Thoughts on The Coronavirus
I normally don’t watch the news, but unless you live under a rock you’ve likely heard the hysteria surrounding the Corona Virus. It seems that these things come along every couple of years to try and put us into a panic.
Hey, remember Sars and Ebola? How about the Bird Flu?
Now I’m not exactly a medical expert but it seems that the only people really at risk are the elderly, the very young and the people whose immune systems have been compromised by something else.
So is it a danger? Yeah probably. Though I’m not worried about catching it myself I do have a 6-month-old at home.
But even with the dangers posed to our babies, elderly and people whose immune systems have been compromised, it seems that people are panicked about the wrong things.
It’s the thing that’s not really discussed on the news. Heart disease kills more people annually than just about any other cause of death. And it has been the reigning champion for years.
And to a large extent, it is preventable with proper lifestyle choices. People know this, but doing and knowing aren’t always one in the same.
So the next time you’re in Walmart looking for facemasks to filter out the Coronavirus (it won’t work btw), ask yourself when the last time you trained consistently and ate healthily. If it’s been awhile your panic has been put into the wrong areas.
Fortunately, it’s not too late. Find a training and nutrition system and follow it consistently and you will be surprised what you can accomplish.
And at the end of the day, people who eat right and exercise regularly tend to have strong immune systems.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.
Turkish Getup with Pauses (exercise variation)
My personal training studio is right across the street from the Boonton Holmes Public Library. So I create presentations designed to teach people about various things relating to health and fitness, since if you want to reach people you have to teach people.
This past Friday I did a presentation about the Turkish Getup…an exercise very near and dear to my heart.
Following the presentation, one thing that was asked of me was how it would go in a “fitness boot camp” type of setting. If you are unfamiliar with fitness boot camps they usually reference some kind of circuit training type of format, often with timed intervals.
It doesn’t have to be since it’s really just an umbrella term that can refer to just about anything.
The Turkish Getup doesn’t really work with this sort of format since ideally, it would be done with grace and control as opposed to rushing through it as you would when under the stress of a timer. With the Turkish Getup, I like to have people try to go heavy (which normally needs adequate rest periods) and also recommend striving for mastery and grace.
Here is a version of the getup that promotes the latter of the two. It’s called the Turkish Getup with pauses.
When you are doing a getup, and you purposefully insert pauses during various portions of the movement, it forces you to own your potential weak points by building in speed bumps. You see, in weight training, there is something called the force-velocity curve. A quick way to explain it is that as you get the weight moving, your various muscles stop working.
Why? Think of it like this. There is a car stuck in the snow and five guys try to push it out. As they start pushing and the car starts moving a couple of the guys let up because the other guys have got it covered.
Your muscles work kind of the same way.
During your pauses, your muscles and your stabilizers are all working statically to hold you in place. It forces control in owning the movement, and when you want to go heavier, it helps you grind through the repetition because you’ll have built a bit of endurance.
And the recommendations of striving for mastery, grace and heavy are why I recommend against doing them as part of a timed interval. However, you could use it as the timed interval.
What I mean by that is make the Turkish getup itself the clock, although I still don’t really think it’s optimal, but still a decent idea.
I think it’s better to have everyone on their own custom program, just training alongside others, which is what I do. But hey, I’m biased.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.
Having trouble with your nutrition? Try this…
When I sit prospective personal training clients down for a goal assessment interview I’ll ask them in-depth about their goals. This helps me determine what steps are going to be needed in order to get from where they are to where they would like to be. Then I also determine whether or not they are committed enough to their own goals.
If they aren’t committed, I turn them away. Why? Because I can teach the top strategies for losing weight, getting strong and looking great. But strategies only work if the person works. If they aren’t committed, it’s like they are telling me “I’m not going to do what I need to do.”
Maybe the timing just isn’t right. That’s ok. Come back when you really are ready to make the changes necessary.
Even when a person is committed, change presents challenges that may be unforeseen. But for every problem, there is a solution and having been a personal trainer for over 15 years I’ve got a couple worth sharing.
One of them is quite simply preparing your food in advance.
One of my newer personal training clients posted this picture on his Facebook page.
I can already tell he’s going to be very successful 🙂
You see when it comes to transforming your body, though I think building strength is more important to the total transformation (I’m talking about gaining muscle, strength and getting “I got this!” levels of confidence) but when it comes to burning fat, your diet is going to be a bigger factor.
And when it comes to dieting, often what fails is your ability to apply whatever your diet may be to whatever your situation is. With something as major as the food in our lives (much of our day revolves around food), there are all sorts of obstacles that get in the way.
You’re running late and/or are incredibly busy with personal or professional obligations so no time to make the healthy choices. Sound kind of familiar?
So we cave to convenience by going to a drive-through or getting some other kind of fast food, and in doing so we sacrifice a bit of our health with it each time.
But a way to combat this is to simply be proactive about it. When it comes to nutrition, simply prepare meals that abide by the rules of your nutrition program for the week in advance. It helps to dedicate Sundays and Wednesdays to this.
A trait common amongst successful dieters is that they eat the same healthy meals on repeat. So you don’t have to make 10,000 different kinds of food on Sunday. Just make one or two things in bulk and pack it into individual Tupperware containers. Then you simply pack what you need with you for the day. You can freeze them and save them for a later day too.
Believe me, you’ll be a lot less likely to cave to convenience if you have your Plan A is already conveniently with you.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.