Fitness Advice: How much of it is good?

The most common thing I see every single day in the gym is people exercising incorrectly. And, the reason for this is, people are learning by watching others and by what others are telling them to do. With so many opinions about fitness and the thousands of overnight “trainers” giving their advice, it’s no wonder why so many people are exercising toward injury and away from progress. For this very reason, I have listed my three points to help you determine whether your fitness advice is good or bad.

1.) Explanation – when someone gives you advice, trainer or not, ask them to explain to you in detail the advice they just gave you. And, don’t take answers like “I read it somewhere”, “my friend is a personal trainer and they showed me” or “it just works, try it.” All of these answers should be red flags to you and are more than likely a great indicator that you should forget their advice.

2.) Don’t judge a book by its cover – the decision to take someone’s fitness advice should not be measured by how good they look physically. Believe me, there are all kinds of ways for someone to look good on the outside: growth hormones, hormone therapy, and many other drugs that are all readily available to enhance the physiques of both men and women. So, be very careful not to associate good advice with good looks. The person giving you advice may well have become physically fit from hard work but we all have different genetics; what works for one person may not work for another.

3.) Educate yourself – this is exactly where it began for me. I was given advice from many people over my younger years, of which most I took blindly, and most was bad advice. After reading, learning, and many trial and errors, I learned the correct ways to exercise, eat, and recuperate my body. Learn about the body and most certainly how to exercise the right way using correct form and technique. Then, you will know what’s right and what’s wrong in terms of advice.

Remember, as with everything in life, “You can’t see what’s wrong until you know what’s right.”

The Three Most Important Things

“Whatever you can do, or dream, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Over my 21 years in the fitness industry as a personal trainer, motivational speaker, and fitness program developer, a few things that I have found to be certain is that you have to keep learning and getting better at what you do. And, another thing I have discovered is the very things that I do to stay ahead in my career are the very same things that you should do to stay ahead in your fitness quest.

1. Stay Educated – The first thing you need to do in fitness is to understand your body and the correct ways to exercise. Do your research and learn which programs are best for you and your needs and why. Understand what goes on inside your body during exercise like heart rate and metabolism. Know your numbers by monitoring your blood pressure and knowing your cholesterol and understand what those numbers mean. Educate yourself on nutrition, not diets or fads, but basic food groups and how your body uses them. Keep an open mind, step out of your comfort zone, and try new things.

2. Be Prepared – Most of your success in fitness will be determined by what you do outside of your exercise program. Preparing your body before exercise by getting enough sleep, managing stress, and eating the right foods at the right times (see #1). Being prepared also means giving your body what it needs to recuperate after exercise by duplicating what you did to prepare for exercise. The sooner and better you recuperate your body after exercise, the better your next exercise day will be. What you do or don’t do today compounds into the next day, week, month, and years of your life. BE READY!

3. Stay Young at Heart – There are many things we cannot control in our lives; our genetics, when we were born, how tall or short we will be, the size of our feet, predispositions, and many others. But, one thing we all can do no matter who we are or what we do; we can all stay young at heart. For me personally, this is the 25th year I’ve turned 20. I refuse to get any older and 20 years of age is where I will stay. I truly believe that we are only as old as we let life convince us to be. Stay humble, avoid complacency, laugh as often as you can, and do what you can to help those less fortunate.

There you go; my top three most important things I have learned in my life to keep moving forward. Apply these to your life and see what happens. That means the next time I see you, I expect to see a big smile.

What You See is What You Get

Visualization is a very productive tool for you to learn to use in your everyday life. Where your head goes, your body will follow, so keep your head in a good place with good direction. I have listed some key points for you to learn how to visualize. So be careful, I know what you’re thinking.

Start with the small stuff – Practice with the little things you do everyday like writing a small note to a loved one, co-worker, boss, or friend. See yourself writing the exact words you will use, and then write them down. Careful with the Boss note!

Practice when exercising – When you sit down to do an exercise, see yourself do 3-4 repetitions before you start the actual exercise. See yourself doing the exercise perfectly; the It’s All Heart Way.

Bedtime Stories – As you are lying in your bed, just prior to going to sleep, picture yourself as you would like to look, doing the things you like to do, having incredible energy, and feeling good about what you have accomplished.

Make it a part of your life – The more you visualize, the better you will get at doing it. It takes practice, but you will be amazed at how affective it is on your outlook in life. Remember, what you see is what you get, so smile so big the moon can see!

Nutrition vs. Exercise: Which One is More Important?

This is a good one! I hear this argument countless times about whether nutrition or exercise is more important.  It seems that most of the opinions I hear rate the importance of nutrition vs. exercise in percentages. For example; getting healthy is 90% nutrition and 10% exercise or 50% nutrition and 50% exercise.

Actually, both of these opinions are way off and the same goes for all of those opinions and explanations I have heard over the years. So, what’s the right answer or breakdown in importance of exercise vs. nutrition when it comes to achieving ultimate health? The answer is…

To achieve ultimate health, the first thing you can do for yourself is to stop guessing which one is most important because both of them are equally important along with a third variable that is never mentioned within this argument; your mental state or positive attitude.. Healthy eating, correct exercise, and a positive mental state are all equally important and should be treated as so. Although they all depend on each other and are all equally important, start looking at these three variables separately and rate each one on how well you’re doing within each one.

For example; start by giving a 100% value each to nutrition, exercise, and positive attitude. And, at least once a week, rate how well you have done with each variable. All three combine to steer us through how well we do on our quest to become independently healthy, and that is 100% correct.

 

4 Word Thinking

“In life, all it takes is everything you’ve got.” A very good friend of mine, John Bledsoe, wrote this quote and from the first day I read it, I completely agreed with it. Throughout our entire life, we always want to be moving forward; moving in an ever productive and fulfilled manner that produces our most desired results. However, as we all know, life happens and one thing is for sure, life is full of both expected and unexpected challenges leading us to many forks in the road and decisions to be made.

Making decisions is a big and very often occurrence throughout life for all of us and the outcomes of our decisions steer our lives in many different directions. One thing for certain, we all wish we had at times made better decisions but as I said, it’s all part of life. How we react to changes in our lives is the key and ultimately the determining factor of how productive and happy our lives truly are. Our state of mind is very vulnerable to unwanted consequences and if not grooved towards something positive it can and will lead us to negative thoughts and unproductive times in our lives. With this said I want to share with you four words that I feel should be at the center of our thoughts when life gets tough and challenging.

4 Word Thinking

1. Opportunity – Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to do it better; an opportunity to learn and live better than we did the day before. Opportunity means a chance to go at it again and make it stick this time. As long as we are alive, opportunity lives too.

2. Persistency – You can never give up. Sure it’s much easier to just throw in the towel and let yourself off the hook but regret will hang around reminding you of what could have been. Adversity is part of the journey, ups and downs are common and natural, and EVERYONE experiences tough times. Learn from your experiences and keep moving forward.

3. Progression – Experience, both positive and negative, is progress. We all learn from both good and bad experiences in our lives so when you think you have taken a few steps backwards or you wasted time with something that didn’t work out, think again. If we didn’t learn from our bad decisions or actions, we would always make bad decisions and stay in the same place in our lives; not fun!

4. Laughter – The all time best cure all. It’s my favorite thing in the whole world. How do you explain that feeling when you laugh? Exactly! It’s truly amazing to laugh especially uncontrollably and with other people. It’s contagious and your mind gets to completely escape from what’s got you concerned, worried, or stressed out. And, learn to laugh at yourself. I always laugh at myself when I watch my exercise videos because I know how goofy I am and it comes out on film.

Where the mind goes, the body will follow. And, where the body goes the mind will follow. Change and adversity is and will continue to be a part of all of our lives. It’s not a question of whether or not it will happen, but when and how often. Always remember that as long as you are alive and kicking, you have a chance to try again. And, even though trying doesn’t guarantee success, you must never give in to quitting because each time you try and don’t succeed, you get better and closer to getting the result you want. And lastly, have fun with life and don’t be afraid to laugh like a kid again; it’s the best thing in the world.

Getting from good to… GREAT!

Complacency, monotony, boredom, and confusion are big reasons many people do not take that next big step to becoming great at what they do.

Taking the steps to reaching that lifetime goal of becoming Independently Healthy are the same steps to go from good to GREAT!

Lets look at those steps:

1. Educate yourself – this is the rock solid foundation for success in anything and everything. Research, learn, and understand the best most proven methods for achieving your goals and improve your life.

2. Believe – YES! One sure thing is that you have the ability to say and think YES! You must first believe you can achieve your goals before you do anything else. Visualize yourself WINNING at what you do and what you want to do. Opportunities become much more viable when you think positively.

3. Make tomorrow better than today – find a way to improve something about yourself every single day. This doesn’t have to be big, just better. Smile more often, learn something new, eat better, exercise better, start a journal, save a dollar, or simply give someone a compliment. Either way, just make a positive change for the better.

Good, better, and best are all relative terms, and only you know the difference. Take charge, take control, and achieve GRRREATNESS!