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How to Live With Fire
Recently I’ve given much thought to Reebok’s campaign to #LIVEWITHFIRE. From time to time I get philosophical and sort of lost in abstract thought of the weirdest things. So this blog is me inviting you for a road trip with me and my brain. Turn the music up and take a look around my cerebral cortex as I ponder what it is to “Live With Fire“.
Living With Fire is NOT Complacent
First, I think about what it isn’t. Living with fire is not complacency. I think its important to be fulfilled, and even satisfied, about where you are going – but maybe not be overly satisfied with where you are. Content with your present, but pressing on to be all who you were called to be.
Living with fire is not living with rage, or resentment. That state of mind can drive us to overcome and accomplish a lot of things, but to what cost? In that frame of mind, we are rarely satisfied in accomplishing anything except vengeance, and still are never satisfied. No, friends, that is NOT living with fire.
Tenacity, perseverance, consistency, courage, willpower – THESE are a few defining characteristics of what it means to me to #LIVEWITHFIRE.
1. Living With Fire is: Tenacity
Tenacity is defined as the quality of being determined to do or achieve something. And I love the following definition: firmness of purpose.
2. Living With Fire is: Perseverance
Perseverance is next on my list of defining this Reebok Mantra. Perseverance is definitely a synonym for tenaciousness, but lets further define living with fire by defining perseverance with a definition from Webster: continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition. To me, living with fire comes alive in the second part of this definition; to continue DESPITE difficulty! I think I should end the blog now – but I wont.
3. Living With Fire is: Consistency
Consistency brings the “ing” to the phrase. See, to live with fire could be mistaken as a moment in time, but livING with fire gives the idea of continuing to strive for that “pressing forward” . To be consistent in our quest to live with joy and zeal for more in life. Consistency could have a couple of different meanings. Both of which I believe are applicable.
The first, is degree of firmness, density, viscosity, or resistance to movement or separation. Our ideals and level of effort should have a routine firmness. Not hot and cold, not soft and hard, but consistent effort in every attempt. Then, the more traditional thought for the way we describe consistency is the ability to be asserted together without contradiction. This would also be the idea to live beyond contradiction, above reproach. (We all fall short here, but when we get it right what victory we have.)
4. Living With Fire is: Courage
This brings us to courage on my synonym list of living with fire. Webster says courage is: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty. Interesting that courage is not the absence of fear, but for someone to withstand fear or difficulty.
In other words, to persevere even in the face of fear. OK, I hear! WHOA!
5. Living With Fire Requires: Will Power
Lets finish our thoughts of Living With Fire by defining “WILL POWER”: The strength or will to carry out one’s decisions, wishes, or plans. This definition left no discussion for feeling or emotion. The idea is to DECIDE on what you want and SEE IT THROUGH - not allowing circumstance or excuses to compromise your decision!
What if we all “lived with fire”, in learning more, loving more, living more? I believe the key is in the desire. Decide what it is you really want. Dig deep to find a burning desire to accomplish or acquire it with a relentless, stubbornness that knows no quit. Never never never give up!
I believe this so much, I tattooed it on my body:
SEMPER PERSEVERA – Meaning, Never Give Up.
Here are some pictures of some amazing athletes who clearly Live With Fire and never gave up – even when they had some pretty awesome excuses. If this doesn’t inspire you, I don’t know what will.
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
re·bound verb \ˈrē-ˌbau̇nd, ri-ˈ\
Rebound: Return, bounce back, setback, backfire, move backward.
I recently took 18 competitors from my gym, Max Fitness, to compete in the NPC Southeast Classic. The goal was hitting the stage. Not winning a trophy, but using the stage to make us push harder and be our best.
The goal was made, and the goal was met! What we do now defines what we learned on our journey to accomplish our goal. In the “realm” of goal acquisition, focusing solely on the goal can be a tragedy. What I mean is, the goal is just that: “a goal” – a means to an end. How we develop, the wisdom we gain, and the way we develop along the way is the real reward for meeting our goal. Goals are not the real rewards.
Lets think backwards for a second. By creating a goal to shoot for, you are inviting some level of adversity into your life. How much adversity we will endure is measured by how grandiose the goal. The “Goal” only gives reason to validate and hold accountable our hard work, our long suffering, our perilous effort to make our bodies fitter, our will stronger, our bellies hungrier. I have never seen anyone train harder than when they were stretching themselves to reach a new goal. These guys did just that. Josh Gay‘s 60-day before & after picture shows just how hard they worked. Then, they hit the stage, and celebrated, and then they went home…
Score! Now What?
What happens after we reach our goal? It is good after hard training to back down, enjoy the “win” and celebrate the goal acquisition. For me, it was going on a vacation (cruise). We hit the keys, then Mexico and then headed to Disney shortly after we got home. Yes, there was a lot of food involved. But, at some point, we must get back in the game.
We don’t pay off credit cards just to go on some huge spending spree waisting our money, discipline and hard work. It is ok to go charge a dinner, but then we pay it off immediately to avoid getting in the bad position we were once in. Whether the goal was physical or financial, it’s important to remember what you learned along the way and how you felt while you were working so hard.
The best way to prevent rebound is to give yourself a marked amount of time to enjoy your hard work. But after that time is finished, it’s time get back to work. It’s time to make new goals – both long and short term.
Before you even reached this goal, you should already dream about what is next. Don’t take your eye off of the immediate prize. Don’t focus on your future goals until you accomplished the one set right before you. However; you should already be thinking about what is next. This will prevent your downtime from turning into a complete train wreck and a complete rebound.
Doesn’t matter if we are talking about finance or weight loss, enjoy your success but don’t throw away your investment. Remember what you learned along the way. This is what makes you better, stronger, and more patient. Make some goals, so you can push your limits!
Geared Up & Ready
Even something like a new pair of shoes can get you motivated to get back in the gym and hit it hard again. I got these new Reebok ZigCarbons and love them. It was just what I needed to want to do cardio again.
My next new gym toy is Reebok’s Bose Headphone set. They help get my mind focused, shut out distractions and make the most of my time at the gym. Totally what I needed to tune back into my routine.
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Formula for Success
“If you take your eyes off the goal, for even a second, doubt will rush your mind like a band of brutal thieves.”
Doubt intends to kill your dreams, destroy your desire, and beat you down with fear. Evidence of this is obvious in the most trying times. When we are hungry, when we are tired, when we are angry, when we are in despair…
Be Hungry
When you are hungry, let that hunger be your purpose. It is a burning reminder in your gut of what you want to accomplish. When you are tired and your eyes grow heavy, don’t be the martyr the world excuses you to be, no one owes you anything. If there is something you want, you stay up one more hour and you go out and get it!
Be Productive
Anger?, rage? Make it productive, and focus the intensity of this moment into success instead of resentment. No one can control your emotions but you. And when you are in complete despair — Stop. Shhhhh. Be still, and listen. You are more than “just being”. You have the potential to be even more than your desires. You have the ability to accomplish things you havent even dreamed of …yet.
One of my favorite quotes of all time comes by way of the late Henry Ford. He reminds us that we can decide what happens next… he said “he who thinks he can, and he who thinks he can’t, are usually both right“.
Go Beyond
“Attaining the goal isn’t success. Success is found in the pursuit, attaining your goals is the icing on this cake we call life.”
Lastly, it isn’t enough to just dream. I love visualization. Wondering what if, thinking just maybe… Hoping, even praying, for that desire of your heart. Instead of praying for “the goal”, pray for the opportunity to make a way for your goal. The satisfaction of accomplishment comes in the effort – the blood, the sweat, the tears, the years, in pursuit of the “goal”. Attaining the goal isn’t success. Success is found in the pursuit, attaining your goals is the icing on this cake we call life.
“Vision without execution is just hallucination” Henry Ford
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. #LiveWithFire
Sculpting Better Legs: Simple Leg Workout to Improve Your “Sweep”
If you have been following this mess I call a blog at all for the last 5 months you may have heard me whine and whine about my knee. If not, you’re in luck because here I go again. 5 months ago I was getting ready for my first ever MMA tournament. I know,… shut it! But anywho, I was gonna try. Here’s a shocker: my 42-year-old butt got tore up by a 19-year-old monster. I tore my medial meniscus and sustained a 90% tear to my MCL. I was devastated, but now I’m back and I want to not only return to competing, I want my quads bigger and stronger than ever. The area I want to focus on for this workout is the Vastus Lateralis, the largest and most outer portion of the thigh.
How to Improve Your Sweep
How do we isolate out the vastus lateralis muscle, or as we call it in the physique world, “the sweep”? Vastus externus or vastus lateralis, depending on your A&P professor, is the largest of all the quadricep muscles. The action of this muscle is to extend the tibia or shin bone at the knee, but I’m here to help you learn how to perform knee extension to isolate out the other muscles that synergistically aid in this action. In sculpting, it is very important that we learn isolation. Whether we are a bodybuilder, a bikini competitor or a stay-at-home mom that wants to scult their body, we can all use these principles to learn to sculpt nicer legs.
Target Training
Fat burn or spot reducing fat can not be limited to specific areas of the body, no matter what ”bogus science” and pills tell you. However, sculpting most assuredly can be reduced to a single area, action, and in some cases, specific fibers of a specific muscle – all based on how we execute the exercise. You don’t need a degree in kinesiology to learn these principals, just a little common sense is all.
So, how do we excite and fatigue the fibers of our outer quad to hypertrophy our SWEEP?
Narrow-minded
Ok, so here is one exercise you should be narrow-minded about. Narrow is better when we talk about our stance to accentuate or facilitate the contractile tissue of the outer quad. So lets think narrow when doing squats and leg extensions. Whatever exercises you do, stand with a more narrow stance (feet together). You may stop and ask, does that mean if I stand wide, I will work my inner thigh and medial quads? Yeppers! Now you are getting it. (another blog perhaps) Moving on…
Self-Centered
With leg extensions, it’s all about being self-centered – literally. If you point your toes outward, you are working the vastus medialis, the tear drop shaped muscle on the medial side (inside) of the legs close to the knee. Since we want to work the opposite side of the legs, then (yes, you guessed it) we want to point our toes in the opposite direction, pointing toes together. Note: this doesn’t work by just pointing the feet from the ankle down, the whole leg must internally rotate to the center to excite the appropriate muscles.
Here is an example of my own leg workout where I use these same principles to improve my sweep.
Yesterday’s Leg Workout
Warm up: 4 sets / 20 reps
Deep weighted walking lunges (35-50 pound dumbbells) 45 seconds rest btw sets
Couplet: Leg Press & Leg Extension Super Set
(zero rest between super set, 1 minute between sets)
#1 Heavy leg press
5-8 plates each side, narrow stance (4″ apart) and push only on your heels
10 sets / 15 reps
#2 Moderately heavy leg extension
Moderately heavy leg extension (130lbs-160lbs) internally rotate your femur’s in (toes are pigeon-toed), and squeeze your outer quad in terminal extension.
10 sets / 12-15 reps
Repeat Super Set 10 Times
Puke and repeat for 10 rounds(sets) with 1 minute rest between (rounds) sets
Here are some pics from my last show, the Daytona Classic, just 10 days after getting hurt.
I WILL FAIL!
Next time you gain ground and next time you find yourself making any headway, no matter how insignificant, FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT to keep it!
BUT, I WILL NOT FAIL MYSELF!!!
#RESPECTYOURSELF
Push/Pull Chest and Back Workout
Don’t “Back” Down (pun intended) this Holiday Season.
Hit the gym HARD.
MAKE ROOM for the extra Thanksgiving calories.
DON’T GIVE IN to laziness.
DON’T MAKE EXCUSES and use the Holidays as a lame excuse to get fat and eat crap.
You can still reach your goal, maintain your weight, improve, achieve – even through the Holidays.
Suck it Up or Suck it In.
WORKOUT
Cardio: 1 hour of elliptical, burned 1,000 calories
CHEST
Chest Super Set #1:
15 Dumbbell Flat Bench Press
15 Flat Bench Chest Fly
5 SETS
Chest Super Set #2:
15 Incline Dumbbell Press
15 Incline Dumbbell Fly
5 SETS
15 Cable Cross Over, 4 SETS
15 Chest Pull Overs, 4 SETS
(lats, chest & triceps)
BACK
Wide Grip Pull Down - 4 Sets of Increased weight and Declined reps (15, 12, 12, 10)
4 Sets of 11 Close Grip Seated Row
4 Sets of 11 Wide Grip Seated Row
4 Sets of 11 Close Grip Pull Down
30-Minute Cardio & Abs Hotel Workout
What You EAT in Vegas, Does Not STAY Vegas!
I don’t cheat on my wife, or do anything illegal, when I’m on vacation, but that doesn’t mean sins are not committed. Gluttony happens to the best of us, and I only wish I keep it a secret – if only to be that lucky. Believe me, I bring back every extra calorie for everyone to see. In my case, it’s what I ate in Orlando, Florida that was the sin I committed – and I didn’t have to travel to Sin City to do it.
Seriously, no matter how good I try to be, I still eat more calories when I’m traveling. So, if I want to have a chocolate and caramel covered freshly baked pretzel dipped in copped peanuts (theoretically speaking of course), then I have make time for hotel gym time in order to combat the fa – no ifs, ands or buts.
Even though some hotels are stocked up on cardio and equipment, like the Windham Grand (pictured here), most hotels at least have the basics – like an elliptical machine, treadmill and bike, with a few weights or tools, like a medicine ball, bench and a mat. If I have the time, I’ll hit both weights and cardio. But, if time is limited, and I want to get on with my playtime, I’ll focus on burning calories. For me, my calorie burning machine of choice was the elliptical, with a dollop of abs on top.
Cardio & Abs Hotel Circuit
Don’t let Holiday travel and festivities sabotage your fitness!! #GetAfterIt with short effective workouts like this one (the workout I did Saturday before hitting Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival).
10 Minutes Elliptical
25 Weighted Crunches
20 Oblique Crunches (right)*
20 Oblique Crunches (left)*
20 Figure 8 Crunch with Medicine Ball
3 ROUNDS
Take oblique crunches up a notch by adding lower body movement, like the Snowboarder Crunch. Once you are done, I guarantee you’ll feel SO much better – and not feel quite as bad for the extra calories you eat! And, if you’re like me, you will be able to actually have fun knowing you got your workout in and made room for a some extra treats! (see how happy I am?) 
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
My Secret Superpowers
When I think of factors that motivate me to work out, I think of so many different things. There is that hot body I want to resemble, the one song that makes me want to push through the pain, the euphoria I feel when the carnage of training is over, but there is also the GEAR.
I don’t care if you are boxing with new gloves or teeing off with new clubs, we just have more confidence when we are training with new sick gear. Well my “boxing ring and fairway” is 10,000 square feet of iron weights and treadmills. My gear is fresh new Reebok threads and kicks that move me to push harder, motivate me to dig deeper, scream at me not to quit.
Silly? Well, maybe. But even as a kid, when I had a new pair of shoes, I could barely sleep with the thought of wearing them to school for the first time. It gave me such confidence. If the shoes didn’t make me run faster or make me cuter, or even smarter, I guarantee the confidence I had from wearing them gave me all the super powers I needed to become a cross between Usain Bolt, Brad Pit, and Albert Einstein.
All kidding aside, next time you find yourself in a rut or lacking motivation, make a new play list of some kick butt grooves, and jump on Reebok.com and get you some fresh gear. Sometimes, you have to motivate yourself to GET AFTER IT!
Never Give Up!!!!!!
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
How to Get Perfect Abs
I love fundamentals. Fundamentals are the foundation from which more complex and effective derivatives are built upon. So many pro athletes achieve stardom and fame only to eventually fall into a slump and return to the basics. Many coaches and athletes alike will tell you, if you perfect the fundamentals, there may be no need for much else.
My Striking, and grappling skills are continuing to get better. As I get more advanced, I’ve noticed that every class starts with repeating basic drills that I learned from the very first day; and so it is with abdominal work.
You can do V-ups, X-ups, sit ups, roll ups, knee ups, or just about any abdominal exercise you want, and without using basic fundamentals, you will never effectively work the target area. Most ineffective abdominal work is caused from poor set up. If you can accomplish a good starting position and maintain good positioning during the range, your abs will cry sweaty tears of bliss. So, how do we set up to get all the “goody” out of our abdominal training? glad you asked!
1. Lay down on your back with knees bent and feet on the floor
2. Roll your belt line (low back) into the mat or ground (a slight posterior pelvic tilt)
3. Use the hamstrings to lock your pelvis into position. Do this by digging your heels into the ground and pull them toward your buttocks to tighten your hamstrings holding your pelvis in a posterior tilt
4. Place your hands behind your neck holding the base of your noggin (nuchal line) and keep your elbows open and wide.
5. Look straight up keeping your chin off your chest.
6. Pull your naval into your spine AS YOU EXHALE.
7. As you exhale, PULL YOUR TRANSVERSE ABDOMINALS IN, LIFT YOUR SHOULDER BLADES OFF THE FLOOR UNTIL ONLY THE MID BACK (THORACIC REGION) IS TOUCHING
(NOTE: LIFT STRAIGHT UP AS IF YOU HAVE A GLASS OF WATER ON YOUR CHEST… TRY NOT TO ROLL UP IN AN ARC)
Congratulations, you just executed a perfect crunch!
Continue to use these same principals for all abdominal work. These fundamentals will help facilitate and recruit more abdominal musculature durring your workout giving you “perfect abs”.
NOTE: Don’t forget – no matter how great your ab exercises are, you’ll never see them if you don’t diet. Diet is 80% of getting the abs of your dreams!
Tractor Tire Abs
Here is an entire ab & core workout I put together for GNC utilizing a tractor tire. Since many MMA camps and boot camps us tractor tires, I decided to come up with a few exercises to help you make the most of your tractor tire. Don’t have one? You can get a used on free at your local tractor repair store or dealer – or you can use a stability ball or bench.
FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.
