Barefoot Fitness

If I Can Do It...

...You can too.

Cliché, I know, but sometimes the truth is.

Wow, has my life changed in the last year and a half. You can probably tell from my pictures. Seriously, what’s with the mullet hairstyle in the before pic? Oh well, that was an easy fix. My body, on the other hand, a bit more of a project.

Prior to getting pregnant with my first child, I “worked out” in between going to nursing school and then Occupational Therapy school, working full time with developmentally disabled people and bartending in the evenings. I enjoyed “working out” but as soon as I was pregnant, I lost every bit of motivation to exercise. Maybe some of you can relate.

Two kids later, I was sick of feeling and looking like I had just given birth to a baby even though my second was more than a year old. I went to Craig and Marshall in the condition you see in the first picture. I was addicted after the first class and instantly knew Barefoot Fitness was going to change not only my body, but my life if I let it.

I could have made tons of excuses why I shouldn’t stick with it. Money, soreness, schedule blah, blah, blah…but I wanted it too much. How badly do you want to change your body and your life?

Does it take time and hard work? Of course it does, but I can tell you it's worth it. Not only do I live a healthy lifestyle now but so does my family. My kids know what protein shakes are, think sliced veggies and fruit are snacks and watch me doing mile tire drags for fun. A little bit better than McDonald’s and TV, don’t ya think?

American kids are suffering from an obesity epidemic and may not live as long as their parents generation. But I know that by teaching them through example I've protected my children from this fate, and even more than fitting into the same jeans I wore in college or my hundred pullup workouts, that makes me sleep contented at night.

I really debated posting this before picture because, well, it’s embarrassing. But I did it because I want to help others reach their goals the way Craig and Marshall have helped me reach mine. Where you are now does not have to be where you are tomorrow or next month. Never in a million years did I think I could do even a single pullup without assistance. I can now do 100 bodyweight pullups in less than twenty minutes.

I am grateful beyond words for the opportunity Craig has given me to own and operate the Barefoot Fitness in Spearfish. It's my passion and I can honestly say I love what I do, even if it does mean getting up at 4 a.m.

Every day I give people the tools to make their own transformations and even more rewarding than going through it myself is watching others go through the same process and knowing what it feels like. Every once in a while we do eight week fat loss contests, using DEXA scans to measure results. At each one, the winners have cut the amount of fat on their body by at least 25%. That's an amazing thing to be a part of.

I am here to help any of you who are ready to change your life too. Just say the word!

- Kelli

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

It's a Special Occasion

Just like yesterday.

Last night for dinner my girlfriend and I had Thai lettuce wraps. Grass-fed beef, shredded carrots, red cabbage and peanut sauce cooked in coconut oil and wrapped in lettuce. Lunch was a spinach salad with chicken, almonds, walnut oil and balsamic vinegar and a sliced avocado on the side.

Generally, I do pretty well with nutrition. My bodyfat stays in the single digits without the need to "diet" because what most people consider dieting is just how I eat anyway.

That said, if I let my guard down I'm susceptible to a "special occasions" mentality that sidelines my nutritional goals. I've been slipping into this periodically over the past few months and have had to consciously make myself aware of it in order to control it.

This summer I've been traveling and spending time with friends I don't get to see too often. A week or so in New York, one in California, another week on vacation with my family road tripping through Montana and Wyoming and suddenly I'm finding myself gorging on pizza, deciding which six pack of beer looks tasty and ordering meals consisting entirely of things that are brown. I rationalize this with the passing thought that this is ok because I'm on vacation.

It's entirely acceptable to have occasional meals that fall outside of your normal nutritional plan and there is nothing inherently wrong with having wine with your girlfriend or a beer or two with your buddies. As John Berardi, founder of Precision Nutrition, puts it, if 90% of the meals you eat fit within your nutritional plan, the remaining 10% aren't going to matter.

When it comes to alcohol, I follow Nate Green's advice, which is to stick to five drinks per week. It doesn't matter whether they're stretched out over the week or all in one night but below that level you're really not going to negatively affect your physique. In fact, there are studies showing better health with those who consume occasional alcohol than those who abstain completely.

This "Well screw it, I'm on vacation" rationale gets tricky though, when it extends beyond one or two meals or a few days. Once you've allowed the special occasion excuse to slip in it becomes increasingly easy to call it up whenever the mood fits.

One must be able to truly separate the occasional outlier meals from day to day routine. The more I've thought about this, the more I've come to realize that one's health and physique quality depends on the ability to maintain one's normal nutritional and workout habits throughout varying circumstances, not just when you're at home and in your usual routine.

What would happen if you won the lottery and you could spend the rest of your life "on vacation?" Would you eat the way many people do during holidays for years on end? Probably not, because you'd quickly see the downfall to this and realize that the good things in life are most fully enjoyed with a strong, healthy body. You'd likely find a way to maintain that body regardless of your location or activities.

A few months ago in Rhode Island I sat down to lunch with a group of friends, including Dr. John Berardi. Everyone at the table was involved in some aspect of the fitness industry and had more than enough knowledge to find the few healthy Easter eggs on the menu but as the waiter went around the table everyone ordered some variation of a burger. About half of us switched the fries out for a salad, but for the most part, we all had plates of brown stuff.

When the food came, we all tore into our burgers as the waiter set down John's meal. His was a giant salad of real vegetables (not just lettuce) covered in strips of seared Ahi tuna. Not only did it look better than our stuff, it was in almost every way a positive nutritional value whereas the food the rest of us were eating was in some way setting our health and body comp levels back a notch.

John was in the same place, with the same resources, having the same experience as the rest of us, and yet he was able to stick close to his usual eating habits without making a sacrifice and having to rationalize it as a special occasion.

Stretch this out over time. Someone with Berardi's level of competence has spent weeks on the road, ate at countless restaurants and had occasional beers with friends all over North America and still stuck easily within his 10% constraint for non-compliant meals.

Sure, if John is at a friends wedding he's not going to skip out on the cake and switch his champagne for water. He still enjoys himself without worrying about nutrition at events that are truly special. But he doesn't toss his knowledge and discipline aside simply because he's not eating at home.

As for me? I met up with Scot Prohaska, an incredible strength coach in Huntington Beach, a few weeks later for a workout. It was after about a week of well-rationalized "special occasion" meals, skipped workouts and generally acting like a fat bastard.

We worked out together at his facility and I was expecting to feel a little slow but was shocked by how hard the workout hit me. Just a few weeks of screwing off had wrecked my strength and stamina and I found myself gasping on the floor trying to decide the shortest path to the door if I had to throw up while Scot busted out sets of pullups and dips. The workout shouldn't have been that hard but somehow I had become one of them. One of the mediocre people who made mediocre choices, easily rationalized them, and never reached physique or performance levels above good ol' comfy mediocrity. I felt awful.

There on the floor of Scot's gym, thinking about the diverging paths that stem from mindsets like Dr. Berardi's versus the mediocre "well, it's a special occasion…just like yesterday" rationale, I decided that I was done with lazy decisions and rationalization.

Now when I travel I maintain the same approach to training and nutrition as I do at home. If I decide to toss normal nutritional habits aside, it still fits within the ten percent rule, and it's going to be because it's a situation that truly warrants it.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Starting Over

Could you do it?

Dave is a professor at the university in Spearfish. He's in his fifties with a barrel chest, a graying beard and a worldly air which gives him a striking resemblance to The Most Interesting Man in the World from the Dos Equis commercials.

A few years ago Dave took off on his adventure bike for a trip with some friends to the Arctic Circle and back. On the last leg of his 6,000 mile trek, Dave called his wife from Wyoming to tell her that he'd be home in a few hours and took off through the darkness towards Spearfish.

Traveling at around 75 miles per hour, Dave came over a hill and the beam of his lights suddenly filled with a herd of deer crossing the highway in front of him.

The impact sent Dave flying over his bike and down an embankment. His shoulder blade was shattered into five pieces like a broken dinner plate and most of the ribs on one side of his body were snapped near his spine.

It was late at night on an isolated road, but a passing motorist somehow saw the wheel of Dave's bike glinting in his headlights in the ditch and called 911.

Once the medics arrived, Dave asked to borrow a cell phone so he could call his wife, tell her that he was going to be late and try in vain to downplay the severity of the incident.

"What do you mean a little accident? And why do I hear people in the background? Honey, let me talk to someone else please."

After being released from the hospital, Dave spent around a year in rehab trying unsuccessfully to restore function to his shoulder.

He was at a turning point in his life. His body was aching and even after the rehab he still couldn't lift his arm over his head. Most of his colleagues from his doctorate days had stopped living physically strenuous lives and had contented themselves with fast food, insulin-managing medications and television. Their active days were over.

Dave's wife had been training with us for several months and talked him into coming to our facility one day.

We checked out his joint function, his health history and assessed his strength and conditioning levels. Pullups were out of the question because even if he could get his arm over his head, he didn't have the strength anymore. He wanted to be able to do pullups again and set this as a major goal. He hadn't worked out nor had much physical activity in several years and his age automatically put him in a higher risk category. He was, to put it simply, a tough case.

He wasn't the sort of guy to give up though, and we saw in him a capacity for suffering and a willingness to work that few people have. The program we started him on was arduous. Every day, we pushed and tested him in some way. Something I identified immediately with him was that he shared a trait that many of the guys who successfully made it through special operations selection had. When it started to hurt, he started to laugh.

When he was doing painful PNF stretches for his shoulder or cranking out sets of rows or pushups on the rings until he couldn't continue, he would drop to the ground laughing in between breaths. He accepted the suffering and was able to take it as an integral part of the process.

Several months later, Dave's work capacity had drastically improved. He was competing for time on the rowing machine with people half his age. His body was taking on its old athletic shape as muscle built up and fat melted away and his shoulder was back to roughly the same range of motion as the uninjured one. He could jump up to a pullup bar, stretch both arms cleanly overhead and knock out multiple sets of pullups. He was back.

Now, he no longer needs specialized rehab based training. He works out in one of our conditioning groups in Spearfish and when new people come in and find themselves being outworked by the guy from the Dos Equis commercials, they have no idea that a year ago he was in the worst physical condition of his life.

Dave hit a crossroads that almost everyone will eventually reach. He could have resigned himself to a comfy, low exertion life and looked back on his years of physical activity as fond memories. This is what many people at his age do, even without breaking most of the bones on one side of their torso. Or, he could have gritted his teeth, started over from the bottom and rebuilt himself into a physically active, strong, capable person, which is exactly what he did.

What would you have done? Could you start over and laugh at your pain?

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Play

Do something novel today

One of the biggest things lacking in American culture is play; doing something unscripted, unregulated, solely because it's entertaining.

By this I don't mean video games. I have no doubt that people spend plenty of time staring at repetitive flashing lights on a screen. I'm talking about the sort of physical play that gives you a sense of flow.

Flow, as defined by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Think of an activity like snowboarding or surfing. In these sports, you're generally there just for the simple pleasure of moving through and responding to a changing environment. There is an inherent element of novelty to each ride and each wave. The snow or wave will never be exactly the same and the path you take or exactly how you ride it will be a little different each time.

When you're in the process of experiencing physically novel sensations, your brain is constantly sending outputs and receiving feedback in order to learn how to make predictions.

Think of how many times you had to fall before you finally got up on a surfboard. At some point your neocortex had a sufficient level of connections to know what to expect at the moment your feet hit the board and how to direct your body from there, but before that happened, there was a lot of swimming.

Once popping up becomes second nature (it's well ingrained at a low level in the cerebral cortex) you'll start playing with learning how to turn into the wave, or cut back, or do the same thing on a bigger, more powerful wave. As one skill is learned, another is built on top of it.

Experiencing novel sensations like this and creating new synaptic connections from them is essentially mental exercise. Your brain responds with a release of neurotransmitters like dopamine that flood your mind with a pleasant, rewarding sensation. It just feels good.

How often do you incorporate this sort of thing into your life? When was the last time you did something physically just to see what it would feel like? You don't need to intellectualize it, just play.

Last week, we finished our usual workout ahead of time. We started looking at the ropes hanging from the ceiling, the I beams running in between them and one of us said, "Do you think it would be possible to move across those?"

"What do you think would happen if…"

What followed was a progressive game that, along with actually being a great workout, was refreshingly fun.

This is your homework. This is part of living a physical life. Learn what your body can do. You don't have to clamber around on 20 foot high I beams from your fingertips, but sometime this week, leave your spreadsheet and your stopwatch and your clipboard alone and just play. Find something you've never done before and see what happens.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

What Would You Be?

Take the first step

By: Marshall Bowen

"First, say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." – Epictetus

We were in the middle of a workout, and I had walked up behind Terry doing goblet squats with a kettlebell, resting between sets. He was leaning forward, his hands holding him up against the wall of the cage and he was talking to himself.

"I wish I had a time machine. God, I wish I had a time machine."

Terry and I have become good friends over the past few months, and this self talk was fairly typical for this point in the workout.

Craig came by and did a circle around him, checking his respiration rate, skin color and eyes, and asked him a few questions then smiled and walked away. "Don't you go dying on me."

Terry nodded, beads of sweat falling off his face, and picked up his kettlebell.

Sixteen years ago Terry left the Marine Corps after four years as an infantryman during the Gulf War. He stands six feet, two inches tall and at that time weighed 200 pounds. He could run three miles in 18:45, do 37 dead hang pullups in a single set and crank out 100 sit-ups in 2 minutes.

After Terry left the Marines he was hired on as an over the road truck driver and his lifestyle changed completely. He used to live a physical life, always on his feet with a pack on his back. Suddenly he was spending 10 hours per day sitting in a truck, driving across the country and living off of food from convenience stores.

He came to us after a realization that his body had fallen out of control and he had to make a change. He no longer weighed 200 pounds. In fact, he had to go to a vet clinic to weigh himself because his six foot, two inch frame now exceeded the 350 pound capacity at the hospital.

As far as physical condition went, Terry started with one of the longest roads ahead of him that we have ever seen.

Plenty of people have come to us knowing that they needed to change their lives and that their health would suffer drastically unless they did so. And then the excuses would come, they'd quit and a year or two later we'd see them again somewhere, slightly more overweight, slightly sadder looking, and on their way to pick up the host of medications at the pharmacy now necessary for them to live. None of those people started out in worse physical condition than Terry.

We saw the potential in him the first day. Craig and I both come from a background which enables us to recognize true suffering, and we saw it in Terry. We know what it looks like when the body breaks and what it looks like when it's just the mind giving in to rationalizations. Terry had what it took. His body couldn't keep up, but he was mentally resilient. For the first few weeks, he couldn't finish a full workout and he would end the session lying on his back on the mats, gasping for air, covered in sweat. He always got back up and he always came back. He had the capacity to, as our motto in the Scout Snipers said, "Suffer patiently and patiently suffer."

Terry was so big that it was impossible for him to do a pullup. Even with the largest band on his foot and a spotter, it just wasn't going to happen. We had to substitute inverted rows on gymnast rings for his pulling movements because there was just no way to get him up to the pullup bar.

That was three months ago. Terry has already lost around 40 pounds. He's wearing shirts he hasn't been able to put on in years. His face is noticeably leaner. Earlier this week, towards the end of a workout, he walked silently up to a pullup bar, hopped up and grabbed it, and slowly pulled his chest to the bar.

Everyone in the gym was immediately overcome with pride because they knew that no matter how hard the workout was for them, Terry was almost always suffering more. They all watched as he knocked out another 15 pullups in sets of three with me spotting him.

Building physical strength and fitness can be one of the most challenging things you'll ever do. Letting time slip by and falling out of shape can be one of the easiest. Once it happens, the road back to health can seem insurmountable.

We hear people all the time who say things like, "I'm going to wait and get in a little better shape before I start working out with you guys." It's another excuse. It's what happens when the road seems to long and the first step seems too big.

All that matters is what's inside your mind. It is completely irrelevant where you start out physically. All that matters is that you say to yourself what you will be, and take that first step. Terry has proven this to us recently, and continues to inspire everyone around him. A year from now, he's going to be in better shape than he was when he left the Marines.

Where will you be?

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

The Pygmalion Effect

Mirroring expectations

How do the expectations other people have for you affect the expectations you have for yourself?

According to a study highlighted in the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, if random strangers think that you are going to be "sociable, poised, humorous and socially adept," it is likely that you will portray yourself that way. And if they don't think you're going to fit those characteristics, you probably won't.

In the study, a group of 51 women volunteered to take place in a communications study in which they would each be having a brief phone conversation with a randomly selected man.

The men were also signed up for a communications study, but what they didn't know was that the information they had been given about the women they were to be talking to had been falsified. Each man was given a bio of the woman he was to speak to and each bio had a photograph of the woman. Half of the photos were models selected for physical beauty. The other half was less attractive, plain looking women.

Prior to their talk, the men were asked to fill out an "Impression Formation Questionnaire." Although the biographical information was identical, the men who thought that the woman was physically attractive wrote that they expected her to have the positive traits listed above. The men who saw the unattractive photos expected the woman they were to speak with to be "unsociable, awkward, serious and socially inept."

The conversations took place and the participants engaged in the usual chitchat of strangers like the weather and their college majors.

The interactions were each recorded and the men's side of the conversations were edited out. Then, the women's sides of the conversations were presented to a panel of ordinary people who knew nothing about the conditions of the study. This jury was asked to fill out the same Impression Formation Questionnaire about the women whose voices they had heard.

Interestingly, the opinions of the jurors reflected the opinion of the men who had seen the fake photos. When the woman in question had been expected to have positive traits, her side of the conversation reflected those characteristics.

How did this happen?

According to the authors, "The answer lies with the subtle power of the chameleon effect. Remember that before the men had exchanged a single word with the 'beautiful' women, they had already thought of them as socially graceful, funny, composed and collected.

Once the men had formed this opinion, it affected every aspect of how they interacted with the women. Imagine if you were talking on the phone to someone whom you believed to be attractive. You'd likely be more engaged, listen more actively and generally find yourself more immersed in the interaction.

When the 'beautiful' women spoke with their mysterious strangers, they couldn't help but react to the cues the men were sending. Without realizing it, they took on the characteristics that the men expected them to have. The researchers explained, 'What had initially been reality in the minds of the men had now become reality in the behavior of the women.' The women unconsciously picked up on the 'beautiful' opinion the men had of them and acted accordingly. In other words, being thought of as beautiful made the women actually think of themselves as beautiful and exhibit 'beauty' in their conversations."

This phenomenon is known as either the Pygmalion Effect or the Golem Effect depending on whether the expectation being mirrored is positive or negative.

Something that I love hearing from Barefoot clients who transform their bodies is how much the process changes their life. When they say this, they really mean that every aspect of their lives has improved alongside the changes they've made in their bodies. I think that the Pygmalion Effect is a factor in this.

I've discussed the Halo Effect before, which is a similar phenomenon in which the way people perceive you and the expectations they form of you are affected by your physical appearance. When these perceptions take a positive swing, the mirroring created by the Pygmalion Effect will in turn affect your sense of self. You'll suddenly feel a greater sense of independence, intelligence, attractiveness and capability because the world around you is expecting the same.

Consider the power you have here in that you can control, to a significant degree, your physical appearance, the way the world perceives you and in turn your self perceptions. It's a means of taking happiness into your own hands.

Is your body telling the world what you want it to about you? If not, what is holding you back? You can write this story yourself. No matter where you are, the means necessary to change your body are available. It's on you to make the decision to take control.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

The Weakest Guy in the Gym

It's not this guy.

If you put a bunch of strong people in a room, they'll find a way to make each other stronger. You put a bunch of weak people together, and they'll probably spend their time bitching about how life isn't fair.

I moved to Denver around six months ago, but still make the trip back to Spearfish, South Dakota every once in a while to keep an eye on our facility here, meet up with friends and train with my old workout partners.

A few days ago I was training with my friend Jesse in Spearfish at his facility. We were going back and forth on the deadlift; pulling a rep or two, adding weight and taking turns at the bar. We never stop working, but we maintain a casual conversation most of the time between sets.

The combination of random bumper plates and iron on the bar made it difficult to guess the weight at a glance, so I didn't bother counting the exact weight on one of my last pulls. I knew that it was heavy, felt my heart rate rise, my nervous system pick up and bumped my shins into the bar with the buzzing feeling that I get before a big lift. I flicked the chalk off my hands, took a deep breath as I watched it make a little cloud in the sunlight coming through the window, dropped down to the bar and drove my heels through the floor.

Jesse was at my shoulder yelling, "Hips!... Hips!..."

I locked the bar out, paused for a second and let it drop, then looked at it and cocked my head in the "curious puppy head tilt" as I tried counting out the weight and asked Jesse to confirm how much it was.

"505. Nice work."

I had pulled 500 a few times before, but this was a new personal record and the odd thing was that I hadn't even thought about it. In this environment, working with guys who squat, bench and deadlift 2,000 pound totals; the weights I work with seem insignificant, so I usually don't pay much attention to what's on my bar. I just try to keep up.

This is the great thing about being the weakest guy in a gym full of powerlifters. I inevitably find myself drifting up to their level. If I were training in a Bally's full of Jersey Shore wannabes screaming and grunting about their 225 pound bench presses, my frame of reference for strength would be altered and I would be less likely to push myself. I would look at them and feel strong enough. When you're lifting with guys who use your max weights on their speed days, that's just not gonna happen. You have to keep striving or leave.

I try to do this with everything. When I do conditioning workouts, I find guys who are going to be nearly impossible to keep up with like Marshall or some of our pro fighters like Joe Warren who seem to be capable of turning off the part of their brain that recognizes pain. Jesse often works out with us, facing his own weakness in our conditioning sessions. (This is how he earned the nickname World's Most Athletic Fat Guy)

In business, I try to have conversations with people who are already much more successful than me. If you ever think you're doing enough to justify a little complacence, sit down for lunch with guys like Nate Green or John Berardi. You'll realize how much further ahead in the game they are and how much unrealized potential you have.

When it comes to studying and reading, I try to talk books with the kind of guys who are actually writing them, like Dr. David Scarborough, a professor and client at the Barefoot in Spearfish. After reading his book, Neural Networks in Organizational Research I realized that I'm, well, not all that smart. But there is a lot I can learn.

Most of the people I've mentioned here who have in some way helped me become smarter or stronger are in this small 10,000 person town. A glance around the handful of people in our gym would show you a world class powerlifter, an incredibly talented A.R.T. Practitioner and a brilliant professor with a penchant for 4,000 mile motorcycle trips. This isn't the only place like this. If you were to look hard enough, you could find people like this somewhere around you.

Are you surrounding yourself with people who are going to make you a better, stronger, more capable person, or are the people around you keeping you complacent? If your answer is the latter, perhaps it's time to do something about it.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Live Your Dream

What are you doing today?

If you read this site, you're probably familiar with my Memento Mori graph; a piece of paper with a hand drawn chart 52 blocks wide and 80 blocks tall which I use to maintain awareness of the passing of time by filling in one block for each week that passes.

It's a valuable-and sometimes painful-means of self-assessment and motivation.

I've kept this piece of paper with me for around eight years now, since my first year in the military in 2002. A few days ago, I got sidetracked while working from my laptop and starting scrolling through old letters I had written.

In one of them to a friend, dated November 12^th, 2002, I talked about making the Memento Mori paper and getting the idea from an article in National Geographic about a guy named Karl Stanley.

I still remembered Karl's incredible story. At age 15, he took it upon himself to build his own submarine out of a ten foot steel pipe and began his way down a self educated, adventurous path following his ambitions and tempting fate on an almost daily basis.

I wondered what ever came of Karl, and a thank you from me was about eight years overdue for his graph idea. So I tracked him down and contacted him.

Karl no longer keeps his chart with him. As he put it, "Ironically, I don't keep mine anymore- but I think if you look through my photos on here you will see I am making good use of my time."

I flipped through some photos on Facebook of his life in tropical Roatan, checked out his website, saw the trailer for the movie about him and his business along with quite a few more major articles, and couldn't agree more. He's been busy, to say the least.

Karl no longer needs to keep his graph with him because making good use of the time in his life has become second nature; he doesn't need a reminder anymore. He's waking up every day and living in a completely unconventional life he set out to create for himself. One that very few people ever thought he'd be able to manage.

What are you doing today?

Want to go deep sea diving in a homemade yellow submarine? Who wouldn't! Check out Karl's site here.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Ikigai

Why do you keep going?

"The two most dangerous years of your life are the year you're born and the year you retire." – Dan Buettner

At his 2009 TED talk, Dan Buettner talked about his work researching the world's Blue Zones, areas in which people live inordinately long, healthy lives.

The Blue Zone with the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world is the archipelago of Okinawa. Here, men and women routinely live to exceed 100 years of age. At this age, they are still physically capable, fully alert and involved in the world around them. They work in their gardens, play with their great, great grandchildren and when they die it is generally quickly and in their sleep. Their rates of disease are many times lower than much of the world.

Interestingly, Okinawans don't have a word for retirement. What they have is "Ikigai" which roughly translated means "passion" or "reason for living."

While conducting their study, Dan's group used a questionnaire with the Okinawans and one of the questions on it was, "What is your Ikigai?" Nearly all of the people were able to answer immediately.

For a 102 year old karate master, his Ikigai was to teach his martial art. For a 100 year old fisherman, it was continue going out and bringing fish back to his family three days per week. For a 102 year old woman, her Ikigai was to spend time with her great, great, great granddaughter.

In Fight Club, Tyler Durden turns to his passengers in a car and asks them, "What do you want to do before you die?" As Tyler lets go of the wheel and the car veers off the freeway, two men are able to immediately answer.

"Build a house."

"Paint a self portrait."

Jack, the fourth man in the vehicle, yells in bewilderment and fear for Tyler to turn the wheel and steer back onto the road.

Tyler ignores him and says, "You have to know the answer to this question! If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?"

"I don’t know, I wouldn’t feel anything good about my life, is that what you want to hear me say? Fine. Come on!"

It's at that moment that Jack has an epiphany and begins to see what Tyler has been talking about.

It's a much different means of conveying the idea than an Okinawan matriarch playing with her grandkids, but ultimately it's the same concept. Why did you get out of bed this morning?

The word passion is derived from the Latin verb patoir meaning "to suffer and endure." This is where stories like "The Passion of the Christ" get their name. Eventually the word came to mean not only suffering in itself, but also the thing that sustains a person who suffers; what enables them to keep going.

In Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl describes his experiences as a prisoner in two different concentration camps during the Holocaust. The stoic nature of the philosophy he developed there led to his founding of the school of Logotherapy, which is a form of psychotherapy based on man's will to meaning, derived from the Greek word logos ("Meaning").

Logotherapy is based on three main principles:

- Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.

- Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

- We have freedom to find meaning in what we do, and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.

As a young candidate in Naval Special Warfare selection, I once asked a mentor, a highly respected former Team Leader from what was once known as SEAL Team Six, what his first piece of advice would be for guys about to go through training. He related it to his family.

"Just don't quit. All I thought about was that I was going to have to face my family when it was over, and I could never face them, or live with myself, if I quit."

Over the years, I found a similar attitude among nearly all of them men who made it through the selection process. While the ones who quit were able to rationalize that it was somehow acceptable, those who did not almost invariably kept their minds on the thought of their wives, brothers, sisters or parents as if they were watching over them and expected them to succeed.

Recently, while reading back through Viktor Frankl's book, I came across this passage:

" ... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise."

In this case, Viktor's passion, the meaning behind his life and the reason to continue suffering through it, his Ikigai, was his wife.

What is your Ikigai?

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

A Physical Life

Erase the line

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."

– L.P. Jacks, Education Through Recreation, 1932.

In the same way that one can generally identify a frat house by the presence of empty beer cans in the yard and random Greek letters affixed to the entrance, an easy way to know that a building is occupied by military personnel is that somewhere nearby one will likely find a pullup bar.

Whether on a remote island off the coast of Central America or in front of a training barracks in Coronado or Fort Benning, the pullup bar will be an integral part of daily life. At times it will be mandatory to do a number of pullups or pushups every time one walks past the bar. Other times it's just something one does because it's part of who you are.

It's the same mindset that one would observe with kids who always seem to have a skateboard with them. When they've got a spare moment, they'll often be found repeatedly practicing specific movements or experimenting with new tricks. Playing.

In a physical culture like the military, this play encompasses things that most people would only consider doing when they're subjecting themselves to "exercise."

This play serves a purpose. Every repetition further ingrains a pattern of movement, creating more efficient motor engrams and making the movement easier to recall. It's developing the nervous system. The effectiveness of this process depends significantly on the frequency. It's been said that true proficiency in a movement requires around ten thousand well executed repetitions before that pattern is available for reflexive recall.

Those ten thousand reps will be much more effectively ingrained when spread out evenly and frequently over time than if they're piled into occasional heaps every week or two.

Outside of cultures like military special operations, it's rare to see the integration of the physical into daily routine. As a result, when an office dweller steps into a gym or onto a playing field, he or she is confronted with an almost foreign world. It's like watching a toddler take his first steps. Everything is new, uncoordinated and novel. Basic motor patterns have not been ingrained and cues which otherwise would occur reflexively, without conscious thought, require significant effort. In this case, there is a distinct divide between the world of physical effort and the person's regular life.

One thing that crosses this void in civilian life is the presence of home gyms in garages, basements and sometimes people's living rooms. I've got some friends here in Denver who have climbing holds and a finger board bolted to a crossbeam in their living room. They play on it periodically almost every day and these few minutes of physical practice go a long way towards improving their coordination and efficiency on rock climbing trips. The physical world is a part of their daily life; not a separate component of it.

While I was living in South Dakota, I had a squat rack with a pullup bar and some rings hanging from the rafters in my garage. As a break between sessions of writing, I would go out every hour or two and do a few pullups or practice on the rings. Suddenly, knocking out sets of multiple muscle ups on the rings during workouts became easy.

How steep is the divide between your physical life and everything else? Do you define physical activity as exercise and have to put on a special outfit and grab a certain logo-clad water bottle before you can start? If so, why? How did this happen?

What can you do today to reconnect yourself with the physical world?

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Hi I Am Ugly

Let's say that for a few days or weeks you were to hire a Hollywood makeup artist, throw on a convincing fat suit and some awful makeup and masquerade as a fatter, remarkably unattractive version of yourself. Would it change the way the world interacts with you? Would it influence the way you feel about yourself?

The answer to both questions is a solid yes, and most likely you would be shocked by the degree to which it would happen.

Over the course of my life, thanks to a combination of military service and a penchant for travel to countries with less than obsessive levels of food and water sanitation standards, I've managed to more or less destroy my body and have to start over from the basis of a skinny-fat weakling.

And that's not to mention the two or three week period which I now look back on as the ugliest time of my life.

Several years ago, I was in the process of getting laser eye surgery. For the surgery, it's necessary to discard contact lenses and wear only glasses for several weeks prior to each exam and before the surgery. I hadn't worn glasses since sometime around the fifth grade, and even went through SOF selection with contacts. I could swim in the ocean with them, fill my eyes with sand and still keep the little buggers in.

The problem with this was that the only glasses I had were either the same ones I had worn in fifth grade or the enormous Coke bottle Navy issue frames known as Birth Control Goggles. It was a toss up. The prescription on the old ones was so out of date that it was probably illegal for me to drive with them, but the lenses on the Navy ones, after having been carried in my pocket as a backup during training, had been abraded to the point of opacity by sand.

The fifth grade glasses were huge, ugly, and for some reason slid immediately to the tip of my nose as soon as I put them on, forcing me to repeatedly do the universal gesture for "I'm a giant nerd" by pushing them back up to my eyes with my fingers every few minutes.

One day we went out on a training op on the boats. We were to rendezvous with another Navy vessel out at sea just off Catalina Island. The sea was typically rough for the transit, with the big rolling swells the Pacific Ocean is known for. Our boat would launch off a wave and punch into the base of the next one, repeatedly engulfing us in water. I had just gotten back from a trip to Central America and hadn't yet made the adjustment from 120+ temperatures to the 70 degree air and 55 degree water off the coast of California, so I was a bit on the chilly side by the time we arrived at our rendezvous point.

The vessel we were supposed to be meeting was late, so we idled the boats, and after spending a little while playing with the forward looking infrared optics system on our boat (high quality infrared optics are capable of seeing through layers of clothing, and we were playing "spot the thong" on civilian yachts coming in and out of Avalon Bay) I sprawled out next to a gun mount and took a nap in the sun. It was a clear day, and now that I wasn't being doused with a fresh wave every few seconds, the warm sun slowly drying out my cammies felt great. I fell partially asleep, and since the boat we were meeting was almost two hours late, spent quite a while there.

What I didn't consider was that while my body was still cold from the soaking wet clothes, my face, stripped free from any traces of sunscreen by the blasts of saltwater, was soaking up UV rays the whole time.

The next day I had the worst sunburn on my face that I have ever had in my life. To top it off, prior to our transit on the boats the day before, I had accidentally splashed my entire face with fairly noxious engine coolant. I washed my face off as soon as I could afterward, but my skin wasn't too happy with a bath in toxic chemicals.

Along with the horrible sunburn, my skin had reacted to the chemicals and broken out in a bizarre blistery rash. Once the burn started peeling, it was a particularly striking combination. The kind of thing that makes adults walk a wide path around you while their children point and ask questions.

Hi, I'm Ugly

It was that day that I exchanged my contacts for the fifth grade nerd goggles, left my command in Coronado and traveled about fifty miles up the coast to begin a three week combat medicine course with over a hundred people I had never met before.

Knowing that this was a temporary state allowed me to take a somewhat emotionally distant perspective and over the next three weeks I analyzed how the people around me interacted with me compared to other groups of people I had joined under different circumstances.

First, it wasn't only the women who reacted differently, it was also the men. In fact, the differences were roughly the same across genders. If I had a question during the course, the instructor was inevitably shorter with me than with the others in my group. They would even answer the question by addressing the others in the group; avoiding direct interaction with me. People made eye contact less, maintained a greater physical distance during conversations and were quicker to discount my input on discussions. If an opinion on a matter was sought, it was seldom from me. It was as if I mattered less as a person.

A corollary I found with this is that at the various times I have wrecked my body with, for example, several weeks of dysentery in Nepal, the changes in the way people interact with you are somewhat similar. As the appearance of your body deteriorates, so does the level of consideration with which people treat you.

After a while, I didn't even bother starting conversations with people because it just never went well.

A substantial body of research has been accumulating on the effects of physical appearance and nonverbal signals. I discussed that more in depth here, but in short people who are overweight or perceived to be less attractive make less money over the course of their lives, are divorced more often, promoted less at work, perceived as being less intelligent and lower in social status and in general report lower perceptions of happiness in life than others.

It's one thing to read those things but like many things in life, understanding comes much more from experience than reading words. Try as hard as you want to describe to someone what an electric shock feels like, it's not until they accidentally zap themselves plugging in the blender that they're really going to know what you're talking about. Words can't completely convey the experience.

It's the same with physical appearance. Having destroyed my body and walked around as a skinny-fat, weak version of myself is another thing and subject for a whole other article, but whether the change is from body composition or facial appearance, it's an eye opening experience. It's unlikely that you're going to don coke bottles and do something to give your face the appearance of leprosy, so you'll have to trust me that it teaches you something that you really wouldn't understand otherwise.

Depending on your appearance, the world around you, and your ability to navigate it, changes substantially.

Getting Away With Terrorism

About a year prior to the sunburn-chemical reaction-nerd glasses experience, I left Coronado for a short-notice deployment to East Africa. This required that I travel across the US via commercial airlines carrying my assault rifle and pistol in a locked Pelican case.

Traveling with weapons in the military is always a hassle, but doing it through commercial air is particularly difficult. I had never done it before, and it was a fairly novel experience to all of the airport personnel I met along the way. The biggest thing is that one must contain positive control over the weapon the entire time. You don't just drop it on a conveyer belt and hope for the best, you walk with the weapon through security, watch it be loaded onto the plane and watch the door be locked behind it. Only then do you get on the plane. After landing, you watch the weapons case be offloaded and walk with it as it travels to the next plane where you repeat the procedure.

I had a layover in San Antonio, and the pilot on the plane had been briefed by someone about this process but didn't quite know how to go about it. He led me down to the side of the plane where the baggage guy handed me my weapons and walked off without a word.

We looked at each other and shrugged.

The pilot said, "So… I guess you just take this to your next gate then. Good luck with everything."

For anyone who has never clunked a five foot long black box against the counter at an airport terminal and told the lady behind the desk that you would like to be escorted with your assault weapons to the plane, this causes more than a little bit of a hubbub.

The crowd of very excitable airport security personnel that almost instantaneously surrounded me at that point displayed a variety of ideas as to how I ended up with special ops modified assault weapons inside a terminal that normally doesn't allow people in with anything as dangerous as toothpaste. They also posited a number of theories as to what should become of me. I heard the words "terrorist," "major violation" and "take him in immediately" thrown about with a good deal of fervor.

This entire time I focused on maintaining a state of relaxed poise. I was well dressed, lean, muscular, clean cut, and calmly and pleasantly answered all of their questions as if I knew exactly what I was doing and that the whole thing was a nuisance that was somehow their fault.

After a few minutes, the woman in charge of the TSA in the airport was aggressively dismissed by the men in charge of the airport's overall operation, an apology was made for the behavior of the airport's "uniformed people" and I was politely escorted to the plane with my weapons and a series of handshakes.

That situation could have gone either way, and had everyone in the group taken a more negative opinion of me, I could easily have ended up making phone calls from a holding cell somewhere. The main thing I could control in that situation in order to direct the frame through which I was perceived was my physical appearance and mannerisms.

Had this event coincided with the sunburned rash and spectacles episode, I'm entirely confident that I wouldn't have been able to affect such positive perceptions of myself from the people I had interacted with and instead would have found myself on the phone with my commanding officer in Coronado saying, "So, funny story…"

Change Your Body, Change Your Life

Every day at Barefoot we see new people walk in who are there because they want their bodies to look better. They want to feel more confident and to project strength, youthfulness and poise. Although facial appearance is much less controllable than the physical appearance of one's body (barring chemical rashes and sunburns of course), the two are somewhat related. They both affect the way the world perceives you, the way you perceive yourself and ultimately the coloring of your interpersonal interactions from day to day.

Some people are born as winning ticket holders in the genetic lottery. They're either naturally attractive, naturally have a great body or both. The world treats them differently than someone else who didn't have the same starting point or has experienced setbacks, but from the perspective of that inherently lucky person, that's hard to fully understand.

In fact, it's difficult to relate to anyone who is at a substantially different level than you, wherever that may be. The only way to really do it is to experience the fluctuations yourself and take notes from an objective perspective.

This is something I enjoy about the changes people undergo when they join Barefoot and begin to change their bodies for the better. After the experiences that I wrote about above, I know what that change feels like.

It's not something as simple as pants fitting better, abs beginning to show or unimagined strength appearing. As these changes happen, the nature of this persons interactions from day to day change as well. As self perceptions and the perceptions of others improve, there is a shift in that person's state of mind. It's not just that this person is changing their body, it's that along with it they are changing their life.

I'll see their posture improve, not just from the workouts and corrective work, but because they feel more confident and carry themselves more openly. These people who came in on the first day shy, self-conscious and inhibited now walk with the self assured gait of an athlete.

Now, they can't walk through the grocery store without being hit on. Their first workout, they weren't sure they could do any of it. Now, they know they can and they want to see how much further they can go. They laugh more, talk more, and dynamically bounce from one conversation to the next; alternately encouraging and making fun of each other on the pullup bar. Their world has improved, their life is changing and they are directing those positive changes. It's an extremely rewarding process to help facilitate.

This is the cool thing about being able to control the appearance of one's body. Take a look in the mirror, or take that dreaded 'before' picture, and then decide what you'd like to see different. More muscle here, less fat there... How do you think your world would change?

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Attention

We were standing in ranks on the beach in Coronado, California, in front of the Naval Special Warfare Center. We were about to start an open ocean swim, and each student was being inspected. Along with the mask and fins, we each carried an SRK dive knife, emergency flares and a UDT lifevest.

The vests were simple gray inflatable rubber contraptions, worn around the neck and in emergencies inflated either by popping a CO2 driven actuator or by inflating them by mouth through a little tube. Along with the SRK, which was made out of some sort of steel that rusted almost immediately when placed in salt water, these vests were a source of a good deal of failures on swimmer inspections.

My swim buddy was across from me as the instructors went over his equipment. In one hand he held his knife, and in the other his CO2 cartridge. The instructor peered inside the CO2 actuator and saw several grains of sand. When you spend the better part of your day soaking wet and covered head to toe in sand, it's pretty tricky to keep the stuff out of your hair, your ears and your equipment. But that's the point.

"Are you fucking kidding me? So you're gonna go ahead and bee bop your way into the fucking ocean with your lifesaving equipment clogged with fucking sand? You didn't bother to check this before you came out here? Attention to detail! Drop on down."

With that my swim buddy dropped into the pushup position, and I along with him. Down the ranks men were being dropped for similar violations: Knives that weren't sharp enough or had a spot of rust, a twist in the strap of a UDT vest, the wrong type of knot tied in the little string that pulled their actuator.

You've got a lot going on as a student going through BUD/S or SWCC. The mental and physical stress is probably tough to match anywhere in the world outside of other special ops selection phases. Despite this, one of the concepts which is hammered into you is attention to detail. Even though you got two hours of sleep the night before, have already ran seven or eight miles in boots and fatigues, just spent an hour or two in a "beatdown" of calisthenics in loose sand mixed with sprints in and out of the ocean, there are countless small details regarding your uniform, your equipment and military protocols that must be adhered to.

There is no acceptable excuse for a failure to meet these standards and in the middle of all the chaos and fatigue, one must always be conscious of the condition of his gear, his swim buddy (who can never be more than six feet away), and his self.

Right around this time period, about an hour's drive up the coast, my friend and now business partner Marshall was going through Marine Scout Sniper School.

Scout Sniper selection is a process of similar brutality as the Naval Special Warfare schools, and because of the importance of observation and attention to detail in the sniper profession, Marshall's training had some even more interesting components.

They would be on the range shooting for a marksmanship qual when the instructors would approach, dump buckets of water over them, cover them with dirt and rocks, twist all of the dials on their scope adjustments and then tell them that they had 30 seconds to hit their target. After taking their shot, they would be ordered to grab all their gear and get the hell out of there as fast as possible, running several miles to a new location.

At this new location, after another round of burpees, mountain climbers and being covered in mud, a tarp would be lifted off the ground. Under the tarp would be a random assortment of objects one might find on a battlefield. The Marines would have another 30 seconds to memorize every detail they could before it was all covered back up.

Anywhere from 20 minutes to two weeks later, the Marines would be required to recall everything they had observed under the tarp, describing in detail its position and condition.

The end result in either Marine or Naval Special Ops is that those who are capable of paying attention to small details under fatigue, stress and states of utter confusion will graduate and maintain this mentality.

Later on during deployments, despite incredible fatigue and chaotic conditions, their weapon will always be cleaned and well maintained, they will at any time be able to reflexively state the condition of their weapon, whether a round is chambered, whether the safety is on or not and how much ammo is remaining. They will have every essential piece of op gear on them in good condition, they will know the location and status of every person around them and their eyes will constantly be scanning for targets, threats and anomalies. The mind becomes a constant catalogue of small details, paying intense attention to every variable present in the moment.

Now, as a civilian, this concept of attention has become something I consider more and more frequently. Attention is a rare state, and it's value as an operator in Special Operations is, although, not generally due to reasons of life and death or keeping sand out of your ears, still applicable as a civilian in day to day life.

Think back to moments in your life in which you were totally happy and fulfilled. Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi called it flow, and defined it as the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing via a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Take a moment and fully contemplate the meaning of those words. Full immersion and full involvement. This is attention. A state of being conscious of every detail as it flows past.

The most rewarding moments in our lives often come from our ability to maintain full attention during simple, day to day activities. Think about the last time you shared a two-hour dinner and wine with friends and family. For one, how long has it been since you did that? Second, was your attention fully focused on that moment, or were you off somewhere else checking your blackberry, thinking about tomorrow's day at the office and wondering which way the interest rates were going to go?

When you're at work, do you stay focused intently on your job, or are you distracted by the fact that you're bored and unsatisfied with life, that you feel like you're losing touch with your spouse, your children no longer confide in you and time spent with your friends has begun to feel more a matter of protocol than actual enjoyment?

When we're only partially involved in life's moments because of an inability to focus, we're never really there. We don't work as well, we don't play as well and our friendships are less fulfilling.

Whatever it is you're doing, try to put yourself in the frame of mind that what you're involved in at that moment is the only thing in life that matters. Other avenues will be addressed at their time. When you're at work, work will be focused on. Next time you're having dinner with a friend, imagine that at any moment a very angry person with a bucket of water, a shovelful of sand and the ability and desire to physically torture you is going to be spontaneously quizzing you on every aspect of the experience.

What was your friend just talking about, what was their facial expression, or their state of mind? What are they wearing and what have they been doing today? If you're in a restaurant, what's around you? People? How many? Who are they? Men, women, a guy drinking too much who may be looking for trouble? Where is he sitting and is he facing you? Where are the exits to the building? Is there music playing in the background? What about the food, are you enjoying it? Can you even taste the wine you're drinking?

This level of immersion should also be applied to the times in which you're expressing your body. When you work out, forget everything else. Put down the magazine, ignore the tv and feel your heart pound blood through your body. Feel your muscles contracting and become aware of what they're doing. Are you retracting your scapulae on your pullups or just pulling your arms back and wrecking your shoulders? The mortgage and your emails can wait. They are not here right now.

What do you really know about your body, and what happens to your mind when it is tested? Try to find your breaking point, and once you realize how far away that is, pay attention to what your body is doing. Can you still maintain strong posture and good technique even though you're almost dizzy with pain and fatigue? Attention to detail: Is your weight on your hips during that squat, or are you breaking down and pitching stress forward onto your knees and lower back? Think about that pain. Stop avoiding it like those dead people do and break it down for what it is. Does it control you?

When you perform that way in a workout, you will walk away with a feeling of fulfillment, of control and satisfaction. If you finish and were really only half involved the whole time, your state of mind will reflect that: Half satisfied. Make your choice.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

It's My Fault

Focus on what you can control

"Why does no one admit his failings? Because he's still deep in them. It's the person who's awakened who recounts his dream, and acknowledging one's failings is a sign of health." Seneca – Letters from a Stoic

The conditions of any interaction between oneself and another can be broken down into two categories: Their actions and yours. You can only control the latter.

Something that I have been working on is upon every negative thing that comes up in my life; when a relationship goes poorly, when a workout doesn't go well, when an article gets kicked back from an editor with the words "total re-write," I stop myself mentally from tumbling into anger, excuses or resentment. (I mean really, how does someone survive long enough into adulthood to come into my gym and strike themselves with a sledgehammer?)

One has the capability to control the impact of outside elements, including other people, by developing a sense for ascertaining each person or things unique temperament. From that basis one may predict future behavior and either steer interactions in a favorable direction or choose not to allow into ones life those whom would affect it negatively. Those things still fall into the category of your own actions.

This applies to situations in any avenue of life, not just interpersonal. Business ventures, driving in heavy traffic, your training in the gym, etc. Life.

When something happens that leads me to feel that angered, blaming sentiment rise up, I mentally halt myself and say something to the effect of "Shut up. Stop what you're doing." I pause for a few heartbeats to accept this and then mentally say to myself, "It's my fault."

I then break down every indication over the course of the event which I should have taken as a sign of eventual failure. It doesn't really matter what the other person did. If my workout sucked or a client doesn't do what I want them to in a workout, I should have been able to read the signs or predict and counter the negative factors in the workout or their behavior.

If I'm sitting on the floor after a workout feeling physically awful, I disregard the urge to blame the lack of sleep, the missed meals, dehydration, the time off or the lack of equipment. These are all things I could have controlled and better accounted for. It's my responsibility to make it better.

I remember driving once with a girl who, up until that moment, had been the most serious romantic relationship of my life. It was over, and I was still in that tachypsychic slow motion is-this-really-happening state that also accompanies things like car wrecks, unexpected gunfire or flipping over the handlebars of a downhill mountain bike into a boulder.

I stopped myself mentally, took a few moments to examine the feelings (something that I developed in SOF selection; rather than mentally avoiding pain, analyzing it to a minute level in order to deconstruct it) and asked her to hurt me. I wanted her to criticize everything about me since the start of the relationship.

She laughed. "Seriously? You want to hear this?"

"Yes. Pretend that either I don't have feelings or that I do and you really want to hurt them."

"You know that I do, right?"

"I'm aware."

"Ok then…"

After mentally annotating that little list, I spent the rest of the drive going over every indication that I should have seen months earlier to know that it was going to fail and trying to figure out what possessed me to keep going with it anyway.

This seems like a good way to torture oneself, and really it is, but it's also a valuable learning experience. There have been and will be other relationships and the only way to get better at them is to forget about blaming the other person, whom you cannot control, and understanding how to improve the factor that you can control: yourself.

Since starting Barefoot, I have kept a shorthand log of daily workouts. In it, I make notes on what went well that day and what went poorly. I look for at least one mistake per day; something that can be improved upon and integrated into a procedure that will eventually lead to a smoothly functioning system. This is only possible if I am capable of accepting responsibility for everything that goes wrong.

Turn this towards your own life. Consider everything around you that is not going well and take a moment to examine it from the perspective that it's your fault.

Are you out of shape? Do your workouts suck? It's your fault. Knowledge is free. So is effort. Do your workouts suck because you're not eating well, because you're just not putting yourself into them, because you're dehydrated or because your program sucks? That's your fault. Or is it because your gym sucks or your trainer sucks? That's your fault too, because you choose those things.

Understand that and you can make it better. Or, you can keep on blaming the things that you can't control and continue to wake up every day to a slightly older but otherwise unchanged self.

"On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use." - Epictetus, born a slave in 55 A.D.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Honest Dogs

Are you honest?

A number of professional fighters train at our facility in Denver. One of the fighters tends to bring his dog, an Alaskan Malamute named Cody, to the facility while they work out.

I was coaching these guys through a conditioning workout recently. The men were pushing through sprints on a prowler and Cody was meandering back and forth among the bustle.

In the world of dogsledding many dogs, when fatigued, will stop pulling with any real effort, but still keep just enough tension on their harnesses that it's hard to tell that they're no longer working hard.

There are some dogs though, that never stop digging into their harnesses with all of their strength, even under severe fatigue. These dogs are generally placed at the lead position on the harness, and are referred to as "honest dogs," a term of considerable respect.

The first thing that was impressed up on me when I started working with the fighters was the sheer effort that they put into everything they did in their workouts. They have a developed a camaraderie that revolves around physical intensity and the sort of mutual respect that comes from shared suffering. It's an atmosphere that I've missed a good deal since leaving the world of military special operations.

It occurred to me while watching them grind out the prowler sprints, with Cody alongside providing moral support, that the reason they've made it to the upper echelons of the fighting world is that they share the same traits as the sled dogs that earn the place in the lead harness position; the honest dogs. They never stop putting out, even when their bodies are wracked with exhaustion.

They could easily slack off a little on the prowler; push it a little slower or turn it around a bit early and pretend they didn't notice, but they don't. They're honest, too.

Take a moment and consider how this applies to your daily activities. Whether it's at work, while spending time with your family or grinding out the last set of pullups at the gym, you are the only person who's truly going to know if you are putting yourself entirely into that activity or if you're really only doing just enough to appear that way.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)

Simplicity

Is this what one used to dread?

"Once you have rid yourself of the affliction there though, every change of scene will become a pleasure. You may be banished to the ends of the earth, and yet in whatever outlandish corner of the world you may find yourself stationed, you will find that place, whatever it may be like, a hospitable home. Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there." – Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

Eleven years ago on this little island, a wealthy local mayor started construction on a large mansion. The mansion was constructed entirely of concrete, three stories high, set amongst a coconut-palm tree grove and overlooking the ocean.

Halfway through construction, the mayor died. The mansion now sits unfinished in the care of the mayor’s niece, slowly crumbling apart. Looters have destroyed anything that wasn’t solidly nailed down, and all the out-buildings and quarters for the guards and servants are roofless and falling down. There is no running water or electricity, and the towering gray citadel is without the luxury of doors or windows.

We called it Castle Grayskull, and for a while, it was home.

A few weeks prior to the castle, we were at our usual base. Some Army Colonel had dropped by for a visit and a meeting. He told us that it was crucial that we have guys on this particular island and he didn’t care if we did it naked in a canoe and armed with a butter knife, as long as we got out there.

Paparazzi (Obviously, none of these names are real) and I got to talking about this. Apparently, we didn’t even need the RIB’s to operate out there. We just needed anything that floated long enough for us to interact with the locals and conduct surveillance and reconnaissance. We had these two little indigenous wooden boats, called bancas, which were purchased locally.

“So, the two of us could take the bancas out there, live on the island and get all these ops done?”

We called it “Operation Butter Knife.”

This was really an excuse to get away from our chain of command and take a little vacation. We figured that an hour or two a day could be used taking all the stupid little pictures the Army wanted, and the rest of it could be spent snorkeling, spear-fishing, napping in our hammocks and otherwise serving our country.

Our Chief loved the idea and was impressed with our initiative, probably because we left out the 90 minutes of work followed by a nap part.

We had created a monster. The op was pushed all the way up the chain of command and came back with an hourly schedule and the usual bureaucratic nonsense. Wednesday night we were given notice that the op was to go through and that we would be leaving Friday on a civilian cargo barge, which would drop us off near the island.

In this amount of time we had to create communications plans, do the weapons and intel-equipment loadouts, conduct gear checks, briefly train the people who would be handling our jobs in our absence, and amass all the stuff we would need to live for about two weeks.

The first thing Paparazzi and I packed was snorkel gear and flip flops.

The trip on the barge took 14 hours. We slept around our gear on the deck of the barge, occasionally being accosted by new and interesting smells emanating from the internal holds of the ship. At one point in the night, I was woken up by the feeling of the ship making a change in course, and looked up at the railing near my head to see the mast of a boat passing by us, coming within a few feet of collision. I slept on a cot, while Paparazzi strung up his hammock near the wall on the edge of the barge. I slept fine on my cot, but the hammock caused Paparazzi some difficulty once the ship hit rolling seas. At about two in the morning, his hammock started swinging, knocking him into the wall with each roll of the ship. Bong… bong… bong…

We arrived at the island the next morning and we dropped the banca boat in the water and headed towards Grayskull.

Four or five SEALs, whom we refer to as team guys, had moved into Grayskull a few weeks ago, and were to be our new chain of command. Apparently, they had been notified of our arrival only the day before.

We were met by the team guy’s LPO (the guy who's kind of in charge), who gave us a quick brief on the house and surrounding property and showed us the rooms we would be staying in. A few minutes later, we were called to the second floor to meet with the OIC (the guy who's in charge).

The OIC told us that the brass back at base had no idea what was really going on at the island. Our being out on the water could potentially scare off several targets they had been monitoring over the past several weeks and endanger the ops they had been planning around those targets. The banca boat would not be used by any American personnel, though he would probably be able to loan it to his Filipino Forces and get use out of it that way. He would task us with a mission once it came up, and until then we would just be working in with them and hanging out.

I could not have been happier. Operation Butter Knife was going perfectly.

Paparazzi and I settled into our room and began working with the team guys around the castle.

The only food at the castle was what you brought with you, which consisted mainly of MRE’s and protein powder. I’m not a huge fan of MRE’s, so I brought a backpack full of protein powder, oatmeal, greens powder and some supplements. Occasionally, we got food from the Filipino Marines who live in the other shacks on the compound. A common offering was sautéed bat adobo. The bats were quite large, and the Filipinos would shoot them with a pellet gun and make dinner out of them. The meat was actually pretty good, but each piece of meat was contained within a mess of little bones and connective tissue, which made it not really worth the work of eating it.

We also brought about 20 cases of bottled water with us, which were to serve not only as our only drinking water, but also as our means of showering.

It takes about five bottles of water to take a shower, or three, if, as in Paparazzi’s case, you only tend to the “problem areas.” This system was working out well enough for us, but by the second day we had decided that it was time to develop some better methods. If the good folks on Gilligan’s Island could make a radio out of a coconut, we could figure out a shower.

Working with one of the team guys, we placed a 35-gallon plastic garbage can on the roof of the castle. We cut a hole in the lid, and ran a hose with a nozzle down to the ground. By siphoning the water, and pressurizing it with the three story drop, we managed a flow of water with just as much pressure as one would find in a house with actual plumbing. The only catch was that the barrels had to be filled daily with water from a well. This was done by dipping a bucket tied to a bamboo pole into the narrow well, then dumping it into a barrel in the back of a pickup. The water was trucked below the barrel on the roof, and raised by way of another bucket tied to a rope. We worked on devising a pulley system made out of bamboo and coconut shells, but the plans never made it out of the theoretical stage.

Our room was on the first floor, and was one of the few in the building with tiled floors instead of bare concrete. The room occupied by Paparazzi and I was about ten by fifteen feet, and featured large, open, arched windows on two sides. Between these windows and the door frame we strung our hammocks. We shared the room with eleven spiders and two geckos. On the first day, we killed a large spider that was traversing the floor and left its remains on display as a warning to the others. From then on, we maintained a loose peace agreement with the remaining eleven and they remained on the ceiling where they were free to stay and catch bugs. Roll call of the spiders was conducted regularly and for the rest of our stay we had no further violations of the treaty.

There was an excellent gym, considering the circumstances, and in order to enter the house one would walk through it and past the large bamboo and palm leaf sign with the words: “Jungle Gym.”

The team guys had a projector which could be connected to a laptop, and each night, as long as the generator was running, we pointed the projector at a large concrete wall on the second story and watched a movie.

All trash had to be collected and taken to a pit where it was doused in gasoline and ignited with a magnesium pencil flare. The team guys were able to solve most problems with the application of some sort of pyrotechnics, a tendency which I found quite endearing.

The bathroom was another adventure. The concept of toilets has never quite caught on in the Philippines, so the bathroom consisted of a hole in the ground inside a little shack. The team guys had already placed a toilet seat on top of an ammo box, which eliminated the necessity of developing good technique in the maneuver known as “The Third World Squat.” Flushing was done by dipping a coffee can into a barrel of rainwater and dumping it down the hole. I recently finished reading a book about a guy stuck for many years in a Thai prison, and after being inside that shack, I no longer have to wonder what his accommodations were like.

There is a clearing of grass next to the castle which is used as a helicopter landing pad. At the end of this clearing is a pair of tree stumps that needed to be removed. This could be accomplished in a variety of ways. A chainsaw seemed most efficient. Burning them was also a viable option. The team guys, however, had a better idea, which proved not only quite entertaining, but also educational, and we spent an afternoon removing the stumps with almost four pounds of C4 plastic explosive.

There was also a large, thick, leafy bush that needed to be removed, and we started making future plans for its removal.

“Ok, so we can fill a bunch of condoms full of gasoline, throw them in the bush, wrap it in det-cord, then throw some C4, connected to the det-cord, in the middle.”

We presented this idea to the OIC.

“Can’t you just use a weed-eater?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“We’re gonna do that. No demo. Jesus.”

About a mile offshore were two large mooring buoys which we had placed recently for our boats. Each buoy was a large cylinder, about four feet in diameter and maybe six feet high. They sat about halfway out of the water. We swam out to them occasionally for a workout, and on days when we have too much time on our hands, we invented another sport: Buoy Climbing.

As it turns out, getting on top of one of these buoys is next to impossible. If one person grabs a side and tries to pull himself up, the buoy immediately flips over on top of him, flinging him back into the ocean. If another person holds the buoy down on the other side, then the first person will generally make it almost on top of the buoy before it spins in place and smacks him back down into the water.

With enough coordination and the proper timing, sometimes the first person makes it on top of the buoy, but this is almost always short-lived, as the person will then overcompensate by moving too far to the other side. This is a fun one to watch. The guy attempting to climb the buoy will suddenly find himself triumphantly on top, and for a brief moment he will consider himself “King of the Buoy” and let out a joyous whoop of victory. It is at this point that the buoy will reach an upright position and then keep right on going to the other side. Picture the movement of one of those little horsey things on a playground that sits on a giant spring, but about six feet tall.

The expression of elation on the man’s face would quickly be replaced by one of impending doom, and the buoy would continue its swing, pushing the second guy underwater and crashing the first directly on top of him, creating a satisfyingly large spray of water. Occasionally, this would all occur while the rider was still in the middle of his victory yell, and the sound of it being cut short by the impact of the water was always amusing to the spectators.

Somewhere towards the end of our stay there, before we had to return to a life of non-stop sleepless nights and back to back operations on the water, I wrote this in a letter to a friend:

"I’m writing this from my hammock inside Castle Grayskull. Out here, I don’t wear a watch, I don’t carry a cell phone, and my wallet is sitting useless in my backpack. I’m not even sure what day it is. I’ve read three books in the past week, and written one story. I haven’t had a hot shower in several months. I’m bitten by an interesting and sometimes mysterious variety of insects each day. My meals are either cold MRE’s, protein shakes, or the occasional luxury of tuna fish packets or granola bars and jerky sent from home. Every once in a while I have some local food from the Filipino Marines around here. All the clothes I have out here fit easily in a compartment of my backpack, and I seldom wear more than board shorts and flip flops. I work out every day, do a lot of stretching, and usually go for a swim in the ocean.

I have not felt this happy or at ease in years. I have to go back to our usual base in a few days, and the ops we’ll be doing then, and some of the people I’ll be working with, are going to suck. Nonetheless, I feel like years of stress are being melted out of my body. Before I came out on deployment, I wrote about how tired I was of the lifestyle in California. I wanted to be free of commuting, traffic, cable television and shopping malls. Now, I am, and it’s great.

I suppose that I’ll be ready to go back when I have to, but I’m really in no hurry. I look forward to the things in the states that I can’t do here. I miss climbing, mountain biking, camping and training at the MMA gym I go to. I want to spend some time with my family. I hope that when I get back I’ll be able to maintain a level of simplicity in my life that will keep me happy."

Happiness is an odd thing. We humans, and I think Americans in particular, are not terribly good at figuring out how to attain it. Numerous studies done by men like Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert have found that happiness only correlates with financial status up to the poverty line. Beyond that, the ultra rich show the same level of objectively measured happiness as anyone else.

For that brief time before the reality of military life swooped back in, we lived at the castle in circumstances that most people would describe as squalor, and yet I look back on it as one of the most enjoyable times of my military career.

Despite this, money, the corporate ladder, working to afford a bigger mortgage and more car payments and accumulating possessions and material comforts takes up the majority of our time. It's like we're not even happy in the rat race. We want to run in the rat race with the newest, most expensive running shoes we can find, and most of us fail to ever stop and look around and wonder why it is we're really doing it.

I moved to Denver recently, in order to build out our new facility here and get Barefoot Denver running, and got an apartment.

I came here with a duffel bag and a few odds and ends. I've got my Ipod, a little Bose speaker for it, a pan, three knives, three forks, a nalgene, a bed, a can opener and a spatula. I don't own a TV, I don't have internet and it seems that all my neighbors are clever enough to put passwords on their wireless routers.

In the evenings after I get done at the facility, I come home, put music on and make dinner; which I either eat out of the pan or dump into a Tupperware container since I don't have plates yet. I don't have a lamp in my room yet either, so if I go in there I use a headlamp. It's like camping.

Then I sit on my floor in the living room, against the wall with my pillow behind my back, listen to music and read or write until it's time to sleep.

During the day, I write down everything I need to accomplish online and spend about two hours at a coffee shop in my neighborhood. This forces me be efficient in my time there, because if you're sitting in public with your laptop, you tend to feel kind of silly if all you're doing is goofing around on Failblog. So I finish my checklist and for the rest of the day I'm disconnected electronically.

This level of simplicity is relaxing, and I feel that I can accomplish far more. By starkly dividing my time working online from working at the facility and from the rest of the day, I lose the tendency to constantly "snack" throughout the day on random internet forays and instead have dedicated work time or dedicated relaxation time. Either one is more productive.

It's still a far cry from Castle Gray Skull and within a few weeks I'll have furniture, internet and probably even a lamp, but it's been a nice reminder of how much of what we take for granted in life can actually just serve as mental and physical clutter.

Seneca also wrote in a letter to a friend, "Still, my determination to put your moral strength of purpose to the test is such that I propose to give even you the following direction found in great men's teaching: set aside now and then a number of days which you will be content with the plainest of food, and very little of it, and with rough, course clothing, and will ask yourself, 'is this what one used to dread?"

Consider this for a moment and look around at all the comfort and clutter you surround yourself with. How much of it do you really use on a regular basis? What would you do if it was all taken away?

We spend so much time working to accumulate all this stuff when it may not even make us any happier than we would be without it, and it's quite possible that the toiling we have to do in order to afford it all takes us away from experiences that would be much more fulfilling.

Self-imposed simplicity is a worthwhile exercise. Think of some sort of material comfort that you use regularly and feel dependant on and exercise control over it. Do you check your email every ten minutes, or leave your tv on all day? Try unplugging your tv for a week, or set a timer and only allow yourself one hour of time online each day. Disconnect your modem the rest of the time and turn off the internet feature on your blackberry.

When you check your email after two or three days and realize that you can go through all of your email in about fifteen minutes, you'll really start to wonder what the rest of that time was for.

Learn to enjoy the real world, physically. That time you won't be spending watching reruns and looking up videos of fat kids falling down on Youtube can now be spent trying something new and finding out what your body is capable of. Rent a pair of snowshoes, join a friend on a hike, or spend an hour staring at a cloud with the sun on your face and reconnect with the world inside your own thoughts without sedating yourself with the narcotic effect of television.

Once you do, post your experience here and let me know how it went.

(To read and post comments for this entry, visit http://barefootfts.com/)