I have been lucky enough to have listened to a few mentors in my life. One of them is my friend Adam who I meet when I worked for GoodLife Fitness Clubs in Milton before I moved to Chatham. He was an unlikely mentor because he’s about 10 years younger than I am but when I met him there was a stillness to his demeanor that struck me as significant. Here are some of the most important lessons that I have learned from him:

Almost everything is right, at least for someone on the planet. Adam doesn’t say that stuff is wrong (other than some of the moral things like murder, theft and dishonesty) because there is someone on the planet that it applies to. I once asked him which were better front squats or rear squats. He looked at me blankly and said both. When I asked him what he meant he answered with the question “which is better oranges or a car?” I laughed and saw his point. Oranges are better for make juice out of but a car is better for driving somewhere. Front squats are better for some and back squats are better for others.

Question the origin of common knowledge. Just because it is common doesn’t mean that it is accurate. One of the first common notions he got me to question had to do with squats. In the fitness industry there is a prevailing thought that one should never squat below 90 degrees because it will destroy the knees. I held onto this belief too until Adam asked me where it came from. He was unsatisfied with my answer “it’s just what everyone tells me” because it lacked any scientific evidence. So I went looking for a study that explained why squatting below 90 degrees is bad for the knees. I haven’t found one. In fact, I found a lot of them that said that it is better for someone who has good flexibility and no connective tissue damage in their knees to squat right down. There is significant evidence indicating that the vastus lateralis is more fully engaged when squatting below 90 degrees.

It’s okay to be the only person in the gym who does Olympic lifts. Adam used to do some weird stuff in the gym. It stopped being weird when I realized that he was packing on the muscle and getting really strong while everyone else remained more or less the same. Olympic lifts (the clean and jerk, and the snatch) are Olympic lifts because of the amount of muscle recruitment they facilitate - both lifts require massive neural coordination and motor firing to complete successfully. It is not surprising that most world class throwers and sprinters incorporate these lifts into their training cycles. It is also not surprising that most ego lifters don’t go near them as it is humbling to struggle with a sub 100 pound clean and press when you’re able to rep 225 on front squats.

You keep the journey alive when you continue to learn. I’m not sure Adam will ever be complete because I’m not sure he knows where he is going. He knows that he wants to learn as much as he can and grow his knowledge so he can be an expert in many areas but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have any intention of ever saying “I have arrived”. His quest for wisdom is inspiring because it is about the journey and not about the destination. Every lift is special, every paragraph or lecture is an opportunity to grow, every conversation is another chance to learn. He doesn’t waste a moment.

I remember thinking when I heard about JFK Jr. crashing his plane ”why do people think lawyers can fly?” It was sad, because he was young, and two other people died along with him. But it wasn’t that surprising to me, because he was a lawyer. He was a hobby pilot at best, and frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea to go flying with hobby pilots. If you want to fly, get an expert pilot to fly the plane.

I hold the same opinion when it comes to changing body composition. When I need to change something about the way my body looks; I ask an expert for their advice. I then follow their advice until I look the way I want to, or I realize that their advice doesn’t apply to me. It’s pretty simple. If I don’t look the way I want to it is because I don’t know how to make myself look that way. If I did know I would be doing what I needed to make it happen.

When I was a trainer at GoodLife it became obvious that almost everyone THINKS they know how to eat in order to change the way they look IN SPITE of the fact that they don’t already look the way they want to. When I asked them why they hadn’t achieved their fitness goals yet, their answers were all basically the same – it was due to a lack of effort and not a lack of knowledge. Hearing these excuses day in and day out was the main reason I made the decision to stop training people, and focus most of my energies on my own fitness and health related goals.

I give a lot of nutrition presentations to parents of young athletes, and I find it remarkable that so many sceptical people trust their children’s training to us, but don’t believe me when I offer them guidance concerning optimal nutrition for athletes. Sure there are some who agree with everything I say, and there are others who agree, but admit that it’s difficult and expensive to eat that way. But I’m baffled by the people who continue to tell me that fat is bad; that human beings need lots of grain; that too much protein will destroy the kidneys, and that supplements shouldn’t be given to young people. When I ask them how they know these things; they say that they don’t know how they know; they just know that they know. I don’t try to convince them, because my role is to educate, and people can only be educated when they are open to new information.

I try to win them over by saying that what they have been doing is not bad or dangerous because they are still alive. I suggest that it is just not optimal. I inject some science into what has traditionally been taught by parents. Serving size and food choices are perfect examples of this – we tend to eat the same foods and similar amounts of food that our parents feed us. In talking to these people, I try to make them doubt the scientific basis of their knowledge in an attempt to get them to open their minds a little. Over time, some of what I say may get in and make a difference at a later date - an approach that has worked with a number of my peers and clients. Those who are receptive to what I say begin to make the changes they have always wanted while those who remain sceptical tend to remain on the same path they have been on most of their lives.

I do consider myself an expert on nutrition; at least as it applies to body composition, because I have done everything that I recommend. I have also been a heavy guy who needed to learn the right way to eat, because my food choices were making me fat. It took a long time to figure it out, but once I did, I was able to bring about the changes I needed in order to improve the quality of my life, and to make my body look the way I had always wanted it to. But I only gained my knowledge because I remained open to what experts had to say about nutrition, and the results came only because I listened to their advice.

If you want to change the way you look, chances are that you are not an expert. Your first step is to accept that you don’t know how to make it happen. Your second step is to find someone who does know. And your final step is to follow their advice COMPLETELY. It’s very simple, the best people get the best results EVERY TIME.

My job at SST has exposed me to a lot of different mass and strength training methods that I have never tried before. On November 1st I picked three things to try so I can see what happens to my body.

Decreased cardio. After about 45 minutes of intense exercise the body begins to release cortisol. Cortisol has a wasting effect on muscle because it breaks down protein. When I was riding 12-15 hours a week in the summer, my body spent a lot of time in a catabolic state. I’m hoping to change that by doing one hour of cardio a week in the form of my Wednesday evening RPM class.

Taking branch chain amino acids BCAA’s. Most strength coaches recommend taking BCAA’s because of their ability to stimulate protein synthesis. Poliquin recommends taking 20-40 grams of them during a workout so I’ve bought a big bottle and started taking them before and during my workouts.

Trying German Volume Training GVT. Another Poliquin theory being tested. 10 sets of 10 reps done super-setted with two antagonistic movements. E.g. 10 reps of narrow grip pull-ups then 10 reps of decline press then 90 seconds rest. Repeat 9 times. It takes about 30 -35 minutes and it is brutal. Really hard mentally because it is hard and boring.

Last November I did my first bulking phase and of the three things I’m doing now, the only one that I am repeating is to cut back on the amount of cardio because of the amount of evidence there is that it dramatically impairs muscles development.

November has started so Rachel and I have been living together for more than 3 months. October had a couple of significant events so I learned a lot about Rachel, our relationship and about myself. Here are a few of the things I took out of October:

• It can end at any moment so enjoy all of it. Rachel’s flat tire on the Gardiner Expressway served as a wake-up call for us to get rid of any complacency that had developed in the relationship.
• The English language is a robust and often entertaining way to communicate. There are subtle regional differences that make for some funny conversations. I had never heard the term “pig house” before I moved in with Rachel and when she said that she didn’t want to live in one, I laughed as loud as I could because of the mental picture it creates. She didn’t find it nearly as funny as I did when I asked her if she called a barn a cow house.
• We both sleep better when we go to bed at the same time. Rachel was staying up later because she had midterms in the middle of October and I had to leave for work earlier, so I was going to bed a few hours before her. During these nights we never really got in sync and comfortable with each other being in the same bed.
• Most of the time our role is not to solve problems, it is to listen to problems. Most of us know the solution, we just need to talk our way to it.

Check out part 1 and part 2 of this series.

The skinny on fat by The Telegram is an editorial comment that is based on a study released by the American Institute for Cancer Research. The full report is available at http://www.dietandcancerreport.org/?p=ER if you want to read it. It is an average read and confirms a lot of what people have been saying about cancer and environmental influences. It contains a really nice break down on the impact of specific environmental influences on specific cancer rates. It is worth checking out.

I do not believe, however, the author of the Telegram editorial article took the time to read anything OTHER than the summary of the report. It wouldn’t normally be a big deal but they drew a conclusion that I wasn’t able to find in the report:

But whatever mysteries remain, the study stresses there’s no question that fat fuels cancer rates, to the point that the AICR believes poor diet causes as much cancer as smoking.

The study does not stress that there is no question that fat fuels cancer rates. The study doesn’t say much about fat at all. It reports a lot of findings about BEING fat, or over-weight as determined by BMI, as it relates to cancer but it doesn’t make any statements about actual fat. There is a very good reason for that - no one eats a diet of just fat.

The cited report is an epidemiological and meta analysis study that correlates dietary factors to the incident rates of various cancers. It is NOT a experiemental study that controls any dietary variables. These types of studies have a good track record in science but cannot be used to draw any causal conclusions as the author of the editorial has done.  

I think this is an important point to make for a number of reasons:

1. It is irresponsible for an author to attribute their claim to another person or group
2. It is irresponsible to report feelings as facts
3. Misinformation is rarely helpful because it moves one away from facts

In a more general sense, unprocessed fat is NOT harmful to an individual when consumed in the right combination with other macro-nutrients. Eating fat with high glycemic index carbohydrates will result in greater fat storage but eating it with protein will not. For example, eating a large steak with a salad will result in less fat storage potential than eating a small muffin with butter. The stake may have more fat calories than the muffin and butter combination, but since it and the salad do not contain any carbohydrates that rapidly increase blood sugar, there is a lower chance that the body will go into fat storage mode.

I don’t blame the author for drawing the conclusion that they do because fat = bad is something that has been said so often that it understood to be a fact. However, to attribute this understanding to the World Cancer Research Fund International and the American Institute for Cancer Research is just wrong. They haven’t made that claim in their report and it is unlikely that they will ever make this claim. Their conclusion is that being OVERLY fat WILL increase your likelihood for developing certain types of cancers.

Our Ancestral Mind in the Modern World: An Interview with Satoshi Kanazawa introduces some interesting ideas about why we do the things we do.

In fact, we’re not playing catch up; we’re stuck. For any evolutionary change to take place, the environment has to remain more or less constant for many generations, so that evolution can select the traits that are adaptive and eliminate those that are not. When the environment undergoes rapid change within the space of a generation or two, as it has been for the last couple of millennia, if not more, then evolution can’t happen because nature can’t determine which traits to select and which to eliminate. So they remain at a standstill. Our brain (and the rest of our body) are essentially frozen in time — stuck in the Stone Age.

One example of this is that when we watch a scary movie, we get scared, and when we watch porn we get turned on. We cry when someone dies in a movie. Our brain cannot tell the difference between what’s simulated and what’s real, because this distinction didn’t exist in the Stone Age.

I have spent about half of my working life managing other people. I am liberally minded, engaging and an effective sales person, so owners and key decision makers have had little difficulty trusting me with leadership roles. During this time, I have noticed that young people with a lot of potential tend to do some things that make managing them extremely difficult and often lead to their early departure from solid organizations.

Here are some behaviors that I have noticed in young workers that indicate that they won’t be working with me for very long.

1) Mistaking rules for reality. Rules are just agreements on how something is to be. They describe appropriate behavior from what isn’t. One of the biggest staff complaints that I have had to listen to concerns parking. Regardless of where I have worked, staff is always told to park as far away from the door as possible to make it easier for the members or customers to get access to the building. This always made sense to me because the business depends on the customer spending their money and there is a correlation between time in the building and money spend. The staff are not less than the customers in the worth sense, they just don’t buy as much as the customers so they are asked to walk further to get in the door. Rules are not value judgments, they are just there to make something a particular way so everyone knows how to behave. You don’t need to agree with them, you just need to follow them.

2) Speaking for others. When you speak for others, you are only speaking for them if there is nothing to lose. As soon as there are consequences to what you say, they will deny their feelings and claim, accurately, that they didn’t say anything about it. The best thing you can do is NOT speak for others.

3) Knowing more than everyone else. There’s a chance that you will be asked to do stuff that doesn’t make much practical sense. If it makes sense for the organization then that is how it is going to be. Pointing out how stupid you think it is does only one thing, demonstrate the need to get rid of you.

4) Mistaking unique for only. Each of us have a unique view of the world but each view is only ONE view of the world. If there are 25 people in an organization there are 25 unique views of the world. The chances that any one view is the best and most accurate view in all business situations are pretty slight. If I let one worker go today and hire a new one tomorrow, the organization still has 25 unique views of the world and the chances that I have brought on the one view that is the best and most accurate are pretty low. Your uniqueness will be called upon when it is what is needed to solve a problem or move the business forward. Until it is called upon do the job that you were hired and agreed to do.

5) Thinking people care about why. If you choose not to follow the organizations rules, do not expect anyone to listen to your reasons why. The police don’t care that you were speeding because you believe that you can control your car better than most people, the judge won’t care either. If you make the choice to not follow the rules be smart keep your rational to yourself. The time to explain why is BEFORE you do something and it comes in the form of “here is an alternative solutions, should we change the process?” If the answer is no, follow the rules.

6) Taking things personally. It’s work and you are paid for your behavior, actions and time. Your boss probably hopes that you are happy and that you find your time at work rewarding. But when it gets right down to it, if they have to choose between you doing your job or you being happy, they will select you doing your job every time. Don’t take it personally when they don’t seem to care that you have a hot date, birthday party or tickets for a big game and they make you finish your shift because, lets face it, you don’t make it a personal thing when they pay you for the hours you work.

Let me start off by saying that the above statement does not necessarily apply to everyone but if you do a lot of cardio and can’t seem to drop those pounds, you may want to consider it.

The statement is based on a few facts:

1. The body adapts to exercise very quickly by becoming more efficient to the physical demands - if you do the same workout two times in a row your body will be about 20% more efficient the second time.
2. The body adapts to the energy system demands of a workout very quickly meaning that it will be more efficient at delivering the energy needed to perform the same workout next time.
3. The body overcompensates to the demands of a workout to ensure that there is more than enough strength and energy to get it through the same workout next time.

Here is the problem with steady-state cardio as it deals with long term fat loss - your body is so good at adjusting to any repeating physical demands that there is a diminishing marginal caloric-cost to each workout. When you are working in the fat burning zone (between 50-65% of your heart rate max), your body adjusts to these workouts to ensure that there is enough energy to fuel them. Given that they rely more on fat utilization for fuel, the body adapts by increasing the amount of fat that is available. The consequence to this adaption is an increase in fat storage.

This isn’t a big deal initially as you are able to increase the amount of work that you do to stay ahead of the increased energy (fat) storage but at some point very early on, the body catches up and begins to store more fat than you are able to burn off (remember 1 and 2 above). At this point, steady-state cardio stops having a fat loss effect and starts having a fat maintaining effect. When one will achieve this point depends on a number of factors but I would estimate that most people will achieve it after about 2-3 months.

Examples would include the over-weight aerobics instructor, marathon runner or tri-athlete because these individuals spend a lot of time with elevated heart rates and have adapted to the physical demands of the activity. While their cardiovascular health is superb, their body rely so heavily on fat metabolism for energy that they store fat very effectively to allow for the sustained effort that their sports demand.

Long-term fat loss is best achieved through resistance and strength training to increase lean muscle mass, and moderate amounts of high intensity interval training (HIIT) to tax all energy systems. HIIT is best described as periods of increasing work effort followed by recovery phases. A good HIIT workout will see you heart rate modulate between 60% of you max to 95% of your max but will never stay at one level for more than a few minutes.

Over the years I have gotten into it with a lot of parents about my desire to not have children. The conversations all go pretty much the same. They ask me when I am going to start a family and when I tell them that I don’t want to start a family they tell me that I am being selfish.

When I was younger I thought that their comment was a slag on me, that I was somehow less of a human being because I had thought about the consequences of having children and made the decision that it wasn’t something that I wanted. As I get older and start to see the first wave of divorces in my peer group, I feel more comfortable with my stance. It is also very clear that any person who tells me that I am selfish for not having children has either found the right partner, has always wanted kids or is trying to justify their own child creating actions by getting others to do the same.

If you have the right partner, the desire to be a parent and the resources to afford it go ahead and start a family. If you are missing one of these three things, don’t.

First off, individuals of our species are able to effectively cold read a lack of love between two people. When you have children with the wrong person, the child is able to pick up on it and will learn this to be the normal dynamic between two people. This lesson will be carried with them into adulthood and may lead them to choose partners that help them to facilitate the same loveless experience.

If you end up getting divorced, the lives of your children become more difficult. There is plenty of research out there indicating the single parent families can result in well adjusted children, often better adjusted than children in a loveless two parent household, but there is also the undeniable finding that the environment changes in a way that eliminates many of the advantages of a loving two parent household.

Next, if you do not want children but end up having them, you better be able to want them unconditionally because they will pick up any feelings of contempt. Contempt is very much like the universal emotion disgust that all human beings are capable of feeling and reading on other peoples faces. To develop optimally, children need unconditional support and love from their primary care givers. Feelings of contempt immediately add conditions of behavior to the feeling of love that children may not be able to satisfy. While it may be appropriate for you to expect your partner to not find a frenzied excitement at the sound of pots banging together, this expectation is not going to be met when your 2 year old realizes that they can control the sounds in their environment by hitting two things together. You need to be proud of their discoveries and be very accepting of the fact that a young persons lessons about the world are often very destructive and disruptive.

Finally, while money is not necessarily a critical component in child rearing, having it does make life easier. The most highly taxed demographic in society tends to be that of the young family. (Okay, this isn’t entirely accurate, but young families need to spend more than child-free two person income households so a larger percentage of their after-tax income is already accounted for). The more money you have, the easier it will be to provide all the necessities and privilege that help to shape a well adjusted youngster. Having money will also allow you to maintain some of the quality of experience that you enjoyed before starting a family. Having children will shift your priorities, but having children shouldn’t mean the end of all the things you love doing. But it could if you don’t have the funds and have to choose between your gym membership or baby formula.

Given that the consequences for having children are life long, people should be spending as much time considering this decision as they spend thinking about their retirement. Buy accessories on an impulse if you like but plan your family and know what you are getting into before you begin.

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed life more when there is a level of predictability to the things I do frequently. I will put up with some very annoying behaviours and patterns providing I have had enough time to get used to them. For example, I know that I’m going to be standing in line when I go to the bank to make my student loan payment each month, I know that I’m better off using the cashier instead of the self-serve check-out when I’m buying produce at the local Real Canadian Superstore and I am certain that the QEW east bound is going to be really slow when I leave work before 5 PM on Friday’s. These are things I’m certain of because I have experienced them often enough to figure-out their pattern and I find them very low stress because I am prepared for them.

Up until very recently I would find myself getting annoyed when there was a change to one of these patterns. Probably the biggest source of this type of frustration has been the check-in procedure the front desk of any GoodLife fitness clubs other than the Milton coed club where I work; my card will only open the gate at the Milton club because GL’s check-in system cannot immediately check you in if you are a member of a different GL club, so when I go to Burlington and scan my card, nothing happens and the gate does not open.

I know the gate won’t open so that doesn’t cause me the frustration. What I used to find annoying is the lack of consistency in the check-in process between the different clubs. At some they smile and open the gate, at others they take you card and open the gate and at others they ask you to write down your name, membership number and the time of day on a check-in sheet before taking your card and letting you in. The other option is they look at you with suspicion, take your card and check your member number in the system, then ask for ID and then get you to fill out the check-in sheet. I am willing to follow any one of these procedures every time I visit but I don’t understand why it varies between clubs and even between individuals at the same club.

A few weeks ago I was walking down the stairs at the Oakville club thinking about what was about to happen and a realization hit me. What was frustrating me was the absence of predictability and the feelings of helplessness I had when I go to check in - no matter what I think is about to happen, there is a very good chance that I am going to be wrong and the front desk person is going to have me jump through a different set of hoops. I identified, that if I knew before hand what was about to happen, it wouldn’t be an unpleasant experience for me, it would just be something I do. So I grabbed the sign-in sheet, filled in the required information, handed over my membership card, showed them my drivers licence, smiled and said “hello”. They unlocked the gate and I went in. I wasn’t asked to do anything else because I had already done everything they could have wanted me to do. It was a small thing, but I had moved the locus of control back to me and removed that helpless “what is about to happen to me” feeling that the process normal facilitated.

Since then I have carried this lesson over to a number of different areas in my life. At home, I expect that I’ll be making the bed in the morning, taking out the garbage and washing the dishes before I go to work instead of wondering whether or not Rachel will or thinking about the possible reasons why she didn’t. At the gym, I assume that there is going to be someone using the squat rack for biceps curls so I don’t consider doing squats until I am loading the weight onto the bar.

I have started to uncover the things that annoy me and I am modifying my behaviour to ensure that I control what ends up happening as often as possible. I determine what needs to happen and then make the process or procedure that I follow consistently so I don’t give others the opportunity to determine my behaviour. Doing this has dramatically reduced the amount of stress that I experience and it has returned a lot of joy to things that I was beginning to find somewhat painful. 

Things are predictable because I make them predictable.