The Actionaut

The exact opposite is also true: don’t get a trainer, and lose money and get fatter!
I want to simply show you how by hiring the services and expertise of a qualified personal trainer, you will put green back into your life (or greenback. I amaze myself at my unintended puns sometimes…)

MONEY SPENT ON DRUGS
According to the bureau of Labor Statistics, the average american spends 1% of his income on prescription drugs.The national median household income is roughly $46,000, so about $460 is spent per year on drugs. That’s assuming everyone takes Rx drugs. 50% of the US population takes at least one Rx drug. From cholesterol, heart disease, anti-depressants to diabetes and OTC drugs for other sorts of issues like back pain, heartburn etc. So, to be conservative, we can infer that if 50% of the population takes Rx drugs, they spend $920 a year on them.
Those who are unfortunate and take the gamut of drugs because of hypertension, cholesterol and type II diabetes run a much higher number which could be diminished, even altogether alleviated if they were on a training and nutrition program.

ESCALATING/CUMULATIVE COSTS
As the Metabolic Syndrome candidate (the “unfortunate” from the previous paragraph) ages, laziness and lack of accountability (yes, I don’t buy the poor condition they’re in as an excuse to not get healthy) make their condition even worse. I was at a public library with my toddler son recently and saw a morbidly obese woman pull out a bag full of Rx drugs. This didn’t happen overnight. Lady, you saw it coming. Now, we all have to pay for it. How much of this is coming out of your pockets to fund her drug habit?

IGNORANCE ISN’T BLISS
Many people are intimidated by the gym. So they never go back. My female clients now are confident enough to walk into a free weights room where the big boys hang, whether they train with me or not. Most women fear that room and walk away. Then they try a class, and some stick, some don’t. Usually they stop because they don’t see results, or the class is too hard and you can’t really learn anything or work at your speed or level.
If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, do not think that picking up a fitness magazine or following instructions on a machine will get you to do it correctly. Who will check your form? If the weight you use isn’t challenging “enough”, you won’t get results. If you use a light weight out of fear of injury, you won’t get results. Then you’ll quit. Exit gym, enter Metabolic Syndrome. But, you’re still locked into your gym’s contract.
Or, you stick with it, get hurt and are set back. Money spent on doctors. Money spent on unused membership. Weight gain. Enter Jenny.
Average gym membership is $50/month.

WEIGHT LOSS CENTERS
Short term fixes, no permanent solution. Do you seriously think Jenny Craig is going to help you stay thin? Of course not. She’d be out of business. All these plans sell you food that can outlast the roaches after a nuclear holocaust, stuff you wouldn’t dare feeding your dog or your child. So why would you put that inside of you? Fillers, preservatives, chemicals, ingredients you can’t pronounce necessitating a Ph.D in chemistry to decipher. I like to know that if I buy peanut butter, the only ingredient is peanuts.
So, more money wasted, yo-yo weight fluctuation.Cost: about $650/month per person. You can grocery shop and cook and feed a few people on that.

LET’S ADD SOME UP
Jenny Craig: $7800/year (what, you thought you could do it for a month only?)
Gym membership: $600/year.
Rx Drugs: $920/year.
OTC drugs: $180/year.
Total: $9500/year.
I am not calculating the cost of being unhealthy, how we’re taxed for the sick people without healthcare who go to the emergency for a cold. Nor am I calculating clothes to buy, which if you hit plus sizes are either ugly or very expensive. I am not including abstract factors like quality of life either, though IMHO it should be at the top of the list, but how do you quantify feeling like crap, having no energy to be with your kids, shortening your life expectancy, aging faster?
What about the cost of doctor visits if you get hurt not knowing what you’re doing?
That’s gotta be worth well over $15,000 right here (for the total, I mean, not just doctor visits). With deductibles, added hidden charges, I know those medical bills really add up.

NOT A MIRACLE, BUT A BETTER INVESTMENT
So, if you were to just invest in 3-4 months of sessions with a personal trainer, you can lose weight, probably get off some of the Rx drugs. You miss less work, which can result in promotions due to better performance, and let’s face it, feeling more confident and looking healthier is always better than the opposite, and any way you slice it, people pay attention to it. If you’re overweight and going for a job interview, the interviewer cannot discriminate. But how would you know? The potential employer is looking at how much the overweight person will cost them in missed sick days, medical benefits etc. There is a reason also why those sharks from pharmaceutical companies send out their arguably, societally-defined “attractive” people to doctor’s offices. When Homer Simpson grew his hair back and lost some weight, he was promoted.
Not superficial. True.

Even if you stick with your trainer for the whole year, by entering a longer term agreement, you either save money in the process by reducing other costs by improving your health or at least break even. And breaking even if your health is better actually puts you on the up-side.

If you’re a current client, or a prospective client and are reading this, lock in your rate with me right now. Prices are going up in 2012. I invested several thousands of dollars this year alone to be a better coach to you. So technically, it’s not my prices that are going higher, it’s your coach who’s getting better. I am not afraid of saying it. Because you’ll get that much fitter and better too!

Don’t know what to ask for Christmas or Hanukkah? Now you do. You have 2 weeks to lock in your rate!

Comments (0) Dec 15 2011

I already blogged last time about why you should train with me.

So now, I am just going to write about “why” you should train period, but I’m coming from a different, more specific angle. Baby boomers, or men as young as over 30, this is crucial information that can increase your health as well as save you tons of cash, now and in the long term! Ladies, scroll down to the very bottom for a picture of what natural levels testosterone in the female body can do for you, and why following the same plan as your cave-dwelling other half will have you looking slimmer, sexier and healthier

DO YOU SUFFER FROM LOW TESTOSTERONE?
If you are in your teens, early 20′s, have a nice day, you are dismissed (for most of you).
If you’re on the wrong side of 40, and even somewhere near, you should read this.
Yes, women too!
If you have man boobs, lower libido, excess body fat, no muscle tone, decreased confidence, are not in the same you were in your 20′s (which is hard to maintain, I know, but you can still look amazing if you do something about it) and you let coworkers walk all over you and never stand up for yourself, you probably are experiencing “low T”. Behavior, schmehavior. If you’ve been like that your whole life, you may just have been screwed when testosterone was handed out, like I’ve been every time I try to go get the new iPhone 4S!

WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?
Back to my 4 pillars: exercise, nutrition, environment, hormones.
They all link together. Remove one, the rest falls apart, or falls short.
Exercise: you have to pick the right intensity to boost the secretion of testosterone, by stimulating the right parts of your brain (hypothalamus, pituitary glands). A typical (and thank God the trend is changing into facts rather than fashion) weight loss of low weights and treadmill is NOT the right thing to do to raise your testosterone.
Nutrition: The right kinds of foods help boost T levels naturally. Examples are celery, bananas, avocado, raw unsalted nuts, asparagus, basil, garlic, figs, whole eggs, lean organic meats to name a few. My vegan friends can be very happy up until I mentioned eggs, and vegetarians until I mentioned meats. So, you can raise those levels too!
Environment: get some sun! 30-60 minutes a day will help your body “luteinize” which is a precursor to testosterone. Make more lutein, make more testosterone. You need at least 1000 lux a day (lux: SI of illuminance, equal to 1 lumen per square meter). An office gets you about 500 lux a day. The sun produces 50,000 to 100,000!
Hormones: well, as you can see, that’s directly related to all of the above. Skip one, you’re throwing off the entire hormonal chain. Or, supplement poorly with inadequate hormone replacement therapy and the balance is off. Good therapy, on the other hand, is great if you’ve exhausted all options, but replacement therapy is that: replacement, not supplementation. It means you can never stop once you start, or the balance is off (again) and it’s very, very expensive ($500-$1000/month, not counting the lab tests and screenings to determine what amounts you should take).

WHAT ELSE CAN I DO?
Watch “guy flicks”. Seriously. Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, John Wayne, Bruce Lee, Charles Bronson were never accused of being sissies. Didn’t you ever feel pumped up after watching any Rocky movie? You can watch your favorite football team, but if they lose, you drop your T-levels too!

Avoid Dr. Phil and Project Runway. I know you can get easily suckered in. Walk away, turn on your iPod to some metal, download something cool and kick ass and watch it on your computer.

If your shampoo has paraben, laurel sulfate, F&DC yellow, trash it now! Those are respectively xeno estrogens that you’re rubbing in, toxins that cause infertility (and may even cause women to not carry full term) and penetrators so it can get into your blood stream!

Eat like a man: a low fat high fiber diet, commonly perceived as good for weight loss, is even more effective at dropping your testosterone levels too. You need fat, natural fat (mono and omegas for instance, stay away from trannies, I mean, trans fats). Oh yeah, and lift like one too!

Stop self-defeat right now! Most of what you do is driven by fear, your reptilian brain, also called the resistance. Stop looking at what you DON’T have and look at what you’re great at. Take that, and do more of it. Why? Cause great begets great, and you are engraining that behavior, which in turn helps you rebuild some confidence, which helps you boost your feel-good hormones, which make you want to conquer the world and yaddah yaddah yaddah…

Now, ladies, I promised you a picture. Be natural, be feminine, and be not afraid. I promise, on my son’s life.

Comments (1) Nov 03 2011

Last time I posted about grunge training. Simple, heavy, loud.

Improve your metabolic conditioning while improving your joint mobility! It is the era of hybrid everything, so why not train efficiently by improving that “cardio” of yours while allowing you to move better at once?

People think that mobility drills are doing a bunch of arm circles or calisthenics, or some sort of stretching (equating flexibility with mobility, which are two different things). You can be fast and loose about it, you can make it slow, controlled, dynamic and even make a circuit of it, get a great warm-up or even a great workout in-between your “grungy” loud, heavy days that leave you all beat up!

It’s all in how you cycle your routine. A great warm-up shouldn’t leave you exhausted for your “main event”, but it should leave you feeling supple and strong at once, relaxed and ready to fight. I know the late and great Jack Lalanne argument of “a lion doesn’t stretch before attacking”, and I agree that you shouldn’t stretch before working out. However, where the esteemed Mr Lalanne and I differ, and many better coaches than me agree, is that lions are always moving around, stretching, loosening up their body, playing, pouncing and when they’re ready, they’re always ready. Be it to hunt or to protect. You should be like that too!

You may not need to work for strength, for whatever you do, and you’re not a lesser person for it. Maybe you just want to feel good and get about your day. I like to lift heavy, but I get it. You need a break and do not want to lose your gains. You can still get the best of your conditioning and joint mobility by performing natural, all-body moves like burpees, moving into a suspended cobras starting from a downward dog stance, hip bridges (very tight for most people, and if you improve your hip mobility and flexibility, you will improve your quality of life!).

Perform any or all of these moves back to back in a circuit, for a minute each, and rinse, lather, repeat the sequence a few times. You will be huffing and puffing and still feel a great pump in your muscles, while burning a ton of calories and staying in better condition than running an interval program on the treadmill. Besides that, why would you run on a treadmill if nothing you do in life revolves around running? It’s not good training, not good conditioning…

Comments (2) Oct 01 2011

The great Jack Lalanne died yesterday, Sunday January 23, 2011 at the ripe age of 96. I say ripe, yet he was a lot more youthful than some people half his age. He accomplished feats of strength such as 1033 push-ups in 23 minutes, swam shackled from Alcatraz to Fisherman’s Wharf, all of which when he was on the wrong side of 40.

He made a resolution at 15 to no longer eat junk food after attending a lecture from nutritionist Paul Bragg. He went on to inspire millions of American households to become healthy. He invented cable pulley systems and other fitness devices, never ate any refined sugars and kept going till pneumonia got the best of him. He was quoted saying “I can’t afford to die. It’d wreck my image”. Jack, you lived and you lived several lifetimes. I can only hope to ever inspire 1% of the people you inspired! You were a great man!

Jack never stopped his pursuit of fitness. I believe, like many good coaches do (and should) that we never stop learning. Constant reevaluation of your knowledge and skills, questioning, discarding, adapting and researching are notions I factor in to training my clients, as should people seeking a trainer. When cost becomes the only factor to find a personal trainer, you are shortchanging yourself on the most important investment in your life!

You don’t have to start eating healthy at 15. But if you’re not currently doing so, start now! You may even live past 96, and we’re talking a good 96! You will need more than an apple a day! As for oranges, ever wonder why getting a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice seems so darn expensive at a fancy brunch or at a farmers’ market? I always kinda, sorta got it, and shame on me for taking so long since I preach a similar gospel to prospective clients, but today, when I decided to squeeze some fresh, seasonal, delicious blood oranges, I went through half a bag for a couple of glasses for me and my wife!

It takes a lot of oranges to make a glass of juice, a glass filled with fresh, unadulterated vitamins and other nutrients that will keep your immune system strong and your muscles more efficient at repairing themselves. A trainer owes it to his clients to always deliver the best, most up to date findings and research on effective training, even if it means going back to something basic and time tested. Just like an orange vs a space age glass of Tang!

Comments (0) Jan 24 2011

Happy New Year, fellow Actionauts!

Even though I’ve posted a blog since 2011 started, this one’s really important for you to know (not that the other one isn’t, but when one has to prioritize, I’m STRONGLY suggesting this makes the top of your must-reads!)

So, to the point, I have promised you the TOP 3 mistakes people make and why they ultimately do not achieve their goals and here they are:

REASON #1
NEED vs WISH: IT’S NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO YOU!
You wish to lose stubborn belly fat, you wish to get bigger, you wish to ________________ (insert wish here). That’s hardly a goal, the stakes associated with it are low. You NEED to make it a super high priority goal, something that will cost you greatly if you don’t achieve it. A morbidly obese diabetic will die if they don’t start eating properly and exercising. A student won’t get into Law School without the LSAT. You won’t get a loan without good credit. You won’t achieve your fitness goal, whatever it is, if you don’t do what it takes consistently. When dealt a death sentence, ill people try anything, any treatment available, even some they would frown upon when healthy. Some atheists even found religion. I’m harsh to make a point! If it’s not a “must do”, your compliance will be 0%, and so will be your success rate.

REASON #2
HOBBY vs HARD WORK: DON’T CONFUSE TRAINING WITH RECREATION
Playing baseball, golf, doing yoga sure can be fun and is great for you: enjoy the sun, the outdoors, move better, feel better. But you can’t measure it. There is no direct cause-effect, meaning if you do A, it needs to lead to B. Doing yoga will not make you lose weight, no bull! It’s the change of lifestyle and desire to be healthier which, associated with the mindset and a likely improved eating lifestyle reducing excess which will lead to weight loss.
You need a PLAN, a proven path to success. Resistance training can and has been measure. Do A and it will lead to B 100% of the time (unless you get hurt, fall of the wagon etc…)

REASON #3
MINIMUM NECESSARY vs OVERTRAINING
There is a difference between “you should at least do X” and “you only need to do X”. Sometimes, to achieve a goal, you only need to do this much work, and give yourself this much time to recover, and do it this many times. Other times, people think that if they do MORE of X, they’ll achieve their goals faster. Truth is, doing MORE exercise can lead to overtraining, failure (muscular and mental) and what you should be doing is the minimum necessary to yield results, and use the spare time to correct or ensure other variables in your program are observed. Translation: knowing that you can’t out-exercise a bad diet, training more will not lead to a better body; instead pay closer attention to your nutritional intake, your rest periods (in-session and in-between sessions) and make sure the program matches your goals (don’t train like a marathoner if you want to build mass, don’t train like a fighter if you don’t fight).

Comments (0) Jan 08 2011

On Sunday, December 12, 2010, I participated, along with 3 other tough guys, in an event called the Spartan Race.
Rather than do the thing on my own, I thought it’d be more fun to have a team (besides saving a few beer bucks on the registration fee and building team spirit).

I like to work towards a goal, and the mere training goals of strength building or hypertrophy didn’t tickle my adrenal glands enough to generate any kind of training fire inside me. While my personal routine didn’t change in preparation of the event, I wanted to prove that I can be ready any time, any day, and that the conditioning I put myself through would be enough. So, the only variable I changed in my training was my diet, which was great because I embarked on a journey I’ve been hearing about and wanted to experience myself after rave reviews. I’m talking about Ori Hofmekler’s Warrior Diet. My personal results have been fantastic and I am glad to endorse it!

Why The Warrior Diet: Switch on Your Biological Powerhouse For High Energy, Explosive Strength, and a Leaner, Harder Body?
Well, for starters, if my own coaches and RKC comrades have been raving about it, it was endorsement enough for me to give it a shot. Designed for efficiency and maximal energy, it seemed like a no-brainer since my journey as a new father has been tough on the eating and sleeping schedule, 2 vital components of any successful fitness program. I directly asked Pavel Tsatsouline, who’s been on it for years I believe, his take on it. While it wouldn’t necessarily pack mass on me, it would give me plenty of energy and time to both work and take care of the baby when my wife needed time for herself and her work, in between my own clients.
Since any balanced diet revolves around insulin management, I was skeptical because all I was ever taught was to eat frequent meals during the day, which prevents overeating and “survival” metabolic slow-down. See, the Warrior Diet has you go through periods of controlled under-eating during the day alternating with over-eating at night.

I can almost see your furrowed brow on one side, raised brow on the other side. Some of your “hmm…” can be heard through the web too!

WHAT’S THE DEAL?
Hofmekler has you eat only live and raw foods during the day. Coffee or tea is allowed. Drink as much water as you want of course. Squeeze some fresh veggies and fruits and guzzle it down, chew on some raw almonds, cashews or pistachios. Hunger is a sign of vitality. Of course, don’t mistake that for an anorexic program! You eat enough to sustain and actually stimulate insulin release and get you going, burning fat and preserving muscle. You can even ingest a protein shake. But don’t stuff yourself like the domestic nomadic Zoo animal our society turned us into. Think predator, hungry, strong and driven to survive and thrive! When a big cat like a lion or a tiger feasts, they eat till satisfied, unsure of when their next meal comes. That’s you at dinner time. Eat till you’re more thirsty than hungry. Follow the VERY HEALTHY order of salad first, then your veggies, then your protein and if you have room, your carbs. Mix and match textures, colors, tastes (crunchy, soft, sweet, sour, savory, green, red, cold, hot…) and eat away. Then, rest up and sleep. While asleep (night time, circadian rhythm), you only use enough calories to rebuild your muscles from your hunt (I mean, training), while stocking up energy for the day ahead.

Think warrior, Roman soldier: when do you have time during battle to take a break and eat. Your adrenaline’s pumping, you’re hungry for life, food but need to stay razor sharp. How do you think you’d do if you felt like after Thanksgiving dinner while trying to slash away at your enemies? Lethargic is my guess. Save that for sleep!

Hofmekler goes into better detail in his book, and I urge you to give it a shot. I wouldn’t if I didn’t try it myself.

COMPARE TO OTHER DIETS
I have always been a fan of the TNT diet, which taught me that we only burn carbs at high physical intensity training (weights, sprints, martial arts, surfing, tennis…) and burn fat when our heart rate is slow/resting (blogging, sleeping, surfing your desk, watching TV…). The Paleo diet adheres to the same principle, though I am no fan of eating liver, kidneys or any other filtration organs and I do mind eating the better cuts of meat. I am picky, I won’t eat certain parts, like the heart or the brain. Sorry, Paleo dieters, you’re better people than I am, and I see no real reason to do this, other than maybe to generate less waste from the animal that “donated” its life.
The Zone diet doesn’t work, because not everyone’s needs are the same. Athletes vs couch potatoes, pregnant vs non-pregnant women, marathon runners vs shot putters. You can’t say we all need 30% fat, 30% protein, 40% carbs. And ultimately, the body reach homeostasis, so why not try something new, that makes sense and is on par with your goals? It even works if you’re not a lifter, and just want a new program. Read it, read Ori’s points and analysis.

WHAT IT DID FOR ME
I started 10 days before my 5K obstacle course in the Malibu mountains, the infamous Spartan Race. By body fat percentage was at 12.5% on a Saturday. On Tuesday, I had dropped 3% body fat at my annual physical exam. My lifts, my energy and my mood have been better. On the day of the race, after completing uphill runs, scaling steep 10′ walls, mud crawls, cold water swim, cargo nets and gladiators with big foam sticks at the finish line, I felt exhilarated, elated and I never got sore nor did I feel more fatigued than after a “medium” intensity workout!

To me, that was validation enough in my eating with the Warrior Diet, as well as my training with kettlebells, powerlifts and natural movement patterns, staples of my (and your) physical fitness development!
(I did run wearing my Vibram Five-Fingers and was glad I did. The grip and agility it gave me, especially after crawling through wet, muddy areas, was a nice welcome compared to wearing soggy sneakers!)

Comments (0) Dec 14 2010

This is by far the most common desire and goal for anyone who exercises for the purpose of health.
While there is a vanity factor we should all acknowledge within ourselves (it’s natural, it’s actually not vain but driven by our species’ need to thrive, survive and reproduce), not exercising 3 times a week is actually bad for you (something I see plastered on the walls of Gold’s Gym Venice, based on some scientific study which I don’t recall the exact source…).

Why yes, it is bad for you if you don’t exercise, because of one word: entropy!

ENTROPY
Not doing squat (I am not referring to the exercise) is bad because as we age, we lose about a pound of muscle every couple of years past 30. If a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day (at rest) and you lose 5lb of muscle in your 30′s, when you reach 40, you can gain up to 90lb! How does that work? If you’re not burning 50 calories a day for a year, that’s 50×365=18250 calories the pound of muscle made you not burn. A pound of fat is 3600 calories, so that’s roughly 5lb between the ages of 30 and 32. Compound that over a decade, you get pretty close to 90lb, EVEN IF YOU ARE EATING THE SAME HEALTHY FOODS YOU’VE BEEN EATING THE WHOLE TIME!!!

HOW DO I GET TONED?
Well, that’s the culmination of all things wellness related: nutrition, training, sleep patterns and hormonal balance and environmental factors (work, home, stress…). I emphasized exercise for health in the first sentence. Performance based exercise is geared at a specific goal, such as an athlete trying to lift a certain weight, run a certain distance, fight X amount of rounds… The result leads to improved muscle tone and a greater functionality in the muscles anyway, without being the main goal. Consequently, let me ask you this: why not pick a performance-driven goal so you can both look good and do stuff? You don’t have to be an athlete to train like one. Besides, training like an athlete puts you in a better frame of mind for EVERYTHING else in your life. That competitive edge, the desire to push and better yourself is something society is lacking. We make excuses, look for shortcuts and fail.

So, go ahead and DO it. Don’t try, that’s just a promise to fail!

Become Flexible, so you can have more mobility, less aches and pains and greater ability in your daily activities.
Develop your Agility and hand-eye coordination, so you’ll never be off guard, always ready and better prepared with sharper reflexes.
Lift to get Strong, because no one needs to be weak. Lift that baby while you’re carrying groceries, move that couch, push the stranger’s dead car off the main road, rescue the damsel from the fire.
More muscle, more speed, more movement leads to more Tone anyway.

Congratulations, you are now FAST!

To read pillars 1 through 3, click on the links below:
Pillar 1: Flexibility
Pillar 2: Agility
Pillar 3: Strength

Comments (0) Nov 15 2010

The link for the video below shows highlights of my instructing fellow “Primal Movers” on the art of natural movement patterns, reverse engineering your drills, all in beautiful, sunny Ventura, CA, this past April, at the inaugural Primalcon, an event organized by Mark Sission from Mark’s Daily Apple. Check out his site for great tips on healthy eating, picking the right supplements and a general sharing of philosophy on being healthy humans

Philippe at Primalcon

Comments (0) Aug 08 2010

Hello, my fellow Actionauts.

I may have been missing at Action (Fitness, the facility) but not so much in action.

Fatherhood has been trying, rewarding and exhausting. I didn’t become apparent until I became a parent (notice the clever choice of words here?) and I had to be clever about NOT putting my foot in my mouth and actually practice what I preach when I used to talk about time management to super-busy clients who would skip their fitness priorities.

So, I am able to squeeze intelligent, total-body training sessions in short amounts of time. I may have lost a few pounds in the process of lack of sleep, but knowing the importance of balancing physical activity, sleep (for hormonal balance), nutrition and environmental factors, I was able to lessen the effects of the demands of parenthood (mostly the sleep deprivation).

In terms of time management, I not only carry a full load of clients, take classes to upgrade my knowledge but also make sure to dedicate a certain amount of time for training. My goals may have been more for maintenance, but also these days, I am learning about modalities to not only pack on mass, shed pounds with less effort and breaking personal records at every workout. The fitness protocols I have learned in Wildfitness and RKC are yielding phenomenal results amongst my clients. Clients move up to a few thousand pounds more per workout effortlessly.
Those looking to shed fat, shed it, looking to pack mass pack it on, those looking to move without pain now move without pain! Simple solutions through smart work requiring dedication!

I’ll be posting some testimonials soon of new clients and their rapid progress! If you haven’t gotten on the Philippe Train yet, come aboard! (Another clever pun)

Comments (0) Jun 15 2010

Or the latest installment in the Fletcher Chronicles

Being a new parent is like the Matrix: you cannot be told, you have to experience it to get it. Just like getting through Hell Week as a Navy SEAL, or the RKC weekend workshop, you can never underestimate how mentally unprepared you may be, even if you are physically conditioned.

Of course, all concepts related to schedule become null and void. Interestingly, some folks perceive my wife and I as big schedulers, but they fail to realize that we are quite accommodating, both working in service oriented industries. Adjusting to a new, not very flexible customer is nothing new.

WORKING IN SHIFTS
Being tired doesn’t quite cover the feeling of what it takes to be feeding, pumping breast milk (so we can take turns feeding him), cleaning him and repeating the process every couple of hours. I have the easy part, because I don’t have life force producing boobies, therefore am not privy to the industrial strength vacuum action happening at the nipple, nor the enjoyment or “machine on human” breast action caused by the pump (or robot porn).

Ever see the Seinfeld episode where Newman says “the mail never stops”? It’s like that.
So, when you say you’re tired but are not a parent, suck it up and shut up, because rest is around the corner. For us, it’s not an option. I’ll take a 12-hour all day powerlifting workshop, though the thrill and satisfaction are a bit different…

So, catnaps, splitting feeding times so one parent can meander through the day only half-dazed is the way to go. My wife usually lets me sleep through the rest of the night so long as I try to do the last feeding or two.

HORMONES
It’s all about hormones, yes, just like training. Stress management, insulin release, HGH. Fletcher had to be bottle fed before he was breast fed because of being born premature. So, to all the La Leche women who live by the breast only and frown at the bottle, it’s not easy to retrain a little kid born with a handicap and no choice. Yes, we’re proponents of the Bradley drug-free baby delivery, want to breast feed because it’s the best, cheapest method available and yes we know it’s optimal for all aspects of the baby’s development. But life has a way of throwing sticks in your spokes. I want my baby fed, I want him growing and resting and I want the same for my wife and I, so sometimes, rather than fight a kid at 2 in the AM who is not getting what he needs from the breast because he is too tired, he gets the bottle with mother’s milk in it. (It’s easier for a baby to drink from the bottle than it is to feed from the breast, in case you didn’t know, and you lose certain benefits. But until I see proof that breast-fed only babies who have grown up are all rocket scientists, super athletes and can fix our health care and are immune to all diseases, I’ll follow the 80%-20% rule of “be good 80% of the time, and the remaining 20%, try to cope so you can go back to doing the best you can”.

If your sleep patterns are off, your stress levels are out of whack. Your fitness suffers, your ability to burn fat is hindered, you produce more cortisol and your mental capacity drops. For a trainer like myself, it’s a hard reality and a tough thing to squeeze in a workout, train clients and teach a very active class at the end of the day (I am wiped out usually when the time comes). Yet somehow, we manage. The rush of endorphins from being a new dad and watching my kid for whom I’d give my life releases the endorphins that make me push through my day. I am an army of one while my wife, the Mothership, the Queen Bee ensures the rascal is alive and provided for with the best food nature produced. And on the occasion we have to compensate with formula, we are not losing sleep over it. As a matter of fact, we gain some as Fletcher tends to sleep longer then. Yes, formula also helps alleviate the hormonal yo-yo that occurs as a result of breast feeding. Small victory for formula, one battle in the breast feeding war, but still one to account.

TRAINING
My workouts are not nearly as long as they used to be. I hardly ever push to failure because it’s pointless and sets me back a day or two. But I train hard, moving high volume and weight without restriction of time other than those imposed upon myself. Usually, that is. Now, the necessity to come home after a shift and help my wife, grocery shop, do laundry, take care of bills or try to run a business with many aspects still in development takes precedence over higher performance. Maintenance and intelligence become the guidelines, biofeedback the protocol by which I decide on any given day what I will do for training. Density is my goal (meaning moving the load in as little time as possible). I’d take the normal RKC snatch test and bump the weight from 24 to 28kg. Or, I’d push for a new Deadlift personal record in under 10 total reps, warm-up included. I’ll swing a 40kg bell 100 times, thus moving 8800lb in 3 minutes or less, doing my heart, my lungs and my muscles a favor. Bottom line: I lost a few pounds, but my body is still chiseled, lean and strong.

I don’t spend time worrying about my reps, the weight I push or how I compare to another. I still have all the skills I had before I was a dad, maybe even added a few more, and I still deliver amazing results to my clients (I just helped someone lose close to 5lb of fat and gain almost 20lb of muscle in 33 days. Wanna know how? TRAIN WITH ME!!). Maybe because I’ve removed the worries, I’ve removed the stress from my performance and how I measure up and therefore make up for the negative effects of the lack of sleep. Any setbacks can be regained and if you’re not strong in times of hardship, your strength is only a weakness.

It does take a village, and Noëlle and I are very grateful for the help we received from friends who brought us meals the past 2 weeks since we took Fletcher home. He is now 3 weeks old and all 3 of us managed to still be alive

Funny thing happened with food, by the way: I’ve indulged in foods that normally only grace the shelves or pantry inside my head and haven’t paid the price for it. I don’t intend to find out how far I can push my luck, so rest assured my hearty steak tartare, raw broccoli and almonds are back on my plate! And did you know that Guinness is a great product to help produce more breast milk?

Comments (1) Apr 18 2010