Great Tip For Back Health, Part 1

Below is one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard about back pain and injuries.  Because oddly enough, for a topic and issue that is so widespread, people rarely seem to “get it” when it comes to the topic of back health – and more specifically, preventing problems.

You need to look at your back as a credit card being held in your hands.  When you bend it, the same thing happens to your back that happens to a credit card – not much.  It basically goes back into its original shape.

Unless you do it repeatedly.  Multiple times.  Over and over.  Day after day.  Week after week.  Year after year.

Eventually a little white stress line will appear.  Then maybe a small tear.  Then eventually, after repeated stress – it will tear significantly.  It’s the same way with both your credit card and your back.

And like bending a credit card, if you continually bend your back, you may get away with it for awhile – but eventually it will tear.  So that last time you tweaked it doing something relatively innocuous, it wasn’t that one move.  It just happened to be the culmination of thousands of bends.

This is EXTREMELY important if you exercise.  If you move incorrectly while exercising, you’re not only speeding up the injury process, but often you’re doing it with a load because you’re holding weights.  This obviously increases the risk exponentially.  So that lunge or squat that you’re doing that isn’t very good – you know the one with not too much hip movement but a lot of spinal movement? 

Real bad. 

It was that which set up your back for an injury, not the seemingly harmless playing with your kid, picking up a box, etc. that did it.  That was only the final straw.

More on part 2 next week, but for now:

View your back as a credit card:  You’ll be able to bend it a few times without incident – but keeping it up over time – especially through improper exercise – is a good way to get hurt.

Thanks to Mike Boyle for the analogy.

Have you asked this question?

Here’s another question that I get pretty often, so I figured it would be easier to explain in a blog post.

Did you ever think this, or ask yourself this before coming to the TR?

When people are considering coming into the TR but are curious about exactly what it will entail from an exercise standpoint, they often ask:

“What will I be doing?”  As in, exactly what exercises will be involved?

Imagine me with a blank stare.  I have no idea why you would ask that.  I mean…how can I possibly answer that?

This is what goes through my mind:

That’s like if you took your car in for service, and you said to the auto tech, “What are you going to do to my car?”

He would look at you with a blank stare, then pause to see if more information was coming, and then he would say (hopefully politely):  “Uh…it depends on what’s wrong with your car…?” with a quizzical look.  That’s if he were polite.  It’s more likely he would look at you like you were a dumbass.

But when I get asked that question, I’m pretty much in the same situation as that hypothetical auto tech:

I have no idea what you’ll be doing in the TR.  Not until I have an idea of what your goals are, what your exercise and injury history is, and what your movement strengths and limitations are.

Any trainer who would tell you what you will be doing without establishing those parameters first is a not very bright trainer.

At the Training Rim, EVERYONE goes through a Q&A about exercise, physical history and injury history, and a Functional Movement Screen.  Then – and only then – can I tell you what you’ll be doing.  And even after that we'll only go through the two week trial of personal training, then re-evaluate the program after those two weeks.

Otherwise, it’ll be the same as if you ask an auto tech to change your oil – when you have a flat tire. The answer won't match the problem.

We put the "personal" in personal training.  We administer the solution to YOUR problem.

I Love Exercise Science

It fascinates me on numerous levels.  Below may explain why to some degree, albeit quite randomly.

It keeps getting less and less expensive to exercise.  You can outfit your house with a pretty good gym for less than $1,000.  I charge less for personal training than I did in 2005.  Consider that.

There’s also more information available about exercise than ever before.  Books, videos, personal demonstrations and lessons can be attained quicker than the snap of a finger in some cases.

Yet orthopedic ailments continue to rise.  Obesity rates continue to rise.

Why is that? 

I’d be lying if I said I knew.  It’s definitely multi-factorial but I think it’s mostly because people believe what they want to believe.  The cognitive dissonance of learning that a personal long standing belief, even if based upon dogma, could be wrong – is just too much to handle for most of us.  We’d rather keep going down a road that doesn’t work rather than deal with it.

Of course that’s not to say any of us know what we’re talking about.  I was told once that we as humans know very little about how we move.  We’re sure that our brain sends messages to our muscles to move.  That’s really it.  I’ve found that not only is that sentiment accurate, but anyone who pretends they know more than that, is by and large, full of shit.

Which is another reason I love exercise science.  No one will ever have it figured out.

There are very smart people who are injured and/or can’t lose weight.  There are imbeciles that are ripped and healthy as horses.  This adds to the intrigue for me.

Another part of the problem, is there is no “normal”.  Everyone is different in an exponential number of ways.  That complicates matters somewhat, which creates even more interest – for me, anyway.

Exercise requires more than anything, patience and persistence.  Learning what works for you takes a lot of trial and error.  This is why hiring someone who’s done decades of trial and error on a large sample size can save you A LOT of time.

But ironically, fitness attracts the impatient.  This creates great people watching opportunities, and a great show.  Have you ever just watched people in the gym or at the park working out?  It’s like a slow motion train wreck.  You see how it’s going to end but you’re helpless to do anything for the poor bastards involved.

The cool thing is you can make decisions today that will make you a better version of you tomorrow and the day after and the day after, etc.  But people will still choose to try a one hour workout today that will somehow cathartically cleanse the decades’ worth of sloth and gluttony that preceded it.

Most people view exercise as a quick path fix to sexiness.

Smart people view it as an investment.

Every day you eat and exercise intelligently, it yields a small dividend.  Do this day after day and eventually all these small dividends add up to a pretty big return on your investment.

Exercise science gives a scary insight into human behavior.  I swear after 15 years of observing people try to get lean and healthy, I think I’m as much an expert in human behavior as I am in exercise science.

I know everyone has an opinion on how to get healthy and lean through exercise.  Almost all are biased, incomplete, uninformed or just plain idiotic.

But for an area that most of us know very little about, we sure do spend a lot of money and time in our area of ignorance.

*Thanks to Morgan Housel for the idea for this rambling piece.

Have You Noticed This?

In case you haven’t heard me mention the first 10,000 times I’ve said it, I love working out in the great outdoors.  And barring ungodly weather (over 95 degrees or under 25 degrees) I try to get out consistently.

I know many of you exercise outdoors as well.  And those of you who don’t, I know you have seen many people workout outside.  Enough probably, that you can probably relate to an observation I’ve made. 

Perhaps you’ve even made the same observation:

With almost no exceptions, people who work out outside – people you see at the track, park, jogging roadside, etc. - fall into one of two categories:

1. The minority, who move quickly and are fit and lean.

2. The overwhelming majority who move slowly and are unfit.

And here’s the important lesson for all of us to learn today, my fellow connoisseurs of all things fit and lean:

People who are lean, are lean because they move fast.  They are NOT moving fast because they are lean.

People who move slowly are unfit because they move slowly.  They are not moving slowly because they are unfit.

I cannot be clearer about the sequence of causation here:  If you move slowly, you will never become lean and fit.

Yes, I understand that moving fast is a relative term.  I know you will never be Usain Bolt.  But you can move faster than you do now.  You can push the pace a little.  You can make it so you get short of breath and have to stop to take a break.  Then you can repeat that process.

THAT is what gets your metabolism up, and THAT is what helps you get fit and lean.

Moving slowly only reinforces an already slow metabolism.  Moving slowly ensures time is being wasted at the least, joint issues from the repetitive motion at the worst.

Push the pace a little.  Get out of breath.  Keep it short and sweet, but breathtaking (literally).

That’s what the lean and fit do to get leaner and fitter.

Any questions, let me know.

Exercise Will Not Help You Lose Weight (?)

“What?” you may be asking…

Well the statement above is technically correct, depending upon a few factors.

I think I’ve read more on nutrition in the past two years than I did in the two decades before that.  Of course, most of the writings and discussions are centered toward fat loss and how to lose weight.  Invariably however, there will always be a short chapter, appendix, or side note about exercise and the role it plays in fat loss.  (Exercise suggestions written by a nutritionist…hmmm…red flag #1.)

The book I re-read most recently by Gary Taubes, “Why We Get Fat”, which was an extremely influential book in the areas of diet and nutrition, claimed that exercise will not help you lose weight.

In spite of what you may expect, I’m not going to attack him for disagreeing with my position on exercise, which I’m sure you are aware differs from his.  His opinion on exercise, like all his opinions on nutrition, are backed by facts.  And he certainly isn’t the only person to make this claim – as I said most non-fitness professionals do.  There is strong evidence that suggests that exercise won’t help you lose weight.

But…the studies and evidence that suggest that exercise doesn’t help lose weight, are based on people who exercise incorrectly.  They are studying exercisers who are doing it wrong.

That would be like me saying most people who diet don’t lose weight.  Which happens to be 100% true.  But the problem is that I’m leaving out the fact that most people “diet” incorrectly.

Ditto for exercise.  True – most people who exercise do not lose weight.  But it’s because they exercise incorrectly.  Don't blame exercise.

In almost every case they do either or both of the following:

• They do not pay attention to quality of their movement.  This leads to injury and/or joint pain, both of which either end an exercise regimen or greatly limit its effectiveness.

• They perform the wrong kind of exercise.  They continue to believe the dogmatic nonsense that long duration, steady state, low to moderate intensity exercise works.  It doesn’t.  If you don’t see that, then you aren’t watching closely enough.

Now, I’m not even going to get into the obvious – there are other reasons to exercise besides trying to lose weight.  You will look better, you will feel better, and you’ll be healthier.  Again, assuming you’re doing it correctly. 

But the bottom line is that exercise – if it’s the right type of exercise and if it’s performed correctly – will help you lose both weight and body fat.

For more on what types of exercise are right for YOU, and how to do it correctly, keep following us.

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Two Simple Ways to Fatten Up

Getting and keeping the slim, strong and sexy look is TOUGH.  Unfortunately, getting fat is pretty frigging easy.  One needs to look no further than commercial gyms and outdoor exercise areas, where the majority of the participants are overweight.  (That seems a little incongruous, no?  More on this later…)

What we have to do as people who are interested in health as well as looking great, is to avoid the two black holes of exercise and nutrition.

But if you really insist on keeping those spare tires and muffin tops, here are two suggestions:

 1. Keep performing low intensity exercise

This will ensure your metabolism never rises.  In fact it will continue to drop due to the natural aging process and due to your proclivity to always make your activity low intensity.  Your walk/jog/treadmill jaunt will burn very few calories comparatively speaking, and the calorie burning process will stop as soon as you stop.  The next time you eat – even if it’s something small and healthy – you will have put back the calories you just used, netting a break even on fat loss.  In other words you just wasted your time.  And the repetitive nature of your jaunt is also likely to be causing joint problems.  More on that later as well.

2. Keep believing grains are good for you

"Healthy Grains" is an oxymoron.  Evidence is overwhelming that sugars and grains are harmful both long term and short term.  Harmful meaning they will make you sick, both long term and short term.  I’m talking about mood swings, depression, ADD, ADHD, violent episodes short term and cancer(s), heart issues and cognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s long term.  But grains and sugars will make you fat as well, and that’s what we’re here to discuss.  A really good way to get fat is to keep your insulin raised all day.  What’s the best way to do this?  Keep having grains and sugars.

For those of you looking to lose the muffin tops and spare tires, make sure you keep following us:

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Discover the Secret to Flexibility

If you’ve read my stuff before you know my feelings on stretching:  It’s probably the most misunderstood and misused aspect of fitness.  Frankly, there isn’t even a close second.  The overwhelming majority of exercisers take what is an extremely complex area of bio-mechanics and dumb it down to “If I pull on this muscle, that’s a good thing.”  Sorry, it’s a wee bit more complex than that.

A recent pulled muscle – my own quadracep – provided me with an example to prove my point:

I perform sprint intervals in my own workouts pretty often.  In fact, sprinting may be my favorite exercise in terms of return on investment.  The keyword here is “sprinting”.  100% all out sprinting.  The kind that if you do it for more than a few seconds you have to slow down or stop.  The exact opposite of what the shuffling limpers you see on the side of the road as you’re driving to work do.

Sorry, back to the point:

During one of my recent workouts, I felt a pull in my quad while sprinting.  Not quite bad enough to call it a day, but some tension and slight discomfort that made me more aware of my form and speed.  It occurred to me that this was a perfect example of what I’ve been telling people for years.

Think about it:

• I warmed up and loosened up prior to the workout.
• It was in the 8^th round of sprints, so had fully extended my legs are far as they can go hundreds of times prior to this.
• I was obviously “loose”.  My quad was working fine up to that point.

So why the pulled muscle?

Because my body could no longer control the lengthening.  “It wasn’t just stretch it and hold it”, like what everyone suggests you do.  It was rapid fire lengthening and shortening.  I.e., real life.

And therein lies the secret to flexibility, my fiends.

My body could no longer control the lengthening (as it had merely seconds prior) due to:

a) Fatigue, which caused poor mechanics

b) Poor mechanics, which caused fatigue

c) Some combination of a and b.

A very subtle change in my physiology and mechanics led to an injury.

In the fitness business, this is called an inability to maintain optimal length- tension relationships.

Incidentally, this is a concept Bruce Lee discussed decades before it became cutting edge.

This is also why any trainer who suggests that an excessively high number of reps of anything is an imbecile.  Fatigue causes injury.  Reason #742 if your coach is a Crossfit coach, fire your coach.

Parenthetically, just the night prior to my pulled muscle, Jacoby Ellsbury of the Yankees pulled a muscle running the bases.  If you think about it, that doesn’t make much sense either.  He obviously warmed up and stretched out.  It was the middle of the game so he had been on a 100% sprint more than once.  But because of choices a, b, or c above, he pulled a muscle too.

So here are the secrets to flexibility:

Pre-workout stretching, or static stretching does not prevent injury.

Functional flexibility is a matter of neuro-muscular coordination, not just lengthening a muscle.

Bruce Lee was decades ahead of his time not only in regards to the martial arts and filmmaking, but in exercise.

Crossfit coaches are dense.  Really, frigging, dense.

OK, the last two are generalized observations and far from secrets.  The first two are the take home messages for you. J

If you say this, you will fail.

As you know, I talk to people about exercise A LOT.  Many people, each in different situations and under different circumstances.

But I’ve picked up on a red flag that tells me whether or not the person with whom I’m speaking will ever get results.

Yes – there is one short phrase that if you utter it, tells me unequivocally that you will not get results from your program.

Want to know what it is?  Here it is:

“Well, it’s better than nothing.”

It's usually spoken when they tell me they are doing ____ for exercise and I roll my eyes.  “Well, it’s better than nothing, Jon!”  Wrong.

Yep.  That’s it.  When I hear "It's better than nothing" I know the person saying it WILL NEVER GET RESULTS.  They will never have the healthy, slim physique and lifestyle they want.  It tells me they are OK with the lowest common denominator and actually don't want to get better.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way:

Eating a doughnut is better than nothing – but it’s still pretty stupid.

Breathing polluted air is better than nothing – but it’s not a good idea.

(Insert waste of time exercise) is better than nothing – but it’s a waste of your time and may be injurious. 

If you want results from exercise, you need to stop doing things that are “better than nothing” and start doing things that WORK.  Like just about everything else in life, it’s about making better choices.

Want to be slim, sexy and strong?  Go to a good facility who will assess where you are, listen to your goals and design a plan for you.  A plan that won’t include things that are “better than nothing”.

As always, we're here to help.

We've Come So Far (Sort of...)

I had the pleasure of helping out with the strength and agility program for a girls’ softball team recently, and one of the conversations that came up applies to all of us interested in health and fitness.

But it occurred to me that we’ve come so far in the areas of fitness and exercise in my time in the business.  Since the turn of the century, more or less, we now know:

Statistically speaking…

• A commercial gym is probably the last place to go if you want to get in shape.
•  Low intensity exercise has very little benefit.
• If you don’t move in the manner your body is designed to, you will be injured and have to stop exercising.
• Eating fat does not make you fat or unhealthy.  Grains and sugars do.

These are all HUGE steps in the right direction.  They’re the reason so many of us are maintaining our health and fitness levels as we age – if not getting more fit and healthy.

But the one area in which we are lagging severely – and this was the topic with the softball players - is in the area of flexibility.  We are still woefully behind the curve on this one.

It’s an area of particular interest for me – “The Correlation Between Static Stretching and Injury Prevention” was the topic of my graduate thesis.  (Here’s a teaser: There is none.)

As usual, I don’t say this to impress, I say it to impress upon you that functional flexibility is WAY more complex than most people realize.  Far too complex to get into in a newsletter, for sure.

That being said, here’s a quick primer that may really simplify – and hopefully help your understanding of stretching and flexibility.

There are areas of your body that are not supposed to be flexible.  I choose to mention this because this comes up ALL THE TIME.  It’s why we have a poster at the Training Rim that says “No unauthorized stretching.”

Your knee is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FLEXIBLE.  Your knee is a hinge.  If it either rotates or hinges too far, like the hinge on a door, the hinge will come off as it would on a door.  A flexible knee is a torn ACL.

Your lower back is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FLEXIBLE.  Unlike your mid and upper back, your lower back needs to be strong and stiff.  It’s designed this way because it’s what holds us upright.  When it loosens or moves excessively is when we have low back problems.  A flexible lower back is a herniated disc.

As I said, there’s way more to it than that and way more to think about – another reason hiring a good training staff is key.  But if you keep these things in mind, you’ll be ahead of the curve in the fitness realm (as you already should be on the bullet points above).

Two GREAT Butt Exercises:

I recently had a conversation that went almost exactly the way a conversation I had about 10 years ago went.  It got me wondering where the people I had the conversation with a decade ago are now and where they are with their fitness goals.

But first, two GREAT butt exercises are single leg squats, and single leg stiff leg dead lifts, i.e. “storks”.  

I’d have trouble thinking of two exercises that give you more bang for the buck.  If you want rock hard glutes, these need to be a staple of your program.  Balance and coordination are improved, as is your conditioning if used in a circuit manner.  Every muscle in your lower body and core is engaged and will get noticeably stronger.  Because of the realistic nature of single leg training (have you ever moved in a parallel stance?  Didn’t think so…) the effects carry over to other aspects of your training program as well.

And did I mention ROCK. HARD. GLUTES…?

Here’s the problem (And this is the conversation I had recently that was the same as one a decade ago with different people):

Single leg squats and storks are challenging,  so people don’t do them.

They require motor control, proper reaction from the proprioceptive nature of the ground reaction forces, multi-planar stabilization, multi-level strength, and good control of length-tension relationships, among other things.*

So a beginning exerciser’s appropriate response should be:  “Wow – I should work on improving those things so I can do single leg squats and storks.  Then I can do workouts that make me strong, lean and fit.”

But unfortunately, that’s not the typical reaction.

The typical reaction goes something like this:

“Improving those things is challenging, and may require some diligence, persistence, patience, and hard work – plus Tony Horton says I don’t need that stuff.  So I’m going to continue to do the things I’ve been doing because they’re easy.  This will ensure I’ll never improve and my ass will continue to get softer, flatter and lower on my body.  Then years from now, I’ll ask Jon (again) what do I have to do to get in shape.”

Of course, those words aren’t used, but that’s really what people are saying when they say I can’t single leg train, so I’ll just keep doing _____ .

Yes, many things in exercise and fitness require a change of direction and some challenges.  But you can make this changes now and your future you will be reaping the benefits and rocking those jeans, or…

…you can continue to avoid changing and continue doing it the easy, safe way.  And to paraphrase Trinity in the Matrix – You already know where that road leads.

“Strengthening the strongest link does not strengthen the chain.”  TR Tenet #5 painted on the wall.

*If you don’t know what these things are, that’s not a problem.  We do and we know how to insert them into your program.

Fitness Lessons, World Cup Style

Between the U.S.’s great performance in the World Cup plus some of the craziness of the games, World Cup soccer has been everywhere you turn lately.  Being the fitness vulture I am, I decided to point out a few things about the conditioning of soccer players that can help YOU get lean and strong.  Because as was pointed out on pretty much a daily basis in the Training Rim – soccer players are in really good friggin’ shape. 

Here are some take home lessons for you:

1. Soccer players do Intervals.

Watch how soccer players run:  They alternate between 100% intensity, to resting, to relatively high intensity, back to 100%, back to rest, over and over.  In other words they do intervals – periods of very intense work followed by less intense work and rest repeated.

They DO NOT pick a low intensity and do that for an extended period.

Again, soccer players have very low body fat.  I’ll try it their way.

2. Soccer players change direction constantly.

Soccer players are constantly changing direction.  Forwards, backwards, sideways, diagonally, etc.  Constant direction changes force all joints of the body to work evenly.

They DO NOT start going forward and then keep going forward…for an indefinite period…

When joints are moved in all directions, they stay balanced and healthy.  When they go in only one direction over and over for extended periods they become dysfunctional.  (One of many reasons jogging is unhealthy).

Find me a good soccer player with bad posture, which is the tell-tale sign of joint imbalance and injury. Go ahead, bet you can’t find one.

Again – I’ll do it their way.

3. Soccer players stretch – AND STILL GET HURT.

The rash of hamstring pulls in the World Cup was almost comical in its frequency.  And every one of the players stretches prior to the matches.  So how does this happen?

BECAUSE STRETCHING DOES NOT PREVENT INJURY.  PERIOD.

Let’s be clear:  I did not say “don’t stretch.”  I said it does not prevent injury.  So if part of your workout is to yank on your knee and twist your back prior to exercise because you think it’s preventing injury, you are wrong.  Save your time.

Can these points make you an elite athlete like the World Cup players?  Probably not.

But they can get you simmer, stronger, and sexier!

Secret of the Strong

Discover the Secret of the Strong:

“Struggle is not optional – it’s neurologically required: in order to get your skill to fire optimally, you must by definition, fire the circuit sub-optimally; you must make mistakes and pay attention to those mistakes; you must slowly teach your circuit. You must also keep firing that circuit – i.e., practicing – in order to keep functioning properly.” - Daniel Coyle (taken from “The Talent Code”)

I was having a conversation with another trainer the other day about cueing members during sessions, explaining to them how exercises should be done, why they need to be done in a certain manner, etc.  And it occurred to me that the point I was trying to make with him, is actually a point I’ve been trying to make with exercisers for years, because really that’s who it is aimed at.

This is something very important that all exercisers need to understand:

Strong people don’t exercise well because they are strong.  They are strong because they exercise well.

They make sure every repetition is PERFECT. Not “OK” – PERFECT. 

They make sure every squat has heel pressure.  They make sure every pushup has a stiff spine.  They make sure every kettlebell swing has extended hips.

When you exercise with this mindset every time you workout day after day, week after week, month after month, eventually you become a significantly stronger and better conditioned human.

This is why, in my facility anyway, when you see people doing impressive things you need to remember that initially they struggled, like we all do.  But after a period of very deliberate practice and always correcting mistakes, they became strong and well conditioned.  The fact that now they make very difficult moves look very easy can be deceiving.  Tons and tons of repetitive errors and corrections went into that skill.

But this doesn’t seem to be peoples’ perception more often than not.  What I hear and what I observe from others is the assumption that the person is strong – therefore they can exercise well. 

Not true.  Not in most cases anyway.  They are strong and well conditioned because they pay attention to every detail of their movement and the exercise they’re performing.

The flip side of this is the person who doesn’t obsess over every movement detail.  The person who doesn’t mind that they shoulders are rolling forward when their hips are supposed to flex.  The person that doesn’t mind that he/she squats with all knee flexion and no hip flexion.

Will this person get results?  Maybe, if they’re lucky.  But they won’t get GREAT results.

In order to achieve major gains from your strength and conditioning program, you need to pay very close attention to every move you make in the gym, and deliberately correct any imperfections.  Over time, this is how major improvements are made.

Pay attention to and correct mistakes – this is how improvement occurs.  And like it says on the walls of the TR: “Always Improve”.

Traits Of The Lean and Healthy

Right to the point:

I've been watching people try to get leaner, healthier and stronger for a LONG time.  And with very few exceptions, people who get leaner, healthier and stronger all have the same behavior characteristics in common.  Conversely, people who don't get results, typically don't have these traits.

Real simple:  Use my experience to your benefit.  If you aren't getting 100% of the lean, strong and healthy look you want check out these traits.  Then be honest with yourself and make some changes where necessary.  Habits aren't like your skin color, height, or other things over which you have no control - you CAN have the same things as the lean, healthy and strong with just a few modifications...

Traits of successful people:

1. Successful People Train consistently.

Successful people make their training sessions a priority.  They put them on their schedule and get them done.  In the event something serious comes up - and ONLY something serious - that forces a change in plans, the session is rescheduled to the next available time – it’s not canceled.

2. Successful people train correctly. 

They are open minded and not afraid to change.  Successful people take what’s a very small amount of time to learn about and evaluate their training.  They continue to expand upon what’s working and eliminate what isn’t.  And they’re open minded enough to see that what may be good marketing, may not be good exercise information.

3. Successful people work at it outside the gym.

Successful people understand their workouts are only the tip of the iceberg.  They focus as much attention on recovery as they do their stints at the TR.  Remember: Exercise is the impetus for improved health – the progress actually occurs when we eat correctly and recover correctly.  Successful people have their nutrition, rest and additional training dialed in.

4. Successful people take responsibility for their own health and fitness.

(This one is actually the mother of the other three, as those habits are born from this one.)

Successful people understand that they will do it or they won’t.  If it doesn’t get done it’s on them, but instead of wallowing, they make corrections.  They understand that they are truly the only ones who can help themselves get leaner and healthier.  They understand there are obstacles, but they create strategies to overcome them.  Excuses simply do not exist in this group.

Do this: think about the people you know who really have succeeded in getting healthier, leaner and stronger.  Then think about the people you know who haven’t.

I guarantee you’ll notice a pattern of these traits among the successful group, and a different set of traits among the people in the other group.

And as always, we’re here to help –

Jon

Are You Banging Your Head Against the Wall?

Quite often, when people set the direction for their exercise program they simply don't choose the best direction.  You know the expression, "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line"?  Well, in the realm of fitness and exercise, sometimes it isn't.

Jon explains here.  If you feel your exercise program has you banging your head against the wall sometimes, check this out: