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Brutal Efficiency

I posted the other day about in my “One Thing At A Time” post about how I like to thinking of my strength and conditioning training as I view a lot of things in life: it’s always better strip things down to their essentials because they simply do not need to be so damn complicated.

I mentioned in that post about a short, but brutally intense conditioning protocol called Tabata.  This is where you do an exercise all out for 20 seconds, rest for 10 and then repeat for a total of 8 rounds.

Well, instead of just describing it, I decided to video a nice little slice of this madness for you, beloved reader.  So without further ado, I present for your consideration… Tabata sledgehammer strikes.  And I wonder why my friends never want to come train with me in my home gym. I guess I can wonder no more.

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You Are What You Think

Like most people who get together with school friends they don’t get the chance to see often enough, I often like to ask “Hey, who else have you kept in touch with?  How are they doing?”  I was catching up in just such a fashion not too long ago with a very good friend from law school.  Our conversation then basically became a catching-up session within a catching-up session.  Umm… huh?  Read on.

I asked him if he ran into anyone from law school and he mentioned he had recently run into a woman we both knew from school.  He said it was pretty funny because she said to him,

You know, I will never forget something Kevin said in law school.  A bunch of us were talking about what you look for in someone else when dating and I said I preferred dating men who were smarter than me.  And Kevin says, “Well, that would never work for me… I don’t know anyone smarter than I am.”

My buddy and I agreed that this story was absolutely fantastic… but partially because I 100% remember that conversation and that’s not at all what I said. HA!

University of Connecticut School of Law What I actually said was that my view of people in law school was that I never viewed my classmates as being smarter than me.  Sounds just as bad, doesn’t it?  Ahh, but what is missing is the second half of my statement and this is absolutely critical:

I didn’t think I was the necessarily THE smartest, but I refused to operate on the assumption that anyone was smarter than me.  They might have been better at some things, but I was also better at other things and so I would put myself on par with anyone.

I’m a fairly humble person, so nothing about this is being arrogant or cocky… rather, it’s a notion that in life, if you walk around thinking everyone is better than you or smarter than you or whatever… guess what?  They definitely will be.  You have just voluntarily placed yourself smack-dab in the middle of a foregone conclusion or self-fulfilling prophecy.

The converse is that while thinking you are just as good as anyone else doesn’t mean you automatically will be, at a minimum you’ve given yourself a fighting chance if nothing else.  So why close yourself off before you even get started?  That always struck me as an awful way of thinking.

Be bold and don’t sell yourself short.  That’s how paragons of good-looks like myself get by… obviously.

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Finding Closure… Strangely

It’s easy to stand here in 2010 and be completely amazed at the world around us.  We are simply awash in a staggering amount of technological progress that takes our big beautiful world and makes it feel incredibly small.  Blogs (like this amazing one that you simply cannot get enough of… right?  RIGHT?!?!?!?), Twitter, Facebook and so on.  When I actually take a moment to stop and think about it, it’s pretty overwhelming in a wonderful sort of way.

But as we move forward and become (allegedly) more sophisticated, we do leave many things behind… and not all of them are bad.  For one, we have really done away with or just completely forgotten many of the rituals or ceremonies that marked important passages in our lives.  I think it’s a wonderful thing that, for example, in Judaism there is the bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah to mark the entrance into an adult life for young people of that faith.  Or perhaps the walkabout that Australian aborigines participate in.  It’s truly a shame there are not more events such as this more universally.

Why have we left such things behind?  Is it a feeling that we are simply too sophisticated for such things that remind us of our more tribal and ancient roots?  Probably.

Ahh, but rejoice my friends!  For despite our desire to leave behind such primitive trappings of a bygone era, there are those out there striving to still provide a means by which to help mark those significant points that we might otherwise let slip by like a thief in the night.  Who, pray tell, who could such a person be?

I present for your consideration… Death Bear.Death Bear

Yeah… you read that right.  Death Bear.

Who… or maybe what… is Death Bear?  Death Bear is a performance artist based in Brooklyn who will come to your home on a strictly volunteer basis to help people move on from a break-up in a relationship.  Cute and cuddly, ain’t he?

I stumbled across this character as part of a piece over at MSNBC and honestly, I had to chuckle when I first saw it.  I mean, seriously… a dude showing up in a 7 foot tall all black bear costume to take away the reminders of love gone sour?  How can that possibly be something helpful for people who are going through some genuine emotional pain in their lives?

Well, apparently it does help.  As Theresa Thai, someone who has used Death Bear before, says in the MSNBC piece, “He was very cordial and kind of somber, actually.  It was almost like sacrificing something to alleviate the feeling of a heavy heart. It’s all symbolic, but it really did help.”

The more I thought about it, the less strange it seemed.  Don’t get me wrong – there’s no way a dude in an all black bear suit going by the name Death Bear is ever going to be quite a normal to encounter as an accountant in a business suit.  However, the notion of someone taking part in a ritualistic way to move beyond heartbreak?  It actually makes a lot of sense and it’s probably not a bad idea for anyone seeking to find better closure.

Plus, who doesn’t like someone in an animal costume showing up at their door?  I tell ya who… people I don’t wanna know.

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One Thing At A Time

One of my favorite blogs is Lifehacker, a site devoted to all kinds of ways to do things a little smarter and essentially “hack” your life, whether it is cool software, better ways to get organized, design your office or even exercise.

So today they had a post about how to build a stand for your cardio equipment so you can mount your laptop to it.  They link over to a snazzy YouTube video that demonstrates how.

*sigh*

OK, as you might see in the comments section of the post, I am not a big fan of any of this approach.  Why?multitasking

I cannot imagine you are providing any real focus or intensity or effort in any kind  of exercise activity where you are using your damn laptop at the same time.  Now, some people in the comments counter that this is meant more for a situation where you are doing work first and getting in the extra benefit of some extra exercise at the same time.  To that I would counter, you are probably not all that focused on your work then.

So to put a fine point on it: I really dislike multitasking.  I think it’s just an inherently flawed concept where we feel that we can get some kind of good product as the end result of a scattered level of attention and focus.  Personally, I know when I try to accomplish 3 things at once at work, I end up with 3 mediocre results… and umm, no one wants that.  Certainly not me.

And what about in your fitness?  I think that some steady-state cardio has its place, but generally, if you are talking on your phone or… for the love of God… working on your laptop while exercising?  My mind is boggled right now at how that can be of much benefit.

OK, OK… I can hear people saying “Well it’s better than nothing…” but so is doing 3 toe touches and call it a “stretching routine” when compared to just sitting on your butt all day long.  It’s not exactly setting the bar too high, wouldn’t you say?

I think this is why I am enjoying the new focus in my own training/lifting/conditioning program right now because I am trying to whittle away all the extraneous stuff I don’t need so I can be committed to doing the essentials and doing them well.  Not only is it a hell of a lot more enjoyable, it’s actually more productive too.

A perfect example is how I shun pretty much any kind of “regular” cardio these days.  You know the kind… shuffling into the gym, setting up on an elliptical or treadmill and slogging through 30 mind numbing minutes where I walk out feeling maybe a little bit better than when I came in.  Ehh.

My solution? Intervals or this lovely little thing called the Tabata protocol which is 4 minutes of fun.  Yes, you read that right… 4 minutes.  How does it work?  Very simple, really.  Pick your exercise (and not anything will do mind you) to perform.  In this case we will go with a piece of cardio equipment – a stationary bike.  You will do 20 seconds as hard as you possibly can.  All out.  Then go light for 10 seconds.  Repeat 8 times total.  That’s it.  It’s not easy, believe me.  The science behind it is not about burning calories while you exercise because it would be very small for 4 minutes… however, you have basically amped up your fat burning furnace, so to speak, for hours afterwards.  Hard work, focus and incredibly efficiency.  Gotta love it… seriously.  You HAVE to.  There’s no choice in the matter, so stop trying to debate me.

So I am begging you… pleading with you… but not groveling (seriously, even aspiring bloggers desperate for more readers have to have SOME limits, my friends)… knuckle down and do one thing at a time.  You might even find you do that one thing really well.  Crazy talk, I know, but that’s just the kind of nutty guy I am.

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Coloring Outside the Lines

Whenever I see a little kid doing some coloring, I always smile when I see what kind of wild creation they come up with in their coloring books.  It’s often a bunch of crazy colors, none of which match and rarely are they able to stay within the lines.  I know it was like this with my nephews when I would see their bursts of Crayola-inspired artistry.crayons_full

But then when they reach a certain age (and I’m not sure exactly what age that is), I  think I fall into the same pattern of behavior as everyone else… admonishing them (gently mind you) that they need to start coloring inside the lines or they need to pick the “right” colors for their drawings.  It’s like my brain just cannot quite process a drawing by (for example) a 9 year old where they just can’t seem to stay neatly within the black-and-white pictures they are given.  I reason, “The pictures would look better and more life-like if they stay in the lines and pick appropriate colors!  I mean, cows aren’t green, for the love of God.”

Well, a friend/colleague/blog reader, Heidi, sent along a quote to me that really struck me about the above kind of thinking I (and lots and lots of other people) get snagged into:

Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.
– Alan Kneightly

Boom.  Headshot.

What a perfect little snapshot on what creativity should mean to each and every one of us.  I’m not going to go off on some rant about nurturing children or proper parenting techniques because (1) I’m not qualified having no kids of my own and (2) that’s just patronizing.  What I do want to say is that for myself, I really need to think a little more about how I view “coloring outside the lines” generally speaking, especially with my nephews.

Pencil mug from Sam In the end, does it really matter if my nephew, Sam, likes drawing all over the place or using the color red for… well… mostly everything (as is demonstrated by this pencil mug he did for me a few Christmases ago)?  Hardly.  I just wonder about the subtle effect of always forcing people into smaller and smaller boxes, hence smaller and smaller ways of thinking about things.  Would Sam be driven down a path of complete anarchy and chaos if he was never “corrected” to use different colors or try to be neat?  I kind of doubt it, but I do think that if he (or any kid) were to be constantly boxed in, they might not quite be to their creative potential as they should.

And I don’t mean anything about all of us needing to be artists and such, but I believe it to be a fact of modern life that creativity tends to be constantly stifled.  It’s like the old line of corporations wanting people to think outside the box, but then always putting them inside physical boxes (cubes) to do their work.  What is gained in neatly partitioned work spaces and potential floor plan efficiency may very well be lost in new ways of thinking.

My own remedy for my own potential stifling attitude (whether for others or myself) is twofold: (1) This blog.  I cannot even begin to say how liberating it is to do this and to write freely about topics of interest to me.  (2) Read The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.  I’ve had this book come highly recommended as a great read on unlocking your own inner creativity and letting it breath a little more.  I began reading a sample of it on my Kindle (so handy) and please do not be dissuaded by the title – it’s something anyone can find value in, not just artists.

Maybe I will even color my next chart for work outside the lines… if I could just bend that damn PowerPoint to my will…

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Adventures in Self-Discovery: Snowboarding

Today I decided I would walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  You will certainly see me advocating all sorts of good positive change, going for it and such on this very blog.  Part of it is certainly because these are all things I am trying to do for myself.  If I speak of how people should put themselves out there and try some wacky things, it’s because I know I need to do the same.

Well, today was a day for me to do less yapping and a little more doing.  So, I took my jazzy new snowboarding outfit and headed on off to Ski Butternut up in Great Barrington, MA to finally give snowboarding a whirl.  It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while and did a ton more talking about wanting to go than just getting up off my butt and just going.

I figured taking a vacation day to extend my weekend to 3 days would be just the thing.

I’m not gonna lie to you… when I actually arrived and saw all those people who just effortlessly glided down the mountain on their skis or snowboards, I got pretty nervous.  I’ve been skiing about 5 or 6 times in my life, but it’s probably been at least… ohh… 12 years since I last went?  And snowboarding is really nothing like skiing.

But I pressed on, signed up for a lesson and off I went for my 1 hour lesson.  How did it go?  Well… much of my day looked pretty much like this:

2010-02-08 - Snowboarding

Yup.  On my butt and looking down the bunny hill, wondering how the hell I was actually going to get back on my feet.

So what did I learn on this brisk and sunny New England day?

  1. Don’t take yourself too seriously.  I knew going into all of this that if I was going to get all bent out of shape, it would be a wasted vacation day.  I hate wasting vacation days.
  2. Kids tend to be pretty good at skiing and snowboarding because they are too young to be afraid.  I could hardly count how many kids… and as young as 6 or so… just firing down the slope with complete ease.  It makes me chuckle to think as we age and allegedly get smarter or more “wise”, we also tend to become less playful and much more reserved.  Kids just go for it and worry about the consequences later.  While that approach is not going to be ideal for all circumstances of an adult life, I fully believe we can all benefit from having this more in our lives every day.  Yes, I said every day.
  3. It’s good to stop being “that guy”.  Oh and which guy might that be?  You know the one.  “Dude, I am totally going to go skydiving.  Seriously.  It’s gonna be aaaaawesome.”  Except he has been saying that for 5 years.  When it came to snowboarding, I was totally that guy… and that guy can be so annoying.  It’s fine to want to do something cool or fun or daring, but talking about it any longer than 1 year is just ridiculous.  And yes, I just made up that 1 year mark, but it now feels super-official to me.  I am the rule-maker… FEAR ME.
  4. Snowboarding gear is almost absurdly complicated. I love my snowboarding pants and jacket.  They are 100% powerful sweet, no doubt about it.  But damn, do they have a lot of pockets, zippers, vents, snaps and doo-hickeys.  I must say I do like the pocket with the vent hole so I can safely tuck away my iPod and run the headphones up through my jacket.  I am still convinced I overlooked a few features.  If the jacket had an emergency parachute in the event you fell off a cliff, I would not even be remotely surprised.

So that was my new experience today and it was pretty fun.  A few of the falls were tough and just getting back onto my feet was a challenge, but I kept at it as best I could.  I only decided to call it a day when one of my falls was a little TOO hard and jerked my neck and head pretty hard.  I figured that was my sign to stop.

I’m just happy I got off my butt, tried something new and shed my “that guy” title… at least for snowboarding.  Now if I can only get my running with the bulls in Pamplona plan in motion… and I am not even kidding about that a little bit.

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Got Scars?

Today I was out in the gray chilliness that is Winter in Connecticut and doing some pushes and pulls with my beloved Prowler.  I strained and struggled and fought it with all I could for a shade under 30 minutes before calling it a day.  As I completed the last push of the day, I finished and immediately dropped into a semi-kneeling position, almost like genuflecting.  However, I successfully kept my breakfast down.  But you know what I thought to myself?

“Huh… no puking yet again… maybe I’m not doing this hard enough.”

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the insanity that is my noggin.  Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times because I really can’t be held responsible for what may happen otherwise.

Now why on earth would I think that?  Seriously.  First of all, I really hate puking.  I know that is not a penetrating insight on par with the work of Plato or Immanuel Kant, but I mean I really hate it.  Second, how can anyone rationally think that puking could be a sign of anything remotely good or positive?  It’s like those kooky powerlifters who seem to enjoy the fact they get blood shins from doing deadlifts where the bar drags along their legs.  That can’t be sane… can it?

I’ll tell you why I think this… because I often wonder, if you don’t bear scars, have you really tried hard enough?  Or put another way, have you truly found the thing you are just so passionate about that you are willing to run the risk of skinned knees or puking or falling short in the process?  Willing to run the risk of embarrassment over not coming through as a total success because you just love the process so much that winning or losing is a distant second?

I wonder this because I believe (at least in my own personal case) that for things that truly and deeply matter to me, I am willing to risk the scars or the falling short or the skinned knees or possible ridicule of polite society.  I know if my heart was not truly in whatever this “thing” may be, I wouldn’t be willing to run the risk of any of that.  Who wants any of that for something that doesn’t stir up the passion of your soul?  Not this kid right here, I’ll tell you that much.

The physical acts of which I speak and the scars that can accompany them are just one tool or expression of what any person walking this beautiful planet can be passionate about.  As you and I well know, not all scars are physical and those that are not can certainly mark you more deeply than ones etched upon your skin.  But the fact still remains… that for those things we care most about… our families, our faith, our ideals or whatever it may be… we will put ourselves out there and run the risk of the scars.

I’m still working on this all the time… the process to find my true passions for all aspects of my life.  It’s certainly not easy because it’s rare to just wake up one day and think “By Jove!  I’ve got it!” and just know what you were meant to do or who you were meant to be.  So I keep plugging away at those things I know I love and by virtue of the struggle, sweat and scars, I hope to find it.

Even if I may have to get a little sick to do it.

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Hardware Stores, Tires and Offbeat Conditioning

So in my gym tour, you can see I picked up a 10 lbs. sledgehammer and a big ol’ truck tire.  That right there is about $20-$30 worth of really good conditioning tools, as odd as that may sound.  Just a little video to demonstrate:

And truth be told?  It’s actually pretty fun and a very convenient way to take out your frustrations.  I’m actually looking forward to warmer weather so I can do this out on my back patio.

Not sure if my neighbors will feel the same, though.  Trying to imagine what might be going through their minds when all they can spot above my fencing is a sledgehammer rising and falling while Slipknot or Disturbed plays on my stereo.  I sense a condo meeting discussion on the horizon…

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The Internet is Full of Real People Too

A few days ago I wrote a post called “The Failure Cushion” where I reacted to a piece on MSNBC discussing people who are new to getting in shape.  Now, I’m very much fine with people trying to improve their lives through exercise and healthy choices… and I damn well better be since that’s about 90% of this blog.

There was a quote from that MSNBC piece that I focus on where a woman being interviewed, Taryn Wright, discusses that she feels she should be able to get in shape because “All these muscle heads are doing this high on steroids. I can do this!”  That line really didn’t sit well with me for these reasons I go into in the post.

Well today a funny thing happened… that same Taryn Wright from the MSNBC article found my post and commented on it (you can see her comments on the link I include above to the post).  And you know what?  She was actually very nice about it and mostly agreed with what I had to say.

The reason I mention any of this is pretty simple: that even when you think you are writing about some seemingly far-away person mentioned in an Internet article, they’re a person too with real thoughts, real experiences and real feelings.  I’m not saying I regret what I wrote in my piece – I really don’t and I think I wasn’t some kind of complete jackass about what she said.  I just strongly disagreed with it.

But it was interesting to get the note from Taryn and then to go over to her blog, Inner Fat Girl, to get a sense of what she is all about.  And yup – she’s just a regular person fighting the same fight all of us have to push ourselves in the direction we want our lives to take.  I’m really pleased Taryn took the time to respond to what I wrote because it’s a really important reminder to me that for all of the nonsense that occurs on the Interwebz, there is often a perfectly nice person on the other end.

So that’s something I try to always strive for in my posts: If I wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, I shouldn’t say it on here.  It’s cowardice, plain and simple, to hide behind the “safety” of your computer keyboard while excoriating people from a distance.  Friends, family, colleagues and such read this blog, so it matters to me that it’s well-written and reflective of who I am as a person… and that shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish.

Please do check out Taryn’s blog.  She is a very good writer and pretty damn funny.  Well, maybe not as funny as me, but good Lord, cut her some slack.  No one has my incisive humor… or charm… or tremendous good looks.  Seriously, it makes for a lonely existence, my friends.  You should feel bad for me.