The Color of Leadership

I attended my university’s leadership program a few weeks ago. It was a really good experience; definitely one of the better leadership conferences that I’ve been to. There were three breakout sessions, each with a few different seminars during them. The first one was the best: True Color Leadership.

I’ve taken leadership “tests” before. They all seemed so general and generic that it was basically worthless to me. What is the point if three other leadership styles share eight out of nine of the same characteristics that I do? Each profile is so generic, how am I even supposed to apply it? This was all changed when I found out my “color.”

But before I go on, I would take the test if I were you. Like the directions suggest, getting a general feeling of the kind of person each letter would be works wonders.

Got yourself all tallied up?

Time to figure out your color. 

Personally, green was my highest, closely followed by blue. Orange and yellow lagged far behind and were in the single digits. I think that that combination almost perfectly describes my personality: innovative, value intelligence and competence, sincere, personal, etc.

So how do you use this to your advantage? Run with your strengths and traits. Are you primarily blue? Then focusing your efforts on personal relationships with other people will give you a great return on both time invested and the results. Orange? Work on developing a culture in your organization, whether that be a fraternity, the work place, or with your family.

Knowing your weaknesses is just as important as knowing your strengths. If you are heavily orange, don’t get a career that is nothing but structure and routine. I would never let it limit you (Who says a green can’t be more loyal than a gold?) but definitely use it to find your strengths and play to those. I think you can make your own inferences on how to apply your “color” characteristics to any area of your life.

You Gotta Know How to Move!

This post is all about planes of movement (Frontal, Sagittal, Transverse/Horizontal). This is a fundamental concept. It was introduced to me in my introduction to anatomy class and I’ve used it in everything from biomechanics to kinesiology. I think people understand one perspective (Plane or Axis) better than the other. This is a planar explanation of this concept.

Let’s start off with definitions so easy you don’t even need to memorize them.

Sagittal plane – Slices you down the middle, dividing the body segment into right and left portions.
Frontal plane – divides the body segment into anterior and posterior portions.

Transverse plane – Divides the body segment into superior and inferior portions.

Planes interact with an axis. A plane and axis are always perpendicular and they always follow this setup.

Sagittal plane = Frontal axis.
Frontal plane = Sagittal axis.
Transverse plane = Vertical Axis.

You can impose a plane on any body segment. A sagittal plane could be imposed on the forearm and hand. If we did that, the forearm would have the ulna on one side of the plane and the radius on the other; the hand would essentially have the middle finger “sliced” down the middle by this plane, leaving the pinky and index finger on one side and the thumb and pointer finger on the other.

So now that we have the planes in mind (hopefully), we need to look at the types of movement. Each movement depends on the joint that is in question. I’ll give the definition of flexion and extension, then an example to start us off.

Extension: Increasing the joint angle.
Flexion: Decreasing the joint angle.
[Joint: Elbow] Arm Curl

It helps to visualize the body segments around that joint. The elbow would have the forearm distally and the upper arm medially. Thus, when you bring your arm up (flexion), you can see how the joint angle decreases. When you bring your arm back down (extension), you can see how the joint angle increases.

Some tips and tricks that helped me remember these:
ABduction: being Abducted away.
ADduction: being ADded to the body.
Plantarflexion: Think of planting your foot on the gas pedal.
Supination: The radius and ulna are not crossed. Leaving your palms (s)up.

Now that we have the motions down, we can finally see how they act in planes.

If we look at the arm curl from early, what plane would the motion fall in? The plane can be imposed on just the arm. The movement can only take place in that plane.

Got your answer?

Drum roll…

…

…

Extension was the correct answer!

This is a basic concept that will take you a long way in human movement and function. Understanding this idea is key to understanding how people move, how to train an athlete, or how to rehabilitate a patient.

Modified GZCL

If you haven’t heard of the GZCL model of lifting, go find it on Google immediately. Easily my favorite philosophy of training, using a (modified) version has let me retain all my strength despite dropping twenty pounds and even packed on a bit of mass in my undertrained areas. The base/foundation aspect of GZCL has proven to be immensely important in my training. Make sure you look up the basics before moving on, or this post might not make much sense.

But that isn’t the program I’m going to talk about in this post. This is the program I will use once I’m done cutting and look to add strength, instead of just maintaining it. I call it the JRLP method (because I’m a vain mother fucker) and it is outlined below:

It works out so that it is on a weekly undulating schedule, with the intensity the highest when volume is the lowest and vice versa. It takes three weeks to get through each cycle since I’m focusing on three lifts. The only thing I am thinking about changing is the load on the “volume” days (Bench in week one, deadlift in week two, and squat in week three). It may be a bit too high, so I may drop it down to 5-15%.

Other than that, I cannot wait to be done cutting (Still have awhile to go), so I can run this and test it out.