It’s June, I’ve been training for my 1st half ironman race since November and the race is just over a month away. Despite six months of training I haven’t been getting faster. I’m sluggish on the run, dull on the bike, and not looking forward to swimming (though I rarely look forward to swimming). Actually, I’m not really looking forward to working out at all.

I check my training logs and notice some other irregularities, like training MORE despite sleeping LESS. Not exactly a recipe for training success.

There’s a saying I’ve heard before that goes something like, “If you think you’re overtraining you probably are.”

Well, that wasn’t good enough for me. Plus I’m just an amateur athlete, overtraining syndrome is only for professional athletes…right?

I go online and search overtraining, then overtraining and triathlon. I read about 20 different articles. I’m obsessive. I need to know why I’m struggling so much.

Two articles in particular were most helpful.

The first was Phil Maffetone’s article The Overtraining Syndrome. I use Maffetone’s fitness test in to gauge my aerobic fitness. The MAF test is an objective fitness test to assess your aerobic development. If you’re improving there should be a decrease in the amount of time it takes to complete a specicfic distance at a specific heart rate (using a heart rate monitor).

For example, warm up and run three miles (at a running track for the most accurate results) at a heart rate of 150bpm and record each mile time. Then after three to four weeks of training do the same workout and record the mile times again. If you’re improving your times per mile will be faster than times from the previous workout, at the same heart rate. (I’m oversimplifying this, if you want to learn more about how this works check out Phil’s article’s here and here.)

My times during this workout stayed the same from April to May and got worse from May to June. Maffetone suggests that this is a key sign of overtraining.

I’m overtraining though? Not likely. I’m Invincible!

Maffetone also suggests that you can actually perform well in a race despite overtraining, which also happened to me. I had a nice performance at the Bassman Triathlon on May 1st, my first race in almost two years. That race took a lot out of me, and looking at my training logs I didn’t really take the time to recover, running seven miles the next day, biking 35 the next and running 10 miles two days later.

Overtraining? Me? I’m still not convinced.

The other helpful article was this one from USA Triathlon. It provides the largest list of symptoms I found related to overtraining.

Of the twenty symptoms they listed I have fifteen of them…

Persistent Increase and muscle soreness even with sandard/easy to moderate workouts
Slower than normal recovery of Heart Rate after a hard effort
Lingering muscle and joint pain
GI problems — Specifically diarrhea or constipation
Minor abrasions heal slowly
“heaviness” or “sluggish feeling” that lasts for more than 24 hours after standard workouts
A decrease in physical performance, particularly during standard workouts
Loss of joy for competiton
Desire to quit
Loss of general enthusiasm
Easily irritable or heightened impatience or annoyed by otherwise normal interactions with others
Loss of ability to concentrate for long periods of time
Loss of appetite
Loss of Libido
Changes in sleep habits or inability to get quality sleep or unable to sleep.

Upon realizing the amount of symptoms of overtraining my body was harboring I decided finally…that I needed another opinion.

I ask my girlfriend to read one of the articles to see if it sounds like me. I wait patiently while she reads it.
She finishes reading and says nothing. “Thoughts?” I ask.
“Yea, especially the sleep thing…and you’ve been really moody lately too.”
“I have?”
“Yea, complaining a lot more and stuff.”

She’s right. Damn.

What You MIGHT Learn about Overtraining From Me

I wrote the story above because I wanted you to see my thought process. I want you to see how despite my body doing almost everything it can to get me to rest, my mind still needed to read 20 articles and ask someone else to be convinced.

Sometimes we don’t realize things that are extremely obvious. Focus by definition can blind you from seeing other things. My focus on training for this race, took my focus away from the fact that my overall health was declining.

Although, at some level I did sense this coming and I tried to scale back because I knew I was on a slippery slope, but with a race coming up it’s not easy. You want to be prepared for the race, and you’re not going to be prepared if you don’t put in the miles. You rationalize to yourself that you’re better off doing the miles even though you’re not feeling great.

Dropping out of a race you’ve been training months for is hard decision to make. It’s hard to imagine the pressure a sponsored pro athlete like Ryan Hall would feel when deciding whether or not they’re ready to race. Hall decided not to run in the 2010 Chicago marathon after he was feeling a little flat a month or so before the event.

I’m not anywhere close to that competitive level, and unlike him, my livelihood doesn’t rest on racing. Still it was difficult for me to admit that I’m not going to be able to race. I have a new level of respect for athletes that make a decision not to race when they’re not ready.

I wrote what you “MIGHT” learn in the heading, because when it happens to you, you’ll likely shrug off my experience with overtraining and rationalize that it doesn’t apply to you, just like I did with everything I read.

It is possible to overtrain if you’re an amateur athlete. It’s probably even more likely for an amateur than a professional. Pro athletes live the sport, amateur athletes do sport as a hobby and work jobs, have kids to watch, and other variables a lot of top pro’s don’t have to worry about.

After all, overtraining really is just under recovering, and if you’re squeezing training between dozens of other obligations then you have way less time than the pro level racer to rest and recover.

If you’re training for any competition and think you might be experiencing overtraining syndrome Ask yourself what you would do if you didn’t have this competition/race/performance coming up.

I didn’t get a high level of clarity on what to do until I asked this question of myself. For me the answer came fast. “Rest.”

If you’re not doing what’s best for you now because of some future event, re-evaluate.

Where did I go wrong?

I think back to October, around the time I first committed to doing the Providence race. I did a fifty mile bike ride on a cold morning. My friend and I got to the ride late, and we didn’t start until about 20-25 minutes after everyone else. We joked about how cold it was and how maybe we’d just ride home, but there was a certain lightness to our attitudes that day. We ended up passing every other person riding that day and when we got back to the bike shop we waited about 10 minutes until the next person finished up. We really crushed the ride that day and for me it was almost effortless.

At the time I was only training cycling 3 days/week about 6-7 hours a week and I showed a lot of improvement. Once I committed to the Half Ironman, all of a sudden I threw 25 miles a week of running and a couple swims on top of that to be “ready” for the race.

Now I’ll be “getting ready” to watch it as a spectator.

Now I know (obviously) you need to build up to a heavier workload instead of just throwing several hours of training on top of what you’re already doing.

I “knew” that before, but you don’t truly know something until you practice it.

My Training and Racing Plans

The plan now is to take a week off from training. The only exercise I’ll be doing for the next week will be some light walking . After that I’ll re-evaluate and make a decision about what I’m going to do next.

My two big races I wanted to do coming into this year were the Providence Half-Ironman, and the Hartford Marathon. I’m dropping out of Providence. It’s possible I can be ready for Hartford, but I’ll have to re-evaluate as it comes closer.

Thanks for Reading

If that’s still a little vague consider the following list from Doug Graham’s book The 80/10/10 Diet

The Fundamental Elements of Health

Clean, Fresh Air
Pure Water
Foods for which we are biologically designed
Sufficient Sleep
Rest and relaxation
Vigorous activity
Emotional poise and stability
Sunshine and natural light
Comfortable temperature
Peace, harmony, serenity, and tranquility
Human touch
Thought, cogitation, and meditation
Friendships and companionship
Gregariousness (social relationships, community)
Love and appreciation
Play and recreation
Pleasant environment
Amusement and entertainment
Sense of humor, mirth and merriment
Security of life and its means
Inspiration, motivation, purpose, and commitment
Creative, useful work (pursuit of interests)
Self-control and self-mastery
Individual sovereignty
Expression of reproductive instincts
Satisfaction of the aesthetic senses
Self-confidence
Positive self-image and sense of self-worth
Internal and external cleanliness
Smiles
Music and all other arts
Biophillia (love of nature)

This list, although not necessarily all-inclusive, does a pretty fair job of outlining many of the topics I wish to cover in this blog. You can see as you look at this list health is not simply the absence of disease, the presence of high level fitness, or maintaining a healthy weight. It’s all those things and much, much more. The thing I love about this list is that it includes many things not typically associated with health creation, but which are undoubtedly essential parts such as creativity, self-mastery, and smiles

On this blog I intend to share information about topics like those listed as well as information about my own pursuit of comprehensive health. I hope you’ll enjoy learning and growing along with me.

-Tom

Let’s do a short exercise to see what I mean. On a piece of paper, number from 1-5 and rank your current top five priorities. Don’t spend more than two minutes on this. You can write down things like family, friends, relationships, work, health, projects, goals or anything else you feel is a priority in your life.

When you’re done look at your list and ask yourself, is this really what my priorities are?

For some reason it’s very easy to lie to yourself about where your priorities stand. You tend to actually write down what you want your priorities to be instead of what they actually are.

How do you know if you’re lying to yourself? I like to take a look at time in two different ways when it comes to priorities, quantity and quality.

Quantity of Time

If you were to rank your five main priorities 1-5 and match them with the amount of time you invest on each would your results be congruent? Are you investing the most time in your #1 priority?

If not think about the things you do spend the most time on. It’s likely that the things you do spend the most time on ARE your top priorities and not the things that you wrote down.

As an example when I did this exercise I realized that I spend way too much time reading articles online and fiddling with my fantasy football team. Those were actually my top priorities, not growing my business like I want it to be.

If you say your top priority is your family but you work a nine hour day with a two hour commute each way, is your family really your top priority? It’s more likely that your top priority is going to work everyday. You could argue that you do this to support your family, but if your family was really your top priority you’d find a new job right?

You can say that one of your top five priorities is your health but if you haven’t exercised in a month and ate fast food twice this week you’re kidding yourself.

The areas where you invest your time are your real priorities, not what you wrote down on your list. Think about what you spend the most time on and write a new 1-5 list ranking the things you spend the most time on. Compare this with your first list and notice the difference.

Quality of Time

Another thing to be honest about is the quality of your time investments.

If you spend eight hours a day working, are you getting eight hours of quality work done everyday? Or do you spend most of your time doing tasks that aren’t really that important?

If one of your top priorities is your health and fitness and you spend an hour and a half each day reading about health and fitness instead of exercising, are you really focusing on your health and fitness? Wouldn’t your time be better spent if you were actually using that time to exercise?

If one of your top priorities is your family, are you investing quality time with them or are you just sitting around watching tv together? Is watching a few hours of tv equivalent to quality time?

Don’t trick yourself into thinking that your priorities are accurate just because you throw time at them. That might not be enough. Throwing Quality Time at your priorities is way more important.

How did you do on this exercise? If your results are congruent great, but if they’re not it means you’re not actually focusing on the things that are most important to you. Long term this will lead to stress and unhappiness, which I’m sure you know is unhealthy.

I wrote this article because I want to make sure everyone is investing their time in the best way for them. I’ve heard people say that their health is very important to them yet their actions aren’t in line with that belief. It’s been written that time is our most precious resource as humans. It’s one thing to believe at an intellectual level time is our most precious resource. It’s another thing entirely to be living your life as if time were your most precious resource. Use what you’ve learned reading this article and doing this exercise to help bring your time usage in line with your true desires.

Did you do the exercise? If not go back and do it, I think you’ll be surprised at your results, because I was. Once you’re done with the exercise, leave a comment at and tell me how the exercise affected you.

I attribute my lack of attention and perseverence to never giving the site a clear focus. I kinda wrote about whatever I felt like at the time. I feel like my lack of focus on the blog stemmed from my lack of focus on my career.

I struggled for a long time figuring out what I wanted to do in my career. After college I spent a lot of time thinking about it and I still couldn’t come up with something I felt really good about. I did come up with a lot of info about what I didn’t want. I knew that I wanted my career to be an outlet for contribution. I never wanted to feel like my career was meaningless. And I wanted to be able to help people directly.

During the time I was figuring out where my career was going, I got very interested in health and fitness. I experimented a lot with diet and over about three years I decided that I really wanted to include health, one of my biggest personal interests, as part of my career as well.

I met these two requirements in the middle and decided to become a personal trainer!

Over this past summer I studied to get a personal training certification from NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine), and on October 1st, I passed my certification test. So I’m officially a personal trainer!

So now that I have a strong focus on where my career is going, I have a greater focus on how I want to use this website.

The site will be a medium for helping others get fit and healthy. I plan on updating the site consistently with posts on health and fitness and also some general personal development and psychology, because for a lot of people whether they exercise or not isn’t really about the exercise, it’s about their beliefs about exercise. I will start with just articles but as time goes on I may do more videos, or podcasting.

The site will also be a place to direct potential clients for information about training. As I train more and more people I’ll add testimonials to the site so you can see the fruits of my labor as a personal trainer.

In the near future I hope to offer online training as well. I’ll probably start with a small group, maybe 10 or 15 and grow from there when I see fit. Online training will consist of day to day workout plans delivered by e-mail, a video component teaching you how to do exercises in the workout plan and a nutrition program as well.

If you’re reading and you’ve got some extra body-fat hanging around that you wanna get rid of free to e-mail me @ Tom @ TomHolowka dot com and let me know a little bit about you and your health goals or some of your limiting beliefs about losing weight or becoming healthier.

I’m really excited about this career path and equally as excited to start getting some results for people who want to get healthy.

Your eating habits and your relationship with food is something that develops over your entire life. Every time you’ve ever put something in your mouth you’re reinforcing your eating habits. It takes time to change it. A long time.

How many years have you been alive? However long it is, that’s how long you’ve been developing your eating habits and your relationship to food.

Is it reasonable to expect yourself to break that pattern overnight? No Way! So Take Your Time!

A big problem is that people want to be 100% raw right away, never eat cooked food again or never even want to ever think about eat cooked food again. Our culture is all about instantaneousness. I’m not saying it can’t be done “cold turkey” but for a lot of people it has to be a process.

And when I say take your time I don’t mean give it a week. Years. Many Years. Really.

Here are examples of some of my favorite raw fooders and how long it took them to get to the longterm 100% Mark.

Dr. Doug Graham

Dr. Graham is the author of my favorite book on raw foods the 80/10/10 Diet. Doug was constantly trying to find a diet that worked for him even as a teen. Even when he began raw he failed on it for EIGHT YEARS before successfully becoming 100% Raw 80/10/10. Note: I wanted to source this with a link but can’t remember where I heard/read this.

Doug was developing his dietary habits for most of his life until he started doing what he’s since coined as 80/10/10.

Harley Johnstone

Harley Johnstone aka DurianRider - Was a vegan eating high raw for FOUR YEARS before going 100% Raw. Source He says it at about 0:50 into the video.

Notice that Harley’s diet evolved over a period of many years. If you watch the full video you’ll even see where he says that he hasn’t drank coffee in 10 or 11 years either. Again proving that it’s a process that takes a lot of time. So if you count from the time he gave up coffee to the time he started being 100% raw you’ll get a period of about six or seven years.

Steve Pavlina

Steve gave Raw a shot in 1997 and only lasted 3 Days! He gave it another shot five years later in 2002 and lasted 30 days. In 2008 he blogged publicly about his raw food trial and was eating 100% raw for most of the year. Steve Still doesn’t eat all raw and occasionally will still eat cooked food. Source.

Notice again that his diet evolved over a period of many years. Steve became vegetarian in 1994. Over 15 years of dietary evolution, and even now he still not at 100% raw.

I’m a Wannabe Raw Fooder

I’ve posted before about my diet, but for a quick recap I eat mostly raw and I have eaten all raw in the past for one 5 month period and one 4 month period, both in 2008.

I wrote this post because I too am a wannabe raw fooder. Sometimes I get upset or frustrated I’m not 100% raw not because I’m a freak or insecure or anything like that but because I know when I am 100% raw I feel amazing pysically. Better than my body ever feels.

But I too have to realize that this is a long process that takes a lot of time. I’ve been upgrading my diet since December 2006, and there’s still improvements I’d like to make.

I’m so happy for all the improvements I’ve made so far even though I know I’m not where I’d ultimately like to end up. That’s one of the great things about life, there’s always room for improvement if you want it.

That’s the real takeaway here. All growth, personal or social is a process, and it might take longer than you want but you have to be willing to accept that as part of the ride.

Are you a raw fooder? Or someone who’s been trying to improve an area of your life for a long time? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

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Work smarter not harder is such a misleading phrase because it makes you think that you can get by on smarts alone and you don’t have to work. The emphasis is the “smarter” part, not the work part, but the work part way more important than the smarter part.

You can’t work smarter if you’ve never started working in the first place.

Chances are you’re very smart (or at least you think you are), so being smart doesn’t help. Working helps.

If you’re overweight for example and haven’t exercised in three years, working smarter just means working.

You have to learn to work, before you work smarter.

I find that this shows most in planning. You can create the smartest goddamn plan in the world, but if you don’t follow it, it means nothing. Do you not follow the plan because you’re not smart? Maybe. It’s possible, but it’s more likely you don’t follow it because you know it’s going to be HARD.

Being smart is overrated, while working your ass off is extremely underrated.

Work smarter not harder is so appealing because most of us (me included) are allergic to hard work. It’s very comforting to be told that you don’t have to work hard in order to be successful or achieve a goal.

It’s also bullshit.

Sometimes working smarter, just means working.

Are you 100lbs overweight? Can you lose all that weght just by being smarter?

Do you waste mountains of time on aimlessly surfing the internet? Is being smarter going to help you stop?

Are you addicted to drinking or smoking? Does being smarter help you stop?

Conscious effort is really the key, aka Hard Work.

So here’s my suggestion, next time you hear “work smarter not harder” focus on the WORK not the smarts.

Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

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In the online world, your life, the data that makes up your online identity is stored forever. Everyone is going to be able to see everything you’ve ever done. Not just now but forever.

Think about this from the perspective of a little kid today. My 9 year old brother has a Facebook now. My little brother is going to have everything about his life from this point on documented online in some form. Crazy right?

I have some new mother Facebook friends and they post pictures of their kids and status updates about what their kids are doing all the time. These kids are having their entire lives documented online from Day One!

Guess what? You’re going to have your life documented online for the rest of your life too.

In the past legacy was for history books, famous people and word of mouth stories from your parents. This is such a huge change from how it used to be. Now everyone has a legacy, and everyone can see it.

When my great, great, grandkids want to see who their great great grandfather was, all they’re going to have to do is go to google (or the future’s equivalent) and type in my name. Realize that!

Leaving a Positive Legacy

You’re the ultimate authority on your online identity. There will likely always be somebody out there who wants to trash you, but if you’ve put enough good stuff online to back up who you are, it won’t matter.

Think about the legacy you’re leaving from time to time.

Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

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I feel a bit conflicted on this. I don’t feel like I have anything to hide but currently I keep certain elements of my Facebook profile hidden. As an example, I only let certain friends view my photos. I do this because I only want certain people who I feel comfortable with to be able to see tagged photos of me.

At the same time though this I realize this is dumb.

I can always untag a photo of me if I don’t want people to see it right, but if the person who took the picture of me doesn’t take it down than what’s the point? The photo is still out there on the internet to be found. I’m just burying it a little deeper.

How do you handle this?

I think you have to be transparent. You can’t expect to bury anything and have it just go away. You’ve gotta be a PR person. Address it and move on. Don’t hide.

Everyone’s in the media business now.

There’s pictures of me on my facebook drinking alcohol, eating fast food, and making obscene gestures. (someone’s going right to Facebook to find these, haha) I don’t do any of these things anymore, so should I hide all of those photos because they don’t align with the person I am now? I suppose I could and I guess it’s really a personal choice, but I think it’s better to leave them up and not hide who I used to be.

I’m not proud of those things (although I did have some epic nights as a drinker) but it’s part of my story, ya know? Yea I got drunk, and did some stupid things. So what? I bet I’m not the only one

So after writing this I’ll probably be a little looser with my online privacy settings and see what happens.

Consequences

Do you see any possible consequences to this?

My hope is that through transparency our society will become a lot more accepting.

For example if I’m going through a tough part of my life I’ll be able to share it online and have support during that time. People will use their social networks for growth and development.

There could be negative consequences too. Maybe I’ll become unemployable because of my lack of privacy.

Here’s some questions to think about for comments:

How do you handle your privacy on social networks?
Do you think transparency is a good idea or bad idea?

Looking forward to you answers! And Happy New Year!

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Looking at it now that conversation seems unbelievably stupid. There’s more media outlets now than there’s ever been. You can build your own media outlet from scratch on WordPress or Youtube. Plenty of people have and plenty more will.

But remember this was 2004 when we had this conversation. When I was thinking about this I asked myself was I really that stupid? How could none of us have seen this?

Back In 2004

Fast Forward back to 2004 for a minute and think about it with me because chances are you don’t realize how much the world has changed since then.

Back in September 2004, when I started college, Myspace was the social network of choice, before the phrase “social network” was even on the radar.

Blogs had been around for awhile but were nowhere near as popular as they are now.

Facebook was .edu for college students only and hadn’t even reached Seton Hall University yet.

What about Youtube? Non-existent. The first youtube video wasn’t uploaded until April 2005. That’s close to two full school years after we had that conversation.

Twitter? Nope. Not until 2006.

So looking back on it maybe we weren’t that stupid. Maybe we just didn’t realize the how quick the world was changing.

The best part of this trick? You don’t have to do anything but wait.

Wait till it’s Spotted

I see so many people chomping down on these perfect looking golden yellow bananas. Those bananas might look perfect but they could taste waaay better. Why? Because that banana’s not ripe.Ripe bananas taste better.

The reason ripe bananas taste better is because during the ripening process the starch to sugar ratio changes. When the banana ripens the amount of sugars increase while the amount of starch decreases. Sugar tastes good. Starches are bland and boring.
(Photo: Unripe Bananas)

Seriously. Just wait.

How You Know They’re Ripe

The bananas aren’t ripe until they’re spotted. I know, it’s hard to wait until they get spotted, but it’s worth it for superior taste.

It almost seems a little counter intuitive, but that’s the way nature made em. Those spots on the peel signal that they are ready to eat.

Many people won’t even eat a spotted banana because they think it’s bad, spoiled, gross, or yucky. I was one of those people when I was a kid too. Time to grow up people!

(Photo: Ripe Bananas)

Taste Test

Don’t believe me? Do the banana taste test.

I’ve done this test with a few people and they all preferred my ripened banana over their unripened banana.

Get a ripe banana (yellow w/ spots) and an unripe banana (yellow w/ no spots). Take a bite out of the unripe banana. Chew. Swallow. Notice the taste. Next, take your ripened spotted banana and do the same. Viola! Behold the superior sweetness and flavor of the ripe banana!

Excuses

People eating unripe bananas give me the excuse that bananas are too sweet when they’re spotted. Lame.

Too Sweet? Really? I’ll see this person gorging themselves on ice cream or cookies sometime later. Maybe they’re just comfortable deluding themselves. A ripe banana is definitely not sweeter than a big bowl of chocolate ice cream. Lots healthier too.

Wait till they’re ripe for a tasty delight!

Did you like this article? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts!
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