Wholistic Fitness

Namaste Noble Fitness Warriors!

Spring is in the air. The other day when Kathy and i were in Chicago, we saw a Santa Monica type of scene; hundreds of noble fitness warriors running, inline skating, and cycling along Lake Michigan. The only difference was the shockingly lack of sun tans! Ouch! Some of those folks needed a dimmer switch for their snow white skin, let me tell you! Regardless, a sight like that – so many people enjoying moving and breathing in their bodies under Father Sky – gives this mountain yogi hope for humanity! Why? Because when people breathe together, people become brothers and sisters of the unifying force of all life; BREATH, baby!

in tribute to the oncoming spring and Cardio season, here is an edited version from one of my chapters of my next book, TOTAL BODY TRANSFORMATION (Hyperion Press) to be released next January.

Enjoy it’s teachings by getting out and DOING IT! That which is not known by direct experience is not true.

May your Practice be strong,

coach ilg

����

Steve Ilg’s

WHOLISTIC FITNESS PERSONAL TRAINING SYSTEM

WHOLISTIC NOTES: CARDIO – Cosmic Yang Style

�The arrow had best not be loosely shot.�

Henry David Thoreau

Cosmic Yang not only builds power for you in the gym, it does the same in its Cardio component as well. To impart power into your Cardio fitness during this cycle, you will be doing my classic �Minutes Are Forever� interval workout along with a special event ‘weekend workout” that truly imparts POWER into your Cardio fitness! The next four weeks contain quite a few moments of high intensity hurtin� during both your gym and Cardio workouts. Because of that, I want to briefly make sure you know the WF warrior�s way to cope with high intensity workouts.

NATIVE ZEN

I once described Cardio training to a new age magazine interviewer as �A form of native Zen.� Why? Because the initial meditation instructions given by any good Zen teacher to their new students is to have them pay attention to their breath and to their posture. Their instruction would continue along lines like this, �When random thoughts intrude upon your meditation on breath and posture, pull your attention back to the breath.�

Does this sound familiar? It should. �Breath & Posture� is the first Wholistic Fitness Lifestyle Principle!

No better coaching counsel could be given for doing Cardio workouts as well. One moment of awareness is one moment of purity. The more consciously you follow your breath and pay attention to your posture, the more aware you begin to live. More awareness during Cardio workouts brings more and deeper meaning into other aspects of your life. You don�t need to �do� anything extra to become more conscious. Just bring awareness to whatever you are already doing, especially during Cardio workouts.

Do you see how all increased fitness always returns, over and over again, to the shining basics? Do you understand why coaches are driven nuts when their athletes don�t pay attention to �fundamentals?� What good is a fast mid fielder in soccer if he or she can�t control the ball? None. What good is it to become cardiovascularly fit if it doesn�t make your life more meaningful and wealthy? None. So what if doing Cardio makes you live longer if you are just surviving instead of thriving?

I�ve worked with a lot of elite Cardio athletes. Most are surprised, if not stunned, by my �unplugged� low tech, Zen based teachings. Here are well known professional or Olympic class athletes and I am adjusting their foot position as we stood in line together at the grocery market! I guess they think how they stand in line in the grocery store somehow doesn�t count as a �valid� part of their training regime like, say, a Max VO2 test in the human performance lab. In Wholistic Fitness it sure does. How you do anything is how you do everything!}

The effort inherent in any Cardio workout turns into suffering only when your ego pulls you away from conscious attention to the moment. Return your awareness to the breath, for example, and suffering dissipates. The ego that likes to attach to discomfort and drama drowns in breath and posture awareness. Purity, perspective (which includes performance strategy), and most of all, peacefulness, thrives in it.

Paying attention to our breath and posture during Cardio workouts is at first like training a puppy. We must sharply yang the leash to bring an undisciplined, frolicking dog to heel. After enough yanks, the dog eventually understands it is better just to do what we want. Once the dog becomes disciplined, we no longer need the leash. We trust that our dog will come when commanded. The dog is now free to run and be �free� while other less disciplined dogs must remain tethered to their leashes.

Trust and freedom can only be achieved through steady discipline and a wise, caring Master. Do you have the self discipline to become free? What is the leash that you use to discipline the unruly mind? In WF, we use Lifestyle Principle #1: Breath and Posture.

Kottitha, wrote a few millennia ago…

“…mind unruffled

shaking distractions away

like the wind-god

scatters a few

forest leaves.”

Enough theory. Time for perspiration; your own. Only through your OWN sweat can spiritual truth be decoded from my WF teachings. Here is one of my classic WF Cardio workouts during which you can practice “Native Zen”:

MINUTES ARE FOREVER

Simple and powerful. Here is how you do it.

Pick any Cardio activity of choice. Then,

� Warm up for 10 – 20 minutes at an easy level of intensity (zones 1/2)

� a) Go hard for one minute (zones 3/4)

� b) Recovery pace for one minute (zone 1)

� c) Keep doing this great idea for 10 minutes: 1 minute �gut wrenching hard� followed by 1 minute �guilt producingly easy.�

� After your tenth �hard� interval (if you make it there!), recover for 10 minutes at zone 1. Then, buckle up your Warrior belt and

� Repeat a through c if you have it in you. if not, that’s cool, just call it a day and come back stronger next time.

� NOTE: always perform a Cool down for 10 – 20 minutes at zone 1.

ps: it is not dishonor to throw up during this workout. unless you use throwing up as an excuse to quit!