Having the right ingredients doesn’t make you a chef. You can follow Bobby Flay through the grocery store and buy everything he does but when it comes time to cook  he will produce a world class meal while you may produce world class crap with the same ingredients. How can this be? You cooked with all the same stuff right? Well if collecting stuff was all that there is to cooking everyone could be a chef. Training and coaching people isn’t any different. You may wear a tshirt that says run, jump, squat, swing, and row but that doesn’t mean you know a damn about how to do any of those things or more importantly how to put them together. Having the right collection of movement disciplines doesn’t make your training great. Knowing how to prepare and mix them does. So how do you learn how to work with the right ingredients? The same way Bobby Flay came to learn about food, you start at the beginning and learn the basics.

I have the pleasure of traveling the world and meeting trainers from all sorts of gyms. Some are great, some mediocre and some need to change vocations. They may work with similar tools but how they present and use them can and often does vary greatly. Recently I have seen a trend that excites me. After years of encouraging trainers to explore gymnastics, joint mobility, barbell and Kettlebell training I now find them becoming more common place. What concerns me is the way the people are implementing these elements into their gyms and personal training. Great ingredients no matter how great can be poison if you don’t know what to do with them. Take gymnastics for example. There is no doubt that gymnastics creates incredible control, mobility, flexibility and strength. As a physical discipline it has so much to offer and as a result people have been picking pieces of it for various fitness programs. The problem with picking elements of larger systems is you need to understand the basic building blocks of a thing before you take it apart. I see lots of people attempting hand stands and handstand pushups but not so many people learning how to roll and fall. These should be common place lessons before students are inverted. When someone goes to a gymnastics specialist they are put through fundamental progressions that are often lacking with those who are only familiar with some parts of a larger whole system. I know, learning the basics isn’t as fun as showing off upside-down in a Facebook photo but still and essential basic element to developing solid gymnastics fundamentals.

Before you can become a great practitioner in any discipline or in cross training you must become a great student and to do that you must learn how to learn. Here are five ways to improve as a student and coach.

1)Check your ego-One of my students was recently coaching dead lifts and suggested to a client that he take some weight off the bar and corrected his form. The client barked at her that “he was once a champion!” I have spent my life around champions in various disciplines. Let me tell you that a champion doesn’t talk like that. This guy may have been first to his mom for breast milk but that doesn’t make him a champion. (an only child maybe) Champions train hard and listen even harder. They learn from their coaches and they excel at basics. So many people these days want to be “elite” but they forget that being elite is being good at basics and the first basic you learn is how to learn. Accept that you don’t know it all, no one does. If you are the smartest person in the room you aren’t in the right room. Find people that can teach you and spend your time listening to them and trying to do what they are taking the time to teach you.

2)Practice basic progressions So your goal is to do a hand stand in the middle of the room? Fantastic! Find a coach who has the cleanest handstands and learn the basics. Study and find out all you can about the various ways people line that movement up. What are the advantages and disadvantages to various approaches. Which approach do you want to work on and why? You are going to spend hours, days, years working on these skills, don’t be lazy! Do some leg work and find out not only how but why you are practicing the way you are. I once spent months working on my free standing hand stand and at the end could hold it for over a minute. Great right? Wrong! My basics weren’t solid. I was relying on my chest and shoulder strength and my alignment was off. One day at yoga teacher training my teacher Mark Darby corrected my form and advised me to stop doing handstands until I was really ready to honestly work with straight arms. After his correction I went back to the beginning and started to find out more about scapular stability and that forced me to suffer with an embarrassing handstand hold of 2 seconds. I am still working to a minute with this form but my understanding of alignment and my physical abilities are now way past where I was when I was practicing the other way.

3)Practice good reps- Practice makes perfect, right? WRONG!!@!!@! If practice made perfect anyone with a bit of motivation could be great. All you would have to do is agree to practice. I could practice Olympic weight lifting  every day for years and still never make it into the Olympics. You could practice singing six hours a day and after two years still sound like two alley cats fighting over fish bones. Without fail every gym I walk into is full of well intentioned people who practice bad movements diligently. If you practice 20 poorly performed squats you might as well cancel your dinner plans because its going to take a hell of a lot more to undo the poor form you just ingrained. Practice good reps. To do this you need awareness, basics and a willingness to accept corrections. (see rule number one) If you workout calls for 50 snatches but you can only do five with good form, the following 45 are doing more harm than good. Work your basics before you attempt a workout like that.

4)Details matter! Do you know the difference between a great student and a mediocre one? Details, details details. The great students listen, remember, think and study details. Little things matter because those little things turn into big things. If an archer is off by a fraction as he draws his arrow that slight movement at the beginning will mean a difference of inches or feet at the target. I just watched a video from an instructor who is registered for my next course. In her video she performs what she calls straight leg raises. In the clip she is rocking and with bent knees bringing her toes to the bar. Those aren’t straight leg raises. Is she aware of the difference? Is she working towards having them straight or has she ever even thought of it? As gymnastics coach Christopher Sommer says in his book Building Gymnastics Bodies “slightly bent arms are still bent arms.” Well slightly bent knees are not straight leg raises.  This isn’t a call for perfection simply a demand for awareness in what you are practicing.

5)Think- If I wanted people to copy my movements I would run video certifications. I could sit at home, sign diplomas and review videos of people trying to mimic what I do on film. I don’t want copycats I want thinking students who understand not only how to move but why they are moving the way we do. Its easy to copy a guru but its much better to question him. That is how you learn what he learned and more. Ask questions and think about the answers. Things often aren’t simple but thats ok. The old saying is true, if its worth doing its worth doing right.

You are responsible for the quality of what you practice. People often spend more time looking for a nice pair of shoes then seeking out good instruction for physical training. Don’t go to the closest gym, go to the one that is the best for you. Don’t workout, train and study instead. Develop physical skills that are the result of hard work and plenty of study and your training will be a tool to transform not only your body but your whole life.

Hard training is hard on your hands. In one of my earlier blogs I detail how you can save your hands from suffering through torn calluses by working on them with a little home kit. A few of my students just pointed me towards this product that they use to help treat and prevent hand injuries caused from training. Check it out and SAVE YOUR HANDS NOW!

Last week one of my students posted a question to me on the Agatsu Facebook Group page. My response seems to have struck a cord with people and has since been passed around and has appeared on other peoples blogs. I thought I would share it here with all of you.

Question:

Looking for some advice;As a personal trainer – working this 8 clients in a row in a given day… When my day is done, I’m done. I don’t want to be I. The gym any longer and just can not seem to mine Motivation for my own workout Any tips on lost motivation? Thank you Shawn. Your still hands down best instructor I’ve ever had!!

Answer:

Hi Jenn, nice to hear from you. People are giving good advice here. I’ll add my 2 cents as someone who often has to train when he doesn’t feel like it. Try spending 16 hours on a plane, landing and training or 8 hours teaching and doing demos without a warmup followed up and then training. On one trip to Iceland I taught a full day, did my training after the course and then had to run 8k in the rain. Its sucked. I was tired, wet, hungry and cold. Time management didn’t get me to that workout or through it. I don’t think people lack time or motivation. I believe they lack a “reason.” You need a “why” not a how. Why train? Why do this? I trained that day because I have goals. I have things I want to do and be able to do. I train so I can be an example to my students. I train to see what I can do. I spent the weekend studying with Ido in Toronto. After a physical 9 hour day I had a Kettlebell workout to perform from my coach. I did it and hated every second. I was tired and had every excuse not to do it. I did it anyway because I am committed to me. Think about what you want out of your training. Where do you want to go with all of this? Its not motivation you need. You need to find a why?

“Everything begins and ends with our ability to control and move our own bodies.” I have preached this in my seminars around the world for years. Telling student after student to look within and first learn to control themselves before they attempt to overcome the external resistance that is offered by Kettlebells, barbells and other amazing tools. To become a talented lifter, or sprinters, or any type of athletic human being we must first become masters of movement.

Last year it was my great fortune to meet and befriend one of the most talented movers and teachers I have ever had the pleasure to train with. While teaching at one of my students gyms in Los Angeles another teacher was giving a hand balancing clinic in the same facility. I watched him move and heard him teach and in an instant I knew the quality of what he was doing. I knew within seconds that I wanted to train with him. Ido and I trained together that night and have been friends ever since.

Since our first meeting I have had the pleasure to train with Ido twice and also share with him some of my Kettlebell work. Just this past weekend I had another opportunity to learn more about Ido and his system at his first certification seminar. The seminar was held in Toronto Ontario at The Academy of Lions.

Its hard for me to really share with all of you what the seminar was like. Those of you who know me will laugh at the idea that I am at a loss for words. Yes, typically its hard to get me to stop talking but in this case I have deleted already ten attempts to describe Idos workshop. So rather than offer up a shallow account of an amazing weekend I want to share with you the feeling that it left me with.

I believe you can judge a teacher by his students. Odelia Goldschmidt who is one of Ido’s top students was in Toronto to help out with the large group of around 45 participants. Odelia is a wonder. She has power, grace, mobility, flexibility and humility. To watch her perform is to bear witness to incredible dedication, determination and the pursuit of excellence at a level that few people have a passion great enough to attempt to reach. She reflects Ido’s passion for movement and is the perfect example of Ido’s ability to transmit his teachings. It was a pleasure to train with and learn from her.

So what did we study for almost 9 hours a day? What does Ido teach? Is Ido the hand stand guy? Ido is a master of movement. A teacher dedicated to the pursuit of training the body and mind to move and develop beyond what we perceive as our limited potential. He is the embodiment of the hard training he prescribes and in my humble opinion what he is attempting with his system is to teach movement in a way that has never been done before. Can he show you how to hit a great hand stand? Yes. Can he show you how to do a lever? Yes, but Ido’s teachings are beyond the party tricks in his Youtube videos. Ido is teaching self mastery through movement. I named my company “Agatsu” (True Mastery is Self Mastery-Masakatsu Agatsu) after this very concept. This exploration is something very close to my heart and I was blown away by Ido’s approach to it. He is not the hand stand guy. He is a movement teacher like no other.

Forget the hand stands and other party tricks. Behind them it is all about movement. If you want to become strong, really strong. If you want to become mobile, flexible, and move with power and grace then Ido’s system is for you.

It has become quite fashionable to critique various trends in fitness. Complaining about the fitness industry is like swimming in a sea of turds and pointing out the ones that annoy you. Your time would be better spent helping others by pointing them to dry land.

Fitness as an industry is a mess. If you are new to it, welcome to the party. Park your brain at the door and go get some CECs. I hear underwater basket weaving is now worth 11 credits, YAY!!!

People seem to be spending less and less time training and more and more time complaining. “This video sucks” or “This is terrible and a waste of time” are the labels for the very videos that are posted so often that they go viral. Are you the type of person who breaks wind and hurries to get everyone into the room so they can smell it? If the video is so bad why share it? You are giving more and more exposure to the very low quality training you are complaining about. Just picture a nice swim in a septic tank. When you post these videos its like stopping and pointing out that for some reason the turd floating to your right is somehow more of a turd than the one on the left or the fifty in front of you.

Do you improve the fitness industry by pointing out turds or by creating something different, something you believe in? Now and then we may see something popular that we believe is dangerous and as a professional its worth sharing an opinion however most of what is shared online amounts to nothing more than “they do that, and I do this.” Its the same old tired crap I have seen in martial arts since I was a kid. My dojo is better than your dojo. “You don’t know the real way, only I know the real way.” The truth is there are many ways to the top of the mountain. You need to find your way, I can’t tell you how to get there. I can only share with you my experiences in the hopes that my successes and failures will be of value to you.

We live in an age like no other. We can share info from around the globe in an instant. What took me years to find and research through travel and training can be found at your finger tips. With all this power we are still the same silly apes acting the fool and throwing turds instead of sharing the great stuff we have found. I don’t want to spend my time telling you about what I think is “bad kettlebell training” or “Bad yoga” instead I’ll point you to teachers like Mark Darby and when you see him move or hear him teach you will know what he is sharing is likely to be different than the yoga you have seen.

If I share a video of Coach Rudnev doing long cycle you will see how graceful and effortless his movements are.

When I post a video from Ido Portal on my wall and you watch his control and poise I don’t need to say a word, his practice speaks for itself.

I am lucky to have spent so much time swimming in a sea of turds that I truly appreciate teachers that have offered me a space on dry land. If I am any kind of teacher worth something to his students let me be the kind that does them the same favour. Let me be a light to dry land for those that seek what I seek.

I was interviewed last week by The MMA Warrior In this hour long interview I discuss my martial arts background, Kettlebells, Joint Mobility and MMA. Enjoy the interview and check out The MMA Warrior for more great stuff.

Springs, air cushions, air bladders, arch support, toe support, anti pronation technology and  more have been loaded into your $150 running shoes in the name of performance. Well what if I told you that you don’t need those so called “safety” features? What if I told you that your foot is the best shoe money can’t buy and running barefoot is the best running school.

In 2008 I noticed a student at one of my seminars wearing some very strange shoes that had individual toes. After talking to him about them I learned that he was wearing Vibram Five Fingers (VFF) a minimalist shoe popular with barefoot runners. Instead of being loaded with features like most running shoes the VFF were stripped down and offered very little other than a thin sole that would protect the wearer from possible scrapes from running on a rough surface. I became fascinated with these shoes and the idea that somehow less was more. Could it be that we actually run better with less between our feet and the ground? I bought a pair and immediately put them to the test. What I discovered was shocking, I didn’t know how to run.


I was heel striking and it hurt. I stopped running and started to consider how I ran. I had never really given it any thought. Its running after all. We can all do it, right? One foot in front of the other, pick up pace and continue. It never seemed like something I had to learn. I, like most people thought I knew all I needed to know about running. Running with the Vibram five finger shoes changed that. I could feel my lack of technique and that inspired me to read about running techniques and about barefoot runners. The more I read the more I came to discover what many runners already knew. Our feet are brilliantly designed however our shoes on the other hand, are not! Running shoe companies have built up shoes with all sorts of gadgets. They promise everything from reducing injury and improving performance. They release new ones every year that make new and exciting claims however they never seem to solve the problems runners face. These shoes are part of the cause not the cure. Our shoes let us run with poor form. Poor form causes injury. So whats the answer? Take off your shoes.

After running in the VFF shoes I experimented with barefoot running and over the years I have explored a variety of footwear not only ideally suited for running but also other forms of training. Moving involves mastery of self. The more equipment you have on the more removed you are from your own body and how you control it. As such, I want footwear that can protect my foot from the surface I am working on without getting in the way of my practice.

In the last few years a lot of interest has grown around barefoot running and minimalist shoes. Major running shoe companies as well as small independents are offering a wide variety of options. As the market becomes filled with these new models it can be hard to choose the right one for you. I have had the pleasure of working with trainers from around the world who have exposed me to some of the best equipment out there. Through our training we have logged countless hours testing ourselves and our equipment.

In the land of minimalist shoes I have found three companies that I recommend to all of my students and their clients. Vibram Five Fingers, Inov8 and Zem Gear all make exceptional products. From running to gym training all have various makes and models that allow freedom of movement as well as protection. Naturally everyone asks me which I prefer.

Vibram Five Fingers wearing these during courses and runs around the world has caused quite a few raised eyebrows over the years. I was even stopped in Hong Kong and asked by a couple if they could take a picture with my toe shoes. Vibram makes an array of excellent shoes for runners seeking that barefoot experience while still wearing some form of shoe. The pros to VFF are their minimalist design, feel and variety. From indoor to outdoor, trail or street you can find a pair of Five Fingers to suit your needs. These have for years been my go to shoes for travel and running. Super light they are easy to pack in my carry on and great to wear at seminars and afterwards during training. Many of my students have adopted them for sprinting and gym training with overwhelming positive feedback. If they have any real short comings it can be found in the multi toe design. Not everyone enjoys the feel of the shoes between their toes. Learning the put them on takes some people a little getting used to and depending on the size of your foot you may have trouble getting that perfect fit. For a guy with small but wide feet I have found VFF a little hit and miss when it comes to sizing. If I do get ones with a decent fit they still tend to be tight on the big toe and often mine break at the seams there.

Last year one of my students introduced me to Inov8 running shoes. I picked up a pair and found these stripped down runners were light and flexible. As easy as the typical running shoe to fit but way lighter. They offered a similar feel to my beloved Five Fingers . I’ve put quite a few miles on my Inov8’s and enjoyed every minute in them. While they are light and flexible they don’t quite have the same feel as VFF’s which are closer to a barefoot experience.

I recently spotted a strange new shoe being worn by one of my students at a seminar in Toronto, Ontario Canada. She was wearing what looked like split toe Tabbi shoes. Ninja shoes! I hadn’t seen anything like that since I was a kid and certainly not in a running shoe. I asked her about them immediately and she informed me that they were from a company named Zem Gear. Minutes after the course ended I was on my smartphone looking them up. I saw that they had a host of different models of their minimalist footwear including split toe and non split toe designs. I was eager to try them since they looked like they could provide me the minimalist experience of my Five Finger shoes with the fit of my Inov8’s.

After weeks of sprints, short runs, long runs and seminars I have found my favorite minimalist shoes. I tested out the Zem Gear O2 and 360. Both models fit like socks and feel great. They are ideal for running and gym training.  In my first run in the O2 I logged my fastest kilometer pace. Both the O2 and 360 offer nice traction on the street and are incredibly light. My only concern with these models would be on a trail run. I would like a little more grip if I were hustling down the side of a hill and as of yet I haven’t seen a model like that form Zem Gear. I am sure however that one is in the works.

Just like the song says…. Feel free to sing or #%*&*@!!!! as you do it!
-1 Bodyweight Deadlift
-2 Rope Climbs
-3 Sushi Rolls (Deck Squat into Plyo Push Up)
-4 50m Shuttle Runs
-5 Deadhang…..PULLUPS! (Chest to bar, don’t be shy 
-6 Pistols Squats (3 each leg, share the love)
-7 Hanstand Push Ups
-8 Two Hand Kettlebell Swings
-9 Cartwheels
-10 Knees to Squat (start kneeling, shins on the ground and jump to a squat)
-11 Toes to Bar
-12 Tuck Jump Burpees (yeah burpees… & bacon!)

“Agatsu is about movement and self mastery” Show your support of Agatsu with a profile badge on your Facebook profile photo. Click this link to add one.

(Computerized Axial Tomography, CAT scan) is a process used to take images of the brain to look for fractures and tumours. Severe head trauma can result in among other things serious deficiencies in brian function. After years of speaking to health and fitness professionals I can not but wonder if the nonsense that many of them pass off as science is actually just the result of head trauma. Below is a list of five signs that your trainer may be in need of a CAT Scan. If your trainer believes any of the following please suggest that they seek medical attention immediately.

5) “When you stop working out muscle turns to fat”: Ok boys and girls. Does water turn into wine? Can you turn lead into gold? The answers as most of you elementary school grads can figure out is that no you can’t and guess what, muscle doesn’t turn to fat. If your trainer says this, send them for a Cat Scan.


4) “Women shouldn’t lift more than five pounds.”Oh I know what you are thinking, light weights and high reps thats what women need. Don’t want to bulk up and look like a guy do ya? Well here is a little secret, its hard for most guys to look like guys. A woman isn’t going to lift her way into looking like a guy unless she takes a trip to a pharmacy on her way to the gym. As for the trainers who say that women shouldn’t lift more than five pounds, well I guess that means women shouldn’t hold their children.

3) “Squatting is bad for you” Squatting isn’t bad for you, being stupid is. Do you know why so many trainers are told not to squat below parallel? Its because the people coaching them know they won’t bother to train correctly. They give them the most remedial move they can think of. Its like covering your house in padding rather than teaching your child how to move safely through the world. The people on this planet who squat the heaviest loads the most often squat ass to grass for a reason. They get more return for every squat than that little dip you see people trying to pass off as a squat. It takes time and effort to learn how to move correctly. Do you want to be a well educated machine, or a monkey with a clipboard?

2)“Locking your joints while weightlifting is bad for them.” This is one of my favs… Oh yes boys and girls thanks to magazines like Muscle and Fiction we have been told for years not to straighten our joints. The results? A bunch of meat heads in wife beaters with puffy arms walking around gyms looking like they are holding two imaginary suitcases. Overloading and hyperextending can cause injury but making people afraid to do something their arms naturally do to support load is ridiculous. Forget whatever cute workout you are doing at home with your Ken and Barbie weight set and watch someone do a snatch with an Olympic bar. Ok, are you watching? Do you see the overhead position? Yup..those arms are good and locked out. Can you figure out why? Just imagine a Bulgarian weight lifting coach telling his student “Yavor, ok listen to me. Today we do a little something different on this lift. I want for you to keep slight bend in your arms when you hold the 200KG load over your head.” If you are smiling as you imagine the weights falling on poor Yavor then you get it. If you are busy thinking of arguments why Yavor should try this, GO STRAIGHT TO THE HOSPITAL AND ASK FOR A CAT SCAN!.

1)“Muscle weights more than fat.”If a trainer tells you that “muscle weighs more than fat” you should have the right to punch them one time in the neck. Not too hard, just enough to jar some sense into that jellybean container they call a skull. Lets play a game, you can play along too. Does five pounds of muscle weight more than five pounds of fat? If you answered yes, please go bang your head in a car door and try again. Five pounds IS FIVE POUNDS!!!@@$#!@#!@# Think! Yes it muscle may be more dense than fat but then SAY THAT!