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“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” – Hunter S Thompson

Fitness is a journey, a life long adventure. As a person who has been on this adventure for most of my life now I can tell you that it is not a straight line up. At times it is a struggle. At times there seems to be not point. Other times your training may seem to take on a life of it’s own and you find that your commitment and energy seem limitless.

My experience has taught me a few things about when falling into a slump.

1. The best way to get out of the slump is to just go. Just begin. That will start the engine running, but there may be some other obstacles that interfere, like stress.

2. Identify the cause of your stress. Sort it out in your mind, and then work toward either resolving it, or taking the steps to get rid of the cause. Stress will kill you. The good news is that exercise will kill stress.

3. Make small changes that will grow. Recently I began riding my bike to work, and I wish that I would have started that sooner. Not only am I saving money on gas, no matter what, I have to ride up hill to get home. Rain or shine. Happy or down.

4. Find a new motivation. What motivates me now is different than what motivated me last year. When I train hard my reasons for training evolve. Some times it is appearance, some times raw physical strength, other times my reasons are performance oriented. I just have to either brush off the old reasons, or dig down deep to find new ones. At the end of the day, in fitness, usually the end really does justify the means.

5. Try something new. Over the last year or so there has been an awakening, a revolution in fitness. You have probably heard thrown it around- Functional Fitness, Cross Training, Core Conditioning. Well it’s awesome, and it’s not the same old thing. Check out TRX. Check out Kettlebell. Try a class like Yoga. Every trainer in the world will tell you that variation is essential for growth, expand this to completely new areas of training and see where it takes you. See where positive variation in life takes you!

We are on this adventure together, and together we can push one another to new heights. That is why we come to the health club. That is why we take classes together and look to our trainers and instructors for guidance. Each day is a new beginning. Each moment you have a new opportunity. In order to never quit, you have be ready to begin again, and again, and again.

Strangely, for many years I have struggled with the following question; what is strength? Of course there are obvious acts of strength, such as lifting extraordinary masses of weight, but that is a singular example of what strength really is. I remember, with vivid clarity when what I call the “positive” definition of strength crystallized for me.

I was on the floor of Fitness Factory Health Club on my last set of push-ups. I was struggling to get the last rep out, fighting to push my body up, my mind fully committed to the one act. When I had completed the push-up I realized what positive strength truly is.

Positive strength is the ability to perform a specific act at will, or when called upon to do so.

Let me repeat that: Positive strength is the ability to perform a specific act at will, or when called upon to do so. The act itself is not relevant, it is the exercise of the will that is critical here. The act can take on just about any incarnation some of my favorite examples are
Physical Strength: lifting, acts of endurance like running, cycling, or striking practice, one on one combat sports
Interpersonal Strength: Taking the initiative to speaking with someone to promote your interests (like asking someone out, asking for a raise, striking a deal, or advancing your career)
Mental Strength: Raw memorization and recall on demand, critical thinking and deductive or inductive reasoning, learning new skills or the continued development of present skills such as language, math, creative or other knowledge based skills
Moral Strength: The voice above the howling mob and doing what is right when all others, and all pressures are pushing you in the opposite direction, even if it means self sacrifice. These sacrifices usually are not so dramatic and conspicuously heroic as the acts of Ghandi, or the martyr for the force of good when the world has turned upside down, these sacrifices are made at the smaller levels first, compounding as life progresses.

I feel confident that most people would agree that the ability to exercise these qualities and actions are strong, but there is an area of strength that goes less noticed, that is less obvious, nonetheless equally if not more powerful. Negative Strength.

This lesson I learned when I was quitting smoking cigarettes in my early twenties. Quitting smoking was aided by my frustration in the fact that I was not able to stop doing something. I found it so annoying that I would have to push myself to do some things, but as a smoker I had to push myself to not do something. Negative Strength is the ability abstain from performing a specific act at will or when called upon to do so.

Negative Strength
When I mention negative I do not mean destructive, I mean an absence, that is why Negative Strength is the ability to abstain from performing a certain act at will. Some classic examples are of Negative Strength are:
Addiction Cessation: Quitting smoking, quitting excessive alcohol consumption, stopping drug usage.
Behavioral Control: Not losing your temper, not succumbing to road rage, not eating excessively nor eating junk food, not allowing frustration to dominate your responses to others
Interpersonal Strength: Not spending time with destructive people (hateful, rageful, deceptive, hostile) even it means that you are alone for long periods of time
Listening and Observing: Not speaking and not allowing your thoughts to cloud your ability to assess what is being said to you, or around you. By keeping the mind quiet it allows us to absorb the world around us and make more incisive judgements as to what we are really being face with

Artists talk about negative space, the area that is empty in a work of art. This area brings contrast and adds support the rendering. Negative strength is that couterbalance to our actions.

Perfection does not exist, only the concept of it, so don’t get hung up on where you stack up against others. Of course competition can breed higher levels of personal performance however, there will always be someone who can lift more weight, who is richer, faster, fewer vices etc… Growing your strength is a worthwhile pursuit, whether it is through activity or abstinence or a balance of both.

Sorry, this is just a copy and paste from Benzinga.com.

Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE: CVC) today announced that its board of directors has approved the leveraged spin-off of AMC Networks Inc., formerly known as Rainbow Media, to Cablevision shareholders. Following the spin-off, Cablevision Founder Charles F. Dolan will become executive chairman of the new, publicly-traded AMC Networks. Mr. Dolan will continue in his present role as chairman of Cablevision. The company announced earlier this year that current Rainbow chief executive officer Josh Sapan will become president and chief executive officer of AMC Networks.
The share distribution will occur on June 30, 2011 to Cablevision shareholders of record as of the close of business on June 16, 2011. In the distribution, each Cablevision Class A stockholder will receive one share of AMC Networks Class A common stock for every four shares of Cablevision Class A common stock they hold as of the record date. Each Cablevision Class B stockholder will receive one share of AMC Networks Class B common stock for every four shares of Cablevision Class B common stock they hold as of the record date.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/05/23/the-bull-case-for-cablevision/

Fortune Brands, which I really know as Jim Beam, will be spinning off it’s Home and Security Business. It filed the Form 10 today. I will be keeping you posted.

“The Big Picture.”

A Spin Off is not a small deal within a company, it is a big deal, aka. A Special Situation, or an Extraordinary Company Event. One amazing element of a company/corporate spin off is that there is considerable time to study, and assess, the events leading up to the division of the company. The spin off is actually such a significant event for a company, that just about every move a company has made for the 6 months prior to the spin off’s announcement, and every move after the announcement, is significant.

According to DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
LJ International Inc. (JADE) plans to spin off its Enzo Jewelry Inc. unit and agreed to sell a $41.4 million stake in the unit through a private placement.

Small/Micro Cap Stock listed on the NASDAQ with a 115M market cap.

I will be following up with this situation as it unfolds.

Happy hunting.

Well, it would seem that Mike Petters, CEO of Huntington Ingalls is certainly getting very well compensated for his position, and his common stock shares are no less than 72,309, but this is small potatoes compared to his options plan which is more to the tune of 706,425.

But don’t take my word for it, look at the SEC document yourself.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1307506/000118143111021905/xslF345X03/rrd306470.xml

I didn’t review all of the Form 4s but suffice it to say that he is definitely tied to this company, and this company isn’t going away any time soon.