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