The problem with food & fitness hacks

When it comes to putting in effort or options for a shortcut, we know what most will choose.

Often putting in a fair chunk of time trying to find the way to circumvent the one thing the none can escape – truth.

What is this particular truth?

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

When it comes to fitness/food hacks these often fail people epically.

You see a guru or celeb will sell a magic pill or next best thing as they know full well people want to buy it, not because it’s actually effective of beneficial to the person in question.

If you’re someone who looks to hacks then it might be worth asking yourself why.

What is it you’re really looking to achieve with them?

Any results will be short lived, then you’ll be looking for the next thing to use and the cycle will repeat itself for as long as you avoid the truth.

Nothing changes if nothing changes, and the main ingredients required are effort & willingness.

I know how it comes across, but please see it for what it really is.

A warning to avoid the allure of a shortened path that is only going to reduce the size of your wallet.

Success leaves clues, and those are often found within the hours, days and even years of consistent effort many seem to ignore ever happened because they only focus on the end product of what people have achieved.

However you already know all of this, so that begs the question….

What’s stopping you applying it?

Enjoy,
Ross

Be grateful, not everyone has what you do

Training is a gift, wouldn’t you agree 😇

I know some don’t because they see it as a chore.

More something they have to do for the purpose of avoiding unfavourable aesthetic outcomes that are the result of their chosen lifestyle.

As such they strike up an odd deal with themselves 👀

“If I do XYZ training I can eat/drink ABC in this amount.”

In all fairness it’s not a terrible exchange truth be told, although over time the scales begin to tip in the direction of what many consider to be unfavourable.

As you’re aware, the body adapts and what was once super effective loses its potency 🧐

This is where purposeful training comes into play.

Something that legitimately pushes you close to a known limit and then forces you to stretch yourself that little bit further.

Having this become a staple in the majroity of sessions (or over accumulated sessions at least) is what actually provides the counterweight to keep the scales balanced or even weighed towards the side of what each individual considers a favourable aesthetic outcome🖤

True enough people say that’s not what they’re all about.

And some are spekaing the truth in such a sentence, however that isnt the case for the majority (which is nothing to be ashamed of, despite what the modern narrative says).

I’d be curious to know when the things you used to do stopped working or giving you what you needed to sustain the lifestyle (from a physical standpount)🤔

What did you change training wise, or did you make lifestyle tweaks?

Or maybe you kept training as it was becuase you loved what you had as a routine and simply kept ramping up the intensity by pushing harder and harder.

Hopefully you weren’t one of the masses that refused to chagne and ended up stuck sinking into the mud despite your efforts.

All answers are insightful, so please do share yours.

Change your training, change your life

Obvious as it sounds making changes in what you do will result in different outcomes.

The issue is that we tend to get attached to things, and in my experience here’s why:

• We gained something emotionally
• A favourable outcome was achieved
• It helps us feel accepted or fit in

Good as these things are for us they can also serve as chains that keep us bound statically.

For example, it’s not uncommon for men to seek hefty amounts of muscle when they start training and once this box is ticked off there are rewards that come from it. Usually there’s then a need to make a shift for health purposes (joints, ligaments, tendons, etc) and that’s where things get hard.

Making a change comes with the fear of loss.

Usually it takes a lot of time to build your body to the level of physicality you prefer/seek.

Say this is 5 years minimum.

To now need to taper off how much you’ve been doing in a specific way you’ve become accustomed to is mentally very challenging for most. I know it was hard for me personally and it took the best part of 4 years which then required some life interventions that forced the change.

Being honest if the string of nasties didn’t happen I’d not have changed my training.

I feared too deeply losing what had been worked so hard to attain.

It may help to know that this won’t happen in the way you think it will, you can sustain what you what with a fraction of what it took to build and in addition to that you’ll be able to stockpile your progress with new & different training stimuli.

Take a moment to ask yourself this – what is it I fear to lose through changing my training?

Really take the time to sit deep with this and anger it honestly.

I’ll share my fear to give you context and get you stated.

It was the loss of all the muscle& strength which would result in being seen as I was when much younger – a small, weak kid who people would come gunning for (even though I was always up for a fight to prove a point). What mattered most wasn’t the social validation and attention, although that was nice, what really worried me was losing what I thought was respect and not being noticed anymore.

Even writing that stings.

However it’s the truth.

The thought of losing this was a very strong tether and it just served to hold me back due to it affecting how I viewed the world.

Embracing our fears is hard because once we admit the truth we can’t hide from it.

Difficult as it may seem, it will be worth it because of all the positive changes it will bring to your life in the form of new experiences.

Take the risk and commit to something different for an entire year, leave behind what was.

After all you can always return to what you know after that time, even though I’d imagine you won’t want to.

Enjoy,
Ross

The problem with rehab work

In all my experience I’ve sound this to be the biggest issue.

People don’t do their rehab work when they need to.

We can go one step further and even say that using some of the typical movements considered to be exclusively used for helping heal an injured area are well worth doing even if uninjured too.

You’ll find that known as – Prehab in the past, or in more modern terms it’s called movement preperation.

It seems dull (and a bit pointless) to do the small things with little to no loading.

This is what stops many people actually doing this kind of training.

I can tell you this is a grave mistake that comes back to haunt a lot of people in the end.

The idea of movement preparation isn’t new because originally it was called ‘warming up’ but given how people only find joy in crushing themselves in each training session their warm up time tended to be cut short.

Now…. In the past I’ve said you don’t need 45-60min warming up like some athletes and folk with endless amounts of time put into it (although if you can that’s a fair thing to do).

The issue is most folk don’t have this kind of time.

Hence why they only want to do the good stuff and will deal with the small bits later.

Which of course they never do.

A warm up can be as little as 5-10min, however I’d then advice other practices in your rest periods, now called ‘active recovery’ to work on areas that needs a little TLC because this is then using your time wisely.

Here’s an example for context:

Main Work – Kettlebell Clean & Press
Warm Up, alternate the following
– 5-10 Swings
– 5 Inverted rows
– 5 Pike presses
– 5 Deep squats (can be goblet squat)
– 20 Shoulder/arm circles
– 20 Chest expansions
– 20 Band reverse flies
– 20 Shoulder dislocations

You can repeat this sequence for 5-10min to feel ready for the main session, which might be ladder work.

A1 – Clean & Press x1/2/3/4
A2 – Weighted Chin x1/2/3/4
Rest as needed and repeat as many times as possible in 30min

Follow this with 5min of basic stretching as a cool down and you’ve just had 45min of solid training.

If you only had 30min I’d say 15min for the main is sufficient, but most will skimp on the warm up instead for the sake of getting more work in due to FOMO.

This isn’t wise.

I’d say for most people having 2-3 sessions per week of movement-prep/mobility/prehab (whatever you’d like to call it) will be of endless benefit to the average person.

Combine that with 3 days of basic S&C and you’ll really be in a good place.

It’s worth nothing that this isn’t 5-6 hard days of training, it’s 3 main working sessions with 2-3 that are geared towards having you feel great and move well.

But the truth is this – such a set up isn’t appealing to people because of the attitude that says we need to crush ourselves in every session otherwise we’ve wasted out time.

I’d highly encourage you to explore restoration style sessions.

These will help keep you healthy, injury free and if you’ve got current pain they can help reduce it.

Give it some thought because it’s worth it in the end.

Enjoy,
Ross