Many may know that I'm just now finishing week 8 of P90x, the exercise program that has received rave reviews and big following over the past couple years.  Rightly so, it's totally legit.  But for me, the most surprising thing is that after a lifetime of competing at a high level in athletics, I've just now learned a lot about the human body that I never knew before.  And, it just blows my mind that I've never known some of this stuff, and that so few people know this stuff. So it's almost like I have to share it. :)  (You can see me getting all hyped up).

Now, there's a TON to say here.  But that'd be dumb.  So let's just take 3 of my top lessons learned over the past 8 weeks.

1) Give up the running and walking (and other low intensity endurance cardio) as you're only (even main) form of exercise.  Sure it burns calories while in the exercise, but when you stop, the burn stops. 

Absolutely build your exercise around maximum intensity, interval based, resistance training.  We're talking crazy pushups, pullups, weights, cross training, wind sprints, whatever is high intensity and muscle ripping ... and do it to failure.  This is why P90x is so effective.  You'll not only shred calories while performing high intensity resistance training, but the micro tears in your muscle tissue will have to repair itself.  The result: you'll burn calories for up to 48 hours after the workout.

Furthermore, all that low intensity cardio actually ends up burning muscle tissue over time.  BAAAD, see next point.  Even still, your body will adapt to repeated low intensity cardio by storing energy until the next workout.  Storing energy = a temporary slow in metabolism.  Not cool. 

Sure, cardio is good for your heart.  You need some of it, especially if you enjoy it.  But you need maximum intensity resistance training too, if not more.

2) Losing muscle tissue is not just bad.  It's a disaster for fat loss.  Muscle is undeniably your body's natural fat burning engine.  Muscle dissolves body fat.  Period.  In order for your body to maintain muscle, it burns stored energy (aka fat).  If you lose muscle, you lose your ability to burn fat.  Each pound of lean muscle burns around 50 calories a day just to stay alive, sometimes more.  So, put on 10 lbs of muscle, burn 500 calories a day more, just staying alive.  Plus, muscle takes up less physical space than fat (even though it weighs more), so you actually look slimmer.

Not to mention the huge benefits of what keeping muscle will do for your bones and overall health past the age of 40. 

With that said, your goal should not be weight loss, but fat loss.

3) Your body runs on fuel.  Exercise is not your fuel.  Food is.

I simply cannot believe that I've live my entire adult life duped by what it truly means to actually eat well.  All the stuff I thought was healthy, turns out it's far from it.  I mean holy cow.  It's absolutely amazing how badly we eat in this country.

Performance wise, health wise, and energy wise...can't begin to tell you what proper nutrition will do for you.  And...I cannot believe I played athletics at a highly competitive level for many many years, and never ever knew how much my performance would have improved had I fueled it properly.  It's no ones fault.  It's just that everyone is ignorant!

Have you ever driven a nice car and filled it up with gas.  The gas cap says something like 'use only premium fuel for best performance.'  And it actually works.  Put in 93 octane over 87 octane and those cars run far smoother, and much longer.  I'll also never forget going to the Daytona Speedway and seeing those cars in person, and learning that those cars will ONLY run on some crazy high performance fuel.  Like 110 octane.  If those muscle cars don't get the right fuel, they'll run poorly and eventually break down.

You can be a performance race car, but only if you're running on the right fuel.  Low Octane garbage will just slow you down...it may even break you down (how often do you get sick?)

For starters, start cutting out junk.  Start with sugar (cookies, doughnuts, soda) and sodium (chips, canned and processed foods).  But to really feel the boost of high octane fuel, try to balance your diet with 40% proteins, 40% carbs, and 20% fats.  It will take about 6 weeks to where healthy eating becomes a habit.  And you'll likely need to read a lot.  But it's worth it.  Totally.

It's completely possible to be in fantastic shape, but not look like it, because of what you put in your mouth.  

And that's the memo.  Cheers.

Quite simply, Caitlyn and John are wonderful people, and they deserve the deep blessings of life. Thanks so much for all you're doing for the Kingdom down in the St. Louis area.

Better late than never.

Thanks to the famous Joe McNally for sharing an infinite amount of photo insight, day after day, free of charge.  He's where I first learned of this technique.  Photogs, know that if you follow his blog you'll earn a doctorate in lighting.  Which is why I need to follow him more :)

Alrighty then.  I'll start with the image, then work backwards.  It's really quite simple:

Yep, that's Kerbi Sue, a week old.  And of course, my other babe, Julie.  It's nothing award winning (obviously), some will prefer it without the texture, but bottom line is that it looks like it was taken during the day.  At a time with wonderful diffused, warm light.  And directional.  But not harsh.  It's the perfect natural light!

But it's not natural light.

To the contrary, it was pitch black outside.  Here are a couple pics of the outside, and also my lighting setup.

As you can see in the above pic, the lighting setup is simple.  Elinchrom Ranger head with the RangerRX Pack, standard metal reflector.  And secondly, yes, that is in fact a white bed sheet.  I bought it a couple hours before from Walmart.  I think it ran me $6.  Gaffer tape it, or duck tape it.  And all the sudden, you have a window sized softbox.  And as you know, the bigger your light source in relation to the subject, the softer and more magical the light.

For you nerds that want to know strobist info: 160th, 4.0.  And I forget what my pack was pumping out.

As Joe has demonstrated before, you can also do this with a speedlight (or better yet a couple or a few to lessen recycle time), so long as you invest in one of the many options to get the speedlight off your hotshoe.

Now, you can also create a much different quality of light by removing the bed sheet (thx captain obvious).  Light that looks just like a sunset or sunrise streaming through the window.  I'll save that for next time...

Cheers to cool, and easy, lighting tricks.

Good luck on the Sr year at Glenwood!

Just a few of many.