In the vast majority of speeches I give, a consistent question comes up regarding my first major fitness goal.

Well, this is HOW it all began…..!!!

When I was 33 years old I set a” two year goal” for myself. This goal was to complete 3500 sit-ups –on my 35^th birthday. At 4:30am on my birthday I went to the gym and began the feat. It was lonely, because I was the only one there, and I laid down a match stick for every 100 I would do until I had thirty-five match sticks. Well before 7:00am it was goal ACCOMPLISHED.

So to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, I thought we could do a push-up and a sit-up contest with several of the NY sports teams. They asked me how many we should do and I said How about 500 sit-ups and 500 push-ups……!! They said they did not think they could do that many and declined my invitation.

Time for “Plan B”…(always have a Plan B). It was time to go see my Big Boss, so I went to my chairman (Al Gordon) and said I’m going to do a Sit-Up-A-Thon, so for every sit-up I do, I want you to donate a dollar…and he said…… Yes !!!.   It’s funny, because I was so excited that as I was leaving I realized he never asked me How many I was going to do. So I said “Al, you never asked me how many I was going to attempt”. He said, Oh, How many?? I said 5000. He didn’t even blink and said great, Good Luck..!!

I had done 5 of these fund raising events over five years.  The first year I did five thousand, the second year ten thousand, then fifteen thousand, then twenty thousand, and then I actually did twenty five thousand.  I don’t count the twenty five thousand because I took bathroom breaks, but the five, ten, fifteen and twenty were all consecutive.  I ended up setting a world record for consecutive sit-ups for 20,100 which took be eleven hour and thirty two minutes…!!!

I have often been asked how did I set the World Record for completing 20,100 consecutive sit-ups in 11hours and 32 minutes. There are many factors, however today I want to talk about just one of them -  proper breathing techniques and the benefits derived from them. In my DVD success4teens or Formula for Success,  I only touch upon these techniques when I did the fitness section.  I’d like to give credit to Mike Kramer for writing the following article which accurately describes the features and benefits of :

Proper Breathing

Proper breathing is an underestimated, but critical building block of good health. Slow, deep breathing gets rid of carbon dioxide waste and takes plenty of clean, fresh oxygen to your brain and muscles. More blood cells get the new, oxygen-rich air instead of the same old stale stuff. Experts estimate that proper breathing helps your body eliminate toxins 15 times faster than poor, shallow breathing. You’ll not only be healthier, but you’ll be able to perform better (mentally and physically) and, of course, be less stressed and more relaxed.

Here’s an exercise that will help you get the full benefits of good breathing. The techniques in this exercise are ones you should try to develop in your normal breathing, and that could take practice. Try to take about 10 minutes, but it can happen in five by cutting the time for each step in half. Most of it can be done anywhere you need to relax or clear your head:

1. Get Ready (2 minutes) Make the room dark, or at least darker. Lie down flat on your back, or sit against a wall. Use a pillow for comfort. Make sure no part of your body is strained or supporting weight. Close your eyes. Just pay attention to your breathing for a minute or two. Don’t try to change it, just notice how it feels. Imagine the fresh blood flowing through your body. Listen to your surroundings.
2. Stage I (2 minutes) Practice breathing in and out of your nose. Exhaling through the mouth is okay for quick relaxation, but for normal breathing, in and out the nose is best. Take long breaths, not deep breaths. Try not to force it, you shouldn’t hear your breath coming in or out. You’re drawing slow breaths, not gulping it or blowing it out. Feel the rhythm of your breathing.
3. Stage II (3 minutes) Good breathing is done through the lower torso, rather than the upper torso. Each breath should expand your belly, your lower back and ribs. Relax your shoulders and try not to breathe with your chest. Put your hands on your stomach and feel them rise and fall. If it’s not working, push down gently with your hands for a few breaths and let go. Your stomach should start to move more freely. Relax your face, your neck, your cheeks, your jaw, your temples, even your tongue.
4. Stage III (3 minutes) Feel the good air entering your lungs and feel the stale air leaving your body. “In with the good, out with the bad” is definitely true here. Make your exhale as long as your inhale to make sure all the bad air is gone. Remember, long slow breaths. Most people take 12-16 breaths per minute. Ideally, it should be 8-10. Now try to make your exhale a little longer than your inhale for a while. Pause after your exhale without taking a breath. Focus on the stillness and on not forcing an inhale. Your body will breathe when it needs to.

Being non-judgemental is critical…..so  I took it in, gave a little smile and said okay.  You really don’t understand me.  That’s not going to be a problem.  When I did the three thousand, that took me about 3hours to complete.  The 10,000 took me about 6hours to complete.  I was right on a pace. It didn’t effect me whatsoever.  In my mental state of mind, I had to mentally drop out people that had any kind of negative connotation.  In other words,  if they are going to put a negative thought in my mind,  the 95% we talked about before, I let it drip right out of my ears, didn’t stay with me.  These people will be there in a dominate way.  Most people are negative, that is just the way life is, so you just have to drop it out.  We understand what the landmines are in America right now.  We know we have a school drop out every seconds, a kid drops out of school.  We know that a teen pregnancy occurs every 67 seconds.  We know another child runs away from home every 26 seconds.  And we know a child is arrested every 7 minutes for substance abuse.  These a kids that never had the opportunity to understand how to develop a positive mental attitude.   Remember what we talked about early on in our conversation that you are incorporated.  You are a corporation.  You make your decisions based on what you want.  It is totally up to you.  Remember what we said about the herd mentality, you know, moving with the herd.  You have to ask yourself, is that herd really moving in the direction that I can see is something positive for me.  It is really quite impressive to do that.  My theory in life, I didn’t coin this expression, but is very appropriate.  Past, Present and Future.  They say the past is history, the future is a mystery, today is a present so open it like one.  Mental success really come in the present. That is what it is all about.  When you make a decision today, when you make that decision that this works for you, that’s when it happens.  This is what most people get affected by, mental failures that have occurred in the past.  If something happened in your past, what happens is it actually effects your future.  If you think you can’t do it your going to actually program yourself that in the future that won’t be able to happen for you.  Henry Ford had a great expression.  He said if you think you can do it you are probably right.  If you think can’t do it your probably right.  So it is how you set the mind up, for me that was very imperative.  I know that you don’t just pop into a PMA, you just don’t. Everything is practice.  The best way I have found to get this development in the mind, is to have some successes.  We go through the goal setting part and you have successes in the goals, you start feeling really good.  It is going t build into the PMA.  You got to have some successes.  Otherwise, what are you building on.  This is always really good news to say oh yeah you can really do this.  But you have to actually have something you can actually mark up on the board and say this works for me.

Let’s start with positive mental attitude.  As you can see Positive Mental Attitude is the first thing, it is really the foundation of how we start everthing.  It is how we think.  The mind is the most important, strongest muscle in the body.   I’ll tell you a little story…As you know I’ve done these situps to raise money for charity.  The first year I did 5,000 sit-ups,  the second year I did 10,000 and with my positive mental attitude, I thought a couple extra thousand, no big deal.  I was training very, very hard.  I was training with a 45 lb Olympic weight on my chest and I was doing sets of 1,000, which seems like a lot but that was my workout was all about.  I was trying to figure out how to combine  a couple different exercises so I could build up the chest and lats as well as the arms and so on and so forth. Someone came up to me and said, your going to go from 5,000 to 10,000, your going to double it.”  I had to do a little moonwalk…It actually affected me.  I with my positive mental attitude was like hey this is only a couple thousand more, no big deal.  I train a little bit harder, eat a little better, so on and so forth, no big deal.  But when someone puts that thought inside your head, that says doubt.  That’s when you start to breakdown the concept of a PMA.  What I did at the time was immediately say, thank you for your concern, but you don’t know me.  You don’t know how driven I am, how hard I work.  Again, notice one of the keys to success was being non-judgmental