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Aloha, what’s up, welcome.

If you are looking to learn some efficient methods to dropping body fat, building lean muscle, and transforming your physique, from some pretty cool (but mostly nerdy and goofy), no B.S., authentic people, then you’ve come to the right place.  If you are here for internet porn, I completely understand, but alas, you’re in the wrong place.  Either way, thanks for stopping by.

*Warning — My writing style has been described as the lab meets the locker room.  If you are easily offended, you probably should not proceed (unless you decide to lighten up).

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL GET FROM HANGING WITH US (click links to read more):

1. Nutrition approaches geared towards slashing fat WHILE improving health. Neither one by itself is enough for greedy, vain people such as ourselves.
2. Training specifically for physique development.  While there can and should be overlap, training to maximize performance is DIFFERENT then training to optimize appearance.
3. Studying and applying science, not excuses, to overcome crappy genetics.
4. Functional approaches.  If a plan is not functional in the real world of a busy professional — which is what we are — it is meaningless.
5. Sustainable approaches.  If a plan is not sustainable for the long-term, it is meaningless.
6. A little bit of Aloha spirit, Samurai philosophy, and Bruce Lee’s words of wisdom.
7. Way more Miyaki than you can, or ever should have to handle.

HOW TO USE THIS SITE

• If you are just looking for some practical tips to get started, I’d head on over to the Articles page and read the “Quick Tips“.  This is basically the barebones “what to do” without much else. If this piques your interest, the rest of the articles are a little more science based, the “why” we believe you should be eating and training a certain way for physique enhancement.
• You can subscribe to the blog and receive an email notice whenever the site is updated with new content.  We promise, we do not share this information with anyone else.
• We also have a YouTube channel with exercise demonstrations, conversations with colleagues, clips of my lectures/presentations, and some fun stuff that may prove useful.
• And if you really like what we’re saying, you might want to sign up for our Facebook and Twitter pages.  I post short lessons and advice that comes up during my in the trenches training sessions, conversations with colleagues, or personal reading.  I also link to research studies and industry articles that I find useful. And, every once in awhile I vent on things that frustrate me in this ridiculous industry.  Those are probably the best.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL GET FROM HANGING WITH US (full text)

1. Nutrition approaches geared towards slashing fat WHILE improving health. Neither one by itself is enough for greedy, vain people such as ourselves. 

You’ll gain insight into how we combine principles from Paleo/Caveman Nutrition, Sports Nutrition, Natural Bodybuilding & Fitness Nutrition, Intermittent Fasting Protocols, and the Traditional Japanese Diet to design nutrition programs that achieve outstanding fat loss and physique development results while simultaneously improving overall health & wellness.  Are we just confused, or are we on to something?  You get to be the judge.

Many bodybuilders, fitness girls, and fat loss enthusiasts will follow extreme measures to attain a ripped physique — unknowingly disrupting normal metabolic and hormonal functioning, and ultimately compromising long-term health.  Just ask some former competitors or extreme yo-yo dieters.

At the same time, there are many dogmatic Paleo/Low-Carb eaters that seek to improve biomarkers of health, but lose out on the physique enhancing benefits of scientifically researched, modern sport and fitness nutrition principles. Despite consistent exercise and healthy eating patterns, they are unable to attain the lean, sculpted, head-turning physiques they desire.  Just ask the Carbophobe who works out all of the time but has nothing to show for it.

But despite what you’ve observed from “life extensionists”, extreme bodybuilders, or anyone else trapped in some sort of nutritional dogma, or you may have experienced yourself with uninformed methods, we believe these goals DO NOT have to be mutually exclusive.  There are healthy approaches to body composition transformation.

2. Training specifically for physique development.  While there can and should be overlap, training to maximize performance is DIFFERENT then training to optimize appearance.

In my private business, I have trained competitive athletes for a variety of reasons — traditional team sports, mixed martial arts, triathlons, outdoor rock climbing, big wave surfing, and even stunt performing.  These are all performance athletes with specific needs.  Performing well is of utmost importance, looking good is a secondary concern.

But my current passion — both for myself and most of my current clients — is training specifically for physique enhancement, the fitness model look, cosmetic improvement, body composition change, vanity training, looking good in a bikini or board shorts (or naked, hey now!), or whatever else you want to call it.  Physical appearance is the primary goal, performance secondary, if at all.

In other words, we just want to be like my idol Ron Burgundy, with the ability to say, “I look good, I mean really good.  Hey everyone, come and see how good I look.”

One of the problems in the fitness industry today is “experts” trying to advise everyone, everywhere, regardless of the goal, and trainers pretending to be all-knowing in every conceivable field.  That’s not me.  I know a lot about one specific niche, from the science down to the practical — a healthy, natural approach to body composition change.  I only know a little bit about a variety of other fields.

So just to be clear, the majority of this site’s content is geared specifically towards training for physique/body composition transformation goals.  If you have different goals, say training for rehabilitation or sport performance goals, I’m not the expert.  But I have several colleagues I can refer you to.  Just shoot me an email and I’ll hook you up.

But back to my meatheads and divas…

You don’t have to be a great athlete, kill yourself (and your joints) running for miles or with cross-training/boot camp drills, or jump around like a cheerleader on crack to get ripped.  Muscular overload is different than neural or cardiovascular overload.  The former is what changes a body’s appearance.  Yet, most programs these days are geared towards the latter.  Thus, people are getting better at performing drills, improving their strength and endurance, balancing on balls and whatnot, but their physical appearance is not changing.  In other words, they are performing better, but not looking better.

I wrote an article about the distinction between performance and appearance-based training here:  Body Composition Training 101: Introduction

I hope you check it out at some point.  It may change your life.  OK, it won’t do that, but it may get your training plan more properly aligned with your training goals.

3.  Studying and applying science, not excuses, to overcome crappy genetics.

WITH crappy genetics (skinny fat dude) and WITHOUT performance enhancing drugs (this is not a holier-than-thou judgmental stance — I could care less what people do — we are just being honest with how we go about doing things), we can’t just wing it, do the latest and greatest training fads, or blindly follow the advice of the “pros” in the magazines.  We’ve had to base our training programs on the science of biomechanics, physiology, and endocrinology to attain noticeable results.  Surprisingly, this complex science yields relatively simple programs on paper.

Actually, its not so surprising, the human body is a simple lever system and should be trained as such.  From there, volume, sets, reps, tempos, interset rest, frequency, recovery, etc. can all be manipulated based on an individual’s body type and goals to produce the desired result.

It’s not innovative or sexy or infomercial-worthy, but it’s effective.  The fitness industry as a whole has it backwards these days: complex programs backed by shady, pseudoscience.  You need to ask yourself, do you want to be “cutting edge” or do you want to be cut?

I can’t help you with the former, although there are plenty of trainers out there that will throw you up on a balance ball and have you do cute, complex exercises like one arm-twisting-squat thrust-curls with wood chops.  This allows them to “look” informed, impress the novice, disguise their inability to produce real world results, and have some kind of justification for selling training packages.

That ain’t me Jack.  I’d rather just show you what works and be done with it.  It’s not rocket science.  It’s physiology.  I don’t want to spoon-feed you fluff, make you feel like you are working out when you’re really not (at least for muscular overload and physique change), or create an environment where you are dependent on me to get results.  Besides, you’d get sick of me after awhile anyways.  I grow tired of myself often.

If you are willing to concede that complex programs on paper can never make up for hard work on the basics, I believe I can help you get to where you want to go.  If you want the latest, greatest, coolest looking training fad, you should probably go somewhere else.

4. Functional approaches.  If a plan is not functional in the real world of a busy professional — which is what we are — it is meaningless.

Neither of us are professional athletes or models.  I make my living as a writer, trainer, consultant, and stripper (just kidding on that last one), and Kalai has a career completely outside of fitness.  We don’t have the luxury of eating 12 meals on the hour, every hour, doing 18 hours of cardio a day, eating zero carbs, having the personality of a snail, the brainpower of a zombie, or the libido of a corpse just to get in shape.  Of course, none of that is necessary anyways.

Are there functional plans that will allow a busy, working professional to look more like a fitness model and less like the average Y2K American, without having to throw away their career goals and live like a professional athlete?  You bet, and we hope to show you more reasonable and functional ways to build your beach-ready body.

5. Sustainable approaches.  If a plan is not sustainable for the long-term, it is meaningless.

Although we are not professionals (yet), Kalai is hot enough, and I am willing enough to do ridiculous things (like trying to look like the toughest guy in the world while being oiled up, fake tanned, and wearing a European man thong), that we do get paid from time to time for modeling gigs.  I also represent a couple of fitness brands.

In order to be prepared for that, and to take advantage of any opportunities that come up, we can’t do the traditional bulking/get fat and cutting/get photo shoot-ready cycles (and again, we have decided not to use performance enhancing drugs to speed those processes, as many pros do).  We need to be in shape year-round, naturally, as our default status.

Are their sustainable approaches that will allow you to maintain a year-round six-pack/single digit body fat percentage, without compromising your health, sanity, or ability to function in the real world? The answer is yes. Will it be magic-pill/infomercial easy? No, but with the right strategies and practical application, it is possible.  We hope to share what we’ve discovered with you.

6.  A little bit of Aloha spirit, Samurai philosophy, and Bruce Lee’s words of wisdom.

As a beach girl and dude, maybe it’s just our natural predisposition to be laid back, appreciate what we have, flow with whatever comes in life with a smile, joke around constantly, and be relatively happy for no apparent reason.  I guess that’s part of it.

And it is not just because life has been a bed of roses for us.  We’ve been in some pretty sh^tty situations and gone through some tough challenges, disappointments, and struggles like everyone else (as I write this, and so I always remember, this last weekend was one of the hardest weekends of my life).

Like I said, part of it may just be our natural inclination, but I think the other part is some of the lessons we’ve learned from our respective cultures, along with personal studies in different philosophies.  I told you we are nerdy.

There are these guideposts, words of wisdom, approaches to life, nuggets of advice, etc. that have helped us in many aspects of our lives — getting sh*t done, achieving goals, appreciating what we have, becoming better athletes, becoming better people, finding our own path, doing what makes us happy, enjoying life, and getting closer to attaining that ultimate goal — peace of mind.

Now we don’t want you to come contemplate the meaning of life with us on a mountain, nor are we pretending to be ridiculous life coaches or gurus that can teach you how to live and be happy (for a sh&tload of money, of course).  No one can do that for you except yourself.

All we are saying is that there are some insights that have helped us along our journey.  We’d like to share those with you from time to time if that’s cool?  We get bored talking about fitness all of the time anyways.  How many times can we tell you not to eat cookies?

Maybe they will help you (the words of wisdom, not the cookies), maybe they won’t.  But it can’t hurt to share what we’ve benefited from with our friends.

After all, there are more important things in life (not many) than getting a six-pack.

7. Way more Miyaki than you can, or ever should have to handle. 

In addition to being an educator, I’m also a pervert, a slightly weird dude, and have the maturity level of a 16 year old.  So the price of admission to this freak show is you have to put up with my oddball comments and jokes.