Pro Grade Training: One-on-One or Group Training for Rapid Results

There is a hierarchy of health and fitness needs that everyone should be following. Unfortunately, most people, including many Personal Trainers disregard this hierarchy due to limited knowledge and the ever so mindset of skipping to the fun parts first. The reason is that we are wired to crave short-term gratification. We want it now and we are willing to skip anything and everything to get there as soon as possible. Studies actually show that kids who are able to strategically offset short-term pleasure for long-term accomplishments are a lot more successful in every area of life when they are adults. Your mind will want it now and it is not willing to put in the work to get to higher level of goals. We are all guilty of it, but what separates achievers from non achievers is that achievers strategically offset this short term perceived gain for long term results. I could get into various areas that people do this in, but I will keep it in the health and fitness neighbourhood.

I would say that almost everyone I see in the gym setting really does not understand human mechanics and movement. Not only that, but they are truly learning bad movement patterns and damaging their bodies. I do not really expect everyone to be an expert in this field. I would expect people to seek expert advice on how to move properly though. People in general want to get fit, loose weight, get more muscle and bulk up. People skip learning how to move properly, how to warm up, how to do movements correctly and how to prevent long-term injury. They want the results now! I have been guilty of it myself. It is a common human trait. I am also very impatient with things in my own life. I do understand and appreciate that it takes time to learn something properly. Because I have been there, I understand both sides. This gives me leverage to being able to make people understand the importance of learning how to prevent injury long term. The fact is that it takes a lot of time to learn proper movement, to increase range of motion so not to compensate with other joints and to be able to learn how to stabilize joints properly and build up the body to be able to tolerate forces.

If you can imagine, we have these things called duty cycles. So for example, lets say that you can raise your shoulder 1 Million times before it begins to wear and tear. So you would have 1 Million duty cycles. Now if you raise your shoulder in a compromised position, those duty cycles get divided pretty fast. So instead of your shoulder bothering you when you are 90 years old, you start getting shoulder issues at 30 years old. Do you see the importance of learning the proper mechanics to lift, especially with load? I hope so. I always use the analogy with my clients of your car. You have an old Honda Civic that hasn’t had the oil changed in a while, hasn’t been maintained in years and has the wheel alignment all out of place. Now you are so eager to go race it and push it to the max. What do you think will happen when your take your old Honda Civic to the max? You can imagine. That also happens to your body. The difference is that you can build up your mobility, your stability, your strength and endurance to a point that you can go to the max. It just takes time, proper education and patience.

Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Be patient, learn from good Personal Trainers, take your time, do your homework and in time you will reach all your goals and more.

– Simon Bialecki

Why People fail at their Health and Fitness Goals and what to do:

It is a fact that most people who “try” to get in better shape or “try” to become healthier and fitter have a hard time doing it and mostly never succeed. There are several reasons for this:

1) Fear of failure. People are so conditioned to be afraid to make mistakes that they are turned off by even the notion of temporary defeat. Temporary defeat, especially by mental blocks and old habits creeping what causes people to quit. These temporary defeats are necessary. They cause people to grow stronger in character. If it were easy, then everyone would do it and therefore most people do not do it. The enjoyment comes after having this temporary failure and breaking through it to the next level.

2) Not feeling good enough and comparing oneself to others. Many people look outside for what they should be doing. This is called external locus of control. You will never win this way. Most people should look inside or simply stated, internal locus of control, to see what they want to achieve for themselves.

3) Many people do not have specific goals that they want to achieve. If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Goals must be written down and reviewed everyday to have a clear picture.

4) No accountability. People do not have anyone that will motivate them and be on their case to get the job done. Most people fail completely because they only have to answer to themselves. Nobody is there to know. It is important to involve someone to answer to when the going gets tough.

5) No program to follow. I see this all the time. People think that training can be learned from a Muscle magazine. It took me 5 years of University, years of study and a ton of practice in the field to know that I still know very little. Many people copy other programs that are designed for other people and often hurt themselves in the process. Stop it and get help! Feed your ego on your own time.

6) Inconsistency in doing their plan. Small steps even if they are small are better then many steps at a time and then no steps repeated over and over. There is something called the Compound Effect, that states that small consistent steps and actions over time yield great results. I believe strongly in this, except I believe in massive momentum to get results in record time. So big steps over a long time will yield even better results. Stay consistent my friends.

7) No lifestyle changes and relying solely on going to the gym. Health and fitness is a holistic beast. You have to implement great eating patterns, sleep patterns and stress patterns to name a few. There are results that come from training, but to magnify them people need to get everything else on board as well. Most people think that by just going to the gym, they will see massive results. I always say, 80% Nutrition, 20% Exercise. We don’t just look and feel great by lifting weights.

8) People dread going to the gym. Lets face it, it can be boring. Most people do exercises that they hate. The reason is that they do not have enough knowledge to make training fun and interesting. You couldn’t pay me enough money to jog on the treadmill! Training has to be fun because having a good time is good for your health and that is why you are there in the first place.

9) But the most important reason that stumps all the above reasons is that most people do not have a strong enough “why”! If you do not have a strong enough reason for what you are doing, then anything that deters you from your path will do so with little effort. Most of people’s physical results are based down deep in their deep unconscious thoughts. Their thoughts lead to feelings, which is the “why”. The how, which is the action leads to results. In fact people do not have to know the how. If the “why” is strong enough, then the how will present itself. The stronger the “why”, the easier the how! Therefore, people’s health and fitness goals are all rooted in their mental thoughts. As people begin to appreciate and then develop this though systemized training, then the path is written in stone.

After we accomplish the “why” power, then my job is to provide the how. The how will lead to massive action, which always will lead to the amazing result. Integrity is saying what you will do and doing it no matter what. This is the accomplishment that you get when you reach your goals. Doing what you said you would do. It is necessary to learn the specifics of how to train your unconscious mind to go after your desires no matter what. It should feel like you are already there. We would come up with specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals to keep you accountable every day to achieving them. You need someone else to keep you accountable. There is no question about it. Inside the gym or at home. It doesn’t matter; you need to be 100% accountable in all areas of your lifestyle from your mental focus to your nutrition to your sleep to your stress and to your training. Having a systemized and custom plan will make the experience fun and it will reap huge results. Therefore, you do not “try”. You do or you do not do! Simple? Do it!

– Simon Bialecki