35 lessons from my life and work in 2012

This may be a little late….but who cares! This is my review of all the lessons I learned last year in life, training and business. Lets dive in!

After 4-8 weeks of high intensity/max effort strength work – working bench and squats once per week each - dropping the volume and the intensity but working bench and squats twice per week added an average of 2kg of bodyweight to ALL my rugby clients.

The emotional stress for psyching up for max effort training and the physical stress it creates can only be maintained for a short period (~6 weeks) when also playing another sport.

High frequency ‘easy strength’ programs kick ass and allowed me to place 4^th in this years UK Strongest Athlete Competition at Strength and Performance Gym after just 5 weeks of a simple program.

To absolutely dominate your sport, pick 3-5 exercises that maximally stimulate the muscle groups and movements required by your sport and perform 2 sets of 3-5 reps for 4-5 days each week, going no heavier than 85% of your max….unless you feel super strong on a certain day!

Strength and conditioning programs should aim to get the maximum possible results using minimum effort – AKA do 2-3 exercises and go home!

Instead of putting up a record board at the gym we put up a training max board. Everyone can track and judge their progress against their fellow trainees, but no one is ever put on a pedestal. This has given better morale for the younger/weaker clients but the strongest clients can still have a sense of pride!

Performing 2 sets of 30 press-ups for 100 days straight will add some arm size and is a good test of your discipline. I was impressed by the effect that remembering to practice my press-ups had on meal preparation, recovery work and even cleaning the house. It’s a great way to discover that you’re actually an extremely disciplined person, or to develop that quality in the first place….plus who doesn’t want bigger arms!

Performing 2 sets of max reps on ring push-ups and ring pull-ups 5 days a week for 4 weeks added 3 reps to my pull-up rep max, added 1kg of bodyweight and allowed me to bang out 69 press-ups in 60 seconds! However a few things to note:

High frequency/high volume/low intensity training made my strength levels drop on the BIG exercises (bench, deadlift) AND I performed bench press and deadlift 1-2 times a week to maintain strength. Don’t do this type of training for more than 6 weeks or your strength levels will drop significantly.

My muscles ached liked hell for the first week of high frequency press-ups, and then my joints ached for the whole month! If you do this, you must stretch and do mobility work for the shoulders, elbows and wrists. You have been warned!

I did ring press-ups purely because my right wrist hurt so much from being in a loaded and extended position all the time in standard ‘on the floor’ press-ups. The rings allowed a much straighter wrist and completely solved that nagging wrist pain. But still, I wasn’t playing any other sport at the time and could recover.

The Juggernaut Method by Chad Wesley Smith is awesome. When paired with Wendlers 5/3/1 program for assistance work it’s phenomenal. Perform your main exercise using juggernaut then perform one assistance exercise using 5/3/1. For example you may deadlift using juggernaut then do 5/3/1 for your squat. Then on squat day simply swap the methods. Do this for bench and military press and you’ve got a method that is guaranteed to add strength.

Most of my clients only come in twice per week and so juggernaut method fits in nicely, but for those that come 3-5 times a week I still prefer a high frequency ‘easy strength’ type of program.

Saying to myself, ‘I am going to have a good day/I’m having a good day’, lifts my mood 100% of the time, if I’m doing something I don’t like it makes the day go quicker/easier and generally I can have a laugh and smile even if the task I’m working on sucks.

Do not let yourself get drawn in by negative or unexpected situations; the only person that’s going to help you is YOU. Stay conscious of what you need to do to succeed, learn to change plans on the go and keep smiling!

Giving gifts, sharing food or helping a friend move house and other ‘giving’ activities all give your brain a sense that ‘there’s enough to go round’ and usually gets rid of money worries or feelings of helplessness. Just go and make someone else smile! You’ll instantly feel good.

Plan for your success, make goals, review them, tweak them, tell everyone what you are aiming for, get a big whiteboard and write all your goals on, create a vision board with pictures of every toy, holiday and future home you could ever desire and this will become both your plan of action and your driving force for achieving it! BTW – Whilst I still enjoy cutting out pictures from brochures and catalogues, Pinterest is absolutely awesome for making nice lists of materialistic things online or on your mobile.

Running a business will bring out any issues or self doubts you have. But you won’t earn more money until you learn to deal with all of these issues and improve as a person! So fully believe you’ll earn more money and you will, unfortunately the opposite is also true.

Deciding to earn more/get more clients/change your job and taking immediate action is literally the key to being successful.

Having a guilt-free day off on any day of the week is always good for my motivation. No working on my businesses at all! On these days I love to go to Starbucks, walk around Macclesfield forest or just sit and do nothing. The brain does get fatigued and resting helps it grow!

Know WHY you want to achieve a certain goal and one of two things will happen; either you realise you don’t know why you want it and you should stop working towards it, or you instantly gain clarity and drive.

The months that I meticulously measured my progress on an excel spreadsheet were my most profitable months.

Writing down goals for the next 90 days and putting them up in front of your desk or on the fridge just plain works! Do this four times each year and you’ll have set goals all year round, and probably smashed a few (if not all) out of the park!

The most important thing I could recommend to anyone who wants to have a fun and successful life is to read books! Last year I read all of these books (and some more I can’t remember):

Easy strength – Dan John and Pavel Tsatsouline
Never Let Go – Dan John
The $100 start-up – Chris Guillebeau
4 Hour Body – Tim Ferriss
The Origin of Our Species – Chris Stringer
The Pilgrimage – Paulo Coelho
Thus Spoke Zarathustra – Friedrich Nietzsche
The Chimp Paradox – Steve Peters
Choosing the life you want and having it too – Simon Tregellas
Never Eat Alone – Keith Ferazzi
Start a freedom business – Colin Wright
Moneyball – Michael Lewis
No Easy Day – Mark Owen
Emergency – Neil Strauss
Juggernaut Method – Chad Wesley Smith
Power, Speed, Endurance – Brian Mackenzie
Born to run – Chris McDougall
Living life aggressively – Mike Mahler
Passion to profits – Ryan Lee
The alchemist – Paulo Coelho

Travelling to other countries instantly gives me perspective on my life. Specifically, I can be proud of my success (my business and daily work paid for me to travel!), creative ideas come to me much more easily and most importantly I can relax! So often my focus is on other people, such as my clients, that I can completely forget to have my own quiet time.

Taking a notebook with me whenever I travel always comes in handy. New training/experiment ideas, money-making plans and notes on how I can live an easier and more fulfilling life all seemingly come out of thin air when I’m on holiday. The notebook catches them all!

Not speaking a foreign language makes me feel stupid and rude at the same time. I have been learning German ever since I landed back in the UK.

Visiting other countries can inspire new goals and put existing goals into perspective. For example, new goal may be to learn a new language, but you also learn that you can’t work all the time if you want to holiday in cool places!

People WILL misunderstand what you do at least 50% of the time, so be clear about what you do and what unique benefits they’ll get.

Last year I began the process of interviewing other coaches and elite athletes for this blog. This led to an awesome discovery….NETWORKING! Talk to other people who do what you do, and generally who are on a higher level than you, and all manner of doors will open.

I often feel overwhelmed with how big my goals are, and/or how much I need to get done in one day. To help with my focus and productivity I downloaded a free countdown timer on my computer and set it to 45 minutes. Now I just try to finish 1-2 things on my to-do list every 45 minutes by playing ‘beat the clock’……usually I can do more in 2-3 hours than most people seem to do all week. Just change your focus and work faster!

One great tip from Tim Ferriss (author of the four hour workweek/body/chef) is to write down everything you’ll need to master a new project on ONE piece of paper. Now you’ve got a handy list of everything you need to focus on, and as it’s on a little piece of paper it is much less overwhelming too.

In January last year I joined Ben Coomber’s Body Type Nutrition site as I’d just finished a ‘dirty bulk’ and the joke was on me. Nearly 15 stone of bodyweight and I had seemingly only gained fat! I learned to be consistent, to eat more vegetables, to eat low carb/high fat/high protein and lost a load of weight within the first 8 weeks. Diet is important, and is something that I used to overlook.

I have a glass of red wine 3-4 times a week in the evenings. Learning to appreciate it has been extremely positive on my life as it’s like starting a new mini-hobby. It’s sociable (providing you aren’t drinking alone!), relaxing and spending 10 minutes a week focusing on learning about wine and buying a new and interesting bottle is a brilliant distraction for the mind. I’ve done the same thing for ‘real’ coffee beans too!

Having a 20 minute nap most days makes me feel happier, more alert and more motivated. Plus in theory means I don’t have to sleep for as long in my main nightly sleep. More free time means more fun stuff can be done!

All these lessons are things I learned the hard way. Sometimes these lessons were fun to learn, other times they were extremely painful. Read and absorb all of this information and put it to work in your own life.

Have a great year in 2013!

Ant