Beauty in the Struggle

"There's beauty in the struggle, ugliness in the success." That's a line from the J. Cole song Love Yours. The line was the ear worm I had this morning when I woke up. I don't know why, I don't remember listening to the song recently. Anyway there it was playing on repeat in my head as I showered this morning. So I started thinking about the line. It's just a play on the various "it's the journey, not the destination" quotes. I'm sure you've heard some version of those quotes but when was the last time you thought about it?

People are all about quick results. "I lifted on Monday and did a HIIT class on Tuesday, I should be #jacked by Friday." We all know that's not how it works but still our expectations get the best of us.

Have you ever had quick success that a) lasted and b) you took a real life lesson from? I would venture to guess that you remember the wins that you had to work for in a lot more detail.

I would also question what you had to do to get your quick success. For instance, I can guarantee that if you only ate one meal of 8oz of boiled chicken and a cup of steamed veggies every day for two weeks that you will lose weight. Your friends and family probably won't want to be around after a couple of days but hey. There's ugliness in the success.

I've listened to tons of interviews of successful athletes and even gamblers. One thing that seems to come up in all of these interviews is that they always remember the losses that helped shaped their careers. Professional poker players can explain bad beats in painstaking detail. Basketball players remember everything from where other players were on the court down to the mechanics of the shot they missed in that big game.

The thing is, even though they remember them, they don't dwell on these losses. They learn from them and then they apply what they learned in other situations. There's beauty in the struggle.

I think this is what separates successful professional athletes (actually successful anythings) from the average joe. First off they finish. Most people start something, then it gets hard and then they stop. Then to make it worst when asked about the experience all they say was that it was hard. Meaning they didn't get anything else out of it that can be used at a later time.

So next time you feel like you're looking for a quick win or you feel like giving up, remember the beauty and lessons are in the struggle and that quick success comes with ugliness in the form of hidden problems.

Your Group Fitness Class Isn't Helping You Lose Fat (pt 2)

Last week I wrote about how most group fitness classes aren't doing the thing most people are going to them to do: fat loss. Check it out here. I won't say that I was bashing group fitness classes but I did point out the limitations group fitness classes face when it comes to fat loss. I've had a few people ask what they should do instead of group fitness classes then. Makes sense since I didn't really give many solutions. So then it makes sense that I should give some solutions now. So that's what I'll do. So I'm going to give 3 suggestions that you can use. Before that though, I'll say that any fat loss strategy is only as good as the way you eat while you're doing it. This is where the phrase "you can't out train a bad diet" comes from.

1. I'm not saying you should forgo group fitness classes forever. If you are a person who likes group fitness classes and you're looking to burn fat, then find a short High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) class. By short I mean 30-45 minutes. If it's a 45 minute class, then about 10 minutes of that should be devoted to warmup/cool down. A shorter class will ensure that you'll be able to reach the (really) high intensities that are needed to burn fat.
2. Start lifting. Or better yet, start lifting heavy. I'm talking about doing compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses and overhead presses. These are big bang for your buck exercises that will help you build muscle. Building more muscle will help you to raise your resting metabolism. This will allow you to burn more fat as you're sitting around doing nothing.

   Let me take a minute to define heavy lifting. To really be lifting heavy you're going to at least know your 5 rep max and even better would be your 1 rep max. Your max is the maximum amount of weight you can lift. A rep max is your max for a given number of reps. So when I'm talking about "lifting heavy", you're going to be at at least 80% of your 1 rep max. (If your max is 100lb, then you'll be using at least 80lbs.) The reps you use will depend on how heavy you go beyond 80%. Generally speaking you're going to be working in the 4-6 rep range.

   When you're lifting heavy, you're form is going to need to be perfect. So you're going to need to take the time to learn how to lift. Find a certified trainer in your area and make the investment to get coached.

3. My final suggestion is go the long slow distance route. This is also known as "traditional" cardio. Go on a run, hit the elliptical or the exercise bike for 30-60 minutes. The trend is definitely towards HIIT but cardio stills works. A good cardio session will burn a lot of calories, with the majority of those calories burned coming from fat.

The three suggestions aren't any in particular order of importance. So in conclusion, let's put these in order. First off, you should be on a lifting program. Your lifting program should cycle between heavier periods and lighter periods (of lifting). So when you're in a heavy cycle you'd be better off adding a couple of days of "traditional" cardio. This will help with recovery. When you're in a light cycle this is when you can go to you're HIIT classes. This is a really basic suggestion of a workout structure. If you want to get more specific, this is where investing in a good trainer will come in handy.

Advice: Giving & Taking

Have you ever given someone the same advice over and over again? I'm talking about they keep asking for your advice and you keep giving it over months and years. Then out of the blue you see the person and they're like, "I was watching Oprah and she gave out some really great advice." It's always Oprah. And the advice is the same advice you've been giving  the person since the beginning of time. If you haven't been in this situation before then I'm super jealous of you. This happens to me all the time. Honestly, I have to hold back from yelling at clients and if I ever meet Oprah we are definitely going to have words.

I was in a little bit of a different situation recently. I had to listen to my client talk about how she always has to give her sister the same advice over and over again. My client was very visually annoyed. The interesting for me was that I was looking at the situation from outside. It forced me to empathize with not only my client but also her sister.

It would've been easy for me to just agree with my client about how annoying the situation can be (have I mentioned how annoying it is?) but I don't think that would've helped her in the long run. I tried to take her sister's side just so she could at least here that perspective. The thing is I got a lot out of it also. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to handle these same situations with clients better.

A thought I came out of the session with was "body blows". Whenever you watch a boxing or MMA match the commentators always mention body blows. They talk about how when body blows are landed it makes it easier to score a knockout with a head shot. So when you're giving the same advice over and over again, you're landing body blows. Then they hear the advice somewhere else and it finally clicks. That's the head shot.

This leads to my other thought that came out of the conversation. People not only have to get the advice at the right time but they also have to get it from the right person. Or maybe the not the wrong person.

My client was talking about her older sister. It's probably hard for an older sibling to accept advice from a younger sibling. (I'm totally speculating here about there relationship.) Or maybe they are too close to each other to give/receive this kind of advice from one another. I think this happens with clients and myself.

Yes it's part of my job to give advice but, especially with long term clients, over time the relationship can/does change. So I think it can be hard for clients to hear and accept advice that's coming from me. This is where Oprah comes in.

Are Customs Stopping Your Progress?

"The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement." - John Stuart Mill

So a few things before I get started. First I don't remember where I got this quote from but I saw it, thought it was good and wrote it down. Also I don't know who John Stuart Mill is but I feel like I should (I would guess something to do with the American Revolution), so if you know help a brother out.

Now that I got that out of the way, I find this to be right on the nose. How many times have you found yourself grabbing for a snack simply because it's snack time? Or have you gone out for drinks just because the rest of the team was going? The list can go on and on.

Customs make life easy. Customs eliminate the need to think. Customs are/have triggers. It's 3pm, 3pm is snack time, grab a snack. What you weren't hungry? Too late, you already ate the snack.

Without customs we would have to sit and think about the pros & cons of every decision that we are making. Customs save us time and energy that could be used at more important times.

For the most part this is a good thing. Until it's not. When you're trying to lose weight 3pm snack time becomes the enemy everyday. It's an enemy that you either have to fight or avoid. In this case avoiding it might mean making it so you can't eat snack; can you move that meeting to 3pm? Fighting it could be being prepared with a "healthy" snack instead of going to the vending machine.

In the case of the bad customs the first step to changing them is recognizing them in the first place. That's the thing about customs though, they're hard to pick out. Remember the point of a custom is to not have to think about them, they're automatic.

So how do we change the bad customs? The first step is you have to take account of your day. This means you have to be able to say what you did during each hour of every day. Give yourself a week to track everything you do throughout each day. After a week you'll start to notice patterns of both good and bad customs.

The next step is to look for the triggers. We already talked about 3pm being the snack trigger but there are other types of triggers. Triggers can be people like that annoying co-worker or situations like happy hour just because it's Friday. Figuring out your triggers will allow you to plan round them.

This leads us to the last step. The last step is used the info you gather from accounting for the week and finding the triggers to make a plan. Your plan should take into account all of the triggers, good and bad, and the flow of your typical day. Try to replace bad triggers with good ones and figure out ways to actively either fight or avoid those bad customs.

Give this a shot. What customs, good or bad, do you notice in your own life. What are you going to do increase the good and decrease the bad?

The Curse Of Choice

I'm in charge of taking GHB, my 3yr old son, to school every Thursday morning. On a good day it's a race against time for me to get showered & dressed, get him fed, bathed and dressed and for us to get out the door on time. Last Thursday, I overslept. I'm not sure what happened but it happened. All the stuff listed above still had to get done but it had to be done in half the time.

The solution to this problem? I started taking away options. I usually let him choose things like what he wants to eat for breakfast and what he wants to wear to school. On this particular morning it was here's your breakfast and this is what you're wearing.

See when he's given options it can add precious minutes to tasks that shouldn't take very long. (To be clear everything with a 3 year old takes longer than it should.) For him options lead questions and distractions.

This is isn't the case for just him. It happens to all of us. We tend to think of having options as a good thing but they can be a hinderance. Particularly when we're presented with too many options.

Like I said options lead to questions, it doesn't matter if you're 3yr old or 30. No one wants to pick the wrong thing. So when you have a bunch of options, now you've got to investigate each one to see which one is the best.

The thing is there usually isn't that much difference between options, especially once you get beyond three or four choices. Most of the time it's more beneficial to limit your options to 2 or 3. Then pick one of those 3 as quickly as possible.

Don't spend too much time trying to figure out the best one. Any benefit of finding the best choice will usually be negated by the time loss trying to make the perfect choice.

This goes for all the choices you have to make, whether it's wardrobe choices like GHB or healthy lifestyle choices like what to eat or what exercise to do.

FREE HOLIDAY WORKOUTS

I've been talking about the holiday season a lot over the past couple of weeks. For good reason. With all the social, professional and family events that get scheduled things can get super stressful. It's when things get super stressful that health and fitness go by the wayside. This doesn't have to be the case.

Before I tell you how to make sure you're not in this situation, let's talk about why it works out this way. Us (modern day) humans are kind of strange in that we err toward complicated solutions for simple problems. We've forgotten about Occam's Razor (the simplest solution is the usually the best; shoutout to Google for the spelling of "Occam").

I've often heard people say "I've got to work out more because I've got all these parties to go to". I'm all for people working out more but this doesn't make any sense. The parties are already taking up more time/energy and you want to combat this by demanding more time/energy of your body. Again it doesn't make any sense.

So what to do? First thing is just make sure you're doing enough. If you've been going to the gym twice/week, make sure you keep going twice a week. This may mean rescheduling gym appointments (by the way, the gym should be a scheduled appointment) or finding different ways to get workouts in outside the gym.

The second thing I'll suggest is shortening your workout. Stick with me here. You're going to shorten the workout but you're going to do more. Just saying you're only going to be in the gym for 30 minutes versus your normal hour is going to make your workout more efficient.

(Let's be honest, most of us spend way too much time standing around/talking to people and not working out during our workouts.)

Shorter workouts tend to be more intense workouts. This means you can get more bang for your buck and still make it to the all the parties.

I've put together a 4 workout plan that you can use to hit all the major body parts. To get this free workout plan all you have to click this link. Fill out the form and then the workout plan will be delivered to your inbox.

You get your workouts in and you still get to party. Best of both worlds.

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Distracting distractions...

Right now you're probably supposed to be doing something else. It could be prepping a document for work, it could be housework, it could be working out. The fact is that reading this is distracting you from doing something else. Unfortunately distractions are a part of life. Before we go on though, there is a difference and a distraction and unavoidable life/work events. Life/work events come up from time to time that need to be taken care of immediately. For instance, I normally have this blog post written by 12 noon. It's 4:30 right now and I'm just sitting down to write this. GHB (my son) had an allergic reaction to some bug bites and we had to take a quick trip to the doctor. He's ok. The trip to the doctor wasn't a distraction, it was unavoidable.

On the other hand distractions are completely avoidable. As a matter of fact, you usually choose distractions to avoid doing something else. I would never choose a trip to pediatrician with 2 year old. I would choose my Facebook feed over bookkeeping. I take the time to point out the difference because I've known plenty of people who confuse distractions with unavoidable events all the time. As a general rule of thumb, if you find yourself in the middle of the same unavoidable events/situations then they are most likely distractions.

Now that's out of the way, let's talk about avoiding distractions.

Deadlines: if your TPS report is due in 2 hours and it usually takes you 3, you probably don't have Minesweeper open on your desktop. You might have to be over the age of 35 to get those references. The point is having a deadline forces you to bare down and do what you need to do.

Environment: I normally write and do most of my work that isn't with clients in Starbucks. My wife thinks this is weird since I don't drink coffee. I like to go to Starbucks because it's not home. At home there is a TV and a kitchen and a bed and a couch. All Starbucks has to offer is amazing WiFi and a beverage I want no part of. The physical space you're in can/will effect your production.

Schedule: this kind of goes with deadlines but it's a little different. If you know you have tasks that have to get done then allot an appropriate time for each task. By appropriate I don't just mean "this will take an hour so I'm going to give it an hour." It may take an hour but if you want to claw your eyes out after 20 minutes, it may be more appropriate to allot 15 minutes and then go to one of your other tasks for a little bit and then come back. This is better than being on task for 20 minutes and then wasting 30 minutes on something non-productive.

Allow the distractions: I do KenKen puzzles everyday. It's stupid, I know, but if I don't do them they sit in the back of my mind and keep reminding me that I haven't done them. The easiest way for me to prevent this is to just do the stupid puzzles. So I make them the first thing I do when I start to do work. I allow myself to waste 10 minutes to prevent hours of wasting energy trying to not think about KenKen. If you know you have something that's just gonna nag you then just get it out of the way.

These are just a few techniques you can use to avoid distractions. Having a plan is going to be your best bet to avoid distractions. Try some of these out and get back to work.

Get On Your Foot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv12_1Cih1w How much time do you spend on one foot? The answer is probably more than you think. Every time you take a step during walking you're standing on one foot.

Knowing this, it stands to reason that we should practice being on one foot when we exercise. However, most of the time when you look at people in the gym they have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

I can't think of any standing exercise that can't (eventually) be progressed to one leg. Start by standing on one foot for as long as possible. Then compare that to the other side. If there's a significant difference (>10 seconds), then work on evening the two sides by practicing extra on the worst side.

Once you can easily stand on each foot for 30 seconds, then you can begin working on different exercises like the one Dorothy is doing in the video.

If you need ideas for single leg exercises let me know. #StartingLine

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