If you’re in Westside Los Angeles, visiting or resident, and want to come train, here is a sample of the things you can do at Action Fitness, Inc. Visit the site here: www.action-fitness.com
December 28, 2009
December 26, 2009
Na’Vi Fitness
I don’t mean to do a plug for a movie I have no connection to, which most people are going to see anyway, but James Cameron’s “Avatar” flick has a tremendous amount of resonance in how we ought to be, live and perceive our environment.
Hunter Gatherer Lifestyle
In the movie, the Na’Vi tribe has a lifestyle of total communion with their ecology. Everything is connected to their Goddess Eywa (quite literally, through some form of organic technology, as every living creature seems to have the equivalent of a USB port, be it plant or animal, even the soil), like a huge hard drive where you can download and upload memories. They attempt to not disturb any ecological balance, and any kill is justified and respected. The Na’Vi, indigenous to Pandora, are tall, lean, beautiful, agile and extremely fit. They are “Wild Fit”, as a matter of fact. They train all day long by riding their native equine and bird equivalents, climb trees, cling to vines, scale mountains and more. The forest is their playground, their gym. Quickly into the movie, you care more for the natives of Pandora, truly connected to their planet, than you do for the humans, who act as a colonizing virus (a concept explored in movies like The Matrix Trilogy) after putting their own planet, Our planet Earth, in ecological jeopardy (nice to know in many centuries, we still haven’t resolved our environmental issues).
Wild Na'Vi Fitness
Similarities to Our Ancestry
Well, not just our ancestry if you consider we still have a few tribes of true Hunter Gatherers, such as the Hadza in Tanzania. But, humans used to be hunter-gatherers before they were farmers, over 200,000 years ago. Farming (and a newly acquired sedentary lifestyle) lasted 10,000+ years until we became the modernized “zoo humans” we are today, thanks to the industrial revolution. We have the technology, which seems soulless compared to how the Na’Vi’s “theo-technology” (a term I just coined for this post, but will not claim was not used elsewhere, if someone happens to have beaten me to it), but we are disconnected, figuratively. We may connect to the World Wide Web, send tweets and social network updates via our smart phones, but we are detached from our immediate surroundings, all focused only on our tech devices. The Na’Vi remind me also of the Masai warriors my wife and I encountered when honeymooning in Tanzania. Very tall, lean, able to read the bush and track animals even in the dark, with a built-in GPS into their brain, their skin so dark it seems it had a bluish tint to it. We don’t need to travel 6 light years, though I thank Jim Cameron for the experience, the reminder, the awareness, the message.
Masai fitness
Movies: Not Just To Escape
Yes, movies allow us to escape from our worldly matters, but great ones also bring us back, especially when the message is subtly obvious (great oxymoron, but stay with me here…). Last year’s “Wall-E” showed ballooned humans, degenerating after trashing the Earth. Here, we saw us colonizing another planet to steal rather than undo what we did to ourselves. The answer in both cases was a return to our roots. It’s not just fitness. It’s a change of perception (which the movies provide), hopefully for a change in lifestyle, not just exercise and proper eating. It’s a call to Action!
December 23, 2009
Part Three: Evolution of the Back and Spine
We’ve seen how our hairier, primate cousins (and I am not talking about your direct relatives) have a narrow set of hips, short legs with a straight line running from their pelvis to their ankle, and how they brachiate to swing from vine to vine. We also share something with them that evolves then devolves if we’re not careful, within our lifetime: the shape of our spine.
From knuckle dragging to upright walking.
The Spine: From C to S shape:
As we are develop in our mother’s womb, our spine is C-shaped. Slowly through our developing skills as we crawl and learn to look around, to the point that we stand, our spine develops its S-like curvature. It is designed to be mobile and is much longer than that of a primate. Our wide pelvis is also mobile and short (compare that to the tall pelvis of an ape and fixed Sacroiliac Joint on the illustration).
Hazards of Joint Misalignment:
The SacroIliac Joint (SIJ) if misaligned, can cause much damage and pain in our bodies, such as disc herniation, wear and tear of the spine, as well as hips and even affects our neural and immune systems!
Many times, the pain in our bodies is not diagnosed as SIJ Dysfunction because we look at other symptoms like stiffness due to poor posture, stiffness in neck and shoulders, misalignment of the femur, stiff hamstrings or calves and associate the cause to that area of the body. There is a plethora of tests, good and bad, to diagnose and treat SIJD, but I’ll leave that discussion to orthopedic surgeons, whose job is to fix you, or at the very minimum, a T-phase Z-health practitioner. My job is to prevent that from happening in the first place (or from recurring if you’ve already been experiencing it).
How to Prevent Bad Posture:
There is a series of exercises that one can do to help develop strength and keep proper alignment in your back and spine: cobra extension, superman extension (with legs on or off the floor depending on your desired intensity of work). An inexpensive way to get a great coach to show you is to watch babies as they begin to crawl, push themselves up and try to take in the world around them. Their brains are not tainted with misinformation yet (and they don’t charge as much as a pro!)
December 20, 2009
Limb evolution continued: the knee
In my second post, we’ll visit a very commonly injured joint: the knee.
How the Knee Works with the Hips and Ankles:
Runners (as advertised in running magazines and with no understanding of the biomechanics of their activity) learn to live with knee pain. Others limit their activities because doctors tell them to and end up making things worse (many doctors only know how to fix, not prevent, other than by keeping you stationary). The bottom line, it’s like when some irate person screams at me: it’s not me. With the knee, it’s not the knee. The knee is cool, moves only in one direction. It’s the hip (too tight, not engaged) or your ankle (not pivoting, especially when keeping your heel anchored to the ground rather than loose and mobile in many movements) that mess things up for the knee, who gets the blame for their screw-ups.
How has our Knee Evolved?
The ape leg is straight from hip to foot. As humans, we have a displaced our upper leg limb from its midline (“valgus” –look the word up-) in order to be able to place our feet under our center of mass when walking upright. Check out the shorter legs and wider stance of an ape’s skeleton by comparison. Legs, back when we were not upright walkers, served a different purpose and used a different weight distribution.
Human and hominid/ape skeletons
Ways to Protect your Knee in Training:
The question now posed is: what do you do with that information? Well, in your training drills, you want to develop mobility and stability in your hip and ankle complex to protect your knee from rotational and adduction forces. Dr Nicholas Romanov published a great book called The Pose Method of Running, in which he breaks down proper biomechanics.
“What if I am not a runner?”
Joint mobility is still tremendously important. The lessons learned from the Pose Method of Running carryover quite easily into tennis, martial arts, cycling, swimming. Efficiency of movement, proper loading mechanics to improve your leverage is what the system is all about. I strongly suggest the book as a must read if you are looking to improve any area of fitness, not just running.
Training Resources:
Although, having been trained myself in it, I urge you to find a Pose coach near you, as there is no substitute for proper individual coaching. In an upcoming interview, I will interview Lee Saxby, one of the highest Pose coaches worldwide after Dr Romanov himself, also the fitness director at Wildfitness. Lee taught me Pose, along with other coaches in the first ever Wildfitness Coaches training in London, UK, in May 2008.
December 17, 2009
Fitness Evolution vs Human Devolution
What are Natural Movement Patterns?
The natural movement patterns in our bodies enable us to do things like running, fighting, lifting. We evolved in an environment where we needed to do intense short exertion with lots of rest or ‘active recovery’ in between. We might have hunted, fought, run away etc. and then spent the afternoon sitting under a tree or gathering berries… We’re still the same human beings we were over 200,000 years ago! It’s just that we started to farm when we became sedentary, introduced a bunch of ailments, nutritional deficiencies and more as a result for about 10,000 years, and since the industrial revolution, we became modernized, caged humans, akin to living in a zoo! (And we know how animals are meant to live in cages…). Evolution-based fitness systems teach us how to train utilizing the innate gifts nature bestowed upon us that we societally ruin by not using them (entropy). It takes us 9 months to come out perfect and a lifetime to undo it. Evolution-based fitness is about learning how to take full advantage of our movement systems, among others (which I will cover in other posts).
How to Move Pain Free:
The key to getting a lean and pain free wild body is to mimic the movements and intensity that our bodies are designed for. The movements that you do most often: standing, walking, running, or whatever sport you do e.g. biking, are those which will have most effect on your body. Doing certain stretches or isolated exercises may help to alleviate pain but you have to change your movement patterns to change the load to your structure and therefore heal or prevent injuries.
Taking Care of the Shoulder (TCS):
In today’s blog post, I want to talk about one of the most commonly affected body parts: the shoulder. Injuries there can be passive, or recurring, chronic or acute, although in my personal belief, if you take care of it and understand its design, you’re less likely to injure yourself under circumstances where you have a semblance of control over your environment (unless someone is purposely attempting to hurt you), like when you ski, climb, play sports or lift (if an accident occurs then, it’s usually a culmination of judgment errors).
Shoulder Evolution:
Our primate cousins’ shoulder girdle is designed of brachiation (picture apes swinging on vines, like Tarzan). We may not swinging on vines daily, but working on expanding our gluteal real estate hunched our desks isn’t what we’re meant to do either when movement is in mind. The majority of our shoulder injuries come from the fact that, due to the lack of brachiation in our daily movement patterns, especially certain body building movements design to “build” the shoulder, our scapula has developed a downward rotation (sagging shoulders, poor posture, tight chest from too much bench pressing…).
Shoulder Mobility:
Stretching movements (like Yoga or Superjoints, Z-Health as well as a series of “wild” or natural movement patterns) aimed at allowing more range of motion can give you the flexibility and mobility you need to open the shoulder girdle. In training, you need to learn how to compress that same joint in order to keep it stable and avoid leaking or dissipating strength by not “connecting” your shoulder, “corkscrewing” it into your torso. That leakage vs linkage, the latter very proper to the RKC system (Russian Kettlebell Certification) is what keeps you strong and injury-free.
Remedy:
Train with me or any RKC certified instructor by visiting dragondoor.com. Or go on a Wildfitness vacation in Africa (make sure to tell them I sent you), which you can find at wildfitness.com
December 14, 2009
Navigating the seas of strength.
It is by knowledge and experience that I navigate the oft tumultuous seas of fitness.
Defeating physical pain, conquering mental anguish and surmounting performance plateaus, I pilot the only vessel I’ll ever carry from the pre-dawn of my life till the lights go out at dusk.
I seek uncharted biological territories, but heed the warnings of captains before me. I’ve sailed the planet through peaks, valleys and oceans, successfully challenged monsters and battled with wits and brawn at my side. Some beasts I haven’t tamed, others are emblazoned on my crest.
“Be water, my friend”. Sometimes, I resist its currents and fight its tempestuous nature, other times I let it guide me through its channels to where I ought to be.
With the realization that it is sometimes beyond me, survival comes from accepting its beauty. You can depart from any port, circumnavigate the globe and find yourself in the very place you left physically, but have you embraced the journey?
You can Powerlift, Oly lift, body lift.
You can machine press, dumbbell press, barbell press, kettlebell press.
Upright row, seated row, bent-0ver row, renegade row.
Pull-up or pull-down.
Bench press or push press.
Relax to the point of tension.
Slow grind or fast & loose.
Clash with Titans or defeat Goliath, for sometimes, a well aimed little metaphoric pebble can take you down for the count. Even the greatest warrior Achilles had a weakness.
Search your golden fleece, find your golden goose. Your journey awaits you, but you must prepare for it.
Embark with me, join the ranks.
Soon, the Actionaut will leave these banks!
December 11, 2009
Advice for the young at heart
Soon we will be older… After listening to a great call between Dan John and Geoff Neupert, 2 bad mo-fos in strength, grip, bending stuff, kettlebells and more, I decided to repost some of the things Dan discussed, paraphrasing from the notes I took, as a reminder for everyone entering Autumn or Winter… Hypertrophy and mobility are the key for anyone on the North side of 50 (hypertrophy, by the way, is the fancy term for building muscles, in this context). Hypertrophy because as one gets older, joints are going. Ever heard the concept of when an elderly person slips and falls, ending up with a broken hip, it’s not the impact/fall that breaks the hip, but the slip (i.e. as the person slips, the hip breaks because of lack of joint stability and muscular atrophy BEFORE landing)? Think of the body as a Lego set, you know, the modular brick toy that promotes creativity and building with kids. The bricks stack up and stay strong by pressing each one into the other, you don’t just set them loosely on top of one another like a house of cards. The same goes for your joints. You need to “compress” your kinetic chain so that you remain stable from top to bottom. Any looseness in your kinetic chain, a.k.a weakest link, and down you go (this is valid for anyone doing resistance training). While yoga, for instance, is great at keeping you loose, you still need to be able to operate your body through gradual progressive overload (GPO). Your body will respond accordingly, following the SAID principle (Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands). Don’t expect to get strong and build muscles if you don’t apply resistance on your body. So, if you used to be able to leap, but now merely trod, you need to get your spring back! Bring your reps up in order to build fresh muscle (you’re only as old as your connective tissue). Yes, we lose muscle as we get older, but that certainly doesn’t mean you cannot build muscle anymore. Quite the contrary, it is essential for the elderly to keep exercising and building muscle. Not only does it keep you strong, stable and connected, but it also helps strengthen your bones; resistance training has been proven to help with ostheoporosis, because as you build muscle, your body also starts to pull more calcium from your food in order to keep the structure of your body (the bones) strong.
December 8, 2009
Fitness in the work place: unleash your inner athlete!
Wellness is currently a $500 billion industry and just getting started. It is about how simple choices profoundly affect our lives. Wellness integrates mind, body and spirit with a balanced flow of energy. It is an ongoing process of choices that become the stories of our lives. Proactive or Reactive? Wellness is proactive: people seek activity, products, and services to feel healthier, reduce the effects of aging, look better, and prevent illness. Wellness is characterized by problem avoidance and prevention. The Need for Wellness Coaching People don’t need more advice about vitamins, supplements, how-to exercise, or 1700 calorie diets. They need a clear, specific, step-wise program for change and an informed guide to help them. Shouldn’t that guide be you? Become knowledgeable about integrating mind, body and spirit and you’re well on your way to guiding your clients to wellness. Contact Action Fitness, Inc. for all your 2010 fitness resolutions before they turn into faded memories, wasted gym memberships, extra unwanted pounds or new prescription drugs. Empower yourself, unleash your inner athlete!
Coaching the
Wellness Revolution
Sickness is reactive: people react to a specific condition or ailment. Products and services treat the symptoms of a disease or attempt to eliminate the disease.
In studies of coronary bypass patients—when their lives are at risk unless they adopt healthier lifestyles—only one in nine is able to change their habits by themselves. Other findings:
70% of health-care costs stem from preventable diseases.
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)Stress undermines work productivity in 9 of 10 companies.
(Industrial Society Survey)70-80% of physician visits are stress related.
(US Public Health Survey)Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease have reached epidemic proportions—almost all are preventable.
(American Medical Association)Every dollar invested in worksite wellness yields 300-600% return through reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, and decreased health-related costs. (Partnership for Prevention National Coalition)
December 7, 2009
I need to be Zen…
It happened again today. It’s not like I shouldn’t expect it, and you’d think I’d learn after all this time. I even thought that after a few hours, I’d cool down a bit and let bygones be bygones. But, seeing as Mondays are usually learning days for me (Tuesdays, I write), while I am listening to a teleseminar hosted by Geoff Neuport, Senior RKC (site: http://kettlebellsecrets.com/specialer.html), interviewing Dan John (http://danjohn.net/) I thought I’d beat the iron while it’s hot.
I am taking advantage of a slight change of environment for my training for a couple of weeks, by going to a very “chichi”, expensive gym, because they were giving away a free trial membership. My own gym is literally a few blocks away, but I figured what the hell? Some pros switch gyms all the time for variety and fun. This one prides itself at having the “best trainers”, all NASM certified (which I am, among other certs). I also like that they have kettlebells there (and I find myself to be the only one using them. I even heard a staff trainer tell his client how bad it is for your joints to train with kettlebells. I let it go. The guy didn’t look like he could punch his way out of greasy paper bag, though he probably knows more about hair conditioners than an Aveda rep).
But here I was today, in my “cage” where I was going from bench press, to deadlifts, to shoulder presses and split squats. Simple, 5 ladders of 3 rungs per drill, moderate weight, good grinds. Today, I was not drawing attention by doing Turkish Get-Ups, Windmills or KB snatches. I was blending in.
What stood out, though, was watching trainers demonstrate crappy training progressions (by jumping around from one exercise to the next without rhyme or reason or purpose, letting clients move with form that resembled a house of cards trying to withstand gusty winds.)
Countless times, I saw idle trainers walk by a person working out on their own like an epileptic without even the conscious attempt to correct them! I mean, come on! You don’t have to collect money every single time from a person for a simple form correction!
As I was doing a joint mobility drill, I had a person come to me and ask for advice on how to do the same thing. Same thing when I was deadlifting, a gentleman near me was doing bent-over rows with poor form, so I corrected him, and he welcomed that. I felt great. Apparently, I demonstrated skills that these folks recognized.
It’s interesting to “secret shop” and see what others are doing. A colleague of mine sees a “sh#t show” (her words)all day at her gym in Vancouver, BC, with so-called “trainers”. Pavel Tsatsouline, Mr KB himself, has learned to not get bothered by it. I feel it is necessary to try to educate members in proper exercise techniques, but how do you do it if there is no quality control anywhere in gyms? It’s like a surgeon passing the medical boards, but botching every surgery afterwards with no consequences! Each bad move I saw was making ME hurt, so I can only imagine how the poor sap protruding his knees and going into spinal flexion during some plyo-box jump squats is going to feel later!
I propose that all trainers start a “secret shopping training guild”, go to gyms and offer our services and report anything that ultimately represents a liability to the gym by having their staff ignore proper technique. Who’s in?
December 2, 2009
Living like the Hadza
I just finished reading a killer article in National Geographic about the Hadza tribe of Tanzania.
They are probably the last surviving tribe on the African continent that still truly live like hunter gatherers. A truly present tense existence without the hassles of economy, taxes, job cuts or everything that ails modern society. They live remarkably worry-free and follow their likes. They spend a few hours a day (4-6) looking for food or water, nap whenever they feel like. They have the greatest food storage at their disposal (the Land), either at the nearest berry bush, baobab tree (bears a tasty fruit), wild bee-hive or a few poisoned arrows and a stalk & hunt away from baboon or giraffe meat.
I’m not saying I want to live in their conditions. But, I am envious of their peaceful existence, for however longer they can sustain it, with the encroaching civilization. These people are fit, healthy, resourceful, eat what the Land offers (really, how we’re meant to eat. Farming introduced many diseases and ailments into our society).
I guess I’ll stick to my eating habits, which I try to have resemble theirs, but for the occasional processed carb (beer, candy bar…) and try stalking and catching waves with my quiver of boards…
