Efficiency and The Best Laid Plans

Friends I hope this finds you all doing well. We’re going to put out a quick tip today along with some updates and requests. Hopefully later in the week we’ll be back to be able to put out a longer version.

Sometimes your best laid plans just don’t work. This weekend Heather’s dad had a heart attack completely taking everybody by surprise. So we’ve been at the hospital a great deal the last four days. In fact part of the point of this tip is to ask all of you who will, to please pray and continue to pray for her father and family. He had two stents put in on Sunday relieving some blockages and was actually feeling much better very quickly, but the test showed that he had three other vessels with severe blockages and needed open-heart bypass surgery. He had that done yesterday afternoon and really is doing very well.

Again we ask that you all would keep them in your prayers and thank you ahead of time for it.

So here are some quick thoughts on this that maybe we can all learn from. Wes, Heather’s father, is 61 years old. He’s probably the healthiest 61 year old I know next to Jack LaLane. Heather’s mom and by consequence her dad are religiously devoted to being healthy. They’re probably, other than a couple of actual fitness professionals I know, the most consistent, healthy eaters and natural herbal and supplement users I’ve met. We’re talking serious here. Not occasionally like most people, but I mean devout, scheduled, all the time.

So what can we learn here?

1. Nobody has any promise of tomorrow in life or health. So you had better live every day like it might be your last. You’d also better have all your spiritual matters in order with God the Father and relationship with Jesus Christ.

2. Wes had two physicals in the last eight months including blood tests, EKGs… the works. His cholesterol is below 200. He literally had no other health problems or lead up symptoms to this except possibly fatigue, but that’s pretty hard to distinguish when you work an average of 75 hours per week.

So what do we pick up here?

We and the medical establishment just don’t know everything. The body functions in a far more complex way than we currently understand. We’re just scratching the surface of why things actually happen. When we asked the doctor about this he said, “The truth is it’s probably all just 90% genetic.”

3. Even though we can’t control things like this and can’t predict them it’s still important to take care of your health. More than likely had Wes not been so extremely healthy when he had this heart attack, it would have killed him. He also would not be tolerating the surgery nearly as well. The moral is you can’t predict what will happen to you, but the greater health you build the more insurance you put in the bank to protect yourself against those things you can’t see coming. The easier and better you’ll live your life. Start doing something to build your health not just your strength now.

4. If you get the idea that you are having some kind of a cardiac problem, don’t try to tough it out or wait around. Get to the hospital ASAP. That’s hard for me to say because it’s against my nature to actually go to a doctor and it’s the same for Wes, but getting there quickly minimized the damage to his heart and is making a huge difference in his recovery.

5. Make sure your family knows you love them.

6. Learn to do something to minimize your stress. Make positive changes in your outlook and in your mental habits. Live consciously to redirect your stress into a positive light instead of building up negative damage.

7. Realize the things that are truly important right now. *Hint – It ain’t work. It ain’t the yard. It ain’t cleaning out the garage although all those things need to get done, only the spiritual and the people we affect last.

8. Plans change when more important things happen. Roll with it. We had a lot of work planned for this weekend including releasing ad copy for the new DVD that Dennis Rogers put out on Slim “The Hammerman” “Farman. It’ll just have to wait until we’ve dealt with the more immediate family matters and that’s the way it should be.

9. Do as much as you can to take care of your health. That includes strength training, cardiovascular training, eating descent food, staying hydrated, getting rest and working on your mental and spiritual outlook. This is a big reason we put out the training materials we have and the whole system outlined in TC 1 and 2 has all of this training built in together, because that’s how you get to the greatest vitality and health.

10. Whatever the situation is you can make the best of it. Even if you don’t have control. You still have to believe and choose to find the positive and that you can come out on top. Keep praying and keep working and you will.

*A quick physical tip. Gear your workout to include as much efficiency as possible. A way to do this is within your warm ups. Include exercises that not only help stimulate blood flow, but build conditioning, stimulate your lungs and deep breathing and build joint mobility, active flexibility, opening of tight muscle groups or joints, propreoception, quickness, tendon strength, multi-angular strength, etc.

Guess why we pick the exercises we pick for our alternative conditioning work? Because when you use them as a workout or a warm up they simultaneously build all those qualities we just discussed. Working on 10 or more physical qualities quickly with simple exercises. That’s also why the old timers used these training tools and why strength cultures all over the world use them. Bodyweight exercises, the kettlebell, the club, cable set, hammers all fulfill these functions. Be sure you get some in your workouts.