Monday, January 4, 2010
Possibly Why the Drudge Report (part of it anyway) points to b2d as the answer to fat loss.
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
Words fail me. begin2dig has been sited on the Drudge Report (a political, not a known to be physical, blog) as an alternative to fat loss surgery. Goodness.
The post reads
NoGov4Me at 2010-01-04 06:23 AM
THe main post itself seems to have been about someone getting surgery to lose weight - though what the surgery is is a bit of a mystery:
And so if someone from there finds their way here, allow me to point out a few pages that may help unpack what this kind general pointer may have meant.
First: weight loss is hard. The reason? Trying to lose weight is often more about our wiring and habits (very deep wiring) than about food. Oh sure that comes into it, but we're so flexible as systems we can make useable calories from a very constrained set of resources. So some resources necessary are people - have written about that here - supportive and knowledgeable people. Other resources are getting some knowledge about how we are wired around food can also help. See the discussion/resources on "food and change" here. Likewise resources on sustaining successful change here.
Second, part of the knowledge for success can certainly be about food itself. Here's why i've found precision nutrition successful in this education. From there as a base line, other actual eating plans may beckon depending on goals. Here's a wee review of some to consider if you scroll down this post from habits on down.
Third, learning about how the body actually uses foods can be empowering to begin to understand why less or more is necessary or not. Here's a whole whack of resources about fats, proteins, carbs and the such like in terms of the little we know about them. The stuff on fat is my fave. it's amazing.
Fourth, another part of the equation is understanding how physical activity supplements but doesn't run weight loss. Diet first; action second. But that action is so valuable for us as brains with bodies. Action helps reduce stress around things like those habitual cravings, helps us sleep better, helps support change (here's 10 tips for destressing too). Here's some discussions about the roles of fitness in well being.
Finally
Bottom line, i'll say it again, weight loss is not easy. If it were obesity wouldn't be an epidemic. I agree with the discussions that show we evolved for scarcity not abundance. And i agree that a good part of the problem is that what is abundant in the west is cheap subsidized crap based on corn and spuds rather than greens and food goodness. So staying lean (being in the minority now) requires rewiring, knowledge to support better eating choices, and a certain level of affluence to afford those choices - and the knowledge of how to make using those healthier ingredients practicable rather than mythically out of reach (see part two on precision nutrition for resources there, and here's a free ebook overview of same).
So thank you, nogov4me, for pointing folks to b2d. Hope the above may be a bit of what you were thinking about when you did so.
And heck if you're here looking for help yourself, i do nutrition coaching via email too.
All the best of the new year!
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Words fail me. begin2dig has been sited on the Drudge Report (a political, not a known to be physical, blog) as an alternative to fat loss surgery. Goodness.The post reads
NoGov4Me at 2010-01-04 06:23 AM
THe main post itself seems to have been about someone getting surgery to lose weight - though what the surgery is is a bit of a mystery:
Of the 3 comments on the post, nogov4me - a member of the drudge community it seems - simply provides the above URL to b2d as the response. Goodness.After spending the majority of her 48 years trying, and failing, to slim down, Veronica Mahaffey was still 50 pounds overweight -- not morbidly obese by a long shot, but still far from the size she wanted. Worried about her health, she called a San Diego weight-loss surgery clinic last spring and asked for help.
She was told no.
Her experience may soon be shared by thousands of Americans.
Ultimately, she got the surgery through a clinical trial of one of several new weight-loss procedures. Now 10 pounds from her goal weight of 135, she says she looks better, feels better and is confident she'll no longer have to fight her weight.
And so if someone from there finds their way here, allow me to point out a few pages that may help unpack what this kind general pointer may have meant.
First: weight loss is hard. The reason? Trying to lose weight is often more about our wiring and habits (very deep wiring) than about food. Oh sure that comes into it, but we're so flexible as systems we can make useable calories from a very constrained set of resources. So some resources necessary are people - have written about that here - supportive and knowledgeable people. Other resources are getting some knowledge about how we are wired around food can also help. See the discussion/resources on "food and change" here. Likewise resources on sustaining successful change here.
Second, part of the knowledge for success can certainly be about food itself. Here's why i've found precision nutrition successful in this education. From there as a base line, other actual eating plans may beckon depending on goals. Here's a wee review of some to consider if you scroll down this post from habits on down.
Third, learning about how the body actually uses foods can be empowering to begin to understand why less or more is necessary or not. Here's a whole whack of resources about fats, proteins, carbs and the such like in terms of the little we know about them. The stuff on fat is my fave. it's amazing.
Fourth, another part of the equation is understanding how physical activity supplements but doesn't run weight loss. Diet first; action second. But that action is so valuable for us as brains with bodies. Action helps reduce stress around things like those habitual cravings, helps us sleep better, helps support change (here's 10 tips for destressing too). Here's some discussions about the roles of fitness in well being.
Finally
Bottom line, i'll say it again, weight loss is not easy. If it were obesity wouldn't be an epidemic. I agree with the discussions that show we evolved for scarcity not abundance. And i agree that a good part of the problem is that what is abundant in the west is cheap subsidized crap based on corn and spuds rather than greens and food goodness. So staying lean (being in the minority now) requires rewiring, knowledge to support better eating choices, and a certain level of affluence to afford those choices - and the knowledge of how to make using those healthier ingredients practicable rather than mythically out of reach (see part two on precision nutrition for resources there, and here's a free ebook overview of same).
So thank you, nogov4me, for pointing folks to b2d. Hope the above may be a bit of what you were thinking about when you did so.
And heck if you're here looking for help yourself, i do nutrition coaching via email too.
All the best of the new year!
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
PDF
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Delight in training: If you ain't had it lately, seek out a Coach.
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
When was the last time you were delighted? With the gift-giving season just behind us, w
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?
Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilities
Likewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
e should all have multiple examples to feast upon. Do you? Can you name 5? 3? 2? 1? How recently? Has one of those occasions been in the context of a workout? What would you say characterised it as a "delightful" experience rather than say a satisfying one, or a proud one?Delight is a concept that fascinates me ( i've written about a kind of theory of design & delight here). To cut to the chase, it seems that often delight comes from a few factors: the unexpected - for instance when something is easier than anticipated as well as enjoining pleasure as if someone is hitting something special in you (like ordering a book online and not having to go through 20 steps just to find out how much shipping is; instead it's right up front. wow).
Other forms of delight seem to be in the context of whimsy - again with the unexpected - but where that thing hits a certain point of particularly personal pleasure/desire with that unexpected.
For me, last night, this was being delighted with a workout i had dreaded where applying a new technique turned out to produce such surprisingly new and wonder-ful results that i was well, stunned, and not a wee bit giddy with delight, as the saying goes.
Why was this Practice Session a delightful experience? Qualities of Delight.
- surprise I was taken by surprise;
- unexpected but desired it's a result that i wanted but had more or less given up imagining could happen - so while being open to the possibility, had no expectation of same
- exceed expectations. the experience went beyond my expectations of what such success would be like
- valuable it's something that has non-trivial value to me
Coaching can be Delightful? As i ponder delight/workouts, i think the closest i've seen personally in a physical context is at times the surprise folks have who've seen their movements improve from a coaching session or their pain go down after doing some mobility work with me, remotely or in person. This latter response seems especially to be the case when a person has
rather given up on making meaningful improvements in either context, and then they do. Wow. Perhaps that is a key role of a good coach: able to open up new possibilitiesLikewise in my own case, my delight was the result of applying some excellent remote coaching tips on my kettlebell snatch from Randy Hauer RKC TL. Hmm. For me the delight was not only that the tip seems to have solved the specific problem i'd asked Randy about, BUT it then went beyond expectations, helping to address another aspect of performance as well. Exceeding expectations, i'll say.
Nurturing Delight: find your Coach. These moments are precious. I suppose in the physical context the reminder is that we may just be capable of far more than we anticipate. That technique it seems plays a huge role in this, but especially, that a good coach can open that door. Likewise, everyone at any level can benefit from a coach.
Lots of coaches can teach the same technique, but having someone communicate that model in a language that just clicks for YOU so that you can apply it - and then succeed with it, and it's something you, personally, care about, where there's that personally meaningful connection - well, that's delight, eh?
If you're interested in remote movement assessment/kb coaching, shout.
I do virtual house calls.
Related Posts - hope they may move towards delight
- movement: what's the big deal with movement anyway
- what's z-health (the movement approach i use a lot)
- why not train through pain
- movement efficiency
- another delightful technique tip: pelvis power for the press (or pull) via Lou McGovern
- getting the eyes in the swing or the row
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Return of the Kettlebell Year End Up Date Speed as Strength? Technique as Progress (update 10)
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
Return of the Kettlebell (RTK) is Pavel Tsatsouline's double kettlebell program follow up to Enter the Kettlebell. The approach of RTK is aimed at muscular hypertophy strength. I started Return of the Kettlebell in September and have been going at it since then with the goal of putting on some arm mass - and of course getting stronger. Over the past few months, i've posted various updates on getting used to the new protocols in RTK, like double KB pressing and, especially, the hardstyle verion of the kettlebell longcycle.
The following post is more of a progress update since starting RTK in terms of its parameters for progress.
There are several ways in RTK to measure improvements:
Arms, Lean Mass & Fat. But first, a quick review of other points. A part of this quest was to let myself explore gaining weight to gain muscle. Have i gained muscle? Let's look at the numbers.
First, bave i gained muscle mass on my arms as intended. Yes. a quarter inch. Not exactly fabulous, is it? but perhaps pretty good. I'm not sure. I don't see it - without a measuring tape i wouldn't either. And what if that gain is fat around the arm?
A nice thing - at least for me - is that both arms are now closer to the same size than previously. My left arm still lags a bit in strength (or maybe co-ordination), but less so in size, and perhaps not so much in strength.
Second, the other measures. I didn't start measuring right when i started in sept, but about a month in, in oct, i did. So i have measures across 83 days, from Oct 9 to Dec 31:
Now lean mass is everything that is not fat. So that's tissue like bone and muscle and also water and sugar. So that means that part of that 2.09 pound gain is not just muscle fiber. We'll come back to this.
Other Measures: Hips & Waist And along with my arms putting on .25 of an inch (sounds good), my waist is .5 bigger (not so good) and my hips, where i carry my fat, are .75 bigger (bummer). Somehow i just don't believe those last two gains are muscle (so why would the first one be muscle?). So it's not all perfect. And while gaining fat is something one is warned about when deliberately going for improving muscle mass, somehow on a small 5'6" frame that seems like a lot on the waist/butt for 83 days. Maybe not, maybe so. It's just how it feels.
Muscle Gain Calculations. So yes i have the measures to say that lean mass has gonne up. a bit. I also have the measures to say that fat has as well. So far so normal. Sort of. According to Chris Thibaudeau, talking about guys and muscle mass (but is it *that* different for gals), if a guy is really focussing on muscle gain, he can put on .25-.5 lbs of dry muscle a week. But along with that dry muscle is 40% glycogen/water. so for 100g of muscle, one has to add 40g of other (glycogen/water). So that 948g of "lean mass" i've developed? 379g is glycogen/water. Grand total: 569g of dry muscle or 1.25lbs dry. Now when the low end of Tib's estimate is .25 a week, that would be 5 weeks of effort. I did this in 11.85 weeks. That's 2.37 times longer than predicted IF, according to Tib, one is both eating and training optimally.
Does that mean that my effort was less than optimal or that my eating was actually so below optimal or that the program is not as hypertrophic as advertized?
According to Thibaudeau, someone with 120 lean mass needs 2455 cals to build that .25 muscle.
so today at 117.9, i should be ingesting 2412 for optimal muscle mass development. Am i? Well, no. I'm not. Why not? Seeing the size of my butt go up without the consequent muscle development doesn't inspire confidence to take in even more calories. Yes i'm in caloric surplus (wouldn't be putting on gut/butt inches without that) but not *quite* that high. IF my butt and waist had increased nigh on an inch each BUT i had developed that additional .25 of dry muscle a week i'd be thinking about it. But as the two are not exactly going hand in hand, i am dubious to push this without better information for women. Bottom line: mass IS going up (along with some fat) and many folks have shown that one doesn't need to "bulk" to gain mass reasonably.
In other measures: practice & strength.
So if the muscle gain has not been as hoped, what about other measures, eg
Any Real Change at All?
A reasonable person looking at my progress, since rungs haven't gone up and weight hasn't gone up, is what strength changes have really occured?
Progress? Technique. I'd characterize progress in a few ways, one of which i haven't seen in the RTK text explicitly, and that's just getting used to the new moves with load.
For example, light and medium days are dandy to grease the groove. Don't get me wrong: medium days are no walk in the park; they're work, but heavy days are where, i'm finding anyway, that my control of the move is really being tested. First time i double snatched 16's for double presses was not a little freaky. Likewise it's taken till just about now for me to feel like i have anything approximating a groove on the long cycle with real weight, and i'll be very keen to have this checked at the RKC II cert to see if i've really understood the HS form here. It would almost be fair to say, ok, measuring could start now, since i feel i have the moves more in hand. So this technique grooving is definitely a place to measure progress. That's a whole lot of motor learning going on.
The way i'm noticing technique improvements is going from what has been total confusion or form devolution to starting to get into a groove.
Progress as Time/Speed. So the other main place i've been noticing progress is in terms of time taken for rungs, and this on a couple levels: especially on medium days of either block (explosive or grinding), the pauses between the first three rungs (the warm up rungs) are becoming vanishingly small. That's good. Likewise, the work sets (rungs 4 and 5) feel, well, groovier, stronger, like there's more left in the tank. This means that medium days are finishing at 30 mins +/-, rather than 40+ mins.
As for heavy days, as per the protocol, before thinking of adding in another rung, the goal is to get the time down as much as possible. Right now, heavy days for me are still heavy. Smoother, but still heavy. So i'm taking pretty good recovery between rungs, but focusing on technique, getting the moves smoother, that's happening.
What i've also noticed on variety days is that my single consecutive 16k presses on the left have increased, as has the ease of doing them - so better form. Likewise the smoothness of my 20k press on the right is better.
Resting HR
One other note of improvement - without thinking about trying for this, my resting heart rate has dropped pretty noticeably - at least to me - to pretty much the lowest it's ever been, ever, doing anything. Now that's something.
Take Away to Date
So, what's the assessment over the past 4 months of RTK?
The main progress seems to be in terms of technique on the long cycle (i hope), and perhaps coordination with double snatching and pressing. Definitely there's endurance strength gains from the cutting my recovery down between rungs, but hypertrophic strength?
There has been some mass gain, but it seems pretty slim to me - but i could be wrong. It's difficult to find good sources of information on this kind of measure. So in my experience, giving it my all to follow the protocol, i would not call this - so far - a particularly hypertrophic program.
Next Steps
Rungs and Ladders: My goal is to get to 5*5 on both the grinds and the explosive blocks for heavy days with the current loads, with good times, so that would mean getting to be ready to switch up to the next weight. After that, i'd like to get back to focusing on the beast challenge. The RKCII comes up at the end of Feb where the Long Cycle is part of the curriculum That's 7ish weeks away. It will be interesting to see how far i can progress towards that path in the coming two months. When thinking about doing five perfect C&J's with double 16's for the RKC II test for gals after three days of form and technique training, i've been biting my lip a bit, i admit. Those double 16's are a challenge.
Hypertrophy and Diet If i can stand it (it's rather tedious), i'll be keeping a closer eye on my calories and specific macro nutrient break down to see how that maps to lean mass and measurements, just to see what kind of tuning might be possible.
Variety Days. These have been either rowing or cycling or VO2max'ing. More recently i've been cycling in the AM (to give my arms a break) and rkc snatch test prepping in the evening (60 snatches a side in various set configurations from Randy Hauer with a tip of the hat to Ken Forsse).
This latter practice i've been thinking of as Astronaut Training. The snatch test for me is a bit of a bogey. By practicing these level of reps regularly (taking about 13 minutes rather than say 6 at test speed), my hope is that i will be well conditioned and prepped for the event. What does this have to do with astronaut training? My understanding of the early days of astronaut work is that the 'nauts practiced the same drills over and over in various conditions so that when the actual event ocured it was, well, well within tolerance and expectation.
Year End Thoughts on RTK
As said, right now the biggest take away seems to be about getting a base for technique - long cycle in particular. Once i get to heavy day 5*5's i'll do another assessment. In the meantime, something this very literally measured reflection is doing for me is raising the question what are my priorities for my practice? Where am i trying to go overall, and what is the optimal way to get there?
Inspiration to some Deep Thoughts
I've been looking at Fawn Friday's awesome ease in doing 24kg pistols which she's put down not to training the pistol, but heavy squatting (she's also nailed the 24kg press). Fawn has some pretty clear powerlifting goals from what i can tell from her blog, and that focuses her practice, and from my perspective seems to be getting fabulous results. She's particularly inspiring to me as she's a wee bit smaller than i am and significantly stronger. That's motivation/inspiration.
So i'm asking myself, where am i going?
My motivation for doing RTK has largely been to prep for the RKCII - to be as best prepped as i can so that i can take best advantage of the coaching that will be on offer. Beyond this, i've had the women's beast challenge in my sites (24k press, 24k pistol, 24k pullup). But as the RKC II approaches, and i'm feeling in the right place prior to that, i'm starting to pull back or up to the forty thousand foot level to ask, what the heck am i doing? Am i hearing the siren call of GS or the iron call of going back to bar bells? and if either WHAT FOR? What is the Big Picture? Does there need to be one? etc. Not questions i'd anticipated asking, but it seems they are both surprising and interesting questions to explore - especially as i find myself without a complete sense of an answer. A worthwhile journey, perhaps apt, heading into a new year.
All the best of the New Years to you all. May your health and wellness visions for the new year and decade all be bright. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Return of the Kettlebell (RTK) is Pavel Tsatsouline's double kettlebell program follow up to Enter the Kettlebell. The approach of RTK is aimed at muscular hypertophy strength. I started Return of the Kettlebell in September and have been going at it since then with the goal of putting on some arm mass - and of course getting stronger. Over the past few months, i've posted various updates on getting used to the new protocols in RTK, like double KB pressing and, especially, the hardstyle verion of the kettlebell longcycle.
The following post is more of a progress update since starting RTK in terms of its parameters for progress.
There are several ways in RTK to measure improvements:
- putting on muscle, for the promised hypertrophy.
- increasing rungs in the program's ladders
- increasing the number of ladders
- increasing the speed of completing the ladders (decreasing the time of recovery between rungs).
- Moving up weight for workouts
Arms, Lean Mass & Fat. But first, a quick review of other points. A part of this quest was to let myself explore gaining weight to gain muscle. Have i gained muscle? Let's look at the numbers.
First, bave i gained muscle mass on my arms as intended. Yes. a quarter inch. Not exactly fabulous, is it? but perhaps pretty good. I'm not sure. I don't see it - without a measuring tape i wouldn't either. And what if that gain is fat around the arm?
A nice thing - at least for me - is that both arms are now closer to the same size than previously. My left arm still lags a bit in strength (or maybe co-ordination), but less so in size, and perhaps not so much in strength.
Second, the other measures. I didn't start measuring right when i started in sept, but about a month in, in oct, i did. So i have measures across 83 days, from Oct 9 to Dec 31:
- bodyweight goes up by 2.7 pounds
- lean mass goes up by 2.09 pounds
- body fat% goes up by .163%
Now lean mass is everything that is not fat. So that's tissue like bone and muscle and also water and sugar. So that means that part of that 2.09 pound gain is not just muscle fiber. We'll come back to this.
Other Measures: Hips & Waist And along with my arms putting on .25 of an inch (sounds good), my waist is .5 bigger (not so good) and my hips, where i carry my fat, are .75 bigger (bummer). Somehow i just don't believe those last two gains are muscle (so why would the first one be muscle?). So it's not all perfect. And while gaining fat is something one is warned about when deliberately going for improving muscle mass, somehow on a small 5'6" frame that seems like a lot on the waist/butt for 83 days. Maybe not, maybe so. It's just how it feels.
Muscle Gain Calculations. So yes i have the measures to say that lean mass has gonne up. a bit. I also have the measures to say that fat has as well. So far so normal. Sort of. According to Chris Thibaudeau, talking about guys and muscle mass (but is it *that* different for gals), if a guy is really focussing on muscle gain, he can put on .25-.5 lbs of dry muscle a week. But along with that dry muscle is 40% glycogen/water. so for 100g of muscle, one has to add 40g of other (glycogen/water). So that 948g of "lean mass" i've developed? 379g is glycogen/water. Grand total: 569g of dry muscle or 1.25lbs dry. Now when the low end of Tib's estimate is .25 a week, that would be 5 weeks of effort. I did this in 11.85 weeks. That's 2.37 times longer than predicted IF, according to Tib, one is both eating and training optimally.
Does that mean that my effort was less than optimal or that my eating was actually so below optimal or that the program is not as hypertrophic as advertized?
According to Thibaudeau, someone with 120 lean mass needs 2455 cals to build that .25 muscle.
so today at 117.9, i should be ingesting 2412 for optimal muscle mass development. Am i? Well, no. I'm not. Why not? Seeing the size of my butt go up without the consequent muscle development doesn't inspire confidence to take in even more calories. Yes i'm in caloric surplus (wouldn't be putting on gut/butt inches without that) but not *quite* that high. IF my butt and waist had increased nigh on an inch each BUT i had developed that additional .25 of dry muscle a week i'd be thinking about it. But as the two are not exactly going hand in hand, i am dubious to push this without better information for women. Bottom line: mass IS going up (along with some fat) and many folks have shown that one doesn't need to "bulk" to gain mass reasonably.
In other measures: practice & strength.
So if the muscle gain has not been as hoped, what about other measures, eg
- increasing rungs in the program's ladders
- increasing the number of ladders
- increasing the speed of completing the ladders (decreasing the time of recovery between rungs).
- Moving up weight for workouts
Any Real Change at All?
A reasonable person looking at my progress, since rungs haven't gone up and weight hasn't gone up, is what strength changes have really occured?
Progress? Technique. I'd characterize progress in a few ways, one of which i haven't seen in the RTK text explicitly, and that's just getting used to the new moves with load.
For example, light and medium days are dandy to grease the groove. Don't get me wrong: medium days are no walk in the park; they're work, but heavy days are where, i'm finding anyway, that my control of the move is really being tested. First time i double snatched 16's for double presses was not a little freaky. Likewise it's taken till just about now for me to feel like i have anything approximating a groove on the long cycle with real weight, and i'll be very keen to have this checked at the RKC II cert to see if i've really understood the HS form here. It would almost be fair to say, ok, measuring could start now, since i feel i have the moves more in hand. So this technique grooving is definitely a place to measure progress. That's a whole lot of motor learning going on.
The way i'm noticing technique improvements is going from what has been total confusion or form devolution to starting to get into a groove.
Progress as Time/Speed. So the other main place i've been noticing progress is in terms of time taken for rungs, and this on a couple levels: especially on medium days of either block (explosive or grinding), the pauses between the first three rungs (the warm up rungs) are becoming vanishingly small. That's good. Likewise, the work sets (rungs 4 and 5) feel, well, groovier, stronger, like there's more left in the tank. This means that medium days are finishing at 30 mins +/-, rather than 40+ mins.
As for heavy days, as per the protocol, before thinking of adding in another rung, the goal is to get the time down as much as possible. Right now, heavy days for me are still heavy. Smoother, but still heavy. So i'm taking pretty good recovery between rungs, but focusing on technique, getting the moves smoother, that's happening.
What i've also noticed on variety days is that my single consecutive 16k presses on the left have increased, as has the ease of doing them - so better form. Likewise the smoothness of my 20k press on the right is better.
Resting HR
One other note of improvement - without thinking about trying for this, my resting heart rate has dropped pretty noticeably - at least to me - to pretty much the lowest it's ever been, ever, doing anything. Now that's something.
Take Away to Date
So, what's the assessment over the past 4 months of RTK?
The main progress seems to be in terms of technique on the long cycle (i hope), and perhaps coordination with double snatching and pressing. Definitely there's endurance strength gains from the cutting my recovery down between rungs, but hypertrophic strength?
There has been some mass gain, but it seems pretty slim to me - but i could be wrong. It's difficult to find good sources of information on this kind of measure. So in my experience, giving it my all to follow the protocol, i would not call this - so far - a particularly hypertrophic program.
Next Steps
Rungs and Ladders: My goal is to get to 5*5 on both the grinds and the explosive blocks for heavy days with the current loads, with good times, so that would mean getting to be ready to switch up to the next weight. After that, i'd like to get back to focusing on the beast challenge. The RKCII comes up at the end of Feb where the Long Cycle is part of the curriculum That's 7ish weeks away. It will be interesting to see how far i can progress towards that path in the coming two months. When thinking about doing five perfect C&J's with double 16's for the RKC II test for gals after three days of form and technique training, i've been biting my lip a bit, i admit. Those double 16's are a challenge.
Hypertrophy and Diet If i can stand it (it's rather tedious), i'll be keeping a closer eye on my calories and specific macro nutrient break down to see how that maps to lean mass and measurements, just to see what kind of tuning might be possible.
Variety Days. These have been either rowing or cycling or VO2max'ing. More recently i've been cycling in the AM (to give my arms a break) and rkc snatch test prepping in the evening (60 snatches a side in various set configurations from Randy Hauer with a tip of the hat to Ken Forsse).
This latter practice i've been thinking of as Astronaut Training. The snatch test for me is a bit of a bogey. By practicing these level of reps regularly (taking about 13 minutes rather than say 6 at test speed), my hope is that i will be well conditioned and prepped for the event. What does this have to do with astronaut training? My understanding of the early days of astronaut work is that the 'nauts practiced the same drills over and over in various conditions so that when the actual event ocured it was, well, well within tolerance and expectation.
Year End Thoughts on RTK
As said, right now the biggest take away seems to be about getting a base for technique - long cycle in particular. Once i get to heavy day 5*5's i'll do another assessment. In the meantime, something this very literally measured reflection is doing for me is raising the question what are my priorities for my practice? Where am i trying to go overall, and what is the optimal way to get there?
Inspiration to some Deep Thoughts
You go ahead and try the above, described here as "Fun" and see if you aren't humbled.
I've been looking at Fawn Friday's awesome ease in doing 24kg pistols which she's put down not to training the pistol, but heavy squatting (she's also nailed the 24kg press). Fawn has some pretty clear powerlifting goals from what i can tell from her blog, and that focuses her practice, and from my perspective seems to be getting fabulous results. She's particularly inspiring to me as she's a wee bit smaller than i am and significantly stronger. That's motivation/inspiration.
So i'm asking myself, where am i going?
My motivation for doing RTK has largely been to prep for the RKCII - to be as best prepped as i can so that i can take best advantage of the coaching that will be on offer. Beyond this, i've had the women's beast challenge in my sites (24k press, 24k pistol, 24k pullup). But as the RKC II approaches, and i'm feeling in the right place prior to that, i'm starting to pull back or up to the forty thousand foot level to ask, what the heck am i doing? Am i hearing the siren call of GS or the iron call of going back to bar bells? and if either WHAT FOR? What is the Big Picture? Does there need to be one? etc. Not questions i'd anticipated asking, but it seems they are both surprising and interesting questions to explore - especially as i find myself without a complete sense of an answer. A worthwhile journey, perhaps apt, heading into a new year.
All the best of the New Years to you all. May your health and wellness visions for the new year and decade all be bright. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, December 20, 2009
B2D Nutrition Article Index: All things Foodish on begin2dig
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
begin2dig has a lot of posts about topics in nutrition, from discussions around nutrients (how does fat and fat burning work; what are carbs) to supplements (and quality of same), to what do various body fat percentages really look like to how rewiring the brain may be a critical part for diet success. To get a feel for b2d's take on nutrition, here's an index of articles organized from nutrients to nutrition resources. Hope this provides a useful reference point for your nutrition explorations.
Fat:
Respect the Fat: An overview of Fat Burning Goodness
Brown Fat: New Improved Single Factor Thinking
We're Happy happy Happy With our Fat - or maybe not
"Lean Muscle "- muscle is lean - do you mean lean mass?
Green Tea - good for more than what ails ya - facilitating fat burning
Carbohydrates
What's 100% whole wheat? and what is it vs sprouted wheat? or sprouted anything?
Carbohydrates: the New Fat
Carbs or Protein before Bed? Not what you think
Protein
How much protein - no really - for muscle gain, maintenance
What's a whole protein? and why how should/can we have them?
Optimal Protein Blends - for carnivores and vegetarians alike
A Minute with Mike: BCAA's, Leucine, or Plain Old Whey - does it make a difference?
Nutrient timing *may* make difference - for strength, body comp, muscle fiber...
The Pump: What is it, Does it Work and if so How and for What Kind of Muscle Growth?
Farmed Salmon: Health and Environment Concerns. Dam
Diets
Eating: Rewiring our Instincts for Sure Fire Weight Loss
Habits and Alternatives: one step at a time dieting (within critique of P90x) (including references to Precision Nutrition, Lyle McDonald, M.Beck, and a cast of thousands)
Supplements
Supplement Curmudgeon: Does that DO anything for you?
Is what's on the label really in your supplement?
Creatine, Beta Alanine, Citrulline malate, and more b2d
Dealing with (a wretched) Cold
The Raw and The Cooked of Enzyme Supplementation
Weight Loss & Exercise
More on Exercise without Diet doesn't produce Weight Loss
Exercise doesn't work - without diet - really
Athletic Bodies: which one is you(r desired shape)?
P90X Critique Part 2 0f 3 - WIll you really "get ripped"?
Nutrient Timing
Nutrient timing *may* make difference - for strength/mass development
Minute with Mike (2 ), Post Workout Recovery Window: real or myth?
Approaches to Nutrition
What the Heck is Sustenance? Review of the Z-Health 9S Sustenance
Rewiring Habits - support for lean eating (part of a Critique of P90X )
Set Point Theory is Crap: We are Only What We Eat
Review of the "Science" claims of the Warrior Diet
Human Support is KEY for Good Eating/Diet Success
Resources
Precision Nutrition. The best source to Learn about one's self and food
Georgie Fear's Dig In: The new easy, fast, tasty, satisfying recipe book: DIG IN
Farmed Salmon: Health and Environment Concerns. Dam
Food Inc.: the unbearable lightness of the food industry
Fitness Geek Book Recommendations
Images and Approaches: Real People making Real Changes with Real Support
Athletic Bodies: which one is you(r desired shape)?
Reflection/Critique of P90X review (in Three Parts)
Motivation as Skill: a Functional Definition of same Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Fat:
Respect the Fat: An overview of Fat Burning Goodness
Brown Fat: New Improved Single Factor Thinking
We're Happy happy Happy With our Fat - or maybe not
"Lean Muscle "- muscle is lean - do you mean lean mass?
Green Tea - good for more than what ails ya - facilitating fat burning
Carbohydrates
What's 100% whole wheat? and what is it vs sprouted wheat? or sprouted anything?
Carbohydrates: the New Fat
Carbs or Protein before Bed? Not what you think
Protein
How much protein - no really - for muscle gain, maintenance
i like this piece - cuz i'm not crazy about the conclusions. That mainly protein may well be overdone if you're talking about muscle gain, which is different than using it for diet to feel fuller on less. There's also a difference between protein synthesis and protein absorption. They are not the same. And in particular, why creatine and load may be more important than protein for *gaining* beyond what ya gain just with exercise.
What's a whole protein? and why how should/can we have them?
ever wondered this? especially if you're a vegetarian? how get a whole protein from bread and beans? or what's a super bean as a whole/complete protein?
Optimal Protein Blends - for carnivores and vegetarians alike
Nutrient timing *may* make difference - for strength, body comp, muscle fiber...
The Pump: What is it, Does it Work and if so How and for What Kind of Muscle Growth?
Farmed Salmon: Health and Environment Concerns. Dam
Diets
Eating: Rewiring our Instincts for Sure Fire Weight Loss
Habits and Alternatives: one step at a time dieting (within critique of P90x) (including references to Precision Nutrition, Lyle McDonald, M.Beck, and a cast of thousands)
Supplements
Supplement Curmudgeon: Does that DO anything for you?Is what's on the label really in your supplement?
Creatine, Beta Alanine, Citrulline malate, and more b2d
Dealing with (a wretched) Cold
The Raw and The Cooked of Enzyme Supplementation
Weight Loss & Exercise
More on Exercise without Diet doesn't produce Weight Loss
Exercise doesn't work - without diet - really
Athletic Bodies: which one is you(r desired shape)?
P90X Critique Part 2 0f 3 - WIll you really "get ripped"?
Nutrient Timing
Nutrient timing *may* make difference - for strength/mass development
Minute with Mike (2 ), Post Workout Recovery Window: real or myth?
Approaches to Nutrition
What the Heck is Sustenance? Review of the Z-Health 9S Sustenance
Rewiring Habits - support for lean eating (part of a Critique of P90X )
Set Point Theory is Crap: We are Only What We Eat
Review of the "Science" claims of the Warrior Diet
Human Support is KEY for Good Eating/Diet Success
Resources
Precision Nutrition. The best source to Learn about one's self and food
Georgie Fear's Dig In: The new easy, fast, tasty, satisfying recipe book: DIG IN
Farmed Salmon: Health and Environment Concerns. Dam
Food Inc.: the unbearable lightness of the food industry
Fitness Geek Book Recommendations
Images and Approaches: Real People making Real Changes with Real Support
Athletic Bodies: which one is you(r desired shape)?
Reflection/Critique of P90X review (in Three Parts)
Motivation as Skill: a Functional Definition of same Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Friday, December 18, 2009
Motivation as Skill: a Functional Definition of same
Follow @mcphoo
Tweet
If asked, "what is motivation" what's the reply you'd give? Is it practical? Useful? Most definitions are not. They are amorphously about goals, ambition, drive. Wikipedia talks about "activation of goal oriented behaviour" but doesn't talk about what that behaviour is. Then there's "desire or aspiration, combined with effort" to achieve a goal. How far does just Will Power get one? One article refered to it as a specific "characteristic to achieve anything in life." Does that mean one might not have that gene? And to be Goal directed sounds so Big rather than immediate (more about various processes of coping with goals here). you'd swear from the way it's discussed, motivation is the key to any success. And yet how do such urfy flurfy definitions help us achieve anything?
For instance, if one looks out the window in the morning and it's snowing (as it is in southern england right now) and one is cold a 'bed, and well, as the Stanislovski inspired actor might say "What's my motivation?" to leave this happy state, what "goal" is there to which we might appeal to say "i have to go into work. blast"
Somehow going to work on a regular basis just does not seem like a goal, does it? It's rather a Maslow-ish necessity if that's how we maintain food, shelter, and not least that nice, warm bed? Let's get real - with motivation.
Getting Functional. In the i-phase z-health certification, motivation is a key component of the course as a key part of good coaching practice, and Eric Cobb, one of the most de-mystifying people i've heard present, takes what i've come to understand is a typically Cobbish/Cobbsian, view of motivation in terms of what can be turned into actual practice. That is, it's functional rather than personal. Motivation is the assessment between two consequences. That is we tend to weigh up the cost of doing the thing and not doing the thing, and go from there. So, in my mind, is the cost of not trudging through this untenable blustering british snow and going to work greater than the cost of getting up and going and out the door to work?
There's a certain appeal to this approach to motivation, not the least because, as Cobb puts it, one doesn't have to be all chipper to take the necessary action - something else that motivation seems typically to imply. One can be in a dreadful mood and still do the deed. One might even sulk a bit, and still have the Force of Negative Consequences to motivate one out the door. And if you dear reader need help with letting go of a dire mood cuz such things just suck one's energy, i have another post/idea for you here.
Death to the term "unmotivated" But then on the other side of the non-chipper doing, is the potentially happy decision to work from home rahter than work if such is an option. By putting the decision in terms of a cost/benefit analysis, removing the personal character traits, one may not be tarred with the offending brush that one is simply therefore "unmotivated." That is so disparaging. It seems to assert that there is a deep problem at the character level if one decides the costs outweigh the benefits of taking action.
The other context of course in which we see the harmful use of the term "unmotivated" is with folks who have struggled to acheive something -say a body comp goal - and repeatedly diet and miss or rebound. They are "unmotivated" or they'd succeed. Piffle. Lack of strategies for success is not the same as lack of decision to act.
Getting Practical: Skills rather than Flurfiness. But to the point, the idea of what i'm calling a functional definition of motivation is that it takes the Mystical and Emotional and Innate Characteristic out of the concept and makes it a practicable skill.
That is, rather than being about the right attitude - whatever that may be - it's about good, informed analysis. And it's way easier to chart out skills (that's the functional part) for analysis of consequences, and to define practicable skills to support any other practice one wants to perform (like getting to work or lifting a heavy object), than it is to develop something as mystical as Attitude. After all, if work required one always to be desperately in love with what one were doing to be motivated to do it, how much work would get done?
Aside - in discussing these ideas with colleagues at the dragondoor forum, someone brought up
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow. Excellent book. If you haven't read it, or heard it, by all means, recommended.
The flow state is where one is doing something such that one is taxed sufficiently that skills are being called to bear so that one is engaged enough to find an action challenging and interesting. If one is overtaxed - say by a far more skilled opponent in a match of some kind - the task is hopeless - no place for purchase. Likewise if the task is underengaging one becomes bored and can be depressed or frustrated as well though for other reasons. So the author argues for any task, it is optimal to find a way to be in flow. But to get to flow, we assume that one has decided to engage in the activity, knows what they're doing to exectute it at an appropirate level of demand.
Familiarity of Cost/Benefit Analysis. The thing about this working definition of motivation is that it's based on something we already do quite regularly: i have to go to work lest i be fired. I must teach this class else folks take their money back and i starve.
What having the definition made explicit does, it seems to me, is it takes it outside of some innate mystical quality and makes it something accessible for discussion and analysis. So we can take apart our regular practice, interrogate it, and find ways to address obstacles. For instance Cobb has a tip that if we don't want to do something, find a way to get moving with it for three minutes and after that it will get into gear. Cool.
Likewise, thinking about the Season of Regret nigh upon us with body comp oriented goals or other New Years oriented deferrals of action promised, we have a very functional way to look at, say, food: we know that eating this additional mince pie will mean 40 more minutes of HIIT that we mayn't have in our bodies to erase. But what happens if that particular negative consequence isn't enough of a cost-as-motivation (rather than benefit as motivation) for the immediate denial of the extra Mince Tart? The consequence seems too far away for immediate payment. And so we still keep chomping?
What this suggests are potential opportunities to build up a bunch of things:
interrogating the perceived cost/benefits.
are the reasons what colleagues talk about as intrinsic or extrinsic? immediate or long term? I will be fired (extrinsic) or i will gain weight (too far away to be perceived) vs i have promised to do this thing and i value my word (intrinsic & immediate). Moving towards cost benefit analysis that focuses on intrinsic & immediate costs and benefits can help sustain a practice when extrinsic motivators may weaken.
In the mince tart example, this kind of instrinsic cost/benefit analysis framing may have more immediate usefulness. For instance, i made a promise to myself that i would only have one tart at this party, and i can keep that promise to myself. It's an important principle to me to do what i say, even to myself.
Skills in Motivation Analysis: Finding out what these both more intrinsic & immediately effective motivators are SKILLS based, not innate knowledge. It's not because we're a bad person and have no Will Power that we may fail in what we are motivated to do. We may have that in spades, but without the techniques of how to develop the analysis (recognise intrinsic vs extrinsic; what will be helpful at an immediate decision point rather than some far away goal etc)
Hence the value of seeing motivation as an assessment of consequences first (analysis not character), and then getting a set of related skills going (the right level of analysis) that will best support the desired consequence throughout practice. In other words, finding the right cost/benefit analysis that will keep mince tart munching to an acceptable level.
If we work with others, coaching, teaching, whatever, this also gives us a framework, it seems, to help
them look achieving what they want: what are the extrinsic and intrinsic benefits and costs?
It's this kind of skills and functional approach around developing habits that i've been finding particularly fascinating of late because it says knowing how to make change per se isn't the main issue; knowing how to make change sustainable is, and that sustenance is NOT innate knowledge.
Sustaining Successful Change
There are a couple of books i've found that really touch on getting and the sustance-as-skills part of change. One of the, in the diet space, is Martha Beck's 4 Day Win. Not unlike Cobb's Three Minutes of Movement to Get Stuck In, Beck finds strategies that are completely and totally doable, and sets up a 4 day win strategy for each towards building better habits for change in the diet space. Her work in psychology has shown that if you can get a new practice going for 4 days, you can get some important re-wiring done.
If you're interested in this kind of plastic brain rewiring, there are other related books recommended here.
The other book i'd recommend for consideration coming into the new year is Stephen Covey and R&A Merril's First Things First. This book is focused on re-wiring habits and perspectives to help get things done.
I like it because it is NOT about how to make To Do lists; it's about figuring out one's real and foundational motivation for something - principles as Covey calls them - and having pracitces to support those principles. Very functional. He talks about how to keep the first things the first things. Or, a fave: don't prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities. No kidding.
Habits as Skill Sets; Skill Sets as Habits: Both these books represent approaches to develop habits - or what we might call automatic or reflexive or neurologically wired, practiced responses to situations - to help us rather than achieve goals per se, live principled lives. As Covey and colleagues argue, once we know what we're saying "yes" to - what's important to us - it's easier to say "no" to what is not. The heuristics offered in the book for getting to a place in life where, for instance, most activities are Important but Not Urgent is very cool (the other parts of this quad are Not Important and Not Urgent, Urgent (for usually someone else) but not Important (for your Yes), and Urgent and Important. First things First argues that the goal is to get as much as possible happening in that quality quadrant that is non-reactive and then has room for the real and unexpected emergencies, rather than living regularly in the reactive, as many of us do. Functional.
Covey's Quadrants
Who's Involved? Covey, Merril and Merril also tend to look at those Important but Not Urgent things relative to Roles and Relationships. In which of my roles is this task assigned; what trust relationship does that engage? It seems when we situate our responsibilities or things we're motivated to do relative to relationships that we care about because they feature Real People, those actions can become more meaningful. Am i not eating this tart just for myself, or because i care about my family and a commitment i've made to them to get healthy, and this frickin' little tart is one part of that commitment? Or if not to family, i've made a promise to myself that i'll stop at one, and whether it matters or not, in terms of calories, i'm practicing doing what i say i'll do. This is one small act i will have at the end of the day to say i did what i said i would do.
Beck likewise spends time getting to grips with real inner self parts who tend to look out for opposing interests (the wild child and the judge for instance) and come to a place that by understanding these positions, and observing them, and learning some new skills for working with them, we can get our collective acts together.
Skills Aren't Innate, but they can become Wired. Where this all gets to for me, as you can probably
tell, is the notion of being more gentle with ourselves because we ain't born knowing how to do stuff we ain't wired to do.
Consider the fascinating work by Susan Roberts of Tufts around the ways we seem to be wired almost instinctively to go for just the kinds of foods that when there's an abundance of 'um, they become "bad" foods, but at just about any other time than now (now being our supra abundant food always in reach affluent culture), really survival smart: energy dense, familiar, available, satisfy hunger, and even variety rich.
In other words, we need to rewire ourselves to have new instinct-like responses to our 21st C affluent environment, where motivation is more subtle than move or die (though actually that's still the case).
It's Neurological and it's a Skill and So needs Reps. Rewiring is achieved through learning, repping in new neural pathways. And when we learn something, the best teaching is usually that which breaks a practice down into manageable, practicable, learn-able skill sets.
My suggestion is that if you're in doubt about some of those skill sets, the above framing and books may be a useful ways to begin to get to grips with practice, and tune up the motivation to something that can fire up the behaviours, once learned, we want to fire up reflexively to help keep us happy, healthy and wise into the new year.
And coaching: When we work with others - supervising, teaching, coaching - what's good for the
goose is good for the coaching space too. I used to teach a lot of so called "required courses" - courses students had to take as part of their program, and so did not meet with love. One thing found out there is that often students doing a required course hit boredom pretty fast. If we have the Flow model, we can get pretty quickly that the material is either too simple to engage them or too far out of reach to find a way to get engaged. So that's one problem - how to help get to a flow place to provide a pathway.
The same can happen with movement-related goals: the person doesn't have something that allows them to hit a flow state: the prospect of sitting on a stationary bike and pedalling for 40mins is too tedious to endure. So finding flowful practice (to coin a term) is coaching job one.
But let's assume we hit that flow. How stick with it?
In the required course, helping to figure out ways to make a course relevant for a 300 students in one lecture is a bit of a challenge, but actually taking time to talk about what their reason is for being in the room via Covey-like unpacking can be useful: what principle does doing this course support? What are the uber goals to which this particular course is part of the process? How find relevance (and if we can't, well, perhaps that is a Sign Unto Us to Find Something that Is).
That's one tack. Creating a craving may be another. Finding the hook to associating the action with pleasure (reward) such that there's a gap, a loss, when it's not there, is a Good Thing, too. So we can imagine that finding flow may help find the reward/pleasure in something and doing that thing becomes one way to get that feeling back. How do we find that hook?
Assuming someone wants to figure that out, wants to get to that place of Doing the Thing, Motivational Interviewing
is a strategy for helping folks self-talk towards supporting these behaviours they've already decided they want to undertake. Generally the strategy is about how to listen effectively and affectively. I mention this in passing right now for reference if you are working especially one on one coaching (whether athletically or otherwise) someone towards that intrinsic motivation path.
Move along little doogie, move along. A quickie path to better days seems to be movement in general. One of the best things about creating a habit of moving (and if we walk we already have some of that habit to build upon) is that we're designed to move; not moving is not as much fun as moving. We feel better when we do it.
The challenge for a coach may be making the case that there are LOADS of options that fulfil the movement criteria. Don't want to lift heavy today? Fine. Let's do something else. The movement is the habbit. That's the pleasure; not the guilt trip of not doing *exactly* what one imagined one was supposed to do. Shoot that word "should" please.
IT seems easier to stay motivated - to get the cost/benefit effect when the practice of the action becomes pleasurable, desireable rather than a chore. A good coach - of movement or any activity - will help make that happen with us.
Practice: it never frickin' stops
The intriguing thing i have found is that like any skill, to stay razor sharp, or even just half way effective, even these skills have to be practiced regularly. They need their 10thousand hours, too. And right now that's exactly what i need (am motivated) to do. Get my 3 min. dig in going. And heh, it's actually stopped snowing and there's a blue sky. In the UK. In december. Wow, makes me feel, oh i dunno, motivated? Na. The consequences haven't changed from 5 mins ago, but there's one less obstacle now to getting down to it.
All the best to you and your practice.
Related Posts
For instance, if one looks out the window in the morning and it's snowing (as it is in southern england right now) and one is cold a 'bed, and well, as the Stanislovski inspired actor might say "What's my motivation?" to leave this happy state, what "goal" is there to which we might appeal to say "i have to go into work. blast"Somehow going to work on a regular basis just does not seem like a goal, does it? It's rather a Maslow-ish necessity if that's how we maintain food, shelter, and not least that nice, warm bed? Let's get real - with motivation.
Getting Functional. In the i-phase z-health certification, motivation is a key component of the course as a key part of good coaching practice, and Eric Cobb, one of the most de-mystifying people i've heard present, takes what i've come to understand is a typically Cobbish/Cobbsian, view of motivation in terms of what can be turned into actual practice. That is, it's functional rather than personal. Motivation is the assessment between two consequences. That is we tend to weigh up the cost of doing the thing and not doing the thing, and go from there. So, in my mind, is the cost of not trudging through this untenable blustering british snow and going to work greater than the cost of getting up and going and out the door to work?
There's a certain appeal to this approach to motivation, not the least because, as Cobb puts it, one doesn't have to be all chipper to take the necessary action - something else that motivation seems typically to imply. One can be in a dreadful mood and still do the deed. One might even sulk a bit, and still have the Force of Negative Consequences to motivate one out the door. And if you dear reader need help with letting go of a dire mood cuz such things just suck one's energy, i have another post/idea for you here.
Death to the term "unmotivated" But then on the other side of the non-chipper doing, is the potentially happy decision to work from home rahter than work if such is an option. By putting the decision in terms of a cost/benefit analysis, removing the personal character traits, one may not be tarred with the offending brush that one is simply therefore "unmotivated." That is so disparaging. It seems to assert that there is a deep problem at the character level if one decides the costs outweigh the benefits of taking action.
The other context of course in which we see the harmful use of the term "unmotivated" is with folks who have struggled to acheive something -say a body comp goal - and repeatedly diet and miss or rebound. They are "unmotivated" or they'd succeed. Piffle. Lack of strategies for success is not the same as lack of decision to act.
Getting Practical: Skills rather than Flurfiness. But to the point, the idea of what i'm calling a functional definition of motivation is that it takes the Mystical and Emotional and Innate Characteristic out of the concept and makes it a practicable skill.
That is, rather than being about the right attitude - whatever that may be - it's about good, informed analysis. And it's way easier to chart out skills (that's the functional part) for analysis of consequences, and to define practicable skills to support any other practice one wants to perform (like getting to work or lifting a heavy object), than it is to develop something as mystical as Attitude. After all, if work required one always to be desperately in love with what one were doing to be motivated to do it, how much work would get done?
Aside - in discussing these ideas with colleagues at the dragondoor forum, someone brought up Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow. Excellent book. If you haven't read it, or heard it, by all means, recommended.
The flow state is where one is doing something such that one is taxed sufficiently that skills are being called to bear so that one is engaged enough to find an action challenging and interesting. If one is overtaxed - say by a far more skilled opponent in a match of some kind - the task is hopeless - no place for purchase. Likewise if the task is underengaging one becomes bored and can be depressed or frustrated as well though for other reasons. So the author argues for any task, it is optimal to find a way to be in flow. But to get to flow, we assume that one has decided to engage in the activity, knows what they're doing to exectute it at an appropirate level of demand.
Familiarity of Cost/Benefit Analysis. The thing about this working definition of motivation is that it's based on something we already do quite regularly: i have to go to work lest i be fired. I must teach this class else folks take their money back and i starve.
What having the definition made explicit does, it seems to me, is it takes it outside of some innate mystical quality and makes it something accessible for discussion and analysis. So we can take apart our regular practice, interrogate it, and find ways to address obstacles. For instance Cobb has a tip that if we don't want to do something, find a way to get moving with it for three minutes and after that it will get into gear. Cool.
Likewise, thinking about the Season of Regret nigh upon us with body comp oriented goals or other New Years oriented deferrals of action promised, we have a very functional way to look at, say, food: we know that eating this additional mince pie will mean 40 more minutes of HIIT that we mayn't have in our bodies to erase. But what happens if that particular negative consequence isn't enough of a cost-as-motivation (rather than benefit as motivation) for the immediate denial of the extra Mince Tart? The consequence seems too far away for immediate payment. And so we still keep chomping?
What this suggests are potential opportunities to build up a bunch of things:
interrogating the perceived cost/benefits.
are the reasons what colleagues talk about as intrinsic or extrinsic? immediate or long term? I will be fired (extrinsic) or i will gain weight (too far away to be perceived) vs i have promised to do this thing and i value my word (intrinsic & immediate). Moving towards cost benefit analysis that focuses on intrinsic & immediate costs and benefits can help sustain a practice when extrinsic motivators may weaken.
In the mince tart example, this kind of instrinsic cost/benefit analysis framing may have more immediate usefulness. For instance, i made a promise to myself that i would only have one tart at this party, and i can keep that promise to myself. It's an important principle to me to do what i say, even to myself.
Skills in Motivation Analysis: Finding out what these both more intrinsic & immediately effective motivators are SKILLS based, not innate knowledge. It's not because we're a bad person and have no Will Power that we may fail in what we are motivated to do. We may have that in spades, but without the techniques of how to develop the analysis (recognise intrinsic vs extrinsic; what will be helpful at an immediate decision point rather than some far away goal etc)
Mince Tart Eating Analysis
| Motivation Cost/Benefit | immediate | longer term |
| intrinsic | promise to self | health |
| extrinsic | maybe not a lot | - public image: fat - lower cost & effort of calories to make up |
Hence the value of seeing motivation as an assessment of consequences first (analysis not character), and then getting a set of related skills going (the right level of analysis) that will best support the desired consequence throughout practice. In other words, finding the right cost/benefit analysis that will keep mince tart munching to an acceptable level.
If we work with others, coaching, teaching, whatever, this also gives us a framework, it seems, to help
them look achieving what they want: what are the extrinsic and intrinsic benefits and costs? It's this kind of skills and functional approach around developing habits that i've been finding particularly fascinating of late because it says knowing how to make change per se isn't the main issue; knowing how to make change sustainable is, and that sustenance is NOT innate knowledge.
Sustaining Successful Change
There are a couple of books i've found that really touch on getting and the sustance-as-skills part of change. One of the, in the diet space, is Martha Beck's 4 Day Win. Not unlike Cobb's Three Minutes of Movement to Get Stuck In, Beck finds strategies that are completely and totally doable, and sets up a 4 day win strategy for each towards building better habits for change in the diet space. Her work in psychology has shown that if you can get a new practice going for 4 days, you can get some important re-wiring done.If you're interested in this kind of plastic brain rewiring, there are other related books recommended here.
The other book i'd recommend for consideration coming into the new year is Stephen Covey and R&A Merril's First Things First. This book is focused on re-wiring habits and perspectives to help get things done.I like it because it is NOT about how to make To Do lists; it's about figuring out one's real and foundational motivation for something - principles as Covey calls them - and having pracitces to support those principles. Very functional. He talks about how to keep the first things the first things. Or, a fave: don't prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities. No kidding.
Habits as Skill Sets; Skill Sets as Habits: Both these books represent approaches to develop habits - or what we might call automatic or reflexive or neurologically wired, practiced responses to situations - to help us rather than achieve goals per se, live principled lives. As Covey and colleagues argue, once we know what we're saying "yes" to - what's important to us - it's easier to say "no" to what is not. The heuristics offered in the book for getting to a place in life where, for instance, most activities are Important but Not Urgent is very cool (the other parts of this quad are Not Important and Not Urgent, Urgent (for usually someone else) but not Important (for your Yes), and Urgent and Important. First things First argues that the goal is to get as much as possible happening in that quality quadrant that is non-reactive and then has room for the real and unexpected emergencies, rather than living regularly in the reactive, as many of us do. Functional.
Covey's QuadrantsWho's Involved? Covey, Merril and Merril also tend to look at those Important but Not Urgent things relative to Roles and Relationships. In which of my roles is this task assigned; what trust relationship does that engage? It seems when we situate our responsibilities or things we're motivated to do relative to relationships that we care about because they feature Real People, those actions can become more meaningful. Am i not eating this tart just for myself, or because i care about my family and a commitment i've made to them to get healthy, and this frickin' little tart is one part of that commitment? Or if not to family, i've made a promise to myself that i'll stop at one, and whether it matters or not, in terms of calories, i'm practicing doing what i say i'll do. This is one small act i will have at the end of the day to say i did what i said i would do.
Beck likewise spends time getting to grips with real inner self parts who tend to look out for opposing interests (the wild child and the judge for instance) and come to a place that by understanding these positions, and observing them, and learning some new skills for working with them, we can get our collective acts together.
Skills Aren't Innate, but they can become Wired. Where this all gets to for me, as you can probably
tell, is the notion of being more gentle with ourselves because we ain't born knowing how to do stuff we ain't wired to do.Consider the fascinating work by Susan Roberts of Tufts around the ways we seem to be wired almost instinctively to go for just the kinds of foods that when there's an abundance of 'um, they become "bad" foods, but at just about any other time than now (now being our supra abundant food always in reach affluent culture), really survival smart: energy dense, familiar, available, satisfy hunger, and even variety rich.In other words, we need to rewire ourselves to have new instinct-like responses to our 21st C affluent environment, where motivation is more subtle than move or die (though actually that's still the case).
It's Neurological and it's a Skill and So needs Reps. Rewiring is achieved through learning, repping in new neural pathways. And when we learn something, the best teaching is usually that which breaks a practice down into manageable, practicable, learn-able skill sets.
My suggestion is that if you're in doubt about some of those skill sets, the above framing and books may be a useful ways to begin to get to grips with practice, and tune up the motivation to something that can fire up the behaviours, once learned, we want to fire up reflexively to help keep us happy, healthy and wise into the new year.
And coaching: When we work with others - supervising, teaching, coaching - what's good for the
goose is good for the coaching space too. I used to teach a lot of so called "required courses" - courses students had to take as part of their program, and so did not meet with love. One thing found out there is that often students doing a required course hit boredom pretty fast. If we have the Flow model, we can get pretty quickly that the material is either too simple to engage them or too far out of reach to find a way to get engaged. So that's one problem - how to help get to a flow place to provide a pathway.The same can happen with movement-related goals: the person doesn't have something that allows them to hit a flow state: the prospect of sitting on a stationary bike and pedalling for 40mins is too tedious to endure. So finding flowful practice (to coin a term) is coaching job one.
But let's assume we hit that flow. How stick with it?
In the required course, helping to figure out ways to make a course relevant for a 300 students in one lecture is a bit of a challenge, but actually taking time to talk about what their reason is for being in the room via Covey-like unpacking can be useful: what principle does doing this course support? What are the uber goals to which this particular course is part of the process? How find relevance (and if we can't, well, perhaps that is a Sign Unto Us to Find Something that Is).
That's one tack. Creating a craving may be another. Finding the hook to associating the action with pleasure (reward) such that there's a gap, a loss, when it's not there, is a Good Thing, too. So we can imagine that finding flow may help find the reward/pleasure in something and doing that thing becomes one way to get that feeling back. How do we find that hook?
Assuming someone wants to figure that out, wants to get to that place of Doing the Thing, Motivational Interviewing
is a strategy for helping folks self-talk towards supporting these behaviours they've already decided they want to undertake. Generally the strategy is about how to listen effectively and affectively. I mention this in passing right now for reference if you are working especially one on one coaching (whether athletically or otherwise) someone towards that intrinsic motivation path. Move along little doogie, move along. A quickie path to better days seems to be movement in general. One of the best things about creating a habit of moving (and if we walk we already have some of that habit to build upon) is that we're designed to move; not moving is not as much fun as moving. We feel better when we do it.
The challenge for a coach may be making the case that there are LOADS of options that fulfil the movement criteria. Don't want to lift heavy today? Fine. Let's do something else. The movement is the habbit. That's the pleasure; not the guilt trip of not doing *exactly* what one imagined one was supposed to do. Shoot that word "should" please.
IT seems easier to stay motivated - to get the cost/benefit effect when the practice of the action becomes pleasurable, desireable rather than a chore. A good coach - of movement or any activity - will help make that happen with us.
Practice: it never frickin' stops
The intriguing thing i have found is that like any skill, to stay razor sharp, or even just half way effective, even these skills have to be practiced regularly. They need their 10thousand hours, too. And right now that's exactly what i need (am motivated) to do. Get my 3 min. dig in going. And heh, it's actually stopped snowing and there's a blue sky. In the UK. In december. Wow, makes me feel, oh i dunno, motivated? Na. The consequences haven't changed from 5 mins ago, but there's one less obstacle now to getting down to it.
All the best to you and your practice.
Related Posts
- - Habits in Eating - not about the food - practice approaches.
- - Mentor and Group support as part of reaching goals/changing habits
- - review of precition nutrition, habit-based eating.
- - getting rid of crap around goals
- - the perfect rep quest series
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
COACHING with dr. m.c. 
www.begin2dig.com