Sorry for the slow blog updates. I've tried to update more often this past week but end of the year and holiday stuff keeps popping up. Tis the season...
I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas from all of us here at Formosa Fitness. Stay safe, train hard (okay, maybe not), and enjoy the time with your friends and family.
Happy Holidays!
This is the best true story and endorsement of kettlebell training I've seen. Two paramedics get an unexpected surprise. An excerpt:
We arrive at a small wooden house and are let inside by a Russian family: a middle-age couple and their two teenage sons. "It's my father," the man says in heavily accented English. "My grandfather," one of the sons says in perfect English, while sitting at the kitchen table with a high school calculus textbook open in front of him. "He's acting irrationally," the other son, a strapping young fellow in fashionably distressed jeans, says.
"Does he have a psych history?" Bronson asks.
"No," the calculus son says. ...
We go into the living room, where the man is sitting on the couch. He looks younger than 85.
He's about 5 feet-6 inches tall, barrel-chested, arms like iron bars, and no neck. "He's built like a brick house," Bronson says. ...
PD arrives. As I'm explaining to one police officer what's going on, the other cop points to the corner and says, "Whose are those?" Under a table are two cast-iron things, like solid black cauldrons with thick handles.
"What are they?" I ask. "Kettle bells," the cop says. "What's a kettle bell?" I ask.
Read the whole thing to see what happens at the end.
I often get the impression that people want to go from what they look like now to looking like Arnold or like the fitness model on the left. The problem is that the gap between current reality and the goal is waaaaaaay too extreme. You don't have to set something like that as the goal.
The main problem is that people doing so set themselves up for failure. First of all, read Arnold's books and you'll learn that he worked out for HOURS a day. Yes, HOURS. So do many fitness models. Can you devote that much time to training? If so, go for it. But if you can't, is that level a smart goal to set? I think not.
Set yourself a reasonable goal of getting down to around 20% body fat at first and then evaluate your training and nutrition from there.
What you may find is that you're perfectly happy being somewhere between where you are and these "ideals."
And if you're happier and healthier then maybe that's enough?
Yep, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Ok, so I've mentioned it before. But I think the movie's various messages are what a lot of people need to hear.
The main thing that I took away from the movie was Socrates' idea of athletics from an internal motivation. Remember the scene where he took Dan out in back of the garage and showed him a set of gymnastic rings and told him to do the rings just for the sake of doing the rings?
That kind of motivation is what is missing in both sports and the fitness industry at large. Sports is all about winning and external motivations like medals, trophies, etc. Fitness is usually about how you look or some other shallow motivation. But internally driven fitness satisfies a deep human need to move and enjoy skilled movement for its own sake. It become about expressing and enjoying your body at a more efficient level.
Yes, the movie is cheesy but how could it not appear so? The message runs so completely counter to modern thought that it must appear silly. But if you look past the cheese, there are some important messages in the film and book.
Check it out.
This is our student Cat. She lost a dramatic amount of weight through our training and we salute her hard work. She shows what training at Formosa Fitness can do for you. Way to go, Cat!
If you've bought one or more kettlebells, you may wonder what to do next when it no longer feels heavy. Well, you've only scratched the surface of what's there.
Here's what I did today with the 12kg kettlebell:
swings 2x25L/25R
clean and press 2x25L/25R
snatches 2x25L/25R
squats 2x25L/25R
push press 2x25L/25R
lunges 2x25L/25R
600 reps total and rest only as needed to catch the breath
I don't usually work with the 12kg kettlebell any more except to teach but I wanted this type of low intensity/high density work out today.
This type of work out hits everything and shows that you can still get a good challenge out of a kettlebell that may feel a bit lighter to you. This extends the life of the kettlebell, meaning that you don't necessarily have to go out and buy a heavier one unless you just want to.
Enjoy your kettlebell work.
A week ago, I took my little boy to a great local indpendent hamburger joint and had a cheeseburger, fries, and a root beer (that's hard to find in Taiwan). We thoroughly enjoyed it and I didn't feel an ounce of guilt.
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about nutrition is that if they start eating healthy, they can never again eat their favorite foods. Since they know they can never give it up completely, they feel they will fail so why even try. So then they say, "What the hell. Pass the bag of potato chips." That's not how it works.
You don't have to give any food up completely. It just isn't necessary. You simply have to stop abusing the priviledge of eating fast or heavy foods.
How to do that? Learn to eat according to a healthy nutrition plan like Precision Nutrition and stick to it 90% of the time. That means you can indulge somewhat for 10% of your meals each week.
But right here is where people run into trouble. They're usually glad to know they can indulge once in a while, but then they immediately rebel against the idea of eating healthy 90% of the time. If you eat healthy 90% of the time and you eat 5 small meals a day, that means you get to splurge for about four meals a week. Oh no, doesn't sound so fun now.
Two things:
One, unless someone learns to stop emotional eating, gain control of their life and eating habits, and learn to DELAY gratification, then they will NEVER get fit. NEVER.
Now this can be a process, it can take a long time, you can make small changes slowly as a kind of fitness and nutrition on-ramp, etc. But eventually someone is going to have to look at a bag of Doritoes and say "no." It's going to have to happen sometime. So expect it. The gain is delayed gratification in the form of weight loss and looking great. You trade that little pleasure of stuffing your face today for looking great naked later. There, I said it.
Second, you'd be surpsrised how good a well-prepared burger is when you don't eat them all the time. These foods become pleasure foods again, not staples, as they were intended to be. There's no way you should be eating at Burger King everyday if you're overweight. You probably don't even taste it any more if you it every day. Have it once a week at most and learn to savor it.
So remember, you don't have to give it up permanently. You just have to let it have it's proper place in your overall diet.
The answer is simple: don't be ordinary.
I see this a lot -- a fitness guru does something that seems unusual and the peanut gallery snickers behind their hands. Yeah, look at that silly stuff he/she says works. Now ask yourself why the guru gets the results they get and the peanut gallery remains the peanut gallery every year. Who's laughing now?
If you want to be high level at anything, then you MUST stop doing what everyone else is doing. You have to be willing to have friends or family say, "What the hell are you doing?" In fact, if they don't then you're probably not doing things right.
The masses are mediocre and tend to act like crabs in a barrel. Try to crawl out and they pull you back down.
If everyone around you is extremely overweight and you really try to lose your weight, expect a backlash. You'll be told, "Who do you think you are? Do you think you're better than everyone else?" Your answer should be, "You bet I do. And I'm going to prove." Then do it.
I don't much care for being elite, so don't misunderstand. I'm not a world champion at anything, but I can make a pretty mean tub of popcorn. But I also feel exactly ZERO inclination to do what others around me are doing. In fact, a pretty good formula for success is to look around at what everyone else is doing (notice how seldom they get results?) and do the EXACT OPPOSITE.
It's harsh and it's cruel and it's not politically correct. So what? But the fact of the matter is that successful people are willing to do the things unsuccessful people are not. The sooner you realize that this applies to fitness and dieting as much as anything else in life, the sooner you'll start making progress.
I'll step down from the podium now. :)
A poster on a local board asked for help. He/she apparently weighs 400lbs. Here is the advice I gave:
First of all, it likely took you a while to get to 400lbs. so it's going to take a while to get the weight off. Don't let "The Biggest Loser" fool you. You're likely talking in terms of years. So don't pressure yourself to change everything all at once. go slow.
Second, I'd recommend walking 30 minutes a day everyday. And do it. Don't fall into the "I don't have time" trap because everyone really does. Some people just don't want it badly enough.
Third, diet and nutrition is what gets everyone. People may exercise but few want to change what they eat. I'd recommend that you just take one step by not drinking anything but water. No sodas, no juice, no nothing but water. Keep your eating habits where they are for now.
Take one step into eating better and one into exercising and stick to it. Then go from there.
Finally, when you do slip up by not exercising one day or having one soda then don't beat yourself up and quit the program. It's very common for people to say, "I had one cookie, I ruined my diet and exercise program. Give me the bag." If you do that, there's no hope. Set your goal at 90% compliance and seriously aim for it. I allow myself two sodas a week. Bumps now and then won't sidetrack you.
Good luck.
And no, I'm not advocating spouse abuse. :) For new readers, I'm referring to the Crossfit Cindy workout: 5 pullups, 10 pushups, 15 bodyweight squats done circuit style, as many as you can in 20 minutes. I do this periodically as a fitness test.
Today: 19 reps and almost finished 20.
Totals: 98 pullups, 200 pushups, 293 squats. Overall total: 591, just 9 short of a 600.
Needless to say, I'm a happy camper today. :) That's the best ever for me.
So I'm not putting these numbers up to impress anyone. Some of you studs and studettes can do this in your sleep. Instead, I want to make two points.
1. Having a fitness test every now and then let's you know where you are and where you need to go.
2. working escalating density style (EDT) is a great way to stay motivated.
Expounding on point two, what makes Cindy tick is that it's an EDT style workout: you want to do more volume by even the smallest amount each time you do the workout. And an increase of just 1 in any exercise shows that you're making progress.
Do you realize how inspiring that is?
Instead of dreading going to the gym, each workout becomes a part of an overall competition in which you're competing with yourself. Do one single more rep than last time on the test and you win. That's progress. No, I don't make every workout a competition as that would put way too much pressure on me and I'd burn out. This is where point one comes into play. I make the fitness test my competition with myself. I pick a single day (and not too often) and go for it. That's what I did today and it was great.
Have a great day. :)
