Darryl Talks About Personal Training With the Fitness Connection Nation

Darryl has made great progress in muscle growth and loss of body fat.  It’s exciting to watch people make changes in body composition and completely change their lives.

Watch the video to see Darryl talk about his experience with personal training and changing his body composition.

Time To Go To The Next Level

Are you making progress in your fitness and nutrition?  If so then it’s time to take it to the next level.  If you are not making progress, then it may be time to reevaluate you training and nutrition and try to figure out what’s not working.

Sometimes it can be something simple like not getting enough protein or vegetables in your diet.  Or, it could be something holding you back like problems with digestion or stress.

If you are making progress, that’s good.  The worst thing we can do is think we got it made because we are seeing results from our workouts and nutrition.  One of the things I tell people I train is never think that you can do the same things you are doing this week and expect them to help you progress next week.

If you are looking to make progress, you have to change your workouts.  Your body is very good at adapting and once it adapts to the workout, you stop making progress.

This means you have to vary your sets, reps and even your cardio conditioning.  Basically, I never train the same sets and reps two workouts in a row.  The workouts always change so that muscles can not adapt to the training.

Have fun with your workouts.  In order to see any results, you have to exercise 5 hours a week.  If you are going to spend an hour each day in the gym for 5 days out of the week, you might as well enjoy the time that you are there.

Personally, I love working out.   When I’m weight training, it’s just me and the weight.  I never think in terms of the weight and me in competition.  No, the weight is there to show me what I need to do to make improvements.  If it ever turns into a competition, I will always lose to the weight.  I’ve come to terms with the weight and it allows me to see me as I am and what I need to do.

Make friends with your workouts.  Have fun and enjoy making progress.  It’ll make going to the gym something you look forward to rather than dread.

3 Examples of People Making Progress In Strength Training

I’m excited about the things happening with 3 people who are making great progress in their strength and fitness goals.

I’m seeing all kinds of great things going on.  From gaining bucket loads of strength to showing vast improvement in body composition and muscle tone.  People are making tremendous improvements in their training and getting healthier every day.

For instance George.  When he first started training could only bench press the bar, by itself, just a few reps.  Now George is benching 130 pounds at 6 reps.  And then on top of that super-setting with 6 reps of triceps bench dips.  The man is a monster now.  He’s on fire and getting stronger every day.  It’s just amazing to watch someone like George make the progress he’s made in such a short period of time.

Then there’s Jane.  Jane swore to me three weeks ago she could not do a single push up.  She started out doing the girlie type push up with her knees on the ground.  Then she quickly progressed to knees off the ground.  Jane went from not being able to do a single push up to doing 48 push ups in one training session.  Talk about someone who’s made a real metamorphosis in the strength of their body.  Jane is a real champion.

Darryl nearly passed out and had to stop his first training session early to go throw up.  I never try to work people so hard they pass out or throw up.  My point of view is that it’s counter productive to have to stop a training session because someone gets sick.  But, Darryl was so out of shape he could not get through his first training session.

This week Darryl completed one of the most challenging training session I could throw at him.  He did a whole hour of complexes.  Complexes will make you cry for mercy even when you have been strength training for years.

Darryl did great.  He went through the whole hour and at the end asked me if it was okay if he did some light cardio for 15  minutes.  What kind of person nearly passes out on his first training session and three weeks later is training like mad and asking for more?

All three share something in common.  They all told me they couldn’t do something and are now doing what they said they could not.

My mother had a saying when I was growing up that I never understood, but for some reason it stayed with me.  Whenever I would tell her that I couldn’t do something she would say “Can’t never could do anything.”  That made no sense to me when I was growing up.  Mom’s a little bit country, as we say here in the south.  But today I realize the wisdom of her simple statement.

If you continue to tell yourself you can’t do something, you will probably never do it.  You have to surround yourself with people who believe in you and you have to change your mindset.  Most important, you have to stop telling yourself you can’t do whatever it is you have told yourself you can’t do.

You are much stronger than you ever imagined.  You just have to believe that you can bench press that heavy weight, you can do push ups, you can do a rigorous workout.

But most of all, believe that as strong as you are physically, you are even stronger in your determination.

Gaining Strenght and Adding Muscle with Pushups and Pullups

The past four weeks I’ve been training my chest and back muscles hard.  Usually, I recommend that you have at least 24 hours rest between workouts of the same muscle group.  I recommend this rest because generally muscle needs at least a days rest between workouts.  This is so that the muscle can repair itself and build stronger tissue in place of the tissue that was damaged during the workout.

But for the past four weeks I’ve decided to do something different.  For five days out of the week I do 100 pushups and 50 pullups.  NO, not all at the same time.  I split it up into three sets.  Something like a 40-40-20 for pushups and 20-20-10 for pullups.

At first this was exhausting because I was doing either an upper or a lower body workout along with the 100 pushups and 50 pullups.  The first week was the hardest.  But after the first week it’s been great.

Here’s what I’ve experienced.  An extreme boost in strength and endurance.  So much so that at first I was somewhat alarmed.

After 3 weeks of doing 100 pushups and 50 pullups per workout, I decided to do some unassisted dips.  My usual max on dips was right at twelve per set.  However, on the first set I reached 12 with ease and went right on to 15.  Doing 15 reps of unassisted dips kind of freaked me out and I did the last two sets of 12 dips.

The next day, after getting over the initial shock of the day before, I decided to see just how many reps I could do at one time of unassisted dips.  This time I went to 20.  That’s almost double what my max was before I started doing pushups and pullups everyday.

I’ve become so sold on basic pushups and pullups that I’m having most of my clients do them each workout.  Right now I don’t think they appreciate doing so many pushups and pullups as I do.  But I am certain that they will in a few weeks.

If you want to gain lots of strength and lots of muscle, then do pushups and pullups in each training session.  It’s that simple.  Not a whole lot of complication.  Just remember to do the simple stuff.  By simple I don’t mean easy.

See for yourself how far you can progress in a short period of time.  Have fun and train hard.

More Benifits From Weight Loss

Recently I was talking with a trainee about the changes she is going through with her weight loss.  One of the things that she said is happening to her is that her energy level at work is much higher than it used to be.  Then she told me about how her back is no longer bothering her.

I had to think about that for a moment.  It occurred to me that I had not had issues with my back since I had lost all my weight.

Driving long distances was always a problem.  If I drove for more than two hours at a time my lower back and hips would ache.  Sometimes so much that I would have to pull over and walk around for a few minutes.

I haven’t thought about how it used to be such a problem driving on long trips in a long time.  Over the summer when I drove to Texas from Anderson, South Carolina I experienced no pain and felt great.

Losing weight changes a person’s life in ways they could never imagine.  If I would have known all the ways that my life was going to get better by being healthy and fit I would have thought it was impossible.  There are a multitude of reason why a person should make the changes they need to make to get in shape.  But really, it comes down to one simple thing.  Feeling better about yourself.

Today I no longer feel out of control with my eating and weight gain.  I am no longer powerless to make the changes that need to be made for me to live the life I want to live.  I heard this said a long time ago and I believe it now more than ever…”powerlessness is a very powerful feeling.”

Don’t let anything stand in your way of reaching your fitness goals and felling good about yourself and your life.  We all have the potential to make the right choices for ourselves.  And making the right choices gets easier the more we practice making them.

Fitness Connection Nation Video

Today, with lots of help from a video production master, I completed my first

personal training video.  Jimmy did a great job and is incredible to watch in action

as he preformed his magic.

Let me know what you think of this video.  Personally, I think he did a great job.  But

I’m a little biased.

Surround Yourself With Winners

Last week I talked about how people use food to cope with anything from stress to feelings of loneliness.  This week I had a conversation with a trainee that involved some of the same issues I discussed last week.

I was talking about the importance of surrounding herself with people that supported her weight loss goals and who understood how challenging it is to change her body composition.  She has a family member who is also going through personal training and is facing some of the same struggles.  Having a member of her family there supporting her and being supportive to them has been extremely important for both of them in reaching their goals.

However, she told me about a friend of hers that wasn’t so supportive.  This friend said to her “I don’t want you to lose all your weight.  I like you just the way you are.”

I asked her what she felt about her friend saying that to her.  She stated that she felt like the friend had her own agenda and didn’t really have her best interest in mind.  We talked more about why anybody would not want to see good things happen in another person’s life.

Personally, I think it comes down to fear.  Fear of change and of losing control.  If someone changes, will they still want to be my friend even though I haven’t made any changes?  Fear that the relationship with change and they might possible go in a different direction with their life.  Fear that if they are making changes then I might have to question “why am I not making changes?”

Change, even if it’s good change, can be scary.  Sometimes especially if it’s good change.  Change means we have to take responsibility for where we are right now and how we got ourselves where we are.  It means that we have to admit that the old ways of doing things may not be working.  Those ways of doing things are comfortable and doing things that provoke change are not familiar.

An example of knowing that change needs to occur but being stuck in old habits, ways of thinking, and behaviors happened today when I was working with a new trainee.  I always ask what the person had to eat before they came to the training session.  The trainee replied that they had eaten a hot dog.

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Now granted, they are new to training.  But it doesn’t take that much common sense to know that eating a hot dog before a training session is probably not the best food choice.  When working with a trainer and trying to lose weight, I don’t know if there is ever a good time for a hot dog.  But certainly not before you go in for a training session.

And of course they felt sick and weak half way through the session.

Sometimes it’s others who can be obstacles to us reaching our goals.  Sometimes it can be ourselves.  We not only have to surround ourselves with winners.  We have to be a winner for ourselves.  We have to be our own cheer-leading section.  Not being arrogant and not being the center of attention.

Surround yourself with winners.  People that will support you and are happy that good things are happening in your life.  And be a winner for yourself.  Do this and you can’t help but be successful.

The Cycle of Stress Eating

This past week I was talking with a trainee about their progress.  This trainee has made excellent progress but seemed to be having difficulty staying away from foods she knew were not healthy for her.

We discussed a wide range of issues.  One of the things I asked her to do was to reflect on what she was thinking and feeling when she made the decision to eat something that’s not on her nutrition plan.  Not just “Oh, I’m hungry, I think I want a whopper with fries.”  What was the motivating thought and feeling for her to eat fatty, greasy non-nutritious foods.

What we came up with is that she eats out of stress.  The way that she’s always dealt with stress, anger, sadness, hurt, fear or any other feeling is to eat away those feelings.  By eating away her feelings she can literally “stuff ” her feelings and never have to address them.

Here’s the deal, we all have ways that we cope with life and the feelings we experience.  Some people use food.  Others use alcohol, drugs.  Others even use relationships as a way to mask feelings.  No matter what a person uses to turn off their feelings, they will continue to act out in the same manner, unless they can directly confront why they are avoiding the issues that need to be dealt with.

The cycle of acting out to avoid the uncomfortable feeling looks something like this:

Each part of the cycle leads to the next and when a person is in this cycle, they have an extremely difficult time removing themselves.  The individual has to stop themselves in the fantasy stage and question what is causing them to romance the idea of eating something that is going to make them feel bad emotionally, mentally and physically.

The best way to get out of this cycle is to stop and think about what is going on right now and what the person is feeling.  Many times stress is a major factor.  Loneliness is another feeling that triggers acting out.

For whatever reason, the person experiences a void in their life and they usually try to fill that void with food.  Filling a void with food can cause lots of negative consequences.  It’s not the rapid type of consequences that someone who uses drugs and alcohol.  It comes on over a long period of time and can be just as devastating.

Sometimes it’s not just the physical aspect of weight loss like exercising and eating properly.  We also have to consider what is going on mentally and emotionally.

Think Of Yourself As An Athlete

Everyday these two guys come into the gym together.  They’ve been coming for awhile and working out together.  So when I saw one of them working out by himself I asked him where his buddy was.  He said “he won’t be working out for awhile.  He’s not doing to good.”  I was with a trainee so I didn’t push him for more information.  He gave it to me anyway.  “He had a stroke.”  I was shocked because even though the guy is overweight he is still young.  I asked him how old his friend is and he said 37.

37 years old is way to young to be having a stroke.  But this is not the whole story.  Later on I find out that on his way home from the hospital this guy stops off at Wendy’s for a hamburger and fries.  His friend said that his justification for stopping at Wendy’s was “my eating has nothing to do with me having a stroke.”

Am I missing something?  How in the world could anyone think that their nutrition have nothing to do with their health?  It’s hard for me to even conceive that someone would have that much denial about their choice of food intake.

Nutrition and exercise have everything to do with a person’s health.  Sure this guy was coming to the gym and “working out”.  The one thing I notice about his workout was the lack of intensity.  I never saw him break a sweat.  The gym seemed more of a social setting for him.  Which is okay, if you are challenging yourself while you are training.  If not, then it’s just a waist of time.

And if you are not eating properly and going to the gym you will never see a change in body composition.  You can fool yourself into thinking you are taking care of yourself, but in the end it’s all about what you put into your body and how that is used to support your energy needs.

We all teach a lesson.  Some of us teach others the way to be strong and healthy and others teach how to fail at being strong and healthy.

I have to put myself into a frame of mind.  I try to picture myself as a athlete in training.  Not just someone that is working out everyday and trying to eat right.  What I eat has a direct effect on what I do while training.  What I do while training has an effect on how I eat.  I eat carbs and fats for energy and protein, fruits and vegetables for muscle repair and body function.

When I think of myself in terms of being an athlete in training, I have to stop and ask myself “how will this food affect me while I’m training?”  Will it add to my goals or will it take away from them.

I know that I am not a athlete.  But having the mental attitude of being an athlete in training gives me the discipline I need to eat in such a way that it compliments what I do in a workout.

Think of yourself as an athlete.  You are  strong and getting stronger.  Your body needs proper nutrition to compete everyday in the competition of life.

There is no reason anyone should be having a stroke in their 30’s.  It is all about nutrition and exercise and how they relate to each other.

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