Eric Harr - The Portable Personal Trainer: 100 Ways to Energize Your Workouts & Bring Out the Athlete in You

For Mom and Dad.
And for the most passionate person Ive ever met,
my lovely wife, Alexandra.

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge my literary agent, Robert Preskill, and Jennifer Griffin for being the first people to believe in me in the publishing world. And my best friends:

Chris, Clarke, Joe, Oliver, Sharon, Walter, and Gramma.

Foreword

I first met Eric Harr on the peak of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California, as we shot the pilot of a new thirteen-part documentary series called Building a Champion: The Inside Secrets of the Worlds Best Athletes. In the series, Eric and I travel the globe, training with the best athletes in each culture. We want to learn what really makes them championsthe premise being that the secrets to true fitness reside in the hearts and heads of champion athletes the world over, not in quick-fix plans or new abdomen exercises. Eric conceived the series; in fact, its based on many of the same principles as is this wonderful book.

A few words about Eric before I get to his book. The first things I noticed about Eric upon meeting him were his intensity and excitement. From what Ive seen, his charisma is infectious, and he can inspire people to reach for new levels of achievement. Ive been training competitively as a swimmer for over eighteen years, and Ive never met anyone like him. He draws peoples passions right to the surface, encouraging them to strive for goals they believed were out of reach.

Eric is also one of the best triathletes in the world. Even in the highest athletic circles, the triathlon event is known to be one of the most physically demanding sports. Heres a sport that requires you to perform at a world-class level in three distinctly different arenas. It takes an incredible amount of discipline, knowledge, and determination to succeed in this sport. Eric not only succeededhe was the first rookie ever to be ranked in the world Top 10.

In The Portable Personal Trainer, Eric has distilled the wisdom of a triathlete and combined that with commonsense training tips. The result is a book like no other: a portable, inspirational guide to exercising (and living) to the fullest. And because hes the real deal himself, Eric has inside access to the secrets of the worlds best athletes. What makes this book so special is that he breaks those high-level concepts into simple ideas and makes them apply to anyones fitness program. He has encapsulated the best fitness advice from around the world in 100 simple strategies. This book is a unique treasure. Ive read hundreds of fitness, diet, and motivational bookstrust me on this.

What do I love most about this book? Its right on the money and its just a whole lot of fun. Ive trained with the best coaches, athletes, nutritionists, and mental coaches, and the best fitness advice Ive learned is to exercise intelligently (instead of just as hard as you can) and to have fun. Its really that simple. Do these two things and youll get more physical, mental, and spiritual fitness results than you can possibly imagine.

This remarkable book will show you how.

Dara Torres

Introduction

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

R ALPH W ALDO E MERSON , WRITER (18031882)

P assion and performance. As a professional athlete in the worlds most physically demanding sport, Ive spent every waking minute of every day for the past seven years seeking to master these two words.

My career as a triathlete began in the Virgin Islands. It was a serendipitous discovery. I was biking to and from work in a law firm there and idly decided to do a local triathlondespite being twenty pounds overweight and having zero background in cycling or running! As I began to train for this event, a passion ignited deep within me, and that passion fueled a new level of physical and mental performance, which further inspired me to exercise. This became a self-perpetuating cycle until, after four months, I was having so much fun exercising that everything I did had a new level of excitement. Winning that race improved my self-image, but the training process transformed my life.

The most fascinating part of this experience was the permanence of my new passion. It didnt wear off like the classic post-self-help seminar high. It didnt fade away like the excitement of reading an inspiring book or the buzz of setting New Years resolutions. This was my body, and this passion came from the inside out. It came freely, it was permanent, and I owned the experiencenobody else could take credit for it. That was the best part. The new drive came from teaching my body and mind to perform by exercising smarter, not harder, and by focusing more on the pure enjoyment of exercise. I had ignited the athlete in me.

Today, triathlon is my career. Its not the most lucrative sport in the world, but I wouldnt give it up for the world. I am paid many times over in other ways. For me, triathlon is a tangible way to construct a more fulfilling and meaningful life, to keep my passion alive, to reach my true potential, to be fully happy. Isnt that what we all seek? You can achieve those things with something that is simple, fun, invigorating, and cost-free: exercise. Athletics elicit spirited emotion from people around the world, because we see the best parts of ourselves in action. We watch great athletes on television, not to worship their exceptional lives, but deep down to remind ourselves what is possible in our own.

But lately it seems that connection has broken down. In 2000 Americans spent $31.7 billion trying to lose weight, get fit, or boost their health, yet there are 52 million clinically obese people in this nation. We know more than we ever did before about health and fitness, but were still not getting the results we want and deserve. This is due in part to an increasing reliance on others to solve our fitness and nutrition issueswhen, in fact, we know more about our bodies than anyone else. Its time to pursue our goals from the inside out rather than the outside in.

The Portable Personal Trainer is designed to empower you with the tools and strategies that you need to rely on yourself for motivation and fitness results rather than paying someone else to help you. Where does the information in this book come from? Over the past seven years I recorded the most powerful lessons from tens of thousands of hours of my own training and generations of wisdom gleaned from the very best athletes in diverse cultures around the worldathletes with whom Ive closely trained and competed. Through swimming with German triathletes in the U.S. Virgin Islands, mountain biking with Dutch national champions in Boulder, Colorado, and running with Kenyans on an island off the coast of Morocco, Ive become privy to their most prized secrets. I focused on how these people stay motivated and how they transform their passion into performance and that performance into even more passion for their sports and their lives. I watched these people very closely and chronicled their innermost wisdom. Ive also read thousands of books and magazines related to health, fitness, and athletic performance in my quest to become the best athlete I can be.

You hold in your hands a collection of the best lessons from this experience, distilled into simple, palatable real-world strategies. By following them, you will learn how to gain the maximum physical and mental benefits from exercise and how to forge that new performance into a lifelong passion. Just as the worlds best athletes do.

Champion athletes are the worlds most reliable source of truth and wisdom on fitness. They have distilled years of experience into concise methods that