Many of us hold preconceived ideas and notions of what “yoga” ought to involve, its purpose, intent and mission. But physical yoga is intended for one reason: to reunite the body, mind and emotions into one-pointed focus. Where ever you are, in what ever you do, you can “yoke” these apparently separated aspects into union.

A strong yoga practice can use any intensity level for its physiological purpose, but do to so safely and appropriately, track and measure your internal arousal level.

First, determine your heart rate maximum. HRmax = 205.8 − (0.685 × age).

Then, match your intensity to the appropriate fitness level and internal response to the activity.

Convalescing: No Intensity (<40%HRmax)
Beginners: Low Intensity (40-60%HRmax) Builds aerobic base and aids in recovery
Intermediate: Moderate Intensity (60-80%HRmax) increases endurance and trains the anaerobic threshold
Experienced only: High Intensity builds high-end work capacity

No Intensity: If you’re recovering, reconditioning, or recuperating, begin with light joint rotations here, to prime the capsules and “inner, fluid body” to deliver lubrication and nutrition throughout the skeletal chassis, so that your connective tissue can accommodate load of increased intensity without pain or injury.

Low Intensity: If you are a beginner start here. Improve the ability to deliver oxygen (aerobic capacity) throughout the body and remove waste and toxins. As an intermediate and experienced yogi, this is where you can recover from higher intensity activities.

Moderate Intensity: You produce higher levels of lactic acid as you approach the anaerobic level. Your body can no longer produce enough energy for the muscles with normal oxygen intake. Introduce interval training as a way to increase the workload on the cardiovascular system, thus allowing one to increase the anaerobic threshold.

High Intensity: Maximum heart rate is usually sustainable for short bursts of 10-60 seconds. Typically this is purely anaerobic and the prime source of energy is ATP/CP and muscle glycogen. Therefore, to pair HRmax with the correct activity, do not continue beyond 90 seconds at HRmax. (90 seconds is a LONG time, don’t worry.)

But most importantly, it’s not reaching these levels, but recovering from them which gives you a “strong yoga” practice.

The most expedient method of HR recovery involves two breathing exercises:

1. When you are ‘gassed’ and feel the reflexive impulse to inhale rapidly, instead use short, sharp exhales from the belly to restore the gas mixture at a cellular level. You can’t do the second breathing exercise until you can control your exhale, so start by regaining control of the exhale, but discontinue the first exercise as soon as you do.

2. One long, slow, deep exhale from the belly and control the pause after the exhale as long as possible. Then, relax the inhale back through the nose, and squeeze the exhale back down pulling belly back and then down. This is the fastest form of heart rate recovery as breath has connections to both the voluntary and the autonomic branches of the central nervous system; which means exhale to slow down sympathetic arousal, and elicit the parasympathetic “recovery” response.

You can usually begin with #2 in No, Low and sometimes Moderate intensity levels, but you will need #1 often in moderate and usually in all High intensity activities.

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

I can appreciate your concern about exploitation, about becoming vulnerable. Coming from a history of violence, and experiencing first hand the physical, mental and emotional cruelty, I would never suggest anything but strength.

In the mid 90s, I tested for my black belt in Aikido, I had all the skills, as well as my youthful vigor as a nationally competitive fighter. Thrashing my demonstration, sending my ukes flying like broken balsa wood, my Aikido teacher asked me to attack him instead. Seeing this as an opportunity to show him that I was skilled not merely in Aikido, but in several martial arts, I came in hard and heavy. Smiling, he seemed to soften as a struck at him, shot in to take him down and kicked hard to sweep his legs. The harder I fought, the more his affable quicksand sucked me down, exhausting me of breath and options.

As my Aikido teacher demonstrated very easily on me, kindness is not a weakness, but your greatest strength.

Relaxed determination, not aggressive overcompensation, offers the fastest and most sustainable progress and success. Gentleness allows you to adapt to each situation as required; where force alone cannot.

Don’t mistake gentleness for docility or kindness for impotence, and don’t allow either to be an excuse for weakness. As Leo Buscaglia said, “Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

So my coach asked for my best fighting posture. He pushed me easily over and said, “100% of the attacks you don’t take will miss, and 50% of your best defense remains vulnerable. Hold back nothing. Your best odds: whatever you fear, move directly toward it, relentlessly.”

That lesson has shown me more success than any fearful cautiousness. Like my unlikely win against the Russian master, you will take a few shots, some of them will rock you, but you will earn zero regrets and uncommon success.

I once gauged my success on the level of my competition. But now, I find myself transcending ‘otherly’ competition. Now, I focus on competing with my current notion of my potential: how am I limiting my potential service to others RIGHT NOW?

Don’t ask, “how will I be stopped?” Ask, “how will I allow myself?” We can’t ascend the limitless ladder of potential without pain, but we don’t need to suffer fears.

For you can. You will. You are able to climb as high as you imagine. Higher.

V/R,

Scott Sonnon

One could argue that the reason I had my neck broken in competition from being thrown by suplex onto the top of my head wasn’t because of the power of the throw but because of the biomechanically inefficient displacement of my head creating a structural weakness for absorbing shock. My dramatic forward displacement created a vulnerable force angle for the impact.

Your head already weighs generally one seventh your bodyweight. Balancing that large mass atop such a tiny beam qualifies as elegant magic. But for every inch that the head moves forward in posture, it increases the weight of the head on the neck by 10 pounds!

Poor neck posture leads to a Forward Head Translation: one of the most common causes of neck, head and shoulder tension and pain. This can be a result of injuries like sprains and strains of the neck leading to weak neck muscles, poor sleeping positions, driving stress, computer neck, couch neck, readers neck along, improper breathing habits, and upper cross syndrome (thoracic kyphosis / cervical hyper lordosis) caused by anxiety, fear and anger (primal sympathetic arousal or “Moro” reflex).

The extra pressure on the neck from altered posture flattens the normal curve of the cervical spine resulting in abnormal strain of muscles, ligaments, bones and joints of the neck causing the joints to deteriorate faster than normal resulting in degenerative joint disease or neck arthritis as indicated in an article published in the Spine Journal (1986;6:591-694).

I do not endorse neck bridging, neck harnesses, or any other weight bearing by the neck not necessarily because they’re ineffective at developing the strength of the muscles surrounding the neck, but because the position of the neck should NOT BE FURTHER STRENGTHENED in its dysfunction.

If you suffer from neck, upper back or shoulder pain, recovering anti-gravitational neck position takes time, work, practice and adaptation. A healthy dose of passive and active traction using corpse pose to slide the crown away from the shoulders using gravity, the frontal (dorsal) neck glide while counter posturing with scapular depression, and forward fold as a controlled inversion to use gravity, leverage and breath to create space, alignment and “lift” of the crown toward the feet.

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

Crossfit’s ad agency? “Boo!” Okay, sorry. :P

“Life is short. Have an affair.” - WTH? Have you seen this new advertisement? Harkens to the Crossfit, “Cheat on your girlfriend, not your workout” ad.

Really, what is going on lately? Is it the ubiquitous infidelity of our political leaders, the media inundation of indiscretion, or… something else? Is it really just a money grab? It can’t be, can it? Sociologically, there must be a more nefarious influence than merely, “it makes us a lot of money.”

It seems as if company after company buckles under the pressure for shock marketing: “Let’s say something so controversial that we’ll go viral, and then once we have the exposure, backpedal with an apology and fire the scapegoat ad agency.” WTH.

We are so much better than this. I’m not offended that they would try it. I’m astounded that it would work to ANY degree. The recent example of a fund raiser advertisement depicting a stripper pulling wagons of dead and dying children was rationalized by Crossfit because they’re raising money through its virality. Really?

We are so much more powerful than we can imagine. Yet we allow ourselves to be preyed upon by such juvenile contrivance.

You want to be sexy? Be authentic. No training required.

You want to be strong? Be loyal. No medical exam mandatory.

You want to be tough? Be accountable. No supplements needed.

You are more than they’re marketing to, for they’re marketing to the lowest, debasing quality within us. Allow yourself to be more.

Stand up. Stand out.

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

My colleague, MSG. Matt Larsen, contacted me in the mid-90s about developing the US Army Ranger grappling program wanting to include Sambo into the Jiujitsu curriculum. We concentrated our talk on the training foundation to ALL effective combatives, and in doing so had to delineate two primary tactical imperatives which he went on to write as author of the US Army Field Manual on Combatives (FM 3-25.150):

The soldier who wins a hand to hand fight on the battlefield is determined by:

1.    the willingness to close with the enemy,
2.    whose backup arrives first with a gun.

Closing with the enemy requires courage, and in any fight, the ultimate determinant of failure is often not poor tactics, but primarily poor preparation.  “Fatigue makes cowards of us all!” – Vince Lombardi

Contributing to the physical fighting readiness of US Soldiers holds many parallels to preparing fighters for the mat or ring; except your backup involves the quality of your coaching, and your weapon - a superior conditioning program.

Most fighters do well in spite of their conditioning not because of it. Their mental toughness, drive to win and aversion to losing, overwrites their lack of properly specific conditioning.  Imagine how much better they would do with properly integrated specific conditioning!

Some have used the analogy that to win you need to have “more” conditioning than your opponent. If we think of conditioning like nutrition, even if you eat a perfect diet for you, unless you move every joint through its full range of motion daily, that nutrition isn’t getting to your tissues and you’re literally being starved to death at the dinner table. Your nutrition remains locked in cold storage. Fighters with great general conditioning are dominated by those who don’t “look” in the same kind of shape. General needs to turn specific.

Here is the #1 secret to training like a winner which is key for combat-specific physical preparation on both the battlefield and the mat.

Train to WIN not to Fail

Most fighters still condition themselves to be bodybuilders, powerlifters and cross-trainers, not fighters.  Training programs must be designed with one thing in mind: success on the mat. If a program siphons off your gas, you’re sacrificing the very reason you want to train: superior performance!

If you’re sore for days after training, because you went “to failure” your sparring and skill practice will both suffer.  Exercise doesn’t hit back, no matter how “hard-core”. Your conditioning supplements, but does not replace, your practice and sparring.

Be brief, intense and infrequent. Focus on high quality form rather than on quantity of repetitions. Don’t waste long hours at the gym. If you do, you’re training successfully for the wrong sport! If you feel drained after your training, you’re training helps your opponent more than it helps you. Feel ready-to-go not ready-to-sleep!

Fights are always a series of burst-collide-disengage-recover cycles, even in a sustained clinch. Train for the fight you get, not the fight you want! Primarily focus on how fast you can fast you can recover, and you will cycle faster than even a more superior skilled and athletic opponent. To recover more quickly always perform a restorative mobility session before and after your training.

Fatigue is not an accident of human design. It is the body’s natural mechanism for protecting itself from overuse. Train up to but not beyond the point that you still have “gas in the tank.” If you’re constantly overheating your car each time you drive, you’ll eventually overheat your engine.  Training should be a tune-up and pit-stop, not a demolition derby. As you train close-to but not beyond failure, you push the threshold of fatigue father away, so that when you fight, you do so with indefatigable vigor.

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

In my recent objection to Crossfit’s unsavory advertisement of a children’s hospital, I received a nasty post from a fake facebook profile, “Sonnon your always claiming to be so positive and yet you want to attack Crossfit because we are so much more successful than you. In reality your a bitter competitor using negativeity to criticize your betters. If you were actually a positive person youd say something good about companies who are more successful than you.”

1. The poster mistakes “bright-sidedness” for positivity. Sometimes the most empowering message you can utter is, “No.” Standing idly by and ignoring malicious and unethical treatment and pretending to see the “bright side” is a form a self-deceptive cowardice. Truly positive messages are not a denial of negativity, but an affirmative resistance to it. I’m “positive” that the advertising that Crossfit has been using is inappropriate, disrespectful and demeaning to both women and children.

Concocting a facade of positivity to avoid objecting to abusive, disrespectful behavior isn’t “positive.” It’s the worst kind of negative: the one which can never heal, never protect itself, never take positive action of growth and development.

If you see something, say something. That’s positive.

2. This issue begs another topic today, the one related to the image in this photo: scams, in particular rapid weight loss scams. In an endless barrage, I receive “network affiliate” requests to sell the latest “get thin fast” scheme. Today’s touts losing 25lbs of fat in 25 days - not water weight, not muscle loss - pure fat loss: one pound of fat lost every day for 25 days.

Folks, you’re smarter than that, and you know it. But there are those out there who don’t know that these are unhealthy, dangerous scams. There’s so much wrong with this attitude:

A. Rapid weight loss is primarily expulsion of water retention. As a competitive wrestler, grappler and fighter for 30 years, I’ve seen, tried and evaluated almost every known method of “weight loss” imaginable. When you lose fast, you’re losing primarily water, not fat.

B. When you lose weight fast, you’re almost always cannibalizing muscle tissue, as well. You are losing muscle, which means you’ll eventually back-slide, since muscle burns fat. Lose fast = lose muscle = gain fat = “skinny fat” which eventually returns to “over-fat” again. It’s an endless loop.

C. The sudden metabolic ignition of adipose tissue can lead to a toxic burden by your organs, as volatile chemistry embeds in fat stores, so to ensure healthy fat loss which your system can process safely, target 1-2 pounds of fat burn per week.

D. Weight isn’t even an accurate measure of health and fitness, as muscle weighs more than fat, and as you grow stronger and healthier, you’re going to GAIN weight.

Those of you who know me, know that I don’t look for the “bright message” in everything. I look for the growth in every challenge, and the opportunity in each situation for us to develop as individuals and as a community.

Sometimes, the most positive message you can utter is, “No.”

Trust your intuition. Rely upon your common sense. If something sounds too good to be true it’s often not a “little good and a little true.” It’s usually the opposite: all bad and totally deceptive.

As a business owner, I’ve made mistakes in the past, and tried to “look at the bright side” when people I’ve worked with behaved in ways that made me uncomfortable. But every time I ignored my intuition and neglected to obey reason, I got into trouble.

Believe in your innate wisdom, and your inherent ability to detect BS. Call them as you see them.

V/R,

Scott Sonnon

Initially, I was willing to dismiss the Crossfit “Cheat on your girlfriend” advertisement as a blundering Reebok faux pas, but this advertisement coming directly from Crossfit HQ leaves me speechless.

Perhaps that’s their marketing intent: shock and disgust creating virality of the advertisement, attacks by critics, apologizes from advocates, and high profile exposure of the discussions which ensure.

But does the end (marketing success) justify the means (abusive immorality, like the D&G “rape” ads)?

Is this really the type of ad we want in our industry: a stripper pulling wagons of children sick, puking, dead, or on dialysis? Disgustingly unbelievable. Even if for a fundraiser, would the funds raised justify the message used? Some argue that if it causes enough controversy then it will stimulate more funds, but this was given to me by a Crossfit box owner who refuses to support HQ or the benefit due to the tasteless delivery. One staunch defender said, “even if it’s tasteless, disgusting or immoral, if it serves its purpose, isn’t that all that matters?”

Really?

The highest trafficked message I’ve published on Facebook, had over 1,000 shares, and reached 3 million readers. It’s message: “You wouldn’t cheat on family. Don’t cheat on you.”

On this advertisement, as a professional who has been involved with marketing for twenty years, wouldn’t it be far more effective to release something along the lines of:

Sweat for Tears: The Harder We Work Together - The Greater Hope They Have!

Powerful, tasteful messages can be crafted. Means do not justify the ends.

I love what I see in the community which has surrounded Crossfit, but I increasingly see an unhealthy, if not corrosively toxic, messages coming from the Crossfit corporation itself.

To my Crossfit friends, you don’t have to accept the bad with the good. Your community dictates the company direction, and you “vote” with your patronage. Insist that corporate uphold the values you believe in as a community, and they will concede to the strength of your virtue.

V/R,
Scott Sonnon

Recent research documents the heart as the most powerful electrical and magnetic field generator int he human body; despite that the brain continues to be held as our primary power potential. Although the brain does indeed hold its own electromagnetic field, it pales in comparison to the field strength of the heart. Facts: the heart is 100,000 times electrically stronger and 5,000 times magnetically stronger than the brain.

If breath controls the heart, and heart produces our most powerful field generator, then breath becomes our catalyst for changing our field. Physics demonstrates that a change in our electromagnetic field, produces atomic level transformation: as we change our energy, we change our state (of matter), and moreover, everyone we encounter.

In martial art, yoga, bodywork, counseling and coaching, we use a tool called entrainment: a technique for synchronizing and controlling of cardiac rhythm by an external stimulus, in most cases to our own breath. As we breath, so too does the entrained individual or group. As we change breath, and entrain others to do so, we change the heart rhythm - the most powerful force in the human body.

There is much more going on than we realize, even with our most current, cutting edge science. Breathe.

V/R,

Scott Sonnon

Both people have the SAME BMI. Person on the right has TWICE as much BODY FAT as the person on the left. On my last BMI check, I categorized as approaching “obesity” and yet had less than 10% body fat.

The BMI was invented between 1830 and 1850 by the Belgian polymath Adolphe Quetelet during the course of developing “social physics”. It wasn’t updated until 1995 after pressure from the WHO and then updated here in the USA in 1998 by the NIH for universal conformity. Even now, it is nothing more than a tool for insurance companies (and now employers) to deny coverage (employment)!

BMI was originally created for life insurance companies to be able to charge people according to their risk of death. It was found that people with higher BMIs had a higher risk of death. But this only worked at a time when most people were at least somewhat active. Obviously, today there are plenty of “skinny fat” people who have “normal” BMIs. On the other hand, there are plenty of active, muscular people who have “obese” BMIs, but are healthy.

V/R,

Scott Sonnon