that a shift in work onto the hamstrings brings.

Regardless of what you do with the new awareness, your riding will improve dramatically once you begin to use your hamstrings when you cycling, and your performance will improve dramatically once you start to train your hamstrings with the specific goal of getting stronger.

Changing Your Life – Do Something Small

There’s no safe or effective way to wipe the slate clean and begin again. And, frankly, you wouldn’t want to. Do you really what to repeat all of the lessons life has given you? Do you have any reason to believe that you would do anything differently if you were to start over without holding onto the lessons of the first time round?

So, you want to change your life for the better. Great, below is a list of things that you can do that will improve the quality of your life. Copy the list onto a sheet of paper and a few times throughout the day do a couple of things. Keep the rest of your life the same. Basically, leave your life as it is but add in a few good habits. Add items to the list as you think of them.

  • Drink a glass of water
  • Eat a piece of fruit
  • Eat a green leafy salad
  • Give someone a heart felt compliment
  • Talk to someone without using “I” or “me” for 5 minutes
  • Hold a door for someone who really needs it held for them
  • Brush or floss your teeth
  • Use moisturizing cream on your face and hands
  • Turn off a light that doesn’t need to be on
  • Take 3 deep breaths
  • Listen instead of waiting for your turn to talk
  • Write down your goals
  • Try to remember the last 3 things you learned that made your life better
  • Leave for work, school, etc… 15 minutes early
  • Read 5 pages of a book
  • Write and mail someone a letter
  • Make your bed, do some dishes, tidy your house
  • Wash your hands
  • Smile
  • Call a parent, sibling or friend who you haven’t talked to in a while
  • Think of 3 reasons why you are grateful
  • Garden, cut the grass, water the flowers, do some yard work
  • Go for a walk or a hike
  • Spend some time with children
  • Go to a toy store, release yourself from the fear of judgment and play with some toys
  • Sing or dance
  • Skip the social media and have a real conversation with someone
  • Recycle some garbage
  • Pick up some trash
  • Observe some of the lies you tell yourself
  • Take a dog for a walk and let them lead you
  • Simplify your life by eliminating from it something that you don’t need
  • Write something
  • Make a To Do list
  • Clear off an item from your To Do list
  • Clean your kitchen, bed room, car, living room or do some laundry

The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you are doing something. Improving your life requires action and often, any action will do. We all has stuff that would make us feel better or that is on our minds that we’d benefit from completing. If you want to feel better, close off some of these loops, but basically, just do SOMETHING!

Those Who Do And Everyone Else

Part of what I miss most about working for SST is that most of the athletes who came in to train came in to train their asses off. I don’t see this as much in the commercial gym I am presently working at. I would estimate that about 75% of the members – even those who are training with trainers – have very little desire to achieve much of anything while at the gym.

Don’t get me wrong, I try to beat the living hell out of my clients. Some of them respond by pushing harder than I ask and some work as hard as they are going to regardless of my efforts to interrupt their mediocrity. But those who respond would be working hard for ANYONE – I’m not special, I know more than most trainers but I have yet to be able to figure-out how to make someone work who is unconsciously satisfied with being average.

Now, there are similarities between those who work and those who show-up. Most of those who work hard have jobs that require a lot of independent work – VP’s for large banks / vendors, self-employed, independent or franchise business owners – or are young and working towards something. Those who show-up tend to have jobs that they don’t really like, work for people they don’t particularly like, and present excuses for not doing the things I ask as opposed to simply saying “I made the decision to drink on Saturday night.”

I suppose this is the psychology of fitness and optimal health. At SST I was engaging individuals who were working towards high level competition or with young people who had never enjoyed the slack life that full time employment can offer. At commercial gyms I’m working with those who have tasted the good life – the distractions / indulgences that money can buy – and have found returning to the simple life to be too challenging. It’s sad really, relaxing, eating and slothing away life is easier than grinding away at a mostly pointless activity that leads you to optimal health but moves you further away from passive enjoyment.

I fear for the future of many people on the planet. Most of the people I see and engage are, at least, coming to a gym and of these, 75% of them are not working very hard. I cannot comment for those who do not come to the gym but I’d be willing to guess that 95% of them are doing nothing to make their lives better other than changing their perspective so that those who actually do something are seen as fitness freaks and those who don’t are seen as the norm

Industry Sanctioned Laziness

I had a consultation with a 40 something lady yesterday. She was interested in personal training because she has found that her weight loss is very slow since she joined the gym about three months ago in spite of her coming in and working out 4-5 times per week.

I took my normal approach with her – which is to assume she is missing one or two critical pieces of information that are preventing her from being successful – and didn’t try to sell her. This approach is effective for me because a lot of people don’t need or want training, they just need a little wisdom or a slight change in behaviour. This lady was no exception.

The first 45 minutes focused on nutrition. Hers is fairly good. The only real issue is that she is eating a considerable amount of carbs with the mistaken belief that just because they were organic they would help her improve her body composition. I let her know that the body doesn’t know or care where the food comes from – it’s going to treat organic carbs in basically the same way it will treat conventional carbs – as one or two steps away from being sugar.

The final 15 minutes focused on her exercise routine. She is making a number of mistakes here but two that are dramatically impacting her performance. The first is that she doesn’t record the weights she is using and as a consequence has only added about 10 lbs to any of the lifts she is performing. 10 lbs in 3 months is fine if you are dead lifting or squatting 400 lbs but when your numbers are 80 lbs on leg press and you have no injuries, 10 lbs in 3 months doesn’t cut it – particularly for a beginner. So I told her to keep a record of the weights she is using to make sure they are progressing upwards.

The other mistake she is making is a lack of intensity on the cardio movements. When she started, she would work until she was out of breath, sweating and tired. But early on, someone showed her how to use the machines “correctly” for weight loss and she started working in the fat burning zone (I’ve written about this bs before). This basically means you try to keep your heart rate around 60-65% of its max. So, for the last 2 months she has been avoiding working hard because of the mistaken notion that the fat burning zone is the way to go for fat loss. I corrected her on this notion and encouraged her to work as hard as she can or as hard as she did initially and to consider some high intensity intervals. She was pissed off that she had wasted the last few months just coasting along doing effectively nothing because she was more than willing to work hard – in fact, she was working hard until someone showed her the “right” way to do it.

Why this “fat burning zone” stuff continues in the fitness industry doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who spends a few minutes doing some research will quickly learn that what matters is the amount of energy you burn and not where that energy comes from. All things being equal, working harder is better for the fat loss and conditioning than working with a lower intensity. If you can work at 80% you should work at 80%. The fact that fewer of the calories will be coming from fat isn’t all that important as the body will use stored fat to help replace any deficit in energy that results from the high intensity movement.

Riding With Elite Riders

On Sunday I went to Albion Hills to do some riding. I rode with a few guys I’ve known for a while and one guy I have never met before named John, who rode a single speed with no shocks. It was a great ride and it’s the hardest I have worked in years.

John is one of these guys whose physiology is ideal for bike racing. He beat me at everything which is unusual. I worked hard to keep up and when we stopped to wait for the other guys, I was always winded while he just seemed to be breathing normally. I asked him about this and he told me that when he was last measured his max heart rate was 216 – which he has gotten his heart to. He is able to maintain a HR of 185 for extended periods of time and it recovers really quickly when he slows down. Compared to my numbers of 174 – the highest my HR has been in years – and my ability to sustain work at 157 and it’s clear why I was left trying to stick to his tire for the draft.

I asked him how his numbers compared to other people and he admitted that his cardiovascular system is in a league of its own – he’s in the same range as top professional cyclist. Being 10 years younger than me, the fact that I didn’t die trying to keep up with him was both lucky and a sign that my training is moving me in the right direction.

What I liked most about the ride is that it was a pissing match. He knew I wanted to beat him and he was pretty vocal each time he passed me, which only served to fire me up even more. It was good natured and it brought up my riding to a level I haven’t seen in years if ever. I’m not sure if he was being nice but he did make a few comments that it was good to finally have someone stick with him, but then he pulled away again so I’m not 100% sure he wasn’t mocking me.

Hopefully I’ll get to ride with them again. The guy who set-up the ride has just started back to cycling after a decade long break and he’s getting better each day. He’s picked the right group to ride with because they are forcing him to get improve much faster than he would if he was doing it on his own and his progress is fantastic; it’s even better considering 8 weeks ago he was still smoking.

The take home lesson – train up if you want to improve; and quit smoking today!