Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing WorkoutsThis post is Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing Workouts.

Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing Workouts

Starting this week, I am going to send out an email from both my Beachbody email and to users who have subscribed to Charles Lloyd Fitness some sort of question in reference to fitness. So here is a copy of the email I sent out last Friday.

Hey everybody, Just trying to check in with everybody since individual emails are a bit time consuming. But I wanted to find out is going on with everybody, how is your fitness stuff coming along, and is there anything that I could help you with?

Or maybe a better question is what is one thing you are struggling with? I am somewhat of a fitness nut and have been doing this health and nutrition thing for 14 years now, so maybe I can give you some advice, a few pointers, or lead you in the right direction. You can contact me at my website charleslloydfitness.com, or at [email protected], heck you can even call me at 916-***-****. Either way email, call, text me and let me know how you are doing. TTYS, Charles

Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing Workouts

Here is an email I received from one of my readers K. L.

“I just finished my 3rd week of insanity and it’s awesome. I’ve been seeing changes since the first week and I notice every week how my fitness level has increased. Even my blood pressure has come down noticeably. I wasn’t exactly out of shape either but after taking the winter off of running to let my knee heal, too many full and half marathons over the last 2 years to give it much rest, and not working out for the 3 weeks after my son was born I needed something to kick things back into high gear. Insanity has definitely done that and given me some great workouts to do while traveling for work, which happens 1-2 weeks per month. While traveling the workouts are awesome and the shakeology & recovery packets are a great way to keep healthy too. It was actually your reviews that led me to purchase the deluxe upgrade to my insanity kit, mainly that the upper body weights workout can be done with bands.

 

I know you also asked for one thing that I’m struggling with, but to be honest the only thing I’m struggling with is the occasional time crunch that I can’t squeeze in a workout. This past Thursday night while I was traveling from work I had less than 3 hours before leaving for the airport the next morning. That’s the only insanity workout I’ve missed but I think that’s pretty good considering I’ve been traveling 2 of the last 3 weeks since I started. My make-up approach was to simply throw on an ab workout on top of today’s planned workout with the thinking that I don’t want to do both workouts in one day, removes the necessary recovery, or do the workout tomorrow, which removes the recovery day out of the week. Would you recommend a different approach?

 

Also, my nutritional plan, if you could really call it that, has been to drink shakeology right after getting up and doing insanity about 30 mins after that with the recovery formula post-workout. The rest of it I’ve been keeping track on my phone counting calories, but not being too stringent in light of my travel. Drinking shakeology before my workout certainly gave me more energy than my first pre-workout attempts, granola bars or Met Rx meal replacement, but I kind of feel like there’s something different I could be doing to add more boost to my workouts. I know Beachbody sells a pre-workout mix, but it doesn’t come in packets and that won’t really work with traveling (random bag of white powder looks suspicious). Any suggestions for a pre-workout bar/mix? I prefer a mix since it helps rehydrate as well.

 

Other than that, I’m doing pretty well. I did get your email about making money as a coach and while I’m not opposed to it, it’s not something I’m interested in putting much time into right now with my work schedule and a 3 month old. However, I have thrown out that I’m doing insanity and that I’m a coach when I can to hopefully get people to buy from me and get some of the military guys signed up as coaches.

 

You should send out a reply to everyone with how things are going for you.

 

Thanks for everything,

K.L.

Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing Workouts

Thanks K.L for the email,

Congratulations on the baby K, send me some pictures and I will post your little boy up on this blog post, also good job on staying on the Insanity Program and grabbing the deluxe package. So let’s just start from the top. Nice work on reducing your hypertension (high blood pressure for my readers who don’t know). Back in 2001 I used to sell Health Insurance here in Northern California and I can tell you back then (2001/02) there was a 25% mark-up in health insurance premiums simply for having hypertension. All the self-employed people reading this website KNOW what I am talking about. With my Insanity workouts, I ONLY use bands. I have a set of Bodylastics Terrell Owens Strong Man Edition that I bought YEARS ago (I don’t think Bodylastics sells these anymore I think they are just called the Super Strong Man edition now), which are fantastic, plus like you said you can take them on the road with you.

*Note to readers*There you go folks a review straight from a readers mouth “While traveling the workouts are awesome and the shakeology & recovery packets are a great way to keep healthy too.” If you haven’t tried Shakeology go to this post and get some free samples.

Ok so here is my thought on “Missing Workouts.” I am currently reading The Answer, a book that was recommended by a VERY good friend of mine, Tony Richards from London England. Anyway I bought the book off Amazon for $6 shipped out of the used section and was pretty much brand new. So there is a section in the book that talks about neurological pathways and associations. The section paraphrased goes something like this. Your mind makes neurological associations based on past events. So when you hear, see, touch, taste, feel, or whatever something; neurological associations and pathways are formed. So let me give you an example from my life. I can remember quite vividly that whenever I heard this sound come on TV:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJNQh9wdWtU&feature=related

I would literally stop in my tracks and immediately run…no sprint to the TV. Because I knew something GOOD was about to come on, mainly a Charlie Brown special. If CBS had any sense they would use this tune again, not all the time but maybe three or four times per year. Anybody who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s in America and had a TV, when they heard this sound they would LOSE THEIR MINDS.

Here is the best YouTube comment I seen on this clip.

Whenever you saw this you knew $#!( was about to go down.

Anyway the point I am making is I associate that sound with something fun and exciting, even watching the youtube  8 second clip and nothing happens after that makes me excited…to this day. Fast-forward to today, whenever I go to the gym, the smell of the gym makes me feel like I am at “home.” The smell of sweat and bleach with headphones in my ear, actually makes me comfortable, it is one of the few places I feel “comfortable, at home, and relaxed.” Some people have comfort foods, some people have comfort rooms, some people associate sex with comfort. I associate the smell of a gym with comfort because my highest associations with how I remember things are visual, physical and smell. The gym hits all three of these associations when I am on a “high” from concentrating on my workout. I made this association about eight years ago when I was living in Japan. During that time I had gotten away from working out due to a failed health insurance business and I was broke and practically homeless. So I made a promise to myself from that point on, April 13, 2003, that for six months I would workout six days per week using the Body-for-Life book. I believe Tony Robbins said that if you want to make new neuro associations you had to “force” yourself to do an activity for three months. I wanted to change my financial situation and I knew I couldn’t change the people around me, so the easiest and cheapest way for my financial situation to change was to change myself.  Sure enough within three months of “deciding” to change my financial situation I went from making about $2000 per month to over $10K per month.

Astronaut Story

Going back to the book “The Answer” the author gives a story about how NASA space astronauts were given eye glasses that when put on made everything they see upside down, and it affected EVERYTHING the astronauts did. However by day 28 their brains “rewired” themselves  to no longer see upside down, but to see right side up, meaning that even though they were given glasses that are made for you to see upside down, neuro associations by their brain had been made to override the glasses to see right side up.

What does that have to do with anything?

So I am guessing that you are wondering what in the heck does this have to do with working out and your Insanity workouts. I am not a believer in make-up workouts. I believe that adding an abs workout was the correct thing to do – it’s what I would have done also. The point of Insanity, P90X or any workout program is not to follow the program to the letter, do the workouts at the prescribed time, and to only eat rice crackers, spirullina and drink wheatgrass all day. The point of any exercise program, personal trainer, or instructor is to get you to make neurological associations within your body to make you to “WANT” to workout, to condition your body to associate working out with pleasure. Most people I meet, talk to, or whatever will workout for a while, maybe lose a couple pounds, but then two, three, or six months later, heck maybe even years later, the weight will seem to creep back on or they fall back into the same old rut. The problem from what I see with these types of people is that they never made any really deep down neurological associations with where they want to be and where they came from. Usually they like eating cupcakes or whatever MORE than eating correctly and working out, meaning the neuro association to eating cupcakes is stronger than the neuro association to eating correctly and working out, thus it is ONLY NATURAL for them to go back to their old ways.

In your case since you already come from a decent base of running marathons, but now you have other responsibilities with a newborn baby, family obligations, work obligations, and knee problems, you are doing the Insanity program perfectly. I know almost NOBODY that can follow the program to the letter, even people with the time, money and resources. So for you, don’t have time to do a full workout, then by all means do the ABS workout, but one thing to remember and I tell everybody this DO NOT SKIP REST DAYS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. I know that you are highly motivated and want to do the correct thing but if you can’t get a workout in then don’t worry about it. If you can do the full program to the letter 90% of the time you are absolutely golden!

Pre workout Stuff

For pre-workout stuff there are only 2 products I use since you are looking for something portable: P90X bars or Cliff Builder bars that you can buy at Wal-Mart, Target, Trader Joes, anywhere almost. Over the years I have bought pretty much every pre-workout drink, bar, powder, serum, snack or whatever. MetRx, IsoPure, Detour, you name it I tried it. Most of that stuff is disgusting and some bars like the EAS protein bars shouldn’t even be considered food they are so nasty. If I have P90X bars in the office they will be gone in a matter of days between my business partner Julie and I. My favorite ones are the Café Mocha (and I am not a coffee fan) Peanut Butter, then followed by Chocolate Fudge, I think the Wildberry Yogurt bars taste like chalk dipped in sugar but Julie loves them. If those are not in the office then I personally use Chocolate Mint Cliff Builder Bars, they are available almost everywhere here in Northern California and they are cheap, on sale I think I can usually find them for $1.25~1.33 each. They are a great deal, they work, and not only actually edible but taste good. Julie eats the Chocolate Coconut Luna bars, they are “made” for women so I think they increase the tear ducts in your eyes so you may not want to buy them ;).

But seriously though 80% of this whole fitness and nutrition thing is eating correctly, and it is what most people struggle with. Mainly because there is so much cheap and readily available food here in America and since you need food to live, neither you, nor I, nor anybody will ever win a “food fight” or a fight with food as Bill Phillips would say. Shakeology is some good stuff, but it really only replaces one meal out of the day. My advice is if your normal diet is not normally healthy, then you have to preplan all your meals. If you have stuff in your cabinets that you know you shouldn’t be eating, then when you are at your weakest it will be extremely hard to resist. So, the number one rule to overcome that problem is DON’T HAVE THE STUFF IN YOUR CABINETS, the number two rule is to not put the stuff in your cabinet so rule number one will never be an issue. Preplanning will *almost* alleviate* this problem. For me if I’m not hungry, eating stuff I shouldn’t is easy to resist. For some people, maybe somebody reading this post, eating could be emotional, spiritual, a way to escape, or 1000 different ways that your brain has made the neurological pathway to eating and feeling good.  If you know this about yourself and your current waistline reflects this, then you know what to do.

I totally understand the work thing as I was in the military for seven years. The reason I sent you that email is because, as you know, military people love to talk-a lot-and when I was in the military people would ask me what I did for my workouts and I would tell them and the next thing I would see is them doing exactly what I said. Since signing up as a Coach is free for military and non-profits, I think it’s a great program and opportunity.

Currently I am doing the P90X2 program and I will start to post my reviews and thoughts on the program once I finish the 10 Minute Trainer Program that I started a long time ago. 😛

TTYS,

Charles

This concludes this post of Mail from Charles Lloyd Fitness Readers Missing Workouts


Charles Lloyd
Charles Lloyd

Self processed fitness missionary and author of most of the ridiculous fitness articles written on Charles Lloyd Fitness.com. I am not really a writer, but a workout fiend who happens to have a blog. The single mission of this website is very simple: Get You In Shape. I have been blessed with the gift of good health and want to share it with you. Join Me.

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