Complete body transformations seem like a miraculous feat. There’s nothing like an amazing before-and-after picture to stoke the inspirational flames of someone looking to go from couch potato to fitness buff. Yet, the number of people who succeed in complete body transformations seems to be quite low. Anecdotally, the vast majority of people I know that have tried to take hold of their health fail. As a result, transformation is often regarded as a white unicorn. But why?





I train people to achieve these transformations at a very high success rate. In fact, I have yet to have a trainee who has given me 100% and not yielded phenomenal results. But I am not saying this to brag. There is nothing magical about me as a trainer, and my trainees are normal people, mostly with sub-par genetics. Rather, these results stem from a common set of attitudes and procedures that allow people to transform their bodies at will. Without the right knowledge and attitudes, people end up spinning their wheels and never getting the body they want; they fall into that crowd that never sees results and then gives up. But by learning about the factors that have brought my trainees success, you can go a long way toward a better, healthier body:

They are analytical about transformation. They obsess over progression and “leveling up”

People that make successful transformations obsess over tracking their body weight and the progress they make in the gym. They change gears when they do not meet their targets. Think that tracking takes a lot of time? Trust me – the amount of time you spend tracking makes up for the amount of time you would otherwise spend spinning your wheels by a factor of ten.

A successful client of mine - let’s call her K - went to the gym religiously for four years, but looked the same year in and year out. She would go to the gym, do the same weight/reps/exercises every time, then leave. When I had K analyze why she remained stagnant, she realized it was because she was not progressing her weights. I made her track every weight and rep of every exercise, and focus on beating that weight/reps the following week. Within 12 weeks, she made more progress than she had in the previous 2 years (went from squatting 65 lb for reps to 155 lb for reps) and actually placed in an amateur bodybuilding competition. The need to progress, in order to truly transform, is one of the reasons that small steps alone are not enough. (p.s. You can only “progress” on pushups alone so many times until you need to find yourself a barbell).

Here is K before and after she became analytical about working out (12 weeks apart)

They have no limiting beliefs

Some common excuses that I hear:

1. “My whole family is fat…. My body isn’t meant to have a 6-pack.”

2. “There is no way that I can be disciplined enough to diet or count calories.”

3. “I’m a super busy guy… I can’t go to the gym 3-4 times a week.”

Jeez…

1. Eat less crap

2. Buy a notebook

3. Stop wasting time watching Lost (to steal one from Gary Vaynerchuk).

One of my most successful trainees - we’ll call him J - is a former 300 lb guy obsessed with video games (surprisingly common in people who’ve made huge transformations). One day he woke up and said “I want to be a bodybuilder.” So, J spent a lot of time learning about weight loss and muscle building and is now a fitness buff/geek at 180 lbs. Instead of limiting beliefs, all of my trainees: love learning (which include finding little diet hacks and questioning common nutritional beliefs) and know when they’re making excuses.



They’re smart about working out

In one of my first forays into losing weight when I weighed 220 lbs or so, I did intense balls-to-the-walls-until-you-vomit cardio for two weeks. Know the result? I gained 2-3 lbs, and none of that was muscle. (Damn you leptin!) If you think you should be in the gym hours every day sweating your ass off, I suggest you pick up Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Body. This ties back to my first point about analyzing what works and what doesn’t. There is the correct way to transform your body… and then there’s the blind, maniacal, ineffective, and surprisingly dangerous way that the media propagates on shows like The Biggest Loser. There isn’t enough room in this blog post to explain the correct way (though I do give free personal training to those who are truly passionate… email me if you’re interested at richard@fitocracy.com), but it takes a lot more consistency and heart than sweat.

They think about fitness like a game. Sure you’re going to stall or “die” on certain levels , but you have a ton of lives.

In fitness, screwing up is just like losing a life and starting at your last save point. Just get back on track and try to move forward. Unfortunately for many, they think of fitness as a one-time race with no end in sight. If they start slipping up, they think that the game is over and go about living their formerly slovenly lifestyles. When you slip up, the game is far from over. Just get back on track and keep progressing. Even if you took a step back, you can always eventually beat the level you’re on and move forward. The great thing about thinking about fitness as being a game is that you have a ton of lives.

In reality though, you only have one, so don’t waste it. Play the fitness game.