Category: Becoming More Active

This category covers things that relate to increasing the amount of physical movement that a person does. We are a mobile species and movement plans a big role in helping us regulate our bodies, our brains, our mood, and our spirit. It can include things about exercise programs, exercise movements, or general mobility such as walking, picking things up, or the activities that make-up our jobs and recreational life.

What Phase Are You In?

Spend as much time in gyms as I do and one thing will become very clear to you, most people go to the gym without a clear purpose. There isn’t anything wrong with this – I’d sooner see people go to the gym for the sake of going than have them never go – but going to the gym without a purpose isn’t going to allow you to make the most of your time there.

The human body is an amazing thing with a fantastic ability to adapt to its environment; it takes an average person about 6-9 weeks adapt almost completely to an exercise program. For this reason, people need to approach their training or gym time in phases that have a distinct purpose and end goal. For example, many gym goers are there to drop a few pounds of fat and increase or tone muscle – basically, they want to look good naked. I think this is a fantastic goal because it is going to help someone feel better about themselves and it is going to improve the quality of their life significantly. The issue with it is that very often, trying to tackle two goals at once will prevent you from making much progress in either one.

For those individuals looking to lose body fat and increase or tone muscle I would suggest that they separate these two goals into distinct phases – one for fat loss and the other for muscle building or toning.

For example, the first 6 weeks are for fat burning and will consist of metabolic workouts aimed at increase calorie burning and cardiovascular fitness through the use of interval training. During this phase you may do 20-30 minutes of varied speed and resistance (or incline) running, cycling or elliptical machine 3-4 times per week along with some strength training – 1 or 2 full body workouts per week consisting of 1 or 2 sets of 8-10 reps per body part. Your diet will be modified and carbs will be reduced. After about 6 weeks, your body will have adapted to the workout and the reduced carb diet and you will move to the next phase with is for muscle growth.

The next 6-9 weeks will be for muscle development. During this phase you may do 3-4 full body workouts per week consisting of 3-4 sets per body part. The rep range will be different on each day and will range from 6-8, 9-12 and 12-15. The exercises will change every 3 weeks and you will lower the amount of cardio you perform. In some cases you will eliminate the cardio to allow your body to become de-conditioned to it so when you enter the 3rd phase, fat loss, you will find the movements taxing on your body again.

You will repeat this cycle of fat loss, muscle building over and over again until you achieve your fitness goals. The good thing about this approach is that you will rarely get stale or bored with what you are doing in the gym because it is changing constantly and when you start each phase, your body will be shocked into adapting to the new stimuli.

If this seems completely foreign to you or you do not know where to start, consider getting in touch with a good trainer to help you plan your workout phases.

Strength Training for Cyclists

As an avid mountain bike rider, I spend a lot of time on the trails. I try to do a couple of races each year – at the participant level vs. the competitive level – and train year round to make sure I don’t shame myself too badly when the gun goes off and there’s a mad frenzy of riders hammering to be the first into the single track. The racing is a lot more fun when you’ve put the time into the practice and training. In fact, while races are won on race day, I believe they are actually won during the off season, in the gym, lifting weights and building strength. There has been a dramatic improvement in my performance once I incorporated strength training for cycling into my year round program. Below are 7 strength movements that a cyclist should perform if they are to hit their peak performance level. Note that this is not a workout, it’s a list of exercises, recommended rep ranges and my rational as to why a cyclist should use them.

1) Bulgarian split squats. Similar to a back foot elevated static lunge except the focus is on moving forward and back vs. up and down. It’s a great movement because it works each leg equally. It focuses a lot on the VMO which is critical for both peddle force production and knee stability – remember, you are going to fall and usually the only thing saving you from hitting the ground is being able to quickly put your foot on the ground to catch yourself. Knee instability at this point is going to increase the chance of falling and injury to your knee. Having the back foot elevated recruits more of the hip flexor muscles which are critical for the knee drive that pulls the peddles from the bottom to the top.

I like to work with a rep range of 12-15 for this movement.

2) Bent over standing hamstring curls – the reason you are bent over is to mimic riding position so aim for 45 degrees of hip flexon. This movement is critical because many riders do not have good hamstring recruitment – in fact, most people do not. Unless someone is moving quickly, these muscles play a role in maintaining knee stability. The hamstrings are made up primarily of fast twitch fibers so you need to focus on explosive contractions and controlled eccentric phases. Given that half of the peddle stroke is made up of knee flexon, you will need to learn how to powerfully recruit the hamstrings if you are to generate the most amount of force.

I work with a rep range of 6-8 for this movement.

3) DB bench press. Strong pec and anterior deltoids muscles are critical for holding the upper body in the right position when riding the rough trails. This movement is good at building this type of strength.

I work with a rep range of 6-10 for this movement and will alter the angle of the bench to include decline and incline pressing.

4) Bent over pronated (palms away) BB row. With trail riding, you are going to have to pull the front wheel off of the ground to clear logs and other obstacles. To do this, you will need a considerable amount of back strength. Bent over rowing is ideal for developing this. It is also great because being bent over places the upper body in the same position it would be in when riding.

I work with a rep range of 8-12 for this movement.

5) BB squat (front and back). The BB squat is one of the best strength movements someone can perform because it recruits muscles from the entire body, particularly the legs and core. Squatting deep is a fantastic way to develop the strength of the VMO muscles and it’s one of the best ways to develop eccentric strength that is needed anytime you put your feet on the ground to catch yourself from falling.

I work in a variety of rep ranges for these movements. With front squats I’ll do 3-6 reps and with back squats the range will be between 2 and 25. I’ll never do front and back squats in the same workout and like to change them up to keep my body adapting to the different movements.

6) BB deadlifting. I perform this movement primarily to work the core, lower back and glutes, but is also works the legs and upper back so it is a fantastic way to develop full body strength. It is particularly good at teaching you to recruit your glutes as you drive your hips forward to complete the movement at the top. These muscles are particularly important for force production when standing and sprinting.

I work with a variety of rep ranges ranging from 2 to 20

7) Power cleans. This is a movement used to develop speed because it is extremely difficult to clean a weight slowly – it’s impossible to be completely honest. Hip drive is absolutely critical with this movement so it’s a fantastic way to train your glutes to contract quickly. It’s also a fantastic way to training the upper back muscles to be faster along with your legs given that you are lifting the weight of off the ground from a dead stop.

I work with a variety of rep ranges with this movement but do not go above 6 reps. The goal when performing power cleans it to make the bar move as quickly as possible. To ensure that it helps to build speed, it is critical that a set end as soon as the bar speed drops by 10%. While this may seem like a tough thing to figure-out, you can feel any slow down and catching the bar on your shoulders is really tough unless it’s moving quickly.

I encourage you to incorporate some of these movements into your strength training program if you are a cyclist. You will notice an improvement on the trails and you’ll be riding faster than you ever thought you could!

Functional Training for New Strength Training Athletes

Functional training is taking the strength and conditioning world by storm for three very important reasons. First off, it’s fun. If you have never dragged a sled or flipped a tire, you don’t know what you are missing. It may sound kind of silly but the first time you get under a tire, drive your hips forward and heave it over you’ll know that you’ve found something that you’ll want to do again and again.

Next, there is less muscle soreness in the days following a functional workout vs. a traditional strength training workout using barbells, dumbbells and bands. The reason for this is that there is little or no eccentric contraction to most functional movements. The eccentric phase is the lengthening phase for a muscle – with a squat, it is the movement from the top to the bottom and this tends to be the phase that causes the most damage and subsequent pain. With functional movements, this phase is all but eliminated. For example, when dragging a sled, the load wants to stay still. No matter how much weight you put on it, it is never going to pull you backwards.  The same applies to tire flipping, sledgehammer swings and battle ropes – basically you are breaking inertia and that is it.

Finally, functional training gets you results that are useful in sport. Traditional BB and DB work makes an athlete stronger and they can then use this strength in their sport, but there isn’t a direct relationship between BB strength and skating for example –performing a dead lift will make someone much stronger but the strength they gain is general and needs to be assimilated in order for it to be put to use. Functional movements however more closely resemble the movements one performs during athletic competition. Sled drag crossovers, for example, will increase the strength of the muscles responsible for the crossover movement which will help to increase the power of this movement. Another great example would be Russian Boxes – two 35 degree ramps that slope towards each other. The action of jumping off of the outside leg from one box to the other is very similar to the skating motion. This functional movement is excellent for improving ones skating power.

Given these facts, I recommend functional training for everyone – from the young athlete to the older adult who is looking to keep their mobility into their later years, and everyone in between. In fact, I believe that functional training is particularly useful for those athletes who have never done any formal strength training before because they already have some experience with the movements – most sports have the athletes run, twist and jump and these are all facets of functional training – the learning curve for functional training is much shorter making these types of workouts production very quickly.

When functional workouts are paired with proper nutrition the results are fantastic! Body composition will improve dramatically as decreases in body fat are coupled with increases in lean body mass. On-field or on-ice performance will also improve dramatically as stronger leaner athletes are able to produce more relative force – this translates into harder hitting, higher jumping, and faster running or skating. Proper nutritional habits will fuel the body correctly meaning it can function optimally – higher sustained energy, higher force generation and quicker recovery from intense efforts.

If you have never done a functional workout before, you have no idea what you are missing!

What Can Aerobic Athletes Learn from Strength Athletes?

For too long, many people have been unwilling to bridge the gap between how aerobic athletes and strength athletes train. It is as though they are on different sides of the training fence and anyone who suggests that there should be similarities in the way these two groups train is considered an outcast. But recently, research shows that things have started to change; at least in terms of what an aerobic athlete can gain from training like a strength athlete. There are so many obvious benefits, that we now know it is not wise for an aerobic athlete to hold onto the notion that strength training isn’t useful for their purposes.

Here are some of the benefits of strength training for aerobic athletes:

Strength training will help avoid injuries

There is a popular saying that if you repeat one movement too often, you’re going to sustain an injury in the overworked area. This is true because, while the body can adapt to becoming very good at the one thing, it starts to become very poor at the things that are not being tended to. Long distance runners, for example, tend to end up with bad knees. Some believe that this is because of the impact running causes to the leg and hip joints.  But this isn’t necessarily the case, because the body eventually adapts to the impact sustained. The actual reason why the knees end up hurting is because the work of running results in an imbalance in the muscles of the upper leg. Distance running doesn’t require a lot of hamstring strength and as a consequence, the hamstrings do not develop well enough to hold the knee in a safe manner. This lack of development decreases the structural strength of the knee and therefore increases the risk of injury.

Strength training will help to eliminate pain caused by muscle imbalances

Many cyclists suffer from knee pain because their IT bands are extremely tight which causes their knee caps to track incorrectly during peddling. (IT Bands – iliotibial – are a tough group of fibres that run along the outside of the thigh.  They function primarily as stabilizers.) This IT Band pain can be avoided if the muscles that pull the knee cap in the other direction are strong enough to hold the knee cap in line. Strength training is the only way to correct this weakness and allow for pain-free riding.

Because strength training improves the body overall, aerobic exercise will seem easier

In almost all sports, performance improves if the athlete is able to generate more relative force from their muscles. The easiest way to increase relative force is to get rid of extra body fat and increase muscle mass. Contrary to popular belief, strength training is much more effective at reducing body fat than performing aerobic exercise. In fact, there is growing evidence that aerobic exercise stops being an effective method for fat loss after about 8 weeks as the body adapts to the demands of the movement. Once this happens, fat loss tapers off and the body stays the same. More often than not, if food intake is not reduced to adjust for this decrease in calorie-burn fat will begin to accumulate and the athlete will be LESS powerful.

Strength training will help make the muscles more powerful, thus increasing relative strength

Making the muscles stronger will boost relative strength. From a practical stand point, a muscle that produces more force will propel an athlete further with each movement when compared to muscle that is weaker. Imagine an athlete who is able to add an inch to stride length because of strength training. Given that stride rate tends to remain stable over the course of a 24 mile marathon, that extra inch is going to mean fewer strides are needed to complete the run, so a runners time will decrease by a significant amount. Even if the stride length only increases by 1 cm, the improvement is going to be dramatic.

Strength training will make the body more efficient at recruiting muscle fibres

The nervous system adapts to the needs of strength training and it becomes more efficient at recruiting more muscle fibres. This improved coordination of firing will result in a further increase in force production. This is different from increasing the strength of the muscle in that a weaker muscle can produce the same amount of force as a stronger muscle if more muscle fibres are recruited, but the outcome is improved stride length and increased force production.

The diet of strength training athletes is very close to the ideal diet for aerobic athletes

Contrary to popular belief, aerobic athletes do not need to consume massive amounts of carbohydrate. However, it must be said, that they need more carbs than the average under-active person.  They should take in similar amounts of protein and good fat as the strength training athlete consumes. The type of carbohydrate consumed should include slowly digested carbohydrates, like oatmeal or sweet potatoes, as well as carbohydrates that are immediately available for energy, quickly digested carbohydrates such as Gatorade, dextrose, maltodextrin, etc… at the time of greatest physical exertion. This is exactly the same way strength training athletes eat. It ensures they get enough energy to fuel their workout and enough protein and fat for body repair.

Tri-sets – My Experiences

The most recent training method I used was tri-sets. This is a grouping of 3 exercises for the same body part, performed in sequence with 10 seconds rest between each exercise. Once the third exercise is completed, you wait between 2 and 3 minutes before moving on to the next tri-set or exercise. It’s an accumulation type method that boosts your work capacity while also increasing lactate tolerance to a small degree. It will make you grow but won’t really add much strength.

Exercise selections – with tri sets, you are moving from a weaker ROM to a stronger ROM for exercise 1 and 2. For example, incline press followed by flat or decline press, or incline DB curls followed by standing BB curls. You do this because it helps keep the load as high as possible for each exercises.

The third movement should be something that is significantly easier for new to moderate trainees or something that is tougher but with fewer reps or less weight for the advanced trainee. For example, trap bar deadlifts, DB split squat, hack squats as a beginner or intermediate tri-set and front squat, back squat, front squat for an advanced trainee. When the first and third exercise are the same, we call this a double tri-set and it tends to increase size gains over the traditional tri-set, but it has a much larger intensity cost and should only be performed by people who have the capacity to work that hard.

Some examples of what I did were, for back, lean back supinated chin-ups, neutral grip pull-ups, and lean back supinated chin-ups; wide grip pull-ups, mid neutral grip pull-ups and narrow grip supinated chin-ups; weighted pronated mid grip pull-ups, bend over DB row, standing rope to neck. For chest, 45 degree DB press, flat DB press, and 45 degree DB press; 70 DB press, 30 DB press, DB flies. For shoulders, seated military press, seated Arnold press, and medial DB laterals.

Tempo and timing – the goal is to get about 30-50 seconds of time under tension for each segment of the tri-set. When we include rest time we are looking at about 4:30 to 5:00 minutes of time for each tri-set. This means that you can train two body parts in about 30-40 minutes leaving enough time to do some accessory or structural balance work.

I’ve been doing tri-sets for about 4 weeks now and am getting ready to change things up again. My work capacity has definitely increased and I’ve been sore in the days following my workouts – an indication that my body is adapting to a new form of stimulation. It is a good method that I will come back to in a few months. It’s also a mentally challenging approach because the sets are so long – up to 2 minutes.

The main error people make when performing tri-sets is not adhering to the rest interval of 10 seconds between segments. There is a tendency to take longer and while I can understand why someone would, it lowers the effectiveness of this approach dramatically. Keep in mind that the 10 seconds is only long enough to move to the next exercise, it isn’t long enough to get a drink or have a conversation. But with 2-3 minutes rest between sets, you should have plenty of time to do all of those other things.

I have given it to some of my clients and they have experienced the same things I did – growth, pain and a boost in work capacity. Try it out if you are looking for a new challenge.

Speed Training – Uncovering Imbalances

SST is running their Lightening Speed Camp again and the coaches have been getting ready for it by working their way through the drills to make sure we know what we’re doing and to make sure things do smoothly when we’re working with the athletes.

I have never done any speed training for running before. My speed training is for the bike and it focuses on getting me up a hill or around another rider quickly. Most of my power comes from my quads and glutes for the passing and from my quads and hamstrings for the hill climbing. When I started doing the drills for the speed training I was anticipating that they would be a piece of cake given my level of fitness and relative strength, but I was wrong. Boy was I wrong. Turns out that I have a few imbalances or recruitment issues what make sprinting efficiently fairly difficult for me. Worse than this is that these issues have been having a negative impact on my cycling power as well.

Below is a list of the issues I uncovered, how they impact my riding and what I need to do to correct them:

Hip flexors are weak on both sides and I have a recruitment issue with my left side. My tensor fasciae latae was KILLING me on both sides for a few days after the training. This came primarily from the wall knee drives. It’s safe to say that the other muscles that flex the hips are also weak – psoas and illacus. These impact my riding because the hips do flex when pulling the pedals from the 9 o’clock position to the 1 o’clock position. I’ll address these issues by doing more knee ups, a hanging leg cycling movement and hanging leg raises with my toes facing out. I’ll also benefit from doing more sprinting. My goal is not to add a lot of strength to them. Instead I will focus on improving muscle recruitment.

The bottoms of my feet were really sore in the days after. This makes sense because I lift with my feel flat on the floor and when I ride, my shoes have a stiff sole meaning that the muscles in the foot do not have to do very much. I’m losing a little big of power by having loose feet although it isn’t that much. I’ll address this one by doing more running – particular starts and starting to use the power runner machine we have at SST.

My VMO’s were sore. I know I have some recruitment issues with my vastus medialus because my knees sometimes get sore after riding a lot. I’ve been working on this by doing Poliquin step-ups, hack squats with my heal on a step and lots of split squats. The VMO is active mainly when in the first and last 20-30 degrees of knee extension so the alternating wall knee-ups with complete knee extension of the lower leg caused the pain. This issue impacts my riding because I’m not firing these muscles when I need to when the front foot is between 3-6 o’clock in the peddle stroke.

My calf muscles were killing (primarily the gastrocnemius and not so much with the soleus). This one shocked me a little because I have good calf development and I do a lot of movements that use them. However, I haven’t been training them with heavy loads very often because I figured I was getting enough work with the riding. I was wrong. I’ve been losing power with the 4-6 o’clock position of the peddle stroke because of this. To address this I have a variety of options. Lots of standing ankle extension (gastrocnemius), some seated ankle extensions (soleus), back squats with ankle extensions at the end, and forward sled dragging.

The front of my lower leg was somewhat sore but it should have been killing. This indicates a recruitment issue with my tibialis anterior and a possible (very likely) flexibility issue with the antagonist muscles on the back of my lower leg (gastrocnemius and soleus). These issues would impact the 6-11 o’clock position of the peddle stroke as I pull from the very bottom to the top. I’ll address the flexibility issue by doing more stretching of the lower leg. I’ll fix the recruitment issue by doing toe raises, focusing on lifting the front part of the lead foot when doing split squats and by doing some ankle flexion work with band.

All in all I’m losing a fair amount of power that I wasn’t aware of. What’s funny is that I wouldn’t have become aware of it had I not tried the running speed drills. The lesson here is one about diversifying my training and not doing the same thing all the time. I’m fairly sure that if I tried cross country skiing I would uncover more information about how my body is functioning that would make me a better rider.

Another Case For HIIT

In the debate of steady state cardio vs. high intensity interval training (HIIT) I am torn. I hedge my bets by doing both; mainly because mountain bike riding and RPM are HIIT and road riding is more steady state cardio. But fence sitters tend to annoy binary thinkers so my lack of endorsement or a condemnation for one doesn’t sit well with many people. The long and the short of it is that the body will adapt to whatever you throw at it so you need to keep changing things up to make sure you are getting the full benefit from exercise.

But the evidence for in support of HIIT is starting to grow. Short Bursts Of Exercise May Fend Off Disease by the Globe And Mails Paul Taylor reports on a study that tested the impact of HIIT on insulin sensitivity.

The body releases insulin in response to an elevated blood sugar level and this hormone will help facilitate the transport of sugar into the body tissue (fat cells when the muscles do not need it or into the muscles when their levels are diminished. With people who have normal insulin sensitivity, the amount the body releases is appropriate and blood sugar returns to normal levels quickly. However, obese people and type II diabetics are not as sensitive to insulin so their blood sugar levels do not drop as quickly as they should so the body releases more insulin. Blood glucose in high levels is very damaging to the body so being insulin resistant is a long term health risk.

The study revealed that 4 blocks of 30 second intervals of high intensity effort followed by 4 minutes rest was enough to improve insulin sensitivity by 23% in health but sedentary males. These improvements were seen after two weeks of 2-3 sessions per week. The reason for the improvement is that the efforts were high enough to spend most of the stored glycogen in the muscles therefore increasing the need to sugar transfer into the muscles.

The author of the article draws some conclusions about HIIT being better than traditional gym work for lowering heart disease risk that may not be accurate given that insulin resistance is only one of the factors associated with heart disease. The conclusion also fails to consider the positive cardiovascular impact of longer duration exercise.

However, this study is good news for the pro HIIT crowd and anyone who has only less than 60 minutes to workout per week. And it’s more evidence for my belief that intensity is the key component to any exercise routine.

Lactate-High

I find contentment when my heart rate hits 160 – 85% of my heart rate max. My brain clears of thought. My awareness of “me” disintegrates. It feels really good to work that hard – mindlessly working and loving it!

85% is right around my lactate threshold – the point at which the body produces lactate FASTER than it can clear it. When my heart rate goes above 85% I begin to tire. The length of time I can spend above 85% depends on how hard I am working – I can build to 92% but need to shut it down immediately or I could stay at 88% for 45 seconds. My tolerance to repeat intervals above 85% is dependent upon the intensity of the efforts – I may have the capacity for 4 92% efforts or 10 88% efforts.

My long-term recovery is also impacted by amount of time I spend above 85%. I haven’t figured all of it out yet, but the more time spent above 85% the less likely I am to be able to reach 85% on the next attempt. I notice this more in the summer when I ride more. Some days my body just can’t work hard enough to get anywhere near 85%. When this happens I need to take a few days off from riding and allow my body to recover. This can happen even when my leg muscles feel fine; just as I can push my heart rate above 85% when my legs are still sore from specific leg training.

Regardless, it feels amazing to be working right on the threshold of exhaustion. It’s both mental tough and mental rewarding. Tough in that I can work harder and longer than my internal monologue believes I can and rewarding because I reach a point where the internal monologue stops and my body functions uninhibited by thought.

CanFitPro – Certification I Now Hold

I attended and took a lot out of the 2008 CanFitPro conference in Toronto. I was like 1000’s of people who attended with the intention of gain new qualifications, certifications and experiences that will make their journey through the fitness land-scape more rewarding and more enriching for those they interact with. I now hold two certifications that I didn’t hold before – my Spinning certification and my CanFitPro PTS certifcation.

So What?

I’m now qualified to be a personal trainer and to teach indoor group cycling classes at places other than GoodLife; given that my LMI RPM certification only qualifies me to teach at GoodLife in Canada.

What now?

There are two things I need to consider now, the first is the easier of the two and that is to create and market some All Terrain cycling classes using my own choice of music and my own choreography. This shouldn’t take me too long given that I’ve been riding while listening to music for the last 4 years. Things I need to complete before I’m ready to launch my class include getting my computer set up with music editing software so  I can cut and paste songs to create the specific profile that a track requires, track objectives or scenarios, riding and hand positions and their names, class format stuff (e.g. length and pacing) and the materials to teach participants about zone training.

The tougher of the two things is setting up a personal training company. I say this is going to be tougher because unlike cycling classes, I’m NOT already doing this. While I have trained before, it was working at GoodLife and at SST, but this is going to be the first time that I have gone out on my own to do it. I’ll need to come up with waivers, educational materials addressing nutrition and lifestyle behaviors, templates for workouts, assessment materials and tests, goals sheets, designing workouts, creating and pricing a list of services, training clients, building a client base and marketing myself as a trainer and a brand.

There is a good connection between teaching cycling classes and being a personal trainer given that both are natural next-steps for the active person. They are a great complement for each other in that those who do a lot of riding should also be doing some weight training and those who do a lot of resistance training should be doing some intense cardio based training.

It’s going to be a fun and challenging venture and I’m looking forward to see how this next chapter of my life works out! Stay tuned for updates!

What People Want To Hear

After work on Thursday I met up with Travis who I used to work with at SST. He has started a personal training company call DNA Fitness based out of Burlington and has been interacting with other trainers who work with private clients. At SST we primarily worked with athletes who were driven to succeed but lacked the knowledge to create the right program to achieve optimal fitness. His new venture is different and he is starting to get exposure to the psychology of fitness.

“What do most people want out of a trainer?”

In most cases people who are not innately active want to hear that it isn’t their fault that they are out of shape. They want to be told that they are fine and that there is something unique about them that makes it impossible for them to stop eating unhealthy food, to start exercising and to get into better shape. For those who seem to love to exercise or tend to make more-healthy food choices the knowledge is there that they have control over these choices.

Let’s be honest here and say the way that someone looks is a reflection of their choices in almost every instance. Obese and unhealthy people do make the choice to eat poorly and move as little as possible. For them the realization that they have complete control over their choices has not yet been made. They are looking for validation that they are victims of something that is out of their control. In fairness this is a characteristic of most human beings, it just tends to manifest itself differently in people.

The toughest thing for a trainer to do with these types of clients is to teach them that it IS their fault that they look the way they do and to help them see that they CAN do something about it. Frankly, I found teaching this lesson to be one of the most draining things you can do because there is 10-40 years of thought inertia to overcome. It’s a task that is compounded in difficulty by the human tendency to seek out information that validates their belief and to outright disregard evidence to the contrary. Never underestimate the power of denial.

In most cases a doctor is a better person to teach an individual that their state of health is a result of their choices and too often it comes in the form of bad news – a test revealing cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a heart attack. The news is a shock to them, but not necessarily a surprise.

What can a trainer do to help their clients hear what they don’t want to hear?

People learn better by doing, particularly when they are not open to learning; which is the case with people who hold victim beliefs about their fitness abilities. If a trainer can get a person moving and eating a little better, their client will notice some results. This is often enough evidence to help them see that they CAN do something about it because they HAVE done something about it.

Let the client know that human beings are 99.9% genetically identical. Since almost everyone has the same potential to achieve a certain level of fitness, by achieving it themselves, a trainer can effectively BE the proof that it can be done. I have found this to be one of the more effective ways to show people the light.

Let the client know that the body has a strong desire to keep doing what it has been doing and that as a part of the body, the brain is the same way. Thoughts are going to be sticky and it is going to require a lot of effort to change the thoughts and to change the behaviour. It could be months before they find working out to be a fun activity simply because they have found doing nothing to be a fun activity for so long.

I think Travis is going to do well with his new business because he is knowledgeable and because he cares about people. I have always known him to tell people the truth and not just tell them what they want to hear and these are the reasons why I would trust him to train my family.