Coach Stevo's Razor

Coach Stevo Fun Fact: I majored in the Philosophy of the scientific method at the Univerisity of Chicago, a school that in 1945, pulled out of the Big 10 Conference because football was too much of a distraction. What did I learn from this eduacation?

Science is fun. Ok, football is probably more fun, but science is arguably more useful. Unless you’re interested in making money, making friends, or having sex. Then it is far less useful. But it is definitely better than football for understanding how the world works! For example, one of the most important devices in the philosophy of science is called a “razor.” It’s a logical device that shaves away unlikely explanations for a phenomenon until you are left with the correct answer.  Kinda like how Dr. House comes up with the correct diagnosis but not before being fully convinced that it’s lupus (Hint: it’s never lupus). The most famous razor is Occam’s Razor which is translated as, “all things beings equal, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one.” Fancy, huh? Well today we are going to learn about Coach Stevo’s Razor. It’s a lot like Occam’s Razor except no one has ever heard of it and it was inspired by instructions on the back of an antacid bottle. 

Stating the Obvious

The other day my sister-in-law posted this picture on Facebook. It’s the back of an antacid bottle with “Tips for Managing Heartburn.” The penultimate suggestion is nothing but pure genius: 

“If overweight, lose weight.”

Seriously people, that sentence is so full of truth I think I need an antacid just reading it. In the short time I’m been making people sweat professionally, I’ve had dozens of clients. That means I’ve asked dozens of people what their fitness goal was. I’ve only ever had one client not tell me, “fat loss” and she was lying. Most people are fatter than they want to be but the thing that stops people from losing literal weight is most often figurative weight. Too many choices, too many distractions, too many pressures, too many bad days and too many bad influences lead to too many donuts. Everyone knows how to lose literal weight. Eat less; move more. People hire me to help them cut the figurative weight. Coach Stevo’s Razor is how I help them.

Coach Stevo’s Razor

That which is done is superior to that which is not.

Let’s look at two identical twins, Sherri and Terri, who both need to lose 10 lbs. Sherri frets and researches the best way to do lose the weight. She talks to everyone she knows about exercise, reads 4-5 diet books, and spends hours at work on internet message boards learning everything she can about losing 10 lbs as quickly as possible. Terri, on the other hand, cuts down on some sweets and starts doing some exercise. Nothing special, she just goes to the gym every now and then and tries out a bunch of different stuff. Let’s look at the results a year later:

Sherri: Gains another 3 pounds.

Terri: Loses 1 pound.

I know what you’re going to say: “A pound of fat loss in a year?! That’s nothing!” And you’re almost right. Terri’s program was haphazard and inconsistent. She could have certainly lost all 10 pounds in a fraction of that year if she stuck to Coach Stevo’s Ticket to Hotness. But look again. Terri might have lost only a pound of fat, but she held off the other 3 pounds that Sherri gained. In a year, that’s a net of 4 pounds of fat that she lost. And here is an example of Coach Stevo’s Razor: any change was much better than no change.

If you look at fitness magazines or on fitness websites, you’ll see the words “optimal” and “most effective” thrown around a lot. But in the real world, the control group is doing nothing and doing anything that moves you towards your goal is worth your time. Can I write you a program that will result in you reaching your ultimate hotness potential? Sure. I can write it. But the program that gets you there is the program that you actually do. It might be haphazard, it might be inconsistent, and it might have some dead ends (like Zumba). But if it keeps you moving and keeps you motivated, then you aren’t doing anything wrong. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. 

Fear is Dead Weight

After years of accumulating bad habits and shame, taking control of their lives and their bodies can be a daunting task for most people. But learning that there is almost no way that you can screw up frees you of a lot of figurative dead weight. With my clients, proper form is not optional and I go out of my way to help them learn the most objectively successful ways of training towards a particular goal. But in reality, training isn’t objective. I don’t judge someone who wants really wants to do cardio every day or really likes that this type of training or that type of training. In the end it’s all subjective because it’s your body. If your form is good and you know why you’re doing what it is that you’re doing, you’ll be fine. Just lighten up do something!

Goal Setting in Gotham

When I was ages 4 to… well now, my favorite fictional character was Batman.* Mostly because he is everything I wasn’t. Since the death of his parents, Batman has been singularly focused and utterly disciplined. He spends every night doing the same noble, difficult, but boring thing: patrolling the rooftops of Gotham looking to stop crime. I, however, suffer from a unique attentional deficiency my wife likes to refer to as “a laser beam pointed at a spinning mirror.” From moment to moment, my focus and concentration is fixed, intense, and powerful but rarely for longer than a few days or weeks. Between graduating from college and starting to train people I had no less than 13 career goals from Master of Wine to Marine Officer. But Batman only every wanted to do one thing: fight crime. That's dedication to a goal. In fact, Batman is able to wake up every day and get stuff done because he has goals and he meets them. When I was 25 and 60lbs overweight, all I knew was that I was fat. It took a goal to get me off the couch. But that meant I was one step closer to making my dreams become reality.

Make It Real

Everything you want in life starts out as a dream. They’re big, abstract, and for most people, very unlikely to happen. Reality is kind of the opposite. Lots of small, concrete events that actually do happen. Goals are somewhere in the middle, one step closer to real. Like Diana Scharf Hunt says, “Goals are dreams with deadlines.” So when you are thinking about something that you want to do, make it real. Give it a deadline. Give it a number. Make it realistic. Instead of saying, "I don't want to be fat anymore", say, "I will to lose 60lbs in 292 days."

Plan It Out

60lbs is a big number. Some of my clients have bigger numbers. This can seem daunting because targets that are far away are harder to hit. But the easiest way to stay focused is to give yourself a series of closer targets. "I will lose 1.4lbs a week" sounds a lot easier because it's more real. So break your big goal down into a series of smaller ones and see if they don't feel more realistic and possible. For an extra dose of reality, write them down in your calender. Look! Now you've got a plan!

Make It a Habit

Maybe it's a limitation of my profession, but the only way I know of to get better at something is to practice. Goals are no different. The more you practice meeting goals, the more likely you are to meet them in the future. Alwyn Cosgrove calls it the "Goal Snowball." But I see it as a matter of priority. Dan Gable says, “if something is important, do it every day.” I can’t think of anything more important in life than making dreams come true. So write a plan for your goal that includes a daily task that brings you closer to reaching it. Start with one or two tasks per day. Like, "I will exercise and eat right today." Before you know it, doing those tasks will become a habit. And habits have a way of sticking around and defining who we are.

Summary of How Coach Stevo's Dream Became Reality

DREAM: I don’t want to be fat anymore.

GOAL: I will lose 60lbs in 292 days.

PLAN: I will lose 1.4lbs per week.

TASK: I will exercise and eat right today.

HABIT: Daily exercise and healthy eating.

All the Success, None of the Glamor

When people ask me how I lost 60lbs in 292 days, I tell them, "I made diet and exercise a habit." When young Marine Officer Candidates ask me how I went from a 195 PFT to a 300 PFT in 9 months, I tell them, "I made training for it a habit." It's simple, but it's not easy. And sometimes, it hurts.

My favorite illustration of Batman is this Alex Ross painting from 1999’s Batman: War on Crime. Batman is the archetype of human discipline; someone who has set huge goals, met every one of them, and is living his dream life. And it’s not pretty.

When you break down a dream into real tasks that you can do every day, you’re left with a list of things to do. And the person you dream of being is the person that does those things, every day, no matter what, out of habit. The first step you have to take to become that person is to do is start doing those things. No, habits are not glamorous, but reality rarely is. And along the way, it may even involve some pain. But in the end, it's your dream. Do you want to make it real, or keep it glamorous?

*ok, fine. I wanted to be Batman. Seriously. I had a cape.

The ABCs of Training

With rare exception, what most of my clients want is change. They want to change their body’s shape or function. They have a goal, and they come to me to help them attain it. Sometimes they have trouble articulating that goal and they need my help to even work up the courage to say it out loud. When a new client tells me she wants “toning and core strength, ” I hear, “I wanna look better naked.” When she tells me she wants to “lose 10 lbs.,” I hear “I wanna look better naked.” But I don't judge and no matter what the goal, there is only one path to achieving it: the direct one. When you’re with Coach Stevo, you’re training.

As I’ve talked about before, training is placing consistent, progressively intense stress on the body in order to illicit physiological changes during recovery that you have deemed to be beneficial to your goals. It’s not “burning calories,” although it does burn some calories. It’s not “working out” even though it takes work and, at least with me, is often outside. I call what I do “training” because the next question in your mind has always got to be, “training for what?” Your body is a tool that you are shaping for a purpose. That purpose is your own (speed, power, hotness, a PFT, the Olympics, etc.), but you always need to keep that purpose in mind. If you can say to yourself, “I am training for X” then you are more likely to do those things that you believe will improve your ability to perform X. You are also less likely to get distracted by the latest fads and chances are better that you will succeed. As Dan John says, “the goal is to keep the goal the goal.” But let’s look at the difference this mentality can make.

Gym? What’s a Gym?

Most of us do what we think of as training in gyms. Gyms sell convenient access to heavy things and showers to people who do not wish to make a formal investment. So really, gyms are more like libraries than bars, although you’d never know that by visiting them. Like bars, one of the most common things that people do in gyms is observe other people and judge them. This means that a lot of people who enter the gym unsure of their purpose or knowledge of how to affect their body go in and get immediately distracted by what other, stronger, hotter people are doing. But also like bars, very few people talk to the hotter people and ask them why they are doing what they are doing. This leads to lots of bad form and scattershot exercise choices that get reinforced over time by fear and ignorance.

The fix? Treat the gym like a library. You go to the library to learn things from books you don’t feel like buying. You know what you don’t know and you are there to learn it. You may even ask an expert for help. The gym should be no different. You’re training. You know what you want; you know how to get there; you are just at the location for the convenience. I’m not saying it can’t be an enjoyable space filled with interesting people, I’m just asking you to remember what you’re there for. If you spend more time at the gym talking than sweating, then you need to save your money join a knitting club.

Get Out of the Box

The most important thing that happens when you start to think about “training,” instead of “exercising” is that your head gets out of the box. Specifically the globobox gym that you probably go to every week. Training doesn’t just mean lifting. It doesn’t just mean cardio. Training means getting better at something and that can happen anywhere, anytime. I train people in parks and playgrounds, but I also give them homework so they can train in their apartments and in their offices. Training happens every damn day because otherwise it will never become a habit. If training never becomes a habit it will always be a struggle. So if you tie training to a certain location, then every time you are away from that location you will not train. The same goes for tools, clothes, or even rituals. I have had a client who thought that not being able to stretch her hamstrings for 45 minutes on a certain wall at a certain time before a session was a reason to cancel. Her hamstrings were not the problem.

The fix? ABC, baby. “Always Be Cranking.” There is always something to work on. Specifically, there’s always something you suck at. Most of us are happy to work on the stuff we are good at, but foolishly undo all our hard work by ignoring glaring weaknesses in our body’s performance. These blind spots are usually motor-patterns, mobility and soft tissue quality. The funny thing is that all of these problems can be easily cranked on without special shoes or a sports bra. I encourage all my clients to stretch, foam roll, and pattern (squat, hinge, push, pull, carry) wherever they find themselves. This usually means at home or at the office, where all you need is 24 sq. ft. and a lacrosse ball to get some serious work done. Throw in a 12kg kettlebell and a jump stretch band and there is almost no weakness you can’t crank on every damn day. You don’t even need to break a sweat; you just need to move a little. The key is remembering that you are training, not working out, not exercising. Training has a purpose and as Kelly Starrett likes to say, “there are no off days.” So keep moving; be aware of your body and its weaknesses; and remember to ABC. Because you’re not exercising; you’re training. And chocolate coconut almond super shakes are for closers.

Everything Works (until it doesn't)

Have you ever gone to a bookstore and looked at how many diet books there are? Have you every wondered why there are so many different exercise programs on the internet? Or why every trainer is an expert in [latest fad workout, body part, etc.]? Well at great risk to my physical well being, I am about the let you know the secret to training, and improving your body for the rest of your life. If I don't post next week, you'll know why.

The Most Closely Guarded Secret in the Fitness Industry

When I first started training, it all seemed very complicated. Sets, reps, one leg, two legs, bodyweight, cardio... ahhh! There was a sea of choices that I needed to navigate. How would I know what to do?! Well, as I got more immersed in the science (thanks to people like Alan Aragon, Bret Contreras, Nick Tumminello, Brad Pilon, Dr. John Berardi, Eric Cressey, Leigh Peele, Jonathan Fass, and even Kevin Larrabee) and the art of training (Dan John, Mike Boyle, Mark Reifkind, and Pavel), I began to slowly realize something that Dan John had of course learned decades ago: Everything works (until it doesn't).

Every diet, as long as it is eating less calories than you use, works. You will lose weight; the number on the scale will go down. Until it doesn't anymore.

Every strength training program, as long as it involves CPR, works. You will lift heavier weights; the number will go up. Until it doesn't anymore.

You Are Not the Marble. You Are the Chisel.

One of the things you have to understand for this to make sense is that you are not a block of marble waiting for some brilliant trainer to come along and sculpt into a perfect hottie. Only you can make you. Your body simply responds to the stresses you place on it. Whether it's lifting heavy weights or running really fast, your body reacts to the stress of consistent training with neurological and physiological changes. You need consistency so the body knows it's not temporary, intensity so it knows you mean business, and recovery so it has time to change. But this process is not passive and you are not a block of marble; you are the chisel and the stress is the hammer.

Surely, no stress is a stressful as new stress. New diets, new exercises, new programs, all seem to have an immediate impact on the body because they place our body on high alert. After 2-3 weeks of consistent exposure, we see big improvements on new programs and tell the world about our awesome new diet, program, trainer, etc. But in time, our bodies adjust. In 6-8 weeks we just get used to things. We burn less calories doing movements we are more efficient at. We recruit less muscle fiber into lifts that we are more proficient in. Our brain lowers our NEAT to match the new caloric input. The rate of improvement begins to drop. After 12 weeks or so, no matter how well designed the program is, our bodies usually stop changing. And banging away at things harder won't change much because by now the chisel is dull and needs resharpening.

Know What is Working

The key to understanding how to sharpen the chisel again is knowing what was working in the first place. Before you go off and try every workout program and fad diet under the sun, it's important to have a baseline from which to work.  You have to be aware of what you are eating and what you are doing. You have to know that you are burning about 2000kcal a day to intelligently play around with numbers in your diet. You have to know what set and rep schemes worked best for you at certain times in your life. You have to know how much sleep you are getting. You have to know your tool well before you go about changing it. So here are some tips for understanding what is working and why before you go off and change everything willy-nilly:

• Keep a training journal. I have a blog so I can monitor all my activity. No you can't see it.
• Keep a food journal. This doesn't have to be complicated. I use the same blog and just post a little :) or :( if I was compliant to the particular plan I am on at the time. Some of my clients take pictures of all the food they eat with their phone.
• Pick a few skill measurements and do them a few times a year. I like the front squat, the deadlift, the one-arm overhead press, pull-ups, and the RKC snatch test. Every movement is represented, as well as my conditioning and I don't need a spotter or a lot of equipment.
• Weigh in, but not too often. Dust your scale off every 2-4 weeks. That's about how long it takes to really lose fat or put on muscle. Any more than that will just freak you out.
• Take pictures. Every 2-3 weeks take craigslist-style mirror shots of yourself from a few different angles. The scale is not the only thing that matters. In fact, for most people half-naked pictures matter a lot more.
• Recognise that it's all related. Training, diet, sleep, and life all interact. So keep tabs on how these things affect each other in your journals. Were you traveling a lot during that time? Just had a baby? Drinking more alcohol? Write it down and remember to make a not of it when you are assessing a program.

Now Change Something

Now that you kind of know what works for you, change something. Honestly, it doesn't have to be drastic. Subtle changes to a nutrition plan or a workout program can keep the results coming. If you were doing sets of 20 swings, try 25. If you were back squatting, try front squatting. If you were eating 150g of protein, try 175g. Or 125g. But whatever you change, keep at it for 2-3 weeks. Now look at your body shots. Are they hotter? Did the number on the scale change? Are you moving bigger weights? These little changes can add up to having a major impact on your body, but only if you give it time. If you have tried monkeying around with something a few times and it's still not working, try making a more drastic change. Switch from kettlebells to barbells. Stop drinking for a month. Hell, go vegan, just don't tell me about it. But whatever you change, make sure to keep as much as possible the same. Just like you learned in 8th grade science class, sticking to one variable is the only way to know whether or not something worked.

The Best Exercise in the World

People like to cut corners. Everyone is looking for a shortcut to wealth, happiness and hotness. And so it's not surprising that people look to take shortcuts at the gym. Everyone wants to be hotter, stronger, leaner, and faster yesterday. And I get it. Doing things is hard, especially things that are hard to do in the first place. Not doing things is way easier. But what I can't jive is that the reason most people say they don't exercise is that they "don't have the time" for 2-3 resistance training sessions and 2-3 cardio training sessions a week. Now, if you do the math, that's only 5 hours a week in the gym. And as I've said before, any more time that you have to dedicate to training should be dedicated to sleeping. But let's say for the sake of argument that you don't have 5 hours a week to go to the gym (how much time do you spend on Facebook again?). So you ask me, "Coach Stevo, what's the single best exercise I can do?" Oh, I'll tell you, but I guarantee you that you are not gonna like the answer.

"The Best Exercise in the World" is the one that you suck at the most. You wanna get hotter, stronger, leaner, doing only one exercise? Then go to the gym and do the one exercise you suck at the most.

Everybody Got Their Goat

 Let's look at an MMA fighter. George St.-Pierre is a gifted athlete and a brilliant tactician, but his greatest strength lies in honest personal assessment. At the beginning of camp, he sizes himself up and asks, "what's my weakness? How can this guy beat me?" Then he spends the next 8-12 weeks training with people better than him at that weak spot (boxing, jiujitsu, whatever). No matter how good he gets, he will always be great at some things and weaker in others and in the cage, those weaknesses can become liabilities. The same is true with you. The entire spectrum of human movement comes down to some simple moves. We push, pull, squat, hinge, carry, and we do things faster than we metabolize oxygen or slower (anaerobic or aerobic cardio). That's about it. And if you look at what you do most in the gym, I bet there is at least a 90% correlation to doing the stuff you're already pretty good at. The joke in the industry is that for men, Monday is International Bench Press Day. Well, when I look around so is Wednesday, Friday, and every other day ending in "Y." And for women, every day is "aerobic cardio" day. Oh, I'm sorry, and "core strength" day. But humans aren't made that way. Our bodies are a single piece; a tool that either works well or doesn't. And every body has a weak link, usually highlighted by a exercise that we hate doing. In the biz, that's called your "Goat." Now you just gotta find it and train it.

Finding Your Goat

Take the list of movements above and write them in order of your favorite to your least favorite. That movement you wrote down last? That's your Goat. And for you, it's The Best Exercise in the World.

Training your Goat

Tomorrow, I want you to go to the gym and do a thorough warm up with all the movements on that list. Then, do your goat exercise (aka, The Best Exercise in the World). Now do whatever the hell you want. 2 days later, repeat. Continue for 6 weeks, then re-write your list. Got a new goat? Repeat! Make sure you are training everything a little but hitting your goat first, hardest, and every single time. For extra credit on your days off, do your goat with just your bodyweight for a light sweat. Now you're training the Coach Stevo way: Every. Damn. Day.