As a red-blooded American, I'll always respect Navy SEALs.  But luckily for my Mom, I could never be one - my poor swimming skills and INTJ personality don't always mix well with authority.  So rather than living out my GI Joe fantasies, I've been experiencing them vicariously with my new favorite book, Extreme Ownership.  

I know what you're thinking, "How can fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq teach us anything about fitness and nutrition?" It's because strong leadership, problem solving, and hard work transcends industries. And I'll take learning wherever I can get it!

As I've done before, below are several parallels between the book and being successful in the gym.  Hope you enjoy them!

Gravity impacts our daily lives much more than we realize.  And no, that title is not a euphemism for weight loss. ;)

But over 90% of us have lingering aches and pains - tight quads, calves, or backs; hip, knee, ankle or back pain.  It may not be painful enough to keep us from our daily activities, but it's enough to know it's still there.

What if I told you that you probably don't have a problem with a particular body part? Instead, you may just have a gravity problem.

I never paid much attention to conditioning.  I thought it was an easy concept to understand.  Do some cardio once a week, hard intervals if you can, and you'll be in shape in no time.  Except if you wanted to build muscle - then don't do any cardio, ever.

And now?  I'm eating my hat.

Thanks to people like Joel Jamieson, our industry has actual science to combat the #broscience.  It's this actual science that's made me change my mind on everything above - we actually need much less interval work; more long slow cardio; and that a proper conditioning plan is incredibly detail oriented.

Below are the three biggest takeaways that anyone can implement immediately into their own programs.

Deadlifts get an unfair shake. Whether it's unfortunate anecdotes - er, horror stories - or numerous YouTube videos of ill-advised attempts, I understand why.

Yet when analyze it, the deadlift is one of the best ways to make people stronger, leaner, and more athletic.  It also does a great job at preparing people for life, which for 99% of us is the actual goal of our training.

So in my attempt to "Make America Lift Again," I'd like to do my part to change the perception of deadlifts.  After all, the empowering and primal feeling of lifting something heavy off the floor is unlike many other feelings you can get in life.  But hitting a baseball around 400 feet is a close second ;)

Below is a 5 minute guide to improve your deadlift and set up.  Let me know what you think!

I'd like to thank The New York Times for contributing to the malaise and hopelessness currently coupled with obesity.

Why?  Because last Monday the Times published After The Biggest Loser, Their Bodies Fought to Regain the Weight.  A depressing account of what happens to contestants after they leave the show, it is. But good journalism? It is not.

Sadly, this newest article adds to the disagreeable and outdated health advice from the Times, or those found in an Op-Ed.  And full disclosure, I'm far from impartial as The Biggest Loser is among my most hated shows on television. Yet I'm also a religious watcher of The Bachelor, so hey, nobody's perfect.

I don't believe the Times had malicious intent, nor were they purposely trying to paint sustained weight loss as some Sisyphean task.  Instead, my main gripe was that they didn't add anything to the conversation and they failed to propose any solutions.  We've known from study after study that losing weight is the "easy" part, maintaining is the hardest.  And the only answers they did provide were bariatric surgery or accepting hunger as the new normal.

The logic and skepticism of our inner scientist should be wary of accepting the conclusions of a small, self-selected study, but it's hard to overlook such a compelling story.  So in an effort to steer the interwebz back to reality, below are 5 ways in which the article failed to cover the entire story: