Coach Ken Wall

  It's over 30 years old now. It weighs 16lbs, the handle is slightly bent and it's once sharp edge is a bit blunted from years of bludgeoning it's target. My dad bought me this metal handled splitting maul because my accuracy as a teenager when splitting wood left a bit to be desired. (It still does)  As a skinny kid who was desperately trying to prove otherwise, I had a knack for breaking handles of axes and mauls with my somewhat wild swing. Fortunately for this maul ( and for those that would be a six foot radius) I got lots of practice as we heated our house with wood so lots of hours were spent after school stockpiling for winter. Like many things that seem to be mundane on the surface, there is some skill and knowledge that can be acquired if you do them long enough.  Here's just a few of the lessons if picked up from my trusty maul.  1 . Swinging with all your power won't do you any good if you can't be accurate.   Like most teenage boys, I thought the h...

So....in case you didn't know, I'm a hunter and I pretty much live for this time of year. We are in the first week of PA's rifle deer season and I'm still chasing one of the few mature bucks we've seen on the property we (My Dad and I) are fortunate enough to hunt. We got some snow this morning  But by afternoon, it was melting fast as the sun came out from behind those dark cold front clouds. It gotten quite windy and combination of wet leaves and a gusty wind made for good conditions to do some sneaking (Still hunting) around in the woods.  Still hunting has always been one of my favorite ways to hunt as it seems to quiet my mind while simultaniously heighten my senses. Leaving the world of 2020 behind for a few hours is always a good thing and having only to focus where my next footstep should go so as to remain quiet while always on the look out for anything that resembles even a part of a deer keeps my somewhat A.D.D. brain in check. Today's plan was to hun...

The Karate Kid is one of my favorite movies. (Not the new one with Jackie Chan... I guess I'm showing my age here) Not because the kid from New Jersey beats the California pretty boy for the championship but because of the awesome lessons I find it. In one scene during training Daniel is berating Mr. Myogi about learning how to do the "Crane Technique. He's frustrated that all he has learned is some blocking techniques (Everyone knows "Wax on, Wax off") and is convinced that his training is going to slow and that he will never be ready for the tournament. Myogi simply replies, "First learn stand, Then learn fly. Nuture rule, not mine." Overly simplistic advice from an aging martial artist or a great life lesson that most take for granted? I'll take the latter. Every day in the gym, I state and restate the need for simplicity in training and in making changes outside the gym. As humans, we seem to want to make things complicated. We a...

There’s an old saying in sports that says, “Offense sells tickets but defense wins championships.” I know.... I sound like your grandfather watching a football game. It's pretty old school but it's totally true. Nobody enjoys watching a football game  that ends in a baseball score buuttttt  if your defense can't stop the other team, they have no chance of winning I see this in fitness all the time. The latest, greatest, coolest fitness gizmo, workout program, fad diet, or new fitness franchise in town will all sell a lot of "tickets". They’re exciting.  They’re sexy.  They scream fast results and "the thing" they've been missing all their life. It's easy to understand why people flock to these programs in droves. But do they help them win?  Will they keep you safe? Will they keep you from getting hurt? Will they make you feel better? Will they make it easy to stick with it? Or will you be so sore that the mere ...

One of the best things about being a fitness coach is the conversations you get to have with people. If you start having enough of them, you start to see some pretty consistent patterns and a few you are even forced to recognize in yourself. Whether the goal is committing to a fitness program, eating a little better, or even chasing a dream, it's staggering the number of people who will rattle off a bunch of great benefits to their life by making a change but will end the sentence with but. Then automatically, they will proceed to tell me all the reasons it isn't possible. Time, money, knowledge, etc. There's a reason for that famous motivational Speaker, Les Brown, likes to say we are wired to be negative with our thoughts on things we'd like to do. Isn't human nature kind of mean? The interesting thing is that if you ask those same people why something is possible, they, completely on their own, come up with solutions for the barriers they first mentioned...

This is not how your measure fitness Sara couldn't stand it anymore. Clothes didn't fit right and the bathroom scale gave her a number she didn't recognize. She mustered up some courage and headed down to the local gym to hire a trainer to help her lose weight. She met with the trainer, who took all kinds of measurements including weight and body composition. They set a weight loss goal for 12 weeks later. She was pumped. Sara started training 3 days per week with her trainer and she was really starting to feel better. She noticed she had more energy. She was making better food choices and was significantly stronger.  When it came time to check her measurements, she felt she was ready. Then it happened. She fell short of her weight loss goal by a few pounds. Suddenly she felt like a failure. All the feelings of accomplishment had faded and she felt like giving up. What went wrong? Was it her workouts? Was her diet not up to par? I would say neither. ...