Monthly Archives: September 2010

Tighten the hell up.

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You’re making progress in your quest to become more fit. Maybe that means building muscle or losing weight (fat), but whatever you’re doing is working. There will come a day when you start to see less off a gain (or loss, depending on how you want to look at it). This happens to everyone. You can only be so fit, so strong, or so light. There are physical limitations to what a human being can be composed like.

I was at a conference called The Audience Conference recently and one of the speakers, Dan Patterson, made a very insightful point: tighten the hell up. You can think you’re crushing it, but in the bigger scheme of things you’re sloppy and could do way better. Don’t just settle for what you think is awesome. Be awesome. Do that or you’ll fail.

When you reach your goal or ‘the plateau’ you’ll regress into your old habits. Maybe you’ll start eating out more, or when you’re eating out, eating less healthy foods. This is because you made it to where you need to be. Unfortunately if you continue on that course in that mindset, you’re going to fall back to where you were.

This is when, most of all you need to tighten the hell up. Buckle down and stick your face to the grindstone. It’s time to push your goals out beyond where you think you can attain them and kick it up a notch. What you’ve been doing so far to see such significant gains will only maintain you now.

Cheat meals and missing exercise dates will work to a point as long as your overall fitness plan is sound and you’re sticking with it, but at some point you’re going to need to buck up and lose your cheat meals and never miss an exercise date. You might even need to start exercising more.

That’s the problem I have with ‘diets.’ People that ‘diet’ usually stop at some point and then lose all of their progress. What you need to really do is change your diet for life, not ‘go on a diet’ and you’ll make permanent changes that last forever. If you can change your habits, you’ll succeed in your fitness goals and go way beyond. It’s all about changes to the unconscious decisions you make in your life.

I’m writing about all of this, because I’ve begun to plateau in my own efforts. The amount of weight I can lift isn’t accelerating like it used to, and I’ve been floating just under 200 lbs for about three weeks. I understand that a lot of that weight has been muscle traded for fat, because I can see it in my physique, but none the less, it’s de-motivating when I’m still 20 lbs away from my goal of 180 lbs.

As a result of that de-motivation, I’ve managed to slip in my diet and gym visits, which in turn showed an upward tic in my weight on the scales – and I suspect that wasn’t adding muscle. I’m publicly telling myself right now that I need to tighten the hell up and push harder. Can I reach that goal by the end of the year? We’ll see.

Could you save your own life?

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I wish I could remember where I was reading it, but basically a question was posed: are you fit enough to save your own life? What does that mean? It means: could you run, jump, swim, or maneuver yourself out of a life threatening situation that a normal fit person could probably navigate easily?

Swimming

If your plane crash landed in the water and there were no life preservers, could you tread water until help arrives? If your boat sinks in the middle of a lake and you have no option but to swim to shore, could you do it? You should be fit enough to swim a quarter mile or tread water for at least half an hour.

There are two issues here. One, you should be able to swim, so if you can’t you should learn. I was listening to the news the other day and six children drowned in a river because a couple of them went out too far and another four drowned trying to save them. None of them could swim. Their parents stood on the shore horrified, but couldn’t do anything because they couldn’t swim either. I feel like that situation should never happen.

The second thing is: you should be in good enough shape to be able to swim and tread water for an extended period of time. You never know when you’ll find yourself out on a lake or the ocean with no option but to swim for it or wait in the water until help arrives. You don’t need to be Michael Phelps, but you shouldn’t be the first person to drown either. That would be embarrassing.

Running

I know this probably only happens in action movies, but you should probably be able to sprint at full speed for half a mile or so. I mean a solid run at 6mph or so. Let’s get a little out there and consider that a serial killer is chasing you at a dead run. You want to be able to run to the neighbors house or police station, because you know you’ll never be able to get the keys in your car in time. That never works.

Let’s flip it around and pretend you see someone in need. They’re over a half mile away and need CPR. There isn’t anyone else around. Could you save their life?

Agility

Are you agile enough to climb a cargo net or jump over some waist-high obstacles without breaking your stride? You never know when you might need to run down an alleyway strewn with debris. You should be able to climb a cargo net at a respectable speed and use monkey bars.

Your balance should also be decent. You might need to climb some thin pillars or cross a 4×4 beam between buildings while you’re running from the aforementioned serial killer. It would be a sad site if you were running to save your life and died trying to get away.

Training

Obstacle courses are great for training your survival fitness – especially when they have a body of water available for you to swim in. You should just try to complete a predetermined course to begin with, but move on to set a personal record every time you attack it. Try adding obstacles when you begin to plateau. Increase the length or difficulty of the course if it gets too easy.

Try to attack an obstacle course at least a few times a year to see how you do. If you’re really into it, set aside one or two visits a month if one is readily available to you. There is a reason that one of the core exercises of the military is obstacle courses. They provide real world obstacles for you to overcome.

Intermittent Fasting Can Jump Start Fat Loss

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I’ve been reading a lot lately about intermittent fasting as a way to jump start fat loss. In my own fat loss quest, I’ve started to hit a plateau around 200 lbs. I feel like that might also be because I’m starting to add on a lot of muscle, but I can’t be sure. I’m by no means demotivated by my progress, because I am doing much better than I was six months ago.

I actually had the pleasure of seeing some pictures of myself from St. Patrick’s day and I was amazed at how much healthier I look. I’ve lost a lot of weight in my face and neck. There is no better motivator than going back in time and seeing some pictures of how you used to look.

To break through this wall I’m hitting, I’ve decided to try fasting to see how it affects my energy and weight. I’m worried about potentially losing the muscle I’ve gained, but I also know I can put that back on once I lose the fat. I’m more concerned about what kind of hit I will take to my overall energy. Last Saturday I ate dinner around 6:30 PM and promised myself I wouldn’t eat again until 6:30 PM the following evening.

When you really break it down and think about it, a 24 hour fast isn’t really a big deal, because you’re only cutting out two meals: breakfast and lunch, the following day. I had no trouble at all making the journey and was able to eat a sensible dinner on Sunday evening. My overall energy wasn’t affected and I felt great about the whole endeavor.

I’ve read that doing two fasts a week can produce great results and I’ve decided to try that. I’m already allowing two cheat meals a week and have seen good progress doing that, so I’ll continue to do two cheat meals a week along with the fasting. From what I understand, the cheat meals are actually a good practice when fasting, because it helps return your leptin hormone levels to normal.

Leptin is the hormone that puts your body into “starvation mode” and causes you to store fat. When you fast those leptin levels drop and you start to store fat, but when you cheat, they rise to above-normal levels and you store less fat. The one-two combo of cheating and fasting is supposed to accelerate weight loss in theory.

I will try fasting for 30 days and see if it affects my overall energy and weight loss. If it works, I may continue. Either way, I will report the results here and let you know how it goes.

For people looking for more information on intermittent fasting, please check out some of the resources that immediately come to mind, like: ExtremeHumanPerformance.com, FitJerk.com, and TryingFitness.com.

Have you ever tried to do a fast? If you did, how long did you go, and how did it make you feel? Please share your results and we’ll compare them to what I find out.

Take it Easy: Avoid Injury: Get Better Gains

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At the gym the other day I was doing some bench presses. I wasn’t doing anything too heavy and I was pretty confident I’d be fine. My routine was going to be ten reps and five sets at about 60% of my one rep max. I got about five or six reps into my fourth set and things started getting harder. I wanted to finish out the set, so I pushed myself through the grind and around the ninth rep, I felt my should pop out a bit. I had a spotter and had them reset the weight on the bench for me. I didn’t push anymore. I just packed up and went home. I hadn’t made it anywhere near my full time in the gym.

There was one thing I did right that day and one thing I did wrong. I’ll start with what I did wrong. I pushed myself hard enough to actually aggravate my shoulder. It ended up setting me back a bit because it was sore for three or so days afterward.  Because it was my shoulder, it kept me from doing most upper body workouts for those three days. You don’t need to hit that ‘grind’ every time to see gains. You can very easily see progress just going until your breathing or form change. Stop there and avoid injury.

I was talking with a guy at the gym a few months back and he was telling me about his bench pressing story. He is currently going to the gym to rehab an injury to his elbow. I guess he had been pushing about 400 pounds on his one rep max during his normal routine and was trying to push forward to 405 pounds. He hit the grind at 405 and tried to will himself through it. He ended up ripping the tendon in his elbow from the bone, which set him back significantly. He’s now doing 375 pounds on a bench press, more than three years later.

What I did right: I stopped as soon as I knew I had pushed too far. I didn’t keep going on benches or even any other exercises and that ultimately let me get back into the routine much quicker. I just bailed out, went home, and rested myself. By doing that I was able to stay on track and push my quest for fitness forward.

I’m not saying don’t push yourself. That’s not what this is all about. I’m saying don’t push yourself too hard. Know your body, and be patient. You can’t add five pounds to your one rep max every week. Eventually your gains will slow down or even plateau. Embrace that and be careful while you’re doing it. You could cause yourself a few days, or worse end up in the hospital, if you push too hard. This is about being healthy, not about how much weight you can life, so you can show off to your friends.

Have you ever injured yourself while working out? How bad was it? Did you recover? How long did it set you back? I want to hear your story.