Mid Life Fitness

Workout Album: Disturbed – The Sickness

If like much of the Western world you’ve given in to temptation and over eaten, then rejoice! Mass building requires calories and in this world of obesity we constantly under attack by a media driven guilt trip over what we eat.

Now I don’t mean that you should eat just anything that comes to hand, but there is need to see the forest and not just the trees, something which is impossible if we just listen to a small and vocal minority whose aims are not the same as ours.

In the next couple of days keep your eyes on this blog or my newsletter because Vince Del Monte is releasing a co-authored report which might just open your eyes a little.

I don’t agree with everything that Vince says, and neither should you. Come to that you shouldn’t agree with everything I or anyone else says either! Come on, you are old enough now to realise that you need to tailor advice to what works for you.

But back on track, as I work out today, hitting a new Personal Record, at least for this cycle of training, I’m glad for the boost in calories which are in the process of adding muscle. Yes there is going to be some fat as well which I’ll need to deal with, but the Summer and Autumn of stripping back the fat has altered the balance in my favour. More of that in the report, but for now I need to get back to the presses and pull ups – I’m writing this in the rest pauses as I’m still taking it easy because I haven’t cleared the last of the cold from my system yet – the price of a crap immune system, but one which is sooo much better than it used to be!

Train hard.

No one would expect to be able to build impressive muscles without spending time working hard in the gym. The same then is true of the mental attitude which is necessary in order to be able to work out that hard.

Mental strength does not come to us any more easily or naturally than physical strength. Both need to be carefully trained and developed. No matter what your genetics might dictate on either of these things, you can improve and be better than someone who has not bothered.

The one trait above all others which will see you to success is in maintaining a positive mental attitude. A positive mental attitude is the steroids of the mental strength game.

Where do you get them?

As with any strength training, it has to be done consistently otherwise you will lose any benefits that you’ve gained.

In the Western culture we’ve become accustomed to being negative about things. Our days are filled with complaining about things, being irritated or angry about other people. Road rage is a symptom of a much larger problem.

You need to learn to stop that practice, because what you do to others is reflected in your own self. Anger and frustration can be powerful motivations in a workout to really push yourself, but that assumes that you’ve made it into the gym in the first place.

Remove all negativity from your mind. While you may see negative things in others, don’t mention them, don’t even think about them. Instead find something positive to say. This is very hard to do in my experience, but it also applies to you, yourself. It’s easy to talk yourself into giving up by focusing on the negatives. Focus on the positives. If a workout didn’t go as well as you’d hoped then be determined to do better next time, but focus on the fact that you came and did it.

Normally there is a reason for a workout not going well, so search within yourself to determine why – where you ill, tired, hungry? This is the second secret, which is to learn from every experience, good or bad. Take pleasure in those experiences, because each have something to teach you and if you can learn the lesson you will do better the next time.

Establish a morning ritual where you find those nuggets of benefit in the happenings of the previous day. Start the day with a laugh, even if forced because the biofeedback will make you positive. Start the day in control of your own mind by choosing to only be positive that day.

Only you can develop the strength to stand firm in your own mind. Only you can choose to be unaffected by the moods of others, to instead focus on achieving your aims. This is how you change the rest of your life – what are you going to do about it?

You guys have asked me some questions and I’ve chosen one particular theme which I think runs through the majority of the questions to answer. That theme is how you can create the time to fit your workouts into your already overcrowded schedule.

I’m going to be putting up a short webcast where I’m going to talk you through the action points you need to take to smash through the barriers. I’ll warn you in advance that I’m not going to hold back on this one, and some of you may not like what I have to say. But there are only two outcomes for your future – success or excuses and if you want to turn the excuses into success then you may need to hear some things you don’t like.

I’m going to be putting the free webcast up for you on Thursday the 18th of February.

If you’ve had trouble finding time for your workout or found that other things keep coming up and taking the time slot you put aside for it, then you need to watch this.

Some of the things that I’ll be covering include:

Why one thing you are doing now guarantees failure
How to find hidden time
How to put it all together into one
Why taking things slowly creates long term success

Remember that you can watch the video for free, but because my server doesn’t have unlimited bandwidth I will have to restrict the number of people who get an invite to it.

To get an invite, all you need to do is to click on the link below and give me your email. You will need to confirm your email, so be prepared for that. I need to make sure that the few slots I have go to people who will actually receive the email, so if you don’t confirm your email, then I’ll send your link to the next guy on the list.

To register click here or paste the following link into your browser

http://www.mirius.co.uk/Events/register.htm

All of the religious and spiritual systems have one thing in common – they have a method for grounding. You might know it as centring, prayer or contemplation but despite the names it is all a form of meditation.

In our daily lives we are especially beset by confusion. We have multiple levels of distracting communication coming in at us, any number of things which act to stress us; things we need to do, to respond to. Multitasking is commonplace even where we try to avoid it, and the end result of this process is to leave us fragmented and without focus.

We can also find ourselves withdrawing from the pressure, putting up walls and allowing ourselves to stagnate and become depressed.

Stresses damage your body

Depending on your belief system you might view your response to these problems as being an issue with your energy being, your mind or just with your spirit. We have a physical body but we also have an intangible, mental or spiritual part, the part which makes us who we are.

To improve your body you need to have focus and this means you can’t afford to be fragmented and confused, but neither can you afford to hide from the pressure either. Both will result in not scheduling your workouts, nutrition and rest properly and even when you do workout the chances of maximising what you are doing will be slight. It’s all too easy to muddle your program and not give the exercises the focus they need because your mind is somewhere else. Mental stresses will impact on chemically on your body, reducing your ability to cope and this too will slow or even reverse your progress.

The solution is to put the time aside to ground yourself. To be effective this cannot be something that is done once in a while, you need to make it a regular process and if you can’t do it every day then at least do it before each workout. You need to make sure that your focus is on what you want to be doing, to make sure that you tick every box necessary to achieve your goals.

Meditation exercise

Most meditation systems start with breathing. If you have your own system – you do yoga, Alexander technique, martial arts or belong to a religion, go and learn that part of the system and apply it to yourself. You may not have been taught it, but if you ask your teachers they will be able to help.

But if you don’t have a system or simply want to start now then follow this:

Take a seat, wherever is comfortable, close your eyes and breathe.

Open your mental eyes on your inner space. Where are you? Are you in your head, are you floating about outside your head? The first task is to bring yourself back into your head, and you do this by focusing on your breathing. As you breathe pull your awareness back inside your head.

Once you have it there, you need to start to bring it down into your body, breath by breath. Take it down past your neck, past your chest and all the way down to your pelvic floor. You can do this by visualising the bones of your chest or the backbone and go down one vertebrae each breath. If you are familiar with chakras then go down one by one, it doesn’t matter how you get there so long as you do. This is the seat of the body. I find that when I get there suddenly my breathing slows down of its own accord and I relax.

As you continue to breathe you need to be aware of the energy of the body and how it flows. You can think of the energy or spirit being drawn in as you breathe and then pushed back out as you breathe back out. If you think in terms of chakras then apply your knowledge and for example you may want to spin the root chakra. Find a visualisation that works for you.

It need only take five minutes and it may take several attempts before you can achieve it, but if you can start the energy flowing then you can clear or ground yourself. The energy is like the incoming tide, it will sweep away any disturbances; any scattered sand or water that has become backed up in a pool, leaving it fresh, clear and ready for the day.

Be present in yourself

When you are grounded then you are present in yourself, you know who you are and you are in control. If you are not grounded then life tends to live you and not the other way round. When you are centred, you are in touch with your core values, the things which you are passionate about, the things which make you who you are. If you do this before a workout then your focus is fresh, your motivation reconnected.

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.