It’s Friday and I’m fired up!  I’m leaving for my Birthday Ski Weekend today.

Since yesterday I’ve had the opportunity to contemplate on the significance of turning a year older.  It also gave me pause to look back.

I would say that most of the things I do on a daily basis would have seemed very far fetched to the me of ten years ago.  Although you probably wouldn’t guess it, I’m very introverted.  At one time I was extremely shy also.

One of the best things I think any person can do for themselves is learn to take more risks.

I know that the blessed life I enjoy today would not be possible had I not learned to take risks and expand my comfort zone.  I would never have quit my job at Extreme, I would never have met my amazing wife, I would never have become a public speaker.  These were all things that scared the s**t out of me at first!

Understand that everything you’ve ever wanted is right at the edge of your comfort zone.  Your comfort zone equals your life zone.  It equals your happiness zone.  The more you can expand your comfort zone the greater your quality of life will be.  I really believe that.

I understood instinctively that to overcome inhibition one must act uninhibited.

I’m always playing with this idea, it keeps me growing.  Yesterday at Starbucks I bought a complete stranger a cup of coffee, just like that.  He was speechless.  It was fun.

The day before that one of the members here smelled really bad.  The gym was filled with his pungent aroma.  As one of the trainers put it, “it was giving me a headache.”  I told him, “I don’t mean to be rude but you stink!”  While it’s true that he needed to be told, I spoke up mainly because it made me uncomfortable to do so. 

These daily forays to the edge of comfort have helped me tremendously. 

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

You’ll be amazed at the courage you develop.

A big step out of your comfort zone can be life-changing.  It was for Paul Potts, a former winner of Britain’s Got Talent.  The video of Paul’s audition for the show is one of the most watched YouTube videos of all time.  I show it occasionally in my seminars.  If you’ve already seen this, do yourself a favor and watch it again.

I’d like you to listen to him talk.  Notice the fear in his voice.  I mean the guy is a phone salesman!  Notice how the judges and the audience all thought he was going to be a joke.  And finally, recognize in yourself the same ability he used, and which we all possess, to step up when it really matters.

Click here to watch the video.

I tear up every time I watch this.  It’s a beautiful expression of the power of being human.  We can be more than we imagine.  We can touch greatness.

Risk something today.  You could ask out that person you’ve had your eye on, strike up a conversation with a stranger, or call someone you care about and tell them what they mean to you.  Don’t think about it, just do it.

“Leap, and grow your wings on the way down.”

Have a great Friday,

Conor Kelly

Happy Groundhog Day.  It’s also my Birthday today.

On this day some years ago, my journey from small to large to medium began.

Guess who?

Thanks for joining me on the ride!

Whether your goal is to be large, medium or small, I know you can get there too.

In yesterday’s blog I described Pareto’s principle as it pertains to your fitness program.  Today I’ll share some thoughts on what I believe to be the most high-leverage strategies for getting fast results.

How do you accomplish more with less?  To a large extent it depends on lifestyle factors that are specific to the individual.  One person’s 20% may not equal another’s.

However, if the goal is fat loss, here are some things for you to consider.  

1. You can’t out-train a bad diet.  Nutrition is numero uno, el capitane when it comes to fat loss.  Look there first.  Put your energy there first.  Too many people are trying to outrun their lousy eating habits and it doesn’t work.

Within the sphere of supportive nutrition, here’s what I believe the 20% to be:

(1) do enough to make small improvements each week.  If you never eat breakfast and you ate breakfast once this week, you can say you ate better this week.  That’s all you need to do.  Keep doing that and never stop.  You’ll eventually have much more supportive eating habits.

(2) Find a pattern that works for you and stick to it.  I more or less eat the same stuff every day for 5-6 days a week.  It’s simple, I don’t have to think about it much, and it’s easy to follow.  The other 1-2 days are when I get some variety.  If you think it’s boring, find new ways of preparing your food.  Do scrambled instead of boiled, add a new spice to your chicken or salmon or rice, try a healthy lunch counter. 

Many grocery stores now have a warm lunch counter where you can literally pick a protein, a starch, and veggies for less than $10.  Remember, you’re busy; you want it to be as automatic as possible for you to eat well.

(3) Lean protein, starchy carb, fibrous carb every 3 to 3 and half hours.  In other words, eat 4-5 times a day (meal or snack), just be sure to include some protein each time.  Avoid processed or packaged.  Drink lots of water in between meals.

(4) Watch those evenings.  Don’t do the Sumo thing.  Eat less when you need it less.  As I’ve explained, this made a huge impact for me.

2. Follow a plan.  Without a plan you’re like a ship without a rudder; floating around pointlessly.  A complete plan includes BOTH nutrition and exercise.  Hire a personal trainer, shorten the learning curve. 

I’ve seen miracle transformations in people who did nothing else but add structure to what they were already doing.  We’re purpose-driven beings.  Do the thinking up front, then put it in cruise control.

“The battle is won or lost before it is ever fought.”  Sun Tzu, Art of War

If you suffer from the whole “I workout a couple of times one week but then I miss a whole week,” there is a cure.  It’s called a plan.

3. Always find new ways of challenging yourself.  Try to set a personal best of somekind in every workout.  Try new training methods.  Use a periodized training program.  Keep the intensity as high as possible relative to your current level of conditioning. 

In other words, you’ve got to give your body a reason to change. 

Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result?  Insanity.  That’s what Einstein described.  Yet there are hundreds of people lining up in health clubs to do the same routines day in and day out.

What’s in the the 20% when it comes to exercise?  (1) Weight training, (2) Interval training, and (3) MRT, or cardio circuits using weights.

4. Work on you.  Your body can only change to the extent that you do.  The most productive thing you can do is work on your thoughts and feelings around this whole process.  Find things to like about yourself, and find ways to feel good in the process of getting fit.   

Learning to focus on the positive outcome you want and developing a healthier self-image are crucial to long term health.  To do this, nurture your mind daily.  Your mind needs supportive nutrition as much as your body does. 

Every day, read positive articles like this and listen to positive audios on success and personal development.  Venture out and try new things.  Most of all, practice being your own best friend.  Most of us with never put up with someone else speaking to us in the way we speak to ourselves!  Treat yourself as a caring and patient teacher would, and I promise you’ll find it much easier to take action on almost everything.

In my experience, working on yourself will have a even bigger impact on your results than your workout program. 

Attempt to view all decisions regarding your actions through the lens of the 80/20 rule.  Ask yourself, is what I’m doing really going to make a significant impact? 

It is said that the quality of the response is equal to the quality of the question.  Want better ideas or actions?  Ask better questions.

I’ll leave you with this: what’s one thing you can do today that will bring you closer to your goal?

Raya, Jeff, and myself are getting set to head up to Horseshoe Valley for a Birthday ski weekend.  Let’s hope there’s snow by the time we get there.

To Your Success,

Conor Kelly

Are you familiar with the 80/20 rule?

Sometimes referred to as Pareto’s principle, it is credited to an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto.  At the beginning of the 20th century, Pareto observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

You can spot this pattern everywhere.  In economics, they say 80% of the population controls 20% of the wealth.  In business, 80% of your revenues come from 20% of your customers.  In medecine, we have the concept of minimum effective dose, that point beyond which more of a particular treatment produces only negligible results.

Is it always exactly 80/20?  No.  It could be 90/10, or 70/30 sometimes.  The point is, in almost every arena we notice that a few of the causes are responsible for most of the effects.

In other words, very few things matter.

In fitness, it could be said that as a rule, about 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results.  Therefore, if you are able to identify what those 20% are, and focus on them, you can generate faster fitness results with less effort!

Know that 20% of the nutritional changes you’ll make will produce 80% of the fat loss, and the last 20% of repetitions closest to fatigue will cause 80% of the results you get from your exercise program.

There are many things you can do for your fitness, some of them just happen to count more.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to uncover that 20%.  When you do, your power to transform will increase exponentially because you will be focusing on the three or four things that have the most impact, and you won’t be wasting your time on things that have little or no impact.

How are you going to identify that 20%?

There are general rules, however, for the most part I find it’s specific to the individual.  At Evolution Fitness, one of our main goals with every new trainee is to help them understand what aspects of their program they should focus on.  What’s gonna be the biggest bang-for-your-buck?  What is it that, beyond everything else, is going to get you the results.

It’s usually something specific to your lifestyle.

Even though I know you’re probably going to hate me for saying this, in my experience it’s usually the exact thing you don’t want to do, or are avoiding doing. 

Whatever we resist is often what keeps us stuck.

For me, it was my evenings.  That was the hardest thing.  I looked forward to eating when I got home, it was how I rewarded myself for getting through another day.  I was pretty much willing to change anything except for that.  But this was the one thing which, when it finally changed, made all the difference to my results.

As I sign off for today, I’d ask you to consider, what is your 20%?  Perhaps you already know.  Then consider, what if I was willing to change this?  Would it be so bad?

When you know that everything you want is on the other side of one simple choice, it’s not much of a choice anymore.

Remember, effort is required, but struggle is optional.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my 80/20 analysis, and hopefully I can save you a lot of time and frustration.

To Your Success,

Conor Kelly

We recently had a client return to training with us after a hiatus of a couple of months.  She’d actually lost quite a bit of weight since we last saw her, so naturally I was intrigued.

“What have you been doing?  Have you been training?”

“No.  It’s the diet, it just finally clicked.”

“How so?”

“Well, you’ve been telling me for the longest time I should have a cheat day, and I guess being ‘unlimited’ in that way finally helped me to realize I could do this.”

Two comments: (1) if your goal is fat loss, nutrition always comes first.  Figure that the average person sleeps about 7 hours per night, that leaves 17 hours per day.  Even if you worked out for an hour every day, you’d still have 16 hours left.  In other words, fully 2/3 of your “fat-burning” day is influenced solely by your food choices.  You can positively impact your metabolism, or sabotage its proper function.

Next, (2) any plan based on deprivation is destined to fail.  Most of us are just not wired that way.  You need to have room in your plan to relax and enjoy life.  The best way to do this is by having a pre-designated day each week reserved for eating what you feel like eating.  I’ve lived my life like this for years.  Sunday is my cheat day. 

That being said, you need to have the right belief system to make this realistic for you.

Foods are not “good” or “bad”, they just have more or less nutritive value.

This breakthrough alone might be worth the price of admission kids.  Let’s face it, food is already a very emotionally charged issue for most people.  Do we really have to turn into a moral issue as well?

The shift that needs to occur for most people is that food is neither “good”, nor “bad”.  It either nourishes your body well, or it doesn’t.  This is a subtle difference, but one that I’ve noticed people who have a healthy relationship with food understand.

There’s no question that eating is a great source of pleasure!  Nature intended it that way.  I personally love getting together with friends and relatives and enjoying a lot of food and drink, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But nature also intended it to be fuel.  Where the problem occurs is when the food becomes the main source of pleasure, or the main way we self-medicate.  A derivative of this problem is the myth that eating in a supportive manner means you can’t enjoy your food.

I’ll admit, these days, I eat very cleanly, most of the time.  I rarely overeat, and I almost always choose highly nutritious foods.  But I’ll tell you something else, I also really enjoy my food!  I most definitely do not feel deprived in any way, especially since following a healthy pattern affords me the option to let go of that pattern periodically and not pay a price for it!

Cheesecake, ice cream, pizza, burgers, and chocolate – I eat all that stuff!  I love it!  I just don’t eat it every day as my main source of nourishment because I’d feel awful most of the time. 

The problem is not eating whatever you want, it’s eating whatever you want, whenever you want.  That can add up to a bad combination.

When you learn to evaluate food based on “what is this doing to me?” as opposed to taste, it will instantly become easier to make better choices.  As for the taste issue, you’ll adjust.  Seriously.  One of the most common aspects of the programs we teach is that as a person learns to eat supportively, they begin to crave healthier choices, and their cravings for junk food gradually fade away.  It might just be a question of knowing how to prepare your best food options in a way that makes them more palatable.  Experiment, you’ll find out what you like.

Trust me, your body knows what’s up.  If you crave less supportive choices, you’ve trained it to crave these things.

I really do evaluate my food choices based on what’s good for me.  Will this allow me to feel good?  Will it support me in having the body and appearance I want to project?  Will I be energized or will I feel sluggish?  These are the types of questions that happen subconsciously.  But I had to train myself to be that way. 

At first, you may have to ask these questions consciously, almost every time when making a meal decision.  Does that sound like a lot of effort and discipline?  Only at first.  Before too long you’ll begin to reprogram your own thought process, and when that happens, you’re laughing.  Eating well becomes a part of you.

For each of these questions, the answer lies in the basic nutritive value of the food you are considering.  Choose low value, and you’ll end up feeling tired, sluggish, experience bloating and gas, as well as packing on the fat.  Choose high value, and it’ll produce a high value outcome for you.

If you had a high-performance sports car, would you use a low-grade fuel?  Not if you cared about the car.  Over time you’d muck up the incredibly well designed engine and ruin the car’s performance.  Here’s a news flash:  your body is that well designed, highly-sophisticated, high-performing machine.  You’re just not choosing to look at it that way.

Most people are fueling their bodies like a broken down Lada from the 70’s!  I used to!  Is it any surprise that a person would be unhappy with their health or their body at that point?

Your body is the one mode of transport you don’t get to choose.  You can choose what to fuel it with, however.  The right fuel will make for a better ride, I guarantee you that.  It was designed to serve you, but can only do so to the extent that you serve it first.

Learning to view your food choices as a source of fuel as opposed to mere pleasure is a shift, no doubt.  It’s one that can take time.  But it will pay huge dividends.

The end result is that you can begin to view food as a potential source of pleasure, AND fuel.  In so doing you are looking at the positive aspects of nourishing your body well, as opposed to the negative aspects of depriving yourself of pleasure.  In my experience, a positive focus on “what can I do for my body?” has a much better feel and stick-to-it-ness than “I’m not supposed to have that.”

Real contentment does not come from the fleeting satisfaction of a good meal.  It comes from challenging yourself, getting out of your comfort zone, and growing as a person.  One of your best opportunities for success with your nutrition plan is to look for new ways to enjoy yourself.  Take a dance class, join an affinity group of somekind, get out and meet new people, or discover a new hobby that you can be passionate about.

Finding ways to “fill the void” other than with food is probably one of the best things you can do for your nutrition plan.

And it’s ok to enjoy your favorite “cheat” foods too, just maybe not every day.  You’ll feel much better for it.

I like what Helen Keller said, “life is short, eat the dessert first.”

Get out there and enjoy life.  Enjoy food, and enjoy feeling great too!

To Your Success,

Conor Kelly

I just got back from a nice long walk, and after eating a healthy lunch consisting of grilled chicken breast, wild rice, and broccolli, I’m recharged and ready to deliver today’s content.

If you’ve ever wondered how to get that stubborn fat off your belly, hips or upper body, you’ll want to check this out.

First, there’s a couple of concepts you should understand.  (1) Your body loses fat in genetically pre-determined patterns.  It’s the “first on, last off” rule, which basically states that the area in which you are most likely to put on fat will also be the last place you lose it from.  So if your hips are the first place you gain weight, they will also be the last place you lose weight.  Sucks, doesn’t it?

The general rule is that to get the fat off a particular area, you need to reduce your overall bodyfat percentage.  You’ll go through a process whereby everything else gets leaner first, until you ultimately lose fat from your trouble spot.  It just takes time.

(2) You can’t spot reduce an area by directly working that area.  In other words, you can’t make your belly smaller by targeting the abs.  That’s why the almost endless number of so called belly-reducing gizmos and devices you see on infomercials are such crap.  Don’t waste your money.

Once we’ve acknowledged the larger principles in (1) and (2), we can know look at what you can do to help the process along.  More specifically, we can chart a course of action based on your body type, or the general pattern of fat-distribution.

A small caveat: much of what I’m about to share is very scientifically based, yet some of it is purely my experience.  I’ve worked with so many different bodies over the years that I’ve just learned to recognize certain norms in terms of what each so called “body type” responds to. 

1. Heavy around the mid-section (belly fat).  People with stubborn belly fat generally do not respond well to doing lots of cardio.  I’ve met many runners, for example, that never lose the fat around their mid-section until they stop running.  My theory on it is that fat is a very important nutrient to a cardio-based exerciser, which means your body always likes to keep some in reserve.

The other factor in belly fat is cortisol.  Cortisol is your body’s stress hormone.  High levels of emotional stress, lack of sleep, and poor diet are all factors to consider where it concerns excessive cortisol levels in the body.

Sleep is a huge thing for belly fat.  Look there first.  Next, gear your training to eliciting a better lactic acid response.  That means you’re shooting for more of a localized muscle burn than an all out cardio assault.  Getting that burn creates a significant growth hormone response, which is helpful in combatting cortisol.

High repetitions with controlled movements as well as lower repetitions with a slower motion work well.  Interval training is preferable to long and steady paced cardio in this case.

2. Heavy on the hips.  Brace yourself for this.  A recent study proved that during extended periods of cardio a woman’s body can effectively shift it’s fat stores from the lower body to the upper body instead of burning them off!

Spending a lot of time on the treadmill or the elliptical is counter-productive to this particular type.  You’ll benefit more from doing intervals, or depletion type, high rep circuit training with weights.

3. Heavy upper body.  Some people have relatively lean legs but carry more fat in their upper body such as the arms, chest, and the midsection.  It’s a similar type to #1, but #1′s fat is usually much more localized in the belly.

This type can benefit from the same type of training as #1, except that there would be additional benefit to really focusing on the legs.  They’ll either have thin and weaker legs which will respond to the additional strength requirements of a heavy training regimen, or they’ll have strong, toned legs capable of a significant workload which we can then leverage to create a positive hormonal response in the body.

Either way, focusing on the lower body in this case seems to be the ticket to leaning out that upper body.  Go figure.

4. Very even fat-distribution.  This body type is both a blessing and a curse.  You’ll generally have better potential to get lean, but you’ll be losing from all areas so evenly that your progress will seem very slow at first.

A lot of weight training and some MRT style cardio circuits will get the job done for these guys and gals.

Here’s a great little interval training program I used during my summer 6-pack program, which will be effective for all four types, but even more so to #’ s (1) and (2):

• Warm up 5-10 minutes
• 5-minutes of 30 seconds fast and 30 seconds slow on a stationary bike (9 out of 10 effort on the “fast”, and 3 out of 10 on the “slow”)
• 5-minutes total rest
• 20-30 at 70% max heart rate (220 – your age)
• 5-minutes of intervals on the bike as above
• 2-3 minutes cool down

To be performed twice per week either first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, after resistance training, or allowing at least three hours after your most recent meal.  The former two would be my preferred choices.

If you have any questions, please include them in the comments.  I’d be happy to discuss this topic more.

Enjoy your Sunday,

Conor Kelly

One of my mentors told me that when you say you want to be successful, what you’re really saying is you’re not successful right now.

That’s why you should always want to be “even more” succesful, or to do an “even better” job of something.

With that in mind, here are three ways to make exercise “even more” fun:

1. Learn to do it correctly: knowing what to do can be very empowering.  Most of our success stories will tell you they developed a passion for working out when they finally discovered how to put the pieces together.  I’ve seen the most unmotivated exercisers become excited about their routines, simply because we added structure to what they were doing.

When you’ve got a plan, you’ve got a purpose.  We are goal striving beings.  Lack of purpose equals boredom.

Also, when you know how to properly target and isolate your various muscle groups, exercise takes on a whole new feel.  You develop a sense of creative control over your body that generally makes things fun.  It feels good to feel it where supposed to feel it.

2. Compete against yourself: strive to set a personal best of some kind in every single workout.  Run five minutes longer, or run the same distance in less time, do more weight or more repetitions, or add new sets and exercises within the same timeframe.

It’s fun to progress.  There’s a great sense of achievement that comes with hitting a personal best.  People always love the strength phase in our training protocol for that reason.

3. Mix it up: Try new things.  Join a walking group, check out a boot camp class, do pilates, swimming.  Find out what you like.  We generally change the program every 2-4 weeks.  One big reason for that is preventing your body from adapting to what you’re doing.  But it also keeps things interesting.  Variety is definitely the spice of your workout routine.

There are lots of ways to make exercise even more fun.  But probably the most significant one is to show up often enough, and for long enough to enjoy the results.  Make your workouts your “me” time, your sanctuary, an opportunity to focus on yourself, to clear your head and recharge.  Do that, and very quickly you’ll actually miss it if you don’t go.

To Your Success,

Conor Kelly