Category: Makes You Think

This category covers things that relate probably require some reflection and some time to allow your brain to process more completely. It will be the largest category because the aim of this site is to get people to shift their thinking in some way and to create a new “normal” state. It is safe to say that any post that is included in this category will probably present you with a new piece of information, a new way of looking at something, or a different take on what is already considered common sense or common knowledge.

5 Things To Live By

Five things that could make your life easier. 

Accept the world for how it is. Seeing the truth and accepting it will improve your productivity dramatically. When you stop fighting against reality you are free to work with it to improve your experience in the world.

You cannot control the world so focus your energy on things that increase the chance of you being successful. There is such a huge interdependence with all things on the planet that it is impossible for you to control the world. Accept this and focus your energy on the few things that you do have some control over – your thoughts and your actions.

Listen to other people because you will learn something and because it makes the other person feel useful. Almost everything you know you have learned from another person. When you shut your mouth and listen when people are talking you will open yourself to new lessons. You’ll also be giving them the opportunity to clarify and consolidate their memories while feeling they have value for having given their input.

Rarely give unsolicited advice and when giving advice accept that the other person isn’t going to follow it. Unsolicited advice doesn’t cost anything and is therefore viewed as worthless; so don’t expect anyone to action on your worthless opinion. If you want people to do what you say make them pay you to tell them what to do.

Do it now. When we say we’ll do it later we are conceding that it isn’t a priority; what reason do you have to believe that it will become a priority at some point in the future? If you are going to table an action until later, make sure you table it to a specific time and not just “later”.

Industry Sanctioned Laziness

I had a consultation with a 40 something lady yesterday. She was interested in personal training because she has found that her weight loss is very slow since she joined the gym about three months ago in spite of her coming in and working out 4-5 times per week.

I took my normal approach with her – which is to assume she is missing one or two critical pieces of information that are preventing her from being successful – and didn’t try to sell her. This approach is effective for me because a lot of people don’t need or want training, they just need a little wisdom or a slight change in behaviour. This lady was no exception.

The first 45 minutes focused on nutrition. Hers is fairly good. The only real issue is that she is eating a considerable amount of carbs with the mistaken belief that just because they were organic they would help her improve her body composition. I let her know that the body doesn’t know or care where the food comes from – it’s going to treat organic carbs in basically the same way it will treat conventional carbs – as one or two steps away from being sugar.

The final 15 minutes focused on her exercise routine. She is making a number of mistakes here but two that are dramatically impacting her performance. The first is that she doesn’t record the weights she is using and as a consequence has only added about 10 lbs to any of the lifts she is performing. 10 lbs in 3 months is fine if you are dead lifting or squatting 400 lbs but when your numbers are 80 lbs on leg press and you have no injuries, 10 lbs in 3 months doesn’t cut it – particularly for a beginner. So I told her to keep a record of the weights she is using to make sure they are progressing upwards.

The other mistake she is making is a lack of intensity on the cardio movements. When she started, she would work until she was out of breath, sweating and tired. But early on, someone showed her how to use the machines “correctly” for weight loss and she started working in the fat burning zone (I’ve written about this bs before). This basically means you try to keep your heart rate around 60-65% of its max. So, for the last 2 months she has been avoiding working hard because of the mistaken notion that the fat burning zone is the way to go for fat loss. I corrected her on this notion and encouraged her to work as hard as she can or as hard as she did initially and to consider some high intensity intervals. She was pissed off that she had wasted the last few months just coasting along doing effectively nothing because she was more than willing to work hard – in fact, she was working hard until someone showed her the “right” way to do it.

Why this “fat burning zone” stuff continues in the fitness industry doesn’t make any sense. Anyone who spends a few minutes doing some research will quickly learn that what matters is the amount of energy you burn and not where that energy comes from. All things being equal, working harder is better for the fat loss and conditioning than working with a lower intensity. If you can work at 80% you should work at 80%. The fact that fewer of the calories will be coming from fat isn’t all that important as the body will use stored fat to help replace any deficit in energy that results from the high intensity movement.

Intensity Won’t Kill You, a Lack Of It Might

One of my clients has started wearing a heart rate monitor during his workouts recently to make sure he is working as hard as he needs to – his goal is fat loss and to recapture some of the health lost during the last 20 years of smoking. What is more interesting than the information the monitor reveals are the views of the client.

After a particularly grueling super set the monitor revealed a heart rate of 170 BPM. He was gasping for air, pouring sweat and looked extremely tired. Resting before starting the next set, he said “a month ago I thought that I would have died if I ever got my heart rate higher than 150 BPM”. I laughed because I thought he was kidding but he wasn’t. He had never in his life worked with that kind of intensity and really did think that he was an ideal candidate for a heart attack if he pushed himself that hard.

He didn’t die. In fact, 170 is tough for him, but he’s able to work that hard fairly consistently – we’ll get his heart rate up to 170 5 or 6 times during the high intensity intervals we’re doing. His body fat is dropping, his energy is increasing and his posture and muscle mass are improving.

The irony of the entire thing is that his lack of intensity was shortening his life. Because he didn’t get his heart rate up, he had gained a lot of body fat, had very poor cardiovascular health and had basically given up doing anything that was unpleasant. He was well on his way to an early grave and, as a husband and father of two, setting his family up for unnecessary hardships when his life ended prematurely.

If you need to reduce your body fat and get your life back, get medical clearance, go to the gym and work with as much intensity as you can handle, and then push a little further.

Essential Characteristics Of New Strength Coaches

Over the last 3 years I have interviewed a lot of people who were interested in becoming strength coaches as well has having worked with a large number of actual coaches. Below is a list of 5 essential characteristics individuals must hold in order to be successful in the industry.

Passion for working with people. Passion is contagious. If a coach is passionate when they engage their athletes, there’s a very good chance that they will be able to boost the performance of the athletes and help to create better training experiences, results and compliance to the demands of year round training. The inverse is absolutely true – a coach who lacks passion will lower the performance of their athletes. Passion may not be enough to reach all of the people you train but it is absolutely critical for reaching those people who can be reached.

Seeing gaining knowledge and experiences as valuable uses of your time. Unless you are really good, very experienced or own the training centre, there’s a good chance that the money you earn will be kind of low. For this reason, you need to be able to see the value that time with the athletes, creating programs and running the centre. These experiences are what will make you a better coach and allow you to demand more money in the future. You will not learn everything you need to know at school and don’t really have a choice but to gain years of experience before you can consider yourself a professional. If you don’t hold your professional development in a high regard, this industry isn’t the right one for you.

The ability to accept that other people know more than you. Given that you are there to learn and gain experience, you need to be open to just how little you know about particular things. Part of this is regarding others as experts or as more expert than you are.

The ability to listen and hear what other people are saying. This applies to other strength coaches, skills coaches, parents, bosses, clients and athletes. Everyone has an agenda and great strength coaches are able to uncover the critical needs of all the individuals involved and create a plan that helps address all of their main objectives. Talking to the athletes is the only way you are going to be able to uncover injuries and gauge subjective progress. Your ability to hear what is being said is critical in creating a plan that addresses the actual needs of your clients vs. your perceived needs. For example, you may believe that all athletes should be lean but there are a few conditions that would require that some hold more body fat than others. Unless you listen and hear what everyone is saying, you could end up creating a lesser athlete based on your own belief of what is needed.

A willingness to try new things and follow the advice you give to other people. This is critical because other people can see you walking the walk and if you don’t, they are less inclined to listen to what you say. You are also going to be more convincing if you have done what you are asking your athlete to do. This doesn’t mean that you need to play football or have played football in order for you to coach a football player in the gym, but it does mean you should have tried the nutrition plan you are giving your athletes, tried the training method you are prescribing or have a good level of efficiency in the movements you are coaching. Sitting at the front desk eating chocolate eggs while telling people to reduce their refined sugar intake doesn’t cut it if you want people to eat less sugar. Deadlifting with a rounded back while coaching someone to keep their hips low doesn’t cut it. Telling someone how to power clean based on what you read in a book or saw on YouTube isn’t the best way to coach their movements.

The job of strength coach is a fun and rewarding one. Just make sure you have what it takes before you enter this field because if you don’t, you’re not going to last.

A Calorie Is Not A Calorie

When it comes to weight loss, there seems to be a common belief that if you eat fewer calories than you burn you will lose weight. Part of this notion is that a calorie is a calorie so if you eat 200 calories of fat or 200 calories of carbs, the consequence on the body is the same. Over time I have found this to be false – a calorie of fat will have different consequence on the body than a calorie of carbs or a calorie of protein. Further more, not all carbs are the same – watch the link.

People need to stop saying that changing body composition is about energy in and energy out because it isn’t the case. It is about the amount of specific energy in. For example, low carb, high protein and fat diets are more efficient at reducing body fat when compared to low fat diets even when calories and activity level are the same.

Fat loss is possible but only if you eat the right foods in the right amounts for a sustained period of time. With the exception of high intensity athletes, most people will get better fat loss if they limit their sugar intake (of ALL types of sugar and particularly fructose and man-made sugars like high fructose corn syrup).

Food The Drug

“How do I get rid of body fat” and “how do I gain weight” are two of the most common questions I get. My answer “you eat the right foods at the right time and you avoid the wrong foods at the wrong time, and move more” is an answer I am comfortable giving because it is completely accurate. However, a lot of people don’t like this answer and when I ask them why they they mention that they’ve heard it before and that they are looking for something new or quicker.

And I have a moment when I think that our species shouldn’t be at the top of the food chain.

I think the issue most people have with their relationship with food is that they don’t really understanding the nature of the impact it has on their bodies. Food has drug-like effects on the body. Some foods cause the release chemicals that have a powerful impact on the body – chemicals that require you to have a doctors prescription.

From a body composition point of view, the key chemical to control and manipulate is insulin. In non-diabetic individuals the body will release it when the blood sugar level increases to a certain level; a level that I call the insulin threshold (IT). This occurs because too high a blood sugar level can cause a number of very serious consequences in humans. There are other mechanisms that promote fat storage in human beings, but insulin is the most efficient energy storage hormone that the body releases. If you cross the IT while you are working out, the body will begin to transport energy into the muscle cells to help fuel the movement. If you cross it while you are not working out, the body will transport energy into the fat cells to help fuel future movement.

Insulin is a very powerful chemical that one can control to create desired changes in body composition. When we want to release it, we consume high glycemic index carbs such as dextrose and when we want to keep it steady we consume lower glycemic index carbs or consume very small amounts of carbs. By timing our insulin events we are better able to store the type of energy we need to improve body composition to either lower body fat or increase lean mass.

All foods have some impact on our hormone levels so it is important that we are aware of these impacts before we eat to make sure we are facilitating the desired response from our bodies. Otherwise we are basically reaching into a medicine cabinet and popping random pills.

Food As Fuel and Building Material (again)

Over the last few years I have had the good fortune of working with 100’s of different athletes of different ages, skill levels and stages in their athletic career. I have notice a number of things that are important but probably the one thing I have noticed that ALL successful high level athletes share is an understanding that food is fuel or building blocks and eating does not need to be an experience.

Personally, the switch flipped for my progress when I stopped regarding food as good or bad and instead choose to look at it as bricks, mortar or fuel. Once I stopped looking for experiences out of eating my progress accelerated dramatically – I remain lean all year round, continue to build muscle and have more energy now than I had when I was in my early and mid 20’s.

I have tried to impart this understanding onto ANYONE who is interested in getting more out of their bodies in terms of appearance or performance, but I’d venture a guess that longevity and quality could also be added to the list of things that will improve once someones relationship with food becomes realigned with reality. This understanding in not one that is easy to pass along and, frankly, getting someone to see food as something other than something that should be enjoyed is probably the most difficult task that a strength coach will have to perform as there is a lot of social inertia to overcome. Lets face it, our society treats food as a reward so the association of food and a positive experience is deeply ingrained in our brains.

ANYONE who has been able to overcome the food must be good belief has benefited from it tremendously. The body composition improvements lead to performance improvements which lead to confidence improvements. Without fail, correcting your understanding of what food actually means to you WILL make your life better. The simple act of making decisions that are based on reality will represent a significant movement towards self-awareness and self control. The inverse is also completely true, continuing to eat food for emotional / reward reasons will hold you back from complete self-awareness and optimal health.

Eat because you need to rebuild yourself out of the best quality materials and power your movement with the right fuel. Don’t eat because you like the taste of chocolate, cookies are an easy breakfast or because pizza tastes better than spinach. The easy way is rarely the successful way. If you want more out of your life, do what elite athletes do and eat mindfully.

If you have not yet read my first post about food = fuel and building material you should check it out.

The Best Piece Of Equipment

I have noticed a disturbing trend of people preferring to spend their money on better gear as opposed to better quality food. Some players won’t think twice about spending $200 on a hockey stick but will claim a good quality protein supplement costs too much money, or that better cuts of meat or good quality fresh vegetables aren’t worth the price. What gets to me about this attitude is that these players will become the food they eat – the body remakes itself out of the stuff it digests. The same cannot be said for the $200 stick – no matter how good it is, it will never actually become the owner.

A little apprehension is fine as I work for a company that sells supplements; I may have ulterior motives for suggesting them. But the cost push back I get from people when I suggest eating more plants is insane. Countless studies have shown the positive effect eating more vegetables has on the physical and mental development and health of all people so there isn’t any question about it, all people should eat more vegetables. You will live a longer better quality life if you eat more plants, you will have less cancer, have better functioning organs, you will be leaner and you will have more energy. There is no debate here, these are facts.

The shortsightedness of favoring gear over good quality food means that the one piece of equipment that controls all of the gear ISN’T as good as it could be; the body doesn’t move as well as it could. This has a negative impact on how the great gear performs so the competitive advantage that could be gained from better quality equipment is lost because the players aren’t looking after the best piece of equipment they have – their bodies.

You get one shot at life with this body so do the right thing and treat it like the best piece of equipment you own. Remember, it’s the only piece of equipment that you can’t replace!

New Interns, New Enthusiasm

Over the last few weeks a few interns started working with us at SST Vaughan. I have always really enjoyed the first few months working with trainers / coach who are new to the industry because of their enthusiasm and because it reminds me of how far I have come.

When I look back on my first training job I kind of laugh because I’m not sure why I was hired. I didn’t know what I didn’t know and thought that I had all the answers. I was pretty certain that I was a better trainer than most of the ones on staff. Over time I began to realize that I didn’t really have a clue. The three things that I brought to the table were passion, enthusiasm and only just enough knowledge to not seriously injure someone.

The last number of years have seen me build on the big three traits of a trainer adding knowledge, experience and possibly some wisdom to the mix. I have evolved from a person who helps motivate sedentary people to move to a professional who possess sufficient abilities to advance people towards their athletic or fitness potential all while maintaining my personal integrity and behaving in an ethical way. I no longer say things that I have read or believe to be true and now say things that I KNOW to be true. Today I have no difficulty saying “I don’t know” when asked a question and I do not fear not having the answer as I can either research and find the answer or direct the person to a more knowledgeable coach / trainer. I understand where I fit into the big picture and make sure I do not venture where I do not belong.

This is something that I try to impart to the interns. The reputation of the company rides on our ability to get results from our athletes and members and NOT on our trainers ability to have an answer for every question they are asked. There is nothing wrong with taking a few days to get the correct information and in the grand scheme of things, taking your time to dispense accurate advice is more important than giving the wrong advice for fear of losing esteem in the eyes of the people you train.

These are exciting time for the interns because they are at the start of their careers in a great field. Working with them is in many ways more rewarding than working with the athletes.