The Minimum Effective Dose

More is always better right?  Well... not always.  In fact, maybe not very often.  An age old trap for lifters is thinking that if I just do a little more work every time I go to the gym, I'll keep getting closer to meeting my goals.  So you keep going to the gym and hitting it hard, sometimes twice a day, week in and week out. You start to notice that your shoulders are aching when you wake up in the morning, but you've got a deadline for your goals so you have to keep adding weight.  Then your knees start to hurt, but you need to get a few extra sets of squats in.  You're not sleeping that well.  Even worse, your progress has come grinding to a halt.  Now what?  It seems like adding even more work is the ticket to get the numbers moving again, but where is the motivation to train?  You're hurting, tired, and stuck.  So let's rewind, what should you have done?

Training is like medicine.  You administer a dose and look for a response.  You don't prescribe chemotherapy to someone suffering from a cold.  You tell them to go take some over the counter decongestant and wait it out.  It's the minimum effective dose.  If you start at the nuclear option, there's nowhere else to progress if that doesn't work.  In addition, most drugs have side effects.  The less of a drug you can take to get the desired effect, the less you have to deal with the side effects.  Thinking of training in this way means, I'll do the least amount of work in the simplest possible way that will garner a training effect.  It limits the side effects (excessive soreness, joint pain, potential injury) and it leaves me with options for increasing the dose when the current dose stops working (different set and rep schemes, more sessions, etc.).

We can look at this from a variety of angles.  If you're training for strength and a simple progression of 3 sets of 5 reps will allow you to make progress, why make it any more complicated than that?  Pick all of the low hanging fruit you can, because progress is going to be much more difficult in the future.  There's no need to add bands and chains and specialty bars when you're a new lifter.  There's no need to rotate workouts every week or to do odd lifts to build your basic movements.  Simply practice the basic movements with enough weight on the bar to allow you to make progress.

If you're a crossfitter, do the WOD with weights and movements that allow you to move with the highest possible quality.  Get used to your body and learn how to use it.  You probably don't need to be training 2-3 times per day, 6 days per week at this point.  Get your 3-5 training sessions in per week and allow time for recovery.  When the progress stops, then you can address the reasons and perhaps the next step will be to up the dose.

If you're a runner, follow a plan that doesn't run you into the ground 365 days out of the year.  I think the reason so many runners are injured is that they don't have an off season.  Repetitive pounding on your ankles, knees, and hips is going to take its toll.  Build your running to your competitive season and then bring the dose back down to allow your body to recover.  Couch to 5k programs are great, if they get you off the couch and prepared for a 5k.  However, it could be that you should take a slower progression towards being the runner you want to be to allow you to make progress over a longer period of time.

So take a step back and look at your training.  Are you doing too much?  Do you go into workouts recovered and ready to work hard, or are you feeling beat up and tired?  If the goal is progress, and it should be, then you need to keep the goal the goal rather than just doing work for work's sake.  Look for the minimum effective dose that will carry you towards your goals.  Be smart, stay healthy, and train hard!

If you enjoy these blog posts, please take a minute to click the little buttons below and share them with your friends.  I think these are training messages that can make a difference to help you reach your goals, and would love to share this knowledge with as many people as I can.  You could also take a moment to join our facebook group.  Last plug, follow me on twitter and instagram @disruptivefit for updates on training and new posts. It's full of trainers and lifters who enjoy some discussion and are a great resource for training questions.  Thanks for reading!

Reset

"...have you tried turning it off and then back on again?"

You can hear the tech support guy's tired voice intone over the phone the first step of every technology troubleshooting process ever.  He's said it so many times to so many people, many of them inexperienced enough with technology that turning it off might require a few steps, that the phrase has lost its meaning to him.  It's a wonderful thing to keep in mind that it's almost always possible to reset the system.  It seems like that is part of the natural process of things in life, although sometimes it can be forced upon you if you are not diligently keeping tabs on what's important.  Because everything in the world falls apart when energy is not being spent to keep it together and we have limited energy and attention to keep it all moving, we'll be faced with the need to reset a variety of things at various times.  So what does that look like?

As a husband and a dad, I need constant resets in family life.  It's easy to take the people who are always around you for granted.  So I need to reset my attention and where I spend my energy to make sure that I'm working on keeping family a priority both in day-to-day life and in the big 30,000 foot level decisions we make.  Otherwise people tend to drift apart due to the universal principle I mentioned above, everything tends towards falling apart.  In this case I like to reset by unplugging from the nonessential parts of life, focusing on my family, and then plugging in the other stuff little by little.

As a business owner and as an employee I need constant resets.  If you aren't diligent in what you are doing as your trade, it's pretty easy to get in a rut and start mailing it in.  Once things get stale, you aren't doing your best work, no innovation is likely, and someone who is still hungry and having fun will be vying for your spot.  My favorite reset from working is camping, but we all need some kind of break to turn it off so we can turn it back on again.  Recreation is literally re-creating yourself through play and various pursuits you enjoy so that you can return to work refreshed with some new perspectives and ideas to keep things moving forward in new and interesting ways.

As a lifter I need regular resets.  If you continuously load your body with more and more work, you will eventually either bench press a school bus or you will break.  While I've seen a few guys who looked like a bus was not out of the question, it's more likely that you'll develop tendinitis or tear a muscle or some other malady if you never reset your training to give your body a rest.  If you don't respect your body and always ask more and more of it, it will let you know that that is unacceptable.  You can't treat your friends and loved ones like that or you won't have many left hanging around you.  While an injury can be a huge set back, sometimes it's your body's way of forcing a reset.  If it happens to you, take the time to consider why it happened.  Are you pressing towards your goals with too much haste, not allowing for things like recovery and rest?  Are your goals even realistic?  Have things been hurting for awhile, but you're ignoring it or treating it with your daily regimen of vitamin I (ibuprofen)?  Maybe it will go away is a five word phrase that leads to failure.

Since this is mostly a training blog, let's think of a few ways your training could be in need of a reset.

1.  You've stopped making progress.  This is the clearest sign you need to rethink things and take a new angle on your training.  If something you were doing was working and now it is not, you need to assess and make adjustments.  Dan John famously said that everything works... for about six weeks.  When you stop getting stronger, it's time to reset.  That could mean changing exercises or doing the same exercises with different implements for a little while.  More likely just changing the load, sets, and reps will do the trick.  The newer you are as a lifter, the less variety you need in your training to keep making progress.  The simplest reset is just to knock about 10% of the weight off the bar and then build back up.  It seems like your going backwards, but the reset gives your body some much needed recovery and allows you to train long term rather than burning out in a few months.

2.  Your technique is falling apart.  It's pretty common for technique to suffer as you approach 100% effort on a lift.  While some small changes in technique might be okay, big changes under a load can lead to injury.  The easiest example for this is squatting. When I have a lifter who is making great progress in bar weight but they stop squatting all the way to proper depth because they are afraid they'll be stapled to the floor at the bottom, it's time for a reset.  In this fashion a trainee can unload the bar some, get a little rest, and practice the exercise for more reps with less load on their body.  As they progress back up in weight the rest and the skill practice lead to new personal records.

3.  You've lost interest.  Let's face it... squatting every week for your whole life might be a little boring for some people.  It's probably the best way to be really strong and durable, but only if you do it.  So if your program is so boring that you're avoiding the gym, it could be time to step back and reassess what you're doing and why you're doing it.  Then you can reset by setting up a new program that adds in a little variety or perhaps add a training partner for a better training environment.  This one also requires a critical eye for program hopping.  If you're making progress on your current program, don't hop around looking for shortcuts.  There aren't any.

4. You're injured.  It happens, and when it happens if forces you to reset.  This could be a car accident that was an acute and totally unexpected injury, but more often for trainees it's something that was totally avoidable.  You've been ignoring all of the warning signals and pushing your body to failure.  You haven't been eating enough of the right foods or sleeping enough or drinking enough water.  That knee has been aching for months, but you haven't stopped to try to figure out why.  When something finally breaks, your body is forcing you to slow down and reset your training.  Early injuries in lifting tend to be smaller than when you're strong enough to move weights that will really break your body when your technique is sloppy or you're over-trained.  Listen to your body and respect it by taking advantage of the above resets and you can probably avoid this type of reset.

Resets are a natural part of life and required to continue making progress.  While it seems like a step back, a simple adjustment to the way you think about resets will make them a constant companion and friend.  Rather than thinking of it as losing ground, think of it as an artist who upon finishing a part of his masterpiece steps back to see how it fits with the whole.  If it adds something to the piece, it stays.  If not, it gets reworked to bring everything together.  Stand back, take in the whole picture, and reset what is necessary.

Every Rep Is Practice

I spend a lot, maybe even most, of my time in gyms.  I'm blessed to coach and lift in environments where people are really working hard, but even though I get to train in solid gyms, it's pretty common to see people going through the motions.  It can happen for a variety of reasons, but I think the biggest one is inattentiveness.  When you are not present for each and every rep of a training session, you will get less benefit from your training and you will create bad habits that have to be retrained in the future.

Every rep you complete of every exercise you do is practice.  Whether you are practicing for grace and perfection in your squat or for wobbly broken knees and a back that is out of position on your heavier sets is up to you.  The biggest offender is warm up sets.  As you unrack the empty bar, you should move with the same precision and purpose as a world record attempt.  Ed Coan talks about the methodical nature of his squat set up in a recent podcast with Mark Bell.  He made the point that because every rep was identical and intentional that when he came to the heavier weights (and he knew about heavy weights with a 900lb deadlift at a body weight of just 220lbs) it was just like the light ones in technical execution.

Musashi, famed Japanese swordsman and author of the Book of Five Rings, when talking about training said essentially the same thing, only about 500 years before me.  He wrote that when one trained they should do so strongly and with purpose.  There is no sense in wasted reps done without attention to detail, striving for perfection.  In weight lifting they build bad habits that can lead to injury and missing your full potential as an athlete.  In sword fighting, it can get you killed.

Knowing that just going through the motions sucks the life out of your training, how do you stay present for each and every rep in a training session?  Start by simply making an effort to be aware of what you are doing.  Feel your breathing, your balance, your position as you move through your warm up sets.  Strive for perfection as you prepare your body to work hard.  Intentionally set aside intruding thoughts as you train.  When it's time to squat, it's time to think about squats.  When the work report or assignment from school starts to creep in, set it aside and practice focusing on the task at hand.  When your attention is divided, you will not work as hard and the work will not be as effective as a result.  Realize that this is a practice and it will take practice to master it.  When you are making an effort to stay focused on one thing, you will probably notice how distracted you tend to be as you move through a training session.  With time and discipline, you will be able to be fully present and fully immerse yourself in your training.  That kind of 100% effort, stretched out over a long period of time is the way to maximum results.  Remember, every rep is practice.  As you practice, you will develop habits.  Your habits will dictate your results.  Put your full attention into every rep, every day and watch your training take off.

Goals: Direction

Direction is one of the most difficult things to find in life, just ask any 23 year old college graduate.  For the last 16 years someone else has been setting their goals.  It starts with colors, shapes, and letters and ends with some pretty complex arrangements of colors, shapes, and letters.  But now you're a graduate.  No more teachers and institutions directing your path.  So what will you do now?  It's up to you.  For a few motivated grads, this means that the world is their oyster, full of opportunity.  For many, it's a paralyzing task to try to determine the direction for the next 50 years of life.

I find the gym to be a pretty decent analog to life.  One of the most difficult things for many trainees is deciding on a direction to take their training.  Sure, there are a few who seem to effortlessly glide into an intelligent program and solid goals, but for the most part that is not the case.  In my case, I trained for nearly 10 years before really understanding what I was doing and why I was doing it.

At its worst a lack of direction can lead to rampant program hopping, over-education, and a discouraging lack of progress.  At best it leads to mediocre training that is too diluted to bring any real results.  Couple this with poor habits outside of the gym and you have a recipe for landing back on the couch in 2 months or less.  While we all secretly wish we could just lay on the couch instead of going to the gym from time to time, we all know that it will not end well.

Your direction in the gym should be determined by your long term goals.  If the direction of your training is not relevant to what you are trying to accomplish, it just doesn't make any sense.  You might need to hire a coach to help you think through and plan the action steps to move you towards that goal.  Setting the direction of your training is a lot like investing, most people don't do that without good advice from a qualified professional.  While what happens with your money is pretty important, I'd argue that keeping your body healthy and ready for any necessary task is probably a little more important.  So don't skip working with a qualified coach to keep an eye on your overall program and to help keep your training moving in the right direction.

Once you've set your course, it's time to put your head down and grind it out.  Stop reading all the fitness magazines offering you 3 weeks to huge guns and a tight butt.  Stay the course and continuously move in the direction you have chosen.  Don't be in a hurry to see results.  Instead, focus on the process of getting a little bit better every single day.  Direction is a long term process.  It will guide the next 20 years of your training.  That means there might be small tweaks and course corrections, but huge shifts should be fairly rare.

In summary, setting the direction of your training is hugely important.  Start with your goals, talk with a coach, put your hand to the plow, and get to work.  Don't constantly watch the scale or become preoccupied with numbers on the bar.  Do be preoccupied with doing the next right thing, every single day, for the rest of your life.  If you miss here and there, it's not going to be a problem because the overall direction of your training is going to keep you moving.  It's when you lose your direction that you find yourself back on the couch. 

Focus on the Process

We live in a results oriented society.  Everything you buy, you buy because of what you expect the results of that purchase to be.  You bought the minivan because it would result in more space and easier transportation for a growing family.  You bought the big screen tv because it would result in more entertainment or a better view of the big game.  You bought the gym membership because it would result in a trimmer waist and bigger guns.  This is a pretty reasonable way to think about things.  You only have so many resources to invest, so investing them in things that will result in outcomes you want is pretty smart.

The problem is, when applied to training, it can be a little frustrating at times.  You've probably been frustrated with the results you expected from your training in the past.  Some dvd set or personal trainer promised you 6" off of your waist in 21 days and in spite of your zeal and good intentions, it didn't deliver.  You tried a crazy fad diet for 30 days, but it didn't deliver the advertised results.  You bought the next neon green supplement that said it would get you completely jacked and tan, just like the guy in the ad, and it didn't deliver.  Chasing results can be expensive and frustrating.  I think there is a better way than trying to buy results or expecting a quick fix.  Instead of focusing on the results, I think you should focus on the process.

What does it mean to focus on the process?  First you have to realize that it took you your whole life to get where you are today.  Get up, and go look an a mirror.  The result of the x number of years you have lived and the decisions you have made and the habits you have formed is looking back at you.  You didn't become you overnight, for better or for worse.  Second, you have to realize that any kind of significant change you want to make is going to take time.  Unless you're starting out fairly lean and muscular, you're probably not going to see your abs in 6 weeks, especially if you haven't seen them in 6 years.  You probably won't be the fastest or the strongest, which leads us to the next point.  Third, leave ego and pride behind.  Everyone starts, or restarts, somewhere.  Join a gym where people will help you think through your goals and create strategies to meet them.  When you get there, you might not stand out. You will need to change your habits, a little at a time, to be the habits of someone who can do what you want to be able to do.  So that's all well and good, but how do you do it?

When you set your focus on the process, you set goals, and then you do the simple things every single day.  You drive to the gym.  You eat enough of the right things to support your goals.  You go to bed on time.  You take your fish oil. Every day you do the next right thing that will move you towards your goals.  It's profoundly simple to get leaner, stronger, and fitter.  So simple that instead of just putting your head down and pushing through it, you want to look for the next best thing that promises results.  All the advertising is flashy and exciting, but the products rarely deliver, so try this instead.  I'll give you a 100% guarantee that if you focus on the process and do the next right thing that supports your goals every day, you will crush your goals.

If you want some help nailing down your goals, or creating some action steps to carry you towards them so you can focus on the process, I'll be happy to help.  Comment below or send an email to disruptivefitness at gmail.com for some assistance.

Change of Pace

I'm taking a break from the normal 3 and a half training days per week focusing on the big three for a 5 week challenge/rehab program.  After some friends tipped me off to a new Dan John article on the program, I decided to give it a go.

The program involves 20 training sessions, 4 per week for 5 weeks.  You could do it 2 days on and 1 day off, but I like having the weekend "off" since I tend to play around in the garage gym Sunday afternoon.  In each training session you will complete 500 kettlebell swings.  That's right 500, it's not a typo.  They are to be executed in 5 rounds of 10, 15, 25, and 50 rep sets.  Between sets you can add a barbell or other lift to round out the program.  The barbell lift should be executed in sets of 1, 2, and 3 reps.  A bodyweight exercise could be done for 2, 3, and 5 reps between sets of swings.  A beginner could just forego the extra lift per workout if the overall workload is too much.

The workout I completed this morning looked like this:
KB Swing 55 lb bell/Press 135lb barbell

5 Rounds for total time:
10 Swings/1 Press,
15 Swings/2 Presses,
25 Swings/3 Presses,
Rest 1 min.
50 Swings.
3 minutes of corrective work (stretching, rolling, etc.)

1 down, 19 more training sessions to go.

Here's my rationale for the break from my normal training, in bullet point fashion for you speed readers.

• I'm currently eating a paleo-ish diet with my wife which will inevitably lead to me leaning out a good bit.  I expect to lose about 15lbs this month without going hungry.  Doing a workout that will encourage me to shed fat while maintaining and possibly building lean mass is a great complement to the diet.
• I'm in pretty lame cardio shape.  You just don't need very much cardio to be a powerlifter.  That being said, I'm okay with a little balance and this program hits what I want.  I can do cardio while training for strength without running.
• Since I injured my hip a year ago in a powerlifting meet my left side has been lagging.  I'm looking at this as an opportunity to retrain my body to fire the whole left side with 10,000 reps of 55lb kettlebell swings.
• I can hold onto some strength and build up some weak points in the process.  I plan to use standing overhead presses, front squats, L-sit pull-ups, and bench presses as my lifts to offset the swings.  Each of those will be building a particular weakness for me to prepare me for better overall performance upon my return to regular training in November.
• 5 sets of 3 minutes of corrective work mixed into the training session.   I'm notoriously bad at doing mobility work on my own.  This builds in some opportunities to rehab some pain I have and get healthy.

Anyone want to take the challenge with me?  Comment below and join in at the facebook page to share your experience with other movers and shakers.  (I almost said swingers, but that wouldn't have been correct...)

Do It Anyway

Yesterday was a bad day for training.  I was up too late the night before, so my sleep was cut short.  I really don't like it when I don't get enough sleep.  I didn't eat enough the day before.  You can't blame anyone but yourself for those problems.  I've been working more and later and earlier and I'm a little tired.  So is everyone.  So after that set up, here's how the day went.

Alarm went off early AM.  I didn't want to get up, had time to sleep in.  Did it anyway.

I was hungry, but didn't feel like making breakfast before I went to train.  Did it anyway.

Low energy, not feeling very motivated to even drive to the gym.  Did it anyway.

Wanted to cut the warm up short because I just wasn't into it.  Did it anyway.

My training partner showed up, he was feeling pretty beat up and didn't want to work that hard.  Did it anyway.

Finished our main lift for the day and didn't feel like doing our assistance work.  Did it anyway.

What did I learn from all of this?  That it doesn't matter that much how you feel.  It's what you decide to do that matters.  No one on the platform, the field, the court, or the office cares that much how you feel today.  They care what you do.  At the beginning of college football season in the US there are zero fans who care how their team's head coach feels about the game this weekend.  If their team isn't winning, they want him fired.  If players don't produce, it doesn't matter to the fans and coaches that they didn't sleep well last night or eat enough to support training and playing.

What can you take away from my bad day?  That you aren't going to have the best training session of your life every time you enter the gym, and that doesn't really matter.  Some days are going to be really bad, and that doesn't matter.  What matters is that you do the work.  Consistently.  Day-in, day-out you show up and work hard.  You're tired?  So is everyone else.  You don't feel like it today?  Quit tomorrow.  Never let what you want right now get in the way of what you really want.  Don't be ruled by the tyranny of desire.

I'll see you at the gym.

23 Hour Rule: You Can't Outwork a Bad Diet (Part 1)

In the last installment of the 23 Hour Rule, I introduced the idea that what you do outside of the gym matters for your progress in the gym and in competition.  Since many training programs call for about 3 hours of work per week in the gym, we found that the ratio of time outside of the gym to time in the gym is about 56 to 1.  What that means to the average gym goer is that your training is just a drop in the bucket of life.  While you can accomplish a lot, and I do mean a lot, in just 3 hours a week of training, you cannot undo 165 horrible hours in that short of a time.  So where are we going with that idea today?  Your diet.

When people say diet, what they usually mean is some fad they've adopted for weight loss.  As I've mentioned before, I think weight loss by itself is a terrible goal because it's too short sighted.  What do I do once the weight is off?  Generally, I go back to the habits that resulted in me being overweight enough to make radical changes in lifestyle.  That doesn't do anyone any favors.

What I mean when I say diet is the habits you have around food consumption.  Most Americans eat a diet of convenience, meaning they eat what is easy.  That results in most people being overweight or obese.  (That's not hyperbole, click the link.)  The idea seems to be that, I work so hard and I'm so busy that the only way to get the 3 meals a day that I NEED, is to hit the drive through for a couple of them and then microwave something out of a box when I get home.  How else can I possibly survive?

Before we go any further, I need to challenge 2 ideas mentioned above.  The first is that eating should be easy.  That is entirely dependent upon what you mean when you say it.  If easy means carrying around a 3rd grader worth of body fat and using the CPAP when you sleep, then that doesn't feel very easy to me.  It sounds like making an already full life more difficult.  If it means you can generally attempt to shake off any and all personal responsibility for what goes into your body, then I don't see how that will end well.  What about having sustained energy to get you through your busy day?  What about being healthy and looking healthy?  That sounds a lot easier when I start to think in the long term.

And what about the people who depend on you?  Many of my readers are parents.  Is it going to be easier to teach your children to eat by your example and see them thrive, or to feed them from drive-through windows and watch them join the ranks of the overweight and obese?  I understand that you're very busy, but are there things that could be trimmed out for a healthier lifestyle?  This is in no way an attack on already very busy, tired, and overworked parents... I am one, and we only have 1 kid in our house.  Instead, it's a call to evaluate your habits, and look for ways to make better habits, both for your benefit and for those who depend on you.

The second idea I want to challenge is that you absolutely must eat at least 3 meals per day, every day, for the rest of your life to survive.  Humans are survival machines.  No matter what belief you subscribe to, we've been around for a long time.  There were long periods of scarcity throughout human history where people lived off of less food than some people eat in a week for long periods of time.  If you don't have 3 meals a day, you will not die.  If you do not eat for the next week, you will be just fine.  This means that if your option for a meal is low quality food or don't eat, you certainly have the option to not eat until a better choice comes available.  Life in the first world means that a better choice will come available in about as much time as it takes to drive to the nearest grocery store.

Start evaluating how you are eating.  In my experience, people tend to thoughtlessly form their dietary habits.  Give it a little thought, and stay tuned because in the next part we'll talk a little more about what to eat to support your training and your healthy lifestyle.  Following that post there will be some thoughts on how to make healthy eating a little more convenient for you.  

If you need a little help with your diet sooner than the next post, you can reach me through the comments or my email disruptivefitness@gmail.com.  Further, there are other goal oriented trainees and trainers hanging out at our facebook group who would love to get you know you and help you out.  As always, thanks for reading and supporting this blog!

Enjoy it!

I've been under the weather enough that I haven't even been able to get out to the gyms to coach.  Without being dramatic, I really miss being under a heavy bar and seeing others struggle and succeed.  Being sick for the last week has given me some more perspective on training.  Enjoy it!  You don't know what might happen to remove you from the training hall for a few days, a week, or forever.  Be in the moment.  You aren't doing workouts just to do workouts.  We don't exercise here, we train.  Each time you enter the gym, it's a sacred space where you set aside the day and just live for an hour or so.  Hopefully, it's not the only part of life where you get to do that, but it's certainly one of the easiest.  Have fun with your training.  Train with people you like.  Make all the progress you can in the time that you have.  Most of all, just simply appreciate that you have a body and mind that can do the things we do day-in and day-out.

From now on, when presented with a workout that looks rough, erase phrases like, "That sucks!" and "I don't want to do that" from your vocabulary.  Instead look at every hurdle as an opportunity to learn something about yourself and improve.  You're doing everything you can to be more awesome every time you slay the dragon in front of you.  So never stop fighting.  When faced with the choice between training and watching one more episode of whatever on netflix, cancel your netflix and get to the gym, or on the trail, or the road, etc.  Work your tail off while you have time to do so, because there is a time coming when you will not be able to train like you do now.

While my illness is a minor and very temporary set back, it provides some focus.  What is important to me and why?  I'll tell you this, the first priority is not the gym.  I haven't been able to play with my infant daughter or spend much quality time with my lovely wife for most of the week due to my consistent elevated temperature, and that's a way bigger bummer than missing a training session or two.  It's reminded me that I do really enjoy lifting and coaching, and besides being bored out of my mind on quarantine, I'm beyond ready to get back to the gym.  I hope I'll see you there!

Exercising or Training?

When you think of the word exercise, what comes to mind?  Walking in circles in the woods carrying heavy stuff on military duty?  A thought experiment?  If you're like me, the first thing that comes to mind is the cardio theater.  25 treadmills lined up facing televisions to keep you entertained while you burn calories.  That concept alone is pretty crazy.  Think about this: if you are reading this blog, you likely live in a place where calories are so available and affordable that it's nothing to you to spend money on a gym membership to go and burn them.  That logic should shake you up a little bit.  Are you just exercising so you can burn calories, essentially wasting the energy that you consume on a daily basis?  I hope not, that's a pretty circular and pointless exercise, at least to me.

So what's the alternative to exercising and burning calories?  Simple, it's training.  So what's the difference?  As I noted above, exercising is essentially just moving around aimlessly.  Training is working towards a goal.  What is the point of basic training?  It is to produce something, a baseline capable soldier.  When you talk to a triathlete who is preparing for a big race, they will tell you they are training for it.  A strength athlete getting ready for a big meet?  S/He's training.

Consider why you're heading to the gym in the first place.  It is not my goal to get the exercisers out of the gym, although that could free up many occupied squat racks.  (Unless you own it, don't curl in it.)  Instead, I want to infuse their exercising with purpose and transform them into trainees.  If you want to think more on setting goals to give your training value, I recommend that you start here, with my article on setting SMART goals.

Need help figuring out how to apply the SMART principle to your training?  I'm always happy to help.  You can reach me through the comments or my email disruptivefitness@gmail.com.  Further, there are other goal oriented trainees and trainers hanging out at our facebook group who would love to get you know you and help you out.  As always, thanks for reading and supporting this blog.

23 Hour Rule: Sitting is the Slow Death

You're a gym rat, addicted to training.  You work hard in the gym on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis.  We're lifers here, there's no end to training until there are at least 6 feet of dirt holding you down.  You're doing everything right for about 1 hour a day, but what about the other 23?  When I taught school, and now as a coach and trainer, I often refer to the 23 Hour Rule.  You cannot undo 23 bad hours in 1 good hour a day.  This is especially true since most people only train 2-3 days per week.  That means that you have an accumulated 165 hours per week outside the gym with 3 in the gym.  That's a ratio of about 56 to 1.

There are a variety of things that the 23 Hour Rule applies to in everyday life.  Today we're going to key in on posture.  In the gym, position is power.  That means that if I am able to move correctly as I squat, run, jump, and pull, I will have greater output and therefore greater results.  It also means that I can do all the things I enjoy doing in the gym for the rest of my life instead of creating overuse injuries from poor movement over long periods of time.  Remember the ratio above, if you train for about 3 hours per week, your time outside the gym to time inside the gym ratio is about 56:1.  That means if you are moving with poor posture 56 times more often than you pay attention to movement you are never going to be able to correct that with just time in the gym.  If you spend a great deal of that time in a seat, the resulting posture is even worse.  Will your training time help?  Absolutely, if you are paying attention to position and form as you train.  (You are doing that right?  New gym personal records aren't worth being injured and missing training and future personal records.)

The Problem

Most Americans spend most of their time sitting down.  That would be great if it wasn't for the fact that your body was made for motion.  The only time you should be stationary for extended periods of time is when you're asleep.  It also means that you can very easily go a full week without bending any of the joints from your hips down to your ankles past 90 degrees.  You wake up and roll out of bed, walk to the breakfast table and sit down.  You get in the car for your commute to your desk where you sit for the next 8-10 hours.  Back to the car to the living room where you sit for the remainder of the evening before going to bed and doing it all again.  Why is this a problem?  Because it teaches your body that it only needs to move through these abbreviated ranges of motion.  That means very tight hips and ankles and knees that have to be unnaturally mobile.  This leads to lower back pain, hip pain, knee pain, ankle pain, pain pain, and all kinds of other things that you do not want.  In gym talk that means your squats will be terrible, you won't be able to get into position to deadlift correctly, you'll probably run and jump poorly, and you'll always have to contend with pain.  I think you can see that this is an undesirable situation.

The Solution

Move!  No seriously, get up from your desk every 15-20 minutes, even if it's just to stand up for a minute before returning to your chair.  Get a bluetooth headset so you can walk and talk.  Even better, get a standing desk and be a trendsetter in your office.  You'll be amazed how much more alert you are as you shake off the malaise that is the result of hours upon hours of sitting.  When you get home at the end of the day, don't just plant yourself on the couch for the remainder of the evening.  Go for a walk, play in the floor with your kids, do the 1 or 2 projects you've been avoiding around the house because you're just "too tired" to do anything else.  A moving body is a happy body.  And if you reduce the ratio of sedentary to active and good positions and posture to bad position from 56:1 to almost anything else, you'll see the benefits.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on the 23 Hour Rule as we move forward.  We'll cover more topics regarding posture, nutrition, recovery, and a handful of other things to which the 23 Hour Rule applies.  In the meantime, get up and move around.  Right now.  As always, you can interact with this and other topics in the comments or by emailing me at disruptivefitness@gmail.com.  If you'd like to get a notification in your inbox when there is a new blog or video available, enter your email in the box to the right to subscribe.

What should I eat? (New Video)

If you would like to see what I encourage my clients to eat, check out this video below.  It's so simple that it doesn't make much sense.  There are no silly rules, no confusing macro nutrient timing issues, just easy to follow advice that gets results.  You don't have to eat 6 or 8 times per day.  You don't have to weigh or measure your food.  If you will start here, you will see results.  Take the 30 day challenge that I issue in the video below and let me know how it works for you!

I apologize for the image quality, the lighting was pretty poor in the gym this morning.  I'm certainly open to suggestions as to how to make better quality videos, and the next phone I but will have a solid camera in it for sure.

Client Interview: Suzette

[Author's Note: This one is special, it's an interview with my mom!  After some prodding over a long period of time, I got her into the gym with me... now she's down 32.5 pounds.  My dad jumped on the wagon as well and is down 14 pounds.  That's 46.5 pounds by simply eating like adults!]

Brandon: First question, what made you decide that you wanted to lose some weight?  Where there any special motivating factors?

Suzette: I wanted to be a healthier grandmother.  I had been working out some and getting stronger, but hadn't had any significant weight loss.  Brandon challenged me to a 30-day plan of eating only meat and vegetables, and I accepted the challenge partly to please him and partly because I figured I could do anything for 30 days.

B: What methods for weight loss have you tried in the past?

S: Low-fat diet, First Place, Weight Watchers.  First Place worked well for me because it gave me good guidelines of what/how much to eat every day.  It was a group effort with weekly meetings, Bible study and encouraging leaders. 

B: How much weight have you lost?  How long did it take?

S: To date, I have lost 32.5 pounds.  I started on April 15 and am still eating basically meat and vegetables, occasionally some fruit, no grains or sugar.

B: How difficult was it to lose the weight?  What kind of lifestyle changes were necessary?  Did it require a lot of sacrifice?

S: In the beginning, I felt like it was a lot of extra work.  I had to plan more, grocery shop more, cook more.  I felt like it was so much trouble--no wonder people lose weight eating like this!  It's so much trouble that it makes you not want to eat at all!  Since I committed to the 30 days, I stuck to it and the weight dropped quickly.  That was motivating. I found that eating only meat and vegetables was satisfying, and I didn't really miss eating the other stuff. It was much less difficult than I thought. 

B: What were the biggest challenges?

S: Since my husband is not a vegetable eater, I had to make two different meals and keep cooking things I had chosen not to eat.  It took more time to shop and to prepare foods from scratch.  Also, explaining to people that I'm choosing to only eat meat and vegetables was a challenge when other food items were available.  Sometimes it was easier just to eat a few bites of the other foods than to listen to the negative comments.

B: What lessons did you learn through the process?

S: I feel better when I eat better.  It doesn't hurt to not eat junk.  It works better with exercise (even though I haven't been able to go to the gym much during these 3 months for various reasons).  I don't do well exercising on my own--I do much better with guidance and direction from my fantastic personal trainer!  

B: Any comments you would like to add?

S: On the day that I reached 30 pounds, my non-vegetable-eating husband of 35 years decided that he's "in".  In the last few weeks, we've eaten a LOT of green beans and he has eaten vegetables that he hasn't eaten since I've known him...carrots, broccoli, asparagus.  He doesn't like it too much, but he's trying.  That makes cooking much easier!

Client Interview: Trevor

[Author's note: Trevor is a local friend with whom I have had the pleasure of working with off and on over the last year.  I asked him to answer a few questions after hearing him celebrating losing 30 pounds recently.  Without further ado, here's the interview.]

First question, what made you decide that you wanted to lose some weight?  Where there any special motivating factors?  I accidentally lost my first 10 pounds.  I was recently on a trip to Denmark and Sweden in which we walked and biked everywhere.  When 10 pounds dropped with basically zero effort, I realized how much nasty weight I must have been carrying and how weight I could lose with little more than zero effort.

What methods for weight loss have you tried in the past?  Light running and weight lifting with no diet change.  I saw frustratingly minimal results.

How much weight have you lost?  How long did it take?  Over the past 5 1/2 weeks, I've lost 30 pounds.

How difficult was it to lose the weight?  What kind of lifestyle changes were necessary?  Did it require a lot of sacrifice?  It wasn't difficult to lose weight, it was difficult to make the lifestyle changes and sacrifices that would result in immediate weight loss.  I drastically changed my diet - I only eat meats and veggies (with small amounts of fruit), no grain, no dairy, no sweets and no processed foods (which means very few trips to restaurants) and I drink only water and black coffee.  I permit myself one "cheat" day a week (usually Sunday) where I eat what I want.  Interestingly enough, however, what I want has evolved as well.  Knowing how poor junk food makes me feel, eating junk food has lost its luster.  Although it was a sacrifice initially, my body has grown to love leaner, cleaner food.

I also implemented regular exercise (4-5 days a week).  I alternate between lengthy runs or bike rides and short, intense body weight workouts.  Again, although it was difficult to overcome the inertia I'd developed over some time of inactivity, I've grown to enjoy exercise because of how it makes me feel.

What were the biggest challenges?  Breaking old habits and building new habits, particularly in skipping the drive-thru.

What lessons did you learn through the process?  Since beginning my leaner, cleaner eating and exercise, I've lost 30 pounds, my eczema has gone away, I sleep better at night, I'm not tired all day, I don't have daily headaches and stairs don't wind me - all this to say the lesson I've learned is junk food and a sedentary lifestyle aren't worth how awful I feel with it and how great I feel without it.

Any comments you would like to add.  I spent years playing organized sports and exercising so it took a good bit of humility in confessing I'd grown into a slob.  In addition, it took a great deal of humility to listen to a coach tell me how to exercise.  Fortunately, Brandon was gracious in easing me along, showing me the sorts of lifestyle changes and physical activity necessary to drop weight and exercise well.

Goals: Long Term Vs. Short Term

"When there is a choice between the short term and the long term, there is no choice." -Jim Wendler

You are a marvelous adaptation machine.  Your body is capable of way more than you will probably ever demand of it.  You can see examples of this by watching Ironman triathlons, the Olympics, the Crossfit games, or going to a local powerlifting meet.  What does it take to realize the levels of performance that the athletes competing are expressing?  If you've read this blog at all you can probably guess my answer: long term hard work.

Training is cumulative.  

Donnie Thompson didn't smash a 3000lb total in powerlifting with 6 weeks of training.  Rich Froning Jr. didn't become the "Fittest Man on Earth" by following a 3 week muscle magazine training program.  Usain Bolt didn't become the fastest man on earth because he started running the same year as his first Olympics.  This list could go on forever.  There is no such thing as an overnight success.  Every overnight success story you have ever heard follows years of hard work, usually with little to no recognition or compensation, that built up the base of the pyramid until it was large enough for the tallest point to poke out above the clouds.  Just like get rich quick schemes are too good to be true (or at least legal), get jacked and tan quick schemes aren't worth the paper they are printed on.

If that's the case, and it is, then how do I choose the right programs and strategies for me?  Easy!  You start out with long term goals and back track your way to the present.  So what kind of goals should I set?  SMART goals of course.  Even more specifically, I recommend performance goals over any other option.  Why performance goals?  Because you can generally control the factors that lead to increasing performance. If you are carrying a ton of body fat around but you want to get faster and stronger, you'll lose the weight working towards the performance goals.  If you set the goal to only lose the body fat, you'll become a slave to the scale.  It will drive you crazy.  Besides, simply losing the weight is too short term, you want to keep it off and continue to be faster, stronger, and healthier.

How do I do it?

So let's work through the weight loss example together as an opportunity to set a long term goal and then several short term goals to measure progress towards achieving the long term goal.  Let's say you're about 23 lbs overweight, and you're fed up with it.  You might think the best long term goal is to lose 23 lbs.  I think that is more of a short term goal.  A better long term goal could be to lose 23 lbs and keep it off indefinitely.  Most people who have struggled with weight loss have had short term success, even reaching goal body weight before overeating back to their pre-diet body weight.

Simply losing the weight requires a short term change in habits.  Losing the weight and keeping it off requires a long term change of lifestyle.  Here is how I might write my goal to lose 23 lbs and keep it off.  The overarching long term goal is at the top followed by several short term goals that will let me know I am making progress.  Each short term goal will have 1 or more steps that I am going to take to make each happen.  The discerning reader might even find some helpful tips for fat loss below...

BIG GOAL: Lose 23 lbs and maintain my new body weight indefinitely.

Goal 1: Lose the first 5 lbs within 30 days.
Step 1: Drink plenty of water.  (1/2 my body weight in ounces.)
Step 2: Cut out sugary snacks.

Goal 2: Lose the next 10 lbs within 60 days.
Step 1: Stop drinking calories.
Step 2: Move around for 30 minutes 3-5 days per week.

Goal 3: Lose the remaining 8 lbs within 60 days.
Step 1: Find a training program I enjoy and will commit to for at least 3 days per week forever.
Step 2: Learn more about healthy eating and how to cook healthy foods for myself and my family.

The example above is very simple, but it shows how you can work from a broad long term goal through several short term goals and action steps to get you to the end result desired.  If you have a fair amount of fitness knowledge, you can apply this process to yourself fairly easily.  If you don't think you could have come up with the example above, I am always happy to help.  You can comment below or email me at disruptivefitness@gmail.com.  Don't forget our facebook group for like minded people who are interested in improving themselves through smart, hard work.

Goals: Be SMART

Goal setting is a pretty popular target among our self improvement culture.  It should be, because nothing sets you on the path to success like deciding what success looks like and then working hard to get there.  There is something almost magical about thoughtfully choosing the outcome you want, writing it down, and then formulating a plan to make it a reality.  Almost nothing in life is more motivating than real, measurable progress towards a goal.  It will get you out of bed early in the morning to train hard no matter what, when nothing else will.  If goal setting is the process of moving from point A to point B, you need to figure out both spots.  Where are you?  Where are you going?  There are two problems I've encountered working with trainees, they don't know where they are and they don't know where they are going.  Since they don't know where they are starting from, it's hard to set concrete goals.  Because their goals are nebulous, they never know if the goal has been achieved.  That's a shortcut to giving up.

Instead, you're going to set some SMART goals so you can measure your progress and know when your goal has been achieved.  This concept isn't brand new, a few guys (George Doran, Arthur Miller, and James Cunningham) published it in 1981 in Management Review.  (P.S. Why haven't you been setting smart goals since then?)  So let's examine this acronym a little more closely before looking at a few examples of how you can apply this principle to your training.

Your goals should be:

S- Specific
M- Measurable
A- Achievable
R- Relevant
T- Time-bound

Specific

I've written before about people wanting to get "in shape."  I often retort that round is a shape, you need to be more specific.  I would be willing to bet 100 burpees that many of your goals for training and performance are not specific.  Examples I have heard recently, "I want to get bigger (or faster or smaller or stronger)."  That seems pretty specific, right?  Wrong!  So how would I make those more specific?  Instead of I want to get bigger, I want to gain 10 lbs of lean muscle.  Instead of faster, I want to run a 40 yard dash faster than my current time of 5.1 seconds or a sub-20 minute 5k.  Instead of I want to be smaller, I want to lose 10 lbs of fat.  Instead of stronger, I want to set a 5 lb personal record on my squat.  You could be even more specific than that, but saying exactly what you want to achieve makes it real.

Measurable

This is a safety net for your specific goal requirement.  If your goal is not specific, you cannot measure it.  If your goal is measurable, then you know when you have achieved it.  For example: I know my weight gain goal has been accomplished when the scale tells me that I have gained 10 lbs.  It is unambiguous and simple to measure.  This is why "I want to get in shape" is such a terrible goal when left on its own.  How will you ever know if you're in shape?  There is nothing to measure.  Making your goal measurable gives you clear data points to track your progress, keeping you motivated to continue working towards your goal over time.

Achievable

Let's be reasonable here.  If your goal is to get 6 inches taller in the next 6 months, your goal is not likely to be achievable unless you're a 13 year old boy, and even then it's a stretch.  Making the goal achievable puts the ball firmly in your court.  You should set goals that rely on you, not on what other people can do for you.  Following the weight gain example, I can control what I eat and drink.  It will take discipline and planning to make sure that I eat and drink enough of the right things, but doing that is totally achievable for most people.  Simply choose goals that you believe you can meet that are above simple performance standards but are not impossible.  It is better to set a series of smaller, achievable goals and knock them down one by one than to set a goal for the end state you are trying to achieve and make it there in one jump.  Training is a process, whether you want to be faster, lose body fat, increase lean body mass, or simply run your first marathon.  Trying to accomplish everything at once is a recipe for failure.

Relevant

I want to make sure that my goals actually fit in with what is important to me.  If I set a goal to watch 96 hours of television without stopping, that is not relevant to health, fitness, or performance.  I need to choose goals that make sense and are relevant to my overall direction for training and life.  Continuing in the weight gain example, if I want to gain weight, setting a goal to read a book a week is not going to help me gain weight.  Instead I need to set goals to eat a certain amount of protein per day based on the body weight I want to achieve.  My goals need to jive with what I am trying to accomplish.  This can be a tricky one, and sometimes benefits from a coach.  It would be easy to assume that reading about nutrition or searching forums about training programs would be a relevant to my goal of putting on lean mass.  Most of the time, that's simply not the case.  Try to use Occam's Razor when making decisions about what is relevant to your goals.  Choose the simplest path towards what you want to accomplish, the more complicated it gets, the less likely you are to do what needs to be done.

Time-bound

Set a deadline.  If your goal is open-ended there is no sense of urgency.  You will likely allow that goal to be crowded out by the general business of daily life.  When there is a deadline, you know you have to make daily progress in order to make your goal a reality.  If I wanted to add 10 lbs of lean mass to my frame, I would set the goal for 6 months or a year so that I am motivated to work towards my goal every single day.  It's also important to remember that simply doing the next right thing that will move you towards your goals day after day is the real secret to making progress.   The older I get, the more I realize that I need to get all I can done each day because there are less and less days ahead of me to spread out the work.  That deadline will keep you honest!

Examples

After all that, here are a few examples of SMART goals based around some of the most common goals I see.

I want to lose some weight.  UN-SMART.  I want to lose 10 lbs of body fat in the next 6 months.  SMART.

I want to gain some weight.  UN-SMART.  I want to gain 10 lbs of lean body mass in the next 12 months.  SMART.

I want to be faster.  UN-SMART.  I want to run a 5k in 21 minutes at my next race which is 12 weeks out.  SMART.

I want to be stronger. UN-SMART.  I want to increase my total by 50 lbs at my next powerlifting meet which is 16 weeks out.  SMART.

Can you see what makes the difference between the UN-SMART examples and the SMART ones?  We take a generalized, unspecific goal and make it specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.  We make it SMART!  I encourage you to set the following goal right now: "I will spend 30 minutes to 1 hour before this week is over thinking about and setting at least 2 SMART goals that will positively effect my training and life outside of the gym."

If you enjoyed this article, please take a moment to click one of the little buttons below and share it with your friends.  There are a lot of other posts you might find interesting, and if you'd like to get updates in your email, simply enter it in the window to the right.  You can also join our group on facebook to see what others are saying about goals.  Lastly you can follow me on twitter and instagram @disruptivefit to see what's going on in training and life.  As always thanks for reading!

Goals: The Focus Principle

What got you into the gym in the first place?  Think back for a moment and try to remember what finally made you pick up your first weight or step onto your first treadmill.  Many who started young were inspired by the great bodybuilding champions like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Columbu.  Dreams of huge arms, chiseled chests, and a combination of making all men jealous and all women  interested danced through their heads each night.  The mass media bombardment that anorexia is the new in shape tended to drive the girls I knew straight to the dreaded treadmill/salad bar combination.  Nonetheless, these people had goals.  They may have been ill-defined, but they were goals.  I believe that those goals were really what got us into the gym to begin with.  Before we had an end goal in mind that required some barbells and running shoes, we would never have had a reason to darken the gym door.

I first got involved with lifting partly because my mom would workout in our neighborhood gym and partly due to competitive sports.  Like many of you, I didn't have any coaching, I just did what came naturally.  I didn't have clearly defined goals, I just wanted to be bigger and put more weight on the bar.  I quickly realized that lifting, for me at least, was more fun and rewarding than the sports I was lifting to support.  It was readily apparent though, that without a plan and particular goals, I would have a hard time making much progress.

Notice I didn't make any value judgments about the goal of training purely for aesthetics.  If your goal is to train hard so you can be proud of how you look, that's fine by me.  What you have to keep in mind is the Focus Principle.  We'll say it this way: You can only do one thing at a time.

Here are the roughly 3 things that I see people wanting to do in the gym:

1. Get stronger.  (Higher 1RM lifts.)

2. Get bigger.  (Muscular hypertrophy.)

3. Get in shape (we'll include lose fat here since that's what most people who say that to me mean).

So why not go for all 3 goals at once?  Because soon 3 goals will be 11 goals and none of them will be achieved.  You only have so much time to go to the gym.  You've probably had that argument with yourself at least once this week when you wanted to skip training for some other activity.  If I have a limited amount of time to spend on my training, which I do, then I want to use it towards the goals that are most important to me.

What does that look like in real life?  If I want to get stronger, I'll primarily plan my program around higher intensity/lower volume training.  If I want to get bigger, I'll primarily plan my program around high intensity/high volume training.  If I want to get in shape, I'll turn towards Crossfit.  In other words, I pick a goal, then I plan my work accordingly.

Does this mean that I can't be big, strong, and in shape?  No, not at all.  It means that you're in it for the long game if you want all three (and who doesn't?).  According to these oversimplified categories, I like to see newbies go from getting in shape, to getting stronger, to getting bigger, to bumping up getting in shape, and so on.  Classical periodization would break that out into about 8 week cycles training towards a primary goal and maintaining current levels of the other goals.  I think that's a great place to start.

What happens when you focus in on one thing?  You get better at it.  When people try to get in shape while building size, they tend to short circuit both processes at once.  Remember, unless you have no responsibilities outside of the gym, you have limited training time.  Use it to achieve specific goals rather than just farting around in the gym.  Next time you're tempted to deviate from the plan, remember the Focus Principle and crush your goals instead.

The Tyranny of Desire

"Don't let what you want now get in the way of what you want most."

You are an incredibly bad predictor of what will make you happy.  There, I said it.  It's true too.  In spite of that, you (and I) tend to live mindlessly under the tyranny of desire.  What is the tyranny of desire?  It is being ruled by your short term appetites.  It is living without being aware of what is around you, simply looking forward to the next thing that you think will make you happy, successful, strong, good-looking, etc.  The tyranny of desire is the plague of the fitness world.  I'll paraphrase how it usually tumbles out of the mouth of an unthinking trainee, "What program should I be doing since I want to get in shape now?"

This is the same trainee who has done 2 weeks out of about eleven different muscle magazine programs without ever finishing one.  He has probably tried at least as many diets, for about 6 days.  Why?  Because that next program looks new, shiny, and fun!  At it's root, the problem is an ill-defined set of goals.  If the goal is simply to be doing something, then anything you do is good enough.  Where does that lead?  Go in most globo-gyms and see.  Lots of guys and gals who have been spinning their wheels for a decade.  No change in weight on the bar, no change in body composition, no change in real measures of output like VO2 max or stroke volume.  It is a vicious cycle of continually being led astray by their own desire for the next best thing.

How do you know if you're living under the tyranny of desire?

Do you know what you're doing in the gym?  Do you know why you're doing it?  No... you're probably just doing whatever you want when you go to the gym.  If you go to the gym at all.

Do you know what you are eating?  Do you catch yourself chewing something you unconsciously put in your mouth?  Are you eating because you're bored?  Yep... tyranny of desire.

Have you changed fitness programs more times than there have been months this year?  Do you have a program at all?  Once again... shackled to the ever changing winds of your desire.

Do you randomly buy stuff you don't need or want to impress people you don't like?  Carry a huge debt load as a result?  You've been imprisoned under the tyranny of desire.

What do all of these problems have in common?  Typically we're all looking for the next best thing that we believe will make us happier than what we are doing now.

What is better than the next best thing?

Setting solid, measurable goals and knocking them down one by one.  When you have real goals, it is very easy to hold on to what you want most.  You have spent some time deciding what is important to you, and can now devote your time, energy, and resources towards achieving those goals.  It helps to have blinders on when you go to the gym, the grocery store, and other places full of goal diverting land mines.  Don't do what everyone else is doing.  Have a plan when you arrive at the gym, work your plan, and go home.  Head to the store with a grocery list (it doesn't include fitness magazines at the checkout line), buy real food, and go home.  Don't give yourself time to wander around the store buying chocobombs and frosted cardboard.

Setting measurable performance goals gives you a reason to train hard, eat well, and recover intelligently.  If you need some help with setting goals in the gym, stay tuned.  There will be several posts coming soon based around conversations I have all the time in the gym.  If you'd like a little help assessing life and gym goals to see if you're living under the tyranny of desire feel free to comment below or email at disruptivefitness@gmail.com.

Eat Like A Grown-Up

The moment I tell someone I'm a trainer, it's time for confession.  It works like clockwork, and I feel like I should put on a collar and go sit in a box somewhere to hear them out.  The conversations usually start something like this.

 "I used to go to the gym all the time... ten years ago."

"I ate like... 27 donuts last week."

You can imagine, you might have heard the same lines, or even said them at one point.  Following the purging of consciences are the questions.  They center around two things: flabby parts and diet.  If people really understood the link between flabby parts and diet, they wouldn't have so many flabby parts.  At the very least they wouldn't be overweight kind of by accident.

When the question of what to eat comes up, I have a very simple answer.  I borrowed it from a Dan John article published in 2011 entitled "Eat Like a Warrior King."

Eat Like A Grown-Up

That means quit eating your daily candy bar and drinking 11 cans of diet soda.  Don't eat your giant bowl of sugar bombs in front of the TV to start the day.  Quit binge drinking on the weekends, and take some responsibility for yourself.  These are the kinds of decisions children make.  You are an adult.

If you had the misfortune of being trained that food and drink are a reward or medicine for regulating emotional states, it's time to start untying that knot.  It's great to have a cake on your birthday, but everything you do doesn't need to be celebrated with a round of beers and pizza.  Find healthy ways to celebrate success.  Reward yourself with time with friends, an hour of recreation, or some other mentally, emotionally, and/or physically active activity.

You are the only person who decides what you eat.  That's part of being an adult, and adults think before they make decisions.  Here's what I think it looks like to eat like a grown-up.

First, you choose to eat or not eat.  You don't simply eat because other people are eating.  I like the idea of eating when you are actually hungry.  Often dehydration masquerades as hunger, so drink some water before you decide to eat.  If you're no longer hungry after 10-20oz of water, you probably weren't hungry.  This also means you don't eat because you're bored.  If you're bored, do something that needed doing that you've been avoiding by snacking.

Second, buy and cook your own food.  If you can unwrap it and eat it and it isn't a banana, don't eat it on a regular basis.  People who cook on a regular basis spend less money and eat better food.  If that isn't a win/win, I'm not sure what is.  Add to that the benefit of learning your way around the kitchen and this is really as no-brainer as it gets.

Third, eat with your goals in mind.  If you want to bench over 1,000 pounds, then start eating 12,000 calories per day like Scott Mendelson.  Otherwise, keep it around what you need to survive and stay relatively lean. If you are trying to gain some lean mass, eat slightly more food than you need to maintain weight.  If you are trying to lose some fat, eat less than you need to maintain weight.   It is much easier to stay lean eating real food that you bought and cooked yourself than it is to try to eat from drive-through lines and stay alive.

That's about it!  Just like showing up, it's simple, but not always easy.  You're an adult though, you don't expect everything to be easy.  You do what needs to be done because you are responsible for you.  If you want to talk more about goal-oriented nutrition and eating like a grown-up, comment here, join us on facebook, or email me at disruptivefitness@gmail.com.

Simple Strength Training

Almost everyone I've ever met wants to be stronger.  It doesn't matter if they have never touched a weight or if they deadlift 700, it's almost like there's no such thing as strong enough.  The problem many run into is that there is way too much signal noise about how to get stronger.  You can find 7 articles in the same magazine on how to get stronger and they are all different and sometimes contradictory.  How do you sort out the fluff from the facts?  At the beginning level, it's fairly simple.

Simple Strength Training

There are a handful of requirements for building gorilla strength.  These basic principles apply across the board.   This is not an exhaustive list, but it is enough to get anyone started towards being stronger and healthier than ever.

First, your program must contain multi-joint movements like the squat, deadlift, bench press, overhead press, and power clean.  You'll notice that almost all of these are standing exercises.  In real life, you will most often need to express strength while standing, so why not train that way?  Want some more good news?  The moves that are best at building serious strength are also best at building serious muscle.  

Second, you have to show up on a regular basis.  You can make real progress only lifting weights two times per week for a long time with an intelligent program.  You won't make much progress lifting weights every other week.  It's like putting together a meal over the course of a month.  You're going to be pretty hungry if you make your salad on the 1st and finally get around to the steak on the 28th.  Consistent work over time is the simple ticket to getting bigger and stronger.

Third, you need a simple plan that you understand and believe in.  Since most of the training population is either brand new or returning from an extended lay off, I'm going to give some pointers to the newbies on how to choose a program.

So what do I look for?

As a beginner, I recommend training 2-4 times per week.  This ultimately depends on schedule.  If you're very busy and can't spare much time for the gym, an hour two times per week might be your best bet.  If you're a gym rat and you don't want to leave even to eat, go with a four day program and consider some counseling.  Don't just get hyooge for the gym bros, build some functional strength to go out and enjoy life!

After you settle schedules, look for suggested exercises.  Can't find a front or back squat anywhere?  Throw it out like last week's moldy pizza boxes.  No pressing overhead?  Drop it like a bad habit.  No pull-ups or chin-ups?  Do they want you to be weak forever?!  If you find a program entirely built around curls in the squat rack, run for the hills.

Finally, look at how they program the lifts.  Is there a consistent understandable pattern?  It can be as simple as add 5 pounds to the bar per workout.  If you do this over the course of 3 months, you will be objectively stronger.  It can be a little more complicated and take advantage of some percentage based systems, choosing your working weights based on a percentage of your maximum lifts.  I prefer a simple add 5 pounds to the bar style program for most newbies.  It works, and it works incredibly well as you are first starting out.  I can suggest Starting Strength, 3rd edition* as a great launching point for newer lifters.  I used Mark Rippetoe's program to take my squat from 345 to 495 over the course of 3 months.  It is a simple 3 day a week program the meets all of the above criteria and it works.

Get to work!

Now that you have some basics for simple strength training, get out there and move some barbells.  One of the most fulfilling parts of my work as a coach is seeing people improve and reach their goals, sometimes I think it's why I exist.  So, close your computer, lace up the gym shoes, and head out to start setting new personal records!  Stick with the program you choose for 3 months and see what kind of awesome results you get.  As always, if you want some help, email me at disruptivefitness@gmail.com or drop a line in the comments.

*This is an affiliate link.  If you choose to buy the book through this link, thanks very much for supporting me!

You Can Talk the Talk...

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” -John Quincy Adams

[Author's note: This is a little bit of a break from standard fitness writing, which I will be making from time to time. This is a very important topic to me because let's face it, your life is not ultimately just about you. A recent article on how coaches are failing children and what we can do about it from the Performance Menu inspired me to post these thoughts.]

Leadership is currently a hot topic in our culture.  As a coach and trainer, it is my job to lead people down a path towards healthier, stronger lives. Strong leadership is absolutely necessary because people prefer to stay where they are rather than do the hard work of moving forward.  I appreciate strong leaders

Not only is leadership a hot topic, I think it's a poorly defined one. So here is my stab at what makes a leader: A leader is someone who moves his followers toward a better shared future by communicating vision and leading by example.

Let’s break that definition down and see what it really holds.  

First, a leader is someone who has followers.  If you are trying to assess yourself as a leader, you should be able to look back and see people who are doing what you are doing.  I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of trainees over the years. As a result, I have been able to gather a small group of followers who work hard and do what I am doing. I try to use that influence to encourage them not only to make strong habits for life, but to invest what they are doing and learning in at least one other person to bring them up as well. Remember, if you are leading, it means someone is behind you.

Second, a leader is driving towards a better shared future for his followers.  When a father leads his home well, his goal is a healthy family.  He is not trying to ruin his children’s lives or abuse his wife.  He leads towards a better shared future.  Shared is an important word for us here.  I can't coach if no one is training. No one will show up for coaching if they are not seeing positive results from my coaching. My life is better, both in terms of fulfillment in seeing people get better and in being able to earn a living, when I am leading people to conquer their goals. The shared future that I am working for is a healthier, stronger generation of kids who I hope will make some strides towards living full and happy lives as a result of their strong habits in and around the gym. Note that I will benefit from this change in culture, but it is not centrally about me.

Third, a leader leads by communicating vision and by example.  A leader has to have a vision for the better shared future he is driving towards.  Once that is established, the vision must be repeated over and over to the followers.  We are forgetful people. How many times have you started a diet or a fitness routine only to find old habits sneaking in almost unnoticed until it's too late? It is my job not only to repeatedly remind trainees of the vision, but my life should exemplify it.  If the leader is not in front, he is not leading.  That is why as a coach, I have to eat well. I have to set and achieve goals. I have to compete. I have to demonstrate strong habits. I have to have a strong work ethic. There are no days off for a leader.

As Mr. Adams said above, if you are doing these things, you are a leader.  I'll be writing more on investing in the next generation over the coming weeks.  The good news here is that everyone can be a leader. You don't have to lead a thousand people, or even ten. Simply ask yourself, who will be replacing you in a few years?  Get involved in an up-and-comer’s life and have a say in what kind of leader they will be.