Motivation - Essential Beyond All Else

"UGH, I don't feel like going to the gym today"

"I'll just go tomorrow"

"Well maybe I can buy just these bags of chips this one time"

"I'll never lose the weight, I don't even know why I bother"

"I'm not gaining any muscle, I doubt skipping today will matter"

Have you found yourself saying any of these things? Most of us have. Staying home from the gym off schedule is one of the worst things you can do from accomplishing the body you've always wanted. All of us need rest days, maybe even a rest week. It's very healthy to do that, but you need to schedule it. Missing a day because you simply don't feel like going, can very easily translate into two or three days you skip. Maybe it is just one bit of junk food, and before you know it, pop tarts or cookies are a staple on your grocery list again and you'll never accomplish your vision that way.

Well if all those feelings are normal, how do body builders and fitness enthusiasts get to where they want to be? And how are there so many people in shape, if it feels so difficult for me?

The first thing to realize, is everybody that is trying to transform their body or even just get into better shape has felt the way you do at some point. They, like yourself, have to find a way to stay motivated, to stay commited. We'll discuss 4 key points to help you find it within yourself to stick with it.

1. Establishing Goals

2. Tracking Progress

3. the Mental Aspect

and 4. the Back Up Plan


1. Establishing Goals
This, by far, is the most important of the 4. Establishing Goals will help you envision what you want to accomplish. With a definitive objective you can realistically succeed, opposed to having goals like just wanting to have some model body, a goal that can easily feel unattainable. When selecting goals, select goals that are realistic, while not without challenge. For example, if you're overweight, try setting a long term goal of losing 20lbs in 16 weeks. Then create dietary and exercise goals. Create a plan of attack.

Within weeks 1-4 try to cut your calories from maybe 2600 a day, to 2300 by cutting sodas and juices and eating slightly smaller portions.

Within weeks 4-6 try replacing fast carbs with slow/complex carbs in your diet.

Weeks 6-8 try reducing your portions further and lowering your caloric intake to 2000 a day.

Weeks 8-10 focus on replacing dinner with a salad, and using lean protein shakes in place of snacks between meals

Weeks 10-16 reduce your carbs to as low as possible and reduce your caloric intake to only 1700 a day.
(None of this plan has been analyzed or even really thought about, it's strictly an example)

By making adjustments through phases like this, you can really smoothly impliment big changes by allowing yourself time to adjust as you make them. If you try to jump into these big giant radical swings all at once, they'll never last.

2. Tracking Progress
This goes hand in hand with Establishing Goals. In order to see the small bits of progress that you really are making and maybe not directly seeing in the mirror as well as to identify or fine tune anything that needs adjustment can be done by logging your caloric intake and exercise. This can be a major way to stay motivated. As you stick to your plan and can see it in paper, the less you want to blow it. Also when you do make that progress over a period of time you can look back and see your hard work is getting somewhere helping to keep you motivated to stay at it. I highly reccomend keeping a journal and tracking your progress.

3. Mental Attitude
Make exercise your vice. A lot of people today smoke weed or cigarettes, drink alcohol, engage in self injury, or other things as a way to deal with or in reality escape their problems. Some people choose less harmful ways, like art, music or other, even possibly productive activities.

A clinically proven way to deal with stress, is exercise. Use stress, and anger as motivation to get into the gym and exercise. Endorphins can work magic.

On the other hand, keeping a positive attitude can be all the difference. If you stick to your diet and exercise plan, you will see progress in time, always remember that. Never feel like its not working or you cant do it. Where there's a will, there's a way. Always remember that.

4. the Back Up Plan
So maybe you really just don't have the time to get the gym to work out, or for some reason you can't or just don't feel like driving. Be prepared for it and have a couple of at home work outs ready. Maybe buy a pull up bar, go for a run, plan an abs and callisthenics work out. There's plenty of things you can do at home to still get a very good work out in the comfort of your own home.


I hope this can help all of you to stick with your plans and accomplish your goals!! Keep up the hard work :)

Explosiveness: A Virtue

ex·plo'sive·ness

n.

1. state of being explosive
explosive [ɪkˈspləʊsɪv]

adj

1. of, involving, or characterized by an explosion or explosions

2. capable of exploding or tending to explode

3. potentially violent or hazardous; dangerous an explosive situation

How does being "explosive" apply to your becoming champion?

Allow me to give you 3 of the finest examples of people who highly implement explosiveness:

(Pause the music player at the bottom before watching these)

1. Branch Warren - Body Builder

2. Georges "Rush" St. Pierre - Professional MMA Champion

 

3. David Belle - Tracuer (Founder of Parkour)

When referring to explosive movements it can be summed up best by the following words:

Strong

Sudden

Quick

Decisive

Without hesitation

Without reserve

In Body Building, explosiveness can take on two forms, a technique for high weight, or for athletic performance, or lean muscle. 

When you're under your 80% or 1RM Bench Press, and that bar comes down to your chest, don't take a moment to inhale and start pushing it up slow and steady... EXPLODE, you push it through the roof, fast, strong, hard, without reserve, you give it all you got to get that bar up as fast as you can, this would be a pretty common technique to completing a heavy rep. When squatting 135 and getting a full range of motion, don't just stand back up with it, EXPLODE, go ahead and jump! Fast, explosive. Movements like that will increase your speed, which leads us in to how it applies to MMA, Parkour, sports, or forms of mastering ones physical self.

Explosive striking, kicks, etc, has been a technique passed on through Chinese Martial Arts for centuries, and made famous by Martial Artist, Bruce Lee. Compare Bruce Lee's jab and right side kick with the punches of a Karate fighter. A Karate fighter, will stand with his front completely forward, feet wide in an almost Sumo Wrestler stance with both fists facing up at his waist, from there he drives one fist out and twists it as it extends forward, completing a punch. From there he pulls its back to his waist and drives out the next one simultaneously. This technique uses the same principle as that of combinations in boxing. However, only so much power can be derived from such a stance of your feet firmly planted on the ground and moving only your torso to complete the punches.

Bruce Lee based the principles of his Martial Art, Jeet Kune Do, on being fluid and dynamic. His stance was light on the feet, standing sideways towards your opponent. The jab started by twisting your waist back and quickly snapping it forward as the motion followed upwards by the rest of the upper body into the fist while it extends, sending all the force to the punch and point of impact. Imagine a building wave until it crashes if you will. A similar motion. It starts as only a small swell as the motion moves forward and becoming more powerful where at the final moment, it is explosive, it crashes. Again with the right side kick, the back foot comes forward to meet the position of the front foot as it raises up and then quickly thrusts out to crash, or explode and complete the kick. The creating and passing of kinetic energy through the body into the target. Explosiveness.

In movement, like Parkour, a Tracuer moving from Point A to Point B in the most direct and fast route possible does not have time to stop before a chest high wall, plant his feet on the ground, and then throw himself over. He must explosively, from full running, leap forward using only his hand on the wall to guide his body over in a single motion. It takes a sudden burst of strong, decisive energy without hesitation or reserve to make it fully over the wall and continue moving along without any pause.

Here's an example in a sport most of you are more familiar with, Baseball. The there's a player on 3rd and one coming up to bat. The player on 3rd is now waiting for the batter up to bring him home and get the winning point, he positions himself for the hit, with eyes sharp on the swinging bat. Suddenly, his ears discern the sharp decibel rise, the bat striking the ball into the outfield, in the corner of his eye he sees the batter drop his instrument of success. The player with eyes keenly focused on home plate, with no time to build up to full speed, must make it across home plate before the ball is thrown back and he'll be out. He explodes forward, every muscle in his body is contracting and releasing with full effort. in a split second he's at his full speed, and before anybody blinks... he crosses home. That player, with not even enough free time to blink without risking his reaction time, has to explode into full motion or lose it all. There's no pace lap, or warm up. Just full speed ahead on a moments notice.

His training requires explosive movements weighted or body weight, and sprinting drills, among other various specialized routines. These elements are the crucial difference in all of these examples between success and failure and in some potential situations, life or death.

If becoming a well rounded champion or athlete is your goal. Be sure to implement explosive training techniques (burpees, jump squats, box jumps, clean and press, sprinting drills, etc) into your workout regiment.

Keep up the hard work and be sure to check back later for an Explosive Training Workout.