The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman

Product Information

The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” - Maya Angelou, poet and activist Because the loads are significant, the athlete should rest 1:30-3:00 min between sets. Again, often the tendency of endurance athletes is to move through the exercises with less rest. This is not an aerobic workout and longer rest intervals are necessary. Our key objective as athletes is to safely close the gap between our current performance and our potential. Intelligently applied strength training schemes greatly diminish the risk of injury, and enhances performance. We’ve all heard plenty of swim anecdotes and philosophies. Here, we have focussed on the science. Exercises We simply cannot train at an optimal level if our tissue or joints are dysfunctional (misaligned, in a shortened or lengthened state, etc.). Here, dysfunction is a byproduct of repetitive movement occurring predominantly in one plane through a limited range of motion. Set/repetition organization at the onset of this phase should be 3 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise. Two sessions per week is plenty.

I am Dr. Shelly Mahon, your host, and today’s WELL source is Shane Niemeyer. By the time Shane was 28 years old, he was a heroin addict and had been arrested 25 times. After a failed attempt to take his life by suicide, he transformed himself. Today, Shane is a motivational speaker, elite triathlete racing ironman and 70.3 distances, full-time strength and endurance coach, and author of The Hurt Artist: My Journey from Suicidal Junkie to Ironman. He has interacted with hundreds of parents and thousands of adolescents on topics related to substance abuse, wellness, fitness, criminal justice and mental/emotional well-being. We all have a lot to learn from Shane. At the heart of his message is the importance of respect for yourself and others, generosity, grit, and importance of constantly growing and learning to be a better steward of humanity. An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.” - Lydia M. Child, abolitionistThe first time through this workout, it may be a good idea to perform only 2 sets of each exercise. Shane: Mandy came to Boulder in 2009 for a training camp with my good friend and mentor Joanna Zeiger. Joanna had taken me under her wing when I first moved here. Since I trained with Joanna 4-5 times per week, I met Mandy by default when she came to train up high just before taking her pro card. As soon as I met her that was it for me.

I haven’t had a good race out there yet. I can be very insecure at times, wondering if I belong. I’ve been trying to work on my mental game. The heat also plays a role, and I’m trying to work on my nutrition. Opening my eyes for the first time after I'd jumped—my ears ringing, my head pounding, and the anguished tears that I'd been crying moments before as I'd let go of the railing and let go of life still coursing down my cheeks—I was surrounded by a few people, including someone in hospital greens. I think I took a very pragmatic approach to taking a new identity for myself. I needed to improve as a person. The physical part was crucial for a lot of reasons. I didn’t know what to do with my guilt and shame, and the exercise became an outlet for those emotions. It was like a release valve. I knew I needed to do something big to swing my life the other way. I wanted to channel my extreme behavior in another direction. NIEMEYER: My past is my past. There are a lot of things I’m not proud of, but they happened. Going through the process with the writer, Gary Brozek, helped me examine my life in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. We talked for hours at a time. I was really open to him. If I were writing the book alone, I would have left some things out. It was painful.The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The participants in these and similar studies utilized either heavy weight-low repetition schemes or plyometric protocols both with significant rest intervals between sets. Here we will be combining elements of plyometric/ballistic training with heavy weight training so that we can achieve the adaptive responses of both modalities. It will be important to take longer rest between the sets than in past phases, as the loads are more demanding. In this phase we must fight the urge to organize the workout as a “circuit”, which is more aerobic in nature. Instead, we want the anaerobic benefits that come with combination of load with adequate rest between sets. This strength phase is organized by grouping a strength pattern with a more explosive pattern in a series of “super sets”. Again, we get plenty of aerobic training with the swim, bike, run; not taking enough rest between these sets will just make the athlete tired and miss the objective. Rules of the HWT/Reactive Phase