Opinions of an Old Trainer

Fitness has evolved interestingly in the United States since Jack La Lanne was first gracing our black & white T.V. screens twisting upon a wooden square supported by ball bearing to enhance waistlines. His hybrid like grandson operates a CrossFit box in San Francisco.  I am certain that his grandfather beams with pride. I believe this intriguing phenomenon of generational improvement is encouraging.  Darwin might smile.

There is  a type of battle going on with the pervasive insidiousness of social media and a constant barrage of 2 second visual advertisement and promises of glorious fix everything with one click purchases though.

So yesterday a close friend asked me about my views on being a valued trainer in today's confused world of fitness and training being sold just to cause a transfer of  AFT and funds.  The depth of character required today to preserve true integrity and well meaning social activist persona is truly daunting.

The American public craves superficial quick fixes.  They dream of fantasy and pay dearly for support of such fleeting and vacuous doses of drug like bottles, pills, powders and tiny intervals of 10-day or 6 week training packages.

I have a favorite eavesdrop story.  I overheard a rather fleshy, whining demanding female potential training client stating her requirements to a relaxed attractive well composed young new trainer at what is now a defunct Bally's Total Fitness.  The client was saying in that tight pitch of females that are used to complaining a lot and just living with constant frustration that they then spread to their impossible herd of children.  She said that if she did not see change within 2 weeks she just KNEW herself and she would quit.

I in  my inevitable uninvited way interjected "How long did it take her to achieve her current status of deconditioned overweight and frustration with her body?"  She said well OMG she had 3 children and it just happened....

Lets see.  3 children my mathematically obsessed mind calculates is about 2.25 years.  With no breaks.  Oh, and no birth control.  And she wants results in 2 weeks or she will quit her training...  She expressed no responsibility for becoming either the mother of 3 or the resulting condition of her physical self.  I predicted that she would blame the trainer for a failure to fix everything in record time and that she may never convert her lifestyle or that of her offspring to a sustainable reasonable management of food choices or 3-20 minute boughts of planned exercise weekly.  And I left the conversation feeling very sympathetic for the sweet looking girl attempting to close the sale of 10 sessions or whatever she had been told to sell to reach her brutal weekly quota.

So let me get to the solid point before I lose you totally:

A caring coach will instill in a client a vision of a lifestyle that is fully sustainable with basic lifts and then whatever enjoyable form of variety filled movement they will look forward to like a treat at holiday every week.

Food is a tool to be enjoyed and shared that allows for shiny resilient skin, fun exuberant energy generation as well as a maneuverable body composition that allows clothing and movement to be both flattering and fun!

So training is a life long pursuit of fine tuning that must respond to changes in economic wherewithal, geographic location, availability of food supply and the ups and downs of stress and rest.

I would start with teaching basic macro nutrient spot checking, not obsessive tracking or unreasonable constraints that scare people away from even being aware of monitoring or educating themselves.  The structural integrity of any human form can be efficiently and over decades maintained using deadlift, back squat and either or both bench press and push jerks.

Auxiliary cosmetic or specialized corrective exercises addressing supporting or weaker sectors of the body can be customized to suit client goals or trouble with balanced execution of basic lifts.

The most  important lessons, regardless of exercise selection or sports choices is a comprehensive respect for the wonderful human form and it's operating system the human spirit.

There is an indivisible synergy when food management, weekly exercise, social networking, rest and emotional health surge together to form an energetic person able to inspire everyone they meet to seek baby steps towards this optimal life of joy and love of life.  The world CANNOT have too many of these people.

So trainers everywhere, I challenge you to learn these many elements of an optimized life.  I warn against giving too much attention to a single element and harming the other sectors by neglect and over sight.  I would love to see true fitness shared and spread between countries, between sports camps, between competing gym chains and private gyms.

Good luck to everyone.  I cant wait to see how great your good works can be in the very near future.  Please write to me and share your baby steps and lessons learned along the way.  The world NEEDS you.  America needs you.  Believe me.

The Depression AMRAP

Staying fit is cake when everything is under control and your getting a ton of high fives and Facebook "likes."  Your selfies rock and the weather is good.

Everyone gets their share of wrenches thrown into the blend however.

So what to do when your mood plumetts, your amazing fit friends are leaving you in the dust and having trouble or being limited is really a social network taboo of modern times?

So, I decided to call it the Depression AMRAP.  Crap happens predictibly and periodically although you don't know what or when.  You know.

So the trick is to get in and get out with expert skill.

Be mad, sit down pout, do nothing, blame everyone else (for about half  millisecond), claim its not fair (immediately call  bullshit alert).

Plan a few alternative escape plans and then look ahead to getting it all back together to do it again soon.

BTW: AMRAP for my Bodybuilder buddies [non-CrossFit] is As Many Rounds as Possible.  It means in a limted time, your lifetime, you want to cycle out of bummers as fast as you can and as often as they get thrown your way.

3-2-1 Go!

The 2014 Diet of Nina Sug: Its the 6-6-6- Food Plan

Hello Everyone who asks me what I eat.  And yes, I understand that being 50 years old, 9% body fat and over 50% MUSCLE makes me look "different."  So, the 2 questions that show the greatest understanding of what I look like are:

1] What do you eat?
2] How many hours a week do you workout?

Here is my current food pattern that is constantly in transition and flux.  I always obseve new information, try stuff and respond to my internal body cues.  So it is a conversation, so to speak, between my physical state, my food sources and selections and constantly varied opinions and odd studies published here and there.

Morning:
I start the day with 3 Cups of Bullet Proof Coffee.  [Yes you may Google that.]

It is essentially starting the day with 300 calories of pure fat and a slug of brain nurturing anti-oxidents with "good" fats.  I adore it.  I buy my organic coffe at the Groundwork next to the gym that I manage. CrossFit Mean Streets Downtown Los Angeles

Intermittent Fasting:
I am not rigid about this.  I may fall asleep before midnight then with the 300 calories of oil for breakfast, not begin eating my food until about noon.  This pattern is currently nicknamed intermittent-fasting

Food Preparation:
I attended a training called KitchenKarate  I bought a ton of 8 ounce containers all over town.  I am concerned with size, shape, durability, tactile appropriateness and leaking. I prepare all my food at home.  I portion it immediately into 8 ounce containers.  I port all my food in these containers with me in a rolling cooler to avoid carrying loads on one shoulder and to deter my food obsessed miniature pincher from raiding my angus burgers and baby carrots when I turn my attention to other concerns.


My food pattern:
I daily with variety eat 3 meat servings.  I also to add about 50 grams of protein a day to my intake make and consume egg white pacakes.  The egg whites are 2 Cups daily prepared without grains, sugars or fat.

I allow unlimited vegetables and attempt to eat 5 different colors a day with wide variety.  Everything is raw or steamed.  I use little sauces but do make sugar free dressings and enjoy sot sauce.

Carb Cycling Casually:

Ilove Japanese Purple yams and yams. So I might serve up some of those roughly every 4-10 days.  Nothing is precise with me.  I am an artistic soul with an engineering degree.  Everything in my head is analytical and abstractly cross referenced like a huge collage of data and pictures from my entire life.

MacroNutrient Ratios:

I started with targeting 150 grams of protein a day given my weight of 115 pounds.  The remainder of my caloric daily intake is mixed between Fat and Carbohydrate.  I estimated that my fat consumption is near 65 grams a day.

I eat a full 8 ounces of raw nuts and raw peanuts eery day or I go crazy.

I include dark chocolates of 72% or higher everyday, or I go crazy....I eat chocolate to protect those near me.  Ha Ha!  Its a girl thing...

So back calculating my consumption of about 1800 calories daily it is 600 calories each of fat/carbohydrate/protein.

My girlfriend eating 2000 calories a day would eat 666/666/666.  And I am not gay, I just call my girlfriends that term.  Trust me I am so straight - lucky dude knows just how straight....

I make thai curry chicken meatballs cooked 6 pounds in a batch often.  Angus burgers break up all the   chicken  eating.  I enjoy fish and tuna.

I drink 2-6 ounces of red wine daily also.

You might live to be 100 or you could die before nightfall.  So i tend to think for enjoying each day, with the understanding I wish to be happy lively and comfortable as a centurion.  The FOUNDATION for that is each day everyday.

I hope that launches you on some increased self respect expressed through your food portions and selections.  Living in public sharing good decision making is a great arena for taking care of yourself.

Good Luck!

Send Questions to NSugamori@gmail.com

XO

Permission: The great quest for Vicarious Freedom.

There was a step intructor named Sam.  He was a  kind of lanky black dude with a degree in pschotherapy.  He had an extremely popular step class and I for a short time was puzzled by it.

I have always been a left brain driven anaytical task natzi, despite my right brain urges to be artistic and just play freestyle in the realms of free association and creativity.  I was always afraid that I could not pay my dam bills if I launched into some "I am an artist" "I am a singer" crap that LA and high schools and city colleges were rampant and buried in with a waiter at very cafe muttering the same dogma...

So even in fitness, a very expressive movement based forum, I was a kinesiology, anatomy, 3-dimensional space and motion task master.  So watching Sam teach, I would begin by going, uh,this dude   has most all non specific highly repetitive short range movements that make me crazy.  Then I realized the psychology of his message that drew all the members to his class.

His message was
permission!!!

It was brilliant.

The way he grinned at each participant and freely, kind of an African Freestyle, led movement - he often said irregardless. It's not a word but it had meaning.  It meant no matter how screwed your day was, how bad traffic was, whoever died yesterday, the date you didn't get....
whatever just have fun right this second and experience joy!

He had the recipe for pleasure.

The members would have a cow and a kaniption fit if he changed the music track he used ever single class.  It frustrated even him!   But the group and the following had a ritual that basically guaranteed their group endorphin release and they didnt want a hair touched on the golden gooses nobby head.

Permission.

All day and maybe their entire lives, people experience constraint.  They are corrected, admonished, yelled at, confined, charged money.  They suffer disappointment and frustration.

For a hour a week or whatever, they wat to move, smile dance and gain vicariously in the umbrella of another person's aura permission to just be joyful liberated endorphin producing living creatures.

And sadly most peope are unable to do this without chemical assistance, structure, a guide or external guidance 

So, if you want o be a commodity...bottle the shit.

Permission.

"A Stitch in Time" : Or Never Trust Anyone Under 30

In the 60's there was a saying : Never trust anyone over thirty.

It was because the younger generation was learning that what the established hierarchy was doing or telling everyone was misleading.

Young people don't like hearing what older people want to say to them.

But what if listening meant you had a future in a drop dead beautiful non-stop amazing body?  Would you listen?

Carolyn Erikson 1st Place 45+ Figure Gold Coast Muscle Classic 2014

On February 7, I met Carolyn Erikson.

Holy moly.  It started like this and then just got better.  I was sitting in the conference room for a pre-show workshop to explain to newbies how to be in a body building or muscle show.  I spend my life around  fitness  people. I have for decades.  I have a built in register of body composition, structure, carriage, body language, attitude, proprioceptive skill level, nearly neurological interconnectiveness and psychology.  Give me a few more years, I will get there.  So, I didn't really see anything  outstanding in the entire room.  I saw a  lot of good and great but not outstanding.  Then I saw this forearm that had tight thin skin, great muscle tone and vascularity.  It turned out to be a female I suspected was 35 or so.

Later I spoke to her.  She was 49.  No way?! Awesome!  And impressive.

When I spoke to Carolyn, it turned out she had a long history in fitness with a broad spectrum of variety and she was bright as well as modest.

I wanted to share her photo and describe meeting her because she is evidence.  Everyone is evidence of how they live making them whatever they are at that  moment.  Carolyn is evidence that fitness and intelligence can lead to exceptional physique and happy beautiful longevity.  Her condition shows that making exercise integral element of daily living is well worth what it takes in time and effort.

So please meet Carolyn's photo.  Please think that choosing sensible foods and portions over a lifetime and staying active and challenging your body are good choices.  Please share these proven beliefs with those you care to see a happy future together along side you and plan your next workout.

Consider this even if you are not anywhere near 50 yet.  This kind of build never happens by accident or through complacency or neglect.  And it isn't overniight.  It is a lifetime of good behavior, actions and decisions.


A stitch in time saves nine: A  workout today saves having to repair and rescue a neglected weak overweight undeveloped human form tomorrow at great labor and greuling   odds of success.

Your Mind: How It controls your Workouts & Training

I am a huge eavesdropper and I also do what I call cumulative data conglomeration.  So spending a majority of my life in the gym and fitness setting, I am a walking listening monitor of the collective consciousness.

The biggest difference between how I observe and listen is that often my framing of focus is to notice what has been left out.  So many people in a live setting are distracted by what is going on.  That is like being the perfect audience for a magician.  That entertainer plans and relies on humans being easily caused to fix their sight and attention to the most movement nearest their face. Meanwhile,the trick is being executed nearby and more surreptitiously.  So my intent is always to be a poor audience for the illusionist.

The second angle of observation that I constantly occupy is 'Compare & Contrast'.   that was also a basic and routine assignment when I was in school.  So I never understand people that state they didn't learn anything useful in school. Good schools teach the structure of critical thinking.  That basic structure can be applied in any life circumstance.

So back to the gym.

In the arena of diet and exercise, people seem to flail about half heartedly starting programs or regimes and then sort of trailing off back to whatever default beliefs and behaviors their family demonstrated or society inadvertently caused them to adopt.  And that track record of knee jerk buy it for $29.99 - "There, that ought to fix it" mentality supports a multi-Billion dollar industry of empty and failed gimmicks never fixes anything people aren't actually learning or succesfully changing just CRAP.

The available crap in this industry far outweighs the genuine entity because of the slope to surviving the threshold to alter one's interior.

Dig DEEP:
There used to be a phrase called dig deep.  its not part of today.  Today is everything immediate and superficial.  which is totally fun and often beautiful, but what segregates the successful remains substance and character and commitment.  Within fitness, people see photos and beauty and they want to acquire it like a tank top from AMERICAN APPAREL.    

However core beliefs and daily rituals, planning and endurance are really key tenets of accomplishment.  Instagram is not about core beliefs or life commitment.  Possibly the followed by over 100k live these lives.  But most must be moth like in their short attention spans attracted to bright or shiny object at a distance.

Let's say you see a pretty picture and you want to be like what you see.  It can require a total therapeutic overhaul of your reasoning habits, your foundational beliefs, your choices in the face and presence of most around you choosing NOT to do as you chose.  It might require embracing being alone in some respects, even ostracized.  When you encounter amazing people you are rarely exposed to the list of hardships they handled with modestly, the thousand of hours they labored with no guaranteed outcome and the tenacity to persist sometimes just driven by some tiny smothered life force deep inside.

It might seem boring or arduous.  I suppose that is where drinking the Kool-Aid comes into the game.  I am very fatigued of the term passion.  Some words although perfectly good get so overused that they cease to have any meaning besides you know everyone else is saying it and it's good and acceptable.  'Passion' is crawling into meaningless pablam as I blog here with my mini gaming physical Qwerty and mini iPad.  Kool-Aid is the drink where you immerse yourself in buying into a dream or vision of a future better outcome.  You forbid detractors from tripping you.  You gather momentum and tools and support that raise you up and move you forward.  You refuse to quit even whilst stumbling.  You have wholly chosen and decided direction method and intent.  It is as if the task is completed and getting to it is just aftermath.

Follow instructions that are not sold.  Dig  deep and change how you think and believe to allow you to do what is necessary to complete the daily details and behaviors that make you what you desire.  Dont expect it to be sudden or easy or cheap in effort.

Stop mimicking failed models of people, lifestyles and rituals. Be fearless in being better not about taking unnecessary risks.  being stupid and reckless as a badge of honor is for high achieving morons.  Its why we have the Darwin Principle. They eliminate themselves and we are entertained in the process.



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Side note:

Yes, Drinking KoolAid is a Jones Town reference where people died.  Yes, there is sugar in it.  But the truth is you do die at the end of whatever you choose to do.  And there is a somewhat insane energy that allows those who can evolve to drive a complex vehicle with 16 steering wheels to excel and achieve the unusual, not a mainstream cube worker control panel of four with large instructional labeling.

You are a Bonsai Tree: Daily Formation of You

Everyone has heard of non-verbal communication.  An they know that they transmit messages with their posture and movement.  But somewhere in people's minds there is a belief that it is only at times or when you are on stage or when you are thinking about it consciously.



How we:
1. sleep and
2. drive our cars,
3. hold our cell phones
4. Stand and talk to friends
5. Sit at the work station
6. walk to the parking lot
7. lean at counters
8.  brush your teeth and hair

Every gesture is to your soft tissue form a formative lesson.

Your body does not distinguish between the so often talked about hour in the gym and the other 23 hours.

You wish it did.

But your body is in a way a recording device like the black boxes recovered after he plane crashes.  It records everything without differentiation. So whatever you say most often, WINS!

Just as the Japanese gardner carefully forms and limits the size an shape off his Bonsai tree as a respectful tribute to nature, beauty and life:  You also show respect and form your body each day as you guide and limit and mold it's form, select its food, expose it to light or dark, avoid movement or embrace it.

Each day that you rise you can check in with your results.  Each morning you can plan the day ahead to contribute to moving in a good direction.  Even tiny steps or changes towards betterment will add up to a better tomorrow.
___________________________

So what are little things that I in particular am planning as part of today for instance?:

I have about 6 weeks until the next Figure Competition.  The last one I prepared using a spin bike cranked up so that it was like an hour hill climb.  I wanted my pseudo cardio time to be muscularly taxing for both torso, arms and legs.  Its important to honor spine neutral even when you label 60 minutes as cardio. Thinking that you can shrug, hunch and deform your thoracic curve as long as you sweat and have an increased heart rate is very short sited and the sign of a body novice.  You may be off to a good start collecting a few components of movement training, but your abuse essentially of your equipment shows a hole in your philosophy.

So this round, I will be using the step that hit the fitness scene about 1990.  It seems to have fallen from favor now that it is 23 years later.  My 20+ years of mixing group exercise formats with the step allows me to train more thoroughly because of the hours I have already put in on the device ; some weeks 15 hours a week.  Trying new things when you need fast concentrated results may not be the best option.  So we will see.