Now What?

Yesterday I had a thought provoking conversation with a client as he was asking me what I want to do next.

At first, I went through all the boxes such as

1. Save /create jobs. Done

2. Expand the business. Got it.

3. Create the best equipped gym in the city. Done ( yes, one batch of delivery is still missing but we are almost there)

4. Another goal was to help one million people in 2021 and I consider this one accomplished. How do we measure this ? Our social media got 40 million views as of today, so I figure if 2.5 percent heeded my sage advice we did reach one million.

But the conversation went on in typical NY fashion ….ok, you did all that but what do you want to do for you?

This happens rarely but I did not have an answer then. In fact, it took me quite a bit of contemplating and thinking while reading a few history books to come up with one.

I came to the stunning conclusion that I do not to be another gym owner/ coach but to stand for something.

My goal is to be the guy or one of the guys that brought scientific coaching to fitness.

Rather ambitious but here is the thing: if other sports were coached like bodybuilding then nobody would run under 10 seconds for the 100 m dash, nobody would swim under one minute in the 100 m freestyle and we would still throw little weights away when doing the long jump.

Why is the fitness industry so backwards?

A few reasons

1. Since bodybuilding is not an olympic sport there is less of an interest in running studies to optimize performance. Instead, coaching mainly revolves around stories: This guy is really big and he did X. Hence X must work for everyone .

2. Extreme drug usage covers up bad behaviour. Many athletes are in shape despite their training not because of. The chemicals and great genetics allow some trainees to get away with training and diet regimen that are simply not practical for the average gym goer.

There are two major construction sites

A. Nutrition
This is handled in a very top down approach, along the lines of ” eat really boring and tasteless foods, do not have a social life. Ever.”
Instead one should focus on optimizing nutrition for health, meaning fix your micros and cut down inflammation.
Once that is in check, it is about optimal recovery from workouts. The better you recover from workouts, the better you will look.

B. Training

Training in the fitness world is completely upside down from other sports.
How ?
The fitness world does not believe in skill acquisition.

Any other sport has a learning curve. Skiing starts on the bunny slope, karate with a white belt, swimming with kicking.. you get the idea.
And yet, anyone walking into a gym thinks he is a world class athlete .
What is the issue? Most trainees are simply moving weights without training their muscles

. The outcome?
Best case scenario: no progress. Worst case: injury.
We all need to admit that we are white belts in terms of training. Remember that Arnold guy?
He took anatomy classes and ballet lessons to understand how the body functions.
If you don’t know what the muscle does and how to shorten it you will not make progress. It pays to take a step back , spend a few weeks perfecting the movement in order to set yourself up for many years of progress.

The process can be broken down into four points.

1. Stability. Are you in a position where you can focus on your target muscle?
2. Initiate . Whichever muscle moves first does most of the work, so make sure you are using the target muscle first.
2. Control. Can you stop the rep at any given moment? If not, the weight controls you.
3. Tension. Don’t lose it. Ever

This sums up what I would like to bring to the world of fitness, wish me luck!
Maik

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