L.E.S is More: Part 1 - Lifting

Lifting-

In my experience and observation, it is possible that one can reach a desired weight or composition by purely focusing on their diet. However, adding a weight training regimen will help expedite results and allow one to reach their goals faster.

For the average person or beginner, I think it's good to aim for lifting 3x/Week. Those three days can easily be broken out into chest/back, shoulders/arms and lower body. This allows you to hit all the key muscle groups and do so effectively.

If you don't have access to a gym, don't fret. Getting outside and being active 3-5x a week is a great substitute. Whether it be walking your dog, hiking up in Forest park, or riding your bike to and from work, those activities will all help expedite the process. The goal here is to just avoid being sedentary.

It’s important if you are a beginner to at least start with a lower weight to ensure proper lifting technique and form. It pains me to see people load the bar up with weight, only to severely limit their range of motion. If you have some anxiety about using low weights because of how it may look, let me just say that everybody started there at one point. Additionally, it's important you gauge your results compared to your goals/expectations. DO NOT compare yourself to your peers because there is no concrete basis for comparison and it will only have a negative effect on your mental approach.

So here is an example of a basic lifting routine and lifts one could use if they decide that weight training 3x/week would work for them:

Chest/Back

• Dumbbell Bench Press
• Seated cable rows
• Incline Dumbbell bench press
• Pullups

Shoulders/Arms

• Dumbbell Shoulder press
• Rear Delt Raise
• Lateral DB Raise
• Seated Curls
• Dips

Lower Body  

• Squats
• Lunges
• Hamstring curls

Stay tuned for the Eating portion of the L.E.S. is More series, coming soon!

-Colin

L.E.S. is More

I’d like to set this up as a little intro into a 3-part series called “L.E.S is More”

L.E.S is a simple acronym for Lift, Eat, Sleep, or as I’d like to think, the bare essentials of getting into shape or living a healthy lifestyle. 

In today’s world we are able to access much more information than we were 10-20 years ago thanks to advances in online capabilities. Why this can be a good thing, it can also lead to information overload. How do we know what is healthy? What lifting method works the best? What supplement will help me do X & Y? With all the new information available, it seems we tend to forget the basic things that built the platform for those questions to even be asked. This is why I encourage people to step away from the overload and focus on the three most crucial elements to any successful body or lifestyle transformation.

Lift. Eat. Sleep. 

Each subsequent post will go into a little more detail of how LES can actually be more, and how to take advantage of each component to achieve maximal results.

Trust me; I used to be that guy on the other side, trying to find the latest supplement or latest and greatest routine. It wasn’t until I stepped away and really thought about what my goal was. I wasn’t training to be the next Ronnie Coleman or Bo Jackson; I just wanted to maximize what my body could do for my personal satisfaction. Subsequently I realized the differences between doing those special routines and taking those magic pills/powders are clearly immaterial & PFW (s/o to my fellow accountant’s lol). 

So please stay tuned and on the lookout for the next couple posts. Step away from the information overload, assess what your true goals are, and focus on the basics of: Lifting, Eating, and Sleeping. Give it some time and hopefully you will be achieving those goals like I am…

Act with Intention

It's been way too long since my last post and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't lightweight embarrassed writing this now, knowing damn well 2 months ago I set a goal to post weekly. I apologize for that. Hopefully the 3-4 people (maybe generous haha) that actually read this blog will understand and know that I let myself down at the same time.

I wanted to keep it short today and post a great TED talk that I watched the other day and really got the wheels in my mind turning about the future. Being a 20-something myself, its almost overwhelming to imagine all the possibilities and options life presents us with if we use our resources and act with intention. In my opinion the possibilities are endless, only by definition and genetic limitations. However, that has still got to leave us with at least a million possibilities, right? And that may be a conservative figure. Regardless, i'd much rather be overwhelmed by my options rather than underwhelmed.

To sum the video up, Meg stresses that we spend our 20's working towards something, acting with some intention and not just mindlessly drifting along and putting things off because of this illusion of how much time we have in the grand scheme of life. The choices we make now shape our future. We need to get rid of this notion that we can waste our time during our 20's and finally get serious once we turn 30's. I think she really hit it on the head when talking about the flight of an airplane and how such a slight change of course, upon takeoff can be the difference of landing in Hawaii or Alaska.

Let's forget age for a minute and live with some urgency to force ourselves into acting with intention in our everyday lives.

 “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”

-Leonard Bernstein                                  

-Colin           

The little things that matter

First I’d like to apologize for how long it’s been since my last post. If anything I could tell you that I’ve been on the road for the past 2 weeks, busy with work and beginning to gear up for some serious CPA studying, but that shouldn’t matter, those aren’t good excuses and I will own that. 

From now on though, I will stick to at least one post per week, hopefully more, but I think one post is achievable for now. 

Lately though I’ve been noticing how much the small things in life can make a difference in someone’s day. 

I try to make it a point to say “Thank you, ____” whenever I interact with someone wearing a name tag, like at the grocery store or gym, etc… You would be surprised at how much positive reaction that can receive. 

Business wise I think there are many ways of adding a personal touch, one big one would be hand written thank you notes, but there are other ways that could be used more frequently. 

For example if you are trying to connect to someone on LinkedIn, don’t just use the pre-populated text within the greeting, but add a personal note instead. Give people something interesting to read or let them know that you took the time to write a nice message. 

It’s the little things like that, that takes so little effort on your part but can make such a large difference for someone else on the other end.

-Colin 

Live from Juneau, AK: "Don't sacrifice what you want most for what you want at the moment"

Glad to say I can officially cross Alaska off my list of states I've never been too. Granted, I'm in Juneau, not quite the bulk of the state but its still Alaska none the less. I wish it wasn’t so cloudy and rainy; seems as if It’d be a spectacular scene if the clouds ever decided to lift or burn off. 

Work has been busy the first 48 here and don't see it letting up as I am only here for a week and there is quite a bit of work to be done. I was able to get a solid workout in today after an 11 hour work day at the local gym, Alaska Club located here in Juneau. I thought it was a decent gym, but was appalled to find out a membership was close to $100 a month...

Anyways, lately with work being as crazy as it is, I've been thinking about how we as people tend to get so stuck in the moment that we lose sight of the bigger picture, or how small that relative blip of time is compared to our lifespan. It a natural reaction in times of duress, and I would admit that I have had my struggles over the past month or so with all the hours I've been working and other non-work related thoughts.

It wasn’t until I found a quote that really helped to ease my anxiety during this time:

"Don't sacrifice what you want most for what you want at the moment" 

Deep huh? I thought so. It immediately resonated with me the moment that I saw it. Considering the internal struggles that I had been going through, it was exactly what I needed to see. 

To me that quote isn’t about just looking at the big picture, but about having discipline and self control to know where you want to go and to not get distracted by the little things that might arise and get in the way of that. 

At 24, I have pretty good idea of how I want to live my life and the kind of people I want to enjoy it with. But the reality is, I can’t execute that at 24 for the most part. I have to put in the work now if I want to live like that later on. Knowing and reinforcing that is very empowering and motivating to me personally. I actually made some note cards with that quote, among other various quotes that I pull out first thing when I wake up, and about 10-12 times during day to keep my head in the grind and out of the clouds. I will say after a few weeks it has made a profound difference in how I approach my career and other various aspects of my life. It felt as if I stopped spinning my wheels and remembered what I was working towards, and what I needed to do to make that a reality. 

So my challenge to you would be to find what you want to have in your life on a big picture scale. It’s tough to have an exact idea, but at least have something general to strive for. If you want to avoid that feeling of spinning your wheels, you have to have an idea of where you are going or where you want to go. 

Without that direction we can easily be distracted by the things that pop up in the moment and essentially lose sight of what we want the most. 

So try it out. Have something to strive for, make some motivational note cards, and pull those out first thing when you wake up and right before you go to bed. Don’t let the small stuff get in the way of your big picture. 

-Colin 

 

 

2/15/13 Goals Update

I would like to say I have officially accomplished one of my goals this year and can subsequently cross it off my list.

Granted it wasn’t that hard of a goal to accomplish, but officially filling and registering Peakless as an LLC gives me a motivational boost to stay on top of the blog and get things rolling on the business side to generate some revenue.

Big win or small win, a win is a win.

 

-Colin

Valentines Day #ForeverAlone Travel Workout

I definitely should have made sure to post this actually on Valentine’s Day but after I got off work, and through the workout I had to pack for my flight back to Portland today. 

Given yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and I was in Missoula without a Valentine, I thought the name would be jokingly fitting in a few ways:

1. It’s Valentine’s Day, without a date, on the road, safe to say that "forever alone" feeling was probably present.
2. After actually finishing this workout, I'd prefer to be alone to give myself some time to catch my breath and get some blood back in my brain.
3. By finishing the workout itself you put yourself one step closer to being in better shape, boosting your confidence and resulting in a newer self to increase ones chances of not ending up forever alone. 

Without further ado, the Forever Lonely Valentine’s Day Workout:

4 Rounds Total 

• 100 Air Squats 
• 75 Sit ups 
• 50 Sky Jumps 
• 25 Pushups 
• 20 Rear 
• 10 Hand Stand Pushups 
• Run 1/4 mile on the treadmill. 

Overall it’s a tough but satisfying workout. Like I mentioned before, not a lot of Hotels will have the ample amount of free weights so to counteract this, workouts must have and maintain a high intensity.

Additionally Montana was fun for what it was. I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to comeback aside from seeing Yellowstone, but it was nice to be able to cross it off the list. Not sure I agree with a lot of the locals who told me it was just like Portland (LOL) but they were good people none the less. Although I think this picture would be a good indicator of how quiet this place actually is:

-Colin