The Functional Movement Symposium (Coffee, Wafels & Argentinian Steak).

This is an overview of The Functional Movement Symposium hosted by Human Motion, that was held just outside of Amsterdam on Sunday 13th October.

The speakers on the day were Kyle Kiesel, Lee Burton, Mark Scappaticci, Behnad Honarbakhsh, Craig Liebenson and Gray Cook.

Firstly, I have to say Amsterdam is the friendliest city in the world and really does live up to the stereotype, everyones on a bicycle or tram, every other shop is a coffee shop (normal ones and special ones) or a bar. It also appears to be where Supermodels are harvested from. So after spending the first day wandering around the town with my colleague Nick and my girlfriend Tiss, drinking coffee, eating cake, partaking in several local beers, eating a very tasty Argentinian steak (why are there so many Argentinian steak houses in Amsterdam?), having a wafel with cream on, getting lost and being constantly rained on it was time for an early night to catch the shuttle bus the next morning at 7am to the symposium venue.

As my notes on the day were taken through a haze of sleep deprivation, caffeine and micro brewery beer any mistakes or mis-quotes are my own fault.

Coffee and Cake Amsterdam style (Nick 'our man in Amsterdam' Heasman on the left)

First talk of the day was Kyle Kiesel & Lee Burton - A Systematic Approach For Exercise Design.

Kyle Kiesel kicked off the presentation (he had been standing in the doorway of a hotel in central Amsterdam with us at 7am waiting for the shuttle bus too).

It started with a brief overview of the Functional Movement Screen, which I won't repeat here as I am assuming you are familiar with it. Then Kyle did a live FMS screening on a guy from the audience, he scored a 13, which is below the cut off point of 14 (I think the guy may have scored higher if he wasn't wearing supertight Euro skinny jeans!). Interestingly, even though the guy said he wasn't in pain, because of his borderline score, lack of smooth movement and high threshold strategies (grimacing to do simple movements) Kyle then did some additional SFMA screening. This was interesting stuff, but I think most of us want to know what we then do with the screen information, how do we construct a program with this information?

Lee Burton then took over, and went through a simple checklist. What do they (the client) not need? Correctives? Conditioning? What do they need? What do they not want? What do they want?

Using the example of a young American football player, Burton then went through the other information you need, such as medical history. This was good to see, as all too often people can become obsessed with the minutiae of movement assessment and forget about the case history of the person in front of them. Have they had previous injury or surgery, what goals do they have? In the case of the American football player, previous shoulder surgery, his age (17), positional needs are all addressed in the program even if the screen presents as non painful and symmetrical.

It was good to hear Burton talk about give and take with a client as well, as any of us who design programs all day know, you have to give the client a bit of what they want, a little bit of what they need and challenge them enough without breaking them down and equally not spend an hour doing correctives if its not needed.

In the case of the young football player a circuit of mobility exercise including T-spine rib rolls and Turkish Get Ups were put into his warm up. Mobility or motor control work can also be supersetted with strength work, so Burton still had power cleans, box jumps and kettlebell strength moves in the young athletes program.

Bag to prove I actually went to it

This whole concept is expanded on further in the DVD The Future Of Exercise Program Design - which I only watched yesterday. If you are involved in program design or writing programs in anyway I think this DVD is required viewing, especially the Alwyn Cosgrove section, as he uses several real world examples of clients and their movement screens and how you use this in conjunction with other information to construct a program.

Other points of note from this talk were

• The re-tear rate of ACLs after surgery is 20-30%!
• Back pain can be because of excessive core activation, not a weak core, a motor control issue
• Lack of mobility can = instability

The next presentation was by Mark Scappaticci, entitled Functional Integrated Therapy - Optimising Performance.

 I must confess I had never heard of this guy before, which goes to show some of the best people in the world aren't promoting themselves on the internet and social media all day long, because they are out there working with clients and athletes on a daily basis.

I enjoyed this presentation, even if by Scappaticci's own admission, it's something he only put together a few hours earlier. But hey, when a guy has been to the last 6 Olympic Games with the Canadian team and consulted with the GB Olympic team it's worth listening to what he says.

Scappaticci's background is a chiropractor, and was there treating Donovan Bailey when he broke the 100m world record. He has his own assessment system, and like all good systems whether it be FMS, DNS (Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilisation) or Scappaticci's FIT - they have more things in common than they don't.

His first point was to asses the body as a global structure and look for areas of increased tension/ forces. It is surprising that assessing as a global structure is still really not part of mainstream physiotherapy in the country (UK), it is still very much look at the injured area in isolation, whereas Osteopaths, DNS, FMS, NKT etc all seem to assess globally first.

He then outlined his systems theory - the sphere of optimal performance needs:

Optimal biomechanics

Optimal nutrition (at this point Mark informed us that if you go into any Olympic village food hall two thirds of the track and field athletes are in the line for McDonalds. Yes, sorry to disappoint but genetics is a factor and even elite athletes are not optimal)

Optimal rest

Optimal program design

Optimal technical skill

Optimal mental focus

Optimal adaption to stress

Optimal restoration

And we don't want to wait for the first injury, we want to be able to predict it and prevent it before it happens.

Optimal biomechanics need the neurosensory system, soft tissue and joint all to be working optimally.

An injury will result in different compensations in different people, for example an ankle injury may result in a different sensorymotor adaption depending on the individual (for example, the glutes switch off to protect the ankle resulting in hip or knee issues - my words here) and world class athletes are masters at compensation. Poor mechanics result in increased stress on tissue.

"Outcomes are only as good as your ability to assess." - Scappaticci

Another interesting point is to separate the clinical diagnosis from the causative diagnosis. For example, in my field, you have been diagnosed with a disc bulge at L4/L5 but what caused it? The weak link breaks but the structures away from it may be the things that are not working. (Joint by Joint theory anyone?)

Scappaticci also went through the injury mechanism - injury leads to reduced oxygen level in the area, an increase in alpha procollagen which causes scar tissue. This may show up as abnormal tension in the fascia long after an injury has 'healed'.

The fact that someone is afraid to move may drive pain signals was another point that resonated with me, I see this all the time with chronic back pain or people afraid to squat because their knees hurt.

Scappaticci stated that you need to have a treatment strategy 'power of intention, what are your goals?'

Other points

• Poor posture is a a barrier to optimal performance
• Do sports specific testing where appropriate. A poor assessment doesn't mean they are poor at their sport.
• Can I do something to enhance performance, if not I might leave it alone
• Taping  (like kinesio, rocktape) affects the nervous system
• Use whatever tools you've got - dry needling, fascial abrasion (a tool invented by Mark, to me it looks like a bit like a gua sha or graston thing, though Mark assured us it was different, but at 690 euros for the tool set I think I might follow Leon Chaitow's advice from when I saw him talk 'use a jam jar lid!')

At the end Mark got the guy on stage who had previously done the FMS with Kyle at the start, his active straight leg raise had been asymmetrical with the left leg no where near 90 degrees. Mark did some dry needling in the guys sacro-illiac area for literally about 10 seconds and then retested the guys leg which went up about another 30-40 degrees. Would it stick? Mark said he didn't know. What makes the best the best is they are also humble, sometimes you don't know why something works, it just does, but you gotta have a system. And you've gotta assess and test, treat then retest..

Next up was a practical session with Behnad Honarbakhsh (who also happened to be standing outside the central Amsterdam hotel at 7am waiting for the bus) called Reset Techniques for the Thoracic Spine.

First point form Behnad was to define a reset technique as 'anything without the active participation of the client'. And any change you do manage to make has to be set. And the technique you use should be based on your diagnosis.

I believe Behnad is a Canadian Osteopath and also teaches the SFMA course. I got the impression quite a few people in the room had taken the SFMA course during the week as Behnad asked certain questions about anatomy of the ribs and spine; the Symposium was the culmination of a week of courses including FMS, SFMA, dry needling and so on. This practical session was very much aimed at the manual therapists in the room, as it involved manipulation and visceral techniques. So if you are a Chiro or Osteo you can do this stuff, if you are a coach you can't. (my girlfriend is in her 4th year at Osteo school and currently one of her electives is visceral manipulation, so this is very much her field).

The session started by doing an assessment on a guy attending the symposium. If you aren't involved in manipulative techniques then this is still interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, 'the opportunity for compensation is greatest standing' and 'mobility takes precedence over motor control'. Which means, yes, looking at standing posture but then look at other postures and see if things change. If a problem is coming from the head and neck down, it will still be there in a seated position, an asymmetrical head position will stay asymmetrical, if it is coming from the feet up it will disappear during seated posture. So it gives you an idea where your treatment or corrective exercise strategy should start.

Behnad then went through reset techniques for breathing, ribs and visceral manipulation. To be honest learning practical techniques in these type of sessions is almost impossible, as what you need to do is observe and then go away and practice. Also, I think for a lot of the group it wasn't relevant, as like me they aren't going to do visceral manipulation. And even things like breathing resets which can be quite simple still take time to learn and practice (as I know from DNS).

Take home points were though-

• Don't discount the viscera referring pain, we tend to think in musculoskeletal issues and forget about the major organs and how for example the liver is attached to your diaphragm, so can influence breathing
• The driver of a problem is the thing that changes the other one. For example, if you manipulate a rib and breathing improves, then the rib was driving the breathing disorder.

Next up was Craig Liebenson - Building a Durable Athlete - Introduction of the Prague School and athletic development.

For me (and my colleague Nick) this was the stand out presentation of the day. Although, I have heard audio interviews with Craig Liebenson talking to Stuart McGill, I have never seen an entire lecture from him or seen him in person. It was one the most galvanising and inspirational talks I have seen.

And I almost didn't go to this one, as I have done DNS courses A, B and C and have a fair grasp of what the Prague School does. But this talk wasn't really about the Prague school, it was about bringing everything together, a call to arms if you will.

DNS and all that jazz source: rehabps - facebook page

A few key quotes from Liebenson

"Pain is not an early warning system, its already too late, the damage is done."

"Assess without expectation"

All too often we have a preconceived idea about what we will find or what a client wants or needed. But it's not about us, it's about that persons quality of life.

"Ensure competency before adding capacity"

And don't be "a prisoner to protocols". Liebenson was very much in the camp of movement philosophy and similarities between the likes of Janda, the developmental model and the FMS. Yes, the assessments may be different, but there are some underlying principles of movement that drive everything. You assess and then you analyse and then he gave us the classic Karel Lewit quote

"He who treats the site of pain is lost"

Maybe they should write this above the door of every physio department in the country.

Then Liebenson gave us some stats on MRI and CT false positives. For example 30% of 30 year olds will have a discogenic issue on an MRI but will not have pain. And also a Korean study I don't have the reference for - basically quality of life must match quantity, there is no point living longer if our functional capacity dramatically decreases and your levels of pain go up. Our job is to get people moving better and more often.

Other key points from Craig

• After injury tissues heal but muscles learn. An echo. Guarding.
• Ankle sprain -brain switches off the glute to allow ankle to heal
• A  fine line between building and breaking
• Get Strong first, he referenced Pavel Tsatsouline here
• And adopt a middle way.

Liebenson then quotes another person I had never heard of, Henk Kraaijenhof, but turns out to be a famous Dutch coach and another person too busy being awesome to bother writing a book I guess

"Train as much as necessary, not as much as possible. As much as is necessary in order to improve."

and then another Lewit quote

"The first treatment is to teach the patient to avoid what harms him."

This very much echoes Stu McGills advice and something that is easily forgotten in our rush to use fancy techniques and exercises. And then Janda again

"The brain thinks in terms of movements, not individual muscles."

Old Vlad Janda was ahead of his time. Then there was a quote from Laird Hamilton, the big wave surfer. I forgot to write it down. But it was very much in the vein of movement quality and authentic movement. What I liked about this lecture was Liebenson brought all these disparate sources together, whether it be Laird Hamilton, Greek Philosophers, Dutch coaches, Lewit and Janda from the Prague School or Pavel with the kettlebells and showed the thread that connected them all. Authentic quality movement is writ large in all their philosophies. And I like the fact that someone like Liebenson is constantly learning and remaining humble and in wonder at the human body like us all (he said a couple of years ago he didn't know what a deadlift or kettblebell swing was). A true renaissance man for the new rehab renaissance.

A final quite from Janda

"Time spent in assessment will save time in treatment."

And then echoing the DNS approach - every exercise is a test.

DNS - everything is connected. Source: rehabps, prague school facebook page

And then Craig made us all stand up, and reach for the ceiling, decompress the spine, and breathe to engage the core and bring the ribs down (it is always surprising that on most fitness courses and lectures you spend all your time sitting down in a terrible posture, doing exactly what you tell your clients not to do).

And lastly a call to arms

"The world has stopped moving."

Sedentarism (did Liebenson just make this word up?!) is this generations smoking. People aren't moving and its killing them.

To finish a clip from www.designedtomove.org



And up last, the big man himself Gray Cook - Cooking with Gray.

At this point I think we are all flagging. The symposium has been going since 8.30am, its now pm and we got up at 6am (5am UK time).

Gray Cook

Gray Cook has the ability to bring it back to basics, to reduce it all down to its essentials. To make you think about the very basis of it all.

In the lecture Cook went through the principles of movement as outlined in his book Movement. You need principles, a checklist, a system.

"Movement is a behaviour."

If you are in a gym or fitness facility you are 'the front line of defence, we do fitness a little differently here'. Never forget that if you are doing this stuff you are still in the minority. Maybe there were 50 or so people in the room listenening to this lecture, that's 50 people in the whole of Europe. Yes, if you use these things you are in the minority. To echo what Alwyn Cosgrove says in the Future of Exercise Design - if you are in this room and continually learning, or doing this stuff you are in the top 0.5% in the country.

Anyway back to Gray, some key points

• You need two perspectives - movement & performance or movement and impairment
• Mobility before motor control (as stated in previous lectures)
• What is dysfunction? We talk about it all the time, but whats the definition
• If we compensate the workout may be harder but not efficient. If you can't squat, trying to get someone to do 20 loaded squats is going to be hard for them but is just going to break them down or injure them or produce a load of inflammation and cortisol which may be detrimental to their goals such as weight loss.
• Total body tension doesn't over stress joints - such as in the deadlift
• Core may not be globally weak, it might be how it responds in one pattern
• Don't overkill corrective exercises.
• Delete the insulting movements
• They could be too sedentary or too specialised

And that was that. A video clip from the Erwan Le Corre and Gray Cook video, in which my girlfriend wondered if Erwan was single.

Any questions? Of course, at this point I couldn't think of any, no one else could either. Afterwards I thought of some questions
1) Will the movement screen always be the same 7 movements or will some get added or deleted?
2) Behnad had mentioned a breathing screen/assessment earlier - will it get added in?
3) And a question from my colleague Nathan - why no hinge pattern in the FMS assessment? There is a squat movement but no deadlift movement, why only multi segmental flexion in the SFMA not in FMS?

But of course, none of  that got asked. And before you know it, we're all back on the shuttle, including Gray and the FMS guys (I thought Gray might drive us all in the movement bus, like the equivalent of the Scooby Doo Mystery Wagon but no such luck).

In my mind this was well worth going to, for 149 euros. A chance to meet like minded people, realise 'you are not alone' and inspires you to carry on.

And before we knew it, we were lost in the Amsterdam rain again and then drinking Heineken in a small bar.

Micro brewery beer menu - I guess there is a reason this picture is blurred

Take home messages

• If you're not assessing then you are guessing
• You gotta have a system, principles are more important than methods
• Dutch women (and men) are hot
• I can't read a map

Smith Machine Hip Thrust (Yes, I Found A Use For The Smith Machine)

Unless you spend your time hanging out at LA Fitness and reading back issues of Flex magazine you are probably aware of an exercise called the Barbell Hip Thrust as popularised by The Glute Guy Himself Bret Contreras.

Contreras has shown this exercise to have high levels of glute activation and if you want to have a strong booty this is a 'go to' exercises. However, I have noted that many women seem to avoid it for a several reasons:

1. They have to venture into the freeweight area and negotiate guys doing their third chest and bicep workout of the week and have to put up with their braying stares as they set up.
2. The set up can be awkward for both men and women. But I think especially for women, as they can probably hip thrust some heavy weights, normally way more than they can bench press and in many cases probably more than they can squat. So loading up the bar and getting set up can take time.
3. They then have to position themselves under the bar and bridge up. This requires them to stabilise the bar with their hands and I have a had a few people who are not so confident about this.
4. One of the common errors I see, is people drifting up the bench, or 'travelling' thus turning it into more of a leg press, as their body tries to desperately avoid activating their dormant posterior chain.

Of course, it turns out I didn't invent the Smith Machine version but I like it for several reasons

1. Set up is easier. You can load up the bar and then when you are ready twist it and let the weight down onto your hips.
2. No need to worry about stabilising the bar with your hands. It's going to stay in place. And at anytime you can re-rack.
3. In the video you can see that the Smith Machine we are using doesn't let you go all the way down to the bottom and get a fuller range of movement. At first I thought this would be a problem but it turned out to be advantageous. Firstly, it allows for a more continuous tension on the glutes. Secondly, its easier to get out of at the bottom. Thirdly, it really lends itself to pumping and partial reps.
4. The bar moves in a vertical path. It's much harder to cheat on this movement. I've had people who could only feel the traditional hip thrust in their back or hamstrings, despite coaching and cueing. As soon as I put them on the Smith Machine version they could feel their glutes activating for the first time. It is much harder to travel up the bench and turn it into a leg press, as you will feel the bar moving down your legs away from you.

Several women in the gym have tried this and they have all said that this is best glute activation/soreness they have felt with any exercise.

I like moderately high reps with this exercise, sets of 15-20 reps and finishing some sets with partial reps and iso holds for good measure.

The only issue you are going to have is accessing the Smith Machine if there is a group of 16 year olds on it doing partial assisted 1 rep max bench press day or some old skool fella doing his behind the neck press supersetted with shrugs workout. 

This doesn't mean don't do glute bridges and thrusts with the barbell or bodyweight versions (another version I like is with the sand bag) but its something else to add into the exercise tool box.

Now I think about it, there are a few other exercises that the Smith Machine is good for if you have access to one:

1. Inverted Rows (also known as fat man pull ups or as named by James Exall 'Lazy Boys')
2. Side stepping over it like a hurdle for hip mobility. This is good because you can adjust the height of the bar
3. Press up progression, start with the bar high, steep body angle, progress down to a flatter press up position. Similar to what you can do with a suspension trainer/ TRX, but more stable.
4. Chest/ Lat stretch
5. Possibly a one leg squat variation.
6. Hanging your coat on
7. Frees up the power racks and bench presses because of all the people doing their partial rep bench presses and squats on it.

I will add in videos of the above exercises at some point. In the mean time give the Smith Machine Hip Thrust a go.

Random Sunday Ramblings (All Things Fitness)

Here are some random ramblings about a host of health and fitness related topics. Some could be an entire article in themselves, some just save me ranting on twitter or facebook.

In no particular order:

Pilates/ Yoga/ Corrective Exercise.

• Pilates isn't magic regardless of what your Physio/ Chiro/ Osteo/ GP tells you. Many of the people recommending it have never actually done a class themselves, so have no idea why they are suggesting you do it. How about these health professionals learn some corrective exercise and start prescribing it properly. If you enjoy Pilates and like the idea of doing it, then do it. Same goes for yoga.
• The people who need to go to a yoga class are in the free-weights area, and the people who need to lift weights are in the yoga class.
• Stroke rehabilitation in this country sucks.
• I bet Joseph Pilates wished he copyrighted the name and franchised it (except, of course, he didn't know what the future would hold and now he's gone to the big studio in the sky).
• A large number of people starting in a gym will tell you they have an injury or previous injury. This is the norm. The injury free person is not the norm. So why don't they cover this on level 3 fitness courses. These aren't the special population, they are the population. The special population is that small group of people who have made it through life injury free with no mobility restrictions.
• Personal trainers and coaches started doing corrective exercise and ended up doing de facto rehabilitation because the physio services in this country have been a miserable failure.
• If I referred out every time I was meant to, the gym and Pilates class would be empty.

Strength Training. Gym Culture.

• Olympic weightlifting is a sport. Unless you are actually competing in the sport don't be so precious about whether triple extension exists, or whether the Chinese are using the catapult method, or if variations of the lifts have any benefit. If your goal is to be more athletic, explosive, strong and improve body composition then there is benefit to dumbbell variations, as well as sandbags, complexes and so forth. Olympic lifting is not compulsory for all athletes.
• Having said that some coaches seem to fear the Olympic lifts because they are 'so hard to coach' and they 'only have their athletes for a limited time' and they could spend their time on 'less technical more effective things.' If you have a healthy person with no restrictions then in my opinion they are no more difficult to coach than barbell squats or deadlifts. And dumbbell and sandbag variations can be taught even quicker than some of the standard  'slow' barbell lifts.
• Powerlifting is also a sport. Again squats, deadlifts and bench press can all be beneficial depending on the persons goals. But unless they are competing in a meet where gear is allowed and chemical enhancement is common place then following the program of the elite lifter may not be all you think is going to be.
• Strongman - see above.
• Ask most guys what they are doing in the gym today and they will say 'chest' or 'shoulders' or 'back & bi's'. Meaning most guys training in the gym still think in terms of body part splits and bodybuilding training. Rarely is anyone ever going to say 'deadlift strength' 'dynamic effort day' 'explosive power' or 'superficial back line fascia'. If you think things have moved on and functional training and strength training are now king, go and ask this question on a Monday evening in any standard gym and count how many people say 'Chest'.
• Most people working out do not compete in anything. Training is their hobby. They may be dedicated, train 7 days a week and obsess about their macro ratios but the only stage they are stepping on is at the local club on a Saturday night after drinking 10 tequila slammers. Yes, all they want to do is look good in a t-shirt or dress and attract the opposite sex or same sex - and I don't have a problem with that.

Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED).

• Most guys taking performance enhancing drugs don't compete in anything. A surprising number of guys (still a minority but sizeable) take test, growth hormone, clenbuterol and all sorts of other shit like tamoxifen just because they are so insecure and want to look bigger at said nightclub. They are either lazy, want results too quickly, stupid, and just maybe our society is now creating a physique ideal that many men find hard to achieve. Most of these guys look fat and bloated and should ask for their money back. Also don't forget these guys don't have a whole medical team backing them up like Lance Armstrong did, its just them in their bedroom with a needle, a sore arse and their friends assurance that this stuff is the 'good shit'. When it all goes pear shaped, our healthcare system will be picking up the pieces.
• You don't hear much about amateur endurance athletes taking PEDs, but I'm sure it must happen in the likes of ironman triathlon and even some marathons. It happens at the elite level, so why not amateurs? I can't see why male endurance athletes would be any less insecure than male weight trainers. Maybe EPO is too expensive, I don't know.

Fitness Industry.

• There is no equipment solution to the fitness industry problem of lack of participation. 
• The revolution that makes more people take part in fitness and join gyms won't be about a piece of equipment or a particular class or a cheap price or opening hours. It will be about motivation. The person who figures out how to tap into peoples intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their desires and emotions will be the person who transforms the industry and improve its current abysmal market penetration.
• Recently a sales and marketing manager asked me if 'functional fitness' is a fad. Well firstly, in my world dumbbells and barbells are functional, standing on a powerplate waving a vipr is not. Seeing as humans have been lifting weighted objects for a couple of thousand years, have been trail running ever since we were upright hominids and lifting dumbbells and weighted wands/ barbells for the last two hundred years - I would say none of these are fads. However, maybe treadmills, bikes and crosstrainers are. Most of us in the industry now started in the last 10 to 20 years, which means we came into an industry built on a model of rows of cardio equipment in health clubs, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon. This is the fad, but because its been here since we started working, it seems like the norm. In 20 or 30 years will people be laughing at us because we walked indoors on treadmills while playing sudoku on a screen bolted to the front of the machine.

Fad?

• In 2009 the second most profitable fitness operation was BeachBody who own P90X. They grossed over $900 million (source: FitPro Business magazine apr/may/june 2013). Still think you need a big room full of equipment? And P90X makes Crossfit look like they are following classic Russian linear perdiodization.
• Only 39% of consumers exercise regularly (HAFOS survey 2012) despite the fact that walking and body weight exercises are free. Access to facilities is not the issue. The average person in the UK watches 4 hours of TV per day (Ofcom, 2011) therefore people are not time poor, they have enough time to exercise if they wanted to.
• Fitness trainers are arguing about the details when most of the population aren't doing anything.
• Why is there a kettlebell community? I don't see a medicine ball community or cable machine community? People don't get so zealous about other bits of equipment except possibly...
• Barbells, there is always a false dichotomy set up online. You either only use barbells or machines. You either squat or you don't. You have to use bilateral movements or unilateral. In reality it always depends. If you train people all day, you make decisions based on the person in front of you and the equipment you have available. If you don't train people all day you have time to read Supertraining with a magnifying glass and post on forums all day. Its simple: Use the tools you have, and if you have multiple tools use the most appropriate one.
• Speaking to male friends of mine who go to the gym but are not obsessed with fitness and aren't in the industry - they like machine weights because they are convenient, they can do a quick circuit and they are easy set to set up. When I asked why they don't use the freeweights they gave all the same reasons that most women do - intimidated, too crowded, set up time and mainly the area is normally full of douches doing 50 sets on the bench with their mates while talking shit.
• You think people care about research or things have moved on - go and see how many people are still doing crunches in the gym.
• People opt out of inductions/ orientations because their previous experience tells them its going to be shit and not address their needs. You can change this by offering a quality product.
• Probably no one is going to take us seriously when the entry level to the industry is set so low. A weekend course and you can be the fitness expert in the park #beasting people #smashingit #hardcorefitness  #lawsuit  #chump.

Running.

• Running 100 miles is not logical in any way, so why do I want to do it?
• I've seen just as many injured from weight training as from long distance running. Despite this, there is a trend among strength coaches to say that if you run long distances you will end up skinny fat and injured. Which is like saying if you powerlift you will end up fat with a pec tear. Most runners get lower body injuries, most weight lifters upper body. Both have lower back injuries. It could be runners are more likely to report injury or go to a physio - but I'm guessing. Or weight training injuries such as elbow surgeries etc just are written down as being caused by training.
• People say standing on stage in a pair trunks painted brown posing is ridiculous. But 22 men on a pitch kicking a bag of air around isn't - and they are millionaires. I don't do either, but if its your passion and you enjoy it - don't listen to anyone else. This applies to all sports.
• All runners need to do some form of resistance training.
• Most runners are weak and have appalling movement screens - this doesn't mean they are bad runners.
• You can be overweight and run. And if you enjoy it and your joints don't hurt then carry on. But don't think it will help you lose weight. That stick thin female and male runner who just went past you - they probably always looked like that.
• Since I started running properly again a few years ago and started to midfoot strike more my calves have got progressively tighter. But if I stretch them will it make me a better runner or worse runner or less injury prone? Or would it make me just feel better because I was doing some flexibility work that really had no benefit?
• Barefoot running is not magic, but I quite like doing it.

Women in the gym.

• Why do so many women want to look like the bag of bones models in fashion magazines, why do they think men want them to look like that? It makes me sad.
• A good proportion of figure and fitness competitors had a back ground in gymnastics and athletics as kids. Essentially they were doing gymnastic training for 20 years and then decided to lift some weights.  If you don't have that background don't beat yourself up, its going to take more than a year to get to where they are. Without taking anything away from the figure pros with that background - I'm more impressed with the people who have lost 20kg and have been working hard for 10 years than the people who are genetically gifted with a 6 pack.
• Crossfit isn't evil. How many women did you see doing pull ups and Olympic lifting before crossfit?And crossfitters aren't the only people doing random workouts, go to any gym or any day and see what random stuff people are doing and what random stuff personal trainers are giving people. Crossfit didn't invent the random illogical workout. And once again, see above, what are you actually training for. Plus a fair amount of hot women do crossfit.
• Do women really need to train differently from men? They need to train differently to men if they have different goals for sure.

Nutrition.

• Why are they still teaching the standard food pyramid/eat well food plate on level 3 fitness courses. Where is the evidence to support it?

Official UK NHS FSA Eat Well  Plate. Foods high in fat and sugar get the same segment. Turns out coconut oil and olive oil are in the same category as high fructose corn syrup and skittles

• Intermittent fasting, low carb, paleo, carb cycling, carb back loading, vegan, vegetarian, biorhythm diet have all worked for someone at some point. It doesn't mean they will necessarily work for you. Someone do some research please.
• If you can find any evidence to support the hypothesis that a  low fat diet is better than a low carb diet for weight loss, you can submit it here and win a cash prize!
• Always check the research references people quote to support their argument. You may be surprised to find they aren't always quoting the best research and sometimes it actually says the opposite of what they are saying (thanks to Nick Heasman for this one and being research vigilant!)
• I don't like bulletproof coffee.
• I used to fear the avocado. But seasoning is the key.

Coaching.

• What works for you may not necessarily work for your clients.
• Don't be the guy who trains his girlfriend by giving her exactly the same workout you do. She probably doesn't want a day dedicated to biceps and forearms.
• Coaching is a mix of art and science. Much like practicing medicine, except we don't kill as many people with adverse drug reactions.
• Most American strength coaches are biased towards American Football, Basketball, Baseball and Ice Hockey because that's who they coach. Their information may not necessarily apply to the athletes you are coaching. This doesn't mean you can't take something from what they do, you probably can't adopt it wholesale though.
• A few years ago tempo training was all the rage, popularised by Ian King and Poliquin (before he jumped the shark and starting injecting vitamin C to boost testosterone, taking skin fold measurements of peoples chins and packing on 10 pounds of muscle by eating Guatemalan mangoes). I generally ignored tempo until I read Triphasic training. Now, I have used eccentric, isometric and concentric phases with people looking to gain strength, bodybuilders, sports players and figure athletes. I will write a separate article at some point showing how you can simply apply it to various training programmes.
• The best coaches were not the best sportsmen. As far as I am aware John Wooden wasn't a superstar basket player, Dave Brailsford never won the Tour De France (yeah, I know he is not technically a coach), Tony Minichiello wasn't a Decathlon world champion and one of the greatest running coaches of all time - Brother Colm O'Connell - arrived in Kenya as an Irish missionary with no experience of coaching professional runners. The most talented and successful athletes can't always tell you how they did it or coach others.
• This stuff should be fun, don't take it too seriously.

Breaking Bad.

• The second half of the final season starts on Netflix next week. Huzzah!

Hank Schrader

Tortuga: �Hey white boy, my name�s Tortuga. You know what that means?�

Hank: �If I have to guess, I�d say that�s Spanish for asshole.�

A Review of Current Trends in Movement Training with Dr Duncan French.

This a review of the Current Trends in Movement Training video which is available from here. This is a down-loadable video of a lecture and practical sessions that took place at Leeds Metropolitan University last year.

The product is produced by Brendan Chaplin, who is the head of strength & conditioning at Leeds Met Uni (just for the record I have no affiliation with either and have never met the fella). He does seem to be one of the few coaches in the UK who is trying to match and compete with the American strength coaches, in terms of setting up seminars, producing products, podcasts, interviewing coaches and setting up a brand.

And unlike most American coaches, which tend to be independent, working in private clubs etc this guy is very much coming from a university background and getting people involved who not only have coaching experience but also masters degrees, doctorates and working with high level teams. As we know, these things on their own don't necessarily mean someone is a good coach, but I commend Chaplin on trying to raise the bar on the quality of what is available for education purposes in the UK.

So what do you get for your money.

The downloadable video is 2 hours and 20 minutes long. You also get a pdf of the power point presentation which is 53 pages long. The cost of this at the moment is �67.

The first hour of the video is a class room based lecture, the remaining hour and twenty minutes consists of practical sessions covering mobility warm up drills,  co-ordination exercises, footwork drills and plyometric progressions.

Who is Duncan French?

I must confess that before purchasing this video I had no idea who Duncan French was. I bought this video on the strength of another video that I bought from the same website - a Vern Gambetta lecture and practical session (which I will review on another occasion).

Duncan French's website is here. In short he has a PhD in Exercise Physiology, has been a strength coach at the English Institute of Sport (EIS), Great Britain Basketball (yes, apparently we have a basketball team) and Newcastle United (that's a soccer team to any Americans reading). In addition, he was one of the founders of the UK Strength & Conditioning Association (UKSCA) and has been its director for 4 years. I should have heard of him but I hadn't (and yes, I am even a member of the UKSCA, so maybe they should improve their PR).

In short, he has the background and is not some chump sitting in his mothers basement who decided to release an ebook and video.

Duncan French - standard folded arms strength coach shot - comes across as a nice fella though

The lecture section.

This lasts approximately 60 minutes and is a straight film of a lecture. The sound quality is good (unlike some other products I have bought in the past from other coaches), the inter-cuts of the powerpoint are clear, so you can easily see what is being referenced, and you can follow along with the pdf of the power point.

In this section French basically outlines his movement philosophy. What I found interesting is how open minded he was in referencing a whole range of different coaches, not relying purely on the academic literature. In setting the scene of 'what is movement' he covers both Paul Cheks and Dan Johns definitions of primal movements - pushing, pulling, twisting etc. Anyone who has been involved with DNS and developmental kinesiology can find these definitions lacking, and I was pleased to hear French mentioning the true primal patterns you go through as a child from laying on your back to rolling to squatting and standing. Gray Cook even gets a mention.

The fact that a strength coach and academic is mentioning these things shows how the field has evolved. The truly humble coaches are always willing to learn and have moved beyond the usual approach of given athletes only Olympic lifts and basic strength training.

You could easily skip the lecture section and go straight to the practical stuff, and the practical session would still make sense. However, you would miss out on a some nuggets of information.

"Train things that people aren't good at. The things they have had taken out of their system." - French

 If you are coach or a personal trainer you will tend to see the same things that people have had taken out of their system - for example hip mobility and t-spine mobility are two things I see lacking in people everyday.

Another key point that can easily be missed is how someones anthropometry influences the coaching. As Duncan says, you may have the same exercises but depending who is standing in front of you, the coaching may be different.

Two key points that come across are that Kinetics are trainable and Kinematics are coachable:

Kinetics - things like force, power, stiffness are all trainable - this is the strength training part.
Kinematics - angular velocity, base of support, basically how you move - are coachable.

I think this a key point if you are a PT, coach or someone doing a bootcamp outside. Putting a bunch of exercises together is easy, what makes the best coaches better than everyone else is how they coach them. Being able to look at someone and picking out what they need to improve. As French says, coach the multi directional movement, you are not just there to provide motivation.

Some other key things that French covers in the lecture are - strength & stability, stability is not strength, stability is reflex driven. He also covers optimal posture and how bad posture increases joint loading, and will ultimately decrease ROM and decrease force production. (If you want anymore detail go and buy the product!)

French is big on principles and not practices. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, in this house we obey the laws of biomechanics!

Differential Learning.

This is obviously something that Duncan is just introducing into his coaching practice. And it is something I will write about in more detail in another post. In brief, the idea is to get away from highly structured drills. For example, rather than always having the hurdles at the same height & distance, vary the spacing, vary the height, to increase motor learning and not get stuck in fixed patterns. However, if someone is a beginner keep things structured, you need to understand the rules before you can break them.

Take away point.

The key take away point for me echoes DNS and other whole body movement approaches. (As an aside: The difference between DNS and some of these other ideas of primal movement is the shear amount of precision in the movement)

'The ankle in isolation affects everything' - French

As does the hip and the scapula. The body moves in a global pattern.

Warm up drills: 10 minutes, 18 exercises.

The next section takes place in an old school gymnasium (wall bars, ropes, balance beams) making me have a flash back to plimsolls and school PE and got me wondering if these type of gyms would actually be better for us all.

The sound quality is not as good as the lecture to begin with as it is in an echoey hall, but it does get better as this section goes on. This is a mobility warm up based on Duncan's primal movement principles. As he points out on several occasions, 'we are not re-inventing the wheel here' and these are drills he has picked up over the years from various places and some he has made up himself.

If you are familiar with the likes of Cressey's Assess and Correct, some of the stuff that Diesel Crew posts and elements of Animal Flow, Primal Move and Mov Nat then this will be familiar territory. The interesting thing is that a guy with a PhD and is the director of the UKSCA is absorbing them into his movement system and is using them with his athletes. This actually might be an area where those in the private fitness industry have always been ahead of the strength and conditioning coaches working in traditional sporting environments.

You get a lot of exercises here in a very short amount of time. I counted 18 separate exercises in just 10 minutes. And a couple were new to me. Some people would have stretched this whole section out to a stand alone product in itself! Again, if you already do mobility drills, then this may not bring anything new to the table for you.

Co-ordination exercises.

As an introduction to this section French stated that he saw these being done by a German Table Tennis coach, and like all good coaches thought 'I'm having those!'.

This is all about tempo and rhythm.

Again you get a lot of drills for your money here - I counted 15 drills in about 12-14 minutes. Some will be familiar if you have done any running technique work - things like A Skips, and some will be familiar if you have seen any of the barefoot running drills - pose running, chi running and so forth. There are some coaching cues and points for example with the A Skips that I have used since watching this video.

There are quite a few I haven't used before, if you are involved in circuit classes, bootcamps or actually training teams these would all be a good addition. What is also comforting is watching the seminar participants doing the drills, I assume they are all S&C coaches and they present with the same movement issues we see in the general population all the time, with a whole range of anthropometry.

As French says though, this is just basically hopscotch. His job and all of ours is to

 'make you a better athlete' and make the 'athletic vocabulary as big as possible' of the people you are training.

Footwork Drills & Plyometric Progressions.

For me this is the section of the video that makes the purchase worthwhile.

The foot work drill section lasts about 10 to 12 minutes and covers approximately 8 drills. This section takes place in the weights room and the video and sound quality is good.

Unless you want to lose a kneecap - don't try this - for some proper plyos see the Duncan French video

French goes through his progression from low level footwork drills to plyometric progressions. Unlike some books and videos that throw a whole load of plyos at you, this actually gives a logical progression and coaching points. The key is speed and foot contact, as French states

"Its hard to make people fast by training them slow"

You need to move the body at speed. Stop the drills if the athlete slows down or the movement quality is lost.

The last section is the plyometric progressions and lasts about 40 minutes. He goes through the principles first - deceleration before acceleration, pre-qualify the athlete with dynamic isometrics. In brief, he starts with depth jump progression, about 7 exercises; a box jump series, 5 exercises; hurdle series, where some differential learning ideas are brought in and then a travelling/ multi-directional speed section -of about 8 exercises and finally some chaos drills (back in the gymnasium) which are probably more applicable to team sports.

If you have ever read the likes of Verkhoshansky, Chu & Siff, it can be difficult to figure out an actual progression for your clients and know what coaching points to emphasise. Duncan French gives you that progression and some invaluable coaching advice.

What you don't get.

What you don't get are any upper body plyo drills, no strength training in the traditional sense and no easily printed off template you can copy. If you are looking for these things, then this is not the product for you.

In conclusion.

French finished by saying that you should be trying to make all movement look more athletic. And

"Be a thinking mans coach... don't just throw a load of drills together"

This can be applied to PTs, group trainers or coaches. Follow principles and then use your imagination.

The lines between strength coach, personal trainer, fitness coach and physical therapist are becoming increasingly blurred. The ones that will thrive will be the ones that understand movement principles and get results.

Like all these type of products, �67 is not cheap, but for me it was worth it. And Chaplin has produced & edited the product well. Do bear in mind it is an actual seminar being filmed though, things are happening live.

I have already used many of the drills and progressions with a national level hockey player, an elite distance runner and myself (for what its worth). I'll let you know the results.

Death Proof (Ambulance Blues*)

"I was home. What happened? What the hell happened?"

                                                    - Jake Holman (Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles)



(Watch the clip from the film Fearless, and if you haven't seen the film you need to go and watch it now, and then watch The Sand Pebbles. In the words of Father Ted maybe the film Fearless is a bad reference because not many people have seen it; oh well).

One minute I was looking at a spreadsheet, the next minute I was in an ambulance, and then I was in a hospital. One minute I was there, and then. Gone. Memory erased. Like anaesthesia seeping into my cortex. And then back again. Reality continued without me. Time shift.

I don't want to overplay it, I didn't meet Jimi Hendrix or Mel Siff. I didn't stare into the abyss and it didn't stare back. There was just nothing. (Worse things happen at sea for sure).

Memory.

You think life is concrete, you have control, you don't. The membrane of consciousness is easily punctured. Memory and reality are two different things, and you're walking a tight rope between them, free-fall a step away.

It turns out memory and imagination are the same (New Scientist no.2885) not separate entities. You construct what you need to survive. We create our own myth, our own narrative. What you remember is imagined.

There will be moments you amplify and play over and over again on constant loop. Other times will be lost, entire years you can't recall; the missing years.

(Mis-rembering it seems can affect whole cultures and populations, collective amnesia, everyone wearing the same rose-tinted filter. Entire decades couched in sound bites and vision bites. The media becomes our memory, music video and news clips welded together to form a false montage. Before you know your recollection is nothing more than what television told you; and you were there but you can't rely on your own version anymore).

I woke up, I was fine. Some people have it worse, they don't get a chance, ended before they started - turned into pink mist by an automatic drone strike.

Guess what, when you wake up, the first thing you think is not - 'I really should get back to work and finish that spreadsheet' - no sir.

You wake up and you're not dead, and all your faculties are still in tact. Uneasy. The first person you think of and the first idea you have are instructive. In the book The Chimp Paradox Steve Peters talks about The Life Force, the essence of you, what is important to you.

"..imagine that you are 100 years old and on your death bed with one minute left to live. Your great-great-grandchild asks, 'Before you die, tell me what I should do with my life?' (Peters, 2011:89)

  Now assuming your answer isn't 'avenge my death' then you this should be how you live your life, if not then

"...you are living a lie. Don't live a lie: it will unsettle you more than anything else."

You are not Highlander.

There can be only one and you're not him.

The gut punch realisation that you are blood and bones should bring these questions sharply into focus. You are ephemeral. You will die. You are dying.

In Western culture we are squeamish about the whole notion. We hide from it, sanitise it, keep it at arms length. Our TV news shows wars without killing and without bodies everyday. We don't want to be reminded. Eternal youth culture and the gathering of 'things' are our vaccines.

The things you own may not be biodegradable but you are.

We want to believe in order, but when entropy comes knockin' on the door it takes what it needs.

(Furthermore it seems our bodies live on the edge of chaos to stay healthy, irregularity of brain rhythm and fluctuations of heart rate during the day are designed to keep us healthy (Siff 2003). The less variable these things become the more problematic it becomes for health. Ecosystems are not the models of balance we once thought them to be, they are all on the edge of chaos and catastrophe. An erroneous belief in the order of things will not save you.)

We know its coming but we don't want to be reminded.

 "It's said that when a general returned in glory to ancient Rome, he was accompanied in his procession through the streets by a slave whose job it was to remind him that his triumph would not last forever. "Memento mori," the slave whispered into the general's ear: "remember you will die". The story may be apocryphal, but the phrase is now applied to art intended to remind us of our mortality." ( New Scientist 2887 )

On the banks of the holy river at Pushnipath you see the bodies burning everyday. Charcoal and dust. With monkeys scavenging in the water and women washing clothes in the same river a few hundred yards away; not the hygenic hospitalised version we have become accustomed to.

Your move: but what if the grim reaper wants to play chess for your life and you don't know the rules. There's a Bergman and Woody Allen reference for you there: 2 for the price of 1.

In the Hagakure 'The The Book of the Samurai� Yamamoto Tsunetomo states

"Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one�s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one�s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead."
 
Of course, the Samurai were obsessed with death and how to die. (And I doubt the Ronins sat around telling jokes). But even in the Hagakure there is acknowledgement that most right minded people don't want to die. Being scared is natural, but don't let the fear lead to inaction. The inevitable ending should galvanise you into action. In a positive way.


Wake Up.

So you wake up and go home. And for a while everything is going to be different. Everyday normality has been disturbed and you can't go back.

(forward to about 2min45secs into the clip below)



You were chugging along. You were the proverbial frog being gently heated in the pan of water, not really noticing, and then someone turned it up to boiling and  you realised - f**k I'm being cooked alive here!

In my case there was no definitive answer, you have to wait, test this, scan this. In a Mu state, Schrodingers Cat, outcome uncertain. (until eventually months down the line, someone says you're fine, we don't know, just one of those things).

At this point you have two choices, live in perpetual panic attack fear, what ifs abound, until you become paralysed by inaction. Or become death proof (note this doesn't mean become suicidal and stupid). It means accept death and when it happens is uncertain, and then start living.

Yes you can spend your time 'waiting for a moment that just don't come' or you can be one of those guys 'who washes up and then goes racing in the street'. Yes its true I learnt 'more from a 3 minute pop song than I ever learnt in school'. Sometimes, you do just need to turn the music up loud, loud enough so 'you don't have to think', the song below is a good start.

 

Punch the clock.

You can spend your time being homesick for a place you've never been, lovesick for a girl you've never known. Or get on with it.

Go to work and punch the clock, and before you know it 10 years at the post office have passed.

�Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside � remembering all the times you've felt that way.� 

 �We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.� 

 �You have to die a few times before you can really live.� 
 �what matters most is how well you walk through the fire� (All quotes Charles Bukowski)

The fortune tellers don't know anymore than you. They confuse imagination and memory too.

The past is as dead as you need it to be, the future is as bright as you want it to be. Loves will be lost, mistakes will be made, wrong turns taken. There will be the one who got away. Bad days in Yuba City and even worse days in A&E cubicles with 12 lead ECG attachments. You can't go back, you can't change a thing, only your reaction to it.

Beware though. The water is warm and inviting. Before I knew it I was punching the clock again, lost in the day to day trivialities, 'small minded people' at the place where I work, its the same everywhere. Old habits and patterns die hard. I went back, I opened that spreadsheet.

It's getting late.

Someone once said to me 'if I was going to do it, I would have done it by now' or maybe I said it, I can't recall. That statement is only as true as you want it to be.

There's a choice - be anxious, settle, become immobilised or realise this will make no difference to to the eventual outcome. These are states of being that waste time, and times in too short a supply to waste.

It's already too late. What are you waiting for? You cannot be death proof, but you can be more. It's not as bad as you think. You are defined by your actions. There are coffees to be drunk, songs to sung, trails to be run. There are lives to be lived. You're alive goddammit!

-'Can you hear that freight train?'
-'Yeah, me too honey, me too.'

(*listen to the whole song or go ahead to listen to one of the best lines ever at 6mins 30secs)



�There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.� (Hagakure)

References
New Scientist 2885
New Scientist 2887
Mel Siff (2003) Facts and Fallacies of Fitness
Hagakure
Bruce Springsteen 'Badlands' 'Racing in the Streets' 'No Surrender'
Neil Young - Ambulance Blues
Fearless - film
The Sand Pebbles - film
Charles Bukowski - various
Steve Peters  The Chimp Paradox

Forget Goals. Focus.

I've written about goal setting and SMART before, see here and here.

And I will concede that for a certain proportion of the population goals work. These tend to be the individuals who like to manage everything and control every variable, they follow their program precisely, write down everything they eat, and enter all their competitions a year in advance and plan to peak for every one. This is a small minority of people.

For most people goal setting obviously doesn't work, otherwise gyms wouldn't be full of people every January and February trying to lose weight for the umpteenth time after failing on every other occasion. And yes, many of these people would have written their goals down and made them time bound and all that, and it doesn't work.

So what is the alternative? And do all super successful set goals like we are lead to believe?

Why people leave gyms, why do they fail?

Straight up let me state that you don't have to join a gym to get fit or lose weight or get buff. Having said that, these are the reasons most people join gyms.

There just happens to be data that attempts to explain why people leave gyms. We can use this data from the microcosm of the gym, as it is informative in explaining why people fail to hit their goals in every day life as well.

The biggest drop out rates from gyms occur in the first 2-3 months. Bear in mind, this happens to be the 11-12% of the population that were motivated enough to go to a gym and join up in the first place.

Do you know the number one reason people say they leave gyms within 12 weeks? It is they didn't feel comfortable, ergo they were uncomfortable in the gym environment. They didn't feel they fitted in or it is where they belonged. There are a whole series of training courses now aimed at fitness professionals, they help the people in the fitness industry make these people feel comfortable.

Here's the problem though, no one whoever reached for a goal or tried something new felt comfortable. The very nature of trying new things is getting out of your comfort zone. If it was comfortable, they would still be sitting at home on the sofa eating Pringles.

To use the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water being gently heated, they are so comfortable they don't even realise they are being cooked.

 

The second most common reason cited by people leaving gyms is they got bored. Yes, after 2 months, which for most people is 8-16 workouts they got bored. This leads to several possible conclusions:-

1. Their every day lives are so exciting the gym just can't compete. They spend their days base jumping and wrestling bears so lifting weights is boring.
2. The program they were given is boring, do 10 minutes on the treadmill followed by 10 minutes on the recline bike forever or until you pass out from boredom.
3. They're lying, they didn't enjoy the experience, it was too hard, they didn't like it or they were too far out of their comfort zone.

I think we can dismiss  conclusion number one, as statistically a large proportion of those people will spend their days in a cubicle farm working for a faceless corporation and will go home at night and watch structured reality TV shows to numb the pain of boredom.

It is a possibility they don't enjoy the gym, but that is different from being bored. Yes, working out can be hard at first and if you don't enjoy it go and do something else. That is the first point with goals, you can be so obsessed with the end result that you forget how you are going to get there. You have to engage in the day to day process. Otherwise the end result at any cost becomes overwhelming. For example, you've decided you are going to lose half a stone in time for your holiday, a set time bound goal, but along the way you slip, you found the gym 'boring' (i.e it was f**king hard and you were out of your comfort zone) and a glass of wine here and there won't hurt, will it? Then before you know it, your holiday is in a week, so you starve yourself, do whatever it takes. Bingo, you lose half a stone, you then go on holiday, binge eat and drink and put all the weight back on.

Cubicle farm - you've already bought the farm, you just don't know it yet

You met the target, you hit the goal, but you were living in the future, never focusing on the here and now of your life. You didn't enjoy the journey, because there wasn't one, just 6 months of panic.

I can't remember the third most common reason people state as to leaving gyms after 2-3 months, its probably something like they don't like the music or they are afraid of catching MRSA from the machines. In fact, all reasons should be 'I'm out of my comfort zone, and I didn't want it enough'. Maybe, some of these people leave and go and achieve their goals anyway, but the stats on obesity and fitness would suggest not.

Goals are limited.

If you set a goal you have limited yourself. I will lose this amount of weight and no more, I will run this fast but no faster, I will lift this weight but no more. A goal can become a barrier, the 4 minute mile is a case in point, most people thought it was impossible at the time, but then one man didn't, the rest is history. Of course, most of us aren't running 4 minute miles but we still limit ourselves.

To explain this I will take a few liberties with the Central Governor Model. Tim Noakes proposed the central governor model to explain why the body stops you killing yourself during exercise, the body will maintain homeostasis at all costs, so it will make you slow down running even if you have enough fuel in your muscles, are not at your VO2 max and have not recruited all your muscle fibres. Your brain tells you to stop.

To take it a step further, if you run any distance your brain has already worked out how fast you should run and what pace you should keep, hence you run faster over 100m than you do over 40k, unless you are a complete novice or idiot and have no reference point of how fast you can run.

This helps to explain why even marathon runners sprint finish when they see the finishing line. Your brain calculates that you have enough energy and enough muscle fibres to make it to the line and says 'yes, it is safe to sprint'. The runner then collapses as soon as they reach the finish line - their goal. If the finish line was 100m closer they would have collapsed then and if it was 100m further they would have collapsed then. Their brain matched their effort to the goal distance (of course, other things are at play when people do die - sudden cardiac death, over hydration etc).

Noakes has explained that this model can be used to explain other types of fatigue and motivation

"This new interpretation is the first to allow a more reasonable description of a number of phenomena that defy rational explanation according to the traditional ��limitations�� models of fatigue. These include, among many others, the chronic fatigue syndrome, in which affected individuals experience evident fatigue at rest, and the role of psychological and motivational factors, centrally (brain) acting pharmaceutical agents, hypnosis, shouting or sudden unexpected gunshots, or other forms of distraction including music or premeditated deception on human exercise performance."

To take it a step further, if you think you can only run a certain distance or lose a certain amount of weight it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The limitation in the brain has been set.

But don't all successful people set goals?

We've been led to believe that successful people - athletes, celebrities, business people - all set goals.

In his article Consider Not Setting Goals in 2013 Peter Bregman shoots down an urban myth.

"Like that study done on the Harvard Business School class you may have heard of, in which only 3% of the graduating students wrote down clear goals. Twenty years later, those 3% were worth 10 times the worth of the rest of the class combined. Compelling, right? It would be if it were true. But it isn't. That study doesn't exist. It's pure urban myth."

Also, I was interested to read in a recent chaos and pain article that Hugh Jackman doesn't believe in goal setting. To quote Jackman

"That's Jackman's primary driver: Instead of setting goals, seek defining moments. Those are the real tests, because you have to be willing to fail in a pressure situation in front of other people. "That fear holds all of us back," Jackman says. "And that's the toughest thing about aging. With age, you see people fail more. You see yourself fail more. How do you keep that fearlessness of a kid? You keep going"

and

 "I don't set goals in life," he says. "In this country, people are all about goal setting. And I concede, to a point, how it can help you get going. But we limit ourselves with goals. We have far more ability than we give ourselves credit for. You see that in people under pressure. How does someone run a 100-meter race at the Olympics? When it's once every 4 years, with everything they've done leading to that? It can't just be adrenaline." Then he nods and smiles. "Maybe it's just the mind getting out of the way."

(Both quotes originally appeared in mens health I think)

(You can see the full article here, but be don't go to this site if you are easily offended)

The idea of seeking defining moments is pivotal. (Not only is Jackman, 6' 3", ripped and can sing, yes Les Mis is a great film, he comes out with great quotes like this; I want to hate him, but I can't).

Next time you're in the gym, feeling strong, try that extra weight on the bar, see what happens. Out for a 30 minute run but everything is flowing, just keep going, run until you get lost. Haven't exercised for years, go for a walk, what the hell have you got to lose.

Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners are the epitome of not limiting themselves. They all seem to think they can win, and run a 2.04 marathon, sometimes they crash and burn, but sometimes it becomes a defining moment. That's why they are so scary to run against, they have't accepted limits nearly as much as some of the European and American runners have.

So what to do? Focus of course.

Peter Bregman proposes areas of focus. Rather than focus on the outcome and the goal, focus on what you are doing here and now, the  task you are doing at this moment with no future reward in mind.  Stay in the present.

"How do you do it? It's simple: identify the things you want to spend your time doing"(Bregman)

You have to have fun and enjoy it. Bregman is focusing on business, but its even easier in training because you don't have a boss telling you what to focus on.

If you like lifting weights, lift the weights for the hell of it, focus on the perfect rep, or mastering an olympic lift. The process is important. Don't be wedded to one program or a number in your mind. Those poor saps who dropped out after 2 months, they were focused on some future reward, countless people have said to me 'I hate exercise, I hate the gym' but they feel they have to do it, they've already failed, I feel like telling them - 'go and get your money back now and leave, this wont work for you', if you don't love the process, then all you are going to do is blame the monthly cost, or the water fountain or the cleaners in the gym, because you didn't like it or it was too hard.

As I've stated before, you have to be intrinsically motivated, no one will do this for you. And if you reach some pre-determined artificial point in the future, you will feel hollow, wonder what to do and will have missed living in the present.

Stop being distracted by frivolous things, how many things can you really focus on?

To quote Pavel Tsatsouline

"Over the years people have asked me why don�t I offer motivation tips. The answer is: I have none. We are all adults here: either you have it, or you don�t."

There are no goals - go ultra.

With running its easy to get obsessed by numbers, we all have Garmins and stop watches. We can become OCD about measuring our average speeds, mileage and PBs. All the while missing what we should focus on - the joy of running.

As Peter Bregman has said in another blog 'stop focusing on your performance'.

We live in a society where everything is measured, performance evaluated, KPIs, we become goal driven. Yes, our society has benefited from the technology and the advances but in recent years it has also been our un-doing. Measure everything, then people just fix the numbers to hit the goal, because the stats are all that matters, and winning is everything and the quality is gone. And no one sticks their head above the parapet because no-one wants to be seen to be the one who fails, because you'll be the first one in the firing line when it all goes pear-shaped.

In ultrarunning the guys and gals at the front are trying to run as fast as they can, but behind them is another sub-culture. Those who are running just to run. The Caballo Blancos of this world. Run just to run. No watch, no distance in mind, they explore. Also described by Rob Schultheis in the book Bone Games, a whole group of people not entering races or thinking in terms of 50 or 100 miles, but just drawing a straight line on a map and then traversing that line for no other reason than to do it, be in the moment, the zen mind.

And at that point you've gone beyond goals, and the need for external validation and chasing some future you.

�I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.� - John Muir

If you're lucky you get to focus on what you want to do all the time. However, realistically with financial needs and family responsibilities you may have to devote a large chunk of your time to something you don't like that much to make ends meet. In which case, for f**ks sake do not waste your precious spare time on things you hate or are not engaged with, focus on things you actually want to do and don't blame anyone else if your don't.

Forget goals. Relax, let it go and immerse yourself. Enjoy.

Don't get distracted by looking too far down the road. Focus on where you are now.

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_governor
http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2013/01/stop-focusing-on-your-performa.html
http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2012/12/consider-not-setting-goals-in.html
http://www.strongfirst.com/blog/be-a-man-among-men/
 http://lostinfitness.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/evening-with-caballo-blanco-you-know.html
Zimmerman, Mike.  The Hugh Jackman Workout: The X-Factor.  Men's Health.  2006.  Web.  23 Jan 2013.  http://www.menshealth.com/celebrity-fitness/hugh-jackman-workout