Okay…yesterday I posted a few things that came to my mind as I was writing, but the problem with those posts is that you always think of stuff afterwards that you wish you’d included.  So today I figured I’d just throw down a few more things for your enjoyment.

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1.  The structure of high fructose corn syrup is not that much different than table sugar (sucrose).  I think that the notion that HFCS is somehow magically making people get fatter is probably overstated.  Overconsumption of either is probably a bad idea.

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2.  Over the past couple of years soy has gotten a bad reputation.  Some believe that even being around the best friend of a relative of someone who once new a guy who ate a spoonful of soy is enough to make a man’s estrogen skyrocket and cause him to grow breasts larger than Dolly Parton.  The truth is that while large quantities of soy can possibly have some estrogenic effects, a moderate amount probably isn’t going to adversely effect most people.  Having some tofu or a soy based products every once in a while isn’t going to kill your body composition improving efforts.

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3.  Tell me this doesn’t look like it is going to be freaking awesome!

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4.  Why is keeping weight off so hard?  Your Body is Happy to Wait for Your Weight to Come Back.  Again I state, losing weight is the easy part.  Show me an expert who has a plan to KEEP it off and I’ll be impressed.

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5.  If you’re new here and you missed it, I wrote a 5 part series on training people with obesity a while back.  If you’re interested at all in fat loss, I’d highly suggest you read this.  Be prepared for a perspective shift.  Check out part 1 HERE.

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6.  Probably just over a year ago some random guy named Joe Dowdell added me on Twitter and then on Facebook.  Up until that point I’d never even heard of him.  Then over the next few months as we started chatting I found out the Joe was the owner of an incredible 10,000 square foot facility in New York City that had been rated as one of the top gyms in the United States by Men’s Health and the number 1 gym in Manhattan by About.com.  I also discovered that he’d co-written a book called Ultimate You and that he’d contributed to damn near every magazine from Men’s Health to Cosmo.

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Basically, he’d spent the last several years developing one of the top gyms in North America (where he gets to train celebrities and pro athletes) and he’d finally established his business to the point where he was ready to enter the online fitness world.  Today I’m excited to share with you that he’s put together a completely free webinar called The 5 Keys to Success detailing  the process of how he has built one of the top gyms in the United States.

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If you are a personal trainer and you want to learn what it REALLY takes to make it in the personal training industry or even just to get better results for your clients then this video is a must watch.  You can check it out HERE.

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In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve pretty much been MIA on the blogging front lately.  I’ve managed to throw down the odd post, but ultimately I’ve been slacking off a lot for various reasons.  As I recently just celebrated another birthday (did I really just turn 35?), I figured there would be no better way to make my return to regular blogging than to do an annual birthday post as they’ve been pretty popular in the past.

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In case you missed the previous ones where I posted largely embarrassing photos from my youth, you can check them out HERE and HERE.  Basically, in these posts I like to share bits and pieces about myself as some of the thoughts going through my head about health and fitness right now.  I might just end up saying something that gets people riled up and starts a lively discussion.  Usually happens.  Enjoy!

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1.  In terms of fat loss, I think that a calorie is mostly just a calorie.  In other words, I feel that there are some added benefits for health to making better food choices (less Halloween candy and more vegetables), but if you want to lose fat you’re ultimately going to need to consume less calories than you’re able to burn off.  If you don’t do this it doesn’t matter what you’re eating.  You won’t lose fat.

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2.  I’ve said before that I don’t think exercise contributes meaningfully to weight loss when a solid diet is already in place.  But that is only partially true.  Realistically, I feel that exercise CAN increase weight loss over and above diet alone (obviously more calories burned SHOULD result in greater weight loss).  The problem arises in that the amount of exercise required to make this occur is probably beyond the amount that most people are willing to do.  So high level athletes who train a ton are able to make this happen.  But I don’t think it is meaningful for average people who are training a couple times at the gym each week.

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3.  In response to the point above, some might point to THIS STUDY (actually systematic review with meta-analysis) that shows exercise and diet together are better than diet alone.  However, at the end of one year the combined group had maintained an average weight loss of 6.7kg (14.7lbs) verus the 4.5kg (9.9lbs) lost by the diet only group.  While there certainly is a difference, most people would probably fire me if those were the only results I was able to produce over a 1 year span…especially if the all the time spent on exercise every week only resulted in an additional 5 pounds over a whole year.  To me, exercise is best left to gaining/sparing muscle mass, increasing performance measures, and improving health.  Diet alone can handle the body weight.

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4.  Weight gain is not caused exclusively by carbs or insulin.  Taubes is full of sh*t.

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5.  In large, long term trials no diet has ever proven vastly superior to any other diet regardless of macronutrient composition.  In less fancy terms, whether you eat low carbs, high carbs, or whatever else matters less than the fact that you actually stick to the program in the long term.

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6.  Glycemic index may have a role in health (this is good), but I’m not sure at this point that it actually plays a role in weight/fat loss to a meaningful degree as some would have you believe.

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7.  Organic food may be better for us.  Or not.  Personally I lean towards the first statement, but there IS evidence on the other side that should not be taken lightly.  Don’t be duped into organic foods are necessarily better and that any evidence to the contrary is some conspiracy theory.  If you can afford (and want to purchase) organic then go to it.  But if you can’t don’t stress too much about it and focus on putting in good foods.  This is probably more important as a first course of action anyway.

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8.  Most supplements are pretty much worthless.  HERE is a good graphic to show you how your supplements stack up.  Note that even those that are above the “worth it” line may be there for reasons other than fat loss or looking good naked.

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9.  The vast majority of people making scientific claims about the use of programs or products have no freaking clue how to read scientific research (you know…the place from which the claims actually came).  People who use the programs or are a part of certain movements even become so dogmatic about them that they fail to recognize evidence to the contrary.

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10.  My product How to Read Fitness Research is the answer to this problem.  Oh…and every time you come to this page and you don’t purchase a copy a fairy loses her wings.  Just sayin’.

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11.  I pretty much love this post.

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12.  I was at a conference a while ago when the presenter asked a room full of trainers (rather off-handedly) if they remembered how glycolysis works.  Not one hand went up.  If you don’t understand the basic principles of science related to the methods you’re teaching…umm…how are you training people who rely on you to separate fact from fiction?

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13.  A woman on my Google+ page, who is a fitness professional, posted this picture the other day.

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Perhaps that “fitness professionals” as a whole shouldn’t be criticizing the people we claim that we’re supposed to help.  If you are in this profession, think before you post.

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14.  My hair is turning almost totally grey.  Seriously.  (Okay…that was random.  Just looked in the mirror.)

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15.  Staring a new movement…OCCUPY THE GYM.  Who’s with me?

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16.  I think you can build a body just fine without deadlifts, squats, or the bench press.  (Oooo…that is gonna get some people fired up)

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17.  Related to the comment above, I love all three exercises, but if  you couldn’t do any of them I still think you could get pretty buff.

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18.  If you didn’t know already, I am a social media addict.  I’m always updating my Facebook.  And these days I’m starting to find Twitter to be almost on par with Facebook in terms of awesomeness.  I’ve discovered that your Twitter experience is largely determined by who you follow.  Google+ is a little lacking for me, but I still have it.  Maybe it will grow on me.

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19.  My buddy Nick is hosting a strength CRUISE!!!  Seems like a pretty good idea to me.  Check it out!

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20.  I’m out of time.  Gotta run.

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Okay…that appears to be it for me.  Timer is going off and writing time is done.  Thanks to all of you for reading and sharing my stuff.  Much more to come now that I’m back in full force.

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Have a fantastic week!

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In a post last week I mentioned that fitness industry superhero Alwyn Cosgrove was going to be putting on a webinar called The Death of Personal Training.  Well…on Monday night that seminar took place and, as many who signed up probably already know, there were so many people trying to log in that the webinar service actually crashed!  I think there was such a rush of people trying to log in that Alwyn was single handedly responsible for the following afternoon in Virginia.

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In case you missed out and weren’t able to see it, here is the link to the replay (no sign up needed):  The Death of Personal Training

However, the fact that there was such an influx of people trying to login for this webinar tells me that there are a heck of a lot of fitness professionals who want to improve their business.  The good news (in case you haven’t heard it yet) is that after the seminar Alwyn introduced a special offer in the form of a new program called From Counting Reps to Counting Revenue.  Frankly, I probably couldn’t do the program justice if I tried to describe it so go check it out for yourself.

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From Counting Reps to Counting Revenue  <– Get the deets here!

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For those who aren’t in the know, one thing that happens when you offer to help someone promote a product in the online world is that they typically send you something called “swipe copy” that you can use to help them sell the product.  In short, it is usually in the form or pre-written emails or blog posts that you can use to provide your readers content.  Quite often, this is why a lot of emails from those promoting products look pretty much the same and seem as though they aren’t very authentic.  It is because they aren’t.

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I’ve never really liked swipe copy and don’t use it.  I prefer to write my own reviews.  In this particular case, this is especially true for 2 reasons.

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1.  Alwyn’s Product is Legit and I want this review to be authentic!

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Alwyn has not only been there and done that, but he’s helped others transform their businesses too.  To me, this is more important than just doing it.  He and his wife Rachel have shown repeatedly with their mentorship groups that they can produce results not just with themselves, but with others.  THIS give the program credibility in my eyes.  I’ve already seen the first week of videos and they are fantastic!

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2.  I know what it is like to struggle.

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A lot of other people reviewing this product have wildly successful fitness facilities.  Many of them have done it right from the beginning and have never known what it is really like to worry about making lease every month, whether they’ll be able to make their car payment, or even feed themselves.  I, on the other hand, know this.

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When my wife and I launched our facility several years back we did it all wrong.  We didn’t have a business plan.  We funded it with a line of credit and some credit cards.  We didn’t know which numbers to track and if you’d asked me at any given time what we had made that day (or that month) I probably couldn’t have told you.

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What I did know was that some months paying the bills was easy and there was a few extra dollars in our pockets.  When times were tough it was hard to pay the bills.  When times were tough, we’d send out the occasional flyer that never seemed to have the response rate that people talked about on the internet.  We tried running bootcamps (which were okay), but we didn’t know enough to have upsells in place to really make these profitable.

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What we did have was passion!!!  (If you’re a fitness professional I KNOW you do too!)

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We loved helping people and we figured that by simply becoming the best at what we did our business would thrive and we’d make tons of money.  So we leased a place, slapped a sign above the door, bought some equipment, and went to work.  And work we did.  Most weeks we worked up to 60 hours.  We’d work mornings…and nights.  We lost touch with family and friends as we worked ourselves to the bone.  And when we tried to hire staff, the process was a nightmare and we either had to fire them or they quit and swiped the clients they had from us.  Basically, we hadn’t bought ourselves a business.  We’d bought ourselves a job.  And it was a crappy job with no vacation, little pay (after expenses), and no benefits.

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In the end, it came down to a point where my wife and I decided we wanted to have a family.  And we both knew we couldn’t do it with both of us working 60 hours per week with very little money…or at least that wasn’t the life we wanted for our family.  So we opted to close our doors, sell everything off, and walk away.  And since we didn’t have an exit strategy (as Alwyn discusses in his product) we literally lost tens of thousands of dollars and we’re still paying for that until today.

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Now I don’t want you to take this to mean we weren’t good.

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At the risk of sounding arrogant, we were not only good, but we were DAMN GOOD.  Darn near excellent actually!  Almost every single one of our clients lost fat, gained muscle, reduced pain, and improved their health while in our facility.  I have testimonials to prove it.  And our client retention was excellent!  But there weren’t enough new people coming through the door every day and we certainly weren’t maximizing the amounts we couldn’t been making from each client with upsells, other services, and so on.

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In short, when it comes to running a fitness business, being good simply is NOT good enough.  You can be the best in the freaking world, but if you don’t have good business practices, you’ll end up with your doors closed.

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Now for me, this actually ended up to be a blessing in disguise as I ended up with consulting gigs, doing work for a government funded bariatric medical program, and I’m still able to train clients out of a friend’s facility.  In fact, it wasn’t until we closed up shop and I was able to spend less time in my business that I became able to share my thoughts through my blog with the world.  And we had a beautiful daughter.

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But not everyone is so fortunate.  And to this day I regret not having done it right from the beginning.  Had we had the systems in place we could’ve run the facility, made money, and stepped away to grow our family at the same time.

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So let me conclude with this…

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I consider myself to be a good person to take exercise and nutrition advice from.  I know these areas like I created them myself.  I can get results with almost any client you put in front of me.  But I am probably the worst person to take business advice from.  As a business owner you MUST know both of these areas if you are to succeed.  And since I don’t know business (although I’ve learned a TON about it after the fact) I can’t really tell you how to run a facility.

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What I do know is that Alwyn knows fitness business.  If you currently own a fitness business you owe it to yourself to pick up his product and turn your business around so that you never have to struggle.  I say this sincerely because I’ve been there and I know how you feel.  I know some of you might balk at the price (it is $297) I can’t say enough times how much money and heartache you’ll be able to save yourself if you just get your business on the right path.  Please do yourself a favor and pick this up.

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Counting Reps to Counting Revenue  <– Get it Here!

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I should also note that there is a 100% guarantee on this product and if you don’t feel it is worth the money you’ve paid (I KNOW it will be), just ask and your money back and it will be returned with no questions.

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And finally, this product is ONLY on sale until Friday September 2nd and then it will be pulled off the market.  Yep…pulled.  As in gone.

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Counting Reps to Counting Revenue  <– Get it While You Can!

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If you are a fitness professional, you will not regret it.

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In the recent past I’ve had the incredible opportunity to communicate a few time via email with fitness industry superstar Alwyn Cosgrove.

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*Side note:  How freakin’ awesome is that???*

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In any case, during the process I discovered that he has a webinar coming up called The Death of Personal Training.  If you’re a fitness professional looking to establish yourself in this industry or you’ve already got your foot in the door and you’re hoping to make this your career I’d highly suggest that you listen to what Alwyn has to say.

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The underlying component of this seminar is the concept fitness industry has completely changed and over the past few years, the best ways to market, operate and train has been changing and that most fitness professionals are NOT changing to keep up.

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The statistics for fitness based small businesses are alarming!

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Within the first 5 years of business 80% of small fitness businesses are out of business!  And by 8 years 16 out of 17 of them have closed their doors.  In other words, just 94% of small fitness businesses are out of business in under 10 years!!!  Many will lose a lot of money.  Some will go bankrupt.  But almost all of them will close and if you’re not prepared for what is coming in the fitness industry you could very well be one of them.

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As the seminar title suggests, personal training as we know it is dying.

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The good news is that Alywn Cosgrove (one of the owners of the most profitable gym per square foot in the United States) knows what it takes to build a great business and he’s ready to share the blueprint for his business so you don’t have to become one of those statistics.

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In the Death of Personal Training webinar here’s what Alwyn is going to share with you:
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- why it’s the scariest and greatest time in the fitness industry to open and run a gym
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- how the fitness business model has drastically changed throughout the years and if you are not changing with it, you will be out of it soon

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- 5 steps to not only survive but dominate your marketplace
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- the turning point in his career that will help you take your business to the next level
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Interested yet?  Yeah…me too.  Here are the rest of the deets.

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Title of the webinar: The Death of Personal Training

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Presenter of the webinar: Alwyn Cosgrove

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Date of the webinar: Monday, August 22nd

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Time of the webinar: 8pm Eastern

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Alwyn assures me that this webinar is full of business building information, and could be the most important hour of your business’s life, so reserve your spot now:

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The Death of Personal Training Webinar <– Register Here for FREE

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Admittedly, I am not sure how many people Alwyn will be letting on the webinar, but I know a lot of people will be trying to get on (Alwyn is kinda big time you know?), so reserve your spot as soon as possible.  Oh…and if you can’t make yourself available for the webinar at 8PM on Monday don’t worry.  You’ll be able to download the webinar after that fact, but only if you register in advance.

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The Death of Personal Training Webinar <– Register Here for FREE

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So that’s it for today.  If you’re a fitness professional I can’t recommend this webinar strongly enough and I won’t belabor the point any longer.  I’m going to watch this webinar.  If you are a personal trainer, I’d suggest you do the same.

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Today I just wanted to drop a quick note to share a few things.

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1.  FitJerk Interview

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Today an interview was posted that I did with a guy that calls himself FitJerk.  If you hadn’t guessed by the name, he calls himself this because he’s delightfully pleasant, politically correct, and loves to sip tea and eat crumpets.  *Note the obvious sarcasm*.  He’s actually a straight shooter and doesn’t take BS from anyone which is part of what made the interview so cool to do.  If you want to check it out you can do so HERE.  (Some language in this interview not suitable for work or those who are offended by such things).

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2.  Thoughts on Intervals

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I was recently asked to write a piece for the Ontario Society for Health and Fitness Bulletin (which is an evidence based publication) on my thoughts on interval training for fat loss.  Interestingly, they paired it up with another article on the same topic that presented a different viewpoint.  You can check it out HERE.  (My stuff is on page 3).

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3.  Last call for Muscle Imbalances Revealed Upper Body

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Yesterday I wrote a post on why I think MIRU is going to be solid.  So today I just wanted to remind you that the sale where you can save $70 on this product will end at the end of the day TODAY.  After that, the price will go from $77 to $147!

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Of course, if you’re still leery about shelling out the dough, I also want to remind you that there is a 60 day money back guarantee on this product so if you’re interested in checking out the product, I’d highly advise that you take advantage of the deal now before the price jumps.

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So that’s it.  Last call.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.  :)

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Muscle Imbalances Revealed Upper Body <– Get it now before the price goes up!

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