After Workout Quotes

Great. Okay. That, uh... was easier than I thought." Jack cocked his head. Wait a second... He couldn't decide if he was pissed or really impressed. He hooked a finger into the waistband of the workout pants she'd changed into and pulled her closer. "Did you fake me out with those tears, Cameron?" She peered up at him, defiantly, seemingly outraged by the suggestion. "Are you kidding? What, after the day I've had, I'm not entitled to a few tears? Sheesh." Jack waited. "This wedding is very important to me--I can't believe you're even doubting me. Honestly, Jack, the tears were real." He waited some more. She would talk eventually. They always did. Cameron shifted under the weight of his stare. "Okay, fine. Some of the tears were real." She looked him over, annoyed. "You are really good at that." He grinned. "I know.

Want to exercise more? Choose a cue, such as going to the gym as soon as you wake up, and a reward, such as a smoothie after each workout. Then think about that smoothie, or about the endorphin rush you’ll feel. Allow yourself to anticipate the reward. Eventually, that craving will make it easier to push through the gym doors every day.

He is flames in a sea of ice. A glass of water after a five-hour workout. He’s a tight fist around a needy cock.

More often than not, expecting to lose weight without first losing the diet that made the weight loss necessary is like expecting a pig to be spotless after hosing it down while it was still rolling in mud.

When I say us, what I mean is them. I felt fine. No; I felt like I’d woken up after a long sleep and had a good workout in the fresh air and a really nice stretch and was now contemplating with interest the idea of a hearty lunch. Sitting on edge in a classroom for hours surrounded by fluffy peeping freshmen waiting for one mal to pop out at me: nightmarish. Summoning a river of magma to instantly vaporize twenty-seven carefully designed attacks at once: nothing to it.

Let’s be honest, don’t we all want to achieve our perfect weight after one workout, and then get offended when it doesn’t happen?

Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from the deepest black to whitest white, they're various heights, but each one of them is admirably proportioned. Each is sound of tooth, smooth of skin. No ripples of fat around their waists, no bulges, no dimpled orange-skin cellulite on their thighs. No body hair, no bushiness. They look like retouched fashion photos, or ads for a high priced workout program. Maybe this is the reason that these women arouse in Snowman not even the faintest stirrings of lust. It was the thumbprints of human imperfection that used to move him, the flaws in the design: the lopsided smile, the wart next to the navel, the mole, the bruise. These were the places he'd single out, putting his mouth on them. Was it consolation he'd had in mind, kissing the wound to make it better? There was always an element of melancholy involved in sex. After his indiscriminate adolescence he'd preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and who needed him. He'd liked to comfort them, stroke them gently at first, reassure them. Make them happier, if only for a moment. Himself too, of course; that was the payoff. A grateful woman would go the extra mile. But these new women are neither lopsided nor sad: they're placid, like animated statues. They leave him chilled.

We didn’t care about muscle fatigue or breakdown because after a certain point we were training our minds, not our bodies. My workouts weren’t designed to make us fast runners or to be the strongest men on the mission. I was training us to take torture so we’d remain relaxed in extraordinarily uncomfortable environments.

If you aren't hurting after a good workout then obviously you haven't done something right

Instead of a boozy happy hour after work, soaking up inflammatory alcohol, you can meet up with your friends for a workout or a game of softball or Frisbee—something that actually makes your body feel good and is a better bonding activity than pounding beers and nachos. This way, instead of feeling deprived of social engagement, you rewrite the rules of social engagement to work for you. You’re making a new kind of human connection.

Despite the tendency toward laziness that Turcotte sensed in him, Secretariat thrived on work, and he devoured his hay and oats and sweet feed and mash after even strenuous workouts, never backing off his feed cup, never missing an oat.

Habits are built on consistency, and you build consistency by showing up again and again. It’s not about the actual workout, how many shirts you hang up, or what you do after you turn off Netflix; the point is, you went to the gym, made it to the bedroom for tidying, and turned off the TV. If you just keep showing up, it will feel far more natural and effortless to do more—get into the workout, fold the rest of the laundry, or prep your lunch for the next day. Chase consistency.

He was relaxing in his cabin after one particularly strenuous workout, sprawled facedown across his bunk, reading. The volume was one of Kirk's own cherished bound books. "The kind of book you can hold in your hands," as Sam Cogley had put it. The lawyer had introduced him to the hobby of collecting "real" books, and Kirk had found this remarkably well-preserved copy of an old favorite in an antique shop on Canpus IV. He was absorbed in the adventures of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus when the door signal flashed.

Being busy helping customers meant that I had no time to train the way I was used to, with an intense four-or five-hour workout each day. So I adopted the idea of training twice a day, two hours before work and two hours from seven to nine in the evening, when business slacked off and only the serious lifters were left. Split workouts seemed like an annoyance at first, but I realized I was onto something when I saw the results: I was concentrating better and recovering faster while grinding out longer and harder sets. On many days I would add a third training session at lunchtime. I'd isolate a body part that I thought was weak and give it thirty or forty minutes of my full attention, blasting twenty sets of calf raises, say, or one hundred triceps extensions. I did the same thing some nights after dinner, coming back to train for an hour at eleven o'clock. As I went to sleep in my snug little room, I'd often feel one or another muscle that I'd traumatized that day jumping and twitching-just a side effect of a successful workout and every pleasing, because I knew those fibers would now recover and grow.

The cadre expected me to do twenty nine iterations, alternating sixty pushups and eighty flutter kicks—this after a full day of our hardest workout to date. I looked around at my stunned teammates to see if they were up for rushing the instructors and killing them. No. The drops began.

The main workout consisted of only a two thousand meter swim. This was the longest swim I ever completed in my life: forty times down and back. I was tired and sputtering after the first lap. Except for a surprising aptitude for swallowing pool water, my swim technique sucked. I felt as comfortable in the water as a camel,

Here’s a great home workout that allows you to train and work on the usual issues I find ailing most people: • Right-leg Bulgarian Split Squats with the dumbbell in the suitcase position, 10 reps • Left-leg Bulgarian Split Squats with the dumbbell in the suitcase position, 10 reps • Goblet Squats with the dumbbell cradled on the chest, 10 reps • Deep Push-ups, chest touching the floor, with the push-up handles, 10 reps • Doorway Chin-ups or Pull-ups, 10 reps • Ab Wheel, 10 reps Try to do these six exercises one after another straight through without resting much between movements. Repeat this sequence, after a minute or two of rest, three to five times.

So if you add it all up, weight workouts give you two, and possibly three, important advantages over endurance exercise: 1. The afterburn, which might be an extra 50 calories. 2. A higher percentage of fat calories used for energy after the workout. 3. A possible increase in resting metabolic rate, in the neighborhood of 50 calories a day.

I immersed myself in my relationship with my husband, in little ways at first. Dutch would come home from his morning workout and I’d bring him coffee as he stepped out of the shower. He’d slip into a crisp white shirt and dark slacks and run a little goop through his hair, and I’d eye him in the mirror with desire and a sultry smile that he couldn’t miss. He’d head to work and I’d put a love note in his bag—just a line about how proud I was of him. How beautiful he was. How happy I was as his wife. He’d come home and cook dinner and instead of camping out in front of the TV while he fussed in the kitchen, I’d keep him company at the kitchen table and we’d talk about our days, about our future, about whatever came to mind. After dinner, he’d clear the table and I’d do the dishes, making sure to compliment him on the meal. On those weekends when he’d head outside to mow the lawn, I’d bring him an ice-cold beer. And, in those times when Dutch was in the mood and maybe I wasn’t, well, I got in the mood and we had fun. As the weeks passed and I kept discovering little ways to open myself up to him, the most amazing thing happened. I found myself falling madly, deeply, passionately, head-over-heels in love with my husband. I’d loved him as much as I thought I could love anybody before I’d married him, but in treating him like my own personal Superman, I discovered how much of a superhero he actually was. How giving he was. How generous. How kind, caring, and considerate. How passionate. How loving. How genuinely good. And whatever wounds had never fully healed from my childhood finally, at long last, formed scar tissue. It was like being able to take a full breath of air for the first time in my life. It was transformative. And it likely would save our marriage, because, at some point, all that withholding would’ve turned a loving man bitter. On some level I think I’d known that and yet I’d needed my sister to point it out to me and help me change. Sometimes it’s good to have people in your life that know you better than you know yourself.

If someone is looking to use supplements to enhance their results, it should only be after a solid nutrition and training plan is in place. Many top researchers and experts in the field will admit that at most, supplements may give you a 5% boost to whatever you are doing with your current nutrition and training. If you have a bad diet, or don’t train properly, adding supplements is most likely going to end up being a waste of money,

We all need relationships that give us the feeling of ecstasy we get from life's simple moments—the first sip of coffee, the smell of fresh laundry, a hot shower in the winter, a movie with a good ending, and a glass of water after an intense workout. Sometimes, we can't describe the type of people we need in our lives through a list of attributes. Sometimes, it’s simply the vibrations they give us—ones that make every cell in our body dance.

Starting is the hardest part, both in the moment and in the early days of habit-building. Initially, you will see limited results. After a hard workout you will feel sore, but look in the mirror and see no change. After eating broccoli, you will feel about the same. After writing on day one, you will not have a full book. But when you do these things over the long haul, you can end up with a fit and healthy body and several full-length novels.

Now for the interval-training group. They also went on a six-week-long training regimen, but one that required much less work and time. It was modeled after the protocol used in our first study. The subjects began by spending a couple of minutes warming up on the exercise bicycle. Then they performed a thirty-second-long sprint. They rested for four and a half minutes, and then they did another sprint, repeating this four to six times. Instead of training five days per week, they trained three days.

Walking doesn’t just make you happy—it can also help fight depression, anxiety, and stress. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, researchers have found that taking a ten-minute walk can reduce feelings of depression, fatigue, and anger and suppress anxiety as effectively as a forty-five-minute workout. The effects of a short, brisk walk don’t just go away once we get back to the office or our homes—scientists say the effects of walking on mood can last for hours after a single jaunt.

If you hurt your knee, you wouldn’t wait until you couldn’t walk before seeking help. You’d ice the joint, elevate it, skip your workouts—and then, if you didn’t see any improvement after a couple of days, you’d make an appointment with an orthopedist. Unfortunately, most people don’t turn to a mental health professional for help until they’re in real crisis. Nobody expects to heal their knees themselves, using self-discipline and gumption. Because of stigma, though, we do expect to be able to think our way out of the pain in our minds.

ONE OF the biggest differences between the training of world-class runners and that of recreational runners is how slowly we elites sometimes run. Let me explain. Let’s say it’s the day after a hard workout. A typical recovery run for me is 10 miles in 65 minutes. A 10-miler at an average of 6:30 per mile might sound fast, but consider it in perspective. That’s almost 2 minutes per mile slower than I can run for a half-marathon and more than 90 seconds per mile slower than my marathon race pace. For someone who runs a 3:30 marathon, which is about 8 minutes per mile, that would be like averaging a 9:30 pace on a recovery day.

A few months later I got a call from a close friend, Jeff Bloch. “I was reading in Men’s Health that they’re going to do a search for a regular guy to put on the cover,” Jeff said. He went on to tell me that Men’s Health usually only had celebrities on their cover, but they were teaming up with Kenneth Cole to do this “Ultimate Guy Search,” and Jeff thought I should enter. During my Army days I used to tell the guys that I’d be on the cover of Men’s Health someday. Back then it was a real pie-in-the-sky dream, but I thought about it a lot. I even thought about it again after I was injured and started to design my own workouts. I thought I had a legit story for them. But of course it wasn’t a reality until Jeff’s call.

Keep in mind the rewards ahead. Workouts provide awesome internal rewards; after a long dance practice or gym workout I always have more energy and a clearer mind, and I’m able to focus on things I need to get done. But we all know it’s hard to remember that great feeling when you’re headed off to the gym, dreading the work ahead. Conjuring that ecstatic state of mind you know you’ll find later can be a tremendous motivator. If you prefer external rewards, motivate yourself with baby steps every day to hit a bigger long-term goal--one with a luxurious reward as your prize. Once you’ve reached it, allow yourself to follow through with whatever reward it was that motivated you, whether it’s a great glass of wine or a Sunday movie marathon.

Daily life makes us all susceptible to accumulating stress, mostly due to the non-stop demands and pressures of juggling work, home and personal responsibilities. This stress revs up the nervous system, causing the brain to flood the body with hormones that trigger overreacting, irrational thinking, and even insomnia. After years of unavoidable exposure to the stress reaction with no defense, the nervous system can become severely deteriorated, leaving us defenseless against mental or physical illness and disease.iv As it happens, meditation has been proven as one of the greatest counter-stress solutions.v When practiced daily, meditation can help to restore balance and re-supply much-needed rest to your physiology. Common side effects of daily meditation are increased energy and feelings of contentedness and inner happiness.vi

How to stick with it. Inertia is a real thing. Momentum will build. When you do something often enough it becomes a ritual, like going to church or brushing your teeth. You will eventually recondition your body to crave working out and eating the right foods. The circuitry can be rewired. There’s the trigger, the process, and the reward. The key is to get it to the point where it’s such a habit, you want to do it. Let’s take a real-life example that all of us have faced: we haven’t been to the gym in a while, we feel sluggish, and we don’t want to go. The idea of lacing up the sneakers and hitting the gym feels like torture. The trick is to remind yourself that at the end of that workout, your mind actually feel pleasure. It feels good. Sometimes we get brainwashed into thinking that Gym = Pain, Candy = Pleasure when really it’s the opposite: without fail, our bodies feel better after they’ve been in motion.

Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability. Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen.

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. ‘Look at him!’ Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, ‘That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he’s done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!’ Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. ‘That’s not fat,’ he declared, punching himself in the stomach, ‘that’s good healthy meat!’ He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks.

Exercising an unfit muscle causes soreness, which is followed by improved muscle function and increased resistance of that muscle to become sore. In that sense, soreness after exercise is good (as long as it lasts less than a week and doesn’t come back). Sore joints, on the other hand, are collateral damage (see above). Most people think that if they do an intense workout (say 90 minutes of circuit training in a gym) that they should lose weight. And indeed, if you weigh before and right after such a workout, the scale goes down because of sweating and water weight loss. However, if it makes you sore for the next few days don’t be surprised to see the scale go up. That’s because muscle soreness indicates that your muscles are temporarily inflamed, and inflammation causes fluid retention and swelling in that muscle. Once again, don’t let the scale make you crazy. Once the soreness is gone, the swelling is gone, and the scale comes back down where it’s supposed to be.

He woke each dawn at 5:30, without need for an alarm, though he set one anyway just to be sure. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he lifted. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he jogged. Down along the Charles. Beneath the sagging boughs of honey locusts fat with fruit. Following his workout, he prepared a shake. After, he showered beneath the rainwater showerhead in the third-story bath-room, water beating down his back, the radio blaring classical music from its place on the marble vanity. Classical, not rock or country or top forty, because he'd been raised on Handel and Tchaikovsky and because sometimes, when he was very tightly wound, the instrumentals were the only things that eased the tension in his chest. When that was done, he dressed, made his bed--tucking his corners in with the militaristic precision his nanny had demanded of him when he was still small and belligerent and went downstairs to make eggs. Over easy, paired with whole-grain toast and a glass of orange juice. He had his routine down to a science, and he did the same thing every morning.

Peak Intensity • 10+ Duration • 25 minutes The Evidence • When it comes to boosting fitness, there’s something remarkably potent about going all out—and this is the protocol that helped us grasp that. We based it on repeats of the Wingate test, a 30-second all-out sprint on a stationary bike. It’s exhausting—and remarkably powerful. The training protocol features a series of five 30-second all-out sprints, a total of just 2.5 minutes of hard exercise per day. In our study, we had our subjects repeat the protocol three times a week, amounting to a weekly time commitment of just 1.5 hours, and less than 10 minutes of hard exercise a week. After 6 weeks, we compared the sprint group’s benefits with those experienced by a group that exercised continuously at a moderate intensity five times a week for a total of 4.5 hours a week, also for 6 weeks. The sprint subjects either equaled or exceeded the conventional exercisers in their improvements in aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and the ability to burn fat. A remarkable result, considering the sprint group spent a third of the time exercising.

Peak Intensity • 10+ Duration • 25 minutes The Evidence • When it comes to boosting fitness, there’s something remarkably potent about going all out—and this is the protocol that helped us grasp that. We based it on repeats of the Wingate test, a 30-second all-out sprint on a stationary bike. It’s exhausting—and remarkably powerful. The training protocol features a series of five 30-second all-out sprints, a total of just 2.5 minutes of hard exercise per day. In our study, we had our subjects repeat the protocol three times a week, amounting to a weekly time commitment of just 1.5 hours, and less than 10 minutes of hard exercise a week. After 6 weeks, we compared the sprint group’s benefits with those experienced by a group that exercised continuously at a moderate intensity five times a week for a total of 4.5 hours a week, also for 6 weeks. The sprint subjects either equaled or exceeded the conventional exercisers in their improvements in aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and the ability to burn fat. A remarkable result, considering the sprint group spent a third of the time exercising. Who

IS CARDIO BEST BEFORE OR AFTER LIFTING? NEITHER! Doing cardio right before or after lifting can seriously hinder muscle and strength gains. Why? Researchers from RMIT University worked with well–trained athletes in 2009 and found that “combining resistance exercise and cardio in the same session may disrupt genes for anabolism.” In laymen’s terms, they found that combining endurance and resistance training sends “mixed signals” to the muscles37. Cardio before the resistance training suppressed anabolic hormones such as IGF–1 and MGF, and cardio after resistance training increased muscle tissue breakdown. Several other studies, such as those conducted by Children’s National Medical Center38, the Waikato Institute of Technology39, and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland)40 , came to same conclusions: training for both endurance and strength simultaneously impairs your gains on both fronts. Training purely for strength or purely for endurance in a workout is far superior. Cardio before weightlifting also saps your energy and makes it much harder to train heavy, which in turn inhibits your muscle growth. So, how do you do it right?

I shoot up out of my chair. “It’s Bree. Hide the board!” Everyone hops out of their chairs and starts scrambling around and bumping into each other like a classic cartoon. We hear the door shut behind her, and the whiteboard is still standing in the middle of the kitchen like a lit-up marquee. I hiss at Jamal, “Get rid of it!” His eyes are wide orbs, head whipping around in all directions. “Where? In the utensil drawer? Up my shirt?! There’s nowhere! That thing is huge!” “LADY IN THE HOUSE!” Bree shouts from the entryway. The sound of her tennis shoes getting kicked off echoes around the room, and my heart races up my throat. Her name is pasted all over that whiteboard along with phrases like “first kiss—keep it light” and “entwined hand-holding” and “dirty talk about her hair”. Yeah…I’m not sure about that last one, but we’ll see. Basically, it’s all laid out there—the most incriminating board in the world. If Bree sees this thing, it’s all over for me. “Erase it!” Price whispers frantically. “No, we didn’t write it down anywhere else! We’ll lose all the ideas.” I can hear Bree’s footsteps getting closer. “Nathan? Are you home?” “Uh—yeah! In the kitchen.” Jamal tosses me a look like I’m an idiot for announcing our location, but what am I supposed to do? Stand very still and pretend we’re not all huddled in here having a Baby-Sitter’s Club re-enactment? She would find us, and that would look even worse after keeping quiet. “Just flip it over!” I tell anyone who’s not running in a circle chasing his tail. As Lawrence flips the whiteboard, Price tells us all to act natural. So of course, the second Bree rounds the corner, I hop up on the table, Jamal rests his elbow on the wall and leans his head on his hand, and Lawrence just plops down on the floor and pretends to stretch. Derek can’t decide what to do so he’s caught mid-circle. We all have fake smiles plastered on. Our acting is shit. Bree freezes, blinking at the sight of each of us not acting at all natural. “Whatcha guys doing?” Her hair is a cute messy bun of curls on the top of her head and she’s wearing her favorite joggers with one of my old LA Sharks hoodies, which she stole from my closet a long time ago. It swallows her whole, but since she just came from the studio, I know there is a tight leotard under it. I can barely find her in all that material, and yet she’s still the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. Just her presence in this room feels like finally getting hooked up to oxygen after days of not being able to breathe deeply. We all respond to Bree’s question at the same time but with different answers. It’s highly suspicious and likely what makes her eyes dart to the whiteboard. Sweat gathers on my spine. “What’s with the whiteboard?” she asks, taking a step toward it. I hop off the table and get in her path. “Huh? Oh, it’s…nothing.” She laughs and tries to look around me. I pretend to stretch so she can’t see. “It doesn’t look like nothing. What? Are you guys drawing boobies on that board or something? You look so guilty.” “Ah—you caught us! Lots of illustrated boobs drawn on that board. You don’t want to see it.” She pauses, a fading smile hovering on her lips, and her eyes look up to meet mine. “For real—what’s going on? Why can’t I see it?” She doesn’t believe my boob explanation. I guess we should take that as a compliment? My eyes catch over Bree’s shoulder as Price puts himself out of her line of sight and begins miming the action of getting his phone out and taking a picture of the whiteboard. This little show is directed at Derek, who is standing somewhere behind me. Bree sees me watching Price and whips her head around to catch him. He freezes—hands extended looking like he’s holding an imaginary camera. He then transforms that into a forearm stretch. “So tight after our workout today.” Her eyes narrow.

In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. The road to back-to-back championships is just that, a road. And you travel along a road in steps. Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one, and then the one after that. Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don’t think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn’t panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

I saw her as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. This beautiful woman with a gigantic smile on her face was just about bouncing up and down despite the orthopedic boot she had on her foot as she waved me into a parking space. I felt like I’d been hit in the gut. She took my breath away. She was dressed in workout clothes, her long brown hair softly framing her face, and she just glowed. I composed myself and got out of the car. She was standing with Paul Orr, the radio host I was there to meet. Local press had become fairly routine for me at this point, so I hadn’t really given it much thought when I agreed to be a guest on the afternoon drive-time show for WZZK. But I had no idea I’d meet her. Paul reached out his hand and introduced himself. And without waiting to be introduced she whipped out her hand and said, “Hi! I’m Jamie Boyd!” And right away she was talking a mile a minute. She was so chipper I couldn’t help but smile. I was like that little dog in Looney Toons who is always following the big bulldog around shouting, “What are we going to do today, Spike?” She was adorable. She started firing off questions, one of which really caught my attention. “So you were in the Army? What was your MOS?” she asked. Now, MOS is a military term most civilians have never heard. It stands for Military Occupational Specialty. It’s basically military code for “job.” So instead of just asking me what my job was in the Army, she knew enough to specifically ask me what my MOS was. I was impressed. “Eleven Bravo. Were you in?” I replied. “Nope! But I’ve thought about it. I still think one day I will join the Army.” We followed Paul inside and as he set things up and got ready for his show, Jamie and I talked nonstop. She, too, was really into fitness. She was dressed and ready for the gym and told me she was about to leave to get in a quick workout before her shift on-air. “Yeah, I have the shift after Paul Orr. The seven-to-midnight show. I call it the Jammin’ with Jamie Show. People call in and I’ll ask them if they’re cryin’, laughin’, lovin’, or leavin’.” I couldn’t believe how into this girl I was, and we’d only been talking for twenty minutes. I was also dressed in gym clothes, because I’d been to the gym earlier. She looked down and saw the rubber bracelet around my wrist. “Is that an ‘I Am Second’ bracelet? I have one of those!” she said as she held up her wrist with the band that means, “I am second after Jesus.” “No, this is my own bracelet with my motto, ‘Train like a Machine,’ on it. Just my little self-motivator. I have some in my car. I’d love to give you one.” “Well, actually, I am about to leave. I have to go work out before my shift,” she reminded me. “You can have this one. Take it off my wrist. This one will be worth more someday because I’ve been sweating in it,” I joked. She laughed and took it off my wrist. We kept chatting and she told me she had wanted to do an obstacle course race for a long time. Then Paul interrupted our conversation and gently reminded Jamie he had a show to do. He and I needed to start our interview. She laughed some more and smiled her way out the door.

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

Avoiding glucose and insulin spikes throughout the day while we’re inactive and then adding natural sugars to our bloodstream after a workout is arguably the best thing you can do to make your muscle cells more responsive to insulin.

The best food to consume immediately after a strength-training workout is 12 ounces of a liquid protein/carbohydrate drink. The drink should consist of 0.7 grams of a high-glycemic-index carb per pound of body weight (about 100 to 140 grams) and 0.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight (about 30 to 40 grams). Carbohydrates should be high-nutritious, high-glycemic-index sources such as fruits (bananas, strawberries, oranges, and so on) and honey. This is the only time I recommend eating a high-glycemic food (more about the glycemic index later). Protein sources can include nonfat milk, nonfat yogurt, soy milk, and protein powder supplements.

Calories and Muscle Mass Calories are units of energy in food. There is another “popular” idea that building more muscle mass (through anaerobic exercise) will cause the body to burn more calories. This is absolutely true; however, what is the source of those calories being burned? Are they from sugar or fat? Burning calories by building greater muscle mass does not automatically mean that they will come from fat calories. When dealing with weight loss we have to be more concerned with the type of calories being burned than with the quantity. When it comes to fat burning, the size of your muscles is insignificant. Look at a football player who has lots of muscle mass yet has lots of fat too. Having large muscles doesn’t automatically cause your body to burn more fat. The most important point to know is that the fatburning-hormone effect occurs 14 to 48 hours after exercising, BUT only if certain factors are present: adequate sleep, good nutrition, low sugar, low stress and healthy glands. The following hidden barriers will prevent weight loss: 1. Sleeping less than 7 quality hours. Quality means having good deep sleep and feeling rejuvenated. 2. Not resting enough between exercise sessions. 3. Not resting long enough between the repetitions or intense bouts of exercise. 4. Exercising intensely for too long. Intense anaerobic exercise should be kept between 25 and 40 minutes, and even that should include within the workout a good amount of rest between bouts of exercise. 5. Consuming sugars, starches, juice, sports drinks or alcohol. Most protein bars have tons of sugar. 6. Having pain or inflammation. 7. Lots of stress.

Calories Are Insignificant Compared to Hormones Think about this — if you exercise moderately for 1 hour, you might burn 350 calories. That’s equivalent to several teaspoons of salad dressing. No big deal! The real benefits of exercise occur one to two days later, but only if the environment is almost perfect. In other words, if you do things correctly and don’t violate the fatburning environment, you will burn fat. Fat-storing hormones can easily nullify the fatburning hormones. The worse off your hormone health, the more perfect the other factors need to be. What you eat before, during and after Any carbohydrates (except vegetables) will stimulate insulin, which nullifies the fatburning hormones. This means if you consume sugars 1 hour before or during exercise, you can inhibit the entire purpose of exercise — fat burning. Since fat burning can only occur in the absence of carbohydrates, consuming carbs 14 to 48 hours later can also inhibit fat burning. Drinking several alcoholic beverages can set the liver’s function back for days, preventing fat burning. Protein before workouts is best.2 Eat an egg, some nuts, a small piece of fish or some cheese before exercising. I had a patient who would reward herself for exercising by going to Dairy Queen every day and wondered why she wasn’t losing weight. I had another who would drink half a glass of wine before bed, at the same time working out intensely with no results — I wonder why? Consuming sugar, juice or refined carbohydrates before bed can inhibit fatburning hormones while you sleep. The important thing to remember is that a very small amount of carbohydrates through the day can keep you out of fatburning mode.

Summary of Nutrient Timing Protocol Consume a meal containing a low-glycemic carbohydrate and lean protein source about two to three hours before training. Keep fat consumption to a minimum. Have a large piece of fruit and some whey protein (amounting to 0.1 gram per pound of body weight) within half an hour of training. Consume a large cup of coffee before training. Consume 8 ounces of fluid immediately before your workout and then take small sips of water every 15 or 20 minutes while training. After training, consume a drink containing high-glycemic carbohydrate (such as grape juice or cranberry juice) and a quality protein powder. Generally, you should consume about 0.5 gram of carbohydrate per pound of body weight (0.25 gram per pound of body weight for those with decreased insulin sensitivity) and 0.25 gram of protein per pound of body weight.

Appreciate the comfortable (responsibly). Producing in the evening can be an experience like no other. With the comfortable, ongoing hum of the engine and the nights your atmosphere, generating can be almost like traveling through place. Producing in the evening seems unusual, fun, and even exciting — for some people, it’s one of life’s simplest yet most excessive entertainment. It’s definitely outstanding have fun with a evening produce, but don’t neglect to focus on what’s most important of all — your security and the security of other drivers. Always keep in ideas that getting sent straight while generating can be dangerous (especially at night), so keep your interest on the road. If you’re confident in your secured generating workouts, you’ll be able to successfully relax, notice in, and revel in your ride! Put your returning viewpoint reflection in its “flipped down” or “night” strategy to reduce returning front aspect part aspect lighting glare. Check all your car lighting constantly, especially if upcoming winter year time mean that you will be doing more generating after dark. To make the process simpler, you can take changes with a friend working the lighting and watching to see that they all come on, or you can notice your own reflection in the ms ms ms ms windows of a glass-fronted developing. You have purchased some car parts and accessories. Block out interruptions while generating, but don’t focus definitely on the road. Doing so may put you in a situation of hypnosis and you may even mentally “blank” for a few a few several weeks. Keep your viewpoint moving around the car and landscapes. Some car gadgets should be set progressively. Always use a car car car car seatbelt and encourage your guests to do the same.Do not produce drunk. Never produce without a legal drivers’ certification approved in your name. Don’t believe the town story that sunglasses with yellow-colored or bright orange sketchy connections help you see better in the evening. Wearing them in the evening may make aspects seem less heavy. Always carry around your drivers’ certification to prevent police from getting suspicious of a situation that isn’t there. Do not produce when you are tired. In some countries, generating while feeling sleepy issues as impacted generating. Regardless of the law, it’s dangerous.

They talk about it like it’s all jukebox slow dances and sweaty lovemaking and princess-cut diamonds. But sometimes it’s just your wife sitting frog style on the kitchen floor after a workout, looking for an omelet pan.

VitaSupple’s eye supplement is the best way to keep your eyes healthy for a longer time. After all, we watch through eyes only and there is no substitute for it.

LPL also happens to be one very good answer to the question of why we don’t lose fat when we exercise. While we’re working out, LPL activity decreases on our fat cells and increases on muscle cells. This prompts the release of fat from our fat tissue, so we can burn it in our muscle cells, which need the fuel. We get a little leaner. So far, so good. But when we’re done exercising, the situation reverses. Now LPL activity on the muscle cells shuts down, LPL activity on the fat cells shoots up, and the fat cells restock whatever fat they lost during the workout. We get fatter again. (This also explains why exercise makes us hungry. Not only do our muscles crave protein after a workout to restock and rebuild, but our fat is actively restocking, too. The rest of the body tries to compensate for this energy drain, and our appetite increases.)

Record notes after your workouts about how you feel, how many repetitions you completed, how far you were able to run, or anything similar that fits your workout – as with your designing of your dietary and

(You’ll know why when you get to chapter 8.) Refuel Your Body After a workout, it’s important to refuel your body, especially with complex carbohydrates. Some experts speak about the “carb window,” the sixty-minute period following a workout when your body needs carbs to replenish glycogen and your muscles can make this conversion three times faster than normal—in this way, you can refuel your body’s energy resources, boost

Workaholism’ is endemic, and for many of us our life is governed entirely by work. Once upon a time, we worked to live; now, we live to work. Any ‘life’ we do have is merely recovery from work. We work, recover from work and then work again. We go to the office to work. After work, we bring some work home with us. For rest, we go to the gym for a workout. Totally exhausted, we go to therapy to work through our problems – ’I’ve done a lot of work on myself,’ we say. After all that, there’s the housework! Finally, we go to bed, too tired to be happy, but our mind is still working and we can’t sleep. No problem. Insomnia is a wonderful chance to get more work done! The work ethic is motivated by the belief that anything worthwhile requires great work, effort and labour. According to the work ethic – creativity isn’t inspiration, it’s perspiration; love is a labour, not a joy; success is a marathon, it never comes easily; health is about a ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude; salvation is hardest of all – it is a wrestling match with the angels, just ask Jacob. Nothing comes easily, according to the work ethic. Has it ever occurred to you that ... you’re trying too hard to be happy?

The first step in dealing with negative automatic thoughts about a task or plan is to catch them by asking, “What am I thinking right now?” These thoughts often do not occur in the form of grammatically correct sentences, but may be expressed in brief phrases (e.g., “Oh no,” “I hate this stuff,” a string of expletives, etc.). In fact, sometimes procrastination starts with an accurate statement (e.g., “The gym is crowded after work.”), but that can kick off a string of assumptions that result in procrastination (e.g., “I won’t be able to find any open machines. It will either take me 3 hours to finish my workout or I won’t be able to do my full workout. I’m tired and I’m not up to dealing with crowds tonight. There is no use in going to the gym.”). The subsequent evening spent watching lousy television shows while eating way too many cheese puffs leads to self-critical thoughts and frustration with the missed workout (e.g., “I could have gone to the gym. I would have been done by now. Now I have to find time to make up this workout.”). At the outset, it is vital to be aware of how your thoughts make you prone to procrastinate. Automatic thoughts are often distorted and impact your feelings about tasks. Hence, you start to psych yourself out of doing something without having a chance to get started on it, which increases the likelihood of resorting to avoiding the task through an escape behavior. In Chapter 7, we will discuss in greater detail some of the distorted thoughts and strategies for modifying them, particularly with regard to the emotions they trigger, including pure and simple discomfort about a task (i.e., “Ugh”). When dealing with procrastination, however, the most common distortion we encounter is magnification/minimization. That is, you pull out and embellish all the negative elements about performing a task and you overlook or play down the positive elements and your ability to handle the task in question.

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Interval training is the repeated performance of high-intensity exercises, for set periods, followed by set periods of rest. Intervals can consist of any variety of movements with any variation of work and rest times. It burns far more calories and produces positive changes in body composition with much less time than aerobic training. This is not only because of the muscle it builds, but also the effect it has on the metabolism following the workouts. Strength training creates enough stress on the body’s homeostasis that a large energy (calorie) expenditure is required long after the exercise has stopped. During low-intensity aerobic exercise, fat oxidation occurs while exercising and stops upon completion. During high-intensity exercise your body oxidizes carbs for energy, not fat. Then, for a long time afterward, fat oxidation takes place to return systems to normal: to restore depleted carbohydrates, creatine phosphate, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), circulatory hormones, re-oxygenate the blood, and decrease body temperature, ventilation and heart rate. Not to mention the longer term demands: strengthening tendons and ligaments, increasing bone density, forming new capillaries, motor skill adaptation, repairing muscle tissue and building new muscle. And the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you are able to burn during and after exercise.

Thus strength training gives your metabolism a boost far beyond the duration of the actual workout, for as long as 48 hours. In contrast, after aerobic training your metabolism returns to normal almost immediately. So with interval training we’re not only building muscle, but we’re also able to kick up our metabolism long after–even when sleeping! Many people believe aerobic activity strengthens their heart, and decreases the chance of things like coronary artery disease. Yet, after much research, even U.S. Air Force Cardiologist Dr. Kenneth Cooper–the very man who coined the term “aerobics”–now believes there is no correlation between aerobic performance and health, longevity, or protection against heart disease. On the other hand, aerobic activities do carry with them a great risk of injury. Most, even so-called “low impact” classes or activities like stationary cycling, are not necessarily low-force. And things like running are extremely high-force, damaging to your knees, hips and back. Aerobic dance is even worse. Sure, you’ll hear the occasional genetic exception declare that they’ve never ever been injured doing these exercises. But overuse injuries are cumulative and often build undetected over years until it’s too late, leading to a decrease or loss of mobility as you age, which, in turn, too often leads to a shortened lifespan.

As soon as possible, following your workout you need to consume: • 30 – 50 grams of a lean complete protein like whey, soy, egg, chicken or fish. • 30 – 50 grams of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index. Why lean protein? Because fat slows the absorption of protein and carbs. During a brief window of opportunity after your workout, protein synthesis occurs at the highest rate. This is due to the micro-trauma (broken-down muscle tissue) that occurred during your workout. Complete recovery will be optimized if you provide your muscles with a large supply of amino acids—the key components of protein—within 45 minutes after your training session. A whey protein shake is the best post-workout protein choice because it is so rapidly absorbed, and it has the highest efficiency ratio, or availability to the body, of all proteins. Why carbs with a high glycemic index? Immediately following your workout is the only time to eat carbs that rapidly absorb into the blood stream as the glucose causes an insulin spike. Insulin helps shuttle protein into the muscles, repairing and building new muscle. It is also an important hormone that regulates the storage, replacement, and use of glucose. During a workout, the body uses stored glucose that is in the blood and muscles as fuel for the activity. If the lost glucose isn’t refilled within about 45 minutes after training, your body rapidly goes from an anabolic state (muscle growth and repair) to a catabolic state (cannibalizing of the body’s muscle for protein and energy). Since insulin signals the body to replenish and store glycogen, and the release of insulin is best triggered by eating foods with a high glycemic index, it makes sense that eating carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, along with some lean protein, is the best post-workout choice. An effective and convenient post workout meal is a whey or soy protein supplement, which contains maltodextrin, or simple sugars, as its carb source.

Exercise can also make us feel good, which helps make it enjoyable. After a good workout I feel simultaneously alert, euphoric, tranquil, and free from pain—not unlike taking an opioid. Actually, natural selection did adopt this drug-pushing strategy by having our brains manufacture an impressive cocktail of mood-altering pharmaceuticals in response to physical activity.16 The four most important of these endogenous drugs are dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and endocannabinoids, but in a classic evolutionary design flaw these primarily reward people who are already physically active.

So there we were before breakfast in the hotel garden beneath palm trees, all wearing our matching conference T-shirts. The sound of waves crashing into the hotel beach was drowned out by a boom box playing loud electro workout music to pump us up: exuberant, high-octane tunes with pulsating rhythms that keep building to new crescendos. After dividing into teams, we spent the next forty-five minutes racing from one exercise to the next—planks, squats, sit-ups, sprints, and burpees (a combined squat, push-up, and vertical jump)—constantly high-fiving each other and shouting encouragements. At the end, everyone was exhausted, and we all congratulated each other for our efforts, agreeing vociferously how much fun it was. I enjoyed myself, but was it fun? I did the exercises as best I could, but what I actually enjoyed was the camaraderie, the beautiful setting, the high-fiving, and even the music. Afterward, I also enjoyed the feeling of having exercised intensely. But frankly, the planks, squats, sit-ups, sprints, and burpees were hard. The routine brought to mind the running guru George Sheehan’s observation that “exercise is done against one’s wishes and maintained only because the alternative is worse.

She points to two devices in the center of the dark space. The contraptions are silver and remind me of the suits knights wore in past centuries. The armor hangs suspended between two metal wires. “They are concentraction machines.” I slide my body into the machine. Dry gel hugs my feet, my legs, my torso and arms and neck, till only my head is free. The machine is built to resist my movements, yet it responds even to the tiniest stimuli. The idea of building muscle is to exercise it, which is nothing more than using the muscle intensely enough to create microscopic tears in the tissue fiber. This is the pain one feels in the days after an intense workout—torn tissue—not lactic acid. When the muscle repairs the tears, it builds on itself. This is the process the concentraction machine is built to facilitate. It is the devil’s own invention. Harmony slides the device’s faceplate over my eyes. My body is still in the gym, but I see myself moving across the rugged landscape of Mars. I’m running, pumping my legs against the concentraction machine’s resistance, which increases according to Harmony’s mood or the location of the simulation. Sometimes I venture to the jungles of Earth, where I race panthers through the underbrush, or I take to the pocked surface of Luna before it was populated. But always I return home to Mars to run across its red soil and jump over its violent ravines. Harmony sometimes accompanies me in the other machine so I have someone to race.

Try to make sure... that you have somewhere in your house where you can do a workout, whether that's yoga, core-strength exercises, or an online class. If you know you have the space, it's harder to make an excuse as to why you can't fit a bit of movement into your morning, lunch break, or after work.

Each day, I noticed Coach sent us off with a positive comment. “It’s a great day to work together toward our goals,” he’d say after we’d gathered for the workout. On a particularly windy day, it would be: “What a great day to challenge and shape our perseverance.” Sometimes his words were simple—“Okay, let’s go”—and it was his upbeat, let’s-get-it-done inflection that set the tone for the workout.

What we eat and how much also affects our hormone levels. Our growth-hormone levels are naturally reduced by sugars and fats. That means eating a lot of cheesecake or other fatty desserts not only puts more fat into our bodies, but also diminishes our ability to burn it. It is a double penalty in which fat begets fat. Avoiding sugary foods also helps prevent the energy drop and hunger that result from insulin clearing the blood of nutrients. Eating about ten grams of protein after mild exercise, or twenty grams after more strenuous workouts, helps control hunger, as will adding plenty of fiber to one’s diet. Not

Twenty minutes in, I figured that yin was not the kind of yoga I’d seen on YouTube. It wasn’t a workout, which at first irritated me—I wanted that good butt, after all—and in my experience, if something wasn’t hard, it didn’t work.

Let’s say that you are doing the dumbbell curl with a weight that allows you to do 8 repetitions with good form. Each succeeding workout push yourself to perform an extra repetition without losing your good technique. When, after a period of weeks, you are able to do 12 reps with the weight that you started out doing 8 reps with, increase the weight slightly and drop back to 8 reps. You can continue progressing in this manner without limit.

Begin each workout with 3- 5 minutes of light cardio. If you don’t have access to an exercise bike or treadmill, you can simply jog around your garden/ outdoor space. Or jog on the spot for 60 seconds, perform jumping jacks for 30 seconds, followed by high knees for another 30 seconds and repeat 2-3 times.

Next, do some dynamic stretching specifically to the body parts you will be working on. These could include arm circles, leg swings, trunk circles, bodyweight squats, or lunges. We will explore this further in the Mobility chapter. After the workout, you should do static stretching, which we shall explore further in the flexibility chapter. I also recommend using a foam roller to perform a self-myofascial release massage either pre and/or post workout. This simply involves placing the roller between the muscle group you wish to work and the floor or a wall. You then roll back and forth to apply pressure to the muscle.

Stretching Recommendations The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends flexibility exercises for all of the major muscle-tendon groups - neck, shoulders, trunk, lower back, hips, legs, ankles - 2-3 times per week. Spend up to 60 seconds on each stretch; if you can only hold the stretch for 20 seconds, repeat the stretch three times. Never bounce into a stretch. Perform dynamic stretches before your workout. Perform static stretching after your workout. If you are doing a separate stretching session, do a 5 minute warm up of cardio and dynamic stretches.

Increasing workout frequency is going to increase your after burn.  By doing a workout every day, you can effectively raise your resting metabolic rate all of the time.

The starting point to constructing your workout program is deciding how often you will exercise. The current general recommendations for physical activity are 150 minutes of aerobic activity week at moderate-intensity exercise. That equates to about half an hour a day, five days a week. That activity should include doing a range of physical activities that incorporate fitness, strength, balance and flexibility. However, such activities as gardening and playing sport should also be included in your total exercise count. Including these types of activities will help to make sure that you are getting the proper balance between exercise and recovery. Alternatively, it is recommended that you do 75 minutes of vigorous intensity exercise on a weekly basis. On top of that, you should do muscle strengthening activity on at least two days per week.

Strength training workouts will usually last between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on whether you are training designated body parts or your whole body.

When you first start working out, don’t go full out straight away. If you exhaust yourself straight off the bat, you’ll be adding fuel to the idea that you don’t like exercising. Take it steady and build up gradually, enjoying the training along the way. Exercise is movement. It’s not confined to the gym or a set block of workout time. It could be walking, swimming, playing basketball or any other activity that you enjoy that will get your heart rate up for 30 minutes.

By having a shake right after your workout, you stop the stress hormone cortisol secretion and start the positive hormones and nutrients to expedite the recovery process and maximize lean muscle growth.

We just had a body picked up by an inappropriately hot mortician. Apparently lifting dead bodies is a good workout, yo. It wasn’t just me, all four of my coworkers in viewing range were all, “Whaaaaa????” And then after he left, one muttered, “who else can we kill?” Don’t judge, we’ve got to blow off steam somehow

again. After their “rolling” session, Reece and Freddy ran a few laps around the inside wall of the compound before getting into their morning workout. Like most of the special operations community, their

Recovery" is everything you do outside the gym to take care of yourself: eating, sleeping, stretching, managing stress. Another oversight of the "workout"-based type of exercise is that it does not teach us to care at all about this stuff. If you're like me, you might have even been conditioned to believe, for instance, that eating a nice big meal after a workout would be "wasting the workout." In reality, the *opposite* is true: if you don't eat enough, you are only setting yourself up for an unfair and unnecessary amount of soreness. And this is true of all recovery dimensions: if you don't sleep, or if you don't manage your stress, you will be miserable trying to build muscle.

Advanced Program After you have acclimated to WBV and built up your tolerance and strength, you can maximize the health and wellness workout benefits by following these training tips. Whole body vibration exercise is much more intense than conventional exercises. Workout times can be drastically shortened; you can accomplish the same results in ten minutes that would take you sixty minutes with conventional exercise. This is true because WBV requires your body to constantly respond to the rapidly moving platform beneath you. Four factors determine how effective and challenging your training sessions are: 1. the frequency (rate of vibration) 2. the position or posture you assume 3. the amount of time you spend holding a given position 4. the amount of weight you are supporting on the plate (if you want a more challenging workout, hold additional exercise weights)

I decided to make a price pact with myself. After making time in my timeboxed schedule, I taped a crisp hundred-dollar bill to the calendar on my wall, next to the date of my upcoming workout. Then I bought a ninety-nine-cent lighter and placed it nearby. Every day, I had a choice to make: I would either burn the calories by exercising or burn the hundred-dollar bill. Unless I was certifiably sick, those were the only two options I allowed myself. Any time I found myself coming up with petty excuses, I had a crystal clear external trigger that reminded me of the precommitment I made to myself and to my health. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s too extreme! You can’t burn money like that!” That’s exactly my point. I’ve used this “burn or burn” technique for over three years and have gained twelve pounds of muscle, without ever burning the hundred dollars.

decided to make a price pact with myself. After making time in my timeboxed schedule, I taped a crisp hundred-dollar bill to the calendar on my wall, next to the date of my upcoming workout. Then I bought a ninety-nine-cent lighter and placed it nearby. Every day, I had a choice to make: I would either burn the calories by exercising or burn the hundred-dollar bill. Unless I was certifiably sick, those were the only two options I allowed myself. Any time I found myself coming up with petty excuses, I had a crystal clear external trigger that reminded me of the precommitment I made to myself and to my health. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s too extreme! You can’t burn money like that!” That’s exactly my point. I’ve used this “burn or burn” technique for over three years and have gained twelve pounds of muscle, without ever burning the hundred dollars.

Build some muscle. Muscle is more metabolically expensive than body fat. The more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn each day—even at rest. Having more muscle also improves your body’s ability to regulate blood glucose levels after meals, which has been linked to reduced body fat levels.3 Increase workout intensity. Adding more daily activity like walking is a good idea, but adding more intensity to your exercise routine will make a bigger impact on your metabolism. This is due to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. After an intense weight training session or circuit training routine, your body burns calories at a higher rate for several hours after the exercise session has ended. Move more. Look for opportunities to increase nonexercise movement throughout the day: taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking while talking on the phone instead of sitting down, or standing instead of sitting when possible.

It’s a perspective on story that may also shed light on why you and I and everyone else spend a couple of hours each day concocting tales that we rarely remember and more rarely share. By day I mean night, and the tales are those we produce during REM sleep. Well over a century since Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, there is still no consensus on why we dream. I read Freud’s book for a junior-year high school class called Hygiene (yes, that’s really what it was called), a somewhat bizarre requirement taught by the school’s gym teachers and sports coaches that focused on first aid and common standards of cleanliness. Lacking material to fill an entire semester, the class was padded by mandatory student presentations on topics deemed loosely relevant. I chose sleep and dreams and probably took it all too seriously, reading Freud and spending after-school hours combing through research literature. The wow moment for me, and for the class too, was the work of Michel Jouvet, who in the late 1950s explored the dream world of cats.32 By impairing part of the cat brain (the locus coeruleus, if you like that sort of thing), Jouvet removed a neural block that ordinarily prevents dream thoughts from stimulating bodily action, resulting in sleeping cats who crouched and arched and hissed and pawed, presumably reacting to imaginary predators and prey. If you didn’t know the animals were asleep, you might think they were practicing a feline kata. More recently, studies on rats using more refined neurological probes have shown that their brain patterns when dreaming so closely match those recorded when awake and learning a new maze that researchers can track the progress of the dreaming rat mind as it retraces its earlier steps.33 When cats and rats dream it surely seems they’re rehearsing behaviors relevant to survival. Our common ancestor with cats and rodents lived some seventy or eighty million years ago, so extrapolating a speculative conclusion across species separated by tens of thousands of millennia comes with ample warning labels. But one can imagine that our language-infused minds may produce dreams for a similar purpose: to provide cognitive and emotional workouts that enhance knowledge and exercise intuition—nocturnal sessions on the flight simulator of story. Perhaps that is why in a typical life span we each spend a solid seven years with eyes closed, body mostly paralyzed, consuming our self-authored tales.34 Intrinsically, though, storytelling is not a solitary medium. Storytelling is our most powerful means for inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential to our survival and our dominance. This offers a related design rationale for coding story into the human behavioral repertoire—for identifying, that is, the adaptive utility of our storytelling instinct.

The kettlebell originated in Russia in the 1700s, when farmers used to use kettlebells to help weigh their crops. After a while though, it is said that the farmers realized that they were getting stronger, and they found out that these new weights they were using on their crops were perfect for showcasing their new found strength. They started off competing in local trade fairs and festivals; but by the 1900s, the sport was being practiced all over Eastern Europe. It was so popular and so effective at conditioning the body that even the soviet military used kettlebells as part of their physical training and conditioning regime.

Instead of dwindling into an atrophic puddle of sick fat, we can make our ending like a failed last rep at the end of a final workout. Strong, vigorous and useful, to the last.

Moving vigorously shortly after you get up will generate an alchemy in your brain—based on its neurobiology—which will not only wake you up fully but electrify your focus and energy, amplify your self-discipline and launch your day in a way that makes you feel on fire. Now, to be ultra-practical for you two, I’ll say that your workout could mean taking a spinning class

After the workout is over, I am always glad I talked myself into going.

I am interested to see how Hawaii’s ‘War On The Homeless’ is going to work out on Maui after the loss of historic Lahaina town.

After contracting Lyme disease and operating at ~10% capacity for 9 months in 2014, I made health #1. Prior to Lyme, I’d worked out and eaten well, but when push came to shove, “health #1” was negotiable. Now, it’s literally #1. What does this mean? If I sleep poorly and have an early morning meeting, I’ll cancel the meeting last-minute if needed and catch up on sleep. If I’ve missed a workout and have a conference call coming up in 30 minutes? Same. Late-night birthday party with a close friend? Not unless I can sleep in the next morning. In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I MUST be fine with paying, or I will lose weeks or months to sickness and fatigue. Making health #1 50% of the time doesn’t work. It’s absolutely all-or-nothing. If it’s #1 50% of the time, you’ll compromise precisely when it’s most important not to. The artificial urgency common to startups makes mental and physical health a rarity. I’m tired of unwarranted last-minute “hurry up and sign” emergencies and related fire drills. It’s a culture of cortisol.

However, after ten weeks of intensive workouts and weight loss on the paleo diet, the participants’ LDL cholesterol levels actually went up.

I loved it when my blood rushed. After six months of my workout routine I was addicted to feeling like a throbbing clit.

Kissing Ellie was like putting on glasses after a lifetime of squinting at far-away shapes. Like the first gasp of air after cliff diving into the ocean. Like a cold shower after a hard summer workout. Like a fucking reward.

ENDORPHINS SERVE ONE purpose and one purpose only: to mask physical pain. That’s it. Think of endorphins as our own personal opiate. Often released in response to stress or fear, they mask physical pain with pleasure. The experience of a “runner’s high,” the feeling of euphoria many athletes experience during or after a hard workout, is in fact the endorphin chemical surging through their veins.

No girl will pick six-pack abs over six cars. So, drop the dumbbells and grab a briefcase. Swap your protein shakes for paychecks and deadlifts for dollar signs. Abs might get a glance, but a garage full of luxury rides? Now that’s a head-turner. So, quit sweating at the gym and start hustling at work. After all, muscles flex, but money talks—and it’s fluent in 'Vroom Vroom' and 'Cha-Ching'!

How is it possible for someone to look so good after a workout?

Back when I started ColorComm, I was living in a small DC apartment with slow dial up Internet, so I spent two hours before work and two hours after work using the free Wi-Fi at the hotel across the street. It was a lot of long days, too little sleep, morning workouts and evening drinks missed in favor of doing more work - but it was worth it to me because I knew my dream was to one day leave my firm and run ColorComm full-time. I was willing to put in the exra hours. But if reading this makes you cringe with dread, or if you just don't want to spend that much time working, that's okay! It is not necessary to work from dawn to dusk every single day in order to have a successful career. But that reaction also means you probably shouldn't plan to make your side hustle your full time job anytime soon, because you may not be passionate enough or hungry enough to make it happen.

Like most of the special operations community, their physical training centered on useful strength, cardiovascular endurance, and durability, which, as both of them were pushing age forty, was increasingly important. Looking like a steroid-fueled bodybuilder was not part of the equation and was a liability in terms of both physical performance and blending into civilian populations. Their workouts pulled elements from various coaches and training programs, including CrossFit, Gym Jones, and StrongFirst. The idea wasn’t to be able to compete with endurance athletes, power lifters, or alpinists, but to achieve a broad-based level of fitness that would allow them to perform well in each of those areas. After a series of warm-up exercises that most would consider a serious workout, they completed the strength and endurance Hero WOD “Murph,” named in honor of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Mike Murphy. Wearing their body armor, they started with one hundred burpees followed by four one-hundred-yard buddy carries. Then it was right into a two-mile run, one hundred pull-ups, two hundred push-ups, three hundred air squats, followed by another two-mile run. Both men powered through, thinking of the scores of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who didn’t make it home.

What? Not a good enough workout for you. I must be losing my touch. I thought I’d done you in after those two orgasms before bed, not to mention that bonus one in the middle of the night.” “No, I mean, yes. It was good.” I’ve never had this much trouble forming words in my life. “Just good? My pride is wounded.” He throws a hand to his chest. “You should take up acting if the hockey thing doesn’t work out there, drama queen. It was amazing and you know it, but…” “No buts, I refuse to hear any buts before breakfast. Eat up. We can talk after breakfast.

Prayer is powerful, so find times throughout the day to pray. Here are some examples: before you get out of bed, before meals, before and after your workout, while you’re on a walk, before bed, and with your family.

Like every new skill, mastering your morning routine will take some time. Review any notes or highlights you made while reading this book, and follow our simple process: Write down your new routine. Be as specific as necessary. (For example, “go to the bathroom” may not require further detail.) Use waking up as the trigger to begin your morning routine, with each subsequent element of your routine reminding you to start on the next element. Start small—a five-minute workout is less intimidating than a half-hour session. Give yourself small rewards after completing the hardest parts of your routine. Give each new element you bring into your morning routine a fair shot. Trying something for just a couple of days before giving up isn’t enough. Though opinion varies on how long it takes for something to become a habit, we suggest you give each new element at least a one- or two-week trial to see how you like it.

I love you,” I try. It isn’t nearly as hard to say as I thought it would be. “I love you so much.” Actually, it does hurt to say it. But it aches in a good way. Like sore muscles after a good workout. It aches like progress. Roddy leans down and places a soft kiss on my temple. “I know,” he says. “I love you, too. Now just relax.