What’s the most effective method of ensuring that you’ll fail to achieve your fitness goals?

Well, you’re right - by not starting in the first place, i.e., doing nothing.

Touche. You got me there. Ok then, assuming you’re actually doing something, what’s the death knell for results?

A: Not having FOCUS on one thing (which is hopefully the goal you wish to achieve).

I’ve known plenty of people who lost loads of weight on “the wrong program.”

I’ve seen tons of guys get huge by doing “dumb stuff” in the gym.

I’ve personally spoken with top-notch athletes who got to where they are by “eating all wrong, overworking, and doing whatever random exercises their coach drew up for them.”

What separated these individuals from the scads of people who fail is not that they got all the answers right - far from it - but that they all possessed a single-minded desire to achieve their stated goal - their one stated goal.

It’s run a marathon or build 18 inch arms. It’s achieve 5% body fat or win your local tennis organization’s tournament. Not both.

When you try to do too many things at once, a funny thing happens: nothing gets done. Focus on achieving one goal at a time, however, and over time, you will get everything done - one goal at a time.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What fitness goals are you working to achieve?
2. If you have more than one goal, which one are you working on right now?
3. Are you moving in the right direction?

For all you readers that work in an office of some sort, here’s an easy way to track water consumption.

You will need:

Water in some sort of vessel (likely, a 16-20 oz. bottle)

Rubber bands, like the ones you can find in your standard office

The office water cooler

If your daily water goal is 64oz, you can track your progress towards that goal during the day by noting the amount the bottle holds (say, 16.7 oz) and dividing (e.g. - 64/16 = 4 bottles’ worth). Once you’ve consumed the contents of the bottle, refill it using your office water cooler and wrap one rubber band around it. Continue this process until you’ve wrapped the appropriate number of bands around the bottle (in this example, 4).

It’s an easy, low-tech way to keep track of water consumption and make sure you meet your daily quota. Remember, the more you can automate things and create systems and habits for yourself, the easier reaching your goals will be. Remove the thinking (and consequently, the rationalization) from your daily choices.

I’ll be away for 10 days or so visiting my parents in our ancestral homeland, China. I don’t expect to have too much Internet access available to me so you’ll have to wait till I get back to hear what I thought of that breast cancer/fruits and veggies study that came out recently.

If I don’t get thrown in jail for it, I’ll try to do Tai Chi with the rest of the folks in the middle of Tiananmen Square and post a pic of it here, like this:

See y’all in August.

It’s always premature to trumpet the latest, greatest scientific discovery until the science itself is examined (meaning, no, I haven’t read the study yet), but this article was just too compelling to pass up.

Can you believe it? The key to a longer, healthier life is minimizing insulin production.

I previously blogged about how insulin functions in the body to keep blood glucose levels stable by transporting “sugar” out of the bloodstream and into the cells. If high levels of insulin (due to high levels of blood sugar) are maintained, then over time the body’s cells grow resistant to insulin’s effects and no longer accept the entry of sugar. The pancreas responds by pumping more insulin into the bloodstream, and the cells grow more and more insulin-resistant until - boom - you’ve got diabetes.

It doesn’t take a PhD in Nutritional Science to figure out that if you want to be healthy, you want to be insulin-sensitive. Some things that make you more insulin-sensitive are:

1. Exercise. Especially strength training.
2. A diet low in carbohydrates, particularly starches and grains.
3. Fasting. (Dr. Mike Eades, Art DeVany, and Ori Hofmelker have all written extensively on this topic, but I might consider throwing my hat in the ring in a later post).
4. Consumption of Omega 3 fatty acids. Eat your marine animals, kiddies.

Increasing your insulin sensitivity will help you maintain good health and a lean physique, but the (admittedly premature) results of Dr. White’s study suggest that minimizing insulin levels will increase your longevity (by decreasing brain levels of the gene Irs2).

Just another small benefit of following a healthy lifestyle.

A client of mine remarked about NJ governor John Corzine’s speedy recovery from his horrific vehicular accident. She said,

“Well, if I did 4 hours of physical therapy a day, 7 days a week like he did, I’d get better just as quickly .”

No, she wouldn’t have. You can bet your bottom dollar that while the PT helped some, it was Corzine’s mental state, motivation, and overall insanity that brought him back to his duties so quickly (hey, he was CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs in a former life).

If you’re like most exercisers, you spend a great deal of time researching what the best diet or nutrition is. You’re concerned with putting together the perfect exercise program. You read about meal timing, macronutrient ratios, undulating periodization, and myostatin. And yet, there’s likely one thing that would never cross your mind at all - rest.

Rest. It’s almost a forbidden word in American culture (at least in the non-stop town I work in, good ol’ New York City). In a training context, it’s assumed that like other things, more exercise is better - more reps, more sets, more workouts, more weight…

…well, more weight generally is better. But the other stuff deals with recovery issues; in other words, rest.

Understand this: Exercise is merely the stimulus for change. It is not the agent of change - your body is.

Example: Pick up a heavy dumbbell and begin to curl it. Curl it until you can no longer even lift it. Then set the dumbbell down.

Is your biceps muscle stronger now?

No - in fact, it’s weaker. Strength training is a systematic process of weakening (damaging) muscles, so that the body “fixes” them and ends up making them stronger afterwards. All you’re doing with the exercise is causing trauma to muscle tissue, which your body will repair and reinforce (if a strong wind knocked down your fence, wouldn’t you reinforce the fence posts so that it wouldn’t happen again?). Only after this repair process occurs are we actually stronger.

Most folks don’t give themselves enough time to allow this recovery process to occur. The scientific consensus is that 48 hours is a good time frame for muscle recovery from an intense work bout (after 48 hours, muscle glycogen is fully replenished - the fuel tanks are topped off). However, some newer research involving mRNA suggests that full recovery doesn’t occur until closer to 72 hours post-workout.

Whatever the actual case may be, allowing at least 48 hours between strength training bouts will ensure that your muscles are adequately recovered to receive their next bit of “gentle coaxing and persuasion” to become bigger and stronger.

Skip a day, get results faster - what a compelling concept.