300

As I began my day this morning, my wife finished watching "The Chronicles of Riddick" and "300" started. In my ongoing quest to get more and more ripped, this 300 thing has had me thinking for some time. Every now and then someone will tell ask me if I'd heard of the training program that they had to go through, and someone will have something different to share with me. So seeing Gerard Butler ridiculously ripped up in that scene where he kicks dude into the pit--actually the look in his face, even though he was acting, provided some substance for me, and I have been thinking about it all day. Incidentally, a re-run of SNL was on just now, and the host was none other than Gerard Butler! A funny but noteworthy coincidence, and of course there was a skit and references made to the movie "300". So while we were watching, I felt it was time to let my fingers do the walking and find out more, since obviously he was no longer in that kind of shape in SNL, but how the hell did those guys look like that?

I stumbled upon a site, gymjones.com, where apparently these guys trained, and much of the program was explained in greater detail. If you click on the title of this blog you will link to the exact page. Holy crap it is insane. These guys trained together for 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week for four months straight, restricted their calories to give them barely enough of what they needed to survive just short of foraging and hunting themselves, and were humiliated for their failures and weaknesses and acclaimed when they hit milestones. The team effort not only changed them physically but mentally as well and united them as an elite army which helped to really prepare them for the parts they would play.

I mean, even now as I am going into the 5th week of my custom program of a 2-hour extreme home fitness routine where I combine pre and post exhaustion techniques with a near perfectly laid-out nutritional schedule and my resting heart rate is that of a crocodile's, I am nowhere near what these guys look like...yet. I don't want to be writing forever, but check out the link to really see what I'm talking about, and check out their version of the fit test, aptly called "300" (which is 300 total reps of various lifts and exercises). But I will share a few quotes from this page which have really got me pumped.

"...appearance is a consequence of fitness..."

"...we prescribed random physical challenges to keep them off balance, to ensure they never knew what was coming, to cause a stress-reaction, to break them, to make them look bad in front of each other, which eventually led them to trust one another. Trust made them willing to go all the way to the edge in each other's company..."

"Butler commented that my idea of a workout is to 'go until you are actually in fear of your life and then go further. Then, you do more.'"

"...Butler summed up his experience with us when he said, 'Pretty much anything Mark Twight offered up was so difficult in the kind of way where you wish you had never been born - and even more than that, wished he had never been born.'"

Those are just a few good ones. Check out the link for more. There is a lot I took away from this reading, but more than anything else, and as I think of the people that I am currently mentoring and my own journey, I can say that your mindset is everything. No matter what obstacles are in your way or what you have to overcome to get to your ultimate fitness, health, and life goals, you must keep your focus and develop your mindset to even overcome what you believe yourself to be capable of. Only then will you begin to really believe that there is nothing you cannot achieve. Tony Horton said this (and I'm paraphrasing),"Get it out of your mind that you can't do something...rather, change the statement to 'I currently struggle with...'" It's absolutely true--things I thought were outside the realm of possibility I am smashing, and the things today that I struggle with I know for a fact I will accomplish in due time with hard work and dedication. Thanks for reading and enjoy the rest of your weekend!