Affirmations are phrases or statements of intent which you can repeat to help you stick to your journey or ‘way of the warrior’

Lean people don’t skip workouts. Or lean people workout even when they don’t want to is likely true, turning this into an affirmation would be “I never skip workouts” or “I workout even when I (and everyone else) doesn’t want to”.

“Lean mean fighting machine, make the cover of a magazine”….. to be fair I’m still working on this one. Progress not perfection.

A fighter might have something they adhere to like “each time my opponent attacks, I reply with an equally veracious and disruptive technique” “I never fail to reply”.

Take home message have a think about what motivates and drives you, what you desire and list a few affirmations which will help you. a statement of intent. Rather than "I will take my supplement everyday" something like

"I am powerful and driven, the type of person who would always adhere 100% to their programme"

affirmation

/afəˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/

Learn to pronounce

noun

plural noun: affirmations

1.
the action or process of affirming something.

"he nodded in affirmation"

synonyms:assertion, declaration, statement, proclamation, pronouncement, attestation, assurance;

2.
emotional support or encouragement.

"the lack of one or both parents' affirmation leaves some children emotionally crippled"

A Lesson From Mr Hastings

A long time ago we had a great headmaster at my primary school Peter Hastings was his name, a war vet – he once told a story which stuck with me, he had a student who was talented but needed to read more books to progress, he told him “expose yourself to more books son” – you can probably guess, the boy failed to progress despite getting tons of books out the library, and when visiting his home he found all the books were laid out open in his bedroom. I did what you told me to do sir… The Exposing yourself to books story…means it’s not enough to be there, you have to involve yourself in the process.

If you are feeling left out – ask questions, involve yourself get into the books, practice with intent, don’t just turn up and go through the motions.

The Power of Positivity

Positive people help and inspire, on the flip side negative people can deplete, acting in some cases like psychic vampires… I’ve got excellent energy as a practitioner you have to give this out, replenishing your own energy is another story. I rely on adaptogens, b-vitamins, aminos my energy is noticeably lower without these. These can support and propel the right mindset… of course the mind and intent is everything.

Einstein – he got a lot of things right (almost) here’s a great quote from him. We all know these people, sometimes we have them as clients (and family).

Our job as practitioners is to inspire, motivate and create good energy in the people around us. Our ability to maintain energy and drive is essential to this process.

Fairness and equality in every human exchange. Except in war and sport. There’s only one winner.

Another quote from Einstein I like is the make things simple but no simpler than that one. I guess for me this means being able to answer things on the back of a postcard. If you can’t explain something in simple terms it’s normally because you don’t understand it fully.

Maintaining motivation in the face of adversity; maintaining endurance in the face of fatigue. Indeed endurance in a fatigued state is the corner stone of maximal sporting and life performance. Fatigue resistance or hardiness, resilience these all require a well functioning adrenal system.

Keep this positive nature and approach requires an abundance mindset. Rather than a scarcity mindset. This can be hard to maintain sometimes as if it’s not reciprocated the abundant mindset needs replenishment from somewhere. This can be from the ability to self-regulate and self-replenish energy stores. Sound nutrition is essential to allow this to happen.

Feeling Constantly Fatigued? Read on...

I’ve spoken about fatigue before – you can read in more detail here. You can run out of muscle energy, you can run out of oxygen in sufficient amounts, you can accumulate too much lactate to even move sometimes. Also, you can run out of central drive, motivation and the signals from the brain to the muscles can become depleted.

If you have the right intent, the right team, the right affirmations, rituals and support system both nutritional, emotional and spiritual.

I mentioned before being first to say hello and be nice…. You can spread wonderful energy through being positive and enthusiastic….you can be a leader on the pitch and drive your soldiers to dig deeper.

It’s harder to do this under a state of fatigue.

Fatigue can present itself in terms of worries or things which contribute to your stress cup getting full, or empty if these areas are lacking;

Not in any order of priority but here’s some important areas which we can take for granted but should also help keep the replenishing, growth and abundant mindset focussed with energy giving intent…

• Sleep
• Roof over head
• Balancing training with recovery
• Good nutrition
• Sense of purpose
• Financial stability
• Partner
• Family
• Bedroom action
• Kid support
• Cooking
• Holidays (Financial)
• Friends
• Tactile (bedroom) cuddles
• Complements - on visual appearance
• Nice things and nice times
• Consuming enough antioxidant rich foods

Physically the areas which can be supported through nutrition are varied;

• Brain CNS
• Muscles lactate buffering
• B-vitamins for nervous system and energy production
• Inflammation regulators
• Injury and recovery enhancers

Making the choices to make your body look different, planning them is the easy bit, sticking to them is the challenge.

Self regulate through goal setting and daily affirmations, develop some intrinsic motivation techniques;

Stone - gathering moss…. We all know the person who thrives off a pep talk. Off they go full of motivation, only to run out of steam shortly afterwards – you can keep pep talking them up, but ultimately if they are not sufficiently motivated this person will be a constant source of struggle for you to maintain;

Like Einstein said these people will often come back with a reason why you can’t do something, what you need is a team around you who come up with solution-based approaches – surprise you with new ideas. To do this they need to be involved in the processes and motivated on the level which is important to them, recognition, financial and so on.

A team who can adapt to a new attack strategy in real time requires the very best powerful leaders. Younger teams who lack leadership fall apart when presented with unusual changes in energy or attacking capabilities. Also fighters can disrupt their opponents by breaking the rhythm of attack which fighter can fall into.

- Intrinsic motivation
- Extrinsic motivation

Intrinsically motivated exercise programmes result is much greater levels of body composition change.

Final Thoughts

The glue that holds the body together is collagen. The structures in the body are made up of amino acids and minerals. The bone needs minerals for hardness and collagen for flexibility.

The glue that keeps you bouncing back and motivated to continue is called ‘true grit’

Understanding yourself… Your opponent…

The sword of “no sword” Master Tessu said some words to this effect, if you don’t understand yourself – it’s going to be difficult to win. If you understand yourself but don’t understand your opponent, you may win you may lose.

Understand yourself and understand your opponent then victory is almost certain. He also spoke really well about projecting your energy into your opponent this encourages a flow state where you can read and anticipate their next move, easier in one on one battles. An area Arnold Oborotov excelled in when he took apart the current World Champion who was 25kg heavier.

Looking at elite sports, team sports you can see why this works. Analysis of opponent’s traits, strengths and weaknesses is a core element of performance and winning.

Taking care of your own stuff first is the base where from you can build into next levels of elite performance.

Amino Man promises to deliver solution-based supplementation…