Some Inspiration

I'm disappointed in myself for not posting more often, but I am also trying not to post just for the sake of posting either.  This may be a little more of the latter, but I wanted to share a couple of videos I found today that were pretty inspiring.

The first is a video by Neil Pasricha called "The Three A's of Awesome".   It is almost 20 minutes long, but has a good message about how to get the most out of life.  The gist of it is, there are going to be roadblocks and obstacles in your life, and how you choose to handle those will determine how far you are able to move forward.  Anyway, the video caught my attention, and maybe it will yours too.

The other video which caught my eye today was this one.  This video shows a kindergarten teacher's classroom in Mexico, where two rival drug cartels are having a gunfight just outside of the school (apparently several people were killed in it).  The teacher has the kids on the floor, but is very calm and begins to sing with them so they don't freak out in a very scary situation.  I know at least 3 current or former kindergarten teachers who kickbox with me, and I can imagine all three of them acting in a similar manner even though I am quite sure all of them would also be completely freaking out on the inside.  It takes a special kind of person to succeed as a kindergarten teacher, and this woman in Mexico appears to have that gift (as do my kickboxer friends). 

Anyway, two videos with nothing more in common other than they inspired me, and hopefully they'll stir something in your like they did in me today.

Shades of Gray

Perhaps against my better judgment, I'm feeling the need to write about several things I've read about or witnessed this week that have to do with race.  I'm not yet sure what my point is going to be, but each of these things really got me thinking and I just wanted to share them.

The first item was this news story, which discussed a federal appeals court ruling that stated that the city of Chicago would be forced to hire 111 black firefighters because of a test that was taken in 1995 in which a large percentage of those who scored in the top 10% were white.  Apparently the plaintiffs were able to convince the court that this test in fact did not measure one's ability to be a good firefighter, and the random cutoff point from which the city would hire assured that the vast majority of the hiring pool would be white, and it was therefore discriminatory.  Now I'm the first to admit that I don't know all the details of this case, and the unanimous decision would seem to indicate that a strong case was made, but I cannot for the life of me understand how the court could make that ruling.  It really has me wondering how exactly was this test discriminating.  I am no fan of affirmative action either, and this case just sounds a whole lot like affirmative action to me.  Maybe it isn't "realistic" to look at things like this, but anytime I hear a story of something being given to someone or done as a result of someone being black, I can't help but test the situation in my head replacing "black" with "white".  For example, what if the story were "city must hire 111 white firefighters"?  That sounds awful to me, and I'm a white male.  Or the NFL rule that says teams have to interview a certain number of black coaching candidates before they hire a head coach.  Yes, I understand that the number of white head coaches in the NFL is very high, but seriously, if you're a black coaching prospect, isn't it degrading to know that you're being interviewed because you HAVE to be rather than because you might be the best fit for the job?  God help the city of Chicago, which will now have to find an additional $30,000,000 in its budget to pay for this mess.

Another item that caught my eye was the recent remarks by boxer Bernard Hopkins about Donovan McNabb and  Manny Pacquiao.  Hopkins is black, and it seems apparent to me that he has some pretty racist views, but I don't expect the racism police to come down on him just because he may be an idiot.  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton seem to live for the opportunity to publicize stupid things a white person might say that could be construed as racist, and I think many of the things they do and say actually do more to divide us than they do to move toward the elimination of racism from society.  (South Park had a brilliant parody on this very subject a couple of seasons ago by the way).  It is the double standard that I and I think many others have a problem with.  There are stupid white people in this world who say stupid things just like there are stupid black people who say stupid things.  If you are really trying to end racism, you have to go after ANYONE who is racist, not just those in the majority.  But then again, I also believe that most people will realize when someone of any race has said something that shows their racist beliefs and react accordingly and appropriately on their own.  And oh so often, the best course of action is to not give the words any publicity.

The last thing I wanted to share was something I witnessed while visiting the rec center swimming pool this afternoon.  While sitting in a chair by the side of the pool talking to a friend of mine, I noticed that there were a ton of young kids in the hot tub (young meaning younger than 10), and it was very crowded.  A short time later, a family walked into the pool area, and three from that family got into the hot tub.  This family happened to be black, and most of them happened to be pretty large people.  I didn't notice them get into the hot tub, but I did notice that within a couple of minutes of them getting in, almost every other kid in the pool had gotten out.  Was this because these people were black and kids were racist?  Or was it because they were big?  Who knows, but that seemed like the perfect time to actually use the hot tub, since all the kids had finally gone away.  After sitting in the tub for maybe 10-15 minutes, the black family decided to get out, and sure enough, within another couple of minutes, the hot tub was again full of young children.

So what is my point?  Well, here are a few:
1.  I certainly am not so naive as to think racism doesn't exist.
2.  I think it is usually made worse by those who claim they are trying to eradicate it.
3.  I'm not racist, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some people who disagreed with my views that would claim I have racist viewpoints.

I wonder sometimes if, because I'm a white male, I truly won't ever be able to fully understand certain issues that minorities claim are big problems.  It probably has a lot to do with priorities and culture, so things that are important to me may mean nothing to someone else, and vice versa.  Just because of human nature, I can't imagine racism or prejudice will ever completely go away (lucky for Al Sharpton), but hopefully people in general will get better at responding to it in a more appropriate way.

AFPA Conference

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a long weekend in Ocean City Maryland last weekend for an AFPA conference.  To say that the experience has renewed my passion for fitness would be an understatement (as anyone who asked how it went can readily attest).  The conference consisted of 10 roughly two hour sessions over a two day period.  At any given time frame, there were about 10 different "classes" being taught, and attendees could choose which classes they wanted to take.  There were specific "tracks" such as nutrition, group fitness, personal training, yoga, and many others, but we could attend any class we wanted in any track.  And so I did.  If you are interested in exhaustive details about what I was taught, keep reading.  If not...tune in again next time (I promise you won't hurt my feelings).

My first class was "10 mistakes personal trainers make".  Fantastic lecture, and it made me think a lot about my situation teaching at Alpha as well as Alpha as a business.  The number one mistake cited was not following through on promises, and hopefully I don't make that mistake very often.  Another one was "don't be "friends" with your clients".  Oops...I will be the first to admit that I fail MISERABLY at that.  I love my kickboxing students, and am good friends with many of them, but I think I do a pretty good job of separating the business side from the friendship side.  This situation may come back to haunt me some day, but for the foreseeable future, I love teaching kickboxing, and I have great friends who I teach, so both sides of the equation will just have to continue to coexist until someone says "I told you so". 

Another class I took taught about ways to avoid burnout.  This was geared more towards preventing burnout as a trainer, but I was also interested in what might be said about avoiding burnout as someone trying to stay in shape, because Lord knows we've all been there at some time in our lives, and I'm no exception.  The gist of what I learned was....make time for yourself to do things completely unrelated to your job, and you have to take the initiative to find ways to liven up what you're doing and keep it fresh.  Easier said than done sometimes, but certainly good advice.

I took a class on bodyweight training.  This was a fantastic workshop, and I learned many new exercises I hope to incorporate into classes in the future.  Most of the exercises weren't ones that you'll do a few reps and fail, but they contained movement in multiple plains and were very efficient at working multiple muscle groups simultaneously.  The same instructor also taught the bootcamp design class I took, which also gave me some great ideas for upcoming workouts.

Two other classes I took were a kickboxing class and an "Athletica" class, which was kind of a weight training class in an aerobic group setting.  These classes were really good at showing alternative group workout methods, and really hammered home to me what a difference a good instructor can make on the class.  Our instructor had only been doing these classes about 5 years, but he was very smooth and transitioned seamlessly between exercises.  Very little downtime.  And he pretty much did the entire workout with us as he talked and instructed.  To say he was shredded would be an understatement.  I do not teach my kickboxing classes as an aerobics class, but some of the concepts were very useful and I'm already using them in my own classes.

I also took some classes that went into detail about core training, and a class on "animal movements" (since I also teach 3-5 year olds, this sounded like a great class to get some ideas). 

All in all, I learned a ton this weekend and took a lot of notes.  I have a lot of sorting out to do and a lot of links to look up to get my thoughts in line, but I'm really excited about some of the things I'll be adding to classes.  One thing I took note of was just how the instructors worked their classes, such as how they motivated and instructed everyone, and how their music fit into their class.  When all the elements came together, the class dynamic really was stunning and made everyone seem to come together.  I loved that energy and am going to work on bringing it to my classes every time I teach.  I definitely have the right group of people in class to make that happen. 

The Trip Back East

I flew to Maryland yesterday to attend an AFPA conference in Ocean City.  I haven't posted in awhile, so I wanted to just jot down a bunch of random thoughts I've had about my trip so far.  (Not so much the conference...that may come later).

I love flying alone without having to worry about any kids (not that I get to do it very often).  Several years ago I flew to Toronto alone from Denver.  On the way, my connection out of O'Hare was canceled, and I had to spend the night sleeping on the airport chairs with all the rest of those people who had no place to go in Chicago.  While there, I noticed a woman who had several very large suitcases and I think 3 kids under the age of 7, including an infant.  I wish I could remember her story, but the gist of it was that she was essentially moving to Toronto and her husband was already there and she was bringing the kids and all of their stuff.  And then her flight was canceled.  She looked panicked (as I think anyone would have in that situation).  I didn't have any of the worries she was dealing with, so I at least helped her drag the suitcases around and keep the kids corralled while she made some calls and tried to figure out what to do.  In the midst of complete chaos and unbelievable stress all over the place, it had no bad effect on me.  I think she eventually found a friend in Chicago to drive her up to Toronto.

I have heard about the flooding in the Mississippi River basin.  It looks horrendously bad from 33,000 feet.  This is going to be a tough spring for much of the middle of our country.

The boardwalk area of Ocean City is a little disappointing.  Completely tourist trappy, which I guess makes perfect sense, and I'm not sure what else I was expecting.  What is sad, though, is that it isn't tourist season yet, and the workers here look, I dunno, bored.  One young girl was running the carnival game in which a bunch of people squirt a water gun into the nose of some clown or something, and this makes a balloon rise, and the winner gets the prize.  No one was coming.  You could actually hear her sighing in exasperation as no one volunteered their marksman services.  Oh, and she was texting as she was trying to lure people over.  It is "Springfest" here, which as far as I can tell means a handful of fraternity and sorority boys and girls are in town to do spring break type stuff.  The rest of the people seem to be the people in this country who want to come to a popular tourist area but are too cheap to do it during tourist season.  It is an interesting mix of people, let me tell you.

I ran a mile for time.  Figuring it was at sea level, and there was a strong wind at my back, I thought there wouldn't be a better time to see what I could do.  7:03, which is the fastest mile I've ever run.  And it really hurt bad.

I ate at two restaurants today, and at each one, my waitress had the unfortunate honor of waiting at a table where the customers had no clue what they wanted, and had a million questions about every little thing on the menu.  "What is the difference between Dungeness crab and king crab?  Is that like soft shell crab?  Which one tastes better?"  I didn't really care, but it was interesting to see two sets of such completely clueless individuals in two meals.  On the other side of the coin, though....waitresses tend to treat you really well when you eat alone.

My hotel is right on the beach, and the sound of the waves (coupled with no kid or pet duties) is remarkably soothing for me.  I could never live up here, but it is nice to get away every so often, and this weekend is doing my mental health just fine.

It's time to start....RUNNING!!!

Last weekend was the Mudhen 5K race in Longmont.  Not being a runner, let alone a distance runner, I did not participate in the race (and after waking up to a steady SNOW, I was even more thankful I hadn't committed). However, many friends from Alpha and some families from school did run, and I was able to catch the tail end of many of their races.  Kathy competed for the first time in quite awhile and ended up 4th in her division.  One KB student from Alpha, Stephanie, won her division.  Several others were there running with their kids or supporting their friends.  But probably the most inspiring runner was another kickboxing friend, Erika, who was doing her first 5K.  She is as strong as they come, very dedicated to coming to class and has made monumental improvements across the board in her overall fitness.  But she is not a runner, and yet she decided to set a goal and see it through.  And she finished, and it was really cool to see that and all the support she was getting.

Well, the end of those races is always great, with people congratulating each other and just hanging out and realizing they just did a pretty intense workout, and now they are done and they can enjoy the aftermath.  Kathy was looking for more races to run, which is beyond awesome, because quite often she is just too busy or tired to train or compete in stuff like this, and she is actually very good at it.  She found a half marathon being run for the first time in Longmont this July, and she thinks that would be a good race to train for.  She talked to some of our friends about it, and they showed some interest.  And I will probably look back at this decision as one of the most whacked out decisions I have ever made, but I told her I would give it a go myself. 

Yes, I am planning to run the Redline 13.1 in Longmont on July 16th (happy 40th birthday to me).  Let me just list a few things that are fundamentally flawed about my decision:

1.  I am not a runner.  I have never enjoyed running.  And I have never been very good at it.

2. I have no endurance.  I swam in HS and college, and when I was in top shape, I was a SPRINTER.  I can hang for four laps in a pool.  13 miles on a path....um, not so much.

3.  Did you see what time this thing starts?  6:30 a.m.!  I am never up at 6:30 a.m, but on July 16th, I not only get to wake up at least 90 minutes earlier than that, but then I get to go run (which I hate) for 13 miles (which takes endurance). 

4.  I don't remember the last running race I competed in.  Pretty sure it was a 5K.  Pretty sure it was at least 10 years ago.  Pretty sure the elevation of the race was about 50 feet above sea level.   

5.  My knees and feet have been giving me lots of trouble lately when doing martial arts.  I imagine 13.1 miles  of foot pounding on a paved trail is not going to give my knees any warm fuzzies.

All that said, there is one thing that I have going for me.  I've never raced that far before, but it will be a challenge, and one that I'm not yet convinced I can achieve.  I fully expect to suck, and I fully expect that the race will nearly kill me, but I also expect that there will be a lot of support for me and my other friends who plan to do this, and that will be all it takes.  By the time I turn 40, I hope to at least be able to say that I've run a half marathon, and anyone who knows me at all will know that if I can say those words honestly, hell must certainly have frozen over.  One of my favorite motivational quotes is "Pain is temporary.  Pride is forever."  No doubt.  Time to bring it.....

Certified

 That's certiFIED, not certiFIABLE.  I just received my "AFPA Cardio Kickboxing Instructor" certification in the mail today, so I'm pretty pumped.  This is my second AFPA certification, along with "Certified Childrens Fitness Specialist".  Almost looks like I might know what I'm doing when I'm "encouraging" my kickboxing class to do a few more pushups or working with preschoolers on their throwing and kicking techniques. 

A couple of years ago, when I realized that I would enjoy working in the fitness industry, I looked into which certifications actually meant something.  There are dozens of fitness certifications out there, and from what I've researched, there are maybe half a dozen or so that are actually worth anything.  That brought me to the NSCA, which offers a Certified Personal Trainer cert (for those looking to get into a personal training gig), and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (for those who want to design exercise programs for athletes).  I liked the way the CSCS cert sounded, and thought that it could be useful for designing martial arts training programs.  I got my study materials and went to work studying.  The test takes several hours and is closed book.  Needless to say, without a degree in exercise or fitness or anatomy, the material has been pretty difficult.  And without any real "need" to get this cert, my studying tapered off and I eventually just put it on the shelf after about 9 months.

When I started to teach kickboxing, I looked around to see if there was a KB cert that actually meant something, and my search lead me to the American Fitness Professionals and Associates (AFPA).  They did indeed have a cardio kickboxing cert, and from what I could tell, it is a pretty respected certification.  In addition, the AFPA has a whole bunch of other certs available, including the Certified Childrens Fitness Specialist (which I thought would be great for the Tiny Tigers class I was helping teach).  I got the study materials for the two AFPA certs, which have a 6 month deadline, but are open book tests.  The CCFS cert was over 100 short answer questions and a couple of essays.  I received that cert in October of last year.

The KB cert included a true/false test, and I also had to send in a video of me teaching a class according to the guidelines of the AFPA cardio kickboxing program.  I finished the test pretty quickly, but in typical style, procrastinated on the video for several months.  Eventually, the perfect opportunity arose for me to shoot the video, so I jumped on it.  I had help from 4 of my incredible students (Erika, Amber, Carey and Kathy) to be my "class", and had another friend (Ashley, who is pursuing this same cert as well) actually run the camera as I "taught".  After a couple of hours, things went off without a hitch, and I was able to compile almost an hour of footage to send in to be evaluated.  The materials said to expect 4 weeks before I hear if I pass or failed, and for 4 weeks, I went to the mailbox every day like a high school senior waiting to see if he got into the college of his choice.  And today, almost 4 weeks to the day, my envelope arrived, and I passed. 

I'm lucky to have friends who were willing to help me out with things like this, as I could not have completed this certification without their help.  A heartfelt THANK YOU to all of them, and I'll see you in class again soon!

Spring Cleaning

The last couple of weekends, we've been doing some serious spring cleaning around our house.  I used to be a hoarder (and my son apparently has inherited that trait from me BIG TIME), but I've gotten much better at going through piles of clutter and realizing that some of it really is meaningless and just taking up space.  Today, I went through several boxes in our crawlspace that had all kinds of goodies in them from my youth.  Here is some of what I found:

- All of my old swimming trophies and medals.


- Newspaper clippings from my childhood days as a swimmer and baseball player (I had a .432 average one of the years I played and won my team's golden glove award one year).

- Pages and pages of "progress sheets" from all of my swimming events over about 9 years from elementary school through high school.  I kept some of the ones from state championships and nationals.

- Swim meet heat sheets.  Dozens of them.  Found a whole lot of names from the past I had forgotten about but used to compete against frequently.

- Award certificates.  Among them:  4 time Georgia swimming all star, Augusta Swim League team record holder in 50 free and 100 fly, high school letter in swimming, highest academic honors as a freshman in high school, high school foreign language award, and best of all....Mrs. Wix 3rd grade Green Dot Reading Program completion.  GREEN DOT baby!!

- An AWESOME collection of sea shells.  My grandparents used to own a beach house in Clearwater FL, and my dad and brother and I used to spend hours combing the beach for shells.  The beach was covered with mainly broken bits of them, so we eventually got to the point where we only kept the really cool ones.  My mom has a bunch of them at her house in GA, and I've got a box of really cool ones here now and have no idea how to go about displaying them.

- I found a body fat analysis I had done at a national swimming camp when I was 16.  I weighed 138 lbs, and my BF% was 7.3%.  Needless to say, I've added substantially to both of those numbers.


- My age group swimming sweat shirt.  In Illinois, many teams gave out patches for various achievements that we would have sewn onto our sweatshirts.  The best swimmer usually had the most patches.  Becca might fit into this sweatshirt now.

I always love going through my old stuff and remembering the old times and the people I shared them with.  I'm friends with many of them on Facebook now, and some I'd forgotten about for at least 30 years.  And seeing all of the swim meet papers made me realize again how fortunate I was to have parents who didn't mind driving (sometimes hours) and spending entire weekends sitting on hard bleacher seats on a hot pool deck in air that smelled like chlorine.  (Or if they did mind, they never let on that they did).  It was fun to see the notes and splits my dad had written on the heat sheets. 

The stuff that was just taking up space has been removed from these stashes, and I've got a couple of very manageable bins now with many of my childhood memories waiting to be cracked open again during the next big cleaning or when my kids get curious about stuff I did when I was their age.  I can relax easier now knowing that my life is a little less cluttered than it was at the beginning of the day.