Joint Venture

Like most things in life, two or more people working towards a goal working together to accomplish one or more goals ends up being much more efficient then one person going at it alone. Cooking thanks giving dinner, pushing a car, picking up a box of spilled paper clips, capturing a flag and Slaying a dragon and or Robeast. Multiple minds, multiplied will, multiple hands and a singular goal. People at every level can benefit from forming workout partnerships. I use the term partnership, because this relationship is based on work. Now you may be really good friends with someone, but that doesn't automatically qualify them as a grade a workout partner. just like any business partnership, if your partner isn't pulling their own weight and adding to the overall success of the project then you may be forced to cut ties and either find a new partner or partners, or go into business on your own. You gotta remember what your trying to accomplish. You if your trying to get something done, then your in the business of working out. If your spending time with a friend ie workout date, then by all means enjoy each others company. There are several types of partnerships. Workout Partner, community, and trainer. I can't go into and discus work partners without giving you a little back ground on me. I'll be quick. I've been lifting weights since 95. I had a couple of really good strength coaches before I went to the University of Arizona on a football scholarship. I was fortunate enough to have two great strength coaches there. I was exposed to alot of different philosophies before I became a trainer as a profession and began formulating my own theories on strength training and body shaping. I'm pretty particular about my workouts. Mainly the pace. I keep a pretty high tempo, and chain exercises together. Not all that much time for chit chat. When I train people, I'm pretty particular about the weights they use as well as the form they keep. I chain exercises together, I may chit chat a little more as far as explaining why I do certain things, where they should feel the contraction, and how well my Steelers doing, and such. I stumbled upon the perfect training partner. He allowed me to lead the workouts, he was able to keep up in most exercises, and in some cases I was forced to raise my level to match the his intensity. We didn't even have to take out or head phones to communicate. Every now and then we'd log out and compare notes, Then we'd log back on an commence wrecking shop. Now in this situation, I was the alpha. The advantage of this is that you get to work on all the things that you wish to address with little to no deviation from the blueprint in your mind. Another advantage is that since you in a leadership position, you psychologically want to lead by example. Form and intensity. Now if you are in the apprentice position, that's not a bad place either. Little to no energy is used in creating a sequence, it can all be diverted to working. There is a third tier in the workout partner scenario. The equal partnership. This is when you and your workout partner are on the same level. If you both beginners there can be some lag time between exercises and sets,do to figuring out whats next up and better ways to do the same thing. Not a problem in most cases because you both probably needed the rest anyway. It's good to have a buddy there when you want to go heavier for the first time. Experienced partnerships also have a little lag time due to arguments about what should happen next. I generally solve this but going exercise for exercises. You, me in other words. Or me then you I should say. Each Situation has its advantages, and it's important to maximize them. Now the community partnership is different. With the workout partner, you have direct accountability. Meaning if you don't show up that is a personal foul on you. Penalty will be thrown in your face from now until forever. Now with the community depending on how entrenched you get in it that level of perceived accountability grows. The more you show up, and become a regular participant the more you will be missed if you are absent. Make no mistake, the show will go on with out you, but they'll let you know that your absence was felt when you return. You'll already know, because the feeling would be mutual. Now community can be a overall gym environment or it can be the 6:30am kick boxing class. ally yourself up with other like minded individuals united by their availability. Let your powers combine and vanquish that early rising monster. The last situation is the trainer. Now this is a probably the truest form of a partnership. Two people are united by the same goal, but their responsibilities are different. The person in the role of the client is responsible for funding the project as well as owning the project. Meaning taking it home and doing the homework. The person in the trainer position is responsible for engineering the success. Manipulating the hour so that energy stays high, the check list gets done. Things get accomplished, and that the seeds are planted so that project continues to flourish. A key phrase or word or encouragement on the way out, or simply leading by example and sharing a little bit of yourself by discussing your free time with them. Now you and your trainer may have know each other for many years and be great friends, but you must remember what your there for. This isn't a workout date. It's a timed paid for session. So you better be there on time, and be ready to work. All of these partnerships have some real strong points, but like most things in this arena, reep what you sow. The energy that you put into each hour at your project is what your going to get out of it, and your project is most important to you, so if you are going to partner up with someone to get your goals accomplished make sure to keep those goals at the forefront an choose the situation that fits you best.

Become a barefoot beast in the weight room

So I recently purchased my first pair of....bare..foot..shoes. I guess that's kinda what some people would refer to them as. Functional, minimalist, or five toed shoes I believe could be technical terms for them. Now, I'd like to begin by saying that I was definitely a member of the group that frowned upon the weirdos exercising in the gym with the shoe gloves on. Even though I knew a couple of them. They happened to be friends of mine who were trainers and who were all damned good at there craft. Despite that I still couldn't wrap my head around the idea. I was just too weird for me. Later I ended up training a guy who was an avid runner. He was in preparation for an adventure. He planned to go to Africa and run 37 marathons...... in 37 days....... barefoot. Real talk. At any particular time he could have stopped and I would have been impressed. He could have even switched up the order. I'm going to Africa for 37 days. " Far out!" I'm Running a marathon, x37 or 41, barefoot, consecutively, in Africa. Forgive me, I go on, and on at times...37! Anyway, I began working out barefoot shortly after he went off to etch his name in the guinness book, and I since then the only thing that prevents me from doing so 100% of the time are rules of certain gyms. It' such an enjoyable experience. I was taking a new gym for a spin the other day, and I couldn't stop myself from thinking how much fun it would have been if I didn't have to wear these damned shoes. Now, I'm the type of person that responds well to answers to the whys. Now one of the answers to the whys came to me even before the shoes themselves came to the forefront of fitness. A friend of mine who was a dance instructor told me that she only works out barefoot. "why" I said. Then the beginning of the sale was when she told me " it makes you smarter". Always the skeptic I say " so your saying these things will make me smarter? How?" She goes on to say "shoes dumb your feet down, and with your barefoot your brain is forced to translate thousands if not millions of different motor patterns" Since then I've pondered that statement and I believe it to be correct. Your brain is constantly operating, recording data for analysing and later use. Imagine if you only had the hand of a ninja turtle. Bare with me for a minute. Ok, you got this ninja turtle hand and your typing this blog. One blog of many. Its your job. You get off work and then you take off your turtle typing glove and go on to do things with your normal hand. To spin this back around, even though your doing all or the same exercises and movements you've been doing for years, now your actually feeling the entirety of them minus the sensory dampener known as an athletic sole. Having to make an internal adjustment to minor shifts during squats, dead lifts, overhead presses and even learning how to control your weight distribution during running. Wither your an athlete or a civilian having increased coordination and control is something that we all can benefit from. I haven't even got to the part about the increased strength in your feet. A note about me, I'm about as flat footed as Fred Flinstone...Ok, I don't know if Mr Flinstone was in fact flat footed but for arguments sake let's just go with it. My feet feel awesome. I can now go as heavy on calf raises without being limited by my foot's durability. When I started working out bare foot, people would ask me, " arn't you afraid you'll drop a weight on your foot?" I retort " a shoe isn't gonna help all that much if I drop one of tha weights I lift on it." That's when I'm being a smart ass. But seriously, I'm pretty coordinated, and I normally workout when the room is empty. One of the factors that drove me to purchase the shoes was that I recently began working out at public gyms again, and I'm sure working out bare foot is one of those things that is frowned upon. It also doesn't hurt that these companies are actually hiring designers who want to sell shoes. Now that a couple of companies are making them they know that they can't just throw anything up on the shelves an expect the public to buy into it. Now we as the public can say "Hmmm, naw. That's kinda wack." So in closing, I want to issue a task to you. Go outside and walk up and down your stairs. Now with only a pair of socks or barefoot, perform the same task. Open your mind and pay attention. It you don't have a flight of stairs then perform ten squats with a 2.5 second hold at the bottom, again with a cognitive mind. If you have a flight of stairs in doors, there's no need to go outside. Anyway, I hope this was informative for and or entertaining for you, thank you and congratulations for making it this far. Try out a pair at your local shoe store, I bought one of the pairs I tried, the other one I also tried bare footed....just puttin that out there. I didn't think about it till the tried to sell me some of the five toed socks on the way out. If you got em enjoy and watch out for that dude to your left on the incline with dumbells as big as his torso. Yeah, tha one whose elbows are quivering like the knees of a new born colt. Be mindful of your surroundings.

Resist the temptation

re·sist·ance   [ri-zis-tuhns]
noun
1.
the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding.
2.
the opposition offered by one thing, force, etc., to another.

Resistance. My method of choice when training. It along with a proper nutrition program are directly responsible for building and toning muscle. Fact: From age 30 to age 70 we can lose more than 25% of the type 2 muscle fibers in our bodies (type 2 fibers are our strength fibers). Resistance exercise can actually slow down and in some cases even reverse the aging process by building muscle mass and strength. Not a bad deal. Resistance exercise can raise metabolic rate by increasing the bodies post exercise oxygen consumption. A note on EPOC written by someone not named Austin, but none the less he feels you should know

"EPOC and Weight Management
Because the body continues to expend energy after exercise, EPOC plays a supplemental role to an exercise program in weight management. Currently, researchers are interested in the effect different forms of exercise have on EPOC.
The evidence suggests that a high-intensity, intermittent-type of training (interval training) has a more pronounced effect on EPOC (Haltom et al. 1999). Also, it appears that resistance training produces greater EPOC responses than aerobic exercise (Burleson et al. 1998). The research suggests that high-intensity resistance exercise disturbs the body’s homeostasis to a greater degree than aerobic exercise. The result is a larger energy requirement after exercise to restore the body’s systems to normal (Burleson et al. 1998), and thus an explanation for the higher EPOC. The underlying mechanisms that cause the higher EPOC observed in resistance exercise include elevated blood lactate, and an increase in circulating catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine) and anabolic hormones.
Inspecting the data from several investigations, it appears that EPOC accounts for postexercise expenditure of 51 (Haltom et al. 1999) to 127 (Burleson et al. 1998) kilocalories. Since a pound of fat is equal to 3,500 kilocalories, the effect of EPOC on weight control must be regarded in terms of a cumulative effect over time."

And we're back, hope I didn't lose anyone there when the guest speaker came on. What they were saying is that it cost calories to do work. Simple as that. Also the more muscle your carrying the more it cost to fuel in work. Thus the more muscle you can cultivate the higher your metabolism is going to have to be.

I can literally go on and on about the benefits of resistance training. I can get in to all of the various different types of that mode of training. How with your own body weight and proper techneque you can literally work your entire physique. And how with a isometric or static contraction, you can strengthen and tone your upper, lower body and core. Or how with a simple dumbbell you can either stack on slabs of rock hard muscle or shape and hone finely tuned edges to each and every muscle.

But what really drew me to resistance is the fight. The struggle against the weight, the world, yourself. It's the release. I started off long ago wanting to change something, so I felt the best way to to that was to work at it. And I did work. And it felt good. To have a picture in my mind of an outcome and with my own two hands forge it. By pushing obstacles out of my way and pulling my dreams closer as if my life depended on it. Please forgive me for going off on another tangent again. But seriously there is a release that can be found in resistance, and as strange as this sounds but that guy over there bangin his head to the Game's new CD is practicing his version of Yoga.

In the end you may try resistance training and it might be the polar opposite of your yoga, but I want to caution you to resist the temptation to swear off weights totally. Don't be that guy or that gal, that burns up all of your fat burning potential by burning up all or our fat burning potential doing cardio all day long thinking that all your burning up is fat. You get all that? Very good. Until next time, be good.

Perfect the Rep

One of the things that I see repeatedly in the room is people lifting weights. This is a regular occurrence. It's a problem. Not in itself, but when lifting a weight from point A to B be becomes the main focus of the activity. Hey, I'm all for people doing tedious activities to pass the time. Some call them hobbies. Now if you main focus is to exercise and build, shape and or strengthen muscle, then that's when lifting weights becomes a problem. The weight is just a means to focus a muscular contraction. The weight is simply a tool that when used properly can stress the muscle in a manner that the forces it shorten and lengthen, and depending on the goal of each particular set, and the skill of the practitioner can cause the muscle to grow, to contour and to strengthen. I think back to my early years of training until now, and I realise that alot of time and effort were used in learning the proper way to attack a set. I say used but I could easily swap that word out for wasted. Because the I was just lifting weights from point A to point B instead of focusing on mastering the rep. But I did use the word use because its my belief that you learn something from every experience, every time you enter the room is no different. But when you actually put your mental power towards getting better at something with each repetition you'd be surprised how much progress you can make and how quickly it can happen. It's ridiculously simple how easy it is to get on the path to perfecting the rep. Step one learn the movement. Learn how the pros teach it, and what your supposed to feel. Look it up on line or have someone teach you or whatever. Next you find a weight that you can successfully complete the movement for at least fifth teen reps, the rep number may vary from time to time. This is the important part, you open up your mind, and then you attempt the rep. That sensation your supposed to feel, attempt to find that body feel each and every time. Try and strike that same point with your contraction. You do this enough, you will manage to teach yourself to target complete muscle contractions. The thing is, you do this every single time you work out, you actually learn to workout better, and your time spent in the weight room will definitely me maximized.