What's Happenin' Cap'n?

Saying something alluring to get a client isn’t ever going to help you. It’s not hard to be on the side of quality strength training and health and wellness information instead of expedient answers. Perhaps it’s because I have said stuff like this in the past, with my ignorance and lack of real-world successes and experiences. I’ve had the opportunity to learn from my own experiences with my own clients and from other phenomenal coaches. Strength & Wellness truths 1. There is NO easy way Only behavioral changes. Those habits are often the hardest to break. However, if you practice, you’ll make progress. 2. Strength training and movement are the most important and helpful things anyone can do at any time in their lives to help themselves feel better longer. It has ZERO negative consequences, which is why it’s so difficult. Strength training is hard, period. If you start with just one or two days a week, your body will become more efficient. Possibly changing you so much with just that amount that you never thought it was possible. 3. Nutrition information is often overcomplicated and driven by fear or perhaps willful ignorance. It’s become similar to a religious practice, maybe by accident or perhaps on purpose, depending on who’s shouting the loudest about their diet doctrine. The best outcomes with nutrition are behavioral and focused on a specific change rather than targeting and demonizing a particular food or macronutrient. Learning the basics first can be so helpful for someone who is curious and wants to change. * How much protein should I have? * What’s overeating or undereating for me? * What am I willing to work on? * Why am I doing this? These are just some questions you could ask yourself to better improve your nutrition. I will work the rest of my career with other coaches and try to make it better for the best possible information to get you, to help you. Focusing on your health, wellness, and strength training will always be the answer. As hard as it is to do, there will be people here to help you get stronger and get better and stay better longer. Just a coach trying Now repeat Small things done well add up Small things done well add up

Over the years, I’ve realized how easy it is to get very comfortable. Comfort for most people is the measure of their success. The more successful you become, the more comfortable you can get. The more money you make, the more complacent you can get. The more your hard work pays off for you, the more likely you are to start to set up on autopilot. This is a common theme. I’ve worked with a lot of high-performance people over the years. Just like the things most people know are not the best for your health, like being on your phone too much, overeating, and drinking too much alcohol. These things should be treated with respect, almost like the way you look at fire. Your success and comfort should also be treated in a similar fashion. You accomplish some difficult things, become a success, and then start letting yourself slip. There's a multitude of reasons. You feel like you deserve all the fun and “free time”. Perhaps you’ve shifted your focus to enjoying the daily comforts. All the while, not realizing you aren’t sharp anymore, you smack the snooze button every day, missing appointments & making excuses. You don’t realize you don’t push yourself anymore, letting the comfort creep in. A comfort zone is a beautiful place where nothing grows. Spending too much time in comfort is a grave mistake, something I’ve dealt with in my own successes. I found myself slipping many times. I’ve so far been able to check myself through the practice of these very uncomfortable hurtles. We experience glimmers of success and let the soft and easy creep in. These are some ways I’ve been able to keep myself in check. Having accessible mentors - people who have accomplished things you’ve admired. Talking to them feels like you’ve lit the fire in your soul again. It’s helpful for some new perspective on hard or tough situations that can push you through this flat-line comfort crisis. Read - reading can reinvigorate and spark the fire needed. Reading an inspiring story or reading about someone doing something of great value or difficulty can add to your thoughts and mindset. Giving you the details, you need to look up once more at the challenges ahead. Aim at something difficult - find something challenging to accomplish and use the things you’ve learned over the years to pursue it with actionable steps. Make sure it's difficult enough to change your behavior. Make it something you’ve wanted to do that's tough but fun or interesting enough to hold your engagement. Success can hurt you if you let it. We know that, but it's hard to see or feel in the moment. Comfort creeps in so slowly, tip-toeing into our lives. Don’t underestimate the power of stepping back, taking a hard look at yourself, and asking, What am I doing to myself? What promises am I breaking to myself? Finally, the most important question of all is, am I even challenging myself anymore?  Don’t let comfort win

Often, as a coach, I have people come to me for change. Most of the people that we see are looking for major life changes. What I found in my experience is that you can start putting all of your discipline and energy into the minor changes you need to make from day to day first. What’s my reasoning behind that, you ask? Let’s go over this in three parts. There is no task small enough for you to tackle. Fall in love with the small tasks first. Practice as much as you can, and discipline the 24 hours in a day first before trying to take on the years. Focusing on the small things you do every day adds up. For example, "I want to start strength training for my health and longevity" instead of taking on this monumental task, saying that you’re going to strength train every day, focus on what you can do and manage for the week and start from there. If it’s one day a week, start there; if it’s two days a week, start there, etc., etc. Practice does not equal perfection. Practice makes progress. The longer you take to improve, the more likely you are to make it a lifestyle change. The more practice you have, the better. Every published study I've read claims that people who changed their daily habits first and focused small saw the best long-term sustainable and significant results. Measurements are probably the most critical of all the steps and oftentimes the hardest to look at out of fear of failure. We have had the pleasure of working with many clients, and we always make sure we do one thing well, and that's making measurable progress. Some examples In body scale, measuring lean body mass and body fat Training logs and programs from day one (strength increases) Body measurements Bloodwork (we recommend) Overall, how the person is feeling Whatever you're trying to accomplish, make sure you measure and track it. It’s important for you to look back and see the progress and the fruits of your labor.  Minor > major turns into minor, making major changes in the life you would like to see for yourself in the most manageable way. The more practice you get today, the more practice you have doing the smallest tasks well. It becomes a domino effect. The question is: What type of domino effect do you want in your life? Do you want a domino effect of incomplete tasks, not taking care of your health, not sleeping well, and looking for every excuse? Do you want a domino effect of treating the small tasks with pride and doing them well, making sure you’re dedicating the time and conquering tasks that you can actually do? I’ll leave that up to you to decide what type of person you’d like to become in 1 to 3 years.

Burpees — As I looked at the body mechanics of a burpee, I started to realize it’s a high-risk, low-reward movement for most people. Most new-age coaches look at this as something that we all wish we didn’t have our clients do from a functional strength standpoint. Eat "clean foods"—Obviously, there are foods that are higher in caloric value. Foods like pizza, ice cream, and chips are some examples that are constantly brought up. However, rather than strict adherence to a very unrealistic life existence, it is important to teach people about calories and the importance of balanced dieting. All studies show it leads to more bingeing and a good & evil approach to eating, which is not helpful for long-term success. In my experience, teaching them about the importance of protein, carbs, and fats has been far more helpful. We've all heard the phrase "no sleep grind." "Stay on your grind". I’m probably the largest example of this. Considering I work 10-13 hour days very regularly, you don’t sleep at all, and you wake up early to go to the gym. "Get after it". 4-5 hours of sleep almost always results in ZERO progress. You must sleep well to recover and perform the best you can. 7-8.5 hours for optimal performance, from everyday life performance to lifting performance. Your mind and body will thank you.

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot going on. I was a dyslexic, poor, extroverted kid whose parents had just divorced. I found myself in a messy, dysfunctional situation. Exiting that situation at the age of 15, I was a couch surfer & found myself homeless more than a handful of times. At the age of 17, I dropped out of high school. I remember the feeling of anger and aimlessness very well, as that pain would become my motivation for years to come. I have been called a loser countless times, and people have said I wouldn’t amount to anything. There was a continual barrage of my poor choices coming back to bite me in the ass. Before dropping out of school, I would skip school to go to the local gym that was down the road from my high school. Doing this seemed to help me temporarily escape the issues that I did not want to face. I discovered that you can push through pain and still see results. Something that I would not connect with in my life for many years. You see, I’ve always had a good work ethic because that was the only thing that I thought I had. At that time, my work ethic was really all I had, so I started to build my new-found principles off of that. Strength training always seemed to make sense to me. You have an objective, and the goals of that hour or hour and a half are to complete those objectives that you’ve written down for yourself. In my world of mass complexity and a sea of complications, this would show me something very clear. "Lift the damn weight", That’s how you get through this. That’s what it will take to make it to the end of this training. Don’t think outside of this hour. Don’t even think outside this rep. I discovered myself by going one rep and one set at a time. Consistency made progress and showed me discipline. A structure that I’ve never experienced was built and earned through pain and hard work. Everyone has to start with their first rep. Strength training saved me through its iron lessons, one rep, one set at a time. Twenty years later, from a trashy, nothing-kid to a multiple business owner with the discipline to better understand how to navigate life, implement what he's learned, and share it with others. If you aren’t in a good place, or perhaps you don’t like the choices you’ve made, Maybe you think you don't have much to offer; start small. You can start as small as one rep. So, yeah, it’s a little more than just strength training to me. What does strength training mean to you?

      Heather R is our December Member of the Month! She has been attending Sculpt-X classes since January 2018 and has seen positive results!  She’s lost 10 pounds and 5″ over these past 12 months. Here’s Heather’s story: The beginning of this year, I knew I needed to make a change.  I was […] The post Congrats Heather, 2018 December Member of the Month appeared first on LiveSculPTed.

    An isometric plank is an exercise that builds the strength of the body’s core muscles. In the plank position, your body is supported by your forearms, elbows and toes. It looks like a push-up on your elbows, except there’s no movement. The work is done when your muscles contract and hold the plank […] The post Get fit without sit-ups appeared first on LiveSculPTed.

For the first time ever we are excited to recognize a personal training pair as our Members of the Month! Tom P and Patrick T have utilized Sculpt’s partner personal training option to both work on their fitness goals and health. They started training with Ben on August 30th together twice per week and Tom […] The post December Members of the Month: Patrick & Tom appeared first on LiveSculPTed.

This year was probably the next record high for participation in obstacle course racing (OCR). There are thousands of races all over the world, each with thousands of competitors trying to beat the rolling hills and conquer every obstacle. Not all want to come in first, finishing is a worthy enough goal. Nearly all first […] The post Spartan Race Training | OCR Training appeared first on LiveSculPTed.