Just lifting weights in what we call "straight sets" is great as the backbone of your training. Straight sets are simply lifting a weight for a prescribed amount of reps, resting, repeating, and so on.

However, over time you'll want to do some different stuff to push your muscles to grow, break the staleness in your program, and to target your sets a little more for certain results.

In this podcast I get into five of our favorite types of "specialty sets" at Relentless and how we use those to push our clients to better results. You'll learn:

-Techniques you can use to put more weight on the bar and target your sets for more muscle in certain areas.

-How to build and improve that important "first rep" technique.

-How to make simple changes to work around injuries.

-How to increase the metabolic distress and time under tension, two of the primary factors of muscle growth.

-How to lift more in less time, more safely.

What you say to yourself matters!

Look, we all have self-talk.

Learning to control my own self-talk to keep my mood from crashing and to keep myself from getting into a reactive and negative state from life's events was one of the biggest keys to changing my life.

Is life going to always be sunshine and roses? Of course not.

Are you going to make everything ok just by being positive and telling yourself that? Nope.

However, often things aren't nearly as bad as you can convince yourself that they are by listening to the voice in your head.

In this Quick Hit I'm going to give you my number one tip to quieting that demon down and putting your self-talk into perspective.

Programming an exercise training plan is a bit science and a bit art.

There are a lot more variables to look into than just plugging in a bunch of exercises.

Do the exercises balance?

How long should the athlete go without a deload?

What is a deload?

Should it be a full or partial?

What are the outside considerations for the athlete?

I go into these and several other programming variable considerations in this episode of the Be Relentless Podcast. Give it a listen and up your programming game!

Have you ever tried to improve yourself somehow, either in the gym, the classroom, studying some personal development, learning a new trade, only to have people (many of them friends, families, or partners) knock you down and hate on you?

This is one of those things that makes my blood boil. Unfortunately I see it all the time as a trainer. I often have clients come in who are doing their best to change their lives, get healthy, lose fat, gain muscle, and they've got someone at home belittling them and sabotaging them.

And you know what?

A lot of them end up apologizing for DARING to try to make themselves better.

That makes me furious. I don't throw the word "right" around very often, but you have a right in this world to try to be better and to make yourself better, if you so choose. Don't you dare apologize to anyone who makes you feel like you don't.

Whenever someone is successful at something people love to talk crap about how they were lucky, got given a good hand, or happened to be in the right place at the right time.

That does happen.

It doesn't happen very often, though.

The one attribute I see people who are successful when it comes to losing weight, getting stronger, gaining muscle, building a business, being successful parents is that they are consistent. They do the small things every day that add up to big things down the road.

Success takes hard work, but it doesn't take as hard a work if you're consistently doing the right things.

"The unexamined life is not worth living"

-Socrates

That's one of my favorite quotes.

Honestly, I think it should be taught at the beginning of every school year and it should be carved in stone on every public building.

The issue is that the vast majority of people you see out there do not examine their life. They go from one TV show to the next, refusing to be about anything.

I simply can't get behind that type of existence because that's all it is: Existence.

Life is awesome.

Sometimes it's really hard. But just the fact that you get to have it and experience versus not is a very cool thing.

So why would you want to go through it not even paying attention to what it's all about?

That's not the Relentless way, for sure.

When you examine your life you start to come up with some things that you believe. I'm going to share some of my ideas and beliefs and would love to hear yours.

Find out what I think is the most valuable thing in your possession.

What is the most important thing you can do to control your health?

What is so precious and so easily cast aside by most of our society?

What do I think that, if everything else is equal, is always better to have more of?

Give it a listen and find out!

I'm back after a hectic week! Sometimes life throws a bunch of stuff at you and you've got to become good at shuffling pots around on the stove. Sometimes it works out, other times not so much.

After a complicated week of holidays, real estate sales, and everything else that could get messed up it was important for me to hit the ground running today and get back on the horse.

Whether life has thrown you some curves or whether it's just a matter of slipping on your diet over the holidays, it's important that you don't dwell on it. That doesn't get you anywhere. Instead focus on getting up, dusting yourself off, learning, and hopping back up on that business/life/nutrition/exercise horse and getting back on your journey.

Stop Blindly Chasing Your Goals!

At Relentless we don't view our work as just a place where people get in better shape or improve their performance. They do, and it's awesome, but there's a lot more to it than that.

We're a transformation center.

That means that we take people and we help them become the best versions of themselves, which often includes way more than just lifting some weights and doing some sprints. The real issue most people seem to have when it comes to accomplishing their goals is that they often go at them blindly. They don't get a firm fix on where they are now but they just know they don't want to be there.

That's like knowing that your goal is to drive to San Diego, me giving you a map, and not telling you if you're in Bangor, ME or Charleston, SC. Sure, eventually you could probably puzzle it out, but it's going to be a lot harder.

There are four key areas to tackle when it comes to baselining, and I'm going to hit you with both the theory AND the actual measures in this podcast.

So get ready to take the blinders off, take a real look at where you are now, and get ready to hit your goals with a true, lazer-like focus.

One of the things that kills me about the fitness business is how everyone wants all these amazing results but refuses to change their lifestyle.

Newsflash!

If you keep doing the same stuff that you're doing now, whether it's in fitness, business, relationships, or whatever, you're going to keep getting the results that you've been getting. There's nothing wrong with that, if you're happy with where you are.

If you're not, however, and you want some extraordinary results... then you're going to have to do extraordinary things to get them and you'll have to adopt an extraordinary lifestyle. Stop half-assing and expecting full-ass results.

If you're looking for a free, simple, and effective way to recover better, feel better, live healthier, be more productive, have better relationships, and basically take everything currently in your life and upgrade it... Then you need to sleep better.

Let's be honest. You don't get enough sleep. You get enough to get by, but not enough to excel. I know, because often I'm in the same boat.

The truth is that if you get enough good sleep, you will be able to do WAY more with the time that you're awake. Probably more productivity than you'd get from the time gained from skipping the sleep in the first place.

That's not even considering the health benefits of sleep, or the risks of not getting it. High blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, lowered immune system function, more body fat, lower testosterone and growth hormone, diabetes, and the list goes on. So in this podcast I'm going to tell you how to set up your super sleep lair, a trick to get into better sleep, and whether or not those sleeping pills are good for you or whether they are possibly more harm than they are effective.

So many gurus of the self-help business want you to control your feelings by controlling your thoughts. That's all well and good, but the problem comes up when they ask you to mask your feelings with thinking nothing but happy thoughts.

The truth is that we move away from pain and towards pleasure. However, the drive to move towards pleasure is often not as strong as moving away from pain. It's actually pretty easy to get stuck at a low level of pleasure because it's better than pain. If we mask our pain and just seek out pleasure, then often times we'll miss our big goal because we get sidetracked along the way.

Feel the pain that pushes and moves you. It's ok to feel it. Just feel it and use it to never feel it again.

Sometimes a rant gets a little sidetracked! When the mic is on and you get in a mood... What can I say?

You know what holds back most people who start a training program, especially New Year's Resolutioners?

It's the Snowflake Phenomenon.

See, here's the deal.

It's true that every snowflake is unique. That's wonderful. The idea floating around the personal development world is that every person, like the snowflakes, is unique. That's awesome, and it's true.

BUT.

Snowflakes are all made from frozen water.

They're all crystalline.

They all fall from clouds.

Basically, snowflakes are like 80 or 90% the same as each other. It's only the shape, that 10 to 20% that is different.

People are the same way. And that's what we say we want: The simple answer that will work for everyone. But if we get it, we immediately point to our shape and say how we're different. You can't have it both ways, snowflake.

The fitness and personal development business is full of questions. More importantly, it's full of answers.

Unfortunately, a lot of those answers are at best incomplete and at worst flat out wrong. Why is this the case?

Because too many coaches and leaders look to appear right versus actually taking the time to be right.

The truth of the matter is, it's not just on the gurus and the coaches. It's also on the person asking the question. Often times people will ask what can be a very complex question and demand a simple answer. I understand that is how our society seems to be working now, but I would suggest that perhaps you should look a little deeper.

There is one answer, though, that will most often be the most right. If you take advantage of it then it could be the best possible answer you could ever get.

In this episode I get to catch up with my friend, Kyle Newell, The Human Performance Expert. Kyle is a gym owner in Hillsborough, NJ, but he's also an expert of pattern and habit change and brain function. We talk about some of the best ways to get and stay on a healthier path, how to change habits, how to recognize patterns within yourself, and how to face up to adversity and keep moving forward.

One of my hobbies is looking at what successful people do and breaking that down to its parts, looking for commonalities.

One of the traits that I see show up often among high achievers is that they have a "daily practice", if you will, that revolves around making themselves better.

It may not be directly related to their chosen field (although sometimes it is), but there's something they do every day or nearly every day that improves them. Some meditate. Some practice music. Some go for a daily walk. Some have elaborate rituals while others have a daily cup of coffee and read the same sections of the newspaper.

Regardless of what that practice is, choosing it with intention and implementing your own version of it will help anchor you and your success.

My own version, which I'll be releasing soon, nails down these components a little more, but really who am I to tell you how to implement your own daily practice?

Just find something that resonates with you and do it, every day.

"Weekend Warrior" is a term that gets thrown around a lot in a bit of a negative or derisive fashion, but I disagree. Almost every adult that trains is someone who I would put in the Weekend Warrior category.

If you don't have a definite sport that you are definitely training for, but still want to do some awesome stuff for your body, athleticism, and play... then you're a weekend warrior. If you do the occasional road race, Obstacle Course Race, lifting competition, ski hard, play in a basketball league, and you don't spend all your time specifically training for those events... then you're a weekend warrior.

The issue is, weekend warriors often don't perform up to their levels of expectations and they often get hurt.

So here's going to be five tips that will keep you having a blast, beating your buddies, and off the doctor's table. You'll learn:

-The thing that you should be doing and probably aren't doing enough of.

-The key areas of your body that you need to be focusing on to keep your performance high and your resiliency up.

-The training exercises that will give you the biggest training bang for your buck AND keep you from feeling like you got run-over the next day... so you can actually DO the things you WANT to do, instead of being too sore from the gym.

-The three primary training tools that you can use to cover your bases and prepare you for whatever the weekend throws at you. I learned this one the HARD WAY, and I'll tell you about it.

-How to constantly be moving forward and avoid that "stuck in a rut" feeling like most gym-goers suffer from.

Ordinary people are all around you.

There are a lot more of them then there is of you. That's because they're ordinary.

They spend their day leading lives of quiet desperation or even worse, quiet acceptance. If you listen to this podcast then you aren't ordinary. Chances are very good that you don't want to be ordinary.

So why do you do what ordinary people do?

Why do you exercise like they do?

Why do you talk like they do?

Why do you eat like they do?

Why do you even STAND like they do?

The fastest way to be extraordinary is to see what ordinary people do and don't do it.

That's your Monday Quick Hit.

Whether you want to admit it or not, chances are very good that you lie to yourself every day.

Or, rather, your brain lies to you.

It's not because your brain has gone bad on you or hates you. Actually, much the opposite. Your brain loves you and wants you to be successful... by IT'S definitions.  The unfortunate thing is that you and your brain might have VERY different definitions of success!

The way it does it is that it tells you lies.

In this podcast I'm going to go into why this happens. We'll talk about:

-Why the Map and the Territory are different, and what I mean by that.

-The four BIG lies I hear every day from clients that they're telling themselves, even if they aren't liars.

-How to overcome those lies and get past them.

Another Monday Quick Hit!

When it comes to selecting goals, people most often focus on outcome goals, or goals that are based on a certain outcome.

That makes sense, right?

I mean, that makes the goal the goal.

However, the issue with that is that it can often be too far away and thus it's easy to get discouraged. This is what Seth Godin calls "The Dip".

Instead there's another kind of goal: Behavior Goals.

These behavior goals will help set up your long-term goals for success and be much easier for you to hit. I break down the difference, in Monday Quick Hit fashion, for you today in order to get you on track and KEEP you on track.

It's hard as hell to get a train moving from a standstill.

They're heavy and it requires a LOT of energy.

Your life is the same way. If you're feeling stuck then it's hard to overcome that inertia.

However, once you DO get the train rolling, then it takes far less energy to keep it moving or to steer it in different directions.

Again, your life is just like the train. Once you start the change process then it's easier to hit the next day and to fine-tune your progress.

I'm going to go over the process that I use with clients as well as what I've used to create a powerful change in my own life.

We'll cover:

-Why I want you to take a quick look at where you are now but not too long.

-The right and wrong types of goals to set and how you've probably learned the wrong way.

-The eating the elephant style of action and my embarrassing story.

-The three methods I like the most for keeping Big Mo (momentum) going.

-What inevitable part of a successful journey you need to watch out for and how to come out the other side.

RANT WARNING

I was at a restaurant this weekend and just listening to some conversations going on around me.

What struck me more than anything else was the sheer amount of complaining and "poor me" mentality that was going on.

We've all done it, so I'm not throwing too many rocks, but the truth of the matter than just bitching about a problem isn't going to do anything to help you.

Life IS going to do stuff TO you. You can't choose that. What you CAN choose is what you DO about those things. Life is a game of chess. You can't control your opponent, but you can set plans in motion that will lead to your victory... as long as you don't have a crappy victim's mentality and allow yourself to be pushed into negative situations.

Recovery is one of the aspects of training that a lot of people ignore. It's sort of like money: It really doesn't matter how much money you make. It matters how much you keep.

When it comes to your training program, it's the same thing. It really doesn't matter how hard you smash yourself in the gym or the playing field (unlike what all the memes say), it matters how much productive work you can do AND RECOVER FROM to come back stronger. If you aren't adapting and realizing the gains from your training then at best all you're doing is spinning your wheels and at worst you're digging yourself into a hole.

In this episode I'm going to be going through the most popular recovery methods you can use, how to use them, and also a quick and dirty recovery program you can apply right now to help yourself start recovering faster from your workouts, improve your results, and feel better along the way.

Monday Quick Hit!

I used to teach my wrestlers to learn and master one takedown, one escape, and one pin.

That didn't make them easier to beat.

As a matter of fact, it made them much better wrestlers.

The same thing applies to life. Learn a few simple things and MASTER them until they're on point. Then move on to more things. Stop chasing your tail and hammer what IS working.

The only things you can control in life is your own thoughts and feelings.

As much as we'd like to exert our control over everything else, the bottom line is that while we might be able to influence the outside world, we can't directly control it. So that means you need to conquer yourself first.

You need to win your Inner Game.

That's what we're going to talk about today. We'll be going over exactly what I mean by "Inner Game", the roots of your game, how to point it in the right direction, and how to keep it on course.

We're going to talk the science of building strength.

What are the different types of strength?

What are the different methods of strength?

How do you train for strength?

Are you making the critical strength training mistake that most athletes do when they "lift weights" that limits how strong they can get?

Class is in session, let's hit Strength 101.