Growth occurs during rest, NOT during the training.

If you have used my guided meditations to help you relax or sleep, you have likely discovered that when you are under stress for too long, without allowing proper rest and recovery, your well being and often your health begin to deteriorate.

As you move towards becoming a powerful force for good in the world, an understanding of this principle is crucial. Taking regular down time will allow you to settle into, and apply what you are learning, in real life contexts. It will prepare you to work “better” and “smarter” when your mind and focus returns there.

The training and strengthening of your PHYSICAL body is naturally an ideal place to understand this principle and apply it. The best laboratory for the good life is the one that you are currently living in!

If you train too hard, too long, and too fast without proper rest and recovery, the body rejects progress and deteriorates.

What one is actually doing to the muscle(s) when training is creating very small tears in the muscle fibers. These small tears breakdown muscle tissue and if proper rest is achieved before the next time that muscle tissue is broken down --- progress and growth are the results. The muscle tissue creates scar tissue (i.e. repairs itself) over the small tears in order to protect itself and prepare for the increasing demands being imposed on it.

When a muscle is forced to respond to increasing demands, it will gain strength and grow in size in order to protect itself. But if the muscle tissue is broken down again before it has been given sufficient time to recover and repair then the principles of Overtraining and Diminishing Returns take effect.

New this month to mythoughtcoach.com are a few mp3s to jump start your strength training goals.

MAXIMIZE YOUR WORKOUT RECOVERY—Visualization and images to assist in healing between intense training workouts.

THINK LIKE . . .THE OWNER OF A STRONG BODY!—Yeah, you really need to strength train. It’s really not an option anymore. Affirmations and vision to get you started and keep you committed.

Strong People Stay Young, and (Relatively) Sane

Q. How often should I strength train if my goal is to burn fat?
A. 2 times per week would be great! As you build muscle tissue, which burns calories 24 hours a day, excess calories are less likely to be stored as fat!

Q. What if I don't want to bulk up? I just want to tone.
A. If it were that easy to bulk or get big nearly every guy in the gym would be huge. Women don't have the genetic potential to build large muscles due to hormonal differences. Adding muscle tissue to your body will actually make you smaller in the long run, because muscle takes us much less room on your body than fat does. The best goal for women is to weigh as much as you can in the smallest size.

Q. What are the benefits of strength training?
A. Strength training, if done correctly, can make some major changes to your body and mind! Actually, if you were only able to choose one type of workout, I would have you choose strength training over cardiovascular work. Here is what you can expect:

1. Increased metabolism
2. Increased strength and flexibility
3. Increased muscle tone
4. Reduced stress levels

A great way to approach strength training is with the Slow Speed Method available at mythoughtcoach.com, which is safe and extremely efficient. With your headphones on, I will coach you through every set as if I were right there with you!

The Serenity Prayer

At times of trouble, this prayer is recited repeatedly until the intensity of difficulty has passed.


MP3 File

My Thought Coach

Life Mastery and Swimming Pools

For reasons yet unknown, I have been preparing myself for the rigors of an Olympic-length triathlon this July. With a solid testimony of interval training, endurance work is a change to my previous highly productive, even sacred 20 minute workout time.

There's nothing really time efficient about training for a triathlon.

But there is something powerful about the process of becoming a good swimmer. I began this journey with a labored and sloppy swim stroke that I had picked up at around age 8 while playing Marco Polo with my brothers. The only way to change it was to REFUSE TO SWIM THAT WAY even once more. Not one stroke. Ever again.

The change didn't come naturally. Even after a conscious decision to swim better, every thing I was trying to master felt unnatural, like alien commands traveling along my nervous system. I had to make them second nature, absolute habits deep inside my body.

Our brains, as complex and as wonderful as they are, are really only able to focus on one thing at a time.

The only way my brain and body could begin to make this profound shift was to change my paradigm. I had to stop thinking of my workouts as swimming. Each workout became merely a practice of just one tiny piece of perfection. By breaking the big job down into bite size parts, I could then begin to practice doing those parts perfectly.

One skill at a time, the deep grooves in my brain and muscle systems are slowly experiencing an override, as they replace the old for the new and improved. Occasionally now I have moments of being inside the body of a strong and efficient swimmer. It's remarkable. It restores my faith in the process of change.

You can, without question, override old patterns, habits, and ways of doing life. EVERY TIME YOU CHOOSE A NEW WAY OF RESPONDING TO A SITUATION IN YOUR LIFE, YOU ARE SOFTENING THIS GROOVE. You are practicing doing it differently, and dramatically increasing the odds that you will be able to duplicate that behavior again. And again.

Start now, in the movement toward a new and improved life experience, with just one bite sized area. Have it be small--something in your life that you will now practice responding to differently from this moment on.

Want more peace in your life? Practice. Identify one area that stresses you out and then, every time that stressor shows up, embrace it! This is your big chance to PRACTICE RESPONDING DIFFERENTLY! The second it happens (i.e. the co-worker is rude, the driver cuts you off, the kids are insane, the bills!) mentally express gratitude that you have been given a fantastic opportunity to practice staying peaceful!

You have been given a gift from this marvelously orchestrated universe to become a better person than you used to be.

Over time, as this new response becomes more natural, choose another habit or response in need of some overriding. Hooray! More chances to practice and eventually master a new skill!

You are in the most ideal life curriculum for your maximum growth, chock full of opportunities to practice and eventually become a truly remarkable person. Click here to head to www.mythoughtcoach.com.