TACFIT

Blog

How do you stay consistent?

Posted On: 8th August 2023 | In: Coach Spotlight | By:

By Scott Sonnon, TACFIT Founder.

People often ask how to stay consistent in the practice of physical exercise (or healthy nutrition, proper sleep, illness recovery, or injury rehabilitation. You can have a great program and great tools, but if your goals aren’t high enough, you become inconsistent, and eventually stop for any number of rational reasons. If your goals are high enough, nothing can ever stop you.

Big goals are often lauded, but sometimes, small, consistent goals are better than large, audacious goals. However, high goals are different from big goals. High goals regard how high you aim: your higher purpose (or telos). If your aim is too low, you will not be able to remain consistent during difficult, busy, or stressful times, but if your aim is high enough, you will remain consistent regardless of how chaotic and uncertain life becomes. 

Low goals involve immediate results: body fat percentage, weight lifted, energy gained, or appearance changed, as examples. Once you achieve these goals, you often feel unsatisfied. In some cases, you feel let down because you thought they should make you ‘happy.’ Low goals may give you temporary pleasure, but not the lasting fulfilment that keeps you consistent.

High goals take time and often are not quantifiable. Examples include being a good role model, being an accountability partner, not letting down your team, or showing up for your family and friends with energy, enthusiasm, and vitality. High goals involve committing effort for others, rather than achievements for yourself.

When you are alone, when no one can see you or know what you are doing, what will you do? Will you skip your workout (or skip recovery and do a workout when you should not)? Will you grab the sugary snack? Will you indulge whim instead of quietly working hard when no one is watching? 

High goals remind you that every choice you make comes with responsibility to those ‘others’ that your high goals target. You are never alone. Like a teacher once said to me, you do not step on the mat alone; behind you lies a legion: everyone you love and everyone who loves you. You have a duty to your self-defined high goals, and as a result, a duty to those included in those high goals.

It is easy to rationalize away the time to take care of yourself, to devote it to things for others: like more time at work, more tasks around the house, more projects to be completed, or spending all available time with your friends and family. You become a martyr to your rationalization. However, are you bringing your best to them for them?

If you are doing something for your friends, family, and community, what inspires them to endure chaos and uncertainty in their own lives without falling off, becoming inconsistent, and losing their own vitality? You. Your embodiment inspires them. You are a role model for those you care for and who care for you. Doing ‘more’ for them at the cost of your own health and wellness, by skipping your practice or indulging on whim, may appear to give them more time, money, or presence, but it robs them of the character virtue that we all need when facing life’s challenges: a role model for consistent, daily discipline.

Set your goals high enough that they subordinate all your low, achievable goals. Who are you doing this for, really? When you achieve one low goal, why ought you continue to be consistent? When life intervenes with an eruption of chaos and uncertainty, rather than throw away all your practice, why ought you cling more tenaciously to your daily discipline of healthy behaviors? How do you self-define your duty such that you cannot ever be derelict to the pursuit toward your high goals?

None of us are great at these things. We all fall short and miss the mark. That does not mean that we should not pursue high goals. As Haridas Chaudhuri guided: “The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes” (Shirazi, 2018). Nonetheless, that high aim will keep you moving, mile by mile in stable, predictable times, and inch by inch during the chaotic, uncertain moments that cause us to sacrifice the very behaviors that propelled us forward in the past.

REFERENCES

Shirazi, B. (2018). Haridas Chaudhuri’s Contributions to Integral Psychology. The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 37(1). https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2018.37.1.55 

Optimal Breathing Patterns

Posted On: 28th July 2023 | In: Coach Spotlight | By:

By Scott Sonnon.

Optimal breathing patterns are those that promote efficient oxygen exchange, support relaxation and stress reduction, and enhance overall physical and mental well-being. Here are some key characteristics of optimal breathing patterns:

  1. Diaphragmatic Breathing: Optimal breathing involves utilizing the diaphragm, a dome-shaped muscle located beneath the lungs, to draw in breaths deeply and fully. This type of breathing allows for maximum oxygen intake and promotes relaxation. Tight abdominal muscles, fixed seated positions, poor posture, and even poor technique in physical exercise and sports dysfunctionalize diaphragmatic breathing and can lead to overuse of accessory torso (or “chest”) breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing can also be impaired by pregnancy, nausea, and abdominal surgery.
  2. Slow and Controlled Breathing: Optimal breathing patterns involve slow and controlled breaths, allowing for a balanced exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. This can help regulate heart rate, blood pressure, and stress levels. Slow breathing can be characterized as breathing rates of 6-12 breaths per minute. Stress, anxiety, higher carbohydrate intake, poor air quality, sleep disruption, and excessive mouth breathing can lead to higher breathing rates.
  3. Nasal Breathing: Breathing through the nose, rather than the mouth, is considered optimal as it filters, warms, and humidifies the air before it reaches the lungs. Nasal breathing also promotes better oxygen uptake and helps maintain a balanced breathing rhythm. Although oral breathing is a ‘back up plan’ for when nasal breathing is distressed (such as with allergies, poor air quality, and congestion), breathing through the nose releases the body’s natural anti-viral nitric oxide (NO). NO opens the airways (bronchodilator) and the vascular network (vasodilator) for improving breathing and oxygen delivery.
  4. Balanced Inhalation and Exhalation: Optimal breathing involves a balanced ratio between inhalation and exhalation. This balance ensures efficient exchange of gases and helps maintain proper oxygen-carbon dioxide levels in the body. Exhaling in less than one second as a “puff” does not give sufficient time to scrub off carbon dioxide in the lungs. Gasping inhales do not allow sufficient filling of the lungs and over-rely on the air sacs (alveoli) in the upper portions of the lungs which are less diffusible and more fibrous and from the pooling of pulmonary blood flow to the lower portions of the lungs due to gravity, do not exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide well.
  5. Coordinated Breathing with Movement: Optimal breathing is synchronized with movement, allowing for enhanced performance, coordination, and energy efficiency during physical activities. This is a very large discipline requiring education and training, as there must be a proper “biomechanical” match between a movement and breathing. Either the breath has to be matched with the compression of the lungs causing exhale (like folding over in a seated position) and the expansion of the lungs causing inhale (like standing and raising hands overhead), or the breath has to be matched to the effort phase of the movement (like exhale on hitting a tennis ball, or inhale to prepare to lift a very heavy weight).
  6. Mindful Breathing: Optimal breathing patterns often involve being present and mindful of the breath, focusing on the sensations and rhythm of inhalation and exhalation. This can help reduce stress, improve mental clarity, and promote a sense of calm. Nearly half of stress regulation, attentional stamina, and calmness are accomplished merely by paying attention to what breathing sensations feel like. The brainstem centers for breathing automatically optimize breathing patterns if we pay attention to these breathing sensations. However, stress, anxiety, hyper focus, and extended concentration cause us to deprioritize optimal breathing patterns for the urgency of diverting resources to perceived crises and urgent tasks.

It’s important to note that optimal breathing patterns may vary depending on the activity, context, and individual needs. Techniques such as breath control exercises, breath awareness, and breathwork practices can be utilized to develop and maintain optimal breathing patterns.

As an advocate for optimal health and well-being, I emphasize the importance of understanding and practicing optimal breathing techniques to enhance physical performance, reduce stress, and support overall vitality.

The 4 Day Wave of Optimal Workout Intensity through Heart Rate Monitoring By Scott B. Sonnon

Posted On: 29th June 2023 | In: Coach Spotlight | By:

Monitor your pulse rate to know the intensity level of physical exercise and how to change that intensity to match your intended goals. Despite that wearable sensors for physical exercise have become widespread, not everyone reviews the literature on methods. If you are new to using pulse for fitness, this primer explains the basic rationale for optimal use. If you have been struggling to achieve optimal fitness results, then a (re)visit to your target intensity zones may help and will only involve that you do some simple math below.

Heart rate monitoring is a widely accepted method for assessing the intensity of your physical exercise. As your intensity level increases, your heart beats faster, reflected in a higher pulse in beats per minute (bpm). Monitoring and adjusting your heart rate allow you to match the intensity level of your workout to your desired outcomes. 

The simplest way to link your pulse rate to your goals is to factor your heart rate maximum (HRmax) percentage. Though variable to individualized differences in people, the most basic HRmax method uses the formula of 220 minus your age (Riebe, 2008). For example, at 40 years old, 100% of HRmax is 180bpm; 50% of that HRmax would then be 90bpm.

HRmax percentages can be used to target your exercise intensity level through zones (Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee, 2008). Take a moment to write these zones for yourself. First, factor your age subtracted from 220. That number is the beats per minute of 100% of your heart rate maximum (or your 100%HRmax). 

Next, create a simple chart for yourself:

Low intensity exercise zone is less than 64% HRmax. For your low intensity workout range, multiple that number by 0.64. Everything one bpm lower than that number is low intensity exercise. 

  • Moderate intensity zone is 64-76% HRmax. Multiple your 100% HRmax by 0.76. Everything between the result of your 64% HRmax (above) and this next number, 76% HRmax, is your moderate intensity exercise.
  • High intensity zone is greater than 77% HRmax. Everything one bpm higher than the result of your 100% HRmax multiplied by 0.76 is your high intensity exercise zone. 

This training intensity distribution can form a schedule if you consider evidence on how much of exercise should be spent in each of these zones. Contrary to the attitudes of unsuccessful athletes (that more intensity is always better), elite athletes spend three quarters or more of their training time at low to moderate intensity exercise, and only approximately a quarter of their training time at high intensity levels (Stöggl & Sperlich, 2015). John Wagle (2017), now the head performance coach of the Kansas City Royals, further explains adaptation to high intensity exercise requires three days, which Dr. Wagle describes as “surfing the intensity curve” (p.52). 

So, essentially, your training intensity distribution becomes a wave to surf. The bulk of your time is spent below high intensity exercise. The most frequently you go high intensity is once every four days. This 4-day wave incorporates a low intensity day, moderate intensity day, a high intensity day, and then a day of no intensity to optimally recover. 

Physical exercise is a stress to the body that requires time to positively adapt. Train too intensely, too often, and the reverse happens: positive stress becomes negative. Negative stress can compromise the system. Since your body cannot tell the difference between stress, if your day is highly emotionally, mentally, physically, socially, financially, or occupationally stressful, you may need to downshift to a lesser intensity workout. The clinical rule of thumb is, to positively adapt to your exercise, the more stressful your day, the lighter your workout should be (Chaitow & Gilbert, 2013).

Recovery is based on how well you adapt to physical exercise during sleep. So, also consider researching how to monitor sleep to know specifically how your body has adapted to the prior days of exercise. Your sleep biometrics inform the intensity of exercise you are ready to perform that day.

Tracking your heart rate during exercise can be a valuable method for optimizing your workout selection and performance. A little math can help you target the selection and adjustment of your exercise to match your optimal adaptation. Wearable monitors can help, but even knowing how to find your pulse with your fingers to your neck to check your heart rate will allow you to adjust your workout while you are performing it: slowing down when your heart rate is too high and ramping up if your heart rate is too low. Since positively adapting to your workout is required to achieve the results you want, consider a training wave of different intensity days. Evidence suggests a four-day wave of no, low, moderate, and high intensity days.

REFERENCES

Chaitow, L. & Gilbert, C. (2013) Recognizing and Treating Breathing Disorders: A Multidisciplinary Approach 2nd Edition. Churchill Livingstone. 8-9 

DeWeese B., Wagle, J., & Bingham, G. (2017). Let the rhythm hit them: Adjusting the tempo to skillfully surf the intensity curve. Techniques, 10(4). 52-59. 

Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee. (2008). Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee Report, 2008. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services. Washington, DC.

Riebe, D., et al. (2008). General Principles of Exercise Prescription. ACSM’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription. 10th Ed. Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 143-179.

Stöggl, T. L., & Sperlich, B. (2015). The training intensity distribution among well-trained and elite endurance athletes. Frontiers in Physiology, 6, 295. 

Movement Motivation

Posted On: 11th June 2023 | In: Health and Fitness and Scott Sonnon | By:


Sedentary lifestyle decreases motivation. Sedentary derives from the Latin root sedere, which means “to sit.” There are mechanical, neural, and chemical reasons that sitting decreases
motivation. This article discusses a chemical input for sitting-induced decreases in motivation, and then proposes a known solution for increasing motivation by dosing mobility.When you sit for extended periods of time, muscles turn off due to lack of necessity.
The brain abhors waste, so it conserves energy whenever possible. When the brain detects muscles are not needed, it decreases muscle activation. We experience this in terms of lower energy levels, but decreased energy is not the same as decreased motivation. Understanding this requires a bit of science.Sitting reduces mobility. When you lose mobility you have, the brain blunts your awareness of options to move into an area where you are restricted or tight. This is a known phenomenon called the perception-action cycle (Tran, Smith, & Buschkeuhl, 2017).
Imagine that your body is tight after a 17-hour flight from Miami to Johannesburg.
You land and walk down the jet bridge, bumping into unmoving walls, fumbling with an easy backpack, and tripping over an entirely flat surface. The tightness of your long-haul has led to diminished mobility. To protect against injuring yourself, your brain has reduced tens of
thousands of unconscious micro-decisions while walking, leading decreased perception of options to move, which you experience as uncoordination. As all that you did in flight was watch movies and sleep, why do you arrive at the hotel with no motivation to explore the city
that afternoon?Renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, the physicist responsible for 90% of brain imaging technology, presented motivation as an index for reduced uncertainty (Friston, 2023). What do we do every day that increases uncertainty? We sit for hours scraping with our thumbs on a glass screen or rhythmically banging plastic buttons staring at a window of dancing lights.
Your body grows tight, and your brain knows how dangerous this is.
If you are immobile, your brain chemically signals unreadiness for action. Blunted of options to move, it knows that difficult actions will likely lead to injury, so it reduces motivation by decreasing dopamine levels. Imagine being tight, and you need to dodge cars running across a busy 8 lane highway. You will strongly lack the motivation to endanger yourself because your brain detects your immobility. Fortunately, the reverse is also true.Increasing mobility switches off the blunted perception-action loop, which increases your brain’s ability to forecast your potential actions with relative certainty. With the ability to predict energy and output estimates, your brain feels more confident in your ability to handle
tasks, including recreational activities, like biking, jiujitsu, hiking, playing with your dog or gardening. Restoring mobility increases motivation.
Much like my grandmother used to say: “the appetite comes with the appetizer.” A little movement expands the perception-action loop, increasing motivation.
Maybe that is all that you do for the day, just a few minutes of mobility. Not only will you feel better for the rest of your day, making everything feel easier and more engaging, but the next day, around a half hour before the time the day before when you did your mobility, your brain will start dripping a little dopamine in anticipation of that mobility. Motivation begins to build in drips and drabs, and every day, reinforces a little more until it becomes a habit.One day, you may have so much motivation that you may even feel like skipping the mobility and getting right to intense physical exercise. However, strength training increases muscle, but only to move in the direction you trained it. Strength training eventually makes you less mobile.

Skip mobility for a few days, and you again lose motivation to train outside of the ranges you strength train. You take fewer risks with new activities. Then, you end up getting injured by over-training those strengths. Never skip your mobility, even if only 5-10 repetitions outside of your strength training ranges for a safety valve to protect your motivation levels.In modern, sedentary lifestyles, we will lack motivation to move because we have become tight. Drip some mobility and motivation builds. Practiced a little each day, and a habit form where motivation increases before your time to move. Once you start exercising again, no matter how much motivation you have, never skip your mobility, even it is only five to ten
repetitions outside the ranges of those you exercise

.REFERENCES
Friston, K. (2022, October 20). The Dr. Jordan Peterson Podcast: Perception: Chaos and order |
Dr. Karl Friston | EP 298. [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feS1zuKz2N8
Tran, C., Smith, B., & Buschkeuhl, M. (2017). Support of mathematical thinking through embodied cognition: Nondigital and digital approaches. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2(16). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-017-0053-8		OK

Stay Consistent in Practice

Posted On: 20th May 2023 | In: Health and Fitness and Scott Sonnon | By:

Scott B. Sonnon

People often ask how to stay consistent in the practice of physical exercise ( or healthy nutrition, proper sleep, illness recovery, or injury rehabilitation. You can have a great program and great tools, but if your goals aren’t high enough, you become inconsistent, and eventually stop for any number of rational reasons. If your goals are high enough, nothing can ever stop you.

The Importance of Setting High Goals for Consistency

Big goals are often lauded, but sometimes, small, consistent goals are better than large, audacious goals. However, high goals are different from big goals. High goals regard how high you aim: your higher purpose ( or telos). If your aim is too low, you will not be able to remain consistent during difficult, busy, or stressful times, but if your aim is high enough, you will remain consistent regardless of how chaotic and uncertain life becomes.

Small, Consistent Goals vs. Large, Audacious Goals

Low goals involve immediate results: body fat percentage, wight lifted, energy gained, or appearance changed, as examples. Once you achieve these goals, you often feel unsatisfied. In some cases, you get let down because you thought they should make you “happy”. Low goals may give you temporary pleasure, but not the lasting fulfillment that keeps you consistent.

High goals take time and often are not quantifiable. Examples include being a good role model, being an accountability partner, not letting down your team, or showing up for your family and friends with energy, enthusiasm, and vitality. High goals involve committing effort for others, rather than achievements for yourself. When you are alone, when no one can see you or know what you are doing, what will you do? Will you skip your workout ( or skip recovery and do a workout when you should not)?

TACFIT - Stay Consistent in Practice

Will you grab the sugary snack? Would you indulge whim instead of quietly working hard when no one is watching?

Embracing High Goals: Commitment to Others

High goals remind you that every choice you make comes with responsibility to those ‘others’ that your high goals target. You are never alone. Like a teacher once said to me, you do not step on the mat alone; behind you lies a legion; everyone you love and everyone who loves you. You have a duty to your self-defined high goals, and as a result, a duty to those included in those high goals.

It is easy to rationalize away the time to take care of yourself, to devote it to things for others; like more time at work, more tasks around the house, more projects to be competed, or spending all available time with your friends and family. You become a martyr to your rationalization. However, are you brining your best to them for them?

The Temptation to Rationalize Away Self-Care

If you are doing something for your friends, family and community, what inspires them to endure chaos and uncertainty in their own lives without falling off, becoming inconsistent, and losing their own vitality? You. Your embodiment inspires them. You are a role model for those you care for and who care for you. Dong ‘more’ for them at the cost of your own health and wellness, by skipping your practice or indulging on whim, may appear to give them more time, money, or presence, but it robs them of the character virtue that we all need when facing life’s challenges; a role model for consistent, daily discipline.

Set your goals high enough that they subordinate all your low, achievable goals. Who are you doing this for, really? When you achieve one low goal, why ought you continue to be consistent? When life intervenes with an eruption of chaos and uncertainty, rather than throw away all your practice, why ought you cling more tenaciously to your daily discipline of healthy behaviors? How do you self-define your duty such that you cannot ever be derelict to the pursuit toward your high goals?

Embracing Imperfection on the Path to High Goals

None of us are great at these things. We all fall short and miss the mark. That does not mean that we should not pursue high goals. as Haridas Chaudhuri guided: “The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes” (Shirazi, 2018). Nonetheless, that high aim will keep you moving, mile by mile in stable, predictable times, and inch by inch during the chaotic, uncertain moments that cause us to sacrifice the very behaviors that propelled us forward in the past.

New Release Free to Move for Life out now! $99.99 (Special Launch Price!)

REFERENCES

Shirazi, B. (2018). Haridas Chaudhuri’s Contributions to Integral Psychology. The international Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 37(1).

Avoid overusing, underusing, and misusing.

Posted On: 25th September 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Even though we believe that being deconditioned (having insufficient stress, which results in movements becoming out of practice) is the only form of being unfit, there are actually two other ways that can limit our physical capacity just as much: misuse (having improper technique as a result of a fixation on effort over form), and overuse (pushing through pain of repetitive stress despite under recovered diminishing returns).

Flow, or our optimal level of fitness, is achieved when we strike a balance between putting in sufficient but not excessive effort, properly building and challenging our technique, and experiencing exertional discomfort as opposed to distressed pain. We also want to avoid overusing, underusing, and misusing our bodies.

Shoulder Mobility and Clubbells.

Posted On: 10th September 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

The following are the primary ranges of motion in the shoulder that are lost with two-dimensional training:

1. Flexion is defined as bending the joint, which results in a decrease in the angle of the joint; bringing the upper arm upward to the front; involves the Deltoid (anterior), Deltoid (lateral), Pectoralis major (clavicular head), and Coracobrachialis muscles; Biceps brachii, sometimes known as the “short head,” and,

2. Extension: Straightening the joint, which results in an increase in angle; moving the upper arm down toward the back; including the Latissimus dorsi, Deltoid (posterior), Pectoralis major (sternal head), Teres major, and Triceps brachii muscles (long head).

Because of their limited mobility, a lot of people turn to physical therapy, although this treatment might or might not be effective. However, while an injury may cause a loss of movement, decreased movement itself is not always an indication of harm.

The “Back Position” with the clubbell helps restore lost shoulder flexion and extension, in addition to transverse adduction and medial/lateral rotation on the outside of the arm. Incorporating straightforward clubbell exercises into your workout routine will help recover lost movement, which in turn leads to increased potential, decreased soreness, and increased power in two-dimensional lifts.

Use our Subscription Plan options to gain access to dozens of clubbell programs that will improve your general mobility while also increasing your strength and health.

Learn More

Optimize Your Exercise Through Correct Timing

Posted On: 26th August 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Hello Friends,

The reason that hormones are the “master switch” on your fitness success is because when you exercise at the wrong time, your body actually responds to it by increasing stress hormones, rather than switching them off. This can have disastrous effects on your fitness: you can be able to work hard, but you gain fat, and you don’t build muscle – you actually will start losing muscle and losing bone density. All of this happens because of a thief called Cortisol.

Cortisol function allows your body to respond to stress. Although stress is an important part of creating positive adaptation in your health and fitness, when it’s out of control, it diminishes your quality and quantity of life; which is why excess stress is the NUMBER ONE killer of our species with 90% of our medically-related issues originating from stress. Out of control cortisol levels can lead to inflammations, emotional stress, poor sleep quality, digestion problems, and more.

Your cortisol level “pulses” with a particular rhythm called the ultradian rhythm. It’s highest in the morning, which helps you get out of bed. It declines throughout the day, and is lowest at night, preparing you to go to quality sleep. Growth hormone is also released in cyclical fashion under the control of your waking and sleeping cycle. Small amounts of growth hormone are released periodically throughout the day, but major increases occur during the night, if you’re sleeping properly. A lack of sleep during the night can disrupt the natural growth hormone cycle and diminish gains in muscle size. So, too can exercising at the wrong time.

If you exercise at the wrong time, you increase cortisol levels. For example heavy weight lifting upon waking or HIIT in the middle of the night will wreak havoc on your fitness potential. This is because the building blocks to make cortisol are also used for the building blocks for your muscle and bone growth and even your longevity. You need progesterone to synthesize other important hormones like DHEA, your anti-aging “recovery and repair” hormone. When DHEA drops, aging accelerates! When cortisol elevates, you decrease your ability to make progesterone because the precursors of progesterone are “stolen” to make cortisol! It also means that you cannot produce sufficient growth hormone and testosterone to grow from your exercise!

Program your training to be consistent, on time, and follow that with resolve to the best of your ability day in and day out for best results.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Bad45 - Bodyweight and Dumbbells Program

Bad45 – Bodyweight and Dumbbells Program

BAD45 exploits cutting edge discoveries in exercise endocrinology, which gives you entrance into 3 CRITICAL WINDOWS for your optimal performance: the catabolic, or fat burning window, the anabolic, or muscle building window, and the metabolic, or energy enhancing window. You only need to follow the turn-key daily calendar to achieve results you haven’t been able to acc…

$139.00
Shop now

If you want to optimize your exercise, so that no matter what your current condition, you can ensure your results, we invite you to come learn more about Coach Sonnon’s BAD45 System for Hormonal Optimization!

This is a revolutionary approach to burning fat, building muscle, and enhancing your balanced energy throughout the day.

To make this system as accessible as possible to the widest range of people, Scott Sonnon designed BAD45 to use the most basic resistance training tool currently available around the world: the dumbbell, and your own bodyweight. No matter where you are, you have these inexpensive (the dumbbells) and free (your bodyweight) tools.

Practice Higher Quality Mistakes

Posted On: 11th August 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Hello Friends,

“How can I tap you every class, but at competitions you’re always taking the gold from fighters I know that I could not beat,” I asked flummoxed by my first coach’s unusual teaching style. He replied, “I’m here to learn and practice, not compete and fight. You should be, too.”

I foolishly retorted, “If that were true, then I would be doing better at competitions like you.” Smiling, he asked, “Have you been learning to win, or losing to learn? Most people get stuck with the latter – trying to not look like they’re losing – so they only ever learn FROM losing. To avoid making the process take so much longer, take risks practicing your new skills. If you want to reach new levels, you have to practice in new ways; don’t keep repeating what’s safe. Then, you really lose. Then, you only ever learn how to lose, because that’s all you’re practicing. Practice to win by allowing yourself to make higher quality mistakes.”

I laughed then, because I had always been in the slow learner category of life… And it took me many more years to realize I needed to consciously practice the necessary failures (improving tools, skills and ideas), rather than unconsciously repeating unnecessary failures (misusing, misunderstanding or misapplying tools, skills and ideas.) I had worked very hard repeating my low quality mistakes.

Henry David Thoreau cautioned, “A man may be very industrious, and yet spend his time poorly. There’s no more fatal a blunder.” I had been stuck in the mindset that if I stopped my coach from beating me, I would absorb his experience, skill and attitude. Instead, I discovered that I needed to invest all of my effort into learning the drills, not defeating them. Effort into the technique, not effort into the activity, as I came to learn in exercise.

So, placing myself in each uncomfortable and unexpected vulnerability my teachers could find, I began to allow myself to fail while attempting to improve. I stopped trying to avoid losing. The longer I am alive, the more I watch the oldest practitioners of any discipline who still seem to be learning. They’ve stopped trying to not lose. They’ve perfected the art of learning.

Practice failure rather than failing at practice; the former involves the necessary mistakes you experience when you improve, but the latter – the unnecessary, fatal blunderings of true failure.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Progress From The Center

Posted On: 5th August 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Many people find great challenge in maintaining a consistent personal practice due to their “work schedule.” When we neglect our health we commonly rationalize it by saying that we’re “too busy.” We rush around frenetically until we face a traumatic experience: a debilitating injury or a death in the family. At those times the stark reality of our precious minutes of life, of just how little time we have to be with friends and family, feels like sand grains falling through an hourglass.

I rushed through the past two decades on a sea of competitions, travels, adventures, projects, performances, lectures, and seminars. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what my life has included – every minute of it. But I realize that I ‘missed’ a lot of my experiences due to fear of failure and embarrassment, fear of poverty, and fear of making an insignificant contribution to my community.

So often my mind was in the future, planning and strategizing, rather than “in the moment” of what I was doing. How many projects went sour because of my lack of focus? How many competitions were lost? How many friends and family did I ignore or neglect? We’re all guilty of this, but we don’t need to wait for tragedy to reform our worldviews.

The birth of my children taught me that all of my plans and goals are meager in comparison to the vibrancy of life. My plans and goals are now more focused, more concentrated. They surround a celebration of that vibrancy that is life; they’re not a distraction from it.

If we rush forward without a stable center all of our efforts are for naught. They don’t latch in. It’s like rushing to the car and forgetting your keys. Hurrying to clean up the kitchen and knocking over the milk. Teaching your children good manners only to curse when you slam your finger in the door. Frantically trying to meet a deadline only to forget a crucial component of the project. Flying through your exercises and pulling a muscle at the end. We must find our calm composure and work from that solid, lucid foundation.

I don’t believe it’s necessarily about “slowing down.” Living a high performance life can be fulfilling, and it can be beneficial to everyone in one’s sphere of influence. But it’s also about realizing that plans and goals are not in front of us like a carrot. They are always and already around us, like the laughter of children filling a room. We only need to realize that we stand in the epicenter of life’s vibrancy — and revel in its absolute bliss.

TACFIT is a healthy high performance balance of the “Centeredness” of the East and the “Progress” of the West. Both are necessary. Some of us come to discover our ‘center’ through forward progress. Others come to understand ‘forward progress’ only by having a stable base – centeredness. The goal is to identify where we are in our lives, our strength, and to seek out that other in which we are weak so that we create an ongoing balancing act of Centeredness and Progress

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Spending Or Investing Through Exercise?

Posted On: 29th July 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Hello Friends,

In one of my early books in 2003, I introduced the unbalanced social perspectives which have led to an unsustainable body image. A vile incumbent message still infects us through media, advertising and sales copies that we are unhappy and unhealthy because we are “unattractive”. Not only must we protect our minds from the assault of these messages, but we must re-balance a sustainable wellness perspective.

When you balance your wellness, you bolster your immune system with abundant vital energy and positive psychological attitude, while performing painless movement, spontaneously navigating physical tasks with ease and imagination. Your natural beautiful physique results as an unintentional by-product from that innate vibrance.

Too many of us think of exercise as merely removing stored excess. Avoid the mindset trap of: “I’ll eat this [crap], or skip this activity and just workout harder tomorrow.” If you want to have an awesome workout, then pre-load yourself with active recovery in the days BEFORE your exercise. Prime your peak performance every workout: eat well, do mobility, stretch a little yoga, roll out, and drink extra water.

As my martial art coach used to say, if you’re going to go to battle in 5 hours, spend 4 sharpening the blade, and the last hour praying and meditating.

We must remember that much of progress is imperceptible: the daily changes not visible in the mirror, not obvious in technique repetition, not ostensible in character development. Like cutting a gemstones, 1,000 hits may not make any visible change in the state of the gem, but the potentiality accumulates, and then 1,001 strikes creates a perfect cut. We misperceive the final strike as the “right way” rather than the culmination of the right persistence.

The definition of insanity is repeating an unsuccessful behavior and expecting different results. The difference between insanity and persistence is commitment, knowing the difference is wisdom.

If you’re going to SPEND energy in the future, INVEST today in your quality performance. Like any investment, the more that you do, the greater your compounded interest you reap on the day that you pull out those savings for an incredible workout. Stop thinking of exercise as getting rid of the bad, and start thinking about it as gaining goodness.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

A Healthy High Performance Balance!

Posted On: 25th July 2022 | In: Health and Fitness | By:

Hello Friends,

Many people find great challenge in maintaining a consistent personal practice due to their “work schedule.” When we neglect our health we commonly rationalize it by saying that we’re “too busy.” We rush around frenetically until we face a traumatic experience: a debilitating injury or a death in the family. At those times the stark reality of our precious minutes of life, of just how little time we have to be with friends and family, feels like sand grains falling through an hourglass.

I rushed through the past two decades on a sea of competitions, travels, adventures, projects, performances, lectures, and seminars. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what my life has included – every minute of it. But I realize that I ‘missed’ a lot of my experiences due to fear of failure and embarrassment, fear of poverty, and fear of making an insignificant contribution to my community.

So often my mind was in the future, planning and strategizing, rather than “in the moment” of what I was doing. How many projects went sour because of my lack of focus? How many competitions were lost? How many friends and family did I ignore or neglect? We’re all guilty of this, but we don’t need to wait for tragedy to reform our worldviews.

The birth of my children taught me that all of my plans and goals are meager in comparison to the vibrancy of life. My plans and goals are now more focused, more concentrated. They surround a celebration of that vibrancy that is life; they’re not a distraction from it.

If we rush forward without a stable center all of our efforts are for naught. They don’t latch in. It’s like rushing to the car and forgetting your keys. Hurrying to clean up the kitchen and knocking over the milk. Teaching your children good manners only to curse when you slam your finger in the door. Frantically trying to meet a deadline only to forget a crucial component of the project. Flying through your exercises and pulling a muscle at the end. We must find our calm composure and work from that solid, lucid foundation.

I don’t believe it’s necessarily about “slowing down.” Living a high performance life can be fulfilling, and it can be beneficial to everyone in one’s sphere of influence. But it’s also about realizing that plans and goals are not in front of us like a carrot. They are always and already around us, like the laughter of children filling a room. We only need to realize that we stand in the epicenter of life’s vibrancy — and revel in its absolute bliss.

TACFIT is a healthy high performance balance of the “Centeredness” of the East and the “Progress” of the West. Both are necessary. Some of us come to discover our ‘center’ through forward progress. Others come to understand ‘forward progress’ only by having a stable base – centeredness. The goal is to identify where we are in our lives, our strength, and to seek out that other in which we are weak so that we create an ongoing balancing act of Centeredness and Progress.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon