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When I lift, you lift (just like that)…
When I lift, you lift (just like that)…
When I lift, you lift (just like that)…
Hell yeah, hey Coach J, bring that back!
-Ludacris (probably)
Happy Friday, Coach J here from Anyman Fitness – and welcome to the latest edition of The N.W.A. Newsletter.
Each Friday’s N.W.A. Newsletter will have 3 parts:
- A Nutritional Tip to help make your diet healthier and easier to stick to.
- A Workout Tip to help make your training sessions more effective and fun.
- An Attitude/Mindset tip to help you strengthen your greatest asset – your mental toughness.
I will also give you my single favorite piece of social media content from AF over the past week and link to it on either Instagram or Twitter.
Without any further ado… let’s get started, shall we?
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N.W.A. Nutrition Tip Of The Week:
One of the best strategies to improve your nutrition is to always search for ‘low hanging fruit’ you can ‘pick’, so to speak.
This metaphor means it doesn’t make sense for you to get ‘fancy’ with your diet when simple and easy advice will do you just fine.
And the lowest hanging fruit there is for you nutritionally?
That’s easy – being responsible with your alcohol consumption.
It’s no secret that alcohol is a big part of the American culture (and in many other parts of the world as well).
It’s also no secret that alcohol is, quite literally, a toxin we ingest to relax and unwind.
No judgement here – I enjoy alcohol in moderation myself, so no worries if you partake.
Just be aware of the negatives and intentional with your decisions on how much alcohol to drink.
There are a lot of calories in ethanol (the ‘alcohol’ part of an alcoholic beverage).
Ethanol contains 7 calories per gram – almost double the calories per gram of protein or carbohydrates.
Not only that, but the calories are liquid calories – they don’t provide any recovery from workouts, any energy to go about your day, or any fullness/satiety at all.
They are – without a doubt – the worst kind of calories you could ever put into your body.
Zero nutrition.
Zero positive benefits for the body.
Other than feeling buzzed, loosening up socially, or enjoying the taste, there isn’t a single, positive benefit from drinking alcohol.
Binge drinking is defined as “a pattern of drinking alcohol that regularly brings your blood alcohol content (BAC) to or above 0.8 grams of alcohol per deciliter of blood”.
This amount would be roughly 4 drinks for women, and 5 drinks for men – in a few hours’ time.
Also consider a 20 ounce beer or a large glass of wine… each of those options would likely be considered *2* drinks at once due to the size and (possibly) strength of the drink.
Possibly even moreso if the beer was on the heavier side with a higher ABV.
Given the above definition, reflect a bit of what you’ve just read.
Do you meet the criteria for binge drinking?
It’s a real eye opener when you put it like that… if you go out to dinner and drink 2, tall, heavy beers with your meal… that’s likely all you get.
If you drink any more at home, you just had a ‘binge drinking session’ accidentally… it honestly doesn’t take much.
One last fact for you regarding alcohol…
A 6-Pack of Bud Light is 834 calories.
I know many men (and even some women) who drink a 6-Pack every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Some wouldn’t even call that ‘excessive’…
In a year, that’s 130,104 calories worth of beer.
That’s 37.1 pounds of fat you would lose in a year, roughly, if you eliminated it in this scenario.
As I stated earlier, no judgement whatsoever if you enjoy alcohol.
I do myself – and sometimes, it’s simply worth it to have a few drinks to relax.
But let’s not kid ourselves here.
Alcohol is inherently a toxin.
It’s literally poisonous – and drinking it has very few, if any, benefits.
It’s also going to make it much more difficult to lose fat effectively.
Your sleep, recovery, workouts, blood pressure, resting heart rate, anxiety, etc are all impacted negatively.
Every time I abstain from alcohol for an extended period of time, everything in my life improves dramatically.
I’m in a better mood, I sleep better, my digestion is awesome, I’m happier, my workouts are great, I have little to no anxiety, and my libido shoots through the roof…
I know you’ll realize those same benefits if you take a break from it as well.
N.W.A. Training Tip Of The Week:
Back in the early 2000’s, a strange fitness myth began circulating.
Everyone and their brother started discussing “muscle confusion” and how it helps you break through plateaus.
(Thanks, Tony Horton…)
The concept sounds plausible in theory:
You constantly change your workouts so your muscles can’t adapt and over time, this leads to superior strength and muscle growth over traditional/standard approaches.
There’s only one, small issue with this sort of a set up… how on earth do you know if you’re performing better if you’re always doing something different?
When training, you should always be striving for performance improvements.
You should be trying to best your previous workouts and gain strength and endurance over time.
The best way to do this is to repeat your workouts and use the exact same exercises, sets, reps, and rest times each session.
When you perform 2 identical workouts in consecutive weeks, you can see clear as day if you’re any better in Week 2.
You should also be checking what you did last week so you know what your goal is for your session – and your goal is *always* to beat last week’s training log.
If you’re constantly changing the exercises, their order, the sets and reps, the equipment you use, etc, you’re utterly blind and you have no clue if you’re making progress or not.
With a proper strength training program, the first 2-3 weeks are spent figuring out the weights you should be using for each movement or circuit.
Weeks 4-10 are spent increasing the weight linearly in every exercise you can, focusing on proper form and range of motion.
Weeks 11+ are spent pushing the limits of your program seeing how much ‘juice’ you can squeeze out of your training block.
Oh, that reminds me – if you reach Week 11 and you’re still making solid performance increases and you change it up?
Yeah… that’s a really bad idea… NEVER change a training program if you’re getting stronger weekly!
That means it’s WORKING!
And Rule #1 of Fitness is (of course): Don’t fix something that ain’t broke!
I once did the exact same training program and dietary set up for 2 years straight.
That’s 104 straight weeks where I repeated the same 3, short, 40 minute workouts religiously on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I combined it with a solid diet.
My entire training program consisted of: Deadlifts, Bench Presses, Incline Bench, Shoulder Presses, Chin-Ups, and Romanian Deadlifts.
Seriously.
That was it.
Nothing more, nothing less – those 6 exercises are all I did for those 2 years.
When I started the regimen, I was a beginner with a huge belly roll, and when I ended the regimen, I could bench press 300, squat 335, and deadlift over 500 pounds – all while rocking a full 6 pack at well under 10% body fat.
That experience taught me everything I ever wanted to know about ‘muscle confusion’ and what a crock of nonsense that marketing gimmick is…
N.W.A. Attitude/Mindset Tip Of The Week:
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘fake it ’til you make it’ before.
Nowhere does that phrase ring true moreso than in fitness.
When you’re first starting on a fitness journey, you’re completely out of your element and comfort zone.
You may have a larger body due to carrying some extra weight.
You might not move as fluidly or with as much ease as you’d like to at the moment.
You could feel a bit out of place at the gym – and that can be difficult and intimidating.
That’s the exact point where it can help to pretend to be someone else. 🙂
Now, this may sound a bit hokey and a tad silly – I don’t want you to put on a costume to go to the gym or anything (unless you want to).
But hear me out… if you want to be a fit and lean person… then you need to start behaving like a fit and lean person!
In essence, you have to “be” the person you wish you were, before you actually become that person!
Your mindset should shift – and instead of loathing workouts and being annoyed by healthy food – realize if you wish to be lean and healthy… well… that’s *kinda* what those people do!
And they do it every day…
Having a proper identity – and identifying with healthy, wholesome habits is an excellent idea.
In a former life, my identity was “the big, loveable J who eats and drinks everything in sight, and is just a lovable, big lug!”
I won’t lie – I fucking HATED that identity with a passion.
I despised being everyone’s ‘garbage disposal’ when it came to food.
But it was what it was… it was rightly deserved… I DID act like a garbage disposal on many occasions…
It was tough to give myself a new identity. It took some time.
But these days, I’m the ‘fit J who eats right, works out regularly, runs his own business, and is a great role model for his kids and family’.
That’s much better.
And I’m here to tell you – my new identity is an intentional change I wanted to make.
I didn’t want to be the ‘Chris-Farley-type-big-old-goofball’ kind of a guy.
I wanted to be strong, masculine, unbreakable, tough, and a protector to my daughters and wife.
Mission accomplished.
And if you ‘fake it ’til you make it’, you can change your identity, too.
After a number of months ‘faking it’, you’ll look around and realize “Oh shit, it happened… I’ve actually changed who I am!”
I can promise you there’s no better feeling on earth.
One Favorite Social Media Post Of The Week:
‘My dude Thomas has been with Anyman Fitness for 4 years, kicking ass and taking namesAnd it freaking SHOWS!
I wish more people had his grit & determination.
WAY too many people want a ‘3 month transformation’ and far too few want a 3 year transformation.’
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I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Anyman Fitness N.W.A. Newsletter.
I’ll be back next week.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Best,
Luda-Coach-J
Anyman Fitness
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When I was in high school, No Limit Records rose from the projects of New Orleans to the top of the rap world.
Their biggest single was “Make ‘Em Say Uhhhhh” off of the album Ghetto Dope by Master P, which came out in the spring of my Junior Year.
We would roll to our high school baseball games in our parents mini-vans, screaming the words of the song at the top of our lungs.
We won a state championship that year, and 23 years later, us guys on that team STILL go wild when we hear that song.
Music has the ability to solidify a memory, so in the future, when you hear a certain song, all those emotions come rushing back to you and you get to experience the magic all over again.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch the music video on repeat a dozen times or so… it never gets old to me 🙂