Formosa Fitness

Our next kettlebell shipment ships out tomorrow. We're very excited! It's our biggest one yet. We want to have in stock whatever size you need. Take a look!

Those are powerclubs on top BTW.

So this is what's in store next. We're always expanding and growiing because I'm always learning something new. I'll be taking the TACFIT and CST clubbell cert in December. I'm very excited to be offering this in Taiwan. so expect to be challenged with these movements in the near future!

This was our first TV interview and it aired on yesterdays' news. I run a class for the hearing impaired on Tuesday/Thursday and a local news crew came to interview us about it. Luckily my part of the interview got cut a bit short since they asked questions I hadn't prepared for, especially in Chinese. LOL. 

We don't have to quit our desk jobs and work as peasants to reap the benefits of movement. Instead we need to look beyond the sitting-type fitness that many people are doing. Think about it this way: if you're sitting hunched over a desk all day, why would you choose fitness that also has you sitting and likely hunched over? It just doesn't make any sense. Your fitness makes the problems WORSE, not better.

Sitting types of fitness have many problems. One of them is that the stabilization muscles aren't used. Sitting isolates most muscles except the few being worked -- that means fewer calories are being burned. It's an extremely inefficient way to work out.

Functional fitness, on the other hand, gets you up out of your chair and doing all those movements that you don't do all day long. Using the basic human movements of deadlift, squat, lunge, push, pull, jump, etc. will burn one heck of a lot more calories than sitting fitness, insure that you maintain muscle mass throughout the body, retain quality of movement as you get older, etc.

And let's be honest: sitting-type fitness is extremely boring. Whenever I hear from someone that fitness is boring, I ask what they're doing and it's always some form of fitness that minimizes movement and variety. Running like a rat on a treadmill, sitting on an exercise bike, using weight machines, etc. doesn't provide the variety of human movement that we're capable of doing because it locks you into one movement. That's why they have so many TV's in places that provide this stuff: you need something else to keep you entertained.

Another missing piece is that because movement is minimized, you're limiting your fitness to that single movement or small set of movements. Your body will eventually adapt -- meaning you're going to have to go to further extremes to keep making it work for fat loss or fitness. In order to keep getting results, you'll have to do more, go harder, etc. at something that people likely already find boring.

The alternative is to get outside the box and do movements that you NEVER do. Because you don't do them much, you're likely very weak in them. You'll see very quick results because your body is starving for squatting, lunging, pulling, etc. when all you've been giving it is the same sitting you do all day anyway.

There's a final major reason NOT to choose sitting type of exercises and it's a big one: sitting type of exercises do little to fight muscle wasting associated with age and the concurrent drop in testosterone in men.

Rates depend on who you talk to but muscle loss of half a percent a year in the sedentary starting around the age of 30 seem about right. This loss is cumulative, meaning that by the time you're in your 50's, you're going to be in deep trouble if you've waited that long to start working out. A 10-15% loss of lean muscle (most people have little to start with) is serious business.

Several interesting points need to be made here:
1. Aerobic exercises do little to nothing to preserve muscle mass. This type of exercise does not promote muscle hypertrophy, in fact it does the exact opposite. Muscle wasting happens even to older runners and cyclists. This especially sets women up for osteopenia and then osteoporosis. There's a strong relationship between muscle and bone mass.

2. Quality of movement greatly declines. Once this muscle loss takes place, you're below a neutral point in terms of fitness. Many activities become risky because you don't have the muscle to support the movement, meaning you'll have to exercise to remove the deficiency before engaging in them or risk injury. The older "weekend warrior" is particularly susceptible to this problem.

3. Testosterone production and maintaining muscle mass in men are strongly correlated. Maintain one and there's a strong likelihood you'll maintain the other. Once the sex hormones start to drop, you're more at risk for a host of diseases. Not to mention watching your sex life wither away (yuck).

4. The exercises that maintain muscle mass and testosterone production the most are the compound lifts -- deadlift, squat, clean and press, jerk, snatch, etc. These exercises are the very opposite of the sitting type of exercise.

5. Couple all this with a corresponding decrease in protein consumption for various reasons and you've created a perfect environment for muscle wasting. Lack of sufficient protein leads to loss of lean muscle mass even in younger individuals. For the elderly it can be devastating.

Decreased protein consumption, aging, muscle wasting, engaging in aerobic/sitting exercise only, osteopenia/osteoporosis, decreased sex hormone production, obesity -- every single one of these is interrelated.

Obesity becomes very hard to fight when all these factors are in place.

We did it: I signed a lease on our new location yesterday. We went in to negotiate only but (surprise, surprise) our new landlord agreed to everything. This kind of threw me off a bit since it was so unexpected. So we signed the lease and I have the keys. It all happened so very, very fast.

So what's in store for Formosa Fitness 2.0? Take a look at this:

This is where we're headed. We've been using kettlebells exclusively with a little TRX thrown in but it's time for us to expand the options a bit. Kettlebells will always be a big part of what we do but we no longer want to be focused on a single tool. We want to use whatever tool gets the client the best results. So barbells, climbing ropes, dumbbells, sandbags, etc. will alll be added to the mix.You'll appreciate the variety, I'm sure.

This has never been tried in Taiwan before. We're going to be breaking new ground here again because ....well....that's what we do. :)

(Edit: for reasons I don't understand related to Youtube, if you watch the video here there is no sound. Double click and you can watch it on youtube with sound. Hey, who knows why?)

These are our new coaches and this is what I put them through. I want the kettlebell certification that we offer to be something different in Taiwan. This certification is something that you earn by doing -- just showing good form on a few reps isn't enough. I want coaches that can actually do the work. They need to experience first hand why the kettlebell is special. And I believe this first group got it.

I'm so proud of this group. They prepared very well and worked hard. I saw some serious improvement in just a few weeks. That took guts -- just what I was looking for in new coaches.

If you think you have what it takes, then start preparing for our second certification now scheduled for September 18, 2010.

It's a whirlwind week here. We had our first kettlebell certification ever in Taiwan yesterday. We were honored to hold this event and want to say thanks to all the trainers that worked so hard for their certification. Here are some pics from the event:

Thanks again to everyone for a successful cert. Hope to see you at the next one!

You have to hand it to Nike. They're one of the few companies that can see beyond common advertising practices. These ads promote solid results beyond just looking like a stick. Thin and sickly is out. It ain't fit. Someone wants to look like that then just do heroin. Shooting for the body type below is both doable and healthier! Just do it! :)

Sometimes a client comes in and says they want to:

• gain muscle
• lose fat
• clean up their diet
• take suplement A, B, and C
• cut back on drinking
• go to bed earlier
• get up earlier
• stop smoking
• stop kicking the dog
• etc., etc., etc.

Every time I hear this, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. I understand the desire to change things but this is NOT the way to go. Why not?

1. Doing too many things prevents you from doing any one thing well. For most people, all of these are good goals but they're pretty hard to do individually, let alone in a whole group. Disperse your efforts and you wind up with nothing. You're just setting yourself up for failure.

2. All of these things either are habits or depend on habits. How many habits (some you might have had your whole life) do you think you can change in a week? You'd be lucky to change one. So just pick one.

3. But here's the worst part that few people get: even if you do get results, you'll never know WHAT got you the results. You're doing too many things. What worked and what didn't? Who knows? So when whatever worked stops working (and it eventually will) what are you going to do then?

This total makeover idea is terrible unless you're on a reality show and can work on this stuff 24/7.

Instead, start a fitness and diet journal. Write down everything that you're eating and how you're exercising. Just get that habit in place first! Once you have the DISCIPLINE to journal, get the exercise habit down. Make it consistent, make it effective. If you can't get that habit down, then forget about taking supplements, etc. because it won't matter. Once the fitness is in place, start cleaning up the diet. Diet is MUCH harder for most folks than exercise. There's a hierarchy to this stuff that must be respected. Once fitness and diet are taken care of then the cornerstones of an effective program are laid. We can then later discuss supplements, etc.

Keeping a journal lets you know what worked and what didn't. That's a VITAL piece of the puzzle. Without it, you're just foundering around unfocused.

DISCIPLINE is a major issue for most folks. They are so scattered that they become immobilized. Get the discipline to focus on one goal at a time, and most anything is possible.

Lots of work lately so sorry for the lack of updates. This is our completed logo for Kettlebell Taiwan. This organization is devoted to spreading kettlebell training throughout our island nation. We changed the name too since our Facebook page is Kettlebell Taiwan, as is our website: kettlebell.com.tw