The 1 Thing All the ‘Gurus’ Don’t Want You to Know, Guest Post by Fitness Blogger Justin Cox

This post is written by Justin Cox, BS Exercise Science, CSCS, strength coach and down to earth, no-nonsense fitness blogger. He is also my online personal trainer.

I like what he has to say here about calling out the hype and building a consistent, simple, effective routine.  –April

Everyday we see ‘gurus’ pitching the ultimate 12 week plan, or 6 weeks to sexy, or how to get the flat sexy stomach you have always wanted in just 20 minutes per day. Trust me, I see them all the time. I have made those programs, I have sold those ads, and I have made a lot of money doing it.

But there is a secret the ‘gurus’ don’t want you to know. This is the secret that keeps you coming back to them time after time again. They purposely keep sending you 6 week programs and special 21 day detoxes so you will buy those products instead of discovering this one secret. They do it because they don’t want to lose their job.

Let’s face it, people like shiny. Coming out with a new sexy abs program every 4 weeks is shiny. Just follow this program for the next 4-6 weeks and you will have the abs you and your husband have always wanted. Just take a look at this screen shot. All I did was a quick google image search of Shape Magazine.

Notice anything? How many new body plans, 4 week to sexy programs, and the ‘new diet’ programs can they really create?

It is all distraction. They want to keep you away from this one secret that I have been teaching to my personal clients for the last 10 years to give them amazing results. This one secret allowed me to create the top personal training studio in my city before I left it to have more family time. It is the same secret I use with all of my online premium coaching clients today. The same secret that I give away for free in my Transformation Made Simple program.

So what is this closely guarded secret that can cost all ‘gurus’ their jobs?

Consistency. That is what you need. You need to be consistent in your program in order to make the best progress. By continually selling you new and different programs, the ‘gurus’ are purposely keeping you from achieving your goals. This ensures that when you fail, or the program doesn’t go right, they can sell you a new program that promises to fix the problems with the old one.

But the biggest, and the truly best fitness professionals I have ever come across, we all have one thing in common. We keep our clients consistent and give them the time they need in order to achieve all their goals.

Consistency allows you to adapt. Adaptation is the sole purpose of exercise and fitness. Forget everything you have ever heard of muscle confusion. There is an actual term for it and a place for it, but it is not what you think and not the topic of this conversation.

Adaptation is what you need. You need to adapt to the stress you are putting on your body so that you can handle more. If you are constantly jumping from shiny workout to new shiny workout every few weeks or even every couple days, you will never fully adapt. That means you never get that much better.

Consistency allows you to adapt and get better.

A simple way to look at it is like this. Burpees burn a lot of Calories. They burn them fast and skyrocket your heart rate. Which workout will burn more Calories? Performing 10 burpees for 4 sets or performing 20 burpees for 8 sets? Without adaptation, you will have a near impossible time progressing to the harder workouts that burn more fat than the easier workouts. If you are jumping from shiny workout to shiny workout every few days or weeks, then you can’t adapt.

Consistency allows you to adapt and get better.

Now consistency doesn’t mean you need to do the same workout every single day for the rest of your life. That just sounds horrible. But there are a few things that you should always be doing. Take these 4 exercises for instance:

Military Press
Squat
Pull Up
Dead Lift
These 4 exercises, or close variations are in ALMOST EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM I make for my clients. I create for them new and different workouts every 4-6 weeks, but within that, these 4 exercises remain consistent. Over time, they end up doing hundreds and thousands of reps of these exercises. They adapt to them and they get stronger. This strength carries over to other parts of the workouts and allows them to do more.

Once they can handle more, they can burn more fat if they want, build more muscle if they want, and eat more food without worry. That is the power of consistency.

But there is a trick to consistency. I am sorry but it is not as simple as just saying, “I am going to start being consistent today.” I truly wish it were that easy.

The key to consistency is simplicity. Sit for a moment and think about past fitness or transformation programs you have used. Were they challenging? Were they complex? At first you started off with all the greatest intentions right? You followed the program 100%. Then something happened. You maybe missed a day or you stopped feeling the vibe.

The key to consistency is simplicity.

That novelty wears off and you start finding yourself having to convince yourself to workout. You have to almost fight yourself just to get your program going. That is the time where you lose your interest, where you fall off the program and have to start over in a few weeks.

The key is simplicity. In my free course, Transformation Made Simple, I stress this in every lesson. The key to being consistent is to make the process as simple and easy as possible. Make it so simple that there is absolutely no reason you can’t do it.

Sounds too easy right? I mean how could something that simple actually work. Well think about it this way. It takes about 50 heavy reps per week to develop strength. To accomplish this, you could do:

5 reps x 10 sets one day per week
5 reps x 5 sets 2 days per week
5 reps x 2 sets 5 days per week
All three of those programs have been proven to be very effective for developing strength. Which one would you rather do? Do you think you will be more inclined to ramp yourself up to do a huge heavy 50 rep workout every week, to a moderate 25 heavy reps twice per week, or a simple 10 reps every day?

That is the idea of keeping things simple and being consistent.

Break things down into the simple small steps that you can manage to accomplish everyday. AND THEN GIVE YOURSELF TIME.

Going to level with you here. Those 6 week, 12 week, and even 20 week programs are good and all but they are kind of a lie. Personally I went from normal to photo shoot ready (sort of) in 8 weeks. But then again, I was already in good shape. I already had a foundation of consistency and simple basics that allowed me to increase my intensity and buckle down for those 8 weeks.

The images they use to sell you those programs, are from people like me, who already were in a decent place. If you are just starting, give yourself time. International fitness coach Scott Sonnon says that it take about the same amount of time to completely transform a body as it does to prepare an Olympic athlete, 4 years. From personal experience, I agree.

Give Yourself Time.

It takes time to develop the new habits you need to create, to change the bad habits, and to truly develop the consistency that you will need in order to achieve the results

To recap, here are the 3 things you TRULY need in your program.

Consistency
Simplicity
Time
Now here is what I want you to do:

1) If you liked this article, and learned even 1 thing from it, click the share button down below.

2) Leave a comment below and tell me what you are going to do to make things simple and consistent for yourself going forward.

– See more at: kbburn.com