The Fitness Guru

YEA! HAPPY NEW YEAR!! WHOOO-HOOOOOO!!……YES!!!…… FIRST DAY!! NEW YEAR!!…. NEW DECADE!!!………YEA!!!!…… HAPPY….. NEW….. year……whoooo……hooo…. yes….. ya……. hmmm…..

With any luck, you are waking up this morning (or this afternoon) without a hangover. Food. Food will be on the list of things to do. And some stores and some restaurants may be open. But it is a holiday, so you can’t be sure. By Sunday, you’ll be a little discombobulated because it’s the second long weekend in a row and now all your internal clocks are way off. Monday: gather ’round the water cooler with all the NYE war stories and comments about “amateur night” (note: as my friend, Tom, was the only person I know who went to bed at 11:30 last night, he is, by default, the only “professional”). Within two weeks, you will have stopped screwing up every time you have to write the date on something. In four weeks, any reference to the New Year or New Decade will have gone the way of Tiger Woods jokes. And within six weeks, 80-95% of you will have given up on your New Year’s Resolution.

That’s right. By Valentine’s Day, the National Hallmark  Day of Chocolate and Cards, only a few Resolutionaries will be left standing. The reasons are simple: we create goals for ourselves without creating an effective strategy for attaining those goals. Sure, it seems like everyone has a strategy to help you, but, for the most part, that strategy is “Happy New Year……now let’s change”. The desire to change isn’t a strategy. It has to be met with a thorough play-by-play so that you understand the ups and the downs of the process.

So here are the five things to keep in mind to help you succeed this year and every year with your resolution. Now, I am the Fitness Guru, so I am going to help specifically with fitness and health related goals. But this ideas can work just as effectively with all your resolutions, personal or professional.

1. Take smaller bites. Yes, your grandmother was right. You take too big a bite and you’re going to choke. You have 40 pounds to lose? Start with the first 10. What the hell– start with 5. If you focus solely on the 40, and the weight doesn’t come off fast enough, that will lead to frustration, dissolutionment, and closing the door on yet another year’s resolution. That leads us to……
2. Patience. My god, if I had a dime for every person who walked through my door and thought that they were going to get it done in two weeks, I would be retired to an island in the Pacific by now. You have to understand that your train has been traveling with a great deal of momentum in one direction. In order to slow  down and change direction, you will have to patiently redirect your path. And the more momentum you have in a particular direction, the more focus and time you will need to redirect yourself.
3. Do not change direction too quickly. Ok, follow me on this one: your driving a Ferrari at 110 miles per hour down the highway. You want to make a hard, 90-degree left turn. My suggestion: slow down or your going to crash. You haven’t exercised in 10 years? Why on Earth are you going to go to the gym for two hours at a stretch, 6 days a week starting the day after the heaviest eating/drinking period of the entire year. Start slow and methodically. Go to the gym for half an hour, stretch, do a little cardio, maybe try a class. See how your body feels, how it reacts to the stimuli. If you feel good, up the ante. If you are sore and tired, keep it easy for the first week or two as you ease into it. You have time (see suggestion #2).



4. Don’t spend a fortune. Health clubs love this time of year. They see the panic in your eyes and they thrive on it. They will get you to sign up for 18 months of direct withdrawal from your checking account, knowing full well that by Valentine’s Day you will have forgotten you had a membership. Buy a month’s membership. They’ll sell it to you (they just want your money, after all). Make sure the gym is for you, that it is effective and you enjoy it. Then make the big purchase in February. Same goes for meal plans, exercise equipment, shoes, clothes, gizmos, late night infomercial products– the whole enchilada. The industry loves January because everyone throws their money at problems. Don’t be one of those people. But……
5. If you do spend money, spend it and spend it wisely. Spending money on your health and well-being is the wisest investment you can make. But, like financial investing, you want to be sure you are putting your money into an investment that will reap dividends. I am a trainer and I believe that an educated trainer is the Resolutionary’s best friend. Exercise is a science, not a crap shoot. I have yet to meet someone who couldn’t achieve their goals with the proper information and persistence. The problem is that the information is usually faulty. So Buyer Beware! Go about finding a New Year’s trainer the same way you would shop the rest of the year: get referrals from friends, interview the trainers, ask questions, find out specifically what they would do to help you, not simply someone who walks through the door to be “trained”. And keep in mind that most quality trainers have full schedules. You will need a little flexibility to find time in their schedules. If a health club is quick to offer you their “top trainer” who happens to be free five days a week during peak hours, take a good, long look at that person, their education, their work experience and their success rate.

This isn’t the end. This is the beginning. I wish there were only five things to keep in mind. This would be so simple if that were the case. But if it were that simple, the success rate would be higher than 10%. And it isn’t.

So buckle up and stay tuned. Let’s make this the best year ever! Whoooo-Hooooo!! Happy New Year!! Yea!!!!

No, it’s not a ski run. It’s what I do when I’m strapped for time and I want as solid a workout as possible. Here’s how it works:

1. First, I start with 5 minute warm up on the elliptical machine.
2. Next, I choose five exercises, A thru E.
3. Each exercise should work a different body part: legs, arms, abs, etc. I will also add a cardio vascular exercise like Mountain Climbers or Jumping Jacks
4. I start with one set of exercise A. Then I wait 30 seconds. Then I do exercises A and B. Wait 30 seconds. A,B and C. And I continue on until I have A,B,C,D, and E.
5. Now I start with E. Wait 30 seconds. E,D, wait 30 seconds. And all the way back to E,D,C,B and A

Each Diamond should take about 15 minutes to complete. If I have 30 to 45 minutes to workout, I will do two Diamonds back to back. And the great thing is that I can keep changing the exercises from Diamond to Diamond so that I never get bored.

It is a high intensity workout so be careful and patient the first time out. But give it a try and you’ll find the Diamond is a fun, creative way to make the time fly by in the gym.

Check out this podcast debunking (fun word) some fitness myths.

The Fitness Guru

www.fitnessgurunyc.com