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I have written numerous times in the past that, in many cases, it isn’t necessarily the magic of a specific program that brings about results, but the consistency with which a person is able to stick to that program.  If the program is reasonable and the person follows it relatively closely, results should follow.

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So to me, getting results is just as often about overcoming barriers that get in the way of sticking to a program as it is about having the “right” program.   When a barrier gets in the path of any plan and that barrier is not addressed, consistency can fall off and results immediately begin to suffer.

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Dealing With Pain

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I recently wrote about the fact that I’ve moved to a new facility in a different city and have begun establishing a brand new personal training clientele.  Of the first 7 people I started training 4 reported having a history of some sort of back pain and one even had an acute bout as a result of a yoga class preventing him from training for over a week (it turns out that he was having a lot of discogenic pain and is very intolerant to flexion).  This means that 57% of my new clients have some experience or history with back pain!!!

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Now some would argue that it is not a trainer’s job to diagnose and treat back pain, and I generally agree.  I most often refer clients out to professionals who are more suited to deal with such problems.  However, I do feel very strongly that a fitness professional should be able to work around pain and, more importantly, be able to prevent such pain from recurring as much as is possible.

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When a client is in pain their workouts suffer, their results suffer, often they deviate from their nutritional guidelines out of frustration, and if they miss workouts, you could potentially lose the money you would have earned during that training spot.  And if they’re not getting results, you’re not getting referrals either!  Back pain robs your clients of results and can rob your wallet.

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That said, my friend John Izzo has recently rereleased his Shatterproof Spine product as a downloadable video and I think that this is an excellent resource for trainers to learn how to manage low back pain and prevent future occurrences in their clients.  John has (like me) been training clients for over a decade and he’s gone a ton of experience dealing with clients of all kinds.

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Attached to this are two fantastic bonuses.  The first an ebook that will help you identify at-risk back pain sufferers with 5 simple drills and the second is a 30 minute downloadable video titled “Eye of the Trainer” that covers the art assessing 7 specific exercises as they relate to back pain.  I really enjoyed this one actually.

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If you’d like to be able to crush this barrier for your clients, keep them out of pain, get them results, and maintain your income then this product is definitely worth viewing and I highly recommend it.

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Shatterproof Spine <== Check it out here!

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A little while back I posted the following video on my Facebook because it got me pretty fired up and I wanted to stimulate some discussion.

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Literally within the first minute fitness guru Paul Chek states that “cardiovascular exercise is one of the most dangerous things you can do”.  He then goes on to suggest that the cortisol response from cardio is going to be detrimental to your health while lifting heavy weights repeatedly is somehow not going to have a similar response (hint: cortisol also rises after resistance training).  He later concludes that your body will adjust to cardiovascular exercise and that the number of calories you can burn will ultimately go down over time and prevent you from being able to lose fat.

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Of course, I find this interesting because I know a few endurance cyclists (and have seen data from cyclists in various labs) and it appears to me that these people are able to generate HUGE wattages on their bikes and burn through far more calories in an hour of cycling than and a novice rider.  Interestingly, I am betting these people are possibly healthier than the novice riders too, but I’m just speculating here.

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Then…to make matters worse, Dr. Mecola goes on to post this article that appeared on Facebook with the title “New Study Shows Cardio Workout May Damage Your Heart”.  The title on the actual page is “One of the Worst Forms of Exercise There is”.  Of course, they’re actually talking about this study which ultimately shows that there are some minor right ventricular changes in athletes who have completed endurance races between 3 and 11 hours.

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Are these really dangerous?  Maybe.  But the reality is that Mercola and his gang are using these changes (and all the stuff from other studies they citied) as surrogate markers for risk of death or cardiac issues which isn’t really a well established relationship.  In fact, part of the conclusion states (with reference to the right ventricular changes) “that the long-term clinical significance of which warrants further study.”

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Further to that, these are people who ran for 3-11 hours straight!  I couldn’t run for 11 hours if I was being chased by Freddy Krueger.  And if I did, you could probably bet that my heart wouldn’t like it.  As with most things in physiology, there is usually some kind of inverted U pattern for improvement.  No stimulus or a very low stimulus provides very little rests.  A mid-range (optimal) stimulus provides better results.  And going too far and really pushing the envelope can result in some sort of decrease in results.  In this case, the type of training for the races might be optimal for performance, but not health.  Truth be told, I’m not sure the results really even tell us that.

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What I do know is that I’ve never seen cardiovascular exercise listed as one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular death.  In fact, a new paper detailing the leading LIFETIME risk factors for cardiovascular disease listed hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), and smoking as the 4 most major risk factors.  Nowhere on that list did I see “doing cardio will kill you” or “cardio will esplode your adrenalzzz”.

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Going a little further down the rabbit hole, there has been plenty of research showing that exercise (including steady state cardio via activities as easy as walking) can improve health.  Heck, you could even do it on a treadmill…in running shoes!  (Yes…I know…blasphemy).  If you have the time I’d suggest you watch Dr. Robert Ross talk about it HERE.  He’s a great speaker with a ton of knowledge and I’d highly suggest you bookmark it if you don’t have time to watch it right now.

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Does this mean I think steady state exercise is incredible for weight/fat loss?  Not necessarily, but there is some evidence to suggest that cardio alone can contribute to weight loss with around 200 minutes per week making a pretty meaningful difference in some studies.  But if you’re familiar with my blog you’ll know (via the link in the previous sentence) that when combined with diet I don’t think what type of exercise you choose (steady state, metabolic workouts, intervals) really makes a difference in terms of fat loss anyway.

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I am not personally a fan of long term steady state activity, as I prefer higher paced superset type workouts in the interest of time and preserving muscle mass during fat loss (with the calorie deficit coming mostly from diet).  However, if you know someone who wants to hop on a treadmill for their 30 minutes of steady state cardio they probably aren’t going to die.  In fact, it might just improve their health.

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Don’t let any internet fearmonger tell you otherwise!

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PS: If you’ve found this useful or are just plain old fed up with people making up stories about the dangers of cardio, please share this post.

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PPS: Using studies that only support your pet theories without examining the entire body of scientific evidence (as was done with the article on the dangers of cardio) is called “cherry picking”.  If you’d like to learn more about how to properly read fitness research you can check out my product HERE.

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As I alluded to in my post yesterday, the past couple of years have resulted in huge perspective shifts for me.  Well…far be it for me to stop the trend of change.  As of mid-December I gave up my position in bariatric medicine and decided to take a big step and move my personal training practice to Toronto.

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I am now part of the personal training team at Medcan which is Canada’s leading preventive healthcare clinic, with over 60 physicians, 240 staff and a 50,000 square foot, state-of-the-art facility, located in the heart of Toronto’s financial district.  They offer a comprehensive health assessment, genetic testing, links with Johns Hopkins Medicine, and a whole host of other incredible services.  The personal training area is complete with turfed areas for drills, sleds for pushing, battle ropes, treatment tables, and even a Bod Pod for body composition testing.  In short, this clinic is AWESOME and I’m ready to kick it into 2012 working with one of the best teams in the country.

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Of course, this means for me that I’ll be commuting on the train or bus back and forth for up to a few hours every day so I’ll have plenty of time to read, write content for the blog, and finally pull together one or two of the projects that have been on my mind for a while.  So if you’re in Toronto and you’re in need of training please contact me at admin@markyoungtrainingsystems.com for pricing and availability.

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Alternatively, if you’re a fitness professional and you’re interested in buying me lunch chatting over coffee shoot me a note and perhaps we can connect.

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Just over two years ago I thought I had it all figured out.  I had a degree in kinesiology, I’d been in the fitness industry for over a decade, trained clients for tens of thousands of hours, and had co-owned a training facility with my incredible wife, and I was up on almost every single fitness and nutrition happening on the planet.  I felt at that time I was ready to finally break out and publish my first articles in major online publications as well as starting to blog on a larger scale (rather than just for my clients).  So I did and this blog was the result of that decision.  I published a few articles, connected with some big names in the industry, starting writing posts, and had a rapidly growing readership.

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Then something happened.

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My wife and I decided to close our training facility so that we could focus a lot less on running a business and more on having a family.  I took a half time position with a Bariatric Medical Program to help treat people with obesity and continued to train some of my personal training clients out of a friend’s facility (as well as maintaining a small group of online training clients).

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I Lost My Voice

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The whole process of becoming a dad, learning more about obesity, getting more in touch with the research I’d been neglecting, and working with clients whose lives had been markedly impacted by their weight created a major perspective shift for me.  I kept trying to write the “same old stuff”, but it became harder and harder to talk about counting calories, carb cycling, and the detailed intricacies of physiology that improve body composition when I was coming to realize more and more that few of these things really matter for the vast majority of the population.  I love them.  They are important.  But not as important as some people would have us believe.  They are the details…and for a lot of people…the details won’t matter a lot until they take care of the bigger issues preventing them from succeeding.

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But when I started to talk about “less sexy” concepts like behavior change, obesity, general health, and slow (rather than idiotically fast resulting in regain) weight loss my readership dropped.  And further to that, I felt like my joking and fun loving personality didn’t really come through in these posts as I was trying to force content on an industry that wasn’t really interested in what I was saying…or at least I thought they weren’t.  In the blog writing world we talk about the way we write as our “voice” and I felt like I had lost mine.

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Getting My Voice Back

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As a result of the perspective change I’d had and the difficulty writing content people wanted to read I slowly decreased my writing to the point where I wasn’t really putting out much at all.  I felt like it wasn’t really reaching people and it certainly wasn’t fun anymore either.  But over the last several months I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact I want to have on this world and this industry and my vision for what I’d like to become is slowly forming.  I feel a passion burning and I KNOW that whether the industry is ready for it or not, it is on me to create a change in whatever way I can for whoever might be listening.  I’ve got my voice back, I know what I’m going to say, and I am going to bring it in 2012.

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I want to thank all of my readers for supporting me (and also making me laugh on Facebook and Twitter in the meantime).  In the coming year I hope to provide you with a steady stream of content to make you think, challenge you, and help you.  I appreciate whatever help you can give me by sharing my stuff along the way so I can reach as many people as possible.

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Let’s get after it!

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The answers ranged from 400 calories to 1200 calories, all the way up to “GET THAT IN MA BELLEH” (with my wife also being a smartass and suggesting that it was 4500 calories – Love you baby).  After taking guesses a dietitian colleague of mine and I independently totalled up the plate using online calorie software.  And interestingly enough, we got totally different answers!

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Her total was 1500 calories whereas mine was closer to 1000.  But when we looked at the reason for the differences they were largely attributable to differences in the estimated sizes of the portions on the plate (we both agreed that the meat was probably pork).  However, the big point here is that whichever estimate you agree with the fact remains that the food on that plate represents far more calories than most people should be consuming in a single meal.  It also means that even trained professionals have a hard time agreeing on quantities when looking at a plate like this.

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With the Christmas season upon us and the number of parties, dinners, and potluck events that will inevitably be a part of it, I think that this plate would actually even be a conservative estimate of intake for a lot of people.  There are almost always pre-dinner treats like veggie trays, hummus, and chocolates kicking around.  An even then a single plate of food might be less than most people eat (you know…try a little of everything and then go back for a second helping of the stuff you really like).  Combine that with the calories from wine, beer, and desserts (you know you HAVE to try at least one slice of each kind of pie right?) and you’ll be consuming a boatload energy that will ultimately be stored as fat.

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Doing this task made me think back to previous holiday seasons where I hadn’t paid much attention at events like these.  This year I think I’ll be a little more attentive to what I’m eating.  If nothing else, when you’re making up your plate this holiday season I hope this task inspires you to be a little more cautious with your consumption to0.  After all, the best way to lose weight in January is not to have gained it in the first place.

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Have a great weekend!

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PS: Today is the last day to save $100 on the Peak Diet and Training Summit and (due to popular demand) there is now a 2 pay option for those who prefer to pay in installments.  This package is a true beast with 15 DVDs, 2 info packed manuals, 2.0 NSCA continuing education credits, and a bunch of other bonuses available only this week.  There is no risk as the product is fully refundable so go and pick it up before the deal disappears.  Order your copy HERE.

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Last week I shared a couple videos by my friend Joe Dowdell and his partner in crime Dr. Mike Roussell.  In case you missed it, Joe is the owner of a 10,000 square foot facility in New York City called Peak Performance that has recently been ranked as one of the top 10 gyms in America.  He’s also possibly one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to connect with.

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In any case, this past summer Joe held a diet and training summit as his facility in conjunction with Dr. Mike Rossell and, fortunately for us, he had the whole thing recorded.  Today Joe is releasing all of that footage and for this week only he’s offering a $100 discount on the whole package.

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Frankly, I’m still working my way through the material (there is a ton of it), but so far I am pretty damn impressed at the sheer volume of information in this product.  The training section alone covers client goals, assessment, principles of training, periodization, program design, templates, and even actual client examples from Joe’s personal files.  And that is only taking you to about half way through the training component of the product!

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The nutrition component talks about the various stages of nutritional change (from nutritional freestyling to counting and compliance) and provides Mike’s comprehensive guidelines for each level.  As I mentioned last week, I really like the way Mike breaks down behavior goals into actionable steps rather than using meal plans and I feel that any trainer or coach could benefit from utilizing this method.  Of course, meal plans can still be used for specific times when rapid advances are necessary, but I feel that Mike’s method is more sustainable for most people.

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In short, I think the resource is absolutely solid and I’d recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in stepping up their game.  I’ve also just learned that this product has been approved for 2.0 CEUs by the NSCA (which is pretty amazing) so if you’re closing in on the end of the year and you need to grab some quickly then this product will definitely meet your needs.

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Of course, since this is a product launch there are fast action bonuses so I figure I should mention these for those who are interested, but are in need of a gentle nudge.

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First 50 Customers

…will get PEAK 30 which is a Rapid Body Transformation program used at Peak Performance including meal plans and shopping lists.

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All Customers in the First 24 Hours

…will get 13 Naked Nutrition Bites white papers on topics including how to battle carb cravings, surviving the holidays, and more.

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And there are more

…but I’ll let Joe tell you about them himself HERE.

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Basically, I think this resource is definitely worth checking out and with the $100 dollar savings and the fast action bonuses the best time to purchase is right now.  If this seems like something you might be interested in you can check it out below.

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Peak Diet and Training Summit <== Get it Here!

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For a long while now I’ve talked about progressive behavior change as the primary driver for fat loss.  Frankly, I believe in this concept so strongly that I probably haven’t written a formal meal plan for a client in over 5 years.  Going beyond that, I rarely even have clients count calories as this is dependent on the client’s need and where they are at in their training or diet program.  That is not to say that I don’t cover nutrition, but I feel that written diet plans are largely ineffective.

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Today my colleague Dr. Mike Roussell has shared a video that I feel addresses this concept very well and shows exactly how a fitness professional can go about improving nutritional compliance and results with their clients.  In fact, he provides the very content that he covered at the Peak Diet & Nutrition Summit this past summer and I think some of the concepts are absolutely fantastic.  To me, not having to write diet plans has been a major time saver AND my client results have improved more in the long term as people are able to stick to my current plans much better.

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I should say in advance that I am not totally in agreement with the some of Mike’s thoughts on meal frequency and carb consumption, but the key points in this interview extend beyond nutrition itself and relate more to how to effectively convey that information to clients to get the best results possible.  If you are a fitness professional and you are interested in learning how to bring about the best fat loss for your clients (or yourself) then this video is totally worth seeing.

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Fat Loss Without Diet Plans  <== Check it out!

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Also, if you missed the video I mentioned the other day where Joe Dowdell talks about how we went about creating one of the top gyms in the United States, you can view that here too.  But please don’t forget that both videos are only available for a limited time and will then be taken down.

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Fat Loss Without Diet Plans  <== Will be taken down soon!

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Have a great weekend!

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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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Last year my buddy Eric Cressey released an incredible product called Show & Go where he detailed the very process he uses with his own clients to gain muscle and get strong at the same time.  I’ve honestly working on an article for you for the end of the week, but I didn’t want to let another day go by without mentioning that Eric is currently holding a sale on this incredible product until Friday at midnight and you can pick up the whole thing (with all the bonuses) for 50% off!  And since I’ve been pretty swamped lately I asked Eric if he’d share a little bit about his programming and his new product.

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Check it out!

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Hey Eric, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you please introduce yourself to those of my readers who have obviously been living under a rock and have never heard of you?

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My pleasure. I’m the president and co-founder of Cressey Performance, a high-performance training facility located just west of Boston, MA. I deal with clients ages 9-70 from all walks of life and various sports, although our “niche” has become baseball performance training. This off-season, we’ll have over 70 professional baseball players at Cressey Performance for their off-season training.

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Additionally, I’ve created several DVD sets and written numerous books and hundreds of articles over the years, most on my website, www.EricCressey.com. I do a considerable amount of consulting for both individuals and companies, speaking around the globe, and have even published some research along the way. All of this work is in the areas of corrective exercise, strength and conditioning, baseball training, and assessment and program design.

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And for those of us who are familiar with your work, can you share something about Eric Cressey that most people don’t already know? The more embarrassing the better, of course.

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I come from a family of accountants – and up until the end of my freshman year of college, I was convinced that I was going to be an accountant. I even competed in the state accounting championships my senior year of high school (yes, that’s an actual contest).

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Also, I can’t iron.

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Put 600+ pounds in front of me and ask me to pick it up. I’m on it.

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Ask me to write a book? Done.

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Put eight miles per hour on a fastball in an off-season? Piece of cake.

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Iron a shirt? Complete and utter chaos. I’m like a deer in headlights and usually wind up burned – and with a wrinkled shirt.

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That’s awesome man!  I’ve got some pretty good shirt ironing skills…but I don’t think most people would be interested in reading a book about it.  What do you think is the most important consideration one must take into account when when training for both size and strength at the same time?

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I think the most overlooked factor is definitely volume manipulation – and, more specifically, an attention to incorporating deloading periods. Most people who are just trying to gain size seem to always do absurd amounts of volume, but that’s at odds with the heavy emphasis on quality over quantity that you see in the world’s best strength sport athletes. It’s not hard to appreciate that many folks who want both wind up doing too much in terms of both volume and intensity – and end up injured or simply frustrated (and spending three hours in the gym for every session).

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To that end, it’s important to integrate deloading periods every 4-5 weeks to allow the nervous system, muscles/tendons, and endocrine system to bounce back.

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How do you feel your product Show & Go addresses these issues?

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EC: It does so via a few avenues.

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First, each phase includes a specifically targeted deloading week (the fourth week) where the volume is reduced.

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Second, there is considerably exercise variation; you won’t do an exercise for longer than a month in the program. Additionally, in many cases, some of the exercises aren’t used longer than a week. So, the variety inherent to the program assists in creating overload and even overreaching – but definitely not overtraining.

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Okay cool.  But how do you feel Show & Go is different from all of the other strength and size programs available on the internet?

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EC: At risk of sounding arrogant, the creator is what differentiates this program from others that are on the market right now. We live in a time where many authors of fitness programs on the internet don’t actively train anyone – and many never did in the first place. With how dynamic the fields of fitness and human performance are, this is a pretty scary thought. You only get one body; you should be confident in placing it in someone else’s hands with an exercise program of their design. Otherwise, it would be like a graduate student purchasing How to Read Fitness Research from you – with you having never read or published a study in a scholarly journal. Perspective matters.

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I’m proud that I coach loads of people – from 9-year-old kids, to professional athletes, to Olympians, to clients of all ages and goals – six days a week at my facility, Cressey Performance. In the month of September alone, I wrote 114 programs for clients; I’m very proud of the amount of time, energy, and thought that goes into not only creating these programs, but interpreting how folks respond to them. That’s the same kind of thought process that went into Show and Go; we put a large group of “guinea pigs” from all walks of life through the program before it was ever released to the public. You’ll find many of their results and testimonials on the sales page.

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That said, in terms of differentiating the actual program, Show and Go provides a lot more in terms of exercise variety, at least within the confines of what “typical” gyms’ equipment selections allow. I built more “on the fly” strength tests into the programs on top of the already-challenging loading protocols. I included both 2-, 3-, and 4-day-a-week training programs to accommodate individuals’ unique schedules. I provided exercise alternatives for those who lift somewhere that doesn’t have all the equipment they’d need to perform the program as-written.

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Additionally, self-publishing afforded me several luxuries; most notably, I had no restrictions on the length of the text. I wrote as much or as little as I wanted – and basically did whatever was required to make the program exactly what I wanted it to be. Exercise descriptions weren’t limited to a certain number of sentences, and if I wanted to include seven exercises in a specific day’s session instead of six, for instance, it was okay. I also included ready-to-use templates that people can print out and take to the gym to record weights used, whereas traditional books are never conducive to this.

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And, on perhaps the coolest note, instead of just exercise photos for demonstrations, you’ll find an entire video library where you can view the proper technique for every single exercise in the Show and Go program (roughly 175 exercises). Assuming an average of 12-15 seconds per video, you’ve essentially gotten yourself the equivalent of a 35-45 minute DVD on top of all this programming and my charming wit and personality.

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Okay…now to the nitty gritty. There are a lot of products out there touting completely unrealistic outcomes in terms of strength, muscle mass, and fat loss over the period of a short program. What kinds of gains can the AVERAGE lifter who is willing to work hard realistically expect if they follow your program?

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Before Show and Go was ever released, I put a big group of male and female “guinea pigs” through the program with some outstanding results. It wasn’t uncommon to see increases of 80 pounds and more on the squat and deadlift, with improvements about half those amounts on bench pressing and chin-up totals (understandably smaller, given the smaller window of adaptation for upper body strength). We had people drop more than 25 pounds and 5% body fat while on the program, and we had scrawny guys who gained as much as 24 pounds in the four months. It came down to what their starting goals were, and how they attacked things nutritionally on the side.

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We even had many athletes who used this program in conjunction with their sports training – from endurance competitors to rugby players – with excellent improvements.

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The cool thing is that literally every single one of these “guinea pigs” made a point of noting how much better they felt; they improved mobility and moved more fluently by the end of the program. This is a stark contrast to the aches and pains you normally see with programs geared toward performance improvements; the program not only improved performance and made people bigger, stronger, and leaner; it also helped set the stage for healthy future training.

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I think the take-home point is that – as with any program – you’ll get out of Show and Go proportionately to what you put into it, regardless of your goals.

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Absolutely!  Where can my readers get access to Show & Go?

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They can check it out at www.ShowandGoTraining.com, where it is on sale at 50% through this Friday at midnight.

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Excellent! Thanks for taking the time out to do this interview man!

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My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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