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How I Changed My Health in 2015!

Are you tired of being out of shape, tired of huffing and puffing it up a set of stairs, tired of feeling lethargic and lazy, tired of not fitting into your favorite clothes? Well it’s that time of year folks, it’s the Eve of 2016! That means its time to pull out those old, tired New Year’s Resolutions that no one ever seems to keep.

Well, do we have an opportunity for you!

10%final

Welcome to the 10% CLUB, the hottest trend in fitness today! Forget all those bullshit gym memberships, Cross-Fit workouts, “Get Fit in 30 days” marketing gimmicks! Who needs ’em? At the 10% CLUB we sure don’t… because we’re not a gym, we’re not a workout routine, we’re not a gimmick. We’re just a movement! And by movement, we mean… well… we move! We walk, we run, we bend and stretch and get our hearts pumping… and we lift heavy shit! And we GUARANTEE RESULTS!

OUR HISTORY:

One night in March of 2015, after drinking at least several gallons of wine with his uncle and other family members, our founder, the legendary blogger STEVE WARNER, who had recently begun dabbling in a new exercise routine after no longer fitting into his favorite pair of jeans and beginning to look like a Weeble-Wobble standing on a set of toothpicks, made the now infamous and somewhat regrettable statement “let’s get to 10% BODY FAT!” (10% body fat being roughly the holy grail of MEN’s fitness when you start to look totally shredded and ripped.)

Now granted, it was clearly the gallons of wine talking, but the challenge had been thrown out there and frankly there was no going back!

This was followed by a terse and sarcastic reply from his son, another founding member of the 10% CLUB, “Dad you’ll never get to 10% BODY FAT!”

Not one to shy away from a challenge, it was on… IT WAS ON!!

Thus began the 10% CLUB.

OUR EQUIPMENT AND FACILITIES:

THEEQUIPMENT

At the 10% CLUB we’re proud to brag about our facilities and equipment. Housed in an old barn, we boast that hot summer days will be HOT with a faint hint of manure smell, cold winter days will be COLD and uncomfortable and every day will be DIRTY with the occasional mice, spiders and other wild animals running on by. We go for FUNCTION, not FINESSE and we’ve compiled some of the FINEST LOW-QUALITY equipment you’ll ever find in the modern fitness world!

From our LAZY BOY DEADLIFT AND PUSHUP STATION, exquisitely fashioned from the bottom of an old Lazy Boy Chair that our founders children had promptly destroyed soon after purchase, our RUBBERMAID STEP-UPS & BEER STATION, an oldie but sturdy cooler, which if you plan ahead, could easily keep a six-pack of beer icy cold for some post workout carb replenishment, to our LOTS-O-SQUATS and PULL-UP AND STEP-UPS STATIONS, built from recycled landscaping timbers, we’ve got it all covered!

Or who can beat our good, old BUCKETS-O-BRICKS, which are basically just… well… heavy buckets full of bricks. Carry around some heavy buckets full of bricks and we guarantee you’ll burn a shit-ton of calories if you don’t first blow out your shoulders or elbows! And our newest addition, PUSHIN’ THE SLED, a one time working treadmill, scored FREE on Craigslist, but which recently broke down and now can only be used by manually moving the belt with your feet like pushing a heavy sled… which frankly provides an infinitely better aerobic workout!

OUR DIET PLAN:

Food-Pyramid

This looks about right…

Eat better. Yep, that’s it, you know what that means. Out of the ground is better than out of a box. Oh yeah, and cut back on the sugar and the booze. Like way back. But not completely. Yeah, definitely not completely!

At 10% CLUB we don’t have “One Cheat Meal” or “One Cheat Day” a week… fuck that shit! We have “Set Back Days.” There are going to be days where you eat four donuts and six brownies and wash down a whole pizza with two bottles of wine like an industrial strength garbage disposal.

Those are SETBACK DAYS, try to limit them.

OUR CALORIE BURNING PLAYLIST:

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“You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby! You’re gonna diiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!”

 

  1. Boston: More Than A Feeling
  2. Boston: Feeling Satisfied
  3. AC/DC: You Shook Me All Night Long
  4. Motley Crew: Looks That Kill
  5. Guns N’ Roses: Welcome to the Jungle
  6. Sweet: Ballroom Blitz
  7. Elton John: Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting
  8. KISS: Rock and Roll All Night
  9. Survivor: Eye of the Tiger
  10. Rocky Soundtrack: Gonna Fly Now
  11. Rocky Soundtrack: Going the Distance and the Final Bell

This playlist has been thoroughly studied and proven to burn calories when played painfully loud during a workout or even when listening in your car and is guaranteed to provide a “PAVLOVIAN STYLE” urge-to-exercise-response whenever any of these songs are heard outside of the 10% CLUB environment!

FRANCHISING OPPORTUNITIES:
SAM

So you’re still reading… well we really like you, and it sounds like you are ready to jump head first into the 10% CLUB movement. We’re happy to have you on board!

We’ve spent some time developing a franchising program that for little to no cost, you… YES YOU… can own and operate your very own 10% CLUB.

Here’s how you can get started!

  1. Find a place to locate your new 10% CLUB FRANCHISE. Could be a basement, garage, attic, living room, barn. Anywhere you can find some extra space.
  2. Score some of the finest, low quality fitness equipment you can find. Revive that old Stair Stepper, Weight Bench, Abdominizer, Total Gym, Total Abdominizer, Schwinn Aero-Dyne, Ellipitical, Fitness Flyer, whatever… that you bought ten years ago after watching a 3:00 am infomercial. Look under large piles of laundry and old boxes, you may find an old treadmill or weight bench underneath that you’ve long forgotten about. Check the FREE sections of your local Craiglist, folks are always giving away stuff.
  3. Create a CALORIE BURNING PLAYLIST. We recommend the official 10% CLUB PLAYLIST but understand that our franchisees may have different tastes in music. Just find about an hours worth of music that’s motivating and that will provide you that PAVLOVIAN STYLE urge-to-exercise-response! Listen to it ALL-THE-TIME!
  4. Commit to joining the movement! Put your sneakers on and get ready to start walking, running, bending and stretching and get your heart pumping… and lift some heavy shit!

WELCOME ABOARD!

___________________________________

Obviously this is in jest and not to be taken as serious fitness advice. As always, consult your doctor… blah, blah, blah… before beginning any exercise program (even though no one really does that!) But my point… I’ve dropped in the neighborhood of 20 lbs. over about a nine month span working out in my barn on a bunch of half-ass equipment and watching what I eat (some of the time). I’ve dropped my cholesterol and triglyceride levels, which have always been historically high, significantly, although they are still too high. I haven’t spent any money on gym memberships, diet plans or other infomercial BS. I still drink wine, I still snack sometimes and I certainly don’t eat like a rabbit.

I just did it… something clicked and I did it… or maybe it’s better said “I’m doing it,” because it ain’t over and believe me, I’m far from your typical go-getter, Type A personality.

At the time, I felt LIKE SHIT most days, tired and cranky and lethargic and depressed. I was drinking too much and eating like crap. I feel a lot better now, healthier, happier, energized and in better shape. The “10% CLUB” was just a joke at the time, but has now become a silly little catch phrase that my whole family references and that keeps me motivated. Hey, whatever works, right? Find what works for you!

It hasn’t been easy, I devote about an hour or more, 4-6 days a week to exercising but I enjoy it and look forward to it and I’ve learned not to expect instant results.

You can do it too, IF YOU REALLY WANT IT. You DO have the time, that’s the biggest load of shit excuse we all make for everything – me included! But you have to want it, that’s the absolute first step… and you have to make it fun. It has nothing to do with gyms and trainers and exercise classes, although those can no doubt be helpful if that’s what works for you. Find what works for you!

And the same thing applies to any of your “resolutions” if you choose to make them, whether it be health and fitness, career and financial, writing goals, family and relationships. Plus if you can find success and stick to it in one area of life, at least in my opinion, it drives the motivation to work harder in other areas.

Wishing you all a fabulous NEW YEAR! The next few days will surely be “SETBACK DAYS.” After that, if you choose to join, welcome to the 10% CLUB. See you in 2016!

Steve

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White Christmas

A little song we did…

Christmas here in Michigan, as with many traditionally cold places in the U.S. this time of year, was unseasonably warm and FAR from white. But we still enjoyed good food and some family time at home.

Hope you all (who celebrate) had a Merry Christmas and wishing you all a happy, healthy, prosperous New Year!

Perhaps we’ll see you all more in 2016!

Here’s the “professional” version that I recorded for my Soundcloud page:

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A Brown Road Campfire

Hi gang, sorry I haven’t been around much the last couple months. I’ve been busy displaying my awesomeness in ways other than being a world-famous blogger. I promise there are some things in the works and that I will be back soon. Until then, in the spirit of Summer which is finally here and warm campfires on crisp, clear, starry nights, here’s a pretty epic old post from Summer of 2011 when this blog was a younger version of itself and which many of you have probably never had the privilege of experiencing.

So that you can vicariously enjoy the whole Brown Road experience and since I can’t think of anything to write about, here’s me singing a campfire song, including all of the outside bird and peeper sounds from the swamp behind us! One of the critters got so loud towards the end, I think maybe it was sitting right underneath me. Maybe it was singing along. I laughed because I thought it sounded like one of those combination music and nature sounds CD’s you can buy.

Sweet Baby James is one of my favorite songs.  My Mom sang it to me to help me fall asleep when I was a baby. I don’t really remember that, but I imagine that’s where it all started. My parents had a copy of the James Taylor album that this song was originally recorded on and I would listen to it all the time.

If you’d like, here’s a video I found on youtube of a crackling campfire, that you can look at as well!

You should play them both at the same time to really get the full effect! You may have to adjust the volume settings on the videos to watch them together, the crackling fire is pretty loud.

Have fun at the Brown Road campfire!

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64 fl. oz. Miracle Bubbles

The weather in Michigan this weekend was spectacular, warm but not too hot, cool but not too cold. I spent as much time outside as I could, doing manly things that involved an array of outdoor tools; shovels and rakes and brooms and axes, all the while sporting several days of unshaven stubble, old dirty jeans and a t-shirt, broken down leather work boots and gloves. A heavy flannel shirt was added in the evenings when the newly found Spring temperatures gave way to pleasant cool air that felt more like Fall. The peepers and other critters in the swamp behind our property sang spiritedly the whole weekend.

Part of Saturday’s workload, was cleaning out one of my barns, the one filled mostly with lawn equipment and outdoor tools and a diverse assortment of everything else you could imagine that needs a place to be stored. It was dirty work and over the recent long, cold Michigan winter, it had become a disorganized mess of shit piled everywhere that I could barely walk through without risking a certain trip to the emergency room.

It felt good to clean it out, to make space, to put tools back where they belonged, to throw stuff away. That’s probably the closest place I have to a man-cave, although there’s no television, no couch, no sports memorabilia, no cooler full of beer. But it is a place where I can go and tinker around and have a little solitude. The extent of the decorations dressing up the few rustic timbers that aren’t covered with tools hanging from rusty, bent nails; a dirty, old, yet still proud American flag that once flew from our house, a wall of our old Michigan and Massachusetts license plates, a stop sign that I picked up some time ago, and a KIMBERLY TERRACE street sign that my wife was given back when she was a teenager… acquired, I’m sure legally, of course!

I worked through the clutter, throwing away old spark plug packages, empty oil containers, cans of dried paint, pieces and parts of stuff that I didn’t recognize and figured if I have no idea what it is or where it came from, it must not be that important. Tools were sorted into tool boxes, screws and nails and bolts and nuts and washers were relegated to a recycled coffee can to be reused at another time. I learned long ago to never toss away a perfectly good fastener. The floor was swept of dirt and grime and oil and hay. I pulled a couple of old mowers out, stripped of their parts like abandoned cars on an urban freeway, and dragged them to the road along with a FREE FOR PARTS OR SCRAP sign, handwritten in black marker on a scrap piece of board.

Then I came across this:

bubblesIt was dirty and covered in spider webs and had been sitting in this same spot for who knows how many years. I picked the jug up secretly hoping it was empty so I could quickly toss it into the ever-growing trash bag. It felt full and I unscrewed the cap and looked inside to see about 2/3 of the container was still filled with the soapy bubble mixture that has given kids endless delight for decades. Without giving it a second thought, I started carrying the jug to the far back part of our property where I could dump out its contents, then dispose of the packaging in the trash.

But as I walked, I felt this profound pang of a loss of innocence… and frankly, more than a little sadness. Shovels and axes and several days of unshaven stubble and old dirty jeans and a t-shirt and broken down leather work boots and gloves… had been instantly trumped by a container of dish soap disguised as MIRACLE BUBBLES!

I thought of my two kids, surely who we had purchased this giant 64 fl. oz. jug of MIRACLE BUBBLES for many years ago. Neither of whom, I surmised, now grown up, knew or cared that it existed anymore. My daughter will be a senior in high school next year, and my son a freshman, the first time since elementary school that they’ll be in the same school again. I stopped for a minute, unscrewed the cap again, pulled out the MIRACLE WAND and watched as the warm spring breeze sent oily, rainbow tinted bubbles flying through the air. I dipped the wand three of four more times and watched as more bubbles soared through the air only to disappear in the blink of an eye the moment they landed on the grass or a log pile or the branch of a tree.

I questioned my decision to dump out the container.

Then it occurred to me that experts often recommend using dish soap if you are trying to get a new tire to seal to a rim while filling it with air. I dropped the wand back into the container, screwed the cap back on and turned around and headed back towards the barn where I set the jug back down where I had found it, still covered in dirt and grime and spider webs.

Because I learned long ago to always be prepared and who knows the next time I’ll need to seal a new tire to the rim of my mower or lawn tractor.

That’s why I kept the bubbles…

Really…

Okay, maybe not…

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