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Performance Area => Article & Video Discussion => Topic started by: mike.1283 on December 07, 2010, 07:25:19 am
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There were a few "blog" style posts I had originally thrown on VF and since I'm using this forum a lot more often I figured I'd throw them on here, see if anyone has any thoughts.
I subitted my original article to a couple of coaches/trainers/websites and asked for opinions and I posted it to my Facebook page as a "Note" and I haven't really heard any feedback on it, so I'm going to post it here and ask for anyone's opinions of, this is just going to be copied/pasted in.
Introduction
With many programs that are currently on the market, athletes now have the opportunity to not only follow a program but also learn the methods behind the program. We are realizing more and more that there isn’t some secret equation to building better athletes; it can be as simple as increasing the amount of relative strength and decreasing your bodyfat percentage. The purpose of this article is to discuss some of the methods and trends being used for increasing athleticism.
While some of the older programs used to preach routines that would have you in the gym for hours per day and up to 6 days a week we have realized that for training athletes we don’t need to be training them that much. Most of the time in addition to the skill and sports specific work they are doing on the side, they are being over trained, and never realizing their bodies full potential.
Muscles and how they work
Muscles can work in 3 different ways, concentrically, where a muscle is shortening and contracting under a given load, as in the curling phase of a bicep curl. Eccentrically, where a muscle is lengthening out, when you’re on your way down in the bicep curl, and isometrically, where a muscle is staying the same length in a given position under tension. In order for an athlete to improve athletic ability it’s important to have the muscles working effectively in all these ways. You can only accelerate as quickly as you can decelerate, and your body can never be expected to apply force, without being able to absorb force as well. There are at least 3 different types of muscle fibers Type I or slow twitch, Type II a, which are fast twitch but still have some characteristics of slow twitch fibers, and Type IIb which are the fast twitch fibers and have the greatest potential for power.
With someone trying to increase their athletic ability specifically working on increasing power output, athletes should be focusing on the intensity of each exercise and try not to have long drawn out routines. With exercises like squats and deadlifts (unless it is during a particular lifting scheme such as heavy eccentrics or isometrics) you need to focus on accelerating the bar as quickly as possible. With an exercise such as box jumps, you do not want to be jumping to a box drastically below your jump height in order to be able to make the jump for higher rep ranges. With higher impact plyos that can be taxing on your Central Nervous System, such as depth jumps, and squat jumps the intensity and form of the exercise is crucial, and the only way to ensure seeing results using these exercises is to make sure you are jumping as high as possible. The exception to this is some repetitive style jumps such as jumping rope or line hops where the goal is not to reach maximal height but more going for speed, even still not trying to pace yourself for an extended period of time.
The 1st phase of my routines will usually cover base of strength, and be considered general adaptations, or prehab (injury prevention) phase of training. Base of strength is important because when we start adding strength with heavier loads and increasing the amount of plyometric or drop sets we have an effective base to build from. Building athleticism can be compared to building a house where a solid foundation is a key component.
Training theories
Base of strength is something that tends to get overlooked quickly with athletes looking to get substantial gains quickly. In athletes who have not worked out before this specific training phase can be important and can lead to gains quickly because your body is forced to make neural adaptations. The idea that gets used is you have to squat at least 1.5x your bodyweight to be able to do plyos. While I do not believe that this is true, it can be good guidelines to follow for someone who hasn’t worked out frequently before and does not have access to a trainer or coach.
After the base of strength and some general adaptations have been made I will start to increase the load (%1rm) and begin introducing them to lower rep ranges. During this phase I start to include plyos such as box jumps, or repetitive style hops, such as line jumps or jumps reaching to a specific height, if plyos were not introduced yet. It is still very important to focus on form and with plyos focus on landing quietly or softly to avoid any unnecessary impact on the joints. On an exercise like box jumps athletes should be learning to absorb force and decelerate their body. Force absorption is important because 1st and foremost for injury prevention and 2nd you can’t expect your body to be able to apply force if your body is not able to absorb it, if your body has to waste energy on landing then you will not be able to explode as powerful.
During the next phase we can continue to progress, adding heavier loads and adding exercises that are more demanding. I always like to make sure that athletes can land quietly and softly and I have them do altitude or depth drops, where they are just focusing on the landing. After they are able to do that I will have them do full depth jumps, where they are stepping from a box landing and rebounding back up. 2 keys I try to focus on to make sure they are ready and performing these correctly is, 1 are they are still able to land quietly when coming off the box and after the jump, 2 on the jump itself are they able to jump higher than the box they stepped off. If not than they can regress by either making the box smaller, or taking a small step back and still work on just their landings in the depth or altitude drop.
Program ideas
There are countless ways to organize a specific training split and there are not any that are wrong or right, but athletes should have a reason for their methods. You can do splits of circuit training, which works when people are trying to lose weight and cut bodyfat. You can also do upper body and lower body splits for an athlete looking to work out on consecutive days, their upper body will be getting a rest when their lower body is working. The amount of sets and reps that you do during any given lifting session will depend on the type of training routine that you’re following. Some circuit training routines will be longer and have more total sets per workout, specifically because while certain muscles are being worked other muscles are going to be at rest. More recent training routines that I’ve read have people working for much shorter duration being around 15 – 18 sets per workout, and only be an hour or less. There is no trainer or coach who can tell you specifically that once you are at a certain amount of sets or intensity then you are going to be overtraining vs. under-training.
There are also countless amounts of different methods that can be used to challenge the muscles and push them further, methods like supersets which are just grouping 2 or more exercises together without a break. Drop sets, where you would take an exercise do that exercise until failure then immediately drop some weight off after you reach that failure point and do more reps again with that lower weight until you reach failure. Another example would be doing heavy eccentric exercise where you would go very slowly on the way down of the exercise or have somebody assist you with a maximal load on the concentric portion of the exercise then slowly resist the exercise on the way down. An example would be doing a bench press or squat for 185 which you could only do 4 reps of (for this example) after the 4th rep someone would assist you in lifting the weight up, and then you would slowly resist the way down. The last 2 methods that I’ll talk about for this article are forced reps, and isometrics. Forced reps are when after you reach failure somebody assists you through a set amount of reps beyond failure. Isometrics are certain exercises where you are holding the position under tension, ie wall sits where you have your back against the wall and your squatting down as far as you can.
Sample day
Circuit Training: Go through all 4 exercises 1a through 1d, with minimal breaks in between exercises; go through that group 3 times for 10 reps each. Do the same for 2a through 2d. Upper/Lower Split:
Day 1 Upper Body:
Day 2 Lower Body:
1a – Squats 1 – Pull Ups
1b – Pull Ups 2 – Bench Press
1c – Push Ups 3 – Seated Rows
1d – Core work 4 – Pushups
2a – Deadlift 5 – Bicep Curl
2b – Seated Rows 6 – Tricep Press
2c – Bench Press or Variation 1 – Squats
2d – Core work 2 - Deadlift
3 – Lunge
4 – Step Ups
In conclusion there are countless different ways of organizing training routines based on a lot of different variables. The purpose of this article was to cover some guidelines to follow as athletes and trainers/coaches set up their routines. This has also covered some of the flaws that are seen in current routines and how to address those flaws. It has looked at some reasons that athletes are overtraining and some reasons that athletes may be failing to see results. Train for a purpose, train for results.
This was basically a post I had thrown together because I wanted to put together an article about some flaws I am seeing made with younger athletes, and things that I wish I had known when I was in 7th/8th grade. Just my opinions.
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This post and the following post were just some thoughts regarding nutrition, some copied in from PT on the net (towards the end of the post)
Calling all fat people
As I've posted before I spent about 6 years now waiting for my diet and nutrition to just some point magically "click" with me and have me understand and magically lose weight. After 6 years of waiting and training and learning I've finally been able to say more recently that it never happens and it takes more than just some real basic knowledge of diet to actually lose weight. As a trainer I don't think people will ever understand how much info I know about nutrition, which I'm comfortable with, but even with all this knowledge it doesn't make me or any of us make the correct decisions about what we eat and drink on a daily basis.
Some people are really quick to say "well just don't eat that" and I've always thought that its easy for someone who is in shape or who never had issues with being overweight or obese to, potentially not fully understanding what the person might be feeling. Some people will also "rebel" when a trainer or someone says "hey you shouldn't eat that" they'll eat it in spite, which I know I do. But realistically we all know we shouldn't eat these things (some of them are really obvious), but they're convenient and it can be really tough for someone when they're either on there way home from work, or at work going to lunch and hadn't ate in quite a few hours or a bunch of friends are going out to eat it becomes tough to turn down the junk food. Even when athletes or clients think they're following a diet very closely and they step on the scale and haven't lost any weight it can be 1 of the most defeated feelings in the world (from a weight loss perspective). It is very easy to say after eating a crap meal "I shouldn't have eaten that, or I'm not sure why I ate that" its more important to have that realization before you eat it.
So then what's the solution? Well to be honest at this moment I really haven't found a perfect solution or I would be in great shape myself, but I'm going to give some ideas of ways that people need to be helped, and ways that we can make progress. 1) Realize there are no excuses for eating crap, and any excuses are just that, if we want to lose weight then we need to want it every moment, and if we're not willing to make that dedication, then we're doomed to be overweight and never see enough progress. 2) Diet is so much mental, and so much about will power, and if we're not connecting on a mental perspective then we've lost the person. 3) Accountability and a support staff, 1 that's going to be understanding and troubleshoot the diet issues as they come up instead of pointing the finger and cursing out the person for eating poorly or not progressing with their weight loss. Some people need to be "sympathized" with others need to have strict guidelines and not fall off that wagon. 4) Cheat days or meals, and we need to understand that cravings will happen and it CAN be absolutely brutal to change habits that have been formed, and if we cheat on the diet or nutritional plan then you need to get right back on, and not have to start from the beginning. 5) and lastly we need to realize that if we take an approach of cutting back until we're rid of these bad choices (ie cutting back on soda until we aren't drinking any) or if we go in with an attitude of "I'll start my diet tomorrow" or "after this meal" we'll always have a reason to not make progress, and we'll continue on with our ways that got us to this state in the 1st place.
I hope this comes across correctly and like I said I don't have a full proof solution and I'm hoping others will give some good ideas and anyone who needs help in this way can begin to progress and see what needs to happen to make life long changes that will result with being better athletes.
The other 2 things I wanted to add in here were motivation to lose weight is only going to last for a small amount of time among the avg person. Most people will either hear from their Dr, or step on a scale and be at a point they've never been at regarding weight or health, and realize that they need to make changes, unfortunately that doesn't last, and with diets (my opinion) if you want something quick and immediate, then you could be screwed, because a lot of times you either put it back on, or starve yourself to get to some point.
Last thing I wanted to add in was its my theory, that our bodies always are working against us, my thoughts are that we have an internal set point where are body is comfortable at (the weight that we stay at) and its usually hard to get too far above or below that weight, because our bodies don't know healthy vs unhealthy weight it just knows what its comfortable with, as in taking in close to the same amount of calories and macro nutrients per day, so when we diet, our body doesn't like it, and fights against it, at least in certain instances, making it really hard to lose weight consistently and keep it off for extended periods of time. Again all my theory no facts or research to back these up.
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This was an article on PTonthenet.com from Dr Berardi, who I actually think has some really good nutrition information and programs through his site.
Now, on the exercise side of things, I had no problem. Once my clients got in the gym, I knew I could motivate them to do their absolute best. We had amazing workouts that lead to impressive strength and fitness improvements.
Sometimes, however, that just wasn’t enough.
You see, most of my clients came to me because they wanted to lose fat. Often, a lot of it. And despite the butt-kicking workouts, I couldn’t always produce the jaw-dropping body transformations I knew were possible.
To be honest, though, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was missing.
They just weren’t eating right. And no matter what we did during our 3-5 hours together each week, it was the other 160-or-so hours that made all the difference.
So, over the last 10 years, I’ve made it my mission to get very good at the nutrition side of fitness coaching. And, in working with over 50,000 clients, I’ve discovered 7 key insights that I wish I would have known back when I started out.
Insight #1: 90% of clients want to lose fat, 100% of clients need body transformation of some kind
Back when I was in Miami, I realized that having clients who weren’t eating right was a big problem. My back-of-the-napkin stats showed that about 90% of my clients wanted to lose fat, and all of them needed body transformation of some kind.
I also realized that those sorts of changes can’t be done in the gym alone. If they’re spending 3 hours a week with me in the gym training, I thought, and the other 165 hours a week, on their own, eating poorly…then their progress is going to suck.
And unfortunately, in some cases, it did, for that very reason. In other cases, progress was just okay, when it should have been good. In others still, it was good when it should have been great.
That’s when I realized something important about nutrition…
Insight #2: Nutrition is always the limiting factor in body transformation.
The closer I looked, the more I realized that once I got the client in the gym and working out 3 times a week, keeping the intensity as high as they could manage, it didn’t really matter how we trained.
Sure, if I could get them to come in for 1 or 2 more hours a week, well that would change a few things. But given 3 high-intensity workouts a week, which is what most clients were able to do, body comp change (i.e., fat loss, for the most part) was pretty much the same no matter what we did.
What sped things up significantly, however, was nutrition change. And in some cases, it didn’t just speed things up. It made the otherwise impossible, well, possible.
By changing nutrition habits, I was able to help clients reach goals they had long since given up on. We were breaking through plateaus and seeing results even I was surprised by.
That’s when I became fascinated (some might say “obsessed”) with sport nutrition. I had seen first-hand what was possible, and I wanted to immerse myself in it, master it, and figure out how to teach it to all kinds of clients — especially the ones I hadn’t been able to train successfully.
Soon after, I shut down my training business, left Miami and set out to learn everything I could on the subject. But … where to go?
Insight #3: No one is really teaching fitness professionals how to become effective nutrition coaches.
When I set out to learn sport nutrition (and I now say “sport and exercise nutrition” because I wanted to learn how to coach ALL the people I was training, not just the athletes), I quickly realized that there was almost no place to go.
There were weekend certifications, there were registered dietetics programs, and there was graduate school. And none of these options is specifically designed to teach sport and exercise nutrition.
In the end, I did choose the third option – grad school. Ultimately, I went to study in the Exercise and Nutrition Lab at the University of Western Ontario, and wrapped up my PhD work in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry.
But in school, I never learned what I set out to learn — exercise and sport nutrition coaching. However, the PhD did open innumerable doors. And it made possible what I do today.
Nowadays, I run a fitness and nutrition coaching company that changes tens of thousands of lives every year. And I still conduct studies from time to time through my affiliation with the University of Texas and Eastern Michigan University.
And one of those studies forever changed the way I coach…
Insight #4: Exercise alone doesn’t work.
A few years back I worked on a study at the University of Texas. We wanted to test the effects of exercise alone — without any change in diet. Pay close attention here, folks, because the results surprised even me.
The study looked at 100 sedentary participants over the course of 12 weeks. Half of them were told to do nothing but show up for measurement sessions (the control group). The other half were given:
• an intensive 12 week training program, designed by me
• 3 hours/week of weight training, supervised by a strength coach
• 2+ hours/week of group exercise or interval training, supervised by an exercise coach
• no diet change
These individuals, as stated above, did no exercise before the study began. As a result of this sedentary lifestyle, they averaged between 35% and 40% body fat (according to DEXA scans).
Now, it’s important to note that we didn’t alter the participants eating at all. And we did this on purpose. We wanted to test the effects of exercise alone without diet. In other words, the question became:
“Without a dietary intervention, can exercise alone reshape a person’s body?”
At the end of the 12 week study, we got our answer:
“No.”
Without dietary control, 12 weeks of high intensity training produced a fairly disappointing 1% loss of body fat. In terms of raw data, the participants lost only 1 pound of fat and gained 2 pounds of lean body mass vs. the placebo group.
Frankly, that sucks.
Sure, cynics might argue that the training program was flawed; had it been this way or that way, it would have worked better. But I don’t think so.
Keep in mind, I designed the program and have some experience in this area, having worked with nearly every top coach in the business and being one myself.
Furthermore, each session was supervised by highly qualified coaches, so there was ample quality control.
So ignore this data at your peril, because as we shall see, there’s more of it to come. Here’s the bottom line...
Insight #5: If a client doesn’t change their nutrition, all the effort in the gym is largely wasted.
If a client doesn’t change their nutrition, nothing we as trainers and coaches do in the gym will matter when it comes to body comp change (fat loss, muscle gain). And when 90% of clients want fat loss and nearly 100% require body comp change, that’s a real problem.
Simply put, the last 25 years of published research show that, while exercise alone can promote VERY small changes in body fat and lean mass, those changes are almost negligible. In fact, one published review, a meta-analysis of over 700 previous exercise studies done over 25 years, showed that about 6 months of supervised exercise programming will produce only 9lbs of weight lost.
If we assume 50% of that weight lost is fat (which is a safe assumption, based on the research), that means that clients can expect to lose around 4.5lbs of fat during a 6 month training program.
So, let’s assume a client meets with his/her trainer 4 times per week for $50 per hour. That’s $200 per week, $800 per month, and $4,800 for 6 months. All for 4.5lbs of fat lost?
That’s a cost of just over $1000 per pound of fat lost. After all that time and money spent, would an overweight client even notice a 4.5lb fat loss? Not likely.
Fortunately, there is a better way…
Insight #6: Exercise AND nutrition coaching — together — work even better than clients expect.
The upshot of all of this is that trainers and coaches need to integrate nutrition into their practice. Without it, the results will be consistently disappointing with all but the few driven clients who are changing their diet anyway.
But what happens when you DO integrate training and nutrition?
About 3 years ago, we set out to answer that. And the answer is that when training and nutrition are integrated in the coaching process, body composition change increases by a factor of 3, at the very least. Here’s how I know.
In 2007 we began building what would eventually become something called the Lean Eating Coaching program. And by the end of this year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 clients will have successfully completed this program.
Because the program is entirely online, we keep data on every relevant domain, and with that data, we constantly test new coaching ideas. It’s a real-world research lab, working with people in their everyday lives. So, in essence, we’re quietly conducting what I believe is the largest body transformation research project of its kind.
So, what have we found?
Well, during the 6 month, online-only Lean Eating program, the average fat loss is around 15lbs. That’s at least 3X what we would expect without nutrition change. Keep in mind, that’s without us ever meeting our clients in person.
If our client also sees a trainer in-person, i.e., they use our exercise and nutrition system while finding a coach to help keep intensity up in the gym, we see closer to 25lbs of fat loss in 6 months.
Of course, these are just the averages. Top end results are even more impressive. Top performers, the real go-getters that coaches love, are losing up to 60lbs in 6 months. It’s quite amazing.
So with 6 months of the right exercise and the right nutrition programming, supervised by a trainer, the cost per pound of fat loss can go down from $1000 per pound to $100 per pound. That’s nearly 10X more fat loss and 10X more cost effectiveness.
And that’s what we should expect: 3-10X better numbers with effective nutrition coaching. The problem is, no one is really teaching this stuff.
Which leads to my final insight…Insight
#7: Someone ought to teach fitness professionals how to deliver effective nutrition coaching
I mean, seriously, what have people been waiting for all these years? It’s clear that training and nutrition belong together. So, why have we kept them separate? Maybe it’s that nutritionists have always felt like food was “their domain.” Trainers always felt like training was “their domain.” And neither group felt like they had the power to integrate the two.
But, guess what…once upon a time, physical therapists and trainers felt the same way. Trainers never used any physical therapy techniques. And physical therapists never used training techniques. But 8 years ago that all changed.
Physical therapy techniques started being incorporated in the personal training environment. So we embraced things like movement screens and corrective exercise. Now, in the gym, we screen our clients, help them with muscle imbalances, and help them avoid injuries.
About 3 years ago, I figured it was time to do the same with nutrition. And, in March of 2010, I launched a comprehensive nutrition education program for elite fitness professionals called The Precision Nutrition Certification Program. It’s designed for, and meant to be used in, a personal training or strength coaching setting.
Trust me, there’s no other educational program of this caliber with that focus. I can tell you that, because if there was, I would have taken it myself. Because when I started out as a trainer in Miami, years ago, that’s exactly what I needed.
So make no mistake, if you’re looking for the future of personal training, look no further. It’s in body transformation. And those fitness professions who’ll excel will be the ones the master the art and science of both training and nutrition coaching.
-- Article posted to PTonthenet.com by John Berardi.
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Again PTonthenet.com
Sometimes I joke around that my PhD was almost worthless. Heck, a few weeks ago, I even mentioned the idea in a PTontheNet article, 7 Personal Training Insights That Rocked My World.
In that article, I tell the story of how I first realized that exercise doesn’t do much for body transformation; which is a real problem since 100% of my clients (and yours) actually need a transformation of some kind.
I also talk about another discovery: the realization that nutrition isn’t just important in the personal training environment, it’s everything.
So today, I’d like to focus on the nutrition education part. In other words, once you realize that you absolutely need to incorporate nutrition coaching into what you’re doing as a fitness professional, where do learn that coaching?
Well, for me, when I first decided to build my nutrition toolset, I quickly realized that there was almost no place to go. In my search, there were basically three options, each with some pros and a lot of cons.
Here’s what I found:
Option #1: Weekend Nutrition Certification.
In my search, I saw hundreds of nutrition “certifications.” Most of these consisted of some kind of weekend seminar you attend. And an exam at the end of the seminar. (Unfortunately, some don’t even go as far as using an exam.) Of course, there are pros and cons to this approach.
Pros: With this option, I could have marketed myself as a nutritionist, or something to that effect. Also, it would have been inexpensive. And it would have been easy.
Cons: Let’s face it; this option is basically a merit-less rubber stamp. I wouldn’t have really been much better for having taken the course. And that was the whole point. Not to get “certified.” But to get better. Because I had (and still have) lots of room to grow.
For my part, I opted not to do this sort of cert, because I felt like it was far too basic. Again, I didn’t just want a piece of paper. I legitimately wanted to learn everything I could to master the science and application of nutrition. And I wanted to do this for two reasons: so I’d be better, and so my clients would get better results.
Option #2: Become a Registered Dietitian (RD).
I also thought briefly about becoming an RD, which entails a bachelor's degree, doing a series of clinical internships, passing an exam, and doing continuing education to stay registered. There are pros and cons to this approach as well:
Pros: An RD is a relatively well-known and respected accreditation. It’s a noble profession, requiring intensive study. And there’s a fairly rigorous process for earning the accreditation.
Cons: This type of training is largely about disease management and medical nutrition therapy. There’s relatively little about sport and exercise nutrition. And I felt like if I spent 4-5 years doing an RD, I’d end up without much progress toward my goal of mastering sport and exercise nutrition.
I opted not to do this either, because I knew that I didn’t want to do medical nutrition or work from a hospital. Not all RDs do, but it’s still the focus. I knew, from the very beginning, that I wanted to work with athletes and exercising populations, and the RD didn’t seem like the best way to go about learning how.
Option #3: Become a researcher/professor (PhD).
There isn’t really a sport nutrition PhD, per se. However, once you make it to the master’s and PhD levels, after a 4-year undergraduate degree, you have a lot more flexibility in planning your own studies.
I never really wanted to become a tenured professor (although I’m now an adjunct professor and teach graduate level courses from time to time). It’s just not my thing.
What I did love about the graduate work, however, was the research. I figured that doing a PhD would afford me the time to delve into all the existing research on sport and exercising nutrition, and the ability to actually conduct and publish studies myself.
Pros: With graduate studies, there’s a lot of freedom to study whatever you want in depth, including sport and exercise nutrition, in a demanding and scientifically rigorous environment. Plus, there’s an extremely challenging process for earning graduate degrees. You have to pass comprehensive examinations and have to defend your research to a committee of senior professors.
Cons: There’s an inordinate amount of studying (4 years of college, plus typically 2-3 years working on your master's and 4-5 more years working on your PhD). There’s a huge cost (both from tuition, room & board, etc. AND from the lost employment income you could have been earning instead.) And the focus is research, which isn’t exactly coaching.
In the end, I chose this route. It seemed like the best option available to learn everything I could about sport and exercise nutrition. So, I went to study in the Exercise and Nutrition Lab at the University of Western Ontario, and wrapped up my grad work focusing on Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry.
It was an awesome experience and I learned so much. However, even after 11 years of post-secondary education, the funny thing is this: I never really learned what I set out to learn — exercise and sport nutrition coaching. Sure, I learned the exercise and sport nutrition part. But the coaching part, not so much.
Learning about coaching
Out of school and back into coaching, I realized quickly that my new exercise and nutrition skills were hugely beneficial. The clients that followed exactly what I said got unbelievable results. Plus, I was getting all kinds of new clients because the PhD gave me lots of credibility.
But I kept butting up against the same problem: only a small percentage of my clients did exactly what I said. And those that didn’t, well, they didn’t achieve to their potential. At first, I’d get mad at them. Then I realized that getting mad at my clients was pointless. If I wanted to help them, I had to take responsibility for both their adherence and their results.
If a client was doing exactly what I said, and wasn’t getting results, I damn sure did my best to troubleshoot the program. I’d tweak anything and everything until they got the results they were after.
But did I do the same thing for those that were having problems following my advice? Was I altering my coaching style until they got the results they were after? No, not really. And although part of it was laziness. Most of the problem was that I didn’t actually know how to alter my coaching style.
You see I was trained in physiology. And coaching is part physiology and part psychology. I was missing the psychology part.
So, I’ve spent the last 10 years figuring out the psychology side of the equation. In fact, if you’d like to explore the psychology part yourself, check out my article: The Top 7 Books for Becoming a Better Trainer and Coach.
This exploration into the psychology has made possible what I do today. I’ve tested out more nutrition and coaching theories than I care to remember. First with athletes, and then, through my online coaching programs, with the general population.
In fact, my company, Precision Nutrition, has grown into a huge body transformation research project, in which we test our ideas with real clients every day; the amount of data we collect is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in this field.
And my work combining physiology and psychology has led to something really cool.
The next step in sports and exercise nutrition
In March of 2010, Precision Nutrition launched a comprehensive nutrition education program for elite fitness professionals called The Precision Nutrition Certification Program.
It’s based on a graduate level sport and exercise nutrition coaching course I teach at Eastern Michigan University. And, to my knowledge, it’s the first certification and mentorship program designed for, and meant to be used in, a personal training or strength coaching setting.
In the end, there’s no other educational program with that focus. I can tell you that, because if there was, I would have taken it myself – instead of spending 11 years in school and 10 more years learning about coaching.
So, maybe my PhD wasn’t so bad after all.
It didn’t really teach me everything I needed to know as a fitness professional. But it did help me recognize what’s been missing from the exercise and nutrition coaching game. And that led to the Precision Nutrition Certification. So I guess it was worth the effort.
- Source PTontheNet.com Article by Jon Berardi
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If you want to provide the best nutrition advice in such a way that it actually becomes your own new profit center and integrates nicely with what you’re already doing as a trainer, you can’t become a one-off expert guiding every new client through the basics of good nutrition. No, you’ll have to start out with a system that takes care of the basics for you. Now, you can either create that system yourself, or you can license one that’s already been created for you. Regardless of which you choose, to truly affect client/patient change while also creating a saleable service offering and a program you can personally manage, you need to address the following things:
1. Client/Patient Re-Education - All of your clients/patients are already educated about nutrition. But often times, that education is the wrong kind. Simply put, the North American nutrition education is a poor one. So you need a re-education program for your clients. How are you going to re-educate them? Which texts will they read? What videos will they watch? What assignments will you give them? If you hope to have a chance in influencing client behavior outside of the few hours they spend with you per week, you’d better have a re-education program. Again, good nutrition isn’t taught in sound bites between sets.
2. Regular Social Support - Despite what most fitness professionals think of programs like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, the fact remains that these programs are statistically the most effective ones out there. Why? Well, these programs are rich in social support. Clients get to meet with groups of other individuals with similar goals, and during these meetings, they get to discuss their progress, share strategies for success and form bonds that are based on the encouragement of future successes. Just think about it: many of your clients have family and work environments that seem to conspire to drag them down into the depths of failure. What they need instead is a social circle designed for support and encouragement. So how can you create this for them?
3. New Kitchen, Cooking and Preparation Strategies - Good nutrition isn’t about having a diet plan. It’s about creating the right environment for success. And that starts in your clients’ kitchens. Clients need to learn to stock their cupboards and refrigerators with the right foods. Then they need to learn how to prepare these foods so they taste great. Finally, they need to know how to prepare food in advance for when they’re on the go. Without the right environment for success, no prescribed diet can succeed. How can you help pave the way for client success?
4. Results Tracking and Accountability - Your clients will also need a regular program of results tracking and progress check ups. If there’s no one to check in with every two weeks, their discipline and commitment may waiver. However, at least initially, if you’re there to track results and provide accountability, your clients will have a higher success rate. Make sure you’re doing this by regularly checking body measures as well as nutritional adherence.
5. Personalized Nutrition Plan - Notice the fact that I saved this part for last. Personalized nutrition plans aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on until you’ve paved the way for them to succeed with the elements above. Your clients need a re-education about food amount, type and timing. They need a social support circle. They need to create the right environment for success, and they need a regular program of accountability. Only when they have these things should you consider discussing a customized plan.
-- Another article from John Berardi at PT on the Net.