Let’s talk about how our brains and bodies respond to change.
In order to understand how Change affects us we must define the concept of the SAID Principle — the body always gets better at exactly what it does. While we generally talk about this idea in relation to movement and performance, the brain works the same way with regards to everything we do (or don’t do).

Habits are easy. Our morning ritual is our morning ritual because we don’t have to think about it. We frequent the same stores, take the same routes, buy the same brands, and return to the same restaurants because it’s the path of least resistance. This is precisely why habits are so hard to break.

We are hard-wired for survival as opposed to performance, which means that we want to conserve energy as much as possible. And, making any sort of change requires additional energy — the brain literally burns more glucose when we have to do something out of the ordinary.

So, when you decide to “go for broke” and make several changes at the same time, any unplanned events in your life can easily derail the change you want to make. Your body literally runs out of energy to manage all of the changes, and falls back to what it already knows in order to make it through the day. While it may be frustrating to make changes gradually, it is a much more realistic approach for guaranteeing success because both emotionally and physically it requires less energy and won’t place unrealistic demands on the body.

Remember, success breeds success, so it is much better to have many small successes that add up, than to take on TOO much at once, fail and have to start all over at square one.Let’s look at a few examples of places where people often struggle to make changes, and some ways to ease in to change.

Get More Sleep
Americans are notoriously sleep-deprived. Accidents related to sleep deprivation have been estimated to have an annual economic impact of $43 to $56 billion, and recent studies even indicate a link between chronic sleep deprivation and obesity.
• Create a nighttime ritual. 30 minutes prior to bedtime, unplug.
• Work to standardize your hours of sleep to a consistent amount 7 days a week.
• Shift your schedule in 15-minute intervals to work up to 7-8 hours/night.

Eating Behaviors
Make just one change a week.
• Cut out a snack.
• Add one vegetable.
• Throw out one trigger food.
• If weight loss is your goal, count your calories for one week. The next week, reduce caloric intake by just 100 calories per day.

Fitness Training
85-90% of individuals who start a training program quit within the first 90 days, and 85% of that group quits due to injury. Given the large number of adults who claim to be on a training program, that is an awful lot of false starts. So, how do you start a training program you can stick with?

• If your problem is you just don’t feel like training, then my first recommendation is to choose something that you enjoy. Research shows your rate of success is much higher if you choose something you like.
• If time is a problem, realize you don’t have to spend an hour a day in the gym to get or stay in shape. Look for 10, 15, or 30 minutes to exercise.

• If you are one of those 85% who quit due to injury, a mobility warm-up will aid against future injuries. That, combined with starting the first week at no more than 50% of what you think you are capable of and remembering never to push into pain, will go a long way towards injury-free training.
To summarize,

1) Pick something you like to do, not something you feel like you have to do. 2) It doesn’t have to be an hour, make it short fast and realize it is effective. 3) Ensure that your body is prepped for success by being prepared for movement.

What is the Mission of the RMAX TACFIT® Team?

RMAX International holds a two-fold mission: to promote tactical conditioning and integrated physical and morale training to professionals on a global scale, and to support our members in targeting the general and specific needs assessment of their team, company or unit. Our vision – “Surpassing ouRMAXimum Potential Together” – provides tactical conditioning specialists with a professionally tested and trusted, cutting-edge scientific resource to meet the needs of those who have the courage to move toward danger so that others may move out of harm’s way.

Core Values

• Team-Oriented: We provide support for our members to both facilitate individual growth and foster group cohesion of our teams.
• Global-Focused: We extend into most countries worldwide, and provides in-house as well as support abroad where our members need it most.
• Integrity-Based: We concentrate on only the most expedient, effective and efficient.
• Evolutionary: We remain up-to-date and on the bleeding edge of specific tactical conditioning solutions.
• Integrative: Not a patchwork of parts, we are a synergistic unity of all of our research and development in the field of tactical conditioning science.
• Adaptive and Improvisational: We use retro-tech solutions to hi-tech discoveries and remain free to use whatever resources we have at our members’ disposal to accomplish the task-at-hand.

Join Our Team

As a member of the RMAX International TACFIT® Team, you’ll be among the brightest minds in the field of tactical conditioning, and its founder, Scott Sonnon – the most-acclaimed martial arts conditioning coach in the world.

Consider why security, law enforcement, fire and military personnel worldwide enlist Coach Sonnon’s surgically-accurate training guidance. Overcoming physical, biochemical and psychological obstacles, he knows more than merely how to be fit: he knows first-hand exploiting his true strengths and mitigating his weaknesses until he transforms them into advantages as well. And named the “Coach’s Coach” – he teaches you how to replicate this process with 100% success, regardless of circumstances or pitfalls.

The RMAX International Faculty Directors, coming from all branches of tactical operations – military, law enforcement, security, intelligence – guarantees that you receive perfectly optimized training standards in the areas you need.

As a result, to ensure that you receive the correct educational platform, we offer you multiple levels of certifications:

• Certified TACFIT® Field Instructor (Level 1)
• Certified TACFIT® Team Leader (Level 2)

Departing RMAX International Certification, you will feel 100% confident that you possess a comprehensive toolbox to surpass youRMAXimum potential, and ensure that your teammates and clients do as well.

JOIN NOW OR GET MORE INFO HERE!

If you are an athlete that is training for a sport the best thing to do is train for that sport by practicing that sport. If you are a golfer play golf and practice specifically the basics of teeing off, chipping and putting and playing golf games. If it’s tennis you practice your back hand, serving etc along with playing the games. If your idea is to improve your bench lift you add more weight as time goes along. The body will adapt and get stronger in the bench lift to the demise of other areas of the body. If you are a Martial artist you practice your art. The body gets better at what ever it is asked to do by the practice of that specific sport. No great revelation there. The old adage is true. Practice practice practice to get better at what you want to get better.

However, if you are not training for any specific sport, but just for health and strength then an issue can arise by the repetition of the same set of exercises. The body will natural become efficient at what it is asked to do and overall gains over time will decrease. Through the repetition of theses exercises there can be an imbalance in the body as you practice a set of skills and ignore other parts of your body. If you vary your exercises so the body does not know what to expect it has to work harder. That is what we need for health benefits. We need to fool the smart intelligent body and not let it become complacent in it’s movements due to it’s self efficient ways of learning how to do things better.  Not that we work harder but that the body works harder by being challenged from many approaches.

As mind and body are one the challenges of a varied workout will also work the mind, but it is the body we are discussing here. If a new demand is placed on the body by a varied routine the body will not become accustomed to what is demanded of it. If you do the same thing all the time there are diminishing returns. One could say that progressively adding weight to the same lifting routine challenges the body, but the movement is the same. It is movement along with added weight that needs to be varied. You need to move with intelligence and knowledge to protect the body from harm. This is why it is good to learn from many instructors various forms of exercise.

There needs to be a holistic approach to strength and conditioning. Don’t just run for cardio or Lift weights for strength, stretching for limberness. Yes you do lift weights for strength, but repeatedly the same exercises all the time and just increasing the weight lets the body lock itself knowingly into the same movement. You can bench 400 lbs, but can you scratch your back without aid of an implement. Lifting weights the old fashion way where you isolate parts of the body to push a lot of weight thereby getting little muscle tears that in the long run will cause most of the shoulder and back issues people have. Using machines that restrict movement of the body can also be damaging as too much strain tends to be put on one area of the body. You need to be WELL ROUNDED. Do many things and vary what you do for strength and condition. And don’t forget the joints. There are many exercises that will work the joints and don’t even require any implements

You need to increase strength of large and small muscles. Work the stability muscles and tendons. Most people don’t work the breaking muscles (Muscles that stop a movement) when they push weights as they are doing a slow grinding push. Doing fast controlled movements with lighter weights and halting the action quickly will work the breaking muscles. This will give a different kind of strength to the body by working the tendons from a tense – to relax – to tense action.  A karate performer will move quickly and stop quickly using breaking action to develop power and not need an over muscled body to do some amazing things.

How do you keep the body guessing and working hard? Use many tools. Kettlebells, Clubbells/Indian clubs, Sandbags, Balance exercises, Core exercises, Yoga, Pilates, Body Weight exercise, Battling Ropes, Joint Mobility exercises Martial Arts, Free Weights, Aerobic exercises,  all in a balanced and progressive way. Do not become attached to any one methodology.

The key words being:

Progression – Increase weight, complexity, time,

Foundations – Build a foundation of knowledge on which to progress from

Control – Move with a controlled purpose of movement

Variety – Vary things up all the time

Commitment – Commit to a regime of staying in shape and stick with it

Intelligence – Learn things and do the smartly.

Diet – Lets face it this might actually be the most important EAT HEALTHY.

After training in the martial arts and fitness industry for over 20 years and earning two black belts and an instructor certification in Jeet Kune Do and Filipino martial arts I have learned that each person should have a clear purpose for martial arts training.

Following are a few questions that might help you to clarify why you are training and to help you to set the proper goals.

What motivates you to train in martial arts? Basically, why are you training? What got you originally interested in martial arts training? Was it martial arts movies and all the incredible athletic and super fancy techniques?

Was it the physical power that excited and impressed you? Possibly the self confidence and self-esteem you would gain from not having fear, in the face of confrontation?

Or were you just impressed with the physical bodies such as Bruce Lee’s ripped physique or the ultra muscular and flexible Jean Claude Van Dame?

Possibly mixed martial arts competitions like the UFC is what peaked your interest?

Whatever your original motivation for training was and currently is the question you need to ask yourself is… what is my purpose behind my training?

This question will not only help you to clarify why you’re training but it will help you to greatly improve your performance and results by understanding what you are trying to accomplish or what your outcome is to be. Clarity of purpose is power.

Many times we do things out of habit and out of a way to express ourselves. What I mean by this is that we tend to identify ourselves by the different roles that we perform in our day-to-day lives.             

These roles such as, auto mechanic, teacher, truck driver, student, salesman, manager, athlete are just some of the roles that we do and are only a part of who we are.

We have to be careful not to limit ourselves by our roles. Roles change as life changes and if we indentify ourselves as a truck driver only, then what happens to our identity when we retire? If you limit yourself and your thinking this way then life is incomplete. For me practicing martial arts have always been a passion and interest and something that I have done for a good portion of my life.

But I realized that I liked to teach and help others to acquire the benefits and skills that I have experienced through martial arts and physical conditioning. Now part of my evolution is teaching, writing these articles and producing training videos and eBooks.

So you can see from the example above, I have many different roles in my martial arts and these roles have evolved and are being developed based upon my desired purpose and outcome that I am after.

If I had limited my thinking to only being a martial arts practitioner then I might have lost out on the joy and benefits that I have experienced by helping others and having these other roles. Also by identifying my specific areas of gifts and talents I have not lost my passion or motivation for training which has helped me to grow as a martial artist, as an athlete, and has also helped me to maintain my health, to develop my mind, acquire new skills and also to grow in personal character.

Do yourself a favor and take some time to identify your motivation, purpose, talents & values. This will give direction and meaning to your training.