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Hello Friends,

Styles of exercise and nutrition will never be useful to everyone, because they derive from individual perspectives. One person’s gold is another’s garbage. Most people create drama by bragging about their gold, or attacking someone else’s garbage.

Most misunderstand the difference between styles and systems: a style is a single perspective, like standing on a map and looking at a distant horizon; a system is a globe that can be spun to find the most efficient path for any individual on it.

There are multiple perspectives on problem-solving; some solve one aspect, others – another. It’s impossible to solve them simultaneously if you only view it from a single style.

Only a system can customize the vantage point to view the changing landscape of a diverse population.

There are good systems out there, but people, fixated with their current problem, mistake them for styles.

Ask: is it modular, progressive, transportable, customizable, adaptable and scalable? Does it qualify your form and give you tools to use a level appropriate to you? Does it require you to track your physiological responses to exercise, and not merely the data of your performance output? Does it require your personal feedback before you know how to continue?

If you answer “yes” to all of those, it’s likely to be a system, and not merely a style.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

*** Don’t Miss the Next Online TACFIT Workshop on May 14th – Immerse Yourself in 4 Hours of TACFIT Concepts, Principles, and Training. Come see why TACFIT was named the “World’s Smartest Workout” system! ***

Hello Friends,

Can you say with specificity how “much” is “too much” and how “hard” is “too hard”? Unfortunately for our internal experience, exercise doesn’t come in denominations of much and hard. What might be considered a difficult session for a couch potato is a breeze for an elite commando, and what might be a “light” training day for said commando might be hell itself for an average recreational athlete.

It’s all extremely subjective. How, then, do you train yourself to understand your limits and capacities? You do this by journaling your training and by applying your tools. My Intuitive Training Protocol found throughout our programs (can be applied to any physical training) gives you the ability to differentiate form, exertion and discomfort subjectively, and you can then use this as a determinant factor in progressive resistance. By learning to quantify the subjective, you give yourself an immediate sense of where you stand, and you create a very accurate gauge of your progress.

In order to make this tool work for you, you must first learn how to use it. That takes a bit of diligence in the beginning. By journaling your training and by rating these three variables, you will come to a better understanding of your body and you will calibrate your instrument. The skill of rating your performance becomes more finely honed with each use, until eventually you barely have to think about it. But you will have to think about it in the beginning.

These are the three variables you will rate after each training session:

1. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE): the subjective evaluation of your effort on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest you’ve ever worked.
2. Rate of Perceived Discomfort (RPD): the subjective evaluation of your pain level on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever experienced.
3. Rate of Perceived Technique (RPT): the subjective evaluation of your mechanical performance on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best possible form in that exercise.

If your technique is high enough (greater than or equal to 8) and your discomfort is low enough (less than or equal to 3) you can hold even an exertion level of 10 for as long as your stamina, strength and endurance allow.

As you begin to fatigue and become exhausted, your form begins to fail. Without form, you cannot competently hold the force of your exertion, and as a result, you over-compensate with poor form leading to aches and pains. As these aches and pains go unaddressed, injuries appear. Pouring your effort into your technique, instead of the number of repetitions of weight of the resistance, is what brings you great dividends. With deeper concentration on technique, comes greater physiological benefits.

Poor technique is as trainable as good technique. Every repetition that you repeat with poor technique increases the likelihood that you will embed this. Whatever you repeat, you will adapt to and make more likely, whether you want that result or not.

As a general guideline, when you can sustain an RPT of equal to or greater than 8, an RPD of less than or equal to 3, and an RPE of equal to or greater than 6 over the course of 3 sessions, it’s time to increase a variable: frequency, intensity, speed, density, volume, complexity, etc.

This intuitive training approach and tracking is applicable to all types of training and is not limited to the TACFIT system. Use it anytime you are performing under a physical load, stop counting repetitions, and start valuing the quality of your effort, technique, and discomfort first!

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Hello Friends,

No one comes to the TACFIT “tribe” empowered. Everyone comes with fears, traumas, and held strain. One of the greatest inhibitors to becoming involved, and one of the greatest anchors on development is fear of judgment.

What exactly does one fear when one fears judgment? Perhaps if we all understood this, we would be better facilitators of their empowerment. Let’s look at this.

When one develops physically, one can have stronger character. This is the realm of mental toughness, of course, but it’s also a simple by-product of ‘clean’ living. However, it’s not true that IF one exercises THEN one is a better person.

If I push myself to the goal for which I prepared, and do the thing that I previously thought impossible, does that make me a better person? Not necessarily. Whom have I injured and what specifically have I sacrificed in this endeavor? Did I irresponsibly neglect my work, my family and friends? Did I do so with reckless abandon for my health (abuse of performance enhancing drugs, such as steroids)?

My method of preparation, my behavior and my attitude all determine if my character improves by a peak performance.

People fear judgment when they first come to the “tribe” because of two logical errors. Firstly, they may believe the propaganda that physical prowess equals moral development – that being more ‘fit’ means being a better person (if A, then B). As a result, they may believe a second logical error, the inverse of that relationship: that being unfit equals being less of a person (if not A, then not B.)

I can tell you now that there are many, many more moral and ethical people than myself who suffer tremendous physical difficulties and disabilities. I admire and remain in awe of the vast extent of their wisdom, compassion, patience and selflessness.

My mentors and my experiences have cultivated within me a philosophy of physical culture founded upon strong ethical and moral fiber. I have many detractors because of this – those who cannot see that quality of movement (grace and poise), right action, full feeling, and right attitude, can indeed make one a significantly more powerful character. Empowerment, in other words, comes from how you APPROACH any discipline be it physical culture, martial art, or any other. It is a only a vehicle for transformation, though many drive as if in a demolition derby.

You can become the person you dream of being through physical culture if you approach the disciplines appropriately. It can be a way to overcome your fears, or a distraction from facing them. It is always helpful to look critically in the mirror at how you ultimately define “strength.” How we judge others is a reflection of how we are personally traveling on our path. If we consider a person, more of a person because they are “stronger” or less of a person because they are “weaker” then we have found a substitute for Truth, rather than a path to it.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

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Hello Friends,

If you consistently move every day in the right way (explained below), you will experience significant testing score improvement in comprehending the written and spoken word, as well as, improve in scores in mathematics and science. Follow the 5 simple, practical steps to transform your movement exercise into brain power.

Neuroplasticity pioneer Michael Merzenich demonstrated that improving the ability to distinguish movement improves the general ability of the brain to keep time (called Temporal Processing). That improvement spills over into visual, auditory and fine motor processing, as having “more slices of time” improves the amount of data captured by the brain, and less missed micro-moments where data is uncollected.

Movement improved even visual-based IQ tests, so it isn’t a character of mere exercise transferability to fine-motor enhancements. Your mental processing improves due to movement in a general way because of the improved temporal processing of motor control and spatial awareness. This improvement in motor control impacts the sense of time in the brain – its internal timepieces – which result in “better timing” of the entire brain.

Improved timing causes you to better comprehend reading, to better distinguish and store words that are spoken, and to improve your handwriting. Because of the spillover of these mechanical improvements in eye, ear and hand, your scores in math, science and social studies improve as well. Harvard Medical School Clinical Psychologist, John Ratey detailed these test score increases with relation to movement at “zero hour” (the hour before studying).

Those with prior learning disabilities, now can test higher than those with neuro-typical brains. As the saying goes, hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work. Imagine the test differences for those not facing learning challenges. Unfortunately, because people with “normal” brains don’t experience performance deficits, they frequently don’t consider the value of movement on optimizing their mental potential.

Neuroscience is beginning to explain in layman terms how movement, navigation and learning are collocated in the same brain region, and ignoring one, affects the other tenants. Test scores in ALL children decrease as schools remove movement from class schedules. For adults, the desk has become the new prison: mental performance plummets due to an absence of movement.

As I have provided for national security elements, Fortune 100 corporations, billionaires and professional sports: what works on the damaged brain or learning challenged brain also improves elite mental performance, on a continuum. The formula is very simple, if you’d like to apply it to your own mental performance.

1. Move daily, each morning, and for a few minutes at least every 90 minutes.
2. Perform complex movement once per day (mountain trail biking vs stationary bike, trail running / walking versus treadmill, and clubbells/kettlebells/medballs/sandbags versus machine lifting are examples of complex versus simple movement).
3. Perform some sort of exercise which challenges you to be “out of breath” at least every other day (preferably, daily). Use breath control techniques to recover your breathing as fast as possible, or you lose the effect.
4. Perform 15-20 minutes of this movement exercise.
5. Perform the movement at moderate intensity as it needs to be sufficient but non-excessive for optimal brain affect.

Move in the above manner, and you’ll become stronger but more importantly, smarter.

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Compensatory, or recovery, exercise is the concept of counter-conditioning adaptations that have led to the imbalance in our bodies.

Stored emotional insulation refers to what happens when areas remain unmoved and fear-reactivity, density, and motor amnesia creep in. Muscle atrophies, fascia thickens, synovial fluid decreases, cartilage dehydrates, and nerves/sensory organs diminish in strength. It becomes progressively more difficult to move that area – hence the emotional releases that often result from reopening it.

We Are How and What We Move!

All things are a form of conditioning! If we perform the same routine of physical exercise continuously and consistently without compensatory movement, that activity will be conditioned, adapted to, and progressed upon in an imbalanced way, causing immobility in the “opposite” direction/action. As imbalance happens, insulation/armor grows. Fear accumulates in the area to protect the imbalance, and thus begins the downward spiral of physiological deterioration.

For example, a champion in his sport may be a physical specimen in appearance. But the imbalances of his sport have resulted in a condition where their myofascia is thickened, armored, and insulated, causing chronic pain and injury as a negative. They are a positive blessing, for they call attention to the area, to the imbalance, and, most importantly, to the lifestyle that led to the imbalance.

Not moving is a form of moving… It is a common misconception that sitting on a couch, behind a desk, or behind the wheel is a “non-thing”. These are forms of conditioning just like anything else, and we adapt to make the repetition of those events more efficient. All things require compensatory movement to balance them, including those events that are normally considered “not moving”. Even the stillness of meditation is a physiological act of movement, which is why Buddhist monks embraced the rigorous exercise of yoga – so that they could endure the rigors of seated meditation.

If compensatory movement is not practiced imbalanced adaptations will lead unerringly to pain and injury. This is why all TACFIT workouts are followed with a specific “recovery” Cool-down. But it doesn’t just have to do with exercise. For instance, the practice of sitting on a couch for several hours leads to the body holding forward spinal flexion, and standing and walking with effortlessness (our genetic inheritance as anti-gravitational creatures) becomes increasingly painful and injurious.

Eventually the “posture” of being seated on the couch is armored (in the same way that bodybuilding armors the body) due to the lack of a balancing compensatory movement. Once that armor is set in place, fear-reactivity protects the area from deviant movement – anything that moves the armor in a way that acts against the posture of being seated on the couch. So “not-moving” needs to be compensated for, as much if not more than moving!

Remember this – Emotion exists throughout our bodies, not just in our brains – Compensatory (recovery) movement helps us harness it in both!

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Are you cocktailing your workouts? Are you doing so with a specific purpose in mind, or just blindly picking and choosing? The truth is many gyms and trainers promote a “cocktailed” Workout of the Day (WOD) without any thought into why any one particular exercise or drill was chosen.

With my background, I look at this issue from the perspective of martial arts. If you want results and if you want to achieve a level of mastery, you need to start with a base system and learn the ABCs. Get to black belt, as it were, so that you understand the alphabet of a system, then work your way up several black belt ranks to master so that you learn fluency in applying the basics. Too many people get to black belt and think that it’s time to start cross training.

Far too many people obsessively debate which system is best. And wouldn’t you know that the only people who debate X vs. Y are those who haven’t attained base-level mastery in any one system! I don’t think it matters which system you master first because systems are artificial. Only experience is real. Systems are only delivery platforms for experience. Ultimately all systems lead to the same point. Sure, there are slight idiosyncratic and perhaps cultural differences, but look at the masters of any movement discipline and they all tend to do similar things, move in similar ways, and say similar things.

The most important advice that I could give to someone just starting out is to choose a system that you enjoy in your heart. A system that resonates with you will allow you to confront and overcome the challenges of consistency faced by practitioners of ANY system.

I think that the main problem people face in the pursuit of personal mastery is getting involved in a system that does not permit them to look outside itself. A system is only designed to help you realize certain universal laws. Once you’ve mastered that system you’ve penetrated that mystery and you MUST then explore wherever your intuition leads you. If you fail to do so because you’ve been indoctrinated to believe that you cannot study outside your base system of mastery, you will begin to first get diminishing results and you will then start the process of over-specialization degeneration.

What is over-specialization degeneration? In my case, my mobility, coordination and body control have recently peaked out. I’ve had to downshift my training to focus on some high strength skill development, as well as to increase my power generation. If I simply continued with the training that I had been doing I would stop progressing and begin regressing.

Specifically in our TACFIT Community, I discourage people from “cocktailing” their workouts until they’ve mastered TACFIT (or any system for that matter) because it is counter-productive from a vehicular standpoint. The point of any system is to gain a base level of bodily wisdom. Once you have that you can draw from any source in order to use your intuition (the ONLY accurate compass) to keep you on an even keel, progressing for the rest of your life.

People look at a WOD like one’s I have composed and shared in the past and assume that it’s merely a general-purpose conditioning program. On the contrary, each WOD was created to address a particular issue that I’m resolving in my lifetime of fitness exploration. There is a “black box” that governs my exercise selection and sequencing, intensity levels, etc. That “black box” is the intuition that I’ve reclaimed and developed through mastering one system first so that I have the ability to listen to, understand and accurately respond to my true needs as a lifetime athlete. First we master the basics, then we allow our intuition to guide us!

Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Hello Friends,

Multi-Planar Mobility™ (MPM) involves recovering the pain-free and full range movement of your joints and connective tissues in all three possible dimensions: frontal, sagital, and transverse.

MPM came from various related sources but make no mistake, it was our community at TACFIT, who made it into an incremental and sophisticated system of health and fitness. TACFIT was the first to stress the importance of MPM and to integrate it with all the modalities found within our systems which we commonly refer to as “health-first” fitness. Cheap copycats cannot show where they were innovative, how their joint mobility is incrementally progressive toward sophistication, and how it is integrated as a whole with their health and fitness model, strategies, tactics, and tools.

For over 20 years, Intu-Flow has been our #1 recommendation for anyone joining our tribe. This is because we want them to clean the slate of their previous conditioning, ensure that they have complete pain free and full range of movement in all of their joints and connective tissues, and prepare them for further movement sophistication.

There are several good reasons why we train three-dimensional mobility. The first being that all dynamic movement and real world performance occurs in three dimensions. There is no real world task that is isolated in one or two dimension. This becomes very clear when you hold or move a Clubbell. Failure to train in any one dimension will create a weak link in your performance, as well as the likelihood of joint pain and immobility. This why you should first prime your joints with Intu-Flow™ before you start training with Clubbells, or before any physical activity for that matter. The most profound and most neglected of which is upon first getting up after sleep and hours lying in bed. Besides developing rotary and angular/diagonal strength to assist the prime movers, this also increases stability, enhances injury prevention, multiplies force production abilities, and stimulates the neuromuscular patterns required for best performance for the day.

As an easy to perform routine, Intu-Flow is available to everyone, young and old, men and women, without years of arduous study or injury producing excess. These exercises have helped thousands of busy people, from all walks of life, get Intu-Flow every day.

A flowing, intuitive harmony of basic, efficient movement, body alignment, and simple breathing, Intu-Flow is an exquisite synergy of modern scientific health research and ancient somatic wisdom; an easy to learn, do-it-at-home, playfully fun way to superior health. The results are both immediate and profound; once experienced, Intu-Flow helps you feel so good, your day will not feel complete without it.

Getting Intu-Flow is easy, but far from superficial. Simple and user-friendly, nothing fancy or complex, it teaches you to maximize your health, throughout your day, with each breath. Combining the best from both Eastern and Western traditions, Intu-Flow is a delightful daily journey into pain-free movement and healthy longevity. More often than not, the most effective approach is the simplest approach.

Intu-Flow produces pain-free, energized results – without struggle, and with only a few minutes a day. If you have not gotten on board already, I urge you to experience for yourself why this is the #1 most important and most practiced program in the TACFIT collection!

Very Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

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Hello Friends,

Tension and mobility are on two opposite ends of the spectrum: the greater the tension you recruit, the less mobility options you possess. From the Laws of Conditioning, we know then that if you train your nervous system to fire only for high tension, you diminish mobility.

This is important to understand as research demonstrates that most injuries occur not because a general or hi-tension deficit but because of a lack of ability to absorb and re-translate force, especially at extreme or unexpected ranges.

All strength is a skill. Yet, invariably, when people pick up Clubbells they attempt to use maximal tension to coerce the implement through the trajectory… and they fail every time. People attempt to use force all the time, yet what they need is the right amount of force at the critical moment.

Though a simple tool, the Clubbell is deliberately complex, because like a heat-seeking missile, it hunts out inappropriate tension at critical moments. In other words, whereas high tension focuses upon a tight-loose-tight grip protocol, the Clubbell demands that and everything in between it. And thus the Selective Tension doctrine promotes ‘real-world’ strength or proportional force in martial-arts speak.

This is nowhere more obvious than in the “intelligent grip” required in using the Clubbell. Strength is primarily transmitted through and by the hands. We evloveled into tool-using creatures and the most primal tool is the club.

In single-hand work, the Clubbell pulls through your hand rather than against it. In two-handed work, the dynamic push-pull of the “complimentary grip” demands that you coordinate an alternating power arm and locking arm. In double-handed (two Clubbells) work, you must coordinate two independently moving displaced centers of gravity. These all teach you to focus upon the entire movement rather than merely the concentric action phase. They teach you how to use “just enough” force to carry the Clubbell through each of the various phases of movement.

Clubbells and TACFIT maximize strength gains through optimizing our muscle software with Selective Tension. So we recruit only the muscles necessary for the task, and only the force necessary to accomplish the task. Always striving to work smarter, not harder.

Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

I have met way too many people who live from one blog to the next waiting for the new WOD. The vogue involves trainers rushing to release a random exercise selection. The greatest difficulty with the Digital Age is public domain overload. Exercises, programs, and protocols may flood our screens, and distract us from developing our own personal training doctrine (underlying assumptions and beliefs) and how particular training strategies deliver performance.

Everywhere we are told that we are incompetent, that we must defer to some external source of wisdom, that we are somehow deficient in our perception. However, if we delve deeply and confront our preconceived ideas, fears, doubts, desires and needs, we will release the natural authority over our own lives.

Do you know the nature of your training; is your philosophy deliberate? Not knowing leads to self-sabotage, hesitation, doubt, and resistance. Basically, if you don’t have any goals in mind, any method will get you there. In other words, you’ll be going nowhere, but you’ll get there lighting fast.

We each operate from a personal philosophy, conscious or not. Everyone operates within the parameters of their cultural, social, community and biological operating system. Whether you are aware of your philosophy or not does not alter the fact that every one of us possesses, and is subject, to an operating system. Daily we should seek to massage our ever-evolving philosophy to a conscious level, and check it against the influences we PERMIT to impact us.

This begins at the core. How have you been indoctrinated, and how are you continuing to be indoctrinated? What have you been taught is the truth about the issue? What are your general beliefs about how much you should weigh, how much fat you should carry, how much muscle, how well you should move, should you be pain and injury free, can you be, how well should you move, how does food REALLY make you feel, how much do you truly enjoy eating before, during and after the meal, et cetera?

The flavor of the month guides us like lemmings off a cliff. Underlying assumptions go unquestioned when rushing to the newest fad. Without a deliberate philosophy how can we ever hope to see through the distortion of trend and fashion to what works FOR US as individuals?

Teachers serve a purpose, but only as a guide pointing in the same direction, seeking next to you our collective potential. Each of us manifests our coaches at any point in life. We’re perpetually surrounded by lessons which we can choose to ignore. Training happens every second, and every moment of life, each decision is an act of conditioning.

Acknowledge that your philosophy engages a continual state of amendment adapting to the needs of the new day. Protect yourself by deliberately considering which changes to make and, most importantly, which changes to resist, for the popular vogue of the media and the trends of the community must be held with suspicion. As written by Soren Kierkegaard, “The crowd is untruth.”

You are all the guru you have ever needed. You are the teacher you’ve been seeking.

Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon

Hello Friends,

You may have heard that a five-year testing period is needed for any startup business. The same truth applies to your fitness: two to five years are needed to make serious, permanent changes in your health. You can feel great in a few weeks and look sensational in a few months, but physique is the first to go and — if you want to be truly healthy — last to arrive. Build your ability to move freely first, your ability to perform functional tasks next, then your strength, and finally let your appearance be an outgrowth of that beautiful work. Reversing the process always ends in destruction This universal truth can be found in the other aspects of your life: your vocation and finances, your family and your community, and your mental and spiritual life. There is a gradual progress that we must always take. We cannot and must not avoid the necessary errors, because 99% of success is failure. We hold to the delusion that failure is an evil and success good. We run from failure and desperately claw at success, when both are necessary. If you allow yourself to face repeated failure while maintaining your enthusiastic drive to continue, success is guaranteed. Unfortunately, that wisdom only comes after the two to five years of failure, and we all find it hard to have faith in the process until we’ve plodded our way through one major goal to understand the natural “flow” of success.

“In this world, there is nothing softer or thinner than water. But to compel the hard and unyielding, it has no equal. That the weak overcomes the strong, that the hard gives way to the gentle — this everyone knows. Yet no one acts accordingly.” – Lao-Tse

Persistence may be the single most important attribute of success, for if you only persevere long enough, you WILL succeed. If you only can keep at it long enough, life promises you social, familial, financial, mental, vocational, physical and even spiritual wealth.

I’ve seen truly talented people completely tank out only inches from incredible success because they had not yet “owned” their talents. And I’ve seen people (such as myself) who had no reason for being victorious manage to become so merely from being too thick-headed to quit.

Persistence has to do with repetition of a message, of a meme, in your own mind and in the minds of others. When TACFIT was first released, people had no idea what it was. The concept remained too foreign for mainstream convention. Years later, it became a recognizable brand name, appearing in Cosmo, Men’s Journal and Oxygen magazines. This only came after many long years of facing first silence, then ridicule, then anger and finally, acclaim. Each triumph demands that gradual process, with no short-cuts permitted. We need to be bombarded long enough to accept the truth, because in a digital age we must filter out all the noise.

Your fitness needs you to be persistent. Many people stop shy of the threshold that causes adaptation, never struggling hard enough or never recovering long enough. Stamina, itself, is a primary attribute of fitness and health.

Your relationships demand your persistence. Many flit from one relationship to the next, experiencing the “appearance” of love in the form of chemical lust without ever getting to the depth of unconditional love and experiencing all the arguments which necessarily line that path.

Your spirituality insists on this, because all religions involve trials of faith; of enduring the ego’s seductions, and its fear of impermanence. Only after years of spiritual practice can we connect with the unwavering Higher/Other/Deeper Presence, and even then it requires ongoing constancy of recommitment.

You will not succeed overnight, nor would you want to. Every new challenge will be “just enough” and never “too much”. Whatever is thrown at you, you can handle. As Robert Frost wrote, “The best way out is through.”

Respectfully,

Scott B. Sonnon