Blood!

Thanks to my buddy Vince DelMonte for showing this one to everybody at our Mastermind meeting a couple of weeks ago. Check it out. It's worth the laugh...




It's off to Paramount Canada's Wonderland with the kids tomorrow. Have a great weekend everyone!

CL

I'm taking it back...

Last Thursday, I wrote about fat loss and the simplicity at which fat loss was achieved.

I got a few emails yesterday expressing people's concern with that statement. So let's clarify what I said in Thursday's blog post...

"...but it really is simple - watch what you eat (lots of water, lean protein, healthy fats, fruits and veggies), train hard (weight training & intervals work best) and try to get rid of as much stress as possible."

So what I said was, fat loss is SIMPLE...S-I-M-P-L-E.

Fat loss is simple...It's just not EASY!

In fact, it's really f_cking HARD!

Just ask the fitness model on the cover of Men's Health how much canned tuna and broccoli he had to eat to make the line through his abs a little deeper.

Just ask the MMA fighter who has to get rid of the last 5lbs to make his weight class.

If losing fat were that EASY we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic. We'd be a society of Men's Health and Shape magazine cover models.

Now I'm not saying this to discourage anyone. Nor am I saying that achieving the body you've always wanted is impossible. It just takes HARD WORK and CONSISTENCY. Stay on track with your nutrition. Use a program that works and train hard (even if you don't see any "results" after the first couple of weeks...trust me, something's happening). Give it all you've got and you'll get there.

CL

It's Your Last Chance!

The Turbulence Training Transformation Contest closes today.

Hurry and get your votes in on who you think made the most dramatic transformation.

Go to www.transformationcontest.com to place your vote.

Go to www.turbulencetraining.com to use the same program that one of the finalists used to lose 30lbs in 3 months!!!

CL

The Most Common Question

"Hey, Chris! How do I get rid of this?"

That is the most common question I get when I attend any family event, party, shindig, baptism, barmitzvah, baby naming, wedding...well, you get the point. Someone - a friend, relative, aquaintence, in-law, or someone I've never met before who found out that I help get people LEAN - will come up to me, regardless of what I'm doing, and pose the above question while grabbing they're trouble spot (usually a full clench of the hand with a shake and a jiggle).

My answer? I wrote about it here before. But it really is simple - watch what you eat (lots of water, lean protein, healthy fats, fruits and veggies), train hard (weight training & intervals work best) and try to get rid of as much stress as possible.

Think it's really any harder than that? It's not. Just ask my friend Craig Ballantyne, creator of Turbulence Training, who has been helping people for years with his revolutionary TT system and now has closed his first ever Transformation Contest.

Take a look at how these contest finalists transformed their bodies using Turbulence Training.

Even better, you can vote for which contestant you think overcame the biggest obstacles and made the most dramatic transformation.

You CAN achieve the body you've always wanted. What's holding you back?

CL

Fix Your Posture Today

I got an email from Jim Lin over at The Busy Dad Blog a couple of days ago. We were talking about some of the exercises that I use for my programming and he was interested in learning how to do a stick-up.

The stick-up is one of my favorite everyday exercises. It allows you to really open up your chest and use all those little muscles in your upper mid-back (the ones responsible for giving you good posture).

Because we live in an "anterior dominant" world...we drive, type on a computer, eat, converse, spend "chest-day" Mondays bench pressing...our "non-mirror" muscles tend to get neglected. I'm willing to bet that 4 out of 5 people that work in an office have poor posture just from sitting at their desk all day typing away at their computers.

If you get the chance, get up from your desk a couple of times a day and do some stick-ups. Perform 10 reps 2-3 times daily and you should see a marked improvement in your posture.

The Stick-Up
(I apologize for the "burglar look" in these pictures. But the look and the exercise fit though.)

1. Start by planting yourself against a wall so that your head, shoulders, elbows, knuckles and tail bone are contacting the wall. Initiate the movement by pulling your elbows in and contracting all of your upper back muscles pulling your shoulders down and back.








2. Slowly, ensuring that your shoulders do not elevate (travel upwards toward your ears), raise yours arms along the wall maintaining contact with the wall at all times (ie. Your knuckles or elbows should not come off the wall at all).











Couple this exercise with some stretches for your pecs (chest) and you'll be sitting and standing upright in no time.

CL

Butt Out Already!

I was watching Oprah with my wife a little while back (c'mon guys, your wives make you watch it too). Usually, I'd have my laptop with me and pretend that I was watching when I'd really be working. But this episode was on health and fitness, so it particularly grasped my interest.

There was a doctor on the show (Dr. Oz, I think) who was talking about the dangers of smoking, for both the smoker themselves and their kids. There was one particular statistic that made me fall off the couch...

Through second hand smoke, your child inhales the equivalent of 1 out of every 4 cigarettes that you consume.

1 OUT OF EVERY 4!!!

Listen, it's your perrogative if you smoke. I can understand that.

But don't light up in front of your kids.

Don't do it when they're in the room.

Don't go to another room while they're in the house.

Don't crack a window in the car and smoke your butt while someone is sitting beside you.

Kill yourself BY YOURSELF.

Who ever said that cigarette smoking was cool needs to be institutionalized. What is this, the 80s? It causes cancer of the mouth, lungs and throat. It turns your teeth yellow. It makes your clothes stink. It makes you look like an idiot when you're standing outside in the freezing cold without a jacket on while you're having a butt.

Your kids are smoking 1/4 of the crap you're smoking and they don't even know it.

Be more responsible. Be less selfish. Get rid of the cigarettes.

cl

The Paper Towel Theory

I was going to write something myself this morning, but couldn't come up with anything better than this. It's genius!

From Alwyn Cosgrove's blog...

This is a pretty good explanation of the visual representation of fat loss that was emailed to me recently (And attributed originally to a "Bob White"). Hope you enjoy it..

Let’s assume you go out and buy two rolls of paper towels, each with 112 paper towels on it. You put one aside, and keep it for future reference (your “before” picture). The other one represents you (I’ll call your paper towel “Ed”).

The core represents the lean Ed. The towels represent the fat that is covering the lean Ed.For sake of argument, let’s say that Ed wants to lose 28 pounds of fat, so (112/28) each sheet represents a quarter-pound of fat lost.Let’s also assume that Ed loses his fat equally during each day of the program.Each day during the first week, you tear a sheet off of Ed, representing the fat he has lost for the day. Next, you put Ed next to the full roll (“Big Ed”) for comparison.No noticeable difference! Even at the end of the week!"This can’t be working for me! This program sucks! " But, you continue to follow your fat loss program. At the end of weeks two and three, you continue to compare Ed to Big Ed, and still notice very little difference.But Ed is determined!

He continues to work hard!

Three more weeks go by, the sheets peeling off day after day, before Ed gets up the courage to stand next to Big Ed again. Now there’s a big difference!By the end of the program (112 days), Ed is down to his lean dream, or somewhere near it. Big Ed is still - well, big.

The lesson to be learned is that fat, like paper towels, comes off in sheets. When you are heavy, you are big around. And when you are big around, that fat is spread over a MUCH larger area – just like that outside towel sheet. The closer you get to the lean you, the more each lost pound of fat shows, because it is spread over a smaller area.While the outside sheet may only cover one layer of the roll, the inside sheet may go around 4 times. That last sheet looks like it gives you four times the results of the first sheet, but in reality, the results are the same – your perception is just different! And you’ll never see the inside, if you aren’t patient while the outside is coming off.

Great Analogy!

CL

TGIF...Restaurant Eating

After a couple of days of being in meetings, it's great to get out and enjoy the Toronto wind and rain (note the sarcasm). I came out of those intensive Mastermind sessions with more motivation and drive than before.
While I was in yesterday's meeting, I got an email from my mom asking me to come to a party at a buffet restaurant. I respectfully declined. As much as I love spending time with my extended family, nothing good can possibly come out of eating at an all-you-can-eat buffet, no matter how disciplined you are.

If you do have to go out to a restaurant where you know temptation may get the best of you, here's what I do to make sure my hard earned results don't go down the toilet...

1) Get a workout in to jack your metabolism up. Before we go out, I try to do a quick bodyweight circuit before I jump in the shower. I've got a chin-up bar mounted in my door frame, so a typical circuit would look like this...

1) Jumping Jacks x 25
2) Prisoner Squats x 25
3) Chins (or Stick-ups if you don't have a bar) x 10-15
4) Lunges x 20
5) Close Grip Push-ups x 20

I would do 2-3 circuits trying to beat my time on each successive one.

2) Eat something and drink lots of water before hand. If you're going to a place like a buffet, make sure you ingest something healthy before you leave. This will give you a "full" feeling and hopefully you won't chow down on the deep fried calamari and chicken wings. Even a protein shake would be better than not consuming anything at all.

3) Say NO, DON'T GO. If it's a buffet you're invited to, suggest a healthier restaurant alternative. Nothing feels worse than eating more than you can handle and feeling like a bag of crap afterwards.

Have a great weekend. Eat Smart.

CL

A Little Experiment

So my Blackberry crapped out on me again...for the last time.

I've been reading a lot of books on time and energy management (the 4-Hour Work Week, Power of Full Engagement and Dan Kennedy's "No BS" book are my favorites). One of the common ideas in each book is the concept of inaccessibility. We live in a world of constant communication where there is so much stimuli, it hinders productivity. Have you ever been on a roll with a project only to get interrupted with a phone call or mindless email or one of those "have you got a minute?" conversations that seem to go on for hours? By that time your focused energy on the task is gone and you can't afford that 15-20 minutes that it took you to get focused again.

Well, I'm out. There are too many things that require my undivided attention (my kids, my wife, finishing projects) that I can't afford the interruptions. So the PDA is gone and so are the excuses...for now.

I'm going to go a month without it and see how it goes. I'll still have the "Bat Phone" with me so that my family can get a hold of me...maybe. I'll check my emails and voicemail twice daily at scheduled times.

I'll admit, I was a little addicted to the crackberry. Times have been often that I look for that little blinking red light to see if there's a new message waiting for me. But no more. Let's see when I start to feel the withdrawal kick in. I'll report back.

Feeling Liberated,
CL

The "No-Time" Workout

I literally had NO TIME to train yesterday, so I managed to squeeze in 20-minutes...so, I guess I did have "time". Here's what went down...

1)Warm-up BW circuit (Prisoner Squats, push-ups, reverse lunges, stick-ups, planks (front & side).

2a) Chin-Ups x 3 sets (20, 15, 12 reps)
2b) Pistols (1-leg squats) x 3 (15, 12, 12 reps)

3) Kettlebell Swings x 100 (w/ a 54lb KB) - it took me 2 sets to finish 100

After that, it was off to dinner to celebrate AJ's 10th birthday.

The bottom line.......
You don't NEED an hour and a half, fancy equipment and an elliptical machine to train.

CL

Happy Birthday AJ

Today marks my 10th Anniversary of fatherhood. My little girl, whom I named after the greatest athlete that ever lived, turns 10 today. Ten years of bloody noses, changing diapers, soccer practices, days at the beach

So this being a very special day, here are a few things that I've learned over the past 10 years about being a dad...

-Stay active (and I'm not just saying that because of what I do for a living). Kids learn through observation. Set the standard. If being active is an important part of your life, it'll be an important part of theirs...my 2-year-old knows what a kettlebell is!

-Spend time. It's not about the X-box or all the arts, dance or sports programs they're in. Kids just want you around to take notice and spend time with them. Let them know that they're important.

-The minivan is inevitable. Guys, seriously, you can't avoid it. Drive all the SUVs you want. Squeeze your growing family into that mid-size sedan. Drop your kids off in your sportscar...whatever. It's so darn practical you'd be a fool not to have one. I've got a bike/snowboard rack on mine to say "Yeah, I've still got it". I've even hung blast straps off the roof rack at my daughter's school's parking lot to get a quick workout in. I've got a black one with a spoiler on it...but, yes, it's still a minivan.

CL

4-Minutes of Hell

With my fat burning efforts being accelerated as of late, I've been experimenting with different ways of "finishing" my workouts.

One of the best finishers that I've been using are TABATAs. This 4-minute protocol was created by a Japanese sport scientist and encorporates 20s work periods with 10s rest periods. In order to get the most out of them, you absolutely need to use big, multi-joint movements (no bicep curls or calf raises here). If you're at the gym, then try this protocol using either dumbbell thrusters (squat presses) or front squats (it's easier to rack the bar for your rest periods). If you're at home, try using kettlebell swings or if you don't have any equipment, you could do burpees.

Here's the TABATA I did yesterday after my fat burning lifting session to kick my own ass...

1a) Kettlebell Swings x 20s
REST 10s
1b) Spiderman Push-Ups x 20s
Rest 10s
-Repeat 4 times

I was DONE after that.

Get Lean,
CL