Justin Spencer

20230413

TACTICAL BARBELL II: CONDITIONING by K. Black

It’s great having a 600lb squat and 400lb bench press. But, as an operational athlete, if you can’t run, work, or thrive for long periods of time in a multitude of energy demanding environments, you are ineffective. Your big bench press is useless, your big squat is useless.
General Endurance will primarily consist of aerobic development.
The truth is you will develop things like resiliency and everything else you need through all facets of your training, by simply showing up and doing the work.
Actively progress the systems you need to excel at, maintain the systems you don’t.
Maintain, rather than attempt to actively progress your lower priority fitness domains.
“Working out” can be generic, “training” cannot.
Conditioning is your ability to produce energy to meet the task at hand.
Conditioning is not just ‘cardio’. There’s interplay with strength, strength-endurance, power and other systems. The body is interconnected and complex, so there is a lot of overlap and debate as to what the boundaries actually are between things like ‘strength’ and ‘conditioning’.
The body’s general ‘fuel’ consists of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). The engines that put that fuel to use are the aerobic and anaerobic systems.
A well-developed aerobic system can provide energy for hours. It utilizes both sugar and fat in the process.
the aerobic system will provide most of the energy for almost any work or exercise you do.
The anaerobic system (which includes the lactic and alactic system) is capable of generating energy extremely fast, but can only sustain that energy for about 10 seconds (alactic system) or 60-90 seconds (lactic).
Don’t get wrapped up in what’s better or worse. Everything depends on your end goal.
Two very important skills; learn how to PRIORITIZE, and learn how to be EFFICIENT.
First, you have to know how to train each system in the most efficient manner possible. Efficiency becomes important, because as a multi-tasking athlete you can’t afford to lose training time or energy doing things in a less than ideal manner.
Choose fewer, but more effective tools.
The deeper and bigger you dig your well, the more raw material you have available to grow your other abilities.
Another rarely mentioned, but valuable side effect of endurance training is hardening the mind and increasing your threshold for tolerating pain. It helps develop will power and teaches you to keep going.
General strength and aerobic capacity are foundational fitness domains.
To state the obvious, endurance-type sessions improve the aerobic system.
A well-developed aerobic system can produce energy for hours.
Ultimately, to successfully work hard for a long period of time – you have to work hard for a long period of time.
Both grip and midsection are extremely important.
Constant, frequent, high intensity training will without a doubt eventually burn you out and sideline you if not approached intelligently.
One of the quickest routes to failure is over-eagerness, resulting in trying to go too hard or do too much at the start – which then results in injury or burn-out.
Many overestimate how consistent they are, and tend to miss more sessions then they think. Commit to less, but with ironclad consistency.
Every third week, (3, 6, 9) make your conditioning sessions easy.
Make no mistake, with regular training you will develop work capacity levels that make you appear superhuman, but you won’t get there without a steady, intelligent, consistent approach.
Don’t try and train everything at the same time.
Some tools are better for the job than others. Choose those that are most effective for the attribute you are training.
Advance yourself in fewer activities that do the same job. Make sure your desire for variety/novelty doesn’t get in the way of actual improvement.
Consistency is king. Progress takes time. Stay consistent, and keep plodding.
You will have bad days. Some sessions will be better than others.
You will not always enjoy training. You will hurt. Many of your training sessions will be less than perfect. This happens to all of us. Suck it up. You are slowly turning into a machine. This doesn’t happen overnight.
Focus on what’s important, not on products, gear, and marketing.
Focus on what’s important – doing the work.
Amateurs are all about tech, gear, ‘hacks’, and shortcuts.
Focus on continuously hammering away at the basics.
The important thing for you as a rank beginner is consistency and volume over time.
Your mantra should be ‘consistency first’. This will ultimately lead you to high conditioning levels, guaranteed.
But, there are two things I can’t recommend highly enough. Number one, find a hill. Number two, get a kettlebell or two.
Your first priority is to complete your session. That’s it. You don’t have to set records or look pretty doing it. You can take as long as you need to.
Prioritize consistency over volume and variation. Do a few things consistently, instead of trying to do more and constantly falling short.
Commit to less, and stick to it.
Tailor your exercise selection to your needs.
Slow yourself down if you have to. Work for time, not distance.
Trying to run after kettlebell swings is a real treat.
The more you can handle + recover from = the more you can do over time.
Nothing builds your legs, heart, lungs and willpower like hill sprints. Hills are to conditioning what barbells are to strength. Hills are a cyborg-factory.
I highly recommend you make hill sprints a staple in your continuation protocol.
A note on hill ‘distances’. Since hills vary in length and incline, and you’re limited by geography, it’s pointless assigning specific distances/sizes.
The Plank & Shank is a quick all-in-one core training session, and makes a good finisher. The ‘plank’ is self-explanatory, the ‘shank’ refers to a static back extension/hyperextension.
An important quality is how a candidate performs when he’s brought to his personal breaking point, or past it.
One tried, true, and very effective stressor, is sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is the great equalizer.
Running is easy to control, guaranteed effective, and requires no special equipment or circumstances.
The thing that separates successful trainees from the rest is easy - it’s not special gear, supplements, or the latest workout techniques or routines. It’s consistency.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. Physically put yourself at your training session.
Just show up and do it – and you will get results guaranteed.
Running is one of the most effective and quickest ways to force the physiological adaptations necessary for improved cardiovascular performance and conditioning.
If something’s working for you – don’t change it regardless of what I or anyone else tells you.
If you overdo the long steady state running, other attributes (strength, hormonal balance, muscle tissue) will suffer.

THE KAZDIN METHOD FOR PARENTING THE DEFIANT CHILD by Alan E. Kazdin

As long as you are committed to systematically taking this approach to changing the behavior of your child, even an imperfect and partial application of the method produces results.
When you commit to positively reinforcing the behavior you want, you can be kinder to your child while being more systematic.
Positive reinforcement tends to calm a household because it offers clear, attainable objectives for parents and children alike to aim for in shaping behavior.
Research must go hand in hand with dissemination if it’s going to help people.
But the research shows us that more intense punishment does not lead to greater change in behavior. If you are giving more and longer timeouts, it means your strategy is failing.
If you’re giving more and longer time-outs, this should tell you that you need to do more to positively reinforce good behaviors to replace the unwanted behaviors.
Kids are people, and people respond to the method of positive reinforcement this book teaches; it works.
Heed the natural urge to hug your kid, and heed it often: it’s one of the best things you can do as a parent.
But when it comes to shaping and changing a child’s behavior, what comes most easily and naturally to parents is often the opposite of what works best.
We concentrate so intensely on the behavior we want to eliminate that we forget to praise and reinforce the behavior we do want.
Myth 1. Punishment will change bad behavior.
Punishment can have its uses, as we’ll discuss in later chapters, but study after study has proven that punishment all by itself, as it is usually practiced in the home, is relatively ineffective in changing behavior.
Why? Because it does not teach a child what to do, nor does it reward the desired behavior—which is the only effective way to get the child to do it.
Your child’s resistance to punishment escalates as fast as the severity of the punishment does, or even faster.
punishing changes parents’ behavior for the worse more effectively than it changes children’s behavior for the better.
Modeling is a very strong way to teach behavior, stronger than punishment, which helps explain why the harm you do with harsh punishments can multiply and last a long time.
Myth 2. More reminders lead to better behavior.
In fact, studies show clearly that saying it fifty times is usually less effective than saying it once or twice.
Nagging makes the desired behavior less likely to occur.
The sequence is clear: antecedent (please clean your room) leads to behavior (cleaning the room) leads to consequence (reward for cleaning the room).
It’s easy to remember: ABC. A for antecedent B for behavior C for consequence
Requests or instructions lose their effect if they don’t lead directly to the rest of the sequence.
Myth 3. Explaining to your child why a behavior is wrong will lead him or her to stop that behavior.
Explanation is wonderful for building IQ, for developing a child’s powers of rational reasoning, and for teaching the difference between right and wrong.
The most effective way to teach a general principle like “It’s not right to take from others” is not just to preach it in the abstract but also to reinforce your child’s good behavior in specific situations in which he chooses not to take from others.
verbal instructions have proven to be one of the weakest interventions in changing behavior.
An antecedent without consequences doesn’t do much to change behavior.
Myth 4. Lots of praise just spoils your child.
Praise is one of the strongest ways to influence your child’s actions.
Most parents do not, in fact, praise their children’s behavior too much, even if they think they do.
A lot of very good research tells us that praise, properly used, is one of your most reliable tools in changing your child’s behavior.
Myth 5. Doing it once or twice means your child can do it regularly.
The term for this kind of purposeful repetition of behavior and reward is “positive reinforcement.” Nothing is more crucial to helping a child master a behavior and perform it reliably over time.
Myth 6. My other child did not need special training or a program, so this child shouldn’t need them, either.
Your different children may well require different kinds of training, as do we all.
Myth 7. My child is just being manipulative.
Calling a child manipulative often substitutes for recognizing that we may have reinforced the wrong behaviors in that child.
Adults shape the behavior of children in their responses to it.
The training of children is never over. It’s never too late.
Instead of thinking of your child’s behavior in terms of what you don’t want—He has too many tantrums or It drives me crazy when she doesn’t listen—start thinking in terms of the behavior you do want.
It’s much easier to build up a behavior you want by positively rewarding it than it is to wipe out a behavior you don’t want via punishment or other negative means.
When you get rid of a behavior by rewarding its opposite, the effects are stronger, last longer, and do not have the undesirable side effects of punishment.
When you consistently connect a behavior to rewards, that’s “positive reinforcement,” one of your most basic and powerful tools.
Positive reinforcement should be as consistent and as immediate as possible, directly following the desired behavior and clearly connected to it.
Reinforced” means that when the child performs the behavior, you notice and reward it with positive reinforcement.
“Practice” means that the child has many repeated opportunities to do the behavior right and to be rewarded for it.
You shape a complex behavior by breaking it up into doable steps and then reinforcing each step until you build up to the bigger accomplishment.
You extinguish a behavior when you don’t give your attention to it, like removing oxygen and fuel from a fire.
A for antecedent—everything that comes before a behavior, including the way you model behavior for your child, the instructions you give, the prompts you offer to guide your child, and the context that sets up the behavior.
B for behavior—when you identify positive opposites, when you shape a behavior by breaking it down into doable steps, when you give your child repeated opportunities to do something right, you’re working on the behavior itself.
C for consequences—what comes after the behavior, such as praise, attention, and other forms of reinforcement.
Start by changing behavior, not by trying to get to the root causes of your child’s misbehavior.
Studies show that reinforced practice, over time, actually changes the brain.
Step 1: Starting a Point Chart
The chart is just a way to track and prompt the process of doing the behavior and earning praise and other rewards. That process—reinforced practice in action—is what makes the program work.
It’s much more important to do the program well than to do it all the time.
The where matters, too. Where you place the chart can make a difference. Put it somewhere conspicuous, where everyone can see it, and see it often.
It’s important for your child to see it often as well. It will motivate him or her to earn more rewards.
Step 2: Buying Rewards
Once you’ve set up the chart, you need to select some fun, appropriate rewards and set the terms for “buying” them with the points your child earns on the chart.
First, do not take away. We absolutely do not want to take away anything Davey is “getting” now.
Taking away an existing privilege would cause Davey to resent the program.
We want to add new rewards, although it’s also fine to add more of a reward the child already receives.
Begin with the small rewards.
Candy and snacks can be used, but I recommend staying away from these.
Price the rewards so that they are readily attainable.
Timing matters. There must be little or no time delay between behavior and awarding points.
The link between behavior and consequence has to be as short and as direct as possible. If it’s not, the program will probably fail, no matter how carefully you address every other aspect of it.
A common problem with larger rewards requiring many points is that their delivery isn’t immediate.
When developing behavior, especially early in the program, the emphasis should be on small rewards that can be earned daily.
We want points and praise that are immediate, and we want rewards to be readily available.
Step 3: Explaining the Program
Experiencing the consistent connection between behavior and positive consequences, and experiencing it often, will establish the relationship in his actions, and that’s what counts.
Step 4: Practice
Remember, your practice routine won’t last forever—just a week or two, at most.
Step 5: The Routine
There are two kinds of antecedents that matter. One kind is called “prompts”—specific statements or actions aimed at getting a particular behavior to happen.
But there’s another category of antecedents which is not specifically focused on the behavior but also comes before and helps set the stage for it, arranging the situation so it is conducive to the behavior and therefore makes it more likely to happen. These are called “setting-up events,” and they include things like establishing quiet time before getting to bed, or the routine of washing hands and setting the table before sitting down to a meal.
The goal this first week is to start the program, not to perfect it.
Don’t give him chance after chance, warning after warning.
Attention from you is weaker than effective praise, but it is strong enough to keep a bad behavior going.
Be sure to praise all that you saw that was good and was an improvement over past behavior.
Praise what you saw that was good, praise the little steps along the way to the desired behavior, and praise whenever you give points. Remember that praise for the behaviors, all by itself, is pivotal, even if points are not earned.
Success will require changes not only in your child’s behavior but, in all likelihood, also in your interactions with him or her.
Praise is all-important.
Praise is more important than points or anything else.
Effective praise should include three components: Enthusiastic verbal praise (with feeling, joy, and excitement: Great! Fantastic!) A very specific statement of exactly what your child did that you liked A gentle touch, like a pat on the shoulder or head, a hug, a high five, a smile, a thumbs-up or okay sign, to add a tangible nonverbal reward to the verbal praise
or with only a little resistance, praise him. Give “clear and clean” praise. “Clear” means that you say exactly what he did that was good and you liked; be very specific. “Clean” means that you don’t caboose—you don’t add anything negative or judgmental to your praise at the end.
Remember that adding other information to the praise dilutes the reinforcing effect of the praise.
Always praise steps along the way to the good behavior.
Think cheerleader-level enthusiasm—that’s what works best.
When you praise, concentrate on the behavior, not the person.
Make noncompliance a nonevent.
Try to ignore your child if he does not comply with your request.
Begin with “please.”
When you ask your child to engage in the behaviors you want, begin with the word “please.”
Please is a setting-up event that makes it more likely your child will comply, because it’s noncoercive and implies that she has a choice.
The tone ought to be warm and gentle.
A good rule of thumb is to anticipate compliance. Then you won’t feel anxious, and your voice will communicate that you do not expect to be in conflict.
Don’t ask a question when you are instructing your child to do something.
Be absolutely clear, explicit, and direct:
An important part of the program is knowing and specifying exactly what you do want your child to do (the positive opposite of the behavior you don’t want).
The challenge of our program is to catch your child doing the behavior you want and to reward that behavior—with praise, above all.
And if you can’t catch it often enough because the behavior doesn’t occur often enough on its own, then you practice it.
In framing a positive opposite, let’s try to use positive terms: what to do, rather than what not to do.
Unpraised behavior is likely to drop out, so it’s critical to praise little steps, good tries, and almost-behaviors, even if they’re not enough to earn a point. Don’t be stingy about this.
One more important note on rewards: fight the natural urge to be stingy with points.
Remember, we’re shaping behavior here, and you should be looking for excuses to reward positive steps toward the desired outcome.
Remember that the program is intended to be temporary, a dynamic process that you taper off until the behavior is a habit and you don’t need the structure of prompts and rewards around it.
The main thing is to look for and praise any progress toward the behavior you want; look for any kind of success, and reward any steps along the way.
Too often, parents begin with standards for behavior that are too stringent and unrealistic:
Our basic rule of thumb, remember, is that we begin where he is—not with what we think he can do, but with what he does now.
There’s no more effective way for a child to assert his independence than to shock you by expressing views contrary to yours on the subject of education and career.
Even as you allow for the natural increase in risky behaviors, you have to decide what’s nonnegotiable and then be reliably consistent about enforcing the rules.
Look for chances, also, to build or continue building your child’s competence—whether it’s in sports, music, cooking, or anything else.
Pay attention, as a parent, to the difference between consistency and rigidity in your rules and actions. You want to be consistent, but you may have to compromise more.
Paradoxically, your control and continuing influence will derive from your reasonableness and ability to compromise, so do not mistake these for weakness on your part.
Walk away from battles and return at calmer times for negotiation.
A guiding rule: Praise reasonableness whenever you encounter it.
Praise without caboosing is still important, but tone down the gushing effusiveness you employed for praising younger children.
Monitoring is crucial; the research shows clearly that less monitoring and supervision are associated with more risky behavior on the child’s part.
Once an attitude is expressed as behavior, we can begin to change it.
The next step is to set up a point system to reward the right behaviors.
Reward the steps—which is what shaping is—and work toward the whole behavior:
The basic principle here is to get the desired behavior any way you can, then ingrain it and refine it through reinforced practice.
Praise, adjusted to the age group, is still the most important reward, and points and the goodies for which they’re cashed in are still secondary to praise.
When in doubt, aim to get control over a smaller time period and extend it later.
research shows that it’s relatively easier to extend a desired behavior to other situations once you achieve control in one situation.
Having a messy room is an identifiable stage that tends to appear in adolescence and then go away.
We’re always aiming to reinforce reasonableness and engagement with the family, and we’re also trying to meet a child’s evolving needs, which grow more complex over time.
And, as I’ve said before, resist the urge to be stingy with points. The larger purpose of points and praise and the whole program is to reinforce good habits. Look for opportunities to do that, rather than for reasons not to award points.
Parents should look for ways to give up control, and kids should look for ways to address their parents’ concerns.
In general, when dealing with a preteen or teenager, you want to express interest in good behavior, attend to and reinforce reasonableness whenever he displays it, and give him autonomy and freedom in the safest possible way.
Take opportunities to include the child in the family and to include yourself in your child’s world.
Kids tend to mope a little and then act as if nothing ever happened, but parents tend to dwell on a conflict, replay it, and revisit their hurt feelings and anger.
Parents usually believe that everything would be okay if they could somehow make their child see things from their point of view, but it’s a fantasy. Almost by definition, an adolescent can’t see a situation from her parents’ point of view, and vice versa: parents who think that they remember just what it was like to be an adolescent are fooling themselves.
Rely on reinforced practice—not explanation—as the strongest method for changing behavior.
Punishment is the only tool in many parents’ toolbox—and they reach for their toolbox only when they see their child’s behavior as in need of repair.
Changing this mindset is one of our most important tasks.
Punishment teaches what not to do. It does not teach what to do. Punishment suppresses the unwanted behavior for a moment, but the behavior resurfaces when the opportunity comes up again, since no positive behavior has been developed to replace it.
research shows clearly that a one-minute time-out is sufficient for changing behavior and that we gain nothing but problems with much longer durations,
Using physical power, shouting, and other forceful expressions of authority may oblige a child to comply, but only until the child can be away from the parent’s immediate control.
the effect of punishment is immediate but transient.
Parents feel that punishment is effective, when at best all it’s doing is briefly deferring the child’s bad behavior.
Punishment ought to happen right away every time the unwanted behavior occurs, but the opposite is more often the case. The rewards for misbehavior are immediate, positively reinforcing that misbehavior, and the punishment is more delayed and therefore ineffective.
One must eliminate the immediate reinforcer for the punished behavior, if possible, and that’s hard to do.
Children tend to avoid interacting with a punishing agent—parents, teachers, whoever it might be—and to minimize the time they are obliged to spend with him or her. This is not good for your relationship to your child, especially if you depend heavily on punishment, and it will undermine even a well-designed program for changing behavior.
By driving a wedge between parent and child, harsh and frequent punishment will reduce the effectiveness of that parent’s praise as a reward for good behavior.
Physical punishment is likely to lead a child to display increased aggression against you or, more likely, his peers.
Because punishment teaches a child what not to do but doesn’t teach what to do, any punishment should be combined with a reinforcement program that encourages a positive opposite or otherwise desirable behavior that competes with the unwanted behavior.
The research shows that a mild punishment will be more effective than a severe one if the mild one is supported by positive reinforcement of a desirable behavior to replace the unwanted one.
Punishment should be mild and brief.
Parents’ standards tend to be much harsher than science’s when it comes to what qualifies as mild punishment.
A brief time-out, a gentle reprimand, or even just a warning look qualifies, technically, as punishment. And often that’s all it takes, if properly employed.
As a general rule, if your child is upset, crying, trembling, or startled by your punishment, it was not even close to mild. Take it down several notches.
An effective time-out for a younger child should last no more than two to five minutes. More is not better, at least when it comes to the usefulness of the time-out in changing behavior.
If you are taking away a privilege—use of a toy, a bike, a cell phone—then take it away for one day and no more.
The important part is taking away the privilege right after the offense, not how long it stays taken away.
Effective punishment will almost always be much milder than justice would seem to demand. It almost never matches the crime.
Remember, the useful effect of punishment comes from the moment of taking away, not from adding more time after this initial moment.
Do not punish when you are angry.
Keep in mind that punishment is not vengeance.
Being rational and calm models good behavior for your child. In fact, it teaches a lesson about behavior far more effectively than the punishment does.
The way in which you respond to difficulty teaches your child how to respond to difficulty.
If you have to teach a lesson, stick to the specifics: what your child did wrong, why it isn’t right. Reasoning with a child in the abstract—What if everybody did what you did?—isn’t going to do much good either.
Do not use as a punishment task any activity that you wish to foster.
The ratio of praise for the positive opposite behavior to punishment for the unwanted behavior should be very one-sided, like 5 to 1
Manufacture practice opportunities for the desired behavior to occur so that you can reward it.
Because reinforced practice is the key to changing behavior, creating more opportunities to do the behavior makes a big difference.
If you are punishing the same behavior a few times a day for more than one day, stop and change the program.
In a time-out, a child is withdrawn from reinforcers for a while, and that’s it.
If you use time-out to encourage remorseful contemplation of crimes, or to give a child a break from an activity, or to distract him, you will almost certainly use it improperly.
A time-out should be brief—certainly no more than ten minutes. Often, just a minute or two will do the trick, especially for very young children. It should happen immediately after the behavior that made it necessary. If you can, do it on the spot.
The time-out needs to be directly connected to the behavior that necessitated it.
Remember to praise compliance with the time-out: praise for going when asked, praise for sitting quietly, praise for completing the time-out properly.
Do not threaten your child with a time-out: If you keep doing that you will get a time-out, This is your last chance, and so on. One warning is plenty.
If you declare a time-out and your child folds his arms and says, No, I’m not going, and you can’t drag him, what do you do? First, give him an extra minute penalty. You can do this twice: up the time-out from two minutes to three, then to four. Then, if that doesn’t work, take away a privilege—something significant but brief, like no TV today. Then turn and walk away.
Finally, I’ll say it one more time: research shows that the effectiveness of time-out depends on the effectiveness of time in—developing the positive opposite of the behavior that causes the time-out to happen in the first place.
If the child goes to time-out either right away or when an additional minute has been added, you praise him for going to time-out.
To make time-out work better with young children, we practice it in simulations.
Often, the hardest part of changing behavior is getting the new behavior going at all so that you can reward it (or steps toward it) when you see it. That’s especially true when there is a sequence of actions that have to be done in order to achieve the desired outcome.
Many of your child’s behaviors can be broken into steps and considered as similar sequences.
The conventional parental wisdom, supported by bad advice from experts, is that it’s important to win every battle in order to win the war. But that’s not true.
Be sure you can observe the behavior you want stopped, or can see clear signs that the behavior has occurred.
Our research shows that when a child’s behavior improves, the parents’ levels of depression, anxiety, and stress go down, and families get along better.
Remember, we want to establish consistency in behavior-reward connections.
Here’s a rough rule of thumb to go by: if you say it twice (the initial instruction plus one reminder), that’s reminding; if you say it three or more times, you’re nagging, and nagging can undermine the program.
Repeated reminders will not help the behavior to occur, and because each command that doesn’t lead to the desired behavior weakens the link between the antecedent (your prompt) and behavior and consequence, they can actually hurt by diminishing the power of your words to get behavior to happen.
Prompted behavior must be reinforced with praise, and sometimes with other rewards as well.
The most frequent culprit leading to program failure is a parent expecting too much of a desired behavior—for example, the child must do all of her homework, clean up all of her room, or behave well all day.
Provide reinforcement for smaller steps along the way to the goal. Never demand perfection in performance.
Occurrence of the behavior is directly proportional to the percentage of times you reinforce the behavior.
The most important way to make changes endure is to do the program well in the first place.
When you’re developing the behavior, it’s important to reinforce all or almost all instances of the behavior that you see. As the behavior develops, give the reinforcer for larger chunks of the behavior, so that there’s less direct connection between performing the behavior and getting the reward.
Don’t insist on perfection, but you can build in a bonus for perfection.
Distraction has its place and can be useful, but it does not teach the desirable behavior.
In the case of predictable meltdowns, distraction is not likely to work. We have to teach new behaviors, and distraction techniques will never do that.
More-stressed parents are less able to praise and more readily prone to punish and react negatively.
Lowering chaos and related stress won’t solve your children’s behavior problems all by itself, but it will make you more effective in carrying out a program that will change their behavior, and it may give your children a stronger base upon which to build their relationship to you and their own sense of security and confidence.
All households with children in them can feel chaotic at times.
The research emphasizes instituting some select routines rather than trying to rigidly structure every facet of family life.
Routines bring with them other positive attributes. For instance, they give individuals a special role.
Routines can also provide a structure for specific behaviors.
Children whose families have invested in good routines are more likely to approach their parents and seek them out in times of crisis or before a crisis arises.
Technically, a “reward” is defined as something the child will like and value. A “reinforcer” is defined as a consequence that when given contingently (that means the child gets it if and only if he does the desired behavior) increases the likelihood of the child doing the behavior again in the future. There’s a large area of overlap between rewards and reinforcers, but not all rewards are reinforcers and not all reinforcers are rewards.
Be skeptical about nutritional solutions to social, emotional, and behavioral problems.
Instruct calmly.
Simply modeling calmness when you talk about provocative issues will have the important effect of teaching your child how to handle difficult situations.
You’re always teaching your child, even when you’re not trying to.
Listen to your child.
Solve problems together.
Be generous with warm fuzzies.
Physical contact is crucial for your child’s development, responsiveness to stress, learning, and more.
Build competencies—more than one of them—at different points in childhood.
Encourage social interaction, often under your supervision.
resist the urge to referee when your child plays with other kids.
Always know where your child is.
Plan down time.
Put value on quantity time.
Quality time is nice, but it’s never a substitute for quantity time.
One appealing thing about quantity time is that you don’t have to do anything special or have a scheduled activity: just arrange to be around together, to be available to each other and interact normally.
Develop rituals and routines with your child.
Connect the child to other family members, including those of different generations.
Take care of yourself.
Invest a little of your energy in yourself; it will pay off for your family.

TACTICAL BARBELL: DEFINITIVE STRENGTH TRAINING FOR THE OPERATIONAL ATHLETE by K. Black

Tactical athletes have to become experts at everything, which can be a juggling act.
I always saw military PT as being more about developing the will to keep going versus training or improving actual physical skills.
As my maximal-strength went up, everything became easier.
Strength is ‘practiced’.
Results speak.
Tactical Barbell fully buys into the notion that ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’.
As a tactical athlete you have to master multiple fitness domains.
Maximal-strength is a foundational physical attribute for the tactical athlete.
The most efficient way to increase maximal-strength is through the use of barbells, due to the ease of incremental loading and the amount of weight that can be safely handled.
TB is a barbell strength program designed specifically for tactical athletes using correct principles and best practices to increase maximal-strength while taking into account the need to simultaneously train other fitness attributes.
Every weight you lift will be based on your own personal one repetition maximums.
‘Action is the foundational key to all success.’
Err on the side of the least amount of time you’ll consistently stick to.
All you have to do is execute. Simple, but not always easy.
Aim for being consistent
Motivation tends to grow after success strangely enough.
Consistency is the secret formula, the magic bullet.
Your only job is to go to the gym on the designated days. It’s inconsequential whether you have a good session or a bad one.
Operational athletes place an equal value on strength and conditioning.
Operational athletes strive to be superior in multiple fitness domains, not elite in one.
Being superior in multiple fitness domains is elite.
As long as your strength is increasing over time in the big picture, fluctuations up or down in the present mean nothing.
We’ve found over the years, that things like aesthetics, fat loss and all the rest take care of themselves if you focus on improving your performance.
Powerlifters lift far heavier weights than bodybuilders, yet they don’t resemble bodybuilders and can sometimes be much smaller.
Training for size and strength are different animals.
As one TB reader puts it, you want to be Wolverine, not the Hulk.
Strength training, powerlifting and bodybuilding are not the same.
Attributes or fitness domains are things like maximal-strength, speed, strength-endurance or aerobic capacity. Tools are things like bench press, sandbags, kettlebells, hills, and your bodyweight.
Think in terms of training an attribute. Then choose the best tool to train that particular attribute.
Periodization is just a fancy way of describing planned training progression. Because going 100% all the time simply does not work in the long run. There are many styles of periodization.
Strength is like a skill and should be trained like a skill.
When you attempt to train at your maximum all the time you’re going to burn out and get injured.
You can’t go 100% forever and keep making progress.
Don’t mistake frantic activity for progress.
AVOID MUSCLE FAILURE. Muscle failure is primarily helpful for muscular hypertrophy, not strength.
THOU SHALT REST A MINIMUM OF TWO MINUTES BETWEEN SETS
A general rule of thumb is the longer the rest interval, the more strength without the mass.
Goes without saying food and conditioning load are key ingredients in putting on mass as well.
Short rest intervals have merit for increasing hypertrophy and strength-endurance. But they’re an obstacle when it comes to developing max-strength.
A “cluster” is simply a group of exer-cises.
Always keep in mind we’re training for performance, not to get good at a particular exercise.
Focus on getting extremely strong in a small handful of balanced compound lifts.
We’re not focussed on variety for variety’s sake, we want results.
For the maximum strength game, if you keep changing things up, you will slow down your progress.
Keep the strength training relatively consistent.
A minimalist cluster is 2-3 exercises. Great for athletes or tactical types that are heavily involved in other forms of training or sports which place great demands on their energy systems.
A standard cluster is 3-4 exercises. Usually 3 lifts only, or three lifts plus 1 bodyweight exercise.
Standard clusters tend to produce the best strength and body composition results and are easily balanced with a heavy conditioning protocol.
Operator is the standard issue TB template for operational athletes. It is the backbone of the program. Three days a week.
To get the most out of this program, I strongly suggest you do no extra heavy barbell training on non-strength days. Stick to conditioning or sport specific training.
Operator template is the standard Tactical Barbell strength model. It was the original. Designed for tactical types looking for an ultra-efficient way to gain extreme levels of strength, while doing heavy conditioning work on the side.
Going too light is a waste of time.
These are the principles behind Operator template. All of them have to be in place for success: Training must be frequent (3 x week) Loads have to be heavy enough to trigger maximal-strength adaptation. There has to be sufficient recovery between training sessions.
Ultimately after you remove all the noise, effective strength training revolves around balancing these three things; frequency, intensity (load), and recovery.
If you can practice heavy (enough) lifting on a frequent basis while stopping short of overtraining – you’re golden.
Ask yourself why you’re doing accessory work. What are you truly gaining from it?
That’s the beauty of compound lifts – they tend to strengthen and activate more of your body.
Use a little common sense when choosing your cluster and ensure it’s balanced.
Balance can be obtained through activities outside of your max-strength protocol.
It’s a minimalist ultra-efficient approach that increases overall strength rapidly.
For a minimalist approach like Operator, I generally favor substantial compound lifts like the back squat and bench press for the average trainee.
So if you’re slinging around more weight in general every session, chances are you’ll get stronger faster. More efficiently.
*stick to bodyweight pull-ups until you can do at least 10
Consider Trapbar or Romanian deadlifts as an alternative.
Take one OR two days off in between your strength sessions as needed.
Higher volume contributes to mass gain. If you want to put on a little more beef go with 4 to 5 sets each session instead of 3.
Doing weighted pull-ups progressively and consistently will take your game to the next level. Try it. Bodyweight pull-ups should be substituted until you can hit 10 strict reps.
With bodyweight-only exercises we focus on increasing repetitions vs increasing load.
Strength-Endurance (SE) is the ability to produce resistance or generate force over an extended period of time.
SE is trained using very light loads (20%-40%RM/ bodyweight etc.) and high repetitions.
Time, and controlling it, is everything when it comes to SE.
Choosing exercises for SE should never ever be a problem – because you can always rely on good old bodyweight if you must.
Hormones have a huge impact on your training and body composition. Testosterone contributes to muscle gain, fat loss, libido, mood, and it antagonizes cortisol.
One of the best ways to support healthy hormone levels, is to ensure you get enough fat and cholesterol in your diet.
That being said, ultimately your training and diet should be geared to whatever helps your particular end goal.
Focus on training consistently and improving your performance. Everything else will fall into place as long as you adhere to intelligent eating guidelines and exercise some common sense.
I’ve noticed that the BIGGEST mistake the general trainee makes when trying to improve performance is LACK of food.
When it comes to protein, I am a believer in the idea that you need roughly one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight daily. I’ve found my best improvements in body composition, energy, recovery and strength when I adhere to this guideline.
Ultimately I believe consistency trumps any special supplement or diet.
My general rule of thumb is that mega-dosing anything is never a good idea no matter what the current science says.
Kettlebells are top of the line training tools when used correctly.
Long steady state cardio develops a base level of endurance that assists even during your short high intensity conditioning sessions.
Train and prepare for what you’re facing accordingly.
Most importantly the best program for you is one that gives you RESULTS.
There is no one ‘Holy Grail’ of training programs for everyone.
Pick any legitimate proven program and stick with it for a substantial amount of time before coming to any conclusions.
I set out to write the book I would’ve wanted 20 years ago when I was getting into the tactical world. If I could sum it up in one sentence it would be ‘a simple strength system for extreme results’. No frills, no unnecessary complexity, pared down, and brutally effective.
There are two principles in this book which are responsible for 90% of the results you will see with this program. The first is frequent heavy, sub- maximal lifting while avoiding muscle failure. The second supports the first, which is the longer, 2-minute minimum rest interval.
That tiny little bit of extra rest-interval translates into more work being successfully completed during a session, which compounds over time and turns into massive strength increases.
If your “cardio” mainly consists of sprinting, metcons, and HIIT, you’re doing it wrong. You’re missing out on developing the system that provides you with 90% of the energy you require for your daily activities.

20220912

A MANUAL FOR CREATING ATHEISTS by Peter Boghossian, Michael Shermer

we skeptics like to say, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Barking mad!
when you are in the religious bubble everything makes sense and there is no such thing as chance, randomness, and contingencies.
I call this activist approach to helping people overcome their faith, “Street Epistemology.”
Let’s be blunt, direct, and honest with ourselves and with others.
Socrates … said that wisdom is the key to happiness. Socrates was a skeptic about happiness, because we do not possess wisdom—no one he knows has wisdom.
When pressed, the faithful will offer vague definitions that are merely transparent attempts to evade criticism, or simplistic definitions that intentionally muddy the meaning of “faith.”
A deepity is a statement that looks profound but is not. Deepities appear true at one level, but on all other levels are meaningless.
Malleable definitions allow faith to slip away from critique.
The words we use are important. They can help us see clearly, or they can confuse, cloud, or obscure issues.
If one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe the claim on the basis of faith. “Faith” is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes anyway.
“Believing something anyway” is an accurate definition of the term “faith.”
Not everything that’s a case of pretending to know things you don’t know is a case of faith, but cases of faith are instances of pretending to know something you don’t know.
As a Street Epistemologist, whenever you hear the word “faith,” just translate this in your head as, “pretending to know things you don’t know.”
Faith and hope are not synonyms.
Give me a sentence where one must use the word “faith,” and cannot replace that with “hope,” yet at the same time isn’t an example of pretending to know something one doesn’t know.
A difference between an atheist and a person of faith is that an atheist is willing to revise their belief (if provided sufficient evidence); the faithful permit no such revision.
The problem with agnosticism is that in the last 2,400 years of intellectual history, not a single argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one.
“Agnostic” and “agnosticism” are unnecessary terms.
Faith Claims Are Knowledge Claims
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that focuses on how we come to knowledge, what knowledge is, and what processes of knowing the world are reliable.
A knowledge claim is an assertion of truth.
Faith is an epistemology.12 It’s a method and a process people use to understand reality. Faith-based conclusions are knowledge claims.
Those who make faith claims are professing to know something about the external world.
Much of the confusion about faith-based claims comes from mistaking objective claims with subjective claims.
Think of subjective claims as matters of taste or opinion.
Faith claims are knowledge claims. Faith claims are statements of fact about the world.
Faith Is an Unreliable Epistemology
If a belief is based on insufficient evidence, then any further conclusions drawn from the belief will at best be of questionable value.
The only way to figure out which claims about the world are likely true, and which are likely false, is through reason and evidence. There is no other way.
“No amount of belief makes something a fact.”
Believing things on the basis of something other than evidence and reason causes people to misconstrue what’s good for them and what’s good for their communities.
The emotional satisfaction of religious belief vitally depends upon the beliefs being taken literally; the epistemic defense of such beliefs crucially depends on taking them nonliterally.
Faith is an epistemology because it is used as an epistemology.
Absent any desire to know one is either certain or indifferent.
Socrates said that a man doesn’t want what he doesn’t think he lacks.
Certainty is an enemy of truth: examination and reexamination are allies of truth.
Wonder, curiosity, honest self-reflection, sincerity, and the desire to know are a solid basis for a life worth living.
The sense of moving your intellectual life forward and feeding the hunger to know are a vital part of the human experience.
As a Street Epistemologist, one of your primary goals is to help people reclaim the desire to know—a sense of wonder.
‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.’
people can and do change their mind in response to reasonable argument.
Reasoning away faith means helping people to abandon a faulty epistemology, but reasoning away religion means that people abandon their social support network.
There are five reasons why otherwise reasonable people embrace absurd propositions: (1) they have a history of not formulating their beliefs on the basis of evidence; (2) they formulate their beliefs on what they thought was reliable evidence but wasn’t (e.g., the perception of the testament of the Holy Spirit); (3) they have never been exposed to competing epistemologies and beliefs; (4) they yield to social pressures; and (5) they devalue truth or are relativists.
Belief revision means changing one’s mind about whether a belief is true or false.
A “filter bubble” describes the phenomena of online portals—like Google and Facebook—predicting and delivering customized information users want based upon algorithms that take preexisting data into account (e.g., previous searches, type of computer one owns, and geographical location).
Doxastic openness, as I use the term, is a willingness and ability to revise beliefs.6 Doxastic openness occurs the moment one becomes aware of one’s ignorance; it is the instant one realizes one’s beliefs may not be true. Doxastic openness is the beginning of genuine humility
A pathogenic belief is a belief that directly or indirectly leads to emotional, psychological, or physical pathology; in other words, holding a pathogenic belief is self-sabotaging and leads one away from human well-being.
Once you expose a belief or an epistemology as fraudulent, you’re likely to hear statements of greater confidence.
Having a reliable epistemology doesn’t guarantee that one will act accordingly.
Most people are afraid of feeling anxiety, and they’ll do anything they can to distract themselves from it.
When people aren’t reasoned into their faith, it is difficult to reason them out of their faith.
Many people of faith come to their beliefs independent of reason. In order to reason them out of their faith they’ll have to be taught how to reason first, and then instructed in the application of this new tool to their epistemic condition.
Interventions are not about winning or losing, they’re about helping people see through a delusion and reclaim a sense of wonder.
Few things are more dangerous than people who think they’re in possession of absolute truth.
If someone knows something you don’t know, acknowledge that you don’t know.
People dig themselves into cognitive sinkholes by habituating themselves to not formulate beliefs on the basis of evidence. Hence the beliefs most people hold are not tethered to reality.
do not bring particular pieces of evidence (facts, data points) into the discussion when attempting to disabuse people of specific faith propositions.
Remember: the core of the intervention is not changing beliefs, but changing the way people form beliefs—hence the term “epistemologist.
Nearly all of the faithful suffer from an acute form of confirmation bias: they start with a core belief first and work their way backward to specific beliefs.
Every religious apologist is epistemically debilitated by an extreme form of confirmation bias.
Faith holds up the entire structure of belief. Collapse faith and the entire edifice falls.
God is the conclusion that one arrives at as a result of a faulty reasoning process (and also social and cultural pressures). The faulty reasoning process— the problem—is faith.
Belief in God(s) is not the problem. Belief without evidence is the problem.
Early in the intervention, explicitly ask subjects to assign themselves a number on the Dawkins’ Scale. At the end of the intervention ask them to again assign themselves a number. By doing so you can test the effectiveness of your intervention.
A solid strategy for lowering your conversational partner’s self-placement on the Dawkins’ Scale, and one that I repeatedly advocate throughout this book, is to focus on epistemology and rarely, if ever, allow metaphysics into the discussion.
In other words, focus on undermining one’s confidence in how one claims to know what one knows (epistemology) as opposed to what one believes exists (metaphysics/God).
Do not move on to another claim until the subject concedes that the particular claim in question is not sufficient to warrant belief in God.
Again, it’s always advisable to target faith and avoid targeting God.
The belief that faith is a virtue and that one should have faith are primary impediments to disabusing people of their faith.
First, I’ll ask, “How could your belief [in X] be wrong?”14 I don’t make a statement about a subject’s beliefs being incorrect; instead, I ask the subject what conditions would have to be in place for her belief to be false.
Second, I’ll ask, “How would you differentiate your belief from a delusion?
Simply causing one to consider that their core beliefs could be delusions may help them recognize the delusions.
Model the behavior you want to emulate.
Avoid politics whenever possible.
Bringing up politics when conducting interventions sidetracks the discussion—which should be about faith.
Always be mindful that your relationship with the subject will make or break the treatment.
Trustfulness of reason and willingness to reconsider are two crucial posttreatment attitudes the faithful need in order to make a full recovery.
System 1 thinking (intuition) is instantaneous, automatic, subconscious, and often has some degree of emotional valence; System 1 thinking is the result of habits and resistance to change. System 2 thinking (reasoning) is much slower, more subject to change, more conscious, and requires more effort.
Many beliefs are formed on the basis of the System 1 fast-thinking phenomenon.
Arguing about what constitutes evidence and what are the criteria for evidence usually results in shifting the discussion into ever-receding tangents. Such shifts are common rhetorical tactics of apologists.
The process of genuinely opening oneself up to competing ideas is vital for one’s intellectual life, because it prevents doxastic closure.
Knowledge = Justified True Belief.
Knowledge is not a fuzzy thing that we can decide to have or not.
Meet people “where they are.”
if one thinks one has the truth, one stops looking.
“Often as a consequence of sustained Socratic dialogue, one realizes that one did not know something that one thought one knew.”
The Socratic method may sound complicated, but essentially it’s asking questions and getting answers.
The Socratic method has five stages: (1) wonder; (2) hypothesis; (3) elenchus, (4) accepting or revising the hypothesis; (5) acting accordingly
The Socratic method begins in wonder. Someone wonders something:
Simply put: from wonder a hypothesis emerges.
Hypotheses are speculative responses to questions posed in stage 1. They’re tentative answers to the object of wonder.
The elenchus, or question and answer, is the heart of the Socratic method. In the elenchus, which is essentially a logical refutation, Socrates uses counterexamples to challenge the hypothesis.
The purpose of the counterexample is to call the hypothesis into question and ultimately show that it’s false.
A hypothesis is never proven to be true. After a hypothesis survives repeated iterations in the elenchus, this only means that to date it has withstood a process of falsification.
A single counterexample can kill a hypothesis, yet even millions of confirming instances don’t change the status of the hypothesis. (There’s an asymmetry between confirmation and disconfirmation.)
The elenchus is a simple yet effective way to undermine a hypothesis by eliciting contradictions and inconsistencies in one’s reasoning, and thus engendering aporia.
It’s a good idea to ask someone to repeat or restate their claim.
“I don’t know” is a deceptively powerful statement.
A pregnant pause is a very useful, nonthreatening technique, typically used in sales, to get the result you want.
Humor is an incredibly effective and underused dialectical technique, probably underused because there are so many ways it can backfire.
I never allow people to steer these discussions from faith is true to faith is beneficial (comforting) unless they explicitly acknowledge that faith is not a reliable guide to reality.
The phrase “open yourself up” and the word “gift” are frequently used to indoctrinate people into faith systems. These terms may also be effective in nudging people toward embracing reason.
When administering Socratic treatments, make sure to offer as few hypotheses as possible.
(Asking people to “just pray about it” pushes them into a form of confirmation bias where the very act of prayer means they’ve already bought back into the system they just escaped.)
Socratic interventions are easy to administer, no-cost treatments that can engender doxastic openness and even separate faith from its host. The main way this happens is by helping expose contradictions and inconsistencies in subjects’ reasoning processes.
After an intervention, don’t leave the subject hanging. Be prepared to provide names, contact information, and resources that can help.
Always be prepared to furnish resources at the end of your intervention, and also have that information on hand just in case you run into a subject at a later time.
Forming new relationships is important because these interactions mitigate the risk of recidivating and falling back into faith communities.
Sam Harris observed that there are only three defenses offered in response to critiques of religion (Harris, 2007b): (1) Religion is true; (2) Religion is useful; (3) Atheism is somehow corrosive of society or other values.
The possibility that the universe always existed cannot be ruled out.
No faith is needed to posit that the universe may have always existed.
Anyone who says, “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist,” doesn’t understand what the word “atheist” means, or is simply insincere.
Science is the antithesis of faith. Science is a process that contains multiple and redundant checks, balances, and safeguards against human bias. Science has a built-in corrective mechanism—hypothesis testing— that weeds out false claims.
Science is a method of advancing our understanding. It is a process we can use to bring us closer to the truth and to weed out false claims. Science is the best way we’ve currently found to explain and understand how the universe works.
Equating an extraordinary claim with a mundane one, and then suggesting they “both require faith,” is disanalogous.
Conversations about whether or not faith is beneficial should only take place after your interlocutor explicitly states that faith is an unreliable path to truth. Once you ask people to acknowledge this, you’ll almost never enter into a conversation about the benefits of faith.
The more people who share a faulty process of reasoning the greater the magnification of potential harm.
“What people believe, and how they act, matter. They particularly matter in a democracy where people have a certain amount of influence over the lives of their fellow citizens.
A criticism of an idea is not the same as a criticism of a person.
Ideas don’t deserve dignity; people deserve dignity.
All faith is blind. All faith is belief on the basis of insufficient evidence.
The basic idea behind cultural relativism is that because everyone is always judging a culture from their own particular, situated cultural viewpoint, it’s therefore impossible to make reliable judgments about other cultures and cultural practices. This means that cultures and cultural practices cannot be judged.
The fundamental idea behind multiculturalism is that different cultures can and ought to peacefully coexist.
When one believes dignity is a property of ideas and not just a property of people, then criticizing an idea becomes akin to criticizing a person.
Tolerance only works when there’s reciprocity. That is, tolerance doesn’t handle intolerance very well.
Correcting students’ reasoning processes, and granting faith-based responses no countenance, needs to be the academic, cultural, and pedagogical norm across all academic disciplines.
Give faithbased justifications no countenance. Do not take faith claims seriously.
In order to reason well, one needs to be able to rule out competing or irrelevant alternatives. But one cannot do this if one believes that there’s no way to make an objective judgment about those alternatives.
Generally, praise is underused in advancing dialogue.
(For better or worse, putting the onus of action on someone usually ends the discourse, as most people won’t act beyond the initial contact.)
Curriculum Resource Center (http://www.skeptic.com/skepticism-101/): “A comprehensive, free repository of resources for teaching students how to think skeptically.
Historically, philosophy has focused on truth. Contemporary philosophy instead focuses on meaning.
Faith is an unclassified cognitive illness disguised as a moral virtue.
People infected with faith don’t think of it as a malady, but as a gift, even a blessing.
It matters how we talk about things. It matters what words we use.
If you’re fortunate enough to engage imams, mullahs, rabbis, pastors, ministers, clerics, swamis, gurus, chaplains, shamans, priests, witch doctors, or any other faith leaders, be blunt and direct when demanding evidence for their claims.
Atheism is skepticism applied to a specific extraordinary claim, and children should be taught to apply skepticism to claims in general—not just faith and extraordinary metaphysical claims.
act the way you want others—particularly your children—to act.

REBUILDING MILO by Aaron Horschig, Kevin Sonthana

To develop strength, you must strike a balance between stress and recovery.
To progressively develop more and more strength, the demands of your training must not exceed the adaptive capabilities of your body.
When you train hard and don’t give your body enough time to recover, the stresses of training begin to accumulate.
There is always a reason for pain. It doesn’t develop out of thin air.
When a radiologist sees a bulging disc on an MRI scan, they have no way to determine whether it is due to a recent event (a wound) or is 20 years old (a scar).
Your body is resilient to injury when the power generated at your spine remains low.
if you want to lift heavy weight (placing load on the spine), it is best not to move your spine and keep it within the neutral zone. Lock it in place and keep it stiff while you move at the hips.
Every spine has a breaking point, and the quickest way to find it is to load your spine with a ton of compression and perform rep after rep with poor technique.
If given time to adequately recover after being overloaded during a heavy training cycle, the body can adapt and replace a microfracture with stronger bone.
While your hip joint is meant to move under load, your spine is not.
Working every day to improve ankle mobility should be a priority if you wish to return to deep squatting pain-free!
Learning to stiffen your trunk anytime you move a load (picking up a box off the ground or squatting a barbell) needs to be your first priority.
Stiff hips affect the role of the joint complex directly above: the low back.
Poor mobility in either the thoracic spine or the shoulders often causes the low back to move excessively as compensation when the arms are raised overhead, such as when placing a box onto a high shelf, pressing a barbell, or performing a snatch.
Understanding how your injury presents will help you figure out what you need to do and what you need to avoid in the short term to decrease your symptoms.
Nearly all back pain can be controlled and altered by changing the way you move.
While exercises like Russian twists, sit-ups, and back extensions from a GHD machine may be great at increasing strength, they do little to increase core stiffness.
To enhance the quality of stiffness, you must train the core differently. This comes through the second approach of using isometric exercises built to enhance muscular endurance and coordination.
The definition of stability is the ability to limit excessive or unwanted motion.
One key to fixing injured backs is to use exercises that enhance stability but place minimal stress on the spine while the exercises are being performed.
This group of exercises has become known as “the Big Three”: • Curl-up • Side plank • Bird-dog
Before you begin core stability training, I recommend addressing mobility restrictions at the hip and/or thoracic spine.
After addressing mobility restrictions in those areas, Dr. McGill recommends that you perform the cat-camel before the Big Three to reduce low back stiffness and improve motion of the spine. Unlike other stretches for the low back that can place harmful stresses on the spine, this exercise emphasizes mobility in a spine-friendly manner.
Unlike training for pure strength or power, the endurance component of stability requires the body to perform many repetitions of an exercise to see improvements.
As this rep scheme becomes easier, increase the number of repetitions rather than the duration of the holds to build endurance without causing muscle cramping.
The McGill Big Three has been highly effective since I started using it with my patients who come in for low back physical therapy.
The side plank is a unique exercise because it activates the lateral oblique and QL muscles on only one side of the body, making it an excellent choice for addressing weak links in stability while placing minimal force on the spine.
Stretching the low back stimulates the stretch receptors deep inside the muscles, giving the perception of pain relief and the feeling of less stiffness.
Most of the muscle pain and stiffness you feel in your back is a consequence of a chemical reaction called inflammation that occurs from the real injury located deeper in the spine (disc bulge, facet irritation, etc.). 76 This underlying injury is what causes the secondary contraction or spasm of the surrounding muscles.
Stretching the low back only treats the symptoms and does not address the true cause of the pain.
No rehabilitation plan or corrective exercise program will truly fix your pain and restore your body in the long term if you are too stubborn to deviate from a training plan that is creating pain.
One of the most common reasons for developing back pain is an inability to use the hips properly.
As you work through each exercise, be cautious of how quickly you increase load. An efficient rehab program slowly applies load to the body.
When attempting to lift heavy weight, I recommend taking a large breath in and then holding that breath throughout the entire repetition. When you combine this breath with a strong bracing of your core, your trunk will instantly become more stable and capable of handling tremendous weight.
Many athletes who develop back pain when deadlifting do so because they fail to use their legs sufficiently and end up relying too much on their backs.
The inverted row, performed with a suspension trainer or gymnastic rings, has been shown in research to elicit a high amount of upper and mid-back muscle activation while placing minimal stress on the spine.
Performing a suitcase carry with the weight in one hand is significantly harder and poses a greater challenge to your core than performing the exercise with weight in both hands.
The upside-down kettlebell carry is one of the most challenging variations.
Proper use of a belt involves much more than just wearing it tightly! To use a belt, you must breathe “into the belt.” If you only cinch it tight, you will miss out on the benefits it has to offer. Always think about expanding your stomach into the belt and then bracing against it.
I highly recommend keeping belt use to a minimum.
A belt should never be used with the goal of taking away back pain or soreness.
For those who do not have access to a specialized machine like the reverse hyper, a kettlebell swing is a great late-stage rehabilitation exercise that emphasizes and trains dynamic hip extension in a similar cyclical motion.
Contrary to the exercise name, I recommend performing back extensions in a very hip-centric manner.
If you want to see significant changes in flexibility of any muscle or group of muscles, you must be consistent with your stretching.
Mobility should always be evaluated before flexibility.
If you want to stretch before a training session or competition, I recommend short-duration stretches (less than 30 seconds), which have been shown to have no harmful effects on muscular performance.
I’m going to share a little secret with you: most elite athletes have abnormal traits that give them the ability to do things most of us “normal” people cannot.
The squat is a movement first and an exercise second.
To squat to full depth with your toes straight forward, you must have adequate ankle and hip mobility and sufficient pelvic/core control. You also must have acceptable coordination and balance.
Research shows that knee pain associated with barbell training is often due to overuse injuries. 3 These nontraumatic injuries can become nagging and often lead to further issues down the road.
The most common reason strength athletes develop pain around the kneecap is a lack of ability to control for rotation at the knee (i.e., demonstrating poor knee stability when lifting).
You need to stop using ice on injuries and sore muscles.
Ice does not do what you think it does. It does not aid the process of healing from injury; in fact, an overwhelming amount of research shows that it does the opposite! Other than temporarily numbing pain, ice delays healing and recovery.
There is no denying that ice provides temporary pain relief. Slap an ice pack on an area of your body that hurts, and you’re going to feel better instantly.
But here’s the deal: Just because the pain is decreased does not mean that you’re fixing the injury. In fact, you’re doing more harm than good.
inflammation and swelling are normal responses to injury.
Plain and simple, healing requires inflammation. It isn’t a bad thing at all; it is an essential biological response to injury.
Placing ice on an injured area essentially puts a roadblock in front of the white blood cells trying to get to the area. You think you’re helping the healing process by placing a bag of ice on your body, but you’re actually delaying its start by preventing your body from doing what it wants and needs to do.
Swelling is merely the buildup of waste around an injured area that needs to be evacuated via the lymphatic system. It is a natural response to injury that becomes a problem only when the waste-filled fluid is allowed to accumulate.
Scientific research does not support the use of ice.
Despite conventional “wisdom” telling us that ice is a good idea, research shows that icing delays muscle repair after injury and gives us direct evidence that icing can lead to increased scarring!
swelling accumulates around an injured area because you stop moving!
Exercises performed in a relatively pain-free manner not only accelerate the removal of swelling through muscle contraction but also optimize the healing process without causing further damage.
While voluntary exercise is undoubtedly the most effective way to preserve muscle mass, reduce swelling, and kick-start the healing process after injury, neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) devices come in a close second.
NMES devices work by stimulating muscle contraction through electricity.
Simply put, after injury, we want to promote movement (even if it’s as little as stimulated muscle contractions through the use of an E-stim device) to optimize healing and safely return to the sports we love.
While you may feel less soreness after icing, you’re not necessarily recovering any faster physiologically.
Instead of reaching for that ice pack or jumping into a tub filled with ice, I recommend using an active recovery approach.
If you’re extremely sore the day after an intense workout, I recommended performing a few minutes of soft tissue mobilization.
Research has shown that a few minutes of rolling on a foam roller or small ball (such as a lacrosse or tennis ball) can significantly reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).

MYTHOLOGY 101 by Kathleen Sears

The ancient Greeks and Romans used myths to explain the wonders of the world, including the rise of humanity, the causes of natural phenomena, and the origin of the Earth and the universe.
A myth, defined simply, is a fictitious story or half-truth, but it goes much deeper than that.
A myth evolves as it’s told, over and over again.
Because myths are told and retold, passed from one person to the next, there is often more than one version of the same story.
The Greek victory over Troy was a defining moment for the Greeks and the catalyst for the foundation of Rome.
Virgil is best known for the Aeneid. This epic poem, which tells the story of the origins of Rome, follows the Trojan hero Aeneas after the fall of Troy, as he travels and then settles in a new land, where he founds a new race: the Romans.
Like many modern religions, classical mythology explores the relationship between humanity and a higher power.
Mount Olympus was more than the dwelling place of the gods and goddesses. It was also their command center, the place where trials were held, laws were created, and important decisions were made.
As ruler of gods and men, Zeus had the duty of bringing ultimate order to the universe.
Often considered second in command to Zeus, Poseidon was the powerful god of the sea, a god who garnered more fear than respect. He controlled the seas and could create earthquakes.
Although the ancients often described Hades as cold, he was never associated with evil. He was simply the ruler of the dead, and he performed his duties efficiently and with an unrelenting sense of responsibility.
In Greek mythology, the Underworld was divided into different regions. One region was for the most exceptional mortals (such as heroes), another region was for the common folk, and a third was for evildoers.
When a person died, Hermes came to collect that person’s shade (or soul) and lead him or her to the Underworld. To get to the Underworld required crossing one or more rivers. To cross a river, the shade had to engage the services of Charon, the ferryman of the dead. Charon didn’t work for free; he required a coin as payment. If a would-be passenger could not pay Charon’s fee, that shade was doomed to wander the shoreline for a hundred years before being allowed passage. Even after they’d paid and boarded the boat, the shades had to do most of the work—they rowed, while the ferryman merely steered.
Elysium (sometimes called the Elysian Fields) was the dwelling place of the exceptional. This island was where heroes (and other extraordinary mortals) were sent after death.
According to Greek mythology, all shades (souls) traveled to the Underworld, Hades’s realm, after death.
The hearth was the source of warmth and nourishment because it provided heat for cooking. As a result, to the ancients, the hearth represented the epicenter of the family and one of the most important places in the home.
Of all the things that mortals might do to offend the gods, blatant violation of something sacred was one of the worst. The sacrilege usually resulted in the offender’s suffering and death.
The Parthenon is one of the best-known temples of ancient Greece, partially due to the fact that remains of the temple are still standing today.
The Judges of the Dead decided the destinies of those who dwelled in the Underworld. Although the Judges were symbolically important to the Underworld, they didn’t have much real power. The gods themselves decided whether a person had been wicked enough to send to Tartarus or brave and good enough to spend eternity in Elysium.
Ancient battlefields were places of confusion, bravery, violence, brutality, and bloodlust.
The Thracians were skilled, savage warriors who wielded heavy swords and were ferocious in battle.
To the ancients, the world was inhabited by thousands of deities and spirits that controlled nature and interacted with humans.
The Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, were the goddesses of music, art, poetry, dance, and the arts in general.
The Fates: Three goddesses in charge of determining a person’s lifespan.
Greek mythology was assimilated into Roman mythology to fill in gaps in the latter; eventually, Romans adopted (and adapted) Greek myths on a broad scale.
While many of the stories are essentially the same in Greek and Roman mythologies, the names are different.

DINOSAUR TRAINING SECRETS: VOLUME III: HOW TO USE OLD-SCHOOL PROGRESSION METHODS FOR FAST AND STEADY GAINS IN STRENGTH, MUSCLE AND POWER by Brooks D. Kubik

Strength training used to be called "Progressive Resistance Exercise." That's an excellent term, because it places the emphasis exactly where it belongs – on progression.
The principle of progressive resistance training is the foundation for all gains in strength and muscle.
There are seven basic progression methods that build strength, muscle and power: 1. Adding weight to the bar. 2. Performing more reps in each exercise. 3. Performing more work sets of each exercise. 4. Performing each rep in stricter, better, tighter and more precise form, with greater concentration and deeper focus. 5. Performing more difficult and more demanding exercises, or performing your exercises in a more difficult fashion. 6. Performing additional exercises for each body-part. 7. Any combination of 1 – 6.
It's much better to start light and easy and allow the new trainee to experience steady progress for as long a period as possible.
Beginners should train three times per week on a total body workout, and follow a basic training program that uses either single progression or double progression.
Start with 5 reps on upper body exercises and 10 reps on gut work and lower body exercises. Do one set of each exercise. Use 8 to 10 different exercises.
That's the beauty of progressive strength training. If you follow a sensible progression system, your initial progress comes fast and easily.
Beginners do NOT need to do a variety of different exercises, and will do much better by training on the same exercises.
As far as sets and reps go, the 5 x 5 system is perfect for intermediates. It provides the right amount of volume, and allows you to work with heavier weights than you used in your beginner programs.
For long-term progress and lifelong training, it's a good idea to work up, drop back down, and work back up again. You don't have to stay at the hardest possible program all the time.
Modern bodybuilding programs typically amount to specialization programs on all of the different muscle groups at the same time. That gets you nowhere, because all you do is over-train. It's much more effective to combine an all-around training program that provides adequate work – but not excessive work – for all of the major muscle groups, together with a period of specialization on one or two muscle groups. Over time, you end up specializing on all of the major muscle groups – but not at the same time.
Remember, dropping back to the easier program (with one exercise on the days that you do heavy, awkward object training) is NOT a step backwards. It's a way to maximize your recovery and recuperation from hard training, and a way to help recover from any dings and dents that may be bothering you.
Doug Hepburn believed that no matter what you did, what you ate, or how you trained, there was a limit on how fast you could build strength and muscle.
The answer, Hepburn believed, was to limit yourself to gains of one rep per workout.
As your strength increases, your progress will slow down. This happens to everyone, so don't worry about it. When it does, try using double progression rather than single progression.
Starting light is good because it allows you to concentrate on doing your reps in good form.
Older trainees should always use some sort of simple cycling system that lets them alternate between harder workouts and easier sessions.
Slow and steady is ALWAYS the way to go.

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TACTICAL BARBELL II: CONDITIONING by K. Black

THE KAZDIN METHOD FOR PARENTING THE DEFIANT CHILD by Alan E. Kazdin

TACTICAL BARBELL: DEFINITIVE STRENGTH TRAINING FOR THE OPERATIONAL ATHLETE by K. Black

20220912

A MANUAL FOR CREATING ATHEISTS by Peter Boghossian, Michael Shermer

REBUILDING MILO by Aaron Horschig, Kevin Sonthana

MYTHOLOGY 101 by Kathleen Sears

DINOSAUR TRAINING SECRETS: VOLUME III: HOW TO USE OLD-SCHOOL PROGRESSION METHODS FOR FAST AND STEADY GAINS IN STRENGTH, MUSCLE AND POWER by Brooks D. Kubik