Slay Your Dragon

Slay that beast.

Dragons are mythical creatures.  They are powerful and nearly impossible to kill, at least until you find the soft underbelly and fill it full of arrows.  It seems that every dragon has a weakness, it is up to the dragon slayer to find and exploit it.

In every story, there are villages, towns, and even whole nations that live in fear of the dragon.  Until one brave soul steps forward to risk their life and limb to bring peace to the land.  The dragon slayer must do what others are not willing to do in order to accomplish his mission.  They always seem to have a mentor who teaches them the skills they need and unlock their hidden potential.

I have had the distinct pleasure of training a few hundred dragon slayers.

Some of the more common dragons I have seen go down in flames include personal records in various big lifts, shedding fat that was once as immovable as a mountain, or simply the will to complete a difficult task.  The benefits of bringing down dragons are huge.  If your life is the town that is under attack, then there is more at stake than just a squat PR.  People who slay dragons tend to continue slaying new ones.  So if your goal is to read The Great Gatsby all the way through and it's been beating you for ten years, imagine the confidence boost when you finally sit down, read ten pages a day and slay that dragon.  Then, when the next dragon rears its ugly head, you know you have what it takes to lop it off.

In all of these circumstances, the dragon slayers already had what they needed to go forth and conquer.  So what did I do for them?  Gave them the tools and the outlet to express their growing prowess.  A coach can't slay your dragons for you, only you can wield the weapons they provide to make progress.

What about you?

Do you have a dragon that has been looming?  Every time you engage it in battle it drives you back behind the castle walls?  What would it take to bring that fiery lizard down?  If you need help either in clarifying your goals or in finding the tools to accomplish them, I'd love help you out.  Email me at disruptivefitness@gmail.com or leave a note in the comments.  Also, you can join our small but growing community at the Disruptive Fitness facebook group.

Desire Lines

Typical Desire Line

Desire lines, or paths, can be a path created as a consequence of foot or bicycle traffic. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width of the path and its erosion are indicators of the amount of use the path receives. Desire paths emerge as shortcuts where constructed ways take a circuitous route, or have gaps, or are lacking entirely.

What on earth does this have to do with fitness?  

Let's see...  As it turns out, your life is constructed of a variety of desire lines.  Is there a go to snack that you have to celebrate achievements or big events?  Do you associate certain foods or beverages with feeling happy and content with yourself or your station in life?  Are there particular places that you go when you're not feeling that great and need a pick me up?  If you answered yes to any of these, you have formed some natural pathways to something you desire, namely happiness.  You could think of this in another, less interesting word, a rut.  

Now it's time to do a little self examination.  Here is a one question test for you: Are you in a rut?  You probably already know if it's the case.  You were going to hit the gym today on the way home, but the force of habit took you home instead.  Or maybe you made it, but you just benched again for the third time this week because, what else do you do at the gym?  Getting stuck in a rut in the fitness world is an express ticket to sitting on the couch in front of a screen eating ice cream.  

I know what you're thinking, "Didn't he just sit us down and remind us to stick with a program?"  Yeah, I did.  Here are some differences between sticking with a program and a rut.  When you're in a rut training is often sporadic and based on whether you feel like it or not.  You go into the gym without a plan, without goals, and without heart and you come out of the gym without accomplishing anything.  When you stick with the program you train with gusto because you're excited to see continued progress in at least this area of your life.  You walk into the gym with a plan that you or others have tested, you record your progress, and you leave with a sense of accomplishment and forward motion.  Stick with a program, don't fall into a rut.

Reprogramming Desire Lines

Good news everyone, desire lines can change.  They change as the object desired changes.  

The first step here is to disrupt the cycle of decision making that is leading you into a rut.  Find a trusted program.  I can even help you write one.  

The second step is to start moving.  Motivation tends to me more of a trailing indicator in fitness.  That means that your motivation to get working is likely to build after you start working, rather than preceding a big change in how you feel.  

The third step is to measure progress.  When you can see objective changes happening in performance, it makes you want to get into the gym.  Then the desire line that used to run from work to terrible fast food to an evening on the couch is reprogrammed to hit the gym, cook a healthy meal, and spend time doing something you love.

The final step is to celebrate positive changes.  As motivation to train grows, objective progress is being noticed, and your all around sense of well being is improving, you need to celebrate it!  Enjoy your life.  You are training to improve quality of life, not so that training is all that exists in your life.  Use your newly won fitness to enjoy travelling, playing new sports, or some other awesome reward for sticking with your goals.

If you need a little boost or some help with deciding on a program to help change your desire lines, get in touch with me through the comments or at disruptivefitness@gmail.com.

Program Hoppers Anonymous

One of the mistakes that I see people make on an alarmingly frequent basis is bouncing from program to program without giving what they are doing time to work.  The new guru on the internet said I should do Zercher squats so I'm going to quit this program and jump on that.  The editors of Magazine X, Y, or Z said I should do curls for the girls every single day if I want to get the pump that leads to long lasting meaningful relationships with my biceps.  Then before they know it, this victim of marketing has spent a great deal of time (the one irreplaceable commodity) chasing after twelve other people's goals without making much if any headway in the last six months.  Sound familiar?  But how do you decide what program to follow, how long to follow it, and if it is time to ditch it altogether?  Glad you asked.

What program should I follow?

Whenever someone asks me this question I respond with a question.  For what?  What is it you hope your training program will accomplish?  Do you want a bigger squat, bench, or deadlift so you will be more competitive in strength sports?  Do you want to see your abs?  Do you want to be able to get down on the floor and play with your grand kids without pain?  You see, your goals should determine what you are working on at any given time.  I'll use myself as an example.  Over the last year, my training has primarily consisted of barbell squats, barbell bench press, barbell overhead press, barbell deadlifts, and a few assistance moves like power cleans, chin ups, and ab work.  Why?  Because my goal is to be as competitive as I can be in unequipped powerlifting.  Following a recent hip injury that prevented me from doing any serious lower body work, I modified the program to include more conditioning that would have otherwise been too much for me to recover from with all of the heavy lifting.

You can see that the most important thing is determining what goals you think are worth spending the next 6-12 months of your life tackling with everything you've got.

How long should I follow my program?

If you are one of those people who gets bored with progress, I'm not sure what to tell you.  I stick with a core program until said program stops producing gains.  If I can look myself in the mirror and say, "Self, you are really working as hard as you should be, but this just isn't making you better," then it's time to make some changes.  Notice I said, make some changes, not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  No matter what you are doing there are some basic principles that should apply to your training.  You should be working on all five of the basic human movements that Dan John talks about in all of his writing.  You, as a human on planet earth, were made to push, pull, hinge, squat, and loaded carry.  No program is complete without hitting all five elements.  The intensity and volume of your work will depend on your goals.  Do you want to roll Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?  Again, according to Dan John, spend 80% of your available training time on Jits, about 10% in the weight room, and another 10% on correctives like the foam roller, stretching, and massage/chiropractic work.  Other endeavors would look the same.  Spend 80% of your time on your main goal and divvy up the remaining 20% between the weights and corrective/recovery work.

When do I ditch my program altogether?

I'm going to argue that you never completely quit your program, unless you got it out of a muscle magazine and it isn't producing.  If your training is organized around the big five human movements then you might need some changes to start making progress again, but you don't need to throw your program out the window.  When progress has stalled, there are several things that I look at as a coach to try to find the culprit.  Are you eating well/enough?  If your diet is twinkies (save some for the apocalypse) and beer, don't expect your progress to be monumental.  What does sleep look like right now?  If you have an I'll sleep when I'm dead mentality, it is going to handicap your performance.  Are you doing too much/too little?  Goldilocks was onto something looking for that just right dose.  When we find the answers to those questions it's easy to make some simple changes that should continue progress without changing the entire program.

So, as I hope you can see, it is unwise to change a gift horse of a different color in mid stream.  It doesn't move you any closer to your goals, if you had goals in the first place besides just going to the gym and goofing off for an hour to feel better about life.  Build a program around the big five: push, pull, hinge, squat, and carry heavy stuff around.  Stick to your program for as long as you are seeing progress.  When progress stalls, tweak an aspect of your program and keep busting your tail until you crush your goals, set new ones and smash those ad nauseum.  Go forth and conquer.

Spannungsbogen

Spannungsbogen is a German word that Frank Herbert defines as the self-imposed delay

between desire for a thing and reaching out to grasp that thing. You could think of it as an archer who upon seeing his prey draws his bow to full tension and then waits patiently for the correct time to loose the arrow.  He knows that now is not yet the proper time, and discipline born of practice and experience allows him the self-control necessary for the right shot.  That waiting under tension is spannungsbogen.

I think this self-mastery is an admirable but quickly diminishing trait in our modern society.  As the pace of society sped up, the 1930s brought us the first drive-through windows in restaurants.  Then came microwave dinners, toaster pastries, and sugary breakfast cereal.  The speed at which our desires can be satisfied has become the new gauge for the worth of a product or service.  Convenience has become god in a world where a web page that takes 5 seconds to load is a waste of time.

How does this translate into everyday life?  Recently I wrote that you look like your decisions and offered some ways to make better decisions about how you eat and take care of your body.  The most important aspect of changing your life for the better is the discipline of self-denial which at its heart is spannungsbogen.

Can you be in the same room as ice cream and not eat it?  Sitting at a dinner party as dessert is passed out and you pass?  Do you set your alarm at 5am to get up and train but find the desire for sleep overwhelming you?  Most people would probably say yes.  They have a desire for a thing, desert or laziness, and immediately act to satisfy themselves.  The sum of these decisions results in the disease of affluence.  

Americans are overweight, overstressed, and under-disciplined.  The symptoms are plain to see.  Drooping dark circled eyes, straining belts, and gridlocked traffic ten minutes after the workday was supposed to begin.  Ice cream shops and fast food restaurants are full while gyms and parks are empty.  Even our children have fallen prey as they sip sodas and spend hours in front of a screen instead of engaging in physical play with parents, siblings, and friends.

No one thinks this is a desirable situation.  Childhood obesity is a buzzword in modern society.  Heart disease and type 2 diabetes are on everyone’s radar.  So how do we stem the tide of an epidemic of laziness in indiscipline?  Simple, we begin to cultivate spannungsbogen.

So how do I become develop spannungsbogen?  

The first step is to set realistic goals.  If you are not driving towards a purpose that you know, it is very difficult to be disciplined.  Along with coaching legend Dan John, II would encourage you to set goals in four basic areas of life: work, family, play, and spirit.  Check out his article here for some wonderful insight into goals and life.

The second step is to immediately begin to follow through with your goals.  If one of your goals is fat loss and increased health, throw out all of the processed refined foods in your house.  The monetary cost of the junk food is far less than the future treatment for type 2 diabetes.  Consider it an investment in yourself.  By starting immediately, you begin to exercise the muscles of self-control that will be necessary for reaching long term goals.

The third step is to regularly evaluate your progress towards goals and reorient yourself to continue making progress.  Staying with the goal of fat loss, if you find that your progress has stalled you have to evaluate what you are eating and doing to see why.  Was there a 2 week stretch of office parties and dinners out with friends where you were undisciplined?  Has work been so busy that you couldn’t make it to the gym?  Once you evaluate your progress, then you can reorient yourself to keep making progress.  The unexamined life will never get you where you want to go, no matter if your goal is fat loss or job success or to spend more time with your kids.

What do you want to change about yourself?  What do you want to accomplish?  Develop spannungsbogen, the self-imposed delay between a desire for a thing and reaching out to grasp that thing, and you will be well on your way.  The next time you see a doughnut in the breakroom or the fast food chain on the highway hold back from the immediate gratification.  Many times the desire will pass, if you give it a chance, and you will find yourself on the way to a healthier, fuller life.

You Look Like Your Decisions

As a teenager you could eat whatever you wanted to without gaining a pound. Bikini ready all year long. Washboard abs that you could literally wash your clothes on. You could run and play ball for hours a day and still have energy to wrestle with dad at home in the evening. Then something weird happened when you went to college. The dreaded “Freshman 15... or 25” set in and you might have thought it was no big deal. The switch from after school sports which required 10+ hours of work a week to after class naps had its natural effect. Fast forward ten more years. A sneaky 3-5 pounds a year of weight gain have accumulated on a body that is 50+ pounds overweight (don’t forget the Freshman 15) and you’re scratching your head wondering how it happened.

You look like your decisions. If you regularly choose to gulp soft drinks and sweet tea, eat double cheeseburgers, and french fries you will look like you do those things. It’s a sneaky downward spiral. At first those foods had no impact. Then they just fit your schedule and budget. Then it became a habit which resulted in a body you feel trapped inside of. Sound familiar? This is the American lifestyle. Overweight and unhealthy kids grow into overweight and unhealthy adults. The same thing happened to me. After joining the professional world for a few years of sitting behind a desk, I found myself about 40 pounds overweight and unhappy. My clothes didn’t fit well, my belly preceded me into rooms, and I did not sleep well. I was making bad decisions. I drank soft drinks at most meals, ate pizza and cheeseburgers, and sat at a computer for 8-12 hours a day. A lot of you have had similar experiences.

So what comes next? Do you continue in a Jabba the Hutt lifestyle? Let the next 10 years take their 5 pound a year toll? Of course you do, this is America.

Well, not you. You are here reading about fitness. You want to make better decisions that result in a better quality of life for yourself and for those around you. So what decisions can you make that have a direct result on how you look and feel?

1. Drink more water.
Most Americans are systemically dehydrated. Want to see if you are a unique and special snowflake or just a member of the masses? Find the flat bony part of your shin. Press your thumb into the part of your shin you just found for 15 seconds. When you release the pressure, if the dent remains in your shin, you are dehydrated. A good goal to shoot for is half of your body weight in ounces. So for me, a 225lb man, a good prescription is consuming 112 ounces of water daily. Being hydrated supports all of your body’s functions and can help lubricate achy joints.

2. Eat whole foods.
What are whole foods? They are the natural foods that you would find in nature. Chicken, eggs, apples, and broccoli are examples of whole foods. Cookies, milkshakes, and pasta are not. Whole foods are naturally colorful and nutrient dense. They taste good and fill you up so you are not prone to overeating. Refined foods tend to have the opposite effect. It is much easier to overeat on fettuccine alfredo than steak and asparagus. If you only made the decision to do these two options, you would lose weight, feel more energetic, sleep better, and improve your sense of well being within the first month.

3. Find a physical activity you enjoy and do it.
If you are like most Americans, you spend a lot of your free time in front of a screen. TV, computers, and smartphones are all cool inventions, but when they rule your time you start looking like the characters in the Disney movie Wall-e. You don’t want to look like those people. They made all the wrong decisions. Instead, find a physical activity you enjoy, and do it regularly. I am biased. I think that weight training and moderate to high intensity conditioning will get you the most bang for your proverbial buck. I can back that up with the experiences of my clients. Aesthetically, you can see that Olympic sprinters look how most men would like to look. What do they do? You guessed it, high intensity conditioning and weight training.

So how do I put it together?

To sum it up, if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired you need to 1) drink water not sugary sweetened drinks, 2) eat whole foods instead of refined foods, and 3) find a physical activity you enjoy and do it regularly. You’re probably thinking this sounds way too simple to be what I need to do. Turns out losing weight and building the body and lifestyle you've always wanted is simple, but not easy. If anyone tells you it’s easy to change long term bad habits, they probably have never done it. But anyone who has done it can tell you that while it was difficult, it was worth it and somehow the struggle to overcome made it that much more valuable in the end. So go, and make better decisions.

If you would like more direction on how to make good decisions that lead to higher quality of life, comment or email me, I love to see people succeed and can take the guesswork out of the equation.