There is an extraordinarily powerful ripple effect from one small change.
Folks often decide to make drastic and sweeping changes because they want immediate results. Not only are these choices difficult to commit to and maintain, you can actually set yourself up for failure before you start. A 2002 study confirmed the negative effects of committing to an aggressive diet:
This study examined the effect of anticipated food deprivation on intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters. Participants were randomly assigned to a diet condition, in which they expected to diet for a week, or to a control (no-diet) condition. … Restrained eaters in the diet condition consumed significantly more food than did restrained eaters in the no-diet condition or unrestrained eaters in either condition. Unrestrained eaters consumed the same amount regardless of condition. These results confirm that merely planning to go on a diet can trigger overeating.
I never advise a focus on denying yourself. In doing so, you’ll be blocked by the unnecessary barrier of thinking about what you can’t have.
Throughout my playing career, there were times when I wanted to make changes to my body composition. Although I liked to see quick results, I always started with a simple change. From Psychology Today:
Small steps are always easier to think about, and so to act on, than large ones.
If I was looking to add strength to feel sturdier in the batter’s box, I knew I had to add calories. My methodology was to make a quick, small change to gauge my body’s response. Rather than reevaluating my entire nutrition and strength training program, I’d do something subtle, like add food that I already regularly ingested. If I was in the habit of eating a steak and a sweet potato at lunch, I’d add 1/3 more meat and ¼ more starch, for example.
This simple mental change enabled me to feel stronger as soon as that night’s game. Was I going to hit the ball harder? Perhaps, but not because I was immediately more powerful physically. It was the new commitment that improved my confidence and led to improved results.
Instead of beating yourself up for failing at an overly taxing workout or incredibly restrictive diet, committing to a small change enables you to feel proud of successes. Each success breeds confidence and motivation to keep moving forward to a healthier, stronger body and mind.
Dale Carnegie:
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.
Training Monotony is real, pot-nah (said like 2Pac as Bishop in Juice). You may be under the false assumption that it’s just becoming bored with your workouts. That is not the case. From fellrnr.com: Training Monotony is not about boredom, but is a way of measuring the similarity of daily training. Today, I drove from Palm Desert to Phoenix, Arizona following a horseshit … [Read more…]
Stop paying monthly bills, bite the bullet and build a gym at your home. It makes financial sense and is a much more efficient way to train.If you a) enjoy the social element of a health club, b) care to use cardiovascular machinery or c) don’t have free space for a simple rack and bench, feel free to stop reading. This post is not for you. If you desire more free time with … [Read more…]
I’m never fully explored yoga, but I’m devoted to the pursuit of supreme health and well-being. I’m convinced of the applicability of power posing after reading the studies and I’m ready to take it a step further by incorporating an ancient practice.As a twenty something in the midst of my playing career, I flirted with yoga. I had big muscles then, making those classes … [Read more…]
Sprinting uphill burns fat efficiently and is safer than running on flat ground.When I was a lad, I lived on a square city block. You could walk (or run) around it. The environment was conducive to flat ground sprints, and we had plenty of barefoot asphalt races in Reseda in the mid- to late 80s. Now, my neighborhood is all hills. While there aren’t many kids running the … [Read more…]
My sons and I have been optimizing to do three things.Spend more time together. Consistently get our weight training sessions in. Get better sleep.We have created a process to dominate all three in an hour.Three days a week, my young men and I leave the house for the gym at 5:45 am. School starts for them at 8:00am. We could opt to go in the afternoon, but by … [Read more…]
Striving to take bold action, knowing that you’ll inevitably fail and look foolish, is a strong strategy.
Recently, an inspiring colleague of mine shared this with me.
Life is a maze and we are mice. We have decisions to make at every fork in the road. We will unquestionably take wrong turns, bump up against walls and need to change course. Humans, just like mice, need freedom to move about. If we’re told, “Don’t choose the wrong path,” either explicitly or subliminally, we freeze and stop navigating the maze. The fear of failing leaves us paralyzed and unable to move forward. We stagnate. From the New York Times:
The most concrete thing that neuroscience tells us is that when the fear system of the brain is active, exploratory activity and risk-taking are turned off.
I’m not suggesting that we should become adrenaline junkies, perpetually looking for riskier activities. We should continually evaluate upside and minimize downside. However, it is only by taking calculated chances that we can make any progress. If you never fail, then you have never attempted to achieve what you’re capable of.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. -Albert Einstein
By new, he means difficult and challenging.
Learning to accept the possibility of making a mistake or even fail is a challenge to our comfort zones. We are hardwired to evaluate the negatives more strongly than the positives. As you know, we riff around here on the topic of trial and error. That presumes that there will be errors – but our resulting lessons will be stronger for having made them. Robust triumphs are even more satisfying.
Take a baseball player who experiments with a new approach at the plate. Maybe it’s attacking a fastball in 0-0 count when his personal default setting is to take the first pitch. The first ten times he swings, he comes up completely empty, making weak contact, beating the ball into the ground and awkwardly swinging and missing. He stays with his plan. He’s done his research and taken a long view. He trusts that, over the course of time, his tree will bear fruit. From the BBC:
There has to be some reason to believe the science or technology underpinning that solution, that makes us think the idea is only mostly crazy.
Finally it starts to click. Line drives begin to sprinkle and he reaches base more frequently. He’s on drugs. It’s a high.
Without the risk, without the experiment, we have zero chance to become substantially stronger. Now, I’m not suggesting we only learn from making a wrong turn. Making the correct one teaches us just as much, if not more. From Forbes:
Just as the failures of others teach us more than their successes, our own successes teach us more than our failures. Neurological research bears this out. Scientists at MIT monitored primates’ brains while teaching them a specific task. When a primate succeeded, the researchers observed the monkey’s neurons respond – their brain physically changed in response to learning. When a primate failed at the task, however, there was virtually no change. Furthermore, once primates experienced success, they were more likely to continue improving their performance.
Additionally, it just feels better to succeed (read: win). But only being willing to entertain success means that we will fail as a group. From lifehack.org:
Too many organizations today have cultures of perfection: a set of organizational beliefs that any failure is unacceptable. Only pure, untainted success will do. To retain your reputation as an achiever, you must reach every goal and never, ever make a mistake that you can’t hide or blame on someone else.
Imagine the stress and terror in an organization like that. The constant covering up of the smallest blemishes. The wild finger-pointing as everyone tries to shift the blame for the inevitable cock-ups and messes onto someone else. The rapid turnover as people rise high, then fall abruptly from grace. The lying, cheating, falsification of data, and hiding of problems—until they become crises that defy being hidden any longer.
If we care to grow as people and as teams, we must continually push our personal and collective limitations. We won’t always be successful, but our ultimate achievements will be grander for it.
Fashion and fitness magazines perpetuate the myth that weight lifting isn’t for women. Females are steered away from the weights and toward Pilates, Yoga or Cross-fit classes. This is absurd – using barbells and dumbbells won’t make a woman look manly or less feminine.
The women splashed across covers of bodybuilding magazines with skin stretched tight over bulging muscles protruding from every inch seek that look. They train for years and often take male hormones specifically to acquire that appearance. Not for you? I don’t blame you.
A woman who trains with weights won’t get bulky unless she is consuming an excess number of calories. If a female is ingesting more food than she is using for fuel, she’ll bulk up regardless of whether or not she is picking up heavy objects.
Weight lifting for women makes sense for the same reasons as for men – it is the best way to be stronger and firmer. From Courtney Green, athlete and fitness consultant:
Lifting heavy weight, for both women and men, will cause a flurry of positive systemic changes throughout your body. Your muscles respond by growing (which will also increase metabolism), bones become denser, hormonal regulation improves (that means a much more manageable menstrual period for women, among many other positive benefits), your central nervous system responds by learning how to recruit more muscle fibers to contract on demand and it becomes more resilient to physical stress. Not to mention the real-life benefits of just being stronger. And these are just a few of the reasons why you should lift heavy.
Strength training is the best way to slim down and tone up. Building strength and muscle allows human beings to burn calories more efficiently. If women operate at a calorie deficit and train with heavier loads, they can transform a portion of their body fat into muscle the same way men can.
Which of those fits better into a pair of jeans?
Christopher Wharton, PhD, a certified personal trainer and researcher with the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University:
10 pounds of muscle would burn 50 calories in a day spent at rest, while 10 pounds of fat would burn 20 calories.
Men and women may hail from different pockets of our universe, but we share many similarities when it comes to training for sport and our fitness goals. We are family.
So bypass the hand weights and balance boards and build up to heavier weights. Don’t let archaic arguments scare you away from becoming leaner, firmer and healthier.
I just discovered tamarind paste. If you buy the hype, I’m now stronger than I was 15 minutes ago.
The health benefits of tamarind have been well-studied and include the ability to reduce inflammation throughout the body, improve eye health, boost respiratory health, heal skin conditions, improve the digestive system, relieve pain, increase the strength of the immune system, reduce fever, lower cholesterol to improve cardiovascular health, treat piles, prevent cancer, and even protect children against parasites and worms.
That source has “facts” in its name, so the claims must be true. Seeking out evidence from random online sources is an exercise that requires strong awareness to be effective. It’s easy to confirm whatever pre-existing biases we have. Always fun.
That said, when it comes to food, and experimenting with different fruits and vegetables, even some questionable information may be more valuable than none. If we’re looking to flavor our food, we may as well believe that we’re improving our health in conjunction. The placebo effect is well-studied, so we can lean on that for support of consuming the most (perceived) nutritionally powerful food until we can find dependable science.
Today, over a supremely entertaining Russell Wilson/Johnny Manziel matchup and some work emails, I distractedly prepared a bowl of organic oats. Occasionally, I’ll chop up some dates and toss them in for sweetness and nutritional sock. I had that Pavlovian moment in anticipation of the pleasure of this combination. I reached into the cabinet…no dates.
After going through my maple syrup, honey and banana progression (it’s Sunday, football is on, you get it) and failing to identify an open option, I stumbled across a jar of tamarind paste as my fourth and final read. I had no idea how it got there or how long it was waiting to be opened, but I dove in.
Strong choice. Super tart, but with a healthy balance of sweet. A tablespoon in my oats splashed my bowl with an earthy, reddish-brown hue. Thinking through flavor exemplars, unsweetened raspberry jam comes to mind. The taste isn’t easy to capture with words, but others have put forth admirable effort.
The taste of tamarind is completely unique. It’s that bright sour taste that lingers hauntingly in the background of a good pad thai and many other Southeast Asian dishes.
Oats, pad thai, whatever. I feel healthier, confirming my bias.
We’ve riffed briefly about gaining lean tissue in previous posts, but we’re about to take a deeper, more personal dive into the subject. More specifically, we’ll tackle adding muscle safely, effectively and naturally.
Many of you will be able to punt on this post. Those of you looking to lose, not gain, weight can pass this by. Now is also a good time for a reminder that the scale is an unreliable determiner of this information. Redistribution of said weight, for individuals in general and baseball players in particular, may make more sense.
But for many athletes, the focus is on adding muscle mass and changing overall body composition. If you’re looking to increase your power, explosiveness and general overall strength, read on.
Failure can and should be a great motivator. We aim to win because losing feels shitty. Sometimes, wanting to avoid that feeling can be enough to spark change in ourselves. From a 2014 TED Talk on failing (or “near wins”):
The reason the near win has a propulsion is because it changes our view of the landscape and puts our goals, which we tend to put at a distance, into more proximate vicinity to where we stand. If I ask you to envision what a great day looks like next week, you might describe it in more general terms. But if I ask you to describe a great day at TED tomorrow, you might describe it with granular, practical clarity. And this is what a near win does. It gets us to focus on what, right now, we plan to do to address that mountain in our sights. It’s Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who in 1984 missed taking the gold in the heptathlon by one third of a second, and her husband predicted that would give her the tenacity she needed in follow-up competition. In 1988, she won the gold in the heptathlon and set a record of 7,291 points, a score that no athlete has come very close to since.
My 16 year old son, Chase, is the quarterback for his high school team. Recently, he was demoralized from an embarrassing loss (not a near win) on the field. Rather than let it crush and subsequently derail him, however, he was seeking options for toughening up and becoming more athletic. At this point, his struggles aren’t about skill or talent – they’re about size. In his particular case, he came to me with a goal of gaining 30 lbs of muscle over the next year.
We went out and grabbed sushi to discuss. First, I suggested that 20 lbs, or around 1.5 lbs/month, might be a more realistic goal to hit. It is important to set goals that challenge us without setting them so high that we’re doomed to failure.
Then we began to dive into the process of how he could do this.
Often, athletes and lifters (teenagers in particular) looking to build muscle immediately go to mass gainers. The flashy packaging and bold claims make this a natural leap. By now, you know my lean on supplements, but this temptation even occurs in my own house. Chase wanted to know whether it was a viable option for him.
I get it. In order to lay down lean tissue, you have to be operating at a calorie surplus. You can alter your body composition and lose fat while gaining muscle, but you can’t be as effective while dieting. Mass gainers purport to offer protein and calories in a convenient package. At the same time, most of them are stuffed with sugars, preservatives and low quality ingredients that fail to offer our bodies the most efficient fuel we can provide.
I suggested to Chase that instead that we put some systems and processes into place. I started by sharing that a major key to recovery (necessary for muscle growth) is sleep. We agreed that he would aim to be in bed by 11 pm on most nights (not all, he is a 16 year old). From Nick Ebner, N.A.S.M.-C.P.T., P.I.C.P.:
As we sleep, energy consumption is lowered, allowing us to use the high-quality food we eat during the day to more efficiently build muscle. Growth hormone is naturally released, improving muscular recovery and regeneration. Also, as we sleep the brain recharges. This is important for building muscle because a rested brain is a motivated and focused brain. In simple terms, when you sleep, you recover, and when you recover you replace, repair, and rebuild—all of which are needed for optimal progress.
Additionally, we bagged up around 300 calorie portion sizes of a variety of snacks with healthy fat and protein like almonds, cashews and avocados. We agreed he would take a couple of these to school with him and eat throughout the day in addition to his regular meals to supplement his overall caloric intake.
Finally, we conceived of a weight gain shake that he could consume instead of a mass gainer. Adding a couple scoops of high quality, organic peanut butter to whole milk from grass fed cows and a strong, organic ice cream made with minimal ingredients provides a better tasting, just as portable shake without the downsides of a commercial mass gainer.
Most importantly to this process, we will be logging and tracking the results together. He’s working on recording his sleep, his exercise, his nutrient consumption and the results it’s having on his weight and strength. He sent me the following email:
Day 1 2 shakes no exercise bed 11:10
Day 2 2 shakes light lifting football 11:30
Day 3 2 shakes lifting football 11:45
Day 4 2 shakes lifting football 11:15
We’ll continue to monitor over the course of the next year to see if he can reach his target. We’ll be flexible and responsive to his body’s needs, and we’ll continue to share the results over the next months.
Gaining weight in the manner we want it (that is, lean tissue, not fat) is not always a straightforward path. By being mindful of the entire process, not just time put in the gym, we don’t need to resort to processed supplements.
Most critically, we’re taking the first step without needing to see the whole staircase. You know how strongly we feel about trial and error around here. A new friend recently suggested that the successful people he knows operate with the mindset of, “ready, fire, aim.” I dig that.
Who hasn’t uttered those words? My growing young men, 100 pound pit-bull and I are carnivores. Between the three of us, and the dog, we consume an immense amount of animal flesh. The amount of time I’m spending in the car and store obtaining the meat has reached an all-time high. Seriously, who has time to schlep to the market daily? I’m not behaving in the efficient manner I preach.
I’ve been eating all sorts of animals recently. This week alone, I’ve snacked on ostrich, wild boar, turkey, chicken and all sorts of slippery fish. If you took my family’s votes, however, I’d be alone in my wild game push. They love beef the most. Frankly, the grass fed variety is damn high on my list, too. Healthy? Affirmative. From whfoods.com:
Beta-carotene: shown in several studies to be significantly higher in grass-fed beef, and often at levels twice as high as the amount found in conventionally fed beef. Beta-carotene is not the only carotenoid phytonutrient that increases with grass feeding. The carotenoid lutein increases as well. This relationship between grass feeding and carotenoids appears to hold true even if the cows have been fed silage during the winter months and are pasture-fed only during summer months. The relationship between beta-carotene and grass-feeding in beef is so strong that some researchers have suggested that the yellowish color of fat in grass-fed beef can be used as a good way to determine the extent to which animals have been pasture-fed.
BC is our friend. In the body, beta-carotene is converted into vitamin A (retinol). We need vitamin A for good vision and eye health, a strong immune system, and healthy skin. Let’s season up some rib eyes (booya) and get to work.
So beef is healthy, delicious and we eat a ton of it. It makes sense for me to buy my beef in bulk. ½ a cow will yield 250-350 lbs of meat, enough to last my boys and me about a year in the freezer.
Oh shit, I need a freezer.
I have a nice fridge/freezer combo in my kitchen, but with all the Eggo waffles and Otter Pops, there simply isn’t room for my incoming heifer. I picked up this one to prepare for the impending arrival of all the steaks, roasts, ground beef, organs and bones. Anything over about 7 cu. ft. should be enough to house ½ a cow.
Okay, now that I’m prepared to store a cow, I need to find one. Finding a source with a cow I could visit in person was my aim. Living in Malibu and not near any cattle ranches, this wasn’t the easiest task. If you live near a ranch with grass-fed cows, I envy you.
Stephanie, Kaplifestyle’s know it all, done it all (I kid, Steph) editor simply drives down her red dirt road to a random farm in Maryland and picks out the most stunning steer; she’s home salting in like 15 minutes. If you’re like Steph and are near rural areas, you have many more options. Here are a few from kitchenstewardship.com:
Ask a rancher friend to raise it for you.
Ask a local butcher.
When the county fair rolls around, this could be a good time to keep your ear out for animals who may not have qualified for the fair.
Sure, I’ll just go hit up the county fair. You know the one, it’s right where the 10 freeway meets the 110. Downtown LA, here I come. The rural approach obviously won’t work for us city folk. I had to take a more Malibu-ish approach. I pulled it out. My laptop never fails me.
With some good old-fashioned searching, I began calling around to local farmers’ market suppliers. I was turned down numerous times due to exorbitant shipping costs before I finally found a promising market. I asked them if they could sell me a ½ cow. They couldn’t, but they gave me the name of a ranch in NorCal that could supply me with the kind of cow I was looking for.
ALL Novy Ranch cattle are born and raised entirely on our ranch.
We raise our herd in large, open pastures with room to roam and places to hide from inclement weather or when a mother cow feels the need for privacy to give birth. They are never confined in feedlots, ever. In the winter months when grass is dormant, they are fed high quality hay (high protein) of mixed grasses and alfalfa and are provided straw to bed in. The ranch terrain itself provides areas of shelter from wind and weather with trees and hilly, lee-side areas, but in addition, we provide bunkers of large straw bales for the cows and calves to nestle in and behind. The cows love this. We know that caring for them well and reducing their stress enables them to produce a better product for you.
Now I have storage and a supplier, but I also needed to know what questions to ask. I quizzed superstar FOX Sports 1 basketball analyst, Bill Reiter, about making such a hefty (see?) purchase. His pops is in the cow biz. He shot me back this text, directly from the elder Mr. Reiter:
Would not do it unless I knew if the animal is a steer, heifer, cow or bull, the age when slaughtered and how it was fed. Will the carcass be USDA graded (ie: select, choice, prime etc.). Last, there will be a lot of cuts that you don’t ordinarily cook like cuts from the chuck, round, brisket to name a few.
Who knew this was so much work? You know how we do it here at KL, missionary style…um, I mean, we are on a mission. So let’s break this down. Here’s your glossary:
Steer: A male domestic bovine animal that has been castrated and is raised for beef.
Heifer: A young cow, especially one that has not yet given birth to a calf.
I’m sure Bill’s dad knows his stuff, but according to Jeannine Schweihofer, Michigan State University Extension and Dan Buskirk Michigan State University Department of Animal Science, the difference in the meat is marginal:
Very small differences are noted between beef from steers and heifers after looking at large populations of data. Michigan State University Extension summarized studies for carcass traits and instrumental tenderness that compared beef from heifers and steers. According to the most recent National Beef Quality Audit, heifer carcasses had slightly more marbling than steer carcasses, but USDA quality grade was not significantly different.
Understood. I’ll just ask for the prettiest cow of any age or gender. I know what Stephanie paid for her ½ cow, so I feel prepared from every angle.
Making the call didn’t disappoint. All in, I’ll be spending about $5/pound for beef that I am confident was raised happily and humanely and slaughtered with care. The quality will far exceed the grocery store beef I’ve been purchasing, and I will be saving money compared to the Whole Foods product I’ve been investing in. I will be spending less time in the car and more time high fiving my boys over shared meals. My dog will be devouring organ meat and bones.
I understand a new process. I feel more confident. That mission we laughed about? It was well worth it.
Gavin provides us with our topic for musing today.
You recently invited the readers of this blog to engage in more counter discussion of positions you have taken (to paraphrase you). Not your first time, and not surprising to anybody that frequents the KL. I think your mind would spin out of control if you went a day without a challenge, a task to conquer. Have you ever considered the irony of a person in today’s spotlight pleading (need to learn italics in this format) to be critiqued, to be prodded? But that question is not my official (pretend italics) question. With authenticity and transparency ingrained, how much internal and external conflict does this create in what is essentially your high-profile, corporate gig, where some degree of counter behavior will be asked of you quite often? Do you think you can change corporate/business culture more than it can change you?
Gavin, you’re a stud. Your questions and comments are always sharpening. Thank you.
First, I would not call my occupation corporate nor high profile, although I certainly work for a corporation. Player Development is human development masquerading as a baseball endeavor.
No small percentage of the reason I continue to write this blog while working in baseball is because I know players peruse it. I may reach out to a player while on the field or at my (standing) desk. But this forum offers another method of connection. When no one else is around, I can share general philosophies without putting anyone on the spot. I have a space to wax about something totally off the cuff and then follow up with a player later. Hopefully, it sparks debate or a productive conversation. I can refer back to posts on nutrition, body language, speed, power…whatever. We can sharpen and be sharpened, inspire and be inspired. Isn’t that what we all live for?
For that very reason, authenticity is vital. In order to relate to another human being, we must clearly indicate that we stand on common ground. That means acting like us in any given moment, while perpetually hunting for the strongest version of ourselves. Some days we are perfectly on point, other days we display our highs and lows. Perhaps we get pissed off and get loud, perhaps we’re relaxed and having fun. Those are important to display, independent of the forum.
So, I’m not trying to change corporate or business culture. I maintain my flexibility, but stay true to my core beliefs and practices. We shouldn’t be so malleable that an office environment removes my soul. We are trying to connect with other human beings, and we can’t always do that face-to-face. Sometimes it has to be on the phone or via text. This blog is another format to prompt debate, action or assumption questioning. It’s a place to remove some boundaries while remaining responsible and cognizant of my audience. Otherwise, I’d just write about John Lee Hooker on the guitar, and you’d be bored to death.
Strong mind,
Kap
As a reminder, feel free to leave your questions and thoughts in the comments below. Any topic is fair game.
Taking the first step is the most important thing you can do. For today, I want you to take a step – off the scale. Your scale is like your worst ex. It’s a liar; deceitful, manipulative and behaviorally inconsistent. It’s most dangerous characteristic? It’s intoxicating, luring you in day after day with the promise of better things to come.
It’s time for you to end the dysfunctional, toxic relationship with your scale. Kick that SOB to the curb.
The scale only measures weight. More times than not, weight is a poor indicator of how we feel. Medical studies are showing that weight is not indicative of overall health. Tara Parker Pope writes in the New York Times:
Despite concerns about an obesity epidemic, there is growing evidence that our obsession about weight as a primary measure of health may be misguided.
The scale doesn’t just reveal fat lost and gained. Step on a scale in a moment and be delighted by a loss of several pounds, but that weight may be from water and glycogen depletion. Re-hydrate yourself properly and that delight morphs into concern over extra pounds. A crash diet may shrink the glowing numbers on the scale, but comes at the cost of muscle. Most of us don’t aim to be skinny and flabby. Tone is more the aim.
Case in point, in the picture on the left, I weigh 215 pounds. I stand 6’1. My body fat was around 5 percent. The man on the right is listed at 6’1, 220.
The ripple effect of relying on the scale is dangerous. Even if you don’t weigh yourself in an obsessive-compulsive fashion, your mood will inevitably be impacted by natural weight fluctuation. You follow a nutrition plan to a tee for weeks or months, gaining some muscle and losing some fat. When you weigh in, however, you’re floored that you’ve not lost a pound. Maybe you even gained a few; muscle is about 18% denser than the equivalent amount of fat. You throw your hands up in disgust, thinking “this is pointless” and go back to your less than stellar eating habits.
By the way, I wouldn’t, unless you’ve got extraordinarily thick skin, measure body fat as an alternative to standard weigh-ins. Some folks naturally carry higher body fat, and I don’t see how insecurity around your body’s natural tendencies will provide the greatest level of motivation.
For women, avoiding body fat as a measuring stick is even more critical. According to Runner’s World:
Although many female athletes try to reach lower body-fat percentages (14-16 percent), doing so can also alter their hormones and have a cascading effect in increasing cortisol levels from perceived stress, disrupting the menstrual cycle, increasing risk of bone injuries, and decreasing overall performance.
Instead of focusing on weight or body fat, use the following three measures and your mind will be every bit as strong as your body.
How do you feel? Are you moving around well? Do you get out of bed in the morning feeling lighter on your feet than when you started your plan? Are you smiling more? Are you excited about continuing your lifestyle journey?
How do you look by comparison? Are you noticing new muscles that were not there before? Are you seeing definition in your face that was not apparent prior?
How do your clothes fit? Are the pants that you couldn’t button easily now loose? Are your arms filling out that t-shirt better? Are you excited to try on your little black dress because you sense it will illuminate your curves more now?
Checking these boxes will be a much truer indication of your success in achieving your fitness goals and making healthier lifestyle choices. If you know you look and feel better, you are losing baggage, if not weight. Are you ready to take that step?
Last year, I began weight training with my two sons.
My family often makes friendly wagers on football games. In this case, I had a bet with my older son, Chase, about Peyton Manning’s performance with the Denver Broncos when he returned from neck surgery. My terms were simple. For two months, Chase would accompany me to my weight lifting sessions.
I won the bet. Three times a week, Chase and I (along with my younger son, who came along for moral support) awoke at the crack of dawn and worked on the major power lifts. Chase was 13 and Dane 11, so they used very little weight to start, barely enough to challenge them, as we worked on squats, dead lifts and bench presses.
At the end of two months, they absolutely hated it – and me, when I woke them with a hug before dawn. Chase fulfilled his payoff of the bet and I retuned to doing the early morning routines solo.
Several days ago he asked me if we could get some weights for the house. I tried to contain my smile, but it burst through. The introduction to lifting didn’t land at the time of my introduction, but that’s what being the leader of men is about. He believes it’s his brainchild to start weight training now, about a year later, and I love that.
For eons, people have believed that weight training for children was a bad idea. A study in the 1970s of Japanese child laborers found them to be shorter than their peers; researchers assumed that moving heavy objects day after day had stunted normal growth.
New research shows the exact opposite. From the New York Times:
But a major new review just published in Pediatrics, together with a growing body of other scientific reports, suggest that, in fact, weight training can be not only safe for young people, it can also be beneficial, even essential.
In the Pediatrics review, researchers with the Institute of Training Science and Sports Informatics in Cologne, Germany, analyzed 60 years’ worth of studies of children and weightlifting. The studies covered boys and girls from age 6 to 18. The researchers found that, almost without exception, children and adolescents benefited from weight training.
Children in the studies didn’t bulk up the same way that adults do. Instead, the changes happen on the neurological level. Children who participate in strength training are able to use their muscles more efficiently, a benefit that does not occur when beginning weight training later in life.
The studies also discovered that children who participate in sports and also do strength training exercises are at a lower risk of injury, due to strengthening their muscles, tendons and ligaments.
This doesn’t mean we load up the bar and throw it on their back; quite the contrary. Nor do I think we should force children into massive workout regimes for which they are not ready or interested. However, by introducing the process safely and sensibly, they will often begin to make healthy lifestyle choices on their own that will benefit them for years to come.
