As the story has it, one day I headed to the opposite side of the globe – the Flipside. I arrived in Korea February 16th, 2005 and thought I’d do a year, then leave. I was wrong. I stayed, launched my first company, Flipside Fitness, and then opened Korea's largest boxing club, Hulk's Boxing (now called Hulk's Club).

After 11.5yrs in Korea, I then picked up one day and returned to Toronto, Canada. But then I left again.

Now I live in the Philippines where I am the CEO and head coach of Empowered Clubhouse, the Philippines' first and only boxing clubhouse exclusively just for women. I also am the founder of the Lil' Sistas Project, CEO and designer of Slay Gear and Baa Baa Black Sheep .Ph.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Taking Responsibility... Friday, August 22

I coach people.  I try my very best to encourage them to train right, train hard and eat right.  Everyday I try to push them through workouts that are out of their comfort zone because I've always believed that that's where the changes occur but they can only train as hard, go so far and be as successful as THEY CHOSE to be.

How your body looks, feels, and works is based on the following:
20% training
80% eating

A one hour workout is hard but dealing with the remaining 23 hours, what you put in your mouth, well, that's the hardest part.  That's way harder than the one hour workout I'm going to push you through.  I can only control the 20% of my member's health equation yet so often, and I'm speaking of monthly weigh-ins here, it's me who is often made to feel responsible, as if I didn't try my best.  

Today I had a member make a big public stink at our juice bar when I read her her monthly weigh-in results.  Her results actually weren't so bad but they weren't good either.  Her body fat percentage and muscle percentage had stayed the same.  She was frustrated, as expected, but so was I.  When I asked her if she was going to continue training at Hulk's, she said no and basically said it was because "Hulk's had failed her".  That really hurt but I knew better.  She felt I had failed her but I felt she had failed me. I had told her exactly what to eat after training and had repeatedly told her to write down what she eats and bring it to me.  I tell this to so many of my members but, like so many of them, she too ignored me offering to go the extra distance with helping her.  She, like so many others, thought she could out train a bad diet but you can't, especially considering it's 80% responsible for how your body's health.

I have the average member for roughly one to two hours a day.  For some members, this time comes only one to two times a week, at most, but for the majority of them this is 5 times a week.  

So let's break that down, shall we.

There are 168hrs in one week.
The average member spends 5-10hrs a week training, that's assuming 1.5-2hrs, 5 days a week.  Let's use 7.5hrs a week training, for argument's sake.

= 168hrs - 7.5hrs
= 160.5hrs remaining hours in your week

Minus the hours you spend sleeping, which is supposed to be a solid 7hrs but let's be honest here, most don't get a full 7hrs of sleep.  For this purpose though, let's say you do because well, if you're like me, you probably overdose on sleep on the weekends.

= 7hrs x 7 days
= 49hrs
= 160.5hrs - 49hrs
= 111.5hrs remaining hours in your week

Of course you could factor in work and/or school here but I won't and I say this because at work/school you probably eat one or two of your meals and can snack.  The point of this breakdown is to emphasis just how many hours every person is responsible for with regards to their eating.  

It works out that I am only responsible for 7.5hrs of their week but that they are responsible for 111.5hrs.  That works out to be 6.7% of their week I have to push, pull, motivate, and train them hard at our boxing club.  Clearly 6.7% clearly can't compare to the 93.3% they're responsible for but at weigh-ins it often feels like their result numbers are 100% my responsibility.  That's rough and that's not fair.  I can take it though, "I've got strong shoulders" I say.  

The key to making our members more successful is educating them more about the importance of clean eating.  You can't out train a bad diet and no one is an exception to this golden rule.  You CAN lose weight and you CAN become so much healthier if you solely focus on your eating.  Muscle is made at the gym but it's revealed in the kitchen, ain't that the truth!!!  

My main means for educating members about clean eating has been to use the juice bar as my tool.  I've plastered it with various clean eating posters and affirmations.  There are both Korean and English translated versions of my clean eating diaries and we've got large posters, both in English and Korean, advertising various post-training protein smoothies we offer.  I've loaded up snackie cabinet with numerous healthy-choice snacks for members to buy and am always trying to switch them up.  The last shipment of snackies I bought were all given away for free to numerous members for training hard or via friendly competitions I've posed them and their friends.  Numerous members have seen me prepping my weekly meals at the juice bar and some have even gone so far as to buy some of my prepped meals from my personal freezer.  I encourage members to bring their own post-training meals and have cleared a shelf in our club fridge for them to use.  And everyone knows I'm quick to call out and discourage members from bringing "dirty eating" foods to the club [cough, cough... boxes upon boxes of donuts] but I'm eager to figure out what more I can do -- how I can further encourage members to not only clean up their eating but take on and deal with the remaining 80% they're responsible for.

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