Exercise advice from former fitness coach

What I used to tell New Year Resolutioners.

Any regular gym dreads the spike of new signups each January. For the first three weeks of the new year the place is packed; newbies are hogging the equipment and there are no towels in the locker room. For consistent gym goers this period sucks.

Meanwhile personal trainers are swimming in leads from former and prospective clients looking to improve some aspect of their health and fitness. Among this group, some will actually show up to a session with a trainer/nutritionist or sign up for program.

Those that show up should be applauded, change is difficult. Unfortunately most will revert back to their previous behavior within a few weeks or months, and will find themselves making the same resolution for the Xth consecutive year. Yet there are those that mange to achieve their goals.

As a former fitness industry professional that has worked with professional athletes and general population clients with varying fitness levels, I’ve seen it all. Badly out of shape clients would eventually outperform NHL players. Other clients that were sedentary for years, were able to cut their Body Mass Index (BMI) in half.

I was fortunate to learn from one of the best fitness professionals in the industry, which also guaranteed me a steady stream of clients because of his reputation. Despite the knowledge and experience gained during my fitness coaching career, the truth of the matter is, like any other trainer, I had very limited influence on the success of my clients.

People that achieve their fitness goals approach their health with a similar approach to anyone that is successful in any other domain. Instead of relying on discipline, which is overrated, they prioritize their health and set up systems to make it hard to fail. Good setups are what separates those that achieve and maintain their fitness ambitions, against those that make the same New Year resolution year after year.

Today’s article will cover the best tips and practices to help ensure you will be one of the people that others look at in admiration.

If this week’s article does not interest you, please check out some other recent ones:

Luigi Mangione chose to be Tyler Durden

The world needs another Ben Franklin

The Power of Confidence

The Most Obvious Secret to Success

Obvious Fitness Advice That Works

Depending on your fitness goals, some of these might be more applicable than others. At a high level, if your goal is weight loss, you need to maintain a caloric deficit (burn more calories than you consume). In this case the specific activity matters less, it’s more about consistency and avoiding poor habits that inhibit your process. What to avoid matters far more than what you need to do. Strategy > Tactics.

On the other hand, if you are trying to get more muscular, put on size or get stronger, avoiding certain activities will not be enough to reach your goals. Tactics > Strategy.

This list is going to stick more to the strategy level instead of getting overly specific, since it’s difficult to give tailored advice that will apply to everyone’s situation.

1. Make it difficult to miss workouts

Regardless of your goal, the best trainer or fitness advice in the world is useless if you can’t stick to a consistent workout schedule. Relying on will power alone is a terrible strategy and will guarantee your failure. If you had such rock solid discipline and willpower to begin with, you wouldn’t be making fitness related resolutions (or read this article).

Most in shape people lack the resolve of a David Goggins or Jocko Willink, instead they integrate fitness into their daily lives. The best workout routine, is the one you can consistently stick to. Instead of trying to flood your garden once per month, water it a little each day (I don’t know anything about gardening).

(What Grok thinks Jocko and Goggins looks like)

Whichever fitness plan you opt for, make sure it’s more difficult to miss a workout than to avoid it. If you choose a gym over an hour away, you are not going to make it. If your routine relies on all the stars aligning, you are not going to make it.

I recommend training first thing in the morning, when you wake up, every day (or each workday). If you make it a daily thing, it has the advantage of more quickly becoming part of your routine, and if you miss a workout because of sickness or travel, it’s less problematic. Some people manage to consistently find time to train during lunch or after work, this has never worked well for me or my clients because work/life has an easier time getting in the way the later into the day that you wait.

When it comes to fitness, consistency is king. A common practice that works well is to take a paper calendar (yes paper). On days where you work out, trace a line from the top left corner down to the bottom right corner. On days where you eat healthy, trace a line from the top right corner, down to the bottom left corner. Your goal is to have as many X’s as possible, and avoid consecutive blank days.

2. Don’t eat sh!t, or eat way less.

If your goal is to lose weight or get more lean it’s not complicated. You already know the answer, you just wish there was an easier way. Assuming you are not already jacked to the gills on Ozempic, if you want to lose weight, you need to eat less and probably eat less garbage.

I mentioned above but if you want to lose weight you need to in a caloric deficit. The number of calories you can burn in a day/week is limited, therefore to drive the deficit, you need to also look at your intake.

You don’t need to drive a crazy deficit to see results, assuming you are not already at a low body fat percentage, if you maintain a daily deficit of around 500 calories, you would lose about 1 pound per week. Considering you burn ~800-1,200 calories a day just by being awake, assuming you aren’t eating excessively, you don’t need to burn as many calories through exercise as you would think.

If you limit your inactive days and avoid eating in excess, above what you expend, you will gradually see your weight drop. The shorter the time horizon you give yourself, the bigger the deficit you will need. The trouble with steep deficits, is that they are very hard to maintain beyond a few weeks or months.

I’m not going to play internet nutritionist but it’s hard to gain weight if you only consume meat, fish, eggs & vegetables while only drinking coffee, water or tea. Sugar, ultra processed foods and alcohol will not help you achieve your health goals.

3. Avoid unnecessary injuries. Weigh risk vs reward.

We touched on it in point #1, if you can’t exercise, you can’t reach your fitness goals. Nothing can derail your fitness progress more than injuries. Big or small, they pull you out of your routine and put you behind. Injuries can happen to anyone, regardless of fitness level, you can’t reduce the probability to zero but there’s a lot you can do to minimize it.

Having spent tens of thousands of hours in a gym, I’ve seen enough bro science and pure stupidity to say that even intelligent people seem to shut their brains off as soon as they put on workout gear. If you don’t want to get injured, here are some basic principals you should implement & understand.

• Don’t Skip your Warm up.

  • This is so simple but this is probably the most overlooked thing. It doesn’t need to be overly intricate but make sure that you do something that gets some blood pumping into all the muscles you intend to target in your workout session. This includes the smaller muscles too.

• Heavy loads & high intensity workouts are more taxing on your body and central nervous system

  • If you want to go heavy (approaching maximum lifts) more rest and recovery time is needed.

  • This is why if you are testing your 1 rep maximum on a weekly basis, you are asking to get hurt. Same reason why you can’t do sprint training every day. This doesn’t mean you can’t do difficult workouts every day, just understand what activities are more taxing than others.

• Compound movements are great, but they are taxing

  • Many fitness experts recommend prioritizing compound lifts because they target more muscles, giving you more bang for your buck. Examples include the bench press, squats, deadlifts, Olympic lifts etc.

  • There are many positive benefits associated with these lifts but they come with a tradeoff. Since you are involving many muscles, and usually higher loads, if you have a weak link in the chain, it could be your undoing. Normally this will be your core strength, lower back or minor shoulder muscles. Compound lifts have their place but if you aren’t thoughtful about how you add them into your program and perform them, they can do damage.

  • Some suggest doing lighter loads for more reps, but this approach can lead to just as many injuries.

• Running is overrated, walking is underrated

  • Running is great for many things, but just like with compound lifts, if you aren’t smart in your approach, you can find yourself regularly getting injured. Running injuries are so common that they have a name for runners knee. For most people looking to lose some weight, you can burn a lot of calories just by walking and it’s very difficult to get injured.

  • If you are looking to run on a regular basis, especially further distances, you need to make sure you don’t forget to also do occasional strength work too. Speaking of which.

• Don’t overlook the smaller and less used muscles

  • Even if you are smart about running, lifting weights or playing sports, if you don’t address meaningful muscle imbalances or weak movement patterns, you are increasing your chances of injury. This is why training each arm or leg individually is as important and mixing in some variety to your training is important. A few months back, I explained why Pilates is actually a pretty good workout for that reason.

4. Exercise until you are out of breath or you feel your muscles

• Assuming you are training between 5-7 days per week, a workout should generally fall in the 6-9/10 range in terms of difficulty. You should consider any workout below a 6 to be an active recovery day. If you are training every day, it’s fine to have a few of these, if you are training only a few times per month, and some of these are low intensity, you won’t see great results.

• Each person will have their own opinion if a workout is easy or difficult but a good gauge, is if you are out of breath by the end of your workout, or you can feel your muscles reacting, there’s a decent chance you’re in that range.

Of course before starting any new fitness regiment it’s always best to consult your physician and a licensed professional (which I no longer am).

I hope you learnt something helpful today. If not, well there’s always next week.