Blog Archive

I wish you saw the bigger picture

This is a marathon of a process; I’m talking physical and mental development. Many opportunities arise for us to make an easy advance; however, the transition can feel rushed, and our desire often dominates our capability. You see the handstand push up, the muscle up, and the huge lifts. Fun is in our interaction and patience with progression. Blown attempts, blind adherence, and rushed movement, will leave you lying in chalk. Knowing it takes 8 years to Mastery, why would you attempt to get there in 8 minutes?

Clear as day but you don’t see the vision,
What we got deserves some patience,
Cuz this ain’t no finger painting

Addressing mobility is laying the foundation in all areas for you to move freely. Joe Montana would practice drop back drills that would bore high school football players to death. Wax on, wax off; Mr Miyagi drove one boy crazy with simple tasks before revealing their application. Progression, transition, substitution, activation, supplemental, accessory and corrective exercises should make up the bulk of your program. Advance simple exercise difficulty instead of leaping to the next progression. Add load, change tempo, or increase volume; otherwise, you’ll have to regress.

Beautiful and modern all the same,
But what’s a photo if it’s out of frame

You have attainable dreams; however you must chase what’s in view before arriving at your destination. Functional range is something rarely sought after on the road to movement. That round back has held up for years, yet your lifts haven’t risen significantly. Working hard through a difficult repetition is crucial, but cut the set before it gets ugly. Just because you managed to irk through it, doesn’t mean you made a healthy adaptation. Ingraining motor patterns is the same way you ingrain values. Integrity is built through character, not charisma.

If I make it I’ll come back to get you,
I’ll paint all the world for you,

This is what I do, what we do. As movement coaches we study and apply the science. We challenge and experiment with techniques of old, and new. We’ve learned hands on, and know what works and what doesn’t. Through our environment we are able to find the most effective ways of progressing. We program, progress, regress, reposition, and cue you for greatness.

Life is movement.

I pray you see the bigger picture

This has become more prevalent in the last few months in my personal development in addition to the big picture of our MadLab Community. Live a better life and appreciate the journey in continuing what you love to do. Love yourself.

We’re in your corner.

Chesty

Monday’s Workout:

Warm Up: Dowel Work

Skill/Tech:

(:10) A) Snatch jump to high pull – 3 sets of 4

(:20) B) 1 High hang snatch 1 Power snatch – 5 sets  (75-80% of 1rm)

(:40) Workout: 20 minutes to complete:

3 rounds of:  How many strokes to row 30 calories

Score is total strokes from all 3 rounds
Score as AFRAP (as few reps as possible)

– Can’t pull above your nipples
– No race starts – first stroke must be full
– No coasting at end

In between attempts 1 and 2 – 10/10 Tea party

In between attempts 2 and 3 – 30/30 Halos

Cheers!

HOS

Whether you’re learning a new movement for the first time or refining a familiar pattern, you can direct your attention in one of two places.

An Internal Focus,  targets the athlete’s feeling, sensation, or moving a specific body part.

An External Focus, concentrates attention on how the athlete’s movement effects their immediate environment (or equipment).

Weight room examples of External/Internal cues

Overwhelming research suggests – for performance, external cues can be more effective than internal cues.

For example, one such experiment examined the learning of a golf chip found that players who focused on the movement of the club head during the swing performed more skilfully than those who focused on their arms during the swing.

An external focus of attention actually increases automatic processing during a task (this is good). It also reduces consciousness, and therefore the amount of attention needed to perform a given task (also good).

According to Ian Jeffreys, senior lecturer in strength and conditioning at the University of Glamorgan:

“Effective movement capacities need to be optimally co-ordinated by the nervous system, with the potential degrees of freedom effectively controlled. Conscious attempts to control movements interfere with automatic motor control.  An internal focus freezes the degrees of freedom, thus inhibiting movement execution by inadvertently disrupting automatic processes. This results in movements that are often less fluent and less efficient.”

Or from Don Meyer, Hall of Fame NCAA basketball coach:

“The more they think, the slower their feet get.”

Give your body a task, and then get out of the way.

For today’s snatch practice, instead of focusing on all of the little things that have to happen for the lift to go well, like: extend hips knees and ankles aggressively, big shrug, high elbows, turn the wrist over and squat,  just think: Jump the bar up to the ceiling and then snap yourself under the bar.

Andy

Friday’s Workout:

Warm Up: Coach’s Choice

Skill/Tech:

(:10) A) Power Snatch – 6 sets of 2 @ 80% of 1rm (go lighter if this feels too heavy)

(:30) B) Box Front Squats – 6 sets of 3

(:50) Workout: OTM 10 min Amrap

20s Pull ups
20s Burpees
20s Rest

Optional Finisher: 25/25 pistols

Big day today. Get in here and enjoy it.

Saturday’s Workout:

Warm Up: Coach’s Choice

(:15) 3 x 400m run

-2 minutes rest btw
-Score is total time it took you to complete all 3 runs including your rest

(:25) Groove Workout movements

(:45) Kinda Quarter Gone Bad – Partner WOD – 1 partner working at a time

5 Rounds

1 minute amrap thrusters (135/95 lbs)
1 minute amrap rope climbs
1 minute amrap burpees

Optional Finisher: Easy 1000 m row then 10/10 Tea Party

HOS

I wanted to give everyone some quick early food ideas to put you on a better path when you start cleaning up the diet.

I see food logs like this one all the time with new students.   95 % say they want to lean up and lose body fat among many other things.  Then I go into 20 different renditions of the little speech below.

I try to summarize some of it as best I can.  First note – all carbs turn to glucose.  The low fat craze as most of us know hasn’t worked in 30 years.  Yes, reducing fat will easily cut down on your caloric intake.  BUT it will not result in your body burning your own body fat.  Think of your body fat as “fuel in your tank”, it can provide you with a steady source of fuel in-between meals.  Since we’re complex organisms you cannot treat a calorie quite the same. Prof’s “A calorie is a calorie is a calorie” paper goes into that. I’ll get it posted to the bottom of this blog.

WE can run on two fuels: glucose (“blood sugar”) and FAT.  I know you’ve all been told that you need carbs for energy, but you’ve also heard that this or that exercise will put you in the “fat burning zone.”  What we need to understand is our body is happy to burn either fuel depending on your situation.

You must also know that your body can turn carbs to fat and fat and protein to carbs.  Eating good fat doesn’t make you fat, and you don’t need to load up on carbs to keep your blood sugar up.  You just have to be careful.

Remember this General Rule – Your body has to get rid of glucose before it starts burning fat!

So if you want to see some dramatic body image changes, let’s get your body shifting over to burning fat.  Especially if your not happy with your body fat situation.

For Example: If your eating cereal and juice for breakfast, and apple and granola bar for a snack, then a sandwich for lunch with chips and a latte, and then on to some pasta/potato/rice based dinner, and some chips in front of the TV at night – your in big trouble.  You basically burned glucose all day instead of fat, and then all that left over glucose if you we’re keeping super busy exercising will quickly turn into fat and place it right where you don’t want it – belly, butt and thighs.

You have to start thinking of our hunter-gatherer ancestors who lived on meat, vegetables and fruit when in season.  Get off the rapidly digestible glucose bombs that shoots your blood sugar through the roof.  This makes insulin come in to take care of all that high blood sugar volume and store it into your fat cells (unless your muscles need that current fuel for physical activity). Remember Insulin is a fat storage hormone – high levels of insulin will both put fat into the tank as well as stop your fat from going out of the tank.

So easy trick – keep your insulin down therefore triggering a little message to your body that it doesn’t have much glucose to work – so now it shifts over to burning fat for fuel instead.  Draw that fuel out of the tank!!  Use your fat stores.

Again, most of us suggest a gradual transition.  Go 60-40 to 80-20 of real food / “paleoish” / low glycemic & nutritious diet. Try and put 4 good meals together in a row.  Then have a some fish and chips or a your certain slip up, but then get back on a diet of low glycemic load foods and meals.  Here’s Al Sears list for reference.

So instead of continually eating a cup of:

White Rice, Brown Rice, Quinoa, Pasta, Bread, or a baked potato on back to back meals everyday, choose some leafy greens or something that looks like a large quantity of mashed potatoes called “Mashed Potato Surprize”  aka Cauliflower Mash.

But before just realise 5 Basic Foods and their nutritional info below (google nutritiondata.self.com/facts to go to town)

CARB CHOICE           CALORIES              FAT                AMT of CARBOHYDRATE             PROTEIN           GLYCEMIC LOAD

Pasta                                 221 cal                 1g Fat                   43g Carb (3g fiber)                        8g Protein                 180ish

White Rice                           205                      0                       45g Carb (1g fiber)                         4g Protein                  283

Quinoa                             222 cal                2g fat                       40g   (6g fiber)                            8g Protein                53 GlyIndex

Baked Med. Potato            205                   7.5g                        34g   (3g fiber)                             4g Protein                    253

Dry Mashed Cauliflower

1 cup of cauli                40 cal              1g Fat                           7g (5g fiber)                               4g Protein               basically nil

So we make this cauliflower surprise all the time. Now I do add some yummy stuff when I blend it. Throw in a half avocado, couple tablespoons of olive oil, a couple tbsp coconut cream, Dijon Mustard, and spice(salt, pepper, garlic powder, and maybe some paprika).

So the side dish stays low carb while you make up a good chunk of your calories in good fat. You know there’s 70cal/8g Fat in coconut cream, while 30ml(2tbsp) of extra virgin olive oil gives you 160cals/27g Fat, mustard glob is 30cal and 1/2fat&1/2protein.

So 1 delicious cauliflower will make you around 4 cups of this “mashed surprise” and start your easy transition to a lower carb nutrient dense and higher “Good” Fat Diet.

Promoting health and longevity is as simple as regular trips to the farmer’s market and your own garden.  Dr. Joel Fuhrman a star nutrition researcher, physician, and author says. Why? While building-block nutrients like – protein, carbohydrates, and fats – are essential, we overstuff our diets with processed foods and tend to miss out on disease-fighting micronutrients like vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

“Your healthy life expectancy is proportional to the micronutrient-per-calorie density of your diet. We want to get as many micronutrients as possible per caloric buck,” he states.

Some other carbohydrates that are nutrient dense and calorie wise include kale and really any leafy green, onions, seaweed, garlic, mushrooms, blueberries/berries, seeds and even dark chocolate in moderation.

Hopefully that was brief enough,

TBear the PaleoBear

THURSDAY’s CLASS

Warm Up:

24/24 halo
12/12 Bulgarian split squat
12 wall angels
12/12 banded shoulder press
200 skips

(:15) Skill/Tech: HSPU – 6 sets of 3

Got killer hspu? Try these at a deficit

(:30) Groove workout movements

(:40) Workout: 18 min amrap

12 front rack lunges (135/95 lbs)
12 t2b
40 double unders

Optional Finisher: 50 teddy bear handstand to push up

HOS

So last weekend MadLab had a little Surf Trip up in Tofino.  The waves didn’t show up like some of us veterans would of liked but we had a bunch of rookies that had a blast learning in the white water.

The Surf Lesson

It brought back fond memories of when I was learning (and always will be learning).  Patty or Surfo standing in the white water with us.  Paddling like mad while going no where until someone gave me a huge push. Good times.

And here we go!

Speaking with some of the rookies afterwards they mentioned how much work it is and how sore they were.  This made me laugh for 2 reasons: 1) Its true 2) The first section of the surfing learning curve is figuring out how not to get the living daylights beaten out of you by the ocean.

GO!

As always I am a big proponent of education so I wanted to put up a few websites here that would help answer some of the questions that surround this awesome sport.

Surfology: The Science of Surfing and Waves. Part of the Surfline Website, I like this because it shows how the sport is shaped by oceanography and meteorology. It also has some good information on how waves work.

Explain that Stuff: The Science of Surfing. Good section about how to read a surf report. Much the same as above but more elaborate explanations as well as reference links at the end.

Of course you can read all you want but nothing is going to get you better than time in the water.

Ladies in the water.

Almost Wayne!

Never stop learning. See you out there.  😉

The Shepherd

Wednesday’s Workout:

Warm Up:

20 banded good mornings
20 scap push ups
20 scap pull ups
Forearm stretch out

(:10) Skill/Tech:

A1) Tire Flip Fun – 50 m tire flip for time (no jump in and out – just fun old flipping)

-Partner up and trade off flips if you want
-Remember what tire you use

A2) DBall Throw and Chase
-For 200 m you must throw the DBall (20/12 lbs) then run up to it and pick it up and throw it again
-1 step with the DBall is allowed for the throw
-This is for time
-It was such a hit last time I thought we would try it again (compare to May 12/15)

(:35) Workout: Partner 5000 m row

Optional Finisher: Accumulate 30 ring dips

Cheers!

HOS

Working hard is crucial in training; building a strong, gorgeous, capable physique and mindset is fundamental to living a long lustrous life. Working hard is crucial in your career; putting in hours, continuing education, and investing in your professional image is fundamental to providing for that lustrous life. The blend of the two allow me to represent and live every aspect of my life with meaning and fulfilment. I don’t pay much attention to the lead up of anything; I don’t seem to initiate that tune-in vacay/getaway until I’m strapped in for take-off. Sometimes it takes the right yin to your yang (or breast to your chest) to help remind you of when it’s time to take time to make time.

I’ve travelled more in my last 2 years then I have in my entire life. My getaways have ranged from quiet shore-line cabin retreats to European trains, planes, and automobiles; personal, professional, and educational development seminars and just plain ol’ good times. If I wasn’t nudged in that direction, I may just get stuck in Vancouver flow of The Chestevez. The truth is, I love my flow; however, without that nudge, I lose track of how important it is to take time for my self, my relationship, and the simplest pleasures in life. Travelling to anywhere is a great opportunity to indulge in what counts.

Chesty and Breasty Adventures have soothed my mindset and allowed me to come back refreshed and ready to engage with all of my Team Chesters and the rest of you MadLabions. With 3 seminars and certifications out of the way this year, I was due for a good ol’ fashion funcation; after 3 weeks of nudging, Disneyland. Having never been as a child, it was the perfect way to ignite a little random childish sparkle in a full grown adult experience (Goofy, Minnie, and California King Bed at the Sheraton).

Just a friendly reminder to take time to make time. A recharge away from the hustle and bustle can be essential to maintaining juice for life. The law of attraction is only as good as your belief in the affect it has. Great things come to those who take the time.

Big love,

Chesty and Breasty (she nudges me the best way)

Tuesday’s Workout:

Warm Up: Coach’s Choice

Skill/Tech:

(:15) A) 8 minute dead bug

(:25) B) Front squat – 3,3,3 at 100,105,110% of 5rm

(:45) Workout: 4 rounds for time

20 wall balls unbroken (20/14 lbs)
10 pull ups unbroken

Movements are unbroken. So if you don’t do all 20 wallballs or pull ups in a row then you must start that part of the round again until you do. Rest as you must in between movements to ensure you get the unbroken done.

There are many progressions available to you – Lighter med ball or bigger band etc… You can even do 8 rounds of 10 wb and 5 pull ups if you want. I just want that sustained effort.

Please be strict with yourself about the standards – If the ball does not touch the wall at the correct height or your squat is short or your chin doesn’t get over the horizontal plain of the bar or your elbows don’t straighten at the bottom of your pull up etc… THEN IT DOESN’T COUNT!! I burned myself on my 15th wallball of the final round last time I did this workout. All you can do is laugh.

Have fun out there!

HOS