THERE IS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS

By Rob Maxwell

The book is a collection of different articles I have written regarding physical fitness and nutrition. I have touched on my own experience and bringing science back to my experience. This is why it's called THERE IS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662914690

Book preview

THERE IS A METHOD TO THE MADNESS

This book is a collection of articles I’ve written. They are meant to be read individually. Please read this book like you are reading a group of essays written on different fitness topics. There are various topics here, including strength training, cardiorespiratory training, flexibility, psychology, motivation, diet, wellness, and others.

I’ve called this book There Is a Method to the Madness because there is! Behind all the exercise prescriptions are reasons why they work. These reasons aren’t talked about enough. I think this is my specialty. I have a master’s degree in exercise physiology, and I love looking at the why’s. Yes, sets of 12 are best for building muscular size. But, is there something magic about that number? Of course not. What goes on in the body that creates that adaptation with that number? There is always a reason why the things we do work or don’t work. There is a method to the madness. There truly is a science to it and I like to talk about the science. I once heard a student say, I want to be a cook and not a chef. I love that. We can follow recipes and do a pretty good job. But we can learn how to write the recipes and really know the why’s. There are many recipes written about fitness. I think if we all understood the why’s more, there would be more people falling in love with fitness. There is a method to the madness.

I’m also writing this book because I love what fitness has done for me. When I was in junior high school and early high school, I was overweight, and I felt awful. It impacted my entire life. I went through a very difficult time during those years with my father passing when I was twelve. I believe I became depressed and simply ate to feel better. I didn’t really know any better. At the time, I just thought we were who we were and didn’t have much control over changing that, in any areas, really. I talk about genetics some later. If you were to see me when I was fourteen, I doubt you’d say I had the genetics to be really fit. You may think the opposite. If you saw me at 55, you’d probably shrug off my developments as just genetic. Funny how that works. My point is, I was far from fit in my early teen years. I was active and a pretty good athlete at certain sports, but I felt like the fat kid, and the feeling drove me greatly to become much of who I am today.

Was I obese? No, but I felt fat. I really don’t know what I weighed, but my guess would be at 5’7" or somewhere around there (average height for junior high), I maybe topped out at 175. Again, I’m not sure, but I know I felt fat, was called fat, and took on the persona of someone who was. My parents were divorced when I was twelve, and my father passed about one year later. Both of my living grandparents passed around this same time. Looking back, I'm sure I went through PTSD, and my reaction was to eat junk foods because it took away the anxiety and sadness. It’s all good though. By going through this tough period of life, I was able to have a career that teaches all about my love affair with physical fitness. Because of how much it has made me who I am today, it has enabledme to have a career where I don’t feel like I go to work every day.

I lost weight in high school simply by eating what I called normal. I ate 3 square meals a day of what was thought to be healthy and did not eat snacks or junk food. It worked for me. I lost weight in a hurry. I remember the summer of my junior year, I jumped on the scale at Publix where I worked, and I weighed 135 pounds. I was then about 6 feet. Man, I was skinny! This was after only about 2 months of my new lifestyle of eating healthy. This is another reason why I know I was never that heavy, but the key is I felt heavy, and that’s how I identified myself. I felt so good about myself. Of course, growing up, I had to match the inside with the outside, because getting in shape doesn’t take away all the grief and feelings of low confidence, but it was a great jump start.

What I learned the most about this period that I was able to apply to all other areas of my life was that thechoices we make will lead to the outcomes. Prior to this, I thought people were thin, medium, or fat. I thought people were dumb, average, or smart. I learned this isn’t true. I learned if I ate correctly, I could be lean. If I ate without discipline, I could get fat. This led to learning if I studied in college, I could make A’s. If I didn’t study, I could barely pass, or fail. I did end up making mostly all A’s in college and I ended up graduating magna cum laude. For my master’s degree, I graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA. I’m not bragging about myself. I’m bragging about what becoming fit taught me. It taught me to always do all I can to be my best (in this case, study as much as I can) and great things will happen. I’ve applied this in business as well. Put my best self forward and do the work, and good things will happen. I learned these lessons at an early age by learning how to become physically fit.

Yes, I know factors such as genetics and other things determine just how much to different extremes we can go. But, do they matter? We can’t change them. Don’t we simply want to be our best? And if we are, isn’t that the spectacular thing? I think so. If we're our best, we’re feeling great about ourselves, and I believe if we feel great about ourselves, we do great things for the world we live in. And if we don’t, we aren't as a likely to.

I have evolved in my fitness from the time I lost the weight in my teens. I have tried different fitness hobbies and I have become far more of a chef. I’ve stayed consistent for almost 40 years at working out! There have been different ways, but it’s been 37 years of some form of strength training, cardiorespiratory training, healthy eating, and sports. I love it, so I do it. I do it because I love it. There is a method to the madness, but to find it, we need to start and see what happens.

MY EDUCATION

I worked at Stewart Treatment Center in Daytona Beach, Florida, which later became Stewart-Marchman Treatment Center in the 1990s. Stewart Marchman is a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. I was bodybuilding and living the lifestyle. I was working on my degree in psychology around that time. I loved the field, and I still do. I was not exactly sure what I wanted to do with it, but I knew when I took psychology classes in college, I always enjoyed them.

I worked in the RAP Department which stood for Residential Adolescent Program. I was first an assistant counselor, and I later became counselor. I really did enjoy the job. I believed, and still do, in what they were doing. I had struggled with drinking too much in college, so I could really relate to the residents, and felt like I had a lot to offer.

One day, while working, one of the kids came up to me and asked me how I got big, or how I got a strong bench press. I really do not remember what exactly he asked, but I remember it had nothing to do with drugs and/or alcohol, and everything to do with fitness. This was a common occurrence. I answered him as I always did, and I found myself very engaged in the answer. A light bulb went on in my head at that very moment, and I remember driving home thinking I wanted to be in the field of fitness, and I even thought I wanted to be a personal trainer. At the time, the field of personal training was brand new. The fitness industry was not even really an industry yet. A couple of guys were doing personal training at World Gym (a large franchise gym) where I worked out. I mean, the field was in its infancy, and that was good. It was a very pure profession then. Pure in the sense that people only were in it who really had something to offer, and knew that they did.

Even though I had a lot of personal experience, I would have to have the education to break into the industry. I respected the field too much. Could I have just made some business cards and made a go at it? Probably, but I did not want to do that. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about. I was not big on getting parallel degrees. I always wanted to move upward. So, on my way home from work that day, I was brainstorming. I was excited. I felt like I really knew what I wanted to do. It all made sense.

I was fired up! Fitness was my true passion. When I was in junior high school and early high school, I went through a stage where I was overweight. I lost it before my senior year. I remember thinking at the time I wanted to work in a field where I could help kids learn what I did, one day. I do feel like it was the move I was supposed to make. When I got home, and all rest of the week, I called around to find out who had the program I was looking for. I did not know exactly what it would be. Keep in mind, this was long before the day of the internet. You had to call or go by! Those were better times about getting details. I started with UCF, which is where I got my first B.S. degree.They had what I was looking for. They had a master’s degree in Exercise physiology and wellness. Wellness was hot then. It was a big part of where everybody thought the industry was going. It never did move too far into that direction.

After making my call to UCF, I got my next steps in what I needed to do. I was told to make an appointment with the heads of the program. I did. I first met with Gerald Gergely. He became a significant role model for me later. The other department head was Dr. Frank Rohter. Both men became instrumental for me. I remember meeting with Mr. Gergely. He told me, to be in the fitness profession, you must love it. It is not the profession to get into if you want to become rich. I said I did love it, and it was not a problem. He then said in the industry you must learn to be all things to all people. He asked me if I could do that. I said yes. We hit it off very well.