How People Around You Shape You

A pic of the awesome poster made by Hannu Saarinen.

Earlier today I was sparring submission wrestling with a friend. To me that meant a full hour of proper ass whooping. My poor performance kind of pissed me off, but after a while I ended up thinking about something that's been rolling in my head for a while now.

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Above is a quote from Jim Rohn.

If you want to grow and move forward, it's crucial to have inspiring and skilled people around you.

Are the people you spend time with the people you admire? Do you spend time with people who bring you down or people who enable you to take the next step?

Quoting Steven Winterburn.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self esteem, first make sure you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

In sports, moving to the next level often means getting your ass kicked every now and then, but so be it. Let it elevate you.

Resonate With People With Traits You Aspire To Have

Meet Patrik, a friend of mine who I first met few months ago. Soon after, he started to pay attention to his eating habits a bit more and go to gym with me. In three months he dropped over 28 lbs (13 kg) of body fat and got a whole lot stronger. Sadly we didn't take proper before/after -pictures so you'll just have to settle for these. Click to see a larger version.

Patrik's 3 Month Transformation.

Lesson of the Day: If you want to be fit, start hanging out with fit people. If you want to be smart, start hanging out with smart people. If you want to be a great cook, start hanging out with great cooks. You get the idea.

Oh, and just in case, if you start hanging out with people with shaved heads, you just might end up shaving your own one day. You've been warned!

Bodyweight Challenge: Muscle Up!

It's an Instrument.

Muscle up is probably my favourite bodyweight exercise at the moment. Try it out and maybe you'll understand why. It's harder than it looks.

Here's my two cents for you to get started.

• Position yourself about one step away from the bar.
• Jump and grab the bar. Let your body swing forward once. Stay completely relaxed (this is important).
• When you swing backwards, shoot yourself up with one explosive maneuver. Use your whole body!
• If anything, your stomach should be the first part of your body (after your hands, duh) touching the cold steel. It's not a pull up so don't pull your chest to the bar!

Extra tip: Do not look at the bar! It will screw up your performance. Keep your face down.

Hopefully you got an idea how to approach the exercise.

Check out my muscle up video below. Me and my friend had a spontanous muscle up challege when we were on our way to a party, hence the unusual choice of workout gear. I tried to compensate lack of warm up with half a bottle of red wine. It worked surprisingly well, so I might make it a habit.



BTW. I lost the muscle up challenge by one rep.

Rediscovering Resistance: The Big Lifts

Couple of days ago.

I went to a gym and a first thing I saw was a couple of guys doing biceps curls and writing down reps on a training log. This is exactly what I meant about people being out of focus.

Biceps curl is not an real exercise; it has no real-world application and no one is ever gonna give a shit about how many reps you can make and with what weight.

The Big Lifts

Minimalist Fitness mentality includes six basic lifts: deadlift, squat, bench press, overhead press, weighted dips & chip ups. These are the essentials that should count for 85 % of your strenght training routine. You can also add snatch and clean & jerk to this category.

The remaining 15 % is for the so called tuning exercises you can choose by your preference (e.g. the damn biceps curl). But the big lifts are what count, what you should keep track of and where your time & effort should be invested.

Time to Wake Up

First of all, excuse my grammar for I am not an native english speaker.

I have to admit I started this blog partly out of frustration. I'm utterly and completely tired of seeing people focus on pointless workout routines and irrelevant nutritional details.

Our brains are getting bombarded by supplement adverts, new trendy workouts and fad diets. It's no wonder that we're lost and out of focus.

In this blog I will embrace the ones that matter; big lifts, heavy weights and real food!

Simple & effective.