This one is for my first serious training partner, Ethan. Good times, buddy.
This is where Barney the dinosaur used to live until he got kicked out for singing too loudly.
I used to have a gym membership. That is, until the day one particular “fitness” club kicked me out for… get this – working TOO HARD?!
That’s right. I was working out too hard for the management’s comfort zone, and they gave me the boot. But there’s a little more to the story.
This was your typical 24-hour health club. I signed up because they were running a special offer at a ridiculously low rate with a no-penalty “cancel anytime” policy. Their business strategy appeared to be “get as many signups as we can, and hope most of them don’t actually come and clog up the gym floor.” This particular gym was my go-to spot for over a year. I made some great gains there, and by anyone’s standards, I was milking my membership for all it was worth.
Now, when I say this was a typical health club, I’m sortof, kindof, maybe stretching the truth just a bit. This place was FAR from typical, and FAR from anything I’d ever want to encounter again – both as a customer and personal trainer. Let me paint a word picture for you… Continue reading That Glorious Day When My Gym Kicked Me Out For Working Too Hard
Dehydration had set in a couple hours earlier, but I wasn’t counting the time, nor did I have any idea what the real time actually was. My mouth was past the point of dry, and had developed a sticky film that sealed my lips shut, smacked against my teeth. My tongue was stuck to the top of my mouth until I forcibly unhinged my jaw to take a deep breath. I could feel the slime stringing between my lips as I wiped my mouth. Probably afternoon, I muttered. I’ve been dehydrated before, but it’s been awhile since I’ve been this dry on such a hot day.
The sun was directly overhead, making it impossible to tell which direction was north, and we were forced to rely on our intuition, which was truly more of a guess. We could be anywhere and heading in any direction, but we weren’t too worried. This particular forest isn’t too big. Walk in a straight line long enough and we were bound to hit a road eventually. Still, it didn’t help that we had no map and no compass. The trail system looked simple enough from the map we had looked at before departing. Follow red trail to blue trail to yellow, which brings us back to red. Simple enough, but it wasn’t so simple. Either we’re terrible map readers, or the map was too far outdated. Somehow, we managed to get lost in the woods, but you never say “we’re lost” when you’re out in the bush.
The bugs were swarming around us like a black cloud, and I gave up whacking mosquitoes a long time ago. I resolved to allow the hitch-hikers a warm drink as long as they didn’t take more than they needed. Some ended up mangled into my arm hair in a splash of blood – reminding me of a painting by Claude Monet. Your mind wanders when you’re approaching heat stroke.
My dog, Ronin, had disappeared into the dense brush a few minutes ago as he usually does when he catches a scent, only this time he hadn’t returned. I had noticed earlier that he was getting hot and nearing heat exhaustion, so I was worried he may have layed down somewhere to rest. We slowed our trot to a halt and began wandering back to find him. After a minute or two of calling for him, he emerges in a crashing wave of brush and leaves – dripping wet from a nearby swamp that he used to cool off and rehydrate. His tank was full, but we were approaching empty.
Back in high school, I was a fast food junkie. One or two weekly trips to McDonald’s, Taco Bell, or KFC wasn’t unusual back then. Not long afterwards, I saw the documentary Supersize Me by Morgan Spurlock (the one where he eats nothing but McDonald’s for a month). That triggered a decision that had already been looming in my mind to completely stop eating fast food – even if it meant I would go hungry for some meals. I haven’t been 100% clean, but since then, I’ve probably had fast food less than 5 times. There’s so much that can be said about the decision not to eat fast food, but I’ll let the statistics speak for themselves… Continue reading WARNING: Everything you Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food
Lately, I’ve seen articles, headlines, and advertising that all have one theme in common…
The one thing you need to do to lose weight
The one secret that nobody is telling you for how to build massive muscles
The one trick to jump-start your metabolism
The one supplement everybody needs, but nobody knows about
The one strategy celebrities use to build movie-muscles in just weeks
You’ve probably seen titles like this, too. Each one is boasting not just a solution to a modern problem, but THE solution. It’s like they’re saying, if you know this one thing, it’ll change your life for the better. Maybe true, but I think there’s a little more to this than meets the eye…
Now, let me get one thing straight before we begin. I am NOT against offering tips and solutions that provide tangible benefits to people who need help. You’ll find that I do this all the time on Physical Living. Good information is not the problem – it’s the misrepresentation or misapplication of good information.
Let me show you an example of how this “one thing” marketing technique can be abused…
The one thing you need to do to lose weight… is start the new ABC exercise program.
This may not be untrue, but it can be incredibly misleading. You see, this statement implies that if you only do one thing, you’ll lose weight. It sounds too good to be true, and often it is. What that statement does NOT indicate is that weight loss is a little more complicated than that. It’s not very complicated – in fact, it’s very simple – but not so simple that one minor change will produce the desired results every time. That statement doesn’t explain that almost everyone who starts a new exercise program also increases their daily calorie intake somewhat subconsciously. It’s the body’s natural way of finding homeostasis. If you start burning more energy, your appetite will increase to compensate for the immediate loss of energy in the form of calories burned. Unless you actively prevent an increase in daily calorie consumption in addition to your new exercise program, you have a very poor chance of losing weight. I bet you didn’t discern that from the ad, though.
The truth is that there are quite many things missing from one simple promise like that. Problems, and especially health and fitness problems, are very rarely solved by making just one change to our lifestyle, but from a combination of things. Continue reading The ONE Thing You Need to Know About Your Fitness
I want to take this opportunity to recognize some fellow physical living experts and aficionados whom I respect as a way of saying thanks for putting in the effort to publish valuable information on the Internet.
Best Physical Living Bloggers to Watch in 2010:
I take endorsements very seriously. These are people whom I trust to bring excellent information again and again. They have a good standing among their peers and are trusted sources of reliable and useful knowledge. Most importantly, I like them! Continue reading Best Physical Living Bloggers to Watch in 2010
Disclaimer:While I wouldn’t call this a rant post (nobody likes a rant), I will stand very adamantly against a prevailing idea. It may seem like I utterly hate what’s happening, which is mostly accurate. However, I do feel that context is important when discussing matters such as these. So, in no way am I against the technological miracles that are being invented these days. I think most technology can be used for good things. But as is often the case, technology is misapplied into making life a little easier and killing us a little faster. And I would bet big money (if I had it) that this new technology will be marketed with the purpose of making profits, rather than helping serve true needs.
Watch this… you don’t need to see the whole video to get the idea.
Honda’s Walking Assistance Device Prototype
So, Honda has seen it fit to invent a walking assistance device (WAD). Splendid! After all, walking is such a strenuous activity. And we wouldn’t want to fatigue our leg muscles or injure our joints, would we?
This is just one more step towards my lifelong dream – to invent a HOVER-PAD for personal transportation. I’m already at work with the Honda research and development department, drafting first-run schematics and big-money marketing plans. After all, we wouldn’t want to overstress our hearts by walking – even with walking assistance devices, which can be so demanding on the delicate human frame. One day, billions of people will be grateful that I invented this Hover-Pad that now allows people only to move from laying down in their bed to standing up on the pad. They’ll never experience fatigue again!
But now that I’m thinking about it… all that standing has got to make people feel awfully tired. I know my legs get a little shaky after a few hours. Ah, I know what I’ll do. The HOVER-SEAT will be born! And if it reclines, it could double as a bed! Time to get a patent for that… (anybody seen Wall-E ???)
The update of JohnSifferman.com’s: “Real World Strength Training”
Physical Living is an update of the original Real World Strength Training website found at JohnSifferman.com. What began as a personal blogging hobby has now become a more refined resource for information regarding a physically-focused lifestyle.
Real World Strength Training was established to explore and discuss [...]
The one thing you need to do to lose weight
