Day 62, What If...

... 10% of the world did The Peak Condition Project? This thought bubbled up in my mind today as I was jumping rope. Of my friends and acquaintances who know I'm doing this, (and it's getting more and more obvious that my physique is changing, thus, more people keep asking) the reactions fall in this range. Let's take a sample of 10 people:

• 4 will say something like : "Why? You weren't out of shape or anything..."

• 3 will be in the ballpark of: "Wow, sounds tough, I could never do that..."

• 2 will say something along the lines of : "That's cool. Good luck! I'll check your blog!"

• And 1 out of 10 will say: "How did you do it? I want to do it. I want to start tomorrow. Tell me how you did it. I'm serious."

When I was an aid worker, a 10% compliance rate for a given health initiative was considered a huge success. So I've been surprised to have so many people not only express interest in the PCP, but practically beg me to let them do it too. (This is why I decided to open it up to three others) All I can say is that the Project brings out the best in people, especially in that 10%

So anyway, I was just trying to do a thought experiment. What if 1 out of every 10 people in the world started eating right, controlling their diet, and exercising consistently? How would that change the planet?



First, a lot of industries would see an immediate 10% drop in profits. Fast food, restaurants, bars and the like would have 1 out of 10 tables empty.

Other sectors of the economy would see big upticks, especially agriculture and sporting goods. Fruit prices would go up as demand soared. There would be a lot more eggs sold too, which wouldn't be a great thing considering how most egg farms are run.

But there would be other effects. If 1 out of 10 people started looking and feeling really good, the people around them would naturally start to become a little healthier too. As I wrote about way back on Day 19, when you're on the PCP diet you don't take your friends to restaurants, everyone in your house eats the low sodium soy sauce, etc...

As a result, healthcare costs would go down. The 10% wouldn't want to opt into insurance plans that supported the other 90% who had unhealthy habits.

Maybe even a divide would open up, as indeed it already is, between people who think about their health and those who don't. There would be those who took their smoke breaks, and those who took their jumprope breaks.

Readers, what am I missing? Do you have any ideas for how the world would change for the better or worse if 10% of the population did the PCP?

Day 61, Easing Off the Throttle

This week I could feel my body getting to a breaking point, so I've eased off a little bit. Not doing as many sets, not pulling as much weight. I'm getting a lot better at listening to what my physiology is telling me.

For instance, towards the end of last week I noticed that the burn from my training was taking on a different character. It's hard to explain, but it was moving from a kind of "meaty" pain to a more "stringy" pain. This is the same way I felt a month and a half ago when I caught a cold. But that time I kept on pushing and probably made my cold worse. So I'm going to keep it light for a few days. The jumprope stays of course.

I'm starting to understand that the path to peak condition doesn't look like this...



It's more like this.


And isn't that how everything in life is?

Day 60, The Style of No Style

What made Bruce Lee a remarkable martial artist was his openness to new techniques and ability to blend styles. He grew up doing Kung Fu, but was not bound by the rules of that discipline. When he found something that worked better, be it from the world of jujitsu, boxing, or street fighting, he incorporated it without complaint or clinging to his old ways.

This went for training too. He mixed Western bodybuilding and sports science freely with ancient Chinese strengthening techniques. He tried everything, even gimmicky gadgets from the back of martial arts magazines. He built his own weight lifting machines, designed his own protein drinks, and constantly asked if what he was doing was really the best way.

Eventually this all evolved into his martial and life philosophy, Jeet Kun Do, or "the style of no style." The emblem he designed for his school looked like this.


The Chinese characters read, "Using no way as way" and "Having no limitation as limitation." The arrows and yin/yang indicate the constant flux and malleability of reality, and by extension, of Lee's martial style.

This kind of open mind requires an enormous intellect. We use tradition and formality to bring a feeling of security into our daily lives. Clinging to a single tradition is, from this perspective, a kind of mental laziness. Someone is giving us all the answers and we follow them without question, usually out of sheer lethargy.

I am not a serious martial artist, but I run up against the same thing in the world of yoga. Yoga is just as splintered as the fighting world. Hatha, Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Sivananda, Bikram, Anusara, Vini, Kundalini, these are all styles who, to an outsider look almost identical. But within the Yoga world there exists a certain distrust if not outright hostility to styles other than one's own.

So, it was with Bruce Lee's example in mind that I set out a few months ago to find a new stretching technique, outside of the world of yoga, to get me to the hanging splits I mentioned in Day 50. I've tried a lot of different things. I've queried kung fu teachers, ballet dancers, physicians, a reiki master, and tried all their techniques. I've dived down deep into the yoga sutras looking for clues regarding hip flexibility.

And after all that I've found a technique that I think is the best. I won't share it until I can definitively prove that it works, but, like Bruce, I will joyfully keep searching for better ways of doing things. That's where the fun of personal growth lies!

Day 59, Field Trip

Yesterday Chen and I went to a small, local community gym to do some research and development. It was a happy, dog-eared little place, and if you saw the movie Dodgeball: A True Underdog's Story, it was a lot like Average Joe's Gym from that movie, which you can see a bit of in the background of this clip.



By the way, I only watched Dodgeball because it was being shown on a plane trip I took. What excuse do you have?

The main reason we went is that Chen wanted me to learn exactly which muscles I need to target by doing the actions on machines, then trying to replicate the movement with the resistance bands or my own body weight. I'm reaching a point now where I have to be more and more targeted with my exercises, or I'll plateau in terms of muscle growth.

The gym was busy, it was a Saturday afternoon. There were some guys in there who had obviously spent a lot of time in the place, they knew all the machines well and were talking with the staff. But I couldn't help noticing that they just didn't look that strong. I checked how much they were pumping on the machines, and it was a lot of weight, certainly more than I could do, but it wasn't translating into a good physique.

I figured out after a few minutes that those guys must have no diet control whatsoever. All their big muscles that they've trained so hard to get are buried under a half inch of subcutaneous fat tissue. It's the difference between this.


and this....


After pounding out their sets they must feel pretty good about themselves and go out for ramen and beers. I used to be like this too, back when I had a gym membership. What I didn't realize is that to really get strong and fit, you have to change your whole lifestyle, starting and ending with diet. I am slowly coming to the conclusion that my version of The Peak Condition Project is 70% diet, 10% strength training, 10% cardio, and 10% flexibility work.

So that was pretty eye-opening, and re-energized me to stick close to my plan, even though I can get away with cheating now.

And if you're pumping iron at the gym, good for you, but wouldn't it make sense to have all that time, sweat, and effort actually show up on your body with a little diet control? I'm amazed at these guys who can spend hours lifting at the gym but can't say no to a heavy, unhelpful dinner that same evening.

Day 58, An Old Photo

About three years ago I went through the 10 Rolfing sessions. If you have no idea what I'm talking about go to the Rolfing Homepage. Rolfing is great and I highly recommend it.

Part of the Rolfing process is taking a before and after picture, to check how your posture has changed. I kind of forgot all about the pictures. But then last week I ran into my "Rolfer" and the photos popped into my mind. I asked him if he could send my old photos to me via email, and they arrived yesterday.

I couldn't believe them. Are you ready for this?

When this photo was taken I was coming off of two years at a desk job, and it really shows in the curved shoulders, turtle neck, and of course, extra flab. I'll never go back there!

And, I know someone's going to ask, so here's a shot I took this morning in my bathroom.

This is the skinniest I've been in my life. And I'm still two months away from Peak Condition.

Day 57, All You Can Eat (not very much!)

Tonight I went off diet at an all you can eat macrobiotic buffet. I say I went off diet but really I can't go off diet anymore. To put it simply, my stomach (the organ itself) has shrunk to about the size of my fist. I quickly reach a point where my stomach is physically full. No more food will go in there, and it's uncomfortable even attempting to eat more than I usually do on the diet.

Tonight, I was uncomfortably full after eating a bowl of miso, some salad, a piece of smoked fish, and a small serving of pasta. I had some eggplant and burdock tempura on top of that because it looked so good, but it was too much and I soon regretted it.

A few weeks ago I would have considered my meal just the starter trip in a long all-you-can-eat bonanza. I made sure I got my money's worth at those things.

What still baffles me is how now, I am doing perhaps double the daily exercise I used to on half the calories, without ever feeling hungry or low on energy. If anything I have more energy than ever. And I'm using the few calories I get to build new muscle. Where was all that food going before? I guess it was just passing through my system, because a lot of it was processed junk without a lot of nutritional value. Still, it doesn't seem to add up.

All I can think is that my body has learned that the free ride is over. Calories aren't just going to rain down in abundance like before. So when a meal comes, my body is like "Ok, I gotta get a bang for my buck with this energy, cause the rivers of milk and honey have stopped flowing."

Oh, and my PCP is 8 weeks old now! Every four weeks I've promised to post a photo in a Bruce Lee pose, you can see the last one on day 28. Here's today's, I was practicing nunchaku and just put the camera on timer shot.

Day 56, You Are OK

A weird thing has been happening to me recently. Now that I am getting noticeably in shape and doing so in this very public manner, people who aren't in such great shape are approaching me almost abashedly, and either asking for advice or kind of apologizing for their current physical state.

This feels very much like the times I go to a restaurant with a non-vegetarian, and they're like, "Dude, do you mind if I have a hamburger?"

Or when I run into a yoga student around town who hasn't come to the studio in a while. Before I can say "how are you?" they're explaining what has kept them away and promising to return soon.

In all three of these situations, I want to clap the person on the back and say, "Dude, I don't care." But that's not exactly true. I do want you to get in better shape, I do want you to eat less or no meat, and I do want you to do more yoga, especially at my studio where you'll be well taken care of. I do care.

But I know how complicated life is, and how I can never imagine what a day in your life is like. I know you're doing your best, that you've made the choices you have because that's all it seemed you could do at that moment. And I know you'll be ok.

So if you want to make changes in your life, just make them, and I'll be behind you 100% But if you don't feel up to a big change at the moment, don't try to explain why to me. I understand, and I think you're fine just the way you are. Really!