Happy Monday!
I hope you are all coming to terms with what it means, and may mean to have Donald Trump as President of the US. That’s a real meditation, eh…
I’ve been as busy as ever working on my CHEK 4-Quadrant Coaching Mastery online program, coaching clients, getting ready for my Love 4 Mastery program launch Thursday, along with finding time to meditate, exercise, and even doing a little work on a new painting.
For those of you who follow my video blogs regularly, I hope you enjoyed the recently finished series on Space, Time, Movement and Healing.
Since that was pretty intensive for most viewers, I thought I’d switch to some less comprehensive topics to share for a while.
Today, I’ll share a method of enhancing your training in the gym as my vlog feature. In fact, in my blog today I will share:
1. The Higher and Deeper Training Method
2. Mike Salemi’s Kettlebell Workshop In San Diego!
3. C.H.E.K Institute Advanced Training Program Completions
4. Show-N-Tell With Paul
The Higher and Deeper Training Method
If you want to maximize your strength and endurance (technically called strength-endurance) training, I can show you a great way to do that.
There are many instances in our lives where we need adequate strength to lift heavy objects. There are also times when we need to move a lot of objects, such as when cleaning your garage or yard.
I remember being an apprentice bricklayer (stonemason) when I was young. As low man on the totem pole, it was initially my job to mix cement and keep all the bricklayers supplied with blocks.
We were often using scaffolding to build high walls and with several bricklayers working at once. I had to move constantly from mixing cement to delivering wet cement and blocks to each bricklayer to keep them constantly supplied to build walls.
When I delivered blocks, I used a wheelbarrow filled as high as I could get it (the tire would go almost flat!), and then get them up multiple levels of scaffolding.
My method was to put my arms through the holes in the blocks and get four blocks on each arm. Then I’d swing them up to the scaffolding and leave them there, and run up top and do that again until I reached the height where the bricklayer was working. This went on for 10 hours a day on most days.
Who needs a gym when you’re doing that kind of work?
The truth of any work or sports situation is that if your strength and fitness doesn’t adequately exceed the demands of your work or sport, you can quickly find yourself suffering the negative effects of over-training.
Having spent many years working in orthopedic rehabilitation, I can assure you that I’ve had to help a countless string of workers and athletes who found out the hard way that using their job or sport for “conditioning” did not work.
In my vlog today, I show you how to:
A) Go Higher: This means to go into your fast-twitch motor units and muscle fibers, which offer a stronger contraction, but don’t last nearly as long as many work tasks or sports demand.
Here I demonstrate how to use an ascending pyramid format with emphasis on progressively stimulating your body and nervous system in preparation for high intensity (heavy) lifting to get maximum performance.
B) Go Deeper: We now reverse the order of the ascending pyramid and go into a descending pyramid where we exhaust the whole range of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers progressively (thus “deeper” into the motor neuron pool and muscle fiber population).
I demonstrate this method using a swing-clean-to-press with kettlebells coupled with heavy dumbbells for the heavier lifts.
This method can be used effectively with about any lifting exercise you like, and another beauty of this kind of training is that you can get an amazing workout with just one exercise, as I show today.
Mike Salemi’s Kettlebell Workshop In San Diego!
I am very excited to announce the CHEK Kettlebell Performance Workshop: An Integrated Approach to Kettlebell Training
Dec. 10-11, 2016 in San Diego, Calif.
The Higher and Deeper workout I shared in my vlog today is one of many different types of workouts I used when conditioning Mike Salemi, a Master of Sport in Kettlebell Lifting and former International Kettleball and Fitness Foundation (IKFF) National Champion.
Mike has developed a fantastic, two-day kettlebell workshop that will give you some very important fundamental skills and tools you can use for any form of conditioning, from personal health and fitness to sports-specific, or even CrossFit style, training.
Mike is easily one of the best, most disciplined athletes I’ve ever coached, and he has a real mastery of the 4 Doctor methods I teach as well.
Mike is not only an elite athlete. He is very busy running a successful business. If that isn’t proof of 4 Doctor mastery, what is?
Mike is also a great presenter and communicator. He is clear, easy to follow, passionate, and truly a MASTER of kettlebell training. I’m sure he can take you higher and deeper regardless of your training dream.
Mike has limited registrations so that he has time to work with each individual in class and give you the most practical education you can get in two days.
Here’s some information about this upcoming workshop so you can get registered before it sells out:
CHEK Kettlebell Performance Workshop: An Integrated Approach to Kettlebell Training
December 10-11, 2016 in San Diego, Calif.
Here are just some of the concepts and techniques you’ll learn:
• Learn how to lift kettlebells safely.
• Learn how to apply kettlebell lifting to any work or sports environment.
• Understand how to use kettlebells within a holistic approach to training.
• Understand the CHEK 4-Doctor approach to kettlebell training.
• Discover how and when to use the “less is more” principle of exercise prescription.
• Learn how to apply the 5 Essentials of Program Design.
To learn more or register: https://chekinstitute.com/chek-kettlebell/
C.H.E.K Institute Advanced Training Program Completions
Exercise Coach, Montreal, Canada, with Carl Weston
Alhough Carl is one of our newest instructors, he’s certainly very busy teaching and making a great name for himself among his students.
Thank you Carl, for guiding our students toward C.H.E.K Exercise Coach completion and all of you students who gave your undivided attention.
I look forward to hearing some of your success stories as you apply your training to the many people in the world who can use your help.
I hope to see you in C.H.E.K Practitioner Level 1 when you’ve successfully integrated Exercise Coach into your life and professional practice and are ready to go to the next level!
Show-N-Tell With Paul
Mana Bumi
We continue to have fun with Mana each day. He’s growing like a weed and crawls around like a proud little pony all over the place.
Here you can see him helping Angie with the laundry. Angie thought it was pretty funny that the first thing he did was to grab a pair of her underwear and put them across his body. Oh boy, you never know what this guy will get up to!
He loves being in the dirt, on the grass, tasting rocks and leaves, watching the bugs move around, going places with Mommy, having his morning runs with both his Mommies, and visiting his Grandma.
Mana loves wrestling with Daddy too. When Daddy tries to be scary, the scarier I can be, the more he loves it! He’s definitely two hands full, but All Love.
C.H.E.K Institute Instructor Suzi Nevell To Open New Clinic In Auckland, N.Z.
Suzi Nevell is the best physical therapist I’ve ever worked with in my professional career. She served as one of our most senior C.H.E.K Institute Instructors for many years before taking a break from all the traveling and teaching to rest and make some changes in her life.
One of those changes is the creation of her new holistic physical therapy business in Auckland, N.Z.
We all wish Suzi and her partner the greatest of successes. What a blessing your new clinic will be for the people of New Zealand, and those who travel to see you!
All of us at the C.H.E.K Institute send our love and inspiration, and hope to have you teaching again in 2017!
Why Your Heart Is Not A Pump (downloadable audio)
I spent many years intensively studying the works of Rudolf Steiner. He was a true genius, and a very spiritually evolved man who left the world biodynamic farming, the Waldorf school system, anthroposophic medicine and much more.
One of the amazing things I found out when studying his teachings was his explanations regarding the fact that the heart is not a pump. As you can imagine, this concept hasn’t caught on in mainstream medicine yet, but we are now realizing, once again, that Steiner’s genius can’t be denied.
My buddy Jason recently listened to a great audio interview titled, “Why Your Heart Is Not A Pump,” and this is what he had to share with me after listening:
Hi Paul,
I found this to be a very interesting interview. The interviewer is not very experienced, but Dr. Tom Cowan shared some very interesting information with him.
Why the heart is not a pump, but actually acts as a water/blood charger of sorts “structuring” your blood (they talk a good bit about structured water), how heart attacks are not really related to plaque in the arteries, but decreased parasympathetic functions etc., and also how love is the “x” factor that scientists can’t dissect.
I think you’ll find the interview really fascinating.
Tom Cohen also goes into how Steiner was able to predict that the heart was a 7-sided figure (later named chestahedron) that sits in an imaginary box in your chest, long before they were able to actually prove that the heart was not a pump but a vortex and was this shape.
Also interesting is that if you tried to put a 7-sided chestahedron into a box, it has to sit at 36 degrees to fit perfectly, which is exactly the degree it sits inside your body.
The interview also explored the body temperature of a normal human.
To listen online or download this amazing interview to your phone, click here: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2016/11/why-your-heart-is-not-a-pump/
Paul’s Movie Picks This Week
Captain Fantastic (Viggo Mortensen) is he story of an unconventional father who is forced to leave his self-created paradise and bring his family into society for the first time. He and his wife had homeschooled the children in the wilderness, and also gave them the training to survive a wide variety of situations.
When his wife died, that led to some real challenges that he and his children must face together.
This is an excellent movie. It’s funny, deals with real life issues, and has some deeply emotional moments in it.
I think it is a fantastic movie for parents and kids old enough to hear the word “fuck” a few times, and for anyone that loves finding the humor in life. Angie and I loved it!
Antonio Banderas plays the lead role in Finding Altamira about the life and events of the man who realized one of the most important discoveries of the 19th century: Altamira’s caves.
This is a story of an amazingly intelligent, open-minded man who rocked both the academic establishment and the church with the discovery of the cave paintings he and his daughter found in a cave they were exploring.
This movie is sure to be inspirational for parents and kids. Angie and I loved it!
In The Sea of Trees, Matthew McConaughey stars as a professor with a troubled past traveling to a Japanese forest with a dark history. There he meets a mysterious stranger who takes him on a life-changing journey of love, discovery and redemption.
The problem: The stranger who had a huge influence on him when he was ready to take his own life didn’t exist when he tried to go back and find him… or did he?
For those of you who believe that angels can manifest as human beings when Divine Intervention is justified, you will find this a deep, powerful movie that opens us up to the richness of life and death, and the many lessons we can learn in life. I hope you enjoy it.
A Brushfire Nearby on A HOT, Dry and Dangerous Day!
I was here at my office doing some work yesterday, getting ready to do some audio recording, when all-of-the-sudden, I heard a VERY LOUD helicopter. I looked out the window and saw what you see above.
Just over the hill nearest to me there was smoke rising, and the fire department sent one of their water-bomber helicopters to the rescue. This is the second time we’ve had a fire very close and they sent the water-bombers right to our lake to get water.
It made several trips, and I could actually see the water line drop a couple inches on the lake! I was amazed that it could fill up in as little as two minutes.
It is a great feeling to know we have that little lake (reservoir) next to us because fires are not at all uncommon here. It has been a very hot, dry summer and seasonable dry Autumn thus far. We still haven’t had much rain, and we have been having Santa Anna winds blowing lots of heat in from the desert.
Believe it or not, it is almost December and we are still on high fire alert here. Thank God for flying firemen!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my blog this week.
I look forward to sharing more with you next week.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
