So I’m going to begin this post by asking you the question, “Why are you here? At this site, reading this post about health and fitness.” Furthermore, if you met with me tomorrow, as your personal coach/personal trainer, what would your answer be to why you are here?

I’ve written several past articles on our warrior philosophy and Why We Train, so no cheating;) JK…But I really do want your answer to come from the heart.

Ok, stop here and think about your answer.

Alright, are you ready? Go ahead and say it out loud.

Good! Let’s start there.

What’s at the root of any answer you might have given? Ask yourself, why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to have more strength, endurance, flexibility? Why do you want to live longer?

Then, once you’ve answered why. Let’s break it down a few more times. Perhaps, you said to find a lover, have bigger muscles for the same reason, run a marathon, or simply for your back not to hurt. If you want to live longer to be with your grandchildren, then what is the purpose of even that.

Of course, you simply want to be happy and share that happiness with those around you!

We all want to be happy and reduce suffering. It’s at the heart of the human condition and it’s the foundation of many philosophies and religions.

But now, I want to paradigm shift with you a little bit. After all, what is happiness? Will you really be happy once you accomplish these things. Perhaps you will, but then ask yourself, “How long will it last?”. What is true happiness anyway?

Now you’re about to discover the true reason for why you are here, in front of me, seeking out the Warrior Way. You’re going to learn the way to train which will sustain you for the rest of your life. Because, we are going to strike at the very source of your true happiness.

GETTING EXCITED? Good:)

You’re going to train to live fully in this present moment, during every movement, rest, and transition. You’re going to learn how to be completely aware of your breath and form ,and through doing so, find the aliveness that resides within you.

Furthermore, you are going to train the nervous system to focus completely in the here and now, and through this process, you’re going to learn how to not let your thoughts and emotions govern you, but rather, how to harness these things to enhance your practice.

Finally, you are going to learn the greatest strength there is, the strength of BEING.

Being is much more important than the amount of weight that you can lift or the size of your muscles. Being is your ability to be present in the midst of the greatest pleasure, struggle, or pain. Being is not being carried away from the present moment through identification with your thoughts and emotions. But rather than being attached to these things, true Being uses thoughts and emotions as tools and allies in your practice to support your further development as a human being.

So, we are going to take your practice from being a completely ego driven function that depends on the past or future to define it, to something that is going to liberate you from the prison of your conventional mind. By liberating your practice from your everyday habits and the conventions of typical training, we are going to teach you how to find a joy, passion, and purpose in movement and exercise that you never thought possible.

So are you ready to join me? Let’s begin training for happiness!

Here’s to unlimited possibilities!

Why is engagement so important?

Engagement encompasses much more than just taking part in a workout program. First of all, ask yourself, “How important is it for your partner or spouse to be engaged in communication with you?”. Not just to mindlessly nod their head or listen with their own agenda in mind, but to fully bring every facet of their being into the presence of your togetherness.

Isn’t the full presence of someone else’s body, heart, and mind what brings the vitality and aliveness to the relationship? Is it possible to have a relationship if someone is never truly engaged?

At Life Warrior, we teach that our relationship to our practice should be similar to the relationship we would like to have with someone else. If we are using someone else just to attain an end goal, what kind of relationship would that be? The process of being with someone is much more important than where that person is taking us. In fact, it is through the process of truly being with each other that produces the bi-products/end results of a satisfactory relationship.

So the real question is, “How would you expect to have a truly successful workout practice if you are failing to engage in a proper relationship with it?”

Within the context of Warrior Training, also known as Body-Mind-Moment Training, we refer to proper engagement into your practice as wholehearted engagement.

Wholehearted engagement is the alignment of our body, heart, mind, and intention into whatever we are practicing and whatever is arising in the present moment. When we are wholeheartedly engaged, we are not simply enacting a practice while our minds wonder and our intention is only to get somewhere, anywhere else but here.

By fully engaging our practice, we are training our bodies and minds to unite together into whatever we are doing. As warriors, our aim is to carry that very engagement into our everyday life.

As warriors, we wholeheartedly engage our life, partner, work, training, family, and each other.

Let this be the context of your fitness practice. Not to use your practice just to get somewhere else, but rather to practice being fully alive.

This is the only path to true success and happiness in life. 

Discomfort Zone: How to Master the Universe

While these are wonderful endeavors, Life Warrior is about something much more. So in this post, I want to address the reasons a Life Warrior trains.

BTW, what defines and motivates your training practice?

I often ask this question to my clients and I, almost always, get the basic answers:

I want to tone, lose weight, look better, build muscle, find a mate, etc. 

These are all perfectly reasonable and valid answers, but if you look closely, you will see they all share a common thread. Take a minute and look at your own goals! What do you see? What is your motivation for training?

Ok, I promise it’s not a trick question. I just want you to honestly evaluate your inner desires and driving forces for your practice, or lack there of;) It’s essential to see this because, more than likely, you have not tapped into the greatest part of yourself, which is why, potentially, you have not succeeded up to this point.

Have you seen it?

All of these driving forces are carried by the need to fit in, to conform to an external opinion, to feel accepted, to look good in society’s eyes. They are all in relation to something else and have to do with an idea of what you “should be”.

Who’s making these rules anyway?

Perhaps you said that you want to simply feel better. Well, you’re getting warmer but you still have yet to tap into your greatest qualities, and often times, your desire to reach for that cappuccino, slice of pizza, or stay at home rather than train will supercede your desire to feel better.

So I ask one more time.

Why Train?

It’s the most essential question to answer because the answer will determine the course and dedication of your practice. It will determine your present and future relationship to your health and will effect you and everyone else around you for the rest of your life.

The answer to this question will determine your discipline and nature of your practice. No wonder most people fail to maintain a sufficient health and fitness regiment. They’ve only scratched the surface of what it’s all about.

Toning, weight loss, building muscle works for a few faithful who inhabit the gymnasium most days, but often times, later in life, when the external forces that were driving them relent, their practice fades. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard of how strong and healthy people used to be.

So why does a Life Warrior train? Well, here’s one answer.

A warrior trains to discover their greater excellence. The greater part of themselves which lies beyond their habituated patterns and which is defined by the society they exist in. I warrior practices health and fitness as they practice life. Through our training practice we learn to fully inhabit our body/minds in this present moment. We learn to observe what is arising without egoic judgement and interpretation.

Through growing our body/minds into this present moment, we become warriors through the “pain” of practice, and by approaching the difficulties of practice we learn to experience more pleasure as well. Not comfort but pleasure that derives from surrender and letting go into the immediacy of the moment.

Finally, through discovering our excellence, through growing our greater capacities, we transform not only ourselves but the world around us. We bring greater joy, peace, and presence to our families, co-workers, and everyone we touch on a daily basis.

So I guess the real question is:

Are you aware of what you’re really capable of?  Are you aware of what lies beyond the small egoic self that you think you are? Are you awake?

Here’s to unlimited possibilities. John Austin, founder of Life Warrior

P.S. To learn more about finding your greater Excellence through your practice. Read Rob McNamara’s book Strength to Awaken. Find out more on our Recommended Books page.

The Path to Mastery page is also a fun place to start.

My primary advice to anyone who begins training with me just before Thanksgiving and who expresses a reluctance to changing their eating habits for this much anticipated “Turkey” holiday is simple: “Change nothing.”

Ha ha, I was hoping you might be surprised. Yes, my primary advice is for you to eat as much as you can possibly eat! Stuff yourself till you can’t move, take a nap, and eat a little more.

I will just ask you to make one simple shift. Cultivate mindfulness around this day! After all, Thanksgiving is a day of gratitude, right?

How do you feel after eating so much?

Does it allow you to be more or less present with those around you?

What is gratitude and how does that relate to my habits on this day?

Let me be clear, I’m not asking you to judge yourself and I’m also not trying to give you any foregone conclusions. You are free to eat all you want. You are free to be as attached as you want to your culinary traditions. I’m just asking you to put a little space around this day and observe what exactly is happening here.

Some things I’ve noticed or asked myself:

Why am I mentally programmed to act a certain way?

Where does this programming come from, inside myself or from someone or something else?

Is my body really enjoying this or is my mind attached to eating a certain way?

What really makes me feel good?

Is “Turkey Day” a good moniker for this day and do I want to support this tradition or could I build a Thanksgiving tradition around something other than this food?

That’s it! I will say that for myself, eating a ton of food isn’t really all that important to me anymore*, but this change has not come instantly and it has been a natural progression out of my current way of being. I’m not asking you to change a thing;) Happy Thanksgiving!

*Notice I didn’t say it’s not important, we are all always growing and none of us is there yet

P.S. This will be my first vegan Thanksgiving! I’m looking forward to making a delicious sweet potato dish (from the Engine 2 diet) filled with lots of veggies. Wish this bachelor some luck:/

The weight loss industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in America. Everywhere you look, from your computer to the television to magazines at the local supermarket’s check-out isle, you are bombarded by “new” programs and images of what you are “supposed” to look like. A sexy, new you is the ongoing promise of a very profitable enterprise.

Here, I challenge you to question this very conventional approach to weight loss. Obviously something is not working since you are poorer than you were yesterday and no better off, while others are getting filthy rich.

I then challenge you to look deeply within yourself and ask a basic question, “Are you happy?” And by asking yourself this very simple question, I’m going to open the door to a new way of looking at your health and fitness.

The Lie Of Happiness Tomorrow

When will you be happy?

When you lose 10 pounds? When you get rich? Or when you go on your next vacation?

Have you ever noticed that when you have achieved certain goals in the past, your mind immediately finds the next thing to focus on. Maybe you experience a brief moment or even a few days of satisfaction, but surely enough you inevitably start focusing on the next thing to give you your dreams.

So even if you do reach your weight loss goal, will you really be happy? More often than not, you won’t reach your goal in the first place because in following a program you hate, you will soon enough go back to what is comfortable.

What if you stopped trying to find happiness in anything other than this present moment?

So if you are tired of thinking that your life will be better tomorrow, I offer you a solution. 

The solution is simple. Stop!

Stop stressing yourself out!

Relax and enjoy the moment, because chances are that you are missing it.

Live in the here and now. Go for a walk or a hike because it’s nice outside. Eat a healthy delicious meal because it’s what your body is really craving. Don’t stuff yourself because you never feel good after eating too much anyway. Take a yoga class because you want to treat yourself. Exercise hard because of how good it feels when your body is releasing endorphines, cleansing itself through sweat, and rejuvinating the heart and lungs.

Maybe you’re not completely there, but I can promise you that the only people who create a sustainable nutrition and weight loss “program” are those for whom it isn’t a program at all. It’s a way of life…and that my friends is warrior weight loss.

Cheers and here’s to unlimited possibilities for you in this life. – John Austin

Click Here to go to our Home Page and learn more about LW

So let’s go ahead and first break through all the myths of a mindfulness practice that keeps most from even attempting meditation:

First of all, mindfulness is not just an Eastern practice filled with chanting and mantras. While meditation was largely cultivated in the East, it has also been practiced by Western teachers, mystics and other spiritual leaders throughout the ages. Mindfulness goes by many names: meditation, centering prayer, focus, calming breath, awareness, or simply “being” and it even has a complete Western, science based practice built around it called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy or MBCT. Therefore, mindfulness does not have to be connected to any religion or even spirituality and can be purely a way to reduce stress and increase happiness in our lives.

Mindfulness does not necessarily involve crossing your legs on the floor for hours at a time.  Mindfulness practice can come in many forms, whether seated on the floor, in a chair, walking in the park, even washing the dishes or some other form of every day exercise which can be transformed into a mindfulness practice. Initially, I thought meditation practice could only be done seated; therefore, it was not a practice I often did because it seemed more like a chore than anything else. However, when I learned that mindfulness could be brought to any aspect of living, I expanded my practice to everyday life and at that point, I actually began doing seated meditation more often because it helped me remember to practice it at those other times. Some of my favorite forms of practices are running in the park and washing dishes.

Mindfulness is not “blissing out” or some form of no thought. I often hear many people say that they cannot meditate because they think way too much. It’s kinda like someone who says they can’t do yoga because they are not flexible or they won’t learn Spanish because they don’t know it already…doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Realizing that we think way too much is actually the first success of a mindfulness practice. Not thinking is impossible for pretty much all of us, especially in America, and will probably not be ceased through meditation. Meditation is simply the observance of our thoughts and in some cases the realization that we are all crazy in some way, shape or form. Meditation then allows you to be mindful of your thoughts and eventually be able to choose what thoughts you’d like to have vs. thoughts that are part of negative patterns and which are defeating your attempts to live a more healthy and fully alive existence.

Mindfulness does not involve getting rid of our goals in life. By taking on a mindfulness practice, you will actually greater enhance your ability to achieve your goals rather than decrease your success in life. Mindfulness allows us to reduce stressors by being aware of our thoughts and choosing not to identify with them. By not identifying with our thoughts, especially our negative ones, we allow ourselves to enhance our effectiveness in the world because we are not brought down by every remark or roadblock. We can simply observe it and move on our way. However, mindfulness does make external goals secondary to the aliveness and awareness of this present moment, therefore, if we do not achieve one of our external goals, it also does not destroy us.

Ok, now that I’ve covered the myths, I want to express why I think that mindfulness is one of the most important things we can do in the West:

Throughout my training career, I can pinpoint one primary reason that causes 99% of failures. This reason, as you can guess, is stress and negative thought patterning. When we are stressed out, it is very difficult to add new things into our lives, no matter how beneficial. Think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We cannot actuallize a new part of ourselves when we are struggling with our emotions and our day to day existence.

This is why, we must begin the practice of mindfulness and make it part of our lives. No matter how stressed you are, I encourage you to find just 1 minute a day to focus on your breath and observe your thoughts. Your only job in that minute is to be completely present with whatever arises in those moments, without judgement. If you think the whole time and don’t find a second of peace or calm, GREAT! SUCCESS! If you’re able to find a second of peace, that is wonderful also. The intention and practice is more important then the level of proficiency reached.

However that minute can eventually turn into 2 or 3, and then you may decide to add mindfulness to some other area of your life. Eventually, you will find that you are less reactive and you are happier in your everyday existence.

Therefore, mindfulness can be inserted into our lives no matter how little room we have for new things. In turn it will create spaciousness into areas where we didn’t know there was any and slowly, it will transform our lives. Then we will transform the world around us by being happier more peaceful individuals.  A lot can come from a little.

Thank you for reading and please come join us sometime at Life Warrior Fitness Studio in Littleton, Colorado! We often add mindfulness onto the beginning or end of the workouts. Sincerely, John

I’ve been in the health industry for 7 years and from what I’ve seen and heard, the gym “out” crowd of health enthusiasts want nothing to do with the gym “in” crowd, and what’s going on inside most modern gymnasiums.

I was out the other day pounding the streets, promoting my business when I came a across a girl picking weeds who looked like she was in pretty good shape. For the lack of a better opener, I said, “Hey, looks like you work out”, at which I got a positive nod in reply. I began to say that I was bringing a fitness concept into the area and that she should join. Then I got a great Colorado response, “I don’t workout in gyms.”

Given the typical gym set up of rat wheels and moving stairs perched in front of t.v’s accompanied by bolted down torture devices, I have a confession to make! I have been a closet self-loather of modern gymnasiums for almost my entire trainer existence. For the first few years, I went along for the ride and would show all the new health seekers how to use the machines, fix the pins, adjust the seats, straighten their spines perfectly and in a robot like motion, move the lever on the machine…but I must say, their was a cognitive dissonance growing in the background of my mind.

Is this how we were meant to move? How does this promote vitality and performance for every day existence?

So these questions would pop up in my head, however, I had to justify my vocation and most importantly my income. Without believing in what I did as a trainer, I wouldn’t sell and, consequently, I wouldn’t have a job.

So to make a long story short, I was riding my bike to work one day and BOOM, the idea of Life Warrior popped up in my head;) Actually, it was much more complicated than that, but after having been to Chicago and having learned and certified through Jon Hind’s Monkey Bar Gymnasium and after having spent so many years in the fitness industry, not completely agreeing with what I was doing, I came up with the simple idea of lifestyle vs. “health programs”. So obvious right? But somehow the whole industry is capitalizing on quick fix mentalities, supplements, and boring machine programs.

Anyway, so back to my point. Life Warrior is a Colorado brand because so much of Coloradian’s have the same mindset as the girl I met picking weeds. If you’ve worked out outdoors while climbing a mountain or riding your bike with the foothills in your peripheral, why in the hell would you settle for a stationary bike with 24 hour Fox New’s playing overhead. Only if it’s freezing, snowing or raining, and even then, some hard core enthusiasts would still find a way to work out somewhere else, far away from a corporate gym.

So why is Life Warrior a Colorado brand? Because we share your disdain of everything I’ve mentioned in this article. We hate staring at our muscles in wall to wall mirrors or gazing at a t.v. while mindlessly humming along on the elliptical. Nothing sounds worse to us at Life Warrior. We want to get outside the box…LITERALLY! Yes, we have an indoor studio to workout in, but we want to help create a lifestyle that can be taken anywhere.

A person can take our workout to the park, throw Jungle Gym XT straps around a tree branch if they like, and get the same exact workout that we would do at our studio! Furthermore, if you are a hiker, runner, climber, boarder, skiier or whatever, you will get much, much more from a full body skill training workout than from randomly pumping up your bi’s and tri’s. Skills are transferable anywhere while pumped up muscles, being trained in a single range of motion, is only good for one thing. LOOKS!…and even that is up for debate.

Lastly, utilizing our yoga and mindfulness techniques, you will be able to much better enjoy your outdoor experience because you are not only feeling great and pain free but you are more present with your surroundings, rather than dwelling in problems that exist in the past or future.

So why is Life Warrior a Colorado brand? I hope I’ve answered that question for you;) Enjoy your weekend and come check out our fitness studio in Littleton! Sincerely, John

Almost every appearance of pain or occurrence of injury is the result of an imbalance in the body. Whether the pain occurs naturally, from day to day movement, or whether imposed by an outside force (ex. fall, hit from something, etc.), it is a sign or the result of something that is put “off” in our physical system.

The product of injury is often rehab, however my main issue with rehab, over my years of observation in the fitness industry, is rehab’s lack of one the most important components in the Life Warrior system. What I have seen is that rehab often lacks a Holistic View of viewing the body, movement, and its environment. Having said this, rehab is very effective at addressing the immediate issues of the injury and getting the individual out of the imposing pain. The problem is that, most of the time, many discrepancies in the physical system are left completely un-addressed and the person is set up for many resulting issues down the road.

For personal training, whenever I meet a new client here at Life Warrior, in Littleton, Colorado, the first thing I look at is their overall movement. How does a person walk, squat or sit in a chair, lunge, push, pull, bend and twist? When I observe these movements, I’m looking for several major collapses or “leaks” in their system. Do the arches collapse, causing the foot to turn out, the knees to turn in, and essentially the pelvis to rotate and cause undue pressure on the spine? All of these things can be seen and felt from one point, the point of connection of our feet to the very ground we walk on.

So to keep it simple, one of the easiest ways I teach my clients to live a pain free existence is to simply teach them to observe the weight of their feet on the ground…the very foundations of our movement as human beings. When proper alignment of the feet cannot be maintained, it is an indication that other muscles in the body are overcompensating, therefore causing the overuse of these muscles rather than evenly distributing the force of movement throughout all the interconnected muscles of the ankles, knees, hips, and core.

To further complicate this issue, most of us have been wearing supporting shoes for our entire lives. Whenever I tell someone that I run and train mostly barefoot, the first question I’m usually asked is how to I get my support. It’s pretty similar to the question people ask when I say I’m plant based….Where do I get my protein? lol

Well, for a long, long, looooonnnnngggg time before the modern era, even before the Greek and Roman Empires, people chased game, climbed, ducked, crawled, lunged, jumped, and played without any support whatsoever. How did we make it this far? And why is the 20th and 21st century rife with a large percentage of our population in all sorts of pain? (BTW, for that same pre-modern period, humans were mostly grazers, eating meat when they could catch it to supplement their plant based diet.)

I’ll let you answer the aforementioned questions, but I’ll leave you with a short answer on how to live a pain free existence. You have get back to the roots of how you were meant to move, which is outside the box of our mostly sedentary lives. Try going barefoot for part of the day, run in the grass in the park, try lunging across the grass feeling the weight even on the front foot and down the middle of the balls of your back foot, squat or sit in a chair without letting your knees go in or out, balance on one barefoot while cooking dinner. Furthermore, when you do decide to pick up an exercise regiment, try not to go into a gymnasium where you will be waiting for a machine, in which you will sit down in the same position you’ve been in all day.

I will finish with the caveat that you have to take it slowly. Use your common sense! If you’ve been in shoes your entire life, don’t expect to throw them off and run 6 miles or even 1, and don’t expect to exercise by jumping up and down if you can’t squat without collapsing your knees and ankles. Just begin by walking around the house and feeling the center of gravity of your feet on the ground. When you sit in a chair, do you shift all your weight onto one small part of your foot or do you keep your weight evenly distributed down the middle of your feet? Even if your heels are lifted, can you keep the weight even between the balls of your feet?

Well…I hope this helps and here’s to getting on the path to living a pain free existence. Sincerely, John, founder of Life Warrior

When I found my daily yoga practice, I also found a much better diet. I no longer needed an hour of cardio a day to keep my weight in check. I still played sports, biked and ran on the beach, but that was icing on the cake – yoga and a plant-based diet kept me slim. As I moved from Florida’s sunny, sandy shores to New York City’s polluted streets, I stopped doing so much cardio, and as the weather got colder, I stopped running and biking completely. Then I took off to travel for seven months, and though I was very active, I was not even doing my yoga anymore – I just couldn’t find the space in the cramped hotel rooms and crowded bus stations.

So here I am, settled at last in Colorado. I got back to my yoga, and I was feeling great. I was skiing, biking, even running a bit. I’d lost my taste for the gym. It’s just not fun, especially if you aren’t looking to bulk up for slim down – I’ve just found better, more fun ways of staying healthy.

When I partnered with John, I knew I’d be going to his classes and learning more about what he does. I accepted that I would have to do “it” – that boot-camp thing that seemed so intense and competitive and so NOT me.

I knew that I was not up to the endurance of it, and I was prepared to take as many breaks as I needed. I went at my own pace, I stopped when I needed to, I tried really hard at the things that I loved, and maybe not so hard at the really difficult stuff. And it was fun. I was surprised how challenging it was for my whole body – not like at the gym, where I used to work out one muscle at a time. As I sat back (during another break) and watched the 64-year-old woman doing the same workout as the 25-year old guy, each going at very different speeds but encouraging each other as they went, I knew that I had found something special. Amanda, partner and lead yoga instructor w/ Life Warrior