What and why is a 21 day workout important? What’s the deal with 21 days?

I get asked that a lot and it’s a great question. We have three reasons why we picked 21 days:

#1. Three weeks is doable – most of us (especially me) have short attention spans – we get bored easily. The more defined the program from start to finish the better the odds of someone completing it. The number one goal is completion, because once someone completes a challenge, the odds are in their favor that they’ll be Fired Up to try a new one which means they get even stronger and more confident…Success begets Success my friends and the 21 Day Challenge is about building a habit of perpetual success! 

#2. Not only do our minds get bored, but so do our muscles. It’s critical to switch up our training patterns so our muscles don’t get “complacent” – we want to keep them “guessing” – the more we do, the better our results, which in turns means the more Fired UP we’ll be and motivated to stick with it!  Three weeks is perfect for this – our muscles will be sore in week one, by week two we’ll start to get the hang of it, and by week three we’ll be crushing it and ready for something new. 

#3. Three weeks is the amount determined by the docs for the length of time required to establish a habit. We’re not interested in programming teammates to form 21 Day habits – we just want you to create a success habit that you can apply to anything you go after in life…and guess what’s the best to start the success snowball rolling?? Yep, with your body!

CHARLIE MIKE — ALDEN

Teammates, if you haven’t figured it out by now, the Olympics FIRE ME UP! I happen to be a snow nut, so the winter games add additional fuel to my Fire – but what gets my fire stoked in the first place is what the Olympics remind me of every time I watch them – that is, what I call the Olympic Fundamentals. 

Olympic Fundamental #1 – You’re only as good as your Olympic Support team!

Very few of us will ever be an Olympian, but the fundamentals of becoming an Olympian can be used by anyone. They have universal application and when employed can take us to our own Olympic podium in life.  These are fundamental rules of success, whether you’re on a quest to participate in the Olympics or play in an orchestra – the fundamental rules don’t change, your goals do. Listen to how Miracle on Ice coach Herb Brooks (pictured above) said it, “This team isn’t talented enough to win on talent alone,”  but his last words were, “This is your moment. You’re meant to be here.” Of course, not all goals are created equal. Some can be obtained within days, others months and the really big hairy scary ones can take years…much like the years of commitment required to become an Olympian.

 The bigger the goal, the more important your support team is. My new favorite Olympian, Alexandre Bilodeau (Canada’s first winter game gold medal winner on Canadian soil) said it best moments after winning the Men’s Moguls event: “An Olympian is only as good as his support team, and mine was perfect.” What he’s saying is that couldn’t have achieved his goal without a whole bunch of others supporting him throughout his journey. He listed his parents, his brother, his coaches, his teammates, and even all the people of Canada! Imagine that for a second – seriously – imagine if you had an entire country’s worth of support behind you in your quest to be the best…now, ask yourself, if you had this support, what would your goal be? (Once you have an honest answer, give yourself some time to think about going after that goal, because deep down inside you, there’s big hairy scary goal waiting for you – you’ve just got to unlock the chains of fear to get it out and GO FOR IT!)

 As you watch these Olympics, know that every single one of these Olympians has Olympic-size Support behind them – and they’ve been with them for a very long time. Whether you’re in a SEAL Team, on a swim team or vying for the Olympic Team, you’re only as good as your support team. This, my friends, is what I consider the first Olympic Fundamental. Once you’ve created your Olympic-sized goal, take time to honestly evaluate your support teammates – you’re looking for honesty, undying encouragement, can-do attitude, and above all else, people that believe in you, even when you don’t believe in yourself. Find the right support team, and you’ll be a force to be reckoned with on your quest for gold! 

CHARLIE MIKE – ALDEN

Here are my other four Olympic Fundamentals:

Olympic Fundamental #2 – You’ve gotta Believe to Achieve!

Olympic Fundamental #3 – To be the Best, you must first learn to do your Best!

Olympic Fundamental #4 – Learn smarter ways to work, Then work even Harder!

Olympic Fundamental #5 – Compete but make sure you also Complete!

Teammates, last Sunday night marked an epic milestone for Canadians when Alexandre Bilodeau won the gold in the Mens Moguls event. He was the first Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal on Canadian soil. Bilodeau’s victory was not just Canada’s first gold of the Games, but also consigned to history Canada’s status of being the only country to host the Olympics twice — Calgary 1988 Winter Games and Montreal 1976 Summer Games — and not capture a gold. The moment Alexandre won the gold NBC commentators predicted the next day’s top headline: “The drought is over!” Certainly an appropriate headline for the young man’s (22 years old!) golden accomplishment, but the real story of inspiration is the understanding what drove him to be the best in the world.

Alexandre’s older brother Frederic has cerebral palsy; he can barely walk or talk, yet has found a way to ski with his little brother. In Alexandre’s words, “he’s truly amazing, for all his challenges, he never has a bad day, he has every reason to be negative but he’s always positive.” Alexandre’s skiing wasn’t always golden and one of the commentator’s asked him what kept him going when he was feeling discouraged. His reply is what compelled me to write this – he said, “my brother Frederic is my perspective – when I didn’t feel like practicing I think of him and that he can’t do what I can do, and then I would go and ski for him.”

Perspective can come from anywhere and from anything in your life. Link perspective with your personal purpose and you’ll create the most powerful weapon needed to accomplish your goals – Persistence. Nothing, and I REPEAT, nothing worth accomplishing is accomplished without persistence. Whether your goal is your country’s first gold medal on home soil or going for gold in whatever you do, you’ll need to find perspective to keep your persistence Fired UP and focused on your goal.

The next time you’re feeling down, discouraged, or distraught, think of Frederic Bilodeau sitting in a wheelchair cheering on his little brother to Olympic gold – then realize how lucky you are that you’re able to do what you do … and not to worry, I’m sure Frederic won’t mind providing you with a little perspective, after all you’ll be in golden company, just ask his little brother and the 33 Million Canadians that cheered him on!

HOOYAH FREDERIC and ALEXANDRE BILODEAU!

CHARLIE MIKE – ALDEN

Teammates, I love the Olympics – from the opening to the closing ceremonies to everything in between, but more than anything else I love to learn about the athletes and their personal stories of persistence in the face of adversity. To me, the Olympics are a celebration of individual perseverance – of childhood dreams finally realized over countless years of hard work and undying determination. One of the many wonderful elements of Olympics is that only a handful of Olympians will ever gain fame and fortune – for most it’s the satisfaction of accomplishing a goal they refused to let go. Friday night during the opening ceremony, John Furlong, the CEO of the Vancouver games stated: “…lives of great significance start with a spark.” Knowing that billions around the world were watching, he implored the next generation to find their “spark” from the athletes performing in these Winter Games so a new generation of inspired athletes can raise the Olympic bar. Furlong encouraged the Olympians to “seize their moment” and to “Never EVER Give UP.” It was an excellent speech, and the words came home to me. 

An extraordinarily small number of people around the world will ever become Olympic athletes. It’s hard work and it takes work and it takes talent, persistence, luck and unusual amounts of family/friend/coaching support; I know, I tried for the 1992 summer games in rowing, and never got there. My Olympic spark started in high school when I found a sport that I could actually excel at – rowing. It was perfect for me – a seemingly simple movement while sitting down and going backwards! One particular day after completing what I thought was a tough workout (and feeling pretty damn good about myself) I boasted to my coach, Hart Perry, I wanted to row in the Olympics. I’ll never forget his response: “then train and row like an Olympian.” 

That one statement was my Olympics spark. Coach Perry could have responded a thousand different ways from laughter to a ludicrous stare, but instead he took this 15 year-old boy’s comment seriously and essentially said if that’s what you want then it starts now and you better raise your game – if you want to be the best, then do what the best do. I’ll never forget how he responded to me – I wasn’t the best rower on the squad and I certainly wasn’t the healthiest (asthma and pneumonia plagued my early days of rowing) – but he gave me reason to believe in myself, and though I never made the Olympic podium, let alone the games, that single spark has since ignited multiple fires within my gut to go after my dreams, and most importantly, he gave me reason to believe in myself. 

Not everyone has a Coach Perry in their life or the Olympic dream in their head but EVERYONE has the capability to dream their own Olympic-sized dreams. And once you find your “Olympic spark”, seize it with all your might and go after it like an Olympian. There’s a Coach Perry out there for you, and an Olympic medal with your name on it – you just need to keep your Olympic flame burning bright by Never EVER Giving UP! 

CHARLIE MIKE – ALDEN 

P.S. Thanks Coach Perry for teaching me how to believe in myself. 

Statue of Ilanaaq, located on Whistler Mountain, BC, and symbol of the 2010 Winter Olympics, wikipedia: creative commons license.

Hey Team, Marcus Colburn, aka Mojo Frog here, your “Perfect” charge’ d’ affaire and I’ve got a killer tip that you can use to help you get wicked awesome results from your perfect products! Check out The Perfect Wicked Awesome Killer 100 Rep Workout!

I’ll make it simple for you as I know how confusing all this figuring out the correct tabulations can be (at least for me as I’m just a gym rat)

Keep working your way up till you can get 100 reps of everything. Now this may be quite a chore but it’s do-able.

• Keep your numbers low at first like 5-10 reps & do them on everything: pushups, dips, situps, pullups, & squats with no weight & you can even use the pullup bar at a waist level to aid you in the squats at first.

• Then keep a log on what your rep count was even if it’s 4. IT’S ALL GOOD! Just work it baby…

• Stretch when you get done with each body part worked & release myofibril tissue to allow strength to increase. This will give you the rest time in between sets. You have so many combos & “perfect exercises” to choose from that it’s astonishing or in my case dumbfounding!

You will not have to worry about where that workout deck of cards is or if you might have misplaced a few. All you need is your “wicked awesome perfect log note book” in order to track your progress, along with your very Own Customized Training & Nutrition Program!

“HOOYAHS”
NUFF SAID!
Remember, “THE ONLY EASY DAY WAS YESTERDAY”

Teammates, a couple questions I often get are, “What’s SEAL training really like? Who are the SEALs recruiting these days?” Check out what NBC’s Today show learned when they had unprecented access for nine months to the world of the Navy’s Silent Warriors.

“From high-tech weapons and underwater demolition to hand-to-hand combat and parachuting into war zones, NBC’s Chris Jansing takes a look at the making of a Navy SEAL.” Notice what phrase comes up again and again: Extreme Fitness.

Did you know a Newsweek reporter wrote about Bronze Star Lieutenant Commander Tom Rancich’s SEAL Hellweek aka BUD/S? Tom is a CHARLIE MIKE blogger too! N.B. every CM SEAL blogger has written about their BUD/S week. Lastly, read Warrior Elite: Forging SEAL Class 228 by Dick Couch.

CHARLIE MIKE — ALDEN

Or, as Lance Armstrong puts it, “Work like you stole something.”

Teammates, I’m over all the efficiency experts in the world saying: “Work Smarter Not Harder”. Who’s kidding who here? Just because you’re going to “work smarter” doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still work harder. Think about it! Let’s assume you’ve discovered a smarter way to work (assuming you haven’t just discovered a Genie in a bottle), you have to assume others have unearthed a similar “smarter” approach; which means that you’re no further ahead then when you started “working smarter” because others are doing the same “smart work” – which means you’re right where you started UNLESS, you take your new found “smart work” technique and apply a hefty dose of good old fashioned hard work to the equation.

For those looking to really make something happen – then live by this slogan:

“Work smarter, THEN Work harder!”

There’s lots of ways to work smarter (we think we’re on to something here at Team Perfect!) but that’s only half of the equation – the other half is hard work, and lots of it! At the end of the day, the person with the prize is the one who learned to work smarter while working his or her tail off all along the way. When you learn a better way to do something, be like Lance Armstrong when he would earn the yellow jersey for the first time on each of his tour wins – he’s been quoted as saying: “I ride like I stole something”. I love that phrase, because that’s exactly what you should be thinking when you’ve discovered a better way to do something. Take that smarter approach, then work like you’ve stole something! Because sooner or later, others are coming, and the one that wins will be the one that is relentless on learning how to work smarter while working harder!

And guess what, your ability to work harder is directly correlated with the condition of your body! The strength of your brain, body and attitude – the only three things you can control – determine your ability to generate work. The better conditioned your brain, body, and attitude are, the better you’ll be at generating relentless amounts of smarter, harder work toward your goal. That’s why fitness Fires me UP so much, because it’s a key component in enabling you to work harder to accomplish your goals – i.e. it powers your ability to make a difference – to live the life you want!!

So next time you hear some self-help expert tell you that all you need to do is Work Smarter Not Harder – correct him/her immediately before they accidentally infect another poor soul with a slacker’s slogan.

Define your goal, then work it like you stole something!

CHARLIE MIKE – ALDEN

Teammates, over the past year the marketing team of Team Perfect has been on a quest to distill the essence of Team Perfect into a single phrase. They call it a “tag line”, I call it our mission statement reduction sauce – our mission statement reduced into 4 words or less. It’s not an easy thing to do – edit words down to the bare minimum yet still capture the key meaning of your purpose. There are lots of examples of tag lines, but few really stir the soul – a couple of effective ones that come to mind are Nike’s “Just do it” or Apple’s “Think Different” campaigns. Both capture the prospective company’s personalities – of course, at the end of the day, tag lines or mission statements or slogans or credos are just words. However, when they are backed by action such as Apple’s consistent design philosophy to “think differently” about what a piece of technology looks, feels and works like or Nike’s continual pursuit to associate their product with people that don’t talk about performing – they “Just do it” – then the words begin to take meaning…

To reduce our “mission statement” is to get to the core of why Team Perfect exists (and continues to persist!). We have seven core values at Team Perfect and our first one is:

#1. We CARE about the health of our customers” is our front sight focus. And the reason we care is that we link health with the ability to never give up, and when you’re armed with the capacity to persevere no matter what the odds are, then you have the ability to make a difference. Think about it for a second – what’s your purpose? What are you going to do with your life? Why?…What Fires you Up?…what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? (i.e…what would you do if you knew you wouldn’t give up?!). Doing anything new or different is hard enough – but it’s exponentially harder if you’re out of shape!

So what’s my favorite phrase?

“Make your life count.”

It’s up to you – you define your life and what it’ll be. After all, at the end of day, what’s really important in life? How many objects you own or the number of zeroes in your bank account? Doubt it… I bet, if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll come to the conclusion that I have: figuring out ways to make a positive impact on something or someone – leaving the world a little bit better than you found it while having one helluva good time. In other words: Making YOUR LIFE Count. So be like Apple and think differently about your life, because your life is uniquely yours…and once you’ve decided what it’s going to be, be like Nike and Just do it!

CHARLIE MIKE! ALDEN