Consistency is King

I recently had a conversation via email with one of my clients regarding consistency.  Posting the entire email wouldn’t be appropriate or really all that useful, so I decided to edit one of my responses and toss it up here as a short article.

One of the biggest concerns many people have with a new exercise program is their ability to stick with it.  They know they’ll start out all gung-ho, but what happens when things get uncomfortable or boring?  If you have large buckets of cash, you can hand them over to me and I’ll hang out with you 24/7 and keep you on track.  If you have to ask how large the bucket of cash needs to be, well, you get the picture.  No, even with a trainer, you will have to jump the consistency hurdle all on your own.

The thing to keep in mind is the power of habit.  To varying degrees, people tend to resist change.  This is a major factor for people who need to lose a significant amount of weight.  They have spent many years getting to the place they’re at and it takes a huge lifestyle change to drop the weight and keep it off.

POP QUIZ!

Q: What percentage of people who have lost over 100 pounds keep it off?

A: Less than 20 percent!

Don’t you love encouraging bits of trivia like that?  Well, don’t let it get you down.  Use that information as a reminder to yourself not to slip back into your old ways!  Now you may not be in that exact situation, but if you’re trying to make even a small change you should remember that you have been doing things a certain way for quite a while and it will take time to build new habits.  A good rule of thumb is it takes 30 days of consistent success to make a new behavior a habit.  Every one’s time frame is different, but if you stay consistent you will eventually find that the new behavior isn’t “new” anymore.  It’s just what you do.

So how do you get those 30 days of success in the bag?  There are several different approaches to this and the one that works best for you depends a lot on your personality.  If you tend to have a competitive nature, try making every exercise session a little contest with yourself.  Tinker with the number of reps, the weight, the distance, and the speed.  If you can beat your last performance, chalk up a win! If you are easily bored, try changing your activities regularly.  Sure, you may end up as a “jack of all trades, master of none,” but so what?  This isn’t your job, it’s just exercise!  There are any number of ways to motivate yourself, so try a few and see what works for you.

What’s the bottom line?  Get going and don’t stop!  When those of us in the fitness world say “lifestyle change,” that’s exactly what we mean.  A change in the way you live your life.  For the rest of your life.  When you’re starting out, don’t think in terms of “for life,” think in terms of today.  Exercise today.  Eat right today.  Stack up a whole pile of successful days and what do you get?  Yep, a successful life.

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Motivation

When you are a trainer or coach, you inevitably have to deal with motivation issues.  Countless books have been written on motivation.  Go to any book store or library and you will see multiple shelves jammed with books on the subject.  Why?  Well, quite simply it’s because there is no one motivating factor that works for everyone.  If there was, there would be one book.  Actually, it wouldn’t even be a book!  It would be just one sentance that said “Here is the one concept that will serve as your motivation for all things in life.”  Now that sure would make life easy, but people just ain’t wired that way!  Be it love, money, guilt, or countless other motivating factors, we all have unique feelings that spur us on.

I’m just going to talk about motivation as it relates to exercise, because that is what I deal with on a daily basis, but what I’m laying out for you here can also be applied to other areas of your life.  What spurs you on?  Maybe you know and maybe you don’t.  If you don’t, I’d certainly recommend you take some time and really think about it.

When people come to see me, I invariably ask them “Why are you here?”  Sometimes I get a blank look, but usually I get something to the effect of “well, I need a trainer because I want to get in shape.”  “O.K.,” I’ll say.  “But why?”

Here are a few reasons that don’t cut the mustard:

“I’m tired of being out of shape.”

“My husband (wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc) wants me to lose some weight.”

“My doctor told me I should start exercising.”

Now are these bad reasons?  No, but they are incomplete reasons.  Any of these (and countless others like them) can serve as a starting point, but on their own they aren’t enough to force lasting lifestyle change.  To make these work, you have to make them important to you.  Yes, I’m sure that your spouse’s opinion is important to you, but you need to make it more personal than that!  If your reasons for making a major lifestyle change are not profoundly compelling to YOU, it really doesn’t matter how important they are for anybody else.

To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you a little story about Bill.  Yes, Bill is a real person and no, that’s not his real name.  I didn’t train him, either.  In fact, I knew him several years before I got into the training business.  His story really stuck with me though, so I relate it to all of my clients at one point or another.

When I met Bill, he was a big man.  Actually, he wasn’t big.  He was HUGE.  He wasn’t very tall, maybe 5′ 8″ but he was well over 350 pounds.  Nobody knows how much he weighed at his heaviest because the scale in the doctor’s office only went up to 350.  He had an awfully hard time buying clothes because size 64 waist pants are pretty hard to find.  Now he wasn’t an unhappy fat man, quite the contrary.  He had a good job that he enjoyed, a very nice and attractive wife, and a really cool son who was a couple of years younger than me.  He had a great personality and really enjoyed his life.  He especially enjoyed food and found it very hard to resist.  His doctor had hounded him for years to lose weight, but he never could stick to a diet, let alone an exercise plan.  He knew his family wanted him to lose weight, and he wanted to lose it, too.  Unfortunately, none of this was enough and he resigned himself to being fat.

Until his son graduated from high school.

Shortly after the graduation, he went to his doctor for his semi-annual lecture on losing weight. When his doctor asked how he was doing, he told him all about the graduation and how proud he was of his son.  Bill’s son had earned an academic scholarship at a very prestigious school and his future was looking bright.  Then he showed his doctor a picture of himself at the graduation with his wife and son. I saw the picture later.  Happy normal sized wife, happy normal sized son, and a happy balloon that looked like it had escaped from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  The doctor looked at the picture and said “Wow, that’s great Bill!  It looks like you had a good time at the graduation.”  Bill did have a good time at the graduation.  He had such a good time and he was so proud of his son, he couldn’t wait until his son graduated from college.  Now THAT was going to be a party!  The doctor waited until Bill was done talking, then looked at him and said “Bill, you aren’t going to make it to the next graduation.  At the rate you’re going, you’re going to be dead in less than four years.  If you don’t lose some weight, you aren’t going to see your son graduate from college, you aren’t going to be there when he gets married, and you aren’t going to see your grand children.”

Oof.

As it happened, the doctor had hit Bill’s motivating factor: his love for his son and his desire to share in his son’s success.  After that, there was no turning back for Bill!  He stopped eating sweets, desserts, and huge portions.  He started walking, even though for a man of his size it was very strenuous.

No more soda!  Walkalkwalkwalkwalk.  No more pie!  Walkwalkwalkwalk.  No more french fries!  WalkwalkwalkJOG!  Jogjogjogjogjogjog!

Bill proceeded to shed pounds like a snowman in the sun.  For the first few months, he was losing six to eight pounds per week.  Now normally that kind of weight loss would be considered unhealthy, but Bill was an exceptional case.  Maintaining that kind of weight takes a lot of calories, so when he cut down his intake and started exercising, the fat just melted off.  As Bill progressed, the weight loss came more slowly, but he kept his motivation and stuck with his plan.

It took him just under two years, but Bill attained his goal.  It had been a while since I had seen him last and I almost didn’t recognize him.  He was down to about 220 pounds, and was scheduled to go down to about 190 in a couple of weeks.  No, I didn’t type that wrong. When you lose that much weight, you end up with excess skin that has to be surgically removed.  Bill had about 30 pounds of excess skin.  Yeah, I know, “Eeewwww!”  Bill still exercised for a few hours each week and was eating a normal, sensible diet.  Sure, Bill had a piece of cake once in a while, but it wasn’t an everyday thing anymore.  During his weight loss, Bill discovered something: you don’t have to eat a diet of hay and rocks to be healthy.  You can enjoy food, but you don’t have to enjoy ALL the food ALL the time.

So what’s the point of all this?  Simply put, your motivation has to come from you.  Others may be able to make suggestions, but if you’re going to make a significant, lasting change you have to have a reason that is compelling to you.  And guess what?  There are no “wrong” reasons!  Whatever your motivation turns out to be, it isn’t bad or wrong, it just is.  If a particular motivating thought keeps you going, than that’s the one for you!

Anyway, it’s been several years since I’ve seen Bill.  I moved to a different state and I wasn’t able to stay in touch, so I’m not sure what he’s up to.  Did he gain all the weight back?  Maybe, but I like to think that he didn’t.

The One Best Exercise for Everyone Forever

Do you know the one best exercise?

If I never hear that question again it will be too soon! Usually I hear it in this form: “So, what’s the best exercise for working my abs (butt, legs, arms, etc)?” I am often tempted to respond with some ridiculous and wrong answer like “You need to do sprangle hops, but be sure to wrap your ankles and wear a knit cap.” I don’t do this because one, it’s wrong, and two, I would have to spend the next half hour explaining what sprangle hops are. Note to those who are new to all this and can’t be expected to know any better: there are no such things as “sprangle hops.”

If there isn’t a “best” exercise, then how do you know what to do? Well, the easy and self-serving answer is “sign up for my program and I’ll tell you exactly what to do every day.” The free answer is this: do everything, but do more of the big exercises. By “more” I mean you roughly 85% of your time, and by “big exercises” I mean full-body exercises where you load the spinal column. Aw heck, sign up for my program anyway (you’ll save a bunch of time and effort.)

Still set on searching for the “one best exercise?” Ask yourself this: if a “best” exists, what does that make all the others? Are they second best? Worst? A pointless waste of time? If they aren’t the best, why does anyone ever do them at all? Seriously, if we knew of a “best” exercise, why would anyone do anything else? There are literally hundreds of exercises and exercise variations and each and every one of them work. How can I say this with confidence?

Simple, any time you use your body to apply force to a load, your muscles are doing work. If you are doing work you are exercising. Now we can debate quality of work all day. Yes, some exercises are better than others for certain people at certain times, but you have to look at variables. I can make very strong arguments for squats and dead lifts being two of the most effective exercises, but that doesn’t mean much for someone confined to a wheelchair, does it?

The working title of this article was originally going to be “everything works, but nothing works forever.” I also mention it in my introduction video, so as you might have guessed, it’s a pretty important concept for me. What I’m getting at is this: if pick out an exercise and really hammer away at it, you will get stronger. If you want to continue to get stronger, you will need to change your exercise selection a little bit. No, this has nothing to do with “tricking” your muscles (don’t get me started on that one). It has everything to do with over-use and boredom! Doing the same thing the same way will eventually lead to strength imbalances and you will almost certainly lose any excitement you once got from exercising. This doesn’t mean that you have to totally give up your favorite exercises. If you love doing squats but you’ve stopped progressing, why not change it a little? Have you tried sissy squats? Split squats? Front squats? Hack squats? Squats can still be an integral part of your program, but it will do you good to change things up once in a while.

“But Phil,” you say. “What about all those other sites that claim to have the secret of a ’super exercise’ that will render the entire fitness industry obsolete? They normally charge $379 for this super-secret stuff, but if I act now I can get it for $29.99. Why shouldn’t I try those guys?”

Easy. Just about anyone who claims to have the “one best way” to do anything is probably a lying dirt bag. There is a chance that they’re just wrong, but they’re probably dirt bags.

Oh, and for the record: I am not about to start calling out individuals or specific websites as I don’t feel like being sued this week.

More on Dead Lifts

If you haven’t watched the video on dead lifts yet, you might want to check that out first. In this episode, Parker and Phil go over the Romanian Dead Lift and the Stiff-Leg Dead Lift.

Is Your Back Pain Caused by Muscle Imbalance?

Are you keeping yourself in balance? Many people suffer from back pain that is caused by weakness in the muscles that support your spine. Keep your back happy, healthy, and strong by doing this simple exercise.

Ab Exercise With a Twist

If you’ve been doing the same ab routine since you can’t remember when, then it’s time for change! Throw these into the mix and hit those obliques…

Is Your Cardio Program Working?

Ok, I’ll come right out and admit it: I HATE doing cardio!  Fortunately, I’m a power lifter and that sport doesn’t require a high level of aerobic endurance.  It also doesn’t require low body fat which is why many power lifters tend to be “built for comfort.”  Still, it isn’t a good idea to do NO cardio!  As much as I dislike doing cardiovascular exercise, I also have a strong aversion to dying from a heart attack when I’m 50.  So the cardio must be done…

How do we reconcile the blah of cardio with the need for doing it?  Simple!  Find a protocol that you enjoy (boy, “enjoy” sure is a stretch) that also elevates your heart rate and gets you huffing and puffing.  No, running up one flight of stairs doesn’t count.  You have to elevate your heart rate for an extended period of time, generally speaking for about 30 minutes or more.  Depending on your level of fitness, this may be accomplished by a brisk walk.  For those who are a little more fit, games like soccer or basketball are an excellent way to get your cardio in while still having some fun.

In the video, I mention my loathing of jogging.  The reason for this is twofold.  One, jogging at a slow pace for several miles is a great way to reduce your limit strength (max strength for a single repetition).  Since I compete in power lifting, that would be very counter produtive for me.  For a marathon runner it doesn’t matter since they don’t have to carry anything while they run, they just have to GO (and go, and go, and go).  Second, since I’m *ahem* “plus-sized,” jogging makes my knees and hips hate me.

So how do I get my cardio?  Tire flipping!  In the following video, Parker and I flip a 260 pound tire for reps.  It’s not all that exciting, so we edited it down to one set each.  By the time we were through, we each did four sets of 16 flips.  It was a great full body workout and it was actually kind of fun.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

Many people don’t exercise because they lead busy lives and don’t want their exercise programs to monopolize their schedules.  While it is true that professional athletes and body builders spend a great deal of time in the gym, the actual amount of exercise needed for good to optimal health is quite small.

If you want to have a healthy body and increased levels of energy, don’t look to the muscle magazines for exercise advice.  Every activity and every sport has different training regimens.  Some of the differences are small and some are quite large.  Putting it simply, if you don’t want to be a body builder, football player, or downhill skier then don’t train like one.

For a basic health and fitness starter program, I recommend 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise three days per week and about 45 minutes of resistance exercise two days per week.  If you haven’t exercised much lately, take it slow!  Over-enthusiasm is one of the biggest killers of exercise plans.  If you overdo it, you’ll be miserable and much less likely to continue.  How do you know if you’re doing too much?  Listen to your body!  If you go for a run and you start gasping for breath, slow down and walk until you feel better.  As you progress, you’ll find that you need fewer breaks and the breaks that you do take will be much shorter.  Start small with the weights!  No lifting with the ego!  The goal is NOT to be curled up in a big ball of pain the next morning.  Experiment until you find a weight that you can perform eight to twelve repetitions with.  If you can’t lift the weight eight times, go lighter.  Once you can do twelve repetitions it’s time to bump the weight up a little.

If you don’t feel you’re getting results quickly enough, don’t worry.  While the human body has an amazing ability to adapt to its environment and the stresses of that environment, the adaptation doesn’t come overnight.  Give it a couple of months.  With a sensible exercise program, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how little your daily schedule is impacted and by how much your body changes for the better!