4 Lessons Learned in 4 Years

Guess what?! This month marks my 4 year mark as a fitness professional..woohoo! That is 4 years of learning, learning and more learning. I'm overwhelmingly grateful to be able to work in sweatpants and do what I love to do everyday. I still cringe at the idea of going back to my old job as an audio/video tech (my tv wires still give me nightmares). It won't work for me ever again. Through my short career I have learned tons of lessions and here are 4 of them:

1. I'm an idiot-  I fail my way to success. I am in a self-assessing business and to frankly there are alot insecure people in it including me! But I have settled some of my insecurities by coming to terms with lesson #1. I find peace knowing that the best of the best in my industry feel the same way. The space between myself early in my career and now lies in personal exerience. Again, I am consistently failing my way to success. Often the principles I base my programming today are a product of my very own screw ups. When I tell clients they need to squat, deadlift, clean and press it's because I didn't for a long time and got nowhere. I also didn't do them with my clients because I was convinced they were "too advanced for them," for a long time and they got nowhere. I take alot of pride in earning the trust of my clients but just like earning trust, fitness is a process. The chronology of my life since weight loss looked a little like this:

* I got fat- I learned how to eat, started working out and lost weight.



2006 at 220lbs :)

 * I wanted to never get fat again- I got certified as a trainer
* I learned I had been doing everything wrong my whole life. I was not interested in bodybuilding, yet I was lifting just like one :(
* I took on full body workouts instead of bodybuilding split routines and strength exploded
* I lifted too heavy and hurt myself
* My squat sucked- i fixed it.
* My power clean sucked- I fixed it.
* I got into cross training and random physical challenges and loved it.
* I didn't do any mobility work/joint care education or practice and hurt myself
Q: Quit or dont quit? A: Quitting is for quitters
* I started doing mobility ed/practice work + lifted core lifts only (Squat, Clean, Deadlift, Press, Pull Up)
* I got better at all of those things and better at nothing else.
WTF!!!!!!!!!????
* Back to the basics of technique lifting but added bodyweight exercise and gymnastics. Also developed the philosophy of training towards my weaknesses. After a long frustrating road I realized that avoiding my weaknesses made me weaker.

P.S. I was advised by a strength coach that the previous process will be repeated the rest of my life :) yay!
This is tiring isn't it?

Where I'm at now: The above paragraph did a great job of making me look like a failure. Fact is, this system of failing forward has gotten me the greatest gains in my life. I am stronger than ever. I am faster than ever. I am now injury free and know how to prevent chronic injury from happening. Should it happen, I know how to treat most issues and if I dont know, I know what expert to defer to. Through all of this I've helped countless people lose 35+ lbs and Betty Barrett of Avon Park, FL lose 109 lbs. Every year I get an incredible amount of text messages and christmas cards from clients thanking me for helping them see fitness and themselves in a way they had never before. Through failing forward with myself, I have changed others lives. And that makes being an idiot worth it.

2. Competition makes you alive, education makes you thrive- Getting around a bunch of like minded people for a single cause is uplifting. Regardless of whether you compete with yourself or others physically or mentally the challenge of competition drives us to perform at a level we cannot perform by ourselves. If this doesn't make complete sense to you now, try it. It never fails.

Active.com is a great place to find local fitness events in your area.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
- -- Thomas Jefferson advising his daughter Martha, 1787.

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

tnation.com is a great collection of successful bodybuilders and strongmen/women who go beyond the scope of conventional wisdom and produce world class results through practical programming.

startingstrength.com- Mark Rippetoe is one of the worlds most reknown strength coaches. When he speaks; listen. He has a few wonderful books called Starting Strength and Practical Programming

journal.crossfit.com- a great resource for everything crossfit. Crossfit is known to produce some of the worlds most impressive feats of strength. They get a bad rap because of perception that they are out to make you puke. Dive into this site and you'll see that it's one of the more well rounded systems available and theres something for everyone to learn.

3. You can't out exercise a bad diet- Human kinds greatest strength is our greatest detriment. The reason we'ved survived as a race despite disease, natural disasters and war is the same reason we can hurt ourselves repeatedly and neglect to learn from it. Some do, some don't. That reason is simply that humans are very hard to kill. Very hard. I found that out immediately after becoming a bootcamp instructor. It's hard enough to get people do something they know is good for them. It's even more amazing to me how once they do, they will pay out of pocket a great amount of money to be beaten senseless in workouts but never change their diet.

robbwolf.com- a health first approach to nutrition and one of the best resources for nutrition on the net!

myosynthesis.com - a little geeky but wayyy worth it!

                                           

4. Fitness IS for everybody- Rich Froning won the 2012 Crossfit Games which is a grueling fitness competition dedicated to crowning the worlds fittest man. I have dedicated my training to appear in the crossfit games 2015. That being said, if you merely look at the competitors that make it all the way to the finals you will see there is a clear cut genetical gap between myself and the competitors. Some of them include:

*Height: I'm 6', the average is 5'8 which gives a great mechanical advantage in oly lifting and gymnastics.
*Strength: Average power clean is 300+lbs. Mine is 185lbs and sloppy.
*Experience: Many of these guys have dedictated 2-5 consistent years of training before making it this far. I have 6 months under my belt.

My height puts me at a disadvantage in this sport before the first event is even announced. I'm not mad about it because I set my expectations high for myself regardless. My strength is lower than the average athlete my size and I've never been refered to as a "strong" dude. I've always trained casually like most people do but not competitively since college. My definition of casually is lifting hard 3-4 days per week and eating fairly clean but not calculated. However, if I use my time constraints or my disadvantages as an excuse to quit or give up, take days off, stop my lifts early than I am only doing an injustice to myself.

One of my favorite sayings: "To choose to compare yourself to others is unwise. You will continuously fail and and never reach your own potential." Focus on your own efforts in reaching your own potential. Getting the best out of yourself on each individual day is the only way to see steady gains.

I see the light!
On positive note, you are in control of what is possible. Any moment can be trained for, recognize what it is you wish to do and set a progressive program to get there. Roger Banister was the first person in recorded history to break the 4 minute mile barrier. No one had ever done it before him! Since the day he broke that barrier over 100+ people have since beaten his record. All it took was 1 person to neglect conventional wisdom and work to achieve his own potential. There is no age, gender or gentic advantage/disadvantage that can stop you from achieving your goal. Relying on advantages makes you lazy and untrained. Allowing genetic disadvantages to turn into self defeating beliefs, diminish gains and otherwise convince you to rationlize that failing is acceptable.