How long will it take?

October 11, 2015 by
How long will it take?

How long will it take?

How long will it take…That is the question.

How long will it take to lose weight? To fit into my favourite pair of jeans?

How long will it take to build muscle? To get lean and ripped? To see a six pack?

How long will it take for my injury to heal? To get back to sports? To doing the things I love to do?

How long will it take to get fit? To get healthy? To have more energy and stamina?

While the end results of all of these questions may be a little different from each other, with some focusing on changing physiques, other dealing with injury rehabilitation and some primarily focused on general health and wellbeing, all of these questions are really asking one thing:

“How long will it take before I see changes?”

If we were to base our expectations on the headlines often seen on the covers of any of the health, fitness or fashion magazines that we’re constantly bombarded with, the answer lies somewhere between 10 days and 12 weeks.

We read about celebrities and their fad diets and intensive training regimens dropping 10 lbs in 10 days, or bulking up and adding massive slabs of muscles to their frames for their upcoming superhero roles in just 12 short weeks.

We see athletes with seemingly unsurmountable injuries return to play in what appears to be just mere weeks or months after major surgical repairs and broken bones.

And then we believe that’s what the norm is. We believe that those types of results are typical. That those types of results are the expectation.

We use those media published stories as the foundation of our own barometer of success.

Have I lost weight fast enough?

Have I put on muscle fast enough?

Have I come back to sport soon enough?

And then sadly, we are disappointed when our reality sets in and we haven’t achieved those lofty goals in the desired timeframe.

The scale has hardly budged. Our injury hasn’t healed.

So what’s missing?

Why didn’t our reality match the other reality?

Why weren’t we able to do what “they” did?

One thing: context.

For those actors and celebrities transforming their bodies, their work opportunities (and corresponding paycheques) often depend on their physical appearance. The roles they’re cast in may require a certain look or physique such as Christian Bale’s extreme and drastic transformations from The Machinist to The Dark Knight.

The same broad scenario applies to the high performance and professional athletes, whose finely-tuned bodies are the tools of their trade. The performance of their bodies dictates their salaries and endorsements. It has very real and tangible impacts on their livelihoods.

For them, they now have the drivers (both internal and external) to push them to allocate the resources (or find the resources) to achieve these targets.

They have teams of highly skilled and trained people at their disposal.

They can hire the elite physiotherapists, personal chefs, sports nutritionists, and specialized personal trainers to craft structured programs.  They have the time and resources to allocate to go to work – in this case, changing their bodies, building their bodies or healing them.

For them, their body is their job.

For those of us not in that context, we have matters that may take greater precedence. Like young kids or aging parents. Like our jobs and careers, the means by which we pay for life. Like our housework and chores. Our day to day tasks.

By the time these pressing daily items are dealt with, we often don’t have the eight or nine hours left in the day to sleep and recover. We don’t have the two, three or more hours a day to lift weights, do cardio or rehab. Our meals are often grabbed on the go, instead of being homemade, perfectly balanced, and fully nutritious.

Our context, when put in perspective against these media marketed norms, is very, very different.

So how long will it take?

As always, the honest answer is it depends.

It depends on our context.

It depends on what resources we can invest into our results – how much time, money, effort and energy we have to spare.

What we’re willing to sacrifice.

So while these media based standards of transformation and rehab seem unattainable, that’s not to say that we can’t make change happen. We can. Our bodies are capable of incredible feats, if given the opportunities and means.

We just have to figure out what we’re willing, and able, to put in.

From there, we can then figure out how long it will take.

And looking honestly at our context, it may just take longer.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset, Personal Training, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Simple Formula For Results

October 2, 2015 by

In this short video clip, we discuss a simple formula for results.

Paying attention and addressing any (or all) of the components has the potential to take your results to the next level.

https://youtu.be/j9vMYWhO280

 

Filed Under: Mindset, Personal Training, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , ,

But I just don’t have enough time for exercise

September 18, 2015 by

Time. There’s never enough time.

Sound familiar?

Any time the phrase “but I just don’t have enough time” escapes open lips, it’s often met with a round of heads nodding in agreement and a cacophony of “oh yes, me too” and “same here”.

It’s an epidemic. Or it would seem that way.

But is it really?

Is there really such a shortage of time that we can’t fit everything we need to get done in the time we have available? Do people really not have enough time in the week to accomplish what we want to get done?

Not enough time for exerciseLet’s look at exercise.

We know it’s good for us.

We’re well aware of the incredible physical and mental benefits that it offers. We know that almost every aspect of our lives improve when we get enough physical activity including general health, work performance, mood and learning to name a few.

And yet we know we often don’t get enough.

When life gets busy, when we’re stressed, when we’re tired, when we’re pretty much anything, it’s the first item that can be rescheduled, shuffled, delayed and abandoned because we just don’t have enough time for it.

But is it really a matter of having enough time? If our days were an hour or two longer, would that really suddenly allow us to get our exercise in? Would any portion of that extra hour or two be used to get our heart rates up and our muscles working?

For a small number of people, perhaps. But for a vast majority, it’s not really about time, it’s about priorities.

Exercise is just not important enough because if it were, it would get done.

This is not to say that spending an hour in the gym with a half hour commute each way is going to be feasible for everyone, nor should it be.

But this is to say that many people just don’t place exercise high enough of the priorities list to have it reschedule, shuffle, delay or abandon another activity such as watching a movie on Netflix or perusing Facebook.

Let’s talk a little about priorities.

What are yours?

We may have a list of priorities in our minds, but our actual priorities may be very different in real life.

How can you find out?

Here’s a quick and easy way to get a rough estimate of your actual vs imagined priorities.

Take a piece of paper (or use your smartphone) and note down how you’ve spent your last week. Mark down how many hours you’ve spent doing various things from work, to exercise, to meal prep, to Facebook, to sleep, to Netflix or TV, to reading, to child minding etc.

Be brutally honest otherwise you’re only lying to yourself. As a side note, memory recall is quite fallible, so these won’t be extremely accurate for most people, but will give you a general idea. If you want a more accurate measure, keep a notebook and a timer with you and start clocking.

Tally up all the hours under the various headings. Divide each by 168 for the total hours available per week, multiply by 100 and voila, you have your weekly priorities in percentage form.

e.g. If I sleep 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, that gives me 56 hours per week. Divide 56 by 168 = 0.333 multiplied by 100 = 33.3%

Now that you have that information available, you can decide if there are any changes you need (or want) to make.

And if their costs are worth it.

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset Tagged With: , , , , ,

Do the work.

July 23, 2015 by

It’s not good enough to just show up.

You have to do the work.

Yes, we all think we do the work.

We often do enough to get by or satisfy our belief of what’s work.

Or we do what’s comfortable, what we’ve always done.

But when it comes to fitness and health, there are so many forces pulling us in so many directions that we aren’t always truly doing the work we need to be doing.

This is not meant as a personal attack.

But if you want to start seeing results*, the first item on the agenda has to be taking stock of where you’re actually starting from, doing a current audit of sorts.

When you go to the gym, how hard are you working? How efficient are you? Do you take your mobile device and check Facebook every few minutes? Do your water breaks seem to stretch out into happy hour territory? Does the intensity of your exercise actually leave you feeling like you’ve put everything you had at that time into it or could you go for round two without even breaking a sweat?

In most cases, we find short cuts. We find the easy outs.

We find any number of ways where we can make the work easier. Longer rests. Lighter weights. Slower pace. Lower difficulty setting. And so on.

This is human nature (at least for the vast majority of us) – we seek the path of least resistance.

When it comes to health and fitness, that’s not always the best course of action.

To teach the body to adapt to higher levels of fitness, we need to put it in higher levels of challenge and stress, beyond what we’re comfortable with, with enough consistency over a long enough period of time.

Being at the gym for an hour will not suddenly confer improved performance, decreased body fat or improved cardiovascular fitness or stamina.

Unfortunately, the feeling many people get from just showing up translates into the feeling that the work was done. This is almost like a mental check mark. And what do we do when we’ve crossed something off our to-do list is we often congratulate ourselves for the job well done and take a break in celebration.

Now, being at the gym and busting your butt for an hour, pushing yourself, putting it out there in a progressive manner, that, when repeated over time, will confer physiological changes. That will be the stimulus your body needs to change and adapt. That’s how fitness is earned and physiques are crafted.

Basically, showing up is not the same as showing up and doing the work.

So if you’ve been working on your health and fitness and haven’t been seeing the results you want, it may be time to sit down and do an honest, objective audit of the actual work you’re doing.

And keep in mind that to earn the results, we have to do the work.

*The work audit should also take into account the “work” you’ve been doing with your nutrition. Exercise without appropriate nutrition will not yield optimal results.

Filed Under: exercise, Mindset, Personal Training, Strength & Conditioning Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Paying the Piper: What cost are you willing to pay?

October 15, 2014 by

Everything has its price, and nothing may be obtained without paying this price – Napoleon Hill

Ain’t that the truth.

The same can be said of injury rehabilitation or fitness results or even just  basic good health.

Everything has a cost.

Be it invested time. Be it traded opportunity. Be it precious beads of sweat. Or even cold, hard cash.

There is always some form of transaction taking place. Some form of exchange.

With someone else, or even with yourself.

You will never get something for nothing.

Now that that’s out of the way, the better question to ask is whether you’re willing to pay that price.

Are you willing to invest?

Are you willing to put in the time?

Are you willing to give something up, sacrifice something that you currently have for something else that you could have?

Are you willing to put money down, to pay for coaching, equipment or experience?

It’s OK if you’re not. Not everyone is ready to take that leap yet. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

But if you’re willing to take that big first step, if you’re willing to overcome the tremendous inertia of the status quo, just remember, it doesn’t have to be all out. You don’t have to go all in.

Moving forward towards your goals is still moving forward, even if it’s not at mach speed. And moving forward means you’re not sliding back or even standing still.

Small progress is still progress. Small change is still change. And that’s a powerful thing.

If you’ve got back pain or you’re just plain out of shape, doing just a few appropriate exercises daily is a good start. You don’t have to start with heavy lifting for an hour or two every day at the gym. But you will have to find movement or activity that you enjoy, that you can sustain, that pulls you. And do it consistently over time.

That is the cost. That is the investment.

If you’re looking to lose some excess weight, shifting your eating towards more veggies and fruits instead of processed pre-packaged snacks is a good start. You don’t have to jump on any complicated or restrictive paleo or low carb or low fat diet. You don’t have to “diet” at all, but you will have to generally consume less. And do it consistently over time.

That is the cost. That is the investment.

Remember, life doesn’t always require a lump sum transaction.

It’s often full of payment plans. Most of which can work in your favour.

Filed Under: Mindset Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

It’s never too late to start, to work on your abs.

September 30, 2014 by

A few years back, before the clinic doors opened, I was doing some freelancing mobile physiotherapy work.

My travels often took me to various clients’ homes, some of which included retirement and long-term care facilities.

It was in a retirement home where I worked with a lovely young women in her late 80s who was experiencing some memory loss and physical decline. It was with the gentle coaxing of her caring and attentive family that she decided to work on improving her strength, balance and endurance.

She could just as easily have decided that all she wanted to do was sit on her comfy recliner and read her incredible, diverse collection of books.

But in those moments of lucidity, she wanted to maintain her independence as much as possible and minimize her risk of a serious fall, so we would head to the home’s physiotherapy gym a couple times a week and work diligently on various exercises.

Each week, when I knocked on her door she would greet me with “Hello, fella!” as she couldn’t remember my name or what exactly I did. And every time, I would find a way to let her know that I was a physiotherapist and we would be working on getting her moving.

She would then follow up with a half-hearted diatribe against exercise, exclaiming that she was too old and exercise was for the young.

In the end, she would always agree to do a little bit today, but just a little bit.

We would make our way down to the exercise area, my automatic cues of “pick your feet up, don’t drag them”, “look up, don’t look down”,”bigger steps” and “take your time, there’s no rush” bouncing off the walls.

Her retorts of “my aren’t you bossy?!” bouncing right back at me.

When we first started, 5 minutes of total movement was an eternity for her. We would work in one minute bursts.

Even then, she would ask for multiple rest breaks, trying to drag them out as long as possible with shrewd negotiations and offers.

By the end, we were spending at least 20-30 minutes straight on various exercises specifically chosen to help her complete her most important daily physical tasks: getting out of a chair, getting on and off the toilet, transfers, and walking with her walker as safely as possible.

But at the end of every session, without fail, exhausted from all the work she had just put in, she would turn to me and say:

“I need to do some sit ups now to flatten my stomach.”

And so we would make our way to the large elevated therapy bed, and she would do a few sets of sit ups and crunches, before making the trek back to her room.

 

Filed Under: Mindset, physiotherapy Tagged With: , , ,

If you pay attention to this once concept, could it change your results?

September 25, 2014 by

If you’ve come to see me for physiotherapy treatment or for physical training, you’ve probably noticed, I use the term, “it depends” a lot.

When engaged in debate and discourse in the health, fitness or rehabilitation industries, I tend to straddle the fence, rarely committing fully to one side or the other.

That’s because one side never has all the answers, or is the right choice, in all situations.

There are never any absolutes.

The missing ingredient is often context.

Without context, it’s easy to throw absolute statements around and come across as certain. But in a world with as many dynamic and fluid situations as you can imagine, context can change and impact so much.

For one client, taking rest in the short term may be what’s required to assist with tissue healing and a faster return to function in the long term.

Because she doesn’t ever sit still and is always on the go. Rest helps her.

For another, the key ingredient may be early return to specific movement or exercise.

Because he’s usually sits at a desk and is mostly sedentary. Movement helps him.

As you can see, it all depends on the context.

Context matters – it drives the intervention.

And context can change.

So the next time you’re not seeing results using XYZ athlete’s rehab program or following XYZ celebrity’s fitness routine, maybe it’s not the intervention that’s wrong, maybe it’s the context you’re using it in.

Filed Under: Mindset, physiotherapy, Strength & Conditioning, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The quick fix myth

September 13, 2014 by

The quick fix.

The magic bullet.

The < insert whatever-you’re-trying-to-shortcut > hack.

Sure these can exist. And at times these may be exactly what you need.

They may even do the job you need them to do.

In that moment.

But these results are almost never lasting, specifically when it comes to your health, well-being and fitness.

If you’re looking to drop 10 lbs, sure you can starve and dehydrate yourself, and achieve that end result in just a few short days.

While likely effective, is it safe? Is it healthy? What cost are you willing to pay?

And what happens to your body when you ingest that first glorious meal after the self-imposed drought and famine?

Undoubtedly, you’re weight will rebound very quickly. Your body may even compensate and add more to the mix.

You could potentially be worse off than when you started…the unfortunate start to the all-too-common yo-yo cycle with much bigger emotional ramifications than even physical ones.

How about the injury quick fix?

What if you’re trying to deal with low back pain, or some other injury?

Well, you could pop all the pain pills and use all the icy-hot patches and supportive braces you want, to give yourself temporary, symptomatic relief.

But do any those quick-fixes above address any of the possible underlying pain or injury mechanisms, of which there are many?

Do they take into consideration any of the myriad biopsychosocial inputs that make you a whole person? The different stressors in your life? Your habitual postures or positions? Your emotional states or beliefs? Your physical status?

Or do they address any of the long term habits and behaviors that would allow you to maintain your results, that would allow you to break the repeating cycle of boom and bust?

In my view, the answer is a resounding no.

I’m not suggesting that quick-fixes be abandoned.

In many cases they serve a useful purpose to initiate forward progress, to overcome inertia, and to get the ball rolling.

But they shouldn’t be considered the best course, or a lasting solution. They should be quickly replaced by consistent positive habits and behaviors (mental, physical and emotional) that will build a solid foundation.

This often takes effort. And time. And consistency of that effort over time.

But this often leads to long-term success.

Optimal health. Ultimate performance.

 

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset Tagged With: , , , ,

The Web of Persistence

September 5, 2014 by

Every few days, in a very specific area of the clinic, I notice an intricate spider web.

It’s silken threads form an incredible lattice of amazing beauty and engineering ingenuity. It comes complete with structural supports, kitchen area, living room and an array of the other amenities that would make any spider lucky to call such luxurious accommodations, home.

And every few days, I take it down.

I feel bad. I really do.

I can appreciate the hard work that went in to building such a functional structure. And I do understand that those spiders, and their webs, play a role in trapping the myriad of annoying insects that one will find in urban life.

But that doesn’t stop me and down the web goes.

Duster 1 – Spider web 0

Until just a few days later, when seemingly overnight, a new bigger, grander web has taken its place. With more silk. With more living space. With more effort.

What can we learn from this spider?

In this seemingly endless battle between me and Charlotte’s kin, there will be no winner, but we both will persevere. A battle of the ages.

And that is the lesson here.

Perseverance.

Each time I “bring down the house”, that spider doubles down and rebuilds. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t quit, or give up, or even move to my neighbour’s unit. It stands its ground. And each time, the results are more spectacular that the previous.

Duster 1 – Spider web 1

Imagine we use the same mindset when dealing with with our human performance or injury rehabilitation goals?

Imagine we kept working at improving our physical limitations or deficiencies by exercising diligently? By endeavoring to regularly eat fresh, healthy, nutritious foods?

Imagine we consistently worked on building strength, endurance or stamina without stopping at every obstacle or set back? Imagine the foundational structure we could build.

Imagine the web we could weave…

Filed Under: Human Performance, Mindset Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Small steps, big results…

September 3, 2014 by

More often than not, by the time my clients come see me, they have a problem.

And to them, it’s often a big one. Well, big enough for them to seek outside help.

This can include general problems like low back pain or neck pain, sports injuries like sprained ankles or twisted knees, or functional limitations such as loss of strength or loss of flexibility after a surgery or medical procedure.

In almost every case, the rehabilitation protocol will follow a set procedure of problem solving which involves the use a technique called chunking.

What is chunking?

Chunking is exactly what it sounds like: breaking a bigger, more challenging problem into smaller, more manageable bits, or “chunks”.

Take for example someone coming in with low back pain.

Their present level of pain may be so bad that the idea of doing exercises makes them feel ill; their protective guards would go up and the minute I suggest exercise, they’d look at me like I was out of my mind – there would be no buy-in.

And without that buy-in, most physical therapy doesn’t work as well.

But if I know that specific movement would help get them out of pain and back to their regular activities, how could I overcome that initial resistance and get them to start?

By chunking it.

Instead of going head first in to more complicated exercises or rehab movements, I may just work on something that they already do or that they already need to do.

In many cases, I just work on the basic transition from lying to sitting, or sitting to standing – activities that they would need to do already anyway. By working on these simple tasks and enabling them to solve a small problem in the context of the bigger problem, my clients are empowered. Confidence goes up. And usually, pain levels go down. When pain goes down, function usually improves. And a positive feed-forward loop is created with subsequent chunks added in.

In the end, all these little chunks add up, creating big results.

The best part about chunking: it can be used for almost any problem, in any area of your life.

From human performance to debt management.

Now that’s a chunk of advice I’m glad I came across.

 

 

Filed Under: Back Pain, Human Performance, Mindset Tagged With: , , , , ,
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