Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Sucker Punch: (an interview with) Paul Chek by Bryan Krahn

Sucker Punch: Paul Chek
Functional, gimmicky, who cares?
160 pounds is still a shit load of weight to hoist up one-handed

Paul Chek is brilliant, controversial, and convincing. This is an interesting interview with him posted at T-Muscle. He is never short on an opinion, which resulted in part of the interview being removed from the main page.

They included this little blurb at the end of the article:

A large section of this interview was edited out because it had to do with religion and, frankly, we don't feel like seeing the article discussion generate an Internet version of a bar room (or church hall) brawl. However, out of courtesy to Paul, the removed section will be posted in the Politics and World Issues forum.

Not surprised about the religion stuff (really, it's more spirituality than religion) in his talk - he goes there, often. He tends not to see heath, training, and spirituality as separate, but rather, interconnected. Not too many fitness coaches can quote Maslow or talk about Jungian Projection. Or talk about quantum physics.

If there is another integral oriented strength/fitness coach besides Shawn Phillips or Rob McNamara, it's Paul Check. Big props to T-Muscle for posting another interview with Chek.

[For what little it's worth, I disagree with him about not eating nuts. But almost everyone will disagree with him about something.]

Oh yeah, he practices what he preaches:

Sucker Punch: Paul Chek
Paul is no stranger to heavy, basic training.

Sucker Punch: Paul Chek

Many have adopted the expression "turn disaster into opportunity" during the latest economic recession.

After my recent interview with educator, author, speaker, and exercise expert Paul Chek, I had the opportunity to find out exactly what that expression meant.

My one-hour conversation with Paul Chek was just coming to a close when I suddenly realized that my voice recorder wasn't, well, recording voices.

Fortunately, I'd taken notes; 20 feverish pages of them, in fact. But Paul Chek, one of the most controversial, outspoken figures in the industry today, isn't exactly known for speaking in short, MTV-friendly sound bites.

Paul Chek is a man on a mission and when he speaks, his words reflect that. He is unapologetic in his belief that many "modern" approaches to health care are either misguided, flat-out wrong, or agenda-driven practices designed solely to pump up the bank accounts of the big pharmaceutical machine.

Because of his hard line approach, Paul has alienated a lot of his peers who would normally be praising him as a visionary who's revolutionized the field of corrective exercise. Instead, they question his practices, his criticism of the scientific method, and his holistic approach to health and wellness. Some say he's simply an excellent therapist that's gone too far, others say he's flat-out crazy.

The criticisms only make Paul talk louder.

As a result of my technical mishap, I had to think a lot about what Paul had said. I had to look at my short hand scribblings and ask myself if that was what he really said, or if I'd somehow misinterpreted the message? I had to cross-reference what I thought I heard with other work he's published, and finally trade emails with Paul just to make sure I wasn't subconsciously hearing things that I wanted to hear, or inserting my "programming" when I should have been listening to his voice.

In the end, I'm glad I took the time to seek out the voice behind his message and I encourage you to try to do the same.

Remember, it's easy (and lazy) to dismiss the things that challenge your beliefs; it takes effort and maturity to let down your defenses and try to understand them. Cause you never know where an opportunity may be waiting for you.

So without further ado, meet Paul Chek.


TMUSCLE:
Paul, you've been the force behind many training concepts that are now considered staples, like Swiss ball work, heavy ab training ...

TM: I assume that must piss you off.

TM: You mentioned spirituality. Why do you consider spirituality to be such an integral part of strength training?

TM: That sounds like Maslow.

TM: Paul, a lot of lifters tune out when the subject turns to God and spirituality. You've been in the lifting game longer than many people, so you must understand that lifters are very skeptical of anything that isn't easily measurable or observable. How do you get lifters to buy in to these abstract concepts?

TM: I don't know. I would say a spiritual person is someone who tries to live their life in a way that acknowledges that they are a part of something bigger.

TM: Sure, I remember that from university. That's the Freudian idea of projecting your ideas onto others rather than considering what they're really thinking.

TM: So you can honestly connect the dots from spiritual development and real world physical development or healing?

TM: A popular criticism of you is that it appears you give far too little credit to the basics (clean diet, consistent, heavy weight training) and give far too much credit to the mysticism.

TM: Can you explain how you would approach working with a professional athlete?

TM: Absolutely. And steps three and four?

TM: Ok, I can imagine that a lot of readers might be rolling their eyes right now or scrolling down to see today's Powerful Image, but I think that if you framed this a bit differently it would sound quite similar to what other coaches have put forth. Specifically, setting goals, establishing priorities, emphasizing rest and nutrition, the importance of mental clarity and sound choices. But you say words like dreams...

TM: Sure do. Your method of analysis has been criticized as observing things in "the real world" and then seek research that supports your observations. Is this true? Is that not backwards science?

Look at Einstein. He was famous for doing experiments in his bathtub. He said once that you couldn't solve a problem with the same science that created it. You're subconsciously limited by their viewpoints, their bias. In fact, I'd argue that there could be no objectivity in science if the researcher has any attachment to the outcome whatsoever. This fact is objectively borne out in Schrödinger's cat experiment, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and The Copenhagen Interpretation in quantum physics, all of which imply that "consciousness directed at any given result influences outcome."
Read the rest of this intriguing interview.


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