The Academy

39 Ways To Not Be Like Everyone Else

Found this on Jason Ferruggia's Renegade Strength And Conditioning website. Thought it was worth sharing! Check it out.- Jay

39 Ways To Not Be Like Everyone Else

The problem with being like everyone else is that everyone else sucks.

My advice is not to do it…

How do you start your day each morning?

Do you angrily smash the alarm clock and roll out of bed exhausted, dreading another day doing what you hate?

Or do you spring up fresh and well rested because you went to sleep before 11pm like you know you should, and get excited to tackle another day doing what you love?

After hitting the bathroom do you stagger into the kitchen and get a pot of coffee brewing as fast as humanly possible?

Is that what it takes for you to wake up in the morning and actually feel alive?

If you eat, sleep and train properly the last thing you should ever need is caffeine to wake up.

What about your workout regimen?

Do you do focus on big compound lifts, advanced bodyweight exercises, strongman training and avoid machines and isolation movements like the plague?

Do you keep a detailed log book and track your progress week after week, year after year?

Do you stick with a program for longer than a week? It takes at least four to even have a clue what’s going and what’s working.

When it comes time for cardio do you hop on the elliptical or stair climber or do you go find a hill and sprint up it until your heart beat is visible through your hooded sweatshirt?

There’s always an easy way out. You can always live a life of mediocrity and unhappiness and do what everyone else does. Or you can choose to not be like everyone else. You can choose the road less traveled.

How do you do that?

Here are 39 ways that would be a good start.

1)    Eat only organic produce and organic, grass fed meat. Avoid any factory farmed meat like the plague and try your best to avoid conventionally grown produce when possible.

2)    Eliminate sugar from your diet completely. Fruit doesn’t count.

3)    Cut out all processed foods.

READ MORE......

You Can Do It!

Here's one of our new lifters. This is her only athletic endeavor in over forty years. I always say that you can accomplish anything you want if you're willing to work and you have the right help. Awesome work Leslie!!!!!!! First meet.... Here we come!

 

Jason "Mayhem" Miller= Real Man

Ok, that was a realy stupid title for several reasons. 1- the "gender as definition of strength" thing is so dumb. There are strong ass women, and weak ass men.... so..... "man" as an adjective for strength is nonsense. And 2- if you DO use that type of "real man" language..... at least describe a truly strong person! Real strength is not what most would think. Jason "Mayhem" Miller has written an awesome article describing how a truly strong person behaves. It is not what the "dudes" that read Maxim would've expected to come out of a "cage fighter". Check it out. Jay:

Mayhem’s 7 Man Laws

The guys at Maxim asked me to write for them, and let me be the first to say, IT'S ABOUT GODDAMN TIME. I have been sitting here for damn near a decade with tornado of ideas spinning in around in my head of things men need to know.

Who am I? You might know me as the "bully show guy" or "Jason Ellis' friend" or "the dude on Ultimate Fighter that can take a beating." Or maybe you have no goddamn idea who I am.

Hello, my name is Mayhem. It's nice to meet you.

I’m not that Mayhem from the goddamn Allstate commercials - the one played by Liz Lemon's dummy boyfriend. I'm the actual Mayhem. I've been Mayhem for a long time. Even my mom calls me Mayhem.

I've been an MMA fighter for 12 years. My next bout is May 26th at UFC 146 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. I also have a special on Hulu, called A Day in The Life, so when you're finished spanking it to girly pictures on Maxim.com you can go to Hulu.com and watch what I have to go through on a daily basis. Now that the boring ass introductions and shameless self promotion is over, let's get down to bidness.

You need to act like man. I can help.

Here are a few Man Laws that I gathered over my years of adventuring. I hope you will find them helpful, or at least entertaining.

1. A man needs to learn something new every day.
I am not telling you to learn useless animal factoids from the bottom of Snapple caps, so that you can recite them in order to get girls to exchange numbers with you at Starbucks, but here are some just in case you need the help:

Turtles can breathe through their butts.

A snail can sleep for 3 years.

Most koalas have chlamydia.

I'm asking you to learn something that will improve your life. Something about your job, or something that will get you out of your mother's basement. Take a business class. Apply to a  technical college. Shadow someone who does what you wish you could do.

I spent many years being a beat-up-dummy for UFC champion Tito Ortiz...for free. But constantly being around him taught me how to slam someone off the side of the cage and elbow them in the face.

Maybe you know how to make a "Purple-Eye" (three shots of espresso into a cup of coffee). It means nothing unless you have the motivation to use that knowledge. For instance, maybe you should have a cup of coffee.

2. Men don't smash their fellow man.
This should be pretty self-explanatory, but please allow me to elaborate for those of us who are oblivious, pathological 'haterz.' Run your own race. Worrying about what the guy in the next lane is doing will just get you tripping over your own tiny girl feet.

There will always be guys more handsome than you, with more money than you, and with a bigger, uh, feet than you. It won't improve your position in life to chuck stones their direction, it'll just decrease your foot-speed.

You can't smash someone down to bring yourself up. That negative attitude just begets more negativity, sending you into a death spiral that keeps you from reaching your potential. Also, nobody wants to hang out with your whiny ass.

Don’t hate on your pals at the bar. Don’t hate on people you don’t know. (Yeah I’m talking to you, anonymous Twitter douche. It makes you look weak to your 16 followers.) Don’t even hate on your enemies. Keep your eye on your own prize, and try to build up the people around you. We all push one another up with that positive mental attitude, but remember....

3. It’s every man for himself.
Just because you have a support system, doesn’t mean you need to use it for every little stumble you have. I infamously lived in a van outside a California gym for a year (remember, Tito didn’t pay me). Sure, I could’ve called my daddy and got him to cosign on a lease on some cruddy apartment. But I refused to admit to him that maybe I should have went to computer school.

Relying only on yourself will forge you into a Hattori Hanzo blade that can chop the head off of any foe that stands before you. Sure you’ve got the chips stacked against you. Your name doesn’t begin with “Kim Jong” so you probably don’t have any clout, power, or two cents to rub together, but that just means you have nothing to lose.

I read some story in some old self-help book that I can't even remember, and it contained a something I will basically plagiarize in honor of this being on the Internet:

The twins of a deranged serial murderer grew up. One got heavy into drinking, drugs and basically being a social miscreant, culminating in finally murdering a guy over some petty reason. The other twin made his way through school, earning a degree, and running a small business that flourished. Two guys. The same genetic make up. They asked both, one from his office desk, the other through the glass of a prison visiting room, “Why do you think you turned out the way you did?”

They both responded with basically the same answer,

“Look at my father, what else was I supposed to do?”

It’s all in your mindset, young Jedi.

4. A man takes chances.
Of course a man is courageous - I shouldn’t have to write it as a rule. No risk, no reward. But once you take the risk, there ain't no half steppin’. Once you got the courage to commit to something you had better go balls out and take it to the limit.

5. A man is persistent.
I have everything in my life because I was unwilling to quit. I feel like in our increasingly sissified society, where everyone gets a participation trophy for showing up, we've become a bit soft on losing. You are supposed to lose sometimes.

You are supposed to be a sobbing mess, scream to the sky and wish you were never born.  Feel that sting- the unmistakable pain of your own spirit repeatedly shanking you in the kidneys with a dagger of self doubt.

Now jump forward from that image as hard as you can into the future. You’ve lived life, you took the chance and if nothing else you got some life experience from it. Take that knowledge, it counts as the one thing you learned today. Build off of it--that takes a special kind of courage, which brings us to our next Man-Law...

6. A man is honest with himself.
The hardest thing for a man to do is face the truth about himself. We all are built with a mechanism inside of us that somehow lies and tells us we are way more badass than we truly are--some of us had mothers who fed our ego entirely too much, conversely some of us were raised in an environment that beat us over the head with insults until we are convinced that we are unworthy.

7. A man figures it out himself.
Let me share something personal with you. I learned a huge life lesson when meeting one of my heroes, Chuck Palahniuk. As someone who loves to read and write and fight, I was anxious to meet the author of one of the Gospels of Man: Fight Club.

I sat through a talk on his latest book, which I later read, but didn't think it was as awesome as Survivor or Choke or Invisible Monsters. My focus was the book that made the movie that we all saw, and our GF's saw because Brad Pitt was goddamn hot in it. Fight Club, while very short, was well researched, well written, and provide some social commentary on the State of our Union, plus a nice bonus, SPOILER ALERT: The main character was batshit.

All of his books are badass, and I want to write badass books too after I'm done risking my brain in the cage, so after the lecture I hopped in line to ask Chuck a question.I made sure to be the last one in line, so I could get some uninterrupted instruction on how to make my work stand out.

When I finally arrived, I came face to face with a short, tan, smart-looking man in a pink shirt. His demeanor was focused and he had an air of flamboyant awesomeness that probably comes when you write books that Hollywood makes into movies.

I introduced myself, and poured my heart out on how his book sent my life in a crazy right turn, inspiring me to channel my youthful aggression into fighting. After that, I stammered through some specific questions I wanted answered, and first he gave half-ass answers that said "I'm tired, beat it." Then he deflected them, and focused on the fact I was a fighter. He gave me the advice, "Be careful, don't get a detached retina."

Yeah, thanks a lot for the tip pal. I didn't come here to receive an ophthalmological exam.

Dejected, I walked back out to the busy L.A. street and yelled "CHUCK PALAHNIUK DIDN'T TEACH ME SHIT!!!!!"

On the way back to the car, I was thinking more and more about the meeting, then I realized something. Without words, Chuck was saying something much larger. He was saying, “Figure it out your fucking self. I didn’t work my ass off to be an awesome writer just to give out the knowledge for free to some mouth-breather with cauliflower ear!”

I got it, Chuck.

If you can’t learn from an experience, it’s because you haven’t thought about it hard enough. I thought about this one and figured out that it’s up to you to have the courage to risk your ass trying to make your dreams come true. If you quit shy of your goals, you’re the only one that has to live with it.

There are 7 Man Laws for you. The rest are for you to write - after you make my Americano.

Caution/Progress

Caution and progress are mutually exclusive. You can only have one to the degree you're willing to let go of the other.

I say it all the time in martial arts. Turtling up is a great way to defend being punched (caution). But when in the turtle, you're not doing anything to make the punches stop (progress).

And, you have to mean it! By that, I mean that you can't sort of punch while really wishing to turtle. You have to commit to the punch. You have to give yourself 100% to taking that risk. Otherwise, you just left caution behind for nothing!

But, honestly, this isn't a boxing lesson.

For me, martial arts have always been a microcosm of life. Almost like that book "Everything I need to know I learned in Kindergarten". The way I live life, everything I needed to know, I learned on the mat!

Obviously, I'm talking "life lessons" here. Clearly, I didn't learn math or english on the mat. But I learned "how" to live.

That little boxing lesson from earlier...... That clearly has application in life. You can't go into that job interview "sure" it won't work. You have to commit to that "punch" you're throwing. You can't make progress trying to "cling" to caution.

So.... clearly, I'm saying GO, GO, GO!! No caution, EVER! Head down! Windmill!

Not, so much. The trick is the play between the two. Yes, all progress is from having taken the risk. But continuous progress..... Longevity...... That takes caution! You have to be able to come out of that turtle and throw! And then get back in it, and regroup.

I always think of it in my head as a gunfight scene in a movie.

If they just ball up behind something and never come out.... All caution. No progress. If they just walk all smooth forward while shooting (think Terminator)..... All progress. No caution.

You need to use a bit of both.

and here's where it gets philosophical.

You have to believe 100% in your plan to succeed.... And completely willing to fail.

If you don't believe it can work, you won't really commit. And then it won't work.

If you don't want to risk failing, you won't really commit. And again, it won't work.

If you get yourself all pissed and willing to go out in a blaze of glory..... you will.

You can't ever be so down on yourself, that you can't see the possibility of it working. Or so dependent on your current success that you can't try to improve.

I've done both.

When I was a kid, life was scosh difficult. (Waaagh! yes I would like some cheese with that whine) My point is that because life kinda sucked, I was willing to take risks. Or so I thought. See what I learned is It's not a "risk" if you have nothing to lose. So while I seemed like a "taking my shot" kind of guy, really, I hadn't had to take any actuall risk. I was just plodding forward shooting, cause I was gonna get shot anyway..... may as well go out like that. That's not true risk.

Consequently, I made a lot of progress. I'd managed to accomplish a lot of really cool things. And that's when it went downhill. I started taking less risks. Well, I should say as my life improved, I actually had things to risk!

Once things go "well" for a while, it's hard not to want them to keep going well. Then, you start changing decisions to reduce risk. At some point you look up and realize you've been "turtling" for a looong time! And sometimes, if you've been "safe" for so long..... You comepletely lose your courage to take the risk to move forward.

You are what you do most often.

You can't get so comfortable you stop being willing to take chances. And you can't be so sure you're going to "go out swinging" that you never take the time to make safe when you can.

I guess what I'm saying in this rambling post, is this.....

Be safe when you need to be. Be willing to lose it all to take a shot.

And everything you need to know about life you can learn from fighting.

-Jay

 

 

 

Oly Inspiration!

Just in case you're not fired up about the new Oly Lifting class yet- Jay

 

Oly Lifting= Not For The Soft Of Heart!

Catalyst Athletics, one of my favorite websites, recently put up an article about staying in love with the sport. Not only is it awesome.... But there are some really poignant parallels to BJJ. Check it out- Jay

“Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves—to break our own records, to outstrip our yesterday by our today.” - Unknown

Do you know what weightlifting is? It is the worst bitch you could ever encounter. It frustrates you, makes you cry on the inside, doesn’t take yes for an answer, and fucks all your shit up. Mentally and physically. Weightlifting continually tells you no. It pulls when you want to push and it pushes when you want to pull.

You wrap your fingers around that bar and the bar already wants to work against you. Weightlifting takes your insides and puts them right on the platform for all to see. You want to make that barbell your bitch, but really it is laughing at you; all the while you are victim to its demands. The barbell runs the show.

READ MORE.....

Inspiration For The Day

This was at the Atlantic States Open weightlifting meet 2012. He was in the 85-90 year old category. He broke a national record at this meet. I didn't catch his name, because I was so blown away I forgot to wright it down. I was absolutely inspired.

So..... what is your excuse again?

 

My First Olympic Meet

Yesterday, I competed in my first Olympic Lifting Meet. We went to Mass for the Atlantic States Open. Was a great experience. Funny, how nerve reactions are the same for all sports no matter how different those events are. Sandy mouth and excessive urinating, just like backstage at fights! I've been doing Oly variations of lifts in S&C for years, but recently have become obsessed with becoming better at the sport itself. So even though, I'm not going to the Olympics, I still put a lot of pressure on myself. High expectations= anxiety! I planned for that. I set my last lifts about 10 lbs shy of my best lifts in the gym. And I only opened at 90% of those. pretty conservative. But, I wanted to make all my lifts, and really just learn how the sport really works.

The effect that nerves have on fine motor skill can really shoot you in the foot in Oly Meets. The Snatch is the most technical of the lifts, and of course happens first. So I go out and do just about the worst snatch ever witnessed. I probably shouldn't have gotten the pass on that one, but I think they felt sorry for me. Well, I loosened up after that. By my last snatch, I was at least managing decent form. Still, couldn't get myself into a solid low catch position like I do in the gym. But, I'll take a solid high catch under the circumstances. After that is the Clean and Jerk. By then I was lifting like myself. Form was clean!

Anyway, I always tell people to push themselves, and try things. I think you find yourself in the moments when you do the things that you could've sworn were just out of your reach. I try to practice what I preach. So, I thought I'd share my latest adventure.

Here's a video of my best attempts in each lift. Snatch 65k (144lbs), and Clean & Jerk 100k (221lbs) -Jay

 

 

Exist Anew

Exist Anew is a website started by Beau DeCourcey, and Aaron Bilodeau. Aaron has been a student for years, and Beau is one of our main instructors. They have taken the lifestyle design concept we preach here at The Academy, and added their own research, and style. They have both made the commitment to give to others the benefits the have gotten through the protocol they developed.

Exist Anew is how they are doing it!It will be an informative blog, as well as a contact point for the personal training/consulting they are doing. I recommend them and their services. I'm proud they are part of our family.

Here's a taste of their material. -Jay

Comfort Zoning

Photo taken by Cody Pickens

The modern world has a lot to offer, and in most cases, far too much for our own good.  On the other end, the ‘up hill both ways in snow storm’ mentality is a little too austere.   Comfort zones tend to exist on a positive feedback loop. Meaning the more comfortable you become, the greater comfort you seek. Suddenly, a simple chair no longer satisfies, and now must recline, and might as well massage you while sporting a dual cup holder and refrigerator. I’m sure I’m behind on the curve and even a better chair exists, with an “improved” model in the works.

The point of this post is not to demonize comfort, but rather point out that pain and pleasure exist in the contrast of being. A stump will never be as pleasurable a seat as the super recliner described above, but the super recliner will never be as pleasurable with out the stump. Both exist on each end of the comfort continuum, and it is in the contrast between the two that pleasure is found. Find these edges of comfort often, but exist there shortly.

READ MORE......

Jay's Guide To Happiness: Think Negatively. Give Up. Suffer.

Yep, that's right. Sunday is a great day for a philosophical discussion.

My latest obsession: Stoicism.

I've been studying it for a while now, but there are a lot of misconceptions out there, so I thought I'd make it easy for you. -Jay

Stoicism 101:

Stoicism is generally thought of as a philosophy. But, it was a very early way of manipulating your psychology as well. It’s been said that Stoicism is kind of like the pragmatists Zen. I was exposed to Zen through all of my martial arts research. And, while it appealed to me very deeply, it also seemed a tad too esoteric. Stoicism, seems like a scientist’s attempt at Zen. Let me break it down for you. Stoicism simplified: Think negatively. Give up. Suffer. Yep, it’s all about becoming happier. What? Ok, maybe it needs more explaining.

Thinking negative. That’s easy. They’re just throwing the “starving kid in Africa” line at you. You know the old line “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, then I saw a person who had no feet”. That’s the idea behind stoic negative thought. It’s not to be morbid. It’s to develop gratitude, and joy. Stoics spend some time every day picturing all the bad that could be. And then they open their eyes to the beauty of what they still have. Thinking negatively is really just a technique for developing gratitude and joy.

Give up, really? Ever heard the “Serenity Prayer”? “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Well, that is the essence of Stoicism. Stop caring about the crap you can’t effect. Have absolute control over what you can. Don’t run yourself into circles putting things in the wrong category. Done. Recipe for happiness. I think that’s how Stoicism eventually became to mean to have “no” emotion. Because most people are sooooo emotional over nonsense that is not in ant way under their control, and stoics (about those things) would have nothing. All people remember are the deadpan moments. The don’t realize that Stoics were just maximizing their joy. The biggest killer of joy, is stress and worry. No stress and worry, more joy! Stoics weren’t being devoid of ALL emotions. They were just ridding themselves of the ones that didn’t help. That’s the give up part.

The other real advanced thought in Stoicism, was the concept of “Adaptation”. That’s what I was hilariously referring to, when I said “suffer” earlier. They already understood progressive resistance. You all know it. If you run 1 mile for a while it stops being hard. So you can add another quarter mile, and another, and another. Until, one day, you’re running way further than you ever thought was possible. Because you added stress, adapted, then “progressively” added more “resistance”. It works with weights, suntans, calluses, …. Everything. We are familiar with this in the physical world. But, not so much in the mind. Stoics understood, that if you could progressively learn to endure suffering, then suffering would be less able to take your joy. So, they had some austere practices. Fasting, cold exposures, zenlike simplifications, physical exercise, etc. People see these practices, and think they wanted to suffer. Wrong. They wanted to be able to endure suffering, so they would suffer less. If you really don’t like getting sunburned, your best defense (besides hiding) is to EXPOSE yourself to the sun. And get accustomed to it. Smart, controlled exposure, makes it effect you less. Hell, it’s why you get flu shots. They were on to something WAY ahead of their time. As a non mystic, non esoteric philosophy of life and way to achieve psychological health…. You can’t beat Stoicism.

Read up on it!:

A couple of great resources are:

Getting Stronger

In Over Your Head