No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

- Steve Jobs

What is one idea worth to your business?

This is one of the primary questions we ask when deciding to attend seminars, use different marketing tools, invest in advertisment or anything we are considering to take our business to the next level. Asking this question is also a powerful exercise we use with all our mastermind coaching members frequently to help them think differently.

One of the best ways to understand how much an idea is worth is to understand the lifetime value of a customer.
(From wikipedia) – The lifetime value of a customer is is the net present value of the cash flows attributed to the relationship with a customer.

Let’s use an example:

A client trains at your gym once a week in a one-on-one or semi-private session and pays $200 per month.
If your average client stays with you for one year, then we can multiply that by 12 to come up with $2400.

Assuming that client purchases additional services over the course of the year (supplements, nutrition, etc) the lifetime value of this client could be $2800 or even higher.

As a rough idea then – one marketing idea that gets you one client could be worth $2800 or more easily.

So think about this – what if I showed you a method that brought in ten prospects?
And another method that guaranteed you’d convert 50% of those prospects to annual clients ?

Using the numbers above, those methods combined could be worth five clients at $2800. That one marketing idea would be worth $10K to your business.

Additionally, if you do a good job (which I hope is a given), then every single client you’ve ever had should refer you at least one other client. So, it’s not a stretch to assume that an idea that gets you one new client, should result in at least one additional referral.

And what if you also knew how to retain those clients for longer than one year (the example used above)? And made sure that you delivered such great results that every client referred you not just one – but at least another three clients?

One idea could get you ten prospects. Which could mean five new clients. Which could mean five, ten or even fifteen extra referrals.

One single idea could be worth six figures if implemented correctly.

A single idea can change your entire business. And your life.

–
AC

Today we enter what retailers and businesses call Q4. The fourth quarter of the year.

2011 has flown by – for me at least.

But here we are – October 1st. Only 3 months until 2012 and you’re setting the same old New Year’s Resolutions…again.

But before you get too depressed and think that thee year is over – let me point out that 3 months is a long time – you can get a lot done in 3 months. And there’s no rule that states you can only set goals Dec 31st. You can start progress towards a goal anytime….

Is your goal to lose fat? You could EASILY lose 2 or 3lbs per week by starting now, tightening up your training and diet and focusing your efforts. You’ve got 13 weeks until New Years Eve. That would mean somewhere between 25-40lbs gone.

There’s 13 weeks left in the year. Imagine starting 2010 having lost 20-40lbs more fat. Get started on a solid, effective, fast-acting fat loss program today.

Muscle gain? Check out Muscle Gaining Secrets and start growing today. By Jan 1 you’ll have quite possibly made 8-10lbs of solid gains in muscle.

You’re a trainer who needs more income? Picking up just one more client, could increase your income dramatically. Pick up 55 fitness business tips or The Evolution of Personal Training DVD and start doing something dramatic.

No idea where to begin with goal setting? Pick up Dax Moy’s product and start checking off items on your dream “to-do” list.

If you’re on track with your 2011 goals- don’t lose momentum.
If you’re behind schedule – step it up.

And if you haven’t even started – it’s NOT too late. Make your 2011 Quarter Four Resolutions now and get a jump start on 2012.

Don’t let the next three months slide by without doing something!

–
AC

It’s no secret that diet outperforms exercise for fat loss. A recent study (that I mentioned HERE) confirmed that.

However some people have taken this concept and said that exercise just doesn’t work for fat loss period.
Not true. Not true AT ALL.

You see, all of the studies that look at exercise tend to look at aerobic exercise. The ones that look at weight training nearly always use machine based exercises and isolation exercises.

That doesn’t reflect the type of exercise that we do at Results Fitness. And I’m willing to bet that it’s not the type of exercise that most of my readers are doing.

We have around 350 members right now, all on supervised training programs. That’s more than almost any fat loss study in existence. We also have close to 60 gyms or studios in our Results Fitness Mastermind group. Add to that all the colleagues and friends I have throughout the industry that share ideas with me and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that what we’re doing in the trenches is likely AHEAD of what’s being published. We just have more data. We see stuff that gyms without that network or number of clients would see. We connect the dots that others don’t.

As an aside a recent study stated aerobic exercise was better than weight training for fat loss. First off, if this were true, I’d have went out of business a long time ago!

But what the media failed to report is that after 8 months of machine based resistance training, three times per week, the participants showed no improvements whatsoever. That’s not a sign that resistance training doesn’t work – it’s a sign that THIS machine program doesn’t work.

Also  overlooked so far by most is this sentence in the study (from the researchers): “The result is that the aerobic program likely expended approximately 67% more calories than the resistance  program did. We would hypothesize that much of the difference in the effects on ectopic fat are due to the differences in caloric expenditure between the two training programs.”

So let’s look at the findings –
After 8 months of aerobic training the participants lost 4.4lbs (total weight – they didn’t measure body comp)
After 8 months of resistance training they lost 1.76lbs

Obviously 4lbs is way better than 1.76lbs but I wouldn’t say either program really worked would you?
And if we point out what the researchers said – the resistance training program burned 33% of the calories of the aerobic program (seriously, what kind of weight training program is that?) – but actually lost 40% as much fat.  Isn’t that a better “return on investment?”

Regardless, the aerobic group involved running 12-20 miles per week. The average weight of the participant was 195lbs. Considering the time spent running each week – this would average out to be around 1800 or so calories burned per week (I used an 11 min mile average).

The researchers stated that the aerobic group burned 67% more calories than the resistance group. That means on average (again I’m extrapolating the data) – the resistance training group burned around 594 calories.

And this is the part that doesn’t make sense. The resistance training group averaged 135-180 mins training per week. That’s at the high end, 4.4 calories per minute spent training. Again – what kind of resistance training program burns that few calories per minute? (Especially in light of Scott’s work showing that 8 minutes of weight training burned somewhere between 159 and 231 calories)

My conclusion? “A well structured high intensity cardio program at 80% max heart rate for 12-20 miles per week was just 60% more effective than a machine based weight training routine, particularly when the cardio program burned 67% more calories”

—

At Results Fitness, we’re testing things all the time, tweaking what we’re doing and adding some stuff from the research.

Now admittedly we extrapolate from the research and start applying it, but we know that interval training works and we’ve seen studies showing the metabolic demands of kettlebell training so we use both of those.

We know that free weight training is superior to machine training. We’re using suspension training, triplanar movements, sleds, ropes, tires, sandbags etc. We use unilateral exercise, offset loading, dynamic variable resistance training. We know that supersets burn more calories than straight sets in the same time frame. We’ve seen that explosive lifts burn more calories during and after training than slow lifts so we add those too.

So we use full body workouts, compound movements, short or incomplete rest periods, self limiting exercises, explosive lifts, performed in a superset fashion. We screen clients so that we can attack their weak movements and therefore weak muscle groups and therefore increase metabolism (all of them are linked).  We periodize the plan and track the variables, constantly tweaking and upgrading the program as we go.

And of course, we coach nutrition, recovery and supplementation also. Reseach needs to look at one variable at a time. We use all the tools at our disposable and build people that are leaner, stronger, and look, feel and perform better.

Training for fat loss needs to include:

1) An emphasis on building muscle or at the very least maintaining muscle.
2) Make that muscle work – hard – in multiple movements and multiple planes of motion
3) Make that muscle work FAST. Power could be the missing factor in fat loss training.
4) Make the metabolism WORK – short rest periods, high work density – ramp up energy expenditure during and post-workout
5) And we add in non traditional interval training – where we work the whole body hard, working more muscle and more movements than traditional cardio
6) And we still add traditional cardio when needed :)

… and then we do it all again with a smart program and built-in progressions.

And I KNOW we’re not alone. There are a lot of readers of this blog getting out there and doing smart programs that are getting great results. Maybe one day the researchers will get in tune with what practitioners and in-the-trenches enthusiasts are actually doing…

–
AC
PS – for more about our programming philosophy for fat loss clients, click HERE

This is the most comprehensive resource Alwyn and Rachel Cosgrove and the Results Fitness Team have EVER put together explaining their complete system to writing the fat loss programs they are known for.This manual includes step by step how to write extremely effective fat loss programs following the same system they use at Results Fitness for both their semi-private clients and their group members.You’ll learn how they use the FMS to design a fat loss program, the components they include in each workout along with the periodization model they follow along with a sample print out of 4 phases of their exact template and 4 phases of an actual
sample client program.

You also get the exact nutrition advice they give, coaching cues they use and questions and psychological strategies
they use. This is the ONE resource you need to take your results with your clients to the next level and get better
results in less time which will set you apart from your competition.

The manual is on sale for a short time and is available HERE

–
AC

Nothing in the world can take place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent
- Calvin Coolidge