Lyonhart Fitness

RMAX magazine latest edition

The newest issue of the world-renowned RMAX Magazine has just been released!

This edition includes articles by top CST Instructors, Coaches and Head Coaches addressing topics such as:

• Nutrition
• Yoga
• Group Fitness Training
• Proactive Aging
• News and Events in the RMAX world
• Amazing personal testimonials

And yes, it's still FREE!!!

Get it here now: RMAX Magazine

I am proud to be part of an organization that make so much innovative health and fitness information available so freely. The dedication by the RMAX staff to service and helping all people realize there full potential is truly inspirational. The fact is RMAX is more that an exercise system, it is a family of people of all backgrounds bound together by a mutual goal of enhancing lives. I urge you to learn more about this incredible tribe and join us in this mission. You can start by downloading this magazine and reading for yourself what RMAX has to offer you.

 

 

Reaching Maximum Potential

As a child and young adult I battled regularly with a whole array of demons. Family dysfunction and abuse led to creating a defensive psychological shell around myself. Accompanying this was extreme lack of self esteem and high levels of fear reactivity in all social contact. My genetically defined physicality was lacking any advantage except being tall. I was overfat, under-muscled, athletically inept and always the "last one picked" for the very few sports I ever engaged in.

But I eventually came to realize that these circumstances and disadvantages were not me. My true self lay somewhere deeper within, untouched by the trauma and waiting to emerge. The path I am now on is allowing that self, the real me, to manifest itself more and more everyday. This path consists of a daily practice of melting away the slag and allowing the gold to shine through.

You too can choose the path you will follow. The downward spiral ruminates in the past and focuses on the attacks to our ego. The upward spiral, while not easy, leads to realizing the amazing potential that is inside each one of us.

The lyrics of the song "Everyday Glory" by one of my favorite bands, Rush, tells a similar story with captivating imagery:

In the house where nobody laughs
And nobody sleeps
In the house where love lies dying
And the shadows creep
A little girl hides shaking
With her hands on her ears
Pushing back the tears
'Til the pain disappears

Mama says some ugly words
Daddy pounds the wall
They can fight about their little girl later
Right now they don't care at all

No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...

Everyday people
Everyday shame
Everyday promise shot down in flames
Everyday sunrise
Another everyday story
Rise from the ashes and blaze
In everyday glory

In the city where nobody smiles
And nobody dreams
In the city where desperation
Drives the bored to extremes
Just one spark of decency
Against a starless night
One glow of hope and dignity
A child can follow the light

No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...
No matter what they say...

Everyday people
Everyday shame
Everyday promise shot down in flames
Everyday sunrise
Another everyday story
Rise from the ashes and blaze
In everyday glory

If the future's looking dark
We're the ones who have to shine
If there's no one in control
We're the ones who draw the line
Though we live in trying times
We're the ones who have to try
Though we know that time has wings

We're the ones who have to fly...

Competition Is Healthy

This is so true on many levels of human endeavor.  Competition is not destructive but absolutely necessary for real growth.  Without it we remain linear and stagnant, which in reality means we deteriorate and die.

Read this blog post to get a pretty accurate perspective on the value of competition:

Competition Breeds Success

I challenge you to find your external motivator that will push you beyond you self-imposed, debilitating limitations.  This is a universal requirement for anyone to reach their true full potential.
It could be your friends, training partners or a carefully chosen coach. 
Don't neglect this important aspect of your training.

Be Well.

Jeff

Announcing Lyonhart Distance Coaching

I'm pleased to announce an exciting new service I'm providing through Lyonhart Fitness. Whether your goal is weight loss, enhance sport or activity-specific performance, or optimal fitness for all of your life, I am here to help you reach them. The fact is everyone needs accountability and someone to guide them to go beyond their limitations. I would be honored to work with you in an intensive one-on-one coaching relationship with the . . .

Lyonhart Fitness Distance Coaching

Quality distance coaching provided by certified CST Coach Jeffry C. Larson:

• Customized program design

• Monitoring of daily workout blog

• Weekly feedback via email

• Weekly video evaluation (via YouTube or other video hosting site)

• Video tutorial of customized exercises and/or compensations

• 4 or 6 week programs with an option to build into longer-term Training Hierarchy Pyramid

• Contact me for more information and rate quote: Jeffry.Larson@LyonhartFitness.com

 

Be Well.

Jeff

Workout Time Management - Part Two

OK, maybe now you are ready for the next level of time investment into your daily personal practice. You want to feel better, move better and live better and you are able to devote 20 minutes a day to making that happen. That’s all you need – a block of 20 minutes sometime in the 24 hours of your day. Again, maybe you wake up a bit earlier or maybe you finally decide to watch a little less TV at night. Wherever you find the time just be sure to commit to it fully. Make an iron-clad appointment with yourself and don’t skip it no matter what.

Instead of multiple modalities in your time block, like I talked about in the last post, now you are going to devote the entire 20 minutes exclusively to one of the 3 rings of Circular Strength Training. You will further categorize your workouts according to intensity as measured by the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale of 1-10. What you will end up with is a 4-day cycle that looks like this:

Day 1:  20 minutes – Intu-Flow Joint Mobility: Cardinals and Circles, Head-to-Toe, Core to Periphery  – RPE=1-2

Day 2:  20 minutes – Prasara Yoga: poses such as Forward Fold, Down Dog, Upward Dog, Sleeping Warrior, Prone Scorpion, Spinal Twist, Corpse Pose, each pose 30-60 seconds with slow and smooth transitions in between – RPE=3-5

Day 3: 20 minutes – Bodyweight exercises or Clubbell routine: at the most basic level is the Golden Three (Trinity Squat, Quad Hop, Spinal Rock) chained together in continuous motion -
RPE=6-7

Day 4: 20 Minutes – Same routine as Day 3 but increase the intensity: faster, more weight, less rest/more reps, etc. – RPE=8-10

This protocol is designed as a wave of intensity that you can repeat over and over. Recovery, compensation and skill progression is built in. The optimal scheme is to repeat this micro-cycle 7 times resulting in a 28-day program. Try it. Record your progress and measure your results. You’ll be amazed at what happens. I have been through this same 4X7 cycle many times and have reaped huge benefits every time.

Consequences

"We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision."                                                                                                    
     -Gary Collins

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!”

     - from the song Freewill by Rush

“It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

     - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets

In terms of health and fitness what choices have you made? What choices have you avoided making? Are you 100% satisfied where you are now or would you like to see changes happen?

I urge you to make a conscious choice today to live a healthier, happier, stronger, flowing life. You do have the power to make a real change right now. And I’m here to help you.

So let me know where you want to go and what you want to do. Maybe its something you are already doing or maybe something you’re thinking about but just aren’t quite sure about it yet.

Type it out and share it with me. By doing this you make the commitment stronger and yourself more accountable. This is the path to success.

Maybe you are feeling like you just can’t find the time to become more fit. That’s a hurdle I can help you with too. You’ll be surprised in the ways you can squeeze out just a few valuable minutes in your day to make extraordinary things happen.

 

Maybe you think it will just be too hard. We can start right where you are now to begin making the small changes that will add up to big results. You can take tiny baby steps but you need to get started now.

What other reasons do you have to NOT make the choice to be more fit and healthy? Tell me. I want to know. Let’s find the answers together. Every day you hesitate and don’t make that choice you are in fact making a decision to become LESS healthy and fit.

 

Final Thoughts on Mastery

If you have been reading my last several posts on the path to mastery you may know find yourself ready to begin this process yourself. But how? Where do you start to looking for a system of physical training sophisticated and with enough depth to sustain a lifetime of personal fulfillment and health benefit?

I asked that same question years ago myself. I too was searching for more than a ‘workout plan’ or another passing fad in the commercial fitness industry. What I wanted was a complete holistic system that would fully engage my mind and body and give me the health, wellness, strength, endurance, mobility and peak physical performance that deep down I recognized my body craved.

Then I found the RMAX International website and discovered Circular Strength Training and from that day on my life was forever changed.

I found everything I was looking for in CST and more. I also discovered I was not alone in my quest. Through the RMAX forums I made contact with people who were making the same journey I was. After much electronic conversation, reading the material on the site and finally beginning my own persona practice of CST I knew I had connected to something much more than just another exercise routine – I had discovered a path to optimal health and physical mastery.

It has been incredible to see how CST has evolved and exponentially grown over the past several years. It is now being actively taught by certified instructors and coaches around the world and the amount of information and resources available are staggering. So how does one begin their personal exploration into CST? While there are many possible starting points recently there has been a new resource released which in my opinion is one of the best, most inexpensive and user-friendly places to immediately grasp the fundamentals of the system and begin to feel the amazing physical benefits.

It is called Bodyweight Exercise Revolution: The 4X7 Wave

In this fantastic ebook CST Head Coaches Adam Steer and Ryan Murdock lay everything out for you with pictures, video, and detailed text. They also supply several day-by-day programs that take out all the guess work. All you have to do is get the book, read through it, pick your program and get to work. Best of all is that you can get in touch with either of the coaches through the online forum and they will be happy to provide you additional guidance, personal feedback and answer any questions.

This is such an enormous value and the programs can be used by anyone of any age or current fitness level. No additional equipment is necessary. I strongly recommend this to anyone looking to begin their own path to physical mastery.

Test Yourself

The path to mastery is a journey of life-long learning, improving, and refining of mind body, and spirit. It is goal-less in the sense that we are not motivated exclusively by reaching some external goal or product. Our inner commitment is such that we don’t ever say “OK, this is enough, now I have learned it all”.

It is true that there will be plateaus in our development in which there seems to be no progress. These are challenging times which can sometimes last quite a while. But if you persist in your practice with intentionality, surrendering to your coaches instruction, you will eventually surge your way up from your plateau to a high level of competence.

There also will be times where you will be challenged to the extreme limits of your capabilities. While it may seem to be a paradox with the goal-less journey, there is a definite place for competition and testing. This is the last of George Leonard’s Keys to Mastery.

Key #5: The Edge

The ‘edge’ I am talking about here is the testing of the extreme limit of the attributes or skill set that you are working on: strength, endurance, flexibility, speed, mental control, etc. One must be aware of the effects when engaging in this kind of testing. Pushing the envelope like this requires marshalling huge amounts of mental and physical energy. It will be tremendously taxing so proper preparation and recovery are a must.

The specific form of going to your edge will depend upon your particular path. It could be a tournament, a 10K road race, the CST Trial By Fire, a martial art belt test, a personal record Kettlebell lift, or any kind of test or record attempt is appropriate for you. It may be something you do individually or as part of an organized event.

Whatever the results of the search for your edge its important not to become overly attached to the actual results. Remember, you are in this for YOU, there is no place for determining your individual self worth by comparing yourself with anyone else. Be confidant in the fact that no matter what the results were, by engaging in this test you have continued your transformation into a better person than you were before. You have taken a giant step on the path of mastery.

Think Again

Author and master martial artist George Leonard, in his book Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, describes the essential components in the path to true excellence regardless of the particular skill set or functional area that is being pursued. This is not the ‘get-rich-overnight-in-3-easy-steps’ type of scheme that promises so much for so little but at best results in a quick high with no real substance followed by a fast descent back to where you started. This is the long and deliberate road that produces slowly but steadily produces tangible and permanent results and true personal self fulfillment.

Key #4: Intentionality

Leonard uses the term ‘Intentionality’ to label an important but evanescent concept that is sometimes hard to describe in words. This is because this key element has more to do with our thoughts and how we direct them as we pursue the path of mastery. Attitude, mental outlook, concentration, visualization and even meditation are some other words that could fall into this category of Intentionality. The bottom line is this: how we think about what we do is at least as important, if not more so, that our physical action.

Even if you have the best exercise program in the world if you are just focus on knocking out reps and getting it over with you will not get nearly the full benefit. In every exercise, every rep, you must fully engage your mind as well as your muscles. There are many specific aspects to concentrate on depending on your particular stage of development and fitness goals. How are you breathing? Are you executing a full range movement? Is your body structure sound? Maybe you need to focus on slow, smooth motion and maximum muscle fiber recruitment. Or perhaps you need to really push up the speed/tempo.

As modern Western science continues to progress forward we are beginning to rediscover some of the lessons from the ancient East. We are seeing more and more clearly that what we call the ‘mind’ and ‘body’ are not separate things but intimately connected. Thoughts have real power that are made manifest in our physiology (and vice versa). So be very aware of your thinking while you workout or practice your particular physical discipline. Focus on mastery and you will reap amazing rewards.

Empty Your Cup

Sometimes the path of mastery is like trying to reach mountain peak. You have seen the glorious summit from a distance and you desperately want to get there but the only path up there is narrow, rocky and steep. On both sides is a sharp drop-off and there are dips and turns. Now picture yourself walking this path backwards, completely unable to turn around and see exactly where you are going. But you have chosen a guide, one who has traveled this road before, who is giving you direction at every step. While you are never completely sure exactly where he is leading, you listen closely to what he says and carefully follow direction. Failure to do so will cause you to fall off the path all the way back down to the foot of the mountain.

Key #3: Surrender

Every beginner is clumsy. When a child learns to walk there is a long process of crawling, wobbly standing, tentative steps and lots and lots of falling. One of the reasons that few adults commit to the path of mastery is that they are far to ego driven and self-conscious to allow themselves to go through this necessary period of extreme awkwardness. Beginning the path to mastery requires courage. The kind of egoless courage that keeps us going even after we fall a few dozen times.

You have chosen your coach carefully and now you must trust him or her even if we don’t understand just how this program of theirs is supposed to work. Even if they explain everything to us in detail it will not help one bit unless we actually DO what they tell us. And when we fail and make mistakes we accept our coaches critique and try again. We learn by doing, by movement, not by sheer intellect. This is a process of physiological re-creation on a cellular level – it takes time. In order to achieve mastery you must be willing to give it that time.

With time and experience, no matter how far we have traveled on our path up to the summit of our chosen mountain, we must learn to maintain this beginner’s mind. We will also realize that we will never reach the summit and that there is joy to be found in the journey itself.