Wanna know the secret to effective program design? It’s always fitting the program to the person, not the other way around. Sure there are best practices (and best arm training programs; disagree with that and I’ll fight you after school) but for the most part, a really good program is like a suit that’s been expertly tailored to your dimensions by someone named Rocco. It just feels and performs...

I’ve worn my share of hats in the fitness industry. But if I had to distill what I do down to a clean & succinct elevator pitch it would be "I help people reach their physique goals." Yet that’s not entirely accurate. What I really do is help solve physique problems; at least the “solvable”ones, which isn’t always the case. Chronological age might be just a number but your body still has an...

Nobody wants to maintain. Everyone has a goal, and it's always to "get somewhere" -- get leaner, get bigger, drop a dress size, hit a new PR. If anything, periods of maintaining are seen as down time, even negative time, the empty gap between periods where you make leaps in progress. To some, maintenance offers no plus side beyond the obvious rest and recovery. It's because the constant pressure...

Learning the calorie counts of your favorite foods and tracking them is a highly effective fat loss tool. However, for sustainable, life-long success you need to learn to differentiate between what's true hunger and what's merely cravings, boredom, habit, etc. Catch is, you can't master the latter unless you temporarily step away from the former. But most people are unsuccessful at making the...

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...

There’s an old expression: Fat loss is simple. Just not easy. Co-coach Scott Tousignant and I don’t think truer words have ever been spoken. Fat loss boils down to a handful of physiological factors, with “maintaining a calorie deficit” being the big kahuna. Add to that “regular exercise including resistance training” and “eat sufficient protein” and you’ve moved most of the big rocks. But when...

My old client Doug (not commenting on your age haha) is one of those folks that rarely need me to check on their food choices.  Because he's the right kind of "foodie." Now the word "foodie" became popular a few years ago with the explosion of The Food Network and many others like it. Suddenly everyone was "passionate" about kale and quinoa and the perils of perfecting risotto while spending...