The Source Of McDonald's Nuggets

http://docakilah.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/can-you-guess-what-mcdonald%E2%80%99s-food-item-this-is/

Inspirational Martial Artist

Ben has a great story. I tell his story to all my other clients who are self doubters. He was a DJ, he didn't know how to play one instrument. He taught himself how to use a computer program to make digital music and now he is a highly sought out producer for digital music on commercials.

The other special thing about Ben is that he was involved in a car accident. His left leg got smashed. They saved his foot but they had to fuse it to his ankle. Goodbye mobility. He had a life long obsession with martial arts but he was never able to train. Too fearful, and no school would take him because of his limitations.

Somehow he came to me and we started to work together in MMA. When I filmed him working the pads with his pad holder Matt, if I didn't know him, I would have no idea he had any issues.

He doesn't let stuff like a fused ankle stop him from strengthening his mind, body, or doing kick ass moves.

So I have one question. What's your excuse?



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.

Guest Coach

Guest Coach Cindy showing some martial artists the finer points of the Turkish Get Up.

How To Run And How Not To Run

I took a video of a client before I made any changes to his running form. His regular form of exercise has been running and his running is typical of most people. He wears sneakers and steps heavy onto his heels and kicks the ground away as he extends his knee.

Pulling up your ankle that many times to land on your heel will cause shin splints, landing on your heel is very hard impact on your body. It's like a car constantly going over bumps. It's also inefficient and a slower way to run and you will be more prone to injury.

Instead you should run as if you were running on ice. Pulling the ground away, lifting your heel up. It should look like shuffling. Actually to compare, it looks a lot like how a horse or gazelle runs. How a typical runner runs...I can't think of one animal that runs like that.

The best shoes to wear when you run are barefoot/minimalist shoes as I have linked over to the right. You can feel yourself make contact with the ground as you pull the ground away. That feel is very important in everything you do. Power comes from the feet up. They also say you illness starts from the feet up.




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.

Man Earns Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Black Belt At 78

http://www.dailypilot.com/news/tn-dpt-0114-blackbelt-20120113,0,1768188.story

Oldest Competitive Body Builder

Henry Ford Quote

My Favorite New Work Out Shoes

On a whim I ordered some shoes from RMAX to wear at my gym. I needed something for both martial arts and fitness. I have 4 different kinds of barefoot style shoes, but none of them were a good cross trainer for fitness AND martial arts. I read the reviews, saw the endorsements, especially from a lot of BJJ guys including Steve Maxwell who is also a world renowned strength trainer as well.

I LOVE these shoes. Best shoes I've worn. It molds to your feet. Feels like your wearing nothing, but feet still feel protected. If you need shoes to spar in, unlike wrestling shoes, these won't hurt your ankle or knee because of the excess traction that sticks your foot to the mat. That's the main reason I didn't like my other shoes. On my rubber plyomats, whenever I pivoted, it hurt my knees. Not with these.

Click on the picture below to pick up a pair.

Fitness Has Been Defined!

“Every man should be able to save his own life. 

He should be able to swim far enough, run fast and long enough to save his life

 in case of emergency and necessity.  He also should be able to chin himself 

a reasonable number of times, as well as to dip a number of times, 

and he should be able to jump a reasonable height and distance.” 

- Earle E. Liederman (Endurance 1926)

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.

Stuff Women Say To Trainers

I've heard about 80-90% of this from actual clients.

Fotoshop

Yes this is what we've come to.

Hip Hop Granny

This 71 year old granny is moving the way you WISH you could move. Age truly is only a number.



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.

Martial Arts As Strength

I was fortunate enough to take a class with the legendary "Cobrinha" Rubens Charles Macial the other day. In watching him teach and move, I got a small glimpse into why he is as good as he is. It's impossible for me not to look for efficiency issues everywhere. So I am going to break down Cobrinha as an athlete and his ability to generate strength.

The Athlete

Cobrinha is not just a great BJJ player, he's also a great athlete who could have excelled at many sports. All BJJ (Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) is, is a series of movement patterns. No matter the physical activity or sport, all movement patterns obey the same laws of physics and biomechanics.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the importance of proper movement, energy leakage, and BJJ technique. Better aligned and straighter movements can create more force. Misaligned and rounded movements leak energy, and you can lose 50% of your strength and feel overpowered. Or with proper movement, feel that much stronger.

For you to constantly stay aligned, you also need great flexibility and body control. 99% of the BJJ players out there look like this when they bend over to pass the guard.

Us Mere Mortals

Not to throw my buddy Budo Jake under the bus here but this is how most of us do it. Look at his back, its round. Any lifter would tell you, you will not be able to get to your maximum deadlift or squat with a rounded back like that. You are leaking 30%-50% of your energy. Not only that, you are more likely to tire your back out and also cause injury to yourself. But our posture is poor anyway. We sit at a desk all day, we are rounded forward, and this is what is comfortable and what we know. If I told someone to flatten their back and bring it to a neutral position, they may not know how to send those signals to their body.

World Champion Level

As I was searching for images, almost every competitor at black belt in the worlds could maintain a neutral spine now matter how bent over they were or how squatted they were.

As bent over as Cobrinha gets to show a move, his back stayed neutral. He can generate a lot of strength for lifting or driving here, while keeping his back from getting tired and relying on his main muscle driver, his glutes.

Probably at this level of competition, if YouTube videos are any indicator, the guys who do this full-time also have access to strength coaches who can show them how to generate more power and assess them for functional movement pattern distortions.






Same Move In the Strength World

In the example shown above, it looks a lot like this technique that Pavel Tsatsouline is showing. A variation of the Zercher squat, called the Zercher dead-lift. Pavel is generating a lot of force here, enough so that they are studying how he is able to manage such strength in that awkward position.

But look at his back, how neutral he can maintain his back. Observe  his neck, he is looking at the floor, so his cervical is also more in lined with his spine. As opposed to looking off to the horizon.



Putting It All Together

Now look back at Cobrinha. He is also looking down and keeping his thoracic, cervical, and lumbar spine in alignment. An athlete of Pavel and Cobrinha's level who are already gifted, who are aligned, can generate a lot of force here. In Pavel's case he can lift a lot of weight. In Cobrinha's case he is generating a lot of pounds per squat inch pressure onto his opponent.

How We Train

It reminds me of all the terrible conditioning I see at strength camps and martial arts academies where everything is misaligned, and its hackneyed strong man moves with none of the proper technique. You end up with some decent cardio and strength, but your energy leakages also get strengthened that much more.

Strength is definitely also a skill, like BJJ, that needs to be drilled perfectly over and over and over.


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.

Rise Up!

In a previous post, I wrote about being able to stand up and to gain motivation to work out. I decided to show a video of physical demonstrations of this act. One is of The Turkish Get Up while balancing a yoga block. I choice a yoga block because I wanted to show the move was about being seamless and steady, as opposed to being able to just muscle a lot of weight.

The other example I show is of a self defense stand up. I mentioned in that previous post that getting up is about being able to get up under duress, but also to be able to keep yourself safe while you get up. So the self defense version of the get up is a great example.

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.

Obesity in America

Sitting Kills

Trainers And Their Clients

Why do personal trainers tell their clients to do cardio all day but as soon as no client are around, they go lift heavy things on their own?

Think about it.

A Squidoo Article

How To Work Out At Work

A Hub I Wrote On The Get Up

http://allouteffort.hubpages.com/hub/The-Best-And-First-Work-Out

Yoga!

Sedentary jobs, Sedentary Clothes, And Sweat

Currently not only are most of our jobs sedentary, it is so sedentary it would be unacceptable to be sweating at work. Think about it, you can't sweat at work? And these same people are the same ones who complain about how long and how hard they work, yet they never sweat and they aren't really allowed to sweat.

Not only that their clothes. Most of the time it has to be dry cleaned. Their clothes are not designed for sweat, and would most likely rip under any type of labor.

So once again, their jobs, their clothes, and even the culture is anti-sweat. So no matter how much you say you walk around, or work hard, or move, or try to make up for it with 3 work outs a week, how active is your life if for most of it you are not allowed to sweat?

Not only that, after this thing we call "work" where we can't sweat, we go home to move even less. That's called not working.

So what are we really supposed to do?

You should try to do something active for 2-5 mins every 2-3 hours to break this sedentary cycle. A metabolism boost to rev up your metabolism to its NORMAL active state.


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.

What Are The Best Basic Exercises For Beginners

For anyone starting a fitness program or routine, they should consult their doctor first to make sure they are cleared for physical activity.

Your first goal and the goal of any personal trainer or training program should be to keep you safe and injury free. Every other goal is secondary to that primary goal of doing yourself no harm. Make sure you properly warm up prior to activity.

There are 5 basic exercises or lifts or concepts that are important for beginners. They are the squat, the deadlift, the lunge, a pulling exercise, and a pushing exercise. All of these are compound movements. Meaning instead of isolating parts of your body, you are using your body as one whole unit. Which is ultimately the way your body was engineered to work. Isolating body parts is a sports specific way of exercising for the sport of body building. For a beginner or someone just looking for fitness and weight loss, compound movements are recommended.

From the perspective of toning or weight loss, you will recruit more muscles doing compound exercises as well as increase your metabolic rate (burning calories as some people call it). Think about it in the instance of cardio, would you get more benefit from running up a hill, or standing in place and swinging your arms in a circle? One uses your whole body, one just uses your arms (specifically your shoulders). So then with that same thought, would you gain more benefit sitting down and doing some bicep curls, or holding weights and doing a squat?

1. Out of the 5 exercises I have mentioned, the squat is the most important. The idea is simple, we are mimicking something we do every day. The most important act, one of our first acts. The attempt to lift ourselves off of the ground, sitting and standing. Something we are designed to do. You look at a lot of cultures and they still squat instead of sitting on the ground, and this is completely comfortable for them. It's even how we originally used to go to the bathroom. You look at modern day people, and when they sit or stand up from a chair, they no longer squat. They basically fall down into the chair, and fall forward out of the chair. We need to bring the squat back. If we want to look like our fit ancestors, we have to train like they did. So what's more basic than something we've been doing since we've been around? There are many variations, from behind the back squat, front squat, dumbbell squat, goblet squat, kettlebell squat, overhead squat but for a beginner I recommend the body weight squat. I won't allow any of my clients to have weights until they have mastered the body weight squat.

2. The next exercise is the deadlift. The act of picking something up from the ground. It's roots? We had to hunt and gather right? We picked things off the ground, or hunted things that ran on the ground. Or we needed to pick up tools or pick things up to create tools. Its part of the foundational movements that make us human. It's all about hinging at the hips. With all the back problems people suffer from now, we have lost this ability and we need to bring it back. You look at how bad people's postures are, how rounded their backs get. They don't hinge at the hips, in fact they start bending from the middle of their back. We were born with a S-curved spine for a reason and if you round it out while bending over, under load or constant repetition, something will pull or snap! People because of this will tell you to avoid the deadlift. Well you will deadlift regardless. I guarantee it. While tying your shoes, picking up something off the ground, picking up your child, etc. Would you rather do it without any thought and poor technique? Or correct it and do it under a controlled environment so you become conditioned to a movement you do already? Make sure you master the idea of the hip hinge while maintaining a neutral spine. Look at yourself in the mirror. I use a stick with my clients, they hold it behind their back. One hand behind their head, one hand behind their low back. Throughout the whole movement they have to maintain three points of contact with the stick, at the head, the upper back and the low back.

3. The lunge is next. What else do we do all the time? We walk, we move, we stagger our legs. This is conditioning us to stay balanced and strong in a staggered stance. In all sports, martial arts, dancing, or basically 99% of the time you are up right, you will have one leg in front of the other. It's a safe way to work our balance without all the difficulty of exercises that require us to stand on one foot. But once you get good at the squat and the lunge, single leg exercises would be your next progression/evolution.

4. The pulling exercises. In our past, when we worked, we worked. We were constant pulling things. Pulling ourselves up, pulling carts, pulling ropes, pulling weeds, etc. We are so rounded because we constantly shrug forward, even our shoes make us lean forward. This has become a problem. Pull yourself together! Pull! Correct and align your posture. Whether its the row, a pull up, a pull down, a cable pull, etc. Just pull.

5. The pushing exercises. So what do I mean by that? It's any exercise where you push something away from you. Think about it, what do you do most of the day? You reach for things in front of you like keyboards and cellphones, you push doors open, your shelve something, you lift yourself out of bed, etc. So a pushing exercise can be anything from a push up, bench press, or my favorites, any overhead presses. Pick something up and lift it over your head. Bring that range of movement back and unfreeze your shoulders. We hardly ever lift our arms above our heads anymore as an adult. We stopped doing that once we stopped raising our hands in school. And even in school your arms got burned out raising them so you had to try to hold it up with your other arm or set it on top of your books. Besides the back where do people have the most problems? Shoulder and neck. We have nearly the same design as apes and monkeys. They have no problems raising their arms over their heads, they cling and climb trees all day, and are much stronger than us. Do they have our shoulder and neck issues? No. We were born to move our arms about. They are in a socket after all, designed for full range of motion.

I've given you a common sense explanation of why these exercises and routines are important. There are still many of you who are all about the weight loss and will think, well cardio will help me lose more weight. Wrong. If you think about it and go down that train of logic, it is absurd. What burns fat? Does fat burn fat? No. Muscles burn fat! Does cardio build muscles? No. What builds muscles? These compound exercises build muscles. What burns fat? Muscles. What do I do if I want to burn fat? You need to build muscle.

These are universal concepts really and there are many variations of all of these exercises. Some things that are general rules, maintain a neutral spine throughout each of these movements. Maintain most of your weight on your heels (except on the lunge where one of your feet will be on the ball of the foot), if because of your heels you can't feel where the weight is on your sole, wear less bulky shoes. Squeeze your glute and engage your core. Breath in and out during effort. Constantly breath, breath like a predator. How do they breath? Deep. Don't breath like prey and get winded and eaten up by these routines. Make sure your knees track your feet. With the squat, deadlift, and lunge: instead of just coming up, think about pushing the ground away.

For examples you can find plenty of demonstrations online but better yet because these exercises take time to master, seek out a professional. No not your buddy or your dad who thinks they know a thing or two. A personal trainer, maybe a personal training class or fitness class. They may be walking around your gym with nothing to do, ask them a question. These moves are simple but you don't treat them with respect and you will get hurt. So get guidance.

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.

FDA Looking Out For Us?

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/8294-walnuts-are-drugs-says-fda

Mental Training

When you want it mentally, it will manifest itself physically - Coach Sam

Make Life Easy

You train hard to make life easy. You ask yourself hard questions. Once you can answer them, everything else gets easy.

2012

All I have to say to you is it's 2012. Time to live up to your resolution!

Christmas Eve Work Out And Martial Arts Clinic

 Work Out

Martial Arts Clinic

Helping Out This Season

When you help someone cross the river, you both end up on the other side.

Fiber

Fiber slows down the sugar that enters the blood stream but it will speed up digestion so the food can leave your body quicker.

I know people love drinking their food, even with the juicing craze. You need fiber! Never eliminate it, even for the sake of more vitamins or nutrients.

My Kind Of Heavy Bag

Another Satisfied Client

This Is Not Just For Income

They say your income is the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most.

Well I say:

You are as fit as the 5 people you hang out with the most.

Training With Kathy Long

Training with multiple time Women's Boxing World Champion, multiple time World Kickboxing Champion, MMA Veteran, Martial Arts Hall of Famer, and movie action star Kathy Long. A true inspiration.

A Thank You Note

I recently got a thank you e-mail from an old client. Made my day.

Here's an excerpt -

"I'm happier, more independent, and confident now more than ever. I think releasing all the negative energy and people around me has helped me become a better person. Weight loss was just a perk. And you know, I've been wanting to thank you for helping me out a lot. The time I spent training with you has helped me take the higher road in life...Honestly, you're a life changer."

Whining Now Has A Price!

Effects Of All Out Effort

What's Most Important

I had a client come in. Wanted to get fit, and also use my coaching to help her with her anxiety. She's tried everything. She performs classical music and the amount of stress and pressure of performing and auditioning and competing at a high level were wearing on her and she felt something physical would help her fight this, along with building confidence, and work out some stress.

She told me she felt she needed a hardcore teacher. A bad ass who was in her face screaming. That's what she needed. Tough love. I asked her why she felt this way? She said her teachers tell her that's what she needs, that's already what she's used to, and its the only way to get good performances out of her. I asked her who told her that? Her teachers. I saw where all this anxiety was now coming from. I told her that's not the type of coach I was, and that's not what she needed.

I handed her a stick. I told her to hold on to it. Then I tried to rip it out of her hand aggressively. Every time I did, she braced and clenched. Even when I pretended to grab it, and feinted, she still clenched. When I came at her slowly, more politely, more respectfully, she relaxed and allowed me to move her around with the stick. I told her when people come at her this hard way, that's her natural reaction. Freeze, clench, stress, and react also aggressively. When I came at her respectfully and controlled, she allowed me to move her, we created a mutual bond of trust. I told her then that people will come at her in life this way, but she is also coming at herself this way as well, she is coming at herself without respect, impolitely, aggressively. She needed to be easier on herself.

I asked her what's the most important thing she needs to learn from this? What's the first thing she needs to learn? What does she need to get out of today?

She gave me varied answers. From relaxation and breathing, to learning how to exercise on her own, to maybe some martial arts moves as well. She thought martial arts seemed like a good form of exercise, that it may help her.

I told her all those things were important, but to me the most important thing is learning how to get up.

I told her to lie on the ground, and asked her if she knew how to get up without having someone kick her in the face? She realized she had no idea. The simplest thing, the thing taken most for granted.

I then demonstrated a way to get up without taking any damage.

I asked if she knew what I just showed her? She said I showed her how to get up.

I said no, I showed you how to rise against duress. Duress of any kind. Physical or mental or situational.

I showed her the same move again, this time holding weight. There was only one way to get up against direct pressure.

Performance training to me is all about being able to get up, rise to the occasion, or keep picking yourself back up, against any stress, pressure, or attack. Whether it be mental, physical, emotional, financial, spiritual.

I told her she would perform as she trained. If I screamed at her, she would just be good at taking orders. And then out there, she would only be good as the orders I gave her. She would be the best example of a  cog on a ship. Not the captain of the ship. It's not about taking orders, its about mastering yourself. To master yourself, you need to learn to rise against any adversity.

Get up.



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.