Have you ever had this happen? You're happily going about your workout and then you can see the trainer make a bee line for you. Your heart jumps. You must be doing something wrong. The trainer offers a few words of (hopefully) gentle correction and then the exercise becomes nearly impossible.

During your next set you try to abide by the advice given, but it makes the exercise 10x harder. 

Why is that?

Let's compare your muscle to a group working on a project. In any lift or exercise, there are multiple muscles being asked to perform different functions. When you give the signal to your muscles to "bring that barbell from my waist to my shoulders" you will perform a biceps curl. But not all biceps curls are created equal. 

Not all teams are created equally either. I can remember group projects in college. They usually went something like this: one group member is the bossy one and is bound and determined to get an A on the project. Two group members are neutral and will do the wor...

About the Author:

Jeremy “the tall trainer” Biernat is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Strength Coach, has his Bachelors in Exercise Science, and enjoys writing, speaking, and inspiring people online and in person. See his new book!  More importantly he is a husband, father, and follower of God. His practice is in upstate NY (Canandaigua) where he works with people in one on one and group sessions to make awesome changes in their lives. He doesn’t do everything perfect, cries in movies, and would love to hear from you. You can contact Jeremy by commenting to this post, emailing [email protected], or calling 1(800)380-7047. 

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I could almost leave it at that but I’ll add a little detail.  It is not something you DO it is something you have.  Diet the noun is the typical food for an animal or person.  You shouldn’t go ON a diet.  You already HAVE a diet.  Now it may be terrible, but it’s yours.  If you make a radical change to yourdiet, it’ll work for a little while. 

But…when it breaks down you go back to your typical eating and gain it all back and then some.  Instead take what you are already eating and make a small change that you can live with.  When people join our program they are sometimes shocked we don’t have a “DIET PLAN” for them to follow.  There are helpful guiding principles in nutrition that we try to improve on but that can look very different person to person. 

Don’t go on the “Stone age diet” or the “Plants only diet”.  Go on the (your name) diet.  Actually, you already are on that diet.  Now just improve it a little. 

About the Author:

Jeremy “the tall trainer” B...

I'd like to start by saying I am a very private person and hate being the center of anything so doing this testimonial for all to read will be very difficult but I honestly hope that in doing so can spark the interest and motivate someone to realize it's time to get up, get moving, get healthy so they can enjoy life for many years to come, as Art Williams would say "JUST DO IT!", so here goes:

I worked at a job for over 20 years and I really enjoyed it, until the company went through many changes at all management levels, plus many layoffs in production, they even froze pay raises and took money away. After laying off my workers my dept. I was expected to do the same amount of work. This became very stressful, and I even gained a new boss who thought he was all that, he wasn't and treated me like I didn't know anything and worse a female.  It hit me, I was stressed, overworked, and so unappreciated, all with having chronic migraines, hair literally falling out, and terrible mood swi...

I stumbled across this and it was too good not to share. 

Milkshake Study YUM!

Grehlin is the hormone in your body that is responsible for hunger.  (think growlin’ grehlin).  The higher it is the hungrier you are.  They did a study with mostly college students.  There are a lot of studies on college students because for a couple bucks and a milkshake they’ll do just about anything.  So, they had them fast for 3 hours!  Basically, they needed them to be a little hungry.  They checked their Grehlin levels when they got there and then gave them a milkshake called sensible delight that promised guilt free pleasure.  At only 200-300 Calories, low sugar, etc.  They had to wait an hour for the milkshakes effect show up in the blood.  Then they checked the Grehlin levels again.  They had fallen.  Not far but some.  From what we know the more you eat the more they fall so a small milkshake should have had that effect. 

They had them come back again on a different day.  Fasted again ...

Plateau. It can seem like such a dirty word at times. 

You may feel:

• Stuck
• Stagnant
• Loss of Momentum
• Powerless

Plateaus are not fun. You work so hard, yet you aren't seeing any positive results. To break out of a plateau you must do the opposite of all those feelings we just listed. 

You need to create:

• Change
• Motion
• Improvement
• Ownership

In order to do all of those things you'll need to tap into The Growth Cycle. There are three parts to creating growth and blasting through plateaus.

ACTION

LEARN

PURPOSE

You'll need to understand why you're doing something (PURPOSE). You'll need to actually go out and do something (ACTION). And you'll need to find out more information or get some guidance (LEARN). 

Here are a few examples of each.

ACTION

• Plan out dinners for the week
• Sign up for a workout
• Take time for some meditation/breathing
• Pack your lunch
• Have the difficult conversation that you keep worrying about
• Identify what the deeper problem really is

LE...

About the Author:

Jeremy “the tall trainer” Biernat is a Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Strength Coach, has his Bachelors in Exercise Science, and enjoys writing, speaking, and inspiring people online and in person. See his new book!  More importantly he is a husband, father, and follower of God. His practice is in upstate NY (Canandaigua) where he works with people in one on one and group sessions to make awesome changes in their lives. He doesn’t do everything perfect, cries in movies, and would love to hear from you. You can contact Jeremy by commenting to this post, emailing [email protected], or calling 1(800)380-7047. 

Please share this with friends!

We've run numerous experiments over the years trying to highlight one simple thing: you eat more than you think you do. We've shown this by having people make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pouring cereal, and creating their own lunch from materials provided. 

We've found that, consistently, our clients are off by at least 50%. That is, they created a sandwich, inside a fitness studio, while the trainer was watching, and they still made it 50% higher in calories than what a "typical serving" would be. Some experiments show as much as 150% error! That's like thinking you ate 300 Calories, when in fact you ate 750!!!

The problem: just knowing about this bias does not help. If you read this article, and this information is new to you, it will not change the way that you serve yourself. Our clients are pretty aware of the bias that they have (and they are very intelligent people!) Yet they still over serve themselves in experiments. 

My quick suggestion is this: measure the things ...