Emotional Attachments: Exercise, Identity, & Addiction

One of the most challenging things to deal with for exercise, rehab, & medical professionals is a client/patient's attachment to a particular form of exercise or sport. As my mentor, Gray Cook, pictured below with Master RKC Brett Jones, has often said, "It's probably easier to get someone to quit smoking crack than to get a runner to stop running long enough for you to get them functioning properly."

This, sadly, is one of the trademarks of modern fitness..... emotional addiction. And it's little surprise.

We spend so much of our lives limiting our movement, starting as early as pre-school. Instead of being outside, running, jumping, playing, and exploring our environment and our movement capabilities as we evolved to do, we're in class for hours each day, forced to sit in partial flexion, and receiving less and less education (and, in many cases, misinformation) as to what our bodies are really capable of.

Over time, our bodies start losing the ability to move in a fundamental fashion. Our cores become flaccid and our limbs become spastic. Yet, society and nature tell us that to be considered vital, to be considered sexy, we have to look great and move a lot.

Notice that I said "move a lot" and not "move well."

When you're hungry enough, you'll eat just about anything someone puts in front of you, and you'll scarf it down like it was the tastiest thing you've ever imagined. When you're dying for movement, or in some cases, dying from lack of movement, you're likely feeling the urge to make up for lost time by putting in a major dose of extra hard, super HIIT (high intensity interval training) or some other means by which you can feel the reward of sweating buckets, tons of adrenaline kicks, and bathe in endorphins bubbling forth from your goosebumps. Over time, you identify yourself with the means through which you experienced that high, and it becomes part of your psyche, your sociology, and your soul.

The problem with that is two-fold.

As Gray has said many times, "YOU ARE NOT YOUR WORKOUT OR YOUR SPORT. YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING."

While we're all driven by a need to belong, we need to realize that belonging to one group over another comes at a cost. You can see it in religion. You can see it in nationalism. You can see it in social cliques. And you can see it in human performance and medicine!

When someone is so driven to be a football player, a drummer, an attorney, a cyclist, a kettlebeller, a P90Xer, a violinist, a martial artist, an exotic dancer, an actor, a researcher, or whatever other pursuit that brings with it a label that pigeonholes how you move, how you live, and how you think of yourself, the body modifies itself to accommodate such specialization.... or as my old professor used to say, "The body is a conservative system."

If you live, work, or train in such a manner that you regularly compromise your body, you have to make sure that you are constantly repeating the IPDE loop - Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute.

* Identify possible dangers in your training, your sport, your job, or your workout routine.

Let me use myself as an example. I'm a lifelong martial artist. I love it. It moves me. It brings me incredible joy. It has been the reason why I've met some of the most influential people in my life..... and it has been the source of some of my most debilitating injuries. Because of my training in the martial art I love the most, Combat Shuai-Chiao, I've taken repeated high-throw falls until my hands didn't function properly.

* Predict how those dangers can affect your quality of life in the BROADEST possible sense.

Again, using myself as an example, that repeated whiplash & impact from hard throws & improper breakfalls is a danger that can affect my performance as a clinician, as a strength coach, as a martial artist, and most importantly as a father if my fine motor skills are impaired by any compromise in the structures and soft tissue around my C-spine.

NOTE WELL: Chronic stiffness and aches (even if not "crippling" in intensity) impair sleep, energy levels, strength, mental clarity, mood, and performance. Just because it doesn't hurt you badly enough for you to stop dead in your tracks, don't think it isn't affecting your performance AND your quality of life. Compensation is sinister.... until it's obvious.

* Decide how you're going to manage those dangers & liabilities in such a way as to minimize or eliminate risk. In a lot of ways, this is the step in which you have to either FULLY and CONSCIOUSLY accept the effects and consequences of what your chosen pursuit is. If you choose to define yourself via your pursuit, then you need to also maintain your fullest abilities as a human being OUTSIDE of your specific skill. For example, if you're a violinist, you need to make a plan to optimize your upper body ranges of motion outside of drawing the bow, finger placement, and keeping your jaw on the chin rest.

For myself, that means figuring out how best to both rehab my neck & injured joints while also minimizing the damage from repeated hard falls. Through lots of research, experimentation, & work, I've identified the prehab training methods that will strengthen my body to be more resilient. I've also identified the passive treatment modalities that I need to implement regularly to keep myself at my functional best. And finally, I realized that using a crash mat is a sign of intelligence and not weakness. Hard-charging athletes need to realize that safety is a sign of long term vision, not wimping out!

As Guro Dan Inosanto, pictured below demonstrating with Bruce Lee on a hardwood floor, has said many times, the older generations did things a certain way because of what they had available at the time. Ancient martial artists trained hard with no protection because such gear had not yet been invented. Earlier generations trained with some protection because they invented it. We as the newer generations have luxuries afforded to us that were simply unavailable in decades past. Since we have these improvements in safety gear, we should be able to train to a high level for a longer duration than our predecessors with less injury. Not using such safety gear, corrective exercises, or other improvements out of allegiance to "how the old timers did it" is myopic at best.

* Execute the plan you decided on. As Gray Cook would say, "Consistency trumps intensity every time." Doing your prescribed corrective or rehabilitative exercises once or twice and then complaining that they don't work is not a sign of either awareness or honesty. It takes time to develop a neuromuscular habit, and it'll take repeated practice to groove a new, better, safer, stronger neuromuscular behavior pattern.

Don't believe me? Great... Keep doing things your way & prove to me over the long-run that your way is correct. Until then, I'll keep studying, keep practicing, keep refining, and keep making the most of the hard-earned information that we have at our disposal these days.

Do the half-kneeling chops to prevent your lower back pain from the golfing. Do the Tai Cheng to keep your neck & shoulders from aching so much after your hours behind the desk. Do the deadlifting to make sure you're developing the posterior chain & postural reflexes after those long bike rides. Do the soft tissue treatment to make sure you're keeping the optimal elasticity in your muscles. Do the non-sport-specific endurance work to make sure you have the capacity to maintain a higher level of performance throughout a match or event. Do the flexibility/mobility work to make sure your body can handle the unexpected ranges of motion of sport. Do the seemingly remedial stuff to make sure that you do the higher level stuff in an even safer, smoother manner. Do the explosive plyometrics, such as those found in workouts like P90X or training systems like Parkour, that force you to learn how to handle speeds and vectors that are outside of what you're used to.

Outside of movement, change up the music that you listen to on occasion. Vary your eating/dietary patterns. Study a new language. Make new friends. Don't be content with mere survival and don't let yourself become stagnant.

Human beings were meant to be so much more than what most of us conceive of ourselves as today. While we have learned to be tremendous specialists, we've lost so many of our abilities that, generation after generation, it's killing us in a more & more sinister manner. Because the familiar is comfortable, we've become addicts to routine and have prided ourselves on identifying with our addictions.

As MovNat founder, Erwan LeCorre said, "Adaptability is the Holy Grail of human evolution." So let's break our addictions and live our lives in a way that honors our many areas of evolution. This, in turn, will thereby improve how we both live our daily lives and perform in sport-specific conditions.

The Beachbody Ultimate Reset - Vegan Diets, Strength training,

Tomorrow morning will be my post Beachbody Ultimate Reset physical & bloodwork. I've gotten a few private messages, emails from friends, & tweets asking about the Reset & "how hard it is", etc...

It really boils down to this: Decide, Commit, Succeed.

If you've decided to do the Reset & aren't so sure about the strength of your commitment, then minimize your distractions/temptations & print out papers with HUGE letters that say the following sentence: "Stick to the rules & keep things simple." Post them on your fridge, on the pantry, & wherever you might keep food/snacks.

Schedule as few social engagements as possible during the 21 days of your Reset. The less you're going to be "pressured" into eating, the less likely you are to cheat. But seriously, if you WANT to do something, you'll do it. If you WANT to stick to the Reset, then nothing anyone says will sway you from it. Likewise, if you aren't committed to the Reset (or whatever else), nothing anyone says will keep you to it.

Allow yourself some leeway to skip/replace a meal with intelligence & integrity. Choose something that doesn't violate the Reset principles. On days where I was teaching kettlebells or martial arts for longer stints & didn't have a cooler or fridge to keep perishable fresh food in, I brought along a protein bar with ingredients that were in keeping with the vegan concepts of the Reset. The bar I chose is available at http://bit.ly/DRproteinbars and is vegan, gluten-free, & dairy-free. Also, if you have a particular food allergy or sensitivity, modify the Reset to avoid ingredients that might set off your symptoms.

Finally, don't pay attention to the rubbish that people say about needing to eat meat to function athletically, to have energy, for their sex drive, etc... People's bodies get metabolically trained to function on a certain type of food, and because they rarely ever spend enough time training their body to be metabolically flexible, they're never really free of their dependence on that type of food. Humans evolved as opportunistic omnivores, meaning we should be able to eat whatever is naturally available to us & still function well. The majority of people that I hear screaming about needing to eat meat ALL the time don't exactly look (or move) like what I'd imagine a primordial hunting bada$$ to look like, so don't buy into the hype.

As far as the sex drive issue, that's an absolute crock. Here's a personal vignette... When I was still in college & was teaching Tai Chi at a local health club, one of the older guys who always had the attention of the ladies in the club told me that one of his secrets was to spend an entire day eating fruits & vegetables before he was going to spend the night with a woman that he was dating. He explained that the fruits & vegetables are cleaner fuel for your system & easier to digest faster, leaving more blood to supply other parts of your body. Additionally, the fruits don't create the same body odors that meats do, de-necessitating strong, artificial deodorants. So like I said before, don't believe someone else's ill-informed hype.

If you want to do something, do it all the way & finish what you start! Then enjoy the results!

I'm BACK!

While I may have been away for quite some time & let this blog gather a few cobwebs, it's time for a revival! I've been working hard on a variety of different projects, including a new portal website, but I think that it's time to rejuvenate & update this blog, since it's already established.

In the coming weeks, I'll be posting quite a bit more content on everything from the Tai Cheng program that I created with Beachbody, to the Hardstyle Kettlebell Certification, RKC, & CK-FMS courses that I'll be teaching in Los Angeles, Seoul, & St. Paul, to other odds & ends in the world of human performance.

While this blog was originally entitled kettlebellslosangeles.blogspot.com, it's grown far beyond the realm of kettlebells & strength training. There's so much that I've been privileged to learn & experience in clinical medicine, in martial arts, in injury rehab, and in life that I want to share with you, and I'm going to work towards making this blog a much better means of achieving that.

So thanks for your patience, and look forward to some great stuff coming down the line! If you haven't done so already, please follow my public Facebook page!

Kettlebells for Beginners

Photo courtesy of Coach Ron Jones, KBLA RKC

If you've decided to start training with kettlebells and devote time to experiencing the improvements that they can offer you, you'll need to actually get your hands on some kettlebells! BUT WHICH ONES?!?

Here's my personal guideline. 

Because the most fundamental exercises in kettlebell training are the Swing & the Turkish Get-Up, I strongly suggest having two different kettlebells. If you're thinking that having to shell out the money for two kettlebells is expensive, let me tell you that coming to see a doctor or therapist after you injure yourself trying to be a badarse with horribly compensated technique is much more expensive. 

Invest on the front end, reap on the back end. Skimp on the front end, pay terribly on the back end.

The lighter kettlebell will allow you to learn the Turkish Get-Up with a weight that should allow you to be challenged safely without being too stressed to pay attention to good form. It will also allow you to make tweaks to your Swing form without great risk of injury to yourself. 

Men - You'll ideally need both a 12kg (26lb) kettlebell and a 20kg (44lb) kettlebell. I know, I know, I know... You bench press with 5 plates on each side & can squat with a buffalo on your back. I don't care. The Swing & Turkish Get-Up CAN be done as strength movements, but finesse and technique are primary concerns in the RKC method - NOT brute strength. Remember that every point of technique you overlook will come back to haunt you eventually. Trust me on that.

Ladies - You'll ideally need both a 14lb kettlebell and a 16kg (35lb) kettlebell.

Now if you're one of those folks who's ridiculously strong, coordinated, and un-injured, you can certainly err towards the larger sized kettlebells. As long as you can maintain correct form on BOTH sides for Pavel's Program Minimum, which I believe he goes over in Enter the Kettlebell, use whatever sized bell you want. Remember that the sizes I mentioned in this post are nothing more than general guidelines for the average male & female based on my experiences in teaching around the world. 

Remember, too, that NOTHING takes the place of working on the above exercises with a skilled instructor, not just a skilled athlete! 

Proprioception is Sexy - RKC Snatch Test Preparation & other Sports Performance applications

It never fails. Regardless of the field of endeavor, there's always someone with a serious disconnect between reality and actuality. Like the word proprioception. Would you think that something so nerdy could be sexy?

Let's look at how that works with movement, for example. If you've ever lifted a weight overhead as an adult, the odds are pretty good that when you thought you achieved the lockout position, you probably were a bit shy of straight at the elbow. Nonetheless, you were probably dead sure that you'd locked out that elbow and pressed or snatched that heavy weight to a perfect apex.

Sorry to break this to you, but you might've missed the lockout.

If you've ever done the RKC Snatch Test and heard the words "No count!", that could've very well happened because of an incomplete lockout. Yeah, I know you're sure. I know you've never had a no-count doing the snatch test at home. I know your form is perfect.... when YOU'RE THE JUDGE!

Subjectivity is the primary means of enabling the self towards failure. And as the legendary Functional Movement Screen founder Gray Cook says, "We all need systems to protect us from our own subjectivity." So the system that we need to refine is that which gives us feedback as to whether or not we're really moving the way we think we're moving and takes away our ability to argue defensively like bratty little children.

Proprioception is the ability to distinguish where one part of the body is in relation to another. We develop that ability somewhat as children during the growth process. In the years from newborn to childhood, you developed the ability to go from randomly poking yourself in the eye to picking that booger out with surgical precision. But with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles (and even in grade school since physical education programs got the ax years ago), proprioceptive deficits are building up faster than fat on the waistlines of American youth.

And as a result, you get to hear about proprioception from me. But here's the good part... Proprioception IS sexy!

Good proprioception affords you two very big advantages.
1. Accuracy in movement - which means that you very likely execute very precise, very controlled, very graceful, and very efficient movements. If you have great awareness of your own movement, then when your nervous system tells you that you locked out, then you REALLY did lock out. If your body is telling you that you locked out your back leg on that stance, then your Sifu likely agrees with you too. If your nervous system is masterfully in control of your body's movement, then that fadeaway jumpshot that you launched from 3-point land has a much higher likelihood of creating that sweet sound of nothing-but-net. That makes you not only a better athlete, but a more attractive specimen as well. Not to rip on bodybuilders, but you could be the most buff dude on the beach & unable to tuck your own shirt in.

2. Reduced injury rates - make everybody happier, except your competition. Someone with great proprioception can push harder on the field or in battle and get more out of his or her body. Someone with terrible proprioception will push hard and either waste move clumsily & get hurt or lurch like a car with the parking brakes on and create repetitive motion injury.

So for those of you who want to come to the RKC, I encourage you to find the strictest feedback mechanism that you can find (like a combination of Flip video & a solidly qualified instructor) and apply it mercilessly towards yourself. Why? Because if you're allowed to lie to yourself, you probably will. And your reliance on faulty proprioception may cost you a rather pricey certification, airfare, & lodging (as well as a few days off from work and wickedly sore muscles).

On the other hand, if you use this blogpost as a call to really invest the effort into re-calibrating your proprioception, you'll find that you not only perform better under pressure, but do so with less effort, more grace, and a decreased likelihood of injury.

If you're not interested in the RKC, no problem. But you STILL have to deal with the reality of your own movement patterns and develop a REAL awareness of them. As I often tell my students in martial arts, kettlebells, or any other form of movement, if I tell you to do something such as straightening your leg, and you think you're already straightening your leg, try to straighten it a little more anyways. If your leg moves, then you didn't have it as straight as you could have. And then that little bit of movement should humble you enough to self-check more & more and develop sharper & sharper awareness of your body and your control over it.

Don't wait until life takes away all your compensations before you take the time to self-check your perceptions against unflinching reality.

It's been long overdue

Ladies & Gentlemen, I'm the first person to admit it...

I've fallen way short of my own expectations for this blog and for my own websites, especially www.kettlebellslosangeles.com.

So to remedy that, like any responsible person should do with a problem that's beyond their management capabilities, I'm seeking out professional help.

I have a whole slew of domain names that I've reserved, and I want to spend the next few months populating the vast majority of them so that I can start using them to get more information out and to increase my productivity.

Soon, I'll be launching my new portal website, which will hold a whole slew of links to my other websites. Those other websites will include everything from compendiums of my articles for different martial arts magazines, to information on the different Chinese medicine modalities that I practice, to my particular insights on Russian kettlebell training, to the different styles of martial arts that I practice and/or teach.

You've been incredibly patient as I've been traveling all over creation and not blogging or posting anywhere near as much as I'd like to. And if all goes well, I won't have to give the FMS company line of "2 more weeks" as a nebulous deadline of when this portal will be ready to open.

While it may not always seem like it, I hear you very clearly when you ask me for insights, for help, for solutions. And I am going to make sure that starting in 2011, you get the best I have to offer through the best of the world wide web's technologies.

Keep on me, keep pushing me, keep supporting me, and keep growing with me! And if you have some thoughts on how I can get my online presence sorted out sooner and smoother, please shoot me an e-mail at kettlebellsla@yahoo.com!

The LA Times & Yahoo News Jillian Michaels Kettlebell Controversy

Just in case you've been lucky enough to be off the grid for a while, let me fill you in.

Not too long ago, I was contacted by James Fell, a fitness writer for the Los Angeles Times, to speak on a new kettlebell DVD featuring The Biggest Loser star, Jillian Michaels.

To say that I had a few issues with the quality of her instruction was to put it rather lightly. Then again, my situation is a little unique. My very first exposure to kettlebell training was directly from the man who essentially revived the use of the ancient Slavic strength training device, Pavel Tsatsouline himself. The VAST majority of what I've learned about the use of kettlebells and strength training comes directly from time spent directly under Tsatsouline's tutelage.

And as someone who makes his living as a health care professional dealing primarily with musculoskeletal pain, I see plenty of people who come into my clinic with injuries sustained while "exercising" or "training" or "working out". That's why I think so highly of the Functional Movement Systems information that's taught by another of my mentors, Gray Cook.

Cook's teachings echoed the same emphasis on disciplined movement that I'd grown up with in traditional martial arts. Moving in a sloppy fashion for the sake of exercise is just a precursor to "repetitive motion injury", a.k.a. "non-contact injury", a.k.a. "weekend warrior syndrome". The names are many, but the outcome is simple = PAIN.

With that in mind, it's not hard to see why I'm a stickler for details in movement, especially in teaching movement for the sake of exercise. If you try and muscle someone around in a combat situation instead of relying on well-developed finesse, you'd better be damn strong, or else you're going to be injured rather often. If you try and muscle around a weight, especially without the guidance of a qualified instructor, your likelihood of injury just went through the roof.

So as much as I'd prefer to be diplomatic and not ruffle any feathers, there's the small issue of integrity that I had to deal with. As much as it might benefit my bottom line, I don't like seeing my patients over and over again for the same or similar pains or injuries. If I do, that means that there's something I'm not doing right or addressing completely. It's a horrible business model, I know, but I'm the one who has to be able to sleep peacefully at night. Thus, I felt compelled to speak honestly about what I saw Ms. Michaels teaching as far as her movements and the safety of her kettlebell technique.

Mr. Fell quoted me accurately, even if he didn't name me or Kettlebells Los Angeles accurately (...Who the heck is "Dave" from "Kettle Bells Los Angeles"?). The words I spoke voicing my concerns about Ms. Michaels's teaching methods & technique were reproduced word for word.

So shortly after the article hit the net, the buzz started happening surprisingly fast. Here's the link to the original LA Times piece... fortunately with the correction to my name printed as a sidebar...
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/homeentertainment/la-he-fitness-jillian-michaels-20101011,0,5152686.story


And just today, the Yahoo! TV Blog posted a story about this as well, thankfully with my correct name.
http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/health-experts-call-foul-on-jillian-michaels-regimen--1642

Some folks are interpreting what I've said as a personal attack on Jillian Michaels. The truth is that as much as I appreciate what she's doing as a motivator, I think she needs to learn more about what's at stake with biomechanical errors like the ones she's propagating. As well-intentioned as she may be, that's no excuse for taking the persuasive power she wields and treating it carelessly.

Whether she gets her RKC, her HKC, or whatever other internationally recognized kettlebell instructor certification that's solidly recognized by kettlebell experts the world over, I'd hope that she'd be conscientious enough to invest the time & sincere effort to learn the safest & most effective means of training with kettlebells that she can find.... not the easiest, not the most streamlined, not a few lessons.... before putting out an instructional DVD that will be used by thousands of people in the hopes of getting in shape.

The bottom line to me is this, as I posted on my Facebook page under the link:

"Folks, let's call it the way it is. I'm not out to get Jillian, and I'm glad that so many people see her as a motivator to get healthier. Rather, I'm out to make sure that we're not "adding fitness to dysfunction". We all need to go back to... what my mentor, Gray Cook, outlines as priorities: "Move well, then move often." Tons of reps that don't observe strict form are enabling movement patterns that are counterproductive and potentially injurious in the long run. Exercise professionals need to hold themselves to a higher standard, even if the industry or the public doesn't."