In spite of Tank’s affinity for flashing people, he managed to win adoration of the family of one of our CP athletes to the point that they decided they wanted to get a cream puggle just like him.  Having just spent the previous six months housetraining him and trying to get him to sleep through the night, my wife and I had plenty of suggestions for these folks to avoid making the mistakes we made.  I mean, we never told him to eat paint chips, but puppies will be puppies, you know?

Anyway, that family is now all settled with their puppy, and it got me to thinking about the importance of learning from others’ mistakes is in the world of strength and conditioning programs.  If I can help out one puppy owner, I might as well help out the 60,000 unique visitors on this website each month!  With that in mind, here are five strength and conditioning mistakes I corrected that have made a big difference for me:

1. Eating like a pansy in the post-training window – If you’re an up-and-coming lifter or athlete who can benefit from increasing muscle mass (and I definitely was), the post-workout period is not a time when you can skimp on calories.  I really did not start making great progress until I was getting in over a thousand calories between my post-training shake and the meal that took place an hour later – and that was on the light side compared to what I’ve seen with some other guys.

I can’t think of many things that drive me crazier than seeing one of our athletes finish a training session – and then sit around in the office for 2-3 hours without eating anything.  I love having them hang out at the gym, but I just want them to do it with calories!

2. Not training for strength soon enough – I’m going to dumb getting bigger down as much as I can, yet still keep it mathematical.

You’ve got to do “muscular damage” and then rebuild.  If you don’t do work, you don’t get damage.

Work = Force x Distance

Unless you plan on growing for the rest of your life (or find magical ways to keep adding range of motion to exercises), the easiest way to positively impact the amount of work you do is to apply more force – or be stronger.

To that end, I’ll make a bold statement here: for the first two years of lifting, your primary goal should simply be to add weight to the bar (provided you can do so in good technique and without pain).  As long as we’re talking about compound strength exercises, you’ll be very pleased with the results.

We have novice lifters at Cressey Performance who grow like weeds in their first two years of training with us – and I can’t say that I’ve ever had someone ask me about “the pump.”  I wish I’d had someone to tell me to shut up when I asked about it when I was 18!

3. Spending too much time doing non-essentials – This one goes hand-in-hand with the previous observation.  I really had no place doing curls, triceps extensions, and other isolation exercises when I hadn’t even come close to putting up good numbers on the important strength exercises. It kept me in the gym too long and interfered with my recovery on the really important stuff.

The funny thing is that now that I have gotten a lot stronger, I really don’t have interest in doing much of the isolation stuff anymore – because I realize that the core strength exercises are the ones that really helped me progress.

4. Not being more athletic with my energy systems work – Growing up, I was an avid soccer and tennis player, and as a result of all my time on the field/court, I was reasonably quick and good with changes of direction.  When my early 20s rolled around, I took a step back from those sports to pursue strength training “full time.”  A few years later, I was invited to play in a charity basketball game against a bunch of at-the-time Patriots players like Ellis Hobbs, Reche Caldwell, Pierre Woods, and Logan Mankins (among others).  Don’t let anyone tell you that NFL guys can’t play hoops, because these guys mopped the floor with us (in my defense, I did have Kevin Larrabee on my team!).

The outcome wasn’t altogether surprising, but one thing that did open my eyes was how I just didn’t feel as athletic as I used to be in spite of the fact that I’d gotten a lot stronger as compared to my high school years.  I was putting force into the ground, but I wasn’t applying it quickly – and I wasn’t doing it in planes of motion in which I was comfortable.  Not surprisingly, most of my energy systems work at the time (which really wasn’t much) was being done on machines: ellipticals, versa-climbers, rowers, and bikes.  I committed to cutting back on mindless repetitive motion cardio right away – and since then, just about all my energy systems work has been sprinting, strongman-type medleys, change of direction work, slideboard work, and medicine ball circuits (plus just a small amount of Airdyne work).

The end result?  A 37.2-inch vertical jump – more than 12 inches better than I was back at the time, and I’m at a higher body weight and just as lean as when I was doing all that “gerbil cardio.”  More importantly, I feel a ton more athletic – and I’m more likely to do stupid things for others’ amusement around the gym.

5. Not finding a good training crew earlier – I’ve been fortunate to lift with some excellent training partners, from my days on-campus at UCONN, to South Side Gym, to the guys I lift with at Cressey Performance nowadays.  Before that, though, I was flying solo for quite some time.  Let me tell you: good training partners make a HUGE difference.  They pick you up when you’re dragging, help you select weights, provide spots/handoffs, and create an awesome social atmosphere that actually helps training progress.

“Going it alone” doesn’t just refer to having training partners with whom you can lift, though.  It also refers to having professional resources to whom you can turn – whether it’s a massage therapist when your elbows get cranky from all the gripping you do, or someone to help you out with your strength and conditioning programs.  I’m not going to lie: I did some terrible programs back in the day when I didn’t know any better.  If I’d had an unbiased party helping me out, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

That’s one reason why I created Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.

On one hand, it takes the guesswork out of training by providing the actual strength and conditioning programs as well as an extensive video database to help with technique on all the mobility and strength exercises.  On the other hand, though, I designed it so that it would give folks a lot of wiggle room when it comes to adapting it to their unique goals and needs.  There are 4x/week, 3x/week, and 2x/week strength training programs; five different supplemental conditioning options; and a unique mobility warm-up for every month of the program.  Problems solved.

Click here to learn more about Show and Go.

What were some of your biggest strength and conditioning mistakes?  Share them in the comments section below and you might just help someone from repeating them!

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Eric,

Thought I’d add to your pile of stories about my experience with Show and Go. As a 30 year-old non-athlete who has never truly followed a complete training program, Show and Go really challenged me, brought some great results, and has turned me into a huge snob in the gym (my rest periods are generally spent grimacing at peoples’ form and judging them for their partial range movements/exercise choices). The biggest challenge for me was adapting to the longer workouts/more volume/new exercises. As I reached the end of the program I certainly noticed I had adapted well.

I did not test my 1RM before starting, but I had good estimates and without a doubt I am much stronger and much more confident in my body to handle heavier loads. My results:

1RM Deadlift  – 380 (approx. +60lbs)
1RM Front Squat – 245 (approx +55lbs)
1RM Bench Press – 260 (approx +30lbs)

Other stats of note:

- Gained about 9lbs even though I know I don’t eat enough
- Literally ripped the back of 5 pairs of pants bending over or sitting down (and grew out of most of the rest of them)
- Grew out of almost all my suits (pants and jackets)

I’ll be coming back to Cressey Performance in the next few weeks to get a new program in person and can’t wait. Hopefully my legs/butt will settle down and stop growing out of pants. It’s getting to be an expensive hobby for someone who has to dress up for work everyday.

Thanks for this program. It was what I needed and it worked. Your blog and Tony’s blog helped with continued motivation and instruction throughout.

You guys have a good thing going. Looking forward to what’s next.

Zach Stanley

Whether you’re a beginner or a veteran lifter, I’d encourage you to check out the program that had Zach splitting pants and moving big weights: Show and Go.

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A: This is actually a great question, and I am actually surprised that I’ve never answered it before in over five years of writing on this site.

For me, it all comes down to five factors in each athlete/client: strength training experience, injury history, goals, time to commit, and training session structure.

In someone with limited strength and conditioning, more of the session is going to be devoted to technique work on entry level strength exercises.  You don’t have to worry as much about lifting really heavy weights simply because beginners can make appreciable strength gains with as little as 40% of 1-rep max on exercises.  The more advanced an athlete becomes, the less time you spend on technique work, and the more work you do with strength development and corrective exercise.  Eventually, when an athlete has a lot of strength, you have to consider whether all the time and effort that would go in to adding 20 pounds to his squat would actually be better spent elsewhere – whether it’s with corrective work, power training at a lower percentage of 1-rep max, or in introducing new exercises.  Effectively, it always comes down to finding someone’s biggest window of adaptation and exploiting it.  That’s one reason why I tried to make the Show and Go program so versatile by including 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week training options alongside five supplemental metabolic training protocols.

If we are talking about someone with a lengthy injury history, though, the rules get thrown out the window.  You are not only spending more time with corrective exercise, but also refining your strength exercise selection to work with this individual – so it might mean that you have to do more technique work to add in new strength exercises, regardless of that individual’s training experience.

One’s training goals impact the corrective/heavy lifting balance as well.  If I’m training someone who simply wants to improve quality of life or stay healthy in athletics, I can be a bit more cautious on the heavy lifting side of things and hold back.  However, if we are talking about someone who was put on this planet to get strong and wants to be the most badass guy in the gym, we have to lift some heavy weights to make that happen.  So, while the second scenario in many cases requires more corrective exercise, we’re talking about a population that is willing to take more risks in training to get to a goal that might not be at all interesting to a more “low key” population.  This does not, however, mean it’s okay to let strength-oriented people lift with atrocious technique.  Doing so makes you an unethical clown who is more likely to get sued – not a professional.

Time to commit is another important consideration that many folks overlook.  Very simply, if someone can only get in two exercise sessions a week, I’m not going to be spending a ton of time on corrective exercise with them.  You’re much more likely to die from being fat and having diabetes than you are from having a cranky rotator cuff.  I’ll gladly give these folks additional corrective exercise that they can do during their busy schedules (which are never as busy as they claim), but I won’t coddle them when they need to move.

The last factor, which is more about the training model than the athlete/client in question, is how one structures a training session.  At Cressey Performance, athletes start their sessions with foam rolling and then proceed to an 8-10 exercise dynamic warm-up.  For many folks – particularly young athletes – that is enough “corrective” work, and the remainder of the session can be devoted to technical instruction and increasing strength on exercises that are safe for them.  Those with more accumulated wear-and-tear on their bodies will need more corrective exercise beyond what they’ll get from strength training alone – so we add in fillers (e.g., extra mobility work) between sets, and some additional corrective work at the end of the session.  Since you have a limited amount of time with people, you may have to cut back on strength training or metabolic conditioning initially just so that you can get in this early corrective work to get them over the initial “hump.”  Trust me: it will set the stage for long-term success rather than “short-term gain, long-term pain.”

There are two final points I’d like to make.  First, in my experience, many experienced lifters/athletes have responded well to separating the heavy lifting from the corrective stuff.  When they show up to train, they may be really fired up and ready to go – so the last thing they’ll want is to do some scapular wall slides or spend five minutes getting some length in their rectus femoris.

These folks would be wise to do just enough warm-up work to prepare for their heavy training, and then add in some separate sessions to address movement inefficiencies – whether we’re talking additional foam rolling, massage, mobility drills, rotator cuff work, or something else.  They can also add it in on the end of the session after the hardest work is done.

Second, for many folks, maximal strength can be tremendously corrective.  Increasing strength in one area can reduce excessive stress in another area of the body.  An example of this would be using the box squat or deadlift to learn proper hip hinging techniques, which would increase posterior chain contribution and take some of the burden off the quads in someone with anterior knee pain.  Likewise, all other factors held constant, a stronger muscle is less likely to become degenerative.  You can read more along these lines in two older newsletter of mine on the Law of Repetitive Motion: Parts 1 and Part 2.

Obviously, there are many things to consider, but this should at least get you headed in the right direction in finding the right balance in your strength training program.

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What philosophies, if one, do you follow and what basic rules do you find to be the most important when determining the sets and reps?

A: This is a loaded question!  The best way to get better with programming is simply to write a ton of programs and see what works and what doesn’t.  However, with respect to your specific questions on sets and reps, what you choose to utilize is going to be dictated by:

1. The duration of a session – You won’t be able to do 6 sets of 4 reps if you only have an client/athlete for an hour and want to accomplish other things.  This is, in particular, a big issue in collegiate strength and conditioning programs because the NCAA allows only limited number of hours per week with athletes, and sport coaches and strength and conditioning coaches have to share this time.  Additionally, it’s a challenge for personal trainers in private training set-ups where clients may train in 30-, 45-, or 60-minute blocks.

I’ve written several times in the past about how I would never allow our business model to dictate our training model – and this sets and reps question is one reason why.  At Cressey Performance, we do all semi-private training, which allows for sliding starts and finishes.  It allows us to get in all the work we need to do with clients – regardless of the sets and reps in question.  Likewise, as you’ll see in the rest of this two-part series, you’ll appreciate that it’s why we don’t have one program standardized for everyone on the dry erase board; every single CP client has a unique program  because they all have unique needs.

2. Competing demands – The more variety (plyos, conditioning, medicine ball work, etc) that you want to add to a program, the less volume you’ll be able to do on strength training.  We have limited time and recovery capacity, so we can’t just keep adding all the time.

For me, a good example is what happens over the course of the baseball off-season.  Lifting volume is high when they get back, throwing is a no-go, movement training is 2x/week, and medicine ball is light.  After the first month, medicine ball work goes up, lifting comes down a bit.

Then, at the start of January, medicine ball and lifting volume comes back down and throwing volume increases.  We then get rid of medicine ball work almost altogether and go to 3x/week movement training as the season approaches, throwing intensifies, and guys do more hitting.  So, it doesn’t just depend on the exercises; it depends on the big picture.

A great follow-up read to this point would be my recent post, Weight Training Programs: You Can’t Just Keep Adding.

3. Exercise selection – If you’re doing more sets, you’ll want to do it on “money” exercises like deadlifts and not curls, etc.  Moreover, certain exercises lend themselves better to higher reps than others.  For instance, we never front squat anyone over six reps, because technical breakdown often occurs with fatigue.  You also wouldn’t want to do cleans for sets of 15!

Usually, it’s also good to just “call it” on a particular exercise and move on to the next if someone has already dropped the weight on subsequent sets and form continues to deteriorate.  That energy is better spent on different exercises where technique can remain perfect even in the presence of fatigue.

4. Training age - As a general rule of thumb, the more experienced they are, the more sets and FEWER reps they’ll need.  At this point in my training career, I just won’t get strong on sets of five. Here’s another good follow-up read: Why I Don’t Like the 5×5 Workout.

Conversely, beginners generally need more sets and reps to pick up on things.  That doesn’t mean that you should just do three sets of 15 reps on everything with a novice, though.  I find myself teaching squat and deadlift variations with four sets of five reps quite a bit; the load, however, is light enough that the lifter could usually do 10-12 reps.  In other words, it’s just technique practice.

5. The Training Goal and Client/Athlete in Question – While taking heavy singles over 90% of one’s 1-rep max may be ideal for helping folks get strong, working at such a high percentage in some populations warps the risk: reward circumstances. Whether it’s older folks, those with injuries, or athletes who have a lot more to lose by getting hurt than they have to gain by adding five pounds to their squat, you have to take each individual situation into consideration.  I always remind people that we lift weights to improve quality of life, not just so that we can talk about how heavy the weights we lifted were.

6. Whether You Want to Impose or Remove Fatigue – In a “loading” week, volume is going to be higher.  If you’re deloading, though, that volume is going to be reduced.  Aside from beginner strength training programs, volume should never be the same over several weeks in a row.  I discuss several deloading strategies in my e-book, The Art of the Deload.

I’ll be back in a few days with more factors that influence the sets and reps in a strength training program.  In the meantime, if you’re looking for a comprehensive strength and conditioning program to take all the guesswork out of things for you, check out Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.

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How about cardio?  Would a few 30 minutes interval training sessions work?

What if I did extra rotator cuff stuff every day?  Just a little tubing, you know?

I’m going to add two extra days of calves, abs, and forearms.  It shouldn’t be a problem, right?

These are just a few of the common questions I receive from people for whom I write weight training programs (plus all the other components of a comprehensive program).  And, it’s these kind of questions that make me appreciate just how challenging it is to teach someone how to effectively write programs – and why everyone gets all flustered when they first start writing training plans.

Very simply, most people don’t understand the concept of competing demands.  Everybody wants to add something to their weight training program – but not everyone is willing to take something away in order to do so.

How many elite powerlifters or Olympic lifters do you know who regularly do interval training?

How many elite triathletes do you know who just want to add a few sets of biceps curls?

The answer is, of course, none.  And, it’s because – whether they appreciated it or not – these high-level athletes were effectively managing competing demands.

In some cases, different fitness qualities compete with one another; an example would be extensive aerobic training while trying to increase strength.  You can’t get strong quickly if you’re doing hours of cardio each week.  Somewhat similarly, in an overhead throwing population, it’s challenging to regain shoulder internal rotation and flexion range of motion (ROM) and pec minor length when an athlete is throwing – so you have to do your best to get the ROM during down-time in their training year.

In other cases, you may have multiple qualities that contribute to an overall training effect, but you can’t prioritize all of them at once.  For example, my professional baseball clients need a host of different qualities to be successful, but the body has limited recovery capacity, so their training programs have to target their most readily apparent weaknesses – and do so at the right time of year.  We cut back on the medicine ball and upper body strength exercises and volume when their throwing volume increases.

And, we can’t do as much lower body strength exercises when guys are doing more sprinting and change-of-direction work.  Stress is stress, so you have to apply it judiciously.

Taking this into consideration, I think that one of the best drills for someone looking to get better at writing programs is to take a full-on comprehensive weight training program with supplemental conditioning/movement training where someone is training 6x/week – and then cut it back to 3x/week.  Assume that there is a whole lot of of “other” stress in this athlete/client’s life – whether it’s work, illness, family issues, or just being an in-season athlete – and figure out how to scale a program back in order to make it productive and safe for that individual.

Lots of factors have to be taken into account: the volume and intensity that individual can handle, how long each session can last, and what specific factors one needs to address most.  A good example to check out would be the differences between the 4x/week, 3x/week, and 2x/week weight training programs (and accompanying optional supplemental sessions) in Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel and Move Better.

There are loads of factors you have to take into account when you write a comprehensive training plan – from the weight training program, to soft tissue work, to mobility work, to movement training, to energy systems training.  The most important consideration, though, is how they all fit together synergistically to make the program as a whole effective.

So, try the challenge I listed above and see how you do; I think you’ll find that it’s a lot harder to subtract than it is to add to your weight training programs.

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Preventing Lower Back Pain: Assuming is Okay
Who Kneeds “Normal” Knees?
Healthy Shoulders with Terrible MRIs?

While some of these studies stratified subjects into athletes and non-athlete controls, not surprisingly, all these studies utilized adult subjects exclusively.  In other words, we’re left wondering if we see the same kind of imaging abnormalities in asymptomatic teenage athletes, which is without a doubt our most “at-risk” population nowadays.

That is, of course, until this study came out: MRI of the knee joint in asymptomatic adolescent soccer players: a controlled study.

Researchers found that 64% of 14-15 year-old athletes had one or more knee MRI “abnormalities”, whereas those in the control group (non-athletes), 32% had at least one “abnormality.”  Bone marrow edema presence was markedly higher in the soccer players (50%) than in the control group (3%).

Once again, we realize that just about everyone is “abnormal” – and that we really don’t even know what “healthy” really is.  So, we can’t hang our hat exclusively on what a MRI or x-ray says (especially since we don’t have the luxury of knowing with every client/athlete we train).  What to do, then?

Hang your hat on movement first and foremost in an asymptomatic population.  Do thorough assessments and nip inefficiencies in the bud before they become structural abnormalities that reach a painful threshold.

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Quad Pulls in Baseball – Why do they happen?  And, what are they really?  This old post of mine actually gets a ton of traffic – presumably because a lot of people run into “quad pulls” quite frequently and immediately search for information on it on Google.

The Regular Guy Off-Season Program – Looking for a good four-week program to test drive?  Give this one a shot; you might just get more athletic on top of being bigger and stronger.

My Coach Says I Shouldn’t Lift – I have some fun with this one.  It’s great “ammo” for any athlete who deals with a coach who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.

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First, though, you might like to see me rocking the Ron Burgundy mustache at CP this past weekend.

All of the CP clients were fired up to train on Saturday because they knew there might be the opportunity for a mustache ride, but they were all disappointed that I just don’t roll like that; it’s a classy ‘stache.

Anyway, moving on, today’s featured product is Optimal Shoulder Performance from Mike Reinold and I.  Through Tuesday at midnight, you can get 20% off this DVD set by heading to www.ShoulderPerformance.com, adding the product to your cart, and then entering the coupon code CYBER20 at checkout.  Whether you’re a weekend warrior, baseball coach, rehabilitation specialist, fitness professional, or competitive athlete, there’s a lot to be learned by checking out this resource; the feedback has been excellent from those who have purchased it thus far.  Here’s a sneak preview:

On to the strategies for correcting bad posture…

1. Train more frequently.

Obviously, in many cases, those with bad posture often simply don’t exercise enough, so any motion is good motion.  However, this also applies to regular exercisers who hit the gym 3-4 times per week as well.  Why?

Well, I do a lot of my “corrective” work in my warm-up programming – and the more often you train, the more often you’ll have to do your foam rolling and mobility warm-ups.  So, breaking your training program up into smaller components on more frequent days might be the best way to force yourself to do the things that you need the most to correct bad posture.

2. Use daily mobility circuits.

Along the same lines as the “increase training frequency” recommendation, it’ll never hurt to repeat your mobility warm-ups during your daily life. If you are someone who is really in need of drastic changes, do your warm-ups twice a day, seven days a week (on top of any static stretching you do).

3. Strengthen the deep neck flexors.

When you get stuck in a forward head posture, the deep neck flexors (muscles on the anterior portion of your neck) really shut down as the sternocleidomastoid, suboccipitals, levator scapulae, scalenes, and upper traps get dense, fibrotic, and nasty.

You can start off by simply doing chin tucks against the wall (put the back of your head up against a wall, then make a double chin without the back of your head losing contact with the wall). Then, you can progress to quadruped chin tucks, a drill I learned from Dr. William Brady.  In this drill, you’ll work against gravity as you pull your head into a more neutral cervical spine posture.  Most people will butcher this on their first try by going into hyperextension as they get to the “top” of the movement.

When you get the technique down, you’ll actually notice some crazy soreness along the anterior aspect of your neck in the days that following. We usually go with sets of 5-6 reps and a 2-3 second hold at the top of each rep.

4. Go with a 2:1 pulling-to-pushing ratio.

This is a recommendation you see quite a bit, but nobody really talks about how to “smoothly” apply it to a program.  Here are a few approaches I’ve used in the past:

a. Simply add an extra pulling exercise on the end of a day’s session.

b. Pair a bilateral pulling exercise with a unilateral pressing exercise – and do “halves” on each pressing set.  In other words, if I was doing 6×6 chest-supported rows (CSR) with 3×6/side 1-arm incline DB presses (IDP), here’s how I’d set it up: CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left, CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left, CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left.

c. Make the pulling exercises in your program the A1, B1, and C1 options, with the pressing as the A2, B2, C2.  And, simply have an extra set of each of the pulling exercises – meaning you just don’t return to the pressing exercise for a last set.  This might work out as more of a 3:2 pulling-to-pushing ratio, but you can always tack an extra set or two on at the end to make it work.

I’ll be back soon with more strategies for correcting bad posture, but in the meantime, don’t miss out on the Optimal Shoulder Performance sale that is running through Tuesday night at midnight. Just head to www.ShoulderPerformance.com, add it to your cart, and then enter the coupon code CYBER20 at checkout to receive 20% off your order.

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First off, the huge sale is pretty simple: everything on THIS PAGE (all collaborative products from Robertson, Hartman, and I) is on sale at 20% off.  This includes Assess & Correct, Building the Efficient Athlete, the Single-Leg Solution, Bulletproof Knees, Magnificent Mobility, Inside-Out, and the Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Set.  You don’t even have to enter a coupon code; you can just go purchase them all in one place, and the discount is already applied.

As for the mustache and the important message, check out this video of yesterday’s 4th Annual Cressey Performance Thanksgiving Day Lift, where we had about 30 people in attendance.  The horseshoe ‘stache (minus the soul patch) makes an appearance at the 26-second mark.

At risk of sounding overconfident, things have gone well for us at Cressey Performance since we opened our doors in 2007.  We’ve had double digit percentage growth in each of the past three years and the job seems to get more and more fun each and every day.  In the next two months, we’ll expand into an additional 1,000 square-feet.  I talked a lot about how we’ve attacked things to get to where we are in a previous blog post, Three Years of Cressey Performance: The Right Reasons and the Right Way.

One thing I’m not sure I’ve highlighted in my writing enough, though, is how important the camaraderie we have among our clientele is.  “Creating camaraderie” was never a bulletpointed objective in our business plan, but in hindsight, it was the single-most important factor in our gym not only “making it,” but thriving in an economy where loads of other gyms were closing their doors just about every day.

Each year, the Thanksgiving Day lift reminds me of that, as for me, Thanksgiving is all about family. In other words, if you’re going to spend a few hours with people on Thanksgiving morning (and get up ultra-early to do so on the morning after what is arguably the biggest partying night of the year), then you better enjoy the company of those people and see them as part of your extended family.  We had high school athletes, college athletes, professional athletes, weekend warriors, Moms and Dads, and former interns in to get after it from 7:30AM to 9:30AM – and it really meant a lot to our staff.  Sure, a lot of them were probably just there to see (and feel…and be photographed with) my mustache, but you get the point.

How do you create camaraderie among your clients?

• You hire the right people, give them plenty of autonomy, and make sure their jobs are as fun and rewarding as possible so that they’ll always be in the right mood to create and nurture friendships; there simply can’t be bad days.  I heard from a commercial gym trainer the other day that his facility had 68% employee turnover the previous year; how do the members even know the staff – let alone become their friends – when they’re gone within a month or two?
• You treat everyone as individuals, even if they’re in a semi-private or bootcamp-style training set-up.  This means you individualize with your programming and find time to interact with everyone, monitor their progress, ask about their families, or just shoot the breeze about who the Red Sox should sign this off-season.
• You put results first and revenues second (some of the business coaches out there will hate me for this one).
• You introduce clients to other clients and help expand their social networks.
• You organize client events – whether it’s a Thanksgiving morning lift, trip to a baseball playoff game or a boxing match, Halloween party, or a seminar for parents on how to keep young pitchers healthy.  And they don’t even have to be huge gatherings; my family has had two of our pro baseball players with us at Thanksgiving each of the past two years, for instance.

The possibilities are endless in this regard, and the appropriate “strategies” (if you can even call “caring” a strategy) are going to be unique to each facility, but the end goal should always be the same: camaraderie.  If you’re in the fitness industry and not working to create it both intentionally and unintentionally, you’re missing out on an important component of being successful.

Thanks for reading; I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.  Don’t forget to check out the 20% off sale on all the aforementioned products HERE.

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Post tags: Athlete, Attendance, Business Plan, Camaraderie, Clientele, Collaborative Products, Coupon Code, Gyms, Hartman, Hindsight, Horseshoe, Knees, Message Check, Mustache, Percentage Growth, Performance enhancement, Single Most Important Factor, Square Feet, Successful Training, Thanksgiving Day

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I’m calling it ‘Stache Bash 2010 – because I’ll soon be rocking a mustache to round out the week (and drive the ladies wild).  As of right now, I’m just rocking the Circle Beard (moutee) – and while it’s not a hit with my wife, our puppy doesn’t seem to mind, as evidenced by his nap on the couch with me during football on Sunday afternoon!

Here’s how it’ll work…

• Each day, I’ll rock a new facial hair with a new one of my products on sale at a hefty discount.
• With each day, I’ll also provide some new content to go along with these sales promos.
• My products will go on sale Tu (today), We, Th, Fr, Mo, and next Tu – which means that the weekend is open.  With that in mind, I’ve reached out to a few friends to see if they’d make their top-notch products available to my list at solid discounts on Sa and Su – so don’t forget to check back in over the weekend.
• I’ve sequenced all of this so that if you do opt to purchase multiple products, they’ll ship in the most convenient and affordable way possible (i.e., Building the Efficient Athlete, Magnificent Mobility, and Assess & Correct will all be on sale together).
• I’ll leave each item on sale for 48 hours, as I know a lot of folks are in different time zones and may read this blog a day or two late.
• The month will wrap up with me turning in my man card to be clean shaven once again on November 30.

So, without further ado, let’s kick this sucker off with a 30% off deal on The Truth About Unstable Surface Training. This e-book has helped to clarify the role of instability training for a lot of folks in our industry, but what many people don’t realize is that it goes into great depth with respect to strength exercise progressions for training enthusiasts who may be outside the fitness profession.  You can click HERE to purchase directly or click HERE for more information.  Just enter the coupon code STACHE to apply the discount at checkout.

“I used to advise trainers and other strength professionals that they must always continue to develop themselves and continue their education by reading every book and article and attending every seminar – but I was wrong. My advice now is to be very selective with the resources you seek out and the research and products you obtain. There is so much misinformation in the fitness industry and so much junk on the internet that it’s easy to be misguided.

“So what is the right information? Without hesitation, I can say anything from Eric Cressey. His e-book, The Truth About Unstable Surface Training, is no exception. Learn how unstable surface training originated in a rehabilitative setting and led to one of the biggest controversies in the fitness industry today. I was honored to get a first look at this resources. It was not just the literature review, studies, strength exercise demonstrations and progressions that were eye-opening; it was the practical applications. As always, Eric provides a thorough explanation of complex ideas.

“If you’ve ever found yourself – or come across someone – using the term “functional training,” you absolutely must buy The Truth About Unstable Surface Training right now!“

Jim Smith, CSCS
Author, Combat Core: Advanced Torso Training

Again, that coupon code is STACHE and is good through tomorrow (Wednesday) at midnight.

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