An interview with Al Kavadlo

www.alkavadlo.com

Al Kavadlo is an animal.  Just like me he grew up a tall skinny kid who got into fitness at a fairly early age. A lot like most trainers these days, Al started his fitness career by training out of local facilities and doing private in home sessions.  It wasn’t until long that Al came into his own style and took it to the streets/parks of New York City.  I have had the pleasure of connecting with Al these past couple of weeks and I can already tell I like his style.  He’s brutally honest, and his training style is inspiring.  Here is what has conspired between the two of us these past couple of weeks.

Me: Is the majority of your training done outdoors?

Al: Yes.

Me: How long have you been training this way?

Al: I’ve gradually been getting away from working out at gyms over the last several years.  Up until recently, I had always worked at gyms, so I didn’t want to spend all my free time there as well.  That’s how I got started with working out in parks and other recreational areas.

Me: Nice, how long do your workouts last?

Al: Some days I only have 15-20 minutes to devote to my own workout, other times I might train for over an hour.  I’d say on average I spend about 45 minutes a day working out.  If you hit it hard, you don’t need a lot of time.

Me: I agree, sometimes those 15 minute shock and awe sessions are the best. That human flag position is sick.  How long did it take you to get good at it?

Al: Well it’s tricky to say because I had a very good foundation before I ever tried to do a human flag.  Once I got the idea to try it, it only took a few months to start to get the hang of it, but like I said, I was already pretty fit.  It’s still a work in progress for me though–there are guys who can do it for a lot longer and with way better control than I can.

Me: Still it’s pretty bad ass. If you only had time to do one exercise, what would it be?

Al: It’s hard to say because there is no one exercise that really gets everything.  But If I had to pick one it’d probably be Turkish Get-ups or Muscle-ups.

Me: Do you do anything that might cause somebody to classify you as a geek? ie comic books, video games, tech, movie trivia etc.

Al: I’ve been a huge Weezer fan since the early 90’s.  And I guess running my own website is a bit geeky.

Me: Do you have any fitness industry pet peeves?

Al: My biggest pet peeve, and this is not just in fitness, is lying.  So whenever I feel like someone is peddling a quick fix or trying to hype a bogus product, it really bugs me.  I also get annoyed by trainers who act like their methods are the only way to get results.  There are many roads to the same destination.

Me: Agreed, people need to start being honest more with themselves and others.  Also we all need to understand that we’re all on the same team.  Drop the egos. What do you see happening in your future regarding fitness?

Al: I will continue to challenge my limits with body weight training and keep exercise as a daily part of my lifestyle.

Me: Who wins in a death match Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal.

Al: Gotta go with Chuck on this one.

Me: Correct answer! Do you have any great physical achievements that you’ve accomplished and would like to share?

Al: Running the NYC marathon last November was probably my greatest physical accomplishment.  You don’t realize just how long 26.2 miles is until you actually run it.

Me: Damn, I can’t even drive that far without my legs cramping.

Al: As far as feats of strength, the one arm chin-up is the one I’m most proud of because it took me years of practice to get it as good as I have (even though there are still lots of guys who do it way better than I do).

Me: Do you have any role models or someone who’s inspired you?

Al: I’ve had tons of role models–everyone from Arnold Swartzenegger to my own mom!  There are also a few people I’ve met who have been “reverse role models”–I watch them to see what NOT to do!

Me: The rest of the world often sees us Americans as fat and over consuming.  What do you think people in this country need to start doing/thinking to change that image?

Al: People need to start giving a shit, Jamie!  Apathy is the number one problem in America–obesity is just an offshoot of that.

Me: What can people do to find out more about you and how to train with you?

Al: By going to my website, www.AlKavadlo.com.  Unfortunately, I am not taking on new personal training clients right now.  However, there’s tons of free videos and articles on the site, so people can still get the Al Kavadlo experience.

I’ve always been into meditation. I guess it’s something I picked up from martial arts at an early age. But just recently I’ve been using it as a post workout tool for recovery. I have to say, it seems to do the job quite well.

Not to mention there are some legit studies showing it’s effectiveness post exercise. Check this study out from the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Here is my current routine.

1. I find a quite place to sit down and relax. I try to keep it distraction free, but by no means do you need to be in complete darkness and silence. Hell, sometimes I don’t even close my eyes. There’s no set rules in meditation. That’s why I like it.

2. Start by watching your breath. Just notice the sensation of the air entering your lungs. Try to keep the breaths deep into your abdomen. Almost like you’re breathing into your gut.

3. Focus on relaxing every muscle in your body. Start from the top of your head on down to your toes.

4. Once relaxed you’ll probably notice your mind will tend to wonder off occasionally. That’s alright, it always happens. Just bring yourself back to watching your breath.

It doesn’t take much to get results. Start with 2 or 3 minutes. Sometimes recovery is neglected, but it really is one of the most important aspects of a workout. In recovery is where you build lean muscle, burn fat, and clear harmful stress hormones from the body.

Give it a shot. Let me know if you’ve tried this or have found a better way.

By Vince DelMonte

www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

If you could sculpt one body part to perfection for next summer, what would it be? Let me guess – six pack abs! I don’t know anybody who does not want to shrink there waistline, lose body fat, eliminate low back pain and develop a jaw dropping set of rock-hard six-pack. Too bad that your brain has been poisoned with contaminated information.

Before you can start learning how to get six-pack abs and discover the truth about what it really takes to build a beach-worthy abdominal section, you must first expose the lies, myths and rumors. Before we talk about how to get six-pack abs, the right way, we must re-program your hard drive and empty the trash can of garbage you have been fed.

Because of all this hyped up and misguided information – even among so-called ‘fitness experts’ – you should skeptical of discerning about all abdominal training equipment and programs. Let’s first eliminate the top four ways not to get a six-pack:

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require expensive workout equipment promoted through obnoxious infomercials. You can’t flick on the TV anymore without seeing two new abdominal exercise machines being promoted at once. There are so many of them, that if you get suckered into these ‘ab workout’ gimmicks, you will be broke quicker than Ben Johnson sprints the 100 m dash! And get this: Of the $520 million dollars a year spent on exercise equipment, abdominal machines get a $208 million dollar piece of the pie!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require thousands or even hundreds of crunches a day. So much for the Brittany Spears ab workout! Crunches are decent but totally overused and associated with more being better. Crunches is a very general exercise and general exercises get general results. Excessive floor crunches shorten the abdominal wall, pull your head forward and emphasize poor posture. They also involve a very low level of stimulation which neglects adequate muscle fiber recruitment.

Learning how to get a six-pack does not involve starvation diets. Starvation diets starve the muscle when instead, you should be feeding the muscle. Guess what happens when you starve your body? Your metabolism shuts down out of survival and causes your body to store fat. Your body must get energy from somewhere so guess what gets sacrificed? That’s right, your precious muscle which is in fact responsible for a maintaining a high metabolism. Starve your muscle – great logic!

Learning how to get a six-pack does not require fat burning pills. What did the last weight loss pill you bought do for you? The same thing the next one is going to do – nothing! Except give you a thinner wallet but not a thinner waist line. The entire concept of taking pills to ‘burn fat’ is built on a sandy foundation and misleading because diet pills only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. Without focusing on the root problems of a flabby mid-section, like nutrition, lifestyle and proper training, you will just end up where you started – farther away from having a six-pack for summer instead of closer.

If you just landed on earth from Mars today, and were able to avoid these four completely wrong ways to build a six-pack, than you will have an advantage over the rest of the world and be one enormous step closer to taking your shirt off with pride!

About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets To Insane Muscle Gain found at http://www.VinceDelMonteFitness.com

He specializes in teaching skinny guys how to build muscle and gain weight quickly without drugs, supplements and training less than before.

I write the occasional article about how people with desk jobs should train and avoid certain exercises.  Since then, I’ve received several questions from people with non sedentary jobs.  People on their feet all day long like my sister, the teacher.  So is there a difference between what I recommend for a stander and a sitter.  Nope.  And I’ll explain why.

The human race has been evolving for roughly the past 2 million years.  During this period our bodies, by natures design, have been built to remain in the standing position for several hours at any one time.

The first chair was invented just a couple thousand years ago.  Between then and now it has been just a blink of the eye in terms of human evolution.

Do you imagine that early man would take its rest breaks by sitting on perfectly elevated rocks?  I don’t.

We have taken this perfect, standing machine and since childhood, taught it that sitting is the standard and the norm.  Eating, schooling, doing homework, and driving.  All of these things done from the seated position during a huge developmental growth period.

It’s no wonder why we see so many orthopedic problems within our domesticated society.

What you have is a build vs. conditioning problem.  You have all the proper pieces to be a standing, pain free machine but you’ve conditioned it otherwise.  You’ve taken the parts from a mountain bike and have turned them into a 10 speed road bike.  Sure you can learn to race a 10 speed off road, and probably get pretty damn good at it too if it’s all you knew your entire life.  But is that ideal?  You’ll definitely have to replace a lot of tires along the way.

I’m not saying it’s a no win battle.  But it is a constant battle that you should always be considering when evaluating your own well being.  We’ve conditioned ourselves to be a lot more fragile than our ancestors.  In our daily lives we can never fully assume that we are in perfect heath just because we are ably performing regular daily activities.  Take a subjective look at your activities and workouts and ask yourself if there could be a better way of doing things.

And here is a quick video about the evolution of tech I thought was fun.  Enjoy.

Your hands; they’re the most sensory rich part of your body.  The amount of nervous system feedback from your hands to your brain dwarves any other part of your body.  Your shoulders, hips, knees, feet and back don’t even come close.

When you go through the paces of everyday life, your brain relies on signals from your hands, especially when something physical is about to take place.

This is why it’s important to have a strong grip.  A tight grip will reinforce a tight posture through that nervous system feedback.  The brain knows, if the grip is taking an activity seriously, the rest of the body should follow suit.

Test this next time you workout.  Grip those weights just a little bit harder than necessary and you’ll feel much more stable in your lifts.  You can even train your grip when opening and closing doors, carrying a brief case, shaking hands or even just putting dishes away (don’t break them of course).

A good but not exhaustive list of exercises that help with grip strength.

• Dead Lifts
• Pull UPs
• Body Weight Rows
• Kettlebell Swings
• Farmers Walks
• Dumbbell Rows

You should be using a variety of these in your workouts in order to strengthen your grip while your arms are in different positions.

Super geek and futurist Ray Kurzweil is known for his brilliant insight into the future of technology and computers.  

Upon reading an article about him on life extension I learned that he uses this ROM machine for quick, intense 4 minute workouts.  Much like the fast paced cardio workouts I prescribe to boost fat loss. It appears that Kurzweil is really on to something.  Come on, there’s no arguing that the guy is brilliant.  

I really believe that this is the future of fitness.  Long gone are the days where you spend hours a week at the gym receiving little to no results.  It’s all about quality intense workouts in a short period of time.  Although, I really don’t think you need a $14,000 machine to do this.

By the way The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology is a great book.  I highly reccomend it.  

The following is an email I received from Eric a reader and his friend Sadie (the red menace).

I’m not a runner.  I hate running. But yet I run every single morning.  Why?  Because each morning I get a cold wet nose in the eye and then there’s an Australian Cattle Dog at the side of my bed making a sound that I can only compare to an air-raid siren.

6 months ago I rescued the cutest dog in the world from a county pound.  I was only marginally aware of the intense exercise needs of the Australian Cattle Dog.  She needs one (preferably two) hard runs a day.

And each morning – and I literally mean every morning – when I wake up I have the same thought:  I can’t believe I have to go out and run now.  And as soon as I’ve taken my second or third stride outside, I have the same thought:  This is so great.  I’m so lucky I have such a beautiful, sweet dog that gets me out every morning to run (at a pretty decent pace).  When I get home, I feel like a million bucks.

I’ve lost 40 pounds.  My sport (judo) has improved.

And I owe it all to my very personal trainer.

Tell your readers that there are plenty of dogs in pounds in shelters that would love to be a personal trainer, too.  And unlike the ones at the gym, you can snuggle them after the workout.

Best,

Eric

Thank you very much for the inspirational story Eric.

For those of you out there who may be curious in adopting your own personal trainer you can find hundreds of pets in your area in need of a home through Petfinder.

Or if you’re just feeling charitable go ahead and visit ASPCA.

And if you have a similar story or anything else entertaining or inspirational please email me at thebuffgeek@gmail.com.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Although working out strengthens your immune system in the long run.  If you get sick it may be best to take a much needed rest.

Warm up: Solute to Sun (8 mins)

Exercise 1: Hip Dominant

Exercise 2: Upper Body Pull

Exercise 3: Quad Dominant

Exercise 4: Upper Body Push

Do 10 – 20 repetitions of each and repeat 3 or 4 times.

Can you still get results when only working out for 30 minutes or less?

The Roles hormones and the Central Nervous System play during your workouts.

Who are Roger Bannister and Jordan Jovchev?

Not bad for a couple of guys who only worked out for 30 minutes a day.