This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Markus Oakey released a cool interview with Master NLP Practitioner Rintu Basu on “Jedi Persuasion Techniques”. Bear in mind that these are indeed the droids you are looking for.
  

• Sasha has a new video of an entire day’s worth of daygame approaches, from blowouts to number closes.

• The Real Man Conference is returning to Amsterdam this April 21/22! Click here to learn more.

Nutrition

•  Mark Sisson explains away the “Asian Paradox” and how it really isn’t a paradox at all. A fascinating post on something which I think everyone on a Paleo/Primal diet has wondered about before.
  

Exercise

• Skyler Tanner on bones and how they are much more than a thing that’s just there in the human body.

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Brad Branson discusses his view on daygame and how, when approaching a girl, the most important thing you should be focusing on is your mindset going in on that interaction.

• Shasha. “Girls always know when you’re faking”, that’s Shasha’s first point in his new video and that’s why he counsels his students to be whatever suits their own personalities, in other words, be their ideal self.
  

Nutrition

• Mark Sisson after a wonderful series on inflammation and its effects on the human body, it’s time now to know which top-foods Mark has found to be anti-inflammatory.
  

Exercise

• Doug McDuff M.D. An interesting study showing that children performing HIT have an increase in spontaneous physical activity, a finding that may not surprise anyone who is training in the same fashion and has, at some point, entertained the idea of jumping off walls and doing triple backflips.
  

• Drew Baye’s “My Philosophy of Exercise” has already been posted as a guest post here on The 21 Convention but it bears another mention if you haven’t checked it out already, especially now that Crossfit is becoming more and more mainstream.
  

Comment of the week

This is a guest post by 21 Convention speaker and world renowned exercise authority Drew Baye. Re-posted with permission from Baye.com.

 
Maintaining your health and achieving and maintaining a high level of functional ability should be among your highest priorities. You only live once, and both how long you live and yourenjoyment of it are directly affected by your health, your physical capabilities and your appearance.

Proper exercise is a requirement for living the longest, happiest life possible. It is a requirementfor self-actualization – realizing your full human potential and necessary for achieving the idealof a sound mind in a sound body.

While many people have at least some awareness of the potential benefits of exercise relatively few fully realize its importance. I believe at least two of the main reasons for this are failure to associate a lack of exercise with the resulting physical consequences, and underestimation of human physical potential.

It is easier to make cause and effect associations when the cause is one of commission rather than omission and when the time between cause and effect is shorter. The consequences of a lack or omission of exercise are not immediately apparent and in some cases take years. Nautilus inventor Arthur Jones once explained during a seminar:

“If I were to grab you by the throat, and choke off your air supply, it would immediately become apparent to you that oxygen is absolutely essential for life. If I were to lock you in a room with no water, after several hours, the degree of thirst you would experience would indicate to you that water is a requirement for life. If I were to lock you in that room with water, but no food, it would take a little longer, a matter of a couple of days, before you would be ravenously hungry, and there would be no question in your mind that food was absolutely essential for life. However, it often takes years before ones body begins to show the harm done by a lack of proper exercise.”

 
 
In the long run, if nothing is done to prevent it, we gradually lose muscle as we age, becoming weaker and more frail and suffering other problems as a result such as decreased basal metabolic rate, decreased insulin sensitivity, increased body fat, decreased cardiovascular and metabolic capacity, increased blood pressure, osteoporosis, increased risk of falling due to reduction in speed and steadiness of movement, etc.

In the meanwhile, if you do not exercise you live with a level of functional ability and a physical appearance far below your potential. Compared to what you can and should be, you are weak, slow, and fragile. If you do exercise, properly, the improvements in strength, speed, durability, and overall health will allow you to do more, do it better, do it longer, and look good while you’re at it. I believe the average, untrained person grossly underestimates their potential, would be surprised at what they are capable of becoming with proper exercise.

Exercise is one of the most important things you can do to improve your life. It deserves the same serious consideration, attention to detail, and effort – both physical and mental – as any other major life goal or achievement of high value. It is not enough to just do exercise, you should strive  to master it.

You should perform every exercise and every workout in the safest, most effective, most efficient manner possible.

Safety

It ought to go without saying that exercise should performed in the safest manner possible, but considering the sloppy and haphazard form commonly displayed in gyms and the outright dangerous antics of Crossfit, plyometrics, “core stability training” and similar activities touted as exercise it is apparent most either aren’t aware of or underestimate the potential for injury and long term damage of improper training.

While all physical activity poses some risk of injury exercise can and should be performed in a manner and with a level of control which makes it safer than almost any other activity. It would be counterproductive and downright stupid to perform an activity for the purpose of physical improvement which simultaneously poses a significant risk of causing physical injury or undermining your long term functional ability and health.

This does not mean exercise should be easy. On the contrary, to be effective exercisemust involve a high level of effort. There is no conflict between safety and intensity of effort during exercise, however; the manner of performance required to minimize risk of injury is the exact same required to maximize the quality of muscular loading and effectiveness.

Effectiveness 

More than any other factor, exercise effectiveness is related to effort, and effort is maximized with proper form. Contrary to claims of some ignorant trainers that how you perform an exercise is less important than the effort you put into it, proper form and maximum effort arenot mutually exclusive but directly related. The better your form the higher the intensity.

The histrionics and bodily contortions often associated with a high level of effort during training are not an indication of greater intensity; many trainees commit these discrepancies even when they are not actually working hard. They are attempts to reduce the difficulty of the exercise or distractions from the discomfort of hard work.

The person who grunts, grimaces, and makes a show of heaving or jerking to gain momentum and leaning this way and that to find a lever advantage during exercise is not the one training the hardest, but rather the person who remains stoic as the pain of effort increases, impassive and expressionless, focusing on intensely contracting the targeted muscles while maintaining strict control of the position and movement of their body.

Correct form during exercise involves positioning and or alignment of the body and a path, range and manner of movement designed to effectively load the muscles. Breaking or “loosening” form makes an exercise easier, not harder. Some trainers claim “loosening” form is advantageous because it allows more repetitions to be performed displaying their ignorance of the real objective of exercise.

Efficiency

Exercise is not an end in itself, but a means to improving your health and functional ability to better enjoy other activities and aspects of life. You should spend no more time exercising than necessary for best results. Doing so will not give you better results, but will take away from the finite amount of time you have to pursue other goals or  interests and enjoy the company of friends and family. Fortunately very little exercise is required if performed properly and with a high level of effort.

The only exercise you need – in fact the only activity that truly qualifies as exercise – is progressive resistance training. When performed properly it is the safest and most effective method of stimulating improvements in all trainable factors of fitness; muscular strength, size and endurance, cardiovascular and metabolic efficiency, flexibility, bone density and connective tissue strength, and body composition.

The Standard

There are other considerations, but these three – safety, effectiveness, and efficiency – are the highest priorities and the standard against which different methods should be compared if the ultimate purpose of exercise is to contribute to greater enjoyment of life.

There are a lot of training methods, programs, and modalities which can eventually maximize your strength and overall fitness and functional ability.

Any strength training method performed with a relatively high level of effort, consistently, and progressively, and any program that addresses all the major muscle groups without exceeding a volume and frequency of work your body can recover from and adapt to can eventually get you about as strong and as muscular as your genetics will allow.

Any physical activity or combination of activities performed with a relatively high level of effort, over a full range of joint motions, involving loads meaningful to the skeletal system, can eventually result in significant improvements in cardiovascular and metabolic conditioning, flexibility and bone density.

Any modality that provides the ability to meaningfully and progressively load the muscles – free weights, machines, body weight, manual resistance, isometric stations, etc. – can be effective for this purpose if used correctly.

These things are often pointed out to avoid criticizing or making comparisons between methods, however in any objective comparison of different methods of achieving the same goal one will be best.

Your life, your health, and your time, are far too important to settle for just any training method, program, modality. Accept nothing less than the best.

The Mission

My mission is to promote this philosophy, of training in the safest, most effective, most efficient manner possible to maximize life-long health and functional ability with enjoyment of life as the standard, and to teach the best methods of achieving this.

This will be the purpose of this web site.

This refinement of philosophy and mission are why Elements of Form has been almost completely rewritten and rather than teach will expose the flaws of protocols like rest pause, negative-only, and the misuse of various unnecessary and counterproductive “advanced” techniques like forced reps, forced negatives, drop sets, etc. and why they have no place in a proper exercise program.

This is the reason I sought employment with Overload Fitness and membership in Renaissance Exercise, as they are the best in the field of exercise and represent true advancement in the art and science of exercise performance and instruction.

– Drew Baye

(Original link)

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Adam Lyons. Okay, many of you probably won’t be able to watch it, but still, this is pretty cool: the first pickup ever recorded in 3D. Enjoy.

Nutrition

• Mark Sisson. A very interesting new post about inflammation and how it leads heart disease. Mark has also a very important post on oral contraception that I think you should check out.

Exercise

• Bill deSimone has a new interview up at High Intensity Nation where, for example,  he shares the wonderful meaning of “functional fairy dust”. I couldn’t invent it if I wanted to.

• Keith Norris talks about how he believes the Paleo community has overlooked the importance of resistance training for optimum fat loss and sustained well-being.

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• James Marshall has a new video out on how to go about approaching someone in a park.
• Socrates. Be sure to check out his new blog at Manning Up Smart.

Nutrition

• Anthony Johnson shares his newly discovered Paleo solution to the body odor and deodorant problem: “It’s fucking condensed salt.”
• Richard Nikoley has his new Free the Animal, Beyond the Blog book out. You can read a number of free excerpts and purchase it here.

Exercise

• Keith Norris and Skyler Tanner wanted to invite all 21 Convention fans to Paleo FX, a must-attend event which is gearing up for some serious ass kicking this March in Austin TX.
• Doug McGuff, Bill deSimone, Skyler Tanner and James Steele II endorse Chris Highcock’s new book Hillfit: Fitness for Hillwalking, Hiking and Backpacking.
• James Steele II shares an interesting paper that further supports the separation between physical and skill conditioning.

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Adam Lyons talks about how some of his students are so fixated on the outcomes of their interactions that they might be hindering their practice because the girl they are talking to might not be “the one”.
• Brad Branson puts out a new video blog/free tour video. Discusses how he lost the hottest girl of his life by making a simple mistake.

Nutrition

• Richard Nikoley. After this particular annihilation, people will be more cautious from now on before they write anything that begins with the title “Don’t Eat Like a Cavemen”.
• Mark Sisson explains what inflammation is. Lots of great information on  atopic that is highly relevant to anyone interested on how to eat.

Exercise

• Keith Norris has packed bags and, along with his wife, has moved in to a new place on the Internet: Ancestral Momentum.
• Bill DeSimone’s new book Congruent Exercise is reviewed on The Dream Lounge.

Miscellaneous

• Anthony Johnson officially endorses Ron Paul for president.

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Bravo, Keychain, Matthew Hussey, Rob Judge, Sasha Daygame. All former speakers on The 21 Convention, all part of the Top 10 PUA list for 2011.
• Steve Mayeda’s message from his blog post is: We are all sexual beings, but something, in some point in time, has gone terribly wrong.
• Adam Lyons follows up on his last video to share some tips that will help you ensure you translate your practice into success.

Nutrition

• Mark Sisson writes an open letter to all young kids as an appeal to why they should start caring about their health now, instead of delaying the inevitable. An essential read for everyone, kid or not.
• Richard Nikoley shares an e-mail from one of his readers, who is a nurse, about how she has been ordered by her supervisor not to discuss anything about the Paleo Diet while on work. Not even amongst fellow staff members.

Exercise

• Anthony Johnson demonstrates one of the “most congruent lower body exercise conceivable”: The hip belt squat.

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Brad Branson on plowing and how you can use it to spark a conversation with someone you’ve just approached.
  
• Markus Oakey. Would you like some videos with your bacon? Markus shows us on this amazing video that if you approach someone with emotion, what you say isn’t that big of an issue.
  

Nutrition

• Anthony Johnson. Two interviews by Dr.Mercola with Mark Sisson and Doug McGuff MD.
  
• Richard Nikoley. A hilarious blog post, not for the faint of heart (i.e vegans).
  
• Mark Sisson teaches how to properly read your cholesterol results.
  

Exercise

• Doug McGuff MD. In the future, there will be a chapter on the Fitness History books titled “The Zumba Massacre”.
  
• Keith Norris. “When all else in the world may be completely and insanely bat-shit, an evening’s worth of 225 lb power clean repeats remains comfort food for my physical being.”
  

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Adam Lyons asks: “Do You Practice Dating?”, after an e-mail from a former student makes him think about what separates those who achieve success from those who don’t.
• Sasha Daygame shows us a kiss close from when he was in Budapest, followed by his afterthoughts on the interaction.

Nutrition

• Richard Nikoley. Could it be that we’ll be seeing the release of the Free The Animal book soon? Oh boy.
• Keith Norris. After the blood work, now it’s time to get a look at Keith’s body fat numbers. It also includes a great reminder from Skyler Tanner: “If you’re fat: eat better; if you’re lean: keep eating better”

Exercise

• Doug McGuff M.D joins Mark Sisson to show how to get started with the Body by Science approach to exercise. A lot of skeptic comments on this one.
• Skyler Tanner starts an “exhaustive review” on biomarkers and what the literature says about their effects on longevity. He’ll also be proposing two new ones to start thinking about. Pretty rad stuff.
• Drew Baye discusses the finer points of what is actually meant with the word “Fitness”.

Comment of the week

This is an all new post series from The 21 Convention, featuring the best content from over 50 independent 21 Convention speakers on a weekly basis, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, blogs and more. Check in every Sunday for the latest and greatest independently produced content from T21C speakers.

Male/Female Relationships

• Robbie Kramer, “The Secret Sauce of Attraction“, written blog on attraction, conversation, and confidence.
• Brad Branson releases a new video blog on confidence and pushing your comfort zones.
• James Marshall and Sasha Daygame release a joint infield day game video. Epicness ensues.
• Andy Yosha releases the Day Game Blueprint.

Nutrition

• Richard Nikoley, comments and video on a medical doctor who cured herself of multiple sclerosis —  a supposedly uncurable disease — eating a paleo type diet.
• Mark Sisson, an easy to follow post on how to eat more fat – including the saturated kind. Nuff said.
• Doug McGuff M.D. , thoughts on avoiding lab tests as well as a mini review of a new book Congruent Exercise.
• Keith Norris get’s full blood work done, surprising results, as well as comments from a blood specialist. Doug McGuff MD is vocal on the specialists recommendations.

Exercise

• Skyler Tanner responds to questions and comments about his recently released 21 Convention presentation.
• Drew Baye begins to define exercise, comments on his recent experience trying out a new line of machines.
• Anthony Dream Johnson discusses “reductionist errors in nutrition, exercise, and psychology”, follows up with discussion of exercise recovery.
• Bill DeSimone starts a facebook page for his new book, Congruent Exercise.

Comment of the week