The Okada Method

12th January 2012

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A Little About Me

As I was writing the first few posts of this blog, it occurred to me that I had failed to really talk a whole lot about myself. This was pretty natural of me, as I don’t really enjoy having to describe myself, but it may have left a few people asking, who the hell is this Ken Okada guy and why should I trust him? I understand this sentiment completely, since I as a part of this industry know that there are way too many “experts” in the field who claim to know everything when in reality they just hide behind a keyboard all day long. The real kicker here is that these people have probably never trained a single soul, let alone helped anyone attain decent results. And yet they still claim to understand the next big secret in the fitness industry.

This is one of the many reasons why I believe it is incredibly important to know who the hell you’re taking advice from. There are simply way too many gurus in the field who know next to nothing. There are way too many faulty studies, bigheaded personal trainers, and certification systems that are way too basic and easy to attain! If there is any type of qualification that sets apart the outstanding individuals who actually know their material in this realm, it is experience, and through that experience, true knowledge of training.

So where does all of that put me? Well, first off, from those opening lines you can probably tell what kind of attitude I have towards this profession. That being said, I am still naturally very open minded, but have built up enough of a filter to be able to know when to call BS on something. As people may know, I will never teach something that I do not have adequate knowledge of and things that I know to be untrue. People do that on a regular basis for the money in this industry, and it makes me completely sick because it wastes so much of people’s time and money.

Anyways, that is probably enough ranting for now, as it is inevitable that I will keep doing that in the future. I will get back to the whole point of this post. I will describe myself completely from a training perspective to not bore people with my life story.

My training history starts around the fifth grade when I had absolutely no idea of what the hell I was doing and really only did a ton of push-ups on a daily basis. I recall doing multiple sets of eighty push-ups for hours on end. Predictably, I never did any form of running besides playing football with my friends during recess. Being the highly uninformed and ignorant kid that I was, this continued until my freshman year of high school when my dad received a cheap weight training set from his friend. From there my ignorance multiplied with every pound of weight we had and I obsessively lifted weights for hours on end everyday, doing all of the wrong exercises and never doing anything for my back or legs. I mean, who really cares about legs, right? And your back has muscles?! Gimme a break!

2006 - When I began my freshman year, I stood around five foot seven and about 115 pounds. My head looked like it was supported by a stack of dimes and I would probably disappear if I hid behind a telephone pole. It wasn’t until I decided to join the football team during spring training that I started to receive some proper guidance on the aspect of strength and conditioning. It was also about this time that I started to read everything that I could get my hands that pertained to strength and fitness. By my sophomore year, I was around 125 pounds and in better condition than I have been in up to that point.

2007 - In the realm of sports, football became my life during the summer and fall, and my training reflected it. In the winter and spring, I swam, but kept my weight-training regimen designed for football. I continuously lifted heavy weights and specialized my conditioning to sprints. Even in swimming, I was specialized in the shorter races.

2009 - Towards the end of my junior year, I had grown to about 168 pounds at 5’8. I was noticeably a lot bigger and my neck was so thick that my brother said I looked like a gorilla. This was also when I achieved my first 250-pound bench press, and at the time my coach said it looked like I had another 25 pounds in me. Now, these stats are nothing special, but it was a great checkpoint for me to gauge my progress.

During the football season my senior year, I leaned down to about 155 pounds for some reason (I still desperately ate like a horse. Maybe it had something to do with having a girlfriend and never getting enough sleep…) but was still the strongest and in the best condition yet. I became aggressive enough (and a bit stupid and crazy) to be able to start on the defensive line. I was by far the smallest lineman in the league.  2010 - I kept training heavy even after football and eventually squatted 385 pounds. This was a bit disappointment for me since my goal in high school was to eventually squat 405 before graduation (Also nothing big in the world of squatting).

This was also about the time that I started to train my first “client”. She was one of my best friends who was fairly active in that she did dancing, ran cross country, and played badminton. She was also not in denial that she was out of shape and overweight. She worked her ass off on a daily basis to do something about it. She eventually came to me for guidance and once she told me what she was doing to solve her problem, I bluntly told her that she was approaching it completely wrong. For her training, she was jogging an hour per day after her badminton practices. For her diet, she was on that wacky Jenny Craig stuff. I can hardly even call that stuff food.

After talking with her, I scrapped her entire program and designed her a completely new one that she could do during the badminton season along with simple nutritional guidance. They were all fairly simple instructions and she lost about a total of 25 pounds within two to three months. Everyone was complimenting her on her new look and (here’s the kicker) she did it all naturally and completely healthy. She actually ate more food on my program than she did before and trained for less time.

I was pretty proud of her. And excited that my program actually worked since I actually came up with it instead of giving her something off of the Internet. After this success, I knew I was onto something and that my knowledge was actually going somewhere.

Fast forward past graduation and into my freshman year of college: Fall of 2010.
When I began college, I stood at about 165 pounds. A few weeks into the semester, different events in my personal life caused me to fall into a deep depression in which my stress levels skyrocketed, I didn’t eat, didn’t train, hardly slept, and quite frankly didn’t really care a whole lot about anything. Within a few weeks I had lost most of my strength and my weight plummeted down to 140 pounds. My cheekbones became visible and I was noticeably a lot thinner. By the time I had somewhat gotten myself back on my feet and back in routine, I was 135 pounds. 185 pounds felt heavy to me on the squat, but once that weight kicked my ass, I immediately got my drive back and sought to not let anything bring me down again, especially my strength. Within weeks I rebounded back to a solid 155 pounds. Although admittedly my strength and conditioning never fully recovered yet, I’m on my way to kick ass shape.

Present: Right now I stand at 170 pounds and still growing. I’m a college kid that still has that passion to keep learning and getting stronger. Over the years I have read hundreds of articles, a few golden books on the field, trained a few select clients. I am well-versed in strength and conditioning, fat-loss, and sports training. I’m still learning and admittedly, beginning to break into this field and put my knowledge to the test. That is part of the reason why I started this blog: to share my knowledge and ideas about this field and to help others.

I’m here to help and answer questions. Leave me something in my ask box if desired. I will answer all questions, no matter how silly you might think it is. Hell it doesn’t even have to be about training!

This is my passion, and I’m here at your service.

So let’s get to it.