Gym Couple Quotes

The theme of the dance was "Great Romances," or some such nonsense. There were projections of supposedly great couples from the past on the walls of the gym. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Hermione and Ron, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.

What I really needed wasn't a dose of school spirit; it was a glass of water, an aspirin the size of my fist, and the answers to the history exam that I hadn't studied for the night before. "As long as I'm dreaming," I muttered, my words lost to the cacophony of the gym, "I'd also like a pony, a convertible, and a couple of friends." "That's a tall order." I'd known that there were people sitting next to me, but I couldn't begin to imagine how one of them had heard me. I hadn't even heard me. "Would you settle for a piece of gum, an orange Tic Tac, and an introduction the the school slut?

Your brain is involved in everything you do. Your brain controls everything you do, feel, and think. When you look in the mirror, you can thank your brain for what you see. Ultimately, it is your brain that determines whether your belly bulges over your belt buckle or your waistline is trim and toned. Your brain plays the central role in whether your skin looks fresh and dewy or is etched with wrinkles. Whether you wake up feeling energetic or groggy depends on your brain. When you head to the kitchen to make breakfast, it is your brain that determines whether you go for the leftover pizza or the low-fat yogurt and fruit. Your brain controls whether you hit the gym or sit at the computer to check your Facebook page. If you feel the need to light up a cigarette or drink a couple cups of java, that's also your brain's doing.ACTION STEP Remember that your brain is involved in everything you do, every decision you make, every bite of food you take, every cigarette you smoke, every worrisome thought you have, every workout you skip, every alcoholic beverage you drink, and more.

Getting down to the gym a couple days a week and having low-fat milk in your morning latte isn’t going to make much of a dent in a system or lifestyle that is essentially, well, unwell.

Is there any chance the tutor is, you know, gay?” I held my breath, waiting for his answer. “What, like I hand out a survey?” He laughed when I blinked, worried I’d just offended him. “I’m just messing with ya. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t play for my team. Though if he did, he’d be a little out of my league.” He sucked in and patted his stomach, which was made somewhat flat by his efforts. “Nothing a couple of weeks at the gym and giving up bread for the weekend wouldn’t take care of.” I rolled my eyes. “Shut up.” He sighed. “I love being a guy. Need to lose five pounds? Go without ketchup for a couple of weeks. Problem. Solved.” We shouldered our backpacks and trudged up the stairs. “I really hate you right now.

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.

With the mistaken premise that my stay-at-home work and his accomplished career required equal emotional energy, I couldn’t understand where he got the vigor to worry about his ego being rejected or his sex drive being ignored. For me, it was all hands on deck, between our kids and our house and our work. Sex, passion, romance, I thought, could certainly wait. And maybe some part of me reasoned that when I had suffered a loss, he had been too busy to support me. So what could he possibly ask of me now? But now, in the fresh mental air of my momspringa, I start to understand the kind of neglect John must have felt when I fell asleep in one of the kids’ beds every night or stopped kissing him hello and instead threw a preschooler into his arms the minute he walked in the door. At the moment I’m walking in his shoes: my children are cared for by someone else, my days are spent in rich mental exercise, I get plenty of sleep, and I go to the gym every day. In other words, I have the emotional energy to think about desire and how good it feels to be wanted. Yes, John had clean pressed shirts without having to ask, and yes, we had family dinners together that looked perfect and tasted as good, and yes, he never had to be on call when Joe started getting bullied for the first time or when Cori’s tampon leaked at a diving tournament. Yet while I was bending over backward to meet his children’s every need, his own were going ignored. And was it the chicken or the egg that started that ball rolling? If he had, only once, driven the carpool in my place, would I have suddenly wanted to greet him at the door in Saran Wrap? Or was I so incredibly consumed with the worry-work of motherhood that no contribution from him would have made me look up from my kids? I don’t know. I only know that in this month, when I have gotten time with friends, time for myself, positive attention from men, and yep, a couple of nice new bras, parts of me that were asleep for far too long are starting to wake up. I am seeing my children with a new, longer lens and seeing how grown up they are, how capable. I am seeing John as the lonely, troubled man he was when he walked out on us and understanding, for the first time, what part I played in that. I am seeing Talia’s lifestyle choices—singlehood, careerism, passionate pursuits—as less outrageous and more reasonable than ever before. And most startling of all, I am seeing myself looking down the barrel of another six years of single parenting, martyrdom, and self-neglect and feeling very, very conflicted.

Suddenly he felt his foot catch on something and he stumbled over one of the trailing cables that lay across the laboratory floor. The cable went tight and pulled one of the instruments monitoring the beam over, sending it falling sideways and knocking the edge of the frame that held the refractive shielding plate in position. For what seemed like a very long time the stand wobbled back and forth before it tipped slowly backwards with a crash. ‘Take cover!’ Professor Pike screamed, diving behind one of the nearby workbenches as the other Alpha students scattered, trying to shield themselves behind the most solid objects they could find. The beam punched straight through the laboratory wall in a cloud of vapour and alarm klaxons started wailing all over the school. Professor Pike scrambled across the floor towards the bundle of thick power cables that led to the super-laser, pulling them from the back of the machine and extinguishing the bright green beam. ‘Oops,’ Franz said as the emergency lighting kicked in and the rest of the Alphas slowly emerged from their hiding places. At the back of the room there was a perfectly circular, twenty-centimetre hole in the wall surrounded by scorch marks. ‘I am thinking that this is not being good.’ Otto walked cautiously up to the smouldering hole, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the beam emitter that was making a gentle clicking sound as it cooled down. ‘Woah,’ he said as he peered into the hole. Clearly visible were a series of further holes beyond that got smaller and smaller with perspective. Dimly visible at the far end was what could only be a small circle of bright daylight. ‘Erm, I don’t know how to tell you this, Franz,’ Otto said, turning towards his friend with a broad grin on his face, ‘but it looks like you just made a hole in the school.’ ‘Oh dear,’ Professor Pike said, coming up beside Otto and also peering into the hole. ‘I do hope that we haven’t damaged anything important.’ ‘Or anyone important,’ Shelby added as she and the rest of the Alphas gathered round. ‘It is not being my fault,’ Franz moaned. ‘I am tripping over the cable.’ A couple of minutes later, the door at the far end of the lab hissed open and Chief Dekker came running into the room, flanked by two guards in their familiar orange jumpsuits. Otto and the others winced as they saw her. It was well known already that she had no particular love for H.I.V.E.’s Alpha stream and she seemed to have a special dislike for their year in particular. ‘What happened?’ she demanded as she strode across the room towards the Professor. Her thin, tight lips and sharp cheekbones gave the impression that she was someone who’d heard of this thing called smiling but had decided that it was not for her. ‘There was a slight . . . erm . . . malfunction,’ the Professor replied with a fleeting glance in Franz’s direction. ‘Has anyone been injured?’ ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Dekker replied tersely, ‘but I think it’s safe to say that Colonel Francisco won’t be using that particular toilet cubicle again.’ Franz visibly paled at the thought of the Colonel finding out that he had been in any way responsible for whatever indignity he had just suffered. He had a sudden horribly clear vision of many laps of the school gym somewhere in his not too distant future.

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.

EATING IN AND OUT Going hungry to a restaurant or party is a common pitfall that can lead to some major overeating, especially since it’s these places where you typically consume the most unhealthy food. Unlike when you prepare your meals yourself, you can’t control your food’s content when you’re out on the town. Even if you try to eat the healthiest thing on the menu, you’d be amazed by the amount of butter and oil they throw on just about everything in the kitchen. A great secret to not overeating at restaurants and parties is to simply eat a small meal right before you leave home. That way, when you get there, you’re focused on having fun, instead of waiting for food to fill your belly. Focus on enjoying yourself, the company you’re with, and the party or restaurant—not on dieting or gorging yourself. You order less, save more money, and tend to really enjoy what you eat because you’re eating to satisfy your taste buds, not your empty stomach. So don’t sweat it if you go out a couple of times a week to eat. Just try to eat as balanced of a meal as you can comfortably, and don’t stuff yourself. All it takes is a small meal beforehand. Just remember, between traveling to the restaurant, being seated, getting menus, ordering and having your food cooked, chances are you’re not going to actually be served food for another hour at the very earliest. So think ahead. Don’t ever leave your house hungry. Eat a little beforehand, order less, and have more fun.

The Monday night after Halloween, I made myself go to the college Bible study Willie was teaching. There were about six or seven other guys, and we met in the gym. Brian, the guy I’d seen at the party, was there too. I wasn’t too worried. Since he was at the party, he probably wasn’t too proud of himself and wouldn’t be telling my brother about it. But Willie got up in front of us and said, “I know some of you guys are struggling, and struggling hard.” That got my attention. I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, but I remember thinking, He’s never said anything like that before. A couple nights later, I got drunk and went to the movies. When I came out to the parking lot, I saw a note on the windshield of my truck. I picked it up and unfolded it. “I know what you’ve been up to. We need to talk.” It was from Willie.

Temptation Bundling One approach to fighting wayward urges involves “temptation bundling,” in which subjects couple a “want” activity with a “should.” In one experiment, Milkman divided participants into three groups. The full group was allowed to listen to audio novels of their choice only at the gym; after their workouts, the novels were locked away. The intermediate group was allowed to keep the audio novels but was encouraged to listen only at the gym. The third, unrestricted group was not limited in any way and could listen to novels whenever they chose. At the start of a nine-week intervention, the full group visited the gym 51 percent more often than the unrestricted group. The intermediates visited the gym 29 percent more than the unrestricteds. Meaning: pairing a “want” activity (listening to a juicy audiobook) with a “should” one (going to the gym) was a strong incentive to exercise. The method was so valuable that when the experiment was done, 61 percent of the participants opted to pay the gym to restrict access to their audiobooks. The effect fades over several months, though, so people have to switch the “want” activity to stay engaged. Even so, these results open up multitudes of possibilities. If we pair an unappealing chore with something we like to do, we increase the odds that we’ll perform the challenging task. For example, you could buy yourself an item of clothing every week you lose some weight. This will force you to assess your body and give you a reward for being disciplined. This is temptation bundling, but it’s also giving yourself a break from a constant stream of “should” activities. It recharges your brain and makes you stronger for the next time a little self-control is required (see below, “Don’t Overdo It”). Another method of improving self-control is the use of precommitment devices, which allow you to lock in good behavior tomorrow based on your good intentions today. An example of this is a website called stickK.com that helps people create commitment contracts. On the site you create a contract with yourself in which you set a goal—for example, losing ten pounds by a specified date. You deposit money into an account and then you select a trainer or coach to referee and confirm whether or not you achieved your goal. If you don’t hit your target, you lose that money. The process ensures that once tomorrow becomes today, you’ll feel a strong pinch if you break the contract. For example, you can commit to giving $500 to charity if you don’t achieve your goal by the specified date. Or choose an anticharity, meaning if you fail you must give money to an organization you don’t want to help, such as the opposing political party, which is an extra incentive not to fail. Using precommitment devices is a way of forcing your future self to do what your present self thinks it should.

Poor things were laden down and they were only youngsters. When I went to school at their age we had a couple of books and our shorts and vests if it was gym class that day, now it seemed like they were expected to do homework every night and carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Whatever happened to just being able to go to school, play with your mates, learn a little, then forget about it when the school day was over?

He hoped it didn’t show on his face that just looking at her in the dim firelight was a treat, a delight. Her hair all mussed from bed, her feet bare, her cheeks pinked up from anxiety, she almost took his breath away. He knew she was skittish around men to the point that she couldn’t even go to a coed gym to work out, and he didn’t delude himself that he was exempt from that category, not even after all the time they’d had together. Oh, perhaps at the moment, as they shared a couch with a couple of feet separating them. But if he tried to get too close right now, she would freak. Bolt. Melt down. “Maybe

Failure is completely overrated. I mean, it’s just not that bad. Most people have an irrational fear for how bad failure will be, and the bad thing about that is that they then don’t take enough risks. If you don’t take intelligent risks that push your boundaries, you’re not going to get much done in your life. So take intelligent risks that stretch your comfort level. And when you fail, lay low for a couple months, hit the waves or the gym—or whatever works for you. Then get up, start dreaming, and move forward again. Jump.

Rooms For Rent Atlanta That Cater To Your Personal Growth Are you looking for just the right room to rent? Maybe you have the resources you need to find it yourself. After all, this is the age of the search engine, and plenty of information is available to anyone who seriously looks for it. There is a wide variety of choice, so you can concentrate only on those homes that might potentially be for you. There are plenty of advantages to occupying rooms for rent atlanta. You save a lot of money paying only part of the expenses you would normally pay for when you have a house of your own. This is because you only have to pay your share of the rent, water, electricity and heat bills. But there are disadvantages to house share too. Conflicts can arise when you live in house that is not yours, especially if you rent a room in a house where the other residents are from a different background than yours. Having a nice place to stay can even help your physical health, and it surely affects your mental health. You may find a place also that comes with furniture already in it. This would allow you to get by with spending less on not only the furniture but the transportation too. Sometimes you can actually save money finding rooms for rent atlanta in the country. This depends on how often you plan to visit the city. If you have a job you can do from home, or if you are retired and collecting benefits, then there is no real reason for you to pay the extra money to live in the city. Of course there are many choices you need to make while you are searching for a room. Some people just do not enjoy living alone. Renting an entire apartment to oneself can, indeed, be a lonely experience. For those who want an easy opportunity to socialize, then, renting a room is a great option. It is little wonder that so many houses on campuses around the country are full of young students renting rooms - its partly for convenience, and definitely partly for the chance to be among others their own age. Renting a room provides the chance to be among one’s peers. There are many more benefits, but perhaps the biggest and best is the advantage of not being locked into something for life. Room rentals can be very appealing, and they can complement the kind of lifestyle you want and deserve. If you want to find the spirit or soul of a city, move right in with its inhabitants. You may benefit socially by taking a couple of classes at the local college. You might try looking for rooms for rent atlanta where there are games, indoor or outdoor. This is a great way to meet people and get started in your new life. Depending on the weather, you might want a pool or access to a gym or tennis courts. Maybe you are attracted to the kind of community that has stunning architecture and green trees and plants. There may be a certain type of street design that appeals to you.

If we keep abusing ourselves, God is not going to just keep us happy and healthy. We need to start cooperating with God. When I get up in the morning and I know I have to exercise again, I heard my flesh say a couple of weeks ago in the gym, you know your flesh will talk to you, and I was starting to work out with my trainer and I heard my flesh say: Do I have to do this for the rest of my life? So I answered it back: Yes, you are. See you don’t have to let your flesh push you around, you can talk back to it because the enemy works through your flesh. If you don’t do what you need to do to take care of yourself, then you are basically killing your own self. If you will just start with some simple basic things... How many of you do not drink enough water, how many of you do not get enough sleep, how many of you eat too much sugar, how many of you feel bad most of the time? I am just saying God has a work to do through you, and he wants you to feel good, he wants you to have energy, he wants you to have enthusiasm, and he wants you to be zealous for life. He wants you to love your life. God doesn’t want you to just get up every day and drag yourself around trying to make it through the day.

The west end guy peeled away from his window and started walking. Heading east. Fifteen feet behind Rutherford. Moving with loose, rangy ease. He was clearly having to shorten his stride to avoid overtaking his mark. Ahead of them a woman had stopped at the edge of the sidewalk to tend to a child in a stroller. Beyond her a couple stood, talking. They were dressed for the gym. Just regular folks. Not part of the pattern. Unaware of what was happening.

Again, let’s take the Push Up, a standard exercise that works your chest, shoulders, triceps, abs, obliques, and lower back (unlike benching which only works half of these). If you do Push Ups standing up with your hands against a wall a couple of feet in front of you, the exercise is pretty easy. Then try them with your hands on an elevated surface, like the edge of a bureau or windowsill. The lower the surface you use–a desk, a couch, a coffee table, telephone books–the harder it gets. Putting your hands on the floor, like a standard Push Up, is harder. If we put our feet on the coffee table and our hands on the ground, the exercise becomes significantly more difficult. This is using leverage to increase the exercise’s difficulty. To make the exercise still harder we could place our hands on one or two balls, like a basketball. Now we’re using an unstable surface. Still harder would be to do basketball Push Ups with pauses at the bottom. Still not hard enough? Try doing them one-handed on the floor. Then one-handed with your feet on the couch. Then on an unstable surface. Then with pauses … You get the idea. And this is only a simple example that can be repeated with many of my exercises. You’ll see the possibilities are endless. So there you have it: We’ve gone from one variation of an exercise, that probably everyone reading this book can do, to a more difficult variation that probably no one reading this book can do right off the bat. The difficulty of bodyweight exercises can be tailored to suit the needs of virtually anyone. You have total control of the resistance.

Resigned that I wasn’t going back to sleep, I rolled up and got out of bed once another glance at my phone confirmed it was seven thirty and instantly peeked out the window. There was a dull, repetitive sound coming from out there. It was Mr. Rhodes. Chopping wood. Shirtless. And I mean shirtless. I’d expected something nice beneath his clothes from the way he filled them out, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of… him. Reality. If I wasn’t already pretty sure that there was dry drool on my face, there would have been five minutes after seeing all…. That through the window. A pile of foot-long logs were tossed around his feet, with another small pile that he’d obviously already chopped, just to the side. But it was the rest of him that really drew my attention. Dark chest hair was sprinkled high over his pectorals. The body hair did nothing to take away from the hard slabs of abdominal muscles he’d been hiding; he was broad up top, narrow at the waist, and covering all that was firm, beautiful skin. His biceps were big and supple. Shoulders rounded. His forearms were incredible. And even though his shorts grazed his knees, I could tell the rest of his downtown area was nice and muscular. He was the DILF to end all DILFs. My ex had been fit. He’d worked out several times a week at our home gym with a trainer. Being attractive had been part of his job. Kaden’s physique had nothing on Mr. Rhodes though. My mouth watered a little more. I whistled. And I must have done it a lot louder than I’d thought because his head instantly went up and his gaze landed on me through the window almost immediately. Busted. I waved. And inside… inside, I died. He lifted his chin. I backed away, trying to play it off. Maybe he wouldn’t think anything of it. Maybe he’d think I’d whistled… to say hi. Sure, yeah. A girl could dream. I backed up some more and felt my soul shriveling as I made my breakfast, making sure to stay away from the window the rest of the time. I tried to focus on other stuff. You know, so I wouldn’t want to have to move out from shame. Was I tired? Absolutely. But there were things I wanted to do. Needed to do. Including but not limited to getting away from Mr. Rhodes so my soul could come back to life. So an hour later, with a plan in mind, a sandwich, a couple bottles of water, and my whistle in my backpack, I headed down the stairs, hoping and praying that Mr. Rhodes was back in his house. I wasn’t that lucky. He had a shirt on, but that was the only difference. Darn.

It was 1992, and the Knicks were hosting their first annual summer camp for youngsters. Like many camps with professional teams, the club wanted to have one of its players make an appearance for a day. Not someone like Ewing, a star who had too many demands on his time already. But not someone from the end of the bench, either. So they asked Mason—basically still new to the NBA—if he’d appear for $1,500. The forward said yes, and the team provided him with a limousine to the camp that day. Mason had his window rolled down as the vehicle arrived, and the kids hovered around it like paparazzi, wanting to catch a glimpse of him up close. Yet Mason stayed in the car. First for two minutes. Then five. Then almost fifteen. Finally Ed Tapscott, then the club’s administrative director, came outside. He’d been responsible for Mason’s appearance at the camp that day, and couldn’t figure out why Mason wasn’t making his way inside the gym. “I’m not getting out of the car for anything less than $2,000, bro. And I want cash,” Mason told him. Tapscott figured he was joking at first. But Mason was completely serious. Sure, he’d agreed to the $1,500 figure before, but now—with an army of young, excited kids waiting inside—he had the leverage to play hardball. Tapscott said he wasn’t even sure he could realistically get access to that much cash that soon. “I had to give one of our staffers my ATM card,” he recalls. “What choice did I really have in a situation like that?” With assurance of the pay increase, Mason hopped out. He played in a couple of scrimmages with the children. But, in classic Mason fashion, he couldn’t turn off his competitiveness. While playing, Mason inadvertently elbowed a kid, knocking the child out cold and breaking his nose, which gushed with blood. When the boy regained consciousness, he woke to find a worried Mason hovering over him. The child smiled and asked the Knick to sign his bloody T-shirt. Meanwhile, Tapscott said he and others running the camp were merely happy to escape the situation without the threat of a lawsuit.

Kettlebells are compact, inexpensive, virtually indestructible, and can be used anywhere. The unique nature of kettlebell lifts provides a powerful training effect with a relatively light weight, and you can replace an entire gym with a couple of kettlebells. Dan John, Master SFG[1] and a highly accomplished power athlete, famously quipped, “With this kettlebell in my bedroom I can prepare myself for the Nationals.

there was a dark-skinned cleaning guy at the gym, he worked nights, and Anders had always been nice to him, but the cleaning guy had started to look at him in a new way after Anders changed, and Anders had not liked it, but it got him thinking, and he had realized that the cleaning guy was the only guy at the gym who never exercised there, and he was such a small guy, and was he hired because of that, because he was small, in a place where it was important to be big, and did he have a family, bad where he came from, or was he alone, and why had Anders never asked him these things, and why did the new way he looked at Anders bother Anders, the way he looked at Anders like Anders could talk to him, but Anders had not yet talked to him, not beyond the usual hey there, have a good one, and Anders had decided he would talk to him, finally after all these years, he would stop being nice to him, which was not really being nice to him, it was just treating the cleaning guy like a puppy, a dog, that you give a couple pats to, and call out good boy, and instead Anders would talk to him, and see what he had to say, not because Anders was better than before, but because the way Anders saw stuff was not the same, because the cleaning guy could probably tell Anders a few things, and Anders could probably stand to learn.

There was never a man from the gym.

He imagined a reality show host selling Los Angeles to a live audience: “Are you a surfer dude hitting the waves? You’ll fit right in. How about a hipster starting a gluten-free cookie brand or a new church? Of course. And is there a place for a young family raising small children? You bet. How about a retired couple wanting to play bingo all day? Indeed. High-powered executives? Yes! Lawyers, doctors, agents, and managers? Best place to thrive. Gym buffs, starlets, chefs, yoga teachers, students, writers, healers, misfits, trainers, nurses? Right this way, please. Are you into cosplay, improv, porn, Roller Derby, voyeurism, cemetery movie screenings, food truck drag racing, AA, relapse, rehab, open mic, plastic surgery, wine tastings, biker meetups, karaoke, clubbing, S and M, or escape rooms? Come on over!” Every race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and food preference was well represented within Los Angeles County, and this is what Oscar loved most about his city;

I like to explain stability using an analogy from my favorite sport, auto racing. A few years ago I drove to a racetrack in Southern California to spend a couple of days training with my coach. To warm up, I took a few “sedan laps” in my street car at the time, a modified BMW M3 coupe with a powerful 460+ HP engine. After months of creeping along on clogged Southern California freeways, it was hugely fun to dive into the corners and fly down the straightaways. Then I switched to the track car we had rented, basically a stripped-down, race-worthy version of the popular BMW 325i. Although this vehicle’s engine produced only about one-third as much power (165 HP) as my street car, my lap times in it were several seconds faster, which is an eternity in auto racing. What made the difference? The track car’s 20 percent lighter weight played a part, but far more important were its tighter chassis and its stickier, race-grade tires. Together, these transmitted more of the engine’s force to the road, allowing this car to go much faster through the corners. Though my street car was quicker in the long straights, it was much slower overall because it could not corner as efficiently. The track car was faster because it had better stability. Without stability, my street car’s more powerful engine was not much use. If I attempted to drive it through the curves as fast as I drove the track car, I’d end up spinning into the dirt. In the context of the gym, my street car is the guy with huge muscles who loads the bar with plates but who always seems to be getting injured (and can’t do much else besides lift weights in the gym). The track car is the unassuming-looking dude who can deadlift twice his body weight, hit a fast serve in tennis, and then go run up a mountain the next day. He doesn’t necessarily look strong. But because he has trained for stability as well as strength, his muscles can transmit much more force across his entire body, from his shoulders to his feet, while protecting his vulnerable back and knee joints. He is like a track-ready race car: strong, fast, stable—and healthy, because his superior stability allows him to do all these things while rarely, if ever, getting injured.

Several years ago, I was playing basketball with our son Jonathan. We’ve played one-on-one for years. For the first time, he beat me, fair and square, 15--14. I gave him a high five. Then I told him he was grounded! During the game at one point Jonathan dribbled around me and went up for a shot. I came out of nowhere, timed it just right, and blocked his shot. I swatted the ball away and it went flying into the bushes. I felt like an NBA star. A couple days later, we went to the gym to play with some friends. Jonathan said, “Dad, tell everybody what happened the other night.” I said, “Oh, yeah, Jonathan went up for this shot, and I must have been this high in the air and I blocked it, and it was something else.” He said, “No, Dad, I meant tell them how I beat you for the first time!” What’s funny is, I didn’t remember my defeat, I remembered my victory The first thing that came to my mind wasn’t that I lost the game to him, but the fact that I did something good. It’s because I’ve trained my mind to remember the right things. For many people it’s just the opposite. They won the game, but they remember all the mistakes they made. They never feel good about themselves. They’re always focused on something they didn’t do good enough. It’s all in how you train your mind. It depends on what channel you’re watching. Don’t make the mistake of remembering what you should forget, whether it’s your hurts, your disappointments, or your failures. Don’t forget what you should remember--your victories, your successes, and the hard times you overcame.

Surfing is the first lifestyle sport. X Game staples like skateboarding and snowboarding were inspired directly by surfing. Being a surfer involves a different level of commitment from being a golfer or basketball player. Surfing is more than an athletic pursuit that you do a couple days a week at a course or in a gym. Even when surfers are out of the water, they are watching the weather, tides, and wind, monitoring distant swell patterns, and mentally tuning in the ocean. Surfing defines your life, in the same way that work—being a farmer or a carpenter or a blacksmith—used to define people’s lives. Forty years ago Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock called surfers “a signpost pointing to the future” for their embrace of a leisure-time “lifestyle,” and in this case Toffler was right.

They Are Unreliable There was a time when you were the center of all their attention, but now you feel like you are no more than an afterthought in their lives. This can mean that they are unfaithful with you. He/She Kisses Less Often If they have started to avoid initiating a kiss and austerely avoid it during sex unless you pull them right into it, then they are cheating. They may also bail on the foreplay, avoid making eye contact, and time out their sex, it is a sign that their mind and heart are wandering someplace else. He/She Is Always “Working” Is he usually late? Does he/she always say that they are at the office and working on something important? It could be their new object of affection… just saying. When a partner cheats, they will try their best to minimize their contact with their spouses and use excuses to stay out of the house. They just feel a little guilty when they are with you, but boy does that stop them from cheating? Certainly not! Every Time You Confront Him/Her, They Call You Crazy Even if in just some casual banter, you bring up the topic of cheating, they start to act all weird and call you crazy for even thinking like that. No one likes to be caught red-handed and a cheater will always say they haven’t cheated. So take the hint if they act too surprised on the idea that you called them a cheater. His/Her Dressing Style Changes If he had a difficult time suiting/dolling up for any occasion previously and has started to do it too often now, it is again a sign that they are trying to impress someone. Also, if they seem obsessed with going to the gym or shopping for more sharp-looking/sexy clothes, it could mean they are cheating.

Her Dressing Style Changes If he had a difficult time suiting/dolling up for any occasion previously and has started to do it too often now, it is again a sign that they are trying to impress someone. Also, if they seem obsessed with going to the gym or shopping for more sharp-looking/sexy clothes, it could mean they are cheating. He/She Gets Angry When Questioned Where you were until now just riles him/her up like the Hulk. He/she hates being questioned about their whereabouts. Their stories won’t match, their tone and pitch will change paces and they will try to avoid talking about it altogether.

Once the beginner gains have been made and we learn what to expect, our interest starts to fade. Sometimes it happens even faster than that. All you have to do is hit the gym a few days in a row or publish a couple of blog posts on time and letting one day slip doesn’t feel like much. Things are going well. It’s easy to rationalize taking a day off because you’re in a good place.

Improving your stability is perhaps the most important thing you can to reduce the likelihood that you will become another fall victim. And the great news is, doing so doesn’t require a lot of effort. Performing some of these home exercises a couple of times a week can make a huge difference. It can also just take a few minutes - in fact, you can even do them during the ads on TV, or as a quick morning/ before bed routine. Adding the more gym-based exercises into your routine will also play a huge role in your increased stability and strength.

Good or bad, habits have the same origins. They result in very different experiences, of course, but don’t let that color how you think of them. In this regard, going to the gym regularly and smoking a couple of cigarettes a day are the same. The exact same mechanisms are at work.