Formosa Fitness

This is Biochem Whey Isolate Protein Vanilla flavor. I have one unopened can for sale at NT$1500. It goes to the first person that calls.

I'm experimenting with importing some of the few supplements I regularly take. Biochem protein powder is one of the absolute best you can buy and that's why I'm trying to get it here to Taiwan. It uses NO artificial flavors or sweeteners and is whey ISOLATE, not lower quality concentrate. Whey isolate is almost impossible to get in Taiwan. All I found was Now Foods Unflavored Whey Isolate.

I've tried a can of Biochem and found it one of the lighest proteins I've ever tried. The taste was great. It dissolves very easily and is great for cooking, too. Protein bars are easy with this protein.

So if you want one of the best protein powders you can get, then give me a shout today.

P.S. We now carry a full range of protein powders, including vegan. Call us today and get yours!

The American diet has gotten totally out of hand. Glad to hear Jamie telling it like it is. And again, notice that he doesn't have a six pack or 10% bodyfat. The diet changes he recommends won't have you consuming lettuce, crackers, and water all day. Good stuff.

Wow, what a great cert that was. The presenter was an expert in functional anatomy and worked that material into the presentation whenever he could. I learned lots about which TRX exercises were really good and which ones might not make the cut. I also had a question about whether or not clients should do a full minute plank before starting TRX training and the presenter shot down that idea. His reasoning was solid so I'm glad I asked.

The cert manual is one of the best I've seen. A real keeper. We covered stretching as well as the upper, lower, and core exercises you would expect. And all of it is in the manual for review. Glad to have it as we covered a lot of stuff.

It was good to meet more trainers from around the region and compare notes with them. It's also nice to know how you stand in your profession and I came back feeling very comfortable with my knowledge and the direction we're headed with the gym. I feel now more than ever that we're going in the right direction.

As great as the certification was, I'm glad to be home. There's no place like home, right?

Getting pumped up about the TRX cert I'm taking this weekend. Glad to be learning from Fitness Anywhere -- the official TRX people. LOL at the clip above because my class looks nothing like that and I just realized why. All the clients are young, in shape, and the class is in a meat-market gym complete with a DJ. Can't work out without a DJ, now can we? :)

These are the celebrity trainers associated with TRX. I'm hoping to pick up Todd Durkin's DVD on the TRX since I think his stuff is the most interesting.

Anyway, this is the last post until I come back next week. Wish me luck and stay tuned for lots of great TRX training ideas when I get back!

Then be willing to put in more than a minimum effort.

We all would like to win the lottery by buying a one dollar ticket, but that isn't reality. And fitness isn't magic. You can't do a little and gain a lot.

If you want great results, then you'll have to work hard for them. There's simply no shortcuts despite what the commercials tell you.

And where did this idea of three times a week for exercise come from?

As far as I know, this was a suggestion made by the American Heart Association in relation to cardiovascular health many years ago. The idea was moderate exercise three times a week would help you fight off heart disease. Yeah well maybe, but that's in NO way sufficient for much of anything else.

Three times a week is a bare minimum for any fitness routine. It's usually the minimum I will accept for someone to join my classes. Less than that and I make people buy equipment they can use at home. Why? Because once or twice a week in class just isn't enough.

Take almost any fitness goal and you'll see that you will need more than three days a week to reach it. Talking about fat loss -- don't make me laugh. Three days a week for fat loss isn't going to work for most folks. It isn't a big enough demand on the body.

Most of us simply don't move enough in daily life for three workouts a week to make up for the difference. It simply doesn't compute.

So the higher your goals, the more time you'll have to devote to reaching them. Fitness is no different.

Few people really know what it's like to really push the body hard. For most folks, they do an exercise (often with poor form already which saps their results) until it gets a little uncomfortable and then they want to take a break. Welcome to the middle of no where. When you train like this, the middle of no where is where you will stay.

For some folks, I push form harder at first. It's hard to get good results without it. I really hate to see poor performed exercises done at lightning speed. That is a total waste of time. The point of what we're doing isn't to hump the floor when doing pushups, for example, but to use the pushup motion to train the body. Training the body is the whole point. Numbers are just numbers. They are irrelevant to a large extent. 100 poorly performed pushups is nothing to brag about.

For other folks who have decent form already, I let the form slip a little as they get tired. These folks know what they're doing. If form degrades a little due to fatigue, that's okay.

Regardless of the group you're in, taking a break when you're just a little uncomfortable does nothing. You have to PUSH past those plateaus. You have to move INTO your discomfort zone. THAT is where the results lie.

And most people haven't experienced this before. Mainstream fitness shields them from that need. Our comfort-loving lifestyles shields us from that, as well.

So in the end, mental blocks are what prevent us from getting results. Tell the "I can't do this" part of your brain to shut up and you'll find you can do a lot more than you think.

One of the best kettlebell resources I've seen and it's free! This is a must-have even if you don't do kettlebell sport. Enjoy.

This is one of those head bangers you run into occassionally -- the idea that you should be able to do something BEFORE taking the class. A visitor to one of my classes said it looked very interesting but that she couldn't do what we were doing in the class. I took a mental sigh and tried to patiently explain that was exactly WHY she needed to take the class -- she could not do the stuff we were doing. She NEEDED to take the class in order to learn how to do it. None of my clients could do it before they took the class, either. It didn't sink in.

The main problem is the skill-less and equally worth-less workouts in mainstream gyms. Their idea is that you can somehow get fit without challenging yourself in any way. Weaknesses? What weaknesses? You don't have to challenge those weaknesses in a mainstream gym. Just hop on the treadmill and walk your way to fitness. Except it never works out that way, does it? Hmmm....wonder why? Shoulder hurts? Back aches? Haven't done a lunge to tie your shoe in ten years because you can't? That's okay, the pec deck and ab machine will fix all that. :)

The idea of learning something in fitness is still new but ironically enough, what we're talking about learning is natural movement -- what we had originally and lost as adults. Yes, it is THAT valuable.

But again, if you could do it on your own, you wouldn't need to come to class. You wouldn't need a trainer. If you could do it on your own, everyone would. But obviously that isn't the case.

It hurts me when I lose business like this because such people can't see the value in what I'm offering. And here's the real kicker: and these are exactly the people that need it most.

One of the most important insights I've gained recently is that I can't help everyone. Some potential client's mindsets won't allow it. But for anyone on the fence that is reading this, my services are specifically designed to get you what you can't get yourself. Make the call, take the class and start making progress.

Talking about functional bodybuilding lately means we have to bring up form vs. function. Here, I mean form as in how you look -- not technique. Some people look like a million buck on the outside but when you ask them to do something......yuck.

In a seminar I taught, we had a young man join us and he was pretty buff. Strong looking upper body, defined claves, six-pack, hell he had everything on the menu. Then I asked him to do a deadlift using just his body weight. He couldn't do it. Seriously. His hamstrings were like piano wires. His back was so bowed he could have shot an arrow with it. He couldn't un-bow it no matter how hard he tried. We had three trainers trying to help him. No luck. Squats showed the same deficiencies. He couldn't do a body squat to save his life. Knees all over the toes, heels off the ground, hips forward instead of sitting into them. He gave up with the seminar after about 10 minutes.

Here's the thing -- if we had put him on a leg extension machine, he probably would have blown all of us away. But take away the machine and he can't do much.

That's not functional fitness and not even good bodybuilding IMO. Using isolation exercises to the extent that you CAN'T do full body ones is worthless no matter how great you look. But this is what working out in a normal gym promotes. Break the body up into pieces with machines and never learn to use it as one piece.

So remember that going for looks is okay. We all want to look good whether we admit it or not. But function must be there - six pack or no.

Don't let it own you. Everyone knows of at least a handful of exercises they aren't good at. Why aren't you good at them? Why are you avoiding them? Those exercise have you by the short hairs.

Start owning them through correct technique and then higher volume. As you get better, ramp up the intensity. Show those movements who's the boss. Find a harder version to do, or multiple versions. Combo them together. Then circuit them together.

Want some inspiration on mastering exercise? Check out this clip:

That's owning an exercise.