It’s not everyday you get a chance to learn about fitness, recovery, and healthy lifestyle practices from some of the best and most recognizable athletes in the world—so when I had a chance to participate in XPT’s first East-coast experience in Montauk last summer, I jumped at the chance (and jumped underwater with dumbbells, and jumped into the ocean, and jumped in a tub of ice…but we’ll get to that).
XPT – extreme performance training – is a program developed by big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, former pro volleyball player Gabrielle Reece, and author and endurance expert Brian MacKenzie. The three-day experience covers a range of workouts and recovery techniques including heat and cold therapy and breathing exercises. The program started out of Gabby and Laird’s Malibu home (they’re a couple, in case you haven’t seen their extremely impressive and very naked photographs in the 2015 ESPN Body Issue) and cap out at around 15 people, so participants get plenty of one-on-one attention as they try stand-up paddle boarding in the ocean, surfing, a range of bodyweight workouts in varied settings, pool workouts involving underwater breathing and plyometric movements with dumbbells, and testing your mental fortitude in a tub filled with ice.
“It’s gonna hurt….but how you deal with it and react to it is everything.”
“XPT is an exploration in performance training; it’s a philosophy about fitness and lifestyle and wellness, allowing us to continue to learn ourselves while we teach other people,” explains Laird. The program, which is relatively new, isn’t fixed, he says, and will continue to evolve and change as they learn and try new methods. Approaching performance and health from a holistic point of view, the program delves into all aspects of wellness, including breathing, recovery, nutrition, and exercise. “This is a glimpse at a lifestyle that we have developed over years of exploring, and now you can take some pieces of that with you,” he says. Bottom line: all the activities you try during the XPT experience are things these guys are doing anyway, everyday—now, they’re just sharing it with the rest of us.
The pool workouts involve dumbbells and instruction on controlling your breathing as you work your way through weighted jumping squats, lunges, and pistols. Participants also learn how to swim underwater on one breath while carrying a dumbbell. Although the workouts are challenging and fun, they’re more about learning to control your breathing and stay calm; knowing you have more air even if your brain is telling you to drop the weight and give up; and understanding that much of the stress and challenge in working out—and in life—is about how you react to that challenge. And, the intense circuit training doesn’t take place underwater just just because it looks cool: “It’s a way to work hard without beating yourself up, especially as you get older,” says Gabby, who recently underwent a complete knee replacement but breezed through the water workout with us. “At this point, it’s less about training to compete and more about training to keep up with my children and with Laird, and to have everything functioning correctly. I don’t want to lose my health in order to appreciate it.” Another workout included a 30-minute circuit workout led by Gabby made up of 30-second sets of movements from kettlebell swings and snatches to traditional bodybuilding dumbbell exercises; yet another simple but effective workout involved burpees, beach sprints, and swimming.
Ice therapy was one of the more challenging aspects of the experience. Sitting and remaining calm in a tub full of ice goes against everything your mind and body tells you is a good idea—which is one of the reasons the XPT team practices it. Besides the benefits in enhancing mood, reducing depression and stress, and assisting in muscle recovery, it teaches you to strengthen your mental tools in dealing with physical discomfort. Laird believes that being able to override your initial impulse to avoid discomfort reaps huge results in your mental and physical health. “It’s gonna hurt,” Laird says in a sincere and matter-of-fact approach that makes you both trust him and almost forget he’s famous. “It’s hard, but how you deal with it and react to it is everything. I like to give myself a mantra while I’m in there: ‘this is my house. This is where I live.’”
One of the major components of the XPT experience is enjoying yourself and connecting with nature, and the people and world around you. One way we did this was through a breathing exercise developed through a mix of ancient techniques, the Wim Hof method, and the personal experience of the founders. The breathing exercises, which lasted from 20-40 minutes at a stretch, involved deep belly breathing, timed inhales and exhales, and breath holding, and depending on the timing and sequencing can be used for increasing exercise performance or relaxation, mostly through improving co2 retention. “Breathing is a down-regulator that helps you relax,” says Gabby, and as someone who doesn’t generally enjoy meditation or yoga, I found this practice incredibly useful. The breathing is practical and easy to follow without getting distracted since it is a more cyclical, athletic form of breathing than, say, traditional yoga techniques. Within twenty minutes of this cyclical breathing, the class was asked to collectively hold our breaths, which we were able to do calmly and easily for up to three minutes. At the end of these sessions the participants were left invigorated, focused, and relaxed. These breathing exercises took place on the grass; our workouts were on the beach, in the pool, and in the ocean; we chatted and ate in the sun. “We look at nature as this extreme thing, and we’ve removed ourselves from it, even though we’re just as much a part of nature as anything else,” says Brian.
The group ate well throughout the experience, with plenty of fresh vegetables and seafood and snacks, but there wasn’t a feeling of strict rules. While the three leaders eat mostly Paleo, it’s more a byproduct of their simple goal to eat real, unprocessed foods. There’s not much macro counting or carb obsession going on—just enjoyment of real fresh food when you’re hungry, fasting when you’re not, and more than a little fat-fueled coffee. “The most important part of diet for me is variety; in fitness, too,” says Laird. “I like plants and animals; it’s what I eat.” The ideal diet is personal for every individual, adds Gabby: “It’s important that people figure out what works best for their system.” For Brian, who eats a mostly Paleo (plus cheese) diet and whose wife is a former Olympic rower, it seems that common sense—without the obsessive rules—is the best practice. He mentions things like generally avoiding booze, focusing more on plants, good fats, and proteins, and avoiding excessive carbs (“there’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate,” Brian says)—and if you’re looking to lean out or are just busy surfing all day, think about incorporating fasting (with the caveat that men are physiologically better suited for it, and that it’s often a more gradual process for women who wish to go that route).
“If we all just ate when we were hungry, we’d be better off,” says Laird. “We are all overeating. In the old days, you had to go work and find your food, now we have stores full of it everywhere.” Brian reiterates: “We are all addicted to food, it’s just how we eat and react to it that makes the difference.”
At the end of the weekend, you aren’t given a test or a booklet of guidelines on how to live and eat and exercise. What you are given is a set of tools to incorporate how you see fit into your own lifestyle, a kick-start of fun and excitement that makes you want to learn more, treat yourself better, and try more things that scare you just a little bit (like jumping in a tub of ice, for instance, or getting on a surfboard for the first time). As the program grows, XPT will train other instructors and offer more experiences at different price points to reach an ever-wider audience. Laird also assures us that the experience is not just for “super athletic guys. Anyone can benefit from it, regardless of genetics and background.” Certainly, a willingness to try something new is a more important requirement than your fitness level.
While it may not be possible to fully incorporate the XPT lifestyle—we can’t all live in Malibu—it’s more than feasible to take at least a few lessons back with you to improve your fitness, health, and overall wellness. I was happy to get a sunny glimpse into how some of the best athletes in the world train—not just for their sports, but for life: Gabby, Laird, and Brian all emphasized that their approach is about training to be healthy and happy, and to live life to the fullest. And if you want to live like Laird Hamilton, you have to have energy, work ethic, and more than a little sense of adventure. “They say you can never have too much fun, but the part you have to remember is, you have to be in pretty good shape to do it!” he laughs. “It’s not an option; it’s part of my existence.”
To find out more, check out some videos and tutorials, or sign up for an experience, visit xptlife.com.
The post The XPT Experience appeared first on Paleo Magazine.
source https://paleomagonline.com/the-xpt-experience/
No comments:
Post a Comment