I’ve recently done a lot of personal and professional self-evaluations as I prepare for a lot of transition and opportunity. The primary issue that I’ve had is that there has been a war going on within me that was interfering with my focus.

For those that know me, I am a very emotional and passionate person. I care deeply for my loved ones, my athletes and clients along with anyone else within my sphere of influence. But there is a colder darker side to my personality that I’ve tried so hard to suppress. A side that others can perceive me to be cold, heartless and inconsiderate of people’s feelings.

Growing up I was always taught to be kind, respect others and treat people how I wanted them to treat me. As I began to go through adolescence and prepare for college I then started to understand that kindness can be mistaken for weakness, people must EARN respect and that I must treat people the way they want to be treated.

I have ceased to fighting my “colder” side so that I can fully embrace the dark-hearted animal inside us all. Ever since  I’ve accepted & learned to harness this, the more clarity I’ve received and the more progress I’ve experienced in life.

I say all this so that I may introduce you to our inherent primal nature. We all have dualistic aspects of our being that govern our daily survival. Deep within our true selves when we take inventory of our aspirations and goals the one primary theme that we’ll find is that we all have an inherent, reflexive need for survival or self-preservation. And in order to “preserve ourselves” we must develop Primal Focus.

Primal Focus Defined

Primal Focus is an intense heightened sense of present moment awareness directed at a specific task without any added emotion. This level of focus is required to accomplish anything great in life, and is simply the basis of survival.

Before the discovery of anesthesia, many surgeries were performed where the surgeon had to become so dark-hearted amongst the pain and agony of the patients screams and intense distress in order to ensure their survival. This is still relevant today on “the field” within the military when soldiers’ injuries are tended to without any local anesthesia.

If we look at nature, animals must be very cold and dark-hearted to ensure their survival. Check out this clip below. It’s a group of lionesses hunting an Impala. I chose the least graphic clip to make a point. There’s no blood or gore.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x1Vyp6Yo50&feature=fvwrel 

There are numerous times in life where we must sever our emotions and attack whatever task is necessary to ensure self-preservation. Now some may say that the Lionesses are cruel creatures and that this type of action is NOT necessary. That is pure emotion talking. These Lionesses ARE NOT hunting for recreation; they are wild undomesticated creatures whose lives depend on taking another life to ensure their SURVIVAL. If they don’t hunt, they don’t eat and they will die…PERIOD.

Primal Focus in Action

We all need more Primal Focus to sever our emotions to complete tasks that are required for our own survival. Ambition, passion and drive are all sub-categories of survival.

When professional athletes train, they do so to enhance their performance to rise to the top of their sports to create lifestyles for themselves and their family. When amateur athletes train and compete it’s a result of their ambition and passion for the game.

When individuals sacrifice sleep in order to complete tasks for school or business this is also a form of self-preservation. They have the mindset that their very SURVIAL depends on them shutting down their emotions and getting things done. Ask any successful entrepreneur about the relationships between their raw emotionless hustle and their survival.

There are times when some of the most respected and best looking trainees don’t feel like “eating right” or “training hard” but they do it anyway because when you make the goal the goal you have to make sure that your behaviors match your goal regardless of your emotions and feelings at that present moment.

When you choose to engage in activities and/or complete tasks that are WAY out of your comfort zone, some may call you a masochist. This is due to the lack of understanding that people have toward your reasons for survival and your ability to focus. These times of insanity arise when we all feel that we need to push our own boundaries to achieve our own set views of self-preservation.

As a coach I teach individuals to EMBRACE DISCOMFORT daily. When they get tired I’m constantly screaming “FIGHT FATIGUE WITH FOCUS! My athletes and clients tell me all the time that I must get extreme pleasure out of watching them endure pain. They are absolutely right. But it’s not that I enjoy the affliction of pain…I love seeing people take themselves to that uncomfortable place, Overcome it and see progress, results and improvement that lead to their personal evolution as they exhibit Primal Focus to ensure their own survival.

Primal Focus…Do YOU have it?????!!!!!!!!

Here are a few quotes that sparked the following article:

Ambition is priceless it’s something that’s in your veins.

It’s easy to dream a dream, though it’s harder to live it.

I’m on the practice field running 2-A-Days so I don’t drop the ball when it’s thrown my way.

If you STAY ready you never had to GET ready.

Refine your technique so that when given the platform you’re ready to dive into the pool of success.

Each day is a gift not a given right.

You need to get up get out and get something. Don’t let the days of your life past you by!

Against the grain should be a way of life, what’s worth the prize is always worth the fight.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says they are bored. It just lights a fire in me that sends me into a rage. There is too much that can be accomplished for anyone to say that they are bored.

Ambitious individuals NEVER say that they’re bored. When you have set goals, boredom should NOT be a part of your vocabulary. Each and every day we are blessed with the ability to breathe we should be clawing and scratching to accomplish our goals.

Every day we should be eyeing for perfection in our chosen crafts. Perfection IS the journey, not the destination. Practice, refine, repeat. This is the sacrificial cycle of the ambitious.

This is the moniker that we need to live by daily. You can’t be given ambition, it’s a seed that we need to cultivate and grow within ourselves EVERY-SINGLE-DAY! No one should have to beg us to get better. No one should have to coerce us into making sacrifices to set goals we’ve set.

Either we want it or we don’t!

It’s really that simple.

If you have a goal, are ambitious and you’re willing to sacrifice…how bad do you REALLY want it!

I performed a power complex, an upper body super set. I’ve put on 6lbs of muscle in the past 4 weeks and the goal was to “saturate” the new muscle with as much “wattage” as possible so that I’d could maintain my speed and power output.

I then finished off with a PR in kettlebell snatches after not snatching for 12 weeks.

Fun workout filled with TONS of WATTAGE!!!!

Total Body Power Complex

1a. 106lb/48kg Kettlebell Swing + “Average” Jump Stretch band 6×3

1b. Kneeling Jump to Knee Tucks 6×3

Upper Body Power Super Set

2a. Explosive Pullups 4×3

2b. 20-inch Box Depth Plyo Pushups 4×3

Metabolic Finisher

3. 53lb/24kg Kettlebell Snatches: 100 total in 4:49

In Yoga it’s referred to as a “Downward Dog” but there are more benefits than are commonly understood.

The secrets to proper execution are:

#1: Unhinge the hips

• Make sure you are moving through your hips and not the lower back

#2 Activate the upper-back

• Make sure you really squeeze the shoulder blades

#3 Activate the glutes

• Make sure you squeeze your glutes before you drive the hips forward so that you’re not using your lower back.

Other Note: Be sure to maintain a neutral spine throughout the entire movement by engaging your upper back through the “push phase” and squeezing your glutes through the “drive phase” back to the starting position.

But as I examine the true intention of the word, it points to someone who’s been captured by their current circumstances or position in life. But there is another side of the “victim” coin that we need to examine.

Bill Gates is a “victim” of his diligent drive to master computer programming. Michael Jordan was a victim of his work ethic to be great in his sport. Warren Buffet is a victim of his passion for financial empowerment. Steve Jobs was a victim of innovation. When we choose to objectively look at the word victim, without attaching any emotion to it, we should start to understand that being a victim is purely the effect of being captured by your own thoughts and intentions.

Self Illumination is merely personal development. In order to develop yourself, you must truly start to examine yourself with an objective eye.

1. What beliefs do you have about yourself? Are they empowering or destructive?
2. What habits are you unconsciously aware of that are stopping you from truly fulfilling your goals?
3. What person or situation made you believe that having goals or dreams were the foolish acts of a child caught in a fairy tale?

Getting to the root of the above questions are all a part of self illumination; the ability to objectively shine the light on your past psychological programming that’s left you stuck in box. This past programming has made you set limits on yourself while doubting your ability to make things happen in your life.

The more you start to study yourself the better your performance will be during any activity you choose to focus your efforts into. When you take on the subjective mentality of being a “sacrificial animal” you forfeit the power and ability to make the necessary changes in your habitual thoughts and behaviors that are keeping you boxed in and preventing you from stepping out of your comfort zone. Once you’ve started to look at the root causes of where you are in life you must start to develop your true self while dropping your ego.

Personal development is simply about “Engineering Your Own Excellence”. In life we aren’t mean to “find ourselves”, we are meant to “design ourselves”.  And whether we want to accept it or not, if you are in a current state in your life where you feel like a victim you have been “unconsciously designing your own life”. In order to take back control of your life you must take full responsibility of where you are in life. You may have had some negative influential experiences with a parent, teacher, coach or significant other that you are still carrying emotional baggage from.  Carrying around this excessive negative energy is not only damaging you but everyone who you come into contact with. Negative energy can’t be created or destroyed, it’s merely transferred. But instead of carrying that negative energy around you can choose to let the energy flow out of you after you have chosen to transform it into positive energy that’s going to move you closer to your goals.

If it is your desire to achieve excellence in life, you must first objectively examine your habitual thought and behavior patterns. Take full responsibility of your current position in your life and chose to create new habits and patterns of behavior that will allow for you to “Engineer Your Own Excellence”!

1a. BB Snatches (snatch-grip) 3×3 65lb, 95lb, 135lb

1b. Medball Perpendicualr Throws 3×10 ea

2a. Hexbar Deadlifts 5×2 435lb

2b. JGXT Pushups + Iso Knee Knee Drive (hip flexion) 5×5 ea

3a. JGXT Paloff Press 2x10ea

3b. BB Supinated Snatch-Grip Deadlift 2×12 135lb

4a. BB Supinated Snatch-Grip Deadlift 3×12 135lb

4b. 1-Arm 1-Leg Row (contra-lateral-unsupported) 3×5 ea 135lb

4c. Shoulder Elevated 1-Leg Glute Bridge (hip thrust) 3×10 ea

5. FINISHER: 18-10yd Dashes

In my pursuit of engineering excellence through human performance, up until the past year I reluctantly focused purely on movement. I made the mistake, which is common in fitness and performance industry, to focus my attention on improving the structural integrity and strength qualities of the human body.

With my background in engineering, I focused solely on the biomechanical and bioelectrical systems of the body, while neglecting the body’s biochemical state, which is the foundation to our health.  Over the past few years my personal experience has shown me that we can’t solely think of nutrition as a tool to improve athletic performance; we must focus on optimal health first.

It’s impossible to fully maximize our worth ethic and efforts if we are not healthy. In this faster paced world we live in now with long work hours and chaotic travel schedules it’s not easy to nourish our bodies with quality nutrition. Even if we display the discipline by planning ahead and preparing food at home there are still some gaps that must be closed. There have been days where I’ve been working on projects, designing programs, writing articles, coaching on the training floor and answering email that I’d forgotten to actually eat.

“Foundational-5″ Supplementation

As a result I learned over time that I needed to give myself larger buffer and tolerance zones when it comes to nutrition through “Foundational-5” supplementation. Foundational-5 supplementation refers to the five supplements for optimal health that EVERYONE should seek to include in their nutritional plans which include:

1. Whole Foods Based Multi-Vitamin/Mineral
2. Greens Powder
3. Probiotics/Enzymes
4. Omega-3 Oils
5. Activated Charcoal

It doesn’t matter what your fitness and performance goals are, we are all in need of the Foundational-5 in our lives. Now there are some people who believe that we can gain all of these nutrients by eating whole foods and I agree with them. But, unless we are purchasing food from a local farmer or are growing the food ourselves, then we are not reaping the benefits of all of the nutrients above.

After a lot of foods are picked from their vine or are harvested from the ground, they contain an abundance of the Foundational-5. But after a few days of ripening the nutritional content starts to decrease because the food is actually ALIVE. Unprocessed food is full of living nutrition and microorganisms that we need to maintain the healthy functioning of our bodies.

Significance of Whole Foods Based Multi-Vitamins/Minerals

We have all heard that we should all take some type of Multi-Vitamin/Mineral to be healthy but the problem we run into with most vitamins is that they are synthetic isolates that are foreign to the body. This usually results in low absorption which then turns our urine into a neon bright fluorescent yellow due to our bodies getting rid of them. Naturally occurring vitamins and minerals contained in whole foods are accompanied by essential co-factors that enable the absorption and utilization of such vitamins and minerals in the body. So when you consume a whole foods based multi-vitamin/mineral it yields better absorption due to the presence of essential co-factors.

My Fav!

Significance of Greens Powder

Greens powder is exactly what it sounds like, full of green vegetables and grasses from the Earth and sea bottoms that provide us with highly alkalinizing minerals and nutrients.  Now if you’ve ever taken a chemistry class you’ve heard of the term “pH” which stands for the “power of hydrogen”. The total pH scale (1-14) which ranges from one (acidic) to fourteen (alkaline) with seven (7) considered to neutral, measures the concentration of positively-charged hydrogen ions in our bodies. Ions are electrically-charged atoms that make up the electrical “juice” or current our bodies use to communicate. The presence of more hydrogen ions promotes acidity, while the presence of less hydrogen ions promotes alkalinity.

A healthy body functions best when it is slightly alkaline. When our cellular pH levels deviate from a healthy pH range (7.2-7.5) normal cellular functions are adversely altered and puts us into a disease state which can promote illness, fatigue and a host of other ailments that adversely affect our health.

The additions of greens powder allows for us to reap the benefits of sea algae, spinach, spirulina, kale, chard and host of other green grasses in a convenient way to ensure we are getting all of the alkalinizing and immune boosting benefits of greens powder.

Are you eating 6 servings a day?

Significance of Probiotics/Enzymes

We have all heard the term that” we are what we eat” when it comes to nutrition. But I’ve learned over the years that to be more accurate that we need to understand that “we are what we absorb”.  Just because we consume it doesn’t mean we absorb it. This concept has been studied deeply in science which has allowed for the term “bioavailability” to be coined. Simply stated, bioavailability is the degree to which nutrients are absorbed and are made “available” to be used by the cells. As I mentioned earlier there are many “co-factors” that our bodies need  in order to absorb and utilize nutrients. And the co-factors that enhance “bioavailability” are Probiotics and enzymes.

Probiotics are the good bacteria that live within our “guts” that help to maintain digestive health by enhancing bioavailability and food elimination. The problem is that Probiotics are killed during the processing and pasteurization of foods. As a result the ratio of good to bad bacteria in our digestive tracts shifts to the dominance of bad bacteria altering our digestive health which impairs nutrient absorption and elimination. This is how most of us have become overfed and undernourished. We’re consuming a lot of food and calories, yet our body isn’t absorbing everything that we’re consuming.

We must PROTECT this house!

But we just can’t focus on increasing Probiotics without also focusing on enzymes. Enzymes are proteins that catalyze (speed up the rate of) the degradation (breakdown) of the molecules within our foods. Simply put enzymes help our bodies to digest food by “unlocking” the molecular bonds of food (carbs, protein, and fat) in order for our bodies to extract the nutrients. So not only do Probiotics play a critical role in food absorption but enzymes are essentials as well.

How enzymes work!

Significance of Omega-3 Oils

Omega-3 fatty acids are essential fatty acids. Anytime the body is unable to manufacture or produce a nutrient on its own that nutrient is called “essential”. Omega-3 fatty acids play vital roles in brain and cognitive function as well as normal growth and development. There are three classes of Omega-3 fatty acids and they are:

1. Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA)
2. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)
3. Alpha Linolenic acid (ALA)

These essential fatty acids can be found in wild-caught fish such as tuna, salmon and halibut; organic grass-fed beef, free-range eggs from chickens, walnuts, flaxseeds and chia seeds.

More specifically EPA and DHA support brain function by assisting with the synthesis of neural transmitters. EPA and DHA are converted into prostaglandins which are hormone-like substances that regulate cell activity (muscles are included) and maintain healthy cardiovascular function.

ALA helps to support immunity, vision, cellular membranes and the production of hormone like compounds. The overall synergies of the Omega-3 fatty acids help to naturally decrease inflammation in the body. Omega-3 fatty acids also enhance the bioavailability of nutrients by increasing the permeability of the cellular walls which enhances cellular function for comprehensive human performance.

The marine source for Omega-3's

Significance of Activated Charcoal

The final member of the Foundational-5 is a member you may not have heard of at all. But if you have a water filter in your home you’ve been reaping its benefits without even knowing it. Activated Charcoal is a carbon based compound that has been treated with oxygen to open up millions of tiny pores between the carbon atoms. The highly “active” and “ionic” pores become “bonding” sites that trap chemical toxins and impurities that pass each pore.

If you refer back to how we talked about the body’s pH and hydrogen, then you’ll understand that these active and ionic pores can attract excess hydrogen to their sites to aid in alkalizing the body and maintaining overall health. Activated charcoal have been used in water filters for decades, but recently in the past few years homeopaths and nutritionists have started suggesting the oral supplementation of activated charcoal to aid in detoxification while improving digestive health.

How Activated Charcoal works!

Activated Charcoal Disclaimer: The high absorbency of activated charcoal may reduce the effectiveness of certain medications. So please make sure that if you are taking any doctor prescribed medicines that you consult your doctor before using activated charcoal.

Synergistic Summary

So as you can see the Foundational-5 all individually perform vitally awesome tasks within the bodies and when they are taken together the synergistic benefits can have dramatic effects on your health.  And when your health has been optimized, you will expand your potential for excellence in both sport and life.

NOTE: You can easily find the Foundational-5 at your nearest vitamin, nutrition or health food store.

As promised here’s the first entry to my personal training log. I use various periodization and planning schemes depending on the time of year and my personal goals. This week is an “Unload” week for me with a focus on enhanced movement and acceleration skills. Thanks for stopping by.

Roll

Rolled each area for 60-90 seconds. I’m very dense so I need to stay in each area longer.

1. T-Spine
2. Lats
3. Glutes
4. Hamstrings
5. Calves
6. Quads
7. IT-Band
8. Adductors

Stretch

1. Reverse Armbar in T-Position (video below)
2. 1/2 Kneel T-Spine Twists (video below)
3. Hinging Hamstring (video below)
4. Sumo Squat to Y Raise to Stand (video below)

Active Patterning

1. 1Leg Hinge to Explosive Hop (video below)
2. Acceleration Rollouts Part 4 (video coming 11.3.2011)

Acceleration Stability

1. Jungle Gym XT Single Knee Drives (video below)
2. Jungle Gym XT Fallouts + Iso Knee Drive (video below)
3. Jungle Gym XT Elevated Pushup Plank + Active Knee Drive (video below)
4. Jungle Gym XT Single Switch (video below)
5. Jungle Gym XT Triple Switch (video below)

Acceleration Skill Application

1. 3-Point Start Setups (video below)

Organic Strength Expression

1. Jungle Gym XT Pushup + Iso Knee Drive (video below)
2. Jungle Gym XT Inverted Rows (video below)

Grab your Jungle Gym XT by clicking here

If your core is “unstable” then you must “reset” your core by feeding it come “stability”. Check out the video below to see what I mean.

Click here to grab a Lateral Resistor 2.