BodyBlitz Fitness Solutions

Functional Fitness – the next step to fitness retardation?

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:02:46 +0000

Take a deep breathe and sip on your coffee and coke, because I have to let this out.

The madness of functional fitness has to stop somewhere and a line has to be drawn on reality and stupidity; it seems rather crazy to put it mildly.
Seriously, when will it all end?

Lets talk about functional in terms of everyday life – it is dictated by genetics, lifestyle, work life and even personal preference.
As much as we try to make things “functional” there is only a few axis/planes a body can move in, the rest are just variation within the planes.

However Idiots try their best to make an exercise out of nothing, of which I have no clue how or why but that of a person’s creativity at play.

How functional can a office worker be?
If I had to think of a functional exercise for them, it’ll be sitting on their butts with their hands stretch out with a keyboard typing, “Exercise” over and over and over again.

You see, there isn’t much function yet many are trying to sell it with some weird contraption to make it look cool.
Yet it dies out almost as fast as it comes in and you wonder why…?

WTF is this?!

I know, I know, Hater’s gotta hate but whatever…

But when you get knee benders of a squat, you’d have to question what really is their purpose of which they’re trying to sell you..

Holy sh…

Okay, thats about enough of a rant.

I’ll just end off with a quote off their site, google it if you want to know more -

10 years on, it is this same kind of precision and technical expertise that Nelson carries over from his days as an engineer into his work as a Functional Training Specialist.

My debut on TV

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:36:39 +0000

My five minutes of fame.

Note don’t believe everything that is said about me, and what I have to do.

Half of it is scripted and I just played along lol.

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Out-sourcing your responsibility with Gadgets

Sun, 23 May 2010 17:46:58 +0000

The Geek

I am a self program fitness gadget geek, I love anything that I can tinker with so that I can improve my understanding of performance development.

I rely on gadgets mainly because it is useful and can help track performance while improving my understand of how I can improve my training program and planning.

Currently I have many gadgets that I use and will not stop investing in them. Yes, it is an investment if you know how to use the gadgets to your advantage.

The Gadgets

The current array of gadgets that I use is as follows -

These are relatively inexpensive gadgets to use to track your performance and allowing you to outsource your responsibility with regards to time keeping and focusing more on training itself.

My next investment will be on a GPS watch by Garmin which will record my distance and pace for any distance related activity.

Technological Edge

Why I use gadgets is because I train alone most of the time, I do not have a training buddy and also I have the freedom to train anytime I want and still able to analyze data that I can record.

Lets break down the gadgets and see what they do -

Bodymedia Gowearfit -

Have you ever wondered how many calories you burn while playing with your kids? Or how active you really are over the course of a week? Now you’ll know – with BodyMedia^® FIT, the clinically proven system that turns your body’s everyday information into a tool to help you manage a healthy lifestyle.

Simply wear the BodyMedia Armband during the course of your day, then log onto your personalized BodyMedia FIT Activity Manager. You’ll get accurate, easy-to-digest information about the calories you’ve burned, plus a calorie consumption calculator and tips for how to best reach your fitness and lifestyle goals.

The BodyMedia FIT System also measures sleep duration and efficiency – so that you can begin to understand the influence your bedtime has on your overall health.

The bodymedia Gowearfit is a very useful device to track caloric expenditure and how your daily activity measures up to, it is a very valuable insight into your everyday life and how each exercise activity burns calories.

As such, I won’t say that it is a needed tool but a very useful one if you’re interested to invest to look into “what you believe to be the best exercise for fat loss” to be. Also it allows you to see if you’re consuming enough calories for bulking stage and if you’re NEAT (non exercise activity thermogenics) is eroding your daily caloric intake to meet your goals.

It also gives me a chance via the display to see how many steps I have to take in order to meet my daily activity rate so that I know roughly how much I have to move to get a certain amount of calories burnt a day.

It gives me consistency though it is not 100% accurate but at least something to fall back on and adjust from there.

Casio G-shock Mudman Wrist Watch

Casio makes very good watches, well engineered and very robust against abuse.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve knocked my watch against the wall or the amount of sweat that has been poured on to the watch.

So far I’ve been using this watch for the past 3 years and it hasn’t even broken down nor has the rubber strap disintegrated yet – this is notwithstanding that I’ve not changed the battery yet.

That said, this is a very useful tool for me as it has a dual stop watch and a count down timer. The one thing I like about the watch is the count down timer feature which beeps 1/2 way of your time – i.e 1 minute into your 2 minutes count down, and the next feature that is cool is that it has the count down beep at the last 10 seconds.

Very useful for doing intervals or when you want pace yourself doing distance runs/swims.

So far one of the best investments to date.

Gymboss

The Gym boss is an interval timer which helps you count up and count down interval set.

It is cheap and extremely easy to use – once you get past the setup part, just press start it’ll automatically count down your intervals.

Although many watches have this feature, it is very troublesome to press the small buttons on your watch plus try to fiddle around with it on your wrist while doing an activity.

Simply press start and start your activity and then tune yourself to the beeps or vibrates or both.

This is the extremely useful feature, the beeping and vibration. Tactile cues is good for people like me who listen to music to focus on the task at hand, this allows the user to focus 100% without the need to keep checking the display.

Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player

The clip+ is an extremely durable and small foot print player with extremely good sound.

Used by audio enthusiast and exercise crowd, it is a great tool to store music and listen to on the go, be it at the gym or on a run.

Simple just clip the Clip+ on to your shorts and start your activity.

Why you need to outsource

The whole point of delegating your responsibility is to free up unnecessary distraction that can be filtered out.

We are bad multi-taskers, and it is not a good thing when you want to do the best you can with your physical limit.

Ever tried brushing your teeth, wearing your pants and replying an email?

Well we don’t need to do it to find out the answers because it just won’t end well.

Multi-tasking is only done when you have no choice, so don’t do it when you’re trying to achieve a goal.

Other than just visual and audible cues which we are so useful, tactile cues allow us to open up more “bandwidth” to process information.

We live in a technological age now, and mass production makes this kinda “tweaks” to your training life cheap and inexpensive to use.

It is an investment, and can be one that brings your training to the very next level. Also apart from that, you can record data to analyze what is bringing you down towards your progress.

The 15 minute no sitting rule.

Alwyn Cosgrove the plagiarist

Sat, 15 May 2010 21:49:15 +0000

As much as I used to respect Alwyn Cosgrove and read most of his works, I have came across information regarding this professional conduct that is somewhat unprofessional.

I will give credit when credit is due but I will hold no punches with people who constantly rip off other people’s work for profit and without crediting the original author’s work.

Alwyn Cosgrove is one such person that I used to respect but now have sunk lower than a school boy who wanted to ace his test by copy/paste method of other authors.

First he ripped off Lyle..

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/mis…sm-part-2.html

Now he rips off Ian king..

http://www.kingsports.net/industryintegritytest.htm

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

Mistakes, Stupidity and just plain Craziness…

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:41:14 +0000

We’ve all have come to this stage of life before, one time or another we’ve done it.

Some of us won’t admit it because it’s just plain embarrassing, but I believe truly that one needs to make mistakes to learn. Without mistakes, there can be no room for improvement and frankly we’re not perfect beings.

If I had to choose a middle name, “Mistake” will be it because I’ve made alot of mistakes in my life and in my nutrition and lifting program to gather my experience that what makes me what I am today.

I believe truly also that there is no such thing as a mistake, but the best decision that you made with the available options prior to your experience and ignorance of a subject that you have not thought about.

However don’t let that be an excuse but a stepping stone to understanding a subject.

What is a Mistake?

Mistakes are just that Mistakes, so don’t have to over think it or beat yourself over it. Before I start addressing my views on mistakes, I’ll like to throw out a great step by step guide to correcting mistakes -

Admit that you’ve made a mistake.
Learn from your mistake.
Don’t do the same mistake again.

Alot of us fear mistakes because we don’t wish to be wrong and thats a wrong way of thinking. It only shows that we’re a lesser of a person who do not want to be humbled to learn something new, something that we’ve never thought about. We are only humans and have finite resources to understand and learn things.

It is a shame that people will not admit mistakes because it only shows that they don’t wish to learn more, and to stop learning would be a demise of one’s intellect, thought process and even integrity to their profession. No body can truly say they know enough however one can also know too much for their own good but I digress.

In all honesty, nobody can say they can stop learning if they bothered to upgrade their knowledge and seek knowledge.

However this is different from plain stupidity, making a mistake doesn’t mean that you’re stupid it just mean it was a best decision that you’ve made with your current level of intelligence and understanding; do no confuse the two.

Sometimes ignorance becomes bigotry and being stubborn is somewhat like a side effect of it. I believe too that some people are just plain stupid, and I will not lie about it or try to be polite. There are many people who are just plain stupid because they ignore common sense even when there are tell tale signs to stop it.

What does stupidity means to me?

Well its simple… If you completely ignore common sense even with obvious hints and advice against it, then you’re stupid enough not to act against it.

If you know you could get injured, hurt or even kill yourself yet do it because you thought it was cool, fun or wasn’t put in a position where you had to choose, then you’re just plain stupid.

Being stupid sometimes can be fun, but it ain’t fun when you have to pay for the consequence dearly.

If I could quote an urban phase, it’ll be ” it’s all fun and games till someone loses an eye.” Again, I digress but seriously it happens and still is happening.

What is just plain craziness or insanity?

The last degree of stupidity to an extreme level is just plain craziness.

Einstein made a very interesting quote, ” Insanity: Doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.”

This level of ignorance and stubbornness that is a forced mistake and stupidity combined; Completely devoid of intelligence and willful intent to ignore common sense and obvious hint.

So how does it relate to lifting, nutrition and all that jazz?

You made a mistake to eat that cream puff thinking you can afford it when you’re dieting, big deal.. move on and deal with it by not doing it again.
You are stupid when you make that same mistakes every other day and don’t see results of your dieting after 8 weeks and ask yourself why?
You are just plain crazy thinking that its because you’re just having too much carbs.

Mistakes are a dime a dozen, it happens everyday but we learn from it.

You made a mistakes by training too much this week, resulting you to be over reaching and fallen sick from the episode.
You are stupid to continue training even when obvious signs such as a flu and a running nose is telling you stop.
You’re just plain crazy to go all out and get injured from forcing yourself to train.

Stupidity is devoid of common sense, maybe common sense is not so common for some.

You made a mistake by estimating your body fat level visually, you correct it by having someone else more experience do a body fat caliper measurement on you.
You are stupid to insist that you’re around 10% when everyone else says you’re 15%.
You’re just plain crazy to believe everyone is wrong and you’re correct.

Plain craziness happens, and sometimes people just need to get a smack of reality to realize that.

You see I could go on and on but you get my drift, so make a mistake and continue to make one but learn from your mistakes.

Don’t beat yourself over it because It isn’t worth the time to cry over spilled milk, simply think to yourself…how did I spill that milk and what can I do not to spill it again?

However the most crucial take home message here is that, don’t be stupid and lastly don’t be crazy, simple isn’t it?

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Foundations of physical fitness – My view and definition.

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:34:02 +0000

The word “foundation” have many meaning to many people, though many the end result is somewhat the same.

It entails some form of low level support for building something else . Take for example foundations for a wall is the steel bars(re-bar) that are inside to hold the concrete, and it is as strong as how many bars are there to reinforce the wall.

The foundations of physical fitness is no different from a building; gravity affects us all and no matter how many ways you cut it, its going to lead back to same thing.

I won’t go as far as to speak about athletic community and specific sports because as of now, I have not specialized in any sport as of yet but I train the general population more. So I have a better understanding on the average Joe or Jane on the street, whom for some apparent random reason wanted to get fit.

First of all, I don’t try to make up my own rules and views on the definition of fitness. I try to fit the definitions within conventions if its reasonable and for more obvious reasons, that its just common sense.

I view physical fitness as the ability to do a physical activity well – short, sweet and most of all simple. I don’t want to use big words which makes no sense at all, things like broad time and modal domains whatever…

So what is physical activity for an average office worker like? – wait that was a rhetoric joke, because it almost nothing.

Clicking on the mouse and staring at the screen 10 – 15 hours a day, and another 2- 3 sitting front of the computer/television screen before finally hopping into bed. Maybe, just maybe once in a while, your boss dumps you a huge stacks of file or some pretty chick/handsome dude needed help with carrying some stuff, and you’ll volunteer.

Doing nothing at all, won’t cause problems right? I mean you did nothing but sit on your ass all day, what problem can there be?

Well quite a bit, depending how bad it is. The best part is that when the idea of getting fit suddenly pops into their little sedentary minds, the first thing they do is engage in some vigorous form of sports or put on a trainers and start jogging 2-3 km then start to think they can do a marathon already…

Don’t get me wrong, I believe something is always better than nothing but when most sedentary slugs do this, they’re actually trying to build the top of the building without laying the foundations, building the ground floor or the floors underneath the roof.

No one with common sense will try to build a peak without a foundation; a roof without anything to support it, stuff don’t just float in the air. Yet, this is whoever who have no clue where to start does. Maybe not so common sense after all.

I know alot of people will say, “Don’t be a wuss…just do it!”

Which is fine if you’re 15 to maybe mid 20 but when you get older, things that you damaged while doing physical activity don’t heal as fast and you need to work to pay bills or your mortgage.

Before someone quotes me out of context, and “over” comprehend my point and start putting words into my mouth -

All I’m saying is that, unless you get paid while injuring yourself, then fine go ahead and stop reading.
If you can run your life with a sprained ankle or a bad knee, more power you!
If being in pain all the time with injuries is your fetish, then what can i say?

If you don’t have such luxuries, fetish or method to work around it then read on…

The foundations of fitness is laid with bricks of strength -

As I said before – you’re up against gravity; your friend, nemsis and alibi all rolled into one.

Gravity is the one thing that makes the difference of a 150kg (mostly fat) vs a 50kg man landing from a jump. I don’t have to expand the magnitude of a “Richter scale experience” by the 150kg man on his ankles, knees and joints.

He could even kill a person if he landed on the right spot.

If your joints/muscles are not strong enough to take such abuse, it is impossible to hold up a structure (your body) with ample support.

Getting stronger is the first priority to cardiovascular conditioning, because seriously… how far do you need to run everyday from your MRT station to your office? Or bus stop to home/flat?

I’m not saying that cardio is useless but in terms of priority, conditioning would depend on the kind of physical activity needed for your everyday life. Doing simple metabolic conditioning in terms of body weight circuits and supersets is ample for a beginners as long as its low impact and moderate intensity.

But a full on 5km run or a hard interval training all the time isn’t the solution in the beginning. Getting stronger is, and if you get stronger everything else will improve together with it.

Strength is the key element to anybody’s fitness, without it you’re just fighting a losing battle with gravity.

When in doubt, do less -

There is a saying – “what doesn’t kill, makes you stronger.”

That is almost true on most parts but what doesn’t kill you also may cripple you. What cripples you make you crippled, period. Unless you plan to compete in the para-olympics, then ignore what I wrote and stop reading.

Laying the foundations of your fitness need not be a competition to fuel your ego, just because you can do 10 doesn’t mean you have to do 100 to prove your worth.

Although I am a firm believer that practice makes perfect and practice is at least 25 reps or so as a minimum however it must be with good form and done with quality movement.

If you’re killing yourself by forcing repetitions and doing bad ones, do less of it because you’re doing yourself a disservice by teaching yourself the wrong things. Also if you’re not doing it properly and with too much volume of work/load, you’re going to injure yourself.

Less sometimes is more, exercise is like a drug; ample dosage provides a cure, too much and you’ll over dose on it.

Always train with movements and not muscles -

I’m not going to go as far as to say that muscles are not important, because they simply are.

But going to a gym and then doing only bicep curls isn’t going to improve your life and fitness level a whole lot. We don’t use the bicep a whole lot in everyday life.

There are different planes in space that we move our bodies – front and back/ up and down / left and right.

As a newbie, your biceps or chest muscles should be the least of your worries. It is like tweaking the rims of a car when the problem is the chassis and the axial that rotate the wheels if you catch my drift.

Sure you can argue that the rims are equally important but you need not worry about that now, that can come later when your foundations are strong.

So aim for full body compound movements – Squats/Deadlift/ Chin ups / Shoulder presses/ Bench presses / Rows – Oh quick question – Does the chin up have a bicep curl within the movement?

These are the basic and most fundamental movements everything else spans from this and are variations, if you can’t master this then all the “functional” exercise in the world won’t save your life.

Most of it is too exaggerated and reeks of B.S, seriously…what is so functional about moving your mouse around the desk? But thats what you do for a living…

And for your information, doing squats and deadlift don’t injure you… doing it wrong does.

Trust me, I’ve seen many who do and they think they’re doing it right…

Summing up -

These are just a few points to take into consideration.

Lets face it, everyone was a newbie even myself, everyone had to start somewhere. However opinions differ as to what you should do when you’re starting out and it is no different with mine.

The only thing I’d like to point out is that if you have to listen to someone, make sure it makes sense to you and not kill yourself doing things that are stupid.

The simple rule of thumb to follow -

If it hurts, stop doing it.
If it doesn’t progress you nearer to your goal, assess what went wrong.
Do not let yourself get sucked in; everything works(if its sound), just that some things work better for you
Don’t get injured but don’t stop yourself from progressing with unfounded fears.
If you want to be cheap then you progress slow. If you want more efficient training, hire someone who knows what he’s doing. (everyone needs a coach)

So there folks, my view on how to lay the foundation of fitness.

If I was in his shoes – My dive into the religion of Dan John

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 15:40:31 +0000

I’ve almost completed reading Dan John’s Book and I have this crazy idea of just trying to study his techniques and evolve it to modern times and adapting it to my situation.

I am going to start my Dan Johnology cult and begin paying him pilgrimage by studying the text of this book as scriptures and it’ll be a full fledge theology of this lifting life of a sage.

If you want to call me a Dan John fanboy, so be it…doesn’t matter to me anyway because I’m quite proud to admit that I appreciate his work.

Why?

Because it works and its simple yet easy to understand but far from easy to do.

I think it is a great guide to draw inspiration from and I can do it simply by doing what he says and off load my responsibility to him – sounds like me shrieking responsibility I know but who cares anyway?

I’ve started my “Plus one and” programming and focused on getting stronger, so far the progress is slowly improving.

Currently I’m doing 80kg front squat for 5 and 85kg for 3. I’ve brought my total back squat volume up to 100kg for 3.

Broke my PR of my military press of 65kg and felt that I could maybe push it to 67.5kg, abit above .75 of my BW.

I count the last set of 5/6 to determine my total best.

So folks, if you want to get something done… just do it everyday, you’d get better at it. No need for fancy smancy programming.

I’ve been also upping my weight on the accessories – Core – Roll out with a barbell/ Decline half get ups with 2 x 15kg plates and Back extension of 4 x 5 reps of BW +20kg

All in all the accessories hurt like hell because I’m so weak at it but when I do get stronger at it, my lifts improve slightly. I fear accessories more than the main lift itself – so it shows how weak I am.

Since I’ve increased my lifting days to 3 times a week, I’m rotating my accessories to hit all the parts -

Flexion – Extension is the main theme – Which means isolations are being used -

reverse hamstring curls/leg extensions
Half get ups/Back extensions
Curls/skull crushers

The rest of the other movements will be hit with the normal push pull configuration anyway so I don’ bother to waste time with it.

I need to however shed the stupid idea that isolations are for bodybuilders, because it’s not.

I find that isolations are the icing on the cake that makes everything click together, doesn’t do alot but when you’re at this stage where you’re trying to push through a plateau, anything helps.

Though maybe I’m just weak, but well I won’t know till I’ve tried.

“Plus One and” Program – simple template for newbies and intermediates.

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:25:13 +0000

Recently I got off the diet and was thinking to myself how I weak I’ve become, with my gymnastic research/met con days.

Basically I got sick of the iron, took a sabbatical and came back with new ideas, but the truth was frankly I got bored of doing the same thing over and over again.

Taking a side step once in a while helped me realize a few things that I took for granted.

Being weak sucks, having too many goals at once sucks even more.

Again I’m going to make reference to Dan John’s book, because to me it is something like a religious class study textbook. Each time I read 2-3 articles/chapters and just stare out into space to reflect on my life and lifting life.

Maybe I have no social life which could factor into the equation but anyhoo…

I was quite intrigue with the idea of the “One Lift a Day” Program; Take 1 lift and go to the gym, lift it for 45 mins with ample intensity/poundage and go home.

See, simple right?

So I thought about it and I felt there was some obstacle and pet peeves that could turn me off from this program… I realize I hate spending 7 days in the gym and rather spend that time in my bed relaxing to music or reading a book.

Call me lazy but thats how I roll, because I can’t justify being heterosexual or not being a pedophile and having almost zero hot ladies working out and watching a bunch of teenager and sweaty men work out.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to lift but I hate to hang out at gyms because especially community ones like Singapore Sport Council gym’s are just a play ground for idiots who go there to pass time.

But I digress; simply put, I have a problem with stupid, I try to avoid it as much as possible.

One thing stuck with me for a long time ever since I read that article as a neophyte in lifting on T-nation was “If its important, do it everyday. If it isn’t then don’t do it all.”

Motivated and somewhat fedup with complexity because I don’t even understand it myself, I started a “Plus one and” Program.

My goals were simple, lift 3 days a week, do an important lift plus one other exercise and an accessory.

Rep scheme was a simple 5 x 5 reps, 5 x 3 reps alternating each week just to shake things up and fuel my adrenaline for lifting heavy stuff so I don’t feel like I’m a weakling, and also people don’t steal my weights when I’m going heavy or bother to ask me because they get intimidated when they see me the next time round.. I kid.

So my weakness is in my squats, strangely enough I could do 2 times bodyweight for deadlift but can’t get anywhere remotely near that for squats- I’m peeve and somewhat curious why.

So I do Squats plus 1 upper body movement and core/arms.

A real simple template which I use now is this -

Monday – Back squats + Military press & Weighted sit ups

Wednesday – Front Squats + Cable Rows & Weighted back extensions

Friday – Overhead Squats + Bench press & some curls/skull crusher

Principles are really simple – keep adding weight and go as heavy as I can while lifting with proper form and never lift to failure – I have no friends in the gym you see, and I don’t want to kill myself.

Having feel of how much you can realistically lift is very important, don’t go just by numbers but always try to push for progress. If for whatever reason, you can’t do or complete the last set of 5, finish it off at 3 and strive to make it 4. If you can’t get to a certain weight like you use to, then forget it, try it another time. I could go on and on but what I’m just trying to say save your ego for another day.

Another thing to note is how fast you recover is how much volume is optimal, what you want to strive for is frequency not PRs in every lifts. If you can’t recover within the next schedule gym session, scale down your workout or increase your rest days. Don’t be stupid and again save your ego for another day.

So its that simple, take one important lift and do it all the time, add on the secondary lift from the other half of the body and add your accessory lift in at the end.

The Great Eades Smackdown, 2010! – Part 2

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:51:19 +0000

This just in, this is for those who have not subscribe to his newsletter.

Enjoy!

The Great Eades Smackdown, 2010!

Part 2: The Fairy Godfather of Low-Carb Strikes Back – and Strikes Out!

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for the much awaited sequel of The Great Eades Smackdown, 2010!

In Part 1, we warmed up by slapping Eades around a little – now it’s time to send him to the canvas!

Join me as I continue the unmerciful obliteration of the fraudulent claims made byProtein Power author and incurable low-carb shill, Dr. Michael Eades:

Click Here for Part 2 of The Great Eades Smackdown, 2010!

Cheers,

Anthony Colpo.

This just in from Colpo – The great Eades smack down.

I had a dream…

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:22:02 +0000

I had a dream, the dream of owning a top notch facility with all the equipments that you see in the modern ones in the US. All the cool contraptions and device for testing, the amount of free space in their warehouse gym. It is just a sight to behold.

However I was jaded that I could never have the chance to play with the weights like how the people across the globe did, my dream became less optimistic.

The only time where I found it decent was when I was working in the now defunct Optimum Performance gym. But reality has made it such that Singapore Sports Council was okay, but the freedom that is lacking there is seriously a drag to work with. The only other place which I thought was great was at woodlands, at Republic Polytechnic. Dumb bells going up to 50kg, bumper plates with a spin bar, a great platform to train with and lots of space without much crowd.

The main draw for me was that it had a Kaiser Functional Trainer, which is driven by air pumps. The other best place to be lifting in a old skool manner would be Singapore Weightlifting Federation which has quite decent equipment and a whole lot lesser rules. All in all there are great places but non of them are really accessible to me due to my location and work schedule.

Home gyms are great and are also a seriously affordable investment but the problem is the lack of space and living in a HDB doesn’t really cut it to do such things. However reality is such, there is no perfect environment to train in and basically you have to make do with what you got. I was dealt this lesson when I left a gym to work for myself, condominium gyms were quite badly equipped and most of the things I’ve learned using barbells and proper dumbbells all went out of the window.

Sometimes all I had to work was with this, and seriously I was stumped. I would stare at it with bewilderment as I sometimes have no clue what to do. So one day, I decided that I just needed to go back to the basics. No cutting edge equipment, as ghetto as it can be and to make do whatever I can with whatever I could find.

I surfed the web for many Ideas on bodyweight training, there were a few but nothing really convincing. Then I chanced upon Ross Enamait’s Never Gymless which was a great resource to work with and draw inspiration upon. My further understanding of bodyweight work was with Coach Sommer’s Building a Gymnastic Body, it was all good resources to rely upon.

I went on to purchase my gymnastic rings and to me was the most sensible investment as a training tool so far. It packs up quite compactly, its not too bulky to lug everywhere and for $80 bucks shipped… I can’t find any tool other than the jump rope to match it’s return of investment.

Anyway my transition to a more basic and minimalist approach got me thinking about my training philosophies, and I can’t help but to realize that I’ve became an equipment/fitness atheist. This sudden enlightenment was further enhanced with clarity from reading two articles by Bill Starr and Dan John.

Everything works, some better than others in some aspects of training but not everything is a perfect tool. Buying a power drill to hammer a nail isn’t the best of choices. Yet some people are extremely dogmatic with their approach, believing that is a one size fit all program or a one tool fit all thing.

Fitting square pegs into round holes is just plain ignorance and yet there are many people who doing that.

So my dreams were smashed and reality was a killjoy. However it didn’t stop me from discovering new things, allowing me to be more versatile that ever. The take home point is this, reality is a bitch, suck it up and get with the program.

You can train anywhere, with anything and with anyone. It may not be optimal but you can make it work with enough dedication and creativity. And in the words of the wise Dan John, “don’t get suck it.”