100 calorie packs

I went to the grocery store today.  I’m probably one of the 4 men on the entire planet that actually likes to shop for groceries.  There are a couple of caviats to my enjoyment:

• The list needs to be flexible (I’m going to buy 2x as much things that aren’t on the list compared to what’s on it
• It needs to be during non-peak hours (I hate dealing with inconsiderate fucks on their phones that block the isle)

During my most recent visit I was bombarded with 100 calorie versions of…pretty much everything.  You can get popcorn, cookies, even apples.  That’s right folks, 100 calories worth of apples.  Cause we’re in an epidemic of people getting morbidly obese because they’re eating the WHOLE apple.  Put the apples down people.  Learn to say “no”.

Misc

I dunno if anyone is following the whole obesity tax thing or not.  If you’re staring at the screen with a blank look google “New York obesity tax” when you’re done here and get up to speed.  Long story short they’re imposing a tax on soda (I think California is taxing high fructose corn syrup).  The interesting thing on both is that soda and HFCS are t as the evil that is fatness and we should stop “the man” or at least make some money off of the fatties.

This brings me to having a nutrition discussion with my co-workers during breakfast one day.  They had some burritos and orange juice and talking about the evils of soda.  I pointed out that the juice was more calorie dense than a pepsi of equal size to which the response was “Well yeah, but it has zero nutritional value”.  To which I replied “So?  Are you really getting the bulk of your nutrients through liquid calories in the first place?”.

That’s basically the crux of my issue with taxing “bad food”.  The food may not be great but it’s not bad.  Obesity isn’t caused by ding dongs.  It’s caused by people eating too much.  You can lose weight all day long drinking soda and eating snickers.  You might feel like shit, but you’ll lose weight.  Before anyone starts freaking out about being healthy, the tax isn’t called “the healthy tax” it’s the obesity tax.  I say tax portion sizes.  Shove the king sized snickers up your pooper and give me a 120cal one.

Misc Thoughts

I was recently re certified as a PT leader.  To my surprise the class was pretty decent.  The people that taught it seemed interested in what they were doing and grant access to quite a bit of interesting equipment and training.

The only negative I had was on on the sample training.  The first was an old gym rat who’s sole focus was on making a routine hard.  IMO a “hard” routine is the mark of a lazy trainer.  You can make anything hard, just move into an awkward position and hold it for a few seconds or super+set something that focuses on a small muscle group….viola…hard.  I was even balancing on a swiss ball at one point, at which time there was a definite risk of me losing my shoe up his ass.  Body awareness is cool, lack of being able to stand on a fucking ball does not mean that you’re missing a vital part in your training.  Then we had a mini spin class.  This was my second ever spin class…neither time could really justify me wedging a tiny little seat in my ass for 45min.  There seems to be a trend of fat spinning instructors I’ve noticed.  I get to listen for ever on how you can get lean and in shape spinning by someone that either doesn’t own a mirror or just misses the irony.  Finally we got introduced to equipment by someone that obviously had no clue about what was going on.  Talking about isolating different sites in muscles that…you can’t isolate and using machines in ways that they weren’t intended to be used.  Good times.

All three of the negative experiences reiterated that you need to know why you’re going to the gym and the necessity of having a holistic view of training to ensure that you actually get what you achieve what you’re setting out to do.  What’s the point in going to the gym if your training\diet\lifestyle doesn’t match your training goal?  You could be sitting on the couch eating delicious oreo cookie ice cream sandwiches.  Yum a dum dum.  At least you could enjoy that!

Misc Thoughts: Train Like an Athlete

Every once in a while you see someone say something about wanting to look like an athlete.  So the rule of thumb answer is if you want to look like an athlete then you have to train like an athlete.  It sounds cool, but it’s stupid.

Riddle me this.  Do all MMA fighters carry a particular look?  Football players, golfers, fishermen?  You’ve got big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones…blah blah blah.  Their skills allow them to carry out their occupation.  My buddy Gabe is a consultant.  He’s all kinds of sexy, but I’m not sure that going to college and eating BBQ is going to work for me.  Point:  There isn’t “a look” for athletes.  Some sports tend to attract\produce certain body styles but you’re running into a chicken-egg scenerio.

Pt2 of this little fiasco:

Even if training like a track star would make you look like a track star…you’re not going to do it.  You don’t have the time to put in per day and you’re not going to wait 10 years worth of training like this to achieve that look (aka the amount of time it took that guy to get that look).  Why?  Because it’d be stupid.  If you were willing to dedicate 10 years to get that look then cut back to 4hrs of weight training a week and a decent diet.

Moral of the Story:

Athletic training will improve your skill set at that sport, it’s not bodybuilding.

If you’re willing to put in the time and effort anyway, there are faster\easier ways to get there.

Misc Thoughts: Stealing from Billy Blanks

Seeing Bill (I call him Bill, because we’re tight like that) was pretty cool.  I’m not really sold on Thai-Bo as the solution for the worlds problems but it’s an interesting way to get off your fat ass for a little while and there’s value in that.  The cooler part for me was the fact that the guy is a success story.  Superstar martial artist, was in movies, created an entire fitness movement, and you can tell when you talk to him that he really believes in what he does.  Helping people is important to him…that’s cool.  I’m sure getting filthy rich doesn’t hurt but he seemed very genuine.

At the end of our little session we did the big semi-circle and had a talk where he gave some little words that seemed important to him.  Please note that this is all pretty much paraphrase here so hopefully Bill won’t jump out of some bushes and kick me in the face:

“You are the ultimate controller of your world.  Regarding health, if you’re not successful then you’re not really trying.  Name anything in your life that you worked hard at day after day, all day, for years, and haven’t been successful at it.  You can’t.  If you are genuinely trying then you will succeed.

You have the power within yourself to be a loser.  You have the power to allow yourself to fail at every goal that you ever set.  It comes easy.  Is it something you really want to work towards?

Misc Thoguhts: Professionalism

One thing that I think is neat about wordpress is that it has a lot of build in statistic information that’s easy to read and see.  Typically when I put up a new review my readership doubles.  When I take a strong stand or make a negative review it’ll triple.  With the plagiarism argument floating around there were a handful of extra hits, so I’m going to assume that there are folks out there not satisfied with my numerous posts on the subject that are already a matter of public record.

I haven’t put anything above and beyond here because I don’t really have anything to add to what I’ve already said.  There’s been a lot of action in the past calling for unification on credentials for personal trainers.  I’m not against forcing people to learn how to do the job that they’re paid for but on the outside looking in I only think that, that’s half of the problem that likely stems from the same root cause.  IMO there’s a lack of emphasis on professional standardization.  Be it learning or acceptable practices.  There’s too much emphasis on brand and not enough emphasis on value or “doing a good job”.  It’s a tricky proposition because for the most part the window for “right answer” is pretty broad, but there has to be a personal pride in doing a good job or at the very least a willingness to concede when you don’t.  Whether it’s personally bettering yourself or putting out products that you don’t have to make excuses for, you as a trainer (or any other job in the world) need to take pride in all aspects your craft.  If you do a job, do it right.

Misc Thoughts: Salesmen

A recent example of how the industry can be divided into the buisness world VS. helping people.  For those you that have been following my adventures for a while, you know that I’ve had particular issues with a particular circle.  My big conflicted around the marketing tactics being used and not necessarily delivering on content.  Some people are better than others at avoiding the outright stupid, but every so often slip ups are made.

In this recent example material is flat out stolen, at the very least influenced by…by an extreme level, without giving credit to the original author.  It’s odd because it happened before, but I was willing to give the re-publishers the benefit of the doubt.  Everything under the sun has been done before and having (very) similar ideas about diet and training isn’t necessarily impossible.  This time we have pretty much blatant paraphrasing of a work.  Similarities can’t be avoided but it’s a pretty hard case to argue that the similarities aren’t pretty obvious.  It’s amazing to me…fuck…there’s a lot of things amazing to me.  I amaze easily apparantly.

I’ve been pretty fortunate recently to see certain folks get called out without a major blowback.  Slowly the higher profile folks are starting to get dents in the armor for propping up dirtbags, and lying to their customers…or just being pointed out that they aren’t what they claim to be.  It’s an interesting age we’re in.

Misc Thoughts: Training Secrets

Some people say that they have training secrets…and shall sell them to you. Some people say that there are no secrets…and if you buy their book they will tell you why. Some people say “Ramma Lamma Ding Dong”. To these people I say “Party on Garth”.

Back to the fitness world, I think that there really are training secrets out there. They aren’t exercises or rep schemes so much as they’re “context”. Most advise given out in the world is correct if they’re presented within the proper set of circumstances. In this mind set the author of a given work usually isn’t “wrong” about information. That doesn’t mean that the information that they are passing on to you as a reader has anything to do with you or your current situation; and that my friends is the key to this little hope chest. Part of the fun when reading a new work is figuring out what has to be true for the information that is being provided to be accurate, or what situation has to occur for the statement to be correct.  It’s not really intuitive when you think about it.  We tend to focus on things either being right, wrong, or irrelevant.  Chances are some new information will fall into at least one of those categories, but shifting your thought to the left might make the information worth remembering.  Perhaps if you got your leg chopped off the information may not be relevant.  Perhaps if you’re at or above 15% body fat you can shit can all the fat loss tricks you read about and stick to the “eat less, exercise more” plan.  Perhaps if you can only do 10 push ups you don’t need a “plan” other than doing push ups as  many and often as much as possible.  Perhaps if you’re at 90 then that plan is stupid.

hmmm.

Misc Thoughts: Group ownership

Kind of building on the boot camp post here:

7.  It’s your world, own it.  If you’ve got an hour then everyone needs to be involved in everything for an hour.  If you’ve got three then they need to be occupied for three.  It sounds obvious but everyone finds out the hard way.  You’ve got people jerking around, talking, distracting, not having a good time.  It’s not “THEIR” fault.  You’ve gave them the opportunity to be a distraction\lose their focus.

Talk loudly\firmly.  Go immediately to the point and give demonstrations while you’re explaining.  Ask for questions and move immediately into doing it.  You can initialize socialization while the group is doing their thing.  You have them focused on doing what they came to do.  You maintain the power in the situation.  If you start off with the “how was your weekend” bit then they’re going to chatter for freaking ever and you have to interrupt them to do your job, screw that.

It’s the same principle during the session.  There has to be a line that says “This is what everyone should be doing at this moment” and that line has to exist 99% of the time.  It establishes discipline.  If someone is fucking off then you can call them out for fucking off and they are wrong for doing it.  If they’re in between activities for too or never laid the ground rules on what they were supposed to be doing in the first place then it’s you’re fault.

Example:

-”Hello, I’m Tony…I’m going to kill you”  No waiting for a response.  People came to be instructed by you, it doesn’t matter what they have to say.

-Instructions begin both verbal and visual.  “I want this done, this many times\for this long.  Do you understand?”  Someone doesn’t understand, pull them up in front of everyone don’t discuss from a distance.  If you’re talking from a distance then you’re supporting dialog, you want them to fucking do a push up, not to talk.  Have them do the exercise “Got it?  Everyone 3-2-1 go”

-People are doing their thing.  You provide constant feedback.  Good.  Bad.  You’ve got a nice ass.  You have a good weekend?  2 people are talking during this period and you shout down anyone bucking the system.

-Johnny Top 25% finishes early…as he should.  Fortunately you told  him to do jumping jacks\go grab your gun from the car\random thing that’ll take 2-3 minutes until the middle 50% are done.  What he does isn’t that important, he just has to be doing SOMETHING.  Bottom 25% are still at it, call them up.  “Time, get up”.  Try to make sure that it’s not one guy…that’ll make him feel like a fag.  If it’s one guy let him finish OR call up everyone when there’s 3-4 people left to go.  It’s easier to maintain enthusiasm when you’re moving like a team.  Any time people start getting singled out it starts being harder to hold people together.  Makes sense right?

-Praise the group.  Short and too the point.  “Alright, that was good.”

-While people are recovering you’re beginning your next demo\explanation.  Oddly enough it’ll take you just long enough to explain\show what you want to do for the middle 50% of your group to recover from what you’ve just had them doing.  Funny how that works.  You’ve got that 1-2 min to make your point for the next round.  If the people recover while you’re jerking off then they lose focus.  Can’t let that happen.  Floooooooow.

Misc Thoughts: Boot Camp

Word on the street says that Roland (blog link down to the right) is going to be “the man” and start teaching fitness bootcamps to shinies.  That’s the goal anyway, so it’ll come to fruitation at some point and it got me thinking so here’s a post on that.

Just to caveat here, I’ve never ran a bootcamp.  Tell you the truth, I’m not sure what that really means.  Now I have been to one bootcamp before (not really practical for most) and ran more PT sessions than I can conveniently count, so I’m going to dig deep and share here from what experiences I do have.

1.  Timing.  Timing.  Timing.  Figure out what you’re going to do and how long it should take.  Figure out transition time between events.  Talking time to explain things.  Add 1min longer than you’d think it’ll take between anything that requires moving and explaining.  Running over time isn’t acceptable, you can’t do it.  Running out of shit to do makes you look like a jackass.

2.  Plan around the middle 50%.  25% of the people that show up are going to not actually want to be there and\or will just flat out suck.  25% of the people are going to be studs.  The rest of the folk will be right around the same area.  If you work at the top tier level then 75% of your people can’t do it.  If you work at the bottom tier then 75% of your people won’t be challenged.  The goal should be to challenge the middle 50, encourage the bottom 25, and recruit the top 25 into encouraging and assisting the others.

3.  Competition.  Find things that pit people up against each other.  They’ll work harder and enjoy it more.  If you’re like me and not particularly original then pick up a book.

4.  Challenge people.  The goal is figuring out something that the class doesn’t think that they can do…and have them do it.

5.  Pick goals that are easy to succeed.  Say you give someone a workout with 100 squat\pushup\situp\
so forth.  Some people are going to look at that and think you’re insane.  Tell them they’ve got an hour and you don’t want to hear bullshit for an hour or they’re done.  Everyone will finish.  Hell it’s 300reps, at one every two seconds (average) that’s 30 per minute \ 300 = 10min.  You’re giving 60.

6.  Never pick on the new guy.  Let the class haze.  Find your favorite and ride their ass.  New guy gets encouragement.  You want them to come back.  If they want an ass riding, seeing you do it to someone else will be good enough.  If they’re self conscious then you just avoided alienating them.