© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2010. | Permalink | One comment

Now, I’ll be the first to admit they do look a bit odd at first…

If you aren\'t seeing the embedded video, click here to view.

… but they feel amazing, and you get used to them really quick.

You may have heard of Vibram Five Fingers before; they’re definitely making the rounds among the kind of people who know a good thing when they see it (heck, there’s even a site completely devoted to them!). But if you haven’t, I highly encourage you to try them. Why?

Because they’re ultra-comfy.

I’ve always loved being barefoot, from being a kid at the beach to playing grass volleyball in college. I always take my shoes off indoors, and I love the warm seasons because it means I can get away with flip-flops most days. Wearing shoes is like wearing a tie; in some situations you have to do it, but if I had my druthers, those days would be few and far between.

With VFF’s, though, you can go anywhere you need to, and it feels like you’re barefoot. And because they’re so light, even after a day of walking everywhere, your feet feel great. No more tired ol’ dogs.

You feel more connected to your environment.

When I walk on any surface, I can feel it intimately. Seriously: the second day I had them we went to the movies, and I got grossed out because I could feel the stickiness of the carpet. (But, even on sharp gravel, the sole is enough to protect you from feeling any pain, so you can walk around relaxed.)

Your feet get stronger.

Think about it: for millions of years, we’ve been barefoot. How were we able to run after mastodons, trek over mountains, and still survive if we hobbled along, muttering, “Ouch! Ooch! Oaff!” every time we stepped on a rock? Because we didn’t, that’s why. When you go barefoot, your feet adapt. The ligaments, tendons, and musculature of your feet are strengthened by walking and running barefoot. It’s the wearing of shoes that weakens your feet, by doing the work that your feet should be doing for themselves.

I hike in the mountains wearing these shoes, and four days a week, I do my CrossFit workouts in them. Whether I’m Olympic lifting, sprinting, or doing any of the myriad of exercises I do in CF and the M.E.B.B. protocol I follow, I haven’t had any problems doing them in my VFF’s.

If you’re planning to run in them, I highly recommend easing into it. I started learning POSE running while wearing other shoes, and it took some time to strengthen my feet and calves to the point where I could run without a lot of soreness. When I switched over to the Five Fingers, the technique was much easier, but I was glad I had built up my strength as much as I had. And now, running in them is a joy. My feet/calves almost never get sore, and I can’t explain how great it feels to run without big, clompy shoes weighing me down.

Now, it’s not all sunshine and roses…

The only complaint I have about them is that, well, they stink. After all, I don’t wear socks with them, and after all that exercise, they can get pretty funky. I’ve scoured many online forums where people talk about them, looking for a good solution, and this is what I’ve come up with:

• Clean them after every use. It only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s well worth it.
• I spray them with Trader Joe’s Cedarwood & Sage All-Purpose Cleaner, and Earth Day Products’ “Everyday Stain & Odor Remover”, letting each one sit for a few minutes before rinsing them out and spraying the other. When the weather is warm, they’ll dry on their own pretty quickly, but in the winter, I prop them up against a fan and let them “blow dry” that way.

(If you’re a VFF wearer, and you’ve found something that cleans them well, please leave a comment and share your secret!)

They’re not for going incognito in.

The first time I got asked about my bizarre shoes was within ten minutes of buying them, and the interest hasn’t slowed much (just imagine when I get the red ones!). When people see these shoes, they almost often stare, and the more adventurous ones will strike up a conversation, asking me where I got them, what the story is behind them, and if I love them.

And of course, the answer is always yes.

© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2009. | Permalink | 16 comments

Enter: Primal.

It’s not that CrossFit doesn’t have a nutritional recommendation: it does. And it’s about as simple and clear as it can get: Meat and veggies, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. And any CrossFitter worth his/her salt is going to be able to rattle that off like a well-grooved mantra. And, at the same time, knowing what to do and actually doing it are often not the same thing at all.

I’ve read all kinds of fantastic nutritional information before, and have for years, but never have I been able to make it a lifestyle like I have since adopting the “Primal Blueprint Eating Plan” like I have with Mark Sisson, at Mark’s Daily Apple.

Primal living is, in my own words, a prescription for eating the way we’ve evolved to. Our genome has honed itself for over 2 million years, adapting to a particular style of eating that didn’t really fluctuate until about 10,000 years ago. And, since that “recent” shift, we’ve done nothing but go downhill, health-wise, except for the hygienic changes that have increased our average lifespan. It’s pretty clear if you look at how we’ve evolved to eat that it makes a lot of sense to stick close to our own internal genetic recipe. After all, you wouldn’t pour rocket fuel in your car’s gas tank, right? It’s just not designed for it.

Primal living isn’t just about nutrition, though. It’s about the whole grain-free enchilada – fitness, play, rest, and natural living in all sorts of ways. I’m not going to talk all about it, because Mark has already done a fantastic job of that on his blog for the past three years. I’d highly recommend reading this post for a bird’s eye overview, this post if you want a jumping-off point for a bazilion different resources on Primal living, and if you want the clearest explanation of what nutrition is all about, my all-time favorite post about Primal eating is this one right here.

If you like what you see, then the best thing you can do (short of buying Mark’s book) is to sign up for the special Primal Primer newsletter series that he created for this past month’s big Primal challenge. It’s the best, most comprehensive bundle of useful information on your health that I’ve probably ever seen. Seriously.

Now, Here’s Where I Need Your Vote:

As a part of Mark’s month-long Primal Blueprint Health Challenge, there were a number of contests created, ranging from super-simple to more elaborate… including creating a video of a Primal recipe that you love. I made a video of my Primal Coconut Pancakes/Waffles, which you can watch here, and it made it into the contest! Woo hoo!

Now, in order to win the prize, I need your vote – today. It’ll only take about 3 seconds, and would mean the world to me, if you could click to this post here and vote for my video: Primal Coconut Pancakes/Waffles. And, of course, I’d love to hear what you think of them if you make them yourself! (A few people have left comments on the video post, and so far, they’re a hit.)

If you’re curious about anything Primal-related, including my journey that brought me here, or anything about the video or the contest, please don’t hesitate to ask.

UPDATE: Bummer! I lost the contest by four measly votes (185 to 181). Ah well, that’s how the coconut crumbles… for all of you who voted, I appreciate it more than I can say!

Image by alaina.

© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments

But being the between-the-lines kinda guy that I am, I wanted to answer the question not with three answers, but with one. And so naturally, my answer was “CrossFit.”

Now, I never would have answered that question with any other fitness/exercise/sport that I’ve done (except maybe Nomadics), and I’ve done tons: intercollegiate rowing, yoga (bikram’s, ashtanga, hatha), triathlons, tai chi, full-contact martial arts, bodybuilding, you name it. Why?

Because you’ve got to embrace the suck.

Jon Gilson of Again Faster says it excellently in this must-read article:

When the knurling scrapes your shins, and your traps bunch into knots, you’ll make a decision, one that will affect every aspect of your life. Give in to the agony, and you will always give in. Cave to demands that crush you, and you’ll always cave. Roll to the floor, and you’ll always exist beneath those who choose to stand.

In order to make it through gruesome ordeals, you have to find a place in yourself that wants to overcome. Rising up to meet a challenge, toughing it out when high tide comes your way, and gritting your teeth and not giving up are the price of admission to success.

When you dig deep and muster up a performance that you weren’t sure you had in you, that teaches you something. It teaches you that you are strong, that you can withstand Shakespeare’s “slings and arrows”, and that your character, being what it is, is sufficient to the task.

“Embracing the suck,” then, is the hallmark of a champion. If you can look at a challenge, know it’s going to bite you in the ass, and still get yourself up to the starting line, then you’re playing the game for real.

You may not like it, but it’s true.

I know this may not sit well in today’s personal growth culture, where you can’t take a strong stance without the words compassion! and empathy! being hissed at you like you’re a demonic drill sergeant, just waiting to pound anything soft within range into cold, hard submission.

Now, before you write me off as a heartless bastard, know that I fully understand the roles of compassion, empathy, and proper timing. Too much, too fast, and you’ll burn out your engine, whether it’s your physical engine or your spiritual one. There are times when pushing means pushing too hard, and you do need to back off and give yourself a break.

But if you’re always giving yourself a break, and don’t have a mechanism in place that will take you past your comfort zones, you’ll never grow. And in my estimation, that would be worse than having never pushed too far.

It doesn’t have to be CrossFit, of course.

I’m not saying CrossFit is the only way. I’m not saying the path of the heart doesn’t have a thousand manifestations. And I’m not saying that there’s any one way to truth.

I am saying, though, that you have to find a way to go beyond who you’ve been. And in the rounded-corner world that most of us live in, there are precious few opportunities to see the kind of person you are, and forge yourself into something more.

And personally, I happen to love physical exercise. I love the movement of muscle and bone, the expression of intention through physical activity, and the grace and poise that athletics can bring to its devotees. Maybe it’s because I grew up overweight and sedentary for so many years that I’ve come to appreciate the joy of feeling my body do what it can. I don’t need to ruminate on it anymore, honestly, trying to find a concise “why”; it’s a joyous, happy part of my life, one that I’m immensely grateful for.

Again, from Jon Gilson’s article,

Remember that the walls of the gym are nothing more than physical barriers, meant only to separate us from the elements. What you do within those walls will echo in your daily life, and you would do well to choose your actions wisely.

And that’s just it, isn’t it?

What you do in one area of your life echoes through the rest of it, doesn’t it? You can’t compartmentalize anything. It all plays together, it all makes a difference, and it all matters.

How you rest is how you eat is how you work is how you dream is how you love. What you bring to one, you bring to another.

Image by Malingering.

© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments

Cronfeld

Yesterday I talked about a system of fitness called CrossFit, to help make the point of General Work Preparedness (GWP). In a nutshell, you take a generalist’s view of what it takes to be successful at work, rather than a specialist’s, by not just focusing on improving your working skills, but by becoming a better all-around person (more details here).

Well, to be perfectly transparent, I’m a CrossFit addict now. I live and breathe all I can of it, because I find it more exciting than wearing a hand-buzzer at a networking convention. I’m subscribed to their journal, I frequent the message boards, and I work out (mostly) along with CrossFit’s 3-on-1-off schedule. It’s the bees knees, baby.

I read something on the CrossFit message board the other day that struck me as having great value, and not just in fitness terms. Damien Del Russo (one of the thousands of community members) wrote, on a thread about losing weight:

Keep in mind that CrossFit is not meant to be a weight loss plan. That is one of the effects of being fit, but not the point of the [program].

Because CrossFit is about creating a "broad, general, and inclusive fitness" (a hallmark tenet of CrossFit), it doesn’t focus on one particular result, but on the ability to get better across the board: speed, strength, agility, coordination, etc.

When you train this way, and follow balanced nutritional guidelines, your body finds its natural and optimal balance. If fat needs to come off of you, it will. If you need more muscle, it’ll grow. If your heart needs to be more fit, it gets stronger and more efficient. So, you train for inclusive fitness, and that’s exactly what you get.

Now, the "crossover" part…

It’s easy to get specialized when it comes to spirituality and personal development, and start compartmentalizing our goals, such as:

• "I want to work on my anger."
• "I want to be more patient."
• "I need to learn how to forgive myself."
• "I need to be better at managing stress."

And so, we launch ourselves into programs and initiatives to try to develop those aspects of ourselves. We read books and take classes to learn how to communicate from the heart, do mantras to help us become more compassionate or relaxed, do service projects to learn selflessness, and so on.And in the quest for the solitary examples of what we think will make us better at certain things, we lose sight of what we can do to make us better equipped to handle the multitudes of situations that come our way each day. We strive for compassion, for example, because we think that’s an element of being a better person. What about working on becoming a better person all-around?

Train for connection, end up compassionate

In all the spiritual paths I’ve learned about, the fundamental teaching is connection. The more you can connect to your inner self, the better off you are. The more you can connect to your fellow human being, the better off you are. The more connected you are to the natural world, to the spiritual world, to your thoughts, emotions, and body, the better off you are.Is that it, then?

Of course not; it’s way too simplistic (and wrong) to imply that one focus will do it all for you. In CrossFit, we run, because running builds one kind of endurance. But we also lift heavy weights, and do bodyweight exercises, and gymnastics, and on and on. Multiple points of focus to train your whole body. And the cool thing is, when you’re a better deadlifter, you’re a better runner. And jumper, and rower, and cyclist, and anything else you need to do.

In your spiritual/personal life, you’re also going to need to focus on a multitude of topics in order to best develop the whole of who you are. The better you are, for example, at tapping into your spiritual connection, the better you’ll be at all kinds of other personal skills.

The trick is to kick your spiritual couch-potato tendencies, and get going.

And how, pray tell, do you do this?

Well, in the words of Michael Valentine Smith (Robert Heinlein’s protagonist in Stranger In A Strange Land), "I am only an egg." I wouldn’t endeavor to be more inclusive, than say, Buddha, Lao Tzu, or any of the world’s Prophets.

Because even if you’re "spiritual, but not religious," you have to admit that the experience of thousands of years of spiritual practice and personal development can’t just be tossed aside because it doesn’t fit your paradigms.

Am I saying that you should adopt a formal religion? Heavens, no. I mean, go ahead if you want to; I’m not against them if your intentions are clean and your discernment strong. What I am saying, though, is that success leaves clues. There are teachings available from the spiritual and religious doctrines of the world that, when practiced with a certain degree of self-responsibility and awareness, can yield immense benefits in your personal development, and help you build a "broad, general, and inclusive spirit" — path or no path.

And if you don’t have a "path" already?

Then start simple: Get to know yourself. Spend time inside (your heart, not indoors). Connect; with yourself, with others, and with whatever sense of "Oneness" you perceive and/or believe in. Live responsibly. Act sincerely. Extend a hand graciously, and receive one just as amiably. Love. Love some more. Forgive. Be grateful. From there, follow your heart.

Is there more?

Of course there is. Keep watching this space!

© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2008. | Permalink | One comment

Malingering

If you’ve seen my kung fu movies page, you know I’ve got a thing for action movies. Well, let me qualify that: I like well-made action movies. And the more physical action in it, the better.

Really, it’s because I love human performance; I get the same rush out of Cirque du Soleil, gymastics competitions, and soccer/football games, for the same reason (action movies just add a little drama now and again, which is nice).

That’s a long way of introducing the idea that I watched the movie "300" a while ago (well, most of it; I skimmed through a few overly gory scenes). What impressed me the most was the actor’s physiques; these guys were chiseled. And not freakish, either; just balanced and buff.

A little Googling and YouTubeing later, and I was watching some videos online about how the actors got in shape for their roles… and lo and behold, they were following CrossFit routines — a system I’ve been following for the better part of this year, so I wasn’t really all that surprised. Haven’t heard of CrossFit? Maybe it’s because CrossFit is a far-cry from what goes on in 99% of the gyms across this country.

Rather than focus on individual muscles (the typical body-building, big-box-gym-circuit-training approach), CrossFit is all about what they call "General Physical Preparedness," or GPP. In Coach Glassman’s words (the founder of CrossFit):

From the beginning, the aim of CrossFit has been to forge a broad, general, and inclusive fitness. We sought to build a program that would best prepare trainees for any physical contingency — prepare them not only for the unknown but for the unknowable… in sum, our specialty is not specializing.

Specialization has its price

A number of years ago I was training heavy; using large amounts of weight in a very small range of motion. Why? Because it builds size. I got to the point where I was lifting over 650 pounds on a leg press machine, and I was bench-pressing over 300 pounds.

But then, I went to put my then-two-year-old in her carseat, and almost threw out my back. I thought, "Huh?" That major disconnect taught me there was something seriously wrong about my methods.

GPP to the rescue

With GPP, you are training everything, for anything. And therein lies the beauty of CrossFit, in my opinion. By doing this kind of workout, you get in better shape, period. For anything. For any circumstance you need it for. For life.

GPP -> GWP

Lest you think this is just a promo for CrossFit, let me open this idea up a bit…

What are you interested in, for example, in your work? You’re probably interested in working at your best, with your heart and spirit in tact. It means you’re interested in HOW you work, not just WHAT you’re working at (although that matters, too). It means you want to express your purpose in this world, find meaning, and find peace and fulfillment in what you do.

Can you see how you have to go beyond just getting more done? Can you see how you need to focus not just on hours worked, widgets sold, clients served, or workshops taught? Can you see how efficiency, or communication, or intuition, or stress-reduction alone aren’t going to come close to giving you the kind of life you want?

In order to show up at your best, you need to adopt the GWP approach: General Work Preparedness. Generalize, not specialize.

That means finding a way to include such factors as:

• Productivity: organization, scheduling, eliminating distractions, etc.
• The ability to maintain your focus: a combination not just of "arranging your work", but the mental and spiritual aspects of clarity, passion, overcoming obstacles, etc.
• Confidence: cited as one of the top psychological factors in athletic performance, it holds true for work as well; without a positive self-image, your ability to present your best value — and stand in it with resolve — goes the way of the dodo.
• Health: if you aren’t physically up to the tasks you set for yourself, how can you achieve what your heart yearns to achieve? Whether you need to focus on drinking enough water, eating well, having core strength (it takes a toll on your body to sit at a desk all day, if that’s what you do), learning to type dvorak so you don’t get RSI, or whatever, taking care of your health is a foundational part of working at your best.
• Rejuvenation: don’t forget the value of off-time as well. No one can expect themselves to work at anything 10 hours (or more) a day, five (or more) days a week, week after week, and not burn out. Rest doesn’t just mean physical rest, either; you have to nurture the needs of your heart and your mind as well, which could include spiritual time, time with family and friends, you name it.

Is that it?

No, there’s certainly more. But this article is long enough as it is.

The soul of it is this: Whatever line of work you’re in, you are a human being. That means you have a heart, a mind, a body, and a spirit (the boundaries of all these are up for debate, of course… but that’s for another article). And it pays to pay attention to what all of your needs are, if you want to show up at your best.

© Adam for Adam Kayce, 2008. | Permalink | One comment