Your car or your body. Which do you maintain better?

I recently had the oil changed in the van that we use to tour in.  Our mechanic rotated the tires and checked the fluids.  I also got the van washed later that day.  I was reminded of a conversation I had with the fellas about maintenance.  

We had just finished a show where one of the performers tweaked his hamstring and I really wanted to stress the importance of making sure that we were taking care of our bodies.  I stressed the importance of strength, flexibility and conditioning.

We put a lot of miles on our touring van and as a result it requires more maintenance and more frequent maintenance than if we only occasionally drove it around the city.  The same is true of our bodies.  If all we did was occasionally challenge ourselves physically, we would not have to pay too much attention to our strength, flexibility or conditioning.

When I worked with the Houston Rockets, I had access to the weight room, the team trainer and the team doctor.  At one point, there was even a part-time team massage therapist which I too was able to make appointments with.

Now that I am not with an NBA team, I provide these necessities for myself.  I am not one to splurge on much of anything but when it comes to the three most important tools that I possess (my mind, body and spirit), I go out of my way to continually invest in their well being.  When it comes to my body, I have a membership to both 24 hour Fitness and Bally's, an investment that allows me to go to any of their locations nationwide.  The good thing about this investment is that because of the work that I do it is a business expense and can be a tax write off.  Fortunately many of the hotels we stay in have some sort of fitness room even if it is just a stationary bike.  It is definitely not necessary to go to a gym to maintain one's physical fitness - there are all kinds of things one can do with ones own body weight to stay fit.  

I also make what I think are wise investments when it comes to what I eat/drink on a consistent basis.

Going back to the van analogy, when we get our oil changed our local mechanic always makes sure to check our fluids.  He knows that we travel around the country and put a lot of miles on the engine and as our van's "doctor", he is vigilant about making sure he does his job to keep us rolling.

Sometimes I think he is more vigilant about maintaining our van than we are about maintaining our bodies.  Take fluids and nutrition for instance.  We had a teammate years ago that broke his femur.  Now understand that your femur is the largest bone in your body - it's your thigh bone.  He was barely 21 and appeared to be in amazing shape, yet he broke his femur.  Turns out he couldn't remember the last time he ate anything green, had a glass of milk or drank water.  He was basically living on Church's chicken and Coke (the soda).  

Our muscles and tendons and joints need lubrication and our bones and organs and "engine" need fuel.  Unless we are consuming what they need, they are not going to get it and will soon break down.  I cannot stress enough the importance water plays in the effective functioning of our bodies.  Water carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, regulates body temperature, lessens the burden on the kidneys and the liver, helps dissolve minerals and nutrients to make them accessible to the body amongst other things.  The human body on average is made up of 70% water and dehydration is the result of too little water intake.

How water benefits the human body

  

  

Study after study shows that fruits and vegetables are the key to health and wellness.  It is for this reason that I make it a habit to have a banana or apple not too far away.  Another easy way to include vegetables is eating at Subway and for fruit I carry a small cooler when we travel.  Eating well on the road can be very inconvenient but not impossible.  This is no Subway commercial but think about it: Most Subways have tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, onions, bell peppers, cucumbers, black olives, jalapenos and banana peppers and you can get them all with your sandwich at no extra cost.  Why not get them all.  Think of it in terms of your car:  I know this is ridiculous but, let's say your car told you one day it didn't like oil or transmission fluid - the taste just didn't agree with it and it preferred Vodka and Red Bull instead.  Would you stop putting oil and transmission fluid in.  No, you would tell your car to deal with it because you know in order to run effectively it NEEDS oil and transmission fluid regardless of how bad it might taste.  So you feed it to your car anyway and hope it doesn't get revenge by refusing to play it's radio or refusing to roll down the window when you press the button.

Why would we maintain our vehicles better than we maintain ourselves?  I encourage you to feed yourself the things you NEED even if you don't like the taste of them, OR find tastier ways to get them into your system.  Don't be like the 5 year old that wants soda with every meal and refuses to eat his vegetables - that 5 year old doesn't know any better, WE DO!  

Don't be fooled by thinking that because you take vitamins, you are getting what you need.  That multi-vitamin you are taking may be doing more harm than good.  Check out this article and tell me what you think about vitamin supplements.  Not all supplementation has the potential to be harmful.  As diligent as I may be, I do not eat enough fruits and vegetables on a daily basis so I bridge that gap by taking a whole food based nutritional product.  Keep in mind that if you are an athlete, act like it and consume nutrition like it.  Be Great!

Can A Non-Gymnast Become an Acrobatic Slam Dunker

From time to time I get asked if a person has to be a gymnast to become an acrobatic slam dunker. Since I flipped out of the womb and have been flipping ever since, this question initially caused me to step outside of myself and consider the possibilities.

I now know without even thinking about it - NO! Being a gymnast is NOT a prerequisite for being a trampoline dunker. Having gymnastics training certainly helps to shorten the learning curve but I have determined that one just needs to be athletic and have desire.

I am reminded, as I think about some of the performers that have come through the ACRODUNK system, that physical ability is a necessity but heart and desire is what takes a guy from just being able to do dunk shows to being able to WOW!

Eli Akin, Gregory Mueller, and Alain Anderson were not gymnasts but became crowd pleasing extreme dunkers. The common denominators for each of these guys is physical ability and a passion for entertaining. Each of them had different learning curves but all of them were able to include a front flip dunk in their repertoire. One or more of them have mastered the “afro” pass (front flip off the glass), the barani pass, or the clutch dunk (front flip through the leg) which all require an acrobatic mindset.

My training began in the backyard. I flipped off fences and tree stumps and roofs before I ever set foot in a gymnastics gym. It was for the love of the jump that I flipped almost as much as I walked or ran. Keith Brown was a gifted gymnast who trained at Houston’s Gymnast Factory and benefitted from the expertise of Keven Mazeika (2008 USA Men’s Gymnastics Team Heach Coach). Keith was one of the first guys I approached to be a part of our team. It turned out that he had a friend, Sadiki Fuller, who was more of a backyard gymnast that also liked the idea of being a part of an acrobatic slam dunk team. Both of these guys were definitely gymnasts but the first guy to ever perform with me as part of our team was Eli Akin, a basketball player and definitely a non-gymnast.

The first 5 touring performers for our team consisted of me, a backyard gymnast that got classical gymnastics training, Eli Akin - a 6 foot plus basketball player that had to develop his ability to flip, Keith Brown - a classically trained gymnast with mad skills, who could also play basketball, Sadiki Fuller- a 6 foot plus backyard tumbler that could play basketball and got most of his gymnastics training in public school classes, and Byron Thomas - a pure athlete who was also a backyard tumbler that could do anything athletic from basketball to football, track to baseball, soccer to fencing, badminton to chess - whatever. (I’m only exaggerating a tiny bit)

More than athletic ability, these guys all had a deep down desire to entertain, to get air, to wow audiences to “blow them away” we used to say. Other than myself and Keith, the level of elite or classical gymnastics training was pretty shallow.

As more classically trained gymnasts auditioned to be dunkers for our team (and there have not been many), I noticed that these gymnasts had to unlearn a few things to become more effective as acrobatic slam dunk entertainers.

There is a level of rigidity in classical gymnastics. The “toes pointed, legs straight” thing for some is hard to ditch. I had to unlearn some of this myself but for me it was not a conscious unlearning. It was that I transitioned to a smoother, more fluid and cooler swagger than that of the robotic “salute the judge, do your routine, stick your dismount” style of a classically trained gymnast. I had guys like Eli Akin and a whole league of NBA players that I was taking notes from.

So, you do not have to be a gymnast to be an effective acrobatic slam dunk entertainer. A gymnastics background will definitely shorten your learning curve when it comes to the acrobatic part but even without any gymnastics training, you can learn that.

Over the past 5 years, I have learned some acrobatic skills that I had never done before. I will admit that the foundation built through years of flipping helped me but what truly made it happen, came from the heart. All those non gymnasts out there that have excelled as acrobatic slam dunkers know exactly what I’m talking about.

Check out www.acrodunk.com to see some gymnasts and non-gymnasts as acrobatic slam dunkers.

Be Great!