How a 90 Year-Old Sushi Chef Can Make You Sexy

August 24, 2016 by Roger Lawson II Leave a Comment

Meet Jiro Ono, the greatest sushi chef alive – and arguably the greatest to have ever lived.

Jiro first began apprenticing in a sushi restaurant at 9 years old.

At age 90, Jiro has had the same job for the past 81 years.

The documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi tells Jiro’s journey to becoming a master of his craft who continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, and in doing so highlights universal principles that you can begin applying today on your own quest for a better life (and a kick-ass body to go along with it).

“Once you decide on your occupation, you must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work.” – Jiro Ono

In this case, what is your occupation?

It’s you.

It’s your body, how it looks and how you feel inside of it.

It’s your strength and how you choose to display it as you go through life.

It’s your mindset and how you mold it to respond to the challenges you face.

You are a tightly woven bundle of habits and predictabilities, steps and actions that have landed you exactly where you are at this very moment.

To get where you want to go, somewhere different than where you are right now, you’ll need to develop new, more gangster habits that starting steering the sexy ship that is your life towards these uncharted waters.

To do that, falling in love with every step of the process is key.

The ups and downs, the boredom and un-sexy routine, the soaring successes and the ball – or whatever you’ve got in those jeans – smashing defeats.

You will miss workouts.

You will screw up your eating plan.

Your fat loss or muscle gain progress will stall.

When you love the process, it becomes easier to reframe the inevitable obstacles you’ll encounter as valuable feedback that will eventually lead you to the outcome you desire instead of packing up and going home at the first sign of things not going as planned.

Mistakes and setbacks are like diamonds covered in elephant shit: with enough willingness to push past the stinky exterior and clean it up a bit, you’ll be rewarded for it.

Whatever happens, you will survive it. And you will learn to thrive because of it.

I’m not saying this as some woo woo The Secret-esque declaration, but because I’ve seen it work.

Full immersion is the way to go when trying to achieve anything, and you get to decide what that looks like for your life and where you are now.

Think of it like a pool.

Do you learn to swim by dipping your toe into the water?

How about going in halfway – you know, to that point where the frigid water paralyzes your genitals and makes rethink your entire life?

Nope.

You get all the way the in and find something that you enjoy about the coldness, if nothing more than that you were able to make it through that initial wave of suck without dying.

Half-assing guarantees mediocre and disappointing results.

Full-assing is scary before you make the commitment, but that’s where the most rewarding growth waits.

When in doubt, go full ass.

Jiro Approved Action Step

Commit fully to your exercise plan.

How many days will you exercise?

What time will you do it and where?

Commit fully to eating in a way that supports your body and your goals, whatever they are.

What are the foods you’re going to eat? Do you have them on hand?

What time are you going to eat your meals?

Be specific and write your answers down.

When things do eventually go off plan, instead of letting your emotions take over and lead you down a rabbit hole of negative self-talk, ask yourself the following questions:

What lessons can I take away from this event?

What actions can I take in the future so that when faced with a similar situation, I can create a better outcome for myself?

Again, be specific. Write your answers down.

Find ways to enjoy the challenges you’ll encounter, what they bring out of you and what you learn about yourself from facing them head-on.

Look for opportunities to enjoy your successes and how amazing it feels to be making progress towards a goal.

There is beauty to be found in the chaos, and freedom to be found in the madness.

Fat Loss & Muscle Building Supplements

January 8, 2015 by Roger Lawson II 2 Comments

Dear fantastic and loyal reader,I get a lot of email about which supplements are great for muscle building and fat loss. In person, once people find out what I do for a living, I get asked even more (so now I tell them I’m a janitor).I’ve got nothing but love for you, so when you read this please hear it from that place of love.

Fuck supplements. Fuck them right in their silly asses.

Imagine that your body is a car, whatever your glorious mind can conjure up (mine is Speed Racer’s Mach 5).

You know the body, wheels, breaks, engine, pedals, doors, windows, ignition, and anything else required for a car to actually run and not suck? In your body, this is represented by your diet and training.

Want to know the role that supplements play in this car? They’re solid gold pair of balls hanging from the license plate – nice to have but unnecessary, costly and ultimately pretty damn useless.

Supplements are meant to do just that – supplement a solid diet and training program. If you don’t have that base established, no supplement in the world can help you.

Returning to the car example, no matter how many pairs of solid gold balls you have, if you don’t have the actual car to attach them to, now you just look like a silly person carrying around a bunch of solid gold balls for no reason.

At the end of the day ALWAYS look at your diet and training. I’ve trained hundreds of clients and from my own experience with them and myself, 99.99999999% of supplements don’t do a thing but give you a false sense of confidence and progress, taking your money and making your bank account cry tears of agony.

Your bank on supplements

99.999999999999999999999% of your results will come from dialing in your diet and training, aligning them with your goals. Then, and only then, will supplements even potentially, possibly, perhaps add something to the mix, but even then it’s extremely negligible.For muscle gain and fat loss, here are the only supplements I’ll ever recommend to the general trainee, but even then these are in addition to a dialed in diet and training program.1) Creatine Monohydrate (nothing else).

2) Caffeine (because with more energy you’ll train harder, but look at your sleep levels first).

3) A quality protein powder IF you need to boost your protein intake/for convenience, but whole foods trump all powder.

4) Sex. Lots of it. Preferably with someone you really love and care about.*

*don’t pay for this supplement – it defeats the purpose.

That’s it. No fat burners, sprays, wraps, herbal mixes, anything with some fancy name or really awesome charts and graphs on its packaging.

Now if you’re tempted to go spend your hard earned money on supplements that promote building muscle and losing fat at any point within the next 5-75 years, please just deposit that money into my bank account instead, because I will go buy a delicious steak, bite the shit out of it, and praise your name as I absorb its glorious flesh into my body.

Want to make sure that you have your training and nutrition base locked in and directed towards your goals? Click here.

How To Use Your Gaming Skills For Fitness Success

December 22, 2014 by Roger Lawson II 1 Comment

RogLawSSJ You’re in an enviable position, like Liam Neeson in Taken (AKA The Greatest Film Of All Time). You have a particular set of skills that make you a force to be reckoned with.

You’re a gamer, and it’s time the world hears you roar.

Life is the ultimate role playing game. Sure, there MIGHT not be dragon, and you MIGHT not be able to effortlessly deliver 9,999 points of damage to your enemies (yet), but much like Cloud, Samus, Master Chief and Lara Croft, you’re the hero of your own story.

Everyday that you wake up is a new chance to use the lessons learned from your experiences to create the future that you desire.

Now here’s the kicker: no one can do this for you. No one can tackle the necessary work required to change your world for the better. Frightening? Maybe. Exciting? You can bet your sweet hit points that it is! As a gamer, you innately understand this. Regardless of the game you play, you’re thrust into the role of the hero, shoes that only you can fill.

The princess (or prince – that’s right, ladies!) is in another castle and you’re their only hope.

This subtle mindset shift, from victim to hero, is what allows gamers to excel at anything we set our minds to, with fitness being custom-made for our particularly awesome skill set.

Enjoy The Grind

When it takes longer to level up, and more challenging to accumulate valuable experience points.

When skills become harder to acquire and progress all but grinds to a depressingly screeching halt.

Welcome to The Grind.

Everyone who has done anything worth doing has come face to face with it, but luckily you’re more familiar than anyone else with this part of the game, and it’s high time you use this to your advantage.

Lifting and nutrition is a battle of attrition, wearing down bad habits, uninspired moments and fighting the natural human urge to look for the path of least resistance (hello McDonald’s drive-thru). If there’s anything I can say with absolute confidence after working with hundreds of clients it’s this: there is no magic bullet.

These things take time, and those who are most successful find a way to enjoy this necessary part of the journey.

Grind

It’s like staring down a long corridor with a giant boss glaring at you dubiously from across the room. The hallway has many doorways, all containing something useful, all serving only as a distraction from your main quest.

No matter what you do, the only way forward is to do the work, to defeat the boss.

The latest fad diet.

The newest workout that promises to adorn you with muscle and cut slabs of fat off like thick-sliced bacon in record time.

Hopping from one program or diet to the next in search of the “secret” that will fast-track your results is just another way of trying to circumvent the grind.

This is where dreams go to die.

This is where many people spin their wheels for months or years on end, not moving any closer to their goal than when they started.

But what about gamers? Not a chance! You know the meaning of hard work and sacrifice, viewing the grind as a necessary part of the path towards completing your quest. You know how to keep your goal the goal. Find what works and milk it for all it’s worth before exploring other options.

With this firmly entrenched in your brain, it’s becomes not a matter of if you’ll reach your destination, but when.

Progress, Rewards And The Pursuit Of Awesomeness

Let’s talk about loot, gear, rewards and treasure.

If you think this whole health and fitness thing has to be head down, powering through difficulty after difficulty until the end of time sort of deal, I invite you to consider another perspective.

As someone who once believed such dogma, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and buying into it can actually make it even more challenging to accomplish great deeds.

Games have a fantastic reward system built into them that we can apply to our own pursuit of happiness. Complete a quest, get a new item. Perform a certain task, unlock a new area of the world. All of these are ways of keeping us motivated and moving forward, focusing our eyes on the proverbial prize and feeling great for doing so.

We play games for the enjoyment that they bring, so why not treat our lives the same way?

LevelUp

Nobody said that this had to suck. Identify an area where you’re struggling and build a quest and reward system around it – you can even draw your own avatar if you’re feeling particularly sassy. If you’re struggling with getting to the gym, set a weekly or monthly goal for the number of sessions you want to make. Each time you go to the gym, give yourself a certain number of experience points and once you have enough to “level up”, reward yourself.

The same goes for nutrition. Do you usually order fries when you go out to dinner, but this week you subbed them out for veggies a few times? BAM – that’s a win.Treat yourself for new personal records, consistency streaks, and pretty much everything that you can.

The key to success is pushing yourself consistently in small doses that make you slightly uncomfortable. As you get more wins beneath your belt, your confidence in your ability to overcome anything that comes your way grows.

Keep this mantra in mind: as you can do better, do better.

Growth and progress happens in small spurts. Of course it would be daunting as a level 1 noob to step into a level 99 dungeon, but it becomes less so after you work your way up to that point. Every once in awhile you’ll have the opportunity to do something very difficult that will level you up in a big bad way – take these chances whenever you can.

Fail Forward

Dying sucks.

For some, seeing the dreaded “Game Over” screen after several hours of work is enough to make you wanna throw yourself on the floor and flop around like a fish that’s having a seizure. But first, calm down, playa.

Dying means you took a risk.

Failing means that you went for it but didn’t quite make the mark, and that’s perfectly fine.

Game Over

The great thing about failing in game, much like real life, is that you always get a second chance – mistakes aren’t permanent. Using the knowledge gained from your setback, you can jump into the fray and try again, stronger and wiser from your defeat.

If you fall off your diet, identify what happened (was it stress related, poor planning, or just one of those days?) and confidently hop back on, knowing that when the scenario presents itself again you’ll be prepared.

Get Your Hack On

Like Neo dodging bullets in The Matrix or learning kung-fu in 5 seconds, a hack is a way of manipulating your environment to serve your needs by looking for opportunities to make any difficult task less challenging and thus easier to comply with, increasing your chances of long term success. If devices like the Game Genie and Game Shark exist for consoles, then why not apply the same principles to get your sexy on and take control of your health?

Neo Dodge

If you’re constantly running into a wall with your diet because of poor food planning one hack would be choosing 2 days a week where you prep the majority of your food for the week so that you eliminate this issue before it becomes a problem. Another even more awesome, albeit it more costly, way would be to hire a company that prepares and delivers your meals right to your doorstep.

Can’t find the time to make it to the gym? Sit down, find out the reasons why and set up a system that removes a particular barrier from the equation. If you’re always sleeping through your alarm, set 5 of them at different intervals. If you forget to take your gym clothes to work, keep a spare pair in the trunk of your car and in a locker at the gym.

Getting a grip on your health and manipulating how you look and feel through sheer force of will and your own efforts is about as life changing and magical as you can get without a wizard’s wand or gryffin.

You only live once, and when your world is in peril, failure isn’t an option. Suit up and get ready for battle, hero.

Flotation Tank: A Quick & Easy Way To Beat Stress

December 10, 2014 by Roger Lawson II Leave a Comment

I first heard about the flotation tank (also known as the isolation or sensory deprivation tank) from being a regular listener of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. As someone looking for ways to better manage stress both from life and the gym, and is always looking for new experiences, I decided to give it a try.

Little known fact: I’m afraid of water AND the dark AND am unreasonably worried about accidentally drowning in the bath tub or a small rain puddle, so I was extremely hesitant about this experience – to this day I haven’t successfully floated in any other body of water.

Thankfully the staff was knowledgeable and friendly enough to answer my questions, one of which was if I would be the first person in the history of the world to go bye bye in the tank, and if so could they make up a way cooler, heroic story to tell my mom, preferably one where I died saving a bus filled with orphaned puppies from a deranged serial killer.

I was shown to the tank and given the preliminaries – session length, what to do in case I panicked or needed help, putting wax inside my ears to prevent water from getting in, etc. Once I was left on my own, I did the only thing that made sense: get nekkid.

Stick with me here. I’m not being creepy.

You can enter the tank in a bathing suit or swimming trunks, but the main benefit is the sensation of nothingness, so if you do that then the feeling of material pressing against or clinging to your skin might take away from the flotation experience, so butt nekkid is the way to go, people.

From there I opened the hatch, descending into darkness, closing the door behind me.

And then there was nothing.

As a 6 foot tall gentleman of considerable thickness, the inside was spacious enough to allow me to move my body around the tank without feeling too constricted. It did however take awhile for me to stop tensing my body up, preparing for inevitable moment when science failed me and I started to sink. Then came the business of finding the most comfortable resting position: do I go beachside hands-behind-my-head style, or do I cross my arms like I’m a vampire in a coffin waiting for sunset?

My first time was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. No sensation of feeling anything against my skin, no sound and no light; the closest thing that I can liken it to would be meditating while floating on your back through outer space if suddenly all the lights in the universe turned off.

With this physical stimulus gone, the only thing that remained was mental chatter, and there was a ton of it. I thought about what I was going to eat for dinner, if I accidentally forgot to lock my apartment door, if there was anyway that I could become a taste tester for Cinnabon, and if there were any creepy infrared cameras spying on my less-than-presentable dangler.

For the first 10 to 15 minutes, it felt like I was sitting in a room filled with a bunch of people who were having 20 different conversations at the same time and all I wanted to do was tell them to shut their silly faces.

I breathed into my stomach and out my nose at a slow and controlled pace. Once I did, the thoughts started to subside as I focused less on them and more on my breath. After a few minutes of this, I began to experience the most relaxed sense of prolonged peace that I can ever recall having.

Time felt like it was slowing down and speeding up simultaneously; the more relaxed I was, sinking into the experience and letting go of any expectations that I had, the faster time seemed to go. I watched thoughts flow in and out of my head. If one came in that I was particularly interesting to me, I held on to it for a bit and once it was no longer useful to do so I let it go, sending it on it’s merry way.

After what seemed like just a few minutes in this state, I was stirred by a knock on the tank door – my hour was up.

The rest of my day was extremely relaxed. Situations that would’ve annoyed the hell out of me just rolled off my back, and this feeling of “ahhhhhhhhhhh” carried well into the rest of my week.

Each experience is profoundly different. Some sessions I used to surrender and let go of as many thoughts as possible, and others I used as uninterrupted problem solving time for any particular issue I was having.

Even if you just do it once a month, you can’t put a price on an hour of uninterrupted solitude – no voices, no text alerts, no email swooshes or people looking for you to do something for them.

Since making it a regular part of my life, I can’t speak highly enough of this experience. If you’re the type of person who is easily overwhelmed, is filled with anxiety or can’t seem to pull yourself out of “GO GO GO!” mode, you owe yourself to give this a try.

Float Questions

What are the benefits?

To name a few:

Quick reduction in stress levels
Decrease in stress related pains & anxiety
Can help with depression
Better sleep
Enhanced creativity via shift in brainwave activity
Make your skin feel like magic

Where can I find a flotation tank?

There are hundreds of locations worldwide. Here are a few sites you can use to find one in your area.

http://www.floatation.com/wheretofloat.html

http://www.where-to-float.com/

http://floatationlocations.com/where-to-float/

Will I drown?

Nope. Thanks to 800+ lbs of Epsom salt in about 9 inches of water, it’s impossible to drown due to the density of water. The only way I can think of is if you fall asleep and mysteriously flop over onto your stomach…so don’t do that.

Will I run out of air?

Nay. Fresh air is constantly being circulated through the tank. If you feel claustrophobic, you can always get out at any time.

Rog, you got naked. Is it clean in there, or do you now have Ebola?

Quiet, you! You’re required to shower before entering the tank, and the tank is cleaned after each session through a variety of methods to ensure that those nasty microbes don’t live to see the light of day.

How long should I float?

A typical session lasts anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes. You choose the length, and can get out when needed.

Any last words of advice?

Avoid caffeine or other stimulants a few hours before you float, otherwise it can impact your ability to relax. Make sure that you don’t have any open cuts, because this salt is not a game and you will pay dearly for it.

Also, if your eye itches, DO NOT SCRATCH IT!

Audio Lovin

November 18, 2014 by Roger Lawson II Leave a Comment

I’ve done a slew of podcasts over the last few months, so instead of the normal weekly writing I wanted to give your eyes a break and make sweet, sweet audio lovin to your ears.

Full Disclosure Fitness

http://fulldisclosurefitness.com/fdf-episode-061-rog-law-of-rog-law-fitness/

The FitCast

Part 1: http://thefitcast.com/episode-304-roglaws-rules-of-fit-living-part-i

Part 2: http://thefitcast.com/episode-305-roglaws-rules-of-fit-living-part-ii

Fit Smart

This is the podcast that I record with my partner in crime JC Deen.

Our internet home: http://fitsmartcrew.com/

iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-fitsmart-podcast/id506717061?mt=2

Muscle For Life

http://www.muscleforlife.com/rog-law-fitness-interview/

The Damian Brown Show

http://www.damianbrown.com/podcast-episode-1-lifes-too-short-not-to-be-awesome

The Kryptonite Report

http://www.kryptonitereport.com/episode-23-with-rog-law-sexification/

The Joe Rogan Experience

The episode in all its glory.

Training Music Bonus

I’ve been known to go to the gym every now and then, and when I do I like to make sure that my ears are thoroughly assaulted by the finest of tunes. Here’s my personal playlist that gets me through my sessions.

The Art of War

Please know that if Beyonce pops up in the middle of a heavy set of squats and you crumble to the ground, questioning everything that you know and love about me, I regret nothing.