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5 Common Myths About Six Pack Abs

August 16, 2012 By 75 Comments

Last week, I was downtown chowing down breakfast with my friend Patrick Hitches downtown Chicago. Patrick’s like a walking terminator and made his own abs transformation a few months back.

Our talk quickly shifted from just catching up to fitness and comparing notes on our six-pack transformations. And, as we talked, we marveled just how much bad information is out there about losing weight and burning fat (and even worse, how much of it I believed over the years). After talking it through and realizing many of the same myths are repeated over and over again, I decided it’s time to do some myth-busting on 5 commonly believed myths about six pack abs.

5 Myths About Six Pack Abs

Myth #1 – You Can Run Off Your Belly Fat

“I need to lose weight so I’ll start running.”

FALSE.

I have a love/hate relationship with running and while I love the challenge of being able to run farther than I’ve ever gone before, it’s an absolutely terrible way to actually burn fat. Running and getting lean are actually polar opposite goals (when’s the last time you saw a long-distance runner who was absolutely jacked and not named David Goggins?).

If you don’t believe this, lets take a look at a recent informal case study I just did using google image search. The first person is Stephen Kiprotich – 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist in the Marathon event. The second person is Usain Bolt – 2012 Olympics Gold Medalist Sprinter in the 100m, 200m, and 4x100m events.

Which one do you want to look like?

Marathoners vs. Sprinters

Which one do you want to look like?

Long distance runners have a terrible tendency to be skinny/fat or just skinny/skinny. There are very few long distance runners that combine distance running while being ripped and strong.

Triathletes tend to do a pretty good job of balancing the two, but that’s a whole other story.

Unfortunately, this misconception that running leads to fat loss is not only common, but ineffective. Because of that, so many people buy into it who want to lose weight and get turned off to fitness altogether. The thought-action cycle usually goes something like this.

“I don’t like running” –> “I have to run to lose weight” –> *Decides to run to lose weight* –> *Doesn’t lose weight* –> *Hates running* –> *Gets discouraged that they can’t lose weight* –> “I don’t like running”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against running and adding in running to your workouts will definitely make you a better runner, but it won’t help you burn fat. In fact, you might hurt yourself if you’re overweight and put unneeded pressure on your joints throughout the exercise.

Myth #1 Busted: What To Do Instead

Cut out the 2 hour cardio sessions. If you want to burn fat, 20 minute sprint sessions or jump rope interval training will do much more for you than those 10 mile runs.

Myth #2 – Crunches Are An Effective Abdominal Exercise

If I see one more person spend twenty minutes doing crunches in a futile attempt to get a flat stomach, I’m either going to scream or cry (probably just scream though).

Crunches are not an effective abdominal exercise.

They won’t “spot reduce” fat on your stomach, and they only engage a percentage of your abdominal muscles and can put a strain on your lower back and hip flexors.

Myth #2 Busted: What To Do Instead

Get off your back. If you want to work your core get off your back and start doing full body exercises that work your core and stabilization muslces will much much more for you than spending an hour on your back doing 1,000 crunches. Also, planks are awesome. Do those instead.

Myth #3 – You Need A Gym To Lose Weight

We have more gyms now than we’ve ever had in the history of time. And people are still out of shape and overweight. You don’t need a gym to lose weight  and get a six pack - you just need to move.

Get outside, play, do natural movements or bodyweight exercises.

If you want to lose weight, you don’t need a single piece of equipment. Skip the treadmill, and do sprints outside. Instead of bench press, do pushups. Instead of throwing tons of weigh ton of weight on a squat rack and butchering a squat, do air squats or lunges to start.

Not only are gyms not not needed, but they actualy provide MORE excuses for not working out. How many times have you thought about going to the gym but instead said:

  • “It’s too far away.”
  • “There are too many people. It’s crowded.”
  • “There aren’t enough people. I won’t know anyone.”
  • “I don’t know what to do.”
  • “They don’t have the equipment I like.”
  • “I’m embarrassed to be around gym people.”

Unless you’re trying to actively put on muscle mass, there’s no need for a gym – you can do everything you need to lose weight with bodyweight exercises with a flat space in your house or garage. And, if you really need to have a gym, you can make your nearby playground into a home gym.

Myth #3 Busted: What To Do Instead

Do the best you can, with what you have, wherever you are. I decided to do home workouts so I had no excuses. The only reason I could skip a workout was if my lazy butt decided it wasn’t worth it. You can get a six pack using nothing but bodyweight exercises and discipline.

Myth #4 – There’s “One” Killer Ab Exercise

There is no one killer exercise to get your abs to show up. Here’s the truth.

Abs are a body fat percentage game.

Most people need to get to sub-10% body fat before your abs will show and that happens through diet – not anything else. The annoying and difficult truth is that abs are made in the kitchen. If you want to believe anything differently, you’re going to be very, very disappointed and spend way too much money on late-night informercial products selling you the “next breakthrough workout.”

If you won’t change how you cook, you won’t change how you look. Sorry, for bursting your bubble, but that’s the truth. In my journey to lose 34 pounds in 8 weeks, I never did a workout that lasted longer than 30 minutes. I simply created a consistent intense workout and drastically changed how I ate. If you’re looking for the best ab exercise, this is the best one I’ve found:

The best ab exercise is five sets of stop-eating-so-much-crap. - Chris Shugart

Myth #4 Busted: What To Do Instead

If you’re looking for the “one” thing that will get you closer to six pack abs than anything else, take a good hard look at your diet. The paleo diet is a good framework to start with. 

Myth #5 - You Can’t Ever Get A Six Pack

The biggest thing myth is that you think you can’t do it. As soon as you see someone else’s results, you immediately think to yourself:

  • That seems really hard.
  • Someone else could do that, but not me.
  • They probably have great DNA. I was born to be like this.

Bullsh*t.I say that because I’ve been there. Hell, when I started, I didn’t think I could do it until I got the photos from the photo shoot back! But that’s how it is anytime you challenge the impossible. It seems impossible until the very moment you actually manage to do it.

“It always seems impossible until its done.” - Nelson Mandela

It’s easy to believe and say that it’s impossible to get a six pack while sitting around drinking Red Bull and eating oreos.

Of course you it’s impossible when you’re eating red bull and oreos. You have to change things!

But, if you change things, you can change your results. Losing fat and getting six pack abs isn’t easy, but it is simple. You just have to know what to do and you have to want it bad enough.

Myth #5 Busted: What To Do Instead

Instead of sitting around talking about why you couldn’t ever do it, get off your butt, change your habits and actually do it.

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Have you ever bought into one of these myths? What other questions do you have about losing weight and getting a six pack?

I’ve put everything I know into a blueprint called Impossible Abs. Find out more here.

photo 1 | photo 2

Filed Under: Fitness, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, Nutrition, Six Pack Abs, The Impossible, Weight Loss Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Crash Course Intro To Impossible HQ

August 14, 2012 By 11 Comments

We’ve had a lot of new people in the last 10 days so I thought I’d take the time to review exactly what it is we’re up to at the site (we have a lot of things happening). If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll still want to read this. We’ve got a ton of projects going on and you may have just missed a few things.

First things first, there are a lot of sites that are about inspiration, feeling good and happy self-talk a-la a  virtual internet Oprah.

This Is Not One Of Those Sites

Here, we talk about pushing your limits and tell a great story by doing the impossible. Doing really hard stuff doesn’t happen by sitting around, and talking about how much you really want to do something, while waiting for the stars to align. It happens by going out and actually doing it. That’s why the unofficial shorter motto around here is:

  • Do something first.
  • Talk about it second (if you have time)

The even shorter version: Do something.

We believe inspiration is worth absolutely nothing if you never do anything with it – so we focus on doing. Cool?

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s how this whole thing got started…

The 2-Year, 20 Second Recap

2 years ago I was a laid-off from UPS driver helper and couldn’t get a call back from Starbucks. It was not awesome. I didn’t feel like I could do anything.

So I sat and moped  around for a while while telling myself how hard life was and how everything was impossible….then something happened. I got sick of it. I decided that even if I tried and massively failed, it would be 100x better than sitting around in my parents basement feeling sorry for myself and telling myself how good my excuses were without actually knowing it myself.

So I started doing something. I made a list of all the things that seemed impossible to me and decided to start actually trying them. The first thing I did was a “fake” indoor triathlon  (I figured it would be easier for them to fish my drowned body out of a pool than a lake when I drowned).

You can make your way through whole story, but things escalated quickly:

The fake indoor triathlon led to a real one, which led to a bunch more triathlons, my first marathon and a half ironman despite me hating running and never having run more than 3 miles in my life before.

As I started doing things, the blog started to expand as well. Since it’s inception, it’s expanded into a brand headquarters, a community, an apparel line and a manifesto that’s topped the charts on Amazon for weeks.

So what are we up to now? Well, quite a bit (we’re ambitious like that).

Current Impossible Projects.

Impossible School Project

We’re Building an #IMPOSSIBLE School in Guatemala

As a community, one of our main goals is giving back and helping others do the impossible as well. Currently we’re partnering with Pencils of Promise to raise 25,000 to build a school in Guatemala and help 1,000 students achieve an impossible goal of having a chance of education. (After announcing it just last week, we’re already 15% of the way there). But this isn’t a normal hands-off fundraiser, once we raise the funds, we’ll actually go visit the school and help build it with our hands. If you’d like to join in and help out, you can do so in two ways:

As part of this initiative, I’m running my first ultramarathon this October in Chicago to raise awareness and funds. Training starts today!

The Impossible Abs Challenge

My most recent challenge was my most daunting (and easily my most vain). For my entire life I’ve wanted six pack abs. I tried a billion different programs (approximately) and none of them worked. This spring I got sick of messing around and finally decided to get things done.

I sat down with Vic and we created a program that eliminated my excuses and in exactly 8 weeks I lost 34 pounds got to 5.4% body fat and finally the ever elusive six pack(and did a photo shoot along the way). You can read about exactly how I got six pack abs here.

After several requests, we’re releasing the training guide and coaching program in the next two weeks. If you’d like to be find out more about this, you can sign up here.

Impossible Gear

Nate Damm Impossible

Nate Damm finishing his Walk Across America in his Impossible Shirt

Several people in the use impossible gear as a reminder to live a life worth writing about and do the impossible. It’s been all over the world with people doing incredible things. If you’d like to join in the fun, grab some gear, do something impossible in it and send it in. We just might feature you :) .

Josh Furnas Impossible
Josh doing a 200ft Gainer of a bridge
More People Doing Impossible Things [Get Your Gear Here]

Other Impossible Stuff

A few other happenings and references that aren’t neatly organized into one specific category.

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Whew that’s a lot! If you’re still with us, congratulations, we’re glad you’re here. If you’re an impossible veteran…you know the drill. We’re just getting started :) .

#boom

If you haven’t already, subscribe via email and then join the community of other impossible doers in the impossible league community.

Filed Under: Adventures, BIT Updates, Business, Impossible Things, Life, Physical Challenges, Six Pack Abs Tagged With:

How Bad Do You Want It?

August 6, 2012 By 36 Comments

For you new visitors, welcome! Check out what the sites about and subscribe via email here.

————–

Cause sometimes you just feel tired…you feel weak

And when you feel weak you feel like you wanna just give up.

But you gotta search within you…you gotta find that inner strength

And just pull that sh*t out of you and get that motivation to not give up

And not be a quitter…no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.

‘Till I Collapse – Eminem

How Bad Do You Want It?

Everyone wants to do stuff. Lots of people want to get in shape, do great things, travel the world, live an adventure and tell a good story with their life, but there’s a big difference between saying you want something and wanting something bad enough to do something about it.

I got a ton of emails after posting last week’s case study on my six pack experiment on people wanting private coaching to do what I did. Almost every conversation went something like this:

When do you want to start? 

Well, this week would work, but I’m not quite ready.

Okay, well how bout next week?

Well, I have a party coming up that week…so that wouldn’t work, maybe the week after – or the week after that.

The problem is lots of people want to lose weight, get ripped and look good naked, but they don’t want to have to work. They “want it bad”, but they don’t want it bad enough to start immediately and make the changes they need to in order to succeed. They don’t really want it…they just kinda want it.

A few months ago, a two-part video titled, “How Bad Do You Want It?” made the rounds on the internet. Take 5 minutes to watch the most inspirational thing you’ll see all day.

How Bad Do You Want It? Pt. 1

[click to watch video in email]

How bad do you want it?

You don’t want it badder than you want to party.

You don’t want it as bad as you want to be cool.

Most of you don’t want success as much as you want to sleep!

“When you want to succeed as bad as you wanna breathe then you will be successful.”

How Bad Do You Want It? Pt. 2

[click to watch video in email]

This is the time to test your heart – to test your limits! This is the PART where you reinvent yourself. It’s about pushing yourself beyond the limits…it’s about perfecting the you – not just doing more, not just being better, but finding your best.

Do you really want it or do you just kinda want it?

How To Know If You Just Kinda Want It:

You might say you want it, but you just kinda want it. You can tell because

  • When it’s time to cheat, you give in.
  • When it stops being easy, you give up.
  • As soon as things get uncomfortable, you go searching for something easier.

If there’s an acceptable excuse, you take it. The easy way – you find it. You stop at good enough and level off when it seems “reasonable.” You get suckered into cheats, hacks  and “shortcuts” when the biggest shortcut of all is hours and hours of unnoticed, unsexy and unappreciated work.

That’s what most people do and when you do what most people do, you get what most people get. But, that’s the moment you get the chance for separation. That’s the moment when, if you decide to keep going, not give up and seek out perfection, you create distance between yourself and “average.” But how bad do you really want it?

You say you want it, but you really only kinda want it.

You say you want to get in shape, but not as bad as you want to

  • party with your friends
  • eat whatever it is your co-workers brought in for a snack
  • drag your butt out of bed and run sprints

You say you want to start your own business, but not as bad as you want to

  • read one more business book about it
  • waste time on twitter
  • stay up late and wake up early to work on it

You say you want to do something impossible, but not as much as you want to

  • wait to find the “perfect” thing to start on
  • watch one more episode of that funny tv show
  • live vicariously through others and watch someone else do it

Stop it. Live vicariously through yourself.

If you want to do something, just freaking do it already.

How to Know If You Really Want It:

You decide to do something and don’t let anything stop you. Period. You start now, because you don’t know if you’ve got tomorrow.

In other words:

When you want to succeed as much as you want to breathe.

That is when you’ll succeed.

When do you want to start?

When the answer changes from “next week” to “yesterday”: that’s when you know you’re on your way.

It’s not easy to do the impossible (that’s why it’s impossible). When you do something that’s never been done before, it will be hard. But if you conceive it, you can do it. It all comes down to one question:

How bad do you want it?

If you’re interested in getting in incredible shape are willing to put in work, sign up here for more information about Imposible Abs.

Filed Under: Fitness, Hustling, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, Six Pack Abs, The Impossible, Video Posts Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Plummet at the Summit 2012

July 26, 2012 By 16 Comments

Interested in coming along on some Impossible Adventures in the future? Sign up for future impossible adventures here.

WDS Plummet at the Summit

The Plummet Crew Doing The “Runyon-face”

Plummet at the Summit 2011 was an unexpected success. I wanted to go skydiving and was too scared out of my mind to do it, so I committed to doing it and asked if anyone wanted to come with me. I thought I’d have 4 people or so to sign up with me and I ended up taking 41 adventurers along for the ride. It turned out to be fantastic experience and both the annual Plummet at the Summit and Impossible Adventures was born. So when this year’s WDS rolled around, we knew we wanted to come up with another grand adventure. And while skydiving was great, but  year I wanted to do something a little bit different.

Enter Plummet at the Summit 2012: Bungee Jumping edition.

There’s a few different reasons we took people bungee jumping this year, the main reason being that with bungee jumping: there’s a decision point. Skydiving is fun, but for the most part, your instructor jumps and you hope you don’t look too stupid. With bungee jumping, you have to decide to jump. You get to make the decisions. Much like cold shower therapy, everything gets reduced to one simple step. You either step into the shower or you don’t. You either jump when they tell you or don’t. It’s very simple and you get to see what people are really made of when it comes right down to it.

The overall experience went off without a hitch. After having everyone sign away their lives (including a very foreboding “death waiver”), we piled into a few cars and made our way to the Pacific Northwest Bridge in mountains of Southern Washington along with a set of our own photographers and our own film crew (yes, we’ve got footage coming soon).

It was fun time before the World Domination Summit to meet a set of adventurers and get to know each other and bond over a near-death experience and do something that had been on most people’s bucket lists for a while. But as a whole, the #1 thing I was most proud of the entire time was that

27 people showed up at the bridge. All 27 people jumped. 

It doesn’t always happen like that. Sometimes people can’t do it. They seize up and instead of jumping, they climb back to safety – but not this group. People terrified of heights told fear to suck it and jumped anyway. Some were excited, some were terrified and some didn’t know whether to scream swear words at the top of their lungs or pee their pants (or both), but each one jumped and loved it. Here’s how one jumper put it:

“Bungee jumping: If I could take the first 3 seconds of freefall and bottle it, I would chug that sh*t every. single. day.” - Asia

I could go on and one about the adventure, each person’s jump, and everything that happened, but we’ve got a few thousand words in photo format thanks to the Spyr Media team (Thanks guys – it’s just a matter of time until we make you the official Impossible HQ media team). Enjoy.

If you’d like the full set of photos, check them out at Spyr.at

***

Some of the jumpers decided to write up their own experiences on their own blogs. Here’s a few of them:

While you can get a good idea of what the experiences were through the jumpers stories, it’s even better better to live vicariously through yourself and experience these adventures first-hand. We take quite a few people on impossible adventures a few times a year. Experience the next adventure for yourself.
***
While there were quite a few Impossible shirts being rocked at the Plummet and WDS in general (way to represent!), the award for best Impossible Shirt photo of the weekend goes to Josh Furnas of Selfless Tees for his impersonation of the Incredible Hulk before hurling himself off a bridge and doing a 200ft gainer. Well done sir. Well done.

Impossible Adventures
Impossible Adventures

Jumping off a bridge or doing something else impossible anytime soon? Grab your impossible gear, take a photo and we’ll put you in impossible league gallery. Boom
Filed Under: Adventures, Impossible Things, The Impossible, The List Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Six Pack Abs ≠ Impossible

July 23, 2012 By 59 Comments

For the last 3 months I’ve been quiet on the personal challenge front. It’s not because I haven’t been doing anything – in fact I’ve been rather busy – but I’ve been working on something that’s taken a ton of focus. Fortunately, it’s finally time for me to share.

When I first started the list, one of the first things on it was

Get a six pack and do a photo shoot to celebrate

The Six Pack

It’s always been a little weird to have on the list as it’s unapologetically vain but, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. When I started a few years ago, I used to be cautious about going after it. I tried it a few times, and never really committed myself to it and was never successful. In my years as an athlete, I had gotten close and even gotten in really good shape, but was never actually able to get that elusive six pack. It was one of those things that I didn’t know if I could actually do or not – I figured genetics just didn’t have it in the cards for me.

That all changed after a St. Patrick’s day conversation with Vic at SxSw, I decided to go for it again – a good 2 years after first putting it on my list. To make sure I was committed, I kickstarted it with my own edition of cold shower therapy, got a killer fitness coach and focused on this goal solely for the next 8 weeks. Considering I was traveling at the time in the Dominican Republic, the workout program that we developed had 3 rules:

  • No equipment/gym/weights required. As I said, I was traveling and wanted to be able to do this anywhere in the world.
  • Workouts should last less than 30 minutes/workout
  • No excuses. Just results.

I turned my intensity and focus onto my diet and over the next 8 weeks, I lost 34 pounds, dropped to 5.4% body fat and finally got the ever elusive six pack abs I always thought was impossible. I did this in 8 weeks, never visiting a gym and using nothing but a jump rope and body weight exercises you can do anywhere in the world.

These are the results.

Impossible Abs Before/After

(The lighting differential is from the two different mirrors I took the photos in).

I’ll share more about exactly how I did this next week (sign up for updates here), but after 8 weeks of dedicated focus, I finally crossed it off my list.

Six Pack Abs: Impossible

But I wasn’t done…

The Photo Shoot

The second part of the goal was to do a photo shoot to celebrate. As it turned out this was the hard part.

In order to reflect the fitness regimen that we developed, I wanted to find an old warehouse or abandoned warehouse for the photo shoot. The idea being that even if you had no equipment and were stuck in this building with nothing but your jump rope, you could still do all the workouts you need in order to get into incredible shape.

After searching for a bit, we found a location just outside Chicago. It was old, abandoned, had incredible graffitti and had the warehouse feel I was looking for.

Somehow I convinced Jeff and Marla to do a photoshoot at said location – sight unseen. They agreed immediately (I think they trust me a little *too* much).

They didn’t realize The fun thing about the shoot was that we shot it at the top of the building – 150 feet in the air or so. It wouldn’t be too big of a deal if we had the useful things like stairs or a lift elevator, but the location had been abandoned for 30 years or so and scrappers have long since taken the stairs to sell for cash. This left one route to get to the top – a rickety old ladder that  creaked half way through, reminding you of your untimely meeting with death if you freak out, slip or just get tired.

There’s no good way to actually describe how tall this ladder was silos actually were, how brittle this ladder seems and how intense the entire experience actually getting to the shoot location was, but it was totally worth it. The photos speak for themselves.

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The Experience

This entire experience was the most intense and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life – due to the 8 weeks of focus and intensity involved in the diet and workouts - not to mention the last few days of incredible self-control, combined with water manipulation, scouting and actual preparation for the photo shoot.

I used to think that certain physical aspects of fitness was all genetics, and that average people like me could never get abs. Over 8 weeks, I realized that not only is that not true, but there’s an exact formula for doing it. It’s not quick and easy, but it is simple and possible if you know how to do it and are willing to put in the work. There’s a blueprint and it works.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be talking ab little more about the fitness regimen I used  to get the results I did and lay out a specific blueprint for how I got my results. If you’d like to be notified when they’re up, subscribe to the blog or sign up for more information here.

Impossible Abs Is Now Available Here.

In the mean time, it’s time to knock another thing off the list:

Get a six pack and do a photo shoot to celebrate.

Impossible

#boom

Filed Under: Adventures, Fitness, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, The List Tagged With: , , ,

How To Do Anything You Want

July 12, 2012 By 8 Comments

Anything

How To Do Anything

I write a lot about physical related challenges. I realize not everyone is interested in them – and that’s okay (you’re certainly not required to read anything I write). But, the interesting thing about doing new and challenging things is that the the process of acquiring those skills and challenging yourself is the same whether you’re trying to run a triathlon, get six pack abs, or learning to knit. While, I’m not going to write about knitting here, the fact is that doing anything is pretty simple and remarkably similar throughout a variety of skills, no matter what it is that you’re tyring to knock off your impossible list.

Do impossible things is a science – a straightforward process you can replicate over and over and over again. So, if you find yourself wanting to do something, anything and not knowing where to start – here you go.

How To Do Anything You Want

1. Know what you want.

Know what you want. This is simpler than you might think, but a lot of people get stuck here. Know what you want. Be precise and specific. Don’t say “I want to get in shape.” Say “I want to run 5 miles in 45 minutes”, “I want to finish a triathlon in 90 minutes”, or “I want six pack abs in 8 weeks”. Know exactly what you want, find out the tradeoffs you’ll have to make to get there, and decide that it’s worth it.

Then commit, and go do it.

Know what you want.

2. Start Small

I started this journey two years ago with a indoor triathlon. That changed everything for me. Over time, I built up to sprint, olympic and half-distance triathlons. Now, the only thing left to do is a full triathlon – an Ironman. 2 years ago, that would have been absolutely impossible for me to imagine. Now, it’s just a few months away.

Have big, scary, impossible goals, but start small. If you start small, at least you’ll start. Then you can make small changes over time and realize huge gains. But, if you try to start big, you might end up so scared and intimidated by your goals, that you never start, never change and never do anything.

Start small.

3. Be Consistent.

Consistency is what separates people who make lasting changes and people who don’t. If you know what you want, make small changes and do it every once in a while, you might succeed…every once in a while. But, if you’re consistent, and consistently know what you want, make small changes, push your limits, you’ll find your abilities tend to grow and expand and soon you’ll be able to do things you never thought you’d be able to do.

Be consistent – consistently.

If you want to do anything, it’s pretty simple. Know what you want and make sure it’s worth the tradeoff. Start small and make small changes along the way – each pushing your limits of what you’re capable of. Be consistent and do it consistently. Then, all you have to add is time.

***

Checking in from Chicago, Jeff and Marla Sarris from Spyr Media snapped this photo before doing the late ride in Chicago – an all night ride through the city. Want to get in the impossible gallery? Grab an impossible shirt or tank from the gear site, go do something impossible and take a photo. BOOM.

Impossible Shirt Late Ride

photo credit: Sanctuary photography → No Longer Active

Filed Under: Adventures, Impossible Things, Personal Development, The Impossible

The Intensity Tradeoff

July 5, 2012 By 11 Comments

Impossible Intense

There’s two ways to do almost anything impossible.

Quick and hard.

Slow and easy(er).

But no matter which way you choose, almost all results come down to this formula.

Intensity Allotted x Time Allocated = Results Realized

In everything I’ve done, I’ve found this formula to be bulletproof. You can lower the intensity of your work, but it’s going to take more time. Conversely, you can raise your intensity and often accomplish things much quicker than you previously thought. The tradeoff becomes between what you’re willing to dedicate more of to something – your time or your focus.

My buddy Patrick told me once, there’s no reason to take 2 years to do what can be done in 8 weeks. I tend to agree. The faster arrival time, is often worth the increased intensity required in my experience, but your results may vary. Both approaches work, but it’s often a matter of what you want to do and how you want to do it.

Quick, requires more energy, focus, and determination. There’s less compromises available and it’s often more intense – but it works and you can often get to where you want to go faster.

Easy, takes more time, and requires less focus, but it may take you a while to arrive at your destination – if you arrive there at all.

Both approaches work – the problem arises when you want things both quick AND easy. There’s no really a shortcut – the shortcut is to work hard, work smart, and work fast. The short cut is to turn up the intensity.

That’s the intensity tradeoff.

What will you choose? 

—

There’s still time to RSVP to our Impossible Meetup in PDX this Monday. See you there!

—

Susan Lacke, my cohort in Impossible TRI, rocking her women’s tank top while posing with her runyon-esque face and looking quite intense. While I’m not sure how I feel about her tribute to me, but she did bike 500 miles, run 20+ and wrestle a grizzly bear with her bare hands just after wearing this. After that, she can make whatever face she wants. Don’t have your gear yet? Grab an impossible shirts and/or tanks, take a photo doing something a little more impossible than posing like me, send it in and we’ll put you in the gallery.

susan lacke impossible

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, Fitness, Impossible Things, Kicking A**

Your Physical Limits Reveal Your Mental Limits

July 2, 2012 By 8 Comments

caution limits

You might have noticed that around Impossible HQ we talk about physical limits a lot.

And for someone reason I’ve learned that whenever you start to do something – people want you to do something else and lately I’ve been getting a lot of people who want me to write about mental limits because “they don’t want to push themselves physically.”

Apparently, I’ve got some bad news: I’m not going to. I know how this goes.

Everytime someone says they’re not interested in pushing their physical limits and only want to push themselves mentally I call B.S even though they usually have some good excuses at the ready as well;

  • “I’ve already pushed my limits.”
  • “I already know what I’m capable of”
  • “I don’t care that much”
  • “I don’t feel like it”
  • “It sounds hard”

B.S.

They’re scared.

I’m not going to just write about mental limits – just like I’m not going to write about flowers, rainbows and how the earth smells after it rains.  All great things – sure – but I’m not going to talk about them here – and if I do, I’ll start with physical limits.

This site is about challenging you. About getting you to do something – phsyically do something – with your body – physically. To challenge you to move from inaction to action – physical action – and do something impossible – physically.

Before you think I’m a crazed physical limit maniac overloaded on testosterone who likes to eat raw meat and throw around heavy things and is a little crazy, you’d be mostly right – but there’s a reason for it.

There are mental limits people hit.

There…I said it.

There are legitimate non-physical goals you can have.

You can do things that push your limits mentally.

But that’s not what most people want. Most people want an excuse to stay the same and breaking “mental” barriers let you do that.

Here’s the real reason why physical challenges are so important in all this:

Your physical limits reveal your mental limits.

Your Physical Limits Reveal Your Mental Limits

Your mind sucks. It is unbelievably easy to BS yourself in your mind. You can come up with the worst excuses in the world and convince yourself it’s a valid reason when the only feedback you get is within your mind. When you keep things mental – everything stays mental. When things are mental, they’re imaginary and when things are imaginary – they’re indestructible.

Physical limits are different – they’re tangible – undeniably so – which means they’re also fragile, bendable and breakable.

And that’s exactly what physical limits are – breakable.

There’s something about being able to say “I literally used to not be able to do this. Now I can.” Physical limits allow you to do just that.

I used to not be able to do _____. Now I can.

When you first start out doing the impossible, you can’t do anything. You suck a lot and everything you do might fail. But keep it up and over time you start to suck less and less and you actually are able to do things. You find yourself using the phrase “I used to not be able to do _____, now I can.”

  • I used to not be able to run a mile. Now I can run 5 without thinking about it.
  • I used to not be able to do a pushup. Now I can do 100 straight.
  • I used to cry as soon as I would start a cold shower. Now I have dance parties in it (this may or may not be a factual statement).

When you physically DO something you previously were not able to DO, something changes.

When you break something physically, you know that it can be broken physically and it doesn’t matter what your mind tell you, because you know from first hand experience.

Ever tried to break a nalgene bottle? If you haven’t tried it yourself, you’ve probably had a friend who tried to do it once, threw it on the ground only to have it bounce back up and hit him in the nose without even a scratch on it (as an alternate, you can try this with an old-school candy-bar-style Nokia phone for the same effect). It’ll seem indestructible – impossible to break – and if you try, you’ll end up with a jacked up nose – or at least that’s what happened to your friend. So that’s the lesson that comes with impossible things – don’t try them or you might end up with a jacked up nose. 

But if you have to admit it, you didn’t really try that hard. If I were to give you $1,000 to break the bottle, you’d go and rent a mack truck to backup over that sucker and wee how indestructible it is then. If it seems like it’s impossible in your mind, it is. As soon as you make is possible – and do it – it somehow become possible. But, if you never take action – everything will automatically seem impossible because that’s the default state of your mind.


Once you’ve, broken your Nalgene, run a marathon or done something else, you might still try to BS yourself, tell yourself you can’t do things, and say that it’s not possible, but you’re lying to yourself.

If you run a marathon, you can never say “that’s too hard for me to do” because you’ve done it before.

You’ve been there

You know what it’s like.

You know how hard it is.

And you know you’re stronger than it.

You know you can do it.

You know that it’s possible.

Physical challenges show you your physical limits. When you break through them, you experience a real-life case study on the fact that your limits are just temporary. They are not permanent. They show you that everything holding you back is in your head.

It’s so easy to BS yourself in your mind because there’s no tangible realization of doing something that you never did before. You can think, think, think, all you want, but you don’t know until you do it.

With physical limits, progress is almost offensively obvious. When you challenge your physical limits, you start to use this phrase:

I used to not be able to do this….now I can.

  • I used to not be able to run this far – now I just did.
  • I used to not be able to lift this weight – now I can.
  • I used to cry at the 1 minute cold shower mark. Now I go 5 minutes without flinching.

I used to not be able to do _______. Now I can do 5x that.

Try it.

If you do, things change. You change. Try it. Here’s what mine looks like.

I literally used to not be able to run more than 2 miles. My knee would hurt, I’d quit and go home and tell myself “I just wasn’t a runner.”  But, I switched to minimalist shoes, started actually training, ran a bunch of races and finally ran my first marathon. I know I can go out and run 10-20 miles on demand. It might suck, but I can do it if I need to. I used to not be able to run 2 miles. Now I can run a marathon. I know that.

I literally used to never think I could be strong, build muscles or get ripped. But, I dialed in my diet, focused on my workout routines and lost 34 pounds in 8 weeks and got to 5.5% body fat. I know I can lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks if I need to. It might be tough, but I can do it and I know how to now. It might be hard, but I can do it. I used to not be able to get cut, get ripped, but now I can. I know that.

I used to not be able to hear a challenge without thinking about how incapable I was, telling myself how I was different and that everybody else could do them, but not me. Now I see challenges and wonder what’s keeping me from doing them and I’m messed up in the head enough to actually go out and try them.

—

Talking >>> Doing

The entire mentality shifted when I moved from talking to doing. Moving things from simply being mental to being phsyical and actually doing the phsyical challenges I told myself I couldn’t do.

Physical challenges show you your limits are physical things - nothing more. They’re physical things that you’re capable of backing up over with a mack truck and smashing into 1,000 pieces and going farther beyond them than you ever thought you could.

If you keep telling yourself that you “know” you could, you’re lying to yourself. You might be confident, but you can’t actually know until you actually do it. If you’re so confident and “know” you can do something – why not actually go out and do it?

If you really have no desire to do something, then I can’t say anything – I can’t make you do anything and if you want to spend your life arguing your reasons why you’re not doing things – at least skip the talking and start “not doing” all the things.

But, I will bet that behind your tough facade of “you not caring” or “not feeling like it” is a little bit of fear that you’ll fail – that you don’t think you can actually do it.

And when you think like that – you’ve already lost the mental argument that you want so badly to hang on to.

You’re fighting to keep your limits intangible – to keep them unquestionable and mysterious rather than physical and concrete. When they’re like that – then nobody can question you – you can say whatever you want, all your excuses seem valid and no matter how many  people challenge you – you’re always able to rationalize it (because nobody else understands). So, since your reasoning isn’t concrete,  you stay a self-matyr – proud in a twisted way that nobody can understand you, that your situation is completely and utterly unique and that you’re “stuck” – no matter what – and that nobody really “gets it.”

But if you try – just once – try to push your limits – even on the smallest scale – things will change.

You’ll whine, complain, sweat, cry and maybe even bleed a little trying. It will hurt, it will suck and it will be freaking hard.

I’ll say that again.

IT WILL BE FREAKING HARD.

But if you keep going, eventually you’ll succeed and when you do – you’ll change. Because once you do something you used to think was impossible – it no longer is.

You just did the impossible. Literally.

Something used to be impossible for you. Now it’s not.

You broke something you thought was unbreakable and suddenly this web of stories you’ve told yourself about your capabilities starts to unravel, thread by thread.

If this one little story you believed about who you are isn’t true, what else isn’t true?

And then your approach completely changes. Maybe not immediately, but over time – it does.

Instead of backing down from challenges – you look forward to them. Instead of shying away from stuff that might be tough, might hurt, or might be impossible – they get into you head and intrigue you.

You want to do them, because you want to see if you can do it – you want to see what you’re made of. You want to see how far you can really push your limits – both physical and mental.

You take them on – even when everyone else thinks you’re nuts – you look forward to them.

The big thrill most athletes I know get, isn’t from the physical aspect of it – in fact, most people will tell you that aspect sucks – it’s from the mental aspect. The key point in most games, matches or competitions is NOT physical. It’s mental.

It’s from out thinking your opponent – and even more commonly – outthinking yourself. Your mind is screaming, screaming, screaming for you to stop, give up and go home. Quit! Take it easy! Be normal! But you decide to keep going, and shift from autopilot and manually override your brain, find a door, keep going and go farther than you’ve ever gone before.

But when you’re just trying to process things in your mind – it doesn’t work quite so well. When you try to smash your mental limits just by thinking – you might do it – there’s no telling. You might smash one. Maybe, but you’ll probably just B.S. yourself into oblivion and never really change things.

When you smash your physical limits, you smash your mental ones along with it. You get both.

You have to become stronger than you are now. Getting stronger physically, get stronger mentally.

But…but…but…but…but…but…

  • I’m different!
  • You don’t understand!
  • I just can’t!
  • You’re not listening!

Stop it.

I hear your words, but I don’t believe them.

You’re not special. Contrary to what your mother told you – you face the exact same dilemma that each and every one of the other 7 billion humans on this earth face.

Every one has something they think they can’t do and every single one gets to choose whether or not they do it anyways.

Which one will you be?

Never stop pushing your limits.

—-

When you’re done reading – actually do something. The Impossible League 30 day challenge started two days ago, but it’s not too late to start (protip: it’s never to late to start). Get in the league and get after it. Go push yourself physically and see what happens.

—-

I’m tying up a bunch of loose ends today related to WDS. A few weeks ago, we gave away 2 copies of Chris Guillebeau’s $100 startup. Congrats to Lore and Jorge O – look for your copy of the $100 startup in the mail soon!
—-

In case you didn’t know, I’m taking 25 people bungee jumping this Friday on one of the first Impossible Adventures. If you’re signed up, make sure to sign your death waivers!
—

If you’re not going to be getting in early to jump off a perfectly good bridge but still want to meetup, we’re having one of our first meetups next monday in Portland. If you’ll be in the area, RSVP here. See you there. Boom!

—

Oh, and if you see me around at WDS, come say hi. I’ve got something for you if you do :) .

photo credit: skyloader via photo pin cc

Filed Under: Blogging, Fitness, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, Personal Development

40 Degrees and Rainy With 100% Chance Of Windsprints

June 1, 2012 By 14 Comments

rainy

Yesterday

It’s been raining all morning. Grey, dreary rain.

I’m freezing too. I look around the chilled house and realize it’s dropped a few degrees outside so I look up the temperature online – 49 degrees. It’s May.

I glance at my workout schedule – windsprints. I almost laugh. The thought is ridiculous.

40 Degrees. Rainy. 0% of Windsprints today

I tell myself. No way. No how.

Hell no.

I look back down at my computer and get back to work. I fire off a few emails, talk to a client and tidy up some loose ends. I look back at my workout schedule.

Windsprints.

Staring right at me.

Nope. Not going to do it. 

I try to focus back on my work, but my mind is already started arguing with itself.

I don’t want to go.

I don’t want to do it.

Not today.

You can’t make me.

I fire an email off at Vic telling him about the rain, and the temperature – too cold to run, I say – hoping that will be an excuse enough for him to go easy on me.

I wait 3 minutes and send him another one without waiting for a response – already knowing what it would be.

“I hate you”, I type as I stand up and head to my room to look for clothes.

I layer up like I’m about to visit the tundra.

  • Under Armor, check..
  • Sweatshirt, check.
  • Shorts, check.

I peek outside – still way too cold for sprints.

I walk back in, glance at my computer and think for a second how much easier it’d be to just sit down and stay in – it’s way too cold after all (and it’s raining!). But results don’t care about your excuses.

I glance back and rummage through my closet.

  • Sweatpants, Check
  • Winter Hat, Check

It’s May. IT’S MAY! I tell myself. This shouldn’t be happening.

Last week I was in the Dominican Republic! What happened, where am I and what did people do with spring in Chicago when I was gone?

I mutter something under my breath and then walk outside. As the cold hits me, I say outloud to no one in particular.

REALLY? TODAY? REALLY?

I’ve got 2 days left in this workout regimen. Today’s the last tough day. Tomorrow’s slow and easy. And today – of all days – spring in Chicago decided it wanted to pretend it was February.

@#&^!

It doesn’t matter anymore. I let out a small grunt and I’m already outside. Cold, wet, outside. Great.

Sprint day. 

I hate sprint day. Run until you can’t breathe anymore – who decided this was fun?

Vic, I hate Vic – I tell myself.  This is all his fault. ALL HIS FAULT.

But Vic didn’t make me sprint outside. I did. I’m not sure why, but that realization makes it easier. I accept it, settle down and walk to my starting point.

Here we go.

50 yards. Down and back. I run in the middle of my street – quiet enough to not have to watch out for cars – but busy enough that I still get odd looks when they pass by. At this point I could care less. I’m used to it.

50 down and back. Then rest as I walk back 50 yards to do it again.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

Over and over and over.

The sets blur together and I lose count of how many I’ve done. I know that I’ll be out here for 20 minutes at the least – there’s no use in keeping track of the number of sprints I do. I don’t care about time either – I care about running till I’m out of breath.

Down and back. Down and back. Down and back.

21 minutes later, I look down at my watch. I’m done…

…almost…

Hill sprints are optional – but I do them anyways. I don’t know why – maybe I like pain. When you’re already this deep, you might as well keep going. In a workout, when you get the choice between hard and easy – the hard way always makes you stronger. Mentally, if nothing else.

I walk around the corner and look up at the hill.

*sigh*

REALLY? REALLY?

It’s not incredibly steep, but it’s long. 200? 250, maybe 300 yards? I’m not sure, but it’s far enough to wear me out sprinting on a flat surface, much less an incline. This hill won’t be fun.

The thought of turning around and walking back home crosses my mind, but I barely finish the thought before I’m off.

My legs are tired. The wind, the rain and the hill all conspire to pull me down, but I keep sprinting – noticeably slower than before – but sprinting none the less.

Breathing heavy, I get about halfway and start to slow. I dig back in and kick as much as I can until I reach the top and realize I want to puke.

“One.”

I walk back down to the bottom of the hill.

Why am I doing this?

Again.

I take off, a little bit slower, but I make it to the top.

“Two.”

One last time. This one is tougher, but I keep pushing until the hill levels off.

“Three.”

Done, I breathe finally and half walk/half-jog down the hill – as the rain cools me down – the same rain that threatened to keep me shut in.

I walk back inside – 36 minutes later. My sweatshirt is sopping wet. My sweatpants are too.  I don’t know how they got this wet, as I take them off and throw them near the laundry and change. Somehow though – I’m done. Thank God.

As I settle down at the computer – I notice something’s different than earlier. I look at the rain – it’s still coming. I check the weather – it’s still cold. Everything’s still the same…but me. I’m stronger.

40 Degrees.

Rainy.

100% Chance of Windsprints.

Damn straight. #rah

—
photo credit: pennacook

Filed Under: Adventures, Impossible Things, Kicking A**, Life, Personal Development, Writing

I’m Jumping Off A Bridge at WDS…Who’s Coming With Me?

May 22, 2012 By 33 Comments

bungee

I’m jumping off a bridge in Portland this July before a certain unrelated conference on world domination. Want to come with me? I’m taking 30 people max. Sign up below.

—

What? You want details before jumping off a bridge to your very likely, but not-so–very-likely-death?

Fine. Here you go.

The 2nd annual completed unrelated and entirely unofficial WDS 2012 Plummet at the Summit adventure.

July 6th, 2012 – 10am. Outside Portland, Oregon.

You + up to 29 other people

Why 29 other people? Because adventures are approximately 100x more fun with other people. Sure you can go bungee jumping by yourself, but you can’t always go bungee jumping with 29 other awesome people who you’ve just met.

Here’s the deal. Cost is $160 for 2 jumps. Sign up here.

Register with - Pay with WePay

–

Why am I doing this?

Here’s the backstory. Last year I told people I was going skydiving, and ended up taking 40 people jumping with me. It was a ton of fun, a little bit crazy and 40 people did something they had been wanting to do their entire life. I figured it was such a good time for everyone involved – why not do it again?

This year, we’re taking a slightly smaller group of 30 people to jump off of a bridge, have the experience of a lifetime and cross something off your impossible list.

What’s included in the ticket price.

What’s included:

  • 2 Bungee Jumps and possible death
  • 1 special edition Impossible Adventures Shirt
  • Experience of a lifetime (included free of charge)

What’s not included:

  • Transportation
  • Lunch
  • Photos (Bring $20 cash if you want 25-50 high quality videos of you jumping)

We will all meet together before caravanning to the jump zone, and we’ll do our best to get everyone carpooled up, but we’re not guaranteeing you a ride (Hint: if you got a car, bring it – you’ll need it!). If you’re going to a certain completely unrelated Portland conference later that evening, don’t worry you’ll be back in plenty of time for the opening ceremonies.

What shirt do I get?

The shirt is a special edition of the impossible shirt. It’s a special edition fo the the trademarked impossible shirt on the front and the ridiculously awesome Plummet at the Summit on the back thanks to Emily Belyea. Thanks Em! Unlike the other impossible shirts – you can’t buy this shirt – you have to jump to experience it.

Plummet at the Summit 2012

Why Bungee?

Skydiving is fun, but you’re strapped to a tandem instructor for the experience and they’re the ones that jump, pull the chute and steer your down to the ground. You choose to go up in the plane, but you don’t choose to jump out of it. Bungee is different.

Bungee is all about choice. You don’t have an instructor jumping out of the plane for you with you attached for the ride. You’re the one standing on the ledge, looking down (even though they tell you not to), and you’re the one that gets to choose to either leap off or crawl back over the railing. You have to decide to jump for yourself.

Some people do it. Some people don’t. But you get to choose.

I’m jumping off a bridge in Portland at WDS. Who’s coming with me?

Register with - Pay with WePay

BOOM.

- Joel

–

Also, this officially marks the start of Impossible Adventures. If you can’t make it to Portland this summer, click here and sign up for future adventures we’ll be doing :) .

Filed Under: Adventures, Impossible Things, Life
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