Bodytribe Fitness

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WINTER STRENGTH CAMP coming up soon!!! Ya know you wanna…

Recently I exchanged some material with the infamous Ross Enamalt, who’d wonderful book, Full Throttle Conditioning, had a great catchy subtitle: putting the ‘work’ back into ‘workout.’ I like that.  So here’s today’s workout

We’re repeating last Thursday’s workout, only harder. For those looking for a higher rep GPP challenge, here’s what some of us were playing with this week:

Outside play time: since the sun made a brief visit this week, we went outside and started messing around with our tires.

Tire flip/tire sled tug/club slam. 6 reps/2 lengths/10 per side, 3 sets.

Shut Up and Rule the World 

Many years ago, when I thought I knew everything, as did my immediate peer group who was carved from the same wood, there mingled into our clan a newcomer who had the same beliefs of inflated genius, but spoke a slightly different dialect. Either through slight contradiction or simply over-expressed, unsolicited opinion it became quickly obvious that the grain of her timber was slightly different.

At first we chalked it up to her newcomer status; a neophyte in the ways of our tribe, but soon patterns emerged that forced us to evaluate ourselves and why the fit wasn’t quite right with our newest member.

We came up with a series of educational challenges for our group as an attempt to analyze our individual communication patterns and see if we were blabber mouths, blowhards or neurotic introverts. There was no science to our little experiment, but these challenges, many of which were based off of some solid wisdom my mom imparted to me when I was even younger and even more invincible, became decent insights into how our egos let us learn. I still use these challenge guidelines today, and with sometimes embarrassing results.

• Count how many times you start a sentence off with “I think…”
• See how many times you speak more than listen in any given conversation.
• Check how many times you feel you must participate in a group conversation even if you weren’t prompted to or asked anything directly.
• How often do you try to change someone else’s mind?
• Do you try to answer more questions than you ask?
• How important is it for you to feel `right’ in any given situation, and how do you go about the process?

In the grand scheme of this mortal coil we’re going to learn more than we can teach. One of the biggest lessons ever imparted to me was how to learn, and it has become a perpetual quest. The traditional wisdom quotient of `two ears, one mouth’ is often used as the determination that we should listen more than we should speak, but current evidence has suggested that even with this 2:1 ratio, god possibly invented duct tape for the purpose of helping the ear’s advantage even further.

The loudest are rarely the rightest. And `loud’ isn’t always an issue of audible volume as much as word choice, timing and sheer quantity. History seems to bless those who master wisdom through a quieter intensity, and their words ring louder through substantiation and knowledge, not volume.

Sagacity speaks louder than bombs, often for the very simple reason that the person behind the words spends less time speaking and more time doing. Action and example override hubris and hyperbole, sometimes without a single word being spoken. Perhaps because participating in life, instead of talking about it, reduces our need for attention by empowering us with a security no amount of chest thumping can achieve.

It is almost too easy to wrap this all up into some sort of movement and fitness diatribe. Let’s leave that up to you. Meanwhile, test yourself with the list of challenges above. See how the ear-to-mouth ratio works for you.