Spectrum

Once, a long time ago a client came back to me a few days after our last session.  She was depressed.  She had stopped her walking program on my advice.


Shocked me because I never gave such advice.


The conversation was the merits, nay, the necessity of pushing the body past it's normal functioning.  As most of you know it is this push that causes adaptation.


She was an avid walker.  Walking was not a challenge for her, at least the way she did it, and so she reasoned that she should give up walking.


I then explained that there are a lot of good things to walking.  Health and balance in our lives is not solely tied to the growth and change of hardware and software.  It ties into, and stems from a lot of factors.


She was happy again.


The moral of the story.  Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  Don't put fitness in a box.  We, all of us, have to strive to work out the blueprint of our minds and bodies until the very last day.


Stay tuned true believers.

What rest means

Short one today True Believers:


What does rest mean..to you.
Is it sleep, is it brain dead via TV or other diversions.
Is it the quiet of a walk in the woods.


I will propose this question to help you reflect on what rest means to you.


How do you feel after you have applied your version of rest?


Take your time, get back to me when you can.


Until next time....

The How And The What

We didn't use to have to exercise.  Life was exercise enough.  One might say exercise was unconscious.


That world is in our rear view mirror now.  Some might say for the better, some for the worse.


I say opportunity lurks


When life was hard enough to test the body on a daily basis there was no time for what the body and mind COULD do.  Only what it HAD to do.


With movement now "optional" in our lives we can make the choice, the conscious choice, to make it more than survival.


The word Yoga derives from the same root word as yoke - which connects animal to plow.  In terms of movement it denotes connecting mind/intention to movement.  This option, to move with awareness and to be aware of what we are about as we move, is a watershed concept in our health and fitness.  It allows us to take our bodies beyond the merely functional tool of movement and survival to a learning tool.


Whatever you choose to do for your exercise and fitness, choose it in relation to who you are, and as you perform your actions turn your awareness to them, not to outcome and certainly not to distractions.


All the best,
Steve

There are choices we make every moment of the day in our lives that both determine and reflect who we are.


Look for all the little things.  Nuances.  Ask yourself if they express your ideal version of you..


In the meantime watch me beating up on my bootcamp class.

Amherst I long to walk in your woods.

Own Your Training

I may be a bit of a problem to my clients and students.

It's not my jokes.

.....Okay it's not JUST my jokes.

The problem is I really love what I do. To me there is no other career path that even comes remotely close.

The problem with being infatuated with your profession is you think everyone else feels the same. Maybe I should restate that just a bit. You KNOW everyone feels the same, it's just that THEY don't know it yet.

Why is that a problem?

Because a robot that follows along, does blindly what it's told or programmed to do does NOT care, not even one whit, about what it's doing.

This is not saying anything bad about robots or even androids or cyborgs (yes I am a geek in more than one way).

I am a problem to my clients and students because I want them to understand why. I don't want them going through the motions. Even if they are pushing themselves to the limits physically, I want them engaged mentally. I want them to be as captivated by the WHY as much as they are challenged and inspired by the what.

So I explain. My people know you can't out train a bad diet, they have all heard how one soda will undo the caloric deficit of 45 minutes of work, and, if they stay tuned (not guaranteed by any means) they hear why the calories in that soda are less detrimental that the mode of delivery.

Through the breathing and recovery between Tabata training sets they might get a few words about Elevated Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), and what it means to their TIME and their goals.

Do they listen? Some do, some don't, and sometimes it's a matter of repetition, or delivery (I know if I open with a knock knock joke they usually tune me out right away) but I keep the information flowing, even if they look at me glassy eyed and on one occasion beg me to stop (okay actually I was training my wife that day).

Where am I going with all this?

We have heard it often enough, Information is power. That's what I want for my people, that's what I want you to want for yourselves.

Until next time true believers.

Steve

Getting along swimmingly

What recovery means

Imagine you are playing a game, diving to the bottom of a pool, starting in the shallow end and each successive time you dive in you move further and further into the deep end.

                As you begin, not having to go very deep at all you only take a small inhale.  Why load up on air if you don’t need to?

                As you progress though, you will have to take deeper breaths to make sure you have enough to last you all the way to the bottom and back up.

                Now Imagine not coming up for air, or taking equally short breaths in the deeper end as you did in the shallow? How far would you get?  How hard would it be?  Could you even keep it up?

                So here is how the metaphor breaks down. The dive is your workout; the coming up for air is your recovery.

                Without recovery you will not be training very hard (depth) or very long (repeated dives).

                The second aspect of this metaphor is about the time above the water breathing.  The deeper you go, meaning the harder you training, the longer your recovery time. If you try to keep the same recovery time even as you get into your training groove and find the  power to go harder, bad things will happen (hopefully not brain damage).  The harder you train the more critical recovery.

                There is one more twist we can throw in here. While you are recovering are you treading water, or have you learned and practice the skills to float.  Which uses up more energy?  And which will let you recover sooner and get back to diving deeper?   This is to say not all recovery is the same.  Just taking a day off is not the same as doing some stretching or very light (walking) cardio.

                More things to plug into your internal vetting machine as you move through the potential maze of training.

                Stay on course True Believers.