Ever feel like this Bear, surrounded by Giants?

Has life ever felt like a bear, where you being clobbered by giants all around you?

In a Performance Lifestyle, being able to tell a story that supports what you want is everything.

Stories that don’t support you are the giants, and when your stories (your thinking) do not support you, you will get clobbered.

The difference between this reality and the picture on the left, is that you can see the Giants football team, you can’t see so clearly when you have a story that doesn’t support you, but you can feel it’s negative impact.

You know something is wrong, you just can’t quite put your finger on it.

That’s why the curse of the capable person is drama, negativity, and beating the drum of a story that does not get you want you want.

In the video below, the lead character, Brock, has to face his giants when his coach calls him on his unsupportive (negative) story about the upcoming game against the “giants”. The thing not to take away from this post is the heroic “give me your very best” mantra of the video as a lifestyle solution. Heroics are not lifestyle solutions, they are tactics that summon huge amounts of energy for short periods of time. Live that way and you’ll burnout as a performance addict.

Give me your very best, is a powerful mantra and admirable, and it has it’s place in a lifestyle that will work for you (sometimes, you just gotta summon huge amounts of energy) but it is not sustainable without your lifestyle supporting the capacity to do so and even then, “giving your very best” is at best, periodic.

I know of few people giving their very best all the time. Those who do, are usually burnt out. It’s only those people who are living performance lifestyle, who can give their very best on a periodic basis and do so consistently. And the truth is, that’s all you need to do, to be wildly successfully. You don’t need to be doing your “very” best all the time.

The reason is the need for recuperation; which is why most people don’t give their very best most of the time or at all. They aren’t managing their energy and are chronically fatigued, so giving their very best gives rise to complacency and laziness as the status quo, as their energy level sinks without the level of recuperation they need to sustain.

Facing the Giants – Your Giants.

The thing to really take away from this video, is what happens when your thinking is not aligned with the outcome you want and how a change in story can change your mindset and take you to a place(s) you never imagined. Literally. Add to that, the reality check on doing your very best and the need for the energy to do it and your very best will become more regular. And that’s just one reason why we live a performance lifestyle.

In this video, I the “giants” are the negative, unsupportive stories holding the team back. Your story is your mindset and to the extent that you develop more supportive stories, the more stable and forward moving you becomes. Just like the team in this video, amazing things can happen when you change your story.

Think like an athlete even if you're not into sports or a fitness enthusiast

By Laura S. Jones?Special to The Washington Post?Tuesday, April 17, 2007; Page HE07

Calling all athletes. Yes, you. Who did you think? Stop laughing — you’ll snort coffee all over the paper.

You may not be able to give yourself a nickname or call yourself charming, but you can declare yourself an athlete — whatever your waist size, bowling average or how much you’d really rather be snoozing. And maybe you should. Establishing a fitness identity — of any ability — makes it more likely you will keep exercising and live a healthy lifestyle, say some experts. And that makes you more likely to judge yourself on what you do, not on how you look, which some would argue is the road to happiness.

Think of it as the fitness equivalent of “You are what you eat.”

“There is a process of forming an identity as an athlete,” explains Diane Whaley, associate professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. “Buying the clothes, learning the lingo, hanging out with other participants in the chosen activity or sport. Once you form that identity mentally, it is more likely that you will come up with strategies to participate in that sport over time. Having that identity translates into the behavior.”

Or as Yogi Berra famously said, “Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”

But what, you say, if you’re not very good at your chosen sport or activity?

Redefine your goal, suggests Whaley: “It’s all about improvement, not about outperforming others. You can improve skills or time. We all compare ourselves to others, but how we use that information is key. Use comparisons to learn, not to feel bad.”

My husband, Rob, did that instinctively when he was a college swimmer. He kept competing because he kept learning. “I never swam a perfect race, although I won a few,” he says. “Racing identified the things I needed to practice; it made practice interesting and fulfilling. Swimming is a sport that offers so many things to get better at. It’s like solving a puzzle.”

I didn’t grow up as an athlete, so I thought all athletes were just naturally good. Rob made sure I got over that and opened my eyes to seeing sports as a subject I could study. Studying was something I was good at, so I began to feel I had some control over what I was doing. Now, exercising and talking and learning about exercise is as natural a part of my day as eating and sleeping. I call myself an athlete, and not just to excuse the goggle marks on my face most mornings, my lack of interest in events that end after 10 p.m. and my chronic tardiness.

There are limits, of course, to such makeover thinking.

John Jakicic, chairman of the Department of Health and Physical Activity at the University of Pittsburgh and of the American College of Sports Medicine’s committee on behavior modification, doesn’t mince words: It’s “pretty obvious when you’re not Marion Jones.” Still, he thinks it’s possible to help people achieve an exercise identity. He has two suggestions:

“One, you must provide mastery experiences. A person must be able to complete an enjoyable activity in order to have a mastery experience. Then they can try to do better next time. We must tailor opportunities to exercise to be challenging and achievable.

“Two, it will take a long time to change the way people see themselves. People have both a visual and performance image of themselves. Changing the visual image is too hard. Focus on changing the performance image, and you might get to a feeling of confidence and self-efficacy.”

Curious to see how these ideas work in practice, I talked to personal trainer Robert Price at One to One Fitness in downtown Washington.

Price says that new clients who see themselves making progress toward their fitness or weight-loss goals double their efforts because they feel good about their achievements. A client may not start out wanting to run a 10K, but in the process of inching toward a smaller initial goal, she forms an athletic identity, and now exercise is a regular part of her life.

Olwen Huxley, a USA Triathlon-certified coach who was an active member and unofficial coach for the DC Triathlon Club ( http://www.dctriclub.org) before moving to Hawaii last year, described how rank beginners get hooked on a sport or activity.

“People stick with it because they are surprised (and happy) with what they can do after a short time of regular training,” she wrote via e-mail. “I think the most important thing for people to understand who are intimidated is that although there are tons of . . . people in sports who were gifted from the get-go, there are millions of people in this country who have picked up a sport they know they will never be that great at, but they don’t give a damn and they don’t let it stop them from enjoying being an athlete at their level.”

Glover Park resident Mira Mignon, 39, knows what Huxley means. Mignon took part in her first triathlon last year and found the experience transforming. Today, she wears her Ironman watch to work and sometimes lets the laundry pile up because she has learned to define herself by what she does as an athlete, not as a housekeeper.

“Motivation [to exercise] is not a problem anymore because exercising with other people is so much fun,” Mignon said. “And I have a goal, which keeps me from getting bored. There’s always more to learn.” Her goals for this summer’s races are to finish and have fun. “A solid mid-pack placing would be great,” she said.

My friend Randall Stoltzfus, 35, is a successful New York artist — a member of a group not known to exercise religiously. A few years ago, he discovered Ashtanga yoga, and now he loves it and the fortitude it gives him to work with the large canvases he favors. “It’s the first athletic thing I’ve ever done,” he said. Like a true convert, Stoltzfus has spread his passion for yoga and its benefits to his girlfriend, Callie.

Gordon Gerson, 70, hesitates to describe himself as an athlete, although he competes in swimming events and often wins or places in his age group. Gerson, president of Reston Masters Swim Team, used to be a long-distance runner, but he had to quit because of arthritis. Rather than give up his fitness identity, he returned to an old sport: He was a swimmer in high school.

Another athlete who has reinvented himself is Steve Wydler of McLean. Wydler, a former high school wrestler who took up squash and running as an adult, is recovering from surgery for a knee injury suffered in a squash tournament. He says he’ll keep exercising even if he has to give up the sport, because being fit is an important part of his life. His advice to those who didn’t get the exercise bug in high school? “If you have a partner, it will help. You can’t leave your friend on the corner at 7 a.m. and just not show up.”

Once you think of yourself as an athlete, exercise becomes a part of who you are, not just another item on your to-do list. Don’t let the professionals or the collegiate stars be the only ones to know the benefits of being an athlete. The word is democratic enough to describe you and me. ·

Laura S. Jones is a freelance writer living in Charlottesville. She is certified as a health fitness instructor by the American College of Sports Medicine.

This Article is from the Washington Post – Original Article click here

One of the greatest discoveries I found when leading the development of the Performance Lifestyle Formula, was this:

The very same set of lifestyle skills that will enable a person to get out of the downward energy trend and increase their energy, will enable someone to dramatically improve their health and get their weight under control, as well as achieve peak performance and the goals they have set, ultimately improving quality of life. The power is in how the skills are applied (tactics) – what skills you apply, how  you do it and why.

For example: if a person is training for a transformation challenge or sporting goal, when you Activate and Strengthen Your Body in a Performance Lifestyle, your lifestyle would include more sport specific training than someone who has ambitious life or business goals and does not require fitness training at that level.

So here are a few way in which a Performance Lifestyle can apply in your life:

1. It’s how you live a “healthy lifestyle” successfully – this is one of my most common answers because a healthy lifestyle has many definitions and is very subjective. Meaning, anything can be deemed “healthy” even if it’s not. For example; in a Performance Lifestyle we eat nutrient rich foods, and when you know what a nutrient rich food is, the guess work is taken out of  it and you actually learn how to eat for health, which is a skill. We take the same “best practice” approach to each of the 12 fundamental skills you learn in the lifestyle, each of which enables you to function and perform better and live a healthy lifestyle, successfully.

• Get out of a downward energy trend and restore yourself – underlying almost all diseases of lifestyle (not genetic diseases, but those driven by choice and by the environments you subject yourself too), is overwhelm, exhaustion, fatigue, over stimulation, under recuperation, over consumption, under nourishment, over busy (over trained) limited physical inactivity, all of which give rise to the overweight condition and health complications and what we call “diseases of lifestyle”. In a Performance Lifestyle, staying out of this trend is top of mind.

• Get free of Performance Addiction – some people just can’t stop themselves, yet they are trying to live in balance, with vibrant health and peace of mind and they have anything but “peace of mind”. They have so many stories floating around in their head, most of which are unsupportive, that they can’t stop moving, doing, being better, striving, proving themselves etc. If they want to get free of performance addiction the answer is to get into a Performance Lifestyle.
  

• Overcome fat loss resistance and “metabolic syndrome” - how many times have you felt like you are doing it all, but just can’t get things to change, like your weight? The specific reason why is not also easy to identify, but the one thing is simple to clarify, there is some aspect of your lifestyle that is holding you back and causing problems. In a Performance Lifestyle you will learn how to overcome fat loss resistance by making a whole lifestyle change and that means taking steps back far enough so you can make changes at the needed level to move forward in a position of strength.

• Set a big goal (life, business, sport) and achieve it with the support of your lifestyle. The purpose of your lifestyle is to achieve your goals, and goal achievement requires performance; that’s why it’s called Performance Lifestyle. The whole idea of eating, thinking or living better is to achieve something greater and bigger than health itself. Health is your birthright, success isn’t!

• Prepare for a Personal Transformation or Fitness Challenge (coming next) – it’s one thing to live the healthiest lifestyle you can, it’s another to transform or challenge yourself in a highly regimented period in your life. This is a time period when you are following a proven training program or system that is planned and only lasts for a period of time. Your lifestyle then helps you maintain your results. If you want to prepare for a personal transformation or fitness challenge, then get into a Performance Lifestyle to get ready, and learn how to do it right!

• Get the most out of our life – how do get the most of your life without life getting less than the best from you? You must stay out of that downward energy trend which will do more to negatively affect your energy, attitude and outlook than anything else. You also need to align the structure of your life, your lifestyle and your goals so that you start “firing on all cylinders” so to speak. This is a tall order no doubt, but whether you know it or not, that’s what we are all striving for. Having a lifestyle that is sustainable; that works so well, it’s an amazing ride with the best quality of life possible each step of the way. If you want that, then Performance Lifestyle principles and practices to work for you.
  

Each lifestyle skill in a Performance Lifestyle is clear. You learn how to manage your energy including the quality of the food you eat and your activity levels so that you can challenge yourself and stay fit consistently in a Performance Lifestyle and achieve your goals. To do that, we need to develop a resilient  mindset and skills set and that’s what you learn in Performance Lifestyle training and coaching like the LS 365 Training at The Lifestyle Coaching Center.

But that’s not what happened in my case. I write this just 26 hours after the injury occurred.

Reeling in pain from a tweak in my lower back and unable to get up assisted while participating in the MBG Intensive which was due to my condition coming into the intensive (which I explained in my last post), I had a meet up with Jon Hinds about what was going to happen next.

Now normally, in my past when feeling that kind of pain, I would have ruminated for some time and gone the route most people would, which is rely on nothing but ice, or worse give up my power to needles, orthopedists and body workers of every sort before ever attempting to train again. All of which/whom have a place and may be part of the solution, but on their own are not the solution itself.

Jon and I sat down and within minutes we realized that the next steps included the pro active correction of the misalignment and strengthening my weaknesses.

Of course, there is no rush and progress is going to need to be what the situation calls for.  For me, that calls for a renewed commitment to streamlining and simplifying my life ever further, and a strategic focus on the three core essentials of health and higher performance:

1. Actively Managing and Recharging my Energy
2. Eating Nutrient Rich foods
3. Activating and strengthening my body

or what Jon calls in his is MBG 3 Training… eating, training, and restoration; and of course, commitment to developing a new story as I work towards a goal that really improves my situation which is hindered right now by an injured lower back.

Nothing is nearly as powerful for healing, health and performance than putting the right “core essential” practices for you in play in your life.

For me this means:

a) a commitment to under eating nutrient rich foods, which have a high nutrient per calorie ratio. But as anyone learns when eating a nutrient dense diet for a long period of time, as I have; it’s easy to over eat. You just don’t need that much food, and for me, I need to eat less than I have been.

b) a 90 day plan that leads to a new lifestyle routine: in my case, it’s including or “focusing” in my case on daily Eichens Yoga which is a form of yoga, rooted in restoring natural alignment and feedback. I am going to be practicing the Warrior Sequence -

Here are a few pictures from the sequence we did today Sunday at the MBG Intensive… after my injury!

c) a new goal that I set yesterday while unable to get up… and that is in 90 days being able to stand on my hands unassisted for 1 minute!

Yeah, you heard right. Thanks to Jonny Hinds who was thinking bigger than I was yesterday, that’s my new training  goal.

I am skeptical and excited about this goal all at the same time given my schedule, and my obvious pain right now, but the good news is; I am already preparing for it and it is helping me heal my injury without wasting any time and with Jon’s help, I’m feeling like I can do it.

Now to do this, I am going to make it my objective to lose 25 lbs by under eating nutrient rich foods. By the way, under eating does not mean you won’t get enough calories, it simply means that you are eating less than you are used to, and because we are talking about nutrient rich foods, you can do this without every being hungry. I’ll share more with you on eating rutrient rich in another post, but suffice it to say right now, you know you are not overeating if you can forget you have a stomach.

I am also going to get very competent in the Warrior Sequence (high energy Eichens yoga routine) while here at the MBG Intensive. I discussed this with Jon, and I figure this. I know allot about training, and there is so much more to learn, but the reality is, for me, unless I get my body into alignment with some focus and strengthen my weaknesses ongoing, all other forms of training are going to get me in trouble like they did at the intensive on (my) day two.

So that’s my aim during my training time with Jonny Hinds this go round in Madison. It’s thinking big (as I always do, but starting small).

Right now, for me, small is big! I’m not fully participating in the intensive, but for me, I know what my needs are and I’m focused on that and that needs to be something that I get comfortable with… not trying to progress too fast like I have in the past.

Also, I’m going to need to do a better job at restoration during peak performance periods like I went through in the past 3 months that had me launching the new Nutrient Rich website, traveling to events in 3 states, including New Orleans, San Diego and Wisconsin and working on the launch of The Lifestyle Coaching Center.

It proves the point that it’s not what you know or what you do for a living that matters. It’s how you live that matters.

I have challenges going into the downward energy trend, like so many other people, and that’s why I began this work in performance lifestyle. I want to live in balance, with vibrant health and peace of mind while achieving my most ambitious life goals, not having to exit my plans to deal with injury or health complications.

What’s the point of learning about health, energy and fitness… if not to help you function and perform better while in the game of your life and avoid having to get sidelined for significant periods of time.  It’s very much how Jon Hinds is advising me forward.

Yesterday I wanted to hang it up for however long it took to get free of pain and then start exercising again. Today, I am doing the right kind of exercise at the right level to get free of pain and that means yoga.

Now that’s a performance lifestyle mindset.

I plan on keeping you posted daily on the challenge I have set for myself here on the Performance Lifestyle blog and at Jonny Hinds MBG 3 Training blog.

In 90 days I aim to be 25lbs lighter, free of pain in my lower back, feeling strong, and to be able to stand on my hands for 1 full minute unassisted.

I’m tired of old story of not getting the full benefits of what I know. Are you?

It will be great to have your support and maybe, just maybe you’ll participate with me, as my trainer Jon Hinds helps me create a new story and a new outcome.

As Jesse Venture said in the movie Predator. “I ain’t got time to bleed” meaning: I don’t have time to turn towards impotent solutions. I need to activate and strengthen my body, and turn what happened yesterday, and all the events leading up to it, into a new challenge; a training challenge that fits the needs of my real situation and helps me eat think and live better.

After just meeting up with Jon at couple local events in NJ (Jon and Jessica are from Wisconsin), at first I was ready to change my plans and go.

When you get a chance to train with Jon Hinds and Jessica Rucker you take that opportunity seriously. You’ll never learn fitness the way you’ll learn it from Jon and Jessica – they are are among the top trainers in the country and you’ll know it quickly. They know how to train and progress.

But I had a family outing planned and I wanted to prioritize my family over anything else (something I haven’t always done in my life, but take great pride in today). I was also looking forward to slower intensity in August after a very intense first 6 months of the year that came to a crescendo in July.

As you may know, one of the things we manage to in a Performance Lifestyle is staying out of the downward energy trend for significant periods of time. The downward energy trend undermines your ability to function and perform well, and I was in one of those trends, relatively deep, by the end of July.

Then my nephew qualified for nationals in soccer and my sister’s family was now on their way to Kansas, postponing our family event, so naturally I felt compelled to join Jon at the intensive.

Now in my annual periodization schedule going into the downward energy trend somewhat is not all that out of the ordinary as I head into August. It’s the end of a peak quarter for me in my business, and it’s not unusual for me to be in need of an extended rejuvenation period to prepare for the second half of the year.

Its not that you won’t get run down from time to time even proactively living a performance lifestyle, that’s natural; it’s a question of how long you stay there and what you do to correct course.

It’s not that you’re not motivated when you can’t follow through and you find it hard to keep things together, it’s that you’re in need of regeneration. Nothing can arrest your capacity to function and perform well more, and leave you prone to injury than lack or recovery.

And it happened to me…

The first day of the Intensive was awesome and the second day was even better, at the start, but for me, after day 1, I am injured.  I never got a chance to post yesterday because I literally couldn’t get up.

JAM Injured

Coming into the week, I was concerned about tweaking old injuries, even though I have taken steps in the past year to minimize the chronic nature of these old injuries through bodywork.

What I hadn’t done, was fix the underlying misalignments that were causing them to remain chronic and ready to flare when just the right stress was there… and low and behold, I tweaked an old injury in my back, even while being careful!

It had nothing to do with the training or whether I was taking the right progressions (that’s a cardinal rule in the MBG 3 Training System). I was.

Earlier in the day I was standing on my hands which I had worked up to for the previous two days.

John Allen in Handstand

The reason I got injured was because this progressive way of training has not been part of my regular schedule (including yoga every day) and my physical condition, in recent months, has declined due to work load and lack of rejuvenation.

I knew it, and Jon knew it it too. I showed up out of alignment, and in a relatively run down condition, which as you will learn on this blog is almost always coupled with extra pounds. Yeah, I need to lose some weight.

Understanding my present situation…

In the past two months, I went into a downward energy trend that had a hold on me for a variety of reasons I won’t get into in this post. It gained further momentum because my planned vacation in July turned into a business trip (super busy schedule) on top of the fact that I had to complete the go live version of the new www.NutrientRich.com, which was supposed to be done the Friday before I left, and my vacation was no more.

It was at once an exciting time and an incredibly frustrating time at the same time. I was excited to launch our new site about eating nutrient rich foods (a cornerstone of a Performance Lifestyle), but I was doing it at a time when my vital energy was very low and in desperate need of recuperation.  This led to lets say,  very “touchy” behavior.

My outlook and attitude started to crash along with my body. It’s what happens when you don’t or can’t manage your energy well, faced with circumstances, that affect you like these affected me.

So here I am in Madison in a condition that was going to be easily aggravated by just enough stress to put it over the edge, and it happened. I aggravated my back doing kettle bells.

If you don’t know what Kettle Bells are, here’s a pic from the training. That’ Jessica Rucker teaching the progressions to use them safely.

Jessica Rucker Teaching Kettle Bells

So what is this all going to mean for me? Obviously I can’t train today as planned. I’m here in Madison, I want to learn as much as I can from collaboratively Jon, Jessica and the other trainers getting certified.

There’s a little ego involved although not that much. Although yesterday, in my frustration over my repeat injury (which was my responsibility) that had me feeling like an old man amidst my younger training partners, my ego had a firm grip on me. I left the gym and went back to my room and just lied flat and fell asleep wondering what was going to happen next.

Then the next phase of the episode unfolded. Jon who just finished leading the training seminar, and knew I left, came back to the condo to see what was up.

I’ll share what happened in my next post.

Too many times I see people who put themselves through extremely hard workouts and yet still find a way to waste it with their lifestyles. They think that by working out hard, this gives them a justification for eating and drinking whatever they want throughout the rest of the day and the days that follow until the next workout.

The crazy aspect is they expect to see results at the same time. Now this philosophy may work for a small percentage of people in this world that are very lean and that can pretty much eat whatever they want (who are probably not reading this article), but for the majority of people that continually battle with their jeans from 5 years ago, this is not the thought process that needs to occur in order to see results from their workouts.

The alternative solution (if this person is you) is to think ‘Don’t waste your workout’! Whether your goal is weight-loss, rehabilitation, or sports performance, your lifestyle outside the gym is just as (if not maybe even more) important than the workout itself. The average fitness enthusiast spends about 1 hour 3 times per week working towards his or her goal by performing cardio-respiratory training, strength training, or a combination of both each week. This means that out of a possible 168 hours in a week, a workout totaling 3 hours is less than 2% of the total hours available for that week.

I’m not the smartest person in the world but I know I wouldn’t expect to see any results doing something only 2% of the time. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect clients to have the ability to commit more than 3 hours per week to their workouts but what I do expect is for individuals to make the most out of those workouts and don’t be counter-productive with the lifestyle outside the gym (see my next article entitled The Performance Lifestyle Model.

‘Don’t waste your workout’ is the quickest but most precise way for me to get my clients to understand that it’s not only the workout that matters but what they do after that might make or break their results. When I say ‘Don’t waste your workout’, I mean the following:

* Following properly advised nutritional guidelines
* Getting the proper amount of sleep to aid in recovery
* Limiting the amount of empty calories (pop, alcohol, sports drinks)
* Being more active in your daily life (sitting less and being more upright)

Just following these tips will definitely help aid in faster and more desirable results. I know these may be elementary to most of us but just seeing them written down sometimes helps one to focus better. Now go kill yourself in your respective workout but keep in mind ‘Don’t waste your workout’ to see those results that you most definitely deserve.

*Andrew Wallen is the president/CEO of Integrated Movement. He has a Master’s Degree in Exercise Science while holding numerous professional certifications. Integrated Movement is a personal training and sports performance training studio located in Valparaiso, IN. Integrated Movement strives to achieve success through science. Here’s a link to another great article by Andrew (Dude, Where’s My Core?) where he says… “Your performance lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, workouts & supplementation) plays the most important role in getting those wash-board abs.”