What’s better than reading Rog Law once a week? I can think of many things: koala bears gnawing on eucalypt leaves, free rocket packs, and being able to turn brooms into lightsabers on command, but sadly you’ll find none of that here (well, except for the last one).

 

I do have the next best thing though: I’ll be posting three times a week now – Monday, Wednesday and Friday – oh snap!

Monday will still be the day devoted to the fitness and lifestyle related content that you’ve grown to love.

Wednesday will alternate between a few on-going light hearted series that I’ll announce this upcoming week, so stay tuned.

Glorious Friday will be devoted to the random goofyness that makes up the entirety of who I am and just wouldn’t fit much into my Monday posts. This could range from rants on topics completely unrelated to fitness, informative links and videos that I’ve come across during the week, and a host of other fun stuff.

Which brings me to today.

I’m a big fan of mimicking accents and famous voices, so much so that when driving I often practice new ones using dialogue from movies that are floating around in my head. Now here is where you, my awesome and fantacular readers come into play.

What accent and/or famous voice do you want to hear me shamefully try to mimic (or butcher)? Do you want to hear me recite a particular line from a movie you love, or do you want to hear Sean Connery say something that comes straight from the space between your ears?

Leave your suggestion in the comment section below and I’ll pick one every other week to perform, complete with internet street-cred ruining video.

I reached my goal body composition a month ahead of schedule – so now what? For that answer, I need you to hop into my time machine and travel back to the greatest period of time in the world: the 90’s (don’t worry, denim jackets will be avoided at all costs).

In the early 1990s, Martin Lawrence was straight crushing it: House Party, Def Comedy Jam,  and Bad Boys – just to name a few of things he played a huge role in. Not only that, but he also created and stared in his own sitcom entitled Martin.

One of the most memorable characters on the show went by the name of Bruh Man, and his ridiculousness can’t be put into words, so this video will have to do:

The most important thing to know about Bruh Man is this: whenever you asked him what he was doing, his answer was always the same – nothin, just chillin’. In order to even begin to  comprehend the depth of this life philosophy and how it applies to us, we must first arrive at a basic understanding of what chillin’  actually is.

To be in a state of prolonged satisfactory being, not regarded as being bored but not in the process of doing anything worth elaborating upon.

When it comes right down to it, most of us have the goal of simply looking good naked or in various states of undress, and as long as you’re consistent and are not doing anything too goofy with your nutrition and training, you will undoubtedly get to that point.

Game over – you win.

But what happens next? Do you aim to put on more muscle or do you push to lose even more body fat? Regardless of the road you choose, it’ll eventually (hopefully) lead to a place where you’re happy with the body that you’ve created and, aside from minor tweaks here and there, you have no desire to put in more effort to change it.

As Leigh Peele so eloquently put it, the end is the beginning. At some point you’re going to arrive at a place where the goal isn’t to keep pushing further and further, but to simply enter a state of maintenance, aka chillin’, where you enjoy the fruits of your labor and invest your energy elsewhere.

That’s where I’m at now, and it’s a beautiful place. And the sooner you reach your goals, the sooner that you can be there as well.

Photo Credit: Bfishadow

Reality is a harsh and cruel mistress, but she’s always fair.

Mark Young, a fellow fitness professional and human flag wrote a post here that really got me thinking about the nature of goal achievement. When it comes right down to it, most of the times when we’re chasing after a particular goal we’re living in our own heads, and it’s straight up kills any chance that we have towards making real progress.

Think about it this way: how many times have you encountered someone trying to lose or gain weight? Pretty often I bet. Now how many times have you heard that same person swear to the high heavens that they aren’t eating “that much”, or that they’re eating like a pregnant giant yet can’t gain weight? Probably a good 90% of the time – and these are the people who will spend most of their days spinning their wheels; the physical embodiment of the phrase “traveling without moving.”

So what gives? Their continued execution deserves some props, but they have no objective tools by which they can measure their progress, and they’re going nowhere because of it.

Girth measurements? Objective.

The way your clothes fit? Objective.

Tracking your food intake & strength gain numbers? Objective.

Guessing how much you do or don’t eat? Hell naw!

Having tools like these at your disposal isn’t only recommended but downright necessary because they tell you the most important thing ever: are you moving closer to your goal? It’s like the ultimate flow chat to awesomeness.

No matter what formulas you follow or other people tell you, if you aren’t making any progress towards your goal, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

1 – How is your execution? Are you handling your business and doing what you need to do?

2 –  Have you done #1 consistently?

3 – Have you given it enough time to work?

If you answer yes to the above questions then you need to change something. Don’t continue banging your head against the wall of defeat out of some false sense of commitment to a plan that isn’t working. Despite your inner voice telling you that it should be working, the reality of the situation is that it isn’t. Adjust your course of action and begin using some tools outside of yourself to track your progress. Rinse and repeat until your awesometicity quotient increases by at least 172%.

If you answer no to those same questions, you might need to change things up but guess what? You have no idea if you do or not. Your execution and consistency is all over the place, plus you haven’t given enough time for the fruits of your labor to grow, so even if you do switch things up you’ll probably end up in the same position as the one you just left, constantly stuck in the should be loop and not addressing the root of what is. Until you meet those three basic requirements you have no frame of reference to base your changes on, so anything you do is pretty much a shot in the dark.

I wish someone had told me this when I was younger, but sadly I had to get it dropped on my head in a song for it to stick:  a movement in any random direction is not progression.

Have you ever had the feeling that things were going too good? Not just regular good, but good to the point where it didn’t feel like you were living your life anymore? If this were a typical day in the life of you, the big fail beast would be racing down the street at a breakneck speed to trip you up before you started to get too full of yourself.

That’s what went down in my life this week.  Since last check-in, I’ve been 100% compliant with my workouts and nutrition with no struggle at all. I was so on point with everything that I was within 1lb of my goal weight 5 days ago.

But then it happened. On purpose.

I failed in a big bad way, and I loved every minute of it.

After a pretty decent workout, I decided to go on what will go down in the history books as a roaring rampage in the supermarket. Mac & cheese? Yes please. Cookies? Don’t mind if I do. Cake? Oh you’re far too kind! I still got in my regular amounts of  fruit, veggies and protein, but when all was said and done I consumed over 5,000 calories. I was bloated and groggy for the rest of the day, and I wondered how bad the damage would be the next day.

Plus 7lbs from the day before. Perfect.

I know that it seems asinine to purposely mess up a good thing; that would be like stopping to do the James Brown 5 yards short of a game winning touchdown, but let me explain. It’s easy to be upbeat and positive when life is filled to the brim with sunshine and unicorns and you’re knocking out your objectives with a 1990s Mike Tyson level of ferocity, but what happens when you make one little mistake that deviates from your master plan?

You stumble. You begin to question your abilities and your resolve to achieve what you set out to do. You may very well even pack it up and call it quits right there.

If you’ve never seen a grown man beg then prepare to be stunned and stupefied because here it comes: I beg of you NOT to do this.

As with many things in life, looking at a situation in a different way is sometimes all you need in order to overcome it. Instead of treating failure as something that marks the coming of your doom, view it as a tool that will bring you closer towards success, even more so than always staying the course.

It’s inevitable that you’re going to one day fall short of the mark that you set for yourself. You’re going to miss some workouts, you’re going to not finish your product by the deadline, and you’re going to screw up on the path to greatness – a lot. You’re not perfect and if you were life would be no fun to live anyway, so it’s best to accept this fact right now because it leads to the next, most important piece: The horror of failure isn’t in the act of falling, but staying there.

When you find yourself down there on the floor of life, ask yourself this question: Will this kill me?

If the answer is no, which it always is, then stop feeling sorry for yourself, stand back up and start moving. Don’t put it off for later, because later never comes. Do it then.

Falling shows that you’re a human with faults.

Staying down shows that you’ve allowed yourself to embody and become those faults.

Getting back up again and again shows that you’re not going to allow these moments of imperfection to define and guide you; you’re better than that and you’re gonna prove it by moving forward and succeeding.

You learn more about yourself in failure than you ever will in victory, and failing on your own terms is one of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal. By doing so you condition your mind to become that of a winner so that when the real thing comes you don’t even have to coax yourself to get back into the game, because now it’s automatic. – you’re back on your feet before your right buttcheek even hits the floor.

You’ll have trained yourself through experience to know that the world won’t end if you falter. As long as you choose to rise and continue to move forward with a purpose, you will get there. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably sitting on the ground, nursing their wounds as they watch you walk by.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett

So, faithful readers and comrades, when have you failed and how did you handle it? Did you rise, and if so how awesome did it feel?

Weight: 183.4

Photo Credit: Mykl Roventine

For some weird reason, I look forward to the familiar person dressed up in a Statue of Liberty garb trying to entice me to get my taxes done. Even though it never works, it sooths my soul to know that with all that’s changing in the world today, I can still expect to see the familiar site of someone dressed up in a toga waving at me like I’m riding a dragon down the street.

I drive up and down this stretch of road every single day, and up until now I hadn’t noticed one critical detail about my torch wielding friend – she wasn’t human.

At some point down the line, whatever business that person worked for decided that they were so unnecessary to the company that they could be uprooted, eliminated and replaced by a machine, and I didn’t even notice that they went missing at all.

And that right there is the risk you run when you’re just good enough.

Being good enough doesn’t get you noticed.

Being good enough doesn’t move you forward in life.

Being good enough is the quickest way to ensure your downfall.

As time passes, you become expendable. Today’s good enough is tomorrow’s obsolete, and the only way to ensure that you aren’t gobbled up by the machine is to run. Run as fast as you can from good enough and towards redonkulously awesome. The closer you get towards this end of the spectrum, the less likely you are to be so easily replaced.

Nobody can replace Batman because he’s the best at what he does, but what about Daffodillia who holds the power to, you guessed it, grow daffodils on command but spends her time working at a coffee shop that she hates? Not so much – there are a ton of people who could do that.

The problems that we’re each facing in our lives can’t be solved by being good enough. Actually, being good enough will only buy you just a little more time to sweat before the axe inevitably drops. So instead of waiting, decide to become awesome. Push against being average and challenge yourself to become better than you ever thought you could be, and you will be rewarded for it.

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.” – Carlos Castaneda

Are you going to settle for just being good enough?