Patience Presence Practice

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  • Patience
  • Presence
  • Practice

These three words were the response to a question on what advice Michael Pollan has for anyone looking to improve their cooking skills. At first I was surprised, but also thought that would be a great answer to the same question as applied to losing fat, getting stronger, and many other health issues.

Pollan was in Portland doing a speaking event in support of his latest book “Cooked”, which on the surface is about cooking but is really about us, and ...

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The Balance

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“Musculoskeletal pain is a lifestyle issue.”  – leading physical therapist Dr. Shirley Sahrmann

There are many ways to interpret that statement, and many lessons can be drawn from it. Of all the people that come to EFL I estimate that 90% come because they are experiencing some sort of pain or discomfort that negatively affects their life. The other 10% have body composition or performance related goals but tend to also have some movement-related limitations be it chronically tight upper back ...

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Lower Stress for Better Results

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As the holiday season rapidly approaches there is no better time to talk about managing stress to improve health. Recently a number of events and research has come together that help illustrate the concept of how in general lowering stress input, be it from training, work, or personal life will benefit you. I’ll go into how nutrition, and exercise volume, intensity, and frequency can all play positive or potentially negative roles in health and fitness.

But first what is stress as ...

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The Home Food Challenge

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Now that big political dramas are settled and we can all move on it’s time to get back to business. Here at EFL we have a monthly challenge each month, and since fall is a great time to focus on serious body fat reduction our November challenge involves tracking how many meals one prepares at home.  And as we head into winter and the holiday season it becomes even more important to build good nutritional habits. The reasons why this ...

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Bigger Smaller Bigger

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A couple of months ago Nate Green and I met up for beers up the street from EFL, and over some delicious Hopworks organic ale he told me about a book he was working on that had him glued to his laptop for the better part of every day. No wonder he was looking a little paler than one would expect in summer, even in Portland. The premise of his book, “Bigger Smaller Bigger” is a self experiment on ...

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Feather Ruffling

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It never fails. Every time I attend a workshop or conference I come away with the realization that I didn’t really know what I thought I knew. That things I thought should work for correcting an issue, or making someone stronger probably wasn’t optimal.

Am I not as an effective trainer as I thought I was?

It is for these reasons the vast majority of trainers never attend conferences such as Perform Better Summit. The city I live in probably has more ...

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All You Need to Know About Fitness is

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Writing blog posts these days, with Facebook and Twitter being the default method of mass communication, feels a bit like sending a telegram.  With my schedule of training people and running a business time is at a premium.  And not to get off on a tangent but in my spare time I’m working on an equation that demonstrates the amount of time a fitness pro spends posting on Facebook about their awesome blog posts and articles is inversely proportional to ...

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Shifting Perspectives

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Have you ever had an experience where someone or something causes you to suddenly realize that what you thought was normal might not be at all? There is no question that we all get a bit too comfortable in our habits from time to time, especially when not exposed to other ideas. Often our greatest periods of personal growth and productivity are when we face a challenge, or have a shift in perspective.

This past week a friend provided just such ...

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The New Rules of Lifting for Life

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Every couple of years I get a second Christmas when the latest in the series of New Rules of Lifting books arrives.  This year is even a bit more special because Lou & Alwyn’s latest book, The New Rules of Lifting for Life, addresses a population that makes up the bulk of my clientele. As Lou puts it NROL4L is for “Men and Women who want to ace their midlife exams.”

Frequently I’m asked to recommend books or programs for people ...

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Chunk Your Way to A Better Body

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How many of you enjoy multi-tasking? What, no show of hands?

It’s probably because juggling multiple thoughts and actions is stressful, and likely means we’ll do a poorer job. Yeah yeah… try telling that to your boss I know. But it’s a fact. Recent books on efficiency that I’ve seen all seem to touch on the subject of setting aside chunks of time to do only e-mail, then a time for filling out the TPS reports, of whatever it might be. ...

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