Mid Life Fitness

Are you making free choices or are you just reacting? Is your fitness and health plan really on track or are you stuck in a rut heading off into the sidelines?

Your Are Unique
This is your one chance at life, your one chance to express who you really are. Never before has the world seen anyone just like you and never again will it again see someone who has the exact blend of skills, talents, strengths and even weaknesses that you possess. How long are you going to hide in the flock and pretend to be just like all the other sheep? How long will you continue to believe that a one size fits all approach is really going to meet your needs?

Labels
Do you identify with certain peer groups? Are you a hardgainer? Are you suffering a mid life crisis? There are many labels we can use to describe ourselves, how we act, how we react, how we think, what we like and what we do. They can be very useful in understanding ourselves so that we can realise the things which trigger us into patterns of behaviour. They give us a solid foundation from which we can move forward.

But labels carry an inherent conflict. For all that they are useful tags which tell us things we need to know, we take those labels further and actually make them a part of our identity. When we do that, those labels can become mental prisons. “I can eat what I like because I’m a hardgainer”. “I can’t get as muscled as those guys because I’m a hardgainer”.

Mental Prisons
Often these prisons are imposed upon us. Society, fitness and health gurus, our friends and our peers impose upon us their expections, their hopes and their opinions. Some are imposed by law, some by the moral codes of our religious beliefs but perhaps the ones which we absorb the most deeply and question the least are those created by the media and our immediate circles of friends and peers. They all dictate what we should do, what we ought to do, what is acceptable,in other words what is normal. And of course we all want to be normal, to fit in, to be seen as part of the ‘in crowd’, to have the fast track on the latest trend or information.

But we can’t blame everything on others, indeed in truth we can’t blame anything on others. Routines of various sorts; habits, obsessions and addictions, all form when we repeat actions. When we repeat an action or a thought we create a path of lower resistance in our minds and bodies. There are too many things happening around us for us to be able to pay attention to all of them, so we filter and only pay attention to those we deem the most important at that time. Anything which isn’t the focus of our attention is performed on automatic, at least as far as our concious mind is concerned, so the choice will always be the path that was followed before. Any path which is followed repeatedly becomes a rut. But as it becomes easier to follow the rut, it also becomes harder to climb out of it.

Escaping Your Cell
We allow the prison walls to be built because we value our safety. Sometimes we build the walls ourselves deliberately in order to set a new pattern or to break out of an old one. But we don’t just choose paths because they are those of the least resistance, we also choose the safest path. Familiarity with the ground makes it appear safer, but the safety is often only perceived, it isn’t real, for there may be better paths. In this regard perhaps one of the biggest dangers is that these choices are rarely done consciously. As we walk a familiar path, our attention is elsewhere, and our sense of balance is kept by our unconscious mind. Only when we reach an obstacle do we consciously use our sense of balance, and yet if we focused and trained that sense of balance we might be walking tightropes instead of still being the rat treading the endless maze.

Does money equal freedom?
A visit to a commercial gym easily demonstrates just how much of a mismatch there can be between effective exercise and what the market provides. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not possible to consider every decision you make, but there are some which are core to your life and others which are not, and I’d like to think that getting your body into a state which will set you up for the rest of your life is one of the decisions you can’t avoid.

Similar to the gym industry, many households have dubious fitness products stuck gathering dust in storage, and even personal trainers jump on bandwagons, trying to appear cutting edge, but often instead simply end up making their clients reliant upon them instead of giving them robust and reliable routines.

Are you making real choices when it comes to where you spend your money on fitness or are you just choosing between alternatives given to you by others who have very different agendas?

Freedom
Freedom means being able to see the real choices which are available in that situation. Freedom means being able to investigate those choices, reviewing them and discussing them. It means at the end then being able to choose a new path which is suited to the unique person that is you.

Ask yourself: Am I really free to choose the best routes for me or am I just following the flock? Are my mental ruts keeping me from seeing the wider view?

Those who know me, know that I am a proponent of using free weights, that is weights which are not attached to a machine which has a fixed plane of movement. It should come as no surprise then to learn that I like dumbbells.

The question was raised though as to what dumbbells are best. The answer of course,  is that it depends.

• No compensation.  If you lift one thing with both hands, the stronger arm will do more work.  This means that it can grow more than the weaker arm, making the imbalance between arms even worse.
• Safer without a spotter.  If you are lifting heavy without someone to help you out if things go wrong, it’s a lot easier to dump dumbbells than if you are lifting a bar.
• Weight limit.  There is only so much space on each bar to place weight.  While you can certainly max out on your arm workouts, trying to hit your maximum weights for the major muscle groups such as the legs is going to be difficult if not impossible.

If you have plenty of space then having a set of made up dumbbells in a range of weights is ideal.  Placed in a rack, ready to be used so that you can switch from one to another during the workout is the best way.  But if like me you don’t have the space for a rack or don’t want to splash that much cash on it then adjustables are the way to go.  My recommendation if you don’t have a rack is to get a couple of sets of bars and weights which are compatible with your barbell weights.  This way you can use them on both and you can load up a couple of sets of dumbbells at the start of your session so they are ready to be used.

Like most free weights, if you buy the cast iron type then you can pick them up second hand for a very good price.  They don’t wear out and there are always dumbbells for sale at garage sales, ebay or craigslist to name a few sources.

If you are starting out, then dumbbells are a good starter choice, you can add a bar and more weight as you go along.  But if you do start out this way and you are a hardgainer then I’d recommend www.HardgainerProjectXSystem.com because its a higher volume system which means you can get away with lighter weights at the start.

Last week I wrote about how I had trouble fitting the first day of the Hardgainer Project X workout within an hour. It seems I wasn’t the only one, but while I wasn’t too worried about it because I knew that I’d be able to shave time off now that I knew how the program worked, still Jeff “Muscle Nerd” Anderson has come back with a response.

When I tested the program everything seemed to fit within the sixty minute window of opportunity there. Now when it comes to the arms and shoulders day if you go a little bit over, it shouldn’t be that much over. You just gotta make sure that you are really recording those times in between.

The arms are relatively small muscle group it’s not like you are really, it’s the same with the shoulders, you’re not really taxing a lot so you should be OK. You should be alright there.

Hope that makes sense to everyone. Drop me a comment if it doesn’t, and I will be giving out more of the Muscle Nerds advice over the next couple of weeks.

Now that the program is live, Hargainer Project X that is, it was time to buy it and review it.

The program is nicely laid out and is very well thought out. It’s very tightly focussed on the hardgainer, either skinny or skinny fat. Now I’m not saying that it isn’t controversial in some areas especially in the supplement section, but until I’ve had the chance to put it into practice, I’m reserving judgement on it.

You can read my review and watch the video of it here:

Hardgainer Project X review

Having come back from a weeks holiday where I will admit that I didn’t eat according to any proper sort of nutrition plan. I was careful when we ate out and we were self catering so I was able to influence what we ate. But we had pizza twice and ready meals as usual. We did only have a cream tea once…

So this morning I get on the scales, which I only do once a week and and I’ve lost a couple of pounds. Was it muscle? Was it fat, water or what? I only exercised once while I was away which was bad and I’m ready to start back on Monday into my programme.

Truth is though that gaining weight for me is difficult.

Which is why I was interested to come back to see that a friend of mine has just issued a couple of free reports (audio and pdf) about the research behind the new program which he is launching next week.

One thing I did do while I was away was to do some people watching, and I was surprised to see just how many guys, mature guys that is, who are frankly skinny. At least that is in terms of musculature. That creeping middle age spread starts coming in from the early thirties so there are a lot of men who fall into the skinny fat category.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am adding muscle even though I do easily fall into the hardgainer category, but I’m waiting for the launch with interest. Jeff has given me copies of the free reports and I’m suitably impressed so far with his logic. He isn’t revealing all to me just yet, but I can say with confidence that I will be getting a copy of the programme and seeing how well it fits with my own.

Click Here to get your own copies of the free MP3 and ebook

Check it out and let me know what you think. I had to laugh though because I am guilty of telling hardgainers that poor nutrition is a primary cause of them not gaining weight. I’m not going to back track on that, but I am willing to consider if I’ve been wrong on the subject – at least in some cases. I’m more interested in finding something that works better than in being embarrassed by being proved wrong.

Click Here to get see the guinea pigs who tested Jeffs new three step training programme.

I really recommend that you go and check the free reports out and see if you recognise yourself in any of the guys there. One of them is the skinny fat shape which I think many of us fall into, so I’m going to be very interested in seeing how he gets on.

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