Tag Archives: meditation

Meditation, Training, & Health

People who train love to talk about the anabolic window. This is the magical window of time that you have to eat a metric ton of protein after you train, or you will lose all that you trained for. As you probably noticed I am joking (a little). The point is that if you name anything people will be able to tag it, and then make it more important than it may actually be. Just to be clear, I do know it is important to feed the body after we stress the body, but too often we worry about the wrong things. Today, I will hopefully let you spend a few moments considering how important mental recovery is to your progress.

 

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)

 

This is basically the functions that occur without us doing much. The ANS is comprised of two yin and yang systems, the parasympathetic and the sympathetic. Easy was to remember these is sympathetic is fight or fight, while the parasympathetic is rest and digest. Think about it this way: you train hard and your body moves into sympathetic (supplements affect is as well), then when you finish your training session you want your body to move back to a more parasympathetic state. By doing this you will increase blood flow to the gut (to help with the magical anabolic window), as well as reducing heart rate, and allowing the body to begin recovering.

 

Meditation and Breathing for a Greater Parasympathetic Response.

 

After your next training session sit in a quiet dark room for 5-10 minutes and practice meditation and nasal breathing. If you do not know how to start then here is your quick introduction. Get comfortable, begin breathing deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to breath in as much air as you can filling your entire body with air. Then slowly breath out through your mouth. One easy way to control this is count, 1 is in and 2 is out, then 3 and 4, repeat this until you reach ten then start over. By doing this you will begin to return your body to a more parasympathetic state.

 

A fun test is to leave your smart watch on and watch your heart rate. You should see a drop in your heart rate as you practice this breathing. As stated earlier 5-10 minutes of this should be plenty to start. Even if you are interrupted just keep breathing. The entire point is to give you control over your mind, and your breathing. After you do this stand up stretch and notice how much lighter and better you feel.

 

Give me any feedback and I hope this helps.

Time=Love

In my last post I wrote about lessons I learned from others. Today I want to spread some Aloha from St Simons Island GA. Yes, I am aware that St Simons is not any where near Hawaii, yet we can spread Aloha anywhere.

 

My good friend Hank McDonald was a strength coach at University of Hawaii and he brought me out to speak a few years back. I owe Hank and Tommy a huge thank you for that trip. To put it in perspective the other speakers came from The Ohio St University, Auburn, San Francisco Giants, former NFL strength coaches and some top private trainers. Then there was me, from the athletic giant Robert Morris University. I was lucky enough to learn about  Hawaiian culture from Keanue Reeves cousin (he is a professor at UH). Morale to the story, I was outclassed in every way possible and I learned that Aloha means many things including good vibes.

 

In my last job I worked with two men’s basketball coaches. The first guy was a good guy and I am still a fan. He was put in a position that he could not succeed, and he was let go not long after I arrived. The second coach Jamion came in and did his best to bring some good vibes to the team. He spread the aloha during my time there, and there was one thing he said (which I had heard before, yet stuck with me this time), Time=LOVE. Whatever you spend your time doing you love. I was also able to meet a man that became a good friend Greg Graber, Greg wrote the book, “Slow Your Roll.” We hit it off because he spoke a lot about meditating, and controlling the controllable. Greg reminded me to slow my roll and stop fighting loosing battles.

 

Time=Love is a simple idea. If you commit time to anything then you must love it. So why I a taking time from my vacation to write this? I am doing this because I do love spreading aloha.  I will probably not touch a barbell this week and doubt I’ll train, I also probably won’t answer your email :-). So take some time today to decide what you love, and give it your time.