Why does it always seem like the same people constantly win?

The same teams seem to go on a run every season...

The same company seems to be growing and expanding...

Is it because they're more talented, work harder, have some secret tricks up their sleeves? There definitely is some truth to those things and I never want to take away from that, especially the hard work part.

But winners all have one thing in common that separates them from the rest.

THEY EXPECT TO WIN!

Their lives are built around winning. Everything they do in their life, how they live, how they prepare, and how they perform is all built around winning.

That is the expectation from themselves AND everyone else.

You will only take yourself as far as your mind will let you. You will only expect and work as hard as your mind tells you to believe in.

If you have low expectations, you will have low level preparation, that produces low results.

I like to tell this story about my high school football team after my junior season. Not as an excuse to chat about the "good old days," but as one of those life lessons that sports teaches you.

At my high school we were always EXPECTED to win our conference and at the very least make the playoffs every year.
But, during my junior season, we had a lot of seniors get hurt, so most of the starters were all juniors and sophomores and we ended up losing to two really good teams and one team that we really should've beat.

We went 7-3, second in the conference, and just missed the playoffs...

For most football programs, that would be a pretty good season to hang their hats on.

However, that wasn't the case for us.

For us, everyone around town and in school would ask us...

"What happened to you guys this year?!"
"You guys kind of sucked!"
"That was a rebuilding year."

Looking back at those comments, they sounded kind of rough. But it's because we didn't live up to our expectations placed on the team, we under performed to the standard, it wasn't good enough to the standard that was set for the program.

Our Head Coach at the time, Coach Bayuk, always told us in preparation that "everyone is always gunning for us, they want to be the team to knock off the top dog, that we had a target on our backs." That was his reminder of where we were at on the food chain in our conference.

When you're expected to win, you prepare to win and you perform to win. You become a winner.

That next year, we went 9-1 (one loss was out of conference to a great Maple Heights program) and we made it to the second round of the playoffs (we're not going to bring up that game ha). We were hands down the most dominant team in our conference, nobody came close to touching us and we beat our rival twice, once in the season, and the other in the first round of the playoff.

As far as how we felt about the season before going 7-3, "we took that personal" as the great Michael Jordan says!

Now, I know I'm over here talking about my high school football like I'm still the guy living in the glory days, I assure you that's not the case! I write about it, because it's such a beautiful example of reality.

It's a perfect life lesson that I learned looking back at my time in high school football. It's the same repetitive lesson that happens over and over again for people across the board. Success leaves patterns and clues if you're looking in the right places.

This same reality runs with all successful people. The same goes for my day to day life working with my clients. I expect them to show up, I expect them to do their best, I expect them to get great outcomes.

You will only go as far as the story you tell yourself about yourself. Your conscious self knows, your body knows, and your daily actions know that your reality is limited by your beliefs and expectations for yourself. Don't be afraid to rewrite your story, and the best part, you can start rewriting it right now!
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• Raise your expectations of yourself!

• Prepare to win!

• Expect yourself to win!
• ​Go win!
  

The first rule of recovery..."You do not talk about recovery."

Just kidding, I couldn't help myself! #fightclub

First Rule: There needs to be something that you're trying to recover from.

Remember, training is STRESS. You stress yourself and then adapt to it by RECOVERING from it. This is where recovery comes into play. And maybe you've already guessed it, but yes there's levels to recovery just as there are levels to training.

A lot of people like to focus more on recovery than they do the actual training. They're more into ice baths, sauna's, float tanks, etc. than training hard in the first place. 

People like to resort to gravitate and put a lot of energy into the recovery side of the equation more so than the training part it seems sometimes.

Why is that?

Generally speaking, the recovery work is easy, we generally like to avoid hard things (remember it's our survival instinct). But in life/sports, we must be able to push ourselves and do some hard stuff if we want to grow as individuals.
So this needs to be crystal clear before moving forward. Make sure that you're training hard enough to be worried about actually recovering from it.

On a side note, we should be concerned more with recovering from general life stressors more than being concerned with recovering from training. Another topic for another day...

Recovery happens on a continuum, just like pretty much everything else in the performance world.

Because training is planned stress that you're inflicting onto your body, it must be addressed that the first stage of recovery is actually setting up you program to optimize performance AND recovery. If you're going "no days" off, you either just started doing that, you're young, or you don't train hard enough. If you're properly training, you will need to prioritize your recovery as well.

Setting up your training to have hard sessions, lighter sessions, and planned rest days will set the stage for proper recovery protocols to do their job. This process alone is very diverse and complex, so I will leave you with a couple general rules and concepts to know about accommodating stressors. 
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1. Plan only 2-3 hard workouts a week
2. Have at least 1 complete rest day
3. Plan 2-5 lighter workouts in between hard sessions

Many roads lead to Rome, however I didn't want to leave this part out, but at the same time, not to spend a lot of time going down this rabbit hole for now... 

​So instead, I want to discuss daily recovery protocols that everyone can start doing right now, especially if you're not currently prioritizing these things!

You have things that you should be doing everyday for recovery purposes and things that you hold as an ace card to use them when you really need it. Now, what's really good to know is that the things that you need everyday, are actually the most important recovery tools. If you do a great job at the every day things, the less likely you'll need to be reaching for those ace cards all of the time.

So, let's break down some things for you to focus on everyday.

The number one thing you can do to help your recovery is sleep quantity and quality. Without good sleep, literally everything physically good that you want to have happen, will be a lot harder to have happen without proper sleep.

Number two is hydration. If you're dehydrated, this will heavily impact recovery in all ways, you are literally made up of water and all body systems will be strained and suffering.

Number three is nutrition. If you're underfed, especially chronically, you're body will be running strictly on fumes (hormones) and you will be rely on adrenaline to get you through your next workout. If that doesn't get fixed, a host of more problems are on their way!

Supplementation is number four. Not necessarily supplements to help you sleep like melatonin and ZMA, but supplements that help you reach your daily intake levels like protein, creatine, Vitamin D, magnesium, etc.

Moving on to your ace cards, are things like ice baths, sauna's, massages, deep water floating. These are things that you don't need or shouldn't need to perform regularly for most cases. These are much more aggressive modalities. At times, the modalities that decrease inflammation at fast rates (like ice baths/ibuprofen), can actually cause down regulation to your normal recovery times if you overly use them and depend on them to recover.

You want to think, to let the body recover in its natural form of sleep, hydration, and overall nutrition as much as possible. Give the body a chance to learn how to adapt and stop trying to force recovery methods on it constantly. You will thank me in the long-haul for taking this advice!

So for this blog's action steps, I want you to really address the 4 daily recovery modalities to make sure that you are doing not just good, but a great job at each. Become great at those before getting into the aggressive methods to recover from workouts!

In this blog, we're going to have a nice little chat about nutrition. I'm going to save you all the details of how many calories you should eat, how much protein you need, why hydration is important, etc.

You find that all in The Lifestyle Nutrition eBook that you can access for FREE HERE as well as JYT's 50 Success Tips for Training!

What I've learned though, is that a lot of people don't want to hear that stuff, as it's too much for them off the rip. They're not quite ready to do the real work and put in the effort yet in order to actually know and understand nutrition. Most people just want the hack, the diet, the secret trick, the supplement, etc. that think they're missing out on.

P.S. There is NO SECRET you're missing out on...

For this blog, I am going to share some thoughts and mental frameworks on how to improve your nutrition from a performance standpoint and a body composition standpoint. This is also information for people with not any metabolic diseases who are not the exception to the general rules. If you have to ask if you're an exception to the rules, then you're not an exception to the rules FYI.

The first thought we need to address is comparing ourselves to people like competitive bodybuilders at their show, models in a photo shoot, and actors in movies.

These individuals do not look this way all year long. They diet down and get in shape for these jobs. Not to mention special effects in photos or movies. A lot of them will be in good to great shape, but the ultra lean and sculpted physique is not how they look 24/7, 365 days out of the year. So lets just scrap that reality out of our heads forever unless you're going to become one of those.

The second thought we need to address...What I have found over a decade of nutrition coaching, is that most people under eat majority of the time, people and even MANY athletes from all levels. If people would learn to eat what they're supposed to, they wouldn't get themselves into trouble of binge like behaviors, hardcore cravings, and diet fatigue of constantly dieting.

If people ate a solid breakfast, ate 3 whole meals a day, had healthy snacks, consumed protein, weren't afraid of complex carbs and fruit, stuck to healthy fat options, drank at least 1/2 their BW in ounces of water a day, 80-90% of the nutrition problems would go by the wayside!

I know this because you wouldn't want to make bad decisions because you would be in fed state. You wouldn't feel depleted and constantly craving sugar and salt. You would feel energized, happy, and probably more content about your body composition too. Your body would actually work for you versus fighting you...

But instead, people are more concerned with detoxes, cleanses, and cycling fad diets wanting a quick fix to address their poor long term behaviors.

The third thought we need to address are fad diets...Truth be told, the good thing is that everything works, but the bad news is, that everything works...But only for so long...Unless you're following sound nutrition principles and adjusting as you go, your progress will come to a halt if you're on a diet, and it usually doesn't look pretty, emotionally I'm talking mostly about!

This is the result of what 99% of where mainstream diets will take you. You will get some upfront results, brag to your friends about this new incredible diet you're on this time, and then the diet will take you into deep water and leave you stranded out there. 

Diets all come and go because they only work for so long, and they keep recycling them with different names. Sound nutrition principles have been here for a long time now, and those who follow those nutrition principles, are the ones who get the BEST results.

Stop looking for shortcuts, and start looking to build better habits and you will see transformations happen on many levels for you!

If you haven't done so yet, go read The Lifestyle Nutrition eBook and take responsibility and control of your nutrition.

You will be happier, more confident, and healthier if you learn and follow real nutrition.
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Here are some additional tips that you can implement right now that will make a big difference for you in your nutrition.
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• Consume protein at every meal (3-4 times a day).
• You need to eat more at your meals/snacks if you're starving before the 3-4 hour mark.
• Consume 16-20oz of water upon waking.
• Eat complex carbs to give yourself more energy plus to keep cravings low.
• Do not eliminate major food groups unless you have a health condition that requires you to do so.

Did you know that the fitness abilities of mobility and flexibility are not really the same thing?
Mobility is the range of motion of your joints.

• Example: People have limited range of motion in their shoulders.

Flexibility is the ability for your muscles to relax and lengthen.

• Example: People have a hard time touching their toes because their hamstrings do allow enough relaxation to lengthen reach them.

A lot of people get these two things confused often. Just think, mobility is range of motion in your joints, while flexibility is the ability for your muscles to lengthen.

So, what does this all mean for you?

Well, it can mean a lot of things fortunately/unfortunately...

There's a lot of ways to interpret whether you need to improve mobility/flexibility. There's many opinions (professional and unprofessional) surrounding this topic as well.

In this blog, I'm going to simplify some things for you to determine if this is a big area of concern or not.

First off, we need to identify what your life/sport looks like. What sort of human movements do you need to perform on a daily basis.

Identify all of the movements that you need to be able to perform. If you come across a certain movement that you cannot fully perform with ease, then you most likely have a mobility/flexibility issue that needs improved. If you can actively perform all of the movement patterns efficiently without disruption in function (or doesn't impact your quality of life/cause pain), then boom, you're in a good spot and I wouldn't be losing any sleep about improving mobility/flexibility fitness.

The reality is however, that there is almost always something that you can improve on in most people, whether you yourself believe so or not.

But what's also important to know, is that not everyone/every joint/muscle needs to be hyper mobile and flexible nor should be. A lot of people like to just assume, more flexibility the better. And in a lot of cases, that's even worse than being a little too tight!

Another reality is that, increasing flexibility does not decrease the chance of injuries happening. You will get much more injury prevention from proper strength training and proper conditioning than you will even get from stretching. A lot of people really believe this in the sports world and it's just not true. Extreme tightness that causes high loads of dysfunction, yeah you'll run into problems eventually, but you can't out stretch injuries from happening...

Certain joints are built for stability in your body, like your knees and elbows. Yes they need to have a full range of motion, but anything beyond that range of motion can cause high levels of instability when in fact they need to be stability. The same goes for even mobility joints like you hips and shoulders. In many different cases, hyper mobile joints that lack stability are a recipe for disaster, it's like having a joint built out of soft clay.

So, stretching and mobility is really a case by case situation if you want to get super picky about the details.

Now, I know I said I was going to keep things simple, but let blow your mind real quick...

What I have learned and witnessed more times than I can recall or count, is that mobility and flexibility BOTH heavily improve when weakness is the cause of tightness in either muscles or joints.

How about that?!

So, thinking back to the nervous system and how it's so integrated into our bodies, if a joint is weak and lacking stability, or a muscle is weaker than the surrounding muscles, your nervous system will tighten that area up. Why does it do that? Remember how I said that the bodies main goal is survival? Well that's the bodies way of keeping itself safe. It tightens you up because it recognizes weakness in the body. Add some strength and stability to that region, and you'll start noticing increased ranges of motion and the muscles being able to stretch!

Pretty crazy right?!

Some people spend years (sometimes most of their life) stretching something to only find out it was weak in the first place :(

So now you're probably like "this is so cool, but now 'm also really confused! Do I stretch or just get strong?"

Don't worry, you just need to take in everything that I've said to this point to digest it and think about your own life. Key words, think about it...

And next, just start taking action on the action steps I'm going to leave you with today. If you can follow these guidelines below, and actually take action on them, you find that a lot of stiffness and range of motion issues will begin to dissipate for you.

Again, like all things in training, it's super critical to understand that everything is a case by case situation. Some of you reading this may need to just get some blood flowing, hit some good range of motion, and activating some muscles, while others may need to go find a good physical therapist re-correct and remodel some soft tissue.

It always depends situation, but this list below will either help you fix any issues or if it doesn't you may need some more specific work by either a PT or a Trainer/Coach depending on what's going on!
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Mobility/Flexibility Action Steps

• During strength training workouts, perform full range of motion exercises to train/maintain/develop good mobility.
• Stretch your muscles (about 30 second holds) at the end of your workouts or on your recovery days to help the muscle relax, this will also help recovery by helping the muscle get into a relax state (a relaxed state = recovery state).
• Perform mobility drills in your warm up to kill two birds with one stone.
• Don't be obsessed with getting more mobile/flexible just for the sake of it if you don't know exactly what you're doing, it may lead to issues down the road.
• If you're really not sure if you have a mobility/flexibility issue or not, seek out a professional to help is always best!

For some reason when people think of conditioning, they like to refer to it as "cardio" and the main focus of this cardio exercise always seems to be surrounded by its benefits/discussion to fat loss.

Conditioning/aerobic training/"cardio" can be a way to burn body fat, especially if you have a lot to lose or you possess low levels of fitness. But, once you've established a baseline level of fitness, its main benefit actually isn't fat loss at all.
When it comes to conditioning, your body adapts to it pretty fast (which means you can lose the progress fast too). When you adapt to it, it means you become more efficient at doing it. Which means you use less energy to do a specific amount of work. When you get efficient at it, you're body will burn less body fat. So you either have to do a lot more of it (equals more time), do it a faster pace (make it harder), or you have to switch how you perform your conditioning (example: cycling to running).

So, if you're using your "cardio training" as a means for fat loss, it will be very short lived and then become not a very effective way to metabolically to burn fat. It becomes this game of more burned energy versus caloric intake, and that is a tough game to play and maintain long term unless you decide to transform into a competitive endurance athlete.

Now that we got all that out of the way, lets get down to business and discuss what conditioning's main benefit to the body really is...

Heart health/performance, blood flow circulation, and work capacity are the main benefits to conditioning work.

These are the main purposes, to make the heart stronger to pump more blood more efficiently, increase your blood flow network in your body, and allow you to perform more work in less time. You develop higher/better levels of energy in your body!

This is the true essence of conditioning. It's becoming a more efficient human being on how we produce our energy.
To further the discussion of actual conditioning on a much larger global scale, person to person, goal to goal, sport to sport, we can really get into the weeds fast as many different elements make up proper conditioning.

We can also break down the energy systems in your body that are responsible for creating energy at a cellular level. But I will spare you all that boring science stuff for now, but I encourage you to look into energy systems if you find this particularly interesting.

So in this blog, I want to talk specifically about your aerobic system. As this is a system we can all benefit from, as a means for human survival and to improve human performance.

The aerobic system is your energy system that relies on oxygen to create and produce energy. It's what is responsible for keeping you going right now while you read this and while exercising for hours on end. Everything that we do as humans, sleep, walk, talk, jog, play a sport, there's always an aerobic component to it. That's why I know, if you improve this system, it will make you perform better at whatever it is that you do!

Lets talk about how we improve this thing called your aerobic system that exists inside of your body.

The aerobic system actually has a couple different levels to it itself, like aerobic capacity (how much you can do), aerobic power (how strong your heart is at pumping blood), VO2 Max (the amount of oxygen you can bring into your body and use), to your anaerobic threshold (the heart rate at which you no longer use oxygen as its primary fuel source).

But to keep things simple for the sake of this blog, we're going to focus on aerobic capacity, as it will serve a larger purpose for most people.

Aerobic capacity is about building up efficiency in your heart to be able to pump more blood, more efficiently at a given work load. It will also be responsible for building up a blood flow network in your body so blood flows to your working muscles and back to your heart better. This in return, allows you to do more work and recovery faster when you have a higher level of aerobic capacity.

If this is all sounds good, it's because it is good!

The challenge to this, is planning it all accordingly. Because it does require time (see below) to get the most out of this training. So in order to do this, you have to allocate time, energy, and overall volume to fit into other fitness goals that you may have.

For example, if you're a competitive powerlifter, you can't spend all of your time doing aerobic work building up work capacity. You have to spend more overall time preparing to Squat, Bench, and Deadlift even though you see benefits to having a good level of aerobic capacity. If you don't, you will not perform very well in your competitions. So you have to be able to do enough aerobic work to get benefits from it without taking away from the main goal which in this case is the sport of powerlifting.

Again, we can keep going all day with this stuff, but to leave you with some good information, I'll list criteria below to take action steps to start improving your conditioning (specifically aerobic capacity and not "cardio").

Start building your aerobic capacity with these guidelines below.

• Perform 20-60 minutes of aerobic work each conditioning session.
• Keep heart rates around 120-135bpm. Go lower if your fitness isn't good, like 100-115bpm.
• Perform this work, 2-4 days a week.
• You can use any means you'd like to achieve this (walking, jogging, cycling, rowing, swimming), as long as you keep yourself in the heart rate zone.
• Focus on performing this work as relaxed as possible and keep your breathing consistent as this helps create that efficiency in your aerobic system.
• P.S. Stop calling it "cardio" and call it conditioning or aerobic work.

A lot of people have a lot of "strong" (you see what I did there) opinions when it comes to strength training.

The opinions range from, one side that will say, "it's the best thing you can ever do for yourself and it's the only thing you ever need to do in order to get in shape." And you also have people who will say "that it's unhealthy and will cause long term physical harm."

And what you'll find is that these opinions are strongly and heavily (I did it again) biased behind the person saying them.

You'll hear people say things like, "you just need to worry about strength training and you don't need cardio."

To people who say things on the flipside, "lifting weights will make you slow, stiff, and cause body pain when you're older."

Both viewpoints are heavily inaccurate and dramatic to say the least, but that's what people say and sadly believe...

The reality is, training means are a lot like water. Water is good for you, and so is strength training. But too much, too little, or drinking it from the wrong places can cause you serve harm...

So, let's get to business on what strength training is, and how to properly apply it.

Strength training is a process of causing mechanical damage/stress to the muscles and tendons on the body. It's a process that starts in the brain and spinal column, and it expresses itself into the muscle fibers to move your limbs/skeletal system on your body.

There are many ways to train for strength, it's not just about pumping lots iron. You can train strength through body weight movements, suspension training, bands, machines, dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, and even other unorthodox means.

As long as you're causing mechanical stress to the muscles of that given movement pattern, then it's considered strength training.

Now, when we speak of movement patterns, we're taking things to the next step.

Strength training is also actually, coordination training.

Remember how I said that strength starts in the brain? Well, the brain is an organ that learns and builds new skills, so we can not ignore the fact that by training strength within movement patterns, like a squat, hip hinge, push, pull, flexion, extension, rotation, and anti-rotation movement patterns, you're body is building efficiency in that movement as well. The process of training the muscles, also heavily improves coordination in your body. Because those same movement patterns that you do in the gym, are the same movement patterns you perform in life or in a sport for that matter. It builds timing coordination as a skill in those patterns, whereas most people look to strength training as a means to build visual muscles.

Not all strength training is created equally, there are different levels to the game of strength. Strength also lies on a spectrum or continuum.

Some strength exercises are very stressful on your CNS (brain and spinal column). While others are not very stressful on the CNS as those don't require high outputs of energy from your brain to perform them. Simple rule of thumb, the heavier the exercise is, or the more force you need to produce, the more CNS you will need to recruit the maximal amount of muscle fibers to lift the weights. Whereas the least amount of force needed will equate to less CNS muscle fiber recruitment.

Let me show you some examples below as they go from most stressful to least stressful (top down) on your CNS.

• Absolute Strength (Very stressful on the CNS)
• 1 Rep Max in the Deadlift
• Dumbbell rows
• Push ups
• Suspension rows
• Plank Holds
• Muscular Endurance (Not very stressful at all on the CNS)

This is important to know, because the more CNS you use, the longer you'll need to recover from it. It's why if you squat really heavy one day, the next couple days you wouldn't be able to do that again. Whereas if you did bicep curls or some crunches, you could probably easily do that 3 to 4 days in a row (not that I recommend that).

The more you use your CNS for strength training and to develop it, the stronger you'll get. Think you train your nervous system versus your muscles.

Now on the other end, think body building exercises. Higher reps 6-15 reps with strength training exercises. These tend to be less stressful on your CNS, but they are good to build muscle size do to time under tension with reps so these reps focus more on "tearing of the muscles themselves" versus needing high CNS recruitment activity.

So, as you may be seeing here, people often say, "is it better to lift heavy or lighter with more reps." And the real answer is both, because they compliment each other but serve different purposes. The idea is to train them both in the right mixture for what your goals are.

• Someone who needs more size but less strength, most of their volume should be higher reps.
• Someone who needs more strength but not size, most of their volume will be heavier weights.

At this point, you can see that strength training on the surface is quite simple. But as you peel back the layers to it, you will see you can uncover new truths and possibilities. There's obviously much more we can go into, but I think that's enough for this email, I'm sure you have things to get to. So I will leave you with some strength training rules to live by to take with you until the next email about "cardio."
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Strength Training Rules to live by:

• Start off slow and light, you can always add in volume and intensity later.
• After your heavy days, allow for at least 48-72 hours to recovery before lifting heavy again.
• Train both ends of the strength spectrum, the magic is in the dosing based on your goals, fitness levels, and genetics.
• Don't train to failure, allow for 2-3 reps left in the tank and only train to failure sporadically, not regularly.
• Your body will only adapt to what you expose it to, if you only do body weight or very light resistance you'll only get that strong and you will adapt and won't improve. Don't be afraid to push yourself by making very small jumps each week/month.

In the last blog post, Why Most Training Programs Fail, I may have left you a little more confused than providing you with answers. Be patient and be in it for long haul, not all great things come at once ;)

So here's the thing with stress and training.

Training is just stress to the body, just like rushing to work, riding a roller coaster, going through a bad break up, or getting in a car crash.

It's all just stress (sound familiar?).

Your body just sees stress and it wants to protect itself from it. It doesn't know that you're riding a roller coaster, stuck in traffic, or that you're trying to bench press a new personal record.

It's trying to do one thing and one thing only, at all times...And that is to survive!

When it comes to physical training, you have to remove your emotions for a minute and think how your body thinks. Get on the bodies' level, and then you can get back into your mind and emotions.

When you bench press, you think "I really want to lift this weight, this will be so cool, don't give up!" You're body sees it as an external threat to survival. "It thinks, there's something that's trying to break me, or even worse, kill me."

So here is what happens...

You lifted heavy enough weight to cause enough stress for your body to see it as a threat to its survival. You're body then adapts to that stress by making it stronger, so that the next time it sees that event again, it will be prepared for that same stress. This is how you get stronger and build some muscles.

Now, say you don't bench for a long time after that, because maybe you were so pumped you hit your goal, that you said, "Okay my work is done here." And then, 6 months later you missed training so you tried to bench press again and you noticed you were significantly weaker this time.

I thought my body would be prepared for this event called the bench press again?!

Well, what happens is that it was prepared, but because it didn't see that stress again, of lets just say 21 days, it started to forget about that event and started focusing on other things to survive from. Therefore, your bench press performance began to decay :'(

This is fundamentally how training works. You strategically stress it as a means to create a future outcome of adaption. If you don't use it, you lose it. Yes, that's a very real concept!

For all fitness abilities, this is how it works. Each ability has different ways it needs stressed. This is why not just knowing training is enough, you actually need to really know the human body and how it responds to stress.

Forget exercises, programs, and rep ranges, that is not training, that's just a small part of it. The key to getting great results is knowing how the body responds to stress.

And then the next level is knowing how the stress of training all gets put together, how your other life stress impacts your training stress, and how to train certain fitness abilities together.

It really is a lot to digest and it's also the same reason why most Bachelor Degree students feel extremely lost when they start learning about training in their internships.

But, here is what I can share with you right now today, that will help you with optimizing stress and your training!

• Train for minimal to optimal doses of training for results. Do not always train maximal.
• Build with volume (sets and reps) first and save intensity (how much/hard) for later.
• Allow for 2 reps in the tank. Again, don't redline yourself at every workout.
• You should need a deload (I do stabilization weeks) week every 4-5 weeks. If you don't need them, you should train harder. If you don't feel rested and motivated after the deload week, it wasn't light enough.
• Allow for only 2-3 hard sessions a week. The other sessions should be light, and one day at least completely off.

I got to thinking the other day, at JYT we have a culture built that is organic and reflective of not just myself, but have been adopted and developed by Team JYT over the years! We have all built it together, and I'm naming it, The JYT Mentality!

After giving it some genuine thought, I broke it down into 5 different topics of what makes up The JYT Mentality.

1.) Prepare for success.
Success doesn't just happen by chance. To find true success, you need to plan for it, work for it, and prepare for it. Winging it and hoping for the best is what people who don't find success do.
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2.) Act like you've been there before.
When things go to plan, carry yourself as if you expected them to happen. Showing happiness, satisfaction, and being proud of yourself is one thing, but you do not act surprised or even worse, arrogant to others. You hold yourself to a higher standard and always take the high road when things go according to plan, because that's what was supposed to happen from the start.

3.) Celebrate other's wins.
You know what it's like to work hard, make sacrifices, and not to take any shortcuts. So when you see your people around you win, celebrate for them like you wish they would celebrate for you.

4.) Develop confidence through taking action.
The body builds the mind and the mind builds the body. Success breeds success...The small daily wins of doing what you need to be doing, add up to big wins in the long run. These small wins along the way through taking action, reaffirms to your belief that you are on the right track!

5.) What you put in, is what you get out.
It shouldn't be a shock that the more energy you put into something, the more energy you'll receive from it. The game of preparation is a formula based on this reality. You set your life up so that you can prepare for it, you work for it, you believe in it, and in the end, you get what you want. You can love the journey AND the outcome!

If I had to break down the mentality and what we expect of our clients and team at JYT, this would be its core principles. A lot of people don't always have all 5 of these attributes on day one, but over time, I see them become a staple in how they live their life. 

Success doesn't happen over night as the saying goes...But success is a way of life!

I find the world of marketing to be comical. 

Because my coaching business is an actual business, I do spend a decent amount of time learning business so that I can stay in business...If business goes well, then I can keep doing this and keep helping people...It's a win-win situation for everyone involved!

But what's funny is that, once you learn something, it's hard to unlearn it...

Learning marketing/advertising stuff, realizes how much I don't use any of it. So much of it is manipulating people to spend money. Majority of products that are ever made, aren't made to help you, they're created to sell you.

And it's really just a game of...

• "Convince them to buy, and move on to the next prospect."
• "I know your pain, I have your solution to fix that pain." 
• "You've been lied to, let me tell you the truth of what you're missing out on."

When you break it down, it's really just simple childlike mind games. And to be honest, I'm not even mad about it LOL.

But, I also can't really use any of it either if I'm being honest...

Because once I make a sell to start coaching you, I have to see you. I sell you the car and have to drive around in the car that I sold you on and hope you like it LOL. 

If I were to sell people who aren't really invested in themselves to train, then the training (the product and brand) will suffer. So I don't sell, I just put out good vibes from JYT, share what's going on, and hopefully attract the right people is what "my secret" is...

But, what's funny as I hear everyone's ads, everyone has the secret to what you've been missing. And let me tell you, there must be a lot of secrets that are being kept if so many people have them.

When you hear an ad that someone's has a secret ingredient in a supplement, or they have the secret meal plan that only the celebrities know, or they have a secret workout routine that models use to get in shape for a magazine cover, a red flag should be raised and turn and run away as fast as possible! This is someone who is using a tactic who wants you to buy their product, they take your money, and it's up to you to decide later if the money was well spent or not.

If you learn anything from this blog, just know that there's really not all these secrets out there. There's just professionals who know their stuff and are in the trenches on a daily basis honing in on their craft working with people who are willing to make a change and do the work...

Boom that's the big secret!!! Shhhh!