When a decision is made with emotions we tend to stick to preconceived notions.  The decision is more about feelings than what the facts show.  Everyone holds certain preconceived notions about things.  Those preconceived notions are generally based upon emotions.  For instance, most people believe that the best way to lose weight is to simply cut calories.  They don't want to work hard, so they avoid the gym.  Their preconceived notion that the best way to lose weight is to cut calories takes over.  When faced with the decision to get in shape, they fall back on their preconceived notion that they need to cut calories.  Once they've fallen back on their preconceived notion, most people won't bother to even listen to things that contradict that preconceived notion.  The fact is that emotional decisions are made in order to make us feel better.

When a decision is made with one's intellect it is quite a different story.  Intellectual decisions tend to be well thought out.  These types of decisions involve alot of thought and analysis.  Most of the time they are based upon data that has been collected.  Things have been weighed and examined and a decision has been rendered.  With this type of decision, if something is presented that contradicts the facts as seen so far, that new information is weighed and considered alongside the already collected data.  If a change is needed in the decision it is made.

Which way is the better way to make a decision?  I personally believe in the intellectual method because I feel the best way to make a decision is to consider all the facts.  An emotional decision has an air of uncertainty about it.  It feels like a collapse can happen at any point.  There just isn't a sense of comfort when a decision is made purely on emotions.

Deadlifts hit the entire body.  Thus, when you do them so early in a workout it is sort of a pre-exhaustion technique.  I noticed it especially in my bent over rows, but my pulldowns were amazingly hard today as well.  I will say that it makes it extra intense when you do deadlifts this early in the workout.  At the same time, the intensity level goes way up for the entire workout.  I was winded from the second exercise forward.  It was truly intense.  This leads me to a lesson everyone needs to learn.

We often speak in terms of cardio for fat burning and weight training for muscle building, but this is a thought process that must be set aside.  Weight training can be a great cardio workout if done correctly.  At the same time, it keeps you from losing the muscle you are working so hard to build.  Carlos DeJesus prescribes a weight training circuit as cardio for alot of his clients.  It gets the heart rate way up and really helps to burn fat.  At the same time, if you are capable of pushing yourself extremely hard during your weight training workouts you can get this same cardio benefit.  That's what happens to me during H.I.T. workouts.  My heart rate is racing throughout the workout. I keep the rest periods very short.  In fact, the only rest I get is deloading one exercise and loading up the other exercise. 

Things progressed well today.  We both increased most of our weights/reps throughout the entire workout.  As noted above, we both found that the workout got more intense today.  The combination of working closer to the 80% of our 1RM and the deadlifts right at the start of the workout really kicked our butts. 

Neither of us was lifting weights that were particularly difficult to us yesterday and yet we got hit pretty good with DOMs just one day after the fact.  It felt great.  We both discussed how excited we are to be back in the gym tomorrow.  It is just an awesome feeling!

Today I realized just how thankful I am that I get to workout with my son.  It is so much fun to mentor him through this process.  I am attempting to give him the lessons he will need to enable him to create his own workouts.  He has come a long way.  He came from not giving his full effort to where he is completely pounding his body at every workout.  He is seeing the benefits through his hockey playing.  It is just simply exciting to see how this is all working for us.  I am very proud of his efforts.

Be sure to answer the 1 question survey to help choose my video podcast topic for Saturday!

I spent the day knocking off small tasks for work.  These are the kinds of things that make a huge difference for others, but take me very little time at all to accomplish.  I do this about every other week.  I sit down with some major focus and just plow through my captured list of small tasks.  When I was done today I went and processed all my meeting notes from last week into my GTD system.  This system is what keeps me organized and afloat.

I noticed an article on a body building forum about only being able to get 1 full body workout in a week when the man had intended to do 3.  My initial thought was that at least he is working out 1 day a week, but my next thought has to do with making time for things that are important to you.  Why the excuses?  Why not just buckle down and make the time for the gym?  I'm sure he could get up an hour earlier to fit in a full body workout more often.  If he were to sit down and think about ways to accomplish more gym time, it would happen.  My take is that it just isn't that important to him or he'd make the time.

Be sure to take the 1 question survey to help pick the topic for my video podcast this Saturday!

Matty's Workout Log

  

I spent part of the morning doing affirmations.  I've been working through the following today:

Affirmations:

I am a muscle building machine.

I have large muscles that burn fat from my body with ease.

I eat the right food in the right amount to continually build more muscle.

I will post my affirmations as I use them.  These have kept me very focused today.  I changed things up this time around by taking a break between missions, but even then, I had to make that mission a "rest" mission so that I could get ready for M5 itself.  I plan to knock off every single one of the goals listed in my mission goals.  I am going to post them in my sidebar and you guys can follow the progress accordingly.  I have these goals posted around in various places to remind myself what needs to get done.

I am preparing for my first video podcast of M5 and wanted to ask your opinion.  Please take this one question survey to help me determine what to do for my video podcast this week.  Whatever topic gets the most votes will be the topic I use for the podcast.

Be sure to answer the 1 question survey to help choose my video podcast topic for Saturday!