When you’re looking to change the physical composition of your body, it can take years of hard work, determination, and discipline to get results. You have the people who enjoy the luxury of a naturally sculpted physique. But that sadly can’t be everyone. You might have to at least consult top-notch fitness coach skills to learn the basics of refining your physique.
If you’ve decided to start shaping your physical appearance, it is hard to know where to start and if in fact, you’re heading in the right direction. The results speak for themselves but getting good results is the hardest part.
Honesty – in all aspects of business and personal relations.
Accuracy and Flexibility – programming for specific individuals to get maximum results.
Organization – for both paperwork and digital resources.
Qualifications – degree, license or certification, and experience
People Skills – motivation, sales, articulation, and closure
So if you’re looking to make a difference for yourself it may be worth investing in a fitness coach. Knowing what to look for in one is yet another challenge. So let’s peel back on what should you look for specific to each of the skills listed above.
Seeing as how I post personal comments now and then, just wanted all the regular readers to know that I went camping in the NH White Mountains. Went to Jigger Johnson campground. Did some swimming in the Swift River. Ended the trip with a visit to Clarks Trading Post and the infamous Wolfman. This is why I haven’t posted in a week.
It was good times, and now I’ll get back to blogging about fitness.
Be sure you take care of yourself by scheduling in some down time. This could include watching a movie, playing a game, or going on vacation. Your vacation might include camping in a tent, RV, or lean-to; staying in a cabin, motel, or hotel; a cruise, a visit to your local theme park, or back packing across Europe.
Taking a vacation can rejuvenate your spirit, decrease stress and cortisol, and help your muscles to recover from months of endless resistance training. Taking one full week off every year, or even every 6 months, will do wonders to help your body recover from the rigors of intense fitness.
This post was written back in 2008, but the poll didn’t get many votes and the post didn’t get any comments. Now that Project Swole has much more traffic and somewhat of a loyal community, I went and rewrote some of this piece and I’m re-posting it today so that we can get more comments and votes. I think it will be an interesting study into the training background of most Swole readers.
When and why did you first learn about exercising?
We all know how beneficial exercise is to maintaining a healthy body. Kids don’t usually know this and teenagers don’t usually care. Typically it is up to parents and schools to educate kids about exercise and nutrition, ’cause quite frankly they aren’t very likely to do it themselves.
I learned about exercising in junior high school when some of my friends started curling and bench pressing to build the “show muscles” for the girls. I even did some curling and bench pressing myself, but not more than a couple times a week, and I didn’t build any significant muscle mass. My real education in weight training came in high school… I’ll talk about that more below.
Sorry for the absence everyone, I spent two days in the hospital thanks to over-thin blood. My kidney swelled up and stopped working, and I had blood in the urine for a couple days. Fun stuff, right? Sorry if it’s TMI, but it’s my reality.
I sure am sorry to hear about Michael Jackson’s death.
I have several of his albums and grew up with Thriller on MTV. Sorry to say I missed out on that whole Jackson 5 scene, but solo Michael was groundbreaking music and his dancing was stupendous. After all, he gave us The Moonwalk!
No matter what you think about Michael Jackson’s controversial personal life, you have to admit that he truly was a good man, especially earlier in his career. He honestly cared about the well-being of children.
If you are someone who trains for a month then takes a week off because life gets busy, you are just like me.
If you are someone who normally trains 4 days a week and then can only get in the gym once in a 9 day stretch because life gets busy, you are just like me.
And like you, I put together than occasional plan to commit for a solid 3 months, eat right, train 4-5 times a week, and make some real progress.
We are not lazy, we just get busy or have to deal with family situations. Right?
Excuses, excuses…
Lazy Man – This is not me and it better not be you!
Looks like I haven’t posted in about a week now. That would be because:
I’ve been having great fun camping at White Lake State Park in Tamworth, NH.
My wireless Internet connection stinks so I’ve brought home the development PC sitting in the office that I never use anymore, so that I can hardwire it to the router.
Now that I am back online and back from camping, I anticipate posting again regularly until July 4th, when I will again go camping at White Lake State Park.
Upcoming Project Swole projects:
A 5×5 Minimal Effort Powerlifting routine based on some studies of old school training, Tony Robbins, and Pavel Tsatsouline. A spreadsheet will accompany the routine so you can plug in your numbers and print out your training log if you wish.
A 5×5 Speed-Strength Full Body routine, for those who feel limited by the 5×5 minimal effort powerlifting routine. The spreadsheet for this guy already exists, but I’m not offering it for download yet.
I still want to get out my Project Shred idea, but I haven’t had time to build it out the way I want. It will be a hardcore diet with meal equivalents that you can use to make up your own diet plan.
My fitness themed HealthRanker.com clone FitWire is live, but it doesn’t work the way I want and is not setup the way I want, so I am not ready to launch it yet. You can find it if you search for it, but I’m not ready to link to it or promote it yet.
Hopefully that stuff will be done soon. For now, just continue to lift and get Swole.
Finally I am starting to feel just slightly better after battling illness for well over a week. This is still just a short nonsense blog post, but I finally feel comfortable writing material again.
I did end up having to go to the doctor, who ended up prescribing me antibiotics. But I also wanted to mention that I picked up some generic Sudafed with Pseudoephedrine, and that really helped a lot with trying to deal with my stuffy sinus infection.
Don’t get the Pseudoephedrine-free version though, as I hear it doesn’t help that much. Instead, ask for the real deal at the pharmacy window. Most stores no longer stock the high Pseudoephedrine based Sudafed in the isles, instead they have it protected in the back room where the pharmacists are.
That is all I have to say for now, as I am exhausted and must get to bed.
I’m am still on my death bed, and my computer was down for 2 days, so I haven’t had time to write any good content for you guys. I will post something useful very soon though, even if I’m still sick.
I only have a few things to report:
I upgraded my PC from 512 kb RAM to 4 gb RAM. Now it is faster, and I am psyched.
I upgraded my USB wireless adapter to a D-Link DWA-552 PCI wireless adapter (i.e. the network card is IN the computer). Now my Internet connection doesn’t dump out every half hour, and I am psyched.
I upgraded my Linksys G-series wireless router to a Netgear N-series wireless router. I don’t know as anything has improved from that upgrade yet, so I’m bummed that I spent the 100 bones on it.
My first new project is almost complete. I call it FitWire and here is the latest draft of the logo. I can’t say anything else about it yet.
My second guest post with Diets In Review has come and gone. I don’t think it was a super great post, but hopefully someone will benefit from it. You can find that post at How to Train Legs part 2.
I have seen the new Friday the 13th movie and it is good, but now I am exhausted because I went to the 9:30 showing.
So, that’s it. I’m sick in the lungs and sinuses. Trying to rest and medicate, but it’s not working. Soon I’m sure I will go to the docs.
I have many great posts coming up shortly, so please don’t give up on me yet.
Sorry about the downtime today. Project Swole was down for over 12 hours this time.
It looks like we are still going to have to move to a dedicated server. The rest of this post is boring so either move on to a fitness related post or… (more…)
Well, things have kind of fallen off a bit for a couple weeks. Between family medical issues, an increased workload, and a stubborn child, I have had recent difficult both making it to kickboxing and lifting weights. Because of this I feel myself becoming softer, smoother, and in poor cardiovascular condition. Eating junk food at Halloween didn’t help either.
Check out the Olympic front squat chick in the video at the bottom of this post, if you get bored with my training log rant.
This was another solid 4-workout week: 2 kickboxing classes and 2 weight training sessions. Everything feels good except that I’m only getting about 6 hours of sleep per night on average. If I were to force myself into a healthier lifestyle, I would be getting 8 hours of sleep each night.
After 5 long nights of 5-6 hours of sleep combined with staying up late on the weekends, I’m pretty much beat on Friday. My only salvation is that I don’t get much strenuous exercise on the weekend, which helps me to recover.
A decent week in the gym and the dojo, I managed two sessions of weight training and 2 kickboxing workouts. In the middle of the week, my PC at work died and I struggled through trying to get it back online while simultaneously attempting to finish work on a software project that was due on Friday. This resulted in my missing my kickboxing workout on Wednesday.
Both kickboxing workouts were excellent, especially Friday’s, which is surprising because I lifted from 3:30-4:30 then kickboxed at 6. Somehow I had just as much energy for kickboxing as I did for weight training, and I think this is due to my post workout nutrition strategy.
A subpar week indeed, due to stressors at the office and at home, I was unable to make my workouts for Thursday and Friday. This was both good and bad. Good because I didn’t sleep much last week and was starting to feel sore. Bad for discipline and consistency reasons.
Kickboxing was good for the two days that I attended. My cardiovascular condition is improving with each high intensity thai kickboxing workout. Weight lifting was good for the one workout that I completed. Strength was up all around. Check out the stiff leg deadlifter at the bottom as today’s inspirational video.
Sticking to the program you design is key to feeling great about yourself, and to experiencing increased success. This is week number 2 of completing 5 workouts; 3 kickboxing and 2 weight lifting.
Finally! I pulled off 5 workouts in 5 days. In order to do it I had to train twice on Friday, but I still made it! 3 kickboxing sessions and 2 weight training sessions were completed without a hitch.
If you have a heavy bag at home, try this kickboxing workout:
One rep: Jab, Cross, Hook, 2 quick low kicks (thai kicks), and 3 burpee/push-up combos.
See how many reps you can do in a 4 minute round. Take a minute to rest and drink water. Repeat for 5 rounds. After 25 minutes of this, you will be sweating like a little piggy. Read on to learn about my workouts for the week.
All I managed was one very painful kickboxing workout this week. During that workout I basically couldn’t punch, kick, run, participate in calisthenics, or breathe. I knew something was wrong since two Fridays ago, but I couldn’t go to the hospital or to the doctor until my new insurance policy kicked in on August 4th.
So on the 4th I went to see my primary care physician for a routine physical and to diagnose my breathing issues. Given my history of clotting, he set me up with a CT Scan and some blood tests. After fighting with my health insurance for an hour or more, I finally was cleared to take the tests. Finally on the 5th (today) I made it in for my tests.
Three solid days of kickboxing this week, but Friday was absolutely horrible. I was feeling tired around 4pm so I decided to take a couple fat burner/energy pills. Not good.
This was the first week at my new job, getting used to my new schedule, so I stuck mostly with kickboxing this week. There really wasn’t much time for anything else, although I did check out the gym on campus but they don’t have what I need. There’s no squat rack, power rack, or a place to deadlift. The guy I talked to also said that if I tried to deadlift there, I would set off the broken glass alarms or something. I’ll stay at Gold’s with the meatheads for now.
Monday was a dojo kickboxing day. Wednesday was an at-home kickboxing day. Friday was a day that not much happened at all. A little bike riding occurred over the weekend. Not much else happened.
The first half of the week was spent on vacation in the White Mountains. Specifically at Dolly Copp Campground near Gorham, NH. While camping I got in several sets of push-ups, an hour or so of swimming, hours of running and kicking balls with the kids, and one 20 minute jog through the campground. Obviously there was no kickboxing or weight lifting to be had at the campground.
