Health and fitness marketing is designed around a set of implied goals such as: muscle building, weight loss, enhanced performance, a heightened feeling of well being.
These are the generic goals that most marketers assume you’re interested in but nobody can choose your goals for you.
Your goals have to be a personal choice. Once you’ve stated your personal goals clearly it becomes much easier to take action on them and avoid distractions that don’t bring you closer to your goal.
If you don’t state a clear goal you can end up with dozens of unfinished projects, lots of money wasted on programs, supplements, food and books. And worst of all you can end up discouraged and thinking that your a failure.
In this podcast we will discuss the following:
1. The implied goals of health and fitness marketing
2. Why it is important not to compare yourself to others
3. Accepting your genetic strengths and limits
4. Setting your own goals vs accepting an implied goal
5. Understand where you are right now and what to do to change it
6. Realistic vs unrealistic expectations
John
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{ 14 comments }
Hey Guys,
About 15 minutes into the podcast you talk about a guy who posted a quesiton on your blog. I’m pretty sure I’m the guy and it was my question. Just for clarification when I do HIIT I do run sprints on a football field (and they are true sprints, I was an athlete playing varisty football, wrestling, and track up until college). The workout is fairly intense. Just so you have an idea it works as follows:
Sprint 100 yards 8 times (Rest 30 seconds between sprints using a stop watch rest 2 minutes when all 8 sprints are done)
Sprint 60 yards 8 times (Rest 25 seconds between each sprint 2 minutes when done)
Sprint 40 yards 8 times(Rest 20 seconds between each sprint 2 minutes when done)
Sprint 30 yards 8 times(Rest 15 seconds between each sprint 2 minutes when done)
Quick Side note question: Why does this make my abs pop and be so much mroe defined than other HIIT? For two days afterwards I will look much better than if I had done jump rope or cycling even though those workouts will be just as painful. Any thoughts?
If I do HIIT on a cycle it is also very intense I make sure to get my pulse up to at least 185 bpm on every sprint cycle which is over 80% of my max heart rate. I will then rest either 30 seconds or a minutes depending on what day of HIIT I am doing (long or short intervals). I think treadmills are terrible for HIIT because they take so long to go from a high mph to a lower one. Also they can[‘t go fast enough to truly mimic a sprint. But that’s just my opinion.
When I lift I am lifting for muscle building. I am doing 10 to 20 sets of 12 to 15 reps per muscle group that I am lifting that day. I do two day splits and make sure to hit upper Pecs (to get the upper pec caught up the the growth of my lower pecs), Shoulders (I hit shoulders the hardest since that is what I am trying to grow the most) bi’s, tri’s, Lats, quads, glutes, calves (and then any small muscle groups I hit as well but with not as many sets). I rest 30 to 45 seconds between sets in order to make sure I do not recovery fully. The lifting is very painful with a lot of lactic acid burn. The lifting lasts for 45 to 50 minutes the HIIT takes 10 to 15 minutes. I lift 4 to 6 days a week I do HIIT 4 days a week (after lifting).
Right now I am trying to get to 1.618. I am at a 32.5″ waist and 48.5″ shoulders I am 6 feet tall. I want to get to 31″ waist and 51″ shoulders.
I eat 1500 calories (or less) a day 6 days a week. The other day of the week I’ll consume close to 5,000 calories (it’s pretty gross but delicious).
I am an experienced lifter I started “power lifting” when I was 17 and did competitions (bench, dead, squat) till I was 23. I am 25 now and have been trying to get “shredded” for the last year. I was never able to be “shredded” following power lifting and body building advice. I found Rusty Moore’s site about a year ago and yours guys stuff not that long after that. I greatly appreciate all the help and all the work you guys do. It is very informative.
My question is: Is my workload and nutrition going to help me achieve my goals? Is it enough? Do you see any holes in the plan?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Mike
Hey again,
I just wanted to comment that this podcast is your best podcast yet. You really lay it all out there and explain the reasonsing behind the simplicity and strip away the confusion. Your help is greatly appreciated. You guys do great work and your results, as well as the results of others proves that.
Thanks,
~Mike
Didn’t listen to the podcast. Your list of main points is all that matters. Right on.
Things that make you go Hmmmmmm….
Nice topic…nicely stated….specifically the part about implied goals and instruction (assumption) based upon those implied goals.
There’s nothing else I can say about that.
Now, about the “Not comparing ourselves to others”…of course it’s true. Logically speaking it’s true, but the “HOW to stop it,” is another topic altogether. Prob a psychological issue, huh?
Nice.
Great podcast. Would listen again.
(always wanted to say that seriously)
I totally relate to the “dinner as fixed variable” thing, and having to work around it. Dinner is a social meal for me at least 5-7 times a week. And then there’s breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. So that’s probably 7-9 social meals for me every week. A bit much. I might try to reduce those to 5-6 times a week, and really tighten up my diet the rest of the time. I haven’t thought about it quite this way before. Good stuff.
I liked your comments at the end about why you do what you do. You guys do give a lot away for free in these podcasts, they’re some of the best that I’ve come across on the internet. Unfortunately some people don’t see the value of something until they’ve lost it, but they’ll come ’round in time.
Looking forward to seeing what you do about the Venus index. I’ve got my girlfriend onto these programs and she loves it. I’m wondering how much variation there will be between the Adonis and Venus workouts?
What about the dreaded “man boobs” ? is it a genetic thing that just must be accepted, or do you guys have any specific advice for guys who struggle with this?
Mike:
Wow, man, 5k in one day!? Seriously, you need to get a grip if you really want to lose off your belly. Going 3500 over 1500 avg is tacking on 500 cals to your daily avg over a week’s time = 1 lb of FAT bro! Yeah dude, every 3500 cals = 1 lb of fat and each 1″ on the waste is about 4-6 lbs of fat.
“Fat” for thought man. That’s your biggest hole right now.
Get your daily avg down to 1300-1500 over the course of a week (still wanna splurge, throw in 2-3 Eat Stop Eat fasts to free up 2000-3000 cals for your splurge day) and you’ll start to see your waist drop at least a half inch every 2-4 weeks (likely even faster, but that’s conservative). Further, I really don’t recommend going over 3k in one day. I’m big on measuring things by the week w/daily averages to keep it simple, but it just seems to stick on me more when throwing it all down in a day compared to spread out… so perhaps instead of killing it for 3 meals in one day, maybe spread it out over the week).
Lastly, dude, just take the freaking plunge. Sign up, get in on this contest they’re throwing (even if we’re already 3 weeks into the 12, it’s still HELLA motivating to be cutting when everyone else on the forum is!), and do the workouts John has designed. I’ve been lifting for at least a dozen years on multiple programs and this is by far the best I’ve been on.
You guys were totally talking about me on this podcast. I dropped a lot of stuff that I was doing. I do major lifts 2x a week and hiit 2x a week. Strength first day and hiit the next day with full day of rest after. I do hiit for conditioning and it makes my joints and body work better for work and feel better after I do it. I do make excuses to eat more when I workout, so it can be a vicious cycle, but for 15-20min of my time doing hiit, I don’t have to worry so much about calorie intake. I do notice a big difference of low cal days mixed with hiit, looking particularly sick(awesome) the next morning. Easier said than done with the “just drop calories more” thing. My mental toughness is what it is, and I will work on the hunger triggers and try to not to over eat, but it’s really, really hard to do sometimes.
Hey Seth, no one said it’s a walk in the park. If it was, everyone would have a killer body.
Once you “get” how hard it really is, you start to make easier decisions for yourself that take a lot of the willpower out of the equation.
(ie, having ice cream in the fridge during a cut down when you KNOW that it will call for you… lol)
Hi , as always excellent podcast,
Would it be possible if you guys show the intensity of the training in action? (have u ever done this before) I think this is the biggest key to gaining muscles? In my case I better do 10 reps when you ask for 13, then do 13 and feel like being able to do 2-3 more. I would like to see examples how hard you have to work to get results and I thing others would also benefit.
@Mike: Nope, it was me. Clement here and they mentioned my name. It was at a time when I was looking to improve my athletic abilities to improve my chances of getting into the soccer team and impress the girls. Haha. I was pretty taken aback that Brad and John would have done an entire podcast based on my comment, but it shows how much my views were skewered and I bought the AI system!
i use a mechanical treadmill at home and it seems adquate for basic exercise“-
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