In case anybody reading this doesn't already know, I've entered a 12-Week Transformation Contest being run by a well known and successful poker player by the name of Sorel Mizzi. As I talked about in my last blog post, I have been taking fitness relatively seriously for close to a year now, and have come a long way, but still have quite a ways to go. One of my goals for the last few months has been to get lean, which is something I've always been terrible at, even when I've "done everything right". While I've improved my overall conditioning/fitness tremendously for the last several months, I've more or less stagnated on the fat loss front. For the last several weeks I had scaled back my training a bit, and was trying to give my body a bit of a breather as my body had gotten to feel quite worn out/overtrained after several hard months.
Anyway, I heard about Sorel's contest through a close poker friend of mine in the middle of the day on the entry deadline. On one hand, I said "a hah! perfect", but finding out on the day of the entry deadline was a bit rough, as I wasn't 100% prepared (and was starting a busy weekend), but I knew I had to get entered and try to get started on a plan ASAP. I immediately spent all of my free mental time weighing my options, trying to come up with the right plan for a specific time frame (12 weeks), trying to figure out how to get everything in order to really attack this thing right. After quite a bit of deliberation, I decided to go ahead and "invest" in private fitness/diet coaching (more on that in a bit).
To back up a little bit, I want to mention that I have always been a do-it-yourself person. More specifically, I have rarely found the value in paying for private tutoring of any kind, especially at the beginner/intermediate levels. I have always tried to teach myself anything I need to learn, and with few exceptions that's pretty much worked out for me (as a side note, while I think I'm somewhat unique in this regard, I think it's relatively common among poker players. There is a definite amount of self-actualization required to even begin let alone stick with/be successful at poker). For me, fitness/training/diet was no different. I have spent countless hours over the past 9 months drawing from every resource I can get my hands on to learn/improve my fitness knowledge and therefore my training. So for me, it was a very difficult decision to pay for fitness coaching. So why did I do it? A few reasons:
1) I felt I was at the right stage fitness-wise where I could actually get my money's worth from something like this. I feel that for the most part, when you consult a world-class expert on something, you really don't get to tap their real expertise until you have achieved a certain faculty with whatever it is you are trying to learn about. I know that If I had paid for private training 9 months ago, I would've had difficulty completing any really effective workouts, and the first few months would've been spent just "catching up" in a general fitness sense before I'd really get value for my money. Now, I have the right base of strength/conditioning/mobility that I can really attack a killer program and get everything out of it.
The truth is though, if I'm honest, I think that my fitness knowledge is such that I could have gotten 80-90% of the way there without it, so am I really getting as much value as the average client? Probably not, which brings me to the next reason:
2) Motivation. As much as I hate to admit it, investing in something like this brings along several motivating factors. The first is that when you get a fitness/training/diet program from someone you have trust in, you are unlikely to question it, and are more likely to just worry less about the programming and just execute. That being said, I can and will question the program if I thought there was something wrong with it. However, having gone through the program for most of a week now, I think this program is extremely well-written and will be effective.
Secondly, when you're paying good money for something like this, you're more likely to stick to it. For me, especially post-black Friday this is no small investment, so the thought of not following through my end of the bargain scares the crap out of me, so I haven't even for a second doubted my ability to stick to it to a T.
Also, you are held somewhat accountable just because your "coach" is going to want to see your results and hear your progress reports.
I will say that as a self-actualizing/motivating person, it's very hard for me to admit to myself that the above motivating factors are a part of it. I have always hated the fact that people will pay money to others to have them tell them what to do. I remember taking coronet lessons as a kid, and having my parents paying some private instructor to tell me what and how much to practice. Part of me wants to say "if I can't teach myself and motivate myself, I don't deserve it", which is a big reason why this was a very tough decision for me.
So, those factors on top of hearing about Sorel's fitness challenge gave me the impetus to go ahead and pull the trigger on it. Now that I got all of that out of the way, I'm pretty excited to tell you more about the program:
Like I said above, I spent a lot of time reading/learning what I could from various resources. Some of these resources include fitness "gurus" with a strong web presence, some of them really fantastic fitness guys (like Eric Cressey), and many who are really just great marketers more than they are real cutting-edge fitness experts. A rare few have a strong combination of both, and one of those (IMO) is a guy by the name of John Romaniello at Roman Fitness Systems:
While he can get hype-y with the best of them, I have followed him (and his programs) for awhile, and his content is fantastic. I highly recommend checking out his website/blogs/products and watching some of his videos. A lot of his workout/diet theories are very cutting edge and very interesting, so when I decided to enlist the help of someone else for this, choosing him was a no-brainer. Oh, and he's also a bit of a poker freak as well, so that's cool (in case you're ever in a game with him, my gut instinct tells me he's probably an "overplay suited connectors/hood flat with small pairs" kinda guy... sorry Roman!).
As for the program itself, it is dynamic and will change depending on my progress over the next 4-6 months. For the first month, I am on a frequency-heavy program that includes weight training 3-days per week, alternating between Upper Body and Lower Body workouts. Several cardio sessions and bodyweight workouts are interspersed through the week, so I will be working out twice per day some days. I got started on Tuesday and even though I have lots of experience with these type of workouts, it has been an ass-kicker (in a good way).
From a dietary perspective, I am on a very low-carb diet to start that includes utilization of Intermittent Fasting (IF) protocols. For those who aren't yet familiar with Intermittent Fasting, it is one of the latest crazes in the fitness world and I have tried it in the past with relative success. For quick reference, you can check out Martin Berkhan's Lean Gains site as well as a two-part "Primer" on IF written by Mr. Romaniello.
For the majority of my adult life, I was a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, but have introduced some seafood (mostly fish and shrimp) in the last few years. Going low-carb is not terribly easy if you don't eat a lot of red and white meat, so I've pretty much decided that I will have to at least add a lot of seafood to my diet, if not break my pseudo-vegetarianism completely. We'll see how it goes. So far I feel great for the most part although going low-carb wreaked havoc on my sleep quality initially. I barely got any decent sleep the first few days and then crashed for 11 hours last night. I'm a notoriously bad sleeper to begin with but hopefully my body adjusts, good sleep is so important!
Whew, that was as wordy as I was afraid it might be. I hope it was interesting to some! I'd love to hear if anybody else out there has been on (or is currently on) a personal training program and what your experiences were with it both positive/negative.
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