Are You Getting Anwhere?

STOP DOING THIS

Don't talk about your goals

Doing that gives you a false sense of accomplishment and annoys your friends.

Quit looking for new information on how to get results

There's nothing new to doing what you need to do. Don't reinvent the wheel. It's all common knowledge.

Don't complain

Gain weight easy? Hard to put on muscle? Does that mean it's impossible? Work harder. Was it hard for you to go to work one day because of traffic? Did you just not show up?

Don't take things for granted

Think about all the business that were huge and now are gone. Think about the people in high school that were popular and now are nothing. Think about the A-list actors from the a decade ago that can hardly get a decent role on a TV show. Did you get in shape but then started to gain weight. Happens all the time. Did you get cocky? Did you start to slide because you thought you could get away with that extra bagel?

Don't shop for groceries or go to restaurants hungry

You crave empty carbs been you're hungry. You'll buy Red Baron pizzas at the store, or eat 2 baskets full of corn chips or bread sticks. Chips make hips and rolls make rolls.

Don't look for an easy way to get results

There is none. If there was, everyone would have already accomplished it.

START DOING THIS

Track what you're eating

Track your exercises. Blog, journal it, track it. If you're not, you obviously don't care enough and deserve to get there.

Be happy that it's hard to be in shape

If it was easy, everyone would look great. Personally, I'd hate that, I would have to be judged off my personality and I would never survive.

Recognize your bad habits.

Bad habits don't immediately give you bad results. If ice cream immediately upped your body fat by 15% and gave you type 2 diabetes you'd stop eating (I hope).

It's the little things that get you, because they're little and you let them slide. Back pain, body fat, high blood pressure, bad relationships, low wages, everything bad in life is from your bad habits.

Prove to yourself who's in control

I give up things to show myself who's in charge. I can't live with the fact that anything could possibly have control over me. Maybe it's because I have a history of addicts in my family, but I can't live without knowing I have control.

Stay away from bad environments

It's easy to eat healthy when I"m home because I don't have junk food around at all. At my grandmas house it's harder to make those choices.

Recognize your successes

So many of you are so successful in areas of your life but can't do something so simple that you want to do? Why? Think about how good you are at other things, how you did that, and how you could apply that to your fitness goals?

FRIENDS

No one is going to help you

Everyone is too worried about the little dilemmas in their life to waste their time thinking about what you're doing. Are you thinking about their aspirations right now, or are you concerned with your own?

Get rid of loser friends and people that aren't developing themselves

Eliminate bad influences from your life, they don't want you around anyway. If you stop drinking you won't want to be around your drinking buddies, and they definitely don't want a sober person around. If you eat healthy, people who eat shit don't want you around reminding them of how bad their life choices are. 

Negative people and bad influences are not so transparent

They're hidden in your life and use subtlety to throw you off base. Think hard on who they are, and they'll eventually reveal themselves. Just like they'll slowly get you off track, not just push you off the rails in a few single meetings.

"That's too hard. It's easy for her. Wish my family was rich. That could never happen. Easy for them to say. If I had time and money I could do that." People who say things like that are friends you need to delete. 

Do you have the right mentor?

A lot of trainers were in shape at one point but now are chubby or even fat. They say they know how to get in shape though and flash old photos of themselves. But being in shape isn't about getting in shape one time, it's about a lifestyle you can maintain. If they can't live that, how could they possibly teach it?

THE COMPOUND EFFECT

A lot of what I mentioned was taken from life experience, and a lot of the things mentioned were also heavily influenced by a recent book I've been reading called THE COMPOUND EFFECT by Darren Hardy. http://www.thecompoundeffect.com/

Back Pain

BACK PAIN 

You're only allowed so many bends throughout the day. Save them for things like tying your shoes, not sit ups.

Don't do sit ups. They stopped doing them in the military.

Your back hurts most in the morning because you're superdehydrated.

Stretching by pulling knees to chest may feel good today, but will hurt you more tomorrow. You're flexing your back and putting yourself in a dangerous position.

Find what's hurting your back, stop doing that, work on strengthening what's lacking.

Don't ever get surgery. It may alleviate one pain, but open up a whole new world of problems that you can never fix.

Many people have herniated and/or bulging discs, but don't even realize it because they're not in pain yet.

Enlarge your computer screen to 150% so you don't have to lean forward.

Common thought is that you hurt yourself through some sort of event. Disc herniation is not an overnight thing. It's bad habits/posture/form that have lead to this happening.

If you're in pain during an exercise you've gone beyond your capacity, stop it. Your body is telling you something.

Squatting is appropriate for getting off a toilet or chair but not for dropping to the floor. Instead, do a lunge that does not bend your spinal discs and is a much more appropriate choice

Athletes with the most abdominal flexion have the most injured discs, think gymnasts.

80% of people have back pain.

People with back pain tend to use their hamstrings more, when they should be using their glutes.

Doing glute bridges reinforces the idea of using your glutes.

Curl ups, Side Planks, Bird Dogs are all good exercises to rehab your back.

Back pain is not a life sentence. Just have to take an effort to rehab it.

Genetics play a part in it. Slender spines are great for golfing but terrible for football. Thicker spines are great for football but are terrible at golf.

Some people have deeper hip sockets than others. Not everyone is meant for squatting deep.


For more info from Stuart McGill, check out http://www.backfitpro.com/

I'M BECOMING A MORNING PERSON

I'm the last guy who would ever write this

I'm not a morning person, I've always told myself that. I've always been that. But recently I've tried doing something different. I now start doing some jumping jacks almost as soon as I get out of bed, and I then engage in some yoga stretches. And I already love the change.

Exercise has been proven to get the brain moving

These too many studies and articles boasting about how much exercise boosts the brain so I'll let you just look them up for your leisure. Let's just say it's very, very, very, significant.

Just promise me you won't use Stephen Hawking as an excuse to not do it.

1st hour is the catalyst for the rest of the day

You ever heard of setting the tone from the beginning? Now the 1st thing you've done is something positive, healthy, and gets the brain going.

How good are you going to feel about the rest of the day now.  It only needs to be 20 minutes, and for that little time donation you get a huge ROI.

Make it easy

Keep the phone far from the your bed and don't check it until after you workout.

Splash your face with water and put on your workout clothes.

Reward yourself

Think of that coffee you're going to immediately after.

That breakfast meal or hot shower. Keep the reward in sight you get for you're morning task.

Do the exercise you enjoy. Swimming, Lifting, Biking, Running, whatever.

New habits should be done 1st.

When overcoming old habits your brain is resistant, so why wait till the end of the day when you're mentally exhausted to try forming a new habit?

Getting up earlier is better in general means less distractions. Now you're up around less gym rats at the gym, more parking spots, less traffic. The earlier you do it the more time for shower, breakfast, meditate, and anything else you need to do.

Go to bed earlier

It's like the old Seinfeld joke about Day Guy vs Night Guy.

Are those few extra YouTube videos or BuzzFeed quiz worth the 1 or 2 of sleep you're going to miss.

Without alarm clock

Use the app sleepyti.me to find what the best time to go to bed is for you. You can wake up are the correct sleep cycle so you don't even need to use an alarm clock and get a full sleep.

Accountability

Thomas Frank has a lot of great tips to help out such as apps to keep you accountable such as an automatic Facebook post about it or having to pay your friends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XFAYNQIM3Q

Not Working Out is Just as Hard as Working Out

Want to workout and you're too tired. What if I told you it takes the same amount of energy to not workout than it does to workout... Got your attention?

Think about it, you want to workout but don't. Do you automatically get relieved of all this energy and time of working out? No, you're still doing something. Now, you may have saved a lot of physical energy but now you're going to have guilt, regret, and have used the mental energy to lie to yourself and rationalize why you can't workout.


You can brainstorm for excuses or just do the work.

Ever been unemployed? Was life without ta job fun and relaxing? Stressing about money, your future, resumes, and interviews. It's probably way more work and stressful than most jobs. Same thing when you don't do the things you know you need to do. The more guilty you feel, the more you need to do it.



Most hope that one day they just feel so guilty they just have to do it. By that point you're so far in the negative side of that receipt it's going to be 10X the work to where you initially wanted to be. Where, if you would've just done it in the beginning you would've had a receipt on calories spent.


Speaking of 10X, here's a great read

Hell, most of you are literally spending money on the gym and don't go to it. It takes just as much money for a gym membership you go to, as one you don't go to.


The gym is making plenty of money whether or not you show up

It's like this for everything, that person you wanted to ask out, that career you wanted to try out, that novel you want to write, it goes on and on.



Quit wasting all that energy on excuses. Does the taste of those Mozzarella sticks last near as long the guilt you keep from eating it? If it does, let me know where you got them.



You're going to pay a price either way, may as well pay for something you want.