• Multiply Exercise and Nutrition to Look Even Better in 2008

    by Alexander Becker

    It's not rocket science. You know what to do. You know what you should be doing.

    Health and fitness is a great foundation for any lifestyle and you can start right now. If you think there is nothing you can improve, your nutrition and your exercise regimen, you can always refine.

    It is not about whether or not you exercise and watch your nutrition, of course you do, right?

    Executive Summary: Exercise × Nutrition

    Pay attention to exercise and nutrition and you will look good and be healthy. There isn't much more to get started and eventually end up leaner and healthier.

    Consider -- and follow -- these two very simple recommendations --

    1. Eat as much unprocessed food as possible and cut everything processed or refined. Food is fuel.
    2. Move your body and your mind as much as you can in as many directions possible. Stagnation and inertia mean death.

    Fat Loss

    With spring coming soon and after just another year and just another month of feasting, the fat loss issue comes up.

    Let's start with four rules from Christopher Mohr from T-Nation's 2008 Fat Loss Roundtable, Part I --

    1. Eat a fruit and/or at least one vegetable with every single meal.
    2. Plan ahead. Don't go to work without any food at all, then wonder why you opted for fast food at noon, hit the vending machine at 3 PM, and are famished on the way home so you decided to order a pizza to pick up for dinner.
    3. Define your goals and write them daily. If you don't know what you're working toward, you're going to continue to struggle.
    4. Move more! I'm all about complexes, interval training, large body movements like deadlifts, etc. but what about the other 160-plus hours during the week when you're not at the gym? Walk more. Get on a bike and use that as your transportation. Use the stairs instead of the elevator.

    ... and continue with Mike Roussell's 6 Pillars of Naked Nutrition from The 2008 Fat Loss Roundtable, Part II --

    1. Eat five to six times a day.
    2. Limit your consumption of sugars and processed foods.
    3. Eat fruits and vegetables throughout the day.
    4. Drink more water and cut out calorie-containing beverages (beer, soda, etc.).
    5. Focus on consuming lean proteins throughout the day.
    6. Save starch containing foods until after a workout or for breakfast.

    Skinny Fat

    Misguided diets or radical diet attempts often lead to a skinny-fat look. Try to eat more and get lean --

    Don't you think it's about time to eat in order to get healthy and lean?

    Complacency

    Do you think it's enough? How do you know? There are at least 5 reasons to get even leaner --

    Something that gets infinitely harder, the closer you come to reaching the absolute goal, is the ideal feat to fight for. If it was easy, anybody would do it and succeed. Competition is the ultimate comparison. There is only one first place.

    Time

    You say you're short on time? Try something like the 4 minute-workout --

    The X-minute workout, a running gag among fitness professionals, can still be employed effectively, especially as an addition to a well balanced schedule involving resistance training, intervals, and aerobic work.

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  • Are Your Goals Mutually Exclusive?

    by Alexander Becker

    What are your training objectives? The question highlights the problem. The next one is harder: What is your training objective?

    You want peak performance, beauty, aesthetic body composition with minimal fat and maximum muscle, superior mental sharpness, raw strength and endurance and speed. Overall health and longevity. Me too.

    While those objectives aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, by trying to achieve all these goals simultaneously, you will end up achieving nothing more than average, lowest common demoninator results inspired by too broad objectives and lack of priority.

    Peak performance in what activity exactly? Minimal fat and maximum muscle mass, an ideal for looks, may not be the best foundation for raw strength; more overall mass and, yes, bodyfat, will yield more strength.

    So at the very high end of the scale -- and we're talking about nothing else here -- it is less fat vs. more strength.

    Endurance and speed? Choose one. The two are completely different animals. After establishing a foundation training both endurance and speed you must decide which one to pursue even further.

    Aesthetic and healthy? Sure it's possible but it quickly becomes a compromise; there are various tricks involving water and salt for example that will make you look even better yet, from the perspective of best health and longevity you'll want to leave the tricks alone and eat in moderation, light and balanced.

    Again, the high end decision, even leaner, -- mind you, this is true perfectionism -- is between extreme beauty vs. optimum health.

    Set priorities and determine the pros and cons of the goals in the big picture. You can always have it all today and pay later, the question is: Is it worth it?

    What about drugs? What exactly do you want and how bad? Certain drugs will make you look better in the short term. Certain other drugs will increase you concentration and decrease your need for sleep while making you more alert -- for a short time. If it's necessary, make a decision.

    The more clear your priorities are, the more mutually exclusive the various objectives become. You're not going to be #1 in every game. On the other hand, you can be #1 in any game.

    Choose your game, pay the price, and win.

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  • The 4 Minute-Workout: From Running Gag to Ego Buster

    by Alexander Becker

    The X-minute workout, a running gag among fitness professionals, can still be employed effectively, especially as an addition to a well balanced schedule involving resistance training, intervals, and aerobic work.

    The Tabata Method is a variation of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Dan John has build a short, yet effective Fat Loss in Four Minutes out of it --

    Tabata is the name of a Japanese researcher who discovered an interesting way to increase both anaerobic and aerobic pathways at the same time. It's one of those strange training programs that seems to fit across disciplines: it's excellent for bicyclists, speed skaters, Olympic lifters, or the person looking to lose fat quickly.

    This training method is so simple, yet so incredibly difficult, that athletes tend to try it once, acknowledge its greatness, and then vow to never speak its name again. What is it? It's simple: take one exercise and perform it in the following manner:

    1. For twenty seconds, do as many repetitions as possible.
    2. Rest for ten seconds
    3. Repeat seven more times!

    Ok. So much for the method. I really like sprint intervals but in Northern Europe, rain is sometimes used as an excuse not to go out and run. Enter the remedy; Tabata thrusters --

    The thruster is one of the greatest lifts no one has ever heard of in the gym. Take two dumbbells and hold them at shoulder height. Squat down, keeping the dumbbells on the shoulders. As you rise up, press the bells to the overhead lockout position. You can either press as you rise or use the momentum to help "kick" the bells overhead. I find that I do a little bit of both in the four minutes.

    Thrusters do things to your heart rate and breathing that I honestly can't describe. Go light! A 35 pound dumbbell in each hand is a very difficult thruster workout! Check your ego at the door for the first two minutes.

    It did rain and I did try it... The soreness lasted for three days.

    For those of you who'd ask, here is the dialogue that founded all the fun, from Something About Mary in 1998 --

    Hitchhiker
    You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
    Ted
    Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
    Hitchhiker
    Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.
    Ted
    Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you're going.
    Hitchhiker
    Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin' there, there's 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
    Ted
    I would go for the 7.
    Hitchhiker
    Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
    Ted
    You guarantee it? That's - how do you do that?
    Hitchhiker
    If you're not happy with the first 7 minutes, we're gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That's it. That's our motto. That's where we're comin' from. That's from "A" to "B".
    Ted
    That's right. That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you're in trouble, huh?
    [Hitchhiker convulses]
    Hitchhiker
    No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody's comin' up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won't even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
    Ted
    That - good point.
    Hitchhiker
    7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea. It's like you're dreamin' about Gorgonzola cheese when it's clearly Brie time, baby. Step into my office.
    Ted
    Why?
    Hitchhiker
    'Cause you're f--kin' fired!

    The above described four minutes will indeed train your aerobic and your anaerobic pathways, at the same time, the mind will be working just as hard to stay with you and harden together with your body. Try it. It's only four short minutes. Plus three days, that is.

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  • Assess and Improve Your Trends

    by Alexander Becker

    Now that you measure your data regularly, it's time to analyze and see if we can derive some meaningful information from the amassed figures...

    Measure and compare your key data over time. Compare your financial data, weight, health, ... recognize and determine the trends and make sure that each trend goes in a -- meaningfully -- positive direction.

    Everything you do or are responsible for is measurable and comparable. To keep things going or to bring things back on the right track, make sure to monitor and -- if desirable -- change trends that are possible to monitor and observe with little effort. You need at least five measurements over time and, sometimes after eliminating the extremes, you can read a general direction of progress. Do not go crazy about spikes and weird, single instances, it is the general trend that we're after.

    Getting better, staying the same, and getting worse. There are only three general, observable directions for any given, measurable, progression. By the way, in order to avoid the trap of interpreting stagnating figures as positive inactivity, try to always get on a track of -- ever so slightly -- increasing quality.

    Look at your weight, three years ago, last year, six months ago, today: Is it staying the same? Congratulations. Your net worth. This should go up. Is it increasing over the course of the key dates measured? What about inflation? Do not forget to normalize your results.

    Determine a number of key indicators and monitor them religiously, set goals to improve each one of them, ad infinitum. There is no need to stop making progress once a certain amount of growth is achieved. Do not settle for a perfect figure. The only perfect figure is the next, better one. Continue and go on and on.

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  • Employ Your Instincts Against Overtraining and Burnout

    by Alexander Becker

    Plato has Phaedrus say: You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.

    When the initial motivation is extremely high or the external and internal, personal expectations are too demanding, often physical and mental burnout are observable. What is happening in management can be compared to a similar phenomenon in sports: overtraining, plateaus, physical burnout, and fatigue are the results of the triumph of will over sensibility. The cure against burnout and overtraining is very simple: stop immediately and rest.

    Excessive training, trying too hard, or monotonous routines that don't challenge the mind or body lead to overtraining syndrome with symptoms that are hard to recognize and differentiate from mere temporary exhaustion or psychological causes instead of effects.

    Overtraining may lead to training plateaus, the body cannot catch up regenerating itself and gets stuck on a mid-level that is achievable without adequate rest. Overtraining is the result of weeks or months of wrong training, you're not going to burnout after a couple of days or some high intensity training.

    An effective strategy to avoid and to prevent overtraining is to listen to your body's needs and its instincts. It's all too easy to override pain in order to achieve the next promising and potentially rewarding goal. The body as well as the mind need rest. Growth and improvement take place while not training, while at rest, between workouts and after work. Hard work is definitely necessary but the moment it becomes mindless it is a sure sign of becoming insensible and therefore against nature's requirements.

    It is vitally important for eventual success to balance and level the eagerness in the beginning and focus on maintaining the discipline through the initial motivation and the lows and the highs and the plateaus.

    Consciously relax and release all the tension from time to time. Make no exercise a dedicated exercise and count the non-reps, e.g. try to statically hold nothing for the intended duration. This special exercise is the only exercise that let's you grow while still working on it...

    The same holds true for corporate executives: rest consciously without working at all. Schedule an amount of time where you absolutely do not work. Consciously dedicate this time to not working at all. As a side effect, you will notice how, perhaps unexpectedly, your productivity will go up. Your energies will replenish and you will gain new clarity.

    Enjoy every moment of your recovery, as much as you enjoyed, with all your heart, work until crashing.

    Find the best resources on health clubs in your area at SignatureHealthClubs.com.

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  • Understand Pain to Train More Efficiently

    by Alexander Becker

    It doesn't have to hurt in order to work, especially not on an everyday basis, but an always and infinitely comfortable workout is no guarantee for success either. There is no reason to run away from the slightest air of pain, as much as you don't need to run away from hunger. Enjoy your pain as long as it lasts.

    Have you ever trained to accomplish full splits? This hurts and it has to.

    You can choose from three different kinds of pain.

    First, there is the pain of muscles that are brought to their maximum in a controlled training situation. Your workout is breaking up the muscle fibers which subsequently heal and grow bigger and stronger as a result. You want that pain.

    Then there is the pain of injury: it hurts and at the same moment you know that you should stop your workout immediately. You certainly don't want it but you need that pain in order to prevent further serious damage to muscles, joints, or ligaments.

    Another form of pain, the most stressful and the most desirable one, while at the same time the hardest, is the pain of endurance, where the mind offers to shut down the muscles long before they are technically due. Your body would thankfully give in. It is an art in itself to signal the mind that you understand that there is still a long way to go -- sometimes literally, think marathon -- and that the body is physically capable of working the load. You convince the mind that its efforts in telling you to stop will be ignored.

    The pain stays the same, whether you run the double or the quadruple distance, the trick is to surrender to the continuous pain and to proceed anyway. The reward is a solemn state, which is achieved when this royal pain is conquered with marathons for example, with wall chairs, with willpower plus discipline. Nothing more.

    It is this pain that you don't really want nor need, in fact it is -- to a certain extent -- a game that your mind is playing with you. The more you resist and endure, the more your mind will respect you and finally cooperate with you in your effort to excel.

    You need willpower to successfully finish heavy, painful workouts, you are even able to overcome the pain of injury with sheer willpower -- take care though -- but in order to conquer the pain of endurance you have to combine willpower and discipline. This is where real training with massive results begins.

    Pain is weakness leaving the body. Mental weakness, that is.

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  • Reality Check: The Implications of Elite Training

    by Alexander Becker

    Is it possible to be in top physical and mental condition while at the same time participating in life with all its seductions, influences, and an environment that is, if not negative by definition, at least neutral, neutral as opposed to the maximum goals and achievements that are so not-average and pursued while training for life?

    Coming out of a controlled environment, mind and body, discipline and willpower are finally allowed to show what they are really able to achieve.

    Yet it seems that only in a controlled environment, it is possible to train and prepare yourself for heights formerly unknown. This creates a dual environment problem, where you train for the outside world but not within that world. I'd love to promote training for the real world in the real world but it doesn't work this way.

    You train with amazing results, you eat perfectly healthy, your thinking is positive and untainted, only to emerge from your laboratory immediately starting to effectively de-train your mind and your body. Life is cyclic.

    I'm still striving to attain the heights of the monk, always, and continuously, although I do not recommend living completely ascetic. Life has to be instinctual -- to a certain degree at least -- it encompasses ups and downs, exceptions, successes and failures.

    After a certain point, after accomplishing your goals for yourself, to go even further, to reach for the next impossible, the unreasonable, you have to decide whether to drop everything incompatible or accept satisfaction with what you have within easy reach.

    This is what is meant when the best is being defined as the enemy of mere good.

    WOW! You look like you're not from this world is not an exaggeration but a perfect truth.

    We're talking about the training of elite athletes here, with goals hard to attain, training levels hard to maintain, and rewards hard to believe but why not adopt some of the methods and include them in your everyday mindset.

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  • I want you to be Happy, Healthy, and Beautiful

    by Alexander Becker

    You are beautiful. I want you to be at your best. Because you rock.

    People keep coming up to you, exclaiming: WOW! You are beautiful!

    The purpose of this site is to help you and inspire you in achieving and maintaining being WOW. It's about your happiness and your health and your beauty. We are talking about fitness and mind and health. About nutrition and about diets. About hard work and about amazing results.

    The difference between WOW and other helping hands is that I will never tell you that you don't have to work for your goals. In fact, you have to work as hard as you can -- by definition -- to achieve as much as you want.

    I want to bring out the best of you. Nothing more. It is a journey and it will be the best there is.

    WOW is a blessing and a gratification, an indicator that you are on the right track.

    You rock. That's it.

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