And the secret is: don't play golf.

I played yesterday for the first time since fall 2008, and I had one of my best rounds in years. I had two disaster holes -- including a 9 on a par 3 -- that kept me from breaking 100. But overall I hit the ball cleaner and more accurately than I have in recent memory. I hit the greens off the tee on four out of five par 3s, for example, something I don't think I've ever done. 

Of course the lack of practice killed me around the greens; I couldn't get out of the sand to save my life, and even with generous "gimmes" I still managed to three-putt 6 times. I should also note that I bent a few rules during a long afternoon that included a one-hour delay for a hurricane that tore through the area right after we hit our tee shots on the 10th hole. (A lot of people resumed their rounds at the same time, and we all had to guess where our balls probably landed. I played someone else's ball on #11, and I strongly suspect someone else played mine.)

Still: my swing felt more natural and fluid than it has in a long time. My friends theorized that it was muscle memory kicking in, but my muscles remember how to do all kinds of crazy things when I play golf, most of which I didn't do yesterday. 

The only explanation is that my body works better than it did before. I've made dramatic changes to my workout program, spending as much time on mobility and core training as I do on strength. Could that have made me a better golfer, even without actually playing golf?

Tags: golf, core training, mobility, workout

Is it really May? And is it really possible that I haven't posted anything here since January? I would say that time flies, but in my experience it just crawls along, and sometimes the best I can do is crawl along with it.

The past few months have been jam-packed for me. Alwyn and I finished the manuscript for the third book in the New Rules of Lifting series; look for it in January 2011. I've been blasting away on several new projects, including the fourth NROL, while trying to keep up with my side gig as a husband and father. 

And I'm looking forward to the 2010 JP Fitness Summit in Kansas City, always one of my favorite events. We're just two weeks away.

Here's why I'm posting today, after my unplanned absence: My new friend Amy Scheer just posted this interview we did last week via email. It's fun and kind of weird, which of course is a pretty apt description of me. (I can't speak for Amy.)

Please drop by Amy's site to give it a read, and feel free to scold me in comments for being away so long. When it comes to social media, I'm growing less adept at a time when everyone else is getting better. I'm either way behind one curve or way ahead of another. 

Tags: personal, interviews, jp fitness

Happy New Year ... just 14 days after the fact.

Some quick updates:

* I went back to my old site, Male Pattern Fitness, with a guest article. In it, I review my favorite new workout books of the past 12 months, including Adam Campbell's outstanding Big Book of Exercises.

* I did a really, really fun podcast with Mike Robertson. The goal was to talk about how fitness professionals can improve their writing to move their careers forward, but the most memorable stretch comes when I go off on a spontaneous rant about how annoyed I am by Facebook. I've been thinking about it for a while, so I guess it was going to come out sooner or later. Still, it caught both of us by surprise. I just hope it's as entertaining to you as it was to me when I was getting it off my chest.

* One more trip back in time: I did an interview with actor Sean Faris for Men's Health magazine, talking about his workouts and diet. Sean is a smart young guy, and comes off as truly passionate about sports and exercise.

* Finally, going all the way back to October, I did this interview with Sean Barker for his Dad Fitness blog. In it, I make a point that I think is important for all parents today:

So that's what I've been up to. What about you?

Tags: books, dad fitness, mens health, mike robertson, podcast, writing, journalism

One of the real joys of the holiday season is reading the annual Christmas letters from family and friends. The best letters manage to be funny, clever, poignant, self-mocking, and most of all brutally honest -- quite a trick to pull off with just a few hundred words. 

This I freely admit: My friends inspire me to write better Christmas letters. I won't say I compete with them -- if I did, I'd have to push my kids to be more interesting, and there's no telling what dark alleys that would lead us toward. I just like to think that the people reading my letters get a kick out of them.

Unfortunately, there's another kind of holiday letter. The worst are the chirpy ones that stop just short of offering the exact amount of the husband's annual bonus and photocopies of the kids' perfect SAT scores. 

We got one today ... well, I can't go into details, because it would be unfair to the very nice people who sent it to us. We like these people a lot. I'll go as far as to say they're instantly likable. You meet them, and you feel comfortable around them. They're warm, friendly, and gracious.

But during a week like this, when Kimberly and I are fighting with the kids to not leave dirty socks under the Christmas tree, I really don't need to read about how someone else's children all make perfect grades, master technology instantly, and pick up their rooms without being told. 

You know?

I can barely get my kids to bathe this time of year, much less organize their bookshelves or defrag our computers. They're great kids in many ways, but I'd rather go off the holiday grid than to stack our family letters with details of their finest attributes. In two sentences I could make each of our kids sound so perfect that other people would start drinking early the day the letter arrived, knowing their children can't possibly measure up to ours.

But I'd never do it, for two good reasons: First, it would be a gross misrepresentation of who our children really are. Second, it would serve no purpose other than to make other people feel bad about their own kids. 

So how do you write a good Christmas letter? I've seen useful advice posted here and there. But the real key is this: Your friends and family should look forward to reading your annual letter, and when they finish, they should wish it had gone on a little longer. 

Easier said than done, I know. But if you're going to take the time to write anything at all, you should at least put in enough effort to get it right. A Christmas letter doesn't have to be clever or even memorable. It just needs to make its recipients happy they took the time to read it.

Is that too much to ask?

Tags: writing, christmas, christmas letters, children

The news about my mother gets more disturbing all the time. At Thanksgiving dinner, I was told, she referred to her daughter-in-law with a vile epithet ... even though she was in that daughter-in-law's home, and the insulted person had just cooked dinner for 11 members of our family.

I'm sorry to be vague about what was said; it would be a much more interesting and powerful story if I just repeated the insult, especially if I described the context. But because I have filters, I won't. My family would never forgive me, and I wouldn't expect them to.

The open question is whether my mother was always thinking such nasty thoughts about the people around her, and we only know it now because dementia has removed her filters.

If that's the case, all I can say is, thank goodness for filters.

So here's a question: How many times a day do your filters stop you from saying what's really on your mind? As a person with ADHD, I can tell you that I cherish my filters, and I'm never embarrassed to admit I need Concerta and caffeine to keep them up and running. I have plenty of regrets about the times I wrote or said what was really on my mind, and can't think of a situation where I held back and regretted it later.

We have a media culture today that thrives on the appearance of people speaking without filters. Some of them are really, really good at it. But I don't believe for a second that the people who have the most to gain from saying outrageous things -- whether we're talking about Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, or even Glenn Beck -- are truly speaking to us without filters.

I think they're remarkably adept at creating facsimiles of partisan outrage, but if you could peek behind the curtain I think you'd see a savvy and extremely successful business model at work, rather than true anger born of genuine philosophical convictions. If any of these guys spoke into an open mic without filters, I think we'd hear more Lonesome Rhodes and less Tom Paine.

That said, I think this blog post by Chris Faust, the recently laid-off travel editor of USA Today, comes as close as we're going to get to a genuinely unfiltered commentary by a media insider. Consider this lament:

But what bothers me the most is what my firing represented. See, I’ve been learning all the tricks that a modern multi-platform journalist is supposed to know. In the past 22 months, I’ve blogged, tweeted, shot photos and videos, and handled speaking engagements. I edited my section, managed my high-personality staff and then in my spare time, I wrote cover stories – something that very few other editors at USA TODAY do. I hustled and I cajoled and I ended up out on my ass anyway.

Do you doubt, for even a second, that this is what she really thinks about what happened to her?

Compare it to this paragraph in the same post:

But increasingly, things have become more interesting outside the newsroom bubble. I’d go to conferences and meet people who were making it just fine on their own. Some were creating niche businesses, busting up the paradigm. Others were parlaying old school media talents into fresh ventures, with a moxie that made me wish I had the freedom to emulate them. The air inside USAT’s towers on Jones Branch Drive always seemed a little stale after that.      

These freelancers-slash-entrerpreneurs are smart. They are nimble. And now they are my role models, as I join their ranks. 

Now I get the sense I'm being sold a product. I don't mean that as criticism -- I've been in the exact same situation as Chris, and I understand how it feels to find yourself adrift after years of safe passage aboard one of the biggest ships on the sea. You have to create a new brand and sell your products as if your life depends on it ... which of course it does.

That's why you need the filters. 

Tags: media , trends , filters , adhd , family , dementia