A high school friend who chose a more conventional career (finance) loves to take good-natured jabs at what I do for living.
“Dude, writing training programs? You might as well say you work in the toy department.”
In a way, he’s right.
I love writing training plans – the problem solving, the trouble shooting, and then progressing. I could do it 20 hours a day and it would still never feel like work. Just really poor work-life balance.
Oh well.
But one thing that never fails to rustle my jimmies is when folks want to switch up the exercises in their programs at random.
I have to take a deep breath and explain to them that consistency, repetition, and progression is what develops mastery, not variation. So it’s better to become awesome a handful of things than to constantly chase what’s new and shiny.
And how do you become awesome at something as banal as a weight training exercise? First you must learn to respect the rep.
Take dumbbell flyes for example. Any knucklehead can lie back on a bench and perform a bunch of choppy reps. But even this basic exercise is in fact highly nuanced.
For starters, adjust the range of motion so the hands are more in line with the ears – this puts much more stress on the upper pecs versus the shoulder.
Next, adding a brief pause in the stretch position helps eliminate unwanted “bounce” at the more delicate point of the exercise.
Finally, adding a hard pec contraction at the top helps increase the tension at a spot that’s usually “dead range.”
Suddenly it’s not just picking things up and putting them down!
This type of hands-on critique is why I loved personal training, and it’s a big part of what Scott Tousignant and I do at the Physique Mastery Movement group coaching program.
Members record their sets and post them in our private PMM Facebook group, where we can offer them objective, often game-changing form critiques.
The cool thing is, we do the same for the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of changing your body: diet.
Ask anyone who’s made a dramatic physique shift, whether losing large amounts of fat or packing on muscle, and they’ll tell you that finally getting their diet on point made the biggest difference.
But what does getting one’s diet “on point” even mean?
Is it eating….
…the right amount of calories?
…enough protein?
…sufficient carbohydrate to support training?
…enough “good fat?”
What about fruit and veggie intake? Or water? Can I still drink coffee? And artificial sweeteners and GMOs and the Glycemic Index and –-
It gets confusing, even overwhelming.
And as a coach I can tell you first-hand that overwhelm torpedoes progress like nothing else.
People have so much stuff to remember, so many boxes to check, that they often end up saying “screw it” and decide that the lifestyle is just not “for them.” And then order pizza.
That’s a shame.
So at the Physique Mastery Movement, we teach people to ignore the “noise” and just focus on doing the most important stuff – what I call The Big Rocks – and do it consistently.
We give members basic diet instructions and then encourage them to post their diets for feedback. And they can post it as often as they wish, even daily.
Best still, the feedback we offer is available for the group to see, which helps everyone learn and support each other’s efforts.
It may not be as entertaining as working in the toy department for a living, but changing your body should always be about results first, and fun a close second.
This is the cornerstone of how coach Scott Tousignant and I coach diet at the Physique Mastery Movement.
If that’s something that you think you can benefit from, we’d love to have you on board.
Just remember, enrollment ends Friday, September 29th.
Join the team as soon as you get the chance so you don’t miss out on this opportunity.
See you on the other side.
Click here to join Physique Mastery Movement