Adam Farrah's Blog - Evolved Eating, Evolved Training, Evolved Living...

It’s Up To You – Are You Ready?

February 9, 2013 by 8 Comments

Kristin Doing a PR Over Head Squat

“…If you had one shot, or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?”

-Eminem

Here’s a question for you: Where are you not giving and living 100% in your life right now?

What are you waiting for? Can’t you do better?

Here’s another: Do you have work to do on yourself or in your world that will make your life a better place in 6 months or a year?

Why aren’t you doing it? Whatever reason you have, valid or not, fix it. Now. Go.

And, finally: What can you commit to and start – today – that will make your world a dramatically different place over the course of this new year?

You know what you need to do. It’s no secret to you. Each of us knows where we can be doing better in our lives.

This stuff isn’t easy, though. This blog is all about fitness and training and Paleo eating and healthy living. These topics are – by necessity – about change and growth and making changes in our lives and our habits. Sometimes the changes are difficult and uncomfortable. Very often we learn a lot about ourselves in the process of making the difficult and uncomfortable decisions.

Paleo Diet Seminar at CrossFit Relentless in West Hartford, CT

“Ready When You Are, Bro…”

I’ve returned to CrossFit. I needed to. I needed community and I needed hard training. I needed to be around like-minded people. I needed motivation and support. I needed the energy and passion that comes with CrossFit and I needed a great place to train.

I’ve been friends with Merle Mckenzie from CrossFit Relentless since 2008 – before CrossFit Relentless itself even existed. The Relentless family of gyms is quite a force here in Connecticut. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be training or a CrossFit family I’d rather be a part of.

Now, Merle has a serious “no bullshit” attitude. Those who know him know what I’m talking about. I reached out to Merle because I needed help. I needed help with my training and I needed someone who would push me to do what I said I was going to do. Trust me, you don’t want Merle busting your balls about your lack of training motivation or not doing what you say you’re going to do. Maybe that’s where the “Relentless” name came from…

Now, I KNOW everything I need to train myself to a high level. I have a training and certification resume a mile long. But I wasn’t doing it. My motivation was virtually nonexistent. I was, basically, depressed. I was in a hole and couldn’t get myself out. I was doing great coaching and inspiring others, but I was earning an “F” in self-motivation.

I told Merle I needed help getting my fitness shit back together. His response?

“ready when you are, bro”

Typical Merle. No bullshit. Nothing fancy. No caps or periods either. :-) That one line cut through it all.

It was about me being ready. I had all the resources and support I needed. It was all waiting for me. The question was, was I ready to take the opportunity to do what I said I wanted to do?

Me Push Ups

No more excuses…

All my BIG excuses and distractions excited my life last year and January of this year. I could have laid on the couch for another 6 months sucking my thumb with my stuffed animals, my cuggie and some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, but I wasn’t sure I’d be too excited about myself and my life this summer if I did that.

No one would have necessarily blamed me if I was still depressed and exhausted after the stress of the last two years, but I would have blamed myself. No matter what it took, I was going to get myself out of the mud and get moving again.

“ready when you are, bro”

That was it. It was up to me to decide where I was going to take this…

Choose to Focus on the Positive…

Throughout 2011 and 2012 I did too much waiting and too much living in the future. I blamed myself for – and took responsibility for – the behavior of others way too often. What’s even more sad, is I spent a lot of time accepting others for who they were and how they were showing up in the world while some of these same people criticized me for who I was and how I was showing up.

All that’s over now and I’m working to show up in the world with more strength, courage and integrity.

I WILL show up in the world with more strength, courage and integrity.

It’s time to get serious about building the life I want to live and live it. I think you should do the same if you’re not now.

The lesson I learned over the past few months is that I can live my dreams as soon as I’m ready. Everything I need to live and thrive and be healthy, successful and fulfilled is within me  and it’s within the world I’ve created for myself.

I have all I need. It’s within me and it’s within the world and the friendships and relationships I’ve spent the past 5 years creating and nurturing.

It’s not “out there” and it’s not dependent on a specific person or situation being in my life or not being in my life.

My success and happiness is dependent on me. It’s not dependent on what the non-starters of the world choose to think of me or how they choose to act in my life.

Loose the Non-Starters…

I spent the past year putting 80% of my effort into losers, non-starters and dead-end relationships. I was so drained by negativity and bullshit that I was showing up in the GOOD relationships in my life with too little to give.

Worse, I was showing up FOR MYSELF and for MY OWN life with little vigor and too little to give. I gave some of my best away in places where it didn’t matter and wasn’t appreciated.

Live in the Present…

Here’s a hint for you. Live in the present and evaluate your relationships mainly in the present.

Every time I go to one of the Relentless gyms I’m happy to be there, happy I went and I leave having pushed my limits and improved. I feel good in those places and with those people. I’m inspired to improve myself and bring more of myself to the world when I’m there and after I leave.

I’m not “waiting” to feel good “later.” I’m not waiting for it to get better there. It’s good there now.

Don’t wait for things and people to change. Stop making sacrifices. Stop sacrificing your values for others. Stop living your life halfway.

Stop living in the future.

Live now.

If things aren’t flowing in certain parts of your life now, it’s very likely you need to make some changes. They might be difficult and uncomfortable changes, but you probably need to make them.

Sometimes it’s hard to do what’s best for you and what will serve your long-term goals.

But, where will you be in 6 months, a year, two years, five years or a lifetime if you keep doing what you’re doing? Better make a change sooner instead of later…

Make This YOUR Year…

Can you step into your power RIGHT NOW and live the way you want? I bet you can at least start.

I’m going to make this my year. The past two years have been very difficult. A large part of them were spent cleaning up the mess that resulted from my leaving my old life behind so I could live the life I wanted and had envisioned for myself.

I’ve now got a blank canvas to create the life I want on. It took more than two years, but I HAVE that blank canvas now. It’s up to me. Life’s waiting on me now.

“ready when you are, bro”

I’m going to live that life now. I’m going to step into it and live it and make this my year to finally start living. I’m inviting you to do the same with me…

I want to be better. I CAN be better and I WILL be better. I want to bring more of myself to the world. I want the world to be a better place because I’m in it.

I’m ready.

ttys

Adam

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Surviving in Our Age of Digital Distraction…

July 14, 2012 by 5 Comments

Someone is Wrong on the Internet Cat

Slaying the Digital Dragon…

No, I’m not getting into computer games. I’m not turning into a World of Warcraft nerd. What I am doing is making a stand against the “non-Paleo-ness” of the modern world. I can’t stand it anymore and I’m leaving the building…

On an evolutionary note, you could think of it this way: Our world has changed dramatically and permanently with the proliferation of digital devices, communication and social media. It will never be like it was and we have no idea what it will be like in 3, 5 or 10 years. If you buy into the whole evolution thing, it makes sense that there will be those of us who learn, grow and adapt to the changing environment and those of us who don’t. We’re talking survival of the fittest and adaptation to environment here – and you can argue that the stakes have never been higher. (For a fascinating look at what the technological revolution and evolution we’re living in means, check out the book “What Technology Wants” by Kevin Kelly.)

The Age of Digital Distraction…

I’ve been losing my mind lately. I’ve been working harder and harder and stressing more and more – and getting less done than ever. Over the past few weeks, I finally got some perspective – thanks to Leo Babauta and Steven Pressfield – and could finally see that my constant “busy-ness” was producing virtually nothing of any real value to me or anyone else.

Worse, I wasn’t really progressing toward my goals and the lifestyle I wanted. And, even worse than that, my physical and emotional health was beginning to backslide just a bit. Not the direction I want things to be going in and definitely the “canary in the coal mine” as far as the future my current actions and habits were creating.

“If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”

 - Douglas Adams

I talked a lot about digital distraction and the mess we’re in in my post “You Can’t Have it All – And You Don’t Want It All Anyway…” In that post, I laid out the fallacy we’re sold in the modern world about “having it all” and how we’re trying to have it all and having less and less of what we want the more we try.

My current goal is to have only a very few things that I’m engaged in – but very important, meaningful and compelling things.

I talked in depth about my goals for the coming year in “You Can’t Have it All – And You Wouldn’t Want It All Anyway…” and “Time’s Up! Are You a Professional or an Amateur?” The rest of this post explains the way I’m going to accomplish those goals…

Experiments in (Paleo) Lifestyle Design…

Tim Ferris’ tagline on his blog is: “Experiments in Lifestyle Design.” (http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/). What I’m focusing on here are “Experiments in Paleo Lifestyle Design.”

Just like our bodies didn’t evolve to thrive on technologically produced and molested food and hour-long treadmill workouts while watching a TV, our body, mind and spirit didn’t evolve to be inundated by information, requests, emails, tweets, texts and updates 24/7 across multiple digital devices.

Trying to create outstanding health while under this barrage of digital information is likely just as ignorant as trying to build outstanding health while eating McDonald’s or walking on a treadmill and watching a TV…

Intellectual understanding is nice, but nothing really happens until you put things into practice. My blog is Practical Paleolithic after all, so actually making this all work in the real world is important.

Intellectualizing is nice, but mental masturbation can only take you so far – then you have to actually ACT. This is where 99.9% of people miss the boat…

So this is where the “experiments” part of “Experiments in Paleo Lifestyle Design” comes from and it’s where the “practical” in “Practical Paleolithic” comes from.

Here’s what I’m going to do…

I’m going on a serious Social Media and Digital fast. That’s right. A fast. I’m prioritizing my writing and my training. My health and my work come first. The rest comes second or not at all.

(BTW, this absolutely does NOT mean I won’t ever be online again – or that I don’t love and value EVERY SINGLE person who I’m connected to online. It’s just that the constant pointing and clicking and tweeting and chatting is beginning to erode my health and sanity :-) )

Slaying the Email Monster…

I’ll attempt to check my email every day, but that won’t always happen. I’ll check it every other day at a minimum – and I mean ONCE in that period. ONCE…

I’ll reply to the important emails as soon as I can and I’ll que up the others to be responded to as I’m able. That’s it. I’m going to shoot for an hour every day or two for email and THAT’S IT. I’ll have to work on being OK with letting some of them slide.

If you think I’m nuts, think about this:

There was a resent study done by the University of California Irvine and The US Army on the effects of email “vacations” that showed email caused workers to change screens twice as often as those who didn’t have access to email. Those with access to email were in a “steady state of high alert” with constantly elevated heart rates. Those removed from email access for 5 days experienced a more natural and variable heart rate.

Can you say CORTISOL?

And, while you’re at it, think about this:

If your email program checks for new email every 5 minutes – and you haven’t turned off the “new email alert” option – you’re getting interrupted about 96 times in an 8 hour day. That’s NOT including interruptions by text message, Facebook, Twitter, etc. ON TOP of that number.

(Both of the above are from an article in the August 2012 Macworld. There’s a revolution going on currently where highly innovative companies are focusing on seriously minimizing or entirely avoiding email. You can read about what’s going on with this topic in the August 2012 Macworld issue.)

You’re getting beeped and bleeped at by an electronic device a few hundred times a day most likely… How Paleo is THAT?!?!?!?!

While most of this new and expanding thinking about avoiding email is aimed toward improving productivity, my purpose is really toward improving my health, mental state and thinking quality. Yes, I want to become more productive at producing work that matters, but the real aim for me is to improve my health, healing and training. (And,further, I believe that producing more work that matters will improve my health as well…)

Paleo Internet and Social Media – Web 0.0

I’m a huge fan of social media. I love what the social web has done for the world in general and me in particular. But enough is enough.

For quite a while now, I’ve been experiencing worse and worse anxiety, lack of focus and distraction. And I’ve been getting very little of my important life’s purpose-level work done. Yes, I had seen the latest boob-centric hilarity posted by my dear old friend Wild Gorillaman and I’ve seen about 30 of the newest “You Can Do It! Rah! Rah! Rah!” motivational slogan pictures that were circulating this past hour on Facebook, but as for truly important WORK, I was accomplishing very little and seriously spiking my cortisol while I was doing it. Or, not doing it as the case may have been…

It's Not Ectoplasm Red Head Ghostbusters

Where this All Came From…

Last week this all reached a peak when I got up, sat with my fresh-ground organic coffee, did some reading, listened to the birds, felt the sun coming in on the porch… And proceeded to turn on the computer and start checking email and Facebooking and feel my calm focus fade. My heart started beating more rapidly, my thoughts started racing and, next thing I knew, I had 50 browser windows open and an absolute glut of things I just “had to” read and “had to” do and “had to” reply to.

Within about a half an hour, I was stressed, overwhelmed, had added about 80 things to my to-do list for the day, felt hopeless and out of control and had ZERO desire to write and create. Oh, and my stomach had started bothering me…

NO MORE!

I’ll still be on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, but I’ll be sharing my own content a lot more and making more infrequent – but more meaningful – contributions on there. I’ll be engaging in a lot less time wasting.

It’s Not Just Me…

Yeah, I might just be some crazy anomaly. But I’m not. In the past few years there’s been a massive increase in books and programs and blogs and whatever else related to dealing with this incredible digital stimulation and information glut that’s exploding around us.

There’s more opportunity to create and learn and grow and explore and contribute in this new age of ours, but there’s also more opportunity than ever to get buried under an avalanche of to-do lists, irrelevant nonsense and requests for your time and attention that you could never, ever complete no matter what you did.

Taking a New Path…

My personal approach is going to be dual approach. On the one hand, I’ll practice “selective ignorance” as Tim Ferris calls it in “The Four Hour Work Week” and I’ll work to focus on the absolute minimum of things. But those things will be those that are the most important – as Leo Babauta talks about in “The Power of Less.”

At the same time, I’ll leverage technology and use “systems and software” as advocated by guys like David Allen (“Getting Things Done”), Michael Linenberger (Master Your Workday Now!) and David Sparks (macsparky.com).

What I WON’T do – anymore – is point and click and stress and check and tweet and run in circles endlessly like a douchebag and get almost nothing done after 12 hours on the computer. Those days are now over.

My goal is that all my online friends will see more focused, meaningful, relevant and ground-breaking new work from me. That alone will make me happier. And the lower stress lifestyle I’m experimenting with will likely help as well.

Stay tuned. There’s some cool new stuff coming!

ttys

Adam

Bonus…

Here’s a really funny post about how silly us Paleo types are at times…

“A Day in The Life of a Paleo Warrior!”

Bonus Number 2…

If the stuff I’m talking about in this post are interesting to you and you’d like to pursue more on them, here are the books I’d highly recommend you check out:

“The Power of Less” – Leo Babauta

“The Four Hour Work Week” – Tim Ferriss

“Getting Things Done” – David Allen

“Control Your Workday Now” – Michael Linenberger

David Sparks’ Screencast Series on the Omnifocus software

“The War of Art” – Steven Pressfield

“Turning Pro” – Steven Pressfield

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Time’s Up! Are You a Professional or an Amateur?

July 11, 2012 by 17 Comments

“This isn’t the stage we want to set going into our 40’s…”

Robb Wolf said this to me in early 2010 during a phone consult. These words stuck with me. At the time, I was 38 and Robb was 39 (I think). Back then, I was still living in my too big house with the two mortgages, stressed out of my mind and sick with adrenal fatigue and digestive issues galore. (You can read more about my personal journey to Paleo here…)

In a few weeks, I’ll be 40. I don’t get too hung up on age. Particularly because I plan to live to 120 (Seriously, I do.). But the 40s thing and Robb’s ominous words do have me thinking. I think this is the point where you either go in one direction or the other. As in, you either become that seemingly “ageless” person who doesn’t look, act, think or perform with any regard or respect for their age or society’s ideas of what people that age can do, or you go along with the mainstream media and the medical establishment and everyone else and start down a road of diminished function, misery, prescriptions, falls and broken hips and senility.

Do I feel 40? No… And, yes…

Actually, I feel young and vital and nowhere near 40.

Usually…

Other times, I feel old and exhausted and like I can’t take another second of any of this digital age and all the distraction and stimulation (There’s more on digital distraction and how to deal with it here…).

But, I’m not going to get hung up on my age or anything else. Randy Coture turned 49 this past month and he seems to be in OK shape :-) My Jiu Jitsu teacher’s teacher, Roy Harris, is 50 this year. He moves OK for an old guy :-)

Randy Coture

Randy Coture – UFC Hall of Famer

What’s cool about Roy Harris is that he’s evolved his whole game so that it works for someone who isn’t 22 and a gifted athlete. His strategy and technique is so refined that he can move slow and he doesn’t need a lot of speed or explosive strength. Not that he doesn’t have either, he just doesn’t rely on either because there’s always someone stronger and faster. But smarter and more aware of the infinite, subtle details is a game you can continue to improve with age – that game has no limitations.

Roy has told us that he loves rolling with the young explosive “studs.” Roy’s Jiu Jitsu is so good and so refined that he can just let them explode and push and power and work for as long as they want – which isn’t very long no matter what kind of shape they’re in. While they work, Roy doesn’t do much. Once he feels them get tired and start to breathe heavy, he goes to work nice and calmly at his own pace and does what he wants with them. That’s experience and mastery… Every one of us who’s rolled with Roy at Modern Self-Defense says the same thing – it’s like wrestling with a giant python with mind reading capabilities…

Roy Harris BJJ

Roy Harris – Martial Artist

But, You Still Have to Work…

When you’re in your 20′s and early 30′s, you feel like you still have time. With the arrival of 40, I don’t feel like I have time to fuck around anymore. I have plenty of time to do everything I want to do – the writing I want to do, the books I want to create, the ideas I want to put out into the world, the training I want to do… But I DON’T have time to WASTE. I know what I want and I know where I want to go and I don’t have another year or 3 or 5 or 10 for excuses and halfhearted attempts and schedules so full of “everything” that nothing ever gets done.

Time’s up! It’s either time to put up or shut up and get some Depends and call Wilfred Brimley to set up automatic delivery of your diabetes supplies. And, don’t forget your oatmeal…

Wilfred Brimley Selling Quaker Oatmeal

What’s Not Working…

So, this is all great. I know what I want and I know how to get it and I’m still young enough to actually do it.

So, what’s the problem? What’s not working?

What’s not working is me. I mean, I’m working my ass off, but I’m not getting where I want to go necessarily. I’m doing too many “urgent” things and not enough of the important things that are all too easy to let slide.

In fact, if you read “The War of Art” and “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield, you’ll learn that we are naturally prone to let the really important non-urgent things slide. It’s a lot easier to put off writing a blog post or a book or an article and check your email or your Facebook status again for the hundredth time that hour. It’s easier to deal with all the emergencies that blow up in the moment than it is to get to a Jiu Jitsu class or get your next workout in or to write another section in your next book.

Pressfield will tell you that this is where the amateurs are separated from the professionals. Amateurs follow – and embrace – the distractions. Professionals “Do The Work” and “Turn Pro.”

Turning Pro…

Right now, I’m reading “Turning Pro” by Steven Pressfield. It’s a great book that’s brought a ton of value to me already – and I’m not even halfway through it! Steven’s main point is that we need to “turn pro” if we’re going to stop messing around and actually create the things we want to create in our lives and in the world.

So, thanks to Steven’s work I’m “Turning Pro.” I’m going to treat my writing and my training as a professional would…

Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield

 

I Was a Pro Once Before…

Way back in my bodybuilding days I was a “pro.” Not really, but I had the mindset of a pro. The best training of my life and the best shape of my life came after about 6 months of focused training for the very first EAS Transformation Challenge back in 1996. What’s funny is that I didn’t even give a shit about the car! I wanted the exposure and the sponsorship and the privilege to be able to train full time as my job. I actually said if I won I wouldn’t go back to school the next year and would start competing.

Of course, I didn’t win the contest and Muscle Media 2000 and Ol’ Bill Phillips turned out to be a little different than we all had thought and hoped, but that time really taught me some things – and it is STILL teaching me things. Back then, I was treating every workout, every run, every meal and every supplement purchase as a career building event. Every night I was focused on getting a perfect night sleep. My workouts started the night before as I reviewed my training journal and read up on a few things that I thought would be useful for the next day’s workout.

My whole “deal” was training back then. I lived it. I truly believed with everything I had that I could win that contest and get the endorsement contract. I didn’t know it at the time, but THIS is what Steven Pressfield means by “Turning Pro.”

Muscle Media 2000 Cover

Building a Boring, Uneventful Life…

The past few years I’ve been working really hard to have a boring and uneventful life. I’m most happy and productive when I have long stretches of uninterrupted time with nothing to do but work out and write and rest and read a good book about writing or training. I’m most miserable and unproductive when I’m running around putting out fires and “managing” my time and my commitments and trying to do “everything.” You can define “everything” in this context as pretty much anything that doesn’t matter in the long run and has nothing to do with any of the important goals in your life.

If A Blogger Never Blogs, Do You Hear Him?

That’s a play on that Zen riddle about if a tree falls on a bear shitting in the woods and no one is around… Or something like that… But, what do you call a writer who never writes? Or a Paleo blogger who’s so stressed by social media, email and digital stimulation he’s on a 24/7 cortisol ride? What about a supposed athlete who isn’t anywhere near his potential – regardless of age.

It’s time to do the f’ing work!

From Here on Out, I’m Doing The Work…

Enough is enough. I’m going to get to work.

Here are my goals:

Write

I’m a writer. Writers write. I’ll write every day from here on out. Early in the morning. I can currently knock out 1000 words or so before 10am. Blogger Chris Brogan says he does about 4000 words a day. He jokingly states his occupation as “Typist” when he fills in the “Hello My Name Is” card at conferences. I want to be a typist like Chris…

And I’ll write offline. Yeah, offline. I’ll copy and past my finished work to the text editor on my blog. No more writing with an open browser and internet connection.

And, I’ll write more Paleo health books this coming year. I have 5 outlined right now. FIVE. Those outlines need to become finished books. And they will.

Train

My good friend Merle just opened CrossFit Ironworks in Higganum, CT and I’ve committed to training there and joining that community. That begins in earnest tomorrow. I’m also hitting BJJ twice a week and getting a run as weather permits. Yoga and/or meditation will happen daily. I’ll get my next belt in BJJ next summer (2013) when Roy Harris is here for his yearly visit.

And, Not Much Else…

The two major goals above are going to take precedence over EVERYTHING else… That’s it. No more messing around. It happens now.

The Futility of Goals and Timelines…

In the above goals you might notice something that contradicts what virtually everyone tells you about how to do goals. My goals above aren’t highly specific and they don’t have definite timelines or other metrics behind them for the most part.

Here’s Why:

The epiphany I got from Steven Pressfield’s work is that showing up and doing the work is most important. And, that’s also what I’m the worst at. So, rather than making huge goals with aggressive timelines and all this other hoopla, I’m setting goals that are little more than just showing up and doing the work. If I get the days and the hours right, I’ll get the months and years right…

So, this time I’m setting the tiny, daily goals and letting them take me where they will. We can all set every hyper-ambitious long-term goal in the world, but without daily action it won’t mean shit – no matter how many times you positively affirm it to yourself…

How About You?

What goals are you procrastinating on? Where can you be “showing up” and getting the work done where you’re not right now? Leave a comment and let me know where you’re going to start focusing and doing your own work on the stuff that’s important to you…

What do you need to “Turn Pro” at to get what you want and achieve your full potential?

ttys

Adam

Here’s a Bonus…

This is a great video my friend Bob shared with me. The guy’s name is Owen Cook and he’s a “dating coach” from the genre of “Pickup Artists” in the book “The Game” by Neil Strauss. Owen is one of the top coaches in the world and he’s also an extremely intelligent and successful guy. In this video, he digs deep into the topics of success and consistency as it relates to him losing over 70 pounds, running his company, perfecting his craft and, well, getting laid… It’s mostly about the former three though :-) Thanks, Bob…

 

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You Can’t Have it All – And You Don’t Want It All Anyway…

June 17, 2012 by 28 Comments

“If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?”

- Douglas Adams

 

This post took me quite a while to write because I was exploring and forming the ideas in it as I was writing it. I feel like I’ve grasped the basics of the issues I’m facing, the path to get to a better place AND there’s enough in here that will help YOU get to YOUR goals – and maybe have more fun doing it besides…

That said, this post is an exploration of what I’m coming to believe are the foundations of success in training, healthy living and the rest of life – and some rants about the games society and culture play that keep us from getting where we want to go…

Information Overload

 

Something that just recently came to me is how many “you don’t have control” messages we get day after day over the years. It came to me, oddly enough, when I realized that I actually DO have full control over my life – at least now I do…

The above is that classic “I Love Lucy” episode where she and Ethel have to work faster and faster to keep up with their work and keep their jobs. What’s particularly fascinating about that scene to me is how it applied to the work style of the time it originated in. Factory or “high-tech” jobs in that time would be just as stressful and overwhelming in those days as a high-tech job is today. Factories and conveyer belt systems were state of the art then just like email, iPads, social media and all that go with them are state of the art now.

Information Overload

You Really DO Have Control…

I recently picked up a copy of the book “Zen Habits” by Leo Babauta. It’s a great book that really made me think. Leo basically takes a “minimalist” approach to his blogging and his life. He has one of the top blogs in the world, so you can’t really argue that his methods don’t work. He basically suggests fewer projects, fewer goals, fewer commitments, fewer daily to-do’s – BUT, he insists that the things you DO choose to focus on are highly important TO YOU and are directly related to your bigger picture goals and vision.

The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

It’s been said in many different ways by plenty of smart people, but here’s the basic issue in Leo’s words:

“For many people these days, work is a constant stream of e-mails, of news and requests, of phone calls and instant messages, of papers and notes and files. The day starts with an in-box full of e-mails, and ends with an in-box just as full, and each e-mail represents a request for information or for actions that we don’t have time to fulfill. We are drinking from a fire hose of information, with no idea of how to reduce the flow.”

- Leo Barabuta

And, also said in many different ways by many smart people, here’s what I believe to be the solution, again in Leo’s words:

“The solution lies in setting limits to how much we consume and do. It lies in making the most of our time by focusing on the most important things, instead of everything….”

- Leo Barabuta

Or, Said Even Simpler…

“Stop all the things that make you a pussy and steal your energy. Get your life back.”

- Jim Wendler

Jim Wendler

I’m Too Busy Trying to be Successful to Succeed…

Already this Spring/Summer I’ve had two pretty large setbacks in my training goals. I’ve had a few more in my personal life as well. I’ve gotten a lot better at controlling the “Voice in The Head” (as Eckhart Tolle calls it) and I’ve been able to ignore (or at least not give full attention to) the “Because you’re a fucking loser!” response that comes back like an echo when I pose the question to myself: “OK, why couldn’t you make that happen?”

But the question still remains: Why did I fail to reach specific goals I had set for myself?

The answer I’ve finally come back to is that I’m not focused enough. Oh, I’m focused on what I want – in my head – but I’m not focused enough in some of  my actions yet. You can THINK about a lot of things – virtually all at once – but you can only DO one thing at a time. Your energy, time, patience, willpower and perseverance are a lot more limited than your brain and ego think.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least”

- Goethe

A Shift In Thinking…

I’ve recently had a pretty major shift in thinking. The short story is, I’m going to take my life back – as Jim suggests above. Regardless, it means I can’t be delusional and fool myself as often as I’d like or for as long as I’d like. She pretty much always calls me out on it.

There was a time when I was really high on the old-school self-help stuff. Even though I’m decidedly “new school” when it comes to just about everything, I read a lot of the older stuff – Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, etc. – in the early years of my interest in changing my life for the better. I don’t feel like that stuff is as applicable to my life anymore – or to modern life in general. I think that stuff is great – and it’s definitely helpful when you’re low on confidence and vision for your life – because it teaches you to be audacious and hyper-ambitious in setting goals and your expectations from life.

But the 21st Century is different. You CAN’T have it all. Honestly, you don’t even WANT it all – because managing it all once you had it would drive you insane! To paraphrase Seth Godin, it makes a lot more sense to choose the ONE THING you have the passion to be the best in the world at and focus on that. Seth is considered the best marketer in the world. To that he’ll add that he’s also the worst TV watcher in the world and the worst meeting attender in the world. He’s chosen the ONE THING he has the passion to be the best in the world at and he’s focusing on that..

So, Here’s My Shift in Thinking…

Instead of focusing on how much I can do and how fast I can “break through the barrier” to achieving my goals, I’m going to take a different approach from here on out. I’m committing the next YEAR to my writing, blogging and training and to very little else. Instead of being audacious and grandiose in my goals – which has its time and place – I’m going to focus on “showing up” every day and doing the little things that add up to success day after day and year after year.

Here are my training commitments for the year:

  • A full year of consistent Wendler 5/3/1 as a foundation for my strength training
  • A full year of consistent Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training leading up to my next belt test July 2013
  • From the foundation of 5/3/1 above, add in Kettlebell Sport training toward the very end of the summer to prep for my CKT Level 2 with Ken Blackburn sometime in 2013

That’s pretty close to it.

No 500 pound bench press. No UFC Title. “Only” one martial art instead of 6, I’m not going to 20 different certs this year… (There will probably be a little MMA and Muay Thai in there too, but it won’t be a focus…) My first reaction to all this a few days ago was “How can that be all I do for the year?!?!?!?!” I look at it now and think “That’s PLENTY…” Of course there will be other training things I do, but the point is, I’ve chosen the things I KNOW I’ll love doing enough and care about enough that a year spent doing them will be a worthy investment of my time. Yes, more might be nice, but not really necessary. Besides, if I do get a little more than the above done, its a bonus…

So, what does it actually take to succeed?

I think what it really takes to make things happen are Focus and Consistency. If I look at every successful period of my life or any time when I achieved a big goal, created something or made something major happen, I was both focused on the project – sometimes to the exclusion of almost everything else – and I was consistent about working on it or learning more of the skills I needed to work on it.

This is me in the mid-1990s…

In the mid-1990s I was about 26 years old and in the best shape of my life. At this point, I had taken a break from college the year before because I had burned myself out so badly that I could barely function. It was the first time I had an encounter with full on adrenal fatigue (called “chronic fatigue” back then) and all the mess that goes with it. (Interestingly, the burnout happened when I was studying less than my happier years previously, but was now trying to juggle a part-time job, a girlfriend an hour away, a social life and a million demands from my “friends” at the time. I’ve actually written about some of the lessons learned form that period in the post “I’ll Never Be Good Enough.”)

This picture was taken after about a year of recovery – 6 months or so of “convalescing” followed by 6-8 months of focused training:

Adam "shredded" in the late 90s

I looked great and I felt great during that time. You could argue about how “functional” my strength and condition was, but I was training in the ways there were state of the art and popular at the time. And I wasn’t exactly weak with a 405 Deadlift and Weighted Dips with 3 – 45lb Plates around my waist…

If I look at the other times I’ve really accomplished or achieved anything in my life it’s ALWAYS been a time of nearly 100% focus on the goal and the exclusion of as much of everything else as I can possibly get away with. Building this blog, writing my book, rebuilding my health, getting my motorcycle license and learning to ride, productive training in martial arts – ALL were times of almost complete focus on the single goal.

By contrast, the most unhappy, unproductive, depressed, anxious and confused times in my life have ALWAYS been the times when I was being pulled in too many different directions and had too many things going to focus on just the one or two that were most important.

More Lies from Our Friend, “The Establishment…”

A few years ago, I wrote about the fantasy we get sold in mainstream society about having it all. That post was called “Fitness, Health, Money and LIES” and I took a look at the common fallacies and misconceptions that spread through the media – particularly the training and fitness media.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Seth Godin – who writes THE NUMBER ONE MARKETING BLOG IN THE WORLD – has said over and over again to pick one thing and become the best at it. Here he is saying it in an interview on Technorati.

If you truly are passionate about something, GO DO IT! Don’t believe for a minute that you’re going to be able to do everything all at once. Even Arnold couldn’t do it. He focused on being the best bodybuilder in the world – and succeeded – then he blew up the box office, then he went into politics. He never could have done all 3 at the same time. It would have been impossible. Many have probably tried but we’ll never know, because they never made it…

I think the media likes to promote the “you can have it all” idea for two reasons:

  1. No one likes to think they might have to give up something to get something else
  2. Many, many industries thrive on people being frustrated, misinformed and ready for a quick fix or magic pill

If I wanted to be generous, I might even say that many of the hardworking people who make up the mainstream media actually believe that they CAN have it all. They’re functioning under the same delusion. So the delusion just keeps spreading.”

- From: “Fitness, Health, Money and LIES“

So, in short, don’t buy the hype…

“If  five million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

- Chinese Proverb

All this also reminds me of an Urban Legend that circulated through the university science and engineering programs I went through. Someone always knew someone who heard about some guy who worked full-time, had a family AND was pulling straight A’s in a full-time engineering program on top of it all. Sometimes he was pulling straight A’s in a double major in Mechanical and Chemical Engineering or some other obscene combination – depending on who was telling the story…

The problem with that story – other than the fact that I never met this person or anyone who knew him - personally – is that between classes and labs you’re basically occupied from 9am to 3 or 4pm Mon-Fri in an engineering or chemistry program. What the hell full-time job are you working? Not to mention – and I did the math – on top of the average of 32 hours a week I spent in classes and labs, my nights and weekends were PACKED with homework that I’d barely be able to keep on top of from day to day. There were many, many nights I never went to bed and there were a few times I even went TWO nights in a row without sleeping to get all my work done. And, the funny part is, the people who had part-time jobs on the weekends were always looking for ME on Monday morning to see how I had done this or that from the lab or homework that was due. (By the middle of senior year, I had started to almost completely avoid my classmates because I always had my work done and they were rarely as well prepared as I was. I got sick of helping people who were never in a position to help me back…)

Now, with all that work and sleep deprivation, I still “only” got a B.S. in Chemistry with a 3.4 GPA. That’s without working any kind of job, living at home and being single. Pretty pathetic accomplishment compared to Mr. Awesome with the 20 kids and straight A’s and full-time job…

What’s funny (now) is that I really did feel pathetic and lazy and incompetent for years during and after college because I didn’t work at least part-time while going to school…

Here’s Where It All Comes Together…

As Stuart McRobert says at the beginning of “Beyond Brawn:”

“More of what did not help you over the last few months is not going to help you over the next few months….”

So, herein lies the basic question – and a clue to a basic, human dysfunction that grows more and more prevalent the further into the 21st Century we go: Will you be happier, healthier and more fulfilled with MORE in your life – just MORE stuff to have or do – or will you be happier, healthier and more fulfilled with just a few really important goals achieved, PRs set and truly meaningful things done?

More and more it seems that it’s all just about MORE – more Facebook and Twitter followers, more useless emails to clean up, more inboxes to check, more projects, more goals, more Apps, more accomplishments, more stuff. What if you just chose a tiny handful of the MOST important and meaningful things in your life and focused on those. I know, SCARY right?

But, think about it – what tiny subset of the things you’re doing and working on now would be so satisfying and thrilling that, if they were all you accomplished for the whole year, you’d feel satisfied and fulfilled?

Do those and let the other crap sort itself out…

Now, get to work!

If you want to take action on this stuff I’m talking about and get to more of the stuff that makes you happy and fulfilled, check out these two great (And pretty short!) books:

The Power of Less:

The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

Do More Great Work:

And, if you’re interested in blogging and social media business stuff, you can listen to this podcast from CopyBlogger with Chris Brogan for extra credit:

And, finally, this is a GREAT interview with THE MAN Seth Godin for Problogger:

 

 

There it is. If this post was helpful to you or made you think, I’d love to know about it in a comment or message.

ttys

Adam

 

Dedication…

I’d like to dedicate this blog post to Professor John Tanaka from the Department of Chemistry at UConn. He was one of my favorite professors there and was always great to talk to and learn from. I even called him when I was out of school and working in a lab and couldn’t get an inorganic synthesis experiment to work – he got me right back on track in a few minutes, of course. He passed away in April of this year after 45 years at UConn.

Dr. Tanaka taught me how to think, how to find and process information and how to be resourceful in finding answers to questions. Strange as it may seem, I really enjoyed the hours (and hours) I spent tracking down the answers to the “Library Questions” he assigned us every week. They were like little “information puzzles” that had to be solved – mostly by looking through index after index of older chemistry books. There was no Google or information overload in 1999!

Thank you, Dr. Tanaka. I’m a better scientist for having studied with you…

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Fitness Goals – Setting, Refining and Staying Focused…

December 30, 2011 by 11 Comments

Adam's Goal Index Cards

It’s kind of a cliche to get all into “goals” around January 1. Personally, I look at the beginning of a new year as the time to review what I’ve done over the past year, evaluate my current goals, set new ones and redirect or alter my life course as necessary. I work with my goals and with goal setting all year and often on a daily basis as I evaluate, re-evaluate and change and revise my goals. I don’t look at Jan 1 as a time to set goals and then forget them, I see it more as a logical time to increase my focus on my goals and I look at the beginning of the New Year as an ending of one time period and the beginning of another.

This year – 2012 – in particular seems to be shaping up to be particularly intense and productive in some really great ways – many old and unneeded or negative things are ending, many new, positive things are beginning, new goals and opportunities are coming into focus and positive change is pretty much pervasive in my life right now. That makes this New Year even more important to me and has me even more actively focused on the coming year. But, I do with my goals almost daily and think a very regular, year-round focus is the best way to get results.

This post gives you a number of different techniques and options for envisioning goals, setting them and creating something solid to review regularly to keep on track and check in on your progress. I’ve used all of these methods at one time or another and I still pretty much use all of them to varying degrees. My two favorites though, are the index cards and the MS Word document that I’ve talked about before.

 

Goal Setting – Going Multi-Media…

Something that I can get ridiculously excited about at times is this Web 2.0 world we live in. There are virtually ENDLESS opportunities to indulge our creativity when it comes to goal setting. You can pretty much find a picture or a video of just about anything you want to add to your goals…

Below is a new YouTube Playlist I started this morning. All you need is a user account to save the Playlist and you can create a collection (or multiple collections) of videos to watch when you need a little extra inspiration. Before working out is a great time to watch them…

My Inspirational YouTube Playlist

If pictures are more your thing, you can search ONLY images with Google. Here’s just part of the results I got for “Strongman Training.” Plenty of images to cut and past into a Word document or print out on photo paper and add to index cards.

 

Google results for "Strongman Training"

 

There’s also this site called Pinterest.com. You can create “boards” and “pin” pictures to them. You can also tag your pics so others can find the topics you’re posting on. You can also search for topics and see what others are posting and “re-pin” their pics to your boards. It’s a fun site and more and more of my Facebook friends are showing up on the site every day. I expect Pinterest to become a really popular and active site in the next year.

 

Pinterest Page Example

 

Of course, if you wanted to go “old school” you could just create an album on Facebook and put all your inspiration pics in there. You might even – GASP – print your pics out and keep them in a physical folder!

 

Community…

Speaking of Facebook, there’s this community called “Strong is the New Skinny” on there that can be inspiring and supportive every now and then…

Joking aside, getting yourself hooked into a good, supportive community is a GREAT way to share goals and stay on track. And the internet makes it ridiculously easy to find people who share your values and will support you in your goals. There’s no reason for anyone with an internet connection to go it alone – there are plenty of great groups and forums and other places online to find like-minded people 24-hours a day. In the past, I struggled with finding people who shared my niche and sometimes odd-ball interests. In the 21st Century though, there’s no reason to feel isolated because the people you encounter in your daily “bricks and mortar” world don’t share your values.

Reaching your goals and creating positive change in your life is very much dependent on having a good, supportive peer group that can encourage you, support you and that you can learn from. Humans are STRONGLY influenced by the other humans they interact with on both the conscious and subconscious levels. There’s a statistic that says we tend to earn within 10% one way or the other of the people closest to each other. I find this is usually the case. You can probably extrapolate that figure to fitness, health, happiness, satisfaction with life and almost any other life quality. You become like what and who you surround yourself with so be careful, be selective and be the kind of person other successful and positive people like to surround themselves with…

sins shirts at usapl 2010

Word Processor Documents…

You can always go with a simple old word processor document in a program like MS Word. Here’s a video I did at the beginning of this year as part of my first blog post on goal setting called: “Creating a Fitness Vision and Training Goals for the New Year.”

With a Word doc, it’s easy to add and expand it, print it out, etc. I still have my master vision in a Word doc, but I’ve come to find the index cards a little easier and faster to work with every day. I like the cards for every day reading and review to stay on track and the word processor document for higher level, more formal goal setting and planning…

BTW, my MS Word vision doc is up to 167 pages of pics and text! It’s 6,361 words, too! It definitely describes my ideal life and lifestyle in detail!

Creating Fitness Goals and Vision in MS Word

What’s even cooler about the Word doc is that, when I go back through the older drafts, I find that many things have actually happened! They’re not always present in my life in exactly the way I wrote them, but many, many things have come to be in a similar – or better way – than they were written!

Books and Magazines…

“If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

- Benjamin Franklin

I just LOVE books! I have literally hundreds and hundreds of books. Below are just a couple of the books I’m currently reading or picking through. It’s an eclectic collection for sure and I find that just reading a few pages in a book about something I’m currently working on as a goal or project can really stimulate my thinking, creativity and enthusiasm.

I’ve made it a habit for years now to “feed my mind” every single morning with a good book that inspires or educates me. My morning routine since somewhere around 2006 has been to get up and have coffee with a good book on something I’m currently interested in. I don’t think I could even put a value on what that practice has brought to my life in positive payoff…

Books are great for getting motivated for goals

I’ve had a real love for magazines since I was a kid. Pretty early on in life I learned that virtually any interest you could possibly have had at least one – and likely several – magazines devoted to it. Now, in the 21st Century that’s more true than ever. Things have become more and more “niched down” and there are magazines that cater to virtually every interest. Yes, it’s true that the mainstream journalism markets have taken a beating, but niche journalism is doing great! And, many print magazines blur the line between online and offline by posting additional content online that connects with the print content.

Magaiznes for setting goals

I routinely scan pics in magazines to my computer and print them out on good photo paper for use on my cards. This card has a pic of a truck that has a VERY specific set of characteristics I want to keep in front of me and in my head for my own truck project.

Pre Runner Truck Goal Card

A good magazine is GREAT for giving you lots of pics to draw ideas and inspiration from and they can really help you find websites, products and other resources related to your interests that you’d likely never find through a search engine – because you wouldn’t know that they existed to look for them!

Making It Happen…

Two of the absolute greatest resources for goal setting and creating a larger vision for your life are the “Getting Things Done” books by David Allen and the CD set “The Time of Your Life” by Anthony Robbins. I recommend both very highly. I’ve personally worked with all these resources for years now. They tend to take on greater and deeper meaning for me as the years pass and I work through them over and over.

I consider “The Time of Your Life” by Robbins to have been an absolutely pivotal program for creating positive change in my life. EVERYTHING changed for me the morning I did the “Finding Your Vision” meditation on the second CD of Day 4. It was the first time I really “saw” and “felt” my life in the way I wanted it to be and in alignment with my deepest purpose and desires. Once I had a feel for that vision I began YEARS of positive changes that led me to end many things and begin many others. My involvement in CrossFit and Kettlebells, my career as a coach and trainer, my health and healing – as just a few examples – were a direct result of the work I did with that program…

 

Getting Things Done

Anthony Robbins TIme of Your Life

Is There Achievement Without Striving, Struggling and Stressing?

Michelle and I were just in yoga class tonight. The instructor was talking about – what else – goals and New Years resolutions… Her take was basically that last year she had all these goals and she was all motivated to go after them in 2011 – and very few of them materialized. So, THIS year, her goal was to “let life happen” and not try to control things too much. My first reaction was to give her a copy of “Getting Things Done…” (Actually, my FIRST reaction was to throw a copy at her head! :-P How very “yoga” of me…)

Michelle and I were talking about this after and the point came up about achievement without striving. My firm belief is that, when you’re on the path you need to be on and you’re aligned with your spirit’s deepest path and purpose, there won’t be a lot of stress and striving. Yeah there will be hard work, but it won’t have that frantic, caffeinated, stressful feeling to it – and it definitely won’t be draining and exhausting.

I can contrast my life now and the things in it – the great Strong is the New Skinny community on Facebook, all my martial arts friends, my great girlfriend, a successful eBook, etc. – with what things felt like when I was working a corporate job, doing graduate classes at night and trying to keep my too big and too expensive house afloat. Things flow pretty well for me now. I still have to work hard, but I don’t feel that exhausting and stressful pushing and striving like I once did when I was living a life that wasn’t aligned with who I am on a deep level. And, the places where I DO feel that negative striving and pushing feeling are actually the places where I’m cleaning up the mess that was my old life. They’re the things I’m working to settle and put to rest. The NEW stuff is flowing and unfolding pretty easily…

When you’re aligned with your TRUE purpose in life and you’re heading where you’re supposed to be heading, things have more of a tendency to flow…

I say the above just to provide some balance and insight. I truly belive that life IS NOT meant to be a struggle. If your life is an endless struggle – or feels like one more often than not – you should probably take a look at some of the deeper more spiritual levels of life like your path and your purpose.

As a little “bonus,” I’ll share a resource that had a profound impact on my life about 5 or so years ago. The resource is the CD Set “Prosperity – How to Apply Spiritual Laws To Create Health, Wealth, And Abundance In Your Life” by Randy Gage. If you’re interested in a spiritual – yet very down to earth and accessible – audio series on manifesting your goals and prosperity in your life, this set set is just awesome.

Now, Get to Work!

I’ve tried my best to give you plenty of options, resources, techniques and strategies for setting goals and staying focused on them. If you have others I didn’t mention, be sure to leave a comment to share it with me and the others who are reading this post.

That’s it for now. Good luck and may 2012 – and beyond – be a great time of positive achievement!

ttys

Adam

A letter to the year 2012

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10 Things That Will Make Your Training BETTER…

June 21, 2011 by 53 Comments

Rouge Rack at CrossFit Relentless

A big part of my personal journey recently has been about improving my training. I’ve come at this goal from a bunch of different directions and used many different tools and ideas from a wide range of disciplines and areas to make it happen. Not everything I’ll suggest is typical, but it IS something that’s improved my training on some level and that I think can improve yours too…

1) Set Goals – I talk a lot about setting goals. And I think goal setting is a HUGE step in the process of improving your fitness and improving your life. One of the best programs I’ve ever worked through on goal setting is “Time of Your Life” by Anthony Robbins. It literally changed my life. If you want to see the method I use to keep track of and refine my goals, check out this video blog I did on goals and creating a fitness vision. You don’t need to take it quite to that level – though I think doing so will greatly improve your results AND your life – but the process is something you can use to get yourself on track and get a vision for where you want to go that’s bigger than where you are currently.

2) Add Some Active Recovery Training – This can really be anything from yoga to basic stretching to joint mobility work to committing to using a foam roller regularly. Currently, my active recovery stuff is yoga, meditation and walking around the beaches here in Saybrook Manor (sometimes with a few pounds in my weight vest). The point is, you NEED to “put something back in the tank” when you’re training hard regularly and pushing your limits. I’m always amazed when I see people – particularly CrossFitters – who train themselves nearly to death in their workouts and do virtually NO recovery stretching or “body maintenance” type stuff to help the body recover and improve flexibility, range of motion, etc. If you need some suggestions for this area, check out “Yoga for Dummies” and “Yoga on the Edge” by Sara Ivanhoe and also mobilityWOD.com by Kelly Starett. BTW, things like yoga and mediation have some massive additional benefits that I talk more about in number 10…

3) Learn and Refine a Sport  – For me, this is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and, to a lesser extent, Mixed Martial Arts. It can really be anything you want and are interested in though. I have a few friends who are into cycling, lots of friends who do martial arts, some who are into Olympic lifting or Powerlifting, etc. The point is, when you choose an area to focus on that has a “constant improvement” or “competitive” aspect to it, all sorts of good things happen. It also helps focus your training because now you’re training for performance in a specific area – it gives you “yardstick” to gauge your progress. If CrossFit or “Sport of Fitness” is your sport, you can still choose a “sub-division” to train, refine and specialize in for a period of time. Find a CrossFit cert that’s interesting to you or nearby and commit to training that particular area for 6 months to a year. For example, you could do a Rowing Cert, Running Cert, Oly Lifting, etc. and then train the techniques you learned. Either way, when you start really training yourself in a focused and specific area, your body and mind respond in a way that’s different from when you’re just “training to get in shape…”

4) Periodize Your Training – This one is HUGE for me. Like most “exercise addicts,” I LOVE to train. I feel weird and depressed when I don’t train and that makes it really hard to take rest days and cycle my training in a way that works LONG TERM. CrossFit is a place where this is particularly important because the usual idea is to “go hard” all the time. My opinion – and guys like Robb Wolf will back me up – is that you need to cycle your intensity by scaling workouts or changing the “perceived intensity of effort” in a regular way. If you look at the Powerlifting world as an example, you’ll see that NO Powerlifters train all out, all the time. In fact, they usually only “peak” their training poundages a few times a YEAR with an absolute maximum effort. Look at the Westside Barbell program by Louie Simmons or Wendler 5/3/1 to get a better understanding of what I’m talking about. Both of these programs cycle intensity and take a very long-term approach to progress. I’ve also talked about this topic at length in my blog posts “Strength Training and CrossFit” and “CrossFit Workouts and Becoming More Efficient.”

5) Clean Up Your Diet – This one is just SO important. By now, everyone probably knows I’m pretty much sold on some interpretation of Paleo. But, seriously, if you haven’t tried REALLY cleaning up your diet for 30 or 60 days – and I mean 100% CLEAN – you’re cheating yourself. I recently recommitted myself to eating 100% clean for a month and you know what happened? I felt so good when the month was over I committed to doing the ENTIRE SUMMER 100% CLEAN. I’m not even going to have a birthday cake for my birthday in July – I’d rather FEEL AWESOME on my birthday and the days after! Clean up your diet and you’ll see that commitment and focus expand into other areas of your life – and you’ll feel great besides. BTW, if you need some REAL WORLD information on diet – Paleo or just healthy eating in general – check out my eBook “The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link.” It’s over 160 pages of unbiased, hard-hitting, no BS information on eating for health!

CrossFit Relentless Bootcamp Sign

6) Choose a Short-Term Focus Area – I touched on this one a little bit above. Choose an area you’re going to focus on for a 3, 6 or 9 month period and work it HARD and CONSISTENTLY. It could be Pull-Ups, Double Unders, Gymnastic Skills, Running or a certain technique in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu like Arm Bars or Side Mount. This particularly effective when it’s something you currently SUCK at. The point is, if you “drill down” into a specific area or two, you can likely become nearly expert at it in a relatively short time period. It’s just a matter of focusing your efforts. When you focus on a technique or skill or two like this for a time period you’ll actually make much faster progress than if you try to train “everything” for the same period.

7) Choose a Long-Term Focus Area – This one is different from what I was talking about above. You need to also decide on your LONG TERM training focus. This is your MAJOR area of focus and is probably going to be the area you’re most passionate about, the best at and the most committed to improving over a lifetime. Especially when into “everything” like I am and lot of others are, you have to decide what you’re going to become OUTSTANDING at. For example, if you’re a Martial Artist and you’re into Kettlebells and CrossFit, you might decide that Martial Arts are your lifetime focus area where you commit to becoming world class over the course of your lifetime, kettlebells are something you excel at and CrossFit is something you enjoy the benefits of because it improves your other training and makes your Martial Arts better. I talked about this topic in detail in my post “You’re Only as Strong as Your Foundation.” The point is, you simply CAN’T be awesome at everything you do and you need to choose where to focus your limited resources. I think it’s also really important to take Seth Godin’s advice and choose an area that you can actually become THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT. Read his incredible book “The Dip” for more on this and check out this tiny little post by Seth called “Make the World Smaller.”

8 ) Do Technique Work – This goes along with 3, 6 and 7 and has a lot to do with the blog post I mentioned in 4, “CrossFit Workouts and Becoming More Efficient.” It blows me away when I see people training movements like the Powerlifts or Olympic Lifts and they have ZERO understanding of the technique fine points. Do you REALLY think – because your “trainer” or “coach” showed you how to do a movement for 10 quick minutes as part of a warm up before the WOD – you actually “HAVE” that movement and don’t need to practice and refine it? Some athletes spend AN ENTIRE LIFETIME perfecting movements like the Front Squat, Deadlift, Clean and Clean and Jerk. A freakin’ lifetime! There is ALWAYS room for improvement. If you don’t believe me, check out this short little article by Coach Glassman called “Fundamentals, Virtuosity and Mastery.”

9) Create Hard Deadlines – This is a great one to put positive pressure on yourself to really deliver over the short or medium term. This can be anything you want. Enter a local CrossFit competition, commit to a 30 0r 60 day Paleo Challenge at your box, enter a Powerlifting competition or whatever. I just recently did this when Jason Lambert from the UFC was coming to teach a seminar at Modern Self-Defense Center last month. I committed to eating 100% clean and being in the best possible shape I could be in for the seminar – and I organized my training for the 5 weeks leading up to the seminar accordingly. When you have a hard deadline to be in shape and feeling good, you make different decisions and you bring a greater intensity to your training.

Adam Farrah with Jason Lambert from the UFC

Me with Jason Lambert in May of 2011

 

 

10) Learn to Quiet Your Mind – This might be one you weren’t expecting. I’ve been working with the concepts in Eckhart Tolle’s incredible book, “The Power of Now,” for over a year – and they CONSTANTLY take on new meaning for me and lead me to deeper and deeper understandings of myself, my spiritual side and so many other things. If your mind is constantly “chattering away” and you’re not in control – or at least conscious – of  your behavioral patterns, motivations and, particularly, the places where you screw yourself up, you’re going to have a really hard time making progress. Beyond that, I think TRUE HEALTH happens on EVERY level – Physical, Emotional and Spiritual. There’s a lot more to being healthy – things like having a life you love and being able to function in your work, your friendships and intimate relationships. Health isn’t just about having abs and  a good Fran time…

That’s if for now. Below is a little bonus for you if you feel like picking up a new book or two this week.

ttys

Adam

Three Books (That Have Nothing To Do With Training) That Will Improve Your Training…

  1. “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle
  2. Some good fiction like “The Dresden Files” series by Jim Butcher – I first received the advice of reading fiction at night to wind down from Tim Ferris in “The Four Hour Work Week.” I am a HUGE fan of light fiction reading at night to reduce stress and improve sleep!
  3. “Full Catastrophe Living” by Jon Kabat-Zin

 

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It Really DOES Get Better…

June 10, 2011 by 37 Comments

Donuts

I finally realized today that it DOES get better. If you put in the time and you put in the work it really does. I’ve always had FAITH that it got better, but today I could actually SEE that it DOES.

Every so often, my mom and I end up near this donut place in Niantic, CT. Mom has a “thing” for bakeries and that stuff, so she always stops and gets herself something. When we were there about 2 months ago, I was pretty stressed and miserable and I got about 6 of those glazed chocolate donuts I love. I ate them ALL at one sitting and had some of mom’s stuff as well. Needless to say I felt like complete SHIT the next day and even the day after…

Yesterday we were in Niantic again. Mom wanted to stop. Even though I wasn’t getting anything, I went in with her – this is after nearly 2 months of 100% clean eating. And you know what? I didn’t even want anything! Yeah, it all looked good, but my stomach started hurting and feeling sick just thinking about eating that stuff. There was NO WAY I was going to mess up my nice long stretch of eating clean with a bunch of crap and then feel like shit today. No damn way!

Building Momentum…

At the end of April 1011, I decided to do the entire month of May 100% clean and nearly all Paleo. I DID IT. And what did I want to do when I got to the end of May? KEEP GOING! I committed to doing the ENTIRE SUMMER 100% clean. And I’m doing it. It’s EASY too.

I have enough momentum built up that it’s easier to keep going along the track I’m on than to change gears and eat garbage. I have a good training schedule forming up and a bad day of eating will throw it off. Why would I do that? It would be stupid…

The momentum thing is becoming huge for me. The more momentum I build, the easier it is to build more.

It’s Really Just Physics…

I studied chemistry and engineering in college. In physics, when you get into 2-Dimensional motion, you learn that, for something to reverse direction, it has to slow down to the point that its speed and acceleration are ZERO in the original direction BEFORE it can start moving in the opposite direction. I think this is what trips people up in training and in life. If you’re heading in the WRONG direction and not getting where you want to go, you have to put in work just to slow and eventually stop your movement in the WRONG direction and then completely STOP before you start moving in the direction you want to go.

I think a lot of people give up too early because they “don’t see results.” Really, they ARE getting results it’s just that the early results are a slowing of movement in the wrong direction. You have to put in a ton of work to slow your movement toward where you DON’T want to go, THEN come to a complete stop and ONLY AFTER YOU STOP COMPLETELY do you start slowly moving in the direction you want to go in.

Of course, once you get headed in THE RIGHT direction, it’s just as hard to reverse direction as it was when you were headed in the wrong direction. It gets EASIER to stay on track and KEEP going in the right direction. You just have to hang in when it feels like you’re not getting results and keep making positive change and taking positive action.

BTW, when the Buddhists talk about “burning up negative Karma” or “Karmic debt” this is essentially what they mean. The negative stuff keeps coming even after you change your behavior to more positive and appropriate behavior because your “momentum” is still heading in that other direction…

But, You Have to Know What You Want…

Here was one of the keys for me: I had to get CRYSTAL CLEAR on what I wanted. And I mean CRYSTAL CLEAR. I’ve been doing a TON of work on my goals and my vision for my health, training and life lately and it’s paying off. It’s paying off because I weigh ALL my decisions against that vision when I’m making them. That’s why it was easy to pass on the donuts. “Will eating those donuts get me closer to what I REALLY want?” Of course, the answer is NO! Decision made, problem solved…

Here’s What I Want…

I want to achieve the best health and performance of my life. I want to compete in Jiu Jitsu and possibly Mixed Martial Arts and CrossFit. How bad do I want that? How about I ditched my entire old life and changed virtually EVERYTHING to build a life where I had the time and opportunity to train every day and obsess about my diet and rest.

Last week, when I was training with my friends at Modern Self-Defense Center, I realized that I was THERE. As in, I’ve gotten to the point where I can train as often as I need to and WHEN I need to. My life supports my goals and my training and my efforts. Yeah, there’s still a metric crapload of work to do, but I have the time and the energy and the OPPORTUNITY to do that work. Even just a year ago I didn’t…

Speaking of a Year Ago…

It still messes with my head when I think that, at this time a year ago, THIS BLOG DIDN’T EXIST. I was still trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. And my book “The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” was just a bunch of ideas in my head and a bunch of notes in MS Word. I had NONE of this a year ago. Strong is the New Skinny on Facebook didn’t exist until September 1, 2010. I wrote the original “Is Strong the New Skinny?” blog post just a few weeks before that. As of today, there are 19,084 friends following SINS on Facebook and the blog post that started the whole thing has been read 14,344 times.

That all happened in less than ONE YEAR. LESS THAN ONE FREAKIN’ YEAR.

That gives me one hell of a perspective. And it makes me think about what I can accomplish THIS year…

What can YOU accomplish in a year?

ttys

Adam

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Squat, Deadlift and Bench Press Guidelines for Women…

May 14, 2011 by 65 Comments

Woman Deadlifting

In my last video blog on Westside and CrossFit, I mentioned the 300/400/500 Bench Press/Squat/Deadlift numbers Stuart McRobert advocates as a guideline for male athletes. At the time, I wasn’t sure what the numbers were for WOMEN. So, I did a little digging and came up with some answers. (Oh, BTW, by “Squat” I mean the Back Squat :-) )

As Stuart says on page 88 of “Beyond Brawn:”

“The 300-400-500 figures are based on the prototypical, experienced and successful [drug-free male athlete] who weighs about 190 pounds and is around age 30, at about 5ft 9in height.”

I think that 300/400/500 is about right for any natural (not using steroids) male athlete with reasonable work and life commitments outside the gym. I know mostly CrossFitters (as opposed to Powerlifters) and can’t think of any off the top of my head who greatly exceed those numbers.

So, what does all this mean for women?

Stuart goes on to say that women should expect to achieve around 55-70% of these numbers depending on age and body weight. He also says that women tend to be weaker in the bench press relative to the Squat and Deadlift, in general. That might indicate that the Bench Press number below needs to be adjusted down even a bit further.

Here are the lower and upper limits for the three Powerlifts – for women – based on Stuart’s suggestions:

Bench Press: 165-210 pounds

Squat: 220-280 pounds

Deadlift: 275-350 pounds

These numbers are just a guideline…

I’d be very curious to hear what all the women who read this blog and follow Strong is the New Skinny on Facebook have to say about the numbers above.

  • Are they accurate in your experience?
  • How far away from or above them are you?
  • Are you working toward them as goals?

Either way, hopefully these numbers give you something to think about and – possibly – a reasonable standard to keep in mind as you work toward your training goals.

ttys

Adam

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SINS Challenge Update – Setting Smaller Goals…

April 12, 2011 by 4 Comments

Team Tire Flip Women

I’ve been thinking a lot about my body and health goals lately. I’ve also been reading Dan John’s excellent book, “Don’t Let Go.” I’m not sure how it all came together for me, but I started thinking about smaller goals. If you’ve read any kind of self-help/goal setting stuff – like the Anthony Robbins program “Time of Your Life” that I talk about in this post on creating a fitness vision – you’ve probably heard some talk about translating your big goals into smaller ones. I’ve heard that type of thing A LOT, but it never really clicked for me. Finally, it clicked…

Some of you know that I recently committed to doing yoga EVERY day. I talked about that in my blog post “If It’s Not Working, Try Something Different…” I’m doing pretty well with that protocol, although I might shift the yoga to post workout on my workout days. Anyway, I sat down last night (Sunday) and started thinking about my goals for the week. I guess that’s when I first had the thought that I needed to MAKE SURE that I did yoga every day. With that one thought, a lot became clear – because I was thinking about an individual goal at the day level. I now had ONE thing that I could check up on at any time and KNOW if I was doing what I should be doing to reach my ultimate goals. “Did I do yoga today or not?” That’s it. Small and simple goal. Simple yes or no answer. Pass or fail.

Thinking About Goals on a Daily Level…

Then I started thinking about my other goals in the same way – on a daily level. So, from the big, massive, global goals, I finally – FINALLY – got to the daily behaviors. Now it’s REALLY simple to get things done and focus on what I need to:

  • Did I eat completely Paleo today?
  • Did I eat enough?
  • Did I do yoga?
  • Did I do a workout or practice some skills that are on my list?

In a few weeks I’ll add: “Did I do Jiu Jitsu/MMA today?” (On Tuesdays and Saturdays.)

The Problem with BIG Goals…

Big goals are great for “setting the sail” and heading in the right direction. The problem with the big goals is that they can create a situation where you “live in the future” and don’t enjoy or fully engage in the present moment. The NOW. I talked about how this works in my post: “How Happy Are YOU?”

The big goals are great to get you motivated and get you focused on the future and where you want to go. But EVERYTHING happens in the present. This is where the disconnect was for me. I’m here now and my BIG goals are way “over there” in the future. There was no connection between the two. And I’ve been doing the major goal setting stuff for YEARS and not truly seeing this. I FINALLY saw it!

Here’s the Connection Between Today and the Future…

The connection between today and the future is this: Your days HAVE TO add up to the big goals you have for the future. You have to do NOW what will lead you to your future goals. And when you do those things, you have to love them and enjoy them and be thankful to be blessed enough that you can focus on “luxuries” like training, resting, eating or whatever.

You need to ask yourself – every day or even a few times a day: “What do I need to do NOW to have the things I want in the future?” And, to this I MUST add: “Am I enjoying the process of striving for my ultimate goals?”

If you can check in at the end of the day and say that you accomplished all (or most) of your small daily tasks, behaviors and goals, THEN you can be reasonably sure that you’re headed toward the big future goals. As Stuart McRobert has said over and over again: “Get the days and weeks right and the months and years will take care of themselves.”

That’s pretty much it. Simple and profound. I heard this stuff HUNDREDS of times from MANY different gurus, authors and speakers. But I never saw the connection. I now see the connection.

Set big goals. Do the little things everyday that will move you toward them. Enjoy doing these little things as you do them and live in these moments.

It couldn’t be any simpler…

Here’s a passage from Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” that sums it all up perfectly. In fact, this paragraph is highlighted and underlined and starred in my copy of the book. Apparently, it means something to me EVERY time I read it (I’m on time number 3 through “The Power of Now” at the moment…)

“If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored.”

Set big goals, but enjoy the process, the small victories and the journey… Honor The Now…

ttys

Adam

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I’ll Never Be Good Enough…

April 8, 2011 by 50 Comments

Fedorenko Competition Kettlebells

I’ve realized this morning that I’m never going to be good enough. At least, not as long as I’m playing by the rules of society and our fucked up culture.

I really shouldn’t care. But I do. It’s not even that I play by the rules anymore, but a lot of people I know still do. I’m VERY clear about my goals and who I want to be and what I want my life to look like. VERY CLEAR. The “problem” is that what I want isn’t what most people want.

Maybe what most people think they want isn’t truly what they want and it’s what our TV and internet culture told them they should want. Probably that. But I’ve met VERY FEW people who have thought through every aspect of their lives and made decisions based on their own internal desires and standards.

How many books have YOU written?

I love how everyone tells me how much I need to relax and have fun and “let loose.” That’s all nice – and I KNOW I could do a little better in the “relaxing department.” (Particularly since, ONE DAY into my “no computer in the morning and yoga first thing in the morning” habit I’m writing this instead of doing yoga…) But I know what I want and where I want to be and who I want to be – and you don’t get there by relaxing. I also know that when the muse appears I need to write. She will likely be gone if I wait until later… Welcome to the wonderful world of being a wacky creative…

I talked about what it was like to drive my book “The Paleo Dieter’s Missing Link” to completion last week in the post: “My SINS Challenge Update – Late is a Lot Better than Never.” IT WAS HARD. So was getting a Chemistry degree 10 years ago. So is making good progress in weight training and martial arts – I know these two are hard because I’m currently making SHIT for progress. Nothing worth accomplishing is easy! NOTHING!

But, it’s a lot easier to find creative ways to distract yourself from what you really want or tell yourself you’re happy with the way things are. And, unless you are surrounded by exceptional people, most everyone in your life will be thrilled to tell you you’re much better served drinking with them or eating garbage with them than you are working on what matters TO YOU. Misery loves company…

There was a great quote in the book I just started reading, “The War of Art.” In it, Pressfield says:

“When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do since birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.”

I wasted some of the best training years of my life in my early 20s trying to “have it all.” I was out “being social” instead of studying or resting for my workout the next morning. I was letting others decided what was best for me instead of doing what I KNEW was right in spite of the fact that no one else was doing it and in spite of the fact that all my friends encouraged me to “let loose” and not be so “intense” all the time. And what was the final outcome of that period of my life? A train wreck. If I had it to live over again I wouldn’t even answer my phone when people called me to hang out. I’d train and rest and study and let the world go fuck itself. Maybe a few more pounds of muscle or a bigger deadlift or better health isn’t what our culture values. But, it’s what I valued then and it’s what I value now – and THAT’S what’s important.

But I can only live in The Now…

I can’t go back there, though. I can only live today and apply the lessons of yesterday to what I do now.

And here’s what I know today:

  • I want to be a better writer and blogger
  • I want to write the best fitness blog IN THE WORLD (Yeah, the world…)
  • I want outstanding health, strength and fitness
  • I want many, MANY people to buy, read and LOVE my new book

That’s just a start. I wrote out a bunch of other goals here: “My OWN SINS Challenge Goals.” None of these things happen by being balanced, they don’t happen by relaxing and they don’t happen by accident. They happen when you put in the hard, HARD work and break through your own – and society’s – resistance.

I’m done with it all. Nothing I want or do or accomplish will ever be good enough for anyone else anyway. I’m going to continue to focus on ME and what makes ME happy and what I value. If people like me and admire me for it, great. If it’s not good enough for someone else, I don’t care.

YOU shouldn’t care about anything but YOUR OWN standards either – as long as they’re TRULY YOURS. Think about THAT for a while…

ttys

Adam

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