Activating Good Nutrition

When I began teaching at the gym, I was over 200 pounds. A lot of my clients can't seem to remember that, because it was only a few weeks later (maybe just over a month) that I was down to 170 pounds. But it's true. I wasn't 200 pounds of muscle, either. I was out of shape. So when I talk about this with others, how I lost over 30 pounds in just a handful of weeks, people want to know what I did. They tend to assume I radically changed my diet. Wrong.

What I did was quite simple, but it seems to escape a lot of people. Instead of going on some radical diet, cutting out carbs, eating soy bean soup, or whatever, I simply increased my activity. As one of my conditioning coaches, Stephen Alimonda, told me once, "Output must equal input." It's really that simple. If I'm eating 10 lbs of food a day, I need to burn 10 lbs of food a day. It really is that simple.

Now don't get me wrong. Eating right is VITAL. But I think a lot of people put the cart before the horse. Or at least they try to do too many things at once. A friend of mine, who seems to lose weight at will, but puts it right back on, is one of those types. She will cut out carbs, watch EVERYTHING that goes into her stomach, throws herself into a rigorous gym routine, looks great for a month, and then balloons back out a month later. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is simply: too much too soon.

Here's my point. Get up and start doing things. In the beginning, forget all about your nutrition. (I know that many of you personal trainers will disagree with this. But you're wrong). Anyhow ... eat whatever you want. McDonalds? Arby's? Wendy's? Sure. At least in the beginning. The reason I say this is because activity has a way of putting things in perspective and giving rise to better habits. If you walk everyday, or do some other form of activity, more than you used to, you will see improvements in endurance and weight loss very quickly. Why? Because your output is getting closer to your input.

I don't recommend that you keep eating crap. But let's begin small. Eat what you want, but get outside and do something. After you do something long enough, you'll begin to become inspired to make additional modifications. But little ones. And slowly. For instance ... I began jogging. And then, slowly, I started to cut out the crap food little by little. But it was almost effortless. That's why I recommend starting with some form of activity ... and THEN eating right comes almost naturally.

But before you go out and say I know nothing about training because I recommend that you eat fast-food, let's be clear on something. Proper nutrition is extremely important. If you continue to eat poorly, you're going to continue performing poorly. And feeling poorly. I don't recommend bad eating habits. At some point you're going to have to cut out the crap. However, I feel that proper nutrition has a way of working its way into your life simply by getting up and doing things. Jogging? Walking? CrossFit? CageFit? (Of course I recommend THIS one). Sure. Just get up and get going. Better nutrition choices will come to you a lot more easily. But if I'm wrong, at least you got off your duff and actually did something. Right?

Glass House Training

I recently came back from an extended training vacation in my home state of Maine. While there, I did some of the best training of my life, and I had a lot of time on my hands to create new workout programs. One such workout program that I developed is what I call Glass House Training. I named it this because the British Army refers to their prison barracks as Glass Houses, since the original one had a glass roof. Since the imprisoned soldiers needed to fight ennui and stress by working out, I figured they probably did some badass training. My research showed that these prisoners, once released from incarceration, were up to 60% better shape than when they were first locked up. Of course I wanted to know what they did, so I researched what workouts were typically used by British soldiers in general, and then what their prison routines, specifically, consisted of. I came up with seven gross motor movements. So I call these routines Glass House 1, Glass House 3, Glass House 5, and Glass House 7. The numeral refers to the number of movements contained within each drill. (You don't have to do all seven).

Since I've been doing Glass House Training, and since I've begun implementing it at my gym, the results have been awesome. Incredible increases in cardiovascular endurance, strength, muscular endurance, toning, agility, speed, power ... and so on. It might all seem a bit odd, and like one of those hyped up "secrets of invincibility" ads, but I haven't found much to compete with it. And that includes Tabata, Fight Gone Bad, and Parkour ... found in CrossFit and other programs.

Want more? Come on in and we'll prove it to you.