Shaolin Kung Fu: Your Personal Warrior Training Program

If you don't have a Shaolin teacher near you then my DVDs give you insant access to authentic  Shaolin Teachings. What I teach in my DVDs is what you would learn if you entered The Shaolin Temple. It is possible to learn from my DVDs as long as you respect yourself and respect your teachings. Train regularly, five- six times a week and clearly define your goal.

Shaolin transformed my life, and it's my goal to help as many people transform their lives. I'm very happy that thousands of students all over the world now train with my DVDs and books. 

When I made my first DVD, Kung Fu Journey, in 2005, I had no plans to make another one. But due to constant demand from my long-term students I've now made nineteen DVDs, one Qigong book, and  my kung fu book will be available next year. 

For the beginner I know it can be a bit confusing knowing which DVD to start with so in this series of blog posts, I'm going to give a quick overview of each DVD and how to train with them and what benefit they will give you together with some suggested training programs.

If you want to learn Shaolin as a martial artist then you need to start with Shaolin Workout 1, 2, and 3.  If you're not so bothered about Shaolin martial arts but you want exceptional stamina then train with Shaolin Bootcamp and Shaolin Circuit Training.

Shaolin Workout 1 is exactly the same as if you were stepping into a class at the Shaolin Temple. Don't expect to keep up and understand everything.  As you keep studying with the DVD, you will slowly see improvements and gain an understanding. Once you've mastered the five fundamental kicks and the five fundamental stances, even if you still can't keep up, you're ready to move onto Shaolin Workout 2.

One of the reasons for moving up quickly is so that your body doesn't reach its plateau, in order for your body to keep improving, you need to keep surprising it and keep finding the edge of your training. Alternate between Workout 1 and Workout 2.

If you're only interested in fighting techniques and not traditional Shaolin then can skip Workout 1 and 2 and go straight to Workout 3, where you learn fighting kicks and fighting punches and combinations.

As a martial artist continue to come back to these three DVDs, and now to improve your strength and stamina and challenge your body even more, add in Shaolin Bootcamp 1 and 2. These DVDs use your own body for strength training and are more challenging in terms of stamina. 

You can alternate the days so now you have a complete 5 day workout:

Monday: Workout 1

Tuesday: Workout 2

Wednesday: Workout 3

Thursday: Bootcamp 1

Friday: Bootcamp 1

Saturday: Self-train without the DVDs perfecting your techniques.

If you're a fighter or you want to work more on your stamina and modern fighting techniques then alternate between the Circuit Training DVDs and the Bootcamp DVDs. Circuit Training Volume 1 focuses on punches and Circuit Training Volume 2 focuses on kicks. 

It's good to do each of the Circuit Training DVDs twice a week:

Monday: Circuit Training 1

Tuesday: Circuit Training 2

Wednesday: Bootcamp 1 or 2

Thursday: Circuit Training 1

Friday: Circuit Training 2

Saturday: Bootcamp 2

With the Bootcamp DVDs, correct form is not as important as pushing your strength and stamina. If you're working with all 7 of the DVDs then work out a program that fits with your goals.

I have two other kung fu DVDs, these are more specialist DVDs specifically for martial artists, Fighting Punches and Kicks Volume 1 is exactly what the title says Kung Fu Ch'an and Fighting Punches and Kicks Volume 2 teaches takedowns so you need a partner to practice with,  Kung Fu Ch'an demonstrates how kung fu can be a direct gateway to the teachings of Ch'an Buddhism or Zen, this is not a teaching DVD as such.

You can share your training experiences with other students by joining this Facebook page.

All of the DVDs are available on my website. www.shifuyanlei.com

In my next blog post I will give an overview of my Shaolin Qigong DVDs.  

Thoughts on the McDougall Advanced Study Weekend

For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dr. John McDougall is a doctor and diet/health advocate who recommends a very low fat, high starch, whole food vegan diet to control weight and avoid chronic disease.  He's been at it for a long time, and he's a major figure in the "plant-based diet" community (i.e., a diet including little or no animal foods).

Dr. McDougall invited me to participate in his 3-day Advanced Study Weekend retreat in Santa Rosa, CA.  My job was to give my talk on insulin and obesity, and participate in a panel discussion/debate with Dr. McDougall in which we sorted through issues related to low-carb, Paleo, and the health implications of eating animal foods.  I was glad to receive the invitation, because I don't see myself as a diet partisan, and I believe that my evidence-based information is applicable to a variety of diet styles.  I saw the Weekend as an opportunity to extend my thoughts to a new community, challenge myself, and maybe even learn a thing or two.  It was particularly interesting to compare and contrast the Advanced Study Weekend with the Ancestral Health Symposium, which is more Paleo- and low-carb-friendly.

General Observations

The attendees were a lot older than AHS attendees.  I estimate that most of them were in their 60s, although there were some young people in attendance.

I don't place too much emphasis on peoples' personal appearance at conferences like this.  You don't know what a person's background, genetics, or personal struggles may be, you don't know how closely they adhere to the program, and you don't know to what degree a group of people might be self-selected for particular traits*.  But I will note that Dr. McDougall, his family, and many of the other starch-based/plant-based diet advocates tended to be extremely lean with low fat and muscle mass.  They also tended to have a healthy and energetic appearance and demeanor.  As I would expect, decades of exceptionally high starch intake hasn't made them obese or obviously ill.

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You Already Are What You Want To Become

Olympic athletes train their minds as hard as they train their bodies. They have coaches for their chosen sport, and a team of sport's psychologists for their mind. Shaolin students train their minds as hard as their body, and our psychologist is Zen Buddhism. Doesn't matter whether we follow a religion or we follow none, we can still take these teachings and apply them to their training. This helps us to see our world with fresh eyes and enter our training with a beginner’s mind.

One of the ways in which we can reignite our energy for training is  through the practice of aimlessness. This means: You already are what you want to become. Does a

tree have to do something? The purpose of a tree is to be itself, and your

purpose is to be yourself.

We have everything. There is no need to put anything in front of us and run

after it. So, whatever it is that you believe you want – good health, more

energy or to be an exceptional martial artist – you already have.

Bring this energy into your practice and you will find that it will enrich

whatever you are doing. Not only your Qigong or Kung Fu practice but also your work and family life. This Zen teaching on aimlessness helps us to stop putting our life on hold or waiting for the future when we think we will have more time or be less stressed.

There is no future time there is only now. And now is the most important

time we have. Now is the building block for the future. Instead of drifting

into the future of “if” and “when”, we focus on the single point of now. Now is all we have.

For this month, check yourself and rather than constantly trying to improve yourself train from the perspective that you already are what you want to become. Relax. There is nothing to strive for.

Remind yourself that right now you have all the elements for your health,

You simply have to apply the Shaolin techniques you are learning.

Shaolin Martial Arts helps us to reach the potential in ourselves that we

only dreamt of before. Using the powerful life energy that exists inside our

body we can make ourselves healthy and balanced. If you approach the

Shaolin Arts with intelligence and determination, I guarantee you can bring to your life the wholeness, health and inner satisfaction that you seek. What are you waiting for? Start today.

 For more information on Shifu Yan Lei's teaching DVDs, books and downloads please visit www.shifuyanlei.com

Statins increase the risk of delirium by 52% after cardiac operations

This study was published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery 2012 May;93(5):1439-47

Study title and authors:
Preoperative statin therapy is not associated with a decrease in the incidence of delirium after cardiac operations.

Mariscalco G, Cottini M, Zanobini M, Salis S, Dominici C, Banach M, Onorati F, Piffaretti G, Covaia G, Realini M, Beghi C.
Department of Surgical and Morphological Sciences, Cardiac Surgery Unit, Varese University Hospital, University of Insubria, Varese, Italy. giovannimariscalco@yahoo.it

This study can be accessed at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22541176

This study investigated the association between preoperative statins with the incidence of postoperative delirium in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. The study included 1,577 patients receiving preoperative statins who were matched with a control group of 1,577 not receiving statins.

The study found patients receiving preoperative statins had a 52% increased risk of postoperative delirium compared to patients not taking statins.

What about the Other Weight Loss Diet Study??

The same day the low-fat vs low-carb study by Bazzano and colleagues was published, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a meta-analysis that compared the effectiveness of "named diet programs".  Many people have interpreted this study as demonstrating that low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets are both effective for weight loss, and that we simply need to pick a diet and stick with it, but that's not really what the study showed.  Let's take a closer look.

Johnston and colleagues sifted through PubMed for studies that evaluated "named diet programs", such as Ornish, Atkins, LEARN, Weight Watchers, etc (1).  In addition, the methods state that they included any study as low-carbohydrate that recommended less than 40% of calories from carbohydrate, was funded by the Atkins foundation, or was "Atkins-like".  These criteria weren't extended to the low-fat diet: only studies of name-brand low-fat diets like the Ornish diet were included, while the meta-analysis excluded low-fat diet studies whose guidelines were based on recommendations from government and academic sources, even though the latter group represents the majority of the evidence we have for low-fat diets.  The inclusion criteria were therefore extremely asymmetrical in how they represented low-carb and low-fat diets.  This fact explains the unusual findings of the paper.

The abstract immediately activated my skeptic alarm, because it states that at the one-year mark, low-carbohydrate diets and low-fat diets both led to a sustained weight loss of about 16 pounds (7.3 kg).  Based on my understanding of the weight loss literature, that number seems far too high for the low-fat diet, and also too high for the low-carbohydrate diet.

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Spiced Up Rawnola

I know I haven't been updating much as of late, but school has just started and is really keeping me busy as well as keeping me from blogging. I thought it'd be nice to get away from the schoolwork though (i. e. desperately looking for distractions) so yesterday I made a batch of -believe it or not- rawnola! Yup, you heard it right, this rawnola is in fact RAW, meaning it's packed with nutrients and vitamins otherwise lost when you bake your granola, meaning it's the perfect "healthier" alternative to your regular "ALL NATURAL SUPER-GOOD-FOR-YOU GRANOLA" (pff, they put so much crap in breakfast cereal nowadays I wouldn't know where to begin). If you really can't live without that extra crunchiness you get from baking the granola, I suggest you go check out this post instead. There I've shared my favourite granola recipe, one that is actually healthy for real, gluten-free AND refined sugar free. Either way you're in for a treat. Here we go.

Spiced Up Rawnola 

50g (1/2 cup) raw oats (most oats have been steamed for longer shelf life, the fully raw ones are almost impossible to find though, so any oats you have will work just fine for this recipe)

140g (about 1 cup packed) pitted medjool dates

40g (2 big) dried figs

20g (3 tbsp) whole flax seeds

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Or any spices/superfood powders you have at home!

Optional: A handful of shredded coconut/chopped nuts/cacao nibs

1. Place all ingredients except for the flax seeds (this is very important that you don't, flaxseed oil goes rancid very quickly!) and pulse until you have a chunky mixture that holds together in smaller clumps, like real granola does. Transfer to a jar or bowl, stir in the flax seeds (or incorporate them using your hands) and store in the fridge or freezer.

Low-carbohydrate vs. Low-fat diets for Weight Loss: New Evidence

A new high-profile study compared the weight loss and cardiovascular effects of a low-carbohydrate diet vs. a low-fat diet.  Although many studies have done this before, this one is novel enough to add to our current understanding of diet and health.  Unlike most other studies of this nature, diet adherence was fairly good, and carbohydrate restriction produced greater weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor improvements than fat restriction at the one-year mark.  Yet like previous studies, neither diet produced very impressive results.

The Study

Lydia A. Bazzano and colleagues at Tulane University randomly assigned 148 obese men and women without cardiovascular disease into two groups (1):

1. Received instructions to eat less than 40 grams of carbohydrate per day, plus one low-carbohydrate meal replacement per day.  No specific advice to alter calorie intake.  Met regularly with dietitians to explain the dietary changes and maintain motivation.
2. Received instructions to eat less than 30 percent of calories from fat, less than 7 percent of calories as saturated fat, and 55 percent of calories from carbohydrate, plus one low-fat meal replacement per day.  No specific advice to alter calorie intake.  This is based on NCEP guidelines, which are actually designed for cardiovascular risk reduction and not weight loss.  Met regularly with dietitians to explain the dietary changes and maintain motivation.

Participants were followed up for one year, with data reported for 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month timepoints.  This study actually measured body fat percentage, but unfortunately did so using bioelectrical impedance (like on some bathroom scales), which is essentially meaningless in this context.

Results

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