Secrets.

Are there secret techniques? This is one of the biggest points of marketing something to people that will sell products quick. Make them think you have something they don't, and they can't get it without you. 

Let me let you in on a secret. "Secret Techniques" are never what gets you somewhere. They can be accessories to success, if the knowledge is even worth while, but never can you build a whole foundation on it.

I've been chasing secret techniques for a long time. So long, that i forget sometimes the key isn't necessary what you're doing, but going ahead and doing it, committing to it, and putting hard work in. The basis for any success is always hard work. You can't escape that fact. There is a reason why we admire top athletes and sports stars. It's because they have shown they have worked hard enough at a single task and attained a mastery, when most of us fall short to ever do the same. 

We as a society respect hard work, theres no doubt about it, mostly because so few of us truly know it.

Most of us never get the big picture of what it is. The sports heroes we follow may only be good at one thing in their life, and thats what carries them. One thing. It's all you need, just work hard enough at that one thing, and dedicate yourself completely.

Thats why we frown on steroid use. Not because it hurts the athletes health, but because it means they took the easy way out. It means they are just like the rest of us. Their hard work is artificial.

I've had victories on the mat that meant next to nothing to me, because it wasn't hard work. I didn't train hard enough, or i felt like i got a lucky win. Those are not victories. You only remain victorious if that effort comes through struggle. Those are the things that make us. Sometimes the struggle isn't even in the arena of competition. Sometimes the struggle is just getting there. The training, the financial burden, the relationship strains, it all comes to fruition when you win. Its a validation of yes, you put in hard work, allow yourself the pleasure of recognizing it.

Struggle gives purpose. Reject the notion that anything in life should come easy, because if it does, it carries no meaning.  

Sometimes it doesn't matter if you win or lose.  It's how you struggle.

Athletics are an avenue to know yourself. Theres a million different ways to do it, but all of them involve encountering adversity.  The man who skips out on adversity has never known the true reason of doing anything; Testing yourself.

We feel who we are in our everyday life doesn't accurately represent us.  We encounter the mundane, the unremarkable, and the flat out boring things that fill most of our workdays. Unless we are lucky enough to find and work enough in a field we are truly passionate about, our potential to represent who we think we really are is not capable in everyday life.

Theres nothing great about the drive to work. Theres nothing great about your tuna sandwitch for lunch. Theres nothing great about your boss yelling at you.

The people who possess such a trait to find these things great are either a enlightened buddha, or  suffer from complacency induced insanity. Some people relish this things. These are people that forgot their dreams along the way. Maybe they convinced themselves that they really are doing what they want, and changed their highest aspirations to fit whatever life they made themselves.  It's hard to come back from that point. 

To really appreciate the little things, you have to see life from the highest peak. Thats why you don't see  people dragging along in the day to day muck teaching seminars on how to achieve happiness on the weekend. Its the same reason that enlightened monks can be truly happy just by watching the leaves fall. They have had the struggle, the doubts, the fears, until it all accumulated into seeing things as they are.

"A ship is safe in harbor, but thats not what ships are built for," would accurately describe how i few.

Most of are safe in the harbor, because if we take the middle road we don't have to fall short of whatever expectations we think we know.

I've been there. I like to think i'm past that, but it's not a permeant place you can escape. You have to keep making forward progress. Sometimes you rise to the occasion, and sometimes you fall short, but if you know you had the hard work, you had the struggle, you did everything you could until the point you would rather die than give up the fight and the moment comes and you still fall short, you are left with no regrets.

Failure is usually the easy way out, which is why we feel bad when it happens. However if you put as much struggle, as much aversion to failure as it took the person who won, you've not lost. 

To be able to struggle, fight, and learn something about yourself is the true victory. 

You have no true opponents. When you decided to compete, the person in front of you might have complete domination of you on his mind. He may even hate you.  Make sure to thank him. Without the man standing across from you ready to challenge you, you can never know yourself or your abilities. You need someone to push you and pressure you to make the victory worth it, or the defeat beautiful. There's no dishonor in defeat. Theres dishonor in quitting. Few will ever see the difference, because few will ever want it that bad. 

Three weeks ago i took second place in a tournament. This was not my first loss, nor will it be the last, and i was upset about it. The fact i lost was very secondary to the fact i didn't truly push myself. I didn't push the attack. I had the gas left. I wasn't ready to push to the point of complete bodily shutdown to avoid a loss. If i had done this, i could of brushed defeat off and learned. Instead, i left the match learning nothing about myself, and with very few points to improve on because i never really opened up. 

If someone wants to beat me they sure as hell better earn it. It's my responsibility as an opponent to push the other person to their struggle zone. If they don't rise to the occasion, and will themselves to put as much into it as i do, they lose, and vice versa.

I'll be the first say simply wanting something more isn't enough to win, but it goes a long, long way. I know as a blue belt in BJJ, if i really try, i can surprise myself with my ability. I've had the benefit to test myself in Brazil against the best in the world. I know where i stand in regards to the top. So i know i have the potential to take on and submit anyone, deep down inside.  Others might not have that benefit and might have to rely solely on fate. To really believe in yourself is important. How do you develop the fate? By taking yourself places you've never been before. By risking it all in training. To be on the verge of quitting and recover from it. You must do this consistently. Fate is a trainable skill, and the harder i know i work, the more of it i have coming from the knowledge of myself. You can lose it if you don't work it enough. I've been guilty of that too.  So work hark, and everything else will come easy. Theres no secrets. There's no shortcuts. Embrace the struggle.

 

Recovery

"If exercise is King, recovery is Queen."- Scott Sonnon

Sometimes the problem isn't people putting too little work in, but in the case of some athletes, putting far too much. Over-training is a elusive state that some will argue is pure myth, and others will cite as a major factor in diminishing returns over time. What is agreed upon, is without proper recovery, you will feel sluggish, sore, be more prone to injury, among a myriad of other similar symptoms. Whether you think you are simply being soft, or feel these symptoms are hindering what you want to do, the answer is proper recovery.

I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as overtraining, but only under-recovery. These sound the same, but the distinguishing factor is, you can put in just as much overall total work, but if you have the tools available to you, how you feel, will greatly vary. There are all sorts of factors that go into recovery including, age, sex, genetics, diet, compensations, type of weight lifted, frequency of workouts, proper nutrients, ability for body to assimilate nutrients, total systemic stress, and experience with the activity. The last one is my favorite one. Recovery can be grow just like a muscle can. You wouldn't try to instantly deadlift 500 pounds, nor should you expect your recovery to come up to be able handle that work in a reasonable amount of time without training it too. 

Lots of goal oriented people run into the "too much, too soon" type of overtraining.  For example, if i'm an 30 year old with no significant exercise experience, i decide i want to start running to try and lose weight. I start off alternating between running and walking, after a few days to a week, i decide i want to step it up to running 15-20 minutes with out stopping. I'm a little bit sore and achey, but i'm making good progress. I can see the time i can run going up and up with each training session i'm doing. I see i'm losing a pound or two a week, but i decide that progress is too slow for me. I think like most american adults and fall into the "more is better" mindset. My theory is if i run 2-3x's as much, i'll drop the weight 2-3x as fast. Over the course of the next 2-3 months this  turns to running twice a day, 6-7 days a week. I love the high running gives me. No matter how i feel, i just have to get my run in. Ran or shine. Until after 2-3 weeks of this twice a day training, i start feeling winded. My shin splints have almost got unbearable, and every step i take turns to agony. It takes more and more for me to get going every morning. I measure my resting heart rate and see it creep up a few beats per minute with every consecutive run i take. I no longer feel good afterwards. I don't know whats happening, things were going so great. I'm eating 2000 calories a day, i know i've measured. If i want to cheat, i can still get the Big Mac as long as my total is under 2000, because a calorie is a calorie. I've also not been getting great  sleep, as i'm constantly stressed out from work. I don't have time to do specific warm-ups or cool-downs before and after my run. The more i try and continue, the worse it gets. The great results i was seeing now stop completely. That's overtraining. 

The "more is better" mindset is a cultural norm for us. Its not enough to have a smart phone that sees to my every will, i need the IPhone 5. Would i like to make it large for a dollar more? You beat your french frying ass i do. Buy one get one free?! Why get one when i can have two of something.

The best example i've heard is this, If i have a headache, and can take two aspirin, and the headache will go away, or i can take 10 aspirin, have my headache go away, but get the runs, a upset stomach, and stress on my liver, which is the better option? Well thats a common sense answer, you take the two. Why are you going to do more when two is the right dose for you? So why do we train the opposite? We see benefits stacking up very early on, so we decide if thats working so well, i could do much more and get that much more benefit. Athletes would benefit to think in this "minimal effective dose" mindset. Don't do more than you need at any one time. Do something that challenges you, and forces you to adapt. Force too much and that time for adaptation goes up too. If i'm doing a heavy dead lift workout where i hit a 1RM, i should know to take a couple days recovery because of the excessive demand on my body.

This can especially turn into a detriment if you are putting so much more into working out, at the expense of sport skill practice. Athletes will seem to gravitate to the concrete, and quantifiable progress of strength and conditioning. It offers an allure that you get to see your progress, rather than simply feel your progress, like if you are in a sport that is skill based.

I've been on both sides of that issue. I've done too much, and too little, and i've payed for it. It's not simply enough to train harder, but to train smarter. What you choose to do should be a compliment to your main priority rather than hold it back. It takes a lot of sensitivity and time to get an accurate feel for this, and to know your recovery. So when we are novice athletes, and we try to start something if we don't have the intuitive gauge to differentiate whats good, and whats bad, we run right back into the "too much, too soon" mindset.

Our bodies are not designed for exponential growth, we are designed for slow, steady progress.  I have to ease into anything i do, because i'm not sure the effect it will have on me.

So while the body's over-all ability to recover from exponential stress is slow, there are things we have control that effect recovery. With the knowledge of time being the biggest factor in our ability to recover, we have to utilize all the tools we have at our exposal  to ensure that we do what we can to recover.

Here's your toolbox:

Journal- Keep a detailed training log. Include mood, energy level, aches, pains, and soreness. Try to quantify how what you're doing is effecting you. This is your most important tool. Make any connections you see, and highlight any patterns that come out. Play around with what your doing to see if your suspected effect is truly being caused by what you think. With proper journaling, all the other tools presented will be self-evident.

Sleep- Sleep is not expendable. 8-9 hours a night is mandatory if you want to keep doing what your doing. Hormone regulation, muscle growth and repair, among a mountain of other benefits means you cannot sacrifice this. Don't believe me? Journal and find out.

Diet- A whole article itself can be written on this, and perhaps it will be. Diet has a big effect on inflamation. Inflammation= slow recovery. Everything I eat should be real. If it comes from a factory, it most likely won't help you. The processing of food leads to an excess of Omega-6 fatty acids in our diet, leaving the ratio compared to Omega-3 far off. Take a fish or krill oil supplement, and avoid all foods with processing and ingredients you can't pronounce. Also, water is the number one anabolic supplement you can take. Half your body weight in ounces of water a day should be consumed. Think about taking an antioxidant supplement as well, or just drinking your fair share of green tea. Use your common sense on this one. It also might be beneficial for you to experiment with cutting grains out all together, to see if you have a gluten intolerance, which can lead to more inflammation. Get a good consumption of your green vegetables, and limited consumption of fruit. No processed sugars.

Stress- When we exercise, we stress our body. A hormone by the name of cortisol is released. When we worry, the same hormone is released. Cortisol is essential for recovery and to be alive, but too much of it, and the negative side effects stack up.  It's essential to manage emotional stress, because this has a side effect on total systemic stress, in turn effecting, and even limiting our recovery. Emotional stress manifests itself in physical stress. Simple meditation, and breathing techniques can go a long way in management of stress. So can avoiding assholes.

Mobility/ active recovery- We recover faster when we move. Nutrition is only sent to the joints through movement. Increased blood flow is also able to remove toxins and waste products from muscular break down.  Search for "Intu-flow" on youtube, and follow the program religiously.

Myofacsial release- Some of you might be friends with the good old foam roller. For those of you who are not, they are available for purchase here. Proper usage of the foam roller includes hitting every major muscle group, and once you find a spot of tension, hold pressure for about 10 seconds. This is best done before a workout. Massage is essentially the same thing. If you feel like your being overtrained, massage is a great thing to splurge on to help you recover.

Other techniques are better suited for individuals. Do a little experimentation.  Different workouts require different recovery. For example a heavy strength workout requires a few days of recovery. If i'm going to muscular failure in workouts, that also takes extended recovery. Only you know how much work you put in when doing sport skill practice, so tailor any conditioning program you have around that. Conditioning cannot live separate from skill practice, one will always affect the other. Use the minimum effect dose, and work up from where you're comfortable.

Bring your heart rate up with a purpose.

I get it.

Running is accessible, practical, and very hard to screw up. People looking to burn calories (a notion i don't exactly agree with) will hit that goal. If you're a runner, thats exactly what should be your main focus. I'm here to look out for the people who don't know how to achieve similar caloric effect, in a shorter time, with a post exercise oxygen consumption rate of nearly double that of steady-state cardio ( 13% of calories burned during the workout over the next 36 hours due to metabolic demands, compared to 7% of steady state cardio, J Sports Sci. 2006 Dec;24(12):1247-64.), And, build power on top of muscle. Sound too good to be true? Not so.

Back to peoples normal source of cardio, jogging. If you're a fighter, you use your whole body on top of your legs. Theres very rarely the same demands you would face in a foot race. Power, explosion, and different opponents all play into what you might need to do to win. Its not simply enough to have steady state cardio endurance in BJJ, or MMA, because the foot doesn't fit the shoe.

If i'm fighting anywhere from a 5-10 minute round, why would any of the precious energy i devote into a conditioning program be ruined by going on a hour long jog? If i have that short amount of work time, i want to ensure i have maximum power and strength available to me at that time, for the whole time. I recall listening to a seminar taught by Paul Chek, and he went onto say how theres very little carry over from lower body conditioning to upper body conditioning. For example, if you're a boxer and almost exclusively use your arms, running is going to have minimal benefit for you compared to something that also utilizes your upper body.

There's also the issue of heart-rate variance (HRV). If you're never letting your heart-rate come back down while training you essentially are stuck in only being able to go as hard as you can till you reach your heart rate max, and then you're screwed because your nervous system isn't familiar enough with the concept of recovering the heart-rate to a manageable level.  HRV is a key in many of the conditioning programs i follow and implement. You could be one of the strongest, explosive athletes in the world but if you can only go till you hit your HR-max and then have a very hard time recovering in a realistic amount of time, you're in trouble. So even if you were able to overwhelm your opponent at first, once you hit that wall, its very hard to come back if you don't constantly train HRV.

Scott Sonnon once again leads from the front in this regard. He coined the term "tactical fitness" to describe the phenomena of being able to accelerate to 100% intensity, and be able to recover from it in a very short time, 

"Most PT programs overemphasize aerobic energy, through long, slow duration training; others overemphasize size and limit strength. Physical preparedness must follow function within the energy system of tactical response: the capacity to work at high intensity in multi-planar movement for repeated bursts of short duration with fast recovery. Current PT programs fall sorely short of these demands." Sonnon Writes.

So without knowing your sport or activity, i can offer a very simple, yet effective form of whats called a   "complex." These are very useful and be used with any variety of tools from barbells and dumbbells to even kettlebells and clubbells.

Keep in mind, this is building a foundational level  of strength, power and tactical fitness. To be truely "tactically" fit, you need movement sophistication to put greater demands on your nervous system, because your body and mind crave it, and without it, you will find yourself plateauing. 

I was first introduced to the "barbell complex" with Martin Rooney while attending a seminar in Fairlawn, New Jersey. Rooney put us throw the grinder with these, and i greatly appreciated the challenge. 

Foundational Barbell Complex- 

Each minute on the minute, 6 reps each movement ( Don't set the barbell down untill finished with the set), 6-9 rounds.

Deadlift
Shrugs
Hang cleans 
Front squat
Push press
Backsquat
Jump Squat

Start with a lighter weight than you think you need, because the anaerobic demand is very high. A good place to start would be with  5 pounds a side. Time yourself on the first set, and if you finish under 60 seconds, you add weight to the bar. If again, you do another round and finish under 60 seconds you would add more weight, and keep doing so until you finish off each round at around roughly a minute.

When finished with the set, make sure to take your heartrate, and record where you were at when you finished. Time how long it takes your heart rate to return down to 120 BPM. You might notice at first it could take very long to return down to 120 BPM. That's your gauge for tactical fitness.

Heres some gauge numbers:

If your HR drops under 10BPM in the minute following exercise close to heart rate max, you need to get your heart checked.

If it drops 10-20 BPM your average in tactical fitness 

If 20-40BPM you're above average tactically fit.

If 40-80BPM, you have exceptional tactical fitness.

80BMP and above is almost pure fantasy, save super heroes.


Repeat this program 2-3 times a week, for 4-8 weeks.

Why do you do it?

Back a couple months ago, i was working out at a gym in Rochester Hills. I imagine it's what many gyms around the nation to be like. Its not a big Lifetime Fitness, or was it a Planet Fitness cookie cutter. It was locally owned.

I was at this gym for 6 months. It's my only basis for what a "normal" gym is like. I usually workout at home, or more recently at an off the beaten track gym. 

You start to notice common trends about people. Tank the meathead (no joke, his nickname was Tank.) would groan like his nuts were on fire every hamstring curl he did. There was the 50 year old cougar who painted her face like it was the renaissance, taking extra care not to sweat, so she could still hit on guys half her age. There was the man in his mid-forties with graying hair with a horrible look of pain on his face after repeating his daily workout for the 10,000th time. He would never switch anything. It would be the same old med-ball slams for X number of reps then right on to some sort of pathetic jumping up and down, then knocking out a bastardized bench press for 50 reps. 

                                                                  Face palm.

All these things make you chuckle, but they're also very sad.  It's real peoples lives.

Why do you do the things you do?

If I was a friend of theirs, I would ask these people why they were here, and what they were doing. I can almost guarantee the answers I would get are, "I'm tryna' get big"said by a kid who looks like he should have a TV commercial for you to donate a nickel a day to or "i'm trying to drop my pregnancy weight" said by a women who has clearly not ovulated in the last 15 years.

Do you know why you use it?

If you've got a goal of dropping weight, what the hell are you doing alternate arm rows on the free-motion machine with no pin in the weight stack?

Why are you running for 8 miles on a treadmill?

Truth is, most people don't even know why they are doing something. Yeah, thats cool that you do a neat little trick on a stability ball. I'm not interested in tricks. Hows your foundation? If you can't perform at least 40 pushups in two minutes, and you're a man, i don't care how fun something looks, we're not doing it till you have a solid foundation.

                                                Let me know how getting strong goes, bro.

You don't build a house in a swamp.

The same workout the actors from "300" did to get into shape for the role, might not be for you. You wouldn't try to put a square peg in a round hole, would you? Not everyone is the same. Just because some thing else works for someone, doesn't mean it will work for you.

Are you progressively getting stronger? Are you doing better and better each session? Do you even know how to track that?

These are questions of progress. Everything is an opportunity for measurement.  

Know your goals. Even the general fitness enthusiast should have goals. "Get in shape" should not be one of them. How will you know when you get there? Do the plan.

Is exercise your primary, or secondary focus? 

You better know, because that will shape your training.

Are you recovering enough?

Any results you hope to achieve are a direct result of proper recovery. Adaptation is recovery. If you don't recover, you don't adapt.

What are you putting in that hole between your chin and nose? Is it taking you further, or closer to your goal?

                                                                     This one.

Am i trying to lift like the hulk, when i've got less than 6 months of experience?

Safety is primary. 

Learn to question everything. If you have a trainer and he can't tell you how what you're doing is taking you closer to your goals, in a simple, clear manner, then you need a new one. If he needs to use fancy terms to try and trick you into thinking somethings working, you need a new trainer. 

See all these questions leave a lot of unknowns. If you've got some crazy workout plan, its only going to make it harder. The simpler and more down to the point your workout is, the less likely it is to spring holes. 

If i can pick between two movements that will make me strong, or 14 that will also make me strong, what the better plan?

How do you measure 14 exercises with the close to 11 different variables and questions i previously asked?

Answer is, ding ding ding, it's going to be hard. 

When i was traveling in Europe for two months i thought i was going to be miserable with out my workout plans and equipment. I know how to plan out a workout, but lets face it, doing Tabatas ( high intensity training, 20 sec on, 10 off, 8 rounds) in the middle of the park for everyone to see your pain, and then repeating it for 6 exercises, seemed a little weird. Even if you don't care if your a public display or not, your workout gets changed. 

Theres a saying i learned from my Yoga teacher, Johnny Kest, "The observer changes the observed."

So no matter how into the zone you think you are, you're still going to suffer because of the temptation to be something different in front of people.

I also didn't have a heart-rate monitor, so any kind of cardiovascular tracking i wanted to do could be inaccurate, partly due to the fact i refused to wear a watch, and inconvenient for the 10 second rest intervals to see if i was on track.

These are a few of the unknowns among many.

I needed something spartan. I needed something simple and effective. 

So while i reading  Pavel Tsatsouline's book, "The Naked Warrior", i found myself set onto a modified program mentioned in his book.

It came down to two things...

One-arm pushups.

And Pistol squats

That was it. 6 days a week. Both movements.

And i found something rare that i hadn't often experienced. I had measurable, trackable results. Any error in technique i might of had was quickly fixed because the focus i could deliver onto the two simple movements.

I would often journal and take notes of things i could notice in everyday life that i could easily narrow down to one of the two movements i was doing.

"Legs felt very strong climbing up this mountain today."

Ah, well i would say that was the pistol squats.

All these things were measurable, because it was simple. I knew why i was doing it. I wanted to maintain strength while traveling, and then possibly add some more. 

I knew what i was doing and why i was doing it.

I hit on all those questions i asked at the start of this article, because there were no leaks. 

I didn't try to build my house (foundation) in a swamp.

                            "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication"- Leonardo Da Vinci

Martin Rooney of Training for Warriors fame brilliantly came up with what he calls "The illogical four"

People do things for 4 reasons in the fitness world.

1. It's new.

2. It makes me sore.

3. It makes me fatigued.

4. It looks cool.

If you're work out includes one of these, its not necessary wrong. I'm just trying to get you to probe your decisions, and really figure out if what you're doing is helping or hurting you.

It's only these two things. Something is either helping or hurting you. Theres no middle ground. So question everything you do, and why you do it. 

 Feel free to contact me anytime on facebook, or send me an e-mail at ctwigg@cstcoach.com

Chael Sonnen Implementing The Gable Method

This video only reaffirms what i said before about The Gable Method.  Whether conscious or not, Chael does exactly what i described. Take it from one hell of a fighter.

Chael Starts talking about it at 59 Seconds in.

The Number One Thing Most S&C Programs Miss

Theres a lot of ways to get "in shape" out there. Of course theres a lot of things that are right, but from my point of view theres even more garbage clouding people's mind. In fact I would go as far to say that many people would actually benefit to not have the constant whisper and allure of "How to get a six pack in 7 days!" and other claims like "With biceps this big, people will finally love you despite your insecurities. Heres how to get them in a simple 48 seconds a day."

You get out what you put in. I think everyone knows that. If you don't feel like you're putting in hard work, you can probably surmise you're not going to get great results. With all this marketing people try so hard to believe the claims they hear, about this being the next big thing, or this being the one little secret they were missing.

We talked about it yesterday, theres something special about working hard. I also went onto say working hard isn't enough. Yeah, it will give you a great mental advantage, but you have to train smart. Now, theres a million ways to cycle workouts, to build intensity, and to get your heart going. I'm not going to talk about those today.

I'm talking about the number one thing most strength and conditioning programs miss.

Now this isn't some mysterious secret. It just so happens to fit in what strength and conditioning should be.  You see, a lot of strength and conditioning( S&C) programs draw influence from bodybuilding.

Thats okay. (In the long run no...but i'm not here to tell anyone they're wrong.)

But if you're a fighter its not. Its not enough to simply be stronger.

Its not enough to have more gas in the tank then the other guy.

And you can bet your ass its not enough to look better than the other dude.

The missing ingredient is mobility. You may also know it by the name movement.

If you aren't on a daily program of joint mobility, and fairly consistent movement drills, you're holding yourself back.

I had heard, and read about movement and mobility during my first Circular Strength Training (CST) seminar. When i first started doing joint mobility, i thought it was alright.

"Cool, i can move my neck side to side. I couldn't do that before."

So I continued for a bit after the seminar, and sporadically after that.  After all, immediately after the seminar I went to the small country of Brazil. The last thing i needed my apartment ( grossly undersized for the amount of people we had at times) was people giving me shit for "Throasic extension, flexion, and yaw."  Which ends up looking more like a weird dance move. So i did it in secret.

When i had returned home, i was unsure how to continue my fitness career. I thought Yoga teacher training would be a great start for me. Part of my yoga teacher training required a daily practice. At least an hour, every day. Most of the time the class i went to started at 6AM, which mean i was up at 4:30AM to drive to yoga. While i was never happy waking up, i started to notice changes, not quick, but noticeable .

I felt better for the rest of the day. My BJJ practice was immensely improving. I had developed flow.  Everything i did seemed to take less effort. My power to weight ratio was increasing everyday, despite insignificant strength training. My balance was better than it had ever been.

So what was happening? Yoga was the missing ingredient i had been looking for. It had done all these wonderful things for me.

A problem arose.

That practice was an hour everyday, and you can bet i wasn't going to keep waking up at 4:30AM if i didn't  have to. Not to mention the price was almost double what i pay for my martial arts training.

What was the compromise?

Enter Prasara Yoga. Sanskrit for "flow without thought." It was exactly what i was looking for.

Standard yoga is fantastic. Don't get me wrong. It happens however, that my chosen activity is very dynamic in nature.  In traditional yoga, you stretch, and hold for a  certain number of breaths, which is normal terms "static stretching." So my training demanding Dynamic movement, mobility, and flexibility, while tradition yoga gave me more static, holding, and ridged postures.

I obviously had to change it up a little, to meet the demands. Thats where Prasara comes in. Not only was it yoga, but it incorporated all this dynamic movement i needed to keep improving.

I'll touch a bit more on Prsara another time, but for those of you curious to what it is, have a look here.

As i did more reading, i found that Coach Scott Sonnon also believed mobility was the missing piece.

Now heres the discrepancy, you may think by mobility, i mean the same thing as flexibility. I don't.

The word mobile is defined as follows:

mo·bile

   [moh-buhl, -beel or, especially Brit., -bahyl] 

adjective

1.

capable of moving or being moved readily

2. flowing freely, as a liquid.


Mobility is flexibilities practical cousin.  Just because someone is flexible, doesn't mean there capable to move to that range of motion when they need it. Nor is flexibility a prime characteristic of health, contrary to popular belief.

When you hear about a senior citizen, you don't hear "Well, you know, Mom was doing okay by herself but between her losing her flexibility, and her thinking the web cam was going to steal her credit card information, we just had to put her in a  group home."

You instead hear how they lost their mobility. Their ability to be capable of movement. They've lost the flow.

Lets bring this back full circle with an example.


Fighter pilot John Boyd theorized that a moderately armed and armored jet that was highly mobile would be victorious over the bricks (heavy) and the fast (needles).

He theorized that  a Jet that could outmaneuver both the power and the speed, and respond decisively to fast-changing conditions could defeat rivals consistently. This eventual lead to the development of one of the greatest planes ever developed, the F-16.

So ask yourself  " Are you training to be a F16 or a B2 bomber?" 

Are you training to be highly adaptable, and efficient? I'd say the majority of people are B2 bombers. They get the strength, and power, but they can't take the parking brakes off to truly be able to express this strength or power in real situations.

Thats the whole philosophy of current functional training systems. To be able to have expressible power in real life activities, rather than just the gym. They will however fall short if you don't have mobility.

The body is supposed to work as one unit. So what happens is when you free up this tension in your muscles, smooth out all the adhesions in your myo-fasial matrix, and mobilize each joint so you can utilize it to its full potential, is that you become the F16. Suddenly, your strength training means something. You feel like superman because you aren't feeling the normal aches, pains, and injuries.  Parts of your body that were once shut off, are finally activated, giving your more strength. 

So mobility is the key to be able to express power and strength you've worked hard to attain. Just add the last ingredient,  or else you're baking bread without yeast. Your end product is going to be flat, and tough. 

Be pliable, plastic, have the ability to move your body not only in the way you want, but the way you need.

Keep watch for upcoming videos on body-weight mobility drills, as well as joint mobility, and compensatory movement.

The Gut Check

Hard work is ugly. You aren't going to be happy about it. More than likely the amount of obscenities  running through your head might very well rival that of Bobby Knight. Maybe you're too the point you're too tired to even put together coherent thoughts. Maybe you aren't working hard enough and all you can think of is the next due date on your latest report.

Where you put in work, that place is holy ground. My training used to be hard, but i never implemented what most military folks like to call "The Gut Check." That means in that moment, you're going to be tested. You're going to go through something you don't like, and what carries you to the finish isn't the kind of shape your in (although this no doubt will go a long way) but the kind of guts you have. A measure of heart. Theres something very rare in those times, where you get a glimpse of yourself, Maybe it's fleeting, or momentary, but in that instant you find nirvana. You find the middle ground between heaven in hell. It's the kind of place where you go to live, and to die. Theres no lying there. It's you, and no one else.

Not the same kind of gut check.

We each deal with those situations differently, when were dug deep into a hole.

Some will cower.
Some hear voices.
Some only focus on pain.
Some on time.
Some on breathing.
Some on fatigue.

These are the deepest darkest parts of our mind. All our self-doubt, self- hate, self-critisim, and weakness are sure to come out.

It's also the fastest way to get rid of them. You see, something special happens when your pushed over a perceived edge. The potential you thought you knew gets blown out of the water.  You become something more than you were. This is instantaneous. You don't have to drink 30g of protein, or 4:1 ratio drink of carbs to protein to secure its spot. Its with you, and no matter where you go after that work out, it can't be taken.

                                   In the SEALs BUD/s class, every moment amounts to a gut check.

Theres the saying in sports, that "Sport X is 80% mental, and 20% physical." While i cannot attest to these concrete numbers, i will say mental conditioning is physical conditioning. Of course you can have your meditation, your mantra, your affirmation, or whatever mechanism you are currently using to expand the mental side of your conditioning, but the bare bones of it is mental conditioning is a direct result of physical conditioning.

These last few weeks i've had brought the hammer down on me. Disregarding the pros and cons of doing so, to which there are many, my potential has increased much more than my physical conditioning could adapt to.

You see, i've been doubled over. I've had the doubt, and the fear that comes with the unknown, but with my support system at the gym, i've pushed through.

I've been training by myself, or with my Dad for close to 2 years now.  I can push myself pretty damn hard. It's nice to have a training partner to keep you committed to working out. Someone to keep you for the most part accountable. But a workout partner is not a Coach. He's in the zone doing his own work, just as i'm doing mine. Neither of us is pushing eachother. It's a personal motivation.

Yeah this works very well.
But a Coach makes you something more.
Someone to test you, and someone to make you hurt in the best possible way, when you need it the most.

So with my experience training with a coach the last couple weeks is a big change.

My BJJ conditioning, as i said, has jumped leaps and bounds. Not because the physical attributes i've developed, but because the perception of pain and fatigue i've developed.

Pain is a impermanent perception. You can always break that boundary. So the next time you find your self in a situation where your really sucking wind, or getting mounted by a guy double your size, you can just remember that circuit from monday. Yeah that one. The one you would rank as your hardest workout ever, until then inevitable (hopefully) time you break that pain perception again. You can remember that this isn't half as bad as that. That comparing gives you strength. You know you have more left. You've made friends with pain and already, and it's no longer a mystery.

Pain is our greatest teacher. For a while.

You see thats where most people in that mindset fail. They get addicted to that high, of breaking through the perception of pain, and the feeling of triumph afterwards. Contrary to what you think of every morning when your doing your flexing in the mirror to see if that six pack has come in yet, while your body is torn to pieces, it's not sustainable. Nor is it healthy.

The point i'm trying to get across is this...

"Every workout is either a test drive, or a tune up."

Before i elaborate, i'd like to pay homage to Berkey, who passed this on to me when he heard it from Gym Jones founder, Mark Twight.

There are times, and places to run yourself into the ground. Be careful with this as well. Develop a taste between crushing previous barriers, and being stupid.

                                                   Please don't test drive yourself this hard.

Which brings me to another staple of training i regularlary used, taught to me by Coach Scott Sonnon. The intuitive training scale. Make sure that intensity there, only if you have the right perceived technique, discomfort, and effort. Lots of times thats hard for you to tell. Thats also where a good coach comes in.

Getting back to the point, as Berkey went on to say, is you need to have these so called tests. Sometimes it's to gauge whether your ready for a specific event. Sometimes it is in fact just a gut check. Since we went over the latter, i'll talk about sport specific tests.

Whats my gauge? How will i know if i get somewhere? How do i know this is working?

Thats something you should look for in a coach. Not a coach who is happy to put you through a workout, because anyone can do that. You want a coach who can make you better, and then prove to you in a clear-cut manner that he did.

His bench marks should give you confidence. They should take you to the depths of hell you might hit in a competition.  Thats the true mental game. If a opponent can't take you somewhere you haven't already been, then he loses a big advantage.

If you fail the bench mark, you still win. Now you know what you need to work on.

Do you not see this common trend in life?

The great Coach Scott Sonnon says in his book The 3-D Performance Pyramid  that

" Your threshold of pain = your threshold of performance." 

He also goes on to say " How much you resist determines how much you are able to accomplish." and "Increasing the threshold of pain and decreasing the threshold of fear-reactivity are the two protocols for creating flow in fighting."

Sonnon brings up up a great point. If your constantly injured because you've done one too many gut checks, your body is going to fighting you all the way through training. In that case, you've reached your threshold of performance.

Sonnon continues " How much you can take (toughly) determines how much you are able to accomplish."

Now this refers to what in martial arts is called "hard work" The grind. The suck. Real application of intensity. Theres a whole different thing called soft work, but that doesn't exactly fit into the topic at hand.

Which brings me back to a point I've experienced, the fact that i have increased my threshold of pain, i have in turn increased my performance.

Like so many things with the genius that is Sonnon, things i thought were cutting edge, and that i have discovered myself, Sonnon not only has done it years before, but put it into a much clearer, concise,  and even somewhat scientific formula.  I'd highly recommend any of his work.
                 

Life is all about blowing past what you thought you could do. If you can't think of one thing you've done in the past year to get yourself thinking like that, then what kind of life are you living?

One great thing my father has told me he does is set one goal a year that is way to far out of reach. Seemingly impossible. Put the work in and do it, and then crush it. If you live to be 80, and start doing this at 20, my limited math skills tell me that you will have 50, hard, tangible moments in your life where you're better than before. I've met people who have lived there whole life on 1 or 2 things like that. Expand your horizon.  Push your boundaries. See yourself live a life that people can only dream of having.