My reply was “Yeah, I’ve been trying to break her of that shit”. This obviously was not what he was expecting and he sputtered a bit about how impressive her one-legged squats and rotations on the ball were and how he couldn’t do it. Admittedly, my second response of “who cares?” wasn’t the most educational or accommodating, but it at least did spark further conversation. He continued on about coordination and balance until I finally hit him with the old Jim Wendler quote (paraphrased): “Given a couple of weeks I can probably teach you to squat on a Swiss Ball…” <- He agreed with me at this point, then I continued the quote "But it'll take a lot longer to teach you how to squat 600 lbs".

His response: "True, but once you start adding weight you're just increasing your likelihood of injury".

Holy shit.

I shrugged and said that injuries happen, but I'm pretty sure that I'd much rather face a skilled BOSU-based athlete on the mat than a skilled and well strength-trained athlete.

Seriously, people. As much as I like to poke fun at the Stability Ball and BOSU training, it certainly does have its place. That place is mostly rehabilitation and recovery work. That's what those tools and their accompanying training protocols were designed for, and that's what they are for. Unless your goal is to do progressively more challenging balancing and coordination acts while looking like a seal, then they shouldn't hold a major place in your training protocol. Even then you would be better served developing a great deal of absolute strength through other means and then honing that strength on the balance tools.

We need to talk for a second about the transference of skills. The more complex a skill is, the less likely it is to transfer to other areas of athletic development. For example, a squat is a pretty basic skill (until you get to the point of being an advanced powerlifter, but we'll leave that for now). Your body is designed to squat and assuming your movement patterns are tuned up then you'll be a pretty natural squatter. By developing the magnitude of your squat (through external resistance) you will develop power and coordination in that movement. This directly translates to almost all athletic endeavors. There's also the functional hypertrophy that can go along with it, but we'll again ignore that for now.

Now let's look at a two-legged squat on the BOSU with some sort of medicine ball hand rotation. Assuming that there's no injury present what we're basically looking at is a very light squat with artificially narrow feet (unless you're very small and a BOSU is wide enough for you to have a normal squat stance on) with some degree of ankle, knee, and hip compensation. The first few sessions you try this there's a lot of stability work that goes on and it's fairly difficult. However, after a few sessions you'll find that most of the challenge is gone and you can perform this task fairly easily.

At this point you've reached a basic level of coordination, balance, and ability. How do you improve from there? Make the squat more complex? Sure, to a point. However, you'll find that after a short time you'll just become better at your one-legged Romanian Deadlifts-into-Squats-into-Push Presses. You won't become a faster runner, sharper kicker, or better wrestler.

However, add 100 pounds to your working squat weight while maintaining your current bodyweight and I guarantee you'll run faster, jump higher, kick faster, and escape from holds better.

The injury thing? I don't agree there, either. With proper programming and technique adding external resistance will develop your strength, mobility, and coordination to the point where you will IMPROVE your resistance to injury. Spending time on a ball is not going to give your tendons, ligaments, skeletal system, and muscles the necessary impetus to remodel and improve themselves. This development of your structure is what will protect you from injury, not some sort of balancing act.

The reason that many people get screwed up from weight training is because they lift too much weight too early in their training career with piss-poor form. Period. The reason that powerlifters and strongmen are always jacked up is because they are continually pushing their bodies with very heavy loads and straddling that line between strength and injury. That's the nature of their sport and what they have to do in order to improve. They know it and they accept it. A martial artist, to use the example of the gentleman I was speaking to, does not need to train at that level of intensity all of the time, and so with judicious use of external resistance will be far LESS likely to be injured while maximizing their ability.

Don't get sidetracked and swayed by stuff that's all sizzle and no steak, people. Don't spend your time looking for the magical exercise that is suddenly going to change your performance or your physique. Instead look for the quality that you need to develop and then go and find the means by which to develop that quality.

Interested in learning more about the strength lifestyle? Grab my free ebook 7 Secrets of Strength and Health on the right!

The problem certainly wasn’t my mother; she’s pretty positive. The problem was with my mode of thinking. You see, once I started thinking about the problems associated with some of the situations I’m in I became focused on problem-based thinking. Once that happens, all you can focus on is the problems with a situation. That doesn’t do you any good. Dwelling on and bitching about your problems does nothing more than waste time and help you find new problems that you probably didn’t even know existed and didn’t matter in the first place.

Unfortunately, this is where most people spend their life. They sit around and focus on what’s not going right in their personal, financial, or fitness life. They’ve got way too much on their plate at work. Their kid is a pain in the ass. They haven’t received a raise in three years. The economy is bad. They only have a vending machine full of unhealthy food at work. Their gym is on the other side of town. You get the point.

To make matters worse, this type of thinking is contagious. There’s nothing that problem-focused people love more than getting someone to agree with or start thinking like they do. That gives them someone to focus on the problem and bitch with! If you spend a lot of time around problem-focused people (and don’t forget that most people are) you soon will find your desire, focus, and productivity washing right down the drain.

To combat this problem-focused thinking it is key to promote solution-focused thinking. Sure, there are always problems. You need to be able to identify them, which is usually not a big challenge. However, rather than dwelling on whatever problem faces you, once you’ve identified the problem or challenge it is imperative to become solution-focused and drive your thought process towards how to fix the problem. This simple mind-shift will do amazing things for your productivity and success.

This isn’t some sort of pie-eyed “power of positive thinking” line of bullshit. I don’t care if you like or don’t like or if you feel positive at all about what you’re doing. You are simply thinking about how to successfully overcome a situation by focusing on a solution or improvement to make it happen. Is your lawn flooded? Well, then perhaps a drainage ditch is the solution to your problem. Do you like to or want to dig this ditch on a nice Saturday afternoon when you could be at the beach or watching a Spring baseball game? Hell no! Do you have a problem that needs solving and the technology (shovel and back) to make it happen? Yep. So get it done.

Sometimes this is easier said than done, of course. My above drainage ditch example is pretty cut and dried and we all know that life can get a lot more complex. I recently picked up a great idea for turning around your thought process from Jason Selk, author of 10 Minute Toughness. You should all read this book, if you haven’t, as a side note. Rather than just trying to focus on a solution when faced with a complex problem all at once it is far easier to apply “small steps” thinking to it.

When you find yourself in the middle of problem-based thinking Selk recommends stopping, taking a deep clarifying breath (he has a method and scheme for this, but just go with a very long, slow breath), and asking yourself “what is one thing I can do to make this better?”. Even if that one thing isn’t much, there’s pretty much always one little thing you can do to improve your situation. Once you’ve done the one thing you can do to improve your situation, repeat the process and look for the next thing. Before you know it you’re well on your way to solving your problem.

I know, you’re reading that and thinking “that’s it? That’s the answer to my problems?”. No, the answer to your problems is stopping the focus on your problems and then actually focusing on the solution. When you boil life down it doesn’t have to be all that complex, and usually the simplest answers are the best ones. Taking small, consistent, and constructive steps forward will always be better than sitting around, dwelling on a problem, and waiting for some sort of magical inspiration.

Interested in finding solutions and developing a strength lifestyle? Grab my FREE ebook 7 Secrets of Strength and Health on the right!

All this stuff is very hard work, but there’s a certain amount of satisfaction that comes with doing it. Even when (or perhaps especially when) you’re frustrated by the task there’s an element of overcoming and success. When you’re performing physical work to help out a friend then at the end of the day you know that your toil has produced or improved something. It’s very similar to a great workout in the gym. It’s hard, and at times painful work but you know that when you leave, upon giving it your all, that you are better than when you entered. There should be some satisfaction and sense of achievement taken from that.

While I was shoveling manure I had some time to ruminate on a few things (other than being elbow deep in cow shit), and one of which being the value of what I was doing. I haven’t been doing much farm work lately and I realized that it was very different from my normal day to day activities and that is why it was so refreshing to me. In addition to the satisfaction and fitness that comes of hard, physical work the work itself provided the opportunity to stimulate my mind and body from broader avenues.

One of the things I see that concerns me in our society today is that we’ve become a culture of specialists. While this isn’t all bad, as I’m a specialist in strength and performance myself, the attitude of specialization has overtaken all aspects of our lives. This is concerning to me as that’s not how we’re wired to operate. Think about how we’ve developed as organisms for a second. We’re not specialists. Human beings are some of the most adaptable organisms on the planet. We’re omnivores, so we can eat all sorts of things as they’re presented. We’re warm-blooded, so we handle temperature variations better than most species do. We have a large brain and opposable thumbs which has enabled us to further adapt and handle new situations. We have a strong sense of individuality to go with our desire for group contact that allows us to survive as a group but put our own organism first. Most species go much more toward one direction or the other when it comes to individualist or group function. We certainly are pack creatures but retain a strong sense of individuality within our pack or tribe.

We humans are meant to thrive when performing a variety of tasks. That’s not what we’ve been doing with our culture, though. While, as I said above, specialization in one’s vocation isn’t necessarily bad it does not mean that life specialization is the way to go. Too many people have no interests or hobbies outside of work, or if they do it’s just one or two things (usually reality TV and eating, it seems). Screw that! There’s a whole life out there waiting to be discovered. If you’re not taking advantage of that you’re not only missing out but you’re setting yourself up for boredom, depression, and mental or physical overuse injuries.

That’s why I think it’s so important to do something different with your life as a means of recovering and restoring your mental state and feeding your soul, if you will. We as humans have evolved to be terrific generalists and just as in order to be successful in our strength and fitness program we are best served playing to our evolutionary design so should our mental focus be. Take a look at the great people of history and very, very rarely will you find someone who is one dimensional. Leonardo Da Vinci was the iconic “Renaissance Man”. Theodore Roosevelt was a great leader, athlete, and outdoorsman. Aristotle used to push all of his students and charges to maintain a competitive and physically active lifestyle, all while seeking new and diverse areas of thought and research. Throughout history you’ll find that most great men and women have a variety of interests, diverse hobbies, and are physically active.

The take-home lesson here is to take a long, hard look at how you run your life and spend your discretionary time. If your life is way out of balance you only have so long before you run into trouble. As a telling example, check out office workers who sit on their asses all of the time. Before long they suffer from tight hips, inefficient glutes, and eventually back pain to the point where they can no longer sit comfortably. Combine that with the likelihood of weight gain and frequent illnesses and you’ll see that the whole system is affected and they can’t even do what they’re adapting toward (sitting) well!

The fix for them is to start doing things that don’t involve sitting. By moving more, and moving constructively, they soon drop weight, feel better, suffer less pain and illnesses, and are more productive when they’re sitting on the job. By working on yourself as a whole person you’ll find that it will have a synergistic effect and you will improve in ALL areas of your life. If you are finding that you’re run down, stuck in a rut, or just don’t feel that you’re hitting on all cylinders then here are my recommendations for you: Find a new hobby. Take a break from work. Spend some time on yourself. The more you expand your horizons the better prepared you’ll be for the tasks at hand.

Taking care of yourself mentally and physically is what the Strength Lifestyle is all about. If you’re looking for more information on how to live it, then check out my FREE ebook 7 Secrets of Strength and Health to the right!

A1) Push-up Down-and-Ups (12″): 1×10
A2) Sandbag Zercher Squats (80 lb bag): 1×10
A3) Rope Recline Rows: 1×10
A4) Frog Jumps: 1×10
A5) Kettlebell Snatch (50lb): 1×5 each arm

Don’t forget to grab your free e-book 7 Secrets of Strength and Health to the right!

Performance Training - Injury Prevention - Sports Injury Prevention

Think about that for a second. What I’m saying is that these amazing athletes you see on TV who are often making loads of cash to play their sport, don’t possess the most talent for the game. Now, I’m not saying that they aren’t talented, they certainly are. However, if you talk to them they will often be able to come up with some other athletes they know or teammates they’ve had that were much better than they were and yet never made it.

What separates the talented and makes them successful or unsuccessful? Durability. The schedule of a high level athlete is unbelievable grueling and year after year of that type of training and activity takes its toll. Most athletes, even good ones, just can’t stand up to the beating and start suffering injury after injury. This holds them out of skill work, reduces their playing capacity, and eventually ends their career. The successful ones are the athletes that possess sufficient talent and ability to play at a high level AND can withstand the punishment. As the years go by they simply outlast their fellow athletes.

While some injuries are unavoidable, particularly in the contact sports, the good news is that durability is a quality that can be greatly improved by training. This is where the strength and conditioning component comes into play. In addition to improving the performance level of a young athlete a sound strength and conditioning program will accomplish three things:

1. Develop and maintain a high level of tendon and ligament strength.

2. Improve and maintain proper muscle and skeletal alignment and balance.

3. Strengthen and enforce sound movement patterns and body positioning.

The better prepared your body is for the stresses of playing and training for your sport at a high level the more likely you will be to remain injury-free and improve your game. Gone are the days where good natural athletes can just play their sport and be able to compete at a high level. At this point there are talented kids all over the place. What separates them is the training they do OFF the field to make themselves better ON the field.

Want to start becoming bulletproof? Grab my Wilkins Power Dynamic Warm-up Manual, which is a free bonus with my FREE e-book 7 Secrets of Strength and Health over on the right!

Healthy food makes for a healthy body

Now, I’m not talking about the nuts and bolts of diet plans or the grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrate that we take in. We talked a little bit about that stuff but we were thinking bigger than that. Instead of hammering on the minutia of performance nutrition we talked about the overall quality of the food we eat and our approach to food.

So many people have a distorted relationship with food and as a result their health, energy, and physiques are impacted. In talking with Sincere and Shawn we all shared our amazement that so many people, even those who maintained some aspect of a fitness lifestyle, paid little to no attention to the food that they put in their bodies.

Food is life support. We are deeply connected to our food sources physically, mentally, and spiritually. Food is not a crutch for our emotions that we run to when we’re down. Food is not a substitute for happiness in our lives. That’s abuse of food. Instead food supplies us with the energy and vitality that we need to create that happiness for ourselves. When we eat food that supports our lives we are prepared for success.

In training athletes I find a lot of them will skip meals, then pig out on some sort of processed quasi-food and try to down a super-processed supplement shake to make up for it. Then they wonder why they have no energy to focus, perform, and can’t recover from their workouts worth a damn?

Many fat loss clients I’ve trained use food as a support mechanism and a band-aid, rather than try to face and fix their life problems. Let me get this straight: Your depressed because you’re overweight and don’t feel good about yourself, so you eat something awful for you to help yourself feel better… huh?

Look, people, we’re supposed to eat food. I’ve done my time as a nutrition and diet geek and I can argue ratios and grams of various micronutrients with you all day. However, when it’s all said and done the real answer is this: Eat good, natural, healthy food. Eat quality meats (grass fed or wild if you can), load up on fruits and vegetables, minimize or completely drop grains (especially wheat), focus on nuts, seeds, and healthy oils as your fat sources, and eat simple things that you enjoy. Minimize processed food and check your labels mercilessly. If the food you eat is full of ingredients that you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce, then probably you shouldn’t eat it.

Whenever possible get organic, LOCAL food. I firmly believe that the closer a food was grown to you the healthier it’ll be for you. Plus you’ll be supporting a local sustainable farming community, and that’s what will bring us, as a society, security in these turbulent times. Honestly it wouldn’t hurt you to start a little garden, even a window box herb garden, but that’s a rant for another time. Just trust me on this, there’s something special about growing, picking, and eating your own food. If you’ve never had the pleasure of that then you really should try it out.

Too many people today don’t know anything about how the food they eat gets in front of them. That’s just plain unacceptable. If you are putting this stuff in your body, which you supposedly care about, I just don’t understand how you wouldn’t want to develop a strong, healthy connection to it.

Eating well and naturally is one of the seven secrets to a strong and healthy life I go over in my free e-book 7 Secrets of Strength and Health. If you want to know the other six, just sign up over on the right!

I see it all of the time in the gym. Guys are always chasing that magical supplement that will suddenly turn the corner in their physique chase. Girls are always hunting that one “secret” ab exercise that will flatten their tummy and get rid of “these” (*pinching their love-handles).

Guess what? They’re chasing the 20%. They’re also spending so much time focusing on that 20% that they’re not doing the things that will get them their 80. Focus on the basics that you know work for you: Train hard, train heavy, and train the body as a whole. Eat good, basic food that supports your progress. Learn to relax, destress your life, and focus on your productivity. The extra stuff is just that, extra. If you’ve got the time and ability, play around with the 80% of stuff that will bring you the extra 20% of your results, but put your effort into the solid, basic stuff that will maximize your results.

<- This clip is from one of my favorite movies: Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?.

If you’re interested in the basic rules of life that will get you to your 80% and beyond, check out my 7 Secrets of Strength and Health on the right!

While this is largely a business seminar there are some great life lessons that are starting to shine through. Here’s one that keep bouncing through every conversation:

Taking rapid and massive action: Zach’s catch phrase of the weekend is “commitment to speed”. Whether you’re in business, developing as an athlete, or trying to lose weight it’s important that you do it with focus and aggression. Every minute that you wait around for the perfect situation or spend hemming and hawing about your goals is a minute wasted and it’s a minute that you’re not living your goals and dreams.

Decide on a goal and start hammering. There’s nothing that will help you reach your goal like taking that first step, and then another, and then another.

I’m off to another round of the mastermind, but I’ll be checking in after I’m done with some more insights! In the meantime, grab your free copy of 7 Secrets of Strength and Health to the right!

Be sure to keep you back straight, hips up just a little, and your midsection tight. Start out by just adjusting to the position and once you feel comfortable begin with small, slow circles. As you progress you can make your circles larger.