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What I've Been Thinking About...
I had a great conversation this week with a friend from my childhood, Pastor Matt Gorkos (click here to watch). During the discussion we talked about all kinds of things but at the end of the talk, I came to the realization that what he does for work, what I do for work, and what all the other coaches, teachers, and spiritual leaders do in their profession is try to provide what we called "The Third Place". The third place is where you spend most of your time outside of work/school and family. The third place can be the gym, a bar, Twitter, your living room watching the news, a martial arts studio, etc. It is literally where you spend your time outside of your two non-negotiable obligations. There is an old adage that goes, "You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with". When you go about looking for a third place, make sure it is a positive environment that can enrich your life. If you surround yourself with good people in good places, you will see those positive influences carry over into your everyday life. Fitness Tip of the Week Sticking with last weeks theme, we are going to introduce the next step in building a strong cardiovascular system. After completing a few weeks of intervals, it is now a good time to add in some longer, slower runs. During this time, an increase in training frequency is of a greater importance than an increase in intensity. What I mean by that is that I would prefer you take a brisk 30 minute walk every morning than one or two grueling workouts each week. 7 days of movement is greater than 2 days of movement. Focus on frequency before intensity. When identifying how hard to work while training, I like to follow the incredible advice from Phil Maffetone and what has been deemed the "MAF Method". Here is how it works: MAF Method is where you take 180 and subtract your age from it. If you are 40 years old, you take 180 - 40 and get 140 bpm. Your goal should be to stay between 130-140 for the entire time. If you don't track your heart rate, use the talk test to gauge your intensity level. At this pace, you should be able to have a full conversation for the entirety of the session. If you get short of breath and cannot speak in sentences, you are going too hard. The reason for this pace is that bodies start to break down when they are trained at too high of intensities for too long. Remember the goal: exercise frequency. We want to feel energized by our training, not totally depleted. We are in this thing for the long haul. How to implement into your weekly plan... I would start with a goal of staying in the MAF numbers for three 20 minute sessions per week. Nothing more, nothing less. When that is accomplished, add 2-5 minutes and continue doing this until you reach 40 minutes of staying in the MAF zone, three times per week. At this point, your conditioning should be greatly improved as well as your body composition. Keeping the heart rate in this zone has been a staple in the world of bodybuilding to burn fat and get leaner. If it worked for them it will most likely work for you! What I've Been Reading Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield This guy is one of my favorite authors. His historical fiction books are incredible and so are his motivational, kick in the butt books. This title in particular is a follow-up to his book The War of Art. In each, he discusses chasing your true calling and overcoming the obstacles that everyone will encounter on their journey. Over the course of the book he shares stories of personal failures, his contemplation with suicide, historical lessons, and provides the theme of everything you do is practice. You keep showing up. You keep working. You never quit. Often times I think about all the great potential in this world that gave up before the going gets good. They could have literally been one day away from achieving their dream but instead, they quit. Pressfield doesn't want you to quit. He wants you to press on! Horse Talk In reading Turning Pro, Pressfield shared a story about an experience he had with a world-class horse trainer. As he went to view a training session of these beautiful thoroughbreds, he thought he was going to see examples of intense training and discipline. Instead, what he saw, was what looked like play. When he asked the world class trainer about this, the response he got was, "A horse that loves to run will beat a horse that's compelled, every day of the week". This, to me, identifies the power of intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic motivation. The horse doesn't run hard becase his trainer is going to give him a treat or because he is scared. He wants to run hard because the trainer created an environment that encouraged that horse to want to do it on his own volition. The key words here are because he WANTS TO, not because he HAD TO. This is a great lesson for all of us who coach or parent. Create the environment where the child wants to do the right thing, not because of some external factor, but because they choose to. Quote of the Week “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” -- Rachel Carson I hope you all have an awesome week! Chris Fluck
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What I've Been Thinking About...
A big topic of conversation in the gym this week is kids getting cut from sports at public schools. Sports provide an avenue for children to be both physically active and learn the pro-social benefits associated with being on a team. It is not just about playing time or wins and losses. I know people that played a sport for four years and never really saw the field. They have no regrets. They made lifelong friends, have incredible memories, and learned the importance of putting the team first over ones self. These are all incredible things. Unfortunately, some kids are being robbed of these experiences by being removed from the team. In middle schools and high schools in my area, the best teams have great participation. Winning is infectious and kids like to be a part of that. Getting more kids into your program, training them, developing them, and turning them into the players you want them to be, is what leads to long term success. It is also what makes a coach a coach. The schools that do this are the schools that win year after year. They don't rely on a good group of kids to carry them to success. It is their program, their coaching and their teaching that builds a great environment which will lead to wins on the field and off. I have been on both sides of this equations. Do me a favor this fall, take a look at around at the sidelines and see which teams have the most kids. Then, take a look at their win-loss record over the years and see if there is a positive correlation. In more cases than not, there will be. There will always be star players who create outliers but generally speaking, the more kids you have the greater likelihood that you can build a winning team with coaching and increased competition in practice. Fitness Tip of the Week I had a question this week about what to do with an ailing knee and performing cardiovascular training. They enjoy running but it hurts. Prior to hitting the pavement, the muscles, joints, and heart all need to get acclimated to the challenges and rigors of running. In order to do that, I recommend a few weeks of fast walking for about 30 minutes. If this doesn't do the trick and you are looking for more of a challenge, breathe only through your nose during this time. You'll get a great cardiovascular effect without the physical stress that comes with running. The next thing I would so is the 4x4 interval program. This program works great for beginners or advanced. Begin the session by walking for 5-10 minutes to warmup, then jog at a good pace for 4 minutes. When time is up, you slow down and walk for 3 minutes. That is one rep. In week one, only do one rep. Remember, we are preparing the body for more work in later weeks so don't do too much too soon. In week two, you will do two reps. In week three you do three and in week four you do four. Take 10 minutes to walk after your final rep to cooldown and allow the body to recover properly. This slow and steady process will help prepare you for longer runs. We will talk about the best way to incorporate these longer runs in next weeks newsletter! What I've Been Reading Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race by Shanna Swan Heartwarming title for this book, huh? The author of this book, Shanna H. Swan, "is one of the world’s leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologists. She is Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. For over twenty years, Dr. Swan and her colleagues have been studying the dramatic decline in sperm count around the world and the impact of environmental chemicals and pharmaceuticals on reproductive tract development and neurodevelopment." Reproductive viability is decreasing at fast rates, every year. Swan does an amazing job sounding the alarm on this issue and makes me wonder what the future looks like for those wanting to have children. There are a lot of factors that could potentially effect having children and when they are in combination, really limit the likelihood. Countries like Japan are already seeing this play out with very low birth rates so it may only be a matter of time before this starts to show up in America. The Community As I look around the countryside where we live, I have noticed that things are starting to look a bit different than it did in 5-10 years ago. Warehouses are appearing where wooded areas used to be, farms are turning into developments, and generally speaking, the area itself is working its way towards becoming a little less rural. All of these changes are bringing people physically closer together but does it bring people together socially? I have to be honest here, I have a proclivity to keep to myself. I spent a good chunk of my life keeping to myself and staying fairly quiet. One may call this being an introvert and I probably fit that definition to a tee, but every so often, when the topic is right, I feel energized by talking to people. These aren't the, "what do you do for a living" conversations. These conversations are about books, raising kids, physical training, problems in the world, etc. I also learned that these conversatons don't happen when you stay in your shell. These conversations don't happen online. They come in person, face to face, with one or more people listening to each other, learning, hearing, agreeing, disagreeing. One last thing, even though it doesn't feel like it, it is possible to be friends with someone who you don't agree with on everything. Remember that. Quote of the Week "Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth" - Albert Einstein I hope you all have an awesome week! Chris Fluck The Sun Burns Hot Down Here
On Tuesday of this week we boarded a plane in Philadelphia and headed down to sunny Florida. Marisa's brother is getting married and both the bride and the grooms family are spending time together at a beautiful resort. At the current moment, Marisa and Emilia are getting their hair done and I am sitting in our room wondering what to do with some solitude. I did not intend on writing a newsletter this week but here we are... When vacations are approaching, I have the intent of working like a madman (on the property, for the business, with my workouts) so when you finally reach your destination, your hard work can be rewarded with nothingness. I have no expectations. I have no plans. All I want to do is spend time with my family, rest, relax, and read if the opportunity presents itself. What I've Been Thinking About... "Every Marine knows the story of Lewis "Chesty" Puller but not every Marine knows the story of Lewis Puller Jr." -- Jocko Willink I was listening to a podcast this week and came across the story of heralded Marine Lewis "Chesty" Puller. This was a man who served his country with honor. from 1918 to 1955 receiving the second-highest U.S. military award six times, five Navy Crosses and one U.S. Army Distinguished Service Cross, among others. To say he was a legend would be huge understatement. His service is so revered that the mascot of the Marine Corps, a male English Bulldog, is named in his honor. So, like Jocko stated in the quote above, every Marine knows about Chesty Puller. Moving on to his son, he had big shoes to fill. Born in Camp LeJeune while his father serving, Lewis Jr. followed in his fathers footsteps and joined the Marine Corps. While serving in Vietnam, Puller was wounded when he tripped a booby-trapped howitzer round, losing his right leg at the hip, his left leg above the knee, his left hand and most of his fingers on his right hand in the explosion. The doctor that worked on him thought there was no way this man would survive, but survive he did. He became a father, a lawyer, ran for political office, and won the Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography Fortunate Son. He was an impressive man but he was also a troubled man. He struggled with alcoholism, painkiller addiction, depression and eventually took his own life as a result of the darkness he felt he could not escape. Both of these men are heroes. One of these stories gets told often, the other, not so much. Lewis Puller Jr. struggled for 16 years in civilian life. No matter what he did, no matter what he accomplished, he could not escape the darkness. It is a harrowing tale, one in which we shouldn't forget, enlisted person or not. Fitness Tip of the Week “Once you start viewing sunlight in the morning on a regular basis, you not only start to sleep better, you also feel more alert and focused at regular times of day. We all have a hard wired “sunlight hunger’ we need to feed.” Dr Samer Hattar chief and senior investigator for the NIH After listening to Stanford University Neurobiologist Andrew Huberman discuss the importance of early morning sun exposure, it opened my eyes to an additional benefit of getting outside in the morning for a walk. In his words, as you expose your eyes to sunlight upon waking, you will have "increased day time alertness, better focus, better sleep, and improved immune health." In my opinion, taking a 30 minute walk within the first two hours upon waking sets the tone for the day. Focus, energy, alertness, and overall well-being are all greatly improved by getting outside for some early morning physical activity. What I've Been Reading The Storied Church: A Strategy for Congregational Renewal by Matthew Gorkos The author of this book is an old childhood friend of mine who is now a pastor. I came across his book somewhat recently and decided to reach out and check in. To me, the main focus of this book addresses the problem most churches face with dwindling attendance. This downward trend was occurring for decades prior to the lockdowns and since, has seen an even sharped decrease. There is some great stuff in this book with a few ideas that are applicable across many professions. If you work with people, there is something for you here. I am glad I bought this and look forward to discussing it with him very soon on the podcast! Quote of the Week “Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.” -- Gabor Mate I hope you all have an awesome week! Chris Fluck What I've Been Thinking About...
On Tuesday night I was at my daughters gymnastics class and while chatting with a few parents, a young kid worked his way in between us and started talking. The conversation begins with him telling me about his sister being in the gymnastics room, how old he was (8 years old), how much he enjoys swimming, his thoughts on video games and more. While discussing his love for video games he mentioned the game Minecraft. I told him I wasn't much of a gamer but he continued on the subject and mentioned that he also liked shooter games. I asked him why and he responded, "I want to see what it is like killing someone". Those are strong words no matter who delivers them but when it is out of the mouth of an 8 year old, it really makes you wonder. As I was thinking about this conversation I couldn't help thinking about how what we consume effects our brain. When I was younger listening to gangster rap, I did not think the lyrics of that style of music would effect my opinion or thoughts much. Turns out, I was wrong. Those lyrics didn't lead me to commit violence or rob someone but it did kind of desensitize that type of behavior. I think the same is true for video games. If you take in negative stories or surround yourself with negative people, those traits will start to rub off on you. The inverse of that is also true. If you surround yourself with goodness and positivity, your life will be better. I can promise you that! Fitness Tip of the Week If you are anything like me, sometimes you just have a need for speed! There may come a time in your life when you have to move fast. It could be running towards a situation to lend a helping hand or running away from danger in an effort to stay safe. Either way, what gets trained gets improved. Adding speed training into your current program is a fun way to improve your health and increase your capacity to be useful if the situation presents itself. Before embarking on this journey, keep one thing in mind: everything you do prepares the body for what is coming next. Take the necessary time to get your body ready for sprints by slowly adding intensity and reps each week. If you rush this, you will experience problems. It could be extremely sore muscles, a hamstring strain, a back tweak or something worse! I broke all of this down in a video Speed Training Past your Prime! where I use a whiteboard to explain some of the drills. I would recommend watching it if you embark on this sprint journey. If you do not end up watching it, here is how I would implement it:
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie I first caught wind of the story of Le Chambon in Malcolm Gladwells book "David and Goliath", which I would consider a must read. I would also add Lest Innocent Blood be Shed to that same list! It is not often that my expectations are blown away from a book but this Philip Hallie book has done it. I am kind of obsessed with the story and have been maniacally taking notes. Here is how the book is described: "During the most terrible years of World War II, when inhumanity and political insanity held most of the world in their grip and the Nazi domination of Europe seemed irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon." This book is an incredible example of good beating evil through love, nonviolence, and taking care of their fellow humans. One of Them vs One of Us... In the aforementioned book, the residents of Le Chambon experienced something that still shows it ugly head in present time. There was a hard line in those days of the war for some people between "one of us" and "others". Some people felt they had a moral obligation to help only "one of us". This would mean that a non-Jewish European would refuse to aid a Jewish refugee due to the fact that they were not "one of us" and helping them would put them, and their family in danger. The pastor in town Andre Trocme and his wife Magda did not agree with that line of thinking. They decided they would take care of anyone who walked to their door. If there was someone in need, they would try to fulfill that need, to the point that Magda fed the Nazi policemen who arrested her husband because they looked hungry. They were truly unique people. The title for the book was taken from a Bible passage: "Lest innocent blood be shed in your land...and so guilt of bloodshed be upon you". They felt if evil was going to be done in their community, and they did nothing about it, then the would be complicit and just as guilty as those who committed the act. They followed their conscience and did what they felt was necessary. Quote of the Week "And in every one of us, there's a war going on. It's a civil war. I don't care who you are, I don't care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life. And every time you set out to be good, there's something pulling on you, telling you to be evil." -- Martin Luther King Jr. I hope you all have an awesome week! Chris Fluck What I've Been Thinking About...
In a nation where activities are in abundance, often times kids have less free time to explore their interests than those wearing an orange jump suit. When schedules are made it becomes very easy to forget one important area: spontaneous exploration. This type of exploring is done on the kids time. It is not during designated play dates or when it is convenient for your schedule. These moments occur when a child is left to their own devices giving them space to think, imagine, role play, and more. As a result, the child's developing brain grows. I understand life is busy. I also understand the importance of spontaneous, free play. So, that being said, I believe there are a few ways we can implement this time into any busy schedule. The first way to do this is to let your child lead play based off their interests. This makes life easy for you. They create the scenario, you support whatever they are doing. When things get slow and boredom may appear, don't interject. Let them solve the problem of boredom on their own. If you give them enough time, they will find something, even if it does test your patience! Lastly, show them how to engage in play in the most unstructured way possible. Play some tag in the yard, let them create an obstacle course, have them make rules for something and then you follow. It is almost like improv comedy. The other person does something and you roll with it to keep it going. You don't stop to correct or change anything. Just go with the flow! Fitness Tip of the Week In last weeks edition, we talked about what gets measured gets managed. That was in reference to scale weight. In this weeks edition, we will be applying that concept to strength training, finding your weak points and correcting them. The great coach and author Dan John introduced a methodology for training that cannot be beat in terms of simplicity and effectiveness. When you are creating a strength program, it should have the following elements: Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge and Carry. So how do you go about choosing the right exercises following that template? The answer is going to be goal dependent. For the example I will use today, it is going to be to "shrink the gap" between strengths and weaknesses. In my own training, I use a barbell and perform most exercises in a bilateral manner (both limbs used in unison to complete a task). The gap I needed to fill was the fact that my training was lacking unilateral exercises. With no unilateral training, asymmetries may present themselves and thanks to guys like Gray Cook and the FMS, we know asymmetry leads to injury. So, one day per week, I perform the following exercises for two sets of five: Single Arm Military Press, Single Leg Romanian Deadlift, Core Row, Split Squat, Suitcase Carry and/or Sled Push. 2 sets of 5 once per week checks the unilateral box for me and allows me to "shrink the gap" so to speak. Now, just like last week, we need to assess where your "gaps" lie. If you perform a lot of cardiovascular work, then a gap may be strength for you. Follow the five movement template (push, pull, squat, hinge and carry), take your time between sets to allow recovery, write down your exercises and weights, and try to add a little bit more each week. If the inverse is true, and your strength is good but your cardio sucks, spend less time in the gym by cutting rest between sets and go for a 20-30 minute walk after your strength session. In conclusion: find an area of weakness, improve upon that weakness through assessing and tracking, then, once that weakness is corrected, move on to the next area that needs attention and start all over! Top Gun: Maverick Last week Marisa and I went to go see Top Gun: Maverick. I am not a big Tom Cruise fan (Scientology baffles my mind) so I went into this movie with pretty low expectations. Well, my expectations were way off the mark as this movie was pretty damn entertaining. As we left, I thought about three things that showed up in this movie that can resonate with just about anyone...
The Terminal List starring Chris Pratt This show is based off of Jack Carr's book under the same title. I first learned of this author a few years ago in an interview and was impressed with the man. Not only was he a Navy SEAL sniper, but also a New York Times best selling author. These accomplishments are impressive in their own right but when paired together, it makes for something special. Just to give you a FYI, this show is crazy. It goes against the norms of Hollywood storytelling and makes you wonder how far things are going to go. After viewing the first episode, Marisa and I sat in stunned silence. I even had a dream one night about the show and woke up with my heart rate elevated and wondering what the heck is going on here. Quote of the Week “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” -- Rene Descartes I hope you all have an awesome week! Chris Fluck |
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