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Mettle Maker #397
What’s the weekly mettle maker? Training tips and educational information in support of our free programs, that’s what! What’s mettle? According the American Heritage Dictionary, mettle is, “The ability to meet a challenge or persevere under demanding circumstances; determination or resolve.”
Heritage Self-Defense: What do nature appreciation skills have to do with self-defense? Your self-defense techniques are of zero value if you have no idea what’s going on in the world around you. Surprise is the evildoer’s best and most effective tactic. How can you defend yourself if you’re always wandering around unaware?
Last week I put up a bird call video on YouTube (see right). It has one lousy view. I'm pretty sure people think, "Bird calls? So lame!" But paying attention to the world around you is a habit, a skill, and a healthy way of life in more ways than one. Learning some bird calls is a great way to start listening.
All day long people hear-hear-hear but never listen. Imagine if all day, every day, you listened to no one. You ignored your coworkers, paid no attention to your family, and pretended as though your neighbors didn't exist. How strong would your relationships be? How healthy would you be? How happy? How well-liked?
The birds are singing to you, the trees are waving to you, the winds are caressing you, and the stream is calling you to come and play. Don’t be a callous outcast, a hard-hearted loner, a self-absorbed recluse. Be a part of the community of all living things. Join into relationship with the universe and seek wholeness in body, mind, and spirit.
Interested in a 100% free mind-body-spirit martial arts program? Join the martial arts club in Richmond, VA or click here to sign up for the Heritage self-defense distance learning program!
Heritage Fitness: What’s the perfect set/rep scheme for weightlifting? This is one of the secrets of the old-timers, and modern science is increasingly aligning with this, and other aspects, of old-school training. Before I give you the answer, let’s look at what "old-school" means in terms of weightlifting?
1. Reduced intensity. No training to failure (stop on the rep before failure). You're training with too much intensity if you need rest days and/or split days like Chest Day, Leg Day, etc, if you have to grunt or yell to get through a set, if you get really sore after training sessions, if you need ice or Advil.
2. Time under tension matters. Slow the pace of your lifts such that you push fast and return slow. To be more clear, the concentric phase is the pushing part of the movement during which the muscle shortens. The eccentric phase is return of the weight back to starting position, during which the muscle is generally lengthened. The isometric phases are points where the load is held stationary between the transitions from concentric to eccentric, or from eccentric to concentric. Old-school thought was approximately a 1-sec concentric phase, a ..5-sec. isometric phase, a 3-sec eccentric phase, and a .5-sec isometric phase for a 5-second rep.
3. Train your whole body every time you train. See #1 above. Entire sessions on a single zone or body part always results in a level of intensity that’s not old-school.
4. No junk volume. Be stingy with exercises and reps - less is more. Only 1 exercise per body part and about 7 exercises per session.
5. Don’t pick it up if you can’t put it down. No old-timer ever dropped a weight on purpose. You’re cheating yourself out of the eccentric phase of the exercise!
What’s the perfect set/rep scheme? Well, you can build muscle volume and strength with almost any scheme, from one set of 25 to 3 sets of 3. The problem is that the lower the reps the higher the weight, and the more likely the injury. And the higher the reps, the higher the wear and tear on the joints and harder it gets to keep the intensity in the sweet spot. The ideal set/rep scheme — the one that sits at the intersection of results, ease of use, and results — seems to be 3 sets of 12 reps with at the old-school cadence of 4 - 6 seconds per rep as outlined above (1 second up and 3 to 4 seconds down). Essentially, each set of 12 must take a minimum of 48 seconds to complete, and the 12th rep should be 1 rep short of failure.
Weight is less important than pace. Adjust weight on sets 2 and 3 to get the 48-60 second pace and the 1 rep short of failure just right. The slower you go, the harder an exercise gets, and the less volume you can perform in the allotted training time. Do the math. This means you’ll experience less wear and tear because there’s less volume, less risk of injury because of lower weight and increased control, and more strength because the exercise is more difficult (the muscle is under stress for a longer period).
Want more old-school training tips, or a free fitness coach to help develop an old-school fitness program that suits your specific needs and goals? Click here to sign up for one of our free programs!
Heritage Wildwood Outdoor Skills: How do you age tracks and sign? A video will be released on the YouTube channel on Monday at 5 PM. But the reality is, this isn’t something you can learn particularly well from a blog post or a video.
The best thing you can do for yourself is actually go out there and put your eyeballs on some tracks and sign. Make some tracks, and follow them home. Maybe that’s later the same day, the next day, or a couple of days later. How have they changed? How do rain, sun, and wind change the game?
You don’t need to be in an undeveloped area – you can practice in the heart of the city or out in the suburban wilds. Just make some tracks and snap some twigs in your back yard, in a turfed median strip, or in a corner of the local park where nobody walks. Check on them a couple of times a day for a week or so and see how they change.
Looking for a free adult outdoor skills program? Click here to sign up!
Holy Communion is LIVE on YouTube every Sunday at 10 am EASTERn. Click HERE to watch live. To view and print a copy of the program for holy communion, CLICK HERE.
Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, 3/17/24 – Father Mitch
Readings: Jer 31:31-34, Ps 51:3-4, 12-13, 14-15, Heb 5:7-9, Jn 12:20-33
John 12:20-33
Now there were certain Greeks among those who went up to worship at the feast. 21 Therefore, these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” 22 Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn, Andrew came with Philip, and they told Jesus.
23 Jesus answered them, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, let him follow me. Where I am, there my servant will also be. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
27 “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? But I came to this time for this cause. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
Then a voice came out of the sky, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”
29 Therefore the multitude who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”
30 Jesus answered, “This voice hasn’t come for my sake, but for your sakes. 31 Now is the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out. 32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33 But he said this, signifying by what kind of death he should die.
Modern people, just like the Greeks in today’s Gospel reading, ask to see Jesus. We Christians seek him all over the place. We search for him in the Bible. We look for him in the church or in the cathedral. We look for him in the liturgy, in missionary work, in singing. We cry out to him in prayer. Even atheists profess to seek him, claiming that if they could see God, they’d believe.
The problem is, of course, that Jesus is not in any of those places. He cannot be captured in the Bible or any other book. He cannot be held prisoner in a church or a cathedral. Jesus is not a genie that can be summoned by rubbing a magic lamp; and so Jesus cannot be conjured up by singing, or praying.
Jesus cannot be found in the places that people most often look because he’s not an inanimate object that can be found, nor is he stationary enough to be located and photographed. No, the creator of the universe is not in the universe. The speaker of the words in the Bible is not in the Bible any more than George Orwell can be found within the pages of his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. As the anonymous author of Liber XXIV Philosophorum wrote, “God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."
So how can we find him and be with him? In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus reveals the trailhead of the path. He says, “Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” My friends, soon the Red Maple trees will drop their winged seeds. They’ll be blowing and spinning by the millions, helicoptering far and wide, each one carrying within itself a mighty tree. Inside the outer shell of the seed is tremendous potential, locked up and waiting to burst out. And we are just the same. We too must let go of our old selves and yield to our potential if we’re going to become something new and greater in and with Jesus.
Jesus continues, “He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.” What does “loving this life” mean? It means being selfish. Loving ourselves and what we want more than we love others and what they need. Seeking riches, success, fame, and power at the expense of others. Obsessing about how we look rather than how we behave. Focusing on our physical appearance, social standing, and outward virtue instead of on true intention. Hoarding our time and attention away from obligations. Trying to prove our courage, toughness, or skill instead putting our courage, toughness and skill to good use. Averting our energy and attention from giving pleasure to others and directing it toward our own pleasures – the feel of fine clothing and sheets on our skin, delicious flavors on our tongues, delightful entertainment for our eyes, and so on.
If we behave in this way, we are like seeds that hoard their potential, that never split, sprout and transform. As the poet Tennyson said, “The shell must crack before the bird may fly.”
If you want to see God, this is the path.