Why is there so much crap in this industry?

I guess this article is my first real rant, although you can check out my article on bad personal trainers previously posted if you want to.  One of my main problems within my industry of personal training (and the gym industry as well) is that there is so much misinformation put out there to poor uninformed people who are just desperate for anything to help them.  I don’t think a day goes by without me hearing some person saying, “I heard blah blah is good” or “I’m trying this new thing to help me” or “what is your opinion about x?”  Often this is also a way for them to magically change faster, without putting the hard work in that is really required for permanent change.  Then the cycle rinses and repeats.

The latest one that made me snap this week was for a wonderful new class where the participants hold something called a ViPR, which is touted as “the evolution of fitness”.  There is a great promo Youtube video of people doing classes and movements with this thing.  Here’s the funny part – it is a log.  With handles.  It really kind of looks like s strongman log that someone looked at one day and said: “if I could make that lighter, I might be able to sell it.”  They have varying weights and if you go to their web site they have all sorts of crap on there about how effective it is for “whole body integrated exercises”.  Because you can’t do these types of things without holding a 10 pound log?  Or just maybe you can do the exact same thing holding ANYTHING that weighs the same amount?  Even better – if you want to buy one (and please remember that this is essentially a weighted plastic log with handles) the 10 pound version costs $180 plus shipping.  The 45 pound one (so the same as any standard Olympic bar) costs almost $400.

I’m going to a conference next weekend in Montreal.  I just know that at the trade show for that conference I’m going to see booths and booths of equipment just like this that make me cringe when I see people spending their money on them.  From the Shake Weight to the brainwashed masses who support Body By Vi, my industry unfortunately is a marketers dream, because they prey on the fact that people want a quick fix and any solution that they can find to their issues of being overweight and unhealthy.  Here’s a novel idea:  why don’t we as fitness professionals decide one day to get rid of all the extra things and actually teach people how to move properly and get strong without all of the toys?  Last I checked, I actually don’t need any fancy machines or special ropes in order to make someone increase their heart rate, add force to a joint to help make it stronger or stimulate some positive change for your mind and body.

Tell you what.  For your next workout try to do one with only your body.  No extra equipment beyond altering mechanics and motion in order to make things a bit more difficult.  Can you squat a lot of weight?  Try increasing your depth or changing tempo to go really slow.  Do lots of push-ups?  Try handstand ones.  Pulling?  Wide grip chins can be quite difficult even for a strong person.  Try a totally isometric workout and see if you are sore the next day.  I’ll almost guarantee you will be.  Work on a movement you have trouble with – without weight – before loading yourself up.  Get it perfect.  Make sure that you can do one variant before moving onto the next.  Forget about things like amount of reps, weight, how many calories and what the WOD is for today and just work on controlling your movements.

Always remember that the body adjusts and improves based on application and specifically designing things in order to stimulate the change required to head towards your goal, whatever it may be.  No goal?  That’s a completely separate issue but an easy one to address.  So many people spend years and years fighting to improve themselves when the answer, as simple as it is, is right there in front of them.  Breathe.  Move.  Eat healthy, vital things and get enough rest in order for your body to repair itself.  These things are what will help you the most, not a $180 stick you could make yourself at Home Depot for $5.  Do this for long enough and within a year you will be looking in the mirror at a whole new body wondering why it took you so long to figure it out in the first place.  And, you will be miles ahead of all of the other struggling masses buying gym memberships on a daily basis and then never using them.

Now, if you will pardon me I’m going to go and exercise.  Without a $180 log.  I think it will work just fine.

Results from 2011

At the end of the year I always like to think back and confirm that I have actually been doing my job for the people who pay me money to help them.  So here’s a short breakdown of some of my encounters over the year.  Maybe this will inspire other trainers or maybe other people will see this and realize that they actually didn’t get what they paid for from their trainer (if this is you, then it is too bad – go and find another one, no matter what kind of relationship you have with them).  It has also been a good year for me personally.  My wife and I bought our first house and upgraded one of our cars.  She signed her permanent job papers and I moved gyms into one that was super convenient for me to commute to and has been an excellent company to work for.  I wasn’t sick at all this year that I can remember.  I’ve met some great people.  I began saving for the courses I want to take next year.  2012 should be a great year as well.  But I’m digressing. Here’s a breakdown of client results from 2011:

With my clients I do my best to keep them long term.  Out of my current roster of 18 clients, 8 of them have been with me since the beginning of 2011, so for a full year.  This really allows me to track progress and establish long-term goals.

One of my brief encounters was with Monique D.  She came to me with not a lot of money when my new gym opened in February 2011 with a knee problem at the age of 67.  In fact, she had trouble even walking up the stairs to meet me!  She simply had a lot of weakness through the chain of her ankle, knee and hip on one side so once we strengthened that up her pain disappeared.  The big key to her success was that she was dedicated to doing exercise on her own and got the results she was looking for – in only 12 weeks.  I still see her in the gym three mornings a week.  Like I always say, dedication yields results.

One of my recent longer term clients who came to me with a chronic knee issue and a very weak lower back now has much more range in her knee under force, can pick up 60 pounds without pain in her back and can jog for 60 seconds, something that she never did before.  She is also down 29 pounds, 5% body fat and 19 total inches even though her workouts for the first four months barely had any impact at all.  Again, she is very dedicated and consistent.

Mike D is down 8% body fat, added 11 pounds of muscle and lost 22 pounds of bodyfat, despite having a horrible diet, high stress from work and missing many sessions over the year including an entire month off in the summer.  When I did his numbers I was actually surprised he made so much progress, but happy to be surprised.

Eileen R completed her first 5k and is running her first ever 10k next week – she had never run before this year and only hiked at the age of 52.

Gen C, who I will continue to train for the upcoming years Spartan Beast in Ottawa can deadlift 1.5 times her bodyweight and climb a rope like a monkey, while also running 20k in under 2 hours.  She is a machine and I see great thing for her in 2012.

Rachele M competed in her first ever figure show with the WBFF, and while the results weren’t as expected (6th out of 13 competitors) she had a great time and caught the bug.  She is actually applying to be a trainer as well since she got certified about a month ago and will be a great one.

Linda F approached the gym for the first time after retirement this year.  She is in her 60’s and got into a good habit, and is now down 16 pounds and 2 sizes after only working with her for about three months.  Plus she is the strongest woman she knows!

Brenda G came to me with plates in her ankle from surgery the previous year following a motorcycle accident.  She needed to be able to walk properly for her job as a bylaw officer within five months.  Not only did we accomplish that, but also while she will never have full ROM in her ankle she can still perform every movement pattern well and is much happier and healthier.

Lindsay H managed to correct an elbow problem she had for years.  Her testimonial is on my page because she had tried everything else and it never worked.  However, proper strength micro progression in her shoulder, elbow and wrist chain combined with smart movement patterns did.  Her elbows used to cause her chronic pain and how they are fine.  This was also within a short period of time.

There are other stories, but it isn’t necessary for me to put them down here in order to realize that I had a really good year.  I continue to learn and hone my craft, and I managed to help a lot of people get stronger, healthier and happier about their daily living.  My commitment as a trainer is to give excellent service, find solutions for the people who ask for my help, and learn as much as I can do that I can help more people.    That’s why I do my job and continue to love what I do.  If you are reading this, I wish you a happy 2012 and a great holiday season.  Thanks for reading!

Why Can’t I Lose Weight?

After being in the fitness industry for well over a decade, I have seen many people join a facility and attempt to accomplish whatever goal they set out to do.  More often than not this is losing weight.  Weight loss is the number one goal of new members joining a fitness facility, with the statistic being about 70% of members trying to accomplish it.  How many of them actually succeed is another picture entirely.  We have all seen the television shows like “The Biggest Loser” or similar shows where people lose dozens of pounds in a short time and think that we can do the same.  I’ll reveal some truths about those shows in another article, but to begin with I’m going to give you the simplest, most effective way to lose weight and keep it off for the rest of your life:

Exercise a little bit more.  Eat a little bit smarter.

That’s it.  No fad diets, no supplements and no tricks.  It really is that easy.  However, since I’m sure a lot of readers are scratching their heads right now I’ll break it down in terms of numbers that are easy to follow.

In order to lose about 30 pounds over a period of time, a person needs to burn an additional 105,000 calories.  Generally this is best accomplished by both adding exercise into the equation and also creating a caloric deficit through your diet because if you try to do only one or the other, it creates a lot more difficulty, as the math will show.  To lose this 30 pounds at the rate of 1 pound per week (taking 7 months total to take the weight off) you need to lose 3500 calories per week, or 500 per day.  In order to burn 500 calories per day exercising, the average 175 pound female or 250 pound male needs to exercise approximately 45 minutes – every day.  This isn’t realistic for most of us.  Or, you can eat 500 calories less per day and accomplish the same goal.  However, in my experience most of us aren’t eating enough calories daily anyway, so removing 500 calories from our diet daily isn’t realistic either.  I have actually had clients eat an additional 500 calories a day and begin to lose weight, because their burning mechanisms were so shut down it took that much to fire them back up again.  Also, there is more and more evidence coming through research that calorie intake isn’t the contributor to weight gain or loss that we thought it was – hormones have a huge amount to do with it.

However, if you take 250 calories per day  – which is 45 minutes 3-4 times per week – through exercise and 250 per day through your diet then all of a sudden 1 pound per week will begin to come off.  This is basic physiology, but then there is the key that most people neglect:

The exercise has to be more than you were previously doing already, and you need to have a proper baseline established for your caloric intake first and subtract from there.

Nutrition is the most important part of any weight loss equation, so the first step for any weight loss client of mine is to make sure they are eating a consistent amount of calories every day.  If someone averages 1500 calories six out of seven days during the week and then one day on the weekend goes out and eats 3000, their body will simply store that extra surplus because it’s energy demands only account for 1500 calories used per day.  If this same person ate 3000 calories daily on a regular basis, it wouldn’t be a problem because the body would use it.  Establishing a baseline amount is very important, and then sticking to it is even more so.  There are many free tools for tracking this online, and it takes about five minutes a day.  The big key here is consistency.  Once you have that baseline established and can stick to it, then you can decrease the calories per day.  Believe it or not, most people don’t eat enough.  As a general starting point, multiply your goal weight (what you want to weigh) times ten.  This will tell you the amount you will need – at that weight – just to live, breathe and walk.  Exercise adds another element to that, but in order to keep it simple you can begin there.  Just to give you an example, my daily caloric intake as a 36-year-old male at currently 176 pounds is 2600 calories a day – and I’m losing weight.  This amount would be double many of my female clients’ intakes that are trying to lose weight.

Now what about the exercise side?  It accounts for the other side of the coin, but also brings about other benefits like a healthy heart, joint strength and even looking good with less clothing on.  Again, the key here is to figure out what you are already doing, and then add in an extra 250 calories per day, or 500 every other day which is about 45 minutes of exercise.  For example, if I walk my dog at a moderate pace every morning for 30 minutes and that’s it, I need to add in another 45 minutes every other day and it will take care of that side of the coin.  I’m a huge advocate of strength training over cardio, especially for beginners, but it is important to simply find something you like, that fits in your weekly schedule and that you can burn at least 500 calories an hour doing.  But here’s where most people don’t follow through: consistency.  They will do extra exercise for a couple of days, or a week or two but never go through a long term point of change.  I’m talking about six months to a year where they add in 3-4 workouts a week.  This gives you the required calorie burn in order to actually make a significant change.

Obviously there are finer details, but this is a good place to start.  Get consistent, make a change on a regular basis in both your nutrition and exercise programs, and the weight will start to come off.  It really is just that simple.  Why complicate something that isn’t?

Why do I train the way I do?

Often a probing question given by many towards a personal trainer is simply:  how do you work out?  Since I propose to be an expert on health, wellness and physical goings on within the body it should be assumed that I can do some superhuman things with my own body and should be able to do pretty much anything, right?

I’ll let you in on a secret.  I’m just like any of you reading this blog.  I work – a lot – sometimes so I’m so tired I have a hard time finding time to get in my workouts since I’m normally up at 5am and with clients by 6am.  I finish work most nights at 7pm.  I have a wife and two dogs to help take care of.  So when it comes to my own programming, it is often a bit of a challenge.  The way that I tend to approach it is by telling myself what I would always tell my clients.  Have goals, both short term and long term, and then work towards it.  I’ll break my training up into specific phases of time, just like I would with a client.  I record everything (my Iphone is a great asset for this).  I tailor what I eat around when I am going to work out, just like any athlete would.  I plan ahead.  For example, this weekend is my brother-in-law’s birthday Saturday night.  More than likely I’m not going to be in a great state to work out Sunday due to being out late, therefore I know I need to get something quality in on Saturday.  Now I’m sure some of you would say “but you work in a gym, so it’s so much easier.”  This is true – to an extent.  Frankly after helping other people all day sometimes the last thing I want to do in the gym is stick around, just like you all like to get out of the office.

Currently I’m working towards getting back into competitive running and hopefully a few short distance duathlons this year.  The only reason I don’t do full tris anymore is because I’m not a very good swimmer and I don’t enjoy it.  Biking and running are more enjoyable to me so while I’m never going to be an Ironman I can still train hard.  Over the summer I worked on a 16 week phase to add strength and some muscle onto my frame in order to be stronger for the endurance training I knew I would have to do for this upcoming season in 2012.  At my peak (after my honeymoon – European food to be blamed) I was at 189 pounds and almost 25% bodyfat, which is far too heavy to think about running with.  However, my strength had also improved by up to 50% in some movements and my lean mass had increased as well.  Now that I’m getting back into running form I began with simple 20 minute jogs  and half hour rides at easy pace and have been increasing my mileage, speed and power (wattage) consistently for the past six weeks.  My diet was also cleaned up significantly.

So result wise so far – I’m down 10 pounds and 4% bodyfat over the six weeks, plus I’ve managed to increase my average running speed by 45 seconds per mile and my biking wattage by about 25%.  I attribute that to just getting back into my old form but my improvement is good so far.  My goals for the upcoming season so I can put them out there to the world:

Be competitive within my age group (M35-39) during the Somersault Running series at the 5k distance.  This to me means top 3 finish at minor races, and top 10 finish in major races.  If I can break 20 minutes in a 5k this year (last time was 2007) I would be quite happy.  I would also like to be able to compete at the local level in the duathlon series so I’d like to be able to push as if I was a Category 3 cyclist on my bike.  This means being able for someone at 165 lbs (my hopeful race weight) to be able to push 300 watts of power cycling for 5 minutes according to the charts currently published by Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen.  Obviously this will improve and if I can go higher than that this year it would be great, but for me right now that will be good enough.

I hope this provides some insight into even how a trainer approaches their program.  It is just like any of you, staying consistent, having the right goals in mind and steadily moving towards them.  Nutrition and rest are important as well, plus planning ahead to make sure that nothing serious gets in the way of training.  During the holidays this is extremely important as well, so make sure that you plan ahead and get everything done – including your workouts.