Esquire, the Shifter Team, 3 Solids

For those of you that follow this blog, you are likely my friend or a fan of Dunk? on Facebook (and if you are not you can follow me on Twitter at cspann85, but friend me, all the cool kids are doing it). It should have come as no surprise that my article appeared in Esquire about the genesis of the Dunk? I talked about it enough. Esquire is an established and contemporary publication and working with their editorial team was humbling, exciting, and exhausting at the same time. I received my BA in English Literature from University of San Diego and my MFA from Falmouth College in Cornwall, United Kingdom, so actually writing something and having it published in a non-student run publication is as good as it gets. What started out as a 2,000 word saga of redemption and retribution was transformed into a chiseled 700 word clear cut message. Essentially what was once a bloated, over thought and stagnant existence would become a trimmer and better version of myself. You’ve heard all of this before. Esquire legitimizes what we are doing with Dunk?. My hope is that Esquire readers need to read installment after installment. If you haven’t had the chance, you can read it here Esquire Piece.

There has been one major change to the production and what I hinted at in the last blog. I am now and will be until the end of the documentary, trained by the entire Shifter Team (Bernie Darcy and Jase Graber). I can’t thank Heather Lehman enough for getting me started, and if the truth be told I didn’t give her a 100%. I am sure if Heather heard me say that she would say something like “I didn’t give myself a 100%”. However, if I lament on the past anymore my editor (Mom) will quit so onward we go.

The Shifter Team is training me for free and the training is much more than the actual Shifter machine. Here are some words from Bernie Darcy about what my training entails. “The basic outline is: Lots of rock climbing and some hiking uphill. Basically we're utilizing the SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) principle to get your body to adapt to you constantly raising your center of gravity (COG) above the ground. The more strenuous the activity used to raise the COG the faster your body increases your strength to weight ratio (and overall lightness) while you're getting a great dynamic functional workout.

Rock climbing will be the launching pad to getting you into a full functional training program designed to prevent injury while setting your body up with a strong foundation to help you train to jump. This program will put highest priority on balance, symmetry, stabilizing all joints, increasing accuracy, and heightening reflexes. The next priority level will be passive range of motion followed by active range of motion while continuing to build on the other priorities I listed above. After building that strong foundation we can start working on power (this is where plyometrics come into play).

At this point your body should be setup to perform very athletic movements with a minimal injury risk. This is where Jase and I will take our knowledge of jumping technique and coach you through the timing and strategy of a quick/powerful jump.

As far as a timeline, it all depends on how well you progress through the stages. Just like you're finding in the Shifter training, each level of progression is dependent on achieving the previous level. I'm very happy with the rate of your progression at this point, but each one of the progressions has the potential to expose dis-functions in your body. When we run across those it can take some extra time to get rid of it and move on to the next thing. You're really close to finishing the Shifter progressions so now your job is to climb your ass off. As you get better at climbing and the weight starts dropping, we'll be getting further into the functional training program.” You can see Jase demonstrating the Shifter Jase Shifting

Let me translate. I will be hiking, rock climbing, and dieting. For the past three weeks I have worked out a total of 18 days out of 21. Since I started Shifting, climbing and hiking I am down 8 pounds to 248. I plateaued at 238 last June and I need to get to 185-190ish in order to dunk. Diet is my Achilles Heal, but Jase assures me the more I get my weight off the ground the less I will feel like eating. God, I hope he’s right.

The Shifter

Raise your hand if the first thing you think of when you read the title was an adult toy? (Authors note: my editor put in adult toy, I originally had “sex toy”, my editor is my mom aka THE JANE, you can see the dilemma) If you raised your hand you are not alone. All of my friends and family members have asked the same question in a variety of different ways: “the shifter, what is that? Some kind of adult toy?” www.theshifter.com , is not an adult toy as far as I can tell, unless you are into being punished, wait a minute, what kind of audience am I looking for?

The Shifter was invented by Jase Graber, a former collegiate athlete and certified trainer through National Academy of Sports Medicine. The Shifter is a machine that essentially trains athletes how to not sprain their ankles. There is no way I can explain the machine the way Jase and Bernie Darcy (Head Trainer for The Shifter) can, so I suggest you visit the website linked above and read about the studies done at Colorado State University and Arizona State University.

This isn’t my first experience with the Shifter however. Back in 2005, when I graduated from grad school, I wanted to become a sports writer for my day job as I worked on novels and screen plays at night (anyone seen that first novel by the way?). The most important lesson I took from grad school was that if you have a story that no one else has, grab it, write it, and run with it. Someone will eventually want to publish it. And, that is what I tried to do with the “Shifter” piece which got wait listed by the staff at The Republic. Well, life sometimes gets in the way and instead of pursuing a career as a writer (and never trying to re-submit the Shifter piece) I took a job with a start up called Doclopedia and five years later I am still working in health care. Please feel free to read what I wrote about the Shifter back in the day The Shifter

So, all of this being said, you know my story (if you read the blog and thank you if you do) I got married, got extremely out of shape and fat (honestly well on the way to be uber fat before that but what evvs), had some babies, started a documentary, had another baby, couldn’t afford to work out at the gym anymore, so I racked my brain for ideas to work out at home and to not quit documentary, and I thought of Bernie and the Shifter. Then I wrote the longest sentence possible.

I am four hour long sessions into the Shifter training, and it is beyond hard. I will put up some video with the next blog, but imagine continually shifting your weight back and forth, while using your entire core to keep your balance. Your brain is telling your body to go one way and you are telling your body to go the opposite way. Sounds confusing, right, it is.

This machine, if it does what Bernie and Jase claim it will do, will train me to never sprain my ankle again. I always seem to sprain my ankles, so the idea of this is amazing. Time will tell. Dunk continues, and next week we will have our biggest announcement yet, and it’s definitely not another pregnancy .

12-18-2011

I know I keep talking about the importance of engaging my audience and keeping them informed with my struggles to get back above the rim. It seems that every time I think I have a spare moment to write or video log, I end up doing something else, like eating a bean and cheese burro from America's Taco Shop, or taking a nap, or watching the "Social Network", which was phenomenal by the way (although the best movie I have seen in a long time is "The Town" but even then it might be because of my man crush on Affleck). I need to be writing more, and I need to be eating less. For the most part, I have been abiding by these rules, sometimes I slip, sometimes a hot woman (hi Mandy) visits from Oklahoma and you end up eating chips and queso. I am in the same spot, more or less, I was a year ago, physically and athletic wise. I am here and I think I am ready to try again.

Let me preface this last statement with a story about my friend Mike and I during our freshman summer of high school. That year we were members of the freshman basketball team who went undefeated (which at the time was the first team to do so at BCP). Mike was our starting power forward and I was a combo 1-2 guard who came off the bench. The season was a blast, and I worked harder than I ever had before, so when summer came around my dad and I built some homemade plyometric boxes to help improve my vertical leap. Mike and I painted a "PT" on each box, which stood for Psycho Training, and each day in the hot Arizona summer we were going to sweat it out towards greatness. Well, that lasted a week and I never made it to the Varsity team. Although, I did get a technical for dunking in warm ups the following year on the JV (which by the by is the premise for this little journey).

That summer I killed myself for about a week, maybe 10 days, and then I resumed a life of Nintendo, pizza, chasing girls, and being a lazy teenager. The reason I bring this up is because of how it correlates to me being a dad. I am in the early stages of being a father. I had a decent freshman year, and as I started my sophomore season with Henry I began to cruise. Cruising isn't going to cut it, and although I have a team mate I can rely on or who will even let me coast, it just wouldn't be fair to let her carry the load.

You see there is not a day that goes by where I don't regret choices I made in the name of laziness during high school and college. I will never know what could have been, but I am able to control what I will be. So check me out, keep me honest, keep me focused, and let's see what I can do today and tomorrow because yesterday is over. The real journey begins with this post, and I will try my hardest to get you every single detail of what Abby, Kohen, Chloe, Henry and I go through.

Charlie dunks on 12-18-2011, my 33rd birthday.

“No more excuses, I hope”

It seems I am always waiting for myself to get my act together, which drives my wife up the wall. When I first started kicking around the idea for Dunk, there wasn’t one person who didn’t absolutely love the idea of what Dunk was about. Granted most of the people who loved the idea, in fact loved me as well, (as they were all family and friends). But honestly, not one person didn’t love the idea of a documentary about a husband and father, getting back in shape, in pursuit of one amazing athletic accomplishment, dunking a basketball.

How many 270 pound portly men do you know that get sponsored by Converse(in the form of free gear) and have Esquire Magazine lined up to do a piece on them, not a heck of a lot. In fact the only portly white dude that was doing better than me in the beginning of 2010 was Kevin Smith. Ok, there are probably a lot more, but I really like Kevin Smith, and he is my only famous follower. Everything had fallen into place and all I had to do was lose 70+ pounds and dunk a basketball.

Obviously I didn’t do it, but I am still hoping I will. My entire life has been easier than most. I am not saying that my life is hard now, but I am saying it is a heck of a lot busier than it ever was with the arrival Henry Lyle, born 10-12, and starting a great new job. Abby and I have 3 kiddos, one four weeks old and the other two closing in on 18 months, which means I have to commit myself more than ever.

When we first started the documentary we had one amazing trainer (Heather at www.skyfitaz.com) two different camera men, one director, a production schedule, and two fine women lined up as producers. Now we have two camera people (Abby and I) with one Flip recorder and two other camera’s on my Droid X and her Iphone. Essentially, all we have is man power and yet to be seen determination.

I would quit, honestly I would, and I am sure there are people out there who think it would be much easier to quit when you don’t have a gym to go to, you don’t have a trainer and nutritionist guiding you, and you really don’t have any extra time. But I owe this to myself. I can hit the pavement and I know enough to lose the weight. Common sense says I should have probably never ordered anything with extra cheese. So, I am going to work out at night when I am super tired and just want to sleep, I am going to eat right, and I am going to spend every second I can get with my wife and kids. In this year Abby and I will spend more money than we ever have, and a tiny fraction of it will go to either her or me. Evidently that is how this parenting thing works, or at least that is what my mom keeps telling me.

Ps-Welcome to the world Henry, I am so excited to see what you are all about.

Failed or Failure?

I failed Dunk? When we started, in January at 275 pounds, my goal was to be down to 200 pounds by now and I am at 245. I am a couple inches closer to dunking the basketball, but still a foot away. We did not film enough, I did not do a good enough job updating the blog, or releasing video snippets to keep the public interested. As far as I can tell, Esquire has walked away from the piece I had written for them with the help of one of their editors. Now with a new baby due in one month, there is zero chance to lose 45 pounds and dunk a basketball, so I failed. I give myself a big fat F. I could rationalize the shit out of it, but let’s just leave it as an F and move on.

Wait, move on from the production, no way Jose! Again, I am finding myself with an opportunity to prove myself, and this time I understand that I need to prove myself to myself. Before we all hug ourselves and sing campfire songs let me explain. When I started Dunk I viewed the production as a great way to show Abby how committed I was to getting healthy for our family. I wanted a video diary that showed my love to Kohen and Chloe, and how I wanted nothing more than to be a fit, active father. I wanted to show my dad that I could still be athletic, capable of hard work and a wondrous fete. What I have learned though over the last nine months is that none of that truly matters. Don’t get me wrong, I care very much what my wife, children and family think of me. But, in order to truly embrace what Dunk is about, which is changing your life for the better, I need to do it for myself. In the beginning I thought that Dunk was an exceptionally selfish thing to do, especially to a wife who had just birthed twins, but I don’t feel that way anymore. Dunk is for me, it’s to finally let go of my failed athletic past, but more importantly to get healthier and happier and feel better about myself when I look in the mirror. For a very wise trainer once told me, “if you aren’t happy with yourself how can you expect to make anyone else around you happy?” Thank you Heather for that.

After Heather told me that, I put Sky Fitness, (www.skyfitaz.com), on hold. I am taking a hiatus from my workouts there in order to be home with the kiddos and help bring Abby to the finish line with the LAST baby we are going to have. I will be making up my own workouts for the next 3 months with aspirations of starting up Sky again in January.

This is the perfect time for me to see what I can do on my own. This is normally the part when I talk about how much I am going to film and write in the upcoming weeks. Let’s get real, from now on I will do what I can do and hopefully it will be a lot and meaningful. Until next time, keep your nose to the grindstone (Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms).

ps-the picture deserves an explanation and I will give one a week from now.

Re-Up

I thought for this week I would let you read the emails that went back and forth between myself and Heather www.skyfitaz.com Heather after almost 8 months of working together knows me very well, and what you all need to learn is that there is much more to her and this process than just what we do in the gym 3 days a week. Enjoy-Charles

H, it is safe to say i am at the cross roads of dunk. when we starte i weighed 275 lbs and now i am hovering at 243. and the crappy part is i know exactly why. i haven't changed my diet and i haven't sold out in the gym. i know you are not big on big shiny dudes. But i am heading to San Diego and need some of your patented motivational words in order for us to charge into the final stage of dunk.
charles

why haven't you changed your diet?
why haven't you sold out in the gym?

Heather

Wait are you mad at me? Because that seems kind of angry. Now I feel a little nervous about this entire email-post thingy?

not mad at all. "why" is the only question you need to answer first (even though yoda says there is no why....no, it's there is no try - just do). anyway, you need to answer for yourself, not me, why you haven't changed your diet or really committed to the gym. do that.

With out boring you with all of the stories of my unfulfilled potential (at least in my eyes), I don't know if I am capable of selling out, and I am extremely capable of talking myself out of anything. In college I used to wait until the last minute always to finish a paper or study for a test, and after I would hand in said assignment or bomb said test, I always told myself "never again, next time I will be prepared". But I never prepared.

When I got engaged I told myself that I wanted to look good in the wedding photos and our engagement lasted a year. I never did it. I kept telling myself I would start on Monday, this month, etc.

It's the same shit with everything I do. I should be reading every book on screen writing I can get my hands on, or just flat out writing, but I find myself re-reading Pat Conroy or Dan Brown because it is easy and comfortable.

I know what I have to do to succeed. I have to change everything that I am, but I am terrified of trying my hardest and failing, because then what was it about anyways?

what do you determine to be a failure? do you consider not trying a failure? does that seem more safe? where do you think you got the message that it's best just to not try at all to avoid failure?

Don't think anyone ever delivered that message per say, just what if I give everything I have, and nothing happens?

i don't know. what would happen?

I would become the laughing stock of the village (north central phoenix) I already feel that I am getting labeled as the guy with "good ideas who can't back it up". I guess can you create work ethic if you've never had it. Can you get hungry if you're always fed?

so "people" are just waiting for you to fail? "people" were waiting for you to get a bad grade in college so they could laugh at you? "people" were waiting for you to not lose weight for your wedding so they could laugh at you? try again.

OK, I get it, I am not that important that "People" will relish in my perceived failures or incompetence in the class room, but how do you become un-lazy?

you make a change because you want things to be different more than you want them to be the same.

why aren't the things that you say you want very important to you?

They are H, I am just not a hard worker and I need to learn to be. I feel as though I am really starting to sound like a whiny bitch, so let's do this. I am leaving for Mission Beach this Saturday. You come up with a work out regime and I will tape a flip video of me doing the workout and submit to the Dunk site. I am going to draw my line in the sand. We have until November to do this, and I have to do it. Can't spend the rest of my life as nothing but an idea guy, action is action.

you didn't answer my question (which had a typo ):

why aren't the things that you say you want NOT very important to you?

They are very important to me, I am, I don't know a better way to say it, it's just I am not a hard worker, never have been, but would like to be. I feel that I have the motivation in Abby and the kids, I am just having a hard time manning up.

i think that using abby and the kids as motivation is helpful but you're inevitably going to have to do it for yourself. you have to think that you are worth making the changes. you need to look at why you haven't thought that so far. you also don't want to put yourself in a position of doing it all for them, end up not doing it then you feel like a bigger failure because you let them and yourself down. i think that it still comes back to making a commitment to the action part of your plan. you know what to do, how to do it and when to do it. all of the psycho b.s. reasons for inaction can't get you off your butt. at some point, you just have to do it. like it or lump it....just do it (such a catchy slogan). you have to commit, reconfigure and recommit on a regular basis.

i think the answer is that there is no easy answer.

change takes introspection, preparation and action. every day try to make as many good decisions for yourself. take the time to ask yourself why you continue to make decisions the derail you from your goal. quit dwelling on the mistakes and focus on the accomplishments. you are light years away from where you started physically. you have encouraged people to support you and they do. you got converse to give you free schwag and esquire to look at your writing. quit bellyaching about what you haven't done and just do more of what you know you should be doing.

peace out, homeskillet.


Later Skater.

Almost Dead in Flagstaff

I can’t breathe. Abby, the twins and I are in Flagstaff for the 4th, at my parents cabin, and it’s midnight on Saturday the 3rd. I wake up and cannot catch my breath. Abby assures me I am ok and not to wake the twins, so I down a couple Tylenol and go back to bed, taking very short breaths.

I get up at 5am with Abby, Chloe and Kohen and I still can’t take a full deep breath without coughing. We go for our morning walk and I am dripping sweat, which is not normal because it is 55 degrees outside. I have been hitting the gym hard recently, so I know for sure I am in good enough shape to walk. Abby thinks I am faking it, but in all fairness to Abby, I am a hypochondriac who constantly thinks he is about to die or has Motoba (damn that monkey from Outbreak). So now I am questioning myself as to what is going on with me.

By 3pm that day, after two failed attempts at napping, I go with my dad to the local fire station to get checked out by the paramedics. Of course when I say I can’t breathe, they interpret this as “Chest Pain”. While I do my best to assure them that I am not having a heart attack, they already have me packed into the ambulance on the way to the ER. On the way there, they notice that I am not getting enough O2 throughout my body. A normal person has 99% O2 and I am registering 79% to 80% O2. This is not good.

After they wheel me into the trauma center (I am sure some resident doc is hoping they get to crack my chest open and massage my heart back to life manually) I get a message from Heather. I am thinking, perfect…

No blog from Charles last week. I made an executive decision to publicize my pep talk to Charles. I do enjoy executive decisions.

I seem to say the same things all of the time regarding caring for yourself. People do not want to hear these same things (especially my children). There are two things that are a must to take good care of yourself: workout planning and meal planning. When you find yourself off-track and far away from your goals, go back to those two basics. Fitness and good health are not an accident. They are a result of pain-in-the-ass planning.

1. Schedule your workouts. Use Outlook, iCalendar or old school calendar with kittens of the month. Whatever works for you but write down when you plan on working out. I think it’s best to buffer with one more workout than your goal. If you’d be stoked with five, schedule six. Hit it harder at the beginning of the week because clearly, you’re going to run out of time at some point. Blowing off Monday, sets a tone for the whole next week. Just make it happen. I bet you’ll be tired, maybe hungover, feeling fat from eating too much over the weekend but I know that you’ll feel much better that you took a positive step to start out your week. No sense in carrying that crappy feeling into Tuesday.


2. Grasshopper Spannagel seems to resist meal planning the most. Seems nerdy and also another pain in the butt. It is. So what? After working all day, wrangling the kids, starting laundry and praying for bedtime, this is not the time to be parked in front of the fridge, staring down the nothingness or texting your spouse to bring something home for dinner. You can write meals on the kitten calendar on Saturday and shop on Sunday. If you’re feeling a little nutty, you can make some meals on Sunday that freeze so you just have to heat up during the week. Whoa.

Two things to put into motion. Two things that make you accountable to yourself. That’s not so bad. This will help you overcome the everyday “shiny balls” that distract you. As someone who can be a bit ADD and distracted by shiny balls that float my way (Hi Facebook and TMZ.com!), it takes some discipline and planning to dodge those balls (sorry). Do not schedule things during your workout time. Do not entertain other options during your workout time. Go workout. I promise you that there will always be many other things to do during that time. They might be more fun, too. Might not. It might involve working. Might involve cocktails or sleeping, two of my favorite things. Just doing it beats kicking yourself later when you realized you only managed two workouts during the week.

I totally get the setback. I have worked in a gym for twenty years. My weight has fluctuated with my level of dedication. I do not bound out of bed with the 1992 aerobics instructor’s woohoos. In the past couple of months, I have moved my home, taken care of my sons, survived baseball and t-ball seasons, tended to business matters, fired and hired employees, decided to upgrade and move the studio and taken care of my boyfriend after brain surgery. On most days, the last thing I want to do is workout. I would prefer rocking in the fetal position on a few days. Quite frankly, my workouts have sucked because I have chosen to juggle too many shiny balls and not schedule my workouts. Guess who feels crappier for it?

I am off to Safeway to fill my fridge and cabinets with healthy options for this week. One positive step. Tonight I will sit down with my calendar and schedule my workouts. Two positive steps. That’s all I’ll ask of myself today. Two things.

I read this as the doctors rule out any kind of cardiac problem, and I am again reminded that DUNK is not just about me. I made a promise to our readers and my sponsors (see Converse and Doclopedia) that I would post more blogs, more pictures, more videos and I haven’t done it because I keep telling everyone how busy I am.

When I re-read Heather’s pep talk I realize she is absolutely right. It’s as hard as and as simple as planning and execution. My weight loss isn’t where it needs to be because I am not dieting appropriately. DUNK is about changing your life for the better, metaphorically getting above the rim, and literally as well. I wouldn’t have titled this bad boy DUNK if I didn’t think I could do it.

After 10 hours in the emergency department, it turns out I have “A-Typical Pneumonia” which is a relief from “Blood Clots” in my lungs which they were throwing around for awhile. What this means for Heather and I is that I get to focus on 10 days of dieting because I am not allowed to workout.

So, let’s see if I can lose any weight with diet only for the next ten d