workout

Bubs Naturals Collagen Protein and the SmartShake Shaker make for a solid 1-2 punch

Pounding a protein shake after your workout is as American as apple pie, but just because something’s a tradition doesn’t mean you can’t shake it up a little. As opposed to the whey protein I grew up on, I recently made the change to Bubs Naturals Collagen Protein–a shift more and more people seem to be making in the fitness and health oriented worlds. In fact, full disclosure here, the real reason I even started considering trying out a collagen protein was because my mom, a registered nurse with 30+ years in her field working as a caregiver and teacher, added it to her own morning ritual.

Advice is rad and all, but when I see people with expertise I respect doing something new, that gets my attention a lot quicker than any well-intentioned lecture about the recovery benefits of collagen protein.

After showing you guys how I manage to get my blood pumping before a workout last time, it seemed only fitting that I show you what I use post-workout to help get on the road to recovery: Bubs Naturals and the SmartShake Shaker.

There’s no such thing as a protein shake you savor and anyone that tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you something, bub Bubs unflavored protein does a great job of hiding in plain sight while you flavor up your beverage with whatever you like (I usually use a bit of MiO Liquid Water Enhancer). Honestly, if you pound your protein shakes like I do, you can even get away with just going with the unflavored protein alone–it’s not bad at all.

Want to get your post-workout going just like mine? Here are some deals on what I use:

And a special thanks to Leatherneck For Life for providing the awesome “Embrace the Suck” shirt shown in this video!

Using Strike Force Energy as a pre-workout supplement?

While there are already plenty of supplements on the market aimed at giving you a boost of energy to get your workout started, I approached the problem from a slightly different standpoint: I’m not a gel-haired bro looking for an edge before I get my pump on (though I could be accused of that from time to time)… Instead, I’m an exhausted dad just trying to find the strength I need to keep my eyes open between sets on the bench.

Real life fitness doesn’t often have much in common with the aesthetically pleasing, bright eyed and motivated fitness models we see in the advertisements. For most of us humans, our body fat percentage is just one of a hundred daily stressors vying for our attention, and as bummed as we may get when our fitness game falters, we often have no choice but to prioritize real-life responsibilities over the hour of daily self-hazing it takes to keep our love handles from turning into full on luggage. So, when you can steal some time away from work, family responsibilities, and social obligations, you’ve got to get your proverbial money’s worth… even when you’d much rather be napping.

I’ve been a fan of Strike Force Energy ever since they hooked me up with a pack during my time covering Petit Le Mans for NEWSREP, but it’s only been recently that I’ve started using it as a regular part of my pre-workout ritual.

Aside from the kick in the pants Strike Force Energy gives you in the form of caffeine, it also boasts 100% of your daily Vitamin B6 and B12, so you can use all that extra energy it gives you to skip your Flintsones Chewables for the day.

And a special thanks to Leatherneck For Life for providing the awesome “Sons on Tun” cup shown in this video!

E.A.R.N. – A simple but effective way of mastering your fitness regimen

In the pursuit of bettering one’s self from a physical standpoint, there are so many options available today. There is no “one size fits all” approach to fitness nor has there ever been. I’ve met people from all walks of life in peak physical condition; some of them do insane amounts of running, swimming, and biking in training for grueling competitive events like the Ironman, some do no cardio at all. Some people love the thrill of getting a new max weight as they bench press or squat, and others strictly stick by body weight exercises like pull ups, push ups, planks, and dips. Some do a full body routine 2-3 days a week and aren’t in the gym otherwise, some believe in no days off. Really, it boils down to a combination of what works for you as you get to know how your body responds, and what you personally enjoy enough to stick with in the long haul. To paraphrase something I once heard The Ultimate Warrior say in one of his epic Youtube rants after you read all the methods and rules and ideas of any self-help book or a lecture, it always boils down to one basic principle…do the fuckin’ work! There’s no shortcut or replacement for hard work, but even the most self-disciplined among us need a way to keep ourselves on track and accountable…and that’s where E.A.R.N. comes in.

What is E.A.R.N.? Well, if you know me, I’m somebody who is constantly listening to interviews with people that inspire and motivate me, on Youtube and on various podcasts. One of these people is Frank Zane. Zane is much more than a three-time Mr. Olympia and legend in the world of bodybuilding, and it’s something that’s apparent when you hear him speak. He’s a renaissance man of sorts always pushing the envelope in new ventures, with a unique view on bettering one’s self utilizing a series of tools like positive mantras, meditation, and visualization. Anyone still motivated to explore new ground in their life at the age of 76 deserves high praise as far as I’m concerned. A couple of years back Zane was the subject of an excellent interview with Mathew Park where he discussed various concepts that make up his philosophy, and one of those concepts that made an impact on me was his E.A.R.N. regimen. The acronym stands for Exercise, Attitude, Recovery, Nutrition. The way it works is that at the end of each day, you grade yourself on a scale in each category. It’s so simple, but it’s brilliant. I truly would agree with him that these four categories make up the entirety of successful physical health (and even mental health) regimen. If your fitness regimen, mindset, sleep, and eating are on point, there is no other option than to be successful. Let’s dive into each of these categories.

Fitness is the most self-explanatory of the four. I grade every category each day on my calendar on a scale of 0-5. What does a 5 in Fitness look like? To me, one example is setting a personal best. You out-did your max bench press? whether it’s by 5 lbs or 40 lbs, that’s a perfect day in my book. A 0, that’s when you don’t get any exercise in at all. To me, some 0 days are okay, and I encourage them. Some days you need those days off to assist your body in recovery, but we’ll get to that in a couple of paragraphs.

Attitude. A great quote from Pirates of the Caribbean sums up this category for me, “the problem is not the problem, the problem is your attitude about the problem.” Every one of us deals with struggles and aggravation on a daily basis, whether it’s work, family, or monetarily related. Sometimes someone just acts like a jerk and it ruins your mentality. Don’t allow that. Do not allow factors outside of your control to have an impact on your attitude for the day. This category just like all the others is entirely reliant on your own actions. Whether you have the greatest day in the world or it feels like you just can’t get a break, if you can keep a positive attitude and stay optimistic and focused on your goals, that’s a 5 to me. This category is so essential. A bad attitude can lead you to sabotage everything you’re working towards, so remember why you started. The incentive to score high in the category every day will help you in not allowing others to steal your joy.

Recovery. I think pride keeps many of us, especially goal-oriented people, in having an adequate recovery. Let’s get into what I mean. There are people who have no issue sleeping all day and having no motivation in life. You’re reading this, you believe in self-help, so chances are this isn’t you. The most motivated among us often have the #NoDaysOff mentality, and for many of us, myself included, you’ll learn this is unrealistic. If you’re pushing yourself to the max in your workouts seven days a week, keeping on top of your other goals and responsibilities like work, friends, and family, and getting very little sleep, for the majority of us, you’re gonna burn out, or worse, get injured. Allow yourself however many hours a night of sleep that you’ve determined your body runs optimally on. “But I don’t have time.” You do. You do because when your body is running optimally on the necessary hours of sleep, you’re going to function at a higher level and bang out your work quickly & effectively instead of dozing off or half-assing your workouts. Also, it works hand in hand with other categories. If you’re getting strenuous workouts in, your sleep will be better. Yin and Yang. There are also some great supplements that can assist in recovery, I’d highly recommend ZMA. Also, allow yourself a recovery day, maybe two or three. What’s a recovery day? It could mean getting a deep tissue massage, it could mean doing yoga that day. I’ve found yoga to be very effective in this category. To me, yoga is more about recovery than exercise. Most of us spend 5 minutes or so stretching before we exercise…if that. Take a yoga class and you’ll be stretching yourself out for a full hour. Your lifting bros may break your balls but your body is going to thank you. If you’re looking to gain muscle or lose fat, chances are, a regimen of strictly yoga won’t cut it. What it will do though, is help your flexibility and prevent injury. That stuff is necessary, so don’t feel guilty if you take a recovery day even if it just means staying in, skipping the gym, watching a movie, and you score a 0 in Fitness.

For me, Nutrition has become a more clear cut category than it was. It’s because I’ve become someone who tracks my macro-nutrients. This is a whole other subject some of you may need to research, but MyFitnessPal is great with this in making sure you get the proper amount of calories a day for your goal, and the proper percentages of protein, carbs, and fats. This is something I experiment with and change accordingly with my goals. If you’re like me, you get the simplicity of it. Did I reach my daily protein goal, eat mainly whole foods over supplements and processed junk, and stay within my range of calories for the day? Then that’s a 5. Maybe you’re not there yet, and that’s okay. Maybe a 5 for you is that you didn’t indulge in any sugary drinks or deserts for the day. Just be honest with yourself, because you’re the only person you’ll be cheating when you don’t put in the work.

If you hold yourself accountable in these 4 essential categories and adjust accordingly, you will succeed. Let me conclude with another quote that’s a favorite of mine from the greatest icon of martial arts Bruce Lee, “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” Some of the things I said in this article may not apply to you. Some of it just doesn’t work for what you’re looking to achieve possibly, and that’s okay. If anything I wrote resounded with you, I’m happy to hear it. Take it, incorporate it into your regimen, and crush your goals each and every day. E.A.R.N. it and be the best version of you!

Old Man Fitness: Supplements that work and why they don’t for you

Ah, supplements — to the uninitiated, they seem like powdered steroids dispensed via that obnoxious shaker the religiously “fit” among us are always carrying around the office instead of a coffee cup. To the beginner, they offer the promise of expedited progress, or even progress you could never do without the aid of science and the Muscle-testosterone-blaster proprietary blend of herbs and chemicals presented on the bottle like a discovery of modern medical science.

And to the seasoned lifter? Well, they usually look like what they are: useless powders that cost as much as the annual dues for your gym membership.

That isn’t to say that all supplements are bunk — as we’ve discussed in previous editions of Old Man Fitness, there are indeed supplements on the market that can help you reach or even exceed your goals faster than you may be able to otherwise. The secret to supplement-success is two-fold: you’ve got to find the right ones and just as importantly, you’ve got to use them properly.

Protein

Protein is usually the first supplement that comes to mind and it is perhaps the most true-to-title of the bunch. Protein powders are intended as a supplement to your natural protein intake. Protein isn’t anything exotic and didn’t require any major scientific breakthroughs in the past few decades to help you get stronger … protein is just the stuff your body uses to repair and rebuild your muscle fiber. Whether you get it from fish, chicken or Muscletech, protein effectively does the same job.

Because supplements are not regulated by the U.S. government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even protein can be a waste of money. All too often, the nutrition labels on supplements don’t actually show what’s inside the container and without FDA oversight, larger brands than you may think are able to get away with the ruse. It’s much cheaper to sell you a tub of corn flour with protein in it than it is to fill the tub with protein — that’s why even good brands often fall short of their claims when it comes to protein content.

My twenties proved that good protein still works no matter what you mix it with.

The problem with even the good protein supplements has more to do with how supplements are perceived than it does with the powders themselves. People lose sight of the fact that the chalky-shake they’re drinking isn’t a magic muscle building potion — it’s literally just extra building blocks your body can use when building the temple of power you’re working on.

And what happens if you keep delivering more building blocks to a site without putting in the time on the temple? Well, you end up with a pile of shit nobody wants to look at from the highway (or your bedroom door).

In order to make most protein shakes palatable, many companies load them up with carbohydrates and sugars that can almost make you think you’re drinking chocolate flavored misery, rather than the plain old generic sort. All those extra calories aren’t necessarily a bad thing — building muscle requires a caloric surplus in your diet (you’ll need to take in more calories than you burn throughout the day). But if you’re not putting in the hours at the gym, that caloric surplus doesn’t just disappear, it finds a new home … in your love handles.

When looking for a good protein supplement, consider the caloric content as well as the protein content and make sure you’re using the shake to help build muscle by putting in the time under the weights.

Creatine

Like protein, creatine has proven effective as a way to help bolster your muscle-building endeavors and like all supplements, it’s important to check with third party lab tests to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. Unlike protein, some forms of creatine require a “loading” stage, in which you inundate your body with large amounts of creatine to establish a baseline before dropping consumption down to a scoop or two after your workouts. To be honest, I’ve found scientific studies dismissing the loading stage as a marketing gimmick intended to make you run out of creatine sooner and others that claim creatine isn’t nearly as effective without that loading stage.

Like most forms of drinking, “loading” is only arguably productive.

Just like any other multi-billion dollar industry, there’s no shortage of studies funded by (or influenced by) supplement distributors, so it can be tough to sift through the noise. I’m still honestly a bit on the fence about this one, so I tend to lean toward following the directions on the container (of a verified and trusted brand). Maybe I’m burning through a bit more creatine than is truly necessary when I go through “loading” stages, but I’ve decided that the few bucks that costs me is worth the expense.

Like protein, creatine is often loaded with sugars to improve its taste, but you tend to consume less of it by volume than you might a protein shake. Nonetheless, if you’re not putting in the work, those scoops of creatine in your protein shake will also result in nothing more than a few extra dimples in your growing cottage cheese butt. Supplements can’t replace hard work — they can only supplement your recovery process.

Pre-Workouts

Pre-workout supplements are a big hit for younger guys that are looking to add a bit of pop to their workouts, as well as newcomers that love the tingly feeling of invigoration they can provide you as you make a beeline for the weights — but a lot of guys that have lifted for a long time tend to forgo the NO-Xplode’s and Jack3d’s in favor of way crazier shit like getting a good night’s sleep. Why is this? It’s certainly not because older men and women don’t need a pick-me-up before their workout starts, after all. With a baby in my house, I need a few scoops of pre-workout just to get me into the showers some mornings.

The real reason is pre-workout supplements have a diminishing effect on you the longer you use them. That drop in effectiveness will sound logical when you take a look at nutrition label of your favorite supplement … they’re absolutely loaded with caffeine.

Doesn’t seem quite as healthy when you look at it this way.

Now, the guy behind the desk at GNC (and someone in the comments section below this article) will tell you that the herbal blends and fancy ingredients in their pre-workout are really what makes the difference and that the caffeine isn’t what’s doing the trick. They’re the supplement equivalent of a homeopathic doctor trying to convince you that a bag of oregano is the secret cure for your IBS.

While some of these additional ingredients may have some science to back up the idea that they can boost your level of alertness or what have you, they often come in such small doses that they can’t have much effect on you at all, whether good or bad. It’s the caffeine that really gets you moving — and if you don’t believe me, you will when you realize that NO-Xplode has a similar effect on you to a cup of coffee, complete with the often-mandatory trip to the bathroom to squeeze out a number 2.

Just like your coworker that drinks eight cups of coffee a day and swears it does nothing to help him wake up, the more pre-workout powder you take on a regular basis, the less effective it will be at energizing you for your workout. That doesn’t mean pre-workouts are without value, it just means you need to use them with a little forethought.

To keep your pre-workout supplements effective, you should cycle on and off of them. Spend a month with your pre-workout supplement of choice, then spend a month working out without that powdered boost. After a month, your tolerance will be reduced again and you’ll go back to really feeling the value of the supplement.

And of course, remember that these or other effective supplements can’t do the job for you. The supplements aren’t the car, the engine, or even the fuel — they’re more like an octane booster you can add once you’ve already got the rest in order. They can help keep things running smoothly, but you’ll always be the one in the driver’s seat.

About Alex Hollings

Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects ranging from fitness to foreign policy, all presented through the lens of his experiences as a U.S. Marine, athlete and scholar. A football player, rugby player and fighter, Hollings has spent the better part of his adult life competing in some of the most physically demanding sports on the planet. Hollings possesses a master’s degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

Old Man Fitness: Tailoring your workout to your injuries

As we get older, we tend to collect things. Piles of artifacts representing memories both lost and treasured, old receipts we think we may need, and that shirt you know you can’t pull off anymore but just can’t find it in yourself to part with all take their places in our lives and homes like a physical manifestation of our own cluttered minds.

These collections start as a byproduct of the lives we lead, but over time, they come to define us. The tools in my garage and guns in my safe are more than an extension of my interests, in many ways, they’re an extension of me.

Of course, as the years go by, there’s also another kind of collection we tend to assemble, though not one that’s as easy to tuck away into a junk drawer: injuries also have a way of piling up on us. For some of us, they can be a point of pride — my list of injuries represents a long list of great accomplishments and bad decisions, but most importantly, none of them have managed to kill me yet. I’m not proud of every broken bone or torn ligament, but I’m proud that I’m still in the fight, dragging my aching ass into the gym despite all the ways life (and my own choices) have conspired against me.

Like my collection of tools, my collection of injuries defines me in many ways. It informs the way I approach my life, as I work to mitigate old injuries and prevent them from leading to new ones. Many of you can likely relate to things like giving your knees some time to warm up in the morning or adjusting the gait of your walk because your ankle is acting up today.

Pain is like the check engine light on the dashboard of a car. When you’re young, and the car is new, it means something’s wrong that you need to address.

But as you get older and the odometer clicks over into six digits, the check engine light tends to come on more and more often until eventually, it’s just on all the time. My car, creeping dangerously close to the 200,000-mile mark, has its check engine light on perpetually now and both my knees do as well.

So, adorned in our collections of old injuries, we carry on, busting our asses and getting things done like we always have, using the wisdom gained through experience to mitigate the ways our physical problems can extend into the things we do. My right knee has a habit of giving out on me, so over the years I’ve become really good at catching my balance before I crumple into a pile on the ground when it does. The detached retina in my right eye earned through years of fighting has led to me shifting the way I use the optics on my rifle. A lot of times, you may not even think about the ways you manage your injuries, you just do what you need to do the best you can — and it works.

I’ve broken my wrist so many times, I think part of me just assumes it’s always broken.

Tailoring your workouts to injury should optimally work the same way. We tend to think of “diet and exercise” like alchemy — some strange foreign science we can’t hope to grasp on our own, and as such, we rely on the expertise of others (in the form of products and diet fads). The truth is, exercise is just a way to imitate physical challenges in a safe and repetitive manner, and if there’s one thing you’ve learned to manage over decades of collecting injuries, it’s physical challenges.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do most lifts — form is important to maximize your results and minimize your chances at adding to that collection of injuries, but sometimes it’s okay to stray from the path and adjust your activities to suit you. Just like I occasionally switch hit and shoot lefty to compensate for problems with my eye, I’ve also changed many of my lifts to better suit the pile of old problems and surgically installed steel I call my lower body. I do front squats because of the slipped discs in my back, as one example. I don’t pursue one-rep maxes on my lower body lifts either. Would it be cool to know how much I can deadlift? I guess, but not as cool as being able to walk tomorrow.

A reader recently asked me if I could discuss the types of workouts that are good for older guys that may not have the experience behind them to lean on that some of us military types do — it was a great question, and there are some general suggestions I can always provide: focus on functional strength and compound movements when you can, walk and swim to ensure you’ve got muscular endurance without putting too much strain on your joints, and place an emphasis on stretching and flexibility to keep you capable and to stave off injury.

But more important that any of that is developing a level of trust in yourself. Start with a generic workout plan and try to work through it with light weights — when you come across something that hurts, give yourself a sincere gut check about whether the pain is truly indicative of injury. If it is, either adjust how you execute that lift so it doesn’t hurt, or pull it out of your regimen all together. Squats too hard on your bad back? Your form may be the problem but if it isn’t, maybe swap in the leg press in instead. No, a leg press machine won’t give you the same results as squats, but we’re not talking about working out the way you wish you could, we’re talking about working out the way you can safely.

I can take bigger chances with my upper body because I have fewer injuries in that hemisphere.

Struggling because something is hard is a good thing. Struggling because you’re hurting yourself is not.

Eventually, we all have to leave things behind. My wife stopped wearing miniskirts at around 30, my brother stopped installing fart-can exhausts on his cars at around 25, and I stopped trying to break records with my deadlifts right around my fourth surgery. It doesn’t mean she gave up on fashion, he gave up on racing or I gave up on lifting — we just adjusted our approaches as time went by.

There is often a “best way” to reach your fitness goals, but when the best way proves infeasible for you, you can either walk away from the fitness endeavor altogether, or you can find the way that works best for you. Maybe that means using more machines or less weight, maybe it means adjusting foot positioning or possibly not lowering all the way down on your squats (SACRILEGE!)

If you have access to a trainer, it never hurts to get a little help adjusting your game to suit your specific needs, but for those of us working alone and unafraid (with no clips on the bar), always err on the side of light weight. As you get more comfortable, it’s always easy to add a few pounds — but if you hurt yourself, you’ll have that much further to go again once you’re back on your feet.

What matters is that you get something out of your workout and stay healthy. That collection of injuries is going to keep growing, but in time, your ability to compensate for it will as well.

About Alex Hollings

Old Man Fitness: How to earn your ‘black belt’ in fitness

If you’ve ever taken the time to sit and read a bodybuilding magazine from cover to cover, you’ll likely come to a few interesting conclusions: the first is that advertising often tries really hard to pretend it’s expert analysis, and the second is that supposed experts in the fitness field often contradict one another, and even themselves, when it comes to the “best” workouts, methodologies, nutrition plans and lifts are. To be fair, a large part of these contradictions are tied to marketing endeavors: every new product invariably also needs to be the best one, otherwise people wouldn’t buy it but there’s another, less nefarious element at play here as well:

Different people respond to different things, well … differently.

There are, of course, many scientifically backed constants in the fitness world: burn more calories than you take in, and you’ll find yourself smaller than when you started, emphasize the development of fast twitch muscle in your regimen and you’ll likely end up bigger, and of course, if you try to learn how to use a machine via the guess-and-check method, some asshole is going to record it and share it on Twitter. It’s really not so much the broad strokes of fitness that are subject to interpretation and individual variances, it’s the ground level execution you may find needs adjustment.

I’ve spent most of my life training for one of only three things: football, rugby, or fighting. While I’ve participated in other sports (haven’t we all) those are the only three physical endeavors that broke the plain of adulthood and accompanied me into my higher mileage years — but with years worth of experience behind each, I can personally attest that not everything I’ve been taught has benefited me on the field or in the cage. The fact of the matter is, there are two things to take into account every time you learn a new technique for any of those sports: 1) does this new technique aim to improve my game, or just change it? And 2) how does my body respond to the endeavor?

When it comes to collision sports like football or rugby (dancing is a contact sport), change for the sake of change isn’t worth all that much — though I could make an argument that changing your game when fighting can lead to a better rounded proficiency (and when lifting for better rounded results). So with that element a wash, let’s focus on the second one: how does your body respond to this new thing?

When studying martial arts to demonstrate mastery of a discipline, it’s imperative that you learn to mirror the movements of your instructors, but when training in martial arts for the sake of a fight, it’s far more important that you learn how those movements translate into violence inflicted or violence mitigated — and optimally, you’ll find yourself capable of plenty of each. In the pursuit of that interest, you may find that, although you’ve developed a competency in a new technique, it works better for you if you adjust your wrist position slightly or the positioning of your legs. Sometimes, you may find yourself uncomfortable with a technique in general — and as such, hesitant to use it in force-on-force applications.

When you have to subdue a drunk Marine in a hotel room, you fold him in half the way you’re most accustomed. (Everything and everyone was fine once he woke up)

This is where the modern “mixed martial arts” mindset comes in: you train in multiple disciplines, adopt the techniques that work well for you, and discard the ones that don’t. You may be able to sink a triangle choke perfectly according to instruction, but if you find doing so takes you off your game, you’re better off keeping that technique in the “under development” category of your brain and utilizing what you know you’re capable of, if and when you find yourself in a dangerous situation. There are no points awarded for attempted techniques in competition, and there are no accolades for almost stopping an attacker in real life.

Of course, this mindset involves mental discipline — there’s a significant difference between what doesn’t work and what you just don’t like doing. Just like in writing, you can break rules for effect, but you’ve got to know them and practice them first; otherwise there’s no difference between you and someone that was never taught at all.

There’s a common legend about the colored belting systems employed by martial arts disciplines that says all warriors wore white belts, but as a student traveled, learned, and trained, that belt gradually grew dirtier and more battle worn, eventually making the transition to black at around the same pace as the fighter’s skill set developed to match. That legend has little basis in reality (belting systems are actually an advent of the 19th century and most agree they were introduced by the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano).

Legend or not, there’s an important lesson to be learned from the story: the idea that, to become a master, you had to travel and train under different teachers in different variations of a discipline, honing your skills against different opponents was meant to emphasize the concept of developing a well-rounded skill set that was, in many ways, as much about thinking as it was about doing. Being a fighter is a mindset as well as a skill set, and despite the risk of sounding like I attribute too much spiritual vigor to my workouts, I honestly feel that being an athlete is no different.

Over the years, I’ve trained in pankration [Greek wrestling], Brazilian jiu-jitsu, muay thai, various Filipino martial arts, scholastic wrestling, and of course the hodge-podge of techniques employed by the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program and, if you really pushed me, I could probably demonstrate some of the differences inherent to each, but honestly, they’ve all kind of blended into the sloppy Marine with a solid right cross and a propensity for submissions that I am today. Like my friend from South Africa that immigrated through Tennessee, my fighting style has developed an accent all its own — unique when compared to the elements it’s made of, and more defined when I lose my temper.

My fitness regimen has likewise become a unique collection of practices I’ve found to be especially effective for me. My metabolism (despite betraying me at around 30) still allows for looser discipline in my diet than many of my peers, my body’s knack for building muscle on my lower body faster than my upper ensures that I won’t ever be accused of skipping leg day and, to be totally honest, I’ve always been weaker on the bench than I ought to be based on my overall fitness levels. These and a million other small variables have, over time, informed my fitness endeavors, and once coupled with a laundry list of injuries I need to allow for, it has developed into a style all its own.

But here’s the thing people hate hearing: my method works for me, and ultimately may not be as effective for you. Your list of variables are different, the injuries you’ve accumulated over the years don’t affect you the same way, you may have more trouble adding mass or putting on weight may be your biggest challenge. If I can claim a “black belt” in fitness, it’s truly derived from my years spent traveling and learning under various schools of thought, not because I once passed a test that dubbed me a “trainer.”

People who are first getting into fitness are often looking for a sheet of paper with a list of exercises, sets, and reps that will guarantee them someone else’s success. That’s a fine place to start, but as you continue along the road to your own fitness goals, whether its to run a marathon or to squat 500 pounds, allow yourself to grow, to absorb new things and, when necessary, to dismiss the things that don’t prove as effective for you. If greatness could be easily reproduced using a checklist, it wouldn’t be that great at all.

Remember, seek scientific evidence to support your fitness decisions, but as you develop a relationship with your body, seek insight from within. When you see yourself respond well to five sets rather than four, to doing cardio before your workout rather than after, or you find that doing front squats aggravates old injuries, learn from it and move forward.

Get that fitness belt dirty by trying to master new things, and embrace the wisdom born out of finding what doesn’t work, as much as what does.