Dare to Self Improve

As I mentioned yesterday, my second night in Vegas, I had to “go for it” in a different way. That evening we decided to go to a big dance club called “Jet” in the Mirage hotel. The club was awesome except for one major thing…the music was so loud everywhere that I could not possible go up to a person I don’t know and start a conversation. It would be far to difficult. I was having a hard enough time understanding one-liners from my friends!

So how could I go about meeting people? Well….it is a dance club.

At places like this, I’m usually uncomfortable going up to a random girl and trying to dance with her. A lot of guys do the whole, “hover, then approach from behind and start grinding.” I think that approach is totally unconfident and downright skeezy.

Instead, I decided to just walk through the crowd and the minute I saw a girl I wanted to dance with, I went straight up to her, grabbed her hand, and said something like, “You’re cute and I’d love to dance with you!” Guess what? This worked almost EVERY time! I think there was only one girl who didn’t want to dance. Why did it work? Because I approached confidently and direct. I didn’t hide anything, and put myself on the line.

Now that we’re talking about dancing, I think I’d like to continue this thought process tomorrow: Dancing do’s and don’ts

So as I mentioned last week, I recently visited Las Vegas, and while there was really forced to really just take little risks and put my ego on the line (luckily my ego is so massive, it can afford to take a hit No, I’m not talking about gambling…I’m talking about meeting people! Meeting people in Vegas is different than normally meeting people, because in all likelyhood, you’re not going to associate with them for more than a couple of days.

As a young single guy, I obviously gravitate towards meeting young beautiful women.

So the first day we were hanging out in Vegas, anytime I saw someone cute, or fun, I went up to them and started a conversation. The “social norm” however is to just stay to yourself. It’s not very often a random stranger comes up and attempts to start a somewhat engaging and funny conversation. Now what am I risking by doing this? Well, I suppose rejection and a little embarrassment, but that’s a small price to pay! And guess what? All the terrible scenarios you picture in your head about what could go wrong, almost never happen. Seriously, nearly every person I approached and talked to, had a positive response!

Night 2 was much different, and I had to “go for it” in a different way…

When I say taking risks for confidence, the things I’m talking about are usually not ACTUALLY risky at all. Its just we perceive them as risky. For example, if you’re in a coffee shop and all of a sudden break into impromptu song and dance, that’d be crazy. It would take someone incredibly comfortable in their own skin and not vulnerable to other people’s opinions to do something like that. Most of us would never consider doing something that offbeat, mostly because it’s a social risk.

Even starting conversation with someone you don’t know, in a public place is not a social norm because most people are afraid to do so. We all know we’re not going to die or suffer any sort of physical harm by talking to everyone, but for some reason, we convince ourselves not to do it. A confident person is not AFRAID to put himself out there and go for it.

On a recent trip to Vegas, I was FORCED to put myself out there even more than usual, and I’ll tell you what happened…

For some people, it’s abundantly clear as to who has self-confidence and who does not. Usually for guys, someone who exudes confidence can actually be either totally self-confident, or totally insecure and faking self-confidence. Who’s the best judge of true confidence?

Women.

Women are incredible judges of character on first impressions. It’s downright astounding. For example, I have a friend who’s fun to hang out with, when the guys are out, but every single girl I know that meets him, doesn’t care for him. Why? Because he is insecure. That’s no reason to dislike him in itself, but he covers up his insecurity with a fake air of confidence by acting overtly alpha male to a point where women are turned off.

I think confidence can be faked, but not by acting. If you learn to display confident body language (as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post) that’s a start. Taking risks is another big step.

Tomorrow, I’ll expand on this “taking risks” concept.

In a nutshell, they are all hype and no results.

The bottom line is they don’t work. Fat blockers claim to prevent the absorption of fat consumed. Well the amount of fat they actually block is very minimal, and side-effects such as bloating, nausea, and abdominal cramping can sometimes occur. Furthermore, many vitamins are fat soluble, so taking a fat blocker can lead to vitamin defficiencies. They also block GOOD fats such as Omegas 3 and 6. There’s pretty much nothing good about “fat blockers.”

Almost the same goes for carb blockers. Research has shown that carbohydrate absorbtion is not slowed enough to make any noticeable difference. Recent studies have shown the a dosage approximately 5-6 times greater than what is currently available, does slow carb digestion down a little, however, the correlation between carb digestion rate and weight loss has not been proven.

SAVE YOUR MONEY!

On the market today are a number of supplements that are advertised to help keep your weight (body fat) under control.

The first group of products are ephedra based. As I’m sure you’ve heard, ephedra works as a metabolic elevator and an appettite supressent. Amazingy, it actually works (to a degree), but also comes with very unsafe side-effects such as heart palpitations and headaches. The bottom line in, ephedra based pills may “assist” in weight loss, but you can’t lose weight with them alone. Furthermore, the serious health risks associated with ephedrine, to me, do not make it a viable choice.

Well what about ephedra-free fat burners? I’ve done a lot of research, and for the most part, the benefits, if any, are very minimal, yet you’re going to spend $50+ for a months supply. Again, not worth it.

Plus, introducing extreme amounts of caffein, aspirine, etc (as are in these supplements) is hard on your body and liver.

Go supplement free! Tomorrow: A brief discussion of carb and fat blockers.

Supplements. Honestly, unless you’re training for a competition, or are a professional athlete of some kind, there’s really no need to waste your money on supplements. That’s not to say they’re inneffective. There are actually quite a few supplements that do make a difference, however, the difference is very minimal in the grand scheme of things, and simply not worth the pretty penny you have to shell out to get them.

Additionally, many of the benefits that come with taking supplements are only temporary and begin to disappear after taking them. People who take creatine for example, notice a strength gain when they begin taking it. However, as soon as they stop, the additional weight gain begins to vanish (because creatine acts as a water retainer) and the extra strength they once had slowly begins to vanish.

Tomorrow, I want to address one other type of supplement…weight control!

An important aspect of weight training, is the order, and choice of the exercises you do. Generally, you always want to stick to as many multijoint, compound movements as possible, and do the ones that require the most recruitment of muscles, first. Examples of compound movements are: Squats, Deadlifts, Cleans, Bench Press, Rows, and pull-ups. These exercises work a number of different muscles and are the most beneficial (and difficult to do).

A lot of people in the gym avoid doing these exercises because, quite honestly, they’re not easy to do. You need to maintain strict form to avoid injury, and after completing a set, you’re breathing like you just ran a wind sprint. Don’t use the excuse of “I’m just starting out so I’ll stick to smaller exercises.” NO! Start out right, and you’ll quickly notice gains.

Have someone help you get the form down and start with very light weight in all of the aforementioned exercises. Don’t worry about smaller exercises like curls, crunches, etc. You can do them, but they should only supplement the above exercises.

So now that you’ve got a nice workout split and you know how to perform each repetition with good form, lets get into a numbers game.

One of the most common mistakes with overenthused people in the gym, is they just want to blast each muscle with everything under the sun, and work it to the max! Well that kind of enthusiasm is always good, but doing too many sets is actually detrimental to your goals and you’ll end up not getting stronger, not feeling energetic, and more injury prone. In general, I think its good to keep the total number of sets (sets of reps) for each body part under 12 total (with 12 being the very max). I usually perform 9 or 10 depending on how I’m feeling. As little as six though can be enough if you’re really working hard or are a beginner.

Remeber, sometimes less is more, and you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot by doing too many sets!

So I talked a lot about form yesterday, but what is good form? Well it’s hard for me to describe in writing since each exercise is different, but if you’re a novice, I recommend that you consult a personal trainer once or twice to get the form down. Or you can do what I did (the long road) and screw around for a while until you finally realize what good form is.

First of all, no matter the exercise, you need to make sure you are fully controlling the weight the entire time. You don’t want a lot of momentum involved (which occurs when you jerk or throw the weight). FULLY CONTROL THE WEIGHT! Secondly, learn what muscles should be primarily worked during each exercise and concentrate on using only those muscles, while keeping all other muscles rigid and flexed for stability. For example, when doing bench presses, focus on slowly bringing the weight down above the middle of your chest, then pressing the weight up by squeezing your pecs, and to a lesser extent, your triceps.

When performing reps, focus on the decentric motion (bringing the weight back to rest) as well as the concentric (pressing the weight to the point where your muscles are fully flexed). Don’t let the weight simply fall to rest. For beginers, a good start would be 1 second “up” (ie pressing the barbell from your chest, or pulling the bar up for bicep curls) and 3 seconds “down” (lowering the bar back to your chest or bringing the bar down from a curl).