Our habits shape every aspect of our lives. From our health to our wealth, our daily habits can make or break us. I am on a constant search to form the most pro-active habits to create physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual fulfillment; for myself as well as others.

About 5 years ago, I realized that I had fallen into many bad habits in multiple aspects of my life that were not in line with my overall life goals. Basically I was thinking, acting, and even visualizing re-actively, not pro-actively. I still loved what I did for work and felt it was a calling, but I found myself burned out, frustrated, and frazzled daily.

By acknowledging that I needed to change, and through a tremendous bundle of resources at home, at work, in education, in colleagues and friends, I was able to completely overhaul my life. I now find myself breaking through barriers nearly every day I realized were self-imposed.

Maybe you or someone you know is in the same situation. The wheels may be spinning but in the rut of negative habits, no one goes anywhere. Below are some aspects of change that helped me turn things around. If you need a little boost in life, give one, or all of them, a try.

1. Sleep: Focus on creating quality with your quantity. Your body likes it when you go to bed and get up at the same time every day. Your body hates the snooze button. Get rid of it. Want more energy? Go to bed and get up earlier.
The best thing I’ve done to increase my daily energy is to start going to bed at 9:30 and getting up at 4:30, regardless of what time my morning commitments start. Not only do I have more energy during the day, I actually wake up without that groggy feeling.

2. Nutrition: Eat real food. Yes, even if it has fat. Real unprocessed food is what we’ve eaten for thousands of years. Disease has exploded the more processed our food supply has gotten. I stopped the “chicken breast and rice” diet I had been on since college and started getting a variety of meats (especially fish), vegetables, and quality carbohydrates on a daily basis. I started supplementing with fish oil, magnesium, and vitamin D. My energy has increased and my body fat has decreased (by about 5%!)

3. Television: If you are looking for truths, values, and a remedy for your perennial burnout, you won’t find it in your TV. You’ll actually find the opposite. If I could share with the world the valuable life modifying insight I’ve received from watching television, I, um, wouldn’t have very much to share with the world. There was a time I woke up and went to bed to the news. Each night there was a different show I “had” to watch. Now I fill that time with reading, writing, listening to audio books, and even listening to music. In addition to having more time to do the things in life that matter, I’ve received such a higher quality of information, inspiration, and insight. I’ll still watch TV. but it’s an occasion, not a habit.  Watching television isn’t bad. Allowing television to shape your life is.

4. Education: Always seek resources on how to become more fulfilled in your life’s calling. You may be a wise, old, experienced sage, but there is always so much more to learn. Enrich yourself daily. I started to fall under the guise of “I’ve been successful doing things my way, so what more is there to learn?”. The result was stagnation, frustration, and burnout. Once I ditched the ego, asked for help and learned how to seek resources, I experienced exponential growth.

5. Caffeine: A little is good, a lot is bad. If you need a thousand milligrams a day to have energy, your problem is not solved by the drug, it is enhanced. Eat better, schedule better, sleep better. On a daily basis, I would take between 600-800 mgs of caffeine. Morning, noon, pre- workout, and then again in the early evening. This would result in terrible sleep patterns that would often require a sleep aid. Additionally, this “fake” energy was creating a drain on my “real” energy. Now I take caffeine once when I wake up and I’ve never had energy all day like I do now.

6. “I can’t”: Translation: “I won’t”. As my life filled with “I cant’s” I realized that these were really “I wont’s”. While some “I wont’s” are merited, once I was able to discern between the two, I was able to accomplish exponentially more every year.

7. Exercise: Exercise should be a catalyst, not a drain for your time and energy. If the amount of time or energy in a day is a primary complaint, create a more efficient exercise program and do it first thing in the morning. I used to require a minimum of 2 hours in the middle of the day to exercise. Don’t get me wrong, exercise is a great thing, but in a life where you aim to accomplish many things, there is a time economy. I realized that a good portion of my workout program consisted of sitting around, chatting, doing pointless exercises and getting distracted. I now work out from 5-6 a.m. My mid day is free to do the operational things I need to do. I have more energy from starting my day with activity. I’ve cut the crap out of my program by focusing on multi-joint lifts and super-setting supplemental lifts.

There is always more to learn and better ways to create pro-active habits. I am still challenged every day, as are you. Let’s look forward to meeting these challenges with the right mind, body, and soul!

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the women who have made so many sacrifices to put smiles on their baby’s faces, food in their tummies, and love in their hearts. Us grown up babies wouldn’t be where we are today without mom’s nurturing patience, understanding, and care.

I’d like to take an opportunity to thank my mom, Linda, for everything I’ve become. The love and support I have received my entire life has been the fuel that propels my engine. I was truly raised in a culture of wellness and, to this day, this modeling has shaped the way I aim to help people around the world.

When I write or speak about practical “tips” for getting kids healthy or creating a wellness culture in your home, these aren’t notes I’ve copied from a book. These are snippets from my child and early adulthood; a reflection of the environment I grew up in. To this day, I don’t know how my mom did it, but what she created is a testament to committing to health for yourself and your family.

My mom cooked from scratch with natural ingredients before it was “cool”. I remember being very young and going to alternative grocery stores to get real, whole, food. Absent in the pantry were processed peanut butter, cereals, boxed foods, and numerous other items that populate many of our shelves today. We had a huge garden (which she also maintained) and ate quite a bit right out of our back yard.

Our chocolate chip cookies were lumpy and our pancakes weren’t thin and pillowy. Our burgers were thick and spherical, and our peanut butter was a layer of condensed, minced peanuts separated from a layer of peanut oil. The potatoes out of our back yard came in odd shapes and sizes and we had huge zucchinis that could club a mastodon.

These culinary imperfections were not the photogenic relics of what we package as “food” today. Absent of machines and chemicals, food has an imperfect aesthetic. Just as with humans, it’s not what’s on the outside that counts. My mom’s commitment to getting up early (before work) to make breakfast, pack us a lunch, and prepare the family a dinner of real food taught me not only how real food is supposed to taste, but how it is supposed to make you feel.

While my mom never had any formal athletic or exercise training, she knew that being active was an important part of a healthy lifestyle. She would get up every morning and walk or jog. Prior to age 16, I struggled with my weight despite being active in sports and having access to a tremendous diet. Seeing my mom committed to exercising for enjoyment every day inspired me to do the same.

I’d get up early with her at home or on vacation, and go walking or jogging. This is part of my routine to this day, as it is hers. I learned that exercise wasn’t a punishment for being fat, or a sole means of getting a college scholarship. It was something that could be used to give me energy, improve my self esteem, and personally empower me.

The exercise and nutrition my mom used to lay the foundation for our family’s wellness weren’t the tenants of some fad or new wave “approach”. It was her decision and commitment to taking a stand for the health of her family. Yes, everyone around us may have been doing something different but this is how we were going to live.

For my mom, it was a lot more work and a lot less sleep. As we know, it takes becoming an adult to even fathom the sacrifices our parents made for us. What more noble a cause than to champion your family’s health and wellness?

I consider what I learned from the culture of wellness in my home the centerpiece of my success and ability to help others today. While I spend countless hours researching, interviewing, and consulting every resource imaginable on how to improve our nation’s health and wellness, nothing provides greater insight than what I lived growing up.

If anything I ever say, write, or create is able to help or inspire others in any way, credit should be given where credit is due. Thank you Mom for empowering me with the knowledge, experience, and commitment to help create health and wellness in the world. May what I’ve learned from you become a vehicle to make the world a happier, healthier place.

Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom to all the women who have given of themselves to create greatness in their family!

For more information on fat loss, check out Brett Klika’s book The Underground Workout Manual-Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

THEY: The New BIG BROTHER

Brett Klika C.S.C.S.

As I was leaving the Orlando airport the other day, I saw a shirt with the Disney character, Grumpy, from Snow White and the 7 Dwarves.  The shirt read “I’m Grumpy, So Don’t Make it Worse”.   Ohhh poor Grumpy!  What an unfair hand life has dealt you to be able to buy a $30 shirt that allows you profess to the masses how unhappy you are.

As undoubtedly part of the constituency that made you grumpy, I would like to apologize.  I would like to also apologize for Mondays and for people talking to you before you have coffee.  While your tee-shirts provide me with fair warning, I have carelessly disregarded the injustices enacted upon you by the world.

We’re becoming a nation of Grumpys with bad health, bad jobs, and bad moods.  All of which are apparently diabolical bidding’s of some outside force over which we have no control.  “THEY” has become an evil Orwellian coalition that enacts it’s injustice on us upstanding members of society and we deserve much better.

THEY have made us unhealthy. THEY have made us unhappy.  THEY have made our work unfulfilling, and THEY doesn’t give us enough money.

How can we defeat THEY?  Make them make us healthy?  Make them make us happy? Make them make our work fulfilling? Make them give us more money?   The problem is, THEY can be unforgiving and relentless.  It’s too big an organization to cater to the individual. In order to turn the tides, we are going to need a champion.  Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you, “I”.

Despite the diabolical power of THEY, I can create positive change. I can take control of life and influence outcomes. I can choose actions and reactions.  With I, we no longer relinquish control of our physical, mental, and emotional vehicle and let every person, event, and reaction in our lives take a turn driving. I empowers us to stop shouting criticism from the back seat, hop up front, and grip the wheel.

THEY will always have a trick up their sleeve.  I however, acts as final judge, jury, and executioner in the trials created by THEY.  Next time THEY brings you to your knees, summon I.  Brandish this mighty blade in all of your struggles and watch how the tides turn in your life.

Fair warning, you may have to throw away some t-shirts.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

Today it’s time to talk about your training program. A unique “workout” is good every once in a while to burn off stress or change things up, but true results come from a consistent, constantly adapting program.

An actual training program is a foreign concept to many. Consequently, many are frustrated with their results from exercise as a result. When the focus of exercising becomes more about mindless routine or entertainment, results fall by the wayside.

Granted, merely exercising on a regular basis may be enough “result” for some. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this by the way. Do nothing and die, do something and thrive. If every resident of the United States did crappy exercise programs for entertainment and mindless routine, we wouldn’t have many Olympic champions, but we’d be about a million times better off than we are now from a health standpoint. Never forget that!

For the dedicated few who are hell-bent on results, it’s time to move past the colorful Cirque de Soleil based training while juggling colorful balls and tap dancing on balance pads. If by “results” you mean more muscle and less fat, here are three guidelines:

1. Eat way better than you are now.
2. Get way stronger than you are now.
3. Do cardio way smarter than you are now.

For advice on fat loss nutrition, seek good nutritional resources. Paul Chek and Charles Poloquin have some great stuff on losing fat. I also recommend the book “The Samurai Diet” by Nate Miyaka and “The Dark Side of Fat Loss” by Sean Croxton.

For short term fat loss nutrition, look to physique athletes (body builders, fitness competitors, etc) and do what they do (the legal stuff). This type of nutrition is not necessarily a good long-term plan, but is unbeatable in the short term.

To get stronger, first of all, lift heavier and with better technique. If time is a concern, ditch single joint exercises like curls, triceps extensions, lateral flies and crunches. These aren’t bad exercises, but they aren’t an efficient use of energy and time in regards to improving strength. Take a knife to the Swiss Ball (good for other things, not necessarily getting stronger).

Stick to multi-joint exercises and learn how to do them well. To do this, read anything that Dan John, Pavel Tsatsouline, or Mark Ripitoe write. Also Louie Simmons, James Smith, and Dave Tate. Don’t be afraid to decrease reps of these exercises while you’re learning to do them better. Once you get them down, increase the reps and decrease rest time to shock your body into growing muscle and killing fat.

Here are 4 exercises that are slightly beyond the “basics” (deadlift, squat, bench press, military press). First learn the basics, then put these into your training program:

Bus Drivers: For real core strength. Lying on your back isn’t using your “core”. Your core is a relationship, not a muscle. Don’t be afraid to put a plate on the bar and hold onto it while you’re doing the exercise.

Pull-Ups: Learn how to do pull-ups and progress every day. Brutal fact #1: If you can’t do a pull-up, you’re not strong enough.

1-Arm Military: Too many people avoid overhead presses. I don’t do them with my baseball players or with people with shoulder injuries. However, being strong in this range of motion can prevent shoulder injury.

Bulgarian Lunges: These are great for strength as well as mobility. Full range of motion (back knee to the floor) is the only way to go. Do them with a barbell or dumbbell.

For cardio, realize that interval training (go fast, recover, go fast again) is great. However, if this is the only thing you do, your results will diminish over time. Make sure to have 1 or 2 longer, lower heart rate days in your cardio training. If you have to choose because of time, go with the high intensity work, but you’ll get the most results from 2 high intensity days, 1 low intensity long day, and 1 intermediate day (30 minute run for distance).

Here’s little unscientific, purely empirical trick with no supporting data (but is makes sense). Watch Olympic track and field. Do most of your cardio around the distances of the athletes who have the physique you want. I’d love to look like a 100 meter sprinter, but a 400+ meter sprinter is a little more realistic. Most of my intervals are around 400-600 meters (60-90 seconds).

If the result you are looking for is merely to be healthy and exercise regularly, do ANYTHING! You’re doing great and you’ll live a long, happy, healthy life. If results are your primary focus, eat better, get stronger, and do cardiovascular exercise smarter to lose fat and get sexy!

For more information on fat loss, check out Brett Klika’s book The Underground Workout Manual-Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

As you know, the following foods are poison and if you eat them, you will explode:

1. Meat because of saturated fat, poor quality (hormones, etc) and animals are cute
2. Milk and dairy products because of lactose, hormones, and questionable bioavailability of nutrients
3. Eggs because fat and cholesterol can kill you
4. Fruit because of the fructose sugar
5. Grains because of gluten sensitivity and poor nutrient value
6. Beans because of digestive interference
7. Any form of food that has been processed in any way because it will interfere with your metabolism.
8. Anything with sugar because it will give you diabetes
9. Anything with saturated fat because it’s bad
10. Water out of the faucet because it’ contaminated
11. Wild fish because of mercury
12. Farmed fish because of chemical treatments, hormones, and tainted food supply
13. Soy because it’s genetically modified and can negatively impact your hormone levels
14. Starchy vegetables like carrots because they are high on the glycemic index
15. Everything else in the last over-the-top documentary I saw or book I read

So what does that leave us? Maybe some organic, locally grown Kale. No one has zeroed in on that yet. Of course, you should probably go on a field trip and examine the seeds the Kale came from in addition to ordering a soil sample of the area in which it was grown to ensure maximal purity. Probably should make sure the farmer is of the proper ethical, religious, and genealogical tree necessary to produce consumable food as well.

Madness!!! Our nutritional culture in America exists under two guises:
1. Open your mouth, shove in whatever is closest to appease an immediate neurochemical addiction.
2. Adhere by a single nutritional ideology often designed to conform to a charismatic, outspoken individual’s personal agenda. Regardless of practicality or sustainability, attempt to fit this ideology to every nutritional need both for yourself and others.

This has succeeded in making one of the basic human need of eating a confusing, perilous novelty.

Eating is not a novelty! You must eat or you will die. Our need for food is identical to our car’s need for gas; in both quantity and quality. No gas, no go. Bad gas, bad go. It’s pretty simple.

In our society, however, all you need is a 3 cent sticker by your car’s gas tank instructing “premium fuel only” to ensure the owner will utilize only put the highest quality gas in the vehicle. Gas pump in one hand, super-sized cheeseburger in the other.

With all the conflicting and restricting information available on nutrition, how can one tell what constitutes “premium fuel” when it comes to food? One man’s rocket fuel can be another man’s lawn mower gas.

I recommend the 3-step approach of think, act, and feel to determine what foods work best for you. For more information on this, I’d recommend Sean Croxton’s The Dark Side of Fat Loss.

Think
Educate yourself. No, not by watching a one-sided, agenda-laden documentary or reading a similar book. Read a lot of books from varying approaches. Get your hands on actual human-based research with large, large populations (results from a population of 15 hung-over college students does not imply a scientific “truth”).

Where does the food you eat come from? What’s in it? How is it produced? Do you know what each ingredient on the ingredients list is? Could you spell them in a spelling bee? Are large companies motivated to produce food for quality, or profit?

I’m not a “profit is evil” guy. I’m quite the opposite. However, you do have to acknowledge economics when assessing the quality of your food. The truth is, real food items are expensive to produce, chemicals are not. There are a lot of hungry people so food companies need to maximize production and minimize associated costs.

Additionally, our population needs food on a consistent basis year round. Real food is err to the climate, soil quality, amount of land available for growth, and other natural plights of nature. Large food producers can’t risk a bad crop, disease, or any other limit to production. They stack the odds in their favor by hormone-ing, preserving, chemical-ing antibiotic-ing, etc.

With our limitless demands, limited resources, and general notion of entitlement (give me something but I don’t want to work or pay for it), this is the only way to guarantee consistent, affordable food for the masses. As resources are under a never-ending continued strain, this process will only get more extreme as time goes on. Less food, more chemical.

Does the above process create the best food for you to eat? If we want premium fuel, what would logic dictate as the best food choices? If you were to compare a small piece of grass-fed beef or a few whole eggs that you are familiar with the origins of and man has ate since the dawn of time to a plate of frozen “non-fat” soy giblets flavored and engineered to look like dinosaurs, which would you chose?
I’m not a judge, I’m just asking. Which do you think could lead to greater problems in our nation’s health?

Educate yourself and decide what you are comfortable feeding you and your family most of the time. Whatever your decision is, stick with it as much as you can. When you can’t, it’s not the end of the world. Prevalent, not occasional behavior is what will shape your health.

Act
In my opinion, when it comes to pollution, none is worse than the CO2 expelled from someone saying they are going to do something, then don’t do it. Acting on a belief is hard, especially if it’s a new belief or revelation. It takes forethought, discipline, energy, and commitment.

Due to the over-prevalence of inferior choices, eating for quality does require more of a process than “me hungry, must swallow stuff”. You may have to do some research and select food producers or stores you feel comfortable with. You will have to spend some time to prepare your food. Be ready to allocate some financial resources when you’re going for higher quality food as well.

In the situations where practicality reigns, making a better food choice may mean comparing two different snacks and going with the one with the shorter ingredients list. It may also mean “my friend is going to a chain restaurant for their birthday dinner so I’m going to go, eat, have fun, and keep my mouth shut about how nutritionally Pius I am”.

Unless our friends have birthdays every day or our lack of planning results in “which one is less bad” decisions every time we eat, these “blips” in a nutritional program are inconsequential. Remember prevalent, not occasional behavior is what shapes your health.

Feel
Start to pay attention to how the food you eat makes you feel. What foods make you gassy, tired, agitated, inflamed, etc. Also, what foods give you energy, focus, and the metabolism you want. Like a car, you do need to drive it to assess the quality of the fuel. Establish a relationship between what you eat, what you do, and how you feel.

That morning sluggishness, afternoon heartburn, 3 p.m. crash, and sleepless evening do not have to be daily human plights. Much like you don’t fix a leak in the sink buy buying a bigger bailing bucket, you’re not going to fix health problems you’ve created by getting more and more powerful drugs (caffeine, sleeping pills, antacids, etc.) Fix the leak, not the bailing bucket.

To determine what the best nutritional approach is for you; think, act and feel. Remember “premium fuel only” for optimal performance. Put that 3 cent sticker by your mouth if necessary. It will save you thousands, if not more. Never forget to enjoy life. Use your nutritional paradigm to guide, not indoctrinate you. Inspire, don’t condemn others!

For more information and video on exercises, programs, and any other information on losing fat and creating the body you have always wanted, check out The Underground Workout Manual – Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World at www.undergroundworkoutmanual.com.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

Breathing is the foundational component of our survival. We can go weeks without food, days without water, hours without a multi-media phone, and only minutes without breathing. The average human breaths about 10,000 times a day. That’s nearly double the amount of times some people update their daily Facebook status.

Despite the vital importance and consistent quantity of respiration, we spend very little time and energy focusing on quality. Logic would dictate that if breathing is the pillar of our survival, the quality of which we do it can affect our well-being positively or negatively. Improper breathing, improper well-being and vice versa.

Consider how breathing is designed to work. Under normal, non-emergency conditions, we expand our diagram (just above the stomach). This pulls down the cavity that the lungs are in and creates a pressure gradient that favors air flowing into the lungs. This is similar to air rushing into a vacuum sealed bag after you open it.

The airflow is supposed to come in through the nose. The nasal cavity is designed to warm, humidify, and filter air before it goes into the sensitive environment of the lungs. Additionally, the relatively small air receptacle of the nose poignantly directs all airflow into the lungs.

There are pressure receptors in the nasal cavity that sense airflow. These receptors send feedback to the brain that everything is OK, and no emergencies are eminent. Your brain then allows your nervous system to operate the rational parasympathetic (everything is OK) system versus the reactive sympathetic (there’s snakes on this plane!) system.

Your moods, decisions, and ultimately, performance are largely affected by which system you are operating. If your sympathetic is in charge, you’re making survival-based, short term, reactive decisions. You’re supercharged to get out of danger. This high level of arousal helps us perform under extreme stress, but it’s not a good standard operating system.

Your parasympathetic nervous system aids in creating regular breathing patterns, normal heart rate, and rational thought. While this won’t help if a lion is attacking you, it is a much more effective system to be helping you govern your daily thought processes actions, and overall performance.

In America, we are wired for stress. All the “cool kids” are stressed. Don’t believe me? Ask another adult, “What have you been up to?” The only culturally acceptable answer would involve a barrage of “busy, stressed, rushing, etc.”. If they were to respond with: “Just chilling, you know, taking it all in”, we’d politely smile and think “Put down your bongos and put on some shoes. Start towing the line, hippie!”

When we thrive on stress, our breathing reflects it. Take a look in the mirror. Now, quickly, take a deep breath without thinking about it. What did you see? Did you gasp through your mouth as your shoulders levitated towards the sky? If so, you’re not only stress breathing, your sending a further signal to your body that this is merited.

Now, find a place where you can lie on your stomach. Rest your head comfortably on your hands. Place a shoe on your lower back. Breath in deeply through your nose, expand your belly so that the shoe elevates as much as possible. Breath out through either your nose or your mouth. Preferably your nose. Repeat for 1 minute.

How do you feel now? Mentally, physically, emotionally? That’s 1 minute of proper breathing. Try to do it from standing. Watch yourself in the mirror. Don’t let your shoulders elevate or your chest puff up. Put your hands over your upper stomach and watch them rise and fall as your breath in and out through your nose. Try 20 perfect breaths.

Physical performance can be effected by breathing as well. When we “stress breathe” our sympathetic nervous system takes charge (Or it’s already in charge. It can be somewhat of a “chicken or the egg” phenomena). As we discussed before, the sympathetic nervous system can help us perform under extreme stress.

Consequently, it can also make us play “scared” or “tight”. Neither is a situation for optimal performance. When I was a live-in intern at the Olympic Training Center the year prior to the Sydney Olympics, breathing exercises were part of every athlete’s pre-competition ritual.

Aside from the emotional affects of poor breathing on an athlete, the inefficiencies created are a detriment to performance. Improperly or ineffectively using the diaphragm can affect the volume and consistency of air inspired. Not using the nose risks lung irritation due to cold, dry, or impure air. Again, not optimal for performance.

On your next “recovery” run, jog, bike, or other workout, try only breathing in and out through yours nose. To train yourself, take a big gulp of water and keep it in your mouth as long as you can (Like the Russian special forces. Thanks Pavel!). Your first time doing it, you will nearly panic after about 3 or 4 minutes. This may say a lot about your breathing practices!

With high intensity work, you will most likely need to breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. The harder you work, the greater the volume of CO2 you have to expel quickly. When you are at the end of a nightmarish interval or on your last kick of a race, you may have to switch to the survival gasps. That’s OK. Under that amount of duress, you are surviving! I shouldn’t last long, however.

This is how elite athletes have trained themselves to breath. Not being one of them, I have still trained myself to breath this way and it has made a significant improvement in my stress levels, decision making, and athletic (using the term rather loosely) performance.

I’ve found I’ve been able to handle higher intensities while doing cardiovascular work and manage greater loads in the weight room. My heart rate is able to recover quicker after high intensity bouts of either. This does take constant focus and discipline and it took about 2 months to break old habits. I definitely consider it a “competitive advantage” now.

Focus on your breathing. Get good at one of the most critical aspects not only of survival, but of creating well being and optimal performance. I know, it seems like a lot to work on, but take a deep breath. You’ll get it.

For more information and video on exercises, programs, and any other information on losing fat and creating the body you have always wanted, check out The Underground Workout Manual – Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World at www.undergroundworkoutmanual.com.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

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Warm Up: Partner Warm-Up

4x’s Through the Following Circuit
Perform the exercise, switch partner, repeat, move to next exercise.
Rest only when other partner is working

A. Partner Exercise 1 (Push): Wheelbarrow Walks..40 seconds, then switch partners.

B. Partner Exercise 2 (Pull): Partner Broad Jump Competition……30 yards= 1 set

C. Partner Exercise 3 (Trunk): Partner Overhead Medball Slams: 40 seconds, then switch partners

D. Bonus (After Circuit is Finished) (Pull) TRX Pull-Ups Alternate as many TRX pull-ups as possible alternating between partners in 3 minutes

Cool Down: Partner Flexibility

For more information and video on exercises, programs, and any other information on losing fat and creating the body you have always wanted, check out The Underground Workout Manual – Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

There are far more lofty goals associated with doing an extreme physical challenge than weight loss, and as I said before, you don’t necessarily need to be skinny to be healthy.

However, many undertake jogging (or yogging; might be a soft J) and other low intensity aerobic activities with the intention of losing weight, firming up, and significantly changing their body. When this flawed notion doesn’t come true, it ends in frustration and defeat.

I salute anyone who takes on and trains for a physical challenge. If your goals lie outside of merely accomplishing the challenge with your best effort, it’s important to know what you can and can’t expect from endurance training.

If you are an elite level endurance athlete, the physiology of performance can be a different story, but for the recreational endurance athlete, here is the truth:

What endurance training will do for you:

1. Improve your blood profile, levels of energy, and overall health: Any form or regular exercise will improve your health and your life. Endurance training in particular creates favorable physiological adaptations that can improve heart, brain, and other aspects of health.

2. Help create enjoyable healthy habits: Endurance training builds time into your day for enjoyable, cathartic, exercise. People do it because they enjoy it. When people enjoy something, they do it more frequently. You can be outside, listening to music, catching up with a friend, and improving your health (see: skinny and healthy aren’t necessarily synonyms).

3. Create an attainable challenge: Setting out and overcoming a challenge is extremely empowering. At many competitive endurance events, you see participants crying as they cross the finish line. They just accomplished something they may have believed their entire lives was impossible. Think of what this can do for one’s outlook on their own health.

4. Usher you into the right tribe: As individuals get into the endurance training lifestyle, they often train and hang around like people. If exercise is a common bond amongst this group, the general wellness-based decisions are going to be more favorable than other possible groups (the happy hour crew, competitive hot-dog eaters, poker buddies, etc.).

What endurance training will not do for you:

1. Aid in significant fat and weight loss, particularly for women: If you do not exercise at all, assuming your caloric consumption doesn’t rise, you may lose a small amount of weight when you begin endurance training. This is a reaction to the slight increase in metabolic activity.

As you continue to train at these low intensities for extended periods of time, your body learns to be extremely efficient with burning calories and fat, therefore, burning less. It is true that with low intensity, long duration work, you can burn fat as your primary fuel. However, if you don’t create a varied intensity training environment, your ability to burn large amounts of fat will decrease over time.

When you endurance train, you are merely forcing your body to acutely use fuel. The amount of fuel you use depends on how intense, and how long you are training. However, the most significant factor that determines the amount of fuel (calories) utilized is how much lean muscle mass you have. Lean muscle mass is your active, working engine requiring fuel to operate.

If you have a high body fat and relatively low amount of lean muscle (like a majority of recreational runners), it is difficult to burn a significant amount of calories and fat. Your engine just isn’t big enough. Remember, even “skinny” people can have high body fat. Since women naturally have less lean muscle than men, this is even more of a factor.

Unless one addresses their amount of lean muscle mass through resistance training, endurance training only attempts to make a progressively more efficient small engine burn more fuel. It just doesn’t work.

Additionally, recreational endurance athletes often fall under the nutritional guise of “I exercised today, I earned the right to eat whatever I want.” The utilization of calories during training increases the appetite. When this is paired with the “I earned it” mentality on a daily basis, it’s definitely not a recipe for weight loss.

Regardless of what automated, error-laden, normative, non-adaptive based numbers people receive on “how many calories they burned”, this is a gross oversimplification of the weight and fat loss process. Because the body gets efficient rather quickly with low intensity, unvaried, endurance activities, these numbers have limited accuracy to start with and only decrease in accuracy with time.

If you want to burn calories and fat, you have to improve the entire system, not just the amount of calories you acutely burn. The most significant factor to fat and calorie utilization over the course of your day is your resting metabolic rate (RMR). This is how many calories you use during the maintenance and execution of daily activities, particularly outside of exercise.

The better your system functions from proper nutrition, sleep, stress management, and exercise (increasing the size of your engine), the higher that metabolic rate will be. If RMR doesn’t improve, you can train all day and see little to no impact on body fat and weight.

My recommendation? If you like to endurance train, train your butt off (literally)!

I know there will be someone who reads this and says; ” Brett says resistance training is bad for me so I’m not going to do it because I might explode”. For the literate folk out there, it should be apparent that this is not my message. Do what you love every day. However, understand the motivations behind your training and how they align with reality.

If weight loss is part of your endurance training goal, heed the following:

1. Add progressive, really-hard resistance training to your exercise program to increase your amount of lean muscle mass.

2. Get with a coach to design a smart, varied-intensity endurance program with interval, anaerobic, tempo, and recovery work. Train with a group to push yourself. If you’re in the San Diego area, I recommend Peakfinders .

3. Pay attention to your nutrition. YOU CANNOT OUT-TRAIN A BAD DIET! If you don’t know where to start, get with a professional to lay out a realistic program for you.

Train smart, have fun, INSPIRE MILLIONS!

For more information and video on exercises, programs, and any other information on losing fat and creating the body you have always wanted, check out The Underground Workout Manual – Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World at www.undergroundworkoutmanual.com.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.

My travels in the fitness industry often require me to get creative with my workout routine. I often have to break from my “program” and get in a “workout”. The difference? A program is a pre-designed, organized, long term plan towards a specific goal. A workout is just moving at a high intensity to feel good. Both have benefits in a lifetime exercise plan.

On the road, I may not have access to a gym or specific equipment that is part of my program. Additionally, I go to some pretty cool places where I can see some pretty cool stuff. I may not want to be trapped inside when world renowned destinations are all around outside. To still get my workout fix and not miss the sites, I’ve learned how to be an exer-tourist.

Exer-tourism is a great way to fight jet lag, increase energy, see the sites, and maintain your fitness when on the road. I start by looking at a map of where I’m at and determine if there are any points of interest within a 10-15 minute walk/jog/run. Once I find my destination, I’ll write down 4 exercises.

0. Push (push-ups, etc)
1. Pull (pull-ups, horizontal pull-ups, etc)
2. Lower Body (squat, lunge, etc)
3. Bodyweight crawl (forward, sideways,crab,etc)

Sometimes the location or weather has a bearing on the exercises, but I try to address as many strength patterns as possible.

Now, I head off toward my destination on a light jog for 2 minutes.

Then do the following:
4. 1 minute fast run
5. 30 second walk or slow jog
6. 30 seconds push
7. 30 seconds walk or slow jog
8. 1 min fast run

I’ll repeat this 4 times either on my way to, or at my destination. Each time through, I insert the pull, lower body or crawl in place of the push, respectively. 4 times through the circuit takes about 14 minutes. I’ll spend some time checking things out either jogging or walking, then repeat the circuit 4 times on my way back.

in 30 minutes I improve my fitness, and my cultural aptitude!

If I really like the point of interest, I’ll come back as a bona fide picture taking, souvenir, shopping, wrong -line standing tourist. A quick fly by is good for statues, Barcelona’s Segrada Familia merits the return trip!

Integrate Exer-tourism into your next business or personal trip. It enriches the experience and stimulates your mind, body, and soul!

For more information and video on exercises, programs, and any other information on losing fat and creating the body you have always wanted, check out The Underground Workout Manual – Exercise and Fat Loss in the Real World at www.undergroundworkoutmanual.com.

Brett Klika C.S.C.S., Director of Athletics at Fitness Quest 10, is a world renowned human performance specialist, motivational speaker, author, and educator. In his 14 year career, Brett has accrued more than 20,000 hours of training with youth, athletes, executives, and every day people. He uses this knowledge and experience to motivate individuals and audiences around the world through his writing, speaking, DVD’s, and personal correspondence.