Archive for January, 2010

The business model has changed and will continue to do so. The old ways no longer work and what was driving business two years ago is also not going to work now. For success you need to know how to thrive in change or better yet lead in change. In tough markets the rules are different but basic values will always guide the way.

I do feel there will be a lot of gyms, training centers and personal trainers who will not make it past 09 but the reasons will be their own fault for not embracing change but fighting it.”
- Dave Tate

“It’s time to reinvent ourselves. The time has never been better or more urgent in which to question every truth, belief, premise, product, service and price of your business. This is a time of transition to a new economy which you are going to participate in, willingly or reluctantly, successfully or unsuccessfully”
-Dan Kennedy

“The business is in major transition right now.I’ve been in this for over 30 years. It has changed more in the last 3 years than I’ve seen it change in that entire time period.There has never been a chance for greater growth in the fitness industry for those willing to reinvent their businesses and grow with the coming consumer”
– Thomas Plummer

“You’ve got to reinvent your business to fit the realities of the new market”
– Seth Godin

“Reinvent your business constantly. The end goal may be the same, but the tools and methods are constantly evolving.”
– Ken Tucker

If you are a trainer or coach in this field – ask yourself if your business practice is the same as it was last year, or two or three years ago. Ask yourself if your programming has evolved to meet the demand’s of todays consumer. If you haven’t changed your model radically – you will be left behind in today’s economy.

The only constant in today’s business world is that everything is changing.

Your marketing has to be different. Your sales script has to be different. The services you offer have to be different. The actual workouts you put clients through have to be different (today’s client is physically different and has different goals from even ten years ago).

It’s time to evolve and reinvent.

This year for Perform Better I presented on the Evolution of the Fitness Profession – “tested Methods to Transform your Personal Training Business – and shared proven strategies that will allow your business to evolve and grow. This was my highest rated and attended talk ever.

We’ve just released a DVD of my presentation from the 2009 Perform Better tour.

This seminar covered strategies to completely evolve your training business and literally make you bulletproof in the current economy (and as usual with me – it’s all battle tested – we’re on track to have our best year ever in the gym). Businesses need to evolve and change. You literally need to reinvent your entire business identity every 3-5 years or you’ll be left behind.

We cover:

• Understand that business is a system: If you don’t hace a system in palce you are winging it. Business is too important for improv.
• Understand the mindset of the client: “If you can see john smith through John smith’s eyes, you can sell John Smith what John Smith buys”
• Repositioning yourself in today’s market : being a one-on-one clipboard holding, rep counter just won’t work in the new economy
• Semi Private Training / Group Training: how to implement different offerings and stil maintain a high quality of programming
• Fitness Programming for the 21st Century: today’s clients have changed, their goals have changed and their demands have changed. We need to change the very product we are offering.

Bottom line: We need to RADICALLY change our business because our customers and prospects behaviors and psychology are changing.

You can pick up a copy of the DVD here => Evolution of Personal Training
–
AC

The Hierarchy of Fat Loss
by Alwyn Cosgrove

Time for Fat Loss

“Fat loss is an all-out war. Give it 28 days — only 28 days. Attack it with all you have. It’s not a lifestyle choice; it’s a battle. Lose fat and then get back into moderation. There’s another one for you: moderation. Revelation says it best: ‘You are lukewarm and I shall spit you out.’ Moderation is for sissies.”

— Dan John, legend

I’ve been training people for a long time. I own a gym that has several trainers training several people. Despite all the athletes we’ve worked with over the years, by far the single biggest client request has been fat loss.

I’ve made more money from the fat loss market than any other single client group. Over the years my methods have evolved and been refined by what I see in the gym. Simply put, if I can get 20 pounds of fat off a client faster than my competition, I have a higher demand for my services.

I’ve written several articles on fat loss and answered countless questions on the topic. One of the questions I get a lot is:

“I’m <insert something here> and I’m trying to lose fat. How can I do that without <insert losing strength/speed/muscle here.>”

Basically, powerlifters want to keep powerlifting, mixed martial artists want to keep fighting, and recreational bodybuilders want to maintain their muscle mass, all while losing fat. Their massive fear of negatively impacting their athletic performance by not focusing on it for a short time is largely unfounded.

I think whenever we try to pursue two goals at once we tend to compromise results. This is usually because we have a limited resource: time. If our goal is to generate fat loss, then using a periodized training approach with a specific fat loss phase (e.g. four weeks, eight weeks, etc.) where we focus exclusively on fat loss will always yield better results in the long term than trying to juggle two goals at once.

For example, a powerlifter trying to drop a weight class or lean out will be better served by notpowerlifting for a period of time. By focusing on getting lean and then going back to powerlifting training, he won’t fall into the downward spiral of trying to maintain his lifts and get lean at the same time. A 16 week program that includes 8 weeks of hardcore fat loss training, followed by 8 weeks of powerlifting work, will likely yield better results than 16 weeks of trying to do both simultaneously.

With our regular clients or with ourselves, we’re usually extremely limited with time. Most of us can only train three to four times per week. With that in mind — with time being our limiting factor — how do we maximize fat loss? Is there a hierarchy of fat loss techniques? I think so.

Before I get into it, I want to share with you something Mike Boyle said when he did a staff training at my facility a couple of months ago:

“The information presented is my opinion based on over 25 years of coaching experience, communication with several professionals in my field, and an incessant desire to better myself and improve the rate and magnitude of my clients’ results. I’m not here to argue my opinion versus your opinion. Please ask questions. I’ll explain my views but am unlikely to change them.”

I don’t have 25 years of experience (only 17), but I feel pretty much the same. Here are my thoughts.

The Hierarchy of Fat Loss

1. Correct Nutrition

There’s pretty much nothing that can be done to out-train a crappy diet. You quite simply have to create a caloric deficit while eating enough protein and essential fats. There’s no way around this.

2. See #1

Yep. It really is that important. Several trainers have espoused that the only difference between training for muscle gain and training for fat loss is your diet. I think that’s a massive oversimplification, but it does reinforce how important and effective correct nutrition is toward your ultimate goal.

3. Activities that burn calories, maintain/promote muscle mass, and elevate metabolism

I think it’s fairly obvious that the bulk of calories burned are determined by our resting metabolic rate or RMR. The amount of calories burned outside of our resting metabolism (through exercise, thermic effect of feeding, etc.) is a smaller contributor to overall calories burned per day.

We can also accept that RMR is largely a function of how much muscle you have on your body — and how hard it works. Therefore, adding activities that promote or maintain muscle mass will make that muscle mass work harder and elevate the metabolic rate. This will become our number one training priority when developing fat loss programs.

4. Activities that burn calories and elevate metabolism

The next level of fat loss programming would be a similar activity. We’re still looking at activities that eat up calories and increase EPOC.

EPOC (Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption) is defined scientifically as the “recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels” and “can require several minutes for light exercise and several hours for hard intervals.”

Essentially, we’re looking for activities that keep us burning more calories after the exercise session.

5. Activities that burn calories but don’t necessarily maintain muscle or elevate metabolism

This is the “icing on the cake” — adding in activities that’ll burn up additional calories but don’t necessarily contribute to increasing metabolism. This is the least effective tool in your arsenal as it doesn’t burn much outside of the primary exercise session.

Let’s put this fat loss continuum together in terms of our progressive training hierarchy.

Five Factors for Fat Loss Training

1. Metabolic Resistance Training

Basically we’re using resistance training as the cornerstone of our fat loss programming. Our goal is to work every muscle group hard, frequently, and with an intensity that creates a massive “metabolic disturbance” or “afterburn” that leaves the metabolism elevated for several hours post-workout.

A couple of studies to support this:

Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM.

Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.

This study used a circuit training protocol of 12 sets in 31 minutes. EPOC was elevated significantly for 38 hours post-workout.

Thirty-eight hours is a pretty significant timeframe for metabolism to be elevated. If you trained at 9AM until 10AM on Monday morning, you’re still burning more calories (without training) at midnight on Tuesday.

Can we compound this with additional training within that 38 hours? No research has been done, but I have enough case studies to believe that you can.

Another:

Kramer, Volek et al.

Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.

Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.

Overweight subjects were assigned to three groups: diet-only, diet plus aerobics, diet plus aerobics plus weights. The diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks. The aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6 pounds) than the diet group (training was three times a week starting at 30 minutes and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks).

The weight training group lost 21.1 pounds of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn’t result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone.

Thirty-six sessions of up to 50 minutes is a lot of work for one additional pound of fat loss. However, the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated fat loss results.

One more:

Bryner RW, Ullrich IH, Sauers J, Donley D, Hornsby G, Kolar M, Yeater R.

Effects of resistance vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.
J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21.

The aerobic group performed four hours of aerobics per week. The resistance training group performed 2-4 sets of 8-15 reps, 10 exercises, three times per week.

V02 max increased equally in both groups. Both groups lost weight. The resistance training group lost significantly more fat and didn’t lose any LBM, even at only 800 calories per day. (The reason the calories were so low was to really take any dietary variables completely out of the equation and compare the effects of the exercise regime on LBM and metabolism.)

The resistance training group actually increased metabolism compared to the aerobic group, which decreased metabolism. It seems that resistance training is a more significant stress to the body than a starvation diet.

In my experience, full body training in a superset, tri-set, or circuit format (with non-competing exercises) in a rep range that generates lactic acid (and pushes the lactic acid threshold or LAT) seems to create the biggest metabolic demand. It makes sense: training legs, back, and chest will burn more calories and elevate metabolism more than an isolated approach training one of them.

The rep range that seems to work best is the 8-12 hypertrophy range, although going higher will work just as well with a less trained population.

For a powerlifter or an advanced bodybuilder, doing one max effort exercise or heavy, low-rep lift is more than enough to maintain your current strength levels. Examples:

Powerlifter

Exercise One: Max Effort Squat — work up to a 3RM. Transitioning into metabolic work.

Bodybuilder

Exercise Sequence:

1A: Bench press, 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps

1B: Row, 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps
Transitioning into metabolic work

2. High Intensity Anaerobic Interval Training

The second key “ingredient” in fat loss programming is high intensity interval training (HIIT). I think readers of T-Nation will be well aware of the benefits of interval work. It burns more calories than steady state and elevates metabolism significantly more than other forms of cardio. The downside is that it flat-out sucks to do it!

The landmark study in interval training was from Tremblay:

Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.

Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8

This study pitted 20 weeks of endurance training against 15 weeks of interval training:

Energy cost of endurance training = 28661 calories.
Energy cost of interval training = 13614 calories (less than half)

The interval training group showed a nine times greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance group (when corrected for energy cost).

Read that again. Calorie for calorie, the interval training group lost nine times more fat overall. Why? Maybe it’s EPOC, an upregulation of fat burning enzyme activity, or straight up G-Flux. I don’t care. I’m a real world guy. If the interval training group had lost the same fat as the endurance group, we’d get the same results in less time. That means interval training is a better tool in your fat loss arsenal.
3. High Intensity Aerobic Interval Training

The next tool we’ll pull out is essentially a lower intensity interval method where we use aerobic intervals.

Talanian, Galloway et al

Two weeks of High-Intensity Aerobic Interval Training increases the capacity for fat oxidation during exercise in women.
J Appl Physiol (December 14, 2006). doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01098.2006

This study looked at high-intensity aerobic interval training and its influence on fat oxidation. In summary, seven sessions of HIIT over two weeks induced marked increases in whole body and skeletal muscle capacity for fatty acid oxidation during exercise in moderately active women. In layman’s terms, the interval work appeared to “upregulate” fat burning enzymes.

Basically this means we can burn more fat in other activities as a result of this inclusion. In other words, we get some more bang for our buck.

A quick disclaimer though: my colleague Alan Aragon once said, “Caring about how much fat is burned during exercise is equivalent to worrying about how much muscle is built during exercise.” In other words, substrate utilization during exercise isn’t really an important variable in the big picture of fat loss — total calories burned overall is.

4. Steady State High Intensity Aerobic Training

Tool number four is just hard cardio work. This time we’re burning calories — we aren’t working hard enough to increase EPOC significantly or to do anything beyond the session itself. But calories do count. Burning another 300 or so calories per day will add up.

5. Steady State Low Intensity Aerobic Training

This is just activity, going for a walk in the park, etc. It won’t burn a lot of calories; it won’t increase muscle or EPOC.

There isn’t very much research showing that low intensity aerobic training actually results in very much additional fat loss, but you’re going to have to really work to convince me that moving more is going to hurt you when you’re in fat attack mode.

Putting It All Together: Time Management

You’ll notice that this is perhaps the opposite recommendations from what you typically read in the mainstream media. Usually fat loss recommendations start with low intensity aerobics, progress to high intensity aerobics, then intervals. Finally, when you’re “in shape” they recommend resistance training.

My approach to massive fat loss is attacking from the complete opposite of the norm. If you’re a professional bodybuilder, then you typically have extra time to add in cardio and do extra work to get lean. A “real world” client with a job and a family can rarely afford additional time; therefore, we need to look at our training in a more efficient manner and focus on our time available first, then design our programming based on that.

If you have 3 hours per week, use only #1 above: metabolic resistance training

This can be three, one-hour training sessions, or four 45-minute training sessions. It doesn’t seem to matter.

However, once you’re getting three hours per week of total body resistance training, in my experience I haven’t seen an additional effect in terms of fat loss by doing more. My guess is that, at that point, recovery starts to become a concern and intensity is impaired.

This type of training involves barbell complexes, supersets, tri-sets, circuits, EDT work, kettlebell combos, etc.

If you have 3-5 hours, use #1 and # 2: weight training plus high intensity interval work

At this point, any additional work is usually in the form of high intensity interval training. I’m looking to burn up more calories and continue to elevate EPOC.

Interval training is like putting your savings into a high return investment account. Low intensity aerobics is like hiding it under your mattress. Both will work, but the return you get is radically different.

If you have 5-6 hours available, add #3: aerobic interval training

Aerobic intervals wins out at this point because it’s still higher intensity overall than steady state work so it burns more calories. There appears to be a fat oxidation benefit and will still be easier to recover from than additional anaerobic work.

If you have 6-8 hours available, add #4

If you’re not losing a lot of fat with six hours of training already, then I’d be taking a very close look at your diet. If everything is in place, but we just need to ramp up fat loss some more (e.g. for a special event: a photo shoot, high school reunion, etc.) then we’ll add in some hard cardio — a long run or bike ride with heart rate at 75% of max or higher.

Why not do as much of this as possible then? Well, the goal is to burn as many calories as we can without negatively impacting the intensity of our higher priority activities.

If I have more time than that, I’ll add # 5

I think I’m getting into fairytale land at this point. I don’t think most of us have more than eight hours of training time available per week. But if we do, this is when any additional activity will help to burn up calories, which is never a bad thing.

A lot of fighters have used this activity to help make weight. This works because it burns up calories but doesn’t leave you tired for your strength training, sparring, or technical work.

That’s the key with the addition of this activity: just to move, get your body moving, and burn up some additional calories — but not to work so hard that it inhibits recovery and negatively affects our other training.

The research and the real world don’t really show massive changes from the inclusion of this type of activity; however, I think everything has its place. Remember, this is a hierarchy of training, and this is fifth on the list for a reason.

Smart guys call this NEAT — Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. I call it moving a wee bit more than normal.
Summary

Keep in mind that all I’ve said here is that harder training works better than easier training. It really is that simple.

To conclude, I agree with coach Dan John. Attack body fat with a passion and a single minded goal. The best way to do this is with an all-out assault implementing the hierarchy I described above.

Summer is almost here. Shirts are coming off whether you’re ready or not. Attack your body fat with a massive action plan for the next eight weeks!

This article originally appeared at t-nation.com
© 1998 — 2007 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

“None of us is as smart as all of us“

- Ken Blanchard

We live in a truly fast paced world. To keep up, never mind thrive, we cannot go it alone. Think of the ultimate one-on-one sports — be it MMA or boxing – two combatants stripped to the waist, with no equipment going head to head. It’s one-on-one competition of the highest form.

But look back at the corner of the ring. There are always at least three guys in that corner. it’s never one-on-one — it’s a team effort.

Everyone needs help. I think this is one of the reasons why social media has become so popular — people see the benefits of shared knowledge and communication.

And it holds true with education — If you wanted to learn a new skill quickly – what would you do? Would you go off alone and hope to figure it out, or do you get someone to teach you?

You can always learn way faster from someone with experience, be it from books, seminars or as a personal coach.

Two of my personal philosophies have been 1) to continually invest in myself – my own education, and 2) to pay it forward.

So now it’s my turn to pay education forward…

Let me give you a summary of the last nine years or so in my business

• In 2000 Rachel and I opened a gym with one employee, eight members and 650 sq ft of gym floor.
  Our funding? Credit cards. No bank loans, no SBA loans, no investors.
• 2001 our apartment was broken into and amongst other things our laptop, with all our programs and marketing was stolen
• By the second half of 2003 I was sick all the time. Couldn’t figure it out but ended up taking a lot of time off
• 2004 I was diagnosed with stage IV cancer and had to take the rest of the year off
• 2005 I was recovering and could only work part time
• 2006 I relapsed and essentially moved into the hospital where I underwent a stem cell transplant. Rach moved in with me pretty much.
• 2007 Rach and I took the year off while I recovered. In December we had to fire our manager.
• 2008 the economy tanked.
• 2009 the economy continued to drop and close to 20% of all gyms went out of business.

Currently that little gym is 7500 square feet, 250 members and employs twelve staff full time.

Obviously we weren’t what you would consider “lucky” over the past nine years. Yet our business grew.

We just happened to do a few things RIGHT.

It’s unlikely that you will face adversity anywhere close to what we faced. So if your business hasn’t grown more than ours in that same time frame – you must be doing a few things wrong.

It’s time to fix that.

This year we are joining forces with Perform Better and launching a fitness business seminar tour – that has taken us to Rhode Island and Chcago and will take us on to New Jersey and Los Angeles.

If you want to learn EXACTLY how we designed Results Fitness, including the staffing and business systems that allowed us to take three years completely off, and still expand and grow – then you won’t want to miss these events.

February 5th and 6th: New Jersey
February 26th and 27th: Los Angeles

If you’re a trainer who has been struggling this past year, or are looking to take your business to the next level, or a studio owner who is doing well but ready to really step it up in 2010 – this is the event for you.

We will cover:

• Achieve success in the fitness industry creating the business you want, the life you want and the freedom you want. Build a business to support your lifestyle, not the other way around.
• Walk away with action steps to take immediately to dramatically change and fast forward your life, your career and your business.
• Learn how you can make 6-7 figures and work less using the systems revealed during this seminar. (you can’t make 6 figures a year by just doing more of what made you five figures – you need to think and act differently)
• Learn to think like a business owner
• Find out the exact recipe to transition from being a passionate fitness trainer with no free time and no money to being a successful fitness business owner with time, freedom and income to live the life you want.

Go here to sign up: Perform Better in Business

–
AC
PS – This is NOT one of those internet marketing “pretend you’re in the fitness business” seminars – this comes from an in-the-trenches proven successful facility — voted one of America’s TOP TEN facilities by Mens Health magazine 2009 and we’ll cover real strategies to build a solid business.

A recent study from the University of Colorado (published in the Journal of Applied Physiology) had participants perform an hour long easy ride and monitored the “afterburn” – to see how much fat they burned post workout.

They didn’t burn any more than they did if they hadn’t exercised.

From the New York Times:

To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.

WAIT — An hour long EASY ride didn’t have an afterburn effect?

Really? I’m shocked….. you’d think that an hour of pedaling easily would melt the pounds off these people (note sarcasm)

And the title of the study: ” When energy balance is maintained, exercise does not induce negative fat balance…” ?????

Really? If you burn 300 calories (and there is no afterburn effect or additional post-workout caloric burn) and then you replace those calories you don’t lose fat?

Again — REALLY? Who’d have thought that? (note sarcasm again)

I understand that wasn’t the point of the study – but did they really think that an easy ride would increase post workout fat burning significantly? Did they also really think that – for example burning 300 calories and then eating 300 calories would have resulted in fat loss?

I think I’ve said A LOT that low intensity aerobics doesn’t create any post workout increase in metabolism. I’m just surprised that people still thought it did.

The researchers concluded:

These data suggest that when exercise is performed with energy replacement (i.e. energy balance is maintained), 24 h fat oxidation does not increase and in fact, may be slightly decreased. It appears that the state of energy balance is an under appreciated factor determining the impact of exercise on fat oxidation.

First off I don’t think anyone thinks that energy balance is an under appreciated factor. I think we all know you have to burn calories (although I do think our understanding of calories in vs calories out is probably incomplete).

But performing low intensity aerobic work in that state could LOWER fat oxidation (burning) post workout — In other words it could potentially be a negative?

(For the record – Dr. Eric Serrano showed me research that he had done on aerobic work actually hurting fat loss back in the mid 90s)

–
AC

Q: Between speaking, traveling, running your gym, writing articles etc – how do you find the time to get it all done?

A: It’s all about Laserbeam focus:

Reconsider doing ANYTHING that does not get you closer to your goals.

I don’t watch much TV, or read newspapers, junk sites etc.
I don’t eat a meal alone, or worst case without taking reading material with me. I flew cross country this weekend – read a book, six articles and wrote two blog posts on the first leg while other were sleeping/listening to music/watching movies etc.

My car has educational CD’s stacked up in it. I get 4 or 5 a month from various newsletters and coaching groups and just get through them. If I get an idea from one of them I take notes before I get out of the car (which may become an article/blog post).

Download podcasts to your ipod. Make use of (as Zig Ziglar called it) “Automobile University”.

Set up an idea-day once a month where you read all the newsletters/blogs/material you want to get through. Schedule that day in advance and stick to it. You’ll get through more material in a dedicated day than you will trying to grab 15 mins here and there.

Have a great team around you. Results Fitness are not my staff – they are my TEAM. I delegate to them and I trust them to do world-class work.

Program Design: Use a template model and BATCH it. You shouldn’t be writing programs every day. Set up two appointments a week and get your “programming” head on. You’ll get more done that way when you block out the time and focus on one task.

From Wayne Cotton (courtesy of my friend Todd Durkin):

There are only four things you can do with your time:

1) Green machine – making money time
2) Red tape – paperwork etc that YOU have to do (can’t delegate)
3) Blue Sky – Visionary work, planning, business development
4) Mellow Yellow – down time – recharging.

The problem is most people mix them too much – and if you mix them – you get brown and brown is —- !

However, if you have enough blue and yellow time — you make enough green time.

Sleep quality: not enough can be said. Just like training, you can’t make up quality with volume. And in fact – you can think of it like the reverse.
Massively improving sleep quality could allow you to sleep 30 mins or an hour less than you do now — that’s 3 1/2 extra hours per week or 182 hours per year. That’s the equivalent of 4 1/2 forty-hour work weeks each year – that buys you an extra month of productivity each year.

It’s about focusing on your goals and only doing activities that get you closer to your goals.

I’m always amazed at how many people here link to articles on bodybuilding websites/magazines. Don’t get me wrong – I love it — it means that the article was worth reading, but it also means I don’t have to visit these sites every day – someone does it for me.

One of my coaching clients had productivity/time management issues – yet he could tell me everything that was ever printed on internet forums/bodybuilding and fitness websites etc. When we cut that out – his income jumped.

Is your activity goal-achieving or just tension-relieving?
The latter is ok – but make sure it’s an appropriate amount of time. Most people are shocked when they track their time.

–
AC

Two shoe salesmen were assigned by their firms to sell shoes in the middle of the jungle in Africa.

The first shoe salesman boarded the plane and headed into his new territory unsure what to expect, but hopeful that this venture would be a success. His plane safely arrived in Africa and the shoe salesman immediately began his assessment of his new wide open market. It was less then an hour later that he quickly phoned back to his headquarters and requested the first flight out and back home, explaining to his boss “This a waste of time.  Nobody even wears shoes here!”

The second shoe salesman hopped on the plane anxious to see what awaited him in Africa. He expected a challenge but was optimistic about this new opportunity. After a safe landing the shoe salesman grabbed his bags and quickly became thrilled at what he observed. The shoe salesman quickly dialed up his headquarters and demanded to speak to his boss, he said “This is amazing, send me everything you’ve got immediately! Nobody even wears shoes here!”

Two people in the exact same situation. One person sees the obstacle and one person sees the opportunity. The only difference is their attitude and mindset.

—

As we head into 2010 (the first 3% of the year has already passed) a lot of people’s thoughts turn to goal setting and success.

I have always wondered what makes some people successful in their lives and careers and other people unsuccessful. And the more I think about it, the more I feel that the answer is more likely to be mindset than just skillset.

I’ve had trainers tell me that there are so many gyms in their area that they don’t think they can open one and have it be successful as their is too much competition. I’ve also had trainers tell me that there are no other gyms in their area so they don’t think they can open one as their is no demand. Complete opposite situations but both were seeing the obstacle – if they were in the opposite persons shoes I have no doubt that they would still have seen the situation as an obstacle. It’s the mindset that needs changing – not the circumstances.

“If someone hands you a million dollars, you’d better hurry up and become a millionaire. A very rich man once said, “If you took all the money in the world and divided it equally among everybody, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before.”
-Jim Rohn

“Rich people think differently from poor and middle-class people. They think differently about money, wealth, themselves, other people, and pretty well every other facet of life.”
— T. Harv Eker

—-

I saw a movie on Showtime a few months ago called “Reversal of Fortune”.

The documentary film makers followed a homeless man around for a week or so. At the end of the week – they gave him $100,000. For a homeless man – living under a bridge – this is clearly a life changing sum. They even paid for a financial counselor.

Within six months he had less than $5000 left. Within nine months he was back on the streets – homeless. Owing more money than before.

The morale of the story I suppose is that the homeless man’s attitude to money didn’t change. You need to invest that money – or at least continue to make money – or look to budget. The difference between this man living on the streets and not living on the streets was his mindset. His attitude, choices and behaviors – not just the $100K.

Fitness and your health can be a lot like this also.

Imagine if you woke up tomorrow – with your ideal body… looking and feeling exactly how you want…

What would you do differently to maintain it?

Maybe what you would do differently might involve changing your exercise habits, or your eating habits?

Then why not start doing that now? Make the changes in mindset and behavior first…

–
AC