by Dunte Hector

Occasionally someone will remark during or after class that I make a squat clean or a Turkish get-up look easy. If you’ve ever wondered the same, here’s a question: How many cleans do you do every week? And another: how many weeks have you been doing cleans?

It is easy to take for granted things we’ve done day-in, day-out for years. It is easy to forget how difficult it was to learn a skill — how to ride a bike, how to tie your shoes — and even easier to forget how quickly variations were picked up after that. Sometimes you ride standing up. Sometimes you ride with no hands. Sometimes you ride while looking over one shoulder. Those are just variations of riding a bike.

But when you learned to ride a bike, there was that death-grip-on-the-handlebars, teeth clenched, steel-eyed focus on turning those pedals over one by one by one, now wobble for balance, now pedal one stroke, two strokes, three strokes…until one day, BOOM! You had it! It suddenly came together and you were riding. Almost the next day, you were trying to ride no hands like the older kids in your neighborhood.

Movements in our workouts are the same way. As coaches, we have been practicing basic movements every day for years. A squat is no longer a new skill; it is a well-ingrained pattern, a motor habit. The squat never changes, but position the bar just like so and… a front squat, a back squat, an overhead squat. Just like that, 3 variations are picked up almost instantly.

I have easily done ten thousand power cleans in my lifetime. The squat clean is just a variation. In one way or another, every coach has done at least one push-up every single day for 5 or more years. The Man Maker, the shoulder tap, the clap push-up are all just variations.

“If it’s important, do it every day.” Dan Gable, amateur wrestling legend, said that.

If you’re struggling with a movement at the Shop, I suggest you do it every day. Liz practices pull-ups after every class. Hugh does 2 sets of 5 front squats before every workout. Matt sneaks in sets of 10-20 kettlebell swings after Fusion. They might not see it yet, but I see it getting better; I see it getting easier.

Folks, you’ve been tying your shoes every single day for years. At this point, you make it look easy yourself, but there was a time where it was a real challenge. If there is a movement at the Shop that’s holding you back, practice it every day. Practice, practice, practice, and wait for the boom.

For a while, you’ll be clenching your teeth, gripping the bar too tight, and reciting our cues from class like gospel – “chest up,” “knees out,” “elbows high.”

Chris, Alex, and Leann all became coaches after spending time as members; after struggling, after practicing, and after mastering some of our key movements. Just like them, if you practice enough, you can make it look easy too. And, you know, after being a member, coaching is just a variation.

 
Do some extra reps with Dunte this week! Register for classes here.

by Coach Veronica

Are you letting your stress get the best of you? Do you find that you’ve skipped a workout or two because of stress? Stress is often overlooked because it’s just a part of life. We face multiple demands each day such as work, making ends meet, family, and even your workouts. However, brushing stress under the rug day in and day out has a significant impact on our overall health and fitness goals.

Sure, our bodies are designed to handle small amounts of stress, but they aren’t meant to handle a ton of stressful events daily. When we are put under a stressful situation, good or bad, work-related or social, our bodies go into flight-or-fight mode. Once we’re in flight-or-flight mode, our nervous and adrenal-cortical systems work full time. This happens because our basic animal instinct is to survive no matter how difficult the circumstance.

Cortisol and adrenaline are two hormones release when we’re put under stress. Cortisol is known as the “fat storing hormone” and increases sugar (glucose) in the bloodstream, and can be linked to insulin resistance or diabetes. Your adrenal glands are pumping out adrenaline, which increases your heart rate and elevates your blood pressure. When these hormones are always on the rise, your body can succumb to improper thyroid function, blood sugar imbalances, decreased bone density and muscle tissue, weakened immune system, inflammatory response, and that dreaded abdominal fat that’s so hard to burn off in the gym!

How do you re-evaluate the stressful stimuli in your life?

Make a list of daily tastes, situations, places, and people and how they make you feel. If any of these things are not lifting you up or making you a better person, then its time to reorganize. Try a yoga class at lest once a week. Make an appointment on your busy schedule to disconnect yourself from the rest of the world even if its for 20 minutes! Allow yourself to wind down from the day so you get a good night’s rest. That means turning off that dang computer (after you read this, of course).

Deep down, you know when something is not a positive stress stimulus, so stand up for yourself and your health. And if you’re feeling stressed at all, take a breath and look at a picture of a puppy. Your body will thank you!

Let loose with Coach Veronica Monday, Wednesday, Fridays at 7am and 7:30pm, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7am, 8am, and 9am. Register here!

By Morgan Osmani

What do you think of when you hear the word “strength?” Do you imagine strong muscular bodies, or the ability to lift large barbells over your head all at once or several times in a row? Do you think of marathon runners or triathlon competitors aiming toward personal records? How about perfectly fit bodies with a minute percentage of body fat? What about powerful historical figures, such as Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., who made incredible impacts on society?
Check in with yourself right this moment and notice what comes to mind when asked what you think of when you hear the word “strength.”

The dictionary defines strength as:
• The quality or state of being strong: bodily or muscular power; vigor
• Mental power, force or vigor
• Moral power, firmness or courage
• Power by reason of influence, authority, resources, numbers, etc.
• Number, as of personnel or ships in a force or body.

Did you by any chance associate a meditation cushion or a yoga posture with strength? My guess is that, if you did, it’s because you have practiced once or twice before. For me, strength is not about how heavy you can lift, how far you can run, or how many days a week you make it to strength class. While these things are amazing accomplishments and an expression of our strength, the truth is, our strength amounts to far more than a workout or accomplishing a goal.

In my experience, both personally and as a yoga instructor and fellow practitioner, I find myself accessing my strength in unplanned circumstances or life events that most workouts do not obviously prepare me for. What I love most about practicing yoga or applying a yogic mindset to a strength training or conditioning workout is that it is an opportunity focus on my approach to the task or yoga posture, rather than the take or posture itself.

Yoga is not about how deep your backbend is, the depth of your lunging warrior pose, or even the accuracy of alignment. Yoga is about how open your heart is and whether or not it can remain open in the midst of all the unplanned circumstances of life. Yoga is an invitation to stay connected to a wholeness that exists no matter how strong we think or feel that we are. Strength is about following our goals and intentions through to their completion, even if it means we fail and discover ways to have fun in the process. Yoga is about remembering what we want and assisting others in remembering what they want, in the gym or on the sidewalk. Being strong asks us to be kind to others when we have forgotten our own strength or feel fearful of showing up fully because we feel week in our heart, mind, body, or spirit. Yoga is a process of discovering how much of your own expectations you are willing to let go of in order to align with the present moment. It is about how much acceptance you can offer those around you and yourself as you meet yourself and others exactly as you are, dropping expectations and making peace with what is.

Can you be kind and loving towards your foot, your injury, your belly after eating massive amounts queso, or your neighbor without keeping score? Are you willing to breathe in life fully, in each moment and fiercely drop your mental conditioning over and over again, as many times as it takes for you to make peace with your body, your mind, or your life exactly as it is?

As I write this article, I do so with the challenge of maintaining peace and equanimity as I journey through a slew of canceled flights and several hours of travel on a trip that should have taken just a few hours. I have witnessed fellow travelers lash out rudely at gate agents and airlines employees. I have also witnessed airlines employees lashing out coldly or meanly towards customers in attempt to preserve their own sanity. I cannot help but think and believe that part of what is required to live in a more cooperative society is the mental, emotional, and physical ability to rise above our mental conditioning.

Yoga, strength classes, and conditioning classes may not directly prepare us for difficult circumstances in life, but the continual process of training our mind and resisting our conditioning to do one less burpee, or to work harder than necessary in a yoga pose, has surely trained me to respond as peacefully as possible to an uncertain situation. Perhaps what we are up to in our workouts is far greater and far stronger than we realize and that when we come together for a workout our strength magnifies as we inspire each other to resist our conditioning, try something new, or give ourselves a break.

Hope to see you on the mat or in a class sometime soon.

Find your balance and build strength with Morgan Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30pm! Sign up here!

by Chris Stoos

Think back. Do you remember the first time you were in Dane’s Body Shop and saw this phrase on the board:

“50m Jog to SPRINT.”

Ah, how long has it been since you ran as hard an all-out sprint? Just last week at a pick up soccer game, or maybe 10+ years when you were back in school? Strength can be clear-cut in our minds when it comes to training (example: pick up something heavy and putting it back down), but conditioning can take on many shapes and forms, with some being more effective than others. Why do we prescribe both at the Shop?

I can never get enough of strength week. Give me a heavy barbell any day of the week over my running shoes. Building up a base level of strength is essential, not only for life at the Shop, but for whenever you go back to your daily routine. The work that you put into the Shop immediately translates over to real life. Some surprising benefits of strength training can include picking up your dog when he or she is tired from walking, farmer carrying two bags of groceries back to the car or into the house, or for the college student, running to catch a bus to campus with a fully-loaded backpack.

In his book, Intervention, Coach Dan Johns  recounts, “My good friend and mentor, Brett Jones, once told me this: Absolute strength is the glass. Everything else is the liquid inside the glass. The bigger the glass, the more of ‘everything else’ you can do. So, lifting weights is the quickest way to build strength. As your strength goes “up,” everything else can be expanded, too.” In this case, “everything else” can be all your abilities and skills. If your strength goes up, then your max strength glass makes all the other abilities glasses easier to fill.

So, how does conditioning factor into this?

For the longest time, outside of playing hockey, I had never programmed my workouts to make me sweat. Sure, I used to do the long bouts of cardio on the treadmill, bike, and even the elliptical, but away from those pieces of equipment, training involved a lot of moving heavy weight around, then sitting (probably for too long). There’s nothing wrong with these long bouts of cardio, but I was foolish to think that doing this same process over and over again would result in something different.

Enter my first day at Dane’s Body Shop. To make a long story short, Dane put me through an entire conditioning workout where I never even touched a barbell, and when everything was said and done, I felt great (and exhausted). Over time, you learn to use all sorts of tools and equipment, including no equipment at all, to push your body and to sweat. We use equipment such as kettlebells, battle ropes, medicine balls, and much more to build that base foundation that many of us left behind in our younger years. In the end, the workouts get you comfortable being uncomfortable.

As I’ve said in some of my classes and emails: What’s the point of lifting 1,000lbs if you can’t even walk to the gym without running out of breath? Life demands so much more of us than just simply picking up heavy objects or just running long distances. We want you all to get comfortable at being uncomfortable, so that when life throws you something that’s discomforting, it’s nothing new to you. As you keep “expanding your glass”, there’s so much more that can be done to make life that much better.

Crush strength and conditioning weeks with Coach Chris at 6:30pm Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:30am Tuesday and Thursday, and 10am on Saturdays. Register here!

Professional bodybuilding in the 1980’s was probably the worst thing that ever happened to strength training. Since the eighties, amateur bodybuilders, the dilettantes of exercise, have doomed coaches to answering the ineffective question, “What does that work?” People have come to accept that isolating muscles with dozens of exercise machines and carefully selecting toe angles during lunges are essential to getting in shape. This folly has complicated training and skewed innocent folks’ perspectives about exercising.

No more! Here’s the skinny on why you can’t ever quite pin down what is worked by the movements we use at the Shop, why you keep getting stronger in lifts you don’t train, and why it all hurts so good:

It works everything.

If you did farmer’s walks Monday, did you ever find it difficult to do sit-ups or run on Tuesday? If you worked heavy push-presses, it may have been a mystery why Russian Twists or box jumps were so hard the next day. As every one of you has probably discovered in your time with us, heavy squats seem to make everything harder.

From master strength coach Dan John: “In training, remember the body is one piece.” That is the secret! Carrying something for hundreds of meters or pulling your body through space to put your chin over a bar; pushing a big weight over head or plucking it from the ground; whatever the task, the body is one piece. Every part works together in a beautiful, complex, synergistic dance so you can jump, twist, throw, push, and pull with grace.

We pick movements at the Shop that are whole-body in nature which require you to transmit force from your toes through your trunk to your hands. In doing so, you can lift more weight. That means you’ll get stronger more quickly. And, ultimately, that means you’ll achieve your goals faster, whether to shed some fat or dominate in disc golf.

The first step to building a better body and becoming more capable in every area of life was realizing there was a better way than the machine-and-treadmill gym membership approach. (So thanks for being with us!) The next step is breaking free from the myth that effective exercises train this or that muscle. In everything you do, from squats in the warm-up to kettlebell snatches in the conditioning, remember that the body is one magnificent piece and we are here to help you develop the whole thing.

Someone asked about the Turkish Get-Up once — when the class was scheduled to perform 15-20 get-ups during a circuit. “What does this work?” At a loss for words, I could only think to joke, “Ask me tomorrow.”

That is probably the correct answer. So if you’re ever curious yourself just what muscles we’re working out at the Shop… ask me tomorrow.

**You can train with Coach Dunte Tuesdays and Thursdays during Fusion n’ Go! You’ll definitely know which muscles you worked after 30 minutes.** 

Beat the summertime blues…join us June 22nd for “Dane’s Field Day” at Barton Springs!

This summer’s event will time warp you back to the days of slap bracelets, free spirits, and those little trolls we used to put on the end of our pencils. Pair up with a friend or make it a party with a group of four. Children of all ages are welcome and can participate!

We’re excited to be working with our friends at FundFit Collective on this event. FundFit helps entrepreneurs succeed by creating fun and entertaining fund raising with their fitness events. They believe that staying active and exercising are a crucial part of success.

We’re going to show you a great time at our good, old fashioned Dane’s Field Day from 9am – 12:30pm on Saturday, June 22nd at Barton Springs.

Click the poster to sign up!

Did you eat all your veggies today?  If not, we have a fast and tasty way to make sure you are getting all your veggies with some added benefits of pink Himalayan sea salt and pineapple juice.  The best start to your day is to fill your body and mind with the vitmanins and minerals it needs to stay alert, sustain energy and be at the top of your game.

Daily Greens is a freshly pressed juice that offers a nutritional density that is 5 times higher than the standard juice.  Each 16 oz. bottle is equivalent to 8 servings of vegetables.

Start your day off right or give yourself a mid-day kick with a bottle of Daily Greens.  Don’t pay $8 a bottle at the store, order from DBS and you can get a 7-pack for $48 that is a free bottle in every pack.

email: leann@danesbodyshop.com with your order.

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