Superbowl, parenting and your strength
This past weekend was Superbowl Sunday. It was the Eagles vs. the Patriots and truth be told, I couldn’t really care less. I mainly go to the Superbowl party because it’s a gathering of souls that I enjoy spending time eating food and tossing back a beer or two.
At this party two of my friends had announced that they were expecting a child this coming summer. Wonderful news! And along with the excitement comes the nervousness about the amazing life changing journey that lay before them.
Aurora Grace, my daughter
Now my wife and I had a baby 8 months ago and we sat down with the mommy to be to share our collective wisdom. (by the way, here’s a baby hack, when changing a diaper give them an unused wipe to play with so they don’t stick their hands in their poop)
Anyway, a bunch of things came up during the conversation that I think can apply to your strength, health and fitness.
For one, while she was talking about how nervous she was (they’ll make wonderful parents btw), I had said “Don’t worry, humans have been doing this since the dawn of time and modern medicine has come a long way since then”. There are so many things that have us set up to successfully raise a healthy child. As I look to my right, I have a barebones basic baby monitor…basic in that it only includes night vision, a 2 way microphone and music built into it, but that’s all.
When I was a kid, I remember the monitor that my parents had for my sister. It was like a one way walkie talkie, nothing more…and she survived.
Anyhow, people got strong, fit, lean and healthy long before complicated gadgets, gizmos, marketing concepts and supplements flooded the market place. They didn’t burden themselves down with complicated words like “transverse abdominus” or even have supplements like branch chain amino acids or creatine.
Me holding up a steel bar I just bent. Picture taken by Lynda Renee Photography during one of my strongman performances.
The oldtime strongmen intuitively knew that if you practiced doing things that required strength, you got good at being strong. Strength is a mindset, and part of that mindset is understanding that it is a skill to be practiced, cultivated and perfected much like a musician learning an instrument.
One of the other things that came up is that crackheads have kids, and if they can do it anyone can. Same thing can also apply here, there are people that were in worse situations than you that despite the odds were able to get into phenomenal shape. If they can do it, you can too with the right mindset.
If you need guidance in this and are looking for a personal trainer in the Boonton Township or Mountain Lakes area of New Jersey, give my trial membership a go. It won’t cost you anything and you may even surpass what you previously thought yourself capable of achieving.
The Mighty Atom Documentary
Last night I watched a documentary on the legendary Mighty Atom. If you don’t know who that is he is one of the greatest strongmen of all time despite the fact that he stood a towering 5ft 4in tall and weighed in at 148lbs of fury.
The Mighty Atom was a huge inspiration to me to become a strongman because it had set in my mind that if he at his size, and despite his circumstances could do such amazing things, maybe I could too. And he did it without the use of anabolic steroids…how I do I know? They weren’t invented yet…and he wouldn’t have used them anyways. So if he was able to do it without supplements, maybe I could too.
You see the fact that some people are able to achieve their goals, no matter how lofty they may be is proof that anyone can achieve their goals. Success leaves tracks.
In fact one of the things that I tell people is forget any marketing angle and simply look at the results. If you are in the Boonton Township or Mountain Lakes area of New Jersey, are looking for a personal trainer and are interested in training with me, check out my success stories page first. That should tell you all you need to know.
And if you are interested in watching the Mighty Atom Documentary go to http://www.MightyAtomDoc.com
train and recover so you can adapt effectively
Earlier today I performed back to back strongman acts. Right before the 2nd show someone had remarked, “It’s got to be really tiring doing that twice in a row.”
Yes it can be, but so can so many other things all which take effect on your recovery. I used to have a short questionnaire before every session where I would ask my personal training clients how their sleep had been, how their nutrition had been, what their work week was like. I did this to gauge how hard they should train.
Someone who is going through a divorce, barely slept the night before, has a huge project that is running behind schedule and ate crappy food isn’t likely going to be able to train as hard as someone of similar genes who naps twice a day, eats like a monk and has a therapeutic massage as their regular day to day affair. And because this sort of thing can change day to day, often times training needs to be calibrated on the daily.
It’s a 3 part process. Train (give your body a stimulus to adapt to) + recover (give your body a chance to adapt before it breaks down) = adaptation (by becoming stronger, increasing endurance etc.)
The amounts and the speed of adaptation depend on the person, but are sped up when given in the right doses.
If you need help with this, and are looking for a personal trainer in the Boonton Township or Mountain Lakes area of New Jersey, try test driving my program. It doesn’t cost anything to try it out.