Move That Gluteus Maximus and Quit Whining

It is mid Summer and traffic at the gym has returned to normal, as 99% of all those hell bent on making changes to their health and fitness and getting a hard, buff, sexy body for summer have said screw it, thrown in the towel, and gone right back into allowing their unhealthy lifestyle habits to take charge of their life. If you want something you need to do what it takes to get it! Whether that be loosing body fat, building lean muscle, improving your sport/activity or life performance you are not going to get it with a potion, pill, or 3 minute per day, 1 day per week “revolutionary breakthrough” workout. You are going to get it when you figure out and buy into the fact that it takes a day in, day out effort to get results.

Your performance in life defines you and the level of your performance is dictated by your preparation. That preparation is a series of habits that are all designed for your specific, optimal health and performance. To satisfy yourself and your work, sport or family team your performance has to be the best you are capable of. To perform your best you need to be in a state of optimal fitness. We all know when we look into the mirror if our performance was the best we could give. If it was we feel good, if not we know it and if we continue to underachieve we stop looking in the mirror and detach ourselves from our decline and let it live a life of its own.

I have trained, coached or consulted with over 1000 clients and players in the last 25 years. I wish I could say that everybody I have been associated with had successfully met their goals, as that is my goal. I can say that those who stuck with it and followed my guidance where all successful in attaining their goals. I can design a program that will get your goal met as long as that goal is realistic, but, you have to do your homework exercise, follow the meal plan as prescribed and show up for your workouts. I have helped countless clients and players totally rebuild their physiques, increase their on the field/court performance, speed, agility and quickness. Those that where successful all had the discipline to follow the plan, those that washed out always had excuses and couldn’t do the homework and/or show up for the work consistently. Besides the fitness or conditioning goal accomplishments those that were successful gained much satisfaction from creating sound health and wellness habits in their lifestyle. and felt good about themselves for having taken control of their destiny and disciplining themselves to create those habits in the training and diet.

In our contrived, politically correct society we allow and, at times encourage people to accept mediocrity. Many of the world's most respected health, fitness and medical organizations are reducing their recommendations regarding wellness in fear of more of the public throwing in the towel because they don’t have the will to take responsibility for their life and do it right. Lyle McDonald, Diet guru and Author of the Ketogenic Diet wrote in his forum:
"From a public policy standpoint, there's that huge trade off: Get a small improvement in health (and presumably decrease health-costs) by getting folks to do something, or risk a much larger dropout rate by telling them to work harder. They keep scaling back their recommendations and they still can't get the majority of people to do it. Something is going to be better than nothing, I suppose."
Having the luxury of not being politically correct I say that is bull *&%#, horse *&%# or maybe chicken *&%#, whatever the type it is definitely *&%#. I say why bother to add a couple of unproductive years to a pathetically unhealthy life or go from grossly obese to moderately obese and all the while feel bad about yourself and stress over your limited, negligible attempt to create a state of wellness. I say why bother to do it at all if you are not going to do it right and finish the job. I say just ignore it and continue on in your habits of self abuse and enjoy whatever superficial gratification you gain from your debauchery minus the worry and stress.

Then again, maybe I have it all wrong and people are helpless victims of a conspiracy created by the power-elite through mind control substances in fast food and subliminal messaging on prime time "reality shows" to generate a weak minded, physically feeble population thus limiting the resistance to their paramount need of manipulating the masses to continue their rule.

Greg Alario

www.OptimalPerformanceFitness.com