Small Choices

Making small improvements can have large benefits. It's hard to make big changes. Incremental change is simple and hard to fail at. One by one improve every choice. Bad choices to good choices, even good choices to better choices. Like replacing soda with juice. Or from using olive oil to organic olive oil. If that's even too hard, instead of improving little things every day, start out with one little thing a week, then move to two things a week. Can't change all your habits? Change just one, then move to another. Or go from alternating (veggies instead of fries every other week) to consistent (veggies over fries from now on). Start as minor as you have to, just start. However small, you can make improvements, but keeping adding onto your previous improvements until you don't even realize how many good things you are doing for yourself. The main thing is you are changing yourself into someone that always seeks to improve, and that will show up in everything you do.

Advice And Why We Suck At Them

People suck at advice when it comes to fitness. Whether it's giving it or receiving it. When you want to get healthy, everyone has an opinion and will offer up advice (whether they are healthy themselves or not). You don't have to be fit yourself to have an opinion right? So what do you listen to?

Not only that but people always ask for advice. When people find out I am a trainer, they always ask me for advice (they don't want to train with me, just want a simple tip), and it's usually for spot burning. Just melting fat in a certain area (as if regions of the body are like continents separated by a body of water and you can isolate one region from another. As opposed to the body being one whole connected unit). They tell me that's all they need or want and if I tell them the magic trick, they will go out and do it religiously. As if all this time they were just lacking knowledge, not motivation.

First of all there is no magic fix. Secondly even if I do humor them and give them advice and guidelines I know most likely they will fail at it. Whether they are CEOs or simple students.Why? People are terrible at taking fitness advice. It's not about doing something, it's about changing something. How would me telling someone something or giving them advice cause a behavioral change? You are not doing something not because you don't have the knowledge or no one gave you advice, it's because it's not part of your behavior to wake up early and jog or go hike instead of drink the night before. They've heard it all before and still they don't change so why would anything I tell them affect a change? It's unfounded optimism.

If someone never cooks yet I told them the secret is preparing your own meals, why would they change their behavior and start cooking every meal? It may happen for a little bit but would it last long? You have to calculate for those obstacles, calculate for your own short comings, calculate for your own reality. They ask for advice as is they are this pliable robot that can be trained to do something on one simple command. That's not human.

Even people who freely offer advice, good or bad ones, why would that all of a sudden affect a change? Behavior needs to change and behavior doesn't change with simple advice.

But they won't be happy unless I tell them something so I do (knowing they won't do it anyway) but always close with, it's not about tricks or advice, it's about a lifestyle change. You can't change just one thing, or changing your work out or your diet, it's about changing yourself.

This takes lots of practice, patience, guidance, mentoring, support, motivation, practice, and practice. If I told you a way to get nice abs is to hold a plank for example, you may or may not do it but it won't change anything about who you are. If I was there and made you hold a plank every day, while encouraging you and giving you things to think about as far as healthy ways to live, this will affect a change.

It's not about little tricks or techniques, it's about concepts. And concepts unlike tricks cannot be taught in a 5 minute conversation. Concepts take a long time to explain and apply. The best example I can give is this. You have never fought before. You walk into a martial arts dojo and find the master and ask him to give you one tip on how to be a black belt level fighter. When your friends ask you if you signed up there, you reply, no I didn't need to, he gave me a tip on how to be a black belt. This obviously sounds ridiculous because it's not realistic (though there are people out there who think they can fight because of watching a movie, reading an article on fighting, or they got a tip on some secret technique). So how would the same thing work by walking up to a fitness professional and asking for advice?

The opposite would be nonprofessionals freely giving out advice. That's like getting fighting tips from a white belt. But you walk into any dojo and it's the white belts who always have the most advice, teach the most, and have the most opinions. They just don't know any better yet. And in my experience it's usually the most unfit people who have the most advice about fitness.

Women Bulking Up

I have talked about this before but it's worth mentioning again because for a lot of women have this fear. To wake up looking like a body builder. Or they have to avoid certain work outs, or train differently because they are a women.

When I train my male athletes, I don't train them specific for them being a man, I train them specific for a goal. It's not gender specific. That's how most male athletes train. Not specific to their gender, but specific to a goal. For a lot of women, if a man does that work out, they need a completely different one. I see online all the time for women's work outs, women's health, fat burning work outs for women. Fat burning is fat burning and is not gender specific. It's like wanting to learn math, but because a lot of men are taking the class, they want a specific math for women's course. In a way that concept is insulting. A work out is a work out, men AND women should be able to do it. The work out doesn't care what gender you are. Somehow a body weight lunge is specific for a women and heavy squat is specific for a man? Like the weights or the movements care? The movement is based on physics and function not on sex. You break down work outs and they are just pushing and pulling movements. There is no way science will determine the act of pushing or pulling is specific for a man. That is...stupid. It's all about perception. They see men do something a lot, its a male act, women do it it's a women's act. Swimming from end to end of a pool for a competition is male, whereas swimming in the middle of a pool like in synchronized swimming is a female act? It's just perception because of the people who dominate that activity, not the activity itself. Do not mistake the participants FOR the activity. Let's say a lot of gay men combed their hair. Combing your hair still is not a gay activity. A lot of men lift heavy, but heavy lifting is not a male activity.

To be honest a trainer really has no idea what a work out for a women is supposed to be (even a female trainer). They just give you what they think you want: low weight, high reps, focus on abs, a lot of thigh exercises, and it's...got to be easy but very aerobic. Because somehow someone said that's a girls work out (and it was created by being exact opposite of traditional work outs of being heavy, low reps, etc.) except that men and women both have same muscle tissue and same amount of limbs and function and move in the same way. So why work out differently? That's just nonsense. There is no proof that's specific for women nor is there any proof it's more effective at fat burning than a universal work out, actually research shows it's much less effective.

Ah so where does this concept come from? It's because they see men who get very large, muscular, and bulky and attribute it to their work out style. It's not. It comes down to 2 simple things. Men have way more testosterone and less estrogen. And the men who want to get bigger will eat more. That's it. Women will never have the testosterone (without aid of anabolics) to get like that. And unless you are eating like a horse, you shouldn't get any bigger either. In fact you take any large muscular man, ask him to do his normal work out, except restrict his diet to say how much a 140lb women would likely eat. And lower his testosterone and increase his estrogen I will guarantee in a short matter of time no matter how manly his lifting is, he will shrink and start to look like a women. If a women starts to see more muscles, it's not necessarily they got bigger or more muscular, its that they lost the subcutaneous layer of fat that used to cover up their muscles. A work out can only do so much, you see how hard it is to lose weight with working out alone, imagine how hard it is to gain weight with working out alone? It's diet, genetics, and hormones that paint the rest of the picture.

The truth is, someone more muscular burns a lot of calories just existing. Muscles is the enemy of fat and bulk, not the friend. Food is the friend of size.

Men don't limit themselves in these ways. Why should women? To do this would be to set limits on themselves When is it a male thing to be powerful? In any setting. Don't fall for the marketing tricks. There is a saying: after a while the victim victimizes themselves. DO NOT be your own worst enemy. 

Rulon Freakin Gardner On The Biggest Loser

As a wrestler, athlete, sports trainer, and martial artist I have been following the career of Rulon Gardner. Ask any wrestler and they will know who he is. Ask any sports writer or strength and conditioning coach and they will know who he is. He may be an unfamiliar name to a lot of personal trainers and aerobics instructors. So to fill you in, this is who he is:

Rulon was an All-American wrestler at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the Olympics, and in the world of sports there is few names that brought fear like the Russian named Alexander Karelin. Karelin won 3 Olympic Gold medals, 9 World Championships, undefeated in 13 years and had not given up a point in the last 6. In 2000 Rulon beat him (albeit controversially) and won Gold. Then in 2001 he won the World Championships in Greco-Roman wrestling. He was the first American to do all three (let alone win Olympic and World in Greco).

As a child Rulon was impaled by an arrow in a show-and-tell accident. 1990 he lost his daughter in a car accident. In 2002 he was stranded on a wilderness snowmobile accident and lost a toe to frostbite. In 2004 with that missing toe he won the Olympic trials and won Bronze in the Olympics. In 2004 also he was flung from his motorcycle when he was struck by a car. At the end of that same year he competed in his first MMA fight in Japan against Hidehiko Yoshida and won. In 2007 he was in a plane crash into Lake Powell. He was forced to swim in 44 °F water for over an hour. He along with 2 friends survived overnight in 28 °F weather with no shelter or fire.

And finally now Rulon is on The Biggest Loser. Why? He has ballooned up to nearly 500lbs!!! I had to give that background (more info about his survival and accomplishments are in his autobiography) to illustrate how someone who's survived and accomplished so much, let himself get so big? If it could happen to him it truly can happen to anyone else. Because it's not a big event, it's slow, gradual, and enjoyable in some aspects. And honestly his weight is probably more life threatening in a realistic sense than any of his near death experiences. An accident is something you survive and walk away from, weight isn't something that just happens and ends in a flash and you walk away from it.

I have a suspicion that this happened because he (like a lot of people I know) didn't care if he gained weight or by how much. In his mind he was confident he could lose it whenever he wanted, if he chose to do it. Maybe the fame, money, and attention he and his new gym that he just built would get was the motivation for him to decide to lose it. And I have no doubt he will lose massive amounts of weight. He has trained harder (no matter what he might say for publicity) than anyone on that show ever has and he can do it again.

But a lot of other people have that mindset. I can lose it if and when I want to so it doesn't matter if I get fat. I have control over my life, I still have a choice so my weight doesn't bother me (sounds like the excuse of a lot of addicts which is an important connection because food is like a drug). Sorry to say a lot of people who think this is wrong. Anyone can become obese as Rulon has illustrated. But losing weight is not as simple as making a choice or turning on a switch. It is a constant struggle and choice made every moment of the day.

And even if you do lose it, it will never make up for the loss of opportunity and quality of life you gave up prior to it. An ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure.


About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Slow Down

It takes time for your brain to realize it is full. Not only that but it takes time for your system to digest food. Slow down the pace at which you eat. Drink water in between bites, chew more, talk more, eat a variety, eat the parsley, suck on the lemon in your water. Whatever it is, find a way to slow down. Your body will benefit in many ways from this small change.

Fads Have No Quality Control

There is a reason why your favorite magazine, even those concerned with health and weight loss are not scientific journals. Same could be said to a lot of books and TV shows that cover health and weight loss. They are not scientific,and do not have any quality control over content.

Look at the cover of some magazines saying the secret to weight loss is this! Then 3 months later they contradict themselves and say the secret to weight loss is that! Now the reader glossing over magazines periodically doesn't even realize the magazine has contradicted itself. Not only that but the writers aren't scientists or health experts. This is also true for books, written most often by celebrities or celebrity trainers.

On TV shows and talk shows, they will bring on an expert who is only an expert because they wrote one of these articles or one of these books. Then a few shows later they will bring someone else who contradicts the other expert. Never bringing in a discussion on who is right or who is wrong.

This happens because of the goal. The goal isn't to find truth, the goal is to get buyers, viewers, sell a book, sell a DVD, make money. Who would watch someone or buy something or read something if it said the same things all the time. Work out more, eat less. What's new about that?

Fads will come and go and come back. Different people will tell you to do this or that. Different people will ask me if this works or they heard that works. Just remember that even the magazine or show doesn't know what works either. We are inundated with information and instead of empowering it makes us feel helpless.

Just stick to the basics. Throughout my life in martial arts, my teachers have always taught me one principle. Your art should fit into the palm of your hand. It should be simple and based on a few concepts. Whatever you do make sure it's simple and based on science.

Eating Less Living Longer

The Japanese (who live longer than any other country outside of certain tribes and groups) have a saying, "Eat 80% full and push 20% away." There has been a study going on for over 20 years studying the life of Rhesus monkeys. One group eating freely. There other on a restricted diet. Same food just less of it (30% less). Sufficeth to say the monkeys who eat less live longer.

But who wants to live forever one might say, I just want to live a good life. Well looks like the quality of life of the dieting monkeys is better as well. They have better brain function, less diseases, less problems. How can you say you live a good life if you feel sluggish, live in pain in your last days, and have chronic other problems?

Never being full, never being hungry. What a concept. I know people who have a hard time eating through out the day, they will binge but skip breakfast because they aren't hungry yet. In actuality its easier to eat when you're not hungry than to eat when you're already full.

If you want to eat steak, go ahead and eat it. Just eat less of it. And eat some more some other day or some other meal. Don't eat like there's no tomorrow because if you eat correctly, there will be lots of tomorrows.

Vegan/Vegetarian Is The Way To Go?

I know this is a big trend right now. Even amongst some athletes. I know many health and fitness gurus who swear by it. Mainly endurance athletes, they always bring up Dave "The Man" Scott as their main example. He is a multiple time Ironman winner and is the bench mark on the Ironman. Look on Google and on topics on how to argue with meat eaters, to best examples of athletes who are vegetarian, he comes up over and over. But little known fact. He stopped being vegetarian in 1992 (though he still avoids red meat) and came back out of retirement to the Ironman in his 40s to do it again and came in 2nd and 5th.

We perform better on a varied diet. We shouldn't base our eating habits around meat, but we shouldn't eliminate it either.  There is no simple answer. Balance is always the key. I will repeat that idea often about balance. It's something I look to attain in life, diet, exercise, martial arts, spiritually, and mental well being.

There are days I go without consuming meat at all. And then there are days where I will gorge myself. But overall throughout the week, the month, through my lifetime meat will add color to my primary diet of everything else the world has to offer as far as food. No matter what though everyone is now agreeing on one thing, eating whole foods. Weight loss is part of the goal, but so is longevity and quality of life.

How people have used him as an example for their work shows a big fallacy that occurs all the time. Especially in health. It's something I became familiar with in philosophy. It's the idea of having a preexisting biases and finding evidence afterwords to prove your bias (in this case vegetarianism is the way to go and use Dave as an example even though he's no longer vegetarian). As opposed to finding evidence then creating your judgment off of the evidence. It's called bad science or bad logic. It happens in politics all the time. You have an agenda then you find the proof after the fact. I may be guilty of this as well so always do your due diligence and taking everything as what they are, just information. Get a balance blend and form your own opinion.

You're Only As Good As...

You're last work out. And your last work out is only as good as your last repetition. This means you carry along the residue of your last work out. If all your work outs are good, you will get into phenomenal shape. If you exerted everything in your last repetition then you know you deserve a good rest. A lot of people have mindless, long, and low impact workouts. It's better to have quality work outs infrequently than to have low quality work outs frequently.

If you had a great work out, then rest and food is not your enemy, it is your friend.

Nature of Fat

People think fat is just whats subcutaneous. Meaning right below the skin. It is not. The hidden fat, the dangerous fat is the visceral fat that is in around your organs and in your arteries. Just because someone may look lean, is not the total picture. I too at one point was very skinny, but had very high cholesterol and fat around my organs. I was skinny but ate very poorly. The term used now is called skinny fat. Even more reason not to base health just on appearance.

New Years Tip

Because it is officially 2011 I wanted to start updating my blogs more often and give some tips for the coming year. Here is another food for thought. People become vegetarians for moral reasons but a lot of times its for health reasons. In general vegetarians live longer than non-vegetarians.

But it's not because they do not eat meat. I know a lot of unhealthy, obese, sickly vegetarians. Vegetarians do better not because they don't eat meat, but because they eat more vegetables in general. It's not the absence of one thing, it's the abundance of another. Because typically people who eat meat do not eat enough healthy vegetables.

Balance is always the key. In health, diet, exercise, philosophy, logic, science, and zen.

Can We Blame Genes For Everything?

In a previous post I stated that sometimes it's just genetics. But that is just also part of the equation and meant we all have a designed body and frame. This does not mean we can't lose weight, get lean, or reach our goals. The thing people too often say is, that their parents are fat so they are predestined from birth to also be fat because they have "fat genes."

Let me give you some examples to think about. People who have lung cancer also have parents who have lung cancer. Parents who smoke also have kids who smoke. Is this genetics or passing down of habits? Fat parents most often have fat kids. But fat parents also have fat pets. Does this mean they gave their dogs their "fat genes?" Or is it most likely they overfed their kids and their pets. Most likely they passed down their poor eating habits to their children.

Even if genetics is a factor, there are so many other variables involved that it is nowhere near the explanation of the total picture. You may not have the genes to be a body builder but you still have the genes to be fit. Your lineage survived this long for a reason.

Tips On Running

When you walk, you step on your heel. When you jog, you step on your midfoot. When you sprint, you step on the balls of your feet. Stay upright, chest proud, arms loose, lift your knees and kick back.

Fueling Our Bodies

A popular trend in a lot of diets athletes are using lately is eating one big mega meal a day. There are several different diets that do this with several different hokey names. The idea is that our ancestors, from cavemen to warriors. They typically just ate one large meal a day. Sure the meal was by design was all organic, raw, and sometimes cooked foods.

So a lot of athletes are doing this now. Why? Because they are working out so much and burning so many calories they want to eat in a way to either maintain their weights, or even gain weight.

So eating one mega meal a day will not only load up their body with calories, but they can't absorb all of it at once forcing their bodies to store all the excess carbs. Not only that because you are only feeding it once a day, the body learns not to burn and to slow down it's own metabolism. This gives the athlete energy stores for their 2nd or third work outs for the day.

I do not recommend or condone this diet but I use it to make the opposite point. The enemy of them maintaining or gaining weight is doing the opposite. Which is to basically graze and eat small meals a day. For them they would emaciate themselves because that would supercharge their metabolisms and their bodies would keep burning up fuel.

I am pretty lean. For me it makes more sense to eat a few large (really large) meals a day. Days when I eat small amounts throughout the day is when I notice on the scale I lost a few pounds. Someone who wants to lose weight needs to do the opposite and constantly eat a little throughout the day.

Eating once and starving yourself is counter-intuitive. Whatever you thought was right about weight loss and exercise may be wrong. Be open to that idea, and the idea that anything that makes your body suffer is good for you.

The Hype About The Bench Press

Anyone who's ever been to the gym has heard this question: "How much can you bench bro?"

People have the idea that going to the gym is all about bench pressing. They even design their work outs around the bench and the ab crunch. A lot of women don't want to lift weights because they think weight lifting just means bench pressing and they don't want to make their chest muscular. A lot of people think strength is all in the chest. I can go on and on about the hype and misunderstandings of this exercise. Let me do some corrections here.

The bench press is not that important! I rarely have my clients do it and I almost never do it myself. WHAT???

First of all training, weight lifting, is not about the bench press. Well it shouldn't be. True power and athleticism comes mostly from the hips, the core, and the legs. You look at any sport and where is the drive coming from? Their legs. When a football player tackles all his power comes from the legs, the arms more direct the force. Same with basketball, the jump comes from the legs. Anyone who throws anything, the power comes from the hips and core to generate that torque. The arms just directs that force and most of that is done by the shoulders not the chest. Why do you think people blow out their shoulders or legs in sports? When do you ever hear someone blow out their pectoral muscle? Rare. Because it's almost non-consequential in most athletic endeavors.  The back and shoulders are more important most of the time.

You ever see any strong animals in the wild with a big chest like humans like to create? If anyone thinks true strength is measured in how much they can bench is sadly mistaken. The squat and dead lift are much more accurate measures because those are exercises where you lift something straight up with the weight loaded onto your whole body. Look at football players, they have tree trunk legs. Now bench press isn't totally useless. We need to be able to push, pull, squat, lunge. But a lot of out ability to push something comes from our roots. What do we plant on the ground to push? Our legs right? We want to be multifunctional and we want the movements to be dynamic and realistic. Do we want to look like a meathead or do we want to look athletic? Do we want to just be big or do we want to be as lean and as strong as possible?

Why do a lot of so called gym experts, gym rats and guys who think they know a thing or two about lifting, and a lot of personal trainers have it all wrong? Because they are not scientific. Their ideas are not based in any science and not at all based on physics which is the key to any lift and the most important part of sports science or anything that evens movement, moving parts, and kinetic energy. To state simply, if I was an architect and was designing a building that was supposed to carry heavy load, would I want to focus on the foundation of the building or would I want to focus near the top of the building and make that as big and as wide as possible? I would know nothing about structure, design, and physics if I chose the latter. A lot of times guys get in good shape on accident. And a lot of times experts are gain their clout from personality and charisma more than science. When was charisma ever a big part of real science? You expect them to be stuffy and know what they are talking about.

So guys if all you do is bench press, it's time to modify your work outs and focus on the key strength areas. And ladies weight training is not all about the bench press and getting a muscular chest.

Now don't get me ever started on how often I see people do bicep curls... I see trainers all the time. A girl walks in and wants to lose weight and tone up and the trainer has her doing a million bicep curls...geez. Will she be happy that months of training and not only is she the same size as before but her arm measurements are now bigger?

Most overused exercises are the bench press, the crunch, and the bicep curl. Do not do this typical work out: treadmill, crunches, bench, and bicep curls.


About the Author:

Sam Y. is a Personal Trainer, Coach, Performane Enhancement Specialist, Corrective Enhancement Specialist, and holds multiple certifications. He is also an avid Martial Artist, training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kickboxing, Boxing, and MMA. He is also the author of the popular fitness blog All Out Effort as well as the popular martial arts blog Inner BJJ. You can find him in the Los Angeles area personal training his clients, or at home annoying his wife, or on Facebook at his personal fitness page.

Genetics Has A Lot To Do With It

I used to go to this big commercial gym. I would see the same guys there every day lifting, drinking shakes, drinking gallons of water. They are there religiously, I'm sure you all have seen them too. Every gym has them. Some look in great shape, but most look just...okay.

At this commercial gym, this homeless guy used to come in. He had a cheap plan and it allowed him to come in and clean up. He lifted weights sometimes but mostly he just slept. Why I bring this up is; though he didn't eat or sleep well or work out often he had the body of an Adonis. He looked like a body builder, without doing anything. Actually he was hurting his body with his lifestyle, imagine what he would look like with the right nutrition and training? And yet those guys who were there every day drinking their shakes and lifting mass amounts of weights will never look like him.

You can train strength, skills, even talent can be cultivated. But for the most part how you look, you exterior is determined by genetics. It can surely be optimized but after a certain point it just is what it is. If this were not the case, there would be no use of steroids or surgery to get the right look. Some guys no matter what they do can never be as big or as cut as the next guy so they use a drug or get surgery. Same with the ladies who want the perfect abs, buns, chest, etc. It's just the truth, I don't care what any trainer, dietician, celebrity, DVD, or ab commercial tells you.

We can push the limits of our performance and our athleticism but we can't push the limits of our looks. And ultimately why should we? It only makes us mentally weaker. Just get lean and strong and be happy with that.

Worst Foods

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/eatthis/worst-foods-america-2010

The Goal is Always Simple

Be as lean and as strong as possible. Never try to get so lean or skinny where you undermine your strength or you are weaker than before.

The Inner Game

"In every human endeavor there are two arenas of engagement: the outer and the inner. The outer game is played on an external arena to overcome external obstacles to reach an external goal. The inner game takes place within the mind of the player and is played against such obstacles as fear, self-doubt, lapses in focus, and limiting concepts or assumptions. The inner game is played to overcome the self-imposed obstacles that prevent an individual or team from accessing their full potential."

- From The Inner Game of Tennis