I’m not gonna lie….this transformation stuff is TOUGH WORK! You have to invest a lot of time, money, and effort into the process and you have to have a lot of faith in the people that you are asking for help. The goal of this blog is to help you make sure you are getting the most out of that time, money, and effort. As usual, it is going to get real and I’m going to ask you to think about some heavy stuff but that is where the progress will be made.

There are going to be two layers to this discussion with two questions for you to answer. Here is the first thing you have to ask yourself: When it comes to my fitness program am I just doing something or am I getting something done?

Obviously there is a big difference between the two halves of that question and it can be a tough thing to assess for many reasons. As we have discussed before, one of the hardest things for human beings to do is take ownership over a perceived negative or “failure” situation. We naturally want to think that we are in the right and someone else is to blame. So for the purpose of this blog I want you to just play along and pretend if you have to! We are going to step out of our own heads and analyze our situation. So ask yourself “Am I just doing something with my fitness and nutrition plan or am I getting something done?”. Another great way to phrase this question is, “Am I just taking some random action or am I actually seeing results?”.

I think that any time you are investing your time, money, and effort into a fitness program you have to stay focused on the fact that you are not just buying “the program” you are actually making an investment in future results from that program. Let that one soak in for a second because it is important to understand! I cut my teeth in a commercial gym for 10 years and it used to drive me crazy with the way people would shell out big bucks for multiple personal training sessions each week and they either looked the same (not a good thing) or worse over that ten year span. Now one clarification I want to make (to avoid the haters in internet land!) is that taking some sort of action is an amazing first step. You should 100% be proud of yourselves for taking that initial action. What I’m trying to hammer home here is that if you just keep doing the same thing with no results and no expectations of results then you are really wasting a lot of time, money, and effort. That is the mental shift we are hoping to make here! I have a friend that I see once per quarter in a business group. He’s from the east coast and he’s had a personal trainer for the past five years. Every time I see him he tells me that he isn’t happy with the trainer and hasn’t seen any results yet. He’s also paying his trainer $75 per hourly session! The reason he hasn’t dumped his trainer yet is that they have become friends and he doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. So he’s doing three sessions per week at $75 per session. That comes to a grand total of $11,700 per year for a personal friend. This is insane but it happens ALL THE TIME.

A great question to ask in this situation is “What are my results per dollar here?”. If you get a $10 per month gym membership and gain 10 lbs of body fat over the course of a year that will equal very low Results Per Dollar or RPD. If you do a bootcamp for $400 and lose 40lbs in eight weeks that is a very high RPD. Hopefully this is all starting to make some sense.

The next layer of this blog has to deal with the following question: “Who is to blame for the low results per dollar….me or the fitness professional/program?”. Again….it is always easier to blame anyone but yourself so just for now…just for me….let’s step outside of our own head and analyze this situation because this is the tougher of the two questions for sure.

Lets say that you hire a personal trainer. They set you up with a nutrition program and they run you through a workout twice per week. During the workouts they are super friendly and helpful. You give it 100% with the entire plan by following what they say. After six months of this you haven’t seen any results. This is a situation where you need to change the program/professional you are using.

Now lets say that you hire a different personal trainer. They set you up with a nutrition program and they run you through a workout twice per week. You follow the nutrition program about half of the time and you don’t really push it very hard during the workouts and sometimes you skip them. After six months of this you haven’t seen any results. This is a situation where you need to get your head in the game and give the program an honest chance to work.

If you are one of our NGPT clients you will notice that I’m pretty obsessed with the concept of Results Per Dollar. We want to show you the results and celebrate every chance we get. Our personal trainers have to produce a progress report for you every eight sessions and I recommend that if you don’t see any results then you should fire us! Sometimes the person isn’t a great fit for our program and sometimes our program is the best fit for that person and this is going to be true for any of you out there and any fitness program out there. The key is to use this simple (but intense) two question process to analyze your situation and achieve the highest RPD for yourself.

In review:

Question One: When it comes to my fitness program am I just doing something or am I getting something done?

Question Two: Who is to blame for the low results per dollar….me or the fitness professional/program?

As always I am excited to help you out however I can and your feedback and comments are always appreciated!

Until next time,

Adam

As human beings we are really good at sabotaging ourselves. That power is amplified when it comes to things that are difficult to do like transforming our bodies. We are experts in finding reasons why we can’t do things or why our lack of success always seems to be someone else’s fault. I’ve had over a thousand people come through my program since we launched in 2003 and I’ve noticed a few “transformation traps” that seem to make people stumble a little more often than the others.

Transformation Trap #1 Only having scale based goals: Most of our clients come in with some motivation to lose weight and that is totally normal. This particular transformation trap tends to rear it’s ugly head a little further down the road. As people hit their weight loss goals they can quickly lose momentum and motivation if they don’t have a new goal or anchor point to lock in on. To avoid this trap you should have a wide range of goals in categories like strength, endurance, body fat %, different measurements, energy level, activity level, mental state, etc. When people get towards the end of their weight loss journey and need to find a new focus point I like to use a real-estate analogy. I say “You started off with 100 acres of land and then you sell all 100 acres. How many acres do you have left to sell?”….They always say ZERO and then I remind them that they have run out of real-estate to sell so let’s pick out a new focus point! One of my favorite success stories that deals with this point is Linda Hunt. She hit her weight loss goal of 60lbs and then switched to a strength based goal of being able to deadlift her bodyweight. She accomplished that a few weeks ago and now we are on to doing real pull ups and dips along with some other focus points!

Transformation Trap #2 Weighing yourself every day: This is a very close relative of trap #1 above. People who are ultra focused on the scale tend to weigh themselves every day…sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes I get emails that say things like: “Adam I’m FREAKING OUT….my scale says that I weight 0.75 lbs MORE than I did yesterday….what’s wrong with me!!!!!! AAHHHH!”. This is why we have a rule at my gym that you are only allowed to weigh yourself every two weeks and we recommend doing that with our official weigh in process at our studio. Your bodyweight will fluctuate all week long and throughout the day based on many factors including your soreness level, hydration, food consumption, salt intake, and many more. I’m all for measurement but I believe that you have to operate in a very strict and duplicatable environment to get accurate and comparable results. I weighed myself every day for a week for the purposes of this article and I had a variance of 9 lbs throughout the week. That was actually the first time I had weighed myself in over a year by the way…..haha. Here’s the real scoop with this transformation trap. If you weigh yourself every day the chances of freak out inducing weight fluctuations is very high. The more you stress over weight fluctuations the more that breaks down your willpower. That leads to stress eating and cheating on your nutrition plan. So stick to my recommendation of bi-weekly weigh ins in a controlled environment and stop freaking out!

Transformation Trap #3 Going rogue in the first six months: With the first six months of any transformation process I always see a lot of opportunity. I’ve had over 10 clients that have lost 100lbs or more right around that six month period. You can get a lot done….if you do it right. Sometimes people do a bootcamp or a fitness program for two to three months and then get over confident and decide to “go it alone” and be “self accountable”. This usually ends in disastrous weight gain. Think of it this way, you have spent your entire life building up bad habits that have led you to the shape that you were in. Now you have momentum going but your new lifestyle isn’t solidified yet and you still need to operate from a set plan, have a coach, and be accountable to someone else. Six months tends to be the sweet spot for our clients to achieve a higher level of self accountability and long term success.

Transformation Trap #4 Quitting because it starts to get tough: At our most recent bootcamp graduation I tried an experiment. I asked them to think about how long they think they could hold a plank for. I wanted them to focus in on deciding on their absolute maximum effort and what they could do. Then I asked them to add 30 seconds to that number and hit the ground and go for it. I told them to focus on what was actually going on with their body’s strength and endurance level and not just what they were feeling like “burning, shaking, etc”. I’m happy to say that ALL of them hit their new goal and many of them doubled or even tripled their number. The moral of the story here is that people tend to pull back or quit just as something starts to get tough. This is often true whether we are talking about working out, diet, or even our relationships at home or in the workplace. The way I view struggle or difficulty is that it is usually a sign that I’m getting ready to hit a new level of progress. Some of you have read my blog about the three pain points and the transformation timeline. When you are experiencing some tough times it usually means you are just breaking through one of those pain points and that is the time to really focus in, work harder, and be even more disciplined!

Transformation Trap #5 Measuring your results in the wrong direction: Get ready…because this is a game changer! I see this one mess more people up than all the other traps put together. Let’s say that we want to plot your transformation success on a graph and “point A” is your starting point and “point Z” is your ideal fitness goal. People put in hard work and march along the graph getting results. The absolutely CRUCIAL aspect of this is that we let our ideal goals inspire us BUT we always measure from where we started. People get really messed up when they are ultra focused on that ideal goal (which tends to be a moving target by the way!). They are so dialed into that goal and “not being there yet” that they lose track of how much progress they have actually made. At each mini goal or measurement point you absolutely have to turn around and look back at where you started from and how far you have come. You’ve worked hard and you deserve to celebrate and be proud of yourself. With my personal training groups I send out a report to them every eight sessions. It has stats that show them where all of their numbers were when they first started and how those compare to their current numbers. I require them to take time to look at their progress and be proud of themselves!

If you struggle with any or all of these transformation traps I would love to be of service to you and help you get past them. Just kick me an email at [email protected] and I will give you my best!

Until next time,

Adam

In my line of work I really try to engage with people as they go through their transformation process. We attempt to identify the road blocks that are keeping people from hitting their goals and “not having enough time” seems to pop up a lot. My goal of this blog is to just blast away and hope that you hang on tight and retain a few tidbits that are useful to you.

My new favorite quote is “Discipline equals freedom.” This was said by Jocko Willink, the co-author of Extreme Ownership. At first glance many people will assume that the more “discipline” that is involved in someone’s life the more restricted they are. I’m here to provide a different view of the term discipline and I’m going to show you how I have created the circumstances that make up my regular life routine.

If you have been around me long enough you will know that I’m a big fan of structure, being very organized, and working from a plan or even a checklist. This is what being disciplined means to me. I try to maximize each minute of my day with extreme structure and efficiency so that I OWN my time and I can squeeze every drop out of each day. Here is a list of Fun Adam Facts that are proof of what I’m able to accomplish due to my over the top system of being organized:

• I own my own company with no partners and no investors
• I am directly responsible for running “Team NGPT” which has 32 team members.
• Our company has 491 active clients that attend classes at least once per week. I know 90% of them by first and last name. The 10% I don’t know are just the folks that are too scared to take one of my classes….so I haven’t met them yet….haha.
• I make time to work out between 7-9 hours every week
• I sleep at least 8 hours every night
• I take a 30 minute nap every day
• I meditate for at least 15 minutes every day
• I cook all of my own food
• I buy all of my own groceries
• I answer all of my own emails
• In 2015 I took 102 FREE DAYS from work. A Free Day is a “day off” that includes ZERO work interaction, email, etc. Please note that this is not the same thing as a Cheat Day….I haven’t had one of those in a year and a half!
• I have an amazingly busy family life (wife Marissa, Henry age five, and Hannah age one)

So anyone can look at this list and see that my schedule is packed, but I’m here to tell you that through organization and some hard core discipline I feel like my life moves at a relaxed pace which is really cool! Here are some of my top tips for staying efficient with your time so that you can in effect create more time for yourself.

Tip #1: Take FREE DAYS. The Free Day concept was introduced to me three years ago in a workshop provided by the company The Strategic Coach (www.strategiccoach.com). If you are an entrepreneur that feels like you don’t have ownership of your own life then you need to check out that website for sure. Every quarter I go to my Strategic Coach Workshop in Chicago. One of the cornerstone concepts of their program is their Entrepreneurial Time System ™ where they show you how to organize your work schedule so that each day of the week has a specific purpose. I have to book my free days at least 90 days in advance and by doing that I am forced to be as efficient as possible on the days that I do put in work. I know that a lot of you out there have normal jobs where you have weekends off, but how often do you check work email on those days or do a little bit of work anyway? I would bet that many of you do. My free days allow me to clear my mind totally. I’m much more creative when I’m at work and I have to be very efficient with my work time since I am packing the same amount of work responsibilities into a smaller work week time line. These free days mean a lot to me. I’m of the mindset that I would prefer to have a longer career as an entrepreneur so that I can spread out those years of work a little more and enjoy the special moments along the way. I don’t want to just bust my ass until I’m 65 and miss everything so that I can retire and then start enjoying life at that point.

Tip #2: Use the Boomerang App for Gmail. First things first on this one…if you are using Yahoo or Hotmail for your email service…Welcome to the year 2000…..you should switch to Gmail. The Boomerang app is FREE and it was introduced to me by NGPT Coach Marcey Tidwell. I was paying for a similar app and she informed me that the Boomerang app would get the same job done for my favorite price of FREE. This app allows me to achieve “inbox zero” every single day with my email. I know that most of you have those emails that sit in your inbox for days, weeks, or months, because you are going to need to access them at some point later on. With the boomerang app you just click on the email and select the date and time that it needs to show back up in your inbox. What this means to you is that all emails in your inbox will be actionable items for each day. This will leave you MUCH more productive and you will never forget to respond to important emails! This simple, free app will save you hours each week and it will de-stress your personal email situation.

Tip #3: Work from a plan for each day. I have created a spreadsheet that I call my HUB which is the basic game plan for each week. Each day of the week I have a top three things list. These are the critical things that MUST happen and they MUST happen before anything else that day. I also have an Other Projects/Tasks row underneath my top three for each day. This is where I plug in all the other things that need to happen. I start by loading up Monday’s “other projects” column and if I don’t complete them they go to the next day, etc. I start building my weekly game plan each Friday and have it completed by each Monday morning for the fresh week. I have a top three list for every day, even my free days. I find that having that top three list to accomplish helps me feel like I have made progress with either work or with my personal life every day. The momentum just builds up throughout each week!

Tip #4: Use the Evernote App. They have a free version of this that is great for personal use and a paid version for businesses. This app has been a game changer for my company and me personally. I’m able to create documents and we can all edit and share them in real time. You can organize all of the documents into folders and it is easy to search for key terms so you can find things you need quickly. I have created separate Evernote folders for both my business and my personal life. I have daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly checklist that I complete for both business and personal life. Checklists are awesomely simple and super effective. I love our Evernote checklists because the team member that is responsible for the task can check off their box and be held accountable. We can all see the flow of the day, week, month, quarter. I hardly ever forget to do anything because of this checklist system. If a new task pops up I immediately find a place for it on the proper checklist. I even have notes to check my various checklists on my weekly checklist….haha…..but seriously I do this! Screwing things up, forgetting about things, and making errors all waste a huge amount of time. This is time that you could spend working out or being with your family!

Tip #5: Give each day a theme or purpose. This one may only apply to those that own their own business but I’m going to list it anyway. Here is how my week is structured:

*Monday and Friday are my days where I get the random work things done. This is when I do most of my emailing, marketing, etc.

*Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday are the days where I do what I’m best at. This is when I do my coaching (class instruction, personal training, workshops, and client interaction) and my innovation work (create new things to keep the NGPT experience fresh, exciting, and effective).

*Thursday and Saturday are my Free Days. On Thursdays I hang out with my family in the morning and the evening but those middle hours of the day are all about me and I can’t tell you how powerful this is as far as rejuvenating my mindset. I can do whatever I want for those few hours and completely decompress my mind from whatever is going on at work. On Saturday I usually get a workout in at NGPT in the morning and then it is all about family. We keep pretty busy and just have fun all day. I schedule in extra free days to hit my goal for each quarter. I know that I can work really hard on my other days of the week because I have these rejuvenation days built into my calendar.

I know that everyone comes from different situations and trying to get organized can be a really intimidating task. Some of you may be allergic to structure and scheduling and that is OK. I would just suggest that you hire a personal assistant or a virtual assistant who loves structure and scheduling as much as I do! Either way you have to take an ownership mindset over your time. If you don’t own your time, someone else will. Time is our most valuable resource and we can’t waste a drop of it.

As always I appreciate you choosing to spend some of your precious time reading my blog. Your feedback is always much appreciated and if you feel moved to do so please share this blog with others!

Adam

As I was prepping to do the orientation for our 29th Meltdown Bootcamp I came to the realization that I’ve been a fitness professional for FIFTEEN YEARS…….damn…..that makes me feel both accomplished and old at the same time! When you do anything for that length of time you will start to notice some trends. I’ve come to notice lots of business trends, etc but what I’m really talking about has to do with people. Specifically what helps them succeed or what tends to derail them.

I recently read a book titled “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I HIGHLY recommend that you check it out. HERE is their website. This book really got me thinking about how we take ownership or fail to take ownership when certain situations arise. The more I thought about this I could pinpoint specific times when clients have succeeded in our program because they have “owned” a tough situation. I can also pinpoint other situations where clients have unfortunately decided to “project” and not take responsibility when they needed to.

The key concept I want to dive into with this blog post is the relationship between taking ownership and projection/blaming. When the “brown stuff” hits the fan are you looking to take control of the situation or point the finger of blame?

We all know at least one person in our lives that seems to always be full of drama. Bad things are always happening to them and they seem to somehow feed off of this! I lovingly call this type of person a “crap magnet”. They are your friends, co-workers, or family members and you love them….but you don’t want to get any of that on YOU. This is the type of person that tends to never accept responsibility for anything. Amounts crap magnetism will vary from person to person. We’ve all had those moments when we decide to project our “crap” on other people and not accept any responsibility.

What I want to challenge you to do is the exact and polar opposite of being a projector or a “crap magnet”. When a challenging situation arises I want you to search for a way to own it in some way. We can only control what we can control….I know….I just went Yoda on you! In any challenging or stressful situation think about what you can own. It is always very easy to blame other people and by doing that we are not really controlling what we can control. Other people are wild cards and they will do whatever they want. The sooner we realize that the better. Think about a situation in which you have recently placed some blame on someone else. Now think about controlling what you can control about that situation. What part can you take ownership over? If any of you have ever had to fire someone that would be a great example. Usually the person has done something that has triggered the response of being fired. It is easy to place blame 100% on them. I’ve had to fire a few folks in my day and it is definitely not fun. As a boss and a leader of the organization I have to look at what I can control in the situation and how I can own it. Could I have trained them better? Could I have communicated more effectively? If you try this little exercise out you will find that your stress about the situation immediately decreases. Taking ownership will set you free and placing blame will only double the stress in any situation.

One key distinction to make is “taking ownership” versus “blaming yourself”. When you take ownership over a situation you are making a positive move that will allow you to improve in the future. Blaming yourself has a much more negative impact and isn’t productive. The real magic happens if a culture of ownership is produced where everyone is looking to own their part and improve from that experience.

So how does this all relate to your transformation process? Let me give you a couple of examples:

Example #1: The weigh in room is an emotional place. People are either going to be really excited or really disappointed. There isn’t a lot of in between. When people ask me “what is the worst part of your job?” I will immediately respond with “weigh in room projection”. This happens when a client hasn’t been doing very well on their nutrition plan with lots of extra cheats. They know their weight will be up and they make a decision to project their stress onto me instead of taking ownership over the situation. I will have grown adults walk in there and say “This had better be good!” knowing that they have totally blown the diet. Then when they weigh in and see the weight is up they freak out on me about how hard they have been working, etc. They don’t realize that I get reports from their coach about what they have been eating so I know exactly what is going on. This is a really tough situation to deal with and it happens more often than you would think! This is a case where people are going to project their lack of results as “the program didn’t work for me”….when in reality they didn’t take ownership and “work the program”.

Example #2: We have a lot of clients that come to us that are in a situation where they are morbidly obese and they have to get the weight off to save their own lives. People don’t become morbidly obese from just being lazy and eating junk all day. There are other things going on that have impacted them in a major way and food is the coping mechanism. The challenge here is to get these folks to “control what they can control” and not place the blame for their situation on their parents, spouse, boss, job, friends, etc. For these people to succeed they have to realize that they have to own their situation. They ultimately made the decision to put the food in their body and now they have to own it and take steps to improve their situation.

The basic idea here is that you have goals that you want to hit and we 100% know that life will throw some curve balls at you along the way. There is NEVER a totally perfect time to get fit, lose weight, get stronger, etc. When a challenge or stressful situation presents itself look for your opportunity to take ownership. What can you control or make an impact on? Don’t blame another person and don’t blame yourself. Once you own your part, you are free to move forward towards your goal.

Here are a couple of examples of people that have stepped up in the face of adversity with our program:

Example #1: We had a client that had to have more than one surgery where they actually broke her arm repeatedly to get it fixed……talk about a tough situation! This gal just owned it. She knew that the surgeries had to happen. She could not control that. She did know that she could control what she ate and she could find a way to still burn calories. By taking ownership over her situation she was able to lose over 50lbs by nailing her diet and doing all of her workouts one armed. She was in the studio working as hard as anyone else and it paid off. She didn’t place any blame because she was too focused on controlling what she could control.

Example #2: This one happens all the time! We have lots of people that travel for business and have to attend conferences. This is an easy one to see the ownership vs projection relationship. We have had lots of people really succeed in this situation by taking ownership. They call ahead to see what types of food will be provided. They bring some extra healthy snacks as emergency back up. Others will project and place blame where “They HAD to eat the food that was provided!”. I’ve never really seen a situation where someone forced you to eat unhealthy food. Maybe this happens in communist countries???? One of our accountability coaches and 40lb club members (shout out to Coach Jennie!) travels every week for work. She is a road warrior and her ownership over her situation is outstanding. She knows that she cannot control the fact that she is on the road five days a week so she has to deal with it if she wants to see positive results.

Here is one last insight: When you get into a tough situation and opt to take ownership, you will find that the other people involved will tend to do the same. Recently I had been chasing down a client that hadn’t been around the studio in a while. When it came down to it I sent the one final attempt email and I took ownership. I told them that I felt bad because I wanted so badly to motivate them to get back into action. I thought that they deserved good health and they hired me and my company to help them get there. I went on to say that I had failed to be able to motivate them to reignite their passion to improve their health. I ended by saying that I would be there to help out however I could. I just spoke from my heart and owned my part. I had sent several emails trying to get this person ramped back up to take action with NO response. After I took ownership over my part I think they were able to see the situation differently and they are now back at the studio full go! I think that many times clients go MIA and they assume that I blame them or are mad/ashamed of them. That is the furthest thing from the truth. I accept the responsibility to try and help you as much as possible and that includes pulling your butt off the couch to get you plugged back in. Sometimes I can do that and sometimes I cannot. Either way I own that situation and from that point the ball is in your court to decide to take action.

So after over 1,700 words in this monster of a blog…..here are the simple steps to remember:

1. When you are in a challenging situation don’t place any blame (on yourself or others).
2. Own your part…aka….control what you can control.
3. Keep moving forward towards your goals.

I’ve had some great feedback from my last few blogs. I greatly appreciate you investing your time into reading what I have to say and I will continue to do my best to provide you with as much knowledge and energy as I can!

Adam