It is the 21st day of 2009 and the focus I started the year with has continued.  I feel very much in control of work and family life right now.  The focus I’ve had has made it feel like I am aware of every single thing going on in all areas of my life.  It is an amazing feeling and very empowering.  When you know that you’ve captured all your open committments you don’t worry about missing something that is important. That makes you relax and your focus gets even greater. 

I have 3 more weeks of this body part focused workout series and then I am going to change things up a bit.  I will not reveal here what M6 will be about, but suffice to say that it will be different.  I am already experimenting with some slight nutritional changes (nothing too drastic).  I am not sharing what I am doing just yet because it is in the experimentation phase and I am not sure whether my analysis (prior to starting the experiment) is correct or not.  I don’t want to lead anyone down the wrong path.  Stay tuned for more at a later date.

Thanks to my friend, Marc David, for his recommendation of a site that allows you to keep your workouts logged using a smartphone or other mobile device.  Marc recommends Gymtechnik Mobile Fitness Tracking.  It looks like a great tool, but seems to have some limitations (unless I just don’t understand it completely yet).  I will do a review of this site in the near future.

I believe that the most important thing for your credibility is if you talk it, you’d better walk it.  What the heck does that mean?  Simple.  If you say things should be a certain way, you need to be sure you live that way.  If you preach about getting in shape, you’d better get yourself in shape.  If you fail to do so your credibility will be non-existent.  This may not matter to some people, but I am sure it matters to most people. 

The fact is that maintaining your credibility is a matter of having integrity.  One reason people start accountability blogs is so that others can see what they are up to and hold them accountable.  To me it means that if I put it out there I’d better live up to the standards I set.  Even the Bible tells us that if we expect higher standards of other people, those will be the standards by which we ourselves will be judged.  Thus, you have to do the things you say you are going to do.  You must stick to your plans because you’ve put them in writing and published them for the world to see.  You must stick to your workout plan because you put it out there for the world to see.  That’s what accountability is really all about.  You do what you say you are going to do.

Matty’s Workout Log:

I am a devotee of the Getting Things Done method of time management created by David Allen.  I believe in this system is the best because it is simple and it leverages the Power of Focus.  When you begin using the Power of Focus it is addicting.  Time flies by and you accomplish more than you ever thought possible.  People tend to stay out of your way because you are so focused on the task in front of you.  I see this at work and at the gym.  I find that people respect your time when they see how focused you’ve become.  It is almost an unwritten law that you do not bother a person who is extremely focused.  It is like not talking to someone in the middle of a heavy set of squats.  It just isn’t right.

The Power of Focus can be leveraged by capturing every single loose end you have and getting it into some sort of trusted system.  You then review that system on a regular basis (weekly at a minimum).  This system frees your mind to focus on the important things at the right time.  You won’t be constantly reminding yourself of tasks that are impossible to complete where you are at the moment.  Instead, your focus will be within your own control.  The power that you gain from this is amazing.  The process is simple. 

There were ups and there were downs, but there were no wins.  There was alot of learning.  There were times where the confusion reigned supreme.  At the same time, there were alot of lessons Matty learned throughout the season.  He progressed as a hockey player and a human being.  He is now more of an athlete than when the season started.  For that I am eternally thankful.

Matty will take the lessons he has learned and absorb them in the off season. He will work hard to get into the best shape of his life.  He has committed to a goal of getting in the best shape of his life by the time tryouts come (early June 2009).  He has a trainer (me) who is going to see to it that he makes that goal as long as he wants it.  I will not (and I’ve told him this) push him to go to the gym if he is not going.  However, when in the gym, I will push him to achieve his absolute best.  I will push him to give his best effort always. 

There are lessons here for all of us.  I honestly think I have a topic for a third book that will be about lessons learned from losing.  Winning is incredible.  We’ve done it on every hockey team he’s ever been on.  However, losing is also incredible.  There were bonds made with other people that are extremely strong.  There are parents that we will stay in touch with and kids we hope to see again next season.  Losing has brought us closer together than winning ever could have.  We have learned to celebrate the small victories.  This is something everyone should learn.

There is a great discussion starting up on Facebook about the topic of seeing progress.  If you are on Facebook, join the discussion here.

I believe it is true that most people are not successful from a mechanical standpoint.  They have failed time and again with diet and fitness programs.  They opt for the “topical ointment of behavior modification” when the situation itself is much deeper than any topical ointment can reach.  They seek answers from every single source they can find.  Unfortunately, everything sounds reasonable and logical, so they wind up starting one program, doing it for a short time and then finding another program and switching to it.  This is what is meant by “topical ointment of behavior modification” and it is a dangerously slipperly slope. 

As Carlos so aptly points out, “[t]he answer to our failures may not be in the next or latest diet or program.”  I will go even further and guarantee you that the answer to these failures is not in the next or latest diet or program.  The answer lies within ourselves.  Finding the reasons might not be easy at all.  There are “Unresolved issues” as Carlos refers to them and they are generally hidden from view.  What is hidden within these “unresolved issues”?  Is there some deep-seated pain that is causing you to lose your commitment to your goals?  Did someone’s words cause you to believe you cannot do it?  Whatever the answer, there are events in everyone’s lives that cause “unresolved issues” and the only real solution is to determine what those “unresolved issues” are, how they came about and then tackle them directly.

As Carlos points out, “very often hidden within these events is an unbearable pain that we would rather not face.”  The pain is something we probably didn’t create, but we perpetuate.  The memory of the pain lives on inside our mind and we don’t set ourselves free from it.  Sometimes it involves forgiveness.  Forgiveness is so essential because it enables us to move forward as a free person.  When we fail to forgive we simply tie ourselves to the past and become a prisoner of the even that needs forgiveness.  This is where everything gets very interesting to me.

Carlos talks alot about the “solutions” we attempt.  He talked to me about this on the phone several weeks ago and I wrote down the following in my journal:

Solutions become crutches that keep us from really solving the unresolved issues. What seems like a solution is really nothing more than a bandage that hides the wound itself from sight.

As I read Unfinished Business, this comment came back to me over and over again.  Carlos talks about how food is treated as a problem.  It reminds me of so many people who have written about their fat loss journey and about how they struggle with food.  I used to be one of those people.  I used to eat when I was stressed.  I used to eat when I had alot of planning to do.  I used to eat the wrong things.  I used to self-medicate with food.  I realized that for me, the unresolved issues had to do with things I was told as I was growing up, things I vowed never to do with my own children.  Whenever I tried anything new I was told that it “wasn’t right” for me or I would “never be able to do it” or a multitude of other things.  How do you think those things effected me as I started down the physique transformation path?  Obviously it played a huge part because I was conditioned to think that nothing I tried would ever work. 

My original solution was to immerse myself in any information I could get so that I could “learn” and then conquer the problem.  As I learned principles from Carlos, I learned that immersing myself in information was not the right thing to do.  The right thing was to hold onto the right information and discard everything else.  It is why I am creating https://www.fitnessexpose.com.  It is why I am so passionate about this blog.  It is why I am writing 2 books right now.  I have seen the light.  I have dealt with the underlying problem, the unfinished business, and now I am pursuing principles that are guaranteed to bring me success through the hard work I am putting in.

Matty’s Workout Log: