Your Health

There is only one real way to keep in shape, and that is through regular exercise.

Your health and fitness is the nucleus for which you establish self respect, individual pride, and discipline. It carries over into every aspect of your life. Some people regard "discipline" as a chore. The reality, it is an order that sets you free to attain the loftiest of goals.

The proper mindset can be broke down into three categories; intensity, frequency, and consistency.

"Using a small space in our Air Search Radar room (10'x 11') and a 13" TV/VCR I used your tapes to attain a level of fitness that I have never known.  Prior to the Guam patrol I could do four pull ups, 15 sit ups, and maybe 18 push ups. I had my annual physical in April and was at my maximum allowable weight of 203 lbs.  I returned to homeport June 17th able to do 12 pull ups, 95 sit ups, and 54 push ups. This morning I weighed 168 lbs.  I have never been a runner and am not sure why I entered an organized road race on the 20th of June in Golden Gate Park but when I rounded the lakes to begin the "return leg" two miles of a five mile run and saw an ocean of faces BEHIND me I thought of your tapes and how lucky I was to have found them. I didn't win that race but there are more to come.

"Godspeed Scott Helvenston and thank you EFS for producing the tools to change lives forever." - Dave Winsor

Learning the elements of frequency in your fitness routines is the easy part of the mind set equation. We will call this element the 2% plan. There are 168 hrs. in a week. The required amount of time you should dedicate to fitness is roughly 4 hours (combining strength & cardio.). That is 2% of your life! Don't make excuses for missing workouts, make working out an excuse for missing something else. When laying out a program design, schedule as many make-up days as training days. Don't be overly critical for missing schedule routines. Look at the weekly picture of what you need to achieve and understand what you accomplished over the long haul is what counts. Achieving this mindset will launch you on the road to consistency.

Do you know what the best fitness system is? It's the one you do. Usually the one you do is the one that is the most convenient. Convenience is the ultimate ingredient to staying consistent. Calisthenics training is beneficial for a number of reasons. It is a fitness style that emphasizes versatility and relates more to real world applications . Your risk of injury is minimized greatly due to using your own body weight for resistance and eliminating weight distributions you cannot control. Ultimately though, the reason calisthenics training is so beneficial is it can be done virtually anywhere and it doesn't require expensive equipment. Calisthenics training is just as effective as weight training when you become familiar with all the various range of motions you can manipulate by just using your own body weight.

"Fitness is a Mental Thing". Navy SEALs learn this early on in their training. Challenges put in front of them are as difficult or as easy as they choose to perceive them. The reason people don't achieve there fitness goals is not because they are physically weak, it's because they are mentally weak. The two major reasons people don't achieve a good level of fitness is ; they perceive fitness to be an agonizing experience, give up, quit and ridicule those who have more "knowledge and desire" than them. The other perception is at the opposite end of the dodo brain spectrum. These individuals think that riding 15 minutes a day, 3 days a week on a super duper, phenomenal , cardiovascular, resistance training, "rider" is going to get the job done. Achieving the proper mindset that lies in between these two perceptions lies the answer to "Fitness for Life". The following paragraphs will outline how to train your mind so you can train your body.

Learning the proper intensity for which to train is key. Most of your efforts strength training or aerobic training should be conducted at an exertion level of 70%. Occasionally, put in efforts of 80% to 90% . Your aerobic efforts should be sustained for a minimum of 2O minutes, but preferably 30 to 40 minutes. Understand that training at too intense of a level excessively will break down muscle tissue and weigh heavily on your mental outlook as well. Making this mind-body connection is very critical to attain. Remember this term, "Perceived exertion". Assess your exertion on a scale from 1 to 10. Do your best to train at a 7. Aerobically, this is easy to assess with a heart monitor. Strength training is not quite as cut and dry. You need to experiment with various levels of resistance and repetitions and learn the proper amount of sets to work each muscle group.

"This is by far the best workout I have ever done. I've tried those bogus 8 minute workouts, tae-bo, and celebrity workouts and was not challenged. Also the results were minimal. This is not a quick fix workout, I've lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks doing it and still have 20 more to lose, however this is the only workout where you leave feeling you've accomplished something. My thanks to Scott and Elite Fitness." - Kevin Flynn