Change the Food!

After a great workout with Mary yesterday, we sat down and talked about my food intake which has been off a bit for a while now. Even though I have won the Hawaiian State Ultimate Fitness Championships twice, competed in numerous kickboxing bouts, as well as coach hundreds of people each year, I, like everyone else, fall into habits. I haven’t really fallen into bad habits, just more like a routine that offers no flexibility to add what I really need- vegetables!

As a kid, I always ate my greens first, and then moved onto the rest. Not really sure why, just worked out that way. Now, I just seem to skip the greens all together every day, and every week! Here’s what I normally eat:

Meal One: two cups cheerios, 60 gram protein shake.
Meal Two: ½ pound roast beef, 2 slices whole grain bread, 2 slices Swiss cheese, teaspoon low fat mayo
Meal Three: 2 cups Jasmine Rice, 2 pieces Tilapia
Meal Four: 2 cups Chobani Yogurt
Meal Five: 70 gram protein shake
Meal Six: 2 cups rice, 2 pieces Tilapia

Here are meal changes Mary is helping me make:

Meal 2: add one or two cups broccoli
Meal 3: add one or two cups mixed vegetables
Meal 6: add one or two cups green beans

That was it! For me, my food intake is OK, I just needed to add a SUPER important ingredient to the plan! Simple, huh? This way, I’ll have added vegetables to 3 meals. The good thing about veggies is that it takes just as many calories to burn them off as they supply. Meaning that vegetables are a “wash” on your daily calorie intake and really only provide you with needed vitamins and minerals to keep your body healthy.

However, most people need a complete overhaul when it comes to their diet and nutritional needs - and if that’s the case, then give Mary a call or shoot her an e-mail today!! Right Now!! Because the sooner you start to accomplish your goals, the sooner you’ll reach them!!

727-260-2352 Mary's cell#
MaryMuscles@gmail.com

How to Celebrate a Milestone!!

OK, so I’m 40 now. A monumental occasion for sure, but I’m no different than I was yesterday really. However, I have always viewed birthdays as a chance to celebrate life as well as my purpose for living. What exactly is that purpose and how do I do celebrate that? Well, here are 3.5 ways I recently accomplished just that:

1. Training: On the morning I turned 40 I trained with my fiancé Mary at the gym and we did delts (shoulders). And at 40 I am stronger than ever! I was able to perform 4 sets of seated dumbbell presses with 90 pound dumbbells for 9 reps each set. (In December I could knock out 10-11 reps, but I hurt my back recently and haven’t been able to train properly.) I couldn’t even move that much weight when I was 20, 30 or 35 years of age. That wasn’t all of course, I did a total of 6 supersets of seated dumbbell presses and side lateral raises (90 x 9 reps and 40 x 12reps ), 4 sets of standing military presses (185 x 11 reps), 4 supersets of seated Arnold presses with standing upright rows (65 pound dumbbells x 12 reps and 100 pound barbell x 15 reps) I ended up doing 24 sets of exercises over all. (Hell, I was just trying to keep up with Mary!!) I celebrate by training my body to be strong!

2. Coaching: I have loved teaching since I first tried it back in 1988 as an assistant instructor under Master Chuck Bittle in Rockville, MD, but I knew even before that, that I wanted to own my own martial arts school. In 1986 I was 16 years old and sitting around with my buddies and we were discussing how the school would operate! So, each year since 1988, I celebrate my birthday by doing what I feel I was born to do- directly helping others acheive their potential!

3. Fund Raiser: I’ve been very fortunate in my life; I’m healthy, I have good friends, I make enough to eat and go on a vacation every so often and have been blessed to have stayed sober for over 16 years. But there are people out there who are less fortunate than me, and like most folks in this world could use a bit of help here and there. This year I focused my efforts on people who may not get the chance to enjoy life as I have, so I focused on the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central Florida. We raised over $5500 on the day of the event and still more money is coming in! I celebrate by helping others I may never meet!

3.5 Medieval Times: That’s right…”John Kyle, you just turned 40! How are you going to celebrate?” I’m going to Medieval Times!! Mary was kind enough to get us tickets, so we drove out to Orlando and had a blast! I celebrate by still being a kid!!

Question: what can you do to celebrate the fact that you’re on this earth???

The Other Side Of Pain!

My fiance Mary and me were having a conversation the other day about the difference between ourselves and other people we see training at gyms. We all want results as bad as the next person does, yet we've found there is a major difference between our approach and most other people's who train- and that would be the amount of pain we're willing to put ourselves through.

For instance, here was my last cardio workout: (unless you train on a heavy bag regularly and try to get over 200 quality strikes, you'll not really understand just how hard it is to reach these numbers)

Round 1- Shadow Sparring (180)
Round 2- Shadow Sparring (200)
Round 3- Heavy Bag emphasis on Speed with hands. (approx 180 strikes)
Round 4- Heavy Bag emphasis on Power with hands (approx 190 strikes)
Round 5- Heavy Bag emphasis high volume hands with speed kicks (190)
Round 6- Heavy Bag emphasis high volume hands with high volume kicks (200)
Round 7, 8, 9 &10-Heavy Bag same (180-200)
Round 11- Shadow Sparring (230)
Round 12- Walking Lunges (100)
Round 13- Squat Jumps (70)
Round 14- Burpees (50)
Round 15- Jump Rope (with 50 Double-Unders)

I did the Heavy Bag rounds first this time because I was mostly focused of developing my skill and simply did the exercises at the end for conditioning.

Here's an example of Mary's Shoulder routine:Mary is available for Personal Training sessions as well. She is an active amateur body builder with over 10 years of weight training experience. You can contact her at mmonoc@hotmail.com

Rotation One: (performed 3 times)
Standing Lateral raise
Standing Unilateral Side Raises
Seated Dumbbell Shoulder Press
Seated single arm side lateral raise
Standing alternating front lateral raise
Standing side lateral raise
Standing Dumbbell Press

Rotation Two: (performed 3 times)
Seated Arnold Press
Seated Side Lateral Raise
Standing alternating Front lateral raise
Standing Alternating Dumbbell Press
Around the world side lateral raise
Around the world front lateral raise
Seated Dumbbell Press

Rotation Three: (Performed 3 times)
Upright Rows
Barbell Shrugs
Dumbbell Shrugs

The key, we’ve found for ourselves, is to push the pace with whatever it is we're doing and try to keep it up as high as possible for the duration of the workout and NOT slow down. This way, when it feels as if I can’t breath on the heavy bag, or Mary's muscles are burning and crying for her to stop, we push through. By doing this often we found we can push harder over time which of course is where the results are: on the other side of pain.