I didn't realize it, but I have a few articles out there from quite a while ago. When they say the internet is forever, they aren't kidding. I wrote this back in 2009 and rereading it now returns some very vivid memories of all the trauma I experienced and also put all of my family went through. I don't ever want to do that again. So much has happened since then in the way my continued existence has affected the people around me.
It was a very dark time in my life and I'm more than just a little fortunate to be here writing this right now. A number of people I know had this same affliction. Some you would know and are well known, and some you would not, who were personal friends of mine. None have survived and sometimes I stop and wonder, why was I different? This is a serious subject and to date, although the technology and understanding of this type of cancer is better known, it is still somewhat of a mystery to science and the medical community. My article is a long read, but describes everything I knew at the time.
I hope this will help you understand why this is still an emotional period for me and why life now means so much more than I ever guessed it would.
My experiences with Glioblastoma Multiforme
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
How ‘Comparison Complex’ Prompts You To Hate On Yourself & 5 Ways To Stop It
by Emily Beers for Precision Nutrition
Ever feel like the body you want is always just out of reach? Like you’ll never quite be lean, strong, fit, or healthy enough? Or that there’s always somebody “better” than you? Here’s how to stop hating on your body, and free yourself from the frustration of constant comparison.
Caron Adderley lost 55 pounds over the course of 11 months, and for a short period, she felt happy with those results. While her family and friends (and the rest of the world) saw her as perfectly fit, she soon became dissatisfied. “Even though I was leaner than ever, I now wanted six-pack abs,” says Caron. After all, truly fit people have washboards, right? No matter how lean or strong she became, or what new goals she achieved, there was always someone “better” to compare herself to.
Instead of appreciating her own progress, she kept wanting more. Sound familiar?
In 10 years of coaching, I’ve come across countless stories like Caron’s. Both men and women. Regardless of where you are in your health and fitness journey, it’s common to feel like you’re never quite where you want to be. Everyone else is doing better than you. Even your best effort just isn’t good enough. If you’re caught up in in this type of comparison game, you know how soul-sucking it feels, but you don’t have to keep playing.
Here’s some thoughts on why you can’t stop constantly comparing yourself to other and why it always feels like you’re not measuring up. (Spoiler alert: It’s completely normal, according to science).
More importantly, we’ll offer five strategies that’ll help you conquer your comparison complex because a healthy lifestyle should lift you up, not bring you down. A secret about comparison: everybody’s doing it. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. Back in the 1950s, famed psychologist Leon Festinger, Ph.D. coined the term social comparison theory. The idea; in order to gauge our “success” in any given area of life—intelligence, career success, and yes, appearance—we look to one another for points of reference.
But we don’t look to just anyone. We compare ourselves to our “relevant peer group,” says Karen North, Ph.D., clinical professor of communications at the University of Southern California. This group, explains Dr. North, is made up of people we perceive to be around our same level in any given attribute. For example, if you’re a high school basketball star, you’ll likely compare yourself to the top players in your district, rather than NBA all-stars. It’s probably no surprise that your friends, neighbors, and colleagues typically fall into your comparison bucket.
But you can also be influenced by people you have no clear connection to, like a movie star, CrossFit champion, or Instagram influencer. “Celebrities can become part of our peer group to the point we feel we actually know them,” says Krista Scott-Dixon, Ph.D., Director of Curriculum here at Precision Nutrition and an expert in counseling psychology.
“Think about how you might binge-watch a Netflix series and become attached to the characters,” she says. “This works in a similar way. If you spend time watching or reading about certain people, it can feel like they’re part of your peer group, even if you’ve never met.”
Regardless of who we consider our peers, we tend to feel good about ourselves when we think we’re in the top third of the group. The big problem? The moment we believe we’re “better” than two-thirds of our peers, we switch groups, and the cycle starts all over.
This is what happened to Caron when it came to her body composition. She didn’t start out wanting six-pack abs. But once she saw herself as a “fit person,” she started identifying with a new group of people who were even leaner, fitter, and stronger than she was, and surprise, those folks all seemed to have visible abs.
If comparing ourselves to others is human nature, how can we ever feel good about our bodies? The five strategies that follow can help, wherever you’re at right now. Sure, they might require you to try some new approaches and make tough decisions, but you’re worth it!
Strategy #1: Focus on actions, not outcomes. Maybe you’d like to be a size 4, or bench 300 pounds, ,r run a 6-minute mile. These kinds of benchmarks often seem meaningful. Perhaps because they offer an objective way to compare ourselves to others. (Red flag alert!) You don’t have to wonder how you stack up, the numbers will tell you. For some people, these goals are achievable but for others can be totally demoralizing. After all, we can’t fully control how our bodies will respond to a nutrition or training program. And by setting goals that require a certain outcome, anything that falls short can feel like a failure. Especially when we see others succeed.
Rather than focusing on the end result, concentrate on completing daily actions that’ll help you lose fat or get stronger or run faster. We call these habits-based goals. For example, if you’d like to lose fat, you might set goals such as eating lean protein at every meal, having 5 servings of produce per day, or exercising for 30 minutes 3 days a week.
These actions, done consistently, are examples of how you lose fat and they’re under your control. As goals, they shift your mindset away from comparison, and provide more opportunities for you to celebrate your successful efforts instead of thinking about everything you’ve yet to accomplish. To be sure, focusing on actions over outcomes may require mental adjustment on your part. But with practice, it’ll feel start to feel natural and right.
Strategy #2: Put things in perspective (every single day). It’s easy to obsess over what we don’t like about our bodies; cellulite on the backs of our legs, how our belly looks when we don’t hold it in, body parts we think are too skinny or flabby. You can probably name at least a couple. All too often, these thoughts take up way more headspace than they should. By reminding ourselves what really matters in life, we can dilute these negative feelings, and make them less powerful by the simple act of a daily journal. Don’t think of this as another item on your to-do list. Consider it a quick-and-easy way to get a daily dose of perspective.
Every day, simply write: 3 things you’re grateful for, one thing you’re excited about, one thing you’re proud of (from that day or the day before). Making this list can give you a major mental boost. Do it routinely, and you’ll transform your mindset from a place of comparison to a more appreciative state. As an added bonus, you can look back on previous entries and see how far you’ve come.
Strategy #3: Eliminate your comparison triggers. Think of a behavior, activity, or place aimed at helping you get healthier. Are there any that cause you to feel less than adequate? It could be your favorite meal-prep blogger’s website because she seems to have endless amounts of time to experiment with new and delicious macro-friendly recipes, and your life just isn’t like that. Or, it could be that advanced spin class where you struggle to keep up, a diet that leaves you feeling guilty because you’re always “cheating”, the weight loss challenge group you joined at work.
When my client Marie started training, for instance, her goals were to get fit, feel good, and to be comfortable in her own skin. She got leaner and stronger quickly and joined the gym’s competitor’s program, where she started training with incredibly fit athletes. Suddenly, she felt like she wasn’t doing enough. “I kind of felt like a fraud because I wasn’t willing to live the life of a really disciplined athlete,” she says. For Marie, the competitors program had become a comparison trigger. Yet being a disciplined athlete was never part of her original goal.
Ask yourself: Is there a specific place, person, or practice that always makes you feel “not good enough?” If you can put your “trigger” for self-comparison on hold, you can get the space you need to reassess your situation and decide what you really want. Then, if you’d like to continue, you can return to that situation with a clear head and realistic expectations.
Strategy #4: Transform your social networks. Look through your newsfeeds, friends, and “following” lists, and ask yourself whether each person or account brings joy to your life. If not, unfriend or unfollow. (We told you there’d be tough decisions.)
Start following people who inspire you, educate you, or just make you laugh. These can be people you know, or celebrities and influencers who give you positive feels. Your goal is to custom-build a peer group that fosters love for you and your body. When I’ve given clients this task, they often report that social media, for the first time ever, is a happy place for them—a place that’s now contributing to their growth, instead of hindering it.
Strategy #5: Seek meaningful connections. At the beginning of this year Carol, wrote a social media post revealing she still weighs herself every single day. This isn’t a habit that makes her feel good or in control. Instead, she feels like the scale is controlling her, thanks to her constant pursuit of measuring up. The act of publicly admitting she’s “addicted to the bathroom scale” was empowering for her. But most impactful? The overwhelming support she received from others who could relate. Their messages and reactions helped her understand she isn’t alone in feeling the pressure to keep pushing for more, more, more. And I’d bet her post helped them, too.
Whether it’s online or in real life, sharing our struggles and stories with other people can be a way to build genuine connection, community, and support—and a lot more uplifting than scrolling through #fitspo on Instagram.
Share that post or picture that reveals the real you. Have that coffee with a friend. Open up to your coach or partner. Be vulnerable. Genuine conversations beat silent comparison. Every time.
There will always be someone leaner, fitter, and stronger out there. We all know this, but instead of focusing on things that take away from your joy, build your support system. Seek out role models, and surround yourself with people who lift you up. Turn your attention to those who love you for who you are and who help you love yourself. If you pay close attention, you might finally realize what they see in you, and that’s when you’ll free yourself from the comparison game.
Ever feel like the body you want is always just out of reach? Like you’ll never quite be lean, strong, fit, or healthy enough? Or that there’s always somebody “better” than you? Here’s how to stop hating on your body, and free yourself from the frustration of constant comparison.
Caron Adderley lost 55 pounds over the course of 11 months, and for a short period, she felt happy with those results. While her family and friends (and the rest of the world) saw her as perfectly fit, she soon became dissatisfied. “Even though I was leaner than ever, I now wanted six-pack abs,” says Caron. After all, truly fit people have washboards, right? No matter how lean or strong she became, or what new goals she achieved, there was always someone “better” to compare herself to.
Instead of appreciating her own progress, she kept wanting more. Sound familiar?
In 10 years of coaching, I’ve come across countless stories like Caron’s. Both men and women. Regardless of where you are in your health and fitness journey, it’s common to feel like you’re never quite where you want to be. Everyone else is doing better than you. Even your best effort just isn’t good enough. If you’re caught up in in this type of comparison game, you know how soul-sucking it feels, but you don’t have to keep playing.
Here’s some thoughts on why you can’t stop constantly comparing yourself to other and why it always feels like you’re not measuring up. (Spoiler alert: It’s completely normal, according to science).
More importantly, we’ll offer five strategies that’ll help you conquer your comparison complex because a healthy lifestyle should lift you up, not bring you down. A secret about comparison: everybody’s doing it. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. Back in the 1950s, famed psychologist Leon Festinger, Ph.D. coined the term social comparison theory. The idea; in order to gauge our “success” in any given area of life—intelligence, career success, and yes, appearance—we look to one another for points of reference.
But we don’t look to just anyone. We compare ourselves to our “relevant peer group,” says Karen North, Ph.D., clinical professor of communications at the University of Southern California. This group, explains Dr. North, is made up of people we perceive to be around our same level in any given attribute. For example, if you’re a high school basketball star, you’ll likely compare yourself to the top players in your district, rather than NBA all-stars. It’s probably no surprise that your friends, neighbors, and colleagues typically fall into your comparison bucket.
But you can also be influenced by people you have no clear connection to, like a movie star, CrossFit champion, or Instagram influencer. “Celebrities can become part of our peer group to the point we feel we actually know them,” says Krista Scott-Dixon, Ph.D., Director of Curriculum here at Precision Nutrition and an expert in counseling psychology.
“Think about how you might binge-watch a Netflix series and become attached to the characters,” she says. “This works in a similar way. If you spend time watching or reading about certain people, it can feel like they’re part of your peer group, even if you’ve never met.”
Regardless of who we consider our peers, we tend to feel good about ourselves when we think we’re in the top third of the group. The big problem? The moment we believe we’re “better” than two-thirds of our peers, we switch groups, and the cycle starts all over.
This is what happened to Caron when it came to her body composition. She didn’t start out wanting six-pack abs. But once she saw herself as a “fit person,” she started identifying with a new group of people who were even leaner, fitter, and stronger than she was, and surprise, those folks all seemed to have visible abs.
If comparing ourselves to others is human nature, how can we ever feel good about our bodies? The five strategies that follow can help, wherever you’re at right now. Sure, they might require you to try some new approaches and make tough decisions, but you’re worth it!
Strategy #1: Focus on actions, not outcomes. Maybe you’d like to be a size 4, or bench 300 pounds, ,r run a 6-minute mile. These kinds of benchmarks often seem meaningful. Perhaps because they offer an objective way to compare ourselves to others. (Red flag alert!) You don’t have to wonder how you stack up, the numbers will tell you. For some people, these goals are achievable but for others can be totally demoralizing. After all, we can’t fully control how our bodies will respond to a nutrition or training program. And by setting goals that require a certain outcome, anything that falls short can feel like a failure. Especially when we see others succeed.
Rather than focusing on the end result, concentrate on completing daily actions that’ll help you lose fat or get stronger or run faster. We call these habits-based goals. For example, if you’d like to lose fat, you might set goals such as eating lean protein at every meal, having 5 servings of produce per day, or exercising for 30 minutes 3 days a week.
These actions, done consistently, are examples of how you lose fat and they’re under your control. As goals, they shift your mindset away from comparison, and provide more opportunities for you to celebrate your successful efforts instead of thinking about everything you’ve yet to accomplish. To be sure, focusing on actions over outcomes may require mental adjustment on your part. But with practice, it’ll feel start to feel natural and right.
Strategy #2: Put things in perspective (every single day). It’s easy to obsess over what we don’t like about our bodies; cellulite on the backs of our legs, how our belly looks when we don’t hold it in, body parts we think are too skinny or flabby. You can probably name at least a couple. All too often, these thoughts take up way more headspace than they should. By reminding ourselves what really matters in life, we can dilute these negative feelings, and make them less powerful by the simple act of a daily journal. Don’t think of this as another item on your to-do list. Consider it a quick-and-easy way to get a daily dose of perspective.
Every day, simply write: 3 things you’re grateful for, one thing you’re excited about, one thing you’re proud of (from that day or the day before). Making this list can give you a major mental boost. Do it routinely, and you’ll transform your mindset from a place of comparison to a more appreciative state. As an added bonus, you can look back on previous entries and see how far you’ve come.
Strategy #3: Eliminate your comparison triggers. Think of a behavior, activity, or place aimed at helping you get healthier. Are there any that cause you to feel less than adequate? It could be your favorite meal-prep blogger’s website because she seems to have endless amounts of time to experiment with new and delicious macro-friendly recipes, and your life just isn’t like that. Or, it could be that advanced spin class where you struggle to keep up, a diet that leaves you feeling guilty because you’re always “cheating”, the weight loss challenge group you joined at work.
When my client Marie started training, for instance, her goals were to get fit, feel good, and to be comfortable in her own skin. She got leaner and stronger quickly and joined the gym’s competitor’s program, where she started training with incredibly fit athletes. Suddenly, she felt like she wasn’t doing enough. “I kind of felt like a fraud because I wasn’t willing to live the life of a really disciplined athlete,” she says. For Marie, the competitors program had become a comparison trigger. Yet being a disciplined athlete was never part of her original goal.
Ask yourself: Is there a specific place, person, or practice that always makes you feel “not good enough?” If you can put your “trigger” for self-comparison on hold, you can get the space you need to reassess your situation and decide what you really want. Then, if you’d like to continue, you can return to that situation with a clear head and realistic expectations.
Strategy #4: Transform your social networks. Look through your newsfeeds, friends, and “following” lists, and ask yourself whether each person or account brings joy to your life. If not, unfriend or unfollow. (We told you there’d be tough decisions.)
Start following people who inspire you, educate you, or just make you laugh. These can be people you know, or celebrities and influencers who give you positive feels. Your goal is to custom-build a peer group that fosters love for you and your body. When I’ve given clients this task, they often report that social media, for the first time ever, is a happy place for them—a place that’s now contributing to their growth, instead of hindering it.
Strategy #5: Seek meaningful connections. At the beginning of this year Carol, wrote a social media post revealing she still weighs herself every single day. This isn’t a habit that makes her feel good or in control. Instead, she feels like the scale is controlling her, thanks to her constant pursuit of measuring up. The act of publicly admitting she’s “addicted to the bathroom scale” was empowering for her. But most impactful? The overwhelming support she received from others who could relate. Their messages and reactions helped her understand she isn’t alone in feeling the pressure to keep pushing for more, more, more. And I’d bet her post helped them, too.
Whether it’s online or in real life, sharing our struggles and stories with other people can be a way to build genuine connection, community, and support—and a lot more uplifting than scrolling through #fitspo on Instagram.
Share that post or picture that reveals the real you. Have that coffee with a friend. Open up to your coach or partner. Be vulnerable. Genuine conversations beat silent comparison. Every time.
There will always be someone leaner, fitter, and stronger out there. We all know this, but instead of focusing on things that take away from your joy, build your support system. Seek out role models, and surround yourself with people who lift you up. Turn your attention to those who love you for who you are and who help you love yourself. If you pay close attention, you might finally realize what they see in you, and that’s when you’ll free yourself from the comparison game.
Friday, August 23, 2019
GoDa Fitness Innovations
A bit of personal history first.
Sometime in late 2015 I began training with Danny Daley, a personal trainer. I was trying to get back into shape after having gone through some very difficult times in the past with a brain tumor in 2006. My progress over the time after my two and a half years of recovery (2009 to 2015) was underwhelming at best. I tried a number of things and with different trainers and I was getting nowhere. I desperately needed to do something different. That’s why in 2015 I found Danny and my life has never been the same.
Danny’s own history uniquely qualifies him to do what he does so well. He only did on-site training at the time and made use of anything he brought with him along with what was available at the site where he was training. I already had a modest gym setup in my home, so Danny tried to incorporate any available equipment. Danny likes the use of landmines as part of his functional routines, but he seldom incorporates them, primarily because the opportunities don’t always exist to do it on location, and so he rarely uses them. He did with me though. He likes to use the utility of a landmine, but since I didn’t exactly have the right equipment, and Danny’s efforts to simulate their use was digging pits into my foam mat flooring with my standard barbell. I realized what he was trying to do, but my current equipment just wasn’t suitable.
Now I didn’t know anything about landmines at that point. I didn’t know of their existence and for sure never saw one, so I was oblivious as to what they were about. However, having been a trouble shooter in my work career and basically an inventive kind of guy all my life, the solution was obvious.
With somewhat of an idea in my head, I made a couple of visits to the local hardware store and just using PVC and bolt hardware I created one using just some simple tools in my garage.
The next training session, I showed it to him. He was genuinely surprised and remarked at how simple and smooth it worked. Now that I was finished doing what I had done, I was content to move on from this project like I have always done in the past, but Danny had a different idea. He said this was worth developing and pursuing with a patent, and encouraged me to take this idea to the next level.
The more I studied my invention, I could see that there was substantially more that could be done with its concept. So with a pencil and paper and more trips to the hardware store. I began its configuration. I had all the rudiments I needed, but this story is just beginning.
Forming a team with the two of us, the beginnings of the GoDa Fitness Innovations business venture was under way. I made several more copies as we assembled the rest of a core team of the GoDa F.I. genesis.
Landmines, Fitness, and Gyms.
I didn’t learn this until later, but for people in the fitness world, use of a thing called a landmine is nothing new. In fact, they have been around in some form since at least the 1800s.
The average person might envision only something used to blow things up on a battle field, so a unit of exercise equipment is probably the farthest thing from their mind, as it was first for me.
Landmine popularity has grown somewhat and has been used in a few gyms and for fitness enthusiasts, but to date, the ones in use and for sale today have the same inherent problems. Very little has been achieved to truly improve on them from the ones a hundred years ago.
Maybe part of the reason is that landmine fitness equipment currently on the market is primarily targeted for gym use and utilizes Olympic style bars and weights. Olympic bars and weights are great for lifting ample amounts of weight, but Olympic equipment is bulky, often more expensive. The bar is certainly heavier, and unless you are already accustomed to using Olympic equipment, you are probably not as likely to use it in your home, especially if you’re not a body builder.
Some trainers use them, if they are available in the gym where they train, but education and introduction of their use to the general public is minimal, because of their limited popularity with the majority of the non-bodybuilding community. In fact, most people I have talked to have never heard of them.
Advertisements for these in catalogs and magazines usually show some strongly, well built man or woman in an exercise position, but they do not typify the average person wanting to get into an exercise curriculum.
They look at this person in the advertisement and think, ‘I don’t look like that. I don’t want to look like that. I just want to get into better shape. I want to look good when I look at myself in the mirror and I want to be healthier’.
Often the this same person has no interest in going to a gym, due to time constraints, availability, or cost. Maybe they are overweight and maybe largely out of shape, and so the thought of going to a gym atmosphere to most people can be intimidating. They feel out of place around people who regularly go there and are in good condition, or they are unfamiliar with the uni-task type of equipment, don’t want to ask anyone for the proper way to use, and/or wait for the equipment to be free for them.
Using free weights in a gym can be problematic for anyone not familiar with their profusion of possibilities. Sometimes people using them in a gym aren’t acquainted with proper techniques, and just sling weights around. However, without the correct understanding of the best way to use free-weights, a person can do more harm than good and sometimes result in serious injury.
Finding a fitness trainer is the best way to get appropriate instruction, but location, availability, and cost can be limiting factors, and not all trainers are created equal. As I have found, there can be a substantial divergence in a trainer’s knowledge and dedication to a particular client’s needs, so the one you can get may not always be the one you need. Some are very good and some are less so. As a result of all these conditions, many people just don’t feel the effort is worth it.
They may be inspired at the start of the year and sign up at a gym, but within a couple of months at best, they stop going. They are sometimes still required pay for their membership they have quit using, but they have no intention of returning there. They just pay their monthly fee and write it off as a bad investment in themselves.
Or they never make the move to start, knowing this is exactly what is going to happen. It could be they have tried this scenario before and know the result. And this fact alone keeps many from pursuing the exercise they need.
There may also be factors particular to your situation. You may be disabled in some way, limiting your mobility, function, or ability, making the use of gyms and their equipment to require some sort of accommodation or assistance.
You may also need specific training for a particular sport or recreation activity not easily adaptable to most gym environments.
So, they do what is easiest. They go buy treadmills, steppers, and ellipticals for their home, which studies have show cannot offer a proper workout, burning calories and giving a fully functional workout, and exercising all parts of the body. The country is loaded with equipment like this which has long since become a bedroom drying rack for laundry.
Sometimes they buy home fitness dvds or game consoles and within a short period of time these begin to gather dust, because they have no better effect of getting them in shape than going to the gym.
Maybe they have given up hope. They know they need to do something, but nothing they have tried short of dieting seems to make a difference, and this is never enough. There are no reality or inspirational television shows which can make a difference in ‘their own’ particular situation, so why try?
I have run at the local high school track for years and I have seen the same people there for a long time. They know they should do something so they walk the track. This certainly is something, but in all the years I have seen them there they have not improved in the slightest and look the same as they did on their first day. If that’s all they want out of exercise, then I’m OK with that if they are, but I want more for me.
Diets don’t truly work and are not a long term solution for most of us. Without some form of raising metabolism, results by dieting are temporary and never last. A balance of eating smart, enough sleep, and proper exercise is the best way to make a difference in losing weight, feeling better, looking better, and improving the inner you.
Most of us would rather just do our workouts in the privacy of our own home, but getting a gym quality workout there is not an easy path. Although time is saved by eliminating the time spent traveling to the gym, space, the proper balance of equipment, and budget can be mitigating factors. Just getting motivated to workout even at home can be a challenge if you have a ways to go to getting in shape.
So what does it take to get the best gym class workout available at home, removing as many of the undesired variables and restrictions as possible?
Now back to my own story.
As I continued to develop my device, I thought about my own past training efforts. I didn’t care for the big gym experience the same as other people. I didn’t like the commute to and from it, and once I was there I was in competition for the equipment. In my case, the cost wasn’t as big a factor, but the struggle from start to finish wasn’t what I wanted, which was just to work at getting in shape without all the obstacles. My workouts with Danny changed the way I look at my own goals and what I needed to do to reach and exceed them. This is particularly true now that I am older.
Enter my invention and the GoDa F.I. team.
The company GoDa Fitness Innovations, that Danny and I created has taken an old idea and made it possible for just about anyone, including men, women, kids, the disabled, and even specialized athletes, to get a better gym quality and affordable workout, safely, in the comfort and security of your own home.
The GoDa FIT replaces and greatly extends the functionality of existing landmine units, making it possible to replace uni-task gym machines and perform the kind of functions they cannot.
Its compact design makes exercising with it intuitive, easy, and encourages proper technique. It removes the need for a spotter for certain exercises, and used standard barbells and weights, so it fits most budgets nicely, and is lighter to use. The GoDa FIT can operate in a minimum space footprint, making it ideal for homes, apartments, and even work offices (if you are so inclined). It is also quite portable, giving it the ability to take with you, if desired.
Because of the way the GoDa FIT is designed to function, less weight is needed, and changing weights becomes less necessary, but also faster and easier. You will find that you can extend your workout time, while at the same time making the time required for your workout more efficient and meaningful.
Your desire to make it work for you is the only limitation.
Let GoDa Fitness Innovations lead you to a better you.
You can do this and we can help.
Over the past three years I have made eight revisions with enhancements solving problems revealed during its development. I now have two separate patents submitted to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for it and we are soon moving forward with a Kickstarter program to offer to you what I originally intended only for my own personal use. We are still exploring creative ways for you to take advantage of my invention and I hope soon you will be as excited about it as I am.
Come see us at GoDa Fitness Innovations and discover the future of landmine training.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
The Science of Training Frequency
by Bill Campbell, PhD, CSCS (for BodyBuilding.com)
Training frequency is a hot topic right now. It's always been a hot topic among gym rats comparing their lifting strategies around the drinking fountain, but now it's increasingly on the radar of researchers as well. In the past 3 years alone, there have been approximately 20 published studies investigating the effects of training frequency on muscle growth!
To be clear, in this research, "training frequency" isn't simply how often you train, it's typically defined as the number of times a muscle group is trained in a given week. The classic bodybuilding "bro split" targets each muscle only once per week, but others believe the more frequently you train a muscle in a given week, the greater the hypertrophic (size gains) response will be.[1]
A recent meta-analysis and systematic review co-authored by Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., attempted to clear up some of the confusion and give tangible advice about how often to train a muscle group per week to maximize muscle growth potential.[2] A meta-analysis collects and reviews all of the current research pertaining to a specific topic.
This particular meta-analysis included 25 studies relating to training frequency and muscle growth. The conclusions drawn can help you make better training choices no matter what approach has worked for you so far.
What Does the Research Show? The meta-analysis showed no difference in muscle growth when training your muscles once a week or multiple times per week—assuming training volume is equal. But that's a big caveat! It means that frequency may not actually be the most important variable to consider when structuring your training week. Instead, the total volume of lifting you will do for a given muscle group may be the defining factor.
There are a few ways to interpret these findings:
1). A greater emphasis should be placed on training volume and finding an appropriate amount that you can adapt to, rather than focusing on training frequency.
2). You may not need to arrange your life around an "ideal" frequency-based split if you're trying to make gains. Instead, you can organize your training around your life. If you're following a program you like but that you struggle to fit in your schedule, you may be able to split the same volume across multiple days.
That first point may be the most difficult of the two to wrap your head around, since there's no simple answer about what the "right" amount of sets is. It's very personal and has a lot to do with your goals, your training experience, as well as how dialed in your nutrition and lifestyle are for recovery.
15 Sets Per Week, 3 Different Ways to Arrange Them: Let's assume you've determined 15 sets of chest training each week to be right for you. Why 15? Because it's a good "do you really need to train any more than this?" benchmark. It's definitely adequate for growth in most experienced lifters (honestly, 10-12 may be sufficient for all but the most advanced lifters). And if you're doing more than 15, there's a decent chance that your epic hours-long workouts are either straining your recovery abilities, or just filling your program with repetitive junk volume.
If you're able to fit all 15 sets into one chest day, and train with an appropriate amount of intensity, that's a hell of a day! Doing it once a week is probably sufficient. On the contrary, if you find it's difficult to train 15 sets in one day without burning out, fighting fatigue, or ruining your life outside of the gym, then splitting up the sets into multiple days may be more beneficial. This amount of training volume could be split up in a number of different days, but here are a few examples to illustrate what your training split could look like:
Obviously, there are plenty of other ways you could arrange your week, particularly if you're able to train on the weekend. As a point of reference, in the Physique Science Laboratory at the University of South Florida, we typically program an upper-body/lower-body training split where we train each muscle group two times per week, or a full-body routine in which each muscle group is targeted three times per week.
References
1). Hackett, D. A., Johnson, N. A., & Chow, C. M. (2013). Training practices and ergogenic aids used by male bodybuilders. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(6), 1609-1617.
2). Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J., & Krieger, J. (2019). How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(11), 1286-1295.
About the Author: Bill Campbell, PhD, is an associate professor of exercise science and director of the Performance & Physique Enhancement Laboratory at the University of South Florida.
Training frequency is a hot topic right now. It's always been a hot topic among gym rats comparing their lifting strategies around the drinking fountain, but now it's increasingly on the radar of researchers as well. In the past 3 years alone, there have been approximately 20 published studies investigating the effects of training frequency on muscle growth!
To be clear, in this research, "training frequency" isn't simply how often you train, it's typically defined as the number of times a muscle group is trained in a given week. The classic bodybuilding "bro split" targets each muscle only once per week, but others believe the more frequently you train a muscle in a given week, the greater the hypertrophic (size gains) response will be.[1]
A recent meta-analysis and systematic review co-authored by Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., attempted to clear up some of the confusion and give tangible advice about how often to train a muscle group per week to maximize muscle growth potential.[2] A meta-analysis collects and reviews all of the current research pertaining to a specific topic.
This particular meta-analysis included 25 studies relating to training frequency and muscle growth. The conclusions drawn can help you make better training choices no matter what approach has worked for you so far.
What Does the Research Show? The meta-analysis showed no difference in muscle growth when training your muscles once a week or multiple times per week—assuming training volume is equal. But that's a big caveat! It means that frequency may not actually be the most important variable to consider when structuring your training week. Instead, the total volume of lifting you will do for a given muscle group may be the defining factor.
There are a few ways to interpret these findings:
1). A greater emphasis should be placed on training volume and finding an appropriate amount that you can adapt to, rather than focusing on training frequency.
2). You may not need to arrange your life around an "ideal" frequency-based split if you're trying to make gains. Instead, you can organize your training around your life. If you're following a program you like but that you struggle to fit in your schedule, you may be able to split the same volume across multiple days.
That first point may be the most difficult of the two to wrap your head around, since there's no simple answer about what the "right" amount of sets is. It's very personal and has a lot to do with your goals, your training experience, as well as how dialed in your nutrition and lifestyle are for recovery.
15 Sets Per Week, 3 Different Ways to Arrange Them: Let's assume you've determined 15 sets of chest training each week to be right for you. Why 15? Because it's a good "do you really need to train any more than this?" benchmark. It's definitely adequate for growth in most experienced lifters (honestly, 10-12 may be sufficient for all but the most advanced lifters). And if you're doing more than 15, there's a decent chance that your epic hours-long workouts are either straining your recovery abilities, or just filling your program with repetitive junk volume.
If you're able to fit all 15 sets into one chest day, and train with an appropriate amount of intensity, that's a hell of a day! Doing it once a week is probably sufficient. On the contrary, if you find it's difficult to train 15 sets in one day without burning out, fighting fatigue, or ruining your life outside of the gym, then splitting up the sets into multiple days may be more beneficial. This amount of training volume could be split up in a number of different days, but here are a few examples to illustrate what your training split could look like:
Obviously, there are plenty of other ways you could arrange your week, particularly if you're able to train on the weekend. As a point of reference, in the Physique Science Laboratory at the University of South Florida, we typically program an upper-body/lower-body training split where we train each muscle group two times per week, or a full-body routine in which each muscle group is targeted three times per week.
References
1). Hackett, D. A., Johnson, N. A., & Chow, C. M. (2013). Training practices and ergogenic aids used by male bodybuilders. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 27(6), 1609-1617.
2). Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J., & Krieger, J. (2019). How many times per week should a muscle be trained to maximize muscle hypertrophy? A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining the effects of resistance training frequency. Journal of Sports Sciences, 37(11), 1286-1295.
About the Author: Bill Campbell, PhD, is an associate professor of exercise science and director of the Performance & Physique Enhancement Laboratory at the University of South Florida.
Wednesday, August 07, 2019
What Exactly Are ‘Overuse Injuries’? Inside The Epidemic Sidelining Youth Athletes
Overuse injury. The term itself seems fairly self-explanatory. Something in the body was used too much, and it led to injury. But with overuse injuries at an all-time high among youth athletes, you deserve to know more.
In ESPN Staff Writer Baxter Holmes' series on overuse injuries in basketball, Dr. Nirav Pandya, a noted orthopedic surgeon at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, estimates that the number of pediatric sports injuries he now sees annually is quadruple what it was five years ago. Pandya says more than half of all surgeries he currently performs are on patients under the age of 14.
What causes overuse injuries?
"All injuries stem from the body's inability to absorb force. Period. Force is constantly coming into the body, (and it) should be absorbed by the muscles," says Dr. Tommy John, chiropractor and author of the book Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance: A Sports Parent's Survival Guide. "If it's not fully absorbed by the muscles, it will go into tissues not designed to absorb that amount of force for that amount of time for that amount of reps. That could be a ligament, meniscus, tendon, cartilage, bone, etc."
"The force comes in and chips away at those areas. Constantly chips, chip, chips. (But) it only chips away if we're not able to adapt to the forces we're talking about. It's a relative term—overuse injury, it's all relative. What might be overuse for one person isn't for somebody else."
If an injury is not an overuse injury, it can typically be categorized as a traumatic injury. This refers to an injury caused by a one-time exposure to a tremendous, overwhelming amount of force. Think of falling from a high tree branch and breaking your arm, or a football player having the side of their knee barreled into by a lineman and suffering torn ligaments.
According to the Mayo Clinic, overuse injuries are generally more likely to occur as you get older, which makes the rise in overuse injuries among youth athletes all the more startling.
"This is 10, 12 years ago, and the kids coming into my baseball lessons, they were starting to come in more and more injured," says John, who was previously a baseball performance trainer.
"The injury cases I was seeing in these kids, they were the things that 40-, 50-, 60-year-olds were experiencing. I'm like, wait a second, something's not right." Early specialization is a driving cause of overuse injuries among youth athletes. Early specialization refers to the act of exclusively playing one sport from an early age.
It's generally recommended that kids wait until at least their early teens until they start specializing, yet more children and pre-teens are playing one sport year-round than ever before. The schedules for these specializers are often packed with so many organized games and training sessions you'd think they were a professional.
When you only play one sport and engage in few other physical activities, you're bound to repeat many of the same motions over and over again. Maybe it's jumping up for a rebound. Maybe it's throwing a fastball. Maybe it's racing up and down the field in soccer. But eventually, all that repetition can take a toll. And when your body isn't strong enough to handle it—a fact which often ties into the poor posture many modern humans have due to our technology addiction—something's gotta give.
A 2017 study from the University of Wisconsin found that high school athletes with a "high specialization classification" had an 85-percent higher incidence of lower extremity injuries than high school athletes with a "low specialization classification." Essentially, athletes who specialized were found to be at a much higher risk of lower extremity injury than athletes who play and train in multiple sports.
An overlooked aspect of overuse injuries is that there are almost always warning signs leading up to the more severe incidents. John calls them "breadcrumbs." "There's always something beforehand that leads to the big stuff. There's always some precursor to that point. There's always some sort of warning system the body gives. It's so rare (when there isn't)," John says.
"Somebody walks in—'My 12-year-old tore their meniscus.' How unfortunate—any injury history? 'Oh, yeah. History of rolled ankles, we've had orthotics in since she was 8, we've been playing the same sport (year-round). She's had swelling in her knee for three years. She's had shin splints forever. She's had tape and therapy and she does oils every night.' It's like there's this whole list of things, (and) it was only a matter of time before the body can't warn anymore. Then comes the catastrophic injury."
The professionalization of youth sports has also put parents and kids in a position where they often feel pressured to miss as little time as possible, lest other youth athletes "pass them by." The No. 1 priority after an injury is often reducing the pain as quickly as possible so the young athlete can return to their travel or AAU team, while the underlying causes of that pain go largely unaddressed.
"Pain is one of the last things to show up in dysfunction and injury, but the first to go away. And we use it as the greatest marker—which is sad. People aren't allowed to feel pain anymore. They're constantly icing, they're taking pain relievers and anti-inflammatory products. They'll take a little time off or do certain therapies or modes that have them come back too quickly. 'Well, you're 80 percent or so of where you were at when you came in, and we have to exit you because your insurance won't pay for this anymore. You've taken 2-3 weeks off, you're good!' Actually, they're worse off than they were before, because they didn't get the proper amount of time off and/or the proper amount of treatment. Further, that person was not ideally-equipped on the first place—because they got injured, let's be honest," John says.
"We're applying that pro-sport mentality to kids, and in addition to many other factors, it's almost impossible for anyone to heal in the current system of any sport because of the way it's set up. There’s a compressed time frame and a great deal of guilt that's laid on them. Well, if you take three months off, or you take six months off, or you take a year off—which might be best for some cases—they're like, 'What?' Because they're being sold this idea if you miss anything, you will be left behind."
The overuse injury epidemic in youth sports is the result of many convergent factors. Kids growing up with very little unstructured outdoor play, parents treating their kids like miniature pros, shady club teams looking to squeeze every dollar out of families, constant use of iPhones destroying posture—these all play a role. Yet past generations of kids played for hours upon hours each day, and their bodies rarely broke down. Thus, it boils down to one big question—how is the way kids play today different than it was then?
In ESPN Staff Writer Baxter Holmes' series on overuse injuries in basketball, Dr. Nirav Pandya, a noted orthopedic surgeon at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, estimates that the number of pediatric sports injuries he now sees annually is quadruple what it was five years ago. Pandya says more than half of all surgeries he currently performs are on patients under the age of 14.
What causes overuse injuries?
"All injuries stem from the body's inability to absorb force. Period. Force is constantly coming into the body, (and it) should be absorbed by the muscles," says Dr. Tommy John, chiropractor and author of the book Minimize Injury, Maximize Performance: A Sports Parent's Survival Guide. "If it's not fully absorbed by the muscles, it will go into tissues not designed to absorb that amount of force for that amount of time for that amount of reps. That could be a ligament, meniscus, tendon, cartilage, bone, etc."
"The force comes in and chips away at those areas. Constantly chips, chip, chips. (But) it only chips away if we're not able to adapt to the forces we're talking about. It's a relative term—overuse injury, it's all relative. What might be overuse for one person isn't for somebody else."
If an injury is not an overuse injury, it can typically be categorized as a traumatic injury. This refers to an injury caused by a one-time exposure to a tremendous, overwhelming amount of force. Think of falling from a high tree branch and breaking your arm, or a football player having the side of their knee barreled into by a lineman and suffering torn ligaments.
According to the Mayo Clinic, overuse injuries are generally more likely to occur as you get older, which makes the rise in overuse injuries among youth athletes all the more startling.
"This is 10, 12 years ago, and the kids coming into my baseball lessons, they were starting to come in more and more injured," says John, who was previously a baseball performance trainer.
"The injury cases I was seeing in these kids, they were the things that 40-, 50-, 60-year-olds were experiencing. I'm like, wait a second, something's not right." Early specialization is a driving cause of overuse injuries among youth athletes. Early specialization refers to the act of exclusively playing one sport from an early age.
It's generally recommended that kids wait until at least their early teens until they start specializing, yet more children and pre-teens are playing one sport year-round than ever before. The schedules for these specializers are often packed with so many organized games and training sessions you'd think they were a professional.
When you only play one sport and engage in few other physical activities, you're bound to repeat many of the same motions over and over again. Maybe it's jumping up for a rebound. Maybe it's throwing a fastball. Maybe it's racing up and down the field in soccer. But eventually, all that repetition can take a toll. And when your body isn't strong enough to handle it—a fact which often ties into the poor posture many modern humans have due to our technology addiction—something's gotta give.
A 2017 study from the University of Wisconsin found that high school athletes with a "high specialization classification" had an 85-percent higher incidence of lower extremity injuries than high school athletes with a "low specialization classification." Essentially, athletes who specialized were found to be at a much higher risk of lower extremity injury than athletes who play and train in multiple sports.
An overlooked aspect of overuse injuries is that there are almost always warning signs leading up to the more severe incidents. John calls them "breadcrumbs." "There's always something beforehand that leads to the big stuff. There's always some precursor to that point. There's always some sort of warning system the body gives. It's so rare (when there isn't)," John says.
"Somebody walks in—'My 12-year-old tore their meniscus.' How unfortunate—any injury history? 'Oh, yeah. History of rolled ankles, we've had orthotics in since she was 8, we've been playing the same sport (year-round). She's had swelling in her knee for three years. She's had shin splints forever. She's had tape and therapy and she does oils every night.' It's like there's this whole list of things, (and) it was only a matter of time before the body can't warn anymore. Then comes the catastrophic injury."
The professionalization of youth sports has also put parents and kids in a position where they often feel pressured to miss as little time as possible, lest other youth athletes "pass them by." The No. 1 priority after an injury is often reducing the pain as quickly as possible so the young athlete can return to their travel or AAU team, while the underlying causes of that pain go largely unaddressed.
"Pain is one of the last things to show up in dysfunction and injury, but the first to go away. And we use it as the greatest marker—which is sad. People aren't allowed to feel pain anymore. They're constantly icing, they're taking pain relievers and anti-inflammatory products. They'll take a little time off or do certain therapies or modes that have them come back too quickly. 'Well, you're 80 percent or so of where you were at when you came in, and we have to exit you because your insurance won't pay for this anymore. You've taken 2-3 weeks off, you're good!' Actually, they're worse off than they were before, because they didn't get the proper amount of time off and/or the proper amount of treatment. Further, that person was not ideally-equipped on the first place—because they got injured, let's be honest," John says.
"We're applying that pro-sport mentality to kids, and in addition to many other factors, it's almost impossible for anyone to heal in the current system of any sport because of the way it's set up. There’s a compressed time frame and a great deal of guilt that's laid on them. Well, if you take three months off, or you take six months off, or you take a year off—which might be best for some cases—they're like, 'What?' Because they're being sold this idea if you miss anything, you will be left behind."
The overuse injury epidemic in youth sports is the result of many convergent factors. Kids growing up with very little unstructured outdoor play, parents treating their kids like miniature pros, shady club teams looking to squeeze every dollar out of families, constant use of iPhones destroying posture—these all play a role. Yet past generations of kids played for hours upon hours each day, and their bodies rarely broke down. Thus, it boils down to one big question—how is the way kids play today different than it was then?
Guns Don’t Kill People, Beliefs Kill People
BY MICHAEL SHERMER
If by fiat I had to draw one core generalization from a quarter century spent studying the psychology of beliefs, it is that almost everyone thinks that their beliefs are right, both ontologically and ethically. For the most part, people think that their beliefs are true, moral, or both. No one joins a cult—they join a group that they believe is going to help them and/or society. No one thinks they’re practicing pseudoscience—they believe they’ve discovered a new truth that mainstream science has yet to recognize. And very few believe their actions are immoral—at the time they had perfectly rational and moral reasons for acting as they did.
On this latter point, in his 1997 book about serial killers and other career criminals, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, the social psychologist Roy Baumeister documents the fact that to a man (and they’re almost all men), these violent criminals justified their evil acts with what they believed to be perfectly good reasons. Examples include the 1994 police record of Frederick Treesh, a spree killer from the Midwest who explained, “Other than the two we killed, the two we wounded, the woman we pistol-whipped, and the light bulbs we stuck in people’s mouths, [my accomplice and I] didn’t really hurt anybody.” Or the file on serial killer John Wayne Gacy who, after killing 33 boys, rationalized, “I see myself more as a victim than as a perpetrator. I was cheated out of my childhood.” As Baumeister concluded: “you do not have to give people reasons to be violent, because they already have plenty of reasons. All you have to do is take away their reasons to restrain themselves.”
This brings me to the trifecta of mass public shootings this past week in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. While gun control proponents debate Second Amendment advocates over whether it is guns that kill people or people who kill people, I would like to take the causal chain one step deeper and suggest that it is beliefs that kill people.
The motives of the Dayton and Gilroy killers have yet to come into clear focus, although at the time of this writing (August 5) the former’s social media appears to be left-leaning, while the latter praised on his Instagram account a white supremacist/anti-Semitic 19th-century book titled Might is Right or the Survival of the Fittest, adding “Why overcrowd towns and pave more open space to make room for hordes of mestizos?” Clearly inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, Might is Right opens with these chilling lines:
In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign Proclaiming “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.”
Nietzsche’s Übermensch would be proud. […]
Sunday, August 04, 2019
Japanese Buddhist Miyamoto Musashi’s 21 rules of life
I found this site really enlightening and a great thought experiment. Read these and see how they compare to your own views.
Japanese Buddhist Miyamoto Musashi’s 21 rules of life
Of course there are other articles that follow, like:
Here are my 11 principles of mindfulness
And others. Happy reading.
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