Ongoing Education – Page 2

Simple Structured Training 3 – BASICS

“There is no shortcut. Victory lies in overcoming obstacles every day.”

“One Cuts Out The Doors And Windows

To Make The Chamber: In Their Nothingness

Consists The Chamber’s Effectiveness”

TRAINING
RECUPERATION
NUTRITION

THE BASICS ARE THE BUILDING BLOCKS

By “cutting out the doors and windows” of our body chamber with the basic tools of exercise, we begin to see what’s possible in changing specific aspects of the physique. We begin to see weaknesses and we then take them away with discipline, attention and optimal exercises. What is taken away now serves for “effectiveness,” by means of a lighter, leaner, better balanced, more supple, yet stronger, interconnected and synchronistic body.

If a weakness is present and we learn how to eliminate it, the “effectiveness” of the body is enhanced by what is no longer there. If a weakness is known and not addressed, not dealt with or ignored, its presence is then the limiting effect, and this limitation becomes the Achilles heal of our athleticism. Yet, even if it’s addressed but not fully remedied, at least something was done to take it away and the mind and body are stronger from the effort.

THE BASICS TRINE

TRAINING / NUTRITION/ RECUPERATION

The three main aspects of the Basic program are the Training itself, which should involve both activity in the sport of your participation, and training to counter any weaknesses which need addressing; proper Nutrition with a wide variety of foods and sources of energy to draw from, positive to your sport and lifestyle; and adequate Recuperation, which means resting the muscle groups for adequate periods and also resting the whole body properly. No matter what the regimen is, no matter what sport, what goal, what result you’re after, these 3 aspects must be in place for any and every program to work.

Tennis, triathlon, swimming, speed skating, skiing, bodybuilding, golf – each have a recommended set of exercises that are beneficial to that particular sport and are the basic components every participant should master.

But none of these particular activities will be properly ingrained into your consciousness until you physically get out on the field and participate. You can read about them and analyze them all you want; get every video ever made on the subject, consult every expert; but it means nothing until you get your body into the game and experience it firsthand.

Participation in the sport obviously goes hand in hand with Training for the sport. Do the required stretches, warm ups, plyometric moves, weight training, flexibility exercises and mental rehearsal and your body will register a well-rounded repertoire of intuitive experience before you even get to the field.

Once on the field, pay attention to how the body moves, what you use, any limitations felt, the strengths noted, and what it takes to reach “flow,” a comfort level where you are in and of the game rather than fighting it to get results. Training encompasses mind, body and spirit and if attention to one or two components is lacking, so too will the results.

Proper Nutrition is the most sensible way to involve the internal/mental Basic aspect. Eating right requires mental discipline and will give your body the results you seek by having the proper energy available at appropriate times. Food is a drug and each type delivers its own energy either for action, strength, explosiveness, recuperation, endurance, repair; and too often, nothing, no nutritional value whatsoever. This is also known as the proverbial “empty calories.” Finding what helps and eliminating the “nothing” foods is a huge part of everyone’s life, not just the athlete’s.

The third aspect, Recuperation, is often one of the most overlooked components for optimal training. If you are sore, or tired, or hung over, or overfed, a tendency to let focus drift occurs because mentally, you may feel there is always another day. You let your body down with inadequate rest, you let your mind down with inadequate discipline, and you let your goals down because you’ve chosen to be one step further rather than one step closer to a goal.

There are certain things that can be done every day toward your sport or discipline and certain things that should only be done with 48 hours rest, and sometimes more. Intuition and knowing your own body and its abilities only comes with consistent attention and feedback. You must know when to rest it, and when to talk yourself out of the pain and into the training room to massage the body with blood flow and flexibility.

Full recuperation is also a must, to enable the body to bounce back and often launch into a new level of physicality with greater insights and energy and a fully restored focus that comes from stepping back once in a while to observe, meditate and reevaluate approaches or disciplines.

TRAINING BASICS

You are cutting out the doors and windows of your body by refining your moves to suit your particular goals. If you are bodybuilding or sculpting, you add more shape in one area, take away bulk in another. The spaces between constitute all that needs to remain.

The Training Basics apply to all sports, all bodies. This is what building strength is all about. If you learn only these basics and practice them consistently, you will benefit, mind and body, and improve your sport as a result. If you’re going to do something repeatedly for a better part of your life, you’d better learn what’s safe, as well as comfortable, and what it could possibly do to your body from a structural standpoint, in addition to learning how to prevent injuries rather than repairing breakdowns.[amazon asin=B00NGQNP1Q&template=add to cart]

GET THE WHOLE BOOK Simple Structured Training HERE

HEART AND HANDS – Chapter 2 SST

“The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps – we must step up the stairs.” –Vance Havner

HEART & HANDS

“One Hollows The Clay And Shapes It Into Pots:

In Its Nothingness Consists The Pot’s Effectiveness.”

By “hollowing the clay” of our bodies to shape them to our desired forms, we open the heart and open the hands, literally and figuratively. We reach in each direction of a stretch because our bodies have become huddled and contorted, compressed and distorted by our daily deeds.

What we do with the “clay that shapes the pot” varies according to our talents, ambitions, vision, instruction and application. We are created equal, barring background, deformities or handicaps. We all have the same flesh and bones that are our substances. We each have our own specific, genetic make-up which makes us physically look the way we do, shapes our muscles, and determines the length of our limbs and the strength of our hearts. This is the “nothingness” we begin to shape into something greater.

We open the heart, letting calmness and fresh air to enter and expand its chambers. The fats and processed foods constricting its essential movement and basic operations are allowed to release. The pressure on the organs from bad posture, endless sitting, slouching and gravity itself is changed when reaching high, bending low and stretching out flat on the floor. The “nothingness” there is the space between the arms and legs, between the chest and neck and tailbone as the flat earth grounds you and calms the vibrations of the body to a noticeable hum that lulls the body into the “ahh” you are, laying flat on the floor, mimicking Da Vinci’s perfect proportions as you expand in every direction by laying motionless. You arch your body to receive this “nothingness” which really becomes the “effectiveness” your body needs.

Opening the heart and hands to the challenges of the body in exercise movements forms the clay of our flesh. What is taken away, in terms of extraneous equipment and entertainment, are further distractions from the centered focus one needs in exercise. By taking away, we gain. By using our hearts and our hands we are freed to new levels of improved movement.

We take what we have, and through activity, nutrition and environment we develop our abilities and talents. We hollow the clay and shape the pots that are our lives. We add more muscle here, take fat away there, add strength, flexibility, and balance and by this gain speed, endurance, power and longevity. Our “effectiveness” comes from developing what we have to begin with.

The effective “nothingness” is the ability to stop thinking during competition and allow the body to perform automatically. If balance, footwork, stability, strength and flexibility are practiced consistently, play becomes play. The neuroskeletal system responds to the stimulus put upon it, compensating at various angles, planes and leverages with speed, force and focus.

We all begin with the same set of tools; our bodies that we were born with, our brains and hearts to become whatever we set out to become, and our hands and legs to get us wherever we move toward. We each have “Heart and Hands.”

START WITH THE HEART

The first thing to identify us before birth is the ultrasound of our heartbeat. That is all that defines us. It identifies us as a human in our mother’s womb. That is where we started. The Latin origin for the word “Core” is “Heart”.

As we begin any exercise program or workout regimen we should also start with the heart to make sure it is strong enough to handle the stress we plan to put before it. By learning to target and train the heart for ultimate efficiency, you can increase many areas of the whole physical system by concentrating on just one. The stronger the heart, the stronger the whole system you can build around it. If it is weak, so too will you be.

The benefits of beginning a cardiovascular program are numerous. The first goal is to raise your heart rate through aerobic exercise. Walking exercises your lungs and circulatory system, bringing more oxygen and blood to the brain and heart tissue, which improves mood, alertness, and stimulates the release of endorphins, the “feel good” hormones. By releasing endorphins it combats depression and elevates mood in general, along with well-being and self-esteem through accomplishment, confidence and self –sufficiency.

Walking is also the most available form of exercise, it can be performed virtually anywhere, has the lowest incidence of injury and enhances mobility. Anyone can do it, from the obese 8 year old to the ailing 80 year old. It keeps blood pressure normal, enriches the heart and arteries, lowers cholesterol, increases bone strength and burns excess calories in the most beneficial, least taxing way.

Other positive side effects are that sleep improves and the nervous system gets a workout by stimulating balance and stability when moving your arms rapidly in a rhythmic, cadenced tempo. Once this simple exercise is incorporated into a daily regimen, it often leads to other forms of cardiovascular training.

The maximum heart rate is basically calculated as the number 220 minus your age, multiplied by 70-85% to find your optimal heart rate zone. There are other more precise ways to gauge optimum heart rate, but this is a simple formula that works. For example: a 30 year old would be 220-30 = 190. 70% of that would be 190 x .70 = 133 heartbeats per minute. To exercise in a higher zone, multiply by .80 for 152 heartbeats and let that be the upper levels per minute. The simplest way to check your heart rate is to count your pulse for 6 seconds and multiply that by 10, i.e., 15 pulses x 10 = 150 heartbeats per minute.

Keeping the heart in this zone for a 22 – 33 minute period will begin to show immediate benefits. If it’s too hard to sustain that rate, that’s all the more reason to keep working at it consistently, but at a slower pace. If it’s easy to achieve, try taking it to 85% of your maximum and attempt to sustain that level for 44 – 55 minutes. This is the cardio-effect. This is exercising the heart to handle the workload you plan to put on it with exercise and weights.

Start with the heart. A healthy heart will garner far-reaching effects by burning excess calories and conditioning the whole body to work more efficiently. Exercising the heart in an aerobic capacity will put the body in motion as well as the blood. The less resistance the body has internally, by keeping a healthy heart system, the more performance you will get out of the graduated aspects of training.

This is the something from nothing the poem refers to; you may not be doing anything more than walking, but by doing it with a plan and concentrated effort, you are effectively causing the body to change by accepting or rejecting the exercise, and compensating further progress.

By beginning with the heart and hands we assure our bodies and minds of exactly what we start with. Going through a week of freehand exercises will get the body acclimated to exercise, will point out weaknesses, imbalances and strengths, and will incorporate a discipline that accepts no exceptions or excuses because the body and gravity are all that’s required to begin.

This is what Nike meant when it said, “Just do it” The effective nothingness is the ability to stop thinking during competition and allow the body to perform automatically. To shape yourself for a particular sport is to fashion your personal vehicle that drives you to your chosen destination.

USE YOUR HANDS

Use the equipment necessary for every sport and activity that you currently have and always will have, YOUR BODY. Use your bodyweight as its own resistance when you begin a strength training program. Once you learn how to add repetitions and sets to a foundation based on good form, you’ll learn how to build a program that disciplines your body in every area, alleviating weaknesses and building strength upon strength for better athletic performance, better health, longevity and lifelong activity. And you’ll learn how to get all you need from the environment already available to you.

A step, a floor, a pull-up bar, a chair, a resistance ball, a track, a gym, a pool, a park, a playground all offer areas where a little knowledge, imagination, discipline and commitment can increase your level of fitness 110% from where it currently is. Sometimes the simplest training can teach us the most about our bodies. A push up teaches us uniformity, balance, strength, discipline, pacing, endurance, stability and a way to see measurable gains on a timely basis. As long as you have your hands you can build upper body strength.

Deliberate, repetitive, identical, one-right-after-the-other–moves, train the muscles and also the neuroskeletal system. Begin with as many repetitions as you can, until you can perform 11 perfectly. By holding the contraction and extension fully, you’re sending serious signals to your nerve fibers. You’re giving your muscles a predetermined “groove.” The shape they take is determined by your will, vision and ability to concentrate fully in each repetition.

STRENGTHEN THE POSTURE and BALANCE THE SYMMETRY

STRENGTHEN THE POSTURE and BALANCE THE SYMMETRY

Notice how many people are hunched at the shoulders, slouched in their seats, uneven in their stride, top-heavy or bottom-heavy. The population is getting more and more out of balance at younger and younger ages.

How can a parent tell his child to stand up straight when his own shoulders are hunched or has a back in posterior tilt because of an oversized potbelly? Where are children supposed to learn to exercise daily when their gym teachers are 60, 70, 80 pounds overweight? How do you bring balance to lives filled with infrequent, non nutritious meals and sedentary excuses for play? You start by drawing a clear example, by leading rather than preaching.

Many people striving for fitness end up hindering their progress by a lack of balance. They should strive to balance their body symmetrically and increase their strength proportionately, in addition to enhancing lung capacity and endurance.

If your sport of choice requires club-speed, bat-speed, racquet speed or arm speed of any kind, than the surrounding muscles must be worked equally. Determine the speed and area of stride required for your sport. Running long, straight distances tax the body and its energy differently than short bursts of lateral or multidirectional movements. Mimicry of movement, such as weighted swings, are often detrimental to technique when overdone. All sports, played and participated in by all types and levels of athletes, gain unmatched athleticism when symmetry, strength and speed are garnered and gained through a balanced approach.

There are many people working to be fit, improve cardiovascular shape with marathon aspirations, become better defined or lighter and leaner, but the initial attention should go toward strengthening the posture and balancing the symmetry. Posture is the vertical alignment of your carriage. The structural integrity of your skeletal system is enhanced through Pilates, chiropractic adjustment and strength training. They align the framework your flesh rests upon.

Symmetry is the top to bottom and left to right proportions. This is enhanced by yoga, massage and strength training. Pilates and chiropractic work the bones, while massage and yoga work the muscles. Strength training works both the bones and the muscles.

CONSISTENCY EQUALS RESULTS

If you make your workouts, cardio sessions and meal preparations with attentive frequency, you’ll gain consistent results in strength, shape and health. You will never make consistent gains with inconsistent effort.

If your schedule requires fast, easy meals, take the effort to have on hand the best types of foods, prepared with the greatest benefit for nutritional input, so that you’re adding to your health and energy rather than taking away from it. By choosing exercises that strengthen your weaknesses rather than always working “favorites,” you alleviate the weak links that sooner than later materialize as injuries. By consistently using proper form on every plane, your shape will have more depth and therefore more appeal from every angle, in addition to functionality.

You must make a plan and work that plan, with enough common sense to know when to back off and when to add intensity. It does no good to show up and lazily go through the motions. If all you have to offer is 20 minutes of concentration, put what you’ve got into it and go home. Attend to the details. Exercise with attention to equal intention and leave when it falters.

The body responds to consistent effort. Train it often, as scheduled, and gains will result. Feed it in adequate amounts with rich, varied, whole foods and it responds with energy, alertness, slimness, longevity and a healthy immune response. Or, as too many are currently choosing, feed it with fat-laden, processed foods, poisonous tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks and empty calories and it responds as toxicity incarnate, with disease and debility.

If you train to become a better musician, you consistently work harder at practice and become a better player. An artist must create art by consistently practicing technique. An athlete must consistently prepare their body to the best of its capacity for performance, to become better athletes. That training never goes away. Just like music lessons, or artistic training, the daily ritual of practice lifts the play to uninhibited, unrestricted performance. Your body speaks a language and sometimes it shouts when it hurts and sometimes it whimpers when it’s beaten, but it always responds to the stress put on it by accommodating and preparing for the next time that load is put in front of it. Consistency equals preparedness.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

The first step with Simple Structured Training is to Think. You should be conscientious of what your body is going through on a daily basis.

What do you want?
How soon do you want it?
How much are you ready to sacrifice to get it?
How much time are you willing to invest in getting in shape?
What equipment and facilities do you have to work with?
What are you willing to learn?
What are your ultimate goals?

It’s no different than anything else in life. No one has anything new to offer. These revolutionary products on infomercials are simply new ways of taking your money with century old techniques of achieving your goal, like walking! Some books are full of cute phrases and new tags for old exercises, sit-ups are “Abdominal Abolishers.”

So many books and videos are started with promises like, “ In just 3 weeks…10 minutes…2 months, etc.” What comes next? What happens after the 12-week workout – that wasn’t suited to your body style in the first place – is over, and you’re far short of the promised results? Do you know anything more about your body? Or did you just follow painted footsteps around on the gym floor for 3 months? If you’re here to stay, than so too should your workouts and some type of physical activity, every day.

POETRY IN MOTION

The flexibility, the balance, the strength, the dexterity, the resilience, the blind bravery of a child is everyone’s right. By ignoring your body through inactivity, by forgetting to play, you’re really killing yourself. All the things keeping you from exercise or play don’t compare to the benefits found with fitness. Every single aspect of your life, for all of your life, is positively affected when you put some thought and work into exercise and fitness.

As children, we experienced exhilaration and jubilation often enough to make it a natural thing in our growing lives. A drawing, a starred homework paper, a song, a cartwheel, a picture in the clouds, a hug, a fast bike ride home, a greeting from our dog, could each have been enough to trigger a feeling of that moment being more than ordinary life had to offer. Sometimes we noticed it, and sometimes it went by like the wind we ran through, but those magic moments were there for us to experience, and the feelings associated with them can be conjured for years to come in various situations.

Through our physical natures we transcend earth and achieve the spiritual. All athletes in all sports experience it at some time in their lives. The best athletes achieve it most often. There are many modes available for achieving this transcendence to the spiritual through the physical plane in competition. Dancers, artists, musicians, architects, writers and actors also experience this elevation by going deep within to bring out this magic, revelatory moment which inspires and awes others each time they’re reviewed. This synchronistic execution of performance meeting preparation is the definition of “Poetry In Motion.”

There’s a reason these “things” are called “feelings.” There’s a reason victory and defeat bring equal tears of emotion. We are physical beings in three-dimensional space working on limited time. It is our privilege, blessing and duty to make the most of it. With Simple Structured Training, you can make the “eventful” the “everyday.”

The poem by Lao Tzu, Show Simplicity, Hold Fast To Honesty, defines the essence of how Simple Structured Training should be approached, step-by-step, with clarity, vision and patience. Each age and culture have their own proponents of living the merits of an active life. From Socrates and Hippocrates to Tzu, Thoreau, Whitman, Lalane and Schwarzenegger, being in tune with our inner physicality accentuates the life lived on our exteriors, and resonates to those closest to us. As Einstein said, it is important to work only as much as it allows us to increase our leisure.

Life should be long. Give yourself enough time to find what works for you in keeping the physical aspects of your life working and intact. There is room for experiment. There is room for error. But there must be room for trial. I cannot help but stress how much an active life, especially one begun early, affects the way you look at everything from the simplest challenges, to the dreams and wishes you hold for your children.

Sporting events and our interest in them have grown tremendously. More schools have teams in more sports, with children specializing sooner in life. The Olympics add events annually. We have more food choices, more recreational outlets, more indulgences, yet more disease. Why not make your choices the ones that prove fruitful and beneficial to allow the longest, most abundant life possible across all aspects.

There is an Olympian in each one of us, whether we pursue that route or not, whether we’d even been to or seen an athletic event. As life courses through us, energy begets energy and the more we give, the more we get.

IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH “YOU”

IT BEGINS AND ENDS WITH “YOU”

Simple Structured Training starts with the equipment necessary for every sport and activity that you currently have and always will have – your body. People complain that they can’t get to a gym, don’t have the equipment, or can’t work out alone because they need a spotter or partner to assist them, motivate them, support them.

Simple Structured Training teaches you how to use your bodyweight as its own resistance when you begin a strength training program. Once you learn how to add repetitions and sets to a foundation based on good form, you learn how to build on a program that disciplines your body in every area, alleviating weaknesses and building strength upon strength for better athletic performance, better health, longevity and lifelong activity.

Simple Structured Training works on the weaknesses hidden or ignored which hold you back from superior performance. It increases vertical and horizontal leap distances, directional mobility, and explosive power. Yet, it is simply a collection of exercises known by man for as long as they’d had a name for them. You must think of how you’re currently training, why you are training, and if that training is effective enough to help you improve in your sport and your life.

Simple Structured Training asks you why and how you train in the first place. When you learn how your body works toward your respective activity, you begin to look at the movements you rehearse in practice so that performance becomes automatic on the field and reaction comes first rather than reflexion. This deep-seated mental acuity is key to making even the most simple work, play.

Simple Structured Training are a core group of exercises that everyone at every level should do. Balance, coordination, flexibility, strength, speed, agility, ability to recover, mental sharpness and physiological training are crucial at every age. As you train the body, you train the mind. You begin generally, learn, grow, feed-back, get more specific, and refine goals to continually monitor your plan until you get to a level of maintenance that fits both your time and physical demands.

What typically happens is that an athlete begins to favor the training he or she is stronger at, that which comes easier. Some would rather run than stretch, without realizing stretching would allow faster and longer runs. Some choose to strength train rather than run, not realizing the benefits of oxygen uptake on muscular endurance. The athlete that gets by on talent and genetics alone survives for a while with intermittent peak performances spotted by occasional injuries. The well-rounded athlete, who focuses on training weaknesses to strengths, while strengthening natural abilities, usually enjoys the longest career by constantly learning and achieving and often passing on this wealth of knowledge by example to others.

When you’re tuned in to exactly how your muscles feel, you’re doing it for you. If you’re going too fast and not concentrating on the movement, you’re doing it for a coach or condition, to just “get it done”. Once you find yourself making it harder on purpose, pushing for extra reps, tuning in to how your body performs instead of taking motion for granted, you’ll know you’re hitting the upper levels of training. Going further, doing extra, paying attention and letting go reward the creative soul many times over. This “feel” is the basis of Simple Structured Training.

INTENSITY

The understanding you’ll need to be a better athlete is to simply feel what your body is telling you and respond to it with more or less intensity. Is your heart beating too fast as you exercise? Learn where your optimum heart rate should be for a given, desired outcome, then meet it, surpass it, or slow down. Do your joints ache? Pay attention to form, stance, angle, leverage and body position and back off on the weight. Is your bodyfat too high? Lower your intensity around food, and definitely skip the extra repetitions! There are no great secrets left to this training game. The major “bodybuilding,” “shaping,” “renewing,” and “longevity” magazines have the same articles with the same exercises they had 50 years ago. They call it something else, wrap a concept around it, design new equipment and put a fresh-faced model next to it, but it’s still Jack and Jill doing six basic movements.

People who get on a treadmill for forty minutes, four days in a week, after being physically dormant for 4 years, not only begin in an unbalanced state, but are bound to get more mechanically out of balance without flexibility training or working toward their maximum heart rate. Throw in some weight training with too little or too much resistance or incorrect execution, and you often have an injured athlete instead of a strong participant. With this, the frustration factor goes up, interest goes down and apathy returns because “you’re hurt.”

Many people work at jobs requiring them to bend, lift, lean, hunch, squat, or sit for hours on end. Some drive or travel daily, thousands of miles per year. Ergonomics in the office often only means a wrist rest near a computer keyboard, or an adjustable chair, while repetitive stresses are taking their toll on joints and organs. All areas of work, as well as play, can be enhanced by learning how to strengthen the posture and balance the symmetry.

Simple Structured Training

SHOW SIMPLICITY, HOLD FAST TO HONESTY – LAO TZU

Thirty spokes surround the hub:

In their nothingness consists the carriage’s effectiveness.

One hollows the clay and shapes it into pots:

In its nothingness consists the pot’s effectiveness.

One cuts out doors and windows to make the chamber:

In their nothingness consists the chamber’s effectiveness.

Therefore, what exists serves for possession

What does not exist serves for effectiveness.

What is half shall become whole

What is crooked shall become straight

What is empty shall become full.

What is old shall become new.

Whosoever has little shall receive

Whosoever has much, from him shall be taken away.

Whosoever knows others is clever

Whosoever knows himself is wise.

Whosoever conquers others has force.

Whosoever conquers himself is strong.

Whosoever asserts himself has will power.

Whosoever is self-sufficient is rich.

Whosoever does not lose his place has duration.

Whosoever does not perish in death lives.

A stanza of this poem accompanies each chapter in this book, aligning thoughts and requesting an honest assessment of where your present condition is, in order for you to get to where you desire.

SIMPLE STRUCTURED TRAINING

Introduction

What you hold in your hands is a guidebook to better athletic performance and intelligent attention toward life. Simple Structured Training contains the training necessary for all sports at all levels. This book benefits athletes with techniques for strength, stability, flexibility and transformation. It teaches you to dwell on the weaknesses until they become strengths.

In a non-competitive vein, the everyday tasks of carrying groceries, picking up children or working in an environment with repetitive movements can be enhanced by paying attention to what your life does to your body on a daily basis, and how Simple Structured Training can turn obstructions into pathways. As long as your life contains gravity, you can benefit from Simple Structured Training. Strength comes from the self-assurance of making the “eventful” the “every day.” Repeatedly proving your own capabilities ingrains success, until even failing is welcomed because it shows where work needs attention. Training means making practice harder than a game can ever be, so the game becomes an event played at its highest level, always, and the body flies as it should, on autopilot.

Just as the concert pianist practices so as to not make a mistake the day of the concert, the athlete practices, and on game day, plays flawlessly. Practice and training come in many forms, from visualization to single maximum effort. But just like the artist, the athlete must let creativity and intuition win from time to time so “happy accidents” will manifest into higher insights of what the body and its performance can achieve. By occasionally deviating from the normal methods of sets and repetitions, the athlete learns about his body through open-mindedness, as the “feel” of certain movements register in the brain as well as the body.

EVERYBODY HAS A SPORT

Every person has a sport, be it working with weights or walking, tennis or triathlon. By taking a subjective look at yourself, applying the stepping stones of training from the core of what you have to start with, to higher and higher goals of what you can feasibly obtain, every person can improve their performance, lifestyle and health by paying attention to what they are doing to their bodies at work and at play.

Small adjustments in focus can brighten the big picture of what proper training can do for you. With the growing number of athletes involved in organized or recreational sports, and the variety of activities and equipment available to them, the need for balance, definitive plans and guidelines for achievement are absolutely necessary for safe, healthy progress.

Many aspects contribute to superior performance, from breathing to body mechanics, from how much and what goes into your body, to what comes out from it in terms of energy expenditure. Intelligently reviewing these aspects on a periodic basis, adjusting nutrition, exercise and rest in proportion to available time, and carrying through with plans, goals and scheduled routines to the end, will garner higher results, greater rewards, safer techniques, a wider knowledge base and stronger approaches toward every sport, every season.

YOU ARE A COMPETITOR

Competing with yourself is the ultimate struggle. We do it daily on many levels. Attending your workouts makes attending meetings, appointments, presentations and anything else easier, because confident, positive action started you off fresh, first thing in the morning.

You have to prove to yourself that you are the one in control of your day, your diet, your direction, your health. Take the time to take care of yourself, first thing in the morning. Start your day with silence, darkness, calm introspection, a good breakfast, a powerful thought, an attitude of being in control rather than frantically setting out in opposition to all the things vying for your time and attention. By taking charge from the outset, by writing dreams, praying, meditating, stretching, lightly exercising, going inward before going outward, turning everything off instead of on, you will accomplish all the to-do’s on your list with little effort. Life will yank on you from every handle you give it. But if you choose to pull your own weight, you’ll choose which direction you’ll go, what you’ll do first, and what you’ll discard.

As long as we eat, move and breathe, we must exercise. And we must do it before injuries occur, on the front end, to ensure maximum health, happiness and productive contribution. If you’re here to stay, than so too should your workouts or some type of physical activity, every day. The sooner you rest this in your mind, that exercise is just as essential to life as sleeping and eating, the faster you can find an activity which both meets your activity level and style.

Walking is exercise. Biking is exercise. Even gardening is exercise with its reaching and pulling, lifting and moving. If it fits your lifestyle and you enjoy it, stop begrudging it as “work” and respect the benefits available in everyday things. But learn how to do them safely, and to get the most from them, so they benefit your body as well as your mind.

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