Posts Tagged ‘Alwyn Cosgrove’

I have presented several times on fat los training and techniques in my career -  at the 2007 and 2011 Perform Better tours, the 2008 NSCA conference, ECA in 2009 and 2011 and the World Fit Body Bootcamp conferencejust a couple of months ago to name a few.
As part of my presentation I talked about my “story” – why I became fascinated with fat loss and effective fat loss training — and the need to destroy the myths that surround the topic — and why it keeps me up at night scouring journals for new information.

I believe that behind every person who is trying to change something — or present something new — there is a passion – an overwhelming why – that drives them to find the answers. It’s become something that I look for before really listening to coaches or trainers. The why. The Raison d’être.

Rachel and I just got back from NJ after being at Jason and Jen Ferruggia’s wedding. Now unlike most internet stories about “my good friend” – Jay and I do actually know each other. We first met about fifteen years ago, and have spoken at least weekly ever since. We spent Friday morning training (with Craig Ballantyne and Chad Waterbury) at the Renegade Gym in NJ. In between sets the conversation as always turns to  muscle growth theory. and I spent a while asking Jay about what has changed, what a typical renegade workout looks like etc.

You see Jason looks at building muscle in the same way as I look at fat loss — he’s always looking at research, reading training logs, testing methods and refining his ideas.

That’s his passion. His Raison d’être.

 

And that’s why guys like myself, and a bunch of other trainers are always asking his input on how to gain muscle. I flew him out to California to conduct a staff training for my team because he’s not only one of the best there is – he’s constantly improving his methodology. And that’s one of my “tricks” to advancing my own education – choose only to learn from lifelong learners, and your education will be exponential.

I mean – we’re talking about a guy who took himself drug-free from 147 to 231lbs.

We’re talking about a guy who has tried every training method under the sun and confesses to spending $60,000 on worthless supplements to try to gain size. This is a guy who would email me in the middle of the night when I was going through my chemotherapy treatments with ideas on halting muscle breakdown and using different nutrients to enhance my immune system. His desire to find the solution to muscle growth problems drove him.

And it continues to drive him today. Some of you may be aware that I used to have a column in Mens Fitness magazine called Hardgainer. I was a skinny kid who gained muscle (fought my first mens black belt event at 136lbs) and the editors felt that a regular column would be a great idea.

I did it for a year before I gave it up and handed the reins to Jay. You see – his passion for the topic,  and his knowledge on how to gain muscle was so strong that I felt that he would make a great resource for the magazine.

Jay’s Muscle Growth home study course is available here. I sat up late last night re-reading it. Even reading the information you can almost feel the passion behind the words — and you’ll see why Jay is one of the best in the field at this.

I think the overall message when you’re looking for information in any field is to find the most passionate individuals – those with a Raison d’être and an incessant desire to find out why… and a primary question of “how to make it better”…

Maybe one day I’ll know all the answers. Until then I’ll keep studying :)

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AC
PS – If you want to read Jay’s story – get over to Muscle Gaining Secrets from Jason Ferruggia

Thanks to all of you for “tuning in” to my blog, reading my newsletter or magazine articles this year or attending one of the seminars I taught.
Have a great holiday season!

And remember — it doesn’t matter what you eat or how you exercise between Christmas and New Years…..

….it matters how you eat and exercise between New Year’s and Christmas !
Best wishes to all.

See you in 2012.
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Alwyn

One of my goals for this year was to complete 240 workouts – which translates to about 5 workouts per week on average or 20 per month.
Unfortunately, I was a little short – today I hit workout 220. I’ll end the year with around 225 workouts performed which I’m not too unhappy about.

My goal for 2012 will be 200 workouts. My travel schedule is busy, and with work commitments increasing, I’ll be very happy averaging four solid training sessions each week or around 16 each month.

This is what I call a process goal — it’s not an outcome that I’m looking for (e.g. lose 10lbs, increase my chin-up reps), although they are just as important – it’s a simple “do this” goal that I can make constant progress towards.

Goal setting is still hard for some people. I’ll often meet clients who are interested in losing fat and decide that they will start daily cardio, weight train four times per week, eat six small meals, cut calories by 20% and reduce their carb intake.

These are great goals — but most people are trying to do too much at once. John Berardi has said that studies show that if you want to make one change in your life, you have an 85% chance of success. However if you try to change two things at once, your chances of success drop to around 35%. Three things at once? Almost zero.

The solution to this is to use the goal snowball, an idea I first heard of from Chris Shugart. Here’s how to do it:

1) List five or six behaviors you need to improve or change to reach your goals. What do you need to be doing that you’re not doing? What bad habits do you need to kick? What good habits do you need to instill?

2) List these things from easiest to hardest.

3) “Maintain” all your other goals and focus your attention on the first thing on your list (the easiest one.) Spend two weeks just focusing on achieving that goal so that it becomes a habit.

4) Once that change has been made and ingrained, move up to the next item on your list and focus your efforts there.

5) One by one, knock out these changes and/or goals.

For example: Maybe you sleep late. First goal might be to get up 30 mins earlier every day.
Second goal might be to go to the gym as soon as you wake up – and go four times a week instead of three.
Third goal may be to make sure you always eat breakfast.
Fourth goal? Reduce portion sizes at 3 out of 5 meals…and so on.

So in 10 weeks or so – you’re getting up earlier – never missing a workout, have done an extra ten workouts, and eaten breakfast everyday (which is a key factor in fat loss) while consuming less calories overall. These goals would “snowball” into a bigger overall effect with long-term success whereas trying to do all things at once would likely result in short term failure.

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AC

I was asked by one of our coaching members this morning what would be the first thing I’d do differently if I was to start over.

My answer was to define the core values of my business. It’s made every decision easier and really helped shape what Results Fitness has become.

If you are starting out now (or starting over) – spend a significant amount of time really getting clear on what your core values are.

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AC

I do quite a lot of seminars and consulting which means a lot of travel.

When I add in vacations – I realized I’d taken over 49 flights in the last year. Ugh.

That’s quite a lot when you consider that I didn’t do any travel in August or September and the first half of October. So it’s 49 plane trips in about 39 weeks.

The fun part of seminars is that I enjoy teaching, and really like meeting like-minded people (other speakers, or attendees). The downside is that with my medical history I don’t have the greatest immune system in the world, so the traveling often leaves me completely wiped out, or even sick for a few days.
And when you add in the missed workouts, jet leg, airline food etc – you can see why it can wreak havoc on your health.

So the key thing is to develop strategies to handle this. The first step is recognizing that there is an issue that isn’t optimal for you. Step two is to develop strategies to improve that situation or issue (this is why we will be doing more in-house events next year).

I developed on-the-road workouts, eating strategies and travel rituals that allowed me to arrive feeling ready-to-go and get home feeling at least somewhat fresh.
Really just ideas to avoid some of the problems with being on the road so much.

I was mentioning this to my friend Valerie Waters ( superstar trainer and creator of the Valslide) recently – and she agreed that strategies were a key part of her clients success and added:

“Strategy even trumps willpower. Studies show that willpower is actually in limited supply. Meaning, resist the cookie now, it might be hard to resist it later. Therefore, I believe it is more important to build in good strategies. For example, if you eat ice cream every night, rather than trying to “be good” and resist it, simply remove it from the house. If you consistently visit the vending machine because you don’t have time to go to lunch, your strategy would be to pack your lunch the night before and bring it with you. Anyway, you get the point.”

What situations cause you to miss meals, or make less than optimal choices? What situations cause you to miss workouts?
Start recognizing these limitations and develop strategies to allow you to succeed.

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AC

 

This DVD will teach you how to implement non-traditional cardio training exercises to create a strength, cardiovascular and metabolic training effect simultaneously.
Timed sets, density training, complexes and metabolic “finishers” are included.
This is the method we use to design metabolic training and group classes at Results Fitness, ranked one of America’s Top Ten Gyms by Mens Health magazine.

=> Click HERE to order

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AC
PS – You can save $10 if you order before Thursday at midnight.
Results Fitness Metabolic Training DVD