Chasing Perfection: The Vitruvian Man Complex

I've noticed a burgeoning trend in the fitness industry of material aimed at helping men "reclaim" their failing masculinity, become "alpha males," or reach some idealized ratio of proportions to become a modern day Adonis. I believe anything that gets men or women into the gym and leading a healthier lifestyle is good, but I'm not sure the approach of some of these programs is necessarily spot on.

My very first post on this blog detailed my belief that exercise and physical culture should be a relentless journey towards self-perfection, so any quest towards your concept of an idealized state is in my mind a good one. But I don't care for books or programs that are supposed to yield an aesthetically "perfect" body that is supposed to attract the opposite sex on some deep subconscious level. This kind of thing smacks of snake-oil and to a certain extent, desperation. Womankind is not a homogeneous group, and to assume they can ALL be attracted to a particular body type is borderline insulting to them. Women are diverse and have differing tastes. One woman's Adonis is another woman's "no thanks." Furthermore, I don't believe an exercise program predicated on external approval is healthy or effective.

Physical culture, and even athletics, is really about being in competition with yourself. The weights you are lifting, or the opponents you are competing against are really only there to force you to confront your weakness. The struggle is always against your essentially flawed state and has less to do with your opponent or the weight itself. If your goals revolve around aesthetics more than physical performance, the measure should still be about what you like to see in the mirror. Trying to change how you look in order to please others is a self-defeating approach and a much less rewarding one. If you are happy with you, you'll be self-confident, centered, and comfortable in your own skin. If you base your self-image over what others think you will always wonder, because we can only guess what others think of us, but we always know what we think of ourselves.

If you're a man who's interested in attracting ladies, maximizing testosterone levels, and achieving perfection in form/performance and you're willing to work hard for it, I applaud you. But the goal/standard you work towards should be what you personally believe is your own personal version of perfection. Short term goals should be specific and measurable, your long term goal of "the greatest version of yourself" should be slightly out of reach. You have to reach for the stars, and if in the end we never quite reach perfection, remember that the journey is as important as the destination, if not more so.

Latest Training Info
Having worked on Long Cycle GS-style Clean and Jerk for a while, I wanted to shift gears to concentrate on strength and explosiveness to keep my training fresh and avoid plateaus. For the next month or two I'll be alternating two-week cycles of max strength exercises with heavy weight and low reps, and explosive strength routines. Here is an example of a quick workout I did recently in the explosive phase when I was limited to the equipment in my apartment.

• 4 x 5 reps KB Split Snatch
• 4 x 5 reps Single KB Jerk L/R
• 4 x 8-10 reps Jumping Deck Squats
• 4 x 3 reps Weighted Pullups with 20kg KB (should have been muscle ups but I was limited by what I can do in my apartment)
• 4 x 10 reps Clapping Pushups
• 4 x 8-10 reps Double KB Swings
• Core Circuit (various core calisthenic exercises)
  

Good News! You DON"T have to spend HOURS in The Gym!

The story of David and Goliath is the ultimate "Less is More" lesson, and there are many areas in our lives where we'd do well to apply this maxim. Michelangelo's depiction of David in deep contemplation before doing battle with Goliath also serves to illustrate an important concept in my training...imagine how much more worried he would look if he had just spent 2 hours working out before finding out he has to fight a giant?

Many of us put ourselves in this exact predicament several times a week, spending ourselves completely in the gym and then heading out into our regular lives to "recover" in time for the next gym session. If you are spending crazy amounts of time in the gym each week, can you satisfactorily answer the question, "why are you doing it?" I'd hazard a guess that for many it becomes circular...we work out so we can get better at working out and the time in between gym sessions is just recovery.

I was like that once. I knew I wanted to take my fitness and health to the next level, and I thought the answer was spending ever increasing hours at the local Globo Gym. I entered a contest held by a muscle mag in which I followed a cookie-cutter "mass building" program/diet for 3 months, submitting before and after photos holding the relevant month's issue of the magazine to verify the timeline. I can't speak for everyone's goals, and I don't mean to demean bodybuiding if that's your thing, but this approach was not for me! Volume-wise, I was doing an insane number of reps, sets, and exercises, and leaving the gym absolutely blasted. It was a four day a week split, and each gym session required a devotion of roughly 2 hours of my day. That isn't including the time spent sprawled out on my couch moaning about what a "great" workout that just was, haha.

I stuck with it for two months, and was seeing some results...but nothing to write home about. My results were far out of keeping with the amount of effort I was expending, and I realized I was really unhappy. My life had devolved into a cycle of working, rushing to the gym, sleeping, and repeating the cycle. And my workouts were leaving me feeling drained and worn out! What was the point? The goal of exercise and diet is to enhance your life and make it a more fulfilling experience isn't it? We workout so that we have energy, are free from frailty, and like what we see in the mirror. Some of us add goals of strength or athletic performance to these, but what point is all our effort if it doesn't allow us time to enjoy the benefits?

Since adopting a more Primal diet and lifestyle and using kettlebells to keep my workouts short, intense, and mentally engaging, I've spent much less time actually exercising and more time enjoying the results of those workouts. And the results have been better. A relatively minor, stress free adjustment to my eating habits, and a few relatively short intense kettlebell sessions has yielded me more strength, fitness, athleticism, and leanness than all those hours spent pumping iron and running on the treadmill. And after I finish a workout, I feel like roaring and beating my chest, not collapsing in a groaning heap.

I guess the point of this blog post is to keep the goal in mind in all things you do, and to scrutinize the steps you take towards that goal. If you joined the gym in order to get a great beach body...don't forget to go to the beach because you're too busy in the gym. Make sure whatever you are doing is enhancing your life and not dominating it.

Caveman Core Training!

I'm often asked what I do for my "six pack." I find this funny because I personally think I have a Four-and-a-half pack, haha. I also never sought out the six pack holy grail that is so en vogue in pop culture. Any definition in my midsection has come as a consequence of clean eating and hard training, not so much a direct goal. What follows are some ideas for cheap, at home training for the core that will be challenging and will result in strength gains for your core and a good looking midsection granted that your diet is also very clean.

The last statement is VERY important. Abs are made as much in the kitchen as in the gym. Having strong abs, obliques, etc is fantastic, but you won't SEE any difference if they're covered by a layer of fat. Seeing the muscle may not be all that important for everyone, however EVERYONE needs a strong and powerful core. The core (abs, obliques, back) support every other activity you'll do both in the gym, on the field, and out in the world.

The Basics

• A good workout program should include attention given to the abs, obliques, and lower back
• Your obliques allow you to bend your trunk to either side as well as twist from side to side
• Multi-joint, compound exercises exercise your core without being the focus. Strict pushups, heavy deadlifts, barbell squats, etc.
  
• I'm not convinced a crunch offers a great enough range of motion to provide gains in the abs
• I'm not convinced its possible to isolate the "upper" or "lower" abs. It's all one muscle!

The Exercises

Here are a few exercises that can be done with a minimum of equipment in the comfort of your home. Many of these exercises may be new to you, but then again everyone knows the common exercises. Note: backdrop this time around courtesy of my parents house :)

• L-Sit

Find yourself two stable chairs and hold yourself up with your legs stretched out in front of you, forming an "L" with your body. This is a isometric static hold...you'll want to hold the position for time. A good starting point is breaking it up into as many sets as necessary to reach 60 seconds.

• L-Pullup

When you feel strong enough in the L-Sit, you can up the complexity of the exercise by combining it with the pullup. Hang from a pullup bar as normal, raise your legs up into the L position, and then simply pull yourself up and lower yourself as usual while maintaining the L position. Tougher than it sounds! Do this for 3 quality sets, or 2 reps short of failure.

• Band Punches

This is a fun one for the obliques, and about as sport specific as you can get. Grab a sturdy workout band (I got mine from ihpcombat.com) and throw a technically sound straight punch with an emphasis on trunk rotation. Other punches can be thrown as long as they involve sufficient trunk rotation (probably not jabs for instance).

• Superman/Shaolin Pushup

This one goes by various names, but in any event its a good test of core strength. Lay flat on your belly with the balls of your feet touching the ground and your arms outstretched in front of you and your palms flat on the floor. Other than the balls of your feet, this should resemble what Superman looks like while flying...and if you are good at this movement you can share in his bulletproof body. From the lying down position press yourself up so that the only things touching the ground are your palms and your feet. You will feel your core activating to help you maintain this position.

If this movement is too hard for you, bring your arms in closer to your body so that you rest on your forearms in the bottom position of the movement. Do not bring your arms directly below your shoulders, because thats a normal pushup. The movement has more of a tricep extension type of action in the arms than the push in a pushup or benchpress.

Note in this picture how the position requires full body tension. Every muscle in the body must be tense to maintain strength. Read Pavel Tsatsouline's Naked Warrior and Power to the People for more info on total body tension.

Program Ideas

For a quick, effective program, you could do the following in circuit fashion. Do one exercise after the other with no rest, and repeat the entire sequence 3-5x with 1 min rest between rounds

Routine 1
L-Sit 30 seconds
Band Punches 10-15 reps
V-Ups (consult Youtube for this one) 10 reps

Routine 2
Superman Pushups 10 reps
L-Pullups for a Quality Set (your pulling strength will limit you here)
Band Punches 10-15 reps

I recommend checking out Pavel's book "Bullet-Proof Abs" for info on the Janda Situp. Pavel goes into detail on this fantastic movement that deactivates the hip flexors and allows you to concentrate solely on your core. I won't go into it here because the book is a real treat.

Thanks for reading!

Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye

So...that guy on the left was me, believe it or not. This was a couple years ago, but that was what I looked like fresh out of college, during what is supposed to be your healthiest, most fit years. Sadly, although I was working out constantly, I was also eating the wrong things at the wrong time. Not everything you read in the muscle mags is appropriate for everyone, and at the very least you need to adjust the proportions according to your personal size/stature.

I'm 5'5, so I'm not nearly as large as your average bodybuilder, but nonetheless, after every workout session I would buy a giant smoothie loaded with protein, peanut butter, and yes...SUGAR. I'd then drive home and promptly fall asleep. The diet didn't get much better during the day, what with fast food, snacks, and candy. And living with my parents at the time meant more rice and beans than is wise. So there's me in my Luchador mask, but looking more like a Lucha-don't.

Cleaning up my diet and shifting the focus of my exercise has done wonders for my body composition. I've gone from primarily a bodybuilders form of training to experimenting with a more functional form of fitness through resources such as CrossFit, RossTraining.com, and most lately, Kettlebells. To each his or her own, but my body appears to have responded most positively to this sort of training, and I feel as though my strength, speed, and stamina allow me to more fully enjoy my life. On the diet front, I've gone from the philosophy that I workout, therefore I can afford to eat whatever I want, to a diet in which I eliminated all simple carbs in favor of whole grain sources. Just this change resulted in rapid fatloss, but I didn't fully fine tune my system until I made the Primal/Paleo plunge. I gave up grains and sugars of all sorts and limited my diet to meat, fruit, vegetables, and nuts. Of course, on the weekends I loosen up a bit and allow myself a cheat meal or two.

All this has resulted in the weightloss you see today. Here is a pic of me today, wearing a pair of dress pants that used to fit snug on me. One problem is having to buy all new clothing...



Today's Workout: 2 x Tabata Sprints w/ 1 min rest in between
Check out a description of Dr. Izumi Tabata's work at one of my fav sites: http://bit.ly/5EumX

Today's Last Meal: My favorite shake recipe
I make this shake every once in a while...the soy milk and protein powder make it not STRICTLY Paleo, but there are no simple carbs involved.

10 oz Organic Soy Milk
1 Scoop Protein Powder
1 Whole Banana
2 Tbsp Almond Butter

Blend it all up until its smooth and enjoy! You have a nice mix of healthy fats, protein, and some carbs.