As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a huge fan of random thoughts posts, both when I write for my own website and also when I read other people’s blogs.  I think it’s a great way to transmit many different ideas/topics while keeping the read short.  So without further, here’s my newest edition of random thoughts!

1. I just had my first article published on SportsRehabExpert.com last week.  For those of you who don’t already know the website, it’s an amazing resource for fitness professionals from physical therapists, to chiropractors, to strength coaches.  The website brings you THE MOST up-to-date information on sports and orthopedic rehab and injury prevention available on the internet.  It is a membership site, but you can join today for only 1$! With names like Gray Cook, Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Mike Reinolds and Charlie Weingroff contributing to the website, you’d be crazy not to take advantage of this offer!  Needless to say that I’m really excited about writing for SportsRehabExpert.com ; it is quite an honor for me to be lined up next to those big names! You can join today by clicking on the banner below.

2. A while ago, my colleague Eric Cressey posted a picture of his med ball graveyard.

Upon seeing that picture, I was like:”How is that possible to have this many cracked medicine balls?”.  At the time, we had yet to have one pop at Endeavor!  But that was almost a year ago.  A hockey off-season and a baseball off-season later, we’re catching up!

We’re nowhere close to where Cressey Performance is yet, but it feels good to know that our athletes too can pop medicine balls!

3. I have only a couple spots left for my online program design services.  If you’re looking for a quality program that will bring you the results and make you feel better than ever (read: pain and injury free), shoot me an e-mail and I’ll take care of you.  Don’t settle for the cookie-cutter program you’ll find in a fitness magazine that won’t do anything for you anyway.  Save yourself the hassle of writing your own program, and have someone write a smart, no B.S. program geared toward your specific needs and your specific goals.  You’ll achieve your fitness goals way faster than you ever thought possible!  Visit my Services page for more details.

4. I’ve been food shopping at Whole Foods for a little while now, and I must say it is the smartest nutrition related decision I could have made.  For those who live outside the US, Whole Foods is a mostly organic grocery store that carry the freshest produce and the highest quality food.  It’s simply amazing!  You won’t see this kind of sign in any other grocery store:

Not only do they carry the best quality foods around, by they also encourage people to eat healthy and they make proper recommendations (like this one on the sign) about the basics of healthy dietary habits.

5. A big shout out to the Comcast U-18 AAA hockey team who qualified for the Nationals this past weekend by winning the USA Hockey Atlantic District.  Jared, our boss at Endeavor is the head coach of the team and we train most of the players on the team in the off-season and some of them throughout the season as well.  They won a best of 3 series with their biggest rivals, the Junior Flyers.  They won the first game 5-1, lost the second 5-4 and won the decisive game 9-2 in an amazing game!  Congratulations guys!

6. I set a new deadlift PR yesterday!  I haven’t been deadlifting very heavily lately.  To make a long story short, I messed up my back a couple weeks ago and it’s been bothering me ever since and one of my knee is pretty banged up.  Despite the fact that my whole body is a mess right now, I managed to pull 445, and did it totally pain free!  Needless to say that I’m pretty excited about that new PR…and even more about the fact that my body’s feeling great with heavy loads again.  445 might not be that much, but in my situation right now, I’m pretty pleased with that.  And the next couple of weeks are looking pretty good!

Having a good training program might just be one of the most important thing in your training.  Think about it for a second.  Yes, you need to bring in the effort and your program is only as good as the hard work you put in it.  But if you get to the gym with nothing but good intents and you’re ready to bust your ass, and all you do is stupid stuff, not only you’ll probably end up injured, but your progress won’t even be half of what it could be with a good structured approach.

This is beyond stupid…

With a good approach and a structured program your gains will skyrocket like you could’ve never imagined.  More often than not, you think that just busting your ass and doing more will get you where you want to be.  While in certain cases, that might help for a while, but the truth is you’ll stagnate very quickly with this less than optimal approach.  And then you’ll start to do even more to bust through plateaus, you’ll spend hundreds of dollars on useless supplements, and you’ll develop pain and aches from doing too much while in reality, a no-nonsense approach that’s efficient, time-effective and adapted to your needs will get you where you want without all the hassle.

Writing programs to get faster, to get stronger and to get bigger are not easy to write, especially for intermediate to advanced lifters.  Even worst is writing such programs for yourself!  For many reasons it’s really hard to write a program for ourselves;

• we do the stuff we like
• we avoid what’s hard and we don’t like to work on our weaknesses
• we’re limited by our knowledge (exercises, training methods, etc)
• it’s easy to stay in our comfort zone and we pretty much always do the same things

Writing programs for yourself can literally give you headaches

Why don’t you hire somebody to do that for you?  Just like you hire an accountant to do your taxes, and you hire a mechanic to fix your car, why wouldn’t you hire a professional to write your training programs?  The truth is, fitness professionals (competent ones that is, which are not that easy to find) are way more qualified than you will ever be and they WILL get you where you want faster than you think.

I have been writing programs for over 7 years now.  I have worked with week-end warriors who want to put on muscle, with D-1 College athletes and pro athletes who need to get stronger and faster to make their team; I’ve pretty much worked every clientele possible.  Right now, I write programs for athletes at Endeavor and for a couple of online clients.  I’ve had some time free up on my schedule recently and I am opening up 10 spots for online clients as of now.  If  you want to take the guess work out of writing your own training programs, I can help.  I will write you complete, structured and effective programs that will make you reach your goals while staying pain and injury free.

If you’re interested, visit my Services page to read all the details and see if you qualify for my exclusive services.  Like I said, I’m opening up only 10 spots, so hurry up!

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