At least 23% of adults in America have mental illness: https://mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america


At least 88% are metabolically unhealthy: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/met.2018.0105


And it’s getting worse every year. From 1960 to 1980, childhood chronic illness prevalence went from about 1% to about 3%: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1646496/#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20National%20Health,parents%2C%20educators%2C%20and%20physicians.


In the following 40 years, it doubled, doubled again, doubled yet again, and about doubled once more: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyschools/chronicconditions.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20more,%2C%20and%20behavior%2Flearning%20problems.


Essentially, it went from 1 out of every 100 kids in the 1960s to where it is now: 1 out of every 2 kids. Subdivisions of disease look even worse. The definition, categorization and screening for autism did meaningfully change from 1968 (DSM-II) to 1987 (DSM-III) and to 2000 (DSM-IIIR). But it has not since. In the last 20 years the prevalence went from 1 in 200 to 1 in 36. People try to do hand-waving and dismissal when comparing the 1960s estimate of 1 in 15,000 against the current Californian boys prevalence of 1 in 20. Wave your hands all you like. We are not in stasis. We are not getting better. And we are not getting only a tiny bit worse.


Any in-depth analysis of public health trends shows overall worsening and at younger and younger ages. Thus, we are left with a simple question: why can’t people get healthy? Or one might simply wonder, “if  it’s impossible for us to make an improvement, can we at least slow the rate of detriment?”


This question plagued me long before I entered the fitness industry. However, in the over two decades I’ve been a health and fitness professional, it seems the deeper question is, “Are People Too Rigid to Be Helped?”. I’ve only seen the critical thinking capability of people decline along with a total collapse of American public health by every measure. It’s gotten me to wonder if people are simply too inflexible in their cognitive ability to be helped, even when it’s their own personal best interests of getting healthier. Also, it’s made me ponder a chicken-and-egg scenario, wherein the physical health of most people is so bad that it’s perhaps too much to expect that they’d become sharper in their reasoning. If they can’t get healthy, perhaps they can’t think clearly. If they can’t think clearly, perhaps they can’t get healthy.


If we zoom out and look broadly at outcomes directed by modern day keepers-of-truth and the priestly caste, things aren’t getting better. Absolutely, since antibiotics and sanitation at the beginning of the 20th century, public health mostly improved until the 1970s. Since the civil rights movement from 1954-1968, many great steps undeniably followed for society. However, the overall trajectory since the 1970s sees a definite deceleration in progress and/or reversals. There are whole webpages dedicated to the dramatic worsening of overall prosperity since the 1970s: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com. Specifically, in medicine and health sciences, the bar today is so low that it’s embarrassing: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/half-of-ucla-med-students-fail-basic-tests-since-lowering-standards-for-minorities/54812. 


Certainly, since the beginning of the Department of Education on May 4, 1980, American students have steadily worsened when compared to international students. Black and minority illiteracy collapsed almost entirely until 1979: https://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp. In fact, that year was the narrowest EVER gap between white students and non-white students. In the years since, we have moved to a place where 85% of black students are “functionally illiterate”: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/579750-many-of-americas-black-youths-cannot-read-or-do-math-and-that-imperils-us/. Thus, just broadly, our citizens do not have basic literacy, let alone advanced thinking skill. Things are not improving.


Contemporary studies don’t raise my hope. Less than 5% of American adults can consistently tell the difference between a statement of fact and an opinion:
https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/fact-opinion-differentiation/


To be clear, this is not an evaluation of WHETHER the fact is true or untrue. The statement of fact may be untrue. The opinion may be true. Or vice versa. But people cannot tell the difference between them.


This has an obvious impact on healthiness.


Without a doubt, those in positions of authority are working against the average person. We can see it in how pharmaceutical companies own media and the very regulatory agencies which are supposed to be protecting us from those same companies: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/conflicts-of-interest-in-science-and-human-health-have-reached-the-tipping-point


And simply stated, researchers at Ivy Leagues are actually not very smart or honest: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/red-meat-research-from-harvard-faculty-who-are-sloppy-liars-idiots-ordered-by-the-justice-department-to-return-millions-in-stolen-funds-and-owned-by-foreign-interests


Over and over again, we see “health authorities” champion superstitions, anti-science and pseudoscientific proclamations. As I’ve detailed before, the anti-scientific position of “scientific consensus” has been outright abysmal with regard to the radical mastectomy, Barry Marshall’s research on H. Pylori, and many unsafe medications, most recently notable are the vioxx scandal and the opioid scandal/crisis. But the embarrassments have no end. The flu vaccine effectiveness is negative: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6518843/. The efficacy is so low as to be nonexistent. Moreover, when we factor in people’s increased risky behaviors once vaccinated, the effectiveness is worse than being unvaccinated. 


It’s not merely that public health experts’ lies and half-truths are so pervasive and prevalent. It’s that “authorities” are so overconfident in their superstitions that they exuberantly partake in suppression of speech and thought. When children like Maddie de Garay became permanently paralyzed (https://downloads.regulations.gov/FDA-2021-N-1088-129763/attachment_1.pdf ) by the mRNA vaccines during the late 2020/early 2021 youth trials, the public never even had a chance at informed consent. Pfizer labeled the adverse reaction as “stomach ache.” A healthy Ontario boy died shortly after his mRNA vaccination, along with 400 other deaths and 10,000 serious adverse reactions suspiciously tied to mRNA vaccine rollouts: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/warmington-health-canada-deems-400-deaths-after-receiving-covid-vaccine-low . Nonetheless, these very concerning cases have their reactions listed as “rash” or other non-serious response. Numerous legitimate researchers have been raising concerns in peer-reviewed publications about our hurried adoption of the novel vaccine technology. But they are minimized, dismissed, and vilified. 


Now, maybe these are merely coincidences. Maybe it is totally dumb luck that Sweden had far better outcomes than the US while not locking down, while not closing schools, while not enforcing youth mRNA vaccination, while abiding by the heterodoxy of the Great Barrington Declaration formulated by Stanford and Harvard researchers. Maybe. Unlikely. But maybe. Maybe the US being the only country on earth to recommend infants receive three mRNA Covid vaccinations before nine months old is just a fluke, a glitch, and not a feature of a strategically-designed public health machine aimed at destroying its citizens’ vibrancy and turning them into lifelong sickly customers. Maybe.


But really, people can just look around. Look at the average populace around you. People are not healthy or fit. People are not independent thinkers. They’re generally regurgitating verbatim talking points from corporate media. Or simply look at an average classroom. The percent of children with severe special needs is outrageous. The number of children with major physical challenge and mental/emotional instability is climbing. Obviously.


As such, I charitably gift a fair bit of my personal time to help clarify a number of health and fitness topics, pulling from extensive professional experience, my own personal experiments, and also the overwhelming evidence in the field. I make nothing from this. I don’t want notoriety. I purposely take months or years off of social media platforms precisely because I do not crave attention. I have a family and multiple businesses to attend to in the real world with real people. My online presence is purely to teach and to learn. I make nothing from it. I want nothing for it, except to beneficially impact the handful of people willing to grow. It is exclusively downside, a cost both in the time I could be making money or with my family, and a cost in the actual money to pay for a business website and hosting. The ROI is negative. An extreme loss.


In fact, even this is an understatement, because almost everything I share which is iconoclastic or heterodoxy gets de-amplified, suppressed, or hidden. Unlike online influencers, I have a real company with a physical storefront; and giant tech companies collude to delegitimize any genuine outlet like mine from showcasing dissent. My early Facebook posts on Parkinson’s gained up to half a million views. A one-off YouTube video I made on knee-related orthopedic issues gained hundreds of thousands of views and tens of thousands of engagements. My brief efforts at Instagram peaked around twenty-thousand followers and interactions in the thousands. Our website once had a single day with tens of thousands of visits. However, after 2018, with each blog entry on conflicts-of-interest and the prevalence of non-replicable scientific research, we could actually measure the linear suppression of our visibility by Google and Meta algorithms. It turns out that the speech suppression machines ramped up at precisely that time period: https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/EIP_Jira-Ticket-Staff-Report-11-7-23-Clean.pdf


https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/


https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/zuckerberg-says-the-white-house-pressured-facebook-to-censor-some-covid-19-content-during-the-pandemic


Ironically, in the aftermath of algorithm suppression, I made a lot more money. It pushed me to spend less time on charitable online posts which make nothing for me; and the more I focus on my live business which has always made my entire income, obviously, the better it is for me.


But from time to time I still share, explain, cite and offer pieces of advice for those who are curious. Many aren’t curious. That’s fine. In discussions, however, I find that even some of the curious people have a genuinely hard time understanding the material, even when dumbed down, even when devoid of opinion, even when simplified to totally non-debated facts for simple takeaway.


No shame. Lots of complex topics can be confusing. But when people cannot decipher whether a statement is opinion or fact, genuinely I am not sure where to begin. 


Thus, some years ago I built a critical thinking guide: 


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/4-tips-to-sift-conflicting-science


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/validity-and-soundness


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/induction-is-not-deduction


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/opinion-versus-argument


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/correlation-is-not-causation-trend-is-not-even-close-to-mechanism


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/settled-science


Yet still, I find that people simply struggle to weigh input. In some circles, insults become a sort of shorthand to refuse any sort of discussion, thought, debate, engagement, evidence or argument. Slurs take the place of thoughtful discussion. “Racist” and “nazi” and “bigot” and “______phobe” and “pseudo_____“ have lost any relevant meaning. They are too often the universal language of low-IQ people dodging thoughtfulness and flexible learning. I have encountered even highly educated people insisting that anyone who doesn’t perfectly agree with them is always one of three things: unintelligent; crazy; or evil. This itself is the Ableism or Bulverism Fallacy tied into Ad Hominem Fallacy. It assumes ones own opinion is already conclusively THE TRUTH; therefore, any dissent or disagreement must be explained exclusively by attacking the opponent instead of the opponent’s arguments or evidence.


This isn’t a gloom-and-doom rant. We should recall that there are wonderful stories of progress. There are powerful examples of rags to riches, destitution to prosperity, rock-bottom to pinnacle, despair to salvation, scientific research breakthroughs, and glimmers of hope all around. That said, there is no denying that the past decade people have been competing for who is the bigger victim. Abdication of personal responsibility is the norm. A willful rejection of self-discipline is the norm. Victim narrative is the norm. Participation ribbon culture is the norm. It’s not a coincidence that the popularity of getting dumber, more opinionated, and more unhealthy all coincide. 


It’s particularly vexing for me in health and fitness topics. We can see the abject failure across fifty years of experts and authorities in public health. Yet somehow, a small percent of the populace keeps coming back to them, like an abused spouse defending her abusive husband. The good news is that trust in institutions and “experts” is vanishing: 


https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/


https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx


But really, there are still some 29% of people who claim to have “great confidence” in the opinions of demonstrably wrong and corrupt officials, when a healthier figure would be 0%, and a more reasonable claim would be “SOME confidence.” Sadly, 36% of the population claims to trust media a “great deal/fair amount”, when we know that they colluded with intelligence agencies to suppress speech/truth: 


https://oversight.house.gov/release/the-cover-up-big-tech-the-swamp-and-mainstream-media-coordinated-to-censor-americans-free-speech-%EF%BF%BC/


A multi-year congressional investigation into Covid measures found that nearly every single “conspiracy theory” which media suppressed or pilloried was correct:


https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/


The experts are wrong, and not a little. The voices of media were wrong, and not a little. And we now know for a fact that they lied repeatedly. Is it any wonder that the percent of the populace who trusts them is quite similar in quantity to the percent of the populace who is mentally ill?


At a bare minimum, I hope we can all see there is a big problem with authorities, experts, the modern priests, AND a problem in the individual and society. Once we do, of course, the questions still remain regarding solutions. Simply, there are four notions to keep in mind.


Foremost, I argue we must reject authorities. We must reject authoritarianism in all its forms, for now and forever. It’s actually quite weird that totalitarianism crept into liberal philosophy the past four decades. Suppression of thought and speech was a hallmark of fascism, which so ironically was embraced by “the left” during Covid lockdowns and online debate. That’s perhaps too complex to totally unpack. But suffice it to say, as a de facto default baseline, we must respond with immediate disapproval toward any and all figures of authority. Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to others. Hear a person out. Pause. Reflect. Cross-reference. Ponder. Then, if it seems prudent, make up your mind for yourself about whether you will allow that expert’s input into your framework of acceptable conclusions. 


Second, remember your acceptance is provisional and contingent. It’s not final, ever. If at any point better evidence or questionable circumstances arise, you may reject that conclusion again.


Third, remember that the universe is predictable and run by consistent physical laws. Everything has a cause or causes. Perhaps nothing has been more injurious to modern health than the mystification of health, fitness, and disease. The Postmodernism push to make truth relative was wrong. It’s time to move back to Empiricism. Experts have worked earnestly to convince the populace that autoimmune diseases and autism and cancers “just happen.” This is anti-scientific and anti-modern thinking. Nothing “just happens.” Everything is the outcome of prior causes and influences. It’s not mystical. We don’t need superstition wrapped up in our sciences. Pathologies have causes. Policies and substances have unintended consequences and shift health risks one direction or another. We can debate TO WHAT DEGREE any given behavior or substance shifts risk. But when people completely dismiss any sort of risk or influence from a whole category of drugs or treatments, that isn’t scientific. That’s religious mystical hoodoo. 


Fourth, given that the physical universe has real palpable causes, we’d do well to accept accountability and seek greatness. If we are mystical premodern simpletons, sure, the Fates are happening to us, we are powerless by every measure, and all is pointless and futile. But if we are modern scientific people with agency and will and determination, we impose outcomes on our surrounding environment. With this in hand, we can both accept the consequences of our actions and direct ourselves toward better ones. Instead of exasperation and disempowered futility, we have agency and empowered greatness.


Of course, with random chaos as the framework, how could people possibly get healthy? If there are no causes, why consider altering them? With inflexibility and a religious adherence to listening to the experts (ie - authoritarianism), how could society improve? By definition, it cannot, because the bedrock of that society is built upon destroying any outside criticism, any non-authority input, any possible improvement. That society is a totalitarian regime. However, on the contrary, with agency and empowered greatness, you better believe people will get healthy. A free society which rejects authorities can keep making progress. It can keep improving its tactics. It embraces advancement. It embraces growth. It rejects dogma. It embraces difficult questions, uncomfortable ideas, and new and better ways. Let us be the free society, where people take responsibility for their own futures, and where the totalitarian keepers-of-truth are turned to ash, eradicated forever, and held to a standard of accountability commensurate to the power they so thirsted to impose on humanity.

This claim has been making its rounds in the internet for some months. I could not determine on what hard statistics, if any, people are basing this claim. Certainly, the AVERAGE fitness of the vast majority of the populace plummits as time goes forward. So there is some truth to it. 

In my experience, which is considerable now (over the two-decade mark of professional training and coaching), people do rapidly get weaker after teenage years. And it is true that widespread health and fitness statistics are worsening and at an accelerating rate. As people age, they get weaker. Weakness raises risk OF fall and risk FROM fall and risk IN recovery. That is, the weaker you are, the more likely you are to fall. Moreover, the likelier you are to take serious injury. Moreover again, you are likelier to get sick or even die in the hospital subsequently. In graphs of death from fall, the prevalence in a population is precisely linear with strength loss.

However, there is also a large body of evidence that older populations can make immense progress if they train. And our concept of what older populations can tolerate in training needs some updating. I have worked with clients in their 70s and 80s who absolutely can and do sprint, and they get faster with training over time.

Simply put, if you train to get slow, you get slow. If you train to be faster, you get faster. If you train to get stronger and have better balance, you get stronger and improve balance. If you train to get weaker and have terrible balance, you get precisely what the inactivity and avoidance bargained for you.

I live this. I don't just study it. I don't just have thousands of case studies from over twenty years of 70,000+ hours of experience in the field. I live this. In my son's recent endeavors to run faster, and in pondering this meme making its circles in the social media, I began to wonder: how fast can I sprint nowadays?

About ten years ago I was able to hit 19.0 to 20.0 mph on free runner treadmills. And although I seldom train sprinting in the conventional sense (as opposed to just really faster rower or airdyne or cycling), I KNOW I am still pretty fast. But I did not know PRECISELY.

So I set out about a month ago to see. Day one I was still able to top out the treadmill at a respectable 12.0 mph. Currently, I canNOT maintain it (as I haven't trained this in years) for minutes at a time; but I can hit it for 10-30 seconds, depending on the incline. It equates to the pace of a 5 minute mile. My treadmill goes no faster. So all I had readily-available at my finger tips was incline. At 12.0mph, each 1% incline reduces the per-mile time by 10 seconds. At 12%, that's the same force required to run 15.0 mph on a flat surface, a 4-minute-mile pace. 

Steadily, every two days or so, I tried another couple percent higher. Ultimately, I was able to hit 12.0 mph at 12% for 10-20 seconds. On the free runner treadmill at Lifetime, my son and I topped out at pretty high speeds, my highest being 16.2 (pictured above are two screen captures from videos of my attempts, one at 16.0 and the other 16.2). It's no 19-20... yet. But I also haven't been earnestly training it for years. I suspect in a few months I could surpass my prior sprint speeds.

Speed and power are essentially the very top progression of strength, agility, balance, coordination. Thus, sprinting is critical in some format for everyone. It has to be based on the individual's ability. But there is no real reason anyone should avoid going fast eventually. Train it gradually. Be patient. But you may be surprised at just how rapidly you can regain ability you might've thought impossible. And it assuredly will go a ways to dispel the meme that's making its rounds.

Truly, you'll be surprised simply be incorporating it for even 4-6 weeks. I was. At my buddy's gym today I tried 12.5mph at 15% incline, which equates to the same amount of force to go 17.31 mph on a flat surface ( see video below). It's actually pretty funny how slow a 6'3" guy at 270+ lbs of bodyweight looks even at 12.5mph. Now I realize not everyone out there is already training 1,000lb belt squats and insane lower body lifts - so yes, of course, I had a head start of a significant advantage to retraining the high speed. But for each person out there, there will be a small impact and speed at which you can start. Maybe it's a walk. Maybe it isn't even a walk. I have had clients who need to begin with cycling. We work up to a walk and/or reverse walk very very gradually. But once they have enough strength, we can tolerate impact in the training. That process can take a year with compromised individuals. I know. I have trained people like this many times. But afterward we can take single-leg impact. Then they can jog. For short bursts, then they can run. Ultimately, many will regain moderate sprinting capability. And among people who have been diligently training incredibly heavy strength, the road back to fast runs and sprints is unimaginably short. 

Let us all be curious about where we are with regard to this skill and work at curating it.
​​

I used to not know. I figured a lot of top coaches ran back-to-back appointments 12-16 hours in a row, or logged 7 day weeks all the time. When I was at Bally’s 2004 to 2010, I had a peer who once did 141 sessions in a pay period, beating my personal record of 113 (65 in one week and 48 in the other) by quite a bit. These are only the 60-minute sessions, mind you. To those hours add notes, prep, scheduling, consults, assessments, meetings, workshops for CECs, etc. When I was at Lifetime 2010 to 2012, I once had a peer who about matched my record $65k productivity in a month, and several who beat me in the quarter. This was a lot of sales, but also a lot of serviced appointments. Granted, I was managing as well. But I just figured this is how workers work. My performances stood out. My teams did set a lot of national records. But they weren’t wildly divergent from other top performers. And frankly, people had bested me lots of times at lots of junctures along the way, in a month or a week or a quarter. I didn’t see these outcomes as spectacularly unique. There are many amazing pros out there in the top one-tenth of one percent.


Then, as I ran my own business in the independent sphere, often outstripping these hours and performances, I began to realize something was a little bit different about me in 2013. At the large facilities and giant corporate companies, I maybe stood AMONG the top one-tenth of one percent. But in the independent sphere, I found not a single person running the sheer number of client appointments that I ran, week after week, year after year. No one in all of the fitness influencer or strength-coaching sphere has ever shared calendar screen captures like mine. No one. Not ever. Not close. Not by miles.


For about a year or so, I would post my wake times and a message on Instagram, somewhere between 2:15am and 440ish, depending on the day. Scroll way back on my Instagram and you’ll see. But still, I found no one sharing schedules like mine. Wake times, sure. But no calendars like mine. No one. Ever.


And it started to dawn on me that no one has ever even been close to the experience I’ve logged in strength coaching and training. No one. It’s not a brag. It’s just that no one else on earth is built to be able to focus on others up to 18 hours in a day without breaks, and do it for decades. No one. It’s possible there are some guys in their 70s who’ve coached or mentored as many hours as I have. But again, only I have the receipts. Plus, everyone knows how consolidated intensives simply produce more learning. A person who practices piano for six hour per day every day for five years (about 10,000 hours) is simply going to be better than a person who practices one hour every other day for sixty years (about 10,000 hours as well). I just haven’t seen one person ever share even a short season of busyness that compares to my standard week of two decades. I have some great peers. I admire some great personalities who have curated vast social media followings. But respectfully, none of them are even close to the experience I’ve logged. I love ‘em. God bless ‘em. But humbly, I am the pinnacle in this domain.


Not at everything, mind you. But at quite a bit in human performance, actually. This is not an opinion of conceit. It is an objective measurable fact. We could look at my own metabolic experiments or client testimonies. However, lots of coaches have gained 80lbs of muscle and lost 70lbs of fat personally while having trained dozens of people through 50-200lb transformations. That isn’t very unique, actually. I could make a very lengthy list about bringing one of my clients to be an IFBB pro bodybuilder in her 60s, a client who lost 140lbs in 8 months, clients without limbs, clients without sight, clients with cancer, clients whose outcomes that absolutely boggle the mind, and some with 10 to 20+ year success and progress. But somewhere out there, you are still going to find a handful of coaches with a cool story for each of mine. I do doubt you'll find it all in one other person. And I am confident it's totally singular to have been doing that without a lull for two decades. Moreover, I’ve done that AND I have seen my kids nearly every day of their lives, I have kept my friendships, my relationships, and really just a fairly low-profile and balanced (as of the past 6 years) life.


My wife has been urging me to create workshops for men who want to be top performers and energy dynamos, and for trainers and coaches who want to be at the top of their abilities. Part of it is because I have now coached several famous influencers. Part of it is because I have coached many clients who previously trained with famous and world-renowned trainers; yet every time their experience with me was superior. Part of it is because I genuinely have been the most overbooked professional in this industry for two decades. And the distance between my experience and that of the best-known names in fitness is not even close.


Regularly, I meet with clients who worked with or are themselves world-renowned/famous influencers, clinicians or coaches. Every single time I uncover insights which that expert never dreamed of finding. It isn’t because I’m better or smarter than all of the top gurus in the world. I’m not. It’s simply because I have more experience than all of them. The way I achieved far more troubleshooting experience than every expert in the field of strength coaching and personal training is by consistently booking significantly more hours of appointments than any of them have ever covered, even in the busiest seasons of their lives. It’s just my default.


wrote about it ‘19:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/experienced-coach-or-good-workout-er


And ‘21:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/how-to-fit-workouts-in-a-schedule-with-no-time


And last year:


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/5-truths-from-45-hours-of-coaching-in-4-days


But also many many times on Instagram and LinkedIn going back to 2015:


https://www.instagram.com/p/B1PzPjKDwIp/?igsh=MXVlaGRrMThkdnc4ag==


https://www.instagram.com/p/BxN4Nltjzvf/?igsh=MWNkZTcwdDk4czc1Ng==


Going back to 2013, all work days were like that. Pick a random Thursday in ‘16; and it turns out I booked 7 hours of sessions on my “off day”.


I never found a role model or mentor who even came close. A few guys on social media appeared to put in the sweat equity: Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Gary V, and Dwayne Johnson. But I also noticed they often slept in 1-3 hours later than my usual:


https://www.instagram.com/p/BdDAMnznRR3/?igsh=c2Z2cTZlOTQ4NTA5


https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/there-is-no-kinda-disciplined


https://www.instagram.com/p/Bau1khXBUnq/?igsh=amx1bnhsOXJpbXlr


https://www.instagram.com/p/BICdWWsDnAE/?igsh=MWc5cW1udzdwcXZi


Moreover, they aren’t running packed days like mine focused on other people. Almost all of their waking hours are on self. They aren’t mentoring others thousands of hours per year. They aren’t spending time with their kids every single day of the week.


I became my own role model. Most people cannot handle the intensity of 12-16 hours of coaching in a row with no breaks at all. So they don’t. Either they can’t be on their feet that long. Or they cannot mentally focus. They aren’t organized in a manner to keep the notes/memories straight. Business acumen and experience aside, even pretty tough people cannot handle it. So they don’t. It’s not a knock against any of them. They spent their energy and hours on building massive social media followings or on gaining suffixes, writing books, fame, or obsessive self-improvement which leaves little time in the week for anything/anyone else. They hit their personal limit and hire everything else out.


But for me, I can. So I do.


But HOW I got here may be more instructive for the newer coaches or even for the many, many, many veterans who pretend to be far more successful than you and I both know they actually are.


In recent years I’m more discerning, never overtly working more than 3.5 days per week, but easily logging no fewer than 8 appointments on those 3.5 days (yes, I consider 8 coaching sessions a half day), and typically 12-16 on Sundays and Wednesdays both. Occasionally, I cannot keep a Monday or Friday less than that as well. On very rare occasion, my long days are only 10 hours of appointments (but still 2 hours of note prep and research, NOT counting bookkeeping, spreadsheets, and payment management). Ask my coworkers, employees and peers going back 20 years. This is mostly how it’s always been. I still have pages from my planners in 2004-2010 when I’d get up at 3a, take appointments 5,6,7am, management hours 8-2p, lift, director work 4-7, appointments 7p, 8p, home. And I still spent time with my wife. I still did laundry and dishes. I still mowed my lawn. I still went to family gatherings. Somehow. I wouldn’t recommend it. The cost came from my sleep, recovery, health. I could. So I did. But I also found that at the extreme limits it would impair my value. Technically, I could take even more hours, but my capacity to be electric and engaged for each hour is greatly inhibited after much more than 50 appointment hours in a week I’ve come to notice.


How am I the most consistently successful strength coach on earth?


It’s not marketing dollars or google ad words. In fact, I am probably the worst person on the planet with regard to these. We have previously hired SEO teams and curated social media efforts. For us, they aren’t a fit. No one addicted to screens and social media is my target audience, I’ve learned. Incredibly successful business owners and academics which I tend to coach often don’t even have a social media account. Most of my super wealthy clients do not even have Meta applications on their phones or devices. So an online presence is nice. But for advanced coaching, it’s actually a hindrance by virtue of being such a massive loss of hours and energy spent on people who aren’t ever going to be substantial supporters. This is also how I’ve discovered that the fitness trainers and coaches with massive online followings are mostly frauds. Not all. But most. The people camping out on YouTube for hours a day and viewing your videos at 3am are not serious, not committed to growth or change, and 110% not investors of any kind. Go ahead and slave to get 100 million followers; and I can pretty much guarantee you have no valid real world coaching experience or business knowledge to discuss. Pay a full-time team to optimize your social and website; and I know you haven’t developed anyone, you’ve never managed people, and you have no long-term or serious clients.


I’m talking about how I gained real experience to be a real coach in the real world with real people, running a real brick-and-mortar physical storefront. For tips on the online illusion of expertise or success, you will have to go elsewhere.


A few weeks ago I met with a client who’d trained at the Olympic training facility and with the founders of MAT. He has had famous coaches. I’m sure all of those experts are impressive in their own right. But I always find areas they’ve missed. These meetings were no different. I uncovered opportunities for this client to reclaim athleticism that other experts hadn’t dreamed of. However, it would be a mistake to think my expertise is what gained my success or my hours. Rather, it was these hours that gained me my high level expertise.


To get the hours started first with willingness. Since everyone begins as a non-expert, the fastest path to expertise is willingness to take opportunity and to generate chances for opportunity. I began in the fitness industry with the willingness to accept any duty. If the facility needed toilets cleaned before opening at 5am, I wasn’t too proud or too good to do it. If the pro shop needed the till counted before opening on a Saturday or Sunday, so be it. When members joined at 9pm, someone needed to meet them, interview and interact with them, welcome them and hear them, guide them, and instruct them. In my mind, all of these “menial” tasks were a path to understanding the total working machine of the fitness industry and ultimately gain more chances for more opportunities to advance my understanding ever further.


I could. So I did. I can. So I do.


Be willing. That’s first.


And from that I find is a natural gravitation toward learning. I long ago lost track of speciality certifications, workshops, classes I’ve attended since working professionally in this industry. It’s in the hundreds. I spent a good portion of 2012 memorizing the entirety of the USMLE1 medical school lecture series. I shadowed cardiologists. I trained a lot of MDs and physical therapists and exercise physiologists and PhDs in Nutrition Science. I learned a lot from them along with teaching them a great deal. I ran workshops. I hired and developed a few hundred health and fitness professionals. I found early on that the more brilliant your employees and peers and clients, the more you could learn during every minute of work. I increasingly maximized. When I gained clients who were successful business people, I learned about business. When I took on clients with outrageous health challenges, I learned health troubleshooting. Every single second is a learning opportunity.


Every. Single. Second.


That is the “how.” The “why” is a little trickier.


The short answer is I needed to. I never had a side gig. Fitness wasn’t a side hustle. I didn’t have backers or family money. When things went sideways in my wife’s workplaces or when we started a family, there was no alternative. I had to be the greatest who ever lived. I did not have an option to fail, to flail, to falter, to be average, or even to be pretty great. I had to be superb. And it helped to have some healthy competition and know that I had some peers who were busting their asses as well.


Sadly, that is missing for too many influencers or fitness pros. They don’t have mentors or even genuine hard-working peers. So they are never going to mature into the potential they have. They don’t have anything to draw them up other than views or likes, which are, by definition, a hallmark of INexperience. When I worked at Bally’s, there was a pride in having the appointment book as full as possible. I could actually SEE what other trainers’ days looked like. When I obsessed over national reports, I was legitimately intent on being at the top of those reports. I could observe the number of sessions sold or serviced by hundreds of clubs across the country. I knew what it meant to be the best, and what it would take to beat the best. I could see some absolutely freakish performances and call those clubs and talk to those trainers or directors. Today, that spirit is gone. It’s been replaced by trying to have the greatest social media followings, which is largely a measure of how little genuine coaching experience you can even have. Think about it: you can either work; or you can post. You should do some of both. But the “reports” today are not reports at all; they are merely measures of popularity which reward only the marketing. That’s where the incentive is. So that’s where the “performance” remains.


I have now coached a number of influencers who have never completely more than 25 appointments in a week, most do no more than that in a month. They monetize their followings and sell online programs. So there was never the incentive for them to book up on mentoring or direct coaching. They cannot ever achieve high level mastery of exercise science or nutrition or just progressive human movement with this low volume. It’ll take them 30 years to be where I was at in my first 5-10 years, but maybe even longer since there will be no intensive consolidation of experience.


But they don’t have any spirit of competition around them to hone them anyway. Almost none are starting at high volume fitness centers. And they are burning up tons of hours on videos and posts at the BEGINNING of their “careers.” It’s actually quite sad, because I think I may be among the last generation of great coaches. The measure of expertise in human performance has been steadily shifting toward entertainment, not evidence-based, not empirical, not experience-driven facts. And the young coaches don’t even know it. They are comparing themselves against equally-inexperienced online personalities. Influencers online genuinely don’t know that they are actually quite terrible and should probably not be sharing their “insights”. And the overall market has no way to know this. For a lot of people, it would stand to reason that a guy with five million YouTube subscribers must be an expert, even if you have never seen him post a single calendar shot like mine, even if you’ve never seen him post videos with different clients, even if you’ve never seen him change an ounce of body composition or personal performance himself.


So people have to understand there are two markets. There is the real world market where investors will support incredibly advanced strength coaches. I would include online and virtual coaching within this market. But then there is an entertainment market which has little to nothing to do with health and fitness. The up-and-comers and the veteran coaches alike need to make a decision about which market they want, because deep personal connections are not related to Facebook ads and ebooks. Again, you could do both. I admire those who’ve generated a fair bit of effort at each. But the massive experience with real world coaching is not going to come from bending over backward to make another post, to get more content, to shoot another video, to snap a few more shots. NONE of that is exercise science. None of that is valuable experience in strength coaching. It is cinematography experience. It is entertainment experience. It is moviemaking experience.


More than anything, choosing the real world market is how you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth. Don’t look at helping people as a temporary launch point to get to your next scheme. You have to look at training/coaching itself as the actual peak. It’s not a stepping stone. It’s not a layover. Coaching is the peak. And being an online famous person is not coaching. They are unrelated. They are in opposition, in fact.


The way you become the most consistently overbooked professional trainer and strength coach on earth is you must first see that it is THE height. Be willing. Make every second a learning opportunity. Be ravenous to learn, dying of thirst for experience. If you crave online fame, that’s fine. Pursue that. But please don’t try to place yourself on the same level as me or professionals like me. If you crave opportunity and learning and experience, then you will be a genuine master, a true expert. And that’s how you’ll go on to excel in the real world with real people as a real teacher. Not just for a moment. But for decades.

Low force contractions induce more central fatigue and nervous system fatigue than high force contractions:


https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17626289/


This research demonstrates that long duration training of a low or moderate intensity is more taxing to the nervous system.


Mechanistically, this aligns with our understanding of sympathetic activation. A stress state (of varying degrees) occurs during any training, any perceived anxiety-producing trigger, any prolonged activity. The stress hormone production, receptor down-regulation, and therefore CNS fatigue will have more to do with length of activity than load/intensity.


Anecdotally or observationally, the lay audience can confirm this finding. Elite strength athletes are on average more recovered, less anxious, less irritable, less agitated, than non-athletes or elite ultra-endurance athletes. Gym-goers who emphasize short strength training (no matter how heavy) tend to suffer fewer CNS downsides than gym goers who emphasize lengthy routines. Orthopedic injuries (many of which stem from CNS fatigue) occur less in people whose workouts are heavy in load and short in duration than in those people whose workouts are lighter in load and longer in duration.

Metabolic stress does some of the work and mechanical tension does a lot.


Beyond being in a state of caloric surplus, rested, and some more generalized debates over volume/intensity/progressive overload, the proposed processes which stimulate muscle growth come down to metabolic stress and mechanical tension.


The old theory was muscle damage. “Break it down to build it up,” was a common bro-science aphorism. Not only isn’t it true, but it actually cannot be. No expert in the field affirms this anymore, because of the many counterexamples and obvious impossible paradox therein. Elongating muscles creates the greatest muscular damage, and training which emphasizes forced stretches and hyper-mobility does NOT improve muscular size or efficiency. The contrast of gymnasts versus yogis is perhaps the clearest example of how fixation on lengthening or over-lengthening muscle tissue does not result in a size, speed, or strength gain. Are there benefits to improving control of greater range of motion? Of course. But the very act of “relaxing into a stretch” instead of developing control in it and power over it means limiting mechanical tension, maximizing damage, thereby cutting the strength and size stimuli.


Metabolic stress is real but harder to nail down. Contraction of skeletal muscle does produce myokines, alters energy uptake through changes in glucose transporters, and there are some real measurable reactions in hormone responses on site and throughout the person. The degree to which this contributes to overall health and fitness is significant. The precise muscle size impact from any one cascade is unclear, however. There are plenty of athletes who contract muscles millions of times at low tensions and have zero muscular development despite the metabolic stress contribution. See olympic and elite marathoners and endurance cyclists.


This leaves us with mechanical tension. I have noticed a trend with upstarts in the past five years or so where they are obsessed with mechanical tension as the be-all end-all. And I’d agree that across decades of professional experience I MOSTLY see muscle size gains in response to mechanical tension. That is, as people truly encounter muscular performance limits, and barely eke out a last or genuinely failed rep, that is where we tend to see size gains most dramatic. The journey requires progressive overload, obviously. But the individual mechanism within a workout is the enhancing of mechanical tension.


To be more clear, when a relatively rested person encounters a strength exercise in a stable position and performs 5-20 reps but only ends the set because the velocity of the movement grinds to zero, THAT is that person’s maximum mechanical tension for the intended muscle group of that exercise.


However, I want to caution against a cult-like insistence on ONE way and only one way. The first reason for this is that we don’t KNOW for a fact that getting to absolute muscle failure is better than getting very close. And we don’t KNOW how much better (or if) very-close is than close. The second reason I caution people is that to be able to effectively get near muscle failure, you have to first develop expertise. And to become advanced and skillful (and retain said skill) you will have to train sub-maximally some of the time. Moreover, if people do not include some power, speed, and greater range of motion training into a program at some point, the participant is more likely to get hurt or discontinue, such that he or she can no longer gain the reward of mechanical tension.


At this point, most people might be asking, “What does this translate into for my workouts?” Or, “how do I apply this?”


Let’s take a machine chest press as an example. Imagine you are able to press about 200lbs on this exercise for around 8 reps. Let’s say we start this workout with this exercise, such that you are fully rested once getting to this piece of equipment. Potentially, you’d perform a set of 100lbs for 5 reps, very strictly and intent on creating tension and mentally connecting with the pecs, triceps and deltoids. Afterward, you might wait 3 minutes, and perform another sub-maximal set, 3 reps with 150lbs, perhaps. Wait another 3 minutes. Now, it’s time for business. You set up with all of your normal posture, cues, settings and mentally commit to getting 9-12 clean and toilsome reps with the 200lbs. The first 7 reps may be harder than you anticipate. 8 is grueling. At the 9th rep, it’s a serious question whether you can complete it or not, but, through gritting teeth and eating the pain, you get it. Now, you fight headlong into the 10th rep and the weight is grinding to a halt; but you continue pouring your every fiber of will into budging it another millimeter. And possibly it doesn’t go. You still go to war in your heart and drive your body in the back pad as the bones in your arms seem to bend against the impossibility of the handles. THAT is mechanical tension. THAT is one working set. And THAT alone is sufficient stimulus to get stronger and gain muscle size.


Afterward, you might desire doing another few exercises for the same or similar muscle groups. There’s nothing wrong with that. Potentially, you could muster almost the same wherewithal for a legitimate working set like that on the same muscle group a few times in a whole workout sessions. If you include a separate muscle group, certainly you could. However, any degree of workout far in excess of that is not supported by evidence for the purposes of this simple discussion. Certainly, you could add many more exercises and sets and reps and alternate modalities, if you want to generate some more muscular endurance or train a variety of additional skills. But for muscle size, there isn’t a need to add lots of additional sets or exercises.

In time, that chest press must be 210, 220, and 12 reps or more, BUT in the same manner, the same grind, the same intentionality, the same degree of battle. 


THAT is how muscle is actually built.

Multiply this by 50 weeks and 20 years. There were years where I worked all 52 weeks. And there were many weeks in there where I had 55-65 appointments PLUS another 20-50 hours of management time. But I’ve also had a few reserved years where I refuse to take more than 35 appointments in a week, and where we had multiple trips or went to Greece for 3 weeks. All the same, when you add in my studies, my daily medical and scientific journal reading, my own workouts, it is A LOT of deep deep knowledge, wisdom, and experience. I conservatively place it over 70,000 hours. It could be closer to 85.

In that time I’ve discovered really wild and unexpected troubleshooting, difficult outlier challenges, rare conditions, and many insights which just cannot exist within any lesser amount of experience. There are conditions and client challenges I did not encounter in my first 8 years which I’ve many times now encountered in the past 12. And I managed gyms with thousands of members in my first 8 years in this profession.

So it gives me some worry. It gives me some worry because there are now a lot of really influential people online with far less experience than I had in my first 10 years, far less even than I had in my first 5 years, or even 2, less perhaps than I had logged as a kid when I was obsessed with reading nutrition science and exercise science textbooks.

And these are the voices setting the tone out in the public, out in the ether, out in parlance.

It’s not all bad necessarily. It’s even sometimes flattering to see a fitness trend nowadays which I had pioneered a decade or 2 prior. Whole franchises, companies and cultural movements today are built atop metabolic experiments I ran 10, 20, 30 years ago. But it’s also disappointing to see such simpleton explanations trending, such bad science trending, such bold and wrong advice trending, such entrenched insistence that one single cult is the only way.

I don’t have the will to combat it. I am busy being a real business owner with a real business and a real storefront in the real world. So I’m not wasting effort on the optics of marketing and “looking” like a trendy online personality. But I will take the time from time to time to post and share something which I hope impacts even one person or corrects one of the many pieces of popular and terrible advice floating around. Today, it’s simply this:

1.) be honest
2.) track
3.) go slow
4.) persist
5.) progress

And if I had to add a 6th, it would be to remind yourself that the distance between where you are and where you want to be is FINITE and involves ACTION which is broken down into measurable objective steps. Health and fitness or careers and business aren’t magic. They are not supernatural. Are there some tricks? Sure. Are there intense techniques? Sure. I have many. I share quite a few. But categorically NO ONE is going to shake those 5 truths.

I saw it in this week. I saw it in the past few decades. To get anywhere worth going, we need to be honest with ourselves. Chances are high that when we are unsure why we aren’t more successful or further along or closer to goals, the first area we must examine is our personal honesty. Then, we need to be tracking what we actually do and measuring how it will or won’t produce the desired outcome (honesty, too, will be paramount here). Implementing productive steps need to be slow. We can always accelerate if we have good footing. But we sometimes can’t even reclaim where we were if we go too fast, get hurt, or burn out. If an effort works, it does not magically keep working. Not to be too circular, but we have to keep working at what works for it to keep working. I suspect honesty and persistence together may do more than the other three combined.

As we grow, we earn more growth. With each step, we can tolerate more. And with each step, the distance to the goal is closed. With each step, the distant is closer. And soon, the unknown is the known, the unbelievable is reached, the seemingly-unattainable is attained.