F.T.S.-Elite Living

July 11, 2010

A Short Post

I just wanted to put up a short post because I think I need to if I am going to take this writing thing seriously. I am enjoying my time off more than I thought that I would. I was asked today if I missed the gym and I was suprised that I don't, not even a little bit. I do miss some of the people that worked out there (but that is a side issue). I have to conclude that closing FTS was the right decision for me at this time. But if there is one thing that I will always be disappointed in is the diet issue. I would have liked to have been able to help people undertand diet and it's importance a little bit more, o'well maybe in the next life. Until then enjoy your tacos and pasta.

Word!

225lbs overhead

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July 05, 2010

Less is More

I think this might be my new theme for the foreseeable future. Think about this, the more stuff you have the harder it is to keep up with. I agree that there are certain things that you have to have, well maybe I don't agree but I want to play nice today. However, have you ever considered that there is a direct relationship to the amount of widgets in your life and the lack of quality of the same?

So what am I driving at here. Not much really so take it for what it is worth but I have found that the fewer things I posses or require in my life the happier I am. As of this writing I only have to pay around $300 a month in fixed bills. These will even change as I pay off my student loans (what a waste of money) and complete my cell phone contract (drop from 2 lines to 1). This may not be optimal for most people with families but ask yourself if you really need everything that you have? Here are a few examples.

Cable- Do you really need it? Is it improving your life or is it not only sucking money out of your wallet but also sucking the brain cells out of your head. You might be better served to read a book or interact with nature or your loved ones. The few people that I interact with work a disgusting amount of hours and therefore only get to be home very little. The cable bill can be in excess of $100 a month and then most time is spent watching one or two channels. This is beyond my understanding. I suggest turning the cable off and saving that money.

Cell phones- I have one too, but it is stripped down to just basic calling service with as few minutes as possible. This means I have to be responsible with my day time calling and can't text smiley faces to everybody in my contacts but the up side is that it isn't very expensive. I have a good service with AT&T and only pay about $70/month and that will drop to under $50 after August. I wonder sometimes how we became so dependent on these things. In my childhood years my friends and I would be out all day and it was ok. No one cared or worried about us and not a single one of us had a cell phone, we did spend most of our time doing things like swimming, hiking, hunting, and playing pick up sports games and I know those activities are frowned upon by most youth today.

Multiple vehicles are another huge waste of income and or resources in my honest opinion. As I write this post I am staying on the south side of the Houston metroplex. If there is a need to go anywhere it requires a person to have a vehicle because the distances are to great between things for any other kind of transportation. So my solution is to make sure I live in a place where a vehicle is a secondary necessity. I personally do not own a vehicle and I doubt that I ever will again but I do have access to them if I have an urgent need. Just think about the cost of these things and then think about how much time you have to labor to pay for them. A vehicle is good but multiple ones I don't know.

The last thing that I want to mention in this post is eating out. How crazy expensive is it to eat out? If you do not have time to cook at home and therefore have to eat out all the time I think it's time to find the disconnect. In the last year I can honestly say I have gone to a restaurant 10 times and every time I go I am put off by the cost of not only my food but how much a glass of tea costs. Then to top it off you have to throw a tip down for your server. The last time we ate at Luby's I believe we were just under $30 for two people and as I told the manager then, I will tell you know, I will not eat there again. If I am on the road I eat out of the deli at HEB or I prepare a little and take some food with me. I can be in and out of the store faster than it takes to sit through a drive through, my food costs less, tastes better, and doesn't make me sick. Eating out all the time is not something to be proud of nor is it fun, learning to cook is easy and inexpensive but more importantly it is the biggest thing that you can do to improve your health.

The hardest part is letting go and trusting that you will be ok. It may seem weird to not have cable or an iPhone but think about how much these items are costing you in resources. The whole point I am driving at here is that I want you to have to produce less so you can relax more. If your lifestyle is forcing you to make $3000 a month to finance it you may have no choice but to work all the time. However, if you can make a few small changes and survive the detox phase then you can work less and have more freedom to do the things you want to do. I'm just saying.

If you want to make some more changes read my post 5 Things That Can Change Your Life In 30 Days.

Thanks for reading my short post. Post some of the changes you have made to do more with less.

Learning to give things up is like learning to walk on your hands. It takes time and practice but the benefits are worth it.

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July 01, 2010

5 Things That Can Change Your Life In 30 Days.

We have all been there. You can probably relate your frustrated, tired, wondering what 's next and somewhere deep down you know that it is time to start changing things up a bit. But what to do? There are so many things to choose from and nothing ever seems to work. If you feel the urge down deep in your spirit that it is time to make some changes here is a short list to get you going. Of course this list is not inclusive but it works. I have done them and I have coached others to do them also. This is not going to be an overnight change but I guarantee you that within a month you will notice some very profound changes. Try them all or just one or two but if you start give yourself some reasonable time to see the effects. There are no silver bullets.

1. Write down what it is inside of you that is trying to get out. No matter what it is write it down. It can be something like "go to Europe for a month" or "clean out my garage" or "lose 10 pounds". Whatever it is write it down. I make lists all the time of the things I want to accomplish, achieve, or acquire and it never fails to attract them into my life. Some things happen immediately and others take some time but the idea is that you move the seemingly unattainable into the realm of the attainable. Don't ignore that voice inside your head it is there for a reason. This is a very important thing to do.

2. Start exercising.This doesn't mean join a gym. It means that you need to start doing something that resembles exercise and for most people anything is better than nothing. Do you have access to a track? A city park? For most beginners walking around the block will be all they can handle so there is no need to start spending money when it is completely unnecessary. At some point you will want to join a gym for the access to community and equipment. However, with just a little bit of money you can start to acquire your own equipment and build quite an impressive little home gym. A pull-up bar and a 45lb barbell will open up endless workout possibilities. Then there are web site resources like Simple Fit , CrossFit, or SicFit that will help you and guide you no matter where you are on your journey.

3. Disconnect From So Much Technology.Probably sounds a bit off if you are reading this via Facebook, Twitter, or Typepad but the idea is that we are starting to spend way to much of our time socializing through our phones, computers, feeds, and platforms and it isn't the way humans were meant to interact. There has to be some sort of social interaction beyond Facebook and it is ok to turn it off or even deactivate your account for awhile. I did for almost a year and I was fine and you will be too. Now I am not saying that you or I shouldn't take advantage of or enjoy the best that technology has to offer but I am saying that it might be in your best interest to turn it off for a while. You might be surprised at how addicted you are to this niche of your life and that ought to be enough for concern. Addictions are not good. Set some limits, read a book, or just hang out with your family.

4. Stop eating bread.Diet is a big controversial topic and I don't want to get into the geeky stuff here. I just want you to give up bread for 6 weeks and see what happens. No white bread,no wheat bread,no corn bread, no nada and just do it. Trust me and you will see the pounds start to fall off and you might even be surprised at how much better you start to feel. I know after you detox you will never want to go back and if you do, your stomach will protest. A better solution is to eat a bunch more vegetables, they will fill you up and help you handle the cravings a little better.

5. Get more sleep. Sounds impossible I know. But if anything can have a dramatic impact on your life it is getting more sleep or not getting enough of it. I believe anything less than 7 hours a night is unacceptable. Ok, you can laugh now but I am serious and the experts all seem to agree. Look it up if you don't believe me. Robb Wolf.com is a great resource for your consideration. I promise that whatever it is that is keeping you from getting enough sleep it isn't worth it. I say again it isn't worth it. Sleep more and only good things will happen for you.

Thank you for reading my short post. Now get out there and start taking control of your life. Please post thoughts and feedback to comments.

There are plenty warning signs when your life is headed in the wrong direction, learn to read the signs.

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June 30, 2010

A Big Thank You From FTS

As many of you know by now I have decided to stop teaching classes and take advantage of other opportunities that have presented themselves. The most important message that I wish to convey in this fork in the road is that I am very grateful to each and everyone of the people that have allowed me to train them. It doesn't matter if you were a full time client or just an occasional grazer that came to the free workouts that I hosted, again thank you from the bottom of my heart for trying my program. I hope you have found some benefit and made the necessary changes to take control of your health and fitness. The last 4 years of my life have been spent sharing and teaching revolutionary concepts in fitness, nutrition and lifestyle management and none of it could have been possible without each and everyone of you.

I could name individually every person I have trained, and probably even tell you what your stats are, but that would take a long time because there are literally hundreds of you. I worked at four gyms in Uvalde before eventually opening my own and every step of the way has been one of personal discovery. Sometimes I felt like I was the teacher when in fact it was you who were teaching me. Hopefully, everyone will continue to progress towards the goals and dreams that they feel in their hearts.

So what's next for me and FTS? I will continue to support the community at large. I will probably keep offering some personal training on the side to a few individuals. However, I want to write more about the concepts that I try to teach and live everyday. The daily WOD will not be published for awhile if ever again. There are plenty of web sites and gyms that will do that. I want to take my web site and hopefully all of you to the next level. I hope that my writing will develop and become a benefit to those who want to integrate the core concepts that my household has adopted and had so much success with. I know that the curve will be steep initially but the beauty is that the sky is the limit, I hope you come along for the adventure. God only knows what the future holds.

As you may have noticed I have already changed the name of the blog from "athletics" to "living" as this is a more accurate interpretation of what I am about. I feel that there is a big disconnect in most people's paradigm that allows them to believe that exercise is enough to alter their lifestyles in any significant way. While this holds true for beginners it soon leads to a "failure to thrive" situation. Talking about different strategies on a daily basis, but failing to implement them, can actually set you back in my opinion, so I will put the info out there for you to read, if you choose to, and then you can implement it as you see fit. However, if you need any help or have any questions just shoot me an email. I will help if I can or at least I can point you in the right direction.

I added a RSS feed link to the blog and you can subscribe to follow my updates. If you don't use an application like Google Reader I would highly recommend it. It makes following your favorite web sites more efficient and more like reading a newspaper. There will be posts on Facebook and Twitter as well, but I promise not to spend my life as a voyeur on Facebook.

Personally, I am going to travel, start training for competitions, spend more time with my nieces, help other people develop their gyms, become more minimalistic, and more importantly live my life without regrets. I am also going to write two books, the first will be a cookbook ( I know cooking is a revolutionary idea but we have it down to a fine science and I am a revolutionary), who knows maybe even offering some cooking classes, and the second one will be a guide to living a paleo/CF/minimalist lifestyle. All your feedback will be greatly appreciated and considered for all the content on the site.

I hope you all have enjoyed and found value in working with me through the years. Remember to keep striving for excellence. You are ultimately responsible for yourself and your results. Thanks again from the bottom of my heart! I have enjoyed walking with you down the path, who knows maybe our paths will cross again.

The skys the limit.