MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

There's a good chance you've heard of DDPY or DDP Yoga by now if you're connected to the world of pro wrestling in any way. Success story after success story keep coming out of people who start the program and I gave it a shot. And I didn't like it. I thought going plant-based with my diet was dumb. I didn't want to give up weight training. I absolutely knew my flexibility was good-you know the drill, I was perfect in every way. Well that was a few years ago and since then I've been able to remove my head from my ass and I see things very differently now. Since the beginning of January I've been doing DDPY, thought not 100% like more adherents to Diamond's plan, but I've incorporated the workouts and a lot of the elements of planning and positive thinkings that accompanies the workout theories. I've also cut back on a lot of the bad elements in my diet. I've cut dairy back to an imperceptible amount along with sugar and while my meat co...

Eric Thomas always says "THANK GOD IT'S MONDAY" and that has become something I identify with. It wasn't always that way for me and it's taken a lot of trial, error, anger and downright sadness for me to be the incomplete person behind your computer screen, but nothing starts without a plan! So, it's Monday. Maybe you're reading this on a Tuesday or a year from now, doesn't matter. #ItsMondayEveryday when you have goals. Take today and lay out a plan for yourself. Having big dreams is great and I wish everyone did, but think about how much easier life would be if you just had a plan to get dinner done on time. Or what if you had a concrete plan to get your meal prep done for the week? Don't get so lost in the clouds that you forget these dreams begin and end on the ground. Take today, right now, and jot down 3 things you KNOW you need to do this week and then write down 2-3 simple steps to ensure you get them done. That simple exercise takes abou...

Kai Greene's tagline, "Thoughts become things" is something I think about daily. Before you can do, you must think you can. Therefore resolve everyday to think about what you are trying to accomplish and in time, you will get there because it's been at the forefront of your thoughts. Visualization is so powerful, it creates emotions and feelings inside of you that you wouldn't experience otherwise. "Thoughts become things" is not just a way or saying "plan for your success" it's a way of saying "see it, plan it, think about it, becomes obsessed with it" and then it will happen. You have to struggle a long time before you can be on top of the mountain, visualizing the view from the top will make the climb up seem a lot easier. No matter what-keep believing in yourself!

Mariusz Pudzianowski 5x World's Strongest Man Everyone jokes about carrying all the grocery bags in these days and yeah, a lot of people take it too seriously. Think of it a different way though...not trying to get a laugh, or be goofy or anything like that. You train all the time. You lift weights. You do cardio. You load up with protein and caffeine so you have fuel to perform as best you can. You stretch. You rehab. In short, you do everything you can to perform your absolute best! WHY DO YOU LEAVE IT ALL IN THE GYM??? Maybe carrying the groceries in isn't the greatest reason to train, but how often do you shirk away from exertion outside the gym? Flip the switch on that way of thinking right now. Do more. Carry stuff. Pick up awkward heavy things. Take the stairs. Park further away from the building. The gym is great but it's only a few hours a week, life happens 24/7 and the less you choose to do, the less prepared you'll be. Challenge yourself to perfor...

Did you make it or did you give up? Blogs and self-help gurus abound with talk of defining your own success and what that means, and most of it is good advice. We should be looking inward, not outward, to determine what success is and what it means to us, individually, to consider ourselves a success. Sometimes I worry though, that defining your own success can easily just become a way of moving the goal posts to make it easier for you to stop pushing. Consider the person who wants to lose 50 pounds. They map out their plan, the do the work and they stay honest about all of it, but when the last two or three pounds don’t come off, suddenly the fervor to lose 50 pounds turns into the complacency of losing 47. The rationalization begins with, “well, close enough, right?” Then you start to dismantle why you wanted to lose 50 to begin with. This monolithic number, suddenly becomes just a silly little round number that doesn’t mean anything because you lost a ...

I won’t ever try to pass myself off as an expert in anything other than myself, but I want to share some of the wisdom I’ve learned along the way and hopefully from my lifetime of failing some of you can glean something useful. I don’t mind saying that I am a person who has failed in life repeatedly and will continue to do so, because so much more is learned from failure than from success. At all levels, in any industry, failure is the driving force behind evolution and refinement but in our society we still demonize failing and my belief is that the constant barrage of “perfect” people on social media further eats away at those who are just trying to do a little bit better. There is a cost for success, but not every failure is a true setback-I contend that most are not. Let us take a trip back in the time machine to me in the ninth grade. I was then a doughy 260-270 pounds without an ounce of knowledge about training or nutrition, but I was in weight lifting class because I...

Those in the wrestling and meme communities know about Scott Steiner's infamous promo a few years ago in which he started calculating his chances of winning and gave a completely incomprehensible rant. This meme popped up and I look at it a lot when I need a laugh and I think that there is a universe out there somewhere in which Big Poppa Pump said this with a straight face. In improv they say "always commit." I've found that whether I was doing stand-up in front of a tiny crowd or wrestling in sub-par circumstances, keeping a straight face and never giving up on the scene always wins the day. Fans, whether they pay for a ticket or are cheering you in your personal life, deserve to see you give your best and for you to achieve anything, you have to give it your best. That means that when you are out there doing the work, making it happen, you keep a straight face, stand up big and strong and give it your all. Even if you start giving a wrestling promo that makes...

--> Some thoughts on setting yourself up for success and avoiding some major markers for failure. There are much more complex and complicated things at play these days compared to the dingy weight room of my rural high school in 1997. Social media is awesome, but so many people, myself included, don’t seem to figure out the negative effects of it until it’s too late. Aside from the constant desire to remain connected and the endless battles with trolls, we get exposed to so many messages and that alone can skew our perception of what we want and who we are. Instagram is the de facto social network for fitness and training, but it’s easy to forget that most of the major players in that realm do that for work, because their job is to be models and spokespersons for products. I’m sure that many of them would love for you to achieve your goals, but at the end of the day they need followers and engagement in order to make a buck. These perfect bodies performing incred...