If you only had 3 months to live?

If you knew you only had three months to live how would you live your life? What would you change, would you change at all and keep living the way you are now? It is not something we think about often if ever at all. So why am I bringing this to your attention? Well one of my mentors put a video on his blog recently with Randy Pausch doing an interview on Oprah. Who is Randy Pausch? Randy is a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University he is a best-selling author and has acheived world wide fame for his "The Last Lecture" speech he gave to CMU. Sounds like he could be a great guy right? Well let me tell you that is a HUGE understatement. Randy is in this situation of only having 3 months to live. He is currently living with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Although he went through very intensive treatment, everything the Doctors could think of but in the end it still went terminal.



After finding out about Randy and his story I watched the video of him on Oprah and his famous The Last Lecture and let me tell you I was left speechless. I am not going to try and pretend to be all tuff I even was a little teary eyed after it. I can tell you from this moment on I am going to keep Randy and his story in my mind forever so anytime I am feeling down and out this will be my key to keep me going and get back up. I HIGHLY advise everyone to spend the 30 minutes and watch the video of Randy on Oprah. Also set aside about 75 minutes at some time in the near future to also watch his full lecture he gave to CMU. Best wishes to everyone live your life to the fullest. One of my favorite quotes " Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today." -James Dean



My best wishes to you and your family Randy.



Randy on Oprah


Randy's full speech to CMU

Do not be afraid of difficulty...

"Don't be afraid if things seem difficult in the beginning. That's only the initial impression. The important thing is not to retreat; you have to master yourself." -Olga Korbut Four Time Olympic Gold Medallist


I received this inspirational quote this morning in my e-mail and it got me thinking of all the people out there that begin a new health and fitness program and quit right when it gets difficult. Take a minute now and I want you to think back on all the things you have done and stopped when it started to get difficult. We all have done it at some point or another and a lot of people do it their whole life. I have done it plenty of times part if trying to take the easy road or just say "screw it." Most of the times when I did that it was because I did not push myself and went the lazy easy route. It is a lot less challenging to take the easy route and say you know I am just going to do 3 sets of squats instead of 5, or I am just going to do 5 minutes of sprints on the stair master instead of 10. But in most cases the easy route in the route leading away from your goals or dreams. Part of fitness that not a lot of people get or do is change their thinking process on life. Remember people this is a not just and easy ride if you want to get to your goals and be healthy and stay there you are going to have to make changes to your current life and push yourself. If you did not have to do this would you not be where you want to be in the moment now?

A lot of this leads back to as the quote says "mater yourself" over come your challenges, fears, and push beyond the limits you have set for yourself that got you the body and health you have now. It is time to get up and raise the bar on your life don not just give up when you get discouraged when something is not working right or when something becomes challenging. There is always going to be a new challenge in life everyday, and with fitness. That is how you stay healthy and are always improving. Remember my last post about stepping outside your little bubble of comfort? That is what you need to do to master yourself and reach the goals you have put forth in life weather it is losing those 10, 50 or even 100lbs, what ever the goals may be push yourself do not give into the easy road. Always be in a constant state of growth. Best of luck to everyone as always if you have any questions please feel free to contact.

Here to help you achieve your dreams.
-Matt Holmes

P.S. Looking for something to jump start yourself into the new you, or just looking for something to spice up your training check out Turbulence Training on my products page.

Are you to comfortable?

When I am talking about comfortable this applies to all aspect of your life not just in your training. But for this post we will mainly focus on using exercise as the example and you can see how it expands to life. I read an article last night talking about the "no pain no gain" analogy that gets thrown around all the time. If you know me I am a firm believer in no pain no gain. Let me explain why.

The biggest reason why I am a believer is your forced to come outside your comfort zone. If you always stay inside your comfort zone you tend to get lazy, accustomed to routine, and you never grow as a person or you training never gets you to the level you want. So lets take your training, are you where you want to be? When was the last time your really pushed yourself outside your comfort zone and tried something different? It can be a new exercise or even a new set of exercises for that day. When you are in your comfort zone you are just at maintenance or you might not even be where you want to be. I am a firm believer in change, change is for the good always we might not know why at first but in the end it always will be. As far as change for working out I do not think there is a maintenance period with fitness, there is always areas to improve on if its to gain 10lbs, to lose 10lbs, to get a faster lap, to beat your max Deadlift, the list is always on going. Do you see where I am going with this? Your training will never grow and just become stale if your always doing the same thing. You see the people in the gym and we all have done it at times most of us being unaware of the fact at first but catch yourself doing the same thing over and over.

Like I said it goes with life and personal growth as well. If you are afraid of discomfort and embrace being comfortable and lazy then who you are now is who you will be tomorrow. If you study and look at all the greats Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Napoleon Hill,Benjamin Franklin, Ghandi, Walt Disney, there are just so many to name. If they did not step outside their comfort zone and embrace the discomfort think of all the things we might not have or how different the world would be today. As Tom Venuto said in his article "being better than the you of yesterday" life and fitness go hand in hand they are always evolving and it is an ever growing process.

Ok back with the training and no pain no gain, I know some people are thinking well thats just dumb why do I always have to be in pain that will cause injury and so on and so forth. Yes I do agree but to a certain extent. That does not mean you train without using your head, which this is about and go try something way past your abilities. This is about pushing yourself past your limits but not overdoing it. I will use another one of Tom's great analogies. "Do you know how you develop flexibility? What does the trainer tell you? You stretch to the point of discomfort, but not to the point of pain, right? You get into a position of slight discomfort and you hold it, right? You hold it just long enough, and then what happens? The discomfort goes away, because the muscle becomes more pliable, and the range of motion is increased. And the next time, you stretch it a little bit further." Do you see where I am going with this the reason I love fitness is because its a part of life and it does teach you great leassons in life. Still to this day I do not know where I would be without it. People say sometimes I am crazy and yes I know I am haha but its for the good because thats what sets me apart from the ordinary. Yeah I am very far from perfect no one is perfect because remember there is not end its an on going learning process of growth everywhere around you.

So my advice to everyone is to everyday do something that causes you to go outside your comfort zone do one thing with your fitness/health and one thing for your personal development in life. Always remember change is a good thing and "Do what you always did, get what you always got."

Dedicated to you!
-Matt Holmes




P.S. To find out more about Tom Venuto please click HERE

Guess what I have!!!!

Well after spending about $50 and a couple hours of my time I FINALLY have my own sandbags to train with. The sandbag is one of the most under rated yet highly effective and low cost(as you can see) pieces of work out equipment you can have. Some of you may already know about using sandbags and how effective they can be to really spark up your current routine, but most of the population has not. So I advise you to go over to Body Synergy's Product page and check out the underground strength coach products. And remember tomorrow's workout is only as good as todays recovery! Keep it simple and keep it hard.

Got Rubbers?

No I am not talking about those kind of rubbers, I am talking about rubber bands and no you do not put it there. Why rubber bands you might ask? Well if you just wait a minute thats what I am going to tell you! I could not have said it better than Chris Shugart so I am using his explanation on this topic and why it works.

First I am going to briefly touch about rationalization though as it plays into the purpose of the rubber band trick. Rationalization can be the biggest killer for achieving your goals in your new healthy life but any challenge you might endeavor. Most of use do this on a daily basis and do not even think twice about it, I even catch myself doing it(yes thats right I am not perfect as you all make think haha) Now I will tie this in with how you can start to reprogram your thinking of rationalization by using the rubber band trick.

"Noted Sports psychologist Dr. Jack Singer has a useful trick he uses to help athletes recognize and remove negative thinking patterns. What he does is have them wear a rubber band around their wrist. When they catch themselves having a self-defeating thought like "I choke under pressure during the game" they snap the rubber band on their wrist and replace the negative thought with a positive one such as "I excel under pressure." Even if that statement is untrue at the time, the action helps them to reprogram their mindset and improve their performance.

You can use this trick for defeating rationalization for eating poorly. Example: A co-worker brings in donuts. You catch yourself thinking. "Well, one donut won't hurt, I'll just skip a shake today. And besides, I don't want to be rude by turning down the free food." Once you see that you're making a weak rationalization to justify cheating on your diet, quickly snap the rubber band on your wrist and think, "That's an example of rationalization. I'm too strong of a person to do that to myself." Finally, Remember that defense mechanisms like this are often defined as "largely unconcious" or "semi-unconscions." But rationalization can be recognized and defeated. In fact, it must be."

This is all a process as you may know so we all start somewhere, so go out get yourself a rubber and start snappin! Best of luck to everyone!


To find out more about Chris Shugart and read his article go to http://www.t-nation.com/ALSAuthor.do?p=Chris%20Shugart&pageNo=1