Perspective

 

So how tough is your training? How hard is the diet? Let's keep everything into perspective.

I realize that "perception is reality" and your reality and mine are most likely world's apart.

Maintaining a solid good schedule for your training can be a challenge, especially if you have a job or small children (sorry- non-working folks, particularly those with no kids get absolutely no sympathy from me).

It is really easy to get caught up in the mind game "how do you do it?!" "I am so tired after work, I couldn't possibly get to the gym!", "I just cannot get up that early, I need sleep."

I could probably list an entire book of excuses, there is one there for everyone. 

Excuses don't build a six pack, nor do they develop the glutes or biceps, hard work, dedication and drive do that.

You know, it is so easy to make up an excuse and fool yourself, but who are you hurting when you do that?  

It's like when an extremely overweight person in the gym tells me how hard they train, all the time. And how strict the are with their diet. I don't laugh in their face, I want to encourage them, to be all they can be; but, do I believe them? 

Absolutely not! Just look at them! Actions speak louder than words, and people can tell when you eat right or train hard, all you have to do is stand there and you look good.

Find what inspires you, what it takes to keep you going, no matter what it is, just do it!

Believe in yourself, there is nothing holding you back, except yourself.

Here is a great short video of a fellow who is doing 30 different sports in 30 days in 30 different cities! It inspires me to do something new. I LOVE it!

Do you think this guy has excuses? He may but he certainly cannot finish if he listens to them.

It gets me so excited to watch people like this, I want to do it!

Oh, by the way, when I need a ready to drink I also use EAS Myoplex (but the lite version for s smaller body).

Email subscribers will need to click on the Ready in 5 Weeks link to navagate to the blog to view this.

Walking

Walking is great exercise! Here I am in Paris, I spent two weeks there with my brother. I was at the Arc de Triomphe trying to catch a glimpse of the riders at the end of the Tour de France, and I am so short that I couldn't see a thing through the crowd so I decided to smile and pose. Actually, my brother was trying to take a photo of the drunk guy wrapped in the Catalan flag behind me.

I never went to a gym that entire time I was there, I only walked and walked and walked. I would have gone to a gym had I been able to find one in the neighborhood! I ate pastries everyday and enjoyed fabulous food and barely noticed a weight change.


Walking isn’t just good for your waistline—it benefits your memory, too. A new study that followed 299 adults for 13 years found that walking six to nine miles a week may stop your brain from shrinking as you age. 

“Exercise increases the amount of blood going to the brain,” says lead study author Kirk Erickson, a University of Pittsburgh professor. “This means that more of the important nutrients necessary for the brain to function are distributed.”

Researchers found that the more participants walked, the more gray matter they retained (though exceeding nine miles a week provided no additional benefits). Those who walked the most had half the risk of developing memory problems as those who walked the least. “Some loss of brain matter is normal with age,” Erickson says. “But with increased exercise, the parts of the brain that support memory function—the prefrontal cortex and the hippo-campus—are spared. The earlier you start exercising, the better, but it’s never too late,” he adds. “Any amount you do will help.”




So if you cannot get to the gym, you can walk, You can walk anywhere, anytime, bring an umbrella if it's raining, weather doesn't matter (OK, I am a California girl, I hear it gets cold in parts of the United States, but I wouldn't know, I was born and raised here and 45 is super cold to me, way too cold in fact!). I understand parts of the world get so cold they have out door tunnels sort of like hamster habitrails!  Walk in the habitrail you have then.

Get out and do something good for yourself everyday.

Kickboxing

I have wanted to learn to kickbox for many, many years. I don't mean "cardio kickboxing", I am sure that it is a fun class, but I don't enjoy group exercise, I like to train one on one or alone. I mean the real deal, fighting.

My son has been training at AKA, American Kickboxing Academy,  which is considered the best training facility in the United States, for a couple years. He trains one on one with an instructor who trades for our wine, it's a good deal for all. AKA is home of many champions, Cain Velasquez, Jon Fitch, Josh Koscheck, Mike Swick, Josh Thomson, Herschel Walker, Cung Le, and many more. It's also two miles from my home (but rumor has that it will be moving soon).

I used to go into AKA for years, sit and just watch the lithe bodies, I really get a thrill watching them in action. I finally talked Cooper into joining, and now he won't leave.

I cannot start training where he trains, I mean who wants their mother showing up  when they are training? No one, unless mom is there to wipe away the sweat and blood and give them a hug and take them home for a nice dinner....

So, I have noticed a new trainer at my gym, she has been there a couple months I guess. My gym is interesting, it's a "club" but I call it a gym because I only utilize the gym...It is Courtside Club in Los Gatos, it has 16 tennis courts, three pools, a childcare center, cafe (with alcohol), pro shop (with jewelry, clothes, underwear, accessories), a complete day spa, valet parking at peak times and was named Best Tennis Facility 2010 by the United States Tennis Association....it's a club in other words.. a fancy club.

I go there because it's nice, it's close and it has what I need and want.

So back to the trainer.

You have to be pretty good to work here, they hire only the elite. When you are new, you have to put in "floor time", in other words, you spend time hanging around meeting people and getting paid minimum wage.

This new trainer is fit, she is tight and compact, she looks like an athlete, not just a fit gal who thinks it would be glamorous to be a trainer. We have chatted a few times.

But Saturday morning I saw her in action, and it was impressive. Seems this little fireplug is a kickboxer! She was training a big guy, she had the pads on her hands, he was kicking and he wasn't making much of an impact on her at all, I was shocked how she held her ground. She was a certified beast.

This was a woman I had to talk to.

I went up to her when she was free and asked her about the kickboxing. You see, they just don't do that sort of thing at my gym, it's messy. It's sweaty, it's not a thing you can do and wear all your fine jewelry.....I say this with a bit of sarcasm, but also with a tone of reality, my club is comprised of a lot of rich posers....I honestly believe that most of the young women are members to find a rich mate....and it's the right place to be, I can assure you of that.

We started talking and she explained that she is a kickboxer and not only trains at Courtside, but she trains people at their homes, and due to the economy, she started taking in clients at Courtside, business has been off.

I said "If you ever want to trade kickboxing lessons for wine, let me know"

She thrust her hand in mine, said "deal" and we arranged it then and there. I reached into my training binder, gave her my card and sealed the deal.

We spent a quite some time talking while I was on the stair mill. She wanted to know what I train for. I said I was a figure competitor, and she said, oh you have been at it a while huh?  "NO" I explained I have only been doing it two years, but then realized that is actually a long time for such a demanding sport.  A sport I am really re-considering.

I told her I really would like to work with a trainer, but I just don't have the funds to spare right now, there are other more pressing matters in my life currently. She looked me up and down and quickly said, with all seriousness, "you obviously do fine without a trainer, you don't need one".

We shared a few laughs, talked about training, people, routines, weightlifting, made our commitment and started to bond, this should turn out to be a synergistic relationship, just the kind I like.

I told her I would drop a few varietals by the club for her so she could taste and decide which ones she liked, we would then start training. I am thinking all I need to do is back the BMW out of the garage, shut the door and lay my yoga mat on the ground in case I need to do some work on the floor.

I can learn to  kickbox, I have kettlebells, small free weights, it will be a sweet deal. I am so excited, I cannot wait to start!

Soon, I can reinforce the joists for my new heavy bag....  ha ha ha

By the way, I took this picture a week ago, the legs are looking pretty good huh? Notice the bulge of the hams? RDL's.....start doing them, they work wonders, take a look at yesterday's blog if you haven't.

Of course, you need to do squats to get the bulge in the quads too....ah legs...aren't they beautiful!?

Life long learning

I got this book when I stopped training with SC, although I feel I know a great deal about weight training, there is always more to learn. SC used to ask me "what do you want to work on?" and I would decide if I needed do grow my quads, or my shoulders, or trim something down, and then he would write up a program for me that targeted exactly what my goals were.  I no longer have SC to do this for me. I also miss him, but still talk to him.


My real passion is not "Figure" it is strength, in fact, I starting competing in Figure much later, after I had been lifting for several years. I am actually not a real fan of the "figure look" and prefer to be more muscular, hard and generally ripped than the judges want. I think I like a look that leans a bit more towards bodybuilding.

I started because people would constantly say to me "Do you compete?!" and I decided that  maybe I should check it out, so I did.

When I am not prepping for competition, I like to train for strength, I get a kick out of lifting really heavy weights, of blowing people away in the weight room.

I have been writing up my own workouts now since May and have done a fairly good job of it. I must admit I have "stolen" quite a bit of it from the previous workouts SC developed for me over the years, but things still need to be changed up.


I have found this book interesting, because it focuses in on developing training for the individual athlete and understanding what will make them successful. It explains the differences in response to exercise commonly observed between athletes at novice, intermediate, and advanced levels, explains these differences in the context of the relevant science and presents new training models that work for athletes at all levels of experience.

It also discusses quite a bit about "periodization" and what exactly does it mean anyway?  It teaches about adaptation and why we need to change our workouts. It explains all of the science behind the weight rooms myths.  Here is a little taste of this book:

Communist-bloc countries had (and still have) large-scale sports performance selection processes intended to direct young athletes into the most appropriate sport, based on specific criteria. Once there, athletes achieve and stay in the program or fail to achieve and are sent home. The result is a pyramidal selection structure that eliminates the less competent athletes, leaving only those who have the best chance for international success. 

In the United States and most Western countries, some sports have a developmental pipeline. Football does. Basketball does. In fact, most nationally recognized high school sports that have a counterpart at the collegiate and professional  levels have selection pipelines comparable in scale to those seen at the zenith of the Soviet bloc's sporting success. High school sport in the United States is the base of our selection pyramid. However, high school students in the United States represent a different population than the students of the same age in the old Soviet Union. U.S. kids play sports to get in shape, while kids on the Soviet-type systems get in shape to play sports.

In the former bloc countries, sport was one of the few ways to rise above the constraints of the economic system, and this was a very powerful motivator. This difference is fundamental and significant, creating two distinct levels of athletes that reflect two distinct cultures generating two different levels of motivation for success. Soviet models of periodization were developed for and apply best to only one of these groups.

The U.S. high school student of today does not have the level of general physical preparation (GPP) and movement skills developed by the programs inherent in communist systems, programs in which children learned hot to move effectively and began developing base fitness at age 6, long before they entered sport-specific training.

Elementary school PE programs in the United States are underemphasized and understaffed and ignore GPPncept, the actual norm is one instructor, sixty students, and 45 minutes of class time...... as a formal part of what abbreviated curriculum might exist. Effective physical education is best done in small groups with adequate time. While the educational literature supports this concept, the actual norm is one instructor, sixty students, and 45 minutes of class time.

"Roll out the ball" physical education is the mode in which the teacher (whose own training may not be in physical education at all) operates in the context of overcrowded classrooms, poor administrative support, and inadequate equipment. 

Now this book is not bashing teachers or our society, it is setting the story so a coach can understand where the athlete is coming from, what their skill set may be, how little they may have been able to perfect their talents.
 
Practical Programming has helped me to understand what more I may be able to achieve, by changing my training and understanding the science behind it.  It is not a text book and while has some concepts and terminology the layperson may not know, it makes complex ideas simple and easy to understand.