WOW: Multiply Excellence and Chutzpah

WOWOW: Managing Urgencies with Compounded Bodyweight

Three things.

Managing urgencies --

You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there's a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.

[...]

I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today's emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines. Measure your people on what they did today in support of where you need to be next month.

If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.
The importance of bodyweight training --

You should include a bodyweight exercise and a lifting exercise for every major pattern you train. Horizontal, vertical, push, pull... the whole deal. The major bodyweight exercises include the push-up, inverted row, pull-up, handstand push-up, squat, split squat (Bulgarian squat) or lunge, and calf raise.
A slight edge... --

There's an interesting fact about investing a penny, and doubling that investment every day. So -- day one -- you have one cent in the bank. Day two -- two cents. Day three -- four cents. Day four -- eight cents etc. By day 30 -- you'll have over $5 million saved (go ahead -- do the math). The idea is that major change starts with a small investment.

Make the most out of it.

Labels: alwyn+cosgrove, chutzpah, excellence, insanity, lifehacks, lifestyle, linking, marketing, money, personal+development, seth+godin, success, testosterone, training, vanity

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.

Labels: beauty, business, decisions, doping, elite, exercises, fitness, goals, health, lifehacks, lifestyle, longevity, marketing, personal+branding, strength, success, training

Constrain Yourself, Your Time, and Your Tools

by Alexander Becker

Some concepts keep recurring, again and again, less is more, for example.

Of Ririan Project's 33 New Ways To Overclock Your Brain, one is particularly powerful --

Constrain yourself.

You need structure in your life. And by constraining yourself -- say giving yourself deadlines, limiting your time on an idea in some manner, or limiting the tools you are working with -- you can often accomplish more in less time.

Use deadlines and short time frames. What do you do with your time and sharply defined increments?

Let's take a look at relativity -- what do you accomplish within an hour?

Exercises, for example: 100 bodyweight squats: 3 minutes.; 10 intervals of 15 seconds all out sprinting and 45 seconds recovery jogging: 10 minutes.; Four ridiculous minutes of dumbbell thrusting.; Full body workout using free weights: 30 minutes.
Writing: One such article: 20 minutes.
Food preparation: A big omelette with vegetables and some chicken, all freshly chopped: 15 minutes.

Now, what is it, what single activity takes a full hour? Is there anything taking one full hour? Sure, but cramming those activities within the available 30 minutes makes them even more intense, more dense, and more fun to begin with.

On the other hand, try to limit tools and get your ideas out, with whatever's at hand.

Pencil and a notebook instead of the computer anyone? The medium makes the message. Leave the notebook at home and write your million-dollar-idea down, on the next best surface. Do not let the medium or the brand of your beautiful sketchbook dictate your message.

In other words, do you need a certain, specific, tool to get the job done, a piano made out of glass, for example? One of my favorite quotes from Hugh MacLeod's How to be Creative, is about pillar management, and the props used to hide behind --

There's no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.

There you have it, etc.

Labels: creativity, exercises, lifehacks, personal+development, productivity, training, wow, wow-bits

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.

Labels: business, discipline, fitness, health, instincts, overtraining, personal+development, plateaus, recovery, sports, training, willpower, wow, wow-test

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.

Labels: discipline, education, endurance, exercises, fitness, health, how+to, inspiration, lifehacks, marathon, mind, motivation, pain, personal+development, sports, theory, tips, training, willpower, wow

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.

Labels: athletes, conditioning, education, elite, fitness, goals, health, how+to, integrity, lifehacks, motivation, practice, productivity, reality, sports, training, wow

Exceptions Create Variety

by Alexander Becker

To make an exception or to deviate from an established discipline, often induces guilt or the feeling of failure.

Yet by deviating from -- not giving up -- self-imposed discipline, the discipline itself is trained in its flexibility, not in its strength.

Exceptions expand situations. Exceptions weaken the impact of resolutions but they also uncover hidden facets of otherwise known circumstances. Exceptions lead to conclusions that would never surface by sticking to all too perfectly executed, robotic routines in any area of life.

It is important to accept that exceptions have to remain exceptions. There is no reason nor sense in declaring any exception the new standard -- that is taking the path of least resistance. It is the continuous tension between discipline and exception that acts as a creative force and reflects what being human is about.

Exceptions are means to creation, they divert attention, and create variety, they are seeds for events yet to unfold. Embrace and live each exception, indulge in it, and honor and appreciate it for what it is: a gift.

One exception... when the goals are clearly set and agreed upon, exceptions are not permitted. Some paths have to be followed without exceptions.

The mind, like any muscle, has to be moved in as many ways and in as many angles possible. Exercises have to take that into account.

Labels: discipline, exceptions, exercises, goals, lifehacks, mind, theory, training, wow

Questions and Answers from the Editor

by Alexander Becker

Q: Why WOW?

A: WOW is a blessing and blessings are, in my experience, a subtle, yet very powerful way to change realities.

Q: What is this all about?

A: It's about a healthy diet, fitness, and beauty and the mindset to achieve and maintain these goals.

Q: Why are you doing that?

A: I am experimenting with diets and keep getting great results. I research about nutrition and exercises and I want to share my findings and my inspiration with you. Many people don't know where to start or how to make progress after a certain point; I am here to help.

Q: How do you train?

A: I am doing bodyweight exercises exclusively for half a year now. I never lifted weights and I never went to the gym to pretend lifting weights either. My seven days a week routine consists of 20 - 30 minutes of high repetition calisthenics like hindu squats, hindu pushups and variations, handstand holds, wall walking, and pull ups. I occasionally run and I start my days with breathing exercises and an abdominal workout as assembled by Matt Furey.

Q: Bodyweight means...

A: No iron. Believe me -- your bodyweight is more than enough to lift at various angles and for slow, high intensity repetitions.

Q: What's your workout goal?

A: To be able to handle my bodyweight in any position.

Q: What's your current diet?

A: I am on the warrior diet which is about almost fasting during the day and eating big -- really big -- at night. Make sure to read my review and recommendation of the book The Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler. In addition I am eating vegan. I am constantly experimenting and I consider eating fish for a while now.

Q: What else?

A: You are beautiful!

Labels: answers, bodyweight, calisthenics, diet, exercises, health, interview, personal+branding, personal+development, questions, rant, training

Tracking and Evaluating Progress

by Alexander Becker

The habit of regularly recording and comparing specific data -- as much diverse, significant data as possible, is an easy to implement measure and the most efficient tool to use while working on your goals.

You want to lose or gain weight? Start by measuring and recording your weight once a day, at a fixed time. As a note, I always suggest not to count calories but you may want to count your calories and are free to write them down too.
Keep your financial goals in front of you and make sure to update and track the progress and evaluate the development over time regularly and often.
Workout: Make sure to log the number of repetitions for each exercise you do. Try to ignore people making fun of your training journal, success is much harder to achieve without clear, measurable, and visible goals and subgoals. Besides, how would you ever be able to improve your marathons without being able to compare your runs over time?

The mere sight of comparable records and the recognition of often obvious trends -- ups or downs -- is a great motivator. You don't want to write down a higher weight than yesterday, or a lower balance on your account for today. Just make sure to be brutally honest with yourself.

Archive your data! You may motivate yourself with past achievements in different, measurable fields by looking at your goals' and eventually your life's statistics. You can archive your files in basic ways or you can go creative with printing out graphical charts, pies, or whatever technique suitable for visualizing your progress.

The medium you use to keep your records is not important, you can use pen and paper, your computer's text editor, a spreadsheet program, or one of the various online tools like Backpack or the convenient Google Spreadsheets which lets you import and export your data in various formats.

For fitness-related data, I use a pen and paper solution with custom forms printed out and neatly kept in a binder. This way, the records are always accessible without the need for a computer or internet connection. I do transfer some data into a spreadsheet on the computer to have progress automatically calculated but the initial recording is tree-based.

If you can measure it, you can improve it.

Labels: accounting, diet, discipline, evaluating, exercises, google, health, log, measurement, personal+development, progress, tracking, training, wow

The Wall Chair: Mental Toughness vs. Physical Endurance

by Alexander Becker

A simple, yet effective exercise: The wall chair.

Stand with your back against a wall and feet shoulder-width apart. Slide down into a crouch with knees bent to about 90 degrees. Hold as long as you can.

On the first day, try to hold the position as long as you think you can endure. On the second day, increase the time by five seconds, on the third day, increase by another five seconds. Do this for about a week.

Now, what do you think do you work on during that week? You surely train your quadriceps, but most of the exercising is improving mental toughness. Would you expect to double your physical endurance in such a short time?

It’s the double benefit of training body and mind through continuously pushing beyond the limits that makes endurance exercises so valuable.

Labels: endurance, exercises, fitness, how+to, mind, strength, training, wow

WOW: Multiply Excellence and Chutzpah

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WOWOW: Managing Urgencies with Compounded Bodyweight

Are Your Goals Mutually Exclusive?

Constrain Yourself, Your Time, and Your Tools

Employ Your Instincts Against Overtraining and Burnout

Understand Pain to Train More Efficiently

Reality Check: The Implications of Elite Training

Exceptions Create Variety

Questions and Answers from the Editor

Tracking and Evaluating Progress

The Wall Chair: Mental Toughness vs. Physical Endurance

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