Category: Making Disease

This category covers things that relate to how disease and illness take root in people. It is not intended to be a how to in terms of a set of instructions on the things that you need to do to make your life worse or to shorten it. The opposite might be closer to its goal; if these things make disease, NOT doing them will likely contribute to improved health outcomes.

What Neuroscience Says About Over Eating

Doctor Daniel Amen does a lot of research with the brain. Along one of the paths, tracking brain injuries with football players, he uncovered some very interesting things about the human brain:

As weight goes up, brainpower goes down. The size and function of the brain diminishes as BMI goes up….the larger people were, the smaller their frontal lobes were, and that’s a disaster because the frontal lobes run your life! Not only are we finding that overeating and overweight cause changes in the brain, but we’re seeing that brain patterns can influence how we respond to food.

It goes both ways. If you have low frontal-lobe activity, as is common with attention deficit disorder (ADD), for example, you’re much more likely to be obese. The frontal lobes are critical to making decisions such as food choices…

Consider the ramifications of this two way street. We’re born magnificent, capable of developing to our full potential and living a long illness free life. Our prefrontal cortex doesn’t develop until we’re in late childhood / early teenage years and grows throughout puberty – if we make it through most of childhood, there is a very good chance that we can have it all.

But along the way we get fat. It could be that our folks are too busy to cook healthy dinners, they didn’t know what to buy and cook, you were a picky SOB, whatever, you ended-up fat. As a result, your prefrontal cortex does not develop optimally and your brain in general is smaller than it would have been had you remained lean and optimal.

Moving through life, with a smaller brain, you suffer the consequences of having reduced executive functioning. Your working memory isn’t as good, your will power is compromised and your ability to anticipate the consequences and deal with the future just doesn’t hit on all cylinders.

Staying fat is easier because you don’t have the tools needed to think your way out of it, or at least, control your behavior out of it. You may never see a healthy weight again.

I don’t mean to scare you because you do have options here, but if you are over weight or have a tendency to over eat, you may need to consider enrolling an expert in helping you gain the skills needed to reverse the path of destruction you are on. Let them be your proxy until your brain repairs itself and can anticipate and plan for a better future.

10 Things That Will Boost Your Progress

Intelligent people want to be living a life that is moving forward, growing towards something greater than that which already is. It could be a part of human nature, part of how we were raised or part of our specific genetic code, but intelligent people are on the move, forward and upward. Progress is the unit of measurement, the currency of driven people, and we like to fill our banks with lot of it!

Below are ten things that will speed-up your progress; not just your body transformation or your athletic pursuits, but in all areas of your life.

  1. Realize that effort alone doesn’t work. Many business owners perform all the roles of their company and their business say small because of this. The 20 hour days don’t yield the same results as a well thought out 10 hour day at enrolls other people in doing some of the work. Effort is kind, up until a certain point, then it becomes a joker.
  2. Know your motivation. Be moving towards something very important or leave something behind that needs to be left behind. Or both! There needs to be a compelling reason for WHY you are trying to progress. Progress for its own sake is good, progress for a higher purpose is GREAT. Focus on this purpose and enjoy the boost in efficiency. Most people do not know their motivation for doing things and this is a huge limiting factor with their progress. Have a compelling MUST have reason and notice what happens in your life to help you get it.
  3. Learn from EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. We learn from experiences, not from sitting around. Be open and wise to the fact that you don’t know everything. Progressing forward is about acquiring new knowledge and converting it into wisdom, and this will only happen when stuff goes in. This applies to both the things to do and the things to NOT do – there is a reason why someone lost their job which is usually not the inverse reason why someone keeps their job. Learn from both and maximize your progress.
  4. Choose proof over theory. Some things look great on paper but don’t pan out as predicted while other things seem doomed from the beginning but turnout to be not just the best way to accomplish a task but the ONLY way to accomplish it. When you are looking for progress, go with what works. When you are looking to innovate, go with theory.
  5. Take a few small actions each day. Success is made-up of 1000’s of small things. Progress is about attrition against the odds. While it is unlikely that the small thing you do today will lead you to the victory you are looking for, not doing the small things is usually the reason for a lack of progress. If it takes a few minutes and you have a few minutes, just do it. It will get it out of the way and make action your method of operating.
  6. Set many small and achievable tasks. 10’s or 100’s of these tasks will make-up a goal. Setting-up goals as being the combination of many small things makes achieving them more likely as they won’t overwhelm or discourage you. This way you will always be making progress, everyday and with almost every action.
  7. Find someone to be accountable to who you WILL be accountable to. Sadly, many people get into the habit of not being accountable to themselves as there is a temporal processing issue with it – how do you be accountable to the you of the past? The finest way to overcome this is to enroll someone else to help you stay on track. Engage someone who will be dogmatic about your objectives and who will press you hard when you present excuse as reason.
  8. Track your results to make sure you are staying on track. Consider enrolling someone else as the tracker of your progress – ideally your accountability person. When you do not achieve your results, you need to uncover the cause of your breakdown and eliminate the offending behavior. The objective opinion of an outsider can be the difference between a slow or light speed progress. They only have a vested interest in your results, not your emotional reasons for not acting in a goal achieving way.
  9. Focus on behaviors, not outcomes. Being progressive is about acting in a progressive way, not about achieving a progressive thing. If you do the right things for long enough, the outcome is an inevitability.
  10. Become part of a success orientated group. Successful people need to be surrounded by other successful people and there can be a magnificent synergy between group members. It is usually true that many minds are better than one when it comes to seeing solutions so engage others and enroll them in your journey. This will boost your accountability and it can dramatically increase the intellectual resources that work on an issue, problem or task. You never know what or who other people know, so connect with others and share unconditionally; both your quest and your wisdom.

Antiquated Coping Strategies – Smoking

NOTE – I don’t know the person in the image above but her story is available here. I use this image because it is reminiscent of my dad’s last few days and because those last few days were like NOTHING I have ever experienced. Take a look at the Poo bear on the table and the pictures of her loved ones. Read her story and the final words from her husband. I could be her in a few years and the post below outlines what I need to do to stop that from being my future.

I started smoking again. I had the choice to not start but I convinced myself that I DIDN’T have a choice and set-out believing that it was a fine coping strategy.

It was embarrassing to lie to my father about it. “I’m going out to work on something in the workshop” was what I’d say, and I’d do something, but it was really a trip out there to smoke. The lie made him feel better, like I was finally taking ownership of my life and working hard to build the panel business and it allowed me to avoid disappointing him in his last weeks here. He was proud that I had turned my life around after Natalie’s death – stopped smoking, started eating correctly, got back to exercising, became a personal trainer, started teaching cycling classes and effectively stopped doing most of the things that were destructive. I was glad that my dad was happy and once I slipped, and it was evident that he was getting sick, the smoking habit took hold because I didn’t want to stop out of fear of what it might be like. I also didn’t want to rock the boat given his terminal diagnosis.

Now I have quit. I left everything as it was until I was able to deal only with the death of my dad and the impact it has had on my self-awareness. This was a request of my family to just try and keep things normal until you know what you are feeling and are ready to make the changes. Strangely, the thing that actually clued me into the fact that it would be fantastic idea to stop was a realization about my girl friend at the time. She’s an amazing women and I think we both knew that the relationship would be a 2 part thing if it was to last at all. There was not going to be continuity in it, a separation / break-up was going to be absolutely necessary because of WHO I am and where I am in my life. BUT, my time with her was good and I realized that I actually wanted to live for as long as I can. There was something about the relationship with her that helped me realize that you can feel connected to someone and this connection can help you see things about your behavior that aren’t working. I needed to stop for myself, not for her, my dad, for anyone. I tabled the stopping until after my dad died.

I don’t want to die. I want to live forever, floating through the universe with a smile and love in my heart. But I will not live forever, and if I don’t fix my bad habits, I won’t live for much longer.

Below is a list of the positive changes that occur when someone stops smoking. I like this list because there are benchmark to achieve and it tells a story about recovery. The body will heal itself from a lot of damage if you do the things to promote recover, but only if you stop the damage as well.

Last smoke plus …
  • 20 minutes
    		•  Your blood pressure, pulse rate, and the temperature of your hands and feet will all return to normal.
  • 8 hours
    		•  Remaining nicotine in your bloodstream will have fallen to 6.25% of normal peak daily levels, a 93.25% reduction.
  • 12 hours
    		•  Your blood oxygen level will have increased to normal and carbon monoxide levels will have dropped to normal.
  • 24 hours
    		•  Anxieties peak in intensity and within two weeks should return to near pre-cessation levels.
  • 48 hours
    		•  Damaged nerve endings have started to regrow and your sense of smell and taste are beginning to return to normal. Cessation anger and irritability peaks.
  • 72 hours
    		•  Your entire body will test 100% nicotine-free and over 90% of all nicotine metabolites (the chemicals it breaks down into) will now have passed from your body via your urine.  Symptoms of chemical withdrawal have peaked in intensity, including restlessness. The number of cue induced crave episodes experienced during any quitting day will peak for the “average” ex-user. Lung bronchial tubes leading to air sacs (alveoli) are beginning to relax in recovering smokers. Breathing is becoming easier and the lungs functional abilities are starting to increase.
  • 5 – 8 days
    		•  The “average” ex-smoker will encounter an “average” of three cue induced crave episodes per day. Although we may not be “average” and although serious cessation time distortion can make minutes feel like hours, it is unlikely that any single episode will last longer than 3 minutes. Keep a clock handy and time them.
  • 10 days
    		•  10 days – The “average ex-user is down to encountering less than two crave episodes per day, each less than 3 minutes.
  • 10 days to 2 weeks
    		•  Recovery has likely progressed to the point where your addiction is no longer doing the talking. Blood circulation in our gums and teeth are now similar to that of a non-user.
  • 2 to 4 weeks
    		•  Cessation related anger, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, impatience, insomnia, restlessness and depression have ended. If still experiencing any of these symptoms get seen and evaluated by your physician.
  • 21 days
    		•  Brain acetylcholine receptor counts up-regulated in response to nicotine’s presence have now down-regulated and receptor binding has returned to levels seen in the brains of non-smokers.
  • 2 weeks to 3 months
    		•  Your heart attack risk has started to drop. Your lung function is beginning to improve.
  • 3 weeks to 3 months
    		•  Your circulation has substantially improved. Walking has become easier. Your chronic cough, if any, has likely disappeared.
  • 1 to 9 months
    		•  Any smoking related sinus congestion, fatigue or shortness of breath have decreased. Cilia have regrown in your lungs thereby increasing their ability to handle mucus, keep your lungs clean, and reduce infections. Your body’s overall energy has increased.
  • 1 year
    		•  Your excess risk of coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke has dropped to less than half that of a smoker.
  • 5 to 15 years
    		•  Your risk of stroke has declined to that of a non-smoker.
  • 10 years
    		•  Your risk of being diagnosed with lung cancer is between 30% and 50% of that for a continuing smoker (2005 study). Risk of death from lung cancer has declined by almost half if you were an average smoker (one pack per day).  Your risk of pancreatic cancer has declined to that of a never-smoker (2011 study), while risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and esophagus has also declined.
  • 13 years
    		•  Your risk of smoking induced tooth loss has declined to that of a never-smoker (2006 study).
  • 15 years
    		•  Your risk of coronary heart disease is now that of a person who has never smoked.
  • 20 years
    		•  Female excess risk of death from all smoking related causes, including lung disease and cancer, has now reduced to that of a never-smoker (2008 study). Risk of pancreatic cancer reduced to that of a never-smoker (2011 study).

    Action, Recovery and Consequence

    As I close in on my 40’s I’m starting to notice a pattern in the world – order continues to form, exist and disintegrate. Philosophically, psychologically, physiologically, in the living and in the inanimate, large and small, matter combines and separates for reasons that are now almost completely understood. Once you understand the science and see the pattern, the mystery is gone and the beauty remains.

    Dealing with human beings (me in particular), the order that constitutes me is my body. It is made up of particles that are governed by rules. It’s a complicated bag of matter so many of the rules we have now are general guidelines based on statistics. It doesn’t make a difference what way you look at the numbers though, the longer something exists in an organized state, the less likely it is to continue to exist in that state. Everything is falling apart….

    Fortunately there is a repair mechanism built into living things to stop them from falling apart and with young healthy humans it will replace most of the cells of the body within 3 months and many within hours. This is an enormous undertaking – manufacturing most of the component pieces that make-up 1 human being and ordering them to be an almost exact copy in one fiscal quarter. The body gets it right over and over and over again until it doesn’t. Then it sets out to keep making itself over and over again while attempting to not write-in the mistake.

    Eventually something breaks down or the error is replicated and we get a disease or suffer ill health. If this isn’t addressed, the body will quickly disintegrate into the less-ordered state, death. Once dead, the particles that make up the body break down and find their way back into the environment to become part of something else, eventually.

    There is a relationship between what you bring into your body, what it has to recover from, and the speed of the decline – a toxic internal environment will impair or inhibit recovery / repair and can disrupt accurate cell replication. You can increase the toxicity of the body by bringing in toxins, allowing toxins to build-up and by causing too much damage for the body to completely recovery. Smoking and drinking are obvious stressors with a fairly well established consequences. Dehydration and sleep deprivation are known to impair normal functioning as acute events. Getting a concussion during a football game may require a few weeks or a lifetime to recover from. As a general rule though, the younger and healthier you are, the greater your potential to recover from the stresses of life. Young living things tend to have more resiliency when it comes to maintaining high levels of vitality. There are fewer consequences to their actions because they can recover more completely.

    EVERYTHING we do has consequences. While it is unlikely that one single action will cause disease the battle to maintain order is a war of attrition. Each reaction takes a toll. Every calorie too much or too few does damage to the body that must be repaired. Every chemical reaction can increase the oxidative stress and damage the cells – too much exercise, not enough sleep, holding tension in muscles because they don’t relax, poor posture, constipation, uncomfortable working positions,….

    Treating your blood like the sewer at a chemical factory will also have big consequences on your ability to recover from living life.

    The body evolved to maintain a fairly tight range of environmental conditions that promote optimal vitality and can handle most acute deviations outside of this range that result from us ingesting something. But there is a cost to homeostasis both in terms of oxidative stress and the long term effectiveness of the mechanisms used to restore the optimal range. Insulin and cortisol are important for regulating blood sugar. They are two chemicals that the body produces naturally but which have a toxic effect on the body in acute high doses or chronically elevated levels. Too much insulin over time will increase insulin resistance and impairs the body’s ability to regulate sugar (associated with obesity and a slue of other health issues). This leads to more oxidative stress and the cycle continues to worsen. Prolonged elevated levels of cortisol destroys tissue, creates inflammation and increases oxidative stress. People who don’t eat enough or who exercise too much tend to have higher levels of cortisol

    These two chemicals are mentioned because they are destructive and because our actions dictate when they will be released. Insulin needs sugar. Without an increase in blood sugar, the body will not need to release insulin. We get sugar from the food we eat. If we eat less sugar, we can improve our sensitivity and recover some of the lost homeostatic functioning. Cortisol is released in response to stress; any type of stress – getting scared, thinking about something bad, getting hurt, not getting enough sleep, not going to the bathroom regularly, having too busy a work schedule, children, relationships, your sex life / lack of one, going shopping, ….. doing ANYTHING will create some stress. The issue begins when there is no escape and recovery from the stress and the cortisol the body releases. Consider it like low grade adrenaline – it gets the body going, but it damages the body a little bit each time it is released. If this damage is not repaired before the next stressor, the body grows weaker. This wear and tear begins to compromise function leading to disease. Getting away from stress can be a little tougher than not eating junk food for 5 days, but most of the things that cause us stress usually have very simple solutions.

    The statistical story says there’s a relationship between the amount of pollution we bring into our bodies and the occurrence of disease. Every action has consequences and a need to recover. We DO have control over a lot of the internal environment so we do play a big hand in maximizing our vitality. Our bodies deal with our choices.

    Afternoon Naps

    I have never really enjoyed sleeping in the afternoon. For one thing, waking up the second time is tougher. For another, the quality of sleep isn’t of a very good quality for me. But the main reason why I’m not a fan of afternoon naps is because of the hypnagogia phase of this type of sleep. This state always kind of bothered me because the imagery of dreams doesn’t tend to happen here and you get a raw stream of clear pictures and dialogue about EXACTLY what your brain is processing.

    A couple of weeks ago, a Tuesday afternoon, I had a dream were I was telling someone that my uncle Kevin (oldest brother on my dad’s side) “had gotten it from exposure” in reference to his cancer. In the dream I was attempting to create a logical difference between my uncle and my father. As I drifted awake I became aware that I could hear my parents talking in the computer room. I wasn’t able to make out what they were saying, but the tones of their voices was causing me to come awake with a touch of anxiety. “Are you having a stroke?” I hear my mom say. “No” in a soft relaxed tone is my fathers reply. I’m now standing looking at my mom and dad. I ask my dad how he’s feeling, go through the stroke check list and there’s nothing alarming. He’s fine. His thinking is seems a little off, but not really. It’s tough to tell to be honest. A few days later, after returning from the doctor with my brother, there’s a change to his medication for his heart rate and a “there seems to be something I’m not getting” from the doctor. The next day he improves so the crisis ends.

    Sunday my dad is thinking a lot more clearly but his stomach hurt. Monday he’s tired and not feeling so good. It looks like a stomach flu, a fair possibility. I take an afternoon nap. Out for a short while I wake-up hearing my mom say “we need to take your dad to emerge”. And off we go.

    He gets a CT scan, there’s something in his brain that shouldn’t be there so he’s transferred to Trillium Health Sciences (Queensway / Hurontario) Mississauga’s neurosurgery department for an MRI to find out what it may be. It’s around 11:30 am Wednesday when he gets back from the MRI. He’s sleeping and his vitals are normal. I take a some time to research brain tumors on the internet.

    Turns out brain cancer as a primary tumor is rare. Most brain cancers are a result of a cancer spreading from a different part of the body. Brain cancer as a primary tumor is rare in people above 70. There is a genetic link, but that accounts for 5% of it. My uncles bone cancer was the result of exposure at work. My dream from the week before was starting to settle very unpleasantly on what was suddenly become a new reality that was hard to understand and manage.

    When the neurosurgeon gathered around the family at 5:40 pm and said glioma my heart sank.

    Now what does this all mean? The hypnagogia phase is a possible gift of insight for a lot of people. What I did with the information that I was given the week before the cancer diagnosis is sort of a mystery. I didn’t say to anyone “my dad has cancer.” You don’t say that unless it’s true and I didn’t want to be right about what I had felt in the dream. I did pay more attention to his movement and the things he said, but other than the stomach pain he was improving. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t considered the possibility of my father having cancer before that nap. But the thought had been present and working on my brain for 8 days before the doctor said it.

    The family is stunned. My dad is 68, hasn’t been a smoker in years, rarely worked with PVC (the only chemical conclusively linked to glioma), is active and healthy, and has always had a fantastic brain – a natural problem finder and solver, an ongoing learner and an articulate communicator. It just strikes me as a little unfair that everything about him is still in great working order, that he’s taken care of himself, his body and his mind and now as he begins to enjoy his retirement his genetic code presents this new challenge.

    I’m not sure when I’ll take another afternoon nap, I suppose when I need some more of that hard hitting unfiltered clarity that my conscious mind can’t seem to draw out.

    Post Concussion Syndrome – Life In A Dirty Pit

    Over the last few years, I was able spend some time with Rachel after she received a couple of concussions. She had a few moments of bad luck and knocked her head off some ice and off a dresser. The ice one left her unable to remember key peoples names for about 6 hours, the dresser turned her into a paranoid crazy person for a week or so. It was a challenge to watch because she was suffering, it was evident, and because she wasn’t normally a paranoid person. What was actually frightening about it was that SHE was convinced that she was feeling herself. Her athletic therapist friend Louise called during an argument about me trying to hurt and change her and simply told me that if Rachel wasn’t acting herself, take her to the hospital because there’s a good chance that she’s injured her brain. It took about 4 weeks for her to return to normal and her recovery was an emotional roller coaster of up and down mood, forgetting simple things and struggling to find the right words or thought.

    I had the misfortune of sustaining another concussion a few weekends ago. It’s funny looking back at it because I was able to rationalize a lot of craziness that doesn’t make any sense to me now. I was messed up yet I felt like I was fine and everyone else just changed.

    The injury was fairly simple, horsing around while white water rafting, and I jumped off the boat spinning and twisting all erratically. I hit the water spinning, tumbling and on the side of my head. There was a stillness when I hit the water, after a massive slam to the side of my head followed by a hissing. I remember floating up to the surface of the water thinking “oh oh, that was stupid.” I was dazed and confused as I swam back to the boat. I couldn’t hear anything from my left ear, had a head ache, was having some trouble figuring out how to get back into the raft and I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach.

    We ate a few minutes later, but I had to leave a few times to throw-up. I was beginning to get irritable and a little paranoid, the sickness and headache were building and I was looking around at people wondering who they were and why I’d be in conversations with them. We got back on the boat and things continued to degrade. The head ache and sickness were becoming really bad and I thought about sitting out the next set of rapids, the Coliseum, because I had a feeling the boat was going over. I stayed on and, as expected, the boat threw-out all but one person. My next memories after feeling the boat void its contents into the river were of being underwater, eyes open looking around wondering if I was going to hit the rocks I saw coming at me or if I would be able to float to the surface. Well, I did both.

    I didn’t need the second impact to make my day any worse, but I got it. We got out of the water and I puked my face off. My head was killing, my knee was opened-up and I was becoming unhinged. We get off the water about 20 minutes later and I throw-up again. We get back to the camp grounds, I go and change, get sick and start drink water hoping that I’m just dehydrated. But the camp ground isn’t the same as it was when I left. I looks the same, but I don’t belong there. I don’t know any of the people anymore, even the people I’m there with, and I have a growing level of suspicion of everyone. I begin to withdraw into myself because I feel so wrong.

    At this point I start to notice that my left ear is leaking. It’s mostly a clear fluid, but there’s a little blood in it. This did not register with me at the time. Simply put, I thought “my ear is leaking. I guess it should be, I hurt it” without so much of a thought about lumping the symptoms together to get a more complete view of what was going on. Head impact leading to  head ache, confusion, irritability, paranoia, nausea, and fluid leaking from the ear. I don’t realize it yet, but for the next week I am going to be this new person, someone who was very much like Rachel after she banged her head on the dresser. A confused shell of a man, small, weak, scared, in a daze, with only flashes of memories from of the time between rafting and, well, right now.

    When I visited the doctor they told me my ear drum has a sizable rupture so there must have been some impact. They said it should heal within 6 weeks so my hearing should be fine but that I need to see a specialist to make sure things are normal. They didn’t think much about me not going to the hospital to get checked-out once the fluid started coming from the ear but they weren’t surprised either because if I had a concussion I wasn’t going to be thinking right. Concussions are tough to diagnose, impossible days after the fact, but based on the symptoms and what happened, there’s a good chance I had one, but we’ll never actually know.

    All in all, this recovery left me feeling drained, emotionally empty, and completely confused. This was a “in the pits” type recovery that is both extremely erratic and wildly irrational. I’m more than 10 days out and this morning is the first morning since it happened that I have finally gotten a handle on what has been going on.

    How I Have Not Served My Clients Adequately

    Looking back about 3 years on my training, I can now see a few ways that I have not provided my clients with adequate service. Below is a list of 5 things I am now doing differently:

    1) Sell small numbers of sessions during the initial few months. Some people will not keep doing this and while it is good for them, getting them to do it actually makes their life worse. It SUCKS to be out of shape and it can be even worse trying to get back into shape. And maybe, just maybe, selling someone a years worth of training when they are feeling excited in January is going to hurt them a lot more than help them. Give them the option to leave early on, and give them plenty of chances. You don’t want to train those who do not want to be trained.

    2) Focus on getting them to properly engage their core. Humans need to be able to rotate their upper and lower bodies independently, but they also need to be able to prevent this rotation. If you do not set the ab muscles correctly when you lift, energy is going to be wasted and you will not lift as much weight. Worse still, is that if you ruin your back with relative ease when you lift without properly engaging your core. There has been an enormous increase in the level of satisfaction with most of my female clients now that I stay on them throughout the set to keep their core tight. The initial reduction in load is a small price to pay for the improvement in posture and function that accompanies appropriate core recruitment.

    3) Focus on flexibility, joint mobility and function. This is one that annoys me because it was completely selfish. I don’t like stretching much (at all) and while I understood the importance of having adequate flexibility and proper joint range of motion, I didn’t place enough value on this for a long time. Fortunately all of my clients remained injury free so this shortcoming in training didn’t have a major impact on them now that it is being addressed.

    4) Focus 70% of the strength training on eccentric phases. The lengthening phase of a working muscle is called the eccentric phase. It’s easiest to build strength and most of the micro trauma that forces muscle recovery occurs during this phase – these mean that if you have a lot to lose by not focusing on eccentric work. At its simplest, when you are lowering a weight you just move at 1/2 to 1/4 the speed that you would when you are lifting the weight. I don’t think you’ll lose fat as quickly if you avoid 4-5 second eccentric phases.

    5) Focus on psychology with the people who don’t follow instructions. Athletes listen and do. People who want to change their body composition shut-up and follow the advice that is given. But what do you do when the people say they want something but fail to do what is needed to achieve their objective? You have two choices, the first is to fire them and get a new client, hopefully someone who will follow instructions and work towards their goal. The second choice is to get into their head and try to point out exactly what you are seeing and what it indicates. Doing the second consistently is what separates the good coaches from the great ones – and I’m hoping to be one of the great ones – because you’ll be able to get people to change who could not have achieved it on their own.

    I have started to spend more time addressing these areas with my current clients, but I’m sure there will be a new list of shortcomings in the coming months and years, and that’s a good thing! We only improve the process when we admit to that which is not working and seek to change it.

    Those Who Do And Everyone Else

    Part of what I miss most about working for SST is that most of the athletes who came in to train came in to train their asses off. I don’t see this as much in the commercial gym I am presently working at. I would estimate that about 75% of the members – even those who are training with trainers – have very little desire to achieve much of anything while at the gym.

    Don’t get me wrong, I try to beat the living hell out of my clients. Some of them respond by pushing harder than I ask and some work as hard as they are going to regardless of my efforts to interrupt their mediocrity. But those who respond would be working hard for ANYONE – I’m not special, I know more than most trainers but I have yet to be able to figure-out how to make someone work who is unconsciously satisfied with being average.

    Now, there are similarities between those who work and those who show-up. Most of those who work hard have jobs that require a lot of independent work – VP’s for large banks / vendors, self-employed, independent or franchise business owners – or are young and working towards something. Those who show-up tend to have jobs that they don’t really like, work for people they don’t particularly like, and present excuses for not doing the things I ask as opposed to simply saying “I made the decision to drink on Saturday night.”

    I suppose this is the psychology of fitness and optimal health. At SST I was engaging individuals who were working towards high level competition or with young people who had never enjoyed the slack life that full time employment can offer. At commercial gyms I’m working with those who have tasted the good life – the distractions / indulgences that money can buy – and have found returning to the simple life to be too challenging. It’s sad really, relaxing, eating and slothing away life is easier than grinding away at a mostly pointless activity that leads you to optimal health but moves you further away from passive enjoyment.

    I fear for the future of many people on the planet. Most of the people I see and engage are, at least, coming to a gym and of these, 75% of them are not working very hard. I cannot comment for those who do not come to the gym but I’d be willing to guess that 95% of them are doing nothing to make their lives better other than changing their perspective so that those who actually do something are seen as fitness freaks and those who don’t are seen as the norm

    Too Much Training Volume

    Too many coaches hold the view that more is better when it comes to training volume and this belief is hurting their athletes.

    Most of the conversations I have with coaches about a lack of progress focus on the athlete and not the poor program design. I hear things like “the athlete just isn’t getting it” or “they are losing focus” or “the athlete is weak and needs to work harder”. I have yet to hear a coach say “I’ve asked them to do more work than they can recover from” or “I don’t really know what I’m doing so I just get the athlete to do more” or “I train them the way I trained 20 years ago and don’t really feel like advancing my understanding by learning”.

    I’m not implying that these coaches do not know how to make their athletes better at their sport because many of them do; they have an eye for the sport and can see things that more people can’t. In fact, many sport coaches are the only people who can coach the skills with their athletes. The issue is, they don’t understand the body well enough to understand that their athletes are failing to make progress because the brain cannot control the muscles to the precise degree needed to make the progress and instead blame the athletes will or focus.

    Why are the athletes not progressing? There are two reasons, the muscles are not recovered enough to move as required and the nervous system is not recovered enough to coordinate the muscle fibers to move as required.

    In the car racing world a driver can tell his mechanic that the car isn’t responding correctly when he press down the accelerator. The mechanic will then take a look, uncover the problem and fix it. A damaged spark plug for example will limit the amount of power that an engine is able to generate and once it is replaced, the engine goes back to full power. This is like the muscle not being fully recovered. A chef may find that he’s burning all of the items he tries to fry and when he looks at the stove realize that the gas dial goes from off to full with nothing in between. Once the dial is fixed to allow for precise heat adjustments the chef regains the ability to cook foods perfectly. This is like fixing neurological fatigue.

    Cooking and car racing have one thing in common that most sports don’t have – a tool that acts as a medium between the individual and performance. This medium can be examined, shown to be malfunctioning and adjusted to function correctly. With most sports, the medium is the athletes body so it’s harder to figure-out the cause of malfunctions and since it’s harder to figure-out or see what is causing them, the first impulse is to blame the athletes will or conscious effort.

    This is, when dealing with high level athletes, completely wrong. These individuals work hard, have greater focus than most people and are driven to perform better and better each workout. Their body’s however, cannot perform at a higher level each workout because of muscular and neurological fatigue and without sufficient recovery, their performance decreases. The coaches solution of making them do more reps, more cardio, more anything only serves to decrease their performance further, which will make the coach work them harder.

    The good news is that body won’t allow this to continue for every long and the athlete will get sick well before they work themselves to death, which most high level athletes will do because of their work ethic. After about 6-7 weeks of over training, illness takes over and the athlete can’t perform at all. They take a few days off to recover from the illness which allows their body to recover and when they get back to their sport, they perform much better. The coach is happy and feels good knowing that they did a good job because of the improvement. They attribute the illness to a cold or flu and they start the cycle again – performance will begin to decrease after a few weeks as the athlete “loses focus” and the illness will return.

    This pattern will continue until the coach smartens up, the athlete switches coaches, the athlete quits their sport or the athlete becomes aware enough to dictate the pace of training and lets the coach know that they are taking a few days off when they need to. Unfortunately, too many young and promising athletes will leave the sport and never actualize their potential because the fun leaves the sport due to this avoidable pattern.

    If you are a coach and you notice in your athletes a pattern of decreased performance followed by sickness, a lack of focus following intense training periods, dramatic increases in performance following time off or if your solution for everything is more training, you need to get back to school and learn about neurological and muscular fatigue. If you allow your athletes to continue this cycle YOU are failing them and you may be chasing them out of the sport they love.

    You Model What Becomes Normal

    This page from kidshealth.org goes over some recent numbers about childhood obesity and the finding that 1 in 3 children is now considered overweight or obese. That’s a lot of young people who are suffering now and will be suffering for most of their lives. Carrying extra body fat makes all activity in life more difficult and there is an innate tendency for people to judge obese people more harshly as a result of their weight. I think some harsh judgement is fitting for someone who has control over the food they buy and eat, it is unfortunate for the younger obese person because up until a certain age, they have almost no control over what they eat.

    I have little doubt that there are psychological reasons for many eating behaviours but when it applies to the escalating obesity rate with young people, I believe the obesity preceeds any psychological problems. If the young person’s brain is void of issues then the cause of the obesity is environmental in the form of poor eating behaviors taught by their parents or caregivers. Simply put, fat people breed lean people and then proceed to make them fat.

    Fattening up a child is one of the worst things a parent can do because it harms their child but there is something even more insidious about it. Fattening up their children serves to make the obese parent feel more normal because it creates another fat person. Think about it this way, if 2 fat parents have 2 lean children, the ratio of fat to lean people in the family is 1:1. But if 2 fat parents have 1 lean child and 1 fat child, the ration of fat to lean is 3:1. If 75% of the people are obese, obesity can be regarded as the norm. If both children are fat then they have a 100% obesity rate making obesity completely acceptable. Obese parents, by making their children fat, create a life preserving fiction that being fat is normal and nothing to be concerned with or treated.

    Fat parents rarely teach their children how they should be eating, what foods to buy and how to prepare these foods to maintain a lean body. They also never model lean as a way to live life. Their food choices are taught to their children, along with the obese lifestyle, as things that are normal. Lacking evidence that says anything different, the children learn that these things are how it is. They do not see a choice until much later in life when the habits are formed and their is a solid foundation of adipose tissue ready to soak-up the extra calories and store fat. By the time they realize that they do have a choice the odds are stacked against them that they will ever be a healthy weight because their body’s have become so good at storing fat.

    For the obese parent it is not too late to stop abusing your child but you need to start now. You need to make a big effort to eliminate the behaviors that made you fat in the first place and begin to model the behaviors that will help to maintain leanness. You need to do this even if you will never enjoy a long lean life; just because you were victim to the consequences of poor eating behaviors doesn’t mean that your children need to be. There is more than enough information available that will help you make the right choices that to continue to make the wrong ones amounts to deliberate ignorance. The clock is ticking because your children are watching you and making your behavior the reality. How you act now is how they will act in the very near future. Give them a solid foundation to make their life easier than yours has been.