Should you be honest with clients?

Should we tell clients the truth? I'm not saying we are outright lying to them, but much of the time we are not being entirely honest with them about what it will take to achieve their goals.

Imagine someone books a training session with you or enquires about training with you.

There are three key scenarios where you can be honest, or try and convince the client otherwise or essentially kick them into touch and realize your services are not the best for for them.

Scenario one: Being honest and about frequency and consistency.

Initial consultation or chat, the person tells you they can train once a week, maybe twice ( hint: this means they are coming once every 2 weeks at best). You know they can't achieve anything on this schedule. Should you be honest with them? Or start working with them, and hope they gradually form the habit, start enjoying exercise and build up to three times a week? Anyone who has worked in a commercial gym knows that option 2 is rarely successful.

We all know ideally it takes 3-5 sessions a week, focus and at least some acknowledgment that nutrition is part of the puzzle.

On the other hand, we don't want to burst anyones bubble. They have taken the step to walk into a gym, to push out of their comfort zone; however their expectations do not match the level of effort they are willing to put in.

Now. I'm not talking about the motivated people, who are going to train by themselves consistently, and want a programme and check in session once a month.

This is more the people,who decide they don't want to do anything in the programme you've written. And between follow up appointments it transpires they haven't done any training and have basically ignored your programme.

I was speaking to a colleague about all the programmes he has written, all the individual/ bespoke programmes. He was going through the names, and realized that at best 10% had actually done the programme.

That is a lot of wasted time and effort. The thing is you don't always know who is going to be the one who sticks with it.

Scenario two: I want to tone up, lose weight and not bulk up.

As the conversation moves on in your initial consultation, the client will tell you their goal, or a vague idea of a goal. If you have worked in fitness for more than a week, then the phrase you will hear nearly everyday from women is 'I want to lose weight, and tone up, I don't want to bulk up'.

Occasionally, you get a guy who also says they don't want to bulk up, but a more common guy phrase is 'I don't need to work on my legs, as I play football'. At which point you laugh in that guys face.

But seriously, back to toning. The great industry lie. We know that muscles either get bigger or smaller, fat percentage goes up or down. Yes, in the initially phase of training, a person may start by recruiting more of their current pool of muscle fibres, and become more 'neurally efficient' but at some point if you want to see an actual visual change, some muscle mass is going to have to be generated.

Mention this and a look of panic will wash over the woman's face. 'I don't want to bulk up'. It turns out they are the genetically gifted  0.001% of the female population who easily bulks up, who could have entered Ms Olympia if they had so wished and won based on training twice a week, eating 40 grams of protein a day and a post workout Prosecco.

So you point out all the guys in freeweight area who have taken enough pre-workout to stun a horse, and are trying to mainline protein to get an extra millimetre on their biceps, and are training 7 days a week.

But no, she is different, she will bulk up. You say weights and muscle mass and all she sees is Dorian Yates (or Gal Ferrera Yates, if you want to use the google). Now, of course, some women do want to do this, but mostly they aren't walking into a commercial gym to have a sit down with a trainer, 95% of women you will ever see will say they want to lose weight and tone up.

Dorian Yates back is so big: easily achieved on twice a week of a machine circuit and a bar of dairy milk. Source: every bodybuilding internet forum.

As my colleague once said to some women, 'why do you think it is my interest to make you look like something you don't want to be? If I did that, I would be out of a job, I wouldn't have any clients, Its in my interest to help you achieve the look and fitness you want.' I paraphrase here of course, I wasn't recording the conversation, but you get the idea.

You explain to the woman that lifting heavy weights at low reps might be the way to go, but this goes against the perceived wisdom, this is what big guys do. You explain all about testosterone levels in men compared to women, but she has already glazed over. She's thinking toning occurs with high reps and lots of volume, right, like in toning classes? Which bizarrely, is the thing that research shows causes increases in muscle mass given the right nutrition etc. (See Schoenfelds research on high rep ranges, 25 reps plus).

You could stay true to your ideals. Or nod your head, say you've got the perfect toning programme, mix in some machines, cardio, light dumbbells, and sprinkle in a couple of strength exercises under the guise of toning exercises. Bingo, everyones a winner, she gets results and you keep your client.

Scenario three: The trainer lies to themselves.

When you first start training people you need clients. And you may be paying monthly PT rent you need to cover. Therefore, how likely are you to turn down a client? You are just starting out, but suddenly your level 3 qualification means you can train everyone.

Can that person really be an expert on triathlon training, back pain, all injuries, marathon training, getting someone contest ready for figure competition and write comprehensive nutrition plans for everyones needs?

Or like the classic insta-chump coach, everyone get the same fully customized training and nutrition plan regardless.

You might get lucky, and someone you train wins something, gets a pro card or their injury heals up. Of course, genetics and time had nothing to do with this, it was your training programme.

This is where the industry is at now. Whereas, Alberto Salazaar is never going to coach 100m runners, some PTs can apparently coach everyone.

Wouldn't it be better to refer out, admit you don't actually have a nutrition qualification and are therefore not meant to write nutrition plans; and you don't have MRI x-ray vision and can't fix their injury, but they should go to an actual person who's job it is to do that. If Eric Cressey is referring out, then may be some trainers should do as well.

If you're in it, you're in it.

The above spiel wasn't meant to give any answers. It just is the way the industry is. Of course, adherence rates and the number of people achieving their goals is probably the same as it ever was, so what have we got to lose by telling the truth? If a business model is already broken, then abandoning it to try something new can't be any worse.

Ultimately, it comes down to the art of coaching. That indefinable ability to get the best out of people, to tell them what they want to hear when they start, and gradually shape the conversation as they continue to train. If they get results they wont care. But it's going to be difficult when so many coaches promise the earth, quick fixes and easy solutions. If you're new to the industry, do what it takes, don't starve because you think everyone should do 5x5 barbell work, but keep your integrity as a coach as well.

Slim Charles: The Wire

Coaching Ethos.

How do you create a high level coaching team?

This is a question I think about a fair amount.

These are my thoughts after talking to people who have been in high level coaching teams, observing how organizations like the NFL work and reading some of the literature.

Much of the literature and most of the books are about teams within business organizations. Some of this applies to the 'actual' coaching fitness professionals do. Some of it applies to professional sports teams, but is not so applicable to paying clients. I think it was Mike Boyle who said it is way harder to coach the general public than professional athletes.

I am also assuming you are not a lone personal trainer, in which case you are the coaching team, and should build a referral network for things that may be beyond the scope of your skill set at this moment such as nutrition and sports injury. Unfortunately, many lone personal trainers do not do this, to be blunt they need the money and therefore try to be an expert in everything. Sometimes this works out for them, sometimes it doesn't.

So without further ado in random bullet point format (easily tweetable).

• Everyone in the team knows their exact role.
• Everyone knows the exact goal of their team and their part in it.
• Everyone needs to know the product. Yes that includes the cleaner and the receptionist working one hour a week.
• Clear metrics on what we are measuring. What is important to us.
• Consequences for not meeting the metric.
• Reward for meeting the chosen metric.
• Regular coaching get togethers. Make the agenda clear, not moaning and gossip. But plans and solutions.
• Every day, week, month think what did we do well, what could we do better/different. And then act on this.
• The coaching team should complement each other. They don't have to be clones.
• Make it clear to customers and clients -'this is what we do'.
• Make it clear to customers - 'this is not what we do' but we may know someone else who does.
• Don't try and bend the product to the customer.
• But be flexible with your product, if the market and the science and the zeitgeist changes you may need to change. But make that change whole hearted, not piecemeal.
• If the client is willing to work hard, or the customer is a promoter, go all out and give everything.
• Sack the customer who doesn't want it. Sack the customer who annoys other customers.
• The basics that every customer expects - clean, equipment works, greeting, acknowledgment from staff.
• Clear pricing, clear proposition.
• Don't be afraid of your price if the product is worth it.
• USP, it could be weightlifting, or rehab, or beginners, or weightloss, or being cheap or group training or being luxury. Choose what it is and embrace it.
• Let the USP inform every level of your product from marketing, social media presence, staff recruitment to layout of the building or the equipment you choose.
• Amateurs come across as amateurs. If you are a professional this is how you make your living. It should be all consuming. For amateurs it is a hobby, professionals get paid.
• None of your team should come across as amateurs. Again this applies to the cleaner, the receptionist and the back room staff.
• If half your salary depended on retaining members and customers what would you do differently? (Self employed people already get this). Who and what would make the cut?
• If you are new to the market you may need to discount to get your name out there.
• If you are established and still discounting there is either something wrong with your business model or your pricing is wrong.
• Don't phone it in.
• If you've got nothing on the line what have you got to lose or gain? Managers of big organizations find it hard to grasp this.
• Your coaches should be constantly learning and training. What does the team actually want to improve at? Organize that training for them
• What does the team need to improve at, organize that training for them.
• Everyone should be improving and engaging in deliberate practice. In-house training and external training should be built into the schedule and built into the budget, not an after thought.
• Use scientific rigour to inform your coaching, but also realize that coaching is an art that requires creativity.
• Be honest.
• Be open. Other people can have really good ideas.
• You don't need to be the expert in everything, but know someone who is.
• It should be fun. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't also be serious, challenging  and sometimes stressful. Being good at something is hard. being the best is really hard.
• Listen. If no one is saying anything, you are in trouble.
• Passion only gets you so far, eventually you need a plan, skills, grit and dedication (cue Record Breakers theme tune from the 1980's with Roy Castle on his trumpet, outside of the UK this reference doesn't mean anything)

1980's flashback.

Of course, all this is easier said than done.

Well, that's all I've got right now. Let me know if you have anything else to add to the list.

I've Seen The Future And The Future Is... Coaching (or possibly cleaning, one or the other).

"The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field or endeavor." - Vince Lombardi

We are in a golden age of gym equipment. A few years ago you were lucky if you could find a gym with a basic power rack and an olympic bar. Standard health club gyms consisted of resistance machines, some kind of terrible key system and cardio, and if you were lucky the dumbbells went up to 20kg. The management were afraid of 'hardcore' lifters and were trying to attract some mythical exerciser who was willing to pay £60 a month for the chance to sit on a stationary bike; except that person never turned up in large enough numbers to build a viable industry.

Nowadays, some of the biggest chains have power racks and bumper plates and functional rigs. Crossfit* gyms and micro gyms opened and they all had Olympic bars and ropes, sleds and prowlers and minimal if any of the standard cardio and resistance kit. A few years ago bands and chains and specialist bars were rare, they existed on the internet in Westside. Now the average 16 year old gym goer may have seen a safety squat bar, football bar, cambered bar, pushed a prowler, tried to break his leg by jumping on a stack of plyo boxes and build his biceps with a thick grip barbell.

Its is only 5 or 6 years ago when I went on an Olympic weightlifting course, it was hard to find, it was the only one I could find and they didn't even call it Olympic weightlifting (BWLA weightlifting for sports course to be exact) and I think one of the guys who opened Crossfit London or Manchester was on the same course. And I couldn't find any videos on the internet on Olympic lifts or how to do them. My, how times have changed, suburban housewives are doing Oly lifting as part of their daily WOD and the Reebok shop in Covent Garden sells Crossfit branded Olympic lifting shoes (there was one website that sold them in the UK when I purchased a pair).

Equipment is not enough.

But. It is easy to become enamoured by gym equipment. More people are Olympic lifting than ever before, but very few people lift heavy or come close to being national level. There hasn't been a sudden rush of world records or big powerlifts. Quite a few people have got their 10,000 hours in, but we're not suddenly giving China or Eastern Europe a run for their money. There is a possibility that it takes more than practice, that 10,000 hours has become over emphasised. The same is true in endurance sport: triathlons, 100 mile ultras and weekend 10k's are fully booked, barefoot running is mainstream but as a nation we are less competitive than we were 30 years ago in Marathons - take out the one runner we have and we have no one. People are running slower marathons than they were in the early 1980's.

And however much equipment there is, there is always someone who wants more, if only your had Eleiko bars or a monolift - then they would be a champion, despite the fact people were lifting heavy and winning for eons without any of this stuff. And some guy in a Bulgarian basement is lifting with a rusty barbell and kicking their ass.

Rocky 4 - back to basics, it's not about the equipment

But I digress, the point is, if it was only about equipment and facilities and participation we would see way more people competing at a high level. But we don't. Of course, many people doing these activities have no desire to compete, they just enjoy them, and they like training and being fit.

"the best teacher is repetition, day after day, throughout the season." - John Wooden

And the other point, is having the equipment is not enough. You can have a room full power racks and performance equipment, but if the gym culture is still embedded in body part splits, it will all be empty apart from the bench press and the adjustable benches closest to the mirrors. And there is a fear, a lot of guys and even more so women, who have been using gyms since their rise in the 1990's default to what they know. Why try something if you risk looking like an idiot, its pretty hard to go wrong on the cross trainer or doing a bicep curl, but get the glute ham raise wrong and not only could you end up being rescued there is a chance your hamstrings will explode.

So without coaching and a change in culture all this new equipment (which is really a return to the old0 will stay unused.

"The more I coached the more I became convinced that the mind, the will, the determination, the mental approach to competition are of the utmost importance." - Brutus Hamilton

What do Jess Ennis, Mo Farah, every professional football team and all of British Cycling have in common? They all have coaches.

"'The main thing about Percy is that he coaches your spirit' Elliott believed 'The body itself may only need two months training to get fit, the rest of the time you're building up your spirit - call it guts, or some inner force..." Herb Elliott on coach Percy Cerutty

Health Commitment Cop Out.

If you go to a small micro gym, studio or Crossfit facility there is a good chance you will get some coaching (the debate about quality is for another day) due to the format these facilities use - small group training, one on one, you have to book in. These facilities also have an advantage that certain populations would have self selected and excluded themselves. People arriving at Crossfit or an olympic lifting gym know what to expect, they know what the deal is, the chances of the obese grandma with a dodgy knee and blood pressure pills turning up to take part in the WOD are slim.

In a health club or leisure centre the system is set up differently, anyone can turn up and expect to do anything. Many clubs in the UK have now adopted the Health Commitment Statement produced by UK Active (the governing body for the fitness industry in the UK??!). It is designed to replace the Par-q which was too medicalised. For example, the first line on the HCS is

"We will respect your personal decisions, and allow you to make you own decisions about what exercise you can carry out. However, we ask you not to exercise beyond what you consider to be your own abilities."

Now, we are treating people like adults, which is a good thing, and not expecting the coach to start delving into medical history. In another section it states

"You should not exercise beyond your own abilities. If you know or are concerned that you have a medical condition which might interfere with you exercising safely, before you use our equipment and facilities you should get advice from a relevant medical professional and follow that advice."

Except, firstly people ignore what they have just signed and still ask you what to do about their bad back or achilles or what is best for blood pressure. And secondly, what both the Par-q and HCS fail to address is that most people don't have medical conditions that restrict them, they just have appalling movement patterns, poor mobility and have no idea about how to make an informed decision about what the best exercise to do is or how to it correctly.

And certain exercises will be unsafe for them at this stage, they don't have the knowledge to decide, their judgement of their own ability is flawed. Its like saying, go into the supermarket and buy healthy food, some people will get it right, some people wont. Or like asking someone if they are a bad driver, most people are going to say no, ego is a powerful thing. If someone has a warning light on the dashboard of their car, yeah, they could keep driving and hope nothing happens or they could go to a mechanic and find out what it is. The HCS is kinda like saying to the public, you might have some warning lights up, but we'll let you decide if you can keep on driving the car, we don't want to get involved. We don't want to put up barriers.

And yes, if you work on the premise that most gym members are going to do 10 minutes on the cross trainer and then do a few resistance machines, then they will probably be okay. Except the game has changed, they could turn up and start doing high intensity intervals or body attack or box jumps supersetted with thrusters.

Just Say No.

So what is to be done? Well don't be afraid to coach. And don't be afraid to say no. And knowing what is appropriate and not appropriate requires screening, unless someone has been screened in some fashion, how do you know what there is ability is? This is where Crossfit and the general fitness industry fail, screening is virtually non existent and no one gets told 'actually this is not for you'.

Consider the short burst fast classes and HIIT classes that are all the rage. In a large health club anyone can turn up. The coach on the gym floor has to make a decision, the person turning up has signed the HCS form, but there is a good chance the person signing has no idea what a tabata interval is, there decision is based on incomplete information. So the coach has several choices, scale the workout (it's not high intensity anymore, you are not ready for high intensity), let them do it and risk the possibility of them literally stroking out Andrew Marr style or say no. Sometimes coaching is about pushing people, sometimes it's about saying no.

Somewhere along the line, the industry got desperate, it needed to make the sale, we lost faith in ourselves. Don't be afraid to say no to the client, there is always another choice for them. And this could work in your favour sales-wise:

"The minute it was clear that we weren't desperate, the moment we started to lead instead of beg, the sale was made." - Seth Godin

Coach & Differentiate.

"Let all know that you expect them to possess the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility." - Bill Walsh

The way to differentiate is to coach. Anyone can buy equipment but can they use it? Anyone can shout at clients and make them do 1000 burpees. But can you affect change, can you get results? Is anyone even measuring your results? Coach everyone all the time in your facility, this is a world away from personal training.

Nearly every elite athlete, every team, has a coach or a whole team of coaches. And yet, the public expect to turn up and get results with no help. They are scared and disappointed too. Scared of looking stupid and disappointed by an industry that let them down on numerous occasions. Be different, start coaching everyone and the atmosphere will change, you will change the game from the inside out. Suddenly there will be a buzz about your facility.

Have a training philosophy, have a deep knowledge about everything your are doing and not doing but then realise that coaching is not always technical. It could be simple phrase or word or look, it could what you leave out that matters.

"Teach 'connection and extension'. An organisation filled with individuals who are 'independent contractors' unattached to one another is a team with little interior cohesion and strength." - Bill Walsh

Be aware of the prism you see everything through. Maybe you personally favour hypertrophy, or strength or kettlebells or whatever. But be ware of processing all your clients needs through these prisms. Start blank, see it through the prism of the client, what they really need and then pick the right coaching route. Your philosophy of coaching should be bigger than the tools and methods you use. Coaching is flexible.

Does Louie Simmons Put The Hoover Round?

But what if no one cares about your coaching. There is a good chance that if you work in a commercial facility the management has never even asked you about coaching or measured it, there is a 100% they have measures your ability to clean. The scenario could play out like this:

The health club see all this stuff about small group training and functional training and thinks this is a bandwagon we need to jump on. So they buy all the kit and tell the instructor he/she now teaches fast classes. The instructor is teaching the class and someone complains about the cleaning. The instructor is then conflicted, they are being measured on the cleaning, not the  coaching, and all this stuff could be a fad anyway. The instructor then realises they are actually a cleaner, which is not a bad thing, except they then discover that the actual cleaner gets paid more than them. They then figure out that the studio instructors are getting paid three times as much for teaching a class as the fitness instructor is for teaching on the gym floor and no one asks the studio instructors about cleaning. Yes, its a way of having all these classes on the schedule without paying the instructor more than minimum wage. The instructor gets demotivated, the kit stands empty, everyones doing what they always done. Of course, some clubs pay the instructors a decent rate for coaching, but show me a manager who didn't panic about a cleaning complaint and I'll show you a....

Of all the people, whoever left a gym , it seems no one ever left because they failed to achieve their goal, they left because they didn't have time or it wasn't clean enough.

Which makes me wonder, does Louise Simmons, Eric Cressey and Mike Boyle have the same issues. No one ever released a fitness product on how to keep your gym clean. Does Louie put the hoover round first thing in the morning, do lifters complain that Westside is too dirty or there is too much chalk around, do people tell Rippetoe to get better air conditioning at Wichita Falls. Does Louie just catapult any complainers out the door with a purple band? This topic seems sorely unrepresented on fitness forums.

I can't help but feel the likes of Boyle and Cressey are missing a trick here, how about 'Shoulder health while dusting, avoiding anterior glide of the humerus when cleaning cardio equipment' or 'Advances in mutli-tasking in the gym environment, how to re-tune the TVs on the CV equipment while dealing with a complaint about the music'.

The game has changed.

"'That's the way we've always done it' is the mantra of a team setting itself up to lose to an organisation that's not doing it that way any more." - Bill Walsh

The large chains still pursue a supermarket model, they are trying to cater to the masses. They think they can be all things to all people. But if you try to market to everyone, you have a product aimed at no one. And you end up with some pissed off members, because your product was never really for them in the first place, you just told them it was.

"Don't try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody." - Seth Godin

Much like coffee shops, you could go to Starbucks and get an insipid cup of coffee that doesn't really offend anyone, but at the same time there is a rise in independent coffee shops, its the same for pubs and micro-breweries. It's the same for gyms, except the way to differentiate is with coaching. Except way more people go to coffee shops than go to gyms, going to the gym is a niche activity, whether you like it or not. Going to the gym is more akin to collecting vinyl or vintage cars, it's a niche that wants to be mainstream. Once you accept this marketing becomes easier, you are not trying to please everyone.

There are really only 2 or 3 big players in cardio and resistance equipment, most gyms look the same. Anyone can buy some dumbbells and weight plates. It is what you do with it that counts.

Somewhere along the way, personal training became the antithesis of coaching. It became number counting. No one wants to be associated with the personal trainer moniker anymore. The fitness courses didn't teach people how to be coaches. How to motivate, how to inspire, how to innovate, how to individualise but still have a system. So, the trainers aspired to be coaches, but you'd be shocked at the level of knowledge in these courses.

And the coaching course are stuck in another era, if you've ever been on one, its more about how to control large groups of people and make sure no one falls down a hole; basically a health and safety course. That's what we did to coaching in this country, we turned it into the lowest common denominator health and safety course pitched at kids. It is more akin to an old school PE lesson, which is okay if you are teaching kids. But most of us are coaching adults, grown ups, professionals, who need professional coaching.

Coaching is not about holding someones hand or shouting, its about teaching them a skill, knowing when to instruct and when to not. Knowing when to let someone make their own training decision, and giving them the information to do, but also having the confidence and guts to say when someone should not do something, when to push and when to say enough is enough.

The game has changed, the big health clubs just don't know it yet, or like most large industries with layers of bureaucracy are too slow too react, suffer from inertia or try to copy something really half arsed.

The best gyms have a system, they coach everyone and they have results they can show you. Not one off aberrations, but consistent results with clients across the board.

I could be wrong, maybe all health clubs should bin all their instructors and employ 10 permanent cleaners and everything will be fine. Or possibly there should be a new REPs level 4 cleaning qualification.

The answer is to coach and coach some more, or get out like alot of people are doing these days. Open your own facility, be picky with the clientele, it takes guts for sure.

Have confidence, the equipment is secondary. It could be just me standing in a room with a couple of kettlebells and a bar, and its worth the money because of the coaching and the atmosphere.

Build the gym, but then coach, and create the atmosphere and the reputation. Build it and they will come is only half the answer, the building is just the first part, the people is the second part and the most important. People get results.

Be 'consumed by the process of developing the ability of others. You do it because you really care for it, you do it because you have to.' ( Bill Walsh)

"Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather than the prize." - Bill Walsh

Coach, the alternative is to be the same as it ever was, which is no choice at all.

References
Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself. My Philosophy of Leadership.
Gary M Walton, Beyond Winning. The Timeless Wisdom of Great Philosopher Coaches
Seth Godin, Purple Cow & The Icarus Deception

* Without wishing to get drawn into the eternal crossfit debate, here's my 2 cents worth. There is a puritanical element who seem to think crossfit are responsible for all random training shit. As if before crossfit everyone walked around with a copy of Supertraining under their arm and everyone periodised properly and everyone trained properly and it was all logical and despite powerlifting, olympic lifting and bodybuilding being the most minority of sports - it seems everyone in the gym was competing in these disciplines despite never actually competing; and all training programs had a clear goal and purpose. And of course, everything was logical like splitting your workout into bodyparts, and no one ever did anything illogical like working chest and arms everytime they went to the gym. And all sports are logical like swimming 2.4 miles and cycling 100 and running a marathon, and 22 people kicking a bag of air around a park, and back flipping on a beam and bench pressing in a triple ply denim shirt. Of course, all pro athletes train using a completely systematised approach and no one ever coasted on their genetics, and how someone trains for football or baseball or powerlifting should be the basis of all training, because the gym is only full of serious athletes. And you can't copyright circuit training, in the same way you can't copyright dancing (Zumba) or yoga and pilates (Bodybalance), but goddam they cornered the market and created a tribe with minimal equipment and we all wish we had thought of it first. And its dangerous, because I've never seen a powerlifter or bodybuilder who had to get their pec re-attached or their bicep rupture repaired, and no endurance athlete ever had to have knee surgery and no football player ever had an ACL repair, and every year thousands of people get rescued off of mountains after throwing themselves down them on skis after no actual training or practice and everyone in the world now knows what rhabdo is, and I've never seen anyone get it even in ultra endurance events. (and I can't do a handstand press up or a kipping pull up and there is no way I'm wearing long socks).

Random Sunday Ramblings (All Things Fitness)

Here are some random ramblings about a host of health and fitness related topics. Some could be an entire article in themselves, some just save me ranting on twitter or facebook.

In no particular order:

Pilates/ Yoga/ Corrective Exercise.

• Pilates isn't magic regardless of what your Physio/ Chiro/ Osteo/ GP tells you. Many of the people recommending it have never actually done a class themselves, so have no idea why they are suggesting you do it. How about these health professionals learn some corrective exercise and start prescribing it properly. If you enjoy Pilates and like the idea of doing it, then do it. Same goes for yoga.
• The people who need to go to a yoga class are in the free-weights area, and the people who need to lift weights are in the yoga class.
• Stroke rehabilitation in this country sucks.
• I bet Joseph Pilates wished he copyrighted the name and franchised it (except, of course, he didn't know what the future would hold and now he's gone to the big studio in the sky).
• A large number of people starting in a gym will tell you they have an injury or previous injury. This is the norm. The injury free person is not the norm. So why don't they cover this on level 3 fitness courses. These aren't the special population, they are the population. The special population is that small group of people who have made it through life injury free with no mobility restrictions.
• Personal trainers and coaches started doing corrective exercise and ended up doing de facto rehabilitation because the physio services in this country have been a miserable failure.
• If I referred out every time I was meant to, the gym and Pilates class would be empty.

Strength Training. Gym Culture.

• Olympic weightlifting is a sport. Unless you are actually competing in the sport don't be so precious about whether triple extension exists, or whether the Chinese are using the catapult method, or if variations of the lifts have any benefit. If your goal is to be more athletic, explosive, strong and improve body composition then there is benefit to dumbbell variations, as well as sandbags, complexes and so forth. Olympic lifting is not compulsory for all athletes.
• Having said that some coaches seem to fear the Olympic lifts because they are 'so hard to coach' and they 'only have their athletes for a limited time' and they could spend their time on 'less technical more effective things.' If you have a healthy person with no restrictions then in my opinion they are no more difficult to coach than barbell squats or deadlifts. And dumbbell and sandbag variations can be taught even quicker than some of the standard  'slow' barbell lifts.
• Powerlifting is also a sport. Again squats, deadlifts and bench press can all be beneficial depending on the persons goals. But unless they are competing in a meet where gear is allowed and chemical enhancement is common place then following the program of the elite lifter may not be all you think is going to be.
• Strongman - see above.
• Ask most guys what they are doing in the gym today and they will say 'chest' or 'shoulders' or 'back & bi's'. Meaning most guys training in the gym still think in terms of body part splits and bodybuilding training. Rarely is anyone ever going to say 'deadlift strength' 'dynamic effort day' 'explosive power' or 'superficial back line fascia'. If you think things have moved on and functional training and strength training are now king, go and ask this question on a Monday evening in any standard gym and count how many people say 'Chest'.
• Most people working out do not compete in anything. Training is their hobby. They may be dedicated, train 7 days a week and obsess about their macro ratios but the only stage they are stepping on is at the local club on a Saturday night after drinking 10 tequila slammers. Yes, all they want to do is look good in a t-shirt or dress and attract the opposite sex or same sex - and I don't have a problem with that.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED).

• Most guys taking performance enhancing drugs don't compete in anything. A surprising number of guys (still a minority but sizeable) take test, growth hormone, clenbuterol and all sorts of other shit like tamoxifen just because they are so insecure and want to look bigger at said nightclub. They are either lazy, want results too quickly, stupid, and just maybe our society is now creating a physique ideal that many men find hard to achieve. Most of these guys look fat and bloated and should ask for their money back. Also don't forget these guys don't have a whole medical team backing them up like Lance Armstrong did, its just them in their bedroom with a needle, a sore arse and their friends assurance that this stuff is the 'good shit'. When it all goes pear shaped, our healthcare system will be picking up the pieces.
• You don't hear much about amateur endurance athletes taking PEDs, but I'm sure it must happen in the likes of ironman triathlon and even some marathons. It happens at the elite level, so why not amateurs? I can't see why male endurance athletes would be any less insecure than male weight trainers. Maybe EPO is too expensive, I don't know.

Fitness Industry.

• There is no equipment solution to the fitness industry problem of lack of participation. 
• The revolution that makes more people take part in fitness and join gyms won't be about a piece of equipment or a particular class or a cheap price or opening hours. It will be about motivation. The person who figures out how to tap into peoples intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their desires and emotions will be the person who transforms the industry and improve its current abysmal market penetration.
• Recently a sales and marketing manager asked me if 'functional fitness' is a fad. Well firstly, in my world dumbbells and barbells are functional, standing on a powerplate waving a vipr is not. Seeing as humans have been lifting weighted objects for a couple of thousand years, have been trail running ever since we were upright hominids and lifting dumbbells and weighted wands/ barbells for the last two hundred years - I would say none of these are fads. However, maybe treadmills, bikes and crosstrainers are. Most of us in the industry now started in the last 10 to 20 years, which means we came into an industry built on a model of rows of cardio equipment in health clubs, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon. This is the fad, but because its been here since we started working, it seems like the norm. In 20 or 30 years will people be laughing at us because we walked indoors on treadmills while playing sudoku on a screen bolted to the front of the machine.

Fad?

• In 2009 the second most profitable fitness operation was BeachBody who own P90X. They grossed over $900 million (source: FitPro Business magazine apr/may/june 2013). Still think you need a big room full of equipment? And P90X makes Crossfit look like they are following classic Russian linear perdiodization.
• Only 39% of consumers exercise regularly (HAFOS survey 2012) despite the fact that walking and body weight exercises are free. Access to facilities is not the issue. The average person in the UK watches 4 hours of TV per day (Ofcom, 2011) therefore people are not time poor, they have enough time to exercise if they wanted to.
• Fitness trainers are arguing about the details when most of the population aren't doing anything.
• Why is there a kettlebell community? I don't see a medicine ball community or cable machine community? People don't get so zealous about other bits of equipment except possibly...
• Barbells, there is always a false dichotomy set up online. You either only use barbells or machines. You either squat or you don't. You have to use bilateral movements or unilateral. In reality it always depends. If you train people all day, you make decisions based on the person in front of you and the equipment you have available. If you don't train people all day you have time to read Supertraining with a magnifying glass and post on forums all day. Its simple: Use the tools you have, and if you have multiple tools use the most appropriate one.
• Speaking to male friends of mine who go to the gym but are not obsessed with fitness and aren't in the industry - they like machine weights because they are convenient, they can do a quick circuit and they are easy set to set up. When I asked why they don't use the freeweights they gave all the same reasons that most women do - intimidated, too crowded, set up time and mainly the area is normally full of douches doing 50 sets on the bench with their mates while talking shit.
• You think people care about research or things have moved on - go and see how many people are still doing crunches in the gym.
• People opt out of inductions/ orientations because their previous experience tells them its going to be shit and not address their needs. You can change this by offering a quality product.
• Probably no one is going to take us seriously when the entry level to the industry is set so low. A weekend course and you can be the fitness expert in the park #beasting people #smashingit #hardcorefitness  #lawsuit  #chump.

Running.

• Running 100 miles is not logical in any way, so why do I want to do it?
• I've seen just as many injured from weight training as from long distance running. Despite this, there is a trend among strength coaches to say that if you run long distances you will end up skinny fat and injured. Which is like saying if you powerlift you will end up fat with a pec tear. Most runners get lower body injuries, most weight lifters upper body. Both have lower back injuries. It could be runners are more likely to report injury or go to a physio - but I'm guessing. Or weight training injuries such as elbow surgeries etc just are written down as being caused by training.
• People say standing on stage in a pair trunks painted brown posing is ridiculous. But 22 men on a pitch kicking a bag of air around isn't - and they are millionaires. I don't do either, but if its your passion and you enjoy it - don't listen to anyone else. This applies to all sports.
• All runners need to do some form of resistance training.
• Most runners are weak and have appalling movement screens - this doesn't mean they are bad runners.
• You can be overweight and run. And if you enjoy it and your joints don't hurt then carry on. But don't think it will help you lose weight. That stick thin female and male runner who just went past you - they probably always looked like that.
• Since I started running properly again a few years ago and started to midfoot strike more my calves have got progressively tighter. But if I stretch them will it make me a better runner or worse runner or less injury prone? Or would it make me just feel better because I was doing some flexibility work that really had no benefit?
• Barefoot running is not magic, but I quite like doing it.

Women in the gym.

• Why do so many women want to look like the bag of bones models in fashion magazines, why do they think men want them to look like that? It makes me sad.
• A good proportion of figure and fitness competitors had a back ground in gymnastics and athletics as kids. Essentially they were doing gymnastic training for 20 years and then decided to lift some weights.  If you don't have that background don't beat yourself up, its going to take more than a year to get to where they are. Without taking anything away from the figure pros with that background - I'm more impressed with the people who have lost 20kg and have been working hard for 10 years than the people who are genetically gifted with a 6 pack.
• Crossfit isn't evil. How many women did you see doing pull ups and Olympic lifting before crossfit?And crossfitters aren't the only people doing random workouts, go to any gym or any day and see what random stuff people are doing and what random stuff personal trainers are giving people. Crossfit didn't invent the random illogical workout. And once again, see above, what are you actually training for. Plus a fair amount of hot women do crossfit.
• Do women really need to train differently from men? They need to train differently to men if they have different goals for sure.

Nutrition.

• Why are they still teaching the standard food pyramid/eat well food plate on level 3 fitness courses. Where is the evidence to support it?

Official UK NHS FSA Eat Well  Plate. Foods high in fat and sugar get the same segment. Turns out coconut oil and olive oil are in the same category as high fructose corn syrup and skittles

• Intermittent fasting, low carb, paleo, carb cycling, carb back loading, vegan, vegetarian, biorhythm diet have all worked for someone at some point. It doesn't mean they will necessarily work for you. Someone do some research please.
• If you can find any evidence to support the hypothesis that a  low fat diet is better than a low carb diet for weight loss, you can submit it here and win a cash prize!
• Always check the research references people quote to support their argument. You may be surprised to find they aren't always quoting the best research and sometimes it actually says the opposite of what they are saying (thanks to Nick Heasman for this one and being research vigilant!)
• I don't like bulletproof coffee.
• I used to fear the avocado. But seasoning is the key.

Coaching.

• What works for you may not necessarily work for your clients.
• Don't be the guy who trains his girlfriend by giving her exactly the same workout you do. She probably doesn't want a day dedicated to biceps and forearms.
• Coaching is a mix of art and science. Much like practicing medicine, except we don't kill as many people with adverse drug reactions.
• Most American strength coaches are biased towards American Football, Basketball, Baseball and Ice Hockey because that's who they coach. Their information may not necessarily apply to the athletes you are coaching. This doesn't mean you can't take something from what they do, you probably can't adopt it wholesale though.
• A few years ago tempo training was all the rage, popularised by Ian King and Poliquin (before he jumped the shark and starting injecting vitamin C to boost testosterone, taking skin fold measurements of peoples chins and packing on 10 pounds of muscle by eating Guatemalan mangoes). I generally ignored tempo until I read Triphasic training. Now, I have used eccentric, isometric and concentric phases with people looking to gain strength, bodybuilders, sports players and figure athletes. I will write a separate article at some point showing how you can simply apply it to various training programmes.
• The best coaches were not the best sportsmen. As far as I am aware John Wooden wasn't a superstar basket player, Dave Brailsford never won the Tour De France (yeah, I know he is not technically a coach), Tony Minichiello wasn't a Decathlon world champion and one of the greatest running coaches of all time - Brother Colm O'Connell - arrived in Kenya as an Irish missionary with no experience of coaching professional runners. The most talented and successful athletes can't always tell you how they did it or coach others.
• This stuff should be fun, don't take it too seriously.

Breaking Bad.

• The second half of the final season starts on Netflix next week. Huzzah!

Hank Schrader

Tortuga: “Hey white boy, my name’s Tortuga. You know what that means?”

Hank: “If I have to guess, I’d say that’s Spanish for asshole.”

Train Like An Olympian. Think Like An Olympian.

Over the last week we've witnessed some amazing performances in the Olympics. I was lucky enough to be in the Olympic stadium on day one of the athletics, where I saw Jess Ennis break the British record in the 100m hurdles on her way to heptathlon gold. Elsewhere, Britain continues to dominate in the velodrome, seemingly breaking world records every time we hit the wooden track. In the rowing more gold medals, and athletes pushing themselves so hard they had to be lifted out of the boat at the end by Steve Redgrave. (Yes, I'm British, so I am somewhat bias in all the events I have mentioned, to redress the balance in the weightlifting seeing a guy lift triple his bodyweight overhead and another guy squat jerk 204kg at a bodyweight of 77kg is enough to fire anyone up).

Did I mention I was in the Olympic stadium on day 1 of the athletics when Jess Ennis broke the British 100m hurdle record

But can mere mortals take anything from the way these athletes train and think, and apply it to their own training? I think they can. You may not have the luxury of being a full time athlete, and your goal might be to lose half a stone or run 10k in less than 60 minutes, but you can take certain principles and start using them straight away.

The basics

The first thing to note is that most athletes training consist of basic exercises and drills that anyone can do. Yes, there are a few secrets that they are not going to tell anyone, and in the case of British Cycling they really did have the Secret Squirrel Club working on these type of developments. However, the basics remain fundamental. The Chinese, Turkish, South American and North Korean weighlifters do essentially the same exercises as everyone else. They have to practice the clean and jerk and the snatch, and do some accessory lifts, but to get good at lifting weights you have to lift weights. It's the same with running, to be good at running you have to run, you have to put the time in. Whether you're Kenyan or Mo Farah or looking to run 10k, there are really three basic things you have to do

1. Sometimes run long
2. Run some hills
3. Sometimes run fast, using intervals

This applies to fat loss, too often people search for the magic holy grail, obsessing about the details when they haven't even covered the basics (that green tea supplement ain't doing nothing if you're troffing a big mac and fries everyday). This article here by Nia Shanks covers the basics of fat loss and also contains this great quote from Dan John

"I think many of us think this way: If it’s free or simple or easy to understand, it can’t be as good as something that’s expensive, complicated and difficult to figure out on your own"

Consistency again, No one wants to hear about the hard work

After winning the 10,000m Mo Farah said this in his post race interview

"120 miles, week in, week out, long distance is a lonely event, what you put in is what you get out"

You can see the full interview here.

Mo Farah and his training partner, Galen Rupp, beat the East Africans, but they had to put the work in, they were still running 120 miles a week. It doesn't matter if you have the best coach in the world you still have to put the work in, no one is going to do it for you.

Geraint Thomas (member of Britain's winning Team Pursuit Squad in London 2012, that also happened to break the world record) said a very similar thing. The hours in the velodrome, sometimes from 7am to 10pm at night, the endless repetitions and hard work and grind.

So the question is how much do you want to achieve your goal, what are you willing to sacrifice? You could have a full time job and other family responsibilities, but if you want to lose that weight, if you want to run that distance, what are you going to do differently. How much time can you give to it? And on those dark winter days when no one cares about your goals, what's going to drag you out of bed to go for that walk or prepare those meals for the day? How about never missing a workout for a year or two years.

Decide how much time and effort you are willing to give to your goal, and then stick to it. And have a contingency plan, you know what barriers you have, you know when you might waiver and fail, you know when your busy times at work are. At some point you might get ill, then what? Have a plan.

At some point something or someone will attempt to derail you, be ready for it.

"The Aggregation of  Marginal Gains"

The above quote is by Dave Brailsford, Performance director of British Cycling. To quote from the team sky website

"We've got this saying, 'performance by the aggregation of marginal gains,'" Brailsford continued. "It means taking the 1% from everything you do; finding a 1% margin for improvement in everything you do."

In elite sport, 1% can be the difference between winning gold and being at the back of the field.

The problem with many amateurs is they start looking for the 1% gain when they haven't covered the 99% first. For example, the bicep curl is a 1% exercise. There is no point in doing it if you haven't got the basics covered; squat, deadlift, pressing movement and pulling movements. But a lot of young guys, especially, get it the wrong way around, they do tons of bicep curl variations and ask you how they are going to hit the outer head of their bicep when they can't do a chin up or a deadlift. I'm pleased to say I do see this gradually changing, where I work the squat racks and platforms are always busy with people doing squats and deadlifts and presses, and much of that can be put down to the coaches on the gym floor.

Don't chase the 1% until you've got the basics squared away.

But then look at EVERYTHING you do. The time in the gym, is it efficient? What you eat, what you do at work, your sleep patterns, the people you spend the most time with. Are all these things conducive to you achieving your goals. If not, how can you change them, will a 1% change be enough to reap rewards.

For more on the British Cycling approach see here, here and here

1% Flip it

However, there is another way of looking at the 1% if you are not on a pro cycling team and don't spend all your time in wind tunnels wearing lycra.

Jamie Staff, former member gold medal winning member of the British Cycling team, knew before the Beijing Olympics that to win he needed to improve his time by 2.78%, so he went about improving everything by 2.78%, improving his squat in the gym by this amount, dropping his bodyfat by this amount and so forth. In a NY Times article he states

 “When you break it down, it’s actually really small gains in all those small things that when added together make a huge difference”

You can apply this to your own goals. Say you want to lose one stone in weight, and for ease of calculation lets say you currently weigh 150Ibs. If you focus on losing just 1% of bodyweight per month (1.5Ibs) you would have lost the stone in 10 months, losing a mere 0.375Ibs per week, which is hardly noticeable, but over 10 months adds up. Of course, if you're in Biggest Loser territory you can lose way more than this just by doing the basics.

Setting PBs in the gym can be the same, squat is 150kg, increase by 1.5kg per month, and you've got an 18kg increase in 12 months. Of course, in reality, progress is rarely linear, and as a beginner you can make big jumps by improving technique alone.

You can also apply this principle to nutrition, change one thing at a time. One less chocolate bar per week, one less glass of wine, one more serving of vegetables per week, over a year these things add up. Exercise volume, its the same, 10 minute walk one week, increase by 1 minute per week over a year and you've got 60 minutes exercise per day.

But don't forget the basics.

And these things take time. You have to be patient. Increasing numbers of young guys are taking performance enhancing drugs, these are recreational lifters, with no desire to compete anywhere, but with anabolics easily available on the internet and an instant gratification culture, they will go for the easy route before looking at the basics, and then all the other 1% they can improve on. A clean rider won the tour de france (Bradley Wiggins), therefore this marginal gains stuff works.

Coach

What do Victoria Pendleton, Mo Farah, Bradley Wiggins, Jess Ennis and Lu Xiaojun all have in common. They all have a coach. And all of them have mentioned their coaches and support team in post event interviews (well, I don't know about Lu Xiaojun, but I'm sure he mentioned it when the Chinese state media interviewed him).

Jess Ennis has a coach - but maybe she wants a new strength & conditioning coach - I am available

And most of them have a whole team behind them, including physiotherapists, sports scientists, biomechanical analysis, chiropractors, psychologists and nutritionists.

The athlete also has to have total faith in their coach, their support team and their program.

But for some reason, the average gym-goer seems to think they can train themselves, write their own program or get their program from a magazine (or in most cases don't really have a plan or program, 'I think I'll do some chest and biceps today', 'I think I'll go for a 20 minute run today'). The only problem is, its very hard to assess your own weaknesses and strengths, what you need to work on, when you should back off and when you should push it and when you need to go back to the drawing board.

Coaches come in all different guises, some were world class athletes in their own right, for example, Mo Farahs coach Alberto Salazar,  Jess Ennis's coach Toni Minichiello seems to have always been a coach and was never an elite athlete  (I could be wrong, as there is surprisingly little information about him that I could find) and  it seems to be law that nearly all Olympic weightlifting coaches are an old fella in a tracksuit who will slap his lifters on the shoulders and if they are a female lifter on the ass as well!

The lesson here, is firstly a coach can really help. Secondly, don't be fooled by the appearance of the coach. Too often, in the gym environment the trainer who looks like a bodybuilder get the guys who want to bulk up (and the women sometimes who want to lose weight). I doubt Lu Xiaojuns coach has ever jerked 204kg and Toni Minichiello has probably never run a 12.54 100m hurdles, but they know how to coach and get the best from their athletes. Look for the coach who has got results and can prove it. Of course, athletes at the top of many sports are genetically gifted (save the genetics vs training argument for another day), so find a coach who has also got results with ordinary folk as well.

Kenyan coaching - a lesson

You might be thinking, this is all very well, but I don't have access to the facilities and support team that these pro athletes do, and you may be thinking that there is a 'special secret' training technique or drug that you don't know about.

Over to Kenya, the antithesis of British Cycling, in as much there is really no system or scientific high performance strategy. Of course, being born at altitude and spending your formative years running to school helps, and you can't change that, but this is true of many countries who don't win any long distance event.

If you want to go and train in Kenya, you can, there is no secret training camp. Adharanand Finn's fantastic book Running With The Kenyans outlines his time training there, and Toby Tansers book More Fire has several training programs of the elite Kenyan runners listed. And before going to the USA Mo Farah also trained in Kenya.

The most successful distance running coach in history is Brother Colm O'Connell, an Irish missionary with no background in coaching before moving to Kenya. So don't be fooled by appearances. With nothing more than a stopwatch and a track of rubble, they have dominated until recently all long distance events.

The secret is there are no secrets, do the basics every day, run, get up at 5am and run, run in a group, eat and run and rest, run long hills, do punishing hill sessions and go easy and back off when you need to. If anyone has taken to basics and turned them into an artform, it's the Kenyans.

Personal Training or Coaching

What is the difference between a personal trainer and a coach. This is my take on it. People employ a personal trainer because they need extrinsic motivation, they want someone to make them come to the gym, they want someone to count the reps. Sometimes there is balance of power issue with a personal trainer and client. Its not unusual for clients to tell their trainer that they don't want to do this or that, and they want a new program after two weeks because the current one isn't working. There can be a fair amount of second guessing the trainer, especially if the trainer is newly qualified or is trying to build up a client base, they are financially dependent on the client and sometimes do things to please the client rather than get results.

The coach is different. Yes, there is a dialogue, but the athlete must have complete faith in their coach. The British Cycling team and Rowing team have complete faith that they have the best coaches and system, there is no second guessing.

A few days ago Dave Brailsford was interviewed on BBC Breakfast news, yes he said you need talent and commitment, but without commitment talent was no good and he also stated

'fundamentally it's all about coaching'

Intrinsically motivate yourself

In a study by Connaughton et al (2008) they interviewed elite, world champion  and Olympic athletes to find out what type of mindset they have. They found athletes had three attributes regardless of the stage of their career

1. Having an unshakable self-belief in your ability to achieve your competition goals
2. Having an unshakable self-belief that you possess unique qualities and abilities that make you better than your opponents
3. Having an insatiable desire and internalized motives to succeed

In short, all the motivation quotes and pictures in the world aren't going to help if you can't motivate yourself

And two underlying mechanisms were cited again and again

1. Coaches' leadership
2. Social support

 Find a support team, a coach if you can, who will show you what you need to work on and what you can ignore.

Ultimately, you have to have no doubt at all that you will succeed in your goals.

Time for another Dave Brailsford quote, this time from an interview in The Independent newspaper

"You have to work out, is this athlete intrinsically driven? Is there that burning desire inside them, to continue to compete, to continue to improve, to continue to go through all the pain and the hard work, the nutrition, the lifestyle, the sacrifices you have to make. If you look at all the great champions … it's not to do with anyone outside, it's what's inside them, they're special in that respect. And if you haven't got that, it doesn't matter how much talent you've got, you're never going to get sustained success."

A good coach gives you belief and confidence. But you must have an internal drive, and as we will see at the end of this article, it is possible to cultivate that.

Over training

Many beginners are fearful of over training. Somewhere along the line, someone told them that if they did weights two days in a row or went for a run for two consecutive days they would explode, their muscles wouldn't recover and they would get injured.

Olympic athletes show you how much you can train and how much you need to train. Now, I don't expect you to run 120 miles a week or weightlift for 3 sessions a day, but lets face it, those 5 hours a week you're doing probably aren't going to lead to over training. The average Kenyan school kid is doing more.

But build up gradually, and you'll be surprised how resilient your body is.

At the other end of the extreme are clients who want to smash it every session. They do hours on end. As the old adage goes (I think it was Charles Staley who said it first, but I could be wrong) - stop chasing fatigue, chase performance. If the fatigue doesn't make you faster or stronger or lose weight, then why are you doing it?

The classic example, is when people start using plyometric drills as metabolic conditioning. They start jumping around with awful technique and not really creating any plyometric effect. This is where the coaching part becomes relevant, if they can't do it properly there is no point in doing it. Its also making the client aware that elite athletes rest 2,3,4,5 minutes between plyometric exercises. Its about maximum power and explosiveness, always know why you are doing something.

Even Kenyans take it easy...sometimes

In the excellent documentary 'Born to Run - The Secret of Kenyan Athletics', the presenter Eamonn Coghlan travels to Kenya to see how they train. In one scene, David Rudisha (edit: now Olympic champion, 800m world record holder, first man to run under 1.41) goes back to train with Colm O'Connell at his old school. Not only, does one of the greatest middles distance athletes of all time train with school kids, he does exactly what his coach says. The session is surprisingly easy, they practice running with tempo and rhythm and being completely relaxed, they do a long easy warm up and then do a few laps around the school yard and that's it. The presenter Eamonn can't believe how easy the session is. As Colm points out, not all sessions have to be hard, yes, they will have some very hard sessions, but other session have different goals which in the long term make the athlete better. In another scene the athletes do yoga and stretching. I highly recommend watching this documentary if you can.

The take home message is, training can undulate, when you train hard, train very hard, but when you need to recover, then do so.

Even Chinese lifters warm up with the bar

While watching the weightlifting at the ExCel live and also on TV, I noticed that before the clean and jerk even the top lifters warm up with the bar. That's right Lu Xiajun and Lin Qingfeng, gold medal winning lifters still warm up with the bar. Then I saw one of them put just 40kg on the bar to continue the warm up. The reason they are so technically good is they practice the moves over and over again. If the top lifters in the world still do a warm up with the bar and practice the movement then you probably need to as well.

Lu Xiaojun squat jerks 204kg at 77kg bodyweight. Unless you were born on Krypton and now live on a planet with a yellow sun then I wouldn't attempt this. Oh, and he still does bar work to warm up.

Under training

The opposite of training all the time and never undulating or varying your approach is not training enough. Some people seem to think that the once a week gym session is going to help them lose that weight or transform their bodyweight. Please don't ask me why you haven't lost weight when you do Pilates once a week, go on the treadmill for 10 mins and don't modify your eating habits.

Put some effort in. If you can't commit time to your goal then you will fail. A few sets of bicep curls with a 5 minute chat in between aren't going to cut it. In Olympic weightlifting, if you follow yourself you only get 2 minutes rest between maximal efforts. Get the job done. Focus.


Fail

While I was watching the heptathlon high jump in the Olympic stadium (did I mention I was in the Olympic stadium?!) it struck me that all the athletes keep jumping until they fail, they end on failure. You have to be willing to push out of your comfort zone, find failure and then learn from it, what could you have done differently. Learn to fail and use it to drive you on.


It was the same watching the weightlifting, lifters fail all the time, they go out, fail a lift and then compose themselves and go again. It was surprising to me how many lifters failed an attempt and then came out and got it the second time, or even put the weight up and then got the new weight. Even those who had already won the event, would often come out for their third attempt and try for a PB or world record when they had no need to. Push yourself, compete against yourself.

Train with people who are stronger than you or faster than you can help, as can having a coach, pushing you past levels that you previously thought were your limits.

As Dave Brailsford said 'you will lose more than you win', but you have to keep trying.

Lin Qingfeng. The look of a man who will win at all costs. He doesn't use the door, he just walks through the wall, unstoppable.

Excuses

Okay, maybe you're still thinking, that's all very well, but I have a full time job, I can't afford a coach and I'm not moving to Kenya. Well here's a non Olympic example for you. Scott Jurek, American ultrarunner, won the Western States 100 mile run, Badwater 135 mile run, Hardrock 100, Spartathlon 152 mile run. He had no coach, for most of his early career he was working in a running shop or as a Physical Therapist, and was in a sport with no prize money and in the early years of his career no sponsorship. He would train by running to and from work, and at weekends, with no money and in debt before he became the face of ultrarunning. I highly recommend you read his book Eat & Run.


If you want it enough, you'll do it.

As If

I recently finished reading a book called Rip It Up by Professor of Psychology Richard Wiseman. I highly recommend it.

It is based on a principle first explained by philosopher William James over a hundred years ago

'If you want a quality, act as if you already have it'

 Common sense tells you that your emotions cause behaviour, for example, you are happy so you smile, or you are an extrovert therefore you have outgoing behaviour. In fact, research has show over and over again that the reverse is true. Behaviour causes emotion, if you smile you will feel happier, if you adopt a 'power posture' you feel more confident, and if you tense your fist hard for a minute your testosterone levels will go up. This is the opposite of positive thinking in many ways.

If act like you are an elite athlete, train like an athlete, look at every aspect of your life like an elite athlete, then you will take on some of their attributes (now this doesn't mean your are going to run a 9.63sec 100m but it does mean you will attack your own personal goals in a more professional manner and are more likely to achieve them).

Elite athletes have a coach, get one if you can, or even just get someone to write your training program for you. As one of the athletes in the study by Connaughton said

"When we got into the elite standard of training we were very structured in our training. My coach and I would plan out the training month by month."

In summary to train like an Olympian and think like one

1. Work on the basics, practice, put the time in
2. Once you've got the basics, think about everything else you can improve, the 1%
3. Get a coach or a support network
4. Internalise your motivation. When its dark and cold and you need to get up and train, only you can motivate yourself
5. Act as if you are already elite in the way you approach your training and goals.

Final thoughts - slaying the dragon

One of my favourite athletes (and commentators) of all time is actually a sprinter - Michael Johnson. If you don't know who Michael Johnson is, you probably live in a cave somewhere, but in short Olympic 200m and 400m champion in Atlanta and the most insightful commentator on athletics with a no nonsense approach; not sugar coating and not dumbing down for the audience. His approach to training and attitude always really appealed to me, the results spoke for themselves.

In his book Slaying The Dragon (now out of print, but you can pick up a second copy for a couple of quid) he covers many of the techniques that helped him become a champion, one of these areas is crafting self discipline. If you have set yourself the target of doing 50 press ups or 10 intervals, then do 50 not 49, do all 10 intervals not 9; apply this principle to all aspects of your life and not just your training. Also, importantly remember that the journey can be hard, yes you should enjoy your life, but cutting calories is hard, pushing away that cake is hard when everyone around you is eating it,turning off the TV and putting in another training session when you feel fatigued is hard. As Johnson says

"Ask yourself: 'Why am I doing this?'....when it comes to practicing self discipline, don't fool yourself; go ahead and admit that fat free cheese doesn't taste as good. It only works if the end is something you really want. Remember, this is a decision you consciously made. Remind yourself why."

(Of course he wrote this before everyone went high fat and low carb and then intermittent fasting crazy, because what is the point of low fat cheese - hello taste?!).  Remind yourself on a daily basis why you are doing what you are doing.

Michael Johnson - 'Do the 50th push up' and check out that satorius muscle on his leg!

"after you have stared long enough into the dragon's eyes, there is nothing left to do but slay the dragon. For each of us, that dragon is the thing closest to the center of our lives. It is our core, our ambition, and our joy." - Michael Johnson

Afterward

In an interview on BBC Breakfast Dave Brailsford mentioned 2 other things, get a decent pillow so you sleep properly and use handwash so you have less chance of picking up infection and then not being able to train. If Brailsford says it, I'd probably do it!

British Cycling - they use round wheels, decent pillows amd hand wash

Further Reading

Connaughton D et al (2008) The development and maintenance of mental toughness: Perception of elite performers. Journal of sports sciences. 26:1, 83-95
Finn A (2012) Running With The Kenyans
Jurek S (2012) Eat & Run
Johnson M (1996) Slaying the Dragon (out of print)
Tanser T (2008) More Fire. How To Run The Kenyan Way
Wiseman R (2012) Rip It Up

Links

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/dave-brailsford-cycling-coach-reveals-secrets-to-gbs-success-8005870.html
http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290,17547_5792058,00.html
http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/marginal-gains-bear-fruit-for-great-britain-in-olympics
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/sports/olympics/2012-olympics-how-britain-conquered-the-cycling-world.html?_r=2&smid=tw-share


Further watching

Kenyan running doc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BknGrh7mJ6Y

for those who can't access BBC website, here is Lu Xiaojun lifting 204kg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQRk8kK-GxM

Julia Rohde - just because