Family, friends and clients ask me all the time why I choose to work 7 days a week. I constantly get asked questions such as “Don’t you need a day off?”,”Don’t you get burnt out?” and my favourite – “Don’t you have a life?”. Well to be perfectly honest I enjoy what I do for a living and I don’t really view personal training and running a fitness company as a job per say. Yes, it’s hard work and true I put in very long hours each day but I’ve never regretted my decision to go into business for myself and do something that I’m passionate about which is helping people become more healthy and fit so that they can live long and productive lives.
With that said, I don’t really have a set routine or schedule that I follow each day. In fact some days I might have the opportunity to sleep in until 6:00am while other days by 6:00am I’ve already taught 2 classes and I’m on to class number 3. To most people this may sound insane or absurd as there does not seem to be any set structure to follow however to myself I wouldn’t have it any other way. I actually quite rather enjoy the chaos of my rollercoaster schedule as each day offers new challenges which help keep me focused and determined to overcome each obstacle that happens to cross my path.
Regardless of how I may feel about my work schedule the majority of people who know me think I’m a bit loony for the lifestyle that I live. But at the same time if I didn’t live this type of lifestyle I may have never felt confident to break some rules. And by rules I mean normalities. For example I wouldn’t think twice if a client asked me to train him or her at 4am on a Sunday morning. To me, Sunday is just another day and 4am is just another time slot in that day. So yes it may seem crazy and perhaps I may be slightly deranged however if it wasn’t for my outlandish and bizarre nature I wouldn’t have been able to set myself apart from the millions of other personal trainers out there with their generic diet plans and universal one-size-fits all training programs. In other words, my uniqueness when it comes to work, training and diet has slowly started to transform Forever Fit into an exclusively run fitness company that specializes in transforming peoples lives through using specific formulas that work for each individual rather then text book information that’s outdated or bro science that’s been passed along through internet message forms and from the self-proclaimed fitness experts at the gym.
Let me explain more…..
The majority of people who workout on their own on a regular basis follow a few basic training rules. For example most people have a particular workout split that they like to follow. Whether it be an upper body workout one day and a lower body workout the next or a five day training split that targets each individual muscle group 1x/week or 2-3 full body workouts each week, they usually have some kind of plan they follow. Along with that plan comes sets and reps. Now according to the training rules if you want to train solely for the purpose of strength and power you should keep your rep range between 3-6. If you are training for hypertrophy you should keep your reps between 10-15 and if you are training for “tone” you should be taking notes on everything I say because you need more help in the gym then you may think. And and don’t forget about your sets! Don’t do any less then 3 sets per exercise or you won’t make gains and don’t do any more then 4 sets or you’ll overtrain and lose all your gains. Oh and I almost forgot! The absolute most important thing to ensure that you keep making gains in the gym is NEVER and I mean NEVER forget about that POST-WORKOUT SHAKE!!!! And if you don’t consume that shake within the first 5 minutes after your workout you will have missed your window of opportunity to build muscle and lose body fat and your entire workout will have been a waste.
Ugh……Enter absolute biggest eye roll of all time here _______
I must apologize for my sarcastic tone however I’m constantly bombarded by these ridiculous notions of idiocy that just refuse to die and go away. Between wannabe bodybuilders consuming ridiculous amounts of protein to get “huge” to everyday females who are under the impression that they need to starve themselves and do endless hours of cardio to get “lean” I can only take so much stupidity. And then to add fuel to fire of these endless thoughts of lunacy we have hundreds of Personal Trainers designing training programs and diet plans that are not even tailored to their individual client’s goals, level of fitness, body type, gender, age, lifestyle etc. Instead they are just following what the text books in school told them to do or from what everyone else seems to be doing.
Well I’m mad. In fact, I’m pissed. Not at anyone in particular but more so because these training rules keep arising in gyms across North America. I know my blog won’t reach everyone worldwide but even if it provides a few people with some real insight with some real facts and some real science behind the human body and how it operates I will consider this blog to be a success.
So stay tuned next week for part 2 of my blog as I debunk a few of these training rules and explain why it’s not necessary or even recommended to follow them just because that’s the way it’s always been or because someone within the industry has told you to do so.
Yours in Good Health,
Nick Cosgrove