Life Optimization

We all know that as important as it is to work out, it is equally important to give your body the rest it needs.  Constantly pushing your body to the limit without any rest period doesn’t allow your muscles the proper time to rebuild and recover.  Over-training thus leads to injury and performance deterioration rather than performance enhancement.

Yet, for people in good shape, sitting around and doing nothing during your recovery days can leave you feeling lethargic and low on energy.  You can’t wait for your next workout day so that you can feel good and get the endorphins flowing again.  Hence, I am experimenting with incorporating yoga into my rest periods.

The benefits of yoga are well documented.  A quick search online will reveal that it has some of the following benefits:

1) Increased flexibility, strength, and energy

2) Detoxification

3) Mind/body awareness

4) Improved circulation and respiration

5) Enhanced mood and metabolism

The list goes on and on and are really too numerous to list here.  Seeing as how I enjoy challenges and hazing myself, there was really only one type of yoga that intrigued me, Bikram Yoga.  This yoga is practiced in a 110 degree heated room of 40 percent humidity.  Sessions last for approximately an hour and a half.  After the session, you are literally drenched in sweat from head to toe.  It is quite challenging, but leaves you refreshed afterwards.  The purpose of the heated room is to help with the detoxification process, allow the muscles to warm up and stretch more easily, as well as develop mental fortitude.  I was first exposed to it in Maryland, but have not done it for awhile.  I find that getting back into yoga is a perfect complement to any strength or conditioning routine that you have.  It allows to you still recover on those days, while reaping the enormous benefits of yoga.  Try it and see how it feels.

1) Only buy natural foods

This can easily be accomplished by staying around the perimeter of the grocery store.   All the fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and meats are located around the perimeter.  There are few food items that you should be purchasing from the middle of the store, which is where all the processed, unhealthy foods are located.  The only things I ever purchase from the middle isles are walnuts and canned vegetables.  The rest of my grocery cart comes from the perimeter.  If the unhealthy food never makes it into your cart in the first place, it makes it pretty easy to eat healthy at home.  After all, you have no other choice.

2) Keep your recipes simple

I used to purchase cookbooks with the crazy idea that I would be making all these delicious recipes.  Of course, each recipe in a cookbook has about 15 ingredients, which you also feel compelled to buy.  Unfortunately, once you use a small amount of most of these ingredients, the rest of it either sits on your shelf unused or gets thrown out.  To add to the frustration, the last thing you want to do after a long day’s work is prepare a complicated recipe that will take up the rest of your evening.  My dinner routine now consists of marinating two chicken thighs in barbeque sauce, honey, and garlic salt, wrapping it up in tin foil, and baking it in the oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.  I then either steam up some frozen mixed vegetables or microwave some canned vegetables.  Dinner is done.  By keeping all your recipes simple, by which I mean limiting it to a couple of ingredients, you save money by eliminating extraneous products and save time by preparing food that can taste just as good will a lot less hassle.  This leads me up to Point #3.

3) Eat the same thing every day

This seems extremely boring, but let me explain.  If you’ve gone grocery shopping long enough, you probably have a good idea of the types of foods you actually finish consuming during the week and the foods that go bad and that you have to throw away.  Every item that goes bad and that has to get thrown away is money wasted.  If you’re shopping on the perimeter, you’re buying highly perishable items.  There’s no need to fill up the refrigerator just because.  At any given time, you will only see berries, grapes, apples, oranges, and eggs in my refrigerator.  In my freezer, I have a bunch of frozen chicken and vegetables.  Eating the same thing every day doesn’t mean that you have to limit the types of food you enjoy.  You can still purchase a variety of healthy foods, and you will probably notice that there is a certain range of food that you eat anyways.  For example, here is my typical day.

Breakfast

handful of walnuts
cup of raspberries/blueberries
one apple or orange
whey protein shake with a splash of chia seeds

Lunch

bowl of salad
bowl of fruit
serving of meat w/ cooked vegetables

Dinner

two marinated chicken thighs
side of mixed vegetables

I thought I would get sick of it, but I haven’t yet.  And I’ve been eating this Monday through Friday for months now.  This makes grocery shopping painless when I already know exactly what I’m going to buy.  It also makes me very aware of the types of food I consume.

4) Give yourself a cheat day

Don’t go overboard, but everyone needs to cheat once in awhile

I’m learning a lot from the Crossfit Barbell Club, which meets three days a week and has a focus on strength conditioning instead of the general fitness conditioning that a regular Crossfit workout trains you for.  Although my cardio will probably suffer a bit, it is a necessary evil in order to maximize my lifts.  Our main focus are on four types of lifts: the back squat, military press, bench press, and deadlift.  What is surprising is how technical some of these lifts actually are and that you can cut out 80% of the crap that you do in the gym.  Tricep pulldowns?  Please.  Lets take, for example, the back squat.  Most people simply approach the bar, squat, come back up, and call that a rep.  In reality, proper squatting for requires so much more than that.  Here are a few things that you need to keep in mind at all times.

1) Bar rests on the posterior deltoid

2) Head is in a neutral position looking down

3) Hand rests over the bar in a neutral position

4) Elbows are up

5) Entire body is engaged throughout the movement

6) Ass back, lumbar curve engaged as you come down

6) Crease of the hips go below the knees

7) Push your knees out as you come up

That’s quite a lot of information to process and remember during the lift.  The reason why the back squat (as well other compound lifts) is so effective is that your entire body is getting a workout if done properly.  For size and strength, heavy compound movements are the name of the game.  Here is an example of a typical day:

1st exercise – Back squat

Bar, 5 reps

30% of working weight, 5 reps

60% of working weight, 5 reps

90% of working weight, 3 reps

Working weight, 3 X 5 reps

2nd exercise – Bench press or Military Press

bar, 5 reps

30% of working weight, 5 reps

60% of working weight, 5 reps

90% of working weight, 3 reps

Working weight, 3 X 5 reps

3rd exercise – Chin ups (3 max sets) or Deadlift (1 x 5 reps)

Yes, that’s it.  Forget most of that other shit that you do at the gym.  Concentrate on the big boys.  Happy squatting.