Rommel Ryan

Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013

Rommel Ryan — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 08:00:17 +0000

Goodbye 2012!

2012 can be described in three words: Year of Risk

I made a lot of sacrifices and took a lot of risks in order to find out what I was made of. There’s another popular phrase, “Risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”

Because of certain risks my life took a scary turn early in 2012, March to be exact, where I was rushed to the ER due to the possibility of a stroke. My father had a mild stroke at age 47, and since then I had been aware of the signs and I had one of those signs that day – sudden numbness and weakness in my face and arm down my left side of my body. Prior to this symptom I was experiencing the worst headache ever in my life. I was still at my gym, just knew that I had to get home to rest because I was feeling extremely nauseous from it, and it was difficult driving home, and probably shouldn’t have been driving to be honest.

I get home, throw up, take some Aleve, and try to sleep it off until Julie got home. About five minutes before she got home came the worst symptom. So off to the ER, where I had to wait almost two hours just to be admitted. I was tested for three things, blood clot to my brain, leaking aneurysm, and possible stroke. They drew my blood, injected me with a contrast dye, then the worst of all was a spinal tap – EFF ME!

Thankfully, it all turned out to be negative and it was concluded that I was suffering from a severe cluster migraine. They had me rest there for another two hours then sent me home with migraine meds.

The next day I set a goal to rebuild myself in forty days to get ready for an important video shoot, and then to further prepare my body for the rigors of Tough Mudder three months after that. But before all that I also had more blood work done as I just had a gut feeling there was something else was wrong. Everything just felt off, and my gut was right. The results of my blood work were lousy to say the least and so the healing began. It was definitely a new challenge and a lot of risk involved as my health had never been this bad, and I’m in the health and fitness field for goodness sakes.

Anyway, it really set the tone for the rest of the year in that I took more risks, both in my personal life and business life. I figured take the chances, make the mistakes, and learn from it. A lot of things paid off and at the same time a lot didn’t, but I have no regrets and never will. The pain associated with certain risks essentially nourished my courage to do even better.

As 2013 approaches, I’m very hopeful and inspired for what’s to come. There’s still a lot of uncharted territory, but the key is to maximize each moment, each day, and be fully engaged in the process. That’s all I can do, because today is all that life truly presents for opportunity.

I predict 2013 to be the Year of Kaizen, and I wish you the same.

I wish you a very Happy New Year and the courage to take control and fulfill your dreams.

Welcome 2013!

To the spirit of kaizen,

Rommel Ryan

What I’ve Learned In 2012

Rommel Ryan — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:00:29 +0000

As 2012 (and the world as we know it) comes to a close it seems to make sense to put out one of these posts before I have to break out my zombie killing weapons.

Although, my go to zombie killing tactic – throwing old records like ninja stars, was stolen by the director of Shaun of the Dead. Oh well ;-P

I could go on and on about my impressive ninja skills but that would take like 1-trillion ninja characters of which like only .000001.01.01 you would be able to see, and I don’t want to strain your eyes so how about we get to the things that I’ve learned this past year. I broke them up into seven categories: Mindset, Career, Relational, Health and Fitness, Life, Spiritual, and Family.

Mindset

“Only the failure to strategically control the contents of your consciousness keeps you from feeling the consistent internal charge of being fully alive, engaged, connected and fulfilled” – Brendon Burchard

What your thinking about, you are becoming. This was nothing new to me, but this year it really slapped me in the face a couple times. It was more noticeable due to being mindful of how I was acting in front of my kids, because the times I wasn’t being mindful and brought home stress my kids would emulate. So now I always have this conscious shift of happiness and joy once I insert the key to my front door, it’s almost 100% automatic, but it needs to be. No matter the stresses of the day, choosing happy wins (Duh!).

You have to be engaged, every single day! If I did not make it top of mind to be engaged, my day(s) were very unproductive, scattered, and such a waste. And I had a lot of wasted days in 2012, probably more so than any other year so far that it makes my stomach sick thinking about the lost opportunities.

Always be uncomfortable. Comfort is a false security blanket of force that will deter your dreams. It will force you to stay in relationships, situations, or environments that you’ve outgrown simply because change requires a bit of pain. But the pain provides an introspection to help identify the current mental space and understand what needs to be changed.

Willpower isn’t enough. I realized this big time this year as I’ve had friends and clients that I thought I could help just by trying to convince them that it’s all about their willpower. “Be strong, stay strong” I would say. But the fact of the matter is that if someone isn’t “ready” to change, nothing will happen. And for me to remember that it’s not my problem in the end. But on the flipside, I also recognize there’s a huge part of me that wants to nurture and no let them fail so it’s a big challenge for me to blend those attributes.

I cannot please everyone, nor do I need to. Plus it’s easier to retain self-respect that way.

Be Charged! Most of this year I rarely felt that certain excitement, or satisfaction with certain milestones that I thought I would feel more from. I realized that somehow without ever noticing that I fell into the “comfort zone” trap again and stopped journaling, and stopped practicing my work in activating the 10 human drives that I learned from Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Academy. Just two months ago it really hit me, and since then my goal has been to be on my game more consistently and with a strategic and mindful approach of activating the human drives that I really needed for the day.

Career

“Dedicate your life to a cause greater than yourself, and your life will become a glorious romance and adventure.” – Mack Douglas

MS-V-CV: Mission Statement, Vision, and Core Values
These are the big three that have really been encouraged by my mentors to really lock down. It has helped me tremendously in clarifying my career and personal life. For me, working my mission statement made me ask questions like “What is my calling?”, “What inspires me the most?”, “Where do I want to be 5 years from now?”, “What could I do with it?”

From there creating my vision helped me uncover the value in that mission, but in my process I felt I needed to define my core values before the vision statement, which to most people’s advice seemed like the opposite process. For me it wasn’t, as defining my core values gave me purpose, confidence, and a platform to prevent me from making bad choices.

Failing forward. I’ve been exposed to a lot of business systems the past three years and one system I followed exactly to the letter provided less than stellar results. I thought for a long time that maybe I truly didn’t execute the way I was supposed to, but in that situation I didn’t split test them and later found out the hard way what worked and what didn’t. Then the weirdest thing happened, literally two weeks ago I got a call from a former mastermind colleague who was curious on what I was doing lately with the business. Long story short we both discovered that although we had both followed the same system two years ago that we both got unsatisfactory results. We agreed that some of the marketing just didn’t resonate with our community even though there was a guarantee that it could work with any and all demographic. I then realized that what truly worked was listening to the concerns of my community and figuring out a way to address their needs and desires. But in order for me to get there I needed straightforward trial and error.

So really the big lesson was to take certain tools, but test them enough to make sure it works to attract the clients I wanted. If the tools are “done for you”, I used it as simply a template to write material with my voice.

Trust the Crazy Ideas. I don’t think this one needs much explanation. I felt strongly about certain ideas and if I didn’t try to make them happen would have meant not expressing myself to the fullest. Pretty much goes with the fail forward mentality.

Hire a personal business coach – but one that can truly understand your voice. I thought to myself, “Geez, do I really have to spend more money for someone to possibly tell me the exact same thing I’ve already learned from my previous mentors?”. I had received a referral from a client who had just launched a new business, and she insisted I call her business coach. I did, and the difference with our shared coach was she was a very strategic listener. She just has this gift of listening to all my concerns, but extracting the juice of my concerns. She was able to take what she considered my number one issue based on the way I communicated my concerns, and every time she made me write down a strategic plan for the next few days while I was on the phone with her. It always blew me away on how much sense it made, and how simple it was to execute from there.

Be There. The past year and a half I had pulled myself away from a huge aspect of my business in order to try to build more structure on the back end. And although the back end systems is an integral part, the juice – the “Quan”, has always been in the front end. That’s how I initially created my business and in order to re-ignite the fire with myself and my mission with my clients and community I knew I had to come back in a greater capacity and get more face to face time with them. Just have fun, be quirky as usual, even if they made fun of my quirkiness because at least it made them laugh and we all know that laughter is a powerful antidote to stress. Getting a good laugh in just helps bring the mind and body back to balance, which is why my wife and I always make it a point to get a good laugh in at the end of the day with one of our favorite comedies.

Here’s a few funny clip montage of “The Quan” from Jerry Maguire.

Relational

— 30 —“Because he believes in himself,
he doesn’t try to convince others.
Because he is content with himself,
he doesn’t need other’s approval.
Because he accepts himself,
the whole world accepts him.” – Tao

Warrior Within. This year was a major battle of (my)self. The constant battle of yin and yang, inner voices of doubt, searching for higher self. I’m a very spiritual person, and a student of various religions, I’m just not exclusive to one. In working on myself and searching for my higher self it allows me to truly enjoy the full spectrum of emotions of joy, sadness, pleasure and pain. And the lessons I learn from each event builds my inner warrior. It’s frustrating and stressful at times, but it’s stuff that I needed to go through in order to bring things up to the surface that I now have a better understanding of what’s most important in my life right now, and what I can now learn to let go of. Letting go, and learning to detach from the most trivial of things is also a huge part of my process.

Stop Talking! When I’m stressed I have this big problem of not talking when I’m supposed to listen. Nowadays, I notice it right away, but it bugs the hell out of me that I just don’t shut up and simply listen. I discovered that stress just does that to me, but I know I’m doing better with it, because once I recognize it I remember to take a breath, stop talking, and focus on listening.

Surround myself with people who believe I can. And I only share my goals with people who I feel can help me attain them. Why? Because, those people will ask “Why not?” That’s the environment and attitude that helps me get to working on my goals more.

H.O.I. – Honesty, Openness and Integrity. Pretty much say what I mean and mean what I say, and everything else will be just fine.

The Foo Foo Romantical Stuff. This year I’ve learned to pamper my wife, Julie with whatever she wanted regarding stress relief. Let me just tell you guys out there, if you have young kids and you’re wife wants the dishes done and a back rub, DO NOT hesitate. Get that shit done and the “sexy sexy” will take care of itself. Ok, maybe TMI, whatever it’s my blog right Jules

HEALTH & FITNESS

Stripping Away. Every year my philosophy regarding health and fitness is simply stripping away at the non-essentials. As my life has gotten busier due to bigger family, more traveling, more work to take care of more expenses, yada, yada, yada I found myself always going back to two tried and true formats: strength circuits and physical culture conditioning.

For my strength circuits it was back to the basics of squat, push, pull, and deadlift variations with sandbags, free-weights, or kettlebells.
For my physical culture conditioning it was utilizing bodyweight circuits inspired from TacFit protocols, parkour drills (at least the stuff I know I can do, haha!), and some of the basic martial arts drills that I’m accustomed to.

That’s it, simple yet effective.

Going on 14 years, and reflecting back from the start of my career I’m already discovering that I’m coming full circle from simple to crazy elaborate protocols that the latest trends and research will glorify, then back to the simple stuff. Basics will win every time, Rocky style!

Z-Health Neural Warm-up plus Intu Flow has further increased body awareness, coordination, and IMO tissue quality. I have pretty much dumped foam rolling since being more consistent and more proficient with the drills in both programs. I realize this may seem like a shameless plug since I’m certified in Z-Health R and I Phase, but it’s not. I simply feel strongly that the combination of the two programs improves my body’s ability to modulate threat to my joints while at the same time improves and speeds up the healing process.

Become a Zen Master. My schedule is so erratic plus the fact that I haven’t had a week of a good night’s sleep since November 2009 that I’ve learned to maintain some sense of rhythm by incorporating more meditation time into my day. However, I use technology to help accelerate my ability to meditate such as Holosync and the Silva Life Method. Some meditation experts claim that a certain amount of meditation is equivalent to a certain amount of sleep hours. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know. What I do know is that the more consistent I am with my meditation schedule that even the short amount of sleep I get still feels high quality, plus I feel less stressed.

The Foodie Stuff. In regards to nutrition I’ve found myself always falling back to Precision Nutrition protocols that I’ve been using since 2001. Across the board I don’t know of any other program that can match it in terms of simplicity and consistent results. But that’s me and that’s my opinion of utilizing it in the trenches all these years and achieving predictable results.

LIFE

“A warrior does what they love. A warrior does the thing they are put here to do.” – Dan Millman

Commit to Learning and Growing. I’ve become more aware of the lessons learned from my mistakes this past year and it’s very humbling. I try to learn and grow with each stumbling step, but with that I no longer hold back. There’s no reason to, why would I get myself stuck in a rut?

Make Life an Adventure. Now that I have two kids, I’ve relearned what it’s like to be in awe of the littlest and simplest things. Like my son’s expressions when they see fireworks, or Mickey Mouse. It was absolutely amazing to feel my insides tingle like I was their age again. I really missed that part of me. Now, with every moment, even if it’s a frustrating one, I make it an adventure with my boys.

Choose to be a Hero. In my line of work, on any given day, without realizing it I am able to make a difference. The feedback I receive helps to validate my cause, but I’ve learned to let go of the validation, because my core values have already set the tone and have eliminated the need for that validation. I’m not going to lie, it’s still nice to hear, but it’s no longer a “need to hear” mentality like it used to be a few years ago.

More importantly since Ryan was born I committed to doing what I can – being there for those who need me, standing up for what I believe in, and trusting my gut when I feel strongly that something isn’t right. Choosing to be a hero for my family and working to make a difference in my community is what gets me fired up every morning.

SPIRITUAL

“If there is a God, he is within. You don’t ask God to give you things, you depend on God for your inner theme.” – Bruce Lee

This part builds on my “Warrior Within” point. I’m a very spiritual person, a student of various religions, but not loyal to one. I find too much hypocrisy out there. Let’s just say I’m a Christian with very strong Taoism philosophies. One of Bruce Lee’s sayings best illustrates my path to enlightenment, “Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation.”

It’s a process of yin and yang for me, a way for me to keep top of mind the interdependency of my philosophy and beliefs.

And with that I will now move on to my favorite subject.

FAMILY

“If you have something to say to a loved one, don’t wait until tomorrow. Too late comes sooner than later.” – Nick Welton

Where do I even start? Let’s see…

Letting Go of Everything “Ideal”. I learned to forget the possibility of an ideal schedule with two young kids that are just 21-months apart. I learned to forget trying to maintain organization with the less important items at home, and just make sure that we have clean clothes, clean dishes, and trash and poopy diapers are thrown out. The alternative was learning to live with the chaotic organization that my kids dictated. Why? Because, going with their flow and giving them the utmost attention resulted in less stress and more fun due to “cherishing the moment”. However! However! At the end of the day, Julie and I would still reinforce the concept of “Time to clean up, it’s night night time”, which they always gladly help with. Yay!

Remembering the Mantra “This Too Shall Pass”. Ryan in comparison to Mason was an easy baby (although at the time he seemed very challenging). Mason really taught us that our sanity was more important than sticking to a so-called schedule of feeding and napping. See with Ryan we worked really hard to maintain a certain schedule, but when it came time to attempt the same concept with Mason it seemed that all hell broke loose, because now we were also having to be mindful of Ryan’s schedule. Long story short, in our case, we threw that book out the window and chose to do whatever it took to maintain sanity for the day. With Mason that meant finding the just the right position to feed him, finding the right ambience and sleeping position, testing out what seemed like 20 different bottles, etc…I think you get the point. And just to point out, whatever “the right” thing was sometimes only worked for that day or a week, and then Mason would throw us another curveball to keep us on our toes. So again, it meant getting mindset right, buckling up for the ride, and remembering that this too shall pass and that the journey is absolutely worth it!

Give It Your All. As tired as I felt, as stressed as I felt with the combination of running a business and raising a new baby, I had to do whatever it took to do the things today that would matter tomorrow. There’s a saying “how you do one thing, is how you do everything”, and when it came to family I always kept that top of mind. I was never perfect and I’ve had many down days for sure, but trust me in that I would rebound and rebound hard, because I didn’t like the frustration that I felt when I knew I didn’t give it everything.

Forget the “GURU” Rules. There are so many books on parenting and how to communicate to your child, that just like all the nutrition and diet books out there it all gets too confusing and overwhelming. What happened to the simplicity of the good ole’ days? Granted I’m not that old and I am a child of the 70′s, but come on, I think the generation I grew up in turned out just fine and even had more backbone in comparison to the kids today. Values and respect just doesn’t seem to be as emphasized, but maybe I haven’t been exposed to enough parents either. All I know and feel is that as long as my kids learn to respect their elders and peers, understand right from wrong, understand how to share and give, and when they’re old enough to really grasp the meaning of values then I think we’ll be ok. With Ryan now three years old, I think we’re doing a pretty decent job so far.

Embrace Discovery. Ever since meeting Julie eleven years ago I’ve learned to embrace discovery, but it’s even more amplified now with the kids. Rediscovering a joy in the arts, the adventure of each day and the once in a lifetime milestones such as Ryan and Mason’s first step or their first word. Or their first injury or sickness and how worried we were even though it wasn’t a big deal. Embracing all those discovery moments really takes you on an adventure and reflecting back on the moments thus far just makes me want more of those moments.

Simply embrace everything.

So those are the major lessons I’ve learned for 2012. It also serves as a year in review for me and brings to light some areas that I can work to improve on and be bolder and better for 2013. It’s not about being perfect, but perfecting each day and each moment to the best of my ability. I have a lot of “I can’t wait to’s” that are ready to roll next year that it’s going to be quite the journey.

Let me end this post with this beautiful quote:

“Live your life so that your children can tell their children that you not only stood for something wonderful – you acted on it!”

Dan Zadra

Now go be awesome today

Rommel Ryan

Overcome Unwanted Behaviors and Get The Body You Deserve!

Rommel Ryan — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:00:02 +0000

There’s only 36 days left in the year. 2012 was a year that many of us wanted to be a “comeback” year of sorts. Let’s be honest though, I’m sure most of you also think that every New Year is a comeback year, am I right?

Think about that for a minute.

Why do we do that to ourselves?

We make a decision to want to improve our body and live a healthier lifestyle year after year. You seek out a professional like me, create a plan of attack, work that plan only until you start getting results and then the roller coaster of life causes you to fall off the wagon. We binge, we skip workouts, we cheat, we blame circumstances, and yet what’s perplexing is the fact that we still know exactly what we need to do, and we just can’t seem to get ourselves to do it.

We tend to block ourselves due to struggles with self-discipline, so we self-sabotage with our own negative beliefs and unfortunately many times negative beliefs from our own friends and family.

My confession is that I used to do that up until late 2004.

The catalyst of finally changing my mindset and behaviors was when it fully hit me that I was engaged to be married. I realized then that I had a bigger WHY to stop the self-sabotage. My closest friends reading this are probably wondering, “What?! Rommel self-sabotaged? I never got that impression…” My family, friends, co-workers never knew, because I was good at hiding it and would let out the frustrations through other avenues. But enough of that story and let me get back to the point of this blog post.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

You know you deserve better, so how do we stop and overcome unwanted behaviors?

I’ve got three things for you to take home today.

First, here are three things to keep top of mind:

You have to develop and build your inner resources, your self-esteem and self-respect in order to create a locomotive train of inspiration and motivation to accept the feelings of success on a continual basis.
You have to face the challenge and play full on.
You have to stay engaged on the present moments and stay focused on the good that is to come.

Second, here are three ways to overcome self-sabotage:

In alignment with number two stated above, continually move forward every day in your self-communication by deleting all negative self-talk. If negative self-talk comes about from yourself or others, take a deep breath and put that negative self-talk out in front of you with no judgement whatsoever. When you don’t put judgement on it, it has no meaning. This is zen talk now, but try it, and try it many many times and you’ll soon realize what I’m talking about. It will be easy to move forward when you practice this.
Believe and take responsibility for your thoughts. Believing in your “pride of accomplishment” will help you steamroll through the excuses and allow you to consistently give yourself 100% effort.
Stretch yourself! Stretch every mental, emotional, and physical fiber within you to be at your best and step out of the comfort zone. Sounds cliche, but the more you act in alignment with this mindset you’ll continually “see yourself” evolving in every way. You’ll find yourself excited and ecstatic majority of the time, even during the times you might not always feel up to it you’ll notice how easy it is to make the switch.

Third, just BE YOU, but more uniquely. What do I mean by that? I mean EXPRESS YOURSELF more!

What the heck does that have to do with anything Rommel?! Well, expression is one of the greatest secrets of creating your mental and physical masterpiece. You see, the way you do the small things shows up in the way that you do the big things. The more you engage in creative expression will undoubtedly help you in all areas of life, I’m not kidding!

Allow me to share a short story. Most who know me know me as a jock and a jokester. Before I met Julie, you wouldn’t dare catch me at a musical or anything related to performing arts. One day, Julie wanted to take me to a symphony and to also see the Nutcracker.

Initially I was like, Oh Hell to the N-O! But something inside of me started to flicker when I thought to myself, “You know what, you love this girl, why not give it a shot, what’s the worst that could happen?” Surprisingly, because I chose to be open to it, I had a great time. Soon enough that flicker I mentioned started getting stronger, a few more months go by, and a few more “gleek shows” and before I knew it there was a huge spark to re-engage in the arts. My father was an artist, and growing up I certainly had a few traits from him as I won a few art contests in elementary school, and was always teased by my classmates that my penmanship was “girly”. Because I was just a kid, and didn’t know how to handle it. I soon made my classmates forget all the “artsy fartsy” stuff that I was good at once we hit the sports arena as I was short tempered and extremely aggressive for a little guy.

Fast forward many years and I finally decide to re-engage in drawing arts, and took up graphic design as a hobby. Well, some really cool things started happening with my mindset, my creativity, and the way I designed fitness programs. My clients started getting results in a more fun environment, which ultimately helped them see results faster.

I realize that my story is a little rushed, but the point is that I discovered that your true self-expression is the creative tone, the creative expression of your life. So in physicalizing your creativity, in addition to overcoming self-sabotage you’ll find that overcoming unwanted behaviors isn’t as big of a deal as you initially thought. It just takes a realization that living healthy and fit is a simple switch in priorities, and doesn’t require a total life overhaul.

Ask yourself these important questions,

What do I think will happen when I achieve the results I desire?
What would successful results look like?
To be more inspired, I could start…

Reminder, there are only 36 days left this year.

Rise Above the average, Rise Above the ordinary, because when you do you’ll get the body you deserve!

Light this Sh*! Up!

Rommel Ryan

PS, Here’s a video to get you moving!

3 Things To Do Right Now To Set Yourself Up For Fitness Success

Rommel Ryan — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:29:06 +0000

Most people walking into my gym to start a fitness program typically respond with “Ok, I’m ready for the workouts, right?” – Wrong!

One of the reasons “Forging A Strong Mindset” is our number one element at Element 5 Fitness is because most people don’t address this element first, and 90% of the time these are the same individuals that drop out of their program after 6-8 weeks. They get frustrated, because they never truly addressed putting themselves in check especially when things get hard or they start to slack on any or a combo of components to their fitness program.

So before diving into any fitness program, you must do 3 things to set yourself up for success:

The following is an excerpt from my chapter in the Amazon best-selling book “3 Steps To Your Best Body In Record Time”

1. SIMPLIFY YOUR FITNESS GOALS

Simplify your fitness goals to 1-2 items. Why? Because, too many goals on your list will set you up for failure by becoming overbearing as you lose motivation.

So how do you avoid losing the spark? In setting your goals, you must ask yourself these important questions:

Why is this important to me?

What action steps am I willing to do, and sacrifices am I willing to make?

What things am I NOT willing to do?

How will finally achieving my goal make me feel?
…and what do I gain?

When you ask yourself these questions you now add true substance, and create a bigger “Why”. The “Why” is what will ultimately maintain that motivational spark.

Lastly, WRITE IT DOWN! Write down your goals and the answers to the questions above. Keep it somewhere easily accessible and turn to it whenever you need to spark things up again.

2. CREATE YOUR PLAN AND WORK IT WITH PASSION

So you’ve set your goals, now put together a plan of action with all the support structures you feel you need in order to successfully navigate this plan. Set a realistic time frame to achieve your goals, figure out all the possible roadblocks you’ll run into, THEN create the weekly structure that you know will work in your lifestyle to overcome these obstacles. Once this is created you’ve won half the battle, because this plan will help maintain the discipline to keep your goals in your sights.

Things to consider in creating your structure:

Healthy, supportive foods that you enjoy and are easy to incorporate into your lifestyle (Remember, supportive nutrition will account for 80% of your goal)
Set up a consistent time to get your workouts in
Get the support you need from family and friends, put your goals out there, heck more than likely one of them will ask to join you on your journey
Schedule a reward every 3 weeks, such as a massage, or night out with a loved one or friends. This helps keep you sane and looking forward to showing off your progress (trust me, they’ll notice)
Create a vision/motivation board full of inspiring pictures and quotes, and hang it where you’ll see it

3. GET OVER IT!

Every week I hear clients telling me every “good story” in their book as to why they’re not achieving the results they want. They point fingers elsewhere when they should be pointing at themselves.

Only you can push yourself harder in a workout, only you can put non-nutritious food in your mouth, and only you can control your time to dedicate to your fitness plan and achieve the results you’re looking for.

As a fitness professional I’m here to help motivate you, and to provide you the tools and the “map” to your fitness goals, but I’m not the one to drive you there. It’s not my place.

Just get rid of the excuses, and get done what needs to be done. Take small steps if needed, but just understand that every small step achieved is a victory not a challenge.

At least you took action, and that’s better than 90% of the individuals out there. Take inspired action, and before you know it you’ve achieved the results you’ve been looking for.

Now that you’ve simplified and written down your goals, created your action plan, and gotten over your boring excuses, you’re ready to get going!

“The secret of making something work in your lives is first of all, the deep desire to make it work; then the faith and belief that it can work; then to hold that clear definite vision in your consciousness and see it working out step by step, without one thought of doubt or disbelief.” – Eileen Caddy

Be Strong – Love Life – Play Full On!

Rommel Ryan

Fit In 40 Days Part 2 (My Road Back To Fit)

Rommel Ryan — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 01:43:55 +0000

What’s up guys! Feeling pretty good today, soreness wasn’t too bad, and it’s the type of soreness that gets you motivated to workout again. I know all you fitness nuts and weekend warriors know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s the type of soreness that you crave and hypes you up to attack the next workout.

Let’s get straight to my workout for today. It was simple, two exercises, downward ladder superset:

1) Sandbag Cleans: 10,8,6,4

2) Dumbbell Strict Overhead Press: 10,8,6,4

I started out with a 50lb sandbag for 10 reps when I usually can handle the 75lb bag, and ended up with the 75 lb bag on the last set to squeeze out 5 reps instead of 4. The back felt ok, not 100%, but it’s only day 2. As for the presses I started out with 40lb dumbbells, and well…I ended up with 40 lb dumbbells. Frustrating of course as my strength has gone down severely. I mean even our youth athletes in our Underground program are making fun of me, haha! Again it’s only day two and it’s going to be a process.

What’s interesting is an awareness of how all the stressors really affected my body. So please, please, please pay attention to the things that seem stressful in your life and make sure to be proactive in combating them. It’s only fair to you for all the hard work you do, and to let it slip away sucks. Because right now, initially it sucks, but again I’m grateful for being able to get back to the sandbags, kettlebells, etc.

Smile more, say thank you more, especially to the people you see on a daily basis.

“A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative, he refuses to dwell on it. Positive thinking is a form of thought which habitually looks for the best results from the worst conditions.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Be Strong – Love Life – Play Full On!

Rommel Ryan

Fit in 40 Days Part 1 (My Road Back To Fit)

Rommel Ryan — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 01:01:30 +0000

Two days ago I wrote a blog about my harsh date with stress.

Today’s post is the start of my journey to get back to top shape in 40 days. Why such a weird time frame of 40 days?

Well, I’ve got a professional video shoot scheduled for a new commercial for my gym Element 5 Fitness 47 days from today, which is a great catalyst to start ramping up the workouts and having a clear time frame to get it all done by. I’ve scheduled my workouts to be a fusion of Zach Even-Esh’s Underground Strength Coach program plus my Fit In A Hurry bodyweight and bands routines.

In addition, I’ve incorporated a hybrid of Muscle Activation Technique (MAT) and Z-Health Performance protocols to help my nervous system stay on top of things.

So another question you might be asking is why this combo of protocols?

First, I need to basically remap my nervous system with the MAT and Z-Health exercises, because what I failed to mention in my previous blog is that I also had to undergo a spinal tap. Unfortunately, the doc hit a nerve, which shot an intense shock down my left leg and basically I felt like an old man for 3 days after that. My body was protecting hardcore as if I was walking on ice all day. Only now am I feeling about 95% comfortable, but I can tell that all my stamina is gone, and my body mechanics are sloppy to say the least.

This is new territory for me, but I accept the challenge, because for a good part of my career corrective exercise was my specialty.

So not only do I need to improve my body mechanics again, but I need to regain strength fast with the Underground Strength protocols as I’ve lost a lot of strength. For example, in comparison to my performance in the video below this was my typical weight for each exercise,

DB Snatch “before” – 75 lbs for 2 reps, “today” – 55 lbs for 2 reps
Barbell Front Squat “before” – 185 lbs for 4-6 reps, “today” 135 lbs for 4 reps

The routine in the video I would normally do for 5 rounds, but 3 rounds was enough for me today.

Then on the finisher routine of kettlebell squat cleans to burpees it called for a straight 6 minutes (thanks to my buddy Travis Stoetzel of TravisStoetzel.com), however I had to stop at 4 minutes as my legs and low back started to lock up on me. I was pissed, but also grateful that I finally was able to do a more invigorating workout after taking a full month off of everything.

As I stated in my previous blog, thankfully it was just a cluster migraine, because things could be worse right now and I’m simply grateful that I’m ok.

So if you’re interested, stay tuned as I’ll be posting regular posts in the next 40 days.

“Devote yourself to an idea. Go make it happen. Struggle on it. Overcome your fears. Smile. Don’t you forget: this is your dream.” ~ unknown

Be Strong – Love Life – Play Full On!

Rommel Ryan

My Harsh Lesson With The Stress Reaper (And How I’m Recovering)

Rommel Ryan — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:20:42 +0000

About a month ago the stress reaper decided to pay me an unfortunate visit.

Yup, I let stress beat me, I must confess. Those of you who know me well are probably scratching your head wondering how the heck did Rommel get so stressed out?

Well, I wasn’t paying good enough attention to certain markers like I normally do. I got lazy, I lost some discipline, then my body basically sent me a harsh message on Monday, March 12, 2012 that ultimately had my doctor tell me that I needed to go the ER STAT!

Credit: www.teddytietz.com

I had to be screened for possible stroke, possible blood clot, and possible leaking aneurysm. Talk about a shocker for me, especially since I had to witness first hand the result of my father going through a stroke back when I was 16 years old.

I was confused as the event started out as a weird headache, but every hour became more pronounced and got to the point where it no longer felt like a headache, I literally thought something fatal was going to happen.

So I spend six hours in the ER, going through tests, then waiting, then tests, then waiting and it was so frustrating knowing that best case scenario I was experiencing my first cluster migraine. Better safe than sorry though as my symptoms were pointing to three very serious and possibly fatal scenarios. It could have easily been one of the other scenarios, so I thank God that all the tests came out clean and it was simply a harsh migraine and the accumulation of stress.

How did this really all come about?

Well, I can tell you exactly, because 2011 was a very successful, but also very tumultuous year for me.

I guess you can say I was just very good at hiding my stress or I chose to ignore them and bottled them in.

We all know what happens, when you just bottle it all in, and the result is never pretty.

The weird thing is that I have always felt that I’m not a stressed out kinda guy, and I usually don’t let things get to me, but it turned out I was wrong.

Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the big events last year that contributed to my stress accumulation:

November 2010 I got accepted to co-author the fitness book “3 Steps To Your Best Body In Record Time”

From November 2010 through May 2011 I had to write my chapter and go through a series of edits and final preparation for the book launch in July 2011
This was initially challenging as it was tough writing a chapter for a book for the first time

June 2011, held a staff celebration dinner, which unfortunately ended in an emotional speech of mine that communicated to my team that I am slowly losing passion for the industry and if certain goals of mine were not to be achieved, then I would be leaving Element 5 Fitness, and pursuing other endeavors. (It should be noted that I didn’t quit, because that’s not me, I just didn’t realize the stress was getting to me and the pressure I had put on myself)
August 2011 me and my business partner were chosen to be featured in USA Today for the World Fitness Elite Trainers of 2011, and were quoted for our top three tips for health and fitness
September 5, 2011, my second baby boy, Mason Royce was born! Not exactly a stressor, but the next six months of lack of sleep of course turned out to be.
September 19, 2011, held our 2 year facility anniversary that ended up bombing
November 2011 me and my business partner were invited to film the first ever World Fitness Elite TV show to be recorded on March 31, 2012
And the big kicker, below an apology email I sent on November 7, 2011 for piss poor customer service to our “Tribe Members” of Element 5 Fitness in which I took full responsibility for, because I simply didn’t do a good job of balancing out my directives:

From: Rommel Acda <rommel@element5fitness.com>

To: Mxxx Nxxxxx @yahoo.com>

Sent: Monday, November 7, 2011 9:55 AM

Subject: I’m Throwing Myself Under The Bus (I’m sorry…)

Hello Everyone!

Yes, you read the subject right, I’M THROWING MYSELF UNDER THE BUS, BIG TIME!

Why? Because you all deserve my sincerest apologies for failing you.

The “Insiders Tribe” features and benefits failed big time, and it’s completely my fault. I thought I provided ample training to my staff to handle executing the features and benefits and delivering them to you, and the harsh reality is that I didn’t.

In addition, I took on waaay too much on my plate this year in my book deal, getting Element 5 Fitness recognized as one of the World Fitness Elite in USA Today, working on re-launching my online product, etc… blah blah blah blah!

In the end they’re all excuses in not staying COMPLETELY CONNECTED with the people that matter the most – my family, my closest friends, staff, and last but not least YOU.

I went away for 5 days to get myself reconnected with myself, because I knew deep down I was “unplugged” and operating so robotic, and relegated to a ”stimulus response” entity.

Life moves FAST! And I just did a piss poor job of keeping up and staying present.

So I simply wanted you to know that I truly am sorry.

My mission is to enhance people’s lives through a “kaizen” fitness lifestyle, and my vehicle is Element 5 Fitness.

For those of you who have become disgruntled, I don’t blame you for canceling, because you deserve more. Again, I just wanted you to know that

I’m sorry, and if there’s any way I can fix that please let me know. Actually, it would mean a lot to me if you did let me know, but I understand if you simply want to part.

Sincerely,

Rommel Acda

Now when you look at this list you’re probably thinking “What’s really there to be stressed about? For the most part it looks like a very successful year.”

Most of these events were new territory for me, and I when I think back the preparation for each event had me stressed to a certain degree, and I simply forgot in most instances to balance out my days with slowing down, being appreciative of these opportunities, getting enough sleep, making sure to stay properly hydrated when I was putting in the long hours, scaling back some of my workouts so that I can recover appropriately and still stay in good shape, and making sure to consistently make a connection with my members.

I think I was simply pushing down those stressors and was ignorant to the fact they were piling up on each other. I basically flooded my body with so much cortisol, especially with the lack of proper rest. Finally, my body decided to send me the worst pain signal I’ve experienced so far in my life. My head felt like it was being crushed more each hour, my left eyeball feeling like it was about to pop out anytime plus my left eyelid became droopy, I felt nauseous, threw up, and then my left hand went numb.

So as I said, off the to the ER I went, and now the recovery process begins.

Lessons Learned and How I’m Currently Managing My Stress

I feel that I’m pretty in tune with my mind and my body, however only when I choose to be present. What I mean by that is being fully aware of my mental vitality and my physical presence – simply paying attention.

I’ve learned this drill of asking myself “What level am I at right now?” The answer to that will help me determine if I need to back off a bit to assist in both mental and physical recovery or do I have the capacity to amp it up a bit and level up another notch.

I’ve also learned that for me to stay on a consistently healthy level, that I can put as much of myself as I can with any of my endeavors, but to allow myself to be ok if life throws a wrench into it. Because, what I discovered I was doing was trying to pry that wrench off when it was practically going nowhere and I was wasting precious energy and further stressing my mind and body.

So here’s what I currently do to manage stress:

Journal at least once a day. The purpose of my journal is to keep a pulse on all aspects of my life from career, finances, health, relationships, work flow, personal, spiritual, and lifestyle. If I happen to skip a day of journaling then I notice that reflecting on that previous day I should have backed off a bit on the work or workouts. An easy tell is I feel too tired to get out of bed, even if I got enough hours of sleep, and those mornings I’ll forget to journal. It’s simply improving another skill and becoming more competent with keeping myself in check, especially with my current lifestyle of juggling running a business, being a coach, being a student, being a good husband, and being a good father.
In addition to my everyday journal, I still maintain a journal for my workouts like I always have as I’m most in tune with my physical performance during my workouts. I can tell when I need to scale down the volume or intensity based on what’s currently happening.
I meditate 10-20 minutes per day, and I switch between Centerpointe and Silva Life technologies.
Taking 10-20 minute naps after my meditation sessions, which honestly makes me feel like my brain is working way more efficiently. I just feel more focused and on point lately.
The first part of my work day ends at 4pm and I completely shut off my computer. If I need to squeeze in some extra work I’ll wait until after dinner and putting the kids to sleep is taken care of and fire up the computer for one more hour from 9-10p, then it’s lights out.
Play with the kids more, read to my kids more.
Reading more fiction books, and for me that’s reading a chapter or two per night versus trying to cram in 5-10 chapters one to two days per week. Why fiction, because majority of the stuff I read is either business related or research related so I have to balance it out with more fictional stories.
Reduced caffeine to one serving per week, and have substituted drinking more rooibos tea, but most importantly staying on top of my hydration. But that should be a given for anyone with an active lifestyle anyways.
De-cluttering my home. Believe it or not, clutter in your home truly affects your mindset, and the crazy realization is how much clutter you accumulate when your mindset starts to get lazy. It’s amazing, and I couldn’t believe how much stuff I’ve thrown away in the past month with even more to give away for donations.
Lastly, making a point to create more new experiences in my life. Why? Because brain expert Dr. Duzel has discovered that new experiences improves brain function. And it can be ANY new experience or ANY new learned information. But I choose to experience new things like taking my wife out to a new restaurant we’ve never tried for a date night whether it’s a good or bad experience. Or going on a stay/vacation with the family to a new location, or going to a new show, or learning a new skill for the next 60 days, and my favorite – fully experiencing a “WOW” moment with my 2 year old Ryan as he discovers a new experience or learns something new. It’s an experience that we all forget, because we’ve forgotten how to tap into the child in us and see all new experiences with fresh wonder.

These are the things I’m currently implementing and I’m sure there will be some adjustments in the future, but it’s all definitely made me put even more things into perspective, and the result will be that I’ll be a stronger person for sure. Especially knowing that it could have been worse.

If you find yourself in a similar situation some of these strategies may work for you. But just know that the basics for physical and mental vibrancy is making sure you get proper sleep (7-8 hours), stay properly hydrated (at least 68 ounces per day), sensible nutrition that supports your goals, and appropriate amounts of exercise to consistently maintain or improve overall conditioning.

What strategies have you used to manage your stress levels?

Please share in the comments section

What Is Your 6 Word Standard?

Rommel Ryan — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:38:01 +0000

I attended a Brendon Burchard “High Performance Academy” event back in November 2011. If you haven’t heard of Brendon Burchard yet, he is the author of Millionaire Messenger and is an expert in helping any expert get their expert message out there. Did I say “expert” enough?

Anyway, what I wanted to share was a powerful exercise that he taught at his workshop called “The 6 Word Standard”. It’s an exercise used to maintain and further activate congruency with yourself and when you are interacting with others.

Why is this important?

Well, at least for me congruency nowadays means a lot. I’ve met so many people in the last 5 years that have failed me with not being congruent with who they say they are. It’s been a very frustrating process, and it made it very hard to trust people that my sphere of influence came down to just three people. Not a good thing if you’re trying to build relationships and build your business.

But learning this exercise at Brendon’s event brought about a whole new mindset and outlook to further “activate” congruency.

What is congruency though?

I like the definition that states “when behavior matches the words and actions a person says and does.” Now in regards to a purposeful life I’ve learned that living in congruency is living in direct accordance with my dreams, desires, core values, mission statement, and life goals. And the more I activate congruency the more confident I become with my life’s mission and my industry that I choose to execute that mission. My energy shoots through the roof, and everything simply seems to fall into place. The less I activate it, the less I feel the aforementioned.

Ok, so back to the exercise I learned.

Your 6 word standard should be broken up into two categories:

Words that YOU will live up to for yourself
Words that represent how YOU will interact with other people

You’ll need to list as many words as you can for each category, and then choose your top 3 for each. Here are examples of my list and what I chose:

Category 1: courageous, integrity, valor, hero, passion, role model, hard working, diligent, impactful, fearless, open, loving, engaged, present, bold
Category 2: respectful, inspirational, transformative, impactful, genuine, authentic, entrepreneur, enthusiastic, present, giving, bold, caring, receiving

My top 3 words representing myself for 2012 are,

Being Bold – make decisions and take risks that most people are just too afraid to attempt
Hero – be a hero and a role model for my family
Engaged – be fully engaged and present for each moment of your day and to each task at hand

My top 3 words representing how I will interact with others are,

Present – Oprah once said, “Meaningful things happen when you give someone your undivided—undistracted—attention. Because that’s what everyone is really looking for: to be validated, appreciated, heard. To be raised up by their interactions, and not put down.” I choose to be present with each person I engage in conversation with as I’ve learned that connecting with what’s alive in another person really makes the experience.
Authentic – finding the key and the happiness with myself, and not with what society says you should be.
Transformative – I chose this word because in the fitness business helping people create meaningful physical transformations also help them make meaningful mind transformations. It’s amazing watching the whole process unfold, and it’s very gratifying.

Try this exercise out I guarantee you’ll see and feel a difference in the way you behave and interact with others in just a week. The challenge is staying true to the exercise and getting past 30 days. I have my list in my journal as well as a laminated card that I keep in my wallet everyday AND in my notes app on my iPhone.

What 6 word standard did you come up with?

Please share as I’d love to hear your opinion on this post.

- Rommel Ryan

2 Simple Steps To Get Fat Loss Right In 2012

admin — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:57:23 +0000

Here we are again. It’s 37 days into the New Year and we’re at the “Continue or Quit” crossroads. In about 23 more days I’ll typically see people start to give up on their fat loss goals and say “To hell with it, I just need a break from it all…”

Well you, your health, body, and mind deserve better, but in this unfortunately huge matrix of fitness and fat loss information it’s easy to get caught up in the big mess of information overload. Allow me to end a lot of your frustration right now, because I’m going to to share with you 2 simple steps to getting fat loss right in 2012 (hopefully forever, but that’s up to you). And this is based on hard science.

FAT LOSS 101

Lesson 1: You Need To Understand How To Mobilize Fat Stores

There are multiple mechanisms behind it, but for today’s purposes it’s important to learn what increases fat breakdown. In this case it’s the proper manipulation of catecholamines, specifically epinephrine. Epinephrine has been linked to increasing Hormone Sensitive Lipase (HSL) activity, which is a potent stimulator of breaking down fat stores.

So how do you increase epinephrine in the body?

Simplest way is to engage in moderate to high intensity exercise. A study published in the March 2002 edition of the European Journal of Applied Physiology demonstrated how just 31 minutes of a moderate to high intensity circuit (alternating set format) of multi-joint exercises showed EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) was significantly elevated for 38 hours post-workout. You can only obtain appropriate EPOC from this type of routine versus a traditional cardio based routine.

Below is a sample routine based on a complex versus alternating sets

Another important feature of increasing epinephrine is that once it’s released it binds to beta receptors on fat cells, which basically means that it targets subcutaneous fat.

Lesson 2: You Need To Understand Why It’s Important To Properly Manage Insulin

On the flip side of lesson 1 is that excess insulin deactivates HSL activity, so it’s obviously imperative to manage insulin properly through strategic supportive nutrition protocols such as Paleo (or the like), Precision Nutrition (PN), and even Intermittent Fasting protocols. These strategies will be tackled in a future blog post, but let me explain what I found to be the simplest way to manage insulin.

Simply focus on a high protein, moderate to high fiber (preferably high) intake, little to no refined carbohydrate nutrition program, with lots and lots of vegetable variety. This is why I recommend a Paleo like or Precision Nutrition like approach, because these two strategies really utilize a structure that helps manage insulin appropriately. I personally have used the PN approach with more success, but I’ve simply found that it works best for my body. Again, I will explain that all in a future blog post, but for now just follow these “nutrition crash course” guidelines to help you lose more fat.

Every meal must start with a protein base, preferably lean cuts of proteins

Portion sizing:

Women: shoot for protein portions the size of a deck of cards
Men: shoot for double the women’s portion

Add natural fats (olive oil, coconut oil, flax and fish oils) and lots and lots of veggies

Portion sizing for veggies: unlimited! And the more colorful the better!

Multiply your bodyweight by .55 to calculate how many ounces of water you should aim to drink to stay properly hydrated, help flush out toxins, and to assist your cells in metabolizing stored fat
Supplementation that may help in managing insulin: cinnamon bark extract and high quality fish oils or better yet high quality krill oil
Forget counting calories for now. Simply focus on eating till you’re almost full, but be aware of that goal prior to eating and hold yourself accountable to the lean body you want.

Unless you’re just lazy, these simple guidelines will make creating a decent fat burning environment for your body really hard to screw up. It must be noted however, that being too strict can also create a diminishing fat loss effect, and this is where utilizing Dr. John Berardi’s “10% Rule” comes in. Calculate 10% of your meals for the week to used as a “cheat meal”. For example, if you’re eating approximately 5 meals per day, that comes out to 35 meals for the week, so 10% will be 3.5 meals for the week correct? I like to have my clients round down to 3 cheat meals for the week, and I also prefer they have these cheat meals as a post-workout meal provided they trained hard enough to earn it.

I also encourage them to be sensible about these cheat meals as it’s such a delicate balance between fat loss and fat gain, but when done right the results are amazing. You’re brain and your body certainly need the hormone cascade that’s created from a supportive cheat meal. My clients tend to miss breads and pastas so examples of cheat meals that include these foods are,

Deli style sandwiches with whole grain or whole wheat bread and lean cuts of meat with light mayo, but all the other workings
Pasta dishes with preferably tomato based sauce and grilled chicken or fish or lean ground beef. I myself like a really good chicken cacciatore
Rice dishes with grilled chicken teriyaki or grilled steak and veggies

So the above info is a good start. Improving your competence of the basics of fat loss will get you to the lean body you’ve been working for a lot faster.

What are your favorite cheat meals that you can share with us? I’d love to hear about them!

Rommel Ryan