Hey folks, this is Abel James and thanks so much for joining us on the fat burning man show where we talk about real food and real results.

How's your routine looking lately? Getting a bit stale? It happens to all of us.

But in challenging times, it's more important than ever to identify the things that are no longer working and then let them go.

Nothing long with shaking things up on purpose sometimes. We have a tendency myself included of sticking with the routine for way too long, which leads to wear and tear or even worse serious injury.

So it's important to shake things up every once in a while and sometimes life forces you into these shakeups.

In situations like these sometimes we need to use our weaknesses as an advantage.

Sometimes the only way to beat a rigged game is to rig it harder to find that bug. So remember as well that this game wouldn't be nearly as fun if it were easy.

Now today we're here with a perfect person to talk to you about shaking things up. His name is Nick Shaw and he is a former competitive powerlifter and bodybuilder as well as the founder and CEO of Renaissance Periodization.

I always have trouble saying that periodization. Nick has coached world class athletes including CrossFit Games Champions, International Metalists, Olympians, UFC fighters, professional athletes and even Navy Seals.

Today we're talking about bodybuilding and training for peak performance sports, how to get creative with the fitness at home, how to balance health and fitness while keeping your sanity and tons more.

Before we get there here's a note that came in from Paul he says, greetings. I am a San Francisco Bay Area native and have been under lockdown since March. It's a real bummer.

One good thing happened thanks to you as a charter listener to your show I recalled the Chi running show and barefooting and earthing kind of stuff.

My vanity and cheapness keep me in uncomfortable shoes. I went lockdown barefoot and it has been great. My whole body has improved. My gate, posture and energy, small price to suffer for loafers once in a while.

I hope this finds you well happy new year to you and yours. Paul and Paul O'Alto, PS, the Chi running book had a huge positive impact on my kids cross country joy.

Hey Paul, I love love love this note. It brings me so much joy to see that not only you but the kids are also benefiting from from Danny's work and Chi running in particular.

You know just quick aside the most star struck I've ever been on this podcast or even in general was when I first was introduced to Danny drier who wrote Chi running.

If you aren't familiar with Danny's work just go to fatburningman.com, look up Chi running or Danny drier in the search bar. It should come right up for you.

But also check out his book Chi running it was one book that really changed the way that I thought about running and movement in particular and kind of took me from this no pain, no gain way of thinking or you know took away a lot of that conditioning and replaced it with more body sensing.

And you know barefooting is a big part of that a lot of you may not know that I'm barefoot almost all of the time I include the time that I'm wearing you know sometimes socks or like light slippers but I can feel the ground and that's the most important part you want your foot to have some sort of intelligence with what it's attached to or with what it's inside of or what it's moving over and we lose that ability we lose a whole bunch of different.

Kind of built in skills that we have that help us navigate the wild natural world when we're trapped inside when we're trapped in shoes especially when we're wearing shoes that are unnatural for our form so it's really important to get in touch with even if you do wear shoes which of course I do sometimes it's really important to get in touch with your natural posture and make sure that you're engaging the right muscles when I switched from using running shoes to barefoot style running and minimalist shoes while running in a barefoot style.

I went from running seven eight miles at a time to less than a mile because my as I recall my calves and kind of like this whole line of muscles up my legs and my back felt like it had never been used before even though I was running almost every day at the time.

So as you do transition into a new way of walking barefoot running especially be sure to take it easy on yourself barefoot running on cement or concrete is not something that's really going to serve anyone I know some people who've gotten away with it not something and I do keep in mind that it's something where you want your foot to be in the natural position and when moving in the natural way unnatural surfaces so when they're too hard that can lead to injury make sure you're not doing any of that anyway go check out.

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