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Jason Harrison

The Miseducation of Julio Mateo

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When I spoke to Julio Mateo for 90 minutes at the end of August, Kyle Rittenhouse had just days ago murdered two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Ruth Bader Ginsberg was still alive, and we hadn’t yet learned the inevitable news that the men who murdered Breonna Taylor in her own bed would face no consequences. Every time I sat down to transcribe my interview with Mateo, it seemed that some cloud in our national consciousness would shadow whatever it is I wanted to write.

Julio Mateo

Nearly a month later, Mateo’s message resonates even more clearly than it did before. Mateo, whom I’ve gotten to know a little bit over the past few years in the downtown Dayton scene, is calm, articulate, and thoughtful. He’s a consensus-builder by disposition who moved to the Dayton area to attend Wright State University and quickly ensconced himself in the sort of Dayton positivity movement that encompasses efforts like the Longest Table, the Downtown Dayton Partnership, and UpDayton. 

But something has shifted for Mateo recently after months of involvement in the Community Police Council, particularly after George Floyd’s murder in May and the national uprising that ensued and touched Dayton. He’s gone from unabashed Dayton cheerleader to weary idealist. What follows is an edited (for clarity and conciseness) compilation of our Zoom interview and email exchanges.

Downtown Dayton May 30, 2020

Jason Harrison: I first met you as a dude about downtown, and like everybody seems to know who you are, but I’ve not really known or understood your background or relationship to Dayton. Can we start there and you just tell me when you got here and how you got involved with stuff?

Julio Mateo: I got here in 2002 as an exchange student. I was studying in Spain, where I grew up. I was at a school in Salamanca, which is away from my hometown. And that school when I was a junior developed a relationship with Wright State. It was the first time they had an exchange program with the United States. I had no idea what Dayton was, and I signed up mostly to learn English, and that’s how I got here. Eighteen years ago, almost to the day actually. 

I came [back] for grad school [in 2003]. I did my master’s and my Ph.d. I didn’t finish my Ph.d, I did most of my school work for Ph.d. Around 2012 or so I took a job in a small company in Springboro doing research in human factors. So, decision making, cognitive skills, a lot of cross cultural competence training and research and modeling for the military.

It wasn’t until I moved downtown, which was in 2015, that I really started getting engaged. I connected to the Downtown Dayton Partnership, and Scott Murphy invited me to participate in the Start Downtown initiative, which was to create an ecosystem to support entrepreneurs downtown and to kind of promote that. So that was 2016, and that was kind of like where I got connected to a lot of people. It was mostly about how to make downtown more vibrant at the time.

Right around the same time I learned about UpDayton and I learned about the summit, went to the summit in 2016 for the first time. The Longest Table project was pitched, and I went to the first meeting they had, and I ended up becoming the dialogue committee chair, so developing the dialogue at the table, which is very consistent with the work that I’ve done. I didn’t intend to become the dialogue lead, but I ended up becoming the main point of contact for the person helping develop the conversation at the table. 

Downtown Dayton May 30, 2020

From there what happened is the Gem City Market was also something that came up and what happened is from that whole process between Longest Table and other initiatives, cooperatives, and things like that, I became much more connected to other parts of town besides downtown.  And I started learning and connecting with people from outside, and I became painfully aware of things that I wasn’t really aware of.

I was not very connected to things before 2015 or 2016. And it was a gradual process, right, because it started with Downtown Dayton Partnership and Up Dayton and eventually the Longest Table for example, started moving to different parts of town. So then you have like different meals on the east side and the west side and different areas and then you start like meeting people in those areas and sit at a table and then you start listening to people and you kind of learn about things that have to do with everything. It could be the opioid epidemic, it could be like, you know, blight, or abandoned housing and the impact that has on things like crime. All these sort of things you just learn from sitting at the table. 

The Longest Table had a big impact on me and my process. I learned a lot about Dayton through the process. What started as an interest in downtown walkability and vibrancy and like you know the downtown core, it became much more, you know, downtown will be fine. But I mean there are a lot of things out here that are much more important. 

Harrison: At some point you made your way into the work on policing issues. Talk to me about that process.

Mateo: In 2017, at the time at work we were wrapping up work with the Navy SEALS. We were asked to develop a weeklong training course for the new Navy special operators who were coming in, and we helped develop that and deliver that. The course involved some theoretical parts and there was a very big part that was in a village interacting with role players from other cultures. We developed scenarios based on interviews with former and current Navy SEALS. 

We were thinking about how to transition this sort of training into other areas including law enforcement. So I actually reached out to the Human Relations Council and to the police department. I was trying to partner with them to apply for [Department of Justice] funds, but it didn’t really pan out. 

The Human Relations Council then asked me to be a part of the Community Police Council because of this expertise specifically on cross-cultural competence training. I became part of the council in 2017 I believe.

Wayne Avenue May 30, 2020

Harrison: What were your initial impressions when you joined that effort?

Mateo: My initial impression was that it wasn’t what I expected. So I thought the Community Police Council was gonna be you know kind of, what it’s supposed to be. I thought it was gonna be a joint effort of people from law enforcement and people from the community kind of working together trying to figure out how to improve community-police relations. And technically I guess you could argue it is that but I think what struck me at first was how there was clearly two sides. It wasn’t a group working together to build this together, it was more of a, you know, it seemed to lead conversations in which the community is asking you know we think things should change this way, and law enforcement most of the time is explaining why things are done the way they are or asking how the community can help communicate their message or help people trust them more. It just didn’t feel like a joint effort or a team effort. 

Harrison: You said when you first joined, you thought people would work together.

Mateo: Yeah, so I was expecting, they were asking me to join in part because of this expertise and this experience, and I was expecting them to be asking how they could improve kind of thing. You know what I mean? But it wasn’t that sort of like hey we want the input from community members to figure out how to improve or how to change. In hindsight now I hear this and I think I was very naive to think that. But at the time that’s how naive I was. Clearly as you got into it, it wasn’t a desire to change that brought them to the table. 

Even when the description of how the community police council started, a lot of it was about having community help present the police version to the community in a way that is heard. 

Listening to Mateo talk about what he expected on the Community Police Council was eerily similar to the way former Community Police Coordinator Jared Grandy described his initial experiences. The police were not seeking partners in the community through the council, it seemed, but rather a mechanism of co-option. The baseline assumption wasn’t that the police needed to change anything about the way they did business, but merely in the marketing of their actions. To them, it was a public relations problem and not a fundamental cultural or systemic issue.

After the George Floyd uprisings around the country at the end of May and the beginning of June, the City of Dayton scrambled to respond. What they came up with was a set of five, mostly underwhelming proposals for police “reform,” including five working groups that included dozens of community members.

Harrison: Has that restructuring addressed the lack of partnership (between the police and the community)? Ostensibly that’s why the reorganization happened is we want to make things better. Has the reorganization made things better?

Mateo: Okay, so first of all, I do not think…it has never been presented to us as a reorganization. I mean the CPC still exists the way it was before, although people are a little bit more confused about what our role is. We’ve been asking that question. 

At the time, and we expressed this frustration, the CPC had been working for years. We’ve proposed recommendations, some of which are going to be the same recommendations that will be proposed by the working groups. The frustration was, why can’t we do both? Why can’t we implement some of the things that have been already developed in a room with police with commissioners with the city manager and implement that now and do the working groups. Those two things aren’t incompatible.

The positive thing I would say about the working groups is there is a higher level of transparency that I think is better than it had been at CPC. I still continue to have some skepticism about why this process has to be this long and whether or not the recommendations at the end of the process are going to be eventually implemented in a way that’s going to effect a profound change. 

Mateo serves on the training working group chaired by City Commissioner Darryl Fairchild and Stacy Benson-Taylor, regional director for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. 

Mateo: Honestly, learning about the training that is currently received. It just reinforces this concept that there is more than the training that is being received. There is also a whole culture behind it. The training is all about the concepts of gaining compliance and police legitimacy and making sure that people are basically compliant with police orders. 

From a community standpoint we want to create safer spaces, we want to keep the peace. I actually think the working groups, the way they are being developed right now, are creating a vehicle for the community to learn more about how the police work. I think that’s a positive thing. I think it’s critical to have a more informed public. 

Even after all these years on the CPC, I hadn’t actually been shown the materials, what they actually teach the trainees. Being able to see that for me is a huge improvement. 

Harrison: I’m wondering, having more transparency in the training, have you been impressed in a way you didn’t expect, like some of the training is actually pretty good?

Mateo: I wouldn’t say that. The de-escalation training that is received is almost exclusively about mental health crises. As a community member I would like to see de-escalation being a driver of any situation. Preventing escalation in a police encounter should be the driver whether I’m going through a mental health crisis or not. 

Even the term de-escalation implies that the situation already is escalated. I think many times, the actions of the police officer could escalate. 

The training that they have shared with us was actually developed by the Ohio Peace Officer’s Training Academy. It wasn’t developed by the Dayton Police Department for the Dayton Academy. They are required to teach it as the state provides it from what I understand. So in many ways we’re learning the minimum state requirements for teaching the subjects. And from what we’ve been able to gather, that’s primarily the thing they have been teaching at the Dayton Academy. The working group has the opportunity to recommend things to teach on top of that to enhance the training. 

Looking at what is provided by the state, it does not make me feel any better. For example, when people talk about procedural justice, it’s a tactic to ensure or enhance police legitimacy. That ultimately is the goal, and they say that in the training. Therefore treating people fairly and respectfully is a means to an end. Which conveys a very specific culture, and it separates the community and the police. The language of the training really invites this separation.

Procedural justice is a term well-known in the academic literature on public safety. Here’s how a 2015 paper published in the  St. Louis University Public Law Review explains the the idea. 

Enforcing the curfew May 31, 2020

“Procedural justice focuses specifically on judgments about the interaction between an authority figure and someone who is subject to that authority (such as a police officer and a citizen). Legitimacy, on the other hand, focuses on broader judgments about institutions such as the police, the law, or the government. Although the meaning of legitimacy is currently being debated by scholars, it is generally concerned with whether the authority exerted by an institution is rightful, proper, or appropriate. When the police are viewed as corrupt, brutal, or inept, citizens are unlikely to view them as legitimate sources of authority. In the U.S., several recent use of force incidents have led to a substantial legitimacy crisis in policing, particularly in minority communities.”

Based on Mateo’s description, it seems that the Dayton Police focus on the first part of the theory (the connection between procedural justice and legitimacy) but not the second, which is the perception by particularly black communities that the police are corrupt, brutal, and inept. The police, in other words, assume their legitimacy, while policed black communities try in vain to enact changes they need to see to address corruption, brutality, and ineptitude.

Perhaps no other recent incident illustrates the divide between the way that the City of Dayton—including the Department and its civilian oversight alike—views public safety and the way that huge swaths of the community experience it than the calamitous decision making that went into policing the local George Floyd protests.

Harrison: Talk to me about May 30, May 31. Wayne Avenue.

Mateo: There was a statement on Friday from the [Dayton Police Chief, Richard Biehl], saying that they were going to protect people’s right to express their First Amendment right. I think this is important, the way the situation was framed by the Police Department the day before the protest

The part I never understood [about what happened on Wayne Ave] was the decision to completely block the street, to create the dead end, to frustrate a crowd that had been marching peacefully. These actions are known to frustrate and create high emotions. They didn’t redirect the crowd. They didn’t block the highway if the highway was the concern. They didn’t allow for the peaceful expression of the demonstrators’ emotions and feelings. 

There were also accounts of cruisers pushing from the other side of the crowd, and that eventually led to someone throwing something at a cruiser that was pushing from the other side. And the police were prepared to use tear gas and that’s what they did. If the goal was to keep it nonviolent and to protect people’s right to express their First Amendment right, there were a lot of other tactics they could have used. It just seems like these are tactics that have been proven to elicit this result. 

Having been engaged in these conversations about how can we develop better community-police relations, I would have imagined that the consequences of tear-gassing the community should have been obvious to them by now. It was devastating. And it was not at all perceived to be a big deal by the Dayton Police Department.

Mateo was adamant that his interests are not traditionally political so much as he wishes to see transparent avenues for citizens to be able to make positive changes in their communities. The events on Wayne Avenue seemed to irrevocably change Mateo’s point of view about what community engagement means for him and completed his transition from an idealistic supporter of Dayton to someone acutely aware of how the power structure is failing its people.

He shared with me a personal journal he wrote in the aftermath of the Wayne Avenue protests. 

Enforcing the curfew May 31, 2020

“I am at a loss. I am frustrated, angry, sad, and honestly it feels like a punch in the stomach given all the work I have put over the past three years. I am so disappointed. And I know many of my fellow community members are also disappointed on the actions of the DPD. The CPC was not contacted or involved or questioned regarding those actions. Something needs to change.”

One of the most dangerous aspects of the Trump presidency is it obscures the systemic anti-Black nature of policing that could only exist with Democratic Party acquiescence and collaboration. The police tactics that Mateo found to be so devastating were praised by City leadership in the hours following the protests. 

As I’ve gone back to look at contemporary statements from City leadership from the end of May and the beginning of June, I’ve been unable to find any language remotely critical of the Dayton Police Department’s tactics during those two days of protests. 

“I’ve been talking to other cities across the state of Ohio and they have had the same experience,” Mayor Whaley told WHIO. “The protest goes fine, it is the dissipation of a couple of people trying to get around, trying to get on the interstate, trying to cause some problem. It’s not even the protests, it’s just these small groups. With what they do, they are not set to have their voice heard; they are set to destruct. And so we have to protect the community.”

The current City leadership has all the outward appearances of standing with Black protestors and women. But its actions—enacting curfews to quiet protests, using riot police known to escalate tensions, and launching tear gas some experts believe could have deleterious effects on women’s reproductive health—are at odds with authentically supporting Black Lives Matter and intersectional feminism.

For those of us in Dayton who agree with Mateo that the community needs a process for enacting change, the question is who is standing in the way of that locally? The easy boogieman for progressives over the last four years has been the president, but the more uncomfortable answer might just be the Democratic Party itself. That leaves Black communities stuck between an outrageously racist Republic Party and an outrageously cynical Democratic Party. There has to be another way.

An Interview with Jared Grandy- Former Community-Police Relations Coordinator

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Daytonians joined activists around the country at the end of May in rising up against police brutality following George Floyd’s state-sanctioned murder in Minneapolis over Memorial Day Weekend. All of this led to an awakening of sorts, wherein white people rather suddenly seemed to come to an understanding that racism hadn’t, in fact, been eliminated in the 1960s and anti-Black racism continues to be a driving force in every imaginable sector of American life.

In the absence of a robust organized resistance, Dayton city leadership and police were able to squash local discontent by Sunday, May 31st, when a 7 PM curfew enforced by armored military vehicles, helicopters, and eerily fascist police announcements threatening arrest cleared the streets, paving the way for Mayor Nan Whaley to declare “Black Lives Matter” even after her city government used the very tactics activists have been marching in the streets to dismantle.

It was against the backdrop that I wanted to speak to someone who’s been at the forefront of trying to solve the problem of municipal police states since well before white people began paying attention. Jared Grandy is the former community-police relations coordinator whose resignation coincided with the national unrest over police brutality. The story he told me over a nearly 90-minute talk holds stark lessons for how high the mountain is that we must climb in Dayton if we care as much about equality and justice as public proclamations and social media say we do.

Jared Grandy

Grandy was the type of civil servant every Daytonian should want out of a city worker. Born and raised in Dayton and a graduate of our public schools who found his passion for learning at Sinclair Community College before undergraduate studies at the University of Cincinnati and law school at Northern Kentucky University, he represents the best of who we can be as a city. 

What he found, however, when he assumed the community-police relations coordinator role, however, wasn’t a welcome mat rolled out for someone with deep roots, a solid legal understanding, and a passion for the city. Instead he ran face-first into Dayton’s bipartisan white supremacist foundation.

Jared Grandy: The reason I was interested in that particular position [community-police relations coordinator], is because at the time I was naive enough to think that, you know, there was a difference that could actually be made locally.

By that time, I mean, that was 2016, so we’ve seen Trayvon Martin, Alton Sterling, Michael Brown, John Crawford, on and on and on, and I just thought this was an opportunity to make a significant difference in my local community, in my hometown, the town I know and love so much, and you know over time it just became apparent that it wasn’t the case that we were there to make any significant change. 

Jason Harrison: What made you think that? Well, how quickly did you make that realization?

Grandy: Relatively quickly. Within a few months I realized that [Dayton Police] Chief  [Richard] Biehl and the Commission to a certain extent wasn’t interested in having the difficult conversation. You would hear Chief Biehl even say to this day that the CPC (community-police council) was about mutual accountability which is another way of saying that you know the community is responsible for ending its own gun violence and we’re here to help with that process. And I don’t necessarily disagree with that, right? That idea of mutual accountability, yes, we are responsible for our community but don’t make that assumption that there aren’t people working on those issues. You know there’s pastors and youth leaders and private organizations that’s been working on gun violence in the urban environment for years across the country.

Harrison: It’s the old trope about “black on black crime.” Just because you’re not aware of the work that’s being done—

Grandy: Correct. That’s exactly it. And Chief is smart enough and savvy enough to not say “black on black crime,” you know he just says “mutual accountability” instead.

Harrison: It’s rebranded.

Grandy: Yeah. It’s just rebranded. That’s my issue with Chief Biehl specifically is he’s so good about using the same old tropes, rebranding them, sounding progressive, sounding liberal, and I think the community gets confused about what they got. With Trump, we know exactly what we have. When you tweet “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” that’s a pretty clear message, right? But when you say, you know, we’re working on this issue, we care, you think you have somebody who’s listening and progressive but in reality the policies that are implemented are no different than what a conservative like Trump would implement. And that’s what we get stuck with. 

The Dayton Daily News reported Grandy’s resignation as the community-police relations coordinator on June 3rd, just hours before Mayor Nan Whaley held a press conference announcing five police “reforms.” The timing of the city’s press conference—just hours after the Dayton Daily report on Grandy’s resignation—raises questions about whether that press conference was intended not to begin a process of reform but to distract us from Grandy’s message. (Two of the five reforms are mere continuations of existing policy).

Aside from Grandy’s eloquent rage, what I found most interesting about the article was how Chief Biehl used time-honored tactics intended to silence, dismiss, and discredit. But the quotes attributed to the chief fail to puncture Grandy’s arguments and instead serve to highlight just how steeped in supporting status quo white supremacist notions of “objectivity” the Dayton city government is.

Responding to Grandy’s contention that the Dayton police have a “warrior-like” mentality—an accusation I’ve heard from other people close to police officers—Biehl didn’t offer a substantive response, and instead chose only to offer that “Grandy’s three-year experience doesn’t compare to the decade-long relationship his department has with the Community Police Council.”

This is the part of Grandy’s story that I think is worth every Daytonian considering, and it’s a story that every Black person in this country will find familiar. The city was hostile to the idea of meaningfully transforming the police, Grandy recognized this quickly, and left when his conscience wouldn’t allow him to continue giving the city cover for its anti-Black policies. Then that resignation is used as proof that somehow Grandy isn’t serious about making positive change, despite the fact that he’s dedicated his entire professional life to the uplift and security of Black people. 

Grandy simply wasn’t “objective” enough to do his job—which led to two separate write-ups in his personnel file—but the problem is how that objectivity has been traditionally defined in Dayton and around the country. White people have always been in charge of defining who is objective and who isn’t. They’ve even been able to define what data are and are not objective. 

When Grandy and I spoke at my personal training studio, the tense protests that had swept through the country were still fresh. So I brought up an infamous moment from Buffalo when police officers brazenly pushed an elderly man, causing him to fall, hit his head, and sustain serious injuries. Here’s how a police spokesman initially described the event:

“…a 5th person was arrested during a skirmish with other protestors and also charged with disorderly conduct. During that skirmish involving protestors, one person was injured when he tripped & fell.”

Tripped and fell. Thankfully there was a viral video to show otherwise.

Harrison: The passive language is how they’ve been able to get away with it.

Grandy: So, okay. While I was with the CPC, for two years in a row we commissioned and released this data report. Right? And the findings were that the vast majority of use of force incidents that were reported were investigated by the professional standards bureau and those officers were exonerated, right? You could look it up, but I think it was 847 instances of use of force and 841 of the incidents were exonerated.

Harrison: 841 out of 847.

Grandy: Yes. Meaning that, you know, yes, the use of force happened, but the use of force was sanctioned and all was good, right? 

Harrison: Honestly when you said that I was thinking it would be like 80 percent or something like that. That’s damn near 100 percent. 

Grandy: Almost 100 percent. I mean, for statistical purposes that’s 100 percent.

I did look it up, by the way. Grandy’s recollection was exactly right: 841 out of 847 exonerations. You can read the 2018 report here.

Grandy: I was no longer interested in commissioning that data report because the data itself was so biased and it told a false story. Because the data suggests that yes we arrest people and yes we use force but the force is necessary. If the police determine what force is necessary then of course there is going to be a bias.

Which is why I talked to Dr. Richard Stock from the University of Dayton who we paid to do the report, and he said “I can’t figure out how to account for that bias.” So I’m like I’m not doing it anymore because I’m not advancing the narrative that cops are using force legitimately for all practical purposes 100 percent of the time. 

Harrison: This is like the racist claim that like, well Black people commit more crime. 

Grandy: Yeah. For sure. For sure. It advances that. And if you read the FOP response to my resignation they use that in there. They say well Jared Grandy praised the police and reported that most use of force was legitimate. And that’s such a mischaracterization of what happened. Yes, I did at the time praise the professional standards bureau for the way they do their investigations. It was very transparent. It seemed to be thorough. But they left out the part, which never made it to Commission because Commission is this Disney presentation, you know, it’s not meant for hard-hitting conversation. It’s a PowerPoint slide for goodness sakes. Right? But you know, to take that presentation without the context of the conversations that had prior to that presentation and prior to that report where we discussed at length the implicit bias and favor of the police department in this data. So I was frustrated.

Harrison: Did you find that a tension between being a city employee and doing that work?

Grandy: Yeah. I mean, yes. 

Harrison: That’s a perfect example of like, that was a big part of a conversation, but then when it comes to present it publicly there’s pressure—

Grandy: For sure. For sure.

Harrison: There’s a machine here now.

Grandy: Correct. That’s what I’m getting at. There’s a machine. Everything is hunky dory coming out of the commission. Everything is hunky dory when the mayor speaks. So as a city employee, as somebody who works directly under the commission as an HRC employee, of course. Of course I feel the pressure to get on board with that culture, because if I’m the one dissenting opinion then I am the one who is, you know, you have to get rid of that right? 

Jared Grandy is one of the rare people who has been willing to sacrifice the comfort of his public service job to sound the alarm for the rest of us, all the while offering a discomfiting glimpse inside the Democratic Party machine that stands in the way of the transformation necessary to build equality for Black people in the city of Dayton.

I asked Grandy about those personnel write-ups mentioned in the Dayton Daily News article. He said that people were more upset that that was included in the article about his resignation than he was. 

Grandy: People were a lot more offended on my behalf than I actually was. I’m like “Yes! I had a problem being objective. Like, sure, I’m a Black man, of course I’m going to side with the people every time. The thing is they wanted me to be an objective facilitator of conversation. Which at times I tried to be, but over time I realized that some of these people [from the community] wanted me to open the door for more contentious conversation so as to feel like we were making some progress because beforehand, my first year-and-a-half in, I’d invite people to CPC and kid you not, I quote, “Jared this is bullshit I don’t want to be a part of this,” right? “Because why are we here? We’re not talking any of the things that really matter to the community.” 

What Grandy did was even the playing field for ideas, such that the voice of the people was elevated to be equal to those of the officials in power. He had the temerity to declare their lens of the world as critically important in a city and a country that views the white lens as normative. 

Grandy: I wanted to give them permission to talk about the issues that they really cared about. Prior to that moment what we had, was, you know, even though we had very smart courageous people on the CPC, it’s intimidating to have the chief of police, the city manager, the commissioners, sitting there, and they took advantage of that power dynamic and they really controlled the narrative.

The Dayton Daily News article about Grandy’s resignation was a case study in attempting to control the narrative. “Grandy has struggled to maintain neutrality in his role as community-police relations coordinator and serve as a facilitator, instead of an advocate, according to a January 2020 performance improvement plan in his personnel file.”

But Grandy isn’t ashamed of those write-ups. He’s proud. And we should be too. 

Grandy: That whole article to me was like, yes, indeed, I did all of this stuff. When my grandkids read this article they’ll be proud because I’m on the right side of history.

Jason Harrison’s Words From The Vigil Last Night

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Jason shares the words he spoke in front of thousands last night on Fifth Street at the Vigil for those killed in the Oregon District.

“It’s in the spirit of male loneliness to imagine that someone has to suffer for it,” Ohio native Hanif Abdurraqib writes in his book of essays, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.” I read this line a few years go, and I’ve always remembered it as a perfect encapsulation of male fragility.

The details are still emerging, but what we do know is that a young obviously angry man with access to a killing machine descended upon our neighborhood last night and made people suffer.

I hope what grows in this moment is the courage for us to examine the violent illness with which this country has always suffered. No longer anomalies, these mass shootings are a reflection of who we are and who we have been. It’s not good enough for us to say “we’re better than this.”

Because we’ve not been.

But we could be, if we had the courage to reimagine what a just, equitable, and safe society looked like. If we had the courage to examine the anger of men with the same amount of vigor with which we interrogate immigration, terrorism, or people of color protesting injustice.

Rest in power to those who no longer are with us. Peace and strength to the families and to the injured who must figure out a way to live now.”

 

Signing Off

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Today’s will be my last regular column for Dayton Most Metro, though I hope to contribute from time to time if I have something meaningful to say. Thank you, fearless reader, for putting up with a column that was supposed to be about fitness but quite often was about whatever I couldn’t stop thinking about.

jason-turned

I came back to the Dayton area somewhat grudgingly last year. I think it’s important for me to admit that. I came back for family considerations. I didn’t come back because this is the place I would have chosen. And yet I’ve already managed to form deep and meaningful friendships that I’ll have for a lifetime. I’ve been able to build a business here in a manner for which I don’t have to compromise my values. I’ve been able to live and work downtown in exactly the type of urban, diverse, and textured neighborhood I’ve always craved. Maybe I came back to town grudgingly, and maybe there are times when I crave even more diversity, even more density, and even more texture. But Dayton has been great to me and this column has played a significant role in that.

I’m making the difficult decision to walk away from regular weekly contributions because of time. My gym is getting busier and my ability to write for my business–I largely neglect my newsletter for sometimes months at a time–has waned. I owe it to Present Tense Fitness to devote more of my finite energy to ensuring that it and the messaging surrounding it survives and thrives.

Every week as I’ve sat down to write in this space, I’ve tried in part to write for the people who are sitting on the sidelines of fitness. I’ve tried to write in a way that’s accessible and that ties together the seemingly disparate threads of life that come together to form a healthy body and soul. Often what you’ve read here is me thinking out loud. So many millions of Americans–and the vast majority of those who live in our region–don’t get enough exercise or eat well enough to avoid the utterly preventable lifestyle diseases that plague this country. My guess is I’ll still be trying to figure out the messaging around fitness for people who avoid it for many years to come. But this column was a public platform for me to try my hardest to push that boulder up the hill. Though you won’t see me here nearly as often, I promise you that every day in the Oregon District I’ll continue to figure out how to get more people to do a thing that will measurably enhance their quality of life. That’s my work.

This column has allowed me, forced me even, to look at Dayton through a different lens. Because fitness is my business and my life, I tend to take a wellness view of a community. So even when I ventured into socio-political topics like Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ rights, I wasn’t consciously doing so in order to push any particular agenda. These issues are in fact wellness issues. I hope I’ve persuaded at least some of you to see them that way too. This week has been an unfortunate reminder of how unwell we are as a country in so many ways. The solutions, like the problems, will be complex. But they will involve first a thorough understanding of our shared humanity.

I’ve coached enough people over the last ten years that I’ve seen patterns, and I recognize them here in Dayton. People tend to be incredibly unforgiving of their own shortfalls, and that extends into the larger community such that we refer reflexively to certain people as thugs or white trash. When we use terms like this we’re inherently engaging in a form of dehumanization. This needs to stop. I push my clients all the time to analyze and evaluate rather than judge their own behavior. This mindfulness is what we’ll need to see the multi-dimensional humanity of all of our neighbors. Mindfulness and empathy are practices that you can start on your own, and I think you’ll find that the better you get at removing judgment of your own actions, the more likely you’ll be able to see your neighbors and their actions with empathy.

Thank you to Lisa Grigsby for giving me this platform for so long and for being so encouraging of how I’ve chosen to use it. And thank you especially to Teri Lussier, a local real estate agent and Dayton Most Metro contributor who introduced Lisa and I and first suggested the column.

Be well, Dayton. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions or need encouragement around fitness.

Yours very truly,

Jason

J Crew, Stretchy Jeans, and Donuts

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I dress pretty much like a child on most days. Take a look at a school bus stop near you, and then take a look at what I wear to work every day. You’ll struggle to notice a difference (other than the balding hair line and aging face). Despite my propensity for dressing like an adolescent, somewhere along the line I got subscribed to the J Crew catalogue for men. Maybe they felt sorry for me.

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I was flipping through the catalogue and I happened upon this bit of copy that I haven’t been able to get out of my head:

Stretch Jeans That Don’t Look Stretchy

That’s the title. And there’s a thin looking model dude bounding down some urban steps on his way probably to jump on a bike to grab some organic sushi or something.

“Thanks to top-quality Japanese fabric we source from one of that country’s original denim mills, they look just like all of our famous jeans. Which means now you can wear slim denim and eat doughnuts.” (emphasis in the original quote)

This copy bothers me on three fronts.

1.) The Settling

You know what? Forget it. Just wear stretchy jeans. You’ll never fit into regular jeans anyway. So here’s some stretchy fabric that might look decent for your fat butt and fat thighs and fat stomach. Fatty.

That’s what I read in this ad. Juxtaposed with the skinny dude accompanying the copy, I just find this offensive.

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2.) Overeating = Only Reason Skinny Jeans Don’t Fit

The second thing that bothers me about this ad is the idea that eating to excess would be the only reason that someone can’t fit into some skinny jeans. Let me tell you something. Try to imagine an octopus on dry land riding a unicycle. That’s what I look like trying to put on a pair of skinny jeans. My ass and thighs just simply refuse to be associated with skinny jeans. They don’t want to be in the same room with them. They’re offended by the idea of skinny jeans.

And it ain’t the donuts.

It’s the squats, deadlifts, lunges, good mornings, Romanian deadlifts, and kettlebell swings. Don’t get me wrong, I can put away some donuts. But these thighs just ain’t ever gonna fit into skinny jeans. So why condescend to the people you’re selling to by suggesting that the only reason one might not fit into skinny jeans is that they overeat? I get it. It’s supposed to be funny. But, no. That’s a swing and a miss.

3.) It’s Just Bad Marketing

The thing I can’t shake about this copy is that it’s just bad marketing. It doesn’t fit the brand. J Crew usually seems to be marketing to a relatively sophisticated group of people who care a little about the fabric, the aesthetic, the origin of the clothes they’re wearing. Right? So why would you wink and nod to a guy sitting on the couch with his hand down his pants mainlining powdered donuts? It’s just the wrong audience.

Sometimes when you’re selling something, especially an aesthetic, cute just isn’t the way to go. And if you’re going to wade into what I think are the much needed waters of sizing clothing for a diverse group of bodies, don’t insult the very people to which you’re ostensibly marketing. I don’t know much. But I know that.

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On strength: Just Go and Learn To Be

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Fitness is full of meaningless platitudes, and I try to avoid trafficking in them as much as possible. So when I use social media to post some turn of phrase, I try my best to ensure that there’s meat behind it.

We have a chalkboard at Present Tense Fitness that I use to convey different messages. Sometimes it’s just exposition like, “hey we’re doing this thing on Sunday.” Other times I just try to write something that’s been on my mind.

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This week I changed the chalkboard to say “You’re quite likely exponentially stronger than you perceive yourself to be.” I posted the picture to Instagram while cleaning the gym, and I woke up to find such an incredible response that I thought I’d explore the chalkboard idea a bit more in this space.

I tend to think about fitness metaphorically, though I try to avoid that as much as possible because connections between the gym and life can become overwrought very quickly. (No, you’re not a warrior just because you worked out hard in the gym.) But I want to tell you about specific experiences I’ve had as a trainer that I think are directly linked to the sentiment expressed on that chalkboard and why that messaging resonated so much with people.

Women have asked me about training just as they were escaping abusive relationships. The language they’ve used in explaining why they were interested in getting stronger was strikingly similar, so much so that these conversations have stayed with me in a truly meaningful way.

“I want to get stronger because I’ve been abused and I want to feel strong. I want to do something for myself.” It’s as if these women wanted to express their physical strength to remind themselves how strong they can be everywhere else. They’re not living some Wonder Woman fantasy in which they beat up their abuser. But they understand the connection between their own physical being, their emotional being, and their health.

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I was speaking to a client recently about a big promotion for which he’s aiming, the kind of promotion that makes careers. He’s close to getting it, but he has a a time-intensive application and interview process looming. He told me that while we’ve been working out recently he’s been thinking about that promotion. Each difficult repetition and the focus required to complete it successfully teaches him, he said, how to focus on what he wants outside of the gym. His physical being is one with his intellectual and professional being. There is no separation.

I’ve had older clients tell me about how strength training has reminded them how to be alive (!). I’ve had parents of adolescents I’ve worked with tell me that strength training changed their children’s lives forever.

Understand that this extraordinary feedback isn’t about me, and also understand that I’m not trying to be falsely modest. I was having a conversation with someone this week who attends Speakeasy, and they described a transcendent experience. Your coach or yoga teacher needs to be competent; I’ve seen terrible training or direction in yoga destroy someone’s drive to exercise. But assuming you have a competent and engaged teacher, these experiences that people describe go beyond the teacher. These experiences are about discovering the self, the connectivity between mind and body. The coach is there sometimes just to give you a nudge here or there, but mostly he’s there to allow you to find that connection yourself.

If you’ve never experienced what it feels like to be strong, I’m writing this for you. You feel like you’ve never been strong, and therefore you can’t be strong. But there is strength in you. I know this from working with countless people who viewed themselves as too fat/weak/thin/black/gay/female/clumsy/average/damaged/scatter-brained/smart/stupid/broken/abused/distracted who eventually discovered their own strength. Sometimes it takes only one session. Sometimes it takes half a year. But it’s in there.

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I think that Instagram post resonated because people actually know this to be true already. They’re just waiting for someone else to recognize it too before taking the leap into running/yoga/strength training/Crossfit/Pilates. Maybe that’s you. I know it’s me on some days. But you’ll never know how strong you can be until you lace up the shoes and go.

Just go, and in the process you’ll learn to be in a way you previously thought unimaginable.

Should You Be Scared to Train?

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Your first session with a personal trainer should not leave you wrecked. Ever.

I’m beginning to realize why so many people are nervous before coming to see me. It can take people six months before deciding they want to train before they actually walk through our doors in the Oregon District. Why?

Fear.

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve worked with clients who tell me that they did a session with a personal trainer that nearly killed them. There’s no excuse for this, and the only reason you should walk away from an initial personal training session feeling destroyed is a combination of ego and incompetence on the trainer’s part. Period.

Some personal trainers use detailed assessments like the Functional Movement Screen to determine what your strengths and weaknesses might be. Others take a no less serious approach toward assessment but are nevertheless not quite as regimented. Regardless, your very first session with a good trainer will be far less about making you work and far more about understanding where you are in your fitness journey.

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I was that guy once. When I first started training in New York, my clients were smart, wealthy, and sometimes powerful people. They hired me and often tried to dictate what the session looked like–and I was insecure and stupid enough to go along. They had a preconceived notion of what hiring a trainer should look like and I obliged. The more I learned, the better I got, and the more secure I became, the more I wrestled control of the session away from the client.

That might sound strange to you. Shouldn’t the client dictate what the session looks like? Not at all. The client should dictate what her goals are, but then it’s up to me through experience and analysis to develop the right pathway to those goals. Clients think those pathways are built upon a foundation of ass-kicking workouts, when usually the answer is progressively overloaded multi-joint strength movements, thoughtful rest intervals, and sound nutrition. A good coach will push you just beyond your current capacity such that your body must change as a result, but not so far past your limit that you injure yourself, vomit, or can’t move for days.

It can be difficult as a consumer to determine who’s good and who’s not good. Web searches won’t necessarily tell you what you need to know about a trainer’s approach and experience. My advice? Use your social network. Ask friends who’ve hired trainers for their recommendation. Chances are if your friends received good, long-term results you might have a shot at it too.

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The good news is if you hire well you’ll have nothing to be nervous about during that first session. And hopefully you’ll look back six months from now in amazement at how much harder you’re able to work than you were during that first workout. That’s the way strength and conditioning works: you get a little better each day.

A Lifter and a Yogi Walk Into a Room (Part II)

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Last week I published the first part of an email conversation between local yoga practitioner Anna Shearer and me. This is the second half of the conversation, in which Anna asks me questions about my recent experiences working with her on the yoga mat. While I’ve done yoga before here and there, the one-on-one practice I’ve started with her has been the most consistent yoga I’ve ever attempted. So she had a few questions for me about that…

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Anna: What preconceived notions did you have about yoga before you started practicing it?

Jason: Probably the most important preconceived notion I had about yoga before I started practicing with you was that I don’t enjoy it. And before I make it sound like I’m yoga guy now decked out in Lululemon from head to toe, I should say that I still have moments of panic on the yoga mat. I don’t “enjoy” it the way I do strength training.

But what I’ve realized as I’ve gotten more serious about my own pursuit of strength over the last year is that yoga can be an integral part of getting stronger. And I almost hesitate to say that out of offending anyone who sees yoga more as a spiritual practice. But practically speaking, I’ve felt better in my body since I began practicing yoga with you, and the numbers in the gym indicate that it has helped me get stronger. That sense of efficacy is not one that I anticipated at all. I mainly expected to just feel uncomfortable.

Anna: What advice would you offer to people who want to begin a yoga practice?

Jason: I think having a good teacher is probably more important in yoga than it is in strength training. What I do is fairly intimate, but not nearly as much as yoga. I know really good coaches who approach strength training with clinical precision, and you really can get stronger and leaner with an approach like that. But I think yoga necessitates a sincere bond between teacher and student. So I think it’s paramount that people try out one of the myriad studios or teachers in the area. It seems to me that in yoga, the “better” teacher might not necessarily be better for the individual if the vibe isn’t right.

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Anna: What has been your favorite part of your practice thus far?

Jason: I have a fairly big insecurity around letting go completely. You and I were talking about this recently, but I’ve never been a big drinker or drug user, not because of any moral aversion to stimulants, but because I’ve always been worried that if my inhibitions were lowered enough that the “real” me would come out and people would hate that version of me. I try to stay fairly “held” in my work as a trainer, in part because I don’t want my reactions to things to elicit any sort of shame or guilt on the part of a client.

That sense of holding onto my own self, not revealing too much, can be incredibly limiting. I’ve found that yoga allows me the opportunity to try to be completely open in a way that is safe and encouraging. I can channel rage and aggression under a barbell, and I ‘d go so far as to say that rage and aggression can be necessary at certain loads under a barbell. And that’s definitely a part of my humanity.

But I think yoga has forced me to reckon with another honest part of my humanity too, which is to say vulnerability. And it’s quite possible this has nothing to do with yoga itself, but in surrendering in a sense to the guidance of a teacher I trust. But if I had to guess I’d say it must have something to do with the practice itself. At the end of each practice, in the calm and still room, I feel a sense of accomplishment. And that feels good. But I also feel a sense of calm in those moments that I rarely allow for myself. That’s a pretty powerful thing, but I have a lot of work to do to give myself permission to feel that more often.

A Lifter and a Yogi Walk into a Room (Part I)

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I’ve written in this space before about the false choice between strength training and yoga. Today I want to report back that I’ve been putting my money where my mouth is. Yes, I’ve been on the yoga mat with some regularity lately. I’ve been trading strength training sessions for yoga sessions with local teacher Anna Shearer, who offers one-on-one private yoga at my gym. (She also teaches classes around the Dayton area.)

We’ve been talking about what we’ve been learning from one another, and because we thought it might be a good idea to capture some of those discussions we decided to interview one another for this space. Here’s the conversation, conducted over email this week.

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Anna Shearer/Photo credit: Andrew Thompson

Jason: How have you had to change your eating and recovery strategies since you started lifting weights?

Anna: This is such an interesting question for me! As I started making some big time shifts in my life I dreamed of teaching yoga full-time and what that lifestyle would be like. I imagined having the time to be connected to the ritual of eating…to be present and connected as I made myself a nice, healthy breakfast in the morning. When I started really getting into the thick of teaching I found myself eating in much the same way as I had prior…quickly, on the run, and while multi-tasking to complete other obligations. When I began strength training the increased intensity the weights put on your body required me to really think about consciously fueling. I found myself planning my meals so that if I was away from my home all day I would have the nutrition on hand to help me recover after a session. More importantly, I found myself taking the time to be present and connected – making and enjoying a full breakfast rather than running out the door with a meal bar. In a way, my strength training efforts brought me closer to that yoga lifestyle I was envisioning! I’ve also created space for more sleep and I work with foam rollers, acupressure mats, and massage with essential oils…I’m feeling better than ever!

Jason: What would you want someone who only practices yoga to understand about strength training based on your experience?

Anna: Before I stepped on the training floor I was assuming a strength session would be full force exertion almost continuously for that hour. The sessions are much more strategically geared with points of effort and points of rest. The balance of the two is in line with my yoga experience and I felt right at home.

Also, in terms of the physical postures of yoga, we can only put so much time/effort toward a posture before we succumb to the law of diminishing returns. Take handstand for example. There’s only so many times you can effectively kick up into the posture while keeping key areas engaged and maintaining good alignment…and a well-rounded practice, of course, doesn’t consist of only practicing handstand. So what we can do to supplement our practice is to work with strength training moves that isolate key areas of the body, ones we want to specifically engage in particular postures, so that we’re finding body awareness in those areas outside of actually being in the yoga posture.

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Anna Shearer/Photo credit: Andrew Thompson

Jason: What has been your favorite movement or exercise thus far?

Anna: It’s difficult to narrow it down…as with yoga, there is so much variety and everything has its own uniquely appealing energy. In my experience so far I definitely have a top three.

1. Turkish Get-Ups – they’re like a beautifully choreographed dance and as I moved through the different segments of this exercise it felt familiar like the flow of a yoga sequence.

2. Dumbbell overhead press – this one feels natural in my body and as I work through the reps and sets it becomes almost like a meditation through movement.

3. Medicine ball slams – this one initially felt awkward because it requires some really fierce/aggressive energy…but after settling into a rhythm I came to love the intensity and all out brute force!

Jason: What I’ve found particularly interesting about training Anna is that she does everything beautifully. Her thousands of hours on the yoga mat have given her a body awareness that few people possess.

Next week, you’ll see my answers to Anna’s fascinating questions.

Anna Shearer holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and international business from Ohio University and has trained for and run multiple Tough Mudder races along with a half marathon. She is a graduate of Indigo Yoga Dayton’s teacher training program and you can find her teaching classes a various studios in the Miami Valley. Sometimes you can find her lifting progressively heavier things in the Oregon District. You can email her at anna@presenttensefitness.com.

Eating well can be hard. How to make it easier.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately. Like, a lot about food.

My inability to consume enough calories is the one thing holding me back from achieving my strength goals. Caloric and sleep deficits are the biggest complaints that college strength and conditioning coaches have about their young athletes, according to my deeply unofficial poll. I’m starting to understand why.

Let me say that I recognize that my inability to eat enough food is a profoundly unimportant obstacle in the scheme of the universe. With so many people suffering from obesity on the one hand and malnutrition on the other, I should be happy with the fact that I’m able to consume the calories that I need to stay alive and feel healthy. I also grew up in a household in which eating real food and lots of vegetables was more often the norm than not. So I’ve never had a problem with being an overweight kid.

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But I do have goals in the gym, and effort under the barbell isn’t the major impediment in the way of me achieving them. Rather, it’s those many hours outside of the gym that have been getting in my way. The last month or so have been valuable for me as a coach because I’m learning how hard the lifestyle changes most of my clients need to make can actually be. I’ve hit a stride with my eating lately, so I thought I’d share with you how I’ve been able to eat more calories and how you might infuse my own approach into your lifestyle–even if your goal is a caloric deficit with some weight or fat loss.

Planning Ahead

I’m generally not an advocate for spending several hours in the kitchen on a Sunday and cooking enough food for a high school football team. It turns cooking–what can be a beautiful, soulful, and sometimes even sensual process–into an assembly line Henry Ford would have been proud of. Yet I’ve had to learn to build a bit more assembly line cooking into my food week in order to eat more. On Sundays I’ll cook up more chicken breasts than I think I’ll need, more vegetables than I think I’ll need, and some sort of starchy carb (like rice or sweet potatoes). This provides me with easily accessible lunches that hold enough calories and nutrient density to fuel my days.

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  • Fat loss version: Looks almost exactly the same. You’ll be surprised how much food you need to prepare in order to eat well. Vegetables are cheap compared to other foods, so buy a lot of them and make it your specific goal to eat ALL of them. Also, don’t make this too complicated. Instead of making a bunch of different types of vegetables, make one big batch of, say, spinach and broccoli sautéed together. Then switch up next week.

Considering the food part of the workout

This is probably the most important mindset shift I’ve made, and it corresponds with my numbers in the gym moving rather dramatically in the right direction. I’m deadlifting numbers for multiple repetitions now that I previously would have been happy to get off the ground once or twice. What’s the difference?

Several months back I would do a heavy deadlifting workout and then rush to train a client somewhere across town. Having my own gym space has allowed me to lift hard and then fuel myself immediately. I can’t overstate how important this has been to my development. Now, I don’t consider the workout done until I’ve eaten. Replenishing my pool of amino acids with protein and my glycogen stores with carbohydrates in the aftermath of my workouts has helped me mitigate soreness while also preparing my body for the next round of lifting.

  • Fat loss version: The connective tissue between solely focusing on strength as I am and focusing on losing body fat as you might be is the retention of muscle. If you’re trying to lose body fat and you’re in a caloric deficit, your priority needs to be holding onto as much muscle as possible. If you’re losing weight, at least some of that’s going to be muscle. That’s okay, but you’ll hold onto more muscle the more your diet consists of protein. Consider, as I have, a quality protein supplement.

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Focusing on what’s next

As much progress as I’ve made, I don’t always achieve my goals. Sometimes I’ll skip a meal. Sometimes my breakfast is not enough or I’ve failed to plan properly. The thing I do that probably most “failed dieters” don’t do is I move on. I simply ask “what’s next?” like President Bartlett. I don’t wallow. I accept that I’m a human being and that I’m not always perfect and then I put my head down and work hard to ensure that the next meal is on point.

  • Fat loss version: So you gave in to temptation and you ordered a pizza. Or you failed to plan properly and you ended up at a drive-thru window. Tell yourself two things–1.) You’re in control of your very next meal. 2.) You’re not an idiot, loser, or weakling. You just didn’t have a plan. Stop what you’re doing and make a plan for the rest of the week. Always remember, nine times out of ten it’s not willpower. It’s organization.

Setting concrete process goals

You have to earn your way to specific caloric intake or macronutrient percentages. I know my own strength program would be more effective if I ate more specific percentages of protein, for example. But if I’m not even eating three square meals a day, the percentages aren’t going to matter much. I need to get my calories up if I’m going to get stronger, so I’ve set the process goal for myself of eating three square meals a day and supplementing with two protein shakes. Once I’m hitting those goals consistently, then I can start to zero in on the details.

  • Fat loss version: It’s remarkable how often people come to me and ask for body composition help when they’re watching several hours of television a night and drinking multiple sodas a day. When I tell them we’re just going to focus, say, on the soda for now, sometimes they’ll say “but what should my diet be!?” Focus on the obvious, low-hanging fruit first and then we can talk percentages and calories and such.

 

Embrace Incrementalism

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There are two things I do as a personal trainer that you can implement immediately in your own workout regimen. I take detailed notes, and I increase weight incrementally. The first will just cost you the price of a notebook (Moleskine baby!), and the second might prompt you do join a different gym or to make purchases to round out your home gym.

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The Power of Notes

I’ve not always been a good trainer. For many years I would say I was very bad. But I managed to get results for clients despite this because I’ve always taken good notes. That means I know exactly how many sets and reps you performed last week, I know what you’re struggling to grasp, and I know if it’s time to increase the weight for a particular movement. That’s all in the notes.

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If you’re working out on your own now and you don’t have any injuries but you’ve been struggling to make progress, start taking notes. When you struggle with an exercise, write that down. What happened? Where did you go wrong? Take a video of yourself squatting. How was your form? Did you lean forward? Did your heels pop off the floor or did your left foot pronate? Taking notes of anomalies can help you address them during the next workout.

The Power of Incremental Progress

This note-taking is directly linked to another factor that can dramatically affect how much you’re getting out of the gym: increasing the load that you’re moving during your workouts.

Let’s say you’re still in the beginner’s stage of strength training and you’re using a basic 3 sets of 10 repetitions for your exercises. If you were doing a goblet squat for 3 sets of 10 repetitions using a 35-pound kettlebell last month, then you should be using a heavier one this month. Understand that this scenario presupposes that you’re still fairly early in your strength training life, so that a basic linear progression (add more weight next week than you’re using this week) still yields results. If you’re an intermediate or advanced lifter then you won’t be able to add weight to the bar forever. In the beginning, however, it’s not a bad idea to keep things simple. Just keep adding weight when you hit your goal of 3 sets of 10 repetitions.

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If you’re working out in your home gym, a really underrated investment is small “change plates,” which are the barbell weights that come in sizes like 2.5 pounds, 5 pounds, or 7.5 pounds. You also can get them in smaller increments, like 1.25 pounds or .5 pound. It seems silly, but these tiny increments can help you increase your work capacity slowly over time. Then when you’re ready to convert to more sophisticated percentage-based programming, you’ll be all set when the day calls for a back squat at 77.5 percent of your one-rep max: you’ll have the change plates to get you as close to the actual number you’re lifting as possible. Not all gyms have change plates in small increments, but it might be worth looking for one that does.

You don’t need a lot of different exercises in the beginning of your fitness journey. And once again, the idea of “muscle confusion” is a fiction peddled by people trying to sell yo things you don’t need. You don’t want confused muscles; you want strong, smart muscles that know what the hell they’re doing. You’re not going to build those by hopping around to different exercises every week. And you can’t develop smart muscles without holding them accountable for what they’re doing: that means a combination of notes and incremental weight increases.

 

Make Time, Take Time for Yourself

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If you want a different body, then you have to make the time to build it. Sometimes I think I get my messaging wrong when I try (mostly in vain) to get people off the sidelines and into the fitness game.

I spend a lot of time pushing back against the idea that fitness is complicated. There’s a lot of noise out there about what works and what doesn’t, but there’s a remarkable consensus from people who know what they’re doing around what needs to be done to make a body stronger, leaner, and more mobile. Especially in the very beginning, you need to learn basic movement patterns like the squat, hinge, push, and pull; and you need to do these movements with progressively heavier weights while also eating vegetables at every meal, protein at every meal, and starchy carbs in moderation. That combined with walking a few days a week usually yields results with which people are incredibly happy.

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I find it remarkable then when people come to me and voice objections right away when I tell them what the pathway to their goals looks like.

“Oh, I can’t give up my shows.”

“I like wine too much.”

“I don’t want to join a gym.”

“I have 8-pound dumbbells. Is that enough?”

“I only have 20 minutes a day to work out.”

“Working out is boring.”

“I’m too busy.”

Do any of these sound familiar? Ever used any of these excuses yourself? Chances are if you’ve said or asked any of these things then you’re not actually committed to the process of change. You have the body you have now because your lifestyle looks a certain way. Now you’re telling me that you don’t want to change anything about your lifestyle but you want a different body? Nope. Nope. All the nopes.

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You have to make the time. You have to make the effort.

Fitness isn’t so much about discipline as it is organization, but you do have to make the effort. One of the things our gym offers free with personal training is lifestyle coaching, and we walk people through a habit-based curriculum focused on nutrition and body composition. A common theme from the feedback we get is that setting the 20 minutes a day aside to think through the “lessons” feels overwhelming. The pace is slow, so the first few assignments are things like “eat slowly” or “make time for yourself today.” We’re not talking advanced calculus. But just the process of taking the time to read a little and learn about habits feels like too much because of the 20-minute time investment.

If you can’t take 20 minutes a day for yourself, and remember, we’re not even talking about changing behavior, cooking, working out, or sleeping more, then you don’t have much hope for changing your body. The very first step in body transformation is giving yourself the permission to take time for yourself. This is not vanity or narcissism or selfishness. This is the foundation for success.

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Over the next week, I’m challenging you to take 20 minutes for yourself, whatever that means for you. It could be taking a walk, reading, sitting in a dark room without speaking, meditation, or organizing the next day. The point is to take 20 minutes devoted to enhancing your quality of life. No one else can do this for you. Before thinking about taking big steps (like going to the gym or eating more vegetables), see if you can take this small step: make time, take time for yourself.

 

The Most Important Move You’re Not Doing: The Hinge

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People who’ve never worked out before often assume that the sole reason for stepping foot into a gym is to “lose weight” or change body composition. While those might be benefits for some (assuming they’re also getting enough sleep and eating well) I would argue that the first priority for most people who are new to fitness is to learn how to move.

Good movement is the foundation for increasing workload because you’ll be able to work harder and longer over time by avoiding injury. Sure, you can walk into the gym today and make yourself sweat, but if you’re not also learning how to move you’re not only building in a natural ceiling for your strength and fitness, you’re also increasing the likelihood of injury over time. Lifting weights is actually an extraordinarily safe activity in terms of acute injury (like rolling an ankle) but it can lead to chronic injuries (like that shoulder or hip pain that never seems to go away).

My guess is the most important movement pattern you’re not doing right now is the hinge. Remember when your parents first started letting you help them move heavyish things around the house and they admonished you to “lift with your legs, not your back”? Without quite knowing it, they were telling you to hinge instead of just bending over. But what is a hinge?

A hinge is a movement whereby you flex and extend at the hips. A classic hinge movement pattern is exhibited by a barbell deadlift. If you watch the animation below, you can see which muscles are responsible for hip extension (gluteus maximus and hamstrings). In everyday terms, that’s your butt and the muscles on the back of your legs.

A review of the anatomy suggests that your back does play a role in something like a deadlift even if the primary movers are your butt and legs, but I think it’s especially interesting to note just how important butt strength is on a movement like a deadlift. If you’re trying to get stronger and you still fit into skinny jeans–male or female–then you’re doing something wrong. (I’m only sort of kidding here. Big, strong butts are also functional butts. Go make yourself one.)

Until recently, I used to advise people that if they’re new to lifting then they ought to focus on squatting, horizontal pushing (like a bench press), horizontal pulling (like a dumbbell row), vertical pushing (like an overhead press), and vertical pulling (like a lat pulldown or pullup). But I’ve been thinking that this advice isn’t complete and that perhaps beginners ought to start their journey with hip hinging. Along with the squat, the hip hinge is the movement pattern you’re most likely to use in your everyday life. Therefore it’s important that you both get it right and learn to make it strong.

One of the best collections of video tutorials on learning the hip hinge movement pattern comes to us by way of Tony Gentilcore in a blog post appropriately titled “How to Hip Hinge Like a Boss.” You can view that here. Below I’ve embedded just one example of the many drills he’s put together to help you learn how to hinge correctly.

I’ve been stealing the above drill for a while now. Basically you’re using the wall to learn how to throw your butt back and engage the powerful muscles in your posterior chain. Notice how little knee flexion and extension is actually involved here. This makes the hip hinge much different than a squat. Check out the difference in this brief video below.

So why not just go into the gym and try to burn calories? Why “waste” the time learning the difference between a squat and a hinge? If two people walk into my gym, I know ultimately the more patient person who’s willing to learn the movement patterns will be happier with their body a year from now than the impatient person who just wants to sweat a lot. Why? Because once the patient person learns how to hinge well I can progress them through advanced movements like barbell deadlifts and kettlebell swings. These advanced movements, loaded progressively, will build more muscle and ultimately lead to more of a caloric expenditure than basic movements. Powerful movements like the hip hinge involve more muscle mass and thus provide the stimulus your body needs to change.

Before hiring a personal trainer or joining a gym, reorient your mindset toward movement and away from burning calories. You have to inhabit this body the rest of your life, so you might as well learn how to move it well. Once you do that you’ll also be able to push it harder and make big leaps toward the aesthetic ideal for which you might be looking.

Empathy Part III: Black Lives Matter Edition

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“Whoever apprehends the said Negroes, so that the Subscriber may readily get them, shall have, if taken up in this County, Forty Shillings Reward, beside what the Law allows; and if at any greater Distance, or out of the Colony, a proportionable Recompence paid them, by George Washington.” (emphasis added)

–1761 newspaper ad

insouciant
Pronunciation: /inˈso͞osēənt/ /inˈso͞oSHənt/

Adjective: Showing a casual lack of concern; indifferent: “an insouciant shrug”

—Oxford Dictionaries

The latter half of last week I was in New Orleans for the National Strength and Conditioning Association’s National Conference. Last year was my first NSCA national conference, and I vowed to continue going every year because of the substantive, professional, and personal development that comes from immersing oneself in substance outside of day-to-day practical considerations. I had been excited for months about the opportunity to both learn in and visit one of the most distinct American cities we’ve ever known.

Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

The strength training conference began on July 6, the day after police shot Alton Sterling. My flight was scheduled for July 7, and as I packed to get ready for the trip that morning (I’m a day of the trip kind of packer) my Twitter feed confused me. I knew about the Sterling shooting, but people seemed to be talking about another name, Philando Castile, whose own killing had begun making news.

I was angry, and I felt guilty for flying to a conference to learn about hip extension while others prepared to march in the streets to demand justice in the aftermath of two disturbing killings. I thought about canceling my plans and diverting to Baton Rouge to participate in the marches. I didn’t. I don’t know how exactly I justified not going, but I somehow did just that and sat through presentations on developing athletic power and changing body composition through nutritional manipulation.

In between sessions I scrolled through my social media feeds, and because of the diversity of people I follow on various platforms, I saw a pattern emerge. Someone would tweet or hashtag a Facebook post with #blacklivesmatter, and then someone else would tweet or hashtag “alllivesmatter,” or–especially after a deranged gunman unleashed hell in Dallas–“bluelivesmatter.”

Although much of the discourse remained civil, I detected an anger in a lot of the #alllivesmatter and #bluelivesmatter folks with which I knew I would have to grapple for this column. It’s a grappling I confess feeling ill-equipped to properly engage given the nature of my work. Most of my days are spent thinking about clients, programming, form, and strength. I don’t have the time to write as sharply as topics like this demand, and yet I knew once again that I wouldn’t be able to write about anything else because I haven’t been able to think about anything else.

I grew up in the Dayton area, and often I was the only black person in my classes. I remember getting into a heated argument with an older student while I was a freshman at Ohio State during a conversation about slavery. To be black and alone in a classroom can be a particularly lonely feeling, and it’s not hyperbole to say that I felt and feel a peculiar sense of responsibility for serving as a witness, especially in cases where the teacher in the classroom has been unable or unwilling to speak uncomfortable truths.

So it is perhaps with that same sense of responsibility that I use a column originally intended for fitness to be a witness to the black struggle for equality. Part of my job as a witness is to tell you that if your response to the violence in this country over the last two weeks has been to use the #alllivesmatter or #bluelivesmatter hashtags then you’re stunningly, cruelly missing the point of #blacklivesmatter.

Black people helped build this country, and yet its first president–widely regarded as a hero–placed newspaper ads to get back his “property” when his slaves showed the temerity, ingenuity, and basic humanity to run away and assert their personhood;

Black people have always served this country during wartime, only to return home to be called nigger, left out of provisions intended to help veterans (like the GI Bill), and marginalized economically;

Black people have been in North America since 1619, yet when Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” it was clear he was not talking about Native Americans, black people or women;

Black people weren’t left out of the Constitution as they were the Declaration, but instead were counted as only three-fifths human beings;

Black people ostensibly gained freedom–only after a brutal Civil War–in 1865, yet had to fight for decades in order to secure the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

When students in the Dayton-area schools I attended called me a nigger, or when family members (in the 21st Century!) had nigger scrawled on their property, or when a federal government officer told me I didn’t “sound black” when I was applying for a job, or when a state trooper pulled me over in rural Virginia and warned me about driving in the “wrong place,” or when I was greeted upon moving back home to Ohio with a caravan of Confederate flags at The Greene, or when I watch on the news as person after person after person after person after person is killed in circumstances that strongly suggest that life itself would have been the alternative for someone who wasn’t black, then I am left to wonder: just what in the hell is so offensive about Black Lives Matter?

Deray arrest

Max Becherer / AP

The counter hashtags make me angry. When friends use them they make me feel as I did in high school, when I had friends tell me that we could hang out, but only if their dad wasn’t around because “he doesn’t like blacks.” I was never quite sure of who really loved me for all of who I was or who thought that I wasn’t “like the rest of them” because I happened to listen to Led Zeppelin and the Black Crowes.

The very idea that black lives actually matter has been in doubt from the very beginning of this country. And the years that unsung heroes like Sherrilyn Ifill have been fighting for justice and screaming from the tops of their lungs about police brutality that have felt Sysiphean in nature only have served to reinforce that doubt. The only difference between what we’re seeing in the news now and what has been going on is technology.

How many reports of off-the-books interrogation rooms in major American cities must we ignore? How many times must the plaintive wail about stop and frisk procedures go unanswered? How large must the gap grow between how white people and black people view the police before people acknowledge that the black experience with policing is dramatically different?

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We’ve always assumed in this country that “all lives matter,” only it has taken us many years and not a few lost lives to ensure the truth of that universality.

You might be wondering about black-on-black crime and why more black people aren’t crying out about it. First, the very idea of black-on-black crime has been so thoroughly dismantled that it’s not worth more than a passing mention here. What you might call “black-on-black” violence actually is nothing more than neighbor-on-neighbor violence, as Michael Eric Dyson recently called it.

But there’s a more important point to be made. If you’re under the illusion that black people aren’t concerned about violence in their communities other than at the hands of police, then quite simply you don’t know many black people intimately. It has been the topic of conversation (and iconic rap videos) for decades now. You just haven’t noticed.

And isn’t that the crux of the problem? Maybe you just haven’t noticed. The truths revealed by recent events have been there all along. You’re just noticing now because Apple learned how to integrate a video camera into a phone.

I don’t know how many more times I can write about empathy. For rape victims. For gay people. For black people. I know how difficult it must be for the families of police officers to hear the national conversation right now. Fathers and sons and mothers and daughters put on a badge and a uniform and do incredibly difficult and dangerous work. And yet everyone seems to be talking about police brutality. I honor the work of good police officers alongside you, I appreciate their public service along with you, and I’m sickened by the murders of Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa as the entire country is.

That your father honorably serves his community as a police officer does not obviate the need for a frank discussion about the policing of black America, however, and it certainly doesn’t obviate the need for sweeping change. We’re saying Black Lives Matter because it has never been obvious in this country. We’re saying Black Lives Matter because people have been ignoring large swaths of the population and their concerns. We’re saying Black Lives Matter because before the advent of cell phones even the most infamous cases of police brutality of the black body were easily forgotten.

I’m old enough to know this column has little chance of changing an #alllivesmatter person’s mind. But many of you out there reading this know me. I might even be your “black friend” by virtue of the fact that I too am a Mad Men fan who can quote old David Letterman bits ad nauseum. What I’m asking you to do is listen to me and imagine if you saw video of a police officer shooting me as I tried to follow his instructions.

Did that work?

If it did, now ask yourself: Why could you not summon the human empathy for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile?

And Laquan McDonald.

And Christian Taylor.

And Samuel Dubose.

And Sandra Bland.

And Freddie Gray.

And Walter Scott.

And Tamir Rice.

And Michael Brown.

And Eric Garner.

And…

Is their skin darker than mine? When they speak spoke, do did they sound blacker than me? For whom exactly do you reserve your empathy?

I support Black Lives Matter. I’ll stake the reputation of my business on that. If that offends you but George Washington’s newspaper ad does not, or worse, you were unaware of its existence, then your All Lives Matter rejoinder is nothing more than insouciance sprung out of a one-sided, incomplete, infantile storybook version of American history.

 

 

 

 

Warning Signs You’re Talking To A Fitness Charlatan

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I share a trait with a lot of small business owners I’ve met, which is a constant low-level anxiety that tomorrow I’ll wake up and no one will want my services. My specific thinking goes something like this: there’s such an abundance of free and high-quality information out there that surely no one will pay me to help them with their fitness journey.

The thing that serves to ameliorate that anxiety the quickest is the collection of questions people ask me when they find out what I do. These questions let me know that people are still confused about the basics when it comes to fitness (like what to eat, what not to eat, and how to move), in part because the industry itself is guilty of peddling so much misinformation in the name of profits.

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I’ve put together a short list of things to keep in mind when you’re trying to navigate the fitness journey for the first time. This isn’t about telling you what to do so much as it is about telling you where to find what to do (and not do).

1.) Know the difference between businessmen first, coaches second and coaches first, businessmen second. If your personal Facebook feed is anything like mine, you’ve got friends who are involved in one multi-level marketing scheme or another selling you fitness products like smoothies, wraps, and meal replacements. Multi-level marketing is a process whereby people earn money not just from the products they sell to you, but also from a percentage of the money the people whom they recruit into the industry make from selling products. So there’s an incentive not just to sell you stuff, but to recruit other people to sell you stuff. One way to know that you’re dealing with a businesswoman first and a coach second is whether or not part of their financial incentive is to recruit other people into their business.

2.) If someone tries to convince you that you can’t get fit without them, then move on. With time, focus, and dedication, you could learn all that you would need to know to get fit without the help of a coach. You don’t need me. Many people have limited time, limited focus, and developing dedication. These are the people who might “need” me–and even then for a limited time. Other people who need a coach are those with more advanced physical or athletic aspirations. If you have general fitness goals, however, you can learn what you would need to learn to get started from the wealth of free information available to you on the web.

This message is a lot different than the hard sell you might get when you sign up for a new gym membership. The way I was taught to sell training when I first started in the industry was to gather data (body fat, circumference measurements, weight, etc.) and then proceed to make people feel terrible about that data before convincing them that the only way to change was to work with me.

If a coach truly wants to help you get fit, they’re going to do their very best to make you feel good every step of the way. That has nothing to do with the coach being a nice person (although they might be), but everything to do with your longterm success. What we know about the science of change is that if you feel good about the process then you’re much more likely to stick with it, and thus more likely to achieve your goals. A trainer who body shames you and tells you that you need them doesn’t have your longterm interests in mind.

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3.) If someone tries to convince you that the journey is about having fun, then move on. Think about all of the things in your life that are worth the most to you. Your children. Your relationships. Perhaps your career. Academic achievements. Volunteer work.

How many of these things would you associate exclusively with fun?

I’m here to tell you that your fitness journey won’t always be fun. The results will be fun. Your new body will be fun. But the journey itself? Not always fun. Learning how to cook can be frustrating. Struggling through a difficult set or exercise can be humbling. Missing a playoff game on television because it starts at 9 PM on a weeknight and you have decided to prioritize sleep can feel like so much adulting.

Fitness is rewarding, but it’s not always fun.

4.) If someone tries to convince you that the journey is brutally difficult all the time, then move on. No pain, no gain is basically a lie. Exercise shouldn’t be painful in the way that an injury is painful. Training should be uncomfortable, but painful usually is a recipe for injury. If I’m pulling deadlifts from the floor for 50 repetitions across 5 sets, that’s uncomfortable but it’s not painful. If I’m sprinting up a hill as hard as I can, I’m definitely uncomfortable, but I’m not in pain.

The fittest people I know are constantly putting themselves in uncomfortable positions such that what is uncomfortable today will no longer be uncomfortable next month. But pain? Nah. They’re not in pain. Sometimes they’ll get sore, but they’ll eat well and sleep well to recover. If your workout regimen leaves you in pain all of the time, you might just be pushing yourself too hard–or are under the guidance of a coach whose ego is driving her programming rather than your needs.

 

A Child Asks: Why Get Stronger?

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“Why do you work so hard when you don’t have to?”

A child asked me that question recently, curious about why my own strength training sessions are relatively intense compared to the general population.

“I like the feeling of being strong,” I said.

“But you’re already strong,” she said.

“And how did I get this way?” At this point I thought I had her. Surely the logic of a 40-year-old man would trump that of an 11-year old’s.

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“But you keep doing more and more. You don’t need to do that, do you?” It was a fair point. She’s right. I have certain numbers in my head that I’m trying to hit, for no other reason than pride and maybe more than a little ego. This was a classic case of an adult being forced to boil something down to its essence because of the logic of a child–granted, a really smart child, but a child nonetheless.

So why do I keep pushing? I don’t need a 500-pound deadlift in order to age well, and my young interlocutor understood this intuitively. The truth is that I’m addicted to being strong, and I’m trying to get as strong as I possibly can while I’m still able because there will be a day when getting stronger isn’t possible. I’ll have to rely on my “muscle reserves,” so to speak, to thrive in my octogenarian years.

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But it’s more than that. While there is a part of me who is trying to bank as much muscle as possible for when I get (even) older, if you strapped me to a lie detector test I’d tell you that I’m doing this for the right now. I’m doing this because:

I enjoy the way a strong body works.

I enjoy the way a strong body feels.

I enjoy the way other people respond to a strong body.

I enjoy the self-sufficiency that comes with a strong body.

The difference between you and me if you’re not working out isn’t just physical. You’d enjoy all of the things I listed too. It’s that I’ve always worked out, and thus I don’t have the same insecurities you do.

I leave my cards at the coffee shop I frequent. I hear from people all the time who tell me that they picked up my card there “six months ago” or “several weeks ago.” What took them so long to finally get in touch?

Fear. Insecurity. Previous bad experiences in fitness (usually involving judgment). They spend half a year building up the courage to seek out the help they need to get strong, to feel the way I do.

I’ve not solved this problem. I don’t know how to prove to people that I won’t judge them, make them feel less than, or belittle their skills in the gym. People who study human behavior and change might say that there’s nothing I can say because people have to be ready to change. I understand this intellectually, but I want to solve the puzzle. I want people to know that the gym can be a safe, empowering place.

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I want everyone to know this. I want this understanding, this belief in the power of strength, to reside deep in everyone’s soul, from the 22-year-old with body image issues and a questionable relationship with food to the 60-year-old grandmother who’s never touched a dumbbell in her life.

My industry has tried to solve this problem by lying to people, selling them supplements they don’t need, and telling them that the answer to their fears is a singular piece of equipment or THIS exercise modality (and definitely not THAT one).

So when you add extant fear and insecurity, mix in a layer of smokescreen-induced distrust, then you get the recipe for you not walking into that local gym or yoga studio.

But remember this:

I enjoy the way a strong body works.

I enjoy the way a strong body feels.

I enjoy the way other people respond to a strong body.

I enjoy the self-sufficiency that comes with a strong body.

And you will too.

I promise you.