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Video Blog on some insights about Fat Loss

Insights from Hawaii

This cross country epic I have been on for a few months is taking its toll. I think there are lessons to be learned from my adventures. First, it’s all about people. The late great Jack Schraeder, who made me a writer and I think I was his last pupil, used to tell me “Dan, people like to read about people.” It’s true for traveling, too.

With Pavel and the gang in Virginia Beach, I can barely remember the fact that we went nearly 24/7, but I can remember the steaks and the laughs. (And the chess games). At Steve and Jason’s place, it was a family reunion with Ben and Katherine and Lonnie Wade. I know I worked about 16 plus hours in two days, but the memories are golden.

Here in Hawaii, I did a smart thing. On my first day here, Tiffini asked me “well, what are you going to do?” Well, I wanted to snorkel and I picked up a brochure, and mad e a good decision. On the phone was Makani Christensen, a Naval Academy grad, former Marine and all around great guy. His company is Keawe Adventures and, because of his experience, I saw two sharks, a sea turtle and a billion tropical fish. I also enjoyed some coconut milk and real Hawaiian food and hospitality. I can’t recommend him enough. He taught Tiff to snorkel, something a husband is not allowed to do by law.

So, the next day, I find myself going to the lifting home, the local YMCA, of my hero, Tommy Kono, with Chris Falkner. Chris saw that I was going to Hawaii on Facebook and took the step and invited me to train. I think I helped him and Anthony with the O lifts, but I really enjoyed getting my Bench Press, Front Squat and Pull Up workout, so Buddy Walker, my personal trainer, won’t have to smote me when I return. Chris took me to a local place and I ate Moco Loco and I will let you know when I am hungry again.

Second, it’s about packing. Yes, I said packing. I went on a 16 day extended trip with one bag. If I have my Mac, my phone and my Kindle, I have most bases covered. I usually travel with just flip flops, but I found these light water shoes that can hold my hand washable undies. No socks, of course, they eat space. I always take black polo shirts and matching khaki pants. I “wear” the same thing every day. Everybody has laundry machines and I can work while the machines do their work. I cut my supplements to simply ZMA, Fish Oil and Alpha Male on the road, but I also toss in some packs of Laree’s Joint Connection stuff, too. I toss in my food journal and a pen and it works as my business planner and business card and memory jotter, too. Keep the carry on as small as you can and be merciless about “NOT” bringing stuff. I bring a baggies of floss sticks and toothpaste and a toothbrush and some underarm stuff and that’s it. Hotel shampoos are better than what I usually use.

I can train anywhere with anything, so I don’t worry about any “stuff” to bring. Snorkeling with Makani is a work out, too, and I count that. Of course, so is walking up to three or four hours a day!

My trips are usually “off the beaten path” even at tourist spots. It’s not me, it’s the people I meet.

Bart and Buddy and Insights

I met with Bart this morning for coffee. He’s a fine guy from SoCal (don’t hold that against him) and we talked about lifting and things and the discussion soon moved to kids. Later, my trainer, Buddy, and I had basically the same conversation. How do you balance life, lifting and kids?

Well, Tiff and I “cheated.” We sent our girls to Catholic schools, so we let the school dictate clothes and lots of other things. The other thing we did “right” was our menu and chores list. This is basically what we ate for dinner for about a decade:

Monday:
Steak, Salad

Tuesday
Viking Enchiladas (see “From Dad to Grad” for the recipe)

Wednesday
Chili or Jumbalaya (easy recipe)

Thursday
Breakfast for Dinner

Friday
This night “depended” on what was going on. It could simply be burgers, too, grilled on the old George Foreman.

Saturday
Grandma’s for Taco Night

Sunday
Costco Special

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Clayton HKC

I love the HKC cert. Every time, it gets bigger and better. In addition to the manual, I answer these and a lot more (including patterning and grinds):
Packing the Shoulders:
Summary
By considering both how/where the lat is connected to the arm and how it operates on the shoulder joint has helped me understand why “firing the lats” supports excellent form in the swing, as doing so:
• holds the arm into the shoulder joint socket (packs it in) and thus protects the shoulder during the momentum up of the swing
• acts to brake the upper motion of the swing for optimal moment of the down stroke
• supports that big in front of the body DOWN pull on the arms during that hip hinge down stroke of the swing

Planks ( Get Up Planks, Hip High Planks, PuPP)
Swings (Doubles, Bulgarian Goat Belly Swings, HATs, Spike Swings)
Goblet Squats (Curls, Heartbeats, Hip Flexor Stretch)

Road Warrior

The upside of my career choice is that I get a chance to train. The downside is that my training can be up to twelve hours a day, in all kinds of weather and all over the place. I’m at the end of a ten day road trip and the combo of flights, hotels and long days starts taking its toll.

I only travel with one bag. So, when I get ready to go, I pull out a bunch of baggies and put my nightly supplements in them. One for each night. I reuse the baggies over and over again. In them, I put ZMA, Z-12, Fish Oil, Gary’s Supplements (ALCAR and ALA), and anything else I am trying. I stick a stack of Laree’s joint medicine packs in the side carries, too. This does several things: one, I just swallow a pack of pills every night and, more important, as the stack goes down, I am closer to going home.

It helps to bring a baggie of orange flavored sugar free metamucil, too…I’m just saying. The Kindle is the best friend of the literate traveler and it keeps the size of everything else down, too. I also toss in a bag of floss sticks as they are more important than you think…if you don’t have one!

And, everything I just said applies to home, too.

More later!

I’m not sure how you will get this, but it is good.

It’s funny: this week, I am sifting through some of the best things I have seen in my career. The last blog post, I summed Josh Hillis’s System Six and freely admitted I had no idea how you will get it. After my review, I decided that one of the things Josh does really well is sum things. That’s right and it is that simple: he looks at things, pulls out the gems, and assembles them so that the steps to success are so simple (not easy, necessarily) to follow, you have the courage to leap in and try it.

So, over at Park Road Fitness the other day, I was training with my Personal Trainer, Buddy Walker, and Nathan Flores tossed me a copy of his new DVD, “KettleBell Foundations.” Two things: yes, I have a trainer. The worst person I work with on a regular basis is me: I don’t work my weaknesses and I refuse to follow my good advice. So, if you are an “expert,” my first question would be: “who trains YOU?” The other thing is that the picture of the guy on the cover of the DVD looks so badass, not the kind and gentle Nate that I know. But, Buddy was cracking the whip and I was back to training.

I get a LOT of stuff every week to review. What people don’t notice is that I often don’t review things online. Sometimes, and I will be honest, it is personal. Maybe something in the DVD or book “bugs” me and that can be all over the place. If the person is nude, for example, I struggle with recommending it or there is a wide range of things that bother me. If you ever hear me rant on a topic, it might be one of them. So, Nate’s DVD is in that small group of “worthy” products.

Basically, Nathan is giving you an HKC workshop with the Get Up, the Swing, Goblet Squats and Mobility Drills. I would recommend this for someone interested in the HKC or RKC as it is going to give you the most recent materials from our work. His technique is outstanding, but I really like the way he breaks down the elements of each move. You know, on “paper,” the HKC moves are simple, but the mastery of these movements is a lifelong task. Nathan has a very disciplined technique and you would be wise to model the small safety cues that Nathan shows us.

Nathan is charging twenty dollars for this and he told me he made it so his clients could review the concepts at home. I think his audience is bigger than this, so I will be encouraging him to expand this base. It really is a perfect companion to Josh’s System Six, by the way.

Nathan’s website is here and I don’t know if you can get it. But, I’m happy to see quality work in this field and I support it when I can.

Addition: please don’t email me! Contact Nathan at kettlebellcrush@me.com

I’m glad you like my advice, but I barely can keep up with the normal volume…

Josh Hillis and “System Six”

I’m not sure how you get it and the product isn’t finished yet, but Josh HIllis knocked it out of the park with his new six part system on fat loss. I spent time with Josh in November (I think) and I came away with lots of insights about fat loss. Josh has discovered that its own best clients (those who got their body fat down to “rockstar” levels and, more important, kept it there) didn’t necessarily work harder…

And, you should think about that. What held body fat down (and superb athletic performance up, by the way) isn’t smashing your face against the wall. Yes, there is hard work, but more important is “smart work.” Josh discovered that his best people had a basic level of strength. As I tell everyone, after I heard Brett Jones say it, absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is what you can put in the glass. If you have a thimble of strength, you can’t make a single bad nutritional choice to stay ahead of fat gain. If you have a barrel of strength, you can make a few more mistakes!

Josh’s new program is unique…no question about that. He uses two simple tools to measure that you are staying on track and one of them is simply some strength tests (and so is the other, really). He also advocates a food journal, of course, as this is Josh’s signature in this community: Have a food journal! But, as I discovered with my personal trainer, Buddy Walker, you need someone to help you hold yourself accountable to it. It’s a game changer for me, by the way.

There is more. I was honored to be credited by Josh for one of his ideas and I think the idea works seamlessly with his other five. If fat loss can be made simpler, well, I want to see it. It is an amazingly simple toolkit and it is not filled with gimmicks. It is real. It is simple. It is true.

Josh has three pdfs with the program and the workouts are very good. I took his advice and eased off a bit on some things and, well, I am following his advice here. The workouts are very good and the videos are funny and informative.

I like Josh. I have always liked him. His influence on me might not be noticed by many, but simply count the number of times I reference him in a typical workshop (a lot!).

System Six is a game changer. It is very good and I am going to be stealing these ideas for a long time.

This just makes me happy

I am working on a bunch of things, but I love this picture with me and Dave Draper, one of my heroes and mentors:

Life IS Squatting

On Bar Speed

“It just can’t be that simple, Tiff.”

“Well, think about it.”

Okay, so I did. The proceeding little dialogue was from my living room a few days ago. I have been battling this hip injury for a few years and I discovered that two things keep me pain free: a tiny little stretch and avoiding beer. It’s not science, certainly, but it is true…for me. The discussion actually began when my wife, Tiffini, had discovered that adding a small amount of Iodine, in the form of a supplement, had changed her figure in a few weeks.

She had been dieting hard, training hard and living lean for a while and had been frustrated by the lack of progress. In fact, things were going the opposite way. Her doctor suggested, in passing, that a minor problem she was having with her skin “might” be helped with iodine. Within days, the skin issue cleared, but she and I also noticed “less than subtle” body composition changes. She told me: “It just can’t be that simple.”

My hip pain is being “cured” by about a minute of stretching and avoiding beer. My wife has had a “game changing” experience from simply adding about a nickel’s worth of supplements to her diet.

“It can’t be that easy” is also something that has been changing my athlete’s training for the last few years. Although I disagree with the test, my football players have to do this “thing” where they need to bench press a weight for as many times as possible. The NFL makes a big deal of it with the annual Combine as the rookies bench press 225 for reps. It’s not a contest and it probably has little value. It has been around longer than people can remember as Dick Notmeyer used to have us do it as a fun diversion and most of us got into the 23-25 rep range with 225 weighing just over 200.

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