Recently, Faith & Fitness Magazine readers demonstrated an overwhelming response to participate in our 2010 Fit To Serve Challenge. Five individuals were selected to visibly participate in this yearlong series. I’m excited and honored to personally coach them and share their stories with you. I believe as you follow their training and progress you will be inspired. But, don’t just read their stories and be inspired. Be the story and inspire others. This is your year. Train to serve in 2010. You can CONTACT US to share your story or go to our Fit To Serve FORUM and interact daily with me – Coach Powers, the five participants and other readers as we get fit to serve.
These five people will likely experience a tremendous positive change in their lives as they commit their spirits, souls and bodies to God. Science tells us that nearly 97% of the seventy-five trillion cells in the human body turn over brand new every year. My objective is to give each of their fives brains a reason to create positive adaptive changes. These changes will include an improvement in the ten integrated systems that comprise the human body. Big changes should include improvement in cardio-vascular/respiratory endurance and reduction in blood pressure, an increase in lean body mass and reduction in body fat percentage, increased joint flexibility and body elasticity. We will also achieve a greater revelation in what and how to eat. It is important to understand that there is no need to seek out unrealistic diets that will ultimately fail on a long term basis.
I ask that you, our readers, engage with our five participants through prayer and encouragement in their pursuit of excellence. They want support in achieving their hopes, dreams and visions in the fullness of time.
THE FIT TO SERVE BASICS
In a moment I will introduce you to our participants (I’m already calling them our “fab five”). Before I do I want to share with you common strategies that I am having all of them integrate into their daily and weekly physical fitness workout programs:
– All five on our team believe that they need to reduce their overall body mass, i.e. Body fat percentage. So, I have invoked the “one o’clock rule” for each one them. This rule states that they are not to ingest any starch carbohydrates after lunch. Starchy carbohydrates are considered a “super sugar” and include grains, flour, breads, cereals, chips, pasta, rice, beans and potatoes. They have been encouraged to have as much starch as they want for breakfast and lunch, but not after that. If you want dessert, have it for breakfast.
– The five will all be on an eating modification system where they will eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a queen and supper/dinner like a pauper. God created the human body to have its highest metabolic rate of burning calories from three o’clock in the morning through approximately eleven o’clock in the morning. By one o’clock in the afternoon physiology starts to ramp down. Supper is still a significant meal, but only in terms of actual hunger and not appetite and the enjoyment eating good tasting food.
– The team will be eating as organic as possible in terms of finances and convenience. The biggest concept will be to not eat any genetically modified breads and cereals and meat and poultry that have been shot up with growth hormones and antibiotics. Additives, preservatives, color dyes, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides are considered toxic and unsafe to consume for your 75 trillion cells. God has hard-wired them to recognize danger, so they encapsulate these poisons with body fat to protect the body.
The team will for the most part be engaging in two exercise sessions per day five days per week – 90 to 120 minutes in aggregate duration. The morning is the best time to train in resistance exercise such as weight-training and run sprints. Most our five will be weight-training three days per week and running sprints three days per week (trust me, they will all be easing into these protocols). The best time to train aerobically is at the end of your day and before your last major meal. Our goal to achieve an arterial blood cleaning and strengthening of the heart and lungs with a non-competitive workout such as power walking, light running, cycling, swimming or any other workout that they can sustain a “steady state” of 70% to 75% of their maximum intensity.
MEET THE TEAM
CLAY MEEKS – Seattle, Washington
I really enjoyed talking with and interviewing Clay. Not only do I have a background in Law Enforcement, but I have had the honor of training military and police exclusively from 1982 through 2001 in the areas of functional fitness and the use-of-force.
As a young person, Clay grew up in a very religious household and had a very strong relationship with God. He loved exercise and played basketball, football, tennis and racquetball. He also loved being outdoors hiking, climbing and just being out in nature.
After getting married and having children, he replaced his love of sports, nature and exercise with television, coffee and soda. As his physicality slipped away, so did his relationship with the Lord. Now years later, he has come to the realization that he was not living in a way that made God happy and so he has searched for a way to facilitate needed change.
His goal in this project is to be a better Christian. He wants to be the type of husband, father and cop that God created him to be. He wants people to see a drastic change in his physique, energy and enthusiasm for life. Clay wants to better serve God through his physical fitness and the transformation of his family.
Demographically and for the record, Clay is 31 years old, 5’6” tall and weighs 157. He is in good overall health and takes no medications. Skeletally he has no injuries of concern that will limit his training. We have decided to reduce his body weight down to 145 pounds so that he will be more effective and safe in his law enforcement capacity. Clay’s strength training program will be geared for operational law enforcement.
JOY JOHNSON – El Paso, Texas
It was so fun talking with Joy. To say that I was impressed is an understatement. Captain Joy Johnson is serving in the United States Army and is currently stationed in El Paso, Texas. After attending the University of Houston beginning in 2001, she was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 2005. Now, only five years later she has made captain at the young age of 27.
Joy feels that it is an honor and rare occasion to set an example for low enlisted women and those who she may come across in the course of her career. She is quick to state that the Army is big on leadership, mental toughness and physical elitism. For the past nine years she has surpassed the mark in both mental toughness and leadership. However, in the area of physical elitism she has always “just measured up.”
She has tried for many years to improve her physical fitness through diets, self-paced afternoon workouts and light morning runs. After not seeing any improvement in her quest, she feels that she may be doomed to become overweight as the years continue. Recently in church, her pastor mentioned that Jesus said, “If any man comes to me, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him.” Then it dawned on her that by not being in the best physical shape, she was not representing God as the best female Christian officer that she could be.
So, Joy’s goals are these, to maximally serve God through strong mental toughness, strong leadership, and a superior physique. Her personal demographics include: age 27, 5’8” tall, weight 172 pounds. She is in good overall health and taking no medications. Her left knee can be issue, but at the present time will not limit our training. She is getting the right amount of sleep (7 to 9 hours). Along with our two-a-day workout strategy, Joy will be working on some new running mechanics to improve her speed/pace in the two mile running test. We have decided to take her body mass down from 172 to 153 for now.
SHARON SMITH – Greensboro, North Carolina
When I read Sharon’s application, the Holy Spirit immediately touched my heart with her heart for God. Sharon says that she has struggled with her weight because she has failed to fully understand how her body is not hers, but the temple of Holy Spirit. If she is to do his work, she must be physically able to go where he says to go. She said, “I cannot say, here I am Lord; send me, if I cannot get off the couch.” So this project is a lifestyle change for Sharon where she can offer her body as a living sacrifice and act as a witness to others.
Sharon’s goals are to achieve overall biblical physical fitness so that she can serve God in whatever endeavor that he may send her on, to reduce her body mass from 199 to 150 pounds. She also wants to reduce her blood pressure and get off the medication for it. Part of her challenge is that both her husband and son are thin, so the need to eat more nutritionally is not there for them. I have encouraged Sharon to share the fact that eating nutritionally is not just for maintaining an ideal body mass, but for improving the overall quality of one’s life in terms of creative thought, energy, feeling your best and having personal joy.
Sharon’s demographics include: that she works as a deputy clerk of courts, 44 years old, she is 5’4” tall and weighs 199 pounds. Other than her slightly high blood pressure and body mass, she is in good health and has no major skeletal issues that should preclude our physical fitness strategy.
MARK BREUER – Port Washington, Wisconsin
I was born and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin so when I talked with Mark it was like a coming home of sorts. I forgot to ask him if he was a Green Bay Packer fan. I can’t imagine him not being one – we all seem to bleed green. Anyway, I had a fascinating conversation with Mark. He is a very intelligent and competent guy who knows what he wants and should be doing. This makes sense because he is a 58 year-old financial planner. He’s also a big guy (6’1” 215 pounds) who just loves to train and participate in high level endurance sports such as running, cross country skiing, kayaking and canoeing.
I’m impressed that at his size he has run nine full marathons and wants to do more. At his stature he is built more like a decathlete than an endurance athlete. I must say that I did encourage him to consider lower duration and higher intensity activities such as the Olympic distance triathlon (.93 mile swim, 25 mile bike, and 6.1 mile run) and running hard sprints. He did acknowledge reducing his body mass from 215 down to the high 180’s would prevent injury and increase his speed and endurance both during his training and competitions.
Mark does have slightly high blood pressure and cholesterol and is nursing an illiotibial band strain on the outside of his thigh and knee. But this guy is motivated and very authentic. Look at his goals and how he wants to serve the God in 2010: Beginning in 2006 after a faith awakening mission trip at Katrina, the Holy Spirit really stirred in him to improve his physical fitness so that he could maximally serve god. The Holy Spirit did this by encouraging him to start a group of five to seven endurance athletes from within his church, but expects this group to blossom into an interfaith community group whose main aim is “faith in fitness.”
Along with starting this group, mark wants to compete in a 50 kilometer cross-country ski competition. He also really wants to qualify for the 2012 Boston Marathon. To achieve these goals he knows that he will have to reduce his overall body mass, increase his muscular strength and body elasticity and improve his running speed. I’ve prayed with Mark for the God to heal his body for his honor, glory and purpose within his life.
KIM WINN – Pflugerville, Texas (near Austin)
Last but not least, please welcome Kim. Kim is a high school teacher (97 students), children’s ministry director, and a single mother of three teen-agers. Like the other four team members, I enjoyed speaking with Kim. She has participated as an athlete all of her life. Kim loves basketball, soccer and volleyball. She’s paid some serious dues with six knee surgeries (three on each knee) and still sports a partial rotator cuff tear in her right shoulder. Kim must be tough because she insists that she’s fine and ready to train. The fact that she has earned a degree in kinesiology (study of how humans move) will really help me help her achieve her goals.
So here they are: She wants to gain a level of fitness that will allow her to be active with her teens, to reach a personal goal of weight loss that is healthy, and to utilize the knowledge gained to be able of serve God better by first taking care of the body he has given her. Kim sincerely hopes to be a good role model for the children to whom she ministers, the students that she teaches, her own teens, her friends and those with whom she fellowships. Just a few demographics on Kim: she is 43, 5’6” tall and weighs 172. Along with helping Kim with her primary goals, we’re going to get her down to a healthy 139 pounds.
So, there you go Faith and Fitness Magazine reader team, these are the series participants. Please join us in our pursuit of being what we are created to be for God’s honor and glory. From this point on I will be keeping you up to date on all of our coaching strategies as I communicate to the team members weekly through emails, phone calls, and whenever possible – in person training visits.
